This article accurately demonstrates why anyone who says you cannot describe a civilization or society or set of social norms as good or evil is full of crap.

When you cannot critique society without fear of having your head sawed off then something is very wrong, and the head-choppers should fear an intervention by the forces of civilization.

P.S.: If your idea of the height of humanity is similar to 7th Century Islam – or, for that matter, 12th Century Europe – then, sorry, you’re not amongst those who are civilized.

What I’m reading now:

Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand Up to the Facts

It’s become rather common to hear otherwise sane people spouting Barking Moonbat theories about 9/11 and the destruction of the World Trade Center towers – theories that give way too much credit to the government, as they are certainly not that competent.

Review soon, but so far it is very good.

Going along with that is this article discussing this rather sad phenomena.

Here’s an article about South Park and the rather oddly selective censorship they’ve experienced – namely, it is ok to show Jesus defecating on the president, but showing Mohammed – even in a calm, non-offensive way – isn’t.

Supposedly this was because Comedy Central was being “culturally sensitive”, but (as you’ll read in the article) they eventually copped to the fact that they were afraid of being blown up by some terrorist asshole.

And, that makes me think…. Hmm, if you want more of a behaviour, reward it. Good job, Comedy Central!

One wonders when certain zealous (over-zealous, actually) Christian & Jewish groups will finally figure out they can get their way by strapping bombs to themselves and blowing people to shreds.

I found this article about Tolkien’s views on the use of power to fight power the other day; the philosophy that Tolkien developed as a result of his time spent in WWI shows quite clearly in Lord of the Rings. In short: concentrated power is bad – always.

Power is an ominous and sinister word in all these tales

This is true at the highest level and at the more accessible levels. Look at the treatment of this guy after dropping his iPod in the jetliner lavatory

I’m speaking specifically of the customs inspector who, apparently on his own, decided what was right and what was wrong. I have to say that the author of the story handled that much better than I would.

Haven’t done one of these in a while, so here goes:

Here is some commentary I liked about the world of Cars, a Pixar movie I rather enjoyed. I also wondered “so… what does it look like on the other side of the windshield?”

Not exactly fresh news, but one of my favorite Guitar Tabs sites is under attack by the copyright thugs.

Weird Al has a new album out, and you can download – for free – his new song Don’t Download This Song.

Speaking of not downloading songs, I’ve found this new service on the web called BlogMusik. It works well, is very useful and seems to be just what I’ve been looking for. This of course means the RIAA jackels will be tearing it apart in short order.

In other news, I’m also fond of Pandora. Also nice for music and expanding your genre knowledge.

TRUE BELIEVERS! Stan Lee does The Watchmen.

Microsoft has graced us with their iPod killer the Zune (now available in turd brown). It needs some work, but it does contain one new innovation – Viral DRM. Nice! So, even if you own the copyright to the music you have on your Zune, you can’t share it openly. Thanks, Microsoft. Thanks again.

Speaking of copyright, here is an interesting article by Michael Crichton that is, well, illegal.

Here is a little story that makes me glad I resisted all of those “fantastic mortgage deals” that they kept advertising here in California. I often wondered how people were affording $750,000 houses on their salaries – the answer is… they weren’t.

Finally, I don’t know how this guy did it but he managed to find a way to leave comments on eBay for auctions that he never participated in… and they are hilarious, but the truly funny part is the feedback comments that come with his insanity.

Evangelicals urge museum to hide man’s ancestors.

Who needs to refute anything? Just ask them not to show it.

Well, if it is cash… even if there is no other evidence of wrongdoing.

Oh, that slippery slope…

I have become addicted, in one short day, to Grid Wars 2.

It’s for both Mac & PC - beware if you are short on spare time. It reminds me of Robotron 2084… but with gravity wells and smarter enemies.

(Note that you need to set the input controls to Mouse unless you happen to have a couple of joysticks connected to your machine.)

So, my other task this weekend (other than to RELAX) was to test my backup tools for our online presense and make sure we can, in fact, come back if we have a disk disaster.

I just got through taking too much time moving my restore files (from the backup server) to a shiny, new virtual machine and doing the whole “restore the boot block” dance.

Result? Well, it’s not “did we crater?” – it’s “how big was the crater?”.

Obviously I have some work to do.

Someone has discovered a term I’ve been using for a while now – “Victim Disarmament”.

It’s a very appropriate term, too. It is no coincidence that Florida’s violent crime rate dropped heavily when they instituted “shall issue” concealed carry – criminals don’t want to be killed, and armed victims – especially when you don’t know who is armed – make that a lot more likely.

So, they did what enterprising criminals do – the moved on to other, easier targets. Property crime (grand theft auto, burglary – not robbery) went up. But murders, assaults and rapes went down. Yes, it would be nice if you didn’t get the associated rise in property crime, but over all a pretty good trade.

Now, I realize that this truth may not digest well if you lean towards the “gun control” side – so, here are the citations. And, unlike the Harvard Study (remember “You’re 43 more time likely to be killed with your own gun” and other studies?), John Lott releases all of his numbers and datasets for public consumption. Feel free to take a look at them and prove him wrong.

It’s come to light that, as suspected, a lot of the early-90’s “anti-gun” legislation coming out of D.C. was pre-planned – in fact, Judicial Watch just found a smoking gun showing just that. (Yes, pun intended.)

I’m very curious to see how the Dems handle the next election. Every time they’ve grabbed the gun control lever they’ve lost – big – in local and national elections. The only place it actually plays well is in very heavy Dem leaning areas like Massachusetts and parts of coastal California. Will they finally figure out that “gun control” is a losing game and to just drop it?

Perhaps – it seems that, for the first time in years, gun control is not part of the stated party platform. I guess we’ll see, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

Well, the era was over some time ago, but still…

I finally managed to get all of my old data off of the Macintosh Classic – one floppy disk at a time. Thank goodness for very small hard drives.

I guess, had this been impossible (dead floppy drive or some such), I would have dug up the serial cables for this machine and found a way to tranfer files via ZModem. Regardless, I did it.

I have this extra 500MB SCSI hard drive sitting here, ready to replace the now cold & dead 100MB hard drive in Ye Olde Mac Classic. I just need to figure out where to get the special tools I need in order to open the case for the Classic. It has also become obvious that the original Macintosh mouse for this machine needs replaced – the springs are so weak that they won’t hold the tracking rollers against the roller ball, making operation somewhat random. Yet another reason to abandon mechanical mice.

I did find some very interesting tidbits, including e-mail from when I was at Ball State University. Yes, I still have VAX Mail from the early 90’s, including poetry from someone whom I haven’t spoken to in years (and I doubt that will change, regardless of this discovery). Yes, NightBeast, I have some of your poetry. It’s yours – if you want a copy just write to me. I’d be happy to send it.

Once I sort through it all I may post the more interesting (to me) and non-imcriminating portions.