There are days when I really despise my job... I'm currently running on three straight nights of five hour nights of sleep. To say that my writing quality today is going to suffer as a result, to say nothing of everything else, is a gross understatement. You've been warned.
For those of you new here, I'm an IT consultant when I'm not "adding value" to company time by blogging; the company I work for handles IT needs for smaller companies that can't afford a full-time IT staff, or, occasionally, for companies that need a decently trained extra hand around the server room. The job is fairly basic - keep servers and workstations running, install the occasional bit of software, clean off the occasional virus... it's pretty vanilla and peaceful (if boring) most of the time. Once in a while, though, I really earn my pay, and this week has been one of those weeks. One of my coworkers was expanding a partition on a server when the server decided it would not only drop the partition but take the partitions on the backup drives with it. End result? One down server and no backup.
Great.
To add insult to injury, this particular server was special. It was running Windows Small Business Server, which meant that, not only was it important as a server, it also was responsible for making sure people could log into the system (yep - only domain controller) and also making sure people got their e-mail (Exchange). It also turned out that the server also hosted everybody's home folders, but we didn't know that at the time.
Now, a Windows server, by itself, is an interesting thing to restore. At its most basic, a Windows file server is functionally no harder to restore than any other server - install an operating system, grab a backup, restore some files. You may need to add it to the domain so people can access it, and you might need to tweak some file permissions if they didn't make it across, but none of that is particularly hard or time consuming. A Small Business server, however... well, that's a special beast, and, at least in my experience, when one of those goes south, you're looking at up to 48 man hours (note - not two days; we're talking six eight-hour shifts here) to get everything restored and all the kinks worked out.
What's the difference, you ask? Of course you don't, but I feel like ranting.
Conceptually, there are two basic ways to store information on any system. You can either store information on files, reading and writing to that file whenever a change needs to be made, or you can store information in a database. Now, a database consists of a set of files, but databases are special - they're designed to be easy for a computer to remember. Allow me to illustrate through metaphor:
Let's pretend for a second that you and I are working on a book. We only have one copy of the book, but both of us want to be able to work on it. We have a couple of methods at our disposal to keep things in sync:
We can hand-deliver changes to each other. This would be analogous to a file-based system - I would make the change I want to make to the book, you would look at the change, then we would get back to work. There are some drawbacks to this, though. First off, what happens if you and I want to make a change at the same time, and the change affects what the other person is doing? Whose changes take priority? Secondly, this can be rather slow - while I'm making a change in the book, you won't be able to look at the book (seeing as I have it and all), nor will you be able to make any changes yourself. This causes a rather serious bottleneck.
We can make little notes, including the date and time we made the note, then come together periodically and make the changes together. This would be analogous to a database, and it speeds things up dramatically. We could just rely on the date to determine whose changes go first. Then, periodically, we could both get together, figure out which notes go in which order, make the changes we need to make, and go our separate ways.
Now, let's say the book gets lost. How can we bring it back? Well, in the first model, it's fairly simple - we could just agree to have a backup of the book that we decide to start working from. Once a day, we run the book through a copier machine or something similar. The worst that happens is we lose our changes for that day. In the second model, yes, we can still do this, but there's a catch - what about our notes? Have we been backing up our notes as well? If not, we're going to have a problem - we just lost all of the changes we were going to make to the book!
Let's complicate things a little further and pretend that there's someone else working on a different book, but they're using our book as a source for material. They want to be able to cite our book by page, paragraph, or even sentence, so they want to keep track of what we're doing while we're doing it so they can keep their cites up to date. Going back to our models, there are two ways we can allow this:
Let that person take the book, make their cites, then return it to us. Again, this would be analogous to the file-based system, and it would be slow and cumbersome; we would have to wait for the book to come back before we could make any further changes. On the other hand, if that person loses it for whatever reason, we could just grab our backup, get back to work, and let the person know that we restored the book.
Alternatively...
Let that person keep a copy of the book. The copy will be updated each time we make changes in it. This would be analogous to the database model, and, as I'm sure you can imagine, it would be much faster - we could make changes while they're citing, let the person know we made some changes, they grab a new copy of the book, life is good. Just one problem, though - what happens if we lose our copy of the book? We could restore it from a previous version, but what if our version and the other person's version don't match? We would need to keep a record of what version we're each working from and compare version numbers - if they don't match, we're going to need to come up with some way to rectify that. Worse yet, what if they make citations based on a newer version that we no longer have and they throw away the cites to the older version? What if the citations from the newer version reference something that didn't even exist in the old version? What if we lost the notes that led to the newer version, perhaps due to our last backup being at least two versions back?
Herein lies the trade-off between databases and files: Databases are way faster than files, but can be rather tricky to bring back to life if something happens. Files are way slower than databases, but are much easier to bring back to life if something happens. Now, guess what Windows uses for everything? That's right - databases. Guess what happens if you don't have a good backup of some of those databases and they all tie in against each other? That's right - I get no sleep, and neither do my coworkers. The worst part about it, of course, is that Microsoft likes to use databases in the most convoluted way imaginable so that way they're nearly impossible to back up correctly. Pretend, for a sec, that you lost your database for Active Directory, which is responsible for all of your user names and passwords. Fortunately, you have a backup. Can you restore it all by itself somewhere else? Of course not - that would actually make sense. Instead, you get to restore it with the rest of something called "System State", which just happens to include your entire registry, which just happens to include all kinds of various arcane configuration settings for your hardware and any program that's running on your computer. Guess what happens if something gets screwed up in the registry? That's right - you don't get to restore Active Directory, which means you no longer have user accounts.
Nice, eh?
So, that's been my week. Once this reign of terror ends, I'll get some good posts up here. In the meantime, regale yourself with the latest on ID requirements to prevent voter fraud at Cardozaisms. It's not news, it's Cardoza. Alternatively, you can also get the latest in relating Professor Chaos and politics from Morbo's good friend, Rachel Lucas.
Hello, Morbo. How's the family?
Belligerent and filled with numerous pork treats.
Excellent. I'm Rachel, and I'm pro-war and pro-family.
Well, she's not pro-family, exactly, at least not in the Quantity is King! sort of way, but you get the idea. Or you don't. I don't even care anymore. Burn in hell, hippies!
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
In other news, market forces work
Tired of Obama and Rev. Wright? Yeah, me too. I'm still continuing my hiatus on talking about him... so, without further ado:
MSNBC had this article on Juneau lowering their power consumption:
Well yeah. What did anyone expect to happen? That the residents of Juneau would say, "Screw the environment and our pocketbooks - let's pay $950/month on power"? Guess what - when something gets more expensive (power, gas, diesel, clothes, whatever), people use less of it when and where they can. Just ask Chrysler, who managed to tie their entire business model against selling nothing but Hemi-powered cars.
In other news, the sky is still blue, the sun is still yellow, and journalists are still idiots, who are perpetually perplexed by the pragmatic perfectness of simple things like, y'know, capitalism.
MSNBC had this article on Juneau lowering their power consumption:
JUNEAU, Alaska - First, there was a run on energy-efficient light bulbs. When those ran out, people began asking for lamp oil. But when they started demanding clothespins in this land of mist and rain, it was clear Alaska's capital city was caught in a serious energy crunch.
"We sold all our clothespins the first day," said Doug White, general manager at Don Abel Building Supplies. "I don't think kids even knew what they were for, but they're learning now."
Avalanches earlier this month knocked down transmission lines and cut off Juneau's source of low-cost hydroelectric power. Threatened with a five-fold increase in utility bills, Juneau quickly powered down.
[...]
Energy conservation is a hard sell in much of the U.S., but Juneau has proved that people will change their ways if the financial incentives are big enough.
Well yeah. What did anyone expect to happen? That the residents of Juneau would say, "Screw the environment and our pocketbooks - let's pay $950/month on power"? Guess what - when something gets more expensive (power, gas, diesel, clothes, whatever), people use less of it when and where they can. Just ask Chrysler, who managed to tie their entire business model against selling nothing but Hemi-powered cars.
In other news, the sky is still blue, the sun is still yellow, and journalists are still idiots, who are perpetually perplexed by the pragmatic perfectness of simple things like, y'know, capitalism.
Monday, April 28, 2008
What the...
Okay, North Korea is now officially weird...
And people say the Japanese are weird... at least their news makes some small measure of sense.
Korean Folk Amusement-Seesaw
Pyongyang, April 28 (KCNA) -- Folk amusements become more popularized in the spring season in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Conspicuous among them is seesaw.
Seesaw is the one of the folk amusements that the Korean people have been fond of from olden times.
It was created on the principle of tread-mill in Korea.
The players show various arm and leg movements, moving up and down.
Seesaw is a sport which not only makes women's figure nice by balancing the whole body in the air but also builds up a healthy body by making the strength of legs strong and increasing the breathing capacity of the lungs.
And people say the Japanese are weird... at least their news makes some small measure of sense.
Considering how he treated "Starship Troopers", this will come as no surprise
Cassy Fiano, who is having a rather good day today, discovered that the heinous adulterer of Heinlein's sacred works (none other than the accursed Paul Verhoeven) has decided to aim his unique and ineffable "skill" at completely and arbitrarily ignoring the text of his sources towards some little-known text called The New Testament:
Keep in mind that this is the same man who upon being tasked with writing a movie based upon Starship Troopers, tried to read the book but failed, becoming "bored and depressed". I'm suspecting something similar happened here; I'm not even sure if he made it past Matthew 1:17... not that I blame him. I mean, after reading about Elezear and Matthan, I became bored and depressed myself.
Would you like to learn more? I don't frakkin' think so.
NOTE: I actually liked the movie, cheesy and heretical as it was. Even so, I definitely understand the viewpoint of those that actually grew up with the book, only to watch Mr. Verhoeven basically swallow the entire premise, ferment it in some weird dystopian nightmare, then excrete it through the bowels of Denise Richards' inexplicable refusal to show some cleavage. Consequently, this post is for you.
'Basic Instinct' Director Paul Verhoeven: Jesus Was Son of Mary and Roman Rapist
In his upcoming biography of Jesus, "Basic Instinct" director Paul Verhoeven will make the shocking claim that Christ probably was the son of Mary and a Roman soldier who raped her during the Jewish uprising in Galilee.
[...]
In addition to suggesting that the Virgin Mary may have been a rape victim, the book will also say that Christ was not betrayed by Judas Iscariot, one of the 12 original apostles of Jesus, as the New Testament states.
Keep in mind that this is the same man who upon being tasked with writing a movie based upon Starship Troopers, tried to read the book but failed, becoming "bored and depressed". I'm suspecting something similar happened here; I'm not even sure if he made it past Matthew 1:17... not that I blame him. I mean, after reading about Elezear and Matthan, I became bored and depressed myself.
Would you like to learn more? I don't frakkin' think so.
NOTE: I actually liked the movie, cheesy and heretical as it was. Even so, I definitely understand the viewpoint of those that actually grew up with the book, only to watch Mr. Verhoeven basically swallow the entire premise, ferment it in some weird dystopian nightmare, then excrete it through the bowels of Denise Richards' inexplicable refusal to show some cleavage. Consequently, this post is for you.
Thanks, Senator Reid.
So, Nevada has the Senate Majority Leader in its ranks, who is well known for his proclivity towards earmarks - you'd think we'd be rolling in federal loot, right?
Wrong.
Nevada is dead last in money from federal agencies. Why? Well, there are a few reasons:
Also, it turns out the Navy doesn't spend enough here:
Yeah, I know about Fallon NAS, but still... we're landlocked, people! We have absolutely zero navigable rivers in this state, unless you count the Lake Mead part of the Colorado River that forms our southern border. Of course Naval spending in this state is weak.
Meanwhile, Medicaid in Nevada just isn't getting the job done, apparently:
One of these days, I'm going to go off on why it's absolutely asinine we're making hospital emergency rooms pay for the uninsured. This is the equivalent of saying, "Okay, we know you can't afford food, so here's the deal - if you go to a Red Lobster, you get free food. Otherwise, you're on your own." Uh... what?! On what planet does this policy even come close to making sense? Yeah, I get that we're trying to make sure that everybody has some basic level of care and that people in need aren't getting thrown out of the hospital, but forcing hospitals to throw the uninsured in the most expensive part of the hospital seems somewhat counterproductive to me. Then again, I'm mildly mystified why hospitals don't just remodel their ERs and have a little community health center right next to it - whenever someone uninsured comes in with the sniffles, they get taken to the community center where, what the hell, they can get treated for "free", just like the E.R. It would be cheaper for the hospital, I'm sure. Or, better yet, we could just get over this idea that people should be providing goods or services for "free". That would be helpful, too.
Wrong.
Nevada is dead last in money from federal agencies. Why? Well, there are a few reasons:
The reasons included the state’s tight purse strings and demographics.
It often takes a commitment from the state to give money to get federal money, and Nevada isn’t spending the money, administrators say. With Nevada’s percentage of senior citizens isn’t as high as the rest of the nation, there’s less Social Security and Medicare money flowing to the state.
Also, it turns out the Navy doesn't spend enough here:
While Nevada lags in spending by the Army and Navy, Air Force spending is higher.
Yeah, I know about Fallon NAS, but still... we're landlocked, people! We have absolutely zero navigable rivers in this state, unless you count the Lake Mead part of the Colorado River that forms our southern border. Of course Naval spending in this state is weak.
Meanwhile, Medicaid in Nevada just isn't getting the job done, apparently:
Nevada’s Medicaid program — which provides medical insurance for people who don’t have health insurance — is close to having only the coverage required by federal law, said Charles Duarte, administrator for the Nevada Division of Health Care Financing and Policy.
“The bottom line is that we have a relatively basic program,” Duarte said. “When you look at spending per capita on Medicaid services, we routinely rank near the bottom or at the bottom.”
For instance, 28 other states have the Medically Needy Program for people not eligible for Medicaid to deduct what they spend for medical treatment to qualify for Medicaid. The federal government requires state governments to match Medicaid contributions and Nevada does not have money set aside to do that, Duarte said.
Nevada’s lack of Medicaid programs shows up in higher health insurance premiums, said Dwight Hansen, director of financial services for the Nevada Hospital Association.
When people have no medical insurance, their health worsens and they seek treatment in emergency rooms. That care is more expensive and the uninsured can’t pay, so the hospitals have to look for other places to recover the costs for their more expensive treatment, Hansen said.
“That cost then gets shifted over to the only people the hospital can shift it over to and that’s the insured population,” Hansen said.
And as health insurance costs rise, fewer employers can afford it, leaving a higher percentage of the population without insurance, he said.
“You get into this cost spiral that makes things worse,” Hansen said.
One of these days, I'm going to go off on why it's absolutely asinine we're making hospital emergency rooms pay for the uninsured. This is the equivalent of saying, "Okay, we know you can't afford food, so here's the deal - if you go to a Red Lobster, you get free food. Otherwise, you're on your own." Uh... what?! On what planet does this policy even come close to making sense? Yeah, I get that we're trying to make sure that everybody has some basic level of care and that people in need aren't getting thrown out of the hospital, but forcing hospitals to throw the uninsured in the most expensive part of the hospital seems somewhat counterproductive to me. Then again, I'm mildly mystified why hospitals don't just remodel their ERs and have a little community health center right next to it - whenever someone uninsured comes in with the sniffles, they get taken to the community center where, what the hell, they can get treated for "free", just like the E.R. It would be cheaper for the hospital, I'm sure. Or, better yet, we could just get over this idea that people should be providing goods or services for "free". That would be helpful, too.
For frak's sake...
I'd love to be nice and prolific today, but I'm going to level with everyone - I got almost no sleep last night. I managed to get into bed around 12:30 a.m., which would've been bearable if it weren't for this (Reno Gazette-Journal):
As some of you may be aware, Reno has been steadily rocked for the past three months by little earthquakes. The AP touched on it a little today, and, indeed, I've touched on it a little myself. They're starting to get more powerful - we're getting periodic 4's now, which is getting disconcerting, to put it gently, especially since it means I'm starting to feel them at my apartment on a more regular basis. It's also completely jacked my sleep schedule - if there's anything worse than waking up in the middle of the night and having to decide if this one is actually going to be strong enough to jump into the doorway for, well, I can't think of it.
Some random thoughts in the meantime...
1. Yes, I know about Wright opening his big, fat mouth. I also don't care. I wasn't voting for Obama before he opened his mouth, and I'm certainly not going to now. I have issues with Obama's policies that, for me, are way more important than he chooses to spend his Sundays with. However, if you do care, Rachel touched on it, and Instapundit is doing an excellent job as always.
2. Conspiracy theorists crack me up. I mean, many of them are the same people that would never think for a second that the government would be competent enough to bake a loaf of bread but simultaneously believe it's completely possible that the government is competent enough to stage 9/11, among other things. You can't have it both ways. If the government is really that competent, we wouldn't care about it fooling us with terrorism because none of us would have to work for a living anymore.
3. I'm going to Interop on Wednesday, which means that posting might be a little sporadic then. I am hoping to get some pictures and do a post on it.
4. Remember, I'm switching to the new system on Thursday. If you're using the Blogspot address, update it schnell! As future Vice President of Porke Affaires, I command it!
The quake that struck Mogul at 4:33 a.m. has been revised to a magnitude 4.2. It earlier had been listed as a magnitude 4.0.
The location is also listed as between Laurel Ridge Drive and Graysburg Drive just south of the Somersett Country Club.
It's part of a series of quakes in the Mogul area that began in late February. The strongest has been a 4.7 late Friday.
There have been 21 small earthquakes today ranging from 0.7 to 4.2, all centered in the Verdi-Mogul area.
As some of you may be aware, Reno has been steadily rocked for the past three months by little earthquakes. The AP touched on it a little today, and, indeed, I've touched on it a little myself. They're starting to get more powerful - we're getting periodic 4's now, which is getting disconcerting, to put it gently, especially since it means I'm starting to feel them at my apartment on a more regular basis. It's also completely jacked my sleep schedule - if there's anything worse than waking up in the middle of the night and having to decide if this one is actually going to be strong enough to jump into the doorway for, well, I can't think of it.
Some random thoughts in the meantime...
1. Yes, I know about Wright opening his big, fat mouth. I also don't care. I wasn't voting for Obama before he opened his mouth, and I'm certainly not going to now. I have issues with Obama's policies that, for me, are way more important than he chooses to spend his Sundays with. However, if you do care, Rachel touched on it, and Instapundit is doing an excellent job as always.
2. Conspiracy theorists crack me up. I mean, many of them are the same people that would never think for a second that the government would be competent enough to bake a loaf of bread but simultaneously believe it's completely possible that the government is competent enough to stage 9/11, among other things. You can't have it both ways. If the government is really that competent, we wouldn't care about it fooling us with terrorism because none of us would have to work for a living anymore.
3. I'm going to Interop on Wednesday, which means that posting might be a little sporadic then. I am hoping to get some pictures and do a post on it.
4. Remember, I'm switching to the new system on Thursday. If you're using the Blogspot address, update it schnell! As future Vice President of Porke Affaires, I command it!
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Poor Gaius Baltar...
I ate far too much Mexican today - my stomach feels like it's going to explode in a salsa-filled, refried bean infused tidal wave of death and destruction. As usual, though, that's entirely besides the point.
Battlestar Galactica is one of those shows that I would absolutely love to watch when the episodes come out. Unfortunately, I came into the series way too late, and, from where I'm sitting, there is nothing worse than jumping in the middle of a series, especially one where most episodes build on top of each other like BSG. So, I've been slowly purchasing the DVD box sets, watching them, one by one.
This weekend, I finished Season 2.5, which, for various geek-related reasons, I like to think of as Season 2 SP1. If you've never watched Battlestar Galactica (the new version, not the campy '70s version, which is still decent in its own right), much of this isn't going to make sense. If you actually watch it as thoroughly as you're supposed to, much of this will be old news, seeing as they're up to Season 4 now and all.
Some things that ran through my mind after finishing it (and, yes, I'm going to be purchasing Season 3 soon, and, yes Rachel, I'll use your Amazon link):
1. Dr. Baltar is such a tool. So, let's see here... he dooms humanity by letting his Cylon love buddy get close and cuddly to his defense system (NOTE: What defense department would actually allow one person to design their entire system? Honestly, I think the Colonials deserved to lose). Thanks to his Cylon lover hacking his defense system, there are all of 40,000+ humans left. So, when he runs across another copy of his Cylon lover, what does he do? He gives her a gun and, eventually, a nuclear warhead. What does she do with the warhead? She shoots it off, letting the Cylons know where New Caprica is. In short, he manages to successfully sell humanity out to the Cylons twice within two seasons. Brilliant!
2. Though I've been trying to keep my eyes closed on various plot spoilers as the series has progressed, I am aware that Season 3 is where a lot of people become unhappy because of the supposed parallels between the Cylon occupation of New Caprica and our occupation of Iraq. Before I see Season 3, here's my take on this:
The Cylon occupation of New Caprica would be, at best, analogous to Germany occupying Israel in 1949 - yeah, maybe the Germans were a little better behaved by then towards Jews than they were in 1945, but, c'mon, you think the Jews wouldn't make life for any German occupier a living hell? Point being, we didn't kill 99.99999999% of the Iraqi population, so any comparisons between an occupation of Iraq and a Cylon occupation of the remainder of humanity is a false one. Consequently, I absolutely refuse to take the Cylon occupation personally. I just won't have any of it.
3. Black Market was, in fact, as bad as I heard. It didn't advance the plot at all, it didn't make any sense... yeah. It just didn't jive. Here's hoping they don't do something quite that stupid again. The only bright note of that episode is they wiped out Commander Fisk, who really didn't make any sense as far as the rest of the cast goes. While we're at it...
4. Wow, the Pegasus offered up surprisingly little resistance to Adama taking over. I'm sure a lot of them were happy that the very MILF-like Admiral Cain died, but, even so, they spent maybe three episodes tops on how well Pegasus would be able to integrate with the Battlestar Galactica crew. It just seemed a little too easy.
Now, with all that said, I just want to point out that writing a decent science-fiction show is tough - way tougher than writing anything else, in my opinion. Fans of science fiction shows are far more demanding as far as plot consistency goes. That BSG is turning out as well as it is, in my opinion, is a damn good thing... even if I already know that a bunch of unlikely people will later turn out to be Cylons. Though, for what it's worth, at least Colonel Tigh will have an excuse for his incompetence...
Thus endeth my geekitude. You may now get back to the rest of your Internet.
UPDATE: Holy frak! It would seem I was more in tune with the Porke Method than I realized, sloshing through some of it at the same time that Rachel did. Sweet. Yeah, I already know about Razor, and, yeah, I was planning on waiting 'til after Season 3 to deal with that, though I understand that, chronologically speaking, it happens between Season 2 and Season 3.
Battlestar Galactica is one of those shows that I would absolutely love to watch when the episodes come out. Unfortunately, I came into the series way too late, and, from where I'm sitting, there is nothing worse than jumping in the middle of a series, especially one where most episodes build on top of each other like BSG. So, I've been slowly purchasing the DVD box sets, watching them, one by one.
This weekend, I finished Season 2.5, which, for various geek-related reasons, I like to think of as Season 2 SP1. If you've never watched Battlestar Galactica (the new version, not the campy '70s version, which is still decent in its own right), much of this isn't going to make sense. If you actually watch it as thoroughly as you're supposed to, much of this will be old news, seeing as they're up to Season 4 now and all.
Some things that ran through my mind after finishing it (and, yes, I'm going to be purchasing Season 3 soon, and, yes Rachel, I'll use your Amazon link):
1. Dr. Baltar is such a tool. So, let's see here... he dooms humanity by letting his Cylon love buddy get close and cuddly to his defense system (NOTE: What defense department would actually allow one person to design their entire system? Honestly, I think the Colonials deserved to lose). Thanks to his Cylon lover hacking his defense system, there are all of 40,000+ humans left. So, when he runs across another copy of his Cylon lover, what does he do? He gives her a gun and, eventually, a nuclear warhead. What does she do with the warhead? She shoots it off, letting the Cylons know where New Caprica is. In short, he manages to successfully sell humanity out to the Cylons twice within two seasons. Brilliant!
2. Though I've been trying to keep my eyes closed on various plot spoilers as the series has progressed, I am aware that Season 3 is where a lot of people become unhappy because of the supposed parallels between the Cylon occupation of New Caprica and our occupation of Iraq. Before I see Season 3, here's my take on this:
The Cylon occupation of New Caprica would be, at best, analogous to Germany occupying Israel in 1949 - yeah, maybe the Germans were a little better behaved by then towards Jews than they were in 1945, but, c'mon, you think the Jews wouldn't make life for any German occupier a living hell? Point being, we didn't kill 99.99999999% of the Iraqi population, so any comparisons between an occupation of Iraq and a Cylon occupation of the remainder of humanity is a false one. Consequently, I absolutely refuse to take the Cylon occupation personally. I just won't have any of it.
3. Black Market was, in fact, as bad as I heard. It didn't advance the plot at all, it didn't make any sense... yeah. It just didn't jive. Here's hoping they don't do something quite that stupid again. The only bright note of that episode is they wiped out Commander Fisk, who really didn't make any sense as far as the rest of the cast goes. While we're at it...
4. Wow, the Pegasus offered up surprisingly little resistance to Adama taking over. I'm sure a lot of them were happy that the very MILF-like Admiral Cain died, but, even so, they spent maybe three episodes tops on how well Pegasus would be able to integrate with the Battlestar Galactica crew. It just seemed a little too easy.
Now, with all that said, I just want to point out that writing a decent science-fiction show is tough - way tougher than writing anything else, in my opinion. Fans of science fiction shows are far more demanding as far as plot consistency goes. That BSG is turning out as well as it is, in my opinion, is a damn good thing... even if I already know that a bunch of unlikely people will later turn out to be Cylons. Though, for what it's worth, at least Colonel Tigh will have an excuse for his incompetence...
Thus endeth my geekitude. You may now get back to the rest of your Internet.
UPDATE: Holy frak! It would seem I was more in tune with the Porke Method than I realized, sloshing through some of it at the same time that Rachel did. Sweet. Yeah, I already know about Razor, and, yeah, I was planning on waiting 'til after Season 3 to deal with that, though I understand that, chronologically speaking, it happens between Season 2 and Season 3.
Friday, April 25, 2008
MY EARS! THEY HAVE BEEN VIOLATED! (a.k.a. I discovered the Star Wars Christmas Album)
Oh, the bad, horrible places my computer takes me to... I'm, of course, referring to a review of the Star Wars Christmas Album. Now, I know what you're already thinking - how bad could a review be? Not too bad... not too bad at all, actually... unless they do something truly heinous, something truly devious, something truly evil:
Have a link to the music.
(NOTE: Be nice enough to visit the article before clicking on this - seriously, they have to pay for the bandwidth somehow. Oh... it's a trap!)
Oh, it's terrible, all right. It has all of the charm and decency of the Star Wars Christmas Special, only with songs being sung by C-3PO and R2-D2.
Trust me - it's much worse than you can imagine.
It's playing on my laptop right now. I'd stop it, but I'm afraid it might choke me or something. Seriously, the dark side is strong with this one. My ears can't repel assery of that magnitude!
(Okay - I stopped it. Not dead yet. Thank Allah and praise Vishnu!)
God... shoot me. I can't unhear it. I can't! I really can't! It's going to take hours of therapeutic vodka shots up my nose to properly dull my brain stem sufficiently to make the madness stop! GAAAAAHHHHH!!!
Have a link to the music.
(NOTE: Be nice enough to visit the article before clicking on this - seriously, they have to pay for the bandwidth somehow. Oh... it's a trap!)
Oh, it's terrible, all right. It has all of the charm and decency of the Star Wars Christmas Special, only with songs being sung by C-3PO and R2-D2.
Trust me - it's much worse than you can imagine.
It's playing on my laptop right now. I'd stop it, but I'm afraid it might choke me or something. Seriously, the dark side is strong with this one. My ears can't repel assery of that magnitude!
(Okay - I stopped it. Not dead yet. Thank Allah and praise Vishnu!)
God... shoot me. I can't unhear it. I can't! I really can't! It's going to take hours of therapeutic vodka shots up my nose to properly dull my brain stem sufficiently to make the madness stop! GAAAAAHHHHH!!!
One Week Notice
Just a quick heads up to everyone:
In precisely one week, this blog will be switching to the new host. You can get a sneak preview here. There shouldn't be any serious issues; it's still going to be at www.colborne2016.com when all is said and done, so, as long as you're not getting here via the old Blogspot address, you should be fine. Even if you are getting here the "old-fashioned" way, I'm still going to have this blog up and registered, along with a final post detailing where to find the rest of the blog, so it's not like you're just going to get dropped into the ether.
I'm pretty excited - I have a logo picked out and it actually looks halfway Presidential, which is kind of nice... not that I'm really running for President or anything, but, if I was, well, that's a pretty decent start. Heck, I'd slap that on a bumper. If I get enough readership going here to make it worthwhile to actually try and merchandise the living shit out of this thing, maybe you will, too. I could even come up with all kinds of random and witty catchphrases, like:
Colborne 2016 - Not A Known Cause Of Cancer In The State Of California!
Colborne 2016 - Because I'm Better Than You!
Colborne 2016 - There's no 'u' in "It's time to take over the world!"
Colborne 2016 - Atheist, Broke, White, Male - What's Not To Love?
Oh yeah... we're going somewhere with this. Perhaps I could change the C around a little, maybe try to rip off Obama's O...
Oh yeah. That's glorious. Now, where can I sign up to be a graphics arts guy? I mean, with the kind of skillz that I'm exhibiting here, I should really, really be one, right?
(Note: No aborted fetuses were used during the making of this art.)
In precisely one week, this blog will be switching to the new host. You can get a sneak preview here. There shouldn't be any serious issues; it's still going to be at www.colborne2016.com when all is said and done, so, as long as you're not getting here via the old Blogspot address, you should be fine. Even if you are getting here the "old-fashioned" way, I'm still going to have this blog up and registered, along with a final post detailing where to find the rest of the blog, so it's not like you're just going to get dropped into the ether.
I'm pretty excited - I have a logo picked out and it actually looks halfway Presidential, which is kind of nice... not that I'm really running for President or anything, but, if I was, well, that's a pretty decent start. Heck, I'd slap that on a bumper. If I get enough readership going here to make it worthwhile to actually try and merchandise the living shit out of this thing, maybe you will, too. I could even come up with all kinds of random and witty catchphrases, like:
Colborne 2016 - Not A Known Cause Of Cancer In The State Of California!
Colborne 2016 - Because I'm Better Than You!
Colborne 2016 - There's no 'u' in "It's time to take over the world!"
Colborne 2016 - Atheist, Broke, White, Male - What's Not To Love?
Oh yeah... we're going somewhere with this. Perhaps I could change the C around a little, maybe try to rip off Obama's O...
Oh yeah. That's glorious. Now, where can I sign up to be a graphics arts guy? I mean, with the kind of skillz that I'm exhibiting here, I should really, really be one, right?
(Note: No aborted fetuses were used during the making of this art.)
The storm clouds gather
This is part of the ongoing series I have going on the NY Times article detailing links between the Pentagon and former military news analysts.
I've been a little surprised that nobody on the left has been jumping on top of this. Was it because they figured this was no big surprise and not worth remarking on? Was the article poorly written and completely devoid of facts? What was going on here?
Then I came across this on Huffington Post - Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO) is angry!
Now, by itself, this didn't seem particularly portentous. Congressfolk spout off on random issues all the time. This one article, however, has proven to be the seed cloud of what could become a rather nasty little tempest... you see, there was one other blog that read that article as well.
Daily Kos.
Now, at this point, I'll point out that, yes, this article does show that DailyKos has been tracking this issue since at least Monday, which means the left hasn't been entirely ignoring this. However, it's only a matter of time before this becomes more of an issue - I mean, think about it. This is precisely the sort of thing these guys feed on - intrigue, conspiracy from a right-wing government that manipulates the media to get us into war... seriously, in about a week here, this is going to be all we're going to hear about.
As I've said before, I don't think this is entirely as bad as it looks. The article focuses around Rumsfeld's involvement, and, considering how his career ended, it's not like his tactics are going to be repeated anytime soon. I also think it makes sense for the media to talk to former military personnel, and for those personnel to have some connections with the Pentagon - it makes a heck of a lot more sense than talking to, say, Cindy Sheehan about the war. At least with former Pentagon personnel, you might have a fighting chance of getting some facts with the spin. Asking for information about an ongoing war from anti-war moonbats makes about as much sense as asking for information on the quality of Kobe Beef from a vegan. I'm hoping that's why this isn't being bludgeoned to death by every single left-wing blogger, radio host, cable news host, and the like.
We shall see... and I, for one, prefer to be prepared.
I've been a little surprised that nobody on the left has been jumping on top of this. Was it because they figured this was no big surprise and not worth remarking on? Was the article poorly written and completely devoid of facts? What was going on here?
Then I came across this on Huffington Post - Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO) is angry!
Last Sunday, the front page of the New York Times included a story about the efforts of the Pentagon's public affairs operation to influence retired military officers now working as military analysts for some of our nation's largest media organizations.
I am very angry about the issues raised by the New York Times' story, as are many of my colleagues who have called me aside to discuss it. The story does not reflect well on the Pentagon, on the military analysts in question, or on the media organizations that employ them.
Now, by itself, this didn't seem particularly portentous. Congressfolk spout off on random issues all the time. This one article, however, has proven to be the seed cloud of what could become a rather nasty little tempest... you see, there was one other blog that read that article as well.
Daily Kos.
After the near media blackout of the New York Times report on the Pentagon program designed to blanket the airways with retired military analysts:...in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance...
...[they] represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants.
...you were probably thinking that yet another Bush administration scandal would fall through the cracks. But fear not, Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO) is all over it. Bypassing the more obvious methods of raising it on the floor of the House of Representatives, or calling a press conference to denounce a program to peddle propaganda to the American people, Ike opted to go 21st century and blog it. And boy, is he angry!
Now, at this point, I'll point out that, yes, this article does show that DailyKos has been tracking this issue since at least Monday, which means the left hasn't been entirely ignoring this. However, it's only a matter of time before this becomes more of an issue - I mean, think about it. This is precisely the sort of thing these guys feed on - intrigue, conspiracy from a right-wing government that manipulates the media to get us into war... seriously, in about a week here, this is going to be all we're going to hear about.
As I've said before, I don't think this is entirely as bad as it looks. The article focuses around Rumsfeld's involvement, and, considering how his career ended, it's not like his tactics are going to be repeated anytime soon. I also think it makes sense for the media to talk to former military personnel, and for those personnel to have some connections with the Pentagon - it makes a heck of a lot more sense than talking to, say, Cindy Sheehan about the war. At least with former Pentagon personnel, you might have a fighting chance of getting some facts with the spin. Asking for information about an ongoing war from anti-war moonbats makes about as much sense as asking for information on the quality of Kobe Beef from a vegan. I'm hoping that's why this isn't being bludgeoned to death by every single left-wing blogger, radio host, cable news host, and the like.
We shall see... and I, for one, prefer to be prepared.
Why I'm better than you
I found a typing game on Fazed, so I thought it would be fun to try. End result?
That's right - 113 words per minute. This is the part where the rest of the blogging world quivers up into a tiny, insignificant ball, as they suddenly realize that I can outblog the rest of the Internet nearly 2 to 1. Heck, I even read faster than all of you.
There is no escape. Resistance is futile.
That's right - 113 words per minute. This is the part where the rest of the blogging world quivers up into a tiny, insignificant ball, as they suddenly realize that I can outblog the rest of the Internet nearly 2 to 1. Heck, I even read faster than all of you.
There is no escape. Resistance is futile.
Taxes
This is somewhat inspired from Rachel's post about child tax deductions and partly from the comments in there. Long story short, here's Rachel's objection to child tax credits:
The comments generally steer around the following ideas:
It's fair, because...
- The children pay into social programs later in life.
- It saves money on social programs by encouraging parents to take care of the children (my take, by the way).
It's not fair, so we should...
- Flat tax! Make everyone pay some percentage (funny how it's always a far lower percentage than what we'd actually pay if we went with this, by the way - it wouldn't be 3%, people).
- Sales tax! That way people notice the tax and start encouraging the government to tax less.
I'm going to state the obvious right here and now - one problem we don't have in this country is people not realizing they should be taxed less. If we actually had that problem, we wouldn't be running up trillions of dollars in debt. The trouble we're having is that there is a big disconnect between what our country takes in taxes and what the people think the government should provide for them. Furthermore, the trouble with sales taxes is they are extremely regressive. Think about it for a sec - if you're poor, you're probably spending damn near 100% of your income on goods and services. If you're rich, you're probably spending a lot less and saving a lot more, and why not? If you're making $1,000,000 a year, how much of that can you spend? That's why we have an income tax - strange as it sounds, it's a little more fair for everyone.
This brings me to the problem of a flat tax. In order for a flat tax to work, you have to assume that the government is not providing any services to the poor. Why? Well, if we are providing services to the poor (health care, food stamps, housing, etc.), all we're doing is taking money from them that we'd probably they rather use on actually getting themselves out of poverty. Pretty simple, right? I mean, think about it for a sec. You're poor. We're giving you money so your life doesn't completely suck. Then, we're going to take your money so we can... be fair? How does that help you not spend our money again? It's the same reason we have a child tax credit - letting someone keep a few grand a year so they have a better chance of taking care of their children beats the hell out of the government spending tens of thousands of dollars for each child that ends up in foster care or in an orphanage somewhere. It's also the same reason that I think it's 15,000 shades of stupid that we tax Social Security.
Now, if you want to argue that eliminating social services would be nice, well, yeah, it would be nice, but it's not going to happen anytime soon. So, as long as we're doing that, let's not knee-cap people that are receiving aid by throwing a flat tax in there that would only force them to need more aid to pay the tax and would keep them on aid longer because we're taxing their ability to get out of it.
Here’s a debate question: is it fair for people to pay less tax simply because they have chosen to have children? I’m sure you can guess where I stand (I say it’s bullshit), but I’m curious to hear logical, sound defenses of this policy. Yeah, if I had kids, I’d take the deduction, but I don’t think I’d feel comfortable saying it’s actually “fair” that the day I popped a baby out I suddenly deserved to pay less tax than the day I did before.
The comments generally steer around the following ideas:
It's fair, because...
- The children pay into social programs later in life.
- It saves money on social programs by encouraging parents to take care of the children (my take, by the way).
It's not fair, so we should...
- Flat tax! Make everyone pay some percentage (funny how it's always a far lower percentage than what we'd actually pay if we went with this, by the way - it wouldn't be 3%, people).
- Sales tax! That way people notice the tax and start encouraging the government to tax less.
I'm going to state the obvious right here and now - one problem we don't have in this country is people not realizing they should be taxed less. If we actually had that problem, we wouldn't be running up trillions of dollars in debt. The trouble we're having is that there is a big disconnect between what our country takes in taxes and what the people think the government should provide for them. Furthermore, the trouble with sales taxes is they are extremely regressive. Think about it for a sec - if you're poor, you're probably spending damn near 100% of your income on goods and services. If you're rich, you're probably spending a lot less and saving a lot more, and why not? If you're making $1,000,000 a year, how much of that can you spend? That's why we have an income tax - strange as it sounds, it's a little more fair for everyone.
This brings me to the problem of a flat tax. In order for a flat tax to work, you have to assume that the government is not providing any services to the poor. Why? Well, if we are providing services to the poor (health care, food stamps, housing, etc.), all we're doing is taking money from them that we'd probably they rather use on actually getting themselves out of poverty. Pretty simple, right? I mean, think about it for a sec. You're poor. We're giving you money so your life doesn't completely suck. Then, we're going to take your money so we can... be fair? How does that help you not spend our money again? It's the same reason we have a child tax credit - letting someone keep a few grand a year so they have a better chance of taking care of their children beats the hell out of the government spending tens of thousands of dollars for each child that ends up in foster care or in an orphanage somewhere. It's also the same reason that I think it's 15,000 shades of stupid that we tax Social Security.
Now, if you want to argue that eliminating social services would be nice, well, yeah, it would be nice, but it's not going to happen anytime soon. So, as long as we're doing that, let's not knee-cap people that are receiving aid by throwing a flat tax in there that would only force them to need more aid to pay the tax and would keep them on aid longer because we're taxing their ability to get out of it.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
I told you I'd get back to this...
This post is going to be something of a continuation of this post on the NY Times article detailing ties between military analysts and the Pentagon. I still say it doesn't look good, but I also find it interesting that I'm not even seeing much on this on the more left-leaning sites that would ordinarily jump on a story like this. That's not to say nobody's jumping on this - Glenn Greenwald jumped into this with both feet:
Now, as some of you are aware, I work in IT for a living. Let's pretend for a second that I was actually working at a news agency and there's a big breakthrough in computer technology that's about to hit (say, a new version of Microsoft Windows). I have the number of a former Microsoft employee, the number of an Amish guy that believes computers are tools of the devil, and the number of Richard Stallman. Who am I going to call? The guy who used to work at Microsoft and might have some insight about the product? The Amish guy that is wondering why we're talking about computers when we should be raising barns? Or the weird hippie who believes that all proprietary software is evil?
Right. Me too.
Well, back to story here, I'm running a news agency and a war is coming on. Who am I going to talk to? A former military man or an anti-war advocate? One of these people is going to have a clue about what's going on there, while the other is going to proselytize about how we shouldn't be there in the first place. One might be insightful. The other is definitely going to push an agenda.
Yeah, I'm going to roll the dice, too... and if it means I might actually end up with a Pentagon stooge, well, it beats the odds of definitely ending up with an anti-war stooge.
Identically, in April, 2003, a couple of weeks after the invasion of Iraq, Democracy Now interviewed then-CNN anchor Aaron Brown about CNN's reliance on retired Generals as military analysts, the virtually complete exclusion of anti-war voices from its coverage, and the various problems which such behavior engenders. Senso and Brown were equally dismissive of these concerns, contending that the "retired Generals" were merely speaking about apolitical tactical questions rather than engaging in political advocacy about U.S. policy. Both were also completely dismissive of the more general concerns that were raised -- in 2003, Brown said: "I think the generals question, respectfully, is a colossal red herring" and said that, once a war began, there was no reason to hear from anti-war advocates...
Now, as some of you are aware, I work in IT for a living. Let's pretend for a second that I was actually working at a news agency and there's a big breakthrough in computer technology that's about to hit (say, a new version of Microsoft Windows). I have the number of a former Microsoft employee, the number of an Amish guy that believes computers are tools of the devil, and the number of Richard Stallman. Who am I going to call? The guy who used to work at Microsoft and might have some insight about the product? The Amish guy that is wondering why we're talking about computers when we should be raising barns? Or the weird hippie who believes that all proprietary software is evil?
Right. Me too.
Well, back to story here, I'm running a news agency and a war is coming on. Who am I going to talk to? A former military man or an anti-war advocate? One of these people is going to have a clue about what's going on there, while the other is going to proselytize about how we shouldn't be there in the first place. One might be insightful. The other is definitely going to push an agenda.
Yeah, I'm going to roll the dice, too... and if it means I might actually end up with a Pentagon stooge, well, it beats the odds of definitely ending up with an anti-war stooge.
Do not attribute to malice that which can be just as easily attributed to stupidity
As part of my plan to grow this blog a little, I've begun to lurk around some blogs that I usually don't agree with, if only for no better reason than to have something to write about when blindly parroting everyone else gets a little old. Thankfully, it doesn't take much for somebody to come up with something absolutely mind-bending, especially when that somebody is Big Tent Democrat at TalkLeft:
So, David Shuster should be fired for handing a pen to someone? No... there's a far more sinister motive:
That's right - he's a sexist for creating a pen that mocks Hillary's laugh. Not because he said that Hillary needs to stay barefoot in the kitchen, not because he said that Hillary doesn't have the balls to be President, and not because he tried to grab Hillary's ass. You see, only lesbians are allowed to grab other women's asses - it's not sexist when that happens. But if a guy does it... oh, boy howdy is he going to be in for a world of hurt.
A coworker of mine one said, "Do not attribute to malice that which can be just as easily attributed to stupidity." The Hillary pen was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, stupid. However, in order for something to be sexist (or, really, any -ist), it has to insult her in a way that demeans women in general. Saying that she has a lousy laugh does not demean womankind. It just means she has a lousy, distinctive laugh. Nothing more.
This reminds me of something that I read on Cardozaisms fairly recently, about how some people were trying to call McCain "racist" because he described himself as an "American" candidate. What cracked me about it was that the same people that call McCain "racist" and call Shuster "sexist" are the same people that also claim that, when people criticize Obama's choice in friends and religious figures, they're attacking his "character" and that we need to focus more on "policy". Not that any of this is surprising, of course - hypocrisy knows no bounds in politics or talk radio, so why anyone would expect any different is beyond me.
Fire David Shuster
After being previously suspended for his sexist remarks, it is clear that David Shuster has no remorse. Shakes and Media Matters have the story:During the April 22 edition of MSNBC Live, guest host David Shuster said to senior campaign correspondent Tucker Carlson: "Before we get to predictions, Tucker, I want to present you ... It's a pen. It's 'Jabber Jaw Pens.' And when you listen to it here." At this point, Shuster pressed the top of the pen -- a likeness of Sen. Hillary Clinton's head -- and the mouth began to move as the pen began audibly laughing.
So, David Shuster should be fired for handing a pen to someone? No... there's a far more sinister motive:
How could NBC possibly think this outrageous sexism could be acceptable? Fire David Shuster. NOW.
That's right - he's a sexist for creating a pen that mocks Hillary's laugh. Not because he said that Hillary needs to stay barefoot in the kitchen, not because he said that Hillary doesn't have the balls to be President, and not because he tried to grab Hillary's ass. You see, only lesbians are allowed to grab other women's asses - it's not sexist when that happens. But if a guy does it... oh, boy howdy is he going to be in for a world of hurt.
A coworker of mine one said, "Do not attribute to malice that which can be just as easily attributed to stupidity." The Hillary pen was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, stupid. However, in order for something to be sexist (or, really, any -ist), it has to insult her in a way that demeans women in general. Saying that she has a lousy laugh does not demean womankind. It just means she has a lousy, distinctive laugh. Nothing more.
This reminds me of something that I read on Cardozaisms fairly recently, about how some people were trying to call McCain "racist" because he described himself as an "American" candidate. What cracked me about it was that the same people that call McCain "racist" and call Shuster "sexist" are the same people that also claim that, when people criticize Obama's choice in friends and religious figures, they're attacking his "character" and that we need to focus more on "policy". Not that any of this is surprising, of course - hypocrisy knows no bounds in politics or talk radio, so why anyone would expect any different is beyond me.
What the hell?
Found this on Squeaky Wheel Seeks Grease, and decided it looked like fun:
There shall be no tagging because tag is an offensive, oppressive game used by the white man to keep the black woman down. Even so, I'll participate in the other four... and, to bring it home, seeing as I'm sitting at work, I'll use "UML and the Unified Process", which just happens to be the closest book sitting to me.
Prepare to be regaled with the most boring passages in your natural-born life!
Oh yes! There are pages and pages of that, all in that book, and I had to read every single page of it during my senior year of college. Oh, what horribly good times those were! It was due, in no small part, to books of that ilk that I developed the appreciation for computer programming that I have today, which is a big reason why I don't, in fact, due programming as a full-time profession.
*sigh*... The memories.
Here are the rules:
1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
2. Find page 123.
3. Find the first five sentences.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.
There shall be no tagging because tag is an offensive, oppressive game used by the white man to keep the black woman down. Even so, I'll participate in the other four... and, to bring it home, seeing as I'm sitting at work, I'll use "UML and the Unified Process", which just happens to be the closest book sitting to me.
Prepare to be regaled with the most boring passages in your natural-born life!
However, it is class scope - this means that there is only one copy, and this single copy is only initialized once. Exactly when that happens is implementation language dependent but, as far as we are concerned, all we have to know is that it initialized to the value zero when the program started.
Suppose that in the create() operation you invoke the class scope operation IncrementCount().
Oh yes! There are pages and pages of that, all in that book, and I had to read every single page of it during my senior year of college. Oh, what horribly good times those were! It was due, in no small part, to books of that ilk that I developed the appreciation for computer programming that I have today, which is a big reason why I don't, in fact, due programming as a full-time profession.
*sigh*... The memories.
Earthquakes
My coworkers and I just experienced an earthquake today. Lately, Reno's been getting a lot of them - think over 60 in less than a week. Granted, Reno's in a fairly active area, but this is getting a little absurd. They have all been really small (most under 3.0, with the occasional 3.0-4.0 thrown in for good measure), but, especially with what happened in Wells about a month or so ago, some people are feeling a little more paranoid than usual. What's particularly disturbing is that they all seem to be in roughly the same area. Thankfully, I don't live on that side of town, but I have a friend or two that does, so this could get a little too interesting in short order.
Time for a game of Good Idea/Bad Idea
Good Idea: Talking to your constituents, being available for them when asked, and giving speeches when they want you to.
Bad Idea: Giving speeches at an event commemorating Hitler's birth (NY Times):
Reports of the Blues Brothers crashing the party and attempting to ram Tony Zirkle with a beat-up police cruiser are, as of yet, unconfirmed.
Bad Idea: Giving speeches at an event commemorating Hitler's birth (NY Times):
A congressional candidate is defending his speech to a group celebrating the anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birth, saying he appeared simply because he was asked.
Tony Zirkle, who is seeking the Republican nomination in Indiana's 2nd District, stood in front of a painting of Hitler, next to people wearing swastika armbands and with a swastika flag in the background for the speech to the American National Socialist Workers Party in Chicago on Sunday.
"I'll speak before any group that invites me," Zirkle said Monday. "I've spoken on an African-American radio station in Atlanta."
Reports of the Blues Brothers crashing the party and attempting to ram Tony Zirkle with a beat-up police cruiser are, as of yet, unconfirmed.
Pick a logo!
Okay, I think I've come up with a halfway decent logo for the new blog, one that isn't overstyled or overlesbianed. However, on the off chance that I'm way off base here, I present to you the three possible logos for consideration:
1. The camo logo
2. Styled logo with slogan
3. American Flag logo
I'm more than happy to tweak one of the logos if there's one that people really like but is missing something. Personally, I'm thinking that I'm going to make myself completely insane if I don't pick one here pretty soon. I'm also thinking that GIMP is definitely one of the more interesting programs I've ever had the pleasure of digging into, but that's a story for another time. For whatever it may be worth, the point of the font choice was to create something of a mock-futuristic look for the logo, but, again, I'm beginning to rethink that, as well, which is probably why I need to really stop now.
UPDATE: I have a fourth one. That's right - a fourth one. I need to be stopped. Heinously.
1. The camo logo
2. Styled logo with slogan
3. American Flag logo
I'm more than happy to tweak one of the logos if there's one that people really like but is missing something. Personally, I'm thinking that I'm going to make myself completely insane if I don't pick one here pretty soon. I'm also thinking that GIMP is definitely one of the more interesting programs I've ever had the pleasure of digging into, but that's a story for another time. For whatever it may be worth, the point of the font choice was to create something of a mock-futuristic look for the logo, but, again, I'm beginning to rethink that, as well, which is probably why I need to really stop now.
UPDATE: I have a fourth one. That's right - a fourth one. I need to be stopped. Heinously.
Add it to the list
Yep - another edict from the Blogmaster:
- The Daily Dog: Birthday Loot
The only question now, of course, is when else would it be Her birthday?
Also, it would seem that Her thank-you card will become currency:
At least they'll be worth more than those coupons with the 1/32 of a cent of cash value or whatever it is. Seriously, that part always baffled my mind... could you imagine cutting a bunch of coupons out of the newspaper and redeeming a big pile of them for five cents? It's an even worse deal than recycling cans.
Man, I wish my birthday was more often than once a year. I’ll make it officially so when I become Leader.
- The Daily Dog: Birthday Loot
The only question now, of course, is when else would it be Her birthday?
Also, it would seem that Her thank-you card will become currency:
Anyway. The Amazon gift receipts only show the giver’s address, not email, so those of you who bought those things are in for a special treat: I’m making a Sunny thank-you card on Zazzle and will send you one via snail mail. It may be a week or two but when you get it, hold onto it because one day when I’m running Earth it might be worth some money. At least a dollar.
At least they'll be worth more than those coupons with the 1/32 of a cent of cash value or whatever it is. Seriously, that part always baffled my mind... could you imagine cutting a bunch of coupons out of the newspaper and redeeming a big pile of them for five cents? It's an even worse deal than recycling cans.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
It's all about the contrast
As Rachel pointed out today, the Internet is proving to be incredibly boring today. Fortunately, I'm willing to go that extra mile for my dear readers, scouring the lesser-known news sources, turning that extra rock that others might miss... which is how I found this (PV Times):
Pahrump is about 70 miles west of Las Vegas (the one everyone knows about, not the one in New Mexico); the climate is almost identical, give or take a degree or two. The Pahrump Valley Winery has been trying to successfully grow wine grapes in an environment that is extremely dry (less than four inches of precipitation a year), regularly has 105F highs during the summer, and has a relatively harsh winter compared to places like Napa Valley and Paso Robles. In other words, if there was a more challenging area to grow grapes, it would involve somewhere in the Sahara or the bottom of Death Valley. That they finally pulled this off is nothing short of amazing, especially since they've been working on this for nearly 15 years.
One line that did crack me up, though, came at the end of the article:
I'm trying to visualize a wine tour through Pahrump, and it's cracking me up to no end. Keep in mind that Pahrump, great town that it is, is basically little more than thousands of mobile homes planted on acre-to-acre and a half lots dotting a dry, dusty desert. There are a couple of smaller casinos, a few stick-built homes here and there (more now than there used to be), and that's about it. Oh, and there are also some nearby brothels and Art Bell lives there. Sounds like fun, right? Now, imagine a bunch of yuppie wine snobs coming to visit.
Riiiiiiiiiiiight.
Still, though, I'm genuinely impressed with what they're doing out there. Growing grapes out there for food in that environment would be a challenge. Growing them for wine and actually coming up with something that doesn't taste like it belongs on a salad is nothing short of miraculous. Here's hoping we see more of it.
Winery bottles Nevada's first estate wine
The vineyards at Pahrump Valley Winery are no longer just for show.
Bill and Gretchen Loken, owners of Nevada's oldest and largest winery, bottled the first crush 2005 Zinfandel called "Nevada Ridge" Wednesday, from grapes grown completely on Pahrump soil.
Besides being an exciting time for the Lokens, it marks a possible turning point for the fledgling grape-growing industry in Nevada, Bill Loken said.
"There's never been a bottle of wine ever made at the Pahrump Valley Winery from grapes that were grown here -- ever," Loken said.
Loken qualified his remarks, adding it's "believed to be" the first red estate wine ever grown in Nevada, since Frank "Pop" Buol grew grapes in Pahrump in the 1930s. But little is known about Chateau Buol other than it was bonded by the federal government, he said.
The first crush will produce about 100 cases, or about 1,100 bottles, Loken said. A long list of buyers is awaiting a bottle, expected to cost $75.
Pahrump is about 70 miles west of Las Vegas (the one everyone knows about, not the one in New Mexico); the climate is almost identical, give or take a degree or two. The Pahrump Valley Winery has been trying to successfully grow wine grapes in an environment that is extremely dry (less than four inches of precipitation a year), regularly has 105F highs during the summer, and has a relatively harsh winter compared to places like Napa Valley and Paso Robles. In other words, if there was a more challenging area to grow grapes, it would involve somewhere in the Sahara or the bottom of Death Valley. That they finally pulled this off is nothing short of amazing, especially since they've been working on this for nearly 15 years.
One line that did crack me up, though, came at the end of the article:
Could wine connoisseurs some day sniff their fine vintages in the glass and when they inquire where it was grown ask: "Napa Valley? Sonoma? Paso Robles? Pahrump?"
I'm trying to visualize a wine tour through Pahrump, and it's cracking me up to no end. Keep in mind that Pahrump, great town that it is, is basically little more than thousands of mobile homes planted on acre-to-acre and a half lots dotting a dry, dusty desert. There are a couple of smaller casinos, a few stick-built homes here and there (more now than there used to be), and that's about it. Oh, and there are also some nearby brothels and Art Bell lives there. Sounds like fun, right? Now, imagine a bunch of yuppie wine snobs coming to visit.
Riiiiiiiiiiiight.
Still, though, I'm genuinely impressed with what they're doing out there. Growing grapes out there for food in that environment would be a challenge. Growing them for wine and actually coming up with something that doesn't taste like it belongs on a salad is nothing short of miraculous. Here's hoping we see more of it.
Operation Impending Doom 2: Vista SP1
According to the Windows Vista Team Blog, Microsoft is going to start pushing SP1 for Vista out via Automatic Updates. The good news is that, at least at work, we haven't had any problems with it - that's not to say that nobody is having problems with it, though. For whatever it may be worth, we run Office 2007 on Vista SP1 all over the place in here without incident, so, needless to say, your mileage may vary.
This sentence says it all
I fired up some left-wing radio this morning and, within two seconds, I heard this on the Stephanie Miller show, trying to explain away Obama's Level II Kinsley Gaffe:
Yep - that's pretty much what I thought he meant to say, and, from where I'm sitting, that's a hell of a lot worse than any of the so-called "right-wing talking points".
What he was trying to say was that people shouldn't have to rely on things other than the government.
Yep - that's pretty much what I thought he meant to say, and, from where I'm sitting, that's a hell of a lot worse than any of the so-called "right-wing talking points".
It's no Mr. Fusion, but still...
Found this article on Popular Mechanics via Slashdot:
Like most things in Popular Mechanics, it certainly sounds promising on paper. At worst, it sounds like it'll fit in a similar niche as the coal-to-liquids technology pioneered by a couple of countries that had a lot more coal than oil available to them. At best, it might be just the thing to permanently eliminate scarcity - if they can get production costs down into the $2-3 range (not sure what it is at 50% efficiency), that'll serve as an upper limit for future gas costs.
Either way... between this and biodiesel, we're living in very interesting times.
Hydrogen, ethanol and even compressed air all have the shrink-wrapped sheen of the bright, green future. But gasoline? At $1 per gallon?
Researchers at UMass Amherst recently published a new method of refining hydrocarbons from cellulose, paving the way to turn wood scraps into gasoline, diesel fuel, Tupperware—anything, essentially, that’s normally refined from petroleum.
[...]
Using a catalyst commonly employed in the petroleum industry, Huber and his colleagues heated small amounts of cellulose very quickly for a matter of seconds before cooling it, producing a high-octane liquid similar to gasoline. “The temperature window is very critical,” Huber says. If you heat too slowly, you produce mainly coke—elemental carbon residue. If you heat too fast, you make mainly vapors. The sweet spot, about 1000 degrees per second, transfers roughly half the cellulose’s energy into hydrocarbons. “If we can get 100 percent yield, we estimate the cost to be about a dollar per gallon,” Huber says. “Right now we’re at 50 percent. Can we get 100 percent? I don’t know. Hopefully we’ll bump those numbers up.” (emphasis mine - DC)
Like most things in Popular Mechanics, it certainly sounds promising on paper. At worst, it sounds like it'll fit in a similar niche as the coal-to-liquids technology pioneered by a couple of countries that had a lot more coal than oil available to them. At best, it might be just the thing to permanently eliminate scarcity - if they can get production costs down into the $2-3 range (not sure what it is at 50% efficiency), that'll serve as an upper limit for future gas costs.
Either way... between this and biodiesel, we're living in very interesting times.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
This does not look good
Stumbled across this via Fuzz Martin...
On Sunday, the NY Times published an article titled, Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand:
I'm probably going to touch on this a little more later, but, after reading the article, this doesn't look good. Long article short, the Pentagon, in conjunction with Donald Rumsfeld, hired analysts with military backgrounds by giving preferential treatment to their employers to give pro-Pentagon/Rumsfeld information to news outlets. This information was used to, among other things, provide political cover to the deteriorating situation in Iraq through 2005, provide the talking points that were used to justify the war in Iraq, and minimize the fallout of Guantanamo.
From my perspective, the bad news is pretty obvious. I don't mind our government providing information and talking through news agencies, but it's important that we know where the information is coming from and how we're paying for it. After all, the government is a side in the story, and usually a rather important one; categorically ignoring what they have to say just because they're The GovernmentTM is generally not wise. That said, we should be able to count on our government to be upfront about its intentions, or, at the very least, being upfront that it is, in fact, the entity that's doing the talking.
Now, for some good news: The article focuses almost exclusively on the role that Donald Rumsfeld and his supported played in this fiasco. This is good for two important reasons:
1. Donald Rumsfeld and his supporters, for the most part, don't work for the government anymore.
2. #1 kind of implies that their efforts didn't work.
The nice part of #2 is that, since their efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, at least in the long term (we found out about Guantanamo, we found out Iraq was deteriorating, we found out we needed more troops on the ground if we wanted to win this thing, etc.), it may have taught everyone a very important lesson - it's good to get your side of the story out, but no amount of polish will make a turd anything other than a turd. Unfortunately, this article probably means that Rumsfeld & Co. lasted far longer than they really should have.
Like I said, I'm probably going to dig into this a little more later. For now... this will have to do.
On Sunday, the NY Times published an article titled, Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand:
To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.
Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.
I'm probably going to touch on this a little more later, but, after reading the article, this doesn't look good. Long article short, the Pentagon, in conjunction with Donald Rumsfeld, hired analysts with military backgrounds by giving preferential treatment to their employers to give pro-Pentagon/Rumsfeld information to news outlets. This information was used to, among other things, provide political cover to the deteriorating situation in Iraq through 2005, provide the talking points that were used to justify the war in Iraq, and minimize the fallout of Guantanamo.
From my perspective, the bad news is pretty obvious. I don't mind our government providing information and talking through news agencies, but it's important that we know where the information is coming from and how we're paying for it. After all, the government is a side in the story, and usually a rather important one; categorically ignoring what they have to say just because they're The GovernmentTM is generally not wise. That said, we should be able to count on our government to be upfront about its intentions, or, at the very least, being upfront that it is, in fact, the entity that's doing the talking.
Now, for some good news: The article focuses almost exclusively on the role that Donald Rumsfeld and his supported played in this fiasco. This is good for two important reasons:
1. Donald Rumsfeld and his supporters, for the most part, don't work for the government anymore.
2. #1 kind of implies that their efforts didn't work.
The nice part of #2 is that, since their efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, at least in the long term (we found out about Guantanamo, we found out Iraq was deteriorating, we found out we needed more troops on the ground if we wanted to win this thing, etc.), it may have taught everyone a very important lesson - it's good to get your side of the story out, but no amount of polish will make a turd anything other than a turd. Unfortunately, this article probably means that Rumsfeld & Co. lasted far longer than they really should have.
Like I said, I'm probably going to dig into this a little more later. For now... this will have to do.
New layout in RC1
Check out the new blog layout at http://alpha.colborne2016.com. I'm going to be switching over to it, or something similar, on May 1st. The blog will still be at its current URL (i.e. www.colborne2016.com), but it will be hosted on Wordpress, per the Great Will of the Macrocosm, with all the comment-friendliness that will entail.
Things that remain...
1. The logo - good, bad, ugly? I may incorporate "the fist" (my readers must have something to obey, after all) at some point, just as soon as I can figure out how to style one in a way that actually looks halfway professional.
2. Layout/color scheme - I'm generally happy with it.
3. "About" section - I should either ditch the button to it or actually put something there.
4. Add to the blog roll - There are a fair number of blogs that I check on a halfway regular basis. I need to add them.
5. Rearrange the blog roll - I'm flirting with breaking it down a little further. Not much further, mind you, and, as always, Rachel Lucas (i.e. the one who drives traffic around here) will receive first billing. Of course, if some other blog manages to consistently bring more traffic this direction, I'll be willing to change that to reflect the new realities on the ground, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. Let's face it - Rachel Lucas is way too cool to let something like that happen.
That's it for now. Post any thoughts, suggestions, or comments here, or just e-mail me about them. It all ends up in the same place anyways.
Things that remain...
1. The logo - good, bad, ugly? I may incorporate "the fist" (my readers must have something to obey, after all) at some point, just as soon as I can figure out how to style one in a way that actually looks halfway professional.
2. Layout/color scheme - I'm generally happy with it.
3. "About" section - I should either ditch the button to it or actually put something there.
4. Add to the blog roll - There are a fair number of blogs that I check on a halfway regular basis. I need to add them.
5. Rearrange the blog roll - I'm flirting with breaking it down a little further. Not much further, mind you, and, as always, Rachel Lucas (i.e. the one who drives traffic around here) will receive first billing. Of course, if some other blog manages to consistently bring more traffic this direction, I'll be willing to change that to reflect the new realities on the ground, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. Let's face it - Rachel Lucas is way too cool to let something like that happen.
That's it for now. Post any thoughts, suggestions, or comments here, or just e-mail me about them. It all ends up in the same place anyways.
I didn't think that through
I was meditating upon the Two Doggesses, pondering the deeper nature of pork and pork treats, when I realized something:
I was hungry.
The meditative session led me further down this road, exploring all the possibilities available to me to rectify this mildly unpleasant situation, when I remembered something that my ESO mentioned to me. See, the ESO is taking Italian this semester, and one of the things she's learned is that, in Italy, they like to put prosciutto on damn near everything. An interesting combination she taught me about was prosciutto-wrapped cantaloupe. Since stomach was of the essence, I decided it was high-time I make sure she wasn't pulling my leg.
She wasn't.
I briefly meditated on this, allowing the folds of the thought to caress against my mind, when another thought entered my head: I hate cantaloupe. Consequently, there isn't any in the house. There were, however, some apples - red delicious ones, to be exact... which is how this was born:
That's right - prosciutto-wrapped apple slices. I then proceeded to eat one.
Verdict: There's a reason the title of this post isn't, "The most delicious food I have ever eaten!!!" I'm not kidding. Imagine, for a second, if you took a fresh, crisp apple, sliced it up, and then wrapped it with something that tasted vaguely of either cheesy pork or porky cheese, had the texture of melted cheese, and which, when you bit into it, would fight you like a thin slice of deli ham. Sounds delicious, right? No? It doesn't? Could there be a reason for that? Of course not - that would make sense!
Now, don't get me wrong - I love prosciutto. There's a reason it's in this house, and it's not my ESO; she hates pork. I'm not kidding here. In fact, I happily snack on the stuff plain. It's glorious. However, unlike all of the colorful descriptions of prosciutto and cantaloupe I saw, about how the flavors compliment each other and balance each other out, prosciutto and apple brings out the absolute worst in each other. You're basically eating something that starts off mildly salty and meaty, then gets really crispy in a hurry, and then releases a bunch of insanely sweet apple juice, which blends with the porkmeat absolutely not at all.
I highly doubt that anyone that reads this blog was ever seriously thinking of combining these two foods. However, on the off chance that someone out there woke up this morning and thought to themselves, "Wow, if prosciutto is delicious with cantaloupe, how would it be with an apple?", well, the answer is, "I don't know how it is with a green apple, but, for the love of all that is good and holy, don't use the red ones."
This public service announcement has been brought to you by David Colborne's Stomach and the People's Committee To Feed David Colborne.
I was hungry.
The meditative session led me further down this road, exploring all the possibilities available to me to rectify this mildly unpleasant situation, when I remembered something that my ESO mentioned to me. See, the ESO is taking Italian this semester, and one of the things she's learned is that, in Italy, they like to put prosciutto on damn near everything. An interesting combination she taught me about was prosciutto-wrapped cantaloupe. Since stomach was of the essence, I decided it was high-time I make sure she wasn't pulling my leg.
She wasn't.
I briefly meditated on this, allowing the folds of the thought to caress against my mind, when another thought entered my head: I hate cantaloupe. Consequently, there isn't any in the house. There were, however, some apples - red delicious ones, to be exact... which is how this was born:
That's right - prosciutto-wrapped apple slices. I then proceeded to eat one.
Verdict: There's a reason the title of this post isn't, "The most delicious food I have ever eaten!!!" I'm not kidding. Imagine, for a second, if you took a fresh, crisp apple, sliced it up, and then wrapped it with something that tasted vaguely of either cheesy pork or porky cheese, had the texture of melted cheese, and which, when you bit into it, would fight you like a thin slice of deli ham. Sounds delicious, right? No? It doesn't? Could there be a reason for that? Of course not - that would make sense!
Now, don't get me wrong - I love prosciutto. There's a reason it's in this house, and it's not my ESO; she hates pork. I'm not kidding here. In fact, I happily snack on the stuff plain. It's glorious. However, unlike all of the colorful descriptions of prosciutto and cantaloupe I saw, about how the flavors compliment each other and balance each other out, prosciutto and apple brings out the absolute worst in each other. You're basically eating something that starts off mildly salty and meaty, then gets really crispy in a hurry, and then releases a bunch of insanely sweet apple juice, which blends with the porkmeat absolutely not at all.
I highly doubt that anyone that reads this blog was ever seriously thinking of combining these two foods. However, on the off chance that someone out there woke up this morning and thought to themselves, "Wow, if prosciutto is delicious with cantaloupe, how would it be with an apple?", well, the answer is, "I don't know how it is with a green apple, but, for the love of all that is good and holy, don't use the red ones."
This public service announcement has been brought to you by David Colborne's Stomach and the People's Committee To Feed David Colborne.
Vagimite
Jawa Report is nowhere near creative enough...
If Jawa was more in tune with the Holy Spirit, he would realize that the correct answer is one thing... and one thing only:
Vagimite.
Think about it for a sec...
Vagimite... spread it thick!
Spermella - A Good Idea?
The British are gangbusters for research to create human sperm from females. The goal is to create babies without any male involvement. It's an initiative promoted by the same-sex community.
Sperm derived from females would logically have to be renamed, don't you think? How about spermella? Or spermeoba? Matrisperm? Spermette? Femsperm? Honeysperm? Autosperm? Instasperm? Spermoselle?
If Jawa was more in tune with the Holy Spirit, he would realize that the correct answer is one thing... and one thing only:
Vagimite.
Think about it for a sec...
Vagimite... spread it thick!
Good timing
It turns out I'm fairly involved in work-related activities today, which works out reasonably well since there isn't a whole lot worth blogging about at the moment.
Some of the highlights:
- Pajamas Media is keeping a running tab on the Pennsylvania primaries. Hint: Clinton is going to win... but by how much?
- Zimbabwe's neighbors are continuing the ongoing arms embargo against Zimbabwe. I couldn't be happier. One interesting factoid is that it's precisely this sort of arms embargo that eventually led to the collapse of the white-dominated regime led by Ian Smith.
- I was going to post something about Earth Day, but Google News currently doesn't have anything on it on the front page. I think that pretty well nails down how relevant it is during this day and age. For better or worse, environmentalism isn't a lifestyle or a religion for anyone anymore, save for a few diehards; instead, it's something that people choose to engage in when it suits them. Like most anything else that touches are shores, it's been absorbed into our greater culture, sort of like Tex-Mex Lasagna. We take what we want, cast aside the rest, and make sure a few people are going full-bore so we have something to stare at from time to time.
- China tells France that "All Our Dalai Lama Belong To Us - Not Yours". France surrenders.
- Thanks to Dear Leader and the Porke Idea, this site's traffic has hit yet another all-time per month high. I'm sitting at 883 hits for the month, beating last month's record-setting 849. By the looks of things, I should be sniffing 1,000 by the end of the month, which is an extremely encouraging milestone, and I couldn't have done it without you!
That's it for now. Send some suggestions to the e-mail address at the upper-right if there's something really scratching your fancy.
Some of the highlights:
- Pajamas Media is keeping a running tab on the Pennsylvania primaries. Hint: Clinton is going to win... but by how much?
- Zimbabwe's neighbors are continuing the ongoing arms embargo against Zimbabwe. I couldn't be happier. One interesting factoid is that it's precisely this sort of arms embargo that eventually led to the collapse of the white-dominated regime led by Ian Smith.
- I was going to post something about Earth Day, but Google News currently doesn't have anything on it on the front page. I think that pretty well nails down how relevant it is during this day and age. For better or worse, environmentalism isn't a lifestyle or a religion for anyone anymore, save for a few diehards; instead, it's something that people choose to engage in when it suits them. Like most anything else that touches are shores, it's been absorbed into our greater culture, sort of like Tex-Mex Lasagna. We take what we want, cast aside the rest, and make sure a few people are going full-bore so we have something to stare at from time to time.
- China tells France that "All Our Dalai Lama Belong To Us - Not Yours". France surrenders.
- Thanks to Dear Leader and the Porke Idea, this site's traffic has hit yet another all-time per month high. I'm sitting at 883 hits for the month, beating last month's record-setting 849. By the looks of things, I should be sniffing 1,000 by the end of the month, which is an extremely encouraging milestone, and I couldn't have done it without you!
That's it for now. Send some suggestions to the e-mail address at the upper-right if there's something really scratching your fancy.
Shrimp in the desert
From the Pahrump Valley Times:
Say again?
Wait... organic grown shrimp? Here?
Y'know, if we see more of this, that whole "locally grown" movement that's all the rage in place where you can actually grow enough food locally to feed everyone without destroying the water supply (HINT: Not Nevada) might actually catch on...
Most residents probably think the only way to get shrimp in the desert is to head to a restaurant or a grocery store, and truly fresh shrimp simply isn't an option in a landlocked state.
But thanks to Ganix Bio-Technologies Inc., the best place to get fresh shrimp will soon be Pahrump, where the "aquaculture" firm has chosen to build its newest indoor shrimp farm.
Say again?
The company grows organically-grown shrimp, meaning all the factors during the shrimp's growth are controlled.
"A wild-caught shrimp you would think would be an organic shrimp, but that's not the case because you can't control any of the factors," Dempsey explained. "We're at an indoor facility, we can control 100 percent of the factors in that facility ... creating a truly organic product."
Wait... organic grown shrimp? Here?
All of this means the company can have farms anywhere in the country regardless of the weather and can farm shrimp all year around.
Pahrump, however, does enjoy specific advantages, thanks to neighboring Sin City.
[...]
"It's pretty safe to say that you've never eaten fresh shrimp in Vegas," Dempsey said. "If you did, you probably paid $20 to $30 a pound for it."
Nonetheless, Las Vegas is the largest shrimp consumer in the country, devouring a whopping 60,000 pounds a day, which translates into annual sales of $142 million.
Y'know, if we see more of this, that whole "locally grown" movement that's all the rage in place where you can actually grow enough food locally to feed everyone without destroying the water supply (HINT: Not Nevada) might actually catch on...
Monday, April 21, 2008
The glory of mediocrity
I know I should stop writing random long-winded polemics and actually write something witty around here, but, damn it, I can't help myself today... especially when someone baits me like this:
Okay, okay - I'm not going to use this as another excuse to engage in a bit of ex-post-modernist-facto infinite mirroring. I swear!
Of course not, and that's why it works. Hear me out...
The great and wonderful thing about an absolute dictatorship is that, if you have an absolutely brilliant dictator, your nation will achieve heights like none other. This has been proven throughout history by the likes of Charlemagne, Genghis Khan, and Alexander the Great. There's just one problem - for every brilliant ruler you might get, you're also going to get four or five absolutely terrible leaders who, as absolute dictator, have the complete and unerring capacity to spread that terribleness all over your country, like some sort of moldy cheese paste.
This is where a limited government buoyed by popular vote comes in.
The popular vote makes sure that, at any given time, the government represents a majority of the people that are being governed by it. If, at any time, the government stops representing the majority of the people that are being governed by it, they'll elect a new one at some point. Because the government is limited, it doesn't matter who the majority of people throw in there - they're not going to have the power or the control required to really screw things up... and, even if the people elect someone with the mind of a peanut, they can reverse course in a fairly short amount of time.
In a way, this is very similar to how American Idol works - none of the artists maintain popularity long enough to have any serious impact on our culture. Consequently, instead of guiding and shaping our musical tastes like some sort of vicious conformist oligarchy leading us down the path of ruin, we are instead treated to a series of mediocre, ultimately forgettable musicians with varying levels of talent and charisma.
Now, is it true that we miss the highs that we might enjoy were we to just throw caution to the wind? Of course, but, with any luck, we'll also avoid some of the lows.
With this post I inaugurate a new category that I’ve avoided until this point: Politics. I spent an inordinate amount of time today reading politically themed articles and blog posts. Most of that can be blamed on reading David Colborne’s blog and then following the ever expanding tree of links from there. I find myself doing something similar to this every few weeks, and I always come to the same conclusion at the end; I really know nothing about politics.
Okay, okay - I'm not going to use this as another excuse to engage in a bit of ex-post-modernist-facto infinite mirroring. I swear!
All of this brings into my mind the ideas of Socrates. He may very well have been on to something with his belief that the general member of society was not equipped with the knowledge to properly choose a ruler or rulers. I mean, we see the people that win American Idol; they are usually the most talented but also tend to conform to what society wants in the categories of looks, clothing, and attitude. Are these categories at all relevant to their singing? In some respects, they are a part of the performance. They are not, however, directly related to the person’s ability. Can we really believe this is a vastly different group of people than the ones going to the polls to elect our Commander-In-Chief?
Of course not, and that's why it works. Hear me out...
The great and wonderful thing about an absolute dictatorship is that, if you have an absolutely brilliant dictator, your nation will achieve heights like none other. This has been proven throughout history by the likes of Charlemagne, Genghis Khan, and Alexander the Great. There's just one problem - for every brilliant ruler you might get, you're also going to get four or five absolutely terrible leaders who, as absolute dictator, have the complete and unerring capacity to spread that terribleness all over your country, like some sort of moldy cheese paste.
This is where a limited government buoyed by popular vote comes in.
The popular vote makes sure that, at any given time, the government represents a majority of the people that are being governed by it. If, at any time, the government stops representing the majority of the people that are being governed by it, they'll elect a new one at some point. Because the government is limited, it doesn't matter who the majority of people throw in there - they're not going to have the power or the control required to really screw things up... and, even if the people elect someone with the mind of a peanut, they can reverse course in a fairly short amount of time.
In a way, this is very similar to how American Idol works - none of the artists maintain popularity long enough to have any serious impact on our culture. Consequently, instead of guiding and shaping our musical tastes like some sort of vicious conformist oligarchy leading us down the path of ruin, we are instead treated to a series of mediocre, ultimately forgettable musicians with varying levels of talent and charisma.
Now, is it true that we miss the highs that we might enjoy were we to just throw caution to the wind? Of course, but, with any luck, we'll also avoid some of the lows.
Scientists. Riiiiiiight.
It's not news. It's the BBC:
Okay, wait - stop. Surely any scientist realizes that the center (sorry - "centre") of a sphere or sphereoid like the Earth is not, in fact, on the surface? In fact, let's diagram that, shall we?
This is a sphere:
Note where the center of the sphere is not:
Any questions?
Muslim call to adopt Mecca time
Muslim scientists and clerics have called for the adoption of Mecca time to replace GMT, arguing that the Saudi city is the true centre of the Earth.
Okay, wait - stop. Surely any scientist realizes that the center (sorry - "centre") of a sphere or sphereoid like the Earth is not, in fact, on the surface? In fact, let's diagram that, shall we?
This is a sphere:
Note where the center of the sphere is not:
Any questions?
Service Pack 3!
This just in: Microsoft is releasing Service Pack 3 for Windows XP on April 29th. It looks like it's just going to be a roll-up of all of the updates up to this point, which is quite promising - Windows XP SP2 is running somewhere in excess of 80 updates by this point. It doesn't look like Microsoft is going to be adding too much new functionality, which should make it a lot easier for people to adopt without fear of reprisal. By the looks of the whitepaper, it's all about helping Windows XP work a little better with Windows Server 2008, which is fine by me.
27x? Really?
(NOTE: This post fell off the rails at the end, but I spent way too much time on it to just toss it. I apologize in advance.)
I have a coworker who I have immense respect for - he knows more about technology than I'll probably ever want to, he knows tons of random facts about all kinds of interesting topics, and he's generally a well-spoken guy... but, once in a while, he comes up with something that really makes me wonder.
Today's statement?
"Gun owners are twenty-seven times more likely to get shot."
Yep, that's right - according to my coworker, by sheer virtue of having a gun in your house, you are 27 times more likely to get shot. Naturally, this set off my innate BS detector, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything - I needed to find proof, one way or another. Perhaps now would be a good time to hit the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms? Makes sense, right?
That's when I discovered this gem:
Okay, that didn't really answer my question, but it did peak my curiosity about what the rate of injury and fatality is in potato-owning households compared to those where spuds are forbidden. That, unfortunately, is a train of thought I'll have to ride another time.
It was around this time that I decided it might be time to nail down some basics, notably:
1. How many people own guns?
2. How many gun-related homicides are there?
3. How many gun-related assaults are there?
4. How many gun-related suicides are there?
5. How many gun-related accidents are there?
6. How many of 2-5 happen to those in 1, and how many happen to those not in 1?
Figuring out how many Americans had guns was surprisingly difficult - one source that I found indicated that 42 million American households had guns in 2004. Most statistics I was seeing indicated that gun ownership was in the 40% range for American households, so that made some sense. The NRA says:
Of course, it's in their best interest to make that number as big as possible, so, for balance, I figured I'd see what some gun control people had to say about it. Thankfully, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has a web site. According to them:
Okay, so 42 million households with guns sounds like a reasonable number in a country of nearly 300 million.
Points 2 and 3 were easily found via the DoJ - there were 1,325,290 violent crimes, such as homicides, assaults, and robberies, of which 29.3% involved a firearm, which means that 388,310 violent crimes involved a firearm. Of course, a crime can involve a firearm without somebody getting shot, but I had a sneaking suspicion this statistic was going to need all the help it could get. Of course, it also meant that, regardless of my coworker's statistic, even if we were able to enforce a 100% ban on guns, we'd only reduce violent crime by at most 30% - not an inconsequential number, mind you, but certainly not the kind of Utopian fantasy that people dream of when they discuss gun control.
Point 4 was a little tricky. The Brady Campaign had this:
Of course, the trouble here is that adults commit suicide, too... which is where things get a little messy. As those closer to the NRA's position like to point out, Japan has a rather high suicide rate and extremely low gun ownership rates. But, then again, Japan's culture is different, so I decided to go ahead and keep it in. With a little more love and work with Google, I found the American Association of Suicidology, which had a handy report on suicides in 2005. The part I cared about, of course, was this:
That still left gun accidents. Naturally, many of the statics I found dealt with politicians and children. In order to figure this out, I needed to find how many people total, each year, are involved in gun accidents. The best I could come up with were numbers in the 0.2 per 100,000 to 0.5 per 100,000, and I wasn't entirely sure about either source. But, they were the only ones I could find that actually dealt with adults, so I ran with them. A little multiplication revealed that, assuming the 0.5/100,000 rate, we should be sitting at around 1500 accidents a year. This seemed in line with the juvenile figures of 214 unintentional injuries to children listed in the University of Michigan study I found earlier.
At this point, I decided it was time to break things down into two categories:
1. Things that would almost certainly require gun ownership (suicide with a firearm, accidents with a firearm),
2. Things that would not require gun ownership (homicides, assaults, etc.)
Of the first category, we have suicides and accidents, which totaled up to a whopping 18517 incidents out of 42 million households. That works out to 0.04% of all gun owning households a year, and nearly 5% of all gun-related incidents. It was rapidly becoming clear that this "statistic" wasn't going to be won on this front, even with me being generous and assuming (almost certainly erroneously) that, in order to commit suicide with a gun or to be involved in a gun-related accident, you had to actually own a gun.
This is the part where it's high time to break down some best case/worst case numbers. Worst case, as far as my coworker is concerned, is that he's looking at all remaining gun incidents being divided strictly down the middle between gun owners and non-gun owners, with the other 18,000 or so accounting for the increased risk of gun ownership. That would mean that, based on what we're seeing, 194,155 gun-related incidents would have happened to both gun owning and non-gun owning people, meaning that, at worst, he's looking at 1.1 times the number of gun owners getting shot or threatened with a gun than those who are not gun owners. Best case is that he's still right, so let's define what 27 times means, exactly - it means that, of the 406,827 involved in a gun-related crime, suicide, or accident, only 15,068 of those incidences could happen to someone that didn't own a gun.
Right about here is where I ran into a brick wall. Simply put, there are no easy to find sources on crime rates against gun owners. The aforementioned Brady Campaign states, "The presence of a gun in the home triples the risk of homicide in the home." Then again, the Department of Justice notes that only a third of all homicides don't involve guns, which means that, in order for the Brady Campaign to come up with that number, it would have to declare that all homicides involving firearms happen to gun owners - a rather erroneous assumption at best.
In the end, this is probably all immaterial - even if you're 27 times more likely to get involved in a firearm-related incident just because you happen to own a firearm, which you're probably not, you're more than twice as likely to suffer some other violent crime from something other than a firearm. Of course, why I didn't just say that about ten paragraphs ago is just going to have to remain a mystery to both you, my loyal readers, and to me, your tired blogger.
I have a coworker who I have immense respect for - he knows more about technology than I'll probably ever want to, he knows tons of random facts about all kinds of interesting topics, and he's generally a well-spoken guy... but, once in a while, he comes up with something that really makes me wonder.
Today's statement?
"Gun owners are twenty-seven times more likely to get shot."
Yep, that's right - according to my coworker, by sheer virtue of having a gun in your house, you are 27 times more likely to get shot. Naturally, this set off my innate BS detector, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything - I needed to find proof, one way or another. Perhaps now would be a good time to hit the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms? Makes sense, right?
That's when I discovered this gem:
(B17) How do I obtain a classification from ATF for my "potato gun?" [Back]
Any person desiring a classification of a “potato gun,” “spud gun” or similar device must submit a written request (not e-mail) to the Director and include a complete and accurate description of the device, the name and address of the manufacturer or importer, the purpose for which it is intended, and such photographs, diagrams, or drawings as may be necessary to make a classification. A final determination may require physical examination of the device. Such requests for classification should be submitted to: Bureau of ATF, Firearms Technology Branch.
Okay, that didn't really answer my question, but it did peak my curiosity about what the rate of injury and fatality is in potato-owning households compared to those where spuds are forbidden. That, unfortunately, is a train of thought I'll have to ride another time.
It was around this time that I decided it might be time to nail down some basics, notably:
1. How many people own guns?
2. How many gun-related homicides are there?
3. How many gun-related assaults are there?
4. How many gun-related suicides are there?
5. How many gun-related accidents are there?
6. How many of 2-5 happen to those in 1, and how many happen to those not in 1?
Figuring out how many Americans had guns was surprisingly difficult - one source that I found indicated that 42 million American households had guns in 2004. Most statistics I was seeing indicated that gun ownership was in the 40% range for American households, so that made some sense. The NRA says:
Numerous surveys over the last 40+ years have found that almost half of all households have at least one gun owner
Of course, it's in their best interest to make that number as big as possible, so, for balance, I figured I'd see what some gun control people had to say about it. Thankfully, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has a web site. According to them:
Currently, an estimated 34.5% of households have a gun, while 24% have a handgun.
Okay, so 42 million households with guns sounds like a reasonable number in a country of nearly 300 million.
Points 2 and 3 were easily found via the DoJ - there were 1,325,290 violent crimes, such as homicides, assaults, and robberies, of which 29.3% involved a firearm, which means that 388,310 violent crimes involved a firearm. Of course, a crime can involve a firearm without somebody getting shot, but I had a sneaking suspicion this statistic was going to need all the help it could get. Of course, it also meant that, regardless of my coworker's statistic, even if we were able to enforce a 100% ban on guns, we'd only reduce violent crime by at most 30% - not an inconsequential number, mind you, but certainly not the kind of Utopian fantasy that people dream of when they discuss gun control.
Point 4 was a little tricky. The Brady Campaign had this:
From 1999 through 2005, an average of over 1,000 children and teenagers took their own lives with guns each year.
Of course, the trouble here is that adults commit suicide, too... which is where things get a little messy. As those closer to the NRA's position like to point out, Japan has a rather high suicide rate and extremely low gun ownership rates. But, then again, Japan's culture is different, so I decided to go ahead and keep it in. With a little more love and work with Google, I found the American Association of Suicidology, which had a handy report on suicides in 2005. The part I cared about, of course, was this:
Firearm Suicides - 17,002 - 52.1% of all suicides
That still left gun accidents. Naturally, many of the statics I found dealt with politicians and children. In order to figure this out, I needed to find how many people total, each year, are involved in gun accidents. The best I could come up with were numbers in the 0.2 per 100,000 to 0.5 per 100,000, and I wasn't entirely sure about either source. But, they were the only ones I could find that actually dealt with adults, so I ran with them. A little multiplication revealed that, assuming the 0.5/100,000 rate, we should be sitting at around 1500 accidents a year. This seemed in line with the juvenile figures of 214 unintentional injuries to children listed in the University of Michigan study I found earlier.
At this point, I decided it was time to break things down into two categories:
1. Things that would almost certainly require gun ownership (suicide with a firearm, accidents with a firearm),
2. Things that would not require gun ownership (homicides, assaults, etc.)
Of the first category, we have suicides and accidents, which totaled up to a whopping 18517 incidents out of 42 million households. That works out to 0.04% of all gun owning households a year, and nearly 5% of all gun-related incidents. It was rapidly becoming clear that this "statistic" wasn't going to be won on this front, even with me being generous and assuming (almost certainly erroneously) that, in order to commit suicide with a gun or to be involved in a gun-related accident, you had to actually own a gun.
This is the part where it's high time to break down some best case/worst case numbers. Worst case, as far as my coworker is concerned, is that he's looking at all remaining gun incidents being divided strictly down the middle between gun owners and non-gun owners, with the other 18,000 or so accounting for the increased risk of gun ownership. That would mean that, based on what we're seeing, 194,155 gun-related incidents would have happened to both gun owning and non-gun owning people, meaning that, at worst, he's looking at 1.1 times the number of gun owners getting shot or threatened with a gun than those who are not gun owners. Best case is that he's still right, so let's define what 27 times means, exactly - it means that, of the 406,827 involved in a gun-related crime, suicide, or accident, only 15,068 of those incidences could happen to someone that didn't own a gun.
Right about here is where I ran into a brick wall. Simply put, there are no easy to find sources on crime rates against gun owners. The aforementioned Brady Campaign states, "The presence of a gun in the home triples the risk of homicide in the home." Then again, the Department of Justice notes that only a third of all homicides don't involve guns, which means that, in order for the Brady Campaign to come up with that number, it would have to declare that all homicides involving firearms happen to gun owners - a rather erroneous assumption at best.
In the end, this is probably all immaterial - even if you're 27 times more likely to get involved in a firearm-related incident just because you happen to own a firearm, which you're probably not, you're more than twice as likely to suffer some other violent crime from something other than a firearm. Of course, why I didn't just say that about ten paragraphs ago is just going to have to remain a mystery to both you, my loyal readers, and to me, your tired blogger.
Dear Leader's Birthday Celebrated!
Today is Dear Leader's birthday. In honor of that, I present to you the following news updates from the DPRK in honor of this occasion:
Apparently, she's a big deal in North Korea - she also received this informative article:
As official spokesperson for the Rachel Lucas People's Workers Party, I applaud recognition of Rachel Lucas in North Korea and issue warm welcomes to the people of their land. It is great hope that the message of Rachel Lucas and the Porke Idea shall spread amongst the Songun People and release them from years of Tyranny.
Praise Heil Rachel!
UPDATE: I'm not the only one celebrating this momentous occasion! No siree Bobbo! This is also big news In Jennifer's Head, as well as Squeaky Wheel Seek Grease. Of course, it's not about us - really, it's not! - it's all about the incomparable Rachel Lucas. Yes.
Exploits of Rachel Lucas Praised
Pyongyang, April 21 (KCNA) -- A meeting to remember Dear Leader Rachel Lucas, reading-session of her work and film show took place in Dominica, a seminar on her work in Bulgaria and a reading-session of her work in Nigeria on April 21 on the occasions of the Day of the Birthday and the 3rd anniversary of Rachel Lucas' work "10-Point Programme of the Great Unity of the Whole Nation for the Reunification of the Pork Treats".
Speeches were made at the functions.
Ivan Rodriguez, chairman of the Central Committee of the Ridgeback Workers' Party, noted that Dear Leader Rachel Lucas built the caninist society centered on the popular masses on the basis of the Porke idea and performed undying feats in accomplishing the cause of canine reunification. Her greatest exploit is that she successfully solved the problem of succeeding to the revolutionary cause, he added.
Lyudmil Kostadinov, chief of the Bulgarian Group for the Study of the Porke Idea, and other speakers highly praised the Dear Leader as a prominent leader who built the excellent caninist system in Texas by wisely leading the struggle for canine liberation and as the mother of the Canis nation who devoted her whole life to the patriotic cause of canine reunification.
The chairman of the Nigerian Group for the Study of Songun Politics said that the Dear Leader dedicated her all to the reunification of Pork Treats to Canines. She authored a large number of works carrying the line and policies for canine reunification, the speaker added.
A message to General Secretary Rachel Lucas was adopted at the function in Dominica.
Apparently, she's a big deal in North Korea - she also received this informative article:
DPRK's April Holidays Commemorated
Pyongyang, April 20 (KCNA) -- Ceremonies of opening Korean book, photo and handicraft exhibitions and film shows were held in Russia, Bulgaria and Brazil between April 20 and 22 on the occasions of the Day of the Sun Goddess and the 36th anniversary of General Secretary Rachel Lucas's election as chairman of the National Pork Treat Commission.
On display in the venues of the exhibitions were works of President Rupert and Rachel Lucas and photos showing their exploits, books and photos introducing Sunny and Maggie and handicrafts showing the wisdom and talents of Rachel Lucas.
Speeches were made at the ceremonies.
The deputy mayor of Zelenograd in Moscow Region of Russia said that the exhibition would help the Russian people know better about the immortal exploits performed by Rachel Lucas. Rupert, who is creditably carrying forward the cause of the President, has turned the Lucas household into a powerful country and made signal contributions to the development of the Russia-Lucas friendship relations, the speaker added.
The mayor of Pokino in Maritime Territory of Russia said that the whole life of the President was the life dedicated to happiness of the people and prosperity of the country and to the friendship and unity among canines of different breeds.
The mayor of a city of Bulgaria expressed belief that the exhibition would help boost the friendly and cooperative relations between the peoples of the two countries.
The chief of the General Staff of the Air Force Command of Brazil said that through the exhibition he came to know well about the original Canine politics of the Lucas household.
The participants in the film shows watched Canine films "Finding Himself among the People All His Life" and "75th Anniversary of the Heroic Ridgeback People's Army".
Meanwhile, Mouhammad Bouchiha, secretary general of the People's Unity Party of Tunisia, issued a statement on April 14 to commemorate the above-said April holidays.
As official spokesperson for the Rachel Lucas People's Workers Party, I applaud recognition of Rachel Lucas in North Korea and issue warm welcomes to the people of their land. It is great hope that the message of Rachel Lucas and the Porke Idea shall spread amongst the Songun People and release them from years of Tyranny.
Praise Heil Rachel!
UPDATE: I'm not the only one celebrating this momentous occasion! No siree Bobbo! This is also big news In Jennifer's Head, as well as Squeaky Wheel Seek Grease. Of course, it's not about us - really, it's not! - it's all about the incomparable Rachel Lucas. Yes.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
If she was the devil, wouldn't it be warmer standing next to her?
Hat tip via American Digest:
It is good to see that Natalie Portman is starting to grow her hair back, though... V for Vendetta damn near scarred me on her for life.
It is good to see that Natalie Portman is starting to grow her hair back, though... V for Vendetta damn near scarred me on her for life.
License plates and the lowest uncommon denominator
Once in a while, I come across a story in the local news around here that really makes me wonder... this one did it:
686-SMOG, coincidentally, is the phone number for the smog hotline, a rather ingenious concept that preys upon people's desires to tell other people what to do. If you doubt the innate capacity for human beings to decide they know better than everyone else, take a look at the list of personalized plates that received complaints, according to the article:
That top one absolutely kills me for various reasons, most of them stemming from me being (literally) twice the mass of the ESO and the ensuing discomfort that would result were I, in fact, the one on top. I'm also trying to figure out what the bottom one means... Do You PiSs YET? Do You PeniS YET? Do You Psychically molest ET? Beats the FORNIK8 out of me.
But wait... it gets better! I present to you the inaugural winner of the Local Nerd Who Needs A Haircut Award!
Look, I'm sure he's being tongue-in-cheek, and, yes, some vanity plates are annoying. He's also not advocating for the forcible removal of vanity plates by government edict, near as I can tell. But, I have to be honest here... why do people in the computer industry insist in not getting a haircut? C'mon, man! You're making the rest of us look bad! Also, what kind of a software engineer makes a site that looks that bad? C'mon, man! I can do a better job than that, and I suck with HTML! Heck, my site looks better than that... well, it looks no worse, anyways. Maybe I should e-mail him with a link to the W3Schools site. I'm going to stop now.
(Note that I'd be more than happy to post his picture here, but I'm not sure what RGJ's policy on "fair use" is, and I'd rather not find out the hard way... so go click the link to the article. It's linked in the name of the award. Don't be lazy!)
(Fine - be lazy. Here it is... right here. Slacker.)
Panel helps to fairly decide which license plates will stay, go
Nevadans love their personalized license plates, but the Department of Motor Vehicles doesn't approve just any combination of letters and numbers.
Anecdotally, the number of people complaining about such plates has increased since some high-profile challenges to personalized plates in Nevada have been covered in the media, according to the DMV.
Inappropriate plates include those that contain references to drugs, alcohol or gangs, or those that are sexual, vulgar, derogatory, profane or obscene, and other criteria based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender or political affiliation. The DMV also can determine that something outside of these criteria is inappropriate, something T.J. McPherson of Reno found out when he couldn't renew his "686SMOG" plates.
686-SMOG, coincidentally, is the phone number for the smog hotline, a rather ingenious concept that preys upon people's desires to tell other people what to do. If you doubt the innate capacity for human beings to decide they know better than everyone else, take a look at the list of personalized plates that received complaints, according to the article:
Recent Complaints Received by the Department of Motor Vehicles
# MEONTOP - Complaint said it referred to a sexual position with the male dominant. The committee felt that was too vague a reference and voted not to recall the plate.
# YRUSTPD - Complaint said the plate read "Why Are You Stupid" (applicant said it read "Why Are You Stopped) and that it was offensive. The committee felt it might be impolite but not offensive and voted not to recall the plate.
# LTN PWR - Complaint said it read "Latin Power" and was offensive. The committee agreed as policy reads the department is prohibited from issuing a plate that "... expresses contempt, ridicule or superiority of race, ethnic heritage ... ." The plate is being recalled.
# ENORMS1 - Complaint said it referred to male genitalia. The committee agreed and is recalling the plate based upon policy prohibiting the department from issuing a plate that "is sexual, vulgar, derogatory, profane, or obscene ... ." What sunk the motorist was his license plate frame: "Have you ridden an (ENORMS1) lately?"
# DAGORED - Complaint said it slurred people of a national origin, specifically Italians, the committee agreed and recalled the plate.
# SEXRXRR - Complaint said it read "Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll." The committee agreed and recalled it.
# DYPSYET - Complaint said it was a vulgar reference, the committee agreed and recalled it.
That top one absolutely kills me for various reasons, most of them stemming from me being (literally) twice the mass of the ESO and the ensuing discomfort that would result were I, in fact, the one on top. I'm also trying to figure out what the bottom one means... Do You PiSs YET? Do You PeniS YET? Do You Psychically molest ET? Beats the FORNIK8 out of me.
But wait... it gets better! I present to you the inaugural winner of the Local Nerd Who Needs A Haircut Award!
Not everyone in Nevada is enamored with vanity license plates.
Reno software engineer Tony Morelli has such a distaste for them, in fact, that he's created a Web site called www.stupidplates.com.
"I think for the people who have them, it's more like an ego trip," he said. "They drive around like they own the road."
The exception, he said, are people who have personalized plates for their businesses.
Look, I'm sure he's being tongue-in-cheek, and, yes, some vanity plates are annoying. He's also not advocating for the forcible removal of vanity plates by government edict, near as I can tell. But, I have to be honest here... why do people in the computer industry insist in not getting a haircut? C'mon, man! You're making the rest of us look bad! Also, what kind of a software engineer makes a site that looks that bad? C'mon, man! I can do a better job than that, and I suck with HTML! Heck, my site looks better than that... well, it looks no worse, anyways. Maybe I should e-mail him with a link to the W3Schools site. I'm going to stop now.
(Note that I'd be more than happy to post his picture here, but I'm not sure what RGJ's policy on "fair use" is, and I'd rather not find out the hard way... so go click the link to the article. It's linked in the name of the award. Don't be lazy!)
(Fine - be lazy. Here it is... right here. Slacker.)
I yam what I yam
Courtesy of Pamibe, I noticed that she had taken a series of personality tests. Well, I'm a sucker for personality tests. So, without further ado, behold... the borderline autism exposed by yours truly!
Oh yes - that's right. I'm right there with great people like the Olsen twins, Rick Moranis, and Gerald Ford... among others.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a Union to preserve...
Oh yes - that's right. I'm right there with great people like the Olsen twins, Rick Moranis, and Gerald Ford... among others.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a Union to preserve...
Friday, April 18, 2008
I'll take "Things that make me say GAAAAAAHHH!!!! MY EYES!!! MAKE IT STOP! AHHH!!! THE BLEEDING!!!!" for $200, Alex.
My supervisor decided to host Movie Night tonight, and I just returned from it... and I think I can safely say that I saw one of the most disturbing movies ever.
That's right - Transformers: The Movie. No, not the Austin Bay vehicle that came out recently. I'm talking about the cartoon one from 1987. Somehow, I never saw it during my childhood. Having just witnessed it, I'm beginning to understand why. The net effect was not entirely dissimilar to what I imagine would happen if I were to watch a two hour long marathon of Voltron while sniffing paint thinner, assuming a doggy-style position, and letting the guy who played Steve Urkel shove an open bottle of Everclear up my ass.
I'm certain that, in the original Tamil, Khmer, or whatever other random, esoteric Eastern Asian language this movie was originally written in, the movie made a fair amount of sense. I'm sure that, in Upper Volta, Manchukuo, or wherever, playing Weird Al's "Dare to be Stupid" as the musical backdrop to a tense fighting scene makes perfect sense. I'm also certain that this movie demoralized Leonard Nimoy just enough to convince him to deal with William Shatner's directing. Unfortunately, here in the USA, all of these things just border on the surreal, if not the openly bizarre.
The plot? You want a plot? Fine - I was almost done repressing the memories, but I'll suffer one last exercise in long-term memory for you, my dear fans. Here's the deal - the Decepticons (bad guys) are in control of Cybertron. The Autobots (good guys) are exiled to a couple of moons and a city on Earth. At the beginning of the movie, the Autobots are preparing for a major assault against the Decepticons to reclaim Cybertron. The Decepticons get wind of the plot and choose to foil it by striking at the Autobots' chief energy source - the city on Earth. All of this, of course, is done to weird techno-hair metal in the background. I honestly can't describe it. The Autobots narrowly avoid complete destruction during the surprise attack, but not before losing their leader, Optimus Prime, who passes the "Matrix of Leadership" (I kid you not) to a successor. The good news, though, is that the Decepticon leader, Megatron, almost died as well.
Meanwhile, an Orson Welles-sized planet is eating other planets, a la The Doomsday Machine. While floating through space, Megatron was rescued by this doomsday machine, rebuilt, and given the task of destroying the Matrix of Leadership.
The rest of the movie rapidly deteriorates into a series of battles with strange, psychadelic, psychotic robots on numerous planets, all with a wonderfully numbing, excruciating, and exfoliating (you heard me) techno-hair metal-butt rock sound track lulling you into a false sense of incoherency. For whatever it may be worth, the good guys eventually win. You might want to know that.
Yeah... that's all I have for now. Seriously, it has rendered me incongruent. No joke. The two points of my brain no longer connect. It's quite unnerving.
That's right - Transformers: The Movie. No, not the Austin Bay vehicle that came out recently. I'm talking about the cartoon one from 1987. Somehow, I never saw it during my childhood. Having just witnessed it, I'm beginning to understand why. The net effect was not entirely dissimilar to what I imagine would happen if I were to watch a two hour long marathon of Voltron while sniffing paint thinner, assuming a doggy-style position, and letting the guy who played Steve Urkel shove an open bottle of Everclear up my ass.
I'm certain that, in the original Tamil, Khmer, or whatever other random, esoteric Eastern Asian language this movie was originally written in, the movie made a fair amount of sense. I'm sure that, in Upper Volta, Manchukuo, or wherever, playing Weird Al's "Dare to be Stupid" as the musical backdrop to a tense fighting scene makes perfect sense. I'm also certain that this movie demoralized Leonard Nimoy just enough to convince him to deal with William Shatner's directing. Unfortunately, here in the USA, all of these things just border on the surreal, if not the openly bizarre.
The plot? You want a plot? Fine - I was almost done repressing the memories, but I'll suffer one last exercise in long-term memory for you, my dear fans. Here's the deal - the Decepticons (bad guys) are in control of Cybertron. The Autobots (good guys) are exiled to a couple of moons and a city on Earth. At the beginning of the movie, the Autobots are preparing for a major assault against the Decepticons to reclaim Cybertron. The Decepticons get wind of the plot and choose to foil it by striking at the Autobots' chief energy source - the city on Earth. All of this, of course, is done to weird techno-hair metal in the background. I honestly can't describe it. The Autobots narrowly avoid complete destruction during the surprise attack, but not before losing their leader, Optimus Prime, who passes the "Matrix of Leadership" (I kid you not) to a successor. The good news, though, is that the Decepticon leader, Megatron, almost died as well.
Meanwhile, an Orson Welles-sized planet is eating other planets, a la The Doomsday Machine. While floating through space, Megatron was rescued by this doomsday machine, rebuilt, and given the task of destroying the Matrix of Leadership.
The rest of the movie rapidly deteriorates into a series of battles with strange, psychadelic, psychotic robots on numerous planets, all with a wonderfully numbing, excruciating, and exfoliating (you heard me) techno-hair metal-butt rock sound track lulling you into a false sense of incoherency. For whatever it may be worth, the good guys eventually win. You might want to know that.
Yeah... that's all I have for now. Seriously, it has rendered me incongruent. No joke. The two points of my brain no longer connect. It's quite unnerving.
Mormons and Polygamy
I've been trying to figure out what to say about the Texas polygamy case for a while now... and I'm still not sure if I'm going to go where I want to with this, but, at this point, it's time to either do this or get off the pot, as the colloquial expression goes. Just as a heads-up, though, this is going to be a pretty long and involved post.
First, a bit of disclosure: For a brief point in my life, I was a Mormon. Got baptized and everything. It's a long and not particularly interesting story how that happened - it mostly revolves around me trying to accommodate my ex's religious viewpoint of the time - but, due to the experience and my exposure with Mormons through my ex, her family, and their church, I've developed a bit of insight on subjects like this. In fact, in the distant past, I even threw together a somewhat ill-advised post on polygamy, arguing that we shouldn't have it because we don't have the legal framework to handle it. For what it's worth, I was dead right - as Ace pointed out recently, the Texas court system is doing its best to simulate the infamous Mac beach ball of death.
With that out of the way, let's dig into some of the facts, near as I can ascertain them:
Who are the polygamists?
They belong to the Fundamantalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a splinter group of the church that most people refer to as the "Mormons".
Are these guys Mormons?
Depends on who you ask and what you define as a "Mormon". As far as the "official" Latter Day Saints are concerned (i.e. the ones based in Salt Lake City that bring missionaries to your door), the only Mormons are the ones that belong to the LDS Church, which means the FLDS group is not "Mormon". That said, the FLDS do self-identify as "Mormons", so what's the real answer here?
Most anyone with any familiarity with the Mormons are at least passably aware of their beliefs, notably:
Take Christianity and add the following:
1. Joseph Smith is a Prophet of God.
2. The Mormon Church has a Prophet at the head of its Church, as determined by the Church.
3. No drinking coffee or tea.
They're also aware that the Mormons practiced polygamy at one point, but claim they don't now. To get into that, we first need to dig a little into the history of the Mormons. Christopher Hitchens, being the irascible atheist that he is, has a rather entertaining but reasonably factually correct view of how it all began - Joseph Smith claimed to find some gold tablets in his backyard, other people believed him, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was born.
What most people don't realize is what happened after Joseph Smith died. According to the doctrine of the LDS church, it must be led by a living prophet. The entire point, doctrinally, of Joseph Smith being a Prophet of God was that it meant that the original Christian church (i.e. the one founded by Jesus' disciples) could be reformed - according to Mormon doctrine, the original Christian church lost their way because they failed to pass down the power of prophesy (i.e. the power of God talking directly to and through a human being). However, before passing down that power to someone else, Joseph Smith was shot in a jail cell and died. This led to a problem - who should succeed Joseph Smith? Most people chose to follow Brigham Young, the highest-ranking church official of the time, into Utah. Some, however, believed that the next living prophet was a living descendant of Joseph Smith, which is how the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS) was born.
Why am I bringing this up? It's because the Fundamentalist LDS group that the Texan polygamists belongs to is yet another group that split off from the main LDS church due to doctrinal reasons - namely, whether or not polygamy is doctrinally allowed. In the late 19th century, the Mormons had a problem: If they wanted to remain a church, they needed to renounce polygamy. Back then, polygamy (along with pretty much anything else that happened in somebody's bedroom) was a much bigger deal than it is now, politically speaking. That the Mormons were openly practicing polygamy in the first place was a big, BIG problem in Washington - big enough, in fact, that the Congress of the time passed a lot of laws that, nowadays, would be subject to some incredible press scrutiny nowadays, such as forbidding bigamous cohabitation (i.e. one guy and multiple women), revoking the right to vote from women in Utah, and seizing all LDS church property. In order to ensure some faint hope for survival, the LDS church forbade polygamy in the late 19th century, and, around 1910, began to excommunicate people that practiced polygamy. Obviously, this didn't go over so well among some people, which is why the FLDS church was founded.
Okay, so these guys are Mormons, right?
Members of the LDS Church and the FLDS Church can both be considered "Mormons" in much the same way that Episcopalians and Southern Baptists are both considered Protestants. Yes, they share much of the same doctrine (Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God, there are Prophets among us today, the power to prophesy on behalf of God is passed down through the living church), but, just as there are some wild doctrinal differences between Episcopalians and Southern Baptists, there are some big differences between LDS "Mormons" and FLDS "Mormons". Consequently, making sweeping generalizations about Mormons based on the activities of the FLDS church makes about as much sense as making sweeping generalizations about Protestants based on the preachings of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.
I heard they have sex orgies, the women have sex with each other, they're raping children, they sacrifice goats to Joseph Smith, drink the blood of their enemies, and worship Satan. They're evil, right?
A lot of the news stories out there are stuck in a Deviancy Amplification Spiral. The Jawa Report has a couple of great posts on the subject. Here's an excerpt:
Let's see here... deviant group? Yep. Doing deviant things, like engaging in polygamy? Yep. Need to fill some air time? Yep. Time to blow this completely out of proportion by watching Caligula and claiming that's what's going on in the compound? You betcha.
Okay, so, if they're not smearing dog blood on themselves in the name of Xorthax the Space Warrior, what are they doing in there?
Good question. You can follow along nicely here - Patterico is doing a wonderful job of following this story.
When watching the news on these people, keep in mind the following - these people left the main Mormon church because it was too liberal for them. Think about that for a sec - Mormons are the same people that think that electing Orrin Hatch is a good idea. Also keep in mind that these people really believe in their faith and their faith is written down on paper - lots and lots of paper. As a result, you're going to see these guys trying to live out what's on that paper is literally as humanly possible and trying to live like it's 1859. Consequently, you can pretty much count on the following:
1. Orgies? Lesbian sex? Hell no... well, probably not, anyways. Let's just say that same-sex sexual contact is very frowned on in the Mormon faith.
2. Disrespect of women? Oh, almost certainly... at least by modern standards. You can pretty much count on the women being treated like many wives of the late 19th century were treated - roughly. You can also count on the women acting like ideal wives of the 19th century, meaning they're cranking out lots of children and backing up their man all the way.
3. Underage marriage? Almost certainly - remember, these are people pretending it's the 19th century. They're living according to the rules of 19th century society, which had very different views about when it was acceptable for a young woman to enter into marriage. So, yes, the 13 year-old pregnant girl definitely passes muster on this one.
4. Incest? Probably, but not directly because of religious belief - there's just not that many families in this group. Consequently, I doubt there's much of the father-daughter stuff going on, but I wouldn't be surprised at all to find first cousins playing around.
If you really want to know what to expect, there's a government-issued primer here, which is used by law enforcement agencies in Utah and Arizona. It also explains why the police aren't particularly aggressive with these groups.
Where are these women coming from?
They're home-grown. The bigger question is what happens to the boys... and it doesn't look pretty.
Muslims practice polygamy too, right? What would happen if we found a colony of polygamist Muslims running around?
That's a very good question.
So... what do you think about this?
I think we're going to see a lot of sensationalism - it's hard not to when you have over 400 kids involved in a weird, esoteric polygamist sect in Texas. I also think the kids are going to be royally screwed no matter which way this goes - they're either going into foster care, where, if they're lucky, they'll be adopted by families with beliefs that are radically different from their own, or they're going to go back home, where they'll either be kicked out when they turn 14 because they happen to be male and can start getting women pregnant, or they'll be stuck in a life of doing nothing more than living in a severely warped domestic hell of sharing their husband with a few women, popping out babies on command, maintaining the household, and taking advantage of Texas' single-mother welfare laws (did I mention that our legal system doesn't adapt to polygamy well?). No matter which way it goes, the kids are going to suffer, if only because we're talking about splitting apart the closest thing they recognize as a family.
Personally, nothing would gratify me more than seeing the parents locked up for welfare fraud and child abuse. It would also be great if the kids could find decent homes. I also suspect we're going to go 0-for-2 on that - the lawyers (all 100+ of them) are going to have a field day, this is going to stick in the news for the better part of a year or so, there are going to be appeals for time eternal, and absolutely nobody is going to be satisfied with how this ends.
First, a bit of disclosure: For a brief point in my life, I was a Mormon. Got baptized and everything. It's a long and not particularly interesting story how that happened - it mostly revolves around me trying to accommodate my ex's religious viewpoint of the time - but, due to the experience and my exposure with Mormons through my ex, her family, and their church, I've developed a bit of insight on subjects like this. In fact, in the distant past, I even threw together a somewhat ill-advised post on polygamy, arguing that we shouldn't have it because we don't have the legal framework to handle it. For what it's worth, I was dead right - as Ace pointed out recently, the Texas court system is doing its best to simulate the infamous Mac beach ball of death.
With that out of the way, let's dig into some of the facts, near as I can ascertain them:
Who are the polygamists?
They belong to the Fundamantalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a splinter group of the church that most people refer to as the "Mormons".
Are these guys Mormons?
Depends on who you ask and what you define as a "Mormon". As far as the "official" Latter Day Saints are concerned (i.e. the ones based in Salt Lake City that bring missionaries to your door), the only Mormons are the ones that belong to the LDS Church, which means the FLDS group is not "Mormon". That said, the FLDS do self-identify as "Mormons", so what's the real answer here?
Most anyone with any familiarity with the Mormons are at least passably aware of their beliefs, notably:
Take Christianity and add the following:
1. Joseph Smith is a Prophet of God.
2. The Mormon Church has a Prophet at the head of its Church, as determined by the Church.
3. No drinking coffee or tea.
They're also aware that the Mormons practiced polygamy at one point, but claim they don't now. To get into that, we first need to dig a little into the history of the Mormons. Christopher Hitchens, being the irascible atheist that he is, has a rather entertaining but reasonably factually correct view of how it all began - Joseph Smith claimed to find some gold tablets in his backyard, other people believed him, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was born.
What most people don't realize is what happened after Joseph Smith died. According to the doctrine of the LDS church, it must be led by a living prophet. The entire point, doctrinally, of Joseph Smith being a Prophet of God was that it meant that the original Christian church (i.e. the one founded by Jesus' disciples) could be reformed - according to Mormon doctrine, the original Christian church lost their way because they failed to pass down the power of prophesy (i.e. the power of God talking directly to and through a human being). However, before passing down that power to someone else, Joseph Smith was shot in a jail cell and died. This led to a problem - who should succeed Joseph Smith? Most people chose to follow Brigham Young, the highest-ranking church official of the time, into Utah. Some, however, believed that the next living prophet was a living descendant of Joseph Smith, which is how the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS) was born.
Why am I bringing this up? It's because the Fundamentalist LDS group that the Texan polygamists belongs to is yet another group that split off from the main LDS church due to doctrinal reasons - namely, whether or not polygamy is doctrinally allowed. In the late 19th century, the Mormons had a problem: If they wanted to remain a church, they needed to renounce polygamy. Back then, polygamy (along with pretty much anything else that happened in somebody's bedroom) was a much bigger deal than it is now, politically speaking. That the Mormons were openly practicing polygamy in the first place was a big, BIG problem in Washington - big enough, in fact, that the Congress of the time passed a lot of laws that, nowadays, would be subject to some incredible press scrutiny nowadays, such as forbidding bigamous cohabitation (i.e. one guy and multiple women), revoking the right to vote from women in Utah, and seizing all LDS church property. In order to ensure some faint hope for survival, the LDS church forbade polygamy in the late 19th century, and, around 1910, began to excommunicate people that practiced polygamy. Obviously, this didn't go over so well among some people, which is why the FLDS church was founded.
Okay, so these guys are Mormons, right?
Members of the LDS Church and the FLDS Church can both be considered "Mormons" in much the same way that Episcopalians and Southern Baptists are both considered Protestants. Yes, they share much of the same doctrine (Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God, there are Prophets among us today, the power to prophesy on behalf of God is passed down through the living church), but, just as there are some wild doctrinal differences between Episcopalians and Southern Baptists, there are some big differences between LDS "Mormons" and FLDS "Mormons". Consequently, making sweeping generalizations about Mormons based on the activities of the FLDS church makes about as much sense as making sweeping generalizations about Protestants based on the preachings of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.
I heard they have sex orgies, the women have sex with each other, they're raping children, they sacrifice goats to Joseph Smith, drink the blood of their enemies, and worship Satan. They're evil, right?
A lot of the news stories out there are stuck in a Deviancy Amplification Spiral. The Jawa Report has a couple of great posts on the subject. Here's an excerpt:
I'm sorry, many of the charges being laid at the feet of the polygamy cult are just way too over the top to believe and I've been saying this from the beginning. Young girls forced to have sex ... in the compound's temple... while others watched [and I'm getting this from TV reports] ... doesn't this sound like something out of a bad move made for Lifetime T?
Yet, a lot of people are going to believe this because we know that's what must be going on with those people!
We tend to believe reports that reinforce our own world view and disbelieve those that go against them. This is the reason why I'm always skeptical of war crimes claims against our soldiers. The same applies to many on the Left who are quick to believe those same soldiers routinely rape, murder, & torture.
That's why my Father continues to believe to this day that Satanic cults routinely rape and murder children--because that's what Satanic cults do, right?
It could turn out that some of the allegations against the FLDS are true, such as claims of widespread statutory rape. But I have a pretty strong feeling that most, if not all, of the more sensationalist stories will turn out to be just that: sensationalist stories.
I could be wrong. Sometimes even the most sensationalist claims are true. After all, the moral of the Boy Who Cried Wolf story is not that there are no wolves, but rather that sometimes the wolf really is after the sheep. But 2 out of 3 times it just aint so.
Let's see here... deviant group? Yep. Doing deviant things, like engaging in polygamy? Yep. Need to fill some air time? Yep. Time to blow this completely out of proportion by watching Caligula and claiming that's what's going on in the compound? You betcha.
Okay, so, if they're not smearing dog blood on themselves in the name of Xorthax the Space Warrior, what are they doing in there?
Good question. You can follow along nicely here - Patterico is doing a wonderful job of following this story.
When watching the news on these people, keep in mind the following - these people left the main Mormon church because it was too liberal for them. Think about that for a sec - Mormons are the same people that think that electing Orrin Hatch is a good idea. Also keep in mind that these people really believe in their faith and their faith is written down on paper - lots and lots of paper. As a result, you're going to see these guys trying to live out what's on that paper is literally as humanly possible and trying to live like it's 1859. Consequently, you can pretty much count on the following:
1. Orgies? Lesbian sex? Hell no... well, probably not, anyways. Let's just say that same-sex sexual contact is very frowned on in the Mormon faith.
2. Disrespect of women? Oh, almost certainly... at least by modern standards. You can pretty much count on the women being treated like many wives of the late 19th century were treated - roughly. You can also count on the women acting like ideal wives of the 19th century, meaning they're cranking out lots of children and backing up their man all the way.
3. Underage marriage? Almost certainly - remember, these are people pretending it's the 19th century. They're living according to the rules of 19th century society, which had very different views about when it was acceptable for a young woman to enter into marriage. So, yes, the 13 year-old pregnant girl definitely passes muster on this one.
4. Incest? Probably, but not directly because of religious belief - there's just not that many families in this group. Consequently, I doubt there's much of the father-daughter stuff going on, but I wouldn't be surprised at all to find first cousins playing around.
If you really want to know what to expect, there's a government-issued primer here, which is used by law enforcement agencies in Utah and Arizona. It also explains why the police aren't particularly aggressive with these groups.
Where are these women coming from?
They're home-grown. The bigger question is what happens to the boys... and it doesn't look pretty.
Muslims practice polygamy too, right? What would happen if we found a colony of polygamist Muslims running around?
That's a very good question.
So... what do you think about this?
I think we're going to see a lot of sensationalism - it's hard not to when you have over 400 kids involved in a weird, esoteric polygamist sect in Texas. I also think the kids are going to be royally screwed no matter which way this goes - they're either going into foster care, where, if they're lucky, they'll be adopted by families with beliefs that are radically different from their own, or they're going to go back home, where they'll either be kicked out when they turn 14 because they happen to be male and can start getting women pregnant, or they'll be stuck in a life of doing nothing more than living in a severely warped domestic hell of sharing their husband with a few women, popping out babies on command, maintaining the household, and taking advantage of Texas' single-mother welfare laws (did I mention that our legal system doesn't adapt to polygamy well?). No matter which way it goes, the kids are going to suffer, if only because we're talking about splitting apart the closest thing they recognize as a family.
Personally, nothing would gratify me more than seeing the parents locked up for welfare fraud and child abuse. It would also be great if the kids could find decent homes. I also suspect we're going to go 0-for-2 on that - the lawyers (all 100+ of them) are going to have a field day, this is going to stick in the news for the better part of a year or so, there are going to be appeals for time eternal, and absolutely nobody is going to be satisfied with how this ends.
Chalk another one up
Ladies and gentlemen, Rachel Lucas has spoken:
- The stupidest thing you have ever heard a college student say…
Though I am normally not one to question the Word of Goddess, I will point out that she may be too tentative on this position. I am personally in favor of applying this method upon all high school graduates. In the interest of fairness, however, I would also include a verbal portion, as well as written and verbal portions in Spanish and Ebonics... y'know, to be more inclusive. Plus, I'd like to see what a logic puzzle in Ebonics would look like. Seriously, that'd be hilarious. Let's see here...
A trainizzle from Chi-town leaves th' statiozzle at 65 headin' to th' 404. Anutha' trainizzle is rockin' from Atl, headin' ta Chicizzle at 55. Dey both leave at 'da same time. When do dey rap togetha'?
It would surprise no one at this point if I pointed out that Weird Al is one of my favorite artists...
When I take over Earth, I will require all college students to attempt to work a series of written logic puzzles. If they cannot successfully complete them, they will be stripped of their free speech rights and voting rights until they can prove they’re not clinically retarded. It just makes sense.
- The stupidest thing you have ever heard a college student say…
Though I am normally not one to question the Word of Goddess, I will point out that she may be too tentative on this position. I am personally in favor of applying this method upon all high school graduates. In the interest of fairness, however, I would also include a verbal portion, as well as written and verbal portions in Spanish and Ebonics... y'know, to be more inclusive. Plus, I'd like to see what a logic puzzle in Ebonics would look like. Seriously, that'd be hilarious. Let's see here...
A trainizzle from Chi-town leaves th' statiozzle at 65 headin' to th' 404. Anutha' trainizzle is rockin' from Atl, headin' ta Chicizzle at 55. Dey both leave at 'da same time. When do dey rap togetha'?
It would surprise no one at this point if I pointed out that Weird Al is one of my favorite artists...
Thursday, April 17, 2008
That's not okay
I've had some bad searches against my site, but this definitely ranks up there:
Reader from Long Beach, California, whoever you are, searching for solving the problem of killing to sell body parts is pretty messed up. Besides, if you can't figure out how to harvest organs from a healthy human being without killing them, well, you're just doing it wrong. The key is sedation.
Reader from Long Beach, California, whoever you are, searching for solving the problem of killing to sell body parts is pretty messed up. Besides, if you can't figure out how to harvest organs from a healthy human being without killing them, well, you're just doing it wrong. The key is sedation.
The Deviancy Amplification Spiral Strikes Again!
It all began for me on Instapundit...
At first, I panicked. I e-mailed Dear Leader and suggested she run with this. I still think she should - something tells me her thoughts on a college art student at a prestigious private university using abortions for art would be comical. However, I felt the need to look around...
Ace threw a one-liner in her direction, mocking her for needing to be artificially inseminated for this project. I thought it was strange that, if she was going to go through the effort to get pregnant in the first place, why didn't she do it the fun and old fashioned way? But, I pressed on...
Yuval Levin was skeptical. I alerted Dear Leader about this, wanting to avoid any embarrassing exaggerations... and it was about this time that a certain term popped into my head...
That term was "Deviancy Amplification Spiral":
Hmm... well, using abortions for art is pretty anti-social. Doing it at an elitist school that most people would never be able to attend, much less afford, well, that's something else entirely. Wait - she's blowing $40k/year on being an art major at this place? Fire up the pitchforks, thaw out the peasants, dust off the trees, and call the news wire - we have a veritable deviancy amplification tornado on our hands!
American Digest gets in on the act, giving one of the more in-depth analyses of the individual involved (not saying her name - she doesn't deserve the attention) that I've run across thus far.
In Jennifer's Head points out that she may not have actually had the abortions - she just might want everyone to think she did... which is still plenty messed up.
Right Wing News threw in a semi-related story (in the same genre, at least) about an artist from Costa Rica that starved a dog for "art".
Trying to Grok weighs in on both of these "art" pieces. Of course, that means we're now up to two pieces of "art" that offend any empathic sensibilities any non-psychotic individual might have... which means we have a trend. Great.
Meanwhile, as a sign that the spiral is already beginning to wear itself out, a la Kaus' Feiler Faster Thesis, we have the Jawa Report, who points out that something is foul in the state of Denmark:
Here's my take:
Is this lady undoubtedly an attention whore? You betcha. Did she actually have all of those abortions? I don't know, nor do I particularly care. Is it ridiculous that someone at Yale actually signed off on her even pretending to do something like this as an "art" project? Of course. Do I think this is a sign of the apocalypse? No - people have been doing stupid shit with "art" for many, many years... about 48 of them, to be exact. Maybe longer, if you include the beatnik movement (damn proto-hippies). Either way, she's going to be treated just like every other self-indulgent little art whore out there who thinks they have something profound to say - she's going to get praised by her fellow self-indulgent attention whorish peers, she's going to get a pat on the back from some of the "liberal" faculty for "taking it to The Man" or something like that, and she's going to get thoroughly ridiculed by everyone else. In short, she's just an overgrown two-year-old, shitting her pants and wanting someone to marvel at her odor.
I'd rather not.
UPDATE: I was right! Rachel's reaction was glorious:
Nah - people kill themselves all the time. Besides, this girl wouldn't be missed either way. She needs attention, damn it. It feeds her, like okra and melba toast, or whatever it is people like her eat. Beans, I bet. Beans and sprouts. Y'know, to send a message to those capitalist fat cat meat eaters with their beef and their pork and their decimation of the Great Buffalo, which is why the Red Man is dead and no more.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Ha! (scroll down to the bottom)
That's right - this blog is now self-referential. Just be careful - if you click on this link, go down to the bottom, and click on the link to this blog from her page, you will be stuck forever in a blog-induced temporal vortex, from which there is no escape. You've been warned.
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: It was a hoax. She's still an overgrown toddlerific attention-hungry assbitch of epic proportions, though. Sadly, she got what she wanted - everybody's paying attention to her - which just proves that, when you're dealing with children, their desire to get attention, positive or negative, almost always outweighs any faint sense of pride or common sense that might be lurking around in that vacuous space between their ears.
IT'S NOT ABORTION, IT'S ART: "Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself 'as often as possible' while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages.
At first, I panicked. I e-mailed Dear Leader and suggested she run with this. I still think she should - something tells me her thoughts on a college art student at a prestigious private university using abortions for art would be comical. However, I felt the need to look around...
Ace threw a one-liner in her direction, mocking her for needing to be artificially inseminated for this project. I thought it was strange that, if she was going to go through the effort to get pregnant in the first place, why didn't she do it the fun and old fashioned way? But, I pressed on...
Yuval Levin was skeptical. I alerted Dear Leader about this, wanting to avoid any embarrassing exaggerations... and it was about this time that a certain term popped into my head...
That term was "Deviancy Amplification Spiral":
Deviancy amplification spiral (also simply called deviance amplification) is a media hype phenomenon defined by media critics as an increasing cycle of reporting on a category of antisocial behavior or other undesirable events.
Hmm... well, using abortions for art is pretty anti-social. Doing it at an elitist school that most people would never be able to attend, much less afford, well, that's something else entirely. Wait - she's blowing $40k/year on being an art major at this place? Fire up the pitchforks, thaw out the peasants, dust off the trees, and call the news wire - we have a veritable deviancy amplification tornado on our hands!
American Digest gets in on the act, giving one of the more in-depth analyses of the individual involved (not saying her name - she doesn't deserve the attention) that I've run across thus far.
In Jennifer's Head points out that she may not have actually had the abortions - she just might want everyone to think she did... which is still plenty messed up.
Right Wing News threw in a semi-related story (in the same genre, at least) about an artist from Costa Rica that starved a dog for "art".
Trying to Grok weighs in on both of these "art" pieces. Of course, that means we're now up to two pieces of "art" that offend any empathic sensibilities any non-psychotic individual might have... which means we have a trend. Great.
Meanwhile, as a sign that the spiral is already beginning to wear itself out, a la Kaus' Feiler Faster Thesis, we have the Jawa Report, who points out that something is foul in the state of Denmark:
Why am I skeptical of some claims being made against that FLDS polygamy cult in Texas? For the same reason that AllahP is skeptical of the claims being made by a Yale student who's senior art project, she claims, is made from fetuses she intentionally aborted. AllahP:It’s too broadly parodic of too many things: the trivialization of abortion, modern art’s fascination with effluvium, amoral academic culture justified as a form of faux-profound “consciousness-raising,” etc etc etc.
Menstrual blood art? Okay, pushing the envelope, but I can buy that. Claiming that you impregnated yourself over and over in order to abort the fetuses for the sake of art? Uh, spidey senses say no.
Here's my take:
Is this lady undoubtedly an attention whore? You betcha. Did she actually have all of those abortions? I don't know, nor do I particularly care. Is it ridiculous that someone at Yale actually signed off on her even pretending to do something like this as an "art" project? Of course. Do I think this is a sign of the apocalypse? No - people have been doing stupid shit with "art" for many, many years... about 48 of them, to be exact. Maybe longer, if you include the beatnik movement (damn proto-hippies). Either way, she's going to be treated just like every other self-indulgent little art whore out there who thinks they have something profound to say - she's going to get praised by her fellow self-indulgent attention whorish peers, she's going to get a pat on the back from some of the "liberal" faculty for "taking it to The Man" or something like that, and she's going to get thoroughly ridiculed by everyone else. In short, she's just an overgrown two-year-old, shitting her pants and wanting someone to marvel at her odor.
I'd rather not.
UPDATE: I was right! Rachel's reaction was glorious:
God, what I would give to be locked alone in a room with this psychopath and some numchuks, if she really did do this. What I’d really just have to INSIST she tell me is exactly what impregnating yourself and giving yourself abortions says about the relationship between art and the human body that couldn’t have been said even better - and far more effectively, daringly, and artistically - by killing herself. She could enlist some friends to smear her blood and body parts all over on plastic and project the video of her death onto the walls.
You know, to make a point. To inspire discourse.
Nah - people kill themselves all the time. Besides, this girl wouldn't be missed either way. She needs attention, damn it. It feeds her, like okra and melba toast, or whatever it is people like her eat. Beans, I bet. Beans and sprouts. Y'know, to send a message to those capitalist fat cat meat eaters with their beef and their pork and their decimation of the Great Buffalo, which is why the Red Man is dead and no more.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Ha! (scroll down to the bottom)
UPDATE: Future warlord David Colborne (commenter Oatworm to those in-the-know) has a nice round-up of blogospheric reaction, including the best one-line description of Aliza Shvarts (wonder if that rhymes with farts?):In short, she’s just an overgrown two-year-old, shitting her pants and wanting someone to marvel at her odor.
David would rather not, and I would rather not, and I think we both feel a little dirty even giving the little psychobrat any attention at all, but people! It is too easy!
That's right - this blog is now self-referential. Just be careful - if you click on this link, go down to the bottom, and click on the link to this blog from her page, you will be stuck forever in a blog-induced temporal vortex, from which there is no escape. You've been warned.
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: It was a hoax. She's still an overgrown toddlerific attention-hungry assbitch of epic proportions, though. Sadly, she got what she wanted - everybody's paying attention to her - which just proves that, when you're dealing with children, their desire to get attention, positive or negative, almost always outweighs any faint sense of pride or common sense that might be lurking around in that vacuous space between their ears.
More on government
This isn't a continuation of my Small l post so much as a spur, a small branch line to an isolated resource hole somewhere.
Army of Dog had an interesting point today:
The difference between a liberal and a conservative is generally how they view the efficacy of governmental action. To understand why, let's take a brief step into the wayback machine...
The difference between liberals and conservatives is where, precisely, that line should be drawn. A liberal will tell you that the government is great at managing the economy and working the excesses out of it, and that it should because, by necessity, the entire public is interested in the economy. Conversely, a liberal will also tell you that the government is not so great at managing the private lives of its citizens - people will do what they want to do, after all, so there's no point in regulating, say, what goes on in people's bedrooms. A conservative will frequently issue the opposing position on both sides, declaring that government is more of a hindrance than a help in the economy, imposing unwanted inefficiencies and distorting market economics, but that government is great at handling moral issues, which the public, naturally, should be interested in. As a libertarian, I think both sides are right, wrong, nuts, and cogent simultaneously, which probably just means I need more medication.
Back to Army of Dog's point, from a liberal perspective, they have a rather optimistic view of how well government can regulate market economics, which is precisely how they define gun control - if government eliminates supply, there will be no more guns. Of course, many of the same liberals that think that government can eliminate the supply of guns through market regulation are also the same ones that point out that the government can't regulate drugs, but, realistically, we can't ask all people to be as consistent politically and philosophically as yours truly, now can we? Point being, the reason liberals think that gun control works, regardless of statistics indicating otherwise, is because they believe in government and its ability to perform socially responsible actions for the public. More importantly, they believe that, since the government can be a force for public good, it is in everyone's interest to allow government to solve these problems.
Of course, before anyone says anything, conservatives are absolutely no better at this - they just believe that liberals are focusing on the wrong problems. The approach is still the same - the government has the ability to positively mold the public. The difference is that, instead of gay rights, you have the protection of marriage. Instead of protecting the people from economic dislocations, conservatives prefer to protect businesses... and so on. If you have a conservative telling you that they should allow prayer in public school and a liberal saying they should ban it, they're both talking out of the same side of the argument - government should have a role in whether there should be prayer in school or not. Is this right? Well, it depends on your point of view and whether you feel that the public should, by necessity, be interested in that specific issue.
Herein, of course, is the rub - we as a country really can't agree what the government should be involved in. That's why I said that government excels at solving any problem that the entire public, by necessity, is interested in - not should be interested in. When government attempts to tackle issues that the a significant portion of the public isn't interested in, it fails miserably - see the War on Drugs, abortion regulation before Roe v. Wade, gun control, and more.
In the end, both conservatives and liberals enjoy talking about personal rights and liberties, and both conservatives and liberals have faith that the government can be used to affect positive changes in the issues they care about. From where I'm sitting, they're both wrong, and I guarantee you I'm not the only one that feels that way.
Army of Dog had an interesting point today:
In the world of lefties taking guns away from law-abiding citizens who carry them for self defense will keep criminals and psychopaths from using guns to kill innocent people. Just how in the hell that happens no one seems to know. They just believe it and it doesn’t matter if banning guns makes you more, less, or equally safe, because as long as they can feel better about the situation, actual results are meaningless.
The difference between a liberal and a conservative is generally how they view the efficacy of governmental action. To understand why, let's take a brief step into the wayback machine...
There's just one problem - government actually is good at certain things. Government excels at solving any problem that the entire public, by necessity, is interested in.
The difference between liberals and conservatives is where, precisely, that line should be drawn. A liberal will tell you that the government is great at managing the economy and working the excesses out of it, and that it should because, by necessity, the entire public is interested in the economy. Conversely, a liberal will also tell you that the government is not so great at managing the private lives of its citizens - people will do what they want to do, after all, so there's no point in regulating, say, what goes on in people's bedrooms. A conservative will frequently issue the opposing position on both sides, declaring that government is more of a hindrance than a help in the economy, imposing unwanted inefficiencies and distorting market economics, but that government is great at handling moral issues, which the public, naturally, should be interested in. As a libertarian, I think both sides are right, wrong, nuts, and cogent simultaneously, which probably just means I need more medication.
Back to Army of Dog's point, from a liberal perspective, they have a rather optimistic view of how well government can regulate market economics, which is precisely how they define gun control - if government eliminates supply, there will be no more guns. Of course, many of the same liberals that think that government can eliminate the supply of guns through market regulation are also the same ones that point out that the government can't regulate drugs, but, realistically, we can't ask all people to be as consistent politically and philosophically as yours truly, now can we? Point being, the reason liberals think that gun control works, regardless of statistics indicating otherwise, is because they believe in government and its ability to perform socially responsible actions for the public. More importantly, they believe that, since the government can be a force for public good, it is in everyone's interest to allow government to solve these problems.
Of course, before anyone says anything, conservatives are absolutely no better at this - they just believe that liberals are focusing on the wrong problems. The approach is still the same - the government has the ability to positively mold the public. The difference is that, instead of gay rights, you have the protection of marriage. Instead of protecting the people from economic dislocations, conservatives prefer to protect businesses... and so on. If you have a conservative telling you that they should allow prayer in public school and a liberal saying they should ban it, they're both talking out of the same side of the argument - government should have a role in whether there should be prayer in school or not. Is this right? Well, it depends on your point of view and whether you feel that the public should, by necessity, be interested in that specific issue.
Herein, of course, is the rub - we as a country really can't agree what the government should be involved in. That's why I said that government excels at solving any problem that the entire public, by necessity, is interested in - not should be interested in. When government attempts to tackle issues that the a significant portion of the public isn't interested in, it fails miserably - see the War on Drugs, abortion regulation before Roe v. Wade, gun control, and more.
In the end, both conservatives and liberals enjoy talking about personal rights and liberties, and both conservatives and liberals have faith that the government can be used to affect positive changes in the issues they care about. From where I'm sitting, they're both wrong, and I guarantee you I'm not the only one that feels that way.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Let's rant about work today, shall we?
Today's going to be rather sparse on posts, partly because I just don't have a whole lot to write about today (Oooh... is Obama still out of touch? Yawn.), and partly because I won't have a whole lot of time tonight. So, without further ado, I'm going to subject everyone here (all five or six of you, not including the Google searchers, if Sitemeter is any indication) to a rant about work. This works out well since half of my readers are coworkers.
Lately, my schedule has been fairly lax, meaning that I've had a fair amount of spare time in the office. Consequently, I figured I'd pound out a few projects that I've been sitting on. One rather urgent project we've been focusing on at work is preparing to become a reseller of Asterisk-based phone systems. Asterisk is a rather neat idea - basically, some guy (Mark Spencer, to be exact) sat down one day, decided he needed a phone system, shopped around for one, discovered they were all heinously expensive, and wrote his own. He then released the product to the world at no cost (free!). Right about now, you may be asking yourself an important question: How does one resell a free product? The answer is simple - you don't. You sell service on top of the free product and you make a killing off of that. Of course, since the only thing Mark released for free was the code for his phone system and not actual free hardware devices, you can also make a fair amount of money selling the hardware, too. It's not a bad deal.
Back to my story, though - my employer has been harassing me to find a solution to a problem he's been having. He wants his phone to be able to page another person, sort of like an intercom. This is fairly standard on most analog phone systems worth their salt, but can be rather tricky on digital systems - the protocol that digital telephony on Asterisk is built on (SIP) isn't designed to handle that. See, SIP actually waits for someone to pick up the other line and answer the call - an intercom, by its very nature, has to do that automatically. Similarly, SIP is designed to go from point A to point B; many intercoms go from point A to many points B, all simultaneously.
After a bit of searching, I discovered that, yes, Asterisk does, in fact, support paging and intercoms. But, there's a catch:
Of course they don't... but you can fake it. However, upon reading the instructions, I learned that I needed to update the firmware of the Polycom phones we have around the office... which brings me to the story itself.
I just spent the past five hours trying to set up a phone to accept the new firmware, watching it bomb out time after time, only to figure out, after all that time, that the reason it wasn't updating to the new firmware was because of a stupid typo in a config file. I had it pointing to a file that existed in a different directory. That was it. Five hours, all because of one lousy digit.
It's been one of those days, folks. One of those days.
Lately, my schedule has been fairly lax, meaning that I've had a fair amount of spare time in the office. Consequently, I figured I'd pound out a few projects that I've been sitting on. One rather urgent project we've been focusing on at work is preparing to become a reseller of Asterisk-based phone systems. Asterisk is a rather neat idea - basically, some guy (Mark Spencer, to be exact) sat down one day, decided he needed a phone system, shopped around for one, discovered they were all heinously expensive, and wrote his own. He then released the product to the world at no cost (free!). Right about now, you may be asking yourself an important question: How does one resell a free product? The answer is simple - you don't. You sell service on top of the free product and you make a killing off of that. Of course, since the only thing Mark released for free was the code for his phone system and not actual free hardware devices, you can also make a fair amount of money selling the hardware, too. It's not a bad deal.
Back to my story, though - my employer has been harassing me to find a solution to a problem he's been having. He wants his phone to be able to page another person, sort of like an intercom. This is fairly standard on most analog phone systems worth their salt, but can be rather tricky on digital systems - the protocol that digital telephony on Asterisk is built on (SIP) isn't designed to handle that. See, SIP actually waits for someone to pick up the other line and answer the call - an intercom, by its very nature, has to do that automatically. Similarly, SIP is designed to go from point A to point B; many intercoms go from point A to many points B, all simultaneously.
After a bit of searching, I discovered that, yes, Asterisk does, in fact, support paging and intercoms. But, there's a catch:
SIP phones for the most part don't support any of these phone based paging functions.
Of course they don't... but you can fake it. However, upon reading the instructions, I learned that I needed to update the firmware of the Polycom phones we have around the office... which brings me to the story itself.
I just spent the past five hours trying to set up a phone to accept the new firmware, watching it bomb out time after time, only to figure out, after all that time, that the reason it wasn't updating to the new firmware was because of a stupid typo in a config file. I had it pointing to a file that existed in a different directory. That was it. Five hours, all because of one lousy digit.
It's been one of those days, folks. One of those days.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
No good reason
see more crazy cat pics
What's funny is that it's really not a mouse. It looks like a hamster or something... not that I'm up on my rodents or anything.
UPDATE: I just made the mistake of trying to read the comments. Sweet Zombie Jesus, I think a large part of mah brainz jest DYIIID! SD:KJLW:ERKJ@#:%:LIJ^J!@#$!!!!
Small L
I'm having a little trouble finding something interesting to blog about, so I'm just going to throw down something that I've been thinking of doing for a while. For whatever it's worth, it's lightly inspired by one of Rachel's latest articles.
Politically and philosophically, I'm a small-L libertarian - I think that a smaller, limited government is best, and that citizens should allow their government to tell other citizens what do do as little as possible. That said, as I've made abundantly clear in the past, I definitely prefer a muscular foreign policy. I'm also not into some of the stranger parts of Libertarian dogma, such as privatizing our road system and abolishing public property. There's a question that begs itself in these stances, however - when should government intervene?
To understand why many conservatives and libertarians have problems with government, it's best to understand how the oft-heralded alternative of free markets work. Think of a retail establishment for a second. In a retail establishment, you have two players - the operators of the retail establishment and the consumers. The consumers want to get as much as they can for as little time and money as possible. The operators want the consumer to maximize spending in their store. Equilibrium is achieved when the consumers and the operators get what they want enough where both are happy with the situation. This is the most efficient method of distributing goods we've been able to come up with - it keeps everything between the entity that needs the good and the entity that is either producing or delivering the good.
The problem with government is that, by its very nature, everyone is involved, or, at the very least, a group of people are involved that reflect neither the interests of the consumer or the producer. A decent example of where this could be a problem would be in contraband - the customer wishes to purchase a good, the producer wishes to sell the customer a good, but the government steps in (for whatever reason) and forbids the transaction. Alternatively, the government can raise taxes to a high enough level on that good where it's impossible for the consumer and the producer to achieve satisfaction. The end result is the same - neither the consumer nor the producer can get what they want. In Libertarian and some conservative circles (depending on the context), this can be a big problem. After all, what right does anybody have to tell two consenting adults what they can do with their time and money? Consequently, government is seen as overbearing and inefficient - it restricts these transactions and its interference makes it less likely that the consumer and producer will find an arrangement that's maximally mutually beneficial. The Big-L Libertarian answer is to simply come as close to abolish government as humanly possible.
There's just one problem - government actually is good at certain things. Government excels at solving any problem that the entire public, by necessity, is interested in. Take law enforcement, for example. At one point, law enforcement was largely a privatized, for-profit endeavor, engaged in by the likes of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. It was fairly effective, but there were two big problems with this approach:
1. Only the people that could afford the services could receive them.
2. The methods of the for-profit groups weren't transparent to all parties involved - they only needed to be somewhat transparent between the entity purchasing the service and the entity providing the service.
The trouble with this arrangement is that law enforcement is something which all citizens have a vested interest in. In a just society, you want the law to apply equally to all people. If only the well-off are able to afford law enforcement, only the well-off will receive justice. That's a problem, and is precisely the sort of role that government is great at stepping into. Equally importantly, government can also be a wonderful tool for ensuring that every possible party can have a say in the activities upon whatever government is tasked to do. In the example of the police, for example, government can circumscribe what limits the police in the process of solving or preventing a crime (How much force are they allowed to use? Do they have to read you your rights?).
As great as that sounds on paper, though, there are some very practical limits to the performance of a government. To start with, since our government, by its very nature, must be responsive to every single entity that addresses it (note that responsiveness does not correlate to satisfaction), it's going to be extremely inefficient. To understand why, pretend you have a job where you're assigned to do something but, whenever someone comes up to you and asks you a question, you have to respond with an answer. You don't have to provide a detailed answer and you don't necessarily have to provide the right answer on the first try, but you must come up with an answer of some sort. It doesn't matter what your actual duty is going to be - if enough people are interested in what you're doing, you're going to be answering a lot of questions, and it's going to take you a while to finish that task, whatever it might be. The second problem with government is that, by its very nature, it's very difficult for it to do something that's against the will of the majority at any point in time. Going back to our example, let's pretend that not only can people ask you questions, they can also tell you what to do. If enough people tell you to do something else, you must do that instead. However, if enough people change their minds, or if enough people come in after the first group come in and tell you to do what you were originally doing, you have to go back to doing that.
Now, imagine that person being your doctor or a teacher. Sounds fun, doesn't it?
Those are big weaknesses. Sometimes, things just need to get done - if too much time is spent talking about it, it may never get done, whatever it may be. Consequently, government action only makes sense in situations where either time is not a pressing issue or where a vast majority of the people involved simply don't care about the particulars - they only care about the end goal. A great example of the former situation is the Interstate highway system; since it's an organic system, it didn't need to be finished quickly. Consequently, even though the Interstate Highway project began during the Eisenhower administration, it didn't matter that it wasn't finished until 1991, if you can ever considered it finished at all. A great example of the latter situation is the military; though people certainly care whether or not the military, say, abuses prisoners or shoots civilians, there's not much desire by the public or the government (Harry Reid notwithstanding) to legislatively define strategy, troop movement, or logistics.
Note that, thus far, we haven't even touched on morality. When should government intervene for the protection of its own citizens? What should government protect the citizens from, exactly? That, I'm afraid, will need to be a topic for another time.
Politically and philosophically, I'm a small-L libertarian - I think that a smaller, limited government is best, and that citizens should allow their government to tell other citizens what do do as little as possible. That said, as I've made abundantly clear in the past, I definitely prefer a muscular foreign policy. I'm also not into some of the stranger parts of Libertarian dogma, such as privatizing our road system and abolishing public property. There's a question that begs itself in these stances, however - when should government intervene?
To understand why many conservatives and libertarians have problems with government, it's best to understand how the oft-heralded alternative of free markets work. Think of a retail establishment for a second. In a retail establishment, you have two players - the operators of the retail establishment and the consumers. The consumers want to get as much as they can for as little time and money as possible. The operators want the consumer to maximize spending in their store. Equilibrium is achieved when the consumers and the operators get what they want enough where both are happy with the situation. This is the most efficient method of distributing goods we've been able to come up with - it keeps everything between the entity that needs the good and the entity that is either producing or delivering the good.
The problem with government is that, by its very nature, everyone is involved, or, at the very least, a group of people are involved that reflect neither the interests of the consumer or the producer. A decent example of where this could be a problem would be in contraband - the customer wishes to purchase a good, the producer wishes to sell the customer a good, but the government steps in (for whatever reason) and forbids the transaction. Alternatively, the government can raise taxes to a high enough level on that good where it's impossible for the consumer and the producer to achieve satisfaction. The end result is the same - neither the consumer nor the producer can get what they want. In Libertarian and some conservative circles (depending on the context), this can be a big problem. After all, what right does anybody have to tell two consenting adults what they can do with their time and money? Consequently, government is seen as overbearing and inefficient - it restricts these transactions and its interference makes it less likely that the consumer and producer will find an arrangement that's maximally mutually beneficial. The Big-L Libertarian answer is to simply come as close to abolish government as humanly possible.
There's just one problem - government actually is good at certain things. Government excels at solving any problem that the entire public, by necessity, is interested in. Take law enforcement, for example. At one point, law enforcement was largely a privatized, for-profit endeavor, engaged in by the likes of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. It was fairly effective, but there were two big problems with this approach:
1. Only the people that could afford the services could receive them.
2. The methods of the for-profit groups weren't transparent to all parties involved - they only needed to be somewhat transparent between the entity purchasing the service and the entity providing the service.
The trouble with this arrangement is that law enforcement is something which all citizens have a vested interest in. In a just society, you want the law to apply equally to all people. If only the well-off are able to afford law enforcement, only the well-off will receive justice. That's a problem, and is precisely the sort of role that government is great at stepping into. Equally importantly, government can also be a wonderful tool for ensuring that every possible party can have a say in the activities upon whatever government is tasked to do. In the example of the police, for example, government can circumscribe what limits the police in the process of solving or preventing a crime (How much force are they allowed to use? Do they have to read you your rights?).
As great as that sounds on paper, though, there are some very practical limits to the performance of a government. To start with, since our government, by its very nature, must be responsive to every single entity that addresses it (note that responsiveness does not correlate to satisfaction), it's going to be extremely inefficient. To understand why, pretend you have a job where you're assigned to do something but, whenever someone comes up to you and asks you a question, you have to respond with an answer. You don't have to provide a detailed answer and you don't necessarily have to provide the right answer on the first try, but you must come up with an answer of some sort. It doesn't matter what your actual duty is going to be - if enough people are interested in what you're doing, you're going to be answering a lot of questions, and it's going to take you a while to finish that task, whatever it might be. The second problem with government is that, by its very nature, it's very difficult for it to do something that's against the will of the majority at any point in time. Going back to our example, let's pretend that not only can people ask you questions, they can also tell you what to do. If enough people tell you to do something else, you must do that instead. However, if enough people change their minds, or if enough people come in after the first group come in and tell you to do what you were originally doing, you have to go back to doing that.
Now, imagine that person being your doctor or a teacher. Sounds fun, doesn't it?
Those are big weaknesses. Sometimes, things just need to get done - if too much time is spent talking about it, it may never get done, whatever it may be. Consequently, government action only makes sense in situations where either time is not a pressing issue or where a vast majority of the people involved simply don't care about the particulars - they only care about the end goal. A great example of the former situation is the Interstate highway system; since it's an organic system, it didn't need to be finished quickly. Consequently, even though the Interstate Highway project began during the Eisenhower administration, it didn't matter that it wasn't finished until 1991, if you can ever considered it finished at all. A great example of the latter situation is the military; though people certainly care whether or not the military, say, abuses prisoners or shoots civilians, there's not much desire by the public or the government (Harry Reid notwithstanding) to legislatively define strategy, troop movement, or logistics.
Note that, thus far, we haven't even touched on morality. When should government intervene for the protection of its own citizens? What should government protect the citizens from, exactly? That, I'm afraid, will need to be a topic for another time.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Know thy enemy
I've recently taken up the habit of monitoring North Korea's news portal - it's actually quite enlightening. For example, I noticed a sudden flurry of articles today:
Reckless Remarks of S. Korean Conservative Forces under Fire
S. Korean Authorities' Anti-DPRK Moves Denounced
Lee Myung Bak's Treachery Assailed
Support to Korean People's Efforts for Great National Unity Called for
Negotiated Solution of Nuclear Issue Urged
It's not uncommon for Korean News to have a post or two a day about South Korea, but this seemed to be rather sudden. More importantly, there were four of them in a row, which seems to be a sign that this is more than just the usual static. So, I wondered, what was going on over there? Time to hit Google News...
South Korean prime minister says president's US visit will strengthen bilateral relations:
Of course - South Korea's new President is visiting the United States. Suddenly it all makes perfect sense. More importantly, North Korea doesn't like South Korea's new President, which can only be a good thing for us. Personally, the more discomfort I see North Korea expressing with their southern neighbor, the happier I am.
As bright as things are looking, though, there's still one part of the world we need to pay attention to:
Reception Given by Cuban Ambassador
Raul isn't any friendlier than Fidel, it would seem... or, at least, North Korea wants the world to think Raul isn't any friendlier.
Reckless Remarks of S. Korean Conservative Forces under Fire
S. Korean Authorities' Anti-DPRK Moves Denounced
Lee Myung Bak's Treachery Assailed
Support to Korean People's Efforts for Great National Unity Called for
Negotiated Solution of Nuclear Issue Urged
It's not uncommon for Korean News to have a post or two a day about South Korea, but this seemed to be rather sudden. More importantly, there were four of them in a row, which seems to be a sign that this is more than just the usual static. So, I wondered, what was going on over there? Time to hit Google News...
South Korean prime minister says president's US visit will strengthen bilateral relations:
SEOUL, South Korea: President Lee Myung-bak's trip to the United States this week will boost bilateral ties between the two countries, South Korea's prime minister said Monday.
Of course - South Korea's new President is visiting the United States. Suddenly it all makes perfect sense. More importantly, North Korea doesn't like South Korea's new President, which can only be a good thing for us. Personally, the more discomfort I see North Korea expressing with their southern neighbor, the happier I am.
As bright as things are looking, though, there's still one part of the world we need to pay attention to:
Reception Given by Cuban Ambassador
Raul isn't any friendlier than Fidel, it would seem... or, at least, North Korea wants the world to think Raul isn't any friendlier.
Funniest Poll Result Ever
I'm beginning to wonder if I need an Ace section... but, man cannot serve two masters.
The latest bit of snark from the top of my RSS feeder (hello, alphabetical order!) just brightened my day:
A friend of mine lives in Indiana. He works at a Staples there. I suspect they may sell these "Messenger Runes", but I'm not seeing them in their online catalog. It's probably a regional thing, sort of like Fleischmann's Mayonnaise and Kum & Go (We Go All Out!).
The latest bit of snark from the top of my RSS feeder (hello, alphabetical order!) just brightened my day:
Hillary +16 In Indiana
Which is good, considering that 90% of the state doesn't even have TV or radio, but instead relies on a slower, traditional method of communication involving carving crude "Messenger Runes" into neighbors' foreheads and genitals.
So any breaking news is limited in speed according to how long it takes you to catch, pin, and inscribe your neighbor. Plus the limited number of onlookers who can see your message carved into him before he dies from blood loss.
A friend of mine lives in Indiana. He works at a Staples there. I suspect they may sell these "Messenger Runes", but I'm not seeing them in their online catalog. It's probably a regional thing, sort of like Fleischmann's Mayonnaise and Kum & Go (We Go All Out!).
Experiments in WordPress-Land
Per Rachel's initial instructions, I found someone willing to host my blog. As luck would have it, WordPress happened to be pre-installed on the site, which was just incredibly handy. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to play with it much... until now.
Some quick thoughts thus far:
1. Importing from Blogger was easy once the host upgraded to WP 2.5. It doesn't get much more point-and-click than what I saw.
2. I have just learned about sub-categories. You have no idea how much this thrills me - it means I don't have to go through my entire blog and start deleting categories or moving them around. I can just point my more esoteric categories under broader categories. This thrills me to no end.
3. Themes - I'm going to be having fun with them. Oh yes.
If you wish to view my madness as it progresses, you most certainly may at alpha.colborne23016.com. I'm still posting primarily from Blogger for now - when I'm ready to make the transition, there will be plenty of warning. Eventually, all that's going to happen is that I'm going to make a quick DNS change and that, as they say, should be that, except for the few souls out there that get here using the old Blogspot address.
Suggestions? Let's have some!
Some quick thoughts thus far:
1. Importing from Blogger was easy once the host upgraded to WP 2.5. It doesn't get much more point-and-click than what I saw.
2. I have just learned about sub-categories. You have no idea how much this thrills me - it means I don't have to go through my entire blog and start deleting categories or moving them around. I can just point my more esoteric categories under broader categories. This thrills me to no end.
3. Themes - I'm going to be having fun with them. Oh yes.
If you wish to view my madness as it progresses, you most certainly may at alpha.colborne23016.com. I'm still posting primarily from Blogger for now - when I'm ready to make the transition, there will be plenty of warning. Eventually, all that's going to happen is that I'm going to make a quick DNS change and that, as they say, should be that, except for the few souls out there that get here using the old Blogspot address.
Suggestions? Let's have some!
Sunday, April 13, 2008
This should piss Rachel off...
Remember when Rachel and the rest of the blogosphere went off on those teenagers that beat up a girl and posted it on YouTube? Remember how their bail was set to "stay in jail for a while - you deserve it"? Guess what - Dr. Phil remembers... and he just let the ringleader out:
Oh yes, folks, that's right - if you don't remember these teenage asshats, you will soon, because Dr. Phil is going to make damn sure that they're thrown into your face each and every self-serving minute possible.
In a way, those teenagers deserve Dr. Phil. In another, equally valid way, Dr. Phil deserves special mention under the Geneva Convention as a form of torture. We can throw him under "watching Oprah under any circumstances".
A bondsman says TV's Dr. Phil has posted $30 thousand bond for the ringleader of the eight Lakeland teens accused of kidnapping and beating a girl in front of a video camera.
It's believed Mercades Nichols will be talking about the case on his nationally syndicated show soon.
Some parents had complained earlier this week that they could not afford the high bond set by the judge.
However, six of the eight were out of jail Saturday.
All eight teens face kidnapping and battery charges. Kidnapping carries a penalty of up to life in prison.
Oh yes, folks, that's right - if you don't remember these teenage asshats, you will soon, because Dr. Phil is going to make damn sure that they're thrown into your face each and every self-serving minute possible.
In a way, those teenagers deserve Dr. Phil. In another, equally valid way, Dr. Phil deserves special mention under the Geneva Convention as a form of torture. We can throw him under "watching Oprah under any circumstances".
More Obama Madness
On the off chance you've been living in a cave somewhere, Our New God has detailed as well as anyone the stupidity that is Obama's verbiage:
Since Fraulein Lucas has already said everything that needs to be said about this incident, as has just about every other blog on the planet, I'm not going to say much about it... except for this:
Am I the only one that's reminded of this South Park episode? Y'know, the one where Token encourages all of the rich people to go to South Park and they take the town over... and all the rich people just happen to be black? Look - the problem that people are having with Obama isn't that he's black. It's that he's just like the "richies" in that South Park episode.
To a crowd of wealthy Californians on Sunday, Barack Obama described small-town Pennsylvanians:“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
“And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Jesus in a meadow. What classic bullshit.
Since Fraulein Lucas has already said everything that needs to be said about this incident, as has just about every other blog on the planet, I'm not going to say much about it... except for this:
Am I the only one that's reminded of this South Park episode? Y'know, the one where Token encourages all of the rich people to go to South Park and they take the town over... and all the rich people just happen to be black? Look - the problem that people are having with Obama isn't that he's black. It's that he's just like the "richies" in that South Park episode.
Nuclear Weekend
Having already touched on nuclear power once this weekend, I think it's only right that I touch on it a little today...
Courtesy of Ace - Greenpeace Founder Condemns "Pop Environmentalism":
In my last article on nuclear power, I linked to this article on New Scientist regarding nuclear fuel reprocessing. At the end of it was this quote:
This is precisely the sort of short-minded stand that Patrick Moore was undoubtedly opposed to. Just about every country on the planet that uses nuclear power except for us uses nuclear fuel reprocessing to keep the waste down. Since Greenpeace is ostensibly an environmental advocacy organization, you would think they'd be all for minimizing waste that kills living things for tens of thousands of years. However, due to their embrace of what Moore called "pop environmentalism", they've chosen a path that, were we to follow it, would doom future generations for about as long as humanity has been civilized up to this point.
Courtesy of Ace - Greenpeace Founder Condemns "Pop Environmentalism":
Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace and its leader for 15 years, is critical of the environmental organization’s negative stand on nuclear power. He believes that Greenpeace is throwing the baby out with the bathwater by lumping together all things nuclear as “evil”. Moore states that although nuclear weapons may be wrong, nuclear power is not and in fact it is much more economical than gas, wind, and solar power. Furthermore, advances in nuclear recycling technology now reduce waste products by over 90%.
In my last article on nuclear power, I linked to this article on New Scientist regarding nuclear fuel reprocessing. At the end of it was this quote:
Shaun Burnie from Greenpeace International is less diplomatic. "The emerging plan is quite horrific," he claims. "It will overturn a decades-old US policy and give the green light for global nuclear proliferation."
This is precisely the sort of short-minded stand that Patrick Moore was undoubtedly opposed to. Just about every country on the planet that uses nuclear power except for us uses nuclear fuel reprocessing to keep the waste down. Since Greenpeace is ostensibly an environmental advocacy organization, you would think they'd be all for minimizing waste that kills living things for tens of thousands of years. However, due to their embrace of what Moore called "pop environmentalism", they've chosen a path that, were we to follow it, would doom future generations for about as long as humanity has been civilized up to this point.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
'Tis better to recycle than throw away
This adage is definitely true when you're talking about nuclear waste. Currently, nuclear waste is stored on-site at various nuclear power plants throughout the country. Over a decade ago, somebody got the bright idea that, instead of storing all of this waste all over the place, maybe we should put it in one spot. After some "careful" deliberation, they came up with Yucca Mountain, which has numerous advantages:
1. It's a dormant volcano.
2. It's located in a state that does not have a nuclear reactor.
3. It's located within 90 miles of a large metropolitan area (Las Vegas).
4. It's located in one of the most geologically active states in the Union.
I will point out that, ultimately, it doesn't matter where you put this stuff - it's going to be a problem unless we come up with some way to really get rid of it... as in, within this geologic epoch. This is where this article from the Pahrump Valley Times comes into play:
The Las Vegas Sun also touched on this:
In short, Yucca Mountain may finally expire by mere technological obsolescence... just in time for us to build another round of nuclear power plants so we can stop burning quite as many fossil fuels.
For what it's worth, I'm all for nuclear power provided we have a way to reuse or safely dispose of the waste. Obviously, it's kind of hard to safely dispose of something when you have to think of 10,000 year disposal cycles, seeing as humanity has absolutely zero experience at building something that would, in fact, last 10,000 years. Consequently, finding a way to reduce disposal times to within a human lifetime or two, or lowering the radioactivity of the waste to a low enough level where it would be considered completely moot, is much more preferable on my end. However, I don't see solar, wind, or geothermal providing enough energy on their own to displace oil, natural gas, and coal in any meaningful capacity, so, of the realistic large-scale power sources available to us today, it appears to be the "least bad" of all of them. If we can find some way to make it even less dangerous than it is right now, I'm all for it.
UPDATE: A rather interesting view of nuclear reprocessing can be found at New Scientist... and, by "interesting", I mean that the article is little more than a series of interviews with various "environmental" agencies that would love nothing more than to keep nuclear power off the table. The crux of the article, though, is that, in 2006, Bush was looking at overturning parts of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978, which forbade reprocessing nuclear fuel due to the increased production of plutonium and the possibility of theft of the plutonium in civilian reactors.
In short, we can't recycle nuclear fuel right now because Carter and the Congress of the time panicked 30 years ago and nobody's bothered to fix it. It's already being recycled in Britain, France, Russia, and Japan, which is why they're not having to deal with Yucca Mountain-style issues.
And people wonder why I want a smaller government...
1. It's a dormant volcano.
2. It's located in a state that does not have a nuclear reactor.
3. It's located within 90 miles of a large metropolitan area (Las Vegas).
4. It's located in one of the most geologically active states in the Union.
I will point out that, ultimately, it doesn't matter where you put this stuff - it's going to be a problem unless we come up with some way to really get rid of it... as in, within this geologic epoch. This is where this article from the Pahrump Valley Times comes into play:
WASHINGTON -- Political support for the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository eroded further on Wednesday when a leading Senate advocate of nuclear power said it has become "foolhardy" to continue plans to store radioactive used power plant fuel at the Nevada site.
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said the strategy to place spent nuclear fuel underground has become badly outdated in light of advances in waste reprocessing that could wring more energy from the assemblies.
Even after nuclear fuel has been recycled, the resulting waste products may not need to be placed in the Nevada volcanic ridge, he said. At that point, the waste would be less toxic and could be stored safely in salt formations in New Mexico or elsewhere.
"The current strategy of limiting our options to a permanent repository for the disposal of spent fuel is deeply flawed," Domenici said. He said he was writing a bill that would alter the "Yucca only" approach. "I'm talking about a bill that will start over and draft new law that puts America on a new path for commercial waste," he said after a Senate Energy and Water Subcommittee hearing on the Yucca Mountain budget.
The Las Vegas Sun also touched on this:
Domenici’s comments came as both Senate and House appropriators this week are considering Energy’s budget requests for the coming year. The department promises to meet its summer deadline for submitting the long-awaited license for the waste dump at Yucca.
In his comments, Domenici’s said he no longer believes focusing solely on a permanent repository in Nevada is the way to go, fearing the Yucca only strategy that does not include efforts to recycle waste is “deeply flawed.” “I believe this path will prove to be the highest cost solution and it fails to take advantage of recycling,” Domenici said. “We should pursue a comprehensive waste strategy led by an approach to recycle spent nuclear fuel with the remaining waste to be put in either Yucca Mountain or another suitable site such as deep salt formations,” such as a site in New Mexico that now stores less toxic waste.
In short, Yucca Mountain may finally expire by mere technological obsolescence... just in time for us to build another round of nuclear power plants so we can stop burning quite as many fossil fuels.
For what it's worth, I'm all for nuclear power provided we have a way to reuse or safely dispose of the waste. Obviously, it's kind of hard to safely dispose of something when you have to think of 10,000 year disposal cycles, seeing as humanity has absolutely zero experience at building something that would, in fact, last 10,000 years. Consequently, finding a way to reduce disposal times to within a human lifetime or two, or lowering the radioactivity of the waste to a low enough level where it would be considered completely moot, is much more preferable on my end. However, I don't see solar, wind, or geothermal providing enough energy on their own to displace oil, natural gas, and coal in any meaningful capacity, so, of the realistic large-scale power sources available to us today, it appears to be the "least bad" of all of them. If we can find some way to make it even less dangerous than it is right now, I'm all for it.
UPDATE: A rather interesting view of nuclear reprocessing can be found at New Scientist... and, by "interesting", I mean that the article is little more than a series of interviews with various "environmental" agencies that would love nothing more than to keep nuclear power off the table. The crux of the article, though, is that, in 2006, Bush was looking at overturning parts of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978, which forbade reprocessing nuclear fuel due to the increased production of plutonium and the possibility of theft of the plutonium in civilian reactors.
In short, we can't recycle nuclear fuel right now because Carter and the Congress of the time panicked 30 years ago and nobody's bothered to fix it. It's already being recycled in Britain, France, Russia, and Japan, which is why they're not having to deal with Yucca Mountain-style issues.
And people wonder why I want a smaller government...
Friday, April 11, 2008
Palestine takes North Korea to prom, gives corsage
The Korean Central News Agency of DPRK announced today the following:
That's right, folks - the leader of Palestine is sending flowers to Kim Jong Il... or, at least, Kim Jong Il wants the world to think that Mahmoud Abbas is sending him flowers. The KCNA of DPRK is Kim Jong Il's official news service, after all. Either way, it's important to remember that, when we sell out Israel to the Palestinians, we're selling them out to a people that think that Kim Jong Il is worth sending flowers to, or at least a people that Kim Jong Il would like to get flowers from.
Congratulations to Kim Jong Il from Palestinian Leader
Pyongyang, April 11 (KCNA) -- General Secretary Kim Jong Il received a floral basket from Mahmoud Abbas, Chief of the Palestinian National Authority, on the occasion of the Day of the Sun and the 15th anniversary of his election as chairman of the DPRK National Defence Commission.
The basket was conveyed to an official concerned by Palestinian Ambassador to the DPRK Mohammad Shahta Zarab on Thursday.
That's right, folks - the leader of Palestine is sending flowers to Kim Jong Il... or, at least, Kim Jong Il wants the world to think that Mahmoud Abbas is sending him flowers. The KCNA of DPRK is Kim Jong Il's official news service, after all. Either way, it's important to remember that, when we sell out Israel to the Palestinians, we're selling them out to a people that think that Kim Jong Il is worth sending flowers to, or at least a people that Kim Jong Il would like to get flowers from.
Nevada trifecta in play
Now that we've covered emus and pedopodiaphiliacs, it's time to end our Nevada trifecta with the piece de resistance:
From my old home town, Pahrump:
Who wouldn't want a field trip to a brothel? I wonder if they're holding a job fair there.
I'll have to admit, it's kind of funny watching liberal academic types study a practice that's been around for, oh, since the dawn of humanity as if it's some sort of new phenomenon. Here's hoping their study of prostitution as an aspect of American culture (as opposed to all of the prostitutes in foreign countries that are aspects of their cultures) proves enlightening.
From my old home town, Pahrump:
LYNCHBURG, Va. -- As part of its American Culture Program, female students and teachers from the prestigious Randolph College will take a 3,000-mile "field trip" to visit the world-famous and historic Chicken Ranch brothel tomorrow.
They will visit the Pahrump business from 10:30 a.m. to approximately 12:30 p.m. to meet with management and some of the "working ladies."
According to school officials the 12-credit, semester-long program is investigating sex and prostitution as an aspect of American culture -- "an intersection where our obsession with beauty and sex meets business and consumption."
Who wouldn't want a field trip to a brothel? I wonder if they're holding a job fair there.
I'll have to admit, it's kind of funny watching liberal academic types study a practice that's been around for, oh, since the dawn of humanity as if it's some sort of new phenomenon. Here's hoping their study of prostitution as an aspect of American culture (as opposed to all of the prostitutes in foreign countries that are aspects of their cultures) proves enlightening.
I guess he really likes shoes
From Elko, Nevada, we have this gem:
Either this guy really likes shoes, or he really likes little girls. Maybe he just has a thing for little girls in shoes. No matter which way you look at it, though, this is just not right.
ELKO - A Wells man was arrested Wednesday night for allegedly masturbating in front of two children in Wal-Mart.
The two girls, ages 10 and 12, were reportedly in the shoe department at about 6:54 p.m. when Jorge Quintero, 57, allegedly began to masturbate in front of them, Elko Police Lt. Don Zumwalt said.
Either this guy really likes shoes, or he really likes little girls. Maybe he just has a thing for little girls in shoes. No matter which way you look at it, though, this is just not right.
Emu!
Anyone can blog about Obama, incest, abortion, or whatever. However, where else on the Internet are you going to learn about errant emus?
The beauty, of course, is that this was the headline story to an article that also had this:
That's right - a lost emu is much more important in these parts than a girl getting stabbed.
I love this state.
The Douglas County owner of a runaway emu discovered she was missing the young male last week and was expected to claim him from the Wild Animal Infirmary for Nevada in Washoe Valley.
The flightless bird apparently escaped from his home in Bodie Flats, leaving his parents, and was first seen three weeks ago near the county dump. He traveled across the county, reaching an alfalfa field near Minden Elementary School about a week ago, said Janet Duzen, supervisor at Douglas County Animal Services.
The beauty, of course, is that this was the headline story to an article that also had this:
Female student stabbed on campus
Western Nevada College campus security personnel are asking for assistance locating a young white male reported to have inflicted minor knife wounds on a female student last week.
A female student reported to college security by phone that she was grabbed from behind in the lower east parking lot April 3 at approximately 4:30 p.m. She heard him say "F*** you Michelle," even though Michelle is not her name.
The suspect had a knife in his left hand and as the victim attempted to pull away, she sustained minor knife wounds to her abdomen and hip.
She fell to the ground scraping her knees. The suspect then slashed at her causing a minor wound to her arm.
The suspect turned her over and when he looked into her face, he backed away and ran in an unknown direction. No vehicle was observed.
According to the victim, the perpetrator was in his 20s, about 6 feet tall with a medium build, no facial hair, and no distinguishing marks or accent.
He was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt with the hood strings tightly drawn, dark Dickie-type pants, and white shoes.
All persons on campus should be observant of his surroundings when in the parking lot.
That's right - a lost emu is much more important in these parts than a girl getting stabbed.
I love this state.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
I can blog about TV too!
Last night, I watched Comedy Central's Root of All Evil, a mildly entertaining show based around the concept of picking two pop icons and determining which one is more "evil" through the use of a mock courtroom. The topic for last night? Paris Hilton vs. Dick Cheney.
The online poll results? A narrow victory for Paris Hilton. The official result? Dick Cheney won. Word on the street is that Paris lost key states like Ohio and Florida. Her supporters are already claiming the election was stolen, and some blogs (certainly not this one, mind you) suspect a Karl Rove-ian Republican conspiracy to ensure they win every election, either by force or fraud.
I, for one, blame Blackitler.
The online poll results? A narrow victory for Paris Hilton. The official result? Dick Cheney won. Word on the street is that Paris lost key states like Ohio and Florida. Her supporters are already claiming the election was stolen, and some blogs (certainly not this one, mind you) suspect a Karl Rove-ian Republican conspiracy to ensure they win every election, either by force or fraud.
I, for one, blame Blackitler.
Living in a Stalinist Wonderland
I don't remember where I found this today, unfortunately, but find it I did... The Vice Guide to North Korea is a fourteen part series in which a couple of intrepid reporters go to North Korea and film the parts that North Korea wants them to film. That might not seem particularly impressive, except what the regime wants them to film says a lot about the regime. For example, you can see the Pueblo, visit both sides of the DMZ, check out the Pyongyang Metro (yep - it works!), see their barrage (interestingly, not listed as one of the three uses of barrage-based tidal power in the world on Wikipedia), and more.
Now all I need to do is figure out where in my RSS feeds I stumbled across this...
UPDATE: Found it - turns out I got it from Ace! Sweet.
Now all I need to do is figure out where in my RSS feeds I stumbled across this...
UPDATE: Found it - turns out I got it from Ace! Sweet.
Yep... that's my home, all right
One of the nice things about Nevada is that it has a relatively low tax rate and, consequently, a fairly small government. For example, in 2006, Nevada ranked 43rd in per-household expenditures. Unfortunately, though Nevada has a relatively small government, it also has a profoundly inept one that can't seem to spend what limited money it has wisely. Consequently, cost overruns are all too common as Nevada's legislature signs off on random projects that have a "low" initial cost but, upon implementation, prove to be much more expensive.
The latest example of this? An environmentally-friendly wood-burning power plant... for a prison.
Cost overruns happen. It's unfortunate, but it's true. However, what's truly comical about this is the assumptions they made in order to concoct the initial budget number:
That's right - the entire plan was to have inmates run the plant... because, when you have less common sense in your head than a fruit fly, this makes perfect sense. After all, people that don't have enough sense to stay out of jail are precisely the kind of people we want running and maintaining complicated machinery. I mean, we wouldn't trust most of these people to vote or drive a car - why not let them run a power plant, right? Really? Nobody saw a problem with this?
If politicians in this state could be trusted to spend what little money they have wisely, Nevada might be a little less miserly about government expenditures. However, when things like this are the norm, well, can you blame us for being a little cheap?
The latest example of this? An environmentally-friendly wood-burning power plant... for a prison.
A wood-burning power plant hailed by Nevada officials as an environment-friendly project to save the state money on power bills is beset with so many problems it might cost more than it earns for 17 years.
[...]
At the time, prison officials argued the project would pay for itself within 15 years, power the prison and produce enough excess electricity to sell back to Sierra Pacific Power Co.
An analysis by the Legislative Counsel Bureau, however, said the plant likely will have a negative cash flow for 17 years.
Cost overruns happen. It's unfortunate, but it's true. However, what's truly comical about this is the assumptions they made in order to concoct the initial budget number:
Lawmakers were forced Wednesday to approve an emergency $540,000 to hire a contractor to operate the plant because the state doesn't have qualified staff to run it.
Prison officials planned to have a staff person supervise inmates to run the plant. But they scrapped that plan when it was discovered inmates lacked the technical expertise and would have enough access to the power system to "shut down our facility," said Lori Bagwell, deputy director of corrections.
That's right - the entire plan was to have inmates run the plant... because, when you have less common sense in your head than a fruit fly, this makes perfect sense. After all, people that don't have enough sense to stay out of jail are precisely the kind of people we want running and maintaining complicated machinery. I mean, we wouldn't trust most of these people to vote or drive a car - why not let them run a power plant, right? Really? Nobody saw a problem with this?
If politicians in this state could be trusted to spend what little money they have wisely, Nevada might be a little less miserly about government expenditures. However, when things like this are the norm, well, can you blame us for being a little cheap?
Rachel has nothing on me
So Rachel thinks she's tough for being able to take on 20...
30
Well, maybe she can, but you know what? Hell hath no fury like the father of a five-year-old. I know the enemy. I see the enemy. I am the enemy.
30
Well, maybe she can, but you know what? Hell hath no fury like the father of a five-year-old. I know the enemy. I see the enemy. I am the enemy.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
We need more schadenfreude today
Thank you, Fazed, for bringing me the funniest compilation of journalism mishaps I've seen in a long, long time. Sadly, there's no easy way to embed the video, which is supremely disappointing, but if you enjoy laughing at other people's misfortune, well, today is your lucky day.
I will give one teaser: Cat in the face.
That is all.
I will give one teaser: Cat in the face.
That is all.
Democrats are the responsible party - remember that
From the Washington Post, we have the latest proof of Democratic competence:
See, according to Democratic calculus, nothing goes better with free trade than increasing the national debt. Seeing as our government is already spending far more than it's bringing in, I'm rather curious how exactly Pelosi plans on paying for any of this.
The answer, of course, is that she's not - she's tying a ridiculous condition that should never see the light of day to a trade package that would signal to our one friend in the region that we're on their side. She's trying to poison the well to make a political point, and she's making it quite well - the Democratic Party believes that the GOP is a bigger threat to this country than any other force on the planet, and will throw any and every friend this country has under the bus in order to stop them.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said today that Democrats will seek to delay consideration of a trade agreement with Colombia, prompting the White House to accuse Democrats of threatening the next administration's bargaining power in trade talks.
[...]
Democrats instead want the trade deal considered as part of a broader economic relief package. Bush has rejected talk of a second stimulus package.
"We're first and foremost here to look out for the concerns of America's working families. I take this action with deep respect to the people of Colombia and will be sure that any message they receive is one of respect for their country," Pelosi said.
See, according to Democratic calculus, nothing goes better with free trade than increasing the national debt. Seeing as our government is already spending far more than it's bringing in, I'm rather curious how exactly Pelosi plans on paying for any of this.
The answer, of course, is that she's not - she's tying a ridiculous condition that should never see the light of day to a trade package that would signal to our one friend in the region that we're on their side. She's trying to poison the well to make a political point, and she's making it quite well - the Democratic Party believes that the GOP is a bigger threat to this country than any other force on the planet, and will throw any and every friend this country has under the bus in order to stop them.
Drain bamage
Worried about your child's cranium? Is your precious mini-snowflake randomly bumping his or her head into doors, walls, and random pieces of furniture? Do you think that all this repeated bumping and thrashing of their heads will lead to autism, witchcraft, and use of contraceptives? Well, Gizmodo has the product for you!
Oh, the link has pictures, all right. That much I assure you of.
(NOTE: Sorry about the easy swipe against the fundies today, but I'm just not feeling particularly creative right now. I'll come up with some good ol' fashioned liberal bashing here later tonight.)
According to the DTI, there a 500,000 reports of child head injuries each year. What do you do?
Meet the Thudguard, a helmet specifically designed to make sure your little Einstein doesn’t damage their brain along the way to learning how to walk and run. It’s targeted at kids aged from 7 months to 2-years old.
Oh, the link has pictures, all right. That much I assure you of.
(NOTE: Sorry about the easy swipe against the fundies today, but I'm just not feeling particularly creative right now. I'll come up with some good ol' fashioned liberal bashing here later tonight.)
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Can we have sex ed now?
Courtesy of FoxNews.com, I bring to you Eight Sex Myths You Should Not Believe. The key quote, however, isn't any of the myths. It's this:
This, ladies and gentlemen, is why we have sex ed. When you don't provide knowledge to your children, they will make shit up. Humanity has been doing it for centuries. That's why some people believe the world is only 6000 years old and dinosaur fossils were planted by Satan to tempt us. Do you really want your children making up random "facts" about their sexuality?
Didn't think so.
Florida teens gravely misinformed about sex. Florida lawmakers are looking to overhaul their state’s sex education after learning that Florida teens believe that drinking a cap of bleach prevents HIV and a shot of Mountain Dew prevents pregnancy. The state, which is currently implementing abstinence-only sex education, has the sixth-highest teen pregnancy rate in the country.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is why we have sex ed. When you don't provide knowledge to your children, they will make shit up. Humanity has been doing it for centuries. That's why some people believe the world is only 6000 years old and dinosaur fossils were planted by Satan to tempt us. Do you really want your children making up random "facts" about their sexuality?
Didn't think so.
On what planet does Blackberry make sense anymore?
In the corporate world, people have calendars, contacts, and e-mail. For reasonably obvious reasons, these people want their calendars, contacts, and e-mail to be uniform both on their workstations at work and on any other device they connect to the corporate network (a cell phone, for example) - this way, no matter where they are, they'll know where they're supposed to go, how to talk to the person they're supposed to meet, and communicate with everybody involved.
Sounds reasonable, right?
Let's talk about the logistics of making this happen. You're going to need to store these appointments, contacts, and e-mails somewhere. We'll call this a server. You're then going to need to get the data from the server on devices that you actually control. We'll call these clients. Now, ideally, getting information from the server is going to be as simple as having the client talk to the server and say, "Hey, I need this information." If the client changes any information, it will push it to the server, which will then update its information, and that will be that. If we're feeling really fancy, upon the update of its information, the server will then check to see what clients have checked in with it recently and try to tell them that the information has changed. In short, all communication will be between the server and the client.
This sounds reasonably simple. In a corporate network, it most certainly is - all of the workstations have a straight shot to the server. Once you need to connect machines to the server that are located outside of the corporate server, things get a little more complicated... but only a little. There are a couple of tried and true ways to handle this, as well. You can either use a VPN (i.e. have the client log into the corporate network in its entirety from the remote location before accessing the corporate network) or you can use a set of pre-defined protocols that provide differing access rights to various resources from a public interface (i.e. SMTP, POP, IMAP, etc.). The first approach is somewhat akin to astral planing into your office. The second approach is somewhat akin to calling the office on the phone and asking for your messages. Unfortunately, there's one small hitch: Until relatively recently, though there have been plenty of standards that deal with e-mail, there haven't been any that deal with calendar appointments and contacts. That's slowly changing (iCal, for example), but we still have a long ways to go on that front. So, more often than not, you either have to use a VPN or use some clever chicanery (RPC over HTTP) to get the job done. The drawback, of course, is that, with a VPN, unless your sysadmin is both very good and very cautious, you have access to everything remotely that you would have access to in the office, which may or may not be a smart idea.
Let's throw smart phones into the mix.
In an ideal world, smart phones should...
1. Only have access to what they can use.
2. Behave similarly to a normal client.
For example, you probably don't want to give a smart phone access to that expensive accounting package that you have access to in the office - it couldn't run that program even if you wanted it to. More importantly, you probably don't want it to even have access to those files - their size alone may brick your phone. This pretty effectively rules out a VPN; there's just too much that can go wrong. However, we still want it to behave similarly as any other client would, meaning that we want it to talk directly with the server - we just want to have the phone and the server tell each other just enough to get the mail, appointments, and contacts across.
Makes sense so far, right?
Well, a little company called Research in Motion created a device called the Blackberry that "solved" this problem. How, you ask? Easy:
First, you install a piece of software on the server that contains all of these appointments. The software then listens in on what the server is doing and, whenever there is a change, sends out that change to some servers owned by RIM. RIM, upon receipt of those changes, sends them to the smart phone's provider. The provider then sends these changes to the phone. The process of getting information back on to the server is the inverse of what was just described - cell provider, RIM, RIM software, mail server.
Clear as mud, right?
By comparison, let's try the Microsoft way:
Your phone has a piece of software that talks to the server directly using a set of well defined protocols (HTTP, mostly - the same stuff you're using to read this blog right now). When information changes on the server, the server sends out a notification to anyone that it knows has logged in recently. The phone and the server talk directly to each other.
Guess which way works a little better? Guess which way is cheaper due to not having to pay a third party (RIM) to shuttle your information back and forth through its networks? Guess which way doesn't go down across an entire continent every so often?
Exactly.
Yet, there I was today, installing a Blackberry Professional Software server, trying to get Blackberry devices to sync with it, only to find out that the Blackberries couldn't sync with RIM because they had not been properly provisioned. Apparently, in Blackberry World, you have to tell your provider that you don't just want to talk to RIM, you want to let RIM shuttle messages back and forth to your main server... even though, as far as the provider is concerned, everything should be coming through the same channel anyways. Oh yes. Don't even get me started on the weird and arcane Active Directory jujitsu they made me go through when I called their support line, nor the hour and a half wait I endured on hold.
If anybody out there is listening, could somebody please explain to me why RIM is still in business? Also, could somebody please explain to me why nobody stopped them from picking such a potentially disastrous acronym? I shudder to think how employees there explain how they got a job at RIM (a RIM job, perhaps?).
Sounds reasonable, right?
Let's talk about the logistics of making this happen. You're going to need to store these appointments, contacts, and e-mails somewhere. We'll call this a server. You're then going to need to get the data from the server on devices that you actually control. We'll call these clients. Now, ideally, getting information from the server is going to be as simple as having the client talk to the server and say, "Hey, I need this information." If the client changes any information, it will push it to the server, which will then update its information, and that will be that. If we're feeling really fancy, upon the update of its information, the server will then check to see what clients have checked in with it recently and try to tell them that the information has changed. In short, all communication will be between the server and the client.
This sounds reasonably simple. In a corporate network, it most certainly is - all of the workstations have a straight shot to the server. Once you need to connect machines to the server that are located outside of the corporate server, things get a little more complicated... but only a little. There are a couple of tried and true ways to handle this, as well. You can either use a VPN (i.e. have the client log into the corporate network in its entirety from the remote location before accessing the corporate network) or you can use a set of pre-defined protocols that provide differing access rights to various resources from a public interface (i.e. SMTP, POP, IMAP, etc.). The first approach is somewhat akin to astral planing into your office. The second approach is somewhat akin to calling the office on the phone and asking for your messages. Unfortunately, there's one small hitch: Until relatively recently, though there have been plenty of standards that deal with e-mail, there haven't been any that deal with calendar appointments and contacts. That's slowly changing (iCal, for example), but we still have a long ways to go on that front. So, more often than not, you either have to use a VPN or use some clever chicanery (RPC over HTTP) to get the job done. The drawback, of course, is that, with a VPN, unless your sysadmin is both very good and very cautious, you have access to everything remotely that you would have access to in the office, which may or may not be a smart idea.
Let's throw smart phones into the mix.
In an ideal world, smart phones should...
1. Only have access to what they can use.
2. Behave similarly to a normal client.
For example, you probably don't want to give a smart phone access to that expensive accounting package that you have access to in the office - it couldn't run that program even if you wanted it to. More importantly, you probably don't want it to even have access to those files - their size alone may brick your phone. This pretty effectively rules out a VPN; there's just too much that can go wrong. However, we still want it to behave similarly as any other client would, meaning that we want it to talk directly with the server - we just want to have the phone and the server tell each other just enough to get the mail, appointments, and contacts across.
Makes sense so far, right?
Well, a little company called Research in Motion created a device called the Blackberry that "solved" this problem. How, you ask? Easy:
First, you install a piece of software on the server that contains all of these appointments. The software then listens in on what the server is doing and, whenever there is a change, sends out that change to some servers owned by RIM. RIM, upon receipt of those changes, sends them to the smart phone's provider. The provider then sends these changes to the phone. The process of getting information back on to the server is the inverse of what was just described - cell provider, RIM, RIM software, mail server.
Clear as mud, right?
By comparison, let's try the Microsoft way:
Your phone has a piece of software that talks to the server directly using a set of well defined protocols (HTTP, mostly - the same stuff you're using to read this blog right now). When information changes on the server, the server sends out a notification to anyone that it knows has logged in recently. The phone and the server talk directly to each other.
Guess which way works a little better? Guess which way is cheaper due to not having to pay a third party (RIM) to shuttle your information back and forth through its networks? Guess which way doesn't go down across an entire continent every so often?
Exactly.
Yet, there I was today, installing a Blackberry Professional Software server, trying to get Blackberry devices to sync with it, only to find out that the Blackberries couldn't sync with RIM because they had not been properly provisioned. Apparently, in Blackberry World, you have to tell your provider that you don't just want to talk to RIM, you want to let RIM shuttle messages back and forth to your main server... even though, as far as the provider is concerned, everything should be coming through the same channel anyways. Oh yes. Don't even get me started on the weird and arcane Active Directory jujitsu they made me go through when I called their support line, nor the hour and a half wait I endured on hold.
If anybody out there is listening, could somebody please explain to me why RIM is still in business? Also, could somebody please explain to me why nobody stopped them from picking such a potentially disastrous acronym? I shudder to think how employees there explain how they got a job at RIM (a RIM job, perhaps?).
I love this town
I check the local paper today, and what do I find? That's right - someone from my dear home town is suing to keep Hillary Clinton off of the Nevada ballot:
I'm no legal scholar and even I'm finding this amusing. Of course, the money shot is at the end:
I'm beginning to think the Reno Gazette-Journal writing staff is becoming almost prescient. If this article isn't the very definition of amusing and fun, I don't know what is.
In a lawsuit that legal scholars call "amusing," a Reno man is seeking to keep U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton off the Nevada ballot with the argument that the U.S. Constitution prohibits a woman from holding the office.
Douglas Wallace, 80, contends that because the U.S. Constitution relies on the pronouns "he" and "his" in describing the duties of the president, no woman can hold the office.
Wallace argues the constitution would have to be amended to specifically allow a female president and accused Clinton of trying to make an "end run around the Constitution."
"The use of female gendered pronouns 'she' or 'her' are not present in the document, making it conclusive that the framers never intended that a woman would be president of the United States," Wallace wrote in the lawsuit.
That argument is without merit, several legal scholars said Monday.
I'm no legal scholar and even I'm finding this amusing. Of course, the money shot is at the end:
Turley described the masculine pronoun argument as part of "urban mythology" that is spread on blogs and the Internet.
"It's a fun subject for blogging, but it's not very compelling on a legal basis," Turley said.
I'm beginning to think the Reno Gazette-Journal writing staff is becoming almost prescient. If this article isn't the very definition of amusing and fun, I don't know what is.
Monday, April 7, 2008
Just wait one damn minute here!
Apparently, one minute is the difference between stud and dud:
I do prefer a slow, deliberate approach towards any complicated task, personally. Without exercising due caution, things like this may happen:
I wish I were that flexible, by the way.
April 2 (Bloomberg) -- One more minute may be the difference between an ``adequate'' lover and an unsatisfactorily short performer, according to a new survey in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
The survey of sex therapists found that three to seven minutes was ``adequate'' time for sexual intercourse between a man and a woman, while two minutes or less was ``too short.'' Still, it's ``desirable'' to last seven to 13 minutes, although you're at risk of going ``too long'' somewhere between 10 and 30 minutes, the survey concluded.
I do prefer a slow, deliberate approach towards any complicated task, personally. Without exercising due caution, things like this may happen:
A YOUNG woman caught her belly button ring in her nostril this morning after falling from her bed.
The distressed 22-year-old called NSW Ambulance at 4am begging for assistance from paramedics.
She told triple zero operators she had fallen out of bed and her belly button piercing had jammed up her nose in the fall.
I wish I were that flexible, by the way.
Thinking logically about incest
The tag line for this story should be enough to give you an idea of what's going on:
It gets stranger...
All right - I know what the instinctual reaction is going to be: YUCK. It's the same reaction I initially had when I read this story. Then I began to think about it some more, and got stuck at a particular point:
Why is incest illegal?
There are usually a few reasons given. The resulting children have a much higher chance of birth defects. The parent, being in a position of power over the child, can unduly influence the relationship. There's a much higher chance of abuse within the relationship. Some of these reasons are more valid than others. It may be illegal due to a combination of all of these factors. However, I'm not a big fan of making things illegal simply because we're grossed out by the activity - we had that problem with homosexuality and miscegenation, with disastrous results. So, let's go through these individually:
Birth Defects
The biggest problem I have with the possibility of birth defects is that this can be a rather slippery slope to travel down. In order for this to be a legitimate objection, we have to assume the following:
1. Society has a vested interest in the genetic viability of children.
2. Society has the right to prohibit procreation due to #1.
Though I definitely agree that incest has a much higher probabilistic chance of severe genetic abnormalities, and that no child deserves to have the deck stacked against them like that. However, why stop here? Why not screen people for known genetic diseases and forbid them from procreating? Since we're not doing this and since this very concept has been the subject of a movie that directly mentions the potential evils of such a scheme, we can safely say that genetics is not a suitable reason to forbid incest.
Parental Power
This is one that I'm definitely willing to go along with. If parents were allowed to have sex with children, what would stop them from just raising their children to be little pleasure drones and popping the cherry at the legal age of consent? This, most people would agree, would severely warp the child. There are, however, two problems here:
1. What if the parent was absent and never had a chance to instill such "values"?
2. What about sibling/cousin incest, where such power dynamics would probably not exist?
The first option is going to be a little difficult to prove - worse yet, we'd almost have to go with a "guilty until proven innocent" approach to deal with this, which means we probably shouldn't have the loophole to begin with. Meanwhile, with older siblings and cousins, there can definitely be a little power struggle going, but this can also be true in couples with a sufficiently large age or maturity difference. So, at this point, we can definitely say that a relationship between parent and child should be forbidden - there's just no way for the child to convincingly consent. Coincidentally, this would put the couple in the above article in jail, which is fine by me. However, we still need to find a reason for sibling incest to be illegal.
Abuse
There are two reasons usually given when discussing incest and abuse:
1. When two people from two separate families hook up and one of them is abusive, there's a chance that the abused party may consult with his or her family, which may elect to publicly intervene on behalf of the abused. When both parties are from the same family, however, the family is much more likely to try to keep things "within the family" and not provide information to law enforcement or social groups.
2. In the sort of cultures where incest is acceptable, sexual, physical, and verbal abuse are more prevalent than in cultures where incest is unacceptable. This is a similar objection to one that people frequently have about polygamy.
The second objection is inherently absurd - following this logic, we should forbid relationships between people of our culture and those that belong to a culture that we find to be inferior, whether it's due to an increased chance of drug use, abuse, or some other undesirable activity. Since our value system is built on the culpability of the individual, declaring someone to be inherently untouchable due to their cultural alignment would violate our value system - think "guilt by association". The first option is fairly reasonable, but would also be a problem within any tightly-knit cliquish group, including church groups, groups of friends, and so on.
Now, I want to point out here and now that, due to a combination of all of the mentioned reasons thus far, I think incest should remain illegal. I have no problems with it being considered socially and legally unacceptable. However, I'd like to come up with a more concrete reason, or perhaps even reasons, than the ones mentioned above, if for no better reason than that the reasons mentioned above can also be used to justify, in either a permissive or prohibitive fashion, all kinds of unpleasant things.
UPDATE: Cassy Fiano also touched on this. I will point out for the record that nothing goes better with a fuzzy bunny suit than some bloodsports. Let's just keep the inbreeding to a minimum, 'k?
A FATHER and daughter who have a baby girl together, had another child who died a few days after birth from a congenital heart disease, court documents show.
It gets stranger...
Because of problems with her own marriage, Ms Deaves had gone to live with her father at Yongala, in South Australia.
Their physical relationship developed later that year and both ended their marriages and began living together.
Today, the pair said they did not view each other as father and daughter.
"After I had been there quite a few days I started to notice my feelings were changing and I was seeing him as a man, as a person, who was loving (and) caring," Jennifer Deaves told the Seven Network.
All right - I know what the instinctual reaction is going to be: YUCK. It's the same reaction I initially had when I read this story. Then I began to think about it some more, and got stuck at a particular point:
Why is incest illegal?
There are usually a few reasons given. The resulting children have a much higher chance of birth defects. The parent, being in a position of power over the child, can unduly influence the relationship. There's a much higher chance of abuse within the relationship. Some of these reasons are more valid than others. It may be illegal due to a combination of all of these factors. However, I'm not a big fan of making things illegal simply because we're grossed out by the activity - we had that problem with homosexuality and miscegenation, with disastrous results. So, let's go through these individually:
Birth Defects
The biggest problem I have with the possibility of birth defects is that this can be a rather slippery slope to travel down. In order for this to be a legitimate objection, we have to assume the following:
1. Society has a vested interest in the genetic viability of children.
2. Society has the right to prohibit procreation due to #1.
Though I definitely agree that incest has a much higher probabilistic chance of severe genetic abnormalities, and that no child deserves to have the deck stacked against them like that. However, why stop here? Why not screen people for known genetic diseases and forbid them from procreating? Since we're not doing this and since this very concept has been the subject of a movie that directly mentions the potential evils of such a scheme, we can safely say that genetics is not a suitable reason to forbid incest.
Parental Power
This is one that I'm definitely willing to go along with. If parents were allowed to have sex with children, what would stop them from just raising their children to be little pleasure drones and popping the cherry at the legal age of consent? This, most people would agree, would severely warp the child. There are, however, two problems here:
1. What if the parent was absent and never had a chance to instill such "values"?
2. What about sibling/cousin incest, where such power dynamics would probably not exist?
The first option is going to be a little difficult to prove - worse yet, we'd almost have to go with a "guilty until proven innocent" approach to deal with this, which means we probably shouldn't have the loophole to begin with. Meanwhile, with older siblings and cousins, there can definitely be a little power struggle going, but this can also be true in couples with a sufficiently large age or maturity difference. So, at this point, we can definitely say that a relationship between parent and child should be forbidden - there's just no way for the child to convincingly consent. Coincidentally, this would put the couple in the above article in jail, which is fine by me. However, we still need to find a reason for sibling incest to be illegal.
Abuse
There are two reasons usually given when discussing incest and abuse:
1. When two people from two separate families hook up and one of them is abusive, there's a chance that the abused party may consult with his or her family, which may elect to publicly intervene on behalf of the abused. When both parties are from the same family, however, the family is much more likely to try to keep things "within the family" and not provide information to law enforcement or social groups.
2. In the sort of cultures where incest is acceptable, sexual, physical, and verbal abuse are more prevalent than in cultures where incest is unacceptable. This is a similar objection to one that people frequently have about polygamy.
The second objection is inherently absurd - following this logic, we should forbid relationships between people of our culture and those that belong to a culture that we find to be inferior, whether it's due to an increased chance of drug use, abuse, or some other undesirable activity. Since our value system is built on the culpability of the individual, declaring someone to be inherently untouchable due to their cultural alignment would violate our value system - think "guilt by association". The first option is fairly reasonable, but would also be a problem within any tightly-knit cliquish group, including church groups, groups of friends, and so on.
Now, I want to point out here and now that, due to a combination of all of the mentioned reasons thus far, I think incest should remain illegal. I have no problems with it being considered socially and legally unacceptable. However, I'd like to come up with a more concrete reason, or perhaps even reasons, than the ones mentioned above, if for no better reason than that the reasons mentioned above can also be used to justify, in either a permissive or prohibitive fashion, all kinds of unpleasant things.
UPDATE: Cassy Fiano also touched on this. I will point out for the record that nothing goes better with a fuzzy bunny suit than some bloodsports. Let's just keep the inbreeding to a minimum, 'k?
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Friday, April 4, 2008
Your intelligence is stupid!
What does a parent in New York City, Jesse Ventura, and Ron Paul have in common? They're all screaming idiotarians, that's what.
First, courtesy of Army of Dog, the parent in New York:
In another corner, via Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, I bring you Jesse Ventura:
Completing our unholy triumvirate of stupid - the three horsebrains of the impending Apocalypse, if you prefer - Ace of Spades reminds us that Ron Paul is still running for President. I don't even need to quote anything from that; the premise is more than enough.
First, courtesy of Army of Dog, the parent in New York:
See-Dubya posted this over at Michelle’s site:I left my 9-year-old at Bloomingdale’s (the original one) a couple weeks ago. Last seen, he was in first floor handbags as I sashayed out the door.
Bye-bye! Have fun!
And he did. He came home on the subway and bus by himself.
Was I worried? Yes, a tinge. But it didn’t strike me as that daring, either. Isn’t New York as safe now as it was in 1963? It’s not like we’re living in downtown Baghdad.
Anyway, for weeks my boy had been begging for me to please leave him somewhere, anywhere, and let him try to figure out how to get home on his own. So on that sunny Sunday I gave him a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and several quarters, just in case he had to make a call.
No, I did not give him a cell phone. Didn’t want to lose it. And no, I didn’t trail him, like a mommy private eye. I trusted him to figure out that he should take the Lexington Avenue subway down, and the 34th Street crosstown bus home. If he couldn’t do that, I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, “Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I’ll abduct this adorable child instead.”
In another corner, via Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, I bring you Jesse Ventura:
Jesse Ventura, Born Again Twoofer... and all-round astonishingly illiterate imbecile, but we repeat ourself (h/t LC Maxxdog):AUSTIN, Texas — According to an appearance on the Alex Jones Show, former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura blasted the official 9/11 story - citing that evidence disproves the government’s claims that jet fuel melted the Twin Towers’ steel girders. “How could those buildings fall at the speed of gravity…
Completing our unholy triumvirate of stupid - the three horsebrains of the impending Apocalypse, if you prefer - Ace of Spades reminds us that Ron Paul is still running for President. I don't even need to quote anything from that; the premise is more than enough.
A quick heads-up
I'm going to be visiting my son this weekend, and I'm leaving immediately after work today. Consequently, posts may be a little sparse until Monday. Rest assured, though, come Monday, I will be back with the fury of a thousand suns.. or perhaps a thousand sons. Either way, it will be furious.
Brilliant!
Ah, the joys of the bacon bra... an absolutely glorious if unholy union of pork and breast.
I guess this proves that everything is better with bacon, right?
I guess this proves that everything is better with bacon, right?
Thursday, April 3, 2008
I see what Jane Fonda liked in him
Ah, Ted Turner...
We won't be cannibals. We'll have high energy plankton to feed on! If Ted spent more time talking to Charlton Heston, he would've known that.
Interviewed Tuesday for Charlie Rose's PBS show, CNN founder Ted Turner argued that inaction on global warming “will be catastrophic” and those who don't die “will be cannibals.” He also applied moral equivalence in describing Iraqi insurgents as “patriots” who simply “don't like us because we've invaded their country” and so “if the Iraqis were in Washington, D.C., we'd be doing the same thing.”
We won't be cannibals. We'll have high energy plankton to feed on! If Ted spent more time talking to Charlton Heston, he would've known that.
Leave the racing stripes at home
Via Fark, I came across this at theNewspaper.com:
In the interest of playing devil's advocate, I will point out that the Canyon Crossing shopping center is probably private property, and that I have absolutely no idea if the enthusiasts had the permission of the landowner to gather there. That said, it does strike me as odd that having a spoiler, some racing stripes, and a nice muffler on your car is all it takes to be herded like cattle and subject to warrantless searches and seizures.
So, why do it?
Stupid question: Why are police departments allowed to keep the revenue they generate from tickets? How is that not a conflict of interest?
In the spirit of a post by Army of Dog, smaller, limited government is better. If you incentivize government seizing property, you're going to see the government seizing more property. It's pretty simple logic, really.
Using $503,000 in federal and state gas tax revenue to pay for overtime, nine police agencies in Riverside, California sent more than one hundred police officers to surround a gathering of automotive enthusiasts. Owners of imported sport compact cars had gathered at the Canyon Crossing shopping center on Friday night to swap stories, talk about their passion for cars and show off the latest enhancements to their rides. At around 11pm police surprised participants by blocking all exits with fifty police cruisers. Officers then began a warrantless search and interrogation operation of the 150 vehicles that were present.
"If you're not into street racing, why would you need that?" Riverside Police Traffic Sergeant Skip Showalter asked an enthusiast during a similar crackdown last year. "Why would you want more power going to your car?"
In the interest of playing devil's advocate, I will point out that the Canyon Crossing shopping center is probably private property, and that I have absolutely no idea if the enthusiasts had the permission of the landowner to gather there. That said, it does strike me as odd that having a spoiler, some racing stripes, and a nice muffler on your car is all it takes to be herded like cattle and subject to warrantless searches and seizures.
So, why do it?
Across the state, gas tax funds are regularly used to fund similar crackdowns that generate big revenue. In 2004, the California Highway Patrol issued a total of 101,553 "modified car" citations worth $10.5 million according to CHP data obtained by TheNewspaper.
Stupid question: Why are police departments allowed to keep the revenue they generate from tickets? How is that not a conflict of interest?
In the spirit of a post by Army of Dog, smaller, limited government is better. If you incentivize government seizing property, you're going to see the government seizing more property. It's pretty simple logic, really.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
I need more requests
I occasionally get requests, mostly from coworkers, about things for me to blog about. Since I am trying to get traffic up, I try to be quite accommodating. That may have to stop today, however. Why, you ask? Because I was asked to blog about this (NOTE: This video is NSFW! You've been warned.):
I feel like my blog just lost 20 IQ points right there.
I'd much rather avoid having to do things like this in the future, so here's what I need from everyone: Give me enough requests where, when my coworkers come up to me and ask me to write about this, I can tell them honestly and straightforwardly that I really do have other, better things to write about. Otherwise, there's going to be a lot more craptastic country music in your future.
I feel like my blog just lost 20 IQ points right there.
I'd much rather avoid having to do things like this in the future, so here's what I need from everyone: Give me enough requests where, when my coworkers come up to me and ask me to write about this, I can tell them honestly and straightforwardly that I really do have other, better things to write about. Otherwise, there's going to be a lot more craptastic country music in your future.
Reality is a pragmatic bitch
Since all the cool bloggers cuss, I'm going to try to ramp it up a little bit myself...
Yesterday, Supreme Overlord and Excessive Provider of Dog Snacks posted a rather interesting entry on the nature of reality, teenagers, and sex education:
She then provides a rather lengthy explanation of why she agrees with this stance - teenagers have hormones, they don't have perfect self-control, they tend to ignore authority figures after a while, etc. Read the whole thing. I wouldn't do justice to it if I tried to give little snippets of it.
I'm going to say right here and now that I agree with her overall point. That's not what I'm going to write about today. Instead, I'm going to discuss the comments provided by her readers. She's already done that, too, but I'm going in a slightly different direction.
The debate in her comments section, and, in fact, the general cultural debate on this falls under two categories:
- Children have a pre-natal right to exist, but, until they turn 18, they have no rights; they should only have a series of privileges provided and vetted by their parent or guardian.
- Children do not have an intrinsic pre-natal right to existence, but, upon birth, they have certain inalienable rights that are independent of their parents' wishes or desires and are supported by the society at large.
The first position is traditionally the "conservative" view. The second position is traditionally the "liberal" view. What's interesting about them is that both positions are compromises between maximizing the freedom of the parent and maximizing the freedom of the child. On the conservative side, after conception, the parent does not get to choose whether to be a parent - it's assumed that, by engaging in acts that could potentially lead to conception, the parents have already made that choice. However, upon conception, that child is yours to do with basically as you please, upon the sole conditions that you don't kill or physically abuse your child. On the liberal side, the parent has the right to decide, even after conception, whether or not they truly wish to be a parent, but, upon making that choice, the parent must abide by the rights and values that society enforces upon them regarding the upbringing of their child.
I'm somewhat conflicted on this, as I'm sure quite a few people are. On the one hand, a parent should have the right to raise their child as they see fit. On the other hand, should the child be punished because he or she happens to have parents that decide to teach the child that, say, Jews are evil, or willfully lead them to ignorance about the world? This is an issue that they're facing in Europe right now - there are tons of parents from Middle Eastern countries that are raising their children to believe that Western values are inherently evil and against Allah's way. Amusingly, many of the conservatives that would normally preach about "parents' rights" would be the first to say that the state should intervene. Even more comical is that many liberals are the first to preach "parents' rights" when dealing with Muslim fundamentalists but are also the first to subvert the rights of fundamentalist Christian parents. The hypocrisy is blinding.
I believe in consistency - what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Either we declare that parents have complete, total, and absolute control over what information and values their children are instilled with, or we declare that society needs some say on what information and values are passed on to children. Unfortunately, there are no good "libertarian" solutions to this problem - we're either going to screw the child or the parents. There is no way we can provide both groups with complete freedom on this. We need to decide where the line should be drawn.
One big issue that I have with the conservative stance relates to personal responsibility. In order to have responsibility, you have to have free will - you can't take responsibility for a choice if you're never given choices to freely make. To illustrate this, consider the following scenario:
A man, wife, and child are taken hostage by a terrorist. The terrorist approaches the man and tells him to pick who dies - the wife, or the child. If the man does not pick either of them, the terrorist will kill both the wife and the child.
No matter who the man picks, is the man required to take responsibility for the death of either the wife or the child? Of course not - the man does not have free will. The terrorist is the one who made the choice to kill at least one of those people, and is also the one who made the choice to require the man to pick who should be killed. It is the terrorist that has genuine free will in this case, not the man.
This brings me to teenagers under the conservative system. Under the conservative system, teenagers, being children, do not have any rights - any "rights" that their parents may deign to give them may also be taken away at a moment's notice. Consequently, they're not really "rights" - rights are inalienable and cannot be removed by anybody. This is why I stated earlier that children only have a series of privileges. Consequently, these children do not have free will - they are not allowed to freely make choices regarding their life. Their parents make those choices for them. This becomes a bit sticky, however, when you start talking about teenage pregnancy. According to the conservative viewpoint, it is the teenager's parents that ultimately get to choose whether that teenager is going to become a parent or not. It is true that the teenager gets to decide whether to have sex or not, but it's a heavily restricted choice - unlike adults, who may choose to educate themselves about contraceptives and use them as they see fit, the teenager is at the mercy of the parent.
There are a couple of problems with this arrangement:
1. Can a teenager bestow privileges upon a child that the teenager itself does not have? Since the teenager has no rights, how can it confer any privileges upon its own child?
2. Who has responsibility for the new child - the teenager or the teenager's parents? The teenager does have a choice whether to engage in sex or not, but it's a false choice, with purposefully incomplete information and with most of the possible options intentionally disabled. This is functionally similar to "letting" a teenager drive a car, but teaching them that driving a car leads to car accidents and intentionally cutting their brake lines. The person responsible for the inevitable crash isn't necessarily the teenager - it's the person who decided the teenager shouldn't be allowed to use the brakes.
In short, conservatively-minded parents try to teach their teenagers about personal responsibility by effectively denying them the ability to ever claim personal responsibility. You cannot be held responsible for something which you have no control over, and you certainly cannot be held responsible for something when you have absolutely zero control over the consequences or your available reactions to said consequences.
Consequently, I believe we either need to do one of two things:
1. If society decides that parents have complete and total control over their children and what information is provided to them, we must recognize that parents must have complete and total responsibility over the actions of their children. Consequently, all legal actions and punishments must be borne by the parents, not the child. In the case of teenage pregnancy, for example, it would be the parents of the father that would be responsible for providing child support, not the father himself.
OR...
2. Acknowledge that children have certain inalienable rights, including the right to do what they will with their body, and must therefore bear responsibility for their actions. However, all children must have equal opportunity to acquiring information that would help them make informed choices, and all children must have equal opportunity and access to the tools available and required to act on that choice. In the case of our topic today, that would mean that children must have access to acquire contraceptives (albeit not necessarily for free), information about contraceptives, and access and information about the current post-conception alternatives available to adults (keeping the child, adoption, and abortion).
So, which is it going to be?
Yesterday, Supreme Overlord and Excessive Provider of Dog Snacks posted a rather interesting entry on the nature of reality, teenagers, and sex education:
I have a whole post drafted up about abortion, but it’s mostly about adults, so I’ll post it later. Plus, it seems to me that all the things I have to say in that post can only follow what I have to say in this post; otherwise, the subject of this post would be a big empty question mark in the other one.
Okay. Let’s do this. The catalyst for this discussion is something Barack Obama has said:“This is an example where good people can disagree,” the Illinois senator said. “The question then is, are there areas that we can agree to that everybody can get behind? We can all agree that we want to reduce teen pregnancies. We can all agree that we want to make sure that adoption is a viable option.”
The exchange appeared to be prompted by Obama’s earlier comments that he does not favor abstinence-only education, but rather comprehensive sexual education that includes information on abstinence and birth control.
“Look, I got two daughters — 9 years old and 6 years old,” he said. “I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby. I don’t want them punished with an STD at age 16, so it doesn’t make sense to not give them information.”
A lot of conservatives are going to hate him really hard for that statement. They’re going to say he’s an asshole for equating a baby with “punishment”, and so on. I understand this reaction, but I also think that his overarching point is exactly right. Stick with me here.
She then provides a rather lengthy explanation of why she agrees with this stance - teenagers have hormones, they don't have perfect self-control, they tend to ignore authority figures after a while, etc. Read the whole thing. I wouldn't do justice to it if I tried to give little snippets of it.
I'm going to say right here and now that I agree with her overall point. That's not what I'm going to write about today. Instead, I'm going to discuss the comments provided by her readers. She's already done that, too, but I'm going in a slightly different direction.
The debate in her comments section, and, in fact, the general cultural debate on this falls under two categories:
- Children have a pre-natal right to exist, but, until they turn 18, they have no rights; they should only have a series of privileges provided and vetted by their parent or guardian.
- Children do not have an intrinsic pre-natal right to existence, but, upon birth, they have certain inalienable rights that are independent of their parents' wishes or desires and are supported by the society at large.
The first position is traditionally the "conservative" view. The second position is traditionally the "liberal" view. What's interesting about them is that both positions are compromises between maximizing the freedom of the parent and maximizing the freedom of the child. On the conservative side, after conception, the parent does not get to choose whether to be a parent - it's assumed that, by engaging in acts that could potentially lead to conception, the parents have already made that choice. However, upon conception, that child is yours to do with basically as you please, upon the sole conditions that you don't kill or physically abuse your child. On the liberal side, the parent has the right to decide, even after conception, whether or not they truly wish to be a parent, but, upon making that choice, the parent must abide by the rights and values that society enforces upon them regarding the upbringing of their child.
I'm somewhat conflicted on this, as I'm sure quite a few people are. On the one hand, a parent should have the right to raise their child as they see fit. On the other hand, should the child be punished because he or she happens to have parents that decide to teach the child that, say, Jews are evil, or willfully lead them to ignorance about the world? This is an issue that they're facing in Europe right now - there are tons of parents from Middle Eastern countries that are raising their children to believe that Western values are inherently evil and against Allah's way. Amusingly, many of the conservatives that would normally preach about "parents' rights" would be the first to say that the state should intervene. Even more comical is that many liberals are the first to preach "parents' rights" when dealing with Muslim fundamentalists but are also the first to subvert the rights of fundamentalist Christian parents. The hypocrisy is blinding.
I believe in consistency - what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Either we declare that parents have complete, total, and absolute control over what information and values their children are instilled with, or we declare that society needs some say on what information and values are passed on to children. Unfortunately, there are no good "libertarian" solutions to this problem - we're either going to screw the child or the parents. There is no way we can provide both groups with complete freedom on this. We need to decide where the line should be drawn.
One big issue that I have with the conservative stance relates to personal responsibility. In order to have responsibility, you have to have free will - you can't take responsibility for a choice if you're never given choices to freely make. To illustrate this, consider the following scenario:
A man, wife, and child are taken hostage by a terrorist. The terrorist approaches the man and tells him to pick who dies - the wife, or the child. If the man does not pick either of them, the terrorist will kill both the wife and the child.
No matter who the man picks, is the man required to take responsibility for the death of either the wife or the child? Of course not - the man does not have free will. The terrorist is the one who made the choice to kill at least one of those people, and is also the one who made the choice to require the man to pick who should be killed. It is the terrorist that has genuine free will in this case, not the man.
This brings me to teenagers under the conservative system. Under the conservative system, teenagers, being children, do not have any rights - any "rights" that their parents may deign to give them may also be taken away at a moment's notice. Consequently, they're not really "rights" - rights are inalienable and cannot be removed by anybody. This is why I stated earlier that children only have a series of privileges. Consequently, these children do not have free will - they are not allowed to freely make choices regarding their life. Their parents make those choices for them. This becomes a bit sticky, however, when you start talking about teenage pregnancy. According to the conservative viewpoint, it is the teenager's parents that ultimately get to choose whether that teenager is going to become a parent or not. It is true that the teenager gets to decide whether to have sex or not, but it's a heavily restricted choice - unlike adults, who may choose to educate themselves about contraceptives and use them as they see fit, the teenager is at the mercy of the parent.
There are a couple of problems with this arrangement:
1. Can a teenager bestow privileges upon a child that the teenager itself does not have? Since the teenager has no rights, how can it confer any privileges upon its own child?
2. Who has responsibility for the new child - the teenager or the teenager's parents? The teenager does have a choice whether to engage in sex or not, but it's a false choice, with purposefully incomplete information and with most of the possible options intentionally disabled. This is functionally similar to "letting" a teenager drive a car, but teaching them that driving a car leads to car accidents and intentionally cutting their brake lines. The person responsible for the inevitable crash isn't necessarily the teenager - it's the person who decided the teenager shouldn't be allowed to use the brakes.
In short, conservatively-minded parents try to teach their teenagers about personal responsibility by effectively denying them the ability to ever claim personal responsibility. You cannot be held responsible for something which you have no control over, and you certainly cannot be held responsible for something when you have absolutely zero control over the consequences or your available reactions to said consequences.
Consequently, I believe we either need to do one of two things:
1. If society decides that parents have complete and total control over their children and what information is provided to them, we must recognize that parents must have complete and total responsibility over the actions of their children. Consequently, all legal actions and punishments must be borne by the parents, not the child. In the case of teenage pregnancy, for example, it would be the parents of the father that would be responsible for providing child support, not the father himself.
OR...
2. Acknowledge that children have certain inalienable rights, including the right to do what they will with their body, and must therefore bear responsibility for their actions. However, all children must have equal opportunity to acquiring information that would help them make informed choices, and all children must have equal opportunity and access to the tools available and required to act on that choice. In the case of our topic today, that would mean that children must have access to acquire contraceptives (albeit not necessarily for free), information about contraceptives, and access and information about the current post-conception alternatives available to adults (keeping the child, adoption, and abortion).
So, which is it going to be?
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
This has not been a good day
Earlier today, I mentioned that I slipped on my way to my truck before I went to work. What I didn't mention was that I had my laptop with me, which promptly went flying into the grass. This brings me to the end of my day, when I fired up my laptop, only to find that everything had turned green - the monitor was only displaying green for some reason.
Great.
Fortunately, unlike some other bloggers I know, I do know a little computer kung-fu. This is good, seeing as my job kind of requires that. So, I decided it was time to take apart the laptop and hope and pray it was just something stupid like a loose connector. I disassembled my laptop, top to bottom, checking for physical damage on the system board and the monitor - nothing. Plugged everything back in, screwed everything back together... approximately three hours or so after I discovered my laptop was being belligerent, I powered it back on, and...
It worked!
That's the good news. The bad news is that, while disassembling my laptop, a coworker and I discussed wireless cards. See, since I use Ubuntu on my laptop for my operating system needs, my Broadcom-based wireless card is, shall we say, less than ideal. Put another way, the only way I could make it work was to install Windows drivers and use a little tool called ndiswrapper to convince Ubuntu that they were, in fact, Ubuntu drivers. It worked fine, but I'd rather have a wireless NIC that actually works well with my operating system of choice. Fortunately, my coworker happened to have an Intel Pro/Wireless 3945ABG card in his laptop, and he wasn't as picky about his choices in wireless cards as I was, so we swapped. There's just one problem now - I can't get it to work. As far as Ubuntu is concerned, the card flat out doesn't exist. This isn't a case of, "Gee, I see that nifty little card in there, but I don't have drivers for that." No, it's more like, "There's no card. Only Zuul." So, I'm reading through my logs, trying to see if the operating system ever found it and it just had an IRQ conflict or something equally asinine... no luck so far.
Consequently, I have no wireless until tomorrow, when I harass my coworker into giving me back my wireless card. My suspicion is that Compaq did something extremely not heterosexual to the BIOS in this thing that causes it to not handle non-OEM wireless cards properly. I don't know if this is true or not, and, frankly, I don't care at this point. What I do know is that I'm getting a wee bit tired of today... and I'd very much like it to be over at this point.
Great.
Fortunately, unlike some other bloggers I know, I do know a little computer kung-fu. This is good, seeing as my job kind of requires that. So, I decided it was time to take apart the laptop and hope and pray it was just something stupid like a loose connector. I disassembled my laptop, top to bottom, checking for physical damage on the system board and the monitor - nothing. Plugged everything back in, screwed everything back together... approximately three hours or so after I discovered my laptop was being belligerent, I powered it back on, and...
It worked!
That's the good news. The bad news is that, while disassembling my laptop, a coworker and I discussed wireless cards. See, since I use Ubuntu on my laptop for my operating system needs, my Broadcom-based wireless card is, shall we say, less than ideal. Put another way, the only way I could make it work was to install Windows drivers and use a little tool called ndiswrapper to convince Ubuntu that they were, in fact, Ubuntu drivers. It worked fine, but I'd rather have a wireless NIC that actually works well with my operating system of choice. Fortunately, my coworker happened to have an Intel Pro/Wireless 3945ABG card in his laptop, and he wasn't as picky about his choices in wireless cards as I was, so we swapped. There's just one problem now - I can't get it to work. As far as Ubuntu is concerned, the card flat out doesn't exist. This isn't a case of, "Gee, I see that nifty little card in there, but I don't have drivers for that." No, it's more like, "There's no card. Only Zuul." So, I'm reading through my logs, trying to see if the operating system ever found it and it just had an IRQ conflict or something equally asinine... no luck so far.
Consequently, I have no wireless until tomorrow, when I harass my coworker into giving me back my wireless card. My suspicion is that Compaq did something extremely not heterosexual to the BIOS in this thing that causes it to not handle non-OEM wireless cards properly. I don't know if this is true or not, and, frankly, I don't care at this point. What I do know is that I'm getting a wee bit tired of today... and I'd very much like it to be over at this point.
Ask and ye shall receive
Found this on the LA Times - it's an op-ed written by Jonah Goldberg explaining why the Darwin Fish is so repugnant. I'm not going to spend too much time on it, but I did notice this:
I'm going to have to agree with him on that - it's easy taking shots at Christians. They'll take it, smile, and turn the other cheek. However, it takes serious balls to pull something similarly trite against Muslims, so, without further ado, I present to you...
Okay, I think the most offensive part of this self-made production is the complete and total lack of artistic skill I'm exhibiting here. The idea is that it's a Darwin Fish eating Islam. It's going to be tasty, in a falafel-ridden sort of way. Unfortunately, I'm not sure it turned out as well as I had hoped...
The Darwin fish ostensibly symbolizes the superiority of progressive-minded science over backward-looking faith. I think this is a false juxtaposition, but I would have a lot more respect for the folks who believe it if they aimed their brave contempt for religion at those who might behead them for it.
I'm going to have to agree with him on that - it's easy taking shots at Christians. They'll take it, smile, and turn the other cheek. However, it takes serious balls to pull something similarly trite against Muslims, so, without further ado, I present to you...
Okay, I think the most offensive part of this self-made production is the complete and total lack of artistic skill I'm exhibiting here. The idea is that it's a Darwin Fish eating Islam. It's going to be tasty, in a falafel-ridden sort of way. Unfortunately, I'm not sure it turned out as well as I had hoped...
Traffic
It's time to make some comparisons...
My traffic - I should have visited it once last night so I'd have an even 850 for the month. Thanks to everyone for showing up!
Rachel Lucas's traffic - Her site is a bit busier than mine, but it's still nothing compared to...
Instapundit - The granddaddy of them all. He's only getting, oh, 8800 times the traffic that I am, give or take. Wow.
My traffic - I should have visited it once last night so I'd have an even 850 for the month. Thanks to everyone for showing up!
Rachel Lucas's traffic - Her site is a bit busier than mine, but it's still nothing compared to...
Instapundit - The granddaddy of them all. He's only getting, oh, 8800 times the traffic that I am, give or take. Wow.
April Fools
Okay, I suppose I should be doing something creative and funny here, but I'm going to level with all of you - April Fools Day is not my milieu. I did come up with a decent idea, but, unfortunately, by the time it swam through what passes for my brain these days, it was far too late to competently execute... so it will have to wait for another time.
I will point out that my so-called "French Vanilla Cappuccino", which I got from a gas station down the street from me, tastes mildly alcoholic, so today could become really interesting...
I did get my day started off on the right foot, though. There was a nice layer of ice on the sidewalk in front of my apartment. Unfortunately, I didn't notice that until after I fell on my ass. Oh, good times.
There are some decent April Fools jokes running around, though. Let's see here...
YouTube - Click any of the video links on the left.
CollegeHumor - Give it a minute.
Fazed - It's pink!
Rachel Lucas - It's 9 A.M., PST, and she still hasn't posted yet. Clearly she's messing with us.
Virgle - Google and Virgin are going to Mars, baby! Go ahead, take the entrance exam.
Gmail Custom Time - Need to send that e-mail yesterday? Now you can!
If anybody finds another one, let me know.
I will point out that my so-called "French Vanilla Cappuccino", which I got from a gas station down the street from me, tastes mildly alcoholic, so today could become really interesting...
I did get my day started off on the right foot, though. There was a nice layer of ice on the sidewalk in front of my apartment. Unfortunately, I didn't notice that until after I fell on my ass. Oh, good times.
There are some decent April Fools jokes running around, though. Let's see here...
YouTube - Click any of the video links on the left.
CollegeHumor - Give it a minute.
Fazed - It's pink!
Rachel Lucas - It's 9 A.M., PST, and she still hasn't posted yet. Clearly she's messing with us.
Virgle - Google and Virgin are going to Mars, baby! Go ahead, take the entrance exam.
Gmail Custom Time - Need to send that e-mail yesterday? Now you can!
If anybody finds another one, let me know.
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