Politics archive at Daniel Spisak on Technology

Archive for the 'Politics' Category

8 months ago

A cavalcade of cool photos (SFW)

By Daniel Spisak 1 Comment

(No Ratings Yet)

Loading ...

Categories: Cool, Humor, Interesting, Misc, News and Politics

Disclaimer - Don’t be drinking anything when you scroll to the last photo in this list.

I saw the below photo while scanning through Digg while waiting for some software to finish compiling. I think it is pretty telling as to why it seems so many people these days who are watching the various news networks are not as well informed as they once were. In a nutshell we can blame the proliferation and boosting of importance of fluff/celebrity “news” pieces. Oh yeah, and commercials for making sure you dont die/your dick feels big enough for your ego/buy a SUV/etc.

The reason the public is not well informed

Next up we have a high altitude photo taken from a NASA chase plane of the Space Shuttle Columbia taking off from Cape Canaveral

Here we have a graph of US national debt as a percentage of GDP. Notice the difference in spending patterns of the “new Republicans” verses the supposedly spend-fast Democrats. Just goes to show that sometimes parties change their mantras without people really realizing it. After all, GWB was supposed to be a small government Republican when he ran back in 2000. If we only could have had things gone differently.

I thought this piece of work was interesting because I have seen it used for both sides of debate on wether or not God exists. Atheists look at Nature and marvel at its complexity and beauty that it forms out of the natural laws that man has discovered and began to learn over the course of time. On the other hand, proponents of the existence of God look at something like this and point to it as proof that nature, reality and the whole of being must obviously be the work of a creator.

Ok, last but not least is this riotously hilarious photo from The Onion. I nearly choked on my drink when I saw this and simply had to share it with everyone. Don’t say I didn’t warn you earlier!

1 year, 4 months ago

Does this reflect poorly on CNN or Americans?

By Daniel Spisak 0 Comments

(No Ratings Yet)

Loading ...

Categories: Politics

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, well I think this says quite a bit more then that

So the Iraq, the Attorney General scandal and Iran stories are all more important about autopsy results for a dead model best known for being a human trainwreck with a nice rack.

What the hell is wrong with this country? Is this what CNN thinks American’s want to be informed about? Or is this what American’s have told CNN they want to see on their “news network”? I wonder what course is possible that could change this for the better with the populace in general.

1 year, 4 months ago

Links and Stories from my 41 open tabs in Firefox

By Daniel Spisak 1 Comment

(No Ratings Yet)

Loading ...

Categories: Cool, Humor, Interesting, News and Politics

That’s right, I’ve got 41 tabs open in Firefox right now and that’s just for stories and other interesting bits of information I haven’t gotten around to posting in the past week and a half because I’ve been busy with finals or work to some degree. Mind you, I have more than 41 tabs open in Firefox in total right now; the total number is something closer to about 60 something. Having that many web pages open is using 243.7MB of RAM on the system right now so I thought I’d finally dump these suckers into a post so I can clear the cruft out of my tabs.

Dead whale explodes in Taiwan, without the help of explosives:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4096586

Recent analysis of just how fucked we are if a nuclear attack happens in a major US city:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=522

Sony UK boss thinks Americans are “cheap”:
http://www.playfuls.com/news_06695_Sony_UK_Boss_Calls
_the_US_a_Land_of_Cheap_People_to_Justify_PS3_Price.html

An MIT acceptance letter and its resulting response:
http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/hell/Bestof/mit-letter.html

Tim O’Reilly and Doc Searls seem to think they know how to save newspapers, I’m not so sure:
http://doc.weblogs.com/2007/03/24

10 things about software development that had to be learned on the job:
http://www.taylor.se/blog/2007/03/22/top-ten-things-ten-years-of-
professional-software-development-has-taught-me/

The CG Society’s EON film trailer challenge winners, some very impressive work indeed!
http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=3987&page=2

A list of things that will take you 50 years to learn, or you could just read it here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/3716/ebookebook-16-things-it-takes-most-of-us-50-years-to-learn

Human brain is a poor judge of risk….hmmm, sounds like a certain administration I know:
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/1,73047-0.html

Do you like heavy metal music? Then you might be smarter than you think potentially:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2007/03/21/nmetal21.xml

Some good information on Google AdSense ads and how to use them effectively:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/03/22/google-adsense-facts-faqs-and-tools/

New X-ray imagery of the Sun reveals previously thought impossible acts:
http://space.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn11432&feedId=online-news_rss20

MoveOn pokes a little fun at Stephen Colbert with this parody:
http://falsiness.org/

Tony Snow once abdicated against Executive privilege with regards to subpoenaed testimony of White House staffers:
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2007/03/tony-snow-says-president-must-let-his.html

White House offers up Rove for testimony…just without a transcript, or under oath. Talk about insulting our intelligence!
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Conyers_Sanchez_to_seek_subpoenas_of_0320.html

The world’s first blue rose, pretty wild if you ask me:
http://www.thestreaming.info/development_crossing/2007/03/the_worlds_only.html

A gated community in Tennessee thinks it has the right to revoke the 2^nd Amendment under its community rules:
http://www.newschannel5.com/Global/story.asp?S=6242822

A Republican from Texas who claims he would “reinstate the Constitution” if elected, sounds interesting to me:
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/GOP_Presidential_candidate_would_restore_Constitution_0321.html

Tech hits wrong key in Alaska and wipes out 38 BILLION dollar fund, hope they had backups:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2007-03-20-alaska-data_N.htm?csp=34

NFL tried to take copyright and DMCA too far with Superbowl and now faces breaking DMCA itself:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070320-nfl-fumbles-dmca-takedown-battle-could-face-sanctions.html

Why I love NPR more than ever now that the CPR is trying to kill off Internet radio for the RIAA. Et al:
http://consumerist.com/consumer/riaa/npr-vs-the-riaa-244318.php

Not only do they not have enough armor, but our troops don’t even have the best carbine in their hands. Truly maddening:
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/02/atCarbine070219/

Using Bluetooth as a proximity sensor to lock/unlock your OS X laptop:
http://www.technocrat.ca/?p=44

The AppleTV system is looking to be a worthy replacement for aging XBOX Media Center softmod systems:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2391956&perpage=40&pagenumber=9

Free speech case for high school students goes to Supreme Court, looks to divide Bush and his religious right base:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/washington/18scotus.html?ei=5124&en=9751776d478fdf0f&ex=1331870400&partner=digg&exprod=digg&pagewanted=print

How to not let your IT department become like Dilbert (good luck):
http://www.eweek.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=203343,00.asp

1 year, 5 months ago

Dear FOX News, CNN, and other so-called “news” networks

By Daniel Spisak 0 Comments

(No Ratings Yet)

Loading ...

Categories: Personal and Politics

For the love of Christ almighty stop fucking talking about these subjects and all related stories:

Anna Nicole Smith

Brittney Spears

Fluff/Puff pieces in general

I mean, seriously here, you folks (the news media) are supposed to be the 4th fucking pillar here! And you’ve spent the last two weeks talking about Anna Nicole Smith’s death? What. The. Fuck. Now its Brittney Spears, thanks to her stunt with her hair and her yo-yo-ing in and out of rehab. In the meantime the mainstream media has let itself forget that its job is to report that which is newsworthy, not what they decide is to be newsworthy.

You think that your audience is stupid, when the truth is that you’ve MADE them stupid by feeding all of us this crap and calling it “news”.

For example, instead of reporting about ANS’s (pronounced “anus”) death for two weeks you could have been telling your viewership about how the government asked The New York Times to not report information about Dick Cheney’s trip to Pakistan. I guess Pakistan isn’t the model of stability Dick and Bush keep telling us it is?

How about doing some investigative reporting into things people don’t know much about, but really should? Like how many new bills proposed in Congress are not even written by the Senators themselves, but by their favorite lobbyists!

I mean, I realize there is such a thing as the “slow news day” but you could try a bit harder to fill the dead air with something at least informational and that doesn’t assume its primary viewership is retarded monkeys that fling their own feces at each other.

1 year, 10 months ago

I am in line for a PS3 slot….at 11PM

By Daniel Spisak 0 Comments

(No Ratings Yet)

Loading ...

Categories: Politics and Technology Musings

So here I am, in Irvine, at the GameStop off of Barranca and Santa Rosa camped out in my car with the oddest bunch of diehard PS3 fans possible as we wait for the GameStop here to open up at 10AM so the 10 of us in line can put down 100 bucks for our reserved spot for a PS3, as the GameStop has only 10 reserved slots apparently. From what I hear other EB Games have 10 slots or less, and many places are already staked out by just enough people to ensure that there will be no reserved slots available for anyone come 10AM anywhere in this part of Orange County.

I wonder if this is what it is like in Los Angeles and other parts of the country? I wonder just how limited supply is really going to be. After all, supposedly GameStop/EBGames is going to have an online order reservation system going up at some point once they have a better grip on their supply of consoles. However if it is anything like the number of slots I am seeing per store tonight then the PS3 is going to be one of the hardest consoles to purchase this Christmas season.

I imagine selling these things on Ebay should make some folks rather tidy profits if this is any indication of what is to come.

Update: 3:10AM, we just had two Irvine PD cruisers come by and ask why we were loitering in front of the mall. But its all cool.

1 year, 12 months ago

How the Libertarian Party asked me to run for office

By Daniel Spisak 0 Comments

(No Ratings Yet)

Loading ...

Categories: Cool, Personal and Politics

So I’m in a friends car last week Tuesday evening driving up to Hollywood for that evnings LA Philharmonic show at the Hollywood Bowl. About halfway up the drive I get a call on my cellphone from an area code I dont really recognize, but there are some work related activities going on at the time so I take the call just incase. Turns out its the Executive Director for the Libertarian Party in California. As it happens one of the incumbents for the position of Los Alamitos/Rossmoor Water Sewer District didnt file their papers in time, giving a 3 day window of opportunity where anyone could register with the Registrar of Voters in Santa Ana to run for the position and would end up running uncontested. I ask him to send me an email with more information because I have to admit to being at least curious as to what this is all about. Below are copies of the email correspondance, enjoy:

From: druprecht@ca.lp.org
Subject: Your elected office
Date: August 15, 2006 5:31:38 PM PDT
To: des@t-k.com
Daniel,
I’m so glad you are giving this serious consideration. I personally am running for the water district up here in the San Gabriel Valley. The office is the Rossmore/Los Alamitos area sewer district. Filing is free and very easy. You just go to the Registrar of Voters, Neal Kelley, at 1300 South Grand Ave., Bldg. C in Santa Ana 92711 - 714-567-7600 fax 714-567-7556. www.ocvote.com

You must do it by 5 PM tomorrow, Wednesday.
As I said, noone else has filed, so it could be a slam-dunk. If someone doesn’t file, they’ll just appoint one of their cronies… and we really don’t want that! If you have any questions, please call my home # 626-355-8529.

Thanks.
Dave
Dave Ruprecht
Executive Director
Libertarian Party of California
877-884-1776

Mind you, I found this all out the day before the deadline, and I attempted to go online and elsewhere to find information about what such a position would entail from a time and responsability standpoint and wasnt able to come up with too much beyond the fact that I would be compensated $190 per day worth of board level meetings I was involved in. But nowhere could I find a mention of time requirements which is rather critical to me due to obvious reasons presented by my classload at UCI and my consulting work and other consumptions of my time (like sleep!) so I wrote the Party back and said:

From: Daniel Spisak
Subject: Re: Your elected office
Date: August 16, 2006 10:46:48 AM PDT
To: druprecht@ca.lp.org
Reply-To: des@t-k.com
Dave,
As much as I would like to be able to help the Libertarian party in its cause I am afraid I simply don’t have the time available to be able to commit to this seat. I tried to lookup at the Registrar of Voters and a few other places what the duties of the seat are and I was able to find a little bit of information but nothing that could give me an idea of how large a commitment I’d be attaching myself to. I must also confess that I am curious how the Party came to see me as a potential for this seat? I am a somewhat colorful person and am involved already as a volunteer for the state Office of Emergency Services which I have just enough time for. Seeing as I am a full-time undergrad student at UC Irvine until the end of 2007 and I am also working for two different consulting firms on the side to help pay for my education I feel I would not have the time available to devote to the seat to be able to make a fair representation of the Libertarian Party. However I am honored that the Party would ask me for its
help.

Daniel Spisak
dspisak@nonmundane.org
http://blog.nonmundane.org/
Cell: 562.331.1603

Which elected this response back. No harm no foul.

From: druprecht@ca.lp.org
Subject: Re: Your elected office
Date: August 16, 2006 11:01:24 AM PDT
To: des@t-k.comDaniel,
Of course, that’s very understandable. We found you because you are a registered Libertarian in one of these few special districts where the incumbent didn’t file by the normal deadline and we have a 3 day window to get a Libertarian file there for what will probably be an un-contested office. And, believe it or not, being a “colorful” Libertarian is not that odd. Anyway, thanks for you time and good luck with your - what sounds like - extremely busy life.

Dave
Dave Ruprecht
Executive Director
Libertarian Party of California
877-884-1776

So that is the story of how I almost ended up being on the November ballot as a Libertarian candidate. I have to admit I did really want to give this a go but I just couldnt jump head first into something involving the city I live in without first understanding what would be required of me or what I would need to do. Perhaps next year I can think about this again with a more serious mind and some preparation.

1 year, 12 months ago

Call 212-BIG-GUNS for Geraldo now!

By Daniel Spisak 0 Comments

(No Ratings Yet)

Loading ...

Categories: Humor and Politics

Recently I was watching Stephen Colbert doing his bit over at The Colbert Report on Comedy Central when I had the opportunity to see him talk about a subject that I happen to find just as important as he did. That topic of course was voter turnout in America. Colbert talked about how in Austrailia people get small fines for not voting come election day. If you ask me its a pretty easy way to help ensure that American’s might be more motivated to get out of the house and vote come the next election.

Of course, Colbert’s spin on what this would creat in America I find especially hilarious, given that I believe I already live in a Dumb-ocracy what with Bush and his cronies getting elected back into power for a second term in a row. One can only hope people have learned their lesson and will give

Before I saw the Colbert clip however there was this hilarious running gag going on between Colbert and Jon Stewart on The Daily Show regarding Stewart having to apologize to Geraldo Rivera and Bill O’Reiley. Stewart of course has no idea what Colbert is talking about which prompts them to roll a clip from O’Reiley’s show on FOX where he and Geraldo basically bad mouth Stewart and Colbert as insignificant chuckle hucksters in a narcissitic attempt to justify their only blowhard like self-worth. It’s totally worth downloading and watching.

Also of humor was what The Daily Show did with their projection backgrounds on the set on the way out to commercial break. Check it out in the picture to the left.

2 years ago

Today’s (and Tomorrow’s) Blac-U-Weather Forecast

By Daniel Spisak 0 Comments

(No Ratings Yet)

Loading ...

Categories: Humor, Personal and Politics

Click the image for the MP3

It’s 96 degrees in the house right now. This is insane. Where is my nuclear power plants man? We need less CO2 in the air or something, but no I’m going to have to suffer through another 2 1/2 years of this Bush environmental head-in-the-sand BS. Great.

2 years, 3 months ago

America’s Immigration Problem(s)

By Daniel Spisak 0 Comments

(No Ratings Yet)

Loading ...

Categories: Personal and Politics

I think the biggest problem with immigration can be summed up with this one story I saw on CNN on Tuesday:

“Mexico threatens lawsuits over Guard”
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/05/16/mexico.immigration.ap/index.html

So lets try and understand this correctly. Bush says he’s going to send down a gaggle of National Guard troops to “watch” the border and “advise”, but not enforce the sovereignty of this nation directly. And Vicente Fox wants to threaten our country with legal action over this? What madness is this? Mind you, if one reads the National Guard’s mission statement as taken from their website:

“During national emergencies, however, the President reserves the right to mobilize the National Guard, putting them in federal duty status. While federalized, the units answer to the Combatant Commander of the theatre in which they are operating and, ultimately, to the President.

Even when not federalized, the Army National Guard has a federal obligation (or mission.) That mission is to maintain properly trained and equipped units, available for prompt mobilization for war, national emergency, or as otherwise needed.”

So when Bush mobilized the National Guard to help with the border was he making a tacit admission that our border policy and enforcement is in such shambles that it constitutes as a national emergency? Or is this falling under the nebulous “other” reason? Or is it because the country of Mexico itself is its own poorly contained national emergency that the politicians of this country have willingly lent support to in the guise of the lack of action pertaining to the protection of this country’s borders?

I’ve had the great displeasure of watching Senator Kennedy talk about his thoughts on the immigration reform bill and how he believes it should work. I keep hearing how illegal immigrants only take the jobs American’s dont want to do. Perhaps that was true at first a long time ago. Today however, I find that argument becoming weaker as more and more illegal immigrants stream into the country. If you combine this with the loss of various kinds of jobs to places outside of this country where they can be done cheaper either because of looser environmental laws or due to the differences in international currencies I find this country becoming more service oriented.

So America is supposed to just absorb 100 million plus illegals over the course of 20 years? Thats 5 million additional new jobs that would need to be created every year for twenty years in addition to regular job market growth just to try and support this huge incoming flux. This in a country where for the last 5 years job growth has been lukewarm at best. For more about that you should read the article here:

http://baltimorechronicle.com/2006/021306Roberts.shtml

Then again, rounding up 12 million illegals and deporting them would be a major undertaking. Is it possible? Sure, but only if lawyers dont get into the act. I can’t imagine the kind of legal field day that would ensue due to the likes of the ACLU and other entities. It would be worse then trying to get a nuclear plant built in the middle of the desert I’d wager.

With the President’s approval rating at such an all time low, you’d think that doing something decisive that 68% of this country agrees with would be a complete no-brainer. Send in the National Guard and authorize them to deport illegals crossing into this country while authorizing a crash construction plan for a wall to seal off the border with Mexico. In the meantime, light a fire under the INS ass and start enforcing the laws that already exist on the book with emphasis on cracking down on the businesses using/exploiting illegals for labor. This is something that should be rather easy to start doing just in the state of California, go out to the fields or to the local Home Depot corner.

As for the border with Canada, a similar plan could probably be enacted, but somehow I get the feeling this country isn’t straining under the load of millions of illegal Canadians crossing into this country.

So the problem now as I see it is trying to identify which politicians in power actually have their ability to reason logically still intact and try to influence them with some damn reason. If this country doesn’t do the right something about its border policy soon it’s just going to fall even deeper into the rabbit hole thats already been created.

Search

About the Author

Daniel Spisak was born from the fiery depths of fusion and now roams the pale blue dot known as Earth. I obtained my bachelors degree in Computer Science from UC Irvine at the end of 2007.

I am also involved in technology & security consulting firms as well as being a freelance technology writer. I also contribute to Jerry Pournelle's website and Chaos Manor Reviews. Additionally I am also a freelance photographer as well and you can find my photos either on my own personal gallery or up at my Flickr account or on Zivity.

This blog is one of the main locations where I do my writing, which is then automatically sent to my LiveJournal, VOX, and MySpace accounts. I can also be found on a variety of social networking and microblogging sites like Pownce, Twitter, Brightkite, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

If your viewing this site with Internet Explorer it may not look correct because IE is horrible about following W3C web standards properly or consistently. I suggest you try browsing the Internet with Firefox. It is much better and not as vulnerable to security flaws as IE can be.