Category: FYI

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“A Day Late…

Forty-six years ago, I purchased a set of books, the Great Books of the Western World as compiled by Mortimer J. Adler, et al. The 54-volume set was a tad expensive for a high school kid (twice what I paid for my first car, in fact; nowadays, USED copies of the set run from ~$350 to ~$1,200 on Amazon), but has been a great resource for decades. Sadly, the bindings are in rough shape (largely the result of toddlers getting their hands on ’em a couple of decades and more back, as well as simple wear from use), and some volumes are in downright raggedy shape.

Fast forward to today. I picked up 40 of the 54 volumes in excellent condition at a library books sale of donated books. Most appear completely unread, untouched, although volume 1 of the complete works of Shakespeare is well worn (though still not as worn as my original copy). Glad to have ’em. Oh, why only 40 of the 54? Well, volume 2, the first of two volumes comprising the “Syntopicon” was missing from the donated collection, and 13 other volumes had been purchased by one person before I purchased the rest.

I’ll probably print up some book covers for the “raggedy” copies in my original set and place them in among the “new” set for use, as I still use them for reference, although I have re-read few of them entirely in the last couple of decades. I may also add volumes from the 1990 “second edition” of the collection, at least some works that I don’t already own in other editions as separate copies–who doesn’t already own at least one copy of Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling” for example, or “Waiting for Godot” [Beckett], Animal Farm [Orwell], etc.? I think I may skip volumes 59 and 60 (heavy on 20th Century) from the new edition. I despise Joyce, detest Faulkner and Ftzgerald, and Virginia Woolf gives me a rash. The ones in the collection that are worth anything, IMO, I already have, usually in multiple copies (Brecht, Beckett, Chekhov, Eliot, Shaw and others), anyway.

The recent “classes” via Hillsdale College dealing with the Constitution (thanks for the tip, Diane) have already gotten me re-reading background the Founders drew on in the discussions that formed our national government, so this is a timely find for me.

So, I worked a little bit tonight on some bookshelves. *heh* I may actually get our books organized more sensibly this year. Hey! It could happen! At least I have plenty to read and plenty to re-read (and plenty that’s worth re-reading) handy.

BTW, from that great *cough* reference work, Wikipedia (which nevertheless does have a few good articles), this:

“The scientific and mathematical selections also came under criticism for being incomprehensible to the average reader… “

Well, boo-hoo. Literacy is more than just puzzling out weird hieroglyphs on a page. Other criticisms of the collection are on a par with that one. *yawn* Yes, it’s incomplete, but hey, “Great” used to mean something more than simply “good” or “trendy” or “makes feminazis and multi-cultis feel good”.

Addendum 2: It’s interesting, to me at least, that this work was compiled and the “Great Conversation of Ideas” (largely via the tool of the Syntopicon–a monumental work in and of itself, IMO) fostered as a project sponsored by the University of Chicago, and yet The Zero, that soi-disant “constitutional scholar” who (mis)taught as an adjunct prof at that institution, seems completely unaware of the works (and ideas) contained in this collection except in a sort of weird, twisted mythological manner, since he never seems to get references to Western Civ (history OR concepts) anywhere near right.

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Timeless Wisdom

I don’t know who first said it (and am not even sure where I last saw it *heh*), but this ranks up there with, “Never get involved in a land war in Asia,”* as timeless wisdom:

“A human without at least one sharp pointy thing and the ability to start a fire is just whining hairless ape in most survival situations.”

Yeh, I feel naked without at least two or three “sharp pointy things” on my person at all times, and since I can start a fire with my burning gaze of scorn… *heh*

Continue reading “Timeless Wisdom”

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Personal-Sized, Hand-Held “Big Screen TV”

We have an entertainment center cabinet that’s a wee tad over 5′ in length. When I sit on the couch and hold my teensy lil Kindle Fire at arm’s length, it more than covers my view of the EC. Given the gorgeous display on the Fire, it’s like having my own, personal, hand-held “big screen TV”.

So, as long as I can find streaming video to suit my tastes, I can defer buying a bigger TV, eh? 😉

Of course, the lil 15.6″ screen on my laptop seems even larger in viewing area, when viewed from its usual place on my lap… Heck, in use, it appears to cover 3/4 of the whole wall facing me.

Oh what a difference perspective makes.

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Fortunately…

…the driver died. “Fortunately” in more ways than one. If nothing exculpatory emerges (and I doubt it will), the driver appears to have earned her death sentence from Darwin. Unfortunately, she was old enough that she might already have reproduced.

100 mph down an urban street
No seat belt
Injured four other people.

As I said, the driver appears to have earned her death sentence from Darwin.

If only more of these useless oxygen sinks would find even less harmful ways to remove themselves from the gene pool…

Continue reading “Fortunately…”

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Fortunately, I Don’t Run in Those Circles

I know of a few people–dhimmicrappic leftards, one and all*–who have lost very nearly amazing amounts of weight using the “HCG diet” that uses a combo of Human Chorionic Gonadotropin hormone, a hormone naturally produced by human embryos, and severe calorie restriction (500-800 calories/day) to achieve weight loss. You noticed, of course, that I italicized “weight” in that statement. That’s simply because the amounts of muscle mass lost in this diet is excessive. If one is too fat, then fat loss is a good thing. Muscle mass loss is not, for more than a few reasons. Here, let me just quote a Mayo clinic page on the topic:

“…HCG is used mainly to treat fertility issues. HCG is not approved for over-the-counter use, nor has it been proved to work for weight loss. Companies that sell over-the-counter HCG weight-loss products are breaking the law.

“So why has there been so much talk about the HCG diet? Perhaps it’s because the diet recommends severe calorie restriction — typically just 500 to 800 calories a day. People who follow such a very low calorie diet are likely to lose weight, at least in the short term. However, that level of calorie restriction has risks, such as gallstone formation, irregular heartbeat, and an imbalance of the electrolytes that keep the body’s muscles and nerves functioning properly.”

BTW, I have seen the page I just quoted from excerpted and used in support of the HCG diet. Of course, those who do so are liars, deliberately misrepresenting what was said there in order to promote this dangerous fad diet. So far, every case I’ve seen of such misrepresentation has strangely (NOT!) failed to link the actual page… I have no doubt that the reason is simply to obscure the fact that they are twisting the material they carefully excerpt.

Of course, the target audience of such lying screeds is likely too lazy and stupid to follow a link to the “rest of the story” even if it were provided… and likely too lazy and stupid to understand what’s there, anyway.

Oh, and that “*” earlier? Here it is: I know I run the danger of committing an argumentum ad hominem fallacy by making the association: dhimmicrappic leftards—>dangerous, irrationalbehavior. I’m not actually making that argument by noting that only persons I know who are stupidly abusing their bodies with this dangerous fad diet are the dhimmicrappic leftards mentioned above. The stupid dhimmicrappic leftards I know who are committing this self-abuse are simply data points in a broader correlation I see between dhimmicrappic leftards and many other cases of unthinking (or simply stupid) abuse of self and others. In every case, the unthinking (or simply stupid) abuse of self and others involves blind acceptance of “authoritative” misstatements of fact (or outright lies) and a complete lack of forethought combined with a stupid embrace of “quick fix” solutions to difficult issues.

Just sayin’ It seems, from my observations of the passing scene, to be much more common–though not exclusive to–the left than the right.

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We R Rural

Pretty much, here in America’s Third World County, yep: rural, all right. Purdue University has applied an “Index of Relative Rurality” to stats from American counties that illustrates the point pretty well.

A recently introduced, continuous, multidimensional measure of rurality, the Index of Relative Rurality (IRR), avoids the confusing effects of inclusion in metro boundaries. (2) It does not answer the question “Is a county rural or urban?” but instead addresses the question “What is a county’s degree of rurality?”

The IRR is based on four dimensions of rurality: population, population density, extent of urbanized area and distance to the nearest metro area. These dimensions are unquestioned in terms of their contribution to rurality and are incorporated implicitly in many existing rurality definitions. The index is scaled from 0 to 1, with 0 representing the most urban place and 1 representing the most rural place

(CLEEK to Embeegan, as TWC’s–relatively–vast alien invasion population might say *sigh*)

See that color code next to the bottom? That’s us. We’re not completely devoid of human habitation, and we do have access to–sort of–“urban” areas, but da “piney woods” is our “back yard” (and for many their front yard too), and there are parts of the county where YOU DO NOT GO even if you aren’t a terminally stupid “revenooer”.

A good place for a “bug out location”. Just sayin’.

Oh, you’ll notice I gave no further indication of which of those counties color-coded with the next-to-most-rural coding is America’s Third World County. Long time readers of this blog can pick it out right away, anyway.

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This Stuff Is Simply the Best

I used to use another product that’s almost as good to clean post n pans, coffee and hard water “stained” glasses and mugs, etc., but this stuff is less expensive and better:

While I mostly use it nowadays to shine up my “stainless” steel pots and pans, it has tons more uses. Gottaloveit. Just sayin’.

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A Lil “Notahowto”

This is not a “How to” as much as it is a pointer about styli for capacitive touch screens. (Love the pun or don’t. I DGARA :-))

Love the Kindle Fire. I use it far, far too much. I’m almost back to the average numbers of books per week read that I indulged myself in for decades before I discovered the Internet in ’93, and I have watched more movies and obscure (mainly foreign) TV shows since Christmas than I care to count.

But I had a small bone to pick with the device. While I have relatively small hands (a curse when I was trying to play piano or guitar), using my fingers to navigate–and especially to type on the onscreen virtual keyboard–was something of a pain at times.

Enter the stylus I received with my matte-finish screen protector from HandHeldItems. Yes, it was the company’s low-end, throwaway stylus, but it worked a charm. Soon, though, I missed being able to store it easily. Oh, it had a lil thingy to plug into the headphone jack, but that was clearly sub-optimal. What to do?

A quick search on the web for “DIY Stylus for Kindle Fire” turned up a raft of possibilities, but the one that suggested using the conductive foam padding used in packing electronic parts seemed ideal, so… dig around in parts to find some that’s easily sacrificed, look around for some pens or other “stylus materials” that can be modified, a lil shade tree mechanicking and…

A couple of styli that work great for my purposes. One is from a nice, heafty-weight metal-bodied “gimme” pen that had a built in laser pointer with dead batteries. It offered a way to embed some conductive foam padding in the top of the pen, just above the clip, once the tiny lil laser pointer was removed. A sized Q-Tip holds the foam in place, jutting from the top of the pen, nicely rounded. Nice, sturdy clip. I even had an ink refill for the pen. Excellent stylus!

Another as a backup for the lil 2″ (though extensible to 3″) HandHeldItems throwaway stylus? Sure. A small metal screwdriver (removed the bit end), a piece of conductive foam padding secured with wire and live rubber tape and, voilà! Nice lil 2.5″ mini-stylus. Works just as well as the other two.

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RTFM

Or at least the warning label printed on the bottle. Just sayin’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The warning reads,

Use this product one drop at a time. Keep away from eyes, pets and small children. Not for people with heart or respiratory problems.

I’ve spent a lifetime enjoying increasingly spicy foods and find jalapeno, serano and habanero peppers to be tasty lil tidbits, although jalapenos are, IMO, more for children and delicate flowers with “the vapors” who faint at the mere sight of black peppercorns. This stuff, while tasty, is HOT. No, not the very hottest thing around, if Scoville measurements are on target, but very, very close.

Use with respect. 🙂

Note: Recent college graduates may need to have someone who’s literate to translate the label for them, so if you’re in this category (and having someone read this blog post to you), please seek help.

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Fun On the Road

So, went out of town (out of county by a couple) this a.m. with Son&Heir. On the way back, about 6 miles out of town, saw the gas gauge go from nearly full to almost empty, really quickly, lost power, coasted off an exit (the one I’d planned on taking anyway) and about 400 feet on down the road.

Weird. Popped the hood. Gas fumes. Gas dripping from the fuel rail. *sigh* Under car? Sure enough, gas “streamed” from engine compartment all the way to the back of the car, beside, around and apparently evaporated off hot exhaust components. How no fire, I don’t know, but no fire. (Yeh, yeh, I know: no sparks :-))

Plastic clip on fuel rail failed. Had no tools and no clip… and no gas anyway. Called our mechanic. He sent his son&heir with their small tow truck and he dropped us off at the house.

Now, the guys had installed a new fuel pump several months back and gone ahead and also installed the new fuel filter with integrated fuel rail that I’d had a short while but not gotten around to installing myself.

Get that: my part; they installed. If it’d been a faulty installation, it’d given out long before now, so it had to be a faulty part. My hook. Got a call that the car was good to go, but… Asked ’em to double check (“Tug on that thing REAL hard, ‘K?” ;-)) make SURE the part–especially the clip–was good before I picked it up.

I hate fuel leaks.

Sure, I could’ve had the guy drop it here and torn into the thing, but it’s colder outside than my “old bones” like for doing mechanicking, so better to have it done than do it.

Oh, well. 🙂

*heh* Picked the car up. Drove off, on a windy country road, no shoulder, very few turn-offs. Three miles to filling station. Got a mile. Called the guys. It took three of them *heh* to bring me a gallon of gas. 😉

Fun on the road, indeed.