"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
Well, not so much an explanation as an observation that a universal law of large organizations compelled the unseemly haste which impelled the passage of the Dhimmicraps’ obscene “stimulus” bill.
PARKINSON’S LAW OF TRIVIALITY: The time spent on any item of a committee’s agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum of money involved.
Indeed.
In cards, a player’s “tells” give away what the player wishes to remain unknown. Politicians have their “tells” as well, and the recent rush to pass “Porkulous”–the so-called stimulus bill–without open examiniation is one such. After all, as Robert Burns said,
“There’s nane ever fear’d that the truth should be heard but they whom the truth would indite.”
Aye, most telling indeed.
(“The Dhims”? Yep. Even those three Repugnican’ts in the Senate who voted for the thing were but acting as wannabe-dhimmicraps)
…or maybe it does.
While I was listening to one of my fav songs by Stephen Fearing recently, I was once again stuck by the lyrics, particularly by his use of a word central to the song: beguiling. And once again, I wondered at his use of the word, for most of my exposure to it in a lifetime of reading (usually) good books rendered the word in my mind’s ear once again as “leading with deception” or some such. So, this time, I went to Meriam-Webster online and found…
beguile
1: to lead by deception
2: hoodwink
3: to while away especially by some agreeable occupation ; also : divert 2
4: to engage the interest of by or as if by guile
But when I thought to check the same resource’s thesaurus I found
beguile
1 to attract or delight as if by magic— see charm 1
2 to cause to believe what is untrue— see deceive
3 to lead away from a usual or proper course by offering some pleasure or advantage— see lure
Ahhh, there the meaning Fearing’s song alludes to is most akin to the primary meaning cited. And then methought, “The third listing: ‘Lure’? Fearing uses the word almost in the sense of ‘alluring’ (to entice by charm or attraction) doesn’t he?” Well, almost. But I think I’ve finally found the heart of the song in the fact that the “beguiling eyes” Fearing sees are… (at least partly) in the eyes of the beholder.
Quite apart from all that, Fearing’s wonderful artistry on the guitar, and the lyrics and melody taken as a whole, make this song one that can occupy my mind’s ear for hours. Yeh, yeh, I could wish for better vocal artistry, but the guy apparently wrote the thing as he heard it in his mind’s ear, and discovered he couldn’t quite manage some of the (very well-written) melodic devices. Someone with a better vocal instrument might do the melody more justice, but they’d have a hard time matching the overall artistry of Fearing’s own performance.
Here’s a small sample–just a portion of the intro. Get your own copy of the entire song for under a buck at the link I provided above. And no, I’m not getting anything out of the link–twc has, for now at least, been entirely “de-monetized”. All that went along with taking steps to kill off most of my traffic last year.
[audio:http://www.thirdworldcounty.us/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/beguiling-eyes-clipped.mp3]And no, I’m not going to post the lyrics. Go buy a copy of the song and listen for yourself.
🙂
Oftentimes, folks take good intentions and run with them without enough forethought, resulting in more unintended consequences than if they’d stopped to think things through first.
Case in point: my keyboard drawer. Now, my desk is a cobbled-together bunch of bits and pieces from here and there (the legs, for example, are mere pieces of ice-felled sycamore branches that vary from about 7″-10″ in diameter), and I just sort of assembled the thing like Topsy grew. As a result, my keyboard drawer–1″ thick a piece of MDF with plastic laminate on all six sides that’s 24″ wide and 18″ deep; a piece of scrap I pulled from someone’s discard pile–has nothing to keep me from shoving things off the back side. And, given its size, I do tend to collect things on it…. to be shoved off the back whenever the pack gets too populated. Hence, at least once a week, I have to crawl under my desk–usually behind the safe I use as a foot rest–and retrieve something I’ve shoved off the back.
All this could have been avoided with a little more careful planning (heck, any planning at all! *heh*)
Something like this is behind the recent “stimulus” package, I fear. Nearly 1,500 pages of unread pork passed without any review by adults whatsoever. “Do something–now!” without any sober reflection or consideration of unintended consequences (let alone revelation and consideration of the intended consequences). Good will not come of this, contrary to the spin and lies put forth by politicians, Mass Media Podpeople and the (other) folks set to benefit from all that pork.
All that pork. Needs garlic.
I really don’t get it. Last night my Wonder Woman and I were having a really gay time watching some Red Skelton material. I think our society needs more gaiety in marriages.
Homosexual “marriage”–now that’s another matter entirely different to gay marriage. I do wish folks would learn the difference… but then most of the folks who make the mistake of referring to homosexuals as “gay” probably also make the mistake of speaking about making war on an emotional reaction (terror) to horrific acts (terrorism).
Continue reading “What’s the Problem with Gay Marriage, Anyway?”
via Don Surber, news of a West Virginia state legislator who wants to adopt a law “Iran’s ayatollahs had considered last year.”
Trackposted to Political Byline, Allie is Wired, The World According to Carl, The Pink Flamingo, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, Conservative Cat, Right Voices, and Stageleft, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
After 8-9 months’ daily use of Ubuntu 8.X as my main OS and a few weeks using Win7 beta as an alternate OS, I find some things about Windows 7 to be better than I expected from my exposure to both Vista and XP, Microsoft’s two most recent desktop OSes prior to the Win7 beta (that I’m using about 50% of the time now)… and some areas where Ubuntu still waxes ’em all. No perfect OS. *sigh*
UAC: not really that much more intrusive than Ubuntu’s method of insuring the user really does want to make system changes or install apps. A tad, but not by much.
Drivers: the only real failures of the Win7 beta to load appropriate drivers have been loading a WinXP driver for a printer so WinXp users on the network can print to the printer connected to this machine and an inadequate driver for the Hauppauge TV card–oh, a driver loaded, but it didn’t enable all the card’s features. The first problem was easily solved by installing the printer driver on any XP machine that needed access and the second by installing the Hauppauge Vista driver from the card’s maker. No biggies at all, at all.
I do NOT like Win7’s media center software, but acceptable substitutes (Hauppauge’s own media software or GBPVR) are perfectly fine by me. They Just Work, without being irritating. Mostly, it’s M$’s insistence that I’m a crook (all the DRM crap) that’s irritating, and I’m not in a mood to be forgiving about that. Won’t be, either. I really, really do NOT miss all the DRM crap when I’m running Ubuntu…
I’ve gotten used to the toolbar straightjacket. Don’t like it much, but I can use the limited, clunky M$ toolbar. Takes more clicks than being able to easily set up multiple independent toolbars, but I can work with the parent/child toolbars. (Win98, 2K, XP, and Ubuntu etc., all have the advantage here, IMO)
Getting rid of the default “category” display in Control Panel really helps. As good as earlier Windows Control Panels–better in some ways–and better than Ubuntu management GUIs.
Network management sucks dead bunnies through a straw, but I can (temporarily) work with Win7’s inability to play well with other OSes on the network. At least, now that I have printer sharing working (though not properly, still working) I can live with it for now. I don’t like the difficulties sharing files with computers using other OSes. Perhaps M$ will work through those issues between now and the RC.
I’ve had some issues attempting to remove external drives from a Win7 session. That bothers me, since I oftentimes need to switch between different external hard drives (six USB ports are just not enough for all the USB peripherals, so I guess the “solution” is just to add more ports, eh? *sigh*).
I’ve only had one experience with OS instability using this beta, and it was my fault. Really. I tried doing something I knew probably wouldn’t work, even though Win7 warned me not to, and the OS blew up, failed, fried, died, *kablooie!* (“Where was the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!” Oh, there it was… ) Had to reinstall. My fault and I knew it. IOW, this OS is pretty fault-tolerant. *heh*
Push-Shove: between Ubuntu and Win7 beta, it’s about a dead heat on installing and using VMWare Server and different VMs. Some things easier in one or the other OS, some things harder or more complicated. Maybe Ubuntu by a frog’s hair… but maybe not. Just… different. For example, VMWare Tools are a hair easier to set up when in a client OS hosted on a Win7 box, but on Ubuntu, if a client makes setting up VMWare Tools messy, Open-VMtools is an easily-installed option. Different strokes.
Changing desktop backgrounds is needlessly complicated in Win7 as opposed to Ubuntu or even XP for that matter, but working around the limitations of the interface is a trivial and only slightly irksome exercise.
One weird thing: sometimes my wireless mouse/keyboard combo start acting hinky in Win7–keyboard drops letters I have too typed *heh* and mouse begins skipping, acting as though I either have or have not CLICKed a button I have not or have CLICKed, etc. Reboot in Ubuntu: no problems. Reboot into Win7: problems return until I re-register the wireless devices with the transceiver. Weird, and it has to be a Win7 issue, since the session in between two misbehaving Win7 sessions is a native Ubuntu session where the devices do NOT misbehave. Irritating, but takes less than 10 seconds to correct–for a couple of days–each time it happens. Maybe Logitech has a solution.
Still, this is a usable OS. “Better than Vista” isn’t necessarily damning with faint praise. 🙂
All-in-all,
OK, I’ll confess. Rush Limbaugh gives me a rash. But as shallow and pompous (yes, pompous, Rush) and irritating as I find him to be, he does find an acorn every now and then. If you’re interested at all in the occasional acorn, the CNN videos (posted as ten segments) are here. Yeh, that’s another thing. Long-winded (over an hour and twenty minutes!) blowhard. Oh. Well. And heck, when he attributed words that are central to the opening statement of the Declaration of Independence to the Preamble of the Constitution, he darned near lost me with his (typically) subliterate proclamation. Blowhard.
The Android Known as Romney (not my fav politician for many reasons–among them my concern over how and when and where his battery pack is recharged) apparently “won” the “straw poll”… by showing up. Bobby Jindal, Sarah Palin and Ron Paul made respectable showings in the meaningless poll by NOT showing up. Heck, I enjoyed The Angry Chipmunk’s speech from last year rather more than Limbaugh’s peripatetic peroration this year. And Paul’s opening comments last year were more on point, and, for that matter, prophetic. (“If we continue to do what we’re doing, we’re going to have a financial crisis.”) This year, his speech: better than Rush, still an irritating chipmunk voice (yeh, yeh, I know that’s a minor quibble, except for the fact that his voice actually causes me pain–that piercing, whining tone exacerbates my tinnitus--*arrgghhh!*). His words read far, far better than they sound.
But there were some genuine high points at CPAC or me, such as this typical Newt Gingrich speech, coming in with bushels of acorns at about half the length of Rush’s bloated yak where the acorns are hard to notice amid all the bloviation.
Go to American Solutions for more information on positive steps YOU can take to avert flushing your children’s future down the toilet. The Twelve Step program suggested there isn’t as strong as simply passing The FairTax, but it’s certainly better than anything else proposed in the last quarter century.
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“Be joyful, and keep your faith and your creed. *Do the little things [in life] that you have seen me do and heard about. I will walk the path that our fathers have trod before us.”–reputed to be the last words of St David–Dewi Sant— patron saint of Wales (the only Celtic patron saint native to the land of which he is considered patron), said to have died at age 100 on March 1, anno domini 589.
See the (surprisingly) decent short bio at Wikipedia for more on this remarkable man, and wear a leek or daffodil in his honor today if you will. (A day of bread and water–and “herbs” if you like–wouldn’t be out of line, either, in honor of the monastic rule he established for his order. :-))
Tomorrow, St Non’s Day–another Celtic saint, also Welsh, and St David’s mother.
Update: this short hymn I wrote several years ago, hymn tune DEWI SANT, in honor of the early missionary work of St David and his fellows. Just click on it for a larger view:
(For fun, take this short quiz at the BBC website. You already know how I scored, right? ;-))