Stossel's show was irritating tonight. The topic was Conservatism vs. Libertarianism. As a Libertarian, Stossel misrepresented Conservatism, and various Conservatives were on appealing to the same things Lefties appeal to; the greater good, majority norms.

Stossel said he used to be a Liberal, so that explains enough of an inability to think straight about things to be able to be a Libertarian. But it's shocking how Conservatives seem blithely unaware that effectively saying it's okay to legislate morality, means then the other side can legislate its morality on us. (And where we're only for it in certain cases, the Left is for doing it all but a few cases. I.e. it's a patently dangerous idea, and used vastly more against us than in what we favor.)

I might journal about some of the topics later (maybe if I can find a refresher of my memory of it on youtube), but the show spurred a chain of thinking on a particular topic that led me to the following.

Let's say I'm a landlord, and I'm also bigoted against homosexuals (which I am, but not in the following way), and refused to rent to them. Most people would say the government should step in and force me to rent to them. I.e. Despite homosexuals offending my sensibilities, I should be forced to associate with them anyways. Because otherwise they could potentially have a hard time finding a rental place to live.

Now let's say that instead I'm a landlord, and I don't refuse to rent to them, but I'm a very outspoken disparager of them in the region, and the homosexual community knows it. And let's say the homosexual community represents a significant %-age of the region. What if I'm having trouble keeping the complex full all the time? Should the government force some homosexuals to live in my complex and pay me rent, despite my offending their sensibilities?

And what about quotas. Lefties say that if a community is 10% Black, then roughly 10% of the programming jobs in that community must be filled with Blacks. Else there's racial inequities.

Well janitorial jobs, at least around here, seem to be disproportionately filled by Hispanics. Should the government tell Black people in that area that 10% of them need to switch careers into the custodial arts?

It seems like either quotas are a good idea or they aren't. And it seems like if it's good to force association between parties when one desires not to do so, then it's good.

If it's one thing I can respect Libertarians for, it's at least they're consistent*

*Well, except for their being pro-choice, which flies squarely in the face of being for individual rights.

I'm moving to a theory that carpet bombing with falsehood is all the Progressives have left. A good, but painful data point on the road to recovery.

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My employer pretty-well insisted that I get a certification. They went so far as to pay for the training and the first exam attempt.

To that end, I'm working on GCUX through SANS. So far, so good. It's pretty interesting.

From what I'm reading about how to prepare for the exam itself, it would be to my benefit to prepare a thorough index- something in the area of 30-50 pages long. O_O

Does anyone have any experience with that sort of thing? How does one know what should be in the index and what should not?

It started with the ability to show a network logo watermark. Networks would show a translucent version of their logo in the bottom corner for a few seconds, after resuming from a commerical break. Evidently someone who makes tons of money thought it was important that you be reminded where you're seeing the currently airing content.

I didn't mind that, at all. Stupid, but not really obnoxious. Then they moved onto the phase where they left that up all the time. I took me a while to train my brain to tune that out. Until I was able to, it annoyed the hell out of me.

Then they moved on to the next phase, of colored-in/opaque logos, that they leave up all the time. I.e. blocking part of the content (in that corner), all the time.

Then came promos for other shows on the network, after coming back from an ad break, that took up much or all of the bottom portion of what you're fucking trying to watch. I.e. all the commercials played, the movie has resumed, and you're trying to get back into it, and then here comes an overlay commercial, while the movie is still going. Sometimes it's animated, so basically you miss part of the movie they're showing.

So last night I'm flipping thru, and FX is showing some Ice Age or other cartoon animals movie (not at all my cup of tea, so I don't really know). Now I don't know if it had just come back from break or not, but it popped up an ad for the sequel to whatever it was, evidently now playing in theaters or coming soon.

I.e. they've taken the overlays from just promos for the network, to content-related adverts. I don't have for example a "smart TV", so maybe this has already started in other things.

I used to look forward to progress. When it meant a better picture, or more hp at an affordable price point, or easier and more advanced programming ways.

It's like standard of living is a bell curve. As technologies and advancement of capabilities has increased, our standard of living increased. But ever increasing capabilities doesn't seem to equal better quality of living, forever. My DVD player says "operation not permited by disc". WTF? Cars now have gadgetry to wrench the steering wheel from you or press the brakes behind your back. My dad can't go to a favorite finance site anymore, because it watched a few of his clicks and now doesn't show him general news but only the things relating the few topics it last remembers him clicking on. (I could try deleting cookies, as long as it's not fingerprinting him in other ways.)

So I don't think it's just old-fogeyism. I just like things that are better, not worse. And when you start running out of ways to make things better, I guess it's human nature to just keep on going, because the capabilities do. Didn't we used to be thinkers, or is that just another faulty assumption, about how the world works, of mine from childhood?

p.s. I have the flu, and feel miserable so I'm probably more babbling here than my normal level of babbling on.

...the more they stay the same. I think.

A little over a year ago, I wrote about how I stopped playing WoW and took up ST:TOR. Now, I don't even play that.

Things have been a bit hectic at my house- My wife's computer died (constant, unpredictable reboots and a corrupted hard drive), so she's taken to playing WoW on my system. She raids often, now that she's found a guild that does that sort of thing in the morning. My sleeping period has me getting up late morning. By then, I have an errand or two to do before I start getting ready for work. Rinse, repeat.

I need a vacation.

I've met the lady. She really is all that. Great husband, too.

I forgot it was silly season. Mind you, it is the off-year one, the Winter Olympics to Superbowl Tuesday's buffet of awesomeness, so one really cares, including me.

Still, though, props to Brat for achieving trivia question notoriety. It's almost a shame his votes (should he actually make it to Congress) will be in line with his party waaaaaaaaaaay more often than not.

And congrats to the Democrats as well. Always nice when the other team commits an unforced error.

As the two people exited the elevator, they started to talk about kids and graduation, who was in college and who in high school, one mentioned that she still had a son in high school (iirc): "Why did i space out the kids like that? If i only knew then what i know now."

That much-obituaried Tea Party strikes again. Standing by for fustakrakich to scoff at attempts to oust the incumbent deadwood in 3. . .2. . .

I was listening to LoTR in the car while going around town, and made some progress during a Sunday drive to Cleveland. Moving along, i finally finished, with just the Appendix left.

With the ring destroyed, the cheap mp3 player died, having served its purpose for less than five bucks, who can complain? But now i want more. I want to listen to more books in the car.

MP3 players abound and so do FM transmitters of varying quality. Some MP3 players are also FM transmitters (or is that the other way around?), but none seem to include the simple feature of remembering playback position automatically. Finding that in MP3 players alone seems to be hard enough.

So, it seemed to me i should purchase the mp3 player and transmitter separately. After some searching, i found the Sandisk Sansa Clip+ amongst their other players which has this sought after feature, and includes a nifty speed option. That can be gotten for $30 or so, especially if going refurbished (and not for the plus?), but then there's the transmitter cost and quality.

Some more searching found someone recommending to simply install a receiver to play MP3s, if the need is just for the car. Good idea. Amazon has a cheap player (or another) in which the comments express its cheapness but usefulness as an mp3 player. Some questions and comments mentioned the need of a harness. Another pointed to a cheap one on ebay.

And that is where i am right now. I wonder how hard is it to install a receiver and if this is a good idea.

Then-PFC, now-SGT Bergdahl may in fact have deserted his post. There are certainly credible accusations to that effect, and if so, then he should be tried and convicted for the crime. But it's a whole lot easier to investigate those charges with him here, and we don't let the Taliban mete out justice for us.

The military idea of "taking care of your own" has a lot of different aspects. Holding the line and leaving no one behind are obvious; less obvious, perhaps, is that our people are ours. Loon or no, deserter or no, even traitor or no, whatever else Bowe Bergdahl may be he is someone who raised his right hand and took the oath, and that means that whatever reward or punishment he receives is ours and ours alone to give.

It astonishes me sometimes, having at this point been out of the service several more years than I was in it, how strong and pure those ideas still are in my head: how much "us" the profession of arms still is to me, and I suppose always will be. I'm a civilian and happy to be one now, but both the infantryman and the medic are still very close to the surface. The latter is concerned mainly with bringing back the wounded--and the former is ready, willing, and perhaps even eager to kill anyone who stands in the way of that mission.

Whatever else we did, whatever else we may do, we had to bring him home.