Stop protecting me from terrorists

I just want to make it clear. I don't believe the U.S. government has protected me from a single "terrorist" since September 11, 2001. Since then the executive branch has seized a lot of secret power and violated the rights of U.S. citizens all in the name of protection. This is my public announcement that I'd prefer my right to privacy over a pledge of protection. There's no need for me to lay out all my reasons here when Conor Friedersdorf has already done it for me.

Arrivals and departures

No U.S. airspace is more crowded right now than that around our bird feeder. Flights are coming in from as close as the Blue Spruces and as far away as the Cottonwoods. A rambunctious flock of Chickadees, Titmouses, Juncos, and a Nuthatch or two are ceaselessly arriving empty beaked then departing with a precious sunflower seed.

Landing in the rain.

The resident pair of Cardinals drop in, each alternating between a turn at dominating the feeder and then on the ground keeping watch. They seem to be less an infatuated young couple than a middle-aged pair, a little wiser and more wary of the world's unexpected events whose outcome is unknown.

A vein of Gold Finches arrives. Taking up perches they raise their wings and beat the air at new arrivals until the would-be perch usurper departs. Momentarily at peace, they can snatch up a seed and gnaw the shell with their beaks until it cracks open.

Undesirables of the rodent and avian world join in. Squirrels hop around below the feeder rummaging through the accumulated layer of cracked shells and detritus for unopened seeds. Morning Doves wander in a meandering circle and peck with seeming little hope of finding anything. A gang of purple finches and anonymous bland sparrows arrive chasing the brighter birds away.

An interesting bit of drama on an otherwise dark and wet late autumn afternoon.

Congress: this time it's serious!

The U.S. Congress finally swung into action this week aroused by admissions of marital infidelity and the surrounding scandal. Like most Americans I was glad to see Congress take its oversight responsibilities seriously. We all know that a Congressional investigation into the Petraeus affair is of the utmost importance in these dangerous times.

And rightly so Congress will continue to ignore less important matters that at this point can only be distractions. For example investigating the President and Executive Branch for maintaining that the government can kill Americans without judicial due process. Everyone knows that the American public embraces this policy because the government can be trusted to only kill the right Americans.

Another minor irritation that troublemakers might harp on at this politically critical juncture is the growing use of drones over the United States by the government to spy on its own citizens. Congress is well aware that the only people bringing up this issue are those who obviously have something to hide. Their tired appeals for the respect of "civil rights" can't be seriously considered now, with the current state of the country.

Don't even get me started on people who want Congress to investigate the government programs that capture citizens' email messages and mobile phone conversations. Or war. Or voting rights.

We should all be thankful that the "do nothing" Congress has recently learned its lesson and that it will begin to probe deeply into the critical matter of juvenile female posturing and infidelity by males in powerful positions. Covered interminably by a 24 hour, hype driven, low information news media, I expect this matter will be investigated thoroughly by Congress until it has extracted the maximum political value.

An update to Smashingline: web feeds

I added a new feature to my "internet property" Smashingline. You can now get updates when new race results are posted through a news reader like Google Reader. Web feeds are commonly known as "RSS" and are represented by a icon (technically RSS is a specific type of web feed and Smashingline uses Atom syndication).

Previously new race results were announced through Facebook and Twitter I added RSS because of changes made by Facebook to how items appear on people's "News Feed," you know the thing that used to be called your "Wall." If you used Facebook years ago you know that all your friends' posts used to appear there. When "Facebook Fan Pages" were added you could "become a fan" and all the page's posts also appeared on your Wall. Eventually Facebook changed "Wall" to "News Feed," those "Facebook Fan Pages" became "Facebook Pages," and instead of being a fan of a page you now "Like" them. But most crucially Facebook also decided that users were getting too many posts for them to peruse so they created "EdgeRank" which is an algorithm that attempts to filter incoming posts and only show the "most relevant" ones on a person's News Feed.

Since then Facebook has tinkered with EdgeRank attempting to find the optimal mix of posts you actually care about versus advertising. This tinkering has only accelerated since Facebook's IPO. This past September Facebook announced "promoted posts" where the poster pays to increase the likelihood that their post will appear in a News Feed. The converse is that if you don't pay your posts are less likely to be seen. The most insidious part of all this is that when people "Like" a Facebook Page most of them probably believe that they will get all of the posts from the page. Most of us thought that Like was analogous to "Follow" on Twitter, unfortunately that's not so and Facebook user's are probably not getting information from organizations they are interested in.

Since Smashingline does not make money I will not be paying to promote posts (in fact I have to pay Google every month for resource usage on their App Engine platform). RSS web feeds, a pre-Facebook part of the internet, are the solution to this problem. RSS takes away the power Facebook currently has over what information people see and puts it in the hands of people and the organizations they have a relationship with. It has been suggested that Twitter and Google+ are alternatives but they both have the same problem: ultimately another entity decides what information you get. With RSS there is no gatekeeper between a person and the information they are interested in.

There are a variety of news readers freely available. Google Reader is probably the most well-known. It is very easy to add a news feed to Google Reader and after that you won't miss information from web pages you're interested in. And if you have a web site or blog you should be sure that web feeds are enabled for it, your readers will thank you.

To Mister Romney and friends,

". . .he asked Jesus, 'And who is my neighbour?' Jesus replied, 'A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, 'Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.' Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?' He said, 'The one who showed him mercy.' Jesus said to him, 'Go and do likewise.'"

- Luke 10:29

"There are 47 percent of the people who. . . are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. . . My job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

- Mitt Romney, Republican presidential candidate

I would like to tell you about one of the "47 percent" you were referring to, she is 40 years old and has never worked a day in her life. She is one of those Americans that has never paid taxes. The government pays some of her health care, food, and housing. That person is my sister. You should also know she can no longer walk, dress herself, feed herself, or communicate with her family. Her life has never been easy.

My parents realized years ago that eventually they would not be able to care for her and were fortunate to find a home for her run by the charity Heritage Christian Services (HCS). Now she has a larger family that includes her housemates and the people who care for her. Some of the money that keeps HCS going comes from the taxpayers of the state of New York. When I encounter people complaining about taxes I tell them that my sister depends on some of those taxes to maintain her house and have a decent life, and I thank them because they've helped make that possible. Another portion of HCS's money comes from very generous donors who believe in its mission: "A life of dignity, worth and expression to which all are entitled as God’s created children. This is their rightful HERITAGE."

No doubt your apologists will be quick to say that of course you weren't really referring to people who are disabled. Then which people were you referring to? The elderly poor? Disabled veterans? People who work one or two jobs just to have food and a place to live? The mentally ill, who often have no place to live and no one to treat them? These are the types of people that are part of those 47 percent. You've dismissed almost half of the citizens of this country as unimportant and not worth caring about. That made me angry. I decided I had to speak up for the most vulnerable people who often have no voice of their own. Those who aspire to be great American leaders should stand up for those that have the least, not inflict misery on them.

My sister has never voted, and will never vote. She is not capable of expressing her desires, wishes, or dreams. She is utterly dependent on others to care for her and advocate on her behalf. I wasn't very excited about the upcoming election since President Obama has failed to take many of the actions that I believe are in the best interests of the citizens of this country. But now that I know how you really feel about my sister and other less fortunate citizens in this country I'll be voting in November and I'll think about what's best for her while I'm doing it.

My sister arriving to celebrate Christmas.

Prints can't be hacked

When Mat Honan's GMail, Twitter, and ICloud accounts were hacked he lost all the photos stored on his Mac, IPhone and IPad.

"My MacBook data — including those irreplaceable pictures of my family, of my child’s first year and relatives who have now passed from this life — weren’t the target. Nor were the eight years of messages in my Gmail account. The target was always Twitter. My MacBook data was torched simply to prevent me from getting back in."

Two factor authentication would have helped prevent his accounts from being compromised, but if your photos are important then you should make prints. Mat mentions the loss of these photos four times in his article, even asking the hacker if he feels remorse for causing them to be deleted. Obviously they were very important. Yes prints can be damaged or lost, but it's another preventive step in preserving the photos that are so important to you.

HTML 5 adoption can't happen fast enough

Firefox plugin page with a list of outdated or unsafe plugins. Each update requires navigation to a download page, choosing a download, waiting for the download, and finally waiting for the installation to finish. I know most of these have an "updater" but I really don't want services running on my machine contacting the mother ship willy nilly; that's so 2005.

I don't use my computer so much as administer it.