Fugato

Yep, I’m censoring you.

To the thousands of different people (well, at least thousands of different computers) posting comments to this blog, please sit down and try not to panic: you can no longer discuss poker, gambling, casinos, pharmacies, or viagra or any of its clone names, in comments on this blog. Several keywords are now blacklisted completely; comments containing them will be automatically deleted by my blog software and I’ll never even see them.

So if you want to write a comment containing these words, well, tough.

Also, your comment will not show up immediately unless you have previously submitted a comment with the same name and email address, and I’ve approved that comment. The first comment from a particular name and email address has to be approved by me before it shows up. So the first comment you submit might take a little time to show up, but after that it will be instantaneous.

Why all this censoring? Well, out of the thousands of computers posting comments to my blog, there are maybe three or four people posting comments that don’t contain these words. The rest are from automatic spamming robots that plaster my blog comment pages with advertisements for viagra and online gambling websites. I have to throw those out as they arrive, sometimes dozens of them within a single day. I’m not too fond of that.

An open mind

I just MSNed this link to a friend of mine for fun, calling it “a little mental masturbation for you.”

For some time now I’ve avoided mentioning anything political to him, because, although I agree with his views on economics to some extent (more through emotion than knowledge or understanding of economics, I’m the first to admit), I am disheartened by the nature of his discourse on the subject. I am not interested in loud-mouthed, arrogant, poorly argued trash talk, and I am saddened to see a good friend devalue his commentary that way. But I sent this just for laughs, calling it “mental masturbation” just to tease him a little about his zealotry.

I got some zealotry back, including this:

“… enda fólk sem aðhyllist sósíalisma mental fucked ups, general loosers, people who don’t want to work, plain evil, or naive and/or stupid”

(the first five words are Icelandic for “and after all¹ people who adhere to socialism are …”)

He said “sorry, that’s the way it is, one labels people as childish, i.e. if one does not want to hurt them more than need be.”

I told him I labelled people who said this kind of thing as childish, and added that I had considered him childish for a long time because of the simplistic, arrogant ways in which he expresses his right-wing tunnel vision.

[Mind you, he is far-right-wing only in the original economics sense, not in the often-used sense of hating/fearing homosexuals or foreigners or Jews or non-Christians, or wanting slavery back, or whatever. He is not a racist; he will not judge you for the color of your skin, although he might want to guillotine you for the color of your views ;-) ]

He responded with “well, that’s your problem” and then added that that was rather childish of me (with a ;-) smirkey), and that the difference between my comment about him and his comment about socialists was not a fundamental difference, just a nuance.

I’m considering that last statement. Is the difference a minor one? Am I guilty of the same baseless oversimplification and arrogance? The same closed-mindedness?

Or should I just not even waste time considering the statement, since it came from someone whose commentary I’ve already dismissed as childish? ;-)

Now, that would make me guilty of closed-mindedness.

My house and its surroundings, as seen in Borgarvefsjá

A while ago the Reykjavík Blog mentioned an online map of Reykjavík and asked for links to others.

As maps of Reykjavík (and surrounding townlets) go, there is no beating Borgarvefsjá if your browser can handle it.

• Arbitrarily zoomable.
• Searchable by street address.
• Measures distances along paths you draw (great for running routes)
• Offers layers and layers of information (you pick what gets shown) including:
  • low-altitude aerial photo coverage of most of the map’s area
  • traffic information (speed limits, speed bumps, one-way streets, etc.)
  • postal-code regions and school districts
  • the list goes on

You can even explore the sewage system and electrical wiring if you want to.

Clearly a lot of work (and thus a lot of money) has gone into this system. Still, like so many good things in life, Borgarvefsjá is paid for by hard-working heavily taxed people most of whom never use it free!

Consider this:

Tech Support: “Ok, ma’am, I need you to do a ctrl-alt-del.”
Customer: “How do I do that?”
Tech Support: “Push and hold ‘ctrl’ and ‘alt’ at the same time, and then hit ‘delete’.”
Customer: “Where are those?”
Tech Support: (explains the location of the keys)
Customer: “Nothing happened.”
Tech Support: “Try again.”
Customer: “Still nothing.”

A minute or two later….

Customer: “Should I turn my computer on? Would that help?”
Tech Support: “Yeah, it might.”

Chortle, chortle.

That’s the computer tech-support variety, but there are thousands more. The Aussie caller on a radio show who just has to spell “ACDC” to win a Harley Davidson, and can’t. The guy who proudly states his IQ as “20/20.” The hundreds of blonde jokes and Dan Quayle quotations and “Darwin Awards” stories. The zillions of situations in which one gets to say “well, he ain’t exactly the sharpest blade in the drawer” and chuckle lightly with the glee of superiority.

Yeah, it’s funny. Why is it funny?

Simple. You’ve done it. I’ve done it. We reassure ourselves of our own intelligence by basking in other people’s lack of it. We patch our fragile little egos by comparing ourselves against a suitably inferior reference point.

• Am I a good programmer? Sure; you should see some of the code Joe writes.
• Am I good-looking? Certainly better than that loser over in Accounting.
• Do I play the piano well? Oh yeah, you ought to hear some of those losers I went to music school with.
• Am I a pro? I must be; I’m surrounded by amateurs.

Why do we boost our self-esteem with contempt for others?

Because we’re short on self-esteem to begin with. Because we’re insecure. That’s why.

That is just about the world’s lousiest, cheapest way of feeling good about oneself.

I’ll be doing okay when there is only one person I enjoy looking down on with a feeling of superiority: yesterday’s me.

(Yeah, I know that’s corny. Deal with it.)

After running out of batteries and being started up again, my computer just offered me this description of stuff-that-went-wrong:

When I clicked for more information on the “serious error” of batteries running out, I got this:

Now, I’m a self-proclaimed techie (despite working in Marketing), but I was afraid to click any further. If the above information is not “technical,” I’m not sure I want to know what is.

And sure, I did click further. That gave me a couple of files. They were technical information, fair enough. But that stuff in the dialog box? What is that, the layman’s explanation?

I’m a nut for words, etymology, and all kinds of language trivia. And consequently I’m oddly pleased that now I know where “no strings attached” comes from.