This is comedy gold!

First the Toyata Sienna video and now this. Clever!

As reported from Think Progress:

In a radio interview with Bill Manders on Jan. 25, Sharron Angle — the GOP candidate and Tea Party darling challenging Harry Reid for Nevada’s U.S. Senate seat — came out firmly against abortion. She even took the extreme position that women should not have control over their reproductive rights in cases of rape or incest, because it would interfere with God’s “plan” for them“

plus

MANDERS: Is there any reason at all for an abortion?

ANGLE: Not in my book.

MANDERS: So, in other words, rape and incest would not be something?

ANGLE: You know, I’m a Christian, and I believe that God has a plan and a purpose for each one of our lives and that he can intercede in all kinds of situations and we need to have a little faith in many things.

There really aren’t powerful enough words to describe what a fruitbat this lady is and the utter lack of empathy a human being could possibly hold. I think a new bar has been set.

Still trying to figure out how she could be a ‘Tea Party darling’ with the amount of government intrusion she is suggesting in her statement. Do people think anymore – at all?

I mean… really…. “Congrats! It was God’s plan you were brutally assaulted and raped. Enjoy your rape baby!”

People want to give praise and worship that?

How fucked in the head do you have to be to go along with that idea?

I can’t remember a day when the Supreme Court turned out so many decisions. It was like a celebration of sanity.

First up – exclusionary hate groups get told universities don’t have to fund their club. A tiny violin plays for them.

Next – in a surprising move that is sure to rock rulings down the line, the Supreme Court soundly sided with the 2nd Amendment. After all the trampling the Constitution has received over the last decade it was nice to see something ruled in its favor.

Finally - the horrible Sarbanes-Oxley bill got hammered.

A great start to the week!

Late last week the Obama administration released a document that outlined ideas and process for developing a more secure experience on the internet. There is a real and present danger from losing one’s confidential information through various cyber attacks. This leads to credit cards being charged for items you did not purchase, withdraws from your bank account, or even fraudulent accounts set-up in your name. It can wreck your finances, credit, and generally make life hell.

It’s worth reading the document if only to gird yourself against what will no doubt become the top panic topic du jour from the talking heads of media. The contents of the document will no doubt be distorted beyond measure.

My take from having read it is the technology and process already exist. There are many open source measures from PGP and OpenID that one can use to create a more secure precense on the web. The problem is it takes education and understanding – a focus that should have been the majority of the document but wasn’t.

Indeed, the strongest set of security tools and measures are completely useless if people don’t know how to use them and why they need to be used. Today’s internet environments like Facebook create habits that encourage one to lose their information. You become trained to click on any link someone sends (the quintessential internet security no-no), you friend anyone that sends you a request out of guilt, and post your daily information and habits for anyone to use to social engineer any answer out of you they’d like.

Creating good security habits, understanding how your information gets hacked and used, and knowing the basics for keeping the computers you use free of malware is a far better, far cheaper solution than any national internet ID plan.

Where do you get started?

One of THE best security podcasts available is Security Now! with Steve Gibson on the TWiT network. Few can interpret and relay complex information like Steve.

Though it’s a bit dry, The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team has a good set of topics that is worth reading – from creating secure passwords to avoiding social engineering and phishing attacks.

All this is very similar to the old Smokey The Bear campaign – “Only you can prevent forest fires.”

Only you can prevent yourself from getting hacked.

I think it’s George’s expression that totally kills me…

Some seriously clever marketing from EIZO and their medical imaging devices.

Thank to the Bad Astronomy blog for digging this up.

There’s been so much crap to write about lately. Whether it’s embarrassing apologies from representatives to BP (say what?) and his immediate backpedaling, companies coming together to form their own oversight committee on net neutrality in the hopes that the FCC won’t take it on themselves to screw things up, or the US being subjected to the worst ref in history and having a goal revoked – at least we have this – Portal 2 and a beautiful trailer.

Something exciting to look forward to amidst all the shit.

This toy creeped me the hell out as a young kid. It never dawned on me how in the hell would kids of that age made it through that movie in 1979…