Category Archives: Generalities

Draft targeted for Spring ’05

Legislation has been introduced to bring back the draft as soon as Spring 2005.

There is pending legislation in the House and Senate (twin bills: S 89 and HR 163) which will time the program’s initiation so the draft can begin at early as Spring 2005 — just after the 2004 presidential election. The administration is quietly trying to get these bills passed now, while the public’s attention is on the elections, so our action on this is needed immediately.

$28 million has been added to the 2004 Selective Service System (SSS) budget to prepare for a military draft that could start as early as June 15, 2005. Selective Service must report to Bush on March 31, 2005 that the system, which has lain dormant for decades, is ready for activation.

??Via: Michael Hanscom??

Switch to WordPress

Never one to stick with the same software for too long, I’ve switched the blog from Textpattern to WordPress. WordPress has been creating a tremendous amount of buzz the past few days after the big MovableType 3.0 Licensing changes came out. Initially, I had looked into WordPress for my blog, but the software seemed to “rough around the edges.” Let me tell you that right now it’s the slickest thing I’ve used. The backend is quick and loaded with features. And stability isn’t much of an issue since version 1.2 came out yesterday.

WordPress also has a large developer base and is licensed under the GPL. Textpattern, on the other hand, is developed solely by one person (Dean Allen) and has a non-free license.

The switch over was relatively painless, I used the import script provided by the WordPress installation to move all my posts over. (I did heavily modify the script to maintain post id’s, categories, and links—If you are interested in my modifications, shoot me an email at froe0071@umn.edu).

The style sheet was graciously taken from the WordPress CSS Style Competition. It is entitled Buddha and was created by Hadley Wickham.

Look for new features soon, like Asides, Since Last Visit, Style Switcher, and Stats.

Update: The import-textpattern.php script that I used is now available. It’s still a little rough around the edges, but worked well enough for me. I had to turn magic quotes on for the script to work (set_magic_quotes_runtime(1); at the top of the file).

Candidate Votes vs. IQ

Here’s an interesting chart put together by the people over at The American Assembler.

  State Avg. IQ 2000
1 Connecticut 113 Gore
2 Massachusetts 111 Gore
3 New Jersey 111 Gore
4 New York 109 Gore
5 Rhode Island 107 Gore
6 Hawaii 106 Gore
7 Maryland 105 Gore
8 New Hampshire 105 Bush
9 Illinois 104 Gore
10 Delaware 103 Gore
11 Minnesota 102 Gore
12 Vermont 102 Gore
13 Washington 102 Gore
14 California 101 Gore
15 Pennsylvania 101 Gore
16 Maine 100 Gore
17 Virginia 100 Bush
18 Wisconsin 100 Gore
19 Colorado 99 Bush
20 Iowa 99 Gore
21 Michigan 99 Gore
22 Nevada 99 Bush
23 Ohio 99 Bush
24 Oregon 99 Gore
25 Alaska 98 Bush
26 Florida 98 Bush
27 Missouri 98 Bush
28 Kansas 96 Bush
29 Nebraska 95 Bush
30 Arizona 94 Bush
31 Indiana 94 Bush
32 Tennessee 94 Bush
33 North Carolina 93 Bush
34 West Virginia 93 Bush
35 Arkansas 92 Bush
36 Georgia 92 Bush
37 Kentucky 92 Bush
38 New Mexico 92 Gore
39 North Dakota 92 Bush
40 Texas 92 Bush
41 Alabama 90 Bush
42 Louisiana 90 Bush
43 Montana 90 Bush
44 Oklahoma 90 Bush
45 South Dakota 90 Bush
46 South Carolina 89 Bush
47 Wyoming 89 Bush
48 Idaho 87 Bush
49 Utah 87 Bush
50 Mississippi 85 Bush

??Via: Michael Hanscom??