Quote of the Day

Better (a thousand times better) an atheist who believes in objective truth than a “religious” person who does not. - Paul Marks

From Samizdata

Gary, Indiana

I'm not sure why I find pictures of dying cities so haunting, but I do.

From Boing Boing.

Pwnage

Happy Happy Joy Joy

An indoor range has opened very near to us. If I can somehow start getting income again, life would be lovely.

Important News

Jerry Pournelle will be podcasting via TWiT.

That is all.

We Have Found The Solution

Businesses are leaving California at a record rate, mostly due to its unfriendly regulatory and tax regimes. California has a multiplicity of boards and commissions that make navigating the governmental maze to get permission to do something extraordinarily difficult.

The good news is that the elected officials are aware of the problem.

So they're forming an agency to study it and come up with a solution.

"Later this year, California will set up a new agency that will serve as a focal point for economic development and job creation, he said. Among its goals will be to reverse the perception that California is business-unfriendly."

California, where the jokes write themselves.

Whistling Past The Graveyard

I don't think David Plouffe is fooling anyone. He's throwing it out there because he is a deniable source and on the off chance a useful idiot will bite.

And for the record, one of the things that keeps biting the President in the behind is a little trick they've been playing with the unemployment statistics. Every month they announce the statistics, which typically show some slight improvement in unemployment. They also announce that they are revising the prior two months statistics downwards. That helps the current figures until the next month.

What makes me curious is whether they are relying on Mr Obama's acknowledged strengths as a campaigner to pull them through. I'm not seeing any good economic news on the horizon (jobs are stagnant, inflation recognized or not, is up, up up). My inner conspiracy theorist wonders if they will suddenly gin up some sort of political crisis near the election. The problem with that scenario is that the Iran hostage crisis really didn't help Mr Carter. By now no one thinks President Obama shines with foreign affairs.

I Don't Quite Follow, Would You Please Repeat It?

Ed Milliband, UK Labour Party Leader answers hardball questions from the ever hard hitting BBC.

Note how the professional journalist presses the Labour leader until he cracks.

/sarcasm

{From here}

If You're Going To Read Just One Webcomic

Make it Schlock Mercenary.

I read several. I love 'Day by Day', Oglaf (massively NSFW), Erfworld, Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic and Order of the Stick.

They're all great. But Schlock has a proven track record of always appearing every day for years. It's quality has been amazingly consistent as well.

Howard Tayler, the creator, currently has a buffer of forty days worth of comics.

Just amazing.

How To Maintain Your Linux Computer

Awesome article on the subject here.

Please excuse me while I feel smug. Linux is insanely easy sometimes.

Lifehacker is a great site. Poke around there a bit while you're there.

Uncharitable Semi Rant

Like half of America, I have a Facebook account. Also like most of those on Facebook, I use it to keep track of extended family and old college chums. It's a nice way to mark milestones in acquaintances' lives. I don't anything of real significance there and it doesn't link to any vital or financial information. Hack my Facebook account and you can see the exact same pictures you could see before you hacked my account.

Today I received something from Facebook that surprised me no end. A group I joined back in the dawn of time was spamming my email account with banal Facebook messages. I thought I joined them as a mailing list, although it is possible that I joined them on Facebook when I first signed up.

Here's the rant. Why on earth would someone resurrect a group that had been dead and buried for over two years? We all lost interest more than two years ago (one of the glories of most social media is you can look at the dates on messages). Until Monday, the last message on the group was from early 2009. Most of the messages were from early 2008.

The same people who spammed the group into banal oblivion and howled down any real meaningful discussion back in 2007-2008 were spamming each other again. It's very much like those zombies movies where you think the good guys have killed all the zombies, they've buried them for good and a skeletal hand reaches up from the ground and grabs a foot.

Let the dead stay dead, I say. If you miss the old crowd so much, why not start a new group? Then you can spam each other as much as you like.

Me, I quit the group, again. And set Gmail to mark all the messages received as spam. I'm also exploring ways to set my Facebook settings to 'dull', 'bland' or 'unexciting'.

Good Gaming News

In the midst of my despair of the state of real estate and contemplating a bleak future, I stumbled across this: It seems Star Wars: The Old Republic, the MMORPG Bioware has been working on since forever doesn't suck. It's actually pretty good. And that's from a guy in the very early "friends 'n family" beta.

It's not much, but I'll take what I can get.

RIP Peter Falk

He was a wonderful actor. Most people remember him for Colombo, a role which made real. But my favourite role of his was when he played a grandfather:

Best Selling Idea

My cursory market research reveals that if you really want to write a best seller, it must have angst ridden vampire teenagers in a winner takes all dance contest.

Now you know.

Actually, I'd go there

Apparently at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin Texas, you can eat, drink and enjoy a movie, but you may not text.

The following is the voicemail that was left for them by one disgruntled ejectee (NSFW for language).

Waaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Reporters are complaining that Sarah Palin is making their lives difficult. It's as though she were paying them back for being mean about her all those years.

I'm still not convinced she's make a good President, but I do love how she handles the press.

Science Answers An Important Question

Briar Patch, Don't Throw Me Dep't.

"If the Victorians turned up off our shores and threatened me with a gold standard, 7% taxes, property rights, free trade, the right to bear arms, the restitution of double jeopardy, free association, and the right to remain silent, while at the same time guaranteeing the repeal of civil forfeiture and detention without trial, etc., etc., etc., I would welcome them with open arms."

From here.

Too Much Fun For Words

Click to make some music

From here

Where Are the Heroes of Yesteryear?