Owner: Every Topic in the Universe(s?) URL:http://omniverse.blogspot.com/ Join Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2006 01:45:45 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: "Science, the unknown, and the human race... and how it might all be connected."
That sums it up so well that it's hard to come up with more when required... er... well, just click and you'll see, lol. Site statistics:Click here
Why do the evil usually triumph? 2006-10-22 11:13:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!
I had some new insights today as to why evil people enjoy such enormous success:
1) Evil has few, if any, opponents: To earn the label of "good" or "evil," you have to take ACTION that demonstrates your moral standing; most people neither attack/screw over (evil) nor defend/assist (good) the innocent, and thus are morally neutral... and the neutral tend to not get involved when there's trouble. Since evil is easier and more exciting than good, there are more evil people than good ones, to the extent that in most social groupings there aren't ANY good people; this means that the evil can usually
act unopposed... and THEY KNOW IT.
2) Evil is fearless: Evil people are aware that, contrary to how it SHOULD work, it's highly unlikely that they'll receive censure from the authorities or the members of whatever group they're acting up in; that doesn't matter much to them, though, because they're NOT AFRAID of c Read more:triumph
How to get more comments on your blog 2006-10-18 09:43:00 It seems like every blogging-related forum and chat is full of people begging others to come post comments on their blogs; in their honor, here are a few ideas about how to get more folks to click your "comment links":
1) Eliminate anything about your site that might cause new arrivals to instantly dismiss it, such as:
a) Music or video that starts playing automatically: It's not work safe, and is the #1 complaint I've seen about blogs.
b) ANY sort of automatic file download: People will assume it's a virus, but no matter what it actually is it's NEVER ok.
c) Requiring a special plugin to play your files: There are endless ways to play music or video that don't require weird plugins, so there's no reason to make people deal with a popup telling them to download one.
d) No content at the top of your main page: Even someone on a small laptop with the screen minimized somewhat (which people who surf via BlogMad and such often do) should see something other than your heade
Who do I respect the most? 2006-10-14 13:47:00 Since writing my last post, I've thought alot about who I respect
the most, and why. The traditional concept of respect includes deference, in other words that you'd defer to that person's judgment over your own; for me to feel that for someone, they'd have to have a history of judgment superior to mine, and have me totally convinced that when they advised me their intention was to serve my best interests (rather than to manipulate me, or worse). For most folks, there'd be some older family members that qualified for this position; in MY family, sadly, I've seen little evidence of my best interests ever being considered, and NO evidence that any of them possess superior judgment, so that's out. Some of us have friends with such great track records of making the right choices that we'd trust theirs over ours; among MY friends, I'M the one with the best track record, so that's out too.
The deepest respect I can offer would be that any idea the recipient put forth that's
Who should you respect? 2006-10-10 11:49:00 Ask most people that question, and they give an immediate answer that's essentially a list of every person, or category thereof, in their lives; family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, you name it. If you ask them WHY they respect
those they listed, you'll get a blank look. If you ask them if they're sure all of those people DESERVE respect, you'll get reactions ranging from shock to confusion to anger. If you ask them what analysis they did for each of those people to determine their respect-worthiness, they'll look at you like you're a raving lunatic, and express horror at the idea of actually seeing if people QUALIFY to be respected before giving them respect and the benefits thereof.WHY? Why is it such an outrageous thought that we shouldn't just give respect indiscriminately to everyone we know, that we should reserve it for those who are WORTHY, who have EARNED it? Do we as a culture have the misguided idea that we're so special that anyone in our orbit magically bec
The Beware List, Part 4 2006-10-06 10:31:00 The purpose of the Beware
List is to warn you if someone in your life is evil, sociopathic, a manipulator, out to get you (or some other innocent party), or so messed up that they could cause problems at any moment; to read entries 1-30, see my posts of 5-31-06, 7-6-06 and 8-31-06. Beware of anyone who:
31) Has inconsistencies in their stories (no matter HOW tired, sick, stressed or upset they are).
This is an easy one; if they can't keep their stories straight, they're LYING. When you call them on it, they'll try to claim that it's because they're tired (etc), but, while mental or emotional duress might cause you to have to struggle to remember things clearly, it WON'T cause you to rattle off a different version of a story every time you tell it... and, an HONEST person will be apologetic if you point out that they got it wrong; only a DIShonest person reacts to being caught out by arguing.
32) Describes an event in their lives with a weird and excessive degree of detai
The world's most disgusting person 2006-10-02 10:13:00 Ask any married woman who the most disgustingperson
in the world is, and she'll almost certainly nominate her husband; although we all received the same childhood training as to how to deal with our excretory functions, and the parts of the body they emerge from, when we're not somewhere totally private, for some reason it's mainly women who continue to follow those guidelines in adulthood... if a friend tells you that they witnessed someone farting, picking their nose or scratching their armpit in public, you don't need to ask their gender. Even so, most men have SOME restraint outside of the home; once that front door closes behind them, though, they often reveal behaviors worthy of the poo-flinging gorillas at the zoo (and then they wonder why they get laid progressively less the longer they're married). I assert that MY husband is the most revolting of all; I intend to prove it, so if you're squeamish you might wanna skip this post (there won't be anything graphic, ju
Online stupidity 2006-09-28 11:11:00 First, some news: Earlier this year, I posted that a mysterious new service that was promising to be a revolutionary way to get more hits to your blog was accepting pre-launch registrations; the service was BlogMad, and they DID turn out to be pretty cool... if you want to give it a shot, click the banner in my sidebar with the goofy eyes. Now, the folks that brought us BlogMad are gearing up to launch a new service, "eXlinks," about which they say "Some people are after traffic, some want readers and others are chasing backlinks to boost their rankings on search engines. No matter what your need or want is, eXlinks is going to sort that out for you." They aren't telling us any more than that yet, but if you want to invest 5 seconds to sign up (all they want now is your email addy) and see if it gets you on the ground floor of something good:
Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!
With dazzling timing (see my previous post), I've experienced a classic e Read more:stupidity
The problem with authorities 2006-09-24 12:06:00 In my post of 9-16-06, I discussed how people in authority are assumed to be trying to make their charges play nice but in fact usually aren't; this might have made you wonder what's WRONG with them that they're unwilling or unable to perform the simple task of maintaining order such that innocents are protected and wrongdoers are penalized. Here's the answer in a nutshell:
Managing people correctly requires enforcing behavioral standards on everyone all the time; it's rare for anyone to have to prove that they can do that before being allowed to HAVE authority, so naturally most of them CAN'T (or won't) do it.
Think about it: Authority at work is usually in the hands of the owner, relatives and friends who work for them, those who kiss butt, those with seniority, those who've excelled at something unrelated to managing, such as sales, or, conversely, those who are totally incompetent but for various reasons aren't being fired, and those who are non-threatening to th Read more:authorities
Underwear and other party topics 2006-10-26 09:26:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!
I've got a Halloween party coming up; sounds like fun, doesn't it? The thing is, I'm not a party person; I've never cared much for any sort of group socialization, not even good friends under ideal circumstances, because it's not conducive to the sorts of conversations I prefer (eg intense), and with parties there's the whole merry-making thing that's utterly foreign to my Puritan nature. Even if there's no alcohol involved (I don't drink, and don't enjoy being surrounded by tipsy folks who think they're being amusing), there's an unwritten rule that party conversation should be festive, or at least very casual; it's not that I'm unwilling to be light-hearted or discuss frivolous things (if someone throws a party with the theme of men with hairy chests I'll be there with bells on), it's that there isn't really anything in that genre that I have in common with random strangers... and that's the real d Read more:Underwear
, topics
WalMart + husband = DISASTER 2006-10-30 11:06:00 I'll preface this by explaining something about my husband; he's legendary for losing receipts. He can go to ONE store, get in the car and drive straight home, and when he gets here the receipt is gone; we can search his pockets, the bag(s) and the car all we want, but we'll never find it. He even goes to the drive-up teller, or a drive-through fast food place, gets a receipt when he's IN the car, comes right home and the receipt is gone. It's not that he's not taking the receipts, or that he's absentmindedly tossing them, because I've SEEN him take receipts, put them in his pocket or a bag, and by the time we get home they're GONE, never to be seen again.
As a result, I long since developed the habit of snatching receipts from him whenever we're shopping together; as is typical of habitual screw-ups, he tends to be petulant about it, as if his sacred manhood is being impugned by the implication that he can't hang onto a receipt... and reminding him of his disgraceful
Phone company idiots (isn't that redundant?) 2006-11-03 12:37:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!
My husband's bunglings (see my previous post) might have seemed bad, but not even he can compete with the degree of fouled-up-ness that a major corporation can create; I try not to do consecutive rants about this sort of thing so that new readers don't think my life is a non-stop mess, but this one was too good not to share:
I live in one of America's biggest cities, and am thus provided with phone service by a huge corporation; today, one of our phone lines died, and my husband called them to arrange for a technician to come and fix the problem. The 1st inkling of trouble was when the woman he talked to insisted that she could give NO clue as to when the tech would be here, not even the DAY... but that of course someone had to be home when he arrived in order for him to handle the problem if it turned out to be an inside wiring issue. That seemed insane, but these big corporations are getting more and more arrogant Read more:company
2 updates and some food news 2006-11-07 11:05:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!
Long-term readers might be puzzled as to why it's been so long since I said anything about my mother (who has stage 3 breast cancer); the main reason is that we had no contact for almost 2 months, which is typical for us and hasn't changed since she was diagnosed. I'd last spoken to her the day before she went to the doctor to get Read more:updates
Did you know that you can vomit through your NOSE?!! :-O 2006-11-11 11:37:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!
As you've probably guessed from the title, this post will contain references to unpleasant excretory functions; if that'll bother you, the short version is that my husband and I got the most hideous food poisoning in the history of Western civilization but are slowly getting better-you can skip the details included below.
Still with me? Gotta hear the icky bits, huh? Don't say I didn't warn ya:
Tuesday evening, in a rare attempt to eat healthy, my husband and I had takeout salads for dinner; afterwards, he went to take a nap, and I... what, do you have to ask? I got back on the computer. Within an hour, I knew something wasn't sitting right; if I could have seen into the future (precognition never happens when you could really use it, does it?), I'd have been in the bathroom frantically sticking my fingers down my throat to try to avoid what followed with a preemptive barf, but all I anticipated at that point Read more:vomit
Before you delete or abandon your blog... 2006-11-15 13:00:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!
When you click on the link to a blog you a like, to a BLOGGER you like, and you get a blank page, or are forwarded to a generic search or marketing site, or suddenly it's a different person's blog (usually spam and/or porn), or the top post looks familiar and you realize there hasn't been a new one in weeks, or MONTHS, do you feel like you've been kicked in the stomach? This has happened to me so many times recently that I had to write about it:
One of the dichotomies of the online world is that on the one hand a website can literally outlive its owner, as shown here
http://mydeathspace.com/
while on the other hand even the best-established and longest-running site can vanish in an instant, with a single click. Despite being aware of the latter, it's always a shock to me when a blog disappears; why is it even NECESSARY for blogs to be delete
d? Sure, there are times when a blogger's family, co-workers, school offic
The Beware List, Part 5 2006-11-19 09:55:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!
The Beware
List is a compilation of my lifetime of observations of how people behave when they're screwing you, about to screw you, or are evil, sociopathic, manipulators, or just clueless depressives and social misfits who'll eventually screw everyone within reach including you, whether because they don't know any better or for the sheer joy of it; to read entries 1-40, see my posts of 5-31-06, 7-6-06, 8-31-06 and 10-6-06. It's a very rare person who can stick it to you without giving ample warning; all you have to do is pay attention and stop brushing off evidence of questionable behavior, and you can thwart them. Therefore, beware of anyone who:
41) Says that no one has the "right" to judge anyone else (unless it's DEFINITELY a religious belief).
Only people who regularly behave badly and/or are friends with others who do so feel this way; decent people accept that negative judgment SHOULD BE the result
The things I'm thankful for 2006-11-23 12:15:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!Like everyone else, I'm thankful for the basics: life, health, a solid marriage, loved and liked ones, freedom, the military that keeps us free, a beautiful home in a safe neighborhood, living in a wealthy country, having sufficient $ to never have to worry about missing a meal (or even a new figurine), and those things
that we take for granted but that most people in the world don't have; computers, internet access and DSL. I wanted to share some more personal things that I was grateful for this year, especially since it's been a bumpy road dealing with my mother's cancer, so here's a selection of odds and ends that have been giving me happy moments:My grandmother, who's in her 90's, has regained some of her lost mental functioning: It turns out that elderly people can often get bladder infections that go undetected (because they don't have pain or discomfort from them like younger folks do), and this can cause co
Humans vs human nature 2006-11-27 09:17:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!
Several years ago, I participated regularly in a chatroom, one of whose regulars was so well-known for snacking non-stop that when he logged in the 1st comment addressed to him after "hello" was usually "what are you eating?". The subject of dieting came up one day, and this man who probably hadn't gone more than half an hour without eating in 20 years broke into the discussion of how difficult it was to lose weight and keep it off to proclaim "Losing weight is easy-all you have to do is put down your fork." This man who had no idea what hunger was, much less the gut-twisting agony that accompanies prolonged restriction of caloric intake, honestly thought that you could just decide to stop eating and weight-loss would follow.
You're probably puzzled, or even astounded, that anyone could be so stupid, not to mention insensitive... but wait, haven't you ever looked at an obese person and had vaguely disgusted thoughts a Read more:human
, nature
Group vs one 2006-12-01 09:55:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!
I saw an episode of M*A*S*H recently in which a new nurse who'd decided to try to become a doctor had joined the staff, and the other nurses, far from being supportive and proud as they SHOULD have been, treated her like dirt for daring to try to better herself. Major Houlihan, who's as smart and tough as they come, analyzes the situation and tells the innocent nurse that, since the nursing staff had been running smoothly before SHE showed up, she must somehow be to blame, and she'd better find a way to magically make all the other nurses stop mistreating her or else... and at no point is there any indication that the Major said a single word to the actual wrongdoers about their catty, belligerent and therefore utterly unacceptable behavior, or even suggested that they should take any part in rectifying the situation (that THEY had created) as part of being "team players."
Unfortunately, the way that problem was (MIS) Read more:Group
Husband humor 2006-12-05 09:02:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!
My husband and I have had the flu for the past week or so; can you believe we're both sick AGAIN? Between this flu, the prior one (see my post of 9-8-06), and the food poisoning (see my post of 11-11-06), we've been sick more in the last 3 months than in the last 5 YEARS... him especially, since it's usually just me who gets sick (he says that germs can't approach him because they don't have gas masks, lol). The really grim thing is that we'd just gotten back to normal eating and excretory functions a week before the flu hit (yes, the food poisoning knocked us out for 2 WEEKS), so it was with GREAT dismay that we faced having to switch back to "sick food" again. We didn't have much left, so we wearily started putting together a list of what we'd need from the grocery store before we got too sick to go out; this shouldn't have been a big deal, but my husband is legendary for slurping up most or all of a bunch Read more:Husband
Hawk 1: Rat 0 2006-12-09 13:10:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!
Long-term readers will recall that my patio has been swamped with a Biblical plague of rats and mice for the past year and a half; they come to consume the seed and water meant for the many little birds that flock here every day, and like the birds probably enjoy how the patio area is enclosed by the cover, fence and landscaping, making it sheltered and safe. Because we're concerned for the safety of the tweeties during the day, and the raccoons, possums and skunks that periodically visit us at night, we can't do what most folks will when plagued with vermin; if we mined the feeding area with traps and/or poisoned baits, we'd kill some of our beloved visitors, which means that the UNbeloved ones have had free reign (as long as they stayed out of the shed, where we CAN safely put traps-we've gotten a few in there, but not many).
Rats are sneaky creatures, and so normally come to feed under cover of darkness; in the p
Blog service blunders and a couple of updates 2006-12-13 12:54:00 I mentioned in my post of 9-28-06 that Webring had announced their intention to switch from free for everyone to paid for all but those few that were only members or managers of a handful of rings; I predicted disaster at the time, and it turns out that I was right... which isn't a cause for pride, since anyone OTHER than the owners of Webring would have been able to predict that going from free Read more:couple
, updates
Bah humbug (mostly) 2006-12-17 10:21:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!
It doesn't even seem like the holiday season in the Omni abode; we don't have a single Christmas decoration out yet... heck, we still haven't put the ones from Halloween and Thanksgiving away. As always, I'm held hostage by the disinclination of my lazy and procrastinative husband to tackle the floor to ceiling stacks of huge boxes that all our holiday paraphernalia is in so that stuff can be packed up and replaced with, er, other stuff; I'm not remotely strong enough to shuffle the stacks myself, and I'm not QUITE willing to hire a handyman to help me, so I'm stuck in a holiday display timewarp until I can scream loud enough and long enough for my husband to give in and take time out from screwing around on forums and do his 5 seconds of work so that *I* can spend several hours tearing down old displays and then putting out my most elaborate one of the year... which, if I'm lucky, will occur BEFORE Christmas d
Christmas memories 2006-12-21 12:22:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!
If you're expecting warm and fuzzy reminiscences about happy family times, you must be new here; this isn't a Hallmark special, it's another dark fragment of my past:
When you were a kid, did your parents know what you wanted for Christmas
? If you were raised by human beings instead of by pod people like *I* was, you answered "yes"; maybe your parents couldn't always afford to get you what you wanted, or didn't think some of those things were appropriate for you ("You'll poke your eye out"), but they KNEW, and more importantly, CARED. MY parents had total recall of every imagined wrongdoing of mine for my entire life, and of every penny and minute of effort they ever "wasted" (their word, not mine) on me, so how is it possible that they never knew what I wanted for Christmas, even though I went on and on about each desired item like any other kid? Actually, it's theoretically possible that my father might have k Read more:memories
"Bloggers' Night Before Christmas" and other holiday humor 2006-12-25 11:31:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!
Since my last couple of posts have been kinda downbeat, I'm making up for it with some humor for Christmas
. First and foremost, I've written a little spoof on the classic poem "The Night
Before Christmas," which non-Western readers can find here
http://www.carols.org.uk/twas_the_night_before_christmas.htm
along with a description of where it came from (did you know that the concept of flying reindeer was created in this poem?). I didn't spoof the entire thing because it's LONG, and, while regular readers are aware that I don't shy away from long-windedness, I read some other spoofs that were full-length or close to it and found that even the cleverest of them stopped being funny after a certain # of lines, so I created accordingly. I used the same # of syllables per line as the original, and the same rhyme scheme until the last couplet; I didn't stick to the meter too closely, because that would've taken alot mor
2006: the year in review 2006-12-29 10:48:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!
2006 got derailed for me within its 1st few days by the revelation that my mother has stage 3 breast cancer; this year she went through chemo, surgery, radiation, pneumonia, and currently a blood clot in her lung. She's feeling well enough to work, though, and we're crossing our fingers that her upcoming test to see if there are cancer cells in her blood comes out clean; thank you, again, to those of you who have been praying and sending out + thoughts for her... and thanks from her also (it amazes her that total strangers would take the time to be interested in her illness, but that's because she doesn't know the blogosphere).
The stress of all this knocked out my immune system, giving me the worst flu of my life (it may have been pneumonia given the chest pain I had with it, but I never went to the doctor so I don't know) accompanied by my worst-ever case of hives; the latter continues to the present day (4 mont Read more:review
*** It's my 3 year blog anniversary!! :-) *** 2007-01-02 10:02:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!
Happy New Year!! I hope that this will be the best year ever for you and your loved ones. I found a hilarious e-card for the occasion:
http://www.hallmark.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ecard|10001|10051|143940|-102001;11441;-102178||P1R7SO|ecards
I think the 3rd "resolution" is the funniest... and the most like something that'd
Am I crazy, or is Google updating PageRank RIGHT NOW? 2007-01-05 07:24:00 (I guess those 2 things aren't mutually exclusive, huh, lol?)
I've done every kind of search I can think of, checked every site, blog or otherwise, that I can find that deals with Google
issues, and can't find any mention of an update. Many people have estimated an update for this month, most for the end of the month but a couple for the 1st week, and 1 even referred to odd behavior from Google going back a couple of weeks that they thought was indicative of a rapidly-approaching update, but no one that I've seen has said that it looks like an update is underway... so I'm tossing out an extra post to alert you to the following:
If you query Google's data centers about a URL, you normally get the same PR# back from each one; if you get DIFFERENT #'s for the same URL, that's supposed to mean that a PageRank
update is in progress... and I've checked a bunch of URL's on several different sites that show all the data center results, such as this one
http://livepr.raketforsknin Read more:Google updating
The karma of rescuing 2007-01-06 12:07:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!
Last Saturday, I heard a BANG on the kitchen window; despite my having hung so many suncatchers on it that it barely lets in any light, the birds still fly into the bare spots pretty frequently, so this didn't alarm me at 1st... until I looked up from the computer to see a little tweetie lying motionless on the air conditioner. I lunged to the sliding glass door to see if he was moving; usually they're just stunned and fly away after a few minutes, but sometimes they don't recover before it gets dark and have to be put up in a tree so they don't spend the night on the ground (at least until the cats show up). This bird did something I'd never seen before; he slowly rolled over onto his back with his feet in the air. Shrieking in dismay, and ignoring my husband's admonition that he was a goner, I yanked open the door, dashed out and tenderly scooped the tweet up; I saw no injuries or blood, neither his head nor Read more:karma
, rescuing
The Beware List, Part 6 2007-01-10 09:13:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!
The Beware
List began when I had a major epiphany a few years back; that the evil, the manipulators, and the socially clueless depressives all follow the same patterns, give the same clues to their true natures and intentions, and even use the same lines, and that this makes it possible to figure out what they are, and what they're up
The karmic algebra of charity + prejudice 2007-01-14 11:08:00 Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!My husband told me about the following story (the asterisks are mine):"PARIS - A top French judge ruled that an extreme-right group cannot serve pork soup to the needy, saying the charitable handouts aim to discriminate against Muslims and Jews who don't eat pork because of their faith.Judge Christian Vigouroux of the Council of State, the country's highest administrative body, said late Friday that such giveaways by the far-right group Solidarity of the French threaten public order.His ruling approved a decision by Paris police to refuse permits to the group on the grounds that such handouts could spark angry reactions.France is home to more than 5 million Muslims and some 600,000 Jews. Both Islam and Judaism prohibit eating pork, and Vigouroux said the group had shown 'a clearly discriminatory goal' with its charity.Solidarity of the French was just one of several far-right groups that began distributing pork soup acros Read more:algebra
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