| Sunday,
August 4, 2002
Not the most important question in the world, but
not the least either:
Good Morning Sir,
I just finished reading your article from December
the 3rd 2001, telling about your problems expirienced playing Conquest Of
The New World. I know, not very typical for a reader of your column, but
I'm very interested in how you solved these problems. Myself beeing a big
fan of CNW, I was very frustrated watching my XP Machine crash and crash
over and over again. I was so eager to play the game on a fast and new
computer, and now that. I was really angry to see it not work at all. If
only it wouldn't work properly, I could try to find the errors, but it
keeps hanging up in the boot sequence. I can imagine that you don't have
much time, and probably you are getting a lot of mails with much more
important content, so I understand if you don't have time to respond,
still I thank you in advance for your time,
-TH
Great column;
-- GMX - Die Kommunikationsplattform im Internet.
http://www.gmx.net
There was a good article in one of the computer
gaming magazines on tweaking XP to play DOS games, and I will try to
locate it: I had intended to try some of its suggestions, but didn't get
to it. But CNW Deluxe used to be one of my favorite games, and I wish I
could get it running again; has anyone here done so? Suggestions?
Mike Flynn on Macs:
I have an iMac laptop at home and an HP PC at work
and have no trouble moving files back and forth. I did with Appleworks --
lost some formatting, headers, page numbers, etc. -- but I installed MS
Word for Mac and now no problem, so the issues may have more to do with
the apps than the ops. I can, for example, burn a CD on my iMac, take it
to work and print the files on the high speed/high resolution printer.
I also learned that some Very Old Mac floppies (our
office used to be Mac) that are unreadable on both my PC and my iMac can
be read by an old PowerMac I keep in the basement, saved onto a
DOS-formatted floppy, and then resurrected by either the iMac or the PC.
Serial compatibility. ;-)
MikeF
Well, next month I think I'll get my own and we
will see what results. Thanks.
A Warning on Microwave
use. It seems quite frightening, but read all and then read the
response before you go throw out your microwave!!
As a seventh grade student, Claire Nelson learned
that di(ethylhexyl)adepate (DEHA), considered a carcinogen, is found in
plastic wrap. She also learned that the FDA had never studied the effect
of microwave cooking on plastic-wrapped food. Claire began to wonder:
"Can cancer-causing particles seep into food covered with household
plastic wrap while it is being micro waved?"
Three years later, with encouragement from her high
school science teacher, Claire set out to test what the FDA had not.
Although she had an idea for studying the effect of microwave radiation on
plastic wrapped food, she did not have the equipment. Eventually, Jon
Wilkes at the National Center for Toxicological Research in Jefferson,
Arkansas, agreed to help her.
The research center, which is affiliated with the
FDA, let her use its facilities to perform her experiments, which involved
microwaving plastic wrap in virgin olive oil. Claire tested four different
plastic wraps and "found not just the carcinogens but also
xenoestrogen was migrating [into the oil]...." Xenoestrogens are
linked to low sperm counts in men and to breast cancer in women.
Throughout her junior and senior years, Claire made
a couple of trips each week to the research center, which was 25 miles
from her home, to work on her experiment. An article in Options reported
that "her analysis found that DEHA was migrating into the oil at
between 200 parts and 500 parts per million. The FDA standard is 0.05
parts per billion."
Her summarized results have been published in
science journals. Claire Nelson received the American Chemical Society's
top science prize for students during her junior year and fourth place at
the International Science and Engineering Fair (Fort Worth, Texas) as a
senior.
"Carcinogens -- At 10,000,000 Times FDA
Limits" Options May 2000. Published by People Against Cancer,
515-972-4444
On Channel 2 (Huntsville, AL) this morning they had
a Dr. Edward Fujimoto from Castle Hospital on the program. He is the
manager of the Wellness Program at the hospital. He was talking about
dioxins and how bad they are for us. He said that we should not be heating
our food in the microwave using plastic containers.
This applies to foods that contain fat. He said that
the combination of fat, high heat and plastics releases dioxins into the
food and ultimately into the cells of the body. Dioxins are carcinogens
and highly toxic to the cells of our bodies. Instead, he recommends using
glass, Corning Ware, or ceramic containers for heating food. You get the
same results without the dioxins.
So such things as TV dinners, instant saimin and
soups, etc., should be removed from the container and heated in something
else. Paper isn't bad but you don't know what is in the paper. It is just
safer to use tempered glass, Corning Ware, etc. He said we might remember
when some of the fast food restaurants moved away from the foam containers
to paper. The dioxin problem is one of the reasons.
Pass this on to your friends....
To add to this: Saran wrap placed over foods as they
are nuked, with the high heat, actually drips poisonous toxins into the
food -- use paper towels instead.
Allan Kline, Manager Rosen Alternative Pest Control
Center 219 AFLS University of Arkansas Fayetteville, AR 72701 501-575-8737
Fax 501-575-2410 akline@uark.edu
Forwarded by Jim Warren
[Originally I said}: Again, I know no more than
you read here. I know we use paper towels, but we have been known to use
plastic containers. What I really liked are the hard plastic
"microware" things, but those seem to have vanished from the
market.
However, shortly after I put that up I got:
Here is a link which offers another viewpoint.
http://www.healthfactsandfears.com/
featured_articles/jun2002/plastic062702.html
which is a much more common sense view of the
situation. I still don't intend to use soft plastics and Saran Wrap in the
microwave, but then I never did: they're messy.
But note that my major concern was never dioxins
to begin with. Dioxin became a dangerous substance when a Missouri town in
a flood basin was flooded and couldn't get Federal aid because the
Congress exempted flood basins from flood relief. It's very dangerous
stuff if you are a Guinea Pig. It can cause acne in humans, although it
takes a lot more than you are likely to find from a microwaved container
(if you find any at all).
Some of the other stuff may be more serious. I
tend to use glass microwave containers anyway: we have a set of Corning
dishes of a good convenient size which work well. And the hard plastic
Microware stuff I like, but it's harder and harder to find.
Anyway, note that most of us aren't dead and
we've been using microwaves for a long time...
And one ought to be a bit wary of announcements
that originate with "People Against Cancer": I mean, who isn't?
Another satisfied Microsoft Cust0mer:
Microsoft. Pistol. Foot.
My stock tracking service runs a really nice web
site. One of their features is a Java-based "Tracker" app that
is real-time if you pay the surcharge, or 20 minutes off real time for
those of us on minimal budgets.
Java based.
I have a Dell laptop. With 90ME, it was crashing
daily, to great frustration. I ordered XP Pro Upgrade, and used my
night-school student card to get the Academic price at my college's small
bookstore. I installed XP over ME and everything worked. It still falls
over once a week or so, which beats the more than daily I had been seeing.
Both failure modes may have been due to impending hardware failure.
My hard drive sorta failed. XP got far enough into
its boot to throw up a logo and chug for a while, then complain about
"unable to mount boot partition" or some such. Dell sent me a
new hard drive.
This time around, I installed XP cold, rather than
over ME. It used the Dell CD to authorize my rights, but otherwise went in
as a cold install.
When I went to my investment tracker site, their app
tried to fire up Java. This in turn pointed me at a page at Microsoft
which presumably once contained the Java install package. So far as I can
tell Java is unavailable anywhere in microsoft's public downloads. I tried
installing Sun's Java package, but it was incompatible with my investment
tracker site. Their help line told me that I definitely needed the
Microsoft version. They told me to uninstall Sun and call them back. Like
many help line strategies, this managed to get me past a shift change.
Once I got rid of the Sun Java, I called Globefund back, and the new help
guy wasn't nearly as helpful. He pointed me at the same MS useless site
that their software had originally sent me to.
While on hold waiting for him, I found a microsoft
Java install package in one of my drivers stash directories. Installing
this over XP solved my problems.
I have no idea where I obtained this Java install
package. Presumably the MS useless page wasn't always such, and perhaps my
first encounter with the investment tracker sent me to get Java when it
still existed.
How many web sites out there still use Java. If XP
doesn't support Java, isn't this forcing those websites into using the Sun
Product? If I didn't have the MS one on hand, I would have been livid at
my investments website. Isn't abandoning Java forcing those websites to
look for a non-Microsoft solution? The website wrote a MS-only product.
Microsoft didn't shoot themselves in the foot. They shot GlobeInvestorGold
in the foot. And probably a ton of other web sites out there. After being
burned by Microsoft once, are these dotcoms going to be enthusiastic about
migrating their users to dotnet or whatever is supposed to replace Java?
Or are they going to fix whatever made it incompatible with Sun's version
of Java, and swear off ever writing another microsoft-specific web
application ever again?
Greg Goss Mailto:gossg@gossg.org
And see Ed Hume
on remedies.
Good news?
Thursday's NPR Talk of the Nation featured Anthony
Everitt, the author of the new Cicero biography (6/4/02). The theme of the
show was: why the renewed interest in the classics?
More than one person made the connection to the
issue of Republic and Empire today. The host took calls, some from
teachers of Latin and English.
Also invited was the editor of Variety to talk about
movies, recent and in development.
The archive of the show is at http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/totn/20020801.totn.ram
Cicero is in the first 0:15. The movie talk was near
0:35.
-Erik Olson curator@ancient-theme.com
I choose to think so. We can learn from history.
Mostly we don't, but it's possible.
An odd coincidence:
http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/cgi-win/indivsprofile.exe?H2GA11016
Seems that "Jihad Cindy" McKinney received
around $13,000 in apparently entirely legal contributions from people with
Arabic-sounding names . . .
. . . on September 11th.
Al Quaida support? Unlikely. Coincidence? Maybe.
Joel Rosenberg
The web site http://www.opensecrets.org/
has a lot of interesting information on where money goes in politics. I am
not familiar with McKinney but it is likely that she is a distant relative
(or has married one). My great grandfather McKinney was an old pirate
(actually associated with the last of the Lafitte group).
And this could prove important:
As I am sure you are aware, the Supreme Court
granted cert. in Eldred v Ashcrof where the plaintiff, who runs a website
devoted in part to making electronic versions of PD works available. The
lawsuit challenges the Sony Bono Copyright Extension Act in particular by
calling into question Congress's authority to continue to extend the
copyright period -- what, exactly, does the term "for limited
times" in the patent/copyright clause mean?
You may find the summary at http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1024079069599
of interest to your readers.
Tim tmorris@stclaircounty.org tmorris@advnet.net
It could be important indeed. I am sure the
Senator from Disney (Mr. Hollings) will be incensed...
And I have no idea of the authenticity of the
following, or even the original source, but it makes a heck of a good
story:
You might find this amusing ... -- Andrew Wells
"Truth is high; higher still is truthful living"
George Farthing, an expatriate British
man living in America, was recently diagnosed as clinically
depressed, tanked up on anti- depressants and scheduled for
controversial Shock Therapy, when doctors realised he wasn't
depressed at all - only British.
Not depressed, just British. Mr
Farthing, a British man whose characteristic pessimism and gloomy
perspective were interpreted as serious clinical depression, was led
on a nightmare journey through the American psychiatric system.
Doctors described Farthing as suffering with Pervasive Negative
Anticipation - a belief that everything will turn out for the worst,
whether it's trains arriving late, England's chances at winning any
international sports event or even his own prospects to get ahead in
life and achieve his dreams
"The satisfaction Mr Farthing
seemed to get from his pessimism seemed particularly
pathological," reported the doctors.
"They put me on everything
- Lithium, Prozac, St John's Wort," said Mr Farthing.
"They even told me to sit in front of a big light for an hour a
day or I'd become suicidal. I kept telling them this was all pointless
and they said that it was exactly that sort of attitude that got me
here in the first place."
Running out of ideas, his doctors
finally resorted to a course of "weapons-grade MDMA", the
only noticeable effect of which was six hours of speedy repetitions
of the phrases "mustn't grumble" and "not too bad,
really".
It was then that Mr Farthing was
referred to a psychotherapist. Suicidal?
Dr Isaac Horney explored Mr Farthing's
family history and couldn't believe his ears.
Quote "His story of a childhood
growing up in a grey little town where it rained every day, treeless
streets of identical houses and passionately backing a football team
who never won, seemed to be typical depressive ideation or false
memory. Mr Farthing had six months of therapy but seemed to mainly
want to talk about the weather - how miserable and cold it was in
winter and later how difficult and hot it was in summer. I felt he
wasn't responding to therapy at all and so I recommended drastic
action - namely ECT or shock treatment".
"I was all strapped down on the
table and they were about to put the rubber bit in my mouth when the
psychiatric nurse picked up on my accent," said Mr Farthing.
"I remember her saying 'Oh my God, I think we're making a
terrible mistake'."
Nurse Alice Sheen was a big fan of
British comedy giving her an understanding of the British psyche.
"Classic comedy characters like Tony Hancock, Albert Steptoe
and Frank Spencer are all hopeless cases with no chance of ever
doing well or escaping their circumstances," she explained to
the baffled US medics. "That's funny in Britain and is not seen
as pathological at all."
Identifying Mr Farthing as British
changed his diagnosis from 'clinical depression' to 'rather quaint
and charming' and he was immediately discharged from hospital, with
a selection of brightly coloured leaflets and an "I love New
York" T-shirt.
I find that:
It's satire from "The Brains Trust," which
is a British "The Onion."
http://www.thebrainstrust.co.uk/article.25.2137.html
--Mike J.
which is a relief.
And I know not what to make of this from an
anonymous correspondent:
> I see Bill Clinton told his audience in Toronto
this week > that, if Saddam's boys ever crossed the Israeli border,
> "I would personally get in a ditch, grab a rifle, and fight and
die."
Just a minute! If this quote is true, the only
difference between Bill Clinton's position and that of my fellow
right-wing Sharonist-Crazies is two word:
WJC: ...fight and die
VRWC: ...fight and make them die
Or is this a total spoof, below?
And today is a critical day for Africa:
New York Times, 2.8.4 By RACHEL L. SWARNS
BANKET, Zimbabwe - This is the season for
winter wheat, the time when lush, green seedlings usually blanket the
earth. But these days, the roaring tractors have been silenced and many
fertile farms are idle.
Here in this hungry land, where the United
Nations says six million people - half the population - are threatened by
famine, the government of President Robert Mugabe has ordered thousands of
the country's most productive farmers to stop farming.
The white commercial farmers, who are among
the largest producers of wheat and cornmeal, help feed the nation and fuel
the economy. But they have been condemned as racists and enemies of the
state because they have refused to turn over their land to the government
- land that was seized from blacks during the days of British colonial
rule.
And now, officials say, the day of reckoning
is finally at hand.
By Aug. 8, the government has announced, most
of the nation's white farmers must leave their farms for good. As the
deadline approaches, many farmers are packing their bags.
<snip>
Six million threatened by famine in what was once
the breadbasket of Southern Africa. The mind boggles.
I know not what to make of this, either:
It's Never Too Late to Be a Virgin New York
Times, 2.8.4 By ELIZABETH HAYT
WITH three months to go before her wedding,
Nicole Ratliff, 24, is deep into her prenuptial regime. She exercises with
a personal trainer so her arms will look buffed in a strapless gown. She
works on her tan to get rid of the swimsuit lines across her shoulders.
She exfoliates her face and guzzles 124 ounces of water daily to hydrate
her skin. And since July 26, three months to the day before she will say,
"I do," she has been abstaining from sex with her live-in
fiancé, David Crawford, and plans to continue until after they are
married.
"No more showers together," said
Ms. Ratliff, a pharmaceuticals sales representative in Charlotte, N.C.
"No sleeping in the nude. We'll kiss, and that's it."
Ms. Ratliff said she hopes that a period of
abstinence will ensure that sparks fly during her honeymoon in the Fiji
Islands, and help clear her conscience about having strayed from the
expectations that her church and family hold about premarital sex.
"The closer you get to the wedding, and you're looking for a preacher
and a church, you start to feel guilty," she said of no longer being
a virgin.
These days, a period of "secondary
virginity," as it is sometimes called, is increasingly the norm for
many brides-to-be across the South, an accommodation to the modern reality
of premarital sex and the traditional disapproval of it in the Bible Belt.
Whether fresh out of college or older,
Southern women say the decision of when and how long to stop having sex -
as little as a month or as much as a year - has become standard girl talk
at sorority houses and bridal showers.
<snip>
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
You write:
"Incidentally, Russell's story -- which for
reasons I no longer remember was not in my now out of print collection
called 'Survival of Freedom"'...
The reason that you gave in the book (of which my
copy came through the L-5 Society) was that it was too long, at 25,000
words, for inclusion. Whether you'd still think this in a new edition of
_Survival of Freedom_ is, of course, your judgment to make.
----------------------------- John W. Braue, III
<braue@ratsnest.win.net> http://www.win.net/ratsnest/log.htm
"Live briefly but gloriously. One's evanescent
life is but a preparation for death. The fall of the blossom is as moving
as its beauty on the limb and the final moment, as ceremonialized in the
ritual of seppuku, is indeed the moment of truth"
Which shows my failing memory. Thanks.
Does anyone remember the "Magnum" walking
tree cutters from the Dean Ing short story "Malf"* (short for
"malfunction")?
If so, check out Plustech's walking machines at
http://www.plustech.fi/Walking1.html
and the video's on the web site at
http://www.plustech.fi/images/videot/PlusSide.mpg
(3.7 MB .mpeg)
http://www.plustech.fi/images/videot/PlusjDown4_6.mpg
(3.2 MB .mpeg)
(Windows users: to save the videos for off-line
viewing, right-click, and select "Save target as...").
* "Malf" is currently in print in the Dean
Ing anthology "Firefight Y2K" http://www.baen.com/chapters/W199910/0671578480.htm?blurb
, but is also available in "Firefight 2000" and "High
Tension" (which features a picture of a Magnum on the cover) if you
can find them in used bookstores.
Robert Racansky
Thanks!
TOP
CURRENT
VIEW
Entire Site Copyright, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Jerry
E. Pournelle. All rights reserved. |
CLICK HERE for
a Special Request. 
