Tag Archives: ban

Swinging the ban hammer…

Posted on by

I follow a lot of really dissimilar people on Twitter. Politicians, comedians, real life friends, actors, talking heads, meme accounts, porn stars, bakers, and candlestick makers are all on the list. I follow them because I find them either entertaining, informative, or fun to look at. For me, Twitter is the electronic equivalent of walking down the street and hearing snippets of the conversations taking place around you. It has the decided advantage of not requiring you to be out walking an actual street interacting with actual people.

What so many of these seemingly dissimilar individuals appear to have in common is the swift and violent reaction to any comment or re-tweet with which they happen to disagree. I saw at least three posts this morning before 6AM that had some variation of “come at me, I’m itching to hit the block button.”

Sure, you’re perfectly free to block or unfollow someone at any time for any reason under the sun or for no reason at all. I post what I want, like what I want, and almost always give everyone else as wide a berth as possible to do the same. More and more, though, it feels like net denizens are just roving their feed looking for either a fight or an excuse to display how offended they are. Hey, feel free to swing that ban hammer till your heart’s content. It just seems to me there are better and more entertaining and productive uses for social media.

But I’m just a guy sitting here, so do whatever I guess.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

And here is your regularly scheduled installment of What Annoys Jeff this Week…

The Federal Hiring Process. I just received an email notice that an agency I applied to work for back in April (yes, that’s 8 months ago), has finally decided that they’re not going to hire for that vacant position. Really? I took some jackwagon eight months to decide that hiring into the teeth of massive budget cuts wouldn’t be a great idea? Brilliant. Give that man a promotion. This has got to be one of the top two or three reasons that people don’t list the federal government as one of their “wishlist” places to work. The process itself makes you question whether you’d want to work there in the first place.

Automatic Faucets. We have faucets at the office that turn on automatically when you hold your hands under them. It’s a neat bit of tech. Unfortunately, now I find myself standing in front of “old fashioned” sinks shaking my hands furiously wondering why the water isn’t flowing. Even though I use automatic doors from time to time, I still seem to be able to let myself in and out of the old fashion kind without any real trouble. You’d think the same basic technology applied so something I use as often as a sink wouldn’t leave me standing around pondering what the problem is on a regular basis.

The National Transportation Safety Board. As a group, Americans can be pretty dense… and we’re at our collective dumbest when we get behind the wheel of a car. I applaud the NTSB for wanting to keep is all safe, but will need them to do a reality check. In 2009 about 6000 people were killed by “distracted” driving. Four times more people die in this country die every year from unintentionally falling down. Falling. Down. Seriously. In terms of the big scary ways to die that are out there, distracted driving doesn’t seem like one that I’ll be spending an inordinate amount of time worried about. Besides, even if I weren’t texting, it’s just as likely that I’d be distracted by changing the radio, scratching my butt, talking to a passenger, or scarfing down a Big Mac. Then again, those are probably the next things the fine deciders at the NTSB will want to ban.

Don’t ask, don’t tell… Don’t care…

Posted on by

After seeing the media has gone it’s usual level of overboard spinning up the talking heads on today’s repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, I just can’t resist the temptation to wade into the issue just this once. One of the reasons I’ve so often parted company with my Republican brethren is that as a rule I tend to be just a hair to the right of hopelessly liberal on most social issues (at least the ones that don’t involve throwing good money after bad). Some people will tell you repealing don’t ask, don’t tell is a matter of social justice. Maybe it is, but since I’m not a social justice theorist, that argument is pretty much academic to me… fun to argue, but mostly an abstraction.

As a conservative (and I mean old school, personal liberty loving conservatism here), I believe in the maximum amount of individual freedom consistant with maintaining public order. The government that can tell a lesbian she can’t fly a helicopter is just as capable of telling me that I can’t do my job for no other reason than I happen to like women too. I’ve always felt common cause with the lesbian community that way. As I’ve admitted before, government does a few things really well, but it’s got a piss poor track record at legislating it’s own particular version of morality. If I don’t want Uncle to make decisions for me about who I can like, love, or fornicate with, that means I’ve got a duty to keep him from making those decisions for anyone else. That’s just the way the social contract works, gang. An assault on freedom anywhere is an assault on freedom everywhere.

Personally, I think this is all a good sign that we’re getting over our collective puritanical hangups about sex. It’s only taken 400 years. Don’t ask, don’t tell is history… But I wonder why anyone cared in the first place.