“Enter at the strait gate… “

This trailer for an “updated” 300 is as good an intro as I could ask for…

h.t. NealsNuze

Matthew 7: 13Enter ye in at the strait* gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat; 14Because strait* is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.–NJKV

The semi-archaic construction above actually carries the meaning of the text better (for those who can read it) than many more modern translations. *sigh*

This makes me think of gates and fences. In the broader context of society today, we have a political elite and those they serve (decidedly NOT the majority of citizens they are tasked to serve!) who have determined to completely eliminate the gate controlling access to the superhighway leading to perdition while at the same time piling heaps of trash in front of the gate that opens onto the narrow path to life.

An example–one of many–can be found in the clear message of those who once again seek to grant amnesty to those who have violated our borders, stolen IDs, jobs and services from citizens and done so with the active aid of a foreign power. 1, 2, 3. Were our political elite–elected for the most part with votes bought from greedy and lazy American sheeple–not blinded by their own greed, lust for power and stupid short-sightedness as well as being completely scornful of their duty to this country’s citizens, the hordes of illegal aliens would soon be flooding over the borders OUT of the U.S.

No, don’t give me the old lying memes that they’re here to do “jobs Americans won’t do” or that it’s impossible to deport 20 million people. *throws the bullshit flag*

1. Eliminate illegals’ jobs by cracking down on those who hire illegals
2. Eliminate social services for illegals that are paid for by tax dollars (private social services that do not use ANY public monies could, of course, continue to aid outlaws if they wished).
3. While cracking down on illegals in the workplace, put those thus caught on chain gangs making little rocks from big rocks until they’re too worn down to EVER consider coming back through the back door.

Do those simple things and the flood of invaders seeking to leave would swamp our borders.

But the other side of that particular “open the wrong gate and block the right gate” behavior by our political elite is that the gate to legal immigration is blocked by piles of bureaucrappic trash. Yes, we do need immigrants, but not to do the grunt work and menial labor that limosine “liberals” and fake “conservatives” want done on their estates and in their lowballing businesses. We need immigrants who have technical skills and real science education since those skills and education factors are lagging in the U.S. Yes, lagging, falling behind, failing to meet our needs as an advanced, technological society. (But that’s another rant–about education.)

Any politician *spit* with more than two active synapses in the thunder mug that sits atop his shoulders could see that offering amnesty (even the backdoor amnesty being considered this week)–rewarding outlaws who wreak havoc on our social structure, economy, national health and medical systems, etc.–is a bad, bad idea. But though the smartest of our politicians *spit* (those who actually do have two or more working synapses in the thunder mugs sitting atop their shoulders) know this, almost all of them are still on the road to tearing down the last of the crumbling walls between us and the barbarian hordes. (And yes, I am aware of a very few statesmen left who seek to preserve what little of the Republic we once had. Too little, too late? Maybe.)

*For those to whom “strait” is a confusing term, “strait” is a perfectly good word that is very different in meaning to “straight”. It is most often used in our less and less literate culture to mean “a narrow channel joining two larger bodies of water,” leaving aside its broader meaning. Strait=narrow (thus “straits” as bodies of water are also often referred to as “narrows”!)


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Smart People Can Be Soooo Stupid

Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan says the Iraq War is all about the oil.

Really, Alan old boy? Where’s the surplus of $10-per barrel oil, then? Where’re the pumps with $1.00 per gallon gas?

If the war were all about the oil, we’d be awash in oil and Saudi Arabia would be looking at its sponsorship of jihad with an eye to ending that (very viable) excuse for American adventurism and likely (were there to be one single solitary ounce of truth to President Fifi Mohammed Bush’s declaration that we’d hold national sponsors of terrorism accountable) extirpation and total annihilation of the Saudi “royal” house.

If it were all about the oil.

Smart people can be so very, very stupid sometimes. Maybe Alan’s problem is advancing senility.


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WP Upgrade–not so joy-joy *heh*

Well, as of this writing, the upgrade to WP 2.2.3 has resulted in the fragging of twc. Mike Little’s Journalized Theme, which has been the basis for this blog’s public face since its move to WordPress, is broken by the upgrade (see Update), so I’ll be trying a variety of diferent boilerplate until I either find something I like or discover what the issue is (or have someone hand me a solution on a platter).

Until that happens, some of this site’s functionality will be… crippled a bit. *sigh* Just have to see how it goes, and what kind of time and energy I have available to give it.

Oh. Well.


Update: Well, installed and tweaked (a bit) several different ready-made themes from the WP library and disliked them all. UNinstalled the Journalized theme and simply re-installed it from a backed up copy. Seems to be working fine. Compared the files in the copy I removed with the backed up copy. No differences I could find. I guess the stuff just needed to be reinstalled. Strange, but I’m not really complaining. Sure, the theme I have is cluttered, a lil cramped and all–though that’s not really the fault of the theme template :-)–but if it ain’t broke… 🙂

“Virtual” Exercise

Ahhh, finally some exercise equipment for folks who hate to move!

h.t. Windows Secrets eLetter and a big “*heh* you!” to Sarcastic Gamer.


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T-13, 1.42: Thirteen Ways to Improve Public Education

Public schools in this country are, by and large, swamps of miseducation. The evidence of failure is rampant, and yet we allow the “soft” lobotomizing of students to continue when amelioration would be soooo easy.

13. Require remedial education for PARENTS when their children fail to attain…

12. Objective standards in reading, math, written English.

11. Burn down “schools of education” and

10. Put education professors and remote educrats to work on chain gangs making big rocks into little rocks (as punishment for their abuse of students)

9. Vouchers.

8. Pay school administrators at minimum wage. Give them bonuses for keeping their mouths shut.

7. Introduce State and Federal politicians who want to “fix” public education (after having been one of the chief causes of its problems) to Dr. Tarr and Mr. Fether. Seriously. *heh*

6. Shoot Big Bird and all his partners in crime.

5. Eliminate “No Child Gets Ahead” (disingenuously named by politicians, “No Child Left Behind”)–the current political attempt to create the world of Harrison Bergeron as filtered through the rose colored glasses of Lake Wobegon

4. Track students. Face it, we do NOT live in Lake Wobegon. Half of the students ARE “below average” in intellectual ability. Only a very few can benefit from a genuine university experience. But we keep insisting that kids need to prepare for college, when less than a third of them really can qualify… (and that’s part of the reasonj that colleges are now turning out students who graduate as illiterates *sigh*)

3. Fire crappy teachers. Really. Credentialitis has now laded school systems down with folks who really do make a mockery of even the old slander “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach,” so that it is now all too often, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, can’t teach either… but they have tenure!”

2. Let each and every local school board determine what subjects will be taught, what services will be offered, what teachers will be hired and fired, without outside interference.

And the number one thing that we can do to improve public education in America is…

1. Completely, totally, absolutely and permanently extirpate ANY messing around with public education by the “feddle gummint”–including razing to the ground every office that houses Education Department educrats and their evil *heh* minions, seizing all the assets of these blood sucking parasites and putting them to work on chain gangs with their buddies, the FORMER education professors.


Now, I know some very fine teachers who teach in public schools (AKA “prisons for kids”) who do their utmost to lead the little honyocks in their care into some semblance of civilization, despite the interference of politicians, bureaucrats, administrators and parents (who are themselves, now, all too often “edu-lobotomized” products of a failing system). I am even aware of a few (yes, a few) good schools where teachers, parents, students and the rare administrator have fought the good fight against the fall of night.

But these exceptions to the rule are far too few.

And yes, I know there are other things that can be done to improve public education, but NONE of them will be done by politicians, remote educrats, professors of education or schools of education. All those segments will do is what they have done for years: create more and more ways to destroy our most precious resource.


Trackposted to the Thursday Thirteen Hub and to Outside the Beltway, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Perri Nelson’s Website, Rosemary’s Thoughts, DeMediacratic Nation, Right Truth, Nuke’s News & Views, Shadowscope, Webloggin, The Bullwinkle Blog, The Amboy Times, Colloquium, Pursuing Holiness, Right Celebrity, Woman Honor Thyself, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Great Creeping Credentialitis, Matban!

*heh*

This is just a teaser for tomorrow’s Thursday Thirteen, “Thirteen Ways to Improve Public Education”

From a collection of Chrstopher Anvil’s “space opera” stories, Interstellar Patrol II-The Federation of Humanity, edited by Eric Flint, this:

Is a blacksmith qualified because a qualified blacksmith says he’s qualified, or is he qualified because he can work in iron? And if he can’t work in iron, what is his qualification worth, and what is the qualification of the person who qualified him worth? There are two forms of qualification, you know. One is the license to practice. The other is the ability to do the job. One qualification is granted by authority. The other qualification is acquired by thought and work. How closely these two qualifications correspond generally depends on how well the constituted authorities understand the actual conditions. There are many cases where the authorities don’t understand.

Just so, is a teacher qualified to teach just because they attained some set of credentials as dictated by politicians and educrats (each a class of persons that can’t generally find their own butts with a mirror on a stick… although they generally have no trouble talking out their butts… )?

Just asking…


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“Compassion” (MHWA)

Burt Prelutsky’s recent article, “A few thoughts about compassion” includes a quote from one of his readers,

“Like a lot of folks, I have a job that requires I pass a random urine test. That’s not a problem. What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my tax money to people who don’t have to pass a similar test. Why shouldn’t one have to pass a drug test in order to get a welfare check if I have to pass one in order to earn it for them?”

Why not indeed. But the really pernicious aspect of “compassion” expressed with public monies is that it costs the “compassionate” politician or lobby group little or nothing, because they simply use Other People’s Money to express their fake compassion.

Yep. I am saying that if their compassion were real, they’d use their own money and join with other like-minded people who would also use their own money, time, efforts and talents to express genuine compassion, instead of robbing some to pay others in their expression of fake (costs them nothing) “compassion”.


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Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, DragonLady’s World, Pirate’s Cove, Webloggin, Leaning Straight Up, The Bullwinkle Blog, High Desert Wanderer, and Conservative Cat, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Rambles

I’ll append the linkfest stuff below the rambling rabbit trails that follow…


So, Fred’s announced his candidacy and used some mostly right (or is that Right) rhetoric in doing so. Good on him. (BTW, I don’t use “rhetoric” in the pejorated sense of “empty rhetoric” that most Mass Media Podpeople, etc., would have us believe is all the word entails. Look it up. Or not. :-)) So he missed two of my hot buttons when talking with Leno. I’ll listen further.


Speaking of rhetoric, I once “knew” (via a mailing list) a guy with his doctorate in English, head of a major university’s English department, who taught rhetoric… and was seriously crippled in that department, because he was barely semi-literate. No kidding. I once noted (after punching enough holes in an onlist argument that the other guy’s position was more holes than argument) that a particular position/argument was “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing“, and this English professor emailed me privately to “confirm” that I was referring to a statement by… Faulkner! Kinda demonstrated my “sub-literate” label above rather nicely, eh? Entirely missed the metacommentary, which included–for a literate person–the critique,

“…it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

*sigh*

Read one of the most famous soliloquies in the English language at the link above. Something that “English professor” had never done!


Pound foolish. That’s what most self-lobotomized, brainwashed Americans seem to be. Example: buying new cars alla time and spending way, way more than is sensible for the latest, greatest stuff when what most of ’em have is just fine n dandy, peachy keen already.

Example: our family needs transportation as much as most folks in these (dis)United States seem to. My Wonder Woman needs to travel a bit in her work a couple of days a week (managing two different school libraries), so she needs a car of her own, but not the newest, shiniest toy, just one that’ll get her the couple of miles to work and back and then to the other school and back a couple of days a week as well, and to meetings, etc.

I’m all over the place during the day. Sometimes 30-40 miles (or more) away on gigs. Need great gas mileage (and I approach that at ~42mpg) in a comfortable, dependable vehicle.

Son & Heir needs better than average gas mileage (his is running about 36mpg–with an auto tranny) in dependable transportation to get the 30+ miles to work and back each day (cheaper for him than moving out into a place closer to work, so he can save more $$ for such a move later).

IOW, we need no latest and greatest do-dads and gimcracks, just basic, safe, dependable transportation. So, for less than what one new car would cost (MUCH less) we have three decent used cars. Paid for in full, leaving plenty for possible repairs and normal maintenance. Sure, one of them is coming up on a (normal maintenance) timing belt replacement, and we’re budgeting for halfshaft replacements on two of them (approaching 150,000 ,iles on one and the other already past that), but even if we paid someone else to do the work (unlikely: I’m always looking for reasons to use my tools–and buy new ones! :-)), we’ll still be many thousands ahead of buying a new car, let alone three.

Oh, and all the fancy do-dads? Really, I’ve not yet found a do-dad for a car that’s necessary for good, safe, economical transportation, ever since I decided I didn’t really need the distraction of the radio in my 1953 Chevy Belair…

So, that’s thousands of dollars not wasted that can be used for better, more lasting benefits.

Sure, in all the years doing this, I’ve bought a coupla lemons. (I really don’t wanna talk about the XJ-12. *sigh*) But even with those, we’ve not done badly, and I’m sure if just a few folks look carefully at their spending habits, they can see the wastage in wanting “Newer! Shinier! Bigger! Lots More Do-Dads!”

Similar thoughts can apply to nearly everything from electronics purchases to new shovels. Do we really need ’em?

Just sayin’…


I’ve listened to four of Beethoven’s nine symphonies today. I’ve never listened to so many in a row before. An ear-opener. Of course, the drawback is that I’ve had to listen to 128Kbit sampled mp3 files to do that, and my portable mp3 player didn’t come with the best earphones imaginable, either. *sigh* [Update: the last five sounded MUCH better with a new pair of earphones–some $20 JVC cheapies, no less!] Still, wonderful, though. I guess I’ll listen to the other five tomorrow. I was going to edit out the BBC commenter’s remarks before transferring to my player, but didn’t have the time for that and am glad I didn’t. A review of the symphonies’ biographical/historical settings has been a Good Thing.

Still, makes me want to listen to good CD recordings for a fuller sense of the sound.


I really wish Netgear would post ALL the drivers for equipment that’s still within its lifecycle. The only really negative thing I can find about Netgear.

Other techie stuff? OK. I’m considering adding a far out of lifecycle Palm V to my handheld stable. Under the “Do I really need this” rule, I probably won’t, though. But… I bought a Palm V modem for 25¢ (mainly cos it came with 2 AA batteries and “free” shipping cos I bought some other things I do need at the same time *heh*), so I just hate to have nothing to mate with it. In final analysis, though, I think I’ll just be happy with the two Duracell batteries for 25¢. I do not need a Palm V (or the modem). Heck, I rarely use dialup, anyway–just as a last resort backup to my cable connection.

Some of the other purchases? Well, a couple of Caleb 144MB “super floppy” drives (with media, no less) cos they also read/write 1.4MB floppies (which I still use for some things) and were cheaper on a closeout than any other new floppy drives I could buy, and I have two machines with flaky floppy drives to replace, soooo…

A better wireless card for my Wonder Woman, one that–surprise! surprise!–better matches the capabilities of the RangeMax wireless router we use. Why buy it? Two reasons: better network speeds for her and… her built-in wireless is now a backup wireless “card”. I like redundancy in computer equipment.

Oh, and I think I must have left my Nero installation disk at a client’s when I repaired her Nero installation, so a 99¢ replacement disk for that (and if the client finds the one I’m sure I left behind, then I have a backup copy. :-)).


Have to go stand in line getting one of the cars tagged today. *sigh* Oh. Well. Maybe it won’t be bad. At least the tag’ll be inexpensive (cos the car sure was ;-))


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