PETA Makes Good Posters

(It seems like animal rights is about sexuality and only of interest to emotional women, tho? That’s not even true but it’s what’s being portrayed.)

A Quote from the Buddha – No, a Few!

As much as anyone in the universe, you deserve your love and respect.

All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.

You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

Have compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike; each has their suffering. Some suffer too much, others too little.

In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.

The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground.

The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.

There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.

There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills.

Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.

To keep the body in good health is a duty… otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.

Virtue is persecuted more by the wicked than it is loved by the good.

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.

Without health life is not life; it is only a state of langour and suffering – an image of death.

Perspective

{/war} (End War Tag)

Tis the geek protest

Is Gentrification Natural?

Capitalism, alllowed to run amok, will ultimately result in monopolies. This is the natural order of things. A fish will eat itself to death, the discovery of oil or natural gas will bring direct foreign investment, and inflation as a result. Is gentrification the end result of a housing market?

Houses fill two main roles

1. They give us a place to live, to take shelter from the rain and wind, to sleep, eat, store our things, and find privacy.
2. They have financial value, like a car or any other significant investment.

This puts the owners of any urban dwelling in a conflict of interest situation. Housing is a businesss, not a fundamental human right. Homeless are like carless or Play Station 3 less. It’s the old fasioned way, if you can’t afford a thing, you do without. Except that homeless depress an entire neighborhood and usually means crime. But the division isn’t just between those who live indoors and those who don’t.

Like cars, buildings need maintenance. Roofs wear out from defending against storms and water. Electrical and plumbing standards change over time. Things wear out and need replacement. These reinvestments are passed on to the consumer (tennents in this case), when possible. When dealing with low rent populations, it is frequently impossible to get more in terms of rent, and in such sections of a city, anyone who can afford the increased rent won’t live. A neighborhood is in decline when houses go without these necessary improvements.

When the owner of a property lives in it, this tends not to happen. A person wanting to enjoy their home life has a strong incentive to follow the necessary upkeep. But “real estate” as a speculative investment means capitol flight – moving wealth from some areas to others. While places like Flynt, Michigan slowly die on the vine, niche areas in a city become trendy (like Valencia in San Francisco), people who can afford to (yuppies) move in, and rents rise as the market will bare more.

Some are reminded of the forced migration of Native American “Indians” across the land they once sparsely filled. The bottom rungs of the economy are often pushed from one area to another when they live in metropolises, as most Americans do. (USA Today disagrees.)

1984 Has Come True

Read this.  Or, if you don’t want to, I’ll summarize.  A state senator who endorsed Barak Obama was interviewed by TV Idiot Chris Matthews.  Chris asked “Name some of his legislative accomplishments… name any…” and there was nothing but dead air.  That’s fair – journalists are supposed to ask tough questions, especially when the stakes are this high.

But we’ve been poisoned to believe that what somebody says on television dictates objective reality.  For example, if Matthews had asked the man to name a few continents and he hadn’t been able to come up with anything but North & South America, Europe would stop existing.

This is the dumbing down of America.  This is how Bush operates – just say Iraq is turning into a democracy, that we don’t torture people, that weapons of mass destruction threaten American national security.  It’s true if it gets said on TV.

In 1984, the ruling party put out a new dictionary every year, with less words than the last one.  After a few generations, the people were only able to think smaller and smaller thoughts.  It’s the same thing TV News does, whether it’s Fake News with Bill O’Lielly or MSNBC with Keith Olbermann.  They poison our brains so we can’t recognize logic.  After a generation of this, Americans won’t be smart enough to operate a power plant, and we’ll be in the dark literally instead of just figuratively.

Just like a Cop

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/12/florida-police-dump-quadr_n_86290.html

to violently eject a quadriplegic man from his wheel chair. Just to see whether he needed it!

Are 3-Way Links Sexual?

Not that there’s anything wrong with that – I just want to know is all.

Gun Control

There’s a thread going on over at Webmaster-Talk about gun control.  Being a moderator, I have to tone my posts appropriately.  I asked about the historical context that gave birth to the Bill of Rights and particularly the 2nd Amendment, along with the economics of the illegal firearms market.  However, with my own blog, I can actually share my opinion.

Gun control means removing the safety from your firearm.  The last thing you want is to have to think before killing somebody.  When I see a person in the hallway by the kitchen in the middle of the night, by the time I ask myself “is that my wife or an intruder?” I could have already been robbed for my laptop.

Screening criminals is an affront to privacy.  I smoke marijuana every day, but that shouldn’t prevent me from having a gun.  (Heck, I managed to type another person’s name into the from field commenting on a blog.)  It’s nobody’s damn business that I commmit a misdomeanor every day (possession of a controled substance).  I have the right to bear arms, damnit!

Of course, it’s not just anybody who should be allowed to have guns.  You should have to weigh more than the gun you want, so you can pick it up. That might preclude 4 year olds from having weapons. I don’t really like that idea, but I’m not sure what the solution is. Obviously a child should be able to defend itself from parents who might infringe upon their freedom, like it says in the 2nd Amendment.

Arabs should be allowed to have guns. Anything else would be racism. Just remember you don’t have to actually prove your an American citizen to have rights here – you have to have your feet planted on American soil. This is why illegal immigrants who give birth in this country give birth to a citizen. It’s also why foreign nationals are entitled to a fair trail for their crimes.

Simply put, we should stop worrying about trying to prevent silly things like gun crime and murder, and instead react when it actually happens. It’s the 80/20 rule. We don’t have crack cocain control enshrined in law (like those dirty liberals want) just because coke has the potential to be used as part of a person’s death.

Another Blog in ASP.NET

Here’s an example in action – you can tell by the aspx file extension.  Actually, it turns out there are several.  SharePoint naturally has a blog (and wiki) engine built in. So does Community Server. And

• PressTopia
• DasBlog
• SubText
• T-Blogger
• ThinkJolt 2
• TriptychBlog
• BlogEnngine.NET
• .Blog
• .Text (NOT FREE)

There’s an impression that even saying “I need to open some windows – it’s hot in here” will cost you $500 and line Bill’s pocket. That all free software runs on linux. That pigs can fly.

Ok, I made the last one up, but this should conclusively prove that there exist useful, open source applications written for Microsoft technologies, particularly the .NET Framework. The one and only thing PHP has going for it compared to ASP.NET is a perception that it’s the programming system open source examples are available for.

As shown this isn’t the case. Think for a minute – programmers use programming languages. Bill Gates may be a greedy bastard (*), but the people who find jobs writing code targetting his company’s inventions are no more likely to be money grubbing assholes than people who use Macs.

End users have as much control over the way Microsoft behaves as I do over George Bush’s war crimes. Windows users are just like everyone else. Some are generous, some greedy. Some are black, some are Japanese, some are Israeli. The only way we’re a bloc, a monolithic group that acts together, is in terms of the software we’re able to run. (Example? Try running SQL Server on a Mac.)

* On Bill Gates’s greed. He has been the world’s richest man, although a Mexican now holds that honor (eat your heart out, Republican Party!). Bill has donated more than half of his wealth to charity – he’s actually done more than any other human. He’s a shrewd businessman, but deserves respect as a philanthropist.