Nogburt's Blog

Killing Cows

2012-01-29T02:32:00.001-06:00

I had a bit of a spat today over the appropriate method of putting cows down. Someone suggested that someone else use a 9mm Glock to put a sick cow down. It took 11 shots (all to the head) to kill the poor animal. I found this outcome to be pointlessly cruel; and needless to say, I have made my disapproval known. Sometimes, animals need to be put down; and in a rural situation, going to the formalities of calling a vet to "euthanize" the animal is absurd. After all, it's just a danged cow. But pelting an animal with 11 bullets before killing it is almost equally outrageous.

I have never had to put an animal down. But I know from extensive experience with guns that an animal should never be put down with a pistol. I've heard some folks brag about getting a cow down with one shot with a .22LR by hitting the cow in the right place on the head to get straight to the brain; but I'm not interested in being artful or creative, or playing how many (dozen) .22LR shots will it take to kill a cow this time.

If I ever need to put an animal down, I will use a 12-gauge slug. The outcome might not look as "pretty" as if the cow is harried with small caliber pistol rounds (with "luck," I'd blow a good portion of the animal's head off and not have to worry about the exact location of the peanut-sized brain), but the animal will go down quickly (hopefully in a shot or two) and without unnecessary pain.

About That Homework...

2012-01-22T00:22:00.002-06:00

I'm always a bit tickled by news stories about some demographic or another doing something for the first time. It's always "historic," at least for the 8.5 seconds until the web page updates. In particular, I get a bit of a chuckle out of stories about kids climbing mountains and swimming channels. The latest such story is about a teenager who has sailed around the world alone.

My view is that kids who climb mountains and circumnavigate the Earth are dumb, and their parents are really dumb. So you're the first kid to spend the night at the north pole? Is that going to get you a job? No. It'll sure make for a great college entrance essay; but beyond that, is it going to get the kid anywhere? Probably not. What does a world circumnavigator make nowadays? Whatever welfare pays.

While I am no fan of governments telling folks how to live their lives, I can understand what was behind the authorities looking into this girl. Finally, someone else in the world (the Dutch government official(s)) has tilted his head a bit sideways on hearing yet another one of these "kids doing amazing things (while skipping school and contributing nothing to civilization)" stories. Insofar as truancy and compulsory school attendance laws are a good idea, there should be no exception for kids taking glorified vacations just because those vacations may be exceptionally cool. If a law says that a parent who lets his kid skip school for a year gets jailed and the kids get taken away, such laws should be applied equitably. A truant is a truant is a truant.

Funny Sinking Ships

2012-01-19T21:44:00.003-06:00

I hope I'm not being insensitive going at it again, but I can't help but laugh at almost everything coming out from the Costa Concordia. Here's a translation of a conversation between the coast guard and the ship. The crewmember keeps insisting that they just have a blackout and nothing is wrong. The coast guard keeps saying things to the effect of "really? are you sure its just a blackout?" You know what I'd say if I was anyone on that boat: "Jesus ******* C**** we're ******* sinking! Holy ****! Send some ******* help right now and get me the **** off of this ****** ******* boat!" I definitely wouldn't say "just a blackout."

The Captain and His Ship

2012-01-17T22:36:00.002-06:00

I'm pretty sure a captain is supposed to sink with his ship. I suppose it's a tradition more honored in the breach, but a tradition nonetheless. In any event, the conversation between an Italian Coast Guard officer and the captain of the Costa Concordia is quite funny (in what is undoubtedly a horridly tragic event). Perhaps the captain did what all the rest of us would do and save himself, but we can and should hold it against him that he didn't go back and save everyone (and he got off the ship in the first place).

RAM

2012-01-10T22:09:00.001-06:00

I just bought an extra 8GB of ram for $40 a couple of days ago. Now I have 16GB of RAM. Despite my best efforts, all of my internet searches for "increasing RAM usage" always seem to turn up results for decreasing RAM usage. I think that I can officially say that, for now, I have more RAM than I know what to do with. Maybe this weekend I'll try gaming while encoding video while burning a Blu-ray while running folding@home. If there's a way that 16GB of RAM can be not enough, I'll find it...

But What about World Domination?!?

2011-12-12T09:35:00.000-06:00

It seems increasingly unlikely that Russia is about to take over the world, as had been the prediction for the previous few years. I figure we'll likely get the same news about China and India within a few years.

Occupy the Post Office!

2011-12-09T08:00:00.000-06:00

I posted about a week ago about getting some new computer upgrades. Two of the parts were available from Newegg. The third was sold out there and I got it off of Amazon instead. Newegg shipped the parts using FedEx or UPS. Amazon's distributor used the Post Office (USPS).

The order was placed on the evening (well after business hours) of Wednesday, 11/30 (meaning that it couldn't be acted on earlier than Thursday, 12/1). The shipper company stuff from Newegg got here on Monday, 12/5. So it took under three full business days for the private shipper items to arrive.

The USPS stuff isn't here yet. Lately, there's been talk of the post office going under. I can see why.

Try to Rob an 80 Year-old Woman in Houston...

2011-12-05T19:31:00.001-06:00

A few days ago, a sophisticated pair of bandits, a man and a woman, tried to rob an 80 year-old woman in my hometown of Houston, Texas by posing as utility workers. The old lady saw through it quick-enough and chased the robbers out with "fire and steel." She got off two shots as the robbers were getting away and called 911. Sadly, the woman died (of a heart attack, i suppose from the stress of the whole thing).

Houston citizens usually do better against bandits. I remember earlier this year when a store-owner in Houston killed three men who were tying he and his wife up and robbing his store. The three bandits there actually had guns and it was a real shoot-out. The store owner got shot a few times too, but, as I understand it, no major permanent injuries.

Crime rates in Houston aren't all that high for the type of town Houston is. The Wild West is long gone, and it isn't as if we're just shooting each-other for kicks. But when criminals are dumb-enough to try something, they often find themselves on the dead-end (literally) of a gunfight with a law-abiding Texan. We have an alarm at my house (in addition to the gun(s)). The alarm man came the other day to fix a short or something. He said that whenever a homeowner hurts or kills a bandit, the crime rate in the area drops significantly for at least several months. I guess thieves spread the word around real quick about which neighborhoods will kill them.

So rob the old lady...and she just might kill you.

Computer Upgrades

2011-12-03T02:31:00.001-06:00

I bit the bullet and plunked down a few hundred for my 2-3 year big computer upgrade.

As much as my pride demanded it, I couldn't justify forking down $800 to $1000+ for high end parts when the medium range stuff is so close in performance at half the price. So I'm getting an Intel Core i5-2500K, an Asus motherboard with an Intel Z68 chipset, and 8 Gigs of RAM. It all comes in a few days.

Nog for Pope!

2011-11-28T15:58:00.001-06:00

I found a scribble of paper in a dark corner of my stuff from long ago (2004ish?) when real, flesh and blood, people still called me "Nogburt the Scholar" (a.k.a. "Nog"). I only have the vaguest of memories of what drove me to create my papal platform, but I think that I may have been trying to make a point about all of the tired, worn-out lines that all politicians use to get elected. Whatever the original reason behind it, I was really cracked up seeing it again after all of these years.

I hope others may enjoy it as much as I have.

Credit Cards and Banks

2011-11-15T23:56:00.001-06:00

A little over a month ago, I applied for a credit card for the first time in my life. My thinking was that having a credit card would help me build up credit. So I was planning to get the card, throw it in a drawer (or do the 2 to 3 purchases every year to keep the credit score gods appeased, pay the purchases off, then throw the card in the drawer...), and forget about it.

My credit card application was denied. Since getting my first true "job" a few months ago, I have dedicated well over 10% of my monthly income to paying down my student loans, despite the fact that I am not obligated to make payments of any sort on them until I graduate a couple of years from now. Other than those loans, I have no credit history (yeah, yeah, it didn't help). I looked up my credit score. It's in the "good" category. And anyone who knows anything about me knows that I'm not the borrow-and-never-repay type.

So what was the reason that my application was denied? I opened to many "accounts" in a short period of time. Those "accounts" which I opened in a short period of time were checking and savings accounts which I opened in order to help me deal with an influx of what is commonly referred to as "income." In short, I was denied credit because I started making money, and the credit folks were too dumb to figure out the difference between an "account" with assets in it and an account with "debt" in it.

It should go without saying, I find it exceedingly irritating that I was deemed uncreditworthy.

I applied for the card by mail. I am considering going into my bank in person and asking them to reconsider, as I think that any sane person should realize that opening an account to put income from a newly acquired job should not reflect negatively on one's ability to obtain credit.

On the other hand, in the longer-term, I might just want to defect to another physical bank. I've started looking at credit unions to. My father is in one, so maybe I'll join his.

Greek Vote: Might Be a Good Thing

2011-11-02T22:34:00.001-05:00

The government of Greece has decided to put the Greek default deal up to a referendum rather than giving the okay itself. I have yet to fully make up my mind on the virtues of the matter, but I am leaning towards it being a good thing to do. Here's my thinking.

As I've said before, the many always likes blaming its problems on its counselors. When the counselors are making the decisions directly, even when as is usually the case the decisions are in lockstep with the popular will, the counselors will be blamed for any bad outcomes of their choices.

Another thing that I have noted is that the many likes to have its cake and eat it to. It likes to enact contradictory policies. The failure to successfully enact conflicting policies is always blamed on the counselor and never on the ill-informed or otherwise conflicted populace.

This referendum is an excellent, and perhaps once in a lifetime, opportunity for the people to really stick it to the man; the man, of course, being "the people" themselves. The consequences of either outcome would inescapably fall at the feet of the many. Sure there would still be ways for blaming counselors for as much as possible, but not for the whole of the problem. If the vote is yes, the Greeks agree and accept to pay 50% and the pain of making those payments and they get to stay in the Euro. If they vote no, they vote against Europe, and against Greece.

What could be better than, for once, giving one of those rock-and-hardplace decisions that counselors make and get hammered for all the time, and forcing one of those necessary choices to be made by the people themselves.

Spaceships and Joysticks

2011-10-31T00:54:00.002-05:00

I went to Best Buy the other day. I haven't played a flying video game in a long long time, and I thought of getting a new one. The only flying games they have are a non-Microsoft flight simulator (for folks who get kicks flying 747s on computers) and a few WWII fighter sims. I wasn't interested and went home without buying anything.

I had planned on buying a new joystick too, assuming I found something worth using it with. Years ago (10 or more), my brothers and I got a gameport Saitek Cyborg 3D J15. As far as I'm concerned, it's still the best joystick ever made. It was balanced, and the resistance was just right. I "upgraded" to a Saitek X52 a year or so ago since computers don't have gameports anymore. The system looks flashy and has neato buttons, but the stick is way too loose. Because every movement is effortless, I end up moving too dramatically. The lack of resistance feels unnatural. In any case, I think I'm going to buy a used USB version of my trusty Cyborg 3D the next time a play-worthy flying game comes out.

It was a bit disappointing. Maybe I'm just getting old. I remember the good old X-Wing and StarFox64 days when a boy (or girl, as we were occasionally reminded after humiliating defeat) could blast space-faring baddies with his controller or joystick. Now it's all shooters, with some admittedly good RPGs every now and then. Obviously, though, I've missed something. When did outer space and F-22s go out of fashion?

Texans and Yankees

2011-10-23T17:53:00.001-05:00

Here's a brief excerpt from a conversation that I had with my recently father about activities at the family ranch in the Texas Hill Country, and our involvement with the local community. It is probably the most direct and pragmatic exchange I've had regarding the potential problems of being a "Yankee" in Texas in a very long time.

...

>Dad: If we were more integrated into the local community, it would help us in all sorts of ways. We'd get more knowledgeable about the cattle business. We've had the place for years and we still seem like we're new to ranching. And maybe we'd get better deals.

>Me: Maybe we should invite the neighbors over for Thanksgiving or something, or go hang out in town more.

>Dad: I've thought of something like that. We should definitely be more involved. Everyone else socializes in town and with neighboring ranchers, and takes folks on bird hunting trips. We just do our own thing. We're outsiders, and that can cause problems.

>Me: I know. We go out there and play around like we don't know what we're doing. I'll bet we look like a bunch of Yankees.

>Dad: [being serious, but with the lightest tint of humor as well] Now that's going way too far. We don't use that word. No one's calling us that.

>Me: Oh, come on now. We take our big city Houston friends out there and fool around, and then we go back home to Houston.

>Dad: [in a dead serious tone, the hint of humor now being completely absent] Everyone around there knows we're definitely Texans. We aren't Yankees. There isn't any talk of us being Yankees.

The 99% Problem

2011-10-13T22:13:00.000-05:00

"The French under the former monarchy held as a constant that the king could never fail; and when he happened to do evil, they thought that the fault was in his counselors. That marvelously facilitated obedience. One could murmur against the law without ceasing to love and respect the legislator. The Americans have the same opinion of the majority."

-Democracy in America, de Tocqueville

I hardly know where to start or where to end...

Today's political problems are not in the "counselors." The notion that the 99% needs to take control back from some sinister soulless 1% fails the laugh test, because the 99% has never not been in control. Western government more or less always do what the many wants. If the many doesn't like what the government did or is doing, it'd best lodge any complaints with the party responsible for those actions: the many. Further, the world is not afflicted by a corrupt politician ailment, it is afflicted by an uneducated populace ailment of which corrupt politicians are a symptom. If voters cannot bear the most ephemeral short-term pain to get some great middle and long term gain, we haven't even gotten past step one.

I got tired of the Tea Party long ago. I'm already tired of these Occupy Wall Street folks to. Their positions are even more self-contradictory and they sold out even sooner. As I noted in a recent post, proposed "solutions" to social problems that are in truth just schemes to enrich one group at the expense of others will not solve anything. The "Occupy Wall Street" movement of late is a naked political money grab, and as such it isn't helpful. What would be helpful, is to educate the many and instill in them some notion of civic duty. Only then, will the corruption, and pandering, and inefficiency end.

Liberals

2011-10-13T00:02:00.001-05:00

I am not fond of the "libertarian" label. In Germany I'd vote FDP, in Denmark I'd vote Venstre, in Britain I'd probably vote Liberal Democrat. I'm a "liberal" everywhere else in the world, but in America I'm a "libertarian". "Libertarian" is a term invented by liberals in America because the word "liberal" has been taken here and used for something that it doesn't mean (not in the least because liberalism is so central to American political philosophy that everyone more or less accepts its core tenets). I'm tired of it, and I've been tired of it for a while.

I'm a liberal. I'm a liberal in the sense that "liberal" means something. If you want to sneer at me because I call myself a "liberal," fine; it just means you hate freedom or are too dumb or care so little about freedom that you don't know or bother to learn the word that means "someone who likes/supports freedom."

The Economy - Not Funny Anymore

2011-10-03T22:00:00.000-05:00

All these nonsense fixer-up plans politicians are throwing around are meaningless. It's all the same "give more stuff to my faction and to hell with everyone else" nonsense that politicians always blather about. Whatever the solution is, it isn't going to be one where everyone just gives me all of their money. None of these loot divvying strategies have worked. The troubles with the world economy are no longer funny.

Yet another Europe Rant

2011-09-18T21:25:00.002-05:00

The Europeans need to get it together. All of this EU falling apart stuff is ridiculous. What are the Europeans going to do without the EU? Let's see, they'll break up, Russia will gobble up the Eastern countries, or maybe they'll start killing each other again in a few decades, or just about anything awful that one could imagine.

Europe needs to bite the bullet and federate. Let the various states have their own criminal and civil laws and courts and militias and so on. But have one great big federal treasury, and one great big federal military. Have the Portuguese and Italians tax the daylights out of the French, and have the French dominate the EU military. And have the Germans complain endlessly about how the Polish and Swedes and Slovenians are running their country.

So the Yankees and Californians gang up on us God-fearing Texans sometimes and pass all sorts of federal laws that we hate. At least we haven't been gobbled up by Britain, or France, or Spain, or (heaven forbid!) Mexico. It really worked out quite well for everyone involved. We're rich, powerful, prosperous, and (last but not least) free (mostly). And to top it off, everyone else in the world is (not so) secretly envious of how awesome and strong our country is.

Europe and the Europeans have only one future, a united future.

Constitutional Law

2011-09-09T01:00:00.000-05:00

I seem to be the first person who's gone "cynic" in my con law class. All that stuff about constitutionality? Interesting in theory, but there's a "right answer" to "what's constitutional." If you like it, it's constitutional; if you don't like it, it's unconstitutional.

Riots

2011-08-08T00:24:00.000-05:00

I've never really understood riots. In America, and certainly in Texas, our government, for better or worse, is pretty good about giving us what we want. We Texans have no need to riot. We get a new legislature every two years, so there's always another election around the corner. And if things were somehow to get apocalypticly bad (and they won't), we have our guns. But things will never get that bad. We're not barbarians, we have elections and laws.

The police in Texas are Texans. They may be tough and sometimes a bit rough, but they enforce laws that the many voted to put into effect the way that the many voted to effect them. We may argue over whether these laws are good or bad, but they are the laws; and it is more than likely that you or I voted for them. So I cannot really fault the police for doing what the many tells them to do.

Rioters are not engaging in political activity, they are committing acts of banditry. I do not understand countries, and certainly western democracies, that allow rioting as if it is a legitimate form of political expression. If the many are taxed to pay for a police cruiser, the many are offended when some vandalous youth burns that cruiser. If the many vote to prohibit theft and arson, a band of college students that loots and burns a business wrongs the laws of "the people." Rioters, especially those who loot and burn, are common criminals.

Debt Ceiling

2011-07-28T13:09:00.000-05:00

I'd rather not have the world end on August 2nd. The federal government spends way too much. But if given the choice between the federal government spending (and necessarily taxing) 20% of the GDP and the end of the American Republic, I'll go with plan A and have a federal government that spends 20% for the indefinite future. It's not a pretty compromise, but it's better than the alternative.

I don't like the idea of the honor of small government ideals being staked on the success of the all-or-nothing approach that House Republicans have been taking. Even some of the most hardcore libertarians can see that the House Republicans have gotten about the best deal they can get with one house of Congress. At least a big minority of classical liberals are economics-oriented people. And as such, they should all know the value of pragmatism. Rightly or wrongly, the Republicans (and the ideas they claim to support) will get hit with most of the fall out if the ceiling isn't raised and things crash.

Google+

2011-07-09T15:37:00.000-05:00

I am officially joining the rebellion against Facebook. It's too danged hard to figure out what I'm sharing with who. Even though Google+ is still a bit rough around the edges, the "circles" system alone is enough to entice me to jump ship from Facebook.

In Facebook, you have a mass of friends who see everything you have by default. If you want to restrict anything, the process is pretty convoluted. In Google+, everything is built around "circles." You get friends in these circles and it's easier to figure out what you are and aren't sharing with different people.

Changing Stuff

2011-07-07T01:28:00.001-05:00

I'm changing some layout stuff, so if anything looks weird, I'm working on it. And feel free to critique my color scheme and the the page's lack of self-created art.

Explosions

2011-06-30T00:42:00.001-05:00

I went to see the latest Transformers. I'm not a drinker, but luckily I had eaten dinner with some friends beforehand and had a beer in me when went to see the movie. In retrospect, I ought to have taken up drinking just for the occasion because one beer was most certainly not enough.

I'm pretty sure Michael Bay is going to explode if he makes any more Transformers movies. Bay has perfected the metally sound. Bay has mastered melodramatic music. Bay's explosions are, of course, flawless. Transformers is two-plus-hour long explosion-pornography. The plot is utterly mind-numbing, but who cares.

Also of note, the movie made something of a point of indirectly hating on Megan Fox. Someone told me not to long ago that Fox was just another pretty actress. Bay devotes just a little too much of the movie to proving this point. He seems to want us all to know that he can make an actor, and he can unmake an actor. And I have to say that he made his point pretty well. Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is going to be getting a lot more work now, at least until Bay decides to unmake her.

A New Movie

2011-06-17T00:05:00.001-05:00

I thought of a great new movie idea. Some folks make a time machine, and go back in time to the time before there were any movie remakes.

I'm getting sick of the reboots and remakes. You know things are getting old and stale when they make Robin Hood (and his merry men!) dark, and they make movies out of third rate comic characters.

Movie: Thor

2011-05-07T02:33:00.003-05:00

I saw Thor yesterday. It got great reviews, but I can only give it maybe a 3 or 4 out of 10. The movie's greatest drawback is that there seems to be no point to about 65% of the movie. Thor had lots of promise, but most of it got squandered because the screenwriter sacrifices almost everything to fit the movie into the standard hero-does-stuff-and-meets-girl-on-side mold. Why do we care about Thor's brief stay on earth where he goes around looking all lost? How does a 1,000 year-old deity fall madly in love with an earthling after spending maybe 18 hours in her presence? Yeah, he's impulsive, but not that impulsive. And I'll wager the wenches in Valhalla are otherworldy.

Alright, I'll backtrack a little. I truly liked much of Thor's earth-wandering. Thor is really cool, he knows he's really cool, and he's really funny. The no-name actor who plays Thor does a magnificent job and will certainly get more gigs in the future because of it.

Last but not least, the maker(s) of Thor have managed to make a film about a Germanic god and the word "mead" does not appear even once in the entire movie.

Voter ID

2011-05-04T09:59:00.002-05:00

Recently, there have been some efforts in Texas to require people to present more substantial forms of identification in order to vote.

I did a quick bit of research. In the past century, Texas has seen only two appellate cases (, Heller v. State, Tucker v. Bagby) for the kind of illegal voting that voter ID laws might prevent. And the Tucker case involved someone who wasn't 21 at the time of the primary but who would be 21 at the time of the general election. Neither of the two cases were in the past 75 years. What this means is that, for all intents and purposes, intentional illegal voting does not happen in Texas.

There is no reason why Texas voters should be inconvenienced in the slightest in order to prevent intentional illegal voting, because there is no intentional illegal voting in Texas. If you're poor, you may not be able to wait an hour or two at a DPS office on a work day to get a driver's license.

These voter ID proposals are nothing more than proposals to restrict suffrage by making it harder for the poor to vote. When we vote, we make choices that affect our lives, and the lives of our neighbors. There's no wrong in holding it against someone when they vote to raise your taxes and degrade the quality of important government services. But no one should take issue with someone just for voting.

Osama's Death: Initial Thoughts

2011-05-02T09:11:00.003-05:00

We got him!

We were obligated to hunt Bin Laden and those who helped him to the ends of the earth for what he did. Insofar as the invasion of Afghanistan was done to this end, it was just. Many folks like to complain about the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Maybe it wasn't done well. I don't think it was done well. Things may have gone a lot faster and been a lot less bloody if we would have gone in without the self-deceiving pretense that we were "liberating" Afghanistan. But it's nonsense to suggest that the US should have just taken the 9/11 attacks.

So now what? For starters, we can use this as an excuse to say "mission accomplished," get out of central Asia.

Movie: Street Kings

2011-04-29T19:40:00.002-05:00

I really liked the movie Street Kings. I'm a bit surprised it got such horrid ratings.

Street Kings is a relatively original variation on the "strong retainer of corrupt lord" theme that worked so well in the Iliad, but otherwise hasn't seen much action in the past 2700 years. Long story short, the main character played by Keanu Reeves, is the muscle behind a corrupt police captain. The whole movie is about Reeves figuring out how bad his boss is and setting things right without getting killed.

The characters had depth. The plot was decent. The action scenes were great. If you're into the gunbattles and broken skulls movies, Street Kings is worth watching.

Americans and the Royal Wedding

2011-04-28T10:24:00.003-05:00

I'm a Texan, so I don't much care for Kings and such. The only thing more annoying than someone who thinks that he's better than everyone else because of his lineage is someone who thinks he's better than everyone else because of his lineage who is a descendant a big lot of peasants (there's no shame in that unless you make it a big shame for everyone else). Bless his heart, I don't worry myself about the wedding of the future King of Great Britain to some lucky girl.

However many, if not most, Americans have a mild case of monarchy envy. Royals, I guess, are just cool to have around. Ever since we got rid of ours, many of us have kind of wanted them back, just a little. Because there is no Emperor of America, we settle for the monarch that we would have had if hadn't gone with the whole freedom thing. The blunt way of putting it is, in essence, the British royal family is still the royal family of the United States for entertainment and fashion purposes.

Is it good or bad that Americans care so darn much about the same royal family that they jumped ship from 200-some-odd years ago? I don't know. But I wish I could stop hearing about it.

Commando

2011-04-21T13:51:00.002-05:00

I heard they're remaking the movie Commando. That gave me pause to think about the old Commando. The main villain displaces noticeably less than Arnold. Even watching it when I was a kid, it was noticeable.

If you're less than 6'3 or under 220 pounds, you should never ever ever appear in a "fight scene" with Arnold Schwarzenegger. You can, if you want, appear in a scene where Arnold hits you in the face and your head explodes. But a long drawn-out fight? No. You've either got to be another body-builder, a WWF performer, or an eight-foot tall alien. That's the moral that I got out of that movie.

Taxing The "Rich"

2011-04-18T01:08:00.002-05:00

If we want to tax millionaires and billionaires more, that's great, but let's not get confused about who we're taxing. There's a big difference between a household making $260,000 and a household of "millionaires and billionaires."

An older (late 40s+) professional (chemical engineer, geologist, petroleum engineer, professor on tenure track) can push $200,000. There are many families in Houston that make over $250,000 because the husband is a professional and the wife is a teacher or school administrator. And a married couple of middle-aged professionals, could easily make over $250,000. So what sorts of families would be included in this tax for "millionaires and billionaires? A family made up of a 47 year-old chemical engineer wife making $160,000, a 48 year-old college professor husband making $110,000, and three kids in college aged 18, 19, and 21. A family with a mortgage.

The difference between a family that makes $100,000 and $250,000 isn't revolutionary. The 250k family will probably be older and will have a bigger house and nicer cars, but both families are still in the same class of people (if not the same people 20 years older). The government may need more money, and taxing "the rich" can be a convenient way to get more revenue. Maybe the rich don't have enough and the upper middle class needs to be taxed more to. But it isn't fair to tax people paying mortgages to get more out of people sailing on private yachts.

Mayonnaise

2011-04-04T13:44:00.003-05:00

I do not like mayonnaise. For some strange reason, most food vendors assume that everyone wants mayonnaise on everything.

I will buy a sandwich every now and then. They reach for the mayonnaise and raise it up to start pouring it on. Right before they start squeezing it out, they ask "do you want any mayonnaise," almost as if the question is a mere formality. I feel the great urge to cry out "noooooooooo!"

I restrain myself and say "no thank you." Still, one out of every 20 times or so it still ends up on my sandwich.

A Defense of Social Democracy (Sort of)

2011-03-28T10:06:00.006-05:00

I'm not a socialist; and with the exception of a 6 month period when I was 15, have never been a socialist. However, I am a bit annoyed that socialists in the United States are forced to pretend that they are not socialists. Unlike many others that I know, I do not consider socialism (social democracy, to be more precise) to be an illegitimate viewpoint.

I can see that from a certain internally consistent way of thinking social democracy is a very good thing. In a society governed by principles of "social democracy," the government would promote fairness, equality, certainty, and predictability, even if those values must sometimes be promoted at the expense of the "mean wealth" of society.

I don't pretend that there isn't a trade-off between equality (of wealth) and economic progress. I just happen to think that a wealthier (and less equal) society is better than a less wealthy (and more equal society. Socialists seem to look at it another way. They prefer a more equal (and less wealthy) society over a less equal (and wealthier) society. There is a legitimate disagreement about what we should value more here. Should be be more worried about inequality or economic growth?

Of course, I don't propose to have my cake and eat it to. I don't and couldn't truthfully say that in a society governed by the rules that I want that there wouldn't be executives making $20,000,000 a year and janitors making $20,000 over the same span of time. As long as the mean and median incomes are growing faster, I don't worry too much about the distance between the highest and lowest earners. And similarly, a social democrat couldn't honestly claim that by making the incomes of the richest and poorest closer, that the mean income isn't taking some sort of hit.

To some extent I agree that equality should be valued over other things. I if given a choice between a society where 1 man has $1,000,000 and 1,000 people have $50, and a society where 1,000 people have $400, I would chose the latter society even though the former society has about $1,050 per person and the latter has $400.

Take the following scenarios

Society 1: free-market liberalism (true capitalism)

-1,000 people

-$1,400,000 in total wealth

-250 people have $3,000

-500 people have $1,000

-250 people have $600

-median: $1,000

-mean: $1,400

Society 2: social democracy ("social market economy")

-1,000 people

-$1,175,000 in total wealth

-250 people have $1,800

-500 people have $1,100

-250 people have $700

-median: $1,100

-mean: $1,175

Society 3: socialism

-1,000 people

-$800,000 in total wealth

-100 people have $1,200

-700 people have $800

-200 people have $600

-median: $800

-mean: $800

Society 4: feudalism, stereotypical "capitalism" (mercantilism, cronyism)

-1,000 people

-$880,000 in total wealth

-100 people have $4,000

-700 people have $600

-200 people have $300

-median: $600

-mean: $880

I think that social democrats would agree with me that the 3rd and 4th societies are the worst of the four. The common man in these societies is poorer and the societies as a whole are poorer. Both the social democrat and the free market liberal are worried about the "common man." And both the social democrat and the free market liberal see no value in equality when everyone is equally desolate. The thing that the free market liberal and the social democrat disagree on isn't whether or not the common man should do well or whether equality should be valued above all else even if it means that everyone should be equally dead of starvation. The disagreement is where the line should be drawn, and whether the median or the mean is the best measure of a just and prosperous society.

Nuclear Power

2011-03-17T11:40:00.002-05:00

I have heard things about nuclear power being inefficient, and about nuclear plants having safety issues. Maybe for these or other reasons there should be some rule against nuclear power. But if, on principle, nobody could build or do anything unless that thing could withstand a 9.0 earthquake and a tsunami, nothing would ever get built or done.

Wealth and Trees

2011-03-03T13:01:00.002-06:00

I've lived in Houston since I was 2. There are lots of little things about society and where we live that we pick up on, sometimes so subconsciously that we never note it in our conscious thinking. One of the social observations that I have picked on is that, in Houston, there seems to be a strong correlation between the number of trees an an acre and the value and "class" of a home.

Take "the Villages" of Harris County (a wealthy area in Greater Houston). The homes have maybe one-and-a-half to three times as many trees an acre as very similar homes North of I-10 in Houston-proper. It may have something to do with a sense of oldness or antiquity. Maybe it's something else. But if you're buying a house in Houston and you're going for class, pick the 2500 square foot house with 14 trees over the 3500 square foot house with 6 trees.

Mac OS X "Lion"

2011-02-27T22:24:00.002-06:00

Apple's upcoming operating system includes some great new features:

-Icons on your desktop called "Launchpad" (was available in Microsoft Windows since Windows 3.0 as Program Manager, discontinued because it was archaic and nobody used it, desktop icons are still available on Windows)

-Full screen applications (available in Microsoft Windows for at least the last decade)

-Autosave and versions (available in Microsoft Office in some form or another for at least the last decade)

-Full height email previews (available in Windows for a long time)

-Email "conversations" (available from a variety of vendors including Microsoft for a long time)

-File Vault (called BitLocker in Windows)

"Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery."

Steve Jobs must think highly of the folks at Microsoft.

Solving the Mystery of Old Portraits

2011-02-22T02:18:00.002-06:00

I was at the Museum of Fine Arts here in Houston with my brother the other day.

It has always bothered me that the faces of those wealthy folks are painted so unflatteringly. Today, we want photographers to "airbrush" and so on, and to make our faces as pretty as they can. Why wouldn't the nobles want the same thing from their painters? Why wouldn't the wealthy between 1400 and 1800 want their painters to touch up their faces a bit?

I found an answer: who cares about the face? All of the portraits in the gallery showed the clothing of the nobles in the most elaborate and embellishing detail. The clothing, the sign of wealth and status, was of far greater importance than the face.

Budgetary Red Herring

2011-02-14T12:37:00.004-06:00

Here's the short version of the 2010 US federal budget.

$3.456 trillion in spending

$2.162 trillion in income (other than borrowing, of course)

-About $1.3 trillion in the red

Every time someone talks about a government program, they talk about the costs or savings of it over a ten year period. For instance, the President's budget folks are talking about cutting the deficit by $1.1 trillion over ten years. I think the Republicans said something about cutting $100 billion this year. $1.1 trillion dollars is a whole lot of money just about everywhere in the universe other than in the context of the American federal budget taken over a 10 year period. $1.1 trillion is 3% of the federal budget over a 10 year period, and that still leaves us with a $12ish trillion dollar increase in government debt. The $33 billion dollar cuts proposed for FY10 are a laughably small (and nearly infinitesimal) 1% of spending.

All this talk of cutting $33 billion (over a year) and $1.1 trillion (over 10 years) is a red herring. I guess the idea is to jumble around enough numbers that would be unspeakably big in any other context that everyone starts thinking that they're making an honest attempt to solve the debt/deficit problem. The issue that everyone needs to be worrying about is a $1.3 trillion dollar yearly deficit and a $10+ trillion dollar national debt.

Law: Sometimes The Answer Isn't So Clear

2011-02-01T23:56:00.002-06:00

There is a young man who is making $45,000 a year working full time. An old man who wants him to go to college to better himself asks him: "how much would it cost for you to go to college?". The young man responds: "it would cost $15,000 a year for four years". The old man says back: "if you go to college, I'll give you $15,000 a year".

The young man quits his job and goes to a college that costs $10,000 a year. The old man doesn't pay him anything.

If there were to be a suit over this, how much should the young man get? Here are some answers that have been proposed.

-$0, the old man was offering a gift and had no obligation to carry through

-$40,000, the old man should pay the cost of the college education ($10,000 x 4)

-$60,000, the old man should pay the amount that he nominally offered ($15,000 x 4)

-$180,000, the old man should pay what the young man would have made had he not quit his job in reliance on the old man's promise ($45,000 x 4)

Taste In Music

2011-01-16T12:51:00.003-06:00

It was, up until recently, commonly believed that I had no taste in music. It was, as a matter of fact, said that I "don't believe in music". And I was as much a part of spreading this libelous rumor as anyone else. I have never much liked gossiping about bands and songs, and I have never felt the draw of going to a concert filled with ear-injuring music, excessive bass, often annoying hipsters. So for years now, I have been telling people that I do not like music and that I have no taste in music, and other people have been telling people that I do not like music and that I have no taste in music.

I was lying. As I have recently discovered, I have always secretly held a most excellent and shamefully trendy taste in music.

So here is the album of the week: Frigg.

The Politics of Bad Things

2011-01-10T13:18:00.004-06:00

I really like Sun-Tzu's Art of War. It has a good line or two for just about everything. Here's my Sun-Tzu quote of the day.

--------

8. To see victory only when it is within the ken of the common herd is not the acme of excellence.

9. Neither is it the acme of excellence if you fight and conquer and the whole Empire says, “Well done!”

10. To lift an autumn hair is no sign of great strength; to see the sun and moon is no sign of sharp sight; to hear the noise of thunder is no sign of a quick ear.

11. What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease.

12. Hence his victories bring him neither reputation for wisdom nor credit for courage.

--------

It is troubling that Presidents and statesmen are viewed in high regard in proportion to the number of times that wars, terrorist attacks, and mass shootings happen while they are in office.

Maybe Bush showed great leadership and resolve after 9/11. Maybe Clinton showed leadership and resolve after Waco and Oklahoma City. Maybe Kennedy showed great skill during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Maybe the first Bush showed leadership during the First Gulf War. Maybe Obama will show exceptional leadership and resolve after this. A good leader does amazing things in troubling times or after terrible events, but the best leader prevents troubling times and terrible events from ever happening. The best leaders are the ones that we never remember.

Movie Peeves

2011-01-05T22:39:00.002-06:00

Here are a few things that should never happen in movies:

>The good guy and the bad guy fight. The bad guy seems to win only to be killed while delivering his finishing blow. (Three Musketeers, Robin Hood, Star Wars Episode I, King Arthur, The Patriot, etc...). I really, really, really hate this one and it happens so often in movies. The first problem with this is that, in essence, it shows that the bad guy is actually the more skilled and that the good guy is only able to win through treachery/dishonorable tactics. The bad guy won, evil prevailed, but we don't want the movie to end that way so the good guy magically wins. The second problem is that it show a lack of choreographic and dramatic skill. Movie endings are supposed to be dramatic. If you're being paid money to make movies, you ought to be able to fit in all of the necessary drama stuff in without killing all of the awesomeness of an otherwise highly entertaining action sequence.

>The movie is (again) an action film. The movie covers the bases necessary to establish the protagonist as a primordially awesome manly man with excessive religion. A primordial manly man is 1) attractive, 2) strong, and 3) clever. #3 is almost always the source of trouble. How do you show that the protagonist is "clever" if he is strong-enough to win any fight that is anywhere near fair? Film-makers seem to use two equally annoying plot devices. The first is introducing the "big one": an opponent who is really really big and who the protagonist must beat using his wits. The second is the "hostage scene": something happens and the protagonist becomes unable to use his awesome brute strength and instead must use his trickiness to beat his opponent(s).

>The movie is a romance. The male lead fools around with some other woman towards the end of the film such that he is required to do something dramatic that fills up movie-time and wins back the affections of the lead lady.

>The bad guy is trying to destroy the world/universe and takes someone significant to the protagonist hostage, and the protagonist stops saving the world until he saves the hostage.

In real life, nobody would not save the world because of one person. I love my father, my mother, the rest of my family, and so on, but I wouldn't hesitate for a moment if the choice was between 50,000 people and them. And besides, what kind of love would that be? If my father, or mother, or one of my siblings allowed 50,000 people to die in order to save me, I would beat whichever one of them it was to death. I mean, really? Yeah, I'm the guy who was so precious that 50,000 people were left to die so that I could be saved. For me, the dishonor would be so great that I couldn't live with myself, and I don't know that anyone else could either.

>There is a shootout. Nobody uses cover. I'm rather sure that in real life anyone getting shot at would hide behind something. More generally, it's annoying when bad guys in action movies display the tactical skill of a suicidal one year-old.

Annoying Movie Element

2011-01-05T22:15:00.003-06:00

In both Patriot Games and Cliffhanger, the main antagonists have a rather pretty woman as one of their top lieutenants. In both films, the evil woman lieutenant is positioned throughout such that I cannot help but expect that she will surely play a larger role in the plot later in the movie; that is until she is murdered off by the primary antagonist towards the end of the movie for the most arbitrary of reasons.

Why was the character even in the movie? Her only role in the film is to give the viewer the clear sense that she is a relatively important character until she is murdered off by her boss/lover. And why does he kill her? Because the movie can't end until the bad guy side of the list of characters is empty and the screenwriters can't find any better way to murder them off in a timely fashion.

Here is a new addition to "Nogburt's Laws of Cinema":

-Antagonists shall never commit fratricide unless it is absolutely necessary to the plot.

-Attractive female lieutenants to the top antagonist shall never be killed by fratricide.

-Antagonists who a screenwriter is tempted to kill off through fratricide are almost certainly unnecessary to the plot and shall be omitted from the next draft of the screenplay or shall at least killed off more artfully.

The Secret of Fighting Video Games

2010-12-11T00:48:00.002-06:00

I have always liked fighting video games; but until about an hour ago I've never been any good at them. I took a break from studying for Civil Procedure and played one.

All fighting games have a little meter that tells you how much life you have (and thus how close you are to losing), and most of them also have a "sparring mode" where there is no health meter (you can just go on sparring forever).

I saw a long time ago that I did a heck of a lot better against computer opponents in sparring mode than I did in actual matches. For the life of me, I could never figure out why there was such a disparity in my performance.

I figured it out. My error was simple. In sparring mode, I devoted all of my mental energies to kicking the computer's butt. But in matches, I payed attention to the life meter. The life meter only serves to create anxiety and divert my attention from beating the pulp out of the computer. By not worrying or changing my strategy based on the life meter, I have improved my fighting game performance more in the past 30 minutes than I have over the past 10 years. Playing it cool really works.

Embarrassing Stuff

2010-12-06T19:56:00.002-06:00

Since everyone with a blog is weighing in on the Wikileaks stuff, I figure I ought to throw in my two cents as well.

The other day I saw a man I know well shortly before he went to a big formal party. His jacket did not go with his slacks (they really, really did not go together), and he would embarrass himself if he didn't go back home and change either his slacks or his jacket. At some point or another, I realized that as his friend I needed to stop him from making himself look bad even if I had to be a bit harsh. I said some harsh things, he went home and changed his slacks.

As a law student, I have begun learning the craft of writing legal memos. At some point in the future, I may work for a lawyer who wants to know if his client has good claims or if his client is vulnerable to a potential plaintiff's claims. In those memos, I'll be truthful. If the client has no claim, I'll say he has no claim; and if the potential plaintiff can sue the living daylights out of the client, I'll say the client might get the living daylights sued out of him.

On more than one occasion, I have talked to friends about what they want to do with their lives. Some people I know or know of think that they should wait around doing pretty much nothing until the perfect career throws itself on them. I will often say, in confidence, that someone should get off his butt, make the sacrifices he has to make, and get the best that he can. I often (well, pretty much always) mention in these conversations in confidence that the worst thing someone can do is "to put off getting a real job to start a band because you will end up pumping my gas at a 7-11 in a few years."

On occasion (and only when asked), I give girls who I know well honest assessments of their looks. (Enough said on this one.)

Nothing said in these cases is wrong, or dishonest, or dishonorable, or particularly unusual for someone to say in confidence.

Think of a world where good looking girls cut their beautiful hair and starve their curves away because there is nobody to tell them that they look pretty much fine, think of a world where you don't know if what you are doing can get you sued into the ground, think of a world where potentially productive people work at gas stations because nobody told them not keep putting off their lives to go out and start bands, think of a world where men wear the goofiest slacks-jacket combinations imaginable because nobody will tell them what goes with what? Do you want to live in that world?

Whatever your answer is, mine is that I want to live in a world with prettier, healthier, and more confident women, with less legal uncertainty, with more productive people, and with men who wear tasteful slacks-jacket combinations. The folks at Wikileaks seem as though they would begrudge me such a world. The world I want, not the world they are pushing for, is more honest and open. And for that, I hope that the folks at Wikileaks stop trolling about with people's private conversations, and go and get a real job doing something productive like starting a wiki** for people to freely share important information about things of public significance.

**I should hope that anyone reading a blog would get this one. Wikileaks is, strangely-enough, not a wiki.

Who Steals Lunch Money?

2010-10-11T10:13:00.002-05:00

Has anyone ever truly seen one kid "bully" lunch money out of another kid? Yeah, yeah, we've all seen it on TV, but has it ever actually happened? Being 22, I assumed that the whole "beat up for lunch money" story was something that I was too young to have experienced. So I asked my father who is 52. He told me that he'd never seen it happen but he thought that it was something that he just wasn't old-enough to have experienced. So then I asked my 90 year old grandmother and 80-something year old grandfather who told me that it had never happened to them, but they thought that it probably used to happen before they were around.

So there you have it: kids haven't gotten beaten up for their lunch money since sometime before 1920. Or in other words, nobody has ever gotten beaten up over lunch money. I wonder who started the nasty rumor?

Who Wants to Be The Americans?

2010-09-04T02:00:00.003-05:00

I don't know if this is a big secret or not, but people don't play on their home country's side in online games. I played Battlefield 1942 for a time, and when I played I almost always played on the German side. And the hordes of German gamers would play on the American side. Similarly, I used to play Battlefield 2 and I generally favored the MEC and the PLA. I don't have anything against America anymore than Germans have something against Germany, it's just that it's more fun to shake things up.

Al Gore and Daniel Quinn Support Terrorism

2010-09-02T01:28:00.004-05:00

Now the Al Gore and Daniel Quinn have to deal with some idiot being "inspired" by their works to do crazy things. Want to know where this fellow went wrong? He misinterpreted Gore. Really, he should have gone after ManBearPig.

Let me get one thing straight for all time, there are a lot of people and a lot of things that I don't like; and I may one day write a book or make a movie about some of what I don't like. But under no circumstances should anyone conclude from any work that I produce that I want someone killed unless I explicitly say I want someone killed and I make it really clear that I am not saying something about killing to get at something else.

Here's one for the crazies. I would really approve of the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Seriously. I call for the death of Osama Bin Laden. If you see him, knowingly and willfully end his life by whatever means fancy you at the moment. Here's another one: Hitler clones. If you see any clones of Adolph Hitler, kill them.

Otherwise, stay away from the whole killing thing. It is messy and wrong and dreadfully unpleasant and immoral.

An Editorial Decision Regarding the Content of This Blog

2010-08-23T14:01:00.003-05:00

After much thinking, I have made a decision to remove pretty much everything that could be considered controversial or political from this blog. I started this blog back when I was a 17-year old high school student and I am now a 22-year old grad student. As much as I hate it, the world isn't a very forgiving place. I'm not getting out of blogging, but I will try and stay away from anything too controversial.

Movie Review: Expendables

2010-08-14T16:03:00.002-05:00

Rating: 5/5

The movie was sublime. There was no plot, but watch it and you won't care.

Netflix

2010-07-26T11:22:00.002-05:00

I just discovered Netflix. It is the invention that will surely define the 21st century. It is beyond awesome and has become awesomeness itself. Now and forevermore I shall feed my bad movie addiction endlessly!!!

Fun

2010-07-05T01:23:00.002-05:00

I am a 22-year old recent (May) college graduate going to law school in the fall and I am going to the Natural History Museum tomorrow. Whose idea was it to go? Mine. Why do I want to go to the Natural History Museum? To put it simply, dinosaurs and mammoths are f**king awesome. My initial idea was to go to the zoo, but it was suggested that it would be a bit more crowded (because of the holiday). And in any case I would look foolish going straight for the petting zoo.

I spent the last four years studying the classics, music, and advanced mathematics and physics. I have a driver's license, I vote, I pay income taxes, and I have one firearm (a Mossberg 464) registered in my name. But by God I refuse to accept that there ever comes a point in one's life where one hasn't the right to stare at the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex in wonder and awe. It is an awful shame that there is some societal expectation that "adults" should not find joy in animals and stars and shiny rocks. The world is a beautiful place full of beautiful things, and nobody should be ashamed of being fascinated with butterflies and artifacts from Ancient Egypt.

Don't Burn My Masterpiece

2010-05-01T01:43:00.002-05:00

It seems as though every author and his dog have ordered all of their papers burned in their wills. And nobody ever seems to follow this will provision.

For the record, if by some strange twist of fate I become some great something-or-other and I say in my will that all of my unpublished papers should be burned, I won't mean it. If I wanted all of my unpublished papers burned, I would have burned them myself. If you're the executor of my will and rummaging through all of my stuff you find a great work of the Western Canon in the making, publish it. Yes, I may rant in my half-finished manuscript that my ideas are rough and incomplete; but that's all a part of the game. After all, what parent has a cookie jar expecting the kids to stay away from it?

I will make one exception to this "ignore my will" rule. If by some strange happening I come to have a Nazi-sympathizing younger sister, then you really should actually burn my papers.

It's The People's Fault

2010-04-28T15:45:00.005-05:00

I was reading a BBC article on the financial crisis in Greece. The article mentions "debts wracked up by a combination of corruption and tax evasion and as well as the spending habits of incompetent, profligate politicians". The article tries to blame some small evil minority for Greece's problems, but the cold hard truth is that Greece's problems are a result of the will of the Greek people as expressed through their democratically elected representatives.

It isn't mystical "speculators" messing Greece. If the Greek government were solvent, all of the speculators who wager against Greece will lose their money to those who speculate that Greece is solvent. Those who know a thing or two about economics understand that "speculation" is a natural and very necessary component of economies. Speculators and short-sellers are the ones in the economy who make plans for the future and who ensure that sudden changes in conditions don't cause massive gluts or shortages. Because of their vital importance in bringing markets towards equilibrium, speculation and short-selling is most important precisely in those moments of crisis where speculators and short-sellers are the most decried.

It isn't tax avoiders and the "corrupt". Tax dodgers and corrupt officials don't make up multiple percentage points of Western economies.

And last, but certainly not least, it isn't the politicians. The cold hard truth is that politicians have a remarkable tendency to do what the majority wants. And the majority does not want to pay as much in taxes as it gets in government spending.

The widespread assumption that the majority is infallible is wrong. And all of this blaming everyone but the people is only worsening the fundamental problem that voters vote for spending now and paying later because it allows people to pretend as if they aren't responsible for the sorry state of their government's finances.

A Very Random Post: Two Awesome Men

2010-04-23T22:28:00.003-05:00

I was thinking earlier today for no reason at all: "whoever thought of animal domestication must have been awesome". And then I thought: "whoever thought of agriculture must have been awesome".

I thought about it for a bit more. What inspired these two to get them to carry out their epic acts of sublime genius? Maybe after a long day of chasing yaks for meat, someone thought: "Hey, why don't I just chase them into some closed space or towards some open space where I can at least keep track of them so that I don't have to follow them everywhere on their migrations?"

And then the agriculture person must have thought: "I run all around the forests and the fields picking berries and crops. Why don't I just put a bunch of seeds by my house and save myself the trouble?"

Maybe they had something else on their minds. But for whatever reason, they more or less invented "civilization". How awesome is that?

Radicalism

2010-04-16T23:59:00.001-05:00

I have heard it said at times that the differences between radical movements, especially explicitly totalitarian ones, become essentially cosmetic regardless of whether or not those movements are nominally on the “right” or “left” of the political spectrum. The differences between Nazis and Leninists are more matters of taste than anything else (as if it makes killing tens of millions any less bad than killing six million because the tens of millions are killed for being “capitalists” instead of “Jews”). And this seems intuitive enough. Lately, my experiences with radically oriented students have confirmed this for me.

To give one particular example, a kid I know went from that kind of fringe anarcho-capitalism espoused by the militia movement to being a self-professed communist without any fundamental changes to his ideology. I have seen odder radicalist swings (i.e. communism to Islamism), but they are all fundamentally the same.

Nazis kill people because they are “Jews”. Communists kill people because they are capitalists (a.k.a. “Jews”). Islamists kill people because they are unbelievers (a.k.a. “Jews”). Instead of quarreling over which radicalist group is worse, reasonable people should all work on rooting out radicalism itself.

Palm Pre

2010-04-08T22:44:00.003-05:00

Anyone interested in getting a solid smartphone should look into the Palm's WebOS line of phones, notably the Palm Pre. Unlike other smartphones of note, the Pre features a multitasking operating system. What the Pre lacks in "dicking around" features, it more than makes up for in functionality in the fundamentals. The web browser, email client, contacts app, and all of the other things that real humans use for actual work are stable and intuitive. And did I mention multitasking?

So don't be a tool. Make the wise decision and get the Palm Pre as your smartphone of choice.

iPwned

2010-04-08T11:14:00.001-05:00

http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/article/7-people-who-are-returning-their-iPads/1270688736

A Lesson for Teachers: "I Am Offended"

2010-03-29T23:51:00.005-05:00

You're a teacher. You've got many kinds of kids in your class. One in particular is very popular, well-spoken, and causes you little trouble. Let's call him the "good kid". Another is the local problem child. He is usually the odd kid out, has few friends, and presents himself very poorly. Let's call him the "bad kid".

You are making your rounds and all of the sudden, you hear Good Kid say in an honest and firm voice "I am offended". You swoop over to find that Good Kid is in a confrontation with Bad Kid. Bad Kid is immediately agitated by your presence. "He must be guilty of something; he is certainly looking and acting guilty." You start talking to Good Kid and Bad Kid about what is going on. Good Kid is calm and uses an honest and civil tone. Bad Kid is already upset and becomes more hostile with each word. Maybe other good kids are around to back up Good Kid's story. Good Kid keeps his honest and calm composure, and after Bad Kid results to cursing, you write him up.

Everything here is clear and clean cut, right? Wrong.

Most humans are incapable of "honest moral indignation" before the age of 30. Good Kid is playing you for a fool, or as we say "tool-bagging" you. He is using you as an instrument to bully Bad Kid by proxy. He knows that he's more clever and better composed than Bad Kid, and that you will automatically suspect Bad Kid. He knows that Bad Kid will respond to your swooping down by getting more agitated and that you will interpret this as Bad Kid seeming "guilty". And he knows that he can manipulate you through your cognitive biases by appearing to take a "moral high ground". What amazes me is that any teacher would ever fall for the old "I am offended" trick much less all of them.

From my elementary through high school years, I must have seen the "I am offended" technique tried at least three dozen times. During those years I have been the giving and receiving ends of the "I am offended" trick and I have witnessed it used as a third party many times as well. In probably ten years of "I am offended" experience (roughly between 8 and 18), I know of only one occasion where a teacher did not fall for it.

And the older they get, the more sophisticated the faux-moral ambushes become. I've seen a couple here at college, albeit in far more refined forms. A well spoken kid will essentially jump a less well spoken kid with eloquent moral charges. The less well spoken kid is thrown off balance and agitated, and his frustration is incorrectly interpreted as "looking guilty".

To all who deal with adolescents, burn this into your brain: no kid between the ages of 0 and 20 ever says "I am offended" within earshot of an adult authority figure unless he is guilty of wronging the other kid and is trying to frame the other kid or agitate the other kid into doing something wrong. And of course the other kid seems agitated and pissed off, because he knows that the "I am offended" trick always works and that he is going to get in trouble despite the fact that the seemingly Good Kid is really at fault. I don't care how honest the "I am offended" sounds or what you see or don't see happening, the kid who says "I am offended" is the more guilty one 100% of the time.

Honest outbursts of moral indignation almost always carry with them a certain agitation, a certain frustration, and a certain crudeness and lack of eloquence. A morally indignant person is agitated and pissed off. This is real life, not Hollywood. Moral outbursts are made with growls, hisses, and four-letter words, not excerpts of Kennedy speeches.

Onion Article of the Month

2010-03-29T22:53:00.003-05:00

Here it is, the best Onion article of the month. It's a parody news report which is so funny because it is factually accurate to the point of cruelty.

Voting Nonsense

2010-03-06T19:48:00.003-06:00

I stumbled onto a CNN blog article about changes to the Academy Awards voting system. The article was awful, and it revealed a few interesting and probably common misunderstandings about electoral systems.

The article confuses "majority" and "plurality". A majority is "half plus one" or more. A plurality is "the most votes". A plurality is sometimes but not always a majority. If there are more than two candidates, the candidate that wins the "most" votes may not win a "majority" of the votes. The 2006 Governor election in Texas is a prime example of where a person wins a "plurality" but not a "majority" of the votes.

One major issue with elections that are decided by who wins the most votes regardless of whether or not the one with the most votes wins a majority is that sometimes the candidate with the second most votes might have won the most votes in a two-person race with whoever won the most votes (in the case cited above, it could be argued that if Friedman had dropped out the Democrat would have won, while the Republican would still have won if the race were a two-person race). In order to ensure that the winner is supported by a majority of some sort, various kinds of runoff systems are used.

The most simple kind of runoff vote is a two-round system where the top two candidates face off in a two-person race. Single Transferable Vote (STV) also known as "instant-runoff vote" systems are also common in many places.

Another irritating and aspect of the article is that it presents non-plurality voting systems as sketchy (hence the "new math" in the title and the "disease" remark). STV systems are not at all sketchy. Choices are made based on internally ranked lists of preferences, and political choices are nothing special. STV may involve a couple of acts of addition beyond the simple ordering of vote amounts in plurality voting, but the "transferring" of votes is direct and exceedingly logical. "See the problem with handicapping a 10-nominee race under these rules?" Not unless I fail to understand 3rd grade level math.

And in any case, the author's objections to STV are intellectually dishonest as he objects not so much to STV as to any voting system that reduces Avatar's odds of winning.

Speaking of "Man Law"

2010-02-06T19:35:00.003-06:00

Recently I ran into a bit of trouble, other people's trouble. I am the senior Tribune of the Student Council and the junior Tribune, for whom I am morally obligated to bring up in the art of tribuning, is a freshman girl. Apparently, though I didn't know this at the time of her election, she was going out with the Chair of the Council who is a senior. Then they broke up, in a very bad breakup.

I ended up having to help resolve both of their relationship problems for a few days in order to prevent her from resigning.

There are two major factors here. First, I am responsible for ensuring that the junior Tribune is a good Tribune and anything that gets in the way of her being a good Tribune is my business. Second, it is my obligation as a man to not interfere with another man's relationship in any way.

And now it seems as though my junior Tribune has found herself a new upperclassman boyfriend. So that was my problem. A freshman, especially a freshman girl, should never go out with an upperclassman and certainly not a senior. It almost never ends pretty.

So the question is whether or not I frankly tell her to stop going out with upperclassmen and to pick a nice freshman or sophomore. Under normal circumstances, restricting the field of my fellow men would be a violation of Man Law. However, it seems as though in this particular instance if she goes out with certain upperclassmen it has the potential to mess with my affairs. And it doesn't seem as though a man's relations should receive the same protection under man law if he knows that they will interfere with another man's ability to perform his duties.

What do I do?

The Most Awesome Advisor Ever

2010-02-03T22:27:00.002-06:00

Every senior at St. John's College has to write a "senior essay". And, of course, I am writing on a subject that is tangentially related to politics, and the book that I am writing on is the Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith (the economist).

Each senior has an "essay advisor". I might have the most awesome advisor ever. He may be one of the few people in the world of any level of education who after knowing a thing or two about me would not tremble at the prospect of taking me on in full force on my home turf, economics.

And there are all sorts of crazy rumors about him. The most prominent of which is that he is or was a big communist. The first part of the story is that he ran for some state or federal senate seat in the 60s or 70s on the Communist Party ticket. He says that he was an "entrepreneur" at some point. The second part of the story going around is that he was publishing communist propaganda with some friends of his, and in order to pay for the publication of their Marxist propaganda he and his commie friends decided to go into the printing business. And of all things that they could have gotten contracts to print they printed corporate reports for large companies. Apparently my advisor and his friends ran a rather successful business (in a relatively capitalistic free market) printing corporate reports and used the profits to print communist propaganda, and this was how he was an "entrepreneur", or so the story goes.

The other rumor is that he is some kind of neo-conservative now (a lot of old neo-conservatives are ex-communists).

In any case, Marxist, neo-conservative, or otherwise he "knows his shit". And I ain't sorry that I've got him as my advisor.

Keeping My Damned Mouth Shut

2010-02-01T16:18:00.003-06:00

There come times when one should probably learn to stay quiet.

The other day an acquaintance of mine, a fellow who is "taking a year off" (which is often a euphemism for those who have recently dropped out and are still in denial about it) between his sophomore and junior years in college, announced that he is getting married. Lots of folks came up and said congratulations or hugged him or whatever. I was thoroughly confused. He is statistically doomed to divorce, and I can't say that anything about the circumstances of the marriage would mitigate the likelihood that his "marriage" will last no more than 36 months if it happens at all. It ain't the 1950s and he ain't a Mormon. He's a white man from an upper middle class background who hasn't yet graduated from college. His odds are if anything hysterically low.

Now I may be a cruel bastard, but I could never "congratulate" someone on committing himself to financial and emotional ruin. If I told any of my friends or family that I was getting married tomorrow, I hope they'd punch me in the face and have me institutionalized. I would do the same thing with any of my friends.

Why would this guy's friends congratulate him? The hell it's his life choice, if someone wants to throw his life away you don't congratulate him for it. I spoke to some of our common friends privately and they more or less admitted that looking at it rationally the man is making a big big mistake. If they're his friends, they should help draw him back to reason.

And where the hell are this kid's parents? If I had a son who hadn't graduated from college or at least gotten a steady source of income and he told me he wanted to get married, first I'd ask him if he got someone pregnant, and then I'd whip his ass. If I had a daughter in a similar situation I'd ask her if she was pregnant, then I'd lock her in a room and then hunt down the boy and whip his ass. Afterwards I'd moan for hours about how incompetent of a parent I was for raising such irresponsible children. The situation may be rather funny from our detached standpoints, but I wouldn't be laughing about it if it were one of my kids.

It is so tempting for me to just chew the fellow out. I think I'll just avoid him and the subject if I can. If I must say something it will probably be this: "I heard you're getting married. Good luck, you're gonna' need it."

An Awkward Defense of Tiger Woods

2010-01-29T12:28:00.006-06:00

I don't usually delve into gossip, but the whole Tiger Woods saga is exceedingly peculiar. Now I won't claim that anyone but Woods himself has the full story, but a few things seem to be clear. Woods seems to have an uncontrollable urge to sleep with every attractive woman he can get his hands on.

I remember a while back when I heard that he had married a Swedish lingerie model that there had to be something odd about that relationship, but I thought nothing more of it. But even a rich and famous man doesn't usually go straight to the Swedish models. Swedish women, and Scandinavian women, in general are the most cliche "attractive" women according to the standards of most men that I know, although it is something of a joke among the more educated ones. It says something about Woods that he went straight for a Swedish woman. I guess he had some fantasy about it.

So we fast forward to now, and Tiger Woods has been caught having affairs with an indefinite number of women. And there's some rumor or other about him being in "sex addiction" rehab.

What Woods did was not honorable or honest and was not in accord with social convention; but if I may be blunt about the issue, it is not unnatural for a man to want to sleep with every attractive woman of breeding age that he sees. I doubt there are many men of his status who are monogamous, and I doubt that there are many men who would remain monogamous if they didn't have to. I know if 15 playboy models lined up at my door I would neither shoo them off or pick one and ask the other 14 to go away. Any rational heterosexual man, married or not, would invite all 15 in at once.

Of course, it is likely that most rich and famous men carry out their affairs with more discretion. And most other such men are too prideful to let themselves loose and pursue their most carnal fantasies. I in a restricted sense I will stick up for Woods. His only failing is that he could not restrain himself from doing what most men have always wanted to do.

iPad

2010-01-27T19:18:00.002-06:00

Just hearing about Apple's latest gizmo, a tablet, I can see that it is a joke.

PC tablets are full fledged PCs with additional functionality while Apple's tablet is an iPhone with a slightly larger screen and additional functionality. The iPhone, as those of us in the know know, is a cell phone running on an ARM processor with an operating system that lacks multitasking capabilities. In laymans terms, the iPhone for all of its glory is not a full-fledged "personal computer" class device. It simply lacks the power and functionality.

Why Apple would choose a cell phone as the base of this device is beyond me. I hear it has ebook capabilities but nobody is dumb-enough (well, except for Mac fanatics) to shell out $500+ for a glorified iPhone with ebook capabilities. The iPad is not a cell phone and it cannot compete in that market. The iPad is definitely not a computer, and SJ would be psychotic to think that this can compete against laptops and PC tablets. Looking at its specs, the iPad is also not a competitive netbook.

In short, the iPad is not competitive in any existing market. It's scrunched tightly between netbooks, smartphones, and tablet PCs, but it is subpar in each of these categories and there isn't enough wiggle room between them for it to blaze its own product class. I think that SJ blew it here.

Movie Review: Avatar

2010-01-10T07:30:00.004-06:00

I wrote a review of the movie Avatar, but David Brooks has a much better one that says the same thing. If I read one movie review all year, I'd throw down in January for this one.

And another excellent review...

Aether: Bad Science or the Answer?

2009-12-09T01:57:00.003-06:00

At my relatively unique college, we have finally gotten to the moderns in physics.

Some things are almost terrifying.

>The "speed of light" (300,000 km/s) turns out to be more of a geometrical constant than a physical one.

>In our own frame of reference, we are always moving at a constant velocity through time and we never move through space.

>Aether is a remarkably convenient answer to 95% of the problems in modern physics. But the theory of aether is so unpopular in most circles of physics that it is not even entertained.

>A lot of physical phenomena doesn't make sense unless true action at a distance is possible (meaning that no known particle is exchanged as a medium of information or force). The notion of a "pilot wave" (which one could call an ethereal fluid surrounding a particle if one wished to mercilessly mock a physicist) seems necessary under many theories.

>If a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it, it may or may not be there depending on your point of view.

The French Revolution

2009-11-21T00:14:00.005-06:00

On finishing the Old Regime and the French Revolution by Alexis de Tocqueville, I thought it fitting to give a few of the juiciest quotes.

>...many Frenchmen have lost their taste for freedom and have come to think that, after all, an autocratic government under which all men are equal has something to be said for it... Nor do I think that a genuine love of freedom is ever quickened by the prospect of material rewards... What has made so many men, since untold ages, stake their all on liberty is its intrinsic glamour, a fascination it has in itself, apart from all "practical" considerations. For only in those countries where it reigns can a man speak, live, and breathe freely, owing obedience to no authority save God and the laws of the land. The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave. Some nations have freedom in the blood and are ready to face the greatest perils and hardships in its defense. It is not for what it offers on the material plane that they love it; they regard freedom itself as something so precious, so needful to their happiness that no other boon could compensate for its loss, and its enjoyment consoles them even in their darkest hours.

>Thus our quarrel is not about the value of freedom per se, but stems from the opinion of our fellow men, high or low as the case may be; indeed it is no exaggeration to say that a man's admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.

>The form of tyranny sometimes described as "democratic despotism" was championed by Economists well before the Revolution. They were for abolishing all hierarchies, all class distinctions, all differences of rank, and the nation was to be composed of individuals almost exactly alike and unconditionally equal. In this undiscriminated mass was to reside, theoretically, the sovereign power; yet it was to be carefully deprived of any means of controlling or even supervising the activities of its own government.

>It has been said that the character of the philosophy of the eighteenth century was a sort of adoration for the human intellect, an unlimited confidence in the power to transform at will laws, institutions, customs. To be accurate, it must be said that the human intellect which some of these philosophers adored was simply their own. They showed, in fact, and uncommon want of faith in the wisdom of the masses. I could mention several who despised the public almost as heartily as they despised the Deity... Very different from this is the respect shown by Englishmen and Americans for the sentiments of the majority of their fellow citizens. Their intellect is proud and reliant, but never insolent; and it has led to liberty, while ours has done little but invent new forms of servitude.

>Even in our own time we find men who seek to compensate for their groveling servility to the meanest jack-in-office by declaiming against God and who, while going back on all that was freest, noblest, and most inspiring on the revolutionary ideal, pride themselves on keeping faith with its true spirit by remaining hostile to religion.

>The Roman law carried civil society to perfection, but it invariably degraded political society, because it was the work of a highly civilized and thoroughly enslaved people. Kings naturally embraced it with enthusiasm, and established it wherever they could throughout Europe; its interpreters became their Ministers or their chief agents. Lawyers furnished them at need with legal warrant for violating the law. They have often done so since. Monarchs who have trampled the laws have almost always found a lawyer ready to prove the lawfulness of their acts-to established learnedly that violence was just, that the oppressed were in the wrong.

>Being unable to find anything in contemporary Europe corresponding to this ideal State, they dreamed of, our Economists turned their eyes to the Far East... That unenlightened barbarian government which lets itself be manipulated at will by a handful of Europeans was held by them as a model to the world.

TANSTAAFL

2009-11-20T13:53:00.000-06:00

TANSTAAFL...

More on Windows 7

2009-11-17T00:52:00.003-06:00

I did a clean upgrade with Windows 7. So I wouldn't know about any messed up file structures. Things are different in that regard though with all of these "libraries". But I would imagine once I get used to them I might actually like them.

And I have found no bugs, except that the colors in Starcraft get all messed up (its an old program and this is more of a compatibility issue). As the IT folks here at college screwed things up such that I haven't been able to get any Windows Updates, I can't help but admire the unpatched stability.

On the speed of it, I did my clean install from Vista 32-bit on a Toshiba laptop with some bloatware which I haven't figured out how to remove, and I went to Windows 7 64-bit. Things are a bit faster, but I can't say what of that is due to the few bits of bloatware that I couldn't remove, and what is due to Win6.1 (Windows 7 is Windows 6.1.7600) improvements over Win6 (Windows Vista SP2 is Windows 6.0.6002).

If you do a clean install of any OS, you'll always get a faster system than if you buy the same system from Dell or whoever but with all of their bloatware programs installed.

I was thinking about turning UAC up from its default setting of less annoying to more annoying just because I think that it is ridiculous that UAC doesn't kick in when you screw around with UAC (this is a security issue). If they just did that, UAC would be perfect.

The Home Network feature may come in handy when I get home for Christmas.

Wordpad has gotten an impressive makeover and is quite nice. The calculator is a bit nicer as well.

My general sense is, as I said before, this is what Vista should have been.

Windows 7: Windows Vista with fewer bugs

2009-11-14T00:27:00.000-06:00

I just got Windows 7 installed a day ago. It really seems to be what it is reported to be: Vista with fewer bugs. If only Microsoft released this instead of Vista.

"They Didn't Stick to Their Principles"

2009-11-04T21:06:00.002-06:00

I read an interesting HuffPost article about Obama the candidate as opposed to Obama the president. The article ignores fundamental political realities.

Everyone likes to talk about radical change, and voters often vote on radical change rhetoric. But voters do not actually like radical change. Radical change is always something radical, and from the fringes. The many like gradual changes to one side of the status quo or the other. If someone actually tried to carry out all of the radical changes that he campaigned on, he'd get thrown out of office.

Elections are decided by centrists. Though it may sound counterintuitive at first, the many will never suffer the core "principles" the base of the party that it votes into power. Moderation is, was, and always will be the key to electoral success.

More on Smith: Wrongful Accusations and Punishments

2009-11-01T16:39:00.004-06:00

Reading more of Adam Smith's TMS, he says: "An innocent man, brought to the scaffold by the false imputation of an infamous or odious crime, suffers the most cruel misfortune which it is possible for innocence to suffer."

I strongly agree with Smith here. In a very true sense, the punishment of an innocent man for a crime is itself a greater crime than the crime for which the innocent man is falsely punished. I think about all those cases where an innocent man is exonerated for a crime, but the family of the victim still accuse him. The family commits a most odious and despicable offense. Certainly, to wrongly accuse someone of rape or murder is a greater moral offense than the actual murder or rape of which the innocent person is wrongly accused.

Smith probably wasn't an opponent of capital punishment, but I would apply this line of reasoning specifically to that issue. It is worse than murder to execute an innocent man for murder (or any other offense). The judge, jury, prosecutor, and executioner of an innocent man commit a crime far worse than murder; and all of them justly deserve a punishment far more awful than the wrongful sentence.

Perhaps I Am Not So Vain

2009-11-01T16:11:00.003-06:00

I am writing a big paper on Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In the book, Smith makes the claim that most men (and all of the good ones) desire "praiseworthiness" above not necessarily merited praise.

I have often done things that I have regarded as "praiseworthy" simply because those things were praiseworthy. I have always felt very good after doing praiseworthy things.

I saved an old lady and her dog from being run over a couple of years ago. I was filled with the greatest satisfaction. What I did was certainly most praiseworthy.

I have been in my College's student council for a while. Last year, the Council's number two used greatly dishonest and dishonorable means to injure another student. Despite the fact that the fellow injuring the other had so successfully deceived everyone in the moment that everyone disapproved of the other, and despite the fact that I could have gained much in going along with him and falsely accusing the other student of something that he didn't do, I stood up for the kid in the right against the tide of the other 30 people in the room. I most certainly was not showered with praise in the moment. Afterwards when most figured out what was actually going on, I received much praise. But in the moment, it would seem as though I was motivated not by what I would be praised for, but by that for which I would be praiseworthy.

So Smith might just be right, at least about me. I am often motivated by what is "praiseworthy" as opposed to that for which I will receive praise.

I have always, for whatever reason, regarded my preference for the "praiseworthy" as a sort of vanity. How vain is it that I would help the old lady because I knew that I should be rightly praised for it? But Smith seems to look at things from a different angle. To Smith, the vain one is the one who seeks praise (deserved or not) for its own sake; while the virtuous one is the one who does that which is praiseworthy.

So at least according to Smith, I am not as vain as I thought.

South Park's W.T.F.

2009-10-24T02:14:00.002-05:00

I was most impressed with the latest South Park episode W.T.F. It was about "professional wrestling".

This will be a bit of a spoiler for those who haven't seen it, but what the heck:

Basically, the four boys decide to get into "wrestling", which they very accurately understand to be a form of theater where drama and plot are put above things like toughness and masculinity. Their wrestling matches are not-so-ambiguously presented as something more akin to traditional theater than anything like boxing or real martial arts. And over the course of the entire episode, they act sometimes vaguely and sometimes rather clearly in a way that a normal person might call "gay".

There is something simply sublime about portraying everyone involved in "professional wrestling" as a bunch of pansies. Parker and Stone really pulled it off.

I'll go with the cheeze...

2009-10-11T04:08:00.002-05:00

The Onion is such an excellent news source. They have a little piece on pizza.

I have never understood folks who put everything that they can think of on a pizza. A pizza is a pizza and a steak is a steak and so on. With more than two or three toppings, it just gets nasty.

Cell Phones

2009-09-13T22:03:00.003-05:00

I got a new cell phone. An iPhone as a matter of fact, though I didn't ask for one (it is more or less a gift). But it doesn't get any signal. I'm quite bothered by it. The cell providers should really start investing in signal strength and network quality before they start panning all sorts of fancy phones with fancy features that their networks can't deliver.

The Laws of Men

2009-09-12T23:51:00.003-05:00

Earlier tonight, I was at a party that is held each year on top of a mountain. This mountain is in a national forest, and the party is full of law-breaking (albeit, like just about every other college party). Every year there is a fire at this party, a highly illegal fire managed by drunk and stoned kids in a national forest that isn't too wet and thus quite fire prone.

Due to various factors, several of us decided that there should be no fire. In order to affect this end, fire extinguishers were brought and three students, to boys and a girl, were keeping them.

Some folks tried to start a fire, and as expected the three put it out. A scuffle broke out between seven or so guys and the two guys when the seven or so went after the extinguishers. One relatively big guy tore the girl's fire extinguisher away from her rather violently, even though she hand't used it or participated in putting out the fire, and then he sprayed it right in her face. The girl wasn't really hurt that bad physically, but her feelings were obviously and rightly injured.

I walked her down the mountain. She said something, it was something like "people will think less of me because of this". I had this boiling feeling the whole way. After I got down, I stormed back up this steep mountain path with a strange drive. I was confused about something and my fists kept clenching. I'm not a big man, and this guy is a bit bigger, but for some reason that never crossed my mind. I didn't quite know what I would do when I got back to the top. Near the top, some of my higher reasoning faculties kicked back in and, when I finally got to the top, I went over and insisted that the man go back down and apologize to the girl that he had hurt. He went back down with great haste, and as I just now learned, humbled himself to her satisfaction. I cooled down a bit.

I spoke to a friend of mine a while ago about it. This friend is the nearest thing to a real pacifist that I can think of. I told him how I felt. I told him, "I really thought about fighting him". He said something that I didn't quite expect from one of such a mild nature; he said "that would have been very noble."

There are certain laws that we men seem to have amongst ourselves. I don't know what rules women keep amongst themselves, but no man thinks less of a woman for being struck by an honorless dog. A man is never ever ever to raise his hands in anger against a woman. This is a sacred law, which all men are expected to honor. Men who do not honor this law are cut from the rolls of men and are thought of as men no more. And if a non-man breaks this law, it is held by all men as his fault and his fault alone.

No Laughing Matter

2009-08-31T11:07:00.004-05:00

I stumbled across the "Texas Nationalist Movement", and I must say I was truly terrified. It's even more embarrassing that our governor allowed his face to be put up on their frightful website. Seriously? Who wants to jump ship from the U.S.? All we'd get is an unsound currency and an economy without proper access to the markets of the other 49 states. It's funny to talk about, but in real life nobody should ever ponder this as a possibility so long as our president isn't Fidel Castro.

Girly Music?

2009-08-25T01:39:00.004-05:00

Listening to country channels (yeah, I know...) on the way from Houston to Oklahoma I came upon an interesting observation.

About 4 out of every 5 (or somewhere near there) songs played have men singing, and there are never consecutive female songs.
I personally kind of like some of the ladies' singing. But then it struck me: wouldn't it kind of be girly if I liked to listen to chicks sing? Isn't that something that only other women are supposed to care for?
My observation on this was what struck me. I do like songs with women singers, I quite like them to be truthful about it; but my sense of "masculinity" bars me from openly liking songs sung by women. Further, if I hear to consecutive ladies' songs in a row my inner sense of masculinity begins to feel insulted, especially if I'm with another guy.

I wonder if it is similar for other men. This would explain the stations' well rationed use of songs with women singing.

Houston Traffic

2009-08-20T02:03:00.002-05:00

Anyone who hasn't lived in a large town probably doesn't understand the pain that we city-folk feel every day when we want to get from one place to another. Whenever I go to see relatives in Oklahoma, whenever they use the term "traffic" to refer to something that exists in Oklahoma I just laugh. I've been in Houston all summer and I still haven't gotten used to the traffic again. Well, at least there's no real traffic in Santa Fe, and soon I won't have to worry too much about how bad it is here in Houston.

HDBS

2009-08-18T23:13:00.003-05:00

I've noticed that the term HD is everywhere now. It has a lot of legitimate applications. The TV medium has been revolutionized and TV plays a big part of our lives (directly or indirectly).

But the term HD is being used in other contexts inappropriately, and sometimes downright deceptively. Take digital cameras. Granted that there are a lot of complex standards out there for various things, what everyone refers to as "HD" in imaging is understood by those who understand it to be an image that is 1920 pixels wide by 1080 pixels high (about 2 million pixels, or 2 Megapixels). A lot of digital cameras are now being advertised as capable of taking "HD" images. Sounds great right? Only if you don't understand that a 2 megapixel digital camera is the sort of thing that they hand out with happy meals at McDonald's. Admittedly nobody's selling 2 megapixel cameras, but advertising a camera as being capable of taking 2 megapixel images is like advertising a car that can go 20 miles and hour.

But it gets downright nasty with computer displays. It used to be that the best common display resolution was 1920 by 1200. So? Who cares, right? But now they take the same classes of computers and advertise them as HD, meaning 1920 by 1080 instead of by 1200. In other words, they're presenting something as being visually superior which is technically visually inferior to their older equivalent products.

And the term HD in audio is meaningless when applied to disc mediums. Disc audio formats have been so good that improvements are imperceptible for a long time. The CD audio standard has been around since 1980 and almost all humans can't tell a difference between CDs and anything better. There's some room for improvement, but that's in the sound systems playing the music or other audio and not the audio medium itself. So a lot of this HD audio crap is the equivalent of selling a movie medium on its inclusion of the UV spectrum.

So when I see the term HD used outside of the realm of video, I make sure that I'm not paying more for a downgrade.

Firefox or Chrome?

2009-08-17T22:30:00.003-05:00

I have a lot of good things to say about Google's Chrome Browser. It has substantially better memory management and core stability, primarily due to its use of separate application instances for each tab. It has the Omnibar, which is a truly killer feature. And it's fast.

But nowadays, I use Firefox most of the time.

Chrome, meaning both the "beta" and "stable" channel variants, has a truly killer bug where text fields somehow become unusable. This problem has occurred across operating systems and computers. This bug is so bad that it more than wipes its Omnibar advantage. And Chrome is far less extensible. The NoScript extension for Firefox is a must have for secure browsing and it isn't available for Chrome. And finally, Firefox has gotten the edge on speed for the time being.

Twitter

2009-07-30T23:10:00.001-05:00

I don't get twitter. I am what most would consider a very technically inclined sort, but I suppose I must have an archaic streak or something. Why churn out tons of tiny little messages? I hope it's just a fad.

The Behavior of My Cat

2009-07-23T01:38:00.002-05:00

I have this cat. It never, and by never I mean never, leaves me alone, with exceptions of course to when it is eating, and the like. It must at all times be being petted by me or it becomes upset.

I've noticed that the cat always seems to be worried about:

A) The most likely point of entry for an agressor

B) The most expedient way of flight if attacked

C) Every possible point of ambush

It's kind of interesting to watch it. It's so security minded. If I could just teach it to bark it'd be worth a dozen guard dogs.

The Latest Harry Potter Film

2009-07-21T03:19:00.003-05:00

Can movie folks get over the whole "Nazi" character already?

Browsers

2009-07-20T02:49:00.002-05:00

I must say that I am quite impressed with the latest Firefox (3.5). It's much faster, and Chrome seems to have a few bugs. I suppose this is E-Wadda's turf through...

P.S. Yeah, I know. I haven't posted in a while. I usually post less in the summer though.

I Should Have Kicked The Dog

2009-07-01T18:11:00.003-05:00

I was going on my daily walk today. There was a lady about 100 feet down the sidewalk who was walking three large dogs. I was walking faster than her and her dogs would stop from time to time to smell things. She and her dogs went to the grass by the sidewalk to smell things and I took the opportunity to try and pass. One of her dogs was off its leash and starting off away from her. I moved into its path to prevent its flight. It snarled violently, even more violently than most upset dogs do, at me. After a few tense moments the lady said something to the effect of "I was trying to stay ahead of you; and you shouldn't come up behind the dogs because it upsets them".

What did I do?

-I was casually walking along a sidewalk.

-I adhered to convention by not tailing her close and by attempting to pass at an appropriate interval (moving with your dogs to the grass by the sidewalk is an understood way of inviting a person behind you to pass).

-I fulfilled my neigborly duty in attempting to assist her in the recovery of her loose animal.

What did she do?

-She had more animals than she could expect to maintain control over.

-In having so many animals at once, she was so occupied in maintaining control over them that she neglegently failed to perform several customary acts including:

>Failing to properly estimate my walking speed relative to hers,

>Attempting to outpace a clearly faster moving person,

>Failing to either offer or accept requests of a faster moving person to pass,

>Failing to maintain control over her animals,

>And openly insulting me with her accusations of neglegence.

Further,

When you are around someone whose dog is snarling at you, you don't do anything because the person is right there and is expected and can be reasonably relied upon to maintain or quickly regain control over his animal. But when you are around a wild animal, you are not expected to give the beast the benefit of the doubt.

In a man vs. dog contest, a lot will come down to who its first. Our humanly advantage is our legs. They allow us to strike from a relative distance with great force and they give us an agility advantage. We kick the dog and keep our distance. We can also attempt throwing, grappling, and slamming strikes. But if a dog gets a bite out of us first, we'll go down. If it gets an arm we must resort to bestial ground fighting techniques (rolling and flailing around) and punching with the other arm (and punches mean far lass than kicks).

I couldn't have been expected to assume that this lady could get hold of her dog while keeping control of her other two. If she moved over quick the other dogs would probably think that they were joining the fight. And I'd rather be kicking two dogs than punching three.

Her insulting attempt to blame me for her highly improper conduct was outrageous. I should have kicked her dog.

Get Your Facts Straight! - (AOL) Time Warner

2009-04-30T13:17:00.004-05:00

AOL bought Time Warner in 2000-2001. Time Warner was the smaller company which was bought by AOL. Time Warner was absolutely not the "senior partner" in the merger.

As happens from time to time, not too long after AOL bought Time Warner the AOL side of the newly enlarged and renamed AOL tanked. Then, because internet service providers and media companies have competing interests (involving media downloading), the AOL branch of AOL Time Warner (which was just a ranamed AOL Time Warner after AOL bought Time Warner) took AOL out of AOL's company name in order to disassociate themselves from their Time Warner aquisition. Thus, not too long after the merger, the AOL branch of Time Warner (which is just AOL renamed after AOL bought Time Warner) became the "smaller", "junior" branch of the combined company.

So technically, right now AOL renamed Time Warner is trying to spin its core branch off. I know it is confusing and folks have short memories and may not remember that AOL was the bigger fish; but folks should get their facts straight.

New York and Planes

2009-04-30T00:30:00.001-05:00

I must comment, whoever allowed Airforce One to fly over the New York skyline should be beaten senseless. It is the dumbest thing I have heard of in a long time.

On Software Versioning

2009-04-18T16:50:00.008-05:00

E-Wadda has an interesting series going on about web browsers over at his blog. He lately noted some of the weird versioning practices of companies like Microsoft. Google too has its own share of awkward versioning.

For those who don't know, in theory at least, the "model" system of software versioning goes like this:

-"Pre-Alpha": Pre-Alpha programs are essentially those which are in such an early stage of construction that they are not functional. Only open source programs are commonly available to the public at this stage.

-Alpha: Alpha releases are early test releases of a program that are functional but which are still "feature incomplete".

-Beta: Beta releases are late stage test releases which are often feature complete but with serious bugs which need working out or which need further testing more generally. Most closed source programs are made available in "public betas".

-Release Candidate (RC): Release candidates are, just as their name indicates, candidates for the final release of the program. This means that the RC has no known show-stopping bugs and will become the final release unchanged unless show stopping bugs are discovered which require fixing and perhaps another Release Candidate.

Microsoft is infamous for abusing this system. Whereas a lot of open source programs stay in nominally beta stages for years even though they are rock-solid business-class stable software, Microsoft puts out release candidates which are feature incomplete and "final releases" which have known "show-stopping bugs". This means essentially that MS's nominally "Release Candidate" programs are what would technically be considered "alpha class test releases" and its nominally "final releases" are often what would technically be considered "beta class test releases".

There are, of course, other forces at work. I don't know why OpenSSL which I have linked to above has stayed in "testing" since the 90s when it has been 100 times more solid than even something like XP SP3 for years. In the open source world where techs tend to have a lot more say over marketing (insofar as there is marketing) things tend to get versioned honestly and perhaps at times even too harshly.

Closed source and some open source business programs get "marketing versions". Take Windows XP or Windows Vista. Windows XP is technically "Windows NT 5.1" and Windows Vista is technically "Windows NT 6.0". Windows 7 will technically be "Windows NT 6.1". And in a very real sense, Windows 7 is more of a finalized bug-fixed release of Windows Vista than a technically new product.

Red Hat Linux pulled something similar jumping from version 2.1 to 3.0.3 because their marketing folks knew that "3.0.3" would sound more stable. And Gmail as I linked to above is in nearly perpetual beta because their marketing folks think that it will make the program sound "cutting edge".

So yeah, it doesn't make any sense in practice. There are consistent rules out there in theory, but don't ask the marketing folks to follow them.

Pirates Lose

2009-04-12T13:00:00.000-05:00

It seems as though we didn't whimp out and pay the pirates this time. How wonderful!

Still More Thoughts on Pirates

2009-04-11T23:09:00.002-05:00

Alright, I have the most original plan in the world to get rid of piracy.

The first thing you do is kill every pirate you find immediately. This means that you aren't supposed to "capture" them anymore or "take them alive" them when they (try to) surrender.

The next thing you do is find out where they hang out and blow the Hell out of it followed up by an infantry invasion where you kill everyone who even looks remotely pirate-like.

That's the whole plan. It's really simple.

I cannot believe anyone nowadays would be so dumb as to think about paying them or negotiating with them. That's exactly what they want. Their whole business model is based upon wusses who pay them off. As long as you try to do anything other than methodically exterminate them, they'll keep making money and keep being pirates and keep making more pirates out of their friends. I don't get this whole "partrol the Gulf of Aden" crap either. It makes no sense at all. Passive patroling doesn't beat piracy; killing pirates beats piracy.

Anyone who knows anything of the history of piracy ought to be able to figure this out pretty quickly. The only way to deal with a pirate is to kill him.

Seriously, they're pirates for heaven's sake!

America vs. Pirates III

2009-04-11T16:29:00.003-05:00

It has been a long time since America vs. Pirates I and America vs. Pirates II; and it seems to be time for another episode.

Apparently a bunch of pirates are trying to help out their pirate buddies, but American warships happen to be around. I only hope our navy doesn't give in and let the pirates live. And for Heaven's sake, don't pay them!

On another note, pirates have the weirdest effects on humanity. They seem to be the one bunch of folks in the world that can bring The United States, Russia, China, Iran, The EU, and Al-Qaeda together. Because apparently even Islamo-Fascist Terrorist organizations hate pirates.

It is so hard to wrap my mind around. Even nations at war with each other seem to be able to sail on the same side against pirates (see America vs. Pirates II and the War of 1812). It is almost touching.

Pirates

2009-04-09T16:33:00.003-05:00

I'm glad to hear that our sailors still have some fight left in us after a couple of centuries. I don't know how 4 men with AKs could lose to 100 unarmed sailors, much less 20, but they sure got their arses handed to them this time.

But in any case...

Piracy is one of three "crimes" that I could conscience "capital punishment" for. The other two are slaving (which is arguably a mere form of piracy) and genocide. And for all three it is only because these three things are so barbaric and uncivil they are beyond that which laws are able to reasonably comprehend. But let me not get too much into the philosophy of this. There is no "civilized" way to deal with piracy. Piracy is a most base form of warfare, and is in the truest sense predation on civilization.

That is how piracy was put down before, and that is how it must be put down again. Mercy? No. Human rights? Laughable, they have none. Pirates have been known from the dawn of time as "enemies of all mankind".

As far as I am concerned: String the pirates up and bombard their ports into rubble.

Who Shoots Cops

2009-04-07T19:58:00.004-05:00

Three cops got shot in Pittsburgh the other day. It's downright awful.

And whoever the kid was is dumb as a rock. Who shoots cops? There is no good reason for it. Apparently he was one of those "I'm gonna stock up guns for the end of the world" types. My family has lots of guns, but none of us would be so dumb as to shoot a cop. What's the point? Maybe you'll kill all of the cops in town and free the people from the despotism of being unable to have dogs which urinate inside of their mother's houses. All you need is enough bullets and body armor... No. They'll kill you if you're lucky or catch you if you're not. Maybe you'll be a martyr or a hero for the "cause"... no. Everyone will hate you, and justly so.

Why should a private citizen have a gun? Well there's sporting, self-defense from criminals, entertainment, symbolism, and self-defense from the government. The last one is what the crazies don't understand correctly. The crazies equivocate everything they do with "good" and every attempt the government makes to end their wicked ways as "oppression". Few philosophies could be more self-centered.

I'll use my gun to defend myself against the government when hell freezes over and they start mass gun confiscations and draconian searches. If it comes down to that, I'd join an army. And at least half of our God-fearing military wouldn't have it and so I wouldn't have to go far to find some actual army officer (as opposed to a psychotic militia leader) with his own resistance militia or whatever. Even if I was being arrested unjustly and even if I thought the cop knew it, I couldn't fault him to the point of killing him. The man is just doing his job, and he probably has no reason to think he isn't doing what's right. Maybe if he were one of those mythical Hollywood conspiracy assassin cops, but there aren't any of those around in Texas. I would never take a gun out alone and shoot a cop.

Worthless swine who shoot cops in order to protect their own "freedom" (freedom to allow their dog piss all over their mother's private property) only achieve two things: they commit murder and they make another excuse for the government to take guns from those of us who aren't stark-raving mad.

Buzzards and Cows

2009-03-26T22:28:00.002-05:00

I went out to the family ranch in the Texas Hill Country for the first time in a while, and I saw three very interesting things.

First, I saw a couple of baby buzzards. Buzzards are about the ugliest things on Earth, but I had always thought that at least their babies would be sightly. I was dead wrong. Buzzard babies are as ugly as Hell, they're big, and they growl if you get too close to them.

Second, I saw a cow come through a fence. We have three kinds of fences: electric fences, barbed wire fences, and net fences. I had always been told that cows stayed on whichever side of the fence more because of a lack of motivation than a lack of might. We were tagging, dehorning, and if needed emasculating calves. To do this we rope the calf and stick it in a holder thing; and it isn't wise to do this right in front of mamma or in the middle of a lot of cows so we herd off as many adults as we can and get to work.

This female calf was the last of the day and we had some trouble earlier trying to find mammas for each calf. Some of them were just to scared or negligent to care to come around to pick up their newly tagged babies.

This momma happened to be on the other side of the fence as we were working right up against the fence and she was obviously less than overjoyed by the whole happening. This fence happened to be mostly net with just one string of barbed wire. The whole process of dehorning and tagging doesn't take but 40 seconds but mamma wasn't inclined to wait it out.

There were three of us and my step-mother and the ranch hand happened to be thinking about the bleating calf. Having an admittedly unbecoming fear of large herbivores, I was thinking about pissed off mamma. She pushed her weight against the fence and came though it like the metal wire was butter. I yelled at my stepmom to get out of the way of momma rushing her back and she sure as Hell jumped out of the way. Mamma then turned her attention to the ranch hand who was then dehorning (which involves the nasty job of lightly charing that part of the calf's head, the smell of burnt hair, and a clearly distressed calf). The ranch hand backed of and mamma then went straight for her baby. I handed my stepmom the cattle prod as mamma looked at her baby girl and most surely pondered the best way of obliterating her daughter's restraints without injuring the calf herself. Had we waited more than twenty seconds longer I'm sure her pea-sized mom-crazed brain would have found a way and gone to work. But we prodded her off, finished the job, and let the calf go.

It was a bit scary and a real pain, but my ornery Texan soul has a bit of a soft spot for anything that won't let anything come between it and its baby. This momma had heart and I can't say I wasn't in a way much more impressed with this rough determined cow than the other, less dutiful, mothers.

Third, I saw what I must truly call a mad cow. Not a sick one, but a crazy one. She had one big utter but no calves. This is because instead of eating from a pile of hay or a few dozen acres of grass she commonly preferred to lie down and suckle herself. What a dumb animal...

I thought later that I'd suggest we send that one to the slaughter house. A responsible if perhaps still belligerent mother I can stand, but an incompetent adult isn't something I'd keep in our herd.

Tom Palmer is a bum

2009-03-12T01:38:00.002-05:00

Tom G. Palmer was a bum for much of his life. Or so the National Institute on Family Homessness says.

As someone who knows a thing or two about economics, it's easy to get bad numbers past readers who don't check your sources and methodology.