Check this out though: Guess which of these two textbooks costs more?
If you guessed the thick one on the bottom, the one with full-color, photograph-rich, glossy pages, you'd, of course, be wrong. That one is "only" $70. The one on the top, which is all black and white, has no photographs, and is perhaps a third as thick, costs $80.
When I saw this, I figured that, obviously, this book must contain some really insightful information. So, I flipped to a random page, and read the following:
(Photographic proof here.)
So I just spent $80 on a thin paperback book that tells me that I'm not telepathic.
Time to seriously contemplate a strategic withdrawl from the class.
Loyalty to Christ results in separated living. Dishonesty, lewdness, sensual behavior, adultery, homosexuality, sexual perversion of any kind, pornography, illegal use of drugs, and drunkenness--all are clearly condemned by God's Word and prohibited here. Further, we believe that biblical principles preclude gambling, card playing,...
I wonder if that means I should delete Solitaire off of my laptop.
No more using brandy as an anesthetic in Barge Hospital either.
Doesn't that preclude the entire foreign language program? (just kidding, I know what they mean)
(My emphasis.) If you read the book of Exodus, you can certainly sympathize with this rule.
Why bother with the all these rules then? People who "fit into the spirit of the University" already follow the majority of the rules anyways. You could condense the rulebook into just the rules that make things run smoothly and leave off the rules already required by Biblical morality, which won't be followed by the people who don't "fit in" whether they're in the rulebook or not. ::shrug::
Folks, all the above came from a single two-page spread from the Day Student handbook. (Pages 10 and 11 if you want to follow along.) I'm sure there'll be more later.
UPDATE: About two of you saw a previous edition of the above. My mom asked me to take it down because it conveyed a "'gripy,' critical, or cynical attitude," which wasn't what I was trying to convey at all. I like making fun of stuff, and lists of rules, whether employee manuals or school handbooks, often supply lots of material to work with. I'm not trying to complain about the rules; I follow most of them already. (Sorry about that, Mom!)
I typed in "Jeremy is not" and it returned with "Jeremy is not a homepage.... The cult of the dead is not a low carb diet?" before going off into gibberish.
Anyways, I eventually found out that several files that were supposed to have been deleted weren't really. After killing them in safe mode, and upping the security settings on internet explorer, it hasn't (so far) been reinfected. However, sometimes when you open IE, a second windows pops up and tries to run a script (presumably to redownload all the spyware again). I don't know what's causing that, but as long as it isn't downloading the spyware, I really don't care.
So far, so good....
And they run Windows ME, which was a giant step backwards in OS development.
//begin long-winded explanation of my activities
Anyways, I start off by finding a couple of programs; I google them, find and follow instructions on how to kill them. Open up ProcessKiller and Internet Explorer; immediately a freakin' little dog pops up in the systray; kill it. Another process by the same company pops up; kill it. I go to windowsupdate.com; same processes come up; kill them. This happens every time I open up windows explorer or internet explorer, or navigate to a new page on internet explorer. Sometimes multiple times per page. Persistent if nothing else.
Finally make it onto WindowsUpdate.com; begin downloading the 22(!) critical updates, two of which requre a rebooting (kill dog, kill other thing), reopening IE (kill dog, kill other thing), renavigating to WindowsUpdate.com (get nasty letter from PETA; kill other thing).
Then I find out how to eliminate adware that was causing the dog and the other thing. Follow instructions, descend into safe mode, erase the files.
Return to normal windows, run an indepth AdAware scan; eliminate several more adware files. Breathe sigh of relief.
Open up internet explorer.
Promptly reinfect the computer with more spyware than before.
*sigh*
I've traced the problem to (I believe) a damaged version of Kernel32.dll. Fixing this will require creating a boot disk and running from DOS, because the damaged file is integral to the Windows OS. Assuming that that's the problem and I don't miss any others.
//end long-winded discussion
Again this process, in total, took about five hours, maybe more.
My brethren, these things ought not to be.
That's why I'm going to, starting now, call for the execution of authors and knowing distributors of spyware, adware, malware, and virus. Think about it: they're actually killers themselves.
I myself spent five hours on this; tomorrow I'll spend longer. Multiply my experience by the millions of others like me who've had to fix these problems. Then add in the man-hours lost by those who weren't aware of the *ware problem, only that their computer was running really slow.
One year is 8,760 hours. (24*365). Assuming the average lifespan to be 75 years, that means that every 657,000 hours is one person's life.
Every 657,000 hours that these... people... force others to spend fixing the problems they cause--viruses and *ware--is the equivalent of killing one person.
These people are slowly killing us all. They must die.
Tell me, what better health news could there be for a nation like America? I don't have to recite for you the ill efffects of obesity; even this morning there was a story on the front page about how obesity increases the risk of cancer. If this genetic therapy could be transferred to humans, then Ronald Evans, the lead researcher on this project, deserves a Nobel prize at minimum.
At last, something that's certain to work, with actual science at work instead of these nonsensical "herbal remedies" for obesity! Great news, right? But look at how the AP introduces the story:
So, we've got a cure for one of the top three ailments of our modern society, and they're worried about... elite athletes using the medicine to make themselves stronger and faster.
There's just no pleasing some people.
Despite Edna's valiant attempts, she could not replicate the problem by copying the recovery disk to my hard drive. She wanted me to call the number again and get another service rep as she'd be gone by the time it finished copying. However, upon conference with my father, we've decided to take it back to the Circuit City store on Wednesday and talk to a manager. Hopefully that will work out better than The Adventures of Edna and Travis.
I did take my computer to my local Circuit City to have it sent off for repairs, as I mentioned in the previous post. However, when I got there, the morbidly obese black woman who was attending the "Merchandise Returns" desk informed me that because I needed help more than one year after the purchase date, I would have to call the 800 number listed in my service contract and get help from them.
At first I was incredulous, but then I read the pamphlet and saw that, yes, I would have to go through the added steps of calling their number and waiting for them to send me a box to send my computer to them in. Of course, calling them required going through an ineptly programmed computer system to get to a "Technical Support Specialist."
I did finally stumble upon one, who called himself Travis. After taking some basic information and describing the problem to him, he decided to take me to the BIOS screen and let it sit there for an hour, presumably to see if it would shut down. (Of course, it didn't, because it only shuts down under high levels of CPU activity, but, hey, maybe this guy knows something.) He told me to call him back in an hour if it hadn't shut down. I'm pretty sure that he just didn't know how to handle the problem and, instead of taking it to his supervisor, he led me on a wild goose chase until his shift ended.
Anyway, an hour passes. I call the same number, and attempt to get the same person back. Instead, I get to talk to an "Edna," if that's her real name. English is probably not her first language; she speaks in a heavy Indian accent. Uh-oh.
I give her the same information I gave Travis. Apparently he didn't write it down. ::sigh:: Then I have to convice her that it's not a software problem. ::forehead slap:: It's not a software problem, because it's shut down under several different programs, including my virus scanner, two games, and Windows Media Player. I told her as much, and so she had me dig out my recovery CD for a test.
::red flags go up::
Then, through her accent I manage to determine that she wants me to boot into safe mode with a command prompt.
::klaxons go off::
I confirm that she isn't planning to reformat the hard drive.
::standing down from alert status::
She instead had me copy the CD onto my hard drive, presumably in an attempt to get it to shut down again. But, since it has just finished copying without shutting down, there's no telling what will happen next.
Stay tuned!
Of course, no such luck. Yesterday, it died during the virus scan again. Running a computer game (Galactic Civilizations) also triggers the shutdown after a while. So, back to Circuit City it goes.
So, I've spent a good deal of time today erasing passwords, taking off customizations, etc. to prepare the computer to be taken in. After this post is finished, I'll be taking it in.
Fortunately, I have Mo:Blog! I can type up entries for Blog Jones from my Clie! So my already low post rate won't drop any. Hopefully.
I'm going to miss my computer. :-(
I think that that's pretty clever. But, of course, the parenting "experts" are all up in arms about how it's abusive or something. ::shakes head::
I recently read a novel about the Spartans, the ancient Greek warriors. One of the characters said something to the effect of "We shed tears now to save blood later." It is far more merciful to cause a little bit of pain to a young child when he lies, and thus prevent a pattern of lying from developing, than to let him continue in his sin and let that pattern of sin ruin the child's life.
Now, is putting hot sauce on the tongue abusive? I think not. Punishment, by definition, is painful in some way. Even the ineffective, useless time-out method of punishment involves some small level of pain, the pain of not getting to do what you want. (This is a light pain, easily borne by even a child, and this quality renders "time-outs" ineffective as punishment measures. One wonders if that truth reflects on the general effectiveness of prison terms as punishment techniques.)
However, as one woman who went through this particular variant of punishment pointed out, "I don't need to resort to chemical warfare." Although she makes a gross overstatement of the severity of Tobasco treatment, she is correct; why not just spank the kid properly and be done with it?
(Via Fringe, Via the Carnival of the Vanities)
UPDATE: Apparently though, I'm not that good of a geek. Otherwise, I would have caught that typo in my html tag. All better.
The group, Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, said that children who didn't attend a pre-kindergarten program were more likely to get behind when they started school. The same children also tended to disrupt the classroom and distract other children.
The group said those behaviors can lead to a life of crime and encouraged states to budget money for early education programs.
If your kid doesn't go to pre-kindergarten, he'll likely wind up in jail. Of course, I didn't go to pre-kindergarten. So, I guess I'm doomed to a life of crime.
Oh, there's no self-serving motive there.
That was dumb. Suer - 1 Suee - 0
Story Two: Kid sticks his head out his school bus window. The driver swirves to avoid a squirrel. Kid hits his head into a tree and dies. Now the kid's mom is suing.
The school district is at fault, the lawsuit claims, for allowing the windows wide enough for Raul to stick his head out and for failing to warn Raul of the dangers.
The city and state are at fault for failing to properly design and maintain the road, the suit claims.
I'd say the kid's at fault for being stupid enough to stick his head out of the school bus window. Suer - 1 Suee - 1
Story Three: Tiebreaker. A child, 5 years old, gets on the wrong bus. Kid tells the bus driver so. Bus driver orders said 5-year-old off the bus five miles from home. Some nice person takes her to the police department where, an hour later, she is reunited with her parents. If the parents sue the bus driver (which they should), then: Suer - 2, Suee - 1.
As if the teenagers couldn't eat more without the government's permission.
Hentges said the government would use its nutrition agencies, such as the food stamp programs, to get out the word. The government also has hired communications consultants to make sure consumers understand the messages.
Only 5% of people follow the rules! Oh no!
I wonder how long until someone decides to take legal action against people who don't follow the national food guidelines, on the basis of fat people costing the nation health care dollars. You laugh, but they're already fining people in Pittsburgh for not recycling. It's not much of a stretch to see that mindset transferred to eating habits.
It is worn directly over the wound in question, and, after use, it is rolled up and thrown over the nearest fence.
Hee!
Ravenwood's Universe: Police steal 500-1000 guns from a man in Jamestown, New York. Why? Because he had a lot of guns, and didn't have permission to own... 8 of them.
My own home town: A friend from church was telling my dad and I about his trouble getting the home inspector to let him live in his own house. Apparently he wanted him to put up a hand-rail on the steps to the front porch. Never mind that there was already a brick wall on either side that you could steady your hand on. No, that's not sufficiently "grippable." Also: there was a door that the inspector wasn't happy with. The homeowner's solutions: Slap a piece of plywood up over the door and a discarded 2x4 onto the brick wall until the inspector leaves.
Question: Why does the state get to say that you can't live in the home you just built on your own property? Never forget the meaning of real estate: The word "real" is of Spanish origin, pronounced with two syllables, "re-al," meaning royal. It's "royal estate," owned by the government, not by you. You are at best renting the land from the government, in their eyes. And they'll take it from you if they want it. (See also: Eminent Domain)
More than just owning your land, they own you. They demand that you be educated by their standards, pay whatever portion of your income they deem fit, confine your non-approved speech to Free Speech Zones, give up your non-approved property to the police (whether guns or drugs), and hide your religious beliefs when at their schools. And so on.
And that's just during peacetime. Watch out if we ever get into a deep, entrenched war and we have to call up a draft, wherein you'll be called to (potentially) give up your life for a cause you may or may not believe in.
So, where is this "land of the free"?
(First example via: the Carnival of the Vanities, #99 )
The way Circuit City's policies work, if you take the device in, and they attempt to repair it on two occasions and it still has the same problem, then they give you store credit for a new device. So, depending on the competency of their repair people, I might be getting a new laptop soon.
One thing's for sure though: should I have the opportunity to buy a new laptop, I'll not be buying a Toshiba laptop. My old one had a weird problem that caused the screen's backlight to go out (some sort of power inverter had gone out). And now this with my new one. I'm thinking a Sony next time....
In Somersworth, the price is going up by a stunning $0.25, although the "reduced price meal" for poor people is capped at $0.40 total. In my local newspaper I found that most of my local school districts' prices are going up by $0.10 to... $1.60.
Folks, that's better than Wendy's. Quit whining. Ten cents a day isn't going to break the bank for anyone. At minimum wage, ten cents is about a minute and twenty seconds. Most people hesitate to pick up a dime they see on the street; they lose dimes in the couch.
Some people....
I was reading part of today's Carnival of the Vanities, and I came across an article about "Christian Libertarianism" on a blog entitled Dispatches from the Culture Wars (You'll need to scroll down to July 30th, 2004. On the way you'll see posts entitiled about "More Anti-evolution Absurdity," "Biblical Literalism and Silly Rationalizations," and "A Case Study in Religious Right Hypocrisy," which ought to tell you where he stands on Christianity). He in turn links to a guy by the name of Jon Rowe who tells us how a group called "Christian Reconstructionists have managed to infiltrate libertarian circles." I had never heard of this group before. It turns out they want "to replace this big government with, of course, a biblical theocracy." (quoting "Dispatches")
From further reading I discover that these Reconstructionists (which I originally thought might have been some sort of holdover from the Civil War era) want to set up a government based on old testament law! Rowe links to a Reason Magazine article about the group, which contains this quote (my emphasis):
So when Exodus 21:15-17 prescribes that cursing or striking a parent is to be punished by execution, that's fine with Gary North. "When people curse their parents, it unquestionably is a capital crime," he writes. "The integrity of the family must be maintained by the threat of death." Likewise with blasphemy, dealt with summarily in Leviticus 24:16: "And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him."
And people thought the Federal Marriage Ammendment was bad!
Seriously though, I'll say this once to you, David Chilton: Don't you dare put those words in my mouth. I do not, do not want Christianity reduced to another version of the Taliban, and, were we in a different era, I'd be tempted to take that statement as an attack on my honor and challenge you to a duel. The establishment of Bible-based tyranny is most emphatically not what Christianity is about. Clear?
Another quote from the same article:
I'm almost speechless at this. Let me correct his doctrine: God gave man a free will. He did not put armed guards and barbed-wire fences around the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Put another way, a man is not moral just because he's never been given the chance to do wrong. (I believe I'm badly mangling someone else's words here, but I can't find the actual quote.) Therefore man needs autonomy to be truly moral. He has to have the ability to choose between right and wrong, or else morality is meaningless.
::shudder::
You may be wondering how a group that calls itself "Christian Libertarianism" could say "We therefore deny every expression of human autonomy." That's a pretty good question. Sandlin states elsewhere:
Thus, the state must punish murder (Ex. 21:12), theft (Ex. 22:1-4), idolatry (Ex. 22:20), and other sins that the Scriptures explicitly requires it to punish. Since we may deduce from Scripture that abortion is murder (see Ex. 21:22, 23), that copyright infringement is theft, and that the public worship of the Earth by New Age advocates is idolatry, the state may suppress these crimes.
So, apparently, the libertarianism side comes from the "and nothing beyond" part.
Let us hear the conclusion of the matter: the state is the wrong instrument for spreading any form of Christianity, and it should not be used to enforce "Christian" values. If the government ever follows after this line of thinking, it will become no better than the Taliban and other Islamist governments that have held their people back for centuries.
To you non-Christians: Please, please, please understand that these men, Chilton and Sandlin, are on the lunatic fringe of Christianity, and don't judge us all by them.
Wow. I need to move to Michigan. Their courts get it. Let me state this dogmatically: Eminent domain is immoral, especially when it's used to take land from one private citizen to give it to another. Eminent domain is theft, pure and simple, and makes no difference if a majority of any council, court, or congress votes for it, or even if it would serve the "greater good" of society to force a landowner to sell his land. It's even worse you consider what you're taking: Not just land, but whatever they've built on the land: A hundred-year-old house, a small business, or even a bird sanctuary. There's not only economic value, but also sentimental value for these landowners.
A google news search turns up a number of battles, such as that of Western Seafood Company vs. the perhaps ironically named Freeport City Council. The city wants to build a marina on the Old Brazos River, but there's a tiny problem: The Western Seafood Company owns 330 feet of land that the city would need for that project.
“That would stop us from being able to take in shrimp from boat owners, as we have for over 50 years,” Gore said.
“We’re fighting for survival to do business.”
...
Councilman Jim Phillips said the marina would be for the public good.
“In other words, what is the best use of the property?” Phillips said. “We have determined that the best possible use would be for a marina.”
And therein lies the the debate: Who's the best person to decide what's "best" for your land? You, or the government?
I think the answer is obvious.
So, not only has the economy had to face the high-level corporate corruption (a la Enron) that came to a head in Bush's presidency, but we also suffered the 9/11 attacks. Even worse than the physical damage to the economy from that attack (to the World Trade Center) was the psychological damage: For example, people were afraid to fly, damaging the tourism and airline industries. More importantly, since we didn't have any idea of if or when we'd be attacked again, businesses were afraid to expand. And so on.
Our economic woes are not caused by incompetency at the presidential level; they're caused by two economic disasters that struck at the same time, and we're doing pretty well considering.
If he does this, it will be the most brilliant thing he's ever done. I was planning on voting for him on the basis of the Iraq war, but there are not a lot of domestic issues I agreed with him about. (See Also: free prescription drugs for old people.)
Have you ever seen our tax code? My accounting teacher brought a copy into class once. It's a huge book, thousands of pages of legalese. It needs to be scrapped and replaced. I'd prefer a flat tax on income, but a national sales tax would do OK as well.
I'm really stunned at this. Praise God if it's true.
Via (Little Green Footballs)
Etc.
I used to think Coulter was probably pretty good, but I hadn't read much of her material. One of my favorite teachers was a big fan, and Rush Limbaugh endorsed her, right? So she must be good. But after reading that column, I can say with the editors of USA Today, "Good riddance."
I've discovered a growing distaste for Rush Limbaugh too, although I once loved his show. I even got the "Rush 24/7" subscription to his website. But now... I think that discovering blogs has really changed how I look at political issues and debate. At one point Rush and Coulter appealed to me because I was more interested in the fight between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans = Good, Democrats = Evil. Now I've become much more focused on issues rather than on parties; I'm more open-minded. And the equations are different now: Democrats still = evil, but now Republicans = Evil too. (Walter Williams explains why. Short version: It's wrong to take other people's stuff.)
Limbaugh and Coulter also have a biting, insulting tone that more often than not becomes namecalling. While that can be a lot of fun, it's not going to change people's minds. That's is why my favorite talk show host is Hugh Hewitt. Obviously Hewitt prefers similar ground to Limbaugh and Coulter, but he's interested in debate and getting both sides of the issue, which is why he regularly has guests from both sides of the aisle. He's also a lot less arrogant than Limbaugh, which I appreciate.
I'm glad to hear that Jonah Goldberg is replacing Coulter in the USA Today. Reading his article from USA Today, it does call Kerry a flip-flopper--although much more colorfully--but that's definitely a reputation Kerry's earned. Calling someone a flip-flopper isn't an insult so much as an accusation of dishonestly changing positions to get votes. That's important, because that dishonesty affects his job performance as an elected leader. On the other hand, calling someone a Kool-aid drinking spawn of Satan has no merit in debate.
So, good riddance to Ann Coulter, the Right's Michael Moore, and may Jonah Goldberg do a better job than she did.
(Many of today's links were brought to you by Joe Gandelman at Dean's World.)
Clarification: My lone commenter has pointed out that my comparison of Coulter to Michael Moore is unfair, because Coulter doesn't lie every other time she speaks. And that's true. What I intended to say was that both Moore and Coulter are (or at least should be) embarrassments to their respective parties.
