This is an hour and 45 minutes of my evening while tracking my mouse’s movements with IOGraphica. The lines are the cursor’s paths, and the dots are where the cursor stopped moving. Now I’m feeling self-conscious about where I leave my cursor.

Blaine: “A man called police to his home in the 11200 block of Terrace Road NE. because he said his neighbor continually blows his snow into his yard and onto his privacy fence. Police spoke with the neighbor, who the report said declined to change his behavior and requested a ticket. The police issued a citation for littering.”

Coon Rapids: “Someone called police to report hearing seven gunshots fired in a hallway in the 1800 block of 105th Lane NW. Police set up a perimeter and entered the building. Officers found broken balloons in an entryway and believed that to be the cause of the sound heard by the caller.”

Fridley: “Police responded to a report of a smell of natural gas coming from an apartment in the 1100 block of 52nd Avenue NE. Police did not detect the odor of natural gas, but did detect the smell of dead fish. An officer advised the fire department of the findings.”

Mounds View: “Police responded to a call of a vehicle in the ditch in the 2600 block of County Road I. A 22-year-old Mounds View man was arrested for third-degree driving while intoxicated.”

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Here it is, if you’d like to listen without downloading (file is not hosted by me and may disappear):

http://www.filefreak.com/files/117282_bshc7/rp.mp3

Since my computer is under warranty, I brought it to an Apple store and let them deal with it. They confirmed that the fan wasn’t working and that I needed another one. They warned me that it could take up to 5 days before they were done with the repair. They weren’t sure if they would also need to replace the logic board, but they would go ahead and order both parts anyway.

It ended up being much less of a hassle than I expected it to be. All they needed to do was replace the fan so I got it back a couple days later. Everything has been working fine ever since!

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This week, Minnesota Public Radio was able to access state employee data on Lookout Services’ Web site without using a password or encryption software. Employee names, birth dates, Social Security numbers and hire dates were visible on the Web site for every state agency using the service.

This week, the state and MPR are being countersued for breach of contract, stealing trade secrets and “hacking.”

It’s bullshit, of course.

The Lookout Services Inc. countersuit is a frivolous lawsuit which attempts to intimidate and quash people from exercising their First Amendment rights regarding publicizing information about their site’s complete lack of security.

Let’s see what’s up:

• Lookout Services CEO Elaine Morley runs a law firm out of the same address (5909 West Loop S Fwy # 300 in Bellaire, TX) with her husband, Arden Morley, called Morley & Morley P.C.
• On LinkedIn, Morley & Morley P.C. claims to have 5 employees and Lookout Services, Inc. claims to have 10 employees.
• Morley & Morley P.C. shares at least two other employees with Lookout Services, Inc.: Alisha Campos and David Person. In related news stories, David Person is referred to as “the company’s attorney” and you can find Alisha Campos’ email address on the Lookout site in reference to customer service. (The demo has been taken down, but is cached by Google.)
• The Morleys are on Twitter, and have registered the following accounts: @Everifyandi9, @Lookoutservices, @L00koutservices, @ArdenMorleyLaw, @ArdenMorley, @Houstonlawfirm, @SugarLandLawyer, and who knows what else.
• The Morleys are Republicans, which was kind of obvious from their gross misunderstanding of the First Amendment, although Arden Morley is particularly fond of the Second Amendment (plus 137 other things, damn):
• The Morleys/Lookout Services Inc./Morley & Morley, P.C. were taken to court in 2008 for failing to pay their “computer consultants” nearly $20k. This is publicly-available information: [PDF]
• On the Secrets of the City blog, someone calling themselves “Ashley” with a Sugar Land, TX IP address posted the Lookout press release and comparisons to a journalist burglarizing a house, along with things such as, “The power of the press is enormous and virtually unchecked.”

With the appearance of conspiracy theories in recent years regarding a “war on Christmas,” it has become evident that conservative Christians believe that they are losing their supremacy in popular American culture. Commentators such as John Gibson at Fox News Channel claim that “a cabal of secularists, so-called humanists, trial lawyers, cultural relativists, and liberal, guilt-wracked Christians–not just Jewish people” are persecuting the American Christian majority.

In his essay “Christian Privilege: Breaking a Sacred Taboo,” Lewis Z. Schlosser writes:

“Experiences of racism, sexism, and heterosexism each contribute to the oppression of and discrimination against persons from minority racial, gender, and sexual orientation groups… In similar fashion, Christian religious dogmatism contributes to persons from minority religious groups feeling that their religious identity is not valued, and subsequently, they feel discrimination and oppression because of their religious group membership.”

Concepts such as racism and sexism are often described as nonconscious ideology–in which a group’s inferiority is repeatedly reinforced through assumptions and interactions occurring beyond our conscious considerations. (Psychologists Sandra Bem and Daryl Bem use the analogy of a fish that doesn’t know it lives in a wet environment because it has never experienced anything else.) Within this framework, privilege is the perceived normalcy/lack of conscious consideration of exclusive benefits described as “unearned and unacknowledged advantages” that are taken for granted and which go unnoticed.

Sometimes, Christian privilege accompanies the perception that it is the religious minority’s own fault for being marginalized across all matters of American life. By choosing not to be a Christian, such discrimination is simply seen as something to be expected and deal with, and certainly not to challenge. Responsibility is comfortably shifted back upon people whose beliefs are deemed threatening to the status quo, regardless of what little clout they hold in such power dynamics.

Some examples of Christian privilege given by Lewis Z. Schlosser:

• Christianity and its’ religious holidays are so completely “normal” that they often appear to no longer have any religious significance.
• Christians can talk about their religion, even proselytize, and will usually be regarded as “sharing the word,” instead of imposing their ideas upon others or distributing “propaganda.”
• The birth of Christianity’s central figure is used as the major point of reference for our calendaring system (B.C. and A.D.).
• Christians can share their holiday greetings without being fully conscious of how it may impact those who do not celebrate the same holidays. They can also be sure that people are knowledgeable about their religious holidays and will greet them with the appropriate holiday greeting (e.g., Merry Christmas, Happy Easter, etc.).
• Christians probably do not need to learn the religious or spiritual customs of others, and they are likely not penalized for not knowing them.

When you get 36 local women-owned companies and nearly 1,200 women in one room at Minneapolis’ Graves Hotel, there’s only one possible result — high-energy shopping.

Best/worst part: it was written by a woman.

Text pagers are usualy [sic] carried by persons operating in an official capacity. Messages in the archive range from Pentagon, FBI, FEMA and New York Police Department exchanges, to computers reporting faults at investment banks inside the World Trade Center

The archive is a completely objective record of the defining moment of our time. We hope that its entrance into the historical record will lead to a nuanced understanding of how this event led to death, opportunism and war.

The morning of September 11th 2009 started like any other day.

2001-09-11 06:31:26 “Good morning sexy man!! Got my zebra thongs on!!! Feeling a little animalistic!!!”

2001-09-11 08:26:46 “We’re having cake at 9:00 in Mel’s office for Rich, Craig and Hoss’s Birthday.”

2001-09-11 08:40:37 “What did you do to my chair? I can’t figure out how to fix it. I feel like I’m sitting on the floor!”

It doesn’t last for very long…

2001-09-11 09:14:55 “Code YELLOW in effect. Situation Room is open. Only Duty Officers to report.”

2001-09-11 10:42:18 “ALL EMERGENCY SWAT RECALL MEMBERS REPORT Back to office”

2001-09-11 10:42:57 “58-THIS IS THE L.A. CITY HALL, CHIEF OPERATOR MAKING A NOTIFICATION OF A LEVEL 3 EOC ACTIVATION PER L.A. FIRE DEPT CHIEF OLSON AT 7 AM. PLEASE CALL BACK AT 213-485-5500.”

2001-09-11 10:43:30 “Pete is ok, he can’t find his brother who works in the world financial center next to the trade center. Your mom wants you to go home..Call me 26093″

2001-09-11 10:43:44 “/:DDC/: UPDATE: DUE TO HEIGHTENED ALERT FOR TERRORIST ACTIVITY IN THE UNITED STATES, TSS87 DEARBORN, TSS153 TAYLOR AND TSS45 JEFFERSON WILL BE MANNED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, KAS (17″

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Personally, I don’t believe that newspaper sites should have comment sections. That’s what blogs are for, so nobody has to read the dumb stuff that you write! If it wasn’t written well enough to even be published in print as a letter to the editor, why should it go online? (Hint: “freedom of speech” is incorrect.)

Yeah, you bet if you leave a shitty remark anonymously on my blog, I’ll WHOIS your IP address. Which I already have done in the past, so my ex-boyfriends have learned to use proxies when visiting my blog.

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