Slogging thru the Spam Logs.

I spent about an hour on all my blogs -- several that I use for different purposes -- deleting all the comments, except for REAL comments. Most of them were Chinese, which I cannot understand, and had links to adult sites that I'm not interested in.

I'm not against Chinese, per se, but it really is a pain to rid all those dumb links. So now I require a word-test before each blog comment. I don't mind REAL comments, even if they are negative. I just don't like SPAM.

Living with Children

I am not so old, really, but I am old enough that small children -- my grandchildren -- are much too rapid and wild to engage too often. My office is a massive assortment of bookcases, computers, both servers and workstations, plus laptops occasionally. Also, which is my own fault, there are enormous quantities of computer components lying about, in boxes, in tubs, in cabinets, on shelves, in drawers, and basically everywhere you step.

This is bad enough, however it is also the denizens of the playground that frequent my office, because of all the interesting things in here, and also because Papa is always kind and understanding, regardless of how angry their mom may be at the moment. This results in large numbers of toys, parts of toys, and boxes of toys that accumulate with my own hoarded collections.

I am not really so compulsively a hoarder, it is just hard for me to throw away books, or working pieces of equipment -- regardless of how obsolete they all may be. There are some things I can dispense with, if I get the time. I really don't need 200 feet of Thin Wire ethernet cables anymore. The last thing I used those on was a HP Unix workstation about 10 years ago or so. I also have modems that don't exceed 2400 baud -- useless in today's world, as well as a collection of charging adapters that could bring down a power line if I used them all at once. I can't -- because I don't know which one goes to what device -- they are rarely labeled or even receptacle matched.

I will never use Wireless-B. That can go. I will probably never use Wireless-G again, either -- at least after all of the 3 routers I have are burned out. The Wireless-N will probably last a little while longer, but who knows what will come next. Actually, I prefer direct connect Ethernet for most of my computers, but that is very inconvenient for the other members in the family, so I have to maintain everything all at once.

In front of me are many bottles of pills, directly under my terminal, so that I don't forget to take my 10 different pills throughout the day. I wish I could dump those, and they are a hazard in case any of the children decide to test them for candy content. I also have 10 pairs of glasses, of which perhaps 3 are any good at all, and only 2 which I can stand to wear. I have to use far-glasses for far-things, and close-glasses for close-things. I also have bifocals, but they really don't work very well for using computers all the time.

I have many trash cans, usually filled with napkins from cleaning sticky things off my desk, invariably carried in by the children. There are also other things in there come time to empty them. Toys, parts, stuff I have to sort through.

But I love my grandchildren. Much more than I love my junk.

The Stones

No, this is not about a rock band. This is about religions that have rocks in their numerous heads.

There can be no justice in a world that stones women to death for ANY reason short of some kind of similar crime done by those women against children. Even in the US where we have the death penalty in many states, it is usually carried out quite reluctantly, by the use of drugs or some other quick method, and very rarely at all upon women, regardless of the insidious nature their crimes.

We are supposedly a "Christian" nation. In the Bible it speaks of stoning harlots and adulterers. The method was not in some manner where the woman is running away and people are pelting her with pebbles. No, the method was to tie the woman to a pillar, or to bury her up to her chest so she is helpless to defend herself, and then to use especially chosen rocks, not so large as to kill her quickly, and not so small as to be merely annoying. The stones would slowly and painfully kill her. I wonder who could proudly throw such rocks at dogs hogtied to a stake, let alone a woman.

For the most part, in the "Christian" world, there has been a reluctance to carry out such sanctions, especially since it takes more than just a woman to be an adulterer or a harlot. There must be partners in her crimes, which even if in need of punishment, has been unfairly apportioned. Either get them both, or let them both be punished in some more fitting manner -- like public humiliation or the like.

We had our Scarlet Letters, our Witch Burnings and other forms of this kind of cruelty, no doubt, but in modern times we have overcome such overt brutalities toward women. At least in the public sector. There are always the woman haters, the murderers and sadists out there that can't get through the day without harming somebody, anybody, especially the innocent.

However, this is happening today in "certain" Islamic countries. It is not an abstraction to talk about over Starbuck's, or in a blog. It is real, it is the Taliban; it is the Iranian Islamic Republic; it is the so called "honor" killings all over the world, carried out by medieval thinkers like Islam's and many other religion's zealots.

And this is only one tiny part of the injustices of the world. It is either a black mark on the truthful nature of religions, or it is simply the impotence or reluctance of any "just" God to intervene on our behalf. Either way, it is a human tragedy.

To Hell with you who believe in such things.

Glenn Beck

Politics is a messy business, and propaganda is a continuous effort. If you live and die by propaganda, much like the Maoist, the North Korean, the Stalinist and the Republican, then propaganda is ALL there is.

Glenn Beck is a despicable fraud. However if I just state that as a fact without some proof, then that is just propaganda, no better than the GOP.

If you want proof, merely watch his program (on the Propaganda News Channel). Except that watching it is exactly what the creators of this barrage of carefully chosen keywords want. They also depend that the watcher is some kind of idiot who cannot simply "google" the nonsense they are told and find out for themselves what is true and what is a load of crap.

Glenn Beck spouts "Hitler", "Stalin", "Mao", "Jesus", "guns", "socialism", etc., etc., blah blah. If those kinds of words trigger a certain emotion in the viewer/listener, and then they are associated with the next barrage of keywords like "the government", "Obama", "liberals", "socialists", "environmentalists", etc., etc., then they (the producers of propaganda) have earned their nickels.

If you really want to know what totalitarianism is, merely visit your local Massive Dynamics type of corporation. No socialism, no "Mao", no "Stalin" -- yet nothing but dictatorship and total control over employees. Of course an employee can go elsewhere, perhaps to a less crappy place, or perhaps into the unemployment line.

The oil and coal corporations can poison the entire Earth, kill massive amounts of sea life, poison our children with smog and exhaust products, and then claim "economic injury" if anyone complains about it. Somehow Beck and his team love these people -- the Princes of Petro Coalia, with gushing praise for all their heartless, deathly occupations, keeping all the illiterates of America employed in the most horrible working conditions. Not to mention the money we pay to the foreign oil barons who use their vast oil wealth to fund religious wars and terrorism against us.

But, I am no one. I am a single voice in the roar of the diesel engines and power plants. Who am I anyway? Compared to Beck and the other propagandists of our world, I am merely a gnat to be swatted aside without a thought. And it doesn't really matter anyway. I am not trying to propagandize -- I have nothing to gain from it.

I merely want to point out the blood on the carpet. In our world, much like in medieval days, there are the very rich and the very poor. The rich always win, whether they deserve it or not. The poor always lose. The rich trample on the poor, and if they complain about it, then they become a blood stain on the carpet.

What would Jesus do? Probably drive him out with the moneylenders and other charlatans.

China Blues

My wife has traveled to China for her work as a Software engineer. The company works with LG to produce computer components.

For one thing, I suppose China is quite civilized, so there will be no fear of her being consumed by wild savages in a jungle or mugged in a dark alley somewhere. Her hotel would be classified as a palace in America, and only in the actual work environment will their be any discomfort -- being in a clean room bunny suit is the first stage of that. Eating strange stuff from a big tank of strange stuff is another stage.

China considers women to be something along the lines of a butler or shoe polisher, if they are lucky, but usually not masters of some technical field like electronic software engineering. They will have to swallow their pride and just make room for her. She will not be pigeon holed some way like that.

Anyway, she is there now, so I'm home alone, writing this stuff at 1 am.

Sales

Going from America

Benito Mussolini created the word "fascism." He defined it as "the merging of the state and the corporation." He also said a more accurate word would be "corporatism." This was the definition in Webster's up until 1987 when a corporation bought Webster's and changed it to exclude any mention of corporations.

This is from an article about the recent "Supreme" Court decision to make Corporations have the same "freedom of speech" (meaning the ability to spend huge amounts of money on propaganda) that the little guy has.

I guess that would be OK if we were all individual corporations, but I don't feel comfortable with Exxon and BofA being able to buy whatever election they want and I am only able to just complain about it on my little (mostly reader-free) blog. And it is always the most evil corporations that buy all the elections -- just like in Mussolini's Italy.

If this is what America has become, then I am no longer proud to live in this place. It has become a place that I am chained to, with no avenue of escape. I am much like someone stuck in Libya or Iraq, with people I don't believe in calling all the shots. I am in a prison, and enslaved to uncaring corporate interest -- an interest purely in profit. And corporations can be owned by anybody who owns their stock. I might have 50 shares. China has 50,000,000 shares. And so forth.