Posts from — June 2007

Ellroon has Tagged me.

1. All right, here are the rules.
2. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
3. Players start with [seven plus one] random facts/habits about themselves.
4. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their [two times four] things and post these rules.
5. At the end of your blog, you need to choose [square root of 64] people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

1. I’m a recovering Mensan. I quit when they decided the Bulletin needed more graphics and an unreadable font to attract a “new generation.”

2. Antarctica and mainland South America are the only two continents I haven’t been on. This is odd because, while I don’t know any Antarcticans, I know a number of South Americans.

3. I really dislike television as a medium, preferring the stage or cinema.

4. I have developed a dislike of all water sports and boats, and yet have spent a great deal of my life living near large bodies of water.

5. When I was a disk jockey at my university radio station my theme song was She’s Not There by the Zombies, chosen to rub in the fact that it was an all male institution, a monastery with more comfortable cells.

6. I will almost always be seen in a hat. Mostly because I’m bald and the top of the human head isn’t designed to be hit directly with rain or sun.

7. Some people think I have a dry wit, others say I’m sarcastic, usually I’m just being a smartass.

2³. Only Terry Pratchett fans who have read The Colour of Magic will understand.

Tagging a couple of people wouldn’t be bad, but [three squared minus one] is over the top. If you feel like it, do it and blame me.

Mary at Pacific Views started a post with the Litany against fear:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

This is a construct of the Bene Gesserit introduced in the novel, Dune, by Frank Herbert.

Most people don’t know that the novel was published in 1965 by Chilton, the guys who do automobile repair manuals and magazines.

While there are a lot of reasons for remembering the Litany these days, it sparked a memory of the discussions at college about the possibility of a religion being born from the philosophies found in the novel.

Being brash young college students, we all decided that no one would be stupid enough to base their religion on a science fiction novel.

The BBC noticed that today is a ‘Day of silence’ for US web radio, a move organized through the The SaveNetRadio Coalition to protest the absurd fees that have been levied against ‘Net radio outlets when compared to other broadcast media. You can find a complete listing of sites participating here.

This situation is another facet of RIAA going all Gordon Gekko, and attempting to alienate everyone who might consider buying music.

A hint guys: suing your audience and calling them criminals is not a public relations winner. In case you haven’t noticed, it is tanking sales for your members. I would also note that sneaking provisions into bills that make the creative people mere employees so that record labels can steal the copyright, doesn’t endear you to the artists.

There is a tool, RIAA Radar, that you can use to determine whether a particular artist or album has any ties to RIAA.

There are dueling posts up at Lean Left with KTK asking What is Off-Limits, and Why?, while Kevin started with Romney Faith Fair Game?

This is a problem for the current political climate. There have always been whisper campaigns about the religious views of candidates, beginning with John Adams, but they weren’t in the open, and getting caught was a net negative. Now, people are almost required to explain their religious views to run.

This is not a good development, and is destructive. There is no evidence that religious views make you a more competent person to run the country, and good evidence that pandering to a particular religious point of view is divisive.

I tend to come down on the side that religion can’t be off-limits if the candidate keeps bringing it up to justify her/his policy positions. Traditionally it was off limits, because people didn’t talk about it, or use it as a shield. If a candidate brings it up, they open it up to being questioned.

Dave Johnson of Seeing The Forest notices a logical inconsistency on the Right: if the Media is a liberal conspiracy, why is the Right opposed to the “Fairness Doctrine?”

You would think they would want the time to explain their point of view – a puzzlement?

Chris Regan of Mass Historia fills you in:

This day in history is usually a good one for fans of war and warlike people. Of course, those “fans” are usually people who have never been involved in a war themselves, apart from the violent struggle to get the remote control away from their wife so that they can return to watching History Channel’s “Hitler Week.”

One side’s humiliating defeat is the other side’s great victory, so someone will be happy.

If you don’t have an anti-virus program, please get one, and if you don’t have an anti-spyware program, please get one.

If you are using Windows, and don’t have a firewall program, please use the Windows firewall.

The easiest way of generating a denial of service attack is by enlisting the computers of unsuspecting users by infecting them.

Lavasoft as a good, free anti-spyware program, and Grisoft has a free anti-virus program. It won’t cost you any money, but it will help stop these @#$#% jerks from messing up the ‘Net.

In an amazing display of sanity, fairness, and common sense, the judge in megabuck missing pants trial has told the plaintiff to pay the legal costs of the defendants, take his pants, and get out of her sight [or something very close].

The only thing missing was a mental health referral that the plaintiff really needs.

Is anyone else having a hard time getting to Wikipedia, as in being told it doesn’t exist?

It acts like a DNS problem, but could be anything.

Update: Thanks for the help.  It was my ISP.

Kevin Hayden at American Street links to an article by Don Mayer at Barkings! about his company’s health insurance problems. Don writes about the choices that small businesses are forced to make when faced with the ever rising cost of providing health insurance for their employees.

David Ansen of Newsweek reviews Michael Moore’s movie, Sicko, and makes an incredibly wrong statement:

Why, Moore asks, in a very funny montage that turns a Soviet musical propaganda movie on its head, do we readily accept free schools, libraries, police officers and firemen but blanch at the idea of free medical service?

Having not seen the movie, I’m assuming that Ansen is characterizing those things as “free,” as he makes the same mistake earlier in the article. If Moore is doing it, then Moore is wrong. None of the listed services are free, they are publicly financed. As Ron Paul would say: “there is no free lunch.”

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So everyone went crazy over a denial-of-service attack against Estonia, essentially sites ending with .ee in a country of 1.3 million people and the same language group as Finnish and Hungarian. There were reports in the New York Times, Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, BBC, The Guardian, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, as well as the the tech press, ZD Net, CNet, Computerworld, Information Week, Network World, PC World, Slate, and Wired.

Now, I miss Shakesville and want it back as soon as possible, but get a grip people, Melissa probably gets as many page views as Estonia, but I don’t see the media wandering around asking about the impact of a few days of reduced snark and biting political commentary.

Understand that I know where Estonia is.  I knew more about the Tallinn military district of the Soviet Union than the people who lived there.  My family name is originally from just down the coast in what is the Kaliningrad district of Russia, but was once the original Prussia.

People need to get a grip.

Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

It gets so confusing, a group of homeless whackos in Miami, pizza delivery guy from New Jersey, etc. people without the money or equipment to do anything are terrorists, but other people with weapons, ammunition, and bomb making materials aren’t.

Undeniable Liberal at Maru’s place comes across a guy in Colorado who seems to be rather dangerous.

Rachel Carter reports in the local paper, The Daily Times-Call:

LONGMONT — Ronald Swerlein, the man police arrested Sunday morning on suspicion of hoarding explosive chemicals in his north Longmont home, appeared in court for the first time Monday afternoon on two felony counts of possession and use of explosives.

Boulder County District Judge John Stavely set Swerlein’s bond at $50,000. Officers and agents who searched Swerlein’s home at 2404 Sunset Drive from Friday night to Sunday night found about 200 different chemical compounds, blasting agents and explosives in the house.

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Fallenmonk marks his third blogiversary™ today and buys fresh local produce. Go harass him.