Mazurland Blog

Don't They Have Anything Better To Do?

There's been some discussion at Mazurland and other places recently about businesses that think their success gives them the privilege to dish out left-wing politics along with their product. The search engine Google, in particular, has come under scrutiny for refusing to run some conservative advertisements, and for other forms of ideological bias. Well, it seems like it's not all their fault. In some cases, they're being used, though they refuse to do anything about it.

The illustration at the left shows what happens when you type the word "failure" into your Google search bar. Apparently, the Bush biography got to the top of the heap via the practice of Google-bombing. This practice takes advantage of the fact that Google returns web sites that contain the key words you request, as well as web sites that are linked to by way of those key words. Site rankings are also determined by the number of hits the linking page gets. To get the effect pictured at left, you would have to enlist all your lefty blogger-buddies to place a link to the Bush biography on their blogs using the same anchor text (the visible text of the hyperlink). It helps if some big-time lefty blogs get in on the act.

This is just so...typical. The left loves childish pranks, pointless displays, annoying and vacuous protests. And the thing that comes to mind when a rational person sees some leftist stunt, or gets caught in a traffic jam caused by a mindless protest, is "Don't these people have anything better to do?"

Maybe Mazurland can join the fun. Maybe we can kill two birds (so to speak) with one stone by Google-bombing Wellesley College.

[Hat tip to Rachel]

Mazurland Goes South - Update

Mazurland cub reporter, Paul, has gone undercover as a SQL Server database administrator. So far my cover is working. After posting my original report I decided to investigate some local delicacies. The first one that I encountered was pickled quail eggs. I came across these at a gas station in Tennessee near the Alabama border. They were homemade and in a jar on the counter where I paid for my gas. I knew they were eggs but didn't know what kind, so I had to ask. They're about a third of the size of the chicken eggs that were in the jar right next them. I would have tried one, but I would have had to buy the whole jar. The other delicacy is still forthcoming. Apparently my cover is convincing because the branch manager for the staffing agency I went through stopped by and got good feedback and promised to drop off some chicken biscuits. I'll report back when and if he follows through on his promise. This guy is also the first person I have encountered that would fall into the sterotype of a southern gent.

What Am I Missing?

France is now trying to increase its fertility rate by offering to pay parents to have additional children and remain unemployed:

"A new measure will award $916 a month to parents who take one year's unpaid leave from work after the birth of a third child, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin announced at the close of a national conference on families."

The reasoning is that the additional money will help families balance the demands of parenthood with the need for income. Basically, it's a govenrnment subsidy to have more kids than you presently can't afford. Where will this money come from? How does this stimulate productivity? Isn't this the situation that the Republican Congress and, begrudgingly, President Clinton improved in this country with the "welfare reform" of the late 90's? Maybe if there were more jobs and lower tax rates, families would be more comfortable having more kids. That, of course, assumes there are families.

A Buffalo Idyll

I spent last weekend visiting Ma Mazur in Buffalo, New York with my wife and daughter. Frequenters of Mazurland know that whenever members of the Mazurland diaspora make a pilgrimage to their first home, they try to visit some of the landmarks of that crumbling city, and sample some of its many sounds, tastes, and smells. Over the next few days, I'll share some of what we ate and saw while in the Queen City of the Great Lakes.

But first, I'll tell you about one of the things we did, and it doesn't have much to do with Buffalo. After a dinner of take-out wings and tortellini with pesto, we sat around, nestled in the Mazurland crib, remembering some childhood rhymes (a recent topic at Mazurland Blog). My daughter sang some of her Girl Scout songs, including a long rendition of Hello Operator. (How does she remember these things 5 years after leaving the GSA?) She then showed us her Google prowess by finding a raft of sites containing childhood songs, selection rhymes ("it" games), and other juvenilia. The best site for this kind of stuff is called "Idle Child", which contains songs, jokes, poems, witty comebacks, pranks, and sight gags. After looking this site over, one thing's for sure: we can't let the Delmont kids anywhere near it before the next Mazur Campout. Especially the "Diarrhea Song" page.

[Note to Paul: I did an internet search for any clue to the existence of "Doggy Master" as a selection game. Even if you instruct Google to ignore sites with "Snoop" in them, the results are almost entirely disturbing. What kind of sick coven were you the master of on Proctor Avenue circa 1968?]

The Worst Of Times

This plus this equals this:

"The New York Times Co. said Tuesday it would cut about 500 jobs, or about 4 percent of its work force, as part of an ongoing effort to reduce costs. The reductions come atop another 200 jobs that were cut earlier this year."

I realize that many major newspapers have been losing circulation, but the left-leaning ones have been doing so at a much greater clip. The Jason Blair scandal was only the tip of the iceberg. The Times' reporting is shamelessly slanted and often inaccurate. It's amazing what a little fact-checking by the "new media" will do to such venerable (and previously unchallenged) institutions.

Just ask Dan Rather or Eason Jordan.

Old Glory Politics

Maybe it means I'm not a through-and-through Conservative, but I've never supported a flag burning Amendment to the US Constitution. It troubles me because it often smells of political opportunism and seems to butt against our 1st Amendment rights. Also, the reality is that most flag-burners do a disservice to their own cause, so let 'em make fools of themselves or else arrest them for some lesser charge, like burning without a permit.

So I'm always surprised when I see that this movement is still alive and kicking:

"The National Republican Senatorial Committee has repeatedly seized on the flag-burning issue and this year has zeroed in on Byrd, running ads on his vote against a constitutional amendment. Byrd fired back, claiming the ad was misleading.
Democrats say that Republicans are just interested in playing politics with the flag, noting that votes on the amendment usually are brought up in election years."

I just don't see the political benefit. Pushing this issue reaks of divisiveness and political gamesmanship, and Democrats would be right to point that out. Plus, if the Amendment ever passed, it would take all of 30 seconds for some protester to symbolically burn something that looks like the US flag (maybe one with only 49 stars), and argue it wasn't really a flag.

Mazurland Goes South

Mazurland has sent cub reporter, Paul, to the Deep South to get a flavor for what is going on since Reconstruction. Paul has been in the heart of Dixie, Birmingham, Alabama, for little more than four hours and has already had some amazing discoveries. The first thing was aesthetic. Birmingham and northern Alabama is beautiful. Really beautiful. I imagined plantations and fields. I saw mostly trees. What was strange about that was that there was nobody hanging from any of those trees. I looked as diligently as I could without driving off the road, but all I saw was trees. No ropes, no bodies danglin'. I did see some cotton fields, but there was strangely no people of color picking the white clusters. It seems that Mr. John Deer has taken over that task.

While yours truly was checking into the Studio Plus Extended Stay (3 weeks should suffice), I noticed that the polite man of color who was the hotel manager, who spoke better English than 99% of Kentucky (mostly white), was struggling to read through a 2000+ page user's manual (I am not exagerating) for a new software program for guest management. He was apologetic that he hadn't mastered it yet. I have NEVER seen a user's manual this large even though I have worked on some very sophisticated software packages. I got my room and the hotel manager even saw me in the hallway and wanted to confirm that all was well. My only complaint is that I requested a non-smoking room, but didn't get one. Normally I would have pressed the issue, but I knew that they are booked and I was lucky to get this room. I would estimate that 75% of the license plates in the parking lot are from Louisiana. Most of the people in this hotel are people of color. I only saw one white person, so far. Therefore it goes to reason that if most of the license plates are from Louisiana, then most of the people of color are from Louisiana and therefore people of color managed to escape the horrors of Katrina. Mazurland is exposing media bias.

On another note, Birmingham is the Los Angeles of the South. I think there is one road out of Birmingham and rush hour is a bear. I know because I came into town right at 5:00PM. I cloistered away for a few hours before I decided to venture out to get some vittles. At 7:00PM, it was still a river of vehicles flowing from the city. I have experienced some serious traffic problems in relatively small cities like Louisille and Lexington, KY, but this is far closer to the traffic I experienced while visiting fellow Mazurland blogger Marty while he was stationed in Los Angeles during the 80's.

Developing...

Get On The Bus II

Time is running out on your chance to bid on a very interesting vacation opportunity:

"If you are the winner of this auction, you and a guest will be picked up by my crazy brother-in-law, Cody, in his huge hippie bus, and he will take you on what he calls, 'The Ultimate Hippie Vacation!'

The Rules of the Trip:

You will be required to sell Tie-dyed T-shirts for gas and food money.
There is no map on the bus and he WILL get lost.
Stuff Happens! (And you know what I mean!)
If the bus blows up, he has a tent.
You must provide your own bail money. (Please see rule 3)
He will provide 'the most craziest vacation you will never forget!'"

Ahoy, Me Hearties

In case you didn't remember, September 19th is "Talk Like A Pirate Day".
The idea was started in 1995 by two guys (John Baur and Mark Summers) during a racquetball game, but gained much more widespread attention thanks to a Dave Barry column in 2002:

"As you can see, talking like a pirate will infuse your everyday conversations with romance and danger. So join the movement! On Sept. 19, do not answer the phone with ''hello.'' Answer the phone with ''Ahoy me hearty!'' If the caller objects that he is not a hearty, inform him that he is a scurvy dog (or, if the caller is female, a scurvy female dog) who will be walking the plank off the poop deck and winding up in Davy Jones' locker, sleeping with the fishes."

If this Holiday is not yet celebrated in your community or workplace, don't you think maybe you should be the one to get the ball rolling? Or, stated differently, "Weigh anchor, ye bilge rats!"

Outsourcing Retirement

Here's an LA Times editorial with an interesting proposal; the US government should encourage retirees to settle in Mexico and South America by allowing Medicare coverage to be "portable" into these lower cost regions.

"For the United States, this does more than reduce Medicare costs and allow more seniors to have higher living standards. Creating millions of new jobs in Mexico and beyond would reduce flows of illegal immigrants across the border. It would raise wage levels in neighboring countries, reducing low-wage competition for U.S. jobs and increasing the market for U.S. products. U.S. business, including healthcare companies, real estate developers and retailers, could follow their customers into new and lucrative markets abroad.

This is not a Democratic or a Republican program. It cuts spending, expands choice, promotes market-based development abroad and protects some of our most important entitlement programs."

I don't think this would be right for me; I don't like hot weather, I don't speak Spanish and it seems that for the foreseeable future, people may opt to live in fairly insular "gated" communities to avoid crime. But this idea is already right for a large number of people who have been buying less expensive retirement homes south of the border. Why not let the government encourage something that makes economic sense?