Island Dave's View

Well, the bones are up for the new site of IDV. You can find it at http://idv.revise.org/index.php . I'm still putting links together, but all new posts will be there. I hope you've enjoyed this blog, but I think the style and function in the new site will make it a much better blogging experience on both sides. Please point any links to the new address.

--Cheers

Dave

I weep for you America. I weep for knowing how far our nation has swumg toward favoring aggresive wars...limiting personal freedoms....hatred....ignorance....

This is not the nation I was once so proud to be a citizen of. This is a country of bigots...of hypocrits...of selfish douchebags who honestly believe the bullshit being fed them by Bush and Company. Sad....Sad.............Sad...

Where will this country be in 4 years? Contrary to what wingnuts will claim of me, I hope Bush is one of the best presidents over the next for years than I have ever experienced....not likely to happen, but that is my wish. What I fear will happen is a grinding of our military...ballooning debt combined with a failing, faltering economy...isolation unlike any the US has seen in over 80 years...and more Big Brother policies than even Wells could imagine.

There is now little incentive for Bush to hold back on all the things he wants to do. Wingnuts will hold both chambers of Congress, just as they have for what feels like decades. Will they pass laws that help citizens? Not likely...but Bush and his team will have every conservative legal issue pushed so far to the right we'll fall off the track.......

I weep for this, and wonder...What The Hell Is Wrong With You?!?!? Is Kerry perfect? Hell No. But Bush has been the singular worst president in decades, and yet, he gets MORE votes in 2004 than 2000? Jesus Christ, this is a SAD, SAD day for this nation and for the world.

The election won't be officially decided for days, awaiting Ohio, but it is over regardless. Bush will win, and unfortunately, we are stuck with four more years with Chimpo...

Fuck

GA, KY, and IN called for Bush, VT for Kerry. 34-3 Bush early, no changes from 2000 so far and no surprises here.

Island Tiffiney:



Island Dave:

http://www.zogby.com. Zogby's last minute polls indicate a Kerry landslide. Can we be so fortunate?

I've been messing around with the new Word Press account at Revise, and the new site should be much nicer than this one. I expect to have it up by the end of next week. Right now, I'm up against a BlogShares deadline for the help documentation, and classes are still kicking my butt. Next week, the deadline will be passed, and classes take a week off, so I should have the new site ready to go then.

Cheers, everyone!

Oh, how I laughed with this story from the Court TV (via Yahoo):

A Republican in Colorado fell flat on his face trying to steal campaign signs touting John Kerry (news - web sites) and other local Democratic candidates.

...

"He already had the sign in hand and was running out of the parking lot when he tripped over a low chain that blocked off the driveway," Stigall said.

Wagner fell flat on his face and was knocked unconscious. His wife, unaware of his accident, remained in the car.

Do I have to vigorously shake my head at this to show how moronic this guy is? Jesus. What happened to freedom of speech? He would rather break the law in multiple ways than allow someone else to express a personal political choice. Pathetic. He just made my list for Jerk of the Year nominees, though the tripping and knocking himself out part loses him points for humor during the deed...

I won one of the raffles!! w00t!! Needless to say, I am pretty damn excited to be getting this site off of Blogger. Its been a decent starting host, but the publishing issues left a really bad taste in my mouth.

Once I've got the new addy up, I'll post it here. I love the WordPress functionality, and can't wait to get started on it.

BlogShares raffle today. 5 one-year packages for Pro level web hosting from Revise Media, complete with WordPress 1.2.1. I've got a 26% chance at winning one the five based on my raffle entries, and if I get it, you will see me moving this site off Blogger in the near future.

To quote an excellent Dream Academy song..

"Please, please, please, let me get what I want..."

Finally got a nice new desk from Staples, along with a chair. Check em out:

Desk:

I left the top shelving off the desk to free up space.

And chair:

Why the hell does Reuters bother to publish DAILY polls in the US presidential race? I mean, seriously, the race is so close in the popular vote that daily updates like "Bush takes a four point lead" or "Bush and Kerry are tied" are pointless. Today's headline: Reuters Poll: Bush, Kerry Tied in White House Race. A couple of days ago, they proclaimed a four point Bush lead.

Not only does this completely ignore the electoral college breakdown, these "leads" fall within the expected margin of error in the polls. In other words, Reuters is being pretty fucking stupid, and attempting to show daily swings of opinion which DO NOT EXIST. No one is switching from Bush to Kerry or vice versa at this point. NO ONE. If there are any undecided voters left, and that may be a very big IF, these polls do not reflect such indecision. Stop this crap, Reuters, its making me sick.

Will had a very good comment about BlogShares where he voiced concerns about blog valuation. I'd like to answer him, as well as others who share a very common, very easy to formulate, misconception about the game. First, the question from Will:

Though I'm not sure how I feel about BlogShares. Admittedly, I'm not much of a player, my site is listed.

I fear that some of the premises of the stock market, namely, its a corporate popularity contest, ends up with the valuation of a blog site being higher with more external links attached and volume of traffic received to the site.

While I believe that many of the top sites are well put together, some seem spare on content at times, though they are well visited.

So what's the dif?

BlogShares values blogs based on incoming links, and only for blogs. In other words, if Kos links to your site, it affects your blog's valuation, but a link from Google News does not. Because the game relies solely on incoming links from blogs to determine a value point, the game acts as a very clever social network experiment, with the game layer taking place around these connections.

Also, since incoming links from blogs are the sole source of value, outgoing links to other blogs naturally affect value as well. If Kos links to your blog, using the same example, and hundreds of other blogs link to Kos, the value added by Kos's outgoing/your blog's incoming link is higher than the same outgoing link from my blog since fewer people provide my blog with incoming links. Kinda circular to imagine, but since bloggers often thrive on incoming links, it is a keen method of charting the evolving social network, much like the Ecosystem, only with a fun game attached.

BlogShares does not base anything on site traffic. In fact, the only means of affecting blog share prices are incoming links and player actions. You can buy and sell shares in each blog, changing the price per earnings (P/E) and share price, plus there are tools called "artefacts" which allow players to increase/decrease blog share prices, among other functions. As such, many of the top players often battle each other to control shares in the top blogs in the game. However, there are so many blogs (over 1.6 million at last count), there are never enough buyers for all the shares.

Unfortunately for many BlogShares veterans, whose days go back to the game's beginning in early 2003, the game has changed greatly from being focused on blog shares to a derivative of these blogs known as Ideas. Many purists, and I'm among them, want the game to refocus on share trading and strategy. Admins are working to bring the game back to this point, but a majority of game play continues to take part in a very neat product of blog valuations, the Ideas.

Ideas are a bit complicated to explain if you haven't played the game, but here's a quick summary. There is a large index of categories in the game. Players vote blogs into such categories (Law, Politics, etc...), over 1000 at the current moment. Once blogs are in categories, they have the potential to produce ideas. However, they will only do so if two conditions are met:

1. The blog must have incoming links.
2. There must have been some activity on the blog

The BlogShares spiders rely on a quick parse of the blog site to identify and update links, and use Weblogs.com for activity updates, although the spiders can also read activity during the parse.

Basically, the ideas market is separate from the share market. Although they are both generated from the blogs in the system, ideas are created in two steps.

First, blogs are reindexed by using spiders to parse the site.

Then, once every 15 minutes or so (its random), an idea production script is run. For blogs which are voted into industries and were indexed since the last idea production (and also had some activity on the blog based on a weblog.com ping during reindexing), the script will produce ideas. For example, a blog in the India, Journal, and Hinduism industries would cause those ideas to be produced. The ideas are released on the market upon production.

Generally, they are the major part of investment and play once you pass several hundred billion dollars, but can be fun under that amount too.

The way the prices are determined has recently changed to reflect a more supply-demand relationship. Basically, if ideas are rarely produced, rarely sold on the market by players, and always bought before the next idea production, the prices will continuously rise. See Petroleum Engineering as an example of a rare industry (although "rare industry" changes based on when blogs are voted into them).

Most prices now reflect the rarity, although there are few exceptions. Industries which just start producing ideas are priced very low and are likely to stay that way for quite some time (See Conservadox for example). However, these rare industries have value to collectors who are trying to garner ideas in all the industries available.

Blogs can only be reindexed once in every 24 hours. and premium members can reindex an unlimited number of blogs, though still subject to the 24 hour limit for each blog. So, rare industries will be produced only 1 or 2 times a day, if at all, and thus, many of the rarest industries often sell at $100Million/idea for 10 ideas. Some even go for more than that on occasion.

The other reason for ideas is to create artefacts. In general, artefacts which are the most common (for Weblogs or English) for example are the most useful in the game since they can be used to drive down prices of blogs then acquire the shares and boost up the price prior to selling. You can literally make billions a day with only 30 or so artefacts (and a premium membership due to transaction limits). However, richer players also like to collect artefacts, of which there are currently 204.

So basically, ideas are to build artefacts, for investment, or for collecting.

So, to put it a bit more succinctly, BlogShares tracks links between blogs only, and determines value based on which blog links to other blogs. It cannot be manipulated by site traffic or links to other web sites, but players in the game can affect blog values, at least temporarily, by using artefacts or buying and selling shares. Ideas are produced through a player-voting system and a production script run after blogs are reindexed in the system.

Hope this answers your questions, Will! :)

From AP:

The Supreme Court said Tuesday it will consider whether the Ten Commandments may be displayed on government property, ending a 25-year silence on a church-state issue that has prompted bitter legal fights around the country.

Sad that this country has to argue about such menial and pointless subjects when our school system continues to degrade, medical care is still generally unavailable to a great many citizens, and international conflicts rage on. What happened to the basic idea of seperating Church and State??? Do we really need the Supreme Court to take this up? No mixing the two, period. That's been the stated goal of our democracy. Yet, still, people (religious zealots) continue to press hard to entertwine the two. Bush caters to conservative Christians with every speech he makes. Oklahoma Senators complain about "rampant lesbianism" in schools...Jesus Christ, the hypocrisy and idiocy grows more troubling by the day...and now this...

Ten Commandments displays are common in town squares and courthouses and on other government-owned land, including the Supreme Court. A wall carving of Moses holding the tablets is in the courtroom where justices will hear arguments in the case.

Courts around the country have splintered over whether the exhibits violate the constitutional principle of separation of church and state.
The disputes have led to emotional battles, such as one in Alabama by Chief Justice Roy Moore, who lost his job after defying a federal order to remove a 5,300-pound monument from the state courthouse. The Supreme Court refused last week to help him get his job back.

But the justices agreed to address the constitutionality of displays in Kentucky and Texas. The case probably will be argued in February with a decision before July.

Supporters of the monuments celebrated the news.

"The Lord answers prayers," said former Judge-Executive Jimmie Greene of McCreary County, Ky., which was ordered to remove a display in the hallway of the county courthouse. Greene refused to do the task himself.

"I am a law-abiding citizen, but there is a higher power," Greene said. "I just could not remove that sacred document. Could you think of a better reason to go to jail than standing up in defense of the Ten Commandments?"

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State said the court should block all government displays of religious documents.

"It's clear that the Ten Commandments is a religious document. Its display is appropriate in houses of worship but not at the seat of government," Lynn said.

The last time the court dealt with the issue was 1980, when justices banned the posting of Ten Commandments in public schools. That case also was from Kentucky.

Mathew Staver of the conservative law group Liberty Counsel, attorney for Kentucky counties in the current case, said the Supreme Court has expected for a long time that a blockbuster religious liberty case would come along.

Officials in two Kentucky counties — McCreary and Pulaski — hung framed copies of the Ten Commandments in their courthouses and added other documents, such as the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence, after the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites) challenged the display. The ACLU won and county officials are appealing the decision.

David A. Friedman, general counsel for the Kentucky ACLU, said people of different faiths follow different versions of the document. "Especially in a courthouse, people should not be made to feel like outsiders in their own community because they may not share the prevailing religious view," he said.
...
Religion cases have been difficult for the Supreme Court. In June, the court sidestepped a ruling on the constitutionality of the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools.
...
The court's three most conservative members have made clear that they do not think the bar on state establishment of religion affects local government monuments.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas complained in 2001 when the court refused to rule on the constitutionality of a display in front of the Elkhart, Ind., Municipal Building. They said the city sought to reflect the cultural, historical and legal significance of the commandments.

The court's most liberal justice, John Paul Stevens (news - web sites), disagreed. He wrote that the words "I am the Lord thy God," in the first line of the Indiana monument's inscription are "rather hard to square with the proposition that the monument expresses no particular religious preference."

The cases are Van Orden v. Perry, 03-1500, and McCreary County v. ACLU, 03-1693.

Haven't gotten around to organizing all the pics from our wedding and honeymoon, but hopefully, I'll get em posted to the ID Photoblog soon so y'all can see them. We took hundreds, so its taking a bit of time to weed through them and get em in some sort of order. We did get lots of beautiful shots. Staying in the northern NC mountains helped that a bit, of course.

While I awaited the publishing function to be fixed for my blogs, I had to find something to do with my time. Though still busy with school and the wedding, I was used to spending 4+ hours a day blogging for my sites. Without that to occupy me, I turned to an online game I slowly became addicted to this summer.

Some of you already know about BlogShares. If you don't, let me give you a bit of a run down. BlogShares is a fantasy stock game based on blogs. Shares of blogs (most of yours are already listed) can be bought and sold, with value based on incoming links. Its a really neat concept of social networking, but done within a context of an investment game. If it sounds dry and boring, don't underestimate it. The game has tons of intricacies that take months to fully understand.

Better yet, the community of BlogShares has become my second family. I was hooked by the kindness of many of the senior veteran players, something extremely uncommon in online gaming. Once I hit IRC with the crew, there was no turning back. I've been playing steadily for several months now, and am in the top 30 players in the game. Now, new players call me a "veteran". HAH! If anyone is interested, pop into the BlogShares IRC channel. The network is WyldRyde (irc.wyldryde.net), channel is #blogshares. No password needed. I'm almost always on unless I'm out or sleeping, so pop in for a minute if BlogShares interests you.

Early on, I made it a point to buy shares in as many of the blogs that I link to as possible. Over time, I've lost a few (part of game play), but still have stock in many of my linked blogs. Plus, the blog index is a constantly evolving categorization of blogs based on categories termed "Industries". Science, Politics, Law, ....you get the idea. Players vote blogs into industries, and the index lets you browse industries for new blogs. I've found many great blogs this way.

Anyway, I can't really offer much more without you playing a bit to understand the terms and thrills. I'm currently running a blogging contest via the BlogShares forum and awarding Premium Memberships (currently $15 per year, a real steal) to contest winners. Who know, if you get on the site, find you might like it, check out the contest guidelines here, you might just take a top prize! This second BlogShares Blogging Contest ends November 2.

The guys that brought us "This Land is Your Land" are back with "D.C. Land", featuring our favorite political icons. Funny stuff...

After frustrating problems with the CEM posting, I was completely shut out of posting on this blog as well for two weeks. Didn't get access again til a day before my wedding (which went wonderful). Just got back from a great vacation in the NC mountains, and look forward to blogging much more soon! CEM may be up this week, don't hold me to it though. Site publishing is working again, but may be tight for a couple of days as election happenings get crazy and school picks up again.

--Dave

For some reason, I can't get anything to post on the CEM site...contacted Blogger about it...still waiting for reply. If it's not up by tomorrow, I'll post the newest issue here...sorry again, but its out of my hands...anyone want to suggest a better free blog host?

Wow, has it really been 2 weeks since I posted last????

Sorry, everyone, I have been so busy the last couple weeks I've been AWOL from the blogosphere. But unlike Dubya, I'll at least offer a lame excuse. Work has been long and tiring, and classes, which are heading into the home stretch, have been kicking my ass. Haven't had time or energy to post lately. Not sure I'll be posting much in the near future. Got finals coming up in a couple of weeks, and the Wedding on the 25th. However, I'm putting together a new CEM for Tuesday, so look for that early Tuesday morning.

Talk to everyone soon

BTW: Anyone who sent me email lately--sorry for no response, I'm catching up on responding today, so thanks for caring! All is well here, just less time than responsibilities at the moment, but then again, who can't say that, right?

Rejoining the blogosphere now...

--Island Dave

Got this comment on the CEM the other day:

oh so pious... but so willfully ignorant...

Marijuana is more damaging to the body than tobacco... more known cancer-causing agents...

your sophomoric attempts to discredit your betters with personal attacks are noted with disdain...

but come now, let's reason together... Bush has flaws; but awarding himself medals to throw away and then clain he never did is not on _his_ resume...

Kerry went to Vietnam, served for four months in a combat zone, came home, and joined up with the Anti-war movement that lengthened the war and got Americans killed... probably more than Bush in Afghanistan and Iraq combined...

And now as his crown, Kerry is touting himself as a war hero, who would have gone to war--just differently--and won't be pulling the troops out immediately...

But Bush is the bad one?

I'd respond....but I can't think down on such a moronic level...

BTW "JTB"'s URL is http://jtb-in-texas.blogspot.com/ Laugh at the statement on the page:

You can reach me via numerous email addresses; but just in case you don't know me, please send polite emails.

You leave a comment like that on my blog, unsolicited or warranted, then expect polite emails? Moron...

In response to this post from andante, I wanted to post my reply here for all to read.

andante--The memory loss is such a tough thing to watch. I saw my grandfather go through similar with Parkinsons for almost 5 years before he died earlier this year. It is really sad.

But in a really strange way (am I getting metaphysical here?), his memory loss made it all the more important for me to pick up some of the things he found most important.

For example, he was a fanatical HAM operator, and though I've been an Internet junkie since my first BBS in 1989, I didn't really use it to communicate, just mostly for information and, you know, the usual...(cough) porn (cough)....But now, especially over the past year or so, I've gotten heavily into networking and communicating with lots of people, much like his HAM connection.

Also, he was a diehard Democrat. As a kid, I can remember his rants against Reagan and Iran-Contra. Didn't mean anything to me at the time, but for some reason, as I matured and his memory problems got worse, I began to find politics addicting. I saw why he got so upset over the way things were run. He influenced my views on health care, and especially on pro-worker, pro-union priorities since he was a perfect example of someone who worked hard and retired with a good pension. The way the union-labor relationship was meant to work.

He also loved wine. It was his passion, and over the past couple of years, I've developed quite a passion for red wine.

Could it be a coincidence? Maybe a simple personal desire of mine which already favored those things? Or is it something more? I'd generally put my religious tenor somewhere between agnostic and atheist. I believe that even if morals are human-created and not deity-mandated, this fact does not give them less power or consequence. That said, what I may have experienced is that nexus region between timelessness and immediacy as my grandfather slowly lost his faculties and I somehow matured my own...

Something to chew on, anyway...

Not a political blog, but My Cat Hates You is one of the funniest sites I've ever seen. I can't stop laughing. Click on the Latest Cats Posted link, then check out the pics on the left.

CLAPS, SLAPS, AND THE MIDDLE FINGER

Claps to the 1,100 Iraqis who showed up at a provincial meeting to protest the military assault in Najaf. Exercising the true freedoms of democracy, the protestors were able to peacefully bring an amazing shift in policy toward the situation, one which will likely leave American officials scratching their heads in wonderment. While still a fledgling democracy, Iraq is quickly becoming a hotbed of free expression and appropriate outrage at military operations in Najaf and other cities. It is becoming clear that U.S. intervention should diminish quickly as Iraqis, while still existing in political turmoil, must determine their own course of action. This meeting sparks a new belief in the Iraqi people's strength, though a backlash at American soldiers is unfortunately a likely result. Yet another reason to get the hell out of Hell, and bring our boys and girls back home before we lose another one to senseless warfare.

Slaps to John Harris, staff writer for the Washington Post, for showing he knows just how to blow the President when he really needs to take a load off. Harris's fluff piece in Monday morning's edition provides absolutely no news, no information, and basically serves as a Sunday School primary for potential Bush visits. Lets all just grab a beer and sit around with the "shirtsleeves" President as he smirks that Kerry "might change his mind", all the while, our troops fight bloody battles in dozens of Iraqi cities. Amazing how a decent paper such as the Post can employ such a moronic, unintelligent, and clearly non-creative jackass as Harris for a piece which appears on page 2. Oh, wait, then again, this is the Washington Post...should we expect anything else?

My Middle Finger goes once again to U.S. military planners who ignorantly believe killing Sadr will end insurgent and terroristic attacks on American soldiers. As fighting rages on, the U.S. readies for an all-out assault on Najaf in an attempt to slaughter the Cleric's army once and for all. But as pointed out in Claps, there is strong opposition to U.S. actions there, and further violence will only grow the opposition, not diminish it. As was seen with the growth of terrorist cells in Iraq after the American invasion, eliminating a strong, central figure will simply open the door for greater demand for violence. The U.S. must pull back, abandon Najaf for the time being, and allow Iraqis to control their own destiny. We cannot allow our soldiers to sacrifice their lives in a power-struggle over a city rightly claimed by incumbent Iraqi citizens. This senseless, ignorant aggression must end, and it must end now. Sadly, it is not to be...