Random ranting

1) I hate when people say "backslash," when they really mean "forward slash." How did that start? Who told the general public that they should add the word "back" to "slash?"

2) Have you seen www.conservapedia.com? It takes directly from Wikipedia's open source and slants all its entries to the right, sometimes subtly but often to the point where you can't even see the middle anymore.

For example, the "abortion" entry has a picture of a well-developed fetus and includes subsections discussing "direct correlations" between abortion and breast cancer, abortion and miscarriages in later pregnancies, and general wrong-ness.

It's dependent on user entries, like Wikipedia, but threatens to block users who use BCE and CE instead of BC and AD, as well as users who use British spellings instead of American spellings.

The first subhead under the "Theory of evolution" entry reads: "Lack of Any Credible Transitional Forms," which goes on to say that there is no fossil evidence for evolution.

You get the idea...

3) Finally, if the mood strikes to donate your money to a good cause, check out www.scooterlibby.com, and give to his defense fund.

And don't worry about kittens dying or impoverished young people and immigrants. The money will be much better spent on Scooter's lawyers -- just don't try to take it off your taxes... it's not tax deductible, and keep in mind that you may face gift tax ramifications if you contribute too much.

It's already raised $4 million so far, according to a story in today's New York Times.