At the Orphanage now.

At 19:23:

“Once we get this criminal JP Morgan out of the picture.”

“That, I think’s a lot of people’s hope” [she should stick to her day job rather than attempt to articulate or perhaps she should seek an education]

You’re not going to get JPM “out of the picture” – ever. Let’s go over it once more:

Fats as a party animal:

Fats and his organ (ooh, missus!):

Wiki goes on about Helvetica:

Helvetica is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann.^[1] The aim of the new design was to create a neutral typeface that had great clarity, no intrinsic meaning in its form, and could be used on a wide variety of signage.

No intrinsic meaning, no intrinsic form?   Meaningless?  Formless?  Soulless and therefore beloved of the public dictators of taste?  In fact, is Helvetica a symbol of The Great Nothingness we are moving towards, the mediocritized schlock blandness we take these days as style?

I tend to think of Helvetica as the Michael Buble of typography —you could play his music at a wedding, retirement or cocktail party and probably get away without raising an eyebrow. You could try to dance to his recycled Sinatra inspired ballads, but wouldn’t it be more fun to play some Nine Inch Nails and see what happens?

No intrinsic meaning in its form.  No style.  Concentric thinking.  Y-e-e-e-s-s-s.  From the vid:

We like restrictions, we can’t operate without restrictions.  We wanted to find more structure than design … if possible, we will use only one typeface and one size …  We don’t like humanistic typefaces … it must be more rational, otherwise we have too much expression.

We think that Helvetica contains, somehow, a design programme … it will lead you to a certain language … you will use it like that because the typeface wants it like that.

Ah yes.  We wish to be infantilized, we wish to be told, we wish to be comfortable in our smiley faced cocoon.

………..

* And lets not forget his good Welsh wife Mifamwy Cmfwyp.

Remember when grandparents and great-grandparents stated that they only had an 8th grade education? Well, check this out. Could any of us have passed the 8th grade in 1895?

This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 in Salina , Kansas , USA . It was taken from the original document on file at the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society

and Library in Salina , and reprinted by the Salina Journal.

8th Grade Final Exam: Salina , KS – 1895

Grammar (Time, one hour)

1. Give nine rules for the use of capital letters.

2. Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications.

3. Define verse, stanza and paragraph

4. What are the principal parts of a verb? Give principal parts of ‘lie, ‘play,’ and ‘run.’

5. Define case; illustrate each case.

6 What is punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of punctuation.

7 – 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

Arithmetic (Time,1 hour 15 minutes)

1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.

2. A wagon box is 2 ft. Deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. Wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?

3. If a load of wheat weighs 3,942 lbs., what is it worth at 50cts/bushel, deducting 1,050 lbs. For tare?

4. District No 33 has a valuation of $35,000.. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?

5. Find the cost of 6,720 lbs. Coal at $6.00 per ton.

6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.

7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft.. Long at $20 per metre?

8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.

9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance of which is 640 rods?

10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt

U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)

1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided

2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus

3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.

4. Show the territorial growth of the United States

5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas

6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.

7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton , Bell , Lincoln , Penn, and Howe?

8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, 1865.

Orthography (Time, one hour)

[Do we even know what this is??]

1. What is meant by the following: alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, syllabication

2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?

3. What are the following, and give examples of each: trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals

4. Give four substitutes for caret ‘u.’ (HUH?)

5. Give two rules for spelling words with final ‘e.’ Name two exceptions under each rule.

6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.

7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: bi, dis-mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, sup.

8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.

9. Use the following correctly in sentences: cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane , vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.

10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks

and by syllabication.

Geography (Time, one hour)

1 What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?

2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas ?

3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?

4. Describe the mountains of North America

5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia , Odessa , Denver , Manitoba , Hecla , Yukon , St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco

6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S. Name all the republics of Europe and give the capital of each..

8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?

9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.

10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give the inclination of the earth.

Notice that the exam took FIVE HOURS to complete.

Gives the saying ‘he only had an 8th grade education’ a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?!

No wonder they dropped out after 8th grade. They already knew more than they needed to know!

No, I don’t have the answers! And I don’t think I

ever did!

From ja.bourque@comcast.net

In any full-on, massive war, such as Stalingrad in the Great Patriotic War, it was a question of where the line was drawn.  Would it be Stalingrad or Gorky or Moscow or what?  City by city falls, each one a strategic coup.

Or alternatively, Yes Minister’s “salami tactics”.  At which point do you press the button?

To revisit Yuri Bezmenov [remembering that though he was referring to the Soviet era and America, it's just as relevant to today's globalized world]:

To “change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that – despite the abundance of information – no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country.”

To get more specific:

This multi-stage process requires media complicity/mediocrity, control of educational policy, widespread corruption in politics and industry, and the unlimited money/credit of the international bankers.

The moment the words “international bankers” were used, how many turned off immediately?  That’s because buzzwords and phrases have been used so gratuitously that they’re simply a trigger to turn people off, whether or not the people described are a problem or not.  To say those two words immediately brands a person as being of a certain political hue rather than gets people to see the issue.

Ditto with identifying something as leftist or politically correct.  The reason both are so rabid is that they feel they are pursuing great truths, e,g, equality, fairness and they tack on freedom – surely things anyone would want?  The problem is the intergenerational shift in perception of what is right or wrong or even that there is a right or wrong.

Frankfurt School.  How many turned off at those two words?  If you stack the universities and schools with leftists, so that you grow up believing these people great philosophers, then what chance anyone quoting proponents of that school being quite open about the subversion of society and its demoralization?

And even the whole idea of Left.  The question of the expanded State has something to say on subversion generally.  Henry Makow:

It is important to understand that the goal of ideological subversion is NOT to convert everyone to the left.  Leftist ideology must only be presented as a legitimate alternative for the subversion to be successful.  The Hegelian dialectic does the rest, and when the economic structure deteriorates within the target nation, the subverted population – divided, dumbed down, short-sighted and reactive – will beg for the expansion of government programs.

For example, the new tolerance for the intolerable and discrimination under the guise of non-discrimination.  And the real enemy pushing this change, the tireless workers for demoralization over the decades and generations are involved in massive propaganda, such that good is now mocked and destructive is tolerated as chic or demonstrating one’s sophistication.

As Bezmenov says, a slow process taking generations, each more demoralized than the previous.  And why would they be actively trying to destroy their own society?  Obviously they don’t think they are – they think they’re moving towards some new ideological utopia where everyone loves each other and drugs and incest, sexualization of children and gutter thinking, rather than nobility, are all part of this brave new society of enforced mediocrity and demoralization.

It’s vital that opponents are vilified.  The Church is the traditional opponent of this process so it must be marginalized.  The excesses such as the paedophile scandal, the reaction against “thou shalt not”, the abortion fight, the corrupt megachurch in America, based on money, the hypocrisy of many claming to be Christian, e.g. Jimmy Swaggart, the evangelical movement, Rowan Williams and so on – the purpose is to equate Church with hypocritical stick-in-the-muds.

No mention of the succour the Church actually gave over the centuries through things like hospices and that the goal is comfort and aid for the unfortunate in society.  No mention of anything positive whatever.  Not just the Church either but anyone who rises to influence:

Scrupulous and influential opponents are discredited, threatened or murdered.  It goes very slowly, and its purpose is to eventually bring the target nation to total collapse, when efficient shifts of power structure and economy can take place.

One major arm of this multipronged attack is pornography and in particular, internet pornography.  It’s something only talked about in absolute terms, by the Moral on one side and the Libertarian on the other.  There is no middle ground.  It is one of a plethora of issues which send people into opposed camps and into adversarial debate, rather than discussion of what is really happening.

The very language employed and the buzzwords immediately identify where you are on the debate.  The very fact that I’d run a post on pornography labels me, before any of the arguments are looked at.  I read a post the other day where the blogger asked why looking at filth doesn’t corrupt the censors?

That is a subtle example of winning the debate on the filth by putting a philosophical nicety.  It’s a good point about censors and as you know, censorship is a hot topic and anathema to any libertarian who fails to see that he does that every day with his own kids – censors what they can and can’t do, decides what’s appropriate in so many areas, not just moral.

So, by taking a legitimate point – that adults are old enough to look after themselves, they extend that to the vulnerable as well and leave them as prey to the unscrupulous.  This is part of the process of demoralization and you only need look back at Marcuse and others of that school to see it in black and white.  But who looks back and does that?  How many in society even know about Marcuse and his inordinate influence in the 50s and 60s?

And those inspired by the icons of that time, the Boomers, sang good ole Bob Dylan’s:

Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command; your old road is rapidly ageing.

Who would have thought at the time that today’s sons and daughters would be way beyond their parents’ influence and subject to the world culture controlled and funded by the very people who would enslave all of us?

So, by funding a Vietnam, tapping into the patriotism of the majority, there would be an opposition, mainly young and these people would generally kick against any moral code at all because moral codes are now associated with authoritarianism and oppression [don't you oppress me] and this breaks the authority of both the Church [seen now only as thou shalt not and not as love thy neighbour] and the parent. Dylan was subtle: “beyond your command“.

Command. As a parent, do you command your children or advise them when necessary? So Dylan’s song is a strawman but very few of that era would have seen it as such.

The media is as guilty as any in the process.  Just as Bilderbergers like Kaletsky and many others infest the newsprint media, key people infest social comentary.  Thus we get a NYT article about some parent introducing a kid to pornography or about the new kindergarten which is “genderless” in Sweden.

There are some of us who are old enough and still recall a time of social morality who write this in reaction to such articles in the NYT:

My biggest concern with this article is the parents who allow certain pornographic sites to be available to their children – in fact, pointing it out to them so they know where to look. This is not a parenting choice – it is a criminal act. Showing sexual images to a minor IS against the law, whether it is your child or not. If this was a teacher or a coach showing these “appropriate” sites to a minor, he or she would be charged.

How many of you would agree that it is a criminal act or to go further, a crime against humanity?  I’d wager not all that many these days, certainly with anyone who is Gen X or younger.  Gen X is the generation where the bathwater was thrown out with the baby [I'm a cross between the two]

In the 50s and 60s, finding your father’s Playboys was the extent of your pornography as a kid or in the images some kid brought to school one day, was confiscated by the staff and the kids all joked about what the staff were doing during lunch break.

There’s always been porn – look at Pietro Aretino during the renaissance, there’ve always been the bohemians but they were a section of society.  Does no one see that what we have now is saturation porn in ever part of what kids will naturally turn to each day, e.g. the internet and smartphone, the social forum and in gaming.

Saturation doesn’t point to an enlightened era – saturation points to the endpoint of a long propaganda campaign, where, to quote Bexmenov again, the aim was:

To “change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that – despite the abundance of information – no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country.”

To say that kids’ exposure to wall-to-wall hardcore porn harms or doesn’t harm ignores the fact that there has been a mighty shift.  Such material in the 50s would have been anathema with the majority and as for giving it to kids – those people would have been subject to the full stringency of the law.  Now people look at it and can’t even avoid a yawn.

Even this post is being read by many who’ve been subverted themselves but can’t possibly know that because they don’t measure it against a point in the past.  What there was at that point in the past was a basically functional society which could defend itself against enemies without and within.

How many would agree with this mother today:

Internet porn is a huge problem for parents. When kids’ curiosity used to take them to Playboy or Penthouse, it was pretty harmless, if racy and exciting to them. But now a similar, natural level of curiosity takes them to truly warped, extreme, and sometimes violent video content that can really impact them at an age when they are just forming their understanding of sex.

She’ll be mocked for that view today and pundits will write that she is supporting censorship “for the cheeldren”.  How on earth can a desire to protect one’s children from harm be translated in to mockery of anyone wishing to defend kids?

These pundits will answer: “It’s because the Left and the State are seizing on any opportunity, any sub-section of society they know will bring out naturally protective instincts in people to push anti-freedom legislation and to expand the State, as in the quote above:

the subverted population – divided, dumbed down, short-sighted and reactive – will beg for the expansion of government programs

In other words, they are cynically exploiting people’s natural feelings, such as in porn itself, to twist it into an act of enslavement.”

And I’d agree 100% with those pundits – that is precisely what the enemy is doing.  So it then becomes impossible to counter, for in opposing those who cry “for the cheeldren”, we have to reject the interests of the cheeldren who are being politically used by the enemy.

We’re being polarized and thrown into polarized camps, defined by the enemy, using the language established by the enemy, in order to blunt any genuine opposition to the underlying process going on.

It’s not just with internet porn, is it?  It’s in every field from medicine to the courts.  Positions defined by the enemy and one must be for or against.  Why can’t I wish to preserve freedom for adults and at the same time wish to preserve the right of parents and the means of censoring what their kids do?

All right – censoring is too emotive?  Let’s rephrase it – why can’t I wish to preserve freedom for adults and at the same time wish to preserve the right of parents and the means of determining protective limits for their kids?  You see here in these two versions the power of language as a weapon.

If you think that kids constantly seeing, day in, day out, a steady diet of other kids, on film, being double penetrated or that someone teenage can be a “pornstar”, then something has happened to your moral compass.  That does not mean that I am calling for you to be censored.  That does mean that parents should be able to resist the onslaught of this sort of thing for their progeny and expect that some vague sort of standards of decency apply to what they’re going to grow up with.

You don’t need to go to strawman defined extreme positions here.  You only need take a halfway sane reasonable middle position and then show outrage at what is actually going on at the extreme end, which is now the ubiquitous end.

#  Michelle Obama said in 2009 that she “wanted to rip Bill Clinton’s eyes out” to the New Yorker and the press ignored it.

#  Michelle Obama was also allegedly jealous of Oprah’s relationships with Barack. In fact, Michelle was so paranoid of all the women working near her husband that she reportedly asked her “inner circle” to keep an eye on any girl that Barack got “touchy” with.

#  “Oprah only wants to cash in, using the White House as a backdrop for her show to perk up her ratings,” Michelle was quoted as telling her staff. “Oprah, with her yo-yo dieting and huge girth, is a terrible role model. Kids will look at Oprah, who’s rich and famous and huge, and figure it’s OK to be fat.”

She may or may not have something there with that last one but the bitchiness is the common thread, is it not?

W-e-e-e-e-l-l-l-l, what’s the issue?  Women are bitchy [and increasingly tarty and obese] and men are pigs [and increasingly surplus to requirements] – so what’s new under the sun?

The issue with lovely Michelle is not so much her uselessness in doing anything in her life other than marry Barry Soetoro, it’s not her utter gracelessness.

It’s her roots and proclivities.

Look at her relationship with Bill Ayres or at her college thesis, which Princeton hid, revealing her race-obsession:

After four years at one of America’s most esteemed academic institutions, Michelle recoiled at the thought of “further integration and/or assimilation into a white cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant.”

And the Wright connection:

For Michelle, who had written that a racial “separationist” would have a better understanding of American blacks than “an integrationist who is ignorant to their plight,” Wright’s Trinity Church mission statement had to resonate.

In the oppression narrative, the murder of 3000 Americans on 9/11 isn’t terrorism but social justice. America, after all, had it coming. For Wright, it was “chickens coming home to roost.” Indeed, Wright sometimes prefers to call our country “the U.S. of KKK A” — a grotesque sentiment which, we shall see, is shared by others with whom the Obamas choose to associate themselves.

For their part, the Obamas couldn’t get enough of Wright. Barack and Michelle had him marry them. They chose him to baptize their children, who were routinely exposed to Wright’s race-baiting bombast.

And this is the non-transparent alleged Kenyan and his wife whom half of you over there want to make President of a disintegrating society for four more years.

Good luck, America, with role models like Michelle Soetoro.  She detests half of America and you can cut that any which way you like.  As a black, she detests white America.  As a woman, she detests men.  As a Marxist, she detests the nation built on free enterprise.

And yet white left-liberals will continue to support people such as Michelle Soetoro who detest them.  Go figure.

………..

By the way:

Losses at Oprah’s TV channel approach $330M
Oprah Won’t Publicly Support Obama in 2012 Election

Quick observation: doesn’t look too obese to me:

… it was also nice to see the teenager [0:46] unplug his earbuds!!

Near the top of the list of the Pirate Party’s demons is copyright protection, and rightly so. Copyright protection is an antiquated relic of the late Middle Ages that has no place in the digital era. It is debatable whether such government-granted monopolies were ever the best way to finance the production of creative and artistic work, but now that the internet will allow this material to be instantly transferred at zero cost anywhere in the world, copyrights are clearly a counter-productive restraint on technology.

The major difference is that the distortions from copyright protection are much larger. While tariffs on cars or clothes would rarely exceed 20-30 per cent, the additional cost imposed by copyright protection is the price of the product. Movies that would be free in a world without copyright protection can cost $20-$30. The same is true of video games, and the price of copyrighted software can run into the thousands of dollars.

Discuss.

[Picdump]

In response to a question during J.P. Morgan’s April 13th quarterly earnings conference call, Mr. Dimon made his regrettable comment, “It’s a complete tempest in a teapot. Every bank has a major portfolio. In those portfolios you make investments that you think are wise, that offset your exposures.” And fully two weeks later he apparently still had not seen the detailed positions.

… or:

Mr. Dimon has been incredibly complacent, but he’s not the focus of this CBB.  It’s more important to contemplate that the entire world has been incredibly complacent – for years now.  I recall being bewildered when reading inside accounts of the months and weeks leading up to the collapse of LTCM back in 1998.  How could so many operating in the bowels of derivatives and speculative trading have been so oblivious to what was unfolding?

… or:

For years now, I’ve had a fascination with trying to better grasp how seemingly apparent crises invariably catch everyone unprepared.  True, a crisis wouldn’t really be much of a crisis if the marketplace was prepared for it.  But over the centuries there have been scores of major Bubbles and monetary fiascos.  And having read numerous detailed accounts of manias and Credit busts, on virtually every occasion I would find myself asking, “How could they not have seen it coming?”

There are those who do see them coming, so much so that they actually create them.  This post touches on it.  Some might say that that’s just good business, screwing everyone over and producing nations of Bob Cratchits.  No level playing field is good business?

In 1857:

Corsair, the Life of J.P. Morgan, tells us that the Panic of 1857 was caused by the collapse of the grain market and by the sudden collapse of Ohio Life and Trust, for a loss of five million dollars. With this collapse nine hundred other American companies failed. Significantly, one not only survived, but prospered from the crash.

… and:

In Corsair, we learn that the Bank of England lent George Peabody and Company five million pounds during the panic of 1857. Winkler, in Morgan the Magnificent, says that the Bank of England advanced Peabody one million pounds, an enormous sum at that time, and the equivalent of one hundred million dollars today, to save the firm. However, no other firm received such beneficence during this Panic.

Ron Chernow wrote that the Morgan munificence was reprised in the 1907 panic:

“In the following days, acting like a one-man Federal Reserve system, [J. Pierpont] Morgan decided which firms would fail and which survive. Through a non stop flurry of meetings, he organized rescues of banks and trust companies, averted a shutdown of the New York Stock Exchange, and engineered a financial bailout of New York City.”

Boom and bust are essentials for the Rothschilds/JPMs/hangers-onto make their dosh.  With no natural boom and bust cycles, they need to create them by influencing not only markets but political events or at the very least, profiting from them:

The 1837 panic:

Because of U.S. debt troubles, Peabody became persona non grata around London (after all, he had sold the Brits much of that debt). But that did not deter him. He bought the depreciated state bonds when they were trading for pennies on the dollar. When these bonds paid interest again, in the late 1840s, Peabody reaped a fortune.

Some will say: “There you go, Marx was right – capitalism in all its ignominy.”  What do they say about the corner shopkeeper who now can’t set up his corner shop because of bureaucratic greed?  Can they make any distinction between the two?

Some will say Peabody should not have profited.  I say there was nothing wrong with him reading and profiting on a changing market – that shows astuteness and often hard work.   Good luck to Capitalists at Work.  The issue, as you well know, is if your parent company created that market fluctuation and you had the readies to exploit it.

What is the saying again – don’t ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence?  I’d submit that both are operating in the case of Jamie Dimon.

[H/T Chuckles]

With my 20 a day habit, I’ll be 110 before I go.

This came by email:

A young man hired by a supermarket reported for his first day of work. The manager greeted him with a warm handshake and a smile, gave him a broom and said, “Your first job will be to sweep out the store.”

“But I’m a college graduate!!” the young man replied indignantly.

“Oh, I’m sorry about the misunderstanding,” said the manager. “Here, give me the broom – I’ll show you how.”

It’s common for the old to serve it up to the young and has been for eons – read a book like Decline and Fall and it’s in there. Selective memories which make things seem rosier and a tendency to lump all youngsters in one basket, whilst the young who see anyone fifteen or twenty years older than them as being on the decline are par for the course.

Nowhere was this more obvious to me than in the comments of girls in my lessons in Russia who were bemoaning what “the young” were doing in the mid-2000s. This was 20 year olds referring to 15 year olds – kid sisters etc.

Was there any truth in it? Yes. I’m not saying “thin” is the be-all and end-all but no girl with any self-respect would have left the house pre-2000 with hair messy and carrying weight. It was rare to see any sort of paunchy roundness – it was seen as “I don’t care” – and as for obesity, there just wasn’t for those 20 year olds.

Not so the 15 year olds. One summer’s day at Ikea, which was part of a new shopping complex, we went for something to eat and there were two girls at the counter with bare bellies hanging over waistbands of short shorts and the thighs were flabby. My mate was shocked and appalled but I said: “Par for the course in the west.”  What had really shocked him was that these girls did not care.

The girls in my groups were savage about the new phenomenon. “They see it as a badge of distinction,” was the general tenor of the comments. “To be fat is to have money and to have money is everything.” That was a candid assessment of Russian society.

If there was ever a society which didn’t need, which wouldn’t be able to cope with, which was ill-suited to western imperialist pig-dog “depravity” and “slackness”, it was Russia and I can’t help thinking that there was intention here. Western mega-companies were everywhere with enormous clout to influence things. That gave me my livelihood, true but at the same time, it was seducing the Russians with things they didn’t need, like credit.

And part of it was the repulsion felt by my girls about the “new generation” of tarts, for that was the other thing they told me about the young. Never mind that there were a considerable number of those in the “house of girls” where I taught, at all levels but there wasn’t the blanket tartdom which was coming up. In fact, that very word uttered by a 20 year old showed there were still vestiges of the old society remaining.

And I tell you, if it was a choice between the company of a 20 year old who looked after herself, attended to her studies and had a serious boyfriend and the new pseudo-western phenomenon – foulmouthed, drugged out of their skulls, clubbing many times a week [who let them in the clubs?], no prizes for which one I’d rather be with. For a start the former at least brushed their hair.

So, Mike Stock, of Stock, Aitken and Waterman, has come out, has he, and bemoaned the use of sluttiness to sell things to the young:

The 60-year-old launched a scathing attack on acts who use risqué performances and sexually-charged pop videos – in contrast to the stars he helped launch in the 80s, such as Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan.

More than one commenter mentioned hypocrisy but hey, let that one pass and look at what some editor or whatever of some magazine called Q wrote that anyone criticizing the new porn are just “outdated”.  This is the mantra that’s always been used by those pushing things onto others, especially things which are obnoxious.

Someone rightly pointed out that Madonna was just as bad [and got worse as time went on] and that Adele, far from being a role model was foul-mouthed and tasteless.  Someone [not sure if male or female] wrote:

Wise words. If only people would heed them. But the agenda in Britain to sexualise young girls is phenomenal and it is the people who want that who seem to have control. And noone stands up for the young girls who will be the victims of this approach.

The triple Olympic gold medallist admitted that of his previous Finn Gold Cup victories, this was the sweetest of them all for having won it on his home waters in Cornwall. “This is by far and away the best because I grew up and learned to sail here in Cornwall on these waters. Nothing else really matters apart from the Olympics so whatever has happened before – problems, issues, difficult situations – you just have to try and put them behind you,” Ainslie explained.

Here he is at it on the water:

… and again:

“I would say that particular moment ranks right up there with winning a gold medal,” said Britain’s greatest Olympic yachtsman, who wore the number 001 on his white London 2012 top.

“It was pretty emotional, so much effort has gone into getting the Olympics in London and it means so much to everyone involved.”

Typical champion, speaking like that.

It’s fair that we castigate so many aspects of these Olympics and maybe even the Olympics themselves the way they’ve gone but it’s a different matter with national heroes such as Ben Ainsley and Amy Williams, even Eddy the Eagle.

Just as our troops overseas are true heroes but the Blairs sending them there should be shot, so it is here.

Incidentally, for afficianados, the Finn class is a wonderful boat and though I never sailed it, I sailed its younger sister, the OK Dinghy.  It’s not an easy boat and you do need a certain bulk and the ability to shift your weight around judiciously.

It’s always sported the unstayed mast – that is, the mast which is unsupported by stays [or wires to hold it up] – and thus I imagine it’s a natural for carbon fibre today.

More than that, it is one of the original designs from the 50s and 60s, such as the Flying Dutchman, Sharpie and Tornado [all of which I've crewed on] which have stood the test of time, for the very simple reason that they are classic designs which actually work and have not been surpassed.  The Finn hull has altered very little since 1949.  It hasn’t needed to.

Why the fleximast?

Absolutely essential in monohulls and especially those with unstayed masts, as it flattens out the top of the sail in a blow and allows it to drop off a little. lowering the centre of effort of the sail and making the boat easier to keep upright.

That twist in the top of the sail also encompasses the change in dynamics of the wind as it makes its way to the tip – just look at aeroplane wings to see similar twist at the tip – it’s all about efficiency and during the golden era of the early wingsails, they were certainly fast but lacked that twist at the top, which they’ve been trying to engineer back in ever since.

Here is the physics of it – very interesting to scientific-minded people:

The other word is kosh’mar [stress the kosh, more like 'lush'] – which means ‘nightmare’. It does pretty well the same job and I’d submit both are the words of choice in this case below, via Chuckles, via WM Briggs:

In Sweden, “it is now considered a distinct discrimination if one is addressed as a man or woman.” So reports Kopp Online.

Sweden is angling to de-genderify their pronouns so that use of he or she is officially discouraged, to be replaced by something resembling it (hen).

Not only does this move strip useful information from its language, the Swedes have made an important step in subtracting from a person’s humanity, since to be called an “it” is to be equated to a chair or a bug.

Now that, dear reader, is true equality. And it is under the banner of Equality that these changes are being made.

Koshmar!  Uzhas!

Cut immediately to Uncle Badger who commented at OoL on Barry’s Kenyan birth [or not]:

What I find so deeply sinister is the completeness with which the Left has managed to shut-down any discussion – to the extent that even some who are usually lampooned as swivel-eyed Rich-wing loons slam the door once the issue of Obama’s origin is raised. They are too scared even to discuss it.

It is the Left’s power to control the debate, via the media but also in real life, that is troubling.

Because, let’s face it – we are powerless to stop this madness going on.  I lump JD’s art comment below, the Barry Soetoro birth, this Swedish insanity and so on under the same heading and that heading is less than complimentary.

De-genderify their pronouns!!!Uzhas! Koshmar!  You thought that was bad – try this – Briggs continues:

There is in Sweden a kindergarten with the telling name of Egalia where “gender-free” children are taught the joys of homosexuality and to play house, imagining, for instance, that there are “two or three mothers.” In a separate article, the wardens of this institution justify their experimentation by claiming that “gender” is not something which you are born with, but is something which can be “changed at any time.” This being so, the little tots should learn early how to do this morphing.

I want to weep.  People, what has happened to us?  What has gone wrong and who are these people who would perpetrate such outrages on toddlers?  What sort of parents have that progeny?  What substances are they on?  Can they be reasoned with?

After consulting the Bible, the priest says, “My son, after an exhaustive search, I am positive that sex is work and is therefore not permitted on Sundays.”

Barry thinks: “What does a priest know about sex?”

So he goes to a protestant minister, who after all is a married man and experienced in this matter. Barry queries the minister and receives the same reply. “Sex is work and therefore not for the Sabbath.”

Not pleased with the replies, Barry then seeks out the ultimate authority: a man of thousands of years’ tradition and knowledge. In other words, he goes to a rabbi.

The rabbi ponders the question, then states, “My son, sex is definitely play.”

Barry replies, “Thank goodness but rabbi, how can you be so sure when so
many others tell me sex is work?”

The rabbi softly speaks, “If sex were work, my wife would have the maid do it.”

As you read on do not forget to use your imagination to enhance your enjoyment of this deeply profound philosophical work-

You really loved that piece, didn’t you.

One of my best, for sure.

I was thinking of going along to the Hayward and offering an imaginary £8 to see the show.

But then I thought it might be better, in the spirit of the exhibition, to stay at home and just imagine that I had toured the gallery and imagine my surprise to find that I fully enjoyed what I didn’t see.

Blogger (linked to Google) is also parading a new interface and causing many bloggers to threaten emigration to WordPress.

I understand that Google is trying to create a uniform “look” to all their their enterprises. Fortunately we can still toggle between old Blogger interface and new, but that is going to cease at some point in coming months.

Same kind of objections have arisen for the new Blogger look as those mentioned in the post about G-mail. Too much white space, font not bold enough, stuff moved around for no reason but to create “change”. Re-inventing the wheel by making it square.

Quite right but it’s even worse than that, so I discovered.

WordPress itself has “done a Blogger” and wrecked what was once good. Its Menus don’t work with many themes, its new image resizing doesn’t work, comments don’t work with older versions of Firefox and there’s a problem with spam reported from many quarters. Google will not interface with old Firefox – it simply doesn’t allow comments using its new mechanism. Go over to Safari – piece of cake.

Regulars at my place will remember the horrific time I was having with comments and spam a year ago – regulars were being spammed for no reason, all sorts were going on. Now it isn’t happening. I’m still with WordPress and still with exactly the same theme.

So why is it working now and didn’t before?

Simple – I downgraded to an old version of WordPress. End of problem. Whenever I do images for OoL, for example for Mark Wadsworth, it can’t be done at OoL. I do the images at N.O., resize there, take the html and go over to OoL.

The newer versions of WordPress are c**p but even that’s not the end of the story.

My novel[s] are on Blogger. Formerly, if I wanted to edit, it was simple – change it in Word, Control+A, Control+C … take the html over to Post Edit [html mode] in Blogger, Control+A, Control+V, Publish.

All done. As many times as I liked … and I liked many times.

Now they’ve applied the new abomination and here’s how it goes. First part in Word’s OK … take the html over to Post Edit [html mode] in Blogger, Control+A, Control+V, lose all formatting – all of it!!!!   One massive slab of text, no paragraphs, no italics, no blockquotes – nothing!

OK, the only way around it is to go to Compose, which formats for text but not for other html, such as for pics and links, take the html for every pic and link, one by one and put in Html mode in Edit Post. Switch to Compose mode. Take the text body only from Word and put it in to Edit Post in Compose mode. Now highlight the text only in Edit Post but not the pic or link html and go to T in the menu. Select Normal, as it is preset to Small [meaning tiny]. Go back to Html mode to tidy up, Publish.

Oh and you’ll have to reformat every pic now which was there before. Each and every time you wish to edit – it’s a total nightmare. And don’t even think of manually resizing pics. The only way you can do that is to go into automatic and specify new Large and Medium. You can get it to manual but you can’t see it change before your eyes – you have to guess, Publish, look, reopen Edit and do a little more, Publish … and so on.

This has to be the worst “upgrade” I have ever seen from any company – the coding is kindergarten, there are so many issues which haven’t been considered – simple things people with any sort of formatting ability above an amoeba will need – plus it looks awful. They have no aesthetic sense and no coding ability.

They need to be summarily sacked.

Were you as daft as them?

La Sardina — St. Tropez Fontanette or the Leica M Monochrome ?

I want two of each … there’s something about a B&W photograph shot through a Leica lens that’s very special. As an aside, I’ve been told – but never confirmed – that it is the sand used for making the glass, which is supposedly very different to that used by the Japanese camera manufacturers.

After four games of the World Chess Championship match in Moscow, which began on Friday, Viswanathan Anand, the titleholder, and his challenger, Boris Gelfand, have been unable to make a dent in each other.

All four games have been draws, and there has been little drama, as not one has lasted more than 40 moves. The game on Tuesday was 34 moves.

That’s right, folks – virtually nothing has happened.  Catch all the action by clicking the pic for the interactive chess viewer of one of the draws.

On the edge of our seats – Galfand tries his Gruenfeld, then batters our senses by “unleashing a laser beam of this bishop across the board”!  My sainted aunt!

Meanwhile, we cross to another scintillating sport:

You may need this:

I cheated slightly when I commented here

Flown into Bilbao twice and both times the plane was struck by lightning just as we were landing.

Another strike came when flying from the civilised end of this island down to London and the very laconic Scottish first officer said ach, nae bother oor planes are designed to deal with that sort of thing

But the best one (best?) was at the races in Madrid when there was a direct hit on the grandstand; all the power was blown out with a huge crrraaack!!!!!!!!!

…..except the Tote

Like planes that is designed to keep going: planes merely discharge the electricity through a static discharger at the tail where it finds it way to earth but the Tote was using a UPS system.

This is a magic box of tricks which switches in milliseconds to backup generators when there is a power outage.
All internet servers are, or should be, connected to them and hospitals for example are full of them – can’t have a power cut during an operation, can we!

Just a thought: we are encouraged to ‘live in harmony with nature’ but how is that possible when all of nature wants to kill us?  Everything from lightning to earthquakes to hurricanes to diseases and parasites and sharks and…..

Nature lives by killing, by destroying life.

Nature is evil!

… the mind boggles … the solution to the UK economic crisis, and the way to end the persistent nuisance of the climate inconsiderately changing all the time, is to add a million “secure, flexible, permanent” union workers building wind farms to the UK government’s permanent welfare rolls.These folks would be funny if they weren’t so dangerous.

Comments on the post:

Greg Cavanagh says:

One million more government employees within a 12 month period. What could possibly go wrong?

It’s truly sad that supposedly intelligent people couldn’t figure out that government employees take their wages from the general public. And the worst aspect of it is, surely he would have talked with other people about his idea before going to print, yet nobody else saw the flaw in his plan either.

There is a madness gripping the world.

Bob says:

I don’t know. I’ve been doing environmental management full time and part time in private industry for 30 years. If it weren’t for the government, I’d have had to find honest work.

1 million permanent government workers building high cost windmills and other high cost green delights. Absolutely wonderful. Why not 2 million? We’d stop the climate from changing twice as fast.

[H/T Chuckles]

One single word makes possible all civilisation. It’s a small word, a magic word, yet it transforms, frees everyone. You must whisper it to yourself.

The word is ‘no’.”

[Monkey]

It looks like Google has finally pulled the plug on the old GMail UI. As far as I can tell, this redesign is just change for the sake of change. I can’t see a single improvement! But I can spot three distinct un-provements *:

1.  The featureless white void: the old interface had colored borders and variations in background color which served to deliniate navigation from content and provide visual landmarks that helped me find my way around the page. It had visual ‘texture’.

2.  The “importance” marker is now right next to the stars. I find the (algorithmically-applied) importance marker completely useless and would remove it if I could, but I use the stars quite heavily.

3.  The new icons are inferior to the old text buttons. The text buttons were self-describing. The new icons are not. I’m not usually a fan of toolbar icons; they’re never as self-explanatory as their designers think they are, so they usually need text labels to be decipherable.

Why were these changes made? I don’t know. According to the Gmail blog, the goals of the redesign included: to put mugshots of people into conversation view, to make the density adjustable, to make themes fancier, to make the left sidebar customizable, and to add an advanced search panel.

In other words, a complete wank we neither want nor need.  Can’t leave well enough alone, can they?