Meanwhile- at stately Greyy Manor...

ReasonableAgreement.org

Just when I starting think that scammers could not get lower I get a message from Livejornal telling me that the notifications settings for grammargirl have been changed, and provides a like to see the new settings.

In case you are wondering, I am not grammargirl. I do not have good grammer nor am I a girl. So sending me that message is silly.

But the link included in the email is anything but silly. It looks like a proper LJ link, but when you mouse-over to see the actual link it goes to suspiciously named livejournal.com.okqwaz.com. A google search revealed that there is also a blogger.com.okqwaz.com.

Be careful with any emails you get, and make sure you check the links supplied before clicking them.

Phishing sites really piss me off.

I'm really getting sick of all top ten lists showing the best/worst of the past year or decade. I don't care what the author's opinion of the best/biggest/worst story/movie/event/funniest video/whatever of the year or decade. I cringe when I see them, and here is why.

Top ten lists are a pathetic writers tool. Any idiot can come up with a list of ten things they like or dislike, and many do. It is the literary equivalent of showing cleavage. It is easy, it gets quick attention, and usually gets a reaction from the audience when they agree or disagree. It is a cheap trick to engage the reader.

To make it worse, they are usually wrong. Most are made up based on personal bias and little research. Lists of the things that stick out the most in a person's memory instead of a true exhaustive list of everything from the past year let alone the last 10 years. Usually the list will be convincingly reputed in the first 5 comments left saying "you forgot about this" or "number 5 was nothing compared to A, B, C and D". Meaning that the list was put together quickly to get comments, and that the (lack of) effort has been rewarded with the internet currency of comments.

Which is why we are seeing so many of them now- they are easy and they pay off. And it is annoying the crap out of me. Probably because even though I know they are lazy tools, it still piques my curiosity about what they think the top thing is so I have to read it.

And that annoys me the most of all!

A plug-in for Firefox that will automatically translate websites for you:

http://www.worldwidelexicon.org/s/…

I loaded it and the first page I tried it on annoyed me. I loaded the page and saw it was in French. Then I turned away to take a look at something else, but when I came back the entire page was in English. I figured the site did some auto-detection and swapped me over to an English version of the page- I've seen some newspaper websites do that. So I was annoyed that all the plugin did was move me to a different version on the published site. But I figured I would give it a second chance and tried it on a different website. This time I watched it.

As I watched the individual stories on the site were being translated. It was amazing.

Now I need to think of other places to check out and see if they can be read.

Not to say that those of you who are Republicans or who live in the South are idiots- but it is saying that you are in larger than normal idiotic company.

The Daily Kos and Research 2000 had a poll to find out if people thought that Barak Obama was born in the US. There is a surprisingly loud "Birther" movement that claims he was actually born in Kenya and has knowingly covered it up so that he could become President. To beleive that, you have to think that he was able to:

• cover it up
• prevent anyone from Kenya from talking about it
• hack the official records in Hawaii to have it show that he was born there
• somehow get past Hillary Clinton and her team (who were not above talking up the "OMG! He's a secret Muslim!" bit) during the primaries
• somehow get past McCain and Palin and their team (who actively pushed the line that he "paled around with terrorist")
• somehow get past anyone else that went digging for dirt on him (and they outright made things up)
• AND got past any and all government officials and law enforcement that are suppose to check things like that

Seems kinda crazy, right? So it shouldn't be a large group that thinks he was born outside the US, right?

Wrong.

According to the poll results released only 42% of Republicans believe he was born in this country. And only 47% of Southerners do. For Republicans 28% think he was born outside the US and 30% aren't sure. For Southerners 23% think he was born outsdie the US and 30% aren't sure.

There are only two reasons why so many people would think that despite all the evidence to the contrary and all reason why it is so unlikely that Barak Obama was not born in the US. First- they actually believe Rush Limbaugh or any of the other blowhards on TV and radio that make money by saying offensive and incorrect things about people. The second is that it is far less offensive to say that he shouldn't be president because he isn't American than to say he shouldn't be president because he is black, so racists have jumped on the idea enthusiastically.

Neither one of those reasons reflects well on the people in those groups. The racists? Nothing reflects well on them so there is nothign to say about that. On the conservative talking head side- that is more complicated. There is nothing wrong with most conservative political views, if you can separate out the conservative social views that the Republican party has let dominate their agenda. I agree with some of the political ideas, and disagree with others though I can still see the reason behind them. But conservative talking heads in the media seem to just be vicious, vindictive, and mean spirited. Taking their word as gospel is idiotic.

For that matter, taking the word of most people you don't know is idiotic. Democrat or Republican. North or South. Think for yourself. Check out what your hear and read if you think it is important. We are living in an age where information from all around the world is literally at your finger tips just seconds away. Just a century ago, telephones and TVs were not in even half the homes in the US, let alone around the world. Staying ignorant of facts you consider important is more of an act of will now. You have to be working on not paying attention.

So if you are a Republican or a Southerner, and you have a brain that you feed with good, reviewed, and researched information, then try talking to others in your group and let them know, politely of course, that the odds are high that they are idiots. And then help them learn how to think on their own.

Because they are making you look really, really bad.

The weekend has been a relaxing one. Mainly just been doing some cleaning around the house. Picked up some groceries to have a cookout today.

I have been geeking out a bit with Team Fortress 2. I've been curious about it for a while and this weekend Steam has a free trial weekend. And if you like it, it is also on sale for half off at $9.99. I liked it so I bought it.

There is only one problem with it- the people that play it.

If you aren't familiar with it, it is an online game where you chase people around a map and shoot them. And they shoot you. Simple enough. But the problem comes when these people talk. It is not unusual on a random server for people to swear every other word, use racial epithets to describe anything they don't like, and claim that the people who are winning are homosexual. And that is before you get to the user names people give themselves.

Smack talk is a part of games. I'm surprised that chess masters don't engage in more of it. But there is a difference in talking about how easily your dog could beat someone and using a derogatory sexual or racial descriptor when you have no idea who is on the other side of the network connection. First off, if you can't say it to someone's face you should not be saying it to strangers in a game. To do otherwise is just chicken shit and you really richly deserve a beating for it. Secondly- and this is even more important- if you do that, you are stupid. Not in a school yard "you are a big stupid head" sort of way. Literally- you are a vastly ignorant and unimaginative person. If you can't manage to think up some other more appropriate insult for the person, even if it is an amusing "your mother" joke, then you are a pathetically stupid excuse for a human. If your head is so empty that you can only think to use a racial insult (while being ignorant of the person's actual skin color) or call them homosexual then you are a waste of space. I'm amazed that tyou are able to feed yourself and wipe your own ass.

Oh- I'm assuming you can. My mistake. Sorry about that.

Fortunately, Team Fortress doesn't seem to be nearly as bad as Halo is in this. It seems many Halo players are even more pathetic than that which I've described here. I blame Microsoft. Seriously. They claim that such people will be dealt with when they are reported but I've never heard of someone being banned for it. Yet they did ban a woman for saying she was a lesbian in her profile. So you can call someone gay, you just can't say you are according to Microsoft.

And doubly fortunately, it seems there are at least a few other people that feel the same way. I've found a couple of groups that follow the idea that people talking like that are just not fun to play with. Shamus Young at the Twenty Sided blog and The Over 30 Club both have servers where this sort of thing is frowned upon.

I'm sure I'll find more as I keep playing, but it makes the game much more enjoyable to not be assaulted by ignorance while you are trying to have fun.

One of the reasons I love PvP.


In fact, I knew that getting marrying Mel was going to work out because I didn't show up ahead of time to warn me not to.

For some reason, long stretches of no cooking seem to happen around here. Either because we get too busy to make anything not frozen or out of a box or take out, or because the tiny kitchen doesn't have enough space free to make anything. I enjoy cooking too much to keep letting that happen. That needs to stop.

Tonight I made a surprisingly delicious cheesy tuna and pasta dish. And most importantly Kendra is eating it. In a medium saucepan, pour a can of Campbell's cheddar cheese soup mixed with a can of milk over the cooked pasta. Mix in a couple tablespoons of Parmesan cheese and a cup of shredded cheddar, some butter, and a pouch of tuna. Cook over a medium-low heat and stir until it is all melted and mixed together. That was too easy to be as good as it was.

Topless Robot has a list of the "10 most famous geek arguments." While I don't entirely agree that these are the "top 10", I can't disagree with most of them. And I've participated in a few of those discussions. So that made me wonder where the rest of you fell on these vital issues.