The Proper Way to Respond to Death Threats

Tuesday, April 10th, 2007

Rusty Shackleford demonstrates by example:

I have to say, though, that I’m a bit flattered by Jamaal’s death fatwa. Long time readers know, that its been a goal of mine to get myself one. Not just a death threat from a Muslim, I have loads of those, but an official fatwa. I would consider myself lucky to be included in the ranks of Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, or Wafa Sultan–all alleged “blasphemers” and critics of sharia and the traditional understanding of the sunna (example of Muhammed).

I’m also flattered that he decided to name his list of targets “fatwa worthy” in an apparent ironic homage to my own “fatwa worthy” list of links to the right [which seem to be down right now due to a problem at blogrolling]. Of course, irony means something like the use of words other than their literal intentions. So, when I say Charles Johnson’s LGF, Ed Morrissey’s CQ, Michelle Malkine’s Hot Air, or Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch are ‘fatwa worthy’, I’m being ironic. When he attempts irony, it falls flat. He really means that the links, like mine, are literally ‘fatwa worthy’. Nice try. Moron.

Which kind of makes me suspect that Jamal is just some unemployed teenager with too much caffeine in his bloodstream and not enough real spice in his life. Maybe he doesn’t have the authority to issue such a fatwa? Bummer.

I also notice that “Radical Muslim” Jamaal claims to live in London. Where the picture above right was taken at rally against some others accused of blaspheming Mohammed. Do we have another Bakri Mohammed follower here? That would explain a lot.

Oh, and last time I checked, death threats were illegal. Even in London.

We’re watching you Jamaal. You, and all your ‘radical Muslim’ friends.

WordPress Upgraded

Wednesday, April 4th, 2007

I’ve upgraded the WordPress engine on this site to the latest version, 2.1.3. Initial results look positive, but holler (preferably via e-mail) if you notice anything going wrong.
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Death Threats, Anonymity, and Blogs

Sunday, April 1st, 2007

I’ve been avoiding comment on the whole Sierra/Locke/etc. dust-up lately. Most of the commentary seems pretty on-the-mark, but a few usually sensible people are starting to overreact and call for self-censorship. Once the mainstream media gets hold of this next week, expect the customary cast of Congressional idiots to elevate that to calls for government mandated censorship. However the problem has been blown way out of proportion. There’s one thing that I think needs to be said that hasn’t been said yet to put this whole sordid mess in its proper perspective:

Death threats are no big deal.
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Speeding Up This Site

Friday, March 16th, 2007

I know this site is more than a little slow on occasion. I also know that the static site www.xom.nu which is hosted on the exact same server runs like a bat out of hell, so it’s likely not the server hardware (Mac Mini) or network connection (Speakeasy DSL) that’s at fault. The remaining candidates are:

  • PHP (Very likely)
  • WordPress (Maybe, but unlikely except in so far as it’s written in PHP)
  • Traffic volume (especially comment spammers)
  • MySQL (Possible, but I tend to doubt it.)

I’ve got a lot of suggestions for improving performance, and I plan to start trying some of them. I don’t, however, have any good measurements of where this server is spending its time. I’d appreciate it if anyone could share knowledge and experience as to how to determine where the server is taking it’s time, and how to find out what’s making it so slow. Thanks.
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Most Popular Stories

Thursday, February 15th, 2007

I just did a quick check with LogValidator on the pages at this site for Refactoring HTML. Besides telling you where the markup is screwed up, LogValidator also figures out which pages are the most popular. The results were not what I would have guessed. After throwing away index pages, favicon.ico’s, Atom feeds and the like it turns out the most popular story of the last year is:
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Who Cares About Your Permanent Record?

Thursday, February 8th, 2007

A lot of old fogies are getting bent out of shape over the idea that 20 or 30 years from now today’s teenagers are going to get hammered by random screeds and bad dating habits they posted on blogs or MySpace. Can I chime in and say I really don’t think it’s all that big a deal? By the time any of this becomes relevant, the electorate will have matured enough that they really don’t care about this.
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