Tags
Benjamin Franklin, Christine O'Donnell, de Tocqueville, election 2010, happiness, Jim DeMint, Joe Miller, Michael Steele, psychology, Todd Palin
I’m a really humble person. Except when I’m not. I’m not more than I am. It’s the truth. I won’t deny it.
I have a healthy ego. I’m not insufferably stupid by a long shot, so intuitively, intellectually, and soulfully, I know that you don’t hang on every pearl of wisdom dripping from my typing fingers. I know you don’t expect to be enlightened ala the Buddha and damned if I can find a Bodhi trees around here anyway! I know you don’t expect the latest news and perfect analysis.
But I do believe all that in the secret place within my heart. Which means that I’m shocked, nay, bowled over, nay, near stricken with palsy, that some people (don’t worry, I won’t out you!) have become just the slightest bit borrrrrrdddd with my incessant lamentations on Facebook about my “ad troubles.”
In case you have missed it, I’m being bombarded by ads on Facebook which has slowed my already snail-paced leviathan of a computer to an inch an hour speed. And of course, nobody on FB seems to share my dilemma or my anger.
First I went to Firefox which solved the problem for two days, and then the ads returned. Then I googled around and found an adware block designed for Firefox, and I installed it. It worked perfectly but pretty much ground everything else to a halt.
So, I disabled it for most everything, and figured, okay, I’ll just use it for FB. Well, apparently it doesn’t play nice with other code, so “the troubles” continued. So, I uninstalled the entire crappy thing.
Then I discovered that goggle was now offering a toolbar access to a limited FB on a little drop down. That wouldn’t load on Foxfire, but did on Explorer. Go figure. So far it seems to fit the bill in terms of letting me see my “news” and “wall” and “notifications” and “messages.” I can “comment” and “share.” I feel all warm and fuzzy again.
But I’ll be sure to keep you up to date. I know you wanna share it with your family and friends over dinner no doubt. And if you have advice? Go ahead and share. Just remember I have D I A L – U P, so treat me as a nearly extinct Tyrannosaurus.
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Besides feeling all cuddly and wiggly, I’m cozying up to some goodly written stuff today. So do drop over to the quarterly, City Journal and read a great piece on happiness and the American manner of mucking it all up and making it a trial. Indeed from de Tocqueville on, we have been rightly perceived as a not so happy bunch here in Merika the great. Lots of interesting stuff on Benji Franklin as well, another favorite of mine. Best lines:
If men are so bad with religion, just imagine what they would be like without it.
“Let us rejoice and bless God that we are neither Oysters, Hogs, or Dray-Horses; and not stand repining that He has not made us Angels; lest we be found unworthy of that share of Happiness He has thought fit to allow us.”
And that about says it all doesn’t it? (Note that the author of the piece has a book out called: Benjamin Franklin Unmasked. Might be worth a check out.
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A book review you might enjoy is What Ever Happened to Modernity? by Gabriel Josipovici. He traces the movement from the 16th century forward through a line of philosophers. If ever you have difficulty with philosophy, then books such as this, I think serve to help us navigate. Ormsby writes in the WSJ, so you know it’s highbrow.
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Tidbits from the insane:
- Todd Palin, hubby of the Palinator is mighty pissed that Joe Miller, who owes his political life to said Mooselini, refused to endorse her. One can commiserate, Todd. After all, she is your meal ticket ya know.
- Meanwhile, Christine (no sex for you)O’Donnell struts her international cahones by claiming that China was plotting the overthrow of the US.
- Jim (I’m riding this gravy train!) DeMint says that sexually active single women and gays need not apply to teach school. Guess sexually active men are okay though. Whew, glad somebody is left!
- Michael (my mojo still works for me!) Steele, has no clue what the minimum wage is. Fine as long as you are purporting to speak for your party and their concerns about the little folk.
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Everywhere you go we keep hearing that the Dems are polling better and the Rethugs worse as election day approaches. The Daily Kos has some interesting speculations as to why this is.
Existential Ennui 
Sherry, I’m with you on this computer business. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that end-users are pawns in the software/hardware wars. My earthlink mail won’t accept gmail because their parent companies don’t get along. I’m a Mac, which is pretty swell most of the time–except for when I’m on a site that uses a higher version of Windows software that I can’t get for Mac. And then comes the moment when the computer starts doing weird things because the latest update on a Mac-based software has screwed up a Windows-based application. Try figuring out where that sleeper cell is hidden!
Of course, there are the discussion boards–or there were. Now when I try to find a layman-friendly answer, I end up spending hours trying to decode the solutions from the super-geeks who are oh so willing to help but can’t speak in an intelligible dialect.
Part of me thinks there should be an end-user union that can threaten strikes and negotiate terms AND set up some way to bill back the hours we lose to high-tech perfidy. If I could redeem half the hours I’ve lost to figuring out the intricacies of their spats and specs, I’d no doubt be able to purchase a tiny Caribbean isle, throw all of these electronic gizmos into the sea, and retire to my hammock and cocoanuts.
Oh Tim, it’s just so maddening sometimes. I don’t mean to harp on it so much, but it’s just torture for me with dial up to begin with, and then to have this crap to contend with. I do agree, like corp america everywhere, the computer business cares not at all for the users–only on making more bucks as fast as possible. FB is no different–there is literally NO “contact us” on the site. They have no intention of being bothered.
At this point, nothing coming out of DeMint’s mouth would surprise me anymore.
Yeah, he’s turning into a real idiot. Well, to be fair, I’m sure he always was. I suspect though that he’s really taking advantage of this tea thing as a way to secure power for himself. I doubt he is ideologically pure. lol.
In the 4th year of EFM, we’re reading philosophers, so I really appreciate that link about modernism!
Jan I don’t know which I’m more looking forward to 3 or 4. I am weak on both counts to be sure. I probably am strongest on the NT, and still find that I’m learning a lot every day. This is so worth the effort!
When I’m on dial-up, I use the Opera web browser. It has a button on the toolbar that lets you toggle all the graphics on and off.
A lot of sites look a little weird with the graphics turned off, but it loads MUCH MUCH faster, and I can turn them on with the click of a button if it’s something I really want to see.
(You can get Opera, as you probably guessed, at http://www.opera.com/)
Thanks a lot Tom. I tried Opera, and it won’t download. Keeps stopping at a “corrupted file”. Sigh…Always something.
I tried to download Opera Tom, but it “corrupted file” ‘d me. sigh…always something.