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I think I’m about done with activists. I just spent about twenty minutes being “educated” (their words) by members of the Sierra Club on CSPAN-2. I feel just the same about members of the RNC and the DNC and anyone else who is paid to have such a big mouth.
I like watching O’Reilly because he messes with people who try to make him into an activist for one single large group. Yes, he is an activist at times on some issues (and those are the issues over which I am most likely to disagree with him). I’m somewhere between lukewarm and slightly opposed to his position on “gangster rap” (more on this some other day/night), but I appreciate someone who takes a stand against the concept of the organizational advocate.
We need our advocates: we need loudmouths who won’t shut up until we at least consider their issue. That’s fine. But we have to remember we don’t have a right to be heard; we just have a right to speak. C-SPAN seems to be the engine for people to be heard who probably never should be. If 24-hour news doesn’t rake every piece of muck throughout the day, C-SPAN certainly picks up the scraps.
If the right comes off oblivious or idealistic, the left certainly comes off patronizing. I don’t need to be “educated” about environmental issues. I would rather hear an opinion. And I will make up my mind for myself, thank you. And McDonalds did NOT cause the Holocaust! (An opinion of a professor from last semester.) I think I might be more left on more issues if things weren’t so patronizing over there.
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Service woes and redemptions: IP address still not being issued. Probably done by Friday, no guarantees. Cable may be disconnected due to a mistiming in a service request. SBC finally provided the instructions to disable the routing functions and make the box into a bridge that would not interfere with the router.
Operational detail: a new WAP was purchased as a secondary option and not used. The ghost of Routers Past lives on.
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The spin is horrible. I just read a writeup about Aspartame (the sweetener in Diet Coke) on a holistic medicine website. It appears that my new liking for Diet Vanilla Coke is going to make me lose my mind, get brain cancer, and develop asthma. WebMD denies all such reports, except a bit of a concession for memory effects.
Message to holistic medicine people: spinning medical dangers about a popular ingredient will NOT help your cause. Most people have an instinct when it comes to doing stupid things concerning their health. We, the semi to respectably-intelligent people of America, do not need you to tell us what to do. We need raw data with some competing angles of analysis to fill in where clarity is lacking. I don’t want to hear from Coca-Cola that Aspartame will make me better in bed and grow taller. I also don’t want to hear from a bunch of twenty year-old treehouse dwellers that it’s going to make my head explode. I just want to hear the facts. If there’s a 0.1% chance of brain cancer, I’ll make a call. If it’s 25%, I’ll put down the can. It’s my call. Let me keep that, at least.
I’m young, I have a working bootleg Linux WAP/Router combo, I have a good life. I don’t think I have brain cancer from Diet Coke. I am happy. I am intelligent in most subjects, and I’m getting better at navigating while I’m driving. I don’t need people cramming sunshine or workboots up my tailpipe. Just leave me with a good concept of risk and return, and I’ll figure out what to do to keep things going as well as they are.