Month: November 2004

No time to deal with this now. Just hie thee to the Belmont Club and read. I’ll include other links—and I must remember a few to Credenda Agenda articles on the subject, as well—later.

Who cares, anyway? It’s my blog, and I can noodle around any topic I want.

Web browsers. Recently, Mozilla Firebird has gotten a LOT of “ink”—almost all from computer wonks touting it as THE answer to crappy browsing with Internet Exploder, the world’s worst web browser.

Well , Firebird is pretty good (in fact, I’m using it right now to blog this comment), but it’s nearly as bad as Internet Exploder about some things. Sure, it’s MUCH better overall than Internet Exploder, but then, browsing the internet with pen and paper would almost be better than Internet Exploder, so that’s daming Firebird with faint praise. Much of the hoopla about Firebird’s wonderfuliciousness in computer wonkish press is simply, IMO, because ANYTHING that works is worlds and away better than Internet Exploder.

Sure it’s faster than IE. And because it doesn’t have deep, deep unfixable hooks into the OS, it’s inherently more secure. Yes, it does have (a lame, IMO) implementation of tabbed browsing and a few other nearly OK implementations of browsing enhancements.

BUT, it’s so damned hard to get it to look and work like I like. In fact, I have yet to discover a way to get some of the toolbar/menu features to work like I want/prefer. And the single most significant advance in browsing ease of use, mouse gestures? It doesn’t come built in! You have to choose among competing plugins to install after the fact. Dumb. “Add bookmark here”? Another plugin! Etc.

Why features that ought to be built in have to be downloaded separately, instead of being enabled/disabled within the browser itself, is a puzzle and an irritant to me.

And one really annoying “feature”—one that apparently cannot be fixed even with one of those annoying plugins: some sites that display line wrap fine even in Internet Exploder do NOT line wrap in Firebird. This is a real pain when changing text/display size on the fly (another thing Firebird doesn’t do any better than the lame Internet Exploder implementation).

In contrast, Opera, which has remained my primary web browser for some time, has mouse gestures, mouse wheel text resizing from 10% to 1000%, (which works well with line wrapping), and all those other features mentioned above (and more) built in. And it’s faster loading pages. AND I can put toolbars and menu bars any damned where I want. And using CSS is a snap, and…

Yeh. So, I use Firebird so I can be familiar with it. I use Internet Exploder when a site I absolutely HAVE to use has been put together by people who are so rude and stupid that they refuse to use standards-compliant html/xml coding and require IE (and I invariably send them emails about it until either they change their site or I can find a site that’ll let me do without their crap).

So, my take is that Firebird is mostly OK, especially when compared to the Lousy Browser, Internet Exploder. It does have popup blocking similar to Opera’s and a few other nice enhancements, and if you don’t mind just clunking along without the real browsing enhancements available (with Firebird) only through installing plugins, it’s pretty much Just Good Enough for now.

As to email clients… that’s another story. In spite of some feature lacks, I’m becoming sold on Mozilla’s Thunderbird email software as opposed to Outlook Express. Yes, Outlook Express is a more feature-rich free email software, but not by much. And the built-in junk mail handling in T-bird is nice, although a little quirky. In fact, the whole app is a little quirky, but still works well and is more secure by design than Outlook Express. T-bird’s definitely worth a look, IMO

Back to regularly scheduled snark in later posts.

Thanks to Betsy Newmark for the link to this article about a new feature exhibit at the National Archives. Wow. All that seems to be missing from this “Archives’ Magical History Tour” is sKerry’s magic hat. (But then, it’s a little hard to include a fantasy object in a history exhibit… or ought to be.)

BTW, if you haven’t bookmarked Betsy’s Page just do it. Right now.

Whizbang has a thread going on who the USA ought to send to Arafat’s funeral. Some good suggestions. Personally, I’d combine a few of them and send Michael Moore-on, the Clintoons and Djimmi Carter. It might be too much to hope that Moore-on would like to show “solidarity” with the PLO and go dressed as a suicide bomber… (“Hey! Is that Osama in the Moore-on fat suit?”) Still, sending Moore-on, Carter and the Clintoons to a send-off for a sorry sack of… feces is kinda like sending coals to Newcastle, isn’t it?

I have an idea. Let’s all show our “respect” for Arafat by setting aside a moment to take a dump during his funeral.

Nah. Too respectful. I’d hate to have that negative association formed with good, clean feces.

Update: Lileks has this to say (among other things) about Arafat’s death:

“I am content to know he is not in Hell. Nope. Arafat did not go to Hell. He boards the ferry, yes; he makes it halfway across the River Styx, yes. Then the ferry blows up. Ten times a day for eternity. For a start.”

Well, maybe. A little too mild, IMO, but maybe a start. Perhaps a fitting torment would be bathing with Hitler. Not that the Hitler part would be a problem for Arafat, but think of the torment of forcing a piece of filth like that to bathe at all… In fact, it’s almost a certainty that they each would be filthier as a result…

Well, well. President Bush’s re-election certainly is the gift that keeps on giving…

Vincent D’Onofrio has held a special place in my regard ever since I first saw him act. (D’Onofrio is the annoying twitch on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and the chief reason why I have been unable to watch even one entire episode of that show.) He gives me a rash and makes me feel like hurling. I constantly expect to see him hauled off in a straight jacket in the next scene. When he isn’t, I change the channel in disgust.

Well, thank you President Bush. See this, from today’s NYPost

November 11, 2004 — VINCENT D’Onofrio, the star of “Law & Order: Criminal Intent,” passed out while shooting the hit TV series yesterday morning — prompting insiders to gossip that the actor is “losing it.”

“Ever since John Kerry lost the election, [D’Onofrio] has lost his [bleep,]” said our on-set insider.

“He has been getting into fistfights with people, and when he passed out today, we all thought he was faking it. But then he insisted they call 911.”

[Let me get my head around this: he passed out and asked them to call 911? Yeh, well… Conversational English isn’t necessarily meant to convey meaningful information anymore, now is it?]

Some are speculating that he may not be long for the show… Good ridance to bad acting, I say. (Unless, as I have long suspected about him from past roles, the twitchy freak he plays on the show isn’t acting at all… )

Maybe the show’s producers can replace him with a role/actor who can actually add something to the show without turning my stomach.

An alternative might be to doublecheck his medications. (Thorazine, anyone? Whatever. His dosage definitely needs to be doubled.)

Neither I nor any current living member of my family was alive at the time, but “11/11/11” still evokes powerful “ghost” memories… memories I’ll never have except as ghosts of memories shared with me over the years by people who were living when WWI ended.

“Armistice Day” it was known as for years; in more recent years, Veterans Day.

Stop a moment today to remember those who have paid the price for the freedom afforded by our society. And stop also, if you would, and pray for those paying the price, today, for your safety and for the predervation of that freedom.

The question “Why study history?” finds a ready answer on an almost daily basis on Jerry Pournelle’s site. An example, built from one of the most fascinating periods of European history, the Thirty Years War:

“… the world is in much the same condition now as it was during the Thirty Years War. Calvinists in that time used the notion of Sovereignty to imprison or execute people like Grotius who believed in free expression. Sovereignty allowed repressive regimes, and gave them a legal status, which both Catholics and Protestants were quick to make use of. The year 1648 is one of those dates to remember: not only did the Treaty of Westphalia change Europe forever (one of Hitler’s avowed goals was to reverse that treaty) but the English killed their king and brought in Puritan rule to abolish Christmas and make Merrie England somber and pure. (Charles I was executed in January of what we now consider the year 1649, but in those times the year did not end on 31 December).

The world is now larger than Europe, and the United Nations isn’t united as the Papacy had been. There is no universal agreement on anything including the status of women. The United States has explicitly repudiated the notion of sovereignty as regards nations that sponsor terrorism and harbor terrorist enemies of the West. The United Nations doesn’t recognize that right.”

Just read the whole thing.

Besides evoking Gustavus Adolphus, one of the most fascinating and frustrating, truly pivotal persons of European history—and a good argument for the “great man” view of history, too—the model Pournelle extracts and applies to current events is provocative at the very least.

Well, Carol, you’re a better person than I am:

“Yasser Arafat is dead. May God have mercy on his soul. And now, perhaps in time, there will be a chance peace for long-suffering Palestinians and Israelis.”–Carol Platt Liebau

Yes, of course. And the sentiment is echoed throughout the blogoshere, but more common reactions from my bookmarked sites are found here, and here and here. I am particularly drawn to Jay Tea’s comment,

“Good riddance to bad rubbish

Yassir Arafat: requiescat in feces.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Ad aeternam.”

Yeh, maybe it’s a tad small of me, but why no street parties in the US of A last night, such as the Palestinians held celebrating 9/11?

Maybe the real “street partiy” is being held here. By real men.

Well, now at least, more and more terrorist scum is finding out what it means to “dance with the devil” thanks to coalition forces in Iraq.

“U.S. Marines said American forces had taken control Wednesday of 70 percent of Fallujah in the third day of a major offensive to retake the insurgent stronghold. Major Francis Piccoli, of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said enemy fighters were bottled up in a strip of the city flanking the major east-west highway that splits Fallujah. Army and Marine units had pushed south to the highway overnight, Piccoli said.”–Bakersfield Californian

(h.t. Belmont Club—where you should go to get your news on Iraq/the Fallujah push. A good clearinghouse of maps/photos of the action.)

Hmmm… some have proposed that the pull out from Fallujah last Spring was an engraved invitation for terrorists to consider Fallujah a safe haven, so as to gather as many as possible to a central “roach motel” where many (and the toll is mounting hugely) will NOT be checking out.

It’d be nice if the Israelis could consider Arafat’s entombment seremony to be a similar ingathering…

Oh. Well. At least he’s dancing with the devil, now.

“Yassir Arafat: requiescat in feces.”

Just a short note…

John Ashcroft’s resignation brings to mind some of the LLMB anti-christian bigotry of the LLMB, such as Anthony Lewis of the NYT and his comment, “…certainty is the enemy of decency and humanity in people who are sure they are right, like Osama bin Laden and John Ashcroft.”

Hmmm, I have wondered what Lewis and his ilk would say if faced with comments built around “people like John Kerry and Bennedict Arnold”? Or “Anthony Lewis and Hermann Goebels”? (Of course, the problem with addressing the LLMB with valid similes is that they can’t see the difference between their fallacious ad hominem attacks and valid comparisons…

🙂

This comment in response to “Clowns to the Left of Me…” is typical of the experiences many have with the LLMB:

“…I have been treated like an idiot because I do not fold to the LLMB ideals. When I tried to point out that it is interesting that those on the extreme left cast those on the other side as ignorant as a part of a comment about how politics tends to polarize people- I did not receive a positive response… Guess it goes to show me that I cannot expect to have a rational conversation with LLMBs… “

The LLMB and the MMPA are generally composed of people with the intelligence to know better than to think that a closed mind is a smart thing. That they choose to close their minds to facts and reasoned argument is proof that intelligence and stupidity can coexist quite happily in the same person. In fact, their stupidity might easily be defined as willfully choosing to underperform intellectually.