December 30, 2013

We've seen a lot of pain in GD this year

It seems to me that the troubling, most contentious, issues we see blossom and fade in GD are ones where participants have experienced related pain and suffering personally.

I am not speaking of any topic in particular here if you were reading in guns, or gender, or race, or whatever. The thing I'm trying to get at, and probably won't do justice to, is once I've been burned by a thing it's really hard not react in an emotional state when someone brings up the damned thing. Makes it hard to hear what they mean at times. Even more so when it relates to something that is nuanced and painted with a broad brush.

So maybe, just maybe we can be a little less on edge? Maybe we can trim our broad brushes down to maybe a sash brush? When you paint with the broad brush it can be painful to those with prior pain related to the subject. Once that pain surfaces, it's difficult not to respond in kind.

If we could carry that into the new year, then I'm sure GD would suck a little less.

December 21, 2013

Many here are now owed Beer and Travel Money with an apology

"The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance."
- Robert R. Coveyou, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

To all you people who said I was crazy that the NSA could have a back door into encryption, my inference back in July is now confirmed.

My mistake back then was I thought Cisco was compromised and it now turns out that RSA itself is compromised. How was it compromised? A subtle flaw in the random number generation that I suspect allows the private key to be deduced from the public key.

This would be funny if it wasn't so sickening.

So to all who said I was nuts, who hassled me for attending the anti-NSA rally, it's your turn to be mocked. Unless you want to stand up and say Sorry, Hoot I guess you did know a little about this tech stuff.

December 17, 2013

Affluenza doesn't explain it all. There must also be Gulliblemia:

A condition symbiotic with affluenza causing actions that are not in a person's self interest, thus keeping them poor.

Symptoms:

Thinking that higher taxes on the affluenzant will hurt the Gulliblemic.

Confusing the debt ceiling with a limit on how much the government can spend.

Thinking Medicare and Social Security are not government programs or are causing the deficit.

Thinking that shutting the Federal Government is a good thing.

Watching Fox News other than for comedic effect.


Oddly, it seem the spelling and grammar centers of the brain are also affected.


Attending rallies with 1 port-a-john for every other protestor.

Confusion between religious law and Federal Law.

An extreme case:



There are probably many more I have missed.