http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/10/Dobbs.Oct11/index.html

Massachusetts is in the middle of a gubernatorial race featuring the Republican candidate, current Lietuenant Governor Kerry Healey; an Independent, Christy Mihos; and three Democrats: current Attorney General Tom Reilly, Deval Patrick and Chris Gabrieli. I have some pretty strong opinions on some candidates, and am looking into the others to form new opinions. Suffice it to say that I’m not overly impressed with any of them. My focus today, however, is on Chris Gabrieli, if for no other reason that his television ads piss off. (more…)

Sadly, the sheer amount of comment spam generated by this blog demands action. Therefore, all comments will now be moderated. I’d initially turned off comments on specific, high-spam-count posts that had obvious keywords, and that worked for a while. Now, however, I get hundreds of emails a day consisting of fake trackbacks, comments awaiting moderation and the occasional moron who sneaks through the filters with a post about insurance or online gambling.

I find it incredibly idiotic that spammers would target a blog that as many as 3 people actually read, but spammers, by definition, are all about quantity and not quality. If moderating all comments doesn’t end up reducing the amount of spam, I’ll simply turn off commenting.

Update: Moderating did not cut back the amount of spam. I’m getting about 200 spam comments a day at this point, so I’m turning off commenting completely. I’ll work on tweaking my spam settings to help eliminate spam before it even comes to my attention so I can turn commenting back on in the future.

I think it’s safe to say that when a show outrages Al Sharpton, that show should receive more attention. Not because Al Sharpton is incensed, but because whatever the show did to induce his indignation is probably important, intelligent and worth seeing. The show in question is “The Boondocks”, based on the Aaron McGruder comic strip of the same name. The thing that is different about The Boondocks, when compared to most other comic strips and animated shows, is that the creator and the majority of the characters are black.

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Impossible as it may seem, the Vatican has come out on the side of science when it comes to the argument of presenting “Intelligent Design” alongside the theory of evolution in science classrooms. I’ve talked about this subject before and believed that my arguments, a mirror of many others, were solid without being exclusionary (albeit a bit condescending, I’m sure). I never imagined that my views would be echoed by, of all people, the Pope. The Vatican Newspaper has published a story stating that the Vatican believes that Intelligent Design is not science and should not be taught in science classes. The author, Fiorenzo Facchini, “lamented that certain American ‘creationists’ had brought the debate back to the ‘dogmatic’ 1800s, and said their arguments weren’t science but ideology.” Unfortunately, it’s my belief that most creationists and supporters of teaching intelligent design are not Catholics, but are Evangelical Christians. Evangelicals aren’t known for backing down from a fight or for posessing much common sense, so it will still be a battle throughout the Bible Belt. The sad thing is that I don’t want a fight, all I want people to do is teach religion in church and science in school. Why is that so difficult?

There’s nothing I like reading about more than “national security initiatives” other Presidents put into place that could be abused by our current Head Moron. Of course, if we’re really lucky, we won’t have to worry about the law-breaking bastard for much longer.

As posted over on Slashdot, the White House has sent a Cease and Desist order to The Onion, a long-running satirical newspaper and website.

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Ok, so maybe you’re a little bit peeved at a particular person in your parking spot-starved neighborhood who consistently takes up two spaces with their minivan and you want to leave them an angry and insulting, yet anonymous, note on their windshield.

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Jim, our waiter and recent receiver of free shots (that we’d paid for, because Jim was a way-cool waiter and we wanted him to drink with the 7 of us), had served me my Mojo and the rest of the crew had their drinks (Grey Goose and tonic, Sam Adams, Maker’s Mark, etc., etc.). We’d eaten way too much BBQ earlier and the remnants of my jerk beef + pulled chicken were sealed in their take-out tomb.

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How many ways can our rights be trashed in the name of public safety? The latest one, which might seem minor to some of you, is a regulation from the Boston police that would require all liquor stores to notify police anytime a keg is sold. The notification must include who bought it and where it is going. That way the police can pro-actively monitor the location where the keg ends up in order to prevent parties from “getting out of hand”.

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