A friend's poem

The sun is up,
the sky is clear,
my sister is coming,
I am happy.

The fog is back,
the moon is full,
the weekend is near,
I am content.

author: Stewardess

cube

Criminals and the prison system Part 2 (rehabilitation)

This is a continuation of my thoughts on the prisons of America. The criminal system is doing a good job of getting criminals off the streets (crime rates have fallen), but studies have shown that they don't do a good job of deterring crime, or making habitual criminals not want to commit crimes.

I don't know how to prevent individuals from committing the first crime that lands them in jail, but once they are in the prison system I have some ideas.

You cannot teach someone to be a model citizen. You can show them the light but it will always be their choice on whether or not the choose to become an asset to society instead of an liability.

But you can instill fear and hate of the prison system into them.
Prison needs to be hell. You need to have horrible but nutritious food every day except for the last day of the month (show them the light at the end of the tunnel). Also, little or no entertainment. Prisoners should be bored out of there minds, so they have time to think about what they have done. They should not be allowed to work out (a person should not be stronger when they come our of prison). They should be offered the same basic education as everyone else (high school diploma), but after that they should have to pay for any additional education their selves, after they are our of prison.

Everything in prison should concentrate on what they are going to do when they get out. There should be pamphlets (very easy to read pamphlets), that explain how do do simple stuff, such as open a checking account, apply for college, interview for a job.

That is the first time a person is in prison.

If they get in there a second time, more extreme action should be taken. It is a well known fact prisoners have a lower average IQ than the rest of the population.

http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/vda/vda-sec08.html

http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/publications/executive/stat_report_fy02/stat_report_fy02_intro.htm



When should use this to our advantage and brain wash them. You will use drugs to make them more suggestible. We will have to instill in them, the ideas that they will not steal, kill, or do anything wrong. You will have to change their entire outlook on life. We will give them a monk like state of contentment about their poverty and give them a priest like motivation to help others. We could put them in pastel cells with plants that they have to care for. When they leave there cell they will be bombarded with slogans of peace and goodwill toward man. Of course a small percentage of prisonors will fail, and their reaction against the brainwashing might be worse than what they would have done (but the overall average of the crime would be less than before). But once they are back in prison, they will receive special treatment, where their minds will be rebuilt (or we could just ship them to counties that we don't like).

cube

Fishing trip

I have just got back from the work fishing trip. It is interesting ...... I don't particularly like the entire process, although the fishing is real nice. You have to leave from work early to get to the cabin on the river where we stay for the entire weekend. Leaving work early is not a problem (it is quite nice actually), but the fact that you have to drive 4 and half hours to get to the cabin sucks. It is really only 20 miles from Memphis, but because of the number of curves, kinks and strategically-placed- grandmothers driving it takes much longer to get there than normal. So Friday night you stay up late drinking and gambling (which I don't drink, but I enjoy the betting), then you wake up very early Sat morning to go fishing. I could go fish in a boat, but I choose to fly fish (it is much tougher, and you have to think like a fish). This involves standing in a current not quite strong enough to carry you away, while constantly trying to catch fish and watching for rising water, because at any moment the generators (on the dam which makes the river) could on. If that happens you are swimming until you can reach shore, if you don't drown first. Then once you get done fishing, you come back to the cabin. On Saturday night, we watch football, drink and gamble. This time the food was particularly good. The Sunday morning you wake up early again to leave (and the reason why you wake up early to leave is because you rode with an old man who can't sleep past 6:00 am).

overall score:
6 out of ten. I only caught two fish, and lost the money I took to the table to gamble with. Had I caught more fish and won a big take, I would have given it a seven point five.

I am at a loss for words

The onion has now started publishing true stories, and they are just as funny as the real thing.
I am now confident that the world will end soon.

http://www.theonion.com/3941/top_story.html

Loan for Iraq?

Link against loan to Iraq

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27064-2003Oct14.html

The loan idea sounds great when you first hear it ... but it has some problems.
This above link has some good points. My point is much simpler, though. The government cannot give another government money, and say it is a loan. It takes two parties to give a loan, the one giving it and the one receiving it. Normally a loan requires some type of capital in which the lender can reclaim if the loan is not paid or at least a mutual agreement that it is a loan. We have neither in this case

So what we are really doing is just playing some childish game where we make the rules. "I will give you this and you will give me it back." Which this lovely game can be ruined by the younger player's stubbornness and refusal to give back the item that we gave them. Most likely we will get upset when Iraq does not pay us back, just like children.


This is an update on the status of the loan.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1017iraq17.html

Criminals and the prison system Part 1

This blog is about the prison system and what should be done to streamline it. In the name of time and space I have made some generalizations, which I will try to point these out wherever applicable and support with links.

The prison system in America has some major issues.

As pointed out in this link, America has a disproportionate amount of criminals in fact, more than any other nation. The article did not qualify this statement, although I think that it should have. For example, does America have more prisoners than Australia? Australia's population is about 20 million people, and all of them are known criminals. The article is flawed, but has some have some good points.

http://www.mpp.org/TX/news_4101.html

The good news is that even though we have a large percentage of criminals, our crime rates have gone down as evidenced by this link, but has had unintended consequences. Such as cuts made in rehabilitation programs, as prison systems try to handle the new influx of prisoners.
http://threehegemons.tripod.com/threehegemonsblog/id30.html

According to the link, a significant percentage of criminals will repeat offend after they get out of prison. The more time that a person has been to jail, the more likely that person is to repeat offend. A major point of prison system is to keep people from coming back. Apparently, we are not doing a good job of that right now.

The purposes of prison are to put the very bad people away for a very long period of time (this is being done and done well I think). Secondly, to take the people who have committed small crimes off the street and rehabilitate them.

The second part of the second statement is where we are failing at, and I will suggest some methods for achieving this in the next post about prisons.

Cubicle

I have been busy a little while with responsibilites over here. First, one more page in the book of Technology Will Save Us All. Researchers at Duke University have created a robotic arm that can be controlled by a monkey's neural impulses. This could lead to replacement limbs that are controlled directly by the brain (much like your current limbs) or even a system to bypass damaged sections of the spinal cord and restore movement to paraplegics. Even more exciting, people may one day be able to implant their brains into robot bodies and shuffle off these mortal coils once and for all.

Mahathir

"On Friday, Mahathir said Westerners such as the Rev. Jerry Falwell receive little fallout for labeling the Prophet Muhammad a "terrorist," while statements about Israel's actions against Palestinians draw immediate charges of anti-Semitism."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/10/17/international1303EDT0586.DTL

Hasn't the prime minister of Malaysia ever heard of separation of church and state?

cubicle

Real reason for Iraq

I just wanted to relate this information to the world.


Bush's insistence before and after the war that Saddam Hussein had ties to Osama bin Laden failed to convince her -- "I didn't really think that there was a link" -- but, she said, the situation was getting to a point that Iraq was becoming a magnet for anti-US militants.

"Now there's chaos, now all the terrorists are coming to kill an American."

Even if ridding Iraq of its "terrible" leader had its merits, Albright added: "I don't understand why the war happened now. I would have liked to see us concentrate on Afghanistan."

http://au.news.yahoo.com/031016/19/m40i.html


The anti-us militants that Albright refers to are the real reason we are in Iraq.

Ask yourself this question? If I were a disgruntled male youth in a middle eastern country and suddenly realized that America was the cause of all my problems, would I A) join a terrorist group and go to America to fight or B) just go buy a gun and go to Iraq. You would most likely choose B because it would be easy to do and you would see very immediate results.

The are going to attack us anyways, so we might as well take the fight to them.
The entire strategy behind the war in Iraq is to concentrate the enemy, so that they can be dealt with. I thought this was obvious, but Ms. Albright thinks it is a bad thing that they are going to kill Americans in Iraq. She apparently missed the real strategy behind the war. I bet she sucks at checkers, also.

Ms. Albright (if you read this), up for a game of checkers??

Pete Yorn

I had one of the best musical experiences of the 21st century last night at the Pete Yorn concert. First, it was a wonderful concert in a crappy, poorly let venue. There were maybe a few hundred people there, most dedicated fans. I think it is a bit spooky that his songs sound exactly like the do on the CD, but this lends to singing along, which I enjoy.
He knows how to "rock out really well" according to a friend that was there with me. Pete has an awesome stage presence,and puts forth lots of effort.

The second coolest event of the night was when I acquired one of his guitar picks. He had been tossing picks out to the audience all night. I was standing right in front of him, but the coveted prize had not landed close to me yet. I was standing about 4 to 5 feet left of where I had been standing most of the night when he threw out a pick. It hit the girl in front of me, and then I lost sight of it. Next, she kinda just put here hands by her face and did that excited-girl-jump thing girls do. Which I was at first stunned because she did not dive for it, then I was stunned because the rest of the crowd did not dive for it, but this repeated stunning only lasted a little while before I analyzed the problem and acted to solve it.

The problem was that the pick had fallen to the ground, which in a dark crowded area the chances of finding the pick on sticky floor littered with random garbage is small. What I needed was light. What was I to do? I have no flashlight, no special powers to see in the dark, and I can't make parts of my body glow. I do have a cell phone with a screen that has a soft green glow. I quickly pulled it out of my pocket, unlocked the keypad and start looking for the holy grail of the concert floor. I located it in about 2 seconds, it was partially underneath the girls foot in front of me, so I moved\punched her leg and picked the pick up. There was no crawling, no messy clean up afterward. It was great.

The coolest event of the night was when I met Pete yorn. My posse went to eat somewhere as we were walking back to our car, we noticed that his tour bus was still outside. We walked over, I was naturally cynical, but just as I was about to say something, he popped out of this crowd of people and started shaking hands with our group as he walked to his bus. I said "That was a great show" while shaking his hand (he is not as tall as I thought he was) and he said "Thanks", and as he was walking away I said "I hoped you enjoyed Memphis". And he may have responded to that, but I think he was talking to someone else.

cubicle

What if...

You created a clone of yourself then killed the clone. Would that be murder?

When a person creates another object through almost any means (i.e. farming, chemical processes, or even stock trading), the products of that process are the persons to keep and do with what they wish. The only case in which we really change that standard are with children, it is against the law to beat up your child. But if you commissioned your clone, it should be yours to do with what you wish. I think that killing you clone, if you want, is perfectly reasonable.

Even with animals we can do what we want with. I could go by a very expensive pure bred dog, if I want, then shoot it. I am not saying that it would be smart, but it was my dog to do with as I wish. I only wasted my money and my time. I think there are some laws that prevent cruelty to animals, but you can argue that it is not overly cruel to just kill the dog quickly, plus if your dog goes missing. Are you going to bring it up to the authorities?
I mean it is not like you are sitting there burning holes in the dog's eyes with cigarette butts.

cubicle

Internet checkers

When ever you upgrade to XP you have got to try internet checkers. I totally destroyed some people, and then when up to intermediate, and now I am not that good....but I spend about 5 hours of my Sat. doing it, and I feel great.

cubicle

For Those of us with a lot of free time.

Just found this on the web.

How to Request Declassified MKULTRA and Bluebird/Artichoke Records[81]



Central Intelligence Agency

FOIA and Privacy Act Coordinator

Washington, DC 20505



Re: Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act Request



This letter constitutes my formal request for information pursuant to the provisions of the Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, 5 USC552. I am requesting the three-volume CD set that includes a copy of a shareware viewer of the nearly 18,000 pages of MKULTRA and Bluebird/Artichoke records. Enclosed is a check for $30 made payable to the United States Treasurer.



Sincerely,

[Name, address, telephone number, and date required]

NB 206

The Paradox of Modern War

This year's sequel to the 1991 Gulf War was a military victory but an ideological loss. In terms of swiftly conquering organized resistance and overtaking objectives, we redefined what military success means. Not since every single conquest of France has a nation ever given way so easily to a foreign power. In terms of political objectives, we removed the evil regime that ruled a country we honestly don't want to govern. We ferociously devoured every last Cracker Jack, but found that the prize in the bottom of the box was lacking. Now we are left with the burden of victory instead of the spoils of war. This isn't a defect in the thinking of any major political party or administration as much as it is an indicator of prevailing global values. Not just the effectiveness of conventional warfare is being questioned, but the very necessity to wage conventional wars. It is like taking a chainsaw to a debate. If you wield the chainsaw effectively you will lose the debate because your force was excessive. If you don't use the chainsaw you just end up looking like a jackass for bothering to bring it in the first place. If you are big, violence is always the easy answer. It just usually isn't the right one.

Even the smartest men are beaten sometimes

Note:
Any names of companies, corporations, and/or services are fictional and have no relation to actual companies, corporations, and/or services. Additionally, the ideas presented in this post are a thought experiment only, and have not been tried in reality. Attempt any of the methods in this post at your own risk.

I have an American Express® Delta Skymiles® card, which this card has an interesting feature of giving you a mile or two miles for every dollar that is spent on the card. At a preset number of Delta SkyMiles®, you will get upgrades to airline tickets or even free tickets to any where in the world. Since I am getting these miles for essentially for free (after some yearly charges and credit card protection charges), is there any possible way to increase the amount of rewards that I get. There are a few ways you can increase the number of miles you get through American Express®, but over all I am unimpressed at the speed I can accumulate miles. The only way of increase the amount of Delta Skymiles® is buy spending more. This solution is not a good one because I have a limited income.

So the real question that I am asking is, "Can I increase the number of Delta Skymiles® , with out actually spending money?"

I will go through the ideas, and how each was shot down.

1. Cash Withdraws/Balance transfers
Read the TOS of my American Express® Delta Skymiles® card, and found out that you don't get Delta
Skymiles® for these two transaction types. Additionally it would cost a certain percent of the total cash withdraw
to withdraw the funds. This would eat into my profits over time. Also if I were to withdraw more than my income,
and repay the money back to my credit card, I am sure that would send up a couple of flags at the IRS.

The bastards shot me down, once.

2. Special Bank overdraft protection
In this case, my bank offers a special program where I can connect my credit card to my checking account for
overdraft protection. To increase the amount of Delta Skymiles® I would need to intentionally overdraft my bank
account. Which this could have unintended consequences on my credit. I checked into this possibility, and the bank
will only let me use their proprietary card for my account, not any random American Express® Delta Skymiles® card.

The bastards shot me down, twice.

3. Sending money to a third party using the credit card through a fourth part, and have the third party send it back to me.
This idea could take several forms, one of the more complicated ones is using E-bay® as a front and then
purchasing items (or more exactly services) from that business. And then racking up the Delta Skymiles®.
Or using paypal to send money using your American Express® Delta Skymiles® card, and having your best
friend send the money back to you then paying the balance off of you American Express® Delta Skymiles®
card. This holds the same problems as the first one did with the IRS.

Tonight will be the night I try beauty number three. Wish me luck.

As I side note: I am only harming myself, by inflating the number of miles and therefore reducing the value of what I seek. Funny huh. But since the inflation is just happening to me, I will be rich.

And remember ....... I did all for the Delta Skymiles®

The Middle East and the Far Right

There is little hope for American policy in southwest Asia. It is like the meth junky girlfriend that you keep funneling emotion and money into. If this were a fairy tale, brainless optimism might pay off. But since this is a rational world, Israel will continue to stress tensions on one side of your war while Iranians boastfully enrich uranium on the other side of you. Fortunately, the visionary thinking of Our Great Leader has positioned us directly in the center of the toilet, just waiting for the impending flush before all of this shit starts flying our way.

I think that hydrogen bombs are not the worst offspring of Einstein's genius. That distinction belongs to nuclear power plants. They are the "dog ate my homework" of the modern age. "Bombs, what bombs? We just need to some lights." In the first fifty years after Hiroshima, not a single country has opted to harness that power as their primary energy source. Especially not countries setting next to the worlds largest supply of crude oil. Every secretive plan to develop world ending weaponry is defended on the hope that it might be used for something else. Nuclear power, much like fire, will not be a serious energy resource until its usefulness as a weapon has been diminished.

John Titor

For the uninitiated let me go into John a little.

John claimed to be a time traveler from the year 2036. He was supported by a government organization, essentially the army. I read a good bit of his site and I found it very interesting.

I think you have a few options when you are looking at this guy.

One: It is a hoax.
Two: He is crazy
Three: It is true.

When I initially came across this I wanted to debunk it very badly, but so far I have only found data that supports John's statements.

Here are two links about the problem with Unix that John referred to several times.

http://howstuffworks.lycoszone.com/question75.htm
http://www.deepsky.com/~merovech/2038.html

Which these links in themselves mean nothing, any one with a little computer background could have found these sites and used the information to further their hoax. They just go to show, that if it is a hoax, they at least took time to forge a good one.

Here is additional information along the same line, that I understand to be correct.


A PONDERING HAWKING = MICROSINGULARITY

Steven Hawking proposed the existence of microsingularities that were created in the big bang. They were probably about the size of a proton and disappeared over the years due to an effect of radiation evaporation. (Yes, black holes do emit energy.)

Hawking actually proved black holes on paper (using math), before we ever observed the existence of any. Which Hawking also stated that a black hole could disappear eventually if it turned the mass it was consuming into energy and radiated it. Which if I remember correctly had something to do with the event horizon of the black hole and particle interacting with it.


Does China have a manned space program between 2001 and 2036?

I believe they are pretty close to putting a man in orbit. It shouldn't surprise you if they do that soon.

Recent news items support this.


additional links
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0523/p25s02-stss.html

Which I don't think, saying a major piece discovery is going to come out of CERN, is very surprising. But it is interesting that there are articles which have appeared on the net after John posted. But also these projects were in the works as John was posting also.


I have two theories one that he was crazy, which I think is most likely (some of his post seemed as if the had just woken up in a new world, which being crazy, high , or time travel could have that effect)

The other is that it is real and his government knew that he would come back and post on the web. And they let him do it anyways because they wanted the outcome he affected.....

sand thinks that me might be kin to john

cube

ESPN PAGE 2 Quote from Dr Hunter S Thompson

Our dangerously goofy child President from Texas is a squalid example of trouble coming home to roost. He is like a half-bright football coach who goes into a big game without a Game Plan. BOOM! Shame and failure will follow you for all the days of your life. Selah.
The Bush family reeks of fraud and bad karma. But even worse than our wretched, gibbling president are the cowardly whores in Hollywood who are currently smearing film stars and music people like Johnny Depp by calling them unpatriotic Americans who righteously question the wisdom of invading a whole nation of Islam -- 1.8 billion worshipers -- which is a dangerously stupid idea. Disagreeing with Donald Rumsfeld about bombing anybody who gets in our way is not a crime in this country. It is a wise and honorable idea that George Washington and Benjamin Franklin risked their lives for. These thieves in the White House are so crazy with greed and power, and they are causing so much drastic damage to the world we live in, that they are the ones who should be put on trial for treason.
OK, I am getting a little excited here, so I think I'll wrap this up quickly, before I spiral out of control and burst into flames. I am widely known as a pure-bred, natural-born patriot and a lover of what this country used to stand for. The Statue of Liberty wasn't out there for nothing. Beware of War Mongers. They don't give a hoot in hell if you live or die. They are in this racket strictly for themselves. Mahalo.

A slow crawl toward the apocalypse

I am blogging from Baghdad, the front row seats to the inevitable destructive spiral prophesized by John Titor. We are sweeping up the mess of a short and rather pointless war. All of the promises of terrorist training camps and wmd that were supposed to justify this in the end never materialized. And with the head of Saddam Hussein slipping away in the dusty night, Bush doesn't even have a good trophy to hang by the fireplace. The truth is that we came unprovoked and uninvited. We overthrew a despot that was no more threatening than an evil mosquito and liberated a nation that cant take care of itself. Now we have the incompetency of the Bush administration writing apology notes with one hand and toilet training Iraq with the other. "Okay, this is a constitution. Just fill in the blanks as they apply to your country." Maybe this is what you should show children when you are trying to convince them that cocaine kills braincells.

Ode to a White Broad

 

Ode to a whiteboard 

A blank whiteboard is a beautiful scene.

I love to write on you with blue, red, and green.

Out of the corner of my eye I can catch your glean.

You are twenty-four square feet of clean

You are an empty canvas where I will write my quotes.

On you I will write my notes.

I will fill you with business plans, project scopes, and pseudo-code

This is my ode

To a whiteboard