October, 2010 archive
Trinity Rescue Kit 0
Yesterday I used the Trinity Rescue Kit Linux Live CD to clean up a balky Windows computer. The computer has been washed, dried, and pressed, and is ready to be returned to its owner.
Today I wrote a blog post about it at Geekazine.
Reading the Tea Leaves: Saying It Don’t Make It So 0
I heard a local teabagger on this show say that we in the United States pay more taxes than do Europeans. In other news, up is down, black is white, and pigs fly.
Here’s an analysis.
Here’s a chart from the New York Times (full story here):
Triumph of the Pod Pupils 2
From the Chicago Tribune:
They would have 15 minutes and one learning tool: their cell phone.
(snip)
The lesson would have been impossible in the past. But with cell phones tucked in the book bags and pockets of three-fourths of today’s teens, many high schools are ceding defeat in the battle to keep hand-held technology out of class and instead are inviting students to use their phones for learning.
QOTD 0
Lin Yutang, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.
No One Is Taking Our Privacy 0
We are giving it away:
The study, conducted by Research Now, surveyed 2,200 mothers with young children in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan during the week of September 27. American parents, according to the study, are more likely to share baby pictures and information online than parents from other countries in the survey. Seventy-three percent of parents in the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Germany, and Italy said they were willing to share images of their infants.
Full Disclosure:
I use and recommend AVG products.
Via GNC.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
A suspect has been arrested in a shooting at Mid-Atlantic Christian University. He is claiming that the victim had threatened him.
The police and courts will have fun sorting that out. What I find interesting is what a search of his room turned up (by the way, the campus bans firearms):
Your Tax Dollars at Shirk 0
Expect more stories like this if the wingnut assault on public services succeeds:
Babysitters’ Club (Updated) 0
I am trying to shape up my friend’s daughter’s Windows computer, which is feeling poorly and has lost several steps in its jump off the bag.
A day of struggling with anti-virus and spyware software, ill behaved programs that insist on starting at boot-updespite what I tell them to do, and other stuff like that there reminds me why I don’t miss Windows.
Addendum:
Next time I do this, I’m going to charge for it.
Also, Trinity Rescue Kit rocks. Nothing fixes a Windows box like a Linux CD.
Facebook Frolics 0
Persons forget that the internet is a public place.
Bloomberg:
Porsche, based in Stuttgart, Germany, is concerned that foreign intelligence services may be spying on workers posting “confidential” information on Facebook and other Web-based services, exposing the carmaker to unwanted observation, Dirk Erat, a Porsche spokesman, said today by phone.
The story does not indicate whether Porsche is following to lead of certain American sports leagues in forbidding employees to use personal devices to twit, only that it is blocking access through the company network.
I suspect that Porsche is over-reacting. But, after all, one’s employer’s computers belong to one’s employer. Persons tend to forget that.
Flowback Teabags 0
In the Guardian, Gary Younge looks at the inconsistency between what teabaggers say they want and what they vote for. A nugget:
QOTD 0
Susan Sarandon:
Making love is like hitting a baseball. You just gotta relax and concentrate.
Relax, concentrate, love those Phillies.
Stray Thought 1
The Cincinnati Reds’ naming their baseball stadium “The Great American Ballpark” is as arrogant as the Dallas Cowboys pretending to be “America’s Team.”
In my part of America, any day on which the Cowboys lose is a good day.
(True fact, as contrasted to untrue facts: It was a sell-out to the Great American Insurance Company, whoever they are. It is now my policy to avoid their policies.)
If there is a great American ballpark, it is Yankee Stadium (and I’m not even a Yankees fan, though I was one in the days of Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford, in the days of ships of wood and men of iron).
Attending a ballgame in Yankee Stadium is a thing unto itself.
The Moving Finger Points, and Having Pointed, It Points Back at You 0
“I am not a racist.” At the 45 second mark.
Er, yeah . . . .
We can perhaps cut her some break because she is a child of another time; any white persons born in 1920 grew up in a time of open racism and racist imagery–not just the brutal KKK type, but the more subtle Stepin’ Fetchit-Ole Black Mama-loyal family retainer type (heck, such imagery was common when I was a young ‘un, and I’m two-thirds her age). Given that we have–most of us have–come to agree that racism is a social and moral evil, a racist remark must needs a foxhole in which to hide.
Methinks her denial is more for herself than for any other.
But sayin’ don’t make it so.
’tis a commentary on how difficult letting go can be.
Via Ta-Nehisi Coates, who asks a question I can’t answer.
Afterthought:
A test for nascent racism and bigotry:
If you consider the color of persons’ skins (or persons’ countries of origin, or whatever) as determinants of their characters, rather than as adjectives, you are on your way.
Plus Ca Change 0
Shorter Leonard Pitts, Jr.:
His column implies that Mr. Pitts, who is a perceptive thinker of good mind and kind heart, only recently read up on the Know Nothings.
The kinship between the ante bellum Know Nothings and the current ones has been obvious since the git-go to anyone familiar with that particular early manifestation of American bigotry and xenophobia.
Heck, I’ve been saying that of wingnuttery in all its forms since this blog was three months old.
Left-Wing Conspiracy Theory 1
Rather over-the-top methinks:
No, I think it’s because they know that fear clouds thought. They therefore promote fear, because clouded thought is their friend.
We Need Single Payer 0
The BBC reports on a study by Columbia University. You can see the study here. From the BBC report:
The Columbia University report rejects claims that factors such as obesity have shortened life-spans for Americans relative to other wealthy nations.
The study blames reliance on costly and fragmented specialised care, and calls for systemic reform.
(snip)
“We speculate that the nature of our health care system – specifically, its reliance on unregulated fee-for-service and specialty care – may explain both the increased spending and the relative deterioration in survival that we observed,” the authors wrote.
“If so, meaningful reform may not only save money over the long term, it may also save lives.”
Making money has become the goal of the United States health care industrial complex (though I must emphasize not of doctors, nurses, technicians, and others who deal daily with sick people) as what used to be non-profit hospitals, clinics, and insurance companies have become “for profit.”
As long as the goal of the health care industrial complex is making money, that’s what it’s going to put first.