Liberal propaganda.

**Edit: I spelled propaganda wrong. Again.

Wheeee I've been saving that one. So I spend the last 2 days, about 16 hours working on my sweet new shed with my father. I've gotten him into reading some blogs, and we discussed at length a few repeating patterns we've both noticed (and are by no means immune to):

1. There is a liberal dogma.
2. I agree with a lot of it.
3. We both have a hard time with any dogma.

1: We all know what the liberal dogmatic stances are on everything from global warming, to birth control, to affirmative action, to every other goddamn thing under the sun. While I find myself in agreement with most all of the dogmatic stances I, become thoroughly annoyed when someone chimes in with a completely rational argument against one of them, and the chimer-inner is dismissed as a troll of some sort, and the argument is not explored. I haven't yet found myself labeled a troll on a blog (I don't comment much anywhere), but I can positively conclude that I would be labelled a troll should I chime in.

Even when I am in complete agreement with a stance, political position/posture, or the like my brain immediately begins the devil's advocate program (v 30.3 It needs work, but it's done well for me). I don't do this to necessarily be argumentative, but to be exploratory. I believe this is a byproduct of the general troubleshooting skills I have honed over the whole of my life. I must consider as many alternatives as I possibly can, and should I find a logical conflict, I must do everything I possibly can to correct it. Logical inconsistencies infuriate me, although I have to live with a few (for example, the only logical conclusion I can draw from some of my new-found non-religious frameworks is that eating meat is unacceptable (pain/suffering/killing/etc of sentient beings), however, I continue to eat meat.. and probably will until I can no longer withstand the mental pressure to do otherwise).

2: Yup. Most.

3: Following dogma means acceptance without regard for the truth (should the actual truth be part of the dogma is beside the point). I have, since I can remember, absolutely refused to believe anything that I couldn't conclude with my own thought (when I eventually find the time to think about it. The queue is long). This is why I have no problem dismissing arbitrary authority -- which has caused me a lot of easily avoidable problems -- and making that dismissal quite outward.

I have concluded that the label of troll, in some circumstances (I can't give a %) is intellectual laziness. It's simply name calling with the end of dismissal of an uncomfortable question (in the cases where it's lazy).

While the comfort of dogma may have great appeal to some (and dogma is politically agnostic), I will not accept what I am told. Regardless of the authority of the preacher.

To be cliche:





~Nic

I'm about to slap someone..

For the last goddamn week some fucking asshat has been parking across the street and down 2 or so houses. They pull up and about 10 people pour out of this vehicle and they proceed to test the nerves of the surrounding 2-3 blocks with wall-shaking bass. This, of course, annoys me endlessly. The passing vehicles with obnoxiously loud bass I've managed to deal with fairly well mentally.. as long as I know it will go away I can take a few deep breaths and forget it (When I first moved to Minneapolis in 1998 I thought I was going to die of panic attacks). But this lingering shit destroys my spirit.

SO -- Calling the cops is useless, they're too busy pulling people over for trivial nonsense (esp. if they're a minority)..

So what's a ginger to do?

I think I am going to buy a few Air Horns. I am going to rig something up so I can set it and leave with the goddamn thing blaring away. Leave it on the doorstep with a nice note that says "TURN YOUR FUCKING MUSIC DOWN YOU ASSHAT".

What will I really do? Nothing. I'll sit and stew in my basement while my nerves drive me to fantasize about some form of payback for my torture. ..Oh, and continue to browse for homes in first-third ring suburbs.. and wish I made more money.

~Nic

We have a problem

We have a fucking problem here:

A small town in Alabama is offering non-violent offenders the choice between doing prison time and paying a fine, or working their sentence off by going to church every week.

From TPM

~Nic

Rails 3 - Check if any possibilities exist before validation

In this work project I have a few models: contest model, submission model, and subject model. Subject is a table that belongs to contest, AND subject. Some contests don't have subjects, but if they do, I need to have the user select one. These few snips of code worked well for that situation:

class Submission < ActiveRecord::Base
  
  #Set up how the model works
  belongs_to                :contest
  belongs_to                :subject

  #Validate the field we're talking about in this post:
  validates_presence_of     :subject_id, 
                              :on => :create,
                              :if => :needs_subject?

.. And later I defined needs_subject? as follows:

  def needs_subject?
    if self.contest.subjects.any?
      return true
    else
      return false
    end
    
  end
end #End the model.

So this allowed me to only check if there's a subject if there SHOULD BE a subject.

Hope this helps someone.

~Nic

Probability of god making an earthquake and hurricane?

0.

Tell yourself whatever you want. For the record, the probability of a hurricane arising within 1 day, 1 week or 1 year after any arbitrary point (in this case, after an earthquake) is exactly the same, given seasonal adjustments. When events are close together, we notice. Had these two events been a year apart it would be a different story for the christnuts.

Back to homework.

~Nic

LifeNet Autonomous net

Apparently my idea does exist, though it is in a quite broken-down and seemingly abandoned way. I would think that the source for that project could be branched and modified to do what I had proposed earlier. Find it here: LifeNet

~Nic

I just had a 9/11 flashback..

It was really about the earthquake. I just saw it out of the corner of my eye, and had an "oh fuck, not again" moment for about 1/2 a second. Terrible shot.

~Nic