July, 2015 archive
Walkering in a World of Dreams 0
James E. Causey marvels at Scott Walker’s fantasy world, a world in which persons born on third base convince themselves that they have hit triples. A snippet:
Walker did not mention this during his campaign sermon.
In Walker’s world, opportunities abound if people just work hard enough.
What a fantasy.
More at the link.
Work-Study 0
A Cambridge too far . . . .
The Boston Globe reports that Joe Gibbons is an “experimental filmmaker” and that he allegedly planned to use the footage from his heist in an upcoming film.
Land Mismanagement 0
Warning: Language.
War and Mongers of War: the Perpetual Expenditure Machine 0
Dan Simpson points out that the military-industrial complex is still a Very Big Thing, a self-styled Golden Calf desirous of suckling deeply at the government teat.
Hell. It beats doing something productive.
Here’s a bit (emphasis added):
Any head-scratching that this alarmist assessment might have stimulated, among the senators or the public, was overshadowed by the reporting the same day of the Obama administration’s intention to cut U.S. Army force levels from 490,000 to 450,000 by 2017, with the possibility of more cuts if budget “sequestration” continues as a means of taming federal deficits.
The Dunford-McCain thesis runs that if we make these cuts — part of a long-awaited peace dividend — the Russians will get us. This is silly, but it is fully consistent with Pentagon and arms industry efforts to scare Americans into continuing to shell out enormous sums of money for “defense,” as opposed to meeting the urgent need to fix our roads, bridges and schools and to provide other public services.
Afterthought:
General Motors might have invented “planned obsolescence,” but defense contractors have perfected it.
Nor Any Drop To Drink 0
The range wars are heating up in Cali.
Maybe, he said sarcastically, they’ve dyed theirs.
“I don’t know what color their water is,” Gardemeyer said, “but the water I’m looking at out here is the same color it’s been for all the years that I’ve farmed.”
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Celebrate politely as you reach your last milestone.
Yes, it did happen in Texas. Why do you ask?
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Yeah. They decry “anti-Southernism” while relentlessly turning their faces from the meaning of “Southernism.”
And, in the same item, an ex-actor suffers a sense of residual loss.
Ben Jones, a former U.S. House member known for playing Cooter on the TV show “The Dukes of Hazzard,” said Thursday that there’s been a “visceral reaction to this wave of cultural cleansing.” Those who see the Confederate flag as indisputably racist, Jones said, went “a bridge too far” by pulling “Dukes of Hazzard” reruns off the air.
More self-righteous Pharisaical hypocritical bigotry at the link.
Naked Browser for Android 0
I’ve started using a new browser on my Android HTC One M7: Naked Browser.
No, it’s not for naked pictures (go wash your mind out with soap)–the idea is that it doesn’t have a lot of cruft and useless eye candy to louse up performance.
I won’t use Chrome on a bet. Google probably knows everything there is to know about me, but, by God, I’m not going to help. and I’ve stopped using Opera, my go-to browser on all platforms since it was first released over a decade ago, because I don’t like the direction the company has taken for the past two years.
I tried Dolphin for a while; it was reasonably fast, but the ads got real obnoxious real quick.
I have been using Firefox for Android, which has some nice features, but the interface is a kludge and it is painfully slow; my brother, whose phone is not as powerful as mine, tried it and gave up.
I must say that, so far, I’m quite impressed with Naked Browser. It’s as fast as any other browser I’ve tried and faster than most, and it’s reasonably configurable and versatile.
The interface is quite basic, not all dressed up, and doesn’t get in the way. It allows you to sort your bookmarks into folders, but it did take me a little while to figure out how that works. It also doesn’t do plugins, but I was able to configure it to use Startpage search by default, because it allows you to enter a custom search string to be called when you enter a search term in the address bar. It doesn’t have as many configuration options as Opera Mini, but it has enough to keep me happy.
The Startpage basic search string is
https://startpage.com/do/search?
A web search for “Naked Browser Android” will turn up a number of favorable reviews. Naked Browser has its quirks, but, after a week of use, I am satisfied with it.
Naked Browser is free from the Play Store.
Football uber Alles 0
In a marvelous article, Mike Bianchi skewers college football’s win-at-all-costs ethos.
Just read it.
Sacramental Whine 0
A Missouri judge has ruled that the cultists of death must reveal their the ingredients even thought they’d really rather not let the public know how they conduct their secret rituals.
Judge Jon Beetem, sitting in the Missouri circuit court of Cole County, ruled the state had “knowingly failed, at least in part” to comply with its obligation to act with transparency. He ordered the state to release key details about its supply of deadly chemicals, pending a further hearing on what information should be redacted.
More at the link.
