Month: December 2010

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Buying a Clue–With Cash

Some folks are finally waking up to “Less is more”. Less use of credit cards, that is. More sensible behavior. So what if Christmas isn’t filled to the brim with crap one has gone (further) into debt to NOT (yet) own? Here’s hoping that more and more Americans–maybe, gasp! even congresscritters–twig to the fact that borrowing money to get things is usually a monumentally stupid thing to do, and that the things thus gotten have been bought and paid for with other people’s money, money that comes more than a few strings attached.

Borrow to buy something new and shiny (when what one has that is old and dull *heh* is still perfectly serviceable)? The act of a fool.

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OS Wars

I’ve written pretty often in the last year about Windows 7. That’s not necessarily because I feel it’s the best answer out there for everyone but because I pretty much need to use it and previous versions frequently enough to be able to offer help to users and because I have one application (yes one) that both has no suitable replacement in a ‘nix OS and only almost runs w/o a hitch using WINE under a ‘nix OS. Oh, and Windows Media Center beats the socks off any ‘nix offering in the category for tuning TV.

That said (that I need to use Windows for my own reasons), I really prefer either Linux Mint 10 or PC-BSD 8.1, the two slickest, most complete ‘nix OSes that don’t come with an Apple Tax and Apple Straitjacket attached. For most folks, Linux Mint 10 would be all they’d need in an operating system, since most folks use their computers for

  • web surfing
  • email
  • watching and listening to various media
  • generating graphic/video files
  • “office” type use (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, datasbases, etc.

Continue reading “OS Wars”

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One 1/2 One (Again) Fewer Petty Pet Peeve

Yeh, I couldn’t resist the alliteration.

Well, I marked one of my two gripes about Opera 11 off my list. Turning off the “Visual Mouse Gestures” helper thing. *gah* What a waste. Apparently intended to “help” those users who should live in an Assisted Computing Facility (“Here. dearie; let me make that mouse gesture for you… “), it was nothing but an annoyance to me.

So, I finally stopped griping about it and intermittently looking for a place to switch it off in Preferences, which has only a subset of Opera configuration options, and searched for a solution. Of course, what I found only pointed me to where I ought to have been looking all along, though it pointed inaccurately.

The tipster pointed to opera:config, but mistakenly suggested disabling “Show Gesture UI”, which doesn’t exist, instead of “Show Gesture inf”. Unticking the checkbox by “Show Gesture inf” did the trick.

Update: only sorta kinda halfway. If I pause in mid-gesture for whatever reason, the thing does still show up… in the latest beta. Irritating. Works fine in the first beta. Have to put this 1/2 back on my “petty pet peeves” list.

Update-Update: Two betas later (three in one week), and this peeve is dead, dead, dead, I am happy to report. Now, just watching out for regressions in the future. *heh*

I really ought to have looked there sooner, as I have long used opera:config for other minor tweaks, but hey, lazy, forgetful? Early Olde Tymers’ Disease?

“Fewer” not “Less”? Use “fewer” for things that are/can be counted; “less” for things that are/can be measured. I suppose one could measure my peeves, but I wasn’t talking about the relative sizes of my peeves but a reduction in number. 🙂

And yes, using “less” when “fewer” is better is another of my peeves, but one not so petty, IMO.

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Oh, the Difference a Preposition Makes

I’ve been captured, recently, by the paraphrase of Romans 8:31-39, as found in the Scottish Psalter, “Let Christian faith and hope dispel,” particularly the last line of the first verse, which sets the tone for the entire song with its adherence to clear exegesis of its scriptural antecedent:

Let Christian faith and hope dispel
The fears from which we hide,
For who would dare oppose us now
That God is at our side?

Many people, reading their own agendas into Romans 8:31, “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” argue that God is ON their side in some area of conflict. But the whole of Romans 8:31-39 is subject to its context especially but not only the eighth chapter of Romans, which makes it pretty clear that God is not so much ON the side of those who follow Him but AT their side to comfort, cheer, aid, encourage, etc., as they are on His side.

Big difference.

And this is especially important as those who are labeled–by the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind and even by themselves at times–the “religious right” assert their own “traditional values”. If those values are not clearly godly values, claiming that God is on their side passes hubris on into slander. I’d just caution such folks to be careful, to examine those “traditional values” (such a stupid term; whose traditions, specifically what values?) and only claim to be trying to seek godly values as those things they assert have solid scriptural basis.

Just an observation from an amateur armchair (yeh, the redundancy is necessary :-)) historian/theologian/social-political observer.

BTW, this is the basis of just one of many reasons that Mike Huckabee gives me the heebie-jeebies. He cloaks his Phariseeism on political speech, but he just makes my skin crawl.

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Nanny State 101

So, a woman throws a newspaper in a trash can marked, “Litter Only” and is slapped with a $100 fine by a nanny-state “Sanitation Cop” (WTF?!? “Sanitation Cop”?!?). Because it hadn’t been found on the ground and thus was “litter”? Cwazy stuff, folks.

I suppose the woman could have avoided the fine by first throwing the paper on the ground, but then the “Sanitation Cop” would probably have cited her for littering, even if she had then picked the paper up and thrown it in the litter receptacle. Or cited her for both actions, I suppose. Anything goes with nanny-state, anarcho-tyrannical bureaucraps.

But worse, the so-called “Sanitation Cop” is reported to have said the citation was for throwing “garbage” in the litter can. The “Sanitation Cop” ought to have a $1,000 fine thrown at her for verbal littering. Blurring useful distinctions of meaning by using a word that’s generally for application to wet refuse–garbage–for something that’s obviously dry refuse–trash–is inexcusable in a public employee and should be punishable by more than simple fines, though.

Oh, then there’s my other gripe with the report. The whiny, useless, stupid argument-from-sympathy invoked by the NY Post writers pushing the “80-year-old woman on Social Security” button. Right is right and wrong is wrong and ad hominem arguments (they cut both ways–appeals for sympathy are ad hominem arguments just as much as attempt to illegitimately impeach a person’s argument by referring to personal circumstances, etc., are) make no difference in whether an act is right or wrong. The “80-year-old woman on Social Security” could as easily have been Donald Trump for all I care. Citing someone with a $100 fine for throwing a newspaper in a litter receptacle is just wrong no matter who they are or what their circumstances.

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*This Is Not the Post You Are Seeking*

*heh* IOW, this is one of those posts that probably should not see the light of publication, but the voices in my head (a firm majority) insist I do so anyway…

As an Olde Pharte, I have discovered the joys of extended times upon the throne. When I have a long session in “The Throne Room” I frequently take a book to occupy my time while other things are “processing”. Now, however, thanks to the fact that I finally succumbed to the “wants” to get a toy computer (the lil notebook I’m using for this post), I sometimes just take this lil toy into the “Throne Room” with me, instead of just a book (why not? I usually have more than one eBook in process at any one time on this and other computers).

And yes, that is where I am now, posting this most TMI post of the year for twc.

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Signs Spur Twaddle

I saw this over at The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiller and went searching for a larger version of the featured sign on the web:

Of course, this commonsense statement of the obvious about The Zero resulted in the Usual Suspects uttering the typical banal racist twaddle (a local CBS station’s site, of course):

And then, there’s [sic*] people traveling through on the Interstate like Greyson Johnston, from Dallas.

He saw the billboard shortly after he saw the Bruceville-Eddy city limits sign.

“I’m not real political, at all, but I mean, he is the first black president, ever, and you know,” Johnston says, “You’re gonna have people that hate him, you’re gonna have people that like him.”

Dumbass racist. Oh, the “[sic*]”? “People” is plural. The dumbass Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind “reporter” wrote, “And then, there’s [“there IS”] people… ” instead of “there ARE”–indicating that the writer, typical of Hiveminders, can’t count past one.

There is apparently a superabundance of dumbasses in the Hivemind and its lobotomized sycophants, as the above is typical of “news reportage” on the sign.

Of course, that sign (which has apparently been up since August, though this is the first I’ve seen it) hasn’t drawn nearly the fire that this one did:

Narurally, the Hivemind and assorted leftards, idiots and liars (but I repeat myself) made a lot of hay out of this one by citing it as an example of the lowest of ad hominem attacks, the so-called “Hitler fallacy”. What all that hand-waving and finger-pointing and name-calling was in aid of, obviously, was obscuring the simple fact that if one were to simply state many the social and political policies of Hitler,Mao and Obama in plain English, one would be hard pressed to tell them apart. Indeed, their ideologies and rhetoric (and behavior,come to think of it) all have much, much more in common than they show differences.

But arguing facts is never in the interest of the Hivemind and its fellow travelers.

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Now, That’s a Desktop Background

Following on LC Aggie Sith’s post, I *Heart* Hooters, I went searching for a hooter of my own to use as a desktop background and found this:

*heh*

Now, that’s a hooter.

And so is this one… found later and made into my “new(er)” desktop background:

“Whatchu talkin’ about? I AM smiling… ”

And the replacement for the second background above…

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Is WilkiLeaks Exacerbating “America Hate”?

Does it really matter? The “America haters” are generally of several, sometimes overlapping, classes. Whether it’s envy, fear, antipathy over real or imagined (or even manufactured out of whole cloth, as most of the “offenses” against the Islamic hate cult) wrongs, hate is hate and pretty much insures that any arguments the “hater” has will make them just as wrong as whomever they feel–rightly or wrongly–has harmed them.

That the wikileaks revelations may make such antipathy a bit more open or vocal for a while, things haven’t really changed much since the 1950s and 1960s in terms of antipathy towards America and Americans. Sure, the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind is trumpeting such antipathy more loudly now, but the fundamental reasons for antipathy towards America and Americans are still the same… and are still pretty much the same reasons that America is such a popular destination for immigrants, both those who respect her laws and society and seek to come here legally, and those who do not.

Frankly, I would agree to a great extent with those whose antipathy toward America is based on the federal government’s interference in the internal matters of other countries, whether in military intervention or economic sanctions (or aid). Sticking our fingers into the Bosnian tarbaby is no better or worse than doing so in Iraq and Afghanistan–or than the Fed bailing out foreign banks. (The “feddle gummint” playing rescue of some select parts of the financial sector it sabotaged with its own policies is a separate, though related, issue.)

But speaking directly to the casuistry employed in the “unofficial WikiLeaks” apologia for its revelations, I find it less than compelling. Firstly, the argument that, “So here’s the rule we will live by: If our action is likely to cause retaliation, and hence murder, we should not commit that action. If we commit it, we should be condemned” is dismissed by “knowledgeempire” on the basis that holding to such a standard would require also condemning, “Noam Chomsky, the BBC, NBC, The Guardian, Amnesty International, and so on,” for being irresponsible. So? How does this support “knowledgeempire’s” argument? It could easily be argued by any rational observer that “Noam Chomsky, the BBC, NBC, The Guardian, Amnesty International, and so on,” do indeed deserve condemnation for irresponsible, and in many cases wittingly disingenuous, dissemination of information and disinformation.

Then, the “Let’s only count civilians” argument fails on its citation of “fact”. The facts it cites are in serious dispute outside the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind, so citing such things as argument is weak.

Two fails in as many points of argument=failed argument, IMO. Making an argument by assertion (backed only by disputed “facts” from organs with past poor behavior with “facts” and suspect motivations and goals) alone should not be enough.

All that said, any condemnation laid at wikileaks’ feet–and I have not yet done so–ought only be condemnation for dissemination of disinformation. If what they reveals is true and factual, perhaps it can lead to more responsible behavior from those the information embarrasses. I don’t have a high regard for the ever more obscurantist behavior of the “feddle gummint” in this most disingenuous (no, make that “dishonest”) and opaque administration since Nixon, so if the opacity is breached and sunlight shone on it, so much the better in the long run.

But, making “America hate” worse? Pull the other one.