lexicography.com

That’s my take. I do not have perfect knowledge but of what I know the title stands.

Time after time in the past, what was “known” by all right thinking people and supported by large majorities turned out to look, in hindsight, like a grave error.

We burned people who appeared to be witches or refused to accept Our Lord; masturbation was viewed as an unquestionable cause of serious sickness justifying physical restraint, or in difficult cases, sugery; homosexuality was viewed as a character defect and later a mental illness justifying being barred at the border never to enter the country.

Luckily our elite led majority has finally got everything right, and they are willing not only to use the force of the state to enforce everything from their ideas of proper nutrition to their ideas about smoking; but also, to criminalize any critical dissent from their ideas. So if they are wrong, we’ll never know.

As a blogger, I am always slightly upset when another blogger quits. One thing is I miss the pleasure of their posts, another thing is I question the whole enterprise.

I blog mostly to vent, but there is some minimum number of people who have to watch you vent or it is not worth it at all. I have seen my children move thier totally out of control expressions of anger to a new room for a better audience. Everyone has their own personal minimum number of watchers.

I am most disappointed when some super popular blogger gives up. I mean, I am willing to expend effort and vent before nine people per day; you get to vent before a thousand and you are giving up? Where does that leave me?

When you think of it, the most super popular bloggers are pretty marginal. Drudge is powers over the most important bloggers like Instapundit. CNN and Fox web pages are powers over Drudge. Newspapers and broadcast media are powers over CNN and Fox web. In the grand scale of things, the largest blogger is pretty small.

So you know, a single Blog, even Instapundit, is not going to change the world - a bunch of bloggers against government pork will not unleash some power against the spenders in Congress.

I think a good idea can gather wings and even if the source of the idea is less than a media power, the idea can travel worldwide and have many readers. The Internet makes this possible procession more probable. Still greater minds than mine have gathered larger audiences and decided to give it up.

Never has there been an instrument of power so doubted by the wielders. Perhaps it is su genesis, a new type of instrument; or perhaps it is powerless.

Build up the Iraqi’s Postal Service. Arm the postmen and hire thousands more.

Then privatize the oil fields and give every legal resident with a permanent address a share in the Oil Company. Pay dividends weekly. Make the shares non-transferable for ten years. Include women and children as shareholders.

There is nothing like expecting a check in the mail to make one frown on a firefight in your neighborhood.

“If I can’t get to my house, I don’t collect my money.”

“What, you are planning to blow up an oil pipeline? Are you crazy?”

“I don’t care who is elected prime minister, the government is always broke anyway.’

Have the cultural confidence to believe in our institutions. The good old US Postal Service; it works here, it can work there.

ABSENT, adj.
Peculiarly exposed to the tooth of detraction; vilifed; hopelessly in the wrong; superseded in the consideration and affection of another.

To men a man is but a mind. Who cares
What face he carries or what form he wears?
But woman’s body is the woman. O,
Stay thou, my sweetheart, and do never go,
But heed the warning words the sage hath said:
A woman absent is a woman dead.

The Internet taught me to not tolerate advertisements.

If I see one more time on Television that reminder of the horror coming at me at super chief speed “I never thought I would live to be 100 years old” it will be too soon.

Those ads make me want to invest anyplace other than that chamber of horrors.

I accept no ads now, radio, TV - I always ignored every ad in the newspaper or magazine unless they seduced my interest.

Since I spent most of my time on the Internet, I have a very low tolerance of advertising. Mostly I turn off the offending medium in minutes.

Here’s a question.

Parent A finds out that his teenage daughter is giving blowjobs to her boyfriend. (The boyfriend seems such a nice respectful kid always around the house helping grill chicken and clean up after cookouts).

Parent B finds out that his teenage son is getting regular blowjobs from his girlfriend.

Who is the aggrieved parent, who is the exploited party?

This suggests that the girls are turning the boys into virtual slaves.

It would work for me. “Yes dear”

Why is samitzdata so profoundly unsatisfying?

I mean, in a contest for mind, a war of ideas, in an existence where “ideas matter” and with worldwide publication, why does samitzdata seem as substantial as reduced fat chips?

Could is be that the British have made perfect reconciliation with the end of their civilization? A jeer here, a cutting comment there. I can’t read them anymore. It is, as the free markets say, capitulation.

Upgraded to Spam Karma 2.0 and comments work. I’ve got to get one of those sidebar things that show recent comments because there are some comments to older posts that are interesting. Actually the comments are better than the content. I’m slightly flattered.

Some of the older posts are pretty good. Clearly I worked harder at this earlier, but now it is more a place to vent than cultivate. My Russian Ladies post still brings in the most traffic although Google searches are a close second. Lots of bloggers feel search engine hits on their site name are worthless but I kind of like imposing myself on an unsuspecting public.

What I like about blogs is they show me that many people think as I do. Before blogs, I used to think, “well, I totally disagree with that newspaper column or television news segment, but I guess I am a small minority because the newspapers and TV are loaded with such stuff all the time; it must be mainstream thought”.

Now I discover that there is a whole formerly silent part of the population, thinking, reasoning persons who back up their thoughts and write decent English, who disagree with the mainstream media on a lot of things.

In fact, reading blogs has made me think of the mainstream media as similar to the three stooges. They were cleaning the office at the local TV station and Curly accidentally backs into the door causing it to lock. Then Larry turns on the camera and Mo pretends to read the evening news, all the while tearing into higher culture (maybe they have the opera singer in the studio who always appears at any dinner party the stooges crash).

The mainstream media is almost at the level of self parody. Recently the Wall Street Journal had an entire section dedicated to Using Less Energy. That’s a good idea for a business paper. Probably five percent of our economy is involved in producing, storing and distributing energy. Maybe next week they can have a supplement on “Reducing Manufacturing Output”. After all, manufacturing despoils the environment and creates dehumanizing jobs. Then the feature article on “Shrinking the Private Sector” since we all know that all good things come from the public sector.

ABSCOND, v.i. To “move in a mysterious way,” commonly with the property of another.

Spring beckons! All things to the call respond;
The trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.
Phela Orm

Almost every day I read in the local NJ papers that some employee of a town or the local police or the state police is bringing a suit against their employer because of discrimination.

Let us parse this out a bit. The employee is alleging that a supervisor acted outside of the bounds of law with respect to them. The employee expects the taxpayers of the town, county or state to make them whole to the tune of several thousand or million dollars.

The supervisor, the mayor, the administrators of the police or whatever force, direct a lawyer (at the taxpayers expense) to defend or settle the lawsuit.

Most often the lawyer achieves a settlement with the complainer. No one in the employ of the governmental institution has a cent at risk in the suit. It is taxpayers pay or taxpayers do not pay. Trying a case is hard work. Paying a settlement is how most cases settle. Only in non-governmental situations at least the person agreeing to apy off a plaintiff is paying with his own money. In State and local government they are paying of with your money and you don;t have a bit of input.

Taxpayners who did no wrong pay for a big lottery win for the emp;oyee. The people charged with defending the case have no personal interest in the case. If it is lost they will pay nothing.

I have a proposal.

We contract with a private bonding company to secure “discrimination or equal opportunity” bonds for all supervisory employees. We increase their salary to cover the cost of premiums for the bonds.

From this day on, if a town or county exercises its powers in a way that exposes it to legal liability for discrimination, the damages will be paid by the bonding company and the supervisory people who actually did the wrong would have their premiums increased to cover the increased risk of claims on the bond.

If a local government can institute controls that reduce discrimination suits, the reduction in their bond premium would go into their pocket,

If a local government caused discrimination lawsuits their bond premium would go up and the taxpayers would have no obligation to do anything but let the local officials pay the increased premium for their bond out of their take home pay.

Hollywood, and the entertainment industry in general, deals in illusion.

I have no problem with that because the enterprise of life is tragic. Your own personal life story is tragic. You will grow frail, become sick and die. The ending is not happy. Most probably before the ultimate end, many bad things will visit you. You might watch your parents die, a loved friend get cancer, your own children not live up to the challenges of becoming self supporting free individuals.

However, I am sick of the many “shows” that have insanely attractive women working as a New York police detective or an assistant DA in the prosecutors office. I live in an affluent suburb and I see insanely attractive women every day. They are shopping, entering and exiting luxury cars. In fact, if I look at the car, Land Rover or very high end Mercedes, all I have to know is if the driver is male or female to predict how attractive they are. If the driver is female and the car expensive, the driver is very attractive.

In other words, she ain’t out in the grungy offices of the Brooklyn DA or the local fire department. An attractive woman can live a life of luxury without work. I don’t resent that. I just think it is funny that Hollywood is so removed from any connection to reality nowadays. They deal in illusion, but how is the illusion attractive women have to compete along with the slogging men in gaining salary and prestige somehow satisfying? The attractive woman character could be living off her looks, as most actualy are, and the men could be working to support families or satisfy ambition or hope to gain an attractive spouse, as most actually are.

In the old days, movies recognized this. A woman of appeal was not working next to the male characters engaged in the business of making a living. Of course no women were working in the business of making a living, yet while most average women now punch a ticket, for the attractive the rules never really changed. A small sliver, like entertainers or real estate agents, use their looks for employment gains, and most simply live in a different world from you or I.

I’m thinking of this 430. Black exterior on black interior. Yellow brake calipers and tachometer. My thought has evolved, a used 360, while “affordable” (sneer quotes) is an inferior car in all respects. Why not just bite the bullet and get the 430?

The largest problem to me is this. If you want to be able to resell the car without taking an obscene hit, you can only drive it about 3,000 miles per year. I want to drive it all the time. I want to drive it to the mailbox at the end of my driveway and to Disney World in Flordia.

If I purchase the car and love the car, even in this northern climate, I want to drive it about 6,000 miles a year. Apparently you do not take this kind of hit with the Porsche just because you drive the car.

———— Program note ————–

A very kind person advised me that my comments were broken. I’ve turned down the spam karma settings which have kept Lexicography blissfully spam free, yet also comment free. If another kind person would take pity on me and try to post a comment I would appreciate it. You can always report your experience through the contact me tab.

Funny thing is, this blog stuff is addictive. Meaning propensity to repeat itself with no evident benefit.

I can’t stop posting - even though I have a successful business that pays for my meals and mortgage and my Internet connection. I still want to write things to the world at large, fairly regularly.

Of course I ‘d like things to be more fair in the whole picture. I should have the hits of Instapundit and he should have the hits of me, but that said I return to the “crystal ship” night after night.

The Crystal Ship is being drawn
a thousand gals
a thousand thrills
a millions reasons . . .

See ya. I’ll be here tomorrow.

ABRUPT, adj.

Sudden, without ceremony, like the arrival of a cannon- shot and the departure of the soldier whose interests are most affected by it. Dr. Samuel Johnson beautifully said of another author’s ideas that they were “concatenated without abruption.”