Tag: stupid is as stupid does

Compgeeky stuff. Just skip on down the page if such bores you.

Less than a day on this iteration of Xubuntu, and I’m pretty much sold on it. Oh, little things like, where the heck are some files/folders I know are there. For example, I expected to find a lot more in my /home/[username]/ folder after installing Wine and (just to see if I could–NOT to actually use the infernal thing!) Internet Exploder (vers 4, 5, AND 6). Internet Exploder works as well as Internet Exploder does, but where the heck are the dlls I wanted to inherit for other Windoze apps to use? I know they are there cos IE is working, but am so far having no joy finding them.

Hmmm, had no trouble finding the things under Puppy Linux or Ubuntu/Kbuntu, so what’s so different about Xubuntu? It’ll be fun solving that and other lil quirky things as time permits. Probably involve the very thing I really need to ease into more and more: more command line stuff in Linux. The GUI is powerful and mostly “intuitive” for an experienced Windoze user (with a lil flexible thinking)–ceetainly not really much of a learning curve over flipping between Win98/Win2KPro and WinXP Home/Pro.

In fact, I think I’ll just approach this pretty much that way. There are a lot of GUI and even file organization differences between the various flavors available in different Linux GUI-based distros–even among the relatively similar Ubuntu distros–and each one has different system utilities to handle system management tasks. It’s just a matter of getting a firm grip on those differences, I think.

For example, Freespire’s CNR (“Click and Run”–although it’s not quite that easy–close, but no cigar, as Bill Clinton might say) is a pretty slick way to find and install Linux apps, but it flubbed installing Wine. Puppy Linux’s PupGet installer is pretty slick, but has weaknesses of its own. Apt and Synaptics Package manager–the defaults for the different Ubuntu distros–are very powerful, easy to use and install most apps very smoothely (Wine was a snap to install with Apt, for example). But sometimes, the only way to install a package effectively it’s still necessary to drop into a Terminal session, and each of the different flavors have different tools available to access a terminal–command line–session from within the GUI.

“Aunt Tilly” friendly? Well, each of the three distros mentioned here pretty much are–dertainly as much OOB “friendliness” as any Windows version I’ve seen recently for folks who just want to browse the web, play media files, do email and various office app things. Heck, the wireless networking setup app in the tiny little 60-85MB Puppy Linux is easier to use than the various Windoze wireless setup apps that come installed with woreless-capable Windoze computers. But folks wanting to do more will have to dig a little and tweak here and there, learn to handle command line sessions, etc., at the very least.

It seems Linux distros have reached the point where it’s unlikely that a new user will have to learn how to compile his own kernel, write his own drivers, and all the other sorts of things that for years kept Linux the sole domain of propeller heads.

[Another list from The Curmudgeon’s Corner *heh*]

Rant: ON

Yeh, yeh, I know: “tick me off” is just a bowdlerized version of what I really mean, and that’s the first item on my list:

#1: Dulling down expressions for po’ widdew babies’ neo-victorian sensibilities. “Shit,” as one dear old saint in my church once told me, “isn’t a dirty word. What it refers to is dirty.” And calling things by names that are less than accurate is an insult to genuine attempts to convey meaning. Some things really are vulgar, and they ought to have their nature reflected in properly vulgar terms. (Unfortunately, there are no terms vulgar enough, even scatological enough, to express the nature of politicians *spit*.)

#2: “Feb-YOU-ary” Come on! It’s Feb-RU-ary, folks! Read the word! 😉 Learn to say it; it’s not that hard to GET IT RIGHT! Worst offenders: people who talk for a living, “news” readers, politicians *spit* and Academia Nut Fruitcakes, etc.

#3: Using a singular verb with a plural subject. Dumbass Mass Media Podpeople lead the way here, followed closely by politicians *spit*, Academia Nut Fruitcakes and just about anyone else with influence in the public arena. “There’s problems” is simply the way an illiterate non-English speaker might attempt to grunt a sentence. There ARE problems (“There’re problems”) that may be more serious than this, but few are more irksome… or more indicative of complete, dunderheaded lack of logic or in fact any reasoning going on.

#4: “Gay” to refer to sad sack, often angry and beligerant homosexuals. Nothing gay (happy, carefree) about the class. While I’d grant that there may be some gay homosexuals, there are plenty of gay heterosexuals as well. Ceding the word to people who angrily, stridently and beligerantly claim it as their own is an offense against the English language, common sense and against genuinely gay people.

#5: And take Maccultists. Please. I have nothing against folks using Macs. I’ve used more than one myself, in times past. But the Macrophile religion is just too much for me. Maccultists are worse than Scientologists or Mormons (though not–yet–as bad as Muslims) when it comes to attacking anyone or anything that casts aspersions upon their religion or religious icons and when it comes to lying about their own superior system and the failings of other systems. Give it a rest, folks! It’s just another OS option, now–you no longer even have a unique hardware platform, now that Apple is selling Intel PCs. But… by the same token, people who are Windoze cultists or Linux cultists are almost as bad. Just not usually as rabid.

#6: As always, politicians *spit* What Mark Twain said of Congress, that America is without a distinct criminal class, “with the possible exception of Congress,” can pretty well be said of politicians as a class, nowadays. *sigh*

#7: “Educators” Hey! Whatever happened to teachers? I’ll tell you what has happened to teachers: they’ve become an endangered species as more and more NEA-protected petty bureaucraps take up station in America’s classrooms and participate in the progressive enstupiation of the American citizens of the future. (Yes, I know there are still some teachers left, in fact many, who are condemned for their sins [of attempting to teach] to play Sisyphus, striving against the fall of night… Blessings upon their heads!)

#8: Neighbors who think their vehicle runs better if they sabotage their muffler, so that they sound louder than a C-130 doing touch-and-gos out side my bedroom window… at 3:00 a.m. Would like to book a trip to the Seventh Circle of Hell for them…

#9: May I mention politicians *spit* again? No? Well then, how about liars? No, I don’t mean someone who fibs and regrets it and attempts to make things right and avoid lying again. Sure, we have all failed to be really honest from time to time. But there are those whose whole existence is bound up in lies. They’re the lind of people who would see nothing wrong with cheating at solitaire (or any other game), who apparently believe that they excrete vanilla ice cream. You know some of them, I’m sure. *sigh*

#10: That tiny lil piece of popcorn that just will NOT come outa hiding, no matter how much I brush or floss… until it decides to emerge juuuust at the “right” moment to be inhaled… prompting oneof those monumental coughing jags. I hate that.

#11: Products that come with instructions in Spanish, French and Japanese. *sheesh* The things were manufactured for export to the U.S. Spanish, French and Japanese instructions should go somewhere else. For that matter, as for immigrants (legal, see #12) shoud heed these words. Or go home.

#12: Illegal aliens and darned near any other pet fake victim of people with more time on their hands than they have the IQ to know what to do with. What part of entering the country illegally, stealing IDs and using forged documents to steal jobs from citizens and legal immigrants shows any respect whatsoever for the country they have invaded?

#13: President Bush with his “read my lips: no amnesty for illegal aliens” lie. I mean, what part of NOT having to leave the country and get in the back of the line BEHIND applicants who seek to enter the country legally is NOT an amnesty? “Significant penalty”? Pay up to two of seven years back taxes, work at a job (taken in the place of a citizen or legal resident) and behave themselves from that point on a “significant penalty”? Heck, I’d like to be “forgiven” a few years’ taxes. Can I apply to be an illegal alien if Bush and Friends get this amnesty put in place? And hey! Can I also get free health care, etc., just by applying for resident illegal alien status?

I guess I could go on, since I’m in a curmudgeonly mood, but I guess I’ll not… for now.

Rant: OFF

Noted at the Thursday Thirteen Hub. Unfortunately, this TT is apparently the last TT. So be it. Thanks for the (short for me) ride!

Well, lunchtime rolled around, made some phone calls, etc., cooked a bite and then…

Aw, heck, why not? Wiped a hard drive on a “play” machine, installed the xfc-enabled KDE-based Xubuntu 6.06.1 (cos I’d already determined that 6.1 didn’t like installing on that box), then used Synaptic Package manager to d/l and install the Edgy Eft (6.1)-based Ichthux Linux distro over the Xubuntu install.

And it took less time overall than an install onto bare metal of XP-Pro.

Continue reading “More OS fun”

[Another re-run, this time from last September. Why? Because I’m feeling lazy, and because it needs to be said again. ]

Woman Pays $14,000 to Lease Rotary Dial Phone

The part that gets to me is the comment by a family member:

Strogen’s family is outraged by AT&T’s actions. Strogen’s granddaughter, Barb Gordon said “It’s taking advantage of the elderly. People our age wouldn’t even consider leasing a telephone.” Gordon also expressed her anger and pointed out the obvious that “If my own grandmother was doing it, how many other people are?”

“Taking advantage of the elderly”? How long has it been since everyone who’s paid any attention at all (and has more than as many as two active brain cells) has known that leasing rotary phones (or ANY phones, for that matter) from Ma Bell is unnecesasary? Sure, the woman’s in her 80s now, but she was only in her 50s or 60s when such information became common knowledge. Anyone stupid enough to pay a $10/month rental/lease fee for a piece of throwaway technology really ought to be paying that money as a fine for stupidity. Heck, I have working landline phones that cost less than $10… ten twelveyears ago.

But no, our society wants to put bumper guards on life, now… and that’s making us ever more stupid and incompetent. In our economy of abundance and our society of cocooned ease, we are breeding whole generations of incompetent, lazy nincompoops and whimps (or over-reacting hyper jackasses). As a small example, the other day a young nephew of mine asked about some DOS commands so he could play around on an old computer his family had aquired. Almost stumped me. Windows (and Linux, for that matter) are so graphically-oriented, so easy, that I rarely use DOS commands any more, rarely write batch files, rarely even see the command line.

Enstupiating ease. That’s a critical danger to our society. That and cocooning, bumper-guarding children throughout childhood and adolescence to the extent that they never grow up to be really competent adults but sheeple who always need someone else to take care of them, instruct them in how to do things. Incompetent at learning or doing nearly anything on their own.

Filled with an always present undercurrent of fear.

Take a “discussion” I had elsewhere with a gal who prides herself on being a swimming inbstructor (for nine whole years! woo-hoo!). Her claim to expertise? She is the ONLY swimming instructor she knows or has even heard of who can teach someone the breast stroke in half an hour!

Gime a break! When I was eight, I saw someone doing a breast stroke in the public pool we frequented. I thought it was cool, so I did it too. (And yeh, if my lifesaving and WSI instructors years later are to be believed, I apparently did it right.) A few minutes later, I “taught” my six-year-old brother the breaststroke. How? “Hey! look what I can do!” “I can do that too!” “Show me.” So he did. Simply by copying me.

Big stinking deal.

But no, not today. Today, apparently it takes instruction by a professional for today’s incompetent whimpy kids to learn an idiot-proof breast stroke. And it takes (apparently) 30 whole minutes to do so. Gee, people really are getting stupider by the minute. Growing up, I never met anyone (who already knew how to keep their head in the water) who couldn’t pick up the breast stroke in under 5 minutes, “instructed” or not.

And so it goes. “Education professionals” (filling positions that formerly would have been filled by teachers) are talking (again) about how training wheel teaching methods (oh! That’s another experience! I never knew there were such things as “training wheels” as a kid. Just got put on a bike and pushed off… ) can cripple students’ intellectual development.

Yeh, it’s all talk.

*sigh*

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Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Right Pundits, Bumpshack: Where the News Always Bumps!, Perri Nelson’s Website, Big Dog’s Weblog, basil’s blog, Stuck On Stupid, The Amboy Times, The Bullwinkle Blog, Cao’s Blog, Conservative Cat, Conservative Thoughts, Rightlinx, stikNstein… has no mercy, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Over at Scobelizer, an interesting discussion about vaporware, “boiling the ocean” and cool internet niche apps brought up the quote for today by one of the commenters:

…remembering everything and doing anything useful with that data are two different things. Just ask the CIA.

Of course, one could as easily have said, “Consider the Congressional record,” eh?

Yep. In addition to the YouTube video posted below, it’s OTA Wednesday. You know what to do.

Link to THIS post and track back. 🙂

If you have a linkfest/open trackback post to promote OR if you simply want to promote a post via the linkfests/open trackback posts others are offering, GO TO LINKFEST HAVEN DELUXE! Just CLICK the link above or the graphic immediately below.

If you want to host your own linkfests but have not yet done so, check out the Open Trackbacks Alliance. The FAQ there is very helpful in understanding linkfests/open trackbacks.

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In honor of the discussion about Diane’s new Mac going on over at The Trouble with Angels…

*heh*

😉

As “hh” said in the email sending me the link below, “The only people who will be offended by this are the cowards among us.”

Just click the pic (or HERE) to follow the link.

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This is an open trackback/linkfest post. Link to THIS post and track back. 🙂

If you have a linkfest/open trackback post to promote OR if you simply want to promote a post via the linkfests/open trackback posts others are offering, GO TO LINKFEST HAVEN DELUXE! Just CLICK the link above or the graphic immediately below.

If you want to host your own linkfests but have not yet done so, check out the Open Trackbacks Alliance. The FAQ there is very helpful in understanding linkfests/open trackbacks.

I keep asking myself the same questions today. Why are our political leaders unable to see the handwriting on the wqall? Why is the electroate continually bamboozled by lies from Mass Media Podpeople and politicians *spit*? And even, are the people bamboozled sheeple or complicit in the crimes against society perpetrated by Mass Media podpeople, politicians *spit* and their ilk? And if wittingly complicit, why? Perhaps one portion of the answer can be found in this 2005 post from the old Blogspot days

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On biblical illiteracy

If the cornerstone is crumbling, what of the building it once upheld?

Interesting piece in The Weekly Standard . In his article “Bible Illiteracy in America,” David Gelernter outlines the historical impact the Bible has had on America and hints at what the future may hold for a biblically illiterate people. Thought-provoking. A taste:

“THE GENEVA BIBLE became and remained the Puritans’ favorite. It had marginal notes that Puritans liked–but King James and the Church of England deemed them obnoxious. The notes were anti-monarchy and pro-republic–”untrue, seditious, and savouring too much of dangerous and traitorous conceits,” the king said. Under his sponsorship a new Bible was prepared (without interpretive notes) by 47 of the best scholars in the land. The King James version appeared in 1611–intended merely as a modest improvement over previous translations. But it happened to be a literary masterpiece of stupendous proportions. Purely on artistic grounds it ranks with Homer, Dante, Shakespeare–Western literature’s greatest achievements. In terms of influence and importance, it flattens the other three.”

Oh, and Gelernter also briefly points out where to lay the axe to the common lies about Puritans, as well. Of course, since most Americans are as historically illiterate as they are biblically illiterate, little of what Gelernter says will have much context for most folks.

A society with no sense of its own history will lurch from one faddish thought to another without any genuine critical faculty to assess what is good or ill. Gelenter’s article points out one of the important anchors we have cast away, resulting in just that very cultural character: rootless, we are “blown by every wind of teaching…”

Monday doldrums or simply recognizing the fact that my children will have to survive as adults in a land of illiterate pagans?

*sigh*

Buried deeply in the (very lengthy) afterward to the article are gems like this one:

“College students today are (spiritually speaking) the driest timber I have ever come across. Mostly they know little or nothing about religion; little or nothing about Americanism. Mostly no one ever speaks to them about truth and beauty, or nobility or honor or greatness. They are empty–spiritually bone dry–because no one has ever bothered to give them anything spiritual that is worth having. Platitudes about diversity and tolerance and multiculturalism are thin gruel for intellectually growing young people.”

Indeed.

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Trackposted to Bumpshack: Where the News Always Bumps!, Is It Just Me?, The Virtuous Republic, Random Dreamer, Perri Nelson’s Website, Mark My Words, 123beta, basil’s blog, Shadowscope, DragonLady’s World, The Bullwinkle Blog, Conservative Cat, Pursuing Holiness, Conservative Thoughts, Allie Is Wired, Faultline USA, Right Celebrity, stikNstein… has no mercy, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, High Desert Wanderer, Right Voices, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

By Heidi Thiess of Euphoric Reality

Mexico.

That’s who.

Yes, you read that right. The latest information has uncovered the undue political pressure that Mexico put on our government, and how the White House easily caved. They didn’t even ask questions it seems. Here’s what happened:

After Aldrete-Davila was shot, he complained to someone who brought the “crime” to light (not his mommy, as Sutton has previously told us). That person contacted the Mexican government, which is currently in overdrive trying to portray a situation wherein the poor downtrodden people of Mexico are being brutally shot by cruel, evil Americans at the border – when all they want is a better life for their families. Wah. The Mexican government, seeing a golden opportunity to bring some pressure to bear upon the big, mean U.S. Border Patrol, immediately mobilized their diplomats to exert pressure on the American Consulate in Mexico City. The Consulate, in turn, contacted the State Department, who then informed the President. With me so far?

Bush then called in the Department of Justice and his old Texas buddy, the Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales. Alberto Gonzales called in his hired gun, Johnny Sutton, who then crafted a prosecution virtually from thin air. Sutton’s agenda was furthered immeasurably by Assistant U.S. Attorney Debra Kanof, who has previously shown no compunction about fabricating fraudulent cases, lying and suborning testimony in her cases, and manipulating the media. Kanof has played an integral part in undermining the integrity and fairness of the criminal proceedings in multiple cases, the most prominent being the Border Patrol case. And she has done so with impunity, under the direction of Johnny Sutton.

We were lied to (surprise, surprise) when we were told that the only reason this case came to light is because DHS uncovered evidence that Ramos and Compean tried to “cover up” their “crime”. That, as we now know, is a lie. What really happened is that the White House is kowtowing to political pressure from Mexico, no doubt aided by Bush’s own personal agenda to erase the border. This rotten, trumped-up case against Ramos and Compean goes all the way to highest levels of our American government. Donald Collins ventures to say that this case has all the potential of Watergate to bring down this Administration. I agree.

Continue reading “Guard the Borders”

[a re-run from the old Blogspot days, very lightly edited… WARNING: it’s a little long, and the literacy-challenged may find it too wordy to finish, thus providing support for part of my assertion. *heh*]

The NALS was distressing when I first read the report in 1999 and today’s version of the NALS is no more encouraging.

Private correspondence stemming from a bibliophilic meme led me to think on literacy in general again.

I have what some might consider an idiosyncratic view of literacy. Perhaps I should define terms before going any further. Here’s a spectrum of definitions for the word “literate” as offered by the Random house Unabridged Dictionary:

1. able to read and write.
2. having or showing knowledge of literature, writing, etc.; literary; well-read.
3. characterized by skill, lucidity, polish, or the like: His writing is literate but cold and clinical.
4. having knowledge or skill in a specified field: literate in computer usage.
5. having an education; educated

When most people talk about being literate, it’s my experience that they center in only on the first definition given. Well and good. That a person be able to decode the printed page and write words themselves is no mean accomplishment when set against most of human history of the past seven thousand years or so. (Or against the 80% to 90% illiteracy–in the sense of the first meaning–of today’s Muslim societies.)

The next step, it seems to me is for the person who is able to decode/encode printed words to actually be able to understand what is encoded/decoded. And it is at that stage that the 1992 NALS begins to reveal a disturbing set of information about America society.

A simple (all-too-brief) digest of the survey can be found here, and reveals, among other things that

Continue reading “Literacy in a Democratic Society-I”