We're just negotiating a price

This story has been attributed to several different people, but basically a rich man asks a woman,

"Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?"

"Of course."

"How about $10?"

Outraged the lady yells, "I'm not a whore! What kind of a lady do you think I am?"

"We already know what kind of a lady you are," says the man. "Now we are just negotiating a price."

The Kentucky horse industry and gambling interests are supporting the expansion of gambling in the state, allowing casino gambling and slot machines into the state.

As I've posted before, I am a recreational no-money-bet poker player. I also have played some serious bridge, again not for money. I have known people who were quite capable of playing games of chance and skill without being out of control. If you have some spare money, and wish to entertain yourself by trying to get ahead of the horserace odds, or try to outplay others at poker, I'm not going to critisize you one bit.

On t he other hand, my great-grandfather allegedly gambled away an entire tobacco check one year. There are a lot of people who gamble in many different forms with money they really need for other things.

The problem is that Kentucky, like the lady, is already committed. The state is littered with Bingo parlors from one end to the other, all providing games of chance under the flavor of charity fundraising. The Commonwealth runs the largest numbers racket gaming system in the state, the Kentucky Lottery. There are race tracks and parimutual gambling stations all across the state. Betting is already here, and already legal.

I personally wish slots were banned world-wide. They are a complete ripoff, because they are a complete game of chance. Video poker and slots have been described as the crack cocaine of gambling addiction. That said, bingo and scratch-off lottery tickets are just as purely chance, and probably just about as addictive.

The other big proble m with the KEEP campaign is the dollar figures being thrown around. KEEP is suggesting that Kentucky will receive $430 million a year on a 33% tax. That means the gaming industry would have to pull in at least $1250 million in profits. Even the best games for the house involve 90%+ payouts. Let's we assume that the industry can pull 75% payoffs, which doesn't happen. To generate $1250m in profits, Kentucky gamblers will have to spend at least $6000million (6 billion). Even with much of that money being recycled, it still just isn't going to happen.

I'm afraid that, like the Kentucky Lottery before, gambling will not pay off like its promises. I just hope that the worst of the negatives don't pan out either.

Only one thing to do concerning Mohammed

There is only one appropriate response to the fuss over the Mohammed cartoons:

Squatter's Rights - Not Quite

Update: According to today's Kentucky Kernel, the UK campus newspaper (I can't find the article on-line), Ms. McDonald was in year 2 of a 5-year lease on the building. While I still believe that Ms. McDonald is too vocal about requesting compensation for "her business", she is certainly owed damages for the breaking of her lease, especially since eminient domain wasn't used to buy the property.

I'll renew my opinion that Ms. McDonald needs to own her property before feeling a sense of ownership.

---

I think I've said here before that I am a graduate of the University of Kentucky. While I was on campus, I only had one apartment, which was on Conn Terrace Drive. I am still amazed that the landlord didn't evict me a couple of times. :) The SuperAmerica store on South Limestone had a lunchtime cafeteria with the best barbeque pork in Lexington. I'd get it and mac & cheese at least twice a week on the way to class. It helped make me the man (or at least 30 pounds of the man ;) ) I am today.

When Milady and I got engaged, we moved away, but Conn Terrace has retained a special place in my heart. Even 12 years later, Milady dreams she's calling me at the apartment and can't get through.

Unfortunately, you can't go home again. UK bought my old apartment, and every other building on that side of Conn Terrace and the street behind it. They've torn all of the old houses down ahead of the construction of the new parking garage for the Chandler Medical Center.

There is an old building at the corner of Transcript and South Limestone that held several businesses. The Dutch Mill Cafe was famous for being a lunch place that two old ladys ran in the late 80s and early 90s (never did get to eat there). Wheel Liquor was a mainstay there, and several other restaurants and businesses gave the place a try. The last place to close there was PJ's Barber Shop. The Herald-MisLeader had an article about her in the paper a couple of days ago. Miss McDonald rented her place from the building owner, who recently sold out to UK for over $600k. I can understand one's attachment to a place one's rented for 19 years, but PJ has been unusually bitter these last two weeks. I've seen several signs in front of her place complaining about UK, and then this quote from the story:

The university acquired the building from owner Frances Fresh for $650,000, according to Fayette Circuit Court records. McDonald says she now is seeking an agreement with Fresh on compensation for the loss of her business.

She wants to be compensated because her landlord sold out? A renter wants to be paid! No, no, no, a thousand times no! She was a renter, not a sqatter.

If you lease, you don't own. That's pretty simple. Miss McDonald was offered (I hope) fair rental rates each of those 19 years that she was i n her place. A renter doesn't get any rights to a place just by sitting in a place for a bunch of years. Frances Fresh sure didn't get any extra from UK because Miss McDonald was in the building; if anything, UK would have prefered the building empty from the start.

It is a serious sign of an entitlement society where a renter can get upset that a landlord has a different use for the building. Miss McDonald needs to apologize to UK and to Miss Fresh, and buy her next cutting shop if she wants to control what happens to the property.

Hiccups in the DSL Line

I've been noticing that the website "hiccups" occasionally, pausing to serve pages. I think the database may have its connection limits too low. Unfortunately, that's an OS reconfiguration, and I won't do that unless I'm home. Please bear with me.

I am thinking about outsourcing to a hosting site. Can anyone recommend a good one?

Update: It's not the database, but instead it appears to be my ADSL line. My DSL provider is looking into it now, but I may be forced into deciding if I'm keeping my ADSL line or going to a hosting site and cable modem.

Update 2: The home network line acts like it's fixed. Hopefully it's fixed. That was enough excitement for one day.

Feed a feline, starve a cat?

A couple of days ago, I had the pleasure of having to enter the crawlspace to change our furnace filters. It's a job I thoroughly loathe. We own a split-level, so at least our crawlspace isn't a two-foot space, but it is small, and lined with fist-sized gravel. Being a rather tall fellow, I get to shuffle and grouse as I try to alternate between shuffling and crawling across the space.

I usually shut the cats and dogs out from our utility room, since they want to follow me up under the floor if I do. This time, I forgot to do so, and our alley cat went in. Rather than chase him around, I left the door open and waited for him to come out. Unfortunately, our other cat went in.

Sue-y (yes, named for Steve-O's dog) is our oldest animal. She appearantly was tormented by kids before we got her, and then our kids and dogs (including Psycho-Terrier) were aggressive in playing with her. Now, she hides in the house unless just Paula and I are awake.

Sue-y has that singular abilit y to go into a space and disappear. One writer described cats as multi-dimensional creatures that could phase themselves in and out of our existance at will, which explains how they can enter a room, you can be sure they've left, and then they'll be in the room again.

Well, Sue-y phased out of our crawlspace the same way. Yesterday, it was too cold to leave the crawlspace door open, so we had to try to get her out. Number 1 Son and Little Miss took flashlights and went around the furnace while I waited to corral her out. No luck. Then I crawled the furnace. Still no luck. I finally crawled up to the furnace and looked around. No Sue-y. She was finally in a spot that absolutely no one would pester her, and there she was staying.

I knew she hadn't eaten much for a couple of days, so I finally had to commit to a siege approach: I emptied the cat bowl. She wasn't eating until I saw her out. Fortunately, when the dogs got up at 3AM this morning, she was out. I shut the door t o the crawlspace and fed the cats again.

She isn't happy though. This morning she was under Number One Son's bed, meowing softly in annoyance. If cats could cuss, I'm sure that's what she would have been doing.

MI5

I wouldn't dream of supporting an American internal security service in the style of MI5, but I don't quite understand the big problems with the NSA listening programs under the constitution. The Fifth Amendment would definitely exclude the use of such evidence in a civilian court system. If we keep this power from becoming a personal blackmail pool (like Hoover's FBI), I believe the Constitution does allow Mr. Bush to snoop on foreign calls.

A quote that should strengthen creationists

WorldNetDaily has posted a link to an essay by Frank Furedi that primarily talks about his view as a secular humanist on the current trend by "the elite" to attack Christian movies and Christian-leaning media. In it, Mr. Furedi makes an interesting point about creationism:

So preoccupied are the critics of religious activism with the alleged threat posed by their enemies that they fail to notice that many Christian groups lack the courage of their convictions today, and seem to doubt the authority of their own faith. This is particularly striking in relation to the controversy surrounding Intelligent Design. This theory holds that certain features of the universe, and of animal and human life, are 'best explained' as having an 'intelligent cause' rather than being the product of natural selection. Many see only the danger of superstition in Intelligent Design, describing it as a new form of Creationism on the march. They overlook the remarkable concession that Intelligent Design makes to the authority of science.

Unable to justify creationism as a matter of faith based on divine revelation, advocates of Intelligent Design are forced to adopt the language of science to legitimate their arguments and the existence of some kind of God. This highlights their theological opportunism and inability to justify religion in its own terms. Of course Intelligent Design isn't science; but its appeal to faith in science exposes the limits of the authority of religious faith today.

A secular humanist can see what many ID supporters can't: it is a compromise and we all know it. Once you give science dominion over God, then one only argues degrees, not basic facts. I do believe in the basic tenant of Intellegent Design: there are immense numbers of biological systems that could not have been designed in a piecemeal fashion by rand om genetic mutation, since they could not work until complete.

However, I reject the main compromise of intellegent design: Current neo-Darwinian timelines concerning the evolution of animals are completely and irreconcilably inconsistent with Genesis. Even if you wish to say that the Hebrew word yom does not mean day, but instead age, Genesis documents that the Earth was created before the Sun. Plants were created before the Sun. Birds were created before the land animals. Not only is Genesis 1 not in agreement with current scientific thinking, there is no reason for it not to be if science is correct. The language of Genesis 1 would allow a story that is basically consistent with current scientific thinking with little change. Therefore, either Genesis 1 is correct, God chose to write a grossly incorrect story, or Genesis (and by extention, much of the rest of the Torah) is not inspired.

I refuse to believe that God told a deliberately incorrect story, since that doesn 't match His character elsewhere in the Bible. Even the parables, while possibly not factually true, told moral truths in a story that could be true. Genesis isn't presented in a parable. Instead, it is presented as history.

I also believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. It is factual when it wishes to be factual. Its visions are prophetically accurate. Its parables tell moral truths. It reveals enough information to us to know the nature of God as fully as we possibly can. There is no line in the book that says "Past this point, everything is accurate". I can't see how Genesis 1 is less accurate than Genesis 20, or Matthew 1 for that matter.

Happy Dance

I've spent the last two months fighting to implement FlashCopy on one of our test SAP instances here at work. It's eaten every second of my spare time at work, and that's kept me from posting. It's now made a backup, and all that's left is to make a test of a restore.

More posting later, after I can relax.

White with envy

I'm running a bit late, I know. But I just got a chance to read about the MacWorld Expo. MacBook Pro? An Intel iMac 20"?

The onlything missing is a built-in Windows emulator. VMWare, are you listening?

Excuse me while I cry like a little child because I can't afford one.

Sizing problems

After Christmas, Milady and I started back on the Atkins induction diet, and the weight is starting to leave. I was hoping to have a problem keeping my pants on sometime in February. Unfortunately, it's not my clothes that won't fit.

We went really cheap in buying our current couch (which is really more of a love seat). Three of us can barely fit on it. Since we know that our tax refunds will be substantial, I decided to end the couch whining and buy a new couch.

Over to the local furniture store for their half-price sale. In the middle of the store is a really nice sectional couch. The thing was huge. It could easily have sat nine people, and all of us could comfortably lay down on it at once. Very nice. So we signed on the dotted line, and were anxiously awaiting it.

It's raining today, but they wrap them in plastic, so I wasn't that worried. Then Milady called. The couch wouldn't fit through the doors in the house.

I've never heard of a couch that couldn't be taken through a standard 32" or 36" doorframe, but this one couldn't. The delivery guys worked their hardest to bring it through, but no luck. Fortunately, it was the store's people, so we never took delivery. We now have to take measurements of the house back over to the store to see if we can get a different couch to fit the place, or if we're back to the love seat....

Merry Christmas

It happened, while they were there, that the day had come that she should give birth. She brought forth her firstborn son, and she wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a feeding trough, because there was no room for them in the inn. There were shepherds in the same country staying in the field, and keeping watch by night over their flock. Behold, an angel of the Lord stood by them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. The angel said to them, “Don’t be afraid, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be to all the people. For there is born to you, this day, in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. This is the sign to you: you will find a baby wrapped in strips of cloth, lying in a feeding trough.”

Suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army praising God, and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest,

on earth peace, good will toward men.”

It happened, when the angels went away from them into the sky, that the shepherds said one to another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem, now, and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” They came with haste, and found both Mary and Joseph, and the baby was lying in the feeding trough. When they saw it, they publicized widely the saying which was spoken to them about this child. All who heard it wondered at the things which were spoken to them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these sayings, pondering them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, just as it was told them.

When eight days were fulfilled for the circumcision of the child, his name was called Jesus, which was given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.

Luke 2:1-21, World English Bible translation.

Admitting tasteless faults

This isn't an easy post to write. The Lord has been working on me for some time to talk about this, and I've always found some excuse not to post about it. He didn't like that, though, and has convinced me over the last few days that I needed to post about my troubles here.

I am addicted to pornography. Since starting college, this has manifested itself in an addition to porn on the Internet.

(I'm going to take the rest of this to the extended body, in case you don't want to read the details)

---

Fathers, it is incredibly important that you have no access to any porn within your house, either on your computers or in printed material. My experience mirrors every other male porn addict I've heard about: I had access to pornographic materials when I was 11 or 12 (certainly early enough that I wasn't even aware of sexuality). Not to attempt to deflect blame, but there seems to be something about exposing a boy to porn in early puberty that makes developing a porn addiction easier later.

In college, I had access to Porn on Usenet, and then many of the free web sites that exist on the network. Access to high-speed Internet didn't enable my addiction, it simply made it easier to get.

As an addiction, it did grow until it impacted my relationship with my family and especially my wife. I know it has hurt her and made her insecure in our marriage, and no matter how much I have asked her for her forgiveness and how much she has extended it, I know that this stain will never quite wash out.

Finally, the Lord worked on my heart to convict me that my behavior is wrong. I admitted to Milady that I was looking at the porn. Our marriage was strained, but she felt led to forgive me. I thank the Lord every day that she has forgiven me, and that He has forgiven me as well.

Just like Paul's thorn in the side, the Lord hasn't completely removed this addition from me. I still have urges to use porn, and will until the Lord chooses to completely remove it. I haven't had a personal accountability partner, which was (and still is) a mistake. What is worse is that I am succeptable to pseudo-porn outlets like Stuff, etc., and I see how close to porn they really are. Sometimes, the Lord lets me keep this thorn as a way to humble me, so that I am aware of my own sinfulness still. This is, of course, no excuse on my part, and is not meant to be, but if you're in the same situation, please know that prayer and working in the Word will help you too.

I am even more scared by the trash-girl industry being inspired by the pseudo-porn and porn industries. Women like Brittney Spears have inspired girls fashions that look like trash. Dolls like the Bratz dress like prostitutes, and Milady has to buy Little Miss (at 6 years old) boy's clothing at times because some girls clothes sling too low or are too exposing.

If you are fighting problems with pornography, go to someone in your church or a local Promise Keepers for help. Go to xxxchurch.com for other links. Stay away from porn and the pseudo-porn that is currently marketed as "Men's Entertainment". Stand against the selling of porn and pseudo-porn in your local stores.

Most of all, Christian men, you need to provide an example to your son to stay away from Porn and the pseudo-porn trash currently being produced. Tteach your daughters to have enough respect for themselves to stay away from the porn and the pseudo-porn industry, and their trash-girl image offspring. Teach them modesty, and have them cover themselves in modest, decent clothing. It isn't "empowering" to teach your girls to dress like sluts, or to let your boys look at girls who are dressed like sluts.

I could complain

It's been a busy 8 days. Last Tuesday, the bathroom almost burned down, as I mentioned in the last post. On the way home from work Thursday, I couldn't tell that the Mercedes in front of me was stopped, and I locked the brakes on the poor Saturn up trying to stop. The Saturn nosed-down, so all I did to him was scrape the bumper, but the Saturn lost the hood, hood latch, and about $1000 more damage. I do have comprehensive on it still, but that's $500 deductable and yet another wreck on my list (you know it's bad when Geico wants to raise your insurance by $75 a month....). Little Miss is (I think) reliving her seperation from us last year, and now takes a crying fit every time I tell her no. Yesterday evening, the toilet in the bathroom that I'd just put laminate in a couple of months ago started leaking again, requiring me to start pulling the toilet out at 7PM, and pull the laminate out at 9 (I'd botched the cut-out around the toilet enough that it just wasn't worth saving). My wreck has cost us the money we'd have used to go to Gatlinburg after Christmas, and instead I'll probably be laying the laminate in our bedroom the week after Christmas. And let's not even talk about the Christmas present bill. I really could complain.

But I'm not complaining at all. It's not always easy, but I do know that God is still in control. This week last year, Number 1 Son was laying in the hospital with a heart rate over 175 while the doctors rushed to get a second chest tube in him to drain the pneumonia that almost gave him Congestive Heart Failure. Last year, we spent 5 weeks waiting for the Lord to use a surgeon to heal the remaining half of his right lung. Last year, I was trying to keep a new job and having to work days at the job and spend nights at the hospital so that I could measure out the few sick days I had stored up & not have to go to unpaid days (which we couldn't afford).

This year, I have my family home for Christmas. This year, we're all reasonably healthy, blessed with riches that most people in the world couldn't dream of possessing. We have been able to participate in a couple of ministries to help others. We can go to both sides of the family, and celebrate Christmas together. This year, Little Miss has been baptised, meaning that I can know my entire family is saved.

It is a good Christmas, you know.

A prayer of thanksgiving

It's not the least unusual for my dog to want to get up in the middle of the night and go out and pee, so I didn't think much when I got up to let him out this morning. Until I came downstairs and smelled smoke. Even as asleep as I was, I knew that this wasn't good.

We got downstairs, and I could tell it was coming from the bathroom. Our downstairs faucet isn't well-insulated, so it can occasionally freeze in 15 degree weather (like tonight). I'd turned on a heat lamp. That heat lamp had fallen off the clip, and was proceeding to scorch its way through the bottom of the sink cabinet.

I grabbed the plug to the heat lamp, and pulled it so hard the lamp flew back out of the cabinet, causing it to burst the filament (i.e. nice flash, no damage). There's now a two-inch wide scorched wood mark in the bottom of the cabinet. It's solely God's hand of protection that the cabinet didn't burst into flames.

There really wasn't even any smoke downstairs, so <mumble> even if I'd had the smoke detector working downstairs</mumble> it wouldn't have helped. I'm just glad that the dog had to go.

The silence isn't intentional

I'm not meaning to be quiet, I am just still working on my Hebrew manuscript, as well as mulling over whether it's worth collecting my 1990s era writings together for a book. Lulu makes the printing of the book cheap, I just doubt anyone would buy it once I'd bothered to collect the thing...

Anyone willing to spend $2-$3 for an electronic copy of my 1991 & 1992 newspaper articles, with commentary added for value? :)

Needless to say, the projects that might possibly bring in real money are overriding blogging. I'm hoping that will change tomorrow, but I thought that last week too.

One thing that's too disturbing for 4AM

We broke down and got the evil talking box: i.e. cable is back. I've already practiced mandolin instead of listening to Cutie-Pie and Holmes talk at their guests.

This morning, I got paged to fix some broken backups. Now that something is actually on, I turned on the tube & flipped past MTV. I saw the very end of one of those "no out of pocket" mobility scooter commercials.

I'm impressed. I knew MTV was branching out to fans who don't care if they ever see a music video, but I didn't realize that it included the older set.

Have a blessed Thanksgiving day

May the Lord God of Israel bless you and yours on this and throughout the coming year.

Please take a moment to thank God for every blessing that He has given to you over the last year, and to thank Him in advance for the blessings of the year to come.

An apology, and a note of back to the future

It seems that "Open Source Media" has brought out some of the worst in the Blogosphere. It's been enough to upset LaShawn Barber, as she posts in this article. I've gone back to my article, and I am not proud of the entire article, and that's bad.

First, no matter how much I agree or disagree, there's no reason to call Richard Stallman a "nutjob". That sets the wrong tone. Richard, if you ever read this, I apologize.

Also, I said that the OSM crew "have decided to freeload". That wording was wrong. I wouldn't like to be told that I was freeloading, and I would take it personally. It is OK, and at times good, to disagree, but it is never OK to be disagreeable. I am sorry I was that confrontational.

I always hate it when people tell me "I'm sorry, but", because it seems they're not sorry. Well, I AM sorry, but... I am glad that OSM has decided to return to the Pajama Media name. Charles and Roger document all of the good arguments against OSM, including the probable forcing issue that there already WAS an Open Source Media. Guys, you should consider outing your name brand people, or at least get a full refund. It's the cardnial sin of branders to give you a name easily found in Google.

I am glad that Pajama Media has settled things out, and I wish everyone involved the greatest of success.

OSM - Not "Open Source"

t's hard to miss everyone talking about "Open Source Media". LaShawn Barber is near-live blogging the event. Then Jeff over at The Shape of Days posted an objection to OSM, Buzzword foul with extra penalties for vapidness. I was going to keep quiet about PJ Media, but then the name change cought my eye. I too am glad OSM exists, but their new name is wrong.

In May 2005, I decided to follow the invitation of some of my fellow bloggers who knew more than I (not to mention had a lot more traffic), and sign up for this neat offer to be first in a new group of bloggers. It seemed that these bloggers were going to set up a group to farm out ads, and collect blog content for wider distribution. A little extra money for the ADSL line is always good, and wider distibution would be nice too. Then I got this not-so-neat non-disclosure form in the mail. In return for the possibility of a minor income, PJMedia wanted permission to sue me in another state (I think New York, but don't hold me to it) for uncapped damages if I even accidentally leaked some information that causedthem any harm.

I don't think so. My NDA with my first post-college employer wasn't that bad. I told the nice person from PJ Media that I couldn't sign their NDA, and that if that was enough to keep me out, then that was fine. I would do a "Scout's Honor" that I wouldn't say anything, and was willing to sign all the rest of their papers. She talked to her superiors, and said that that was OK. I was surprised, but glad to be able to stay in the project.

Several months passed quietly. I'm passing up at least $0.50 worth of Amazon.com and Google Ads revenue waiting for PJ Media to get off their duff and do something. I finally get a ping from them, but by that time I was barely even putting out content. PJ Media was so low on my radar that I decided it wasn't worth it. I just ignored the PJ Media email and let my exclusive lock-in offer with them expire.

Now PJ Media is "Open Source Media", and I am glad I didn't sign up. I have been a computer geek since the late 80s. I'm one of those kids who grew up dinking with sprites on the Commodore 64, and marveling about how you could tell this little box what to do and it'd do it. Then I went to college and discovered this wonderful system called UNIX. Whether you called it NeXTStep, SunOS 4, BSD, or even this fledging little toy called Linux, it was Good. I sat on the sidelines with my peers watching AT&T suing BSD Inc. and the University of California Berkeley to close the source on BSD, and Linux take off because of the lawsuit. I've used NetBSD ever since my Mac IIsi could run it, even having to have a terminal because the console code was broken.

I never cared a lot for the difference between "free software" or "open source". Stallman is too much of a nutjob for me to latch onto "free software", but both of these terms represent 30+ years of people like Stallman, the BSD crew, Donald Knuth, and many others believing that basic computer programming infrastructure needs to be reusable by all. The code is "free" (however you like to mean "gratis") because people have given to us so that we didn't have to redo it, and it would be a shame for us to make others redo what we've had to do.

Now, a group of bloggers have decided to freeload on that tradition by calling themselves Open Source Media. They may be using Open Source software (but hardly all - many of the blogging packages aren't Open Source), but that makes us no more Open Source than brushing with Crest makes me Proctor and Gamble.

Other people want to make money off their content, either through ads or by selling some articles. That's fine, I like making money. I'm hoping my current manuscript idea will make some, which is why I've been working on it and not this blog. I'm sure that Charles, Roger, and the rest of the OSM crew desire to make a little bit off their writing too, and that's just fine.

OSM is (appearantly) about making some people who wouldn't otherwise have access to money and a market have that access. That is all good, in of itself. Those of you who have stuck around are seeing my work free of charge, thanks in no small part to Open Source software. However, I am a greedy idea sharer- you may read it, but you can't do what you want with it. You can't reprint my story for a profit. I can't take Power Line or LaShawn Barber's content and do anything I want with it. That's not the blogger way.

The Blogger world is not Open Source. We don't take text and do anything we want with it. Bloggers are more like academics. We cross-link, we attribute, we even heckle, but we never beg, borrow, or "steal". Our work ISN'T free speech like Richard Stallman says, it's just free beer.

I am glad that OSM exists. It's just not Open Source. And I won't be a part of it as long as it tries to say it is.

Where's my towel?

We just got done watching one of the best movies of the year: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Yes, it's not the book. Yes, it's not the best version of the movie, and they drop as many threads as they wrap up. And they don't say the question(*). That's unforgivable.

However, people who deified Douglas Adams have forgotten one thing: he was a hack. He could only write really well when he was broke enough to have no choice. The fourth book of the H2G2 trilogy wasn't great, and the so-called 5th book of the trilogy (*gag* Mostly Harmless) isn't fit to line my cockatiel's bird cage (Sunshine might actually read the pages...). Terry Jones had to write "Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic". Adams isn't Shakespeare.

If you keep that in mind, the movie really fits the tradition. It stands on its own, but helps to know the backstory. I wish they had carried through with the Question, but they simply didn't have enough time. But I really cared about the silly everyman who was losing his home, his planet, yet wasn't losing himself. I may want to be Kirk, Spock, or Obi-Wan, but down in my heart, I know I'd probably be Arthur Dent, and if you think about it, so do you.

I'd rather watch H2G2 a hundred times than watch Star Wars Episodes 1 through 3 one more time.

(*) What is six multiplied by nine? Forty-two.

Yes, it works.