"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
I had a guy call me this afternoon with a problem installing a printer on an Ubuntu box. Somewhere in the midst of it all he asked me what I would be doing for the Super Bowl.
Him don’t know me vewy well, do he? *heh*
I asked him when it was going to be. He said 5:30. I then asked what day. He said today.
*heh* Who’d-a think it?
Super Bowl? I DGARA.
If I wanted to watch football, I’d look for one of these games:
I know of a few people–dhimmicrappic leftards, one and all*–who have lost very nearly amazing amounts of weight using the “HCG diet” that uses a combo of Human Chorionic Gonadotropin hormone, a hormone naturally produced by human embryos, and severe calorie restriction (500-800 calories/day) to achieve weight loss. You noticed, of course, that I italicized “weight” in that statement. That’s simply because the amounts of muscle mass lost in this diet is excessive. If one is too fat, then fat loss is a good thing. Muscle mass loss is not, for more than a few reasons. Here, let me just quote a Mayo clinic page on the topic:
“…HCG is used mainly to treat fertility issues. HCG is not approved for over-the-counter use, nor has it been proved to work for weight loss. Companies that sell over-the-counter HCG weight-loss products are breaking the law.
“So why has there been so much talk about the HCG diet? Perhaps it’s because the diet recommends severe calorie restriction — typically just 500 to 800 calories a day. People who follow such a very low calorie diet are likely to lose weight, at least in the short term. However, that level of calorie restriction has risks, such as gallstone formation, irregular heartbeat, and an imbalance of the electrolytes that keep the body’s muscles and nerves functioning properly.”
BTW, I have seen the page I just quoted from excerpted and used in support of the HCG diet. Of course, those who do so are liars, deliberately misrepresenting what was said there in order to promote this dangerous fad diet. So far, every case I’ve seen of such misrepresentation has strangely (NOT!) failed to link the actual page… I have no doubt that the reason is simply to obscure the fact that they are twisting the material they carefully excerpt.
Of course, the target audience of such lying screeds is likely too lazy and stupid to follow a link to the “rest of the story” even if it were provided… and likely too lazy and stupid to understand what’s there, anyway.
Oh, and that “*” earlier? Here it is: I know I run the danger of committing an argumentum ad hominem fallacy by making the association: dhimmicrappic leftards—>dangerous, irrationalbehavior. I’m not actually making that argument by noting that only persons I know who are stupidly abusing their bodies with this dangerous fad diet are the dhimmicrappic leftards mentioned above. The stupid dhimmicrappic leftards I know who are committing this self-abuse are simply data points in a broader correlation I see between dhimmicrappic leftards and many other cases of unthinking (or simply stupid) abuse of self and others. In every case, the unthinking (or simply stupid) abuse of self and others involves blind acceptance of “authoritative” misstatements of fact (or outright lies) and a complete lack of forethought combined with a stupid embrace of “quick fix” solutions to difficult issues.
Just sayin’ It seems, from my observations of the passing scene, to be much more common–though not exclusive to–the left than the right.
Sometimes, I run across a bit of descriptive narrative that is so tasty that I am compelled–compelled, I say! *heh*–to savor the thing again and again, eating the self-renewing tidbit up in tiny bites, over and over. This is the meat of one such tasty tidbit:
He’d never been in this room before; this was where they took people who had done things that were just short of murder or robbery, a darkly somber room that left no doubt in the prisoner’s mind that he had trespassed on at least five of the Ten Commandments.
…just short of murder or robbery, of course. *heh* But that still leaves eight commandments…
That’s just too good. Economical, evocative, expanding the scene on multiple levels. Fun.
Update: ‘nother one; this one is from a John Lambshead short story, As Black As Hell:
Chaos theory insists that a single flap of a butterfly’s wing in China can change the direction of a hurricane in the West Indies, sparing one island to devastate another. This may or may not be true. Certainly Chinese butterflies continue to irresponsibly flap, giving absolutely no thought to the welfare of their relatives in the Americas.
…sort of. Oh, they’re still collecting their blood money, but the “feddle gummint” thugs have their paperwork in hand for 2011, now, at least. May they choke on it.
Just sayin’.
Full Curmudgeon Mode, I suppose… *sigh*
Something I’ve noticed more and more recently–and even worse, found myself unconsciously influenced by!–is a growing occurrence of sentence fragments used in the place of complete sentences. It doesn’t seem to matter what the genre is, either. I’ve seen it (of course *arrgghh!*) in the simperings, whinings and blatherings of the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind, in academic writing and in fiction. The use of sentence fragments that are nothing more than prepositional phrases in place of complete sentences is especially pernicious.
I suppose some may be excusable in casual writing as some sort of contemporary method of adding emphasis to a preceding sentence. Maybe. But it’s seeming to become pervasive, invasive and influential as it corrupts clear, concise writing.
It’s irritating, especially when coming from the pens of otherwise capable, competent, effective writers. Are they simply trying to write for the ADD/ADHD crowd, those whose attention spans can’t grasp the use of commas, conjunctions, semi-colons and other means of joining independent clauses, and who even stumble over the simple addition of a prepositional phrase modifying or expanding upon an independent clause?
Thankfully, my writing style does drive off those whose grasp of English falls within the parameters of “Me, Tarzan. You, Jane” or “See Dick. See Jane. See Dick run. See Jane run.” I really don’t want or need anyone reading my screeds who’s too lazy, inattentive or stupid to understand sentences longer than three or four words…
Oh, well. It’s not as though I gave a rat’s patootie; it just chaps my gizzard a wee tad.
/rant off
From Forward the Mage by by Eric Flint, Richard Roach and Jim Baen: How to deal with enemies:
Whenever you can, stab ’em in the back.
Better yet, stab ’em in the back in the dead of night.
Best of all, stab ’em in the back in the dead of night while they’re asleep.
If you’ve got to stab ’em in the front, try a low blow.
If none of that works, then use all your skills as best you can, you stupid dummy.
Git ‘er done.
*heh*
Pretty much, here in America’s Third World County, yep: rural, all right. Purdue University has applied an “Index of Relative Rurality” to stats from American counties that illustrates the point pretty well.
A recently introduced, continuous, multidimensional measure of rurality, the Index of Relative Rurality (IRR), avoids the confusing effects of inclusion in metro boundaries. (2) It does not answer the question “Is a county rural or urban?” but instead addresses the question “What is a county’s degree of rurality?”
The IRR is based on four dimensions of rurality: population, population density, extent of urbanized area and distance to the nearest metro area. These dimensions are unquestioned in terms of their contribution to rurality and are incorporated implicitly in many existing rurality definitions. The index is scaled from 0 to 1, with 0 representing the most urban place and 1 representing the most rural place
(CLEEK to Embeegan, as TWC’s–relatively–vast alien invasion population might say *sigh*)
See that color code next to the bottom? That’s us. We’re not completely devoid of human habitation, and we do have access to–sort of–“urban” areas, but da “piney woods” is our “back yard” (and for many their front yard too), and there are parts of the county where YOU DO NOT GO even if you aren’t a terminally stupid “revenooer”.
A good place for a “bug out location”. Just sayin’.
Oh, you’ll notice I gave no further indication of which of those counties color-coded with the next-to-most-rural coding is America’s Third World County. Long time readers of this blog can pick it out right away, anyway.
I have an amazing lip-reading ability. For example, I do watch Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind “news” programs every now and then, but I mute the sound when I do. That way, when, say, The Zero is featured in a clip, I can amaze others present with my lip-reading ability. For example, in the clip the following graphic was extracted from…
“Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie.”
See? Amazing.
(BTW, I also have the ability to read minds. I know this because I got absolutely nothin’ from Biden.)
I used to use another product that’s almost as good to clean post n pans, coffee and hard water “stained” glasses and mugs, etc., but this stuff is less expensive and better:
While I mostly use it nowadays to shine up my “stainless” steel pots and pans, it has tons more uses. Gottaloveit. Just sayin’.
(Titled with insincere apologies to Twain.)
After perusing the text*, I think summing up all the lies The Zero’s phony “State of the Union” address (more like, “State of the Election” campaign speech?) would simply, for the most part, be a repeat of the text. Is there any substantive portion of the text that could stand as an example of an honest reflection of actual fact? No.
And this is what we have come to as a society: this bald-faced liar is viewed by 40% or more (in many polls, a majority!) of those polled as someone worthy of re-election. If such polls are to be believed, then America deserves to be placed on the ash heap of history.
Second thought… the text presented at the link is presented as, “Full text of President Obama’s State of the Union Address, as provided by the White House”–something that doesn’t necessarily inspire any confidence that it really is an actual transcript, and in fact almost assures that it is not, given the serial deceptions this administration is infamous for. But still, I have no desire to watch a video of it and be simultaneously bored to tears by the typical lackluster, lame, awful lack of oratorical skills The Zero genuinely possesses in place of the myth of his oratorical genius, AND infuriated by bald-faced lies issuing from his pie hole.
BTW, before anyone cites The Zero’s credit-hogging on the matter of the Bin Laden execution operation as a truthful statement, I’ll just flatly state that his claim of credit for Bin Laden’s death is so highly exaggerated as to make a lie of the thin facts it depends upon. And that, as any thinking person well knows, is how one constructs “competent” lies: out of a few facts comprising thinly applied lipstick on the pig the liar wants idiots to miss seeing.