October 2004
Politics
Realclearpolitics is an objective site that collects the best columns, magazine articles and web pieces covering the election. Electoral-vote each day analyses the current predictor (Oct 10 Kerry was ahead), also explains how the electoral college works. Let's not forget how the Libertarian Party can affect some of the swing states. I was surprised at some of the celebrities that support libertarian ideals (doesn't mean they endorse the party). An article from the dailycollegian entitled "Halting the draft rumor", concerning H. R. 163 Universal National Service Act of 2003. A page from Neal Boortz on Democrat secrets. CAGW is the taxpayer watchdog against government waste. Politrix is another informational site, seems they have no allegiance to either party (that may be open for debate). Interesting page examines the existence of a CIA 'black budget', infamous for those unsupported accounting entries. Read the official blog of George W Bush or John Kerry.
Medical
The American Bar Association covers the 10 LegalMyths about Advance Medical Directives. Visit USlivingwillregistry for more information on directives.
Myth 4:
An Advance Directive means "Don't treat."
False. While it is true that most people use Advance Directives to avoid being kept alive against their wishes when death is near, it is a mistake to assume that the existence of an advance directive means, "Don't treat." Advance directives are also used to say that the individual wants all possible treatments within the range of generally accepted medical standards. What is said depends upon one's particular wishes and values. Moreover, even when an advance directive eschews all life-sustaining treatments, one should always assume (and insist upon) continuing pain control, comfort care and respect for one's dignity.
Airlines
A good article from USNews entitled "Flying in the Red", reviews the current state of major airlines (snip below). Another from CBSnews: "Low-Cost Airlines Not Second-Rate". Compare the salaries of pilots at airlinepilotpay. Low cost airlines market share is about 25%; profitable due to lower wages and benefits. Share expected to double over the next few years.
U.S. Airways, the nation's seventh-biggest carrier--which declared bankruptcy for the second time in two years on September 12--may end up with no choice but to sell its assets and liquidate. Given the company's listing balance sheet, the last-minute arrival of a white-knight investor seems unlikely. United, still in bankruptcy, scares away investors, too, thanks to a pension plan that devours cash and a nagging inability to prove it can be profitable. Delta and most of the other big airlines are stripping away perks and driving their customers straight into the arms of lower-cost competitors like JetBlue and Frontier that offer cheap fares and smiling on-board employees.
How to Research
Virtual Chase has assisted legal professionals conducting research on the Internet since Summer 1996. Originally a hobby, the site began as a means by which to disseminate articles and teaching aids to law librarians and other instructors of Internet research. Now owned by the law firm Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll, LLP, it offers articles, guides, teaching materials, an alert service and more on Internet research strategies and resources. The site is open anyone free of charge, but they provide materials with experienced researchers, lawyers and other legal professionals in mind. Virtualpet is an excellent resource or starting point for researching an industry or specific company.
The Search for Foreign Law
Sometimes worthy sites do not appear in search engine databases; or even though highly relevant to the query, they rank too low to be noticed. Elexica by the law firm Simmons & Simmons provides an example in this case.
Finding such gems requires diligence and a certain amount of luck. Try browsing the external links of the useful resources you find. Also locate relevant research guides and pathfinders, which librarians typically compile.
Librarian Lyonette Louis-Jacques offers two deserving mention in the area of foreign and international law. Finding Foreign Law Online When Going Global covers databases and other resources that assist researchers in finding the law of multiple countries. Legal Research on International Law Issues Using the Internet provides information about various types of international law resources.
Lock Picking
Lockpicking101 is an active forum on the topic. Forum is divided into four categories and subtopics. Greg Miller seems to be the net guru on picking locks. Wikipedia and HowStuffWorks both give a good overview on the subject. Alas, we must include a glossary.
Lock Identification
There are many types of locks, the most common being:
- The pin tumbler lock. Used for house and garage doors, padlocks, mail boxes, and Ford automobiles.
- The wafer tumbler lock. Used for garage and trailer doors, desks, padlocks, cabinets, most autos, window locks, and older vending machines.
- The double-wafer lock. Used for higher security wafer tumbler applications.
- The warded locks. Used for light security padlocks and old-fashioned door locks.
- Lever locks Used for light security and older padlocks, sophisticated safe-deposit boxes, some desks, jewelry boxes, and small cash boxes.
- Tubular cylinder locks. Used for alarm control systems, newer vending machines, car-wash control boxes and wherever higher security problems might exist.
AmericaVotes
The America Votes exhibit is a potpourri of U.S. presidential campaign memorabilia drawn primarily from the holdings of the Duke University Special Collections Library. The exhibit illustrates the nation's presidential elections in letters, sheet music, leaflets, buttons, and bumper stickers. Also take the time to view Medicine and Madison Avenue.
Memorabilia from the "Log Cabin and Hard Cider" campaign of 1840 reveal that "spin" is not an invention of twentieth century politics. Although the Whig nominee General William Henry Harrison came from an aristocratic Virginia family and lived the life of the country gentleman in a sixteen-room mansion, the Whigs tried to attract voters by portraying him as a simple man of the people. When a Democratic editor suggested sarcastically that Harrison would be satisfied to retire to a log cabin with a barrel of hard cider, the Whigs countered by making log cabins and cider barrels their party symbols. In a newspaper illustration in the exhibit, General Harrison is standing beside a log cabin and a barrel of hard cider. The Whigs won the popular vote and captured 79% of the electoral votes.
MTHEL
Misslethreat.com is a project of The Claremont Institute devoted to understanding and promoting the requirements for the strategic defense of the United States. In the post-Cold War era, the proliferation of technology and resources for nuclear weapons, their means of delivery by ballistic missile, and other weapons of mass destruction has never been greater. In the missle defense section is a page on the THEL project (Tactical High Energy Laser), which is designed to destroy short-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, ground- and air-launched rockets, unmanned aerial vehicles, mortar shells, and artillery projectiles. It consists of an advanced radar that detects and tracks incoming rockets, and a high-energy laser beam that destroys them. This system or project has developed into a mobile unit known as MTHEL, designed to take the stationary High Energy Laser and put it on wheels.
At the heart of the MTHEL system is the Nautilus 100Kw deuterium fluoride flowing gas laser. Designated Nautilus, the laser itself is a proven system, having destroyed numerous Soviet-style 122mm Katyusha rockets during testing in 2000 and artillery shells in 2002. The Nautilus functions in a manner very similar to that of the megawatt-class COIL (Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser) Airborne Laser that is being developed for destroying theater-range ballistic missiles. It focuses a high-energy deuterium-fluoride (DF) laser beam, which is created by mixing fluorine atoms with helium and deuterium to generate DF in an excited state. The beam is small -- only a few inches in diameter -- but it can heat steel over 200 yards away.
In the HEL, $3,000 worth of gaseous chemicals (that might sound like a lot of money, but it's cheap compared to most anti-missile weapons) are mixed to produce photon emitting ionized atoms, which are in turn, collected and amplified, before being directed at the target. The laser destroys the target rocket by heating the fuel storage tank, or by heating the warhead case (in the case of artillery shells or solid fuel rockets). Target acquisition is initially accomplished with a fire control radar that spots the inbound rocket, and then begins tracking it, sending this data to the MTHEL optical PTS (Pointer-Tracker Subsystem).
Science meets Fiction
Technovelgy is is where science and fiction come alive. Explore the wide variety of inventions and ideas of science fiction writers - over 650 are available on the site. Use the timeline of sci-fi inventions (most of these items are linked to information about similar real-life inventions and inventors) or visit the glossary. Another category or theme of books is alternate history, found at Uchronia. Simply stated, an alternate history is the description and/or discussion of an historical "what if" event or events which "happened otherwise" and includes some amount of description of the subsequent effects on history. Alternate history may appear in novels, short stories, scholarly essays, comic books, movies, television shows, plays and elsewhere.
Avatar
A computer-enhanced doppelganger; a computer-generated image that takes your place in a three-dimensional online encounter.
I'm not sure if Neal Stephenson was the first person to use this term in this way, but he spends a fair amount of time in the metaverse describing them. Certainly, the novel Snow Crash popularized and fixed the term in the computer science lexicon.
As Hiro approaches the street, he sees two couples probably using their parent's computer for a double date in the Metaverse. He's not seeing real people, of course. It's all part of a moving illustration created by his computer from specifications coming down the fiber optic cable. These people are pieces of software called avatars. They are the audiovisual bodies that people use to communicate with each other in the Metaverse.
From Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson.
Published by Bantam in 1992
An avatar is an incarnation of a deity in human form; the literal meaning of the Sanscrit word is "he passes or crosses down." It is taken from Hindu philosophy. Just as the deity "passes down" from the higher realms of being to the simpler realm of the material Earth, so a person becomes an avatar in a simpler computer-generated reality.
The first use of graphic or text virtual identities was in multi-user domains (MUDs); although MUDs were first created in the late nineteen-seventies, "avatar" is a more recent term for a virtual character.
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