Round up the horses, it's time to ride

So originally weblogs were places where surfers put links, weren't they? Kottke springs to mind as your archetypal weblog. Just links and short rubrics: not much more than look at this. I've done that from time to time but not for a while. So here is a blog in the old skool way. I bookmark a lot of pages, thinking, I suppose, "that'll be interesting to come back to" and just occasionally "I need to know where to find that". So I'm going to blog my most recent bookmarks, with none added, none taken away.

This and this are profile pages for one of S's stalkers. She has several (not including me, obviously). Now I'm not one to read too much into a photo (you should see mine! You'd never believe I'm southeast Brisbane's answer to George Clooney from my photos, I can tell you), but if I was illustrating "chav" for a book, I'd choose this girl. I don't know whether the thing coming out of her mouth is drool, gum or some sort of sex aid. And man, I don't want to know.

Here are a ton of CSS resources. I'm halfarsedly trying to improve my web skillz. There aren't enough hours in my day though. The web skillz are improving about as quickly as my Latin, Greek and Arabic. BTW, if you wanted to learn a language, try this place. FSI courses are reckoned to be one of the best ways to learn. They centre around drills, so that you acquire the ability to speak the language more so than to write it.

I picked this up from the blog of the guy who sometimes comments as "high in the sky". He sometimes goes by Sopwith Camel or Albert Ross (you can discern a theme, I'm sure). I enjoy his comments and his blog is very readable. Ear Farm looks a bit rock for my tastes, but I like mp3 blogs. I like anything that says "I like this, what do you think?"

Sam Spade is my IP lookup site of choice. I bookmarked it long ago but I did it again for ease of use. It's much simplified these days because it's in the process of being rebuilt. I don't often look up IPs -- I don't have cause now that I no longer play shell games -- but you never know (cue sinister music?).

Wikipedia is not completely bollocks. Like many websites, it has a use (which is not necessarily the one it thinks it has). It's a good place for outlines. If you don't know what a thing is, or where to look for information, it works as a useful aggregator. I bookmarked the page on the Indus Valley civilisation because I wanted to find search terms to pump into Google. This civilisation interests me because a/ it is one of the oldest, b/ it was stunningly advanced -- far ahead of the Sumerians or Egyptians, c/ it is mysterious -- no one is sure who the Harappans actually were and d/ it seems to have made close to no impression on the mainline history of the region it was in. Being old is important because I am interested in learning how man became man, specifically how what we hold to be true became true; how what we do became what we do; whether the complexity of our cultures makes us more than apes, or whether we have changed on the outside and remained the same on the inside. The advanced nature of the Indus Valley culture is interesting because it seems to have evolved entirely in situ. Earlier sites -- such as Mehrgarh -- in the same area are also advanced when compared with other sites of a similar age. It's difficult to discern outside influences on the Harappans, yet they are known to have been in contact with other civilisations (the Sumerians, for instance, called them Meluhha, and there are signs of trade between them). The mystery largely concerns who they were. My understanding had been that they were Dravidians, later displaced by Indo-Europeans, but it seems that it's more likely that they spoke a language from a different family, perhaps similar to relict languages spoken in India today, but not widely. They seem to have completely disappeared, although of course their genes doubtless survive to this day. Many other peoples were swept away by history but were not exterminated or anything like that.

This is the stat counter I've started using. Don't ask why. Just put it down to pure vanity and move on.

As part of an effort to learn why I am shit at poker, I've been studying heads up matchups. I'm none the wiser. This is where I'm at: I can beat .25/.50 limit for 3BB/100. I can beat .50/1 as well, I think. I haven't played many hands but it didn't seem any harder to me. I am beating $5 sngs but I don't have a big sample. I'm not convinced my play is correct though because I seem to need a bunch of luck to win. I also beat the dollar sngs, which is a lot harder, because the rake is huge at PokerRoom and only two places pay. I am hopeless at tournaments. Not hopeless hopeless; but I lose money at them. I can't put my finger on where I'm going wrong. Maybe too tight? Not good enough postflop? The latter could well be it. In an sng, I'm a reasonably good judge of when to get my chips in when I'm short but I don't play well threehanded if the blinds are not very high. Okay, so half the battle is working out where you're deficient. All that remains is to fix it. Easy! (Actually, I go okay heads up. I've grown the requisite balls and I mostly win, rarely coming second unless the other guy gets hit by the luck shovel.) I'd definitely be better if I knew how to work this, and if I start taking sngs more seriously, I'll learn.

The recent shootings have led to a lot of blather and shite and tripe around the place. I won't comment on those who suggest that the victims were all mummy's boys who should have rushed the shooter, because, well, you have to be some sort of fucktard to write that stuff, but others have suggested that having more people armed prevents this kind of crime. That's bollocks, clearly, but for those who buy that kind of thinking, this just might change your mind. Or probably not. If you're the kind of person who thinks the best solution to gun crime is to have more guns, nothing reasonable is likely to make any impression on you at all.

While trying to figure out my login problem, I bookmarked this helpful page. Well, maybe helpful. Who knows? I bookmark tons of these how-to pages and rarely find anything that I actually want-to. Still, I found the chick who wrote it interesting, and followed a couple of links to her (evangelical, black, friendly and kind) and her fiction (erm, awful). I am a people fiend. People's stories, their revelations, the chinks through which the light shows, this is what I am on the web for.

Forty-something years on, the Kennedy assassination generates more web bullshit than any other event. I enjoy conspiracy theories in the same way I enjoy a good novel: I don't expect truth, just entertainment. I spent several hours reading about the faking of the Zapruder film, and rebuttals that suggested it wasn't faked. Problem was, both sides were totally convincing. I find that the only solution is an open mind. Anyway, I linked a library of frames from the Zapruder film, just in case I ever want to write my own conspiracy theory.

efflux might like this. I never thanked efflux properly for rewriting my quote script. He probably didn't grasp how proud I was to have figured it out for myself, but that was no reason to be discourteous about the effort he put into making me a professional version. There's a ton of reading at the Guru's Lair. I have no idea whether any of it is useful or sane but it looks interesting enough, so SCUBAs on and dive in, chaps!

Habitues of the Uselessnet will know what I mean by an "issue troll". They come in different forms: the guys with their own theory of relativity, those who have theories about the Illuminati, scary womanhaters who write long screeds about abortion and so on. Daniel Brandt is an issue troll, and his issue is "accountability". He likes to play the shell game, in other words. He digs up information on people who edit Wikipedia and tries to fuck them up by posting it. Maybe you remember "Jay Maharaj/Jay Stephens" from Uselessnet. Horrid cunt, just like Brandt. Same sort of MO. He relied on people's not wanting their personal details spewed all over the Uselessnet. Not because they were hiding anything necessarily, but because many prefer their on and offline lives to be compartmentalised. For me, it's a question of Dr Zen's having nothing to do with DR. They don't really intersect. Yet they do. But anyway, I feel I should get to choose whether they do. Anyway, I bookmarked Brandt's legal strategy. He claims he is going to sue Wikipedia. I can't see it, if only because there is not a lawyer who would touch his case. See, my understanding of the law is that to bring a case, you need to have been harmed in some way. Some people on Wikipedia have been a bit mean to Brandt, but so far as I know, being a bit mean is not a tort. But Brandt is a narcissist. He seems to me to be a textbook case of the disorder. He very much sees the world as revolving around him and he is loving it at the moment. He is a cause celebre on the wiki -- its bogeyman, as Wikitruth noted -- and on Wikipedia Review, he can hold court and a crowd of admirers tongues his arsehole. If he did bring a legal action, with the consequent inevitable humiliation, he would have to find a new way to posture. Still, he could play the part of victim of the legal system, which he would doubtless enjoy doing.

More poker. This is the late Andy Morton on "schooling". It's as good an explanation as I've seen of why you sometimes want others to fold even when it's correct for them to do so. This is the Cardplayer forum. I read Cardplayer every month. It's a great source of insight on poker. I wanted to check out the forum because Lucko, a blogger I follow, posts there, and he seems to understand tournaments in a way I just don't. This is a paper on optimal stopping. No, me either. I sometimes try some maths to remind myself why I did an arts degree.

I admire the female form. I admire it in many shapes and sizes, as I've noted here before. Women are simply beautiful to me. I sometimes read Pandagon and Feministing (sorry, can't be bothered to find links, but google them and they'll be top of the page) and I'm struck by something in feminism that doesn't make sense to me. Okay, it's true that a woman should not be judged on her looks when expressing a view, going for a job, or doing anything in which looks are not an issue. Attractiveness is rarely part of how a woman should be viewed as a human being. Fine. But not never. When I look at a woman, there is a part of me that says "I'd fuck her" or "No way". Any woman. That's part of what a woman is to me. It doesn't necessarily colour my views of her as an intellect, as a workmate, as a partner in crime, or in any particular way. Is that oppressive? I don't express my view, so how can it be? Anyway, I'm willing to be enlightened on this score, but simplistic ranting won't work. I've read my Dworkin and Greer, so it'll take heavy hitting. For those who also think women are beautiful, or just like cool websites, this is great. I won't try to explain it; just wait for it to load and enjoy. (Reprobates, see whether your answer to "would I fuck her?" changes at all before and after clickage.)

This is the kind of thing the web really is fantastic for. Some geezer has written a huge library of spices and, this never ceases to amaze me, he did it so that he could share it with me. I love him for it.

I don't often read anything out of the New Yorker, and I'm not too clear what kind of magazine it is, but if this article is anything to go by, it's a bloody good one. Yes, some Iraqis met us with flowers and wild cheering. After all, Saddam was not much loved. But we weren't, aren't there for the Iraqis. This is a brilliant study of how we fucked even those who loved us, how they became disillusioned. If you want to know how we lost the war, here it is. Essential reading. Like this post, which is now finished.

posted by Dr Zen @ 8:06 pm