Monthly Archives: February 2004

Slartibartfast

Sunday, February 8, 2004

I am so tired. Marty was in town last night so along with Phil and Badur we were out downing pitchers until they eventually threw us out at 3 AM. Anyway, time to start the programming jobs that I should have started at 9 AM… (9 AM a year ago that is).

PS. Thank you to everyone who wrote me offering to help defend against PETA. But honestly, I would think PETA is intelligent enough to figure out that those galleries are there and the interviews are there not to encourage animal abuse, but to open up a dialog on the subject so people actually think about what they're doing. Not to judge it or condemn it though — if someone wants to do silly stuff with an animal, although I wouldn't do it, I'm not sure that I have the right to make such judgements for anyone but myself.

I think that a lot of people don't really consider all the implications of their actions. To give an overwhelming example that many people ignore, think of how many vegans will tell you that they are animal lovers, but then own carnivorous (ie. dogs, cats, etc.) pets. So… Basically an intelligent creature kept as a slave for your amusement, coupled with hundreds of other sentient animals kept as slaves which you then have killed to feed to your own love-slave. (Sure, you could “force” the animal to be vegan too, but that's just trading one cruelty for another).

Or something like that.

“Can't see the forest for the trees” is the expression I think.

Other people would suggest it's a SEP field.

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"Cheese eating PETA monkeys"

Saturday, February 7, 2004

So some kids in France are urging PETA to have BME shut down. Heh… Somehow, I just don't see PETA coming after me. Yeah, let's have a vegan civil war to determine the true believers. You don't eat anything that farts? Yeah, well I don't eat anything that casts a shadow. Level 5 baby.

Anyway.

The funny thing is they all keep sending me the same message (and minor derivations) over and over again, instead of writing their own, and in their forum talk about flooding my inbox with their messages — they seem to think their 20 messages that are all identical are somehow a larger problem than the 90,000 spams I receive per day (seriously, that's what I'm up to now):

Thanks for your very interesting websites that I like watch because we learn a lot about BM
But like some other people we've find some pictures of piercing on animals
For the piercing we have to be voluntary and not an obligation.
So it will be finding to put out this picture and don't support this kind of piercing anymore

Here's a hint to others considering potential letter writing campaigns: form letters tend to make your target believe that your advocates really don't feel that strongly about it! Also, yelling at the messenger is plain silly, and calling for the messenger to be censored is plain foolish. If you don't like piercings on animals, urge your local government to institute a vegan agenda. Yelling at me isn't going to help.

If one thing about the politically correct left annoys me, it's their incessant drive to ban anything that hurts their feelings. They don't realize that when they take this stance they're no better than Bible-Belt oppressors. Living free means putting up with your neighbor being an ass.

PS. The amusing side note is that the forum that they're using to have this discussion sells t-shirts of pierced cartoon animals to support the forum. I guess that shirts that say “pierced animals are cute and funny” is better than an article that actually talks about the issues for real.

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Seems like a logical next step…

Friday, February 6, 2004

As you probably know, Sen. Bill Frist recently received a letter which contained a primitive (and not particularly dangerous form of) ricin (more). A number of other locations had ricin scares, but so far only the first letter has turned out to be real, thanks to some nut calling himself “Fallen Angel”.

What's interesting is the response by the government.

They're considering simply telling people to stop sending them mail (more). I think we've had this dicussion before, and came to the following conclusion: if you really love something, kill it*. Thus, if you want to protect democracy, a good move to make is to block citizens' access to government. Right?

* Or was that, “if you really love somebody, better set them of fire”?

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Shirts not from me…

Thursday, February 5, 2004

First, for those that are interested, Srini over at unamerican.com has dropped his t-shirt prices to $10 for all of February to celebrate his tenth anniversary (he started his site about nine months before BME). If you've been to BBQs I'm sure you've seen me wearing his gear. Anyway click it:

I think it still says $15 on the site, but the price is $10. He's got tons of cool stickers and other stuff on his site, and when you buy from folks like him (and BMEshop of course) you know you're supporting a small “human-owned” company that gives back to its community.

Anyway, I thought I'd post the feedback I'm getting on the Janet Jackson entry, currently dwarfing all other encyclopedia entries in popularity. These are all messages that have been submitted via the comments form:

i find it annoying that all of the news coverage that this gained, none of them mentioned the piercing really. i found out that i was pierced through bme, i had no idea otherwise

just goes to show how much is censored from censored stuff… and how ignorant the media is.

I seriously can not believe the attention this “boob” has gotten. I think we all lose sight of the fact that breast are technically used to nourish infants… not for sexual pleasure. It is just a boob! Why the out cry? Was your child breastfed? Then likely he/she has seen one before. Have you never dove into a pool and OPPS! Your top flipped down? Its a part of life, people have boobs soemtimes they are exposed… laugh it off, get over it, move on. Find something better to talk about in your day then Janet Jacksons boob. Are you as outraged when you see a women breast feeding her child in public? Its silly.

I think it's just another one of those publicity stunts just to regain they're popularity. First it was the Madonna & Britney kiss contravercial then break ups of Bennifer. And also short 72 hours marriage of Britney.

Just what the heck is going now these days.

What's the fuss about?It's America and lots more things happen there,besides,Janet Jackson is Black and in Africa women dance with breast exposure which is normal and seen as sexy…nobody ever complain about them and had been seen by many!!Just watch the Kings or chiefs in Africa beeing entertained by bare breasts!!!!

OK, that last one is pretty weird.

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Stop Look & Listen

Wednesday, February 4, 2004

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Completion is nearing

Wednesday, February 4, 2004

I'm still building a new master drive; because their restore was incomplete, I have to merge several sets of backups with the restored files in order to generate a complete step. That should take me until about noon. Then I'll do a few test update steps, put up the new articles officially, update the newsfeed, auto-process for bad images, and then do an experience update.

Watching them do the restore process I thought of so many little useful utilities to speed up what they do, as well as integrating the process with their website to improve customer relations. I'm always surprised how incredibly inefficient most processes are. A few years ago I lived with a machinist who's specialty was process design for tooling; he had similar comments about his industry.

Anyway, point is, everywhere you look there are interesting and profitable businesses waiting to be started. Of course, that also ignores the pending economic crash in the United States… After all, at this point the US is a failed economy that's supported almost entirely by a foreign slave trade.

I've been thinking a lot about George Bush's tax cuts, and the more I think about them, the more I think I might understand them. Because they're weird. Given the financial bashing that the poor and middle classes are getting right now, it's somewhat reckless politicially. Now, I have argued in the past that he doesn't care because the poor people's vote doesn't count anyway, and when they do vote, they vote like they're told. However, I'm not sure that's the whole story.

One of the things that makes America unique (or at least a “leader”) among Western Nations is that it has a disturbingly low rate of savings (ie. people don't have money in the bank). When you talk to traditional economists, this is something that worries them much more than Bush's deficit. It basically means that you either have to face monstrous and total financial collapse from an economic hiccup that you have no shield against, or you have to run a pyramid system (ie. use poor countries for cheap labor and so on).

Clearly a pyramid system eventually fails — we're already seeing that. The US knows it has to be able to pull out of that game if the world really goes to war (or the slave-countries climb out of that work camp). Thus, the US government must improve the savings of American civilians. One economic group consistently saves money — the wealthy. It's how they stay wealthy. They shelter and protect their wealth. Now, that's bad, because it keeps it out of the economy, but it's also good because it provides a much needed buffer as well. If you look at Bush's budget, he's also introduced tax cuts for anyone (in any demographic group) that puts away long-term savings (I guess because introducing a living wage is too much to ask).

I wonder this about a lot of the US's bizarre actions lately:
are they acts of desperation, rather than acts of greed?

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Don't stop ranting!

Tuesday, February 3, 2004

Let's play conspiracy for a moment.


The view (yesterday) from our window. In the background (where the top of my skull is basically) is where Rachel goes flying from, and at night (if it's clear) you can see Niagara Falls from here (the city, not the waterfall), as well as some cities in New York across the lake.


Before I do any work on the restored drive I'm mirroring it. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice (that's where I'm at), shame on me. Fool me thrice, well, then it moves past shame to something far more degrading.


This is not my new drive array, honestly. That said, I'm reconsidering the wisdom of a RAID-5 solution both for here and for IAM. I'm leaning more toward a RAID-1 (mirrored) solution, or, if money allows, a 01/10-type solution (mirrored with striping) because drive bandwidth is already one of our bottlenecks.

In terms of the whole Janet Jackson thing that totally monopolized the media for the last few days, let's take a look at what else has been in the media that got “replaced” by the boob… Hmm…. Could it be the budget?

Bush's record setting $2.4 trillion, “fiscally responsible” (his words, not mine) $521 billion deficit (with an additional $400 billion expected over the next year) — and that's on top of the $1.7 trillion deficit he's already built up — budget was released yesterday (more, more). It of course has huge increases in military spending (and that doesn't include the “emergency” billions he's expected to ask for — Iraq is still not in the budget). Bush's explanation for this fiscal disaster? “It's because of the terrorists!” (I'm not kidding; read the articles).

Not only is military spending way up, but, in what Senator Kennedy is calling the “most anti-family, anti-worker, anti-health care, anti-education budget in modern times” (more), he's slashed everything from local police budgets, employment equity for women, alcohol abuse programs (giving a good excuse to use the word “IRONIC”), literacy programs (more irony), education programs in poor neighborhoods (38 separate education programs were “terminated” as Bush seems to be enjoying saying), fitness programs, scholarships, native rights, and lots of small programs like organizations documenting the black history in America (more).

He's even cut a half a billion dollars, eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency's clean water programs, and another nearly half a billion from the Center for Disease Control (more). And you know all this moon mission bunk? Oh, that's being done by telling NASA that they have to scrap $10 billion in other programs (more).Let's see. He's also cutting the Agriculture Department, Health and Human Services, the Army Corps of Engineers, and on and on and on.

Oh, but he did make permanent $1.1 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy. Yay.

In other Janet-related news, lots of people were injured and killed by jocks partying after the Super Bowl (more). But who cares, that's normal sports behavior, right? It's healthy… I know when I have to choose between nipples and murder, I always choose murder. Clear Channel, one of America's largest broadcasting conglomerates, agrees (PDF), calling for tighter censorship on all media that enters the home (including cable and other paid subscription services). What, the company that just got fined $755,000 for indecent broadcasts (more) is calling for a media police-state? Nice.

And if you want to veer off even farther into conspiracy-land, ask yourself why is Cheney all of a sudden taking the fall for the neo-con mistakes? Saira just pointed out to me that he's the perfect patsy — everyone thinks he's the devil incarnate, and he's about to drop dead anyway. He's on, what, his seventh baboon heart now? So here's how it plays out — Cheney takes the fall, and dies before he can be investigated, conveniently making all this “disappear” from the public mind. Either Kerry or Bush (childhood friends and fellow members of the Skulls) will take the next election, this all will be forgotten, and it's business as usual until the four horsemen make their appearance later this year.

See you in hell! There's a BBQ scheduled in my torture chamber already.

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