• Economics,  Funny,  Weirdness

    Two from Dreck

    Specifically this post.

    The first link is to a post containing a proposed national anthem

    The Scotsman is mean, as we’re all well aware
    And bony and blotchy and covered with hair
    He eats salty porridge, he works all the day
    And he hasn’t got bishops to show him the way!

    and

    And crossing the Channel, one cannot say much
    Of French and the Spanish, the Danish or Dutch
    The Germans are German, the Russians are red,
    And the Greeks and Italians eat garlic in bed!

    The Germans are German is a lovely insulting tautology.

    And speaking of the Scots, this article Taller women are more career-driven – that’s the long and the short of it is well worth a read. I have no idea if it’s true or not, but any article that seems to use “homely” as a technical term must be interesting.

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  • Communism

    Tom Palmer puts it very well

    From a post on McCarthyism

    (It’s astonishing how the issue of the very real communist threat to liberty over a period of many decades—fortunately now behind us—has been occluded by the reckless behavior of the senator from Wisconsin. I find that when I mention in a talk that so-and-so was or is an outspoken Communist [or communist], I have to mention that I’m not red-baiting, because so-and-so actively called for establishing the dictatorship fo the proletariat and abolishing private ownership of the means of production, or was a membership of the Communist Party. A simple statement of fact is generally considered evidence of vicious “red-baiting.” The propagandists for the cause of communism did a truly brilliant job and the effects are still with us. Let’s hope that, with the USSR now dead and buried, this particular bit of dishonesty can be uncovered for what it was and is: an attempt to mask a movement for mass murder and total dictatorship as a kind of harmless lifestyle that was persecuted by fanatics whose crimes [such as denying work to intellectual thugs like the wealthy Dalton Trumbo] were far worse than anything ever contemplated by the harmless communist intellectuals, who merely wanted to liquidate much of the population and plunge the rest into a long night of tyranny and poverty.)

    And, later in the comments, more bashing of Dalton Trumbo

    I’d never express ill will toward the family of someone such as Dalton Trumbo; it’s his personal story that’s not admirable. He called in the FBI to investigate people who had written to him about his anti-war book “Johnny Got his Gun” — after Hitler had attacked Stalin. He only brought the book out again after the Allied victory over the Axis powers, when he again became “anti-war.” He’s been portrayed as a principled advocate of freedom of speech, but that’s not consistent with his actions; he supported freedom of speech that he thought was favorable to the USSR, and he opposed any freedom of speech that he thought was not favorable to the USSR. Needless to say, none of his family members bear any responsibility for his behavior. Nor does it excuse the clownish, disgraceful (and counter-productive) antics of Senator McCarthy.

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  • Blogging,  Bluegrass,  Music

    USB mic review

    For those looking for the review, let me say I’m not done experimenting with it (or the podcast) yet. I still need to record the music (which I’ll be creating) which will be a flatpicked version of Saint Anne’s Reel.

    And, of course, religious podcasts are called “GodCasts“.

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  • Economics,  Katrina

    Casinos

    Ray Nagin now wants casino gambling in New Orleans, which seems to be a better idea than most. While that’s the best idea for revitalization to come along so far, it still does nothing about the fact that NOLA is between a lake, a river, and an ocean, which will forever make it geographically unsafe, no matter how many levees are in place.

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  • Blogging

    The other Moody Loner

    I recently reviewed my technorati profile and noticed a link from Electronic Darwinism, whose proprietor also blogs as Moody Loner (I tend to use it as one word, with the M and L capitalized, whereas he has it as two distinct words.) I noticed he has a disambiguation section listing me and Moody Loner Records, which I thought was a fine idea, so I added a disambiguation section as well.

    When doing the spell check for this post, the Blogger spell checker wanted to replace technorati” with “degenerate”.

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  • Photography

    Now I’m done

    I just got the holder for my bluescreen, and I’m now finally done buying photography stuff off of E-Bay. All I really need for my full digital studio is lights, and those are kind of pricey on e-bay anyway.

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  • Tech

    Weirdness

    So, my computer is working again, with the old motherboard (GigaByte makes a tough one it seems), the new HSF (Zalman, very nice) and a quiet case fan, and for some reason the room is now around 3 degrees cooler than was with the prior setup. Very strange.

    And I got the condenser mic. A full report tomorrow.

  • Tech

    Peculiar

    So naturally I try to use the motherboard I thought I’d broken one more time, because this time, it just might work!

    And for a while, it seems to work, it goes through a post and the whole deal. I finish reassembling everything and it refuses to boot into windows. It goes about halfway through the process and stalls.

    I then am in the process of writing down the model number of the motherboard so I can exchange the new one I got last night for one with the proper socket when I notice the AGP card is a bit askew. I shove it back in a little bit and presto! It all works. So basically all of my effort was for nothing then. And it’s still noisy.

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