You're

your
possessive adjective
1 belonging to or associated with the person or people that the speaker is addressing : what is your name?
2 belonging to or associated with any person in general : the sight is enough to break your heart.
• informal used to denote someone or something that is familiar or typical of its kind : I'm just your average Joe | she is one of your chatty types.
3 ( Your) used when addressing the holder of certain titles : Your Majesty | Your Eminence.
ORIGIN Old English ēower, genitive of gē (see ye 1 ), of Germanic origin; related to German euer.

you're
contraction of you are
"You're an angel, Deb!"

Ur
an ancient Sumerian city, formerly on the Euphrates River, in southern Iraq. One of the oldest cities in Mesopotamia, dating from the 4th millennium bc, it reached its zenith in the late 3rd millennium bc.

Thanks A Lot, America!

Way to go America, now Al Jourgenson is out of a job! Now we'll have to wait almost a decade for the next Ministry record!

Blog Not Updated, Nobody Concerned

Absolutely nobody on planet earth noticed the lack of enlargement to the Mountain Of Garbage when Brother Theodore's Monastery Of Reason was not updated for a really long time. Now, being updated, nobody on planet earth notices the now larger Mountain Of Garbage. But trust me, it's bigger now. You just can't tell is all.

I Am Not A Grammar Nazi

Complaining about stuff and adding to the "Mountain Of Garbage" is seemingly the whole point of this blog. (Unless I am remembering wrong, this "mountain of garbage" reference came from a lecture from Paul A. Cantor at the Mises.org site. I'm not 100% certain, but I think that's where I got it from. To paraphrase, he was talking about how culture produces a mountain of garbage with only a few really good things at the top. For the most part I agree; the proliferation of mass communication technology has bypassed the conventional filtering processes and allowed the average schmoe to self-publish whatever the hell he wants. This is both a blessing and a curse and a continual source of conflict to me personally.) But I digress…

So on the topic of complaining, some of the things that really stick in my craw are: Bad spelling, bad punctuation and bad grammar. Especially when it comes from native, monolingual English speakers. Bilingual\multi-lingual people can usually get a free pass, as they are superior to me and thus I have less authority to criticize their mistakes. And most of the time the non-native-English writers will apologize for their English in a quick disclaimer. This courtesy is never employed by the shitty native English writer, but perhaps it should!

I don't demand perfection from people, but a reasonable grasp of proper English is not too much to ask. Some people's internet communication is just abysmal! No capitalization of proper nouns, commas and periods all over the place, excessive exclamation marks, lack of proper spacing…the list goes on. At worst it can completely confuse the reader, but more often than not you understand full well what they're saying, but you lose respect for them. The impression they give is one of laziness and carelessness. Their message is obfuscated when they annoy the reader with sloppy writing.

Unfortunately when you raise even a little hell on this issue the backlash and dismissal is almost guaranteed. You instantly become tarred with "Grammar Nazi". To point out someone's shitty English skills is equated with fascism. People are focused on the content alone, and the presentation doesn't seem to matter at all. It seems like a good thing, like a tolerant and understanding thing. Or is it just as lazy as the poor writers making the mistakes? Who is the "Bad Guy" here? Am I being an asshole for raising the issue? Common practice seems to be "shoot the messenger" instead of acknowledging the shittiness of the offending English.

Bad writing did not fly when we were in school, but out here in the real world we've abandoned our standards and put up with a continually degrading standard of written communication. Reading the web today makes your brain function as a digital converter; no matter how garbled the signal is our internal "error-correction" is engaged and we get the message anyway. I believe this is the root definition of "Half-Ass"; accomplishing your purpose, but with poor execution. One might blame text messaging on cell phones, but I think this is a separate issue. There are those who might slip text messaging-style codes into formal writing, but the people I'm talking about are the everyday slobs who apparently can't put down a cohesive thought properly.

So now you might be thinking, "geez--what a self rightchus blowhard!!!!...who, care's man!?!?" But dammit, I am not a Grammar Nazi! I am not trying to forcibly push some unrealistic standard down people's throats or trying to make the world conform to my world view. I only ask that you adhere to the standards which have been established over time. Language is not some political ideal created by fiat and handed down from on high, it's a complex and evolving thing. The standards and rules which arise from it are organic and natural, they are not arbitrary rules for their own sake. If they were then I would be The Heavy to keep hammering the issue, but it's not like that. So that's why I don't feel that I am being fascist or oppressive when I criticize bad writing. If you just spend a little extra effort you can improve your writing.

Look at YouTube comments for an example of how far gone things can get. This is a bottomless wellspring of abysmally written English. (in addition to the often ludicrous content-based things people say) People are always screeching at each other on YouTube, it's usually constant conflict. Perhaps the reason is that the majority of the population are morons; but putting my pet theory aside for a moment, could another reason be that people's sloppy writing is causing an unnecessary friction point? If people took their time and crafted their thoughts with more care would relations improve?

Everyone can make mistakes, people can make typos, there's nothing evil about that. But continual, consistently poor writing can and should be fixed. I can't assume to know everyone's story, maybe people had a bad education or something, but my feeling is that many of these people are smart, but lazy. I don't expect perfection, but I at least would like to see people CARE that their writing needs improvement and be willing to address the problem. Willful ignorance is truly a nasty thing. To write a bunch of slop and then defend yourself as if it didn't matter is really indefensible.

You're also probably saying, "Jeez man.,,U gotta pick UR battle's. It doesen't matter in teh big picture dOOD, just chill out!!!!!! dont get all bent out of shape over spellinj!" Yeah well, it's this kind of passive contempt and apathy which perpetuates the problem.

Cumulus Crashed Without Corrupting The Database!!!

For the FIRST TIME EVER Cumulus Server took a dump and DID NOT CORRUPT THE DATABASE!!! This has NEVER happened before! NEVER! I was being super-careful and backing up after every addition almost and when it fucked up I knew I was only a couple records behind, but by a seeming mircacle the database was not red!!! WOW!

It seems that what's fucking it up is that there's two people modifying records, me adding and updating and another guy changing status on records. Gee a real tall order, two people working at the same time. Lame Canto, lame.

No Escape

I want a computer with a true Escape key. An escape key which really works. They give you all sorts of buttons and commands to stop things in their tracks, but they don't work. I want the escape key to bring whatever action is in progress to STOP immediately. Not soon, not in 100 milliseconds, not after you're done doing whatever it is I told you to do before, NOW. INSTANTLY. The fire alarm is ringing and I don't care if you're in the shower, you have to leave NOW. A real escape key with no delay. We can only do this with computers but so often they fail to listen.

They told me you could cancel all print jobs by typing "cancel -a -" in the terminal. It doesn't work. The print job is still being sent. They gave me a trash can button on the printer. It said, "Resetting" It lied. it still wants to print. YOU CANNOT KILL THE PRINT JOB, IT MUST PRINT NO MATTER WHAT!!!

If you fuck up a print job you have to power down everything. There is no cancel, you made one mistake and you're dead. I don't know where the data is coming from, but the printer is getting something and it's bound and determined to print it.

If It's Too Loud You're NOT Too Old!

Are you sick and tired of shitty, blaring, over-compressed records? Not data compression, not MPEG or anything, I'm talking good old fashioned audio. Peak-limiting, where digital audio is slammed to the limit to make it louder. But at what cost? Well, by making all the loudest bits QUIETER and the quiet bits LOUDER. What does this do to the music? In moderation and on individual instruments compression can make it sound better. But it is NOT being used in moderation, it's being abused. The entire mix is being crushed to the max. So yeah it is louder, it's in-your-face, but it has no power, it has no teeth. It's not so much a buzzsaw blade as it is a fine sanding disc. They've robbed you of the sound of the real world and made it into this artificial, flat thing with all the life squeezed out of it. At best you'll just have lame-sounding albums of otherwise good music, at worst you'll prematurely wreck your hearing by beating your eardrums to death with this crap.

Loudness is good, but loudness without quiet is only a ying without the yang. Hopefully like-minded people can stem the idiot tide. These folks are fighting the good fight:

Turn Me Up!
LOUDNESS WAR!!!

The most vulgar and offensive thing about this issue is that it built on a fundamental lie; that listeners choose music based upon volume. This pre-supposes that all listeners are COMPLETE IDIOTS! Are you an idiot? I doubt it. Are your musical tastes based upon volume? I don't think such a person exists. There are many idiots in this world but I don't think anyone has ever bought a record based solely on how loud it was in comparision to another record. This is nonsense and anyone who promotes the idea that their record will not be as successful as band "X" because it's not as loud IS a COMPLETE IDIOT! That is a non-existent issue that absolutely does not work in the real world. It's absurd theoretical nonsense! It does not apply, everyone and their grandmother understands the concept of a volume control. Everyone knows that THEY control the level. I don't care how crappy your taste in music might be, but I do know that you aren't choosing what to listen to based on loudness.

These idiots act like making music is the same as competetive sports. This isn't the long jump or a car race, you don't achieve success in the music business because you are the loudest. You achieve it because people like the content. You achieve it for a myriad of reasons, but one of those reasons is NOT loudness. Record industry insiders might care about this shit, but the consumer just doesn't.

The existence of software controls to combat average level disparity between albums in iTunes is evidence that overcompressed albums are a PROBLEM and an ANNOYANCE to the user, not a positive benefit. People don't actually want huge jumps in average level between songs. They want a fairly consistent baseline. That doesn't mean a string quartet has to be as loud as a rock record, it just means that people get spooked when something comes on that blows down the walls and they have to scramble for the volume knob.

So what is your loud-ass mastered record reduced to when the consumer takes things into his own hands with the volume knob and Replay Gain? A WEAK, QUIET RECORD WITH NO BALLS. Way to go music industry, you just did the exact opposite of what you wanted to do. You might as well go work for a federal agency! Sheesh!

You've already lost the race anyway as Exit-13 already released the loudest track years ago, with a completely clipped, over-level noise bed, breaking the Redbook standard and having a warning label on the disc that it could damage your stereo. It was a silly stunt. They beat you. Great. Can we go back to the days of proper technique now? Thanks, sure do appreciate it.

Hooray For FedEx

Unprecedented! At exactly 8:09PM, yes PM, you know, when its dark out, I heard a knock at my door and found of all things, the FedEx guy! Wow! My package was scheduled to arrive today after a poorly-thought-out choice on my part to have it sent to my home address. (I thought I would be on vacation at the time, but I was wrong.) So I fully expected it to bounce whilst I was at work today and have him come 'round tomorrow again. But to show up at night, when I'm actually home, that's like a miracle! I was so caught off guard I didn't even think to give the guy a proper fruit basket or a slab of beer. I mean, the guy actually apologized thinking it was like a "late hour" or something! Wow, a super-convenient night delivery has never occured in my LIFE except for one time when I had something delivered by some obscure shipping service which cost a LOT. Too damn cool. This tears at the very fabric of society, wherein all service jobs seemingly cease at 5PM making it impossible for anyone who works 1st shift to get certain things done. It's like for a brief moment the world actually worked how I wished it would work.

Color Management

I've never liked the whole color management thing in regards to digital imaging. Although from a theoretical standpoint it makes sense; profiling all your gear to get consistent color and whatnot, but in practice it is mostly a huge pain in the ass. The cynic in me thinks that this entire color management thing is simply a scheme cooked up to make money and make people think they're doing something useful when you're really just jerking the computer off. My experience with color management has been that you mess around for hours and in the end you get color that is like 5% better\different than what you had to start with. Case in point, those suction cup monitor things. We bought two new Apple Cinema Displays for our designers and of course had to get the calibration doodads. So I ran the software, went through all the rigamarole and in the end you can compare your monitor new fancy pants profile with the bone stock settings. THERE AIN'T MUCH DIFFERENCE! Oh boy, so it's a little less red than before. Whoop de doo. Yeah, THAT was worth 300 bucks...it's a joke.

I do admire the extremely technical-minded people who can grasp all the scientific stuff involved, but when you just want to git 'r done, cripes what a waste of time! When I worked for a commerical printer doing scanning\color correction\retouching we didn't screw around with color management, we just used a little utility by Thomas Knoll called Adobe Gamma. Tweaked it so our greys were as neutral as possible on our monitors and had decent contrast and we were off. There are perfectly good reasons for using measurement tools, but when you're dealing with an inherently subjective medium like photography I think there's a lot of leeway for the "well it looks right" approach.

The other thing to consider is that no matter how accurate and precise your spectrophotmeter or colorimeter is, your klunky 'ol analog eyeball\brain system is correcting for color shifts anyway. It is SO damn relative! You can work at a CRT monitor for a few hours tweaking a photo and think you've got the most brilliant image with blazing hot highlights, but then you look over to the lightbox with the original transparency and think, "Fuck! It's ten times brighter!" I am a big fan of CRTs, but put a Cinema Display side by side with one and the CRT looks dull and dim. But you can still do great work with either format. Your brain gets used to the "flaws" of either system.

Perhaps I am just jealous of those who are imminently technically-minded and completely grok the whole color management process? I think part of it has to do with the fact that running all these calibration procedures is not usually something one needs to do on a daily basis. It seems to be a fairly involved process that is easily forgotten from disuse. When our Epson 9800 began drifting at work I was in a real funk because I couldn't remember or make sense of the steps necessary to generate profiles. I honestly don't know if the software is poorly designed or I am not smart enough for it. It could go either way. I wonder if the same could be said of Photoshop? I hope not. I hope it's poorly designed. Heh!

In many ways the whole printing process is poorly designed. I can accept that there are numerous parameters to control, I can accept that it is complicated, I can accept that not every user needs to understand every parameter which is adjustable. However, I cannot accept the interface. By that I mean there are far too many screens involved. I honestly think there could and should be a SINGLE screen\dialog box for printing. I must give credit to Adobe, their dialogs for Acrobat and Illustrator come very close. Anyway, that's beyond the scope of color management and I couldn't possibly add more words to the title.

Cumulus Server Is A Suicide Bomber

Why, when Cumulus server crashes does it have to take down everyone with it? What's wrong with crashing and restarting? Do you have to corrupt the open databases and force us to endure a three hour repairing session? What is it doing when it's repairing? What's actually broke? Why is it sorting records? It's completely ridiculous. Just crash, fine I get it, you can't hack it. I asked you to catalog 10 records, perfectly understandable that that was too much to ask. But why can't you just crash and then I can restart your sorry weak ass again? Why kill the database? What did it ever do to you? Just by virtue of being open on my machine you have to kill it mercilessly? Fuck you Cumulus Server!

Blessed Be The Warmakers

It's pretty amazing how widespread the absolute adoration for the military is in the US. Just about everything I read shows people bending over backwards to thank the saintly soldiers and their sacrifices. And I don't disagree, of course it's a sacrifice. You volunteer your entire being over to the State, shave your head so you look like everyone else, wear the same uniform as anyone else and completely surrender yourself to a single central authority. Then you are taught to kill people and destroy things without question. You are taught obediance and strict adherence to rules. Then we are told that such people are the fundamental cause of and defenders of...FREEDOM!? Huh?!

The jingoistic propaganda has taken root. Everyone repeats the same lines about how military veterans ensure that we lowly civilians can VOTE (ooh ahh) and have FREE SPEECH! If there was no military there'd be no free speech apparently. Huh? And voting? Oh boy, I get to vote on which powermad creep gets to spend my money the way he sees fit. Oh boy, sign me up for that. I don't have any want or need for a "leader" to somehow guide my life by remote control. So the ability to vote for politicians doesn't hold a lot of weight to me. Sure there's people I like and agree with, but if you think that it's possible for another person to act as your avatar, and not only you but thousands of others, well then I think that's an insane idea. The best represenative government is one where each person is their own president.

There's no doubt that soldiers have a tough job and their trials and tribulations can often be very touching and profound, but there's a lot of tough jobs out there. Soldiers are no more deserving of our respect than anyone else. Why are the most violent jobs worshipped and not the most peaceful ones? All the good things we enjoy arise from the collective efforts of non-violent people. These things exist either in conjunction with or in spite of violent military operations. Peaceful, intelligent, reasonable, hard working and crafty people will continue to work to make human existence positive despite the efforts of power-hungry and violent people who desire to coerce their fellow man if they don't see things the same way.

Yes, many people will be directly helped by military effort. Absolutely lives will be saved by their intervention. But it is absurd to think that ALL people owe their lives to the military. Nobody needed to be shot or blown up with explosives in order for me to write this blog and all the vast amounts of technological advancements that needed to occur behind it. Peace and freedom is not maintained by US military presence in countries all over the world. It is maintained by trading goods and services between countries. Are we also to offer our humble appreciation to the soldiers and veterans in those countries "we" are at war with? Shall we respect Iraqi soldiers for defending their country as well, even though it's a theocratic system at odds with our own? Is their "sacrifice" any less? Their idea of freedom apparently involves a really goofy book and is vastly different than ours. The US military idea of freedom is vastly different than mine.

There is not a menacing black cloud of palpable Evil which is being kept at bay by the military. Human society does indeed have a violent history, but more often than not it is a peaceful one. Our cooperation and respect for one another is what allows free speech to happen, not our willingness to engage in violent conflict with each other. If the military is so great then why don't we all become soldiers and then we can be in a perpetual state of war and patriotism? Or would you rather have a real job, where your labor and skill can be used to increase wealth and well-being? Humans will likely always have a secret desire for violence and battle, but there are other avenues to express this need without actually losing your life in the process.

You might think this opinion makes me anti-American, unpatriotic or traitorous. I don't really care. Call me whatever names you like. I can't be patriotic because it's hard to be in love with groups in numbers that are hard to fathom. I can't be in love with an entire country. There might be thousands or millions of people I think are great, but others I think are jerks. I'll never meet them all, so how can I know? I will give everyone the benefit of the doubt however and say that the majority of humans are probably good and don't want to kill me or take away my liberty. So my patriotism extends beyond geographic borders. But I can't give it that name.

Just don't try to kill me or rob me, don't put me in jail, don't try to shut me up, don't make me worship your religious ideals and we're fine. I will extend the same courtesy to you. None of this requires camoflage or M-16s to make it happen.

This Photo Of The Californian Fires From Reuters Looks Like A Hieronymus Bosch Painting

Aina? Photographer is Max Whittaker it would seem.

One Shot One Kill

Yes that's right, if you make ONE mistake on the online banking login the system locks you out. Uh, well I guess that's a secure system...secure against both legitimate and criminally-intent users. Where else have you encountered a system that does not even give you a second chance!? Even the system we have at work allows you three tries. Is this how the l33t hAx0rz (sic) work? They just try random names and passwords to see if they work?

"Well I found out this guy named Bob Smith has an account here, I'm gonna see if his password is "bs" Nope. How about "bs1" Nope. How about "bobsmith". Nope. Oh, I know Bob is 48 years old, let's try "bobsmith48" Nope. *sigh* Man being a hacker is hard work! This is gonna take me hours, but rest assured I will have Bob's money! Muwhahaha! I tell you, I sure hate freedom! I wish everyone could live in slavery, then we'd have peace. I swear, if I could just get Bob's money to give to Al Queda they'd meet their February budget and be able to wipe out all non-believers with the seal over their hearts and that. I can't wait! I hope my fingers don't cramp up from trying passwords all night!"

Useless Laws In Action

This post is not going to be all that elegant because I'm writing it when I'm MAD. You shouldn't do that, but I'm doing it anyway. I've now been locked out of my online banking accounts at Associated Bank for the fourth time. Why? Because the federal government passed a shitty law about so-called security questions that you have to answer. There's this list of bullshit trivia they quiz you on and you're supposed to fill in an answer for. "What's your favorite candy?" "What's the name of the street you grew up on" and stuff like that. Yeah I get it, stuff only the user would know. Usually I enter just my normal password and get in, but every month or so it seems I enter the password and then the shitty, government-crippled system barfs out "You've been locked out cause your security questions were not answered correctly". Which is a damn lie because they didn't even ASK them. Either the system locks you out instantly or it is programmed to fail on some kind of timed interval. But you cannot call some automated line, a case where automation would be welcomed actually; instead you have to call during daytime hours to speak with a bank person to reset the fucking questions. IT IS THE LAMEST MOST BOGUS SECURITY AND THE BIGGEST PAIN IN THE ASS I HAVE EVER SEEN IN A COMPUTER SYSTEM!!! Fuck the Federal Government and fuck their laws that treat me like a fucking terrorist. I'M NOT SENDING MONEY TO AL QUEDA YOU USELESS BUREAUCRATS, I'M JUST TRYING TO PAY MY FUCKING BILLS!!! This is what you get with laws, good intentions, total failure in action. And what can I do, close my account? I'd LOVE to. I'd LOVE to rip Associated Bank a new asshole for this treatment, but it's not their fault, they're just OBEYING like everybody. I'm sure this pointless hot air piece of legislation makes ALL banks have to fuck up their systems with this silly hoop jumping. Fuck them. If this is security I don't want it. I'll take my chances with just my plain 'ol password, thanks. AND I DON'T WANT TO BE LOCKED OUT BECAUSE OF A FUCKING TYPO!!! I'm HUMAN for fuck's sake, I can't type perfectly every time! Hitting a Y instead of a U doesn't mean I'm a hacker trying to steal money. Forgetting which serial number I've added to the end of my regular password (thanks to the ordinary bullshit practice of expiring passwords) doesn't make me a guy hellbent on funding terrorists!

Invisible Mouse Buttons

I just ran into an interesting PEBCAK problem with a co-worker. (Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard) He is using the Apple Mighty Mouse (at least I think that's what it's called, the white one with the tiny scroll ball) and had occasion to use a contextual menu. That in itself should be somewhat of a red flag, don't people use contextual menus all the time? Hmmm. Anyway, there is a plugin I've installed on all the department machines which copies the path of a file into the clipboard so you can paste it into an e-mail. So if Jim wants to tell Bob to open up the October Sales Projection document he right clicks on the file on the server, chooses this "Copy Path To Clipboard" command and pastes the string into an e-mail. Easy enough, right?

Now here's a criticism of Apple's hardware; they made a three button mouse that looks like a NO button mouse. It doesn't have buttons per se, but it has sensitive areas which function just like buttons. By default the driver is set to make the mouse one button. This is why the co-worker thought he could not right-click on the files. So I showed him how to change the driver preferences to make the right sensitive-invisible-button to be "Secondary Click" and the left side "Primary Click". This seemed to be fine for a few weeks.

Then today he says that he changed the prefs back to both sides being Primary Click because he was getting unwanted contextual menu popups in the Finder. Why? Well it's simple; because he always clicks with his middle finger on the right side of the mouse. Erm, okay... So it had nothing to do with the software or hardware, just that you're clicking the wrong button! Sheesh! So I explained to him the revelation that Control-Click is the same as Secondary Click on the Mac. What about swapping the buttons around? It's like he's left fingered on his right hand or something. Really really strange.

It's Not Even Halloween Yet You Idiots

Could we PLEASE stop rushing holidays further and further ahead of the day they actually happen? It's bad enough to be rushing Christmas in November but now the bastards are pushing it in fucking October! People, a holiday is ONE day. ONE SINGLE DAY, not THREE MONTHS! The next holiday coming up is HALLOWEEN. Got it? HALLOWEEN. Not Thanksgiving, not Christmas, not New Years, just fucking HALLOWEEN. Can we stick to that? Stop skipping ahead!

Since time is apparently malleable to whatever we want how far will this nonsense go? A year ahead of time? On December 26th 2007 the stores will be advertising sales for Christmas of 2008?! Why stop there? Why not five years ahead of time? Hell, let's just make every single day Christmas so we can have non-stop sales and shitty Muzak at all times.

Gee, Thanks Allah

Even more difficult to believe than the idea of some supreme god who created the universe are the texts allegedly written by these deities. I started reading the Koran and it is equally if not more mind-numbingly dull and pointless as the Bible is. I can't get past Genesis in the Bible and I couldn't get past "The Cow" in the Koran. Truly, it might as well just say, "Blah blah blah". It all just starts with a bang, single phrases thrown at you with no set up or explanation whatsoever. But nevermind that, it's not supposed to be entertaining or interesting, this is the Word Of God, right? The most important thing you could possibly read! Wow, it must be good.

Already, right out of the gate I've been doomed as a non-believer within the first ten verses. Just listen to this rubbish, if you don't fall asleep first:

[2.1] Alif Lam Mim.
[2.2] This Book, there is no doubt in it, is a guide to those who guard (against evil).
[2.3] Those who believe in the unseen and keep up prayer and spend out of what We have given them.
[2.4] And who believe in that which has been revealed to you and that which was revealed before you and they are sure of the hereafter.
[2.5] These are on a right course from their Lord and these it is that shall be successful.
[2.6] Surely those who disbelieve, it being alike to them whether you warn them, or do not warn them, will not believe.
[2.7] Allah has set a seal upon their hearts and upon their hearing and there is a covering over their eyes, and there is a great punishment for them.
[2.8] And there are some people who say: We believe in Allah and the last day; and they are not at all believers.
[2.9] They desire to deceive Allah and those who believe, and they deceive only themselves and they do not perceive.
[2.10] There is a disease in their hearts, so Allah added to their disease and they shall have a painful chastisement because they lied.

So much for free will! Allah has made me this way, I can't do anything about it and I'm gonna be tortured for it! Geez. Muslims supposedly want everyone else to convert to Islam but what about Allah making us this way? It sounds like we've got no control over our destiny. Oh don't worry, I'm sure there's another verse for that. These singular holy texts written by the single holy dude have an odd way of containing multiple meanings and interpretations. Hardly the clear, concise instruction a deity would need to communicate his big divine plan to the masses.

Why isn't there a "God Language" and why don't newborn babies speak and understand it? If there is one god shouldn't there be ONE common language? Why don't humans innately understand Arabic? Oh wait, now I remember:

BECAUSE THEY MADE THIS SHIT UP!

Ahh, it all makes sense now. How this mindless garbage still survives in the modern world I will never understand. We need to grow up, folks. Luckily there's plenty of GOOD literature around, and we needn't slaughter each other over it. Take "The Silmarillion" for instance. Why can't this become a religion? Tolkien writes more interesting stuff than anything in the Bible or Koran. And let's give him credit, the Silmarillion IS a tremendously dry tome. Plus it starts out with a creation story and everything. Come on folks, let's all switch to Illuvatar worship! Hooray!

Voluntary Censorship or Debate?

One of the great things about the web is that people can argue, debate and generally go back and forth about their ideas. Sometimes it can be calm, or heated and sometimes people can start screaming at each other (to the extent that one CAN "scream" in text) But one thing I find particularly vulgar is for person A to actually request that person B change the very words they wrote in order better satisfy person A. Is this voluntary censorship or debate? This is a fine line I'll grant you, but to me there is no grey area here. It is the difference between a real argument and self-censorship.

Censorship is wrong because it is a lie. If you alter the original idea you are fundamentally violating the author's ideas. No matter what positive end you hope to gain by altering the words it is still a lie. It is perfectly fine to challenge a person's ideas, to tell them why you think they're wrong, even to scream at them what an asshole they are. But to try and craft another individual's words to better suit your ideas about HOW they should come across to others is a terrible insult. It's so feeble-minded to try and do that. It shows that you don't really have an adequate response to their message but only wish that they hadn't said it like that. How weak!

How dare anyone seek to change what you say or how you say it by these mealy-mouthed requests! People's minds are changed and new ideas are gained by a long and continuous string of unfettered communication, not by going in 'behind the scenes' and tinkering with the parts. That to me smacks of poltics and bureaucracy rather than a free exchange of ideas. It goes a step backward from genuine persuasion. It is one thing if you are writing an article and working with an editor who wants to change your words around, but here I am speaking of online communication between people. Opinions vs. opinions.

Challenge people about what they say, but don't be so rude and self-important to make them change how they say it or what words they should or should not use. Offer your own idea in turn and explain why you think you're right. Don't tinker with the semantics! You may achieve the same ends after all.

Printing - The Case For A Single Dialog

In the general sense computers keep getting better and better, however there also exists the phenomenon of getting used to bad designs. We learn to accept and work around unnecessarily complex software. Perhaps complex is not the right word, more like disorganized. With the amount of functions that we want our software and hardware to do making things simpler isn't the easy answer, but I do think things can be made far more organized so that the operator can view and change the parameters without a lot of fuss. I speak specifically of printing. No matter if your platform is Mac or Windows, printing software is absurdly complex. There are literally dozens of dialog boxes you can go through, some of them are useful for what you want to print, others aren't. But no matter what you have to memorize a dizzying array of screens\dialogs to wade through before you get what you want. If you ask me the whole thing is a complete mess and we need to start over on this printing business. There is far too much rope with which to hang one's self.

I print stuff everyday on a variety of printers from desktop inkjets to laser printers and high end RIPs. Even though I have learned what most of the settings mean and how to get it to print in the way I want, it is still very frustrating and numerous mistakes are incredibly easy to make. Learning the settings is difficult enough, but the process is made all the worse in that there are too many places to make the settings. There's an OS interface, an application interface, and a printer interface and they all might have redundant or self-defeating settings. The possibility for screwing it all up is extremely high. Why does it have to be this complex? Why do we have so many places to change printer settings? We need ONE dialog box. Make it full screen. Use every inch of the monitor to display EVERY setting. Be able to change everything in one screen with NO hidden functions. Show a legible preview of exactly what you're getting.

The closest I have seen to a decently-designed print dialog is Adobe Acrobat's, but that's not saying much. There are still plenty of hidden functions. Why are there TWO separate dialogs for Page Setup and Print? If you hit Print and the page size isn't correct for your printer you have to exit that dialog and open another. It makes no sense, I am printing the damn thing, so why not have all the preferences clear and visible in one go? If it makes sense to hide the features you never use that's fine, but at least the option should be there.

Maybe nobody cares about printing in this day of gee whiz pocket organizer doodads, but I know my job would be a lot easier if I thought there was some logical interface to use when printing documents. We have just piled complex stuff on top of each other without trying to make it one cohesive operation.

What Defines Cheating In Sports?

I personally have no interest in following professional sports, but I do occasionally read other people talking about sports or listen to people talking about sports on the radio. It seems that there is a lot of hoopla over steroids and whatnot. I'd be curious to know what people are actually upset about when a certain athlete is found to have used steroids, or blood doping or whatever the heck it is that athletes do; is it because they broke the rules of the sport or because it is unethical and subjectively dirty and underhanded to use these substances? Personally the only argument I can support is that the athletes broke the rules of the sport. If the rules say you can't take drug A B or C then you ought to be disqualified. But if there aren't such rules I don't see using drugs in the same sense of cheating. There was some guy in the Tour De France who was kicked out for having a blood transfusion or something. I find it hard to feel much enmity towards these guys because whatever they are putting in their bodies they're still huffing it on a bike for miles and miles. To me cheating in a bike race isn't using drugs, it would be if you put a motor on the bike or sticking a rod through a guy's spokes, having your friends pull a rope across the road as your rival passed by, taking a shortcut off the course or something. Chemicals are a much more nebulous subject.

I'm sure if I was allowed to take every single performance-enhancing drug known to man I still would not be able to throw a baseball as good as the worst professional ball player out there. The degree of physical ability and training that pro athletes have seems amazing enough to me. I would be more likely to call drugs cheating if there exists such a drug where you can take a guy off the couch, inject him with this substance and he can beat the undrugged pro athlete who has been training and practicing for years.

I dunno, I'm just glad I don't actually care about this subject! HA!