Posted onOpinionated Junk

An open letter to atheists

by Leave a comment on An open letter to atheists

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

Read More
Posted onBlahg

An interesting challenge for Twitter and Facebook

by Leave a comment on An interesting challenge for Twitter and Facebook

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

Read More
Posted onBlahg

Cats and dogs

by 2 Comments on Cats and dogs

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
Read More
Posted onBlahg

Housekeeping item: no more anonymous comments

by Leave a comment on Housekeeping item: no more anonymous comments

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

Read More

Facing the light

It is some­times easy to for­get how much influ­ence I have over my own state of mind. Undoubt­ed­ly it is because if my mind is unhap­py, it is my mind that is telling me that I am unhap­py. If I were to become hap­py, my mind would be wrong and I’d have to ques­tion my own pow­ers of obser­va­tion. As it is pos­si­ble to enter into a self-hyp­not­ic paral­y­sis until one tells one’s self the instruc­tion to move, so too … Read the rest

Read More
Posted onOpinionated Junk

Court decrees: obeying the law not suspicious

by Leave a comment on Court decrees: obeying the law not suspicious

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

Read More
Posted onOpinionated Junk

Beware a lawmaker with a disarming smile

by 1 Comment on Beware a lawmaker with a disarming smile

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

Read More
Posted onOpinionated Junk

Abbottabad? Abbotta-bing!

by Leave a comment on Abbottabad? Abbotta-bing!

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

Read More
Posted onBlahg

Insane project idea: iMate Mini

by 1 Comment on Insane project idea: iMate Mini

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

Read More
Posted onOpinionated Junk

Obama leaves a pile, GOP steps in it

by 4 Comments on Obama leaves a pile, GOP steps in it

The GOP is look­ing for ways to look stu­pid and pet­ty, and Oba­ma is all too will­ing to oblige with opportunities.

Oba­ma’s nom­i­na­tion for Defense Sec­re­tary is Chuck Hagel, the for­mer Sen­a­tor of Nebras­ka. Hagel has been crit­i­cized for being not-quite-enthu­si­as­tic-enough-about-Israel and for being in favor of engag­ing Iran and Hamas in direct talks. Hagel is also on record call­ing for cut­backs in the defense bud­get. Exact­ly the sort of nom­i­nee that repub­li­cans would want to block, and exact­ly the … Read the rest

Read More