Author: David

Over-educated Curmudgeon, Bit-Bucket Tuner and Budding Brewmeister.
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Gullibility: Bad; Skepticism: Good

First, the obvious denotative meanings:

gullible: easily duped or cheated

skeptical: relating to, characteristic of, or marked by skepticism: 1 : an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a particular object
2 a : the doctrine that true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is uncertain b : the method of suspended judgment, systematic doubt, or criticism characteristic of skeptics

I’d bet the post title led regular readers to think this post’d be about politics. Well, it could as easily have been, but no.

I am, on the one hand, amused by all the spam I still get that attempts to gull me into opening infected attachments. I filter my email two ways, so spam in my inbox is way down from the hundred per day I once received to just a few a day. But still, I get at least 3 or 4 emails a week with infected attachments that some spammer thinks he can fool me into opening. Such as,

Microsoft has released an update for Microsoft Outlook / Outlook Express. This update is critical and provides you with the latest version of the Microsoft Outlook / Outlook Express and offers the highest levels of stability and security.

Instructions

* Install Update for Microsoft Outlook / Outlook Express (KB910721). To do this, follow these steps:
1. Run attached file officexp-KB910721-FullFile-ENU.exe
2. Restart Microsoft Outlook / Outlook Express

Riiiight. As though Microsoft sent out critical updates as email attachments. Not. Any moron with more active brain cells than a head of cabbage would sneer at this attempt to gull users into self-infection. I didn’t even bother to rescan the thing, since it didn’t get flagged by resident AV on its way in (some don’t, you know). The “sender” was… me. That’s right, the email header was forged to make it appear that I sent the email that was supposedly from Microsoft to myself.

Silly spammer. As though such silly stunts would fool me. I do have more active brain cells than a head of cabbage. Just. *heh*

I don’t know how anyone who is able to press the “On” button on a computer could be stupid enough to fall for that, but surely after viewing the following information, even a head of cabbage would hesitate to open any attachment:

(Yeh, I smudged some of the info in this image expanded header.)

Of course, if I’d been either operating Thunderbird Portable in a sandbox or viewing my mail in a Mint or PCBSD VM at the time, I’d have played around with the attachment a bit. As it is, I didn’t even open it in a sandbox with a text editor. Why play with it when I know I’d just end up deleting it anyway?

So I did. Just delete it. With extreme prejudice.

(BTW, I regularly use an “eraser” utility to scrub any files quarantined by AV, as well as to scrub both free space on my drives and page files on boot. Just sayin’.)

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Twilight Zone Stuff

Today, I finally got my desk cleaned off. Well, almost. Four times today I’ve had my keyboard drawer cleaned off down to the keyboard and mouse.

Four times.

It’s not cleaned off now.

I swear–seriously!–my desk abhors a vacuum. Clean it off? “Stuff” creeps out from some space in some interstice between universes and plops itself on my desk. Really. Today, I found some pictures–just sitting out in the open on my desk–that I HAVE NOT SEEN FOR 12 YEARS. Pictures of me that I had been SURE I’d thrown out (because, like every picture I ever had taken for a yearbook–these as a teacher–they were ugly as sin, that is, looked exactly like me. *heh*). My Wonder Woman asked me to give her one of them, because she’d never seen them before (and has the typical perceptual problem of Good Women: she is unable to see just how ugly I am :-)).

Cue Rod Serling.

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“It Doesn’t Take a Rocket Surgeon”

Yeh, every time I hear or read a mangled expression like that (“It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon”) I know the speaker or writer perhaps has access to a lot of words, but the synapses connecting sound with meaning just aren’t there.

And that, my friends, is what I experience 99% of the time a politician opens his mouth: sound and fury, signifying nothing. Or worse, mangled beyond meaninglessness. But wait! There’s more! Over at Take Me to Your Lizard, I ran across this description of the Giant Step From Reality that is The 0!’s public speaking:

…all this seemed familiar to me, listening to him speak and watching how people reacted to his voice. It took a while but then I remembered why. Obama has the same ability as Saruman, the supposedly good wizard gone very, very bad in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy to lull the weak-minded with his voice. In the second book, The Two Towers, we find this description of Saruman’s voice on page 183:

…..Suddenly, another voice spoke, low and melodious, its very sound an enchantment. Those who listened unwarily to that voice could seldom report the words that they heard; and if they did, they wondered, for little power remained in them. Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves. When others spoke, they seemed harsh and uncouth by contrast; and if they gainsaid the voice, anger was kindled in the hearts of those under the spell. For some the spell only lasted while the voice spoke to them, and when it spoke to another they smiled, as men do who see through a juggler’s trick while others gape at it. For many the sound of the voice alone was enough to hold them enthralled; but for those whom it conquered the spell endured when they were far away, and ever they heard that soft voice whispering and urging them. But none were unmoved; none rejected its pleas and its commands without an effort of mind and will, so long as its master had control of it.

Of course, one must note that at least Saruman began as a good person. One cannot have that assurance about a Chicago politician. But at least now, perhaps I understand a tiny (miniscule, vanishingly small) bit of the comments from folks who rhapsodize about how wonderful a public speaker The 0! is. (But only a wee, teeneintsy tad, cos I’ve never been hypnotized by the man’s supposedly dulcet tones.) I have, since I first heard The 0! speak, thought he was a particularly poor public speaker, because nothing he says makes any sense, and he always seems so… disconnected from what thin content his speeches do contain.

But for some, apparently his voice or something about his presence entrances them, short-circuits what little minds they do possess and leaves them with the impression that something was said.

But for me, his halt, stumblebum delivery and his emotional emptiness coupled with the subliteracy of his teleprompter programmers and the lack of anything actually said has kept me scratching my head up until now. But now I get it, if as “through a glass darkly” (KJV language for “in a cloudy, messed up funhouse mirror” :-)). The complete disconnect between words and meaning and the multiple auto-lobotomies his listeners have subjected themselves to have obviously combined to effect a magic that is quite apart from the rational world of cause and effect. That “magic, entrancing voice” is all simply projection by a bunch of folks who’re NOT nearly as bright as “rocket surgeons” *heh* and so are projecting an illusion of greatness upon the foggy shadow that is The 0!

That’s as close as I can come to grasping why some can actually listen to the same speech I do and come away thinking what they do of the ToTUS’ pet parrot.

That is to say, I still don’t understand it at all, of course. Stupidity that immense is beyond the mind of man to grasp.

My thanks to Nicole, of Autumn People for pointing out the VodkaPundit article that led to the Saruman post.

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New Brew

I decided to try something a tad different in my search for a decent, low-cost hard apple cider recipe. Less than $10 for 3 gallons.

–9 “cans” of frozen apple juice (cos where am I going to get cider apples this time of year?) with water to make up only 7 of the cans, for a more “apple-y” flavor.
–3 cups plain ole cane sugar
–4 sticks cinnamon, broken up
–2 cloves
–1 packet of Red Star Premier Cuvee wine yeast (started ahead of time in about 1C of warm cider)

Bring almost to boil and let it simmer a while. Cool to about 105F. Transfer to fermenting bucket (with airlock). Toss the yeast.

I’ll let it go for about a week before I sample a bit. Then, may let it go a week or two longer, depending on how that goes. Transfer to a secondary fermentation bucket and let that sit a week or so, then bottle with a little starter. If this turns out half as well as the last batch, which had a lower apple-to-water ratio, I’ll be pleased.

Fermenting it in a (well-cleaned :-)) kitty litter plastic bucket, modified with a spout near the bottom edge and an air lock. Keeping the brew at about 75-80F.

Thinking of some of this as part of a wedding present, but only some.

“[D]rink… provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance… “–The Scottish Play, somewhere in Act II, I think.

🙂

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Snow

Well, America’s Third World County is just about exactly as white as snow… wherever the sand trucks haven’t been (which is everywhere except the one main highway).

Went out and about to see the crazies drive. They were out. And crazy. Went about 10 miles to get groceries (well, and beer; there is NO decent beer for sale in town–seriously–and I’m behind on brewing up more *sigh* Need to start some more, and some cider, this weekend). Saw 4 trucks from the highway department–3 plowing and one sanding–headed north as we were headed south. 30 minutes later, as we were headed back north, there was no real evidence they’d been by… and here they came on their southward trek on the same span of highway.

Cleaned cars off once today–about 4″. The 30 mins we were in buying groceries, another inch piled on. Back for a few hours. Another 4-5 inches on the car we drove out for groceries.

Add this to the earlier snow this month, and this is more snow than we’ve had in one January since we moved here 15 years ago. Must be global warming.

Oh. Well. At least my wonder Woman had the day off, as the back roads were impassable or unsafe for the buses. Meant she had more time to sleep in a bit and still have extra time to work on papers for a grad class. Good on her. I spent some time under the house beefing up some insulation around pipes. Never had a problem, but I had the wraps (and bought some more insulating foam-in-a-can while we were out), so I figured why not? Found a couple of cracks/seams I could foam and pack w/fiberglass. Little snugger is nice.

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Harvard “Educated”–Doesn’t Get the Irony

Jonah Goldberg nails the central SOU issue:

He decried the politicians who are in “permanent campaign” mode — the same week he brought into the White House his campaign manager.

Other politicians are vain, cowardly and insubstantial. They need the courage to change. Meanwhile, Obama is great the way he is.

It’s not hypocrisy, folks. It’s the sort of obdurate, terminal stupidity that only “intelligent” people can manage: a delusional blindness to the irony that is The 0! Either that, or he really doesn’t understand the words he parrots off the ToTUS…

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Schrödinger’s Cat And Public Policy

Schrödinger’s cat is a famous thought experiment summed up this way,

A cat is placed in a box, together with a radioactive atom. If the atom decays, and the geiger-counter detects an alpha particle, the hammer hits a flask of prussic acid (HCN), killing the cat. The paradox lies in the clever coupling of quantum and classical domains. Before the observer opens the box, the cat’s fate is tied to the wave function of the atom, which is itself in a superposition of decayed and undecayed states. Thus, said Schroedinger, the cat must itself be in a superposition of dead and alive states before the observer opens the box, “observes” the cat, and “collapses” it’s wave function.

Of course, the problem with thought experiments like this when used to analogize scientific issues is obvious. Let me pop the bubble around this one: how long is the cat in a “superposition of dead and alive states” while closed in this sealed box?

Just long enough for its air to run out so that it suffocates.

Geniuses just don’t seem to think these things out. Einstein discussed Schrödinger’s hypothetical cat with the guy for at least 15 years without ever noting this simple problem with the thought experiment, as far as I can tell. That’s just one of many reasons why I don’t trust the smart people in government to decide what’s best for me. They just don’t seem to look at (or care about) any of the options outside their own paradigm.

Besides, they might just be the kind of person who doesn’t like cats and will put ’em in boxes to suffocate to death.

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Der Führer Disses the iPad

As much as I hate to find myself in agreement with “Hitler” I simply cannot find room to disagree with this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQnT0zp8Ya4&feature=player_embedded

And the thing is, this video only scratches the surface of the stupid feature set. iPad: just the thing for thoughtless and dim-witted Apple junkies (there does exist a class of thoughful and intelligent Apple junkies *heh*) who like to waste money.

h.t. Planck’s Constant

Micro-mini-update, in an article at eWeek I found this lil gem,

Digital device expert Walt Mossberg called this “amazingly low-priced for an Apple product.”

*heh* And I’d bet dollars to donuts Apple addicts would think that’s praise, while the rest of the world would recognize the qualifier (“for an Apple product”) as acknowledgement that Apple products are generally over-priced.