The Pete's blog/

TheWife snapped this at my request this evening as proof I went out of the apartment. :)

Capped this on the iPhone this morning before finally falling asleep. I'm surprised I didn't have nightmares about it--look how creepy Putin looks in that pic!



Anyway, so it turns out that while we've been distracted with all of our problems another Russian journalist critical of the Russian government has been killed, assassinated probably. This time, however, authorities admit they killed him but they say it was an accident.



Yeah, yeah, the kind of accident that happens to you when you're too critical of Pooty-poot Putin.



At least this sort of thing doesn't happen in the US yet. Here you still have to be black to killed unjustly.



Those Russians are soooo backwards! ;)

The above screencap comes from an Engadget.com post which you can find here: http://www.engadget.com/…company-l/ and it reports on Mythbusters co-host Adam Savage's admission that the Discovery Channel caved under pressure from the credit card companies not to air an episode profiling the extreme hackability of RFID chips that are now appearing in credit cards.



The story originally comes from a video posted on Wired.com here: http://blog.wired.com/…ch-my.html which was previously posted on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch



So, now the truth is effectively been banned. This kind of thing pisses me off to no end--as the Engadget post points out, rather than spend money on finding a more secure solution to RFID's problems, these companies would rather spend money on lawyers to stop people from talking about RFID's problems.



In other words, rather than keeping our money safe, they'd rather be able to advertise the latest bell and whistle to get more customers.



This is why I don't have a credit card. This is why I wish I could function without a bank account--because banks aren't keeping my money secure. Remember that company that made a bunch of electronic balloting machines that were super easy to hack? They used to be called "Diebold" and guess what other kind of machine they make: Automated Teller Machines. Yep, the company that couldn't prove they could count our votes we're trusting to count our money.



Meanwhile, banks think RFID is the wave of the future. However, it's anything but. While the credit card companies won't let Discovery Channel show that Mythbusters episode (or let them even MAKE the episode), Engadget.com previously posted a video that details how easy it is to hack RFID. I reposted it here: http://thepete.com/…vulnerable



I'm all for technology (DUH!), but anyone who thinks that technology can be trusted not to fail hasn't used technology enough to know what they're talking about.

I stumbled across this video thanks to Twitter-user BBitner (here: http://twitter.com/…/907249812 ) who linked to a video at HuffingtonPost.com (here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…23205.html ) which I then grabbed and post here. It features Palin delivering a sort of guest sermon to the church she grew up in. She says some damn scary stuff for anyone who thinks God shouldn't be advising politicians on what business deals should go down under their watch.



For instance, in the video, she says that God wants a billion-dollar pipeline to be built in Alaska. This is enough for me--she's not being rhetorical, either--she's asking for members of the church she grew up in to pray for this oil pipeline.



Now, personally? I don't care what your religious views are--but I am worried when she asks people to pray for business deals to go through, *when she's a public servant*. I usually trust politicians to generally keep church separate from state, but she clearly wasn't doing this that day in church.



Correct me if I'm wrong, but when you say God wants a pipeline to happen when you KNOW you'll make serious money off of making that pipeline go, doesn't that make you corrupt? You're using God to sell your constituents on a pipeline that you will financially benefit from--as I understand it, this is very nearly the definition of corruption.



And this wasn't years ago, it was months ago--this video was shot on June 8, 2008.



Another reason this video is important:



The press went mad about Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and hounded Obama about what his pastor said and made Obama renounce words he didn't even speak, himself.



Here's Palin, *saying these words*. Asking people to pray for businesses to come together to make God's plan for Alaska go forward. If the press doesn't hound her the way they hounded Obama, they're just hypocrites (which we kinda know already, but here's a chance for them to do their job).



Watch the video, she doesn't need me to damn her.



Once you see the video and you agree that it's worrying, please cross post it. Show it to people. She's could be a heartbeat away from the Oval Office.