Monday, April 11, 2011

The cult of the pirate . . .

Here's an interesting take on piracy, going back to the Barbary pirates, and European colonialism. Worth thinking about.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Inappropriate content . . .

Went to a store today and while there, my wife wanted to look in the book department to see if there were any interesting books. While looking around I saw that the store had posted a little note stuck on the bookshelf, titled "Inappropriate Content." It said something like the following:

Sometimes some publishers publish content that some people believe is inappropriate although others do not consider the content inappropriate. Our customers are always welcome to call to our attention content that they feel is inappropriate. We would never like for our customers to view content which they believed was inappropriate. We fully support the right of our customers to decline to purchase books that contain content they believe to be inappropriate.

I think that translates to if you don't want to see it, don't buy it, but if you think we are going to let perpetually offended dipsh*ts decide what others may or may not read, you can go pound sand and bark at the moon, for all we care.

So now we all know where we stand and I'm good with that.

Thursday, April 07, 2011

This will work . . .

President Obama has said that shutting down the government for absence of a budget would be inexcusable. He has also said that if the House passes a bill to keep the government open for another week to continue negotiations, and if the Democratically controlled Senate passed it too, he would veto the bill thus causing the shut down. Why? Because all this talk about trying to get a little extra time to work out budget details was a "distraction."