Blog Jones

I am not normally a fan of car shows. I’m content with the car that I have, so long as it’s working, and I’ve never really gotten much of a thrill out of looking at other people’s cars. That said, I do have some appreciation for a well-cared for antique car.

So, I did enjoy visiting the Wings and Wheels airshow/antique car show in at the Spartanburg Memorial Airport this week. I took a number of pictures and added the best ones to flickr.

The most interesting part of the show for me wasn’t a car or plane at all. It was the street vendor who was selling fried Oreos. He dipped the Oreos in batter, fried them in oil, and sprinkled powdered sugar on top. It’s all warm and gooey on the inside when he’s done.

Because what the world needs is a less healthy Oreo.

Check out the rest of the photos in the set here

I’ve just uploaded a new bit of javascript that might make it easier for me to write. You should see some notes off to the side of this paragraph. The idea is that I can keep following my original point here and point out something of relevance that goes off in a different direction over there.

Yay! No more parentheses!The script comes from arc90 labs, via Brainwagon.

This looks fun: play rock-paper-scissors with a total of twenty-five possible hand signals and 300 different outcomes. Clearly, someone has too much time on their hands.

This is interesting; a guy by the name of Matt Dubay is suing to avoid having to pay child support in a suit that the National Center for Men calls “Roe v. Wade for Men.”

According to the story:

The suit addresses the issue of male reproductive rights, contending that lack of such rights violates the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause.

The gist of the argument: If a pregnant woman can choose among abortion, adoption or raising a child, a man involved in an unintended pregnancy should have the choice of declining the financial responsibilities of fatherhood.
…
“There’s such a spectrum of choice that women have — it’s her body, her pregnancy and she has the ultimate right to make decisions,” said Mel Feit, director of the men’s center. “I’m trying to find a way for a man also to have some say over decisions that affect his life profoundly.”
…
Dubay says he has been ordered to pay $500 a month in child support for a girl born last year to his ex-girlfriend. He contends that the woman knew he didn’t want to have a child with her and assured him repeatedly that — because of a physical condition — she could not get pregnant.
…
Feit doesn’t advocate an unlimited fatherhood opt-out; he proposes a brief period in which a man, after learning of an unintended pregnancy, could decline parental responsibilities if the relationship was one in which neither partner had desired a child.

“If the woman changes her mind and wants the child, she should be responsible,” Feit said. “If she can’t take care of the child, adoption is a good alternative.”

It’s an interesting case. Of course, if the couple were married, this would be much less of a problem. And, of course, abortion is almost always the wrong answer. (I say almost because I think you can justify abortion in cases where the life of the mother is at stake. It’s sort of a self-defense measure.)

But as I understand the law–IANAL^*–the mother seems to be the only one who has the right to give the baby up for adoption, and the father has no say in it. That seems inequitable.

If there is going to be similar responsibility–that of caring for the child–then there should be a corresponding similarity in control. If the mother wants to give up the baby, she can; if the father wants to give up the baby, he should be able to as well.

^* IANAL means “I am not a lawyer”

“Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.”
- Nikola Tesla

(Via Google Personalized Home Page)

“To all those people worried that Bush’s SOTU speech is a sign we’re going back into the folly of Carteresque “alternative-energy” policies, one question: how’s that whole return-to-the-moon thing going these days?”

-James Lileks

One of the neat features I get from my web host, vervehosting.com, is the ability to see what search terms people use to find my blog. Here are some of my favorites from this month (my comments are in italics):

Games
settlers of catan registration key hack
settlers of catan free registration key
These two are strange, because Settlers of Catan is a fantastic board game; it doesn’t have a registration key.

Tech
walkman bean cookies
chrysler town and country alarm system five beeps
sony copyright pain bean walkman
my laptop overheats and shuts down
I feel your pain.

Religion
a passage from the bible
Looking for anything in particular?

buy pettit jesus my lord
Does that read like a command to anyone else? “Buy Pettit!”

Food
catchy seafood phrases
chick-fil-a cheesecake recipes

Inquiries
how to dismiss a preacher
repairing nintendo ds hinges
what ifb church mean?
why is the flag a half-mast on january 11?
deciding not to put a feeding tube in my dads body
make your own stonehenge
sue for toilet papering a house
i took off an adblock now i can t see any pictures on my computer
facts about ron hamilton patch the pirate
bju science homework help

Hatred
michael savage is an idiot
bob jones is a sick cult
michael savage hate
bush swears at tony
why do people hate bush
why do people hate bush so much?
why was clinton hated so much
idaho switchblade laws
chick-fil-a discrimination

Love
pcc girls
bju girls
michael rosenbaum dating anyone
why do americans oppose interracial dating?
is jeri massi married?
I don’t think so, but why don’t you ask her?

Just a brief word of background first: The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and the MPAA (Moving Pictures Association of America) are evil incarnate. As examples, the RIAA once sued a 12-year-old girl for thousands of dollars because she traded music on Kazaa, and the MPAA keeps trying to push “Broadcast Flag” legislation through Congress that would allow television executives to decide whether or not you should be able to record their shows and how long you should be able to keep them. They’re the ones responsible for things like DRM, which prevent you from putting music you buy off of iTunes onto any non-Apple MP3 player and which brought us the joy of the Sony Root-Kit fiasco that hid files from you, the customer, on your own computer if you used one of the DRM-infested CDs.

So, what happens if these guys get their way in the future? Tarmle gives us a hint:

Going to the movies is not what it used to be. Security at the studio-owned theatres is heavy, it’s not a trip to be taken lightly. But if you want to see the film everyone is talking about without waiting a year for the home release, you have little choice. When you enter the lobby the first thing you see are long ranks of tiny, thumbprint activated lockers. This is where you must leave all of your electronics, your personal server and peripherals, even your watch, and you had better not be wearing smart spectacles or contacts. As you enter the security zone you’re scanned for anything you may have forgotten. Cochlea and optical implants must be capable of responding with a coded RF identification signal to indicate their systems are secure and cannot record. People with older models, or models implanted abroad where such interrogation is illegal, are turned away. Perhaps they would like to see one of the older releases? Once through the scanner you must submit to a biometric ID test - this is where the known bloggers, hackers and spoilers are ejected. Finally there is the non-disclosure agreement to be signed - these days most moviegoers choose to sign via the MPAAs annual subscription, just trying to take some of the hassle out of visiting the cinema. Finally you get to see the film. In the auditorium the audience is constantly scanned by an AI looking for suspicious activity, so don’t rummage in your pockets for too long. It’s strange that all this effort to protect the movie industry has done so little to improve the movies.

There’s more; read the whole thing. Especially interesting is the bibliography at the end, which I have duplicated in the extended entry for the BJU “Livejournal-impaired” dorm students. (Yes, I know, “Can any good thing come out of LiveJournal?” The answer is yes.)

The music and movie industries just don’t get it: How can they ever expect to gain market share when they keep deliberately trying to frustrate their customers’ desires?

Agoraphilia has a great post on children’s fiction:

Children’s fiction often promotes credulity as a virtue. Consider, for instance, the admonitions in Disney’s Peter Pan, in Elf, or in The Neverending Story. These and many other works teach our children, “Just believe!”

He then proceeds to examine why authors think that “Kids are supposed to believe whatever some elf, or sprite, or cute fuzzy guy ardently insists they believe.”

This is one of the many clichés of children’s literature that grinds against me like sandpaper against my teeth. Another is the idea tha tyou should “believe in yourself,” as though doing so magically infuses you with the ability to shoot basketball, skate, or spell “triskaidekaphobia.”

There are probably dozens of these; what are your story-telling pet peeves?

It’s taken a RAM upgrade and a new graphics card for my parents computer, but I can finally play Civilization 4.

It was worth the wait. Absolutely fantastic. I played Civ3 before, and Civ4 fixes all of the things I disliked about it. It’s so much fun!

In case you’ve never played before, it’s a turn-based strategy game where you start off with a settler and a scout in the caveman era and move through history, developing technology and building an empire. I’m currently playing as the Greeks, and I’ve just taken over Barcelona from the Spanish empire.

The game is a lot of fun. Thanks to my brother Jason for getting it for me.

on the Austrian Edition of eBay. Current Bid: $9,500

I realize that people all over the world have bigger problems, but frankly I can’t feel their pain. For some reason I only feel my own. I’m lucky that way.

-Scott Adams: The Dilbert Blog: My Huge Problems

Donald Pirone, a man in Atlanta, GA, rides the subway. He saw that another passenger was having trouble with the machine that dispenses subway tokens, and so he gave him one. In response, the other rider gave him the $1.75 that a subway token costs, even though Pirone did not ask him for the money.

And for this act of kindess, he was handcuffed and cited with a misdemeanor.

Instead of giving Pirone a warning, the officer decided to handcuff him and give him the misdemeanor citation under a 1992 state law that bars passengers from selling Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority tokens, [Transit Authority spokeswoman Jocelyn Baker] said.

“What you’ve got to keep in mind is that fare abuse is a chronic problem,” Baker said. “It costs MARTA millions of dollars every year.”

Baker acknowledged that Pirone sold the token at face value and did not make a profit. But the law is the law, she said.

“There are customer service phones for people who are having trouble getting tokens out of the machine,” Baker said. “The fact is, our officer acted within the law.”

Yeah, but that doesn’t mean he did the right thing. Don’t the police have better things to do than arrest people for doing good? Maybe incidents like this reveal why Atlanta has a worse crime rate than either New York City or Los Angeles and more rapes and robberies per capita than Washington, DC.

(via Brainwagon)

Did somebody die?

I could understand if the flags were at half-mast yesterday (as a WWII memorial), but why today?

Did I just offend you with that headline?

If you’re Joseph Farah, editor of WorldNetDaily.com, then I did.

Farah is deeply offended by Bush sending him a Christmas card marked “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” The article reads:

Bush “claims to be a born-again, evangelical Christian. But he sure doesn’t act like one,” said Joseph Farah, editor of the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com. “I threw out my White House card as soon as I got it.”

Well, you ingrate, maybe the White House has better things to do with their time than to keep a database of the religious preferences of the thousands of people they send Christmas Holiday Cards to. You could just be glad to get a card from the White House. It’s more than I got.

And, incidentally, according to an article on Slate.Com, describing a White House Christmas party:

The Bush White House isn’t hiding the baby Jesus. There He is among the wise men and barnyard creatures in the 18th-century Italian crèche. Mrs. Bush calls the 18-and-a-half-foot Fraser fir from Laurel Springs, N.C., a Christmas, not a “holiday,” tree.

Happy?

People use the phrase “Happy Holidays” because, in case you might not have been aware of this, there are at least two holidays other than Christmas which fall in the month of December. They are trying to be nice; it’s not an attack on the country’s morals.

On the other hand, responding to someone’s attempt to be nice with a mean-spirited retort is just rude. Shame on ya.

Adrienne over at the Liberty Belles posted an interesting statistic this morning, quoting from Vanity Fair:

With its highly figurative language, Revelation is subject to profoundly differing interpretations. Nevertheless, LaHaye’s followers insist on its literal truth and accuracy, and they have gone to great lengths to calculate exactly what this passage of Revelation means.

As we walk down from the top of the hill of Megiddo, one of them looks out over the Jezreel Valley. “Can you imagine this entire valley filled with blood?” he asks. “That would be a 200-mile-long river of blood, four and a half feet deep. We’ve done the math. That’s the blood of as many as two and a half billion people.”

She then responds:

But wait, if there are about 2 billion Christians worldwide, that means that that river will contain only slightly more than half the blood of the unsaved. Where’s the rest of that plasma going to go?

It gets worse: As of that time, (1) the Rapture will have happened, so those 2 billion are out of the picture, leaving some 4 billion unsaved to populate the earth and (2) A good deal more than half of those remaining people have been wiped out due to wars, plagues, “natural” disasters, and supernatural beings. And then don’t forget that the one-world government would be persecuting and killing the post-trib Christians (and people of other faiths unwilling to yield to the one world government).

The world population will probably have to double before the rapture can occur, just on the basis of the amount of blood needed to fill the Megiddo valley.

That sound? That was me. Gasping for air.

All of my major projects are due tomorrow. I just finished editing a ~40 page document for Management Policies. I started at 9 this morning. Except for an hour or so for lunch and other such necessities, that’s what I’ve been working on all day.

I hate group writing assignments. Hate, hate, hate them.

Anyways, after dinner, I’ll be finishing my Technical Writing assignment, which is a guide on how to install and use FeedDemon, my favorite RSS reader. I’ll have to post it after I’m done.

I guess I’ll study for my Legal Environment test tomorrow at breakfast. ::smile::

TTYL.

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, has started a blog, which I think is funnier than the comic strip. Today, however, he posted something about the Intelligent Design vs. Darwinism debate. Here are the first two paragraphs:

To me, the most fascinating aspect of the debate over Darwinism versus Intelligent Design is that neither side understands the other side’s argument. Better yet, no one seems to understand their own side’s argument. But that doesn’t stop anyone from having a passionate opinion.

I’ve been doing lots of reading on the subject, trying to gather comic fodder. I fully expected to validate my preconceived notion that the Darwinists had a mountain of credible evidence and the Intelligent Design folks were creationist kooks disguising themselves as scientists. That’s the way the media paints it. I had no reason to believe otherwise. The truth is a lot more interesting. Allow me to set you straight. (Note: I’m not a believer in Intelligent Design, Creationism, Darwinism, free will, non-monetary compensation, or anything else I can’t eat if I try hard enough.)

Read the whole thing.

Science is based on freedom of inquiry; if you start suppressing your opponents, you’re almost certainly going to be leading the way into error.

It’s classic groupthink. Everyone is so convinced that Darwinism must be true, that they’re unwilling to examine the possiblity of other explanations.

That’s not good science.

The people of Dover, Pennsylvania recently had an election for their local schoolboard. In a fairly close election, every member of the school board that supported the addition of intelligent design to their school curriculum was voted out, all eight of them. What did Pat Robertson have to say about the free exercise of people’s rights to hold elections?

I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover. If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city. And don’t wonder why He hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for His help because he might not be there.”

That’s every bit as bad as what the Darwinists are doing.

(Via Spare Change)

Forget that “due process of the law” junk: Tony Blair wants to institute summary justice:

From the UK Telegraph:

He claimed that the courts were failing to protect the law-abiding citizen. The criminal justice system was “too complicated and laborious” and the police were constrained by restrictions and difficulties.

He cited the example of a police constable who saw someone throw a brick through a window or abuse an old lady.

“If you have got to take that person all the way through a long court process, you are not going to do it,” he said.

Mr Blair said he had introduced fixed penalty notices to try to get round the problem. Offenders who disputed such a notice issued by the police could fight the case in court.

“Summary justice is tough, it is hard, but in my judgment it is the only way to do it,” he said.

From Samizdata:

So in other words, rather than just arresting the person and then determining the facts in a trial, we are just supposed to trust that the police will always act in good faith and impose summary justice only against the truly guilty and with only the best judgement.

Yes, of course. The British police are incorruptible. You don’t agree? That’ll be a two-week prison sentence.