There's no place like home

There is a small town in Alaska named Dillingham. It has a population of about 2400 and is very remote. A fishing village, mainly.

The city council and mayor have spent about $220,000 of Homeland Security money to install 60 cameras (with 20 more to come) around the town.

What are the expecting to see?

Total insanity.

Oh! I just realised its a multi-page article and it gets even better! It's a movie-plot threat scenario!

"Tokyo is that way," says Thompson, extending his arm to the left. He's standing near the spot in the harbor where Roberts stood the previous day.

"Russia is about 800 miles that way," he says, arm extending right.

"Seattle is about 1,200 miles back that way." He points behind him.

"So if I have the math right, we're closer to Russia than we are to Seattle."

Now imagine, he says: What if the bad guys, whoever they are, manage to obtain a nuclear device in Russia, where some weapons are believed to be poorly guarded. They put the device in a container and then hire organized criminals, "maybe Mafiosi," to arrange a tramp steamer to pick it up. The steamer drops off the container at the Dillingham harbor, complete with forged paperwork to ship it to Seattle. The container is picked up by a barge.

"Ten days later," the chief says, "the barge pulls into the Port of Seattle."

Thompson pauses for effect.

"Phoooom," he says, his hands blooming like a flower.

"Farfetched? My view is we pay people like me to think of the 'what ifs,' " Thompson says.

Bruce Schneier loves to write about movie-plot threat scenarios.

Story details here.

I know it's only Tuesday, but this makes me laugh and I keep watching it over and over.

It is titled Unmoderated Mousetrap Chain Reactor and it's an awesome display of a chain reaction.

Here is the full explaination.

It's...Time...For...AN-I-MANIACS!

Supposedly, the Animaniacs are finally coming out on DVD!

According to this, they will be out in at least two volumes. Volume one is to be released around July 25th with volume two coming out in time for Christmas.

Man, I hope so!

There is a new paper craft blog in town! It is named "Paper Kraft". Surprise.

There are some nice free animal models on it.

Here is a very nice chart showing the order in which you should read the Terry Pratchett Discworld series.

I have read most of these, generally in publication order. I think I need to start collecting them and then read them following this chart.

Stephanie needed to deliver invitations for her thirteenth (!) birthday party to her friends and it was nice enough to take the sidecar!

The battery is pretty weak in the rig - I need to get a new one - so I had to jump start the bike. But once I got it started and let it warm up a bit, it was good to go!

So Stephanie and I drove all over delivering invites. We were out for about an hour and a half.

A nice day for a ride. I saw a lot of other bike out too, and lots of people were looking at us and smiling.

KERA-TV in Dallas was the first PBS station to broadcast Monty Python's Flying Circus, and it was the Pythons' first stop in the US after the premier of Monty Python and the Holy Grail in Los Angeles in 1975. This interview footage first aired live on KERA that year, and hasn't been seen by the public since.

Here is 14 minutes of live footage from 1975 that hasn't been seen since it was taped!

Awesome!

I have tweaked the Sysadmin Daily Planner page a little to make it look more like the DIY Planner V3 format.

I also made it a 2-Up file, so I can print it on my duplexing (gotta love duplexing) printer and then just chop the pages in half and punch them.

Here is the new file.

All the other pages I have made are still here. I still need to make it a Mambo section, or make a pretty index page. Some day.

I'll be tweaking the other pages too and most likely 2-Uping them.

Doug over at DIY Planner has also asked me to help on the V3 widget kit! I feel honored!

Here is a petition put forth by twelve Muslim writers:

THE MANIFESTO OF 12:

Together facing the new totalitarianism

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new global totalitarian threat: Islamism.

We -- writers, journalists and public intellectuals -- call for resistance to religious totalitarianism.

Instead, we call for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values worldwide.

The necessity of these universal values has been revealed by events since the publication of the Muhammad drawings in European newspapers. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the arena of ideas. What we are witnessing is not a clash of civilizations, nor an antagonism of West versus East, but a global struggle between democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The preachers of hate bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a world of inequality. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred.

Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of greater power imbalances: man’s domination of woman, the Islamists’ domination of all others.

To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed people. For that reason, we reject “cultural relativism,” which consists of accepting that Muslim men and women should be deprived of their right to equality and freedom in the name of their cultural traditions.

We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of “Islamophobia,” an unfortunate concept that confuses criticism of Islamic practices with the stigmatization of Muslims themselves.

We plead for the universality of free expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on every continent, against every abuse and dogma.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of enlightenment, not of obscurantism.

Signed,

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Chahla Chafiq , Caroline Fourest, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Irshad Manji , Mehdi Mozaffari, Maryam Namazie, Taslima Nasreen, Salman Rushdie, Antoine Sfeir, Philippe Val, Ibn Warraq

They now have death threats against all of them. No surprise there.

But they have a petition that you can sign showing your support. I just did. You should too.

Go here and sign.

This is a great send up of religion and Mc Donalds. All mashed into one funny video.

Catch it quick, the site says it's gone after April 15th.

TheMcPassion