There are a whole lot of new bloggers who have joined the Freethoughts Blog network recently and I feel guilty that I have not been keeping up with them. I just discovered that Marcus Ranum, whom many of you will recognize because of his spirited contributions in the comments here, has his own blog where he has been posting since June 26.
The name of the blog is ‘stderr’ and in his first post he lists the things he plans to write about.
• Gun control (eventually)
• Military procurement, corruption, grand strategy, imperialism
• Computer security <– “that’s my thing“
• The surveillance state and its many lies and incompetencies
• Religion and philosophy, specifically, arei religions much in the way of philosophies?
• Book reports – I’m not sure what else to call them. They won’t be “reviews” – they’ll be more along the lines of ‘a bunch of things that reading this book made me think about’
• Maybe some recipes
• Maybe some stuff about various crafts I get involved in
• Rhetorical tricks and “can your dialectics break bricks?”
• Anarchism and moral nihilism
• Historical skepticism
I strongly recommend those of you who like me have not been keeping abreast of the new blogs and are unaware of Marcus’s blog to check it out. In particular, I recommend his recent post on the colossal waste of money by the military. It has clearly become a lavish entitlement program for the military-industrial complex, funded and shielded by both parties. If our politicians spent a tiny fraction of the time they spend on unearthing petty welfare cheats to look at what the military does with trillions of our dollars, we could save enough to fully fund universal health care.
Marcus is a very smart person, but in the past he has been far too quick to resort to personal insults against those who disagree with him. He is the only person on FTB that I have specifically chosen to ignore. But, people can change and if his blog is still functioning six months from now, I will take that as a sign that he has matured, and I will give his blog a try then.
To moarscienceplz
Really? Before me? Even SteveOR (sp)? Color me shocked.
“Color me shocked.”
Racism!
Smokey, eh?
Not even slightly.
Care to elucidate your attempted snark?
To Smokey
Is that a serious complaint, or a joke? I know that calling someone “colored” is an out of date way of referring to a black person. It also has -- at minimum -- a tinge of racism, similar to, but less extreme, than the “n” word.
However, as far as I can tell from searching right now, the etymology of the phrase predates European colonialism and the slave trade, and the etymology of “color me ” is entirely unrelated to using the word “colored” to describe a black person.
I do not wish to dismiss your concerns out of hand. Further, even if my claims about etymology are true, it may still be offensive and demeaning to blacks, which would be cause alone sufficient to stop using the phrase. However, currently, from my perspective, this phrase is entirely fine, and entirely free from racist connotations, meanings, history, and subtext, but I am willing to be persuaded otherwise, because I want to be a good person, and a upstanding social justice warrior. Are you black and did you find it offensive? Do you believe that it would actually cause offense to blacks? Do you think that any significant fraction of reasonable people would interpret it in a racist manner? Or are you simply looking for excuses to be offended?
Awesome. I generally love Marcus’ posts, and don’t mind when numpties are called on their numptiness. Another blog to add to the read list!