Category: FWIW

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2018 Polls: The Stupid Vote Gains Ground

In future, vote all red, folks. (*sigh* Lesser evil and all that.) You will have all the years after you die to vote blue.

At least there’s one good thing out of the Repugnican’ts losing the House: hopefully it will gridlock Congress. I say hopefully, because

  1. When Congress isn’t passing laws, at least it’s not making things horribly worse and
  2. MAYBE it will gridlock. . . if the Repugnican’ts in Congress can overcome their predilection for bending over and begging, “Please. May I have another?”

It could happen. . .

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For the Polls Tomorrow. . .

Do NOT encourage everyone you meet/know to vote! The Founders were justly leery of too much democracy (which is why they designed the Constitution to create a representative republic with some democratic elements). Always remember Third World County™’s corollary to Santayana’s Axiom:

“In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance”

ONLY encourage those who are well-informed and who have a rational bent to vote. Actively discourage the ignorant, misinformed, DISinformed, and notably brainwashed from voting. Their influence is uniformly negative, no matter their unthinking, uncritical, ignorant political bent.

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Dewey Was a Great Man (No, Not That One. Not That One Either. *heh*)

The Dewey Decimal System is an extremely useful method of categorizing knowledge for cataloging a library, but it is also a very useful system to use when searching out and exploring a topic of knowledge. An understanding of its classifications can yield some few advantages over computer catalogs of libraries for card catalog users, too. And then, just browsing a section, grazing the pages of books from one end of a class to another, can sometimes yield great benefits.

I once spent time “living” any available spare moment in a large state university library as an undergrad (and it wasn’t even the school I was attending *heh*) making such discoveries–especially during one semester when I was taking a course so far off my majors that I had almost NO background, and none of the prerequisite courses (yeh, talked my way ito it because it seemed interesting) in the subject. Result: The professor found my “insights” refreshingly stimulating, much to the disgust of the other seven members of the class who were restricted by having all the prerequisite boundaries instilled in their thinking.

Ah, but of course all classifications of knowledge, especially those which–like the DDS–comprise relatively rigid, detailed classifications, have the basic flaw of placing artificial boundaries between fields of knowledge. But then, it seems to be a basic human trait to connect disparate elements into a whole, even when that “whole” is wholly artificial and even nonsensical. So, the DDS is, in my use at least, most like a box of building blocks divided into compartments by shape, color, size, etc. It can make it useful when searching for just that right building block.

Sometimes, though, one wants to just dump the box out and scramble up the pieces to see what serendipitous connections one might make. That’s the Internet.

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Clowns to the Right. . . Jokers to the Left. . .

But I REFUSE to be stuck in the middle of them.

There is almost no real news anymore. Almost all that purports to be so is Hivemind propaganda. It’s to the point that such sites as The Onion, Duffleblog, and The Babylon Bee are as reliable (or seemingly more so *sigh*) than “accredited” media sources.

And the so-called “right” end of the spectrum is little more reliable than the so-called “left” end of the media spectrum. While the opinion columnists at Townhall are generally more truthful than front page “news” at the New York Slimes, so-called “news” sites/organs such as Worldnet Daily, Breitbart, The Blaze,and ZeroHedge are all, to varying degrees, propaganda for the putative “right.”

Frankly, I don’t ascribe to Zero Hedge, for example, any more credibility than any other Hivemind “reporting.” Sure, like ABCNBCCBSMSNBCFOX, etc., it is propaganda, but every lie at least has a truthful counter. Zero Hedge can serve as a source of “idiot bait” research. In that, it can also be a “serious” source of info. . . of sorts (about as much as with any other Hivemind organ, give or take), if one really digs. 😉 Also, just like other aspects of the Hivemind (reflecting the biases of every point on Pournelle’s Political Axes), it can serve as a way of checking on what the Hivemind (at least its portion) is trying to obscure, twist, or otherwise outright lie about. Pulling the threads for amusement, if nothing else, can provide a few moments of entertainment, at least, and occasionally, as with other Hivemind elements, the facts it twists can be verified and lead to real and useful information when placed in their original context.

I laugh at the times I took Walter Cronkite seriously (as anything but an effective propagandist).

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Warning Shots

I am a firm believer in ONLY firing proper “warning shots. The only exception to this rule is if an aggressor is wearing body armor. Or is a zombie. Or is a zombie wearing body armor.

Thatisall.

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Déjà Vu All Over Again?

AFAIK, I’ve read everything David Weber has written, even the insane book where Dracula saves humanity from an alien invasion. A laugh riot, for sure, though I’m not sure Weber intended it as such. And for the past ten books or so, every time I pick one up, I ask myself “Why?” Whole swaths of dialog and descriptive narrative seem unnecessarily repetitive (and of much of the “banter” dialog, the less said the better. Actually, the less written and even less read the better).

And would SOMEONE please get through to Weber (or someone–anyone–with a red pencil that works at Baen and/or Tor) to correct his sadly illiterate misuse of “temporal” in his descriptions of civil (secular) officials and clergy gatherings as “lords secular and temporal”? All the phrase does is MISdescribe the group as “lords secular and secular.” #gagamaggot

temporal =
a : of or relating to time as opposed to eternity
b : of or relating to earthly life
c : lay or secular RATHER THAN clerical or sacred : civil lords temporal

Ah, but skipping over the unfortunate babblegab in Weber books does come as the price one pays for otherwise not badly told stories with moral/ethical questions dealt with in ways that are at least somewhat edifying in the end. Maybe that’s why, oh, once every 300-400 books read, I’ll pick up another one by him.

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Transitions: Strange Decos

Until we purchase paint tomorrow, and then do the painting, our living room will look a bit. . . weird, at least to my eye.

The new flooring is fine–looks great–but we still have the “Amaryllis Yellow” (over plaster) on three walls, with a “Stadium Red” accent wall (muted by a black glaze sponge treatment) behind the bookcases/entertainment center. It all looked well pulled together with the blond flooring we had before, but just doesn’t work with the new “bronzed acacia wood” flooring. Besides, I just put up our new drapes (anticipating the paint to come; they’ll come down easily during the paint job), and while they are a really pleasant blue, the blue-yellow-red combo is just too, too Hobbit-ish. *heh*

The new wall color will be better: a dove gray on all four walls, with a black sponge glaze treatment on the book/ec wall over the dove gray.

Still need to add the trim back–and add a bit more–as well as a new valence for the drapes. Methinks the trim will be a nice oyster color. *shrugs* Probably. Oh, but speaking of drapes, hung them on dual rods, so we can add sheers later. The new drapes are “blackout” drapes, and with sheers added, that will give us a lot of flexibility in window treatment. I do need to repair my faux “stained glass” treatment of the bay window where the cats have worn out a viewport. Maybe I’ll make a “porthole” for them; maybe not. 😉

A nice lil fillip: dove gray will pickup the mottled gray 1’x2′ tile at the entry door.

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Rights: Whence Come They?

Sidebar: I avoid terms like “gun rights,” because the real issue is the inherent right of every individual to defend one’s own life and limb against an aggressor (individual or group) doing or threatening to do harm, and to defend his loved ones and the otherwise defenseless innocent from the same. Guns are just one of many tools (excellent and effective tools, indeed often the best of tools, but one of many) for effecting legitimate self-defense.

I also do not like the terms “constitutional rights” or “2nd Amendment right” for similar reasons, but expanding to include the fact that those rights which arementioned in the constitution are mentioned only to prevent infringement of those rights by the federal government.