Noremacam

JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. — The Islamic State is facing international backlash today after releasing a so-called "Kill List," inviting lone-wolf agents to attempt to target the service members and their families on behalf of the terrorist organization. International condemnation has been strong since it was discovered that the list left off Capt. Marissa Steel, a finance officer in the US […]

Apple is apparently bending over backwards to make sure that its oft-rumored streaming TV service gets off the ground. New York Post sources claim that the company is willing to share viewer data with the networks, including demographics and viewing ...

If your PC won’t start then you might try to recover the situation by booting from some other recovery environment: your Windows DVD, an antivirus disc, backup tool, whatever it might be.

If you can’t find that disc -- or maybe your computer doesn’t have a working disc drive -- then you can alternatively boot from an ISO image held on another computer, with a little help from AOMEI’s new PXE Boot Free.

To try this out you must first install AOMEI PXE Boot Free on a central computer in your network. Point the program at your preferred ISO image, start its service, and that’s it: your preparations are complete.

Now, if you need to start a computer from that environment, there’s no longer any need for DVDs or USB keys. Just switch the system to "Network boot" in the BIOS, and as long as it’s connected to the same network as the AOMEI PXE Boot Free computer, it should boot from your source image. Eventually, anyway (naturally it’ll take a few minutes longer than usual).

AOMEI says the program doesn’t currently work with UEFI PCs. We’re not sure why, and didn’t test that specifically, but it’s a significant limitation.

If you can live with that, AOMEI PXE Boot Free is a very straightforward tool, easy to use and with plenty of documentation to help you get it working properly.

People going crazy at Walmart is the usual. People going crazy on Black Friday is the usual. People going crazy at Walmart on Black Friday is a vicious concoction that will leave us all amazed. Make sure you’ve got your camera game on lock down Thursday Night into Friday!

South Carolina & Tennessee

The post People Of Black Friday: Part 2 appeared first on People Of Walmart.

Maybe I am being too harsh, but science writer and sometime TV star Bill Nye has a lot to answer for. When a person sets himself up as a spokesman for something abstract called "science," he should act responsibly. Imagine someone called "The Democracy Guy" or "The Medicine Guy" who rendered judgments on a subject he hadn't fairly studied and did not accurately represent.

Star of the former PBS show Bill Nye the Science Guy, a one time engineer and comic writer, Nye now believes he has found a role in combating the politicization of science. In a hagiographic profile from Nicole Brodeur of the Seattle Times, Nye makes the kind of straw man argument that exemplifies the very thing he claims to oppose: politics posing as science.

Nye says he is confronting people in the country who "run around these congressional districts trying to change science education to fit this wrong idea" about evolution. And what is that wrong idea? That "the Earth is...10,000 years old."

1) He should name a congressional district where Young Earth Creationism (holding that the Earth is only 6-10,000 years old) is being seriously considered as a part of public education -- especially a mandatory part. I don't think he can. If he has been touring the nation's congressional districts he must know this. But no, he is contesting a straw man.

2) The idea he actually wants to vilify is intelligent design, but that is something very different. Indeed, Stephen Meyer's book, Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design, is based on the latest scientific evidence pertaining to the Cambrian explosion of complex life forms some 530 million years ago.

Even in the case of ID, the object is not to require its instruction in schools, a notion that Discovery Institute has consistently opposed. Rather, responsible academic freedom legislation would allow students to know the scientific evidence on both sides of the debate about Darwinian evolution -- not, mind you, intelligent design.

Why doesn't Mr. Science Guy talk about real science issues instead of straw men?

Image credit: Pete Chadwell/Dynamic Arts.

Warning: This blog is written for a rational audience that likes to have fun wrestling with unique or controversial points of view. It is written in a style that can easily be confused as advocacy for one sort of unpleasantness or another. It is not intended to change anyone's beliefs or actions. If you quote from this post or link to it, which you are welcome to do, please take responsibility for whatever happens if you mismatch the audience and the content.
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It's hard to measure this sort of thing, but I nominate the Trayvon Martin protests as the least effective protests in modern history. They might qualify as some sort of world record. And that is a tragedy on top of a tragedy.

You can Google Trayvon Martin if you're not familiar with the case. I assume it's not getting much coverage overseas.

My understanding of the Trayvon Martin protests is that the participants would like the public to stop believing that young African-American males are crime-prone. The strategy for accomplishing this involves holding largely peaceful protests in which a small number of young African-American males are likely to be filmed by news crews wearing masks, breaking store windows, threatening innocent motorists, and getting arrested. That's exactly what I watched on the news last night as Oakland was starting to heat up.

The trouble-makers are a small percentage of the protesters - maybe 1%. The problem is that the 1% gets the lion's share of news coverage, thus reinforcing the racial bias that the peaceful protesters are trying to combat. In terms of managing the public's impressions, the protests are an epic fail.

On a related topic, I'm fascinated by the way humans reflexively group things. In this case, most observers see this as a racial situation: black versus non-black. And yet no one believes Zimmerman would have made the same boneheaded moves if he had seen an African-American woman in his neighborhood instead of a man. Or an African-American child at age ten. Or even a middle-aged black dude in a sweater-vest. The fact that Trayvon was young and male was at least half of what made him seem suspicious to Zimmerman, one presumes.

As a male who was once young, I can confirm that most of my offenses against humanity happened in my early years. My testosterone was high and my frontal lobes were only partly formed. That's a recipe for trouble, and I caused my fair share. I also grew out of it, right on schedule.

The most effective type of protest I can imagine after the Trayvon Martin verdict would involve demands for greater science literacy. That sort of movement doesn't attract too many vandals and it effectively puts racists in the "ignorant" box instead of the "evil" box. That's a game-changer. In the year 2013, perhaps the African-American community needs fewer leaders who are ministers and more who are scientists. Just a thought.