Friday Catz

-- ml
tags: cats, Dum Luks Community

Will at Imagethief offers a disquisition of importance:

Granted that there at least two main types of censorship. One is loud censorship to set an example. Here is where the boundary is. Don't cross it. Kill the chickens to scare the rhetorically inclined monkeys. A second type is the quiet, subtle censorship that influences ideas in the public domain that you never here about. This is the informal guidance to editors that is never revealed, the changes to school curricula to ensure contentious ideas are removed, and the stories and books that never make to the public in the first place and that thus don't have to be noisily suppressed later.

What we can't know is already overwhelming.
That we willingly compound that by forbidding, or hiding, what we might know is our great shame.
--ml
tags: Design, Dum Luks Stockpot

A Quarter for a Truism

Walker at Maxspeak:

Economists are trained to type in the assumptions that will maximize the career-utility of their results.

Too bad inflation has rendered the reward so small compared to the merit of the thought!
--ml

Update 5/13/7-- It at last penetrates the thick carapace in which I preserve the odd goo I call a brain from sulliment by coarse, unreasoning reality: The above might be construed as a cretin's sneer at his betters, i.e.: Economists. The furry little scene inside the camera obsura of my imagination -- more obscure than camera -- was quite other. The thought was that we are all so limited to what pays in our assumptions that it is little wonder actual new paradigms are so singularly thin on the ground. Most people have the well commended opinion that only fools re-invent the wheel. That in the face of what a clumsy contraption we make our contrivance.
tags: Dum Luks Community, aphorisms

Creates Chaos

Ac-c-k-k!!!

The monitor died!

Let's see. This was the open box special I bought to replace the DAK 386 monitor the cats learned to play soccer with.

In the middle of the night.

That was seven years ago.

As my Father-in-law so justly said :

"That's amortized itself three times: it doesn't owe any body nothin'."

--ml
tags: Dum Luks Community, the march of technology

Chaos Creative

Dum Luk's Central: Where it all began one not so dark afternoon.
In the lower left corner is Judge Dee, The legal arbiter of Dum Luk's as knit by Diana out of her own pea brain.
--ml
tags: Dum Luks Community, Judge Dee

Parameters: 2007

Saturday, April 28^th, 2007 was this blog's second anniversary. The Kid^tm was showing off her excellent cooking skills to her boy friend, the MacGears and us. Much hilarity ensued as four twenty somethings and a three year old reenacted the gunfight in Support Your Local Sheriff using bubble pipes, guns, and Rube Goldberg contraptions. Dinner was her set of original variations on Rachel Ray's Korean BBQ flank steak on hot and sour slaw salad (30-minute Get Real Meals, Clarkson Potter Publishers, 2005, pg 71) plus foil roasted potatoes. Mac Gear bought an outrageous pineapple fruit cocktail upside down cake. Perhaps he'll oblige with the recipe at his place. Such frivolity is sufficient excuse to delay this post. Sunday's excuse is that the swamp finally drained enough that I could mow the back 0.040 acres.
Posting nearly doubled, while page views jumped from something like 2400 to 6658. Of the last 100 viewers the US provided 65. Unknown Country (home of the wild 'any key' tree) coyly supplied 9 reticent lurkers. Canada claims 7 to the UK's 6. Australia stumped up 2. One each came from Korea, China, the Czech Republic, Japan, South Africa, Kazakhstan ("Borat again? Tell him I gave at the car wash!"), Norway, New Zealand, the Philipines, Taiwan and Iran.
Maybe 18% come just to see what's new. The remainder landed here as a result of appropriate search words. How to avoid farting when eating beans? or similar wording is the most popular which makes my post about Cowpoke Beans the must often visited.
Techorati has tracked over 50 million blogs and places Dum Luk's 373,737^th. That would seem to place me in the top 1% of bloggers. Alas only the top 0.1% make any money at it.
The Truth Laid Bear has raised my status from a multicellular organism to a wiggly worm with a ranking in its more discriminating ambiance of 24,425.
Of the 957 people who have looked at my Numly Copyright notice since I posted it -- in March I think -- 5%, or 41 people, have voted, with half saying thumbs up and half thumbs down. Given the cussedness of our species I think that's a compliment. If I'm wrong, no good purpose will be served by stepping out of your way to tell me so.
The most important point is that, who ever you are, for whatever reason you came, and whether I satisfied you or not, Thank you for giving me the chance to entertain and just possibly add a bit to your store of knowledge.
--ml
tag: Dum Luks Community, blog statistics

TRUTH: An Irritating Sound

A commenter some where who appeared on Digby's ' scope said:

Bush leveraged a national tragedy into reelection. He’s seeded the federal government with true believers, expanded executive authority while marginalizing Congress and appointing 2 radically conservative SC judges. He’s expanded government surveillance of our phones, e-mails, libraary borrowings, bank accounts and medicine cabinets. He’s stalled efforts to curb global warming, cut protections once provided by the EPA, FDA, and silenced scientists who dare refute the literal word of bible or the backward beliefs of those who claim to know the mind of the almighty. The US can now torture, imprision without providing cause and prosecute without allowing a reasonable defense. He’s built bases in the middle east, and fattened the bank accounts of those whose bank accounts were already obscene. The middle class — the masses — have not been so economically impotent in decades.

For such an idiot, this guy has been awfully successful.

That requires a fair amount of thought.
Consider the walnut shells and the pea.
hmm...
While misdirecting our attention he stole what he wanted.
Q.E.D.: Pirate!
--ml
tags: Dum Luks Community, pirates

Ah So-o-o-o Desu ka?

Gad, I admire John Hawks!

The reason, at least in my mind, is that science is never unanimous. Consensus itself is a meaningless concept in science. Even a crank can be right, if his predictions come true. Science depends on the concept of testability, which in my mind makes it the most special system of knowledge ever devised. It is good that science is conservative, and it is good that it is slow, because both these things contribute to claims being tested properly.

Read the whole thing -- not to be ashamed for assuming so much too soon. but to learn how to have true patience.
If only I could. Sigh.
--ml
tags: what is science, Dum Luks Community

No News is Good?

The ultimate sound bite is silence.
(RIP CBC Radio2 news)
--ml
tags: aphorisms, Dum Luks Stockpot, CBC Radio 2

It Don't Mean a Thing

If it ain't got that ...

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Me too.

Matt Yglesias:

"If I had a choice between leading in national polls (Clinton), leading in fundraising (Obama), or leading in Iowa (Edwards) I'd take leading in Iowa."

I'm not sure it means as much as he seems to think - not yet, anyway - but yeah, me too.

You say ...
I say ...

It ain't got that

Was Anne Hutchinson arraigned
for contravening dogma?
or because she was a woman
who claimed to speak with God?

swing.

--ml
tags: Dum Luks Stockpot, quandary