PicoBusiness

James Lee was a nutcase, and the fact that he latched onto primarily left-wing causes for his nutcasery is not an indictment of the Left.

But this blog post and the associated comments are quite troubling

Specifically – Lee’s manifesto lists many points of concern, most of which are focused on ecological concerns. But the post itself neatly excises all of those points, and focuses only on the Immigration-related concern. And implies that, because he cares about immigration, he must be a right-wing neocon nutcase.

Various people start pointing out his eco-related demands in the comments, and these comments are all voted down – and the posters are verbally assaulted for spreading James Lee’s message of hate. from an outsider’s perspective, this looks like a bunch of left-wing folks jamming their fingers in their ears and shouting “I Can’t Hear You, I Can’t Hear You” to themselves to drown out the argument from the other side.

It’s wrong when the right does it – I believe the buzzword-of-the-day is “epistemic closure”, and it’s wrong when the left does it as well.

Any position, if advocated with enough demonization of “the other” is going to attract crazies. That doesn’t mean the position is inherently bad. Having said that, we would all benefit from a reduction in demonization on all sides of every argument.

Hrmm… Using a virus laden with medicine to defeat diseases…

I’d better start stocking up on my breathing masks, in case it goes airborne!

*ed* – and golf clubs, and canned food, and UV lights, and hunting rifles…

Der Spiegel article discussing the haunting results of America’s WWII wartime action

Via Waldseemuller – the first map to use the name America, and the first to recognize that it was a separate continent from Asia

Pelosi blames “Bush appointees” for lax regulations at BP Deepwater Horizons. Only problem – these weren’t Bush appointees.

If a Republican had made this mistake, he would have been called “A Moron”. Sauce for the Goose?

The drug war is a miserable failure.

Dear Charter,

When I told my co-workers and friends that Charter was going to be my cable company at my new house, they groaned. “Charter is the worst.” I was told, by more than one person. Well, I thought, I will see if things are different – maybe they just had bad experiences.

So I soldiered on – and arranged to have service turned on May 5th, 2010. Pay attention to that date, it’s going to be relevant later.

And, generally, the service was pretty good. A couple of outages, nothing major. Some network choppiness, but again, nothing major. No complaints.

I received my bill in the mail on June 1st. And since I was planning on going on vacation the next week I thought “I know, I’ll take care of this while I am on vacation.” I mean – I haven’t even had the service for a month at this point.

So on Saturday, June 12th, I open my bill.

PAST DUE! It screams – of course, it only screams this on the inside – the only “message” on the outside of the envelope is an ad suggesting I buy home telephone service.

“Past Due??” I think, “How can I be past due? I’ve only had the service for one month and 7 days.” But hey, whatever, I can pay the bill – so I go to my bank and set up auto bill pay for it, make the payment covering the entire balance, and go on about my date. I’m a little annoyed at Charter, but it’s not the end of the world.

Later that same day, I get a call from “Charter Disconnect Service.” WTF? “You have a past due amount, would you like to pay it now over the phone so you can avoid being disconnected.” She says.

WHAT? I grimly point out that I’ve only had the service for 37 days. I also point out that I made an online payment that morning.
“Many people say that they have paid their bills, but they lie.”

Ah, by insinuation, I too am a liar. Yes, my 790 credit rating is due to my ability to not pay my bills on time. Yes, that’s surely the case. Lovely. Again, I insist that I have paid my bill online earlier that morning.

“Well, it may not be processed soon enough, and the disconnect technicians work 7 days a week.” She threatens.

WHAT? Are you kidding me? You’re threatening me with disconnect, and I just received my first bill 12 days ago?

Angrily, I grab my credit card, and shout out the numbers to her so she can “settle my account.” I then demand to speak to her supervisor.

She puts me on hold, and then hangs up on me.

This is the point at which I start ranting on Twitter about how angry I am at Charter.

Then she calls me back, and apologizes for hanging up on me. Ok, the first mote of sunshine in an otherwise dark and stormy day. She gives me the number for her superior, and she tells me that she didn’t run my card, for some reason that I can’t quite understand (she is not the best at English), but she seems to acknowledge that I have an online bill pay set up, and that everything should be fine_).

Grrrr. Still angry, but calmed down a bit.

Monday – I get a call from another person at “Charter Disconnect Service”, telling me I am past due. I growl at this person a bit, and she quickly hangs up.

Tuesday, I get a call from another person at “Charter Disconnect Service”, also telling me I am past due. I growl again, another quick hangup. I am so happy at how I’m being treated like a deadbeat who doesn’t pay his bills. Gives me warm fuzzies inside.

Today is Wednesday. I expect another call today, because, of course, I’ve had Charter for 41 days at this point – clearly I have a history of not paying my cable bill on time.

When I get back from vacation, I am going to carefully investigate my options for different TV and Internet service. This is beyond ridiculous.

Sigh

http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2010/06/jones-act-and-power-of-unions.html

The owner of OkCupid – a free dating site – does some number crunching and theorizing to claim that for-pay online dating sites are not worth the money.

He admits that he’s biased, but I don’t think he realizes how biased he is – or, alternatively, he’s a sneaky bastard.

Here’s his article.

I have some experience in online dating, and I tried a free site (PlentyOfFish.com) before trying a pay site – (Match.com). So I have some familiarity with the topic at hand.

My criticisms:

1. He describes this “conspiracy” that the pay sites have to connect you with people who aren’t currently subscribed (so they’ll subscribe). But my experience was exactly the opposite – every profile was clearly marked with ‘active’ or ‘inactive’. In addition, the way I worked with the site – I looked at a bunch of profiles, winked at a few, waited, watched who visited my profile, looked at their info, and interacted with that much smaller set of women who seemed at least mildly interested. There was no “cycle of messaging.”

2. On the other hand, PlentyOfFish.com was, as far as I could tell, an attack zone of guys who just wanted a one-night stand and bombarded women with messages. There were a lot more women on PoF, but they almost never responded.

3. I also wonder about the statistics eHarmony and Match.com give out about marriages. The numbers are low, relative to the overall population, but I wonder if that’s a side effect of the way these sites work – I met Sarah on Match.com, and unsubscribed a month or two later. When we get married, we won’t have been Match.com subscribers for well over a year, perhaps 2 – how will they know?

4. There’s an implicit “men will spend a fixed amount of time on a site every day/week/etc” I think that’s a bad assumption – I can and did vary the number of hours I spent. Also, it’s very much like fishing – a lot of it was waiting for someone who seemed like a good match, rather than forcing myself upon everyone with a pulse.

5. Someone else pointed out in the comments of that article that the amount of time spent looking for “Miss Right” should be considered – if 1.25% of subscribers find their soul-mate on Match.com in 6 months, but it takes the offline 15% 10 years – then you’re better off with Match.

6. Lastly, the willingness to pay for a dating site is itself a signal – “I have enough money that I can afford to do this” for men and “I am serious enough about finding someone that I will pay for it” for women. – There’s no profile picture, no funny intro paragraph that compares to that level of commitment.

I apparently never posted this

If you answered ‘The memory cost of a high-end Macintosh computer“, you win!

Here’s the thing that really bakes my noodle. In 5 years, that high-end iMac, with it’s jawdropping graphics, screen and CPU capacity, is an underpowered kids machine. In 10 years, it’s a doorstop. In 25 years, it will be ridiculously primitive.

The question is – what is going to arrive over the next 25 years to make that iMac ridiculously primitive?!?!?! I can’t wait to see it. If we just extrapolate the basics, in 25 years a high-end mac will have an 81″ screen, 4 exabytes of storage, 2.5 petabytes of memory and 15 terahertz worth of CPU. But I suspect that this will only begin to scratch the surface of what’s to come.

http://www.unitedliberty.org/articles/5370-census-comedy-gold

I have dual citizenship with the United States and Florida.

Based on new media research, experts anticipate that predictions about the precise date of Peak Oil will, themselves, peak in 2014.

Expert Trendologist Hari Seldon described his predictions for us:

“This prediction is based on various factors – the nature of supply and demand, the historical record of predictions (Peak Whale Oil, Peak Steam, Peak Mule), the attention span of various media channels and psychomathic simulations of the entire Earth’s population.”

“Basically, ” Seldon said, “You’re going to see Peak Oil predictions continue to rise over the next few years, because the Media loves a crisis, and people generally need to fret about something, and most of their basic needs and wants have been met. Currently, the recession is the number one issue on the Fretometer, but over the next 3 years, as the economy improves, the recession will recede, and other worries, specifically Peak Oil will take its place.”

When asked about Global Warming, Seldon said “The recent criticisms of the CRU datasets and the IPCC documents has dramatically reduced worry in AGW. Good or bad, it is not nearly as threatening as it once was. Peak Oil, on the other hand, has a very obvious pain point – the cost of gas – and is easier for people to grasp.”

And why 2014? – Seldon: “What we can expect is an increase in oil prices as the economy recovers. This will, naturally, cause people to switch away from gas where possible, which will generally limit the price increase, just as it did in the summer of 2008. But that won’t be obvious early on, and the media will breathlessly extrapolate a linear trend, and predict gas prices of 10, 15 and $20 a gallon as we surge towards our productive peak.”

“However, ” Seldon continued, “the economy will switch away from gas as the price rises, by substituting walking, video conferencing, bike riding and combining trips, and this will significantly dampen demand. When the crisis fails to materialize a second time, and the media gets burned again, they’ll start to wise up that linear extrapolation of demand is foolish, and the demand for Peak Oil demagoguery will experience a rapid collapse, in the summer of 2014″

This is not helping us (as humans) have a rational conversation about this.

• Climate change belief is given same legal weight as religious beliefs
• James Hansen compares global warming to Holocaust
• Perhaps there is a case for making climate change denial a crime
• Calls for Nuremberg trials for certain highly-placed climate change deniers