Articles from Every Topic in the Universe(s?)

Evil vs crazy
2007-03-23 06:23:00
There's a series on the Discovery Times channel (I don't know what that name means either) called "Most Evil"http://times.discovery.com/tvlistings/series.jsp?series=25220&gid=0&channel=DTCLast night, I stumbled across an episode of the series called "Psychotic Killers," and learned of the horrific actions of some of our nation's most revolting murderers; I also learned that even indulging in the most nauseating behaviors imaginable did NOT guarantee that they'd be labeled insane. The most disturbing example was the case of Gary M. Heidnik, who kidnapped a half dozen women and held them prisoner in his basement; in addition to the standard physical and sexual abuse that a violent criminal would be expected to inflict upon captives, Heidnik added some sick twists... such as putting the flesh of one of the women who died under his abuse through a blender, mixing it with dog food and making the other women eat it. Is this something that a sane mind could even come up with, much le ...

Does intelligence work against happiness?
2007-03-19 03:45:00
Thanks to my friend Peety, whose highly entertaining blog is herehttp://peety-passion.com/I found a fascinating article by sociologist Bill Allin called "Why Intelligent People Tend To Be Unhappy," which begins with a thought-provoking quote:"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."- Ernest Hemingway, author and journalist, Nobel laureate (1899-1961)If you're puzzled as to how this could be, you haven't been paying attention; despite the lip service we give to how swell intelligence is, intelligent people are generally disliked and distrusted in our culture, and it's perfectly logical that they'd be less happy than average as a result. We hold intelligence in such contempt that even in the job world, where it should be eagerly embraced for its potential to make $, bright folks are often screwed:"Western society is not set up to nurture intelligent children and adults, the way it dotes over athletes and sports figures, especially the outstanding ones. While we ...

Should we bring back the draft?
2007-03-15 03:08:00
If you watched "60 Minutes" on Sunday, you heard Andy Rooney say something that's undoubtedly brought him a ton of abuse; that, although he never thought he'd be saying it, since in order to fill our quotas for new troops we're having to "lower the bar" and accept those with criminal records or without high school degrees, we should bring back the draft in order to have a higher quality of soldier. He based this opinion on his own military service, and his bad memories of men of these "lower types" who served with him; he considered them to be poor soldiers, and even poorer examples of Americans for foreigners to base their ideas of what we're like on. Should American military personnel provide a positive example of what Americans are like? Ideally, yes, absolutely, and many of them DO, but that's not part of their job description; their job is to kill people and destroy things, not to be masters of etiquette. It's a moot point, though, because every country has already fo ...

What do we mean when we say someone's "nice"?
2007-03-11 05:46:00
John might be a liar, always keep people waiting, tell ugly racial jokes, cheat on his girlfriends, and shoplift the occasional candy bar, but if you ask anyone who knows him, and knows he does those things, what he's like, they'll say, "He's nice." Heck, John could be a serial killer, and when they interviewed the people in his life after his arrest, and asked them what sort of person he was, they'd STILL say "He was nice"; haven't you seen folks do just that a hundred times?We call virtually everyone who doesn't perform anti-social acts on US, or on others right in front of us, "nice"; what does calling someone "nice" MEAN, then? We pretend that it means what it's SUPPOSED TO, that the person thus labeled is almost always kind, considerate, etc, but what it ACTUALLY means in most cases is:1) I love/like them (and if you think that everyone YOU care about is nice, you're either applying unusually stringent guidelines to who you allow in your life or fooling yourself).2) ...

Harry Potter's penis and other odd bits
2007-03-07 04:03:00
While surfing blogs last week, I came across a photo of a cute naked guy leaning up against a horse; you see porn pics all the time online, and normally I ignore them, but my attention was caught because the central element of the pic was uncircumcised, which as an American woman I'm not used to. My "What the heck is THAT? Oh, yeah, right" reaction gave me time to see the accompanying text... claiming that the photo was of Daniel Radcliffe, the actor who plays Harry Potter. He looks so different with his hair shorter and bangs-free that I hadn't recognized him, but a closer look verified that the face WAS his... what about the body, though? The post said that he's currently starring in the play "Equus" in London, and that, as required by the role, he appears nude in one scene; a little research verified that this was indeed the case (not having been born yesterday, I don't automatically believe what I read on blogs), and turned up many reproductions of a group of promotiona ...

How to never be wrong
2007-03-03 04:46:00
I learned this skill the hard way; I came from an abusive family where wrongness was seen as incontrovertible proof of moral failing and absolute worthlessness, so I figured out at an early age how to stop being wrong in self-defense. Don't worry, it's easier than it looks; heck, 95% of wrongness can be eliminated by just following the 1st rule:1) If you don't know anything about a topic, DON'T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT IT.We have such an intense desire to be seen as one of the group that when the conversation switches to something we know nothing about we have the overwhelming urge to keep babbling; this goes x10 if someone asks us directly about it and suddenly we're in the spotlight. If you try to say something that sounds like what the others have said, or that you THINK is somehow related to the topic, you've got a reasonable chance of getting away with it, which is why everyone does it... but every time you do it you take a major risk of being wrong. 2) Remember that know ...

The Beware List, Part 7
2007-02-27 03:53:00
The Beware List is an accumulation of red flags that I've noticed will very consistently indicate if a person is evil, a psycho, sociopath, manipulator, clueless depressive, or screwing you (or planning to); if you notice someone's behavior matching a description from the list, be on high alert and start taking precautionary measures (which often means just kicking them to the curb as they so richly deserve). This post contains the latest installment; to read entries 1-60, see my posts of 5-31-06, 7-6-06, 8-31-06, 10-6-06, 11-19-06 and 1-10-07. Beware of anyone who:61) Wants to discuss their problems with you, but insists that certain portions of the topic are off-limits, prevents you from making certain sorts of comments, or in any way makes you feel like you’re walking through a minefield when you’re trying to HELP.This person has no desire to SOLVE their problems, and if you try to make them they'll turn on you like a rabid dog. They have no idea how friendship is suppos ...

Husband "humor"
2007-02-23 03:53:00
(In quotes because, as any wife could tell you, it's not like normal humor-it's either puerile or gross or both... don't say I didn't warn you.)My part of the city has recently been inundated with Vietnamese restaurants, and they all have "Pho" in their names, which I was disappointed to learn meant that they mostly had soup, which I don't care for; my husband, although also un-thrilled about the avalanche of soup places, had too much fun with the word "pho" to care. The correct pronunciation of "pho" is "fuh" (or more like "fuh?" because it's "tonal"), but it LOOKS like it should be pronounced "foh," and that's how we said it amongst ourselves before I looked it up; you should pretend it's pronounced that way for the duration of this story, so that it'll all make sense... because, like most men, my husband has a passion for puns, the stinkier the better, and thus he came up with:Him: Do you know what they call fake pho?Me: What?Him: Faux pho!!Me: Oh honestly, lol!!Hi ...
Humor

Borrowing a pen = friendship and sexual attraction?
2007-02-19 04:05:00
(Did you notice the nifty "animation" I've installed in my title bar (BlogMad visitors will have to open my blog in a new window to see it)? Cool, huh?)When I was in 2nd grade, my mother found out that I'd loaned someone a pencil or given them a sheet of paper (I can no longer recall which), and astonished me by raving on and on about how evil this was; everyone ELSE passed pencils and paper around, so why was it wrong for ME to do so? She informed me that paper and pencils were very expensive, and this was why I wasn't allowed, it turned out, to give or loan such things; she told me that when I was asked to I was supposed to respond "My mommy paid for that, and your mommy is supposed to pay for your paper/pencils, not my mommy, so you tell your mommy to buy what you need for school, because my mommy won't pay for your paper/pencils." Yes, my mother was THAT twisted; you can imagine the shock and contempt with which my schoolmates responded to these speeches, and the damage i ...

Mating, $ and mass
2007-02-15 02:35:00
(Note to those who read me on Bloglines: They're having some sort of problem with my RSS feed, but if you want to be able to read me on a feed reader while they figure it out you can click on the "Add to Any" button in my sidebar and choose from dozens of different ones that CAN get my feed right.)In the February 2007 issue of Discover magazine, there's a blurb in the article "The Big Bang Machine" that says (asterisks are mine):"All matter is made of quarks... Every proton and neutron is made of three quarks. But all three quarks together account for less than 2 percent of the total mass of any proton or neutron. So where does the rest of the mass come from? Physicists ***theorize**** that each quark in every atomic nucleus is surrounded by countless 'virtual particles' that constantly emerge from the vacuum and then almost instantaneously subside into nothingness again. It is these evanescent particles that are ***thought*** to give heft to all we see and feel."Translation: ...

Hawk 1: Rat 0
1970-01-01 00:59:59
Long-term readers will recall that my patio has been swamped with a Biblical plague of rats and mice for the past year and a half; they come to consume the seed and water meant for the many little birds that flock here every day, and like the birds probably enjoy how the patio area is enclosed by the cover, fence and landscaping, making it sheltered and safe. Because we're concerned for the safety of the tweeties during the day, and the raccoons, possums and skunks that periodically visit us at night, we can't do what most folks will when plagued with vermin; if we mined the feeding area with traps and/or poisoned baits, we'd kill some of our beloved visitors, which means that the UNbeloved ones have had free reign (as long as they stayed out of the shed, where we CAN safely put traps-we've gotten a few in there, but not many).Rats are sneaky little brutes, and so normally come to feed under cover of darkness; in the past couple of months, though, I've been spoiling their fun ...

Am I crazy, or is Google updating PageRank RIGHT NOW?
1970-01-01 00:59:59
(I guess those 2 things aren't mutually exclusive, huh, lol?)Update, 1-10-07: *** I WAS RIGHT!! *** A well-known Google employee admitted on his blog today that PR IS currently being updated... and *I* figured it out almost a WEEK ago!! Yay me!! :-)I've done every kind of search I can think of, checked every site, blog or otherwise, that I can find that deals with Google issues, and can't find any mention of an update. Many people have estimated an update for this month, most for the end of the month but a couple for the 1st week, and 1 even referred to odd behavior from Google going back a couple of weeks that they thought was indicative of a rapidly-approaching update, but no one that I've seen has said that it looks like an update is underway... so I'm tossing out an extra post to alert you to the following:If you query Google's data centers about a URL, you normally get the same PR # back from each one; if you get DIFFERENT #'s for the same URL, that's supposed to m ...
Google

Blog service blunders and a couple of updates
1970-01-01 00:59:59
I mentioned in my post of 9-28-06 that Webring had announced their intention to switch from free for everyone to paid for all but those few that were only members or managers of a handful of rings; I predicted disaster at the time, and it turns out that I was right... which isn't a cause for pride, since anyone OTHER than the owners of Webring would have been able to predict that going from free to paid would make them hemorrhage members and rings, especially given their poor record of handling technical issues and the downright nastiness of their so-called support department.Mind you, I WARNED them about what was going on when I started getting flooded with emails from ring managers announcing their intention to delete all their rings and referring repeatedly to a mass exodus from Webring; the admin who responded to me denied that any such thing was going on. I forwarded him a bunch of the emails I'd gotten as proof; he never wrote me back, naturally. Eventually, though, they ...

The karmic algebra of charity + prejudice
1970-01-01 00:59:59
My husband told me about the following story (the asterisks are mine):"PARIS - A top French judge ruled that an extreme-right group cannot serve pork soup to the needy, saying the charitable handouts aim to discriminate against Muslims and Jews who don't eat pork because of their faith.Judge Christian Vigouroux of the Council of State, the country's highest administrative body, said late Friday that such giveaways by the far-right group Solidarity of the French threaten public order.His ruling approved a decision by Paris police to refuse permits to the group on the grounds that such handouts could spark angry reactions.France is home to more than 5 million Muslims and some 600,000 Jews. Both Islam and Judaism prohibit eating pork, and Vigouroux said the group had shown 'a clearly discriminatory goal' with its charity.Solidarity of the French was just one of several far-right groups that began distributing pork soup across France over the last four years.Critics contend the giveaw ...

Bah humbug (mostly)
1970-01-01 00:59:59
It doesn't even seem like the holiday season in the Omni abode; we don't have a single Christmas decoration out yet... heck, we still haven't put the ones from Halloween and Thanksgiving away. As always, I'm held hostage by the disinclination of my lazy and procrastinative husband to tackle the floor to ceiling stacks of huge boxes that all our holiday paraphernalia is in so that stuff can be packed up and replaced with, er, other stuff; I'm not remotely strong enough to shuffle the stacks myself, and I'm not QUITE willing to hire a handyman to help me, so I'm stuck in a holiday display timewarp until I can scream loud enough and long enough for my husband to give in and take time out from screwing around on forums and do his 5 seconds of work so that *I* can spend several hours tearing down old displays and then putting out my most elaborate one of the year... which, if I'm lucky, will occur BEFORE Christmas day.The real bummer is that my spectacular Christmas tree is abs ...

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