The Fourth

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Caturday

The bathroom at the shelter where I sometimes volunteer is in the cattery. Occaisionally, a cat follows me in:

The water must be fresher (or different):

At least he can't do this:

Because It's Friday

Threshing the old way:

Another Vampire Company Resurfaces; LightSquared Ed.

LightSquared, a company that was willing to effectively shut down the entire GPS network in order to make a profit, is back. And they want the companies that make and use GPS equipment to reveal all of their proprietary information to LightSquared.

It would be fun to write a response in which the first letter of each paragraph would spell out something really rude. Companies are amoral sociopathic entities and LightSquared is a shining example of that.

GPS has been integrated into modern life. It would be governmental criminal negligence to let a pack of corporate greedheads fuck with it just so some rich clowns can make even more money. The FCC's response to LightSquared's application should be a legal and technical argument that boils down to "fuck off and die, already".

UPDATE: To launch off of Eck's first comment, below, the signal output of a GS satellite is 27 dBW or 500 watts.

The signal strength of a cell tower is 12 watts, or if I have it right, 13 dBW.

The received GPS signal, is, at best -155 dBW, which should be 0.0000000000000031 watts.

Imagine, if you will, that somebody was whispering to you on one side of you and, on the other side of you, 25 yards away, someone else was running a jet engine at full power. You couldn't hear the whisper at all and you'd be crazy to think that you could.

Well, the difference in power levels is less between the jet and the whisper and between a GPS signal and a cell tower signal.

LightSquared's threat to GPS operations should be viewed as a national security issue.

Idiot Government Officials are Going to Learn the Hard Way About Federal Civil Rights Law

Specifically 42 U.S.C. § 1988, also know as the "Private Attorney General Statute". Basically, if you bring a civil rights case in Federal court and you win, the loser has to not only pay your damages, they have to pay your attorney's fees and costs.

So every time some low-IQ politician starts bleating about how clerks and other officials can deny people same-sex marriage licenses, those aggrieved people will have no trouble finding an attorney to take the case. And since the Supreme Court has spoken on it, we're not exactly talking Clarence Darrow-grade legal work: File a complaint, have it served, get an order and blammo! As Bobby Jindal has found out:

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that Plaintiffs in each of these
consolidated cases are awarded their costs, expenses, and
reasonable attorneys' fees according to 42 U.S.C. § 1988 and any
other applicable laws.

So if the idiots in Texas want to keep on refusing to issue marriage licenses, then they can start warming up their checkbooks. And it's not beyond the realm of possibility that the courts might start holding them personally liable.

So what are they going to do, now? Pick up an axe-handle and stand in the door to the county clerk's office?

This fight is over.

The New Flag for South Carolina

I humbly propose a new flag for South Carolina:

Credit: Amhrandorcha

You should click on it, hit the "+" and take a close look at the revised state seal. Frickin' genius.

This is a week late. The email that sent this to me got lumped in with a bunch of other crap, I almost missed it. My apologies to the creator of the flag for that.

Pay Attention to John Oliver

He makes more sense on the issue of transgendered people than 99% of the non-trans people who have discussed this issue.

F-35: Dead Meat in a Gunfight

Just go read it.

The boyos at Ft. Fumble will have it build anyway. Doesn't matter if our fliers get stuck in an overweight, underpowered and wholly inferior piece of shit.

As for it being technologically superior, well, go read this old SF story.

Shorter Girl Scouts to Bigots: GFY.

Some clown gave the Girl Scouts in western Washington state a hundred grand, but then, months later, asked that none of the money be used for anything involving transgendered girls.

Two days ago, the Girl Scout Council tried crowdfunding on Indiegogo, where they explained the situation and asked for help in raising the money to return the donation. It took them a day to raise $185,000.

As of this morning, they're just shy of a quarter-mil.

O Canada

Today is "Canada Day", the day that celebrates when the British Parliament passed a law to unite the separate Canadian colonies into one in 1867, an act that got passed primarily because the Pommies had gotten tired of running the place.*

Which, of course, wasn't really independence.**

Canada didn't become a fully-independent nation until possibly 1931 or 1982, depending on what your definition of "independence" is. Which is probably why it took the Canadians about sixty or so years after the enactment of that law for them to get around to celebrating it.
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* Also, if the Americans invaded, the Brits wanted the option to just say "oh, well" and forget about it. Which would have been difficult for them to do if they still owned it (something the Argies found out the hard way).

** When the Brits declared war in 1914, Canada, as well as Australia and New Zealand, were dragged into the war whether they liked it or not.