Wednesday, Jan. 18, some significant parts of the Internet will go on strike. The websites will only show one page related to the protest against the SOPA legislation the US Congress is considering. This law would allow the US government to shut down any site if there is any suspicion of copyright infringement. If the site is outside the US, the government could force ISPs to block access to the site. SOPA is stupid and dangerous. Except for the part where they could send Justin Bieber to jail because of his YouTube vids. That I like.

Today Wikipedia signed on to the strike. Wikipedia will be blacked out all day on the 18th to protest SOPA. So students, better get your papers done tomorrow! Other internet heavyweights also joined the strike: Reddit, Tucows, Cheezburger Network (Failblog, DailyWh.at) and WordPress have joined the cause. Some other media have noticed and they are writing about this. Great! The pressure is on and the SOPA proponents are feeling the squeeze! Let’s kill that abomination of a bill. SOPA must not pass!

… and no end in sight. Despite his promises, President Obama has not closed the beacon of injustice that is the prison at Guantánamo bay. Arond this week’s 10th anniversary of the opening of this facility, the story of one of its former inmates, Lakhdar Boumediene, has been making the rounds:

In 2001, Lakhdar Boumediene was falsely accused of being an al Qaeda operative while working for a humanitarian aid organization in Bosnia. Even though Bosnia’s highest court found no evidence against him, the U.S. government kidnapped Mr. Boumediene and sent him to Guantánamo, where he remained for 7 ½ years without charge or trial. (ACLU)

Boumediene also wrote a short, poignant OpEd on the NY Times:

When I arrived at work on the morning of Oct. 19, 2001, an intelligence officer was waiting for me. He asked me to accompany him to answer questions. I did so, voluntarily — but afterward I was told that I could not go home. The United States had demanded that local authorities arrest me and five other men. News reports at the time said the United States believed that I was plotting to blow up its embassy in Sarajevo. I had never — for a second — considered this.

Gitmo must be closed and all cases reviewed! More info at the ACLU …

Auf Deutsch …

2011 was a rough year. I’m trying to come up with some good stuff that happened this year, and it’s not easy.

One personal highlight was participating in the Doughman race with the 11-foot-8 team. We raised $340 and came in 8th place (out of 75 teams). Besides the race, I ran a lot this year, including my first 10-mile-run barefoot (and really enjoyed it). We rode our horses a lot, exploring the power line easements in the area and a few weeks ago we finally bought our own horse trailer, so we can take Wally and Cleo out to explore parks in the area.

The most significant event for our family this year was very sad, though. On October 8, Laura’s mom passed away at age 82 from pancreatic cancer.  Initially she was in the hospital because of a broken hip – which was bad enough. But then, while she was recovering slowly from the break, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Laura and her siblings made a huge effort to make sure Dolores got the best care, and in the end she passed away peacefully at hospice surrounded by her family. And as traumatic as losing a parent is, on top of that the family had to navigate the health care system and deal with banks and insurance bureaucracy and then settle the estate. It’s a good thing that there are several siblings who can share the burden.

Our cars were also a source of trouble this year. In March, the Ford truck broke – threw a connecting rod, which pretty much totaled the engine. I was able to sell the busted truck, but that was still $4,000 down the drain. So we bought another truck – a Dodge. That truck needed new brakes and new tires – another $2,000. Then the Mercedes needed new brakes. Then the Jetta needed a new timing belt. And last week the Jetta’s turbo died! And there is still more to come. So transportation was expensive this year!

Both kids changed schools this year; Jacob is going to middle school now and Julia is going to high school. She got lucky and got into the Durham School of the Arts, which is one of the best high schools in the state. She was accepted in the strings program there, so she’ll be playing the viola pretty much every day for the next 4 years. It’s a great program and we’re very happy for her! Jacob joined the strings program in his middle school and he is playing the bass. He also takes private lessons with Robbie, a great bass player and teacher in Chapel Hill. So our kids are developing some musical talent … I’m amazed and proud of them!

I can’t talk about 2011 without a look at disasters, politics and the crazy turmoil almost all over the globe, from the horrific earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster in Japan to the Arab spring to Occupy Wall Street to protests in Greece, Australia and even in Russia and China. And I can’t talk about these events without getting enraged at the deception and violence the so-called leaders of all these countries have addresses these challenges. The blatant police brutality and cynical “news” commentary here in the US about peaceful protesters like Occupy Wall Street should be a real eyeopener to anyone who had doubts about the degree to which this country has already slid down the slope of oppression.

Work was a bit of a bad news/good news roller-coaster. The Great Smoky Mountains Study, our biggest, longest-running study was not going to get funded, so we closed our office in the mountains and laid off the staff – but then it did get funded after all, and now we’ve re-hired some of our former GSMS folks. Still, funding for several positions around the office has dried up, and there will be more layoffs. However, without GSMS funded many, more of us would have had to look for new work. And sadly another lab that I also support shut down last summer.

Laura had a busy year at the store. She has been the Executive Director at One World Market for seven years! Sales were pretty good all year, including the holiday season. But the final word will be the tally after inventory in January. One of her major accomplishments this year at her job was a board retreat in November.

A memorable evening last year was the wedding of Dain and Jenn on June 4th at Dain’s parents’ place in Hillsborough. Everyone agreed that that was one of the best wedding parties ever! What a blast! At least until the cops showed up …  :)

Sadly, last year our real-estate agent and good friend Charles Woody died. He helped us buy our house, sell our house in Bahama, and buy the pasture where our horses live. We really miss him.

I’d also like to point out that I made 800 Gallons (3200 Liters) of biodiesel from used fryer oil last year. (Even though we had to buy almost 100 Gallons of diesel for our trip to Michigan.)

Finally, we own a dog now. Even though we’re really cat people. The dog is a toy poodle, to boot. Yes. I know. Her name is Meme. She is 6 years old and she was Laura’s mom’s dog. We were the only ones in a position to take in the dog, so we did. Meme weighs in at 8 pounds. She is smaller than some of our cats. On their first encounter, our scrawny, half-deaf, 18-year-old Siamese cat jumped on Meme’s back and beat her up – to make it clear who is boss in this house. To her credit, Meme took it well and she seems to respect a clear show of dominance. She’s a dog. She gets hierarchy. And she’s a the bottom of the totem pole right now. So Meme dominates her stuffed-pig toy. Vigorously.

2011 was a bit of a rough year for us. But to many people 2011 was much rougher than to us. We’re really doing fine. And we’re hopeful that 2012 will be a good year. So cheers, and Happy New Year to you all.

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Dear Santa. I was a good boy. Please, can I have one?!

The best blended Scotch in the history of the world – which was also the favourite drink of the Iraqi Baath Party, as it still is of the Palestinian Authority and the Libyan dictatorship and large branches of the Saudi Arabian royal family – is Johnnie Walker Black. Breakfast of champions, accept no substitute. — Christopher Hitchens (via BBC)

Christopher Hitchens dies at 62 after suffering cancer (BBC)

We have lost a brilliant thinker, a sharp-tongued contrarian, and one of the more colorful intellectuals of our time. Condolences to his friends and family.

You can find Hitchens’ Vanity Fair columns here, his Slate columns here, his Atlantic columns here, his Nation columns here, and his New Statesmen columns here. (via DailyKos)

[Update: added the quote]

Fight PIPA and SOPA today!

The Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261), known as “SOPA,” is scheduled for consideration at a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee [today]. The bill is aimed at taking down sites that allow Internet users to acquire pirated versions of original artistic content online. At a recent hearing, the ACLU expressed opposition to the bill because it would allow for the takedown of non-infringing content along with infringing content, in violation of the First Amendment.

More info at the ACLU blog.

[Update] More info on why the revised SOPA is still unconstitutional at the EFF.

Cute!

Today we loaded our horses into our new trailer and went horseback riding at Cedarrock Park near Burlington.

Saturday, I spent several hours fixing the electrical on the trailer. The wires in the hookup were connected in weird places, one of the brakes wasn’t working, and one of the taillights was connected in reverse.

The breakaway brake is still missing a battery, and I am really not sure that a breakaway brake makes any sense on a gooseneck trailer. Also, there is no ground wire, but I will add one.

The trip went well. The rig handles really well. The steel trailer is pretty heavy and I hardly noticed the difference when we added the 2000 pounds of horses to it.

Wally and Cleo are getting used to the trailer, but we still have to figure out who goes first and has to be in the slant-load bay, and who gets to stay in the back of the trailer. On the way out, Wally stayed in the back, and on the way back Cleo did. The slant load bay is really the safer place, since it’s pretty snug. The back of the trailer is more open, and so whoever stays in the back can turn around (which is nice for unloading) but that horse also has very little support. But from what we’ve seen, once we get on the road, they seem to stay nose to nose, munching hay, which is great – safetywise.

Riding at the park was fun for both horses and riders. It was sunny and chilly (upper 40s), the trails were great and there were a few other horses around. There was some nickering and sniffing, and Cleo did get a bit excited, but it was all good fun.

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Today we drove to Roxboro and bought this horse trailer. Finally we’re properly mobile with the horses and can take them places. There are a number of parks in the area that have horse trails. Also some of the stables around here have trails that are open to the public for a small fee. We’re excited to take Cleo and Wally out, and I know they will enjoy getting out and exploring some fun trails.

The trailer is a 16-foot, 2005 Ponderosa (yeah, yeah … I know) slant load steel trailer. It has a small but cozy living quarters/tack room with a bed, A/C, fridge and a microwave oven.

More pictures below the fold …

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Today I rode my mountain bike properly for the first time in a year or two, and I had a real blast! The weather was nice, but I did not feel like running, so I hopped on my bike and rode out to the powerline easement. For several months we have been exploring the powerline easements on horseback, but until today I had never taken my bike out on those “trails”. It was quite wet, and in some places I wished I had put on my mud tires. It’s definitely rougher riding than the prepared trails. In some places the bramble scratch you up pretty good, as you crash through the weeds.

We’re about a mile away from a big powerline easement and you can go for miles there. Our usual route is about 5-6 miles overall and it includes Signal Hill, the highest point in the county. That’s where you hit the easement and you go more or less downhill for several miles on rough trails on the easement.

The nice thing about this is that I don’t have to drive anywhere – I can just hop on the bike and ride out the back yard. I think I’ll be riding out a lot more on those trails this winter.

The largest evacuation in Germany since WW II is underway in the town of Koblenz, Germany, after an unexploded 4000 lb “air mine” from WW II was discovered on the banks of the Rhine river.  The prison, 2 hospitals and 45,000 residents have to be evacuated this weekend, so that experts can defuse the rusty, +65-year-old explosive device, Spiegel Online (D) reports.

British bombers dropped such massive explosives on German cities in combination with incendiary devices in retribution for the indiscriminate bombing of British cities by Nazi Germany. Currently the water levels of the Rhine river are very low, which has led to a rash of discoveries of unexploded WW II ordnance in Germany’s largest river.

Personally, I remember at least one time growing up when downtown Stuttgart was evacuated due to a WW II bomb. I am still in awe of, and baffled by the motivation of people who sign up not just for the bomb squad, but for the job of securing a huge bomb that is completely corroded after over half a century in the ground. Wow.

Today the US Senate rejected the Udall Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and decided to bring this country closer to marital law than ever. The NDAA contains language that declares that the United States is a battlefield and that the US military has the authority to detain ANYONE for ANY reason and INDEFINITELY. We already have a militarized police force, and we have seen the brutality with which cops in combat gear attack peaceful protesters. Now the Congress wants to unleash the military on us?

As if it was not bad enough that President Obama has assumed the power to secretly decide over life and death without due process or oversight, and over foreign nationals as well as US citizens, and no matter where they are. No, now Congress wants to declare war on America. Next thing you know tanks will be “cleaning” up Zuccotti Park and aerial drones will conduct “crowd control.”

What to do? Join the ACLU. Write your representative and Senators. Make your voice heard!

As the Left in the US has become quite disillusioned with the Obama administration, and the conservative Tea Party movement is deflating, Occupy Wall Street and the entire Occupy movement managed to shine a huge spotlight on the biggest problem in America: corporate greed. Occupy’s actions bring focus to populist anger about the “1 percent” who own half the wealth in this country. Occupy’s constructive actions help us past the pervasive cynicism in American politics. Occupy “does something” and that gives us – the 99 percent – hope.

Ever since the start-up I worked for in 2001 was destroyed by its own investors after the 09/11/01 attacks, it became clear to me that the bankers at Wall Street are destroying the economy in the US. Yes I was – and still am – bitter about that experience. But my conclusion was not emotional. My conclusion was based on this simple realization: the investors do not understand what they are doing. And they don’t care. That is the Achilles heel of the US economy, as we have seen over the last few years, over and over.

After 09/11 the bankers probably did more damage to this country than the terrorists – destroying companies, ruining lives by pulling their investments out of businesses simply because they panicked because they had no clue what was going to happen. They had no clue what was going to happen because they are ignorant and don’t understand the businesses they invest in. That same type of ignorance, combined with their greed, is what caused the mortgage crisis and every other recent economic earthquake.

We, the taxpayers, the 99 percent, we then get to bail out these jerks, every time their Ponzi scheme collapses. And in order to make sure we keep bailing them out, they rig the political process in their favor by buying and influencing politicians.

Don’t believe me? Check out this memo from the lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford to the American Bankers Association:

It may be easy to dismiss OWS as a ragtag group of protestors but they have demonstrated that they should be treated more like an organized competitor who is very nimble and capable of working the media, coordinating third party support and engaging office holders to do their bidding. To counter that, we have to do the same. Pulling the cornerstone elements of a plan in place right now will prepare firms to respond quickly and collectively at the earliest and most influential point when embracing OWS goes from concept planning to execution. The cornerstone elements of a plan include: surveyy research and message testing, opposition research. targeted social media monitoring, coalition planning, and advertising creative and placement strategy development.

This memo was obtained by MSNBC and Jonathan Larsen and Ken Olshansky point out in their story that this lobbying firm has close connections to House Speaker John Boehner:

Two of the memo’s authors, partners Sam Geduldig and Jay Cranford, previously worked for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. Geduldig joined CLGC before Boehner became speaker;  Cranford joined CLGC this year after serving as the speaker’s assistant for policy. A third partner, Steve Clark, is reportedly “tight” with Boehner, according to a story by Roll Call that CLGC features on its website.

We, the 99 percent, are fed up with this bullshit. We need our elected representatives to represent our interests again. We need the bankers to go back to managing our money and helping us to be productive, again, instead of sucking us dry. That what Occupy is all about. And that’s why Occupy is NOT a liberal movement. It does not matter what your political views are – the bankers are ruining your country, too. More and more conservatives seem to get that. Especially the populists, the tea partyers, have expressed support for OWS. Most notably perhaps, Sarah Palin and, no less, in the Wall Street Journal:

The corruption isn’t confined to one political party or just a few bad apples. It’s an endemic problem encompassing leadership on both sides of the aisle. It’s an entire system of public servants feathering their own nests…

What are the solutions? We need reform that provides real transparency. Congress should be subject to the Freedom of Information Act like everyone else. We need more detailed financial disclosure reports, and members should submit reports much more often than once a year. All stock transactions above $5,000 should be disclosed within five days.

Yes Sarah Palin wrote this! Salon’s David Sirota explains how this makes sense:

So the fact that Palin (or Limbaugh or Coburn or any other conservative) is an opportunist is actually the most important and encouraging point of all — she shows how one of the conservative movement’s leading icons now sees a major political opportunity in these kinds of progressive/populist proposals. That is, she exemplifies how the perception of political self-interest and opportunity is now shifting so fast toward the Occupy Wall Street sentiment, that even some icons of the right are seeing a bigger opportunity in championing that sentiment than in remaining rhetorically loyal to the corporate establishment.

So political opportunists like Palin are jumping on the OWS bandwagon, the bankers are getting nervous and the cops increasingly show their true colors, using disproportionate violence when dealing with the peaceful, disciplined Occupy protesters. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but right now I’d say that the signs are set for a major storm. Earlier this year, discussing the Arab Spring, I said I did not think America was there yet, ready to confront the mess. I was wrong, and I am glad. No matter what happens with this movement, I think we’ll learn a lot from it. And I think there is a chance it will bring about some real change, not just hope and small change.

Letter from Kurt Vonnegut to Marianne Brown shared on Letters of Note. Kurt, we miss you.

Partytime!

Tapping a keg of Foothills Sexual Chocolate Stout and grilling goat sausages down by the pond. Good fun!

Dan poured the first pint on 11/11/11 at 11:11 AM EST. Funny: that keg was filled at Foothills Brewery on 1/10/11.

In the NY Times, Christopher McDougall writes about barefoot running and raves about the merits of a 100-year-old training exercise called 100 Up:

It was five months since I discovered W.S. George’s “100-Up,” and I’d been doing the exercise regularly. In George’s essay, he says he invented the 100-Up in 1874, when he was an 16-year-old chemist’s apprentice in England and could train only during his lunch hour. By Year 2 of his experiment, the overworked lab assistant was the fastest amateur miler in England. By Year 5, he held world records in everything from the half-mile to 10 miles.

McDougall tells the story of barefoot running like no one else, and he is really excited about the “100-Up” thing. I’m not sure running in place will cure all that ails ya, when it comes to running. But the 100-Up exercise does point to an important issue: technique. I think it’s a widespread misconception that we know how to run. In school, the gymn teachers teach the kids how to do all kinds of sports. They teach how to play basketball, how to do the long jump correctly, how to benchpress properly. But when it comes to running, most coaches just point to the track and yell “run faster!!”

At the other end of the spectrum of coaching runners lives Alberto Salazar.In her  recent New Yorker article, Jennifer Kahn chronicles Salazaar’s quest for running perfection as a runner and as a coach for the Nike running team.

Salazar believes that a runner striking even slightly in front of his body will experience a momentary hesitation while the hamstring labors to pull his torso forward over the grounded foot. “It’s like having a square wheel on your car,” Salazar said. “Each time it comes around, there’s a moment where the car will lurch.”

Switching to a video of Bekele, Salazar grew animated. “If you look at Bekele and you look at Gebrselassie—and Gebrselassie is the first one we saw this with—he’s not sitting,” he said, stabbing a finger at the runner’s pelvis. “His hips are directly under his body, which is directly above his foot. So all that force is going up through his legs and hips into his upper body, to propel him forward. There’s nothing being lost there.”

Both Salazaar and McDougall are on a quest for perfect running technique, but they take very different approaches. McDougall promotes minimalist running, and now I guess the 100-Up exercise as a cure-all for bad technique. Salazaar likes to throw exotic methods and lots of technology at the problem of bad running. And of course he works for Nike. But I think ultimately they both come to the same conclusion – efficiency is the key to good running. Clearly it’s the key to speed. Sprinters have known that for a while. But I think we’re learning that efficiency is also the key to healthy, injury-free running.

11/1/11 (or 1.11.11) – crazy date today! And most likely we’ve also crossed the 7 Billion mark in earth’s human population and we’re now gunning it for the 8 Billion mark sometime around 2020. Is it time to panic? Depends on which estimate in the graph below becomes a reality.

The reality is also that the rate of growth of human population has steadily decreased over the years. In most of the world, more and more parents decide to have fewer children. Empowering women in particular, and giving them access to birth control are critical factors for this trend.

However, population growth in and of itself is not the key problem we’re facing.  The single biggest problem standing in the way of a sustainable human population on this planet is the massive and disproportionate use of resources of a fairly small portion of the human population:

Reducing the total footprint of the human population means we – who live in rich consumer societies – have to cut back dramatically our overuse of resources. That, even more than overall population growth is the real challenge.

Turns out P. T. Barnum never did say “There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute” … this is the crazy story of the Cardiff Giant

From 1866 until 1868 Mr. George Hull, of Binghamton, New York studied archeology and paleontology. Over this period of time Hull contemplated how to pull off a hoax. It seems that many an evangelist at the time had been preaching that there were giants in the earth. In June of 1868 Hull traveled back to Fort Dodge, Iowa where there was a gypsum quarry he had recalled seeing two years earlier. Even then, he had noticed that the dark blue streaks running through the soft lime rock resembled human veins. Realizing this its appearance was tailor-made for his hoax and it was easy to carve, Hull hired a group of quarry workers to cut off a slab measuring twelve feet long, four feet wide and two feet thick.

(Continue on HistoryBuff.com)

Yesterday I went on a bit  about how I think how cool Durham is. Little did I know that Durham is in fact Apple-cool. World-series level. Two fine Durham business establishments make a cameo appearance in the World-series Apple ad for the new jesus-phone. The ad features a new voice assistant called Siri and the lady tells her jesus phone that she’s locked out and the phone presents her with three nearby locksmiths, two of which are in Durham. I know the folks at Don Hill’s Lock and Safe, because they make all our registered keys at work, and they are Durham local business bedrock. They must be lovin’ all the attention :)

The neighborhood email lists are abuzz about this and there is plenty speculation how this cameo appearance came about. Over at the Upstager, they are trying to triangulate the location of the lady in the ad:

we can use the indicated distances (3.3 miles from Don Hill’s and 4.0 from Clayton Locksmith) to do a rough plotting of its two possible locations:

• just south of the Durham Freeway near the Bacon Street side of the Durham Tech campus,
• or just east of northern Sherwood Park and south of Cheek Road, possibly on Castlebay Road or Andover Drive.

However, Google Maps says that the two businesses are 13 miles apart, so I don’t see how you can find a location that’s 3.3 miles from one and 4 miles from the other. But be that as it may … Durham is Siriously cool!

This afternoon was one of those Durham-is-cool moments. When I got off work and I was waiting for Julia, I saw that they were unloading a truckload of vintage Porsches from a truck parked across the street. One of the cars was an original 1950s Type 550 Porsche Spyder – worth about $1 Million!

DSA was just out, and so there were a bunch of parents gawking at the cool, old cars. Several times the oldtimers got stuck in the pickup traffic, and the millioin-dollar Spyder was parked in by a minivan for the longest time, with several people circling taking pictures. I don’t think they were thrilled about all the attention.

After gawking at the cool, old cars, we went over to Fullsteam brewery,  where I had my growlers filled with fine, locally brewed beer. We ordered a couple of gourmet pizzas from the Pie Pushers truck, and I had a pint and Julia a soda while we waited for the pizza. We met some friends and Julia drew flowers and rainbows and dragons on the bar. Across the street, at Motorco,  a band was practicing for their concert tonight. I saw that one of my favorite local bands, Southern Culture on the Skids, will play at Motorco next Friday. I definiely want to see them!

More photos of the Porsches below …

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