BunkBlog

This was in my email this morning. One way of looking at things, I suppose.

In America, 50% of homeowners have firearms. That means 50% of homeowners have the capability to kill you if you knock on their door late at night. That doesn't mean they're going to. But if they want to, that's absolutely within their capability.

If America really wanted to declare war on Afghanistan, the place would be a radioactive glass parking lot. That doesn't mean we're going to nuke-and-pave the Silk Road.

We haven't firebombed Kabul (we did it to Dresden and Tokyo in WW2), we haven't carpetbombed areas inhabited by civilians (we did it during Vietnam), we haven't turned entire cities into ash (we did it to Japan in WW2), we haven't used chemical weapons on the Taliban (as was widespread all over in WW1), we haven't sprayed carcinogenics over civilian population centers (Vietnam), we haven't fought the decisive battle of the war a week after the peace treaty was signed (War of 1812).

If you think that what we're doing to Afghanistan right now is "waging war on the people of Afghanistan", you need to read a few history books. What you're seeing in Afghanistan is about as gentle a war as the United States has ever fought.

These are the assignments for the previous five weeks of economics. Notice how relatively simple they have been, easily understood etc.

• Discuss the difference between Laissez fair and a Central coomand economy in terms of production and consumption decisions. What is the position of the American economy in a wide spectrum of market structures between Laissez fair and Socialism.
• Discuss the price system and the alternative methods used to ration demand. Relate your answer to the types of economic Systems.
• 1. Define Inflation and Unemployment.
  2. Compare Unemployment both under the Classical theory and the Keynsian theory.
• Explain how we arrive at Personal Disposable Income from Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
• Please discuss hyperinflation and its consequences.

Now, here is this week’s assignment:

Equilibrium is attained only when Aggregate Expenditures (AE) are equal to Aggregate Income (y), that is AE=Y; and if Consumption is part of both income and expenditure.
Y=AE– C+S=C+I, explain how the economy can be thrown out of equilibrium.

Yeah, that’s a logical progression from known to unknown. Damn, did this guy even take any Instructional Systems Development classes?
current_mood: amused

CIA Factbook entry on Afghanistan

Life Expectancy at birth: 46.24 years
Literacy: 31.5% (47.2% of males, 15% of females)
GDP per capita: $800 (estimated)

Do you think the bombs could make them more miserable?
current_music: – Fat Lip

Major update to my website’s navigation system. After procrastinating for months (ok, more like a year), I’ve finally gotten around to doing something. Whew! Lots of typing and HTML-tweaking later, Andy Social is all pretty and stuff.

Yea, verily, bow to the CSS-based goodness and the wondrous Javascript menu from Morten.

Except for a couple pages that have a specific need, the background is seamless throughout the site now, thanks to the magic of linked CSS pages. If there’s a navigational or format bug I’ve missed, please let me know.
current_mood: accomplished

Since there is no real “industry organization” for web design, anyone can claim to be a web designer, just by having their own web site. One I came across today has been around a couple years and actually has an order form on the site. This great web designer, fluent in HTML and many many programs, has a website that does not validate as ANY version of HTML or XHTML. There’s not even a head tag or html declaration on the individual web pages. One cannot start an HTML file with the title tag. Yep, really good advertising for your chosen trade…
current_music: Clannad – Na Laethe Bhi
current_mood: amused

Um, why did a post from 2 weeks ago resurface today on LA LJ Bash? I’m not even planning to go anymore, and I’m pretty sure that store is closed anyway. Very strange…

Approximately 130 California National Guard soldiers stepped off a commercial airliner into the Arizona desert Oct. 25 to augment Fort Huachuca's force protection mission. The soldiers of Company C, 1st Battalion of the 185th Infantry Regiment of the 40th Infantry Division were mobilized on Oct. 12. The San Jose, Calif. area unit will support local security forces for a period of 365 days with an option for a second 365-day period.

And people asked me why I didn’t join the Reserves or Guard when I got out. “It’s a sham job and helps you get some extra cash,” they would claim. Yeah, right. Imagine being the schmuck who bought that line and now you’re away from your life for one or two years.

How many people put themselves as their own friend, so they can have one page that includes their own posts as well as their online contacts’ postings? And, why? Do you forget what you’d written?

The in-laws keep asking what we want for Christmas. So, why not point them at the Amazon wishlist or my CDnow wishlist? Oh, because they don’t think those things are what I “really” want. So, I put them on there why then?

What kind of bizarre inside jokes do you share with your oldest friends? Here’s a wacky example (remembered because of a particular password that was generated by some site) for me and . The word “friend” is used by some folks to indicate more than mere friendship, if you know what I mean. So, we decided that there should be a different word for that type of quasi-relationship: frend. The plural of frend is frendz, to further differentiate it from merely friends.

So, what kind of inside jokes have persisted for a long time with your friends (or frendz even)? This one has been around since 1985 or so.

Nothing to say, just want to try out the new icon. God, I’m bored today.
current_mood: bored

Why do so many people have to lord over others their love of obscure art? It’s as if nothing can be good if it’s also popular. Oh, gee, I’m sorry I don’t have time (or the geographic benefit) to seek out that cool new Serbo-Afrikaans TechnoThrash Dubmix that is soooo much better than anything that you might actually be able to find in a damned record store.

No, this is not directed at anyone, just a random rant while waiting for Mr. Sandman to bop me on the head….

Considering that I once considered a 1200 baud modem to be a screaming upgrade to my online experience, it’s amazing that I yearn to get off this butt-slow 33k connection, no? Even worse is that it is supposed to be a 56 k connection, but I’m getting a normal throughput of 3.94kiloBytes/sec (31.5 kbps). Stupid BFE damned town with no broadband options. Grr. mumble mumble bitch complain.
current_music: No Doubt – Platinum Blonde

Don’t suppose anyone has “New Age Girl” by DeadEye Dick available for me to purloin? Not only can’t I find it on Bearshare (dialup may skew my results) but they don’t seem to sell it on CDNow even.

Anyone?

For my Antisocial Store:

For the Origami store, just here for the special offer. Cute little moose, and all you pay is shipping and handling, assuming you buy something else. You know you want to!

Well, it’s Aaron’s birthday today (or for 3 more hours in Korea anyway). I guess he’s almost old now…

Meanwhile my ranking on the T Shirt Countdown has dropped from a high of 20 to today’s #24. Eh.

Played hooky from work yesterday (but called to let them know anyway), and for the first time in 4 months someone actually wanted to see me. And, not just one person, but two. What are the odds?

<rant>
OK, more griping about inconsistencies between browsers. MSIE, the most popular of all browsers, if only because it is preloaded on every Windows and Mac machine, renders fonts literally. Meaning, if someone specifies the font size on his page as being 8 points (you know who you are, you evil shits with low-res monitors), it will render at 8 points regardless of what you set the little “Text Size” menu option at. This seems reasonable, if a bit inflexible. The other two big browsers, Opera and Netscape, both consider the “Text Size” option to be a zoom button. Netscape makes the text larger, regardless of the settings in the HTML, and Opera makes the text and graphics larger.

Personally, I prefer the “non-Microsoft” approach, if for no other reason than I find 8 point text way too fucking tiny and people keep using hard-coded fontsizes even though they’re absurdly inflexible and actually countermanded by HTML 4.0 standards.

</rant>

I wonder if will ever put an actual entry in his journal. I’m sure something of interest must happen occasionally. 🙂

I’m rocketing up the charts now, boyee! Yessirree, I’ve jumped from #46 to #35 on the T Shirt Countdown list. Big deal, I’ve still not sold enough shirts and mugs to get a commission check, but then I wasn’t expecting to make money at this anyway. Anyone wants to look at my stores, feel free.

That’s all I’ve got to say; I’m boring today.

Update: Now I’m #20, so I’m on the front page of the site. Woohoo! God, I’m sad.

Want to read some of the most convoluted reasoning to support a conspiracy theory? Check out this article, which claims that Bin Laden used paintings to communicate with his people in the US and around the world. Yeah, right.
current_music: Five For Fighting – Alright