The Occasional Blog of Jonah Weiland

The Patriot Act, passed into law in October of 2001, is a frightening bit of legislation. The need for it is not so much in question, but rather the implementation and how far reaching it in fact is. Take this account of someone who was detained under the provisions of the Patrior Act:

Two weeks ago I experienced a very small taste of what hundreds of South Asian immigrants and U.S. citizens of South Asian descent have gone through since 9/11, and what thousands of others have come to fear. I was held, against my will and without warrant or cause, under the USA PATRIOT Act. While I understand the need for some measure of security and precaution in times such as these, the manner in which this detention and interrogation took place raises serious questions about police tactics and the safeguarding of civil liberties in times of war.

Real the full story here. It’s worth your time.

Here’s another interesting excerpt:

When I asked to speak to a lawyer, the INS official informed me that I do have the right to a lawyer but I would have to be brought down to the station and await security clearance before being granted one. When I asked how long that would take, he replied with a coy smile: “Maybe a day, maybe a week, maybe a month.”

We insisted that we had every right to leave and were going to do so. One of the policemen walked over with his hand on his gun and taunted: “Go ahead and leave, just go ahead.”

Much thanks to Charles for sending this article.

I’ve been meaning for a while now to write up a full report on why TiVo is the great, wonderful, masterful piece of electronic gadgetry it is. I will get to it one day, but in the interim check out Mark Evanier’s thought’s on TiVo. It appears he has a TiVo 2, I have a first generation TiVo still, and I’m looking forward to reading if the new software does work the way it’s intended to.

I have a number of friends who are currently without regular work. They’re making ends meet at temp jobs and random consulting opportunities that blow their way. And it’s all sorts of folk with varrying degrees of expertise. Some with college degress, others have J.D.’s and doctorates. They still can’t find work. For example, friend Shylo has been dwelling in the basement of a major airline doing temp work on and off for months now. They literally have her working in a basement. No windows. Sucks. But it’s paying the bills.

For those of you still looking for work, it’s time to get creative like this woman from Sweeden who took out an ad in the local newspaper that said, “I want a well-paid job. I have no imagination, I am anti-social, uncreative and untalented.” As a result, she has an interview this Wednesday for a job paying just over $2000 monthly, a third more than her current job.

Thanks to Kimmy for the story.

Here’s an interesting article about the many issues inherent with e-mail correspondence. I can’t say I’ve had exactly these problems with e-mail, but misinterpreting instant message conversations is rather common, even with pernicious use of emoticons (Avoid emoticons! Ohh, that’s a good idea for a T-Shirt.). I’ve discovered over the years you have to be overly descriptive and clear in instant message conversations. The same goes for e-mail, too, apparently.

Weird, I say, weird.

Charles sent me a link to Princeton’s Engineering Anomalies Research group that essentially is trying to see if the human mind can affect real world events. I can’t say I believe in ESP, telekinesis or any of those related phenomena, but when you hear a respectable university like Princeton is involved in researching it, your interest gets quickly piqued. Either that, or your impression of Princeton diminishes exponentially.

There’s a number of interesting, yet I caution you quite dry, articles about their research and findings. Basically, they’re seeing small instances where things happen they can’t quite explain and the way in which they happen doesn’t exactly suggest random occurrence. The piece I found most interesting was the following, taken from this Web page:

“..the ability of human participants to acquire information about spatially and temporally remote geographical targets, otherwise inaccessible by any known sensory means, has been thoroughly demonstrated over several hundred carefully conducted experiments. The protocol requires one participant, the ‘agent,’ to be stationed at a randomly selected location at a given time, and there to observe and record impressions of the details and ambience of the scene. A second participant, the ‘percipient,’ located far from the scene and with no prior information about it, tries to sense its composition and character and to report these in a similar format to the agent’s description.”

Of course, this could revolutionize the phone sex industry, giving the online smut sites some serious competition!

Also of interest is the article on the implications and applications of such events becoming commonplace.

While fascinating, I doubt we’ll ever hit a point where it’ll be seen with any sort of consistency or on a mass level. But, imagine if something changed. That all of a sudden the world was populated with individuals displaying heightened ability. That’s right, we’d be living inside of a comic book. That can’t be good.

It’s been a while since I’ve found an application that I just can’t live without. Steven Grant, in his Permanent Damage column over at CBR, has mentioned a spam filtering program called Mail Washer a couple of times, but I’ve not checked it out until late yesterday. I only wish I had earlier.

See, I get spam. A lot of it. Like the definition of “fuck loads” amount of spam. I’ve had two of my e-mail addresses for over 7 years and they’ve each been posted on forums, signed-up for various items with systems who’ve resold their mailing lists, been listed on Web sites as contact people, etc., etc., etc. … basically the Spammers have picked up my e-mail address from a variety of places over the years and now I receive probably 200+ pieces of Spam a day over 5 different accounts (I have a variety of support accounts for Boiling Point that I must check daily). It got to the point where when I woke up in the morning I’d have to spend the first 10 minutes of each day sorting through the mail and deleting the spam. Well, no more.

I’m not going to give you a full blow-by-blow review of Mail Washer other than to say this: I downloaded the trial version, played with it for about 10 minutes, and instantly paid the $29.95 to upgrade to the pro version. The time savings along will more than pay for this program in one week.

If you get any appreciable amount of spam you need to get this program, or one like it. Mail Washer rocks the mother fucker and knows it.

That title is loaded on so many levels. I’m curious which of you instantly went for the sexual inference. How many of you went the political route? Well, neither subjects are the intended.

No, THIS is the intended meaning of this entry. It’s a hedge, bush, whatever you want to call it, carved in the form of a Pac Man.

I’m afraid the guy who did this probably wasn’t all that inebriated.