Blog Status

I updated my public .htaccess blacklist, in case anyone's interested. I assume someone is, because that post has received 11,000 hits, and they can't all be bots. My guess is that people are using it as a resource to check up on an IP address. I can tell you that from using it, the number of bots getting through declines by about 99%. Some will still get through, but the list grows over time due to my efforts, and those that get through, don't get through for long.

My efforts to monetize this blog via AdSense have fallen flat due to a technical error on AdSense's side. I left a message in their help forum but haven't received any answers. They do not permit ordinary mortals to contact them via email. So I will leave a post on my front page into perpetuity that points the finger at AdSense, which is broken, dead as a doorknob, kaput, game over on my site due to an AdSense bug. I imagine their developers are too busy drinking coffee and eating donuts to work on boring stuff like code.

I like working on code and am pretty good at it, but I am not allowed to do so anymore, because all the programming jobs were given to foreigners. I believe that politicians in Washington, D.C. right now are working on ways to eliminate even more jobs so that they will make a bunch of money on the stock market. The politicians are bribed, bought and paid for by corporations and don't care about America or, much less, American workers.

Trying Ads Again

I decided to try adverts again, because I put a lot of effort into the blog over the years, with a big wonky zero in the way of return. Many people come here and find the information they need to solve the problem at hand and then leave without so much as a thank you. Even if I only make five bucks a year, in ten years time, I'll at least be able to buy some bananas. I like bananas.

Well, it looks like Google Adsense is programmed by morons. Adsense sent me an email saying they put my account on hold until I update my tax info. I'm not permitted to update my tax info because my account balance is below $10. Thus, my sites are on hold forever or until Google hires intelligent programmers. I'm on hold forever.

Zimmerman: Malice Aforethought

The excessive focus on the voice recordings in the Zimmerman Case puzzle me. To me, the recordings are irrelevant. It doesn't matter to me whether the victim or the shooter were screaming. Perhaps both of them were. To me, the case seems cut and dry. A murderer stalked a man at night while carrying a loaded firearm. He shot this man dead, a man who he had no business confronting, a man not committing any crime, not trespassing, not doing anything wrong at all, a unarmed man whose only purpose was walking home from a convenience store. I think the jury can find for malice aforethought.

I don't know what's wrong with Florida that the police did not arrest Zimmerman on the scene for first-degree murder, but certainly the case has the stench of racism all over it.

I've been a pedestrian, just like the victim, walking on the side of the road in the middle of the night, minding my own business. I've had big ugly SUV's pull up beside me, honk their horns, act obnoxious, throw litter, throw rocks, squirt water pistols. Big ugly SUV's are the choice of cowards, and cowards like to carry guns, because they are afraid of everyone else and know that they could never win a fair fight. They need that gun for protection, because otherwise they would surely be beat soundly for behaving like the disgusting louts they are.

Maybe I'm not black, but there are many parallels between myself and the victim. The victim is Mr. Martin, by the way. He is dead, a young man who had his whole life ahead of him. Mr. Zimmerman is not the victim. Mr. Zimmerman is the murderer, the one with blood on his hands, the one who got all flustered because the young gentleman he stalked at night hit him a few times.

I think in this case the victim, Mr. Martin, needs to be given every benefit of the doubt. Since he is not here to speak for himself, every member of the jury must assume Mr. Martin behaved like an honorable gentleman. The moment he was murdered by Mr. Zimmerman, he became a saint. It is likely that Mr. Martin was highly provoked by Zimmerman, who has displayed on numerous occasions an appalling lack of basic social skills. Murdering a witness should not give the murderer the benefit of the doubt. Otherwise, every man that ever fights another will see to it that he kills his enemy, in order that only his version of events is ever heard by a jury.

The Post Office Spies on Americans

I wasn't really surprised to read this article in the New York Times about government spying, because of my recent experience. An undercover agent contacted me a few months ago and tried to entrap me using the U.S. Postal Service. She claimed she ran an organic grow operation out in California and wanted to send me a bunch of weed for free through the mail.

Well, I'm still blogging, aren't I? That means I didn't succumb, she didn't add to her quota, and those long tedious sales pitches she wrote me were for naught, although I suspect she copied and pasted a canned rap that she uses with everybody. She was probably corresponding with hundreds of people just like me. I wonder how many succumbed to her entrapment?

By the way, Facebook, Amazon, etcetera are all crawling with undercover agents using bogus profiles, and Facebook cooperates 100% with the spies. The spies target anyone that likes weed, for sure, and probably a lot of other groups as well. Are you one of the groups being targeted? Beware, the next friend request might just be the government trying to lay a felony charge on you.

Gay Marriage is Good for All

Sometimes I wonder about gay marriage, "what's in it for straight people?" A tangible benefit exists for heterosexuals:

1. To the best of our knowledge, homosexuality occurs in all families, throughout history, without regard to race, nationality, or culture.

2. Thus, every straight person may, through heterosexual intercourse, produce a homosexual offspring. This outcome can be viewed as a risk, an opportunity, or a possibility, depending upon one's attitude towards homosexuality.

3. The straight person who has a homosexual offspring will experience better financial, legal and social outcomes if that offspring can marry and receive all the benefits of marriage. The entire family is strengthened. Everybody wins with gay marriage. Nobody loses. All families will experience better outcomes throughout all future generations.

One's view on gay marriage pivots upon whether one has any notion of teamwork. If one believes that if any person in a team does better, the entire team is likely to do better, then gay marriage has more appeal.

On the other hand, if one's worldview is shaped by competition that requires winners and losers, then one may oppose gay marriage. There is a notion that if other people are miserable, even siblings and offspring, that makes one's own lot seem better by comparison. Some people want to think of themselves as the winners and everybody else as losers. They are willing even for their own families to be losers. What exactly do they win on a personal level? Nothing. But there is apparently some satisfaction to be found in keeping others unhappy and burdened by legal restrictions.

Are We Ready for Democracy?

I wonder sometimes whether we are ready for democracy as a species.

Is Egypt ready for democracy?

More to the point, is the U.S.?

I just read the comments section on a major news web site. The article concerned Mr. Snowden, who is deemed a traitor or a patriot or somewhere in-between, depending upon one's point of view. Comments generally were in favor of hanging, I do believe. Armchair executioners are in great abundance.

I think that many citizens still have the mindset of living under a monarchy. They remain, in spirit, loyal subjects of a monarch, just as things were a thousand years hence, and why should they not? Why should people not believe that fealty comes first? Those among our ancestors who believed otherwise were executed.

Is the world ready for democracy? Not really. Even Republican forms of government arrived too soon for our species. Our progress in evolution suits us for a monarchist form of government, and yet I can't help but feel that we should continue trying to make republican forms of government work, even if they are ill-suited to our primitive mentality. Perhaps with experience, with the progress of centuries, we may learn to make republics work better. Is the liberal philosophy correct? Should we believe in amelioration?

What was the Civil War About?

A real hero of the Civil War that I should have learned about in school was Strong Vincent, a Union colonel who, it is said, turned the tide at the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg. He died during the battle, but was remembered long after death, at least in the North.

Back when I was a boy, textbooks, encyclopedias, teachers, and even my grandmother idealized the wrong man, Robert E. Lee, general of the Confederacy. He was intelligent, but wicked, because he served evil, a similar case as Rommel in WW2. How many Germans now idealize Rommel? Not many, I would think.

The Civil War was about the Southern elite defending their right to enslave other human beings. That was all the war was ever about, and yet people deny it throughout the former Confederacy because they have been indoctrinated to do so. The rich plantation owners of the 1860s were determined at all costs to do harm unto others that they regarded as "inferior" by murdering, raping, torturing, confining, forcing into labor and selling their slaves. Had the landowners ever shown the least resolve to stop committing these atrocities, there would have been no war.

The Southern elite have for hundreds of years set themselves above minorities they regard as inferior, preserving their privileged status and keeping minorities down through legislation and force. This attitude is still in evidence today. Among the Southern elite, there persists a desire to keep others down--anyone regarded as "inferior"--due to a belief that somehow the misery of others makes their own lot seem better, if only by comparison.

Victory through Nonviolence

Gays won on the legal, political, and cultural battleground because they spoke the most reasonable words with the most moderate voice. Their dialogue was one of human rights and dignity. Their opponents varied, but never made a good impression upon me. There was never a time I listened to a homophobe and thought, "Gee, he might have something there." Instead, I always wondered what variety of mental disease these haters suffered from. All too often, homophobes were exposed as closeted homosexuals, which was extremely damaging to the anti-gay lobby, rather like tossing a fragmentation grenade into the officer's tent. The Wiccan law applies: when one points a finger at others, three are pointing back. Too clear was the hypocrisy, meanness and ignorance of homophobes. As for the gay activists, why, they were for the most part non-violent, even in the face of outrageous injustice. There is value in taking blows when others must witness it, because those who watch will wonder when they will be struck next, because violence has a way of spreading, of engulfing communities, turning against minorities first, and then everyone. So when Matthew Shepard was martyred by the brutal murderers, that was one of the turning points in the battle, when people of conscience could no longer accept the injustice, hypocrisy and wickedness. That was the point when many good people said, Enough. Because there are things in life of more value than popularity, material or power. There is a spiritual and moral dimension that transcends the world we live in and life itself. Spiritual force can be overwhelming, as many a cynic has discovered at a late hour.

Fixing a Broken Shutdown Shortcut

Kubuntu 13.04 offered some updates today that broke my shutdown shortcut. After a bit of poking around and trying various things, I found that this syntax fixes the problem:

sudo chmod u+s /sbin/shutdown

I don't notice any improvements from the updates. Devs, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And here's my corollary to that general rule: if you can't help yourself from fixin' what ain't broke, then don't break it.

At least I was able to fix their fix.

Historic Life-Changing Ruling by Supreme Court

The greatest ruling by the Supreme Court in my lifetime has come to pass today. This means the world for gay folks. Equal protection under the law is closer to becoming a reality in every state. The ruling means peace, it means liberty, it means justice.

I am proud of my country. Little I have read in the media the past few months has made me so proud as this. There used to be a time when gays were denied employment in the State Department, because it was thought they were vulnerable to blackmail. Now the case is just the opposite. In China and Russia, homophobia and discrimination are part of the law. Perhaps China and Russia have this vulnerability, but not the U.S.

I am surprised and pleased, but wish the ruling had been unanimous. States' rights, after all; why did the conservative jurists not defend their cherished ideal, states' rights? They do so in all the other cases, the ones where big money for corporations is at stake. The minute the question is individual liberty, suddenly states' rights doesn't matter to 'em. Not much effort is required to expose the motives of Scalia and company.

I think I'm going to have to cast about for a state where gay marriage is legal and relocate! My red state is going to remain decades behind the times on this issue, just like it did on civil rights for blacks. History repeats itself. I think a court order will be required for my red state to do what's right. Wikipedia has a good article listing the states where gay marriage is legal. I view it as a travel guide for gay couples.

I didn't expect to live to see this day, but I'm glad I did. There's a feeling of unreality, of living in a dream. I always chuckle to remember back when I was thirteen and thought I was the only gay in the world. Goodness, there must be a lot of gays out there besides me. And after all, gay is not threatening. By its very nature, gay is not threatening. The more the issue is discussed, the more truth that is brought out into the light of day, the more people realize that it is not any kind of threat. As my straight brother puts it, "If some guys don't want to do it with women, that just means more for me!"

I don't expect a surge of gay marriages. For one thing, many gays aren't couples. However, I feel that monogamy is a good thing, for many reasons, and I think that whatever serves to encourage monogamy (short of compulsion or force) is a good thing. Therefore gay marriage is a good thing both for gays and for society, of which gays are a part. I think over time, gay marriage will become more common.

However, I hope young and idealistic gays don't rush into marriage just to prove a point. I believe a couple--whether straight or gay or somewhere in between--should live together for at least three years prior to marrying. There are, of course, downsides to marriage, which individuals need to examine at their leisure with objectivity. Marriage has always been a problematic institution. However, for some couples, the happy ones, the long-term partners, marriage solves a great many legal and financial loose ends, such as hospital visitation, medical questions, custody of children, inheritance, immigration, federal and state benefits, insurance, and so on. I would advise gays to observe and learn from the experiences of their heterosexual peers however, because divorce can be unpleasant and unfair. I believe marriage and divorce could stand some reforms to keep pace with the evolving roles of men and women. But that is an issue for another blog post at another time.

My Brain is Sprained

On a consistent basis, I drop a word, usually a preposition, conjunction or noun. I have to read my blog posts over and over again, about five times on average, before I detect the missing word. I used to produce near-perfect copy. I think it is a sign of decay that will only get worse as time goes on. However, I find consolation in mainstream media sites, such as CNN and MSNBC, which display the same human frailty.

Blogger Fails in Firefox

I've been using Blogger since 2009. Starting around 2012, Google made ill-conceived changes to Blogger that have made me dread editing my template's html or css. I have given up on maintaining a custom template. The Template and Layout functions of Blogger are horrible. Blogger has crashed Firefox so many times that I've lost count. How does Blogspot set about crashing a computer? Constant and nonstop hits to web sites like twitter, facebook, and google's own. Continual processing for no apparent reason, endless loops just burning the cpu up until 100% of the processor is in use, accomplishing nothing whatsoever. Blogger crashes Firefox on both Linux and Windows systems, I might add. It doesn't matter what kind of computer I use or how much memory I have or how fast my Internet is or which operating system I choose. Blogger will crash Firefox in a heartbeat. It will also bring a computer system to a crawl and force a reboot.

Like most things, Blogger devolves rather than getting better. I suppose Windows doesn't set a good example in that regard. The only thing Google cares about is making money off AdSense, but I can't see running ads on a web site where I cannot even edit the html or css at all without the computer crashing. I certainly can't recommend Blogger to anyone who wants to start a blog, unless they like rebooting their computer every five minutes.

On the plus side, I do like the stock template. It's nice and dark and seems more pleasing to the eye, although I could ask for a bit more color. We have color monitors--shouldn't we use them? Black and white seems, well, a bit of a throwback to the 1970's, when I actually had a black and white television set. It's a sign of age if one can remember watching television in black and white.

I would have preferred the option of selecting and installing a new template rather than being pressured into doing so by a kludgey editor that crashed my computers. Nobody likes being forced to do things.

Classroom Dream

I dreamed that I was in a classroom with many students sitting on those old-fashioned wood and metal contraptions they used to use back in the day, with a hard wood writing surface and chair with steel legs and a steel compartment under the chair bottom to put books and papers inside. Those things could be broken, as some boys discovered after trying the better part of a school-year or multiple school-years, but not easily, and they could be repaired, too.

I was young again, I don't know how young, but at the age when sitting in such an old-fashioned desk would have been right, and reunited with my best friend at the time. We were aware of the passage of the time, so this was not a flashback to the past, but a reunion in Heaven. We realized we hadn't seen each other for--what is it now, twenty years? More, I think. Thirty? Of course we remembered the reasons for going our separate ways. Yet for whatever reason, we were back in the place where we first met all those years ago, doing mindless busy work we used to do in school. The teacher, who had no face, no name, and not a very memorable voice either, had assigned a score of questions to be answered by reading a chapter in our textbook. I don't know what the textbook was about. Something incorrect or inaccurate, no doubt, and not written very well, like most textbooks in school.

I was euphoric at being reunited with my old friend. The magnetism was strong, like magic, and I was curious. I had many questions, but these were left unasked. He was friendly and seemed to understand everything. He was serious about schoolwork as he always was and working on the assigned questions, which he finished before anyone else. I took his notebook--I had that privilege with him that I didn't need to ask--and began copying his answers into my notebook to save myself the effort, smiling all the while.

A few moments later, at the far left of the classroom, another student raised her voice and denounced the fellow sitting in front of her, who had copied her questions just as I had copied my friend's. The teacher reiterated that she expected us to do our own work. I looked at my friend's face and he had one of those expressions I was so familiar with, that look of rebuke. Blushing, I returned his notebook and began working on the questions myself.

Upon waking, the dream seemed less charming. Perhaps it is seldom that young friends part on amicable terms. He was the more popular one, the one that knew how to manipulate others. I was not adept at reading social signals, which is so important in our world. When he decided I was no longer useful and could be replaced by someone else, he played pranks on me that he found amusing, fooling me again and again. Back then, I was what you call stupid. Book-smart but not street-smart, which is often fatal. He was cold and adept at making cold decisions. I don't envy whoever he is with now, if anyone at all. If I had had a choice, I wouldn't have dreamed of him, either. He is not the sort of thing I like to dream about.

I think the dream was just an echo of the past. Memory is a funny thing. Facts are stored in memory, of course, but also feelings without regard to the alterations wrought by time. I used to feel a certain way about him, and that feeling is recorded somewhere, just like a fact would be, even though my current feelings are different. The unconscious mind revisited an old memory covered in dust somewhere in the attic. I wonder what the trigger was? Perhaps last night's watching of the first episode of season six of Mad Men. The accuracy of that retro 1960s show amazes me. Upon reflection, I think the antique fashion and style of that show certainly triggered a memory from my distant past, a past I'd perhaps be better off forgetting.

Confessions of a Blogger

The reality as I see it is that most blogs have no readers--or few, if any. The lion's share of traffic consists of bots. Bots with bad intentions, mostly--content scrapers and hackers angling for derivative traffic. ?!Buzzword?! What is "derivative traffic," igor? Well, pardon my jargon, but derivative traffic is traffic that derives from somebody else's labor--writing, photos, what-have-you. Capiche? There are sites on the Internet that have stolen my content, such as it is, despite what may be regarded as its uncertain value. There are many sites on the Internet that rate my site, analyze my site, give every manner of statistics, and give previews and archival history of my site. All of that comes from bot traffic, from unattended software programs hammering this site day after day collecting data.

On this blog, my best estimation is that 90% of the hits are non-human bots. Of the humans that do hit the blog, most are searching for answers to narrow technical questions, and most hit about a dozen different posts that are the most popular posts on my blog. That would include the Dungeon Crawl Cheat, although I don't know how many Dungeon Crawlers actually bother installing the batch file nowadays. Not many people know what batch files are anymore, and I reckon those that don't would be worried about a virus. The batch file is useful mainly for my own purposes. I can't imagine playing Dungeon Crawl without it. I like to have control over death. Isn't that a natural human desire?

Why so many bots? I get asked that question often, especially when I explain that ninety out of a hundred hits to any given web site are non-human. Well, hackers figured out a long time ago that they could exploit weaknesses in human nature and in search engine technology to drive traffic to their own web sites, where they make money off advertising, install malware, flog some worthless software, or just increase the value of an url that they plan to sell later.

Gee, igor, that sounds like an easy way to make money! How come you don't do it? Ha-ha, I've thought about that and a lot of other easy ways to make money. I won't say I'm above temptation. But even though our government sets such a poor example, I still find some value in ethics. I don't want my legacy to consist of crap web sites and increased distortion and confusion on the Internet. I've always been on the other side of that war and have invested too much effort in fighting bots to change hats now. I suspect the government is behind some of these bots, using them in an effort to monitor and exert some degree of control over the flow of information.

I Like

Usually I blog about things I hate. Today, for variety, I blog about things I like.

I like to watch drag, dance, comedy, drama, and documentaries, not necessarily in that order.

I like to fool around with linux, even though I'm the only one I know that does.

I like to play weird, off-the-wall openings in Chess. The weirder, the better, in my book.

I like to cooperate with people and give them good advice. It may be that the only purpose in life is to spread a little bit of wisdom and sunshine here and there.

I like to get paid for doing work that I enjoy, rare enough though that is.

I like to have a lot of that sort of work.

I like to play some of the most difficult races in Dungeon Crawl, such as troll and mummy, just to see if I can win with one of these "impossible" races.

I like to fight crime by working on security for web sites.

I like to discover that strangers are actually good people with good intentions, rather than something else.

I like to avoid complications.

I like reading.

I like cats.

I prefer winter to summer, cold to hot, spicy to plain, and bitter to sweet.

I like zombie movies, and I've finally come around to liking Game of Thrones.

What Bing Means to Me

I detest Yahoo and Bing. The acronym "Bing" stands for Bastion of Incompetence, Negligence and Gross impairment. Yahoo and Bing are one and the same as far as search results are concerned.

My strong feeling against these two search engines is in reaction to their stubborn insistence to index every last page on a web site, even those pages that the site owner has specifically disallowed in robots.txt. I discovered tonight that #2 in the Yahoo and Bing results for a search term for one of my web sites was the very bot-trap that I had disallowed in my robots.txt. The bot-trap should never, ever, under any circumstances be indexed by any search engine. The reason that Bing and Yahoo index it is because they are stupid, stubborn and ignorant. There is no other conceivable reason. I understand how the rules work in robots.txt. Google understands. Yahoo and Bing do not understand. I do not have time enough in my day to teach those corporations how to code their search engine. They are just going to have to teach themselves.

However, the incompetence of Yahoo and Bing caused a problem for me. I don't want innocent humans clicking on a search result in Bing and getting banned from my site. My first thought was to disallow Bing and Yahoo altogether and get de-indexed from those seach engines, which send so little traffic they are scarcely worth worrying about. However, some people don't know any better and get suckered into installing a toolbar that connects them to Yahoo or Bing.

My solution was simple and elegant. First, I renamed my bot-trap. The new name will not be disclosed anywhere. Yahoo and Bing won't be able to find it unless they stoop to dirty tricks and get banned. They might just do that. If the new bot-trap name shows up, then I may resort to banning Yahoo and Bing altogether, which was my first plan of action.

However, for the time being, the #2 search result that formerly led to my bot-trap now leads to a page that simply informs the user that Yahoo or Bing has caused an error, and they should use Google instead. A link to Google.com is thoughtfully provided.

My problem has now become Yahoo and Bing's problem. They lose face, rather than the other way around, and that's the way it should be.

The Media's Ad Hominem

The right-wing media in this country do not attack Eric Snowden's message, instead attacking the man. That they hate him is obvious. But they haven't much of a hand if they must resort to ad hominem.

I am uninterested in the man. He looks ordinary and unremarkable. The only reason he made the news was his message. The message is what matters. Whether his message is true is the salient point. Snowden's biography is trivia for historians. I have not bothered reading the interviews with Snowden's girlfriend, father or mother. I don't care whether Snowden seems at times grandiose or whether he may have a martyr complex. He did not hire a media consultant, has never been famous before, and is probably making blunders. He should be expected to commit blunders. To do otherwise would be extraordinary. He has never been a politician. Cut to the chase. Is he speaking the truth?

Situational Ethics

I remember that the conservative Christian fundamentalists in my youth railed against a term I had never heard before: situational ethics, wherein certain deeds are not always wrong or always right. Instead, the verdict of right or wrong depends upon the situation. For instance, murder is wrong, but in war, killing may be right. Killing may be right to defend a loved one from immediate violence, or to punish and dispose of a convicted murderer, or to alleviate the pain of a dying person, or to abort an unwanted embryo. Some religionists reject situational ethics, and maintain that there are absolutes, such as this one, that killing is never right in any situation, which seems an extreme position, yet is one taken by several religious minorities throughout the ages. I'm afraid the roughness of our world prohibits nonviolence from gaining a majority footprint. Yet if every being were endowed with an inability to commit violence, then the world would be a better place, sure.

I believe situational ethics is right, because what is usually a right can also become a wrong, and vice versa. I believe in adaptable absolutes rather than unshakable dogmas. I believe the spirit of an ethical law is more important than the literal word. One would be too lawyerly to interpret rules as unbendable. It seems a failure to have a deeper and more meaningful understanding of ethics. But I think the explanation for absolute ethics is that some believe Scripture to be the literal word of God, infallible in every way, a hypothesis neither I nor any of my family ever accepted. I don't think many Christians believe the Bible is the literal word of God any longer.

However, a valid criticism of situational ethics is that many intelligent people subscribe to it, but use rationalizations to find exceptions for just about any conduct at all, such as spying on Americans. I am sure all those Congressmen and bureaucrats really believe that they are doing right by spying on everybody. They dismiss any concerns as paranoia. They point to various cases where spying helped improve the efficiency of this or that law enforcement agency. Well, you know, the Gestapo was a very efficient organization in its day, too. Sure, if you spy on everybody, you're going to catch some bad people. The trouble is, a lot of information gets uncovered by this spying, and that's a very tempting treasure trove of private and personal data. Sooner or later, it's going to be abused, and I think sooner rather than later.

I think all this spying is contrary to the spirit of our republic, that it is a relic of tyranny, and that a powerful tool has been placed into the hands of--who knows? Really, who knows who's tapping into all that data? Do tens of thousands of people have access? How many are psychopaths? How many are working for another government, for the mafia, or for a drug cartel?

I was in the grocery store yesterday and saw a depressing sight, the books and magazine section. There were hundreds of magazines, but not a single news magazine. Hundreds of magazines had to do with sports, handguns, rifles, machine guns, sex, celebrities, entertainment, or making money. The closest thing to a news magazine I could find was National Geographic. As for the books, they had bestsellers and faith-based inspirational books and that's all. At the check-out line, I did see one news magazine, TIME, as thin as a dime nowadays and consisting of charts, graphics and pictures, a mere shadow of what it used to be.

Visiting the grocery store gave me the impression that no one cares about what's going on in the world. But perhaps there is a feeling, which I think more likely, that ordinary people can do nothing about what's going on, that we are powerless, and so to read about world events is pointless and depressing. That, I think, is a consequence of what Noam Chomsky called the atomization of America, wherein people no longer are affiliated with large organizations that can indeed create political change. I remember that all the right-wingers out at work used to harshly criticize unions, as though unions were the enemy, preventing them from achieving what they wanted. I wonder how they like being without unions? I'm sure they must have a feeling of living in Paradise, that everything is roses and butterflies now.

My grandfather would be considered a right-winger today. He was conservative in every sense of the word save one, that he believed in education for women, which was fortunate for my mother. On the other hand, he was racist and anti-Semitic, which was usual and conforming for his people, place and time. I have no reason to suppose he would have been anything but homophobic as well. However, he was a union man throughout his entire working life. I don't know how it came to be that the right-wingers turned against the unions. There were bad unions, corruption, poor leadership in some cases, but I think the unions lost to free trade, which pitted Americans against low-paid workers overseas. Americans lost, of course, which was inevitable in hindsight.

Government Spying

CNET posted a very informative article regarding the government's spying on Americans. Really, Google, Microsoft and Facebook are the least of our worries. The government makes use of them, but they are not nearly as important as another intermediary. The easy way, the lazy way to hack every American all at once is to intercept all Internet traffic directly from the Internet Service Provider (ISP), and that's exactly what the government has done in the case of AT&T and Verizon and probably all the others as well. As I've always suspected, an ISP isn't going to blink an eye when asked for info by the government. Indeed it seems AT&T has been particularly cooperative, going above and beyond.

Can the government be trusted in its denials that this information was gathered, but not used except for anti-terrorism? No, because the government does not have a good track record in the honesty department. Our government not only punishes, but tortures those who reveal information, such as Bradley Manning, and it is likely that the rape charges against Wikileaks founder were paid for by the government as well.

Let's take the opposite view, and assume the government is always honest. The information gathered was used only for anti-terrorism. Okay. But it's still there, and it's still being gathered. Maybe one day, the information will be used for other purposes. Personally I think that day has long since arrived and passed us by. With such a goldmine of personal, private data, what man could resist the temptation of mining priceless nuggets of information that could win him reelection, defeat a rival for his woman's affections, allow him to make billions of dollars? It is completely naive, ludicrous to imagine that this goldmine is sitting in a government vault only being tapped to blow up terrorists. Who even knew of its existence? Who's watching the chickens? Where is the public oversight?

Even if the government were honest, simple negligence, incompetence and corruption ensures that at least some if not all of the information gathered will be siphoned off by other law enforcement agencies and other individuals outside of law enforcement. The government has proven itself negligent, incompetent and corrupt in all other instances before this, and there is no reason to believe that government's competence has magically improved in the case of spying on Americans.

As for the politicians who approved the program, I doubt they understand it. I do not have a high opinion of the technical competence of the old alcoholic millionaires in Congress. Many of them are good politicians, but how much do they know about computers? Technical knowledge is no kind of prerequisite for elected office. I doubt those millionaires can type more than ten words a minute. I don't think they know what Linux is. They probably have no idea how email gets from one computer to another or what a network is. How can they oversee a program they can't possibly understand? The answer is they can't. They are going to nod their heads at the explanation, calculate the political costs and make a decision based upon ignorance, just like they do everywhere else. Obama is no computer wiz, either, by the way. Those people pay people like me to do things for them. They don't know what's going on, don't suspect how easy it is for data to leak out.

Thus, by the year 2013, the Internet has become a tool of tyranny, a tool for monitoring the words, thoughts and actions of citizens. All of our doings online are recorded in a database somewhere. Any time a politician gets curious about someone, they need only ask for a record of all that person's online activity, which they and their henchmen can browse at their leisure, to learn all about that person's friends, family, personal problems, personal habits, career history, financial dealings, aspirations, fears and individual quirks. All of that is there on Facebook and other sites for a lot of people these days. If a politician is displeased by someone, all they have to do is pick up the phone and call the DEA and see whether that person will succumb to an undercover sting involving drugs, or perhaps some other type of sting involving a different law enforcement agency. That's power. That's using information and the legal system to get rid of people who say inconvenient truths.

Social Skills and Those That Lack Them

I admire those that have the knack for smooth social interaction, who can express themselves without resorting to crude and ugly phrases. I am rather less impressed by technical skills, perhaps because I have 'em. When I think about the people I like the most and the one I chose to spend my life with, it is clear that social skills are their foremost quality. Etiquette, sensitivity, insight, thoughtfulness--these qualities sometimes seem scarce in online discourse. Reading some people's messages, I wonder how they could possibly have good relations with anyone at all. My guess is that they probably don't.

I have been both moderator and admin and know what goes on and who goes into a forum. I do not envy moderators. Unless there is pay--adequate compensation--the better choice is to pass. The power, the glory? Eh, there's no glory, and power is only resented, whether used or not.

Nevertheless, online discourse has improved over the years. Back in the day, things were worse. Nowadays everybody has a computer of some kind. Computer use has become more democratized. Technical skills are not the filter, the prerequisite for participation in a forum. Thus, some forums, particularly those with wider appeal, are more representative of the human population, rather than being the exclusive province of geeks.