Just one Nebraskan's opinion

2006-04-29T19:27:00.000-07:00

Its been quite awhile since I've been able to post anything on here and I've been barely able to keep up with what is going on with my family let alone what is happening around here locally or statewise. It is getting close to that time of the year when we get the chance to make changes in our governance. With all the elected offices coming up this year, I haven't had any time at all reviewing candidates or just keeping up with news in general. A good resource for some information on the state level I have found from the New Nebraska Network. This blog is very well read and its nice to see some common sense for once. This is going to be a short entry (need to get a couple of kids to bed), but I will try not to be so much of a stranger and try to make at least one entry a week. :P

2005-10-02T09:24:00.000-07:00

It's finally happened, and it's about damn time. The "Hammer", Mr. Tom DeLay, has finally relinquished his post as Speaker of the House, but not with some crying and whining about political partisanship along the way. He seems to not even realize that Mr. Earle (the leading prosecutor and a democrat) has prosecuted more democrats in his lifetime, than he has Republicans. Where's the political partisanship there?. And at the same time he seems to also have forgotten that it was a Texas jury that indicted him. The lead foreman was even quoted as saying that "It wasn't the prosecutor who had gotten Mr. DeLay into this mess, it was Mr. DeLay himself that did." Add on top of this the investigation of Mr. Abrahoff and his financial dealings with the Texas republican, and the "Hammer" looks like he's in for a long road ahead.

2005-09-09T09:04:00.000-07:00

I'm wondering what the Republicans are going to come up with for an excuse on this one. This and the revelation that Bush picked 5 of the 8 heads of FEMA that were unqualified for the job, knew it was just a matter of time before the Republicans dug their own graves. Democrats may not need Ann Coulter after all.

No Experience needed.
Tom Delay makes it too easy.

2005-09-07T08:12:00.000-07:00

For you gaming fans out there, I came across an article that I can't believe I missed on CPU and GPU performance. Clearspeed has come out with a coprocessing board for PCI-X comps that supposedly gives at minimum 25 GFLOPS of performance. I came across this through the Stanford site (they were talking about recoding GROMACS to use the CX600)while trying to optimize my fah client. The card supposedly will contain 2 co-processors and with the standardization of PCI-X, you will be able to plug in 2 cards along with your graphics board, giving you a total of 100 GFLOPS of processing power. Couldn't find pricing anywhere, but is believed to range from a 1000 to 10000 US dollars, depending on configuration. You can go to the Clearspeed site for more info.

2005-09-04T10:03:00.000-07:00

The Magi Society - Helping People Understand Benevolent Design

Was looking at some of the adverts google had on my blog, and they are always advertising their "proof" of intelligent design. Well I decided to go to one of these sites, and I figured I would provide a transcript from www.benevolentdesign.com of their "proof". It read as follows:

"THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM

The Gospels tell us that before Christ was born, three wise men from the East (called Magi) knew that the world’s Savior was about to be born. The three Magi were very knowledgeable and understood that a new star would appear in the sky and the star would mark the Savior’s birthplace. The three Magi saw the new star, made a lengthy journey and followed the star, found the baby Jesus, paid homage and gave Him gifts.

The reason we remind you of all this is that we believe the Gospels are telling us the Magi were good men, and they were knowledgeable in astrology.

That’s right, the Magi were astrologers.

We know there are many Christians who believe that astrology is forbidden but we assure you that is not the case. If astrology were forbidden by Christ’s true teachings, why would the Gospels tell us this story about the Star of Bethlehem?

In fact, there are over 600 references to astrology in the Bible and none of the references condemn astrology. (See footnote 1.)

At the Christian Guardians, we believe that astrology is much like most other things. Just as there is good and bad in almost everything else, there is bad astrology and there is good astrology.

You must be wondering what has any of this to do with Intelligent Design?

We talk about all this because we have discovered a way to disprove Darwinism by using good astrology, and we have improved Intelligent Design by using good astrology. The astrology we are using is the astrology of the Three Wise Men who foretold of the Bethlehem Star and successfully followed it to Christ’s birthplace. The Three Wise Men were MAGI and their special form of astrology is called Magi Astrology.

Magi Astrology is so different from any other form of astrology that 95% of Magi Astrology contradicts other forms of astrology. The beauty of Magi Astrology is that it disproves Darwinism and proves Intelligent Design. Magi Astrology helps to move Intelligent Design to the very high level needed so that Intelligent Design can make accurate predictions about genetics, the weather, and other areas that presently baffle scientists.

If you proceed on and read the material on this website and our other websites, we promise you what you read will improve your life, help you to believe in our Savior, and you will see the world in a much brighter light than ever before."

2005-09-04T09:55:00.000-07:00

"The Navy announced yesterday that Vice President Cheney's former company, Halliburton, which has handled much of the repair work as well as support services for the U.S. military in Iraq, was hired to restore power and rebuild three naval facilities in Mississippi that were wrecked by Katrina.". Go figure on this one. You know there wasn't any time for bidding on this, so Halliburton gets another pork project, all because of its relationship with its former CEO.

2005-08-27T12:20:00.000-07:00

Have had a couple of people IM about setting up the folding at home client, and how best to optimize it, so I thought I would take a little time to go through everything and basically create a FAQ. The folding at home client can be found here. I have had a few people ask me which client to download, and I tell them it's up to them, but I have found the easiest and most useful one is the first. Don't install the screensaver or the console version unless that is specifically what you want to use. For you Mac people out there, there is also a fah gui client for Apple. Once you have the client downloaded, go ahead and install it, and when the properties screen comes up, make sure you enter 45949 as the team number, that is the Nebraska ALS team. You should be good to go from there. As far as optimizing your computer to get as many points as possilbe, here are a few pointers:

1. Turn off your screensaver. Screensavers use CPU cycles that the fah client could be using. If you are worried about burn in or power consumption, set your monitor to shut off after a few minutes in your desktop properties.

2. Start up as few programs or services as possible, provides for more mem and cpu usage to the client. Goto your run prompt and type "msconfig" to see what starts up on your computer. Be careful you don't disable something you need.

3. Rid yourself of any spyware on your comp. Goto the Microsoft site and get the anti-spyware beta, or lavasoft for AdAware, both these are effective at ridding your box of spyware.

4. LEAVE YOUR COMPUTER ON. Can't run the client, if the machine isn't on. If you are worried about power consumption, the main thing is to turn the screen off, the cpu being on overnight requires less energy than a light bulb being on for a few minutes.

2005-08-23T08:39:00.000-07:00

Alright, finally got a team set up, so if you're interested in joining the Nebraska ALS team, just go to the folding at home site, and download the software, when it asks you what team number to join, it's 45949. You can view your stats at the Nebraska ALS team site. Was thinking about getting a little friendly competition going among the team members on a weekly basis on who has the most points. If you have any ideas just IM me. Also, if anyone has any graphics experience, I'm looking at making a banner for the team page.

2005-08-21T11:07:00.000-07:00

As an addition to the last couple of posts, I am thinking of creating a team at the Folding @ home site, and I am looking for anyone that would want to join. If you are interested at all, IM me on yahoo (gambit10102) or msn (rhammond_13@msn.com). Hoping to get a big enough group together that we will show some results on the Stanford site. If you have any ideas for a team name, I am open to suggestions.

2005-08-21T10:54:00.000-07:00

For those of you thinking about downloading a distributed computing agent, I have found another worthwhile site at world community grid. Unlike the Stanford University site folding at home, the grid works on unknown proteins that may cause disease. The folding at home site works on known proteins that have been linked to specific diseases. Both are worthwhile uses of computer's idle time, with the grid's interface being a little more polished and easier to use then the folding at home's gui. Either way, please consider using your computer's idle time for one of these worthwhile causes.

2005-08-04T15:03:00.000-07:00

I have recently found out someone close to me has ALS. I also have recently been trying to find ways to support research and the study of ALS and other debilitating diseases. One way is to contact your local representative or senator and tell them that you do support embryonic stem cell research. Another way is to donate your computers idle time to such worthwhile endeavours as Stanford's Folding@Home Distributed Computing.

2005-04-28T10:56:00.000-07:00

Here we go again with the Intelligent Design debate. There was no doubt we would see this again after Republicans took the 2004 elections. The religious right once again in Kansas has their conservative state school board pushing to have Intelligent design added to Kansas public school classbooks. Also in Michigan, a conservative group is suing a school board for removing science books that had ID as an alternative to evolution. This whole debate would be a non-issue if there was anything there for ID to show evidence for, but it doesn't. Let's just check the facts. To get a description of ID, I went to the ID network site and here is a few of the things I found. First for the broad explanation of ID, "The theory of intelligent design (ID) holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection. ID is thus a scientific disagreement with the core claim of evolutionary theory that the apparent design of living systems is an illusion." In other words with that quote from the ID site, the theory basically states that there is a higher being directing everything behind the scenes and that evolution is chaotic, has no structure and is not a theory at all. I guess that's fair enough. Let's see what else we can find. "Positive evidence of design in living systems consists of the semantic, meaningful or functional nature of biological information, the lack of any known law that can explain the sequence of symbols that carry the "messages," and statistical and experimental evidence that tends to rule out chance as a plausible explanation." Well this is far from empirical evidence, so I'm gonna have to say strike one on this one. Would kinda like to see their actual evidence, instead of some mumbo jumbo.
"This is particularly necessary in origins science because of its historical (and thus very subjective) nature, and because it is a science that unavoidably impacts religion." Another quote from the site, basically explaining that not only is evolution off base, but that anthropology, geology and other sciences based on empirical evidence also do not provide the empirical evidence required. hmmmm, i'm thinking strike 2. I could go on and on, and this would be entirely too amusing if it wasn't for the fact that they are pushing this on our kids in our public schools. If parents want to teach their kids ID, let them teach their medievel lessons in religious schools instead of our public schools.

2005-04-27T19:12:00.000-07:00

Some fairly amazing photos from a local North Platte resident. Now if I can just talk her to into moving them over to Flickr so they were more user friendly :P. But anyways, this is just one of many, you need to check out the rest.

2005-04-27T14:57:00.000-07:00

Just thought I would throw a pic of who you all know as Ada in there.

This was just gonna be a little experiment on posting pocs through Hello on here and it did indeed seem to work alright. I like some of the ideas other bloggers have thrown out there as far as how to commercialize blogs. Then you also have to consider when is a blog no longer a blog.

2005-04-26T18:05:00.000-07:00

As an update to my post a day earlier, my google ads still seem to have an affinity for my Accord post. If anyone knows exactly how Google Adsense works, it would be greatly appreciated to have a comment on when or if these ads will even change.

2005-04-26T09:30:00.000-07:00

You just have to love Ann Coulter, or let me rephrase that, you just have to love what Ann Coulter is going to do for the Republican Party in 2006. Her interview with Time magazine was just icing on the cake. Even more so then Tom Delay, she will be what makes the Republicans lose in 2006. With comments labeling liberals like "you can deliver a baby entirely except for the head, puncture the skull, suck the brains out and pronounce that a constitutional right has just been exercised. That really says it all. You don't want such people to like you!" It is her brash, ultra-right comments that will serve up the 2006 election for Democrats as Michael Moore helped Republicans take the election in 2004. And if you believe 2006 is too far off for people to remember Ann Coulter, I do believe she is going nowhere anytime soon and will be a thorn in the Republican's side for the forseeable future. It truly makes you wonder with some of the off hand remarks she makes whether she's really serious or not, but who cares as long as she keeps making these same remarks. A more interesting question might be: Is she working secretly for the Democratic party? If it's true, then I have to give them credit, because Ann Coulter will do more to get Democrats elected in 2006 then any single Democrat himself could do.

2005-04-25T20:54:00.000-07:00

I'm probably like everyone else and wouldn't mind making a little extra money here and there. So when Google was advertising for blogger users to put Google Adsense advertisements in their blog, I jumped at the chance to earn some cash. I registered and set up the prerequisite account and also how I wanted to set up my ads within my blog. In my infinite wisdom I set the advertisements up to mimic the content that was within my blog. Well considering I have really never talked about anything material in nature through out this blog other then the fact that I was trying to sell my car almost a year back, I figured the adverts would basically be the same. But much to my surprise that's all the adverts have shown since I put an entry into my blog about selling my Honda Accord. All 4 ads show nothing but ads for Honda Accords. Schematics for Honda Accords, Parts for Honda Accords, Parts books for Honda Accords, etc, etc, you get the idea. So I figured I'd try a little experiment here to mix up the ads a little. I figured I'd put in some context words for thing I would want to buy and see if the ads would change. Here goes nothing. I-pod, digital camera, Xbox, Lamborghini. Well I don't know if that lasy one will work, but the rest should. Stay tuned for updates. lol

Summer Storm in Nebraska #3

2005-04-24T19:55:00.000-07:00

Summer Storm in Nebraska #3
Originally uploaded by marginal.ideas.

I happened to be looking around at some photos on Flickr and happened to notice some really nice photos from around our state. Usually the scenery in Nebraska is not much to look at, but sometimes it surprises you.

2005-04-24T15:48:00.000-07:00

This is a little more on the lighter side of things. As you may know Google recently acquired keyhole satellite and started posting satellite imagery to its map site. Well a couple of guys took this a little further and developed their own sight seeing blog for the virtual traveler and opened it to other people to post their satellite images. You can see a breathtaking view of both natural and man-made sites. If you want to take a look yourself, you can find it at Google Sightseeing. And just for fun I figured I'd put a link for the sat. image of where we live now. Don't become too attached though, you can spend hours roaming the country side, trust me on this one.

Link to satellite image of North Platte here.

2005-04-23T06:46:00.000-07:00

There is a very interesting article that Business Week came out with last week, that shows how blogging will change not only business, but people's lives and perspectives in general. I believe it is a must read.

2005-04-23T06:42:00.000-07:00

Herald.com | 04/23/2005 | Tom DeLay a bad example for husbands

Speaking of Tom DeLay, here is a relatively humorous article from the Miami Herald. At least I thought it was funny.

2005-04-23T06:38:00.000-07:00

ABC News: Parties Seek Gain in DeLay Ethics Scandal

And here is my question on this one, why is this guy still in office? Reprimanded 3 times by the house ethics committee, and then he tries to change the rules in his favor. I don't know why they hold off the rules hearings, investigate the allegations. If nothing is found, DeLay is free to do what he wants, if not, he should be gone. What are they trying to hide....

2005-04-23T06:26:00.000-07:00

CNN.com - White House blasts Dems over Bolton - Apr 20, 2005: "Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is visiting Russia, said questions about Bolton's 'management style' should not be part of the confirmation process."

Secretay of State Rice quotes "Bolton's 'management style' should not be part of the confirmation process." His management style shouldn't be part of the confirmation? You would think for a post like UN ambassador it would be a big part of the confirmation process.

2004-10-04T06:11:00.000-07:00

There will be many a change coming both to the blogger and my home site, alot of it will be subtle so any real noticeable difference will be nil, but it definitely be more user friendly. So if you get the chance drop in on the homesite and take a look around and see if there's anything you like. If theres something that you would like to see on there, leave me an email or an offline. We'll talk at you all later.

2004-09-25T14:11:00.000-07:00

I do believe I am going to start a weekly column on the idiocy of our Government, just because there is so much to write on. And here will be the the first. Or government rant and raves about its war on terror and how it wont stop until every terrorist is dead and every rogue state is gone, and then in the same breathe berates Russia for not sitting down and talking with the Chechen people. If this isn't bad enough, we have even allowed some of the individuals who master-minded the school killings asylum. It wouldn't have been so bad if these two individuals would have renounced the killings, but one of them even admitted masterminding the plot. So in other words the United States and Russia condoned what happened at that Russian school, just by there lack of action.