Why Time Passes Faster as You Get Older

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Do you ever wonder why time seems to pass so much faster now than in years past? The explanation is pretty simple. It has to to with the total number of years lived compared to a randomly chosen slice of time. Let's say five years.

To a five year old child, five years is a huge amount of time. It is as long as he has been alive. The prospect of being ten years old is considered to be so far away that it will never arrive. At the the age of ten, though, that same five years is only half of his lifetime and the prospect of turning fifteen, although still far, far away is more thinkable than when he was five. Starting to get the picture?

As you get older, five years becomes a rapidly shrinking fraction of your total lifetime.
The progression is like this:
age 5yrs =1/1,
10yrs = 1/2,
15yrs =1/3,
20yrs = 1/4,
25yrs =1/5,
30yrs = 1/6,
35yrs = 1/7,
40yrs = 1/8,
45yrs = 1/9,
50yrs = 1/10, and so on.

As we grow up, we get accustomed to anticipated events in the future taking forever to come to pass. So when subjective time starts to speed up, we don't notice it . However, by the time we are 40, the wait for a future event is such a small fraction of the total time we have lived that the shortened subjective time becomes noticeable. By the time we have lived 50 years, five years is only 1/10 of our total lifetime, 5 percent. And smaller slices of time are a commensurately smaller fraction of our years.

That's why time seems to blur past after the age of fifty. Keeping this in mind. It would mean that the longer a person lived, the faster subjective time would become. If this subjective time speed up held true for all ages. Then it might negate any benefits derived from extending the total lifespan. Because life would still seem too short. So, the lesson is... enjoy the time you've got, because you'll never have enough.

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Jabba the Moore

He wouldn't know the truth if it bit him in the knee!

He's a liar over and over, just look at "Bowling for Columbine" and "Roger and Me"!

If you're lookin' for truth, you ain't gonna find any!

Not from Jabba the Moore, you'll never get the straight skinny!

sh-boom! sh-boom! sh-boom! sh-boom! Paaaaah!

What Makes Michael Run...

In the interest of full disclosure let me begin with this statement: I think Michael Moore is a concienceless bag of nightsoil!

But not because he lies, and makes fraudulent documentaries. It's because he does not believe in what he is pushing. He's tapping into the red hot rage of American lefties and Euroweenies, and he's playing them like a master violinist.

He doesn't have any core beliefs.

His true god is money.

He's a fat, fake and a fraud!

Something doesn't ring quite true about him. I'm not referring to his obvious lies. I expect people on the Left to lie in order to advance their agenda. I'm referring to the underlying set of beliefs he espouses. I don't think he really believes them.

He reminds me of Abbie Hoffman. For those of you too young to remember, Hoffman was a rabble rouser, back in the '60s. He coined the phrase "Don't trust anyone over thirty." He talked a lot of crap and had a way with words. But he didn't really believe what he was pushing.

He was a leader of protest movements. But his real goal, the thing he got his jollies with, was manipulating people on a mass scale. Talking them into rioting, directing protests with them as cannon fodder, etc.

He got into trouble with the law by selling cocaine, and disappeared for about six years. He finally surfaced in the '79 and got his legal problems straightened out. But he couldn't work the old magic anymore. He killed himself in 1989.

I get the same feeling about Moore now as I got about Hoffman back then. That feeling is both of them hide their true motivations.

Maybe Moore doesn't worship money. Maybe it is something else. The guy is a very smart individual, and a fairly talented filmmaker. But he's always been fat, ugly, and therefore uncool. A chick repeller. Maybe he's just enjoying screwing over all these cool guys, and the girls that snubbed him back in the day.

But my bet would be that his schtick is to mold everyone who believes in him into a tool, designed to bring more bucks to his already bulging bank account.

This is how an Iraqi Blogger feels about it...

Alaa is an Engineer whose home country is Iraq. He is also a blogger. He calls his blog THE MESOPATAMIAN. He wrote a post about the US turn over of government to the Iraqis today. I'm going to quote the best part now:

"Hail our true friends, the Great People of the United States of America; The Freedom giving Republic, the nation of Liberators. Never has the world known such a nation, willing to spill the blood of her children and spend the treasure of her land even for the sake of the freedom and well being of erstwhile enemies. The tree of friendship is going to grow and grow and bear fruit as sure as day follows night. And the people deep down at the bottom of their hearts, they appreciate. Make no mistake about that. The people have voted today, the pulse of the street is clear, without any hesitation I would give 90% of all Iraqis are hopeful and supportive of the new government, and this is a tacit indirect yes to the U.S. which has been the prime mover of all these events. This is what the foolish fail to understand. Why is this a different situation from that for example of a Vietnam? The answer is very simple: Because, the U.S. has achieved something very popular around here; which is the removal of the Saddam regime. Those who are really against the U.S. from amongst the Iraqis have been and remain a small minority; all other forms of resentment are simply disappointment and disgruntlement resulting from the discomfiture of the present situation and will simply disappear with progress and gradual improvement.

As for the enemy, he will not reap but failure and the bitter taste of defeat.

Glory and honor to the U.S. and Allied men and women whose blood is irrigating the tree of freedom in this land; and their sacrifices, suffering, and toil is laying the foundation for a future renaissance of the Mesopotamian People. Hail soldiers of freedom and enlightenment. Do not be dismayed by the trouble and turbulence of the present, for the future generations will remember and appreciate."

This is a heartfelt statement from an Iraqi citizen. It is men and women like this who will be Iraq's best chance of becoming the modern, thriving country it has the potential to be.

GOOD ON YA! Alaa!

Gowain

******************************************************************

I am reproducing the full text here because his blog is not set up with permalinks and after a few posts would be hard to find.

Monday, June 28, 2004
THAT WHICH HAS BENEFIT FOR PEOPLE
فاما الزبد فيذهب جفاء واما ماينفع الناس فيمكث في الارض

This is a famous Arabic verse of divine Wisdom; the eloquence and resonance of the sentence cannot be translated but the meaning is as follows:

“As for the scum, it will go (disappear) in vain (uselessly); and as for that which has benefit for people, it will stay in the earth.”

One man of the people is asked by an MBC (An Arab network) reporter what he thinks about the new government. He answers very simply in that spontaneous genuine manner of simple folk: “aren’t these men better than the riffraff who used to govern us?” Truer words have never been said.

This day, this modest ceremony, no elaborate celebrations, no fanfare; yet surely this is a “Mother of Days” for Iraq, and history will remember this day.

Likewise, I am not going to say anything grandiose today, rather in the same style of today’s ceremonies. All I can say is that almost everybody here has hope, great hope. Personally I am confident of the future because “That which has benefit for people will stay in the earth”.

Hail our true friends, the Great People of the United States of America; The Freedom giving Republic, the nation of Liberators. Never has the world known such a nation, willing to spill the blood of her children and spend the treasure of her land even for the sake of the freedom and well being of erstwhile enemies. The tree of friendship is going to grow and grow and bear fruit as sure as day follows night. And the people deep down at the bottom of their hearts, they appreciate. Make no mistake about that. The people have voted today, the pulse of the street is clear, without any hesitation I would give 90% of all Iraqis are hopeful and supportive of the new government, and this is a tacit indirect yes to the U.S. which has been the prime mover of all these events. This is what the foolish fail to understand. Why is this a different situation from that for example of a Vietnam? The answer is very simple: Because, the U.S. has achieved something very popular around here; which is the removal of the Saddam regime. Those who are really against the U.S. from amongst the Iraqis have been and remain a small minority; all other forms of resentment are simply disappointment and disgruntlement resulting from the discomfiture of the present situation and will simply disappear with progress and gradual improvement.

As for the enemy, he will not reap but failure and the bitter taste of defeat.

Glory and honor to the U.S. and Allied men and women whose blood is irrigating the tree of freedom in this land; and their sacrifices, suffering, and toil is laying the foundation for a future renaissance of the Mesopotamian People. Hail soldiers of freedom and enlightenment. Do not be dismayed by the trouble and turbulence of the present, for the future generations will remember and appreciate.

And last but not least; Hail, Great El Bush, a leader not only of the U.S. but a true hero of mankind. And Hail Mr. Blair and the other Leaders of the Free World.

God Bless the New Republic of Iraq; God Bless America.

Wa Al Salaam Alaykum Wa rahamutu Allahi Wa Barakatuh

(Peace be upon you and the mercy of God and his blessings)
# posted by Alaa : 1:11 PM

Why I am a Republican

I am a straight ballot voting, and proud of it, Republican now. But once upon a time I was a Democrat.

I voted for Jimmah Carter in 1980. And why not? My Daddy was a Democrat. All my kinfolk was Democrats. And the stories I'd read, and what I'd seen on the TeeVee about Reagan made me sure the we'd all be radioactive crispy critters ten minutes after he was swore in. So, I voted for the Peanut Farmer.

Well, I woke up one morning, Reagan was president, the sun was still shinin', and we was all still alive. And guess what! The hostages, that had been held in Iran for over a year, well they was back!

As time went on and the country got back on its feet from the "malaise" of the Carter years. The house loan I'd taken out at 21.5 percent interest was reduced to 16.5, and finally 7.5 percent when I paid it off. Long before I paid the house off, I began to realize that I'd been sold a bill o' goods by somebody, but I didn't really know who.

I began to be suspicious of the media. I looked deeper than the newspaper headlines, and the talkin' heads on the 6 o'clock news.

I realized the media, was trying to portray Ronald Reagan as a fool and a master manipulator at the same time. That was too much even fer a dumass like me to go for! The deeper I looked into it, the clearer it became that reality, as portrayed by the media, was being twisted to serve an agenda. This agenda's aim seemed to be the eventual dissolution of the USA as a functioning country. I still haven't figured out if it was on purpose, or not.

I took a hard look at the people who made up the Democrat and Republican contingents from Texas, in Washington. I didn't depend on the media's story of who they were. I looked at their associates, their families, and their public pronouncements. I watched them on C-Span whenever I could.

I determined that Jim Wright was a crook, a long time before he had to leave Washington, two steps ahead of the sheriff. You know why? Because his right hand man, John Mack, had beaten a woman in the head with a ball pean hammer, stabbed her, and slit her throat. She almost died! Mack's brother was Wright's brother in law. Wright wrote letters for Mack and promised to give him a job (even though he had neither Hill experience nor a college education). Mack served TWO YEARS in jail and then went on to work his way up the Hill. Mack was Wright's muscle when the latter became speaker.

It dawned on me that the media outlets, for the most part, were in the Democrat's pocket, and the Democrat party in Washington was run by a bunch of socialists and communist sympathizers. But at the state and local level it was still controlled by people who were conservatives.

So I became an Independant. Voting "for the man, not the party." Then I realized that every time I voted for a Democrat, even if it was for the post of Dogcatcher, I was supporting a party in which the top people, in Washington, were working to destroy this country, my country.

I examined my values and compared them to the two major parties. I found that the Republican party best represented my beliefs and values. That the USA would be governed more the way I wanted it to be governed if the Republicans had the power.

So in 1994 I cast my first straight ticket for the Republican party. And I've never looked back.

It's so much easier too, one mark and you're done!

Gowain

To the Moon, Mars, and Someday the Stars!

It has been reported that President Bush may announce a manned mission to the Moon and Mars.

If this is true, it would be a good thing because humanity must keep exploring and moving forward into the universe, the limitless frontier. If we turn inward and stay here on Earth, someday the human race will be extinct. Just another species that rose up, flourished, and died leaving a few traces behind to mark their passage.

Some folks say we should attend to the problems here on Earth and settle them before we venture into outer space. There will always be problems to fix, and religious disagreements that need solving. But if we want to be around long enough to solve our problems, we better spread ourselves out, way out, out into space.

Right now, humanity is like a group of villagers on a Pacific island. The right wave comes along, and poof, the villagers are history. Except humanity won't even be history because there will be no one left to write it down.

But if we broke free of this planet and got out into space, the human race could, theoretically, go on forever! No asteroid could kill us off, no atomic war, or disease, could wipe us out, no climatical catastrophe could put an end to us, nothing could stop us!

Unless of course, the universe ended. But it is far less likely that the universe will end than for life on this particular planet to end. And even more likely that a species trapped on Earth will go extinct before for all life on it will end.

As long as we are as imperfect as we are, we will never solve our problems. The only hope is to alllow humanity the species longevity required to attain the maturity it takes to solve its problems.

We won't see it but our descendants, seventy generations from now, might if we give them the chance!

We owe it to 'em to try.

Gowain

How to Protect Your Identity...Kinda

Any one who uses the Internet to make life easier, like online shopping, banking, paying bills, communicating with friends, etc, will sooner or later become the victim of it. When your email address comes to the attention of the bigtime spammers -and believe you me, it will- your mailbox will fill up with junk mail. But this is the mildest form of torment you can get from the Internet

If you are the type that opens attachments, or have your email program set to automatically open attachments, you will get a virus on your computer. Viruses (Viri?) range from pesky to life (style) threatening.

An example of a pesky virus is the one that causes your screen to display some words announcing that your computer has been invaded by a really smart hacker. See how smart I am! I made your computer do something I wanted it to do!

An example of a life threatening virus is the one that embeds a program to record all your keystrokes, then emails the file to another computer where the hacker deduces your username and the password to your banking account then sends most of it to his offshore account in the Bahamas. This is known as identity theft. You are so desolated by suddenly becoming a pauper that you wash down a bottle of aspirins with a fifth of vodka. After they rush you to the hospital and pump your stomache, you are in a coma for two weeks. When you come out of it they kick you out release you to the street and present you with a bill for $275,000. No longer suicidal, but not having a whole lot to live for, you wander the streets until you are beaten to death in a dispute over a bottle of Mad Dog wine.

Then there's the trouble some people get into when their real name and place of residence is easily available on the Internet. They get the attention of some nut and become stalker prey with the outcome ranging from irritation to murder.

How can this be avoided? This how to avoid most of the bad consequences of being connected:

A. EMAIL:
1. Set your email program never to open attachments automatically
2. Set your email program to only recieve plain text.
3. Never open an attachment unless you have recieved a phone call from someone you trust saying "I'm gonna send you an attachment...."

B. ADDRESSES:
1. Create many email addresses for yourself. Keep the one you are required to create by the Internet Service Provider to yourself. That way the only correspondence you'll get on it will be from your ISP.
2. Create another address and give it only to close friends and relatives.
3. Create one to use when you are registering for stuff online
4. Create one to use when you are registering for free subscriptions online. (More on this later)
5. If you register for a free blog, create a special address for that.
6. Wherever possible, use a Hotmail or Yahoo address. When they get too full of spam, abandon them and create a new one.

C. FAKE PERSONA:
1. When registering for stuff online, use a fictional name and address and memorize them. Then vary the age, gender, and birthdate. Use these personas until you feel the need to create a new one.
2. When registering for free newspaper subscriptions, use the name of the newspaper for your first name. For example, the New York Times is www.nytimes.com therefore your first name would be Nytimesdotcom.

The purpose of all these fake personas is confuse the hell out of anyone trying to build a character profile using this information. I know, they tell us that the info will NEVER be revealed to another soul. But that data stays around forever, at least for the rest of your life anyway, and they aren't always going to be around to protect it. If the company gets sold, the database goes with it and the new owners can do whatever they want with it!!

Gowain

A Question About Placement.....

Can anyone tell me why the Fort Worth Star Telegram [free with sign up] put a story about an Iraqi document that describes a link with bin Laden on page 24A of its Friday, June 25th print edition and put a advertisement story about the movie, Farenheit 911, on the front page of the same issue?

It seems to me that confirmation of a tie between Osama bin Laden and Saddam would be a little bit more important than a campaign commercial documentary. Ahem! It would have balanced the story of the who died in Iraqi militant attacks that also appeared on the front page.

It is editorial decisions like this -placing an unpaid advertisement a story about a movie on the front page- that shows us the print media does not take it's self appointed task of "informing the public" all that seriously. It also intimates that the media elites in Tarrant County think the rest of us are kinda dumb.

Gowain

A Move In the Right Direction from Our Friends, the Saudis

The Saudi government is going to allow foreigners to carry guns.[free with sign up]

Foreign residents of Saudi Arabia will be allowed to carry guns, the police minister announced after a series of militant bombings, attacks and kidnappings targeting Western workers in the kingdom.

But not everyone is thrilled at the thought of having the ability to defend themselves.

Westerners working in Saudi Arabia contacted by The Associated Press had mixed reactions to the possibility of being able to carry firearms.

I guess they're afraid it'll piss off the jihadis.

Gowain

Let Me Explain Sloowly....

David House has written a column in the Sunday Fort Worth Star Telegram in which he bemoans reader accusations of "liberal bias in the news." And can't figure out why someone would take offense at a certain headline. Perhaps I can enlighten him.

The first thing one has to remember about liberal bias is that it has been around for a long, long time. I can remember accusations of liberal bias, and hot discussions of same, on the old Star Text forums back in 1988. In those days, news people simply refused, monolithically, to acknowledge it. They either did not believe it, or they would not admit it, ever. They had defenders who took the same tack. Liberal bias? What liberal bias? That message was delivered in a "How Dare You! You Troglodyte!" tone that fairly dripped with contempt. Then they would go back to printing stories with the same slant, from the left. And making editorial decisions that emphasized the liberal point of view. And grinning behind their typewriters, we suspected.

It is well known that if you take a small, thin stick and use it to lightly tap someone across the back in the same place, over, and over, many thousands of time, it will create a throbbing, painful wound on that person's body.

This is what has happened to many readers. Each left leaning story printed, each repressed (spiked) story that would have given balance, was like a tap from a small stick on the same place in the reader's psyche, over, and over. Eventually the reader developed this pulsing, throbbing wound that is VERY sensitive to liberal bias and contempt. Some have gotten to the point where they no longer distinguish between spoken and written words. Therefore newspapers get blamed for what is said, and shown on TV.

They pick up on contempt where you would not be able to see it. Which brings me to an explaination of why the headline "Washington scrambles to prepare for a Ronald Reagan-style farewell" was seen as liberal bias and contempt by some readers.

The word "scrambles" has negative connotations. When someone scrambles they do so without preparation, in a hurry, without thinking, higgledy-piggledy, seat-of the-pants, and most of all, incompetent. The headline writer may not have meant to say that at all, but the reader's wound tells him otherwise. He knows only a liberal would put the word "scramble" in a headline that referenced Ronald Reagan's funeral.

Then there's "Ronald Reagan-style farewell." The reader asks, "Just what exactly is meant by "Ronald Reagan-style farewell"? He doesn't know what it means, but having already been put on notice by "scrambles" it must also be in the same vein. So he gets mad at that too.

The headline that would have been less offensive if it had said "Washington bustles to prepare for Ronald Reagan's funeral", or "Washington hurriedly prepares for Ronald Reagan's funeral", or"Washington beehive of activity in preparation for Ronald Reagan's funeral", or simply "Washington prepares for Ronald Reagan's funeral". That last headline was a plain statement of fact that could not have been challenged.

The error, of course, is that the original headline was too open to interpretation. Too nuanced. Which is something, we know, a sneaky liberal would do.


We have been trying to tell you that the house was on fire for a long time. Now it has burned down and will have to be rebuilt. So far though, it looks like you all are still living in the shell but can't won't see the damage.

Here's a test. Monitor your reaction to these suggestions because it will tell you a lot about yourself.

Ready?

Here goes...

For each article you reprint from the New York Times, print one from the Washington Times.

Every time you print a Reuters news story about the Middle East, corroborate it with a few other Middle Eastern news sources. Real news sources now, not the BBC!

We don't ask that you be biased in favor of our point of view. Just that you print the facts, all of 'em. Not just the ones that support your notion of the way things ought to be.

Gowain

So, It Was 11 Years, 10 months, Or Twelve Years, Three months, Or...

Jennifer Flowers is upset that Bill Clinton still refuses to acknowledge their full relationship. The boy is telling the truth unless the affair lasted exactly 4377 days, or 105,048 hours, or 6,302,880 minutes, or 378,172,800 seconds. (If you calculate this, subtract three days for leap years.)

"A storm broke over stories of Clinton's relationship with Flowers - she said they had a 12-year affair - when he was running for the Democratic nomination for president in 1992.

Clinton, with his wife by his side, categorically denied the accusation at the time, although six years later he would admit that they had a relationship.

In the memoir, he continues to deny any 12-year affair, saying only that he had a relationship with Flowers "that I should not have had" in the 1970s.

"The fact is there was no 12-year affair," he wrote."

Slick Willy knows precisely the meaning of "is", and uses it like a sharp knife!

Oh well, I'll stand by what I've said before.

Gowain

The Greedy Left...

The Left in the USA, is greedy! They want total control of all media so they can shape the opinions of us huddled masses to fit their own version of what should be.

Orson Scott Card has written an essay about leftward bias in the mainstream media. In it he makes mention of the boiling rage in media centers because of the "unfairness" and "dominance" of the conservative views expressed on cable TV and radio.

This is so, so true. I can't count the times I've read and heard the screams of lefties pissing and moaning about the "dominance" of conservative views on TV and radio, specifically Fox Cable News and the Rush Limbaugh Radio show.

But wait! There are approximately 105 million TV viewing households in the U.S. of A. Fox News, on a good day, brings in 1.5 million households to it's highest rated show. The other cable news companies, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, et al split about 2.5-3 million. The remaining 101 million are divided amongst the cable entertainment and major broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, NBC!

These television outlets are 99.9 percent left-liberal, in way the news is presented, and the plots for their dramas, comedies and sitcoms. The message is nearly always the same: Republicans are Evil, Democrats are Good. But I stray from the point, which is the ratio is one hundred to one in favor of the left! This is NOT conservative dominance.

The nationally syndicated AM radio shows are the one venue that can truly be termed conservative. But only a small minority of listeners tune in to AM. And it can also be said that a left-liberal message dominates FM radio due to the presence of National Public Radio. The rest of FM is devoted to music with some Christian stations thrown in. The bottom line is conservative views DO NOT dominate the radio listening audience.

Then there are the newspapers. Of all the national newspapers in the US, the only one recognized as conservative is the Washington Times. That's an incredible ratio. One against everybody else. Consider this: When was the last time you saw a Washington Times byline in your local paper? When was the last time you saw a New York Times byline in your local paper?

Enough said?

Gowain

With Friends Like This....

Dave Lieber, columnist for the Fort Worth Star Telegram, [free with sign up] has written a fawning character piece on State Representative Bob Griggs, from Tarrant County. You can tell he likes the guy and wants only good things to happen for him. But in Mr. Leiber's puppy dog like enthusiasm, he has revealed something about Griggs that will come back to haunt the politico should anyone, say a future opponent, ever choose to use it. The damaging info is quoted below.

"He was so assured of victory that I can reveal here that he wasn't even in town on election night. When declared the winner, Griggs was, as we say in the newspaper business, unavailable for comment. He was on a cruise."

"Griggs didn't even vote for himself. He tried to obtain an absentee ballot, but the cruise got in the way."

Imagine the slogan of Grigg's opponent:

"I care enough to vote! I care enough to be there when the votes are counted!! Bob Griggs doesn't!!!"

"Bob Griggs didn't care enough to vote, even for himself. Does this man deserve to stay in office?"

This has infinite a whole lot of variations.

Of course this may have been Leiber's goal all along. Bob Griggs is a Republican, and Leiber is a newspaper reporter. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Gowain

Bill's Book

Bill Clinton has written a book purporting to be about his life. I think it will be like his speeches, long, boring, without any substance, and full of lies. I'll pass.

Gowain

Ye Olde Tome Merchante, Richerde Clarke

Richard Clark told the 9-11 Commission, and the nation that President Bush "pressured" him right after 9-11 to find a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Hmmn... You'd think being "pressured" to provide evidence of something that, Clark says, didn't exist would put a strain on the old employer/employee relations, now wouldn't you.

Why, then why did he include this paragraph full of gratuitous butt kisses in his resignation letter? I mean!, the rest of it was fawning enough!



Could it be that he was trying to sell more books????...NAW!!

The full size copy of the letter can be found at The Smoking Gun.

Gowain

What Took so long?

A church in Dresden, Germany is nearing completion after it was destroyed in....1945?!. The question that popped into my mind when I saw this on the television news was, "What took so long?" Then I remembered it was in Communist East Germany and not subject to any incentive for reconstruction, or resources for the same until after the communists were swept away in the late eighties. War damaged buildings remained standing and unrepaired all over Communist East Germany until the nineties. A testament to the failure of communism.

Gowain

Kidnap and Behead...What can be done about it?

Well. Another foreigner in the ME has lost his head to the shitbirds. What can be done about this?

Here's an idea: Each, at risk, person could carry a bomb and set it off if he was kidnapped, or in danger of being kidnapped.

The downside of any of the anti-jihadi methods described here is that the user would probably end up dead if the attempted kidnapping came to pass. And if the technology is not first rate and reliable, he and others could get blown up accidentally. But, hey, he would end up dead anyway, wouldn't he? And He might take a few jihadis with him! Warzones are dangerous!

A man might be able to bluff his, would be, captors into going away and evade capture. And if it became widely known that he carried a bomb and he was the kind of person who would use it. He would become a harder target because the kidnappers would know they would not succeed and so find an easier mark.

In the worst case, he would have the satisfaction of dying by his own actions rather than becoming a headless pawn in someone else's game.

The ideal bomb would have an adjustable blast radius, could be armed and disarmed using encrypted code via keypad, infrared beam, or radio signal, have a remote deadman switch that docked in the bomb housing with blast delay if desired, could be triggered from a proximity switch that was set to go off if the bomb was taken more than XX meters from a signal generator kept in a pocket or implanted in his body. The adjustable blast radius would allow the user to configure the lethality of the bomb to fit the circumstances. This is the ideal bomb. Below are descriptions of less fancy but more attainable anti-jihadi devices.

HAND GRENADE:US Army hand grenades are configured, or could be configured in such that they have a built in deadman switch, if you let go, it explodes.

BREIFCASE BOMB: The briefcase bomb would have the advantage of arming and disarming at will via keypad. A deadman switch could be built in. To prevent theft, a proximity switch could also be set to go off when the breifcase was moved farther than XX feet from a signal generator carried in his pocket, or implanted in his body.

EXPLOSIVE VEST: All the bells and whistles that could be built into a breifcase bomb could be installed in a wearable vest.

Gowain

Texas "Move Over" law won't work

This story appeared in the Fort Worth Star Telagram [free with sign up]. It recounted the problems and dangers of police officers making traffic stops. The consensus seemed to be that the solution to the problem was to get the driving public to abide by the new Move Over law.

It won't work and here's why: About one person in 300 reacts only to expected things. When they're driving on a freeway they react to the movements of cars around them and that's it! They don't react to the un-expected. These individuals are not stupid, they just wrap their minds in a fog, and expect the road to be clear all the way to the destination. And, incrediblely, this mode will suffice nearly all of the time.

When I was a teenager, I was a flagman at a bridge demolition site on I35, then a four lane freeway, with thousands of cars passing under the bridge every day. It was my job to stop traffic when we were going to set off a dynamite blast. I learned then that some people won't stop. Not because they're mean, or arrogant, or anything, but because a kid with a stop sign is not expected. One woman in a staion wagon stopped only after she'd nearly run me over and I hit her tailfin with my stop sign. I never had a car rear-end another, proving that these people react to the cars around them.

A car stopped on the side of the road with a cop standing beside it is not something one expects on a busy freeway. A cop car sitting on the side of the road even with its lights blinking will not penetrate the mindfog that some people drive in.

The equation goes like this: One driver in an fog of innattention + One cop standing too close to the freeway = Tragedy.

If I was a policeman I'd have people pull WAY over to the side, with at least six feet between the passenger door and the road. If that was impossible, I'd have them get off at the next exit.

"They were supposed to obey the Move Over law" sounds like a contender for Famous Last Words to me.

Gowain

Revenge...

When I saw the Twin Towers get knocked down, and the people jumping out, and the body parts dug out of the rubble, and rubble itself, I was angry.

When I read the descriptions of human bodies splashing like water baloons when they hit the sidewalk because they were traveling at 150 MPH due to falling from a height of 1100 feet, I was angry.

When I saw the grief of the thousands of people left behind when their loved ones died on that terrible day, I was angry.

The red hot rage has cooled now. In it's place is a kind of cold resolve that only gets warm when I see the Nick Berg, or Paul Johnson decapitations. Oddly enough the deaths of American soldiers doesn't cause me to get angry, it just makes me want to be there, helping out.

The cold resolve makes me willing to sacrifice my own life if I get the chance to take even one terrorist with me. But of course, I want to kill as many as possible and live to tell about it.

This is out of character for me. I have always thought that killing a man just put him out of your reach. If you want to punish him, you keep him alive and make him suffer.

I guess its not that much out of character after all. Although I want the terrorist soldiers and lieutenants to die, I want Bin Laden to live. I want him to live and witness the destruction, the reduction to fine powder, of everything he's built, or holds dear, by hands of the U.S.of A. I want him know that WE did it!. Then he can die if he wants to, or he can live in a cell and think about it.

Gowain

Drive 'em crazy!

Perry Bullock hast posted a letter "How The Left Believes Al-Qaeda Works" on RWN. Things like this must drive the concientious jihadi crazy. I mean, they worked so hard to scare the bejeebers out of us and make us slink back home with our tails between our legs.

Now, three years after the "death blow" that was supposed to make the U.S. cave in on itself, we're kickin' their asses all over Afghanistan and Iraq, steadily whittling down the jihadi ranks, Osama is in hiding, Saddam is under arrest, and we are more of a presence in the moslem countries than ever. They are mostly reduced to blowing up other Muslims -a big nono according to the Koran- and beheading tied up foriegners, a VERY BRAVE deed indeed.

All this, and nearly half of us don't even think we should be there! We're writing jokes about it, for pete's sake! Can you imagine the frustration level of these shitbirds?

Gowain