Mike Cohen

Timeless Words: The Latest Religious Right Wacko Sound Byte. OK kids, we’ve now heard it enough that it must surely be a talking point written in some religious right how-to brochure… [Morons Dot Org]

Sheesh! According to some of those idiots, separation of church and state is a “myth”.

Sunrise police Lt. Charlie Vitale recognized the name instantly, even a decade later.

JosŽ Padilla lived in Lauderhill when Vitale arrested him after a road-rage shooting incident in 1991. Vitale was a brand new detective, on the job for only two years.

“I almost shot him because he went for his gun,” Vitale said.

Padilla is in a lot more trouble now.

Prosecutors announced Monday that Padilla, now Abdullah al-Mujahir after converting to Islam in the early 1990s, is part of an al-Qaida terrorist network that plotted to unleash a radioactive bomb in the U.S.

Padilla told government interrogators after his arrest on May 8 in Chicago that he turned to Islam while incarcerated in the Broward County Jail and ultimately took his Islamic name.

FBI agents showed up at the Sunrise Police Department about a month ago, looking for his fingerprint cards and paperwork, Vitale said.

Like some of the terrorists who flew airplanes into U.S. buildings on Sept. 11, Padilla had ties to South Florida, living here from 1990 to at least 1997. Religious leaders at several local mosques said they did not recognize his name or his photograph.

At the Lake Park Gardens condominium complex in Plantation, there was a plaque quoting scripture on a door to the home of Padilla’s mother, Estela Ortega: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” There was also a statue of a cherub reclining, two bows decorated with American flag patterns, and a handwritten note: “Please leave this family in peace.”

He lived very close to me. I live in Wilton Manors, which is east of I-95 and just south of Oakland Park Blvd. Lauderhill is about 2-3 miles west on Oakland Park Blvd. Plantation is about another 2 miles west.

I just closed my account with PHPWebhosting.com after moving MacMegasite to Bounceweb. I did the switch yesterday and it went very smoothly.

Senegal: The Computer’s Choice. Will Argentina win the World Cup? Brazil? Argue all you want: It turns out that a computer may predict the odds more accurately than humans. It has already picked one big upset. By Kendra Mayfield. [Wired News]

Yes! I really want them to win, since I have some friends in Senegal and I really like the Senegalese people.

An accused Opa-locka drug dealer has won a new trial with an only-in-Miami argument: The jury pool contained too many people whose last names start with the letter “G.”

Of 38 potential jurors in the pool, 21 had surnames starting with ”G” and 14 of those were of Hispanic origin: six Garcias, two Gomezes, two Gonzalezes, two Guerras, a Gutierrez and a Goldares.

Quoting William Shakespeare and The White Pages, defense attorney David O. Markus persuaded a federal judge that the panel violated Roderick B. Carter’s Sixth Amendment right to a jury comprised of his peers. Carter is black.

”There is no way Mr. Carter can get a fair cross section of the community. That’s especially true in this case where the overwhelmingly majority of G surnames are Hispanic,” Markus said.

The jury pool featured one black man and five black women.

Markus said he didn’t rely on any fancy statistical analyses to bolster his point, just the phone book.

The ”G” section of the Miami White Pages is 80 pages long.

According to Markus, more than half of those residential listing pages — 43 to be exact — are filled with just five surnames: 14 pages of Garcias, six pages of Gomezes, 18 pages of Gonzalezes, two pages of Guerras and three pages of Gutierrezes.

Heroes.

Navajo Code Talkers Break 60 Years of Silence

“Their tale begins in 1942. After discovering that U.S. military codes were routinely deciphered by the Japanese, Philip Johnston, a World War I veteran and son of missionaries to Navajo country, suggested devising a system from the ancient language that few Navajos had ever bothered to write down.

When tests showed that messages that had once taken 30 minutes to code and decode were relayed in 20 seconds by the Navajos, recruitment went into overdrive on the southwestern reservation that ranges across New Mexico, Utah, Arizona and Colorado.

Some 400 code talkers eventually were assigned to every major Marine division, battalion and parachute unit, usually working in teams ÷ one to speak, the other to write ÷ on bulky portable telephones and radios. Despite their value, many also fought as infantry soldiers; a dozen died in the field….

And the irony? The U.S. government’s efforts to assimilate Navajos in the early 20th century included banning their language. Transgressors had their mouths washed out with soap, or worse.” [USA Today]

This article also includes an interesting sidebar that illustrates how the Navajo code worked. A fascinating subject, and hopefully the movie will be an adequate testament to these men.

Links for further information about the Navajo code:

• Navajo Code Talkers: World War II Fact Sheet
• Navajo Code Talkers’ Dictionary
• The Navajo Code Talkers
• Navajo Code Talker GI Joe Figure

[The Shifted Librarian]

I’ve always been fascinated by their history

Here’s my weblog neighborhood.

It turns out the problem I was having yesterday wasn’t the BEFSR41 firmware. Someone was downloading lots of MP3s from my computer. I only put it up there for a few friends and gave them the DynDNS name for it, but somehow the whole world seems to have discovered it.

I’ve taken measures to keep that from happening again, while still making it accessible for my friends.

I just had to clean the first bird droppings off my new car. I’m surprised I made it more than a week, since I park outdoors.

I just downgraded the firmware on my LinkSys BEFSR41 router to 1.40.2 since I was having a problem with my DSL connection slowing down to a crawl. After I’m online for a short time, I’d see ping times of over 4000 ms to my name server.