Month: February 2007

Another one of those posts where I celebrate the demise of a few hundred thousand brain cells… semi-random thoughts on the passing scene, beginning with…

Someone reminded me recently of a time many, many years ago when I needed (*ack!*) to read Simone de Bouvier’s “The Second Sex”—an unwitting revelation of her abusive relationship with Jean paul Sartre—for an assigned paper and all the copies I could find in English translation were either too expensive to add to an already strained student’s budget or checked out of all the libraries I could find.

So I read the French version. Couldn’t do that, now, cos too many brain cells have died and been replaced by these incompetent, lazy things I now have. *heh*

Oh. Well. At least I could parse the title of this blogpost correctly. I think.

The Mad pidgeon does better than simply rehash the Marxist source of PC Newspeak in this post. (Yeh, Orwell was a prophet. He just got the year wrong.) Most folks who read here probably know the source of our society’s contemporary totalitarian PC thrust, but The Mad Pidgeon’s presentation is very, very good and worth a read even if the subject is not new to you. Kudos, MP.

*YAWN* Windows Vista’s cloudy outlook? Well, with the cost of the software half (or less!) of the total cost of upgrading, considering the high hardware overhead Vista really requires to access its “coolness factor” and additional DRM disabling of hardware functionality possible, it’s hardly any wonder folks are not stampeding to buy the thing. I know I’ll only have it installed on a new computer, purpose-built for testing and familiarization. And not any time real soon, either.

And what’s with the Apple Quicktime security hole patch? The “new” QT player that’s downloadable at the Apple site is 7.1.3, and after installation, it proudly proclaims there is no newer update. it lies. The patched version is 7.1.3.[some monstrous string of numbers], and a security scan of the computer I attempted to update for the patch reveals it ain’t patched, not at all, at all. Froze that computer attempting to redownload the thing yet again. And that’s a comp that never freezes… until interacting with this Apple sauce.

Apple stinks. Windows sucks dead bunnies through a straw. And Linux, try as it might, is still not quite there for Aunt Tilly’s desktop (but I’m glad to use it on this desktop while Ziggy goes through its first forced reboot in ages… *sigh*).

In England, “Students now required to declare parent’s degrees so they can be discriminated against.” h.t Harry Erwin. ”

Give it up, Nancy; you’re no Tippi Hedron.

The only way to stop digging yourself into a hole is to just stop digging. Seems simple enough, right? I mean, it’s insane to keep on doing the same things the same way when they’ve lost $658 million in one quarter, right? Try to tell that to the NYT. Yeh, I know it was “absorbing a loss” from some papers it aquired, but you’d think they’d know that up front. Where else were they making a profit? Very nearly nowhere, mon frère.

Another passing thought as I consider the William Arkin flap. The jerk is well and truly getting his just deserts in the outpouring of anger at his (disingenuously denied) call to the American military to STFU. Once again, a leftist confirms: “freedom of speech” means only “agree with the left” when spoken by one of the Newspeaking leftists. Read the paragraph that clued me into the fact that Arkin’s piece was intended to shut the troops up, no matter how he disingenuously proclaims his committment to free speech:

I’m all for everyone expressing their opinion, even those who wear the uniform of the United States Army. But I also hope that military commanders took the soldiers aside after the story and explained to them why it wasn’t for them to disapprove of the American people.

*huh*?!? He’s “all for everyone expressing their opinion” BUT military commanders should take “the soldiers aside after the story and [explain] to them why it wasn’t for them to disapprove of the American people.” Ignore for the moment the deceptive framing stating “disapprove of the American people”–where Arkin equates reportage by Mass Media Podpeople to “the American people.” Focus on the complete disavowal of freedom of speech he falsely claims to support in the first sentence with “[explain] to them why it wasn’t for them to disapprove of the American people.” Obviously, to Mr Arkin, “freedom of speech” when applied to military personnel means “freedom from speech”–just another lil lesson in Newspeak from the left.

And consider (it’s not such a wildly unrelated thought as you might at first think :-)):

“The state which separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.”—Thucydides. Fortunately, most of our military are better-educated than the general population, and the officer corps, from the many I have known, better-educated than most college faculties. So, in our society, it’s the civilian population that tends to be dominated by cowardly, as well as poorer, thinking. Chew on that one, “C-” Jean Fraud Kerry.

Listen to, watch, read the “news” dropped on Americans daily–just now and then, if you can’t stand a daily dose of the posturing, primping and pontificating of Mass Media Podpeople. Now, tell me this: does a public that is so easily decieved by such transparent lies and twisting of truth, by tales told (by idiots, full of sound and fury… ) to decieve and manufacture outcomes antithetical to the values of life, liberty, and the pursuit (NOT guarantee) of happiness, does such and easily-decieved populace deserve the republic once left us by the Founders? Does such a populace deserve the “blood and toil and sweat and tears” of generations of patriots including those now serving our country in Iraq and Afganistan?

Obviously the answer is no. But then, if any of us got what we deserved, then we’d all be in a world of hurt… We must simply and humbly Just be glad for those generations of true patriots, including the current generation, and do whatever we can to honor their sacrifice by doing all we can to expose the lies of the Mass Media Podpeople, the politicians *spit* and all their ilk whose goals are to get their own before the country is driven to hell in a handbasket (by them).

---

Trackposted to Right Pundits, Perri Nelson’s Website, Is It Just Me?, The Random Yak, A Blog For All, Adam’s Blog, Right Truth, Maggie’s Notebook, basil’s blog, Shadowscope, Cao’s Blog, The Bullwinkle Blog, Phastidio.net, The Amboy Times, Conservative Thoughts, Pursuing Holiness, 123 Beta, The HILL Chronicles, Faultline USA, Right Celebrity, Woman Honor Thyself, stikNstein… has no mercy, Pirate’s Cove, The Right Nation, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, Renaissance Blogger, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

THIS is an open trackbacks post, open friday, Saturday and Sunday. Link to THIS post and track back. 🙂

If you have a linkfest/open trackback post to promote OR if you simply want to promote a post via the linkfests/open trackback posts others are offering, GO TO LINKFEST HAVEN DELUXE! Just CLICK the link above or the graphic immediately below.

If you want to host your own linkfests but have not yet done so, check out the Open Trackbacks Alliance. The FAQ there is very helpful in understanding linkfests/open trackbacks.

Well, after the ice storm that took America’s Third World County down a coupla weeks ago, I knew winter had well and truly arrived, but yesterday was quiet, constant reminder: all day (and apparently well into and through the night) snow.

So, what about snow?

1. It does not come down silently. The rush of flakes dropping on cover already laid down is an especially interesting sound.

2. The old saw about no two snowflakes being alike? Really? Who’s examined every snowflake? Until someone has done that (a plainly impossible task, since no one’s going back in time to examine all the snowflakes that ever were, let alone last long enough to examine all the snowflakes that ever will be), let’s just take that lil piece of pompous “wisdom” with a grain of salt, OK?

3. But all right, I’ll give the mechanistic folks a bye on the color of snow. Ignore all that white you see (the reflection of nearly every color in the visible spectrum for humans). Snow is really made up of transparent crystals. Snow just looks white to you and me because, despite the fact that snowflakes are transparent crystals, because we can’t see through those transparent crystals. (Making sense yet?)

4. The Boys (our son’s dogs) hate it while it’s coming down but love it once it’s on the ground. Go figure.

5. Some folks like strapping long narrow things on their feet and playing “collect multiple injuries” in semi-controlled falls down long snow-covered mountain faces. Takes all kinds. (X-country skiers are masochists of a different kind. My kind. Once upon a time, that is. “Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away… ” :-))

6. Most Third World County drivers apparently have NO idea how to handle driving on snow (or ice). Seriously. See one coming? Your best bet is to duck for cover. Seriously. *heh* Especially the bubbas who think 4WD trucks (usually with empty beds, for a nice UNeven weight distribution) can just drive full speed ahead on snow laid over ice. Again, takes all kinds.

7. Shoveling snow can too be fun. (Repeat this mantra until your driveway is clear, then repent your lie while warming up with some hot cocoa in a long hot soak.)

8. Kids canNOT leave snow alone. They have to *shudder* play in it! That one fact alone is the separator between childhood and adulthood. *heh* (Note: adults can play in snow, but cannot be compelled by childish urges to do so. Can’t resist the urge? Grow up.)

9. The best thing about snow? When there’s enough of it to give my Wonder Woman a snow day.

10. I can recall the time when “snow ice cream” became a no-no. Yeh, during all the scare about fallout from nuclear bomb testing in the 50s.

11. Fun to watch the tracks of small animals accumulate on an expanse of freshly fallen snow and attempt to decipher them.

12. Snowmen? I don’t need no stinking snowmen. Yeh. yeh, made some with the kids when they were young. Even made a few when I was a kid. BTDT. I’ll probably have to do the same some day with grandchildren, if I can make my old bones do that sort of thing by then. But right now? Frosty can take a hike.

13. TANSTAFL. Snow days have to be made up eventually.

Linked to the Thursday Thirteen Hub and The Trouble With Angels Wednesday OTA and

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson’s Website, Faultline USA, A Blog For All, stikNstein… has no mercy, Right Truth, Big Dog’s Weblog, basil’s blog, Stuck On Stupid, Common Folk Using Common Sense, The Pink Flamingo, The Bullwinkle Blog, Jo’s Cafe, Maggie’s Notebook | Conservative Blog, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.