If you accept the Bush administration paradigm for "Homeland Security," then I suppose that my experience makes some sense, in which case you probably shouldn't read this, as you will only be even more confused.  Many more people die from preventable auto accidents, equally preventable diseases, and general crime than from terrorists, but we are apparently happy to keep pouring what at last estimate looks to be $3 trillion down a hole that doesn't really seem all that connected to stopping ...

Kenn Gregg's life could certainly have been worse.  He might have been born into a death camp in the Sudan.  He might have died a miserable, lingering death from AIDS in some state hospice with no friends.

Instead, when he did die this past Saturday, he died knowing, I'm sure, that there were many who would feel the loss deeply - among them myself.  I trust that his last days were not spent in lonely misery.  I last spoke with Kenn perhaps two years ago, and then I left me...

Phil Osborn, February 27th, 2008.  On Morals: Note: This is a new take on morality, invoking epistemology as the foundation for why we act morally even when no one is looking.  The various pieces of the argument have mostly been around in various mixes for a long time, and some individuals have come very, very close to putting the puzzle together before this; however, I believe that this is in fact the FIRST time that anyone has successfully put forth a “logically rigorous&r...

OK. Just for a moment, ignore the odds and assume that Ron Paul is prez.

What could he actually DO?

Well, first off, the margin to get virtually any new legislation through would jump to 67%, in order to get past Paul's vetos.

Only legislation that reduced illegitimate government (from a limited state libertarian point of view, not necessarily the same as my anarchist position) would make it without a two-thirds majority. So, every bill would probably come in as a trade-off, tryin...

Update: 01/27/08: I knew that it couldn't be this easy. I was all ready to start feeling good about the City of Santa Ana, for finally taking action to protect people's rights to quiet enjoyment of their properties. Then the following occurred:

Working inside one of my units this morning, in the process of collecting a bunch of stuff to relocate, I heard a vehicle pull up outside and then stop. After a couple minutes, I made my way to the front, moving all the boxes in the way and opene...

All day long today, working indoors doing web design and related computer work in Irvine, OC, I have felt as though I had a cold. My throat is scratchy, my nose stuffed up, and I'm coughing constantly, my stomach feels queezy and there is a dry, metallic taste in my mouth. When I left work just 30 minutes or so ago, it felt more like 7:30 PM than 5 PM. Everyone was driving with their lights on.

The sun was still high in the sky, a lurid red-orange ball that you could stare directly into wi...

March 15, 2008

So far, so good...

After over a month, I finally got the evaluation in the mail from the doctor who I finally chose.  So far, so good.  He indicated in his evaluation that my disability should be much more assigned to work causes - namely being karate chopped in the back of my neck, than to prior injury.

This has been overall a most frustrating and stressing set of events.  I didn't want a QME to begin with, but was threatened by the insurance agent tha...

I awoke in the middle of the night last night suddenly understanding why the incest taboo is such a driving force. Of course, we all know the biological, genetic reason. Closely related people share a LOT of bad genes that would be masked in 99.9% of the cases of mating with a random stranger by the corresponding functional gene from the other partner. Thus, mating with your sister is a BAD idea - at least if you're planning on having kids with only one head, or a functioning brain.

Howeve...

Ocober 21st, 2007: nothing fromt the Post Awful...October 15th, 2007: Nothing from the Post Awful, surprise, surprise.

October 12, 2007: Finally got a notice from DHL of a package, and, sure enough, there were the 2 tickets. Mr. Curtis says that he actually mailed them September 18th. Nothing on my end. I went to the Post Awful today for a discussion about missing mail, this not being the only one in the past year, although the missing letters are few and far between. The postal emplo...

September 10, 2007: Had my first real VISTA crash yesterday, out of a total so far of perhaps 15 hours use. Not a very good average, but the sample is pretty small. I did a normal cold boot, got through the password and then nothing, nada, zilch, just a black screen. I had to hold down the on/off button for ten seconds or so to restart. I get that kind of lockout with Win2Kpro at work once in a blue moon.

September 5, 2007: Not being able to access free wireless anywhere, due to the inco...

A few minutes later... Whoa! See below. More interesting glitches... When I started checking my Yahoo groups, I noticed that all the new messages in several of them stopped yesterday, which is VERY unusual. The kind of high-level hack that would be required to stop me from getting any contact thru yahoo central would seem to require authorization on the highest levels there as well. Wonder if next the feds will break down my door in the middle of the night? Maybe I shouldn't have made tho...

Update: July 17th, 2007. Last week Evryx ran a couple of contests, both here and in Japan, to promote use of their image recognition system. The local Pulitzer Prize Winning "Orange County (OC) Register" gave the company a whole page of free coverage in their business section, so it wasn't for lack of people knowing about it.

The results of the promo, according to the Register: Four (4) people entered the contest in the OC, which has a population of several million. 2 Million (!) people e...

Some notes from an ongoing novel:

Had I only listened to Mom. "Don't take chances. Go with the crowd. Stick your head up and it will get chopped off." Live and learn. Or, in my case, "Die and forget," perhaps.

It started with the font wars. You recall when fonts broke free of simple 2D shapes of a single color. Oh, yes, of course there were early foreshadowings, like the color fonts on the old Amiga system, and, yes, I know, people crafted commercial color fonts for a little while, ...

Some notes from an ongoing novel:Had I only listened to Mom. "Don't take chances. Go with the crowd. Stick your head up and it will get chopped off." Live and learn. Or, in my case, "Die and forget," perhaps.

It started with the font wars. You recall when fonts broke free of simple 2D shapes of a single color. Oh, yes, of course there were early foreshadowings, like the color fonts on the old Amiga system, and, yes, I know, people crafted commercial color fonts for a little while, such...

When I post, I usually am writing from memory. Occasionally I get details wrong, and am happy (if chagrinned) to be corrected. When I have the time, I try to include as many references and links as possible to assist the reader in checking my story.

Then there are the people who simply don't want certain things said, certain subjects examined, or who are simply trolls, such as the Mensa weenies who quibble over the slightest detain, triumphant in their debate forum ability to bring any disc...