Miscellaneous: September 2015 Archives

"If a service falls in production, and there's no monitoring, do we lose a customer?"

Dear Internet,

Comcast or Frontier?

The funny thing about the diesel scandal is that while it appears to be a massive fraud ... no one was actually hurt, and the environment was not damaged, in any significant or measurable way, despite what the alarmists are claiming.

Dear Apple,

How did you release iOS 9.0.1 and not fix the bug with tapping "Update All" in the App Store?  Every time I tap that, I am prompted for my password.  But if I tape "UPDATE" on all the updates individually, I am not prompted for my password.

Dear Internet,

If the FBI found Hillary Clinton's emails on her hard drive (this is an anonymous report, so we do not know), then she probably didn't actually "wipe" the server as though it contained classified information.

The theory is that she would not have "wiped" the server unless she knew it contained classified information.  But if she had done that, the emails would not have been recoverable, at least not without going through extraordinary means.

So this is actually evidence that Clinton either believed that she was not dealing with classified information on that server, or that she wasn't thinking about whether the information was classified.

So she was probably ignorant or apathetic, but not malicious.

Ben Carson's error is not in saying that someone whose personal beliefs are incompatible with American laws and principles should not be President; his error is in saying that "Muslims" have views that are incompatible with American laws and principles.  Many Muslims have different views about what Islam teaches, and lumping them all together is just intellectually sloppy.

So, at least he did come out and say that a Muslim who rejects the supremacy of Sharia over the Constitution, but he is incorrectly implying that this Muslim would be violating the tenets of Islam, and that is not for him to say: that's only for Muslims to say.

Dear Internet,

If the GOP is "holding the government hostage" over Planned Parenthood funding, then necessarily, so is President Obama. If both sides are willing to accept the same result -- a government shutdown -- if they don't get their way, then both sides are equally culpable.

Candidates love to complain about their harsh upbringing. I'll vote for the first candidate to say, "I was born a poor black child." That includes Ben Carson, even though that wouldn't be as funny.

When I was a kid, I thought "Dewey Defeats Truman" referred to Dwight Eisenhower beating Harry Truman for the presidency. After all, as a Red Sox fan, I was well aware that right fielder Dwight Evans' nickname was "Dewey," so why not Ike?  Little did I know that Eisenhower's nickname wasn't "Dewey" and Truman wasn't running in that election.

I also thought that Tip O'Neill was the coach in Bad News Bears, and that "Tip" was short for "Tatum," since Tip looked a bit like Walter Matthau, and Tatum O'Neal was in Bad News Bears.

(Apologies to you younger folks who have to Google all of that to know what I am talking about.)

Erickson can't criticize Kasich's actual record or views in any significant way, so he plays guilt-by-association. Pathetic.

Dear right-wing Internet,

Calling John Kasich a liberal is like holding up a sign saying "I know nothing about John Kasich."  It's like calling Obama a conservative.  You take a very tiny slice of their views that the "other side" happens to agree with, and then say, "well, Obama wants to increase trade, so he is a conservative" or "Kasich expanded sales tax in Ohio, so he is a liberal."

It's just childish, unintelligent, nonsense.

Dear +CNN:

I like +Jake Tapper a lot. Not a bad debate.  But some criticisms:

* Too long.
* Too much focus on irrelevancies, and on Trump.
* Didn't control the debate enough, allowing too many interruptions, which was largely caused by candidates feeling like they needed to interrupt just to get time, because you focused too much on Trump.

And really offensive to me, there was an assumption in one question in the first debate, from Tapper, that this kid who was arrested for a clock was the victim of discrimiantion, which is utter nonsense: the necessary implication is that this would not have happened if he were not Muslim.  But we know that other kids are punished or arrested for stupid fake "weapons" at school.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/04/us/ohio-boy-suspended-finger-gun/
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/10/06/toy.gun.expelled/
http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/21/us/pennsylvania-girl-suspended/

After all the primary debates are done, we should have all the moderators debate each other to determine who gets to moderate the general election debates.

Just to clarify some things here.  Bernie Sanders says: _It would be hard to make the case that we are a just society or anything resembling a just society today.

False.  It's actually very easy.


In the United States of America today, there is massive injustice in terms of income and wealth inequality.

False.  This just isn't based in reality.  There is a lot of "inequality," but there is almost no injustice in regards to it.  "Injustice" implies that someone's rights are being abridged in regards to this "inequality," which largely isn't true.

There's this pervasive notion that if there is inequality, there is therefore injustice.  This view is incorrect.

There's another pervasive view that if there is a wrong, then government should right it.  This view is, also, incorrect.

Further, folks like Sanders and also many Christians believe that since the Bible says we should care for the poor, that we should vote for government policies that take care of the poor.  But the Bible doesn't say that your government should take care of the poor, it says you should.

There's a huge difference in there -- it's not just about helping those in need, but about how they are helped -- and since Sanders is not a Christian I don't blame him too much for not getting it.  Christians should get it, though.

The ignorance is strong with this one.

He says the “Of course I’m a feminist; I have a daughter!” claim of many fathers is an easy but empty response to gender bias and inequality.

True.  But my response is an excellent one: there is no significant gender bias or inequality in the workplace today.  The facts clearly demonstrate this.  It doesn't exist.

Yes, mothers who leave the workforce and later come back can have a hard time.  But a man who leaves and comes back would have a hard time, too.  It's not about gender bias or inequality, it's about individual choices and the logical effect of those choices on your marketability.  Those choices explain all of the wage gap between men and women.

So frankly, the father is not being a feminist at all, because by saving money for her to make up for her future pay gap, he is assuming his daughter will be making certain choices ... which is pretty much the opposite of feminism.

Brandon Marshall: “I think that there are three different types of players viewing this thing. Number one is the fighter. ... It’s not about what he did if he’s right or wrong, it’s more about the process. Is it fair?

“The second is the coward. I call them cowards. That’s the guys who are afraid to face Tom Brady. They want him suspended. I don’t believe in that.

“And the last is the race card. There are a lot of players out there that believe that white players, specifically at the quarterback position, are treated differently.”

Marshall left out the fourth type.  I call them “smart.”  They're the ones who understand the fact that there's no evidence that Brady did anything wrong, or that the NFL violated court precedent and the CBA, and the suspension was unjustified, illegal, or both.

Granted, some “fighters” are also “smart.”  But you don't have to be a fighter to be smart.

Dear Internet,

"Premise" is a logical proposition.  "Premises" is a location.  "On-premise" does not mean what you think it means.

Dear Internet,

Please stop saying it's against NFL rules to record the other team's signals. It is not.

Thank you.

Thanks for that hatchet job, ESPN. Now Brady's going 20-0. Yes, 20. He's going undefeated for the season, winning two playoff games, then he's going to win the Pro Bowl before heading to Santa Clara to win the Super Bowl.

"This lower temperature would mean the tyre lost pressure and would explain why it dipped below the minimum, which is why Mercedes were cleared of wrongdoing." F1 > NFL

I'm waiting for Bernie Ecclestone to demand Lewis Hamilton's cell phone records.

Oh wait. This is F1, not the NFL. They will simply investigate quickly, penalize Mercedes if necessary, and move on to next week.

The 2004 film Tremors 4: The Legend Begins featured a punt gun used in combat. This punt gun was custom-built for the film and was 8 feet 4 inches (2.54 m) long, weighed 94 pounds (43 kg), and had a 2-inch-diameter (51 mm) bore (classified as "A" gauge by the Gun Barrel Proof Act of 1868 in Schedule B).

Finally, a reason to watch Tremors 4!

Would so many liberals think that Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis should follow the law if the issue were, instead, that she illegally refused to hand out business licenses to employers that legally discriminated against gays?

(In Rowan County, as in most of the nation, it is legal to discriminate against people for employment based on sexual orientation.)

Kim Davis says that for her to give a civil marriage license to a gay couple would "violate a central teaching of Scripture and of Jesus Himself regarding marriage."

I don't believe that is true.  Can someone back up Davis' claim?  People seem to just accept it uncritically.

I think the problem here is that there's two different institutions, and we call both of them "marriage."  Jesus was talking about marriage before God.  But Davis' legal duties have nothing to do with that marriage: her duties are strictly about a legal contract between two people.  They are two separate institutions.  Your church in some cases may not recognize your civil marriage, and your government in some cases may not recognize your religious marriage.  They are not the same thing.

Jesus did say that God joins a man and a woman together in marriage. (Matthew 19:4-7)  But again, that isn't civil marriage.  And Jesus also said, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." (Mark 12:17)

You may think that even though it is only civil marriage, it is still immoral, and therefore Davis is right to refuse to "participate" in it.  But on that view, shouldn't she also refuse to license establishments that sell alcohol or tobacco?  And shouldn't she refuse to allow candidates to register for election to public office if they support abortion rights?

What makes civil marriage licenses for gay couples different, that this one duty can be rejected, while all other duties are still fulfilled?

If you have an argument from the Bible for a Christian refusing to provide a civil marriage license to gay couples, I'd love to see it.

This is why I dislike Ted Cruz.  Cruz is a very smart guy, and an accomplished lawyer, especially on constitutional issues.  He knows perfectly well that Kim Davis, the elected Democratic County Clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, is wrong on the law, and that the absolutely proper action for the judge is to find her in contempt of court.

Instead of standing up for what he knows is correct, he is dishonestly positioning himself to win the "social conservative" vote.  Cruz does nothing but pander, because he thinks that is the only way he can win.

He says, "Today, for the first time ever, the government arrested a Christian woman for living according to her faith. ... I stand with Kim Davis. Unequivocally. I stand with every American that the Obama Administration is trying to force to choose between honoring his or her faith or complying with a lawless court opinion."

He knows that's a lie: she was arrested for violating a proper Court order, not for living according to her faith.  And even if her faith does demand she not hand out secular, civil, legal marriage licenses to gay couples -- and it shouldn't, because nothing in the Bible implies that her doing so would violate anything God ever said -- she has other recourse: she can resign.

She wasn't choosing between her faith, and honoring a court opinion, because she had a third option.

I agree with Cruz' analysis of the Supreme Court decision: it was simply a poor legal decision, on multiple levels.  But that is irrelevant: it's the law now.  Get over it.


"Those who are persecuting Kim Davis believe that Christians should not serve in public office. That is the consequence of their position. Or, if Christians do serve in public office, they must disregard their religious faith–or be sent to jail."

More nonsense.  A civil, secular, marriage license has literally nothing to do with the Christian faith.  As Jesus said, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."

Dear Internet,

If you claim the Patriots are habitual cheaters, you are telling everyone that you don't know what you're talking about.

Please, for your own sake, just stop.

Brady is vindicated, and it's about time. My daughter was born the day before the "Deflategate" game. She is now crawling, eating solid food, and pulling up to stand.

I demand that all musicians cease referring to a certain style of music as "bluegrass," because that word -- coming from Kentucky -- refers to bigotry and hatred.

That's a lot of Farscape.

I have ELECTRICITY.