"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."
…but I’ve lost the link to it. Oh, there is is (Thanks, Sweetheart):
Of course, it’s of only academic interest to me, as I have a Finder of Lost Objects “on staff”. Married her. It’s the Uterus Qualification. The one with the uterus is The Finder. You know the drill, “Honey, where did I put Xxxx?”
*heh*
One of the weaknesses of “indie” music is sometimes a lack of good editing or perhaps a too narrow creative view. Of course, that can also be a strength if the artist can look at their own work both with a passion that allows for some creative fire and a dispassion that can allow serious criticism. As an example I’d like to offer perhaps my fav from Heather Alexander, March of Cambreath. It has really stirring lyrics, a great driving beat and… a weak melody and a wee weakness in prosody, which Alexander almost overcomes with a very, very strong performance:
[audio:March_of_Cambreadth.mp3]By the last verse, she very nearly repairs the prosody problem by anticipating the beat with “How” in “How many of them can we make die,” but never quite makes it into a stronger line by placing the “how” directly on a pickup to “many”. And the melody itself is still very nearly boring, and would be absolutely boring without her strong performance of it (which is as I asserted above, very, very strong).
Still, as I said, it’s my fav of her work, and it is very good, even though I don’t view it as among her best musically. And it has a worthy place in the martial repertoire of modern soldier/warriors, IMO, especially since the boring melody probably wouldn’t get in the way at all, at all of any “hell runs” in PT. *heh*
I’ve said it before, but I’m giving into the temptation to reiterate what runs through my mind every time I hear or read the phrase, “It’s only semantics”.
Semantics is the single most important thing about language. Without it, spoken language becomes nothing but (tautology alert!) meaningless whistles and clicks and moans and grunts and written language becomes nothing but weird squiggles, signifying nothing.
Now there abide these three:
Phonemes (sounds and their and written phoneme analogs)
Syntax (structure) and
Semantics (MEANING), and the greatest of these is semantics.
“It’s only (or just) semantics” is an utterance by an idiot, full of sound (and whimpering), signifying nothing* (at least nothing useful, save for confirming that the one saying it has no argument or defensible position).
Insincere apologies to The Bard and all that…
* Aside: For something with much,much more sense than the “nothing (useful) conveyed by the idiotic “It’s just semantics” try this disquisition on Nothing. Not all that edifying, but it did keep me in stitches for days after I first read it. Imagine breaking out in laughter in the middle of a Greek class. The prof was understanding once I had explained and shared the article with him. Nice guy.
…of things I hate. Depending on the day, it might even rank ahead of politicians *gag-spew* and Mass MEdia Podpeople:
Grass lawns and the “care” thereof.
Think about it a second. On the one end of the spectrum we see maniacs who weed and feed and spray and water and “manicure” and roll and trim and vacuum and comb and all other kinds of weird and stupid shiite. And for what? A boring, monochrome green that would be OK on a billiard table but hardly belongs anywhere in nature.
On the other, more rational, end of “lawns” we might see a well-design rock “lawn” that can be “cared” for with a once-a-season herbicide or a lawn with some other no-mow ground cover that
I vote for the “more rational” approach. Something to control erosion that I’d not need to water or mow… not that I’ve ever watered a lawn in any home we’ve had. (If a lawn can’t survive on what God gives it, then it doesn’t deserve to live, IMO. *heh*)
And mowing! Was there ever such a useless task invented? Grow a (grass) lawn. Mow it once a week (or be shunned by neighbors *heh*). Figure out something to do with the *@^#$* clippings–grateful that at least mulching blades finally arrived for that–and do it all over again, for eternity! Talk about hellish torture… Tantalus was a piker.
No, I can see that a Thymus serpyllum (“Elfin mint”) lawn is in my future… Having a groundcover that naturally limits itself to 1″-2″ and is drought tolerant and edible seems far, far more rational than continuing to torture myself with mowing (though NOT weeding or feeding or watering!) a grass lawn (which I’m also allergic to… in more ways than one *heh*). Maybe the “Elfin” mint will be as aggressive as the regular mint I grow and choke out the grass on its own… Well, a guy can dream, can’t he?
From the WaPo a few years ago (a 2006 repeat of a 2005 report), based on the 2003 Adult Literacy Survey by the DoE:
Experts Stunned – Literacy of US College Grads Declining
“The declining impact of education on our adult population was the biggest surprise for us, and we just don’t have a good explanation,” said Mark S. Schneider, commissioner of education statistics. “It may be that institutions have not yet figured out how to teach a whole generation of students who learned to read on the computer and who watch more TV. It’s a different kind of literacy.”
“What’s disturbing is that the assessment is not designed to test your understanding of Proust, but to test your ability to read labels,” he added.
Yep, reading and understanding “labels” was about what the “proficient” level denoted. Sad. That’s “proficient”? Hardly.
*sigh*
Of course, this article from the Georgia State University student newspaper notes a couple of things most of the educrats (they’re all very naturally baffled, the idiots) who’ve commented on the situation have missed. First, more and more illiterate sluggards are getting into colleges, having graduated high school with the reading skills of gerbils. And then this:
“…perhaps the failure lies in the lack of support for library services in schools in the United states, where the first place for funding and staff cuts is the school library.”
Well, there is a wide and deep constellation of other contributing causes, but what the student writer noted here is a fact of pubschool life.
“News” of the “who cares what his latest ploy is” variety:
Weiner seeking treatment amid growing pressure to resign
While the New York congressman seeks treatment at an undisclosed location, he will take a “short leave of absence” from Congress, Risa Heller said in a statement.
A Democratic source, familiar with conversations among Weiner and Democratic leadership about his fate, did not know what specific type of treatment Weiner would undergo.
What “type of treatment”? Frankly, I’m thinking his treatment should follow a line from an old Cheech and Chong bit, “Bailiff! Whack his pee-pee!” *heh*
Yeh. Greenies invoke their sacred “precautionary principle” to kill economies, kill people (think Rachel Carson’s utterly dishonest scam to kill people via malaria, et al by getting DDT banned)–as long as they’re little brown people in far away places–and shut down energy production, attempting to send mankind back to the stone age. F’n idiots. F’n malicious, toxic, evil idiots.
So, let’s exercise some “precautionary principle” all over some greenie a**:
Dead bodies demand organic food moratorium
Right now, someone nearby is buying organic bean sprouts. It may be the last thing he ever does. Last week’s E. coli outbreak in Germany – potentially traced to an organic farm – was more deadly than the largest nuclear disaster of the last quarter-century.
Indeed, in the past two years, two public safety stories have dominated global news headlines – an explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and a nuclear power plant meltdown in Japan. Yet in the recent German organic-food-disease outbreak, nearly twice as many people already have died as in the two other industrial disasters combined.
And that’s why I eat only food treated by poisons and irradiation to kill bugs and bacteria. It’s safer and thus better for me.
“Organic”* farming is now proven to be more dangerous than a nuclear disaster caused by the most powerful earthquake in recorded history followed by a massive tsunami… Therefore, following the “precautionary principle” so beloved to greenie weenies, “organic”* farming should be banned.
*”Organic” used as a neologism (ca. 1940s?) to denote foods grown without the use of “artificial” fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides is an especially stupid term. “Organic” compounds are hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons are organic. Take any hydrocarbon molecular chain: it’s organic. Period. Most man-made pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers are… organic, except in the illiterate use of the word promoted by J.I. Rodale and his groupies. BTW, Rodale was born a few years later than my grandparents, all of whom ate normally-produced food, not Rodale’s “organic” crap, all their lives… and passed away, after long, productive and mostly healthy lives, a decade or more later than the Prevention “organic” health guru Rodale.
*feh*
I’m darned near positive it was all the chemicals in their food that prolonged their lives. Heck, their bodies probably didn’t even need embalming. 🙂
The Joplin tornado event took down our ISP for a couple of days. Seriously. Only a couple of days. A tornado plowed right through the infrastructure it uses (cable) and took out tons and tons of essential infrastructure, and it was back online in a couple of days’ time.
Not bad.
So when I post the access speeds below, I’m NOT complaining. Heck, they still beat the heck out of DSL “speeds” from our local baling wire and tin cup telco–and at lower cost–so I have nothing to complain about, but I still can hardly wait for stutterless video feeds, etc…
OK, I am going to bitch a bit about these “speeds”:
*sigh* Gag me.
The critical issue before the republic today is:
If a citizen “lies” (or simply says something contra to government’s agenda), they’re due some prison time à la Martha Stewart who was sent to prison for “lying” (NOT under oath) to “feddle gummint” goons by denying she’d done something they couldn’t prosecute her for (because she’d not done it and what she “lied” about wasn’t a crime anyway).
But when one of the truly privileged class repeatedly lies to American citizens–even to making blatantly false accusations against others–the consequence certainly doesn’t include prison time. Witness Anthony Weiner. He did, definitely lie, and repeatedly. He slandered others with some of his lies and the lies he had his minions (the ruling elite has minions, of course) promulgate. Consequences? Even if he is eventually forced to resign, it’s still not prison.
Congresscritters are different from you and me. They have no consciences and experience far fewer, and far milder, consequences for their actions.
…sucking the life from the economy one government job at a time.
The stimulus bill saved government jobs, but KILLED private-sector jobs