We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Breakthroughs have recently been made in two computer areas, so I figured I'd catch y'all up to date.
First, voice recognition, which I've been following for decades. One of my pet fantasies is to run a business converting everything in a client's home to voice operation.
"Dim the lights, Hal."
"Yes, master."
"A little more."
"Yes, my lord."
I'd actually program some 'character' into it, like every 23rd time you tell it to dim the lights, it makes you say 'please' first. If anyone out there has some moolah and thinks this would be a fun business venture, let's do it.
But I stray.
While Google might be a little unethical and/or greedy in certain areas, it also remains a fact that Google Maps blew the doors off MapQuest, Google Translator blew the doors off every translation program in existence, Google, itself, blew the doors off the other search engines of the day, and nothing even compares to Google Earth, Google Images and Google Street View.
I feel they mightily dropped the ball with their Chrome browser, though, since it's only the ugliest, most ill-equipped browser in history. You can't even load a local page into it, last time I checked. But eventually they should get things sorted out (it says here).
It does, however, now incorporate what appears to be a quantum leap in voice recognition. If you've ever wasted hours upon hours on programs like 'Dragon Naturally Speaking', then you'll see what I mean.
Although it's a brief video, it still provides three key moments. Note (1) how it capitalizes the first word of the line after he says "New paragraph", (2) how it first thinks he says "notes", then changes it to "no" when "notes" doesn't make sense in context, and how it converts the word "exclamation" into an exclamation mark after it hears the whole phrase. Very smart.
As a small aside, that's not quite the truth up above. It's not Chrome, the browser, that's doing this, but an add-on program. We'll most likely see a conversion of the add-on for IE and FF soon enough. Google's just saying that to fluff Chrome's feathers.
Next up is controlling a computer with just one's hands. Below the fold we'll examine a 'magic box' called Leap Motion. As these things go, it's pretty amazing. Whether or not it's practical is the question at hand — both literally and figuratively.
A rule of the modern age: all confident, reelected presidents trip up in the second term. LBJ was sunk by Vietnam. Reagan faced Iran-Contra. Bill Clinton had his comeuppance with Monica. George W. Bush was overwhelmed with the Iraqi insurgency and Katrina. And Obama will have his as well, obsequious media or not.
Supposedly fundamental partisan swings of an era usually prove transitory: LBJ’s landside led to Nixon four years later, whose landslide then led to Carter in 1980, whose supposed new politics of humility and apology led to Reagan, whose small government-paradigm shift nonetheless by 1992 gave us Clinton, whose “middle way” after only eight years gave us Bush, whose “compassionate conservative realignment” ended with Obama. And so on until the end of the republic.
Bird Dog is off somewhere or other, so you are stuck with what is on my spindle for today and tomorrow. Today there is a lot piled on my spindle. (Please notify Guinness) Tomorrow should be a shorter stack.
We went after the eating fish (Spanish Mackeral), not the big game fish. More practical.
It's like a zoo. With the Humpback Whales all around peering at your boat, the Frigatebirds stealing your bait, and the Sea Lions stealing either your bait or your catch, it was a bit of an obstacle course. But how bad is that?
When you go, make sure to sup at our friend Roberto's shrimp joint, and at Mi Casa for traditional Mexican food and jollity. Good fun. To cook the fish you catch, bring them to Solomon's Landing and ask them to make some wonderful dishes with it for suppertime. They will amaze you.
The article is here. Of course a shorter summer "vacation" would help kids with continuity.
However, I think it's time that the entire structure of public K-12 education ought to be reinvented.
We started out with home-schooling, with tutors for the wealthy, then neighborhood one-room schoolhouses supported and controlled by the parents of the kids, then we went to the tax-supported, age-cohorted Prussian (yes, our public schools were based on the then-modern Prussian schools) factory model for the poor which we still use today in the US, while the prosperous (and the Catholics) used private schools. One size does not fit any, much less all.
Nobody cares what I think, but I do have plenty of ideas.
One of the first things I would do would be to eliminate the age-cohort system and, with that, those talented and gifted programs. Proceed at your own pace after demonstrating mastery of modules of study. The highly-motivated and bright move faster, the rest more slowly - or never. So what? Most kids cannot handle integral calculus but some kids are eager to tackle it.
Another would be to eliminate the huge summer vacation. It's obsolete. Give them August off, if need be. Why should kids have life easier than the grown-ups who take so little time away from their work and pay the bills for the supposed professional education?
Third, I would reintroduce technical training. The fancy private schools my kids attended have more technical training than the public schools have. Schools can take their pick: wood shop, metal shop, music shop, forestry shop, computer shop, kitchen shop, farm shop, garden shop, car and engine shop, construction and architecture shop, art and graphics shop, electrical shop, stone shop, ceramics shop, gun shop, etc. Few parents can teach all of these things, and the opportunities to integrate book learning - math, history, etc into real life tasks can be inspiring. If we had stone shop today, we might find another Michelangelo. Our kids' Kitchen Shop ultimately produced a Cordon Bleu four-star chef whose first task in Kitchen Shop was to understand sanitary dish-washing and the workings of a commercial dishwashing machine. Because private schools are non-union, the Kitchen Shop kids work in the school kitchen and take orders from the chef.
Fourth, I would get rid of the costly educational edifice complex. The building doesn't contribute anything. Any old empty mill building or vacant factory would be fine.
Fifth, I would bring back Civics. Every American needs to be taught how to be a citizen of a free republic. It's not easy to be one; it's all about man and God and law. Not all parents explain this plainly, or even by example.
Sixth: Sports. Every kid ought to do some team or individual sports as part of school or outside of school. Not just the athletically-gifted. America is a sports country. Builds character even if you are a spaz. Mens sana in corpore sano.
Seventh: Get rid of the unions. Teaching is a calling, not a factory job and definitely should not be a government job.
Eighth: Abolish the Federal dept. of Education. It's not their yob, and they are mostly idiots who could not change the oil in their car or hammer a nail straight into a 2X4, much less diagram a sentence.
Being Yankees, we are attached to exotic American Indian foods like winter squash, cranberries, corn meal, baked beans (and hot Thai curries).
A friend asked me about squash pie. It's really the same thing as pumpkin pie, but made with winter squash (of which the pumpkin is just one type).
The winter squashes were discovered and genetically-engineered by clever American Indians - as was corn (maize), the potato, and the tomato. Modern Western cuisine owes a lot to the Indian gourmets.
This recipe for Butternut Squash Pie works for any type of winter squash including pumpkin. Squash pies (as in photo) have a more subtle flavor than pumpkin.
Pumpkin or winter squash ravioli is a fine dish too. We have become convinced, by a Cordon Bleu chef friend, that using supermarket wontons is perfectly fine for making ravioli. We will never bother to make our own homemade ravioli pasta again, because it's too darn much work and it's the inside that counts. (My Woodcock ravioli recipe will be posted one of these days).
I am fond of baked Acorn Squash with some butter and Maple syrup inside, but you can use any winter squash. Simple, and tasty:
"The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself."
...if an employer has 40 full-time workers and 20 part-time workers, that employer would be considered by the government to have 50 full-time workers and would be subject to the mandate because the 20 part-time workers average to 10 full-time workers – meeting the 50 full-time-worker threshold.
House Passes $50 Billion In Sandy Relief (Mostly Unrelated Pork) With Democrats Providing Majority Of The Yes Votes - UPDATE: Less Than Half The Money Is Sandy Related
The Whiz Kids - They didn’t come here to cut spending:
This is the overcaffeinated game of leapfrog that’s characterized Washington for years. Policy wonks and whiz kid pundits fly to a problem, waving calculators and smacking each other with rolled-up charts in attempts to get there first. Legislation is passed that supposedly ameliorates the problem. Everyone trips over each other and gets a convenient case of amnesia. Then it’s on to the next problem. And for God’s sake, don’t look back at the previous one…or at least not for another few years when everyone can return and try to solve it all over again.
Americans are suckers for a sob story. But a lot of them are also suckers for personal freedom. Whenever a bullseye is put on freedom for the greater good, two narratives battle it out for the soul of the country. "We have to fix this" and "Leave me alone."
Think of We have to fix this" and "Leave me alone" as the devil and angel on the shoulders of every cartoon character for the last hundred years. "We have to fix this," wears an earnest expression and her appearance is calculated to suggest nurse, teacher or PTA member, when in reality she's usually an Ivy League grad with a lot of time spent in government and political advocacy and whose kids are raised by Elena from Guatemala, whose immigration status is that of Undocumented Democrat.
It's the best use of an inexpensive chuck roast or round. Pot Roast can be terrible dry mystery meat, or it can be OK. Pot Roast never looks very appealing, and should taste better than the pile of grey, well-overcooked meat looks.
Either way, it gets the family well-fed and meated-up. Kids need meat to grow their brains. I like this recipe because it has lots of my favorite root vegetables in it, parsnips, turnips.
Pot Roast is not a roast, it's braised. I call it Braised Beef and it has to be cooked until fork-tender.
You know you are reaching true adulthood when you read articles about The Kids These Days and end up grimacing. We have posted about the hooking-up culture in the past, about "friends with benefits," and about how the youth are mating randomly and promiscuously like rabbits in the woods and yet are spared the reputational problem which would have occurred when I was 20.
Voyeurism is fun, but tacky. From what I see in life, which is quite a lot, it seems to me that these stories are the exception rather than the rule. From what I see, the average middle-class American girl avoids casual sexual encounters and wants to be treated respectfully if not lovingly. There is a bell curve, and the left tail of the curve is sociopathic.
So much for the girls. For the 20's guys, there is no doubt that it has gotten very easy to get lucky in the bars these days, if that is how one chooses to live. The modern trends of feminism are great for the guys: they get much more sex and sexual variety without committment, and the women make their own money. Unless you feel that relationships are a serious matter and that using others is a form of low life, that is.
I had been under the impression that the reason to spend big bucks for an elite education in prep schools like Andover, Exeter, Choate, Deerfield, etc. was for a very rigorous classical education, traditional and strict moral standards, and, in general, a special culture set apart from ordinary society and its fads, from factory-style public education, and from ordinary mindless and immature teen pursuits.
If these sorts of schools no longer aspire to be different, what's the point?
So now Geoff Chaucer, the father of modern English, is voiceless and the whores have voices? Thus the culture progresses, forgetting the Wife of Bath - and the Whore of Babylon.
This came up the other day when I took the 64-bit version of Firefox out for a spin. Although it's basically the same program, they decided to rename it 'Nightly' and change the cute Firefox icons from this...
...to this wretched abomination:
This begs the question, why didn't they just rename it 'Bowling Ball'?
Using a free program called Resource Hacker, it's easy to change an ugly icon to something better. We shall delve into these digital wonders below the fold.
Pic: Finally! A computer system for people with 14 eyes!
Just to cover a few recent things that have popped up in my geeky little world:
Flash 64-bit Probs
I prefer using a 64-bit Windows system because it utilizes more of my machine's memory. The problem is that Flash, which until recently had a specific 64-bit version that worked just fine, now has a 'multi-system' version which doesn't. I've had various odd problems with both Internet Exploder and Firefox. If you're running a 64-bit system and having Flash probs, the best troubleshooting page I've come across is here. I think both #6 & 7 helped on this end.
Firefox 64-bit Probs
I'd never heard of a 64-bit Firefox, but I got to thinking about it, punched it into Google, and I'll be double-dipped if not only is there a 64-bit version, but that Mozilla officially killed it at one point — which naturally raised a huge outcry among its users and they brought it back. The sordid details are here. The 'official' release is still their multi-platform model; the 64-bit version is here if you want to give it a spin. Be forewarned that they not only changed the name from Firefox to 'Nightly', but changed the icon to something really horrid. The latter can be easily remedied; I'll have a post on changing the icon of an executable tomorrow. Note that you'll need the original EXE file for the original icon.
I've found over the years that I have two soap boxes I occasionally like clambering back on; system backup and getting your yourname.com domain before anyone else does. You only get one shot at it.
Gosh, if only them Congresscritters read Maggie's Farm, huh?
Live and learn, guys. More info on firing up your own domain here.
Security
You might have seen the plethora of articles this past week on temporarily disabling Java. Java is a 'helper' program for browsers (on every operating system, Mac and Linux users please note) so certain functions on a web site will work. It's also used widely by hackers to install malware on your system, and there's a whole new raft of bad stuff coming down the pike, hence the official alert to disable it.
Oracle, the home company, has just now released an update and it's strongly suggested you download & install it. The download site is here. Click the 'Download' button under 'JDK', click the 'Accept license' gadget, then the version for your particular system. Regular 32-bit Windows systems are 'Windows x86'.
I should note that some people think Java is so vulnerable that it should be re-written from the ground up — if not abandoned by web sites entirely — and they recommend you just flat-out disable it. Instructions are here; it's usually just the unchecking of a box. Speaking as a webmaster, I would note that Java isn't used very much these days and you probably won't notice a thing. If you were on some site which had a function you very much wanted to use but were getting a 'You need Java installed' message, you could always just flip it back on for a bit.
Any feedback or questions, give a holler in the comments like usual.
Winter is book season. What am I reading this week?
A classic: How To Run Any Organizationby Theodore Caplow. This splendid book is inexplicably out of print but used copies are readily available online for pennies. He covers everything from running a church choir to a medical practice to a corporate department.
The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don't. Nate Silver's new book.
It's the dumplings that make it worth eating. Good stuff. Otherwise, it's sort of like Chicken Soup or Chicken Stew, which are good if you have the flu but, otherwise, not too exciting.
A national "common core" for lower ed? I do not like that idea at all. I do not approve of any national authorities involved in education, much less curricula. Why do we have local school boards?
Gee, I almost forgot. We have them to apply for federal grants, which are, in turn, used to control state and local education from Washington.
Given the increasing centralization of everything, at least one fellow has something on the ball: David Coleman, Education Hero.
The article is 
Being Yankees, we are attached to exotic American Indian foods like winter squash, cranberries, corn meal, baked beans (and hot Thai curries).
It's the best use of an inexpensive chuck roast or round. Pot Roast can be terrible dry mystery meat, or it can be OK. Pot Roast never looks very appealing, and should taste better than the pile of grey, well-overcooked meat looks.
More city co-eds turning to sugar daddies for school support
Pic: Finally! A computer system for people with 14 eyes! 
It's the dumplings that make it worth eating. Good stuff. Otherwise, it's sort of like Chicken Soup or Chicken Stew, which are good if you have the flu but, otherwise, not too exciting. 