“Who told you this?” I began. “Who told you supporting our troops meant supporting endless war; that disagreeing with our administration’s policies meant turning my back on my country? Who told you that I have to follow our President into the pits of a hell of our own making, never questioning the course though my heart and head scream for sanity? As for our fighting men and women, who told you I’ve no compassion for their sacrifice or respect for their service? As I beg my elected representatives to bring them home, so they might be safe until the day a war of choice becomes a war of necessity – who told you that makes me a traitor?

via Threat Level

A new law expanding the government’s spying powers gives the Bush Administration a six-month window to install possibly permanent back doors in the nation’s communication networks. The legislation was passed hurriedly by Congress over the weekend and signed into law Sunday by President Bush.

The bill, known as the Protect America Act, removes the prohibition on warrantless spying on Americans abroad and gives the government wide powers to order communication service providers such as cell phone companies and ISPs to make their networks available to government eavesdroppers.

Basically, all phone, internet and Voice over IP service providers (including Skype, Google Talk, and Gizmo Project) can now be ordered to put in back door spying measures for the government, all without warrant. I’ll stick to encrypting sensitive emails and using paper for other sensitive data.

Though I am no scientist, this video claims Aspartame was pushed into FDA approval through shady deals and payoffs, and can cause dozens of illnesses, among them brain tumors and Multiple Sclerosis. At the VERY LEAST, it is important to at least consider how safe this chemical is, and whether you should let your loved ones intake it, even if its a a precaution.

I suggest supporting Tagatose, a functional sweetener that is safe for all diabetics, is 92% as sweet, and has only 38% of the calories.

Heres the trailer for Sweet Misery:

See some more clips on aspartame after the jump:
An excerpt on *dun dun dun* Rumsfeld’s connection to Nutrasweet:

and a Fox news affiliate report that didn’t make it very far:

Also this,
(requires login, attainable here)

PS: Forgive the metafilter-style non-descriptive links

When I took my first Telecom class in college, I learned about the 8 RBOCs or Regional Bell Operating Companies being set up after the AT&T monopoly was ended.

My teacher said although they were all former “Bells”, they had no joint interest. However, I wasn’t so sure. At that time, they had already begun to buy each other and were down from 8 to 4:

1. SBC (Ameritech and Southwestern Bell and Pacific Telesis)
2. Verizon (GTE and Bell Atlantic and NYNEX)
3. BellSouth
4. Qwest (US West)

I had a scary premonition that day that this would keep up until there was again 1 company, or at least 2 companies with a joint interest…

And wouldn’t you know it, SBC aquired and changed its own name to AT&T, which then bought BellSouth (down to 3), and Verizon bought MCI for good measure.

Thats scary enough, but it I never even thought about cellular. You see, if we back up to before the SBC merger:

1. Cingular (owned by Bell South and SBC {no joint interest???}) bought AT&T wireless, changing it all to Cingular and creating the largest cellular network in the USA
2. Then SBC bought Bell South and AT&T, and that whole mess becomes AT&T Inc
3. Finally AT&T bought Cingular back!

Confused yet? Thats ok. On top of all that mess, AT&T sold its unprofitable Rural New England operations to Fairpoint (pending approval).

The bottom line: I’m scared about when this will end, and if my premonition about the 1 or 2 final Telecom giants ruling the USA will come to pass, leaving us all with crappy service and soaring rates due to a lack of competition. Of some comfort is the fact that I can switch to VoIP for land-line service, use small-company DSL or cable from the big evil Time-Warner, and have a little choice in cellular too.

The whole thing that brought this up is the fact that I was telling B about how AT&T bought Cingular back, and he pointed out that the Colbert Report had just done an explanation that both out-does mine, and is funny as hell (as usual). So if my explanation confuses you (hell it confuses me), See the slightly less in-depth video here.

UPDATE:  Sadly the video has been taken down by Viacom.  I can’t seem to find a replacement anywhere…

Man, so much to rant about. As far as the Mooninite thing, I was going to be brief but I can’t hold my tongue. Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and New York all didn’t bat an eyelash at these effin’ lite-brights, and thats all they really were. They weren’t “hoax devices” because there was no hoax. It was marketing. At best you could call them street art, and at worst they are improvised billboards.

So, New York, (and I hate to bring this up, but it makes a good point) the place were 9/11 happened, didn’t get scared in the least at these home-made light-brights, but Boston feels the need not only to freak out, but their Mayor says he’s “outraged” and that an apology isn’t enough.

They claim the responsible parties should pay for the “estimated hundreds of thousands of dollars it cost the city to respond to the bomb scares”, but who turned it into a “bomb scare”? The City. Not the creators, not turner, not [Adult Swim] or the advertising group. No, it was the City of Boston, and they need to pay for their own alarmist behavior.

My point is this: Mayor Thomas Menino and all the other alarmists in Boston are a bunch of pussies. I hate use crude language for fear of sounding ignorant, but thats exactly what they are: big, whiny pussies.

The upshot to all of this is the fact that since all publicity is good publicity, Aqua Teen Hunger Force (The show that “Err” is from) is going to get more attention than they ever dreamed of.

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I’m off to spray-paint a picture of a bob-omb on Faneuil Hall.

Update: Jesse made us this lovely Anti-Terrorism poster:

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