Month: September 2006

As a society/people/nation? Answer: apparently General Mills makes money off this crap:

‘Nuff said.

Report Critical of Training of Teachers.

MQ starts with the lede:

Most American teachers are trained in university programs with low admission and graduation standards, and with faculty members and courses that are often unimpressive and disconnected from what takes place in elementary and secondary schools, according to a study released yesterday.

Some education departments and schools should be shut down and others need vast improvement, said the report, “Educating School Teachers,” released by the Education Schools Project, a research group.

Well, duh. Anyone with more than two active brain cells knows that. If the “education system” in America were a person, it’d need another neuron just to make a synapse.

Is there any doubt that many (perhaps tending toward most) Feddle Gummint judges have their brains surgically removed before taking the bench?

Exhibit number (many–larger than I have time to type, maybe a googleplex squared):

US federal judge declares boating illegal in all US navigable waters.

Also evidence that jackasses don’t like boats, I would guess.

This example of anarcho-tyranny provided by Roland Dobbins

(…and wish I’d never learned…)

Did you know that in order to become Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had to have his balls surgically removed (leaving him, I suppose, intestate)?

True. At least that’s the only explanation I can come up with for this:

Pope Expresses ‘Deep Respect’ for Islam

(h.t. to Lovely Daughter for the link to the story.)

Note: Yeh, I know this is up kinda late. Server problems at fatcow’s end this ayem. And I have no idea when they fixed it since I’ve been out for the past four hours… so here’s Wednesday’s OTA post

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Now, the roundup.

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Tired of BSODs and such? Don’t spend a fortune buying one of the new INTEL Macs for the Unix-core OSX. Try out Puppy Linux or Ubuntu. I just put Puppy Linux on an OLD 266Mhz comp with a 2gig HD and only 64MB of RAM last night. Ran like The Flash. Minor configs (which the connection wizard walks anyone, even of the “Aunt Tilly” kind) and on the internet and cruising with no problem. I use two other “flavors” of Linux—one is Ubuntu, another is a stripped down Slackware with command line-only for use as a firewall—on a couple of other computers and haven’t had an issue with them yet. Recommended. Oh, and the newest Puppy Linux distro will fit on a “credit card” CD and boot as a live session, so you don’t even have to actually install it if you don’t want to.

Nice.

On a tip from STACLU, I had a chuckle when I read about the ACLU being sued for invasion of privacy and defamation. Rich. The sanctimonious, pusillanimous, hypocritical terrorist-loving bastards… May 1,000 flying camels deposit turds in their soup.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the DLC has had its tax-exempt status revoked. Oh, dear. What will they do for slush funds now? (Yeh, like that’ll make a difference.)

A little over a week after observing rememberance of 9/11, Edward Feser discusses why so many dumbasses still cling to idiotic conspiracy theories about the event. Worth a read.

Bou laments bureaucratic nonsense. (Remember: medical privacy laws and regulations are NOT in existance for the reasons they say; they are there for two primary purposes: to protect the doctors and to make medical care more expensive and inconvenient. *heh*)

Lady Diane has a roundup of a different sort. Why, she even mentions necktie parties in America’s Third World County. (I’ll have to see that Dr. Tarr and Mr. Fether send her an engraved invitation to the next one… ;-))

Don Surber notes something I take as another good reason for the Fair Tax (cos it’s FAIR, that’s why… *sheesh*)

Kat told me to feel free to post at Cathouse Chat while she and her family are in Hawaii, but I’ve been enjoying her Hawaii posts too much to break up the flow (although, yeh, one did sneak in… ). Here’s one; check out at least a few of the others (including the video tour of their timeshare). Have a great time, Kat! Keep those “cards n letters” comin’!

Well, I did say a “mini-roundup” so that’s all for now.

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Everything that is must have some sort of raison d’être, mustn’t it? Otherwise, what’s the point? Now, it doesn’t have to be a good purpose or even a notably sensible one, but everything MUST have some sort of reason for its existence.

I think I may have discovered the raison d’être for SPAM. Consider for a moment: how many people are going to be positively influenced by unasked for email or blog comments/tbs clogging inboxes (or moderation queues) touting pr0n, “male enhancement” products, get rich quick schemes, Nigerian bank accounts or any of the other dumbass pitches?

OK, we know from the evidence that there are plenty of folks who are dumber than a bag of hammers, cos SPAMmers wouldn’t keep on spending their money, time and other resources sending out such massive floods of junk for no return at all, now would they? So maybe that is the most obvious reason for SPAM: there are enough genuinely stupid people—as in fewer active brain cells than a head of cabbage—to keep SPAMmers awash in the cash they suck from such idiots.

But is there a higher purpose that SPAM serves (I mean besides the lofty purpose of royally pi$$ing me off–a worthy end in and of itself, some might say)?

Well, yes, of course there is. I refer you to my previous comment about SPAMmers sucking $$ off stupid people and my post earlier today about how stupidity ought to exact a price. The more $$ SPAMmers (or any scammers for that matter) can suck off stupid people, the less stupid people have to spend. In a best case scenario, this could result in some stupid people not having enough $$ left for their grocery bill, and being really stupid, they might, just might, be too stupid to find someone to rescue them.

With any luck at all, SPAMmers could be helping stupid people kill themselves off.

But that’s stretching our luck a lil too far, I fear.

*sigh*

Oh, well. For a brief instant there, I thought I was onto something…

Asking Ferdy for comment…

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Some links to interesting (and some infuriating) posts/articles/pages I have stumbled across in the last few days:

Flying “car” (not really, but sorta-semi-almost).

Mother jailed for homeschooling. In Germany, but who can doubt educrats and at least some politicians in this country don’t harbor similar desires?

UPDATE: a followup from a reader:

“This is the companion article to the one you linked”:

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/139

Stücher called upon all Christian parents in Germany to withdraw their children from the public schools which, he says, have fallen into the hands of “neomarxist activists propagating atheist humanism, hedonism, pluralism and materialism.”

Well, of course they have. Just as they have in these sorta United States.

The Age of Horrorism. I don’t fully agree with Martin Amis’ points, but the article’s worth a read. 5-parter.

Rick does an alleyoop with the pass from the Pope, all over poor lil Muzzies’ hurt feelings cos of Benedict’s comments… (What a fortuitous juxtaposition: Benedict=good words. Pope speaks truth and Muslims are upset… par for the course.)

And in the same vein, Abbagav looks at current events and includes this lil aside,

Sure, the Pope has sent a message that religion and violence don’t mix, and been greeted with an Islamic response not unlike the retort one would expect from Moe if Curly complained he was too violent — pick two fingers.

And…

Kris lends more perspective on the “Religion of Peace” (MHWA).

UPDATE #2: The Random Yak voices the definitive post on the Pope’s remarks and the tantrums thrown by the follwers of The Butcher of Medina.

And…

“Religion of Peace” MHWH…

And, while we’re (very rightly) roasting Muslims, how about a couple from Woody? Here and here. (It’s the SECOND link on that last one that lampoons the followers of the Butcher of Medina. The first link–in the second “here”–is NSFW.)

And…

CrusadeS! (WTG, Angel. :-))

Linknzona: The President’s Little Red Book for Illegal Immigration. Must-read.

“Right to know (nothing)”? Dan Rhiel has the Rhiel deal…

And lastly, for those with a desire for a lil light macabre play, here’s the latest Dead Guy on the Sidebar.

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Woman Pays $14,000 to Lease Rotary Dial Phone

The part that gets to me is the comment by a family member:

Strogen’s family is outraged by AT&T’s actions. Strogen’s granddaughter, Barb Gordon said “It’s taking advantage of the elderly. People our age wouldn’t even consider leasing a telephone.” Gordon also expressed her anger and pointed out the obvious that “If my own grandmother was doing it, how many other people are?”

“Taking advantage of the elderly”? How long has it been since everyone who’s paid any attention at all (and has more than two active brain cells) has known that leasing rotary phones from Ma bell is unnecesasary? Sure, the woman’s in her 80s now, but she was only in her 50s or 60s when such information became common knowledge. Anyone stupid enough to pay a $10/month rental/lease fee for a piece of trowaway technology really ought to be paying that money as a fine for stupidity.

But no, our society wants to put bumper guards on life, now… and that’s making us ever more stupid and incompetent. In our economy of abundance and our society of cocooned ease, we are breeding whole generations of incompetent, lazy nincompoops and whimps (or over-reacting hyper jackasses). As a small example, the other day a young nephew of mine asked about some DOS commands so he could play around on an old computer his family had aquired. Almost stumped me. Windows (and Linux, for that matter) are so graphically-oriented, so easy, that I rarely use DOS commands any more, rarely write batch files, rarely even see the command line.

Enstupiating ease. That’s a critical danger to our society. That and cocooning, bumper-guarding children throughout childhood and adolescence to the extent that they never grow up to be really competent adults but sheeple who always need someone else to take care of them, instruct them in how to do things. Incompetent at learning or doing nearly anything on their own.

Filled with an always present undercurrent of fear.

Take a “discussion” I’m having elsewhere with a gal who prides herself on being a swimming inbstructor (for nine whole years! woo-hoo!). Her claim to expertise? She is the ONLY swimming instructor she knows or has even heard of who can teach someone the breast stroke in half an hour!

Gime a break! When I was eight, I saw someone doing a breast stroke in the public pool we frequented. I thought it was cool, so I did it too. (And yeh, if my lifesaving and WSI instructors years later are to be believed, I apparently did it right.) A few minutes later, I “taught” my six-year-old brother the breaststroke. How? “Hey! look what I can do!” “I can do that too!” “Show me.” So he did. Simply by copying me.

Big stinking deal.

But no, not today. Today, apparently it takes instruction by a professional for today’s incompetent whimpy kids to learn an idiot-proof breast stroke. And it takes (apparently) 30 whole minutes to do so. Gee, people really are getting stupider by the minute. Growing up, I never met anyone (who already knew how to keep their head in the water) who couldn’t pick up the breast strooke in under 5 minutes, “instructed” or not.

And so it goes. “Education professionals” (filling positions that formerly would have been filled by teachers) are talking (again) about how training wheel teaching methods (oh! That’s another experience! I never knew there were such things as “training wheels” as a kid. Just got put on a bike and pushed off… ) can cripple students’ intellectual development.

Yeh, it’s all talk.

*sigh*

As I’ve said countless times on my own blog, I am not a very political animal. I have my opinions on things of a political nature but I rarely express them, and I very seldom post on anything political because I don’t feel as if I’m well enough informed on particular issues. I do have an opinion on whether or not there should be a fence along the border between Mexico and the States, and it has always seemed like a very good idea to me.

Living in Texas I see a lot of illegals and every time I see someone that’s clearly Hispanic in front of me in the grocery store, paying for their food with a LoneStar Card (plastic food stamps) or presenting a WIC form, I have to wonder how much of that is going to sustain illegal cousins, brothers, aunts, uncles, etc. I’m not naive enough to think that the only nationality that can use our Southern borders as a crossing is Mexican, but let’s be honest here for a minute; aren’t they the main concern?

I posted some time ago about Governor Rick Perry’s “Virtual Border Watch Program” and I thought that too was a good idea.

* With voluntary participation of private landowners, Texas will use $5 million to begin placing hundreds of surveillance cameras along criminal hotspots and common routes used to enter this country. Perry said the cameras will cover vast stretches of farm and ranchland located directly on the border where criminal activity is known to occur, and “not the neighborhoods where families will continue to enjoy their privacy.”

“Landowners will be able to monitor and defend their property from those who might endanger their families. We will make the video feed available to state, local and federal law enforcement agencies so they can respond swiftly and appropriately,” Perry said. “And we will post this video on the Internet – in real time – so that concerned Americans can help protect our nation through online neighborhood watch programs.”

The video will be available 24 hours a day and cameras will be equipped with night vision capabilities. When citizens witness a crime taking place, they will be able to call an 800 number and be routed to the appropriate law enforcement agency.

It just so happens that I have friends who have a 700-acre ranch that also includes a 1/2 mile of river frontage on the Rio Grande. While small by Texas standards, their nearest neighbor is 6 miles away, and the closest town of any size is Presidio where there is a Point of Entry via an International Bridge. Naturally, there is also an Immigration office. This town is approximately 28 miles from my friends ranch, and the other nearby towns are Ruidosa, population 19 and Candelaria, population estimated at 55. They don’t live down there, they’re hoping to retire there though, and they go several times a year to camp out and stay for a week or two at a time. Here is a picture taken on their ranch.

And another-

As you can see it’s very isolated.

I was visiting with these friends a few days ago and the conversation got around to the ranch and when they were going again and as I know the property is right on the border I asked their opinion of building a fence. Below is a quote sent to me via email after I’d asked a few more questions prior to beginning this post.

Candelaria is the last town on Hwy 170 or “river road” as it is known. The population there is a bit bigger I would guess around 30 or so. It is about 20 miles or so after Ruidosa. There is a sign when you get there that “State Maintenance Ends Here”. The dirt road goes on from there to El Paso, about 140 miles I was told, but you ain’t gonna get there unless you have a 4 x 4, extra gas and tires. The dirt road is where I was telling you about the trolleys that go across the river and the religious icons stuff set in small caves along the road. People out there still live in adobe houses and have no phone, lights or other essentials. Our very own 3rd world.

Another interesting fact about Candelaria is the foot bridge from the States to Mexico there (not an authorized crossing). The bridge was paid for with Russian humanitarian aid money! Can you believe that shit…:)

Once you get past the town they couldn’t even get the equipment in there to build the damn fence. Plus all the cattle ranchers on the river from Presidio on would just cut it to allow their cattle to get to the river for water…. it is the desert after all and water is a very scarce resource. A few are lucky enough to have artesian wells but most rely on what rain water they can trap and the river.

As you can tell from that quote they don’t have much faith in a fence doing any good. I asked then what their opinion of the Minutemen was and was told that “Their hearts are in the right place, and they have the right idea, but they’re spread too thin to do a whole lot of good.” So of course I asked what they thought would work. Guards, guards and more guards. An armed border.

One of the reasons they gave me for this was that even if someone saw the illegal crossers climbing or cutting through a fence, say, via Texas Governor Rick Perry’s camera idea, or the Minutemen calling someone, they would be long gone before anyone in authority arrived, particularly in their area where the road is far from straight, two-laned, and often has livestock wandering around. They say that it’s just too desolate to do any good without men on the ground, and then you have the water/rancher/cattle factor to deal with also.

They tell me that at night you can see lights back and forth all night and that while they feel fairly safe during the day, only seeing a few people with bags ready to swim across when they’re down on the riverfront also swimming, that it’s dangerous to be there alone. My friend’s mother recently stated that she wanted to get away, go down there and camp on her own, and they told her absolutely not, no way, even though she’s the best shot they know. There are too many drug runners mixed in with illegal wannabes, and even though there’s the INS station less than 30 miles away in Presidio, that they very seldom see anyone on patrol and we’re only talking here about a very, very small portion of the TEXAS border.

So what’s the solution? To fence or not to fence? Armed guards? It’s a tough one, but I agree, something MUST be done. I think my piranha idea is sounding better all the time.

Cross-posted at “Diane’s Stuff”.

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BTW, that “Ollie, ollie” thing bugged me when I was a kid, cos I knew it was just people who didn’t know how to properly pronounce “All the outs in free!”

*heh*

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