Further evidence how misguided and broken content-based internet filtration is:
So, Ascendance attends a private college that employs a content filter that’s supposed to prevent access to adult websites and things. Depending on what I’ve written in whatever given week or month, my site drifts in and out of accessibility for him through their network.
We worked on the latest Dissection together in a Google document, and when I posted it to the site, he couldn’t see any of the images. So I had him try to get to one of the individual images, and apparently because the URL contains the string “partygirl”, he was unable to access it because the filter considered it “BLOCKED AS ADULT CONTENT”.
That is: His school — which apparently has a bit of a religious bent and wants to prevent its students from accessing “naughty material” or whatever — blocked a fundamentalist Christian comic book as “adult content”.
I’d be laughing aloud if the frustrating stupidity of it wasn’t so damn depressing.
Me, I *am* laughing at it. A lot.
Oui. Moi aussi.
This kind of thing is indeed laughable – unless you’re denied access to sites that are important for your work. A colleague of mine is repeatedly forced to download teaching material for her German classes at home because she can’t access certain sites from her office computer…
Oh, that’s a special kind of stupid right there.
Isn’t it great that we are being screened and protected?! That’s what “freedom of speech” is all about! Where are our first amendment rights and why is someone else dictating what we are and aren’t permitted to view? I’m confused but then it wouldn’t be the first time my government confused me.
Mom: Well, it’s a private college and they can do as they please. It’s just silly is all, and supports my earlier post about how it casts too large a net.
Sometimes the net is cast so wide that one cannot even look up Irish and Scottish towns because of their names, e.g. KILbride, KILkenny, KILmarnock etc. It’s true: “Common sense is the least common of all senses.”
Ah, you see it’s all because the Chinese have bought out the US government. Soon, the Great Firewall will encircle the world! AHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAH!
Crane: I know you’re joking, but if China decided to cash in all those bonds of ours they bought (e.g. those things Bush liked to refer to as “worthless I.O.U.s back when he was feverishly scrambling to destroy Social Security), we’d be the United States of China.
Jabberwock: “United States of China” is a truly scary concept. With the world’s largest economy in their pocket they would rule the planet. If their treatment of the Tibetans and other minorities in their country is any indicator their version of “Brave New World” would be an absolute nightmare. This really ruins my weekend…
How would the U.S.C. be so? Sure, they’d run the US’s economic capabilities, but how would that inhibit military action?
Or, do you mean they would buy out the Gvt.-contracted military companies in the U.S.?
Felis: My worry is that the PRC leaders would either force Washington to do their bidding, ie make US policy subservient to Beijings interests, or take over the country completely. Can you imagine what might happen to America and the world at large? In China they put greed and consumerism first, at the expense of those unfortunates who fall by the wayside. And lest I forget, look at their environmental record. We Europeans have surrendered many sovereign rights to Brussels, true, but on the whole we benefit from the imperfect setup that’s called the EU. An America subservient to China would serve only the Chinese, to the detriment of everyone else. And just for the record: I’m neither racist nor anti-Chinese, only anti-CPC.
Rev Kestrel: How would China succeed in making U.S. policy subservient? That intrigues me, because they aren’t even part of the same political bodies, apart from the U.N.
As for the European Union, I like the idea of being able to work in Venice and it still be the same as, say, London; however, they seem intent on trying to curb the rights for individual nations to have their own environmental, immigration and work policies.
Of course, the other big risk is the possibility of an extreme conservtive religious group getting in; if Europe became one large melting pot, it would allow an entire contitnet to be under the rule of a religious nut in one foul swoop.
Thankfully the Dutch and the Italians aren’t going to tolerate it, and have made progress (that the key word) towards secularization, and France might be next under Sarkozsky.
Felis: The EU is all we have got for now, and there is no alternative, unless you have a wish to bring back Guderian, Rommel or me father, who served in the “ZWEITE PANZERDIVISION”!!! ( and lost a leg for all I know, and all he ever got for it were an Iron Cross 2nd Class and The Silver (the nerve of them, SILVER IS HOLY) Woundbadge!
To Felis, or rather “Little Bastet” Ah dinnae wish tae be ruled by ain ither but Harachte an Ah say Ah wish upon thee
the eternal power o’ Father Wind Almighty, nanjakh!
Rev Kestrel: EXACTLY. I’d rather be ruled by the EU, and I’m not saying we should pull out; it’s just, I’m citing the various risks involved with surrenduring some of the rights that we have already given up. All I’m saying is the E.U. needs to be “integrated but not combined” as Churchill put it.
I don’t want a Europe ruled by a group of right-wing nuts; the most likely would be the Vatican.
And was that “Little Bastet” remark an insult in a Scottish accent, or a double entendre?
.
To Felis (cat): Bastet is the Egyptian cat godess, and her bairns are therefore wee Bastets, jist as Ah’m a wee Harachte (falcon)…
Ye hae chosen her holy name fer yerself and so Ah consider ye tae be a pairt o’ her clan, tha’s a’.
Felis: Ye strike me as intelligent an discairning, it’s a guid thing tae hae yer like in this world of oors!
Och, ’tis indeed a compliment. Ah thank ye and shake yer hand.
To be ‘onest, I though o’ the name completely independently o’ any historical knowledge. I didnae even know it was real.
I chose it ’cause it sounded a wee bit good, an’ it were all Ah could think of. Och, I was fourteen at th’ time.
Or ye can call me Dutchie if ya layk. Again, Ah dunno why, jus’ ’cause Ah like it.
Religious nuts taking over Europe isn’t much of an issue. France is and always has been aggressively secular and the Netherlands nearly as much, almost nobody in Britain gives two tosses of a dead dog’s cock about religion (and most of those who do are so moderate that I’m not sure they actually believe in anything,) Scandinavia hasn’t really cared about religion since at least the middle of the nineteenth century and whilst the German-speaking nations do have “Christian Democrat” parties, that in practice just means ‘conservative’.
Sure, there are religious nutters in Poland (although currently out of power), the church is still influential in the Mediterranean nations and it was only shoved out of power in Ireland about 15 years ago, and could yet come back, at least in the short term, but any right-wing populist threat is going to play much more on anti-immigrant and anti-tax rhetoric than on religion.
Of course, that’s all irrelevant because the EU doesn’t appear to be on course to become a single state within the next two centuries and the major issue is probably the endemic corruption of most of the top bureaucrats (auditors recently refused for the thirteenth year in a row to sign off on the accounts of the Commision). But let me assure you, Ultra-Montanism will not rise again.
Tae Felis: As ye may hae guessed the noo, “felis” is Latin fer cat, and that ye chose the name unwittingly tells me that ye must indeed hae been guided by Bastet. Ginrally oor clans ca’ us directly , we jist hae tae listen. Och, an’ speakin’ o’ clans, Harachte’s bairns hae talons rather’n honds but thanks a’ the same, an’ may Ah shak yer paw in return?
PS If ye’re intersted in Scottish poetry an folk sangs gang tae Rampant Scotland Directory, ye’ll find riches beyond belief, nae kiddin’.
BtI: Yes, but it’s slowly becoming an issue, becase various pressure groups are using a new weapon: fear. This works expecially well for the fundie Muslims and Catholics. Sure, it’s not arrived yet, but it’s coming, and we can see it from a mile away; so, why let it advance at all?
You’re probably right; even more so when you consider that many people in Europe are actually AGAINST forced religion, so God knows what civil unrest there will be. But, that won’t stop them making a big impression: polygamy is legal in Germany but only for Muslim men, and so is beating your daugther for not wearing a burkha.
If the Islamic clergy get their way (through fear) or the Catholics get theirs (through political subversion), then the other will want to compete. Worse, the Idiot in Chief will see this and probably end up warring w/Europe because “God told him to have a holy war.”
To the Rev Kestrel: Aye, ’tis indeed bizarre. Maybe there is a bit o’ wee intervention by the powers that be. So yes, y’may shak me ‘paw’.
Thanks fer the directions t’ the Rampant Scottish Dictionary. May the saints protect ye for all enternity.
Reet, Ah’m goin fer’ a game o’ golf. See yers all later.