doit, doit now!

Poor Tuttle, OK– they have Jerry Taylor as their City Manager. It seems his hosting provider installed CentOS, an excellent Linux distribution, on the computers used to host Tuttle’s web site, but never configured the computers after the initial install. The web site thus simply showed the default CentOS web page, which includes instructions as to how to configure it. Jerry Taylor instead wrote the CentOS team and threatened to call the FBI unless they “removed their website from his website.”

The CentOS guys were extremely nice about it, even as they became exasperated with how dense this guy was. They had no obligation to provide any support to this guy, but they did, and every time they asked him for the information they needed he became more irate and ignorant. Finally they just went ahead and figured out who the guy’s ISP was for him and told him to go ask the ISP, and after the ISP resolved it, Jerry had the audacity to tell the CentOS guys that it would have been better for them to solve the problem for him more quickly.

Hats off to Jerry Taylor, the most smartest man in Tuttle, OK!

Here are some DVD’s that Iraqi insurgents use as both training and recruitment tools. It’s quite graphic.

If this doesn’t make it plainly obvious that Iraq is another Vietnam, I don’t know what does.

This war isn’t going anywhere.

Why don’t we lower taxes for the rich and then spend some more money we don’t have on the war?

So the idiotic broadband companies are trying to do away with net neutrality and charge companies like Google for “access to their pipes.” The net effect of this would be that, unless Google paid a company like Verizon a fee, Verizon could slow down your and my access to Google when using Verizon’s lines.

Nevermind that consumers and businesses both pay for access to the Internet—because Verizon and Comcast and SBC don’t do anything exciting except connect us to the Net they feel like they’re missing out on the money that truly innovative companies like Google and Yahoo are making.

Message to Verizon, et al: you guys are like the water company. We need you, but only so much as to make sure that the data is flowing, and then to stay the hell out of our way. We don’t want to hear from you, we don’t want to see you, we just want access to the Internet and for you to do it without interruption or annoyance.

So, as usual, I wrote Senators Boxer and Feinstein. My letter:

Dear Senator Boxer:

At Senate Commerce Committee hearings that began today, broadband providers tried to make a case for a new ability to charge various companies for priority service on their networks. They argued that since companies like Google and Yahoo are making money on the Internet that they should somehow get a piece of that pie. I cannot disagree with this position strongly enough. I firmly believe that if these broadband providers are allowed to do such a thing that they will be the only ones who win out, and meanwhile prices will rise for consumers and other businesses while all of the innovation that the Internet has brought us will be stifled.

I am writing to urge you to vote to support any and all measures that would mandate net neutrality for Internet service providers. I am a small business owner who makes a living creating innovative Internet solutions. California is a state of companies that do the same, and in the process effectively drive the Californian, American, and even global economy. The Internet has always been governed by an implicit principle of net neutrality, and as such has allowed all of the innovations of the fifteen years to happen.

As it currently stands, consumers pay for access to the Internet. Likewise, companies like Google pay for their access to the Internet. Why exactly these broadband companies think that they should be able to impose restrictions or charges on either of those two parties when both are already paying for the service in the first place is beyond me.

As Google has pointed out, the barriers to entry for being an innovative company on the Internet are extremely low– anybody with a good idea and some dedication can create something amazing in their garage– and those barriers are so low almost entirely because of net neutrality. Imposing fees on a company of Google’s size wouldn’t do much to their bottom line, but it would raise that barrier to entry so high that the next Google or Yahoo would probably never be able to get off the ground. When the next amazing thing comes along it may never see the light of day unless net neutrality is maintained.

This issue is of such vital importance to our state, country and economy that I do not think it can be stressed enough. Please do whatever it takes to see that net neutrality is mandated, that prices remain reasonable for everyone, and that innovation can continue to flourish on the Internet.

Sincerely,

Nick Hodulik

In my last post I pointed out that conservative Australian politicians are worried that an HPV vaccine will encourage girls to be promiscuous. It turns out I did not do my homework and that, as we all have come to expect, this absurd viewpoint is all over America, too.

The notion that kids are not having sex because of the specter of HPV is just stupid. There’s absolutely no evidence for it. Hey, I have an idea! Let’s stop developing antibiotics because they can be used to cure chlamydia! It doesn’t matter that antibiotics cure other infections and save lives—if we have them PEOPLE WILL HAVE SEX WHEN WE DON’T WANT THEM TO! And Jesus doesn’t like that.

I just don’t get why the Religious Right thinks it can shove its viewpoint down the throats of all Americans, especially when people’s lives are at stake. I am so sick of having to live in fear of these people, of the specter that somehow the little progress that has been made for civil rights for LGBT people and for women’s sexual health will be snatched away in the name of a false Jesus.

Again, this does not bode well for the emergence of vaccines for other sexually-transmitted diseases, notably HIV. There will be an outcry from these people when such a vaccine is developed, and it will be a sad day for all of us. I wonder why we don’t head this off at the pass and start asking these bad people now if they are going to oppose a vaccine when it finally arrives.

Here’s something odd: a very famous Australian scientist, Ian Frazer, has apparently come up with a vaccine for Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), the culprit behind genital warts, plain-old warts, and most cervical cancer in women and anal cancer in gay men. The vaccine has proven to be 100% effective in preventing infection and very safe.

Here’s the shocking thing (and it’s NOT that this isn’t being spouted by Tom DeLay or Pat Robertson, yet): some Australian senators have
called for a “social debate” on whether it should be given to girls on a widespread basis for fear that it would promote promiscuity.

No joke. This is just so stupid I can’t even wrap my head around it.

This does not bode well for the emergence of an HIV vaccine, or any new vaccine, for that matter. The logical conclusion of this idiot’s argument is that any disease that acts as a deterrent to any type of sex he does not agree with should be allowed to hang around and kill people.

“Human suffering? It’s teenage sex that we have to stop!”

“Well, it’s nice that we have an HIV vaccine, but it might encourage kids to have more sex, so we shouldn’t give it to them. Having premarital sex is a fate much worse than death.”

“Well, I was going to give Susie the vaccine, but then I thought it would make her into a little ho, so I refrained. Now she’s got cervical cancer, and she deserves exactly what she’s got!”

So apparently Ford has dropped its advertising from LGBT publications after threat of a boycott from the deceptively-named American Family Association. Ford is claiming that “it’s purely for economic reasons,” but I have a hard time believing that. Something tells me that white trash Bible-thumpers from Mississippi aren’t buying nearly as many Land Rovers and Jaguars as LGBT’s are (speaking of which, I think it’s a good idea for the LGBT community to take back the word “family” from the hate-mongers and use it to represent our community).

And thus my letter:

Dear Ford Motor Company:

I have been considering the purchase of a new car from you for several months now. The Escape Hybrid is a pretty nice machine, and it offers basically everything I have been looking for in an automobile.

However, I won’t be buying one. Or any other Ford vehicle, for that matter.

I am extremely displeased with your bowing to the pressure of the American Family Association and the rest of the extreme Radical Right’s demands about not advertising in gay publications. While I can’t back up this assertion with fact, I would bet that the percentage of gay people buying Land Rovers and Jaguars is a lot higher than the percentage of Mississipian Radical Right people. Since I have many friends who own (but who will undoubtedly soon be getting rid of) Jaguars and Land Rovers, I think you may find that caving to the demands of the Hate Lobby will cost Ford a lot more in lost business than standing up for what is right.

But economic reasons aside, I find it morally reprehensible that your company has decided that the politics of hate has generated enough fear in you to bend your will. This country, and your company, are made up of a wide range of people from all walks of life, and that diversity is necessary for a healthy society and for a successful company. Kowtowing to hate is disrespectful to your LGBT employees, shareholders, and to humanity in general.

It is very sad that you will bow to the pressure of those who espouse hateful policies instead of leading by example and telling these groups that their views are not acceptable in civilized society.

You may think you have avoided a boycott, but I think you have instead created a much worse one.

Sincerely,

Nick Hodulik

The Kansas state school board voted to teach Intelligent Design. The odd thing about Intelligent Design is that it is inherently a contradiction — if there really is an Intelligent Designer, how do people stupid enough to come up with Intelligent Design in the first place ever come to exist?

I wrote to some of the directors who voted for it. You can too! Tell them what morons they are: Kansas State Department of Education

Hey Steve and John-
Thanks for voting in the New Dark Ages! Now Kansas will be even more backwater than it is currently, and the students of Kansas have you guys to thank! Great job!

In christ,
Nick

The Bush Administration is finally getting theirs.

The press seems to have their backbone again and we now have ample and obvious evidence that the Bush Administration not only lied to justify the war in Iraq, but that it willfully broke the law in doing so. Rove is probably going to be indicted. Libby has already been indicted.

Why has this taken two years to figure out? Why do we have an independent prosecutor in place to find out what a simple question from the man in charge could have answered? Why didn’t the President just call in his staff and say, “Okay, people, who did this?”

He never did that because he has known all along.

• He was planning on invading Iraq before 9/11 and he lied to the citizens of the US and to the people of the world about the reasons for doing so. (And this ridiculous bull about “We’ll fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here” is quite obviously a lie; the terror attacks on London and Madrid prove this. We have only served to add fuel to the fire with the war in Iraq.)
• He’s responsible for the deaths of over 2,000 American soldiers and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis.
• He kowtows to the Religious Right and their attempts to shove Christian fundamentalism down all of our throats, and yet he says that Muslim fundamentalists are bad.
• He taxes the poor and gives to the rich and the corporations.
• He took money from New Orleans and various other domestic programs and put it towards the war in Iraq, and destroyed a city in the process (as the Catholics say, this was a sin of omission, not a sin of commission, but it leaves him no less culpable).
• He sold out America’s seniors to the pharmaceutical companies.
• He sold out America’s youth for no apparent reason whatsoever.
• He has rolled back the advancement of science with absurd positions on stem cell research and intelligent design.
• He has trounced civil rights in the name of “protecting” America.
• He has trampled gay rights and rolled back decades of progress that we’ve made.

The list goes on. Fill in some more things, if you’d like.

I honestly try to see the good in everybody, but I have a hard time doing it with this man. I fail to see one truly good thing he has done for me personally or for anybody else except the rich and powerful. He lies through his teeth and people die as a result. All I see is evil. I don’t mean meanness or spitefulness or anything weak like that — I mean real evil, real wrongdoing done by choice and scheme.

George Bush is just a very bad man.

This is so dumb. I can’t believe how dumb it is. Rocco over at I Always Say Stupid Shit has rightly pointed out that this gay reality TV pilot is just about as stupid and stereotypical as could possibly be. The host is kind of hot but simultaneously needs to never open his mouth and even more so should never appear on camera or in any position of pseudo-authority. I hope his bedside manner is better than his cameraside manner. Granted, it’s not entirely his fault: the writers blow.

Ugh.