QotD for 15 Feb., 2010

Upon hearing the news that Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Indiana) won't be running for re-election due to the strident partisanship in the current Congress, I'm reminded of the following:

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." ---from the poem "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats

I really wish the best would stay and fight instead of throwing their hands up in disgust...

Forgotten, not banished

When asked in a Washington Post interview whether an intelligent and discerning leader of the caliber of Dwight Eisenhower would be considered acceptable in today's conservative movement, Gerard Alexander, Assoc. Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, and himself a conservative, responded:

Maybe the saddest thing about Eisenhower is that he's not so much banished as forgotten.

QotD for 4 Feb., 2010

"You can talk about Jesus all day, but if you are not doing what Jesus would have you do, then it matters not. God save us from admirers of Jesus.” ---the Rt. Rev'd. Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire

QotD for 3 Feb., 2010

One of the chief reasons I have little respect for the so-called "traditional Anglican" movement in TEC is the hypocrisy illuminated by this quote:

Reactionaries continually accuse liberals of individualism yet they are the first to cite individual liberties when the community decide to go in a direction the reactionary, personally, doesn't like. ---the Rev'd. Jonathan Hagger

QotD for 29 Jan., 2010

"I was regretting the past and fearing the future. Suddenly my Lord was speaking. 'My name is I AM.' He paused. I waited. He continued. 'When you live in the past with its mistakes and regrets it is hard. I am not there. My name is not I WAS. "'When you live in the future with its problems and fears, it is hard. My name is not I WILL BE. When you live in this moment it is not hard. I am here. My name is I AM.'" ---Helen Mallicoat

[shamelessly stolen from Lisa Edwards]

QotD for 25 Jan., 2010

Considering both the recent senatorial election in Massachusetts and the Supreme Court campaign finance decision, the following seems apropos...

No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up. ---Lily Tomlin

QotD for 22 Jan., 2010

“I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of our country.” ---Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Logan. November 12, 1816

No hands but ours

If you're wondering where God is during catastrophes like the earthquake in Haiti, remember this:

Lord Christ, You have no body on earth but ours, no hands but ours, no feet but ours. Ours are the eyes through which Your compassion must look out on the world. Ours are the feet by which You may still go about doing good. Ours are the hands with which You bless people now. Bless our minds and bodies, that we may be a blessing to others. ---Saint Teresa of Ávila

[hat tip to the Rev. Ann Fontaine]

Why We Are Here

A great, Lovecraftian parody of the infamous "Chick tract," a kind of booklet which way-out-there sorts of Christians used to hand off to unsuspecting normals, can be found in the Cthulhu Tract.

Bwahaha! Come on, monkey-boy! Admit you're a semi-evolved ape thing that is mercifully ignorant of the soul-blasting truths of the Cosmos! Iä! Iä! Cthulhu Fhtagn!

QotD for 7 Jan., 2010

There is no technology that would be harmful in the hands of an individual that can’t be made more so – on an epic scale – in the hands of an entrenched bureaucracy. ---Sarah A. Hoyt, author

Bono's got it all wrong

Jesus Diaz over at Gizmodo posts a righteous rant on the U2 lead singer's boneheaded opinions RE: file sharing and the music biz.

This is about two groups of fat cats fighting for money. First, you're rich and your pals at the music industry are rich. Second, those are rich service providers. In the middle, getting sandwiched between your throbbing shameless practices and thick hypocrisy, is the people. I can't speak for the rest of us, but I'm sick of you both.

Preach it.

QotD for 4 Jan., 2010

Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy a country’s way of life; it’s only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage. The more we undermine our own laws, the more we convert our buildings into fortresses, the more we reduce the freedoms and liberties at the foundation of our societies, the more we’re doing the terrorists’ job for them. ---Bruce Schneier, American cryptographer, computer security specialist, and writer

QotD for 15 Dec., 2009

On the occasion of the birthday of the creator of Esperanto...

"I am profoundly convinced that every nationalism offers humanity only the greatest unhappiness... It is true that the nationalism of oppressed peoples -- as a natural self-defensive reaction -- is much more excusable than the nationalism of peoples who oppress; but, if the nationalism of the strong is ignoble, the nationalism of the weak is imprudent; both give birth to and support each other..." ---L. L. Zamenhof

QotD for 11 Dec., 2009

"XML is like violence - if it doesn’t solve your problems, you are not using enough of it." --- quote from the Nokogiri XML parser documentation

[tip o' the hat to Graham Glass]

QotD for 8 Dec., 2009

With all the furor from the Archbishop of Canterbury concerning the recent election of a certain suffragan bishop in the Dio. of Los Angeles fresh on our minds, I couldn't help but recall a famous quotation:

"I wouldn't go to Lambeth if Jesus himself was there handing out $1,000 bills. I went once before, and if assholes had wings Lambeth would be an airport!" --- the Rt. Rev. Barbara Harris, first female bishop in the Anglican Communion

Windows 7 and Sound Blaster Live! cards

Ran into my first problem with Windows 7 right after the initial install. No sound. Nada. Zippo. Silencio.

Turns out that Creative - the company that mfg. the soundcard - doesn't have drivers for the Sound Blaster Live! under Vista or Windows 7. Probably want you to spend money on a new soundcard instead :P

But a bit of Googling revealed the somewhat tedious workaround.

1. Goto Creative's support website and download the WinXP driver for the Sound Blaster Live! The filename is LiveDrvUni-Pack(ENG).exe


2. Before you run the file, right-click on it and choose "Troubleshoot compatibility." Then select "Troubleshoot program."


3. Select "Program worked in earlier versions of Windows..." and click "Next."


4. Select "Windows XP (SP2)" and click "Next."


5. Select "Start the program" and click "Next."


6. Select "Yes to save" and click "close."

Now the driver install program will successfully run, and when you restart - you should have sound. Yes, all that work because Creative got greedy and decided they'd try to force you to buy a new soundcard ;)

Update: There is also an independent project to write a WDM-type driver which supports the Live! and any, other EMU10K1 and EMU10K2-based soundcard - the kX Project. Word has it that this requires some tweaking once installed, but they do list Windows 7 as a supported OS.

QotD for 13 Nov., 2009

The megachurches are mall-like villages or gated communities with Wednesday nite karaoke and movies and Sunday 'prosperity gospel'. Faith is not between you and God, it's 'your team' and flag and get out of jail free card; virtue is a concept, not practice; sacrifice is for chumps and "I'm a special case, with extenuating circumstances, but I'm still a good person cuz I say the right things about God and Country and you don't." ---Mark Brady, in a comment on Bob Carlton's Facebook

Lord 'o mercy, but I do love a good, righteous rant. Amen.

Great Deal on a Macbook

If you know anyone in the market for Apple's least expensive Macbook, Microcenter is running a rebate deal until 11/15/09 that gets you $200 off list price ($799 after rebate - the form is in a link to a PDF file at the bottom of the page)

The rebate is a $200 Visa giftcard - usable anywhere that takes Visa, but can't be converted to cash at an ATM. I've got a slightly older version of this laptop and it's a perfectly pleasant, usable machine.

Pass the word around to anyone you know who might be interested...

QotD for 30 Oct., 2009

“I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.” ---Jesper Rønn-Jensen

I should know better...

::sigh:: Yes, I should know better, but I got into an argument with an extreme right-winger over in the comment section of someone's Facebook page about the Matthew Shepard Act.

It's just that the disdain positively dripped off of this woman's comments. And every comment of her's was a piece of misinformation lifted straight out of a list of Fox News / Glenn Beck talking points. How Judy Shepard manages to encounter this garbage all the time after losing her son and stay sane & rational is beyond me.

I swear, it's like trying to argue with a Holocaust denier...