Never been one to let the carrier drop

I notice vote.com’s latest vote is ‘Do we need the permission of the UN to go attack Saddam’. The ‘Yes’ argument is ‘We have the right to protect ourselves. 9/11 was a declaration of war’.

Okay, fine.

I can buy that 9/11 could be a declaration of war – except that, um, it wasn’t. People like to compare it with Pearl Harbor, but in the case of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese sent a declaration of war a few minutes before the attack.

Even if it had been a declaration of war, popular opinion seems to have it that Al-Quada was responsable for 9/11. No one has ever suggested that Saddam had anything to do with it. So what we’re saying is, ‘Country A attacked us, but they don’t have anything we want. Country B, which didn’t attack us, has a bunch of oil! So obviously even though Country A attacked us, Country B is the one we should attack.’

What is HAPPENING? I know that television is capable of brainwashing people.. but this is downright scary. I look around and there are people drawing incorrect conclusions from insufficient or just plain wrong data at every level of government. There are people lying – outright lying – in the media.

THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION FOR A UNPROVOKED WAR FOR A CRIME THAT THE UNITED STATES IS FAR MORE GUILTY OF THAN IRAQ!

This country is falling apart at the seams. First we let a unelected president into office, and now we’re about to go fight a unprovoked war that is blatently just for the economic interests (i.e. oil) of that president. We’re going to start WWIII! WHY?

Back to you..

Yesterday, for the first time ever, I used my PA to carry spoken word to the masses.

Set it up in the middle of a park in the middle of Pioneer Square, and a rally (the seattle radical women something or other ;-)) used it to speak.

It was a really bizarre experience. I mean, this thing sits in my basement, and I use it all the time in the band(s) that I’m in, but I’d never used it for spoken word before.

It covered a crowd of 300 people, pretty adequately.

I don’t think it could do 1000 – towards the back of the crowd things were definately getting kind of quiet – but still. Bizarre.

I actually spoke, for about 30 seconds – having a kilowatt and a half behind your voice tends to give you excessive confidence. P. says that what I said wasn’t even vaugely on topic, but seemed like a lot of people liked it anyway. Or else they thought they better cheer for the guy who busted his butt to get them sound – who knows.

Anyway, setup only took about ten minutes, not bad at all. I plan to continue offering my amplification services to rallies..

In other notes, I added some more music to my new music page. Three more tracks, all written in Thailand except for the beginning of ‘unnamed’. As always, opinions welcome.

And the mk3 project is again surging ahead after a major redesign. The Tango project is basically done, and the hope is to make the two plug-compatable. More as it happens. 😉

Hope all is well out there in sheer’s-friend-land. I’ll try to update this more often.

1) A standard practice in Thailand is ‘touting’. Individuals wait in front of public transit systems (train stations, bus stations, airports) and try _very_ hard to get you to go to their hotel, tourist attraction, and whatnot. Practice your sales resistance – do not get angry with these people, but in general, you’re better off not listening to their advice. There are some exceptions.. After a while, you get to rather like being greeted by so many smiling people. Of course, back in the U.S. I was greeted by the smiling faces of the TSA, who genuinely are nice, but it’s not the same somehow.

2) I suggest not renting a car in Bangkok. Just use the taxi or tuk-tuk system – there’s always a taxi waiting a block or less from every hotel (yes, really) and as long as you agree on the fare before you get in, it will be cheaper than renting a car – even if you take ten trips a day. And finding a parking space in Bangkok is, basically, impossible. And Bangkok traffic makes the worst of the USA look positively spartan.

3) In general, smile. Thais have a thing about smiling, and a genuine smile will get you a long way. This may be what I miss most about the country.

4) Bargain, but not too hard.

5) In general, lodging will not include hot water unless you specifically search for it. This takes some getting used to. However, even if you search out the establishments that have hot water, you’ll still pay less than $10 a night for a decent hotel room. $20ish if you want air conditioning. (Yes, AC doubles the cost of the room. Tells you something about what power might cost.)

6) The power system is 50hz, 220V, but uses american style plugs. It IS referenced to ground. Be careful. 😉 Also, don’t plug anything into it that isn’t autosensing, voltage-wise, because it seems to vary from about 180 to about 250V, depending on what time of day it is and what mood the power company is in. NEVER plug a fixed-voltage switching power supply like the one in most desktop computers into it.

7) Getting around: The trains are pretty creaky, and run on what is jokingly referred to as ‘Thai time’. This means they usually are about 20 minutes late. A first class ticket from one end of the country to the other is about $35, though. Planes run on time and seem to be well maintained. A plane ticket across the country is about $75, although there’s a extra $10 charge at the airport that is not included in the cost of the ticket. Trains should be booked two weeks in advance for the best seats. Yes. Really. Lonely planet says so, believe them. 😉

8) Diving: Is beautiful. LOTS of biodiversity! I reccomend for diving the Surit Thani area going straight to Ko Tao, as the dives there are MUCH cheaper and better and don’t involve several hours on a boat. They’re about $10 a dive, vs. about $50 a dive from the more touristy Ko Samui. We didn’t find any substandard diving gear in Thailand, although some of it was newer and some older. Most of the dives are to 40-60ft, with about 80 ft vis and in 90 degree water. Not a lot of coral, but more fish than you can imagine, and a very wide variety of fish and other marine life.

9) Money: Don’t use your credit card unless you have to – some black hats have been rumored to steal CC #s and do funny things with them. There are ATMs on Cirrus and Pulse networks just about everywhere, so bring your ATM card instead. Travelers checks can be changed at almost any bank. In general, money is no problem – they make it easy for you to get it. 😉

10) Odd side note: It’s worth finding out what the ‘scam of the week is’ (cheap gems, free tuk-tuk rides, stolen bags from bicycle baskets, or whatever) so you can avoid it.

11) Transit: In general, you’re better off renting a motorcycle than a car. It’s easier to park and much, much cheaper. The bikes they rent tourists have a semiautomatic transmission and could be driven by a six year old. (in fact, they were, regularly ;-)). Better yet to walk, a lot of the time.

We had a lot of fun. Diving, sitting on beaches, visiting temples, visiting ruins.. all you could ask for. Maybe more later if I get time, although I have way too much work to do as usual.

“Da, Boris, we haff won the cold war. The silly americans, they burned up all their oil!”

We believe in communism now, oh yes, we do.. “GIMME YOUR OIL! SHARE!”.

I can’t believe that Bush is going to get away with this. I know in my heart of hearts that he is, that the people will not stop him.

Poster. I can’t quite get myself to be patriotic enough to put it on the EV, but it’s a clever idea.

This may be turned into a bumper sticker by Dean Grannes, the originator of the idea 😉

Which Personality Disorder Do You Have?
brought to you by Quizilla

Hrm. I wonder if that should spawn a new years resolution or something.

S>

According to this (follow the oil link), the u.s. has a reserve of 22.2 billion barrels of oil, and consumes 8.1 million barrels a day.

So, if we take 22,200,000,000 (22 billion) and divide it by 8,100,000, we should get the number of days of oil left.

And, let’s see..

2,470 days of oil left.

Let’s divide by 365

7.5 years.

Does anyone else find this a little alarming?

In 7.5 years, our entire economy will be dependant on a foreign resource.

KaZaA has 3.7 million people logged in right now.

3.7 million people.

That’s getting to be a appriciable chunk of the U.S. population, thinks I.

In other news, I put up another song-snippet. I need to know if it totally sucks or not before I put more time into it, so if some of you broadband suckers could take a listen at Direct Action I’d appriciate it. I have about six minutes in my mind (it transitions into major, then does some other funky stuff) but as it takes a hour of work to render each minute of audio, I need to know if it totally sucks or not.

I’m glad my computer clock is a hour off. If that were really what time it were, then I’d really be scared.

Spent a few hours tonight playing with Reason (my new favorite toy. I keep thinking I’m going to go to a coffeehouse open mic with a accordian made out of a pair of oxygen8s. I’ll be the first techno accordion player. It’ll be hilarious.

Peseta music, the accordian store around the corner, must be rubbing off on me.

At least, that’s kind of whatI’m figuring at the moment.

But it’ll be a great hit at DefCon. I swear.

Assuming they let us HOLD another DefCon. ‘We didn’t exactly take away the freedom to assemble. We just made the person who’s place you are assembling at responsable for any illegal activities that occured there’. Thank you, RAVE act. It’s more like Reduce America’s Vulnerability to Young Radical Types.

Except that RAVYRT just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

‘Sheer, you’re overreacting’.

Okay. Fine.

In the meantime, my reasonesque meanderings are up on my el-cheese radio station. The transcoder is, however, broken.

Mental note to self: do something about that.

It’s okay, they suck anyway.

I am starting to wonder, though, how do I know when I’m good enough to play a open mic? And what kind of open mic do I find to play? I mean, yeesh, I’m not even sure what my musical style _is_…

I guess the one good thing is, this is Seattle, LOT of coffeehouses.

Right?

Except I guess the Starbucks and Seattle’s Bests of the world do not have things like open mics or poetry readings or pun contests.

Probably just as well.

You know, when I was a teenager there was a coffee house where you could always be sure to find someone interesting to talk to…

Yes, I hear Nicka and Chris snickering over in their respective corners, if they read this. Shut up, Chris, it was too cool. I don’t think it ever made any money, though, which was the problem. And so they turned it into a bar & grill or something of that sort. the Firehouse? Something like that.

But prior to that, it was the Dharma Coffeehouse. Ah, memories of Fairfax, Emmit Swimming doing accoustic sets..

I actually have to admit, for all my hatred of northern virginia, it did have two things going for it. Dharma and Traxx.

I think they closed both of them, though.

Okay. Enough nostalgia.

Signing off.

S>

http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/fm/

Pirate radio has never been so easy. 😉

I wonder if they keep a list of everyone who’s ever bought one?

Something tells me this isn’t the kind of thing you can pay cash for.

No, P., I’m not going to buy a radio transmitter. Stop looking so horrified.

So I was reading the Seattle Times today, and there’s a article on The Art Of Deception in which the author is whining about how Kevin doesn’t talk in the book about feeling any remorse for what he did.

And I’m thinking, here is someone who has completely missed the point. Kevin did NO damage, to anyone. He stole some credit card numbers, yes, but he never made a purchase. He stole some source code for some sensative parts of the cellular phone system, yes, but as far as I know he never made a phone call. And this person is complaining that – in the process of doing no damage, and increasing public awareness of the insecurity of systems all around us, Kevin has done something truly evil and should feel immense amounts of remorse.

I’ll tell you who should be feeling remorse. The CEOs of Enron, Worldcom, AOL/Time Warner, Qwest, and a half a dozen other large publicly traded companies. People who stole millions of dollars, often from their own employees. Bush, who’s trying very hard to start world war three. Other people of similar minds everywhere. The rich who got that way by robbing and exploiting the poor. The man who drives alone to work every day in his SUV, bringing WWIII [which will be fought over oil] that much closer.

Not Kevin Mitnik.

Feel guilty for figuring out how the system is broken? That doesn’t make any sense at all. You should feel guilty for abusing the ways the system is broken to get what you want, without any regards for how it hurts other people.

I could have just as easily been Kevin. Qaz could have just as easily been Kevin. I could make a long list of my friends who could have been Kevin. None of them are evil. You want to know where evil is? Look to the people running our country. Look to the police, incarcerating people for inhaling the smoke of a plant. Look to the automakers building ICE-powered cars when they know perfectly well how to make cars powered by more efficient means. Look to anyone who puts a fast buck now over bigger profits in the future.. or even having a future at all.

but don’t look at Kevin. Kevin has no reason to feel remorse. He’s paid dearly for his non-crimes, and the non-crimes of all of us who dare to look for holes, or dare to think outside the box.

tear it down!

S.