Thursday, May 10, 2007

Answers

But sometimes there aren't any easy answers. Sometimes there aren't even any answers at all. Why did my father have so much sorrow in his life, and such a horrifying end? Why do some men turn to lives of violence and hate? What is going to happen to me in the near future? The easy answer, "it was God's will", is just that -- an easy answer. The universe is infinite, and the notion that we meat animals with our limited grey meat brains are capable of comprehending more than the tiniest part of the infinite is so staggering an act of hubris that it is a wonder that the Creator does not just strike us all down with a blazing series of lightning bolts.

Back to thinking bloggers. This is It may be a blog by a sloppy dog lover, but that's okay, this cat lover reads it anyhow. Why Now gives a nice perspective on the news. And then, hmm... ah yes. I suspect I need to narrow down a representative of that mighty supervillain The Gay Agenda for the final candidate, but which one? A distressing number of blogs on my right margin are created by The Gay Agenda with his evil gay ray gun of gayness that, like, shoots out of television screens and TURNS OUR CHILDREN GAY !!! OH THE HORROR!. Shall it be Mustang Bobby? 42? Hmm...

But there are, unfortunately, several bloggers who have fallen prey to the easy answers fallacy who have fallen off the list of thinking bloggers. There is one ornery old coot who goes around snorting "Who cares, it's all monkeys." Yes dear. And you're a monkey too. What's your point? More distressing is a blogger who is a co-blogger of mine at another site who is much more thoughtful person, except he is always falling for easy answers too. Autism on the rise? Easy answer: It's the vaccines! The 9/11 attacks were awefully convenient for the Bush Administration? The towers were brought down by explosives! Early-onset Alzheimer's runs in the family? Here's some magic herbs that'll stop Alzheimers! Sadly, his once-vibrant blog has become almost unreadable as his quest for easy answers to complex reality removes all skepticism and willingness to consider alternative points of view.

Which reminds me of another young man. This youngster has fallen for easy answers also. He spouts the easy answers given to him by his elders, generally in the form of a simple statement that over-simplifies a complex issue and a scattering of Bible verses that "support" that simple statement, yet refuses to consider the wonder that is the Infinite. He, too, has fallen prey to the fallacy that there are easy answers to life. In his case, the easy answer is to accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, at which point everything becomes simple and you do not need to consider the complexities of the Infinite any longer, you simply act as a soldier of Christ bringing a scattering of simple statements issued by your elders ("the Truth") to the rest of the population. But the Infinity that is the Creator is far vaster than the contents of any book written in human language. The notion that the bags of water and meat called "humanity" could begin to comprehend more than a tiny portion of the Infinite is such an absurd notion that it doesn't survive the giggle test. One day this young man will find out that reality cannot be encompassed by easy answers. One day this young man will discover that what he thought was "The Truth" is just a small part of the Infinite, and that the faith that he professes encompasses only a small part of the infinity that is the Creator. Then what? I don't know. What, you thought I had easy answers too?

- Badtux the Not-easy Penguin

Labels: culture, life, religion

On the other hand...

Choices, choices...

-- Badtux the Consumer Penguin

Labels: navel-gazing, technology

Should I buy this monitor?

Should I buy a wide-screen LCD? I'm looking at the SAMSUNG 226BW 22" widescreen (1680x1050 resolution). They appear to be pretty popular, Fry's is out of them and sells them at $349 list price when they have it (which, BTW, is only $50 more than I paid for my current 17" LCD monitor five years ago). And being able to watch DVD movies without windowboxing (the black bars at top and bottom that appear on full-width theatrical movies shown on a regular-dimension screen) would be nice...

My Samsung ML-6060 laser printer is now seven years old and works as good as new (albeit with a new toner/drum cartridge in that time period of course!). So I know Samsung can build good sh*t. Heck, I am not even *thinking* of replacing my ML6060, even though, in computer years, it's 70 years old and ready for a nursing home. It's a workhorse, with low per-page costs, reasonable speeds (hey, it's an old printer with a 160mhz processor and 16mb of EDO RAM, there's limits imposed by the technology available at that time), and good resolution for a laser printer (1200x1200).

- Badtux the Linux Geek Penguin

Labels: technology

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Flowers for Algernon

-- Badtux the Connections Penguin

Labels: life, literature, navel-gazing

Mortality

Within two years he was unable to work. Within five years he was in a nursing home. Within ten years he was dead. He was 54 years old when he died. Not much older than a cousin of his who similarly died of early-onset Alzheimer's.

I might hope to have inherited my mother's genes here. All of my mother's relatives remain clear-headed until within a year of death. But I don't know about that. I inherited my father's quick mind -- my mother and her relatives have heads of wood. Did I inherit the defective gene that makes the brain suddenly disintegrate in an otherwise healthy man? I don't know, and that gives me yet another selfish reason to wish for a national health care system that actually works. The only reason my father got the care he got, which was as good as was possible with the knowledge and technology of the day, was because he was a Korean War veteran and thus could use the VA system. If it happens to me... Louisiana's public health care system is a shambles due to the loss of 20% of its beds in the Great Katrina Flood, Medi-Cal is a disgrace, and besides it would be a year before I received any care due to disability and might very well be dead in that time. Perhaps that would be better. I don't know. It certainly would not be very dignified, in any event.

Of course, the right wing's answer to this is, "if you're no longer capable of working, you should just shut up and die." The notion of We the People getting together and in a spirit of Christian charity taxing ourselves in order to provide care for the least amongst us does not appeal to them at all, because the only moral value they truly hold, in their tiny little bitter hearts, is "I got mine." The spirit of Jesus Christ, who once famously said that a rich man could no more enter Heaven than a camel go through the eye of a needle, does not live in their hearts. Their other answer is that you should join a church and receive care from your church. That is just another way of saying "I got mine", since these people rarely join a church themselves, and if they do, never donate much of their income to the church. Most church-goers that I know are solidly working class, just poor schmucks going through life thinking they're middle class even though they aren't. It is sad, but true, that the lower one's income, the larger the percentage you donate to charity. A person with $10 is more likely to donate $1 to charity than a person with $1,000,000 is to donate $100,000, even though he can afford it least. But the working class schmuck knows, "there but for the grace of God goes I", and gives what he can. The person with $1,000,000 says, "suckers! I got mine, I'll never be a charity case!", and gives $1 just to say he gave.

In other words, I do not think you can be rich and truly a Christian. Because if you were truly a Christian, you would have given it away to those in need, as Jesus counselled doing.

A week ago someone nominated me as a "Thinking Blogger". I am flattered. I am also supposed to nominate other bloggers as "Thinking Bloggers". That will require some thinking on my part. There is the Quaker Agitator, of course, who is always thoughtful. But he has already been nominated by so many different people that he must be tired of it. There is the warrior bard Minstrel Boy who is thoughtful in a different way, the thoughtful of a man who has seen and done many things in his life, learned many things about himself over his lifetime that he perhaps does not necessarily want to know and acquired wisdom the hard way one scar at a time, and spends his time trying to do the right thing despite his uncertainties about the existence of a Creator. Beyond that... I am not, tonight, doing too much thinking I guess. Too much thinking about mortality, and the transcience of human existence.

There is a place Minstrel Boy went for his own birthday. I have been there, a place where there is water in a desert wilderness, the remnants of old orchards, a few relics of an old ranch hidden beneath the brush slowly decaying into nothing. It is the perfect place to ponder the transcience of human existence while alone with nothing more than your own thoughts. This weekend, though, I think I will take a different trip. I will drive to the Caltrain station and catch a train to San Francisco. I will walk the streets and watch the people. And in the end, I will be no less alone.

- Badtux the Older Penguin

Labels: life, navel-gazing

Eat your music

For L>T, who claims that she is totally "non-musical", get thee to Whistle and Drum and buy the Deluxe Clarke Tin Whistle Handbook, a Clarke Meg tin whistle, and a Walton's Mellow D tin whistle. For less than $30, you may find that you actually CAN learn to play a musical instrument. It's not rocket science, after all. 4th graders can play these whistles. That's just how simple they are.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Labels: music

More light blogging

For those wondering what key my whistles are in, they're all in the key of D. That's pretty much the "standard" key that all the whistle tutorials and songbooks are written for, though of course you can play the songs in any key if you're just playing for yourself. Minstrel Boy mentions a tiny high G whistle. Looking at the Clarke web site they just sell D and C. Walton's made one once, but looks like they just make D and C too. Generation makes a high G as well as a bunch of others, and a lot of professionals used them for some time, but finding a "good" Generation is a chore. So anyhow, I'll probably get a C and a Bb just to round out my whistle collection, but looks like a high G isn't going to be in there.

Finally, regarding why I ended up nose-to-nose with Mencken when my furry alarm clock woke me up yesterday, you may have had trouble figuring out how that could be. But this photo should make it a bit more clear. This is the scene I wake up to every morning, except with me under the covers, of course... clicky clicky to embiggen: Btw, the trashcans are up on the nightstands because I had just vacuumed in preparation for the carpet people coming (grrrr!)...

-- Badtux the Cat-owned Penguin

Labels: cat blogging, navel-gazing

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

This is what we do with our brain-injured in America

Yes, we are such a charitable and Christian nation, to do this to some poor guy who is missing part of his brain due to a gunshot...

-- Badtux the Ashamed Penguin

Labels: sick society, veterans

My penny whistles got here!

I got three whistles -- a Clarke Sweetone, a Walton Mellow D, and a Walton Little Black Whistle. Physically, these things are smaller than a recorder, with the Clarke being the tiniest. Yes, the breath control practice with the recorder definitely carries over to the tin whistle. The fingering is different, of course. The penny whistles are much easier to skirl at the higher register than the recorder is. But these whistles each have their very own character.

The Clarke Sweetone is just a sweet whistle. It's really easy to choose which register you want to be in. If you want to stay in the low register, it's easy to stay there. If you want to go up to the high register, blow harder and do whatever it is you do inside your mouth to get there, and it's similarly easy to skirl away up there. (I dunno what's happening up there, I just kept practicing until it worked). It has a pleasingly "chiffy" sound.

The Walton Mellow D is similarly easy to work with, though a little harder to keep in the low register on the lowest D. As you'd expect from its name, it has a quite mellow tone, a bit bland compared to the Clarke. I think of it as a Clarke on weed :-).

The Walton's Little Black Whistle isn't so little (it's about the same size as the Mellow D, but with a smaller fipple or mouthpiece and slightly smaller in diameter tube). This one is a pain. It doesn't want to stay in the low register. It's great for skirling around in the high register though.

My instructional books came in from Amazon yesterday, so now I'm all set! Not that I'm waiting to read the books, I'm having fun skirling away right now. Given that the average price of these little instruments was $5.95, this is the most musical fun for the buck that I can think of, except maybe a harmonica (but most cheap harmonicas are pretty irritating because virtually all of them have at least one reed that's out-of-tune and irritates the trained ear, while all of these penny whistles are at least in tune with themselves).

-- Badtux the Skirling Penguin

Labels: life, music

Grrr furry alarm clock redux...

So I leave you with this catpile to keep you happy on this day of light blogging, since I'm about to pack up my laptop to leave for work... -- Badtux the Cat-owned Penguin

Labels: cat blogging

Monday, May 07, 2007

Well, they got *that* one right, anyhow...

Your Ideal Pet is a Cat

You're both aloof, introverted, and moody. And your friends secretly wish that you were declawed!

Labels: cat blogging

No blogging tomorrow

- Badtux the Carpeted Iceberg Penguin

Labels: navel-gazing

Wingnut math: 35% is "evenly divided"

Here is how a World Nut Daily article starts:

35% of Dems believe Bush knew of 9/11 attacks in advance

Five-and-a-half years after al-Qaida terrorists hijacked four U.S. airliners, crashing them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, Democrats find themselves evenly divided as to whether President George Bush knew in advance the attacks were coming.

-- Badtux the Math Penguin

Labels: wingnuts

Weather redux

I wore my mesh motorcycling gear riding to work this morning. This evening it'll come in handy. Last week I didn't even ride to work, because it was cold and dreary and drizzling rain. Hmm....

-- Badtux the Weather Penguin

Labels: global warming, life

I read World Nut Daily so you don't have to

Like all the neo-cons, they're always late to the game. For example, I just got a breathless message from WND. "Iraqi Prime Minister has ties to Iran!" Which is a MEMRI (Mossad) translation of an Egyptian newspaper article, and to which my response is... duh? Look, you stupid neo-con morons, all you had to do was read Professor Juan Cole's excellent web site where he translated articles from the Arab press to that effect literally years before Mossad managed to get around to it. Maliki's ties to SCIRI and its Badr Brigade militia go back literally years. And SCIRI was set up by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Iranian intelligence services in the first place as an anti-Saddam force. If you weren't such stupid fucking Mossad suck-ups who refuse to read anything not "ideologically correct", you would have known about this literally years ago.

I mean, c'mon. Back in 2002, before Operation Iraqi Clusterfuck started, I told the dumbasses that invading Iraq would turn it in to Iran West. Shit, George Herbert Walker fuckin' BUSH said the same godammed thing in his memoirs back in '96. What part of "Iraq is sixty percent Shiite" do these stupid fucking neo-cons not understand? But noooo... they knew best. The only problem we were gonna have with the invasion of Iraq, they said, was what to do with all the goddamned flower petals that the population showered us with. Yeah, some flower petals. Are neo-cons the stupidest, most blood-thirsty fucking assholes on the planet, or what?

-- Badtux the Rude Penguin

Labels: bush administration, iraq, war on brown people, wingnuts

Saturday, May 05, 2007

Bonus cat blogging

Doing better with the recorder. Completely ignoring the fingering chart sent with the thing. I have a very good ear, and can hear when a note I'm playing is off key (or simply the wrong note) and modify my fingering to match. I can now play some simple tunes like "I Am Your Sunshine" on the thing. Eagerly awaiting my Irish whistles though, because I absolutely *hate* the sound of this thing (sounds like a plastic whistle - eh, who woulda thunk?!).

-- Badtux the Lumpy Music Penguin

Labels: cat blogging

I'm not fat, I'm just big-boned

Sorry about missing my cat blogging yesterday. Work intervened, and I didn't get home until around 9pm because I needed to get some test cases working over the weekend. As I noted earlier, I recently got a gigantic pay increase and new responsibilities at work and while it's not the sort of environment where I'll be working more than 45 hours a week in a typical week, when stuff needs doing it needs doing.

Hmm, you can see two of my colorful new throw rugs/runners that I found, one at Target and one at Ikea (evil! evil! evil! went in for one thing, came out with $100 of other things including the most luxurious set of sheets that was $45 all by itself!). Hairball season is pretty much over, and the carpet cleaners are coming next week to shampoo my carpets to get the cat yakk out, then I am going to place these things in all the most popular places for my cats to yakk so that hopefully they'll catch the yakk during the fall hairball season when they shed their summer coats and put on their winter coats. I wish I could train them to yakk into their litter box. Sigh. Anyhow, my iceberg is getting more colorful, you'll need sunglasses if it gets any brighter!

-- Badtux the Cat-owned Penguin

Labels: cat blogging, life, navel-gazing

Friday, May 04, 2007

WTF is with this crazy weather?!

-- Badtux the Damp Penguin

Labels: global warming, life

Reminder

Labels: blogging, navel-gazing

Should we get the government we deserve?

Well, in 2000 and 2004, that was pretty much true. (And spare me the silliness about the Busheviks "stealing" those elections... if the apathetic majority had really cared who was President, the only way the Busheviks could have "stole" those elections would have been at gunpoint). But in 2006 something odd happened: The common people changed their mind.

The result from the Busheviks has been... telling. Right-wing zealots who only months before had been touting the virtues of democracy are now showing their true colors as anti-democracy royalists. They want democracy only when the people vote for them. When the people do NOT vote for them, the right-wing zealots say "governing is too important to leave to the people!" and want to impose a military dictatorship.

Personally, I believe that the common people deserve to get what they want good and hard. They want lower taxes? Fine. They get what they want good and hard, in the form of collapsing government services, corrupt officials, disintegrating schools, and crumbling national infrastructure. Sooner or later the common people usually come to their senses and want something else good and hard. The same, unfortunately, is not true of dictators. Generally dictators just continue on their path until they destroy their country. Or as Winston Churchill once put it, "Democracy is the worst of all forms of government except all the others that have been tried." As for the Bushevics and the 27-percenters who still support them, I have only one question: Why do you hate democracy?

-- Badtux the Democratic Penguin

Labels: bush administration, politics, Republican stupidity, wingnuts

Thursday, May 03, 2007

Every life is sacred

I’ll just point out that an ultrasound will also show your intestines writhing and wriggling in your abdomen, and that cancer is living too. So we should never remove cancerous intestines because we are destroying life when we do that, and life is sacred. The same goes with using antibiotics. You are killing innocent little baccili when you do that, and every life is sacred. (And don’t even get me started on the massacre of millions of innocent spermatozoan-Americans every day, especially in the mommy’s basements of rightwing war-bloggers nationwide!),

– Badtux the Sacred Life Penguin

Labels: feminism, war on women, wingnuts

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

News bits 5/2/07

Like the cranky old man said last week, George Bush communicated over a year ago that he would not get out of Iraq until he left office. Do we not believe him? So of course he vetoed the money for our troops. But compromise? There is no compromise possible here. The people of the United States want the U.S. out of Iraq. The Iraqi people want the U.S. out of Iraq. The only people who want the U.S. in Iraq are Iran, Osama bin Laden, and the Busheviks, all of whom find it quite profitable for their interests. Dear Leader already declared victory, why, he even held a big party on an aircraft carrier deck with a big banner saying Mission Accomplished in celebration back on May 1 2003, so the "declare victory" part of "declare victory and go home" is done, but Dear Leader is going to continue supporting his buddies in Iran and al Qaeda, because, well, because he's The Decider and the Decider Decides, yessirree... compromise? He won't compromise. Because the Decider doesn't compromise, the Decider Decides. (Cue that "heh heh heh" smirk ).

Los Angeles police attack TV news crews

A Telemundo TV news crew got their ass kicked yesterday by the Los Angeles Police Department, as a wall of riot police swept through where they were holding court and sent a news reporter and three camera operators to the hospital. That link also shows a Los Angeles policeman beating a Fox News camerawoman with his baton in a scene reminiscent of the Rodney King beat-down (except with more targets getting the beat-down). And of course the Mayor of Los Angeles and the LAPD chief say they're shocked, shocked I say that, well, not that a buncha darkies got beat down, but that it got caught on live television broadcasts and looks bad, if you parse between the lines. (And if you think nortenos like Mayor Villaraigosa care if illegals get beat down, you don't know anything about Hispanic culture, they view the illegals as rustic ignorant nobodies who are taking their jobs).

Your Papers, Please

The Real ID Act calls for a national security card to be implemented. The Department of Homeland Security has been charged with writing regulations about what that national security card should look like. Since DHS is run by Busheviks, they of course don't care about public opinion, but the law says they must gather public input prior to implementing their regulations, so they did a single perfunctory "townhall meeting" at U.C. Davis. At that meeting you had your normal folks out there, civil libertarians concerned about the fact that it's a national ID card, advocates for abused women concerned that P.O. boxes are no longer allowed to be on the card (what about people with no fixed address? Apparently they just, err, don't exist in Soviet America... will they be disappeared to gulags like in Soviet Russia?), advocates for the transgendered upset that their biological sex rather than their adopted sex will appear on the ID card, the director of the California DMV upset that it will force millions of Californians to unnecessarily line up at his offices for new driver's licenses that double as the new national ID card, you know, just the normal kooks and flakes. Hold it. The director of the California DMV??? Why does DMV Director George Valverde want to allow terrorists to swim across the Atlantic with knives in their teeth and sneak into our bedrooms and KILL US ALL ?! Obviously he needs to be deported back to where he came from, he obviously is a terrorist himself. I'm sure that people will welcome him back in his homeland of, err... Los Angeles? Huh. Obviously some kind of funny furriner land where folks ain't like us, like Tuvalu, Nauru, Andorra, and Palau. Why does Los Angeles hate America?

Welcome to Soviet America, comrade

Not that it matters, of course. See, here's how it works. The Decider decides. Or he tells his henchmen/cronies to decide. They then decide, and do whatever they decide. That's how it works, see? Public input? Err, you mean the same public that wants us out of Iraq, the same public that elected a Democratic congress to get us out of Iraq? The public is not the Decider in Soviet America, comrade. The Decider or his designated sub-deciders is the Decider. What part of "Decider" do you not understand?

-Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Labels: news, politics, soviet america, war on brown people

Driver problems

The following EMAIL was sent by an engineer to a techical support person. Names have been changed to protect the guilty.

The problem is that the MAC filter in the network chip is not being properly programmed by the driver under certain circumstances, thus cutting off traffic because the MAC filter is set up for a MAC that our software isn't listening for anymore (generally the original hardware MAC). The purpose of the hardware MAC filter in the network chip is to reduce the number of network interrupts coming into the system to improve system performance, but in this case it's reducing it to zero! I know that version 1.0.1 had the issue. I *believe* it was fixed for 1.0.2, but Abel was the person formally responsible for the fix and Baker or Charlie would have done the code review on the fix and thus know what release it made it into, I'll need to check to make sure. Anyhow, tcpdump "wakes it up" because tcpdump turns off the MAC filter by placing the network driver into promiscuous mode. This "works", but kills system performance.

If you have the 1.0.2 release notes handy you might want to take a look at them. I will be in the office in an hour or so depending upon what the crazy automobile drivers are doing (I looked outside and the road is wet so there may be freeway clogs) and if the 1.0.2 release notes do not answer your question I will be able to verify for certain whether the fix made it into 1.0.2 via looking at the CVS change logs. Hmm, yes, the freeways have driver problems too. Unfortunately the freeway driver problem isn't fixable with a driver fix, unless you consider forced sterilization of bad drivers via branding iron prior to reproduction to be a "hot fix", which unfortunately has a very long debug cycle time to verify the proper operation of the hot fix and thus isn't feasible no matter how attractive a hot fix it appears on some mornings.

Branding irons. Fixing bad drivers with. Prior to reproduction. I like!

-- Badtux the Bad-driver-hatin' Penguin

Labels: humor, life

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Random nonsense

Some Bible kiddy came around here and spit out a buncha verses that "prove" that Man is inherently evil. I pointed out that his verses weren't even 1/10th of 1% of the Bible and that a handful of verses out of context didn't mean diddly, but I'm not quite sure of that. Anyhow, it's not true. I've travelled all over this country and in a variety of places in the world, and people is people. Mostly apathetic, mostly self-absorbed and concerned only with whatever is happening in their own lives, true. But evil? No. To me, "evil" means that you actually go out of your way to do bad things. And I just have not met many people like that. And I've met a fair number of people who you probably would not want to invite home for dinner, given the fact that I taught in ghetto schools in two different locations. I've met misguided people. I've met stupid people. I've met people who will come to no good end. But I've met precious few people who actually go out of their way to do harm to others simply to do evil, and the one that I remember best is a neo-con "Christian" from Houston who was always ranting and railing about how he didn't want any of his tax money going to pay for schools for "niggers". (Yes, he used that word, at his own private dinner parties, one of which I attended in hopes of getting donations for the school I was teaching at). If the Bible appears to contradict reality, well, either the Bible is wrong or you are reading the Bible wrong. Pick your poison. If you're a Christian who believes the Bible is Truth, the only conclusion you can come to at that point is that your feeble human reading skills simply aren't capable of fetching God's truth out of text written in human language. If you're not a Christian, feel free to consider the Bible just another bunch of snake oil bunkum intended to seperate sheeple from their money.

Who the hell is Mike Gravel? Some cranky 77 year old who is running for President, apparently. He apparently had to take a city bus merely to get to the Washington Press Club to announce his candidacy. A Democrat of the old populist podium-pounding type. While I agree with some of his stuff, I'm not voting for him -- he's just too goddamned old. But he had some good quotes at the "debate" last week:

• I got to tell you, we should just plain get out. Just plain get out. [... ] It’s [Iraq] their country. They’re asking us to leave, and we insist on staying there.
• You know what’s worse than a soldier dying in vain? More soldiers dying in vain.
• ... this war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis.
• George Bush communicated over a year ago that he would not get out of Iraq until he left office. Do we not believe him? ... How do you get out? You pass the law, not a resolution, a law making it a felony to stay there.
• This invasion brought about more terrorism. Osama bin Laden must have been rolling in his blankets, how happy he was, our invading Iraq.

And oh -- it's the Fourth Annual Mission Accomplished Day, where we declared victory in Iraq... and then didn't go home. Given that we won on May 1, 2003 -- why, The Decider even said we did -- why are we still in Iraq? Mike Gravel is right. We should just plain get out.

-- Badtux the Random Penguin

Labels: iraq, politics, religion, war on brown people, war on terror

Monday, April 30, 2007

Well, so much for the "moving" thingy

My boss called me in to his office with a look of concern on his face. I go "uh-oh." Well, sort of. Bottom line -- I'm not fired. In fact, I'm not only not fired, but I'm being given a significant pay increase and significant new responsibilities. Which means less blogging on my part, but (shrug). Anyhow, bottom line is that a) I'm not going to have time to do any moving, and b) money isn't any reason to move anymore. So tomorrow I'll go over to the office and sign a new lease and get my concessions for early lease renewal (a $100 Safeway gift certificate, a "free" storage locker or storage room, and a "free" carpet shampoo).

In other news, my recorder practice is coming along. I still have problem holding the low C, and I can't move up the whistle to the higher octave past a certain point without squeaking between octaves, but I'm starting to get a bit of breath control. I ordered several penny whistles today (different brands, they're so cheap there's no reason not to just go ahead and get a collection), I suspect my breath control practice on the recorder will translate well to the penny whistle. I also have a bunch of penny whistle tutorial material and song material transcribed for the penny whistle on the way. I just don't like the sound of my recorder. It sounds... plastic. Which it is. It's a Yamaha that has good reviews in a number of places, but I guess reviewers of recorders don't have very high standards. Or maybe I just don't play the right kind of music for this sound. Who knows. Anyhow, more whistles on the way, so one of them is certain to have the kind of sound I'm looking for...

- Badtux the Subdued Penguin

Labels: life, navel-gazing

The myth of the noble savage

Over the past 40 years the Greenies in the environmental movement siezed upon this myth and used it as an anti-technology screed. See, they say. It isn't necessary to have all these nasty dirty machines, you can live a noble life just fine in harmony with nature.

The only problem is: It simply isn't true.

"Native Americans lived in harmony with nature"... bah. What a bunch of drivel. Native Americans drove the proto-horse and mammoths of the Americas into extinction. Using only stone adzes and pottery bowls Native Americans turned the Rio Salado valley into a salt-ridden desert that took hundreds years to recover to the point where agriculture was possible again (the Hohokum culture disintegrated once no longer able to raise enough food for survival). The Anastazi did much the same over in New Mexico. Native American cultures were continually at war against each other, to the point where, when they had a common enemy, they refused to unite and drive said common enemy into the sea, indeed the only way that Spanish could defeat the Aztecs with the few thousand men at their disposal was by enlisting the neighboring tribes to go to war with the Aztecs at the same time. As for technology, the Native Americans eagerly embraced as much technology as they were capable of absorbing given their lack of education, rapidly adopting the horse and stirrup to the point where when American settlers encountered the Plains Indians they assumed that the Plains Indians had always been nomadic tribesmen (they had previously been sedentary agriculturalists), embracing whiskey and wool blankets to the point where they were used to destroy Native American cultures by giving them smallpox-infected blankets and all the whiskey they could drink, and Native Americans could never get enough guns.

All in all, the only difference between the Native Americans and us is that they didn't have a Scientific Revolution. If they'd had the capability, they would have despoiled the Earth just as much as we're doing. If you really believe that nonsense about Native Americans being such "stewards" of the Earth, I suggest you go to any Native American reservation. There's enough trash and junk lying around to make that stereotypical TV Indian cry. The backside of the Hopi mesas has centuries of trash just piled up where they just shove their trash off the edge of the mesa. The Navaho stripped all the grass covering off their reservation by running so many sheep that they turned high plains grassland into utter desolate desert. Some of this is just poverty, of course -- impoverished people generally aren't concerned about making their homes look nice, they're concerned about survival. But the same was true 500 years ago before the "White Man" came on the scene too.

Too many people have bought too much Greenie propaganda. The fact of the matter is that technological civilization is the only civilization, ever, in human history, that has ever given even one thought to ecology and preservation. Technological civilization is the only civilization, ever, in human history, that has ever had any understanding of the impact of human behavior upon the planet, or the luxury in terms of economic resources to actually start reducing some of those impacts. And furthermore, technological civilization is the only civilization, ever, in human history, that has ever made any attempts to restore that which human behavior has despoiled.

The only way we could go back to living the way the pre-contact Native Americans lived would be to kill off 99% of the world's population, none of whom would go lightly and all of whom would swiftly destroy all the trees and topsoil on their way down (see: Haiti). We'd also kill off all technology at the same time, and it'd never come back -- there simply are no longer the easily-exploitable resources that allowed the Industrial Revolution. We'd live as ignorant tribesmen with no knowledge of anything other than what's immediately necessary for survival in our short, nasty, and brutish lives -- forever. No more art. No more science. No more literature. All of that requires resources and leisure time which would no longer exist. All there would be would be survival. Just survival. Forever.

- Badtux the Socio-Technology Penguin

Labels: culture, economy, environment, technology

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