Thoughts on WikiLeaks

Posted on December 4, 2010 by Michael

I have two primary thoughts on Wikileaks. First, I find it cute how so many people immediately started throwing around the word “cables”, as if they’re totally, like, in the in! Pfft. Second, you know Julian Assange is doing something right if he’s getting governments to freak out this much.

WikiLeaks had become an Internet vagabond Friday, forced to move from one website to another as governments and hackers hounded the organization, trying to deprive it of a direct line to the public.

EveryDNS — a company based in Manchester, New Hampshire, stopped directing traffic to the website wikileaks.org late Thursday after it said cyber attacks threatened the rest of its network.

But while wikileaks.org remained unreachable Saturday, the organization has found new homes. Its German website wikileaks.de was reachable Saturday, and so was its Swiss domain.

The Swiss address directs traffic to servers in France, where political pressure quickly mounted with Industry Minister Eric Besson on Friday saying it was unacceptable to host a site that “violates the secret of diplomatic relations.”

The web hosting company OVH confirmed that it had been hosting WikiLeaks since early Thursday, after a client asked for a “dedicated server with … protection against attacks,” adding it was now up to the courts to decide on the legality of hosting the site on French soil.

Probably the worst thing in all this is that with all these government attacks and arrest warrants, the sexual assault and rape charges Assange faces in Sweden are only being undermined. Honestly. Who actually believes those charges are at all legit? I certainly don’t. And, unfortunately, I’m sure many other people hold the same doubts. That isn’t to say it’s unfortunate that people doubt what are probably bogus charges meant to make Assange look like a bad guy; that doubt a good thing. The bad thing is that those charges only serves to undermine all the real charges of sexual assault and rape that go doubted all the time.

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Catalog of the skies

Posted on December 4, 2010 by Michael

via Wikipedia and, as per request on the picture page, source.

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Religious have no monopoly on virtue

Posted on December 3, 2010 by Michael

That’s according to the Queen.

The Queen, who is supreme governor of the Church of England, said: “In our more diverse and secular society, the place of religion has come to be a matter of lively discussion. It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue and that the wellbeing and prosperity of the nation depend on the contribution of individuals and groups of all faiths and none.”

Now she just needs to point out that religions also not only don’t have a monopoly on science, but they barely have a toehold.

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Thought of the day

Posted on December 2, 2010 by Michael

Proponents of evolution have a lot of things over proponents of creationism intelligent design – knowledge, facts, the backing of virtually the entire relevant scientific community, research, etc. But above all this, they have one especially important factor: honesty.

Filed under: Misc | Tagged: , | 2 Comments »

Bigot questions military study

Posted on December 2, 2010 by Michael

A bigot has raised bigot-based questions on a military study.

Directly challenging the Pentagon’s top leadership, Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain on Thursday snubbed a military study on gays as flawed and said letting gays serve openly would be dangerous in a time of war.

McCain also said Adm. Mike Mullen’s opinion didn’t matter as much as other military leader’s opinions because he doesn’t directly lead troops. Mullen had one hell of a response.

“With all due respect, Mr. Chairman and Sen. McCain, it is true that, as chairman, I am not in charge of troops. But I have commanded three ships, a carrier battle group and two fleets. And I was most recently a service chief myself. For more than 40 years I have made decisions that affected and even risked the lives of young men and women.

“You do not have to agree with me on this issue. But don’t think for one moment that I haven’t carefully considered the impact of the advice I give on those who will have to live with the decisions that that advice informs. I would not recommend repeal of this law if I did not believe in my soul that it was the right thing to do for our military, for our nation and for our collective honor.”

McCain would absolutely not question this study if it gave him the results he wanted. He’s just a typical bigoted Republican, arguing from his biases, not any sort of objectivity. What’s worse, he’s making our military weaker by allowing this unconstitutional law to remain in place.

Filed under: News, Rights | Tagged: , , | 3 Comments »

Republicans and being just a little fat

Posted on December 2, 2010 by Michael

In my daily news trawl, I came across two articles listed right next to each other. Here’s the first:

House Republicans have temporarily blocked legislation to feed school meals to thousands more hungry children.

Republicans used a procedural maneuver Wednesday to try to amend the $4.5 billion bill, which would give more needy children the opportunity to eat free lunches at school and make those lunches healthier. First lady Michelle Obama has lobbied for the bill as part of her “Let’s Move” campaign to combat childhood obesity.

…

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has also taken a swipe at the first lady’s campaign, bringing cookies to a speech at a Pennsylvania school last month and calling the campaign a “school cookie ban debate” and “nanny state run amok” on her Twitter feed.

It has been abundantly clear for a long, long time that Sarah Palin is intellectually inferior to most people. I really don’t see how this can even be debated. But it hasn’t always been clear that she’s also just a bad person. Now it is.

Now, if she was scientifically literate, maybe this second article would have an impact on her thinking:

The latest research involving about 1.5 million people concluded that healthy white adults who were overweight were 13 percent more likely to die during the time they were followed in the study than those whose weight is in an ideal range.

“Having a little extra meat on your bones — if that meat happens to be fat — is harmful, not beneficial,” said Dr. Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society, senior author of the study.

The study’s conclusions, published in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine, are similar to three other large studies, said the lead author, Amy Berrington of the National Cancer Institute.

“Now there’s really a very large body of evidence which supports the finding that being overweight is associated with a small increased risk of death,” Berrington said.

This is what I’m talking about when I say human beings are more important than the abstract ethical principle of liberty. Letting kids get fat is going to have real world consequences that no one wants. Human lives matter.

But kids do like cookies.

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300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Posted on December 2, 2010 by Michael

That’s the number of stars – 300 sextillion – scientists now estimate to be in the observable Universe.

The research, led by Yale astronomer Pieter van Dokkum, is being published by the journal Nature. In an interview with Space.com, von Dokkum said the findings are based on data gathered when the researchers were analyzing “red dwarfs” — stars that are dimmer than our sun and much smaller.

The “faint signatures” of those red dwarfs in eight galaxies “located between about 50 million and 300 million light-years away,” led to the new calculation of how many stars are out there, Space.com writes.

This has also led von Dokkum to speculate that there are likely trillions of Earth-like planets out there. This makes sense given the mundane nature of our solar system. Why wouldn’t there be more planets like ours? And life on those planets? We may be locally rare, but on the scale of the Universe only arrogance could say we’re likely to be exclusive inhabitants.

Filed under: Astronomy/Cosmology/Physics | Tagged: , , , | 4 Comments »

Massive Exit – Boulders Uphill

Posted on December 1, 2010 by Michael

This comes from a couple of long time friends of mine, one of whom sometimes posts on FTSOS. It’s an absolutely fantastic song. Please give it a listen.

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A response to the pope

Posted on December 1, 2010 by Michael

Filed under: Religions | Tagged: , , | 4 Comments »

Come one, come all

Posted on December 1, 2010 by Michael

…to The Liberal Cup in Hallowell on Dec 7. I’m going to be co-hosting the weekly trivia game with a friend that night. Bring your friends, put down ten bucks for trivia, buy a few beers (The ‘Cup has the best around), and see if you can get any of my awesome, awesome questions. One special hint for FTSOS readers: no answer is going to “evolution”. That would be lame and probably too easy.

Heck, you can even argue with me in person if you want. But I don’t recommend it. My alcohol consumption will not be considered “light”. Or maybe that would make me all the more formidable. Try your luck.

Filed under: Local, News | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

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