Yearly Archives: 2005

The Patriot act and privacy

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The New Work Times is reporting today that President Bush authorized illegal wiretapping of US Citizens. This as Congress debates renewal of the Patriot Act.

You could argue that this timing is not accidental. I don’t know if it is or not. What I do know is that it’s time to examine the behavior of the leadership of this country. Bill Clinton was brought before impeachment hearings for lying under oath about having sex with Monica Lewinski. Let’s look at Bush’s record:

  • Went to war based on intelligence that had already been flagged as “questionable” to eliminate a regime that posed no provable threat
  • Guantanamo Bay
  • Abu Ghraib
  • Torture as an interrogation device (C. Rice’s verbal dance around the issue is no better than Clinton’s “it depends on the meaning of the word ‘is’”)

And now illegal wiretaps. Can anyone tell me why impeachment proceedings aren’t underway yet? Or why anyone would trust this government with the kind of sweeping powers granted by the Patriot Act? (I hate that name, by the way. The “Patriot Act” is about the most UN-patriot thing I can think of. It flies in the face of the principals that this country was founded on)

[tag:wiretap] [tag:patriot act]

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An update to Blogwatcher’s account page

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As a folloup to my prior post about BlogWatcher including active user’s subscription list to display lists for anonymous users:

A facility has been added to allow you to “opt out” of this. If you don’t want your subscription list to show up for anonymous users, then go to the “Manage my Account” page, and choose “No” for the “Public Feed” option. Please note: there’s no way from the list shown to anonymous users to know which subscriber was used to include any given feed. So I don’t think there’s really much of a privacy concern here, but I wanted to provide the option anyway.

You also have the ability to opt out of any emails that I may generate to my subscribers, should you wish. I’m not sending any right now, so it’s sort of a moot point, but I may in the future.

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Why do people believe The Da Vinci Code is real?

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Over at Jesus the Radical Pastor, John Frye asks “Why do people believe the Da Vinci code?” My take on it is that Dan Brown has followed the same formula that so successfully propogates so many urban legends. That is

  1. Start with an outrageous premise, but keep it just this side of impossible
  2. Make sure it involves a conspiracy of some sort, meaning that people would be trying to keep it a secret
  3. Provide lots of “facts,” which readers could check if they wanted to, knowing full well that they in fact won’t be checked

Once you combine all that with a fairly well-written book, and you’ve got all the makings of a cult following.

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A minor blogwatcher change

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People who use Blogwatcher regularly probably won’t notice this, but I’ve made a slight change to it. The reason you won’t notice is because you’ll only see it if you try to view your bloglist when you’re not logged in. It was showing a “sampling” of the logs I support. The problem was that the ads that were getting selected had nothing to do with people’s actual subscriptions.
So I’ve modified it. Now, if an unregistered user tries to read their bloglist, they’ll see a combination of everyone’s subscription list who has logged in within the last 2 weeks.
If anybody has a problem with this, let me know. I could probably add an option to the accounts setting page that would let you “opt out” of having your subscriptions listed. Note: there’s nothing that shows who has subscribed – only that somebody has subscribed.

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I could use some education

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OK. I’m reading this book called “Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire” by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat. It’s basically a retelling of Paul’s letter to the Colossians, with a postmodern “slant.” I haven’t decided if I like it yet or not. I’ll post more on that once I finish it.
I’m writing this as a request for input on one of the things I’ve come across. In chapter 3, the authors are equating globalization of the economy with the worst of the oppresive practices of the Roman empire. Now, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, but I don’t understand this perspective, usually associated with “extreme” liberals, that globalization is evil, and the World Bank and IMF are the minions of Satan. I always thought bringing ecomomic growth to developing countries was a good thing!
Can anyone shed some light on this for me?

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A dubious distinction

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Well, I don’t know if I should be happy or mad.
Spammers have found this site. One of the problems of blogs like this is “comment spam.” I got what looked like about 2 dozen “trackback” links this morning. (Trackbacks are a method of some other blog notifying my system that a comment has been made on one of my posts). Unfortunately, they weren’t “real” comments, but instead links to various porn sites.
I deleted them, of course, and put blocks in place so that particular server can’t spam me again, but I didn’t like having to do it.
On the other hand, at least it shows my blog is “connected” enough to attract the spammers’ attention. ;)

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A very good article on the Bible and context

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TheOOZE has an article entitled “THE BIBLE IS NOT A JIGSAW PUZZLE: A New Approach to the New Testament.” I recommend it.
While I don’t know that I agree that this is all that “new” of an approach, it does help to articulate some of the issues with the way that the Bible is (mis)handled today. Unfortunately, coming at the Bible the way the author recommends involves a lot more work that just “cherry-picking” verses to support a position.

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New feeds available for BlogWatcher

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You might want to look at the “Manage my Bloglist” page of BlogWatcher, if you haven’t done so recently. I’ve added several new feeds to the right side of the page.
The “Manage my account” link is also worth a look. You can change the color scheme that BlogWatcher uses when you log in, and you can also change the number of articles shown on each page, and your local timezone. Check it out.

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