Bandelier
Mon May 30 2005 23:05 MDT #Yesterday morning we went up to Bandelier National Monument and got in a quick hike before the Thunderstorms started to roll in ...
Poppy
Tue May 24 2005 21:15 MDT #There are a few poppies out side of Thors new room, and one bloomed las night. It is rather awesome.
Corn
Sun May 22 2005 12:13 MDT #So today is gonna be another scorcher. Looks like it's going to be a good summer for corn, so Rachel got to work planting the last of it. And I snapped a shot using our new digital camera :)
Roses
Sat May 21 2005 20:30 MDT #It has been hot hot hot! So to escape the heat of the Espanola Valley, we went up to Santa Fe today. There we encountered these beautiful roses :)
Moab Photos
Mon May 16 2005 13:25 MDT #So if you've added the main sites RSS feed to your aggregator you already know this -- But yesterday's flower pic was just a teaser for a whole page of photos from our recent trip to Moab, with Mum (and Thor who bagged his 4th state !).
Moab Flower
Sun May 15 2005 09:50 MDT #A shot I took at moab a couple of weeks ago. It was a pretty little clump of flowers - and it shows :)
HouseKeeping
Sat May 14 2005 18:25 MDT #I made a few updates to nmcfarl.org, and added an RSS feed for the site as a whole. Drag/Copy the URL into your aggregator (may I suggest Bloglines if you don't have one), and you'll be notified of any changes. :)
Real ID Update
Thu May 12 2005 11:19 MDT #It passed, of course. 100-0. Bush has already said he'll sign it. But on the upside there is some serious push back according to Wired, particularly from the Governors. This thing may well be revisted, which would be a very, very good thing.
Real ID
Tue May 10 2005 10:11 MDT #The Real ID Act is going to pass the senate, and thus congress today. This bill creates an unfunded mandate which forces states to turn there drivers licenses into national ID cards. It is going to pass because it is attached to the bill which fund the troops in Iraq, and Tsunami relief
The states are required to make the cards follow a particular technical specification -- for easy electronic reading, to link the databases across the country and to include whatever information the Department of Homeland Security wants. This is going to be a large technical challenge and an expensive project whose funding comes out of the state coffers.
More worrisome is that this bill has not once been debated in the senate, much less in the public. Creating a National ID, particularly one that proves residency status something as this does (new DL's will require Birth Cert., SS# and proof of residency), with no debate is an incredibly bad idea. Particularly under the guise of national security. ID's do not ID terrorists - the more likely scenario is that it will make illegal immigration a tiny bit harder. And the tracking of your life by the gov., but also by private industry much, much easier.
This is a bad bill, and although you can't stop it from being passed you should still go to the EFF and fax your senators. This should not stand as it does, and it can still be gutted in a number of ways, even after it passes.
As a side note:
Another section of this bill also contains a call out to Article 3, Section 2 of the Constitution - which may allow congress to pass laws forbidding the courts from looking at the law. As this massively violates the checks and balances, no previous congress has tried this out. Looks like this one will. And all so the Border control can flattens some federally protected wetlands. Ugly
Changes At The Lab
Mon May 9 2005 10:46 MDT #So the times article about the Loas Alamos Bloggers was correct - Pete is moving on. And the Times has the story again.
The new guy is - as predicted from Livermore, the handover is on the 16th, the guys from LANL the Real Story are very happy :) Frankly the bidding on the contract for the lab is probably of more importance, but you never do know how these things play out.
NYTimes: LANL Blog
Sun May 1 2005 14:35 MDT #Todays NYTimes has a very interesting article on LANL Blogs -- though really it is only about one particularly vitriolic blog - lanl the real story. It's an interesting , claiming that Director Nanos is gone. It's also an interesting site, full of overblown opinions and debate that never quite reaches the level of debate. Still 2 very interesting reads.