Category Archives: The Culture

Windows 8.1 is a pain

Posted on April 14, 2014 | 3 comments

It’s early to tell, and I’m still not quite finished transferring files from my old ‘puter via flash drive. But, so far, I think Windows 8.1 is a pain in the rear. Pity I had to leave XP. But it was necessary and I figured I might as well go all the way.

Like all big OS products, including “virtuous” Apple, 8.1 has all these arcane little programs running that it dares you to figure out how to alter or get rid of.

Such as the “tiles” on the “start” page, before the start, actually, and/or desktop pages. It’s cute, but it’s wired to stuff I don’t want, like Bing search and Bing news, i.e. Al Reuters, et al.

Still working on switching the tiles to Google and FoxNews. If I can’t, it’s bye-bye tiles. Finally got the email working. Thunderbird. 8.1 has an aversion to POP servers, though. Wants you to go on the cloud. Security, I suppose.

UPDATE: A week in and it’s still hassling me. Even Dell dropped the ball. I had to Google the new computer to figure out how to open the DVD drive. Geez Louise.

3 Comments

Posted in Evolution, Rancho Roly Poly, Science/Engineering, The Culture

Tagged ,

Guarding the matzoh

Posted on April 13, 2014 | 2 comments

My condolences to the families of the slain. The mood at the local grocery this afternoon, as two score or more of us shopped for Passover, was uncharacteristically somber. And, for the first time in my memory, there was an armed Austin police officer seemingly guarding the matzoh. He smiled. Said he just happened to be standing near the shelves the boxes were on.

Either the store hired him off-duty or the city sent him, after what happened in the parking lot of the JCC in Kansas City. It would be more difficult for that to go down here. Our JCC is fenced and its entrance is guarded, unlike the one in KC, at least according to the pictures I saw. Perhaps this will help them remedy that. It’s always wise to expect the best but to prepare for the worst.

But the grocery is neither fenced nor normally guarded. So it was nice to see the armed officer guarding the matzoh. “Take care,” he said, as I left. “You, too,” I replied.

2 Comments

Posted in Israel, Rancho Roly Poly, The Culture, War Without End

Tagged ,

The Miriam Carey murder

Posted on April 7, 2014 | 2 comments

So far, only WND, a sometimes discredited Internet news outfit, has had the decency to follow up the murder of a suburban mother. They report that her autopsy—obtained by her family’s lawyer—shows no drugs in her system and note that six months later we’re still waiting for release of the official police investigation.

“Did I mention she was African American? When a black teen dies in a late-night one-on-one encounter with a fellow citizen on the streets of Sanford, Fla., it’s the biggest thing since Selma. But when a defenseless black woman is gunned down by a posse of robocops in broad daylight on the streets of the capital, the Reverend Jackson and the Reverend Sharpton and all the other bouffed and pampered grievance-mongers are apparently cool with it.”

The double standard really is chilling. Not just by the race hustlers but by the so-called free press. I’m beginning to realize that almost none of what was reported when Ms. Carey was murdered six months ago was even close to accurate. Big, old media, which has long worked closely with the cops, took their lies at face value and now, apparently, are too embarrassed to retract what they reported to even continue following the story. For shame.

Via Mouth of The Brazos.

2 Comments

Posted in Scribbles, The Culture

Tagged

Image

Rule 5: Robyn Lawley

robin

1 Comment

Posted on April 2, 2014 in Obsessions, Rule 5, The Culture

Tagged , ,

Why I root for Texas

Posted on April 1, 2014 | 2 comments

Even though I spent my undergraduate years at the University of Maryland. Some sometimes ask, including one particularly obnoxious OCS classmate.

Not that I have spent a great amount of time thinking about this. But this post by Althouse reminded me and I liked her answer. To paraphrase her: I have lived in Austin for 36 years. In Austin the sports teams are the Longhorns. Period.

Besides, I only spent three years at Maryland and the last one was in 1967. And during them I was never very interested in sports of any kind. Attended a few football games, but none other. So the Terps hold no magic for me and they wouldn’t even if the Longhorns played them, which they don’t often.

2 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Texana, Texas Football, The Culture

Tagged ,

The latest racism hoax

Posted on March 22, 2014 | 3 comments

At, where else, another university, this time in Michigan.

By, apparently, a black female student. Can’t say for sure as the U.’s always claim privacy in giving cover to the perps. But the hoax itself (see photo at the link) indicates as much.

Don’t these kids have anything better to do than beg for sympathy (and notoriety) by inventing persecution? Especially with a black president in D.C.?

Or, maybe, it has something to do with Wormtongue’s approval being at 40 percent and that he is generally rated below most other presidents since Truman.

UPDATE:  As commenter Jemarti at Instapundit says: “These ‘racism hoaxes’ are nothing less than racist attacks against whites. The entire purpose of each and every one of these acts is to bring opprobrium on whites and to characterize whites as dangerous, sometimes violent, racists.”

What would some minorities do without their persecution complex?

3 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Obsessions, The Culture

Tagged ,

Three-crew flight decks, please

Posted on March 18, 2014 | 3 comments

“There was a time when big jets had Flight Engineers and when two (2) crew members would ALWAYS be in the cockpit when another visited the Lav or galley. Maybe it’s time to have a 3RD pilot in the cockpit, not just for safety, but for sanity.”  —GlueBall at Professional Pilots Rumor Network PPRN).

The PPRN has become one of the go-to sites in following the search for the missing Malaysian jetliner, though it’s gained a lot of no-pilot commenters this month. GlueBall, however, has been a member since 2001 so we can assume he’s legit.

And he makes a good point, if, as seems to be the case, at least one of the two line pilots in this mystery turned rogue. Or, if there were two hijackers with sufficient weaponry to keep the two line pilots cooperating. A third guy up front would make either scenario more difficult.

Not impossible, but more problematic. It would give passengers more confidence, in this age of terrorism, which events like MH370 are seriously eroding.

3 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Obsessions, The Culture

Tagged , ,