third world county

Thank you, thank you. Please, no applause.

Well this is a first. Really. No kidding. I checked my stats (aren’t stats addictive? Maybe it’ll wear off) and found several visits resulting from google searches for I hate Intuit—so naturally I had to investigate.

Yep. I’m number 1. What an honor. (Please notice the irony.) My first (known) number one page ranking in google. For my lil post, “I Hate Intuit.”

Still, it’s an appropriate ranking because I do hate Intuit. nasty buggers. See the post if you haven’t already to know why. Apparently, there are a lot of people on the web who’ve remarked similarly… Probably a drop in the bucket. Most who’d like to say so are probably still mired in Intuit’s lousy so-called “tech support” trying to get help with Turbotax bugs.

Underground SA

I’ve been getting a goodly number of hits from Saudi Arabia resulting from folks (guys, I would assume) searching for a phrase in Arabic (found in “No shoot, Sherlock”) that translates “filthy whore.” (I used the term in a fictitious quote of one of the Iraqi “room mates” of the supposedly kidnapped Italian commie “journalist.”)

Hmmmm… A yahoo search for a term that indicates some guys in Saudi are looking for porn (something that’s supposedly a SEVERE no-no in S.A.). Searches for the same Arabic term are also showing up from Egypt, Sudan, Kuwait, the UAE, Israel (?!?), Holland, Sweden and… Illinois. *sigh*

Well, at least they’re not finding what they’re looking for here.

And… the searches from the Arabic countries indicate a possible ripe field for, um, missions. (Not being good little Muslim boys, now are we? Eh? *heh*)

And so it goes…

“Sign zee papers, old man!”**

Glenn Reynolds notes, in his latest Tech Central column, that

“… if you haven’t been convicted of some felony or other, it’s probably because no prosecutor has tried to put you away, not because you haven’t committed one, whether you realized it at the time or not.”

Indeed. We have reached the point where the only thing standing [between] a citizen (like maybe a pushy, perhaps even obnoxious, broad, say, Martha Stewart?) with rights and a convicted felon whose rights have been stripped, modified or severely curtailed is the time, personal taste and/or whim of a prosecutor.

That means that, in essence, what we think of as rights are really only priviledges temporarily granted by a government that can strip us of those rights any time it truly wishes to do so.

And nearly as bad as “felony inflation” as laws seem to grow like vicious and rabid tribbles, is the actions of judges who issue new law (usually, it seems, after reading tea leaves and goat entrails) by fiat, as Thomas Sowell notes in the first of three recent articles dealing with trouble on the bench:

“While people in various countries in the Middle East are beginning to stir as they see democracy start to take root in Iraq, our own political system is moving steadily in the opposite direction, toward rule by unelected judicial ayatollahs, acting like the ayatollahs in Iran.”

Welcome to the Imperium.

**(My thx to Cheech n Chong for the perfect image of the new order: “Sign zee papers old man!”… “But I cannot sign the papers”…much intervening dialog… “Why not?” “Because you have cut off all my fingers!”)

I’ve reached that awkward age…

…where I can no longer read a book, watch TV, listen to the stereo and carry on a conversation simultaneously. And I don’t have anyone to play chess with at the same time, now, either.

Ah, well. I suppose it has something to do with leaving adolescence behind me, now that I’m in my 50s.

Completely Stupid Idea

One of the many reasons I strongly dislike CSI and its cousin TV shows can be found, illustrated and explained in moderate depth for a layman’s understanding, here .

“Chris Enzler from Cognitech says, ‘you won’t get a perfect picture, that’s Hollywood. You will get a good picture, but you can only reconstruct so much. You almost never get a nice tape – some videotapes have been recorded over 100 times. Banks and other stores try to be cheap, and too many people expect stuff from the movies or CSI.’

Chris gave several examples of Hollywood magic that doesn’t work in real life. One example is from a recent CSI episode, where the video investigator rotated a car in 3D to read the license plate, from a 2D video. In other shows you see the investigators enhance a single pixel to a full screen, with perfect clarity, which is obviously impossible.”

Of course, all the other reasons I avoided the show(s) after the first couple of episodes I watched in order to give it a fair viewing are moot since Rathergate. Since Rathergate, I’ve sworn off ALL CBS programming, including local programming from our CBS affiliate.

Haven’t missed a thing.

Of course, CSI is now in syndication on other channels, but that just makes narrowing down my viewing options (which sometimes narrow down to nothing, which is itself no loss) easier.

Now, if only someone could get through to NBC that cloning ever dumber versions of Law & Order is a waste of otherwise valuable programming time… “SVU” was bad enough, but “Criminal Intent” with weird boy Onofrio gave me a rash. I dread discovering what the new version-that-should-not-be-named might turn out to be like…

Nah. No dread. More TLC and History Channel. That’ll do the trick.

As long as I keep wearing the noose…

Every now and then I restate my intention to more fully articulate my views on the War for Civilization. It includes, of course, the war against Islamic jihadism; the carefully considered rape of Western Civilization by ill-intentioned pseudo-intellectuals, mass media podpeople and loony left moonbats; the collapse of education and the disappearance of a literate society, etc.

But not yet.

In the meantime, here’s some material for the nearly literate (as I hope one day to be) to grab hold of and fly with: MIT’s listing of “Opencourseware”–free course material from MIT. Yep. Free. Here.

(Thanks to George Laiacona III for sending the link to Jerry Pournelle and to Dr. Pournelle for posting it. I can see my blogging tapering off a little just from time spent browsing the courses… Wow. Neat stuff!)

Now, admittedly, the offerings are really “just” highly detailed course outlines, detailing, for example, subjects covered in each class session and assignments, etc. But surely that’s enough to allow a reasonably intelligent person to glean one heck of a lot of knowledge in a subject. I just scanned ” Developing Musical Structures” and it looks like something I could get my teeth into. Foundations of Western Culture I: Homer to Dante; Foundations of Western Culture II; and Foundations of Western Culture II: Renaissance to Modernity, look like well-structured reviews of western civ, with perhaps a little more depth tha n expected, given that they are intro lit courses. (As an aside, it was a trip for me to visit—via phone—with my 13/14(?)-year-old nephew a couple of weeks ago about his venture into reading Greek tragedy. Between his daily readings and the family round-table readings in the evening, it looked like Oedipus would get a pretty in-depth examination… Something many college grads will not have done either in high school or college.)

But the stuff that’s available! Wow! Great site.

More, please.

Oh, and don’t miss the CD/DVD images of 600 (CD) or 9,400!(DVD) books available at http://www.gutenberg.org/cdproject/

When will he sign? My bet? The Twelfth of Never

Notice the entry directly above the topmost post on my blog. It ought to read, “XX days ago, John Kerry promised, on national TV, to sign form SF-180 and release his military records. He has yet to do so,” with “XX” being the number of days since he told Tim Russert, on air, that he would do so.

Polipundit puts it this way:

“This should be a bipartisan effort. If you’re a Democrat who supports Kerry, his signing form SF-180 would help prove that he’s a genuine war hero, not the fraud that the Swift Vets claim he is. If you’re a Democrat or Republican who opposes Kerry, the contents of his military records would shine a bright light on his murky Vietnam War record. Either way, it’s in everyone’s best interest to get the senator to sign SF-180 and release his records.”

Polipundit offers the code to enter that lil script on your own blog, here. Just enter it in your blog template at a place you deem appropriate.

ht to Mickey Kaus via Instapundit.

(During the campaign last year, I sent a simple email to the Kerry campaign a couple of times a week that simply said, “Sign Form 180” about 100 times per email… I also got on their mailing list and returned every campaign email with that same form e-. I knew it would be ignored, but it was my small contribution to the kerry campaign.)

In the grand scheme of things… this ain’t.

Please excuse the light blogging. I just checked my “Zen” Freecell scores and it appears I’m closing in on a milestone, of whatever importance that may be. So, realizing the relative importance of attaining 5,000 Freecell wins (notice the loss entry *heh*) as compared to world peace (or even the Mets in the Series), I must take some time out to contemplate the approach of this significant event in the history of the world.

Now, I have heard there are people who take Freecell seriously. I have even heard that there are Freecell games that are not possible to win.

I play “Idiot” or “Zen” Freecell, so I wouldn’t know about that. Zen Freecell is like regular Freecell (it’s the same lil exe in Windows) with one difference: I play it as simple “white noise” while I’m waiting for my coffee to kick in or as I am zoning out before bedtime, about to nod off, kinda in a pre-dream state. Often, I play a game or two or three while on the phone, ALT-TABbing over to another app to take notes.

It’s mindless doodling for me. (I used to do the same kind of zoning out/relaxing during classes, “drawing” yet another set of doodles for my *Non Compos Mentis Coloring Book*)

And you know, in some ways it is more important, at least for my mental health (such as it is amid this world of woe), than keeping on top of the news or articulating a mini-aspect of my philosphy of life or whatever.

So, off to the Freecell Zone for a couple of minutes, when i could be supplying both of my regular readers *s* with another off-the-wall post.

Maybe add some sauerkraut?

I was thinking along a couple of very different lines at once and they converged in wondering about recipes for crow. (Don’t ask what led to this. It ain’t purty.) So in the end, I adapted a recipe for crow casserole I found on the web, in an attempt to make it actually edible. Looking for volunteers to try it out and let me know.

Crow Casserole
6 Crow breasts, skillet-browned
Horseradish to make one quart, grated
1 cup chopped onions
5 cloves garlic
6 habanero peppers, minced
1/2 cup cilantro, chopped
1/2 cup hot mustard

Mix all ingredients except for the crow breasts
Place half the horseradish mixture in the bottom of a baking dish
Cover with crow breasts
Cover crow breasts with remaining mixture
Bake in 350 degree oven for 1.5-2 hours

Discard and take family out to eat.

OR

Call bubba (or your congresscritter) and see if he’ll eat it. (Note: for some weird reason, it seems crows are a federally protected species. Maybe it’s cos congresscritters don’t want “gifts” of crow casserole sent them on a daily basis… )

Or, maybe not so coincidental

Several times recently, I have comented in conversations with various and sudry folk about the recent Supreme Idiots’ decision essentially banning execution of criminals “aged between 15 and 17 years at the time they commit a capital crime”* and here I sit down after lunch and read John Hinderaker’s piece, “A Government of Men” in The Daily Standard echoing many of the sentiments I’ve voiced (although in a much more well-developed and literate voice).

Most of my conversational invective has been leveled at the court’s reading (and citing) of international (read “old Europe”) goat entrails in order to backstop their extra-Constitutional excess. When Hinderaker comments,

“With all due respect to the Court’s majority, there is simply no coherent rationale for counting the “enlightened” opinion of foreign governments as a factor in Constitutional jurisprudence.”

He hits the nail pretty squarely. I’d like to refer also to this lil quibble the Founders had against boy Geoerge:

“He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation.” (Declaration of Independence)

Hmmm… seems the Supreme Idiots are taking another page from boy geoege’s book, eh? (Of course, “constitution” in that context refers to “nature, character” and perhaps being ruled by fiat is no longer foreign to the American spirit… )