Your Daily Photo (People Suck Edition)

This photo has nothing to do with people sucking, having some jerk jump your fence, sneak into your garage, and take your TREK, has everything to do with people sucking.

It's one of those crimes that don't hit the statistics cause it's kind of pointless to report it as the chance of recovery is virtually nil.

I hope whoever stole it ODs on the crack he buys with the money he gets for selling my bike for cents on the dollar.

The photo is from my Vegas trip over Memorial Day Weekend, an abandoned structure spotted off of SR 127. According to the linked wiki, SR 127 is the Lost Highway from David Lynch's Lost Highway.



This picture shows the structure in the distance, I had my camera taking pictures every 6 seconds. The plan was to turn them into a movie, but the thing about Death Valley is that the views don't really change a whole lot mile after mile after mile after mile, so even as a 10 minute movie made from still shots that covers hundreds of miles, it's just not that interesting.

Below is a view of the same structure from SPACE!


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A Formula for Discerning the Attention Worthiness of an Althouse Comment Thread

This is not a criticism of the Althouse blog itself. It's a frequent read with me, and there are times when the comment section is fun and stimulating.

But there's also times when the 'tit for tat'-ness gets way out of hand.

A scientifically derived formula for determining the quality of a comment thread can be described as follows:

# of unique commenters
_________________

# of comments

The closer to one the better. The closer to zero, especially on large threads, the poorer. There are times when there can be 100+ comments, yet there seems to be only 10 or 15 unique commenters. That isn't good, or helpful, or particularly interesting. Recently, many threads have approached a value of somewhere between .10 through .15 (I made those numbers up, but it sure seems that way, dunnit?)

Like Gresham's Law, the bad comments (and commenters) tend to drive out the valuable comments (and commenters).

Ideally, no thread with more than 50 comments should ever have a value of less than .40, but alas, the greater the total number of posts, the less likely that it is a melliflous melding of many voices, instead it tends to be the shrill shriek of a few very loud, but very unmelodious egotistical and parasitical jerks. Some folks confuse volume and certitude with cogency and correctness.

These parasites tend to get there fill and move on, or get so crazed as to step over a line that shouldn't be crossed, and slink away for awhile. Of course, sometimes they stay away, other times they come back in a new guise, but whether or not it's a new infestation, or an old one trying to make a comeback, these parasites are a problem for a popular blog that attempts to allow voices from a wide spectrum a welcoming place.

When things get like they are now, not commenting on posts that touch on subjects that will send certain folks on a spiral of 'tit for tat' seems like the only reasonable option, as any comment, no matter how interesting, will get lost in the shuffle.

I frankly don't see the attraction that the parasites have for Althouse, it would make more sense if they were trying to suck some of her traffic towards their own blogs, but most of the parasitical commenters don't blog themselves, they just seem to desire to bring down the comment section of a blog whose viewpoint they disapprove.

The worst offender presently, is a classic bore. Should someone choose to write a textbook on how not to engage in debate, then object lesson one would be that particular commenter's recent performance (and the folks who insist on engaging said troll, do themselves no favors (myself inclusive), either).

I don't envy Prof. Althouse and the choices she's confronted with. Either let things continue to devolve, and watch what you created tarnish a bit, or go back to moderating comments for awhile and deal with that hassle.

In summary, people suck (especially the parasites).