inkbluesky

There is a larger version on flickr, its tagged poppies. 

There Is No Tomorrow

So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? As Glenn Scherer reports in the online environmental journal Grist, millions of Christian fundamentalists believe that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but hastened as a sign of the coming apocalypse.

We're not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half of the members of Congress are backed by the religious right. Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th Congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian-right advocacy groups. They include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Conference Chair Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Policy Chair Jon Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Whip Roy Blunt. The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian Coalition was Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia, who before his recent retirement quoted from the biblical Book of Amos on the Senate floor: "The days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land." He seemed to relish the thought.

I wrote about encrytption before regarding VoIP, another blogger has picked up on encryption from the internet angle, How to Protect Yourself From Big Brother

You see, there are fundamental problems with the way the internet was designed in regards to security and privacy. Every email message or web address sent unencrypted (probably every message you've sent unless you're into cryptography) bounces and is routed through open relays around the world, with the potential for snooping at every bounce. The average request for a website bounces through around 12 open relays. That means there are twelve opportunites to monitor your request, without your knowledge.

Interesting part of history usually not found in the average textbook, The Black Seminoles

The Black Seminoles were free blacks and fugitive slaves who forged a strategic alliance with Seminole Indians in Spanish Florida during the early 1800s.[1] Their ancestors reached Florida through a variety of means, such as escape from American plantations, liberation by Spanish masters, and possibly escapes from early slave ships or exploring parties. While some individual Black Seminoles were fugitive slaves, as a community, they were known as maroons — a term that describes free and quasi-free blacks who escaped to the wilderness in the New World to create their own societies.