Musings from Brian J. Noggle
Friday, March 07, 2008
 
A Case for Gay Marriage
If only gay marriage were legal, sadistic lesbians wouldn't have to kill to prove their love for one another.

(Link seen on Ace of Spades HQ.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:04 PM   0 comments
 
Limited By Typing Speed, Spelling
64


You know who will do well here? My beautiful wife, who works in international shipping software and can type over 100 wpm.

Tip: Just Say Hi has also recognized Kosovo. Also, some US possessions/protectorates (Guam) appear as separate countries.

(Link seen on The Anchoress.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:32 AM   1 comments
 
Faulty Random Number Generator
Hidden in this story, which has a positive result of finding a fugitive murder, we have this disingenuous nugget:
    On Sunday, a police officer in Eureka, Mo., was randomly running license plates in a Days Inn Motel parking lot when the officer came across Newman's vehicle.
Mmm-hmm. Somehow, I think the fact that this officer was in the parking lot of a motel running the plates diminishes the "randomness" of it, and I would question his sample size--I suspect it was less random than thorough in the selection of plates to run.

Otherwise, it sounds a little totalitarian, does it not? Stay in Eureka, and the police will know who you are.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:42 AM   0 comments
Thursday, March 06, 2008
 
Making Britain Satire-Proof
You know how some of us like to make a little ad absurdum fun about the nanny state bubble-wrapping everything for the safety of its citizens adult children?

Britain is removing satire from our repertoire:
    Britain's first 'Safe Text' street has been created complete with padded lampposts to protect millions of mobile phone users from getting hurt in street accidents while walking and texting.

    Around one in ten careless Brits has suffered a "walk 'n text" street injury in the past year through collisions with lampposts, bins and other pedestrians.
There's a picture at the link.

History repeats itself, the first time as satire, and the second time as just good sense according to British government officials.

Coming soon: buddy bumpers to keep you out of the street.

(Link seen on Outside the Beltway.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:13 PM   0 comments
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
 
A Decade Later
You can go to AltaVista.com and conduct a Web search?

How quaint.

Of course, 10 years ago, I used AltaVista and Dogpile. So it's not like I've never AltaVistaed or Dogpiled anyone.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:54 PM   0 comments
 
The Difference Between Brian J. and Good Parenting, Volume 19
Sure, most parents teach their toddlers to sing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat". However, very few do so by making the toddlers watch Dirty Harry over and over again until they get the song right.


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:42 PM   0 comments
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
 
America Works Best When We Say Unions, Make Our Military Decisions For Us
Perhaps that wouldn't be such a winning slogan, but the Boeing machinist union wants to overturn the decision making apparatus of the United States Air Force:
    Furious over the potential loss of tens of thousands of American aerospace jobs, a major union representing Boeing Co. workers intends to press Congress to overturn the military's awarding of a tanker contract to Northrop Grumman and its European partner, European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co.
Before you let those fellows go all American Pie on you, don't forget they like to strike at inopportune times.

Be hell of a thing if our Air Force planes couldn't reach their targets because the Air Force had tankers on back order because machinist strikes pushed their delivery dates, ainna? Guess that's not going to happen unless our elected betters in Congress will it.


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:39 PM   0 comments
 
Sad Day for a Wisconsin Boy
Brett Favre Set to Retire After 17 Years.
Report: Gary Gygax, 'Father of D&D,' Dies at 69.

Seriously. What's left for a Wisconsin boy? Governor Doyle and high tax rates? The Aaron "Mr. Glass" Rodgers era in Packers football?

You know, I once met Gary Gygax when GenCon was still in Milwaukee, as nature intended it. It was after TSR sued Game Designers Workshop into oblivion for including trademarked properties like elves and hit rolls into the Dangerous Journeys system. Gygax looked like an old biker and regaled me and a couple of friends with some stories about another system he was developing and some weird role-playing anecdote about carnivorous trees.

I never met Brett Favre, though, and I actually foolishly turned down a chance to see him play the last year. However, I think that the conversations would have been similar.


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:50 PM   0 comments
 
Brian Needs Google Hits
In case anyone wants to know, if you're about 5'11" and a size 5/6, your inseam could be about 33". Difference in your trunk vs. leg length could make for variation.

Apparently, someone does want to know, so I asked my sainted mother, who has those dimensions.

Also, please note that my sainted mother wouldn't mind a whole box of Ho-Hos, if you're sharing, but they nor the copious amounts of junk food she already consumes seem to alter her basic mathematics. Fortunately, I inherited something of that metabolism myself.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:03 AM   2 comments
Monday, March 03, 2008
 
Sunshine Go Away Today
In a stunning turn of events, governments have thought to use the Kirkwood shooting as an excuse to cloak themselves in greater "security" by persecuting dissident citizens and offering a show of force to intimidate citizens. After Kirkwood shootings, gadlies [sic] under the microscope:
    Dienoff, who denies he would ever hurt anyone, is among a small number of people who rarely miss the opportunity to attend local government meetings, where they raise the hackles of officials over issues from taxes to traffic tickets.

    Often called gadflies, they see themselves as champions of freedom and watchdogs of local government.

    But post-Kirkwood, a conflict has arisen between security and First Amendment rights. Where these critics may once have been seen as annoying, if sometimes right, some are now being looked at as possible threats.

    Some cities have moved to install metal detectors and to have armed officers on hand. At least one, Pine Lawn, has voted to bar anyone it deems disruptive from public meetings.
Fortunately for those entrenched in local municipal power, the Kirkwood shootings have a ready-made racial template so that citizens and their leaders don't have to think of it in terms of a small government throwing its weight onto a single citizen, pricking him and then silencing him until violence is his only possible expression.

No, it's racial. Kumbaya, have some harmony-building meetings, and then take exactly the wrong steps.

Because silencing the disenfranchised faster and moving into micro-sized totalitarian city states more quickly isn't going to ensure safety. Limiting the government's influence and not running cities like fuedal fiefdoms might.


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:43 PM   0 comments
 
Once You Start Nannying
Once an organization finds success in its push to rule citizens' lives (namely, through regulating corporations and the citizens they serve), that organization often likes to turn its prowess at ruling to other endeavors. Another case in point:
    The Dodge pickup has rust on the tailgate and a Harley-Davidson sticker on its back windshield. Beside it sits a Honda Accord with a big, white butterfly on the windshield and American flag butterflies on each side of the trunk.

    There's the minivan sporting a tattoo parlor bumper sticker and a miniature San Francisco football jersey suctioned to a window of a red Cougar with a scuffed-up driver's side.

    They all have one thing in common: Their owners didn't pay off a car title loan, and now they're getting ready for auction.

    For years payday lenders have been the bad guy in the predatory lending debate while their close cousin, car title lenders, have cruised along unnoticed - and perhaps more disturbing for some - unregulated in several states. Many efforts to regulate the industry have failed as the lenders pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into legislative campaigns.
Sadly, the totalitarian impulses of the news media continue to cast organizations who offer services as the bad guy, not the ill-informed or naive sheep who get into bad situations and clamor for the government to save them from their decisions.


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:40 PM   0 comments
Sunday, March 02, 2008
 
Comforting Thoughts
By the time my sons are teenagers, Hannah Montana and Avril Lavigne will be out of fashion and trying desperately to hang onto their fame.

Unfortunately, Britney will be more popular as a martyr to the music, a la Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:26 PM   0 comments
To say Noggle, one first must be able to say the "Nah."