Category: Uncategorized

Apparently it’s sweeps week in the blogosphere, as the “2004 Weblog Awards” event winds on down to December 12, the last day of voting.

Best example of sweeps week blogging so far? Over at INDCJournal, we have a “blogochiropterologist” examining the loony left barking-nihilistic-poo-eating moonbats in their natural habitat…

Just so you know, INDCJournal is not entered in the humor category.

[BTW, you should be able to quickly deduce why I used “chiropterologist” instead of “chiroptologist” from the lead-in to the INDCJournal post linked above. Oh, and here (meaning also, there), as well, of course… ]

Oh, have I made it perfectly clear that you are now wasting time here instead of going to INDCJournal and reading the post I link here?

In his Wednesday “View” this week, Jerry Pournelle comments briefly (for him 🙂 on the topic of public education. In the middle of this disquisition is this couple of paragraphs:

“The trouble with democracy is that it tends to pull everyone to a common level: great men cannot rise to their proper level. This was known by Cicero and once known to almost every intellectual in Western Civilization. Now we don’t have a Western Civilization, and to the extent that we do our intellectuals are mostly ashamed of it; and while the last thing our Enlightened class wants is real equality, the notion of “equal treatment” is now pervasive. Why would it not be? The official view of man as taught in almost every classroom in the nation is Jacobinism, Rousseau, “Man is born free yet he is everywhere in chains,” and the rest of it. Why are we then surprised when a great many people act as if they believe that?

The Framers knew better. The Founders knew better. The notion that within most human hearts beats a burning desire to take his neighbors goods and possess his wife was prevalent. As Chesterton observed, one needs only to read the newspapers to confirm the doctrine of Original Sin. One need not be religious to come to the view that to secure rights governments must be instituted among men. But when the notion of rights, and I’m as good as you and I got to have my rights same as anyone becomes the pervasive public doctrine, there are bound to be consequences.”

Disquieting thoughts. But then, truths are always harder than lies… “No Child Left Behind” has nothing whatever to do with excellence in education and everything to do with mediocrity, and for that dedication to mediocrity, we get less than that somewhat less than lofty goal.

We have indeed “sown the wind”.

Consider the introduction to the 1983 National Commission on Education report:

Our Nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world…. the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and as a people. What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur- others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments.

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves…. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.

And the whole philosphy behind such abortions as “No Child Left Behind” continues that act of “unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.”

Consider, if you will, that the world of Harrison Bergeron is the least worst of the outcomes we (or our children) might face from such a philosphy of equal—lowest common denominator— outcomes. (Just click the link. Read the tale.)

Frank J. (at IMAO) demonstrates once again why he got my vote for Best Humor Blog this year (although I am not sure he’s kidding here). Commenting on the apparent poisoning of Yuschenko (Ukraine presidential candidate), he comments,

“I suggest that, in the future, we have Jimmy Carter as an election monitor with his job to try the food and drink of each candidate to make sure it isn’t poisoned. When Carter finds a legitimate case of a candidate trying to poison another, he can then be replaced by Bill Clinton.”

Now that I ponder this a bit more, I think perhaps he’s serious. At any rate, it’s certainly a good idea. Well worth a try. And Jean Fraud sKerry could step up to support democracy should Clintoon discover a case of one candidate trying to poison another. I think Frank’s onto something, here!

Robert Bruce Thompson, computer guru of the highest order and sometime curmudgeonly commenter on things societal offers this tidbit in an essay asserting that the U.S. ought to tax, well, essentially everyone else [heh]:

“I have it on good authority that the IRS hires as auditors only people who were rejected by the Marine Corps for being too aggressive.”

I just changed my mind about the draft. If the above is true, I’m all for drafting all IRS auditors and sending them to Iraq. Then Iran, No. Korea, France (one, only; wouldn’t want to scare Chirac to death, would we? We would? OK.), Germany… the usual suspects.

Oh, and while we’re at it, send a couple to “audit” Canada.

The narrator’s voice could quickly put viewers to sleep, were it not for the amazing footage showing US Marines in combat in Fallujah.

Check it out here.

OK, whatever you’re doing (and I know that what you’re doing is checking this blog), it’s not nearly as important as CLICK-ing on THIS link and reading The Greatest Boy Detective in the Universe, Encyclopedia Brown and The Case of the Misbegotten Memos.

STOP reading this blog NOW and just GO!

The “official” caption for the pic is below it, but I thought it more fitting to label it as a typical member of the Loony Left Moonbat academia…

TEL AVIV, Israel — Natasha, a 5-year-old black macaque walks at the Safari Park near Tel Aviv. The young monkey began recently walking exclusively on her hind legs after a stomach ailment nearly killed her, zookeepers said. (07/20/04 AP photo)

Just a wee tad on the curmudgeonly side. And why not? As our society tends ever more toward subliterate, self-made morons—products of Prisons for Kids (known disingenuously as “Public Schools”) and American pop “culture”—why not become a wee tad curmudgeonly? It’s difficult enough trying to communicate with people who actually speak, read and write English with a moderate degree of understanding. Communication with those who cannot (because of their own laziness and crappy “public education”–so-called) is a burden no reasonable person ought to be expected to bear without protest.

Western Civilization is going over a precipice. And it’s getting a big shove from all those who ought to be fighting to preserve it: academia, our rulers in the political class, mass media… churches.

While I’m not so concerned about my own passing from the scene (what? heaven couldn’t be any worse! :-), I think Dylan Thomas’

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light…. ”

…certainly should be applied to Western Civ.

For further reference to the conspiracy to murder literacy—indeed, to murder sense and sensibility—see Holly Lisle’s discourse on “How to Write Suckitudinous Fiction”. It describes much of the idiocy in academia and “the arts” we have inherited from 20th century dolts, dummies and doofuses in, well, the arts and academia. Of course, their subliterate cousins in the Mass Media Podpeoples’ Army also do everything they can to Make and Keep Americans Stupid(TM).

Meanwhile, I want you to think of the picture above and marvel at a monkey walking upright, every time you hear/see some Loony Left Moonbat in academia. It’s good for your sanity.

It doesn’t have quite the ring of the lullaby Algore said his mom used to sing him to sleep by (sad thing: a grown man having to be sung to sleep by his mom—the song was written in 1975).

Soon, any IBM PC you buy will likely have been made by slave labor in China. See:

IBM and China-based Lenovo Group announced an agreement
Tuesday night in which Big Blue will sell its PC division
for about $1.75 billion. Read more about this deal.
http://ct.enews.eweek.com/rd/cts?d=186-1396-2-79-246460-154698-0-0-0-1

Rabbit Trail #1: Of course, most of what you buy, apart from food, at WallyWorld is now likely made by slave labor in China. In fact, if WallyWorld were a country, it would be communist China’s 4th-largest trading partner. (Hmmm… I have heard the phrase “Wal-Mart country” bandied about… )

Yeh, it’s in my own economic interest to buy much of what we need from WallyWorld (and every time I write that I think of the National Lampoons’ Griswolds on their family vacation). I have tried to buy “non-WallyWorld” brands made in the USA when possible, though. (Like a recent paint purchase where I had the option of getting some paint for a couple of bucks less with the same tint but in a WallyWorld brand… yeh, it may have been sorta “Made in America” but it was still a WallyWorld brand.)

Rabbit trail #2: Interesting thing: we bought a nice dining set from Aldis, recently. (From Aldi’s?!?!?! Yes. Was advertised and we checked it out. Nice.) Really well-made. Nice real birch. From Romania. Not slave labor in China. A country that is trying to seriously transition to democracy and capitalism. Good quality workmanship, nice bonuses in the packing materials (?!?). Aldi’s is giving WallyWorld such headaches in Europe that I’m seriously considering shopping there more often. [heh]

Anyway, look for the Slave Labor label on any future PC purchases of IBM PCs, and, of course, expect the Slave Labor label to be prominently featured (“Made in China”) on products bought at WallyWorld.

Stop wasting time here and go to the Physic Geek’s Christmas Info Memo

What?!?! Still here? Go!

[mild warning: in other Christmas humor posts, the Physic Geek’s pages become mildly vulgar. If that’s an area of weakness for ya, skip those.]

I’ve noticed whenever I get trapped listening to some Mass Media Podperson or Loony Left Moonbat that they pronounce the initial-abbreviation of the United Nations in two syllables as something like “You In”. And even stranger still, I’ve noticed that many real people have been negatively influenced by this to pronounce it similarly.

Sad. “UN” really ought to be pronounced in one syllable as something like “uhn,” as in UNrealistic, UNethical, UNprincipled (as in DIShonorable), etc. It’s a pronunciation that’s more in line with the UN’s apparent mission, and besides, it takes less breath to say than “You In”. Why waste any more breath on the UN than one has to?

Better: perhaps it’s time for US to pronounce UN “You, Out”.