Zombies' Creepiness
by neolibertarian
I've had a number of friends and acquaintances who choose zombies as the scariest fictional creature. I've noticed that they tend to be men. Let me explain to some of my female detractors why zombies are legitimately so scary.
First, I'm referring to the fast zombies of 28 Days Later (and soon to be featured, presumably, in 28 Weeks Later) and Dawn Of The Dead. The slow classic zombies are far less fear-inducing, and are almost comical. They're decaying and withering. So let's stick to the fast zombies that can run you down and fanatically tear into or get around obstacles between you and them.
Most rules have zombies that are fearless and mindless. They pursue with zeal and generally have no real purpose other than to go forth and kill. This would be bad enough if we were talking about werewolves or velociraptors or whatever other animal. The trick is that zombies don't just kill you, they completely rob you of your sentience, your conscience, your capacity for self-critical, analytical, higher thought.
They turn you into a mindless automaton, and they turn your friends, family and neighbors into the same. At least with say vampires there's still memory and thought, and the killing is more covert. Zombies are dumb and overt, with barely more than a hint of any prior personality. After all, they (arguably) represent the effect of communism or totalitarianism on the human spirit.
That's why mindless zombies are the scariest fictional creature ever devised; they rob humanity of its defining characteristic.
Canceling Vonage
by neolibertarian
Hey, it's been over a month since I posted. I've moved cross-country, including a lone car trip of over 3,000 miles. Since I moved and am now relying on work phones and my cell phone, I canceled Vonage. I was really happy with Vonage pricing and service, so I was disappointed to find that they resort to cheap tricks to keep customers.
To cancel service, you have to call - there's no Internet option to cancel, even though Vonage does dozens of things through the Internet including changing and upgrading service. That's not entirely unreasonable, but then you have to guess through several menus on the phone before you can hear the word 'cancel.' After that, you select between a number of options (like four or five) for canceling service, and only the last one involves completely canceling service.
Now, my girlfriend called and chose one of the options to cancel one line and keep at least one line. She was progressing well: she got a rep immediately, and everything was on track until she made a snap decision to cancel all the service. At that point, they transferred her to another section of customer service. She was on hold for a good fifteen minutes waiting for a rep authorized to do what any other company considers a routine service - cancel an account. Then, the rep tried to talk her out of it, and she said that she was moving to an area without cable internet in order to circumvent the argument. The rep looked up ISPs in the area she named and actually found one for her. He tried to push her into signing up for it so she could just continue the service there. She declined, though, and after she pushed more he told her he'd cancel the account.
But, in order to cancel it, he needed to put her on hold. Six minutes later, he came back and the account was canceled. It is not so complex to just cancel an account that it takes six minutes. But when I called to cancel, I was also put on hold for about six minutes - after given a waiting time of three minutes. We both believe that the whole ordeal is meant to pressure people into maintaining accounts.
Not allowing online cancel orders is silly for a company that is supposed to be so internet-friendly. But making people call to cancel means they have to go through a bigger ordeal, it means you can give them serious waiting times, and you can give them subtle, but persistent pressure to maintain an account.
The six-minute waiting time to cancel is obviously a ploy to make people hang up, same for the extended initial time waiting for a cancellation rep (we both waited over ten minutes). And why on Earth do you need a special rep just for full cancellations? To dick around with loyal customers like me.
They also have a large cancellation fee if you cancel in under a year, which is fairly common in different fields (though it's kind of a double-whammy to have an activation fee and a cancellation fee, plus they charge you to upgrade or downgrade service). Viewed alongside their other policies, it seems like simple disrespect for customers.
I was planning on getting another Vonage account after this job ends, but now I think I'd be better off just sticking with a cell phone. I was happy with Vonage pricing and service, but they really need to improve their treatment of loyal customers.
Branch-Forward
by neolibertarian
Having used net browsers extensively, I can say that the best potential improvement to a browser would be (optional?) branch-forward. It would replace the current forward arrow.
As it stands now, the browsers with which I am familiar let you go forward and backward. Your browsing path is a straight line. If you want to move backwards, hit the backwards button. If you're done with that page and want to move the other direction in your path, hit forward. The problem is when you go backward and start a new path (clicking a link or pasting a URL). The previous page or pages that are forward in the path are wiped out.
Branch-forward would retain that information. It's simple enough, since the pages are still saved in your browser history. It's just a matter of saving the information.
Manipulating the branches would be point and click, just change the forward arrow to a number of arrows, sort of like a branch directory icon. In cases of two or three branches, you could see an upper, middle and lower arrow (all pointing right, just like the current forward arrow). Click on one and you go off on that path. In cases where it gets unwieldy to represent, say four or more branches from a single page, it could be represented with two arrows - one arrow that takes you to the most recently used path, and another that opens a dropd-won menu with a list of other paths. It could work just like the tiny little black down-arrow currently on browsers; the down-arrows just let you skip ahead in the straight-line path, but in branch browsing a drop-down menu would let you choose paths (they'd be named for the next page in each path, but maybe a right-click could let you bring up a more complete description of each.
I don't know if this exists yet or if it's in development, but it would really help me out. I tend to do a lot of random browsing but I want to keep the pages I've seen. I don't want to root through my history, which often spans hundreds of pages per day, so branch-browsing would help.
While we're on the subject of this problem, it would help if the browser history including browser-path history. That way if the pages aren't named alphabetically, the method of organization for the browser history, you could still get some semblance of structure between them. At the very least, browser history could be organized chronologically - I don't need alphabetical organization when I have a find feature.
If these features exist or are available in an upgrade to Firefox or something, then cool. But if not, then I totally call credit for these ideas.Related Posts (on one page):
- Firefox 2
- Branch-Forward
Lost
by neolibertarian
Just watched the season finale for Lost, and it was amazing. The show intrigues me on multiple levels. The production values rival movies and the effects never seem cheesy. The science fiction and weirdness aspects are awesome, and really pull my interest. The show is wonderful at making you want more - you never get a full picture of most things until just the right moment. Those AHA! moments are wonderful and happen often, yet I don't feel it's overused (though I'll wager some people, perhaps of a different constitution, would disagree). It has action and excitement, but especially thrillers and cliffhangers.
But the best parts of Lost are the writing and the fact that it's character-driven. The writing is wonderful, I enjoy the dialogue and the way the writers can sum the characters down to general motives and feelings but make them act unpredictably and different. The writing keeps them interesting and complex, but they're also unique and with their own motives and personalities. And the writing wonderfully complements the essential, character-driven essence of the show. No matter how exciting the plot is and how exotic and fantastical the setting may be, the show is about characters.
It's also very fun to see that secondary (or even tertiary) characters have multiple appearances and the chance to develop personalities all their own. I like when a character introduced in the backstory of one character is included in the backstory of another. That plays heavily into the theme that perhaps these characters were all fated to be here or to play a role in the island's development. I don't even believe in fate, but then I don't believe in some of the crazy stuff that happens on the island either, and it all makes for a compelling story.
I'm not that bad at guessing some of the general strokes of the plot, but not so much that the plot lacks surprises - I'd imagine that sort of balance between anticipation and shock is another sign of good writing.
Lost is quite possibly my favorite TV show; well-written, well-acted, exciting stories, gripping plot webs and intriguing characters make it great to watch.
Bigger Universities, More Students
by neolibertarian
Coyote thinks that Ivy League schools should look to expand their class sizes instead of simply adding more and more facilities for the same number of students. I have to agree, if only because it would mean a greater chance of my kids getting in (assuming they apply, assuming I get around to having some).
But more than that, some schools already pursue this strategy. Like GWU, where I got my BA, which expands all the time and adds more students as it goes. I'm not sure the numbers of expansion, but it definitely kept growing while I was there, to the point that every year some students were housed in hotels (no extra cost to them) in overflow.
The more students that go to a second-tier (one-and-a-half-tier?) school like George Washington University, the more people who've heard of the school. It benefits from direct word of mouth, but it also gets to brag about alumni. I know that schools love to tout the alumni that graced their halls, and GW had plenty - like Colin Powell, John Foster Dulles, Mel Carnahan, John Snow, Mark Felt (Deepthroat), J. Edgar Hoover, Charles Colson, Ken Starr, Syngman Rhee, the President of Georgia, the King of Morocco, George Romney, Mark Warner, Dan Inouye, Kent Conrad, Mike Enzi, William Fulbright, Harry Reid, Bob Barr, Jackie O (one of the dorms is named JBKO for her), Lynda Bird Johnson, Truman's daughter, and L. Ron Hubbard, to name a few.
Of course, simply being able to brag that various heads of state, Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or a dozen differen Governors and Congressmen went to your school isn't itself persuasive. But it really helps make the school sound impressive.
And if your school is bigger, my theory is that you'll have a better chance of getting those big-name alumni, and thus of attracting high-quality applicants to your school. So really schools should see students as investments, hoping that a certain number of every class turn out to be pamphlet material - the type of people famous enough to get proud mentions in a promotional pamphlet for the school. More than that, the famous alumni can more easily be brought back for functions, commencement addresses, and other PR events.
A smaller school has fewer chances to get a big name. So non-Ivy schools like GWU, with expansionist, growth mentalities, will eventually start to compete with stodgier, more conservative Ivies.
Of course, GW's strategy is already to be Brown to Georgetown's Harvard. Georgetown puts a strong emphasis on legacies, such that one GW student was rejected at Georgetown despite strong application and the personal recommendation of Ted Kennedy (though personally I think Teddy might have been worse than dead weight).
A huge percentage of the GW students when I went there were Georgetown rejectees or waitlistees (I'm proud to say I was rejected by the Edmund Walsh School of Foreigh Service at Georgetown). While certain schools get a strange blueblood sense of satisfaction from only accepting a small number of students, that's not a very good strategy for the schools, either to promote themselves or to make money.
Of course, one major problem with academia is that its connection to profit and bankruptcy is loose at best. Unlike with other businesses, universities have maintained from their monk-dominated church heritage the sense of isolation from the secular, profit-making world. They charge ridiculous sums of money, and the higher the cost the more people want their product - just ask GW, which consistently aims to be at the very top of the pile in tuition. They don't operate with shareholders out to make money, they see no-fire contracts with aged employees ('tenure') as an industry positive, and of late have even withdrawn from government policy advising, which was itself not especially productive or profitmaking.
But if there's one thing universities do agree on, it's that their mission is education. So to speak to them on their terms, more people would be educated if the top-tier schools would expand their facilities to allow larger numbers of students in.
"I Love The 80s" Abandons Last Pretenses Of Historicism
by neolibertarian
The stupid I Love The 80s shitck has spawned seemingly thousands of shows on VH1. The idea is that a bunch of graphics, a random spattering of b-, c- and d-level comedians and media personalities interviewed one at a time, and brief shots of memorable persons, places and things is going to make a show. It's supposed to be about what life was like way back 17 years ago.
One of my objections is how it's so thoroughly superficial and barely informative, catering to cheap emotional responses, and how it encourages the shortest attention span. A cynical, cheap show based on the idea that a low-budget show can subsist entirely off of ideas and experiences created by others with only minimal original contribution. Basically, a clip show of the briefest and blurriest stereotypes of a thirty-something's childhood.
Well, one 80s-themed VH1 show is about toys. And the strangest thing is that Erik Per Sullivan - Dewey on Malcolm in the Middle - was among the people commenting on the toys. The reason is obvious: because he's recognizable to viewers. The whole I Love The 80s theme is just about showing people things they've seen before, just like most of E! is about showing famous people we've seen before. Very cheap.
The reason the choice of Dewey is so revealing is that he was born in 1991 - not only after the 80s were over, but after Saddam had already surrendered. How can a 14-year-old speak firsthand about toys from the 80s? Next thing you know I'll be called to comment on the gas lines in the 1970s, years before my birth.
I'd much rather watch an in-depth report on almost any one of the items in an I Love The 80s show, than to watch VH1's monstrosity, an abomination unto knowledge and creativity.
Walk The Damn Line
by neolibertarian
I just saw Walk The Line on DVD and I have to say it was an amazing movie with first-rate acting. What I found most interesting was that I sympathized with Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) throughout the movie, even though for a period he's a depressed drug addict. Here's hoping that tomorrow Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon win at the Oscars tonight (plus Paul Giamatti for Cinderella Man - he's an excellent character actor).
I've also been downloading Johnny Cash songs on Napster. I'd already heard a half dozen of the songs as themes or movie soundtracks. It's cool that he did such great covers of diverse music - Dylan, The Eagles, Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, etc. I can tell I'll be listening to songs like Hurt, Ring of Fire, I Walk the Line and The Man Comes Around for a while.
Summers Leaves Harvard
by neolibertarian
So Larry Summers has left Harvard, bowing out to pressure from faculty who seemed very concerned at being challenged in their views and comfort zones. This entry at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni blog (tip to VC), explains why the faculty who chased him off is to blame here.
I think the real problem with universities is that they're isolated from the economy, isolated from the world of politics and policy, and insulated from the most common forms of feedback. They've become separated from the world like an order of monks. Fortunately, education itself, as well as the degree system, is still highly valuable and is only getting more valuable. So colleges are safe, but the way they operate isn't by any means safe.
Happy Halloween
by neolibertarian
Today is All-Hollow's Eve. Eat candy, watch the Simpsons Treehouse of Horrors, and be scared.
Communism Re-Refuted
by neolibertarian
In case there was any doubt that the luddites and environmental extremists who want to take away industry and power were right, I can confirm from personal experience today that electricity is good.
We lost power this morning at a little after 7, and got it back maybe a half-hour ago. We had a generator in the meantime that kept the fridge going and was good for maybe a couple lamps or the toaster or whatever, but not all at once. It's nice to be able to use my computer, tv, phone (I use VOIP through vonage, so I need electricity and Internet to use my phone) and the rest. Other than losing power, our only real damage was losing a bit of the facade on the front of the house (it was basically a plank of painted wood under the roof). I'll avoid closing with a bad Flintstones/Wilma joke.
Happy Anniversary
by neolibertarian
Thirty years ago today, Eugene Volokh, his parents and his brother arrived in America.
More Cajun Corruption
by neolibertarian
Apparently one of the guys in New Orleans in charge of distributing disaster relief supplies to Katrina victims was skimming off the top - by taking boxes of supplies to his own home. Police searched his home and found boxes and boxes of lanterns, clothes, vacuums and so forth.
It's bad enough that he was stealing from disaster victims, no doubt many of them displaced or indigent, but what was he going to do with a bunch of lanterns and vacuums? Either he was just stealing out of impulse or he thought he could sell the stuff at a profit.
Literally
by neolibertarian
Sen. Landrieu:
"These guys [in the National Guard] are carrying the weight of the world literally on their shoulders."
Really? The third planet from the Sun is no longer being held in orbit by inertia and gravity but by some guys with M-16s and humvees?
Literally is the adverb form of literal. It means you are speaking without exaggeration or metaphor. Learn it.
Katrina vs. Terror
by neolibertarian
After the terrorist attacks on our country there was an enormous sense of strength, resilience, reverence and efficacy. Katrina was different in a lot of ways, but I think we'll always feel psychologically different about natural disasters because there's no apparent enemy.
Anti-capitalist types will always try and turn it into environmentalism or socialism but really this is just a function of an unpredictable nature. Climate, weather, storms, hurricanes, floods, droughts and everything else just happen and we haven't learned how to do much in response besides get out of the way.
There's no enemy to unify against, so psychologically we're more likely to have infighting and bickering over whose fault it is rather than a primary focus on solutions.
Krauthammer on Katrina
by neolibertarian
As usual, Krauthammer provides a nice broad picture of the problems behind the response to Katrina. It seems to me the biggest problem is that the Mayor and Governor didn't order evacuations and that politicians and bureaucrats subsequently prevented (and continue to prevent) the Red Cross and private citizens from helping out in the city proper. I suspect it has a lot to do with bureaucratic processes and control (see Coyote here and here) but their rationale was that giving food and water to the refugees in the Superdome and Convention Center would encourage them to stay there, and that letting the Red Cross go in to help would make people want to return.
Apparently they're willing to see people undergo health risks (including death for the very young and very old) of not having clean water and sufficient food on the premise that refugees will make an informed decision to stay or go based on where the Red Cross provides aid. That is an awfully flimsy reason to risk lives.
The city should have been evacuated, the charitable should be allowed to help, and the state should have had a plan in place. The fact that they had to take valuable time (including Blanco's apparent need for 24 hours to decide whether to give Bush command control) shows they were flying blind. They needed a plan and they didn't have one.
Man Fired For E-Mailing Misogyny From Work
by neolibertarian
(tip to the Captain)
Michelle Malkin's take on the Cindy Sheehan business (the mother who's alienated her family by blaming President Bush for her Marine son's death in Iraq, even though in a visit with Bush nine weeks after the incident she was all positive on the encounter) attracted a great deal of abuse from the anti-war, anti-Malkin types. Recall that a week or two ago a leftist blogger made a taxonomy (so-called) of right-wing blogs that credited her as an affirmative action hire who has succeeded largely due to having breasts (he was a little cruder). Well about eight steps of crude misogyny beyond that is a man who had this to say to her via e-mail (as toned down by Captain Ed) :
"YOU STINK you nasty C*NT! Eat S**t and DIE bitch!!"
Unfortunately for one Patrick Mitchell, formerly of the Ogletree Deakins law firm in LA, e-mails are not anonymous and use of work internet resources to send hateful, sexist comments completely unrelated to work are not tolerated. Much credit to the law firm for firing Mitchell, a legal secretary, and to managing stockholder Gray L. Geddie, who called Malkin to give sincere apologies for the "vile" e-mail.
I wish I could say that creepy-level internet sexism from 'normal' adults surprised me, but it doesn't. From my own experiences online I can verify that sexism, including deeply disturbing borderline-rapist sexism, surfaces often in the face of an intelligent and controversial female figure. Some guys just expect women to be cute and not intellectually threatening (typing in pink, cursive fonts with lots of smileys and exclamation points), and when they see themselves losing several exchanges in a row they resort to sexist name-calling, misogynistic stereotypes, sexualization of the opponent and even threats of rape.
The Internet doesn't promise to be good, only more direct.
UPDATE: Malkin herself has a nice illustration of the same effect here about Katherine Harris' appearance on Hannity and Colmes.
Stupid Old People
by neolibertarian
I really have a problem with old people. Old people are scared of teenagers, especially in groups, probably because teenagers aren't slow moving, boring and silent. What really pisses me off is when old people feel entitled to welfare (Social Security, Medicare, etc.) or how they ask for an AARP discount EVERYWHERE. Fucking entitled old people. Then everyone wonders why younger people are cynical and disaffected. Entitlements and politics are tilted toward giving old people undeserved respect and attention.
Sorry, I'm not an Asian; I don't worship old people. Old people that I don't know should be fucking glad that they're breathing. I'm glad to help people with decreased faculties of any age, but old people don't deserve respect just for NOT DYING. If anything, I'm fucking tired of subsidizing old people's spending. Politicians and the media help build up these sacred cows by always bending over to old people and eventually the old people believe it.
Sorry, I'm not going to give old people respect because they happened to be three years old during the Great Depression. Oooh, real hardship there. What were they going to do, commit suicide? That's a real accomplishment, not dying.
Rant over.
Co-Blogger Announcement
by neolibertarian
Due to her boundless intelligence and unparalleled gift for speech my girlfriend Adriana is joining the blog as theorangeevil. She won't be posting at predictable intervals, but she'll always have interesting things to say. I'll let her skill speak for itself.
Housekeeping and Updates
by neolibertarian
I've spruced up the place with a different banner, larger font sizes for the website features and fiddled around with the blogroll to better reflect what I read. The new banner is easier to read but still not terribly flashy. I was pretty proud of the last banner, mostly because I now exclusively use the much-maligned MS Paint to do my graphics. It's not supposed to be art, just something mildly interesting and perfectly legible before scrolling down. For the blogroll, I added sites that I read regulary. I get to almost all those sites at least once a week and others once a day. I removed a couple sites that, regrettably, I did not regularly read (I'd feel worse about it if they hadn't both de-blogrolled me at some point, though I'm not sure why that should be relevant). Also, I've enlarged (doubled, actually) the font size for the titles of the various website features in the left column, and I added the Global Warming Sham to the list.
For the list of features to come, I've got the map done and html-coded for the Dar al-Islam piece. I'm delaying mostly so that i can process the issue in the back of my mind. For some reason I'm uncomfortable with how I've conceived it 'til now, probably because it seems strange to make people click a link to open a new page when I might not put very much information on it. On the other hand, some pages could have quite a bit of information, and all told there'd be like a dozen hot spots to explain - plus the introductory paragraphs (which I've already written). So, it would be too much for one page and perhaps too little for a dozen pages. I could use intra-page links, but for some reason the other issue articles using intra-page links have stopped working (something else I have to address or remove).
I may just put Dar al-Islam on hold and get started on the Genocide piece, or the Supreme Court Caselaw one. I'll figure it out. Either way, I'll soon start putting out more issue articles (in addition to the randomly-spaced editorials).
Old People and Paranoia
by neolibertarian
Eugene Volokh responds to an entry at the Huffington Post that wonders why we haven't heard about a major anti-draft movement on campuses. Eugene hits it on the nose: college students don't pay attention to the people telling us to fear the draft.
First of all, even the anti-Vietnam boomers didn't have a broad protest going until '68 or so (though socialists protested more or less from day one). Why would they expect us to protest a draft that doesn't exist when they didn't protest until several years into the war, following massive mis-reporting of the Tet Offensive? They took years to get to that point, and here we are and a draft isn't even on the table except from people who aren't even ideologically allied with the people running the foreign policy agencies.
In a larger sense, those of us in the current generation, sometimes called Generation Y, don't really listen to the people who lived through Vietnam or the Great Depression. They're whiners. Forget Tom Brokaw; old people whine all the time about life was hard and about how heroic they were. It's seriously tiresome. I mean, it's bad enough that EVERY SINGLE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION is scarred by Vietnam memories and that every debate on Social Security and Medicare is tainted by the Depression. Old people - the GI Generation and the Baby Boomer Generation - dominate the debate on everything. That's only natural since, old people are the people who are or recently were in power. But the side effects are damned annoying.
Not every war is another Vietnam. Not every economic restructuring is another Depression. I've spoken to and known hippies who see every politician as either a Nixon or McGovern, every war as a Vietnam, and every political activist as ROTC Nazi or a Yippie/Hippie. By the same token, I've known a number of grandparents, especially grandmothers, who urge their grandkids to go to graduate school "in order to avoid a draft" and heard stories of more than a few who stockpile canned food and stash jewelry under mattresses in case of another Depression. This is all anecdotal and occasionally rumor, but it still shines some greater truth on the subject: every generation thinks that history is doomed to repeat what happened to them. That's not terribly surprising, but again, it dooms us in our teens and early to mid twenties to listen to Vietnam protest stories and Depression stories all the time.
The real problem is that too many people are too conservative to realize that the world today is not 1968, nor is it 1933. Not every foreign policy failure is 1938, not every foreign policy success is 1945. Not every political sweep is 1964 or 1972. Not every heroic president is a JFK, not every political scoundrel is a Richard M. Nixon.
Of course, they don't see it this way. To the ex-Hippies and the people who see the world through a Vietnam-Watergate-colored lens, the GOP is the party of Nixonian plumbers, a war is waged cynically, illegally and violently through the worst of means for the slightest of ideals and the fate of the young and idealistic is to fight and win against the uber-strong forces of oppression. That's exaggerated, but they really seem to think there's a parallel from the Vietnam business to the Iraq War. There isn't really.
They want to think that the young, college idealists will protest against this war just as they did three and four decades ago. Sorry, different war, different students, different power. Today, the Hippies like you are the old fogeys we're rebelling against. You Hippies and Boomers ARE The Man. You're the ones with too much influence to make stupid, oppressive, backwards policies.
And the grandparents and great-grandparents can be worse. There are some old people living perpetually in fear of another Depression. The first mention of Social Security is greeted with raging egoism and stubborn opposition to reform. We always hear from some of them about how tough they were to live through the Depression, yet they bristle at the idea of going through it again.
If young people were to protest against anything, it would be getting rehashed, recycled advice from people who refuse to realize that they're living in the past. Check your calendars: it's 2005.
Don't expect us to live our lives as slaves to your history.
UPDATE: This is a Politics editorial under the issue articles section of the website. It's especially cool because I managed to work in a quote from Thomas Paine at the end.
