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Showing posts from March, 2007

And the Truth Shall Set You Free

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Apparently the truth has a liberal bias. Don't get me wrong. I spent far too long as a Philosopher not to realize that Truth is a sticky issue. In fact, it can be almost impossible to determine what the truth of any matter is. But at the very least, most people who are engaged in the collection and dissemination of information strive towards presenting that information in a manner which most closely reflects the way the universe actually is, whatever that may be. Despite all its problems, it seems that Wikipedia does a fairly decent job at this. While the information presented in Wikipedia may not be authoritative, there are enough people contributing who care about their subjects to ensure that the information, for the most part, correctly reflects the current scholarship in that field. However, this is not good enough for some of our conservative friends who have found that Wikipedia presents a liberal bias. Therefore, in reaction to this, they have created their own counter

Welcome to Year Five

Yep, that's right. As of Tuesday we will have officially entered year five of the war in Iraq. Just as a friendly reminder, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor took place December 7, 1941, and Emperor Hirohito accepted the Allies' terms for surrender on August 15, 1945. In other words, our involvement in World War II didn't even last this long. Today we hear news that another 7 servicemen died this weekend in Iraq. This seems to be roughly commensurate with the loss rates we've experienced throughout the war. Yes, it's piddly compared to WW2, but it certainly seems that there's a difference between battling a self-declared Empire that has set its sights on taking over the civilized world, and... well, what? Removing non-existent weapons of mass destruction from a petty dictator? Stabilizing an inherently unstable part of the world? Making money for multi-national military/industrial complexes? That of course brings us to Halliburton's decision this w

Springing Backwards

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I hate daylight savings time. I really do. Maybe it's a silly thing to hate, but it has always seemed utterly pointless to me. And now the additional monkeying around we're doing with this already absurd device is making it even more pointless. IT departments all over the country are having to scramble to reprogram all the automatic clock settings on all the computers everywhere. At my own work, after the patches were applied we all had to go into our calendars and manually move all of the appointments from March 11th through April 8th one hour earlier, since the patch advanced all the times that were already in the system. This has got to be costing millions nationwide. And for what? Apparently the goal is to get a jump on the amount of time people are using lights and thereby save energy costs. Putting aside the fact that with a stroke of the pen congress could mandate 45 mpg minimums for vehicles and thereby save a heck of a lot more energy, how much are we really sav