lonelyfridge

I was reading recently about a Geep (a goat-sheep cross).

This inspired a late conversation between P. and I, coming up with interesting new crosses. I believe I’ve hit upon one that will revolutionize the fur industry. Stop raising foxes and minxes in boxes and instead cross a ferret and a weasel: the werret. Just imagine, werret-coats and the dialog that will surely emanate from Fashion TV’s otherwise vapid broadcasts:

“Why, what kind of coat is that?”
“Why, it’s a werret coat!”
“Funny, most coats are for wearing.”

It’s brilliant, I tell you.

Figured I’d lend my marginal page rank to this, even though all of the readers of this site probably read boingboing: California judge shuts down wikileaks.

wikileaks.org

…YouTube, that is:

“P. is learning to play guitar!”
“Are you sure? I mean, maybe she just can’t find anywhere to sit down without picking one up first.”

“What? you bought yummy crackers and hid them? I thought there was trust in our relationship?!?”
“There is! You trust me.”

So, I’m the new admin of an established web forum (2300 or so members). The first order of business is stopping the spam bots.

Of course, there’s a captcha, but, unsurprisingly, it doesn’t work.

Some would say to use a stronger captcha, but I hate captcha, so we’re going to do riddles, which might seem familiar to people who comment on this blog: “What colour is an orange?” (They’re not particularly hard riddles).

This blog uses a plug-in for WordPress called WP-Gatekeeper, developed by CSS virtuoso, Eric Meyer.

We’re going to take this idea, and merge it with our forum software so that all would-be members have to get a stupid riddle or other question correct, or they don’t get a membership.

I’m thinking topical trivia would be good as well, stuff that’s easily found via Google or Wikipedia.

If anyone has any question suggestions, toss them up here. They shouldn’t be formulaic (ie, no math, unless it’s a trick question: “I have one apple and Jane gives me three apples. How many legs do I have?”), or too esoteric.

Pirate Queen: “Actually, mustard is really growing on me.”
Me: “Like a Chia Pet?! Sweet.”

Some of the pictures that I’ve uploaded over the last little while:

Was surfing one of my favourite forums while eating breakfast (it’s like the Times), and happened to read one forum member’s signature that never fails to irritate me:

“WAR HAS NEVER SOLVED ANYTHING, except ending slavery, fascism, communism, Nazism….”

I finally decided to say something about it (on the forum), but here it for posterity:

For starts, I’ll be a pedant and point out that: slavery is still going strong in several places around the world (Sudan, for instance), and in most places ended with laws changing, not a war; that the fascist regimes in South America (and many other places) didn’t end due to war and were much younger than WW2; that communism regimes have never fallen due to war*; and I would argue that Nazism hasn’t, unfortunately, been stamped out (neo-Nazi marches, Synagogue vandalism and arson in Europe, etc).

Actually, that’s mostly what I wanted to say, but there is the larger issue that force of arms cannot stamp out an idea or meme (“-ism”s), unless you kill everyone spreading that idea (and destroy every medium in which the idea is stored).

Slavery in the southern US officially ended following the Civil War, but it was several generations before it ended in effect- it was similar everywhere in the world where slavery was declared illegal around that time.

*To be fair, the Commies got kicked out of Afghanistan. …

I sort of wanted to write more, but I was (and still am) running late.