Articles for the Age of Reason

"WE, THE SENSIBLE CITIZENS of the United States, in an attempt to help people get along, restore some semblance of justice, avoid any more needless riots, keep our nation safe, promote positive behavior, and secure the blessings of debt-free liberty to ourselves and our great- grandchildren, hereby try one more time to ordain and establish some common sense guidelines for the terminally whiny, guilt-ridden, deluded, and other bed-wetting morons. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that a whole lot of people are confused by the Bill of Rights and are so stupid that they require a Bill of NO Rights."

ARTICLE I: You do NOT have the right to a new car, big screen TV, fastest new computer, or any other form of wealth. More power to you if you can legally acquire them, but our government is not obligated to guarantee these luxuries. Live with an old car and a 13" B&W TV.

ARTICLE II: You do NOT have the right to never be offended. This country is based on freedom, and that means freedom for everyone - not just you! You may leave the room, change the channel, express a different opinion, etc., but the world is full of idiots, and probably always will be.

ARTICLE III: You do NOT have the right to be free from harm. If you stick a screwdriver in your eye, learn to be more careful; do not expect the tool manufacturer to make you independently wealthy because of your stupidity or lack of skill.

ARTICLE IV: You do NOT have the right to free food and housing. Americans are the most charitable people to be found, and will gladly help anyone in need, but we have grown weary of subsidizing generation after generation of professional couch potatoes who achieve nothing more than the creation of another generation of professional couch potatoes!

ARTICLE V: You do NOT have the right to free health care. That would be nice, but from the looks of public housing, we're just not interested in our own health.

ARTICLE VI: You do NOT have the right to physically harm other people. If you kidnap, rape, intentionally maim, or kill someone, don't be surprised if the rest of us want to see you sit in the electric chair for a short period of time.

ARTICLE VII: You do NOT have the right to anything that belongs to others. If you rob, cheat or coerce away the goods, services, or money of other citizens, don't be surprised if the rest of us get together and lock you away in a place where you STILL won't have the right to a big screen color TV or a life of leisure.

ARTICLE VIII: You do NOT have the right to any job regardless of your race, creed, sexual preference or religion. Take advantage of the opportunities of education and vocational training laid before you to make yourself useful and self supportive. Don't expect a free ride from the government or your community.

ARTICLE IX: You do NOT have the right to happiness. Being an American means that you have the right to PURSUE happiness. Make your own happiness, don't sit there and wait for someone to hand it to you.

By Mitchell Kaye & Titus Carter

Your Contribution to the Spanish-American War

I received this from Glenn not too long ago, since I haven't had time to come up with anything new since finals week is always busy, this will have to do until I get bored enough to actually post something.
Here it is:

A hundred and seven years ago, in 1898, the federal government began levying a temporary 3 percent excise tax on telephones, ostensibly to fund the Spanish-American War.

Flash forward to 2005 -- and every American with a telephone is still paying this "temporary" tax. The war was over after just a few months, but the tax has been in effect for over a century. On top of that, the tax does not go for any specific purpose. Rather, the funds are simply added to the general fund.

Congress attempted to repeal the tax in 2000. Both the House and the Senate passed legislation to eliminate the tax -- it was a 420-2 vote in the House -- but then-President Bill Clinton vetoed the bill when it reached his desk.

Once again, the House has been presented with a bill -- H.R. 1898 -- that would repeal the tax on telephone and other communications services. The bill was introduced in late April by Rep. Gary G. Miller of California, and has been cosponsored by 39 other congressmen. It currently sits in the House Committee on Ways and Means.

The outrage?

This tax should have been repealed more than a century ago, but some members of Congress still support the tax -- and some even want to expand it. Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation issued an opinion in January, saying that the tax could be expanded to apply to wireless Internet and data connections.

Good Ol' Fashon Justice (follow up)

The two men responsible for defending their car will not be facing criminal charges for the death of the Edward Zanassi, who tried to steal their 1967 Camero. The county prosecutor also said that they may start treating auto theft as a crime and prosecute those who do it.

Mp3 Players

This is an almost final draft of my latest writing assignment for my English class, enjoy if you wish.

The music industry has centered on forms over the decades. The media has changed many times; from analog to digital, from LP to CD, it continues to evolve before our eyes. The current mutation is in the form of compressed files that reside on a computer hard drives. Wav, Mp3, Ogg, and Mid are everyday words in my circles, representing 4 of the dozens of music file formats that live in cyberspace. New technology allows us to carry these files with us in small devices wherever we go with ever increasing capacities. The Apple iPod has become one of the most visible and popular of the music players seen today. Ask a random group of people and most of them will probably tell you that iPod is the best music player available, but that is only because the advertisements tell them that.
Turn on the TV, read a magazine, look at billboards and you will see an ad for an iPod, you practically have to go out of your way to avoid one. Apple followed the lead of such companies as Rio and Creative by releasing their own player, the iPod, named in the same fashion as their iMac and iBook computers. They realized several years ago that digital music players were going to be the next hot consumer music medium, and they were right. Dumping millions of dollars into their marketing campaign has allowed them to seize a sizable portion of the market. Now, thanks to the total media saturation, when most people think digital music, they think iPod. Apple’s marketing executives have done their job very well; I hope they all retire as billionaires.
The most common form of digital music today is MPEG-I Layer 3 Audio, more commonly shortened to Mp3. This format was revolutionary upon its introduction to the world in the early 1990s. Before Mp3, when computer hard drives were measured in megabytes, it was inconceivable to store an entire CD on a computer much less an entire collection. Mp3 made it possible to store music files on a computer hard drive as the data files were as much as 20 times smaller without substantially hurting the sound quality. The seeds for the new music revolution had been planted.
It took until 1999 with the introduction of Napster.com to make Mp3 mainstream. People now realized that they could copy entire CDs onto their computer, and share them with others, while getting new music from all over the world for free. Many music artists embraced the new medium that allowed them to share their music with the entire world, without having to deal with the large record companies who would never sign them to a contract. The music industry took notice and sued Napster out of existence. They did this because people were stealing their music instead of paying for their songs. Napster and many of its successors are now gone, but the Mp3 craze has stuck to this day. Creative Audio, a company specializing in consumer audio equipment, decided to release a small digital player that would hold the downloaded music for people to play on the go. Unlike a CD player, these devices were small, never skipped a beat when moved, and lasted a very long time on a single battery. A handful of companies soon released their own Mp3 players, including Rio, Sony, and eventually Apple.
Apple’s iPod was not a landmark technology when it was released, but it did influence the evolution of today’s digital music players. It incorporated a new interface that had not been seen before and a sleek design. A tiny hard drive replaced the memory commonly found in an Mp3 player which allowed for an impressive five gigabytes of music storage; this was half of the storage space of the average desktop computer at the time. Apple marketed their new iPod niche as their Mac computers where it was quickly embraced by their loyal Mac users. The fad had been born.
It took more than a year for the iPod to be introduced into the mainstream market where it began picking up a dedicated user base that is growing even as I type this. The iPod has evolved through several newer generations and can hold as much as sixty gigabytes of music at this time. The sleek design graces countless ads and people everywhere sport their trademark white earphones. Go into any major electronics store and you will see a large display featuring the iPod and many accessories. From the media saturation, you would never know that any other model of Mp3 player existed. Today, the name “iPod” itself has come to be worth about $100 by itself; the average cost of having the Apple logo on your Mp3 player. If you want an Mp3 player with more features than an iPod, a simplified interface, or more music storage they are readily available. If the 14 hours of battery found in an iPod not enough for you, get something with 40 hours of juice. There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the iPod is a very good Mp3 player even if it is the most expensive, but it is not the best available. The early pioneers of portable audio players are still developing and releasing new and improved players that are several steps ahead of the iPod in features and functions. Why don’t I see TV commercials and billboards being graced by the Creative Zen or the Rio Carbon players? I don’t see them because the companies would rather invest in new technology than advertisements. This is what will keep these companies alive after the iPod trend fades like the 8-track tape.
Apple has everything bet on their iPod at the moment, completely eclipsing their other product. The other Mp3 player manufacturers have several lines of audio devices on the market, Apple has one. I’ve tried to stay away from the huge, name brand fads because the better product is lurking closely in its shadow. With technology advancing at the fastest rate in history, being left behind is an easy feat no matter how advanced the technology is at the moment. The iPod will someday be surpassed by its nameless competitors just as the BetaMax tape player was replaced by the VHS system which has been replaced by the DVD, which will be replaced when something better comes along.

Good Ol' Fashon Justice

A man in Grahm tried to steal a 1967 Camaro Wednesday morning. He figured it would be an easy deal even if he got caught since car theft isn't generally prosecuted around here. He didn't count on being caught by the owner and his roommate who sent him to the hospital in critical condition. The would-be thief, Edward Zanassi, has a repeat criminal history including auto theft, identify theft, and drug charges. I say he had it coming.

Other sucky stuff

Now that they have effectively raised property taxes, they are milking more money out of me on top of that. The state legislature passed some fun tax bills. First, they repealed an initiative of the people which required a 2/3 vote of approval for all tax increases. Then they passed a 9.5 cent increase in the gas tax over the next 3 years. As of July 1 of this year, we will now have the second highest gas tax in the country, thirty-one cents on the state level, just a single cent behind New York. This will be remedied on January 1, 2006 when another 3 cent increase will take effect, giving us the highest gas tax in the country. I probably wouldn’t be complaining much if we had the best roads in the country, but there are places on the freeway where it isn’t safe to go the posted speed limit because the roads are about 10 years overdue for being resurfaced. 
The officials say that they need the tax money to fund such projects as their new light rail system. I have a serious problem with their current system; it doesn’t take people from where they are, to where they want to go. The current trains can take people from Everett to Seattle (about 30 miles) in an hour, with 2 stops in between. The budget analysis was just published in the paper; they spent $393 million on this system. The worst part about it is that there are about 160 people that ride the train on a daily basis. THAT COMES OUT TO $2.46 MILLION PER RIDER! Oh and the operating cost? It costs more than $300 per passenger in daily operating expenses to keep the two trains moving. If they are so hell-bent on taking 160 cars off of the road, they should buy these people small helicopters and train them how to use them, they would be saving tens of millions of dollars.
What is the official response to the low ridership? The idiots in charge are going to add another 400 passenger train to the existing two so that it is more convenient for those riding to have a slightly more flexible departure schedule. I’m guessing that that will only increase the operating costs 50% or so, but probably won’t increase the number of riders much. Someone seriously needs to look into this and consider filing criminal charges against those responsible.
The biggest problem is that Seattle residents aren’t fans of public transportation. The current system doesn’t take people from where they live or work to where they need to go. I could take the bus to school everyday instead of the 45 minutes I spend driving there, but it would require 2 transfers, waiting for the next buses to come, and it would take a little over 2 hours each way to get from my house to school. I don’t have an extra 2.5 hours every day to travel to and from school. I took a while on this post, which I don’t usually do, but I can submit it as a rough draft for an events paper I have in English class, so I’m technically doing homework at the moment. But I’ll post more later if I feel like it, whether or not you want to read it.

Taxes suck

Yesterday a special election was held to increase funding for the local hospital. Their emergency room resources have been seriously over extended for several years now because illegal Mexicans have been using it as a free clinic. The current law forbids the emergency room staff from turning anyone away to claims to have need. The increase would raise the hospital property tax to 59 cents per $1,000 assessed value of property. What they did not tell anyone; that I had to look up on my own is that the current property tax is 9 cents per $1,000 assessed value. Top that with the fact that assessed property values in my neighborhood are significantly higher than the market value of these properties. I’d expect the market value to decrease around here because the neighborhood is rapidly declining as the houses age and are not being properly maintained by their residents, many of whom don’t speak English or any understandable dialect.

Better luck next time...

Happy 4-19 everyone!

The Catholics now have a new pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is now Pope Benedict XVI. My campeign for the papacy has been a rather small and unremarkable one, as less than 100 people knew that I was running. Since he's 78, I doubt he'll be breaking any records for longest serving popes. Now I have more time to setup my new campeign for being the next pope.

On a more important note, AMD is now shipping their 'Revision E' Hammer core processors which mean better overclocking with less heat. With the addition of SSE3 to the chips they may now show higher performance on applications taylored to the Pentium 4. And with the moble Turion64 chips being released as a strong contender to the Pentium M I am now considering buiding a laptop for my next system.

Wow School is Boring

I now have 9 hours of free time to kill at school every week now that the new quarter has started. I spend most of this time reading news online. I also study my quiz book during this time. Yesterday I was even so bored that I did homework. I eventually ran out of that to do, so I made up something to do. I didn't feel like making a cool post, so I am dedicating this post to TBQelite and Rebenstrange. I took their profile pictures and separated them. Here they are:

You can tell which is which because TBQelite was wearing his watch, while Rabenstrange doesn't wear watches.

On March 8, Senator Clinton gave a speech to the Kaiser Family Foundation on the media's influence on teens. Here's an excerpt that had to do with video games:

In the last four decades, the government and the public health community have amassed an impressive body of evidence identifying the impact of media violence on children. Since 1969, when President Johnson formed the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, the body of data has grown and grown and it leads to an unambiguous and virtually unanimous conclusion: media violence contributes to anxiety, desensitization, and increased aggression among children. When children are exposed to aggressive films, they behave more aggressively. And when no consequences are associated with the media aggression, children are even more likely to imitate the aggressive behavior.

Violent video games have similar effects. According to testimony by Craig Anderson before the Senate Commerce Committee in 2000, playing violent video games accounts for a 13 to 22% increase in teenagers' violent behavior.

Now we know about 92% of children and teenagers play some form of video games. And we know that nine out of ten of the top selling video games contain violence.

And so we know that left to their own devices, you have to keep upping the ante on violence because people do get desensitized and children are going to want more and more stimulation. And unfortunately in a free market like ours, what sells will become even more violent, and the companies will ratchet up the violence in order to increase ratings and sales figures. It is a little frustrating when we have this data that demonstrates there is a clear public health connection between exposure to violence and increased aggression that we have been as a society unable to come up with any adequate public health response.

So now we have to figure out why kids are getting dumber when it comes to differentiating fantasy from reality. Fifty years ago, cowboys and Indians were very popular on TV and kids watched gun battle after gun battle on TV. Back then, it was even acceptable for a student to bring a gun to school for show and tell. I can’t find a single instance of a school shooting in the news archives in the 50s. So I have my doubts that watching people shooting each other on TV is cause enough to go out and shoot someone else in real life.

Video game manufacturers are constantly making more violent games than ever before, that is a fact. It is also fact that it is a purely consumer driven industry. If people didn’t want to buy and play violent video games, there’s nothing forcing them to do so. I have my doubts that 90% of the thousands of video game titles contain violence, unless of course you count a tackle in football as violence or Mario jumping on a goomba's head. The real question they should be asking is not “Why are developers forcing violence upon the youth of the world?”, because they are not, but “Why do I like these games so much?” I like them because they are fun. More often than not I play racing, sport, and strategy games but I still like to sit down and shoot up everything in sight every once in a while. I don't think anyone would argue that shooting everyone in sight in Grand Theft Auto is not preferable to shooting people in a shopping mall.

Quote of the moment:
"The new Europe: Being a constant reminder why our ancestors left the Old Europe."

Long time no post!

Well it's definitely been too long since my last post. Do most of you reading this really care? Probably not. Since my last post several important things have happened in the world. I found out that I am listed in the acknowledgements of Claire Wolfe's newest book, The Freedom Outlaw's Handbook. My spring break started about 8 hours ago, and I plan to waste every second possible with totally random and cool stuff, not to mention catching up on a few month's worth of lost sleep. A bunch of students tormented another student beyond his breaking point; now a handful of people are dead. Bryan Suits is back on the radio in his rightful timeslot and I am happy for myself because I can listen to him 5 days a week again. A few other things that might be important also happened, but they are obviously not important enough for me to remember at the moment.

Quote of the moment:
I Solve My Problems Through Violence

I'm busy!

No I haven't posted anything interesting for a while, and no I don't see doing so in the next few days. I have too much work to do to post anything meaningful here right now. I have 4 papers due in the next 7 days and they all suck. I get to quiz this weekend for the first time in a year and a half so I've been studying for that as well. But I also have 2 tests this week that I should also be studying for. So for the last post I should be writing all week here is an anonymous quote that I found while cleaning out my junk mail folder:

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.

The Horse Quiz

Thus says the survey.

A-Team Resurection

Howstuffworks.com has decided they want to form a new A-Team. They placed an ad in the LA Craigslist and waited for results. You can monitor their progress here.

Working Order

I've been putting it off for several months now, but I've finally fixed the most messed up parts of my vehice. I have replaced the wiper motor, so I now have functional windshield wipers; something that I would recommend all Seattle drivers to have. My rear brakes were also squeaking badly, so I opened them up only to learn that excess brake dust was building up inside. I probably have 10,000 miles left minimum before I need to replace them, unless I do a ton of 4x4 off roading in the near future. They still squeak though, so I might take some WD40 to them to fix the squeak. I tweaked my suspension a little so I will have a much smoother ride when hauling 500+ kilogram loads in the back. There are quite a few things that I still need to do, but I now have the more important/annoying ones out of the way.
My current vehicle maintenance to do list:

Get/install a rear-view mirror
Fix rear, passenger window latch
Get/install an emergency brake (I've never had one)
Paint
Replace sound system with one that works better while listening to AM radio

Your opinion wanted

I want to buy a shirt from thoseshirts.com. Since they have many very cool shirts to choose from which one do you think I should buy and why?

Students & Snow

It's official, students have too much free time on their hands.

Student volonteers help create the 55-foot snow scupture of a pirate ship. You can read the entire article here

I'm not sure there's enough snow in a 50 mile radius of my house to make such a structure

Super Bowl ticket

A guy named Jon receives a free ticket to the Super Bowl from his
company. Unfortunately, when Jon arrives at the stadium he realizes
the seat is in the last row in the corner of the stadium - he's closer
to the Goodyear blimp than the field.

About halfway through the first quarter, Jon notices an empty seat 10
rows off the field, right on the 50 yard line. He decides to take a
chance and makes his way through the stadium and around the security
guards to the empty seat. As he sits down, he asks the gentleman
sitting next to him, "Excuse me, is anyone sitting here?" The man
says no.

Now, very excited to be in such a great seat for the game, Jon again
inquires of the man next to him, "This is incredible! Who in their
right mind would have a seat like this at the SuperBowl and not use it?"

The man replies, "Well, actually, the seat belongs to me, I was
supposed to come with my wife, but she passed away. This is the
first Super Bowl we haven't been together at since we got married in
1967."

"Well, that's really sad," says Jon, "but still, couldn't you find
someone to take the seat? A relative or close friend?"

"No," the man replies, "they're all at the funeral."

Too much to do, too little time

If you haven't noticed, I haven't posted a new topic for a while. I will hopefully remedy the situation later tonight. If not, I'll just have to dig up an old email worth reading again.

English is a hard to learn

If English is not your first language, it is one of the hardest to learn. There are many pronunciations for the same letter combinations, that getting a firm grasp takes years, even for a native speaker. Here’s why:

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert..

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail

18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.

19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France(Surprise!). Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.

Quicksand works slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea or is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?

If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend. If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? Is it an odd, or an end?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out, and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

One more: Why doesn't "Buick" rhyme with "quick"?