I have it on good authority (the wife) that Wednesday, July 30th, is Alton Brown’s birthday. Sure its early, but I’ll be gone, and I’m not allowed to bring a laptop with me.
But Happy Birthday, oh King of the Kitchen. You taught me to cook. And while I’m still not great, I learned more from you in a half hour episode on how to fry eggs than 6 months working at the truck stop. We love the ribs, the mac&cheese, and everything else.
Take a look at the Good Eat’s Fan Page website for recipes, how-to’s, and everything else for the only great cooking instructor on TV. Do you want to learn how cooking works, not just how to throw ingredients in a pot? Then please read I’m Just Here for the Food: Food + Heat = Cooking by Alton. This will give you the science behind cooking. Great for pirates, since he covers cooking over open flames. But with this you will understand why you cook they way you do. This is light on recipes, only giving a few examples for each method of cooking. You’re going to read this and understand why you let a steak sit for a while after cooking. Or just what boiling really does. Its worth it, take a look and see for yourselves.

OK, so I’m checking my referrals on one of my sites and I see all these really wierd referrals.
Lots of links from
http://www.antiXXXspamXXXfilter.com
http://www.free-hardcXXXore-sXXXex-pictures-121.biz
http://www.stoXXXpallspXXXam.com
http://www.exhibXXXitionsuXXXccess.com
http://www.blXXXow-jXXXob-cuXXXm-shot-picXXXtures-101.biz
http://www.freeXXX-hardXXXcore-poXXXrn-picXXXtures.biz
http://www.parroXXXtsoft.com
I put in the XXX’s so they won’t show up in searches for here. Looked in the logs and what they’re doing is trying to show up on top of the rankings by continuously sending HEAD requests to the server. This is the new kind of spam. So anyways, they’re all from the following subnets: 207.44.226.0 and 207.44.188.0. So I just logged into my cisco router and completely blocked all traffic from their sites with an access list.
If you’re finding this in your sites, please also black hole those sites. I use several black hole lists for my mail. I block outright about a third of all traffic as spam. But there isn’t an easy way to do that dynamically with web software, so just blocking the whole damn subnet is fine with me…

While the Pirate-King is out raiding Colorado with the Pirate-Queen, I thought I’d take a moment from the 90+ degree heat to sneak in an entry on his site. While I’ve been pondering the Democrat=butthead equation for awhile myself, esp since I consider myself an ex-Democrat, I don’t have anything more to offer on the issue. If anyone knows, or has any idea why the Democrats have lost their collective minds, then please drop a line. Even my octagenarian mother can’t figure it out.

I’m taking a break in the mid afternoon, waiting for a pond liner to warm up. Yes, the hole has been there for over 16 months and I’m finally filling it in. Got the Kid on board with a promise he can swim in it. Hell, I just might take a swim in it myself when all is done. The thing is 9×16x3 at its deepest, 1 ft deep at its shallowest. All told it need a 15×20 liner that weighs 80lbs. Hernia city. Add to that the 10 bags of sand, 2 bales of weed fabric, 2 tons of large river rock, 2 pallets of Pennsy fieldstone, 1 GFCI run-wet outlet, conduit + pvc glue & fittings, 100 feet of outdoor cable and I’m at the $600 mark. Add in another $200 for a filter/pump and my guess is that we’ll be near a grand by the time we’re throwing in fish. Long term goal: foot long Japanese koi. Short term goal: feeder goldfish. The Kid is all ready looking forward to “swimming with the fishes”.

Air conditioniong. What a wonderful invention.

Once in a while, the Bloggers are good for something. Starting tomorrow is the 2003 Blogathon. This is where the the ultimate vanity press will type twenty-four hours for charities. Some of the sites have joined together for the same cause. Everything from Tourettes Syndrome, cancer research, even the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

Me? I’ll be packing and prepping this weekend for vacation. And I don’t have the traffic coming here yet, so I’m throwing my support to other blogs. So if you get here this weekend, take a look at my links list on the right and the ones that are in the Blogathon, think about donating.

I’ve already donated to a small victory’s run at this. Why? She has the absolute best graphic for her site. I just love it, hope it never changes.

hehhheh… Hannity and Colmes is on, and they have some Democratic representative on. I’m barely paying attention, but the wife walks in, watches for a minute, and asked my why are the Democrats such buttheads!

The Boss’s boss worked from home yesterday, promised updated functionals then didn’t deliver. She then questioned the work I did while she was gone, going so far as complaining on the amount of time we spent outside during a fire drill. 18 floors of people had to leave the building in an orderly fashion, wait around for the firechief to confirm that the building was empty, then everyone had to file back in. Being on the 17th floor, the wait for an elevator was 15 minutes.
Ugly..

Then I got into an argument with an ex-army woman about Qusay and Uday. She seemed to think that what we did to Saddam’s boys was morally wrong, and we now had no reason to be upset if someone does the same to GWB.

It’s pointless to argue with people who accept the doctrine of moral equivalence. To them everything is a grey area. To them everything is also opinion, ignoring the possibility that having a degree in the very subject that she was arguing about, as well as having worked for Amnesty International (”Writing letters” as she put it), really didn’t compare with her experience in the service (”Someone who put their ass on the line while you were partying.”) She kept thinking that my attacking her arguments was a personal attack on her, a feeling shared by her colleague in a nearby space.

Coming from a military family didn’t seem to matter, nor did the fact that my son was in Iraq and one of the first to go into Afghanistan.

“He chose his life,” was her answer to that.
I said, “It’s obvious you don’t have kids.” Anyone with kids will know that experiencing danger first-hand is a lot easier to handle than having one’s child experiencing that danger.

Realizing that I was having a bad day, and may be coming across somewhat bombastically, I apologized for any appearance of impropriety on my part. She didn’t accept my apology.

On the way home I then realized that to her, arguments and identity are one. She couldn’t separate the two, therefore she kept viewing my aggressive attacks on her arguments (Sorry, but any Jew that would refuse to kill Hitler in 1933 if one had the chance deserves aggressiveness) as personal attacks.

Too bad. I liked her and respect anyone who puts their butts on the line. Now I’m just a crazy Hawk that doesn’t know shit..

Gun ownership is constitutionally protected. We believe those who make dangerous products also have an obligation to make sure they don’t get into the wrong hands. If the gun lobby would stop objecting to every effort to limit gun availability, no matter how mild, there could be progress toward protecting communities from violence.

From my local left-wing newspaper, the Delaware News Journal.
So, they’re advocating that KMart and the Cooking store no longer sell knives until you’ve passed a safety test?
And that car dealerships should be required to install devices in every car that will shut it down if the driver does anything unsafe? Yeah, that will shut down I-95 in a heartbeat. I can see it now, Bob, the used-car salesman going down to the local high school and towing all the Camaros away.
Typical nanny state attitude. This quote above reminds me of the typical “We support our troops of course, but… ” and then list every way they don’t support the troops. They think supporting the troops is keeping the thought in the back of their minds that no one gets hurt. Support is more than that. Supporting my wife means supporting things she does. It includes helping her out when she needs it, and encouraging the things she does. Not just hoping she doesn’t get killed somewhere.
*Update* Thinking about this a bit more. Man, I can’t wait if this lawsuit ever passes. I will be SOOO RICH! I’m going to sue every company I can think of that has any sort of dangerous product. If a car even drives anywhere near me, GM is going to pay. I mean, they knowingly allowed their dealers to sell a vehicle that could kill someone! In fact, through their marketing and commercials, they encourage the sale of such a deadly thing! They even give rebates and 0% financing! My God, the blood they have on their hands! And due to the precedent, they are fully culpable!

As the Eiffel Tower burns, I thought I’d tell a story. Nope, not about the French, its about President Reagan.
I was in the gifted and talented program when I was in school. The year I was in fifth grade was the year Ronald Reagan went up against President Carter. One of our special projects was to analyze the candidates, choose one to campaign for, and then go and debate in front of some of the normal classes.
Out of sixteen people in the class, 10 chose to campaign for Carter, four for Anderson, and one for Reagan. At the time I just didn’t really care. That was the start of when I stopped giving a damn.. Very Malcolm of me at the time. So I was assigned Reagan to “balance things out.”
Of course the people who picked Carter ignored the economy, the hostage crisis, and every other failure. They just had the typical liberal attitude of he’s a Democrat and therefore he’s going to help the poor and disadvantaged. Reagan is bad because he’s a conservative and therefore he is mean and hates the poor. At least the few people who went for Anderson chose him because he’s an independent. Then again, choosing someone just because they’re different isn’t a good answer.
So we did our research and went and did the debates. I hated being up in front of people, and I don’t remember much about doing the presentations. I can’t even remember how our in school election turned out. But years later I’m glad that even at 10 years old, I did my part.
Of course President Reagan won the election. He dramatically improved the economy which helped the poor more than Carter’s policies did. He won the Cold War, and did many other things, the effects of which are still felt to this day. He was a good man and a great President. I’ll leave off with a quote I found.

In 1984, Ronald Reagan went to Los Angeles to open the Olympics. When he returned home, Maureen Reagan asked what he liked most about the Opening Ceremony.
Her dad stood in the hallway for a moment. Then he lit up.
He liked seeing someone carry the flag of China followed by all those athletes, who looked Chinese. And the German flag, in front of all those youngsters who were German. And the flags from little Africa countries, followed by African kids.
And then our flag came out. One of the athletes was carrying our flag, he told Maureen, getting more and more excited. And following it were marching our boys and girls. And they looked like the whole world!

Aye matie, time to be shanghai’d

Join the Guild of St. Errol

Time for Rennaisance Faires. The local one to the Pirate-King is the Pennsylvania Renn Faire. Its always a good time. Chow on a big turkey leg, check out the latest in chain mail, swig some grog and brew, and of course, get merry with the wenches!

Didn’t take long for Cisco’s vulnerability to be exploited. I spent most of Thursday fielding calls from the help desk because people’s internet sessions would drop, our call center application would hang, etc. Every time someone updated a backbone router we’d lose sessions. 11:30 at night I was still getting paged because of it.
This sounds like that hoax email going around about shutting off the internet to clean it once a year.
Ahh well. I’ve taken the weekend to clean up the back end code on the site, add a few patches, blog a bit, and build two new systems out of spare parts. One is going to replace the wife’s system which is having “issues” and the other is a new server for the parent’s house. Yeah, we’re all high tech like that.

Damn, I feel unimportant now. Not listed on a small victory’s pirate links list.
At least the little dead girl liked Pirates of the Carribean also.
And then she asks about Calvin and Hobbes. She wonders if Hobbes came alive or if he was just in Calvin’s imagination. Hobbes is neither. It is an irrelevant question. To Calvin, Hobbes is alive, and to everyone else, he is a stuffed animal. I do believe this is perfectly in line with current theoretical physics models. Schroedinger’s cat and all that. Hobbes just is. And thats perfect fine with me. In one of the books I have Bill Watterson covers this point.

The so-called “gimmick” of my strip–the two versions of Hobbes–is sometimes misunderstood. I don’t think of Hobbes as a doll that miraculously comes to life when Calvin’s around. Neither do I think of Hobbes as the product of Calvin’s imagination. The nature of Hobbes reality doesn’t interest me, and each story goes out of its way to avoid resolving the issue. Calvin sees Hobbes one way, and everyone else sees Hobbes another way. I show two versions of reality, and each makes complete sense to the participant who sees it. I think that’s how life works. None of us sees the world in exactly the same way, and I just draw that literally in the strip. Hobbes is more about the subjective nature of reality that about dolls coming to life.

Take a look at this Calvin and Hobbes website.

Here is the link for the Windows Media Player 9 - Currently Playing modification for the B2 blog. (Right click Save As on the link, or else you will probably just get a button to stare at!)
What this does for bloggers using B2, Internet Explorer, and WMP9 with the Blog Plugin to add to their blog entry just what song is playing as you edit.
Example follows:
Currently Playing :: Freak On A Leash :: 04:15 :: Korn

INSTRUCTIONS: Simply save the text file above in the b2-include folder as music.php. Then, in the b2edit.form.php file, add the following line:

<?php include(’music.php’); ?>

in between the other buttons. I currently add it between the spellcheck button code and the upload a file/image code, so that section will look like this:

ton” value=”Spellcheck” onclick=”DoSpell (’post’,'content’,”);” class=”search” tabindex=”9″/>
<?php } ?>
< ?php include(’music.php’); ?>
<?php if ( ($use_fileupload) && ($user_level >upload_minlevel) && ((ereg(” “.$user_login.” “, $fileupload_allowedusers)) || (trim($fileupload_allowedusers)==”")) ) { ?>

This loads an unsigned ActiveX control. It is wscript.exe, so you have to have Windows Scripting Host installed. There is no way to read the registry from Javascript without it. So you’ll need to do the following to your security settings. In Tools/Internet Options/Security/Trusted Sites/Sites, add your website that you edit the blog on. You will still get a security warning but you can get past that by clicking Custom Level and changing Initialize and Script ActiveX controls not marked as Safe from Prompt to Enable.
Its setup so that it uses a CSS class called music. You can also change things to use a DIV tag, or even always include the song by modifying your Blog This button to call displaySong() before it gets to submit.

The code I use is a modification to the sample code available from the Microsoft site listed above…

Just got done watching the new “Pirates of the Carribean” movie. Gotta give it two cutlasses up.
I think it managed to get the point across that at that time, Piracy was Freedom. Now, some of the nasty and brutish aspects were there also. But the only people in the whole movie who did what they felt was right instead of what was expected were the “good” pirates.
Studying the topic historically, I’ve not found a definitive difference on whether or not most pirates chose the profession because of fate, freedom, or booty. I’m sure its always a mix of the three. Even many of the ones that chose it for freedom’s sake only did it because there was no other choice. That says a lot about the “enlightened times.”

Pirates of today, however, are solely there for booty and murder. It seems to just be ugly. But also stupid. Here’s a list of the current week’s piracy activities from the Weekly Piracy Report.

• 14.07.2003 at 1400 LT at Chittagong anchorage, Bangladesh.
  Eleven pirates in a boat came alongside a bulk carrier. Three pirates armed with long knives attempted to board via anchor chain. Duty watchman raised alarm and informed port control and coast guard. Pirates aborted attempt.
• 11.07.2003, during early morning at Guanta port, Venezuela.
  Eight pirates armed with long knives boarded a general cargo ship at berth and broke padlocks on storerooms. Alert crew raised alarm and pirates escaped. On 12.07.2003 a thorough search found a stowaway hiding onboard. This may be unconnected with piracy incident.
• 11.07.2003 at 0245 LT, 5 miles NW of Ko Khram Island, Kosichang, Thailand.
  A pirate boarded a bulk carrier underway using grapnel hook. Duty officer raised alarm; crew mustered and switched on deck lights. On seeing crew alertness pirate jumped overboard and escaped in a boat waiting with three accomplices. Master tried to call port control but received no response.
• 09.07.2003 at 0030 LT at Chittagong anchorage, Bangladesh.
  Seven pirates armed with knives boarded a container ship at berth from forecastle. They took hostage duty crew and escaped with ship’s stores

Knives? c’mon, this is the 21st century. And using 2-3 people to attach a ship? Thats just pathetic. If you asked anyone today what would a current pirate would do, I’m sure the answer would be 10-15 people in fast speedboats loaded with machine guns and AK-47s. Not long knives. Sheesh. And no mention of parrots or eyepatches either. No class…

Air Conditioners
Frankie Mayo at www.operationac.com is sending over air conditioners to our troops in Iraq. Even the president of Home Depot has called her personally and donated 20 more. Frankie lives less than a 1/2 mile away from me. Please help out if you can…

I still get search requests for this. Its not mine, but I’ve kept it since the early 90’s. Its always a good read.

Mentor’s Last Words
Another one got caught today, it’s all over the papers. “Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal”, “Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering”…
Damn kids. They’re all alike.
But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950’s technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?
I am a hacker, enter my world…
Mine is a world that begins with school… I’m smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me…
Damn underachiever. They’re all alike.
I’m in junior high or high school. I’ve listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. “No, Ms. Smith, I didn’t show my work. I did it in my head…”
Damn kid. Probably copied it. They’re all alike.
I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it’s because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn’t like me… Or feels threatened by me… Or thinks I’m a smart ass… Or doesn’t like teaching and shouldn’t be here…
Damn kid. All he does is play games. They’re all alike.
And then it happened… a door opened to a world… rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict’s veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought… a board is found.
“This is it… this is where I belong…”
I know everyone here… even if I’ve never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again… I know you all…
Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They’re all alike…
You bet your ass we’re all alike… we’ve been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak… the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We’ve been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.
This is our world now… the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn’t run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore… and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge… and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias… and you call us criminals.
You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it’s for our own good, yet we’re the criminals.
Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.
I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can’t stop us all… after all, we’re all alike.
—Mentors Hacker Manifesto

Yesterday I went to lunch at TGI Fridays. The waitress took me to a table and at the table right next to me was Reds. I stopped and chatted with him for a while.
Reds was in the same National Guard unit I was in. He’s been in the military since VietNam. He was spit on by protestors when he came back from Nam. His airbase was fired on by VC infiltrators while he was there. (I’m hoping I remember all this right, its been a while!)
We were both in Gulf War part I while I was in the avionics shop in the 166 CAM squadron, part of the 166 Tactical Airlift Group. Its now the 166th Airlift Wing. I learned a hell of a lot while I was there. I was good at my job. Reds, Kevin, Danny, Big Al, Jimmy D., Billy, the NCMFs, and all the rest are the ones that made me that way.
Reds just got back from part II. I found out that it was worse this time. Last time we could go into town a lot, even while forward deployed. While we lived in tents, we had all the makings of a full base. And everything was nice and ready for us. We had a great crew with us.

This time was harder. Two months in full desert near nothing at all. Really bad accomodations. Then two months on the coast in full humidity wasn’t any better. He didn’t have too many cool stories, most of it was just a bad situation. It was better the first time.

But thanks Reds. I appreciate it, and from everyone else too.

Take a look at this posting from Sgt. Stryker. It does truly illustrate the difference between the branches of service. Not all the time, but it shows what you can expect.

Bird landed on the utility pole’s steel support bar that is connected to the steel guide wires to the ground. It stretched its wings, and we lost one phase of the three phase power feed coming into the building. Data center went on UPS but not nearly enough time to keep things running, so servers, phone switch, network switches, and firewall are all shut down.
Power company comes out and replaces the fuse inside the transformer, and we have power again. Servers and equipment are brought back online.
Cherry picker comes down out of the sky, and a bird landed on the utility pole’s support bar. It stretched its wings.

The data center’s UPS is not nearly charged enough yet at this point to keep everything running…

There’s a new show on Bravo called Queer Eye for the Straight Guy where five gay men show some hapless straight man (tonight: Butch - double entendre? You decide) the “simple virtues of style, taste and class.” While I’ll probably end up watching the show, it got me thinking about the wife’s hairdresser, “Kent” - and what the Spike TV version of the show would be like: “Fairy Tales”.

In the first episode, Kent would attend auto repair classes at the local community college where he would learn how to change the oil as well as the importance of products with names such as “Goop” and “Armor All”. Later, in the basic home repair class he would learn how to take apart a toilet and replace the beeswax seal around its base without damaging the tile floor or getting the “wife pissed about the mess”. Success would be guaged by “Deborah” - a thrice-divorced mother of five. Out to the workshop where Kent would learn the safe handling of products with names such as “Good stuff” and “silicone sealant”, as well as basic carpentry skills such as using a miter box and a circular saw. After a long day of work, Kent would then settle into the family room with our sports experts and beer connoisseurs. There Kent would learn the real meaning of the term “tight end”, how to intelligently debate the “designated hitter rule”, and the importance between Bud Light and Miller Light.

A Small Victory said it best:
I’m Watching it.
Banzai.
This is funny stuff. I’m sure a lot of politically correct types are fuming right now. That is a sure a sign as any that this is good. I’m actually suprised at how well Lou Ferrigno looks. And Frazier’s sumo move. And I scored correct on how many balloons to float a chicken. The best second part to that would have been how many blow darts to make the chicken come back to earth!

Damn it, Biden, stop being such a wuss.
It should be obvious from President Bush’s popularity that it is OK to be firm and call something by what it is?

Yesterday in the streets of Iran, protesters against the tyrannical, terrorist theocracy braved attacks from water cannon and machetes. They were speaking up for freedom and democracy at extraordinary personal risk.

Naturally, some Americans wanted to express support for the protesters, hoping to nurse freedom in Iran. This is consistent with American values, and it also would help our national security by removing a terrorist-sponsoring regime with nuclear ambitions.

Among those Americans on the side of freedom is Senator Brownback, who, with the bipartisan support of Senators Kyl, Schumer,Inouye and others,introduced the Iran Democracy Act. That bill stated clearly,There is currently not a democratic government in Iran. Instead, Iran is an ideological dictatorship presided over by an unelected Supreme Leader with limitless veto power, an unelected Expediency Council, and Council of Guardians capable of eviscerating any reforms,and a President elected only after the Council disqualified 234 other candidates for being too liberal, reformist, or secular. That is a crucial point, because the American deputy secretary of State, Richard Armitage, has been going around saying publicly and incorrectly that Iran is a democracy.

Which is great. Its nice to see politicians speak up for what is right. But thats not good enough for Sens. Biden and Lugar.

Unfortunately, the Iran Democracy Act ran into opposition from the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar, and the top Democrat on the committee, Joseph Biden. Mr. Brownback, desperate to show some signal of support to the brave Iranian forces of freedom, compromised, proposing a trimmed-down amendment to the State Department authorization bill. That proposed amendment said It is the policy of the United States that currently there is not a democratic government in Iran, the United States supports transparent, full democracy in Iran, and the United States supports the holding of an internationally monitored referendum in Iran by which the Iranian people can peacefully change the system of government in Iran.
Yet even that proposal was too much for Ayatollahs Lugar and Biden. In the end, what was added to the Senate bill neither clearly stated that Iran is undemocratic nor called for an internationally monitored referendum. It merely stated that the United States supports transparent, full democracy in Iran and the rights of the Iranian people to choose their own system of government, and that the United States condemns the human rights abuses of Iranians expressing political dissent inside Iran.

Senator Biden: This is why I am looking to move out of your state. You embarass me personally. Senator Tom Carper is also a Democrat, but I never hear about him doing things in the news that make me feel he is a dumbass. Grow a spine! Borrow or steal one if you need to. But learn to use it. Don’t get up on the national stage and be a politician in the worst sense of the word. Stand up for something that is right. Make it clear to those few who still honor integrity that you know the difference.
Things wrap up with this statement:

Still, Mr. Biden and Mr. Lugar might ponder what message they are sending to those protesters risking their lives for freedom in the streets of Iran. If all those protesters can expect from America is a watered down and desultory message of support, with no money behind it, it just increases the likelihood that the theocracy’s reign will be prolonged, and that one day soon, Americans, our allies, and Iran’s citizens will be facing off against a terrorist-led Iranian regime that no longer is seeking atomic weapons, but that has them.

This is my point. As the beacon in a dark world, the United States needs to broadcast the message of freedom. Not hide the light in case it offends someone. Sheesh

I got The Kid into trains, and now he has returned the favor with Pirates. After reading the stories below, I am wondering why pirates from the pre-victorian era are so fascinating. After all, piracy today does not enthrall - it repulses when one hears of Chinese, Malaysian and Filipina crew being machine gunned to death over a few cargo containers filled with car parts. But the stories of the Buccaneers, and especially Blackbeard, resonate in a way that nearly no other modern-day story or legend can.

Pirates lived in a very autocratic and brutal age. As Churhchill once noted, life at the time was nasty, brutish and short. Human life held little value unless you were one of the tiny minority born into wealth and priviledge and the concept of human rights was still being thought through by British and French philosophers. The freedoms that we so take for granted today didn’t exist except in embryonic forms. Even the freedom to choose one’s profession barely existed; one simply did what one’s father did. In Japan this had been codified into law, but was the custom of most of Europe at the time.

With pirates, however, you had men (and a few exceptional women like Grania) who defied the law and custom and chose their own destiny. Pirates also followed strict codes of conduct - stricter than many employed by armies at the time, directly elected their captains and shared the booty in a relatively fair and systematic fashion. Pirates were free spirits at a time where freedom barely existed, and I think that we find that Pirates and the legends that grew up around them satisfy are own yearnings for freedom.

Long live Blackbeard and the Pirate Kings of Yore!