Category Archives: Trust

Senate Bill 1253 Sections 1031 and 1032

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I caught myself in a mistake that I’m trying to correct. I accidentally shared a link to a web article that states that Senate Bill 1253 (Also apparently Senate Bill 1867) which is called the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 has two sections which have everyone really bent out of shape, including me, erroneously, until I READ THE BILL.

Section 1031 has most peoples attention, the bill text excerpt online lacks a vital section that exists in the raw material of the bill itself. For this I blame THOMAS at the Library of Congress for omitting it.

Section 1031’s Prohibition

20 (d) CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITATION ON APPLICA-
21 BILITY TO UNITED STATES PERSONS.—The authority to
22 detain a person under this section does not extend to the
23 detention of citizens or lawful resident aliens of the United
24 States on the basis of conduct taking place within the
1 United States except to the extent permitted by the Con-
2 stitution of the United States.

Last I checked the only exception that I can reason out is the set of laws established by the US Constitution. I have lived quite well under those old laws and I don’t see how this text has ANY wriggle room to do what the ACLU claims it does.

Section 1032’s Prohibition

(b) REQUIREMENT INAPPLICABLE TO UNITED
12 STATES CITIZENS.—The requirement to detain a person
13 in military custody under this section does not extend to
14 citizens of the United States.

This one is utterly inescapable. It’s printed in BLACK AND WHITE. I can’t for the life of me see how either section would enable the government to indefinitely incarcerate any US Citizen at all. Such a thing would be a gross violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, to say nothing of violating the Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments to the United States Constitution!

After reading this blog, which pretty much states what I see as a gross display of fear-mongering by the ACLU and adherence to the bombastic bullshit claims that this bill somehow puts our civil liberties at risk. The text is clear for both sections, if you read the text itself!

I did a cursory search on Google for the phrase S.1253 and there are just too many sites all repeating the same bombastic bullshit. Claiming that the ACLU knows, or that Lindsey Graham said this or that, but nobody can show me in the text where the proof of their argument lies. I have read the bill and those two paragraphs, for both sections seem to me to be perfectly acceptable when it comes to protecting my civil liberties as a US Citizen.

If I am right, that means that the ACLU is guilty of misleading the public and engaging in misinformation. If that is the case, I can’t trust anything else they say because if they lied once, what proof could there possibly be that they are honest about anything else? They put their necks on the line over this bill. Frankly, just the fact that I doubt the ACLU’s veracity on this subject makes me reject everything else they say – but when it comes to the court of public opinion, if they are caught, it could ruin their credibility.

Why I Left Facebook

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Why I Left Facebook

I just logged into Facebook for the last time, at least to actually use the site for anything really constructive. I got an email from Facebook telling me I had a friend request from some stranger that I don’t recognize in the least. I logged on to kill off the friend request and then I found there were others from people I do recognize, so I accepted their requests and I wanted to add them to my NoWall group. I then started a useless trudge through Facebook’s interface looking for my Friends Lists. They were moved and so I had to search for them all over again. I lost about an hour on-and-off looking for this stupid settings page before I finally blundered into it.

I have had enough of Facebook.

Why? There are many reasons that drive me to abandon Facebook. First is the unpleasant user interface. The way that Facebook has altered their pages over the years has just gotten worse and worse. Functionality that used to make Friends Lists useful were dumped and my requests to have the old functions restored were ignored. I just don’t want to use it anymore. Every time I look at the site my head hurts. I can’t find anything worth following beyond meaningless claptrap related to all the scrobbling applications that fill up Facebook. Bits from stupid game apps that do nothing, and aren’t really games or even fun contributed a lot to this general sense of irritation. Secondly, I’m living a rather involved compartmentalized life on Facebook. I keep half of my friends list in the dark. I want to share a lot of things with my loved ones, but I want to pick and choose them. I love some of them more than I love others. Facebook used to have really easy ways of managing Friends Lists, but recently they’ve eroded a lot of that functionality away. I maintained a NoWall group and banned that group from seeing any content on my Facebook page. I then stuffed family members, friends, and people I know a little bit into that group. Partly because I don’t want to deal with them seeing all that I have to share and partly to punish some for being social twats. Finally, and probably the biggest reason why I am leaving Facebook is because the lack of controls for sharing got me into serious trouble at work.

That in the end is the biggest point of all. Share controls. I want to share different things with different people and Facebook really made a mess of things. So I left Facebook and moved to Google+. There I can control how I share very conveniently and I quite enjoy the clean wide open spaces and all the ways I can segment the social flow of information. On Google, I have placed everyone into neat little circles and that’s how I want to manage it. With Google+ I can be free to be who I am and say what I want without having to fear reprisals, retribution, or censorship. The people in the dark are happy there, and I’m happy keeping them there.

Google Plus

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For the past few weeks, ever since it was closed to the majority of the public I’ve been toying around with Google Plus. At first I was hesitant to invest much energy in it because I got so burned with the boondoggle that was Google Wave. I immediately noticed that the user interface seemed oddly familiar, as it turns out one of the designers for Google Plus was an old Macintosh designer. Who couldn’t see that coming from miles away? The interface was clean, it didn’t have annoying Zynga games or any of the other dreck that Facebook has to contend with as part of it’s heritage of being a “College Kids Social Site”. Google Plus was something new.

After a time I started to think of Google Plus as a weapon Google designed and aimed directly at Facebook, as it seems that the two products are pretty much direct competitors to each other. I had this view for a few weeks until I saw a slide presentation that revealed that Google’s hubris was a lot larger than anyone had previously considered. Google doesn’t want to fight Facebook. Google wants to fight an entire computing paradigm. Currently the world is in the throes of migrating towards “thin clients” and “cloud services” and Google is angling to become the assumed foundation for that entire new world. There are balls, and then there are Google Balls. It’s not so much Facebook that Google Plus is fighting. It’s like an anonymous-but-incredibly-attractive man in a black leather jacket came into Facebook’s house and almost incidentally smothered Facebook with a giant pillow. You can see that he isn’t really holding the pillow but you can see that Facebook is struggling as if Googles entire weight was holding that pillow over Facebooks head. I’ve already left Facebook for nearly all intents and purposes. The only thing that Facebook retains that is still somewhat useful is their event subsystem, but I fully expect that one of the next steps that Google will take will be a new events system that leverages Google Calendar and Google Plus into a new product, maybe, called Google Events. Only time will tell on that one.

Using Google Plus is as I’ve said, a breath of fresh air. I love using it and I can’t really explain why that is. I think it’s because there are a lot of little things that all cluster together and when you add them up, Google Plus has some seriously powerful features. Instead of Facebook’s Like, you get a +1. At first this seemed rather like a feature-for-feature thing, until I noticed that every single item in a Google Search carried this shimmering (yes, it really shimmers) +1 button next to each item! So Google has found a way to instantly socialize search. Hah. Amongst all the other things, I learned by browsing the web that Google’s Picasa product, which quietly got a cloud-treatment called Web Picasa, that the service has a 1GB data storage cap, but that the cap only counts on files that are bigger than a certain very-large-value and that it’s unlimited storage just like it is on Facebook. Again, Hah. The best part of Google Plus, at least for me, is the Circles functionality. It’s very clean and very elegant. I have my Friends, my Family, Coworkers, Followers, Google+ New People… a circle for each of my social groups. I can control which Circle or set of Circles gets which updates right when I write the updates themselves. This is perfect for me as I’ve learned, in the crucible of Facebook, that sequestering certain individuals in my social life is essential. These people, in the past, have unilaterally demanded on censoring what I have to write, even if those things are my opinions and frankly are none of their business and if I were to be really picky, violate my First Amendment rights. With Google Plus I can make sure that they never see the things that would normally upset them and with one very elegant control choice, make sure that they will never have to be upset again by the things that I write. I marvel at this kind of structure that Google has provided people like me. Google Circles are a virtual representation of how I structure my life! There is Work Andy and Home Andy and Friend Andy and so many kinds of me, all configured specifically for that group. My friends wouldn’t recognize me at work, because I conduct myself far differently than I do anywhere else. Likewise my work acquaintances have never really met the real me. They are the Coworkers Circle, and that Google brought this to the forefront really appeals to me and gratifies me.

Google Plus has half of the keystone for get my full adoration. They submitted an iOS App for the iPhone and that was cleared by Apple and it sits on the second row on my home screen of my iPhone. The other half of the keystone will either make that iOS app they already have a Universal App, or come out with an app formatted for the iPad. Once that comes to pass there will be very little if any reason for me to ever return to Facebook. In many ways it’s almost an odd new competition between Google and Facebook. To see who can come out first with an iPad app. Facebook declared that an iPad is not a mobile device and so they were never going to make a Facebook app for the iPad. Then it was revealed on the web that Facebook did have an iPad app hidden in their iPhone app and once it was revealed Facebook did enough to show their hands as manipulative petulant assholes and immediately put the kibosh on that iPad app. It may not be ready and they may not want to release it because the app isn’t up to their standards, but that’s just a red herring. It would be such a deep coup if Google got it’s Google Plus iPad App approved before Facebook’s iPad app. It would be one more slap in the face to Facebook as Google actively ignores it and snuffs it out at the same time.

If you would like to join me on Google Plus, all you have to do is send me the email you would like to associate with Google Plus and I will send out an invite. I apparently have an inexhaustible supply of invites, so if you aren’t on Google Plus and you would like to see what all the hullabaloo is about, all you have to do is ask.

 

 

 

 

 

Saying Goodbye to Facebook

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Yesterday, July 19th, 2011 I said my final goodbyes to Facebook and announced my transition over to Google+. I went on Facebook and let everyone who could still see my wall, know that I was leaving that service for good and conducting all my sharing over on Google+. For me it was a matter of who built the better mousetrap. The services provided by Google+ far outweigh the headaches that I’d have to wade through to match on Facebook and I like the cleanliness of Google+ and the lack of baggage that comes with running a service that was at one point built for high school and college age kids to socialize on.

When I made my goodbye status updates on Facebook one of my friends who usually doesn’t say much brought up a valid point. His issue with Google+ is their privacy policy, which he took exception to. The policy is composed of jargon and legalese such as “non-exclusionary rights granted by the … for the perpetual use and non-exclusive publishing rights of the …” and so on and so forth. I am not about to make people who read these policies feel less of themselves by denigrating this legalese as so much meaningless and incomprehensible bibble-babble, but I’m not about to let something like that interfere with the path of my life and the things I want to do. Aren’t I running afoul of a policy that strips me of my rights for what I share and what I post online? Don’t I care about the things I write and the music I share and the photos I share? Doesn’t that bother me?

No. Not in one small bit does it bother me. My life is dull. What I have to share is free for the taking. Why should I license what I photograph, what I record, anything at all, when it comes down to it! What am I protecting? If I were to get all worked up I’d be protecting an endless and mindless stream of inconsequential doggerel and pablum. My social existence is important for me, and the message is important for the people in my life, but ownership of that material? It’s utter dreck. So what if someone comes along and licenses all my photography and lays claim to all that I have written. Someone comes along and asserts ownership over my blog? You are welcome to it! Much like Jazz, the crap that I create comes from an infinite source of unceasing malarkey. Grab as much of it as you want, I’ll just shovel up more. I’ve got a big shovel, boundless energy, and you’re just running garbage detail for me. Knock. Your. Socks. Off.

Really what it comes down to is none of these policies mean anything to people like me because we go ahead and live our lives. These policies exist for people who thrive on the minutiae of life. The only times these policies get dusted off and opened up is when someone tries to be a dick. Society gives us a shorthand when people are being dicks and so, in this social fabric, as long as the howler monkeys aren’t hooting and hollering too loudly the rest of us shrug and graze and go about our plain and dull lives. I haven’t heard anyone get bent about a privacy policy whatever from Google and even when I read the policy bibble-babble, I don’t really care. Non-exclusive, penultimate, pejorative, permissible, persimmons blah blah blah. It’s important to a very small subset of people and if it keeps them happy and shuts them up, why should I care? If the service disappears, so be it. It evaporates with all my writing and all my posted pictures? Uh, fine. I’ll just move on to something else. In the end I don’t care! I don’t care if I win, lose, or whatever. This sort of thing doesn’t interest me and life goes on.

And that brings me to another point, one more general than all the others. If everyone uncorked all these very dull and very blah-blah-blah policies and we all decided to dwell in the house of the righteous and mighty we’d quickly find ourselves so wrapped up in legal jargon and rules that we couldn’t do anything. Liability to perform a bowel movement? Nope. How about walking outside in the sunshine? Nope. Eating? Come on. I bet a legal eagle could find a series of policies that outlaw respiration! When you have this amount of text and only a very small segment of the population with enough interest to maintain consciousness when exposed to it, you end up with people who take others statements on-faith. We can’t process the endless stream of legal mumbo-jumbo, so we hire people who we pay and we trust to do it for us and give us a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Truth to be told, once we honor them enough to let them have a say, we forget all about what they said and get on with life! People tell us that we really should have lawyers look at things, and so we do. Not because we understand or actively even care about the lawyers but we understand that lawyers must be fed. Nobody told us why, and it doesn’t directly impact our lives to see to their proper feeding, so we write the right things, we post the right things and we look to the special creatures called lawyers and we look for a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. That’s as far as it goes, kids! Life goes on! Work has to be done! Those agreements and policies are great, they’re done, yes! They were seen by somebody? Yes! Those somebodies were happy? YES! Well, good… WHATEVER. We move on.

Life has to find a way to trudge forward. These policies are meat for lawyers. The only time when you need a lawyer is when people deviate from the Golden Rule. Society pressures each of us to not stray from the Golden Rule, so for a lot of this, once penned, will never see the light of day again. This brings up another point that has bothered me for a long time, and that is the fine-print monsters. There are agreements everywhere and there is fine-print everywhere, you can’t escape it. There is what is written and there is what is understood and the two aren’t necessarily bound together! When someone decides to be a dick, to play the fine-print game, then the lawyers click their mandibles together and there is a feeding frenzy — for the lawyers! For the people in the drama, there is the victim of the dick, the dick, and the fat happy lawyers moaning in ecstasy and having little orgasms when they hear “billable hours”. So afterwards, the victim of the dick and the dick part ways and the victim has learned a lesson. The victim of the dick never approaches the dick again. This used to be the end of it. The dicks never really had anything else to fear from the victim because they were just one little meaningless nobody in a sea of meaningless nobodies. That is, until social media and social networking came to town. Now the victims of the dick can hop up on a soap-box and write about their experiences to all the other potential victims of the dick and warn them. “Dick is here, he’s after you, avoid him.” and so the dick starves and dies because his prey was alerted that he was in the tall grass and fled. This creates a new series of regulatory controls between the victims of the dicks and the dicks. Now that each one of us can instantly publish and amplify our warning hoots to everyone else, the dicks are on the run, scampering left and right looking for victims and finding nothing but pounded earth from the millions of victims that have fled. This is the natural order of things now, and this is why it’s important to not be a dick. The minute you are branded a dick, you are effectively ostracized from society, you are given a Scarlet D to wear and everywhere you go tales of your dickishness proceed you!

So lets get back to where we started… leaving Facebook for Google+. Do I care about the privacy policy? No. Why am I not concerned? Because I value nothing that I create, I WANT TO SHARE IT and because I’m using these systems, isn’t it obvious that I want to GIVE IT AWAY!?! So someone comes along and takes it, well, that’s part of the point. If there is a dick in the tall grass, it might bring down a bit of the storm but it won’t stop the storm from coming and overwhelming it. Even if the dick starts to rampage, it’s now just a matter of pressing a button and walking away, effectively annihilating the dick.

In the end I don’t care. Life goes on. There are more important things to fret over, like whats for dinner tomorrow, did I see the tight little bubble-butt on that twinkie gym-bunny, what are my plans for labor day? These are the pressing things, not “Oooh, Google came in and asserted ownership of my LOLCATZ pics!” There is an order to things, and frankly, bubble-butts trump rampaging company-legalese-dicks. Life goes on.

Overcast

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While talking to several of my coworkers about the ways I organize my digital life it struck me that I have never detailed the what, the how, and the why. To me organization has set me free. There are only a few places where information is kept and so finding it is just a matter of checking a few places and almost always I can find, or remember, what I need.

Here at Western we have changed our email infrastructure to what is called “WebMail Plus” and I affectionately refer to by the initialism WMP. WMP runs on Zimbra servers out of our ISP in Ann Arbor Michigan and ever since the changeover I’ve never been very comfortable in the new system. I don’t like the web-based interface and I don’t like my email to stay in Ann Arbor for very long if I can help it. It’s purely a personal thing and I don’t expect everyone to have the same resistance to WMP as I have. There is a significant amount of history between me and WMP that goes quite a bit back.To that end, I store my email somewhere else and I store some files in other places as well, depending on where I’ll use them most of all.

Tools

I use these tools in order to better organize my digital world:

  1. Mail.app
    1. The native Mac Mail.app is set to pull in my WMP Mail over the IMAP protocol. This protocol allows me to select the Mail.app interface and bolt it on, covering up the less liked WMP Native website interface. Several key benefits to this are how I can configure all the aspects of Mail.app’s fonts to suit me and make it easier for me to read text. Mail.app also has a Bayesian Filter for identifying Junk Mail. I teach it what is and what isn’t Junk mail and it does a pretty kickass job identifying future Junk and getting it out of my way. The other feature of Mail.app that I have come to rely on is the “Redirect” command. This command allows me to effectively ‘resend’ an incoming email somewhere else as if it was always destined for that other address. This feature is a ‘killer feature’ when combined with other cloud services that I’ll write about further along in this post.
  2. iCal.app
    1. Just as much as I don’t like WMP when it comes to email, I also do not like it when it comes to Calendaring. I prefer to use iCal for my calendaring needs. Thanks to Zimbra’s adherence to standards I can have my cake and eat it too. WMP provides a CalDAV service which I can subscribe to using iCal. Not only can I have my local calendars off my home server subscribed on my iCal, but I can also have my WMP calendars as well.
  3. AddressBook.app
    1. As with iCal, the AddressBook.app application can subscribe to CardDAV Services that WMP provides. With all three in concert I have effectively replaced my need to use the native WMP interface and instead replaced it with a far more friendly Mac-based interface.
  4. Evernote
    1. Evernote is a cloud service that “remembers everything” and is only limited by the amount of information you send to your Evernote system, but not how much material you store there. Each free Evernote account comes with an “Evernote Email Address” that is private to the user and can be the destination of emails and when you do send an email to that address it is just like you have clipped the text directly into Evernote with a client. In this regard, the “Redirect” command and the “Evernote Email Address” are a match made in heaven.
  5. Toodledo
    1. Toodledo is an online cloud-based To Do List manager. There is a website that manages the Toodledo system very well and Toodledo provides a CalDAV compliant feed so I can subscribe my iCal client to my Toodledo task calendar and see everything, including my tasks, on one central iCal calendar. Toodledo also has its own “Toodledo Email Address” that inserts Redirected email into my task list. I can use a shorthand notation in the subject line to enrich the task so that when it is added to my Toodledo system it gets the appropriate context, date, time, and folder. Within Toodledo I have three contexts, Home, Work, and None. I have a gaggle of Folders such as “Email” and “Millennium” and “Personal” and the date system is very flexible. I can write an email to my Toodledo Email Address, set the subject as “Add Files to Folder @work #tomorrow =5pm *email” and the task is created with the body of the incoming email being the attached note of the task and the context is set to Work, the due-date set for 5/6/2011 (tomorrow), the due-time set to 5:00pm and the folder set for Email.
  6. Instapaper
    1. Instapaper also has a “Instapaper Email Address” and anything you send to that address gets queued up in your Instapaper queue. It’s really quite useful if you get a link in your Inbox and want to read it eventually, but not now.
  7. Dropbox
    1. Dropbox is a cloud-based file storage system that synchronizes a folder on every computer or device you use and a central folder stored in the cloud.

Tackling the Email Monster

I’m quite fond of achieving what I like to call Inbox Zero at least once a week, and usually on Friday afternoons. For me, email comes in and usually falls into a few neat categories. There are purely informational emails, such as notices from OIT and advisories about the University Trustees and other WMU news, then there are requests for me to do some sort of task, and then there are email discussions about some sort of running topic. I tackle an inbox that has gone out of control by starting with “low-hanging fruit”. I identify and pitch all the informational emails that I don’t need to note or keep storing. Some of this mail is merely meant to expose me to some news item or some event and after I appreciate the contents, they lose all durable value. For these messages I’ll either mark them as Junk or just delete them. The next level is to identify all the tasks-in-email and redirect them to my Toodledo account. Once they are redirected I delete those from my WMP account as well. All that is left, usually are discussions and “durable value” emails that contain something I really should remember. For the latter I redirect those to Evernote and delete them out of my Inbox. The rest are conversations and usually I won’t keep a lot of these floating around anyways. Once I send a reply the entire conversation is pretty well “backed up” in my Sent Items and so there is little point to keep old conversational emails that I don’t need anymore. Any emails that remain I look at and decide if they are conversations, tasks, or something I need to remember. I keep on whittling down on the pile until I run out of Inbox messages. Some people will note that I’m just playing a cup-game with my emails in Evernote. On Sunday I start organizing my Evernote into folders and let all that information build up there. Because Evernote is bottomless I don’t really care how much information I stuff into it since I can pretty much search text and folders to find anything I might need later on. Another hidden gem is that all of these services, Instapaper, Evernote, and Toodledo all have really great iOS apps for both iPhone and iPad, so I can manage everything on any device I like any time I like. I’ve been known to knock several emails out while waiting in line at the supermarket, or waiting for a movie to start at the cinema. Every bit helps and if you are vigilant you can whittle all your Inbox down to size and then get into a habit of keeping it that way.

Cloud Data Storage: Having Your Cake and Eating It Too

Another need I’ve found is to store data in an easily accessible way between many devices. I have an iPhone, and iPad, a MacBook, a iMac and a Mac Mini. There is always a need for me to keep a certain set of files available on each device. It makes life easier to have them conveniently located and every single machine having the right set of files no matter what. Dropbox suits this need very well. For run-of-the-mill data Dropbox can’t be beat for convenience sake. There is however a problem when it comes to security. Dropbox is secure, but they are vulnerable to search and seizure orders from the government and so they *can* break security on your files in order to comply with a government action. There are some files that I really would like to have available, but I really don’t want to risk having these files exposed. If I’m willing to sacrifice a bit of compatibility (really secure use of Dropbox precludes iOS devices) I have a way to secure files even from Dropbox itself, while still making use of their syncing services. Here’s how you do it. Dropbox is a free service and they kick in 2 gigabytes worth of storage. On a Mac open up Disk Utility, create an AES-256 encrypted sparsebundle disk image file and save it to your Dropbox. Put a nice long password on it and don’t save that password to your Mac’s Keychain system (that makes it really secure, because the password is just in your head) and then you can have your cake and eat it too. The disk image file can be mounted by any Mac computer, you have to type in your access password to mount it. Even if Dropbox were to ship the file to a third-party for analysis the file’s AES-256 encryption (at the moment) ensures that the data within the file is safe. The neat thing about a sparsebundle with Mac computers is that a sparsebundle can be assigned a maximum size, say one gigabyte, and if you only fill it with say 200 megabytes worth of data then the disk image itself isn’t one gigabyte, but instead right around 200 megabytes. The sparsebundle is a lot like a bellows, it expands to contain only the data it needs to. It has a capacity of whatever high-water-mark you’ve set it up for, but it’s efficient in that it only takes up what it’s contents need versus a standard disk image which is a monolithic file. Another neat part of sparsebundle images is that you can issue a rather straightforward CLI command to compact them if you’ve removed data from them. That command is:

“hdiutil compact image.sparsebundle”

So even if a sparsebundle were temporarily carrying a big bulge of data, you can get the storage back out of it by running this command. It’s quite neat and tidy. The only thing that would seal the deal is if the sparsebundles would automatically compact themselves on-the-fly, but even with this command you can still quite enjoy having your cake and eating it too. As it turns out, every removable device I own has an encrypted sparsebundle file stored on it. This is the best way that I know how to have the convenience of this sort of technology and the peace of mind to know that if you lose it, nobody but you can make sense of the contents.

I hope that this makes sense to you all. I’ve found this entire procedure to be quite effective and useful and makes organizing my life much simpler and less burdensome. Perhaps it can do the same for you! 🙂

Security Theater

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Just passed through the TSA checkpoint about ten minutes
ago and went through with flying colors. MSP didn’t stop and ask a
batch of impertinent questions and poke around my bag-o-tech one
little bit. Of course I am fully aware that the TSA is purely
“Security Theater” evidenced by me forgetting to take off my belt
which has a big fat stainless steel buckle. The magnetometer didn’t
even flinch at that. I suspect that it’s all smoke and mirrors,
that the theater is totally fake and transparent and that we’re
flying just as insecure as we were back in 2000 except now we’ve
spent an intolerable amount of money on shazam security that
doesn’t really protect us at all. We can thank the GOP for the
massive expansion of government in our lives thanks to Homeland
Security. That’s a government program that if it was devoted to
healthcare instead of campy theater would make every
dyed-in-the-wool liberal wet their pants. Technology of course is
facilitated by Delta, who saw fit to grace the local waiting area
with easy to reach electrical sockets. It’s an olive branch to
offset the notion that they are raping us over bag fees. So Scott
and I are plugged in, and because MSP’s wireless infrastructure is
pay-as-you-go, I’ve got my handy-dandy Zoom travel router happily
blinking away, converting my 3G access card into a WiFi hotspot.
I’m happily slurping down electricity charging my iPad, which I’m
using to write this blog entry, and my iPod Nano. The Zoom router
and its battery are happily soaking up the free juice as well. So,
for personal liberty 2011 is rather sucky, but for technology,
especially bullshit technological barriers, it’s pretty good so
far. Being able to establish my own WiFi hotspot at-will is a
really neat “sticking-it-to-the-man” kind of feeling. Now on with
the waiting!

Eggs

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The recent news of the Salmonella-tainted Eggs is bouncing around the 24 hour news cycle. My mom told me about Davidson’s Pasteurized Eggs, they are still raw, but rendered completely safe to consume because they’ve been treated with heat, not enough to coagulate the yolks and set the whites but enough to kill any potential infections of Salmonella that might be lurking within the egg. I am of course wanting to explore the MAFC, and a good portion of that is mastering the Sauces section, for which under-temperature eggs are a fundamental component.

I discovered that I could pasteurize my own eggs by raising an amount of water to 150 degrees and holding eggs suspended in this water for 5 minutes. To overcome this annoying inconvenience I thought I would write to my local supermarket chain, Meijers. I suggested that they carry Davidson’s Pasteurized Eggs and basically got a rebuff throwaway message from a Meijers representative who claimed that none of the eggs that Meijers sells was involved in the recall. As it may be, Meijers, that your eggs weren’t recalled does not necessarily mean that they are safe. Pasteurized eggs are safe. I would pay more for eggs that I knew were safe so I could feel okay with exploring the Sauce section of the MAFC. I can’t really just target Meijers, as WalMart, D&W, and Hardings, all the markets in our area do not carry pasteurized eggs. This isn’t the first time that I’ve contacted Meijers, so far it’s the third request I’ve made over the years for products that would do very well in our area. I’ve decided that contacting Meijers is a fool’s errand.

I suppose that if enough young and elderly die of Salmonella poisoning then Michigan will legislate to force egg pasteurization and Meijers will turn a tidy 180 and then aggressively pursue and market it to their customers. What bothers me deep down is that expanding customers choice for truly safe foods isn’t on the radar for any of the local food marketers in our region. Then again, I’ve said time and time again that restaurants and food markets have no interest in public health or safety – filthy food from monstrous sources is perfectly fine as long as the balance sheet remains in the black. Because I don’t trust anything I buy from Meijers, D&W, Hardings or WalMart it is important to cook everything thoroughly, select against raw foods, and when there is no choice but to buy raw foods from these providers, make a weak bleach solution to sanitize what you bought because nobody is going to care for your health but you, yourself. I couldn’t imagine having a live-in elderly family member or an infant, that we don’t have more of a body-count from tainted and monstrously sourced foods is an absolute blessing.

Reading List

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These are the books currently in my reading list:

1. Fool Moon by Jim Butcher
2. The Phenomenon of Man by Pierre Tielhard DeChardin
3. On Love & Happiness by Pierre Tielhard DeChardin
4. The Art of Happiness by The Dalai Lama
5. Grave Peril by Jim Butcher

The most current list reflects my pursuit to get off the black spiral and find some other way to be. So far Fool Moon is a re-read as I’ve listened to the audiobook a few years ago. I’ll be getting back I to the swing of things with that series once I finish off the three other books.