Curmudgeonry

Okay, so lemme see if I can get this blog thingie off the ground... Grunt grunt groan push ...

You remember when you would replace all of that great alcohol that you stole from your parents' liquor bottles with water, carefully marking the side of the bottle first, so as to remember how much it took you to get wasted? Well, I don't either because I never could stand alcohol until I turned about 40 or so, and my parents didn't smoke pot, so I had to... well, I'm getting off track here.

In thinking about the recent discussions on hierarchy, some ideas from another discussion came to me and it seemed this might be a good place to explore them.

Disclaimer: I am not, in any way, suggesting that racism or the rest is good or healthy. Please remember that.

The question is, however, what is the moral response to expressions of these things? Many times the response is violent or hateful in return, creating the politically correct nightmare.

If we have any "right" or claim to life, liberty and property, how can we not have equal claim to our own thoughts and actions?

It may be silly, looking back fondly on the days when I had to remember an eddress like “friend69%node.bitnet@tardis.univ.edu” or worse in order to send someone an email at a speed that was measured by baudrate ... and via a modem that one had to place the phone receiver on ... but in some ways I do. If I mistyped the eddress, or the server was down, or there was a problem of any kind in sending or receiving the email, I got a big ol’ BOUNCE message in return. If I didn’t get one, I knew my email had gone through.

These days, I send out email and wonder ... will it get wrongly trapped in a spam filter? Will it not get through because of blacklisting, because my domain has been forged in spamming? Or because I specifically am not on the recipient’s whitelist? Or do the various factions of the internet necessary to get the packets from point A to point B not speak to each other often or reliably any more? Or did the recipient receive my email, but is too busy/behind and has let it languish, forgotten? Or does the recipient just not want to talk to me?

Granted, not all of those questions would be answered under the old system ... but a lot of the guesswork and frustration wouldn’t exist.

What can I say? I am a confirmed internet dinosaur. Lynx and Pine and Archie and Gopher have different primary connotations for me than they do for most people ... Meantime, I’m tired of not knowing whether my email is getting through or not.

It’s to be expected from the govgoons and burricrats, of course—it is part and parcel of their desire to track, and to be efficacious in tracking, individuals throughout all their activities, across all their days. But I have seen the cry echoed across one too many a private place. “You should have to use your real name!” squawk the parroting, semi-non-thinking plebes. Well, pray tell me this first: what is a real name—and what is real about a name?

Yesterday, while doing some browsing in between craft sessions with the snolfs, I encountered a statement by someone I had been thinking fairly well of (I say “fairly well” because his writings have, of late, been focused on a specific person ... you know the one ... running for Grand Poobah Over Us All). His statement floored me.

That title is meant to be warbled to the tune Who Knows Where the Time Goes? ... fortunately, email isn’t as flitting and fleeting as time. I am saddened to report that I am still having problems with the eddress associated with this domain.

I haven’t meant to be absent here so much of late. I have been busy with various things, and it’s hard to say no to the snolfs when they ask me to come outside to play or explore with them ... but those are only partial explanations.

I can appreciate wanting to update a classic essay for a contemporary audience ... but it isn’t as simple a thing as just changing out old-fashioned words for new. There’s a lot that must be understand about the original piece, as well as the contemporary idiom the author wants to put it in. Rhythm, flow, symbolism, allusions—all these, and more, may need to be considered. It takes a real wordsmith to pull off that kind of challenge.

I’ve just spent about 45 minutes downloading a bunch of music from two different sites that came to my attention within the past few days. One site primarily offers short clips of full songs; the other offers full songs in a variety of styles, including one I like but don’t see much of these days – ragtime.

So, anyone want to guess which music folder I’ve deleted, and which I’m currently listening to and enjoying immensely?

I used to enjoy reading c|net’s commentaries – labeled “Perspectives” – but no longer. It seems to me that the contributions from outside individuals have increasingly become very thin veneers for promoting their own interests. I present as evidence: Where did the music industry go so wrong?, by the CEO of a company that offers “products and services for indie artists”; Time for Fed to join the 21st century, by the CEO of a company that – as best I can tell from its jargon-laden site – just happens to be well-positioned to provide the system he advocates; the especially insufferable Two cheers for intellectual-property law, authored by Microsoft’s general counsel shark; and today’s example, Real ID is bad? Compared to what? by the president of a company that sells “infrastructure and application software for smart credential programs”.

Bill Gates to finally get Harvard degree, says the Seattle Times. Makes it sound like he’s been finishing his requirements for the sheepskin, doesn’t it? A more accurate representation comes out in the second paragraph of the story [emphasis mine]:

Bill Gates is finally getting his Harvard degree -- 32 years after he walked away from campus on the path to becoming the world's wealthiest person.

Gates, billionaire co-founder of Microsoft Corp., philanthropist and Harvard dropout, will receive an honorary degree in June when he delivers the university's 356th commencement address.

All such pieces of paper are becoming less valuable these days, but all the same, there is still a world of difference between that which is earned, and that which is merely given.

Pretty ironic, in a very mixed-metaphorish sort of way, that on the day that the wearin' o' the green is celebrated around the world, it's also treated to further insults to the dollar — once referred to as greenbacks, though less so these days as the USSA moneycrats play with our money's appearance as well as its value. Another bad day for the dollar ..., and who's surprised?

The dollar continued to fall yesterday and overnight with the euro and yen both headed for the biggest weekly gain of this year. The dollar fell 2.3% against the yen and 2.2% versus the euro so far this week after reports continue to show a slowing U.S. economy.

Driving home last night, I heard that our congress had taken steps to deal with the deficits that are piling up. THEY VOTED TO RAISE THE DEBT CEILING!! .... I guarantee these debts that continue to pile up will eventually drive down the value of the US$.

You think? After all, the vermin didn't just vote to raise the debt ceiling, but also approved an extravagant budget, as the Boston Globe reports:

Congress raised the limit on the federal government's borrowing by $781 billion yesterday, and then lawmakers voted to spend more than $100 billion on the war in Iraq, hurricane relief, education, healthcare, transportation, and heating assistance for the poor without making offsetting budget cuts.

On vote after vote in the House and Senate, lawmakers demonstrated the growing gap between their political promises to rein in spending and their need to respond to emergencies and protect politically popular programs. The votes followed last weekend's GOP leadership meeting in Memphis, where virtually every speaker called on the party to renew its commitment to fiscal discipline and to control federal spending and the deficit.

Nothing new there; we've seen all that before. The article continues (all emphasis mine):

With no brakes on spending and no moves afoot to raise taxes, the federal debt is now rising at an unprecedented clip. The government bumped up against its $8.18 trillion statutory debt ceiling last month, forcing the Treasury to borrow from employee pension funds to keep the government operating. After weeks of pleading from Treasury Secretary John Snow, the Senate took the politically unpalatable but economically critical step yesterday of raising the ceiling for borrowing to $8.96 trillion. Under House rules, the debt limit was raised last year without a vote when lawmakers approved a budget.

It was the fourth debt-ceiling increase in the past five years, following $450 billion in 2002, a record $984 billion in 2003, and $800 billion in 2004. The statutory debt limit has now risen by more than $3 trillion since Bush took office.

And let's not forget that the moneycrats are no longer reporting M3 — what our money supply is. Anyone not think the printing presses are red-hot yet? That also pushes the value of the dollar down. If you're interested in a little historical exploration of the dollar's value, check out How Much is that Worth Today?, a nifty utility I featured a while back in my Salon. Here's a calculation I did:

$440.71 in the year 2005 has the same "purchase power" as $20 in the year 1905

How much worse can it get? Strap yourself in and hang on tight, because I think we're about to take that roller coaster ride.

Someone on an email discussion list recently advanced the argument that the USSA dollar not being backed by gold wasn't such a bad thing, because it is backed by something else that's of real value: real estate. He didn't mean the hyped real estate market; he said, ... real assets that are mortgaged in dollars. I nearly fell out of my chair laughing.

I know I'm not a star economics scholar, but I can't help but keep wondering why those types in this country keep picking on Iceland. Yes, there are different circumstances for their krona and the USSA dollar, but, hello? Pot, kettle here?

Most Americans have an easier time naming members of the cartoon Simpson family than listing the five freedoms granted by the nation's founders, a survey by a museum released on Wednesday said.

Here's a hint: one of them is not the right to own and raise pets, an error committed by one in five respondents.

Half of 1,000 Americans randomly surveyed by the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum could name at least two of the five members of Fox Television's Simpson family, the stars of the network's long-running show.

But just 28 percent of respondents could name more than one of the five freedoms listed in the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment -- about the same proportion that could name all five Simpson family members or could recall the three judges on Fox TV's top-rated "American Idol."

Just 8 percent could recall three First Amendment freedoms.

Read the whole, pathetic thing if you've the stomach for it. Just another proof of the GIGO principle, though.

Mostly from current headlines ... all of which make me wonder if there isn't a subspecies of humans that ought to be named Homo sapiens moronis.

Irving jailed for 3 years after denying Holocaust: So having a very controversial, politically unpopular opinion is enough for the thought police to put a person in jail? (I take it Austrian law doesn't rely on "proof of harm" as part of proving a case -- even for laws as stupid as theirs that criminalizes "denying the Holocaust".) I don't know whether to be glad or sad at this proof that the USSA doesn't have a lock on legislative and judicial idiocy.

Congressmen worry about ports deal with Dubai firm: Let me get this straight. It's perfectly acceptable for a UK firm to run six "major U.S. seaports" that include New York, Miami, and New Orleans. But a firm based in the United Arab Emirates is right out. Why? And the more I think about this, the more my reptilian brain spins ... Are these ports private property, or "public" property? If they're private, what business does the USSA Congress have butting in to the owners' business? If they're public, what group of dimwitted bulbs originally decided to sell such important interests in the frickin' first place?? [Methinks it's a different subset of the same bulbs now wanting to close the barn door after the horse done fled.] Again, if they're public property, I couldn't think of a better example of an antithetical "proof of concept".

And last, something which I understand a little better than the above:

This is a sample page from a book titled Why Mommy is a Democrat. The "about" page says that the book is nonjudgmental and promotes "tolerance" ... but wait, that same page also says the book has "numerous subtle (and not-so-subtle) satirical swipes at the Bush administration and the Republican party". Maybe the author's poor grasp of the English language is endemic to the party, and thus helps explain its current malaise.

And who's so wedded to a political party that he or she would seriously consider buying a book like this and reading it to his or her kids? Wait, don't answer that one; I know it. Those would be the same individuals who believe that the political process works effortlessly, like cream rising to the top of the milk. Wrong farm analogy, folks! It's sausage-making, and "we, the people" are the ones put through the grinder. (That forced "sharing" is one small part of the grinding process.) Personally, I find this book highly insulting to mothers. Thanks (I think) to frequent commenter Moni for pointing me to this web site.

No wonder I'm becoming more curmudgeonly each day ...

Okay, I'm a little behind the times, and certainly not up on current events. I clicked through to read this Contra Costa Times article, Lying is a Novel Concept, because I thought it was about a former Eagle (and I don't mean Philadelphia Eagles).

It's about a guy who wrote a memoir that wasn't exactly veracitous. [If that isn't a word, it ought to be.]


And lots of people are apparently disappointed, pissed, annoyed, despondent, frustrated, angered, and a whole raft of other strong, negative emotions over this shocking revelation.



Okaaaaaayyyyy ...





Question: Why aren't those people similarly affected when a politician does the same damn thing?