You know PETA’s reaching when it starts enlisting models to pose mostly-nude for their “Become a mindless vegetable, er, vegetarian!” ads.
Randomosity at its randomest
Monthly Archive for November, 2007
The more I use Macs, the more I wonder why they’ve got such a reputation for being stable. It’s getting to the point where I hear people espouse the wonders of Mac OS and wonder if they’ve ever actually used one. Same goes for people who claim Windows crashes all the time.
I own and use a PC regularly. It’s a Dell laptop and it runs Windows Vista. What’s more, it runs Windows Vista without crashing. Amazing, isn’t it? Excuse the sarcasm, but I’ve been told a number of times that I’m a fool for using both a Dell and Windows, but I’ve never had any more problems than I had on any other brand of computer or version of Windows. Heh, I’ve actually had more problems using Macs. Anyone who says Macs don’t crash has never seen me use one. And no, it’s not because I’m an incompetent computer user who clearly doesn’t know how to use a Mac. Indeed, I get hung up on the command key (what, exactly, was wrong with the control key?) and I hate how closing a window doesn’t quit the program running it, but I know what I’m doing.
After messing around with a triple-boot configuration on my laptop (Vista, XP, and Ubuntu), I decided to can the Ubuntu installation. It worked fine, but I wasn’t using it for anything. It was taking up valuable space, too, so I deleted it and allocated the space to my XP installation so I could install more games. Games > Linux.
Anyways, I’m not completely done with Linux. I came across a rather interesting-looking project called Linux From Scratch, which is basically a how-to guide on compiling your own distribution of Linux. It looks pretty daunting, but it provides a good in-depth look at how Linux distros actually work in addition to building a custom distro with everything you want in it and nothing you don’t want. Perhaps I’ll be releasing the Mad Rants Linux distro sometime in the future…
I’m a bit worried about breaking my computer again, but I do need an excuse to reinstall everything. My computer is getting gunked up. Heh, perhaps I’ll learn Dvorak while I’m at it…too bad I wouldn’t be able to come up with a sweet name for my computer like my roommate and his DvorMac.
There are more than two political parties in the United States. You’d be surprised at how many people don’t realize this. I frequently am. Indeed, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are the biggest two political parties so they’re bound to get the most attention, but the general ideas is that they get the attention because there aren’t any other parties to speak of. This kind of thinking is absurd. Not only does it limit democracy, it also suppresses the so-called “third parties”, such as the Libertarian Party or the Green Party. Parties like that shouldn’t be a footnote in elections. Unfortunately, the people of America have turned the term “third party” into a joke, or even an invective.
“So do you think a third party will win this year?”
“What, do you mean like Ralph Nader, that damn vote-stealer?”
Regardless of Nader’s position as thief of votes (I’m looking straight at the 2000 election here), people should realize that their votes are not just limited to “Democrat” or “Republican”. Too often third parties are seen as annoyances, detracting from the “true” parties. This is because the United States has been limited to a two-party system for years. The last time a third party candidate came even close to winning a presidential election was in 1912, where Theodore Roosevelt, as candidate for the Progressive Party, carried 6 states and won a bigger share of the popular vote than the Republican candidate, William Howard Taft. He lost to Woodrow Wilson, but his second place finish has never been duplicated by a third party. Even Ross Perot only got as much as 8% of the popular vote in 1996.
A common argument I’ve heard against third parties is that a vote for a third party candidate is wasted because they’ll lose anyways. Can anyone else see the flaw in this? It’s a circular line of reasoning. A third party candidate will lose because no one votes for them. No one votes for them because they think they’ll lose. It’s self-fulfilling. I really think that if everyone voted for the party they liked most (instead of the party they thought would be most likely to win), the Libertarian Party would get a lot of votes. Most people don’t even know what a libertarian is, though I bet most of them would identify as one (who doesn’t like a small government?). I blame that on the media for inundating us with the whole “liberal vs. conservative” idea. Note to the American people: the political spectrum stopped being a line a long, long time ago. There isn’t just “left” and “right”.
Anyways, I’m just saying this because I’m a libertarian (ideologically, as denoted by the small “l”). I’m not registered with the party (denoted by the big “L”), but I may register before this next election. It doesn’t seem that the Democrats or the Republicans are going to be putting out candidates I like, so I’ll probably vote Libertarian. Wasted vote? Perhaps, but at least I’m voting for someone I like. That’s a little more important than going along with the status quo.
If the Ku Klux Klan is a group based on Christian values (albeit warped almost beyond recognition), why do they burn the cross? I mean, really. Jingoistic patriots don’t burn flags, so why would extremist Christian groups burn crosses?
It’s been bothering me all day. Well, not really. It just reinforces my theory that bigots aren’t exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer.
