This is fun to watch. Journalists actually being human? Say it ain’t so!
The bit with Najibullah was scary as shit, though. How the fuck is this guy gonna let his interpreter have a seizure and fall onto his lap?!
And then be COOL about it!
Fuck that was scary…
In other news, I’m heading up to Detroit sometime this week for AITP’s NCC 2007.
In light of the recent debut of Adobe’s Flash/Flex-based Apollo runtime (aka “the new Java”), there has been a slew of blog posts by different folks in favor of Flash….or, more specifically, bashing both the critics of Flash and the proponents of AJAX.
Now personally, I find myself being a frequent critic of Adobe, the company, and its practices in regards to their “free” products (namely, Acrobat Reader and Flash), even though I find Flash to be a necessity (and sometimes, even something to do nifty stuff with) and am not against the idea of a company making money or using closed-source solutions.
However, I’ve always gotten the feeling that Adobe is a mix of Apple and Microsoft: we will sue your ass hard (or tell on you to our teacher, the European Commission), but we want to be the big cheese by all possible means (and even assimilate our competition to achieve that end).
So when someone posts their most recent trick with a combination of CSS+JS+HTML to Digg, one of the most common responses left on the page goes something like “why didn’t you just do it in Flash?” or “Flash is better than AJAX”.
The could, at least, just tell the developer what’s wrong with it, and help him fix it, rather than just issue such a knee-jerk reaction.
Geez….
Links:
Oh, and since I passed this quarter (wow, two times?!), I’m thinking of taking it up a notch the week after next. Maybe four classes this time around.
I mean really. I was just banned from a fucking Black supremacist, eliminationist forum!!!!!
Apparently, I can’t ever log back into the forum.
For saying that most of the Aryan Brotherhood membership is full of your stereotypical poor white prison trash, the type which went blindly to war for some 5,000 desperate, aristocratic families in the Southeastern United States for the Civil War……………..I was flipping banned.
For life!
In fact, it’s not that I really want to log back in, anyway.
The forum is full of deflated nutsacks, with huge, flaming racial ego issues.
OH, AND LOTS OF EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!!!!! UHURU CHIMURENGA!!!!!!!
I guess Mugabe would love them down there in Zimbabwe; not as much for the whole “Black Rage” thing as he would for the utter repression of descent through virulent language and strong-arm tactics.
I guess its high time for the following word from my favorite libertarian, Chris Rock:
Preach!
Oh, and I think I will, right here and right now, reject any favor that I’ve ever had towards the idea of both Afrocentricity and pan-Africanism.
Why?
Well, it could’ve been a viable, continentalist ideology which promoted a predominately bone-dry underdog continent against big-bad Europe, if only the politicians and scholars who promoted it were not a bunch of racist, imperialistic douchecans.
Mugabe could’ve been a great candidate of Pan-Africanism, but he fucked it up real hard, and is now the greatest political charlatan from the African continent since Idi Amin. So did Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, so did Mobutu in Zaire (now Congo-Kinshasa), so did Forbes Burnham in Guyana, ad nauseum.
Even the “scholars” of either Pan-Africanism or Afrocentricity, the real spokesmen on either subject, are all a bunch of desperate, violent, racist, money-grubbing twats.
It no longer appeals to me. It’s no longer worth a damn to me.
Africa sold slaves to the Europeans, yet they want to blame the Europeans for stealing “their people?”
Then, when African-Americans decide to immigrate to Ghana, they get treated like shit by the locals?
Just what the fuck kind of nonsense is this?
Just fuck it. Fuck Afrocentricity. Fuck Pan-Africanism. Yes, Fuck Kwanzaa, too.
I will no longer open my mouth to respond to anyone who may want to accuse Kwanzaa of being a racist holiday “for black people who don’t know shit about Africa.”
Yes…………………..maybe I don’t.
OK, just turned the volume to mute and watched it………..then skipped a few metres ahead…..and saw the end.
…………..You know what? I’m just very, very sorry that I put that video up last night.
Even on mute, the preachiness of the video was just seeping through my monitor, making my brain go numb.
No, it wasn’t the big words. No, it wasn’t the snottiness of “We Europeans are not like the great Satan America”.
Just the feeling that the person who posted this video is **really** full of himself.
I apologize.
Just watching this video here:
Now, I know that the US and the EU have this sort of rivalry thing going on: who’s currency is worth more, who influences the Third World countries more, who has the more desperate-to-enter illegal immigrants, etc.
However, as noted in this article about the EU’s head honcho for foreign relations, the EU, in its very nature, is different from the United States, not only in how it deals with other countries (in this case, Syria), but how the member nations interact with each other.
In fact, I just realized something about the EU right about now.
Unlike most other countries or federations, in which a given region’s culture or language is deprecated in favor of the greater union (be it the US or Russia), the EU doesn’t act as a governing, sovereign body. In fact, the notion of sovereignty in the EU has been relegated to the member states, who still retain their diplomats and embassies in other countries.
Plus, the member nations retain their own official languages, which are also recognized on the EU’s level with, theoretically, the same amount of officiality as the official languages of their other, fellow member nations.
The only country to which I can safely compare this aspect of the EU is Canada, to an extent. There, the province of Quebec possesses French as the sole official language of provincial affairs, and the language is also recognized on the federal language, officially, on par with English. Plus, Quebec has its own representation in La Francophonie, as do other provinces which possess French as an official language of government and education.
However, other than that exception, Quebec doesn’t possess any separate foreign representation in other countries or international organizations.
So the EU has this feature at present, which seems to benefit the member states.
Plus, the EU seems much more conducive to the idea of new countries (especially potential member states) being born, such as Kosovo or Catalonia.
So what do I see in the EU? What makes it so different from other federations?
In the EU, I see the decline of sovereignty and nationalism as driving forces for policy, both foreign and domestic.
I see countries gaining and retaining their independence and nationhood without having to engage in a bloody, Bosnia-like hate-fuck.
I see the distancing of the politics of governance away from the sensitivities of culture (religion, language, etc.).
Is that a good thing, though?
Granted, this model might not work in other areas, particularly those which are culturally homogenous over a wide stretch of land.
Plus, the attempts to replicate the effect of the EU in other places are having a gravely-hard time at implementation. The AU is still a dictator’s club (ECOWAS has fared a little better), CARICOM is still having to deal with being dependent upon other countries for its existence, and the SACN……well, its just an unfunny joke.
IMO, the reason why the European Union has worked is because it doesn’t have to depend upon other federations for survival of any kind. Its agricultural sector grows just enough to feed the population of the Union, and its public facilities and utilities are already taken care of.
Other federations will have to step their game up a bit in the next few decades.
Why is it that the people here in the US are so adamantly against illegal immigration, or at least using the excuse of “them furreners takin’ our jobz” as the main weapon of their reactionism?
Honestly, I don’t get it. The only jobs which they pick up are the lowest-wage jobs (cotton-picking, janitorial, construction, etc.), ones which the majority of us “natives” wouldn’t go for in the first place. They act like “OMG, those are our jobs! We’re not educated for those type of jobs, but those are still reserved for us Americans!”
But why the fuss over jobs?
What if, the majority of us who scream so loudly over jobs are the same ones who have to work two jobs and two incomes just to get by?
Is this really the rich country that it has been posited to be for so long?
Think about it. A rich country would be replete with jobs, jobs, jobs all over the place.
If that were the case, then we sure as hell wouldn’t be raising a stink over Cubans and general Caribbean Latinos trying to cross the Gulf in order to get to Miami. We wouldn’t be bitching about Mexicans trying to cross through tunnels and deserts to get to L.A. or San Antonio.
I mean, look at the United Arab Emirates. They get lots of immigrants from India, Pakistan, the Philippines, etc., and they sure aren’t complaining!
So come on. There are far more legitimate issues concerning illegal immigration to worry about (rudeness, crime, not speaking the same language as you do (/sarcasm), etc.). This just isn’t one of them.
Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma just voted to expel their slave-descendant citizens over the weekend.
Apparently, they aren’t “Cherokee enough” for their liking.
Among the Five Civilized Tribes, I guess, this sort of sentiment is prevalent.
Oh…..NOW I see why they’re called the Five “Civilized” tribes!
I mean, don’t they take so well after the people who drove them out of states such as the one in which I live to those pretty little reservations in Oklahoma?
Oh, but let’s not forget that they are expelling the descendants of their ex-slaves, all of whom possess varying degrees of Cherokee blood!
Oh yes, them filthy foreign savage fagniggers better not touch mah full-blooded civilized Injun penis!
Yeah! go preserve the Cherokee Nation!!!
Bitches….die off in a small plague or something with your greedy, corrupt-ass government, your casino money, and your government titmilk.
Oh, and this has riled up both conservatives and liberals alike.
From CosmicConservative to Free Republic (2) to The Perfect World.
Peace.
Just posted to Digg today.
This is interesting, though. A social video website, explicitly modeled after YouTube (hey, the name says so, doesn’t it?), that is dedicated to the Muslim audience.
Now, I’m not going to react by advocating for a JesusTube just yet (if someone wants to, gon’ ‘head then), but from viewing the Muslim vids on YouTube – and especially the acrimonious comments posted on there by advocates, opponents, and e-thugs – something tells me that, if this new website intended to be social in its nature, then there’ll be plenty of conflict from within – not just without, but within – this potentially-burgeoning Internet ummah.
Why?
Well, considering that the majority of Muslims are of the Sunni orientation, and that the most politically-combustible (and controversial) subset of the Sunni demographic is the Salafi or Wahhabi ideological collective, I’m very certain that the same demographic majority will figure prominently on this site.
This is a worry for me since Sunni Islam – and especially Wahhabi Islam – is biased against the Shi’a demographic (you know, the one with the Ayatollahs), regarding it as following an innovated path which doesn’t reflect their own precise view of the world and Allah.
They are also just as biased against the Ahmadiyyas and the Sufis.
So if this new video site starts to swell and prosper, it may also become a highly fertile ground for these rivalries to play out in video.
This could, worryingly, become a host to homemade insurgent and militia videos from Iraq. I expect to see roasted, mangled bodies turn up on this site in the near future.
I’m not knocking the site, just worried about the potential extremism that could turn up on this site.
Yes. I do.
This word may be the most misused term in the English language, or else I’m just sick of how it is being applied on a daily basis.
It is used as a catch-all term for an externally-designated number of individuals who practice the same lifestyle or use the exact same things; the gay community, the Linux/FOSS community, the Mac community, the Wiccan/General Pagan community, the Conservative community, blah blah blah.
But why would you say something like “we in the furry community must do such and such in order to make our voices heard?” Have you ever considered that some individuals in your so-called community may not be as inclined to feel the same way that you do, or may find you and your jingoisms repulsive?
I mean, the only venture (at the moment) that, IMO, can be worthy of being designated as a “community” is Wikipedia. Why? Because the individuals who create, maintain, and edit the many articles on Wikipedia are, usually, thinking less about themselves (to which they wrongfully absribe the pronoun “we”) and more about others who may not be contributors at the very least but still enjoy the fruits of the editing efforts.
And everybody benefits from Wikipedia, too.
So my wish is that people can just stop using the word “community” in such a frivolous manner as that which is most rampant.
Community should only be community if people actually contribute to, and assist others rather than seek their own self-gratification.
Oh, and happy belated fucking birthday, you old POS in Harare.
Right now, the Chinese are all “Gung hay” about the fireworks in San Fran, the Catholics are marching to Mardi Gras in New Orleans and St. Louis (and Rio, and Rome, and….OK, I give up), and the Blacks in America are observing a whole month full of their own (mostly no-name) individuals ’cause…..well…..Kwanzaa still gets pissed on way too much.
Isn’t it lovely?!
