Think about this the next time you trash McCain

WHAT MAKES PEOPLE VOTE REPUBLICAN?
By Jonathan Haidt (at The Edge via Skeptic)

http://tinyurl.com/4yn9za

Haven’t done much more than skim this. Will read it tonight but I was put off by all them big words and concepts like “A Durkheimian ethos can’t be supported by the two moral foundations that hold up a Millian society…”.

Browser Wars I

The Death of Firefox 3

I am so sick of Firefox. I’ve given it every chance to redeem itself. I’d shelved version two in favor of running IE 6 in three or 4 windows and having to shut them down every hour or two. But I installed V3 after falling for all the online hoopla about how much better it was at using memory and how it didn’t crash as much as two.

Jeez what a letdown! I probably didn’t help it any by installing every plugin under the sun but even after disabling or uninstalling them there was no getting around the fact that it hogged memory like nobody’s business. Every app I have had to wait in line while that pig took its time getting hung up in the dumbest ways possible. Switching tabs, loading sites with flash and active pages, it was the slowest thing I’d ever seen save Windows Live writer which I’m using to write this post.

Firefox really had a problem with Digsby, which I use to aggregate all my social networks and email accounts. For some reason these two got in each others way so much I had a hard time deciding which one should go. I raised the ceiling a little bit the other day by popping in 512 megs of RAM which helped but it still hung, just not as often.

The last straw came when I felt it seizing up on me the other day. I managed to open Task Manager and after about 5 minutes of watching the paint dry I saw that Firefox had consumed a whopping 300 megs of RAM and had my processor pinned at 100%! The hundred percent wasn’t new to me but seeing that pig gobble 300 megs of RAM while doing nothing just pissed me off.

So I yanked it. Without a bit of regret. But what to put in it’s place?

Next: Browser Wars II - Not as many choices as you think!

My first and last words about Bristol

Lots of flotsam and jetsam this weekend on the whole Bristol Palin thing but here’s my two cents, then I’ll shut up about it

I can’t believe the number of postings I’ve seen on the various blogs and news sites that say that Bristol Palin’s pregnancy is a “family matter” and not a political issue! That’s just nonsense. There is not one “family matter” that doesn’t have one foot in the political arena simply because they affect us as individuals who are members of a community.

I may want to sit in my living room and smoke cigarettes, drink scotch and watch TV ’til I croak. I have the right to do so, but that doesn’t mean anyone can’t criticise or dicuss my behavior in the context of the overall health of the black male in society if they want to. I can act on it or give ‘em the finger but I can’t shut ‘em up.

Same for Bristol Palin’s pregnancy:
We have a right to talk about it in a political context because she’s another pregnant 17 year old in a country where woman have had to fight for the right NOT to end up in the same boat she’s in.
We have a right to talk about it in a political context because her own mother advocates a form of birth control that is unscientific, ineffectual and, like it or not, a part of our international AIDS policy which elicits worldwide disdain.

As long as we can legislate what goes on with the human body the body politic has a right to talk about it.

Alright, the soapbox is up for grabs now…