Interesting. Needs garlic.

Found at Jerry Pournelle’s, the “Implicit Association Test”.

Sadly, not unlike the MMPI and other such tests, the Racial Preference test could not categorize my responses… any of the three times I took it. Not a “no preference shown” but “could not determine”.

I think the idea’s not bad, but it needs garlic. heh.

Other tests include the

Gender-Career IAT: Gender – Career. This IAT often reveals a relative link between family and females and between career and males.

Age IAT: Age (‘Young – Old’ IAT). This IAT requires the ability to distinguish old from young faces. This test often indicates that Americans have automatic preference for young over old.

And the
Asian IAT: Asian American (‘Asian – European American’ IAT). This IAT requires the ability to recognize White and Asian-American faces, and images of places that are either American or Foreign in origin.

Are these more accurate than Blogthing-type quizes? Maybe. But then again, p-sych as a “science” has serious limitations.

Not a petty annoyance

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Found via The English Guy,

“Create an e-annoyance, go to jail”

Yep. Anonymous, otherwise unaccountable trolls may face federal jail time and fines. But, really, who needs the feds in the middle of this? After all, kicking trolls can be fun (if sometimes boring). And cyberstalking–which the law referenced is aimed at–is more than just being annoying… but the law singles out “annoying” behavior as a federal crime, now, punushable by fines and jail time. To be sure, it also strengthens actual anti-stalking provisions, but even there, is that really a federal issue?

Oh, well. It’s law now. *sigh* Might as well start using it as a club for playing Troll Golf.

FORE!

Semi-anonymously graffiti-sprayed at Basil’s and The Conservative Cat.

Guard the Borders–What is LULAC?

Another abbreviated (as well as late) blogburst post, but not one to skip. Freedom Folks is carrying the load for Euphoric Reality this week, and it’s not a post to miss. FF notes some troubling inconsistencies in LULAC, a group protesting control of our borders, and develops a rich post from them:


Well, which is it, folks? Are you all about the rights of Hispanic Americans, i.e., CITIZENS, or the Hispanic population, which includes those who have ILLEGALLY entered the country, and continue to stay and work here ILLEGALLY?


See the rest at What Is LULAC?

And do consider adding your voice to others’ with Guard the Borders.

Guard the Borders was started by Euphoric Reality, and serves to keep immigration issues in the forefront of our minds as we’re going about our daily lives and continuing to fight the war on terrorism. If you are concerned with the trend of illegal immigration facing our country, join our blogburst! Just send an email with your blog name and url to kit.jarrell at gmail dot com.

Stop the ACLU–a shot across the ACLU’s bow…

From John Stephenson, this:


It is happening all across the nation. The ACLU sue city counsel after city counsel over praying in Jesus name. They don’t sue to stop all prayer, but in every case the target has been Christian prayer. They even fought for the right of a Wiccan to pray at a counsel meeting. Many times it doesn’t even take a lawsuit. They just type up a threatening letter and that does the trick. This was the case in Fredericksburg. But one man isn’t taking things lying down.

Fredericksburg City Councilman Hashmel Turner has filed suit against his fellow council members, saying the council’s newly adopted prayer policy violates his constitutional rights.

Turner is being represented by the Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit group that advocates for free expression issues.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Richmond, asks the court to rule that the city’s prayer policy is unconstitutional, and to order that Turner be allowed back into the council’s prayer rotation.

The council voted 5-1 in November to adopt a policy of offering non-denominational prayers devoid of any Christian or other specific religious references.

Turner abstained from that vote, and Councilman Matt Kelly voted against the policy.

The vote came after Turner had been excluded from the council prayer rotation for more than a year. The council got a letter from the American Civil Liberties Union in July 2004 saying that the civil liberties group would file suit if Turner continued to invoke the name of Jesus Christ in his prayers…


Read the rest at Fredericksburg City Councilman Fights for Right to Pray in Jesus’ Name And see more information about what the ACLU is really about at Stop the ACLU

SIGN THE PETITION TO STOP TAXPAYER FUNDING OF THE ACLU

This was a production of Stop The ACLU Blogburst. If you would like to join us, please email Jay at Jay@stoptheaclu.com or Gribbit at GribbitR@gmail.com. You will be added to our mailing list and blogroll. Over 115 blogs already on-board.

Dog bites man *yawn*

Nothing new, really. Oh, Joe “Mr. Plagiarism” Biden has other problems besides remembering whose words he’s stealing. Yep. He can’t even remember what he’s said, himself.


Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), who grilled Samuel Alito ’72 about his CAP membership, also said that he “wasn’t a big Princeton fan.”

“I didn’t even like Princeton,” he said, to laughter from the gallery. “I mean, I really didn’t like Princeton. I was an Irish Catholic kid who thought it had not changed like you concluded it had…_Daily Princetonian_

Yeh. This after his 2004 speech at Princeton where he said, “It’s an honor to be here. It would have been an even greater honor to have come here.”

And then went on to say,

“I have three children who have mercifully all finally completed undergraduate and graduate school. And I tried to get all three of them to apply here.”

Well, of course he did. As much as he has never liked the school, I’m sure he bent every effort to get them to apply there.

Lesson: how can you tell Joe Biden, Teddy Kennedy, Jean Fraud sKerry and their ilk are lying? Easy. They are still breathing.

Up tomorrow: Stop the ACLU and Guard the Borders. Not much else.

Will it be a case of “These are not the droids you are seeking”? Stay tuned. Perspiring minds wanna know.

Funtech

OK, so for several years now, Apple has been selling “MAc” products running a Unix OS. Now,

Apple Shows New Intel Notebooks, Software

Well, you knew it was coming. Apple’s been having trouble for years now, as its percentage slice of the personal computer market has waned to pitiful single digits, getting fabbing for its chipsets, and further improvements in speed and features? Nah, not happening all that much-because of the problem of getting fabbing for such comparatively small runs.

Sure, Jobs had “promised” (to some squealing from Macrodific users 🙂 last June to deliver Intel-based “Macs” (that just looks weird sitting there on the page: “Intel-based Macs”), but apparently, the Intel architecture is so easy to work with Apple’s ahead of schedule (*heh*).

Then, there’s the bow to Intel dominance in announcing new Intel versions of popular Mac-Mac (as opposed to Intel-Mac or MacIntel *snirk*) softwares.

Change ships and call the new one by the old name. Sure. It works in politics, so why not in personal computing? My only thought is, if he’s going to try selling an Intel computer running a Unix-based OS, why should people not just save a BIG chunk of cash and get a plain box PC and pop in something easy like Ubuntu Linux or Mandriva Linux or (for the ease of use, “Aunt Tilly” users) Linspire? Folks who don’t mind a little “rolling your own” work could easily use Redhator one of the other Linuxes or even Free BSD.

A McIntel personal computer. Nah. Not for me. YMMV, of course.

On other funtech fronts: Kinda enjoying my homebrew firewall/router. Was getting a lot of worm attack attempts from Chinese servers and was able to block a whole range of Asia/pacific Rim IP addresses that are known sources of malware/security attacks with just a download/script that updates a database of the worst addresses 3X weekly. Automatically. Nice. Reporting a buncha ping probes from another user IP within my ISP’s network to abuse was fun, too. Lots more detail than other firewalls I’ve used.

Still learning to nav its shell, some of the commands specific to the software and such. Touching base periodically with the user forum. It was pretty easy to build and configure once I decided on what firewalling software I’d use. Used SmoothWall Express 2.0 software. Built a few more network cables. After that, it was pretty easy. Kinda kicking myself for not doing this earlier.

  • Old AT-based server case with monster power supply and AT mobo
  • 64MB memory
  • first handy PCI vidcard I laid my hands on
  • a couple of network cards
  • old floppy and CDROM drives
  • old, spare 15″ monitor (for setup/troubleshooting)
  • keyboard

Was/is fun.

Superstitious Glurge: a rant/OTA Day

Can anyone riddle me this? Why do otherwise normally intelligent people insist on sending out superstitious chain emails? You know, the one’s that start out with some pseudo-inspirational glurge and then promise you a blessing or a curse: a blessing if you forward the thing and a curse if you don’t.

What? Does someone, somewhere, have a voodoo doll of my email address? Ooooo. That’s scary. *yawn*

Of course, some of the participants in such chains are not otherwise normally intelligent people. You know the ones. They forward the thing as an attachment. Usually starts with AOL users doing it and they forward it to other AOL users who then keep up the assinine behavior of forwarding the thing as an attachment. Nested attachments. Do I have to recreate the filter that junks every email I get that has nested attachments? Again?

OTA Wednesday.

Open Trackback Alliance

Link to this post (http://thirdworldcounty.blogspot.com/2006/01/superstitious-glurge-rantota-day.html) and trackback (http://www.haloscan.com/tb/mnmus/113699582957838138/). “Borrowing” (open theft) from Diane’s Stuff,
“If you use blogging software that doesn’t have “trackback” ability built in, Wizbang Standalone Trackback Pingeris an excellent resource to overcome that small problem as is Kalsey’s Simpletracks.”
Or use Haloscan‘s commenting and trackback service.

Time Out

A little forced quiet on this lil loudmouthed blog, until my ISP figures out why a scant 1/4″ of rain can take down 576 customers’ connections.

Back on backup dialup, and I just can’t live like that. (Hugh: I feel your pain. 🙂

IF my ISP can find where a squirrel ran across their lines and opened the spigot on my information pipe, causing severe leakages (don’t worry about understanding that: it’s highly technical jargon–heh), then I’ll be back. Until then, enjoy the silence.

Or not.

(Like, I can tell you what to do? Fav response to the jejune “Have a nice day”–“You’re not the boss of me.” 🙂

Quick Update: just looked at the “576” number again… given where my ISP (the local cable company) markets its product, that would be… just about their entire customer base in America’s Third World County. Ought to make it easier to track down the problem, eh? I’m sure they will, eventually.

*sigh*

Social Security: Pricking the Ponzi Scheme Balloon

I try as often as possible to not only actually cruise through my blogroll (usually by hitting high points via RSS feeds, since there are soooo very many worthwhile reads out there), skim through news, google up (or otherwise search out) reads on the internet on topic that strike a momentary fancy and read a few books a week. The books can be fiction or non-fiction (which often means “reality-based fantasy” when reading an academica nut’s view of history or politics), eBook or dead tree, new to me or pulled off a shelf or dug out of a box for a re-read. (Current book-of-the-day: an online html edition of Einstein Defiant: Genius versus Genius in the Quantum Revolution )

And then there’s “real life”… which brings me back to my post’s title that ties in very well with a brief article I recently read in Credenda Agenda (one I’d somehow missed on first reading of the issue it’s in). Here’s a taste. Speaking of the Social Security Administration,

…If any private insurance corporation handled their funds the way the government does, the board of directors would all be in chokey.

Nevertheless (for some mysterious reason), the SSA does keep track of all the payments you have made into the system, and those figures are available. We should consider retirement age as that point when the government has agreed, in a plea bargain, to start making restitution. We should therefore gladly receive the checks, cashing them all, until the amount we paid into the system (plus twenty percent) is fully restored to us. At that point, we should compose a letter thanking them for the restitution, and begin mailing back the checks.

Now, that’s a moral and ethical challenge. One most people will fail to meet. I know it may be hard to turn down “free money” when I reach SS payout age (not that far off: I’ve been getting-and trashing-mailouts from the Gray Mafia, AKA AARP, for years). But once I do and then eventually reach “payback+20%”-or whatever I compute to be a fair (just, equitable) return on the monies I paid in, I will need to have made a tough decision to either return future checks of monies extorted from working taxpayers or become an accomplice in the felonious behavior of the government.

Perhaps a better way would be to fund the entire federal government out of one pot, as the Fair Tax proposal would have us do. That way, when taxes are applied to federal adventurism not authorized by the Constitution (any more, just about 90% of everything outside defense) it would at least have the merit of being “honest theft”.

The Fair Tax Book

The check’s in the mail at Basil’s Blog, NIF and Jo’s Cafe.

No Records; Just More Bullshit/OP

The Junior Bloviator from Massachusetts on the NYT-induced twitter about Bush administration electronic surveillance of known terrorists’ communications:

”The leak in the White House was an effort to destroy somebody and his family and attack them for telling the truth… The leak that took place in this case is a leak that — I’m not excusing it — is to tell the truth about something that violates the rights of Americans and doesn’t uphold our Constitution.

Here, Jean Fraud sKerry compares the lame Plame case with the so-called “domestic spying” flap. His statement is so full of lies and distortions (with the little bonus of a flip-flop) that it’s a classic sKerryism. First, as even the 9/11 Commission knows and said in its report, Joe Wilson lied himself blue in his weak leak. So any, mention of bias on his part-and a possible reason for that bias-by a White House source coyuld only “destroy somebody and his family ” if it were true. The cannard that Plame was a covert agent and in danger if her CIA employment were revealed is demonstrably false. Otherwise, why was Scooter Libby not charged under the law forbidding disclosing a covert agent’s identity?

The whole Plame Game was bullshit. Jean Fraud sKerry’s a lawyer (of sorts), was a member of the Senate that passed the law. He knows he’s lying through his teeth. The whole foundation of his comparison is a lie. Typical of sKerry.

Then rthe sKerryist flip-flop: he excuses the leaks harming the effort to gather intelligence on foreign agents planning terrorist attacks on you and me. Then he says he’s not excusing the leaks. And then, of course, he finishes his excusing of the leaks (flip-flop-flip) with another lie: that the leaked information (and their presentation as domestic surveillance) is the truth.

Well, as always with Jean Fraud, yes and no. Yes, of course the NSa (and probably darned near everyone in law enforcement and intelligence circles, except for the feebs at the CIA and the FBI–those agencies once primarily tasked with the job) want to and have listened in on known savage Islamofascist butchers’ communications as often as possible. What?!? You want folks dialing numbers, emailing email addresses, that are known Al-Qaeda contacts to have free rein? Even if those calls originated inside the U.S., the monitoring was of the email accounts and phone numbers of known contacts outside the U.S.

Jean Fraud (and the NYT and all the other squawkers in the Mass Media Podpeople’s Army, the Loony Left Moonbat Brigade and their ilk) knows this, and lies about it anyway.

Why? Because he knows he’s not going to be held accountable for his lies. He’s lied his way through life. And what did he get out of it? Well, to name a few things, a wonderful Christmas Vacation in Cambodia that is “seared, seared” in his memory; a cushy Senate seat as the Senior Bloviator from Massachusett’s lapdog; a rich sugah mommie to pay for his snowboarding, etc.

Oh, and a free ride on his lies that he would (and then did) release his records. If you’ve released them, Jean Fraud, where are they? And if you have nothing to fear in the actual records, why are they still not available?

Where’s the beef, Jean Fraud?

The poster boy for Bullshit in the new millennium as featured on the No More Bullshit button:

No More sKerry BS_button

See Cao’s post today, and


Join the blogbursts to help FREE Kerry’s 180 every Tuesday!
We’ve formed a blogburst group and here are the bloggers who are contributing so far. If you want to join the blogroll for Free Kerry’s 180, click here to email me, include the url for your blog. The blogburst is every Tuesday, so don’t forget to blog about it. All you have to do is encourage Kerry to set his 180 FREE, I’ll send you the code for the blogroll.

This is an Open Post. Link here and Trackback at Will (he won’t mind).

Searching for better stuff at Those Bastards!