shawnblog's blog

Do you believe in ghosts?  Have you ever seen a ghost? 
Submitted by Nancy.

Yes and no. Yes, I believe and no, I have not seen one.

Originally published at Shawn Blog. You can comment here or there.

UPDATE HERE 

Palast Charged with Journalism in the First Degree

Don't miss this information about what Bushcroft Inc. is now doing. Please link to this information, blog about it, tell everyone you know to read it and also pass it on. His site was not coming up at the time of this post (is coming up just fine now). You can also see it at OpEdNews.com

September 11, 2006

Palast Charged with Journalism in the First Degree

By Greg Palast

It's true. It's weird. It's nuts. The Department of Homeland Security, after a five-year hunt for Osama, has finally brought charges against... Greg Palast. I kid you not. Send your cakes with files to the Air America wing at Guantanamo.

Though not just yet. Fatherland Security has informed me that television producer Matt Pascarella and I have been charged with unauthorized filming of a "critical national security structure" in Louisiana.

On August 22, for LinkTV and Democracy Now! we videotaped the thousands of Katrina evacuees still held behind a barbed wire in a trailer park encampment a hundred miles from New Orleans. It's been a year since the hurricane and 73,000 POW's (Prisoners of W) are still in this aluminum ghetto in the middle of nowhere. One resident, Pamela Lewis said, "It is a prison set-up" �" except there are no home furloughs for these inmates because they no longer have homes.

To give a sense of the full flavor and smell of the place, we wanted to show that this human parking lot, with kids and elderly, is nearly adjacent to the Exxon Oil refinery, the nation's second largest, a chemical-belching behemoth.

So we filmed it. Without Big Brother's authorization. Uh, oh. Apparently, the broadcast of these stinking smokestacks tipped off Osama that, if his assassins pose as poor Black folk, they can get a cramped Airstream right next to a "critical infrastructure" asset.

So now Matt and I have a "criminal complaint" lodged against us with the feds.

The positive side for me as a journalist is that I get to see our terror-busters in action. I should note that it took the Maxwell Smarts at Homeland Security a full two weeks to hunt us down.

Frankly, we were a bit scared that, given the charges, we wouldn't be allowed on a plane into New York last night. But what scared us more is that we were allowed on the plane.

Once I was traced, I had a bit of an other-worldly conversation with my would-be captors. Detective Frank Pananepinto of Homeland Security told us, "This is a ‘Critical Infrastructure'... and they get nervous about unauthorized filming of their property.

Well, me too, Detective. In fact, I'm very nervous that this potential chemical blast-site can be mapped in extreme detail at this Google Map location.

What also makes me nervous is that the Bush Terror Terriers have kindly indicated on the Internet that this unprotected critical infrastructure can be targeted �" I mean located �" at 30 29′ 11″ N Latitude and 91 11′ 39″ W Longitude.

After I assured Detective Pananepinto, "I can swear to you that I'm not part of Al Qaeda," he confirmed that, "Louisiana is still part of the United States," subject to the first amendment and he was therefore required to divulge my accuser.

Not surprisingly, it was Exxon Corporation, one of a handful of companies not in love with my investigations. [See "A Well-Designed Disaster: the Untold Story of the Exxon Valdez."]

So I rang America's top petroleum pusher-men and asked their media relations honcho in Houston, Marc Boudreaux, a simple question. "Do you want us to go to jail or not? Is it Exxon's position that reporters should go to jail?" Because, all my dumb-ass jokes aside, that is what's at stake. And Exxon knew we were journalists because we showed our press credential to the Exxon guards at the refinery entrance.

The Exxon man was coy: "Well, we'll see what we can find out... Obviously it's important to national security that we have supplies from that refinery in the event of an emergency."

Really? According to the documents our team uncovered from the offices of Exxon's lawyer, Mr. James Baker, the oil industry is more than happy to see a limit on worldwide crude production. Indeed, the current squeeze has jacked the price of oil from $24 a barrel to $64 and refined products have jumped yet higher �" resulting in a record-busting profit for Exxon of nearly $1 billion per week.

So this silly "criminal complaint" has nothing to do with stopping Al Qaeda or keeping the oil flowing. It has everything to do with obstructing news reports in a way that no one would have dared attempt before the September 11 attack.

Dectective Pananepinto, in justifying our impending bust, said, "If you remember, a lot of people were killed on 9/11."

Yes, Detective, I remember that very well: my office was in the World Trade Center. Lucky for me, I was out of town that day. It was not a lucky day for 3,000 others.

Yes, I remember "a lot" of people were killed. So I have this suggestion, Detective--" and you can pass it on to Mr. Bush: Go and find the people who killed them.

It's been five years and the Bush regime has not done that. Instead, the War on Terror is reduced to taking off our shoes in airports, hoping we can bomb Muslims into loving America and chasing journalists around the bayou. Meanwhile, King Abdullah, the Gambino of oil, whose princelings funded the murderers, gets a free ride in the President's golf cart at the Crawford ranch.

I guess I shouldn't complain. After all, Matt and I look pretty good in orange.

*******

A personal request to readers. Many have written to ask what can be done to protect Matt and me from becoming unwilling guests of the State.

First, this ain't no foolin' around: Matt and I are facing these nutty charges. So spread the info. We believe that getting the word out is the best defense.

Second, call Homeland Security and turn us in. They seem to have trouble finding us. If you get a reward, you may choose to donate it to the Palast Investigative Fund, a 501(c)(3) educational foundation which supports our work and pays our legal fees.

Third, ask your local library to order our book, Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf? Homeland Security now reserves the right to read over your shoulder at the library; therefore, the more our agents are forced to read this subversive material, the more likely we can convince them to come in out of the cold. All kidding aside, we do ask you to request your library order the book: not everyone can afford to purchase this hardbound edition.

Our thanks to Amy Goodman at Democracy Now! and the folks at LinkTV for broadcasting our report from New Orleans and the Exxon refinery. And to Gil Nobel, host of the ABC Television's Like It Is, our Courage in Journalism award for broadcasting our report on his network's New York affiliate. Catch Gil on WABC every Sunday at noon.

In response to a deluge of requests for a copy of the New Orleans documentary, we are preparing a DVD which you may order right now at http://gregpalast.com/premiums.htm.

Originally published at Shawn Blog. You can comment here or there.

Gadget Candy: New York Fashion Week gets ShoZu'ed Don't have enough airmiles to pop to New York for Fashion Week? Compensation comes in the form of Allure Magazine. Its editors are using ShoZu's nifty 'shoot, click and share' tech to create a blog of the beautiful people...

Besides capturing all the runway action, the Allure divas will be taking their ShoZu-enabled mobiles backstage to give us a peek at the "personalities and pressures" (read: cat fights) behind the spring 2007 collections. And this is where things really get interesting. “Women want to know about fashion trends, but the real excitement is backstage - the designers, the models, the spectacle and the celebrities as well as the stumbles and the intrigue," said Marie Jones, spokeswoman for Allure Magazine.

So how does ShoZu work exactly? The free image uploading application allows camera phone owners to send photos and video clips directly from their handsets, without first transferring the files to a PC or getting bogged down in complex commands. In this way, snaps and video clips of New York Fashion Week are currently being beamed to Allure's blog. The Women’s Ready To Wear shows in Milan and Paris will also be screened on the blog's runway shortly.

Originally published at Shawn Blog. You can comment here or there.

It’s thin, light, flexible – and plastic. Brown University engineers Hyun-Kon Song and Tayhas Palmore have created a prototype polymer-based battery that packs more power than a standard alkaline battery and more storage capacity than a double-layered capacitor. Their work, published in Advanced Materials, will be of interest to the energy, defense and aerospace industries, which are looking at more efficient ways to deliver electricity.

read more | digg story

Originally published at Shawn Blog. You can comment here or there.

You have the God-given right to kick the government around--don't hesitate to do so. Edmund Muske. September 11, 1968

MVA Express., uploaded via Nokia and Flickr by shawnblog.

In November 2001, I finally got it together enough to get my Maryland Drivers License back. In 1995, it was suspended for 30 days. I lost my job, my car was repossessed and I almost married my worst nightmare (not long before I met Chris and Janet and began what was to become my dotcom nightmare). Some people have bad days, some have bad weeks or months. I have had bad years--like 7 in a row... but I'm on the upswing now!

I had been living in NYC for about 3 years and never needed or wanted a car, so I neverothered to get it back (rebel without a clue). Just before NYC, I had been living in Maine. One extremely snowy day, my "near miss" suddenly had a drastic medical condition (this happened a little too often--part of the nightmare aspect) which required an immediate trip to Walmart in Newport--only about 10 miles away... in zero visibility and with no driver's license, since she could not drive with the impending medical emergency du jour.

Wouldn't it figure that, in the middle of arctic blast conditions (this was the devastating ice storm of '98) and very literally, zero visibility, the only cop in town pulled me over--because "near misses" tags were covered with snow. Officer OMGWTF said he pulled me over because he couldn't see the tags and it was suspicious. This is all in a town of less than 5,000 where he probably still pulls over any car he has not seen before.

Always be honest with the police.

I told him I had left my wallet at my Dad's place up the road and was taking my fiancé (oh yes, I was that close) to Walmart for her dire illness. He asked for my name. For a small town cop, he had a pretty serious computer system onboard. After some yelling and a direct threat of arrest if he ever saw me driving again, he gave me a nice carbon copy of a ticket with a court date.

I finally dumped the girl (it was more like I ran away really quickly) and moved to Carmine and Bleeker. The court date came and went. Then, a sort of automotive vacation and finally, while trying to reinstate my Maryland driver's license in 2001, I found out that I had an unpaid fine in Maine and that reciprocity meant I would have to pay the fine in order to get back on the road. So, I paid it and got my license and have been happily driving ever since.

End of story? Of course not! That wouldn't be any fun, would it?

A couple of months back, I got a renewal notice. My 5 year old Maryland driver's license would expire today, 9/11/2006 (my 38th birthday) and I could either mail in my renewal or visit the local "MVA" (often know as DMV) to do it the old fashioned way (in person).

I don't like waiting in lines and I especially don't like dealing with people who are empowered only to say no. I know they are probably nice people with real lives, but people that run the MVA sometimes seem as though they are minions of the damned and are somehow strangely able to and excited by making what should take less than an hour at least two.

But, as usual, I digress...

So, I wait in line at the main "MVA" branch in Gaithersburg for 15 minutes. There was an extremely sweet Korean girl in front of me and I managed to start a conversation... about her pink Razr of all things, so the line no big deal until I got up to the counter and was told that their computers were all down and had been all morning. I was told that I could take a number and wait but they had no idea when the system would be back up... or I could visit the MVA Express, where the computers were not down, and renew my license there.

Why was there no huge sign on the door of this place to just go to MVA Express and that the computers were down? Minions of the damned, I tell you.

Off to MVA Express. Not much of a line. I sit down in front of the nice lady who is going to help me here and all seems to go smoothly for a while. She has me pose for a picture. She puts my now expired license in a drawer full of other dead licenses.

Then, the pause and long, thoughtful stare at the computer screen. Then, the hushed conversation with one of the others working a few booths down and she returns. More reading on the computer screen as she reaches back to the drawer of expired licenses to remove mine. She begins looking at my expired license and reading the screen, apparently to verify that the information was the same.

After printing a one page document and what seemed like a very long silence, she hands me both the license and the freshly printed page. With a smile and a sort of automated tone, she says, "Sir, we are unable to renew your driver's license. Please call the number on this paper for more information."

Area code 207.

So, how was I fined again when I paid them in 2001 and have never again lived in Maine? Well, there's this system known as "government" running the world today in ways that some might describe as criminal.

Just after paying a big fine to Maine in 2001 and getting my Maryland driver's license back, Maine fined me (yet never mailed me anything) for a $35 reinstatement fee. Now, I never had a driver's license in Maine (remember, that was the ticket--driving without a license). What the hell do they think they reinstated? I was never licensed to drive there!

To get my license today, I had to pay this "fee" that should never have been imposed since I did not have the document they have supposedly reinstated. Chasing this down with Maine would take at least an hour (it took 45 minutes just to pay the fine today) on the phone, so I probably won't bother.

But I will go on record with this:

The government should not be allowed to commit crime at any level. The people should be able to easily bring something as small as this to "justice" and not only get their money back for whatever error has occurred but also see to it that the problem itself is corrected so that it is not allowed to continue over and over again.

Originally published at Shawn Blog. You can comment here or there.

Windows Run Commands

Wanted to Browse fast in windows. Remember these commands. This will really save a lot of time of your. There are many commands which you might have never seen or never knew. There are certain properties of windows which you hardly know exist in windows. Here is a list of 112 run commands.

Windows Run Commands Accessibility Controls access.cpl Add Hardware Wizard hdwwiz.cpl Add/Remove Programs appwiz.cpl Administrative Tools control admintools Automatic Updates wuaucpl.cpl Bluetooth Transfer Wizard fsquirt Calculator calc Certificate Manager certmgr.msc Character Map charmap Check Disk Utility chkdsk Clipboard Viewer clipbrd Command Prompt cmd Component Services dcomcnfg Computer Management compmgmt.msc timedate.cpl ddeshare Device Manager devmgmt.msc Direct X Control Panel (If Installed)* directx.cpl Direct X Troubleshooter dxdiag Disk Cleanup Utility cleanmgr Disk Defragment dfrg.msc Disk Management diskmgmt.msc Disk Partition Manager diskpart Display Properties control desktop Display Properties desk.cpl Display Properties (w/Appearance Tab Preselected) control color Dr. Watson System Troubleshooting Utility drwtsn32 Driver Verifier Utility verifier Event Viewer eventvwr.msc File Signature Verification Tool sigverif Findfast findfast.cpl Folders Properties control folders Fonts control fonts Fonts Folder fonts Free Cell Card Game freecell Game Controllers joy.cpl Group Policy Editor (XP Prof) gpedit.msc Hearts Card Game mshearts Iexpress Wizard iexpress Indexing Service ciadv.msc Internet Properties inetcpl.cpl IP Configuration (Display Connection Configuration) ipconfig /all IP Configuration (Display DNS Cache Contents) ipconfig /displaydns IP Configuration (Delete DNS Cache Contents) ipconfig /flushdns IP Configuration (Release All Connections) ipconfig /release IP Configuration (Renew All Connections) ipconfig /renew IP Configuration (Refreshes DHCP & Re-Registers DNS) ipconfig /registerdns IP Configuration (Display DHCP Class ID) ipconfig /showclassid IP Configuration (Modifies DHCP Class ID) ipconfig /setclassid Java Control Panel (If Installed) jpicpl32.cpl Java Control Panel (If Installed) javaws Keyboard Properties control keyboard Local Security Settings secpol.msc Local Users and Groups lusrmgr.msc Logs You Out Of Windows logoff Microsoft Chat winchat Minesweeper Game winmine Mouse Properties control mouse Mouse Properties main.cpl Network Connections control netconnections Network Connections ncpa.cpl Network Setup Wizard netsetup.cpl Notepad notepad Nview Desktop Manager (If Installed) nvtuicpl.cpl Object Packager packager ODBC Data Source Administrator odbccp32.cpl On Screen Keyboard osk Opens AC3 Filter (If Installed) ac3filter.cpl Password Properties password.cpl Performance Monitor perfmon.msc Performance Monitor perfmon Phone and Modem Options telephon.cpl Power Configuration powercfg.cpl Printers and Faxes control printers Printers Folder printers Private Character Editor eudcedit Quicktime (If Installed) QuickTime.cpl Regional Settings intl.cpl Registry Editor regedit Registry Editor regedit32 Remote Desktop mstsc Removable Storage ntmsmgr.msc Removable Storage Operator Requests ntmsoprq.msc Resultant Set of Policy (XP Prof) rsop.msc Scanners and Cameras sticpl.cpl Scheduled Tasks control schedtasks Security Center wscui.cpl Services services.msc Shared Folders fsmgmt.msc Shuts Down Windows shutdown Sounds and Audio mmsys.cpl Spider Solitare Card Game spider SQL Client Configuration cliconfg System Configuration Editor sysedit System Configuration Utility msconfig System File Checker Utility (Scan Immediately) sfc /scannow System File Checker Utility (Scan Once At Next Boot) sfc /scanonce System File Checker Utility (Scan On Every Boot) sfc /scanboot System File Checker Utility (Return to Default Setting) sfc /revert System File Checker Utility (Purge File Cache) sfc /purgecache System File Checker Utility (Set Cache Size to size x) sfc /cachesize=x System Properties sysdm.cpl Task Manager taskmgr Telnet Client telnet User Account Management nusrmgr.cpl Utility Manager utilman Windows Firewall firewall.cpl Windows Magnifier magnify Windows Management Infrastructure wmimgmt.msc Windows System Security Tool syskey Windows Update Launches wupdmgr Windows XP Tour Wizard tourstart Wordpad write

Originally published at Shawn Blog. You can comment here or there.

WhiteAnthurium's

Textamerica.com deleted my sites and fired me (with no notice) after almost four years of my professional service to them but my RSS feeds are still active even though the sites are offline... another example of really bad database management but as a result, I was able to import some posts. This one is from the "My Camphone" user contribution site that I created in the early days of TA.

Originally published at Shawn Blog. You can comment here or there.

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing

Textamerica.com deleted my sites and fired me (with no notice) after almost four years of my professional service to them but my RSS feeds are still active even though the sites are offline... another example of really bad database management but as a result, I was able to import some posts. This one is from the "My Camphone" user contribution site that I created in the early days of TA.

Originally published at Shawn Blog. You can comment here or there.

Textamerica.com deleted my sites and fired me (with no notice) after almost four years of my professional service to them but my RSS feeds are still active even though the sites are offline… another example of really bad database management but as a result, I was able to import some posts. This one is from “The Blackout” on TA, a user contribution site that I created in the early days of TA that actually made the news. I was interviewed by The Wall Street Journal for an article they did on how the news traveled so quickly as the result of this and other web sites.

Originally published at Shawn Blog. You can comment here or there.

It's sad that this is not surprising.

Court rejects appeal of freelancer who taped violent rally The unanimous ruling by the three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals means 24-year-old Josh Wolf of San Francisco could return to federal prison if he continues to refuse to comply with a subpoena ordering him to hand over the videotape.