PETA kills animals.
I’m shocked, I tell you. Shocked!
Month: May 2005
What we wonder is: How come it never occurs to liberals or Democrats that the very terms in which they phrase the question are part of their problem? These, after all, are people who are obsessed with politically correct terminology, from “African-American” to “fetus.” Yet somehow it never dawns on them that “working class” is an insult.
Think about it: Would you call a janitor, a secretary or a carpenter “working class” to his face? The term connotes putting someone in his place: Your lot in life is to work. Thinking is for the higher classes. The questions the Democrats ask about the “working class” reflect precisely this contempt: What’s the matter with these people? Why don’t they understand that we know what’s good for them? Why do they worry about silly things like abortion and homosexuality? If they must believe in all that religious mumbo-jumbo, can’t they keep it to themselves?
Every time the Democrats lose an election, they make a big show of asking questions like these. Then, the next time they lose an election, they once again wonder why the “working class” has forsaken them. Maybe it’s as simple as: because they were listening.
…[T]alk about treading in murky waters, here’s one from the reality-trumps-fiction workplace annals: Two entrepreneurs have launched a plan to buy a used cruise ship, park it about three miles off the Los Angeles shoreline, hire 600 programmers from around the world and have them crank out code day and night.
This pretty much says it all.
I have to concur with John Gruber’s comments regarding the Longhorn beta screenshots. I never thought I’d say this, but if I had to use a PC, at this stage, I would stick with Windows XP. Let us hope Microsoft will do something to clean up the interface, because right now, it looks like a major step back.
Jim Geraghty, via Tom:
I’m being warned about the dangers of capitalism from a man who made perhaps more money from merchandising than any other man in history. I’m getting lectured about the dangers of greed from the man who authorized, “C-3POs” breakfast cereal, “The Star Wars Christmas Special” featuring Bea Arthur’s musical number, and not one but two Ewoks made-for-TV movies.
I’m being warned about the dangers of technology, and the glory of primitive cultures like the Ewoks, who are able to defeat the ‘technological terror’ of the Empire, in what is supposedly an allegory of Vietnam. Technology is bad, soulless, dangerous, and dehumanizing. Mmm-hmm. This from a man who replaced a tall man in a hairy suit, a projecting the human-eyed loyalty and sadness of Chewbacca, with the CGI cinematic war crime that is Jar-Jar Binks. A man who tossed aside the Yoda puppet, the spaceship models, the stop-motion animation of the Imperial walkers to go all-computer-animation-and-green-screen, all-the-time.
Having been an ardent Star Wars fan since seeing Episode IV at the age of six, I simply choose to ignore Mr. Lucas’s attempts to inject a little of his political philosophy in to the prequel eye-candy. Sometimes, you’ve just got to enjoy the movie for what it is and not read too much in to it.
John Stossel ran an unscientific, blind taste test of six different brands of coffee, ranging from $12 a pound to $4 a pound. The result was, at least for me, not surprising: the more expensive brands were not necessarily the better tasting coffees.
I am not a coffee drinker. I’ve tasted various coffees scores of times, but it is not something that is regularly brewed in our house. I do love the smell of coffee beans, and of coffee brewing, but don’t care for the beverage.
When my wife and I visited the big island of Hawai’i in 2001, we purchased some Kona coffee from one of the local growers, Country Samurai. While there, we learned that coffee is a lot like scotch. Most of the coffee one finds is a blend of beans, much like the inexpensive scotches one finds are a blend of malts. The best scotch is single malt, and the longer it’s aged, the better. Likewise, the best coffee is from a single batch of beans. Country Samurai sells that kind of coffee, and it was the first I remember really liking. Of course, at $25 a pound, my taste for coffee runs about as expensive as my taste for scotch, which explains why either is a rare find in our home.
Here’s my question for you: What are we to make of people who preach pessimism and doom to people — telling them that they’re poor because others are rich or telling blacks that they’ll never make it because of societal racism? What are we to make of politicians, media pundits and college professors who preach the politics of envy — telling people lies that the rich became rich off the backs of the poor? I grew up poor in a housing project in North Philadelphia, and those weren’t the lessons prevalent a half-century ago. My mother used to preach that “We have a beer pocketbook but champagne tastes.” And my stepfather used to admonish, “If you want to make it in this world, you have to come early and stay late.” Those messages are far more beneficial to a poor person than those of victimhood and pity.
If you spend too much time organizing your stuff or just can’t find it, you need to take a close look at Tiger. There’s a real experiential difference. What’s missing? Not much. I’d like to see more RSS support so I can better read and search off-line, and I wouldn’t mind seeing Microsoft add Spotlight support for Entourage. Otherwise, this operating system is near nirvana for productivity.
There’s no doubt that a lot of similar concepts will be included in the next version of Windows. But Longhorn won’t be here for at least 18 months. It will be interesting to see what Apple has for us by then.