More Important Legislation–Wheelies

Michael Silence reports on the new “wheelie ban” in Tennessee. This piece of worthless legislation was the gift of the generous Vince Dean. There was, however some opposition.

House Judiciary Chairman Rob Briley questioned the need for the legislation, since police can already pull over motorcyclists for wheelies.

“We ought to leave well enough alone with the current law,“ said Briley, D-Nashville.
Dean amended his bill to exclude inadvertent wheelies, and those performed in parades by adults riding slower than 30 mph.

So let me get this straight. Continue reading “More Important Legislation–Wheelies”

Marine Tattoo Ban

New regulations barring U.S. Marines from getting large tattoo:

Marines already tattooed are exempt from the ban but cannot add to their designs; anyone caught with fresh ink in the wrong places could be barred from re-enlistment or face disciplinary action. Getting a prohibited tattoo could constitute a violation of a lawful order, punishable by up to two years in prison and a dishonorable discharge, Marine spokesman 1st Lt. Brian Donnelly said.

Unbelievable. With retention and recruiting numbers down and no end in sight for the war, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to me for guys who are willing to face bullets on my behalf to have the freedom to get inked. Unrelated, but these guys should be able to (legally) drink as well.

Good Idea? Bad Idea!!!

Frantic Industries has a nice little piece on crowded market spaces on the web that you may want to avoid for a new startup.

Most of the spaces named here seem tough to break into at this point without either some very serious backing or a truly unique spin on the technology.  For instance, Younanimous is doing something a little differently by incorporating search engine results along with socially popular results.

Pullo and Vorenus Were Real

Hugh Hewitt has a nice post with an excerpt from Caesar’s memoirs about the real Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus.

I’m very disappointed that Rome is ending as a series, especially since there is so much more story to tell. Although the writers took several liberties with documented history, it’s pretty cool that they were able to make a whole story line out of these two who are side-notes. I was just commenting the other night that I’m embarrassed at how little I know about history, and the sad part is that most people don’t know as much as I do. Shows like this, while not completely accurate, at least give people a little more knowledge than they had before, and they are entertaining as hell.

Dollars – The American Language

One of the big issues surrounding the illegal immigration debate is language. Here in Tennessee, legislation has been sponsored to limit the languages of state documents to English only, and there have been other issues involving foreign language books in public school libraries. It seems to be old reliable for anti-immigration people–attack the fact that immigrants can’t/don’t/won’t speak English.

Continue reading “Dollars – The American Language”

Real Social Security

The LA Times has an op-ed on the growing Libertarian undercurrent. This made me laugh.

Lane was investigated by the FBI in the early postwar years for daring to write on a postcard that Social Security was the sort of socialistic government management of people’s lives we fought wars against. True Social Security, she insisted, was canned vegetables and slaughtered pigs in your cellar. She and Paterson refused to accept anything from the Social Security system.

Hilarious! A friend and I were talking a few months ago about the wrongs of the socialist security system, and how we would thankfully opt out immediately and let them keep what we’ve already “invested” so long as we never have to contribute again.

Another good idea he had was to send all socialist security benefit checks to the wealthiest people in the country attached with a ‘thank you’ note for supporting so many people in this country.

Google’s PPA Program

Search Engine Journal has a great article on this program, which is still in beta–typical Google.  This should be a huge boost as a money maker for bloggers, and provides even more incentive to push good, original content.

More content should mean more links and more money.  Site owners will have the ability to create text based blogs, just like the ones you can create as an Amazon affiliate.  This will allow the ads to be integrated right into the content instead of as a separate section of the site, so it shouldn’t be as difficult to draw the reader’s attention to the ads.

Younanimous

Only a month and a day after posting this, I come across younanimous.com, which bills itself as a social search engine.  Results are based not only on traditional search engine results that it retrieves, but also on user recommendations.  Check it out, pretty cool!!!