Who knew Jackie Mason had aregular video blog? And who knew he was a far better ranter than me? I feel like I’m in the presence of a far better man than I. I humbly take off my hat.
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impressedI don’t think I can be too expressive about how annoyed I am at the moment with the state of LiveJournal client aps. Too many crashes and too much annoyance in formatting design. What I want right now is one that can actually embed images with a simple formatting directive to put it right/left as appropriate, make it a link, and let me go on with my life. SEmagic was my poison-of-choice, but it’s taken a significant dip into madness and chaos of late, and it’s less than usable now. I’ve had it crash three times today on me, and I find that unacceptable given my modest requirements.
What I wish I had was a simple Markdown to HTML editor that was reasonably stand-alone and had some additional ability to let me add-on to the syntax it understands to get things like quick-and-dirty tables / character formatting beyond bold/italic / embedded images with alignment tags and height/width working. I don’t think I’d need much more than that for my purposes. It’s almost enough to make me go digging around to see if there’s a Python-implemented Markdown processor that I could hack on. Or think about implementing something like it in Erlang.
Who’m I kidding? It’s not like I don’t have my hands full as is with Operation BSU. Which was what I was going to post about in the first place, today, and which led to this frustrating spiral of irritation with blogging tools available.
How, you might ask, am I posting this? I’m using the online Markdown parser (called “dingus,” in a rare sop to my cruel ego) to convert it into decent HTML, then I’ll cut-n-paste into the web posting facility of LiveJournal. I hate their implementation of rich-text editing because it’s insufficiently key-boardy, while Markdown is nothing but. Plus it rewrites to use the cool typographic quotes, an issue perhaps only I’m interested in, but there you go.
Grrr, say I. Grr.
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angryThough not as much as you might think.
Why? Well, let's talk about Warriors for Innocence. Let's talk about Six Apart. Hell, let's even talk about Warren Ellis.
Don't bother going to the WfI site, incidentally. Aside from being possibly the worst designed website on the face of the Earth and possibly including orbital bases, it's about as useful as tits on a boar-hog, as my father might say. Even ignoring the swath of JavaCrud it attempts to spew on you.
Why would I want to talk about Warren Ellis, you might ask?
Warren, Hell love 'im, decided to post this in response the current tempest-in-a-teapot:
Until such time as LiveJournal/Six Apart work out how to tell the difference between fantasy fiction communities/support groups/fashion discussion communities/survivor histories and actual criminal use and traffic, and restore those fiction groups and survivor support teams to full working order, my own LiveJournal will become read-only, and I will produce no new content to be read on that system.
I do believe that some stupid people got what was coming to them today. But a lot more people have been mistreated by LiveJournal for no reason beyond blind panic. I see no reason to tacitly support that by continuing to write under a LiveJournal URL.
My main website, is, of course, warrenellis.com, and that already exists as LJ feed warrenelliscom.
No, Warren, buddy, if you really cared about the issue, you'd just yank your LJ wholly with just a forwarding message to your new home on, oh, any of the ten-thousand alternatives to LJ that exist (barring Vox, TypePad, or MovableType, since all of them are owned by Six Apart) with nothing but a charming forwarding-message left behind to quell the dust. That is, pointedly, not what you did. What you actually did was what pretty much evertyne else I see around is doing, scurrying about looking for the most wretched excuse for social posturing that is conceivable. You gave out what, at best, can be seen as a very low decible whine, and muttered, "I'm going to take my balls and go home!" while meaningfully stomping your feet.
This is not, let me be clear, to say that Six Apart has been behaving in anything more than the most boneheaded and incredibly stupid of manners in this context. Can SA truthfully do nothing more than rock back and forth like an autistic child and randomly blurt out names that someone's complained about before sending them off to the cornfield? We're not even talking about some kind of sustained suicide-bombing effort against the SA compounds, which we might actually accept as a poor-but-understandable motivation. We just have SA getting what appears to be an email flood from a given organization that has a site that's about as unprofessional as they come, has no official backing that folks can turn up (and which legitimate groups post clearly and frequently), and who doesn't even seem to have the basic underpinnings of anything more than a well-orchestrated hoax.
"Hoax?" I hear you saying. "What do you mean, man!? These kooks comvinced SA to shut down communities!"
Hoax is exactly what I mean. Did anyone but me notice the recent meme-exploit that moved across LJ in the guise of Yet Another Quiz? How about the revent Eve Online / Goonswarm situation, with all the Goon's "conveniently revealed" information coming just before a holiday period such that Eve couldn't respond for a crucial several day period?
At a certain point in every social group, the number of assholes becomes self-selecting and spontaneously-organizing in a self-supporting way. It appears the number of folks on the Net with factional agendas has reached such a point with various subcultures. Oh, joy. Moreover, the number of idiots in positions of decision-making power has always been unnaturally large, as a result of the rest of us promoting them just to keep them away from the things that really matter to keeping an organization running. Thus, SA's decision-making in this environment.
So, bottom-lining it, my take on this whole situation is that Warriors for Innocence is an elaborate hoax taking on the mantle of an anti-pedo front, but really just a few idiotic shit-stirrers with too much time on their hands. Compound this with Six Apart being suddenly paranoid about how things might be taken (despite the fact that in their own ToS, they disavow responsibility for things posted to LiveJournal) and the fact that a lot of the folks in the most-affected communities are the inhibitors of a universe which is constructed of two things, themselves and drama. The result is predictable: A chunk of stupid from the SA admin and a whole swath of hand-wringing from a whole lot of people no one would have given two-farts-in-a-whirlwind about two days ago ... and still don't.
I don't care if you think it's Confederate-flag-waving anti-UN Redneck Mafia members behind it. I don't care if you threaten to take 0.000000001% of the LJ population with you and go home. I really don't care if you think you need to change your interests and blog content for fear of being shut down, because that's just being a drama queen.
What I do care about is the fact that yet another tempest-in-a-teapot is exploding with much overwrought bullshit floating around and nothing at the root of it. Don't trust Six Apart anymore? Roll out and change your blogging site, it's not hard. "The Net recognizes censorship as damage and routes around it appropriately." If you don't decide to do that, then you really don't care enough to do something about it beyond a token amount.
Me? I don't care enough to do anything about it beyond a token. But I have a great token!
The phrase you're looking for here is "bring it."
( Incest, Demonology, Vivisection, Rape, Sodomy, and All Those Other Good Things )
annoyed
Boston. What in the name of flaming, inhuman Hell has caused your collective intelligence to drop to that of a dead chicken lying in the middle of the highway?
Seriously, folks. Ignore the fact that the ad elements were present in ten other cities for weeks and no one had the brain-dead stupidity to think that a brightly glowing iconic figure had anything to do with terrorism. Ignore the fact that while in Atlanta, one was stuck on the back entrance of the Buckhead police post and police in Boston have no idea what Aqua Team Hunger Force is.
Don't forget that every single media outlet in the US including Fox bought into the scare without actually showing one of the ads, despite them being findable with a trivial amount of effort, pretty much all day. Don't forget that the Boston police and DHS turned this into a crazed madhouse because they couldn't be bothered to actually look at one of the things. Don't forget that Bostonians are apparently the most wretchedly pathetically terrified group in the US.
Incidentally, good luck trying to find a picture of the actual devices on a news site. No go. Actually seeing one would reiterate exactly how stupid you would have to be to think one of them was a bomb. Or a threat. Or pretty much anything but some kind of ad or art installation. However, Flickr is positively covered with pics of the things, and eBay?
Mooninites Neon LED Sign Boston Bomb Scare Mooninite is
going for $1,999. $4,999 is you just want to buy it outright.
That's right. Within hours of the things being found in Boston, pretty much every single one in a reachable place in the other cities were grabbed up and I'm betting half of them ended up on eBay in record time.
(Admittedly, other auctions are going for somewhat less. Prices'll drop off over the next few days, if you really want one, though, and CN'd be idiots not to offer to sell these things from their own storefront.)
But here's the thing ...
I can forgive the Boston metro for not watching ATHF. Hell, I think it's a lame show. I can forgive them for not knowing what a Moononite is. I had no idea when I saw it. What I cannot forgive is none of the following statements coming up:
Are the Boston police, FBI, city and state officials so insanely out of touch that they never saw a toy that was old when I was a wee hatchling? Are the whole lot of them so useless that they don't see a Space Invader icon as really unlikely to be a threat to humanity?
That's more than slightly embarrassing. It's obscenely embarrassing.
Why are these men not looking overly concerned?
Because the charges against them are, in line with the rest of this thing, stupid. Bomb hoax? Hoax charges require proof of intent. The only folks who could be charged with hoaxing would be the folks who reported the installations as bombs, and then only if they didn't know they weren't. (Why they didn't goes back to apparently ongoing genetic failures in the Bostonian breeding population.) Creating a public disturbance? Can I sue the dumbass that pulls out into highway traffic, nearly causing a twenty-car pile-up that tangles traffic for five hours with creating a public disturbance? The folks responsible for causing a public disturbance were DHS and Boston metro ... again. Aided and abetted by a media that finds bomb scares far more interesting to promote than even the most minor of investigative journalism.
Turner Broadcasting are now saying they'll give $1mil to Boston for their trouble, and I'm sure some of the most honest executives are considering it among the best and cheapest national advertising campaigns ever. The target demographic for the show are creating "Never Forget" art and openly mocking Boston for being cry-baby idiots. With CBS expecting $2.6mil for a mere 30sec of ad space during the Superbowl, Turner has got every news show in the US giving them whole minutes at a time for a piddly $1mil.
You know that annoying phrase, "if you $NOUN$, the terrorists win!" "Act like a Bostonian" is fitting in there real nice these days.
To go from the Tea Party to this, how far the mighty have fallen.
Incidentally, some folks are suggesting that CN should have let the cities know they were pulling this stunt. Funny, but an artist having to register with the State before they can make a public exhibit smacks a bit of totalitarianism from where I sit. Commercial art is still speech, at least in this country at the moment. Slippery slope arguments aside, the difference between these guys' actions and the Space Invaders folk-art installations around the country is minimal. Remember the exchange rate of liberty for safety.
angryAccording to Tim Blair, I'm not the only one with a knife out for humanity:
Melbourne neuroscientist Dr John Reid ponders means of rescuing the planet:
War, Pestilence, and Famine, three of the horsemen of the apocalypse, can bring about a reduction in the human population. But these kill on a scale of tens of millions, which is not enough to solve the problem of over-population. And they are most brutal in the ways they kill. Consequently, let us consider the alternative ...
The next most human way to reduce the population might be to put something in the water ...
Reid believes “the world’s most affluent populations should be targeted first”.
I have to say, I'm fairly amused at the idea that respected physicians are now suggesting methods for controlling the human population intended to exceed the wonders of war, pestilence, and famine. I've been accused of having grandiose dreams, but this is rather excessive.
It gets better as you read the interview, mind you.
Of course, the obvious bits always amuse me most:
Consider just a few examples of the measures people will have to accept: First and foremost the notion of steady economic growth – every year an increase in the world's GDP, as The Wentworth Group of Scientists and the Stern Review envisage – will have to go into reverse. We in the affluent world will have to accept substantial reductions in our standard of living to allow space for the poor, mainly in Africa, to improve their nutrition and health status.
To achieve this, income and wealth distribution within our societies will have to become much more equal. The higher up the tree one is, the greater the sacrifice one will have to make.
Really, doctor? Every year the global income valuation increases, and as a result we will obviously have to accept that being at the top is bad and the folks at the bottom are obviously more worthy. He sees a group of unequal heights and a general tendency toward increasing height across the population, and his brilliant plan to save the ceilings in our houses is to cut successively larger bits of leg off of the folks who stand tallest. Forget the idea of simply building higher lintels, or comparing the rates of growth between the lowest and the highest to find the shortest are growing fastest and the tallest much more slowly. No, the clear medical solution is amputation.
You have to be a brilliant neurologist to be that flamingly imbecilic about basic economic theory. One can only hope the man employs an accountant to look after his own riches.
Even if we assumed that global wealth was a limited resource pool and not, as most modern economists seem to believe, a relatively infinite pool of valuation, is not the goal to reduce sustainable populations? Would it not then be far more useful to destroy the teeming masses at the bottom of the chain to give us greater power of accountability and action with the few, higher forms who remain? The more reasonable result given the premise is that the wretched poor in Africa should be snuffed out like insects, in order to sustain the nutrition and health status of those in the affluent, civilized world. And why not? Wouldn't you rather maintain the men and women most likely to understand and grasp your points while freeing you from the low-browed perversity of the lessers? Of course you would.
If we do not delude ourselves, and if we accept the calculations made by the Global Footprint Network and WWF (and I know of no scientific analysis that refutes the basic validity of the model) there is only one ineluctable conclusion. The population of the world must be very quickly reduced to 5 billion (that is, if 6 billions equals 120% of capacity, then 5 billions equals 100%). And then, as the average level of affluence rises, fairly quickly reduced further to, say, 2 to 3 billion.
Ah, yes, the inevitable "you'll use what stats I feel like agree with me, or you're deluded, and since I managed to cover my eyes and hum really loudly while anything like scientific critique of them came within seventeen kilometres of me, they can't be challenged" chain of argument, pretty much always seen in the company of ecological fascists and global warming dictators. And then, while we're there, we'll just make further ludicrous claims which go off into the deep absurd, because once you're that far down the rabbit hole, its not worth pretending to play nice with the other bunnies, anyway.
Two to three billion planetary inhabitants. Only a bit more than half the population of the entire planet gone poof, there. With all that maintains and all those lives maintained, more pointedly, something our illustrious neurologist may have missed when he tested out of Econ 101 lo those many years ago. The cities of Man may appear to be filled to the brim with wasted life, magnificently so in our Western megalopolises, radiant in the setting sun's dying light. You could surely wipe out, say, half the folks in the city selected at random, yes? And then the sum wealth they ever controlled would flow, ineluctably, to the rest. One Night of Long Knives and everyone in the great city gets twice as rich.
Let's assume that was, in fact, true, instead of the most stupid thing said since the last post from Daily Kos. Statistically ... who are you likely to get with a random selection of the population of a city? That's right, the poor, because it takes a whole freakin' lot of poor to support an active middle class. And a fair chunk of the middle class makes it possible for there even to be an upper class of significantly reduced numbers, comparably. So, you end up murdering mostly the poor and disenfranchised anyway, if you go about the job fairly at all.
But we're not talking fairly. Let's walk on a bit through this wonderland.
War, Pestilence, and Famine, three of the horsemen of the apocalypse, can bring about a reduction in the human population. But these kill on a scale of tens of millions, which is not enough to solve the problem of over-population. And they are most brutal in the ways they kill. Consequently, let us consider the alternative.
The most humane way to achieve a reduction in the human population would be for people to voluntarily stop breeding, but this would never happen. The urge to procreate and the innate belief that people have the inalienable right, if not the duty, to have children is too strong to be suppressed, just to save the planet.
One small, but appropriate, token gesture would be to ban immediately all forms of assisted conception, including the use of donated sperm or ova. The fact that relatively affluent couples, or single women who cannot achieve pregnancy by good old-fashioned copulation, or even choose not to do so, can demand the use of expensive medical technology to satisfy their 'need' for parenthood is unacceptable in a hugely overpopulated world.
The next most human way to reduce the population might be to put something in the water, a virus that would be specific to the human reproductive system and would make a substantial proportion of the population infertile. Perhaps a virus that would knock out the genes that produce certain hormones necessary for conception.
The world's most affluent populations should be targeted first. According to the 2006 Living Planet Report, the six populations that have the biggest per capita ecological footprint live in the United Arab Emirates, the United States of America, Finland, Canada, Kuwait, and Australia.
First, I must laud the idea that war, pestilence, and famine are simply not killing enough people. Those poor Africans we were talking about earlier could testify to the Riders' terrible inefficiency in their villages and homes. The true cynic might point out to the good doctor that, in fact, the six populations with the highest per capita ecological footprints also have amongst the lowest per capita reproductive rates. While everyone else in the city is getting taller, these families are already very tall ... but not growing much taller over time compared to the rest, and in fact, there are large gaps. So, if we kill off the Houses of the Highest, leaving their high homes for the swarthy, swarming lower Houses, it would seem the obvious problem is you now have a populace who will all crest as a tighter bunch, with no one living who was invested in providing the solution to a problem before in the city at all.
Oh, wait, let's not forget the triage.
A question I have been told I should address is this: If we interfere with the 'natural' structure of the population by limiting the production of children, how do we support an ageing population?
Dealing with a healthy aged population would be manageable. If all the world's aged were like the 80- to 90-year-old Okinawans, we could probably manage quite well. But dealing with an ageing population beset by the consequences of over-eating the wrong food and under-exercising will be an order of magnitude more difficult. Societies will not be able to provide the healthcare services needed to keep large numbers of unhealthy old people alive.
A triage approach will be necessary so that scarce medical resources go to those who can contribute most to the long-term viability of the planet. Consequently, many middle-aged-to-elderly people will die uncomfortable deaths. Not every problem is solveable.
Ah, yes. Triage. Who performs triage?
Oh, yes. Doctors. Like ... neurologists, one might think. The folks who get to decide, in all this mild population reduction, not just who lives and who dies on the face of the world but "who can contribute most to the long-term viability of the planet." I'm sure neurologists will be seen as entirely indispensable, even if they're from such high-footprint localles as sunny Australia.
Now, a man with a set of scrotes on him would be able to stand up, give a hard look and say,
"Peoples of the Western world, as I see it, the world's filling up and it's in our best interest to preserve ourselves and our ways of life, since we are wise enough to recognize not only this threat, but so many before that those occluded others did not. To that end, they must be destroyed, to be eradicated, like vermin whose presence eats too much of the granaries' stores. Genocide is never pretty, but it's our only option."
John Reid, Doctor of Neuroscience, lacks the courage of his convictions to say that. Instead we get his whining, pueling, infantile filth,
"Peoples of the Western world, as I see it, the world's filling up and it's in our best interest to, with all speed, take the sharp knife in hand and slit our own wrists. It's our fault, after all, that we so very few have so much of the resources at our command, which supports uncounted billions. Once we're gone, the rats will fight over the artefacts of a better world they aren't equipped to understand, but you can rest in your grave, content in knowing that the filth you've left behind will die off more slowly, more strangled, and less fulfilled than you ever did."
You know nothing, John Reid. You don't even have the wherewithal to be a decent villain, and you deserve no better than to be the first recipient of the largess you'd direct on the multitudes beyond your ivory tower.
A reminder, gentle reader. The people who go on at length about the evil that man has wrought on the world, the inevitable pollution of all our water, the cruelty wrought in the efforts to raise all men up to greater opportunity, lowest death rates, and safest cities of history, the eco-freaks, the global warmeningists -- they don't care anything about the life of the planet or a single man on it save themselves. They lie, for their own pleasure. They want three things, and three things only:
In that sense, at least the Islamic Jihadists have a shred of honour. They're forthright about what they think of those who are Other; they hate and despise it and call it Evil. Shaitan. The folks like Reid, they lack even that essential honesty; their religion is grounded in sand made from truths scraped off the great places of the world by rough tongues and dishonest hearts. They won't tell you you're evil, they'll just tell you that you have to die because you're not good enough to be one of them.
angryI've been pretty aggressively avoiding politics for the past couple weeks. I mean, nothing that airs in the two weeks in the run up to a mid-term election will actually make any dent in the historical record of the candidates. Anyone that's actually cared about the facts has already become acquainted with them, and those who aren't are absolutely dazzled and baffled by the sheer quantity of bullshit that's been pouring out of pretty much every media outlet in the US.
If the past couple weeks have taught us anything, it's that the question of why pretty much all of America hasn't marched on Washington and put big pointy stakes in the chests of anyone that has pretensions of political position is the most important one of our day.
I'm an admitted Third Party Voter(tm) and the truth is that I'm thinking that the hope of getting an actual choice in the political arena is about as likely as me entering it. It's a choice between thieves and robbers, rapists and sex-offenders, murderers and killers. It's a choice that is no choice, except the question of whether the rhetoric that pours out is telling me I need to give my money to the government because they know better than I do what I should do with it or I should think just like they do because ... hey, wait, you can read this either way and it still fits.
See what I mean?
So the Democrats control the House and Senate again, while simultaneously every anti-gay marriage amendment passed. Does anyone else see some kind of message in this, because my eyes bleed just thinking about it. If you were looking for some kind of referendum, I suppose it would mean that the Democratic majority should oppose the issue at the behest of their constituency, right? I mean, that is the implied method of the Constitutional madness, right?
Shall we hold our breaths for it?
More importantly, the Democrats control the House and Senate again at a mid-term election. Did the Party not actually follow the numbers on how this sort of thing generally plays out? Given the tenor of Democratic discourse since 1994, they basically have two years to save the world. How many times have we heard that everything the government is doing is wrong (regardless of the fact the Democrats voted on every issue, by and large, in the same way as the Republicans) and the Democrats could save us given two rocks and a three foot piece of rope?
Now they have the rope.
It should be very interesting to follow the Congressional votes on issues like national security and immigration, since the two things that folks in the US seem to agree on is that no Democratic plan (if they can be called that) has any chance of improving either situation. Expect the yammering for a pull-out of Iraq to hit the floor and very likely get voted down. If it doesn't, then you'll really see some parallels with Vietnam get introduced from the blogosphere and pointedly ignored by mainstream media.
Makes me want to move to Kurdish Iraq where they have a working Democracy and I have the great advantage of not speaking a word of the language. Politics can only improve in that environment. Plus, they know that public hanging can be a useful crime deterrent for tyrants. You have to respect that.
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tiredFinally got around to watching the two hour season premiere of Battlestar Galactica tonight.
Short version: Disappointing.
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disappointedA few notes on discussion and disputation in online fora:
Man, a lifetime of dealing with people online, and the core of it can be summed up in a page of bullet points.
The key issues are all about engagement. Whenever possible, pick the field. Whenever necessary, pick the weapon. Joshua was right, the only winning move is not to play, 99.9965% of the time. If you're going to play, know what you're doing and why. Before you engage, know where you'll disengage.
Blogs have actually made things a lot more reasonable in many ways. I don't have to allow comments on my postings. If I choose not to respond to commenters, it's seen as my prerogative, not an abdication of the position. In many ways, blog-mediated discourse is much more civil.
Just stay out of communities and fora and you'll be fine.
This has been a Public Service Announcement.
crankyFrom Yahoo:
[19:59] powderybeachsand: Hello
[20:01] exopilot: Ave.
[20:01] powderybeachsand: How are you?
[20:01] exopilot: Well enough. Preparing for the evening's entertainment.
[20:02] powderybeachsand: In case you are willing, please visit www.undoit.org/home.cfm
[20:02] powderybeachsand: undoit.org is a site that enables people to sign a petition to minimize polluting emissions. Their goal is one-million signatures.
[20:03] exopilot: This assumes I would be interested in reducing pollution or laboured under the delusion that some set of signatures could accomplish it if so. Neither of these things are true.
I'm just really curious how the thought of random folks popping out of the woodwork is supposed to encourage the attachment of others to the cause. I mean, yes, I know the enviro-wacks are perfectly willing to sign petitions banning dihydrogen monoxide, as Bullshit so perfectly demonstrated, but there's a certain point where you'd think people would actually clue up.
Companies already have strong pressure on them to reduce polluting emissions, if only because every emission your factory / function creates is waste. Its something you paid for that you're not getting use from. Reduce waste in general, increase the overall bottom line. Entropy sees to it that there'll always be some waste, but no one likes it.
Moreover, why would "one million signatures say you should reduce waste emissions" be any more moving than "one million people say puppies are cute" or "one million people think war is bad." The phrase that comes to mind is "So fucking what?" How deluded do you have to be as to your own importance to think being one of a million signatures on something so vapid is somehow meaningful?
You might as well become a blogger. No one'll read you, but at least you get writing exercise.
Imbeciles. When I rule humanity with an iron tentacle, I'll have them tortured for my amusement. Good thing they've been so kind as to sign their names at a central registry.
annoyedObligatory political content of the morning.
There's been a lot of ranting about the NSA data-mining operation that someone leaked to the press. Not that its a real issue (see Echelon), nor is it actually factually threatening to anyone's civil liberties, but Power Line does a lot of legal analysis and, at the end of their recent deconstruction, posted what may be the most important point of all:
UPDATE: Maybe I'm the only one who didn't already know this, but I was astonished to learn that there is no expectation of privacy in telephone records at all. Section 2702(c) sets out the circumstances in which a telecom provider can disclose phone records, not including the contents of communications. So this would cover the call information at issue in this program. 2702(c)(6) says that such phone records may be freely disclosed, at the company's discretion:
(6) to any person other than a governmental entity.That's right. These supposedly top-secret telephone records can be given or, more likely, sold to any company or private citizen. So if I had enough money, I could buy the phone records of every person in the U.S., and donate them to the NSA.
Now, aside from the original leaker and NYT revealing to all and sundry that, of the telco's involved, only Qwest has declined to turn their pen records over (thus letting the bad guys know who to hook up their cells with; brilliant disinformation campaign to subpoena the sign-up records of the next three months later, in my opinion), there's the disturbing fact that I could just walk up to any of the telcos, drop them a casual billion in cash, and come away with all the external record data I could ever dream of mining, after which I could do with it what I want.
Weren't the telcos just in trouble for selling phone records to unscrupulous third-parties, with very little peep from the media overall? But its OK and legal to do that, but not to a legitimate government entity with at least nominal oversight and a decent argument to make for possessing the records?
Remember who's squawking the loudest. If there's another terrorist event in the US, see if they immediately demand to know who missed it, and why.
Then shoot them in the head as a danger to genetic advancement.
annoyedYou know, its discussions like this that make it clear my solutions to political impasse are the correct ones:
THE US has rebuffed the British Attorney-General's call for its prison at Guantanamo Bay to be closed down immediately, saying it did not want to release prisoners so they could fight Americans or commit acts of terrorism.
Lord Peter Goldsmith, in unusually strong language, called the jail which holds terrorism suspects an "injustice".
He acknowledged the need to be flexible to balance the limitation of individual rights to ensure collective security. But said: "There are certain principles on which there can be no compromise. Fair trial is one of those - which is the reason we in the UK were unable to accept that the US military tribunals proposed for those detained at Guantanamo Bay offered sufficient guarantees of a fair trial.
"The existence of Guantanamo Bay remains unacceptable. It is time, in my view, that it should close," he said. "The historic tradition of the United States as a beacon of freedom, liberty and of justice deserves the removal of this symbol."
I, of course, have a solution to this problem.
Jacques Chirac, Tony Blair, Angela Merkel, and, sure, Lord Peter Goldsmith need to be invited, with full diplomatic pomp and circumstance, to the Guantanamo Bay facility. They should be wined and dined, lauded and pampered, then, on a bright, clear morning, they should be taken to the main enclosure of the site.
The ranking military officer in charge (Brigadier-General Geoffrey Miller) should graciously receive them in front of a velvet-swathed reviewing stand, and, stone-faced, remind them that their countries are signatory to the Third Geneva Convention, and that said treaty makes clear that certain things are required of those signatories. Moreover, to be recognized as valid subjects of said Convention, combatants should adhere to certain rules of warfare.
Then, slowly, sonorously, he should read the appropriate section (4.1, to be precise) and to point out that none of the prisoners at the facility were engaged in combat actions while following the preceding proscriptions.
At this point, all captives taken from the battlefield or justly believed to be involved in combative activity should be brought out, rifle-butted in the back of the head to bring them to their knees, then a single, mercifully administered round should be put right through the base of their skull, killing them both instantly and humanely. Preferably, in such a manner that bits of blood, bone, and brain spew forward to spray in a fine mist across the upstanding diplomats' faces. Chirac, et al, should be reminded that this treatment is far better than combatants have any right to, since summary execution in less humane ways is the typical end of an "illegal combatant," and the threat thereof is largely what has kept entities from engaging in warfare that violates the precepts of the Third Geneva Convention.
This gentleman's execution should be recorded and the footage given, free of charge, to the world's press corps, while other outlets make sure that its circulated among Middle Eastern countries more directly, in particular Syria and Iran.
Once the singular process is complete, those in custody who are not considered combatants and merely being held for intelligence purposes should be remanded to the custody of the other nations in attendance, for dispensation or execution, as they see fit, but with the stern reminder that if it comes to light that one of them is involved in a military operation against a US interest, it will be considered an act of aggression and the remanding country will be held accountable, with potential sanctions encompassing both economic and potentially military reprisals.
Then, coated in a fine patina of drying blood, without being allowed time to clean up or change clothes, said diplomats and world leaders should be hustled upon a waiting jet, in the same cabin as the remaining camp inhabitant detainees, without binding or restraint, and the Brigadier-General should stand by the side of the runway and wave, as if to a departing and sorely-missed child, as they fly away.
annoyedI think my patience with humans has hit a particular low-point, as it does move in cycles and it's been coming for a while. In particular, I've just hit my limit on a response to someone in the Auto Assault fora about PvP invasions of the non-shared newbie/lowbie areas by other races:
Firstly, please, by all that is Unholy, do try and work legitimate English into your posting. I can forgive such things in IM and fast chat situations, but borderline 7337-speak in the context of something you have more than five minutes to prepare causes opthalamological bleeding and renal failure in caged hamsters ...
But on to something substantiative.Quote:
AGAIN, I repeat all this on a PVP layer like GZ. Then we can have our cake and eat it too. Anyone see a weakness in this concept? lets discuss...You mean, like everything I posted earlier in response to your original posting? None of which you actually addressed or even glossed over in the course of this reply?
But if you demand the point-by-point Fisking ...Quote:
A) appropriateness in this post apocalyptic world, after all...why shouldn't the Biomeks/Mutants raid into the Human areas and vice versa? After all we are racial enemies.Because its not fun for the folks in those areas? Because it makes little sense in the overall narrative? Because it spreads out the folks who want to engage in PvP content and thus is poor, nay, lousy game design? The reasons both in-game and out are myriad.
Quote:
b) A ton of fun for those who wish to defend their territory...as it is Necessary for us to want to do this. Any nation protects its borders and its citzenry will fight for this.Isn't that exactly why GZ exists and is designed the way it is, not just so that out-of-game they can pit their skills against one another, but for "National pride?" If I were forced to an in-game stance response, I'd have to say something like:
"If you have such pride in your faction, why aren't you out there defending and taking the bases, cur? The borders are being kept by others whose job it is to do so; the key to expanding our influence is to control that crater! Now move!"Quote:
c) Bragging rights for those raiding parties which have successfully managed a raid and reaped the rewards.So the bragging rights for taking out players of lower level than you are somehow more intriguing and energizing than those for engaging with folks of rough parity? I think you've just told us more about yourself than you'd like.
Quote:
e)Clan camaraderie and a reason to log on and have fun together.You have yet to actually provide reasoning to support this point. Moreover, its silly. Are you not getting a sense of Clan camaraderie from pursuing missions in the non-GZ areas and orchestrating your missions in GZ?
If not, might I suggest you find a better Clan?Quote:
f)Larger scale multiconvoy tactical battlefield action, with clearer command and control for the classes...the Lt classes will have their job as would the engie classes and the commando and Bh classes. Interdiction, guerilla attacks, scouting, basecamp repair centres, cavalry type charges, end around attacks, feints and blitzkrieg ...u name u can employ it.Like much of the rest of your post, you fail to mention how this is not already the case in GZ. If your contention there aren't enough people in GZ, I'll stare blankly at you and wonder how you might have missed that the game's been out less than a month and GZ is end-game content. If your contention is those things aren't adequately supported by the content of GZ as stands, I might even support that statement ... but that's an entirely different argument than the one you're making, and is actively at odds with your arguments, what there are of them.
Quote:
As i mentioned before...I like this concept becuz it reinforces the expected behaviour created by the Lore of the land, did u guys read your manual?We did. It was written considerably more coherently than your bits, though, for which we were all rather appreciative.
Quote:
I also mentioned that this should not be a totally random event...but should be either mission driven...a la' "Goto to Human city Apollo and back as a reconnaissance, rewards are 12 Uranium widgets"
OR, time driven like the arena events and announced as such...."Biomek invasion force expected in 20mins driving toward Duenna, human defenders are expected to halt this invasion and/or prevent any Biomeks escaping." Results announced in 40 mins.
AGAIN, I repeat all this on a PVP layer like GZ. Then we can have our cake and eat it too. Anyone see a weakness in this concept? lets discuss...Regardless of whether its mission-driven or not, its simply bad game design. Terrible game design, especially in a game where people are already complaining about low population. Not only would you be spreading out your PvP-interested faction population, but you intrude on the games of others who aren't interested if the invasion needs to be countered to deny your faction an advantage (which clearly, deeply, and stupidly favours whichever faction has the most pop at any given time; its self-reinforcing), and you'd be completely ignoring the content that's been designed and geared to be equal-opportunity between the factions and already mission-based (GZ).
The population-weight argument is one I neglected before but its certainly worth pointing out now: If your idea was implimented, the current Human population balance would be highly and irrevocably reinforced, because sheer numbers of attackers would ensure they always have the advantage in any invasion situation, ergo more people would choose to join Human for the winning advantage and the cycle would perpetuate.
Planetside had a somewhat innovative approach to ameliating this. The lesser-populated races would get an XP bonus for as long as they were under-represented. Thus, they might have been losing battles, but gaining more XP for the successful acts they pulled off and at creation time, new players saw the XP advantage and weighed that against being the minority. Thus, there was incentive to create lower-populated races. This could certainly be workable in AA, but it certainly wouldn't be sufficient to make your idea workable.
Is that a bit clearer in terms of what the objections are?
There are times I wonder why I bother reading any MMO fora at all; inevitably, they're populated with illiterate, scab-minded, repulsively mentally filthy sewer-crawlers who must be getting their net.time by leeching off a fibre optic cable running to the local PETA outpost where they kill small yappy dogs and plant them in others' back yards so they have something to bitch about. If it wasn't for the fact my more reasonable and less annoyed posts might be seen by a developer, read, and actually make a difference, I doubt I'd bother at all.
The World of Warcraft fora are absolutely unreadable due to this kind of addle-pated feculent waste.
That's not to say that every poster is a waste of good protoplasm but like blogs, the percentages are not on your side.
grumpyAeon: You're psychotic. You no longer have a common conscience with your fellow man.
Trevor: I never did. You see, I understand the will to evil. The will to evil is like an iron in the forge. There is only one way to shape it [right]--with a conscience that is the fire.
The above quote is from the animated version of Aeon Flux. You will find nothing as intellectually challenging in the live-action version, sad to say, which 
nyxsis and I watched tonight. The main problem being that while the director had a fine, nay, a refined vision of aesthetic action (though his obsession with close-ups as opposed to long-shots made me ache for someone more familiar with wuxia, he simply either did not know or did not care that his source material was ambiguous, a bit schizophrenic, and beautiful in an ugly way. The people in AF-LA were simply too pretty. One of the key images of the original AE was that people, including Aeon herself, were pointedly not pretty. The technology occasionally aspired to the aesthete, architecturally, but under the skin was flesh and insects and pools of ooze and horrific interpenetration. Peoples' faces were pocked and marked and subtly asymmetrical.
Charlize Theron is not unpretty. Neither is Martin Csokas. If Trevor Goodchild doesn't have a kind of brutal, rugged, twisted-bishonen ugliness about him, its just not the world I want to live in.
Despite the high-action kinesis of the movie as a whole, nothing justifies the level of crap of that ending.
Honestly, it makes me long for the far better treatment of semi-related issues in Phantom 2040, ironically animated by the same guy that animated Aeon Flux.
Incidentally, if anyone can get me the entire series of Phantom 2040 somehow, by all means, do so. I miss that series. Maxwell Madison was the hardcore bastard of the Age.
Wow, talk about having your expectations for a movie shattered, I came in expecting it to be a fluffy, romantic comedy piece with nothing but chick-factor. What I actually got was some really inspired satire with on-the-nose rapid-patter dialog and a willingness to go bizarre, strange places with the storyline while retaining a core of ironic detachment.
I loved it.
Throw in an ensemble cast including Willem Dafoe being almost charming and Angelica Houston being, well, smoking hot, and it was just pleasant. Though I could have done without seeing an aging Bill Murray in a skin-tight teal wetsuit, but the scenes with him and Owen Wilson were almost compensation.
Almost.
I say watch it.
![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/charitycam/goth_boy/working.gif){kind=small}
artisticI have several bad habits. Among those habits is having a certain distaste for certain segments of the gaming industry and, moreover, certain members of those elements which really get up my ass because they haven't quite wrapped their heads around the fact that, no matter how much you beat your gums, you don't get traction in the real world that way, save by actually doing. You have to keep doing, though, or you fall behind.
Chief exemplar of that dire state is Ron Edwards, author of Sorcerer and Trollbabes. Ron would pretty much have you believe that he, single-handedly, is responsible for both creating the indie RPG movement and the most important theory in art, saving gamer-kind from brain damage caused by other, lesser, games.
No, seriously, that's what he thinks.
So, its in that knowledge that I read and post at The Forge, the nest of the Cult of Edwards and where, yes, I'm aware, he is a moderator on several fora. I really enjoy the individual game fora for Capes and Primetime Adventures, where Edwards has neither sway nor interest in treading (as it seems neither Matt Wilson nor Tony Lower-Basch make proper obeisance before the Great Man; an attitude I can embrace), but I do read Actual Play and Playtesting, because, darn it, I like to know what other folk are doing.
You know me. I've never been one to suffer fools gladly. I hardly suffer fools to live, much less gladly, so I have a certain number of pointed responses in the ensuing thread, but its noteworthy to point out that, for once, I'm not exactly alone in my feelings on the matters. There are several other posters and respondents, and we pretty much come to the consensus that the issue is social more than systemic, though SR doesn't exactly prioritize the kind of play the guy seems to want to get out of it. Oh, yeah, and his GM sucks. But things were pretty much winding down because, really, we've all said about as much as we can about the guy's direct problem and things have settled to that level of low bubble that suggests a few folks have some refinements to add, but the salient points are touched.
And then Edwards comes in.
All right, that's enough.
There is way too much implied ownership over Shadowrun in this thread. Everyone's prancing about talking about the way "it's" played and what characters are right or not right for "it" in the most vague-ass, nonconstructive way possible.
Get back to the thread topic. This one guy's game. This one play-group. This one composition of issues which were raised at the beginning. Next meatbag who sounds off about how "in Shadowrun, this kind of character is good for blah blah," that's the meatbag I'm gonna teach which ass cheek is which, with Vibrum soles.
You! The one who started this thread! Front and center! Describe an actual session of play.
Best, Ron
I really hate people who are more arrogant than I am. I really hate "moderators" who ignore the fact that others have actually made significant contributions to the thread and wave it away as if the electrons never died to reproduce their words because he doesn't like them. Mix the two, and you have a recipe for me trying to get myself kicked off The Forge.
(The following is probably more meaningful if you know that one of the great battle-cries of The Forge and Edwards' brand of gaming theory is "System matters!" That's with the exclamation-mark, by the way. Its become a mantra of sorts. Thus, my invocation of it is akin to taking one of Edwards' hands, thwacking him across the face with it hard enough to bruise, and saying, "Why are you hitting yourself?" Nothing pleases so much as rubbing an animal's nose in its own poo.)
There is way too much implied ownership over Shadowrun in this thread. Everyone's prancing about talking about the way "it's" played and what characters are right or not right for "it" in the most vague-ass, nonconstructive way possible.That's actually funny, Ron, since on more than one occasion you've defended the statement "System matters!" If system matters, then its perfectly valid to talk about what it matters, what it supports, and what it undermines, both intrinsically and in terms of genre and thematic appropriateness. Or will you now pronounce "System doesn't matter!" and bring the Forge into a New Age of Enlightenment(tm)?
There's no prancing here. We're bringing "it" to the table and saying exactly what we mean. If anything, this thread has been a focus of candor and straightforward statement, with little to nothing in the way of prancing. "SR doesn't do that well, and the genre in general doesn't focus on those issues" is not only not "vague-ass," its true. You may not like the answers, and you may dispute the truth, but you cannot defend the position that its been anything but us responding to Precious' original post in an honest, straightforward way.
Well, you could, but you'd look goofy.
The reason we're not carrying on at length about what you might construe as constructive is that pretty much anyone that's cared to so far has agreed, for the most part. Precious needs to step up and deal with the issue out of the game. Its not an issue, at core, about gameplay. Its about the social context of the group and its social interactions, with a smidge side of story-affect expectations. But having been said, there's more stuff to talk about actual play of SR and cyber-genre games in general, and some of us are exploring those indirectly.
You might not find those interesting. Fine, don't read the thread anymore. It remains about "Actual Play," you're just not interested. Fair enough.Get back to the thread topic. This one guy's game. This one play-group. This one composition of issues which were raised at the beginning. Next meatbag who sounds off about how "in Shadowrun, this kind of character is good for blah blah," that's the meatbag I'm gonna teach which ass cheek is which, with Vibrum soles.Which we disposed of neatly, because "system matters," and further "genre matters."
You may have Vibrum soles, but no need to show off your Mister Snake in the forum just to flex the moderatorship, Ron. You could, possibly, actually contribute something meaningful related to the original post, I reckon, because its not as if Precious hasn't posted enough to actually talk about.
chadu has some experience with dorks making sure you can't engage folks in a public forum because you don't get down on your knees and give them the tongue-worship they think they deserve. His travails with RPGNet probably deserve to be entered into the annals of gaming history as a cautionary talk about dealing with dumb-asses. I can but aspire to his mastery of the field, but I think I'm working my way along the ledge to that general area.
grumpyMan, I'm feeling bad. Consensus is that I may have picked up a mild case of sun poisoning while at Six Flags.
The irony of that on the day I actually remembered to put on some sun screen is hardly lost on me.
I'd like to post something of actual content today. I'm not thinking that'll happen this morning. I'm barely keeping my lids up, as is.
And Auto Assault is refusing to make screen shots while running in a window, which makes me grumpy. You can only imagine. Plus, I need a friend who's a Mutant Shaman and who can provide me some damn healing so I can complete these stupid escort missions. Its hard to escort even a great fighter if they can't get patched up after a hard fight with a swarm of Pikes or Scavs. Bastards.
grumpyMistress Vella asks the classic question:
So I ask again....what is wrong with men?
... only with greater detail.
I think that's obvious.
Women are what's wrong with men.
If we do more than grunt during a conversation, it gets disassembled and analyzed until whatever intention or meaning is subsumed into whatever you wanted to hear instead of what we meant, to the point we might as well have grunted in the first place. Guys skip having steady jobs because we've observed those without have greater success with women. We play video games until the wee hours of the morning because that's the last avenue of accomplishment that women have left for us which has any degree of visceral gratification, outside of porn, which is rapidly going the way of the dodo in any quality, too. Guys let you do most of the work in the bedroom because you've ground into our heads that "No means no" and everything male-initiated and male-desired is bad, in every commercial, in every sitcom, and in every single second of air-time on Lifetime.
You're reading the same magazines that go out of their way to demasculinize men into metrosexual girl-forms. Oh, yes, and who then turn around and ask the leading question, "Where'd all the cowboys go?"
You killed them off, you whores to fashion, you raging self-absorbed cunts too obsessed with your needs to wonder what men might want or care. You strangled them in their cribs with Teletubbies and telling them "guns are bad." You garotted them from behind with every iteration of "Does this make me look fat?"
In the end, there's nothing wrong that can't be fixed by asking, "What have we made men into?" And then going to find the few rugged individualists left, and breeding with them aggressively.
grumpyMake sure before you release your deeply, abidingly fun game on the public that you test to see if it's functional with Microsoft's handicapped access StickyKeys utility enabled. If its not compatible, do not release your game because you've just fucked over the folks who are working hardest to play your game that you've undoubtedly designed for all ten fingers on the keyboard anyway.
Insult to injury is not fun.
I'm looking at you, NetDevil and Pandemic.
Oh, yes, and if you have an online tech support interface, be sure that it doesn't throw an ugly error when someone tries to submit an issue.
Like this one:
Internal Server Error:
Server id: 13->3
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the site's support team and inform them of the time of the error and what operation
you were performing when the error occurred.
Thank you for your patience.
Is it really that hard to run a decent support architecture? Really?
angryWhat in the name of the Unholy is wrong with the folks on Stargate: Atlantis?
grumpyDear Hell, the spammers and scammers are working overtime looking for prey. And for some reason they're deranged enough to think I'll bite!
Consider my posting of a traditional Scam Mail back on 1/11/06.
It, as of moments ago, has replies. Two of them. From two different IPs.
hey!!
(Anonymous)hey
Both are looking for replies at a throw-away Yahoo address.
The 85.108 address is coming from an IP block allocated out of Amsterdam, of all things:
OrgName: RIPE Network Coordination Centre OrgID: RIPE Address: P.O. Box 10096 City: Amsterdam StateProv: PostalCode: 1001EB Country: NL ReferralServer: whois://whois.ripe.net:43 NetRange: 85.0.0.0 - 85.255.255.255 CIDR: 85.0.0.0/8 NetName: 85-RIPE NetHandle: NET-85-0-0-0-1 Parent: NetType: Allocated to RIPE NCC NameServer: NS-PRI.RIPE.NET NameServer: NS3.NIC.FR NameServer: SEC1.APNIC.NET NameServer: SEC3.APNIC.NET NameServer: SUNIC.SUNET.SE NameServer: TINNIE.ARIN.NET NameServer: NS.LACNIC.NET Comment: These addresses have been further assigned to users in Comment: the RIPE NCC region. Contact information can be found in Comment: the RIPE database at http://www.ripe.net/whois RegDate: 2004-04-01 Updated: 2004-04-06
Which, of course, begs the question of who RIPE leased it to. Which they'll tell you straight up:
% This is the RIPE Whois query server #2. % The objects are in RPSL format. % % Note: the default output of the RIPE Whois server % is changed. Your tools may need to be adjusted. See % http://www.ripe.net/db/news/abuse-proposal-20050331.html % for more details. % % Rights restricted by copyright. % See http://www.ripe.net/db/copyright.html % Note: This output has been filtered. % To receive output for a database update, use the "-B" flag % Information related to '85.108.0.0 - 85.108.255.255' inetnum: 85.108.0.0 - 85.108.255.255 netname: TurkTelekom descr: Turk Telekom ADSL-alcatel country: tr admin-c: TTBA1-RIPE tech-c: TTBA1-RIPE status: ASSIGNED PA "status:" definitions mnt-by: as9121-mnt source: RIPE # Filtered role: TT Administrative Contact Role address: Turk Telekom address: Bilisim Aglari Dairesi address: Aydinlikevler address: 06103 ANKARA phone: +90 312 313 1950 fax-no: +90 312 313 1949 e-mail: abuse@ttnet.net.tr admin-c: BADB3-RIPE tech-c: ZA66-RIPE tech-c: ZA196-RIPE tech-c: LA109-RIPE tech-c: NO638-RIPE nic-hdl: TTBA1-RIPE mnt-by: AS9121-MNT source: RIPE # Filtered
So, spammers from Ankarra. I must've hit home with the Ramadan edition of the Squid's Redoubt podcast.
Now, the other IP:
Cebridge Connections CEBRIDGE-CONNECTIONS (NET-209-33-0-0-1)
209.33.0.0 - 209.33.127.255
Cebridge Connections LEBANON-CEBRIDGE-CONNECTIONS (NET-209-33-118-0-1)
209.33.118.0 - 209.33.118.255
Oh, yes ... Lebanon. I really did irritate the Muslims with my Ramadan thing.
Now, is this where we start getting all irritated at the "Religion of Peace" for spamming our mailboxes and websites with crap? If Tehran, Damascus, Jerusalem, and Gaza didn't require a nuclear intervention before now, this probably earns one.
angryI fully admit, I have little patience for the bleeding-heart liberal mindset, the Politically Correct bullshit that permeates all public discourse and twists it into a miasma of special interests. One of my particular hot buttons is the idea of "hate crimes," that somehow a crime is worse if perpetrated on a designated victim group than it is on some poor middle-class white guy.
Someone on my FL posted a reference to a physical attack of a loon against some guys in a gay bar (Yahoo News has the article reference), and, being me, I took exception to the immediate need to somehow make people special by making it, somehow, more illegal to physically assault people. From my response::
Guy has a hatchet and a gun, and nobody is DOA? Kind of weak for a rampage.
Moreover, isn't attacking folks with a hatchet and a gun already illegal? What kind of imbecile thinks they need "hate crime" legislation to make "attempted murder" more illegal? Oh yes, a community that thinks it deserves more and special rights over, say, me. Since I'm not gay, and so I only need the basic kind of legal protection if I'm attacked in a bar by a guy with a hatchet and a gun.
But what really gets me is this:"It's a vicious and ugly reminder of anti-gay prejudice," David Smith, head of policy and strategy at the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights group, said. "What is unique about hate crimes is that they terrorize the whole community."That's unique about hate crimes? So if you kill a white, straight guy in a community, no one really cares, its treated as a matter of course? But if you happen to hit a minority, suddenly the community is afraid to go outside at night and starts buying guns for protection?
What kind of bull is that?
I'm not saying that what happened in New Bedford isn't sad and undesirable, but it'd be just as bad and undesirable if it were a straight bar and not a gay bar, and trying to capitalize on that to get more "special" protections is despicable as well.
Needless to say, this set off a shit-storm of minority privilege cries the likes of which shake the pillars of Heaven on a regular basis. I realize that I'm no saint, but I'm no imbecile, either.
But today -- ah, today -- came the pair of replies (from the same person, notably) that really set my teeth on edge. And since I've been a little short on rant, lately, I think its likely a good thing to turn you good folk onto it.
From today:
Because they're not looking for equality, they want superiority,
As a bisexual Jewish woman partnered with a person of Portuguese, Italian and black heritage, that statement is EXTREMELY offensive. I do not want superiority; I want equality. I don't agree with affirmative action, and my stomach turns knowing that my white friend couldn't be a firefighter because he was white (his score was too low for a white guy, but black men have a lower cutoff point. Same physical endurance tests....).
However, as long as you have that attitude, you will not understand minority struggles. I have a lot more learning to do, and I've been a human rights activist for 6 years. So, um....do some more pondering on that attitude. We want equality, not superiority, whether you're referring to religion, gender, sexuality, ethnicity or race.
My reply was:
Hey, baby, I'm a cripple. Don't tell me about "minority struggle" when you can wipe your own ass and get yourself off. You want to talk about minority struggle? For thousands of years, your people have left my people out on mountain ranges, fed them to dogs, or split their heads open on convenient sharp tables. You want discrimination? At least if you're not swapping spit with your life-partner in public, no one knows you're a freak. If you're running around with dangling legs in a wheelchair, or hands and arms that look like withered up claws, there ain't no hiding from the stares and comments.
So, yeah, "minority struggle," my white, fuzzy ass. If you're campeigning for any kind of special recognition of your victim status, you're looking for advantage, not equality, and I point it out in my own little corner of the "minoritysphere" whenever I see it rear its stupid, ugly head as much as anywhere. But no one really wants to deal with the cripples of the world in that way, and, funnily enough, by and large we just want to be left alone. No one talks about quotas of cripples in the workplace or college. Why? We don't want to be special. We're already special enough, thanks very much. We don't need crimes against us to be somehow more special than against everybody else. We've been spending our whole lives trying to be more like everybody else, trying to be accepted as equals and capable members of society. Being referred to as "special cases" is, pretty much all the time, a slap in the face.
Maybe you need to be special to be special. Maybe you need special little crimes just for your special friends and their special buddies. Me, I'm too busy just trying to get real equality to be bothered. Maybe you guys should give it a try, sometimes, instead of playing up how special you are.
But let's go a little further:
I agree that you are "privileging one group" but I do not agree it's at the "expense of the rest."
Murder is a crime. There are degrees of murder, though -- there's premeditated against a specific person, which has more penalty than a "spontaneous" murder, which has more penalty than "self-defense".
Murder is wrong, no matter what, but there are degrees of wrong. And it *is* MORE WRONG to kill someone based on their ethnicity, religion, orientation, whatever, than it is to kill someone because you're pissed that they stole your car.
You need to unpack your knapsack.
I love that, "unpack my knapsack." The trite commentary of the weak-minded, who don't even have the wherewithal to examine the contents of their own memetic baggage and recognize what foolishness they engage in on a daily basis. But I'm a helpful lad, so I thought I might help with that:
So, its more wrong to kill a black guy because he's black than to kill him because I want to screw his girl?
And they wonder why the idea of special privilidge for such crimes tends to make the proponents look like fools. Mainly because they're engaged in the kind of catagorizing behaviour that they accuse every other group of, but without the benefit of a majority to try and leverage it.
You're right. That poor black guy would rather he was kille because his chick is hot. And those poor gay guys would have preferred if they were killed in a random bar brawl than because they were gay. And their families would be so much more satisfied if that were the case, because they'd be less dead.
Oops, guess they wouldn't.
Here's the problem: You don't react to them being people, they're "gay" or "black" or "minority" when you make it a "hate crime." Its no longer about the crime, its the hate. You minimize and diminish the person.
But that's OK, just so long as they're special, right?
And that's really what it comes down to: Ultimately, at the bottom of it all, the very idea of "hate crimes" privileges the "hated groups" at the expense of everyone else. Talk to the family of the white, straight guy killed for his wallet and tell me if their suffering is somehow less important, less valid, and less important than the gay guy who was shot for being in a gay bar. Is it somehow more moving that the latter was killed for what he professed and the former was killed because of being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Isn't the latter just as important to the families of the people involved, and most importantly, to the dead guys themselves as anything? As George Carlin might say, "They're both fuckin' dead, ain't they?"
But that's not important to the people who are pushing hate crime law, more legislation to solve a problem that's never been addressable through legislation. Nothing is important to them but the fact that the target was a member of a victim group; they're not important because they're people, they're important because they're members of a minority. First and foremost.
The people who claim the sanction of "human rights activists" don't care about human rights at all, they care about minority rights, tellingly almost in every case, their minority. If they cared about human rights, they'd be up in arms about every murder, every attack, they'd be pro bono lawyers who devote their time to everyone, not just crimes involving one social or genetic group. They don't care about "humans," they care about themselves.
The odour of hypocrisy lingers overmuch. I need another shower.
angryI subscribe to Box Office Mojo's regular email updates. I can't help it, really; ever since I started tinkering with Hollywood Stock Exchange -- well, a long time ago -- following the box office of various films has been kind of fascinating. But I've never, ever, thought things like the Oscars were meaningful in any real sense. Care to know why?
'Brokeback Mountain' scored eight nominations, more
than any other picture. Collectively, though, the Best
Picture nominees made up the least popular slate on
record, marking the second year in a row that the
Academy has not nominated a single movie with a gross
over $75 million...
Complete List of Nominees & Their Box Office
http://boxofficemojo.com/oscar/
So, really, the Oscars have about as much to do with the movie-going public's interest in movies as, say, my list of awards to various movies for various metrics. Mine, actually, might even be somewhat better since I actually do like the odd popular movie now and again.
Why do Americans keep tuning in for this? No, wait, I know why. Its the same reason I keep reading Go Fug Yourself, a fascination with celebrity car wrecks, I s'pose.
(Incidently, Hasselhoff's video for Hooked on a Feeling reminds me I need to work on my "looking intense while wearing a half-unbuttoned dress shirt and jacket.")
grumpyI hate to admit it, but I was reading InDesign magazine and deeply enjoying the discussion of OpenType font design, and felt the urge to go look at the cost of one of the nicer fonts they showcase.
Five fonts. $160.
Why did no one tell me I can't afford to be a graphic designer?
jealousTonight has been a devotion to the arts of digital management. In particular, managing the vast swaths of data that needed to be ripped and processed appropriately for addition to the Redoubt, from the immense pile of CDs that I picked up.
Unfortunately, this led to my frustration and eventual proof of why one should never irritate your best customers.
One of the albums I acquired in the Great White North was Nickelback's All the Right Reasons. This would seem to be a reasonable act, of course, but I forgot about one of the banes of my existence, and that it had its tendrils deep into the Canadian music industry. EMI has been throwing very, very annoying copy protection on its CDs released in Canada for a few years now.
This was one of them.
And when I say "copy protection," I mean of the worst kind and highest order. I tried ripping data off the bastardly thing with my sharpest tools under both XP and Linux, and those who know my taste in tools know how very sharp those may be. Nothing cracked it. The best that I could do was derive some very mangled and encrypted audio off the disc.
What did I do? What any self-respecting audiophile who bought a CD for, in particular, just one track that he liked and wanted to own, yet was prohibited from because of the fear of the music industry of its own best customers.
I nipped off to the local BitTorrent search engine and dug up the full discography of the fucking band in a single, convenient file and pulled the whole goddamned thing with smug satisfaction.
See, if you treat your largest consumers as criminals are treated -- and, in every sense my legitimate CD collection is a cyclopedian structure of proportions that make Stonehenge shudder -- they have a tendency to live up to the assessment. Not only that, but EMI violated my rights to fair use of the matter I purchased for my own use, and as such, given there's no recourse for my reimbursement for such, I feel its fair to extract my just compensation up front.
Odds are good that I'd have bought at least another of the band's CDs in any other situation. They've thrown away that revenue now. Moreover, they've earned my ill will, and my voice passed on to those who hear it, read it here, or in my podcast (where I'll assuredly mention it while prominently featuring the track I rather like) ... the kind of anti-advertising the industry as a whole can scarcely afford.
My own feeling is that good music sells itself, and exposing more people more freely to the music I like sells more albums than anything the studios can buy with the money they've been taking out of our pockets and not passing on to the artists for the last few decades. All copy protection does is makes sure fewer people can hear their tracks. That hurts no one but the artists, ultimately.
In 1971, Abbie Hoffman wrote a text called Steal This Book -- and he was anti-establishment enough to mean it. I'll go one further and encourage each and every one of you to go out and steal freely from the media establishment, steal this album and that track and that other discography. If you find stuff you like, by all means support the artist by buying the CDs, or hitting the concerts, or just writing the band a check straight out and putting it in the mail. Hades knows that if you sent the band $15 every time you liked one of their albums, they'd be earning almost an order of magnitude more than they'd be earning from the disc sale. Frequent decent and good labels like Magnatune and sites that provide podsafe music.
If they're going to call us thieves ... be the best thief you can be. I know I am.
crankyHat-tip to Eric the .5b for pointing out EcologistOnline's latest little essay contest:
Ecologist Annual Essay Competition
In association with the Coady International InstituteWhat is Humanity’s worst Invention?The winning entry will receive a cheque for £2,500 and publication in the Ecologist magazine
Essay criteria: all essays must be typewritten, responses must be in English, up to 2.000 words. Entries will be judged on originality, critical thinking, clarity and the ability to spark debate.
Deadline for entries: 15 March 2006
Please submit entries to: essay2006@theecologist
Rules of entry: All essays are the property of the Ecologist. Published essays will be credited to the writer. Telephone and/or email contact details must be included. We regret that materials submitted cannot be returned. For full completion rules visit www.theecologist.org
OK, forget, for the moment, that the question itself is silly. We'll get to that in a bit. Let's examine the requirements.
Hmmm, it "must be typewritten." Interesting. Word-processing must be too high-end and modern for the ecologists at EcologistOnline to deal with. And well they should eschew it, as the amount of resources needed to make a modern laptop in terms of sheer energy density compared to an old-school heavy metal typewriter is ...
Wait, what? You're saying that modern factory techniques are magnitudes more efficient than they were decades ago? Including transport? Well, bugger that for a lark.
Further, OK, the entries "must be typewritten," but the submission address is ... an email! How does that work? Does my platten have a built-in scanner these days? Does it do spell-check? Maybe their email server has the ability to read my papers after I cram them into the tiny little vent holes on my system. That might work.
Note with all amusement that they don't specify anything like a preferred file format for the submission. Attached Word doc? OK. Link to a