This comedian, Brian Regan, is hilarious… original and expressive, with great timing… and relatively clean (a rarity these days, and the mark of someone who’s genuinely and intelligently funny – like my hero Brad Stine). Check out some of his other YouTube videos.

(HT: Siberian Grinder)

Anyways, take today… I started by watching a little Giants/Lions football and sucking down some hot Buffalo wings (one of God’s gifts to Men – ranking up there with air and water). With the sound of butting helmets still in my ears, and Frank’s Red Hot coursing through my veins, I went to my local gym. There, I lifted some iron (my back-bicep-shoulder routine) while watching more football on the multiple TV screens in the free weight area. Something about watching sports can really get the testosterone going… it’s just a better workout that way. Hit one muscle group until it’s dead… then hit another related group until it’s dead… then another. After about a half hour I reached muscle failure in all my target groups, so I moved from the room of iron to the room of cardio-contraptions. I hopped on an elliptical machine – equipped with cable TV – and promptly turned on… wait for it… football! Thirty minutes of nasty sweat production while flipping between Steelers/Jets and Cowboys/Redskins. I can already sense the amino acids from the formerly Cayenne-kissed poultry-protein rebuilding my muscle tissue. Nice.

Take a quick shower and I feel like a million bucks, and my iron-lifting had successfully removed any calorie-guilt carried over from bleu-cheese-lifting. I was left in just the perfect state-of-mind for watching the Patriots continue their reign of dominance.

I have to say it was a good day.

You know… if you’re gonna’ be stupid, you gotta’ be smart about it.

I love one-liners, and the poetry of this one rang true in my ears as soon as it left my lips. I quickly Googled to see if anyone had ever officially said it yet (like Yogi Berra), and to my delight they had not. So I get to have my very own one-liner… my very own Yogiism. Well done me.

The event that stimulated this burst of reason was this – I was told of a group on the website Facebook (a social networking site similar to MySpace) that was entitled “Henry Mills sucks penis” [the name has been changed]. This group was started and joined by current and former members of a local Christian school… and the object of their wrath, Mr. Mills, is a well-respected official of that same school and church. The group’s Facebook page includes disrespectful and insanely inappropriate and infantile content that I won’t share here.

Now… how nervy do you have to be to create and/or join such a group actually using your primary Facebook account with your name and picture displayed for any school official or parent to identify… and to do this while having not yet graduated from the school?! While you’re at it why don’t you just set your diploma on fire right now?! And needless to say, once the school found out about this Facebook group just a few days ago, it was quickly put out of its misery.

So upon hearing this story I exclaimed, “You know… if you’re gonna’ be stupid, you gotta’ be smart about it!” There is harmony in this statement – it’s found in the mix of bumbling wisdom and denotative paradox. But as I pondered, I discerned some “deeper” force at work here. So I put my thoughts down in the form of a socio-algebraic law:

Mooradian’s Law of Multiplicative Idiocy

As the probability of an individual or entity to engage in an idiotic action increases, the faulty cognitive processes driving this increase also propend the same individual or entity to engage in further related idiotic actions, such that the original idiocy is amplified through a mechanism of synergistic multiplication. This described propensity incites a daisy-chain of idiotic action occurring independent of (and possibly in addition to) the coincidental succession of an individual’s or entity’s natural random idiocy as expressed by a Poisson distribution.

As a previous leader of soldiers, I truly saw this law in action. Anyone who’s been in the military knows soldiers and sailors sometimes have an affinity for mayhem. And certain sailors and soldiers have perfected foolishness down to a black art. Now, it amazed me how my soldiers would sometimes commit egregious acts of idiocy, and follow it up by recording their actions in photographic or audio-visual form – thereby supplying incrimination leading to their own demise!? That’s the law of multiplicative idiocy.

Recently, on a local blog, I was conversing with an argumentative and illogical fellow. No sooner had I soundly discounted all his faulty lines of reasoning, when a mysterious second fellow appeared on the blog and echoed the first fellow’s identical illogic. Little did “either” of them know that I’m an admin for the blog… and I could see that “both” fellows were posting from the same IP address! Upon greater inspection, a third and fourth troublesome fellow on the blog were also from this same IP address! When pressed for the truth, the original fellow claimed that the other “three” fellows were indeed real people (housemates) whom he shared his home computer with. Of course, he couldn’t then explain why when I tracerouted his IP address it routed back to a single-point external gateway for a local health insurance company (as verified by their IT security staff). That’s the law of multiplicative idiocy.

How about the lady who tried to pay for her Wal-Mart merchandise with a counterfeit bill? She used a bill of such a high denomination ($1 Million) that not only did the store have no choice but to examine the bill with such scrutiny as would certainly discover the fake… but the store wouldn’t have had nearly enough cash to even make change, anyway! That’s the law of multiplicative idiocy.

The robber who empties the convenience store cash register, but then pays for a soda with his credit card before leaving. The student who vandalizes school property, then brags about it to a teacher. The man who shows up to DUI court drunk. That’s the law of multiplicative idiocy.

In the end I decided to wrap everything about me into one site. The design had to be bold and vivacious, yet clean and classy. Light on dark was a given. In the end, my nuclear engineering roots provided the inspiration for the design (hence the magenta trifoil and glowing green). I titled it, Nuclear Magic.

However, this new website not only serves as my personal site but was also a great proof-of-concept for using Wordpress as a CMS. Wordpress is widely regarded as the premiere blogging software… but its potential as a CMS is profound. So many web designers and developers already have Wordpress blogs and are familiar with skinning and modding them… and the administrator interface is easy-to-use. Pound for pound you won’t get more bang for your buck when developing a dynamic website. Wordpress works great, is free, and is easier to use for what it does than anything else I’ve ever even heard of.

Everything you see at SteveMooradian.com that is not part of the site’s physical design is dynamic. This is extremely significant. ALL images are called out in CSS or in MySQL… not the source files. All main textual content is stored in MySQL. On my Web Design, Programming, and Guitar & Music pages the lists of sites, projects, and bands (respectively) are all Wordpress posts with categories matching the page title. The links at the bottom of every non-Home page are actual Wordpress “Blogroll” links with categories matching the page title. Except for the Home and Gallery pages, each page is built from identical PHP code!

All my coding was done using Notepad++. All graphic work in the design was created by myself using Adobe’s Photoshop and Fireworks software. All markup is valid XHTML 1.0 and CSS3. All of the site conforms to 508 and WAI-A accessibility standards. All dynamic content is semantic. NO TABLES!

I designed the site using progressive enhancement so that I could be search-engine friendly and accessible while also providing a rich user experience to those with Flash and JavaScript-enabled browsers. Examples of progressive enhancement are as follows: I used sIFR to style my headings for users with Flash-enabled browsers. NO images were used for any headings on my site. I used swfIR to style most of my content images for users with Flash-enabled browsers. All drop-shadows and rounding on content images happen dynamically. I used GreyBox for all in-browser popups and image popup galleries for users with JavaScript-enabled browsers.

My new site has already been featured on many CSS and web design galleries… including a prestigious “Editor’s Pick” on the W3CSites.com gallery (which requires strict adherence to valid markup and web accessibility).

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.
- Dr. Seuss

I am an outgoing person. I’m very extroverted… in fact my Myers-Briggs rating is sometimes a straight ESTJ, meaning I’m a war general. As such I have always spoken, whether it was time to speak or not. You will hear it said that it’s much better to be quiet than to speak. You will hear people say “I’ve often regretted my speech, but never my silence.” You will hear sermons preached on the third chapter of James about taming our tongues and the massive damage our words can inflict on others.

This is all fine, but it is perilously lopsided to the point of being deceptive and dangerous. If you want to bring the Bible into it there are more of examples of Christ tongue-lashing than tongue-holding. The Book of Proverbs lauds speaking the right words at the right time. History is replete with examples of evils that were allowed to occur because of the silence of millions of people.

A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.
- Proverbs 25:11

Don’t let anyone tell you that going through life having never offended anyone was the holy way to live. There exist many with wacky beliefs and ideas… and if none of them are offended by you this is to your discredit. They say that defeat is just part of the road to winning… and the the only true losers are the ones who never try. I think the same is true to some extent with the expression of our ideas and principles… and that the only true losers are the ones who think that by staying quiet they’ve performed the more honorable and tolerant action.

Absolute tolerance is impossible for anyone, unless, of course, you believe in nothing.
- Brad Stine

So my blog is just an extension of how I do life. I decided a while ago that if I’m gonna’ go down I’m going down swinging. If I’m going to err it will be by actively doing the wrong thing rather than by a lack of doing anything. Now, does this mean say whatever whenever to whoever and be damned if you don’t like it? No, of course not. Common sense is still a cornerstone of higher-order humans. The proverb above specifically exhorts the use of “aptly spoken” words. The key is this… don’t let fear of not speaking perfectly aptly 100% of the time keep you silent.

You’ve got to dance like nobody’s watching, sing like nobody’s listening, and blog like nobody’s reading.

www.stevemooradian.com :: 2006 :: First hit! It better have been. My business card site. I am at the top of my name.

Post on alt.bbs.doors :: 1994 :: Where the heck did this come from? This was an ad I did for an expansion program to an old computer BBS game (called a door game) titled Trade Wars. Myself and Wendell did the ad for a friend (Tazor Software) who had written the expansion called Trade World. Holy Smokes! I just googled for it and found it available for download here! Craziness!

LCC Soccer :: 2005 :: Here I’m listed as co-leading soccer at Loudonville Community Church with Rick Marsan (who’s a better soccer player than three of me put together)… but unfortunately I haven’t been able to play, let alone lead, for several months so this is more of a misnomer than anything. Rick’s always been the real leader.

RPI Class of ‘96 :: 2001 :: This is our class homepage but hasn’t been updated since our five year reunion!? I’m listed as “attending”. Supposedly I’m re-doing this site for our ten year which is (let me check the calendar) THIS YEAR! Joey… get me that info!

Pocket Grandmaster :: 2004 :: The top of the portable computing chess program food chain is Pocket Grandmaster… voted best PocketPC chess program (again). I helped with graphics by making an additional piece set, coloring some existing sets, and making some wood and marble board designs.

Psycho Doom 2 Level :: 1995 :: Ha! The text file for my Doom 2 level I created way back when… the same one that eventually got published on some deathmatch compilation CD (which I actually own a copy of). I am probably more knowledgeable on the nuances of playing this level than on most of my courses I took back then. Some of the language in this text file is poignant, by the way.

Siena College Army ROTC Alumni :: 1996 :: Wow! I remember all of these guys! My email address is wrong in here, but it’s a great page for memories. Who keeps this stuff up here?

Okay, that’s enough for now… I don’t want to bore you to death. I’d be interested in hearing anyone’s more peculiar vanity Google results.