Author: David

Over-educated Curmudgeon, Bit-Bucket Tuner and Budding Brewmeister.
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NOT a Solution

Was watching an episode (number 1 of only 2) of the short-lived and now history Paul Reiser Show when a commercial for audible.com provided welcome relief. Unfortunately, the relief was very short-lived too. *sigh* The commercial touted audible.com as a way to catch up on one’s reading.

Roll that around in your head for a bit. Some bubbleheaded blonde sitting at her ease on a patio supposedly listening to a recorded “book” as a model for catching up on one’s reading!

If you are behind on your reading, the solution is to pick up a book on your reading list (you do have a reading list, don’t you? Hmmm?) and READ it.

*sheesh*

Note: while listening to someone else read a book pretty much bores me to tears, I can see its value for some folks, but representing that sort of thing as “catching up on one’s reading” is just stupid. For one thing, even assuming a rather slow rate of reading speed, how many people can listen at 500-700 words per minute? Heck, it would seem to me that listening to someone else read a book would result in falling behind on one’s total consumption of books in whatever form, quite apart from the fact that listening ain’t reading!

BTW, after about 10 minutes, I couldn’t take any more of the Paul Reiser Show. NBC did the right thing to kill it early. Just not early enough, IMO. Killing it before airing would have suited it better.

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Slightly Weird…

So, my wife’s family are all from Norway–grandparents were LEGAL immigrants in early 20th Century. OK, nothing weird there. After all, they weren’t Swedish or anything. *heh*

But… Windows Update had an optional update suggested for this lil toy computer that I use sitting here beside her: the Norwegian Language Pack.

Kinda creeps me out. How does M$ know these things?

*heh*

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I Just Hate This…

Nothing much, just another now less useful word, the product of subliterate morons (usually in the Hivemind and Academia–people with NO excuse for misusing words, since, after all, words are their trade) misusing it so often:

decimate

Look at the word. Really look. “Deci-” is a prefix we’re all familiar with (well, all the folks who read here, meaning at least literate enough to read their way out of a paper bag). From the Latin, “decimus,” which means (roughly) “a tenth part”. Yep, until subliterate morons began debasing the word, “decimate” meant to punish (by death) a tenth of a group of people. It came into being as a punishment for a century of Roman soldiers whenever any of their group deserted in battle: any ONE soldier fled the field (or tried to) and 1/10 of the soldiers of that century were selected by lot for execution.

Decimation was a terrible punishment and a strong pressure on the group to make sure ALL soldiers stuck to the line of battle.

“Decimate” as it has come to be used as a result of influence by dumbasses no longer has that useful meaning of a destruction of a tenth of a population but means only the destruction of some meaninglessly general and unknown number. “Decimated” as used by even more massively stupid people is sometimes used in the construction, “utterly decimated” to mean “completely destroyed”.

These “people” make me want to puke. Yes, I meant “people” as a sneer.

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Only a Cockeyed Optimist…

…would think that only half the human race was up to no good.

And only an idiot would think that less than 90% of Congress was up to anything BUT “no good”.

Just sayin’.

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Earth Day 2011

While I’m in favor of conservation and good natural resource management practices, “Earth Day” just gives me a rash. It’s nothing but an excuse for enviro nazis to celebrate their victories over civilization and pound more lies into the heads of dumbass, self-lobotomized sheeple.

Today, on Earth Day 2011, crank up the lights–and anything else electrical that you can. Burn some meat over some charcoal. Mow your lawn with a 2-cycle mower that spews hydrocarbons. Drive a lot. Turn up the AC. Get a big cigar and blow smoke, preferably in the face of some local greenie. AnNd at the end of the day, build a bonfire of green wood and smoke up the neighborhood.

F’n greenies.

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“Free speech? F*** that!”

(Post title is my reasonable translation of the response made by a whiny LGBT dumbass “professor” at the University of Iowa to a “Coming Out” email sent out by a Republican student group.)

WTF?

So a college student group sent out an approved (by the university) mass email to school email addresses advertising “Conservative Coming Out Week”. And what happened?

Ellen Lewin, a professor of Anthropology and Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies in the Department of Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies, responded to the email by writing, “F*** YOU, REPUBLICANS” from her official University of Iowa email account.

[audio: What-a-maroon.mp3]

That “professor” (of useless crap) really needs a spanking. I’d prefer a public flogging, but a spanking would probably drive her (further) insane, so that’d work for me.

Still, I could have wished for a better text than what was sent. After all, this was from someone(s) who graduated high school and gained *coug* admission to university schooling, sent to students and faculty who also ought to be presumed to be literate enough to read their way out of a paper bag, and yet…

From: UI College Republicans

Subject: [NonAcadStudorg] Conservative Coming Out Week

Conservatives in Iowa City it is now time to come out of the closet!

I know at times it feels like you are the only person that [should be “who” but I’ll count this one as a “gimme”–ed] disagrees with this liberal town, but you are not alone! We are asking all Republicans, Independents leaning right, or just anyone slightly frustrated with the current one party controlling every level of Johnson County, and some levels of Iowa and U.S. government to STAND UP!

Conservative Coming Out Week will be April 18th – April 22nd. Here is the schedule of events that will be going on throughout the week:

Monday: Whose [SIC] Conservative Anyway? Guess which athletes, movie stars, and performing artists are Republican. 11-1 on Kautz Plaza off of the T. Anne Cleary Walkway.

Tuesday: Red vs. Blue Blood Drive from 2 to 6pm at the Carnival Room in Burge. Competition between the Republicans and Democrats for a good cause!

-College Republican meeting that night at 8pm in 71 Schaeffer Hall with showing of “Journey’s with George” in honor of President George W. Bush.

Wednesday: Come pick up your Doctors’ Notice to miss class for “sick of being stress” [SIC], just like the Wisconsin public employees during the union protests from 11 to 1 on the Pentacrest.

Thursday: Red vs Blue games! Beat the UDems in kickball and flag football from 4-6 in Hubbard Park. Wear your respective political parties [SIC] color!

Stick around for a [SIC] Animal Rights BBQ at 6 p.m.

Friday: Wear RED Day! Come out of the closet and show your true colors!

Should be a great week! Lets [SIC] come out!

*sigh* The best I could give the author(s) of this email would be a “C”–a “B” for creativity and a solid “D-” for all the mistakes.

But at least the author(s) was(were) trying to play–though fairly (how weird! ;-))–by Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. *heh*

Complete rabbit trail (with no roast rabbit at the end): I regret having missed the PETA Roast Animal Rights BBQ. But I did burn some animal flesh in honor of the event, anyway.

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Passing Shot at Windoze

OK, I use Windows. I have to for various reasons. But I still have some ‘nix boxes–mostly VMs–because I really like some of the Linux and BSD distros that are out, and I just like FOSS period.

I also like Windows 7, for the most part. Definitely THE best desktop OS from Microsoft since Win2K Pro, IMO.

But.

Showed Son&Heir just ONE of the advantages of a modern ‘nix OS. I had done some work on a Toshiba A205 that required putting a new OS on it (long story), so I installed Linux Mint 10–based on Ubuntu 10.04 but much slicker and with all the multimedia codecs necessary for an ordinary Windows user to be able to make the switch easily. So, booted the thing. About 30 seconds. Shut it down. About 6 seconds. Yep. To fully off.

Heck, it takes one of my Win7 boxes 45 seconds to resume from sleep mode! And shutting it off? Longer.

Advantage: Linux Mint.

BTW, while it’s a really cool distro to use in converting an average Windows user over to a ‘nix OS, PC-BSD 8.2 is just too cool for school.