Free Republic

Dedicated to Tony Blair this 225'th Independence Day: "The World Turned Upside Down."Dedicated to George W. Bush: "Yankee Doodle."

"A no-holds barred examination of the National Security Agency..."--From the Blurb

I would like to recommend the book: "Spooked" by Adam Penenberg and Marc Berry, Perseus Publishing. It's a good, modern account of corporate spying.

Not a single post(that I could find) today (until now) about the guy killing a professor and then killing himself. His note said that he chose the victim at random.

In addition to using a firewall such as ZoneAlarm, I would like to recommend a program that removes adware and spyware from you computer. LAVASOFT has a free program that does this. Connect to (I think) www.lavasoft.de (it's a German product.) It's surprising how much junk gets into your computer. Even some shrink-wrapped packages install spyware; even before you hit the "accept" box during installation.

The following appeared on rec.games.chess.misc: According to news sources, Al Gore scored verbal 625, math 730 on the SAT tests. According to an article in the New Yorker, George W. Bush scored 566 verbal, 640 math on the SAT tests.Are these the true numbers? Just curious.

Happy Persian New Year to everyone. This celebration predates even Zarathustra, it's very ancient. Sorry I can't send baklava over the internet.

Our presidential transitions may be full of pomp, dances, rain, protesters, speeches, and other costly measures but, they are a whole lot smoother than the recent transition in the Congo People's Republic--the country formerly known as Zaire--and before that known as the Congo People's Republic.

I just saw on the news that Manny Aragon, 30-year majority leader of the New Mexico Senate is out. Richard Romero (another Democrat is in). Three Democrats and eighteen Republicans voted for Romero.

Chance News has some interesting stuff about the Florida elections and about mis-identification in courts. The site is http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Echance/index.html.

Those of you with access to the JSTOR journals repository may find it interesting to look at some of the older journals. For example, the Journal of the London Statistical Society has a discussion of the statistics of New York City for 1836--the city had about 300,000 people, etc. There are also articles about crime statistics in England and other countries.

The Double MulliganI thought this scandal could use a title.

American Composer Alan Hovaness passed away today at the age of 89.

Sources at the Park Service say that it actually took two books of matches to set the Cerro Grande fire in New Mexico. The wind kept blowing out the matches.

Evacuated 1:30am Thursday Morning. Returned Sunday Night.

No body has noted that today is VE day.

The last thread was getting long. I'm making a few comments.

On a E! biography of Alfred Hitchcock, Camille Pagalia showed up as a "Hitchcock Scholar." Does anyone know if she has been considered as such. I do not recall seeing anything about Hitch in her writings.Many of the people on the show were into psycho-babble. Hitch himself said that he made movies to entertain the audience. Not only does Hitch not make moves like Hitchcock anymore, since he passed away (presumable of natural causes) no one else has made movies like Hitchcock either.

I hope everyone saw "The Fountainhead" tonight. Gary Cooper, Raymond Massey, Patricia Neal. It was on Turner Classic Movies (guess Jane wasn't watching.) It's a great move about artistic integrity.I once recommended "The Fountainhead," "Shenandoah," and "Sugarland Express" for a college film festival; the administration overruled me.