The Flame Warriors website is an awesome tool. It's not just funny and amusing. It's really quite on the spot. Lots of people try to say that we're all different. But are we really? In reality, we all tend to conform to a very finite number of basic personality traits. And to that end, The Flame Warriors page provides a service. I've been in on-line communities now for 17 years. I was the Sysop (admin) on a whole set of BBSes back when I was a teenager. And from then on up, I've come to reali...

According to PoliticalCompass.org I'm slightly left of center with a slight Libertarian bent. This would probably come as a surprise to some of the extreme left-wingers on JoeUser.com who think anyone who isn't an outright socialist is a "right wing kook". So what makes me slightly left-wing according to this test? Easy. Consistency in viewpoints. I don't trust monopolies. My dislike of big government is not founded by libertarian values. I'm not a libertarian. It comes from ...

There are some movies you see and even as you leave the theater you want to see them again. The Star Wars movies are a good example. They're light pop-corn flicks. Other movies are powerful films that are well crafted, sometimes considered master pieces. But once you see them, you don't want to see them again. Troy is closer to the latter. I don't know if I'd call it a masterpiece but I would definitely call it a really impressive film work. It holds up pretty well to some of the classics of ...

This evening on the way back from my son's little league game I turned on NPR. I was greeted with an incredibly sympathetic report on a Mexican immigrant who was on death roll for his roll in double homicide commited during an armed robbery. The report gave air time to every member of his family. Father, mother, sister, etc. It provided a sound bite from his attorney and talked about all the support he had received from various organizations. Missing from the report was a single word or me...

Ever notice that anti-americans usually have no idea how hypocritical they sound? Anti-Americans use words like "alleged" or "assumed" to qualify evil deeds done to Americans.  But even the most far-out theory or assumption of something an American has done wrong is taken as a literal fact. And they wonder why so few people in the mainstream have any respect for them. Bad things don't need to be qualified. If you do a bad thing, it doesn't matter where you're from. There can be ex...

Like most nerds or at least pseudo-nerds I have fantasized about being able to go back in time, knowing what I know now, and right wrongs. Over time, the fantasy has gotten increasingly less tempting.  The first problem came after I got married. I didn't want to do anything that might cause me not to meet and marry my wife. After I had children, I realized that the whole fantasy was really doomed because even if I could go back in time and make sure to meet my wife at the right time, I ...

This was over at Right Wing News today. Thought it was hilarious. Here's an excerpt. Read the whole thing at the link below. Dan Koppel: I'm your announcer Dan Koppel here with my co-hosts Peter Brokaw and Laurie Malkin. It's late in the third quarter and the Damascus Jihadis have the LA Lakers on the ropes. It has been a dominating performance by the Jihadis... Peter Brokaw: You said it Dan! Nothing has gone right for the Lakers tonight and coach Phil Jackson's gameplan is the likely c...

The underlying model and algorithms for The Political Machine are pretty good. Ultimately, the model is a mishmash of polling data from dozens of sources combined with demographic data. What, I think makes The Political Machine special is that it makes heavy use of demographic data rather than just looking at polls. What that means, fundamentally, is that at the end of the day, conservatives tend to vote for Republicans and liberals tend to vote for Democrats and once you understand that, it's ...

Here's a great article I found that really talks about just how absurd the situation is where people go from one day feeling great anguish about the abuse of POWs to the next day wanting to "turn the whole place into a parking lot" due to changes in events. The fact is, there are villains in any military or any organization. But there are also real monsters out there. Some people villify the United States. But what they don't seem to recognize is that there are real monsters that lurk out the...

Some interesting stuff over at VodkaPundit. The British invented the concentration camp, as a way of dealing with enemy women and children during the Boer Wars. Germany invented the industrial death factory. France invented the modern subjugation of Arab lands by Western powers. Are these the reasons why Europeans are screaming so loudly today about "mere" (by their own inventive standards) psychological abuse? The first court-martial for abuse of Iraqi prisoners will begin in less than t...

We were in the Detroit News today.  The article was for The Political Machine mostly but was ultimately a profile on our company. If you're interested in it, you can read it here: Detroit News Stardock article

So tonight we're watching The Simpsons. Tonight they had two episodes, one of which was about a campaign to make Springfield an un-kid friendly place. About half-way through, they have a scene of them changing the Toy's R Us logo and show kids crying including Milhouse grimacing. It was just for a couple of seconds. But apparently I'm not the only world war II history freak out there. One of the writers there made a reference to a World War II image of a sad French man in a crowd as the ...

Some really good fan fiction here. This is a story of Obi-Wan talking about his experiences after sending Anakin to his doom. Post Episode 3 pre-Star Wars.

It's mother's day and my wife is out getting a dress for dinner tonight. So I'm at home with the boys. The boys are mirror images of one another. The 7 year old is gentle, kind, thoughtful. But also soft, fearful, and uncompetitive.  The 3 year old by contrast is strong, willful, adventurous but also disobedient, slow to learn, stubborn. I've been trying to teach the 7 year old how to ride his bike. It's been difficult because he has no interest in learning whatsoever and is afraid of...

So we saw Van Helsing. I didn't have particulrly high expectations for it but on the other hand I was pretty excited to see it. Personally, I really liked it. But then again, I always found The Mummy and The Mummy Returns to be enjoyable (but not as good as Van Helsing). But it is definitely in that same feel. Lots of special effects shots -- LOTS of them. Of our group that went, opinions were mixed. I kind of felt it was up there with Indiana Jones in terms of overall enjoyment though the...