triticale - the wheat / rye guy

Spam Update

I'll have an extended essay regarding recent spam once I have brought my archives over and can present my analysis of the strange strings of words we are receiving.

In the meantime, I want to report that I got my first ever spam for laxatives. Subject line: Works So Great You Will Need New Underwear!

Indeed

Dustbury nails it.

Read the whole thing.

Update: I completely missed this discussion of the topic. A couple of the comments are truly incitefull. Hattip to Erica.

It's I bout time

After having long been neglected, the Letter of the Day has just been detected. My first two I words must thusly be Inspected and Injected.

The Industorious Clock would have been my answer for the recent Cheddar-X favorite Internet time site question.

Inferno(tm) is a new network operating system and programming environment to deliver content in a rich environment of heterogeneous networks, clients and servers, and as such out beyond my level of geekitude.

Are you a member of the Implicit Association ? Take this test to find out.

Idols and Icons and Bears, oh my!

There are Indications that my Index Includes more, but I am Indicicisive so the list is Incomplete.

You are Jocko's Streamliner

Which Classic Dragster Are You?

Sorry. This isn't a real internet quiz. Velociman came up with the concept and this is my take on it. I'm just amazed that the meme hadn't taken off long before I got to it.

Test Plus

Rather than just stick a handy text block up here, as Pixy did on my behalf to get things started, here's a link to something amusing upon which I just stumbled.

More after I manage to replace last night's sleep lost driving an extra shift.

The Germ

Ogden Nash

A mighty creature is the germ,
Though smaller than the pachyderm.
His customary dwelling place
Is deep within the human race.
His childish pride he often pleases
By giving people strange diseases.
Do you, my poppet, feel infirm?
You probably contain a germ.

Libertarian Purity is Pretty Ugly

Most of my end of the blogosphere was taking and discussing the so-called "Libertarian Purity Test" a few days ago. Xrlq took the test, scored a 57, as compared to my 31, and still raised the same objections which I have. He even put "purity" in quotes, which suggests that he shares my believe that libertarian purity is an oxymoron. Suman Palit, who identifies himself as a lbertarian, scored a 55 and raises similar objections to the test's approach.

The first interesting thing about the test is how non-linear the scoring is. My 31 out of 160 is supposed to put me solidly in their camp; I just need to guzzle more of the Kool-Aid. This is a standard Libertarian tactic, and I believe that it does them more harm than good. The majority of the US population, if asked in vague generalities, believes we would be better off with less government. Despite this, the Libertarian Party rarely draws five percent of the vote in major elections, and was lucky to get ten percent in the last Wisconsin gubernatorial election, with a candidate with great name recognition running against mediocre candidates from both major parties. As far as I can tell, they still foresee eventual victory if they continue doing what they have been.

Separation of school and state is a tenet of pure libertarian doctrine. School vouchers still mean the government is collecting and distributing money for education and cannot be seen as an improvement. To the impure libertarian vouchers are seen as loosening the grip of the government/union school monopoly, and to many parents who never considered libertarianism, they are an opportunity to perhaps improve their children's chance of a good education. My own position is that the existing school boards might as well continue running the schools they do, but that every parent should get vouchers, which they can use to send their children where they see fit, and if the government schools need more money per student than the competition it is up to them to justify it. Parents who educate at home would get special limited vouchers for curriculum materials, and would get access to structured schools for such facilities as laboratories, workshops, gymnasia and shooting ranges.

There is a Libertarian bumper sticker which says "Drugs are bad but the Drug War is worse" and most people tend to agree. Majorities have voted for laws giving regulated access to medical marijuana to those who can benefit from it, and reduced penalties or decriminalization of recreational use of the same herb does not horrify most people. Elimination of all drug laws, as the pure libertarians advocate, does. Even I, now in my 35th year of youthful experimentation (and, at the moment, my 30th year of abstaining during Lent) understand what a mistake that would be, at least until we can work our way to establishing a culture of moderation.

One introduction to libertarianism which I read (I regret that I have been able to identify the book even after searching my memory, the web, and the library's online catalog) contained a series of graphs purporting to show that government action did not effect such trends as increased integration and increased industrial safety. This is embarrassingly naïve. Trends do not remain linear. Anyone who watched either process knows beyond a doubt that regardless of the flaws of Affirmative Action or the stupidity of having factories inspected by people with no factory experience, both Civil Rights legislation and OSHA served to overcome resistance to further change.

I don't want to get into the whole "anti-interventionist" thing, other than to point out that "Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins" ought not mean "you have a perfect right to go around beating people up as long as you leave me alone".

In my opinion, and the results of the Purity Test I have seen posted seem to support this, impure libertarianism, also known as pragmatic libertarianism, has a broader following than Libertarianism. We could, perhaps, take over the Libertarian Party, but I think it would be more effective, even tho it will take several election cycles, to take over the Republican Party. I will leave development of a strategy for doing one or the other to everyone else who scored in the 30s thru the 60s.

Public Notice

To all companies who advertise via Shopnav's so-called search assistant:
Effective today, any time my browsing is hijacked by this abomination, I will save the page, and extract all advertisers URLs. I will check them out without providing the referral back to shopnav or overture.com. I will find out what you are selling, and arrange my life so as to do without it. I will spend more elsewhere, I will suffer, I will starve, but I will not do business with you. I will not buy your products second hand, I will not accept them as gifts, I will not drag them home if I find them by the side of the road.

Do not bother contacting me to announce you have disassociated yourself from them or that your child needs medicine. You knew what they were when you contracted to impose yourself upon me and there can be no redemption.

Kind Of Like Luther

"Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise." In fact, even if we move to our other property three blocks away this year as planned, the move will be below the resolution of the Geourl system.

This steam traction engine is known as "Martin Luther" for similar reasons. It has sat for over 100 years in the spot where it broke down.

I mean neither to mock nor honor Luther with this. I am not Christian; my wife is Calvinist. It was a pretty cool thing to say, if in fact he did.