Whither The Fool?

Michael Garfield, the self-styled “High-Tech Texan,” has a very funny take on the “debacle” (according to Houston football fan conventional wisdom, that is) arising from the surprise move by the Houston Texans in selecting Mario Williams, DE, N.C. State, as the first pick in today’s NFL draft.

Check out the photograph of Ms. O’Donnell. Can there be a better illustration of the term “pickle-puss”?

I am a fervent admirer of the editorial writing of Dr. Thomas Sowell of Stanford’s Hoover Institution. An economist and disciple of Dr. Milton Friedman, Dr. Sowell enunciates so well the more elusive aspects of “the dismal science” for those of us who don’t follow, exactly.

I think his recent essay on the “oily politicians” that are threatening to ruin things - as they invariably do with economic policy - with regard to the latest “energy crisis” is as pithy an outline of what’s really going on as I’ve seen.

Politicians have long been known for seizing upon immediate symptoms and ignoring underlying causes and consequences. Back in the 18th century Adam Smith wrote of “that crafty animal” the politician, who is preoccupied with “the momentary fluctuation of affairs.”

I think that’s exactly what we have here. In their zeal to make the next election, they’re once again going to screw it up for all of us.

I heart slashdot. In fact, it is quite certain I’m a nerd, although I’m not officially involved in IT–in fact, I probably couldn’t even code a “Hello, World” in C/C++ if my life literally depended on it–solely because I find myself going to slashdot for most of the news and information I read, aside from my blogroll.

But I have to say: The notion that slashdot is mired in “groupthink” is true if my experience is any judge! The impression I get of the typical /.-er is that of a young, “punkish” IT guy–typically coders rather than manager-types–probably living on the west coast, probably unmarried, likely spending inordinate amounts of time with videogaming and snarfing “decoded” media off the net.

That may be a wholly unfair assessment, but that’s my take. It is generally agreed among certain types of slashdotters that any comments that are pro-traditional values, pro-capitalism or pro-business are going to be “modded down” no matter how reasonable your comments.

For example, not long ago I came across this article. I made this comment, which i purposely tried to make serious, if “controversial” (as opposed to the “slashdot meme” earlier described). Well, you can see the result: It was modded all the way down to minus-one at one point, and finally stuck at “zero.”

The result was that I lost my “excellent karma” for some period afterward. This has happened more than once.

I think the lesson learned here is that society is becoming even more polarized and intolerant. And this is nowhere more apparent than that wild, wonderful, raucous world known as the Internet.

This article at The American Thinker.

Getting harder to disbelieve in the conspiracy theories.

On Ankle Biting Pundits, they note the Left’s “Culture of Treason” and  opine “…this may be a long, sobering summer for the political Left.”

I disagree. If these people have not shamed themselves, or been shamed by others, for the harm they have attempted to cause to this nation’s security in the name of political expediency since 9/11/01, what makes anyone think they’ll start now?

When you see all the open-source games now (or soon to be) available for it.

Several years ago I found some shrink-wrapped games on Amazon.Com, that were Linux ports of mainstream titles like Railroad Tycoon and Myth 2: Soulblighter. The games sold for five bucks, and I bought them more for the novelty than anything else.

Now it seems a lot of effort is going into development of these things as bona-fide open source projects, rather than just ports of existing games years after the Windows/Mac editions have shipped.

And some of them are very good, it seems.

I have recently fooled with Battle of Wesnoth, which is included in the Fedora Project’s “Extras” repository. The gameplay is a bit amateurish for my taste, but it is well-done overall.

I’d like to see someone take the source for Homeworld, my all-time favorite PC game, and turn it into a Linux project–including expansions and mods. I’ve always wanted to learn modern programming, but I think that would be a bit much as a starter project!

Interesting article in last month’s American Spectator that just came to my attention.

I wouldn’t typically be interested in the political fortunes of a Northeastern Republican. And as a Texas conservative some of the ideals of Mitt Romney don’t strike a chord. But Romney is an honest, hard-working “Mormon” (like me, in fact), and that is intriguing.

I don’t know if we’re ever going to have another true conservative in the mold of Ronald Reagan running for the Presidency again in my lifetime. With the state of presidential politics now–the “oppo” team seems to be the most important component of any campaign–all you have to do is apply enough tar-brushstrokes to take your opponent down into the low-30s.

That said, I think the George W. Bush-type “centrist” is the best we can expect. I’d sooner have Mitt Romney in there than just about anyone else I can think of right now.

At least you can count on the MoTab entertaining at the innauguration.

Fascinating article at OTB regarding a new addition to the Star Trek franchise.

I have to wonder, though: If they’re showing a younger Kirk and Spock, are they going to use styles–everything from hair to hardware–from the 1940s or 50s?

I still love the original ST series (known among Trekkies as “TOS,” natch), but it is funny to note the cheesy props and special effects today, jaded as we are by a quarter-century of increasingly sophisticated FX technology.

Anyway, can’t wait to get a load of Kirk’s and Spock’s hair in that one.

(N.B. Really cool Star Trek wiki at Memory Alpha. Check it out).

I just spent several hours over the past two days trying to solve the problem of notifying some of the mailing lists that I’m subscribed to of new entries to the blog. I had to fool around with sending the notification back to my “home” email address, catching it via procmail, stripping off a bunch of fields from the headers, and then sending it on to a Sendmail alias address that in turn directs it to the various list addresses.

I mean, GOOD GRIEF!

All this is made necessary by the fact that the big email handlers like Yahoo! and Google have so many safeguards in place to try to stop spoofing (a typical vehicle for spam, phishing, etc.) I had to make sure the relayed email came in appearing as a docile lamb with little chance of a ravening wolf underneath!

Gee, can’t we just TRUST one another any more?

Guess not.

In a speech back last week, Arizona Senator John McCain asked if there were anyone out there, among those Americans who don’t want the jobs that illegal immigrants are willing to take, who would be willing to spend this coming season picking lettuce in Arizona.

The good Senator has been around long enough, I’m sure, to have learned the adage “never ask a question in a public forum to which you don’t know the answer beforehand.”

As it happens, over 3,000 people have sent in their résumés.

Looking back over all the stuff I wrote the first couple of months of this blog’s life, I can’t believe I had so much to say. ‘Cuz now I just DON’T (Or so it seems).

Having a “real job” for a change has something to do with it, I feel certain (okay, I’ll write about that later when I have time).

I supposed one reason I’m having so much trouble is that I care simultaneously about everything going on these days, and nothing. All the same sorts of worldly troubles bother me: Political, social, moral. But I am coming to realize how little one can do about it, and how little use “griping” does.

It’s not that I’m becoming more tolerant of the evil (or even the just-plain-wrongheadedness) that I see around me. It’s just that I realize how little I can do to effect change beyond trying to live my own life right.

Part of the problem, I think, stems from my suffering (as it happens, for nearly the past year) from adult-onset (a.k.a. Type 2) diabetes. Having a tendency toward depression, this made things a lot worse. I’m just now having to come to grips with it–taking medication, trying to adjust my typically-American diet, exercising more regularly–so any changes for the positive in my own attitude are not manifesting themselves in abundance as yet.

I’m hopeful, however.

But really, what can be done? My faith in God has ebbed and flo’ed, but it has never ceased–and I seem once more to be on the “upswing” in perceiving His bounteous blessings in my life. In the end, it really is in His hands, and we cannot see the end from the beginning. We never could, and we never will, and that’s all a part of learning to walk by faith in this earthly sphere.

I have gotten to where I can understand why the wrong-headedness I see all around me exists. Again, I’m no more tolerant of it but at least I am less inclined to despise those who persist in doing wrong out of ignorance.