Month: October 2009

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Question for the Weak

Joe Sobran:

I’ve never understood… why Darwinians are so militant about spreading their faith — wanting it taught to children in public schools, for example, with competing theories banned. Isn’t this the one idea, of all ideas, that ought to be able to take care of itself, without official support and coercion?

Hmmm, Darwinianism is anti-darwinian: can’t survive competition? Apparently that’s what contemporary Darwinians believe. Strange, that.

“Let [Truth] and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter.” –Milton, “Areopagitica,” 1644

Or, as that 19th century proponent of Classical Liberalism, John Stuart Mill put it in his famous essay, On Liberty,

“[T]he peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”

So, why then do Darwinians get their panties in a twist about Intelligent Design (not to be confused or conflated with so-called “Creation Science”–as both disingenuous Darwinians and disingenuous Fundamnmentalists are wont to do–and no, I did not misspell “Fun-damn-mentalists”)? If it’s the bunkum Darwinians say it is, then a lively debate on the merits of both Darwinianism and Intelligent Design would be good for classrooms, since, IF the arguments of Darwinianism hold water, then ID shouldn’t have a chance in a fair fight.

But, as the Sobran quote illustrates, apparently Darwinians’ faith in their theory is not really all that strong…

Just an obseervation: much more often than not, when one voice in an argument seeks to exclude another voice from arguing at all, the one seeking to censor speech often has a weak argument. See: The Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming or the Obama White Cafe-au-lait (Grande, with a twist!) House.

As for me, I’ve always found such hand-waving and shouting down of opponents to be an incentive to dig into their opponents’ arguments to learn WHY such unfair or disingenuous actions are being taken against them.

And as form Darwinianism, that chief exponent of survival of the fittest, “Isn’t this the one idea, of all ideas, that ought to be able to take care of itself, without official support and coercion?”

Hmm, must have a weak argument.

BTW, for some of the “weak links” in Darwinian arguments, see chapter three in “Kicking the Sacred Cow” by James Hogan.

Kicking-the-Sacred-Cow

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All Downhill from Here…

Now that The 0! is hitting roadblock after roadblock in enacting his agenda to remake America as a third world banana republic–heck, even Repugnican’t congresscritters are taking a hint from a million+ Tea Party protestors and looking at conservatism as a viable option for the first time!–his White Café-au-Lait (grande, decaf-with-a-twist!) House theme song is probably

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Win7 Upgrade Hack

OK, so it’s not so much a hack as a simple workaround. Paul Thurrot explains, here, how to do a clean install of Win7 on an empty hard drive using Win7 upgrade media. Now, for some that sounds like a license to “steal” a full install (~$220 for Win7 Premium) for an upgrade (~$120) price. Not cool, folks. As Microsoft’s Eric Ligman points out,

“For those of you without an existing Windows license to upgrade from, you should be aware that an upgrade license by itself is not a license to install and run Windows on your computer…

“In order to upgrade, you need to have a qualifying license to upgrade from. Regardless of what any hack says, a Windows 7 upgrade is an upgrade.”

Note the “For those of you without an existing Windows license to upgrade from… ” Now, many of us do have existing qualifying Windows licenses to upgrade from (Win2K through Vista, for the most part). They might be on “retired” (and unused) hardware–an old PC or hard drive–but if it’s indeed unused and NOT GOING TO BE USED AGAIN, then that installation ought to morally, and probably legally, qualify for an “upgrade” installation, even if it is on new hardware.

Now, of course there are the restrictions placed on OEM installations that do not allow reinstalling the OEM Windows OS on new hardware. But still… I do have non-OEM media/licenses that’s for qualifying Windows versions not installed on ANY computer. So, I may well take Thurrot’s workarounds and do at least one Win7 clean install from upgrade media. After all, that’s $100 difference in price, and I would be “upgrading” an existing (unused) license… Of course, that would leave me one fewer licenses to use for Windows VMs, but that’s not such a biggie.

Oh! Bright point: the “gold” release of Ubuntu 9.10 is… now. 🙂

Buh-bye!

Update after the jump:

Continue reading “Win7 Upgrade Hack”

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A Time for Choosing

Ronald Reagan’s 1964 speech, A Time for Choosing,” in support of Barry Goldwater, where he speaks of a rendezvous with destiny.

And, from the 1980 Carter-Reagan Debate:

And just for perspective, how different to most politicians was Reagan’s response to sly, underhanded attempts to insert stealth personal attacks:

Gotta love him. Even Mondale appreciated the comeback.

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Well, It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time…

And it seems like that’s a common statement after the fact whenever someone engages in some form of jackassery.

[Toyota Spokesman Chad] Harp said Toyota cannot discuss the legal aspects of the case, but marketing agencies like Saatchi & Saatchi are always thinking of new and innovative ways to attract consumers for clients like Toyota.

Well, it didn’t work very well in this case.

Lawsuit Claims Woman Believed She Was Being Stalked Thanks to Toyota’s Marketing Prank

Oct. 9, 2009—

A Los Angeles woman is suing Toyota for $10 million over a marketing campaign that she claims “punked” her into incorrectly believing she was being stalked.

The bright idea of the advertising campaign was to “punk” people into believing exactly what this woman came to believe. Looks to me as though she has a good argument. Kinda stupid to fall for it, but then it was aimed at stupid people, apparently.

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Win7–Probably “Good Enough”

Adding to my overall positive impression of Win7 on the one machine I usually use it on is this lil additional data point: Lovely Daughter’s new lil HP Netbook with Win7 Starter Edition. While lacking some of the “gee whiz!” graphics doohickies, the OS performs very snappily on a lappy that’s under-powered compared to my Wonder Woman’s Toshiba Satellite that’s still running XP.

And this: getting her lil netbook onto our wireless network was even easier than getting Son&Heir’s Vista computer on it. Seriously. Once the lil thing was fully awake, it

1. noted the presence of the network
2. asked if I wanted to log on
3. asked for the password/wireless key

That was it. Period. EOS. Stick a fork in it. Took much longer to writing this short lil note.

Now, all I need to do to let her have access to some of my peripherals (when I’m booted into Win7) is to send her the Home Group password. Setting her up to use SAMBA-shared resources when this compy is running Ubuntu will be slightly more interesting, though not by much.

Every exposure to the new offering from M$ that I’ve had keeps telling me it’s more than just “good enough”. Next lil project? Installing it on my Wonder Woman’s lil lappy.

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About that Swine Flu “National Emergency”

The 0! has declared that we have a swine flu emergency. How sincere is he about the dangers of swine flu?

October 8, 2009
First Daughters Not Vaccinated Against H1N1

President Obama’s school age daughters have not been vaccinated against the H1N1 flu virus. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says the vaccine is not available to them based on their risk.

The Centers for Disease Control recommend that children ages 6 months through 18 years of age receive a vaccination against the H1N1 flu virus. At this time only children with chronic medical conditions are receiving the vaccination because their immune system is not strong enough to fight off the strain. The CDC also says a regular seasonal flu shot does not protect against the virus.

How about a more common sense approach to H1N1 than running around crying that the sky is falling?

While you are still healthy and not showing any symptoms of H1N1 infection, in order to prevent proliferation, aggravation of symptoms and development of secondary infections, some very simple steps not fully highlighted in most official communications – can be practiced:

*Frequent hand-washing.
*“Hands-off-the-face” approach except to eat, bathe, etc.
*Gargle twice a day with warm salt water (use Listerine if you don’t trust salt). H1N1 takes 2-3 days after initial infection in the throat/ nasal cavity to proliferate and show characteristic symptoms. Simple gargling prevents proliferation. In a way, gargling with salt water has the same effect on a healthy individual that Tamiflu has on an infected person. Don’t underestimate this simple, inexpensive and powerful preventative method.
*Clean your nostrils at least once every day with warm salt water, swabbing both nostrils with cotton buds dipped in warm salt water is very effective in bringing down viral population.
*Boost your natural immunity with foods that are rich in Vitamin C, or Vitamin C tablets that contain Zinc to boost absorption.
*Drink as much of warm liquids as you can. Drinking warm liquids has the same effect as gargling, but in the reverse direction. They wash off proliferating viruses from the throat into the stomach where they cannot survive.
…
Dr. Vinay Goyal is an MBBS,DRM,DNB (Intensivist and Thyroid specialist) having clinical experience of over 20 years. He has worked in institutions like Hinduja Hospital, Bombay Hospital, Saifee Hospital, Tata Memorial etc. Presently, he is heading our Nuclear Medicine Department and Thyroid clinic at Riddhivinayak Cardiac and Critical Centre, Malad (W).

Nah. All that is just too much work. Better to stand in line for a few hours waiting to (maybe) get a flu shot that has a chance of suffering Guillain-Barre syndrome or other side effects, right?

I’ll go with the salt water and Vitamin C, thank you. (Add D3 and even crock-fermented saurkraut for even more protection).