Author: David

Over-educated Curmudgeon, Bit-Bucket Tuner and Budding Brewmeister.
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The Continuing Search for a New Web Browser

Since more and more sites are becoming even ruder about browser use–going well beyond simply browser sniffing, now–Opera 12.18 is starting to become a little more difficult to use as a default browser. It still does work fairly well, apart from aggressive attempts to lock “old” browsers out by some sites, but only in Windows 7 and 8/8.1. Windows 10 seems to simply not “like” it.

Sad, because it has many features other “modern” browsers–including Opera ASA’s “Chopera” (an Opera browser based on the Chrome rendering engine)–either lack or do not implement as well. Mouse gestures as clunky or just weird in most other browsers that implement them natively, and mouse gesture extensions have uniformly proven to be crap. Newsreader integrated into the browser, no add-in required? Nope. Granular–really granular–control of features/customization? Nope. Bookmarks that really work and can be easily organized? Nope. Even the best at importing Opera bookmarks and allowing organization requires laboriously reorganizing each separate folder and sub-folder, one at a time. That’s a bit tedious when one has a couple of hundred folders and thousands of bookmarks. (I treat bookmarking sort of like a library card file catalog: I want everything saved where and how I want it, organized into subject folders and searchable any way I want. Yes, I weed my “catalog” pretty regularly to eliminate dead links. Doesn’t everyone? 😉 )

I could go on and on, because there are many, many features baked into the “old” Opera that are just not present or are poorly implemented in all the other browsers I have tried. The one that comes sort of close to being a replacement, but even it doesn’t allow real customization, has clunky mouse gesture implementation, lousy bookmark organization, no built-in newsreader, and doesn’t let me choose my preferred default search engine, even though it shows a procedure for doing so! #gagamaggot

OK, so just checked again. Since the last time I tried and became disgusted with it, Vivaldi Browser at least does now import my bookmarks and does–almost–sort them, at least closely to their original organization. Manual sorting thereafter looks straightforward (though still tedious). But the rest? *meh* Notsomuch, it seems. *sigh* For example, it limits the number of “Speed Dial” columns to six. I prefer ten. Why bake in such stupid limitations? That’s just one of many such dumb ideas.

Still hunting.

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The Iron Law of Bureaucracy at Work

So, fifth time in six years that “city” *cough* workers *cough* are “repairing” the water line to the house. Yeh, the guy in the hole didn’t like me sticking around to see that he was just putting a patch over the hole in their line. Replace the faulty line? Heck no! That would take work. *sigh*

But at least it keeps them busy going back and re-doing their crappy work.

One of the principles of Type II “Bureaucraps” is to NEVER actually solve a problem, because that doesn’t let them request more funding, more personnel (at the end of the “job” there were five “workers” busyworking the job. Oh, it never needed more than one to do the “work” and another to lean on a shovel and issue directions (which, when it came to the so-so use of the backhoe/FEL at least gave the guy five minutes out of two hours of legitimacy, but it needed five to eat up some time on some time cards), more “turf” to claim as their own.

And their supervisor, of course, set it all up the way it was run, from excess workers using equipment oin a manner assured to take the most possible time with the equipment used, to shoddy repair. All designed to eat up resources in the most inefficient manner possible and assure ANOTHER leak down the road.

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Literacy: It’s Probably More Than You Think

Literacy, as defined down by contemporary CYA “edumacationists” is merely the ability to decode the funny lil squiggles found on the printed page (in whatever form) into words. Comprehension? Notsomuch. Ability to take printed text, comprehend its meanings and reason from it? That’s not really what contemporary “edumacationists” are after, from all evidence at hand. (You can do your own searches on strings like “literacy declines” etc.)

Simple material literacy is just that: decoding printed text.

Formal literacy is more, much more, and involves having a wide written vocabulary, a grasp of correct grammar, and the ability to write using proper orthography in order to communicate as well as possible.

More and more, nowadays, folks write just what they have heard and in the way they speak. This is not all bad, but much depends on the speech they have heard and their ability to understand even that. The problem comes when these same people only read text written by others of their ilk, so that substandard usage, misheard (or misused) words and expressions have entered their speech and then their own text, so that poor language use is promulgated to yet another subliterate reader.

A couple of quick “tests” determine whether a writer is really literate or simply mistaken in thinking he is. (And there’s one right there: the use of the masculine pronoun to indicate a generic human.):

Word and phrase misusage. Does the writer constantly move a literate reader to invoke Inigo Montoya? (“You keep using that word [or phrase]. . . “) Subliterate. “Chomps” (at the bit) for “champs,” “snigger” for “snicker,” “beg the question” with an intended meaning of “begs that a question be asked” instead of its long accepted meaning of a form of argument where the conclusion is assumed in one of the premises, etc., etc. The stupidities are almost endless.

Another quick test: does the writer even know how to use pronouns? Many, if not most, illiterate/subliterate self-inflicted victims of the Dunning-Kruger Effect have NO idea how to use reflexive pronouns, such as “myself, himself, herself,” etc., and so consistently misuse them in place of “my, him, her,” etc. Does the writer even have a fricking clue about objective case and subjective case pronouns, or does he constantly use “I” when he should be using “me”?

These are all signs of a grasp of English that is verbal rather than literate, and that such grasp is influenced by the language (spoken and written) of others of the writer’s subliterate class.

Of course, a grasp of good grammar, proper orthography, and a decent vocabulary are just the barest beginnings of formal literacy. The person who would be literate must then read and soak up the language use and content of great literature, then use the knowledge gleaned to read widely. . . and deeply on many subjects in order to also become culturally literate. History, science (no, not crap science as presented by the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind), the various arts, etc., are ALL the province of a literate person. These once were the realm of a liberal arts education, but, sadly, no longer, save in a few scattered institutions of genuine education.

In truth, literacy is a lifelong learning experience. Anyone who is not fascinated to find ” holes and gaps, lacks and losses, absenses, silences, impalpabilities, insipidities, and the like”1 in one’s own literacy is simply not literate enough to do so. *sigh*

Of course, my post title could be an unfair imputation of ignorance. Perhaps the reader already knows this, and more. If so, I am open to instruction.

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Old Saws Can Be “A Good Thing”

But they don’t always cut true. For example,

“If you get to thinkin’ you’re a person of some influence, try orderin’ somebody else’s dog around.”

Generally true, but I’ve had folks be upset when their dogs liked me better than they liked them. . . and obeyed me better. Not often, but there’ve been times. . .

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It’s the Size of the Fight in the Dog

As Peter Grant quoted when he posted this, “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” ~ Mark Twain

BTW, I recommend Peter Grant’s sci-fi milfic/space opera books as HIGHLY appropriate for readers whose literacy reaches (legitimate) middle school levels, no matter what their ages. Sometimes a bit saccharine, but that’s better than destructively “gritty” in my book, especially for young readers. Think sci-fi milfic/space opera pretty much as written by Zane Grey. Or maybe less fantastic “Doc” Smith translated though a Zane Grey-ish filtering. *heh* (The more I think on that, the more Grant’s new Western series makes real sense.)

A big bonus is that Grant’s books seem to be very competently edited, so that readers are rarely led astray (and mistaught) by misused words, poor grammar, and punctuation errors. That’s just competent line editing. In addition, the content editing eliminates all (or almost all) of the plot bobbles so common to many books published nowadays, even (sometimes especially!) from big publishing houses. This is important, IMO, since reading engaging stories with good morals and ethics that are WELL-WRITTEN can help readers just pick up all these good things along the way.

Of course, unless a book is exceptionally well-written (and by that I mean of stellar class, worthy of survival to become an enduring classic such as “Pilgrim’s Progress”), didacticism can be a killer. No, just well-written (and competently edited) stories that have moral, ethical characters facing conflicts and choosing wisely, and therefore teach good lessons without having to stop and pound lessons into the reader.

Of course, there are competently-written books whose protagonists are bad examples for readers to emulate. I despise that sort of crap.

Poorly-written books that either have protagonists who are “good” examples or protagonists who bad examples are both to be condemned as simply poorly-written books. I find both to be anathema.

And then there are the kinds of books thatb Holly Lisle has correctly classified as “suckitudinous fiction.” Technically well-written but worthless “lit-ra-chure” such as Fitzgerald is celebrated (by self-made moral morons) for having written. Of them I can only say, “Gagamaggot.”

Peter grant’s fiction is all, as far as I have read in his sci-fi milfic/space opera (I have not yet read his new Western novel), light, entertaining, sometimes saccharine (to the point of nearly Goody Two-shoes saccharine), well-written fluff that is highly appropriate for YA readers and engaging even for folks nostalgic for an earlier ethos in sci-fi, where a more elevated moral/ethical behavior would be expected.

Here’s Peter Grant’s Amazon page.

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The Joys of Good Grammar

The joys of good grammar include clearer communication, but also include the “joy” of sometimes making an otherwise enjoyable set of lyrics grating to the ear. *heh* For example, John Jacob Niles should be retroactively slapped upside the head for,

I wonder as I wander out under the sky,
How Jesus the Savior did come for to die.
For poor on’ry people like you and like I…
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.

No, “like you and like I” has the pronouns in the objective case position, not subjective case. The often made lame excuse of adding a mental “are” is no better than correcting it to “like you and like me.” In fact, it’s worse, apart from “like you and like me” ruining Niles’s rhyme scheme.

It’s unfortunate that Niles died in 1980, because he really deserves a dope slap for this abomination. I’d offer remediation for this stanza, but then I’d have to fix the rhyme schemes of the other two verses to match, and I’m not quite sure it’d be worth the effort. Of course, that would afford the opportunity to fix the really awkward last line in the second stanza. . .

Nah. I’ll just pass on the whole thing.

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As Seen on Farcebook

Seen on FarceBook: “bordum.” No, cupcake, for you that’s “bore-dumb.” For everyone else, it’s “boredom.” *sigh*