Discussion of the situation spun up on Web Hosting Talk where it was determined that Blogetrey had been accused of hosting inappropriate content before. That probably meant they were hosting torrents or other illegal but not shut-down worthy. Copyright infringement. The site owner claimed that every copyright violation was removed within 24 hours. By the way, if you ever get slapped with a DMCA notice (i.e. a notice that your site has content copyritten to someone else), in order to be safe from a law suit, all you have to do is remove it. Done.

So what on earth would cause BurstNET, their host, to shut down the site without warning or notice? That’s right, he had to ask ‘What happened to my site?’ and was told it was shut down, terminated, and here’s his money back.

Turns out he had a link.

From BurstNET’s statement:

“It was revealed that a link to terrorist material, including bomb-making instructions and an al-Qaeda “hit list”, had been posted to the site. “

That’s it. A link. One link. But it was enough for a warrant which then showed this:

“Upon review, BurstNET® determined that the posted material, in addition to potentially inciting dangerous activities, specifically violated the BurstNET® Acceptable Use Policy. This policy strictly prohibits the posting of “terrorist propaganda, racist material, or bomb/weapon instructions”. Due to this violation and the fact that the site had a history of previous abuse, BurstNET® elected to immediately disable the system.”

Now the previous ‘abuse’ was copyvio, which was all handled legally, but clearly BurstNET was feeling the pinch. They probably got slapped with a wwarrent and did the legal thing: They shut it down.

Reagrdless of if it was fair or not to the other 69,999 sites hosted by Blogetery, it brings up the inherent problems of running an unchecked MultiSite. Anyone can make a blog/site, anyone can update it, and anyone can get you in trouble.

It’s been a few weeks, but finally news is coming out about the whole story. CNET’s article was invectively titled Bomb-making tips, hit list behind Blogetery closure. That said, it explained this in more detail which let everyone get a grip on what was actually going on.

I’m not going to get into the ethics of free speech and how it does (and doesn’t) apply to your website. Instead I want to use this as a reminder of the trouble you can get into, hosting websites. I host four, three are ‘mine’ and one is a site I like and visit pretty often. I’m very much aware of what’s going on all these sites and I monitor them frequently. This is not just to my benefit, but to everyone else’s on my servers. My host would be 100% within their rights to say “Ipstenu’s got a site that has kiddie porn! Kill her account!” and that would shut down everyone on my server.

As I mentioned before, WordPress MultiSite makes it a lot easier for someone to host a thousand blogs, unchecked, but that also means it’s a lot easier for someone to post questionable content. For copyvio cases, you’re covered when you remove the material in question, but for porn and terrorism, it’s not actually under the same purview. Again. I’m NOT going to get into the why of this, nor the right or wrong about it. If you have a website, you have to accept that your host really has no interest in being involved with a legal dispute regarding kiddie porn or terrorism.

This means it’s down to you to constantly and consistantly monitor your site for sub-sites and domains that are questionable. For me, if a site I host gets one Cease and Desist about copyvio, I take down the material, explain to the person who runs the site why, and ask them not to do it again. At this point, it’s their job to monitor their site. Should they fail to do so a second time, I give them a final warning of ‘If you can’t keep tabs on your site and your visitors, you can’t stay here.’ Third time and I close their account, refund them what’s left on their time, and offer to give them a copy of their site and database, intact.

For the rest, though, it’s a no-warning termination, specifically because porn and terrorism are hot button topics. I’m within my rights to do so (I own the server, I make the rules) and I owe it to the other people. My ISP is in their rights to do similar, because they own the … land my server is on. If that makes sense.

If all this sounds like too much work for you, then you shouldn’t be running an open, anyone-can-register-and-blog, multisite. Or you should hire some staff. Multisite is not a quick money scheme, it’s a job, and you have to take it seriously.

This is not endemic solely of WordPress, but with the advent of MultiSite becoming mainstream, it’s something that’s going to start coming up more and more. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Here are two articles I read that made me wonder how these idiots get jobs in the ‘real’ world.

Naked Came The WebComic

Art, “Art”, and Almost “Art” – What qualifies as “art” in webcomics?, by Jules Rivera, only counts as ‘news’ and not a blog by the virtue of having ‘NEWS’ in the URL (if it had blog, I’d forgive it entirely).

I’m going to say this. If someone walked up to me and said ‘You’re not a writer, you just blog’, I might pop them one. I do too write! You are here, reading my writing, and either enjoying it or rolling your eyes at my idiocy and moving on. By the way, you’re welcome to do that. But this right here is my art.

I take particular offense to her deciding the XKCD, possibly the wittiest and most fun webcomic I’ve run across ever, is a terrible comic because it’s a stick-figure comic. She says of these “This is a person who is not making an effort. The more lazy the artwork, the more terrible the comic is to look at.”

Clearly she also feels math is hard.

As for a webcomic she says is ‘better’, we’ve got the one I don’t actually read regularly, Order of the Stick. The text size is too small. Seriously. I can’t read it. But I do think it’s one of the better D&D parody strips out there. And since I’m not actually a rough and tumble D&D girl (I had a bard who was actually really crap with lyrics, I miss him), it’s not my thing. Still that doesn’t diminish from the fact that the work is really good.

Look, just because you don’t ‘get’ the art, doesn’t make it invalid. I can’t stand Hemingway (a couple of my relatives will shortly be sending hit-men to my house to kill me, so this will possibly be my last blog post ever) but I appreciate his work! I get why he’s famous and a master, but it’s not something I’d read for pleasure. For that, I’ve got Moby Dick, a book many people hate. That’s how art works. It makes you stop and think.

And if the webcomics that make me stop and think are a stickman world (XKCD – don’t forget your hat!) and a photocomic of a dude writing on a chalkboard (Surviving the World, thanks Dante), then don’t diminish their work. There’s room on the net, and in the store, for all of us. Diversity is good! Express yourself the way that come’s naturally!

Well … except this next guy.

I’m With Coco

NBC’s Gaspin Talks About Emotion of Late-Night Changes, by Brian Stelter, is a failed article, not for anything Brian did, but for what his subject said, when asked what he’d learned about the whole Tonight Show shenanigans.

For those who don’t know, on May 29th, 2009, Jay Leno stopped doing The Tonight Show on NBC (which runs at 11:05pm ET) and started doing the Jay Leno Show at 10pm (same station). Conan O’Brian got the nod for Tonight, and in January of 2010, rumors began than he was going to be punted and replaced with … Jay Leno. Okay, the ratings weren’t great for either show, and I don’t know anyone, personally, who actually watched the Leno Show, but a lot of people, myself included, felt that it just wasn’t fair to Conan. I recall commenting that NBC were idiots for not just letting Leno GO and leaving Conan for a year. Late night TV isn’t the same as regular TV.

But. NBC didn’t. They fired Conan (there’s no other word for it, people), and then Jeff Gaspin, NBC Universal TV Entertainment’s chairman, said that he had underestimated the emotional drama that the whole shipwreck caused.

Quote: “I probably, you know, I probably underestimated the emotion of everything that went on. I went to Conan, to Jay, to Jimmy with a very logical, rational plan. I explained it to the press. I wasn’t trying to hide anything. And I think the underestimated the emotional impact it had on Conan, in particular.”

Frankly, he comes off sounding like this: Gee, we had no idea firing Conan would hurt his feelings! As I tweeted to my friend Sabrina, Well it’s not like NBC execs have any experience with being fired. How would THEY know.

I’ll let how stupid they are stand without comment.

Right away I knew we hit someone. My first thought was to text home and let everyone know I’d be a little late. My second thought was to check out Twitter and see what was up. There was nothing out there, so I tweeted that the train had stopped 3 blocks from the station, and there was no explanation, but I thought we hit someone.

After about 15 minutes of waiting, they announce there was a ‘Pedestrian Incident’, and I was sure we’d hit someone. The police, an ambulance and four fire trucks were brought in and, over the course of 2 hours, they investigated. Yeah, two hours. I sat on the train, gabbed with a friend, twittered when I had news, shared news with the people in my car (like how the Red and Purple lines were going to honor Metra passes that day to help people get home), and waited.

My friend called NBC, who told her they knew, but according to those at home, it never made the news. It wasn’t in the paper (except as a small, one paragraph mention in the Chi Trib), and it wasn’t on the WGN News at Nine. In fact, had I not been on the Metra and had Twitter and was following @MetraUPN, I might not have known what was happening at all!

I don’t fault the Metra. There was little, if anything, they could do. You don’t want to announce ‘Yeah, this train is a KILLER’ and scare kids (yesterday was ‘Take your Child to Work’ Day), but on the other hand, some status would have been nice. And where were the reporters? We could hear (and see) choppers, but frankly, if you go search Twitter for ‘Metra’, you can find my comments (I apparently was the first) followed by a horde of other Tweeple on the same train, and then, HOURS later, regular news Twitter accounts picking up the news.

Hours passed, and the news felt it more important to Tweet about iPhone’s stupid ‘Baby Shaker’ app. Which is terribly offensive and wrong, Apple, dude. Not even WBEZ mentioned it (though apparently it did make the radio).

Go try to find articles on it, and you’ll be hard pressed to find more information than Twitter had, at the time of the incident. The only thing I learned from the ChiTrib that Twitter hadn’t told me was that the guy did die (the ambulance left with sirens on, so I assumed he was still alive), and the autopsy is today (Friday).

Well done, Chicago News. This is why you suck, why you’re losing money, and why you’re becoming archaic. If you can’t report on things in real-time, you’re nigh useless. I don’t want to have to wait a day to find out why I was stuck on a train for two hours. This is 2009, catch up!

Apparently he claimed he never meant to steal from anyone And the kidnapping? It was all a misunderstanding. Obviously he’d just asked them to ‘wait over there.’ And the gun was a prop.

Mind you, I think this is a few years too late, because if you can find me 100 people other than those jury members who think he didn’t kill Nicole … Right. Have fun in jail, O.J.

On a side note, Boy George was found guilty for cuffing a rent boy (that is a male escort, sorry) to a wall. Boy George thought the boy had hacked into his computer and was restraining him while he checked it out. Alas, George is also guilty, but I think he needs a doctor’s care more than a jail. Sentencing will be handled later.

Have you heard of this one? A guy in Crystal Lake, IL, claims his dog knocked the gun out from under the bed when the dog hopped into the bed. As the man picked the gun up to put it back on the bed, it accidentally discharged and shot his girlfriend.

Bail is set at $500,000 and the charge is attempted murder.

Japan, being smaller than the US, still has a great number of teams for the size. Nippon Professional Baseball is the highest level of professional baseball, and should be compared to the Major League in the US. NPB has two Leagues, Pacific (Pa) and Central (Se), which are comparable to the American and National Leagues. Since they’re so small, there’s no need to add in Divisions and Leagues, and right now it’s six teams per league, for a total of 12.

The Kansai Independent Baseball League is brand new. They haven’t even played a game yet, but will next year. I’ll have to tune in and see if Yoshida is as good as they say. I have minor qualms about letting a kid play hardball, since she’s still growing (Monica Selles anyone?) but there are the few prodigies who rock it hard.

Headline: Lesbian Woman Considered For Episcopal Bishop

(Okay, first I didn’t know we had gay foot tapping code, though I suppose any sufficiently jazzy foot tapping would default to gay for men. A male friend of mine pointed out he knew about it, but also that he knew someone who fled a men’s room after being told ‘Nice penis.’ Secondly, “Lesbian Woman.” As opposed to what?)

Seriously, the display Tom presented on Oprah, earlier this year, had a lot of those former teeny-bopper groupies (many of whom I went to school with), who had been able to ignore the homosexuality jokes, the short jokes and the Tooth jokes, wincing and carefully burning those old Top Gun posters. And I can’t blame them a bit.

I never had a Tom Cruise fascination. When reflecting on Top Gun, I liked Val Kilmer’s Iceman: cool, competent, deadly. That’s what I want in my pilots. Maverick paved the way for hundreds of idiot role-players to be the modern era Han Solo. Rakish, good with women, and … sorry, I’m gagging over here. Lesbian or not, Tom Cruise is a short egomaniacal twit. By the way, Napoleon was 5’8″, and in his era was considered quite tall.

Scientology aside for the moment, and oh yes, I plan on getting back to that, Tom is creeping the hell out of people. First of all, no one who hasn’t given birth gets any room to talk about if Post Partum is real or not. I don’t have the background to talk about it in detail, but I have a brain. Thinking about it logically, you have a whole other person carried around inside you for 10 months or so, and then they’re out on their own? Everyone, sit back and remember when you left home (for good, for college, whatever) and how it felt. Scary, a little, for you and your parents/guardians. They were letting you go. It’s probably just as bad.

Now, of course, I expect Tom to rant about how Empty Nest Syndrome isn’t real either.

Whether or not these are real diseases isn’t the point. They are felt by people who, after a while, realize they need help and they get it. Brooke Shields took anti-depressants. While I don’t like the use of drugs to control emotion, I can see their point as a way to help get you on an even enough keel that you can start taking care of yourself. I’m not a big proponent of psychopharmaceuticals, but they have their place.

If you’re not a doctor and you’re not a mother, you don’t get to decide what’s right or wrong, regarding how someone feels after their baby’s born. So lay the fuck off Brooke Shields, Tom.

The only people I see backing Tom up about that are his co-stars, and I think we can rest assured knowing they do that to win a buck in the box office.

I’m going to drop back and point out the fact that Tom and I are both against the over use of prescription medication in people today. Yes, I think it’s a bad thing, and I wish more people could find help other ways, or that more doctors used a mix of the drugs and therapy, to help people be themselves. But for every moderation there are the extremes, and I support doctors like my Uncle Arthur doing what they can to help. After all, they’re doctors. They’ve been trained to do that sort of thing. I’ve been trained on computers, writing and anthropology with a paltry two years of college under my belt. Tom? Dropped out of Franciscan seminary school and went to NYC at 18.

Tom’s also a member of the Church of Scientologist.

I’m going to be a little careful in what I right, since Scientology has a rather offensive defense to things. I’m not attacking anyone, but I want to point out why I don’t fancy Scientology. I also oppose some tenets of the Church of Scientology.

Okay, the first thing I need to say about Scientology is that it is a made up religion. L. Ron Hubbard wrote about Dianetics in the 1940s, and in 1949 his stories about it were published in a magazine called Astounding Science Fiction. Now, there are opposing arguments about why he did this. On one hand, Hubbard had been rather unsuccessful at getting the book published and getting any interest in it from medical professionals. Obviously, the need to make a buck overrode any possible ‘this is just for religion’ thoughts at the time. On the other, he saw this as a way to get his word out there. Given that one of the first books published by machine was the Guttenberg Bible (the first was a school book in Latin), I think we can say that this sort of thing happens a lot. Money for G-d and all that.

And the word was that inside all people is an immortal spirit called a thetan and a lesser sort of genetic entity. The thetan has lived many past lives, which can cause problems in the present day by remembering things that didn’t happen to your genetic entity. The thetans, and there are levels to this, and most of their details are kept secret. The most well known story about they is that of Xenu, a galactic tyrant who was the Hitler of 75 million years ago, blowing up billions of people by stacking their frozen bodies around volcanoes and then blowing them up with an H bomb. On top that that, he brainwashed them with a 3D movie for over a month. The surviving thetans surrounded humans (75 million years ago) and acted as spiritual parasites. They’re called Body Thetans and can only be removed by Scientology, which is indeed the mission of Scientology.

One could argue that all religions are made up. The most well known example of that would be the Anglican Church, which we all know was created so Henry VII could divorce his wife. It’s been tradition for years to, if you disagree with the teachings of one church or sect of your religion, and enough other people agree with you, to split off and make your own. And by in large, we’re all okay with that. Just don’t get me started on Jews for Jesus.

What makes Scientology different? Why do people lambaste it and fear it and loathe it? To a degree it’s because Scientology scares us. It’s different, and different things mean a change for the status quo and that makes the majority of Americans uneasy. Just look at how they freak about gay marriage. It’s a change.

Last night I watched The Truman Show and I said to Ipstenit that Truman had to be some sort of an idiot not to notice things for years. She smiled at me and said “A lot of people accept the reality that’s been given to them.” She’s very right. We’re handed a reality by our parents and teachers, and we’re taught to accept it. One plus one is two. That’s real because we all believe it. Because the symbol for one and one objects is two (2). It’s that way because of consensual reality. Not to get all philosophical on you.

Let me take a moment to speak of a made up religion that involved an impending war. The founder of this religion was so concerned about this war, than he took efforts to make sure it happened when he was ready for it so that he could protect his followers. He said that war was immanent, and the next one would be as large as “all the wars that have ever been fought, piled on top of each other.” He offered to lead his people to safety in the desert, and prepared by stocking up food and supplies to wait out the war. After a time, he started to say that the war was not beginning as planned, and he would have to teach people how to start it.

His name was Charles Manson.

Manson’s religion, The Family, was scary as all fuck, and not just because he got his followers to kill people (though that helped, I’m sure). His methodology was well chosen to induct people. When you joined, you gave up all your money, any photos you had of your family was destroyed, your personal items like clothes were shared out to everyone. In a peculiar way, it acted like a Kibbutz, or communal living, except that on the Kibbutz, you shared. For Manson, things were taken from you. It’s a thin distinction, but it’s one of the most important. Children were also taken away so they could be raised free of the ego of the parent. On the outset, that’s a good idea on many levels. Then you can no longer contact your previous life. It’s over.

Slightly similarly, Scientology asks that you sever all contact with people who don’t believe you about (or at least respect your views on) Scientology. This is called Disconnection. Now, this is only to happen in severe circumstances. There are also claims of brain washing.

I’d like to call your attention to a young woman, raised a strict Catholic. She was well known actor, and had just moved to a big city. On a certain day, she was seen at a Broadway play. Three days later, she went to a charity event. Another three days and she went to a concert. Then she vanished for 16 days, during which time she fired her manager and agent, both of whom had been with her for years. The next thing anyone heard about her was from her newly minted boyfriend, who was jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch, declaring his love for her. Katie Holmes, for it is she, dumped her childhood friend, not an actor, from her circle of friends and replaced her with the daughter of a Scientologist. Katie’s claimed that her favorite actor as a young girl was Tom Cruise. Thanks to the power of the internet, we can tell you that her fan sites have claimed, since Dawson’s Creek was new, that she idolized Tom Hanks.

The Saga of Katie is disturbing when looked at from that angle, and it should be, just as we should fear the tale of and feel sorry for Paulette Cooper. When people make a complete personality switch like that, we’re raised not to think of it as normal. Are we wrong? Possibly, but evolution is made of small, tiny changes that grow to affect the whole. The same, logically, should be said of our personalities. When Ipstenit and I started becoming more religious, we decided to take baby steps. As a whole, changing your view on the world is daunting and overwhelming. But one step at a time, well. Anyone can handle that.

So what, specifically, do I stand in opposition with, in regards to Scientology? In a word: Narconon.

To quote Tom Cruise, “Scientology [has] … the only successful drug rehabilitation program in the world .. called Narconon.” The day he said that, you could hear the whiplash from places like Betty Ford. Narconon (don’t confuse it with Narcanon, aka Narcotics Anonymous) is Scientology’s rehabilitation and learning program.

Narconon delivers a “New Life Program,” consisting for a detoxification and rehabilitation stage, complete with heavy doses of niacin, vitamins, exercise and sauna treatments. Taken as an exercise regime, it doesn’t seem so bad, but the effect is that of breaking down your willpower and ability. Narconon is highly controversial, and many medical associations deem it dangerous. Their use of the theories of drug metabolism is often noted, primarily I feel because it’s still a theory. Narconon cites a 70% success rate. An independent, Swedish research study came up with 7%.

After Tom’s little comment, the American Psychiatric Association turned their phasers to kill. They started with the obvious, calling Tom “irresponsible [...] to use his movie publicity tour to promote his own ideological views and deter people with mental illness from getting the care they need.” Even if you admit, as you should, that doctors still aren’t 100% sure what causes many mental illnesses, you can’t agree that Narconon is the only effective treatment.

By the way, Tom used Narconon to determine that he doesn’t actually have dyslexia, and he never did. Thanks.

I can hear a few of my teachers screaming. His too, probably.

Niacin, which they use to treat people, is also known as vitamin B3, and was originally discovered from the oxidation of nicotine. A small deficiency in it can slow the metabolism, resistance to cold, and cause you to gain weight. I’m assuming that Narconon gives you niacin based on some reading I did, but I couldn’t get a clear answer. Niacin acts as a vasodilator, or a substance that causes blood vessels in the body to become wider by relaxing the smooth muscle in the vessel wall. This can lower your blood pressure and reduce pressure around a clot. In large quantities, it also makes your skin flush (a lot, think sunburn) and itch, and makes for a gastric adventure. Vitamin B3 is used in the treatment of mental illnesses by Orthomoleculars (a medical practice similar to homeopathy, based on the use of vitamins and such).

I should note that Orthomolecular medicine is, as of yet, an unproven theory, and it’s well documented that high doses of certain vitamins can be toxic and cause other problems. Most conventional (Western) doctors will tell you that a balanced diet is a better idea.

Does it seem a little hypocritical, by the way, that these anti-drug, anti-psychiatry Narcononists are okay with niacin? Maybe their just against anything but their drugs and brand of psychiatry. They would probably argue that since niacin is found in the body, it’s a natural treatment. Taken at face value, everything created on Earth is natural, unless someone’s secretly found a way to create matter from nothing, and if so, there’s a Noble prize waiting, or at least, James Randi would throw a cool million their way. Not to mention poor Hubbard was addicted to mood stabilizing drugs near the end of his days.

By the way, I don’t actually like those 12-step programs like AA and NA and such, even when done at the Betty Ford Clinic. While they may work for some people, the ones I know who’ve gone through it (and are willing to talk about it) say that the 12-step system breaks you down. The fact that one of the tenants to AA is that you understand your addiction isn’t your fault makes my eyes cross. Surfing the internet will find you dozens of sites about how AA doesn’t work, same with Narnocon. Oddly, I didn’t find anything anti-Betty Ford, though they’re very pro 12-step.

Is Scientology a religion? By the basest description of a religion (the service and worship of God or the supernatural; commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance), yes. It’s also a bit of a hoax, but the two aren’t opposing forces. Australia, who does recognize it as a religion, puts it best: “Charlatanism is a necessary price of religious freedom, and if a self-proclaimed teacher persuades others to believe in a religion which he propounds, lack of sincerity or integrity on his part is not incompatible with the religious character of the beliefs, practices and observances accepted by his followers.”

But just because I acknowledge and support everyone’s right to believe in what they want to believe in doesn’t make me like them.

With his disturbingly large fan base, I imagine Tom Cruise will alienate people. Anyone doing a Google on Scientology will hit Operation Clambake as their second hit and maybe, hopefully, they’ll look at all that too.

Thanks to the Internet, more people have access to more information, and lying to people becomes harder and harder. Secrets are secrets anymore, and someone will post the information to their blog, to use net, to Wikipedia, and within an hour, everyone else will hear about it. I hope this means more people will find themselves quoting Eddie Izzard quoting Martin Luther, when they read about Scientology: “Eine Minute, bitte.”

Update
After I wrote this, I read the following: Katie Holmes keeps trying to phone her ex sweetie, Chris Klein, but he’s so annoyed by the calls that he’s changed his number, according to US Weekly.

Second thoughts, Katie?

The Adventure of Rudy, Tony, Sal and Jem

Rudy: Hmm. We seem to have lost the legged ones in that great wash. Well, we’ll keep together, then.

Sal: Sounds like a good plan. Should we go look for them? They don’t swim so well.

Tony: I’m not getting near that water by where we live. It smells like oil.

Rudy: Tony’s right. How about we stick as a group and look for them out here. They probably got washed out.

Jem: I’m hungry.

Rudy: … Or we could eat. Is anyone else hungry?

Tony: It was a rough trip, getting washed out here.

Sal: I’m a bit peckish.

Rudy: Okay, okay. Tony, go get the fish.

Tony: What? How?

Rudy: We’ve seen the legged ones do it! It can’t be that hard.

Tony: I… what? I can’t get fish! I don’t have thumbs!

Rudy: Well, use your initiative!

Tony: Fuck that idea, you can get the fish.

Sal: Oh! Oh! I have an idea!

Rudy: What? Go find some other legged ones with the buckets?

Sal: No, look! There are fish down here, under the water. We can catch them!

Jem: And eat them live!? I’d rather die!

Tony: Hey, Sal’s right. And I don’t think we have much of a choice. It could be days.

Rudy: It could be forever.

Sal: Here, look, I’ll get one …

Tony: Oh my god, she’s actually eating a live fish.

Rudy: How was it?

Sal: Um, different. Warmer, but not a lot. I like the bucket fish better.

Jem: Nope. Not eating.

Two Weeks Later

Tony: … telling you, that the little red ones are yummy. Jem, you’ve gotta eat.

Jem: [weakly] Nope, nothing doing.

Sal: Rudy, do something! Make her eat!

Rudy: I would if I could, but- Hey, what’s that?

Trainer: [on a boat] Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!

Sal: Is that…

Tony: It might be a shark! They’re smart!

Rudy: No! It’s Legged Ones! Hi! Hi! Hi! [backflips]

Sal: Legged Ones! [backflip]

Tony: Yippie! [backflip]

Jem: [tired] See? I bet they have fish.

Trainer: [talks in human speak for a while] Come! Come! Come! [throws out fish]

Sal: Ooooh, don’t do that, the sharks!

Rudy: Jem, eat up! We’ve found them.

Tony: Won’t the sharks eat them?

Sal: Don’t be silly, they have a … a floating thing.

Rudy: [swims up and talks to the trainer]

Tony: So, they’ll float us back home?

Jem: Oh, god, fish! Fish! Fish that isn’t shitting!

Rudy: Okay, I’ve talked to the Legged One. He seems to understand we’re hurt, tired, and hungry. He said something about Jem being annorexic. Anyway, he’s going to get the transporter and we’re going home!

Okay, I’m not going into politics directly today, I’m on a small history kick. Did you know Abraham Lincoln only got 39.8% of the popular vote?

I’ve had people point this out to me as (yet another) reason he sucks, and proof that Lincoln lost the popular election. I finally found the metrics for my rebuttal argument. Stephan Douglas, the Northern Democrat opponent only had 29.5% of the popular vote. Douglas had the next highest vote percentage of that election. After him is Northern Democrat, Breckinridge, with 18.1% and pulling up the rear is Bell the Constitutional Union rep with 12.6%.

Interestingly, the fact that there were two Democrats, Northern and Southern, is probably why the Dems blew out that one. It’s also pretty indicative of a Mason-Dixon bitchfest that has precious little to do with Lincoln at all.

Looking back at our Electoral College debacle of recent memory, I noted that the popular vote figures for the 1860 election exclude South Carolina. Apparently the Electors were chosen by the state legislature rather than by popular vote. Lincoln wasn’t even on the freakin’ ballot in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee or Texas.

Can you even begin to imagine the outcry today if that had happened?

And yet, even without those states, Lincoln won the Electoral College with 180 votes, needing only 152 to win. Those aforementioned states added up to 55 Electoral College votes, which is fairly significant. Stephan Douglas had 12 EC votes, Breckinridge had 72 and Bell had 39.

I hadn’t meant to point out the idiocy of the EC, but it looks like it does that for itself.

Lincoln was elected and South Carolina turned around, said they laughed at our Northern Ancestors, and secede from the United States. Tangentially, South Carolina was the first state to ratify the the Articles of Confederation (our first Constitution).

The outgoing president, Buchanan, played Lame Duck and didn’t do jack until Lincoln stepped up (thanks, asshole, way to work for your fucking country). The Confederacy officially started the war by shelling Fort Sumter. I refuse to call it the ‘South’ in that sense, since Missouri was a slave state, and if you’re going to argue the war was about Slavery, then you have to include the slave states. Missouri and Kansas tried to secede, but couldn’t get the votes right. Then again, if you’re arguing it was about states’ rights (which I do), then it gets more hazy trying to pick a side by geography. I’m just saying.

Oh, do me a favor and look up the Star and Bars to get a good look at what the real Confederate flag looks like. The Confederate Navy Jack (down near the end of the page) remains the one people recognize. Pity.

I’m not the only one who thinks Buchanan (the president before Lincoln) was for crap. C-SPAN and a bunch of historians have all rated him as bottom of the barrel. Example of idiocy? It was Buchanan who denied the legal right of states to secede. He also was the fellow who publicly stated he wouldn’t run for re-election and said he wasn’t going to make waves. Buchanan intended to sit out the crisis by appointing an equal number of appointments from both sides of the, soon to be, Civil War (at the time, they called it the Schism).

I like screwing with my own head, and sometimes y’all reading this have to cope with coming along for the ride.

For Ipstenit’s sake, I’ll mention, in the realm of weird American presidential trivia, that Thomas Jefferson was a Deist and materialist, and once said “I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology.” That said, he was a vested Episcopal, that is a lay officer, and attended a church run by fellow with the name of Jospeh Preistly. Priestly was a bit of a heterodox in the Arianism faith. Arianism is special in Christianity in that it believes Jesus is the Divine Son of G-D, created by G-D, and as such the two are not contemporaries, and Jesus is always a lesser divinity than G-D. There’s also a bit that they can’t be contemporaries because Jesus didn’t exist before he was created, whereas G-D’s been around forever. Jefferson, for his own sake, wrote his own bible, called ‘The Life And Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.’ That bible, while based on the Christian gospel, removed spirituality. Strikes me rather as a history book, and I think I’d like to read it as such.

Other Deist presidents include George Washington, James Madison, James Monroe, John Tyler and Abraham Lincoln . Zachary Taylor (12) is also solid possibles for Deism. Of the seven, except for Lincoln, they were all from Virginia at a time when the Episcopal Church was the state church. Lots of people try and make a stink about that meaning the fellows were Episcopal, but their own works deny that statement.

Four presidents were without religious affiliation (by that I mean they didn’t go to a church). Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant and Rutherford B. Hayes. Grant was listed as a Methodist in some places.

In case you think the Bushes are the only father/son duet to cause a voting eyebrow raise, remembers the Adams family. John Quincy Adams was the son of John Adams, and lost both the Electoral College and the popular vote. Yeah, and we thought Bush’s win was weird! JQA was made president by the House of Representatives. JQA also had a pet alligator. William Henry Harrison had a pet cow. Millard Fillmore and Chester A. Arthur had no pets.

Harry S. Truman didn’t have a middle name, just the letter S (and often said it didn’t need the period, even though he signed it with one himself). Ulysses S. Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant, but his appointment to West Point named him Ulysses Simpson Grant and ended up as the S only at graduation. Theodore Roosevelt hated the nickname Teddy (as well as his childhood nickname of Teddie). Jimmy Carter actually sued people to get on the ballot as Jimmy instead of his legal name, James, because people identified with him as Jimmy.

Andrew Jackson was born somewhere in the Carolinas. The exact state is unknown. The state with the most presidents is Virginia (8), and eight presidents were also born before the US was established, and were born Brits.

Lincoln was the tallest president, at 6’4″, beating Lyndon B. Johnson by an inch. James Madison, at 5’4″, was the shortest, next to the 5’6″ Martin Van Buren and Benjamin Harrison.

FDR was the president for 4,422, and the next set of people were only presidents for 2,922 days (Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton). George Washington served 2,865 days. William Henry Harrison made it 31 (or 32) days, and at the age of 67 was the oldest man elected as US president until Reagan won at age 68. Ironically enough, Harrison was the first president to die in office, and he died because he caught a cold at his inauguration. Harrison gave the longest inauguration speech ever, clocking in at around 2 hours.

Benjamin Harrison (William’s grandson) had his predecessor, Grover Cleveland, hold an umbrella over his head while he gave the longest speech since his grandfather.