AP Wire | 09/30/2002 | Miami bank robber may have shot self, then hit by hit-and-run van

And someone helped him out from under the van, then a woman in a red Mitsubishi picked him up, and he got away ... guess they don't have any security guards or even moderately alert staff at this bank: Wachovia Bank in North Miami Beach.

Sessions.edu is an online design school. They launched a new tool called The Color Calculator: "... provides the user with the ability to identify color schemes or harmonies for any design project, by controlling a series of menus and tools."

Thanks to Stanley for this link.

Atlantic Unbound | Politics & Prose | 2002.09.25: Pearl Harbor in Reverse

[snip]
When the U.S. faced a mortal threat not 6,000 but ninety miles away during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a threat for which the evidence was incontrovertible as it is not with Iraq, President Kennedy rejected a pre-emptive attack on the Soviet missiles. Striking first, his brother Robert said, was un-American—it would be "a Pearl Harbor in reverse." If the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive strikes had been in place, the Soviet commanders on the scene, faced as Saddam will be with a "use it or lose it" situation, would likely have launched their missiles. We now know they were nuclear-armed. The Bush Doctrine would almost certainly have led to nuclear war between the U.S. and the USSR. It stands condemned by the sternest test in our history. As Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the presidential historian and former adviser to President Kennedy, wrote recently, basing a declaration of war on fear instead of on overt acts of belligerency is not only illegal under international law but also immoral. It cannot be right to kill a country's civilians because you are afraid of what their ruler might do to you. Pearl Harbor lives in infamy.
[/snip]

Consumer Information Security - Federal Trade Commission

I wonder how much we paid for this "mascot" and website. Too much, I'm sure. Dewie? This is the best the FTC could come up with? Why a turtle? Why does there even need to be a mascot?

The Federal Trade Commissioner's name is Orson Swindle. This is true. I didn't make it up.

Oh, and you can forward your spam directly to the gov at UCE@FTC.GOV. It says so right on the website. Of course, what happens once this is done is open to question.

The Village Voice: Nation: Mr. Roboto: License to Ill
by Brendan I. Koerner. MS's EULA raises its intrusive head yet again.

[snip]
However, by downloading the security upgrade, you agreed to abide by an End User License Agreement (EULA) that includes some rather Orwellian language embedded deep within. "You agree that in order to protect the integrity of content and software protected by digital rights management, Microsoft may provide security related updates . . . that will be automatically downloaded onto your computer," the contract warned. "These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and use other software on your computer." Of course, no one but hardcore legal geeks ever bothers to read those mammoth, mind-numbing EULAs—a fact Mr. Roboto suspects wasn't lost on Microsoft's top brass.
[/snip]

This is important, so here is the entire article:
[snip]
Bush to Outline Doctrine of Striking Foes First
By DAVID E. SANGER, © 2002, New York Times.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 -- On Friday, the Bush administration will publish its first comprehensive rationale for shifting American military strategy toward pre-emptive action against hostile states and terrorist groups developing weapons of mass destruction. The strategy document will also state, for the first time, that the United States will never allow its military supremacy to be challenged the way it was during the cold war.

In the 33-page document, Mr. Bush also seeks to answer the critics of growing American muscle-flexing by insisting that the United States will exploit its military and economic power to encourage "free and open societies," rather than seek "unilateral advantage." It calls this union of values and national interests "a distinctly American internationalism."

The document, titled "The National Security Strategy of the United States," is one that every president is required to submit to Congress. It is the first comprehensive explanation of the administration's foreign policy, from defense strategy to global warming. A copy of the final draft was obtained by The New York Times.

It sketches out a far more muscular and sometimes aggressive approach to national security than any since the Reagan era. It includes the discounting of most nonproliferation treaties in favor of a doctrine of "counterproliferation," a reference to everything from missile defense to forcibly dismantling weapons or their components. It declares that the strategies of containment and deterrence — staples of American policy since the 1940's — are all but dead. There is no way in this changed world, the document states, to deter those who "hate the United States and everything for which it stands."

"America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones," the document states, sounding what amounts to a death knell for many of the key strategies of the cold war.

One of the most striking elements of the new strategy document is its insistence "that the president has no intention of allowing any foreign power to catch up with the huge lead the United States has opened since the fall of the Soviet Union more than a decade ago."

"Our forces will be strong enough," Mr. Bush's document states, "to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military buildup in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States." With Russia so financially hobbled that it can no longer come close to matching American military spending, the doctrine seemed aimed at rising powers like China, which is expanding its conventional and nuclear forces.

Administration officials who worked on the strategy for months say it amounts to both a maturation and an explanation of Mr. Bush's vision for the exercise of America power after 20 months in office, integrating the military, economic and moral levers he holds.

Much of the document focuses on how public diplomacy, the use of foreign aid, and changes in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank can be used to win what it describes as a battle of competing values and ideas — including "a battle for the future of the Muslim world."

The president put the final touches on the new strategy last weekend at Camp David after working on it for months with his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and with other members of the national security team. In its military hawkishness, its expressions of concern that Russian reforms could be undermined by the country's elite, and its focus on bolstering foreign aid — especially for literacy training and AIDS — it particularly bears the stamp of Ms. Rice's thinking.

A senior White House official said Mr. Bush had edited the document heavily "because he thought there were sections where we sounded overbearing or arrogant." But at the same time, the official said, it is important to foreclose the option that other nations could aspire to challenge the United States militarily, because "once you cut off the challenge of military competition, you open up the possibility of cooperation in a number of other areas."

Still, the administration's critics at home and abroad will almost certainly find ammunition in the document for their argument that Mr. Bush is only interested in a multilateral approach as long as it does not frustrate his will. At several points, the document states clearly that when important American interests are at stake there will be no compromise.

The document argues that while the United States will seek allies in the battle against terrorism, "we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting pre-emptively." That includes "convincing or compelling states to accept their sovereign responsibilities" not to aid terrorists, the essence of the doctrine Mr. Bush declared on the night of Sept. 11, 2001.

The White House delayed releasing the document this week so that its lengthy discussion of conditions under which the United States might take unilateral, pre-emptive action would not dominate delicate negotiations in the United Nations or the testimony of administration officials who appeared at Congressional hearings to discuss Iraq.

The new strategy departs significantly from the last one published by President Clinton, at the end of 1999.

Mr. Clinton's strategy dealt at length with tactics to prevent the kind of financial meltdowns that threatened economies in Asia and Russia. The Bush strategy urges other nations to adopt Mr. Bush's own economic philosophy, starting with low marginal tax rates. While Mr. Clinton's strategy relied heavily on enforcing or amending a series of international treaties, from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to Kyoto protocols on the environment, Mr. Bush's strategy dismisses most of those efforts.

In fact, the new document — which Mr. Bush told his staff had to be written in plain English because "the boys in Lubbock ought to be able to read it" — celebrates his decision last year to abandon the ABM treaty because it impeded American efforts to build a missile defense system. It recites the dangers of nonproliferation agreements that have failed to prevent Iran, North Korea, Iraq and other countries from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, and says that the United States will never subject its citizens to the newly created International Criminal Court, "whose jurisdiction does not extend to Americans."

The document makes no reference to the Kyoto accord, but sets an "overall objective" of cutting American greenhouse gas emissions "per unit of economic activity by 18 percent over the next 10 years." The administration says that is a reasonable goal given its view of the current state of environmental science. Its critics, however, point out that the objective is voluntary, and allows enormous room for American emissions to increase as the American economy expands.

The doctrine also describes at great length the administration's commitment to bolstering American foreign aid by 50 percent in the next few years in "countries whose governments rule justly, invest in their people and encourage economic freedom." It insists that the programs must have "measurable results" to assure that the money is actually going to the poor, especially for schools, health care and clean water.
[/snip]

So, there you have it. It's all about money - not need, not defense, not ethics or honor or anything good. Just money. Rich white men ensuring they remain rich no matter what.

Now I know what happened was not a botched election, but a coup d'etat, just as sordid as any that ever transpired in any Third-world country. Now I'm convinced that 9/11 was a part of the plan; that the current administration murdered 2,000 Americans and 2,000-plus Afghanis to transform our country into a nation of gangsters. Part of a long-term plan worthy of any Tom Clancy novel. Only it's for real.

I wonder how much Bush and his evil administration will be able to damage the United States before we can finally vote him out of office? I don't hold much hope for our country, especially when our representatives, such as Senator Lieberman (D-CT), fall into line to kiss Bush's ass. I wonder what Lieberman was promised if he fell into place?

I just don't know what's going to happen. And I'm trying to figure out what I can do to help restore democracy to our country. I'm ashamed of the United States right now - look where our self-indulgence and navel-gazing has brought us.

Of Interest:
Bush's Foreign Policy Blueprint. A Grand Global Plan by Jim Lobe, in TomPaine.com.
The Next World Order by Nicholas Lemann, in the New Yorker.
Don't mention the O-word, from The Economist.
Fortunes of war await Bush's circle after attacks on Iraq By Andrew Gumbel, The Independent.
Questions that Won't Be Asked About Iraq, Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX), U.S. House of Representatives, September 10, 2002.

As Stanley commented after he read the NYT article above: "If we think we've been hit by terrorists before, just wait until we start attacking other countries for no reason. Israel thinks it has problems with bombings? I'm sure that's nothing compared to what will happen to us."

From the Detroit Free Press: Law firm out $2.1 million in African fraud

[snip]
He introduced himself as Dr. Mbuso Nelson. He said he was an official with the Ministry of Mining in Pretoria, South Africa.

And he offered to pay a $4.5-million fee to a 59-year-old Rochester Hills woman if she would help him transfer $18 million from South Africa to a bank account in the United States.

The FBI said Poet, a bookkeeper for a small Berkley (MI) law firm, embezzled $2.1 million from the firm's accounts between February and August, after scam organizers persuaded her to wire huge amounts of money to bank accounts in South Africa and Taiwan to expedite the transfer of money to the United States.
[/snip]

I can't believe how unbelievably stupid this woman is.

I can't believe the bank (Bank One) didn't notice a pattern - this scam has been around for a long enough time for it to ring a few alarm bells.

I do believe the bank let the woman send wire transfers she wasn't authorized to make because I've seen first hand how banks let embezzled checks go through: First Union (CT) let a bookkeeper wipe out a small business I worked for a few years ago by cashing checks with unauthorized signatures. They never bothered to check. Banks don't give a damn about small businesses. So I hope this law firm sues and wins big, big bucks because of the bank's negligence.

I also wonder why the missing money wasn't noticed by the firm's accountant - I would assume an actual accountant would check the bookkeeper's work at least once per quarter. That's a lot of of dinero to slip through the cracks without anyone noticing.

Now, send $5 to each of the 20 persons on my list, especially to me, then cross off the first name on the list, add your's to the bottom, and send it out to everybody you can think of even if you no longer have any contact with 'em ... in 27 days you could have like $50,000 or so ... or you could be out $107.40.

Stanley and I finally got a chance to see One Hour Photo. It was excellent. I read a few of the reviews afterwards - most of the reviewers missed the point of the movie, complaining that the "other" characters were "cardboard" or not as fully developed as Robin William's Seymour Parrish (Sy - the one hour photo guy). The movie wasn't about the other characters, the family that obesessed Sy (if had been about them, the director would have probably used more well-known actors than the relatively obscure ones who played the family). The movie was about Sy. The story was told visually more than any other movie I've seen in quite a while - with the cinematography and sets and costumes. You could probably understand the movie and what was going on without any dialogue - the dialogue enhanced the movie, but wasn't essential to it. Williams played this character exquisitely well. It was a really creepy movie, about lonliness and desperation and how sterile life can be when it's not shared with people who care about you. Listen carefully to Sy's observations as he tells the detective why he did what he did. Eriq La Salle was quietly and solidly good as the detective and Gary Cole was as good as the store manager as he was as the department manager in Office Space (essentially the same role - but Cole does it well.) Definitely worth paying full price to see it (with expensive popcorn to boot).

It also gave me some design ideas for a couple of new websites we're building.

No War on Iraq. Sign the petition, send it to your Congressional representative, send the petition on to as many people as you can.

Independent News: UN to upset Bush's war plans with one-year deadline for Iraq
[snip]
The United Nations is likely to throw into disarray America's war plans for Iraq by introducing a timetable for weapons inspections that could give Saddam Hussein a breathing space of almost 12 months.

The extended timetable, which would allow the inspectors first to deploy in Iraq and then to begin and complete their complicated mission, could exhaust the patience of Washington, which envisages attacking the country much earlier, probably in February. Yesterday the Bush administration asked Congress to endorse the military option before the UN makes its move.

President Bush "reserves the right to act in the interests of the United States and its friends and allies", his spokesman said ...
[/snip]

law.com: Judge Throws Out 'Harry Potter' Copyright Suit
[snip]
A federal judge has sanctioned an author $50,000 for submitting false evidence in an unsuccessful copyright lawsuit against the publisher of the blockbuster "Harry Potter" series of children's books.

Southern District of New York Judge Allen G. Schwartz found that Nancy Stouffer had knowingly submitted fraudulent documents to the court in an attempt to bolster claims that the author of the "Harry Potter" series, J.K. Rowling, copied several ideas from Stouffer's unsuccessful children's stories.

Judge Schwartz dismissed, with prejudice, the copyright and trademark infringement claims against Rowling and Scholastic Inc., the books' publisher, and ordered Stouffer to pay her opponents' attorney fees and costs, plus $50,000 in sanctions.
[/snip]

I remember reading about this a while back. Pretty desparate of Stouffer, to forge "evidence."

netsong. Just go play with it - it's just too totally weird to miss.

From David Strom's Web Informant comes this interesting bit o' code: Axis Applet. Click on any three countries to find out what they have in common (an Axis, evil or otherwise, is defined as three countries having something in common).

After you play with that awhile, back up the URL to CODeDOC to check out what it's all about - software art with a focus on the code.

frontline: roots of terror: email from the field | PBS - thanks to fimoculous.com for the link to this amazing web journal.

W.'s Conflicts of Interest
By MAUREEN DOWD
New York Times, September 16, 2002
WASHINGTON
[snip]
When George W. Bush ran for president, he mocked Bill Clinton's addiction to pollsters and promised to tear down the cynical White House trellis of politics and policy.

As it turned out, Mr. Bush didn't need the permanent campaign. He has something far more potent: the permanent war.

Karl Rove and W. have designed a mirror-image presidency. They take everything Poppy did that conservatives regard as a mistake and reverse it.
The right thought that the father's war was too short? O.K., the son's war will be too long.
The right thought that the father's war should have ended with Saddam's disappearance? O.K., the son's war will start with Saddam's disappearance and build its rationale around that blessed event.

Like his dad, Mr. Bush is not keen on delving into tricky domestic issues like Social Security, health care and pension protection. It is hard for a Bush to envision the need for a safety net.

When the Bushes get into the bunker, democracy operates the way they like. It is not messy and cacophonous. It is orderly and symphonic. There are sheriffs and outlaws, patriots and madmen, good and evil, Churchills and Hitlers.

The Bushes love doing things in secret and without a lot of meddling from know-nothings in Congress and smart alecks ... [/snip]

and [snip]
The wartime press is respectful, producing gauzy TV interviews and square-jawed photo spreads, rectifying mangled presidential syntax and mindlessly repeating Minister of Information Ari Fleischer's celebration of the president as "resolute." [/snip]

Check out "Bush Across the Rubicon: The Mantra that Means 'This Time It's Serious'" by Robert Fisk in CounterPunch.

[snip]
... two-thirds of the way through his virtual declaration of war, there came a little, dangerous, telltale code, which suggested that President Bush really does intend to send his tanks across the Tigris river. "The United States has no quarrel with the Iraqi people,'' he said. In the press gallery, nobody stirred. Below us, not a diplomat shifted in his seat. The speech had already rambled on for 20 minutes but the speechwriters must have known what this meant when they cobbled it together.

Before President Reagan bombed Libya in 1985, he announced that America "had no quarrel with the Libyan people.'' Before he bombed Iraq in 1991, Bush the Father told the world that the United States "had no quarrel with the Iraqi people''. Last year Bush the Son, about the strike at the Taliban and al-Qa'ida, told us he "had no quarrel with the people of Afghanistan". And now that frightening mantra was repeated. There was no quarrel, Mr Bush said absolutely none with the Iraqi people. So it's flak jackets on.
[/snip]

Let's hope Fisk is wrong about this one. Though I doubt it.

Thanks to Stanley for pointing out this story in today's Chicago Tribune: A life apart: Harper Lee, the complex woman behind 'a delicious mystery.' To Kill a Mockingbird has been a book that's haunted me since I first read it about 35 years ago and I've often wondered what the author is like. Now I know a little more. The only thing I knew about her before is that she lived next door to Truman Capote as a child, and that she helped him with the research for In Cold Blood, another book that had a big impact in my life.

Edit Strategies is launched! This is our latest site; Edit Strategies provides custom editing services for school applicants, students, and business professionals.

It's an e-commerce site, launched using a free shopping cart from NOP Design and hooking into to an Authorize.net gateway. The NOP shopping cart needs some more twitching since it's somewhat limited (hey, it's FREE -- I'm not complaining, just commenting) but it works perfectly with the gateway for one-item purchases. Just need to figure out how to adapt it for multi-item purchases, if possible, and state-specific sales tax (one would think the payment gateway would take of sales tax, but it doesn't. PayPal does a much better job of this.) The solutions are already in the NOP Design forums -- just have to spend some time looking for the answers.

Also incorporated a cool form maker: CSMailto from CGIScript.net. I highly recommend this. Not only does the product work very well, and is very flexible and the programmer, at least I think Andy Angrick is the programmer, is extremely helpful. They also publish a couple of other CGI scripts I want -- I will probably order them soon. I just love it when products work the way they're supposed to! (Software, especially!)

This site was a lot of fun to build, and we were glad to get back to doing ecommerce solutions (e-commerce on a shoestring budget is possible -- this site is proof). Check it out; comments are welcomed. And, if you need essays or papers edited, our client's rates are very reasonable.

Thanks to Stanley for this Nation article: How 9/11 Changed Our Lives

One excerpt that struck home:
"Ithaca, NY
What surprises and disappoints me is how little has changed since the terrorist attacks. I thought the horrific death and destruction on our own soil so clearly demonstrated hatred and resentment toward us that we would work ceaselessly to implement an evenhanded approach to Israel and Palestine. I thought our leaders would ask us to make some sacrifices, and we'd give up our SUVs and other aspects of our everyday life built on oil gluttony and being beholden to Saudi Arabia. I thought a successful attack with box-cutters would highlight the stupidity of "missile defense" and we'd begin to change how we spent our defense dollars. I thought we'd finally acknowledge we need transportation diversity and begin creating a healthy passenger rail system with less dependence on air travel. I thought we'd become less unilateral and work harder to build alliances and honor treaties. I was so wrong.
JUDY JENSVOLD"

At the very least, I hoped the attack would jerk enough Americans out of our self-absorption to trigger a grassroots movement to restore democracy. I'm ready to join -- I just don't know what to do.

They're going to wreck Sherwood Island. They plan on building a 9/11 "memorial" on the point, allegedly facing the Manhattan skyline, which you CANNOT see from Sherwood Island. What a crock of crap. Here are the sad details of this expensive joke: Sept. 11 Living Memorial.

The "Friends" of Sherwood have been pretty systematically wrecking it -- last summer, they tore out all of the beautiful beach plums. I wish to god they'd just leave the place alone. This memorial makes no sense -- who the hell will travel to CT and pay $10 to see four trees? It's just the destruction of a nice, clear view of the sound. Sure they chose Sherwood -- just put it someplace out of the way. God forbid it should go in Greenwich. It's meaningless.

Well, I schlepped in to collect my junk, sign my layoff agreement (weird, that, eh?) sign my "contractor's" agreement, say allegedly temporary goodbyes to some people, leave my card ... I did not want to go in at all. The news was even worse than I thought. I hated every second I was there today, faithfully did my chores such as emptying out all the junk from my directories, scrubbing my email, etc. as quickly as I could, turned in my keys, and then practically ran out the door. The place looks like a neutron bomb hit -- where once there were 80, now there are about 45 or 50, max. Sad. The day before what would've been my two-year anniversary (9/11, oddly enough). I really hope this place can pull off a turnaround over the next three months -- there are so many really good and smart people there who don't deserve to be saddled with a failure.

I've had better vacations. Stanley and I left for Oscoda, MI on August 23rd. The trip was a bit nightmarish in part, but all in all, okay. When we left, all was well with our world and we were REALLY looking forward to a badly needed vacation -- days on the shore of Lake Huron, visiting my parents and other family living in Michigan, going to Bingo and maybe even winning, plans to go to the Michigan shoreline above Cross Village so Stanley could see my favorite place on the planet ...

The only thing troubling me was that my sister was feeling really sick, which, for her, is unusual.

The worst part about the trip out there was our stop in Newton Falls, Ohio, at the Rodeway Inn. We stayed there because they take pets. Well, it was fairly clean, at least, but a total creepout otherwise. We do NOT recommend it. It was pretty expensive, too, at $60 for a room in the middle of Nowhere. We got in so late there was only one place open for a meal: Kountry Kitchen. We have a rule of thumb: never eat anywhere that uses a "K" instead of a "C." It was an omen. We should've gone hungry.

Things were okay for a couple of days. We had a few problems launching a web site -- miscommunication mainly -- but worked that through so it was not really a big deal, but annoying because we wanted to relax and not have to work on a website we thought was finished.

Then, I called my sister to find out how she was doing, and she told me she was heading out the door because her doctor told her to go to the emergency room immediately. The emergency room was in a hospital about a thousand miles away, in Boston. We sat tight until we could find out what was going on. It turned out that she was in the acute phase of Wegener's granulamatosis, her kidney's had shut down, needed chemotherapy, in real trouble. So we knew we had to head back east earlier than we'd planned.

So, we're still on vacation, but we're now in Boston, and trying to help my sister and her family with stuff. Stanley never dreamed he'd have to mow almost an acre of lawn while on vacation. Or fix a toilet. I had no plans to scrub and clean and ferry kids to soccer games ... but I couldn't relax anyway while my sister is in trouble.

Then, I figured out that I've been laid-off from my part-time gig. Not found out, not notified, just figured it out. Canned along with at least eight or nine colleagues. Since NetOps turned off my access to the company email and website, I figured it out (this place is imploding, and has been for a while, so I wasn't really surprised, just annoyed that they couldn't wait until I got back from vacation to flip the switches). So I rattled the network to get my suspicions confirmed -- the network of refugees from the same place, who knew what was going on before the survivors did. Amazing.

So, my sister is sick with an illness that will threaten her the rest of her life, and a small but steady income stream has been clipped way before I was really prepared for it. Great vacation, eh? And it isn't even over. Not until Monday.

Ah well. I needed more time, anyway, now I'll have it.

What really pisses me off, though, is my sister's problem should've been diagnosed a long time ago. Her medical group, Harvard Vanguard, wouldn't let her go to a specialist earlier, and her assigned physician dismissed my sister as just another hypochondriacal woman - ignored her symptoms, gave her a prescription for Paxil, referred her to a shrink - total incompetence, which could've killed my sister. My sister's symptoms present a textbook case of Wegener's -- even though it is rare, according to everything I've read about it, it should've been an easy diagnosis to make much, much earlier if her physician had actually listened instead of making assumptions. Just another reason people should stop treating physicians as gods.