Priorities

The media is giving the looting in N'Awlins quite a bit of press. I saw some footage of a guy carrying a TV, sans box, looked to be maybe a 25" or 27". I wonder where he is going to put it. Plus, he must be very motivated to carry that thing through waist-deep water. If he put that kind of effort into a job he probably wouldn't need to wait for a catastrophic event to occur in order to get a new TV.

Speaking of motivation, news today is that the poverty rate has gone up. Some quick advice coming from someone who's done a lot of hiring - restaurants are always looking for dishwashers, busboys, waiters, and cooks. Newspapers are always looking for carriers. Telemarketing firms are always looking for callers. Seek and ye shall find; or you can sit on your ass and complain. To paraphrase a famous quote, "I find the harder I work, the more my luck seems to improve."

Plus, working will help alleviate the pain of having to pay for that DVD player, TV, XBox, designer clothing, automobile, and air conditioner that most Americans in "poverty" have.

the Sophist

Right is the 'Interest of the Stronger'; the ruling class in any state will forcibly exact a certain type of behaviour from its subjects to suit its own interests.

- Thrasymachus, taken from Part One [Book One], Chapter 3 of The Republic

Blogs II

Since I use a modern web browser which supports RSS feeds, I am able to keep track of many news sites and blogs. Not only can I quickly scan what I want, I can open the selected article in a new tab without having multiple instances (windows) of my web browser running. I've decided to list them here. As I've said before, tabbed browsing and an integrated RSS reader are great features that are already incorporated into Mozilla-Firefox. Microsoft's Internet Exploiter 7 will have these features by late 2006.

General News: Yahoo! News, Reuters News
Tech News: Techweb, Linux Today
Conservative News: Free Republic

Blogs (URL)
http://www.blogmaverick.com
http://iraqnow.blogspot.com
http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/
http://blogs.chronwatch.com
http://www.moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/

While this may not seem like much, it's enough to keep me updated. If you're using an old POS browser that has no features (IE) you'll need to download an aggregator (reader) to take full advantage of RSS. If you're using Firefox or Opera (or even Thunderbird) you can simply subscribe this these, or any, sites that publish RSS feeds. Chances are your favorite news sites and blogs are already published ready with RSS.

I dread the day that Windows Vista (with Internet Exploiter 7) is released. Somehow, I feel that RSS will be exploited to contain spam or malware or something. If you ever want to ruin a useful feature, let Microsoft put out (I don't want to say 'develop' because they don't develop anything. Two of their flagship products [PowerPoint and Internet Exploiter] they bought) their own product that uses it. Thanks to Internet Exploiter, they almost ruined web browsing. Once MS gets involved with RSS, it could change for the worse.

Back to School

It's hard to believe it's almost time to get back to school. I picked up another class last week so I'm teaching three classes (two courses) in all, starting August 29th. I've taught these courses before so I have all the material pretty much ready to go. One of the textbooks changed but only to a second edition - and the instructor CD is unchanged. Later this week I'll finalize the syllabi and send them off to be printed as well as the handouts for the first two weeks of class meetings. I've checked the class lists and I've got two classes that are filled (thirty-five students in each) and the other has twenty-one. By the time of the final exam it'll probably be mid-twenties for two and mid-teens for the other. So, that's all for now.

The Pawn

The MSM is all over the woman who will remain unnamed to the point that they have forgotten how urgent it is that Karl Rove be fired or that John Bolton is not good enough for public service. Heck, even the nefarious John Roberts is losing press time to her.

The woman who will remain unnamed blames Bush for her son's death. Never mind that her son was an adult who made a decision and committed himself to that decision. However tragic the outcome, some parents (and people in general) don't seem to understand that there does come a time that a child has to leave the nest and make his/her choices in life. Of course, a person who knows this and still carries out a personal agenda does nothing to come to terms with reality and emits the perception that she thinks the world owes her something because of what her son wanted to do with his life. Shame on the MSM for taking advantage of this woman and using her as a pawn in their incessant pursuit to bash Bush. Shame on this woman for not standing by her late son's volition but, instead, using his choice as a pedestal.

Is There Anybody Out There?

I sent an email out a few days ago "reminding" some people to check my blog. These people were chosen because I felt they were the most likely to make comments and engage in some discussion. While I did see a slight spike in the page hits, I only got one comment and two email replies. Instead of email replies, I would have preferred comments on the blog. I sent the email to purposely coincide with the topics I had blogged about around that time, hoping for some chatter. Maybe my posts aren't interesting enough. They aren't all politics and I do try to cover a wide array of topics. Oh well.

The Protester

"Sheehan met the president in June 2004 but said she deserves another visit since there have been so many revelations about faulty pre-war intelligence since then."

Boy did she hit the nail on the head. What about faulty pre-9/11 intelligence? Oh wait, it wasn't faulty, just filed under "LD" for Lame Duck. Under Clinton's watch, Thug #1 and a few of his buddies were actually identified as being linked to Al Q---- but NOTHING was done about it.

What she should be doing is pitching a tent down the road from the Clinton mansion in Chappaqua and asking for a meeting with Bill about what was going on in his administration. Better yet, maybe 3000+ next of kin should join her and pitch tents too. They should all ask what good is intelligence if it isn't acted upon. From turning down UBL after he was offered on a silver platter to actually having several of the 9/11 thugs on watch lists as early as 1999 and, yet, never taking one pre-emptive measure. Seems to me the questions are being directed at the wrong person.

news link

ABC

Hillary Clinton is up for re-election for Senator. Today, a well-known lawyer has announced she is running against Clinton next year. The scoop is that Ms. Pirro has a chance at beating Hillary. NY Republicans need to make sure they don't run an ABC (Anyone But Clinton) campaign. As the Democrats showed last year, AB_ campaigns don't work.

Hillary is quite popular in New York. She moved there to become a Senator. Even though she's been quoted as saying "I love the people of Arkansas", she apparently didn't love them enough to represent them in Congress. Everyone knows her move to N.Y. was to jockey for position and run for President in 2008. New Yorkers, take note, as soon as the election in '06 is over, her campaign will begin; regardless of whether she wins or not. So, New Yorkers have a choice, a Republican Senator or no Senator.

Speaking of the Clintons, a news report came out today that said several of the 9/11 thugs were identified in late 2000 as having possible links to terrorist cells. Lame Duck for dinner, anyone?

Junk

I did some cleaning the other day. I went through my spare stuff and ended up throwing out five hard drives (two were kaput, one was a measly 850 MB, and two were Quantum Bigfoots that I was unable to sell on Ebay), a gutted PC, a video card, some memory that didn't work, cables that don't attach to anything I have, and a few other odds and ends. I still have two monitors that I need to dispose of, preferably through a recycling center. All told, I still have plenty of extra parts and enough to put two working PC's together if I wanted to.

I also solved many of the problems on my wife's W98 machine. I had replaced the motherboard a few months ago but three things didn't work right after that - sound, printer, and power on. I gave up on tinkering with it. I reinstalled the printer many times, downloaded some updates and utilities from Asus' web site, and I even tried two other sound cards but finally just decided that a reinstall would be easier. The icing on the cake came last week when Outlook took a dump lost all her email and contacts. Luckily, I had a backup of her contacts but it was from last year. So, I fdisk'd the hard drive and reinstalled Windows. Miraculously, the sound card and printer work again. I think I'll backup her Outlook stuff every month or two from now on also.