I’ve changed my blog name again. I realized I really like the “private world” meme and plan to expand on it at length and that “markjeftovic.ca” was just a way better domain name than “mark.jeftovic.net”.

I also ditched the “Under the Radar” caption because I found out awhile back that there is another tech blog that calls itself that. So after some consideration I’ve gone with “Exile From the Herd” because it follows on some thinking I’ve been doing about the very rough division of all people into three groups:

1. The Herd If you’re aware of it, you do not want to be in it. This is the vast majority of the population who live in a comatose dreamworld, delegate their thinking to others and will happily follow their next door neighbour or somebody they perceive to be “in charge” off the edge of a cliff if they think everybody else is doing it.
2. Predators These guys love the herd because they prey on them. For the most part it’s like shooting fish in a barrel or clubbing baby seals to death. Amoral, easy and lucrative. Predators can be found in many guises: televangalists, snake-oil salesmen, cult leaders and all politicians are predators. If everybody got smart, these guys would all be hung from meathooks. An informed citizenry is the bane of the predator’s existance.
3. Sovereign Individuals These are people who have separated themselves from the herd and have built up suitable defenses around themselves to be largely free from predation. Predators for the most part leave these guys alone and move onto easier pastures. Sovereign Individuals don’t care who thinks they’re in charge of what. All that matters is that they can run their own lives. For the most part, they write their own tickets and mind their own business.

I of course aspire to the third group. It is largely an ideal and can only be progressed toward but never truly attained.

In thinking on this I also came up with another one of my silly “socialist, conservative, libertarian” jokes because the three groups align very roughly along those definitions.

Question: What happens when a libertarian, a conservative and a socialist witness a fisherman overturning his boat on a lake?

Answer: The libertarian tries to help the guy. The conservative pontificates that the fisherman needs to take responsibility for his own life circumstances and the socialist argues that the fisherman suffers from an unfair disadvantage compared to people on shore and suggests we should all jump into the lake to make everybody even.

Anyway, this is more or less a test post, people subscribed via the old URL RSS feed should still see posts, and new subscribers should end up under the new URL.