Getting all the meat off the bones, then going for the marrow…

I’d meant to write this about a month ago; so while the timeliness of the post isn’t exactly optimal,  at least this is an exercise in following through.

The sign read “everything up to 70% off”, and they weren’t kidding; even the fixtures were marked down to a price point that tempted me to buy, and I don’t fucking need 15′ of commercial bookshelves.  That was just a few steps into the store.

Within minutes I had in my hands six books, including Solzhenitsyn’s tales from the Soviet gulag,  one on how Kennedy’s wiz kids borked up Vietnam, and a mangled Calvin and Hobbes compilation.

The mob now occupying our local Borders was vastly different than the cast of characters that could be seen here just a year ago.  Then, you’d have just swam with a fairly typical slice of “book people”; the creepy, middle-aged manga fan, the self help guide collector, or the recovering goth chick.  But now, it was as if these players were replaced with the cast of “Desperation: The Movie”.  People who clearly hadn’t been into a bookstore in years if ever, were now streaming into the building with the same ferocity Read the rest of this entry »

I know, even more irony, eh?

Photo from my tablet, of my netbook.

Posted via WordPress for Android.

I finally nailed down why I prefer Netbooks to Tablets, and why I am not a fan of tablets in general. Tablets are, for the most part, devices for media consumption; whereas netbooks are better at media creation.

I couldn’t see myself working on a novel on a tablet, short of rigging up an external keyboard. And if you’re going to do that, why not just get a damn netbook in the first place?

Sure, you could browse a forum or other social media site on your tablet, but trying to type a meaningful post onto it with your thumbs would be an exercise in patience and a large waste of time.

What really needs to happen, is for OEMs to start enabling phone service on tablets. With a Bluetooth headset, a 7″ tablet would be pretty much perfect for someone who isn’t trying to cram things into a pair of skinny jeans anyway.

Before we start, yes, I fully grasp the irony of what I’m about to write under the above, meme-derived title.

On the way home from work today I mashed my car stereo’s “on” button and settled in for the return commute.  A few minutes into the drive, after dodging idiots who managed to get a license without ever learning how to merge onto a freeway, AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells” came on the local rock station to which the radio was tuned.

I’d heard the song several billion times, so I wasn’t really paying it much attention, but for some reason the line “I won’t take no prisoners, won’t spare no lives / Nobody’s putting up a fight” jumped out at me.  And as many things tend to lately, something about it irked me.  After a moment or two of trying to ferret out of my subconscious why that was, I finally figured it out.  But instead of just coming out with the reason, I’m going to explain via dialogue. Read the rest of this entry »

This is from a speech Robert Heinlein gave in 1973 to the United States Naval Academy.  I’ve picked it up where he gets to the heart of the subject he wanted to impress upon the midshipmen; the fundamentals of morality and why patriotism is a practical matter of survival.

…why would anyone want to become a naval officer?

In the present dismal state of our culture there is little prestige attached to serving your country; recent public opinion polls place military service far down the list.

It can’t be the pay. No one gets rich on the pay. Even a 4-star admiral is paid much less than top executives in other lines. As for lower ranks the typical naval officer finds himself throughout his career just catching up from the unexpected expenses connected with the last change of duty when another change of duty causes a new financial crisis. Then, when he is about fifty, he is passed over and retires. . .but he can’t really retire because he has two kids in college and one still to go. So he has to find a job. . .and discovers that jobs for men his age are scarce and usually don’t pay well.

Working conditions? You’ll spend half your life away from your family. Your working hours? “Six days shalt thou work and do all thou art able; the seventh day the same, and pound the cable.” A forty-hour week is standard for civilians — but not for naval officers. You’ll work that forty-hour week but that’s just a starter. You’ll stand a night watch as well, and duty weekends. Then with every increase in grade your hours get longer — until at last you get a ship of your own and no longer stand watches. Instead you are on duty twenty-four hours a day. . .and you’ll sign your night order book with: “In case of doubt, do not hesitate to call me.”

I don’t know the average week’s work for a naval officer but it’s closer to sixty than to forty. I’m speaking of peacetime, of course. Under war conditions it is whatever hours are necessary — and sleep you grab when you can. Read the rest of this entry »

Random thought/dime-store epiphany:

It occurs to me that, above all else – economic, military, ideological, or other forms of control over a society; that the most effective means of controlling large groups of people is to manipulate their expectations for their lives.

If the state, religion, or a private entity, can convince enough people that 2.5 kids, home ownership, a white picket fence, and retirement in Florida, for example is “a life well-lived”; then people who hold this belief are effectively fenced within said white pickets. The same went for the founders of ancient Sparta, the Samurai, or the Viking thanes; they shaped the expectation of thousands of lives within a frame that dictated that glory was to be sought, and on the battlefield.

Imagine if instead, someone managed to shape the expectations of enough people, that the point of all human life was to spread out into the universe; to discover everything there was to know about existence itself. Think about what we could accomplish if even a small percentage of people went from birth to death within this framework, with this definition of “a life well-lived”.

Thanks to FLX from the SA Forums for this info.

Joining Google+ (as of July 1st)

Receive an invitation e-mail from someone who likes you.

Open the e-mail an click the red “Learn more about Google+” button:

You will most probably be directed to this site:

WAIT FOR SOME TIME AND CHECK THE SITE AGAIN UNTIL IT ASKS YOU FOR YOU PROFILE INFORMATION (it took about an hour in my case until a new page appeared instead of the “over capacity … check back soon” page)

Inviting People to Google+

At the top of your Google+ stream there is a “share” textbox. Enter your message to the lucky invitee and enter his/her e-mail address below:

Click on the e-mail suggestion :downs: and click share:

That’s it. Enjoy waving…uhm, plussing!

I’d been meaning to use this blog as a repository of comments I’ve made in discussions on various sites, blogs, social media, etc, for a while now. This one’s from Facebook.

In response to the idea that the Department of Defense, and the Department of Education should switch budgets:

Schools need to be a lot harder. Not everyone should graduate from high school, let alone go to college. It’s the dumbing down of the standards that’s hurting the country, not the lack of money.

The main problem with education in the US is the notion that everyone has an equal chance of being a lawyer or a surgeon, while the gas station attendant is just there because he failed to apply himself, or the system “left him behind”.

To revamp the education system, the first thing that needs to happen is extensive intelligence/ability testing starting every year from kindergarten, that is objective, thorough, and free of any possible cultural bias (to eliminate advantage of children born to highly educated parents).

This should be followed immediately by placing students on tracks that leverage their individual strengths while helping address their weaknesses and bring them up to a minimal level to function in all areas of their life as a competent adult.

We need more Shop classes, more Ag classes, more Vocational classes in general, for those who are better suited to manual labor. There is no shame in this, nor should there be any applied to a child who has the potential to help feed the rest of the country, but doesn’t have the potential to engineer the tractor he’ll be driving.

My great-grandparents were farmers; their farm, well at least their land, a hundred miles or so north of Kansas City,  is still in use today.  Of course, at one point after they passed on, it was apparently being used to grow marijuana.  But I guess there’s worse things that could be done with it.

We should take a lesson from the Japanese about how it’s not so important what you’re doing for a living, as long as you’re doing it to the best of your ability; that’s where the honor and status in your life should come from.

Of course, you can’t buy the latest baubles, sports car, or McMasion to impress people, with status and honor. Our cultural values are, indeed, fucked up.

I have no idea what’s going on here, but I find it awesome nonetheless.

At least things in China are interesting; which means they’ll be interesting here too after they take over the country because everyone’s more concerned about the latest season of American Idol than making this country amazing again.

I just wanted to leave this here:

Painting by Conrad Ruiz.