Capybara, Would You Like to Explain This?

Is Capybara the Beast from the book of Revelation? His recent activity over at the Mixxingbowl seems to suggest so.

I was minding my own business, reading the news and occasionally commenting when I came across something disturbing while perusing through some of Capybara's submissions. Rather than describe to you what I saw, I included the screenshot below, in which you can see exactly what I saw when I happened upon a page I was never supposed to see.

FALSE ALARM:  Capybara was briefly considered a potential Antichrist suspect as a result of an apparent misunderstanding.

Needless to say, I was extremely alarmed upon seeing that, especially as Capybara has never shown any indication whatsoever for a capacity for evil, much less the potential for being the sinister villain from the final book of the Bible. I decided to double-check so as to be absolutely certain it was true before publicly levying the accusation.

I pulled up the official Antichrist Identification Device from Jaspax.com and ran the name. In a split-second, the suspense was over:

Capybara IS NOT the Antichrist.

We looked through 55 different calculations for the numerical value of "Capybara", but NONE of them were equal to the number of the beast. Congratulations!

I wasn't totally shocked by the result, but there was one detail over which I was puzzled. If Capybara isn't the Antichrist, why did his activity page at the Bowl boldly display the number of the beast? The only logical reason would be if the Mixxingbowl itself were some way tied to Prince of Darkness.

On a hunch, I decided to try running through a couple of names of people I knew are affiliated with the site. The results were predictable.

Gregory Davies IS the Antichrist!

Here's proof:

1. Write "Gregory Davies" as separate words.
2. Transliterate the result into Greek: γρεγωρι δαβηης. Numerical values for Greek letters are found here.
3. Alternately subtract and add the numerical values of the letters in each word, then take the absolute value of the result. Add together the numerical values of each word. This gives the following:
γ ρ ε γ ω ρ ι δ α β η η ς
( 3 - 100 + 5 - 3 + 800 - 100 + 10) + ( 4 - 1 + 2 - 8 + 8 - 6)
4. The result is 616! Did you know that in the earliest manuscripts of the Bible 616 is the number of the beast? It's true! Plus, wouldn't it make perfect sense for the Enemy to disguise his true face all these years by getting people to believe in the wrong Bible?

Don't be deceived! Now you have absolute PROOF that Gregory Davies is the Antichrist!

Spread the word! Click here to go to a linkable page, or copy and paste the following text into your webpage or blog to let everyone know that Gregory Davies is the Antichrist.
Mathematical proof that Gregory Davies is the Antichrist!

For anyone scratching their head, the aforementioned also goes by the name of cGt2099. It should come as no surprise Davies has emerged as a candidate/suspect to become the most evil person in all of religion. Back in 2009, he admitted/proclaimed as much when early rumors were beginning to surface.

So is cGt2099 the Antichrist? If only it were so simple.

At least two other names that have been widely rumored to be the Antichrist have been confirmed as such.  It is unclear at this point if Davies is in cahoots with Kevin Rose and Barack Hussein Obama as a sinister apocalyptic trifecta, or if the three must contend for the singular honor.

God did not respond to an email seeking comment about the Antichrist situation.

Dog Swallows Fishing Hook, Survives

A recent fishing trip out on the Tchefuncte River in Covington, Louisiana nearly turned disastrous when my two year old male pit bull mix Tank found a jug from a previous fishing adventure that was attached to about three feet of twine with a #4 steel fishing hook at the end of it. The hook still had a dead, dried-up shrimp attached to it from a previous fishing trip that was somehow overlooked while cleaning out the boat.

Needless to say, the dog found the jug with the dried-up shrimp on the end of it and proceeded to swallow the shrimp (and the hook). A friend alerted me to the fact that my dog was trying to eat a fishing hook, but by the time either of us could maneuver our way to the opposite end of the boat (where the dog was stationed), he had already completely swallowed it and had moved on to swallowing the twine connecting the hook to the jug.

Fat Lester's Pit Bull Mix "Tank"

In a split-second decision, I decided against attempting to dislodge the hook, figuring that it would be better to have the hook loose in his stomach than stuck inside his throat or esophagus. He is a large dog (90 pounds or so), but it was a large hook, and the risk of exacerbating the problem only increased with the prospect of an amateur like myself attempting to dislodge a fishing hook from a dog's stomach.

Instead of trying to get the hook out, I immediately grabbed the jug and cut the twine where there was slack at the end nearest the jug so as to not tug on the twine and risk setting the hook inside my dog's stomach. From there, I rushed the boat back to the dock and immediately took the dog to the veterinary ER (emergency room) on Florida Street in Mandeville, Louisiana.

After admitting him to the doggie ER, the doctor proceeded to ask me for a full account of what happened, and I was more than willing to comply, providing her with every seemingly insignificant detail of the event. From there, she proceeded to x-ray Tank to confirm my statement that I was sure I had not inadvertently pulled the twine enough to set the hook inside the dog's body. Sure enough, by the good grace of God the hook was still in the dog's stomach.  It had not been set (piercing beyond the barb so as to lock the hook in place), and had not yet entered the animal's intestines. This, as luck would have it, would turn out to be his saving grace.

The fishing hook swallowed by Fat Lester's dog Tank

Because the hook was still loose inside the dog's stomach, the vet was confident enough about the situation to attempt an upper endoscopy to remove the hook. Given that the alternative was a pretty serious surgery to go in through the dog's belly, cut open his stomach and remove the hook, Tank's fate rested in the potential success or failure of the endoscopy procedure.

For anyone unfamiliar with the term, an endoscopy is a minimally invasive diagnostic procedure used to examine a patient's esophagus, stomach and duodenum using a thin, flexible tube known as an endoscope that can transmit images from inside the patient's body to a TV monitor for an up-close, zoomed-in view. The device can be equipped with additional devices that can do such things as grab or latch onto small objects inside the patient's upper GI (gastrointestinal) tract.

An endoscope is a piece of diagnostic medical equipment used to perform endoscopies (the procedure defined above involving the lowering of the flexible, camera-equipped tube into the patient's upper digestive tract).

Anyway, the doctor briefed me on the situation prior to attempting the procedure. She informed me that if unsuccessful, she would have to perform surgery in order to save the dog, and I granted her approval to take whatever necessary actions needed to be taken in order to save the dog. She assured me that she would not perform surgery unless the endoscopy procedure failed.

Much to my relief, about two hours after leaving the veterinary emergency clinic, I received a phone call from the vet stating that the procedure was a success, my dog was doing fine and was recovering, and that I could come by the next morning to pick him up and settle up on my bill, which came out to more than $1,300.00. She advised against going to pick him up that night, as he was fairly heavily sedated with buprenorphine and was better off spending the night under the supervision of caring animal health professionals in the event something should go wrong in the hours following the procedure.

We had no such bad luck, and the next morning at 9:00 I went back to the animal ER and picked up my dog, who by then had worked up quite an appetite and was extremely happy to see me.

Thanks Dr. Stockton for helping save my dog!

Dr. Donna Stockton: Veterinarian who saved Tank Dog

Worthy Opponent Remembered: Fat Lester's Tribute to JeffK

I know that there have already been several different tributes done since JeffK's departure for the hereafter. While I do not want to be redundant, I think it is only appropriate that I, Fat Lester, publish my own tribute to JeffK (formerly known as "janejas"). 

For one thing, the tribute song chosen for one of the dedications to Jeff was the same song used in a faux tribute to Violet Planet following her banning from Mixx. Maybe it's just me, but it seems as though that cheapens it some when included in a tribute to one of the other three 100k karma Mixxers (no offense to VP, it's the likening of being banned versus the real thing that bothers me). The other thing is that enough time has passed now that I can write the tribute that best commemorates my time here with Jeff without the shock-factor influencing me.

The other reason I decided to go ahead with this tribute is that unlike the authors of Jeff's other candlelight-posts, this one was written by someone on the side of the aisle opposite Jeff. That is significant to me. That someone who spent countless hours arguing back-and-forth with Jeff would take the time to pen a tribute weeks after his passing says something about the kind of man Jeff was. I've debated hundreds if not thousands of different people during my time at Mixx, but none ever challenged me the way Jeff did.

Conservatives tend to classify liberal arguments as being rooted in emotions as opposed to logic and reason, thereby discrediting left-wind arguments on the basis that left wingers don't think logically. While many liberals do indeed wear their hearts on their sleeves, JeffK's logic was as sharp as any conservatives, and he made quite the habit of routinely shredding the widespread over-generalization regarding left-wingers and logic. Defeating him in debate was never easy, and most of our arguments ended with a mutual agreement to disagree for the sake of allowing ourselves enough time to experience worldly things other than Mixx. That isn't to say liberals are right about anything, just that proving they were wrong was far more difficult when Jeff was on the other side of the debate than it would have been with most others.

Jeff and I butted heads more than a few times the first couple of weeks he was a Mixxer. I can recall dozens of heated exchanges between the two of us during the two-plus years I knew the man. However, despite our frequent disagreements over politics and philosophy, the two of us came to develop a relationship based upon mutual respect.

It didn't take long at all for the two of us to realize that the other was not a fool or an idiot, and that our failure to see eye-to-eye on many of these matters was not a byproduct of either of us being an intellectual superior to the other. Essentially, we reached a point where we could accept our disagreements as such without villainizing the other.

Within a matter of weeks after he had joined the Mixx community, Jeff and I had developed a strong mutual respect for each other in spite of the fact that disagreed often about politics, and neither of us was shy about expressing our views about a given subject. We each were able to come to terms with the fact that neither of us were bad people, and that neither of us was severely lacking in intellectual capability. We recognized that so long as our debates pertained to the given issue or topic at hand and did not become personal (meaning neither of us would insult the other despite the extent to which we disagreed on a subject), that our lively debates could be fun, educational and an overall positive contribution to the community.

There was a period of about eight-to-ten months when the discussions at Mixx well far more civilized, intelligent in nature, thought-provoking and educational. For a while there, we really did have the best community of its type on the web, and the ability of Mixxers such as Jeff and myself (and dozens of others - you know who you are) to debate rationally and with respect and civility to all despite our differences that set the example for new users. For a period, that mature and intellectually-stimulating culture was the dominant culture at Mixx.

I was forced to take a five-month leave-of-absence from Mixxing last summer to address some medical issues and later pursue a job opportunity that was prohibitive of my involvement in social media. When I returned, Mixx was not the same place it was when I had left it.

While Jeff certainly didn't have this sort of relationship with everyone he interacted with at Mixx, it was his leadership as an outspoken representative of the political left that helped set the tone for debate and raise the bar on the community standards for interactive conversation. There were some people on both sides of the aisle who eventually made their presence felt in the community, much to the detriment of said community. It was very challenging to have a conversation with some of these folks without insults flying. In most cases, these were the people who lowered the bar for everyone and helped spur the eventual decline in the community and the standards for debate that for years we Mixxers took so much pride in.

If I had to choose a song to represent my relationship with JeffK (aka: "Janejas"), it would have to be "We Just Disagree" by Dave Mason. The words that best express my experiences with Jeff were articulated to perfection by Mason in the song: "There ain't no good guy. There ain't no bad guy. There's only you and me and we just disagree."

Jeff, you were the epitome of a worthy opponent, and while I vehemently disagreed with many of your political views, I hadn't the slightest bit of animosity for you whatsoever --- in fact, quite the contrary (as you well know). There are not many people with whom I can have such challenging and intelligent conversations without having to worry about ruffling anyone's feathers. You were a warrior, and your skin was impenetrable by the words of mere mortals.

God Bless you and your family Jeff. Your presence is missed, but I take comfort knowing that you're probably sitting around having a beer throwing darts with Michael and Gabriel, helping the Easter Bunny prepare to kick off the year's most important Holy Day.

I miss you man. Now more than ever. Since I know you're already in Heaven and do not need my prayers in that regard, I instead will pray for your family, that they may come to peace with your departure for the next world. While I admit I'm in no hurry to get there, I hope one day I am deemed worthy of joining you in paradise so we can resume our ideological jousting, ostensibly for all eternity. Until then, you'll not be forgotten.

Atlas Shrugged the Movie (Part 1) Now Playing in Theaters

Part one of the Atlas Shrugged movie is now playing in theaters across the country.  I've been waiting a decade (since I first picked up the book) for this movie to debut.  And what do you know, but the timing of this movie's release couldn't have been any better.  Atlas Shrugged is the closest thing to an official Tea Party charter as exists, and with a looter government in Washington rapidly confiscating wealth by way of inflation (and taxes), but especially inflation, it almost seems as if this movie was more than a half century in the making by design.

In any case, I this will be the first movie I've gone to see at a theater since April of 2005.

The official movie trailer can be seen below.

For the Record: Jennifer Rexford Confirmed to be Fraud

In case you missed it:  I told this Jennifer Rexford character that I'd retract my first two posts and issue and apology, see to it personally that her story gets mainstream publicity and establish a charitable fund in her name to help with medical bills and immediately make a $150 donation towards it IF (and it turned out to be every big as bit of an if as it looked) she could provide independently verifiable information that substantiated her litany of claims.

She could not provide one single detail such as for whom she worked, the name of her supervisor, any officials within the agency, the name of the alleged doctor or nurse nor any other independently verifiable data.

FOR THE RECORD: I generally don't go around attacking sickly women who claim to have been victimized and are dying unless I'm pretty certain reality is far different than they would have you believe it is.

The kind of shit she's pulling is causing families to lose their homes, children to go hungry and an economy to take a critical and unnecessary blow. The Gulf South's economy is centered around 1) Energy; 2) Seafood; 3) Tourism.

Drilling has been completely shut down putting close to 100,000 people out of work. Tourism and seafood are down more than 100% as people around the country and world continue to harbor completely false paranoid suspicions about the Gulf of Mexico. I saw a poll of college students that showed that more than 25% thought the Gulf of Mexico is largely dead and contaminated and more than 15% believed the beaches are black with oil and tar.

Thanks to this idiot, that group of students went to Lake Tahoe instead of Pensacola or Navarre Beach, the family in Michigan stayed away from the shrimp and oysters at the restaurant for fear they were poisoned. In return, the restaurant owner stopped buying the shrimp harvested in the waters surrounding Venice, LA and 42 hotel employees were laid off. Six months down the road with sales still down and bills piling up, the shrimper and his family of six are forced into foreclosure. Their shrimp just weren't selling and when they were they weren't getting enough money for them to support their families. BP did NOT fulfill its promise to make those who make their living from Gulf Seafood whole (additional resources below), and eventually something must give. For families with mortgages, it's usually the house.

Thanks to this idiot, people are still in delusion about the impact of shutting down drilling in the gulf, allowing the government to get away with starving 80,000 workers and their families out of their homes, jobs and livelihoods.

Tens of thousands of people have viewed this scoundrel's videos and to date no one has previously bothered to point out the fact that HER WHOLE ACT IS BULLSHIT!

I might post an online poll at the blog where all this has transpired asking if "rexford" should be adopted by society as a new synonym for the word "bullshit". Who knows, maybe it will catch on.

Someone had to put her in her place and expose not only skepticism of her claims but also the reasons none of what she said made any sense, as well as put on public display the fact then when confronted she cannot provide a shred of independently verifiable evidence about her story.

nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2011/04/longtime_oil_industry_champion.html

nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2011/04/longtime_oil_industry_champion.html

nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2011/04/bp_says_its_not_responsible_fo.html

Why Newspapers Won't Report Jennifer Rexford's Claims

Those of you who have been following the Jennifer Rexford agitprop scam are in for a real treat in this post.  Now might be a good time to go get some pretzels and a cold soda and get comfortable so you can maximize the enjoyment of watching as I demonstrate exactly why no news agency is willing to print Jennifer's "story" in their newspapers, discuss it on their television programs, radio shows, websites, blogs and any other medium you can think of that I might have missed.

In response to those who have privately questioned why I would even give her story the publicity it is receiving by appearing three different times on this blog, the answer is that I felt it was important that the record show that the woman claiming to be Comrade Rexler's story is complete and utter bullshit, and that she was publicly given a chance to prove otherwise and failed to do so.

The person claiming to be Jennifer Rexford left almost two dozen combined comments on the previous two posts.  The following is my response to those comments:

Re: Comrade Rexford

Comrade Jennifer, I am going to ask you to provide some specific information about your purported story.  If indeed your story does check out, I will do the following:

• Remove the previous two posts addressing this topic
• Issue a formal and public retraction and apology
• See that the story gets picked up by a major national or regional newspaper as well as wire services within not more than 72 hours following my receiving the information
• Establish a charitable fund in your name to help with your medical expenses and make a $100 opening donation

If, as I am expecting, you will be unable to pass the upcoming credibility test, public record will show that your story was debunked beyond the possibility for interpretation.

Please provide the below-requested information which can be submitted privately by using the form found here (use the "domains" field as you would the "message" or "body" field on a standard form).  If you wish to publicly show that you provided the information requested, you may do so in the "comments" field below.

Please provide the following information:

• The date at which you began performing Gulf oil spill cleanup restoration efforts
• The date at which your employment cleanup-related employment ended
• Your employer (the name of the firm)
• The name of your immediate supervisor (the one directly above you whom you answer to daily)
• The name of any other lower, mid and upper level managers/supervisors employed by stated firm involved or associated with the project(s) on which you allegedly worked
• Your job title
• Your job responsibilities
• Specific job duties that placed you most at risk of physically handling oil and oil-related byproducts with your skin, and job duties that placed you at risk of breathing in unhealthy contaminants that you claim caused your litany of medical conditions
• State of employment
• Parish or county of employment
• Name and clinic/work phone number of physician who will state on record that he or she agrees with your stated assessment of your purported conditions and their respective cause(s)
• Name, floor and unit of the supposed nurse mentioned in your allegations and in your vidoes
• Hospital in which said events were filmed
• Name of a physician with whom you had an in-office visit 12-24 months ago
• Signed waivers (one per person) to be sent via certified mail granting your permission for every medical profession whose name is requested above to speak on-record about your condition (I will pay all costs associated with shipping them)

If you're telling the truth and you really want to let the world know just how badly BP screwed you over, you should have no trouble providing me with the requested information.  Use the form linked to above to send me a private email address at which I can send you a mailing address for the waivers. If you are telling the truth, I will keep my word and uphold the promises listed above.

However, I'm not expecting to receive any much less all of the information needed to verify your claims.  You had asked why I didn't bother contacting you before annihilating your unsubstantiated allegations.  The reason is because you aren't going to send me that information and your claims will never be verified --- the same reason no one else will touch your story with a ten-foot pole.  Your accusations reek of unsubstantiated hearsay.  You have a chance here to prove otherwise, but I'm not holding my breath and neither should anyone else.

I am so confident that you are a disgruntled commie environmentalist wacko who fabricated a story full of nothing but lies and distortions intended to inflict damage to the one region of the country you and your comrades deem the biggest obstacle to your dream of an all-out dystopian socialist takeover that I was willing to place my reputation and social media following on the line and risk being viewed as a bully who picked on the sickly volunteer woman who is suffering symptoms including "severe neurological damage, paralysis, internal bleeding and death" in order to establish for all to see that you are a phony, a fraud and a scam artist.

This is your chance to prove me wrong.  The information needed for independent sources to verify your claims has been formally and publicly requested.  You can publish the requested information here on this blog and across the web proving me wrong and revealing me to be a heartless, soulless defender of big oil.

What if you send me the information but I refuse to publish it and claim not to have received it?  Publish the answers to your questions and a photograph showing that the certified mail was indeed received and another photograph showing the completed waivers along with the alphanumeric sequence 19U&IOF%F818@#7!1$24451L9GH4-23-88YUI71$ contained within the main content area of the page to any other page on the web (blogger, wordpress, tumblr, posterous, amplify and other services offer free blogs and have community features that allow you to quickly build a couple of links to your page/post from elsewhere on the site to ensure it gets indexed by search engines - for example, this would entail clicking "like" on someone else's post at Amplify, or leaving a comment or two).  Readers from this post can search for the specified character string and if you did indeed provide the information anyone reading this post will be quickly able to find it with a quick check of Google.

I've given you every opportunity to prove the validity of your claims and get your story out there.  Will you do the unimaginable and actually prove your accusations; or will the record show that your claims and of yet unsubstantiated allegations be shown to be false beyond any stretch of the imagination or any reasonable interpretation?

In the event of a dispute over whether or not the information was provided:

Search sequence for confirmation of certified shipment of signed waivers: 19U&IOF%F818@#7!1$24451L9GH4-23-88YUI71$

Search for the above sequence of alphanumeric character in the absence of evidence either in the comments below this article or in a future post confirming the truth or falsity of the purported claims by Rexford. The absence of information in the comments section of this post or in a post appearing on this blog seven or more days following this posting can be interpreted as an announcement by myself that she had failed to confirm the details of her story. I've already done three posts on this subject, so unless she surprises me and produces some verifiable facts I'm going to assume it's because her story is bullshit.

However, if she does provide the info, I will uphold my commitments outlined above and retract my two previous posts while issuing a formal apology.

Therefore, if you don't see or hear anything else about this story here on this blog, search for the string of characters.  If you find a page created by the purported Rexford claiming to show confirmation of certified delivery of signed waivers but find nothing on this blog confirming nor denying such a delivery, please notify me in the comments section.  If necessary, the USPS can ultimately state who is telling the truth and who is lying if the delivery were to be contested by either party.  POINT BEING, if this issue finally ends here, that means she failed to provide the info.  If she claims she provided the evidence requested and has proof of certified delivery of the signed waivers on a webpage not on this blog, it means she's likely hoping to claim I received the information but would not acknowledge doing so.  In such an event, the USPS will have proof either way whether or not something was shipped via USCM from her to me, and I will have videotaped recording of me opening envelope/package upon receiving it from her to verify its contents.

It won't matter.  Her story is a steaming pile of bovine excrement and it's not going to check out when given the credibility test.  If she does try to lie about providing the info, someone please inform me so that the authoritative and decisive documents eliminating all doubt can be requested.

NOTE: In the ostensible event that your described medical condition is accurate (as is proven through correspondence with your medical caretakers and verification of their identities and contact information), albeit not a result of Gulf cleanup work, I will still establish the charitable fund and make the $100 donation --- IF --- you do the following:

A) Admit you lied and made up the part about your medical condition (if that even checks out) being related to the Gulf oil spill or the ensuing cleanup efforts - both here in a guest post on this blog as well as on your own site and in a YouTube video
B) Apologize to the people of the State of Louisiana, the Gulf Coast region, BP and anyone else who may have read your claims and/or watched your videos
C) Delete all Youtube Videos alleging your condition is related to Gulf cleanup work and any websites and/or blog posts claiming likewise
D) Agree to use social media more responsibly in the future

Granted, I still have serious doubts about Rexford's purported medical condition that are every bit as significant as my other doubts about her wild and until yet unsubstantiated claims. We shall find out though, as her actions will leave no doubt about exactly which if any parts of her story hold water and which (if not all) do not.

Mixx Refugees Taking Up Shelter at the Mixxingbowl, Old Dogg

The Mixxingbowl (mixxingbowl.com) is a social news, photo and video sharing site and community that is relatively new and comprised of many of Mixx's former movers-and-shakers. It started as a user-owned and supported forum to compliment the original Mixx.com. When Mixx was acquired by UberMedia, slightly more than half of the users from Mixx who more-or-less determined what content would appear on the Mixx.com front-page, category front-pages, popular page, and such have sought shelter at the Bowl.

Mixx.com was an extremely large and powerful social news, photo and video sharing community.  The site was founded in 2007 by former USA Today chief strategist and later Yahoo News GM Chris McGill's company Recommended Reading, Inc. Mixx burst on to the scene at a time when Digg had been enforcing both its written and unwritten rules with an extremely heavy hand. Users were being banned left-and-right for reasons unbeknownst to many of them, often for a first-offense (if TOU was an issue). A couple of the more established "power Diggers" got the axe as well. This turned out to be an extremely bad decision for a number of reasons. First and foremost, one of those banned top-100 Diggers named Greg Davies (cGt2099) happened upon Mixx shortly after receiving word that his appeal of the permaban had been denied.

Davies blogged about Mixx, and encouraged other banned Diggers to take shelter at this brand-new social media start-up that wanted them as members of its fledgling community and pledged not to take them for granted (provided they abide by the site's TOU and not spam the place to death). Word quickly spread that if you were banned from Digg, you could join the community at Mixx and not be judged for being exiled from the niche's only true major player. In fact, banned Diggers instead found a sympathetic ear (or a few hundred) at Mixx. Digg had never anticipated all of its banned users joining together and founding their own (penal) colony. Did I mention Davies is a native of Australia?

The other thing Digg never anticipated was the media coverage Mixx would receive in the weeks and months after its inception.

Here is a partial list of the top news stories about Mixx from the site's first 24 months or so as a live community:

- Stealthy Startup Mixx Launches Into Private Beta - TechCrunch
- Digg Refugees May Be Heading To Mixx - TechCrunch - My comment from almost 4 years ago
- Of Digg "Refugees" and Mixx - History shows us that Mark Evans, Tony Hung and author Mathew Ingram were very wrong about this one.
- Active Diggers Mixxing it Up
- Community quality and network leadership trump numbers: Digg loses contributors to Mixx
- Digg users flock to Mixx
- Why I Dig Mixx (and Nixed Digg)
- Mixx: Will it become the new Digg?
- CNN.com Adds Mixx To Its Mix Of Bookmarking Buttons
- Mashable On Mixx: 30+ of Our Most Popular Stories
- Look Out Digg: Mixx Public Beta Coming on Tuesday
- LA Times Invests in Social News Site Mixx
- MIXX TEAMS UP WITH USA TODAY, REUTERS.COM, WEATHER CHANNEL AND LEADING ONLINE PUBLISHERS TO DELIVER PERSONALIZED NEWS, IMAGES AND VIDEO
- The CNN.com Effect: Mixx More Than Doubles Visitors in May To Nearly One Million
- Looking back at Mixx during 2009
- In Memorial of Violet Planet - A Day in the Life - Beatles Video
- Mixxing 102: How to become a SuperMixxer
- Mixx to Digg: We Break News Faster

Mixx eventually ballooned to the point of boasting several tens of millions of unique registered user accounts.

Over the years since its inception the site has had about 450-500 users who wielded substantially more influence than your average Mixx unknown.  These were the ones whose avatars (and links to their profile pages) rotated in-and-out of the ten spots on "Top Mixxers" section of the Mixx Classic homepage.  When the sale occurred and Mixx announced that it would be switching to a new system and that all records, data, pages, content, accounts and everything else associated with the Mixx we knew would be permanently lost in the switch, slightly more than half of those who were active at Mixx during its final months took refuge at the Mixxingbowl.

Others sought shelter at Amplify and Old Dogg (both right-leaning) and still others at ZoomIt.ca (Canadians).  Most of Mixx's left-wing is at the bowl, along with a token few from the right side of the aisle.  Many from both sides I would not consider activists, and most of those I would classify as such most are good, decent people with whom I may disagree but also with whom I have had many an interesting, polite and civil conversation.  It is unfortunate that I cannot make the same statement about everyone that has taken shelter at the bowl post-Mixx.

One of the common themes about where Mixxers took refuge is that most if not all of the other "household name" sites are nowhere on the radar of the displaced community.  From its first days, Mixxers from all backgrounds and from all beliefs shared one thing in common: an extremely bitter taste in their collective mouths for Digg.  Most are simply too sophisticated to find much of an appeal in Reddit or its community.  Newsvine could have made a play but to my knowledge has not sheltered any Mixx refugees.

If anyone reading this is a Mixx refugee or knows a Mixx refugee in need of shelter, please contact me via the comments at the bottom of the post and I will be happy to help them find a new home.

Bullshit Called on Jennifer Rexford Story

The following is an addendum to the previous post appearing here at the World Domination Blog entitled: Jennifer Rexford Oil Spill Agitprop Video Debunked as Fraud.

Here are a couple more points that really don't need driving home as this woman's lack of credibility has already been sufficiently put on display, but I'm going to drive them home anyway.

I majored in so-called "Media Arts" in college. I have worked professionally in journalism as well as in numerous other capacities involving media, not at all excluding the present tense.

Investigative journalists across the country would be fighting each other to the death to get first dibs on a story like this IF IT WERE CREDIBLE - or - if it had a high likelihood of being at least partially true. There is a reason zero legitimate news publications, credible blogs or websites have reported on this.

All of the so-called reporting is coming from Tumblr and other low-end content free blogging services that did little more than rehash the woman's claims without so much as attempting to verify their credibility. The reason no one is taking her seriously despite the fact that more than 16,000 people have viewed her YouTube video. that this woman is completely full of shit and that much is patently obvious to those who specialize in investigative reporting.

There's also a reason she is not coming forward and contacting elected officials and credible news media with her story. Instead, she's relying on an unconfirmed identity that may or may not be her real name. Instead of taking her story to a sympathetic press, she instead finds herself using YouTube, Tumblr and other free online user-generated content services that do not require proof-of-identity and offer no assurance of credibility whatsoever.

I don't necessarily doubt that the woman has severe brain damage as she claims, but it didn't come from performing post oil spill cleanup work.

UPDATE: Why Newspapers Won't Report Jennifer Rexford's Claims

Jennifer Rexford Oil Spill Agitprop Video Debunked as Fraud

I live in South Louisiana, have spoken with those on the front-lines of the cleanup efforts and I am EXTREMELY skeptical of the credibility of Jennifer Rexford's claims made in a series of bizarre but apparently fictional YouTube videos.

Rexford is the ostensible identity of the woman who released a series of YouTube videos in which she fires off a litany of allegations involving her health and supposed misdeeds by British Petroleum (BP). These include an array of what she described as "symptoms" including but not limited to death.

The woman purporting to be Jennifer Rexford charges that she came down from her home in Florida to help with the cleanup and Gulf restoration efforts. She claims she has succumbed to a bizarre combination of severe symptoms resulting in death, although she did not specify if death had already occurred, was likely to occur or may occur at some point in the future.

In late October - when the cleanup efforts were wrapping up and well before residents and cleanup workers had five-plus months to recover from whatever ill-effects they did incur as a result of contact with oil and tarballs breathing in whatever fumes were present since the cleanup ended - I represented a top statewide elected official at a meeting of the Louisiana Shrimp Association in Buras, Louisiana. The shrimpers and fishermen were the initial first-responders and performed the bulk of the cleanup work, and virtually all of the high-risk work.

For almost two hours I sat and listened to the concerns being expressed by those on the front lines and not once did any of the 150 or so people in attendance express any concerns about their post-spill health some six months after they had begun their cleanup work.

[Photo: Jennifer Rexford, the woman behind the bizarre but apparently fictional videos]

If anyone should have suffered debilitating illness as a direct result of the spill it should have been the shrimpers, fishermen and oystermen of Southeast Louisiana. If anyone participating in the cleanup effort were to have come down with oil spill-related symptoms such as those described in the woman in that video it would have happened when they were being repeatedly exposed to the oil and had high levels of the associated contaminants in their symptoms.

The exception would be the potential the spill may have for contributing to multifactorial diseases such as cancer that could manifest themselves at some point into the indefinite future. Note the key words here are potential, may and contributing. The illnesses that would fall into this category are widely understood to be the product of a number of factors including but not limited to diet, lifestyle, genetics and any instances of unusual or extraordinary exposure to toxins, contaminants and such.

The shrimpers expressed concerns about the fact that it isn't known whether or not their involvement in the cleanup efforts will CONTRIBUTE to the development of diseases such as cancer, Parkinson's and others later on in life. No one once indicated that after six months of cleanup work they had experienced any noticeable ill effects from their work in the Gulf recovery efforts.

If indeed this woman's claims were valid, there would have been other examples from some of the thousands of people who had significantly higher levels of exposure than the woman in the agitprop video.

In addition to all that, there is the question of what if any effect the cleanup work had to do with the the woman's condition and its associated symptoms.

Severe neurological damage, paralysis, internal bleeding and death were the "symptoms" listed by the D-list propagandist appearing in the video. Nobody has contacted the local media or any of the numerous high-ranking elected officials both on a local and state-wide effort with whom I am close with. People who worked in the cleanup would be calling Billy Nungesser's office, the office of Senator David Vitter, Mary Landrieu's office and Bobby Jindal's office and demanding they take action, which I know for a fact any of the four above absolutely would should such a matter be brought to their attention (and be truthful and valid).

The woman made no mention of --- wait for it --- going to see a doctor.  It would seem logical that someone experiencing severe neurological damage, paralysis, internal bleeding and death would maybe consider going to the ER and getting a diagnosis and ostensibly medicines and/or whatever other treatments are needed to stabilize and/or cure the condition. [Side-note: It's taking everything I've got right now to refrain from writing in all caps and ending my sentences with series of exclamation points. The degree of this pathetic clown's bullshit may be eligible for a place in the Guinness Book of Records.]

The scary clown mentioned absolutely ZERO names of towns, parishes, locales and jurisdictions that would have inevitably come up had a real Louisiana local or out-of-town volunteer (or paid) cleanup worker been involved with the video. She did not mention Billy Nungesser's name, which she would have done had she been telling the truth.

Her story is completely inconsistent with the hundreds of people I've personally spoken with who actually were involved with the cleanup efforts, her symptoms are inconsistent with exposure to petro-chemicals, inconsistent with the symptoms of actual illnesses and inconsistent with each other.

This woman is 100% full of shit and needed to be called on it.

Due to the incendiary nature of this woman's agitprop, I decided it was best not to embed the video into this post or even link to it. The fact that over 16,000 people have already viewed it is troubling enough, and I don't think it merits the additional exposure. I will provide the URL though for anyone who wishes to assess the video for themselves: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MouIgUtgbgM

UPDATE: Bullshit Called on Jennifer Rexford Story

UPDATE 2:Why Newspapers Won't Report Jennifer Rexford's Claims

Hermain Cain Meets Fat Lester

I had the honor and privilege of meeting 2012 GOP Presidential Candidate Herman Cain at a Tea Party event in Mandeville, LA a few weeks back. Mr. Cain was the keynote speaker at the event, which also featured contributions from New Orleans radio personality John Osterlind, St. Tammany Parish radio personality Jeff Crouere and distinguished gentleman and businessman John d'Hemecourt of Abita Springs.

[Photo: GOP Presidential Nominee Herman Cain visits with right-wing conspirator Peter Egan Jr., aka: "Fat Lester"]

Mr. Cain delivered an inspiring speech in which he laid out his philosophy as a candidate for the United States Republican Presidential Nomination in 2012. He spoke of the government's reckless and ever-growing irresponsibility, and promised that if chosen to represent the Republican Party in the 2012 Presidential Election, that he would be the candidate who finally reversed course in hopes of righting the ship. The question implicit in the words "in hopes of" is not whether or not Herman Cain possesses the ability to lead the country back to greatness, but whether or not the unprecedented spending and borrowing that has taken place since the Democrats seized the House in the 2006 mid-term elections in the face of an already massive debt (present BEFORE they took office - they've increased it by an average of $4.07 billion per day SINCE they gained control of Congress). Each year that Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House of Representatives the Congress set a new record for national debt. That rise has increased dramatically since the election of Barack Obama as President.

Mr. Cain's speech was not particularly heavy on policy or specific issues per se, as can be expected for what ultimately wound up being something of a quasi-announcement that he would seek the GOP nomination for the Presidency. While technically at the time of the event his now-campaign was simply announcing the formation of a "Presidential Exploratory Committee", he left little doubt that he planned to enter the Republican contest as something of a "dark horse" candidate (no pun intended).

[Photo: GOP Presidential Candidate Herman Cain addresses the crowd at a Tea Party event in Mandeville, Louisiana]

The fact is that Herman Cain is not a politician, and has none of the baggage that all career politicians who have been in Washington for any significant period of time bring with them. Perhaps most significantly, the reluctance to implement the "radical" changes (as Chuck U. Shumer and Dingy Harry like to say) necessary to ensure the long-term economic and financial viability of the United States, the Federal Reserve Bank id its currency. The reality is that the last President in recent memory to positively impact the state of the government had a successful career in the private sector before seeking the governorship of the only state where Hollywood icons have repeatedly contested for (and won) multiple terms as chief executive. Those that have followed (and those that preceded) him have been career public sector elected representatives whose idea of running a business involves laundering taxpayer money to campaign donors who then reinvest it in that Congressman or Senator's "business" ventures, and look where they've taken the country.

Of all the names mentioned so far as possible Republican Presidential contenders, with the exception of Donald Trump who is only putting on a show for the sake of publicity and who is a RINO (Republican In Name Only) at best, none can boast the kind of private sector or executive-level success and experience in general that Herman Cain has achieved. Cain, the son of working-class parents in Georgia, grabbed the American dream by the (fill-in your choice of body part). He knows what working people go through in life, knowledge foreign to far too many in the Washington establishment in both parties.

Finally, in Herman Cain Americans have an opportunity to vote for a black man for President of the United States, not because he's black and it's long-past time the country elected a person of color if for no other reason than to break the taboo, but because if his resume, his mammoth intellect and his charisma are any indication, there's a very strong probability that Herman Cain may very well be the best and most qualified man for the job.

I've now met three four of the top six or seven names being mentioned in association with the GOP Presidential nominating contest, albeit one has been mentioned only as a potential candidate for Vice President as he has repeatedly proclaimed that he planned to seek reelection to his state's governorship and would not seek the Presidency - at least not before his 42nd birthday. This Southern Governor only became eligible to run for the Presidency since the summer of 2006. Anyone not know to whom I am referring?

I know this has gotten a little bit off topic since this is a post about Herman Cain. However, this latter candidate whom I have refused to name (in this post - c'mon, you should know this one) presents a couple of very interesting dynamics as a potential VP consideration. First off, in the ostensibly unlikely event he should team up with Herman Cain, they would represent the first major-party non-white Presidential ticket in the nation's history. Second, should this person join up with another candidate such as say Newt Gingrich, whom I have also met during the SRLC last year (2010 for those of you in Rio Linda) when he consulted with myself and about two-dozen other Tea Party leaders in New Orleans about the prospect of a potential Presidential bid, it MIGHT present a scenario in which I could potentially vote for a different ticket IF the Herman Cain campaign had not won any primary contests before Louisiana's, MAY feel compelled to vote for a ticket other than Herman Cain's. Unless and until that happens, at this point, he's definitely got my vote in the Louisiana GOP Presidential Primary.

[PHOTO: (from left) Peter and Pamela Egan, Herman Cain and Fat Lester]

About Herman Cain (Source: Wikipedia)

Herman Cain (born December 13, 1945) is an American newspaper columnist, businessman, political activist, and radio talk-show host from Georgia. He is best known as the former chairman and CEO of Godfather's Pizza. He is a former deputy chairman (1992–94) and chairman (1995–96) of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Cain's newspaper column is distributed by North Star Writers Group. He currently lives in the Atlanta suburbs.

Cain was born and raised in Georgia by working class parents. He earned a bachelor's degree in Mathematics at Morehouse College in 1967, and while working for the U.S. Department of the Navy, a master's degree in computer science from Purdue University.

After completing his master's degree, Cain left the Department of the Navy and began working for Coca-Cola as a business analyst. In 1977, he joined Pillsbury where he rose to the position of vice president by the early 1980s. He left his executive post to work for Burger King – a Pillsbury subsidiary at the time – managing 400 stores in the Philadelphia area. Under Cain's leadership, his region went from the least profitable for Burger King to the most profitable in three years. This prompted Pillsbury to appoint him president and CEO of Godfather's Pizza, another of their then-subsidiaries. Within 14 months, Cain had returned Godfather's to profitability. In 1988, Cain and a group of investors bought Godfather's from Pillsbury. Cain continued as CEO until 1996, when he resigned to become CEO of the National Restaurant Association – a trade group and lobby organization for the restaurant industry – where he had previously been chairman concurrently with his role at Godfather's.

Cain hosted The Herman Cain Show on Atlanta talk radio station News Talk 750 WSB, a CNN radio affiliate until February 2011 and serves as a commentator for Fox News Business and a syndicated columnist distributed by the North Star Writers Group. In 2009, Cain founded "Hermanator's Intelligent Thinkers Movement" (HITM), aimed at organizing 100,000 activists in every congressional district in the United States in support of a strong national defense, the FairTax, tax cuts, energy independence, capping and cutting government spending, restructuring Social Security, and defending the U.S. Constitution. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Cain