Dickie's Quickies

The big news today: Hunter S. Thompson is dead. Registration is required for the NY Times obit, so here's one from CTV in Canada and one from The Seattle Times.

Update: Susie Bright has a lovely tribute to Hunter today. She has voiced some of the same thoughts that I've been wondering: that perhaps he just chose to check out of this world. To do so is a valid option and one I hope to be able to do when I get older (with my loved ones near by). I've watched many loved ones die of a variety of debilitating illnesses. If Hunter did check out as Susie suggests (in order to avoid illness), then I admire him for his actions.

Speaking of the NY Times, they had a great editorial yesterday tearing apart the concept of "intelligent design" (the creationist's theory that the universe is so completely in sync that someone must have been behind it's creation). Here's a good quote from it:

The gravest imperfections in nature, though, are moral ones. Consider how humans and other animals are intermittently tortured by pain throughout their lives, especially near the end. Our pain mechanism may have been designed to serve as a warning signal to protect our bodies from damage, but in the majority of diseases -- cancer, for instance, or coronary thrombosis -- the signal comes too late to do much good, and the horrible suffering that ensues is completely useless.

And why should the human reproductive system be so shoddily designed? Fewer than one-third of conceptions culminate in live births. The rest end prematurely, either in early gestation or by miscarriage. Nature appears to be an avid abortionist, which ought to trouble Christians who believe in both original sin and the doctrine that a human being equipped with a soul comes into existence at conception. Souls bearing the stain of original sin, we are told, do not merit salvation. That is why, according to traditional theology, unbaptized babies have to languish in limbo for all eternity. Owing to faulty reproductive design, it would seem that the population of limbo must be at least twice that of heaven and hell combined.

I love this last bit because, as I've often said, if one believes in God and hates abortion, then one should hate God for (s)he is the greatest abortion practitioner in history. We use a different euphemism for it, "miscarriage", but in the end, the act is the same.

Good news, IMO, on the security front when it comes to your digital dossier. The Seattle Times reported yesterday that Home Despot (my name for them) has lost an appeal in a $1 million lawsuit filed by a man whose credit was marred by an identity thief and Home Despot wouldn't help out in capturing the person, preventing further damage, or any other measure even though they were an active participant (a pawn, but definitely participating in it). In fact, according to the article, Home Despot ignored the whole thing until sheriffs showed up at their bank trying to collect the judgment. Good deal. Maybe this will open the eyes of other companies and our legislators. One can hope that it's a start.

Finally, Slashdot reports that pop-up ads are on the rise again. Apparently the ad makers have finally developed a way around the pop-up blocking capabilities of most browsers. Fun, fun....