Max: Australian Coverage of the Apollo 11 Launch

Watch it here.

Max: Same Old Story

Via the International Herald Tribune

A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

Max: The Rantings of a Terrorist

When 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.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Max: The Lord's Day

Today's sermon:

Jericho: The Geek Choir of Angels

For four minutes and thirty five seconds in February 1985, the "keytar" was cool.

Heck, this wasn't just cool - this was pure, uncut, whole grain awesome!

I remember watching this part of the Grammy awards that year. I hated award shows (still do) - they were usually boring. But, they kept saying Thomas Dolby, Herbie Hancock, Howard Jones and Stevie Wonder were going to perform. These were four artists I admired the hell out of, even at the tender age of 13. I wasn't aware they were going to perform together.

I watched this performance in gape-mouthed awe. The stacks of synths, computers and who knows what else, the colorful players, the music! My fascination with electronic music and jazz was sealed whether I knew it or not.

Today I heard a song from Howard Jones and thought about this performance. I felt an odd pang of regret that I didn't have a recording of this. But, then my brain kicked in and said "Duh! You Tube?" ... and of course You Tube delivered like Dominos! Could I love You Tube more? No!

Looking back, this performance isn't significant as a work of art - it's for an awards ceremony after all. Its significance flows from the fact that it was a cooperation of four great performers and it was a ton of talent on one stage. This is something that formed a bit of who I am and I'm happy to be able to share it with you all.

Max: St. John the Baptist HS to Close

STLtoday

Leaders at the last Catholic parish high school in St. Louis have decided to close its doors at the end of this school year, citing declining enrollment and increasing costs, and leaving students and parents in tears Friday.

The parish and finance councils at the 84-year-old St. John the Baptist College Prep High School met Thursday night to make their final decision.

Max: Will You Be Able To Skip And Use Semaphore?

Crestwood mall to become open-air lifestyle center

Crestwood Plaza will be at least partially demolished and transformed into an open air lifestyle center, according to one of its new owners, Chicago-based Centrum Properties.

Centrum along with New York investment advisor Angelo, Gordon & Co purchased the 48-acre mall from Australian shopping-mall giant Westfield Group for an undisclosed sum. Westfield bought the mall, built in 1957, for $106.4 million in 1998.

The deal, reported first in the Post-Dispatch by columnist Joe Whittington two months ago, closed on March 26. The mall has been temporarily renamed Crestwood Court.

'It had not been aggressively managed for years,' said Sol Barket, Centrum's managing partner of retail development. 'We saw it as a great opportunity to create an open air lifestyle center.'

Max: Do All Companies Have to be Evil?

Do All Companies Have to be Evil?

In the 1987 film Wall Street, Michael Douglas’s character, the high-rolling corporate raider Gordon Gekko, explains why America has lost its standing atop the industrial world: “The new law of evolution in corporate America seems to be survival of the unfittest. Well, in my book you either do it right or you get eliminated.” He elaborates:

“The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed—for lack of a better word—is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms—greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge—has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed—you mark my words—will not only save Teldar Paper but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.”

In the now famous “greed” speech, we find several myths that I hope to bust in this article: that capitalism is grounded in and depends on cutthroat com­petition; that businesspeople must be self-centered and egotistical to achieve success; that evolution is selfish and only winnows and never creates; and, of course, that greed is good.

Humans are by nature tribal and xenophobic, and thus evolution has enabled in all of us the capacity for evil. Fortunately, we are also by nature prosocial and cooperative. By studying how modern companies work, we can gain insights into the evolutionary underpinnings of our morality, including concepts such as reciprocity, altruism and fairness. When we apply these evolutionary findings to economic life, we learn that Enron and the Gordon Gekko “Greed Is Good” ethic are the exception and that Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” motto is the rule. Two conditions must be present to accentuate the latter: first, internal trust reinforced by personal relationships, and, second, external rules supported by social institutions. The contrast between Enron and Google here serves to demonstrate what in corporate environments creates trust or distrust.

...

Max: Flashback

Max: The Wonderful World of Early Computing

Neatorama » The Wonderful World of Early Computing

Max: The Civil War In Four Minutes

The Civil War In Four Minutes

Max: Map Mystery

Centuries-Old Map Baffles Researchers

The map was created by the German monk Martin Waldseemuller. Thirteen years after Christopher Columbus first landed in the Western Hemisphere, the Duke of Lorraine brought Waldseemuller and a group of scholars together at a monastery in Saint-Die in France to create a new map of the world.

The result, published two years later, is stunningly accurate and surprisingly modern.

"The actual shape of South America is correct," said Hebert. "The width of South America at certain key points is correct within 70 miles of accuracy."

Given what Europeans are believed to have known about the world at the time, it should not have been possible for the mapmakers to produce it, he said.

The map gives a reasonably correct depiction of the west coast of South America. But according to history, Vasco Nunez de Balboa did not reach the Pacific by land until 1513, and Ferdinand Magellan did not round the southern tip of the continent until 1520.

Max: Science FTW

On this day in 1859 On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin was first published.

Max: Drain Bump

I was a year and a day ago that I posted my first Brain Dump.

A year ago I was broke and unemployed.

But for just about a month I knew what it was like to be motivated. FOr jsut about a month, I found out what it felt like to not be depressed for what seemed like the first time in my life.

Now, I can picture myself and what I was doing, but I can't remember, I can't even imagine, what it felt like to be a real, functioning human being.

Max: Loop de Loop

The Delmar Loop has just been named one of the 10 greatest streets in America.

Not long ago, the Delmar Loop was nothing more than a strip of mostly vacant, boarded-up storefronts. Missing was the energy and vitality of today's street, an eclectic arts, entertainment, dining, and shopping district in University City, Missouri.

The American Planning Association has selected the Delmar Loop as one of 10 Great Streets in America because of the sustained efforts of local business, government, and the community to achieve successful physical and economic revitalization.

Max: What Am I

As a long time narcissist, I am always fascinated to learn what people think of me. Back in high school - depending upon whom you ask - I was a drug dealer, a dangerous lunatic, a harmless geek to be taken under the wing of the cool kids, mildly retarded, too smart to be allowed out among the general public, etc.

It seems people are still playing the "What is Max" game, and are still getting it wrong.

Some people think I am a "liberal", other think I am "conservative". Jericho thinks I am a dangerous water-brain, but not in a bad way. Perhaps the clearest indication people think I am a fellow traveler (either on the left or the right) are the email forwards they send me. For instance, I was recently sent a forward, sent by one of my more leftish acquaintances, that crows about how Ronnie Regan, upon meeting his Veep's namesake, stated that the young W was slightly less intelligent than a lobotomized squirrel. Another I received today talked about how Oliver North once warned a Senate committee about the serious danger posed by allowing a little know terrorist named Osama bin Laden. He was, of course, laughed at by the know it all liberals who then controlled the Senate.

I am guessing the latter thinks I am part of the Faux News brigade - liberals are all evil and stupid, conservatives are all good, godly men trying to save the country from the depredations of the left.

Some call me a socialist because I support universal health care. Some call me a libertarian because I don't want the government to force me to pretend I am a good Christian. In fact, I am both and neither.

Yes, I support universal health care. Anyone who glibly dismisses health care - if you like the post office, you'll love government health care - has never been unemployed, uninsured, broke and told that someone they love is in dire need of surgery. Much less two surgeries in as many months.

Yes I oppose government enforcement of any religion. If you want to flagellate yourself because you think your imaginary friend will reward you after you die, that is your problem. I don't care to join in.

So what am I? I call myself a realist. I prefer facts to the brain-dead rantings of any ideologue of any stripe. That is why my reaction to the two forwards mentioned above was not amusement at those stupid (liberals/conservative). Rather, I was mainly disgusted. Why? Because neither of the above incidents happened. There is no record at all of what, if any, opinion Ronnie Rayguns had of GW. And at the time of the supposed Senate hearing, almost everybody considered ObD a hero because he lead the fight to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan.

If anything, I am tired. I am tired of the drooling fantasies of ideologues and demigogues. I am tired of people waving a book at me (Bible, Koran, The Wealth of Nations, The Communist Manifesto, whatever) expecting me to turn my brain off and join in the blind stupidity.

If anything, I am disgusted. I am disgusted at people who think that yelling and cutting off people's mics make them experts and the rest of us fools. I am disgusted at people who have never read a real book declaring that the founders of our country were all right wing fundies. Thomas Jefferson took greater pride in leading the fight to repeal a law making Christianity the official religion of Virginia than he did in authoring the Declaration of Independence. And I am disgusted at people who think that just because one or more of our (proud slave owning) founders blindly held to some belief that we all should.

So, yeah. That's me.

Max: 9/11x6

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

"The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."

"The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes."

"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance."

Here's to what used to be what the USA stood for.

Fuck you all for the sheep you are.

Max: Damn Time Dilations

Max: Cuarto de Julio

Happy Independence Day.

Make sure to blow some shit up in celebration of the freedoms we apparently don't want any more.

Max: BBC NEWS | Russian ex-president Yeltsin dies

Russian ex-president Yeltsin dies

Boris Yeltsin, who played a key role in the Soviet Union's demise and became Russia's first president, has died aged 76, the Kremlin says.

He may have become something of a joke in his later years, but I will always remember the brave leader who stood up and fought the coup that tried to bring an end to Gorbachev's reforms.

Max: Pax Moderna

Edge 206

In sixteenth-century Paris, a popular form of entertainment was cat-burning, in which a cat was hoisted in a sling on a stage and slowly lowered into a fire. According to historian Norman Davies, '[T]he spectators, including kings and queens, shrieked with laughter as the animals, howling with pain, were singed, roasted, and finally carbonized.' Today, such sadism would be unthinkable in most of the world. This change in sensibilities is just one example of perhaps the most important and most underappreciated trend in the human saga: Violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species' time on earth.

In the decade of Darfur and Iraq, and shortly after the century of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, the claim that violence has been diminishing may seem somewhere between hallucinatory and obscene. Yet recent studies that seek to quantify the historical ebb and flow of violence point to exactly that conclusion.

Max: Thomas Jefferson Hates America

Muslim Congressman Sworn In On TJ's Koran

Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, found himself under attack last month when he announced he'd take his oath of office on the Koran -- especially from Virginia Rep. Virgil Goode, who called it a threat to American values.

Yet the holy book at tomorrow's ceremony has an unassailably all-American provenance. We've learned that the new congressman -- in a savvy bit of political symbolism -- will hold the personal copy once owned by Thomas Jefferson.

I love it when the founding fathers stick it to the right-wing nutballs.