Pure Defect

The only Libertarian to qualify for taxpayer funding of his Assembly campaign went to court today in an effort to force the experimental "clean elections" program to treat independent candidates the same as Democrats and Republicans.

A lawsuit filed on behalf of Jason Scheurer claims the program imposes "enormous" disadvantages on independent candidates, including state funding that is a fraction of that bestowed on major party candidates. It seeks to compel the state to provide equal funding to all candidates.

Its fine and dandy that this fellow wants to get equal treatment for all candidates; in fact its long over-due for this change I think, and he is taking a huge risk by pushing for it while waring the mark of the LP. As much as most sane people would like to see such changes happen when its the downtrodden group thats making an effort to change things it never seems to go well.

Unless both the Democrats and the Republicans were to endorse this its never going to happen; and the sad truth of thet matter is that there is no way in hell either of them will get behind this because it upsets the power structure in politics and makes it possible for someone outside of the Big 2 to get a seat at the table and a crack at real positions of power.

Labels: LP, politics

Well that is according to the SomethingAwful crew Nerdcore is an 'awful minority' to them, one to ridicule and straight up accuse of being inadvertent racists to boot. Their list of minorities that they despise didn't stop there however, the included advocates of Linux, Firefox, Apple products, and several others as well.

I could say they are ignorant fucks, morons who peddle more venom than a snake charmer with a 2$ special on King Cobras, however that would be wasting too much time on them. The true humor in it all, besides the absolutely outstanding manifesto over at Headphone Sacrament is that SA upgraded beyond just simple stupid to unbelievably hilarious morons when they went after Linux. Knowing just a smidgen about how the internet works, and that a large number of hosting providers offer Linux as a hosting platform I ran a Netcraft search only to discover that every known subdomain of SA was run on.....wait for it...L I N U X!

No fancy quips, no catchy phrases illustrating the humor, just plain laughter that SA fail to get so much about the world around them, I hope the ill-gotten ad revenue is worth it!

Labels: funny, nerdcore, something awful

First go here and read the entry to get an idea of what I was going to do, and if your fairly smart you will see exactly what I was getting at and at the same time realize the absolute stupidity as well.

Well this evening I got inspired and picked up work on the project, and found out that my initial number of 90 Million was so far off it wasn't even funny, which should have been the first tip-off to me that I was letting personal opinion and bias obscure my thinking. After digging through the census data from 2006 I discovered that there were about 29.7 Million females in the United States between the ages of 20 and 34, which was roughly the age range I intended to work with from the onset. Roughly 59% of those were not married at the time of the census and were either widowed, separated, divorced or never had been married in the first place.

With the overall pool of available females narrowed down to about 17 and a half million from my previous guess of about 90 I went in search of data on sexual preference in the US. Due to my lack of research skills I only managed to find a vague number of 1 to 5 percent for females in the US from a Wikipedia entry, so to be safe I averaged that and shaved off a little under 500,000 from the final number. With it all said and done save for taking into account those who are incarcerated, hospitalized, etc as well as margins of error I was down to about 17,057,646 potential mates just within the 20 to 34 age bracket.

Armed with the dating pool size I headed over to IRC to talk to a close friend who happens to be majoring in math and computer science about how best to code the program that would search for the match to the equation. Without posting the logs the general conclusion was reached (much to my chagrin I might add) that it was just as likely to find that 'special someone' on the first try in terms of dating as it was on the 400^th try, the 80000^th or even on the 17,057,646^th try. The cold hard truth of the matter was that my own personality (see also: cynicism and pessimism) were making it impossible for me to see that instant success at dating was just as likely as spending an entire lifetime trying and still coming up short in the end.

One one hand I'm rather disappointed that I didn't see this coming, and it makes me look like the worlds biggest loser to have such a bleak outlook that I personally consider it more likely to look for that 'special someone' your entire lifetime and never find them rather than the possibility that the first person you ever date will be the one you spend the rest of your life with. On the other hand however I still intend to stick to my guns and maintain my stance that dating is completely stupid and more of a waste of time and resources than anything else. When you are dealing with odds just as bad as the lottery (or just as good if you aren't a pessimist like myself) it seems pretty pointless. I've seen a lot of people take the piss out of those who play the lottery because the odds are so bad, yet I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see the same people advocate dating because its 'better than doing nothing' even though its the same game with a different payout; you can either find that 'special someone' or you can get that massive jackpot of millions - both of which have astronomically bad odds of success.

So for those who are about to go out and buy a lottery ticket or ask that person you've have had your eye on out for a date stop and think for just a second, will this be the lucky day or will it be another wasted $5 or evening out?

Labels: project, refute hope

I've been sitting here pondering just what exactly is it about a blog that draws people to it and keeps them coming back. I imagine for those who always color between the lines the idea of a successful blog revolves around insightful, heartfelt and genuinely good content - the kinds of things that make someone feel all warm and fuzzy inside and at the same time give their under worked brain a massage. Unfortunately from what I've seen that is exactly what kills a blog and dooms it to complete failure, at least in the non-niche world of blogs.

If you write about everything under the sun (and I tend to for the most part when I write) then its more often than not the offensive, rude and outrageous things that you post which will draw the most traffic. A perfect example of this is ViolentAcres where VA herself lambastes almost everyone under the sun for one reason or another, yet undoubtedly she rakes in cash from ads on her site because of the volume of traffic it experiences. In one of her most recent postings she takes the piss out of another blogger who posts about how much he despises those who feel the need to get into the passing lane and then go under the speed limit.

I will admit I have both cussed those very people as well as been one of them as well and I would generally concur with her about the dude in question; however that doesn't change the fact that there must have been at least 10 other things VA could have talked about from her daily life that wouldn't have revolved around flaming the living shit out of this guy. But what really turns us on when we read it, a warm and fuzzy fairy tale that contains more bullshit than senate committee or a verbal assault on the character of someone who we write off as being a total jackass? So many of us live sedentary lives that never get the heart pumping with any kind of speed that perhaps reading scorching blog entries is the new fix for those without a life. I would certainly hope that isn't the case but until someone proves to me that general-topic bloggers are succeeding via content that isn't inflammatory I'm not budging on this one.

Labels: attractors, blogging

The previously shrouded-in-mystery group known as the Sinister Six have released two tracks to their website for everyone's listening pleasure. After previewing the tracks I can say the production is on par with most top nerdcore acts considering most of the members are already well established artists within the genre. Of particular note is the quality of the flows on the song Make Way, which sets quite the pace for the rest of the album once it becomes available to the masses. With tracks being posted already I suspect the entire album is not far from release so keep your eyes on their main site as well as their MySpace page for the impending release.

Labels: BenjaminBear, nerdcore, Ytcracker, ZeaLouS1

I came across this quite interesting study on those who have 'Friends with Benefits' as the common phrase goes. They surveyed 125 men and women at Michigan State University who said they had been in such an arrangement. I can honestly say I was expecting this to be a one-sided religiously backed study to prop up the idea of marriage as the only relationship that there should be which involves sex but so far I haven't seen proof of my suspicion. The breakdown for those who don't want to read the article is rather simple, and I have taken out the percentages to show you real numbers instead.

• 12.5 said the FWB turned into conventional romantic relationships
• 41.666666667 stopped having sex but remained friends
• 31.25 completely broke contact with the other person
• 39.583333333 remained in the same arrangement

It was conjectured that people got involved with a friend with benefits because of a desire to avoid all emotional baggage that comes with a normal romantic relationship, yet 12 people interviewed fell into just that. Its not surprising that the largest group was those who broke off a FWB arrangement; People are not always compatible but with little to no attachment (outside of the sex) I'm sure the splits in those cases were far easier than those occurring in relationships that have been going for years or even several months.

Some of the conclusions derived in the study, particularly by Paul Mongeau strike me as perhaps a bit slanted. He states “One of the most interesting things I get from it, is this sense that people in these relationships are afraid to develop feelings for the other person, because those feelings might be unreciprocated.” This seems to come from someone who more than likely is married or at least in a long-term relationship that is mostly fulfilling; there are a myriad of other reasons people might choose such a relationship over a romantic counterpart such as having far too involved a life to justify pulling double duty with a significant other. Hell someone might just be that self centered that they don't care enough to invest their emotions in a romantic relationship so they align themselves with someone with a similar mindset and desire to indulge in physical pleasure.

Labels: friends-with-benefits, relationships, spin