Posts

Was It All Lost?

All the time that's lost, what's the final cost? "A Light in the Black" by Blackmore's Rainbow Buon giorno. Have you ever had the experience of reading or hearing something that made an impression on you several weeks earlier, and then have it continue to come back to you? Sure you have. I'm going to share my latest. Unfortunately, I do not have the source material. It was a link from a link, one of those things that you chase down. And this thing made me feel better. This is a bit difficult to set up, so I hope you'll bear with me. I was remembering (lamenting, in a way) all the time that I have lost on projects and interests that I did not complete. (In fact, I have Soviet Union badges and other memorabilia in storage even now from when I was deeply involved in studying their history. I want to be rid of them. Any takers?) Time spent, and also money spent. My interests changed, and I felt foolish for having spent time and money chasing those interests.

Angel, Saints, Curses and Luck

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Today, I'm going to give political stuff a rest and keep to the overall topic of this Weblog, which is: Anything I feel like writing about. This time, I want to partially repeat myself about being blackmailed in e-mail . This comes from people that I think are well-intentioned, but do not bother to get rid of the conditions that are contained within the e-mails. Every once in a while, I get mail that invokes an angel, the Virgin Mary, some obscur e religious figure like "Saint Schnitzel" — or even Jesus himself. These sentimental pieces are telling me that the sender cares about me, is glad I am a friend and so forth. But then, they get weird. They often have religious pictures and prayers in them. OK... If I forward the mail to fifteen people in the next five minutes, I will have good luck within the next week. I can see by your expression that you've had these things as well. Hey, do you get them with another condition attached, that if you do not forward them,

Have Less, Feel Better

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Buona sera. Yours truly is a bit wound up about a different approach to posting. I believe that I will be posting more often, but with less text; I want to become more efficient with my thoughts and words. Sure, the occasional lengthy treatises and rants will appear, however. "I gotta be me", as the song goes. Things may change. After all, everything is a work in progress (to use another saying). But to use one of my own sayings around the office, "We'll see what happens". Unfortunately for people who want short messages, this is not going to be one of them. It's my usual length. But it's very good, keep reading, it'll take you about two or three minutes. To the right is an example of extreme clutter . Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy those are who already possess it. —Francois de La Rochefoucauld, French author & moralist (1613 - 1680) When Hal the Hacker gets on a project for me, he has all kinds of stu

Power of an Employer

Buona sera. I was able to catch some of the usual Christmas movies that I like to watch every year. Now, wait a minute! I am not going to be going on about Christmas, exactly, and then I'll drop it. I'm as glad the season is winding down as much as almost everyone else. So anyway. Hard-hearted and heavy-handed employers make labor burdensome. Labor, by its nature, is seldom a joy. But treating your employees poorly, or even neglecting opportunities to bring them a little joy, is a good part of what causes labor to be a burden. In National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Mr. Shirley suspended the Christmas bonuses. He was becoming a miser and was more interested in saving a few dollars than in the best interests of his employees. In this case, the Christm as bonus was expected every year, and they counted on it as part of their salaries. When he had to look at the Griswold family, he said, " Look, uh, sometimes things look good on paper, but lose their luster when y

Cowboy as a Pejorative

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Buon giorno, Pardners! Do you ever have that experience where something occurs to you and you ponder it for a while, then it finds its way to the back of your mind and camps out for a while, then it comes back so you can consider it again? It happens to me occasionally. Sometimes, the cycle repeats itself several times. Well, one of those thoughts seems to have come to fruition. Tommy the Knocker and Nicky hate it when I talk that way ("comes to fruition"), and they don't like my title. Too bad. There are people that put "The State" above all else. Your liberties do not matter to these Statists . All that matters is government control, making you bow to the state. According to Mark Levin, Statists are not necessarily liberals. I see it that liberals are more likely to be Statists (so I have a slight disagreement with the great one), and in America the extreme leftist liberals do not believe in the rights of the individual. All that matters are their own

Projection of Arrogance

Buon giorno. While doing some follow-up research on my " Arrogant Atheist " series, I came across some interesting bits of projection (where you do something, deny doing it, and then say that someone else is doing it). Also, I find some interesting rationalizations for arrogance. While skimming an atheist group, I saw some comments by someone that is a "Christian" (I put the term in quotes because this person is so liberal in theology, it's pretty much "anything goes") tells the atheists, "You're so much nicer than the so-called 'Christians' that I run across", and how Christians shame themselves, etc. Meanwhile, the sneering and condescending approaches of the atheists is excused. Why? Because the ultra-liberal "Christian" had more in common with the atheists than with people that believe the Bible to be true. Of course there was agreement! Also, use of deliberately antagonistic expressions such as "xians"

Intellectualism and Reality

Buoa sera. Not too long ago, I was involved in a discussion in an online forum regarding things that we find irritating. One fellow is upset about anti-intellectualism, and wondered why it exists in the first place. I felt that I was bright enough to attempt to offer a bit of an answer (it was a public forum, after all). After I gave that answer, I kept thinking about the subject and have more ideas to offer. Why are people anti-intellectual (or dislike those who call themselves intellectuals)? Smug. The "intellectual class" is so much more clever than those of us who actually have to work for a living, and they let us mere mortals know it. Here is a smug, arrogant article that is just reeking of attitude and helps prove my point. Impractical. They gather together to discuss "ideas" and "knowledge", but appear to be unable to take care of even their own needs. Hey, Mr. Brain! Can you change a tire, or only discuss the physics involved? Torque this , Pa