Author: David

A mini-sorta-roundup of disparate but related bits n pieces from ’round n about…

John Leo beats the obvious about the head and shoulders: The Left promotes assertions that turn out to be false. Oh, and the comments are not to be missed, for example, this snippet from one commenter:

One is tempted to rant about the poor quality of public education in this country, or the cognitive effects of a childhood watching television, or some such. I think our public schools do a rather poor job, and I’m appalled by most television, but I doubt they’re the explanation. [I demur–they are part of the situation–ed.]…

…The voter isn’t being dumb about current events because he is dumb; he’s being dumb about current events because, as one out of 100 million voters, he has made a quite rational (if unconscious) decision that it just isn’t worth making the considerable effort required to be smarter about current events. His vote make so little difference that it doesn’t seem like it’s worth making the effort to use more wisely.

I’m tempted to suggest that this is an argument for federalism. Perhaps voters will take more time to be informed if the important decisions are made closer to home, where an individual voter has more influence… [and where the consequences are much more immediate–ed]

That matches well with my take on a central curative for public education: remove the remote management by educrats and politicians from the picture and see what happens when people are perforce compelled to really manage their own schools.

And more faux liberal betrayal of truth (a VDH gem among other related thoughts) is noted in Alexandra’s own lil differently-themed omnibus post today.

And strangely central to the theme of this post (though it’s perhaps not immediately obvious how it is), Doug Wilson’s “God-centered Worship?” (Hint: we all tend to avoid looking the truth squarely in the eye at times. It’s the human consdition, ya know.) And, Alexandra again, “Does Society Set The Standard For God’s Law” As is often the case, much of the meat is in comments there.

Don Surber (sorry ’bout the earlier typo, Don) notes what happens when The Emperor’s New Clothes becomes public policy.

*sigh*

And from my recommendation for Book of the Month, The Graves of Academe, by Richard Mitchell comes this gem:

The intellectual climate of the public schools, which must inevitably become the intellectual climate of the nation, does not seem to be conducive to the spread of what Jefferson called informed discretion. The intellectual climate of the nation today came from the public schools, where almost every one of us was schooled in the work of the mind. We are a people who imagine that we are weighing important issues when we exchange generalizations and well-known opinions. We decide how to vote or what to buy according to whim or fancied self-interest, either of which is easily engendered in us by the manipulation of language, which we have neither the will nor the ability to analyze. We believe that we can reach conclusions without having the faintest idea of the difference between inferences and statements of fact, often without any suspicions that there are such things and that they are different. We are easily persuaded and repersuaded by what seems authoritative, without any notion of those attributes and abilities that characterize authority. We do not notice elementary fallacies in logic; it doesn’t even occur to us to look for them; few of us are even aware that such things exist. We make no regular distinctions between those kinds of things that can be known and objectively verified and those that can only be believed or not. Nor are we likely to examine, when we believe or not, the induced predispositions that may make us do the one or the other. We are easy prey.

Easy prey? Sheeple to the slaughter.

Oh, the underlying theme of this post? Check the links above then… Continue reading ““Fire up the omnibus, Ma. We’re headed fer the hills!””

Here’s an interesting lil tool for bloggers: Flock Browser. I’m using it to write this post, even though I haven’t really explored the functionality much, yet (inserting pics, media files and fine-tuning html, etc.—haven’t a clue about doing thaose things via Flock, yet).

It seems to be a reasonably responsive browser, reasonably good 9so far) at page rendering, etc. Don’t know yet if it has all the functionality Opera has taught me to expect from a browser. But I do like this lil WYSIWYG popup blog editor.

Ah, just looked at the bottom of this window (duh!). “Editor” is this WYSIWYG view and “Source” gives me html fine-tuning views I like. Very nice. Now, if I could only use my sooper-dooper editing plugins… There’s no real blockquote function in the lil toolbar, but it has an indent function that gives a similar effect (and i can always add the blockquote tag in the Source view, it looks like).

None of the category or timestamp or trackback functions show (yet–maybe after some fine-tuning in Options). Ahh, categories show up when I hit the Publish button.

Maybe good enough for a quick post.

Apart from the blogging utility, it pretty much looks like recent Firefox iterations, and indeed, it installs Firefox extensions (with the typical install facility, behavior and possible browser breakage of Firefox extension installs *heh*).

So, just a Firefox wrap/enhancement like so many Internet Exploder-based browsers? Looks like. Still interesting, if only for the integrated blogging utility…

Mending Walls: Faith

The word “faith” is bruited about quite a bit in common talk, in the public arena, in churches, schools and the media. Every venue has a different take on what faith is, how it operates, its value to society, etc.

And mostly, even in Christian churches, the meaning ascribed to the word today, and its ascribed value to society by various groups, is so far off base that I wonder whether “mending” this wall is worth the effort. Perhaps building an entirely new wall and calling it “pfeffernoogle” would be better.

*sigh*

Let me back off a bit with a set of current denotative definitions that describe the word as it is in use today, ‘K?

• Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
• Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence. See Synonyms at belief. See Synonyms at trust.
• Loyalty to a person or thing; allegiance: keeping faith with one’s supporters.
  often Faith Christianity. The theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God’s will.
• The body of dogma of a religion: the Muslim faith.
• A set of principles or beliefs.

I’ll not fisk those definitions directly for the evidence of pejoration amounting to almost complete loss of the meaning of the word itself. Instead, in this “Mending Walls: Faith, Part 1” post (yes, there is a part 2), I want to very simply and briefly look at the formation and use of the word “faith” and its antecedents (and the words it is used to translate, in a couple of important cases) as drawn from the Graeco-Roman and Judeo-Christian roots that largely formed the basis of Western Civilization… and provided us with a concept of faith that the modern world has lost.

Part 2 will deal with what our loss of the concept means to our society today… and perhaps what it means concerning our destination as a society.

So, if you’re still with me, for the rest of part 1 CLICK Continue reading “Mending Walls: Faith, Part 1”

For those of y’all who are scifi readers (no, the real stuff), this in from a correspondent to Jerry Pournelle’s Chaos Manor Musings

…from Steven Barnes’s blog…

Thursday, June 15, 2006 Bad News- Supereditor Jim Baen in hospital

I just heard that Jim Baen, one of the most influential editors in the science fiction field, had a stroke, and has been in a coma for the last twelve hours. No more information at this time, but those of us who consider ourselves friends, or have admired the vast contribution he has made to the field, well…if you believe in prayer, this would be a good time.

While i do not know Jim Baen—have not even corresponded with him— I have benefitted from his editorial and publishing work. He has been a leader in opening scifi publishing up to new voices, and I very much appreciate that. He appears to be one of the good guys.

Yeh, I’ll be praying for him. It may be selfish of me to do so, but I will be anyway.

UPDATE: another alternative view. CLICK HERE, put your browser i full screen mode and THEN clik “Load”. Yeh, it’s a bit jerkier and more apparently pixelated, but it’s still cool.

N.B.—if for some reason the video below doesn’t load, try this link to a posting of it at my old twc site.

I don’t care if this doesn’t perfectly fit in my center column. Can’t stop the grins, all the way through this!

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(Of course, I do have to wonder what the cryptic word “KANKE” at the end of the vodeo means… “Kanke is a place in Ranchi , Jharkhand , India ; and is the location of one of the largest mental asylums in the country.” *LOL* :-))

h.t. Jerry Pournelle’s Chaos Manor Musings

Update: A couple of folks have mentioned/asked about the music. Try “Era: the Mass”–The Champions

The Mass

I’d like to, but I can’t. As if this were a real surprise to anyone.

*sigh*

Genuine Advantage is Microsoft spyware

By Brian Livingston

Windows Genuine Advantage — the controversial program Microsoft auto-installed as a “critical security update” on many PCs starting on Apr. 25 — not only causes problems for many users but has now been proven to send personally identifiable information back to Redmond every 24 hours.

For years I have found Brian Livingston to be reliable. Sure, he’s a Microsoft Windows cheerleader, but his information is always good. When he details specifically, step-by-step why, in spite of Microsoft’s denials, it is accurate to call Microsoft genuine Advantage software spyware, he’s well worth listening to. More at the link.

My Wonder Woman’s taking a coupla classes that are ostensibly to enable her to use “technology” (Heads up! Buzzword!) to be a better librarian. One, in “ed-tech: curriculum development,” has a rather confusingly-worded assignment that seems to boil down to selecting goals for a n ed tech curriculum (supposedly for student achievement in the school) and assigning those goals to one of four categories, or “domains”

Intellectual
Verbal
P-sycho-motor
Attitudinal

I have no idea why she didn’t want to use my suggestions…

“For the lil darlings who like to feed library books to the pooch, use them as frisbees and otherwise destroy elements of the catelog, rebind and repair all the materials thus destroyed.” (P-sycho-motor AND Attitudinal–two “domains” with one stoned goal!)

And another Intellectual/P-sycho-motor: “Using the tuba, piccolo and dilithium crystals provided, build a functioning transporter system to transport me outa this assignment.”

They seem perfectly valid to me. One deals with “old tech” and the other with “bleeding edge” tech.

Still trying to come up with a Verbal domain goal for the kids who just hafta give the librarian lip… Yeh, it’d be Verbal/Attitudinal… and by the time I finished with ’em P-sycho-motor and Intellectual as well.

*heh*

Checking out the warp drive card catelogs over at Is It just Me? and TMH’s Bacon Bits.

UPDATE: Making this my “Open All Weekend Long” Open Trackbacks Post. Link to this post and track back. See below the post body for more.

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Blogfathers Day is Sunday.

Have you got your Blogfather a (virtual) case of beer or some (virtual) porterhosue steaks or some such, yet?

Better get crackin’, cos ya don’t have a lotta time left, ya know…

🙂

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As I said, this is an open trackback post open all weekend long. Link to this post and then track back. If you want to host your own linkfests, check out

Also note the other fine blogs featuring linkfests at Linkfest Haven.

Crossposted from Stop The ACLU

Via Miami Herald

The recently passed Florida law that essentially bans state academic travel to Cuba promised to escalate into a constitutional battle when Gov. Jeb Bush signed it into law last month.

…….snip…

The American Civil Liberties Union, representing several professors from state universities, filed a lawsuit against Florida officials in federal court, claiming the travel ban is unconstitutional. The group also demands a temporary injunction to prevent the law from taking effect while the case is in court.

”This act is terribly misdirected,” Randall Marshall, legal director of the ACLU of Florida, said of the new law. “This is unconstitutional, and we hope to have this law struck down very shortly.”

The Florida Masochist has the right question:

Tell me Mr. Marshall where it says in the constitution that taxpayer money must be used to support travel? Anywhere in the world? I’ll await your reply but I doubt I’ll get one.

Continue reading “Stop the ACLU”

Oh, yeh, everybody’s got a take on this. Some of it quite pointed and clearly in the X-ring (WTG, Angel :-)). I didn’t want to comment until I’d actually heard/seen a recording that was of decent enough quality to actually make out the words.

I finally did, here.

Update: see tjhe lyrics here.

It’s gallows humor, folks. Storyline, in brief: the narrator of the lil ballad is lured into a trap by a passing young woman. Defends himself in a brutal and effective manner and ends with the tag “They shoulda known they were f***ing with a Marine…”

Exactly. don’t piss on the big dog if you’re not ready to have your throat torn out. I’m with a commenter at Hot Air

The Marine Corps Band should get sheet music written and arranged for this and play it at the White House during receptions for the Saudis and others of their ilk over Christmas and other appropriate holidays.

Served up with a nice Christmas ham. Invite the board of CAIR and stuff the ham down their throats while playing/singing “Hadji Girl” full volume.

Record the thing and play it at deafening volume in the mountains of Afganistan.

Send Abrams tanks through the streets wherever an “insurgent alley” can be found with humongous amps and speaker systems, playing “Hadji Girl” full volume.

Play it at every airport in America before every flight (heckuva screening measure).

Send every CAIR contributor a copy in the mail. Along with a can of SPAM.

And beat every single Mass Media Podperson who misrepresents the thing about the head and shoulders with a speaker blaring the thing loudly enough to make their ears bleed. For starters. The lying, traitorous scum.

And no, I am NOT going to link to the lying bastards, except for this WaPo article that seems to a casual reader to almost (almost) break ranks with the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind with the tepid, nearly accurate-enough-to-effect-plausible-deniability statement,

“The lyrics talk about the Marine gunning down members of an Iraqi woman’s family after they confront him with automatic weapons.”

Right. To a Mass Media Podperson, an attack with automatic weapons is merely a “confrontation”. They don’t note that the family has sent out one daughter to lure the young Marine into a trap, kills another one of its own in attempting to kill the Marine in the story, then he opens fire. Nope. Couldn’t do that, cos then it’d place things in context.

Oh, the WaPo does relate the death of the girl. Sure, but in a way that exonerates the people the song clearly indicates are her killers.

Typical slick WaPo disingenuity.

And let’s not forget that it is typical terrorist behavior to kill innocents, to fire into crowds without regard to life or limb of bystanders, etc. Indeed, it’s typical that they seek out such in order to create the “terror” they live by.

And Muslim families worldwide—and no doubt in Iraq as well—think nothing of “honor killings” and various mutilations of women and young girls.

so the story depicted in the song is built on firm ground in facts well-known to anyone not a Mass Media Podpeople dupe.

Throwing the bullshit flag on WaPo and all the other slightly less slick liars in the Mass Media Podpeople’s Army on this one.

One last update: Kipling had more than one answer for today’s quislings in the Mass Media Podpeople’s Army, the Academia Nut Fruitcake Regime and the Loony Left Moonbat Brigade. Try this, for example…Amd don’t miss the discussion at The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiller. Really. Don’t miss it.)

[N.B., anyone else find yet another spelling error or typo, keep ’em to yourself. I’ve spent as much time as I’m gonna fixin’ the one’s that’ve already been reported. *heh*]

“sing, sing a song…” at Blue Star Chronicles’ Open Post and Caption Contest and Dumb Ox “omnibus post”/open trackbacks.