Random posts on general randomness, motivated by a general laziness and ennui.
which is of course, at the bottom of the ocean.
Go here, and be appalled. I won't actually put this on my webpage. But when some people complain that certain other people are questioning their patriotism, then this might be the reason why.
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Via geekpress we answer the timeless question, "In a fight, who would win, a medieval knight, or a samurai?"
Still no answer on whether Daisy Duke could beat a Charlie's Angel at foxy boxing, though. To the library!
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In the tradition of our foreparents, it is time to make resolutions that I will break or ignore by the end of the month. So, here are my 2004 resolutions:
Of all these resolutions, I think I might have a chance with the last one.
* repeat
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This show is what they're basing their hopes on? Gimme a break! Idiots! Arggh!
Fox had one of the best shows in memory in their stable in 2002 -- the vastly underappreciated "Firefly". Having purchased the DVDs and finally watched the episodes in order, I can say that this show would have been their season. Dumb-asses!
I have been busy writing a screenplay for a dead show, over the past few days. It's a boatload of fun.
Die Fox, Die!
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Having returned from flyover country seventeen pairs of socks richer, and bearing the bounty of "The Family Guy" on DVD as well as a new television, I welcome all and sundry back from their nondenominational yet subtly Judeo-Christian state-supported holidays.
Best gift: Rose Beranbaum Levy's "The Bread Bible", which contains enough wonkery for ten cookbooks (want to compensate, gram for gram, for the hydration levels of the salt you're adding to a recipe? Ever wondered how to convert recipes calling for active dry yeast into instant yeast? Ever wondered what the gluten-content difference was between Gold Medal and King Arthur all-purpose flours?), and makes incredibly good bread to boot. Well, I made incredibly good bread, but it was Levy's recipes. Highly, highly recommended.
Most necessary gift: Seventeen. Pairs. Of Socks.
And so, let's awaken from our tryptophan and sucrose slumbers to kick off the new year by reading this powerful and insightful piece by Aziz Poonawalla on being Muslim and being hated by other Muslims for your beliefs. On a pilgrimage to a holy spot in Yemen, he ran into trouble. Excerpt:
Inside... stood the young men, one armed with a nasty-looking rock. He made it clear in no uncertain terms (and despite the language barrier) that if we bent to our knees to prostrate, they would attack us. We were a small group of a half-dozen pilgrims surrounded by an entire village - but it was still enough to make me almost blind with rage. I could have snapped this fanatic in two, given his relative undernourished size. But even if we survived a confrontation, there would have been serious repercussions for the other pilgrims who were arriving later that day and the rest of the week. We were forced to grudgingly retreat, humiliated and seething with frustration at having our simple desire to express our devotion thwarted.On the way out of the building, I deliberately dropped something I was holding right near the gravesite and then knelt to pick it up. In so doing I sneaked a hurried pseudo-prostration into my action. It escaped the notice of the rock-wielding fanatic and was, in retrospect, a foolish thing to have done. We encountered no resistance as we made our way back to our useless driver and vehicle, and began the long and bruising drive back to Hutaib.
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Well, here we all are. And we are all here, which is a good thing, given that a big chunk of the planet can't stand us right now. Feel free to insert my standard "bush sucks" boilerplate here. But...my light reading for the plane ride home was Irshad Manji's "The Trouble With Islam". It's light fare, but quite sobering. She's decidedly on the opposite side of where I've been on certain issues, with regards to Islam...a lot of what she says rings true. If so, and I can't find a way around it, certain opinions of mine are going to have to change...
Greetings, 2004, the year of the robot. We are all on autopilot now, automatons entering a maze, programmed with a rule set for some reality. Let's hope our maze is roughly the same.
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I will be going on holiday hiatus later this afternoon, returning after Christmas to (I'm sure) plaudits, laurels, and celebration. In the meantime: have a blast, kids.
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The Department of Giant Sucking Sounds Calling Itself Homeland Security raised the terror alert level today from Bert to Ernie.
It's been a while since they've done this. Let's hope this time is just as frivolous as it was in the early days of the terror alert system when they changed the level from yellow to orange to tangerine to just-off-saffron on a daily basis.
Be safe and happy this holiday season, have a happy Chanukah and a merry Christmas, and if you see a dude with a shoe bomb, be sure to kick his ass a lot.
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Calpundit discusses Gregg Easterbrook's record on environmental punditry and concludes "I don't know what axe Easterbrook has to grind here, but whatever it is I recommend not accepting anything he says on environmental issues without checking it out yourself first. He's not necessarily wrong every time, but he's definitely untrustworthy."
So there you go. Grain of salt.
Posting will be light from me. I got the SARS again, or maybe it's the grippe, hard to say. But it sucks no matter what it's called.
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Master of All Blogcritics Eric Olsen, And Master of the Master of All Blogcritics Dawn Olsen, have finally had their kid.
Alexander Kirk Olsen was born at 7:05am Eastern, this morning, and weighed 9 lbs even. He was 20.75 inches long.And yes, I keep using the past tense, but that's because they grow and shrink hour by hour these first few days!
Baby Alexander was overdue, but Dawn had Mexican last night. Consequence: a two-hour labor, total. Mexican sure does go right through you. Congratulations to the Olsens. Ohio just got a little smarter.
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Hanah Metchis of Quare points to a list of the five most common geek social fallacies. Go read: I bet you find something familiar in there.
As a former sufferer of GSF1, 4, and sometimes 5, I can sympathize with those afflicted, but my sympathy dwindles as I get older, jaded, and less tolerant of, well... most things.
Long-time and observant readers will recognize a connection between GSF1 (no-one shall be excluded, no matter how obnoxious, useless, or smelly) and the concept of the "spare" as explained by Minister Buckethead.
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Reason's Hit 'n' Run (now with more raisins!) has a post up about the "last acceptable prejudice." In this case, it's Italians, and the party taking offense is the "Sons of Italy Commission for Social Justice."
Jeez. Better watch out or you're in for a kneecapping.
Sheesh. Everybody knows that the following groups are still wide-open for mocking, stereotyping, and derision of all kinds: White males (uptight, square, and nefarious, yet oddly bumbling and emasculated); rednecks (g'hyuk!); lesbians (non-lipstick variety); homosexuals (as long as it's by homosexuals); Canadians (with their beady eyes and flapping heads); native Americans (redskins, chief Wahoo); black people (as long as it's done onstage at the Apollo); fat people (the degenerate slobs!); liberals; conservatives; environmentalists; Mormons; Catholics; Jews; Muslims; English people; the Irish (they eat their dead!); intellectuals; Latinos; little people; and the blind.
Of course, the last truly acceptable prejudice is against clowns. F*cking clowns.
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My co-blogger Ross has a comment at Winds of Change regarding a post in which Joe Katzman uses the word "idiotarian." Go read for background-- I'll wait.
Ross' comment was, to wit, "I am growing a little tired of the word "Idiotarian". I know it's fun to say, and maybe it's fun to write. Who exactly do you mean? How broad is your "idiot" brush? I think the word cheapens discourse." Joe replies with another post that to me only confirms Ross' objection. He writes,
Ross of Perfidity.org [sic] finds the term overused, and I'm seeing more discomfort with it these days from the left. To which I reply in French: tant pis (too bad). The term is very useful, precisely because it calls attention to the growing neo-fascist/neo-marxist/Islamist nexus of sympathy, mutual justification, and joint action so vividly demonstrated in that neo-nazi spam's URL collection.
Which is fair enough, as far as it goes. The list of urls that Joe refers to is just what he says-- a collection sites devoted to fringe causes, moonbats, fellow travelers, and some well-meaning bystanders.
But Joe fails to do what Ross asked-- explain what he means specifically by the term. Applying the term "idiotarian" to such a wide swath of interests makes the word exactly as useful an appelation as "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" "The G-d D-n Liberals In This Country" "Feminazis" or "The Elders of Zion." If "idiotarian" means "enemy of the country" than "enemy" works fine. If it also means "armchair marxist apologist," "antiwar advocate," "college-age ecofeminist" and "The G-d D-n Liberals In This Country" than we've got problem because "idiotarian" becomes synonymous with far too many things. Does it really denote a "Vast Left-Wing America-Hating Conspiracy"?
If so, Ross has the advantage here, because using such a broad term as "idiotarian" in a serious discussion does cheapen it somewhat.
Joe tends to post thoughtful and fiery stuff, but I'm with Ross- this particular bit, and the comments it has elicited, don't seem up to his usual standard.
[wik] Updated for clarity and stuff & junk.
[alsø wik] Again! I must be a real idiotarian.
[alsø alsø wik] And now commenters at WoC are talking about a "leftist/Islamicist alliance", that is, an active side-by-side collaboration of American leftists and Muslim terrorists, as if it's a fait accompli. Get a fricken' grip, already. This is insulting.
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Over at Norbizness' house, there is a discussion a-raging about a Steven Den Beste post that somebody called Balasubramania didn't like and didn't finish, that Instapundit linked to, that Norbizness called them on, and now everyone's piling on. What fun!
To sum up comments in support of den Beste: if you haven't drunk the kool-aid you cant't possibly understand the depths of den Beste. So shut your cryptoislamofascist liberal pansy piehole until you grow a pair, and learn that your snarky generalizations are inferior to others' dead-serious generalizations.
Bloggers like polemic; it garners traffic and approval. But jeez... this is a whole lot of fur flyin' from a pretty small dogfight. The Clueless piece is one of the more reasonable ones of late, and he deserves credit for that. But how can any commenter disagree with Norbizness' statement that the Clueless echo chamber have taken the loosest bits of the argument and turned them into Strangelovian crazy talk?
The first half of den Beste's article (the part that Balasubramania read) says: "if you (I mean "Muslims") place us in a position where only you or us can survive, it's going to be us, and you'll all be dead."
I can see how that might come across a bit rectocranial.
But the second half says:
"We don't want to kill you, and we don't want you to surrender to us. We just want you to stop your fellow Muslims from trying to kill us. Do that, and this war is over."
I'm assuming #2 is what SDB meant to say, since it came at the end of his free-association where the actual thinking goes on. Also, this statement recognizes that Islam is comprised of individuals, not just suicide units and fellow travellers. The first statement is laughable and the second is tough but reasonable.
When I was teaching history, I was told always to lead my grading comments with the good news. It makes the medicine go down easier. I also taught my students that: context is everything; to make sure you've done your homework so you know the facts; to organize your work so that your point is clear; and to revise afterwards so you don't contradict yourself. Without doing all these things you risk building a castle that will very shortly burn down, fall over, and sink into the swamp. And then what do you have? A burning swamp and an ugly wife with huge tracts of land!
Den Beste? It might be a blog but that doesn't excuse lazy writing. Balu-wha? Finish your reading! Or, alternately, admit you came to uncertain conclusions.
Glenn Reynolds? Tell the whole story or go home! Also, "indeed" and "heh" don't count as incisive commentary anymore; they're schtick.
Johno? What a raging presumptuous a-hole!
SDB, Baluwhatever, and Reynolds are all guilty of lazy reading and writing, no matter what disagreements they may have otherwise. That doesn't help anyone. It's just a blog, but if you take challenges seriously, you better make sure you've done your homework. Participating in a discussion without arming yourself with knowledge is like making Shaq play donkey basketball. Weblogs tend to attract good writers and thoughtful, creative people, but the culture of polemic and generalization that tends to prevail among many weblogs is more donkey show than Shaq. Myself included.
This has been Johno, reporting from atop his high horse. Thank you, and good night.
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This is a happy article, and just in time for my favorite holiday of the year. We are remarkably blessed in this nation, as anyone with the merest inkling of historical awareness can see. Compared to our entire recorded history, and to most of the rest of the world today, we have it better than any people has any right to expect. The only standard that exceeds our current accomplishment and success is that of our own ideals and hope for perfection. At least it keeps us busy.
On a more personal note, I would like to apologize for my recent absence, and offer thanks for the marvelous interweb which makes this blog possible. For new friends like Geeklethal, and old friends like Ross and Johno, and of course for our legions of loyal readers. God bless, all five of you. You rock.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, and beware the the effects of tryptophan while operating heavy machinery.
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As if being from Beaver County, PA (home of Leslie's Big Beaver, the best durned truck stop west of Breezewood) was't bad enough, now you probably have hepatitis too.
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Today's required reading is this measured gutting of Kim du Toit's famous essay on how women are a curse. Really, go read. It's exactly as fair as the piece deserves.
Thanks to the lovely and clean-smelling Ted Barlow of Crooked Timber for the link, and check out as an added bonus "Why the Bombings Mean That We Must Support My Politics," an essay in the same post from another member of CT.
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By way of Norbizness, we find this most excellent site, the Church Sign Generator. I had some fun with this, and here is one example:
The page also thoughtfully includes links to other generator pages. My father would like the ACME Licence Plate generator:
There is also a link to a list of generator pages, all guaranteed to lower your productivity.
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This is cool beyond words. If you're a geek, and I know you are or you wouldn't be here. This website allows you to create things like this:
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