The Argument Clinic

An article resource site...

2007-03-18T10:43:00.000-07:00

Interesting stuff on cars and computers at this site.

Check Out This News Site...

2007-03-15T11:38:00.000-07:00

It's a news site oriented around Knoxville, TN.

It...Is...Alive!

2006-11-21T17:02:00.000-08:00

I've decided to resume posting here. Further bulletins as events warrant.

Hiatus

2006-05-09T12:31:00.000-07:00

This blog is going on hiatus. One, I hosed the template, and I really don't feel like re-doing it for a site that's getting 50 visitors a day. Two, I'm blogging over at Creative Destruction and BNN, and two sites is enough.

Will it return? Probably. When? Dunno.

Oh For Heaven's Sake

2006-05-09T09:44:00.000-07:00

Don't these people have anything better to do?

Weekend Hamster Fun

2006-05-08T15:05:00.000-07:00

Here's an activity the whole family can enjoy.

Well, other than the hamsters.

Interview With The Shah's Son

2006-05-07T15:05:00.000-07:00

Reza Pahlavi, son of the late Shah of Iran, has an interesting inteview in Human Events. He seems like a sensible fellow; his dad was a sensible fellow. (A son of a bitch, but he was our son of a bitch.) We could do business with him, if he was to take the throne. I am less sanguine about the prospects for an Iranian revolution than he is, however. It would be bloody and ugly.

Dolphins Have Names

2006-05-07T14:31:00.000-07:00

Say these scientists. Fascinating stuff.

My dolphin name would be "he who sits in easy chair and types".

Genius

2006-05-06T13:57:00.000-07:00

...sheer genius. American Digest presents "The Law of the Blogger", a link-notated reworking of (I believe) a Kipling poem; I thought it was Kipling's "The Gods of the Copybook Headings", but it isn't; it's his "The Law of the Jungle". Either way, it's awesome.

Jeff Goldstein Has a Fundraiser

2006-05-05T16:12:00.000-07:00

JeffG of Protein Wisdom is having a fundraiser. I am reliably informed that he intends to spend the money on supple young Thai boys, but don't let that stop you.

But seriously; Jeff does good work and deserves some support. I sent in MY thirty-five cents; I urge you to do the same.

"There is nothing good that comes out of that"

2006-05-04T21:57:00.000-07:00

When I saw the headline, I was going to post snark about wishing I had the same problem. But I think he actually means it. Probably because of his kids. Having children is a source of infinite worry when you're very rich, because your kids are realistically and actually the target of kidnapping plots. It's hard enough to be a dad when the abduction threat facing your children is mostly hypothetical; how would it feel to know that at any moment, there really are people idly or actively thinking of ways to take your kids for ransom? Horrifying.

Pro-Choice Vandalism Strikes Another Pro-Life Display

2006-05-03T12:22:00.000-07:00

Following the vandalism last month of a pro-life display at Northern Kentucky University, pro-choice activists destroyed another pro-life display, this time at Princeton University.

Pro-life group Princeton Pro-Life had erected a display of 347 flags, with each flag representing a student who might have been in the Princeton class of 2010, had they not been aborted. The display was torn down and vandalized; pro-choice activists cut up 30 coat hangers and spread them on the ground, and added sarcastic pro-choice messages to the display's signage.

Campus police are investigating the incident, but Princeton Pro-Life expressed skepticism about the investigation, saying that they believed investigating the vandalism was low on the priority list.

Ben Affleck to Play Young Kirk?

2006-05-02T09:54:00.000-07:00

No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

NO.

Want Citizenship? Enlist.

2006-05-02T00:35:00.000-07:00

Interesting proposal from The Futurist.

As one of the commenters notes, I think we have something like this now - but it would be fascinating to greatly widen its scope.

Licensed Torrent Model the Way to Go

2006-05-01T22:43:00.000-07:00

An idle thought about selling video and music content online.

To optimize customer choice and satisfaction, companies ought to specialize in selling either data delivery service, or content delivered through the service.

I pay Adelphia for cable TV. I have DVR software and a machine to run it. I have a home network. I have a high-speed Internet connection.

If I want to watch a pre-existing episode of South Park, I can tell my DVR to record it the next time it comes around, and then watch it either on the TV connected to the DVR PC, or on my PC's monitor. That's legal.

Alternatively, I can illegally use a free BitTorrent client to download the same episode. I can't quite download it at real-time speed yet, so I'd have to get the file first. So it would take maybe an hour or so. For a new episode, I might have to wait an hour or a day for someone to put the file out into the torrentsphere.

Doing any of this would be piracy, pure and simple.

It wouldn't feel much like piracy, emotionally. I'm paying somebody for a mechanism that allows me to watch their show; whadda they care how I get my hands on the goods? But of course it does matter to the content producers, who get unhappy.

The difficulty with their unhappiness comes from the difficulty of fighting digital piracy. Information wants to be free; its legitimate and rightful owners are having, and will continue to have, trouble keeping it owned.

IF content companies want to get their product out into the marketplace and still own it, I suggest a compromise. Issue subscriptions and provide legal torrents to subscribers on a regularly scheduled basis. Make the torrents of decent quality, and ad-free other than (say) a one-minute promo at the beginning of the file. The torrentsphere will absorb such legitimate services and genuine emotional pirates will continue to steal the goods, but people who understand and believe that you have to pay the piper if you want to hear a tune will still subscribe - and the nature of torrenting is that even pirates contribute to the network effect and make the user experience better and better.

In essence, such a scheme would cut companies like Adelphia out of the loop when it comes to content for a large and increasing base of technologically gifted viewers. If I can get my ad-free South Park directly from Matt and Trey (or even from Comedy Central), and pay 'em 50 cents a month, I'll be glad to do so. I have to think that with - say - a million viewers willing to make this deal, a direct, continuing revenue stream of $500,000 a month is worth something - particularly since the deal would be non-exclusive, and they could continue selling their product via content distribution companies for anybody who wants to buy it that way.

(If any of my legions of idle wealthy techie readers feels like being the guy who gets really rich off this idea by pumping me with funding to acquire content and make distribution deals, you know where to send the check.)

Senator McCain: "Clean Government" More Important than First Amendment Rights

2006-05-01T16:05:00.000-07:00

Arizona Senator and Presidential hopeful John McCain, appearing on the Don Imus show, said that "I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected, that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I'd rather have the clean government."

McCain's assertion reminds me, yet again, exactly why the Arizona Republican cannot be trusted with the presidency, or indeed, with any high office. I don't have any input into who the people of Arizona send to the Senate, but I have my own voice when it comes to the presidency, and I will never vote for a candidate who displays such disregard for the values of free political speech that our country is predicated upon.

Via Protein Wisdom.

"Are You a Registered Republican?"

2006-04-30T13:16:00.000-07:00

That's what the nice candidate running for state senate called out to me as I exited the Safeway. He had a little table with a chair and a sign and some literature. I didn't get a good look at him; white guy in a suit. Didn't get the name.

"Yes, I am," I called back as I strode across the parking lot, heading straight for my car. Unspoken - because I didn't want to take the time - was "and thus, I have a job and I'm very busy and I don't have time to chat with a political candidate."

Valuable lesson for people buttonholing me in public:

You only get one shot. Ask the question you need to ask, not a prefatory question. I'll answer your prefatory question, because I'm polite, and then I'll move on. If you want my vote so you can stop the invading Mongol horde, you pretty much need to say "Mister, I want your vote so I can stop the invading Mongol horde!" If I am also worried about the Mongols, maybe I'll stop and listen to you bloviate. But try and save yourself time by wasting mine ("let's prescreen for registered voters, and let's prescreen for Republicans"), and you'll get nothing. I've got stuff to do.

Although, admittedly, not so much stuff that I can't take a moment to blog about it. But that's different - it happens at my convenience, not his.

Saturday Puppy Blogging

2006-04-29T20:33:00.000-07:00

His widdle paws say "cute"...but his eyes say "I will cut you for putting me in this suit, you son of a *****".

Attack of the Ants

2006-04-29T12:48:00.000-07:00

A few days ago my wife made some really outstanding chocolate cookies. Last night I had a few (*cough*) in my office. Apparently some crumbs went "rogue" and fell, unnoticed, behind some boxes scattered on the floor.

Today I grabbed a sandwich for lunch. A green pepper fell out of it and was on the floor; when I noticed it had fallen, I leaned down to pick it up and recoiled - ants! Dozens of 'em, Mr. Rico!

I prepared to engage when I realized - one or two random ants finding my green pepper, I could see. But it had only been there a few minutes. Where had they come from? I cast my gaze farther afield - and there, swarming in their hundreds, were little ant-mountains on top of the cookie fragments. Ewww!

This is why God invented little handy battery-powered vacuum cleaners, however. A few minutes of cleaning (which the floor needed, anyway) and the little ant raiding party was no more. I'll be engaging in tactical ant-squashing over the next few hours, undoubtedly, as ants-come-lately follow the scent trail to where the cookies used to be. Wish me luck as I commit to battle.

We fight the ant infestation we have, not the ant infestation we'd like to have.

UPDATE:

Q. What does my office have in common with the Pink Panther movies?
A. "Dead ant, dead ant, dead ant dead ant dead ant dead ant dead ant...deadantdeadantdeadantant"

UPDATE 2:

A small squad of six highly-trained, stealthy ants crept onto the battlefield. Ignoring the corpses of their fallen brothers-in-arms, they ant-handled one last remaining crumb onto their collective shoulders and started maneuvering it out of the conflict zone. They didn't see the shadow looming. They didn't see the pencil descending like the hand of an angry God. All they saw was the carpet suddenly looming large as they were crushed, as though beneath the awful weight of their own crime.

Don't steal my food.

Johnny Cash Kicks A**

2006-04-28T18:21:00.000-07:00

I've been listening to Johnny Cash's last "real" album, American IV. If you haven't heard his version of "Hurt" (a song Trent Raznor of NIN wrote), you need to hear it. It may be the most raw and powerfully emotional song I have ever heard. Cash was the rare performer who never stopped developing, but in his case, it's emotional layers that he added, not technical virtuosity. (Well, maybe he developed more virtuosity too, but my uneducated ear is not going to pick up on it.)

Put it another way: as you know, I'm a cold-hearted cynical bastard, but I hear his lifelong pain distilled into that song and I just want to cry and cry (as the little one says when confronted with a tragedy on the order of not getting applesauce with dinner).

Members of Congress Arrested at Darfur Protest

2006-04-28T10:19:00.000-07:00

Five Democratic members of Congress were briefly arrested at a protest in front of the Sudanese Embassy. Six citizen activists, along with Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Houston), Jim McGovern (D-Worcester, Mass.), Jim Moran (D-Virginia) and John Olver (D-Massachusetts), were taken into custody for blocking the entrance to the embassy as part of protests against the ongoing genocide in Darfur.

Sudan is governed by a military dictatorship which has been committing an ongoing genocide against non-Arab citizens of the African nation. The sitation in Darfur appears to be deteriorating, with hundreds of thousands of people being driven from their homes by government-allied gangs of brigands. Some aid agencies have reported being forced to leave the country, and the United Nations claims that if the aid network in Sudan collapses, as many as 100,000 people per month could begin dying from starvation, in addition to those being directly killed by the Sudanese state.

Circumcision and Monogamy Most Effective Against HIV Transmission

2006-04-27T20:40:00.000-07:00

Very interesting study done in the field in Africa.

Get The Door...It's Dominoes

2006-04-27T19:55:00.001-07:00

Pennsylvania man uses car to deliver pizza AND corpses. Now there's somebody who really has to keep his two jobs straight in his mind...

Britney Fat-Bashed at Celeb Site

2006-04-27T16:42:00.000-07:00

This video shows Britney Spears practicing dance moves for a new song of hers. The video is unremarkable. It shows a pretty woman who has had a baby doing some dance exercises. Every straight man I've ever known would think "that's a nice looking baby mama there, that is".

What's remarkable (but sadly, not unusual) is the incredible fat-bashing going on in the comment thread attached to the video.

"Britney should give up on trying to look sexy and just embrace her new image of 'beached whale'"

"Big booty = more balance for spins...staple the stomach, please"

"Oh my god how much do you guys think she weighs- seriously.... I'm gonna guess 140.... that's being nice."

"Brit's doing a great job of getting as fat and foul as Anna was prior to the latest drug addictions."

"It's like watchin a WHALE chase a TicTac! "THERE SHE BLOWS""

And so on.

I hold no brief for Britney Spears or for celebrity culture in general. But it is sickening to see the contempt that these people have no compunction about pouring out in a public forum. What kind of mentality thinks it appropriate to crap on other human beings like this? Knock it off, knuckleheads; you're forcing me into agreement with moonbats, and I hate being in agreement with moonbats.

Today In History - the Sultana Disaster

2006-04-27T11:37:00.000-07:00

On this date in 1865, the steamboat Sultana, transporting formerly-captured Union soldiers being repatriated home after the end of the Civil War, exploded, killing 1700 people in the worst maritime disaster in US history.

Although at the time the disaster received only limited press attention (Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated only 12 days previously, and war-hardened Americans were accustomed to seeing gory casualty figures), over time the tragedy has been memorialized all through the Mississippi valley.

Perhaps the most compelling element of the Sultana story is the fact that after the explosion, some 500 survivors, most terribly burned, were taken in and nursed by the ordinary citizenry of Memphis - people who had been the enemies of these soldiers just weeks before. One speculates about how much goodwill must have been generated in northern homes when their wounded finally arrived, bearing tales of the kindness and charity of the people of Memphis.