The project that has been keeping me busy for the last three weeks, Movementarian.com has gone live! It's our third day since the big opening, and our hits have already passed 5600.
I have not had time to write too much for it yet, but check out my piece titled Sexual Frustration Caused by Porn Industry
More to come soon!
I am currently writing on my laptop from my dad's place in San Antonio. I was going to come for a week, but my dad's 50th is in two weeks, so I am going to stay for two weeks, right up until school starts. This is the only real vacation I am going to get, so I might as well try to enjoy it. I'm already very tired and very suburned, and it's only my first day back. I might write some stuff later, especially if I ever learn to use the very funky keyboard on my laptop. Tommorow, I get to build my sister a computer, since she is going to need it when the leaves for UT in a week. I'm really wishing I had my desktop and broadband access right about now...I resorted to logging in to my server via modem from here to use its broadband cause the connection here is sooo slow.
Yup, I got bored with the old name, so I am going for a new look. The CRAP (Content Review Assessment Property) rating has been reduced from 7 to 4!
Also, a finally finished an essay I've been meaning to write for a while now:The Virtues of our Time: Collectivism, Nihilism and Pragmatism
Oh, fun quote:
"If the Iraqi or the Iranian army came across the Jordan River, I would personally grab a rifle, get in a ditch and fight and die."
Yup, this is Slick Willy speaking to a Jewish group in Toronto last week. I believe you, Bill -- I know what an awesome patriot you were for this country 30 years ago.
I got spam from the Air Force Reserve today. Are they getting desperate or what? Maybe they should make a flight simulator game -- hey, it worked for the Army.
Would it work so that you were always fighting the enemy, and if so, who would you go after? Is it open season on Iraq yet?
I think I am going to have to write a letter to the Air Force:
"Dear Sirs,
Please take me of your subscription lists. I don't wish to receive any more unsolicited mail or email from the Armed Force, so if you could remove me from the spamming list as well as the draft rolls, I'd much appreciate it.
Sincerely,
David Veksler"
(Check out a little article I wrote about dealing those spammers here.)
Despote environmentalist and "post-modern" myths to the contrary, technology is a Good Thing. Many liberal profs will spread BS about how the 20th century demonstrated the "evils of technology" but I don't buy any such thing. Technological progress is driven by the individual innovation and requires certain conditions to take place. While it is possible for technology to be used for evil purposes, as it was in Nazi Germany, only a society which rewards individual self-interest will progress technological in the long run, because only such a system will encourage men to take risks, devote years of their lives, and attract investment from other men who are free from control to invest in good ideas.
Both innovation and investment are key to progress. For example, Germany developed a nuclear and jet program much sooner than the US, but the totalitarian system did not deem nuclear research or fighter jets a high enough priority to do much damage to the allies. The United States on the other hand, provided the technology to mass produce conventional and nuclear weapons because it had a clear and proper moral purpose and the semi-free economy to support it, while Germany diverted vital resources to concentration camps and focused on the wrong technologies, losing the war.
Thus, technological progress, whether civilian or military, will only occur when some degree economic and political freedom exists to stimulate and direct innovation and development in the right direction.
Anyways, I was looking through my server logs, as I often do, and I found not only the usual traces of automated hacker attacks (which are logged in detail) but some disturbing search terms. It turns out that search term "+child +penis +img" in google, displays the Aggie Review website as the first search result! I realized that a satirical article someone wrote about the Vagina Monologues, was leading all sorts of unsavory people to my site. Now, I don't plan to report them, or the random hacker to the FBI, but it is strange to how the net attracts all these people to my server, especially since it's only been up one month.
A better example of the net at work, was the girl in Toronto who was searching for information in her hometown of Vinnitsa - which just happens to be the name of one of the photos in my photo collection, as I am from there as well. Because of Google's amazing search technology (and my website skills) I was able to connect with another person, who randomly matched a word that that we shared, and as it turned out, a lot more as well.
(This is an update of an earlier post)
So I've already gotten in trouble once for publishing security exploits, but I think it's worth chancing it again to make my point. I went by the Student Activities office today to get a subdomain name, and decided to ask for the SOFC # for the Libertarians. The nice girl at the desk promptly looked it up for me, and then when I asked her about the procedure for changing passwords, she wrote down the password for the group's account as well. Since I had mentioned in passing my membership in another group, she wrote down their SOFC # and password as well. At no time did I actually say that I was an officer in any of these groups, show any identification or even ask for the password - I simply asked how to go about getting to it, and she provided passwords for two groups for me. Then I proceeded to the computer office to get a new subdomain for another group I'm webmaster of - again, no confirmation of my identity or membership status was necessary. Now I'd like to think that my trustworthy appearance and rugged good looks persuaded the girl at the info desk to be generous with the info, but somehow I doubt that's the case, and that worries me because many groups keep significant sums of $ in their accounts, and this is less than stellar security, despite the huge bureaucratic mess than a group has to go through to get organized and maintain their mandatory bank account with SOFC.
This reminds me of the policy at Evans library to force changes to passwords every 90 days. As a result, many staff members write their passwords on sticky notes on their monitors, and one of the library admins advised me to amend a "02f" "O2s" and so on to a "base" password as a way of remembering it, which I suppose is the advice she gives to everyone else....kinda defeating the purpose?
But, hey, what do I know, maybe Aggies really don't lie cheat or steal after all.
Ten days ago, I requested a room for the Libertarians. I had to get my advisor to sign a form where I picked my top preferences for meeting rooms because there was no way to look them up (or so the person at the registration desk said.) This means, that everyone who reserves rooms has to hope to not request the same day as any other group. Then today, I went to pick up the schedule, and they said they couldn't find it. After about 30 minutes (not kidding) of looking, they found that it had been misfiled under the wrong file. Now it wouldn't be too hard to put all this info online to eliminate security risks, calendar mix-ups, and several jobs, but this is a bureaucracy we're talking about here. Government jobs contribute to "aggregate output" -- right?
The thing I find the most outrageous about politics in today's world is not that so many collectivist and authoritarian governments exist, but that it is the free nations of the world that support them. The U.S. is building North Korea a nuclear plant in exchange for it agreeing to not build more nukes, as millions of its citizens starve, kept alive by the millions in aid that the country gets every year, while North Korea diverts its entire industry (supported mostly by western aid) towards making more weapons and keeping a huge conscripted military force in the army instead of allowing their enslaved masses to raise any crops. As it sends aid and builds North Korea nuclear plans (which are illegal to build in the US thanks to the enviro-wakos), the U.S. military keeps several thousand troops stationed at the border between the Koreas to guard against North Korean aggression. More so than the dictators of these countries, who are common thugs, the "civilized" countries that support these dictatorships are responsible for their existence.
Recently, "thousands of tons of U.S. emergency food aid destined for crisis-stricken Zimbabwe has been diverted to other countries, and a new shipload may be diverted within days, because the donations include genetically modified corn that the Zimbabwean government does not want to accept." Why not? They "don't want to contaminate their soil with genetically modified crops"!
Even more outrageously, Mugabe has said he is being prudent. "We fight the present drought with our eyes clearly set on the future of the agricultural sector, which is the mainstay of our economy," he told Zimbabwe's parliament on July 23. "We dare not endanger its future through misplaced decisions based on acts of either desperation or expediency."
What Mugabe does not mention is that in the last year, he has stolen the land of thousands of white farmers in a pathetic attempt to boost his own failing popularity by taking the role of a common looter. Since the farmers produce most of the country's agricultural output and hire millions of workers, millions of people have gone starving (and unemployed) and the country's economy has nosedived. And this punk claims he is "set on the future"? But it's not Mugabe who makes me sick - it is the aid agencies, the governments, and the media that support these regimes by adopting and promoting the statist, collectivist, nihilist, and pragmatic attitudes that create these sad situations.
Excuse me while I barf.