Frontiersman, February 2011

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Frontiersman, February 2011

Internot
Sam Aurelius Milam III
After the recent failure of an internet hosting service that I was using, I needed to relocate some of my websites. I relocated The Frontiersman Website to an AwardSpace account. I uploaded the website, began testing it to see if there were any problems, and discovered some problems. A good many issues of the newsletter were not available. I tried the usual things like uploading those issues again. Uploading seemed to go well but, when checked, those issues were just not there.
On Monday, January 10, I initiated a trouble ticket with AwardSpace. Here's most of the text of the ticket. The only things that I've eliminated here are the two addresses that I provided as examples of missing pages.

Various of my files are missing. I have uploaded the files using both Web Site Maestro and Fetch. In both cases, the programs indicate that the files have been uploaded. However, the files are not available on the website. Instead, I get a page that is empty except for a big word "Enter". Here are links to two of the missing files, as examples....

Will you please fix whatever is preventing the files from being available on the website?
Sincerely,
Sam Aurelius Milam III

That same day, I received this reply.

Hello Sam Aurelius Milam III.

Thank you for contacting us.

Due to the heavy abuses conducted on our FREE hosting we have enabled automatic content filtering for all FREE accounts. Your page contains these forbidden words:
ORAL SEX [1]
and thus out automatic [sic] is making the redirect and is blocking your website.

Please make sure you remove them to fix the error or upgrade your account to have this functionality disabled.

Please note that for security reasons we cannot disclose the full list of forbidden words.

Thank you for your understanding.
Best Regards,
Vincent Harris
Dedicated Support Team
Supportindeed.com

Recall my frequent complaints about how Christian morality is imposed upon the rest of us, against our wills. This situation is a good example. AwardSpace imposes the typically filthy Christian belief that sex is obscene onto people who use its services. It does so by banning any document that contains any sexual referent that might offend somebody with a typically filthy Christian attitude toward sex. AwardSpace won't even tell me which words are prohibited. If I was willing to remove those words, which I'm not, then I'd have to guess which words to remove. Worse yet, the enforcer drones at AwardSpace have turned the filthy Christian attitude regarding sex into a money-making scheme. That is, I can avoid having my documents banned if I pay a fee and have my account upgraded. It's almost like buying Dispensations from the Church, with AwardSpace setting itself up as the Pope.

When did the land of the free and the home of the brave become the land of the politically correct and the home of the cowardly? All of those people who think of themselves as Christians, who're offended by my attitude, and who're yelling "It ain't us! It's them other guys!", need to do something about those "other guys". Those "other guys" are acting in the name of Christianity. I don't care about the Christian pedigree of anybody who bans my work. Anybody who does that, "other guys" or "you guys", is an enemy of liberty.

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives.

—from Revolt In 2100
by Robert A. Heinlein, © 1939-1953

Please use the enclosed envelope to send a contribution. I prefer cash. For checks or money orders, please inquire.
For PayPal payments, use Frontiersman@manlymail.net.

February 2011

Frontiersman, ^c/o 4984 Peach Mountain Drive, Gainesville, Georgia 30507

Page 1

Genealogical Overkill
Table

Sam Aurelius Milam III

Tracing a family tree back as many years as possible is a fond pastime for many people. The further back they trace it, the happier they are. They like to note with pride their relationships to important people who lived centuries ago. I think that they could probably find a lot of better ways to spend their time.

In the first place, family trees are more than a little hypothetical. Nobody knows for sure who all of his distant male ancestors really were. All that we have is the testimony of the mothers, which can be notoriously unreliable. In that regard, many people might not even know the identities of their true fathers. They might think that they do, but maybe they really don't. Even if what the mothers had to say was always completely honest and accurate, then we'd still go wrong a lot of the time because the further into the past we trace a family tree the less reliable the records become. In my own case, I have some ancestors who appear in the records under different names. Much of the data are simply unknown. Because of that sort of thing, there are even situations in which the identities of the female ancestors are a mystery. However, there's another even better reason to be skeptical of boasts about ancient lineage. That reason is simple arithmetic.

Let's assume that each generation of human ancestry takes about 25 years. It might be a bold assumption but 25 years is probably as good an estimate as any other and it makes the arithmetic easier. For the sake of convenience, let's designate me as being of the generation of 1950. I was alive in 1950. If you weren't, then pick your own decade and do your own calculations. The difference will be insignificant. We must also assume that the number of my ancestors will double with each generation into the past. That is, I had two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so forth. Social scruples relating to consanguinity will usually make that a good assumption for several generations into the past. Beyond those few generations, it's a less reliable assumption. That is, the further back into the past that I trace my family tree, the more likely it is that some particular individual might occupy more than one place in that family tree. So, the actual number of ancestors that I have at some point in the past will probably be smaller than the number predicted by my simple-minded doubling method. Nevertheless, the number of my ancestors will still be large and it will be larger as I consider generations further into the past.

Please use the enclosed envelope to send a contribution. I prefer cash. For checks or money orders, please inquire.
For PayPal payments, use Frontiersman@manlymail.net.

Page 2

Frontiersman, ^c/o 4984 Peach Mountain Drive, Gainesville, Georgia 30507

February 2011

In the table on the previous page, I've shown the theoretically maximum number of ancestors that I had at different times in the past. I've also shown the estimated population of the world at different times in the past. The numbers of my ancestors are based on the simple doubling assumption that I mentioned in the previous paragraph. The estimates of world population are from the U.S. Census Bureau. The numbers of my ancestors are approximate but they're probably every bit as accurate as the numbers provided by the Census Bureau. Even if the numbers are all off by several percent, they still support my point.

You can see that if I trace my family tree back to even as recent a time as the 1200's then it's pointless to speculate about who my ancestors were. The theoretically possible number of my ancestors at that time was almost three times the population of the entire world at that time. In theory, I could be descended from every human being who was alive on the planet as few as 800 years ago. So it doesn't matter if I had an ancestor back in the Middle ages who was a king. In that same generation, I also had ancestors who were rapists, farmers, wheelwrights, candle makers, sheriffs, thugs, soldiers, and so forth. At that point in the past, my ancestors, all 350,000,000 of them, were a completely random sample of people scattered over a large part of the world. The only thing that those people had in common (the only thing!) was that they would eventually all be my ancestors. That's about as trivial as it gets. Also consider that those same people are probably also the ancestors of a large fraction of the people who are alive on the planet today. Furthermore, consider this. What do I care about some descendant of mine who's going to be alive in the year 2911? Nothing. I don't see how anything could be less important.

The calculation casts genealogy in a whole new light. There's probably some virtue in genealogical studies of such things as susceptibility to diseases, ancient migrations of human populations, and so forth. As proof of some self-doubting person's relationship to some noted figure in the distant past, just for the sake of a bragging point, genealogy is just about the most useless field of study imaginable. We might as well assume that everybody alive today is related to everybody who was alive a thousand years ago. I suppose that the lesson here is that the only ancestors who really matter are the ones that we can actually remember for ourselves. Treasure those and forget the others. Take the time that you would otherwise have spent looking for leafs on a website and, instead, spend that time with your grandparents or with your grandchildren, as appropriate. There's a family history that's worth the effort.

Letters to the Editor

...Oh, my friends sister in [town name omitted] did visit your website & 2 days later on a flight she had already booked, (her company flys her a lot) she got "bumped" and TSA'd due to (they said) she accessed an anti-Gov't website!! She finally got it all cleared up & was allowed to take a next day flight. But she wrote to her brother (my friend) & said she's not going to log on to your website anymore!! Maybe you could write something up along those lines & I can give him a copy to send to his sis?? It is real sad that this behavior by "Gov't" is not abhored by those persons!! Ah — one day! Maybe enough will wake up....

—a prisoner

It would be nice if people like her had enough sense to realize that the problem isn't my website. Among the various problems are arrogant legislators who think that security can be imposed by force without destroying liberty, the strutting fascist pigs at the airports who love their jobs, people (most of them) who are so stupid or so brainwashed that they can't figure out the alternatives, and the conspirators in the U.S. government who control it all.

—editor

Sam,

Hey buddy. I'm still here. Except I'm @ a new address now. Anyway, I still get your material — and yes, I'm still enjoying EVERY ISSUE. Thank you Sam for allowing me to receive your articles. I am sorry I have no funds, stamps or financial help. As you can see, these little brown envelopes are for indigent use only. So that tells ya of my poorness. Okay Sam, I'll let you go brother. Keep up the good work. Believe it or not — your publication/article is awakening the people(s). If ya have seen, Americans are starting to stir.

Gotta run Sam, big strip search coming up and I absolutely hate being felt up after 100 guys and 1 officer using the same gloves.

—a prisoner

Please use the enclosed envelope to send a contribution. I prefer cash. For checks or money orders, please inquire.
For PayPal payments, use Frontiersman@manlymail.net.

February 2011

Frontiersman, ^c/o 4984 Peach Mountain Drive, Gainesville, Georgia 30507

Page 3

Frontiersman
^c/o 4984 Peach Mountain Drive
Gainesville, Georgia 30507

It's easy to learn a lesson. The trick is to remember it.

—Tuesday, February 24, 1981

Milam's Notes

Acknowledgments

My thanks to the following: SantaClara Bob; Lady Jan the Voluptuous; my mother; Dewey and Betty; Eric, of Ione, California; and Joseph, of Northridge, California.

— editor

Court Quotes
From Humor in the Court and More Humor in the Court, by Mary Louise Gilman, editor of the National Shorthand Reporter. Forwarded by Don G.

Do you recall the time that you examined the body?

The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.

And Mr. Pennington was dead at the time?

No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy on him.

Observations
Original Source Unknown. Forwarded by David, of Idaho Falls, Idaho.

•

He who laughs last thinks slowest.

•

I get enough exercise pushing my luck.

Funny Quotes by Famous People
Original Source Unknown. Forwarded by Millie, of Baltimore, Maryland.

•

Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat.

—Alex Levine

•

Money can't buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.

—Spike Milligan

•

I am opposed to millionaires but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.

—Mark Twain

•

I don't feel old. I don't feel anything until noon. Then it's time for my nap.

—Bob Hope

•

I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it.

—W.C. Fields

•

We could certainly slow the aging process down if it had to work its way through Congress.

—Will Rogers

Frontiersman

Subscriptions and Back Issues — Printed copies of this newsletter, either subscriptions or back issues, are available by application only.

Cancellations — If you don't want to keep receiving this newsletter, then return it unopened. When I receive it, I'll terminate your subscription.

Reprint Policy — Permission is hereby granted to reproduce this newsletter in its entirety or to reproduce material from it, provided that the reproduction is accurate and that proper credit is given. I do not have the authority to give permission to reprint material that I have reprinted from other sources. For that permission, you must go to the original source. I would appreciate receiving a courtesy copy of any document or publication in which you reprint my material.

Submissions — I solicit letters, articles, and cartoons for the newsletter, but I don't pay for them. Short items are more likely to be printed. I suggest that letters and articles be shorter than 500 words but that's flexible depending on space available and the content of the piece.

Payment — This newsletter isn't for sale. If you want to make a voluntary contribution, then I prefer cash or U.S. postage stamps. For checks or money orders, please inquire. For PayPal payments, use Frontiersman@manlymail.net. The continued existence of the newsletter will depend, in part, on such contributions. I don't accept anything that requires me to provide ID to receive it. In case anybody's curious, I also accept gold, silver, platinum, etc.

— Sam Aurelius Milam III, editor

Please use the enclosed envelope to send a contribution. I prefer cash. For checks or money orders, please inquire.
For PayPal payments, use Frontiersman@manlymail.net.

Page 4

Frontiersman, ^c/o 4984 Peach Mountain Drive, Gainesville, Georgia 30507

February 2011

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