fractalnavel

it occurred to me that one way of balancing this election (yes, there're a lot of presumptions in that phrase) would be to introduce a far right/conservative candidate, analogous to nader on the left/liberal side.  such a candidate would bleed off the more extreme rightist votes, or republican conservatives looking for an alternative to bush, in just the same way that nader's candidacy is seemingly affecting liberal democrats and kerry's campaign.  i would even think this would nominally be a practical enough strategy that some kerry supporters would even be assigned to carry out such a mission - establish a viable bush alternative candidate to offset the nader effect on their own party.  nothing illegal about that.

it's interesting that the simple fact of more choices and a broader american opinion set - arguably more accurately representing a democratic scoiety than the apparent near monoculture of bush supporters - is exactly the biggest danger to a successful democratic election.  “successful” - getting the government that most accurately reflects the spectrum of our population.  it's such a direct paradox, it's scary. 

of course, that assumes that nader effect is relevant in this election - ie, that bush does not hold a clear majority otherwise.  that's not a foregone conclusion either way.

so, back to the beginning: where is the alternative candidate for conservative republicans ? a viable one, say, with a potentially significant draw on voters, on the order of a few percent, anyway.  i'm thinking one answer is that there simply can't be, because of the distribution of the (major) candidates along the political spectrum.

in other words, the lack of a viable alternatve candidate to bush is a strong argument that bush appeals strongly to the far right.  seems a trivial enough conclusion, doesn't it ?

additionally, he appeals enough to those more towards the center of the american political spectrum that he is carrying a solid half of the country in a steady string of polls.

which is interesting, because his major opponent is also carrying close to half the country, indicating his appeal to centrists as well.  but then he seems to lose that far left (to nader).  and if kerry tried to appeal to that left, he would lose centrists.  one can argue that kerry is a far more centrist candidate than bush.

so what is going on here ?  perhaps it is not even possible for a viable democratic contender to arise in this political climate, due to the relatively skewed distribution of american political opinion.  in other words, no democrat can appeal to the relatively very wide attitude base of their traditional constituency. 

by comparison, the republicans are enjoying the fruits of a fairly narrow attitudinal spread among their political base.  makes it easy to consolidate, and they can win elections even if their platforms only represent a minority share americans.

now, this is a scary thing - a large, yet minority, number of americans being so narrow minded in the aggregate that they can dictate to a majority of more balanced, and more distributed, countrymen.

it gets scarier - what if the republican base really represents a majority ?  in other words, the majority of americans may very well be solidly behind the current administration's performance.  “scary”, not because i'm making a value judgement about the respective agendas of conservatives and liberals, but because of the huge shift this indicates in american attitudes, and what the mere presence of such large changes can mean.  “scary”, not to indicate fear, but to alert to a shake up.  and of course, large motions of large masses will naturally involve real danger, the nature of which i'll leave aside for now.

yes, a large shift is indicated.  or not ?  have we always been like this ?  one or the other, which is it ?

where am i going with all this ?  well, it's related to a discussion on american attitudes i was having with a friend a couple weeks back.  i think there is strong evidence to support the conclusion that we are no longer the country that we - and the world - think we are.  and i think that there is widespread non-awareness of this fact.  without making any judgements about what way we “should” be, i think it's a danger to everyone - globally, domestically - for this to continue to go unrecognized.

the major point that seems to be in disagreement with majority foreign and domestic opinion:

our country - and its people -  does back the current administration's attitudes.  we either admit that, or else we admit that our checks and balances -  our democratic institutions - are failing.  and in fact, it's this last point that the democrats - or more accurately, non-republicans - are claiming - that the bush administration has effectively hijacked the u.s. government.  to some extent.  in either case, the common statement that “it's not the american people we're against, it's the government“ is either flat out unsupported (in which case the conclusion is that it's americans that need a reality check), or true (in which case a quiet coup has occurred here that needs correction - or not, if we abdicate our democracy).

and this may be the true significance of the nader candidacy.

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;-)

this needs one of those "number songs".  it'll happen.  i can't remember a lot of those off the top of my head; the ones i do remember are old.  hmm...

• what's jenny's phone number ?
• what device was bowie obsessed with ?
• and the love potion was ?

you get the idea; contributions encouraged.  this kind of thing sounds like fodder for a dedicated website, and so i bet they are already out there.  i'm not bothering to look.

meanwhile, i wonder if there are wardens out there bidding on who gets the new prisoner.  the place needs some sprucing up, and the menu stinks, y'know ?

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i miss these days - well, maybe not:

thanks for the grin !

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this started out as a comment on something craig posted, but then expanded into a life of its own: 

that strip doesn't seem particularly lofty, not a bit.  perhaps such a perception would arise as follows:

could be that your average person on the street (if there is such a thing) has been _trained_ to have his/her eyes glaze over when certain names or topics arise.  it could also be that those who fancy themselves savants have been trained to gloss instead of glaze, being facile at continuing discussion and suspending un-understanding until the material at hand has reached a (interim) consclusion.  in other words, they have learned to talk about things without feeling obliged to understand all the included concepts thoroughly, where those not so trained get stopped at an early bump.

leads to an interesting theory of "knowledge", this train of thought. [aha, a discovered pun! sort of]

anyway, i wanted to niggle with the word "corrected" - a simple "changed" would be more accurate.  especially considering that all of this is purely speculative in the first place.  t'ain't no such animal as experimental black hole physics, eh ?

so the physicists have managed to bring one of their troublesome elite into the fold of their vaunted conservation theories.  a sad thing, in its way.  still, what of entropy ?  on a universal scale, where are the sinks ? (in the kitchen ;-) )

it's things like this that continue to nudge at the corners of my mind, telling me that we've fallen prematurely into a locally self-consistent solution set in terms of math/physics/philosophy, etc.  will the remaining visible inconsistencies and incompletenesses be enough to motivate some minds to explore outside our accustomed pit, or has the entrenchment already become too great ?  and in answering this question, do not underestimate the size and depth of the pit, and what it really means to be “outside”  of it.

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other people inadvertently contribute ideas, not with the things they know, but with the things they are looking for:

• from the server logs - liked this search phrase:  “how do hurricanes start butterfly wings”.  don't know if that's dyslexia or genius ;-)  either way, it's poetic.
• a question (same source, different site): “why do we continue to categorize literature based on the fiction/nonfiction dichotomy?”.  now that's an interesting thought.

geez, i wonder what wild and wonderful things are in the logs of the search engines of the world ?  are these rumsfeld's “known unknowns“ ?  and further, what about things not searched for ?  in a sense, these searches represent a cohering process with respect to the disparate information on these websites.  intriguing to consider this in the context of a self-aware web.  and then, what i'm doing right this second represents a sort of consciousness process relative to these analogs of raw neural firings.  of course, this is based on the initial raw material gathered on the sites in the first place.  ooh, fun, a nature-nurture thing ;-)

and meta-analysis of the question phrasing itself, and apparent purpose, tell additional things about people.

amazing what a little garbage picking will get ya, eh ?

• 2004 Search Keyphrases for sowacs.no-ip.com
• 2004 Search Keyphrases for blogs.no-ip.org

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band width:

how much stage space your rock group needs

banned width:

size limit at an amusement park

band with:

to form a group

bandwidth:

something i ain't got

and you'd think that some nice careless person in this neighborhood would put up an unprotected 802.11 access point, but nOoo...

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hello, my name is chris, and i'm an aol subscriber and i use dial-up internet access.  it has been 2 years since my last contact with broadband.

things have really deteriorated badly the last few weeks.  not sure why.  until recently i had two cincinnati bell phone feeds coming into the house.  i think they discovered that, now i only have one.  it used to be that i could get a decent connection on the other line if i had to.  i just assumed it was c-bell's problem, not mine.  i remember trying to dial in to a uc number (which is free to students) a few years back, and it would never connect from here.  i just assumed it was dirty lines.

now, it could have been the wiring here, in the house, but i just reconnected both sets of wiring to the remaining c-bell line.  both sound just as dirty.  it just occurred to me that i should disconnect the old set just to make sure that some sort of intereference isn't being transmitted along them for some reason, but come on, i'm pretty sure this is the phone company's problem, not mine.

so who do you go to to complain that your land line is apparently too dirty to use for data traffic ?  i really can't see getting a decent response from them.  first they'll want to claim that it's the house wiring, and then either charge me to handle that or make me buy that silly insurance stuff.  and next they may claim that i need that insurance to cover any kind of investigation at all.  and i doubt they would give a crap about data rates anyway, they'll probably just say screw you, and try to sell me their broadband instead.

dirty wires.  interesting.  i can see the dust bunnies clinging to them now.  every now and then i try to pull a large data stream through the wires, try to unclog them, you know, like digital drano.  yeah, well, let me tell ya, every now and then when the phone line used to hang and i couldn't get a dial tone, i'd call that number on the cell phone, and voila, it would clear up.  so that concept isn't entirely crazy. 

anyway, i dusted the wires just to make sure, then went down the basement to see if any bytes were leaking out of the connections.  i followed a few requests along the wires (yeah, it's that slow), and noticed some bits hanging up on a loose screw, so i added a wrap of teflon plumber's tape and that seemed to do the trick.  there was a leak in one wire, and electrical tape seemed to do the trick, but i think i need one of those patches everyone is talking about.  maybe winxp sp2 will work.

then it occurred to me: i have always had this horrendous dust bunny problem here.  they accumulate in foot wide balls and dance like tumble weeds whenever i open a window.  i've even taken to naming a few of the more persistent ones, but they don't train well.  anyway, when i took a closer look at that bit leak, i noticed these leetle-beety pieces of dust wafting to the floor.  so _that's_ what those things are made of !  and my guess is that all these memory leaks i hear about are contributing as well.  yep, just checked -there's some on my screen right now.

so now i'm thinking i should check the outside lines for dirt as well, just to be sure.  not sure what to do about the inside of the wires though.  but i don't surf a lot of porn so there's probably not a lot of dirt there.

so anyway, just a reminder to get out and scrub your wires periodically.  especially with all these viruses around, you can't be too careful.  even you broadbanders should take heed.  in fact, especially you guys.  even though you may not notice, because of all the excess capacity, think of all the room for scum inside those big coaxes.  and if you must resort to mechanical means, remember, don't suck on your wires - blow.

meanwhile, i have heard tell of this signal-to-noise ratio thing, but it's pretty quiet around here, so i don't know...

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oh, crap, i posted something stupid yet again, so now i need a hurry-up post to get it off the top of the queue.  of course, it usually takes two or three posts until the stupid wears off.  it's as if there's some sort of digital porosity to stupidness.  it tends to bleed through to other things.

so why isn't intelligence like that ?  if stupidity and intelligence were genetic, clearly intelligence is recessive, and stupidity is dominant.  yet, from their overt manifestation, one might think that intelligence is highly adaptive - wouldn't one ?

perhaps not.  the success of intelligence (yes, “success” needs definition, let's just use its common sense for now) cannot be judged by few notable cases (that's as powerful and unmerited a stereotype as any other).  it seems that the majority of intelligent folks find it much harder to get along in life than those closer to the center of the bell curve.  it's a kind of positive feedback effect that i've noted in previous posts.  of course, this same reasoning applies to the other end of the curve as well, and clearly more noticeably there, what with all our formal recognition in terms of disability laws (both mental and physical) and so forth.  but why not the same sort of allowances for those on the other end of the curve ?

seems the world thinks that the other class of differently abled folks have some natural advantages that make up for the disadvantages of sheer difference from the norm (yes, outliers from a group are “disadvantaged” in some sense due merely to their difference).  not so.  they suffer from at least the same discrimination as the traditionally “special” folks.  (how dissappointed i was as a child when i learned that programs for the “special” was restricted to those who - honestly - could make least use of it.) 

rather than make the case for these statements (this is filler, remember?), i will instead extend the observation and state that there are many other forms of discriminatory classes that have gone unrecognized formally simply because they are not obviously visible in everyday life.  it is easy to pick out various racial, religious, sex, handicapped, etc. groups.  but what of those whose historical background included some unfortunate beginnings, and yet no visible stigmata ?  working class immigration groups from europe, for example.  our trumpeted “classless” society merely allows us to look the other way - because these classes really do exist, and are perpetuated not through the inherent qualities and choices of the disadvantaged themselves, but by the continued neglect and even active discrimination by the rest of society.

uh, oh - i sense this is moving towards the “your planck sized black hole stepped on my planck sized black hole back at the beginning of the universe” territory of responsibility and restitution.  leaving aside for the moment that there is no such thing as “free will”, and so neither “responsibility”, and dealing with the common illusion instead, perhaps we need to adopt a more forward looking and personally responsible attitude towards life.  as in “no one owes anybody anything”.  and to take this to an extreme, let's apply that to all the compensatory laws and perpetuating practices, like inheritance, recognition, help, insurance and so on.  are we back to the law of the jungle yet ?  and what's wrong with that, really ?

if one insists on holding to the classical concepts of consciousness, freedom, self determination, etc., and putting supreme value on those (illusory) qualities as well, it seems to me that of all earth organisms it is the solitary predators who most thoroughly exemplify these things.  primates and the like are probably best seen as multiple-bodied group organisms from this persepctive, and these “organisms” are not nearly so successful.

there's that word again.  and there's the problem.  success implies purpose and this planet and its homo sapiens biases have narrowly defined and enforced its own definitons on the rest of creation.  on the other hand, it's all just creation folding in on itself, so no matter.  so it's humorous and tragic when i see puffed up examples of the species walking around as if they Know all the answers.

there, maybe this crap will supplant the other crap, for a while.  or at least i've started the bleeding process.

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nah, not really.  i just noticed that my google adsense search feature has made me a whopping $0.08, so i was inspired to put actual advertising here on my blog itself.  oooh, exciting.  i was surprised, some of the ads that come up are actually relevant.  that usually only works when viewing a specific post that has a strong identifiable topic, not the main blog page.  although i noticed there was an ad for expert witnesses for amusement park accidents.  gotta love this world.

i also added ads to my wishlist page; have to wait until it generates overnight to see if all goes well.  i figured that this was the most frequently hit page of the site (because it's one of the few static html pages, and because it's got that red herring thing going for it), so i may as well try and give people something “relevant” to look at when they land there.  although that page also has a large percentage of aborted loads.  makes sense for something 1.5mb in size that will look sorta ad hoc to most people who land there.  i should put a note at the top of the page for folks like that, perhaps explain why the page still might be useful to them, and how to use it.  or not.

well, if someone actually gets some use from the ads, great.  i noticed that a couple of the posts have some interesting things about sailing and seafood that comes up.  however, google doesn't want its ad users clicking on ads on their own pages, for obvious reasons. 

their placement on the page is a sort of forced compromise.  i really don't want to be bothered re-skinning, or working around it, or whatever.

just something to play with, i guess.  until i get tired of it.  it sure isn't a way to get rich ;-)  although i should probably do something with that amazon associate program.

speaking of which (going off on a tangent here), amazon web services v4 is in beta testing now.  that should make certain new things possible - like enabling people to buy me stuff from my wishlist with a minimum of clicks ;-)

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Welcome Sowacs ...
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Hello, chris. Welcome to Live Technical Support. My name is Shawn.
Sowacs stated the question or problem as: good afternoon. "my aol today" and "my aol today ticker" seem to be no longer updated since the new welcome center was put in place. is this true, or is it me ?.
Are you signed on with the same computer that you need assistance with?
You say, yes
TechLiveSHSA says, Chris , Let me see if I have this right. I understand the MY AOL area on your AOL welcome screen is not updating after the welcome screen changed to the latest one introduced by AOL . Is that correct?
You say, close. the new welcome scren does not have the "quick view" feature. and it's the aol communicator ticker and my aol today screen saver.
TechLiveSHSA says, Thanks for clarifying that.
TechLiveSHSA says, Let me explain this to you .
TechLiveSHSA says, AOL reduced screen clutter by integrating channel navigation with the Welcome Screen instead of launching two windows during sign on. Close/minimize the Welcome Screen and the Channel Strip opens so you have constant access to popular areas on AOL.
TechLiveSHSA says, Feedback can be sent directly to our Welcome Screen Staff at AOL Keyword: Tell Us.
You say, thanks for the feedback keyword.
TechLiveSHSA says, You are most welcome , You can try AOL KEYWORD : MY AOL to get the area you are looking for .
You say, i can get the "my aol" page, but i cannot get an updated "my aol today ticker", the one that is launchable from aol communicator.
TechLiveSHSA says, Let me know if that area if missing or if you get any error message when you try to access that
area ?
You say, the ticker appears, but the information it displays (weather and financial) is no longer being updated, and no news appears at all anymore.
You say, there are no error messages
TechLiveSHSA says, Thank you for the information , I am filing a problem report for you right now and would suggest you to contact our AOL Communicator support department directly in this regard .
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