Rule Thirty-Four: Not a Challenge

Sometimes the most benign phrases tell us more about ourselves than we ever wanted to know. “Remember,” I told my Minecraft-obsessed daughter, “there’s a wiki for everything.” Which, of course, is not quite true; there is not, say, a wiki for my personal, individual left nut^†.

To the other, it’s my daughter, so I didn’t clarify that it’s not quite like Rule Thirty-Four.

And then, of course, it hits me. Certes, if I look hard enough, I can find a pornwiki. But (gulp!) do I really want to know if I can find wikiporn?

In truth, I do not intend to resolve this question for myself; something about “priorities” goes here, and maybe something about Tommy Shaw, which would in turn constitute another Rule Thirty-Four question I really, really don’t want to know the answer to.

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^† We’re caught up in an unfortunate shares dispute regarding merchandising, and thus have delayed the launch of the wiki for my right testicle. Never mind.

Something About Today I Can’t Explain

The infinite condition is itself a paradox, as it must necessarily include its own finite limitations, lest it create finite limitation through exclusion.

Just an (ahem!) internal memorandum, sort of. It’s an abstract notion sometimes manifesting in applied logical argumentation, but only in finite and situational considerations. The formulation that struck was that, The infinite must necessarily include its own limitations. Which is, of course, a problematic notion.

Nor can I claim any sense of originality; the statistical likelihood that I am the first person to tread into this realm is precisely measurable: exactly zero. And while it is unclear what role exactly we might ascribe, it is also true that Radiolab visited Gödel during last night’s broadcast.

At any rate, this clumsy paradox exists somewhere in the record, and in much more refined expression. In turn, refined expression is crucial because application of such a crude tool invites catastrophic potentials. The point is remembering to chase it down, lest the idea strike again sometime in the future, and meet similar apathy.

A Note to WordPress: Quit Lying

To: WordPress

re: “Switch to the improved posting experience”

In truth, I think it would be better if you stopped lying. It is not an easier way to create. It is not an improved posting experience. It is extraneous, bloated, and slow. Indeed, the charming robot-sounds caption isn’t so charming, all things told.

Then again, I can also anticipate your response, to unsecure my browser entirely, in order to accommodate you.

Given all the sketchy data that would ask users to engage just in order to optimize their easier, improved posting experience, that response would be beyond insufficient. That is, of course, unless you expect people to not use the web to access anything else while they’re posting via WordPress.

I really don’t care about the so-called “improved posting experience”. Indeed, your firm has commercial concerns, so those of us on the courtesy platform owe it to you to suck this diseased nutsack. Yeah, we get it. Still, though, I just think it’s really low of you to lie like that, especially when there is absolutely no good reason under the sun for fattening up the process with all that Flash-y lard.

Well, okay, that’s not fair. I’m pretty sure the commerce side can come up with a good reason, in which case it would seem our posting experience is improved in the context of your own hosting experience.

But this is (beep-beep-booping) stupid.

Ghosts in the Making

When it was Trayvon Martin, I pitched a fit.

Michael Brown? Not so much.

It’s fair to ask why, and the answer is to simply look at what is going on in Ferguson, Missouri. The twenty-one thousand plus residents have seen their city torn to pieces, body and soul, as protesters and police battle over the murder of an unarmed black man by a city police officer whose record includes being fired as part of another small police department in Jennings, Missouri, that was disbanded by its city council for being so corrupt and generally awful. The town is in chaos; residents are intervening to slow the most vocal protesters, and are also reportedly attempting to prevent media from covering the events. Ferguson has become the latest incarnation of our nation’s sick heritage of deadly racism, emerged as a symbol of our dark slide toward militarized police, and found itself the butt of one of the worst jokes on the planet after a protester tweeted a comparison of the situation there to what is going on in Palestine, and instead of being indignant the Palestinians tweeted back with good-faith advice.

I first addressed the death of Trayvon Martin with friends on March 13, 2012, some weeks after the George Zimmerman stalked and pursued him for no good reason, shooting the seventeen year-old to death and then claiming self-defense. And when I first mentioned it, I did not expect what was coming. Certes, my gorge rose to learn the story, but like so many Americans the idea that an apparently murdered black man will die under the presumption that he needed to be shot just did not seem all that unusual. That is to say, like many I expected Trayvon Martin would become another forgotten lamb.

And, yes, I was wrong.

This time, the nation did not wait weeks. Before the name Michael Brown finished echoing after the first wave of press coverage the town was beseiged by chaos. Screaming and shouting from my evergreen corner of the country really doesn’t do me or anyone else any good.

And, yet, Justice still seems nearly destined for disappointing failure.

Quote of the Day: Benen on Republicans and the Ten Commandments

The larger point is that some conservatives are so eager to have government extend official support to their religious beliefs that they’re willing to argue that their sacred texts have no religious value at all. It’s ironic, in a way – it’s tempting to think opponents of religion would want to strip sacred texts of their spiritual significance. Here we have the opposite.

―Steve Benen

Yes, it comes to this.

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Benen, Steve. “This Week in God, 8.23.14”. msnbc. 23 August 2014.