Sunday - January 29, 2012

Plow? Plough? Palau!

I get some neat notifications from some of the metrics tracking tools that run in the background on this blog. One came last week telling me that I had achieved the milestone of having had visitors from 54,500 different cities. I had another one back in September saying that I had had my first visitor from The United States Outlying Islands; I had to look that up to even know where it was.

Today I was informed that I’ve had my first visitor from Palau. Palau is the west-most island in the Carolines, a tiny dot in the western Pacific about 500 miles east of the Philippines and about that same distance north of western Papua New Guinea. It’s a small archipelago of islands, all alone in a great big empty ocean, at least 700 miles southwest of Guam. But don’t think the Palauians are backwards or primitive. There country is democratically run, divided into 16 tiny states, and they even have a shopping mall. Sounds like it might be a nice place for a remote tropical vacation, although tourism is on the rise after several seasons of the TV show Survivor were filmed there.

Welcome aboard folks!

Posted by Drew458     on 01/29/2012 at 10:24 AM   
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff • International •  
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   Sunday - December 25, 2011

A present without wrapping paper

This is not a notice of retraction, or a statement that one of our old posts has been removed. It is a small notice that enough information has become available to me to admit that at least one of the angles in a news story we ran with last June may have been false, for whatever reason. So let’s call this a Grain of Salt Notification, and when I get or locate more information I will do more if that seems to be the correct course of action. The price of freedom is responsibility, and I am always willing to take the necessary steps that go with that. That’s the other side of the journalistic coin, whether the government considers me to be an official journalist or not.

Therefore I have updated the Tacoma shooting story from last summer with a fair sized lead-in paragraph that says that there is reasonable doubt about the accuracy of at least one aspect of the story.

Posted by Drew458     on 12/25/2011 at 08:48 PM   
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff • News-Briefs •  
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   Thursday - December 08, 2011

Oh Yeah? Says You!

A federal judge in Oregon has ruled that a Montana woman sued for defamation was not a journalist when she posted online that an Oregon lawyer acted criminally during a bankruptcy case, a decision with implications for bloggers around the country.

Crystal L. Cox, a blogger from Eureka, Mont., was sued for defamation by attorney Kevin Padrick when she posted online that he was a thug and a thief during the handling of bankruptcy proceedings by him and Obsidian Finance Group LLC.

U.S. District Judge Marco Hernandez found last week that as a blogger, Cox was not a journalist and cannot claim the protections afforded to mainstream reporters and news outlets.

The judge ruled that Cox was not protected by Oregon’s shield law from having to produce sources, saying even though Cox defines herself as media, she was not affiliated with any mainstream outlet. He added that the shield law does not apply to civil actions for defamation.

Hernandez said Cox was not a journalist because she offered no professional qualifications as a journalist or legitimate news outlet. She had no journalism education, credentials or affiliation with a recognized news outlet, proof of adhering to journalistic standards such as editing or checking her facts, evidence she produced an independent product or evidence she ever tried to get both sides of the story.

Cox said she considered herself a journalist, producing more than 400 blogs over the past five years, with a proprietary technique to get her postings on the top of search engines where they get the most notice.

Blow it out your ass, blackrobe. The only thing that defines a journalist is that he or she keeps a journal; some kind of note taking with added writing done on a fairly regular basis. Belonging to Big Media is not part of the definition, nor is having a degree in the subject. Anyone can write, given even the most basic level of teaching that government education provides. Receiving payment for your work is not a factor either.

I think the smarter move would be to take a closer look at the so-called shield laws. IMO, journalists should have no greater protection against libel or hearsay than anyone else, though the contrapositive of that is that we are all journalists as needs be. No rule says that keeping a journal must be a lifetime endeavor; two entries is enough, right? Given the ability of an online video, post, picture, or expression to “go viral”, you can’t argue about dissemination bandwidth being a necessary aspect either: sure, the NYT may sell 3 million papers a day (AS IF), but a hot post can garner 20 million hits in a week or more.
So is a person who puts up 2 Tweets thus a journalist? Why not?

On the third hand, if shield laws extend to everyone, which seems fair to me in our classless equality society, then the libel laws are going to take a one way trip to the outhouse. So what differentiates a journalist from a propagandist? [Nothing if they work for MSNBC or CBS, right?] I can’t say; AFAIK there is no hurdle, no standard, that says what you put out there has to be at least 50.00001% provably true. If there was, the UK’s Guardian would be out of business overnight!

Sure, Old Media, the MSM, would LOVE to have such a ruling stick. It would eliminate the competition that is killing them. Well, it would at least give them a hammer to wield; smart people would still get their news and read opposing opinions on topics online.

[plaintiff] Padrick said the case showed how vulnerable anyone was to someone with a computer. He said he has lost business from potential clients who search his name and firm through Google and find Cox’s postings at the top of the list, adding that he has no way to remove them.

“If anyone can self-proclaim themselves to be media, the concept of media is rendered worthless,” Padrick said. “When everyone is media, the concept of media is gone.”

...

Kyu Ho Youm, a First Amendment expert and journalism professor at the University of Oregon, called the judge’s strict definition of a journalist “outdated” since so-called citizen journalists currently outnumber traditional journalists.

“When we talk about the shield law, we should pay more attention to the function people are doing than whether people are connected to traditional and established news media,” he said.

Hey, how about that? I figured out and wrote about both sides of the issue without even reading that part of the article until afterwards. Gosh, wouldn’t having the conceptual awareness of the underlying issues and the ability to analyze them make me more of a professional journalist?  I think so!

I think both Padrick AND Youm are correct together: there is actually no such thing as a journalist any longer, because we all are, or easily can be, journalists. Therefore either there should be no shield laws (a lessening of freedom) or universal shield law (an enlarging of freedom). In general, the only SCOTUS decisions I’m in favor of are the ones that expand the rights of the individual.

On the fourth hand, an apt vector for the fourth estate, perhaps op-eds should have sub sago (under the blanket) protection. It’s an opinion after all, right? And everyone has at least one of those. Would “journalists” have to label such writing with the proper categorical tag to be protected? From a technical perspective, would we have to create and use a new XHTML tag to do such identification it for us, like [op-ed]Obama is a sissy-boy lying Kenyan Communist[/op-ed]? Or could we modern digital journalists get away with assuming that our readers were intelligent enough to be able to tell reporting from opinion? [sarcasm]As if.[/sarcasm]

Posted by Drew458     on 12/08/2011 at 08:09 AM   
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff • Computers and Cyberspace • Media-Bias •  
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   Monday - September 26, 2011

And To Each Their Proper Place

Wonkette is now blogging for the UK Guardian.

My own politics inform but don’t determine my analysis; I consider myself pretty equal-opportunity in terms of pointing out ridiculousness or cruelty or error. In the interest of transparency, however, I’m always happy to share my opinion on what I think policies SHOULD be – it’s just usually so far removed from reality that it’s beside the point. I’m a cautious socialist with a libertarian streak, albeit a very thin one.

I could not agree less with her political views if I tried, but a) she is one of the very few bloggers who has made the big jump to professional journalism (ie the kind that comes with a paycheck you can live on) regardless of how she got there (sex blogging), and
b) I think she’s one of the cuter natural redheads out there,

and c) I hope this means that she will no longer be writing for those other 5 media outlets. England can have her, and her left-wing views. And she’ll draw a paycheck and have exactly zero impact on things over here. Which suits me just fine. No link provided; if you really need to read her stuff, Google it up.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/26/2011 at 06:15 PM   
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff • UK •  
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   Thursday - September 22, 2011

Cars so ugly they should be towed!

Go here for more nasty cars.

Example: Number 13

Yep. This one’s for you, Drew!

Posted by Christopher     on 09/22/2011 at 02:49 PM   
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff • Humor •  
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   Saturday - August 20, 2011

I fixed it!

peiper, you had a problem with this:

I don’t know anything about failing CCD cameras. But I took that photo, and turned it into a B&W:

Note the hint of ‘mystery’ in the B&W version.

Posted by Christopher     on 08/20/2011 at 03:33 PM   
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   Tuesday - July 12, 2011

a coffee, a coffee. my castle for a coffee.  oh never mind.

The ole knee seems to be having trouble holding me up. Sort of. OK not that bad really but damn bothersome.

Had electrician here all day yesterday.  The old place needed rewiring to bring up to code.  I can’t describe what there was before.  The old boxes from the 20s thru the 50s in place and just plain not too good.  So, there was a lot of stuff to move out of the way ahead of time.  Things (trust me) are way different in an old English house built in 1924, from similar homes built in the states, depending of course on what part of the states you’re from.  So, the switch over to new fuse boards and additional outlets is time consuming and exhausting for us both.

They do things a bit different here for sure.  For example, they do pick up the debris left behind but do not clean up anything. That is, the brick dust on the counters closest to the work area. And they don’t haul away the leftover crap.  Some do but some don’t or don’t have a license to haul commercial trash.  Howz that fer weird?
Yeah really.  If you put some junk in your car to haul to a dump say, it’s residential and ok.  But if the electrician puts the same thing in his van that he has hauled from your house, it becomes commercial waste and he has to be licensed under threat of a large fine.  Well, he has the license but still asked us to dispose of the waste. There isn’t really that much. Just a medium sized trash bag is all.  So I will have to hide that bag in the middle of next weeks garbage pick up.  It’s all bagged of course but I am just a bit worried about the weight.  If the pick up folks find the wires and old boxes and such in our bin, we could be in hot water.  I guess I’ll split it up into two separate loads for two separate pick ups.  Gee, it’s so much easier back home. But these folks are determined to save the planet.  All by themselves if needs be.
He’s back today installing a couple of extras I wanted, but I had no idea it might take so long.  Can’t use our kitchen yet. Yikes.  No coffee, no tea, no nothing.

Electrician had to go into the small attic.  Yuk.  pretty nasty up there. Tight fit with wiring underneath what little installation there is, exposed nails as the attic was never finished with flooring or anything. Just one small platform I had put in years ago to hold excess luggage and a few boxes. While up there, the holder for his mobile phone opened as he worked and came away. It fell somewhere down into the cavity of the house, far below and between the walls.  Gone bye,bye. 

He’s still here, and I wish I’d had breakfast before he arrived. I just wasn’t hungry. Then. Ah … not to worry.  I have Skippy Creamy Peanut Butter on hand. 

Stay Tuned.

Posted by peiper     on 07/12/2011 at 05:12 AM   
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   Monday - July 04, 2011

Rebuilding the list

I know a whole bunch of BMEWS readers have their own blogs. I took down the blogroll here some time ago when it was hopelessly outdated. It was suggested that I rebuild it. I can do that. But why should I put in links to places that don’t have a connection to this place? Ok, maybe a few of them, but just a few.

So if you have a blog or web page and you’re a member/reader here, send me an email with the URL, and I’ll rebuild that list with some meaning. Kind of an extended family tree thingy.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/04/2011 at 10:12 AM   
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   Tuesday - June 21, 2011

Huh?

Dear Drew,

I am the director for MesotheliomaSymptoms.com and recently I discovered an article on your site that has a lot of links to our site (http://www.barking-moonbat.com/index.php/weblog/gop_vs_epa/).  While I appreciate the mention, I would much rather our links be on sites that are directly related to our audience of people suffering from a terminal cancer. 

Because of this, I would like to ask you to either remove the Mesothelioma links from the article, or remove the article all together.  Please feel free to call me directly if you have any questions about this at xxx-xxx-xxxx or email me.

Best Regards,

Timothy E
Director

------ Reply -----
From: Drew458
To: Tim E
Subject: RE: Request for a removal of a link

Dear Tim,

Let me get this straight. Your website, which is all about distributing information about mesothelioma symptoms, finds it objectionable that you’ve been linked to as a source of mesothelioma symptom information, because someone who might not already have the disease might be interested in it, might wonder about it, and click the link to your website?

So you feel your website is some kind of exclusive insider’s country club? Yet you don’t run the site as a subscription service, nor do you pigeonhole your pages within a relatively closed network like WebMD. No, you are a public site, open to all and sundry. Oh, your subject matter is about a terminal illness. That’s sad, but that doesn’t make you any different than anyone else’s web site.

Your own About Us page states

The web resource MesotheliomaSymptoms.com is sponsored by Seeger Weiss LLP. The site has pulled together as a single resource everything related to asbestos in order to promote education and awareness for victims, their families, and the general public.(emphasis mine)

Well, my blog is about as general public seeking education as it gets.  Yet you find it bothersome that a single hyperlink helps the general public find your pages, while at the very same time your pages encourage readers to follow and befriend you on Facebook and Twitter, which is as open a form of linking as exists. It’s hard for me to follow that chain of logic.

Hang on, it actually turns out that you aren’t really a medical information organization at all, you’re a law firm. Good golly. Not much different than that one on the afternoon TV ad with the gravelly voiced announcer pushing mesothelioma patients to sue.

Let me ask you, since your home page mentions how “as many as 3,000 Americans a year are diagnosed with mesothelioma” and considering that there are likely thousands of websites (Google returns almost 20 million hits on “mesothelioma” - your site does not show up in the first 4 pages; however Google only returns 1.47 million hits on “mesothelioma symptoms” and your site does get the 1st and 2nd non-paid slots) ... how many hits have you received from my blog? How many are you receiving daily? Especially since this particular post is from more than two months ago, and at an average of 4 posts a day, is now utterly buried in the archives at this point.

The whole concept of the internet is the free and open dissemination of information across a massively multiconnected network; getting links from other places is what makes it tick. If you find this kind of open networking distasteful, why are you even online?

You can’t make the argument that our post was at all unsympathetic or derisive to the malady at all. If anything, it was making the point that mesothelioma was deserving of more funding.

So you have left me rather confused. Everyone else on the internet is only too happy to get linked to; there is no bad publicity. But you object to it, even when such a linking is sympathetic to your cause. That makes no sense to me ... unless your whole site really isn’t really about promoting education and awareness, but about promoting more business for your law office.

Oh, and it wasn’t “a lot of links”, it was one. And what makes you think that a vast number of my thousands of readers don’t already have this disease? I’ve never asked them about it.

Drew

Posted by Drew458     on 06/21/2011 at 07:30 PM   
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff • Judges-Courts-Lawyers • Medical •  
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   Thursday - June 09, 2011

Good To Go

I just renewed the internet domain registration and the WhoIs for our alternate web address. Got a nice deal, 25% off, by doing them both at the same time.

The whole deal was only $12.63. But it allows our readers to get to this site even if they forget to use the dash in the URL. That’s right: http://www.barkingmoonbat.com redirects here. One of these days I’m just going to make the effort to change the URL to bmews.com, and perhaps move the blog to another, less expensive, host. Right now if you try to goto bmews.com, you get an odd page from some server saying Host Not Available, and then a list of some odd little webpages on that server. Whatever. That means that bmews.com is already registered to someone, but it isn’t actually in use. Fine.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/09/2011 at 10:25 AM   
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   Wednesday - May 18, 2011

Hear Ye Hear Ye

Miami Herald, please send me an email with your new email address.

I gather you’ve either changed your email address or you’re having trouble with the one you have.

Whatever, but I’m getting an inbox full of “Mail delivery failed” notices.

That is all.

Thank you.

Drew458

Posted by Drew458     on 05/18/2011 at 02:47 PM   
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff •  
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   Sunday - May 08, 2011

Oops, I missed one

Reader P sent in a Paypal donation last month and I missed it. Sorry!

Paypal bombards me with emails, as do quite a number of phony Paypal sneaks who are out to rip off my password. So I probably missed the “you’ve got cash!” email.

Every dollar we get here helps run the blog, and if there is ever a year when we more than meet operating expenses, that money goes in a piggy bank to offset next year’s costs. I don’t pocket any cash from this thing at all.

For the first time in forever we’ve got an advertiser, and that really really helped. I email back and forth with other “potential” advertisers all the time, but it turns out that most of those are phishers trying to get my PayPal account password. And the ones who do seem to be real usually offer micro-peanuts for what they want. Such as “we’ll pay you $20 to put 12 links at the top of your blog and run them forever.” Yeah right. This blog churns 3.5 million hits a year; surely ad space is worth a little more than that, right?

So thanks again P, and try not to be too mad that I didn’t get back to you until today, when you sent me that (deservedly) cranky email. Your donation is not unappreciated. No donation is too small to be overlooked.

Update: I just got home from doing the Mother’s Day thing. We had a great day, and a great meal. I so miss having a charcoal grill here, even if it’s just to grill up some chicken. Traffic wasn’t too bad for the 160 mile round trip, and for once I got to drive home from mom’s when it wasn’t raining or snowing. Sweet. Anyway, I realized after I put this one up this morning that I should have added the word “deservedly”, and now I have. Didn’t want anyone to think I was being smarmy or anything.

And in my inbox I find an email saying another reader has sent in another donation. You guys rock!! Thank you, thank you, thank you ... and thank you ... and thank you ... and you too!
PS - the donator sent me an email. I have not yet been notified by Paypal. Let’s see how long it takes them, if they tell me at all.

Now to read the daily comments, check my BMEWS email, try and help Peiper with some strange thing the new Firefox release is doing, and then to bed.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/08/2011 at 09:21 AM   
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff •  
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   Thursday - April 28, 2011

It’s not that kind of code

Back in the long ago days of Once Upon A Time, computer programmers had to deal with systems that had limited computing power and limited working memory area. The languages of those days weren’t object oriented, and data was handled by putting it into some sort of structure. Once in a structure, it could be sorted, moved about, added and deleted, etc. The core part of building any of those structures was the linked list, which was an electronic lifeform (so it seemed sometimes) made out of nodes, where each node was a small encapsulated entity with the ability to point to the next node in the structure. The pointing was done by a little bit of data called a pointer that carried a machine supplied address, and the value of that pointer was the location of the next node. This let the computers put your data wherever it had room to stash them, but you could pull out huge chains of the stuff just by “pulling” on one “string”. Needless to say working with pointers could be a challenge, and the lesser languages did not have automatic housekeeping, which often lead to the dreaded “memory leak”. You did these things right, or the whole system could crash. Things are better these days, because languages like Java allow the programmers to code as if all their data lives in arrays. Arrays are contiguous chunks of memory cut up into data sized pieces called cells, and to get from one cell to the next you simply add or subtract from an index. Put simply, my_array[1] stores info in the chunk of memory right next to my_array[2]. The truth is that Java and the other modern languages store the information wherever the heck they feel like it, but they do all that pointer manipulation behind the scenes so you don’t have to. And they clean up the trash automatically. It makes for much easier and faster programming.

So that’s what a linked list is. A list of links is something entirely different, and Right Wings News has gotten together with Doug Ross and created a new one. Instapundit is one of the original list of links blogs, and now Hawkins and Ross have created Trending Right. It’s purpose is to supply a continually updated list of “happening” links, all of which are of a Conservative bend. But to make it extra special, the stories linked to are the ones that are - right this second - trending on Twitter. [eye roll]

Trending Right shows the most linked conservative stories on Twitter for EACH HOUR. So, if you want to know what’s hot on the Right, RIGHT NOW, then you read Trending Right.

I personally am missing out on the whole Twitter, Facebook, Social Networking experience. I rarely ever even send a text message on my cell phone. I think it’s all crap.

Is Trending Right worth a visit? Sure, if staying on top of the wave is important to you. For the rest of us, the Big Story of the Day or Week will be enough.

Here’s a fast random sample off of their front page ...

Hey, remember when the high price of gas was Bush’s fault? It costs more now, but nobody - not even Nancy Pelosi - is pointing fingers at the White House.

The Founding Fathers ‘Admired Islam?’ The International Movement to ‘Islamize’ Your Knowledge. Like Hell they did. I’m seeing creeping islamization in my daily life, with “allah” and the terms for various arab bits of clothing etc showing up as clues in the local newspaper crossword puzzles. And they can damn well stop that, thank you. Besides, if you can’t make a crossword without the crutch of using words in other languages, you kinda suck.

John Stossel: Government Creates Poverty, Freedom leads to prosperity. No shit, ‘stache. Well done. Now take this here hickory cluebat and go beat that thought into the other ‘stache (Geraldo) until something breaks.

Yee haa! Walmart is back in the gun business! Sure. Everywhere except NY and NJ I bet.

Speaking of Walmart, here’s one from the WTF Files: Man in cow costume steals 26 gallons of milk from Walmart , gives it away for free in parking lot, then skipped away. He was later arrested, and police found the cow costume in his car trunk.

Posted by Drew458     on 04/28/2011 at 03:17 PM   
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff •  
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   Thursday - April 21, 2011

Lost In The Attic

Whenever I go into the backroom at BMEWS and poke around, I come across things that just seem to be stuck in any old which way. Allan was a bit of a pack rat and it’s taken me a long time to mostly square away the server side of this blog. Among the treasures and trash I found a few Acrobat files which he kept that were copies of Extreme Hate-Filled Lefty journalism.

Remember the Bush/Kerry debate when the LLL (as we called them in those days: Lunatic Liberal Left) got their panties in a soggy bunch because they thought Bush was wearing a wire? It turned out to be the protective vest the Secret Service insisted he wear. Allan saved a copy of a UK op-ed (Charlie Booker writing in the Guardian) from that, which called the President a drooling imbecile and worse, and praying for someone to assassinate him.

Quite frankly, the man’s either wired or mad. If it’s the former, he should be flung out of office: tarred, feathered and kicked in the nuts. And if it’s the latter, his behaviour goes beyond strange, and heads toward terrifying. He looks like he’s listening to something we can’t hear. He blinks, he mumbles, he lets a sentence trail off, starts a new one, then reverts back to whatever he was saying in the first place. Each time he recalls a statistic (either from memory or the voice in his head), he flashes us a dumb little smile, like a toddler proudly showing off its first bowel movement. Forgive me for employing the language of the playground, but the man’s a tool.

...

On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod’s law dictates he’ll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?

And the Left these days screams for “civility in debate” when the Right merely says “we don’t like Obama”. And then the Left goes right back to making death threats. Hypocrites. There’s another charming piece he kept concerning the Valerie Plame / Dick Cheney imbroglio. Choice stuff.

I’ve got files where he practiced his html coding ... and it’s a learning curve, believe me ... he tried to format a copy of one of the God In The Dock essays and made such a hash of it that I can’t even read it with a code editor. But there are also a few things I’ve found that are worth sharing, just to have a slight maudlin moment and say that Allan is still here even though he is long gone. So here you go.

Ronald W. Reagan
1911-2004

At the end of his two terms in office, Ronald Reagan viewed with satisfaction the achievements of his innovative program known as the Reagan Revolution, which aimed to reinvigorate the American people and reduce their reliance upon Government. He felt he had fulfilled his campaign pledge of 1980 to restore "the great, confident roar of American progress and growth and optimism."

1. All E-mails received with attachments will be immediately deleted.
2. Only plain text E-Mails will be read. HTML or formatted messages will be immediately deleted.
3. Keep it short and to the point.
4. If you wish to submit a link to another blog site, please include URL and full text.
5. Only E-Mails received from valid domains will be read.
6. Keep your damned spam to yourself, we don’t need penis enlargement pills or viagra.
7. No, we do not accept posts from outside authors.
8. Calling us names is funny - we like learning new words.
9. If you don’t receive a reply within one week, we have decided you are full of shit.
   
10. Do not send us any copyrighted material.

And a few graphic files. I’ve always loved our little 404 Error - File Not Found bear although I rarely see him. And the one with Richard Simmons? Some things will always remain a mystery.

Posted by Drew458     on 04/21/2011 at 08:49 AM   
Filed Under: • Archeology / Anthropology • Blog Stuff •  
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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