Nihil’s Waste of Bandwidth

R.I.P. Bettie Page

December 12th, 2008 at 9:21 am (Miscellaneous)

Wow. Bettie Page, at the age of 85, died yesterday.

Here’s to a woman who had more troubles than most but still managed to get through pretty well!

Oh yeah…and was in some of the hottest pictures known to man.

Comments

Bill O’Reilly is a bigot

December 9th, 2008 at 10:30 am (Free Thought)

I think the title says it all, but please let me repeat. Bill O’Reilly is a bigot.

In his usual whinings about the “War on Christmas” he is complaining about the sign in Washington State with a simple Atheistic proclamation. Why? Because it is different than his own “Judeo-Christian” sensibilities. He recommends that people of other religions petition their congressmen if they want to see their own religious holidays observed. Yet when the Atheistic community did exactly that he starts crying.

Let’s face it, this country is about all different types of people, not just his kind of people. He cries political correctness, but he should say is fairness. Because that seems to be what he’s against. He wants nativity scenes on public property, but nothing else from other communities? He wants Christmas but not Ramadan or anything else?

That, my friends, is bigotry. Plain and simple. Of course he immediately jumps to Martin Luther King Jr. day as an example. But that’s a different story entirely. The holiday has nothing to do with his having been a minister. It has to to with his being a leader of the rights movement in this country. His desire for equality. Why does O’Reilly bring this up? Because he doesn’t want to sound as much of a bigot as he is. But make no doubt about it. Bill O’Reilly is a bigot.

Bill’s bigoted rant

Comments

Stem cell research breakthrough!

November 21st, 2008 at 10:42 am (Science)

So it appears that the first lab-grown tissue transplant made from a person’s own stem-cells has been completed!

Check it out!

Of course you’ll notice that it didn’t take place in the USA, nor does it look like our scientists and doctors had anything to do with it whatsoever. Why is that? Oh yeah! I remember! Because it was outlawed! Oh well…it is nice to know that there are still people in the world who are interested in progress.

Comments

So nice to be loved

October 22nd, 2008 at 8:38 am (Politics)

So Representative Robin Hayes thinks “liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God.”

Let’s take a look at that statement.

First of all, according to Representative Hayes all liberals are hateful. That’s a big statement right there. I wonder if he really believes that. Chances are that he’s just reflecting his own personal hatred toward people who are not like him.

Now, on to the good part. He’s saying that liberals are not real Americans. I have grown to really detest the concept of a real American. Everyone who says that seems to think that a real American is someone agrees with their way of thinking. Recently a senator wanted to go through the ranks and sift out the real Americans much like Senator McCarthy some time ago during the Red Scare. I thought we would have learned our lesson. But then I guess not. We have people who honestly think that Obama is a terrorist. Funny how many of those people think are in the Congress. Or maybe, and I know this is going to be shocking, they just have different ideas! Oh no! We can’t have that!

On to the three categorical entries for real Americans: work, achieve, and believe in God. So, according to Representative Hayes the liberals hate people who work. Really? So they hate themselves? Or is it that there is this massive number of people who don’t work, and they’re all liberals? Achieve? Ok, so liberals don’t achieve either? Well, if by achievement you mean getting somewhere by violating the things that the liberals believe in, I could understand that. If your brand of achievement means to rob, exploit, cheat, and harm many for your own benefit I’d gladly say that I hate everyone in that category. But that’s not the only kind of achievement, and I don’t think that was the kind that Representative Hayes was thinking about. So once again he’s accusing the liberals of never achieving anything and being bitter because of it. Nice assessment of humanity!

And on to the last, and my favorite. Representative Hayes is trying to pass off liberalism as Atheism. Now think about this for a moment. Liberals, nearly half of the country, are Atheists? Why, that would be quite impossible given that Atheists only made up about 13% of the country’s population in 2000. I can’t imagine it has gotten that much bigger since then. 25% maybe? A possible number given the drastic increases in atheism, but certainly not the entire liberal population of the country.

So what’s he trying to do? He’s trying to say that the other side of the political arena are a bunch of lazy, good for nothing, godless heathens. Is this true? No. Is what he said hateful? Certainly.

But there’s even something worse. When first called in to account for his words he denied them. Flat out. No question. He had said no such thing. That was until the tape appeared.

You know what that makes Representative Robin Hayes?

A liar.

Plain and simple. Isn’t that nice? Is that the 11th Commandment? “Thou shall cover thine own ass at all costs?”

I wouldn’t characterize myself as a liberal in the slightest, but to be honest there’s little to like about the Republicans these days, and this guy exemplifies my issues. Whatever ideals the party stood for, and for many still does, has long since eroded away from the top level leaving a group of rotten politicians whose main job in life is to maintain their positions. Not that this is unusual, mind you, but they have a bad case of it. I think the Republican party needs an enema. Kick out the old guard and get some fresh blood in charge. Not that they’ll do it, but honestly that would be nice.

Comments

Time Warner Cable v/ Lin Television

October 6th, 2008 at 9:21 am (Miscellaneous)

I love getting caught up in corporate bitch brawls.

Two channels have disappeared from my cable lineup because Time Warner Cable and LIN TV can’t agree on pricing. I understand the overall argument. One side wants to make more money and the other side doesn’t want to pay it. That’s not the really sad part since that kind of thing happens every day. The sad part is how willing both sides have been to completely screw their customer base in order to get the point across about how serious they are.

Where’s that leave the customers? Well, fucked to be honest. I don’t get two stations, one of which constitutes a good chunk of my Monday TV viewing schedule. Time Warner suggests I use an antenna or watch things online, which makes me wonder exactly why I would bother with cable TV in the first place. Between the different stations putting their content online and being able to torrent the rest I’d figure it a lot cheaper to just skip the whole cable TV service entirely. Of course Time Warner doesn’t mean I should do that for all of my TV…only for CBS. Lin TV and their local affiliate WIVB suggest I switch to Dish Network immediately. So much so I’m starting to think that Dish is slipping them some serious cash for the advertising. Why don’t they recommend DirecTV? But you know what? I would dream of switching providers solely on the recommendation of a station that thinks so poorly of me that they won’t extend their contract while negotiations are going on. That’s like getting recommended which hospital to go to from the guy who just kicked you in the balls.

If you’re interested in catching the different sides of the argument here’s the links for Time Warner Cable, LIN Television, and WIVB’s take on the situation.

At the end of the day all three are saying the same thing to their customers: screw you.

Comments

Google Chrome

September 3rd, 2008 at 8:12 am (Computing)

Google Chrome looks very nice in concept. After reading through the comic book explanation of what they’re up I really wanted to give it a whril. So I installed it yesterday on my work machine, but I get nothing but sad tab errors. For everything. Blank pages. www.google.com. Chrome’s Help. Everything.

Whoops.

Since I haven’t seen much of anything in the news as yet about massive failures I’m guessing it is just me, but I haven’t had the chance to install it on another computer to figure out what could possibly be the issue. FF works just fine, and lamentably I have to use IE for some work things, and that’s fine. Hmmm…some obscure policy issue perhaps?

Comments

Nvidia bullshit

March 24th, 2008 at 3:37 pm (Computing)

Those of us who work in the computer industry are in the business of dealing with other people’s mistakes. That’s it, really. I spend my days fixing bugs in other people’s software and hardware. Then I get to go home and deal with more of the same.

Today’s fun? I bought a new monitor for my computer, a Samsung SyncMaster 932BW. Why? Because I have the earlier model of the same for my other computer and it worked fine the first time. What happened now? Well, since I have a newer video card it is unable to communicate the default resolution to the monitor. So where my 6800GT works my 7900GS fails. I finally came up with a solution: switching from DVI to VGA cables.

Quality, eh? But then I expect no less from the computer industry, and Nvidia in particular. After all, they still haven’t figured out how to make a driver install program that won’t fuck up your system unless you completely uninstall the previous one, reboot, and then install the new one. Yeah, that’s also a Windows problem but neither of them can manage to get it to work, and they probably never will. Why? Because that would take effort.

Comments

7 more deadly sins

March 19th, 2008 at 7:26 am (Free Thought)

So it appears that the Vatican has decided to revamp the seven deadly sins.

Here they are, according to the Sidney Morning Herald Blogs:

1. accumulating obscene wealth
2. polluting the environment
3. genetic engineering
4. drug dealing
5. abortion
6. pedophilia
7. causing social injustice

So let’s see. Given #1 he should give up all of the church’s gold, because if there is an obscene amount of wealth anywhere it is in the Vatican. With #6 does that mean he’s actually going to DO something about it? I can’t even tough #7 in light of the church’s espousal of genocide.

According to the Vatican’s official newspaper L’Osservatore they are:

1. Genetic modification
2. Human experimentations
3. Polluting the environment
4. Social injustice
5. Causing poverty
6. Financial gluttony
7. Taking drugs

No more human experimentations or taking drugs? Why is this reminiscent of when doctors couldn’t dissect corpses so the pope had a Jewish doctor? After all, modern medicine involves a lot of numbers 1 and 7.

Wow. This pope sucks. He’s the fucking George W. Bush of popes.

I have a better list they should pay attention to. How about:

1. Protecting the wicked
2. Abusing confidence
3. Promoting the spread of disease
4. Promoting war and hatred
5. The destruction of other cultures
6. Lying to protect your wealth, power, and prestige
7. Actively working to halt the progress of humanity

Oh wait. Those can’t be sins because they’re EVEN MORE GUILTY OF THOSE!

The Pope's good side

Pricks.

Comments

Nondescript brain error

February 28th, 2008 at 9:51 am (Literature)

Whenever I try to write something I’m reminded of some various lexical issues my brain has. For instance I have always had an issue with spelling some words that have double letters in them…or sometimes putting double letters where they don’t belong. Just something my brain does from time to time…no biggie overall. The big nuisance (I just tried to spell that as nuissance by way of example) of it is that it is usually the same words over and over. I can’t seem to correct it.

I bring this up because there’s one of these things that really drives me crazy. I know how the word is spelled, but for some reason when I type it my hands inject an extra T. The word? Fantasy. For some reason it usually types out as Fantasty. Fan-tasty. What the fuck is with that?

Come to think of it I think I have an answer: Boris Vallejo, Louis Royo, et al. Their book covers were definitely a case of Fan-Tasty!

Or, for that matter, Joe Jusko:
online pharmacycialislevitrapropeciaviagra

All of a sudden I want to go buy some more fantasy books.

Comments

Taner Edis

February 13th, 2008 at 8:06 am (Interwebbery)

One of my favorite blogs is The Secular Outpost, given to us by Taner Edis. In one of his latest entries he put together a Devil’s Dictionary of academic disciplines. I thought it all quite funny, especially this one:

Political science: If “science” appears in the name of a discipline, this is very often because it is not a science.

Check out the whole article here.

Comments

Nihil’s Waste of Bandwidth

R.I.P. Bettie Page

Bill O’Reilly is a bigot

Stem cell research breakthrough!

So nice to be loved

Time Warner Cable v/ Lin Television

Google Chrome

Nvidia bullshit

7 more deadly sins

Nondescript brain error

Taner Edis

Pages

Archives

Categories

Blogroll

Web Comics

Meta