Many of us here at SL are avid readers, at least, when our work-a-day lives don’t intrude too much. Recently, I discovered a great tool for readers. It’s called SingleFile and it allows you to enter in all kinds of pertinent information on the books you own.

This data is stored conveniently so that you can create reports of all the Science Fiction books you own, or all the hardbacks, or what have you. You can also export the data so that you could build your own database around it. Another nice feature is that all you have to do is enter in the book’s ISBN number (found on the cover) and the title, author, and other pertinent info is found and entered automatically.

One of the coolest things about the service is that it also provides an area for you to keep a reading journal that is attached to a particular book. So, while your reading something, you could make daily journal entries and have them available when you are trying to remember something about that book.

The service does cost $19.95/year, but you can track 25 books for free to give SingleFile a test drive. This service comes from the folks at SpinFree who I think are somehow affiliated with 37signals, designers of impeccable interfaces.

SingleFile comes recommended by me and the good folks at Llama Corp. You can view my “collection” (currently only one book) here.

The election was nearly doomed to fail from the start. Months before votes were cast, steps were taken by the powerful political party to see to it the election swung in their advantage.

Minorities found themselves facing roadblocks on the way to the polls, forcing them to take much longer routes to cast a simple vote. Any former felons were removed from the eligible voter list. Overall that is not a big issue but thousands of people who had names remotely similar to former felons, or anyone that shared a birthday with a former felon, or as long as there was an 80% match in relevant information, were also removed from the list. All in all, 173,000 voters found themselves bared from voting - 66% of which were minorities. Any of those that contested were told they had to submit to a review, which included fingerprinting, to get reinstated. Oddly, one of those involved in the ruling party slipped by. A wife of one of the ranking members of the party had been caught sneaking in $19,000 worth of jewelry from another country, a felony, yet was allowed to vote.

But it just doesn’t stop there. One of those seeking office had voted against Equal Right Amendments in the past. So who cares about those minorities that were told they no longer had the right to vote? Especially when 90% of those minorities historically vote for the other party.

Of course I’m speaking about the messed up election in Zimbabwe. (NYTimes link - free registration required.) No one would believe those things would or could happen in America right?

But the truth of the matter is I’m not referring to Zimbabwe or President Robert Mugabe at all, despite the fact that there is plenty of evidence he horked that election too. All of the stuff I mentioned above happened right here, in Florida. But we don’t like to believe that stuff happens here. Only in 3rd world countries…

The fact is that Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris gave the company that administers the database of Florida registered voters $4 million to hijack the list. Then, as the recounts were taking place, Katherine Harris sent out a memo telling those counting the votes to disregard state laws on overseas ballots, which lead to some votes for George Bush to be counted twice. Hell, 183 of the “overseas” ballots were postmarked as coming from inside the US, which makes them ineligible to be counted… unless you’re voting in Florida. And it was Jeb Bush’s wife that was caught by immigration officials trying to sneak in that jewelry because she didn’t want to pay taxes on it. That’s a felony, unless you’re married to power.

And that was Dick Cheney that voted against Equal Rights Amendments. He even voted against a House resolution that would pressure South Africa to release Nelson Mandela when he was in prison. What a swell guy he is.

Another SpittingLlamas service to you, folks. Helping you understand who runs your country.

No one must have died in the Middle East today, no Taliban must have been found in caves, and no more Priests must have been arrested for child porn. I can tell none of this has happened yet because the lead stories of the day involve the status of facial hair, the fact we all almost died (not really) on March 8th, and someone on Yahoo! News forgot about the moon.

I guess the day is still young and there is hope something savage may happen. Maybe we could do our Web site naked like Naked News does to help bolden interest. But really, do you really want to see Taranis and me naked?

Sometimes, the strangest thoughts come to mind in the bathroom:

If God were perfect, would animals and humans have to excrete waste? Wouldn’t he have fashioned us in such a way that we could use any substance put into our body? Wouldn’t our cells be able to somehow recycle the byproducts of protein production? And if humans were made in God’s image, wouldn’t we be even more able to deal with waste than, say, a platypus?

Yes, an insight into the inner workings of mild insanity.

S-11 Redux:
(Channel) Surfing the Apocalypse

“Culled from over 20 hours of television footage recorded over a one month period and across 13 networks, S-11 Redux is a sound-bite blitzkrieg that challenges the messages we have been fed from our mainstream media and the government it serves.”

“And so… It comes down to a basic choice that we have to make as a civilization: Either: we will learn to bury the animosities of our ethnocentric, militant traditions and come to understand that Earths survival depends on our collective unified participitation, or we will sustain this cycle of violence and revenge until humanity is returned to the status of primitivity and, Earth, reduced to the ruble of antiquity.”

Macintosh Broadband | Loband
PC broadband | Medium

A wise man once said that “every wall is a door.” And on the other side are big, burly men preparing to kick down that door and bust a cap in your bulbous buttocks. Have a nice day.

While I am not a very religious person, I’m not sure that having St. Isidore watch over me while I surf is not a terrible idea.

Every day, my email box and banner ad spaces are inundated with proclamations of hot webcam naughtiness and enticements of the 581% variety. I could also use a little divine guidance when I get pulled into a flame war by some trolling 12-year-old talking about how David Duke had some good ideas. I imagine St. Isidore would look well on gifts purchased online like hockey Jesus. I also doubt that St. Isidore would look favorably on God’s words being twisted thusly. Would he smite down the offenders with a DOS attack? Or would email bomb them with thousands of “Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain” emails?

Sure, it seems a little hokey at first to have a saint watch over you as you surf, but I think the Internet could use a little patience, humanity and righteousness. As long as these folks don’t have anything to do with it. It makes a strange dichotomy that the Catholic church, which conducts masses in Latin down the road from my house, yet, at the same time, they propose an Internet saint. It’s certainly a changing world, but I don’t think praying for a faster connection will bend St. Isidore’s ear

The slanderer and the assassin differ only in the weapon they use; with the one it is the dagger, with the other the tongue. The former is worse than the latter, for the last only kills the body, while the other murders the reputation.

–Tyron Edwards

I travel I-75 to and from Chattanooga every single day, yesterday this got in my way. If I had not slept in yesterday morning and had left the house 30 minutes earlier as I normally do, I would have been right in the middle of this tragic pileup. Amazingly, only 4 people were killed out of the at least 120 vehicles involved. That’s a blessing in itself.

Back on that same stretch of highway this morning, there were remnants of bandages and tarps and debris on the side of the road. There were also blood stains still on the road where emergency crews had setup triage areas in the middle of the highway. It was sobering for me, yet some motorists continued to greatly exceed the speed limit and swerve in and out of traffic.

I think this wreck has now been officially classified as the largest, in terms of vehicles involved, to ever occur in the US. About 10 years ago, there was a similar accident about 45 minutes north of where this one occurred. It, too, was attributed to fog. I think there were about 90 cars in that one, but there were more deaths because a huge fire broke out.

So, what do I do? Do I find a new way to get to work? Would that be any safer? Or, do I just continue to be as safe as I can and to try to be aware of what’s going on around me? Now’s the time for public transportation.

Today, a few treats from the great thinker himself, Albert Einstein.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.

I don’t know how man will fight World War 3, but I do know how they will fight World War 4 - with sticks and stones.