The insanity continues.  The White House press corpse spends Saturday evening adulating a narcissist who who considers it meaningful for a photographer "memorialize" for all "the people" what was supposed to be a private, meditative moment.

FWD:

I recommend the following site: http://www.teatrogolden.com/link/great.link.php?page=licicogyjbemymy

Test

test number two

How to drive up blog readership statistics 101 - - - Use the term "Same Sex Marriage" in your title. Guaranteed.

Blogster and Statistician to the Stars William M. Briggs, a personal favorite read, Friday posted his take on the judicial decision to overturn California's Proposition 8. By Saturday afternoon his site had processed well over 40 comments and I'm sure his blog had received at least 10 times that number of "hits". Fortunately - or maybe not - Matt Briggs doesn't totally rely on blog advertising to put beans on his plate, but he is sometimes controversial vis-a-vis global non-warming, etc., thus traffic numbers are encouraging and probably a good thing. He needs to get his name out there often so ensuing national administrations will tap him to be a future Secretary of State or maybe even something more important. But I digress.

Briggs raised this point:

Those outside of two-person, male-female sets who want conferred upon them the status of marriage paradoxically ask to be part of tradition. That is, they want the trappings of marriage: the ceremony, the rights and, although we rarely hear about these, the responsibilities. But they also want the tradition overthrown, or abandoned. There is no solution to this paradox.

Most commenters on the site were civil and anxious for "dialogue". In fact on this topic they almost rose to the level of commenters on "The Belmont Club", and imho that's quite high. But in the post and during the comments a troubling issue arose that spawned measured disagreement. Because later on he also said:

The third, and most fascinating point, is that the judge, in slaying tradition, only discovered a right for two same-sex persons. He did not (yet?) unearth a right for three, four, or more mixed-sex persons. Nor did he tell us that people and cats could be wed.

The last sentence seemed to strike a dissonant chord with several commenters who deemed it illogical, labeling that topic a "slippery slope". That's one way to sweep the issue under a rug, but their problem here is that Professor Briggs is totally logical. He teaches logic. He lectures on logic. He reads long, dry books written by long-dead authors we've never heard of who wrote about logic. And the commenters who thought the point illogical did not refute this, merely chose to label and forget it, hoping it would go away. It won't, and in more than one way it might actually be an "identitative slippery slope". No matter the best of intentions, when "tradition" is thrown out the window whatever takes its place is never static. Things do change.

In my view when all is said and done - and it's not at that point yet - secular societies of the future will at some point find themselves under pressure to, in this probable order:

• "accept with approval" marriages of more than two individuals.
• "accept with approval" marriages of an adult and a child.
• "accept with approval" marriages of more than three individuals of both genders.
• "accept with approval" marriages of humans and what we currently considered to be a different animal.

All this even though currently many consider the subject to be illogical and a "slippery slope". They may be right, but they might also be wrong. It is only their opinion, not something cast in stone.

Remember rule #44, little ones. Things change. The rising ground may yet prove to be too lubricious for safe passage.

It's Official! The NBA totallly fries the mind.

At least if you're playing guard. In Detroit. For the Pistons. For twelve years.

Nothing else logically explains the latest idiocy emanating from the mayor of that bastion of democratic mal-management, the worn out and economically depressed city of Detroit, Michigan. Appointing a convicted murderer, no matter how well rehabilitated, to the city's Police Board only makes sense to those interested in ripping society apart, not building community.

Taking nothing away from Raphael B. Johnson for the vast strides he's made in returning to society, but putting a former wolf in charge of setting policy for sheep is not a prudent thing to do. How could anything go wrong? Of course living in and holding office in that city could also qualify as lack of prudence, but that's another story.

Don't know the size of Detroit's current phone book, but that's got to be one city where the late William F. Buckley, Jr., might have needed to rethink his famous Boston phone book maxim.

Has Firefox finally "jumped the shark"?

When Mozilla first brought out Firefox it seemed such a clean, simple browser program. Quick, intuitive, fully functional for the casual user. All-in-all an ideal time-saving alternative to the blunderbuss that had grown from the original IE.

Over the years Firefox has gradually morphed into numerous "new and improved" versions - probably to either keep up with the Jones or preempt the Jones from trying to improve their product. The problem is that each "improvement" has seemed to make the browser harder to use, taken longer to load and less stable to browse. Today, each day - running on Vista with plenty of guts and glory - it takes five to eight minutes to initially load - IF it doesn't need to "upgrade" something or other. The last time I counted there are 23 add-on's and features on my update screen roster, though not each one populates the screen every time - thankfully. But this is turning into a serious chunk of time.

And now it looks like they have finally "jumped the shark". For the last eight months three out of five times I close out a Firefox window the program becomes unstable and stops responding - forever, apparently, if I had that much time left to hang around - which being on social security I don't. So once again, after all these years, control-alt-delete are my new best friends. If it weren't for that nice Task Manager program it would be re-bootsville five to ten times a day.

In that same length of time I've upgraded Firefox to the newest, slickest, "bestus" version each time its been offered, but whatever is causing the slow loading and unstable close outs has apparently not been new, slick or best enough for the mavens at Mozilla to mingle with their upgrades.

All of this would be merely a minor problem if Firefox or Mozilla had some type of support system old folk like me could use. They don't. They have "user forums" for everything. Have you ever tried to figure out how to get on the proper user forum to ask a question that won't get you laughed off the planet? No, I thought not. I regularly get kicked off City-Data Forums by moderators and I've never cussed or used a dirty word on them, once. It's just that going to a forum with a problem seems as sensible as driving all the way across town to the Walmart when a laundry load is ready to run through the dryer. Walmart might help, eventually, but the best solution is waiting for me just 3 feet away.

So unless "Firefox Lite" debuts in the next few days it looks like I'll once again be shopping around the browser store for something simple, clean and intuitive. But not Firefox.

UPDATE: This afternoon (7/31) loaded Opera, tried it out a couple of hours, uninstalled Firefox, re-booted and reopened Opera - and my screens have never been faster and simpler. At last a lite browser that doesn't slow me down.

Watching little white balls . . . . .

Will be tied up the next week volunteering as a shuttle driver for some very fortunate athletes. Should be back in action after the 20th.