Blog Jones

The short version: Click this banner for me, ‘kay?

Less short version: I’m using an internet browser called Opera. It’s really a great program–it’s infinitely safer than Internet Explorer to use, because it’s immune to most, if not all, current spyware. It’s much more customizable as well,and it’s loaded with great features, like a built-in email client, a notepad feature, tabbed browsing, and a lot of attention to detail.

An example of the attention to detail: With Internet Explorer, when you click on a link to download something, it asks you where you want to put the download. You select a folder, and click OK, and the download begins. With Opera, it starts downloading while you’re choosing a folder, so the download might be done by the time you click OK. It’s not a huge deal, but it’s good.

Anyways, there’s only one problem: Opera isn’t free. If you want to use it, you either pay the registration fee, or you put up with a couple of (generally unobtrusive) Google ads at the top of the browser. Or, you do what I’m doing right now: Join the affiliates program and get your friends to click on the Opera banners like the ones above and below. One you get 250 clicks, you get a free registration code.

So please, do me a huge favor and click on one of the banners. I’d really appreciate it.

I’m glad I wasn’t on this plane. Fortunately, no one was hurt, AFAIK.

Coca-Cola has announced the development of a new product: A soda that actually burns calories, just by drinking it. Kind of a super diet drink. “Enviga, a green tea-based, caffeinated, carbonated drink, is in clinical testing and is said to speed up the user’s metabolism.”

Mmmm… carbonated tea. Tasty!

This is clever: A game called StreetWars: Killer - NYC. Instead of being a board game or a video game, this game is live-action. Each player is given a packet of information about their intended target–things like name, place of residence, and a photograph. Once they get their information, they are to “find and kill (by way of water gun, water balloon or super soaker)” their target(s).

There are a few safe zones–the block around your place of work, subway cars (but not stations), and buses for example–but otherwise, you’re not safe anywhere. You could be walking down Fifth Avenue and suddenly–SPLAT! You’re soaked with a water balloon.

The game is arranged as a round-robin tournament, and the winner gets an undisclosed amount of cash (which comes from the $17 entry fee).

Doesn’t that sound like fun? We ought to arrange something like that around here….

Hugh Hewitt, author of a book about blogging as a cultural phenomenon and my favorite radio talk show host, has finally gotten RSS feeds for his blog, so I’ll probably read his stuff now.

Note to all other bloggers: If you don’t have an RSS feed, you do not exist to me. Furthermore, I’m much more likely to read your content if you provide full-text RSS feeds. Your blogging software can probably automatically generate full-text RSS feeds. Just do it!

I just installed Bad Behavior Stats, a plugin that tells me how many attempts to spam my site that Bad Behavior has blocked. I cannot recommend Bad Behavior highly enough. I’ve had perhaps a half-dozen spam attempts even get through to the moderation queue since I’ve installed it, and only one or two actually make it onto my site. Wonderful, wonderful plugin.

People have wondered for centuries how the ancients moved the 25 ton blocks of stone that make up Stonehenge. After all levers and simple materials couldn’t possibly move such heavy objects, right?

Wrong. The Discover Channel has a video of Construction worker Wally Wallington moving multi-ton blocks of cement by himself, without the help of motors, metals, or aliens.

(Via Brainwagon)

No seriously, it’s not. It’s “deferred success,” according to the Professional Association of Teachers. They want to avoid “demoralising” students.

I just about sprained my eye-rolling muscle.

Something I’ve been meaning to blog for a while: Jeff Jarvis has a link to a speech that Lyndon Johnson gave in 1967 that sound eerily prophetic:

I believe the time has come to stake another claim in the name of all the people, stake a claim based upon the combined resources of communications. I believe the time has come to enlist the computer and the satellite, as well as television and radio, and to enlist them in the cause of education….

So I think we must consider new ways to build a great network for knowledge-not just a broadcast system, but one that employs every means of sending and of storing information that the individual can rise.

Think of the lives that this would change:
–the student in a small college could tap the resources of a great university….
–the country doctor getting help from a distant laboratory or a teaching hospital;
–a scholar in Atlanta might draw instantly on a library in New York;
–a famous teacher could reach with ideas and inspirations into some far-off classroom, so that no child need be neglected. Eventually, I think this electronic knowledge bank could be as valuable as the Federal Reserve Bank.

And such a system could involve other nations, too–it could involve them in a partnership to share knowledge and to thus enrich all mankind.

A wild and visionary idea? Not at all. Yesterday’s strangest dreams are today’s headlines and change is getting swifter every moment.

I have already asked my advisers to begin to explore the possibility of a network for knowledge–and then to draw up a suggested blueprint for it.

And here we are, talking on the very same network. The internet is the best government project ever.

I came across a disturbing bit of trivia today, but I don’t know if it’s true. According to a Gore press release during the 2000 presidential campaign, BJU banned African-American students as late as 1970. This claim is corroborated by Wikipedia, which states:

From its 1927 founding to 1971, black people were prohibited from enrolling. From 1971 to 1975, only unmarried black people were permitted to apply to the school. After the 1975 court decision of McCrary v. Runyon, which prohibited racial exclusion from private schools, the policy was changed. Other public colleges in the south had similar policies at that time, including Clemson University who did not admit their first black student until 1965.

Is that true?

…

Of course, that would put BJU only a little behind the rest of the country; MLK was assassinated in 1968.

It really is interesting to see how quickly racial discrimination has fallen off. There are still instances here and there of course, but in two generations, racism has gone from being the normal way of thinking to being regarded as backwards, xenophobic, stupid, and just plain wrong by most Americans.

Good.

There are a lot of reasons to not fly these days,between the hypersensitive security, the cutbacks on basic services (”No pretzels for you!”), the lost luggage, the ever-increasing wait before you actually get on the plane, and the generally poor customer service.

Now there’s another good reason to drive to your next destination instead of flying : Insane German airline pilots.

Apparently, the pilot thought that a nearby British passenger plane was being flown by a friend. So he broke from his flight plan and attempted to fly close enough to take his friend’s picture, coming within 600 feet. The British pilot–who was not the German’s friend–was forced to take evasive action.

Fortunately, the pilot’s been suspended, but be on the lookout for more German pilots. There might be more of ‘em.

I hate Doonesbury in general, but especially today’s strip:

George W. Bush did not start this war. This guy…

and this guy…

did. The latter by refusing U.N. weapons inspectors access to parts of his country (which we naturally interpreted as an attempt to hide a WMD program). The former by orchestrating an attack on civilians in our country on 9/11.

Try to get your facts right, and don’t let your blind hatred of Bush make you say stupid things again.

Edit: Shrunk picture for formatting in IE/Firefox. It actually looked right on the Wordpress Default theme in , because Opera resized the image proportionally, instead of squishing it. IE was even worse, bumping my sidebar to the bottom of the page! Ick.

I hate comment spammers. So I installed the Bad Behavior anti-spambot plugin. Hopefully, it’ll help stop the idiot who’s been attacking my site tonight.

I’ve just uploaded a new theme to Blog Jones which I’ve entitled Ronin. I think it’s pretty. It’s definitely easier to read than Starry Night, but yet much more original-looking than the Wordpress Default theme.

Thanks to A List Apart for their article on CSS, which helped me figure out how to make it look right, and to Gary Jessey at Simply the Best Fonts for the Karate font I used in the header.

In other thematic news, I’ve removed the old Wordpress Classic theme; I’ll put it back if anybody protests, but I think it’s really ugly.

Let me know what you think of the new theme!

London’s subway system has been hit by several explosions. No official speculation on who’s responsible yet, but Tony Blair is scheduled to speak sometime this morning.

My condolences to the families of the dead.

Did you know that Harry Potter is used as a torture device in Guantanamo bay?

Did you know that the book Oliver Twist is very popular in China, where it’s been retitled “Foggy City Orphan”?

Did you know that the position of the “Devil’s Advocate” was abolished by Pope John Paul II in 1983?

Neither did I.

(According to the BBC via Gongol.com.)

Hope y’all are having a great 4th of July.

What if Powerpoint had been around in the days of the Civil War?

Catallarchy, one of my favorite sources of libertarian and economic commentary, has linked to an essay by George Orwell, entitled “Politics and the English Language.” As you might expect from Orwell, he calls out against the misuse and confusion of the English language.

I highly recommend reading it, especially if you plan to write anything political at all, even so much as a letter to the editor. Two of the gems in the treasure chest:

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

(In addition to this article, I also highly recommend Orwell’s masterwork, 1984. I read it for myself only recently, and I found it to be both clever and insightful. I especially loved the phrase “the place where there is no darkness.” There’s a copy available for free online.)

Go read the whole thing.