For this week, anyway.

I’ve read two books by Carl Hiaasen and have thoroughly enjoyed them. This week I got the bug to escape to South Florida again and picked up Hiaasen’s Skin Tight.

After dispatching a pistol-packing intruder from his home with the help of a stuffed Marlin head, Mick Stranahan can’t deny that someone is out to get him. His now-deceased intruder carries no I.D., and as a former Florida state investigator, Stranahan knows there are plenty of potential culprits. His long list of enemies includes an off point hit man, a personal injury lawyer of billboard fame, a notoriously irritating TV journalist, and a fumbling plastic surgeon.

Now, if he wants to keep fishing into his golden years, Stranahan has no choice but to come out of retirement to close this one last case…

I was telling my wife about how much I like his books and she was intrigued, so I rummaged through my book shelf and handed her Skinny Dip.

Chaz Perrone might be the only marine scientist in the world who doesn’t know which way the Gulf Stream runs. He might also be the only one who went into biology just to make a killing, and now he’s found a way–doctoring water samples so that a ruthless agribusiness tycoon can continue illegally dumping fertilizer into the endangered Everglades. When Chaz suspects that his wife, Joey, has figured out his scam, he pushes her overboard from a cruise liner into the night-dark Atlantic. Unfortunately for Chaz, his wife doesn’t die in the fall.

Clinging blindly to a bale of Jamaican pot, Joey Perrone is plucked from the ocean by former cop and current loner Mick Stranahan. Instead of rushing to the police and reporting her husband’s crime, Joey decides to stay dead and (with Mick’s help) screw with Chaz until he screws himself.

As Joey haunts and taunts her homicidal husband, as Chaz’s cold-blooded cohorts in pollution grow uneasy about his ineptitude and increasingly erratic behavior, as Mick Stranahan discovers that six failed marriages and years of island solitude haven’t killed the reckless romantic in him, we’re taken on a hilarious, full-throttle, pure Hiaasen ride through the warped politics and mayhem of the human environment, and the human heart.

Part of the allure of reading a Carl Hiaasen book this time of year is, well, this time of year; March. Every winter, no matter how mild, turns into a long winter this time of year. Reading stories that take place in South Florida seem to help one to get over that final hump.

One thing that a lot of people may not know is that Hiaasen not only writes adult themed books, but he also writes juvenile and young adult books. What the hell, I thought, I’ll pick up one of his books for my 11 year old, and went to the library and checked out Flush:

Bestselling novelist Carl Hiaasen is back with another hysterical mystery adventure for young readers, set in the Florida Keys.

You know it’s going to be a rough summer when you spend Father’s Day visiting your dad in the local lockup.

Noah’s dad is sure that the owner of the Coral Queen casino boat is flushing raw sewage into the harbor–which has made taking a dip at the local beach like swimming in a toilet. He can’t prove it though, and so he decides that sinking the boat will make an effective statement. Right. The boat is pumped out and back in business within days and Noah’s dad is stuck in the clink.

Now Noah is determined to succeed where his dad failed. He will prove that the Coral Queen is dumping illegally . . . somehow. His allies may not add up to much–his sister Abbey, an unreformed childhood biter; Lice Peeking, a greedy sot with poor hygiene; Shelly, a bartender and a woman scorned; and a mysterious pirate–but Noah’s got a plan to flush this crook out into the open. A plan that should sink the crooked little casino, once and for all.

The deal when I suggest a book for my son is that he not make a judgement until after he’s read at least 20 pages. He put in his time with 20 and he’s good to go as soon as he finishes the last few pages of what he’s currently reading.

So now, everyone in the Medley household is reading a Carl Hiaasen book.

Recently I participated in a discussion that basically asked the question, “Do Republicans believe in evolution?” Although I’m not a Republican, I know plenty of people who would classify themselves as Republicans and who accept the reality that evolution is a fact. Notice how I didn’t state that they believe it was real. The reason why is because evolution is a scientific fact. Again, I’m not a Republican. I’m a Libertarian. Libertarians share some common ideological bent with some who would call themselves Republicans.

The conversation soon devolved—intentional pun—into a debate of whether evolution was real or not. At that point I lose interest. You can’t have a meaningful discussion about, say, math if the person with whom you are talking can’t accept the fact that 2+2=4. But before it got to that point, the discussion touched on the coexistence of evolution and a creator; God, if you will. Some view evolution as an exemplification of a creator. That it could not possibly occur without some intelligent designer pulling levers like Oz behind the curtain. Others view evolution as being unnecessary and an affront to the notion of God.

This sort of discussion is difficult for me because although the two need not be mutually exclusive, I know that evolution is a verifiable fact. A creator or God is a belief.

As it stands there is not presently a way in which we can either prove the existence of a creator or the nonexistence of a creator. We simply cannot know. Both sides of that argument are basing everything on belief; both the theist and the atheist. One believes in a god, one does not, but both are basing everything on a belief. It’s an expression of faith. I accept the fact that I cannot know if there is a god or not therefore I’m agnostic on the matter. Every time an atheist looks down on a theist in snooty derision, I want to punch them in the throat. “Ass hole, the basis of your assumption is the exact same as the theist; belief. Now put a cork in it.”

Keep in mind that I don’t disregard religion as a whole. I do not. I fully acknowledge the important role that Judeo-Christianity has played in the development of Western Culture and accept that though not without flaws, that role has been by and large a positive one. I appreciate Western Culture and know that it would not exist as we know it without the Judeo-Christian influence that it has benefited from.

Amidst the debate of if a creator exists or not is a theory known as the “simulation theory.” It goes something like this: The universe and everything in it including us is one giant computer simulation. Basically, what if God is a programmer? It may sound crazy, but there are some serious thinkers that have tackled this idea. A great article on the simulation theory can be read at Aeon. No, this isn’t some rehash of The Matrix. It’s far more complex than that. And, frankly, much more interesting.

Our species is not going to last forever. One way or another, humanity will vanish from the Universe, but before it does, it might summon together sufficient computing power to emulate human experience, in all of its rich detail. Some philosophers and physicists have begun to wonder if we’re already there. Maybe we are in a computer simulation, and the reality we experience is just part of the program.

A pair of philosophers recently argued that if we accept the eventual complexity of computer hardware, it’s quite probable we’re already part of an ‘ancestor simulation’, a virtual recreation of humanity’s past. Meanwhile, a trio of nuclear physicists has proposed a way to test this hypothesis, based on the notion that every scientific programme makes simplifying assumptions. If we live in a simulation, the thinking goes, we might be able to use experiments to detect these assumptions.

The article goes on in great detail on how some of these experiments may work. I really do recommend taking the time to read it, especially for fiction writer types looking for inspiration.

The interesting thing is that if science were ever able to prove that our existence is simply a computer simulation, it would both prove and disprove the arguments of both the theist and the atheist. In fact the only real winner in that scenario would be nihilism. Wrap your head around that one.

The prospect that our existence could be nothing more than a computer simulation is a frightening one that has as much credence as theism or atheism from a completely empirical standpoint. But imagine a world in which we have advanced enough technologically to empirically determine the genesis of our existence and it turns out that our existence is not real; that we are simply nothing more than a simulation. Now think about the implications of that.

That is frightening.

Or not.

hind·sight

1. understanding of a situation or event only after it has happened or developed.

I’ve come to realize that the old adage “hindsight is 20 20″ is not entirely true. Oftentimes, hindsight is completely blinded by rank ideology or a grave misunderstanding of history.

I’ve been blogging to some extent since 2000. Back in those wild and wooly days there was no WordPress and very few other content management systems. My first blog I built myself, hand coded from scratch from top to bottom. I loved those early blogging days because it was a new thing. People participated in a sometimes tightly knit and tightly wound community. Also, it was a real dynamic, wild time in blogging. Today’s blogging is staid by comparison. There were a bunch of us who came of “blogging age” together and I became good friends with fellow bloggers that I never met. Most I’ve lost contact with over the years, but some I’ve maintained what I feel are good friendships. For about ten years now, I’ve been great friends with Vincent Ferrari and I’ve never met the guy. Really, I consider the guy a good friend in the truest sense of the word, and I have tons of respect for him. Yet I’ve never met him. Yet.

Back then one of the big challenges was the scourge known as comment spamming. It was present right off the bat but mostly manageable. A few years in it got to be where it was a big enough problem that managing comment spam was a real challenge. Then much later, CMS (content management systems) began to get the hang of it and became very good at blocking comment spammers. Nowadays, CMS platforms, like WordPress, are very, very good at managing comment spam; to the point that you hardly even have to worry about it making it to your blog. But it still didn’t discourage comment spammers because the way that CMS platforms manage comment spam is to divert it to an area on the back end where you can peruse it if you like, or just delete it. Even though it didn’t make it to the blog it’s still present in the control panel. That’s ok for comment spammers, though, because they don’t really care if people see it or not. Even if it’s hidden and never sees the light of day it’s still on a page on the back end. All the links that they flood into that dark, never seen room would still get crawled by search engines and produce an artificially high search result simply because a link to some place–bank, porn site, wherever–was flooded all over the place on various filtered blogs.

Typically it works like this: Some place with a web site hires a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) ”expert” to boost their rankings in search engines. A cheap easy way to do it would be to flood every blog in the universe with “comments” that just happen to contain a link to said website. Everything worked great for the SEO guys looking for an easy buck by showing their clients how they’ve boosted their search results.

But then it all changed.

Google, not too long ago, from what I understand, changed their algorithms to where they are able to identify links that appear in inordinately high numbers. Google calls these links “unnatural.” They want the links they’re crawling and adjusting rankings with to be organic, not the result of spamming various comment sections of various blogs by the millions. The algorithm is now able to recognize the spamming and it ramps their search results down. In some cases they are actually removing these websites from their search results all together. They are contacting the website administrators and telling them that because of their spamming practices they have been booted from Google’s search results or are about to be. I wonder how many SEO “experts” have lost some work over that one?

In my comment spam jail inside of my blog admin are thousands of these spammed urls. I’ll clear it out every couple of months or so, but don’t really worry about it because I know it won’t show up on my site. That’s all I really care about. But the links are still there being crawled by Google and because of that those sites to which the urls point are taking a beating in Google’s search results. Lately, over the past few months, I’ve noticed a huge increase in emails from what appears to be the new SEO “expert” begging me to remove the links because they are being punished by Google. I’ve had some that are near panic and think that threatening me will somehow inspire me to help them. Especially after the third or fourth contact. For example there is this:

Hello, My name is Stacey Thompson and I am with xxxx. I would like to thank you very much to linking to our website. Unfortunately, the link may have been acquired against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and as a result, we recently received a notice from Google that our website has been assessed a penalty after determining certain links may be “unnatural.” It is extremely important for us to bring our site into compliance. Can you please remove the links to our website from the following URLs: http://www.danielmedley.com/*** Failure to remove the link would require us to file a “Disavow Links” report with Google. My concern is that if I submit your site in this report to Google, they may “flag” your site as Spammy or otherwise not in compliance with their guidelines. The last thing that I want is to have another webmaster go through this grief. Additionally, I would also like to clarify that you are not the only person that we contact and we just want to make sure that both our website’s reliability will not be decreased due to the new Penguin updates. Your prompt attention to this matter, along with a confirmation that the link(s) has been removed would be HIGHLY appreciated. I apologize for the inconvenience and thank you in advance for your help. Stacey Thompson

This kind of threat will elicit from me the following email:

Blow me, you douchebag. I didn’t link to your site. YOU did. You spammed my site with links to your shit and now you’re threatening me? Fuck off. I’ll remove your shit whenever I get around to it. If you send me another threatening email I’ll cut and paste your url a thousand times on my site. We’ll see how Google likes that.

Of the ten or so times that I’ve replied like that, I’ve never received another email from them. The nerve.

Most are more tactful about it because they know they’re screwed by their own stupidity. Here is an email:

Hi, My name is Mark and I work at xxxx. I am contacting you with regards to your site danielmedley.com We are currently conducting a review of all of the sites that link to us externally. As a result we were hoping you might be able to assist us by removing or adding a nofollow attribute to the links to our xxx website on the below page as soon as possible? http://danielmedley.com/*** It would be greatly appreciated if you could please reply to this email to confirm that the links have been removed or nofollowed. Should you have any questions, or require any support in removing the links, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. Kind Regards Mark.

Now, that’s more like it. I’m still not going to go out of my way to undo the spamming that they did, but, hey, I might. But I’m sure as hell not going to reply to confirm that I’ve undone your stupid shit.

I will say that the amount of comment spam that I’ve been receiving has diminished greatly.

Thanks, Google.

With all that is going on in Ukraine, I’ve been reading lots of news about what’s going on there. When I say lots, I mean LOTS. Naturally, I read through many of the comments in response to the goings on. One thing in particular that I’ve noticed in the comments is the obviously orchestrated attempt at a pro-Russian spin. I doubt that all of the comments are directly orchestrated, but enough are that lesser informed apparatchik types take up the talking points and run with it not having thought through it enough to recognize the nonsense when they hear it.

One tactic that is utilized to great effect is one that is used by the left here in the U.S., that being a tactic of obfuscation and diversion by leading your ideological opponent to a point of defending themselves to the extent that the issue itself is no longer being discussed.  For example, here in the states, when discussing why you don’t like a particular Obama program, the leftist will throw out the word racist; accusing you of being racist. The purpose of this is to divert you from debating the merits of, say ObamaCare and pivot to defending yourself against the accusation that you’re a racist. This Saul Alinsky tactic is very effective for those who let themselves get roped in.

The way that this tactic has been used in the pro-Russian spin in comment sections is to throw out the word “extremist” or a variation of it. The argument goes something along the lines that the Ukrainian protestors are “extremists” because they are ramping up the violence towards those who would suppress them. The apparatchiks ask questions like, “Can show me examples of the government thugs actually shooting people. They are only armed with shields and clubs, and only shooting rubber bullets. How do you expect them to react when “extremists” are throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at them and setting them on fire.” Then the debate completely shifts off course; the pro-Ukraine supporter starts digging for links to show who shot who, who started what, who is extreme, etc. The apparatchik has done their job. The discussion becomes one of defending oneself from the accusation of “extremist” instead of the issue that really matters.

Regarding Ukraine and that accusation of “extremist” the best thing for the pro-Ukraine supporter to do is to reply with, “Yes, it is extreme. Extreme circumstances require extreme measures.”

This all boils down to the often obfuscated reality that the world is far more black and white than grey. Those “extreme” Ukrainians in the midst of fighting for their freedom are right. Those who support the current powers that be and their lurching towards Russia are wrong. It’s as simple as that; black and white.

The governmental corruption in Ukraine is rampant from top to bottom. Only in a world operating in the Putin/Yanukovych paradigm can a President’s dentist son transform into a land developer power player worth $187 million in a matter of three years in a country where a doctor makes about $250 in a month. The government in Ukraine is for the powerful, by the powerful and of the powerful. The people of Ukraine are nothing more than fodder to fatten the pockets of state sanctioned corruption for the benefit of the few at the top. The courts are at the behest of those in power, a mere apparatus to further the interests of those with a lock on power. The people are demanding change and it falls on deaf ears.

Furthermore, Yanukovych has decided to point Ukraine in the direction of Russia and be Putin’s bitch after being elected on the premise of moving towards the West. No one in their right mind would be happy with that. Yes, many in eastern Ukraine want to be closer to Russia, but their thinking is goofy. The more the world mirrors the sensibilities of the west—even with its faults—the better the world is. The more the world mirrors the sensibilities of Putin’s Russia, the worse off the world is. Call me judgmental, I don’t care. Any rational person knows that I’m right. Right now, Putin’s Russia is an odd amalgamation of post and pre Soviet Union with a healthy dose of cynically accepted corruption supported by a dictator mindset. Of course otherwise reasonable, non-extremist types would go to the extreme to prevent falling under that nightmare shadow. The choice is freedom or slavery. If you’re serious about it, you know that there will be a cost of bloodshed. Yes, it’s extreme, but extreme measures are justified when the sedate get beat down with a club.

People who know me know that I’m all about being as self reliant as possible. By that I’m talking about taking responsibility for my safety and the protection of my family. After all, when it comes to life threatening situations, the police are generally several minutes away when seconds count. What this all boils down to is that if someone makes an unwelcomed appearance inside of my house, their long-term future is perilous.

I’ve got all of our firearms locked away in a safe that is pretty accessible, but not convenient. It’s not exactly conducive to home protection. My wife was particularly concerned about it. Sure, we have the safe, but she wasn’t confident that if something went bump in the night that she would be able to readily access the weaponry inside of it with adrenaline pumping through her body. Think this scenario:

Although we’d talked about it before, this video got my wife to thinking about it enough that she flat out said, “let’s get an easy access safe,” but not like the one in the vid. She didn’t want to have to futz with keys or combinations. She wanted it as easy as possible.

After doing some research I went with a Barska Biometric Safe.

The concept is pretty simple. If something goes bump in the night, you push a button, place a finger on the scanner, and the door pops open. The concept is simple, but does it work worth a damn?

Yes, it does. In fact it works very well. You can scan up to 30 fingerprints into the safe. I made several scans of my thumb and index finger. My wife did the same. I’ve played with this thing a lot and have not had a failure to open yet. It takes about 3 seconds. When I was doing some research on which biometric safe to get this one had the fewest number of failures to open on scan by far. In fact most of the complaints for this one were from people who apparently don’t know how to read: “It beeps when you open it. It won’t turn off!” Those kinds of things. Yes, it beeps, but you can set it so that it doesn’t. But you have to read the instructions to know that.

It can also be accessed via included keys if push comes to shove, but from my experience, you aren’t going to have a problem with your fingers.

Keep in mind that this isn’t a fireproof safe, and if someone were really intent on getting inside of it, it can be done with effort. But it’s meant to be a place to keep your guns safely locked away from unauthorized access yet be easy to get to if needed.

Inside of the safe is my wife’s Glock 26, my S&W M&P40C, loaded magazines for both, extra ammo, and a Streamlight Pro TAC HL light with plenty of room for much more. At 600 lumens, the Streamlight is almost like weapon itself. Shine that puppy in a bad guy’s face and not only will it light up your target as if they were standing next to the sun, it’ll also painfully, temporarily blind them.

A well lit, temporarily blind bad guy is much easier to shoot. But that’s a different post.

Good to see some Wall Street types get on board.

A top financial advisor, worried that Obamacare, the NSA spying scandal and spiraling national debt is increasing the chances for a fiscal and social disaster, is recommending that Americans prepare a “bug-out bag” that includes food, a gun and ammo to help them stay alive.

Of course I’ve been living with this mindset for some time. I call it the Man Purse, but most of you know it as a Bug Out Bag.

But for those working on Wall Street, the notion of actually having firearms in a bug out bag is nothing more than a pipe dream. You know, with NYC’s gun laws and all.

Oh, well. I got mine. By the way, these 5.11 bags are some of the best. Just saying.