Month: March 2010

Broadband For Free*

Tam at View From the Porch brings up an article dealing with the recent decision by the United States government to provide broadband for everybody. The article is about a whiny ninny web developer who is crying because she doesn’t have broadband:

Like a photographer without a camera, or a mechanic who doesn’t own a car, Kelli Fields is a webmaster without high-speed Internet access.

By day, the 42-year-old uses a broadband connection at work to update a university’s Web site, which she built and codes from scratch.

But when she goes home at night, the rural Oklahoman struggles with a dial-up Internet connection so slow, she does chores to pass the time while Web sites load. Her high school-age son is so fed up with the glacial pace of their Internet connection that he asks his mom to update his Facebook page from the office.

Let’s look at this shall we. My father is a mechanic and he owns his own shop. I can tell you one thing the government never provided him with a car, tools, hoist, alignment rack, or even a front desk. Likewise I don’t know a single photographer who has a camera purchased for them by the government. But using these examples this story tries to convince you that the government should be providing Ms. Prissy with boradband for her work? Why does a web developer get special treatment?

Oh because she’s in a rural area where she only has dial-up. Let me check if the government will provide tools to an auto shop that’s in a rural area away from any tool shop. Nope. Will the government provide cameras to photographers in locations far away from a camera store? Nope. Hm I guess those situations still remain irrelevant.

Stop running to the government every time you need something. Oh and I love this part:

She could install a satellite and connect to the high-speed Internet, but the installation fee is $300, and she said she can’t afford that right now. She’s been waiting for wired broadband to come to her home for five years, and she holds out some hope that the network will get to her eventually.

She can’t afford $300.00 but wants broadband Internet? How much money does she think it’ll cost to run wired broadband out to her rural house? Here’s a hint, a fucking lot. Of course I’m sure she’s fine with it so long as every tax payer in America is footing the bill and not just her. God this entitlement society pisses me off. And I haven’t even touched on the subject of government provided and therefore controlled Internet access.

* And by free I mean you’re paying for it through your tax dollars.

Second Amendment Rights For Sale

Sebastian at Snowflakes in Hell points out an Arizona training company called Insight Firearms Training Development (Not to be mistaken for InSight Firearms of Seattle) is writing customers to oppose Arizona’s House Bill 2347 and Senate Bill 1108. These bills are the ones on the table that would allow Arizona citizens to carry without having to obtain a permit.

Apparently Insight Firearms Training Development make enough money off of permit training that they want to ensure Arizona doesn’t becomes a true right to carry state. I find this sickening to a degree that I can’t put into words. These are the type of people who aren’t helping the cause and those of us for the second amendment should boycott such companies into bankruptcy.

Robert Buettner’s Orphan Series

I’ve been promising to do more posts on Godless Sodomite Fiction and thus far failed to deliver much. Well I’m going to help correct that slightly right here and right now. For those of you whom like military science fiction I present you with a great series written by Robert Buettner called the Orphan or Jason Wander series (Yeah it doesn’t really have a series title like The Lost Fleet or Vampire Earth series. Also note that the link isn’t a referral link.). For the purposes of this post I’m going to call it the Orphan series to make life easy on me.

Buettnet’s Orphan series consists of five books: Orphanage, Orphan’s Destiny, Orphan’s Journey, Orphan’s Alliance, and Orphan’s Triumph. The entire series follows the life of Jason Wander who starts as a new military recruit in book one and ends up retired at the end of the series.

I’m not going to go through each book, that’s up to you if you decide to read the series. But I do have to go through Orphanage to establish a groundwork upon which to write about the series. Although there are going to be slight spoilers they will consist of nothing more that can be obtained by reading the back of the book’s cover.

Anyways Orphanage is a tribute to Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. The stories are very similar and that’s by plan not a lack of originality. An alien species had parked its butt Ganymede and decided to start throwing really large rocks at Earth. The rocks are guided and the alien race has the ability to render our nuclear weapons inert. Needless to say Terra gets pummeled pretty hard. Enter Jason Wander, a kid with no real outlook on life. As is typical in a book an event happens that changes his life (Because that’s what makes a book interesting and worth reading). See Jason is a fuck up and keeps appearing before a specific judge. The judge gets sick of seeing Jason’s ugly face and finally gives him a choice, join the military or go to prison. Jason chooses the first option and enlists in the army.

Meanwhile the aliens keep hating on Earth. Eventually Jason’s family is killed leaving him an orphan (Clever huh? I bet you didn’t see that coming when you read the name of the series.). Shit happens and eventually he finds himself recruited for a mission that is heading to Ganymede to fuck the alien’s collective shit up. The mission consists only of soldiers who are war orphans and hence are felt to be the most pissed off and therefore qualified to kill alien scum.

That’s the premise of the first book. Needless to say Buettner’s tribute to Starship Troopers is beautifully executed and he adds enough of his own ideas and story elements to make Orphanage a great book that doesn’t feel too much like it’s idol. In the next four books the story comes into it’s own.

One of my pet peeves in books is poor pacing. I’m not a fan of boring parts in books and very often stop reading a story for quite some time because I hit a lull. Buettner shows an amazing skill for proper pacing. The end of each chapter leaves something interesting to be unlocked in the next one. I always found it hard to put these books down because the answer to something I was dying to know seemed to lay on the next few pages. When I obtained me answer an new puzzle would present itself and I found myself having to read more yet. Putting down these books and going to sleep required an act of extreme will.

Buettner also does an excellent job on character development. Too many series end up having characters stagnate in later volumes. The Orphan series seems to always manage to further embellish characters without making it appear over the top. Jason goes from being a worthless punk kid to a grown man capable of accomplish his work. Other characters are given equal amounts of attention as well. It’s rare for me to have strong memories of side characters but I can rattle off the names and general situations involving almost all of the major side characters in this series.

Of course being a science fiction godless sodomite fiction series there are plenty of gadgets and gizmos. The practicality of the advanced technology mentions written by Buettner impress me. The soldiers in the series wear powered armor called Eternads. The armors contain water purifiers, water storage systems, air conditioners, heaters, oxygen generators, and even a pad on one arm for wiping snot from your nose. All of these features of powered by a battery that recharges itself via the movements of the person wearing the Eternad. Because of the nature of the aliens being fought the guns later in the series fire flechette ammunition.

Being this is a military science fiction series geopolitical politics comes into play. Many events from Jason’s career are brought to light including those involving being a military “consultant” for other countries. This is more important of an event at the series progresses but I can’t really expand on it without giving away plot points and spoiling some of the series.

I really like Buettner’s portrayal of soldiers. He’s very Heinleinesqe in that he has a positive portrayal of the foot soldier. It’s a nice change in pace from many stories that portray soldiers as wanton killing machines with the IQ of a wild boar. I do appreciate this aspect of the series.

Anyways the series is a great way to spend some quality time reading. I urge you to take a look at the first book if you’re into science fiction of any kind.

Political Party Nonsense

I try to avoid talking about politics in a generic term here because it’s a boring topic that only incites anger. But after some berating for not being a member of “The Right Party” I thought I’d drop some note on here. Everybody who knows me eventually learns that I describe myself as a libertarian. Notice the lower case “l” there? Libertarian with a capital “L” is the name of a party while libertarian with a lower case “l” is a political belief.

This is important as I’m not a member of any party. People seem unable to wrap their heads around this concept though. For instance although I’m a libertarian I attended the Republican caucus. Why? Because I want to see Tom Emmers get the candidacy for the Republican party. I work with individuals who agree with my ideals (At least as close to my ideals as I can get but more on that in a minute). I don’t give a wooden nickle if a candidate is a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Green, or even a member of the Communist Party (Granted most of these parties are unlikely to have a candidate I support), if they agree with what I believe I’ll support them.

And this my friends brings us to the Tea Party. Notice the capital letters? Yes I’m not talking about the tea party movement but the various political entities call themselves the Tea Party. I have nothing against these groups but my rant is going to be focused on certain individuals. Many people who have become disenfranchised with the Republican and Libertarian parties have moved to one of the various Tea Parties. I got into a conversation with one of these people a while back. His belief was the Republican party is corrupt (No duh, it’s a political party. They’re all corrupt.) and the Libertarian Party is now evil because they let Bob Barr run as their presidential candidate. That meant he had to jump ship to another party because Odin forbid you actually try to correct the problems in a currently established party.

Well our conversation eventually lead to me being a libertarian. This is the point of the conversation where things turned emotional for him. He got onto a long rant about how the Libertarian Party is corrupt and all real supporters of the Constitution must jump ship and go to the pure and perfect Tea Party. He couldn’t grasp the whole concept of me being a libertarian not a member of the Libertarian Party. It was inconceivable to him that somebody could identify themselves by a political belief instead of political party. And herein lies the problem in my opinion.

Our political system has become about party memberships instead of political beliefs. People will often join a political party because of one strong belief and ignore the fact that party doesn’t agree with any other belief they hold. For example many people join the Republican Party because they believe abortion should be illegal. On the other hand many people join the Democrat Party because they want gay marriage to be legal. In both of these cases the issue mentioned is the primary core belief and they are will to ignore all other party beliefs because, I believe, they are unable to wrap their head around the idea of not being a member of a party. For example using the cases I set forth the person who joined the Republican Party may be in support of gay marriage or against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The person who joined the Democrat Party may be against government controlled health care and labor unions. These individuals are fine with imperfect candidates (Perfect being those who completely agree with your beliefs). There are even people in these parties who are willing for force themselves into believing the rest of the party’s platform so they can be a “full member.”

Then you have the Tea Party members (Once again note the capital letters). Many of the people in these parties are unwilling to accept imperfect candidates. Often times members of the Tea Party were at one time members of the Republican Party, then left to join the Libertarian Party, and finally left for the Tea Party. When prodded why they left X Party they will usually say it’s because of one member who wasn’t perfect. What these people want is in fact impossible. They want to be a member of a party that consists only of people who completely agree with them. In other words they want to be involved in an organization that consists only of themselves. No two people have the exact same ideals hence you can’t have a party consisting only of people who agree with you.

So here comes to point I want to make here. Learn the difference between ideals and political organizations. Realize you don’t have to be a member of any single party. This is the only way you’ll be able to work exclusively with candidates you like. Don’t like the person the Republican Party fielded? That’s OK because you can go vote for the Libertarian Party candidate. Are you angry with who the Democrat Party picked? Then go vote for the Green Party person. Is there an individual running independently that you like? Go support that candidate. For those of you who joined a Tea Party because the other parties are all “evil and corrupted political groups run by special interests” come talk to me in ten years (If your specific Tea Party lasts that long). Chances are you’ll find that at some point during that decade span your Tea Party fielded an “unworthy” candidate and thus you’ll want to jump ship to a new “pure and perfect” political party. Or come join those of us who have no party affiliation and thus have flexibility.

In summary get people who get over the party mindset and start thinking for themselves again. Rant mode disengaged.

Your Tax Dollars At Work

This time its being used to collect more tax dollars. Via Dvorak Uncensored we have a touching story of the IRS doing what the IRS does:

Arriving at Harv’s Metro Car Wash in midtown Wednesday afternoon were two dark-suited IRS agents demanding payment of delinquent taxes. “They were deadly serious, very aggressive, very condescending,” says Harv’s owner, Aaron Zeff.

Oh crap I forgot to paste in the best part:

The really odd part of this: The letter that was hand-delivered to Zeff’s on-site manager showed the amount of money owed to the feds was … 4 cents.

And that’s not all:

Inexplicably, penalties and taxes accruing on the debt – stemming from the 2006 tax year – were listed as $202.31, leaving Harv’s with an obligation of $202.35.

So because of being short four cents on his taxes Mr. Zeff now owes the IRS $202.35. Yeah the American tax code is so just and fair.

Paymar’s Private Property Elimination Bill Shut Down in Committee

Good news fellow Minnesotans! Representative Paymar’s bill to eliminate your right to sell your personal firearms without begging the government for permission was shut down with a five to three vote by the Crime Victims/Criminal Records Sub-Committee. Of course HF1396 was able to move through.

Now we get to wait yet again for Paymar to get a bug up his ass about Minnesotans have the right to private property. He’ll try to get his bill through again one way or another. Unless of course he gets voted out which will hopefully happen this election.

Book Bannings

I didn’t know we were still banning books but apparently some schools are. As a form of retaliation a kid has taken it upon himself to loan banned books from her locker. Interesting.

As an avid reader I always strikes me as idiotic to create a list of banned books. The first thing people are going to do is obtain those books and read them hoping form something good. This goes double for books banned by any church.

Scorched Earth

Mississippi style. A lesbian girl wanted to bring her girlfriend to prom. The Itawamba County Agricultural High School said Hell no (And muttered something about being afraid of catching the gay cooties). Well the student decided to call in the ACLU who eventually told the school yes she’s going. The school’s official response was to cancel the prom.

Talk about taking your ball and going home.

If Everything is Bigger In Texas What Are Things in The Former Soviet Union

They say everything is bigger in Texas. If that’s the case everything must be positively HUGE in the former Soviet Union. I present for your pondering pleasure the Lun class air craft. Also some massive photographs.

What was the Lun class transport? It was a soviet ground effect craft that could transport two million pounds of Soviet anger. To top it off it was also able to six nuclear warhead equipped surface to surface cruise missiles. The entire craft was powered by the collective rage of the Soviet Union. I believe the idea here was to nuke the shit out of the shoreline, release the peasant conscripts, and laugh manically as they died shortly afterward of radiation poisoning.

Seriously some of the shit thought up during the Cold War amazes me.