Mixology Monday: Breaking the Rules

This Mixology Monday’s theme was Limit One over at Kaiser Penguin, cocktails so large that to have two would be excess. On Saturday night causabon and I met to have a drink, and go over what we would post about. We were models of Shandian restraint. Now that the fog has lifted, lets have a look at the damage, shall we?

 

Cremation of Sam McGee

I intended to go camping this weekend, but the forecast of -50° F windchill in Voyageurs National Park dissuaded me. Instead, I am frying up sourdough flapjacks and reading Robert Service poems in an attempt to conjure the spirit of the frozen north in the land of radiators and central heating. People who camp in the dead of winter fall into two broad categories: those who do it for pleasure and those that wish to experience nature red in tooth and claw. I fall into the comfort-seekers, but sometimes I wish I had a hardier soul.

My companions in this trip-that-never-happened certainly were made of stouter stuff. I saw a gleam appear in some of their eyes as the forecast got cold. Others, I think, were merely fool-hardy. Nonetheless, it fell to me to argue that 0° sleeping bags and three season tents (or even quiznees) would not withstand a blizzard from the North. “Remember the fellowship on Mt. Caradhas,” I argued. “Better than the mines of Moria,” they returned. In the end, the most I could do was persuade them to stay close enough to the Twin Cities to bail if conditions became too ferocious. Will they fly to civilization tonight, frostbitten and miserable, or will they return tomorrow with daring tales, like Shackleton? I should have gone with them.

 

McArdle has a useful and insightful post on her blog

You can read it right here.

She’s arguing that the idea of increased food stamp allowances wouldn’t be a useful economic stimulus in the way a tax rebate would.  There are five reasons that she gives, and the first is

The poor don’t need more food. Obesity is a problem for the poor in America; except for people who are too screwed up to get food stamps (because they don’t have an address), food insufficiency is not.

 

A Proposal to Ignore Monogamy

After several years of making fun of them, I am a little sheepish about the fact that I am starting to come around to what the polyamory people have always espoused, though, I think, for different reasons.

Our society is losing connection between people, and has been for a long time. I don’t mean this new ‘interconnectivity’ bullshit given to us by texting and i.m. I mean a legitimate emotional connection between individuals. I think an increase in sex and non-possessive relationships would help that, but we would have to change our motivations and the way we view sex.

 

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in Ten Easy Steps

This article at health.com on where significant concentrations of bacteria can be found starts out on an almost reasonable footing, talking about kitchen sinks (they recommend bleaching them twice a week) and airplane bathrooms. The recommend, by the way, putting the lid down before flushing (a recommendation I’ve heard before*, and cheerfully ignored that time as well). But it doesn’t take long before the article goes a little off the deep end…

 

Link Dump

It’s been a while since I had a useful forum for distributing some of the things I find on the internet in any given day, so some of these are fairly old. That said, I will start with the joys of youtube, and proceed on from there…

 

How to Choose a Password

When I was trying to decide on a password for my WordPress account, I noticed the helpful “password meter” which gauges the strength of your password of choice, both with a little colored bar that fills up incrementally, and an assessment of your current password’s merits. My default password received a “Bad”.
Really? Sure, it’s only six characters, but nobody’s ever guessed it (Yes, my name is six letters, but I’ll bet you that’s usually pretty close to the top of the list). The phishers on myspace have yet to successfully convert me into an automated Webcam advertisement or Macy’s gift card dispenser.
But apparently my proposed password is as hard to guess as “12345”, which also earns a “Bad”.

So I decided, lead by WordPress Password Consultancy, to choose a password more suitable to their liking.

Let’s go back to the number example. What if my password was one thing over and over again, the theory being the same as rock/paper/scissors.