Lost in OK

Reason Magazine dug up this quote from a letter to the editor written by a young Alan Greenspan:

Atlas Shrugged is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should. [The New York Times reviewer] suspiciously wonders “about a person who sustains such a mood through the writing of 1,168 pages and some fourteen years of work.” This reader wonders about a person who finds unrelenting justice personally disturbing.

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Ayn Rand

Today would have been Ayn Rands 100th birthday. Tonight I drink a toast to a remarkable woman with a remarkable mind who can truly hold claim to being part of the “motor of the world”. The greatest compliment I can give her is to say that my ideas have been transformed by hers, though through a process of a constant antagonistic fight. However, I can truly say that John Galt lives on in this one corner of the world . . .

Johnny Carson, the “Tonight Show” TV host who served America a smooth nightcap of celebrity banter, droll comedy and heartland charm for 30 years, has died. He was 79. “Mr. Carson passed away peacefully early Sunday morning,” his nephew, Jeff Sotzing, told The Associated Press. “He was surrounded by his family, whose loss will be immeasurable. There will be no memorial service.”

Poll: Nation split on Bush as uniter or divider

[Via: CNN.com]

This is kinda amusing to me because my buddy Peter and I were just talking this morning about how it was inevitable that Google would have to weigh in on the comment spam plague. Today they announced on their blog that they will be implementing an “nofollow” tag that will allow you to block links on your site from being used for ranking purposes on Google. The same rule applies to MSN and Yahoo searches. From the blog post:

He’s pulling our legs again . . . Tom Waits hasn’t had fun in years:

Moody TOM WAITS admits the last time he had “fun” was 40 years ago - at a JAMES BROWN concert.

The gravel-voiced American singer prefers to occupy his life with educational activities rather than indulging in childish behaviour - but he did allow his standards to slip on one occasion.

Waits says, “I don’t have fun. Actually, I had fun once. In 1962. I drank a whole bottle of Robitussin cough medicine and went in the back of a 1961 powder-blue Lincoln Continental to a James Brown concert with some Mexican friends of mine. I haven’t had fun since. It’s not a word I like.

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I should preface this post by saying I am not, in any real way, an open source developer. I feel no compulsion to distribute the source of my work for others to modify and distribute on their own without proper monetary compensation. In fact I am revolted by anyone who suggests that I have a moral obligation to do so. This is the talk of looters who wish to steal the works of others for their own purposes without the producers consent. However, my feelings on the politics of GNU style open source are well known and not the purpose of this post.

I just love to see the stories about Oklahoma that hit the international news wires:

Oklahoma highway users wishing to call the state about electronic payment passes were mistakenly directed to a sex hotline.

Via: Yahoo! News - Oklahoma turnpike number exits at sex hotline