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Border Patrol "spot checks" on ferries provoke outrage in San Juan Islands

It’s a shame that, since the Border Patrol can’t fulfill it’s obligations under the Constitution, they’ve just chucked the thing. All those checks and balances were just a nuisance, anyways. Why do the terrorists hate us again? Oh yes, that “freedom” thing. I guess the best way to get that under control is to get rid of the freedom.

I just saw a piece about “mobilizing” your campaign, and it wasn’t about initializing a group of volunteers. Nope, it’s now how to utilize mobile communications for grassroots organizing. The world has changed. The ability to organize large groups of like-minded individuals is now simply amazing. With cell phones, et al, we can link to people in an incredibly rapid manner. What groups can do with basic tools, such as Myspace and Facebook is compelling enough, but add to that any knowledge of platform development and one becomes powerful, or at least loud, indeed.

From the Nextweb folks.

Interesting law, don’t know where French law stands of free speech, though. This caught my eye, though. “’In France, we know how to punish, we know how to treat, but we don’t seem to know much about prevention,’ said psychiatrist Sophie Criquillion-Doublet to AFP.” The same can be said for the US, as well as any government that I’m familiar with. Basically, there are limits to society’s effectiveness in controlling the behavior of individuals, thus policy is always a blunt instrument. It does pose an interesting question about how a government, and by extrapolation, society, control the destructive behaviors of its dysfunctional individuals. Is there any other method besides coercion? How much of an investment is considered worthwhile? Where do we draw the line? Do we want to have a society full of like-minded borgs?

Wired has a brief bit about what happens when humans get too cocky; unsinkable ships sink, people die, pandemonium.

Can anyone tell me why Outlook’s printing “number of pages” choices is only odd or even? Why can’t I just choose to print page 1, or 7, or whatever? Why the heck would I only want to print odd or eve? I’m baffled.

I’ve been ruminating lately on my dependence upon my Blackberry. Slowly, with a near sinister creep, this dependence has grown. In 1998 I sprang for my first electronic calendar, a Palm III. Essentially, it was an electronic address book. The other item I’d considered was a device by Franklin, which was only an address book. Soon, I saw the ability to calendar more effectively. Then I figured out Tasks, and the ability to set reminders, and I was hooked. Syncing with Outlook sealed the deal.

I went through several iterations of the Palm, culminating in a Treo 650, which was great at its inception, but proceeded to whither in my esteem. Particularly, the device was buggy to start, and seemed to get buggier the more I did with it. It also didn’t seem to like Cingular’s network. And, finally, the sound quality was terrible. When I’d had enough, I explored other options. I was unwilling to risk another several hundred bucks on a new Palm device, and the lower end ones seemed like cheap crap. Thus, I started exploring Blackberrys.

My friends with the devices always raved about them. It also helped to ease my mind that they tended to have them for years. Now, if I were a chap of unlimited funds, I would’ve sprung for an iPhone, but I am not such. It’s been nice that the Curve has excellent phone quality and I’ve not any network issues (actually getting stronger coverage than my wife’s cell phone). However, there are a few cripes I must air. First, I miss SharkMsg. Also, I miss the sheer volume of aps. I did enjoy running myriad goofy aps, which I’m sure affected those bugs mentioned above – mea culpa. Anyway, I also miss the ability to set short cut keys for pretty much everything. On my Treo, I’d set one of the keys to open up a text to my wife. Handy for those folks that I text often. I had those short cuts set up for all my key aps.

Anyway, regardless of the “wants” listed above, I’m not about the move back. Stability and voice quality trump these. Perhaps this is an area that I can be a solution rather than griping about the problem.

One thing NASA ought to consider is which branch of the service they pull from. Instead of pilots, they should look at submariners. They are able to work in confined spaces and deal with the long term tedious routines needed for long-term space travel. Just a thought.>>

I generally use iGoogle as my RSS reader, as opposed to Google Reader (amongst the myriad choices). I prefer the reading experience in iGoogle, but have come up with one nuisance: adding feeds. I need to click on “add stuff”, then on “add feed or gadget” (not so easy to see, ½ way down the page on the left column), then I drop in the URL. Why not have this accessible from the Main screen, as it is on the Reader page? Just a thought.