It's where I talk to myself. Gaming, politics, and links I don't want to forget about.
Jeremy Zawodny makes the observation that I’ve made a couple of times; namely, Google’s PageRank is broken. (OK, he’s said it more than once.)
In the comments, Phil Ringalda defends Google on the grounds that Jeremy’s page is as good a result for the search terms in question as anything. He discusses the issue further on his own blog.
I would just like to note that I am currently the top result for google://population+of+indianapolis.
I am currently in possession of 20 discount codes for TypePad, the new weblog hosting service/software from Six Apart. (They wrote Movable Type.) If you’re looking for someplace to host your weblog, TypePad is so much superior to Blogger that it isn’t even funny; it’s the perfect place for the non-techie to go.
The discount codes give 20% off the usual prices for life. The prices are pretty reasonable. If you actually know me and you want to start a blog with minimal effort, drop me a line and I’ll shoot you a discount code.
The Pentagon needs blood donors. If you have a DoD affiliation (the Armed Services Blood Program only accepts blood from people with a DoD affiliation), it’s a good time to give. If not, the Red Cross always needs blood.
Kevin over at funmurphys.com has more thoughts on media, following up on his comments here. He’s got an excellent point, which in my book touches on the true value of the Internet: you can get more information faster. Context is what’s valuable, and information provides context.
This is one reason I link to conservative blogs as well as liberal blogs. The other reason is because I’ll link anywhere if I get good writing out of it.
Warren Ellis is writing a novel on the Internet. Using LiveJournal. It starts here. You also get occasional comments on LiveJournal itself:
Sometimes I think of LiveJournal as the world’s biggest technogoth community. LJ has been both lauded and derided as a space for people with black clothes and strange hair to work out their alienation and disaffection in electronic public. That hasn’t stopped it being successful, and it hasn’t stopped it being a tool for national and international networking. As a piece of “social software,” it’s not flawless, but its influence and effect has been huge.
The first thing we all do when we find out about this: we link to it. The second thing we do, those of us who have LiveJournal accounts: we add him to our friends list.
Stop and think about that one for a second. On LiveJournal, adding someone to your friends list doesn’t just mean you can read their entries easily. It also means that they’re on the list of people who can read your private entries, unless you’ve customized things a little.
At the moment, 332 people have added Warren Ellis to their friends list. He has access to the private entries of, well, most of those people. He can read them talking about things they don’t mean to show to anyone they don’t know — let alone a writer who’s always searching for new material for his perverted comic books.
In my universe, I’m going to believe that he did this on purpose, knowing full well what access he would be granted.
The California recall election is definitely the most hope-inspiring thing to happen to third party politics since Perot. Here’s a theory laying out how a libertarian could win it all.
Look, like it or not, the whole line about winning with 15-20% of the vote is wishful thinking. Either the Democrats or the Republicans are going to come together behind one candidate. The winning candidate is going to have upwards of 35% of the vote.
I’m not entirely sure how I feel about all this excitement at the prospect of winning an election with such a small percentage of the vote, anyhow. It seems uncomfortably like putting political interests ahead of serving the people, which is at least one thing democracy has going for it.
Sorry about the missed week last week; Gen Con killed me. I was gonna take a suggestion from Eric McErlain this week, but it’s a little too close to the last one in theme, so I think I’m gonna save it for a little while.
Also, I put together a Monday Mashup page for your delight and amusement.
What else… oh, yeah, I need to come up with something this week. OK, let’s pick some low-hanging fruit. Your inspiration this week is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Go.
The Green Party is floating an interesting scenario for the California recall election. It’s possible that the Republican candidates will split the vote among them, and that the Democrats will hold firm behind Davis and not field another candidate. In that case, Peter Camejo, the Green candidate, picks up the Democratic vote and waltzes into the Governor’s office.
I don’t think it happens, because there are too many things that have to fall the right way. If Camejo becomes accepted as an alternative to the Republicans, the Democrats lose any advantage they have by not running a candidate, so they go ahead and get Feinstein to run. Also, you have to assume the Republicans don’t pull together behind Riordan.
Still, it’s an interesting scenario.
Randy Barnett gives Den Beste much stroke over at the Volokh Conspiracy. While I think Den Beste is skimming over some issues, I must credit him with linking to someone who refutes him nicely. So no picking on Den Beste today.
Nah. Let’s quote Barnett instead. The emphasis is his.
Funny, how you have to read blogs or websites like NRO to learn ANYTHING about what is or may be really going on. The news media is hopeless. Bias to one side, you simply cannot be informed by reading or listening to the mainstream press.
So, ah, where did Randy think Den Beste got his facts? I mean, Den Beste doesn’t actually have any sources that are denied to the rest of us; he learned what he knows about the current state of North Korean diplomacy by reading the BBC and ABC News, just like you and I. You can tell, because he links to their sites to establish his facts. He then analyzes those facts and presents his conclusions.
Randy, in his enthusiasm, confuses “being informed” with “accepting someone else’s conclusions.” This is dangerous. We have, in this era of the Internet, more sources of information available to us than ever before. Many of them are false. It’s vital that we learn to assess primary sources for ourselves; it’s vital that we learn to reach our own conclusions.
Den Beste is not running a news site, nor does he claim to be. He’s running an opinion site. We shouldn’t confuse the two. Read his opinions, by all means — but then go to the same sources he uses, and others, and decide for yourself if his conclusions match yours. Simply reading an opinion, or even many opinions, does not cause one to be informed.
Update: Hi to everyone who dropped by from USS Clueless, and thanks for visiting. Be warned that I tend more to the left than the right, but don’t assume that makes me a Democrat.
Daily Kos speculates on Iowa caucus maneuvering, which might make one wonder why anyone cares about the Iowa caucuses at all. He’s outlined a scenario under which Kerry supporters might throw their votes to Gephardt in order to derail a Dean victory. And yep, that’s about the kind of thing that happens in caucuses.
I don’t think it really requires cell phones to happen, though; Kerry’s campaign can make that decision the night before and pre-arrange the votes instead of waiting till the last moment. They’d sacrifice up to the moment decision making, but they’d gain reliability.
Either way, it’s all a game of perceptions.