LiveJournal Project - January 2004

2 years down, 5 to go.

Date: 2004-01-04 11:58
Subject: where am i going? and why am i in this handbasket?
http://www.casinocitytimes.com/news/article.cfm?contentID=140114

LAS VEGAS -- Las Vegas hotel operators and airlines serving McCarran International Airport are being required by the FBI to turn over all guest and passenger names and personal information, at least during the holiday period, several sources said Tuesday. FBI spokesman Todd Palmer confirmed the federal action and said the requirement that the companies surrender customer information is a "normal investigative procedure."

However, Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for the Nevada Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the program "clearly is not part of a normal investigation. "What we seem to be witnessing at this point is a move on the part of the government to keep tabs on what everyone is doing all the time, which has serious civil liberties implications," Lichtenstein said. "It's one thing to have some specific security concerns and a targeted investigation with some basis in fact, but to ... try to follow everyone goes beyond what is called for."

Hotel operators who asked not to be identified said the information being provided to federal officials includes guest and passenger names, addresses and personal identification information, but not casino records or guest gambling information. But Palmer said "at this point" all the bureau is getting is guest and passenger names. He also said the program was started about a week ago but the timing varied for different companies. He said the program was started because the Department of Homeland Security increased the national alert status, and that all cities of 50,000 or more had been told to "what was needed to make sure the cities were safe and secure."

Palmer said the Las Vegas FBI office has not been told what other cities are affected by similar programs. He said the FBI in Las Vegas is receiving 100 percent cooperation from the gaming companies and airline operators. Hotel operators said similar information was demanded by federal authorities for about six months following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York City and the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C.

Spokesmen for the casino companies said they agreed unanimously a week ago to comply with the FBI demands except for one company which insisted on receiving "national security letters" before surrendering guest records. Airlines are complying under subpoena from federal authorities. President Bush signed legislation earlier this month expanding the authority of the bureau and other U.S. authorities conducting counterterrorist intelligence. The law authorizes them to demand records from financial companies including casinos without seeking court approval.

Previously, casino companies generally released such private information only under subpoena. But under the new law, they will be required to release it if national security letters are issued by federal investigators. The information is being transmitted electronically to the FBI on what could amount to 300,000 visitors to Las Vegas daily. The program of collecting information on guests and passengers was started following a meeting called by federal and state law enforcement agencies.

Bill Thompson, University of Nevada, Las Vegas professor and casino industry expert, called the federal collection of information an invasion of privacy for Las Vegas visitors. He warned it could discourage visitors from coming to Las Vegas. "It creates an image like Central America, where (security) people stand around on street corners with their Uzis and it doesn't feel good," he said. "It's going to be cumbersome, bothersome and hurt tourism generally if it persists at all."

Visitors interviewed Tuesday on the Strip were less concerned about the FBI program.

Just listen to these fuckwits: (commentary mine)

Ronald Cohen of East Windsor, N.J., said he could see the World Trade Center site from his office, and he doesn't worry about privacy issues any more. "Anything they do is a good thing. I have no problems with it, "he said.

Nathan Irby of Baltimore agreed, saying the program may be a small invasion of privacy, "but it's justified because they have to take every precaution after 9-11."

Still another person agreed.

"In today's world, it makes sense for the FBI to look at these lists, and they'd be crazy if they didn't do it," said Paul Van Oost of Melbourne, Australia.

Representatives of casino operators said they would not comment on any specific security measures taken to protect their guests, but they said the safety of their guests is their top concern. A spokeswoman for Southwest Airlines, Christine Turneabe-Connelly, said FBI officials recently subpoenaed airline records for all passengers traveling into or out of Las Vegas from Dec. 22 through Jan. 4. She was uncertain what specific information the airlines were required to turn over to authorities. But she said her Dallas-based carrier complied with the FBI requests in an effort to protect its passengers' safety.

Officials at America West Airlines, the airport's second-largest carrier, wouldn't comment on whether they have been asked to supply specific information about the airline's Las Vegas operations. But spokeswoman Janice Monahan said the Tempe, Ariz.-based airline is cooperating with federal anti-terror efforts, including fulfilling government "requests for information" as well as meeting increased security directives. Earlier this year, Kew Gardens, N.Y.-based JetBlue Airways drew the ire of consumer advocates and attorneys in two states after the discovery that the airline released private passenger information to an Alabama company at the request of the U.S. Department of Defense, USA Today reported in August. Several class-action lawsuits stemming from that action are pending, JetBlue spokesman Gareth Edmondson-Jones said Tuesday. But he said the federal government is not investigating. Edmondson-Jones also said he was unaware of the FBI's recent request for information regarding Las Vegas airline passengers.

Date: 2004-01-06 21:37
Subject: more news of the absurd
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0106LostTicket06-ON.html

apparently, some stupid bitch in ohio claimed that she "lost" the $162 million winning ticket and filed a police report and all -- and now that someone else has come forward with the winning ticket, she's filing a lawsuit to prevent the woman with the ticket from being paid. come on, how fucking recockulous is this?! according to the article, the ohio lottery says that winning tickets are bearer instruments - which means if you've got possession of the ticket, it's your money. now, i don't believe this whiny sob tale of "oh woe is me, i'm a sorry crackwhore that can't get a real job so i'm going to try to bilk the state out of it" to begin with, but even if ms. battle actually did buy the winning lottery ticket, if she were so bloody stupid as to have lost the damn thing in the first place, then she might as well just go and shoot herself and remove her sorry brainless ass from the gene pool.

i've heard of a lot of scams to try to get rich quick at someone else's expense, but this one's fuckin' ridiculous. even if the woman that actually had the ticket didn't come forward, did the empty-handed dumbass honestly think that she'd get paid a $162 million lottery jackpot based on little more than a tale of woe? fuckin' christ, lay off the drugs.

Date: 2004-01-10 14:57
Subject: because it's worth reading.
something along the lines of what i would say, but done in a much less hostile manner

Time: 22:18
Subject: bush sucks!
http://www.bushin30seconds.org

apparently this has been around for awhile, but i just happened to stumble across it via a banner ad which was running on CNN.com - it's a contest which was put together by moveon.org to create 30 second anti-bush ads. they've got the 15 finalists, you can vote and choose your favorite, and the winning ad will be shown on national television during the week of shrubya's state of the union address.

some of the ads are definitely better than others, but i'll be curious to see what kind of impact the winning ad has on public opinion of that asshole in the white house.

Date: 2004-01-16 21:39
Subject: and in other news....
cory and i went up to lake tahoe on monday for a skiing adventure, and unlike the last time i attempted to engage in wintery sports involving pieces of shit clamped to my feet, this time it went pretty well. we hit up heavenly for our snowy mayhem, and i took a lesson from their ski school. probably the most noteworthy things that have been indelibly committed to my memory from that experience are "stay in your wedge" and "turn your feet". yeah. but anyway, i've managed to go from being a level zero skier to a level three skier in the span of one day - i know how to turn and how to stop - two skills which, although fundamentally important, seemed to be rather lacking when i tried skiing the first time. unfortunately, the rental boots i had ended up becoming really painful after a few hours, so that was the extent of my skiing. apparently, not too many boots are made for people with wide feet, so you can imagine how much it would hurt to walk after having your feet continually compressed while at the same time supporting all your weight for a few hours with no break. anyway, that ended the first day of ski fun; i wasn't able to go back out on the slopes the second day due to foot issues; when i woke up on wednesday morning i was having trouble even walking - the pain subsided by the middle of the day, but by then it was too late to go back to the hotel, get my gear, and get to the snow. so i have three days left worth of lift-ticket that i need to use before the end of the season - and unlike last time, i actually enjoyed myself, so i'll be back at it again. and thanks to caesar (of caesar's palace fame, not caesar that died in rome) i got my own pair of ski boots out of the venture -- won a few hundred dollars playing blackjack and spent the money on a pair of boots that are actually made for wider feet. unfortunately, i haven't been able to try them out yet, but they're really comfortable, and probably will be the last pair of ski boots that i ever need. i blame cory for all of this - it looks like she's gotten me hooked on skiing. =/ that's about the extent of the ski trip. i've got a few pictures that will make it online somewhere at some point.

moving right along... we saw chris rock at the dodge theatre last night - fourth row seats - he was fuckin' hilarious. there's a review posted at azcentral which pretty much sums up the evening. i laughed more or less non-stop for the entire two-hour performance.

that about covers the week, i'd say. school starts again on tuesday, and i'm not particularly looking forward to it, since this is going to be the semester of bullshit classes that are requirements for my political science degree, but at least this is the last semester of that kind of shit. wee.

Date: 2004-01-20 01:07
Subject: caucuses shmaucuses
as i'm sure everyone who follows the news is aware, john kerry won the iowa caucus tonight and howard dean came in third, and i'd venture a good part of dean's 3rd place finish had something to do with a comment which was attributed to him from a few years ago that came out and embarassed him not too long ago: "If you look at the caucuses system, they are dominated by the special interests in both parties," he said. "[And] the special interests don't represent the centrist tendencies of the American people. They represent the extremes. And then you get a president who is beholden to either one extreme or the other, and where the average person is in the middle." personally, i never really paid too much attention to the iowa caucuses before this year, because i always thought that it was a ridiculously over-hyped event and i could never understand why everyone gives such a shit about iowa in the first place. but this year, i decided to do a little more research on how the whole caucus system works, and now i'm even more convinced that it's archaic and completely inane.

here's how it works: people go and stand in line and get together in a big tent or auditorium, and like the people screaming for their favorites in "battles of the bands", the caucus-goers go stand in a corner signifying which candidate they support. if your candidate doesn't get a sufficient number of people in his corner, he's deemed "nonviable" and you either have to go support another candidate or you go home. out of town and can't make it to the caucus place? no vote for you. so that means if you're an iowa resident, doing your patriotic duty over in iraq, you have NO SAY. too ill to make it to the caucus place? no vote for you. can't get time off work? no vote for you. yeah, folks, iowa is the bastion of democratic representation.

i've got to give wesley clark some credit for being intelligent enough to realize that iowa is a pile of shit and not even bothering with the caucuses. i wouldn't campaign there, either.

Time: 01:56
Subject: pictures
if anyone cares, there are some new pictures posted in my gallery:

• january skiing
• kitty porn
  Ed: pics included below

oh yeah, and this is funny if you spend any time in the gym at all: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/par10.htm

Time: 21:25
Subject: i thought i graduated from high school?!
that's right, kids, it's the first day of the semester, and the word of the day is "bullshit." i really don't know how i'm going to make it through the 100-level classes that i'm signed up for this term without going absolutely postal on someone. why am i taking 100-level classes, you ask? because, unfortunately, i don't have any choice - they're part of the core requirements for a political science degree, and instead of doing what most people probably do when they start a degree program (take the intro classes first) i made the mistake(?) of taking all the upper-level classes first because i thought they'd be more interesting. now here i am, with just a few classes left on my list, in the miserable position of needing to take both POS 101 (political ideologies) and POS 160 (global politics). the first meeting of both of these classes was today, and after leaving each one i just found myself more and more upset and pissed off with the structure of the modern university education and the cogs which make up that machine. the target of my ire for today is professors who seem to think that they're meant to be our babysitters, and, as such, have mandatory attendance policies. hey, asshole, i graduated from high school 10 years ago, i don't need you to keep tabs on me. if i come to class or if i don't, it shouldn't make a rat's ass worth of difference. if my assignments are well done, you give me an A. if they aren't, you give me some other grade. that's all i ask. don't make me sit through this insufferable boredom, listening to you spew shit at me that chances are, i already know.

professor M is going to be taking attendance, with attendance points making up 20% of my grade, so even if i ace all the assignments, i still can't get an A in the class. professor B is going to be giving 6 surprise quizzes over the course of the semester, all of them combined making up 10% of my final grade. theoretically, i could skip them all and still get an A in the class, but there's a catch: if you miss three or more of these quizzes, you automatically fail the course. what kind of bullshit gestapo insanity is that?1 goddamn attendance nazis. i should not be penalized for being intelligent enough to learn the material and produce quality work without having to sit through lecture if i don't feel like it. i should not be penalized because the rest of the class probably can't do the same, or because you as a professor feel some need to guide your little sheep through the forest.

so now i have a dilemma. i can already tell that the next four months are going to be pretty fuckin' miserable when it comes to school, but i found out today that ASU is going to be offering japanese 201/202 on campus this summer (which is apparently a new development). this means that if i can manage to grind out this semester without killing anyone (myself included), i'd be able to graduate at the end of the summer with both majors completed (BA-political science, BS-math). i could also decide to say fuck the political science degree and just do a minor in poli sci, in which case all i need to graduate is to complete my foreign language requirement and take a "bridge" class (i'm signed up for that this term). i could also reach the conclusion (a conclusion i've reached many times) that this whole school endeavor has been a complete waste of time, effort, and money, and that there's no point in being miserable for another four months when i have no concrete plans to continue my formal education in the first place. it's not like i need to get a degree to further my career or any of that standard bullshit, and i'm more than capable of simply picking up a book on a subject that interests me and learning material that way. and for anyone who's thinking things along the lines of "but you're almost there, you might as well finish it," i'll tell you now to save your breath. i'm not one of those people that gets hung up on finishing something simply for the sake of finishing it; i find that sort of attitude somewhat limiting and narrow-minded.

the bottom line, i think, is that i always expected college to be a place where i could go and be around other intelligent people who were actually interested in and engaged in the subject matter, and those expectations have been sorely unmet here at ASU. yet i continue to suffer through it in the hopes that grad school would be better - and obviously, one cannot get into grad school in the first place to find out if this is true or not if one hasn't played the game and gotten that worthless piece of undergraduate paper. maybe what i'm really afraid of is that if, after finishing the undergrad experience, i DO get into a decent grad program (in what, i don't know - law, maybe) and i find that it's just more of the same shit, and that i wasted a hell of a lot of time going nowhere.

Date: 2004-01-29 09:46
Subject: changing focus yet again.
the spring semester is underway, and as i stated in my previous post, i've not been too pleased with the way it's been unfolding, at least from an academic perspective. a couple days ago, i decided to take a good hard look at this whole school endeavor that i've been wading through, and try to come up with reasons for continuing it, as well as lists of things that i'd like to do in addition to / instead of it. there's really no contest. i've reached a point in my life (actually, i've probably been there for awhile) where i see no compelling reason to endure the stifling bullshit that is arizona state academia. this is not to say that i've magically learned everything there is to know, but to reach the conclusion that if i really want to study something, i can do it better (i.e., more knowledge and less frustration and annoyance per time-unit spent) on my own. whether that independent excursion be via internet-based classes where i sink or swim based entirely on my own merits without need to endure the endless procession of airheaded blondes and fratboy alcoholics that parade through traditional college settings, or whether it simply be a matter of picking up a book or two and reading, i see the self-study route as infinitely preferable.

_purpleglitter_ mentioned in one of her recent entries that since she's doing more art/architecture stuff this semester she's found it difficult to maintain an interest in latin and classical studies, and i think something similar is happening for me - i've reached the extent, more or less, of my interest level in political science. i've studied a bunch of it, learned all sorts of things, and while i can give you all kinds of argument on all manner of international security theories, models of terrorism, and whatnot, it's really no more than an exercise in mental masturbation which has ceased to be worthwhile. i have no plans to ever be in a position where i have any influence on foreign policy, nor any friends who are well-versed on any of the material to engage in heated discussions with. i've simply learned all that i care to know (at least at this point) about the subject, and it's time to do something different.

i'm going to head over to the biology camp - specifically neuroscience and human physiology. i've always been interested in how the brain works, and since i've been spending a bunch of time in the gym, i'd like to have a more technical understanding of how muscle development, neuromuscular connections, nutrition / food chemistry, and all that stuff. i'd like to have a better understanding of how brain chemistry works, and how the various things i've consumed over the years affect that chemistry - and i'd like to have that understanding from a more rigorous level, not just from some sensationalist layman-oriented article on a website which probably isn't believable in the first place. i'm hoping that this might prove a more engaging subject than some of my previous adventures, in the sense that i'll be able to connect the things i'm LEARNING with the things i'm DOING. that connection is something that's been lacking in every field of study i've had up to this point, and i'm wondering if perhaps that disconnection is related to what i call my three-year attention span when it comes to fields of study. it's worth looking into, in any event.

the point of all this? well, for the time being, i'm going to tell asu to kiss my ass, and devote the next four months to things that i actually want to learn (this was my original intent in going back to school in the first place, which somehow managed to get perverted into a "gotta graduate" mentality that caused unnecessary stress and annoyance) as well as things that i want to do that i've been putting off for far too long. maybe i'll get that actual piece of paper one of these days, maybe i won't. it really doesn't matter as long as i'm doing what i want to be doing.
Music: cory's alarm clock going off in the background
Mood: thoughtful