Stormbringer's Thunder

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen Some website owners have a burr under their collective saddles about ad blockers, and we frequently encounter a site that will say, in essence, "Shut off your ad blocker or we won't let you view our site". (If I wanted to get bullied, I'd talk about the truth of biblical creation science to atheists.) So, I click out of the site — which may have received traffic if I used them as a reference in an article. There are some sites that ask you nicely to shut off the ad blocker, but let you continue. An attitude like that may cause me to reconsider if I have to go back there again. Some cranky authors attempt to make a case that  we are "stealing" if we use an ad blocker . Are we stealing when we fast-forward through commercials on our DVRs? Wonder where their foundation is for morality and ethics. Anyway, such a complaint doesn't make a whole heap of sense if you study on it. Bandwidth Not everyone is blessed with ultra-high spe

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen There are many instances of outright fraud on Facebook where people have been tricked into giving important information, making bad purchases, and so on. This is not about those third-party deceptions by sidewinders. No, this is about a different area. Modified from an image on Clker clip art In mid-November, the option was taken using Facebook's own "Promote Your Page" option to spotlight The Question Evolution Project . There were some good articles that needed exposure, and we've done these promotions before. The targeted areas were the United States, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Australia, India, and Indonesia (we do get visitors from non-English-speaking countries), and the promotion is toward people who have an interest in the topics we cover. When the Likes started pouring in, I realized that something was wrong. At this moment, we show about 5,225 Likes from people who use some form of English as their selected la

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen  Edited J anuary 28, 2017   Sometimes I am the bad guy when it comes to matters of "free speech" and "censorship". People often talk about them, but they often use those terms in the heat of anger or to emotionally manipulate others. In reality, there is no absolutely free speech, and censorship can be helpful — and censorship is more common than you may think. Free Speech Someone may say that they have a "right" to free speech, but where did they get that right? Here in the United States, we have documents from our founders that guarantee it. Some countries have almost no free speech. Even here where it is treasured, there are limitations. Municipalities have statutes in place making certain speech unlawful; the community has the right to set its standards, after all (as long as it does not engage in illegal "hard" censorship). We have the right to criticize the government. However, we do not have the right t

Having second Weblogs on Posterous was a silly idea, I admit. Since this Weblog is a general purpose thing, I did not really need to use it. But I wanted to try it out. Posterous is a good idea that is poorly executed. You can upload MP3s and some other things and they make it accessible to everyone. The main problem is that they were down a great deal of the time. Another problem is that for having a Weblog like Blogger, Wordpress and others, fuggedaboudit. The concept was good for multimedia but I did not like it for trying to write something up. After they were bought out by Twitter, they became even more unreliable. One time, it took me almost a week to get a good connection to be able to edit one post. Worse, one of my Posterous Weblogs had content vanish! I sent them an e-mail, asking what was going on. No reply. After several days, I fully deleted the account. I know of one page that was there, it contained public screen shots of atheopaths showing how rotten they can be in t

The word "troll" seems to have shifted meanings since the invention of Algore's Amazing Internet™. (I pick up some interesting phrases from Chris Plante .) Traditionally, it is someone who makes comments in forums and such to provoke a negative response . Since they are doing this for attention, it led to the phrase, "Do not feed the trolls". By the way, someone who posts a comment in a thread that disagrees with others is often mistakenly called a troll. Perhaps it is true, but quite often, the label is incorrect. The definition has broadened in recent years, probably because of the availability of social media. Trolls have become obsessive and vindictive. In my experience, many Internet atheists are not only trolls, but are bullies and narcissistic stalkers who seek to do harm to others. Many are unemployed, so they have time to wreak havoc. Most are dealt with by simply blocking them and reporting them to the appropriate authorities. The n they play the

As a review: "Strange Searches" is my term for those things that show up in my site thingie. It shows how someone got to the site, and what search terms they used (if any), and their search engine. Sometimes people just use key words that resemble an actual sentence but seem funny to read, other times, people really do search for something that I consider strange. And sometimes, people want me to see what they put together so they can get their prank on the page, but that trick usually fails. Here is something that made me wonder. I'll let you do some imagining:

Buona sera. The exceptionally loud minority of vociferous children seems to be shrinking. Atheists have never been popular, and are the least-liked group in America (and probably most of the world). "Why don't people like atheists, Uncle Bob?" This is not the kind of atheist that is a "live and let live" type, you believe, I don't, so what? No, so-called "New Atheism" is shrill, irrational, obnoxious, vituperative — it becomes a caricature of itself . People want meaning in their lives, and are not satisfied with a religion that is based on bad thinking, emotionalism and hate. The obstreperous atheist handbook says that if you cannot defeat your opponent through reason (which is the usual outcome for these kids), resort to finding any and every excuse to mock and ridicule said opponent. It does not solve the problem, but attempting to tear others down somehow makes atheopaths feel better about themselves, capice? So, be careful how your spen

Buona sera.  I received an e-mail from my old pal Joshua James. And then he sent me "2nd Attempt" e-mail. It certainly is nice that he's persistent. He probably knows me and I rudely forgot about him, because he actually addressed me by name on one of my accounts where I conduct legitimate business. Let's see... what are the problem areas? Trust has to be earned.  I learned from some of my associates this valuable lesson, that you don't give away too much trust too soon or you could end up taking a dirt nap, capice?  Trust your instinct a little, but give trust slowly. This cafone  hasn't done anything to earn my trust, since I never heard of the guy before. The only  thing going for it is that my name is there, but he could have bought it from another of my business contacts or subscriptions. Hotmail flagged it.  Sure, I get stuff flagged all the time. That's why I check the spam filter. I'm a member.  Of what? I didn't join anything. Cl

Buona sera. Almost from my first day on the Internet (back when we used carrier pigeons, wires and tin cans), people have been bandying about the term " sock puppet ". It's a fake online persona (not to be confused with a pseudonym, such as "Stormbringer" or "Cowboy Bob"), generally used for deception. I get accused of having sock puppet accounts. Also, I have seen other people accused of the same "crime". The most outrageous accusation in this area is that I made up people who hate me , so I can have someone to fight with, which would include making up entire Websites and Weblogs. Also, on more than one occasion, I would have to create entire sites for people who agree with me on more than one occasion. (People so desperate to attack are downright sick in the head, I promise you.) Mind you, there were times I went to a Weblog and read comments that I wrote but did not recognize ("I wrote that? Hey, that's pretty good!&quo

Credit: Freeimages / c-unie Edited 7-19-2017 Buon giorno. I was thinking about neurotic people on the Internet like my pet troll, Norman. (He's the one that claims almost everything I say is a lie, cannot learn from others, is always right and has tantrums when he humiliates himself or is proven wrong.) So, people like that want to mess with me, and I like to use absurdity to illustrate absurdity (to misquote Rush Limbaugh). I am a follower of Jesus. But I do not go for the modern churchianity version of Jesus or their image of Christians being peace, love and grooviness with sappy smiles and letting people constantly kick us around. (Some atheists have that concept of Christians, too.) When people act up in my presence online, they may very well get shown that their attacks, lies, abuse of logic &c. are not fooling anyone. When I call them on it, they get angry. When some called out this loser, he lost last vestiges of his mind . Here is an internet classic. Some of

Buona sera. I know that I have comments to moderate and responses to give. But I'm on my lunch break, and want to give better replies than break time will permit, capice? And now for something completely the same as before: Computer stuff. A short rant. I tend to get a bit ruffled when some cafone starts spouting off that "computers are evil", "television is evil", "the Internet is evil", "playing cards are evil", "abbreviations of Latin expressions are evil", etc. Listen, just about anything can be used for an evil purpose. As for the computer, there is plenty of evil on it — and some of that is based on your point of view. Most of us agree that child porn is evil. From my Christian standpoint, atheistic Communist sites are evil. Sharia law-loving Muslims would say that my Weblog is evil. An object or process, in and of itself, is neutral. F'rinstance, I am using this computer to listen to great Bible teachings by Charles

Buon giorno. Last time, I discussed why I will not follow some people on Twitter. This time, it's slightly different: Unfollowing. (No, it's not a real word outside of social networking, but it's still useful.) I am not one of those people that needs to have loads of followers to validate my existence; in fact, I trim off the followers. OK, so I've been Twittering, Tweeting, Retweeting (gosh, those terms make me feel so manly...ha!) for a while. Then I see that I'm getting bothered by some of the material that appears before of my eyes. Here are some of the reasons that I may drop my following: Although I knew what I was getting into, someone sends links almost exclusively . Sure, I want news. But not quite that much! It would help if the person had personality instead of acting like some kind of posting bot. They ignore my links . As almost a sub-point to the above, I post some links myself. When I have a new Weblog posting, I'll share the link. When people a