I don’t exactly excuse Jeremy Clarkson for this, but I can understand.

You see, I grew up in the rural, (very, very) racist South. Most people don’t know this, but the common nursery rhyme that begins with "eeny, meeny, miny, moe" in the South at least when I was a kid (and I am certain still does in many areas) always used the word “nigger” instead of “tiger.”

The first thousand (10,000?) times I heard it in my young life, that’s the only version I heard. I didn’t even know there was a version that used “tiger” until I was 11 or 12.

That sort of training – especially for something linguistic like that – is really hard to overcome if you learn it early enough. Even if you try get every racist thought out of your head.

I never, ever say any version of that nursery rhyme anywhere because I might slip and use a word I don’t want to use, because I know how easy it is to do if you’ve heard a phrase used a certain way thousands of times.

Again, I am not excusing Clarkson. I think there should be some sort of consequences for doing something like that.

But I can still see how that could have happened to me easily enough.

When you grow up in a racist place, all that shit just doesn’t disappear by magic. You have to work at it.

I think I am going to stop complaining about Australis now, as the devs believe they have data on their side, not really understanding much about data analysis, how early adopters/power users drive the adoption of new technologies, or the fact that even if only 10% of your users make use of one feature, it’s not the same 10% for each discrete feature.

The devs are righteous in their incorrect beliefs and shoddy data analysis (and understanding of what they should be analyzing), and are now so committed that they can’t change their mind.

Saying anything else about it, like politics or voting, is pointless.

This is one guy that I hate.

I usually don’t call out people like this individually, but he is one arrogant prick making the world worse in his own small way, much like larger players like Obama and the power structure he represents.

The world really is bifurcating between those who will have the ability to powerfully process information and those who won’t.

Google Chrome is now blocked from accessing this site.

If you are smart enough to change your user agent string and read the site anyway, then you are smart enough not to use Chrome.

If I cared about readership that much, I obviously wouldn’t do this. I probably wouldn’t write this site if absolutely no one read it, but I’d rather not have Chrome users on the site.

I would say that I am sorry, but I am not.

Look at what my friend did – she’s awesome!

I may not feel like celebrating, but it took me 2.5 years and a lot of migraines to get to this point. My project asks a question no one has ever asked before and uses some darn clever strategies to get around some cold, hard facts of hard-to-measure ecology.

That’s the sort of thing I could not have done in a million years, and she did it while sick (and surrounded by Canadians! ;- ) ).

I personally do not really care how horrible (or great) of a person an artist is outside of his or her works.

My favorite novel will still be Among Others even if I find out Jo Walton executes kittens with lawn mowers in the afternoon, and then skeet-machetes babies in the evening.

At the same time, I can understand why some people might care as it relates to works produced.

I think art of any type supersedes any one person – even the person who produces it — and when we start examining personal lives, everyone comes up short.

That’s why it’s dangerous to blacklist art for personal reasons in my view, though I can understand different ways of looking at it.

This is not surprising to me.

75% of veterans confident about skills they bring to civilian workforce whereas only 39% of employers believe vets are appropriately prepared to compete for civilian jobs out of the military.

When I got out of the army, more than one person during interviews told me that I had “no experience” despite my laboring in a high-stakes, high-pressure office environment for five years, AND working out 1-4 hours every weekday, AND doing things like regular parachute jumps, AND qualifying on various weapons, AND completing courses to become a combat lifesaver, AND writing for national publications.

But, no experience.

Despite the fact that, as the old cliché goes, I did more before 9AM than most civilians did all day.

Naively, I thought being a veteran would help me get a job. Actually it hurt me, as many employers are highly discriminatory against veterans. If I’d listed nothing on my resume my prospects would’ve been better, but I left my military experience on there as I worked hard for that.

Later on after I ascended the corporate hierarchy myself, I started hiring veterans when I could (and they were qualified), and here’s what I found:

• Veterans are more reliable.
• Veterans react better to stress, as 99.999% of corporate jobs are way, way less stressful than what you experience in the armed services every day.
• Veterans are better at finding unusual and innovative solutions. I suspect this is because in the armed services there are often many institutional roadblocks in your way, yet the mission has to be completed, so you get really good at finding a way to get things done no matter what.
• Veterans complain less overall, but don’t yield when something is really important.
• Veterans will keep going after other people give up. (That’s just something you get used to in the military.)

Obviously this is not true of all former servicemembers. These are just tendencies. However, I’ve never regretted hiring a veteran, but have regretted hiring many non-vets over the years.

Take from that what you wish.

But now when someone says after they find out I’d been in the military, “I didn’t know you were in the Army! You’re actually smart!” it’s everything I can do to not use some of those other military skills I gained on their craniums.

Fortunately I’ve experienced a state of ataraxy as I’ve gotten older, so their craniums remain unblemished.

I hate that I’ve been put in a position where I can’t upgrade any software anymore really because the new versions are less powerful, less useful and designed for complete idiots to use.

Not the world I first envisioned when I first got into computers in the early 80s.

Getting rid of URLs is a terrible, terrible idea.

I don’t care that regular users never understood them. If you haven’t noticed, I have very little sympathy for regular users.

Anyway, why do we have to design everything for the dumbest members of society, and the least capable of learning?

Here, I am referring to computer users who have used their machines for 10+ years who still cannot find their start menu, etc.

This commenter said pretty well why it is happening (and it ain’t really about helping users), though, so I’ll just link to that.

We are  going to get the web we deserve, and it is going to be a pile of shit.