Is the Afghan Massacre Case being prosecuted faster than that of the Fort Hood Shooter?

Within 2 years and 4 months, two Army soldiers opened fire on innocent unarmed people, killing numerous and wounding others. On November 5, 2009, Major Nidal Hasan shot 43 people, killing 13 people and wounding 30. Now more recently, on March 11th 2012, Staff Sergeant Robert Bales assaulted innocent residents in 3 Afghan villages, killing 17 and wounding 6 others.

Because it is more recent, the news stories have filled their columns describing the rapid pace that justices have taken to move toward the speedy trial of Sgt. Bales.  After listening to many of these broadcasts, I wondered if Bales was being prosecuted  faster than Hasan.

Here we have Bales, thought to have committed these horrible Afghan murders, flown out of Afghanistan,  placed in confinement in Fort Leavenworth, and charged with the crimes within little more than a week.

While, Major Hasan, who committed his crime in November 2009, has yet to be tried. For him, it took 1 year just to be arraigned (Major Is Arraigned in Fort Hood Killings).

There are several similarities and differences between the two murderers:

• Both have been in the Army a long time
• Both were in their late 30s
• Hasan is an Officer, Bales an enlisted man
• Hasan is a Muslim, Bales a Christian
• Hasan killed in an American Military base, Bales killed in a foreign war zone
• Hasan has never been in war, Bales is on his 4th tour of combat duty
• Hasan killed mostly US soldiers, Bales killed Afghan civilians
• Hasan pursued radical beliefs, Bales seemed to have just cracked
• Hasan is portrayed as the "Fort Hood Shooter", Bales the "Afghan Massacre Suspect" (emphasis on Shooter and Massacre)

While we do not know the ultimate fate of these two individuals, we can agree that the crimes that they committed are equally horrendous. It is unimaginable to conceive of the acts they committed, and both should be punished. But, justice should treat both individuals equally, and judgement should not proceed rapidly for one individual while the other (although paralized) sits back and enjoys the comforts of confinement, similar to those in Guantanamo who are still awaiting trial by a sympathizing US Attorney General.

Google Analytics adds Real-Time Page Views to help you monitor your visitor activity

One of the most interesting features of Google Analytics I discovered a few weeks ago was their new "Real-Time" page view functionality.  To access this, you will need to visit your Analytics account and select the "Home" page view. In the upper left corner of the menu, you will see the Real-Time selection. If you click on this, and then the "Overview" choice below, you will be shown a live view of the pages that visitors are accessing, similar to the image below.


The Overview page is divided 6 sections, broken into 3 rows.

• The upper left contains the visitor count and indicates the breakdown between new and returning visitors. On the right of are indicators of the number of views per second.
• The second row provides the Top Referrals and a listing of the Top Active Pages.
• The third row summarizes the Top Keywords that were used to access your pages, and a map pinpointing the location of your visitors. 

If you site is relatively active, you will have a visitor count greater than zero and the page will come to life. It's really fun to sit and watch the activity!

Google's Blogger adds Gadgets to Dynamic Views

About a week ago, Blogger Buzz posted their 3rd update of the Blogger Dynamic Views. In this release notice, they announced that several Gadgets are now supported. These include:

• Blog Archive
• Followers
• Labels
• Profile
• Subscribe
• Link List

These are great additions, but for those who utilize AdSense, you may find that this is only supported in the Sidebar and Classic front screen modes.

While I like the dynamic view formats, I found that one must be very careful when experimenting with the various templates. For example, if you click on your Blogger "Template" choice on the blogger sidebar, you will see a snippet view of what your blog looks like at the top of the page. Below, you will see the series of Dynamic View templates.

If you  roll your mouse over the templates, you will see a "Apply to Blog | Customize" tool tip.

But be careful, if you click "Apply to Blog" your blog template will automatically be converted!  You can revert back to the older version, but certain functionality will be lost. In particular, your Google Analytics will be gone.

The better way to play with the alternate dynamic views while not changing your physical blog is to click on the " Customize " button under the "Live on Blog" view at the top.  If you do this, you can click on the alternate Dynamic View templates and see what your blog will look like. If you don't want to change it, then just click the "Back to Blogger" link at the top (not Apply to Blog).

Two problems I discovered with Dynamic Views is that you cannot edit your html page directly or move around the widgets.  A third problem is discovering how to add the above Gadgets to your blog. If you have an existing blog containing the gadgets and simply convert it to Dynamic View, then your gadgets will automatically be transferred. However, if you do not have these on your blog and want to add them to your dynamic view, I have not found how to do this. Cheers!

Google Webmaster Tools adds URL parameters section

In the continuing improvement of its Webmaster Tools, Google has added a new "URL parameters" section under the "Site configuration" drop down menu.

This is an important feature in helping webmasters control the Google's crawl rate of sites where the displayed content can be modified or filtered based on URL calling parameters. For example, this can be particularly important to online merchants and stores.

As best as we have determined, Google follows nearly every hit on your site with their own mirrored hit. It records all the parameters and then has its Googlebot crawl your pages with the new parameters. By doing this, Google can index your various pages based on your content. For example, let's assume that you own an online furniture store, called onlinestoreexample.com.

When someone visits your store at that url, they are shown a series of departments. Let's say Department 1 is bedding and Department 2 is carpets.  If your visitor clicks on the bedding link, they will access the page using the url: onlinestoreexample.com?dept=1. If they want to visit the carpet section, they click on the url onlinestoreexample.com?dept=2.

This is all well and good until someone tries to access your pages by typing the url themselves. If they make a mistake entering the dept parameter and type in "dpt" or "..." instead, then these parameters will be passed along to the Googlebot crawler. This means that your site will be crawled much more often than necessary and that the error pages you display become indexed as well.

By now enhancing Webmaster Tools and giving webmasters the ability to see the crawling parameters, one can now inform Google whether the parameters that they use for crawling are valid or not. For each parameter listed, you have a choice of letting Google decide if it is important, or if it does not affect your page content.

In our own website, we were shown 19 parameters. Of those, 7 were invalidly formed and resulted in errors. By indicating that these 7 parameters did not affect our content, approximately 400,000 urls were eliminated from the crawler.

So, if you have a website and rely on Google Webmaster Tools, we recommend that you visit your own URL parameters section and learn how Google sees your site.

Obama Contraception Mandate: Could it be a political payoff?

In a stunning and defiant push, President Obama has mandated that all companies, including religious organizations, pay for health care insurance that covers contraception and sterilization. However, widespread complaints, particularly from the Catholic church and other groups, forced the President to modify his policy. His compromise was to require all insurance companies to provide contraception free of charge to everyone.

Initially, the President allotted a 1 year period for those who objected to come to terms with their religious souls and objections. But, after the push back, Mr. Obama shortened the timeline, and has set an August 2012 deadline for his new rule to be implemented.  This means the implementation of the rule would not be subject to his winning re-election.

Still infuriated that our constitutional religious freedom is being violated, seven States have now filed a lawsuit to block this mandate. But, the President is not budging.

Wondering about what is motivating the President's decision, I asked myself: Where are condoms were made. Were they manufactured in China? Could this be a reason to insist that condoms and other devices be provided for free? Is it something else?

Well, interestingly enough, I read the article: "How Products are Made, Volume 2: Condom".

Towards the bottom, they have a section headed "The Future", which talks about the "Reality" condom for women that is manufactured by Female Health Company (FHC). It is incorporated in Wisconsin and lists its principal executive offices in Chicago, Illinois. This is the same city where President Obama owns a home and where the President's re-election campaign, Obama for America, is located.

When visiting the FHC website, one is  presented with a Yahoo Finance chart which illustrates the company's stock price for the past 6 months. While having a few ups and downs, it has continually risen from approximately $4.5 a share to $5.50 per share during the past 6 months (see widget at right).

According to its history page, the Female Health Company has been licensed to provide female condoms since 1987. However, its latest product, FC2, was only given US FDA approval in 2009. The company was then listed on the NASDAQ-CM stock exchange that same year.

Coincidentally, the Obama "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" was passed by the Senate on December 24, 2009, and signed into law by the President on March 23, 2010.

Now given that:

• the Female Health Company went public about the same time as the Affordable Care Act was being written in 2009,
• its FC2 contraception device was FDA approved under the Obama administration in 2009,
• President Obama is requiring all insurance companies to provide free contraction devices, including those manufactured by this company,
• the FHC stock price has risen by nearly 20% in the past few months,
• and that FHC is headquartered in Chicago, along with the Obama political campaign,

we must raise the question:

Are there any political or financial connections between President Obama, his political staff, or other members of Congress and that of the Female Health Company which has motivated the President's mandate for all insurance companies to provide free contraception devices to all Americans?

We do not know the answer to this, but we do know that there is no Chinese connection as we originally thought. Could this be another Solyndra scandal? Or, is this all simply coincidental?  You decide.

Sources:

• Obama's Contraceptive Failure
• 7 states sue to block contraception mandate
• Obama / Biden - Contact us
• Female Health Company

Saying hello to old Adgitize & CMF friends

It's been about 7 weeks since Adgitize closed and even longer for CMF. During the heyday period of those two blog advertising networks, my regular schedule was to visit many of the members participating blogs. But now that they are closed, I find myself daydreaming about the good old days.

While traffic for this particular blog has dropped substantially, my two lottery blogs have seen a dramatic growth in search engine traffic. This has kept my morale up and generates enthusiasm to keep on blogging.

To keep myself stimulated, I've settled on routine of regularly visiting a few of the blogs who were active participants in the above networks. In particular, I enjoy stopping in and reading the posts of:

• Orient Lodge and learning about Aldon's political, professional, and personal involvements,
• Sharkbytes My Quality Day which has helped me weather the winter and enjoy the Michigan scenery
• Dickster's Random Thoughts which shares Dick's personal thoughts and the family's difficulties with dealing with an autistic child
• Some Assembly Required that is written as a personal diary documenting the life of an successful advertising executive in Texas
• Carmen's Chronicles , an old favorite and a frequent commenter on my blogs, who has been recently visiting and living in India
• Quick Blog Tips by Ben Barden (of CMFads fame), and Floor15 (which will be closing shortly)
• English Wilderness by John who posts beautiful pictures scenic UK locations

While I rarely leave comments on the blogs that I visit, I just wanted to share my thoughts and let everyone know that I am still thinking about them!

PS: And of course, I continue to miss postings by our old friend Ken Brown!

The global warming and climate change hoax overplays receding glaciers

The politicians and proponents of taxing carbon emissions have continually cited "Global Warming" as the reason we must impose new taxes.  However, a variety of sources have uncovered evidence of manipulated temperature record keeping for the purposes of supporting the global warming hoax.  After this was publicized, the proponents changed their argument to "climate change".

Well, having been around for quite a few years, I've learned that the climate is always changing. Sometimes it is hot, cold, rainy, snowy, dry, cloudy, sunny, or even simply mild. Because of these seasonal and yearly fluctuations, I've always dismissed the climate change argument.

However, global warming is a bit more interesting. Here in the northeastern United States, temperatures have been above normal for most of the winter months. That seems like warming to me. But then I read about the record breaking low temperatures in Alaska and Europe this year, and it seems like cooling to me.

Wattsupwiththat.com wrote an interesting article that summarizes the sub-zero temperatures experienced in various parts of Alaska this year titled: Bitter cold records broken in Alaska – all time coldest record nearly broken, but Murphy’s Law intervenes. And, a search for the term "record cold in alaska" returns

• Record Lowest Temperatures by State — Infoplease.com (note Alaska in 1971)
• Record Cold in Alaska – updated | WOODTV.com Blogs (September 2010)
• Media Ignore Near-Record Cold in Alaska | NewsBusters.org (April 2007)

Looking at this list, we realize that it has been cold in Alaska for a number of years. That consistency hardly qualifies for either "climate change" or "global warming".

Undaunted, the proponents point to the glaciers and scream "The Glaciers are Receding!" This proves that global warming exists.

Unfortunately, glaciers grow and recede as part of their natural life-cycle. Years ago, I visited an Alaskan glacier. The ranger there explained why using glaciers as an argument was a fallacy. He told us:

Glaciers are formed by the constant snow in the mountains. As the snow builds up, it becomes a glacier by compressing the snow at the bottom into hard ice. After a while, the force of the snow becomes too great for the friction to hold the glacier on the slopes. When this happens, the glacier slides down the mountain. Thus it is growing. After a while, the glacier is spread over a wide surface and the friction holds it in place. Because the lower portion is at a lower altitude and in warmer temperatures, that portion begins to melt away. This means the glacier is receding. After some point, the snow at the top builds up again, and forces the glacier to slide down the mountain again. Thus, the glacier naturally grows and recedes.

A number of sources verify the park rangers explanation You can see this by visiting the following sites:

• Glaciers (animated source -click on "Overview" button, then arrow forward at "Types of Glaciers")
• PBS: Interactive Anatomy of a Glacier
• NSIDC: All about Glaciers

Additionally, the book Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud by Robert L. Park provides an excellent description of this and other scientific hoaxes.