Saturday, November 5, 2016
Guy Fawkes Day
Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.
James Burnham
If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.
Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983
“Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Immigration without assimilation is invasion.
Friday, November 4
Roberta had her first day of intense therapy today, and we’ll go out to see her about dinner time after she’s through. Alex got out there about breakfast time. Frank went out at lunch time but was unable to see her and has gone back to Palm Springs. Holy Cross is a freeway drive from here and the last time I drove on a freeway was before the stroke, so I’m afraid to drive on them now. I’m comfortable driving in the neighborhood such as to Trader Joe’s in the daytime, but when it gets dark I have to be home or have a driver. I managed to get to the Emergency Room a couple or three weeks ago at midnight, and had no real problems, but I don’t want to be the pitcher that went to the well once too often.
We’ll go out about dinner time.
I try to thank those who wished us well, but my schedule isn’t really my own and I’m sure I have missed a lot of them. They are appreciated and I do see them, but I can’t always answer.
Saturday, November 5, 2016 We went out to Holy Cross last night at dinner time. Roberta was exhausted from therapy, so we didn’t stay long. Alex was out there at breakfast time and says she looks better than last night; we’ll go out after lunch, which isn’t far away, so I’ll cut this short when we have to go.
I wrote most of this yesterday. This morning (Saturday) I discovered that Microsoft has “improved” Outlook to the point of making it unusable. I tried to send a send a reply and in my answer to put in a hyperlink, but Microsoft has improved Outlook so that the INSERT tab no longer exists in Reply or Forward. I discovered that the improvement restores the Insert Tab if you “pop out” of what you are trying to do, but I still was unable to make an actual hyperlink, so in frustrations I simply pasted in the link following the reference I normally would have attached the hyperlink to. I have no idea what their intention was, and they aren’t telling; their new help system is even more useless than the old one. It used to be that I was the guy who desperately tried everything until I found a way to do something, and made a column out of my travails; I was happy enough when Microsoft or another major vendor screwed up royally because it gave me something to write about. Now I get frustrated like everyone else.
If you are forwarding something and you create text and want to insert a hyperlink to a book title (with the display the title of the book) you are in for a floundering session; I still have not been able to do it. Since all my subscriptions are recorded in Outlook – back when I used Front Page, Outlook was about the best mail/calendar program around and I got used to it – changing from Outlook is likely to be painful, but I think I’ll have to do it. Preferably to something that works a bit like Outlook did in the old days when the goal was to publish a good productive tool, not demonstrate the cleverness of the programmers.
Friday, November 4.
This morning I decided to simply shut down and restart to see if that fixes Word. It was simply refusing to recognize ^p as a valid search character, and various settings experiments seemed to make it worse.
First I tested to see if the “ignores ^p in replace” error was still in effect. It was. It simply would not recognize ^p as a search for input. I know that if you check the wildcard option you get a message that that doesn’t work when wildcard is selected, but this just says ^p is not a valid search symbol. The big computer in the back room does not suffer from this problem, which is why I thought a reset might fix this machine, Eugene, which is my main machine.
Closed all programs and told it to shut down. The screen went dark, and you’d have thought the system was shut down, but the blue power light was still on, and the red disk activity light was madly blinking. Madly. After a couple of minutes, I pushed the blue power button. It shut down. I waited for a count of 30, then turned it on again.
Held my breath; it took a while. The blue power light was on, but nothing else; but then the screen started showing the usual starting messages, BIOS info, etc., and faster than usual after that the screen came up. I put in the password.
All was well, but the red disk activity light was blinking like mad. Very curious. Started Firefox, and the usual set of tabs I get, including the August voice recording of me accepting the Heinlein award in a big booming voice, came up. Some of those tabs I haven’t used since August, but that’s what Firefox gives me every time I shut it down; I wish I knew how to get it to display the most recent set of tabs instead of remembering a set months old, but if it explains that anywhere I can’t find it. Of course they do add requests for money for Mozilla and for Colorful tabs, and I know that although I deleted them – I couldn’t send them a bill for wasting my time – they’ll be back asking for a handout next time Firefox restarts – along with a set of tabs months out of date. I once sent them money, but I won’t pay for being annoyed. I wish there were some setting that would bring up the last set of tabs, or a way I could update the set it remembers. It probably has such a setting, but I guess it’s too much to ask for them to tell me how to use it. I’ve tried to experiment, but they’ve defeated me. When I restart Firefox, I’m going to get a months old set of tabs, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
Anyway, I then opened Word and tested substituting ^p for ^p^p, and lo! It worked.
By that time the red light was blinking once every few seconds, not madly.
Anyway, Word now recognizes ^p, so that’s fixed.
As to Firefox, I think I have a fix for it not ever updating the saved screen. I had checked the save tabs on exit box, but that did no good. Now I checked the “ask on shutdown” option; it does, and it saves the current screen, so that problem’s over.
I’m in the middle of an adventure with the Surface Pro, but I don’t have a happy ending yet. The Pro 3 (with Pro 4 keyboard with fingerprint reader) will not update: or wouldn’t. It would do wireless but not connect the wireless to the Internet. It connects fine with Ethernet.
Online I found a way to manually download and install an update, and while it did not work exactly as I expected, it did it. SLOWLY. Very slowly.
That allowed me to update several times in the normal way. It’s almighty slow, but it seems to be doing it. I have yet another and I’m in the middle of that. It’s taking forever. We’ll see.
I find the Surface Pro useful when it works and I’m hoping it will recover from the mopes.
On to Saturday. A penny for the guy…
There are some observations about Sweden.
On Sweden
Dear Dr Pournelle,
Most importantly, I hope Roberta is doing well and that the rehab goes well.
I enjoy your blog and while I may not always agree with your view, I strongly feel it important to have commentary from people who have a sound grasp (having lived through it) of our history and the actors therein. And who can write 😉
A quick point triggering this missive on Sweden being a failed state. The UK’s Daily Express is not a reliable source of data; ranking at a similar depth to the Daily Mail in terms of reliable truth, fact and interpretation. A more reasoned essay on Sweden and its immigration issues could be found here http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/09/how-sweden-became-an-example-of-how-not-to-handle-immigration/
I’d note that the first page on Google when seeking references to no-go areas were from “publications” (sic) of a similar nature and motive to the Express and Mail.
I spent a week in Gothenburg for business in early September and there was certainly no feeling on the ground that there were any particular nor unusual worries (and my Swedish colleagues would have told me if there were).
Best wishes and hopes for a speedy recovery for Roberta,
David
Being of Viking ancestry myself, I have some regard for Scandinavian affairs, and I would be reluctant to call Sweden a failed state; it does seem to be true that much of the population does not appreciate the threat. Absorbing an very large influx of migrants with no intention of assimilation is not easy, if indeed it is possible. I realize that “diversity” is said to trump everything else, but I haven’t accepted that conclusion. It seems to me that historically the US melting pot has worked very well, making Americans out of all kinds of hyphenated Americans while absorbing some of the hyphenated migrant customs – a perhaps trivial example being the St. Patrick’s Day rituals commonly observed by people whose ancestor never visited Ireland, or, who like my Viking ancestors, were not welcomed when they went there.
I do think that Sweden needs to give a lot of thought to these problems, but I have not been there in a while. My friends there are beginning to worry.
Swedish Police
Dear Jerry –
My best wishes on your wife’s recovery.
A letter referred to Sweden as becoming a failed state due to the existence of “no-go” areas for the police. I’d have to disagree. By our standards, Sweden has an extraordinarily small police force, and it’s no wonder that it is (temporarily, one hopes) being overwhelmed in the inner cities.
The Wiki page for the Swedish Police Authority states that police presence in “disadvantaged areas” is about 1 per 5000. Contrast this with New York City. There are about 40,000 sworn officers for a population of 8.5 million, or 1 per 213 persons, and some areas aren’t what you’d call great places to raise kids.. By our standards, Sweden has an extraordinarily small police force. Of course, we’re a pretty violent place for an First World country.
Additionally, the article does not specify how large the “no-go” areas are, and this makes a difference. If the areas are a square mile each, that’s one thing, but if they are 10 blocks each that’s something else. At any rate, the politics of diversity will make tailoring the size of the police force to the crime level difficult, but that’s not remotely the same thing as calling Sweden a failed state.
Regards,
Jim Martin
We moved toward “abandoned areas” in some urban environments some years ago, but New York aggressively reclaimed them years ago. It can be done, but it takes an intent to do it. I fear the years of small police forces may be over in Sweden, which would be lamentable.
Immigrants riot in Paris.
Thanks to Hillary destroying Libya and Syria, the immigrants from there are rioting in Paris.
They don’t seem to report any of this in the U.S.;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRfyFhm2OR0
This item came in my daughters health insurance enrollment application;
Welcome to Hillary’s wonderfully diverse multicultural America!
(When you import 3rd world, you don’t get 1st world, you get 3rd world. – S. Molyneux)
I don’t know if the sheet is Radical Islamic attack plans or just a privacy rights notice.
I don’t know why they bother with privacy notices. All your info is already on
Anthony Wiener’s computer. The good news is it’s in the hands of the FBI now.
That guarantees it won’t go anywhere now because the new guy in charge of Hillary’s email
investigation is John Podesta’s close friend….
(You can’t make this stuff up.)
(They’re just funnin’ us now.)
The bad news is, before the NYPD turned Wiener’s Computer over to the FBI,
they downloaded it and sent it all to WikiLeaks….
The good news is, they’ll be more interested of pics of Hillary on the Lolita Express
with under age girls than looking at your info.
The bad news we can look forward to having riots like in Paris;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRfyFhm2OR0
Eric
We will endure.
Europe’s New Blasphemy Courts
by Douglas Murray
November 4, 2016 at 5:00 amhttps://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9253/europe-blasphemy-courts
- Europe is currently seeing the reintroduction of blasphemy laws through both the front and back doors, initiated in a country which once prided itself on being among the first in the world to throw off clerical intrusion into politics.
- By prosecuting Wilders, the courts in Holland are effectively ruling that there is only one correct answer to the question Wilders asked. They are saying that if someone asks you whether you would like more Moroccans or fewer, people must always answer “more,” or he will be committing a crime.
- At no point would it occur to me that anyone saying he did not want an endless flow of, say, British people coming into the Netherlands should be prosecuted. Nor would he be.
- The long-term implications for Dutch democracy of criminalising a majority opinion are catastrophic. But the trial of Wilders is also a nakedly political move.
- The Dutch courts are behaving like a religious court. They are trying to regulate public expression and opinion when it comes to the followers of one religion. In so doing they obviously aspire to keep the peace in the short term, but they cannot possibly realise what trouble they are storing up for our future. [snip]
One of the reasons for the First Amendment. States had “blasphemous libel” laws; many repealed them in the early years of the Union (as they repealed their laws establishing one or another religion) but the Federal Government never had those powers to begin with,
The agony of video buffering…
https://priceonomics.com/the-video-buffering-agony-threshold/
“The Internet’s vast size means users can afford to be fickle.
“With an estimated 4.66 billion web pages available to browse, users have a virtually unlimited menu to choose from. This means even the smallest obstacles – a clunky interface, or a detour to download a required plug-in – can send users running away from a site. Amazon discovered that just an additional 100 milliseconds of waiting led to a 1% decrease in sales from their users.
“And when it comes to watching video online – an increasingly central part of what people do on the Internet – nothing deters users like buffering breaks.”
“Our [Mux a Priceonomics customer’s] analysis shows that just one buffering event decreases the amount of video a viewer watches by 40%. The more time a video spends buffering, the less video people watch, and even a small amount of buffering has a huge effect on an audience’s behavior.”
Reminds me of the meme “Lord give me patience…right now!”
Charles Brumbelow
Roberta has a “Give me patience – now” placard on her office wall
Stunning “Revelations”
I suspected the first, third, and fifth — though without that much specificity:
<.>
1. The Clinton Foundation investigation is far more expansive than anybody has reported so far and has been going on for more than a year.
2. The laptops of Clinton aides Cherryl Mills and Heather Samuelson have not been destroyed, and agents are currently combing through them. The investigation has interviewed several people twice, and plans to interview some for a third time.
3. Agents have found emails believed to have originated on Hillary Clinton’s secret server on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. They say the emails are not duplicates and could potentially be classified in nature.
4. Sources within the FBI have told him that an indictment is “likely”
in the case of pay-for-play at the Clinton Foundation, “barring some obstruction in some way” from the Justice Department.
5. FBI sources say with 99% accuracy that Hillary Clinton’s server has been hacked by at least five foreign intelligence agencies, and that information had been taken from it.
</>
Why are we just now hearing about point five? Why wasn’t this mentioned, publicly? “We wouldn’t want to cause a panic”? Neither would a bank robber.
TOP SECRET//SI//TK//NOFORN (Top Secret, SI is a subset of Sensitive Compartmentalized Information — SCI, Keyhole satellite collections, No Foreign Distribution; Americans only) information was on this system and was compromised be no fewer than five foreign intelligence agencies and possibly more?
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan, KSC
Percussa Resurgo
Understandably, I have not been following any of this, and have no idea of its accuracy. Things have become so bizarre that a number of news items I would normally ignore as absurd turn out to be true. God looks after fools, drunks, and the United States of America. We need that. Alas, I gather His patience, unlike His forgiveness, is not infinite.
Bret Baier on the two investigations
This IS from Infowars and I can’t find the video on Fox, but it appears to be legitimate.
Details the Clinton Foundation investigation, and states that the laptops that the FBI agreed to destroy as part of immunity deals for Cheryl Mills and others have not been destroyed because “an immunity deal is voided if someone lies to the FBI.”
Subj: Tweet from Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet)
Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) tweeted at 7:41 PM on Wed, Nov 02, 2016:
Avalanche of evidence in Clinton Foundation investigation. Clinton emails on Weiner’s laptop are NEW – not copies.(https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet/status/793976393524772864?s=02)Iince
I have never tweeted.
Intel launches 500 drones for nighttime light show
There is a video…
Charles Brumbelow
An Alternative To American Citizenship?
This is interesting:
<.>
Scientists and astronomers have revealed plans to set up a new nation in space called Asgardia.
Anyone can apply to be a citizen in the cosmic country, which will be based around one or more satellites orbiting the Earth.
</>
Asgard reminds me of the Norse myths. I am now a citizen of Asgardia!
=) I’ll save you some seats on our space ship. =) ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan, KSC
Percussa Resurgo
They may have problems gaining recognition, particularly for their passports. In my younger radical days I knew and sympathized with Garry Davis, a WW II veteran who sat in camping on the Turtle Bay grounds where they were building UN headquarters; but that was long ago. I still have considerable appreciation for Garry, but the world is not as he saw it then, and it does not look like going there.
I once memorized Locksley Hall
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew
From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue;
Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging thro’ the thunder-storm;
Till the war-drum throbb’d no longer, and the battle-flags were furl’d
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.
sc:bubbles]
Russian Empire or Soviet Union? — “A difference which makes no difference is no difference.”
Russia’s Ramping Up for War Where Nobody’s Looking
Paul D. Shinkman
U.S. News & World Report – U.S. News & World Report – Wed Nov 2 21:47:00 UTC 2016
The Nordic countries of Norway, Sweden and Finland fear greater likelihood of conflict with Putin.
As an old cold warrior I have considerable respect for Russian capabilities, but I think their current ambitions are greatly limited by lack of Russians, and not much ideology for loyalty to an Empire with many non-Russians. The “nationality problem” as Soviet theorists used to term it was always a problem even in Soviet days with compulsory Marxist course from first grade through graduate school.
Russia’s first goals, I would say, is to get more Russian nationalists into Russia. The United States threatened nuclear war over Soviet missiles in Cuba; the Cuban crises abated with Soviet withdrawal from Cubs – and US bringing home IRBM’s from Turkey, although that latter was deliberately not publicized. I do not think they want to revive the WTO; and anyway isn’t that more a European problem? They aren’t helpless in Britain, France, and Germany…
Of course the first Russia (the Kievan State) was established by Swedes. On the other hand, Finland proved a very tough nut to crack by the Soviet Union; Putin will not have forgotten that, nor the body bags coming home from Afghanistan.
Anonymous Release Bone-Chilling video of Huma Abedin every American Needs to See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRu3U-nwyhw
This is all verifiable, too.
Hillary MUST NOT become POTUS.
{o.o}
Well, I certainly would not want Huma as Harry Hopkins to President Clinton.
Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.
