Halleujah! Vindication! Validation! (And All That Jazz… Sorta)

Taking a break from a more than usually productive day, I stumbled across this:

Have a Messy Desk? Congrats, You’re More Productive

Of course, it’s not quite that simple, or else I’d have a gross yearly product greater than most FIRST world countries… *heh* The “study” semi-cited isn’t a well-controlled study but a competition to discover the messiest desk (and why was I not informed? I’d have won hands down!) in order to use the competition to promote a book, “A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder,” by Eric Abrahamson and David Freedman.

Still, the most productive people I know (excepting myself, of course) have perennially cluttered desks, so despite the “study’s” genesis and design as a promo tool for a book, I think I’ll latch onto it as an excuse for my mess.

Feel free to do the same.


Noted at The Trouble With Angels Wednesday OTA and Trackposted to The Virtuous Republic, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Perri Nelson’s Website, The Random Yak, Big Dog’s Weblog, Maggie’s Notebook, basil’s blog, Shadowscope, Stuck On Stupid, The Amboy Times, The Bullwinkle Blog, Conservative Cat, Pursuing Holiness, Conservative Thoughts, Rightlinx, Faultline USA, stikNstein… has no mercy, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, Overtaken by Events, The Pink Flamingo, Renaissance Blogger, and Dumb Ox Daily News, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Listing to Starboard III

Yeh, yeh, a linkfest. You know what to do. See more below the post.


wyeoakfall.jpg

From last month (Feb 5, 2007), this interview at Frontpage Magazing (h.t. Joanne Dow): The Study of Political Islam

The Center for the Study of Political Islam is a group of scholars who are devoted to the scientific study of the foundational texts of Islam—Koran, Sira (life of Mohammed) and Hadith (traditions of Mohammed). There are two areas to study in Islam, its doctrine and history, or as CSPI sees it—the theory and its results. We study the history to see the practical or experimental results of the doctrine.

It’s a long and relatively info-dense (for net magazine copy) article, but well worth reading.

From The Random Yak: A Modest Proposal…and an OTP (No, no h.t. to Jonathan Swift :-))

Congressmen must henceforth send their children to public school in the districts their constituents live in.

One of several Good Ideas proposed by TRY. May I add, “Mexicans” who proclaim they are proud to be “Mexicans” should be sent home to be real Mexicans, instead of phony ones living here and enjoying the advantages of Americans while playing at being “Mexicans”.

While I’m touching that base, let me direct your attention to NumbersUSA and IllegalAliens.US. Get some facts to counter politicians’ lies and then get off your duffs and harass your congresscritters, folks!

Michael J. Totten writes (h.t. Joanne Dow)about the one unalloyed success from the Iraq War: Iraqi Kurdistan:

Sunni Arabs were once the oppressors of Kurds. Now they are reduced to the same low status as migrant Mexican workers in the United States.

Well, Michael, there is a significant difference between Mexican migrant workers in the U.S. and Sunni Arab workers in Iraqi Kurdistan: the Kurds require the Sunnis who want to enter Kurdish controlled areas to at least be cleared by internal security (as Michael does note earlier), unlike the current U.S. government policy of surrender to invading hordes…

That’s all for now. happy clicking!


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Sadly, I am surprised by this outcome/Linkfest

In today’s society or ever more oppressive and intrusive “law enforcement” and ever more nonsensical and oppressive judicial activism, I was pleasantly surprised to read this:

Homeowner had ‘a right to resist’

SARASOTA — John Coffin won’t spend any more time in jail for beating up two sheriff’s deputies inside his house, striking one in the head with a Taser gun he took from the other.

Circuit Judge Rick De Furia said at Coffin’s trial Tuesday that he doesn’t condone the violence against the deputies.

But Coffin, 56, had a right to defend his family and property because the deputies had no right to be in Coffin’s house in the first place, De Furia said.

Well, knock me over with a feather. Someone–a judge, no less! In Florida!–actually taking the side of what’s right against police abuse of power. Maybe there is a small ray of hope that the trend of anarcho-tyranny (the prime example of which is “law enforcement” and judges making criminals of any citizen they choose, damn what’s right) might abate.

But then there’s Congress. *sigh*

h.t. Chaos Manor Musings


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Mending Walls: Reality-Based Fantasies

One of the issues threatening our society is manifested in the “reality-based community’s” fantastic belief set and the chilling effect on rational thought that such a belief set imposes as its psychotic delusions are presented as inarguable fact.

Consider: when those who argue against the fantasies of global warmists are labeled as “global warming deniers” and are threatened, compared to Holocaust deniers, censored, etc.; when rational (let alone highly emotional, though still reasonable, rhetoric) arguments for sane immigration policy and border control are shouted down as racist or argued against with outright lies (“jobs Americans won’t do”–President Bush, et al); when the “flying Imams” claims of racism and religious oppression are even considered or given more than an inch of ink, one time, then we are in serious trouble, because all of these are examples of irrational behavior, disconnected from reality.

Can a society that is dominated by psychotics* long survive? When reality-based fantasists claim to “speak truth to power” what they are doing is attempting to impose their loss of contact with reality on others.

Reality: an order of magnitude more real scientists do NOT believe there is any compelling evidence of anthropogenic global warming. It is these people who want serious research, unhindered by AGW dogmatism, into the causes (and effects!) of climate change. IOW, real scientists haven’t stopped asking serious questions. The now infamous (should be famous, but AGW fanatics are spinning their fantasy machine overtime to carp about it) British documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle might be a good place for uninformed minds to start a search for honesty in this area.

As to sane immigration policy, well anyone not caught up in fantasyland can easily see that a country that doesn’t defend its borders is soon invaded and conquered. See some of the posts here at twc under the “Guard the Borders” topic, visit NumbersUSA or watch the Immigration Gumballs video by Roy Beck. For that matter, for those who think amnesty for illegal aliens is a way to stem the tide of hordes of alien invaders, just consider what message legalizing rape would send to potential rapists.

And for the idiocy of listening to CAIR or giving the “flying imams” claims of racial or religious oppression any consideration whatsoever, let me simply refer you to this.


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*psychosis: “a severe mental disorder, with or without organic damage, characterized by derangement of personality and loss of contact with reality and causing deterioration of normal social functioning.”

Through the Looking Glass: More Linux GUI Stuff

I think I’m going to like Looking Glass as a GUI front end for Ubuntu, but…

…NOT on the Ubuntu box I initially tried it out on. OK, here’s the deal: Looking Glass is a Linux desktop environment GUI that depends on LOTS of Java. In fact, just installing the thing requires three of four signoffs on Sun Java development licenses. IOW, there’s a pretty high overhead. Maybe not as high as with “Vista Oo-La-La” version *heh* but much steeper hardware requirements than the box I tried it out on. OK, so it was a relatively “old” box–1.3Ghz Intel, 384MB RAM and only a 16MB vidcard. Pretty low hardware specs.

But keep in mind, those “low” hardware specs are plenty good enough to drive Ubuntu 6.10 (Well, Xubuntu, Ubuntu using an Xfce Desktop environment, which is less hardware-demanding than straight Ubuntu using either GNOME or KDE), almost blazingly fast. And the Xfce desktop environment has some pretty snazzy visuals, easily matching or exceeding the best GUI look/feel that WinXP can offer and as nice as Apple OSX desktops I’ve seen.

But if someone wants to have the cool GUI look and feel of the most expensive, hardware-demanding new Windows Vista, without donning the Windows Vista straightjacket, the Looking Glass environment running on your favorite Linux looks like the way to go. IF your box has the hardware to run it. The box I initially tried it out on loaded the environment nicely, and the 3D graphics, neato-keano 3D file folders, desktop navigation, transparent folders, menus, etc., all displayed, but navigating/using those elements was painfully slow.

However… on an old, old PIII-500 with 512MB RAM and a 64MB vidcard, running plain old Ubuntu, Looking Glass was usable. Unfortunately, that PC is a workhorse Win2K box I use for most of my Windows testing, service, etc., so I don’t often have it running Linux (Although I have thought of slapping another IDE controller in it along with another DASD to use in a multiboot config).

But the fact that Looking Glass is usable on a system with such low hardware specs tells me that just a little more memory and a better vidcard (with the 64MB vidcard, LG is usable, but I suspect more video memory would be better) would be about all it’d take to give me all the “Gee-whiz” factor of Windows Vista Premium desktops I’ve played with, without having to have a GB or more of memory and a whopping huge frypan of a vidcard.

Advantage: Linux. 🙂


Expanding the borders of “What do you call a country… “

…that refuses to defend its borders?

Conquered.

Remember this?

upsidedown-L.jpg

Last year, at third world county, I posted about my disgust with such disrespect for the American flag and the flying of the Mexican flag on American soil in superior position to the American flag… by people who are being freely “taught” in American schools but who lend their allegiance to the flag of another land. In that post, I showed pictures of the Mexican flag rudely disrespected with the argument that such disrespect was the proper display of such a flag on American soil.

Imagine the response… po’ widdle babies couldn’t take what they so freely dish out.

Oh, I didn’t mind the comments stating outright (falsely) that I am a “hater” a “racist” because I gave tit for tat, simply handing back on a virtual platter a mild form of the disrespect shown on our own soil by those who should go home, if that’s where their allegiance lies.

After all, I expected no less from people who support the unlawful invasion of another country, who support as just, right and good the idea that committing felonies left and right (identity theft, forging of dcuments in order to commit further crimes, etc.) is a positive good, that disrespect of the flag of a land they live in and whose society feeds and clothes and otherwise cares for them in a way their own does not is right and proper, etc.

No, I expected that. But what continues to exasperate me is that all too many of our congresscritters and our president continue to seek to surrender our country to those who say, as one commenter on that post said,

Abajo la bandera de estados unidos!!!!!!!!


(“Down with the flag of the United States”–except, of course, the commenter refused to even give the minimal respect of capitalizing the name of this country in spanish. *heh*)

It seems I recall someone wiser than our current government officials and functionaries saying something different to their “oppress those who would enforce our borders” attitude.

“The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.”– George Washington (Address to the Members of the Volunteer Association of Ireland, 2 December 1783)

Key: “…a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.”

No one, NO ONE who invades our country, illegally, immorally, unethically jumping line ahead of those righteous immigrants who patiently wait in line to enter legally can possibly, ever, under ANY circumstance meet that bare minimum qualification wisely noted by George Washington: “decency and propriety of conduct”.

That our congresscritters seek to subvert any enforcement of our borders (link to “Turban” Durban’s bill that has bi-partisan support–just one example of many efforts) with attempts to give amnesty to hordes of invaders and President Bush promises amnesty to Mexico for Mexican invaders are “small” signs that our nation’s leadership has decided to sink the boat.

Listen again to another blast from the past that shows greater wisdom–heck, my son’s dogs show greater wisdom in dealing with invaders!–than our elected leaders today:

“…we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here does in good faith become an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with every one else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed or birthplace or origin. But this is predicated upon the man’s becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American.

“If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn’t doing his part as an American.

“We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile. We have room for but one language here and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, and American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house; and we have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people.”–Theodore Roosevelt, 1907

That our elected leadership cannot (or more probably will not, as a matter of short-sighted greed) hold onto the simple core idea that a country that will not defend its borders is doomed to fall is chilling.

Do NOT accept the lies that the invaders are only here “doing jobs Americans won’t do” or that most of them are good citizen material (what part of “illegal alien” do such argumkents ignore, hmmm?). Don’t accept the idea that legalizing rape is the way to stop rapists. Well, that’s the same argument as those who say granting amnesty to those who violate U.S. soveriegnty is the way to stop an alien invasion. Explore options for influencing your congresscritters, such as calling, writing and faxing their offices, using resouurces such as NumbersUSA or even joining the Guard the Borders Blogburst. Your children’s children will thank you.


Trackposted to The Pink Flamingo, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, sissunchi, stikNstein… has no mercy, Maggie’s Notebook, Jo’s Cafe, and The World According to Carl, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Oh, that other Celtic saint…

In March, I usually observe Saint David’s Day (March 1) and perhaps two other Celtic saints’ days (Lily, David’s protégé and Non, David’s mother), but I generally avoid the often rowdy–or even bawdy–observances that do not honor the patron saint of Ireland so much as serve as excuses for behavior best left un-acted-out…

*sigh*

So, call me a wet blanket. I don’t care. Most of the folks partying down in dishonor of Patrick probably also subliterately mis-pronounce “Celtic” with a soft “c” instead of properly as “Keltic” (cos the word itself likely isn’t of “Celtic” origin but Greek, “keltoi” *heh*). Truth be known, folks using the soft “c” are simply aping the rude, subliterate French who imported the word (badly) into their tongue as “celtique”–and so imposed the poor French soft “c” sound upon it.

A pox on them all, I say.


Trackposted to The Virtuous Republic, Right Celebrity, Woman Honor Thyself, 123beta, , basil’s blog, The World According to Carl, The Pink Flamingo, Stuck On Stupid, and The Amboy Times, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Weekend OTA/What do you call a country with no borders?

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What do you call a country that doesn’t defend its borders?

Conquered.

And that, of course, is what an inordinate number of congresscritters and our president are working toward.

*sigh*

Computers ‘n’ Music

Yeh, more compgeeky stuff, with a twist.

*sigh*

One piece of software is a major stumbling block to a complete migration of all the twc central computers I use to Linux. Yeh, I know it’s handy to have some Windoze boxes so I can provide support for Windows users, but I can always figure that stuff out if I get a tad rusty. But a replacement for Encore, the only music transcription software that has really met my needs for years is hard to come by on the Linux platform.

Use Wine and Encore under Linux? No joy. And with the hundreds of scores I have saved on floppy and CD (as well as more than a few hard drives on various machines and in storage cases) scored in Encore, I’ll have to keep a machine that reads ’em at least.

But if I could find a music transcription software that works even nearly as well as Encore (or even its baby brother, MusicTime) that ran natively or not in Linux, I’d be at least moderately happy–save the one old Windows box for reading old Encore scores and saving them as midi files to import or something.

No joy there, either. The closest I can find is Rosegarden, which is really sequencing software with a transcription module. And how can I say it gently? The transcription module sucks dead bunnies through a straw compared with Encore.

First, I never liked Finale because it was so extremely resource intensive using it was, “Make score change. Wait. Go build ark. Load animals. Wait out flood. Offload animals. Make pot of coffee and some coffee cake and invite folks over for a klatch. Return to computer. Wait for changes to take effect… ” etc. Of course, that was using Finale on old 286, 386 and 486 computers, but even then, MusicTime and Encore worked just hunky dory, lickety-split, smoothe as silk on that older technology… and “intuitively” for a guy who grew up “hearing” the printed page.

All the reasons I didn’t like Finale on a 286 are there in spades in Rosegarden on a (admitedly “old”) 1.3Ghz computer with 512MB RAM running Xubuntu Linux 6.10. I don’t get it. The interface is obscurantist. Importing a midi file takes about the kind of time Finale did to change a rest on an old 286 (translation: forever. I’ve been waiting 20 minutes for the final presentation of a transcription page from a very short [16 measures] imported midi file!). And what it shows so far is a midi file “translated” into a hodgepodge of notes in tenor clef! *sheesh!* Can’t even split the thing and give me a G and F clef with notes in their appropriate places, as even the cheapo MusicTime can do (lickety split) under Windows.

And the score window is soooo cluttered!

*sigh*

Not good. Not good at all, at all.

I may well have to build a WinXP Pro box JUST to keep a relatively up-to-date Encore install alive.

Oh. Well.

Linux: almost there. Specialty apps like music transcription? Not so much.

“It’s just software”

I know it looks like I have computers on my brain this week, and, well, I do. But this lil post also hints at some broader societal issues. If you play guitar, you may be familiar with the name Sterling Ball. He’s CEO of Ernie Ball, which arguably makes some of the best guitar strings out there. Well, in a (sorta) recent interview–OK, 2003–on CNet News, he emphasizes something I’ve been saying for some time (yeh, yeh: I’m not alone; a lot of folks have been saying things like this):

I think it’s great for me to be a technology influence. It shows how ridiculous it is that I can get press because I switched to OpenOffice. And the reason why is because the myth has been built so big that you can’t survive without Microsoft, so that somebody who does get by without Microsoft is a story.

It’s just software. You have to figure out what you need to do within your organization and then get the right stuff for that. And we’re not a backwards organization. We’re progressive; we’ve won communications and design awards…The fact that I’m not sending my e-mail through Outlook doesn’t hinder us. It’s just kind of funny. I’m speaking to a standing-room-only audience at a major technology show because I use a different piece of software–that’s hysterical.

It’s about choice. It’s about appropriate technology. Finding and using what you need instead of what some domputer maker or software publisher wants you to buy. I touched on one aspect of this earlier in *Whew!* The faster I go, the behinder I get…, although there I concentrated on appropriate level hardware and using things that “just work” to get tasks done.

Unfortunately, we seem to be a society that has largely lost sight of the idea of approproate technology to get done what we need to do and have become a society that needs lots of bells and whistles and snap and sizzle… even if we don’t need ’em, rarely (if ever) use ’em and all the extras just bog us down and make things harder to do…

I get calls all the time that reflect another statement by Ball,

If you put a bunch of stuff on people’s desktops they don’t need to do their job, chances are they’re going to use it. I don’t have that problem. If all you need is word processing, that’s all you’re going to have on your desktop, a word processor. It’s not going to have Paint or PowerPoint. I tell you what, our hits to eBay went down greatly when not everybody had a Web browser. For somebody whose job is filling out forms all day, invoicing and exporting, why do they need a Web browser? The idea that if you have 2,000 terminals they all have to have a Web browser, that’s crazy. It just creates distractions.

And problems. Think of all the lost productivity from workers cruising the web when they have, you know, WORK to do. And the sites they visit can in some cases cause company liability, too. Not good.

What Ball did was step back and look at what his company needed, not what some computer manufacturer or software publisher wanted to sell him. Makes sense.

And it makes sense for home computer users, too. Figure out what you want to do with your computer. Look fr a hardware/OS/software combo that will allow you to do it and have some flexibility built in to grow. Buy that, not what some guy in a metaphorical polyester leisure suit from some hardware or software company wants you to buy, no matter how slick and “pretty” it looks.

With great power comes great responsibility. The checkbook’s in your hands. Use it wisely.


Noted at The Trouble With Angels weekly linkfest, where Diane has gone over to The Dark Side… but that’s her choice, and I respect it. 🙂