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.
Zinn hated the country which made him millions with his 1930s-style propaganda, and which bought his nice summer place on Cape Cod. He even bought the theater there. There is something twisted about people who welcome opportunity for themselves, but hate it for others.
The alienation of citizens from their government is not limited to people whom the government decides to prosecute. Because so many regulations are so unconnected to anything resembling right or wrong, people who want to be law-abiding find themselves picking and choosing the laws that they deem worthy of respect. It is a pernicious process regardless of whether they get caught when they break the rules. People who feel compelled to judge laws on a case-by-case basis have attached provisos to one of their most basic civic loyalties.
Photo is of the Obamacare law. Nobody in America knows all of what's in it, to this day. No doctor or lawyer ever will and, God knows, no politician will ever bother to know: they exempted all national politicians from it. Teams of hundreds of junior staffers wrote that stuff, and put in whatever they felt like.
The detailed regulations to that pile of crap will fill a library, and every hospital, drug company, medical device company, insurance company, doctor, and nursing home in America will be in violation of something. Work for attorneys, for sure, so I guess that's a good thing.
Our government is insane. My personal definition of insanity is not knowing that you are nuts. If you worry about being nuts, you probably aren't.
When, why, and where, did around 50% of Americans get the notion that government was a good thing rather than the necessary but strictly-limited evil which our founders envisioned? What made tough, independent American pioneers into willing children of the State? Is European-style serfdom contagious?
My ancestors escaped serfdom, at great personal risk. I will be loyal to that. I have no gratitude for government "services." I want to be left alone and never "helped." That's American to me.
I've always felt that his singing voice - or rather voices, because he has tried a few over time - never was either pretty or beautiful. At this age, he mostly croaks like a frog. Many or most male folk singers and rock singers are the same. What his voice has is character, expression, remarkable phrasing. I've never heard anybody cover a Dylan song more effectively than he sang it - even songbirds like Joan Baez and Emmylou.
The Band got closest, but even then, not quite the real thing.
I don't think "beautiful" is the point. Expressiveness is the point. I can appreciate Sinatra's polish, Pavarotti's mastery, but it's not them. What's your opinion?
Nobody knows what "higher ed" means anymore. In other words, it means nothing in particular. Employers want to know what you can do for them today to improve their profits. That's simple. It's not what higher ed was designed for in the 1300s and 1500s and 1800s, but it seems applicable today. Practicality.
It's a great loss, but people do need to make a living. Higher ed is not just for the elite and the intelligentsia anymore. Things have changed. Estate taxes, for one thing. The Gentleman's C is a thing of the past.
The term "higher" is obsolete. People like Oprah are today's elite.
But I will keep the play barn that Grandpa built for me when I was 5. It was a rough copy of the barn at the Farm, where Mom had her horses. Someday, perhaps grandkids who will have had less contact with farm work and farm animals, will enjoy it. We have lots of little wooden animals. Maggie's Farm?
I repainted it once. The real one, with a pal. Large barn, with sliding barn doors back and front, wood-paneled tack room, etc White trim. Big job. Lousy pay. Good lead oil paint, of course.
Who remembers tar paper? It is still used sometimes, by those in the know. Good stuff. What is Tyvek?
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."
'Duck Dynasty’ Premiere 
With good reason. 
The votes are in, the die is cast, the line's been drawn, the ball's in play and the table is set.
