Well, If I Haven’t Managed to Get on a DHS Watch List Yet, This Ought to Do It

The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Mediacom, Sucking Dead Bunnies Through a Straw. IOW, Business as Usual.

Well, Mediacom is at it again. This quite apart from sending us 4 “DTAs”–digital jail boxes–that were ALL dysfunctional, and known to be so, according to the local tech who’s replaced 25 of them in the last couple of weeks with known-good MODELS from a different MANUFACTURER. No, this is something else: supposedly we’re hitting our data cap. Really unusual activity. Data consumption on the order of 3GB during a service outage is one clue.

Then, yesterday afternoon, after griping out yet another Mediacom Suckage Expert (A.K.A., “customer service representative,” “phone tech support person”) I DISCONNECTED our cable “modem” for 2.5 hours, reconnected and. . . more than 2.5GB of additional usage recorded.

Next? I then disconnected the cable “modem” for 16 hours. Reconnected and. . . yep. More usage, though less: only 1.6 additional GBs of data usage reported while our system was completely, physically disconnected from Mediacom.

Our neighbor, who has extremely modest Internet needs/usage has reported the same issue to Mediacom just this week. Mediacom, of course, says it’s all us.

Lies.

Local onsite support is better. The local support tech (I say “local”. Mediacom has him covering LARGE parts of 3 counties all by his lonesome) has had multiple encounters with folks supposedly hitting their data caps who simply aren’t, in all reality. Yeh, well, I just talk with folks around town, and my neighbor and I aren’t the only ones I know about.

Mediacom: asking the question, “How many customers can we screw today?”


Update: Strangely, after four hours of connectivity today, Mediacom’s data usage report has shown no increase in usage during that time. Yep. As ALWAYS, the problem is at Mediacom’s end of the pipe.

I Don’t Know Why More People Don’t Do This

N.B. Casual computing notes. Almost NONE of this is for a business setting, although securely accessing remote desktops can be a big help there. But that’s not something I’d push the Windows Remote Desktop Connection app for. Maybe that’s just me. . .


My lil “living room lappy” doesn’t have much horsepower, but it doesn’t need much to log onto the media computer connected to the TV, and a lil rdp file semi-automates even that. Just using it as a semi-dumb client works really well in that situation. Heck, it even saves steps if I’m too lazy (and you can bet I frequently am) to walk back to my “real” computer back in my office. *shrugs*

I really don’t know why more folks don’t use remote desktop access for everyday stuff. It is a wee tad less convenient accessing other computers from my Kindle Fire. Sadly, the best tool for it seems to be TeamViewer. *scratches head* That doesn’t really make sense to me, but at least it works when I need it to, for values of “work” that are a bit kludgy.

*heh* The first time–years ago–I accessed my Wonder Woman’s computer and took control of her mouse, it freaked her out. Of course, that was back in the day when I had to set quite a few things up well in advance for her computer to accept my access. I don’t remotely access as many computers nowadays–especially WAN computers–as I used to do (all the time, it seemed for some years), but I’d just not ever want to do with NOT being able to access–and use just as if sitting at it any computer (of mine) on our LAN, any time, from any of them.

Yeh, yeh, I access files and folders more than I actually do remote computing on different computers scattered around the house, but not a day goes by I don’t fire up an application on Z-I from Z-II that just works better on Z-I than on Z-II, or whatever (yeh, not the computer names). (My music transcription software is an example. I might want to jot a few notes *heh* or make some edits while on the lil living room lappy, but the office machine is better for that. So. . . rdp, baby.)

Yes, it does sometimes mean files are scattered around at different machines, but regular justifications of archives on NASes, etc., help keep everything pretty well organized. (And then there are the “families” of files that have specific homes “in the cloud” as well, and synch up on all registered machines. . . which are then synched/justified on NASes. For the few terabytes of data I want to protect, it works all right.

Oh, look. The voices in my head wander’d afield. Who’d-a thunk it? 😉

(Yes, I know there are some approximations of full desktop access available for various Android and even *meh* iPad situations–see my comments about Kindle remote desktop access–but really? Notsomuch.)

New Policy

Well, no, not new-new. Perhaps a better way to say it is a new statement of a policy that’s grown and matured over time.

Never suffer a fool, gladly or not, for in doing so all you do is kick the can down the road and into a neighbor’s yard. Therefore, when encountering fools, dumbasses, trolls and yahoos, kick THEIR cans as often and as hard as necessary to at least make sure they know what behaviors have earned them their pain.

Of course, “kick their cans” is normatively a metaphorical construction that more or less means, “Read them the riot act, and keep reading it to them as often as you have the time and energy to do so until they at least decide to behave properly around you.”

Almost all of the fools, dumbasses, trolls and yahoos out there are “special snowflakes” who have never had their nonsense and execrably rude behavior thrown back in their faces, have never suffered any consequences for their behaviors. Mock them. Roundly and soundly. Point out each and every one of their flaws (“And you smell bad, too!” is a nice one–especially in Internet fora. *heh*) Name-calling, as long as it is restricted to being descriptive of their behaviors and not as attempts to rebut their arguments (assuming they can make any) is fair. If they fit the class, they’ve earned a wee bit of name-calling, but keep it descriptive and as close as possible to their evidenced behaviors!

Being polite to jackasses only encourages them in their bad behavior. Sometimes, they need a (metaphorical, remember!) 2×4 upside the head. Well, more like most times.

Thatisall.

You Do Not Want to Have This Image in Your Head

Over on FarceBook, one guy posted,

“got a pedicure yesterday. Need to go to XYZ, WV, and do a mineral bath and massage treatment next.”

My teeth are still good enough, but I’m not flexible enough, anymore, to give myself a “pedicure”. . . *heh*

Semi-Almost-Halfway Empty Nest/China Syndrome

Five Year Rule? Five years after kids move out, whatever they behind is yours to do with as you will, right?

OK. Just checking. . .


Old, discarded tech; office equipment/supplies; clothing; stuffed toys; bedding; artwork: all on the block, headed for the tip, donated; entering common household use as OURS, now. Whatev’. ‘s’way it goes. . .

I Post These Kinds of Things Because You’re Slacking Off

The problem with self-pub? Whole HERDS of 20-something illiterate liberal arts graduates “writing” books for a “readership” of their peers. The sheer depth of their cultural, historical and LITERARY illiteracy (grammar atrocities, word misuse, COMPLETE misunderstanding of background and usage of common expressions, etc., etc.) is mind-boggling. It’s too late to lobotomize them. They’ve already done such a good job on themselves, already.

(Yes, there are a few who actually either know how to use a dictionary and form moderately coherent sentences. . . or else have gone outside their cohort and enlisted the aid of the rare literate proofreader/editor to clean up their glurge.)

Yeh, yeh. Dylan Thomas said it best (though about a different kind of death): “Rage, rage against the dying of the light. . . ” *heh*

For Most Things, Brains are Better than Muscles

Even if it means just being smart enough to know when to quit.

Example: Moving a piano.

When the right equipment is used and the piano is properly prepared for the move, two (reasonably healthy) guys are all that’s needed, but heaven help folks trying to move a piano w/o the proper equipment and mental “muscle,” because physics surely will not. My last “piano move” 20 years ago: good equipment, me, a 12-y.o. boy and a 14-y.o. girl (both a couple of standard deviations above the mean and able to take direction very well). Moved the piano out and loaded into truck. Arrival at destination? It took me and three inexperienced guys who apparently were not as bright as my two kids to move it in and set it up. ‘S’truth.

Nowadays, I’m smart enough to know that–at my age and physical condition–hiring someone would be better, because despite knowing how to move one, I’m just getting to be too old for the gig. *sigh*

FarceBook Funnies

Ran into a kid in a FarceBook thread on musical tastes. He was really offended by my comments delineating how obvious it is that contemporary society has, on the main, NO musical taste, and indeed, more or less, that most folks have no capability to discern music from rhythmic noise.

He went on to list a number of “great” contemporary popular works (I am kind), all of which were boring, derivative, insultingly stupid, etc., including a “fantastic” (his word) popular song that had an annoying (and extremely boring) rhythmic ostinato that did absolutely nothing to support the rest of the piece. Oh, and the vocals were juvenile, quite apart from the stupid lyrics.

But the pieces were definitely the kind of thing that would appeal to a musically illiterate junior high school student.

So, he was offended. Mentioned one was “great” in the class of greatness of a “great book”–Plato’s Republic (which isn’t really a book at all but a collection of dialogs of varying lengths and importance that together might make up a novella-length “book,” although it has been compiled and presented as a “bookette” *heh* It’s easier for academic bookstores to charge more for the collection that way. In my collection, every book with an edition of “The Republic” is part of a much longer collection of works. ADHD folks’ opinions may vary.).

It further devolved into his assertion that it was too, and just as great a “book” as King Lear. . . which isn’t a book but a play.

*head-desk*

Kicker: He’s apparently a grad of a “rigorous” liberal arts program (that uses the Great Books of the Western World as a curriculum/curriculum resource/guide), and can’t discern that King Lear is a play, not a book, and he is a writer for The Puffington Host. Naturally. Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind unit.

*sigh*

It was fun playing until I ran out of popcorn.