Flat-Earth-Think

In all fairness, from what little I have seen of him, I think Al Gore is probably a good guy. I think he is caught up in his notoriety like any of the rest of us would be and I find no fault with that other than he is letting it inflate his ego a bit much. But considering his fame I have to hand it to him for first being able to pack it in like that and secondly for letting someone photograph him doing it.

I do think he is a bit goofy but I write that off as being just a regular guy placed in situations where his internal self-image is frightened of doing something that will expose how ordinary he really is. He is awkward. A good example of this was when Clinton spoke after the impeachment trial. Gore stood in the background with this goofy look on his face as he stood by his man. Another example is his attempt to look in charge during the 2000 debates by stalking Bush on the stage. This is a guy that will step up and play the parts he is instructed to play though his delivery is less than convincing.

Do I think Gore is an exceptionally bright man ? You be the judge from the photo.

Yesterday he made a statement equating those who do not believe that human activity is the cause of global warming to those in the past who believed the Earth to be flat. He has it backwards and here's why.

The line of thinking of the flat-earth concept comes from a static view of the universe and the human's Divine position in it. The Sun and Moon orbited the Earth, the stars were set in place so we would have a way of knowing where we are in the dark. However, as time went by and knowledge increased this view became absurd.

So it is with global warming being caused by human activity. It is that same arrogance that somehow everything that happens on the planet is a direct result of a frail little creature with an ego. It is a static view that comes to the conclusion that there exists some optimal temperature the planet should be. For who or what ? Where's the thermostat to set this? Does the Earth really need us to determine it natural cycles? They tend to ignore questions like; what influence may that huge nuclear furnace we orbit have to do with temperature or what influence do those vast flowing oceans have on temperature ?

To ignore that the Earth is a dynamic place that operates within the bounds of physical principles, such as conservation of energy, and indifferent to what we think the temperature ought to be is not much different from the mindset the flat-Earth thinkers. "The world is flat because we say it is and the selective science we have proves it." However, their narrative falls apart if asked what is on the other side of this flat planet?

So it is with the advocates of man-made global warming. They will tell you the science is settled despite a huge amount of historical data that indicates that the Sun, the ocean, the planetary orbital cycles probably have the greatest say in the matter.

So who has the more static view of Earth's climate?

Jesse Jackson: Typical White Person ?

"The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity," he said. "But she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know. . .there's a reaction in her that doesn't go away and it comes out in the wrong way."
- Sen. Barack Obama call to Philadelphia sports radio 610 WIP March 20. 2008

"There is nothing more painful to me … than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved."
- Jesse Jackson, as quoted in US News, March 10. 1996

Judgement ?

The bottle of snake oil Obama is selling is that his brand of 'I told you so' over Iraq is another indication of his superior judgement; as so ably demonstrated with his association with the Right Revrund Wright. I got curious and googled his 2002 Anti-Iraq Liberation speech. It's boilerplate Leftist theology, wrong war, Saddam was not an imminent threat, doing it for oil... etc. As a speech per se I'd give it thumbs up but it would get low marks on logical content.

I'd love to fisk it but that's not what I want to point out. That point is if we hadn't taken Saddam out where would we be ? There was a good chance sanctions would have been lifted. According to Saddam's American interpreter he had every intent to ramp up his weapons program once they were lifted. How much capital would he have with the current price of oil.

It seems likely to me that here, five years later, there would be a nuclear arms race between Iraq and Iran. We know Saddam would have no issue with using them on Iran. Instead of talking about thousands of dead we'd be talking millions.

... Then maybe he was onto something. Let them nuke each other out of existence.

Like Cream, Some Turds Float to the Top

It's time for a tribute to America's royal family... The Kennedys

Stuck on You

Thought I'd heard it all....



Ok... forgive me but I can't help myself... something about this story stinks. Hopefully they'll get to the bottom of it. Amazing they were able to keep a lid on it for two years.

Frustrations

I am a utilitarian in my efforts. Things have a purpose or they are useless to me. Be like water and seek the path of least resistence. Whatever it takes to get it done.

A Christmas present in a shoe box is still a present with or without fancy wrapping. I go along to get along but sometimes the useless things we do as a society drive me nuts. I say what I mean and mean what I say. No peripheral side-stepping. If you want to know what I think then be prepared because your delicate feelings or false self-image will not be icluded in the response equation. Never ask me if this dress makes your butt look fat. No your butt makes that dress look fat. Time is not a replacable commodity and I don't like wasting mine doing a tango of niceness.

I hate it when I want to get from point A to point B but have to consider options C,D,E and F. A good example is ordering food at a drive through. I'll take Hamburger Combo #1 please. Will that be regular, medium or large. REGULAR ! Would you like cheese with that? Did I say I wanted a cheeseburger ? Would you like a hot apple pie. Arrrghhhhh !!! If I wanted one I would have asked for one !!!!

So here is what set me off today and caused this venting. It is a beautiful day here and I work out of my house but I rarely get a chance to eat lunch let alone leave the house to go eat out. Today I decided to and thought a Pizza Hut buffet would be nice. It was 1:34PM when I left. I thought the buffett ended at 2:00 PM but once I arrived they were just turning off the heaters on the buffet table. So I asked if I missed the buffet and yep it was over 10 minutes ago. Now here's all this pizza, still warm, and salad in the salad bowl. They will throw all of this away or in the case of the pizza, box it and take it to the homeless shelter. So instead of making a last minute sale a mere 10 minutes past the deadline they end up getting nothing. Were it me I'd have said yeah go ahead and load up and I'd have made $6.00. So I shook my head and walked out.

Go to the Subway, nobody behind the counter. I make noises to indicate my presence. I wait, nobody comes. I turn and walk out. OK then let's run to Carl Junior's. Hadn't been there in a very longtime and I notice they have these two big machines where a second line of customers would have ordinarily been. There are three of us at the counter. People behind the counter are busy going to and fro but nobody takes our order.

Finally the guy in front of me says "well maybe we're supposed to use this machine". So he is over there custom building his burger and probably dealing with responding 'no' to question concerning hot apple pies. After he's pushed the screen a good dozen times he tries to put his $10 in the machine and it won't accept it. So he repeats the process at the other machine. Same result. So I look over at the other guy, an elderly man just standing there smiling and shaking his head and I say loud enough to be heard "what the hell ever happened with paying some young person to tend a counter ? Shortly after that a young person came and tended the counter " May I help you?"

We have gone technologically insane as a society bound by meaningless corporate policy as if it were set in stone and can not be trumped by common sense. The rule is 'Get the customers money in your hand ASAP. If you have to bend a corporate policy to get an additional sale then bend it.

Don't even get me started with restroom water conservation faucets and blow dryers.

DO NOT GET A VISTA PC

I have done the suffering so you won't have to. I decided to buy an inexpensive Dell PC with Vista Home Premium so I could see for myself if it was truly as bad as others have said. It is. Makes a really nice email PC. Wish I could say a good net browsing PC but my NeatGear wireless NIC won't stay connected enough for me to really tell.

I like the translucent look of the desktop, the gadgets bar is rather spiffy and it seems to perform simple functions well. The highly touted 3-D page view of opened items is absolutely useless. I much prefer the ability to hover over open items minimized on the taskbar where a pop-up thumbnail appears. I do like that.

The biggest irritant is the wireless network adapter keeps going stupid. I know I have network because my wireless XP laptop ( though the least powerful machine I have is still my favorite ) is sitting right next to the Dell. I went out and downloaded the proper drivers for it. But still I'll be on the net and it just dies. If I pull the network adapter out of the USB port and reinsert then it comes back. I actually think this is a USB issue since the adapter is out of another PC and worked flawlessly.

I was able to load my Photoshop 7 on it and it works with one exception. I like to cut images out of photos using the polygonal select. This can get very tedious to make a good clean cut. Right in the middle of a long selection the screen will blink and it closes the selection. I have to start all over after a few choice utterances of the vernacular.

My Command & Conquer Generals loaded on it and withstood application of Mods. But that is the only game I had that will work.

I managed to get my old Sonic Foundry VideoFactory loaded on it but none of my video conversion tools work so it is all pointless if I can't convert an FLV to a version of AVI that VideoFactory will not recognize. Too old and tired to go harvesting Codecs that work.

The single most frustrating part for me is that I come from the old command-line school where I prefer to get down to the file-level and work. I intuitively go for Windows Explorer to do almost anything. I could survive without the test-monkey-friendly graphics interface. Vista won't let you. It tries to think for you as to where you want to store your graphics or your download. If you are out on the net to scarf images from google and you moved to another page it can't remember where you stored the last ones. You end up having to click through the path to the folder. Simply irritating.

And as a single user on the PC it frustrates me to have to tell it to run as administrator when I am set up on the FRIKKIN thing as administrator. This means I ought to hav access to every folder on the file system. I don't.

Not sure I can stand another Microsoft innovation.

My suggestion: If you want a Dell go to their site and grab one of those Vostros that you can still get XP on.

However I am not alone in my opinion:

Microsoft... stop innovating... please.

Two Americas

There are two Americas and subsequently two types of Americans: Heroes and Zeroes.

There is the America of the Berkeley City Council and Code Pink.

Then there is the America of an ordinary girl from Texas - Monica Lin Brown.

...and another from Kentucky - Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester.

A way to tell is if you ask the zeroes if they are heroes they will say yes, they are the ones defending America and if you ask the heroes if they are heroes they would say no, they were just doing their job.

Jam In Heaven

There's a jam in Heaven today. Jeff Healey has died of cancer at age 41.

Fatwa This