90 percent of science fiction is crap. But then, 90 percent of everything is crap.
Sturgeon's Law
I registered the domain nemesis.com many years ago with the idea that it would contain information concerning events, people and technology that were not available elsewhere. Since that time the world wide web portion of the Internet has grown by leaps and bounds, but Sturgeon's Law remains in force (if somewhat optimistic).
Of course, she would be exempt from any taxes she may decide to impose on others. Her remarkably frank comments indicate her proclivity:
We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.
We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.
President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in under served schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps.Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.
And now, with that in mind, consider this bit of history:
The organization dates back to 1890 as the Wandervogel and progressed by leaps and bounds, gaining strength between 1900 and 1914 preceding the First World War. It lost favor after WWI when it first became known as the Youth League of the National Socialist Worker's Party (NSDAP) and was renamed "Greater German Youth Movement" - a less ominous and less political-sounding name. It became more miilitant over time and on Sunday, July 4, 1926 the Greater German Youth Movement was renamed as the Hitler Jugend, Bund der Deutschen Arbeiterjugend and thus the Hitler Jugend (HJ) or Hitler Youth was born.Every year the organization was given a new, innocent, and high minded theme. Beginning in 1933, every year thereafter was to be given a special theme by the leadership of the Hitler Youth. 1933 was aptly named the "Jahr der Organization" or "the year of organization." 1934 was "the year of training." 1935 was "the year of physical training."
On December 1, 1936, Hitler decreed "The Law concerning the Hitler Youth," which mandated that all young male and female Germans (excluding Jews) would be educated physically, intellectually and morally in the spirit of National Socialism though the Hitler Youth from the age of ten onward. This law also effectively ended the Catholic Youth Organization, Boy Scouts and all other non-Nazi youth organizations. This was called the Reichsjugenddienstpflicht (mandatory youth service).
All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
Nietzsche
Ideas are more powerful than guns.
We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?
Josef Stalin
The audience will always look where the magician looks. The magician must never look at what he wants to conceal. The audience will treat as important what the magician treats as important, and as unimportant what the magician treats as unimportant.
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
But scientists, who ought to know
Assure us that it must be so.
Oh, let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about.
Hilaire Belloc
You can look up local gas prices across the United States here.
Click here for U.S. Census information lookup based on place name or zip code.
The Soviet Union had a single, entrenched, systemically corrupt political party, which held a monopoly on power. The United States has two entrenched, systemically corrupt political parties, whose positions are often indistinguishable, and which together hold a monopoly on power. In either case, there is, or was, a single governing elite, but in the United States it organized itself into opposing teams to make its stranglehold on power seem more sportsmanlike.[...] Although people often bemoan political apathy as if it were a grave social ill, it seems to me that this is just as it should be. Why should essentially powerless people want to engage in a humiliating farce designed to demonstrate the legitimacy of those who wield the power? In Soviet-era Russia, intelligent people did their best to ignore the Communists: paying attention to them, whether through criticism or praise, would only serve to give them comfort and encouragement, making them feel as if they mattered. Why should Americans want to act any differently with regard to the Republicans and the Democrats? For love of donkeys and elephants?
Dmitry Orlov
The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
71 U.S. 2; 18 L. Ed. 281; 1866 U.S. LEXIS 861; 4 Wall. 2
DECEMBER, 1866, Term
Regulation is for today's socialists what public ownership of the means of production and central planning were for them half a century ago. No one has to nationalize industries anymore, because the extraordinary growth of regulation has given effective control to the government without its having to assume the hassle of ownership. Socialism has effectively re-invented itself.
Antonio Martino, Italian economist
Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.
Josef Stalin
Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or view any unwanted communication, whatever its merit;
We therefore categorically reject the argument that a vendor has a right under the Constitution or otherwise to send unwanted material into the home of another. If this prohibition operates to impede the flow of even valid ideas, the answer is that no one has a right to press even ``good'' ideas on an unwilling recipient.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger
U.S. Supreme Court Appeal 397 U. S. 728, 1970
Rowan, DBA American Book Service, et al. V. United States Post Office Department et al.
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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has
ruled that the unauthorized use of a thermal scanner violates the
Fourth Amendment, then reversed themselves and decided that it's okay.
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania recently ruled that such a thermal scan is a search in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The cite is Commonwealth v. Gindlesperger, No. 40 W.D. Appeal Docket 1998 (1999), but I don't have a link to an on-line opinion.
All of that is moot since June 11, 2001, when the Supreme Court of
the United States voted 5-4 that the use of a thermal scanner, or
any other "sense-enhancing device", constitutes a search under the
Fourth Amendment. Justice Scalia, writing for the majority:
We think that obtaining by sense-enhancing technology any information regarding the interior of the home that could not otherwise have been obtained without physical intrusion into a constitutionally protected area constitutes a search - at least where (as here) the technology in question is not in general public use. The full ruling, in Adobe Acrobat format, is available here.
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In 1979 the Supreme Court ruled in
Brown v. Texas
that you do not have to supply identification to a police officer
merely because the officer demands it.
Twenty-five years later a slim majority of the Supremes now believe that you must identify yourself whenever a law enforcement officer asks. Failure to identify yourself is now sufficient in and of itself to trigger an arrest, regardless of your guilt or innocence. You can read the full travesty in Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court, Nevada, 03-5554.
The cluelessness of these Justices is evident in the following
excerpt from the majority opinion:
One's identity is, by definition, unique; yet it is, in another sense, a universal characteristic. Answering a request to disclose a name is likely to be so insignificant in the scheme of things as to be incriminating only in unusual circumstances...
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Information on the numerous current
national states of emergency
declared by
Executive Order.
Continuation of the National Emergency With Respect to Persons Who Commit, Threaten to Commit, or Support Terrorism This is a continuation of the original declaration after the attacks of September 11, 2001:
Proclamation 7463 of September 14, 2001
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| You can read a few of the scam letters received by the webmaster here. Why do they all seem to be from Africa? |
Click here to see an effective way to deal with terrorists.
Thanks to our friends at the
Public Broadcasting System,
you can pick your target and detonate a nuclear bomb!
Click
here to see a map of the destruction after a 1 megaton or 25 megaton
nuclear weapon goes off.
You can check out a Java-based nuclear weapon effects calculator here, and a fallout calculator here.
A set of Frequently Asked Questions about nuclear weapons is available here.
A little closer to home, an enterprising Boy Scout managed to build his own radioactive stockpile. You can read the story here.
Safety precautions and the chemcial composition of the nerve gas VX can be found here.
Martin Libicki's The Mesh and the Net: Speculations on Armed Conflict in an Age of Free Silicon is available here.
Information on remote viewing is available from SAIC's Cognitive Science Laboratory.
A variety of information concerning ancient Egypt is available at Guardian's Egypt.
Webster also defines nemesis as one that inflicts retribution or vengeance, or a formidable and usually victorious rival or opponent.
Nemesis a moral conscience. Daughter of Oceanus, or, of Night and Erebus. Dike was her mother. Finger on the lips for silence if you do not wish to anger the Gods.
This Greek goddess helped to avenge those who were wronged. Originally an abstraction of righteous indignation against evil, this idea was later personified as Nemesis, goddess of divine justice and vengeance. Her anger is directed toward human transgressions of the natural, right order of things and the hubris behind it. Nemesis pursues the insolent and the wicked with inflexible vengeance. Her cult probably originated from Smyrna. Apart from playing this role in assorted myths, she is also considered to be the mother of Helen. When Nemesis was pursued by Zeus, she turned herself into a goose to escape him. However, he eventually caught her by turning himself into a swan. As a result of their union, Nemesis then laid an egg from which Helen was hatched. Nemesis is portrayed as serious looking woman with in her left hand a whip, a rein, a sword, or a pair of scales. In the Hellenistic period she was portrayed with a steering wheel.
Greek Legends of Nemesis
Greek goddess of justice and vengeance. She was essentially an abstraction, although she is given as the daughter of Erebos and Nyx. She was responsible for punishing human misconduct and arrogance (hubris). One of the legends associated with her, that of her rape by Zeus in the form of a swan, by whom she subsequently gave birth to Helen, probably refers to a separate goddess who is the deified form of Leda. The cult of Nemesis was particularly prominent at Rhamnus in Attica and at Smyrna.