/project/multiplexer
Ramblings in a State of Insanity
New Conspiracy Theory!*
Aug 6th
How did I miss this one? Where were you people? You are supposed to keep me appraised! That’s your job!
Okay, there’s this awesome new conspiracy theory. I haven’t cobbled it entirely together but so far it involves:
1. The Social Security Department of the US Government;
2. The Federal Reserve;
3. The Royal Dutch House of Orange;
4. The Bilderberg Group;
5. Judaism (of course — it’s no good without Jews)
First, look at your social security card. It has a number on the back! When you’re born, you are secretly sold into slavery to a bank. That number tracks your potential life earnings. We are all collateral for the banks. That number is tracked by the Federal Reserve that then puts the money into evil overseas banks promptly depriving you of your Constitutional Rights. Sure, maybe that number has no meaning but how can a number on a card issued from the Government have no meaning!**
If you can end social security you will be free of this bank that owns your soul! And get back some money or something? I’m not clear on that part.
Here’s a good summary of the conspiracy theory I found over here:
I heard an urban legend that the red numbers on the back of the social security card are your EIN, employer ID number. If you’re just a regular John Doe citizen, you’re an employee of the US Corporation, and are in fact yourself a corporation. That’s why you use the number on the front, your employee ID number (SSN). Supposedly, if you have a replacement card issued to you, the number on the back will come in red ink, and you can use it to declare that you’re a soveriegn American and not a citizen OF the United States. Basically the red ink is supposed to symbolize flesh and blood human being. Consequently, corporate entities use black ink, and banks (which operate under the maritime admiralty law of the high seas) use blue to symbolize water. You could use the FedWorker’s explaination of the serial number on the blanks as actually taking ownership of the card. If you use the SSN on the front, that card, per the Social Security Act itself, is the property of the US govt. They can come along and confiscate it at any time, without any reason. Same is true for your SS benefits.
If you use the number on the back, the “tracking number for blank cards” printed in red ink, you’re claiming ownership of the card and the chattel property it represents. You are the chattel property. If you don’t, they “own” you. You’re their chattel property, and you’re being used as collateral on the bankruptcy the US Govt. filed to the international banking houses back in the 1930’s, the time of the great depression.
Then it sort of goes into conspiracy on how it is backed by British Banks in conjunction with the Bilderberg Group who are controlled by the Royal Dutch House of Orange who are, in turn, running an enormous drug cartel and are also, somehow, Jews. It gets sketchy after this point but I can find a few dozen permutations of this on the Internets. Go look it up! Google is your friend!
This is breathtakingly awesome.
Meanwhile, my minions are finding me MORE links:
1. A fun link about STRAWMAN.
2. More about STRAWMAN from a site with an extremely suspicious URL. Nation Wide Shopping Cart 4? Really? But this one is particularly good.
3. Another fine post about STRAWMAN. Now, with a graphic!
Note: I’m free because my card was laminated when I was small. I want to go hide in a small room and write a novel. A STRAWMAN novel. With us all trying to become free of the horrible Royal Dutch House of Orange!
Squee.
* People who know me — you know, YOU PEOPLE — know that I collect conspiracy theories as a hobby. I have several bookshelves full of nothing but books full of this stuff. I am so excited to learn a new one. OMG! I’m going to EXPLODE!
** Sadly, it turns out through some digging and cross-checking on the Internet that those numbers are paper inventory control. It’s called a sequential control number. There’s some reference to it re: Identity Theft. But perhaps that answer is a lie. A vicious, horrible lie!
Today in a Daily WTF
Aug 5th
“Tea party” activists drawn to Williamsburg and its portrayal of Founding Fathers.
Amid the history buffs and parents with young children wandering along the crushed shell paths of Virginia’s restored colonial city, some noticeably angrier and more politically minded tourists can often be found.
They stand in the crowd listening closely as the costumed actors relive dramatic moments in the founding of our country. They clap loudly when an actor portraying Patrick Henry delivers his “Give me liberty or give me death” speech. They cheer and hoot when Gen. George Washington surveys the troops behind the original 18th-century courthouse. And they shout out about the tyranny of our current government during scenes depicting the nation’s struggle for freedom from Britain.
“General, when is it appropriate to resort to arms to fight for our liberty?” asked a tourist on a recent weekday during “A Conversation with George Washington,” a hugely popular dialogue between actor and audience in the shaded backyard of Charlton’s Coffeehouse.
I’ve got nothing.
The 14th Amendment
Aug 5th
The 14th Amendment is not getting amended or overturned. Not now, not tomorrow, and not ever. The hill to climb to ratify an amendment to the Constitution is monstrous. But Congress has to do something to keep itself busy. After all, there are no wars going on and the country isn’t in any sort of economic crisis!
In the last 20 years, from 1990 to present, Congress, one side or the other, has tried to repeal some or all of:
- the 26th Amendment
- the 2nd Amendment (to explicitly allow for bigger guns)
- the 22nd Amendment (to allow Reagan to run again!)
- the 16th Amendment
- the 8th Amendment — and replace it with explicit language for parking offenses!
I have heard:
- Obama is from Kenya and not an American;
- Al-Qaeda is impregnating women, sneaking them into the US, making them have their babies, and then whisking the babies off to Al-Qaeda training camps*;
- Single, pregnant Mexican women are sneaking over the border to have babies so they can get themselves access to some fine US welfare better known as the noxious term “anchor babies”;
- They themselves are not recipients of the 14th Amendment because Native Americans are all old, white xenophobes and none of their ancestors ever settled here without proper documentation.
This round of hatred from the Republican mouthbreathers is putting me on edge. Instead of sneaking in xenophobic hatred of “the Other” into debate or commercials or television clips on Fox News, they’re holding hearings on modifying the Constitution. Sure it’s election year posturing but it sets my teeth on edge. Maybe we should go back to former slaves not allowed to become citizens of the United States? Let’s get back to our true Conservative roots. All hail Dred Scott!
Yes, I am aware of the immigration problem in this country. Yes, I also am aware of the economic disparity between two countries that share a border. No, this is not the way to discuss it. Xenophobic hissy fits turn my stomach. It used to be Jews and Italians and Eastern Europeans and Former Slaves and African Americans. The flavor of the week are people from the South.
I also know xenophobia and hatred of “the Other” is a favorite horse to flog during major economic downturns. See re: Eastern Europeans and the Great Depression. Someone who is weak and powerless must be to blame. We cannot go after the powerful, those truly at fault, so we’ll go after the weakest and least protected. Whipping up constituents over issues with no possible delivery is a great way to make short term electoral gains.
I watch this process and I’m always relieved that Alexander Hamilton hated people and James Madison felt the unwashed American masses weren’t properly qualified to tinker with the Constitution. The hill to climb to make any modifications is steep. We’ve screwed it up pretty badly once — see Prohibition — but after the Bill of Rights, we’ve only managed to amend the Constitution 17 times in 250 years.
Also, I heard that the 14th Amendment is giving gays the rights to marry, so it’s all good here today. Yay Abraham Lincoln!
* This is my favorite tin foil hat conspiracy theory going around.
Links on the Prop 8 Decision
Aug 5th
Nate Silver has some analysis on Ted Olsen and the conservative dynamics as this goes up to the Supreme Court (which it will).
Dahlia Lithwick on Slate calls it a brilliant decision.
Interesting commentary from Orin Kerr (and others) over on the Volokh Conspiracy here and here and here and here.
Some facts from the case on the Atlantic.
The NY Times Subject to Debate website on the gay marriage decision which has several essays worth reading.
There’s lots of stuff everywhere but this seems the least mouthbreather of the lot.
King Tut’s Chariots Marvels of Engineering
Aug 4th
(Just a splat-share, but this is pretty awesome from a nerd standpoint.)
King Tutankhamun, the pharaoh who ruled Egypt more than 3,300 years ago, rode full speed over the desert dunes on a Formula One-like chariot, according to new investigations into the technical features of the boy king’s vehicle collection.
via King Tut’s Chariots Marvels of Engineering : Discovery News.
Wyclef Jean, President!
Aug 4th
Wyclef Jean to Run for President of Haiti.
Jean told TIME he is going to announce his candidacy for the Nov. 28 election just days before the Aug. 7 deadline. One plan that was discussed, loaded with as much Mosaic symbolism as a news cycle can hold, called for him to declare his candidacy on Aug. 5 upon arriving in Port-au-Prince from New York City, where he grew up after leaving Haiti with his family at age 9. “If not for the earthquake, I probably would have waited another 10 years before doing this,” Jean says. “The quake drove home to me that Haiti can’t wait another 10 years for us to bring it into the 21st century.” Jean sees no contradiction between his life as an artist and his ambitions as a politician. “If I can’t take five years out to serve my country as President,” he argues, “then everything I’ve been singing about, like equal rights, doesn’t mean anything.”
If a man who once performed in movies with a chimpanzee can become President of the United States, and the Terminator can run California, there’s no reason that a member of the Fugees cannot become President of Haiti. If anything, it will focus the media cameras back on Haiti’s post-earthquake plight as he runs for President.
Your Daily Katie Rose
Aug 2nd
Work is killing me today so to lift my spirits (and the spirits of all) I offer the Daily Katie Rose.
On another thought, I am somewhat tempted to start up a blog thread just on “stuff Katie says.” The popular one today is: PROTONS ARE CUTE!
IT’S SO FLUFFY!
Awesome Guitar Software is Awesome
Jul 30th
I have two — two! — pieces of awesome software to showcase today for the iPad. Perhaps you thought the iPad was only good for watching Netflix streaming but now it is made of rock.
TabToolKit by Agile Partners
At first blush you may be all “buh?” But let me tell you the greatness of TabToolKit.
If you’ve played guitar for years… and years… and years… and years… you occasionally open up an old book or an old bag and there, lurking within, is a badly scratched out downloaded from an ASCII document from some repository tab of some guitar song or other you really wanted to learn but all you had was this tab that sort of told you where to put your fingers and not a hell of alot else. You struggled for a while and then gave up. TabToolKit:
1. Organizes your tabs. If anything else, it means no more printing them out, folding them up, or ripping them while trying to play awkwardly on the couch.
2. Displays them in a neat and easy way for practice — especially on an iPad with an easel stand.
3. Uses Guitar Pro tabs which have all the parts to a song, the sheet music, and the tabs so the music-saavy can actually look at notes and go “oh, that is way less difficult than I thought.”
4. Has metronomes, speed up, slow down, looping and repeat features for working on a particular practice.
5. Count in and play at any point in the song.
6. Drop voices in and out.
7. For those wondering how to play said power chords, it highlights where to hold the strings down on the fretboard.
8. And Guitar Pro tabs are extremely plentiful for free.
I love this piece of software. I absolutely love it. I recommend TabToolKit to anyone with a guitar — a beginner, someone looking to improve, someone wanting to carry their collection of tabs around conveniently, anyone. It is squee in a can. It’s iPhone/iPod/iPad — the iPad version is a native, full screen version.
Amplitube for iPad by IK Multimedia
I love the original Amplitube but getting my guitar jacked into my Macbook Pro was always a huge hassle — converter boxes that never worked, feedback noise, weird issues. I ended up with an actual guitar-to-usb cable that lost sound and had high latency but at least worked. Despite this, Amplitube is such a marvelous piece of software it justifies buying a Mac (a Windows version is now available) to complement one’s electric guitar. Who wouldn’t go through the trouble for all those stompboxes, amps and cabs in one place to model any sound, anywhere?
Now I have Amplitube for iPad. Sure it has far fewer stompboxes, amps and cabs then the big software load but what it has is more than enough to model up any sound for any purpose.
1. The iRig dongle works out of the packaging without any software or configuration. Plug guitar into iRig. Plug headphones into iRig. Plug iRig into iPad. Done.
2. Amplitube for iPad (iPhone, iPod) works right out of the box and comes with 12 presets, 11 stomps, 5 amps and 5 cabs for the full ($20) install of the software. The stomps and amps all have little knobs that turn by running a finger along the screen for custom settings. Settings can be saved.
3. The modeling sounds excellent. The latency is low. The feedback is non-existent.
4. Everything sounds better with the Delay pedal which does lock to a BPM. You, too, can sound like a bad Yes knock-off!
I have not played with pulling in my own track and putting effects over it on the fly but this is a supported feature.
It’s just full of squee. Instead of carrying around a Mac and a whole toolbox full of chords and gizmos to get it to work and then not able to get it out to a speaker or an amp all I need is my regular guitar cable, the iRig, headphones and/or output device and the iPad. It sounds fantastic.
For someone who just wants to sit and pick up a guitar and play, and have the guitar sound good through the headphones, this is a must-have. The iRig is $40. The software is either free (Amplitube FREE) with the option to add to it, or $20 for the full build. Everything, yes, is $80 but $80 is the cost of a single, good stompbox*.
So see? The iPad does do things other than just stream videos.
The alternative I recommend for the same price is TabToolKit and a Line6 PocketPOD, but the Amplitube has the visceral feeling of messing with gear where the PocketPOD is dialing to a setting. Not that I don’t love the POD, but I am more likely to have the iPad on me than the PocketPOD.
Wikileaks
Jul 28th
I know this is a little stale (2 whole days!) but I have some quick thoughts on the whole Wikileaks thing:
1. The documents posted aren’t the Pentagon Papers. They contain nothing people didn’t already know. They say the War in Afghanistan is going badly and was never funded well. No news there.
2. Regardless, these were classified documents and leaking classified documents to unclassified sources is bad. Yet, it was a matter of time. If anyone has been following the Top Secret America series on the Washington Post, you know the Intelligence Community in DC has almost 900,000 people. Holy Jumping Jesus, it’s a government jobs program! And all of those people have been cleared. That’s an awful lot of Trust with a capital-T. If 99% of the people involved are honest and 1% of those people feed information to places like Wikileaks, that’s still 900 people — most of them contractors.*
According to Threat Level, the Pentagon claims it has someone but I would be shocked — SHOCKED — if that was the only person leaking to wikileaks. By a long shot.
3. Why is everyone breathlessly surprised at the rise of rogue media? Hell, if spammers and phishers can put up renegade sites, run them for a few hours, tear them down, and bring them up somewhere else, why are we so surprised someone with a hard drive can move a PHP wiki?
Really? Surprise? Hosting sites abound — many nicely outside the US jurisdiction. How hard is it to find a DNS server, a LAMP stack, and SCP to upload files? Wikileaks cannot be stopped or killed — and certainly not by some angry words and a shaking finger. If you can hide your millions offshore, you can certainly run a website.
It’s point #3 that gets me — the shock and surprise. I want to Vanna White and say, “The Internet — Let Me Show You It.” What did people think was going to happen when mass communications met guerrilla disclosure and guerrilla journalistic tactics? Or did we all believe we were going to hold hands and watch FOX News together, forever?
* As a professional security weenie, I have a hard time believing in a mere 1% of dishonesty in contractors.
Storytime
Jul 26th
Quick update:
Katie desperately wants to start writing her highly elaborate stories. She has characters! Plots! Chapters! Only one problem…. She doesn’t know how to spell the words yet. Reading she has down cold. Basic sentence structure, sure. Spelling not so much.
So we’re spending hours with her asking me to spell words and then writing them down.
Bonus points: in Katie’s stories, science is awesome!
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