Perri Nelson's Website 

Open Trackback Tuesday

This extended linkfest is for the 8th of May, 2007.

If you have something interesting you'd like to share, feel free to link it here and leave a trackback.

Just remember the trackback policy.

For the best exposure, go to the blogger's oasis and use the linkfest chooser to choose the posts you'd like to hook up with.

Blogs for Borders Video Blogburst - 050807

The brave folks at Save Our State descend into a Third World hell, on American soil!

A Colorado teen is confronted by her deported rapist, on American soil!

Can our government be trusted to implement the current amnesty?  We take a look at how they're fulfilling their current obligations...

If you somehow missed it our May 1st coverage is here and here.

ALIPAC follows up on the Macarthur Park mini riot...here. (Full disclosure: I helped edit the video)

See all the SOS coverage of Baldwin Park...here.  (Just keep scrolling, there's lots to see)

This has been the Blogs For Borders Video Blogburst. The Blogs For Borders Blogroll is dedicated to American sovereignty, border security and a sane immigration policy. If you'd like to join go to the Blogs For Borders Website and send us an email with "sign me up" in the subject line.

Technorati Tags: illegal immigration, blogs for borders, illegal alien, cirminal, rapist, colorado, california, deportation, baldwin park, save our state, third world, amnesty, president bush, mexico, macarthur park, invasion,

Third party services part ???

I've commented before on the use of third party services on blogging sites. I'm not going to rehash that at this time, except to say that a lot of bloggers rely on free third party services, and that sometimes those services don't work as well as we'd like. Hey, they're free and we get what we pay for right?

When the government provides a service though, we generally expect it to work. Whether it's freely provided to the public or not, our taxes pay for it. The thing is though, that there are an aweful lot of people using government services, and sometimes the capacity of those services is exceeded by the public demand.

I'm not talking about welfare, medicare, or any of those social services, although they suffer from similar problems. No, what I'm talking about is the National Weather Service's DWML service that I use to obtain forecast data. It's been intermittently up and down now for about a week.

People that go to my forecast pages, which rely on the DWML service aren't getting forecasts. Instead they're getting error pages. It's a bit irritating to me when I go to look up the local forecast this way and get the error page too.

It's also my own fault. My forecast handler isn't dealing with the possibility that the National Weather Service might have temporarily shut down access to the DWML service, so it's throwing exceptions. It takes a while to get to that point, because sometimes the service times out, sometimes it throws an "invalid gateway" error, and other times it returns a 403 "unauthorized" error. At least I know what's happening and why, because I get email for every site error.

I guess now it's time I fixed this. A few visitors to my site are trying to retrieve forecasts every now and then. I know the forecasts are failing, so I've been letting down a few of my visitors.

Ouch.

I'll have a fix up for this in a few days. I know what I need to do to fix it, and once it's fixed I'll let you know.

While I'm at it, I'm going to update the repeat visitor widget so that when the DWML service is working, and when I know where you are visiting from, it will show you a quick summary of the next 12 hours in your forecast.

Meanwhile, if there are features you'd like to see implemented, or if you encounter bugs on the site that you'd like to see fixed, please don't hesitate to send me email at perri at perrinelson dot com. Do that, and I'll see what I can do to get them fixed. After all, how can I complain about free services provided by others if I don't keep my own services up to snuff?

Update: The forecast page has been updated. Instead of presenting an error page when the weather service is unavailable it should now inform you that the service is unavailable and provide you with a link to the National Weather Service's main weather page. At the current time the ndfdXml service is offline. I will post a notice when it becomes available again.

Update 2: The ndfdXml service is back online again. Weather forecasts should once again be available.

How to start each day with a positive outlook

My dad sent this list to me via e-mail. I got a kick out of it, so I figured I'd share...

1. Open a new folder in your computer.
2. Name it 'Hillary Rodham Clinton'
3. Send it to the trash.
4. Empty the trash.
5. Your PC will ask you, 'Do you really want to get rid of 'Hillary Rodham Clinton?'
6. Firmly Click 'Yes.'
7. Feel better.

P. S.: Next week we'll do Nancy Pelosi

Consensus

It's an interesting thing to note that today's issues are frequently revolving around "consensus" views. As The Ace at PoliPundit.com notes, the left likes to "establish a consensus reflecting political preferences and make that consensus a fact." Leaving aside for the moment whether a consensus view reflects "facts" or not, I'd like to look at the logic behind this tendency, and how it fits in naturally with the left's world and political views.

First of all, the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines the word consensus in this way:

1 a : general agreement : UNANIMITY <the consensus of their opinion, based on reports...from the border -- John Hersey> b : the judgment arrived at by most of those concerned <the consensus was to go ahead>
2 : group solidarity in sentiment and belief

I think that the left likes to believe that consensus means "unanimity" as the definition here implies. I think that's wrong, but the concept is used as a club to beat aside the opinions of anyone that doesn't agree with their agendas.

The left has a tendency to take a consensus as found in the sense of definition 1b and treat it as in the sense of definition 1a. Once they've reached this treatment, their consensus quickly becomes a consensus as found in definition 2.

I suppose that seems like too fine a distinction, but if you think about it "most of those concerned" is by no means all. It merely needs to be a single individual more than 50% of those concerned. To take a viewpoint held by just slightly over half of the people and treat it as though it represents a unanimous viewpoint is intellectual dishonesty. Yet this is what lies behind the "settled science" of global warming today as well as so many other social issues.

Consensus by itself is not a bad thing, but this misuse of the concept, this blurring of the definitions leads to bad results.This is how the left can so successfully take a part of their agenda and, by picking and choosing the "experts", gradually build a limited consensus. Then once they have achieved that they quickly shift the concept from being a "majority" view to a "general agreement" view without ever actually having achieved gradual agreement. This gives them the excuse to browbeat dissenters and feel good about it.

The very existence of a "consensus" viewpoint like this swiftly becomes "group solidarity" for the left as well. Once this happens, even people who have no actual knowledge of the issues cannot be convinced of the opposite viewpoint, whether they are presented with facts or not. This explains Sen. Reid's declaration that even if presented with evidence of the success of the "surge" strategy in Iraq he wouldn't be convinced, because it "obviously wasn't working".

We can expect much more of this from the left in the future. The left is very fond of the notion of a "pure democracy", even going so far as to say that conservatives don't support democracy. What drives this urge to "pure democracy" and consensus building from the left? Could it be that the socialist nature of modern day liberals and the Democratic party platform encourage it?

I think that it does. Whenever you have a purely "majority rules" situation, you have a tendency toward socialism. People, left to their own, without a firm moral standard, or a firm grounding in logic and evidence tend to want things that benefit them at the expense of others. When a mob works in this fashion the rights of individuals are buried to the "will of the people." Perhaps this is what was meant back in January when supporters of Hugo Chavez declared that Socialism IS Democracy.

The left today uses "consensus science" to drive their socialist agenda. They use "consensus politics" to drive their socialist agenda. By twisting the usage of the term consensus they imply that anyone that doesn't support their agenda is a reactionary or simply an evil person worthy of trial ala Nuremberg.

It's a pretty powerful weapon, this twisting of meaning. It's a sad thing indeed that our educational system today doesn't teach children to think. Instead it teaches them what to think, leaving them poorly equipped to deal with the propaganda flowing from the left in the guise of science and truth.

Conservative Credits

I like to consider myself to be a conservative. Occasionally though I espouse a viewpoint that might be considered liberal, or I do something that in the mind of some is considered to not be conservative. For example, I'm not a NASCAR fan. To some that places me clearly on the left side of the political spectrum. Worse, I live on the left coast, in Washington State.

Because of these ideological sins, I've applied for and been granted conservative credits. This should help to offset my liberal footprint a bit. To view my certificate, click on the image below. For more information about conservative credits, and how you can help to offset your liberal footprint, visit this site.