Blogs

Some dude over at AppleFritter.com has done an interesting study on how to find (potential) subversives using Amazon.com's wishlist feature. Basically, search all the wishlists – using a relatively simple URL manipulation algorithm – for books like (or about) On Liberty by John Stuart Mill, 1984, Catcher in the Rye, and various religious texts. Also, you can search by keyword (like, say, "kaczynski" or "Mich...

Today's Dilbert cartoon is just great. It shows how simple-minded people can be when it comes to a real understanding of free market economics and how it relates to foreign relations, etc., blah, blah, blah. Not that I'm some great Murray Rothbard or anything, but at least I know what fungible means. ;)

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There's a pretty interesting article over at Present Testimony Ministry about the origin and evolution of the pastor. Essentially, the whole concept of a "pastor" (from the Latin "pastora" which means "shepherd") as a church leader comes from one verse in the Bible (Ephesians 4:11). The article's author looks at the meaning of that word in context of that one verse and how the first Christians would h...

Did you know that every government agency website is required to have kids' section? Following is a selection of the more surreal ones.

• CryptoKids (NSA)
• CIA's Homepage for Kids (real ingenuitive title...)
• FBI Kids' Page (anoth...
  

Apparently, it is now illegal to badmouth somebody online if you use a fake name. Wow. Wait, I don't think you quite got my emotion. Wow!...

So, today was my court day for the three tickets I got a couple weeks ago. I was able to get two of them dropped:

• The "driving without insurance" charge was negated because I had actually had insurance at the time, and brought in the card to prove it. The judge told me I got lucky because the fine for driving without insurance is
• The "driving an unregistere...
  

Oh, I'm so stoked – GnuCash 1.9.0 is out! From their announcement:

This release is the very first of the gtk2-based GnuCash series, and is intended for developers and adventurous testers who want to help tracking down all those bugs that are still in there.

Okay, so I might be counting chickens (and a whole lot of other things) before they're hatched, since this is the first release of an unstable bra...

I don't know if Joss Whedon is of a libertarian mind, but several characters in his Firefly series tend to show some pretty libertarian bents in their conversation. Malcolm Reynolds (Mal) – the captain of Serenity &ndsah; particularly has some great one-offs. Shepherd Book – a futuristic monk with a shady past – also makes some great observations about the government. Below are a few of the keenest.

(Note that the "Alliance" is the interplanet...

Yes, it's true, Hilary has made a stunning appearance in the 21st century with the premiere of her own blog!

Best wishes, and may many favorable comments await you, dear. :)

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Today at work, I had to wait for nearly twenty minutes while somebody printed out a 50+ page PowerPoint deck – thrice. While standing at the printer, I had plenty of time to contemplate how income redistribution simply doesn't work.

Because, you see, at one time I had my own printer. It was taken away from me while I was out of work recovering from my appendectomy. The reason, heard secondh...