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.
There's some old advice about not drawing a gun unless you intend to use it. It's true for individuals and for nations. If you go to war, then you had better mean it. Wars are bloody and messy. They're not for the sort of people who think that putting "Smart" ahead of something automatically makes it better. And "meaning it" means being committed to crushing the enemy.
The votes are in, the die is cast, the line's been drawn, the ball's in play and the table is set.
Thanks to commenter Walt Moffett, it appears a free player called VLC is the ticket to watching video on a Mac. An upgrade to VLC provides two key things:
— Stock programs that come with an OS are traditionally fairly featureless. In the world of Windows, the Paint program would be considered a very basic picture editor, Wordpad a very basic word processing program, and Media Player a very basic multimedia player. I don't know what the Mac equivalents are, but assuming its version of Quicktime is the same as I have on my PC, it leaves a lot to be desired. When it comes to features and overall handling, a program like VLC is a big step up.
As an example of 'handling', if you want to pause a video in Media Player using the keyboard, you have to use both hands to hit Ctrl-P, which isn't so easy to do in a darkened room. With the program I use, Media Player Classic, you slap the space bar. VLC is the same.
As an example of 'features', if I want to save a particular spot using Media Player Classic as a picture, I pause the video and select 'Save Image' from the menu. Neither Quicktime or Media Player have this option. VLC does.
— As I noted yesterday, a stock Mac can't play the proprietary Windows format Windows Media Video (WMV), and a PC can't play the proprietary Apple format Quicktime (QT). And neither can play a few 'exotic' formats such as Flash (FLV), RealMedia (RM), not to mention SWF, OGM, MKV, TS and VOB, all of which are video formats currently in use on the Internet today, either playable or downloadable.
The hitch is, while both machines are capable of playing FLV vids like on YouTube just fine, because they're providing the player, if you download the vid to your machine using a Firefox plugin, you're out of luck unless you upgrade the player.
So, because it offers better handling, more features and accepts far more video formats, VLC is a smart move up. VideoLAN, the company, has been around since I was a video god in the late 90's and early 00's and VLC has always had it share of devotees, like the way I've always favored Media Player Classic.
The free download is here. If you're on a Windows machine and want to upgrade your player, I recommend this.
My question for the group is, does installing just the player also take care of the browser, or does the 'Web plugin' also have to be installed? And is this true for both Safari and Firefox?
If you want to give it a go, first download and install the player, then try out the test link below. If it doesn't work, install the plugin, try again, then let me know the scoop in the comments.
If you have both browsers, give them both a shot. It might be that Mac treats them differently, since Safari is in-house, or it might be that Firefox already has the proper 'MIME type' since it's not restricted by Mac standards and is just awaiting a player it can access.
This is a clip from the fun Bruce Willis movie The Fifth Element. It's in my art gallery's Bag O' Clips area under "Great One-Liners". Double-click on the player after the clip starts to expand it to full-screen size.
Once we get the plugin question answered, and assuming there aren't any unforeseen problems, I'll then write an 'official' Computin' Tip which I'll then link to in future posts, slap on the main Computin' Tips index and the Bag O' Clips page.
And t'anks for the continuing help. We'll get this rascal nailed down.
Washington State fulfills two Jewish laws in one shot... and it would have been even more generous to have been reminded about Washington State’s wisdom in overhauling liquor distribution laws…
Two Laws in the Torah were fulfilled on the same day, and it makes good sense that they become laws at the same time.
The two landmark laws just passed in Washington State, concerning Same-Sex Marriage and the (partial) Legalization of Marijuana, passed on the same day as they might have been considered on the same day because they relate, together, to the list of important prescriptions and proscriptions in Leviticus, the Book Concerning the Levites, the Vayikra, the third of the Great Books that make up The One Great Book, whose thirteenth chapter contains, among other edicts concerning social customs and personal mores, this verse, the 13th, which, it seems, hasn’t often, in the last 2,000 or more years in the history of The One Great Book, hasn’t often, we were saying, been interpreted correctly.
It reads,
"If a man lies with another man, they should be stoned."
Seriously, she was an idiot kid at the time, in a family dispute. Her mess began when the grievance crews showed up and exploited a foolish kid. I feel sorry for her. I think she was just trying to avoid a whuppin' from her father or stepfather or whoever, and quickly got in over her head with her teenage fibs.
In a way, I see both her and Pagones as victims of the race industry.
Flashback:
“Full audio of 1998 ‘redistribution’ speech: Obama saw welfare
recipients as ‘majority coalition’” - See more at:
http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=50494#sthash.2xiuODlQ.dpuf
Flashback:
“Full audio of 1998 ‘redistribution’ speech: Obama saw welfare
recipients as ‘majority coalition’” - See more at:
http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=50494#sthash.2xiuODlQ.dpuf
Someone once mentioned in the comments that there was some free plugin or add-on for Macs that would allow them to view streaming WMV video files, which is a Windows format that's not playable on a stock Mac.
Similarly, a stock Windows machine can't play the Apple streaming format, Quicktime. Two decades on and these two behemoths never have resolved the issue.
Result? Adobe stepped in with its cross-platform Flash format and today both Quicktime and WMV have been relegated to the dust bin of history.
You snooze, you lose.
There are, however, still a bunch of excellent WMV vids out there, so if anyone has the answer to this ancient riddle, please let me know in the comments. I'll then do a fresh post with your name in lights (unless you decline because of shyness or fear of how it might be interpreted if it shows up on your résumé) and we'll have others download & test it, just to make sure it's OS-friendly.
If you're looking for test clips, all of the vids in the Bag O' Clips area of my Art Gallery are in WMV format due to quality issues. Pound for pound, bitrate for bandwidth, WMV is much better than the Flash format, FLV. All the rest of the site's clips are in FLV format, but I wanted to keep that area special.
It is no wonder than none of our readers were able to identify this stuff from my parents' basement, which came via my Grandpa via his Mom, I think.
It turns out that it is so rare that the china and jewelry appraiser said she knew these existed, but had never seen them. It's gold-plated Lenox china. They did not make very much of it.
She suggested letting Sotheby's take a look at it all. I'd keep a couple of pieces for sentiment's sake, but would never use fully gold-plated dinner plated, coffee cups and saucers, and soup bowls. Now I'm greedily curious about market value. That little one in the middle is one of the 12 soup bowls, which looks more suited for an offering to a Greek god than for consomme.
In honor of the cool new pic Bird Dog chose for the banner:
Showboat comin' up the river See her lanterns flicker in the gentle breeze I can hear the crickets singin' in the evenin' Old Dixie Lily moving past the Cypress trees.
My little boat, she rocks easy I've been catchin' catfish in the creek all day Oh, and I've never seen ladies like those on the big boats Must be fancy breedin' lets you live that way.
Dixie Lily, chuggin' like a grand old lady Paddles hittin' home in the noonday sun Ploughin' through the water with your whistles blowin' Down from Louisiana on the Vicksburg run.
Papa says that I'm a dreamer Says them mosquitoes a'bit me one too many times Oh, but I never get lonesome livin' on the river Watchin' old Lily leave the world behind.
12:32 "Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
12:33 Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.
12:34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
12:35 "Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit;
12:36 be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks.
12:37 Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them.
12:38 If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.
12:39 "But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into.
12:40 You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour."
As of this afternoon, my parents' house is empty of everything. Even the dumpster has departed. The Steinway Baby Grand was happily delivered to our parlor today and sounds pretty good there. My Mom's Victorian cast iron bird bath with four herons is in the driveway, waiting for me to show it some love with a power-wash and some Rustoleum. My Dad's Danish-style double bureau is in my bedroom. I've needed one forever, never saw one I liked. The drawers are cedar, so it smells good. Plus it was my Dad's for many years. He liked Danish design.
Funny thing about my parents. They never owned many clothes, but they always looked perfectly appropriate, and modestly-elegantly-attired, whether for weddings, beach club parties, dinner parties, fancy cruises, country clubs, hiking in Europe, opera, funerals, yard work, etc. I don't know how they did that. Mrs. BD opined that they did it by owning a very few perfect and very fine things, and were careful to never over-dress. They were not shoppers but seemed to have excellent Yankee taste. They had very little clothing for Good Will to take away.
Their dining room table is now against a wall in our living room, for the moment, where the piano mover guys were kind enough to lug away our old upright that my kids learned on. We might want to keep that Danish slate-topped table and use it as our kitchen dining table, as the wonderful one we use is quite large. Huge. Or save it for a kid. Mom's jewels - the few which I obtained thus far - are stashed in my safe.
After I do some clean-up, I'll post some pictures of it all. Life in Yankeeland goes on. An empty family house is eery, and left me feeling troubled and disoriented. I was already away at boarding school when they built it, but it became home even though I never really lived there. Somebody prosperous will love it, paint it, and raise some fine batch of kids there (it has 6 bedrooms). It's a lovely dwelling. Or maybe they will decide to do a demolition and start fresh. We are gone now.
Clean and wax the floors, wash the walls, then an open house asap. It's a short walk to the Congo church on the hill. It's only worth around a million, for the land. The lovely, large, but 1960s-era home itself does not seem to factor in its value at all. Small bathrooms, lots of big windows with no thermopane. People expect more comforts, nowadays, even though it is entirely sufficient and functional, modestly elegant and comfortable.
My parents were not interested in modern conveniences. Instead of a/c, they just planted trees to shade the house. No sound systems. Radio with WQXR.
Dad, I believe, was proud to have designed and built it for his big family of five kids. A place to read and talk, entertain, eat, and sleep. Never a TV until all the kids left, and always dogs until they got too old to take good care of them. Springers.
Call it Psychopathy or Sociopathy or just "bad people," people with an excess of predatorial instincts are all around us. Overwhelmingly most are non-violent, but what Dr X points out is that psychopathy is a matter of degree.
Most people who worry about being bad or evil, are not especially so. Sociopathic people rarely recognize their inner bad, and often think highly of themselves. Significant degrees of sociopathy can be found in people in all walks of life, not just in penitentiaries (in which few penitents are to be found). I knew a brilliant, charismatic Psychologist with abundant psychopathic traits who probably helped more people than I ever will with his charm, warmth, and wisdom. He had enough self-awareness to keep himself out of serious trouble but he had some close calls.
Dr X pointed out this piece at Smithsonian: The Pros to Being a Psychopath - In a new book, Oxford research psychologist Kevin Dutton argues that psychopaths are poised to perform well under pressure. Not sure I agree, but an interesting topic.
I thank all who have loved me in their hearts, With thanks and love from mine. Deep thanks to all Who paused a little near the prison-wall To hear my music in its louder parts Ere they went onward, each one to the mart’s Or temple’s occupation, beyond call. But thou, who, in my voice’s sink and fall When the sob took it, thy divinest Art’s Own instrument didst drop down at thy foot To harken what I said between my tears, . . . Instruct me how to thank thee! Oh, to shoot My soul’s full meaning into future years, That they should lend it utterance, and salute Love that endures, from life that disappears!
A "Cape" is short for a Cape Cod - style house. This was a common architectural style in the Colonial period, especially on Cape Cod but in New England generally. Common also in the Colonial Revival period (1930s-1950s). More about Capes in Wiki.
It is a powerful and discouraging report. Those are not underperforming schools. Those are underperforming kids and underperforming parents in an underperforming subculture. "Underperforming" by bourgeois standards, anyway. Perhaps not by their standards. Free food is fine.
America contains many subcultures without bourgeois expectations or standards. It's a free country. As we always say at Maggie's, do whatever you want with your time and your life, but not on my nickel.
Sometimes I wonder whether requiring "education" does any good. School learning is not a passive procedure. It requires, at the least, both inner and external discipline and, at most, inner desire, curiosity, and motivation.
In the younger years, clearly a positive connection with authority - a "master," a teacher - helps. One wants to please them and not to disappoint their efforts on your behalf. Our schooling is probably more designed for gals than for guys, or also for highly-domesticated or high IQ guys.
Can those things be "inspired," i.e. put into the air so that they are taken in by breathing? I don't know. I can say that, for me, school discipline and parental discipline put me on the road to an independent restless desire for knowledge and thought, but I may have been born with that anyway.
My IQ is probably not dramatically high, but my interests in all things is quite high and I have a temperamental or cultural restlessness which leaves me without a lazy bone in my body. I don't know what "relax" means, and I do not want to find out. My lack of interest in relaxing has served me well and enriched my life. Not mainly financially, but in all ways. I do not even like to sit down. My Maggie's Farm hobby is an expression of that. Call it ADD if you want.
Even on "vacation" from my day job, I want to either work or learn or eat, but the eating fattens me and drinking makes me lazy, so I minimize them. It's not about virtue. It's the way I developed, and my parents are the same way. "Retirement," endless vacation, is my nightmare.
Well, as close to an angel as I have ever identified.
Like most angels, she just looked like an ordinary middle-aged person. Unremarkable, unmemorable. Angels are simply messengers, aren't they? They aren't gods, and they don't have wings. The wings in angel images are symbols.
Tuesday morning at 10:30 I was sitting in the Maggie's HQ between meetings and conferences, with all doors and windows open to the soft summer breeze and enjoying a nice Partagas - I'm the boss so I do what I want - when I hear a knock on the open outside door. "Hello."
"Come on in," I say. "Pardon my cigar smoke. What can I do for you?"
"Nothing," she said tentatively. "I've never done anything like this before, but I felt had to. Are you (my name)? "Yes, I am. Who are you?" She gave her name to me.
I was pleasant, she was too. She said she hoped I did not mind, but the Lord had asked her twice, in prayer, to pray for me by name and to remind me that God loved me. She had no idea who I was, but googled my name, located me, and walked in my open door on the chance I would be there.
I told her that, far from intruding on me, she was like an angelic apparition. She had driven 20 miles to deliver me a message. I told her that I had lost both of my parents in the past few months, was grieving in my various ways but was not feeling disconnected from God.
She gave me a light hug, said "The Lord wants you to know that he loves you", and walked back out to her car. A silver Camry.
I told Mrs. BD that I had had a visitation from an angel. No, I am not insane. As I thought about it over the past couple of days, I began to realize that grief had indeed distanced me from God - not out of anger or anything stupid like that, but just by preoccupation with my own feelings, self-involvement.
Republicans still believe in being the party of good government, while Democrats, under lefty influence, believing in being the party of moral government. The more pragmatic authoritarianism of the good government party only paves the way for the moral authoritarianism of the left.
The cycle ensures that the left will always have a right to clean up their messes and to rebel against. They need their Nixons to get them out of Vietnam, try to make their social welfare policy disasters seem workable, and act as the father figure that they can pull down and destroy. They need the Reagans and Giulianis and Eisenhowers to denounce as authoritarian conformists, thoughtless buffoons who prevent progress, because the alternative is the eternally stultifying rule of the left whose existence in a country destroys the left as a meaningful moral force in human affairs.
The authoritarian cycle allows the right to claim credit for cleaning up the messes and the left and allows the left to claim credit for cleaning up the messes of the right. The left blames the right and its "budget cuts" to social welfare programs for causing the mess. The right blames the left's flirtation with criminality and its hostility to the solid citizen. The dynamic is a familiar one from elections.
Be there or be square. Evening ice cream at Mac's on the town dock. One of the very few places on earth I know where standing in a line is sorta fun. Fleece or sweater required.
With this ring, I thee …
The votes are in, the die is cast, the line's been drawn, the ball's in play and the table is set.
