Saturday, March 13. 2010
Things are not always what they seem.
You think you're looking at a web page on Maggie's server, right? Nope, not even close. Every single item you see or hear on a web site has been downloaded to your computer first, and those are the files you're reading, watching and listening to. Everything, including all of those wild & wacky videos you watch, are sitting right there on your computer waiting to be saved for later enjoyment.
But no.
No, as cruel as it sounds, this is not an ideal world, and thus there are bound to be a few hitches and bumps along the way, such as your media player rudely spitting out "Unknown format" when you innocently try to play your latest YouTube treasure. But with stalwart heart and steely resolve, we'll solve the whole mess in one fell swoop. I'm not exactly sure what a fell swoop is — but I'm pretty sure there's one below the fold.
Continue reading "Doc's Computin' Tips: Saving & playing web videos"
 When I was a kid, Kedgeree was my favorite breakfast. My Mom was taken by it on all of her trips across the pond, and we kids just did not go for blood sausage. I think I first had it in Scotland.
This Indian-inspired Brit meal is as rare on US menus as Shrimp 'n Grits is on Maine menus. It's great thing for kids in the cool weather, or anytime. Supper too.
Rice, curry, haddock or smoked haddock, etc., and sliced egg on top. I like it with regular haddock, and even the frozen is OK with this. Wonderfully filling, tasty, and rib-sticking.
Here's one recipe, but it need not be so complex.
 Men and women, relationships and politics. Villainous
Another runaway Toyota scam
Democratic candidates distance themselves from healthcare reform
Health care: What gimmick? We just pay the taxes for it for a few years before the thing starts to distort the apparent cost.
New poverty measurements to include government income and benefits. Makes sense. Of course, if poverty is defined as a standard percentage, it will never be eliminated no matter how many cars and TVs the poor own.
Jay Cost: It's Time for Moderate House Democrats to Stand Up to Obama
Moran: How the news gave up its objectivity
Climategate: Once Respected Nature Now Staffed By Moaning Ninnies
God's Grandeur
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Friday, March 12. 2010
 Pic: Average student at Dr. Mercury's Computer School For Unwed Mothers upon discovering that a program she's just installed has added YET ANOTHER entry to the damb context menu!
P.S. I sure wish I had a lip ring. :(
On a Windows system, the 'context menu' is what pops out when you click on an icon with the right mouse button. Unfortunately, programs like installing their own entries on the context menu and things can get a bit cluttered after a while.
The solution is to use a simple program called ShellExView to remove the unwanted entries.
A download site is here. No need to install, just unzip and copy the folder to a permanent home. Then open the ShellExView folder, grab hold of the program's icon and d-r-a-g it over to the Start Menu and drop it in for future access.
Fire up the program and look for the company or program name on the left. Right-click on it and select 'Disable'. Go find an icon, right-click on it and see if the entry has been removed. If not, look for another entry by the same company or program. It should be there somewhere.
Number and Percent of Nonpayers At Record High; More Tax Filers Now See IRS as a Source of Income.
Remember when being called a "taxpayer" was equivalent to being called a "solid citizen"? This trend is not good for America. Every voting citizen should pay their dues to the club of America.
The issue of salt seemed to link with our post on Woodrow Wilson and all of our routine posts about Brit Nanny-Fascism.
Just skim this Tierney piece on the salt "controvery" in the NYT. "Advocates" are promoting their dire data, and the other side is promoting their own - or debunking that of the advocates. (Reminiscent of global warming - and salt, like CO2, is essential to life on earth.)
My point, though, is that the assumption seems to be that if excess salt intake is bad for some small minority, then the government should regulate it. That's the technocratic, government-by-expert thing we have been seeing lately.
Is there anything the scientific technocrat busybodies don't want to control in my life?
Where is individual choice, individual responsibility, and freedom in the equation? Whence a government's power to determine the salt in my food?
At Commentary, an excellent review of the politics: Health Care: A Two-Decade Blunder.
 Founder of the American Red Cross Nursing Service. It's her birthday.
She said she didn't do it because she was moved by suffering, but because she liked the work.
I prefer people who do fine things because they want to, not because of pious self-congratulatory virtue or grandiose notions of changing the world.
Tough shooting, but good fun. Let's find out whether our readers can shoot.
To those for whom the intellect alone has force, such a witness has little or no force. It bewilders and exasperates them. It challenges them to suppose that there is something greater about man than his ability to add and subtract. It submits that that something is the soul. Plain men understood the witness easily. It speaks directly to their condition. For it is peculiarly the Christian witness. They still hear it, whenever it truly reaches their ears, the ring of those glad tidings that once stirred mankind with an immense hope. For it frees them from the trap of irreversible Fate at the point at which it whispers to them that each soul is individually responsible to God, that it has only to assert that responsibility, and out of man’s weakness will come strength, out of his corruption incorruption, out of his evil good, and out of what is false invulnerable truth.
 Your recycling ends up in landfills
Temperature records gleaned from clamshells reveal accuracy of Norse sagas.
More on the foolishness of photovoltaics
Junk Science Bombshell: NASA & Media Knew About Bogus Climate Data 3 Years Ago
Arab Emirates: No Jews, please
Obama Justice Department Shut Down Federal ACORN Investigation According to Documents Obtained by Judicial Watch
Credit Default Swaps Under Fire
EU monitoring "hate" sites, hoping to ban them
Lots of good posts at Moonbattery
From SDA:
When the mother of a five year old girl received a letter detailing a litany of health risks her daughter would face in the future because her body mass index was one-percent outside the recommended limit, mom was appalled, and its no wonder: take a look at the child in question. Actually, take a close look, because she might be following you: various local Councils recruit "environment volunteers" as young as seven to report people for offenses ranging from littering to making too much noise to putting out their trash on the wrong day. The little recruits "are given information packs about how to collect evidence....which could later be used in criminal prosecutions."
In an essay titled Nanny State Britain is Killing Common Sense, Dr. Eamonn Butler writes:
"The organisers of a Christmas party in Embsay village hall were told they needed a full risk assessment, and nut allergy warnings on the mince pies. Schools have banned playground football. Clowns in Zippo's circus couldn't use trumpets in a three-minute sketch because they'd need a music licence. Manchester taxi drivers cancelled their annual outing for needy kids because each cab would need a risk assessment, each child would have to be accompanied by an adult, and each adult would need a six-week criminal record check." (emph. mine)
Thursday, March 11. 2010
 It's about time people began piling on the arrogantly naive goo-goo prissy academic Woodrow Wilson. See George Will today:
Wilson was the first president to criticize the Founding Fathers. He faulted them for designing a government too susceptible to factions that impede disinterested experts from getting on with government undistracted.
Undistracted by the people, that is. Like the EU. Also, from Jonah at NRO - quoted there:
Wilson, once a professor of political science, said that the Princeton he led as its president was dedicated to unbiased expertise, and he thought government could be "reduced to science." Progressives are forever longing to replace the governance of people by the administration of things. Because they are entirely public-spirited, progressives volunteer to be the administrators, and to be as disinterested as the dickens.
God save us Americans from such disinterested expert mandarins. We are the mandarins, and they are our servants! Makes me wonder who came up with the wacky notion of political "science"?
Here's some real Political Science:
 The magical biological and psychological chemical attractions to which we humans are heir is one of the more complicating, exciting, bewildering, and painful parts of life. Desire.
Sexual and romantic tension between two people is powerful stuff indeed. Without it, there would be very little music.
The French, like the cave-men did, routinely give in and just get the thing over and done with. Magic gives way to reality fast, in relationships that last longer than a few hours or weeks.
I wonder how our readers deal with this part of life, but I am not trying to collect Lenten confessions...
A snippet from 1965, Remember Me When the Candlelights are Gleaming (with Joanie), a wonderful Ernest Tubb tune. You can see that Albert Grossman just loves what he has found in Bob.
How many songs does Dylan know?
It takes a high school drop-out to fix what a college grad breaks.
Motto of the flight line crew, h/t, reader
Salt wars? What next?
Maybe broccoli. I read that it is carcinogenic - especially if it is "organic". Everything causes cancer.
Don't let the opposition define you. Am. Thinker
Wednesday, March 10. 2010
Robert Iger, CEO of Walt Disney Company since 2005, plays hard to get what he wants.
Case #1: Not Child Friendly
The New York Times reports today that under pressure from Disney The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood was evicted from the Judge Baker childrens mental health center in Boston that housed and sponsored it for a decade. The Harvard Medical School professor who oversaw the Campaign, psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint, also co-wrote books with Bill Cosby.
The campaign had for years fought Disney’s marketing of the Baby Einstein videos — short videos filled with colors, nature pictures, music and puppets — as educational; it contended that there was no evidence that babies learned anything. Indeed, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen time for children under 2.
After the campaign filed a Federal Trade Commission complaint, Disney dropped the word “educational” from its marketing. But that was not enough for campaign officials. They forwarded their research to lawyers who threatened a class-action suit, prompting Disney to offer refunds of $15.99 for up to four Baby Einstein DVDs per household.
Barely two weeks after the story of the refunds appeared, Dr. Poussaint said, he and Dr. Linn were called before the Baker center’s executive board.
Dr. Poussaint wrote the board:
“You told me that the mission of C.C.F.C. — to protect children from harmful exploitation by corporate marketers — is not in line with the Judge Baker mission. Indeed, we were told that we could no longer criticize any corporations, even if they were exploiting children.”…
“It’s really chilling, that any corporation, and particularly one marketing itself as child friendly, would lean on a children’s center,” said Dr. Lynn, a psychiatry instructor at Harvard Medical School. “And it’s heartbreaking that a children’s center would cave in.”
Case #2: Democrat Friendly Exceeds Shareholder Friendly
Disney CEO Robert Iger is known for his support and funding of Democrat politicians and causes. For example, his 2009 political contributions counted by Open Secrets include $25,000 each to the Democratic Senatorial and Congressional Campaign Committees, a $1000 to Walt Disney World’s Florida-home Republican governor and US Senate primary contender Charlie Crist, then another $14,600 to Democrat Senators.
Iger and Disney have refused to respond to why Disney refuses to sell the distribution rights or to re-air its subsidiary ABC-TV’s docudrama The Path To 9/11. The National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project, a Disney shareholder, has been speaking out at Disney shareholder meetings, including today’s, “warning Disney shareholders that CEO Robert Iger's progressive political bias puts investors at risk.”
"Iger's rejection of several offers to sell the distribution rights of the ABC-TV docudrama, The Path to 9/11, is a sign that his personal political views are affecting business decisions," said Free Enterprise Project director Dr. Tom Borelli, who has raised the issue personally with Iger at past shareholder meetings.
Big Hollywood offered more background.
A $30+ million project that aired without sponsors on two September nights in 2006, The Path to 9/11 dramatized the historical thread that connected the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Islamic attacks on American interests throughout the ‘90s, and the terrorism of that fateful morning in 2001.
Prior to its premiere, the producers at ABC were so proud of the impending project that they had high hopes of airing Path every 9/11 anniversary and showing it in schools across this country as an engaging educational tool – until an accusation of “conservative bias” (horrors!) on the part of the filmmakers quickly spun into liberal hysteria that the project was actually a “well-honed propaganda operation” on the part of a secretive, right-wing network-within-a-network….
Clinton administration alumni, fearing the miniseries would highlight their flaccid response to the growing threat of Islamic extremism and tarnish their political legacy, pulled out all the stops to suppress it. The show very nearly wasn’t aired at all – Robert Iger and Disney were pressured by the Senate Democratic leadership, led by Harry Reid – it hasn’t aired since, and today you cannot even obtain it on DVD.
And why not? Disney President and CEO Robert Iger explains without elaboration that it’s a “business decision.” Oh, well then, case closed. Not only does he refuse to re-air The Path to 9/11 or release a DVD, but he has no intention of even selling the DVD rights to another company. I’m no financial wizard, but I can recognize that, as business decisions go, willfully taking a $30+ million bath on your product when there is a vast audience hungry for it and distributors making offers, is not one of the more lucrative marketing strategies I’ve ever heard of.
Case #3: Lining Own Pockets at Others' Expense
Disney is a leading member of the US travel association’s lobby group, Discover America, that spent millions of dollars to pass its Travel Promotion Act, that was finally recently approved by the Congress and signed by President Obama. It will charge a $10 fee to travelers to the US that will go into a fund to promote tourism to the US. I was on the trail of its misrepresentations, starting in 2007. Tim Carney, muckraker at the Washington Examiner, joined in. Then, in February 2008, Jeff Birnbaum at the Washington Post wrote a 6,746 word expose Mickey Goes To Washington: Lobbyists for America’s richest mouse set out to persuade Congress to scare up $200 million to promote U.S. tourist destinations. In my summary post, which links to my earlier posts on this money-grab by the $1-trillion US tourism industry, I wrote:
The points I’ve been driving home are all there: The statistics Discover America ignores about the strong recovery of post-9/11 international tourism; The cynical marketing by Geoff Freeman, Discover America’s PR specialist; The “inside-beltway” lobbying that swells our federal expenditures and enriches lobbyists and Congressional staff’s future job prospects.
Exposed, the bill stalled until the Democrat Congressional sweep of 2008.
Foreign visitors will surely be thrilled by the added fee. Disney and its travel industry cohorts certainly are at getting others to pay for its own self-promotion efforts.
Isn't that how it works when you go to Disney Land?
We recently posted a link to a homey discussion about how God speaks to us. But here's Gagdad Bob:
God's speech (happily) shatters all human containers for the same reason that a three dimensional sphere shatters a piece of paper.
Male or female? A test to see how you think. h/t, Attack Machine. (Somebody send this to Larry Summers...)
While you take the test, here's this:
:
Back before they had these
they had these:
 White House invents organic Easter eggs. It's about time. Chickens never could figure it out how to produce organic eggs. Sunny-side up or over easy with those recycled wooden government eggs?
Detroit Farms? Makes sense to me.
Cool Baltic shipwrecks. Would love to see the ancient ones.
The NYT as partisan hypocritical hacks, # 3487. h/t, Tiger
Dartmouth's Rob Portman looking good in Ohio
California's College Dreamers - When will students figure out the politicians have sold them out?
Obama Is Late to the Party
Does Government Have To Do Everything? Darn good question. Simple answer: No. We The People aren't morons. In fact, we're the Boss. We create the money that they spend.
Pathetic: Climategate: George Monbiot despairs of the AGW cause – 'There goes my life's work' . Yes, burned up in global warming.
White Trash Barbie. h/t, Vandy
Bob Dylan: Jewish Messiah? Sorry. Just one darn good songwriter and song and dance man.
Fish photo via theo
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Proof that Maggie's is a Centrist website: