Month: July 2008

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Facts vs Feelings

[SEE UPDATE at foot]

I recently had a long email exchange (can’t call it a discussion: all the words that made any sense were all sent; none received. *sigh*) with someone who has sold their soul to the idea of feelings trumping facts.

And this person calls themselves a “conservative”. Seriously.

Here’s the rub:

I received–yet again!–a rehashed and reworded email calling forth the thirty-year-old, tired old hoax about “FCC Petition Number 2493” from someone all riled up about First Amendment rights in danger of being lost to this thirty-year-old hoax.

I returned an email letting them know it was a hoax and added a gratuitous, “I might be tempted to sign such a petition if it existed to keep the charlatans you fear might be taken off the air off the air”.

And there went the baby with the bath water. Now, of course, since the sender of the hoax FELT some favorite religious charlatans were threatened, not only by the evil FCC but by me of all people, I was in for a slew of spittle and froth, “signifying nothing” save the writer’s total committment to feeling over fact.

Oh, funny aside: one of the religious charlatans I mentioned himself admitted some of the charges I laid at his door on national television, but that fact made no difference, either (nor did the fact that I sent a link to an article discussing the admissions. Of course.)

More germane: multiple citations of articles clearly and concisely and definitively debunking the Petition 2493 hoax weren’t enough to make an argument to someone completely sold out to arguing according to feelings, not facts:

“I did read it and I know you said it is a HOAX, but I DO NOT BELIEVE IT IS A HOAX.”

People who argue with their eyes closed, their fingers in their ears and their mouth motoring away at “la-la-la-la-la-… ” are impervious to reason and facts.

And these people can vote.

I used to call these people reality-based fantasists and faux liberals, but now, self-styled “conservatives” are as likely to be included in this class of idiots as not.

This is what “democracy” gets us. Weep for the republic that once was.

[Addendum: Out and about this a.m., I met an old guy who runs a junk store who’s a good example of “feelings over facts”. He had on his shelf a bottle of clear amber fluid labeled “Pepper Beer–not for drinking”. Naturally that led this unmoderated tongue to comment, “What a shame. Beer is for drinking” which led to…

“Beer destroyed my family,” and a tale of growing up in a family where his father got drunk on beer and was abusive. No amount of pointing out the fact that the beer didn’t force excessive amounts of itself down his father’s throat making him into an abusive drunk was going to convince him of his father’s responsibility for his own drunkeness. No, it was the beer that did it.

*feh* Such people are idiots. Inanimate objects, chemical substances and the like do not make people harm others. People mmake themselves do harmful things, including making the CHOICE to abuse mind-altering chemical substances of all kinds.

The bushwah about people, including addicts, not being responsible for their actions is the perhaps single most harmful meme in our society today.]

UPDATE: Hilarious stupidity. The person who prompted this post has “retaliated” for my having pointed out that their spread of a hoax–especially now that they have adequate evidence that what they are spreading is a hoax–is “bearing false witness,” which is a strange thing for someone claiming to be a Christian to do, well, this same person has apparently “felt” like CLICKing on a link or attachment in an email without checking it out, and had their email addressbook harvested by some malware. (No, I do not think they are directly spamming me, although I could certainly make some trouble for them with their ISP were I to report the spam apparently coming from their address.)

Of course, I could be giving this “feeling” person more credit than they are due. Fortunately, I’d never have even noticed the spam emails except this is my day of the week to weed through my email spam queue for false positive (there were none, as usual).

Aside: I’ve almost grown to like email spam now that I filter everything through my hosting service’s spam filters. 🙂 I love for unethical people to waste their resources trying to hook me. Were it not for the fact that they are also wasting bandwidth, I’d no longer mind spammers at all.

Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Woman Honor Thyself, McCain Blogs, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, Shadowscope, Pirate’s Cove, , The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, The Amboy Times, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, CORSARI D’ITALIA, and Democrat=Socialist, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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Distrust Authority

This is a re-run from “I don’t know when; I’m too lazy to search” *heh*

I believe people today are too “credentials crazy” and rely too heavily on someone’s C.V. to provide validation for their opinions, including blog postings. While I have gone the university/grad school route (in a couple of different fields), I try to avoid citing those degrees or even my experience in those fields, as much as possible, to stamp “authority” over an opinion. If a particular personal experience (or set of experiences) can serve as support for other material from other sources, then that seems valid, but just saying “I have a (or several) degree(s) in such-and-so and work in the field” as an argument in and of itself for or against a position is just so much bullshit.

OK, rabbit trail (although this does indeed go somewhere, and will be revelatory). Authority has several faces, and several sources. Some legitimate and others not so (or not at all).

Two classes make religious authoritarian statements (although one denies it): actual, well, “religious leaders” and soi disant “scientists” who make religious claims about “science” (yes, there’s a good reason for the scare quotes).

In the area of relatively above board religious statements, there’s divine authority and human opinion. Wanna argue with God? Be my guest. (Glutton for punishment.) Some religious leaders claim divine authority. Tricky question. If one accepts the Bible as divinely authoritative, then a religious leader within Christianity (or I’d suppose Judaism) could claim to speak with authority if what he’s saying is… scripture. Otherwise, it’s just his opinion, and that’s only as authoritative as it is subject to reason, morality and scripture itself (we are talking about a particular set of authority here, after all). Any religious leader who simply asserts his opinion as authoritative because of his position within some religious hierarchy is playing at being the devil.

And yeh, if you wanna make an issue of it, I’ll argue that assertion from scripture.

Scientists as religious dogmatists? Global warming. There. That should be enough to tell any reasonable person to check the data, examine the processes, testing instruments and underlying assumptions at the very least before accepting any likely lie beginning with “scientists believe” or “scholars are in agreement” or any such crypto-cultic balderdash.

Oh! Lambasting “authorities”! Kicking the Sacred Cow by James P. Hogan. Just buy it and read. I don’t claim Hogan’s an “authority” on any of the subjects he touches on (nor does he), but he does point out some serious holes in the (really) religious statements of faith in scientism. Anthropogenic Global Warmism? Neodarwinism? Heck, “Einsteinism”. *heh* All just sects of the religion of scientism. And none of them nearly so authoritative as scientism would have you believe.

But what of darned near all other authority?

First, I distrust ALL assertions of authority. Unless a person can prove by citation of verifiable fact and via sound reasoning that their assertions are valid, then I don’t consider their assertions to have any authority at all. Credentials don’t count with me.

That includes doctors.

Lawyers.

Preachers.

Teachers (of anything). Particularly, if a teacher cannot do–competently–what they are purporting to teach others, then I tend to write them off as blowhards.

I will always place more credence in a carpenter telling me “This is how it’s done” (cos the carpenter’s authority can be checked by looking at his work) than I would a politician telling me, well, anything (because a politician can be checked by looking at his work *heh*), but particularly, “This is just political reality.” “Political reality” is a self-referential construct, only as “real” as the power we give to (or is illegitimately seized by) the politician claiming it.

What of authority as exercised by various civil governments? More and more, if measured by the principles this nation was built on as articulated by the Founders’ generation particularly, civil government authority is illegitimate. Think Kelo or Martha Stewart or Ramos and Compean or Ruby Ridge or the TSA or… (yes, the list is long and growing)

In fact, the more powerful the government entity, the more abusive and illegitimate its authority seems to be. Which is why so many of the easy pickings in governmental/bureaucratic abuses are from federal exercises of authority.

In fact, if all I were to say about the illegitimate use of “feddle gummint” authority–indeed, abuse of citizens that is in exactly the same vein as those abuses the Founders decried in the Declaratiion of Independence–were “Lon Horiuchi” then that would be enough to demonstrate absolute proof of Samuel Francis’ “anarcho-tyranny” label of bureaucratic/governmental abuse of authority.

And oh, my! did the Department of “Justice” cover itself in shame in the Ruby Ridge/Lon Horiuchi coverup or not? Department of “Jam-up-citizens” would be a more accurate name…

Authority: distrust it. Make it prove itself worthy of respect. Martha Stewart is my hero(ine). If only because her case made manifest the depravity of abusive “feddle gummint” turf-building anarcho-tyrannists. She was punished under 18 U.S.C. Section 1001 for “Lying to Government Agents”–according to testimony by the government agents in question AND a witness the “feddle gummint” persecutors later indicted for perjury for his testimony against Stewart. (Yeh, I don’t recall reading how that ended, but that they themselves indicted their own well-coached witness, the one who was THE critical nail in Martha’s coffin, says a lot, doesn’t it?)

At least some good, of a sort, has come out of the Martha Principle: “How to Avoid Going to Jail under 18 U.S.C. Section 1001 for Lying to Government Agents.”

Read it. Somewhere, there’s a feddle prosecutor or bureaucrat who can nail you for breaking a law or regulatory rule you don’t know exists. All that’s needed is for a feddle gummint bureaucrat or prosecutor to set his/her sights on you and decide they want your hide. That’s an essential element of anarcho-tyranny: the ability to pick and choose among thousands of regulations and laws and selectively enforce them for personal gain–turf-building, career-enhancement or simply petty revenge.

That’s where abuse of Constitutional authority has led us.

ANY abuse of authority is just as evil. Yes, evil.

Distrust authority. Men lie, usually for short-term gain. Bureaucrats are more likely because they are petty, venal, corrupt and/or incompetent than not. Politicians are more likely to be all of those AND consumate liars than not.

And that brings me back to a revelation. Yeh, I have some academic creds. They are all crap. At best. From my earliest years, I learned to tune out the bullshit artists who claimed to be teachers (though I was fortunate to have some at all stages of my formal education path who were able doers in their field, as well). I consider myself semi-literate. Not a day goes by that I don’t make a new (to me) discovery, a “Hey! I didn’t know that!” kinda experience. Not all are as shocking as picking up an uncle’s “Bible”… to discover that it was in Greek (“But, but, I just heard him reading a passage aloud in English!”). Put me in a mind to get me one-a those thangs, too…

No, not all my “Aha!”s open up what seems to be a whole new world, as that experience did, but daily I learn new things that remind me–daily–how much there is to know that I do not.

And that also makes me a bit suspicious of folks who say with “authority” that things are such-and-so, when not only can I see exceptions to their model, but once firmly held their (false) view myself…

Question authority. Give persons “in authority” only the respect they are due… which means, only when they are right or at least honestly attempting to argue from reason and verifiable fact. When they are wrong, blow them a big, fat, juicy-wet raspberry. Ridicule is the highest, best response to false authority, the most generous response false authority deserves.

Want my C.V.? Go suck on a rock. My C.V. is irrelevant.

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Linux Fun (Cont)

Well, I’m back at re-configuring midi, again. Just need to find my notes-around here somewhere… 😉 [Done. Was as easy as I thought, just a fuzzball, latenight brain. Once again, starting an upgrade or an OS install or a troubleshooting session right before bedtime: dumb. *heh*]

Oh, and how in the heck did I get the flash plugin installed before? Notsomuch a problem with 32-bit OS/browser, but Adobe’s twiddling its collective thumbs on releasing a 64-bit version that works–or even a 32-bit version that works with a 64-bit OS and browser (Yes, Opera 9.5X comes in 64-bit flavors, and I’m using 9.52, and yeh, I know the latest release ver is 9.51. So sue me, willya? :-)) Heck, Opera comes with its own 32-bit wrapper for plugins, and the darned thing is in the usr/lib/opera/plugins folder where it belongs AND Opera knows it, so what’s the deal? Oh. wow… not. Sound works in flash files on the web, but not video. I’m sure it’s something simple I did that my brain’s just too fuzzed to recall right now. [Haven’t even given this a thought today, really. Lovely Daughter did send me a link to something requiring either flash animation or iTunes installation, but I just don’t feel like messing with either, right now… ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz… ]

The above (except for those parts in “[ ]”)was written about 2:00 this a.m., when I really, really ought to have been asleep. Figures. Spent the day answering other folks’ tech questions (one doozie was someone wanting to bypass product activation in Vista, cos their UNLICENSED copy wouldn’t activate and would no longer fully boot. My answer: “Buy a legal copy. *Duh*”). Now, maybe I’m rested up enough to tackle re-enabling midi on this box.

Nah. Taking a break, instead. I think it’s time for a nap.

That’s the ticket!

🙂

Post nap UPDATE: I decided to visit http://grc.com and check the built-in Hardy firewall (iptables) with Shields Up! Here’s the score from Steve Gibson’s Shields Up! for Hardy w/no configuration of the invisible-to-the-user firewall:

As good as any other hardware/software firewall combo I’ve had/used for the past 10 years or so.

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What to do about the “War on drugs”?

Or, “If I Were Emperor” *heh*

“From the US we can see that strict laws on personal possession don’t work… “

Were I Emperor for a Week, among the silly (stupid and downright evil–in effect if not intent) things I’d repeal would be ALL laws regulating what adults could put into their bodies… along with implementing stringent punishments for harm done to others because stupid, irresponsible adults put things they ought not into their bodies and ended up doing harmful things as a result. Drunk drivers cause a wreck? Lose all their worldly goods–no dunning the insurance past a minimal amount–become the slaves of those they harmed until their monetary assessment’s paid off, then set free or executed–those who killed someone because of their drunkeness–by dropping their own wrecked car on them… until dead. (NOT “cruel and unusual”–see the numbers of people killed by drunk drivers per year by essentially “dropping” a car on ’em. Definitely “usual” and certainly not particularly “cruel” otherwise, why would so many drunks feel it’s perfectly fine to drive a couple of tons of metal into another human at 65mph?) In public. With pre-emptive natiowide broadcasts of the executions on all available channels, including The Cartoon Network. (Never too young to learn that being drunk is stupid.)

No prison for possession or use of any drug. Only for doing things that harm others directly.

Oh, and what to do with all that $$ saved by ending the “War on drugs”? Provide all the lotus eaters all the drugs they want for free in hopes that Darwin will cleanse the gene pool. No other benefits (no food stamps, unemployment, health care), just all the drugs that druggies want, free. After all, the only cure for stupidity is reality.

Gee, as long as I were Emperor for a Week,

–chain gangs for career politicians, educrats, Mass Media Podpeople, Hollyweirdites, Academia Nut Fruitcakes and Prisons for Kids (AKA, “public schools”) administrators.

–abolish the IRS (and add its minions to the aforesaid chain gangs)

–set up a “Greenie Preserve” where Algore and his idiot followers can be one with nature. No electricity, no modern drugs or preserved foods, no modern sanitation, just greenies, nature and… all the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth they want

Well, a guy can dream, can’t he?

Next? Well, with the stupid “War on drugs” out of the way, maybe the DEA can focus on something else, like, I dunno, persecuting, urm, prosecuting a “War on feddle gummint anarcho-tyranny” starting with the TSA, BATF and… Congress?

*heh*

Trackposted to Faultline USA, The World According to Carl, Shadowscope, The Pink Flamingo, , Leaning Straight Up, Dumb Ox Daily News, Democrat=Socialist, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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Once More Unto the (Ubuntu) Breach…

Well, I decided that before my Evolution inbox became too full to fit on one DVD, I’d like to try another Linux (Ubuntu based, still) distro: OZOS. So, saved my inbox mail and most of the rest of my Home folder (all the documents, music, etc. that I’d generated and downloaded, etc.) to a DVD, downloaded and burned the OZOS iso and formatted/partitioned my hard drive on this computer for the third time in three weeks.

Pretty soon it’ll take more than one DVD to do that and I’ll have to think a little longer/harder before soing such a thing. (Or maybe not. I have scads of terabytes of storage available with my hosting service, after all… *heh*)

So far, a few observations about the OZOS distro.

All the standard Ubuntu stuff one might expect is there, except for OpenOffice, which was strangely AWOL.

No messing with arcane procedures for getting my nVidia chipset working properly! YIPEE!!

OTOH, the default colors/desktop background, etc., were all so dark, and the screen resolution set so high that I could scarcely see a thing. 1024 X 768 is about max for this 19″ CRT–at least for the font size to be large enough to read from further away than 10″-12″… And with the wallpaper and system colors so very dark, it was like falling into an unlit cave with a few fireflies caught, flickering and dying.

Not to worry. Was a snap to take care of (especially as compared to the torturous issues with the normal Ubuntu 8.04 screen rez/monitor corrections)… after I figured out the menuing process. (No system tray, panel bar, etc. CLICK on one of the desktops–there are six virtual desktops by default, each individually customizable.) Well, acually, I am still figuring out how to access things the OZOS way. Uses Enlightenment (e17) as the desktop management system. Slick. Loads and loads of eye candy stuff.

I used e16 on a PCBSD system last year for a while, but the processes didn’t stick with me very well, and some few things seem to have changed between e16 and e17 (and then there’re the differences between PCBSD and Ubuntu Linux… ).

Still, I think I may like this distro. Liked the last three Ubuntu distros I tried out on this machine pretty well (I installed Linux Mint, which is based on an Ubuntu dstro, in a virtual machine and liked it well enough).

We’ll see how this one works for me.

Off to import my mail back into this installation of Evolution.

Done, sorta. *sigh* (Really only mostly–some were missing, but I imported it all into an Opera mailbox, exported from there and finally got ’em. Whadda mess… *heh*) Why, oh why, don’t email clients communicate well with themselves, let alone with their various different “cousins” in the email world?

Oh, the nice stuff about OZOS being much easier to tweak visually may just be in compensation for the fact that it’s completely crappy where sound is concerned. Looks like anything from several minutes to several hours beforeI can have sound fully functional on this installation. Weird, since it uses all the Ubuntu repositories.

Oh, and what’s with WINE installation packages being “broken” now? No WINE until the

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
wine: PreDepends: dpkg (>= 1.14.12ubuntu3) but 1.14.5ubuntu16 is to be installed
E: Broken packages

…problem can meet its match in stubborn third world county pigheadedness… or stubborn third world county pigheadedness is finally overcome by repositories with unrepairable broken packages. *sigh*

Oh. Joy.

🙂

UPDATE: Well, too many issues actually getting anything done in OZOS using the Enlightenment window/desktop managment. Lovely eye candy, but I actually want to do things, not just look at “Gee whiz!” graphics. Besides, what’s with all the problems installing WINE in OZOS?!? Deal breaker.

So, scrubbed that. Installed Linux Mint. Again, purty. Lousy time getting to things and getting things done. And. Nope. WINE a no-go here, too. (Dumb, really dumb.)

So, back to regular old plain vanilla Ubuntu 8.04 64-bit. Hmmm… strange. Was able to set screen rez right away after installing from the same CD I’d installed from several weeks ago that gave me fits. Knew enough to be glad was easier getting around in it and just immediately downloaded the REAL nVidia drivers (not the one Ubuntu offered to install!) and ran the display config utility (must run from command line cos Ubuntu’s not smart enough to install a GUI link to it by default, anywhere).

Nice. Now all I have to do is get the Alsa mixer to use the SBLive! Platinum card…

Piece of cake.

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Bye-Bye, Journalized Theme

I’ve been sticking with the “ancient” Journalized Theme from Mike Little ever since Diane initially set up a WordPress blog for me back in 2005 as an inducement for me to move off Blogger. It’s been through more than a few WP upgrades and has gotten cluttered with all kindsa stuff ove the years, but until my upgrade today, to WP 2.6, it managed to creak along.

No more, though. WP 2.6 welland truly bashed, thrashed and trashed trhe Journalized theme, so now I’m shopping around for something that either suits me or is a quick mod or three away from suiting me. Make my own? Not a profitable use of my time. So, expect twc to look a bit off-color, as it were, for a while as I twiddle with whatever happens to strike me as something I might be able to live with.

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Sturm und Drang… in a Beer Stein

So, Budweiser’s on the sales block, and the deal’s as good as done eh? Much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth by those who see this aquisition of an American icon by a Belgian company as a harbinger of American decline.

Horse puckey. We sell America to Middle Eastern terrorist backers to the tune of $50billion/year. What’s so hard about selling a company that makes their beers with a “unique filtration process” (water through horses?) to a company that makes skunky ales?

*yawn*

Just something for the twittering class to yammer about instead of dealing with real issues sanely.

Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, DragonLady’s World, The World According to Carl, Shadowscope, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, Democrat=Socialist, A Newt One, and Stageleft, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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Passing Shots

The really scary thing about the presidential race this year is that Obama’s managing to do two things:

1. Attract a LOT of enthusiam from idiots who are too stupid to actually parse his poorly-spoken, halting utterances (which, being idiots, they think are examples of great public speaking *feh* Ya can hear better from po’ boy country preachers any Sunday ya wanna wander out into the sticks) and realize that the only substantive content that can be educed or torturously exegeted from them is: “More government, taking more of productive folks’ money to give to slackers”; “I’ll deny playing the race card every single time I play it”; “America sucks, and so do you.”

2. Almost make Juan Mexicain look good. Almost.

Now aren’t either one of those things enough to make you fear for the restoration of the republic?

Compgeeky stuff: As much as I like the simpicity of its interface, ease of configuration and ease of installation as compared to VMWare’s offerings, I’ve finally had to admit that VirtualBox just isn’t up to snuff. The killer? This box has two 64-bit processors. The VirtualBox app installed is for 64-bit processors. When attempting to install 64-bit WinXPP, the install fails with an error message that I’m attempting to install a 64-bit OS on a 32-bit computer. *feh* Mouse/keyboard capture is more elegant in VB, and its fullscreen mode is nicer, but not being able to install the legal copy (as in, “fully licensed, unused anywhere else copy) of XP available to me right now (XPP-64-bit) is too much. Oh, I think I’ll still keep it around to try out various Linux/BSD distros in a VM, but since one of my essential uses for a VM is havin g an XP machine around to use as a reference–w/o having to dedicate extra space, etc. to actually having an XP machine phyysically on my desktop or use a KVM switch, etc.–VirtualBox just won’t do.

VMPlayer seems “good enough” for now for having an XP reference machine available for those times I need to walk someone through some dialog boxes or use Logmein instead of VNC to actually access a remote computer (depends on the remote user as to which option will work :-)).

Of curse (yeh, I feel like cursing), some bugaboos simply must rear their heaqds… *sigh* My NIC, which was “seen” by XP running in VirtualBox is unusable in XP running in VMWare Player… so far. And there’s no sound, either–not from either sound card. But at least everything else works well enough for its primary purpose: walking folks through dialog boxes in XP acurately via remote whatever. The network card would make Logmein easier, though (if for no reason other than continued experience with the “host” end). Well, I’ll either find an answer or not. *heh*

It must just be me, but the Mass Media Podpeople’s Hivemind hagiography of deceased Mass Media Podpeople (Russert, Snow most recently) strikes me as more than just kinda smarmy and self-serving. Heck, I’m sure Russert and Snow were decent enough guys, although Russert lost my respect in recent times with his softball approach interviewing some politicians and Snow lost me completely with his disengenuous defense of the Bush/Kennedy/McCain amnesty bill as “not an amnesty bill”. Sure, it was the guy’s job to parrot the party line, but I used to think he had some integrity.

And I’m sure he did have some. But. The fawning of Mass Media Podpeople whenever one of their own passes away is a more than a little repugnant. Maybe it’s just me. Yeh, I’m sure it’s just me, right?

And Russert and Snow will certainly be missed by their families. R.I.P., guys.

At least Michelle’s left Barry his d*^% to step on. No balls for Jesse to “cut out,” but he sure can make outrageous statements (the “Learn Spanish” response to folks who assert English ought to be confirmed as the official language of the U.S. as a recent example) and then step on his own d*^% in an even more outrageous (and completely dsingenuous) defense of his “outrageosity” *heh*. What? WE ought to learn Spanish, but HE doesn’t speak a foreign language? Well, of course. Just as WE should be taxed to starvation but not HE and his “class,” right? (BTW, Barry, while I’m not fluent in Spanish, French, German, Italian or Greek, I can at least read those languages–albeit not fluently and with a bit of struggle from long disuse. Where were you when foreign language classes were offered, bubba? Dumbass. )

Oh, and speaking of Obamassiah’s dumbass comments, what about his energy/oil remarks, recently? What?!? Because (he says–although he apparently knows little or is flat-out lying about the effects of new drilling/production on oil prices) oil/gasoline prices might not be immediately affected by lifting bans on drilling for oil in our own known reserves, lifting those bans ought not to be done at all? Hmmm, isn’t that consonant with the Clintoonista argument ten years ago? The Dhimmicrappic argument for the past 5-7 years? What if… what if those known reserves had been tapped in the past 5-10 years making the U.S. NOW independant of foreign oil? What kind of barrel would the Saudis and other terrorist supporters have us over now? None, of course.

Barry’s argument is like saying, “Starting a savings/investment account/stragegy now won’t pay off for retirement for 20 years or more, so why start one at all?”

Idiot. And the idiots who listen to him and shout their agreement from the amen corner of The Church of the Obamassiah are even bigger idiots than he is.

And he knows it and is counting on it that they are idiots.

Because he knows if idiots weren’t allowed to vote 90% of our elected officials would be out of work. Including, very obviously, Barry Hussein Obama.

At the very least.

For alla you Star Wars fans (and not-so-fans *heh*), this:

h.t., Windows Secrets “Wacky Web.”

And lastly, an ironic look at the mindset of pseudo-liberals poking fun at legitimate concerns about the Obamassiah’s love of Islamic terrorists, he and his wife’s distinct and well-documented “blame America first!” attitudes, etc.

Obamassiah and His \"Belle\" in the Oval Office

h.t. STACLU.

Hmmm, The Obamassiah and his acolytes are offering far too many easy shots recently, aren’t they?

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The Ubuntu Saga: the Adventure Continues

Everything works, now, just not as I want it to. The last remaining bugaboo is midi–both playback and input from an external controller. Yes, it “works” now most of the time (though some input problems still exist in Encore under WINE–problems that offer an “interesting” puzzle (“May you live in interesting times” sort of interesting, a bit… ). I may adventure further and dispense with the midi-to-serial cable and try getting a midi-to-USB cable working on that issue… though, of course, the USB-midi interface might well bring issues of its own.

Big midi problem: soundfonts. The SBLive! card I added to take the place of the nVidia chipset sound supposedly has its own midi patches (and in Windows it had proved to be nearly OK in that regard, but only nearly, so I used something else for generating sound–for one, I have a nice Roland SD-35 standalone synth I could use with the midi-to-serial under Windows… just not so far under Ubuntu *sigh*). Nope. Only midi output (or input of any kind) I’ve been able to get so far is with some weird “connections” using Timidity. Can’t just use the sound card (not that I particularly want to) or and external synth, and loading a nice Roland-based sound font seems un-doable, so far.

And all that’s quite apart from the input/controller issues.

Other folks seem able to do this, though, and what man has done, man can aspire to. But this is worse than using midi in the bad old days of DOS. Muuuch worse. Oh, I suppose if one simply wanted some midi “boops n bops n bangs n booms” and such like, it’d be OK, but when a frickin’ piano doesn’t sound anything like a piano but like some tin-eared doofus thinks a piano sounds like, midi’s broke as far as I’m concerned.

Easier in Windows? Heck, it was orders of magnitude easier in DOS.

But my midi gripes aside (and do note, midi does work most times, just poorly, very, very poorly–but OOB midi experience, even in “Ubuntu Studio” is pure crap, and that’s speaking highly of it), everything else works well. Heck, now that I know where the proper controls, files, etc. are hidden (not where one might think *heh*), if a major update of a non-video-related component trashes my video driver setup yet again, it’s a few simple clicks and commands typed to fix that. Maybe one reboot, if things are sent drastically south.

Once I got it through my head that the barebones setup I fleshed out to make this computer what I wanted did NOT include DVD drives that knew what the heck a “region” even was, even DVD playback became a simple “insert the disk” pleasure. (*thumps self on empty noggin* :-))

And despite the fact that Ubuntu was literally built by many, many different committees (though nobody would say that any more than they’d say, “Look! The emperor has no clothes on!” *heh*) and is sort of a horse that looks/acts like a camel at times (e.g., no central hardware management that does even what the rather crippled Device Manager does in Windows), on a pre-setup Ubuntu box, the proverbial Aunt Tilly would never know about the humps and spitting; it’d just look like a horse to her. Her browser would work; CDs and DVDs would just play; Email would be in her inbox; emailing a OpenOffice document (saved as a Micro$oft Office file for those still in Redmond’s greedy grasp) to her nieces and nephews would be as easy as in Windows, etc.

I guess, after getting midi working really right, all the time, the next thing I need to start doing is looking at writing the Linux equivalent of batch files, starting perhaps with a script to make some midi things load at boot, rather than having to go back and make all sorts of connections, etc., manually. Every. Single. Time. 😉

Update: Found a better way, already. Dispense with the silly idea of programs that need Jack, etc., installed and running and actively “connecting” ’em. Such a thing is all kludge, anyway. Rosegarden, for example, actually stinks*, compared even to the cheapo sequencer, PowerTracks Pro available for Windows use. Sure, running such things in WINE doesn’t allow for running multiple sound/midi-related programs at one time, but the way PTP handles midi files, wav, etc., files easily–even allowing folks who find piano roll sequencing needlessly overcomplecated by offering simple notation-based sequencing, while I’ve not been able to find any such thing in Rosegarden, well, who needs external apps “connecting” Rosegarden, Lilypond, etc.? (What’s with piano roll sequencing, anyway? Never did get its usability/functionality, except for peope who just can’t make the smaller effort of learning a standard music notation system that’s far more useful and more nearly universal. Sure, for MTC or SMPTE timings with video, etc., piano roll can be useful, but that’s really about it. And if one wants to do that, it’s muuuuuch easier to just play in a standard score and tweak from there. For anyone who bothered to learn how to read music to begin with, that is.)

[*Yeh, you might think “stinks” is kinda harsh when talking about “free” software, but software that won’t even run w/o an external helper app is kinda lame. And Rodegarden isn’t alone in the Linux midi world in that regard. Lame.]

Heck, Encore is an exceptionally powerful notation program (far, far, FAR surpassing anything I’ve seen from Lilypond, Muse or whatever) that also does a commendable job with midi data (a few “tweaks” with a sequencer, perhaps–a good enough reason for using something cheap and competent with a simple interface… like PowerTracks Pro Audio, for lil finishing touches to midi files created with Encore). In some cases you really do get what you pay for, and free software like every single solitary Linux composition/notation program I’ve found yet just cannot in any way compare with a $400 piece of polished, professional-use quality piece of software like Encore**. Of course, upgrades are a real $$Pain, but the last real version upgrade for Encore before this year was 10 years ago, so… it amortizes out pretty well. *heh*

So, easier than messing with Jack, et al: work on getting PTP working along w/Encore in WINE. (Yeh, still no decent midi input w/Encore in WINE using a midi keybard/controller… yet. Yet. It’ll come, I’m sure.)

Oh, one nice thing running Encore under WINE: printing to file (until recent micro-upgrades in Encore, it meant saving the file as an EPS file) had spotty success. The PDF printer driver built into Ubuntu just works, though. That’s nice for sharing printable scores (sharing midi files of scores has always been easy).

Oh, and then there’s that useless USB-IR remote/sensor stuff I either need to configure or replace, but that’s not Ubuntu’s fault as much as it is peripheral makers who hide their device specs so no one can write drivers for ’em.

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Issues and Answers 2.3: The Enstupiation of America

This issue is far, far too big to do more in a blog post than simply point in a couple of directions for answers. But one thing is absolutely rock solid certain: Americans are becoming stupider by the minute.

(Doubt the “absolutely rock solid certain” nature of increasing estupiation? I’ve blogged before on genuine illiteracy, innumeracy and other aspects of increasing enstupiation of the American populace before. Search my site (or just google around for yourself) for previous posts linking such things before arguing with me about enstupiated Americans. Heck, in all the posts I’ve done in the past on the topic, I’ve no more than scratched the surface.)

“If a foreign nation had imposed this system of education on the United States we would rightly consider it an act of war.”–the 1983 National Commission on Education, Glenn T. Seaborg, Chairman

Hmmm, not much has changed for mthe better in the last 25 years…

Let’s first simply take as demonstrable fact that “public education” (more properly called “prisons for kids” nowadays) in America is broken beyond repair and ought to be scrapped and rebuilt from the bottom up. Sure, there are a few sterling examples of public education working well, but

a. the instances are too few and far between to offer any redemption of public education in general and

b. the methods of successful schools–schools that have as their product productive citizens from ALL educable or trainable portions of the bell curve –WILL NOT BE ALLOWED in schools controlled by remote educrats/politicians.

So, to turn the tide of enstupiation, we must first radically change public education. The first step? Take a page from those who mis-quote Falstaff and “kill all the pubschool administrators.” OK, not actually, but at least metaphorically. Remove those who are arguably the stupidest class of people in public education from any position of inluence (administrators” and give them something useful to do in stead, say, making little rocks out of big ones.

(Yes, here are those rare pubschool administrators who are both competent and focused on truly serving as an aid to the teaching/learning process. But they are so few as to be dismissed as nonexistant for the purposes of cleaning houses. *heh*)

Then do the same thing for professors of education–you know, the wackos who come up with another theory to use in experimenting on your kids every year, theories that always seem to make kids dumber, not smarter. Heck, from the consistency of educational theories coming out of schools of edcucation over the past 40-50 years, one might almost think that there were a vast conspiracy aimed at making the American citizen into Amercan sheeple. But, as has been attributed to Napoleon, “Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity”–and the twc corrollary: “Never underestimate the stupidity quotient of really smart people.”

(But then, schools of education aren’t even populated by very bright people to begin with. Heck, most of the social “sciences” are populated by people too dumb or too lazy to do anything creative. Double that for English and graphic arts departments on most college and university campuses, which goes a long way toward explaining the works considered “great art” in the 20th Century… )

Next: get the feds OUT of education. Period. Check your copy of the Constitution. There is NO (zip, zero, zilch) Constitutional justification whatsoever for a federal Department of Education. If you find one, go tar and feather the person(s) who “taught” you to “read” and misunderstand the English language.

And then slap yourself upside the head for being so stupid as to not learn on your own.

Then: place the responsibility for children’s education firmly where it belongs. If Johnnie or Janie can’t read, write and do arithmetic, then blame the parents. Oh, you think we ought to blame the teachers? Sure, go ahead. Who ought to make sure the teachers are teaching their children properly? The question answers itself. And if Johnnie and Janie can’t read, write and do arithmetic and end up being unenployable, then let their parents be responsible for their support. Why should you and I have to take up the slack because lazy, stupid parents refused top BE parents and make sure their children learn what they need to learn to be productive citizens?

But parents’ respnsibilities do not begin and end with formal schooling. Actually, the most destructive lessons are taught by the time kids enter kindergarten (an horrific intellectual/social charnal house I and most of my generation was spared). While there are many destructive lessons “GRUP” parents* are teaching their children nowadays, the most destructive is the idolization of the child.

Parents who are their children’s buddies or servants or “facilitators” (*yech!*) are NOT offering their children the single most valuable lesson of all: a model of adulthood that celebrates maturity. In fact, it’s difficult to think of any place most children might look to find a real adult to model themselves after.

Thus we have “parents” who go ballistic (complete with explosions, firey immolations and childish temper tantrums) if funding for school sports is reduced in favor of *shudder* academics; “parents” who would rather see an academically demanding teacher fired than have little Johnnir or Janie actually, well, learn anything. (Yes, you do too know such parents.); “parents” who will excuse any of their own child’s misbehavior and fight tooth and nail to avert any actual consequences coming to bear on the child.

“Parents” who refuse their own responsibility for raising their children and shelter their children from the consequences of the chldren’s behavior: growing stupid, irresponsible citizens who will stupidly and irresponsibly

spend themselves into debt slavery for things they’ll just throw out tomorrow

elect politicians who will contin ue to sell our progeny down the river for a few more votes from enstupiated, greedy sheeple today

never see the hammer fall when it all comes to its inevitable end

Oh, gee. And I haven’t even touched on that other Great Enstupiator: The Mass Media Podpeople’s Hivemind…

*GRUPs are childish people who are chronologically adult but emotionally immature, clinging to youth, worshipping, adoring, seeking to emulate the immature behaviors of young people. The antithesis of maturity and wisdom, they seek to deny their advancing years. Dumbasses, one and all.

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