Claire's blog

The spiral stairs are installed now!  No rail yet… But… They’re usable!

71-year-old Guantanimo detainee released

Man kicked off plane because his t-shirt had Arabic on it

And finally, the kicker. Read this, and be very afraid.

ATHEISTS FILE CIVIL RIGHTS SUIT IN “OKLAHOMA OUTRAGE” –

SMALKOWSKI PRAYER BULLYING CASE

American Atheists filed suit in federal court Friday in a case nvolving charges of “prayer bullying” and conspiracy to violate the civil rights of an Atheist family.

In November, 2004, Nadia Smalkowski — a student at Hardesty Oklahoma High School and member of the female basketball squad — was ordered by her coach to participate in a game-time recitation of the “Lord’s Prayer.” Ms. Smalkowski, an Atheist, refused and was then banished to the locker room. Days later, following a meeting of school officials,
she was punished by being removed from the team. (more…)

Read about Operation Acoustic Kitty … somewhat amusing.

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Not really. It was a dream. (more…)

We had our 2nd annual Assateague Island beach camping trip earlier this month. Although I was recovering from illness and could not drink due to liver testing situation (since resolved fine), I still had a blast!

Pictures of this event are HERE.
Carolyn’s blog post about the trip. The longest and most thorough account:
Carolyn.wordpress.com (her post is both about Bethany and Assateague).

Vicky’s blog post about the trip:
http://tgaw.wordpress.com/2006/08/12/assateague-2006/

Angel’s blog post about the trip:
http://ansaphone4.livejournal.com/265913.html

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Rove blasts warrantless wiretapping decision:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/08/24/rove.spying.ap/index.html

“Imagine if we could have done that before 9/11. It might have been a different outcome,” he said.

Yeah.  Nice spin Karl.  Unfortunately, Bloomberg is onto you.  Might I direct the user to the legal case of McMurray v. Verizon Communications Inc., 06cv3650, in the Southern District of New York.

The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court.

Original Bloomberg article is HERE.

It’s really hard putting the credibility of a legal team against the credibility of Karl Rove.  But I don’t think someone would start up a court case based on zero evidence.  Everyone seems to sort of know that the scope of NSA wiretapping is more than is stated, because almost everything this administration does is more than is stated.  Unfortunately, common sense isn’t conclusive. 

 But I’m a hell of a lot more likely to believe the NSA was listening in 7 months before 911, than I am to believe anything out of the mouth of Karl Rove. 

Remember, the administration knew attacks were coming.  Perhaps in part because of the wiretaps. 

 Anyone disputing this should know of a memo entitled, “Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside The United States”, sent by Condi Rice on August 6th, 2001.  You can read a transcript of her saying this on CNN.com:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/08/rice.transcript/

Well, we reached a major construction milestone yesterday.

They actually finally cut the hole from one floor to the other, in order to install our new spiral stairs.

Let me just say, it is completely surreal to sit in the same place you’ve sat for 7 years, and when looking up, seeing an upstairs room that you used to have to walk 150-200 feet to get to.

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So, after my tirades on LiveJournal about driving, the very thing I complained about happened yet again, the 2nd time this week.

I got flicked off for u-turning on Braddock Rd. The u-turn is the only way I can get to my house; there is an island blocking it from direct left turn. When people beep at me, I quickly do another u-turn, chase them down, and give them a piece of my mind.

I did this with the TW Perry people. The license plate of the vehicle was 82M 844. I will be calling Carol McConaughy, member of their their Marketing Department ( http://www.twperry.com/Press/ ), at 301-670-2445 just to give her a piece of my mind too.

In looking at this company’s webpage, they clearly care about customer relations. Why they would employ drivers who make a habit of flicking people off is the public relations mystery-of-the-day for me.

Liver:

So I got a letter in my mailbox Saturday from Kaiser-Permanente basically saying, “Dear Clint: Your liver is fine. The end.”

I wish we hadn’t waited til Sunday to get our Saturday mail, because then I could have had a couple drinks Saturday!

Weekend of PlayStation 2:

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Vicky wrote a nice entry about Bethany Beach, where I spent Tuesday night, Wednesday, and Thursday morning, before heading on over to Assateague Island. Her friend Christina also wrote about the trip. I love her title: “My God, it’s full of Sawyers!” Best… Title… Ever… And finally, Carolyn, too, has written up the Bethany/Assateague experience.

I’m not going to bother writing anything myself. Procrastination pays off.

Here are the links:

Carolyn: http://carolyncasl.wordpress/bethany-beach-2006/

Vicky: http://tgaw.wordpress/bethany-beach/

Christina: http://cgeyer.blogspot/my-god-its-full-of-sawyers

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14139027/

Now, I hate dogs.  I have said many times I would gladly push a button to make every dog on the planet die.  Be that as it may, this article greatly disturbs me.

The Chinese government ordered 50,000 dogs killed.  People walking their dogs had their dogs seized and clubbed to death in front of them.  All of them.  All dogs.  All.

Kinda messed up.  Definitely an abuse of authority.

I read an interesting article on thought-criminal.org today.  It can be found here:

http://thought-criminal.org/getting-into-bed-with-autocratic-regimes/

Some highlights:

What do you call a man who lives in the lap of luxury but gives it all up to join the military and travel to a foreign land to fight for what he believes in? 

…

What do you call an oil company that operates the largest oil field in America?  British.

…

What do you call a really ticked off leader that has lost control over his empire?

…

On January 23, 1980, in a state of the union address to America, Carter declared war by claiming the entire Middle East as “vital interest” of the U.S. for which America would do anything to control “by any means necessary, including military force,” Carter proclaimed.

…

So what do you call the brutal dictator of Iraq who rapes, tortures and murders at will?

One of the things I like about WordPress blogs are the awesome statistics. (more…)

Attention random internetters:

Does anyone with back pain have any experience with TENS units?  (more…)

I saw this on CNN’s Cafferty File, and looked up the original article, dated August 2, 2006:

Washington Post article
Interesting stuff.  I am completely unsurprised.

Well, Carolyn’s single fiber test for myasthenia gravis came back negative! 

That’s good. 
No removal of thymus gland.
No lifetime of taking immunosuppresant drugs.

But, Carolyn has still spent over $1,000 out of pocket for her eye (as I have for my back).  We’ve also had over $2,000 of car repairs this year, and $11,000 of unexpected construction costs, for a total of at least $15,000 unexpected expenses this year!

Anyway, she now has a blind spot in her bad eye.  She theorizes that the mirror next to our bed reflected the sun into her partially open eye while she was asleep.  So, essentially, she was staring into the rising sun, possibly for a couple hours at a time, for days on end.

That’s her theory, and it’s better than anything I could come up with myself.

(more…)

Imagining The Tenth Dimension – flash animation

Wow.  Wow.  Wow.  Oh My God.  Whoa…. WHOA!

This animation was one of the most mind-blowingly incredible things I have ever seen in my life.  I am going to watch it again very soon now.  I’m not religious, or even that spiritual — but watching this video could be described as the closest thing to a religious experience that I have ever had..

I mean, by the end of watching this, you can actually understand the following sentence:

In String theory, physicists tell us that Superstrings vibrating in the tenth dimension are what create the subatomic particles which make up our universe, and all of the other possible universes as well. In other words, all possibilities are contained within the tenth dimension, which would appear to be the concept we have just built for ourselves as we imagined the ten dimensions, built one upon another.

They also have a text-version, which is handy for referencing back after watching the animation (easier random access). 

Also, I think I am finally convinced that time may really be the 4th dimension, although to me a spatial dimension is something you should be able to move 2 directions in.  But the Moebius Strip analogy really serves to explain why you can only perceive going one direction in the 4th dimension.  I think there still might be “extra spatial dimensions” between the 3rd dimension, and what this animation calls the 4th dimension.  But I might just be full of crap. :) 

But either way… Once you get past the spatial dimensions, it seems that there are only 7 additional dimensions (giving a total of 10).  There is nothing past the 10th dimension. 

Can anyone think of anything 11-dimensional?  Please?

Here’s what the video SHOULD have looked like:

Instead, here is what we got:

Some other interesting reading:

PENTAGON VIDEOS A FIASCO, SCHOLARS CONCLUDE

an article about how useless the original video is. Even Bill O’Reilly had to concede that he did not see a plane in the video. (If you are skimming this posting, the video above is a simulation created by a 911-Truther who wanted to show what the video should have looked like.)

Scholars for 9/11 Truth

A huge site full of all kinds of information, including an article sent to me:

Why Doubt 9/11?

If you don’t want to believe any of this, that’s your perogative.  But don’t equate 911 Truthers with terrorists.

A couple interesting articles, take ’em or leave ’em:

CNN’s Amanpour Links 9/11 Truthers With Sky Terrorists

Red Alert For Staged Government Terror Attack

Debunking Popular Mechanics’ 9/11 Lies

The Bush/Bin Laden Symbiosis

If we are to set aside the 30% of Americans that do not even know the year in which September 11 happened, then we are left with figures of around 36% who agree that the government was involved in the attack and only 34% of Americans who actually know in which year the attack took place that still think it was carried out solely by a rag-tag group of 19 incompetent morons who couldn’t fly Cessna’s at the behest of a man on a kidney dialysis machine.