Ninety miles from the South Eastern tip of the United States, Liberty has no stead. In order for Liberty to exist and thrive, Tyranny must be identified, recognized, confronted and extinguished.
The CDC reports that more than one third of American homes are now landline-free, with six in ten adults aged under 30 living in households with only wireless phones.
It was a mystery no one could solve — until now. For months, dozens of people could not use their keyless entry systems to unlock or start their cars whenever they parked near the Hollywood Police Department. Once the cars were towed to the dealers, the problem miraculously disappeared.
Police have since cracked the case. Turns out the problem wasn't with the cars, the batteries or even user error, but an illegal pirate radio station that was jamming the signal from keyless entry systems of several makes of cars, including Lexus and Toyota. The man behind the bootleg operation likely had no idea it would lock people out of their cars, police say. Lynn Jacobson, who lives on Van Buren Street a mile west of police headquarters, was frustrated for months trying to get into her car.
"It was happening every day," Jacobson said. "We were getting desperate. It got to where every time I went out to the car I'd say, 'Please let it open.'" Detectives are still searching for the man who set up the bootleg station on the roof of the eight-story Regents bank building at 450 Park Road, a block north of police headquarters. The station was broadcasting Caribbean music around the clock through 104.7 FM, police say. If found, the man could be arrested on felony charges and face a fine of at least $10,000 from the Federal Communications Commission. An undercover detective and FCC agent found the equipment on Dec. 6 concealed under an air conditioning chiller. Four days after they removed the equipment, a man identifying himself as "Jay" left a message for a maintenance worker at the bank building, police say. When the worker returned the call, "Jay" asked if he'd taken his equipment. The answer: No, but the cops did. Most people have heard of pirate radio stations blocking legal radio stations. But keyless entry? That's so rare it's only happened once before, two years ago in Miami, an FCC official said. News of the bootleg radio station stunned drivers who'd initially heard the culprit was an antenna behind the Hollywood Police Department. The problem ended as mysteriously as it began, leaving many wondering how it had been fixed. "How do you like them potatoes?" said Mannolie Disantos, a manager at a nearby Radio Shack where several stranded car owners flocked when their electronic keys failed, only to learn their key batteries weren't dead after all. "We were blaming it on the police. The police were blaming it on the courthouse. We didn't know what was going on." The problem began in August, said Jacobson, right afer she purchased her champagne-colored Lexus. She figured she'd bought a lemon. "At first I thought it was me," said Jacobson, who started to say a little prayer every time she tried to use her electronic key. "It wasn't me. It had to be the car." Jacobson called the closest Lexus dealership, in North Miami, only to learn other car owners were phoning daily with similar complaints. "Something mystical was going on," said Jed Jacobson, her husband. "We didn't figure out it was only happening in [our] neighborhood until later." The dealership told customers it suspected the Hollywood Police Department had changed the frequency of its radio antenna. Jose Camara, a service manager at Lexus of Pembroke Pines, knew of several customers whose locked cars were towed to the dealership. "Some people thought their batteries had gone dead," he said. Managers at the dealerships, saying they couldn't replicate the problem, sent owners home without a fix. Most drivers were forced to read their owner's manual to learn how to access their manual key, Camara said. Cars made by Ford, Lexus, Toyota, BMW and Mercedes reportedly were affected. Despite the threat of hefty fines, pirate radio stations continue to crop up throughout South Florida, said Rob Frailing, a ham radio expert from Cooper City. In February, the FCC slapped Robens Cheriza with a $20,000 fine after he ignored the agency's warning to stop operating a pirate radio station in West Palm Beach. Last year, Fort Lauderdale resident Whisler Fleurinor was fined $20,000 for running a bootlegradiostation on 99.5 FM. Mercius Dorvilus, of North Lauderdale, was arrested in 2011 after deputies caught him operating a pirate station that broadcast Haitian music on 92.7 FM. "People want their own music to be played on the radio, so they set up their own radio station," Frailing said. "I think most people do it because they want to be a DJ and they want to be heard. We have it happen a lot here. We have a lot of people from other parts of the world who don't realize they can't do this. It's a crime."
On December 21, instead of waking up to fire and brimstone, I woke up and read Mitch Horowitz's “Once More Awaiting 'The End.'” Horowitz looks at our apocalypse fetish and sees a society so jaded with the present it dreams of a break from routine, even if that break is a disaster. He also points out that, as we daydream about crisis, we are doing remarkably little to address real—literally real—issues. I like Horowitz's analysis, but there is more to our fixation on zombies, Mayan calendars, and novels about the Rapture than a desire to escape ourselves. Behind much of the apocalypse talk and the questionably-ironic zombie preparation classes at REI is a sense that something fundamental is out of balance. It may be impossible to articulate but, on a low level, we feel a sense of disquiet.
I began thinking about disquiet as I was working on two sprawling radio projects. After recording long conversations with nearly four hundred strangers about the past and present, I began to hear a common refrain rise out of the clamor: the future was scary. Nobody could agree on the cause, but they shared a narrative structure. Trespass. Punishment. Redemption—maybe.
The trespass could be anything from capitalist excess to withering family values, but in both cases, it resulted from hubris. Punishment always came in the form of collapse, whether environmental or economic, abrupt or incremental. If the story continued, redemption could look like a Norman Rockwell painting, Star Trek, or a massively depopulated planet of sustainable farms.
If I had been seeking our common humanity, I found it in a primal sense that we are about to enter the punishment phase. It was tempting to dismiss the disquiet about the future as a timeless part of human nature. Maybe, as Horowitz suggests, it came from our desire for an external event to unleash personal change. Or as a reaction against living in a world of constant change. We could even chock it up to our myths. From Genesis to Prometheus, Greek legend to Hollywood extravaganza, we have a long, masochistic love affair with the narrative of overreach and punishment. This is, after all, the same narrative that rolls Cassandra out of bed in the morning, generation after generation, and she's usually wrong.
Usually.
But this nagging doubt made me take the disquiet seriously. The Americans I met were level-headed, not Cassandra-like. For them, anxiety stemmed less from feeling personally stifled than from a belief that the biggest systems supporting us were cracking at the foundations. There was a consensus that the economy was rigged, money had eroded the democratic process, and, for a large minority, environmental problems were escalating. Optimism about personal lives was mirrored by pessimism about broader change.
It is easy to say that every historical moment is unique and people always feel they inhabit pivotal moments. This is true in many ways, but attributing the disquiet to biology or psychology drags our moment outside of history and prevents us from seeing fundamentally new issues when they arise. We are more interconnected than at any point in the past and our tower of seven billion is propped up by a frail scaffolding of man-made and natural systems. As individuals, we are dwarfed less by God and Nature than by the immense scale and inertia of our own civilization. The stakes are high, the responsibility is ours alone and, perhaps for the first time, we're starting to feel it. The Mayan calendar did not resonate because most people expected an irate Mesoamerican god to knock on the front door with a jaguar hat and a flamethrower. Instead, collapse fantasies are an excuse to confront a visceral fear that, back in reality, we have created a civilization too complex to pilot and with limited time before it strikes the rocks.
Gloomy fatalism is useless, but our apocalypse fetish could be like the strange behavior of an animal sensing the first shivers of an earthquake. If we only seek explanations within and frame our behavior as timeless, we risk overlooking problems in the world we have created outside.
I say put them all in a cage match and the one that comes out alive gets the Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album.
Only extreme leftists can speak apparently, or perhaps get nominated for a Grammy award.
The nominations were announced in early December. A number of politicians have been nominated and subsequently won Grammy Awards in this category before. President Barack Obama won in 2008 with his book "The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream." He also won in 2006 with his book "Dreams From My Father."
Clinton picked up the prestigious award one year earlier—in 2005—with his book "My Life." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also won in this category in 1997 with her book "It Takes A Village."
It looks like it is Moochelles turn but the left must really be torn, can't they just give them all awards, just because they all clearly deserve it. They are all leftist ideologues that tow the leftist line. The 2013 Grammy Awards will take place on Feb. 10 on CBS.
My Inner boy needed to be stimulated so I bought myself a beginner bow. A Barnett Sportflight Recurve Archery Set from Amazon for 40 bux delivered. It has only a 25 pound draw weight but it is perfect for a beginner like me. I bought an extra three arrows so now I have a total of five arrows. This is it in my dining room. I used the box it came in and filled it with other boxes filled with styrofoam and it is working well for target practice for now. If I stand in my living room, I get a distance of a good 30 feet and I don't have to worry about going outside and scaring my neighbors. I have yet to pierce any furniture, walls or patio blinds. The bow stands almost 5 feet tall. I'm having fun with it, but it is scaring my daughters cat whom I am currently babysitting while she is out of town.
There does seem to be some heated controversy on Amazon comments about whether or not this is a recurve bow or a long bow. I could give about two shits.
It makes arrows fly through the air really fast and pierces things. Cool!
One day when I grow up, I'm gonna take my bow out to the everglades and I'm gonna go gator huntin'!
Last Thursday night around midnight, a woman from Houston , Texas was ...arrested, jailed, and charged with manslaughter for shootinga man 6 times in the back as he was running away with her purse.
The following Monday morning, the woman was called in front of the Arraignment Judge, sworn-in, and asked to explain her actions.
The woman replied, "I was standing at the corner bus stop for about 15 minutes, waiting for the bus to take me home after work. I am a waitress at a local cafe. I was there alone, so I had my right hand on my pistol in my purse hanging on my left shoulder. All of a sudden I was spun around hard to my left. As I caught my balance, I saw a man running away with my purse. I looked down at my right hand and saw that my fingers were wrapped tightly around my pistol. The next thing I remember is saying out loud, "No Way Punk! You're not stealing my pay check and tips." I raised my right hand, pointed my pistol at the man running away from me with my purse, and started squeezing the trigger of my pistol.
When asked by the arraignment judge, "Why did you shoot the man 6 times? The woman replied under oath, "Because, when I pulled the trigger the 7th time, it only went click."
The woman was acquitted of all charges. She was back at work the next day! That's Gun Control, Texas Style
DARPA autonomous surface vessel to track and follow enemy subs for months
The growing number of adversaries able to build and operate quiet diesel electric submarines is a national security threat that affects U.S. and friendly naval operations around the world. To address this emerging threat, DARPA recently awarded a contract for Phases 2-4 of its Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) program to Science Applications International Corporation, McLean, Va.
During Phases 2-4 the ACTUV program will attempt to design, construct and demonstrate an unmanned vessel that tracks quiet diesel electric submarines for months at a time spanning thousands of kilometers of ocean with minimal human input.
“Key features and technology for the vessel include advanced software, robust autonomy for safe operations in accordance with maritime laws, and innovative sensors to continuously track the quietest of submarine targets,” said Scott Littlefield, DARPA program manager.
If successful, ACTUV would create a technological strategic advantage against the burgeoning quiet submarine threat and reduce manpower and other costs associated with current ASW trail operations.
“Our goal is to transition an operational game-changer to the Navy,” said Littlefield. “This should create an asymmetry to our advantage, negating a challenging submarine threat at one-tenth their cost of building subs. The program also establishes foundational technologies for future unmanned naval systems.”
During Phase 1 the program refined and validated the system concept, completing risk reduction testing associated with submarine tracking sensors and maritime autonomy. Operational prototype at-sea testing is expected in mid-2015.
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I say put them all in a cage match and the one that comes out alive gets the Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album.
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My Inner boy needed to be stimulated so I bought myself a beginner bow. A Barnett Sportflight Recurve Archery Set from Amazon for 40 bux delivered. It has only a 25 pound draw weight but it is perfect for a beginner like me. I bought an extra three arrows so now I have a total of five arrows. This is it in my dining room. I used the box it came in and filled it with other boxes filled with styrofoam and it is working well for target practice for now. If I stand in my living room, I get a distance of a good 30 feet and I don't have to worry about going outside and scaring my neighbors. I have yet to pierce any furniture, walls or patio blinds. The bow stands almost 5 feet tall. I'm having fun with it, but it is scaring my daughters cat whom I am currently babysitting while she is out of town. 
