"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."
Oh! *!#@$%* this summer rash that has me singing the Leprosy Song (“Leprosy, all my skin is falling off of me; now my ankle’s hanging from my knee; oh, leprosy came suddenly. . . “)
Luckily, mowing and weed-eating does eough of a number on my nasal passages and lungs that the other allergens and irritants take a back seat while I’m doing yard work. It’s just later. . .
Oh, well.
One really nice thing about banking locally (no, REALLY locally) is the VERY personal service. Fraud alert call on a debit card? (Happened today.) Couple of minutes on the phone, fraudulent charges handled and card redlined. That’s pretty normal. In person: immediate service, two signatures. Now, fraudulent charges not only handled but new card and all, in almost no time. It really does help to know and be known face to face (and it doesn’t hurt to have the head teller as a next door neighbor :-)).
We deliberately took a percent and three quarters hit on our mortgage a couple of decades ago, because it meant going with our local bank. Got cookies and such from folks there when we paid it off early. Yeh, yeh, not a big deal, but it was a nice personal touch, and over the short time we carried a loan with the folks there, we had many times to be glad we had a direct line to the folks who “owned” our home with us.
This came from the “pen” of a best-selling author, in a book from a traditional publishing house, with proofreaders and editors and other subliterates (Oh! My!) on staff:
. . .she glanced at one of the only two. . .
Oh!*gagamaggot*! I could live with “one of only two” because that makes sense, but “one of THE only two” is just stupid!
If it were only this example, well, I could understand a slip-up or two, but no! It’s at least one such example of stupid expression, wrong word, malapropism or simply mind-bogglingly weird example of contemporary subliteracy–as dictated by popular “culture”–per every five to ten pages. It’s as though the author were so immersed in the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind’s subliterate expression of popular verbal “literacy” that such things have over-ridden (no, I do NOT mean “over-written” although that may also apply. . . )any reading of genuinely literate works he may have once consumed.
And so, subliterate destruction of written English gains ground, as more and more people see such things in popular, widely-distributed, widely-read works.
*sigh* Is it too soon to see this, when combined with the hard work being done in pubschools and “higher” ed to dumb down literacy, as the result of a conspiracy. . . of dunces?
After years of using an “old tech” 12-volt NiCad battery-powered string trimmer and suffering through the NiCad woes (finicky recharge cycles, maintenance difficulties during storage, progressive battery “senility” *heh* etc.), I’ve been enjoying some backyard cleanup using the new 20-volt Li-ion battery-powered string trimmer my Wonder Woman got me as a Fathers Day present. Really sweet.
Now, next on my list is the companion polesaw that uses the same battery packs. That would ease some of the tree trimming I need to do, and even cut down on the amount of ladder and climbing gear use for most of it.
The impetus for this thought resurfacing today? A “white paper” titled,
“77 Features For Windows® 7 That Every IT Professional Should Know About”
“For”? I checked the paper out, and after reading the first section confirmed what I knew: the writer doesn’t know what “for” means. . . or “of” for that matter. Those are two words it’s a bit hard for English speakers to bobble as badly as this writer did.
Well, the writer was probably just a graduate of an American college sometime in the last decade or so.
Remote access isn’t a perfect substitute for a KVM switch for a computer/”monitor” that’s across the room (and nor would a KVM switch be absolutely ideal *heh*), but with a lappy sitting on my, urm, lap, it’s *meh*-semi-OK. . . Switching between use of the computers is juuuuust a wee tad cumbersome from time to time, but what’s a guy gonna do? It’s slightly better than two different kybd/mice in one lap. 😉 Yeh, yeh, I could access the “TV computer” with my lil tablet, but that’s no better than via the lappy.
Syrian factions vie for control of chemical weapons.
Meanwhile, Syrian rebels pledge loyalty to al-Qaeda, and Obama Steps Up Military Aid To Syrian Rebels
Personally, I think Syria stored Iraq’s WMD in the unused jockstraps of ball-less, go-along-to-get-along, bend over and say, “Please may I have another” cowardly country club Repugnican’ts who have sucked up to traitorous Dhimmicraps for decades, and The Zero just wants to be in on the jock strap raid, but what do I know?
Rep Stockman requests subpoena of NSA’s White House, IRS phone logs
“Obama assures the public he only collected this information to uncover wrongdoing and protect civil liberties. Clearly he would want us to use it to investigate this case, because otherwise he’d be lying,” said Stockman.
“If Obama has nothing to hide he has nothing to fear,” said Stockman.
About time at least one Republican located a workable testosterone therapy.
You’re familiar with the old saw that a prosecutor (persecutor, more like nowadays) can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich if he wants. Yeh, law enfarcement really is about that bad.
More than a few years ago, a client (who shortly thereafter moved with his family to an undisclosed rural, off-the-grid location–really) warned me to be careful what I said in phone calls, because the feds were listening in. I didn’t dispute his warning, because it didn’t matter. No matter how innocent one’s actions or speech may be, there are so many laws and regulations on the books now, that we are all “ham sandwiches”–open to be indicted for “crimes” thought up by our overlords any time they wish to have our blood.
Yeh, the “feddle gummint” has you by the short and curlies any time it wants to hang you. So? All one can do is live as best one can, as morally and ethically as possible, and let the chips fall where they may. *meh* Oh death, where is thy sting and all that.
Hell awaits law enFARCEment and bureaucraps who abuse their power. I wish them the joy of their final destination.