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Saturday, October 9th, 2004
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1:18 pm
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As taken from the campaign trail blog of Michael Badnarik's movement:
IF YOU BELIEVE THAT REAL DEMOCRACY THRIVES ON DIVERSE POLITICAL VOICES AND THAT THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA SUPPRESSES ALTERNATIVE VIEWS, STAND UP FOR YOUR BELIEFS. POST THE FOLLOWING ON YOUR XANGA, PROFILE, OR LIVEJOURNAL, OR E-MAIL IT TO THOSE WHO CARE.
On October 8th at 9PM, two third party candidates were arrested for attempting to enter the Washington University complex holding the second presidential debate. The candidates, Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party and David Cobb of the Green Party, chose civil disobedience to fight the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD). Over half of Americans believe third party candidates should be included, yet politicians continue to funnel public funds into the bi-partisan Commission. S.W.A.T. teams were used to deny the will of the American people while mainstream media ignored this historic event, a shameless suppression of political diversity.
Americans deserve to know about the unjust takeover of our political process. I posted this to take matters into my own hands. If you believe that real democracy thrives on diverse political voices and that it’s time to use alternative methods to support these voices, post this in your Xanga, profile, or Livejournal, or e-mail it to those who care.
What this calls for is a google bomb. Link to http://badnarik.org/supporters/blog/2004/10/08/michael-badnarik-arrested/ And make sure the world hears it.
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, July 19th, 2004
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4:59 pm - Dreams..
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I haven't recorded a dream here in a while.
Last night I dreamed I was visiting my mom. Except, instead of living in California, she lived in Japan. She lived in an apartment on the tenth floor of a high-rise. It was a nice apartment, 2 bedrooms I think. Anyway, I spent a lot of my time just looking out the window. Because I didn't know anyone, and didn't have money to go anywhere. Once, I took the elevator down to the street and walked a few blocks in either direction, and there was lots of construction going on. Construction that happens in a booming economy. Down the street a little farther than I went, was a 20 story biomedical research building, that officed something like twenty thousand researchers and office workers. On the way back up to the apartment, I met a teenager, and we traded a few sentences in Japanese.. then she broke out in full, un-accented english. We chatted for a bit, and she explained how she was a Japanese-American living in Japan. After a bit, we said our goodbyes and went our seperate ways..
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, July 7th, 2004
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11:57 pm - So, wear red.
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My brother sent me this; while it asks you to send it on like some stupid chainmail out there, I think this one is worth passing on. So read at your leisure.
My name is Nadia Jensen and I have an idea for a quiet revolution.
Please take 5 minutes to read my email and then help if you can:
Here's some history behind this idea:
When Norway was occupied by
Germany in 1940, Norwegian women began to knit RED caps for children as
a way of letting everyone know that they did not like what was happening
in their country, that they didn't like having their freedom taken away
by the Nazis.
My great aunt, Karin Knudson Myrstad, was one of the women who knit red
caps for her children and others. Similarly, in Denmark, women knit
red-white-and blue caps (colors of the Allies) for the very same reason.
The result was that whenever Norwegians and Danes left their homes --to
go to the store, to work, etc, they could see that THE MAJORITY opposed
what was going on in their country. As you know, both countries
organized effective Resistance efforts and changed history -- everything
that happened began simply by wearing red!!!! (or the colors of the
Allies, in Denmark).
I believe, as many of us do, that at the very heart of our democracy is
our right to oppose certain policies of our government. Increasingly,
our Government is redefining "freedom" in ways that make too many
Americans perceive that it is risky to oppose his policies -- and, in
particular, current inroads about individual freedoms and policies in
the U.S. and abroad.
However, many of us DO oppose what our government is doing to individual
rights--and I have an idea that will allow all of us to recognize each
other very easily so we can see that WE ARE THE MAJORITY.
SO... I have been thinking that it's time to take action in a way that
is effective and easy for all of us to do: Just wear red every Friday
between now and election day.
Wear a little or a lot-- just be sure that when you leave your house to
go about your day -- to work, to school, to the store, to the gas
station, wherever you go in your daily routine -- that everyone who sees
you will see that you are wearing red because you believe in freedom and
you don't agree with our current administration's policies at home and
abroad. I'm really certain that we'll see that lots of us wearing red
for freedom -- because WE ARE THE MAJORITY. We just need a way to show
each other who we are!!! Between now and election day, ask everyone you
know to wear red for "Freedom Fridays".
I have already spread the word to friends and have had a very
enthusiastic response. This email has been forwarded around the country
by many who receive it - feel free to send in on to your friends and
co-workers.
Nadia Jensen
I'll be wearing red on fridays - will you? Maybe not all red, because we're close to a bad section of town.. but yeah ;3
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Friday, July 2nd, 2004
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9:06 pm - ABC Stores.
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I was just thinking about how silly it is for alcohol to be required to pass through government warehouses in order to be sold in NC, MI, and several other states. Hope mentioned that it was a puritanical system, and while that is true.. it's also a socialist concept. Which is rather ironic, because North Carolina is staunchly republican xD
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Saturday, June 12th, 2004
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6:02 am - Dawn of War
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Alright, I'm taking a break from my general mode of depressing, left-leaning political livejournal posts.
Today, I bring you the most impressive game trailer for any computer game I have ever seen. If you like Warhammer 40,000, if you like Real Time Strategy, hell - if you like shiny movies that are fucking AWESOME, just click away.
To misquote penny arcade - after you've seen this game in action, how can you NOT be excited about it?
In other news, I've finally finished tweaking my laptop's desktop. I'm going to submit the screen to the fluxbox site (they like to collect screens of the latest development version) once I can send email again. I'm still in california, and mom's ISP doesn't have an outgoing mail server I can use, because they only offer web-based email. Yum for verizon DSL.
current mood:  indescribable
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Saturday, May 8th, 2004
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10:13 pm - Anti-DMCA Bill in Congress
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This Bill is set to be heard in Congress on Wednesday, the 12th of May.
It revokes key provisions of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) which make it unlawful to make backup copies of DVDs, break the DRM (Digital Rights Management) encoding on the Apple AAC format, the CSS encryption on DVDs, and basically any data that has been encoded.
The DMCA violates fair use of copyrighted material, such as being able to make backup copies, and transferring the data to a medium it was not bought on.
In addition, this Bill coming before congress on Wednesday will make it unlawful to sell a copy-protected audio CD without a clear warning label that it might not play in certain CD-players. It also makes it unlawful to remove said warning label before sale.
I urge you to consider your rights, if you live in the United States, and the rights that the DMCA violates. I urge you to contact your representative and put forth a valid, persuasive statement against the DMCA, and for the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act. For help finding your representative and contacting them, please visit the Protect Fair Use website.
Feel free to copy and paste this text to your journal, and please urge your friends to do the same. Every person who contacts their representative, represents a better chance to repeal offensive sections of the DMCA.
current mood:  ecstatic
current music: VNV Nation - Burning Empires - Legion (Janus)
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| Friday, May 7th, 2004
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1:32 pm - link postage
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1:08 pm - Yay for music cartels
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Mmmm, RIAA bait -n- switch. I love this country. These morons are shooting themselves in the foot. For less than the price they want to hike an album up to on iTunes, I can go buy the cd from a store and rip it in the format I want. The whole point of online music was that it was less expensive because physical medium costs were not an issue. If they get their price hike, online music will be more expensive.
Expect P2P illegal music downloads to increase once this goes into place. Most people won't stand for this. I know I'll quit buying music from iTMS if this goes into effect.
current mood:  annoyed
current music: Hybrid - Morning SciFi - 01 - This is what it Means
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Monday, March 22nd, 2004
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4:17 pm - o.m.f.g.
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| Monday, March 15th, 2004
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9:05 am - RARRRR
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o.m.f.g.
I am so wired. I've had 3 cheerwines and a can of red bull.
My fingers are shaking.
I've got so much to do... I've got to finish an essay, works cited, etc, before noon.
I've got to finish up polishing a short story by 3.
I've got to write an autobiographical essay (WTF DO I WRITE FOR THAT, HELP) for a college application by tomorrow
plus finish that application and mail it off tomorrow
thank god i have my transcripts ready to go.
shitshitshit.. march15 is DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMSDAY.
current mood:  stressed
current music: Zeromancer - Raising Hell (<3 my mp3 player at school)
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, February 25th, 2004
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5:51 pm - Copied from MoveOn.org
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Dear friend,
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 4.9 million women of childbearing age in the U.S. -- that's 8 percent -- have mercury levels in their blood that are unsafe. Exposure to unsafe levels of mercury can cause damage to a child's brain, delaying walking and talking, and even lowering a child's intelligence. The biggest source of mercury pollution in the U.S. is emissions from power plants.
Will you join me in helping prevent mercury pollution? The EPA is now accepting public comments on mercury controls, at:
http://www.moveon.org/mercury/
The EPA is trying to back away from strict safeguards against mercury pollution from power plants, despite the advice of its own experts and advisory panels. In December, the EPA announced a mercury plan that will expose our children to far more mercury, for far longer, than what the agency has said is achievable and cost-effective.
This should trouble all of us. The EPA’s job should be to protect kids and the rest of us from dangerous pollution.
Please join me in speaking up on this. You can send the EPA your comments here:
http://www.moveon.org/mercury/
Thanks.
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(comment on this)
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| Tuesday, February 17th, 2004
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3:56 pm - Katsucon
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This is an email I sent to the katsucon feedback folks.
Overall, I don't think it was worth my drive up to DC this year - it was last year, though. I may not be returning next year, it depends on a lot of things.
A few things I liked about the con:
- The dealer's room was great, even though I didn't have much money to spend there.
- Iron Artist was fun, though I think the commentators could have done a better job making it entertaining.
The long list of things I didn't like about the con:
- The at-the-door registration price rising from 45 dollars to 50. After paying the 50 on friday morning, I checked the website that night. It still listed 45 dollars. That was 5 dollars I was -not- planning on spending, and 5 dollars I could have spent on food. The fact that this was last minute and not advertised at all almost makes me want to bring in the better business bureau.
- I've heard tell from artists who registered for artists ally, had their checks cashed, and were not confirmed, and when they arrived there were not tables for them. I don't know whether this is true or not, because it did not happen to me - however, the rumor is there and if it has no true basis, Katsucon staff should take it upon themselves to dispel this rumor. As an artist, this is a very disturbing problem if it's true, and even though I did not register for one this year, I probably won't even try next year - if I attend.
- The game room was miniscule, especially compared to last year.
- Staff seemed generally disorganized, especially security. As an adult, I don't like it when a majority of the security staff I see look to be under the age of 16.
- The video rooms did not show anything particularly interesting or even that new.
- There weren't many interesting panels. I'd have to dig out my schedule to point out some of the time slots which I think could have been filled with a better panel.
- The DJs, imho, were poorly chosen. The 80's dance DJ, for example, played a lot of non-danceable material. The saturday night DJ, on the other hand, played some decent stuff - but was very amateur.
- Last year there was parking besides the hotel parking. Hopefully since it will be moving next year, parking will be better. Being raped 10-12 dollars a day for parking does not encourage me to return next year.
- Overall, the hotel staff was much more curteous than the convention staff I interacted with. Bad PR.
- Not very many interesting guests. It was more expensive (50 dollars) this year compared with (45 I do believe) last year. I do not see where the extra money went, as you did not nearly have the caliber of guests (especially when taking Duel Jewel into consideration) this year. I can understand not being able to get Duel Jewel (or another J-rock/pop band/group), but some decent guests please, if you're going to be the most expensive con around. PMX, for example, is having TMR, Miyavi, and several other famous guests - and their price is only 45 (of course, the concert tickets are more.. but still).
- I seriously suspect the water made me sick.
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(comment on this)
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| Monday, February 9th, 2004
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11:27 pm
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4:24 pm - lifted from f4shi0nabl3
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Congress has the power to censure the President -- to formally reprimand him for betraying the nation's trust. If ever there was a time for this, it's now. Join our call on Congress to censure President Bush at:
http://www.moveon.org/censure/
It's clear that we’ve been misled:
David Kay said last week, "I'm personally convinced that there were not large stockpiles of newly produced weapons of mass destruction," and "We don't find the people, the documents or the physical plants that you would expect to find if the production was going on." 5 Kay said these things shortly after resigning from his post as Bush's chief weapons inspector in Iraq.
Bush, in his 2003 State of the Union address, said, "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." 6 Yet Ambassador Joe Wilson, who was sent to Niger in February 2002 to determine whether Iraq was trying to purchase uranium materials there, concluded that "intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." 7
A CIA report in February 2003 said: "We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since [1998] to reconstitute its Weapons of Mass Destruction programs." 8
It's also clear that the misleading was deliberate:
The respected Carnegie Endowment for International Peace recently found that the administration "systematically misrepresented the threat" from Iraq. 9
The basis for President Bush's African uranium claim was known at the time to be forged and not credible.10 "Top White House officials knew that the CIA seriously disputed the claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium in Africa long before the claim was included in Bush's January address to the nation," according to the Washington Post.11
Secretary of State Colin Powell became alarmed at the level of intelligence distortion. When he read the first draft of his speech to the UN -- prepared for Powell by Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff -- he was so upset that he lost his temper, throwing several pages in the air and declaring, "I'm not reading this. This is bullsh--."12
Our democracy only works when we know the truth. We now know President Bush and his administration deliberately misled Congress and the American people. Censure is the least we should expect in response.
The independent inquiry will need a year or more to come to a conclusion, according to the Bush administration. It took less time than that for the country to go to war. We don't need more investigation, we need accountability, and we need it now.
Join our call on Congress to censure President Bush at:
http://www.moveon.org/censure/
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(comment on this)
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| Tuesday, January 27th, 2004
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8:06 am - Neuros
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Well, according to my fedex tracker, my Neuros is estimated to get here tomorrow. *does a dance*
The downside to that, is if the fedex truck can't get to my house.. yay for white shit on the ground :B
and the random quiz thingies:
I'm a Strawberry Daiqery, discover your ALcoHoLiC personality!
How many people have a crush on  leafykitty?
The below numbers indicate what sorta crushes people on leafykitty's friends list have on her/him, as taken from the results of the original LJ Secret Crush Meme. | 5 friends have a Secret Crush on leafykitty. This is 1 more than in October, 2003. This is greatly above average compared to other users.
0 friends have a Public Crush on leafykitty. This is 0 more than in October, 2003. This is below average compared to other users.
0 friends have an Ex-Crush on leafykitty. This is 1 less than in October, 2003. This is below average compared to other users.
| How many people have a crush on you?
Secret Crush Meme 3 is twice as badass as Secret Crush Meme 2! With 23,000 new crush quiz responses (45,000 total) and the ability to find out who a user has crushes on! |
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Sunday, January 25th, 2004
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4:40 am - beowulf cluster..
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Geek alert. I'm in HPC 110.. High Performance Computing 110. It's a basic overview of administration and construction of beowulf-class cluster supercomputers. Beowulf-class clusters are built from off-the-shelf commodities, and are generally known as LOBOS - Lots Of Boxes On Shelves. The third fastest computer in the world is a cluster at Virginia Tech. It's got something in the number of thousands of Apple G5 boxes. The fastest computer in the world, Earth Simulator in Yokohama, is a cluster of almost a thousand refridgerator-sized computers and performs sustained speeds of around 35 TFLOPS (TeraFLOPS - a thousand billion floating point operations per second). Each node (computer) has 8 CPUs in it, each CPU with a performance of 8GFLOPS. The theoretic performance of each cabinet is 128GFLOPS - there are two nodes in each of the 100cm x 120cm x 200cm cabinets. Each CPU draws 140 watts of power.
Anyway. The Space Simulator cluster uses shuttle xpc small form factor boxes - specifically because size is an issue in storing these huge clusters. This cluster is around the 88th fastest computer in the world, and performs at 757.1 GFLOPS (GigaFLOPS - a billion floating point operations per second). There are 288 nodes in this cluster, with a node being an individual computer - just like is sitting on your desk or in your lap right now. They're just Pentium 4 2.53ghz processor boxen. If you take it's performance and divide by the number of nodes, you get approximately 2.629 GFLOPS/node.
At this point, I remembered reading the spec sheet of the Playstation 2 a really long time ago. Then I remembered reading about project to port linux to the 128bit RISC PS2 system. Put that together with the PS2 hard drive and PS2 network adapter... because, you see, most all beowulf clusters are built on the Linux operating system. Most are built on Alpha boxes, intel boxes, amd boxes or apple boxes.
I propose a beowulf cluster built from Playstation 2s. Each PS2 has a floating point performance of 6.2GFLOPS - more than twice that of one of the Space Simulator nodes - and at a fraction of the price. Each P4 node for the Space Simulator cost a little less than 1000 dollars. Each PS2 node would cost less than 500 dollars.
So the PS2s perform twice as fast, at half the cost.
The only question is, how polished is the PS2 Linux project, and how fast are the PS2 network adapters. The only drawback I can see is that each PS2 only has 32mb of main memory. A PS2 Hard drive would be necessary to load the operating system from. You wouldn't be able to complete projects which need a great deal of memory because of this limitation, unless you used some PS2 nodes and some regular PC nodes. PS2 CPU does have 128bit DMA, however...
current mood:  geeky
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| Saturday, January 24th, 2004
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9:45 am
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| Thursday, January 22nd, 2004
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9:12 am
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I've found a replacement for my sleep-time music listening...
instead of the same old same old, iTunes has soem really really good ambient electronica radio stations. the DI.fm one especially plays some good stuff. Good stuff to sleep to.
On the subject of music, next paycheck I'm probably going to go out and buy a Neuros mp3 player. They're the only hdd-based mp3 I've seen with built-in FM transmission... the software for it is also open source. The storage is in a removable 'backpack' to the base unit, so that if a 40gig version comes out (it only comes in 128mb solid state and 20gig at the moment), you can buy a new storage backpack and not shell out 400 bucks for a whole new mp3 player. The pricetag of $199 is also attractive. It also comes with the standard cig-lighter power adapter, and wall power adapter.. things you have to pay extra for in other players.
The only bad thing about them is the li-ion battery is built in. So when it won't charge anymore, you need to send your backpack off to get the battery serviced. From what I hear, though, it's a lot less expensive than Apple's: 20 or 30 bucks.
The main thing I love about it spec-wise, is the FM transmitter... I don't have a decent cd player in my car (mine doesn't like half the cds I have, and is generally annoying to work with), nor do I have a cassette player. With the Neuros, I just set it to broadcast on an FM frequency, and tune my car radio to it. Voila. Cordless mp3 play in my car. Better quality and cheaper than most car mp3 cd players, too. Not to mention it can fit about 28 times more on it than a cd... but yeah. I'm definitely getting one in the next paycheck or two.
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(comment on this)
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4:22 am - misc
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three points today.
1) im sick. yay. achey and headacheness. not as bad as yesterday, yesterday i was pukey, too.
2) van helsing trailer is fucking cool.
3) oldish thing that I just finished up now on deviant art. yes, it has no head. no, it's never going to have one.
current mood:  sick
current music: Steve Roach - Rite of Passage
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, January 19th, 2004
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11:28 pm - We-he-hellll..
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