Author: David

Yep: dual-purpose post. While my “mouse finger” is wearing its “red badge of courage” (also known as my “bulky bandage of klutzhood” :-))–and no, it wasn’t wounded when I was punched in the nose (haven’t been)–dual purpose posts (with lots of cut n paste) will likely be the order of the day.

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Linkfest/OTP. Hopefully you know what to do. More below the post body.

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Is it any news to anyone on the face of the planet that Algore is not only a liar and a hypocrite but a particularly arrogant liar and hypocrite? The recent revelations of Algore’s profligate energy use are not news, but an email making the rounds (h.t. Lovely Daughter.) rubs that puppy’s nose in his mess of lies so well that it’s too good to pass up. (Yes, I know rubbing a puppy’s nose in its mess doesn’t really teach them not to make such messes, but Algore’s already a carcophage, as evidinced by the fact that he’s been eating his own B.S. so long he actually seems to believe it, now.)

Leaving the pretty picture of Algore as a carcophagic dog* behind us (if he’d only let us do so permanently!) on to the classic email making the rounds:

LOOK OVER THE DESCRIPTIONS OF THE FOLLOWING TWO HOUSES AND SEE IF YOU CAN TELL WHICH BELONGS TO AN ENVIRONMENTALIST.

HOUSE # 1:

A 20-room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house all heated by gas. In ONE MONTH ALONE this mansion consumes more energy than the average American household in an ENTIRE YEAR. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2,400.00 per month. In natural gas alone (which last time we checked was a fossil fuel), this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not in a northern or Midwestern “snow belt,” either. It’s in the South.

HOUSE # 2:

Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university, This house incorporates every “green” feature current home construction can provide. The house contains only 4,000 square feet (4 bedrooms) and is nestled on arid high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in winter and cools it in summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas, and it consumes 25% of the electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Flwers and shrubs native to the area blend the property into the surrounding rural landscape.

So the answer is:

HOUSE # 1 (20 room energy guzzling mansion) is outside of Nashville,Tennessee. It is the abode of that renowned environmentalist (and filmmaker) Al Gore.

HOUSE # 2 (model eco-friendly house) is on a ranch near Crawford, Texas. Also known as “the Texas White House,” it is the private residence of the President of the United States, George W. Bush.

So whose house is gentler on the environment? Yet another story you WON’T hear on CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC or read about in the New York Times or the Washington Post. Indeed, for Mr. Gore, it’s truly “an inconvenient truth.”

Poor puppy.

*Update: Note Perri Nelson’s comment. Yeh, I’m forced to admit to an outdated vocabulary (heck! I still think “gay” refers to someone who’s “happy, carefree”). Nowadays, most would use “coprophagic” as it’s the current, more “popular” term/usage of choice. *heh*

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Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Is It Just Me?, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Perri Nelson’s Website, Big Dog’s Weblog, Shadowscope, DragonLady’s World, Cao’s Blog, Leaning Straight Up, Hollywood Gossip, Pursuing Holiness, Faultline USA, Stageleft, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, stikNstein… has no mercy, Walls of the City, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, Dumb Ox Daily News, and High Desert Wanderer, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

A springtime day; a windy hill:
A man had come to die.
Torture done, the crowd grew still:
He breathed out one last sigh.

Prince of life; Creator-Son–
Died on Calv’ry’s tree:
Lord of all creation,
Crucified for me!

Then all the shadowed sway of earth
Groaned aloud in pain–
That God, who came in humble birth,
Had died for mankind’s gain.

Prince of life; Creator-Son–
Died on Calv’ry’s tree:
Lord of all creation,
Crucified for me!

But as the heav’ns in darkness raged
And oceans foamed and roared,
Christ, the Son, would not be caged,
So, from death’s prison soared.

Prince of Life; Creator-Son:
Victorious, the battle’s won.

Continue reading “Cruci-fix”

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7:48 P.M. on April 5th, juuuust a bare smidgin’ North of the Mason Dixon LIne.

Snow. BIG flakes, coming down pretty darned fast.

Global warming, dontcha know…

Pegged to the BB at The Trouble With Angels’ Wednesday Weekly Trackback Alliance Fest and Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, Perri Nelson’s Website, The Random Yak, A Blog For All, basil’s blog, Stuck On Stupid, Conservative Cat, Pursuing Holiness, Pet’s Garden Blog, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, sissunchi, Faultline USA, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, stikNstein… has no mercy, The World According to Carl, Pirate’s Cove, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, Dumb Ox Daily News, High Desert Wanderer, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Continue reading “Global Warming, of course…”

The Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind has only one deadly enemy: the skeptic. Check out John Stossel’s latest. A sample:

What do you think is more dangerous, a house with a pool or a house with a gun? When, for “20/20,” I asked some kids, all said the house with the gun is more dangerous. I’m sure their parents would agree. Yet a child is 100 times more likely to die in a swimming pool than in a gun accident.

Parents don’t know that partly because the media hate guns and gun accidents make bigger headlines. Ask yourself which incident would be more likely to be covered on TV.

Growing up, the first child I knew that died managed that feat (no feat, really, cos we’ll all do it sometime) in about 3″ of water… No gun in sight. Yeh, yeh, I know: no statistical relevance.

Made me careful (and encouraged me to become competent in) around water, though.

I blame life and all that… this week is eaten by locusts. *sigh*

Call this a “meta thirteen,” 13 13s, or “The First 13 twc Thirteens in Review”:

1.) T-13, 1.1

2.) T-13, 1.2

3.) T-13, 1.3

4.) T-13, 1.4

5.) T-13 1.5 “To-Do List”

6.) T-13, 1.6: Thirteen Things I Hate About John Kerry Politicians

7.) T-13, 1.7–13 Reasons Why the Republican’ts Got Dopeslapped

8.) T-13, 1.8: 13 “To-dos” while WW is at a conference (yeh, I’m still whittling away at this list… :-))

9.) T 13, 1.9: 13 things that make me glad to be growing older

10.) T 13 1.10–Thirteen Things About Cats

11.) Thursday 13 1.11: 13 Things I Love About Christmas

12.) Thursday Thirteen, 1.12: 13 Christmas Carols (one link’s broken–no time to fix right now… )

13.) T-13, 1.13: Revolutions (Making surprising progress on this list)

Posted to the BB at the Thursday Thirteen Hub

More about today’s linkfest below.

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Yesterday, I had occassion to drop by my Wonder Woman’s library. She was at a meeting, so I twiddled my thumbs at her desk for a while, noodling around doing random searches of the card catalog. [Telescoping the story… ] I ended up quickly reading a Louis L’Amour book–something I’d not done in many, many years. It reminded me why I read all his books, despite the fact that the plots are predictabe to the point of being hackneyed, all his characters are complete sterotypes, dialog is frequently didactic to the point of being “preachifying” on traditional American virtues, etc. So why did I read darned near everything the guy wrote, lo those many years ago?

The guy could write descriptive narrative. I’ve been many of the places he describes, and some of them I recognized on my first visit from descriptions in his books, others I knew well I knew better after reading his descriptions. That’s something.

But more than that–and the reason one of the most learned men I know once told me he read L’Amour and considered him his favorite “theologian” *heh*–the “preachifying” on traditional American virtues are a welcome anodyne to the pain of viewing the steady erosion of those virtues in contemoprary culture.

So, I may dig out those old paperbacks and skim ’em for some of that preachifying didactic dialog from time to time whenever I begin to be nauseated by contemporary culture. Because some “light reading” just shines more light than some more “substantive’ reading.

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(Every thime I read/hear “Do you want to take a survey?” I think of the Animainiacs. Great cartoons.)

Nah, this isn’t a survey about anything important or even significant. Heck, it’s not even a survey about anything all that interesting to most of my readers, for that matter, so if you have no real interest in compgeeky stuff, just toddle right along to another post, ‘K?

How Long Did It Take to Install Your Home Network?

My answer (because it was the shortest time allowed) was “Less than an Hour”–though of course I didn’t include my first peer-to-peer network between two computers using just a crossover cable (the time for that was essentially just the time it took to plug the cable into both computers and tell ’em they were on the same workgroup. What? 5 mins max?).

My first home network using some sort of switch/hub and two separate segments of cable between two computers in different rooms took about 20 minutes, because I had to run cabling in the attic, down walls, etc.

Real hard. *yawn*

Other computers added on usually take about the same amount of time, unless using wireless access. Running the cable’s the time sink. Well, that and building the cables from a bulk roll.

Nowadays, using a wireless router and wireless cards, one could easily set up a buncha computers on a home network in 15-20 minutes, assuming familiarity with the hardware and different operating systems (if using different OSes). Heck, just assuming the ability to read directions. What really flabbergasted me was the percentage of folks who answered that it took more than an hour: 43%. Heck, 18% (part of the 43%–25% took between 1 hour and 1 day) took longer than a day to get their home network up and running. If it takes that long, someone ought to think to have a literate person read a manual and explain the process using small words, spoken s l o w l y. *heh*

And then there are the folks not dealt with in the survey who are like my (bad) neighbors. They set up their wireless network wrong. But I’m not telling them that their unsecured network leaves them wide open. Nuh-uh. *heh*

Charles Brumbelow, in an email published in Jerry Pournelle’s Chaos Maor Mail points to an Opinion Journal (WSJ) snippet listed under, “The Religion That Dare Not Speak Its Name,” that touches on a subject that’s too difficult for “nuanced” thinkers to resolve easily, but which seems pretty darned simple to me:

There is a genuine problem here of choosing language that distinguishes between Muslim terrorists and plain old Muslims. But circumlocutions designed to avoid acknowledging the former’s Islamic nature cannot possibly help clarify matters.

Let me help “clarify matters” a bit.

“Plain old Muslims” claim the Koran (choose your own trendy spelling) is their literal guide to a holy life.

Islamic terrorists claim the Koran (choose your own trendy spelling) is their literal guide to a holy life.

“Plain old Muslims” revere Mohammed and view his life and teachings (of which the Koran, Hadith, etc,) as worthy of emulation in all of life.

Islamic terrorists revere Mohammed and view his life and teachings (of which the Koran, Hadith, etc,) as worthy of emulation in all of life.

Now, THE distinction: Islamic terrorists honestly, forthrightly and openly seek to actually emulate the bloody Butcher of Medina, while “Plain old Muslims” are either just not all that serious about actually following Mohammed or are living lives of lies, decieving the Dar al Harb.

There. Now you know the single most significant differential between “Plain old Muslims” and Islamic terrorists.

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The best April First pranks…

Inigo Montoya: Let me ‘splain.
[pause]
Inigo Montoya: No, there is too much. Let me sum up…

OK, just one: Google TiSP, a plan by Google to offer wireless internet service to homes through local sewage systems and home plumbing… Bringing together the best of Google with the best of many internet users.

In the typical Google datamining style that has caused privacy concerns in the past, Google said of the free/low cost service,

To offset the cost of providing the TiSP service, we use information gathered by discreet DNA sequencing of your personal bodily output to display online ads that are contextually relevant to your culinary preferences, current health status and likelihood of developing particular medical conditions going forward

Of course, this was April 1, wasn’t it? It’s not as though this were a newsflash from Congress where one expects this kind of nonsense to be seriously proposed…

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