Of Occam, Oswald, Nessie, and Rosie

Whenever an imbecile like Rosie O'Donnell spews forth lunatic rantings about a 9/11 conspiracy, most sane folks (like myself) tend to simply laugh it off. But in a tour de force post on conspiracy theories, Bill Whittle takes Occam's Razor in hand and tackles everything from the JFK assasination to the Moon landing to the Loch Ness monster, and explains how real damage is inflicted on our society by those who perpetrate these "diseased philosophies":

My goal here is not to bust any of these four conspiracy theories; that has all been done much more effectively elsewhere. What I am trying to do here is to build a chain of evidence to show a progressively deteriorating epidemic of world-wide insanity, of truly diseased thinking -- not just a misunderstanding or difference of opinion but real, diagnosable mental illness.

Whittle argues that it's way past time to start pushing back hard against Rosie and her ilk for their dispensing of "cultural suicide pills". Read the whole thing.

DST2K

A site of mine, MarchMadPool.com, that is hosted by GoDaddy.com is down today, as are many other sites hosted by GoDaddy. Some suspect that GoDaddy's hosting servers were ill-prepared for this morning's early change to Daylight Savings Time; Elf M. Sternberg calls it a "mini-Y2K, and says "this completely sucks". I couldn't agree more - MarchMadPool.com is a site I use for a large NCAA tournanment pool that I run every year, and today is Selection Sunday! This is inexcusable, especially since they've had nearly two years to get ready - the legislation changing DST was signed in 2005.

It appears other computers are also experiencing "DST2K" problems: Sprint phones aren't showing the correct time, and neither is my own T-Mobile Blackberry (tried powering it on and off, but that didn't help). And flights at Philadelphia International Airport have reportedly been delayed by a DST time glitch.

Fortunately, my battery-powered analog wall clock is showing the correct time, after a simple spin of the dial in the back of the clock. Sometimes simpler is better...

UPDATE: The Team Murder blog points to a PC World article from yesterday, in which GoDaddy poo-pooed concerns raised by a customer that its servers weren't prepared for the new DST:

"Thank you for contacting Online Support. As Daylight Savings [sic] does not apply to our servers, since we are on Arizona Time and our time zone does not change, our servers wouldn't update," reads one of the replies he received, and which he provided to IDG News Service.

Are. You. Effing. Kidding. Me?

UPDATE II: YawpCo! reports that "as of 3:18pm EST it appears that GoDaddy services are restored". But my MarchMadPool site is still down...

UPDATE III: See the comments at this Slashdot post for a tech geek discussion of the GoDaddy debacle.

UPDATE IV: As of 3:48pm EST my MarchMadPool.com site is back up and running - praise be! Let's just hope it stays up for the duration of March Madness...

Cavegirls gone wild

In the news today: Women may have invented weapons.

Well, duh - anybody who ever saw the epic 1966 documentary "One Million Years B.C." already knew this. Yet another example of lazy journalists not doing their research...

7 Weird Things

I have been "TAGGED" by NoSurfGirl, which apparently means I must post 7 weird things about myself. I don't know how this got started or what it's all about, but the fiesty lass has challenged me so I must respond...

7. In 1969 I was with my family visiting relatives in San Antonio, and one night as we drove back from dinner at a pizzeria we sighted a large glowing football-shaped object moving in and out of the scattered clouds in the sky. We were able to keep it in sight all the way back to my grandmother's house; as we drove into her neighborhood we saw that dozens of people had come out into the street from their houses to watch the strange object, which remained in view for about half an hour. Cue "X-Files" music...

6. My first girlfriend in high school was named Sunday Palmer; she is the first and only person I've ever met to be named after a day of the week (ok, it would have been weirder if she'd been named Wednesday Adams, but I don't have a lot to work with here).

5. I put hot sauce (preferably Louisiana Hot Sauce) on nearly everything I eat, be it prime rib, Ahi tuna, Chicken Kiev, or pineapple pizza. I do refrain from adding it to ice cream and cold cereal, however, so again it's not *totally* weird.

4. I met former teen heart-throb Shaun Cassidy while working as an extra on a terrible TV-series spawned by the great movie "Breaking Away". The series (which only lasted 5 or 6 episodes) was set in Bloomington, Indiana, but at the time of filming Bloomington was an Arctic tundra so the show came here to Athens, GA. I could be seen for about 1.6 seconds when the episode that I worked on aired on ABC in late 1980; perhaps they will have more of me when somebody gets around to putting the director's cut of the series on DVD...

3. Speaking of TV, for most of my adult life - especially when I was younger and thinner - many people said I looked like Mr. Bean (Rowland Atkinson). On a trip to Jamaica around 1990, some people I met during a party at our resort was certain beyond a doubt that I was Mr. Bean traveling incognito; no matter how much I tried I couldn't convince them otherwise - I don't even have an English accent, for crying out loud. About seven years ago I was shopping in downtown Vienna, Austria, when a couple walking behind me on the street started talking loudly and gesturing towards me...I had no idea what they were saying since my knowledge of German is pretty much limited to the word "bier", but in about every other sentence I heard the words "Mr. Bean". Of all the famous actors I could have looked like....well, it beats being called "Danny DeVito", I guess.

2. Around 1994 I "led" a protest march in downtown London. The protest was in favor of - you'll never guess it - acid-tripping rave parties. What happened was that my friends and I were walking from our hotel to see the Houses of Parliament, and since I'd been to London before I was leading the way. As we neared Parliament, we saw hundreds of young people assembled in a small park near the street, holding some kind of rally. We didn't pay much attention to it and continued on our way. But a few minutes later as we neared Parliament, I noticed that the crowd of protestors had left the park and were walking directly behind us on the sidewalk. From their signs and chants I could see that they were protesting against recent police crackdowns on illegal rave parties, where all manner of illicit substances were apparently available ("Fight for your right to party" was on some of the placards). A moment later van-loads of police swooped in from all directions and swarms of baton-wielding Bobbies poured out to meet the protestors head-on - and there I was at the very front of the marchers, looking like I was a freaking Leader of these acid-heads. Luckily we were able to run down a side alley at the last second and avoided getting a "wood shampoo", as a friend in the Ga State Patrol likes to put it.

1. Last night I had a dream that I was one of NoSurfGirl's polygamous husbands - it was weird indeed: she was wearing a hot red jumper (which thankfully covered up her hairy legs), and she spent the whole dream cleaning the floors of my house. Can't imagine where that came from....

An Apology

You may have recently heard that Robert Redford is demanding an apology. Very well, I'll be glad to give him one:

~ I am so very sorry, Mr. Redford, that you think being a Hollywood star makes your facile views on national defense worth listening to.

~ I deeply regret you are moronic enough to believe that "political diversity has been attempted to be thwarted", when every left-wing moonbat in the country has been spewing their bile unabated and at high volume during the last six years (including your own peers, Mr. Redford - Barbara Streisand ring a bell, Bob ol' chum? Michael Moore? Alec Baldwin? Susan Sarandon?).

~ I also sincerely regret you are arrogant enough to imply that people who disagree with you must not possess "a rational mind" or "a sense of decency", even as your own Sundance festival makes a mockery of the concept of decency.

~ And finally, Mr. Redford, I am sincerely sorry that you still cling to sad old '60s rallying cries like "truth to power", and that you are deluded enough to think that such bromides are still cutting edge.

So there's your apology, Mr. Redford. And no need to thank me, I was happy to help.

New look, same ol' crap

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas & New Year's. As you may have noticed, the Den is undergoing some cosmetic changes, which are still in progress. But fear not, the half-baked nonsense you've come to know and love will remain as ever. Check back during the coming week or two as the Den finalizes its new look!