Good Link: (soon to be added to the Almighty Sidebar when I can figure out how to get FTP access through the labyrinthine network setup at home)
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/writeliving/ - 10 Tips on Writing the Living Web
(blogger’s guide to writing)
First of all, people in business need to quit using Corporate-Speak. No one should use verbs like ‘leverage’ or ‘action-item’ or ‘explore’. Say normal words like ‘use’ or ‘do’ or ‘think’.
On my way out of Jack in the Box today, I saw one of my archetypical Persons I Dislike. She was easily 300 pounds. She had on stretchy pants. She was driving a Yukon Denali XL. Her huge (230lbs.?) kids got in the car as they were complaining about the (”little”) portions at the aforementioned Jack-in-the-Box. She yelled at her kids, in public, in a southern accent, words which I shall not repeat here. They strapped their huge (m)asses in their bus of a vehicle and ended up in front of me at the stoplight. But a silly stoplight wasn’t enough to stop this woman. The light was red. She stopped. And then she made a left on a red (without signalling, to boot), across three lanes of traffic, prompting beeps from three layers of cars that had had green lights before they were eclipsed by this behemoth. What did she do? Flipped them the bird. Ah, America. I bet she was late for Ricki Lake. (why is it that this is the sort of person that always complains about what’s wrong with America? Ironic, really…)
His lawyer has argued that stripping him of citizenship would leave him stateless and would be a breach of his human rights. (full story)
Last I checked, the right to a state isn’t a basic human right. The guy was born in Egypt, and he should have thought twice about giving up his citizenship in a dubious bid to get citizenship somewhere else. Maybe we should make a state called Utopia to put on all of these people’s passports (utopia is latin for ‘nowhere’)
so it looks like there was a database problem, and the post i made earlier for today got lost. so i started mucking around with the program i use to do this (MoveableType… it’s great) and i came across the advertising bot comments that have been jamming up some of my entries. i’m working on deleting them. and their presence prompts me to pen the following, which shall apply anywhere on this domain and will be linked to this page in the near future:
All content on this site (data stored under this account on the server) is Copyright Scott Simpson. Use of this server, under this account, for commercial purposes, aside from those explicitly permitted by the owner of the account shall be considered illegal and will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Advertisements of pharmaceuticals, penis enlargement devices, or associated services and products will not be tolerated. Use, viewing, or accessing this site indicates that you agree with and will comply to these terms. Legal issues arising from these terms shall be dealt with in San Diego, California subject to US and California laws.
And you, loyal readers, if you buy anything from the ads in my comments, i reserve the right to smack you.
As always, the only way for an investigator to catch a cyber criminal is to learn their tricks. “To truly understand malware they have to use it. To understand hacking they have to do it,” Haagman said. (full story)
So, since the ‘only way’ to catch a cyber criminal is to learn their tricks, does that mean that the only way to catch a murderer is to kill people? Tread lightly, Mr. Haagman.
Pack cherry tomatoes, baby carrots, and small, pre-cut veggies that are easy to eat while driving. “The key to healthy dashboard dining is to focus on foods that provide a big nutritional punch with few calories from sugar and fat,” Terry Egan, nutrition specialist with University Outreach and Extension in Springfield, Mo., told AP. (full story)
Um, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the key to healthy ‘dashboard dining’ to NOT EAT WHILE DRIVING? If your major concern is being healthy, putting yourself at risk by eating (even healthy foods) while driving shouldn’t even be in your sphere of comprehension. Chill out. Sit down and eat. This is something I’ve noticed that Americans are incredibly bad at. You know how long it takes me to sit down at Starbucks, enjoy my scone and coffee (or tea in recent times) and read the editorials and comics? Ten minutes. And if you don’t have ten minutes to spare in your day to relax and enjoy yourself, you need to re-evaluate your priorities. No wonder so many people are stressed beyond belief. America needs a really big chill pill.
“The global security agenda promoted by the U.S. administration is bankrupt of vision and bereft of principle,” Amnesty head Irene Khan said, launching its annual report. (full story)
Um, Ms. Khan, you seem to have missed the point. The US global security agenda is not bereft of principle — the whole problem is that it’s entirely based on principle. It’s based on a principle that looks really good on paper, sounds really good in theory, and works really well … in the election booths. However, it doesn’t translate well to the global stage in an era when the rest of the world is championing collaboration. Listen — pre-emption is a good strategy when there are defined targets and defined enemies and the rules of Just War can be followed to the letter. Pre-emption would have been a wonderful policy for the US during the second world war. However, leveraging the military as it exists now is not the best of plans to fight, as Jessica Stern puts it, a protean enemy. No, I’m not so arrogant as to think I can do better in a new type of war than the current administration, and I believe there are very few people out there who could. Bush will bomb the living daylights out of anyone that screams ‘down with America’ and Kerry will stand up and talk about something that doesn’t make sense while doing the same. But that’s enough rant on that.. back to the news:
“Violating rights at home, turning a blind eye to abuses abroad and using pre-emptive military force where and when it chooses has damaged justice and freedom, and made the world a more dangerous place.” (Ibid.)
Yep, you guessed it, this is more of Ms. Khan’s work. It’s people like her that keep me from donating to or working with groups like Amnesty International. She’s complaining about US treatment of the ‘war on terror’ (dumb phrase, but what the heck). But perhaps Ms. Khan has failed to realize that her statement could also describe the actions of … you guessed it … terrorists. How do random terrorist attacks not violate basic human rights of everyone else? Listen — let’s think about al-Qaeda for a while. I can thing of a few thousand people who had their most basic human right violated in the middle of September a few years ago. I can think of countless Israeli citizens and other peaceful folk across Europe and Asia that were killed simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Walking down the street, doesn’t one have a basic expectation that their life won’t be taken by someone who believes differently than they do? Al-Qaeda doesn’t think so, so how can someone complain about US tactics in this global skirmish? Next, let’s take a look at abuses under the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Mix religious fundamentalism and nuclear weapons, and you have a problem on your hands. (yes, ANY religious fundamentalism… though I have yet to meet a fundamentalist Taoist or Agnostic)
What entirely too many people here fail to realize is that Islam saved the world. Huh? What? Oh, yeah.. look at the Dark Ages. If the powerful Islamic empire hadn’t been around, Europe wouldn’t have been able to bring itself into the Renaissance nearly as quickly. For those dark centuries, the Islamic empire was a bastion of learning and knowledge. Look it up.
The abuses in the Muslim world happened chiefly under the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, not in general society. The US is at least trying to do the world a favor, even if it doesn’t quite know how to do it. Much of Europe is sort of sitting back, in good European fashion, and watching while the big guy and the scores of little guys duke it out. I’m not quite sure the threat of terror can be quashed, given its distributed and individual nature, but it’s a global issue being addressed by a few nations, while the others sit back and hope it gets taken care of. So kindly shut up, Ms. Khan… let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Oooh, how biblical. Speaking of which:
The Bible says God has given men and women different roles, Drollinger said. “Man’s is, primarily, to be a breadwinner, and women’s is to be at home nurturing their children. I’m all for the female legislators serving our great state with all of their giftedness, in due time,” Drollinger said. “If they have children at home, they need to share those gifts with their children. Then after that, as Ecclesiastes says, there is a season that they can serve in the Legislature.”
Capitol Ministries’ Bible study classes once met in the governor’s suite of offices, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told Drollinger to move when Drollinger referred to Roman Catholicism as a false religion. Schwarzenegger and his wife are Catholic. (full story)
OK, number one, why was a bible study class meeting INSIDE the Capitol? and number two… well, I just thought that was funny. Fundamentalist preachers are fun to listen to, they make so much comedy without even realizing it.
And, on a lighter note, a search on stock image and photo supplier Corbis for ‘cold rolled’ returns photos of OJ Simpson and Nancy Reagan. Go figure.
So I took my mac to the Apple Store last evening… they’re replacing the screen for free. It developed white spots some time ago (a known problem with the first run of the Aluminum Powerbook G4’s). So now I’m mac-less, which is a weird thing kind of… I’m back to leaving up an away message most of the time on someone elses computer and using the web to access my mail. Very strange. Anyway, it should be done by June 4th (though I estimate it will be sooner), and to top it all off, they’re shipping it to my house. Go Apple.
It occurs to me, in looking at today’s news, that there really isn’t that much of note going on in the world. Sure, there’s that Iraq thing, but it’s old news and it’s only by virtue of political games that it’s even really making headlines anymore. The new variant of Ebola in Sudan is pretty noteworthy, but isn’t too relevant to most people on Earth (not to say it isn’t important, just that it’s not something I can really use or do something with, except avoid traveling to southern Sudan).
ABC, CBS and NBC decided not to offer live coverage of President Bush’s speech about Iraq Monday, although the cable news networks planned to pre-empt their regular programming for the address. (full story)
I’m not quite sure where I stand with this one… on one hand, you have the networks’ right to choose their programming, and on the other hand, you have different fingers. Oh, wait, I do know where I stand on this one. Memo to President Bush’s aides and such: You’re not as special as you think you are. You get to make requests for time just like everyone else. Unless there’s some impending doom or immediate peril (asteroid, nuclear missile, Yanni concert), the networks should have soverign control over their programming… and in the event of an emergency, they should choose to cover what’s relevant anyway.
But all cynicism aside, I figure it’s a good thing when there’s so little happening that smoking laws in Malibu end up on the national news.
[Yahoo] already started limiting the amount of time that advertisers’ so-called rich-media ads could cover up important parts of a website, like the search and navigation links. (full story)
Well, duh… Why is it that advertisers think anyone is interested in looking at their garish ads? Why would I visit a website festooned with them? I’ve already stopped using a number of sites (cnet and zdnet most notably) because of the profusion of advertising. Wired has a bunch too, but at least they have the sensibility to have relatively targeted advertising that looks halfway decent. Though I’m still not entirely sure why these website ads need to induce epilepsy to sell their product. I blame it all on Macromedia. For they begat Flash, and for a time it was good. Then once upon a dark day, inept advertisers with a jonesing to make bad movies put it all together and started making annoying ugly flash ads. And then these people realized they could combine the flash with layers, and make people click on stuff before viewing the webpage that they were browsing for on the (hitherto commercial-free public use) world wide web. I find it interesting to note that typically the quality of content is inversely proportional to the amount of advertising on a page. (commented on at SatireWire.com)
I propose a union of web designers to end the exploitation of flash and other rich media in internet advertising. I call it the Organization to End the Blinky Web. It would be a voluntary program with certain conditions and standards (yet to be defined, but I think it’s pretty obvious). When I get a chance, I’ll make a tasteful link banner for it. And a webpage.
It seems that people who play Dance Dance Revolution have found a way to be nerds that lose weight. DDR was always kind of an enigma to me for many reasons:
Except Yanni.
One reason is that men and their doctors may assume they are experiencing a common and benign condition called gynecomastia, or enlargement of the breasts, Giordano said. [rather than male breast cancer] (full story)
Um, if I’m experiencing an enlarging of the breasts, I’m sure as hell going to another doctor if mine says it’s ‘benign’. There is no benign enlargement of male breast tissue.
In other news,
[An] agreement [by the WTO] sets out recommendations such as the reduction of sugar, fat and salt in processed food; the control of food marketing to children and of health claims on packaging; and more comprehensive nutrition labeling and health education. (full story)
If a global body has to start telling other global bodies what to eat, it sort of says something — maybe Darwin wasn’t so wrong. This obesity thing has gotten out of hand, and it’s incumbent upon the Large to quit using up so many of the world’s resources.
Regardless of whether countries end up using the unprecedented plan, experts say the pace of obesity’s spread across the planet, the predictions of what it will cost to deal with the consequences, and the food industry’s lingering fears of a successful lawsuit by fat people are all forces certain to motivate changes. (Ibid.)
Well, first off, there will be no successful lawsuit by fat people, chiefly because the Constitution doesn’t really provide the right to sue someone for your own stupidity (but I thought this double bacon cheeseburger with mayo was just as healthy as a whole wheat bagel!) Come on, morons, quit suing the industry for stupid things. And I sincerely hope that the Supreme court refuses to listen to appeal claims from fat people suing fast food restaurants too. You know what a better way to beat the fast food places is? Open a healthier alternative right next door. With large seats. And low prices. Think about it .. if McDonalds can sell a hamburger (fairly complex) for 99 cents, how little would it cost to provide a decent salad, soup, piece of fruit, and healthy beverage? The only reason health food is expensive is because demand is low. So open a MacHealthy’s. This whole obesity thing sort of reminds me about an experience I had once in a Jack-in-the-Box. This massive man came in and ordered four bacon double cheeseburgers. And a medium drink. He filled it with Diet Coke. Sorry, buddy, but the Coke isn’t the problem.
When I read this headline, I thought it said ‘Families grieve for Kerry victims’. Read about the tragedy in Bangladesh, reflect on the grief of the victims, and then read on.
I’ll wait.
No, I’m serious.
OK.
I’m not quite sure what Kerry (and now I hear Bush) are planning to do by delaying their nominations from their parties. (OK, I do know, and it involves money-grubbing politics, but go with me here..) Let’s look at this from a moral perspective. They both lose moral credibility by delaying their acceptance (which shouldn’t be allowed anyway, I think there should be a 24-hour acceptance period, whereupon the party’s nomination falls to the next guy) the candidates are telling their parties ’screw you guys, I’m gonna go roll in my money some more’ (envision Cartman waddling off) and they’re telling the American people that television facetime and all of the other perks of well-funded campaigns are more important than little details like ‘following the rules’ and ‘having moral credibility’. How can you tell when a politician has no ideas and is all about glitz and facetime? He turns down an invitation from his own party to lead the most powerful nation on earth in favor of doing a few more commercials. Sure, Kerry will get kinda screwed if he accepts at the Convention, but there’s nobody to blame except the people that put the Convention on the calendar. Kerry complains that he has to go longer with the same amount of money (US$75M)… here’s a thought, mister JFK 2, invest some of it for that month. Put it in Google or something. Or quit paying for pizza for your supporters (make them get their own lunch… you are paying them, right?). And George… if it takes you so many more millions to run a campaign against Kerry (and you’re still not faring so well, are you?), maybe you need to change your tactics. Maybe you need to go after some borderline democrats with social issues. The parties are the same anyway, so not too many people (except the Lew Rockwell’s of the world) will go after you for slightly democratic reforms… like taking, say, $5M from the military (they won’t miss it) to do something about the nation’s abysmal schools. Maybe get rid of that piece of trash No Child Left Behind nonsense.
Michael Jackson’s prosecutor is opposing a move by the pop singer to reduce his $3 million bail, arguing the performer might choose to live the rest of his life as “a wealthy absconder” rather than face a life term in a California prison. (full story)
Well, guy, Jacko isn’t wealthy. Otherwise he wouldn’t be in the news. Get it? And if he fled the country, who would seriously care? They have harsher penalties for what he did (”didn’t”) do elsewhere in the world. And they don’t pander to celebrity trash either. So let him go to France or wherever poor ugly pedophiles go.
Also notable: A preservation group calls Wal-Mart a ‘threat’ to Vermont’s way of life … there’s not much I can do but type a smiley after that one, since I can’t add much to the logic. So here goes:
:)
These people need to lay off Martha Stewart. Sure, what she did was wrong, but what’s being overlooked is the fact that no one was actually hurt. Should the Domestic Diva and those that assisted in the alleged stock hullabaloo be punished? Absolutely, if they’re guilty. Should they be incarcerated? No. I doubt these people will run around scrawling ‘at 60′ on walls and plants and little old women. Financial crime should be punished financially. If someone abuses stocks, they should be barred from trading. If they abuse a bank, they should have no access to banks. We have the same policies for cars (license taken away for infractions), so why not for crime? The way I see it, our system is mostly set up that way already: for crimes where someone’s freedom is taken away (murder, extortion, rape, etc.), the offender’s freedom is likewise taken away. However, the same is not true for drug and financial crimes. Pardon me for waxing leftist for a minute, but what exactly is the point of locking up an otherwise upstanding and productive person for having a small amount of nonprescribed pharmaceuticals? A kilogram of heroin, take it away and process it for medical use. Hospitals could save millions. We’d empty the prisons (and let natural selection start to work on those chronic addicts to pharmaceuticals) and have space for people that actually need to be there.. and probably at a lower cost, too.
This brings me to gripe number two with the prison system: education. It is generally assumed that all persons shall have access to education. I disagree with this sentiment for those in prison (convicted of heinous crimes). If the aforementioned otherwise productive individual is sitting in prison awaiting an appeal, let him read stuff. If the inmate killed three people, it’s dark room time. What’s that? It’s cruel and unusual? Yeah, well so are rape and murder. We, as a society, need to get over this ‘fix everything by throwing money at it’ philosophy and actually start enforcing things. $100,000 per year per prisoner will not make crime go away… this is proven by the fact that we still have crime. It was noted in a book I read that there’s a direct correlation between the cost of law enforcement and the incentive to break the law. As law enforcement becomes more costly, there is a greater incentive to break the law, if even on principle to show that it can be done. This is evident on the global stage as well.
But until I’m elected President of the Banana Republic (or other small productive nation), I guess I’ll just have to be content with writing acerbic blogs.
A 23-year SBC employee, Belous went through the last CWA strike against SBC — a four-week walkout in 1983. “It almost killed me,” she remembered. “I’m praying it won’t be that again.” (full story)
There’s a simple way to avoid getting ‘almost killed’… don’t strike. Why don’t these people ever learn? Strikes were effective in the heyday of labor unions, when organized labor was an effective tool to protect workers against management. But anymore, unions seem to do more harm than good. It seems rather strange to me that the same people that complain about wages not being high enough pay hundreds of dollars per year into organizations that supposedly get them more money. That’s called a pyramid scheme.
There was a time when unions were useful. Very few are useful today (teachers unions, etc.) The entire concept is flawed (or does no one else see a little bit of a conflict in people whose entire job consists of labor organization… and are often paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for management jobs … just like the ones they’re trying to destroy… not to mention the corruption that runs rampant) unless the organization is addressing an issue that is truly major (huge cuts, like removing all medical care or huge salary slashes in times of fiscal prosperity)
Striking is useless and serves no purpose. It hurts the company (read: less income equals less profit equals less money to pay workers) and it hurts the consumers (during the insipid grocery strike I still went to VONS, despite being called various names by the monkeys picketing outside). One of the VONS picketers was drinking a Starbucks. There’s nothing wrong with that, unless you’re holding a sign that complains about low pay. But back to SBC.
SBC workers don’t really have a public to strike in front of. Very few people that I know regularly visit the central offices. Very few people will respond to the call to boycott the SBC service if the negotiations fail. Drop my internet connection because some other people are whining? I think not. I’ve been experiencing latency issues lately, but I think that’s due in large part to these inane spam viruses more than anything else. It’s certainly not a labor issue. (modems and routers work just as hard when nobody’s watching or paying them)
In sum, I have one thing to say to most union strikers: shut up. If you approach your conflicts with management in a sane, civil manner, rather than resorting to puerile threats of striking and boycott (it’s technically blackmail… ‘pay us more or we’ll break our contract with you’), you might get more than you bargained for and, imagine, people might actually support you. Justify your demands for pay increases in a reasonable way. Rationalize your opposition to minute increases in insurance co-pays (you know, most likely it isn’t that the company is out to get you … have you considered the concept that maybe their costs have risen because of factors beyond their control? Imagine there’s a strike in a medical supply warehouse… and hospitals can’t get the tools they need at the same price… they’re forced to raise their prices to cover their higher costs, and boom, the cost of health coverage goes up.) I once heard of a group striking because their insurance co-pay price went up a dollar. That’s just juvenile.
There is concern that SBC tech jobs might be outsourced to India. God forbid a company maximize profitability. Supporting workers that aren’t working can get expensive, and in Mill’s Utilitarian theory, it would do more people more good if a US company paid two people in India to do the work of one person in the US.
I used to wonder why 1940s-era Germans went after labor organizers (in addition to Catholics and Gypsies, and others). Now I know.