Author: splicer

Posted onOpinionated Junk

Political discourse in three easy steps

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  1. See an arti­cle or video crit­i­cal of a polit­i­cal par­ty you dislike.
  2. Since you already dis­agree with that par­ty, any­thing neg­a­tive about them must be accu­rate. Fact-check­ing, research­ing of issues, or any oth­er form of ver­i­fi­ca­tion is not nec­es­sary.
  3. Repost to your favorite social media site(s) to be seen by all your friends.

BONUS Any­one who replies with infor­ma­tion which con­tra­dicts any part of your repost is a par­ti­san shill for the oth­er par­ty. Any­one who has done actu­al … Read the rest

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Posted onBlahg

Bitcoin: worth the electrons it’s printed on?

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I recall read­ing even before I had any inter­est in Bit­coin or Bit­coin min­ing that the cost of elec­tric­i­ty was prob­a­bly high­er than the yield one could get by min­ing. So I nev­er expect­ed to set up a min­ing oper­a­tion on my per­son­al com­put­er and get rich quick. I did what I rec­om­mend any­one do if they are inter­est­ed in get­ting to know how Bit­coin works: I set up a min­ing oper­a­tion to learn.

The online resources about Bit­coin are full … Read the rest

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Posted onOpinionated Junk

An open letter to atheists

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Dear athe­ists;

You’ve made a big deal about how sil­ly reli­gion is. You’ve called the rest of us fool­ish for teach­ing kids about the Pow­er who watch­es our every move and eval­u­ates whether our thoughts are decent or dia­bol­i­cal. You rolled your eyes when we talked about the Pow­er who grants us wish­es when we offer ade­quate flat­tery and who pun­ish­es us capri­cious­ly for per­ceived dis­loy­al­ty. You said we were brain­wash­ing our chil­dren to tell them about the Pow­er who … Read the rest

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Posted onBlahg

An interesting challenge for Twitter and Facebook

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As men­tioned in two pre­vi­ous Lex­i­cal Geek­ery entries, I’ve been read­ing Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not A Gad­get which is a refresh­ing man­i­festo about pre­serv­ing indi­vid­ual voic­es in the mish­mash of online cul­ture where iden­ti­ty has become some­thing like an endan­gered phe­nom­e­non. Lanier claims with some good jus­ti­fi­ca­tion that com­put­ing, net­works, and specif­i­cal­ly the Inter­net have acci­den­tal­ly suc­ceed­ed where Marx­ists and Fas­cists both had pre­vi­ous­ly failed: in sub­li­mat­ing the human expe­ri­ence and indi­vid­ual iden­ti­ty into a col­lec­tive mish­mash where every­one … Read the rest

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Posted onBlahg

Cats and dogs

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When some­one claims their dog is smart it’s because the dog has learned to obey the per­son­’s com­mands. When some­one says their cat is smart it’s because the per­son has learned to obey the cat’s com­mands.1

  1. Yes, this pic­ture means that I have giv­en up on keep­ing Rox­ie off my desk to the extent that I actu­al­ly put her bed there. It’s kind of nice hav­ing her curled up in front of me while I work, but I’m not
… Read the rest
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Posted onBlahg

Housekeeping item: no more anonymous comments

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One of my least favorite things to do here is close things down and make it hard­er for vis­i­tors to my site to inter­act with me, the site, and the oth­er users. Cre­at­ing an account on a web­site can be more time-con­sum­ing than is worth just to make an off­hand remark. I want to see those off­hand remarks.

How­ev­er, spam attacks have increased to such a lev­el that it has become impos­si­ble to mod­er­ate the com­ments. Recent­ly web­site attacks of … Read the rest

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Posted onOpinionated Junk

Court decrees: obeying the law not suspicious

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See Low­er­ing the Bar, one of my absolute favorite blogs.

I’ve often won­dered if one could be pulled over for dri­ving at or under the speed lim­it. After all, every­one dri­ves a lit­tle faster than the speed lim­it. The only rea­son to dri­ve under the speed lim­it would be to avoid being pulled over by the police. And the only peo­ple who want to avoid being pulled over by the police are… crim­i­nals. Right?

Well, appar­ent­ly a court has ruled that … Read the rest

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Posted onOpinionated Junk

Beware a lawmaker with a disarming smile

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So much has been said late­ly on the top­ic of firearms reg­u­la­tion that I’m not sure that there is much to add. As the peo­ple of the Unit­ed States engage in this debate I hope that we can remem­ber what the word «rights» means in the con­text of gov­er­nance. A «right» is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the right thing to do, but sim­ply some­thing which a gov­ern­ment can­not restrict. The ques­tion is not so much whether more peo­ple should own firearms as … Read the rest

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Posted onOpinionated Junk

Abbottabad? Abbotta-bing!

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Accord­ing to The Econ­o­mist (9 Feb­ru­ary 2013) in an effort to improve the city’s inter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion, Abbot­tabad Pak­istan plans to begin con­struc­tion of an amuse­ment park. It is thought that if peo­ple begin asso­ci­at­ing the name Abbot­tabad with lux­u­ry accom­mo­da­tions and deca­dent fun, that peo­ple will stop think­ing of the city as the place that har­bored Osama bin Laden until his death at the hands of US Navy SEALs in 2011.

You can’t blame a town for … Read the rest

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Posted onBlahg

Insane project idea: iMate Mini

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On dis­play at the Mono­chro­mat­ic Muse­um of Archa­ic Elec­tron­ics (oth­er­wise known as my bed­room clos­et) is a rel­ic from the past that nev­er got used as it should have. The Apple eMate, a device based on the New­ton plat­form but which came in a clamshell case with an inte­grat­ed key­board and a car­ry­ing han­dle, was designed to be sold to schools but nev­er took off before Steve Jobs returned to Apple and shut down the New­ton divi­sion entire­ly. The design … Read the rest

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