"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."
“Stolen” from G.H. who “borrowed” it from someone not named:
“Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.”
Perhaps too well. *heh* In the mail today, addressed to me: FM 21-76, Department of the Army Field Manual: Survival.
Though it was addressed to me, I didn’t order it. I can only assume it to be a gift from someone who knows me well. Now, who could that be…
Whoever it is/was, thanks! 🙂 (Was Lovely Daughter)
(Of course, apropos of the Senate vote to enslave generations of Americans, the first thing my eye fell on when I opened the books was… a focus on escaping capture by the enemy. Of course.)
Hmm, looks like a rubric for post-Obama Americans seeking to escape the enemy and survive as free Americans…
Micro-mini-update: Because of weather/road conditions, Lovely Daughter (why did I typo that as “Lobely Daughter”? :-))and SiL-to-Be did not spend Xmas Eve with us as planned. So, last night was our “make up Xmas Eve”. Re-read Random Yak’s “Lest We Forget”, shared Xmas Chili, Xmas music, etc., and then went on the Xmas Plunder from the Kids Down South. SiL-to-Be demonstrated his awareness of relationship between Sil-to-Be and FiL-to-Be with a wise gift: a Bodum French press coffee maker. Wise beyond your years, Grasshopper.
Merry Second Day of Christmas, folks!
Yesterday was our first “White Christmas” since moving to America’s Third World County some years ago (we’re well into our second decade here), and old timers tell me such things haven’t been all that common for some time, now.
White Januarys? Yes, that’s a common occurrence. White Christmases, notsomuch.
4″ of snow descended the evening of the 24th and morning of the 25th. As this is America’s Third World County, getting up the hill and out of our lil neighborhood here in town was… not quite possible earlier this a.m. Sheet ice from packed snow resulting from folks leaving very early in the a.m., a little sun, some more cold, etc. No scraping, sanding or salting, of course. The only scraped and sanded areas of town are: the two highways going through town (State responsibility) and the area leading out of the AM/PM clinic that also houses the ambulance service (paid for by the ambulance service, of course). I bought a 40# bag of road salt, after leaving by the only other route out of the neighborhood, and salted the short hill and intersection leading out (and in) on the most direct route to our street. The kids are coming in (and leaving in the a.m. for either work or other activities), and I wanted them at least to have better traction. That others may benefit is incidental. 😉
Only one dog, now, to see to in inclement weather. The 13-year-old “youngster” (a Lab/Shepherd mix) passed away some months ago, so only one “outdoor” dog–the old guy, a 17(?)-year-old medium sized Heinz 57. For the first time since he’s been with us–about 14 years, now–he’s slept inside every night since cold weather hit. *heh* In fact, he seems to want to stay inside most of the time, now. Can’t blame him. Need to find his harness and take him for some walks, though.
Little things, good:
Letting the second fermentation of the hard apple cider go an extra five days: good. Very good, as it turns out. Now for some bottle conditioning… Used some “unconditioned” raw product in some hot “mulled” (OK, microwaved) cider w/cinnamon. Nice. ‘Tis a small thing, but my own. 🙂 Nice lil kick, too. Only 8oz, so not too much on top of my “one or two beers/day” rule (that was one 16oz beer today).
Little things, bad:
Re-reading a book by a fav novelist and being gigged once again by his unusual vocabulary lapse in this book (very weirdly, strangely and uncharacteristically–wrongly–using “temporal” to stand in place of “sacred”–very, very strange vocab lapse in an author who’s usually very accurate in word usage.. Not just once, but three times, so far in this book. Petty of me, I know, but it almost ruins the story. Almost. [Edit: *argh!* I just ran across another weird word use, a malapropism that the author should KNOW is wrong, and if not the author, any number of proof readers or an editor: “Here, here” for “Hear, hear.” *sigh* Sure, on the vast subliterate web, “Here, here” out polls the correct “Hear, hear” but NO author with as firm a grounding in history and as large a vocabulary as this one should EVER make such an egregious error of usage.]
Little things, good:
Called up my ins agent today. I’d cleaned out my glove box and had “cleaned out” the current ins verification form I’m required to keep there (bad). Didn’t really want to call him and have him fax me another one. Faxes are just… so 20th century–and poor quality reproductions of documents at that. And his agency had never “been able” to scan (a much higher resolution image) and email me a copy before. Have a fax machine; I just hate the thing for faxing. But, surprise! surprise! I got him (not another agent working under him or a secretary or his office manager) on the first ring and… he’s muuuuch more tech savvy than the folks he has had working for him in the past. Simply made a pdf and emailed it to me. A Good Thing.
So, one bad little thing, two good little things today. Not bad.
As I was contemplating the Meaning of the Universe (yeh, I was “on the throne”), it occurred to me that I have read very, very few scenes in the (literally) tens of thousands of books–about 2/3 fiction–I’ve read that deal explicitly with the elimination of feces. Protagonists can go through days, weeks, months, years without once taking a dump.
This is weird. I mean, take a man who loves his wife and enjoys the marriage bed with her greatly. Lock him away from his wife for a week. Plug him up so he can NOT void his bowels for the same week. Now, when released, which is going to be the greater biological imperative? Sex or dumping?
See? It’s easy to trump Freud, the weenie. *heh*
Now, back to fictional representations of the act. There are LOTS (loads, tons, an abundant redundant superfluous excess *heh*) of sex scenes in fictional representation, but a paucity of number 2s. Strange, that. The only fictional representation of dumping that springs readily to mind is from the Michael Douglas (Michael and Douglas Crichton writing as Michael Douglas) book, Dealing or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues. Now, admittedly, this ain’t “grate litterchure” but it’s well written and a cracking good, very amusing story–especially for some of us who lived through the 70s mostly conscious (in contrast to many of our acquaintances).
Gotta hand it to “Michael Douglas”. Sure knew how to place things in perspective.
So, if there are any aspiring authors of fiction out there who happen to read this post, please consider including some number 2s in your work. Verisimilitude, dontcha know.
Well, not so much “news” as just a weird lil collection of personal compgeeky events. You have been warned.
ISP sent someone by to check my service outages/slowdowns. I offered to hand the guy a script, since he was new to the area (the regular tech who lives in the area was also in the neighborhood and I visited with him earlier). He gave me a “Huh-what?!?” kind of look. I then explained to him exactly what he would find with his test equipment. What he would find the current state of my connection to be–if it hadn’t already taken one of its sporadic nosedives–and what he would tell me when he was finished.
He gave me another look, then proceeded to directly verify everything I had already told him. He even did as others have done and escalated the situation to his supervisor and was told what I already knew he would be told.
“We’re working on it.”
Yeh. Since July.
I’ll just hand the script to the next guy. *heh*
Now, if that weren’t weird enough (it sure was for the poor tech. He seemed to wonder if perhaps I were psychic or something. *heh*), how about the little issue I had the other day patching MS XML 4.0 (needed because I–reluctantly–installed M$Office 2003). M$ Updates couldn’t see that I needed it, although Belarc Advisor and Secunia PSI both flagged the version that came with the software–and the version that was in place after ALL M$ Update patches to M$Office had been applied–as needing a specific patch. So, I tracked down the file that was necessary to effect the patch and downloaded it.
It refused to install. Bogged down unpacking the compressed install file.
*feh* M$.
Used 7Zip to unpack the thing and it installed just fine. Why the M$ exe couldn’t unpack–completely bogged–makes no sense, but having 7Zip around sure proves handy. (BTW, I never use Windows 7’s built-in compressed file viewer. Too inelegant and missing too many features. YMMV)
And then Thunderbird refused to start. Now, I run Thunderbird Portable off a flash drive. All my archived email in one handy folder, easy to back up by simply dragging the folder from the flash drive to an external hard drive. Can carry it around with me and access my email–with full archives–from any computer with USB ports enabled, which includes our local library.
Nice.
But after a reboot (following the M$ XML 4.0 install, but that likely had no connection), invoking thunderbird.exe wouldn’t start the app.
Weird.
Oh, me oh, my. What to do?
Simple. Reinstall the lil Thunderbird Portable app. The installation routine is very well-mannered and retained all my mail archives and customizations.
Then there was that strange little graphic artifact that appeared in the smack dab middle of my Win7 desktop the other day. Nothing I did seemed to affect it. All running processes were known to me. Multi-scans of the computer by installed and web services found no issues. Yet the artifact remained… until I rebooted. Computer was operating normally throughout. Logs on the router firewall noted no unusual traffic during the time it was present. Just a lil green box that went away on reboot. Sort of reminded me of,
Yesterday upon the stair
I saw a man who was not there
I saw him there again today
Oh my, I wish he’d go away
Gotta love Windows. *heh*
Think about it. While I don’t advocate violent overthrow of government, the Gunpowder Plot is exactly what happens when unjust government pushes people too far. (It’s not advocacy of violence to simply note history and the fact that those who do not learn from history… etc.)
Joe Sobran:
I’ve never understood… why Darwinians are so militant about spreading their faith — wanting it taught to children in public schools, for example, with competing theories banned. Isn’t this the one idea, of all ideas, that ought to be able to take care of itself, without official support and coercion?
Hmmm, Darwinianism is anti-darwinian: can’t survive competition? Apparently that’s what contemporary Darwinians believe. Strange, that.
“Let [Truth] and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter.” –Milton, “Areopagitica,” 1644
Or, as that 19th century proponent of Classical Liberalism, John Stuart Mill put it in his famous essay, On Liberty,
“[T]he peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
So, why then do Darwinians get their panties in a twist about Intelligent Design (not to be confused or conflated with so-called “Creation Science”–as both disingenuous Darwinians and disingenuous Fundamnmentalists are wont to do–and no, I did not misspell “Fun-damn-mentalists”)? If it’s the bunkum Darwinians say it is, then a lively debate on the merits of both Darwinianism and Intelligent Design would be good for classrooms, since, IF the arguments of Darwinianism hold water, then ID shouldn’t have a chance in a fair fight.
But, as the Sobran quote illustrates, apparently Darwinians’ faith in their theory is not really all that strong…
Just an obseervation: much more often than not, when one voice in an argument seeks to exclude another voice from arguing at all, the one seeking to censor speech often has a weak argument. See: The Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming or the Obama White Cafe-au-lait (Grande, with a twist!) House.
As for me, I’ve always found such hand-waving and shouting down of opponents to be an incentive to dig into their opponents’ arguments to learn WHY such unfair or disingenuous actions are being taken against them.
And as form Darwinianism, that chief exponent of survival of the fittest, “Isn’t this the one idea, of all ideas, that ought to be able to take care of itself, without official support and coercion?”
Hmm, must have a weak argument.
BTW, for some of the “weak links” in Darwinian arguments, see chapter three in “Kicking the Sacred Cow” by James Hogan.
I began my life reading and enjoying poetry with Rudyard Kipling. I’d already heard plenty from my paternal grandfather quoting at length from Tennyson, Kipling, Stevenson and even Service, among others, but my first poetry reads were Kipling. Soon after, Robert Louis Stevenson and others followed. Here’s an old, old favorite of mine from Stevenson,
Evensong
THE embers of the day are red
Beyond the murky hill.
The kitchen smokes: the bed
In the darkling house is spread:
The great sky darkens overhead,
And the great woods are shrill.
So far have I been led,
Lord, by Thy will:
So far I have followed, Lord, and wondered still.The breeze from the enbalmed land
Blows sudden toward the shore,
And claps my cottage door.
I hear the signal, Lord – I understand.
The night at Thy command
Comes. I will eat and sleep and will not question more.
While I don’t understand a couple of the word choices (to my mind’s ear, “darkling” doesn’t add much either to the rhythm, or the meaning or visuals for that matter), and when I recite this from memory, I find I often edit those out *heh*, but the images, sounds and feelings of this piece speak to me more and more as the years pass.
I hear the signal, Lord – I understand.
The night at Thy command
Comes. I will eat and sleep and will not question more.
Of course, this was written during Stevenson’s long slide to death as a result of tuberculosis, as was “Requiem,” and they both reflect a growing comfort with approaching death.
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
Quite different to Dylan Thomas’ view (Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night), eh?
Just stuff floating around in my head. Memories. When I was in college, I had a procession of minimum wage jobs to pay my way. One was in a nursing center, as an orderly dealing with “extended care” patients, many of whom nowadays would be in hospice care of some sort, almost all just on a short waiting list for the undertaker’s services. Some would “rage against the dying of the light” while others would reflect the attitudes Stevenson portrayed in these short, powerful pieces.
One dear old soul–in her late 90s with only rare visits from family (she didn’t have many left, it seemed, for some reason, although that seems backward)–was one who vacillated quite a bit between acceptance and rejection of her Final Destination. Nearly every night I worked there, she asked me to recite Tennyson’s Crossing the Bar for her. I ended up writing a tune (and piano accompaniment, although there was no piano available on the floor *heh*) for it, but that’s another story.
Crossing the Bar
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea.But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home!Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;For though from out our bourn of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
And what were these poets so confidently “singing” about?
Behold, I tell you a mystery;
we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,
at the last trumpet; for the trumpet shall sound,
and the dead will be raised imperishable,
and we shall be changed.
Then will come about the saying that is written,
“O Death, where is your victory?
O Death, where is your sting?” 1 Corinthians 15:51-52
So, where have my meanderings led me today? To 1 Corinthians 15:58
Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.
(And yeh, I set that to music at one point, too.)
…or is Freecell in Vista/Win7 just easier than earlier versions?
