Category: Life

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One thing that always stuck in my head about government, way back to elementary school, was the idea of checks and balances. You see, our government was designed deliberately to prevent any one person or group from getting too much power and becoming a de facto monarch (or oligarch). For instance, Congress passes laws, but they don’t go into effect until the President signs them. The President is commander-in-chief of our armed forces, but only Congress can declare war. The House and Senate are designed with different representations so that neither the most populous nor the most numerous states can overwhelm the others.

This principle extends further. Competing businesses keep each other in check (word of the day: free market). Business and government keep each other in check through lobbyists and regulators. Conservatives and liberals, playing tug-of-war, should together keep us trying new things without completely losing track of the old things we should keep. This can usually be managed by having one party in charge of the White House and the other in charge of Congress. The last thing you want is for the extreme right or extreme left to control all branches of government. (We’ve seen what a conservative-controlled country is like over the last few years, and a lot of people don’t like it.)

So it was interesting to see J. Michael Straczynski (a.k.a. JMS), best known as the creator of Babylon 5, talking about the breakdown of civility in politics in terms of the breakdown of checks and balances. If you have 10 minutes to read this tonight — especially if you’re an American citizen of voting age — I recommend that you do. You may nod in agreement, or you may shake your head in disbelief, but it should at least make you think.

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I more-or-less randomly wondered about the origin of the phrase, “My hed iz pastede on yay!” and did a quick google search (the phrase + “origin”). This led me to the Google Meme Observatory, which I am hereby posting so that I can come back and look at it when I have time to, y’know, look at it.

As for the phrase, someone had tracked it down to a particular ex-LJ community, and found the original April 16 post in which someone coined the term regarding an apparently bad image manip featuring the faces of Merry and Pippin. One of the replies: “you do realize you’ve started a goddamn PLAGUE with that expression over at livejournal?” Prophetic words, indeed.

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Some odd searches through which people have found this site over the last two weeks:

  • “vice presidential debate drinking game” somehow hit Fallacious Arguments, despite the fact that the post never mentions a drinking game.
  • “breakdown girl” hit Donna Troy via Yahoo images search. Somehow it seems appropriate.
  • “folsom street fair 2004 pictures” and similar phrases directed several people to Living in Middle Earth, though I can’t imagine why.
  • “sugar packet” — I think someone was looking for real sugar (image search again).
  • “rhyming poems by katherine foreman” hit (big surprise) Katie’s Rhyming Poems. (What’s it like to be famous?)
  • “space pirate amazon ninja catgirl” sounds ridiculous, wich is exactly why I posted about the game
  • “jesse quick in love” actually hit the speed force and Jesse’s mother, but not Jesse Quick herself.
  • “how to steal flash” brings up the Flash Museum. I have to wonder what they were actually looking for, though.
  • “xxx hermione” and similar (some of them rather explicit) — WTF? These hit Harry Potter Titles I’d Like To See.

Unfortunately there are too many phrases for the stats program I use to show anything that hit less than twice — and that’s where the really odd ones to show up! I’ve skimmed the logs a bit, and some of the choice items include: Continue reading →

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Found in a spamtrap today:

“Remove your bills the Christian way”

WTF?

What follows is a long, disjointed collection of unrelated sentences that I suspect is actually Bayes poison (some spammers have figured out that using natural-sounding language is more effective at making Bayesian filters, well, less effective). There is, however, apparently an image above that, which I suspect contains the real payload.

Now if it were trying to get rid of creditors the Christian way, it might make more sense…

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Today’s recipe:

HUMMUS

1 can (14 oz) chickpeas, drained, rinsed well
2 T unsweetened peanut butter
1 garlic clove
sea salt to taste
1/4 c olive oil
1/2 t cayenne pepper
juice of 1 lemon
1 T sesame seeds, toasted lightly
fresh bread for serving, toasted

Put first four ingredients in blender and blend until smooth. Keeping blender on, slowly add oil and lemon juice. Stir in cayenne peppper. If mixture is too thick, add some cold water. Transfer to serving bowl. Sprinkle cooled sesame seeds over pureed mixture. Spread on toasted slices of bread for serving. Serves 4.

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I’ve seen hummus made with cannellini beans, hummus with eggplant, hummus with yogurt, and hummus with extra parsley (think of a cross with tabbouli). But this is the first time I’ve seen hummus with peanut butter. I suppose if you’re not likely to find tahini in your area, it would make an acceptable substitute. Still, shouldn’t you try to find tahini first? I’d imagine that stores in a lot of areas might be more likely to carry that than unsweetened peanut butter in the first place. Or you could just blend a couple tablespoons of plain peanuts for a while before adding the chickpeas. But the real problem here is that nobody’s going to be expecting peanuts in hummus. And if you have someone who can eat chickpeas but not peanuts, that could be bad.

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I took an odd tech support call at work the other day. Someone called in asking about how quickly she could get a new IP address, because she didn’t want anyone to know where she lived. I tried to explain it was all about the network connection, not the physical location, and no, it wasn’t associated with her email address either, and how are you connected?

It transpired that she wasn’t even one of our customers, and that she wanted us to “block” her IP by putting X’s through everything “like you have on your website.”

Huh?

Well, Continue reading →

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