David Veksler

My first car: a ’99 Ford Taurus SE:
Continue reading “New Car”

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Four members of a family have been arrested and charged with murder for allegedly killing and eating a relative during a wedding reception — and serving his flesh to unwitting party guests, police have said.
(From the Agitator.)

A bunch of countries from Europe are sending “observers” to the U.S. to tell us whether American elections are fair. A number of them have recently experienced civil war, massive election fraud, and de-facto dictatorships. Virtually all oppose the policies of the current administration.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A team of international observers will monitor the presidential election in November, according to the U.S. State Department.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was invited to monitor the election by the State Department. The observers will come from the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.
It will be the first time such a team has been present for a U.S. presidential election.
“The U.S. is obliged to invite us, as all OSCE countries should,” spokeswoman Urdur Gunnarsdottir said. “It’s not legally binding, but it’s a political commitment. They signed a document 10 years ago to ask OSCE to observe elections.”
Thirteen Democratic members of the House of Representatives, raising the specter of possible civil rights violations that they said took place in Florida and elsewhere in the 2000 election, wrote to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in July, asking him to send observers.

Wondering what I’ve been doing for the last three weeks? Read this.

Update: more photos.

A town in Italy has banned people from keeping goldfish in bowls.
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The council in Monza believes fish get a “distorted view of reality” if they’re kept in a bowl.
…”You have no idea of the hygiene problems caused by animals and people living together and we don’t want to see animals treated like objects any longer.

(Thanks to: Tim)

I recently had occasion to configure my first Windows 2003 server, so I decided to write down some guidelines to aid the configuration and keep it secure. Before long, I had a lengthy list of boring rules, so I decided to make a list of commandments for managing web servers. Here is the result – the Twelve Commandments of Web Server Management. If I left out anything, thou shalt leave me a comment! Continue reading “Twelve Commandments of Web Server Management”

I’ve posted my latest post on my forum: Aids Reduces African Life Expectancy To 33: What are the root causes of the crisis?

Two cool tricks: put your Firefox install on a flash drive, and get a notification agent for Gmail.

If you are a TAMU student, I highly recommend participating in the economics experiments this summer and fall. Two years ago, I made boatloads of money ($50-$100/session) in the experiments with a bit of game theory and basic knowledge of human psychology. I’m not sure what this has to do with economic theory, but if the department insists on wasting $ on experiments that demonstrate the obvious, I’ll be glad to help them part with it.

Update: I started an album for my Auburn photos.

For anyone interested in such things, here are photos of beautiful Auburn, AL and my beautiful new laptop:
Continue reading “Auburn Photos”

Children as young as 10 are being recruited to fight for the Palestinian cause.
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The recruits, some of whom are dwarfed by their AK-47 assault rifles, are taught how to carry out ambushes.
They are also made to do an obstacle course, crawling under barbed wire and leaping through hoops of fire while their instructors fire live bullets overhead.
The camp is run by a group called the Popular Resistance Committee, which said the next generation of Palestinians needed to know how to fight the Israeli “occupation”.