death of meta?

2005-09-13T18:47:00.000-04:00

I've been paying less attention to this blog for a while now. Just not as much to comment on I guess in the blog-o-sphere. That and what IS worth commenting on, is worth putting in my main blog. I'm considering retiring this blog. For now I'm going to stop listing it in searches and on blogexplosion, but I'm not going to delete it - I don't like getting rid of information.

If you're sad and need your dose of

science vs. religion,

humor and narcissism, or

news and stupidity,

then go to my respective blogs.

Bloggers Against Bush

2005-09-10T18:39:00.000-04:00

I have to be honest and say I don't understand the concept of impeachment well enough to (yet) support impeaching Bush, but I'm planning to look it up. If you do think he should be impeached, there's a bunch of bloggers who're calling for it and you can join them.

(Cross posted on Strange Musings.)

12 (LJ) Babes of Xmas

2005-09-09T20:41:00.000-04:00

Apparently someone's set up an annual 12 Babes of Xmas competition. Your nominee must be a livejournal user, and come October there'll be a vote. The full list of nominees contains more than 600 unique individuals. Once you're nominated you can decline the nomination by doing nothing, or enter the contest by sending him a (non-nude) photo (or six) of yourself.

I wonder if the nominees have to actually be genetically female? What about transgenders and hermaphrodites? His FAQ doesn't cover that.

(Cross-posted on Strange Musings.)

Ungratefulness vs Entitlement

2005-09-03T11:28:00.000-04:00

I have discovered a new conservative blog for me to dislike, Ogre's View.

I am very seriously considering withdrawing all my support, financial and otherwise, for victims of the hurricane...

These people are complete and total a-holes. I'm sorry about the language, as I try and keep it clean here, but these people are horrible scum. If I were there and I held out water to someone who hadn't had a drink in 3 days and they said, "about time," I'd yank that damn water back and pour it on the ground.

This is what the "entitlement mentality" breeds. Sorry excuses for humans not just waiting for assistance, but demanding it. Hey scum of the earth in New Orleans: I OWE YOU NOTHING. NOTHING, DAMMIT.

I had been wondering for days why reports kept coming in about people in places "waiting for help." It confused me because if it were me, I wouldn't sit there waiting. I don't care if I had nothing, sitting still waiting wouldn't get me anything. I'd leave, if nothing else, and go find a public water fountain in Florida.

(permalink)

People weren't allowed out of the Superdome, even CNN admitted this in an article yesterday (anyone got a link?) when they said that people to be housed in the Astrodome will be given passes to come and go as they please, as wasn't allowed in the Superdome.

If I had been without water for 5 days or however long it was in 100º weather, I'd be demanding help too. I am just thankful these people were still strong enough to do so. Their rage at the situation may have kept some from giving up and dying.

Ever try walking from New Orleans to Florida? I bet it takes a few days, by which time you'll have died from dehydration in the 100º heat.

You're right, you don't owe anyone anything. But the United States Government does. When we ousted Saddam Hussein, we criticized the living conditions of his people, and we continue to brandish that against Kim Jong-il of North Korea.

I'm not sure whether this guy is hateful, or just ignorant. Interestingly, my own views on the people who didn't leave have changed over the last week as I've learned more. I guess I can conclude that I was ignorant.

Comment Spamming

2005-09-01T21:26:00.000-04:00

How appropriate that it is on this blog of mine that I suddenly face comment spamming. Having only recently learned the term, correct me if I get it wrong. Comment spamming is when someone (or lots of someones, or the same someone lots of times) posts "content-less" comments on your blog essentially saying "come visit my website/blog." To see this in action, check out these posts. As this is often automated, Blogger now has a "human-verification" option where commenters have to type in some letters they see in order to be able to post the comment. My apologies to the real humans out there for adding the inconvenience, but hopefully now comments will be useful.

UFO Toll Booth

2005-09-01T20:24:00.000-04:00

UFO wackos like the one discussed here crack me up. Look for my helpful comment in there somewhere.

Katrinia Ideas

2005-09-01T18:58:00.000-04:00

I've been commenting a bunch on Strange Musings on small, cheap/free things you can do to help people hurt by Katrina. If you want some ideas, go look.

Anti-ACLU

2005-08-28T12:29:00.000-04:00

I am a liberal, if you haven't yet figured it out. I think the American Civil Liberties Union is doing wonderful things for our country, helping enforce the separation of Church and State (prayer in schools, evolution vs ID, 10 Commandments in courthouses), ensuring that all are treated equally in the eyes of the law (gay rights), and helping defend people who are unable to defend themselves (people detained at Guantanamo Bay). Despite being a liberal, I totally understand that there are many people who disagree with my beliefs, and feel that the ACLU is undermining their way of life. What I don't get is people who think that the ACLU is communist, anarchist, and wishes to take away people's rights. (If nothing else, communism and anarchy are definitely NOT the same thing.)

Examples of blogs and webpages I've run across along these lines:

Bulldoze the ACLU

Bulldoze the ACLU Cafepress store

Stop the ACLU.org

Stop the ACLU.com

Ogre's Politics & Views

Zaphriel's Blog

Amusingly, the last one had a link to Congress.org which gives you the names and contact info for your legislators based on your zip code, so I find the page useful. But I usually get that info from the AAS's Contact Congress page anyways.

Reading

2005-08-26T23:10:00.000-04:00

I've heard this claim before, that only some of the letters on a word need to be right, but it's always interesting to see again.

"Parent Theory" bunk, "Santa Claus Theory" more plausible

2005-08-26T09:16:00.000-04:00

Man, I love how everyone's jumping on the evolution bandwagon. Some of the posts in the blogosphere are particularly amusing. Go have a laugh!

Willful Ignorance

2005-08-22T12:28:00.000-04:00

This person has a strange theory that everyone is born believing in God, and that if you "lose" that belief to become an atheist, that you are being willfully ignorant. As I commented in reply, "funny, that's how I feel about people who deny evolution."

The author makes the normal logical fallacy of depending on the Bible for his arguments--it is a perfectly valid argument to those who already believe, but it will not win any converts--however the discussion in the comments section is interesting.

God Hates Fags

2005-07-14T21:20:00.000-04:00

Oh man, as if I haven't found enough hatred on the net, I found a link to God Hates Fags. This site even has a WARNING PAGE, for fuck's sake, telling just how horrid the contents are! People like this make me glad to be atheist.

Some choice words:

The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) of Topeka, Kansas, is an Old School (or, Primitive) Baptist Church. In short, we adhere to the teachings of the Bible, preach against all form of sin (e.g., fornication, adultery, sodomy), and insist that the doctrines of grace be taught publicly to all men. These doctrines of grace were well summed up by John Calvin in his 5 points of Calvinism: Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints. Although these doctrines are almost universally hated today, they were once loved and believed. ...

Please see The Doctrine of Absolute Predestination by Jerom Zanchius. Most of the major Confessions of Faith throughout the history of the New Testament Church have also advanced these ideas. So, even though the Arminian lies that "God loves everyone" and "Jesus died for everyone" are being taught from nearly every pulpit in this generation, this hasn't always been the case. In fact, if you are in a Church that supposedly believes the Bible, and you are hearing these lies, then your church has apostatized.
(FAQs)

This page is a CHURCH website, and they still believe in predestination! omfg...

These people are to Christianity what Islamic fundamentalists are to mainstream Islam. There's even some of these extremist Christians who go around killing people! (abortion clinic bombings, Oklahoma City Bombing, etc.)

Fallout

2005-07-14T12:47:00.000-04:00

A grand ol' shoutout goes to Bob V who fights the Good Fight against Talking Tina, whom it appears has even retired her blog! I hope it wasn't just over all this... Man, and they call Liberals over sensitive? She could've just killed the comment feature.

Bloggers Need Not Apply

2005-07-14T11:22:00.000-04:00

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently ran an article reminding job seekers to NOT tell potential employers about their blogging addiction. That's a no brainer to me! Would you photocopy your diary and staple it to your resume?

In some cases, a Google search of the candidate's name turned up his or her blog. Other candidates told us about their Web site, even making sure we had the URL so we wouldn't fail to find it. In one case, a candidate had mentioned it in the cover letter. We felt compelled to follow up in each of those instances, and it turned out to be every bit as eye-opening as a train wreck.

(Chronicle)

(The Chronicle is perhaps the best place for job hunting in academia.)

Interestingly, they turned up some of these blogs with just a Google search. Well let me tell you, you'll be hard pressed to find this one thru my real name! Go ahead, I challenge you to find my real name from my blogs if you don't already know me. If you do, send me an email and let me know how you found it.

Grade 10

2005-07-13T15:54:00.000-04:00

I know I said I wasn't gonna post any more before I left, but I couldn't resist. This handy dandy tool analyzes the reading level of your LiveJournal blog. Since I'm on Blogger, I used the username of the RSS that Mere set up for me; hope it doesn't make a difference!

zandperl2's Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 10
Average number of words per sentence:	20.58
Average number of syllables per word:	1.48
Total words in sample:	247
Analyze your journal! Username:
Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern

Reprinted from Strange Musings.

Serial sex offender and murder's blog found

2005-07-05T09:56:00.000-04:00

From his first entry, on January 4, 2004, to his last, on May 13, 2005, Duncan's writings reveal a conflicted man battling personal "demons" and the stigma of a teenage rape conviction.

...

Throughout the 17 months he kept his blog, Duncan displays intense concern for himself whenever a child is reported missing, fearing police will automatically come calling because he is on the offender registry.

In fact, his first entry finds him trying to reconstruct what he did on a particular day in the past because he just learned a 5-year-old girl had gone missing 200 miles away on that day.

...

The post also introduced a theme common in his writings: that offenders "are victims, too" and that they often don't understand that they've hurt someone.

In his own history, he wrote, "I was molested so often and by so many different people that, up until the time of my offense, I actually thought it was normal and that everybody did it."

Although he denied he is a pedophile, Duncan defended pedophilia.
(CNN)

This is a man I feel should be pitied, and then locked away forever. He seems to be struggling to understand that what he does is wrong, but not quite able to grasp it. I don't think he'll ever understand it.

(reprinted from News Unfit)

Ratios

2005-07-05T00:44:00.000-04:00

Messing around on Blog Explosion, I found that there are (as of 12:42am 5 June 2005) 492 female members, and 452 male members. I'm initially surprised at the ratio, as I would've thunk that more than 50% of people on the net are male, so I'd expect this reflected elsewhere. But thinking a little further, blogging does seem like more of a "female" activity, so I shouldn't be surprised.

There do seem to be an inordinate number of mothers blogging about their families on BE. Are you all housewives, as I sterotypically assume?

I wonder if anyone didn't answer that survey question, and therefore the numbers aren't good; I don't recall if it was a required question.

Hm, BE has less than a thousand members. I'm not sure what I was expecting.

Conservatives for American Values

2005-07-01T19:02:00.000-04:00

This guy is hilarious! Assuming it really is the satirical blog I hope it is... His replies to comments on one of his posts are part of what makes me think so. What do you think?

Professionals

2005-06-30T21:16:00.000-04:00

In the past few days, I've run across quite a few people in the blog-o-sphere claiming to be college professors. Are you one? What do you teach? Leave a comment!

Blog Survey!

2005-06-29T22:59:00.000-04:00

If you have time to kill, go take this MIT survey on blogs. It's gonna be someone's PhD Thesis. I have to say I expect it'll be a biased sample due to the solicitation method, but it's interesting nonetheless.

the m word

2005-06-27T13:48:00.000-04:00

Wow, this's totally bizzare... Read the blog post first.

wind scraps: the m word

His mother seems proud of him. And he's only 6 years old! I don't get why it's a good thing to want to be a martyr - instead of getting their point across, they DIE.

Tired

2005-06-21T14:53:00.000-04:00

This's amusing. I decided a day or two ago I was tired of beating my head against "Tina"'s ignorance and deflections and stopped visiting her wonderful site. Then today I went to see if she'd accused me of being a quitter or something, and she's apparently set that page to bump forward to nothing. I guess she got tired of it all too. If you're realy insistent on seeing what she has to say, you can hit the "stop loading" button before it bumps you forward. The grammar of her replies gets increasingly worse as she goes along. Did that all count as a flame war?

Hafta say I agree with her stance on the Runaway Bride's book deal though. Why can't we all just get along? :)

Filthy Rapist Pigs

2005-06-18T18:59:00.000-04:00

The racism of some people really riles me. This woman (link removed) compares post-9/11 America as a rape victim merely fighting back at her victimizers, the whole of the Middle East. And she does it with some of the worst vitriol I've ever seen spouted on the net.

We Nuked Japan twice for less! All they did was attack our Navy. No crime in that? Was it their fault we were stupid and placed all our ships in one place. No, it was ours. Its every Nations right to try to expand its way of life. Its ours to protect our way of life. What did we do in WW2? We Vaporized Japanese Civilian cities. We had not problem at all with it, in fact we did it twice.

... As far as the Holy Koran let me remind you that the prophet Abu al-QAsim Muhammad was a Camel thief not a miracle maker. He never performed one miracle. When he died he did so in a tent with his harem. I spit and curse the Koran for its false teachings and absurdity regarding the treatment of women. I rather be dead than be an Arab woman living like a crappy slave.

So I say to middle east thank your oil wells for if it was me running the show. Right now the Fallout heading your way would be more of a concern than the treatment of your demon inspired Koran.

If that ignorant filth pisses you off as much as me, I would like to request that when you flame "Talking Tina," (link removed) you do it with a logical argument rather than curses, otherwise we'll only support her point of view.

Update: I decided I was tired of trying logic on "Tina" only to receive replies changing the topic with increasingly poor grammar and spelling, so I stopped visiting her page for a few days. When I tried again today, she'd set it to bump forward to a blank page, so I take it she's as tired of it all as I am. While I am still as irate about her initial post and strongly disagree with her opinions, I never wanted to encourage censorship, even self-administered. The links have been removed.

Header/Banner

2005-06-18T16:17:00.000-04:00

I was talking a while ago about wanting to redesign my blogs. I'm working on spiffying up my main blog, Strange Musings. Check it out. :)

Blogging Life Cycle

2005-06-17T14:46:00.000-04:00

Oh man, I'm on Step 3 (going on Step 10)...

To make matters worse, that blog got it from Wasted Days Wasted Nights which/who got it from someone else too, but it traces back to Min Jung Kim whom I *think* is the original source, but we could be mistaken.

Hair Color

2005-06-17T09:14:00.000-04:00

Being on the cusp of redying my hair pink (where'd I put the bleach?), I found this post quite relevant. Someone asked Yahoo what people put on their driver's license if they have what I call "inhuman" hair colors. The answer, of course, is *hyuk*. I occasionally fill out surveys online (like MySurvey.com, which lets you earn money for charities), and it's amazing how frequently they ask things like hair color, and then give the choices blonde, light brown, dark brown, black, auburn, red, gray, white, and you know they don't mean firetruck red.

Turtle Blog

2005-06-16T03:36:00.000-04:00

Man, this site is adorable! Top entry today is turtle bellies--comparing the sizes of their under-shells, and how to ID male/female. They're so cute. ^_^

(Found via BlogExplosion.)

Bouncing

2005-06-14T20:18:00.000-04:00

Unofischal linked this blog on his. It's from a NYC bar/club bouncer, and unlike the stereotype of a brainless thug, the man writes better than myself (snotty as I am). Man, I gotta ask unofischal how he came across it.

Reverberations

2005-06-13T22:55:00.000-04:00

I bet the Blogosphere is ringing with the posts about Michael Jackson's acquittal.

Somehow I've avoided (though not intentionally) mentioning the trial until now. From the little I know, I was unconvinced either way of his guilt or innocence, but I didn't feel I'd heard enough to convict him "beyond reason of a doubt." The whole case was less of a hullabaloo for me than the OJ Simpson trial. Maybe I'm more jaded by the media now, or maybe it's my age.

I remember listening to the Simpson trial verdict on a small radio in my HS AP Physics class. I heard simultaneous cheers and boos down the hall from other classrooms. Each room seemed to have either one or the other, but not both. Only the 2000 Subway Series (baseball World Series, Yankees vs. Mets) prompted as much yelling in my near vicinity--I think it was game 1, but I know it was won in the 12th inning, and we could hear the yelling as a distant surf my parents house. The 7-second delay on network TV is what identified it as the game.

I would love to see some graph of Blogosphere growth vs. time, or some indication of how many people posted about those two other events.

Christian "Science"

2005-06-08T09:37:00.000-04:00

I haven't yet talked about other blogs here, but here's one. The link above is to a blog that's "reviewing" a comic book about the dinosaurs, creation "science," and Noah's Ark. The actual comic itself is still available online for only $4.95. I'm really SUPER tempted to buy it... I won't say more about the comic or the post, as the post at least is worth reading on your own. Go!

BlogBinders

2005-06-07T17:21:00.000-04:00

Speaking of blogs and The Diary of Anne Frank, BlogBinders is apparently a place that'll bind your blog. I guess it's the text only and you can supply a cover image, and choose among various binding styles, and voila!, you shell out some ten to twenty bucks a pop and you've got a book of your blog. Eenteresting, very eenteresting...

Update: BlogBinders doesn't play well with Blogger--you'd have to change your template and go thru a bazillion steps to make it work. I've played with my template enough that I don't want to risk losing it. I _do_ however, want to make my templates even spiffier. Perhaps I'll do that tonight.

Public Diary

2005-06-06T12:53:00.000-04:00

I realized the other day that I probably will never write in a physical diary again. I was pondering The Diary of Anne Frank after it came up in a rousing game of Taboo^TM, and wondered what would make it to my posthumous diary. Then I realized that even if I found my childhood diary, I haven't written in it in years, and I don't really have the urge to do so today, despite frequent postings to my blog. Then I realized this is my diary--in the future, will someone bind all these with my paper diary, and a journal of poems I have somewhere too, and publish it all in 20 languages?

Then I started thinking about the concept of a public diary. Do I write different things here from what I would write in a private, paper, diary? I think so, or maybe it's an age issue. I used to write a lot about events that happened to me on a daily basis, as well as my own feelings and reactions to those events. One of the most common topics in my childhood diary would be considered interpersonal relationships. For example, if M*** takes my candy at lunch, does that mean she's my friend? Did A*** notice it when my hand touched his while playing Spit on Bus 7?

Now my life seems less complicated. I am more bold than I once was, and so such issues are no longer issues. I asked T*** out on our first date (and yeah, I'm still proud of it, he's quite the catch). I didn't trust J*** while going climbing with him, so I told him, and then stopped climbing with him when he didn't improve. Those things that used to be so crucial to me are now not.

Today's issues are ... different. I'm not sure how to describe them. Some postings (journal entries) are about politics or current events. News Unfit is specifically an outlet for my humor on the news (and the shitty reporting of it at times). Perhaps a number of my posts are meta-posts--discussing the nature of posting. Hm, maybe I could theme a new blog around that... I don't think so.

Update: Oh wait, this IS that new blog!

Gorgeous Blogs

2005-06-06T11:40:00.000-04:00

One of the drawbacks to surfing many other blogs via Blog Explosion is that it points out to me how many beautiful blogs there are out there. And mine ain't one of them! Well, I have a clean design which a number of them dont' have, but I'd say 50% of the blogs on Blog Explosion look like they're individually designed rather than taking a stock layout from Blogger or LiveJournal. I should think about doing that myself, at least using my own css boxes if not images.

But on the good side, Blog Explosion has been increasing my readship slightly--Google AdSense says it's hopped up from the teens to the tens in the past day or two. I've even gotten a comment from a random stranger! Shout-out goes to schuey, who doesn't think I'm lame at all. :-P

I guess Blog Explosion's giving me new first-time readers; now I have to do something to retain them as returners--better content, more frequent updating, prettier layout...

Meta-Blog

2005-06-06T10:12:00.000-04:00

Why do we create blogs? Are we so starved for personal contact in this day and age that we'll reach out to complete strangers in any way we can?

Uncle Jack's

2005-06-06T02:20:00.000-04:00

(from Strange Musings)

Recently I've been on a kick to drive up readership of my blogs. No real reason, I'm just kinda curious to see how many readers I can get. I signed up for Blog Explosion, which is one of a billion blog cross-promotion webpages, but they have an entertaining credits system you can use to advertise your blog more within their webpages. The way you earn these credits is (predictably) to view other blogs. In the process I came across Uncle Jack's, which must be the lamest blog ever, with a WONDERFUL article about whether ROTH IRAs or traditional retirement plans are better.

Yes, I know I'm driving up his traffic with this post, but it entertains me that someone would post such things in a *personal* blog, and additionally that he'd go and advertise the blog when the subtitle says the blog's for friends and family!

Man, are my blogs this lame?