September 2001

• Arianna Huffington's Land Of The Free? talks about the potential cancellation of Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect.
• Post-attack blood donors discovering AIDS, hepatitis. Well, that's something good come of all this. At least those folks now know they're infected.
• Vandals smash Arab-owned tobacco shop window. A nice guy gets his business busted up by some drunks. Just around the corner is the restaurant described in the article: For one Afghan in Minnesota, kindness and concern. So far, they've had no problems. My friend Jim pointed this out, and added that it bugs him more than usual because it's in our neighborhood. Me too.
• Phil Agre's Some Notes on War in a World Without Boundaries. Long. Worth reading. Or you could listen to this other take on how to fight the Taliban. On a less non-violent note, you could play Bin Laden Liquors - The Game.
• In Defense of Freedom is the organization I mentioned a while back. They've got a website and some solid suggestions now.
• Hackers face life imprisonment under ATA, ATA Draw Tough Questions and Slowing Down the Avalanche are three articles about the proposed Anti- Terrorism Act.
• When the FBI comes knocking, it's the worst of times. Especially when it's just a fishing expedition.
• Got Code Red or Nimda running on your machine? Best fix it soon. Infected DSL Users Get 86ed by ISPs.
• Finally, if you can get through to the server, The Onion | 26 September 2001 has some fine articles. It's just incredibly busy. You can read about it in the Onion's Bitter Tears of Irony.

Weather in Minneapolis for September 28, 2001     September 28 in History

• NASA's figuring out how to make beer: Suds in Space. Coke has been working on packaging, natch. Now there's something good coming out of government!
• DangerShirt.com claims to have The World's Most Dangerous T-Shirts. They pulled their ''Fuck America'' shirt, though.
• Is it true that You Are Where You Live? Type in your zip-code and find out.
• Motel has a new wrinkle -- garages for guests. Hey, that's kinda cool.
• It's official, GM killing Firebird, Camaro after 2002. A moment of silence, please.

Weather in Minneapolis for September 26, 2001     September 26 in History

• Copy-control Senator sleeps while fair-use rights burn. Picture a future where distributing Linux is a crime... and it's time like these when our elected leaders should be under the most intense scrutiny. Defeat the SSSCA tells you what you can do.
• What Happens Next? Six options beyond war and peace is part of the Reason magazine: Terror Strikes coverage.
• Remember the people taken off a plane at JFK because they were bad people of some sort, almost certainly armed with box-cutters and fake IDs? Turns out it was all False reporting and racial prejudice. And do you hear apologies from the newsies who jumped the gun? There's a few small articles like N.Y. Detainees Released; Hijack Reports False, but that's about it.
• Bush's Wars: At Home and Abroad touches on some of the problems in the quest for Homeland Security
• Surveillance Legistlation Threatens Privacy. Some of the things Congress is trying to do, again in the name of security.
• Larry Ellison urges national ID cards and offers free software. I always figured the guy behind Oracle was a control-freak. Apparently he's gone over the edge to fascist.
• Hey, maybe it wasn't bin Laden at all. Who did it? Foreign Report presents an alternative view.
• More background in the articles Islamic Jihad and the U.S. and Americans Don't Understand That Their Heritage is Itself a Threat.
• Transcripts: The guerrilla's story tells the story of a failed hijacking back in 1970. It's pretty disturbing, since her only remorse is over the death of her comrade. It's part of the BBC's Secrets of 1970 revealed, which covers the British government's negotiation with terrorists.
• Jihad VS. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism are Re-Shaping the World is a book written in 1996 that might offer some more perspective. It's part of the LA Times: Future Shock book review.

Weather in Minneapolis for September 24, 2001     September 24 in History

• I've been googled! And this page describes what people were looking for when they ended up here. Not a lot to submit to Disturbing Search Requests, dangit.
• Anti-Terror Push Stirs Fears for Liberties. Congress and Attorney General Ashcroft's knee-jerk reaction to the events of 11 September seem to be to trample our rights. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union have more information, including some information about the bill that went through final markup yesterday.
• You know things are pretty serious when Paul Wellstone turns hawk.
• On the other hand, there was a new pre-flight announcement from the captain Aboard Flight 564.
• A 'Tarpit' That Traps Worms might be one defense against that Scary Hybrid Internet Worm (or New More Annoying Microsoft Worm). But if you program a worm to patch systems to remove their vulnerability to other worms, you might suffer a fate similar to that described in A 'White Hat' Goes to Jail.
• When I worked at WAM!NET, I used to sit next to this guy.
• Favelets are handy little javascripts and such designed for use in IE Mac. They're darned handy, and are going to be another barrier to switching browsers for me. Bleh.

Weather in Minneapolis for September 21, 2001     September 21 in History

• Have you seen Clear Channel's list of songs with questionable content? Imagine all the people, living life without mass-produced FM radio.... You can check out the other Comments on Clear Channel if you'd like. Personally, I don't have the stomach for it and need to talk about something more frivolous. Snopes: Radio, Radio has the real poop.
• On a lighter note, a company called Brava is about to start selling a vacuum bra that'll give women about one more cup-size if they're willing to have a hoover on their hooters for 10 hours a day for 10 weeks. And no, I'm not trying to send a message to anyone. I just couldn't pass up a chance to say hoover your hooters.
• Speaking of odd bras, there's the CyberBra. How incredibly bizarre.
• And continuing with the mammary theme, there's TitPillows.
• Yes, it's true, I'm Straight But Not Narrow.
• I don't think I need any more manly tips for bachelor living, but there are those who might disagree.
• And more seriously, check out Davezilla on the newest worm. If you can use the internet, through all the spew the worm's putting out there.

Weather in Minneapolis for September 19, 2001     September 19 in History

• Mir Tamim Ansary on Afghanistan - probably been linked to by a ton of others, but it's some pretty good writing. So is Paul Ford's Run From Ground Zero, the thoughts of a New Yorker who was in Israel when the attack happened last week.
• A California Lawsuit targets copy-protected CDs. Maybe this is one bit of evil we can deal with.
• In Sherlock users, Ur 0wn3d!, Peter Seebach gripes about the ads in Sherlck. And then points you to resources to help you shut 'em off.
• HavenCo has apparently been up and running for a few months. Given the attacks on privacy that seem likely to come, it might be just in time.
• There's Nothing but confusion in modern dating game. Boy, I'll say.

Weather in Minneapolis for September 17, 2001     September 17 in History

• N.Y. airport arrests a 'false alarm'. I wonder how many other false alarms we're going to have. The 24-hour coverage has already caused quite a few retractions to be issued, most pretty quietly. But what the heck, we're busy panicking and outlawing plastic knives in airports. Next thing you know, they'll be banning sporks on Greyhound.
• Mike's Message 9/12/2001 - We abhor terrorism -- unless we're the ones doing the terrorizing. At this point, I refer back to the Guardian article about us not seeing why we're hated.
• Poynter.org - Terrorism - a ton of information.
• Feds Push Carnivore after attack. Does anyone think there won't be attempts to erode our rights after the attack in NY and D.C.? Perhaps Congress Mulls Stiff Crypto Laws and Will Attack Hurt Net Privacy? will help you make up your mind.
• The free world must decide how its values are protected. The European left wanted America to quit throwing its weight around. Now America is supposed to take leadership, but listen to its European allies. And They can't see why they are hated. Well, except for trying to be the world's policemen.
• One solution was suggested by George Washington: avoiding Entangling Alliances. I don't mean isolationism, but being friendly and opening commerce to all nations, and avoiding becoming involved in other people's wars.
• Bin Laden comes home to roost. The CIA had a definite role in turning bin-Laden into a leader (in someone else's war). That was approved by elected officials, many of whom are still in office. Are they guilty of supporting terrorism?
• Perhaps a solution to the attack is to set up an international Rainbow Six-type counter- terrorist organization. We definitely need to deal with the perpetrators in the harshest manner. But we need to make sure we get the right folks. And given The Counterterrorist Myth, that doesn't seem all that likely. Operations that include diarrhea as a way of life don't happen. You may want to check out the sidebars in that article, too. There's a lot of history, especially the article on Coming to Grips with Jihad.
• There's been a letter to terrorists posted to the web. It was circulating via email for a while, too. Not sure of the original source.
• ZNet Reactions to September 11 Attacks collects even more commentary. Leftish commentary, but one of the places talking about why someone would be so mad at the US to attack like this. Note that the site went down to due infection by that virus floating around, but apparently all the data is safe, and it'll be back soon.

Weather in Minneapolis for September 14, 2001     September 14 in History

• It's a terrible thing what happened in New York and D.C. But after spending about 21 hours watching TV, and watching people watching TV, I find myself thinking that there's a lot of news porn going on.
  
  By news porn, I mean news that's presented in such a way as to tittilate and excite the viewer, and more importantly, to bring the viewer back for more. Watching the news today has had that same sort of something icky on my shoes feeling that I've had in only the finer film emporiums.
  
  I don't mean to belittle anyone's loss, but I think my fascination with the TV in the past day hasn't been all that healthy, and if I keep it up much longer, I'll either go blind or grow hair on my palms. And I don't think I'm the only one.
  
  But I'm still watching the TV.
  
  

Weather in Minneapolis for September 12, 2001     September 12 in History

• I finally figured out how I was screwing up while trying to rebuild the server software and quit doing that, so now The Smoker's Guide to the Twin Cities is live and working again. Woo!
• blogdex says Dave's Picks is #5895 all time in the list of blogs. Not that impressive. LinkPopularity.com doesn't find a whole lot of folks linking to me, either. Bummage. But the Weblog Hipness Quiz tells me You're pretty hip but you don't care much about popularity. That makes you better than any A-Lister. Guess I don't have to resort to name-dropping just yet.
• I'm not as seriously In search of technological solutions to netiquette problems as others, but it definitely interests me.
• It's no Google, but the Search Bastard has some serious attitude.
• As for ubiquitous computing, Brent doesn't want it. I gotta agree.

Weather in Minneapolis for September 10, 2001     September 10 in History

• Courtney Love's big Sacramento adventure fighting the record labels.
• Stranger Than Fiction - a Columbus, Ohio man goes to jail for thinking about torturing children. Ten years in the slam for having the wrong fantasy.
• The Golden Gate Tunnel - As has been pointed out many times, If it's on the web, it must be true!
• NO|COMMERCIAL|POTENTIAL[DOT]NET. That's what it's got. But there's plenty of amusement factor. And frankly, I'm jealous I didn't think of the name first.
• One of these days I should go through my logs so I can add to Disturbing Search Requests. I'm sometimes amazed at some of the traffic I get without even asking for it.

Weather in Minneapolis for September 7, 2001     September 7 in History

Weather in Minneapolis for September 5, 2001     September 5 in History

• On a personal note, it's allergy season, I caught a cold on top of the allergies, and there's been just a ton of "end of summer" kinds of things going on. That means slim pickings today.
• Yesterday marked the end of the Saint Paul Saints season. They ended up not finishing dead-last in the league, but it wasn't until Sunday's game when that was decided. Here's hoping for a better year next year. It's tough saying goodbye to the staff and players, many of whom won't be returning, and to my summertime family, some of whom I won't see again until next May.
• I'm with Steph on In Regards to Banner Ads. My solution is the Accuweather Local Weather Page. You might want to change the zip-code if you're not my neighbor. It's got ads, but they're well-behaved and mostly blocked by my custom hosts file and WebFree. ASAP!   A Stand Against Pop-under ads! is another person who's grumpy. Oh, and pop-up and pop-under ads are the main reason I often surf with JavaScript shut off. Then again, maybe I'll just switch to iCab which lets you selectively disable javascript behaviors.

Weather in Minneapolis for September 4, 2001     September 4 in History