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December 12, 2005:
Cut Costs at Any Price:
American businesses are continuing to lose their business to
foreign competitors and the main reason is, they are not responding
to their customers. They save a few pennies by farming out the
very important customer support and services to foreigners who
cannot even speak American English. They save even more pennies
by installing those stupid frustrating telephone, pretended speech
recognition, systems. Ain't it swell? Save a ha'penny here, a
ha'penny there and first thing you know, you've lost ten pounds.
I had to call Microsoft the other day because their stupid
software refused to recognize my internet connection. I discovered
that Microsoft has also gone to that very annoying and stupid
voice recognition answering software. I have found the best way
to make these things work is to shout at them in single syllables.
In the case of Microsoft, the system actually worked better than
their old pretended technicians. Don't misunderstand me. No one
actually fixed their software, but I was able to activate the
software that should have activated automatically over my internet
connection. That is an improvement over the morons they used
to have doing those things. It is faster and more accurate if
you can learn to shout in single syllables. My conclusion, these
new voice recognition answering systems are software written
by morons to replace other morons. In a way it makes kind of
a bizarre sense.
California Controversy:
Some schools out there are walking a very thin legal and educational
line. There are two things wrong. First, they are teaching the
kids to use a laptop in their schoolwork if their parents can
afford to pay for the laptop. It is not clear what happens to
the kids whose parents cannot afford the rather steep price of
$1500.00. Whatever happens, this policy clearly violates the
basic principle of equal education that was supposedly resolved
by the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision.
That was the 1954 Supreme Court decision that struck down the
Plessy v. Ferguson separate but equal decision of 1896. No matter
how many times we kill it, this evil beast keeps being regularly
resurrected by mindless bureaucrats. The media report did not
make clear whether there was evil intent to shut out poor people
or just bureaucratic stupidity.
The second thing wrong is the rather obscene price of $1500.
00 for, what else, an Apple laptop. I have seen laptops advertized
for as little as $500.00. The difference is, these are not (big
fanfare here) APPLE COMPUTERS! They are (small raspberry here)
Intel based computers. The real difference is, Intel and Microsoft
have failed to market in this niche market that may turn out
to be not so small after all. As a result, the entire educational
community has been conned into thinking this grossly overpriced
Apple is infinitely superior to anything else. It's a bunch of
crap, of course, but too many schools do not have anyone qualified
to evaluate these products and point that out. Even those who
do often have their science people overruled by bully bureaucrats.
Engineers:
A large number of the people I know were educated in approved
universities as engineers. Most of these people are much like
me in the memory department. When God made them, she forgot to
give them one. We all have memories like Swiss cheese. Perhaps
it's an occupational hazard. That's okay, but, considering this
mental flaw, I cannot fathom their behavior. These people know
they cannot even remember their zip code, but they still refused
to keep records of what they do. The standard answer I get from
them when I want to know what they did in a particular case is,
"I don't remember." Frankly, I don't know how they
survive. A basic tenet of science is "always keep accurate
records of what you do." Why does it never occur to them
to carry this concept over into the rest of their lives? Are
engineers naturally stupid, or what?
Steven Hadley:
Bush's national security adviser was on the Stephanopolous show.
He successfully dodged every question that was put to him. When
it ended, he acted as though he thought he had won. I think he
did win. He won the wet-spaghetti-on-a-plate award for slipping
around.
Do Gooders:
Now we have a coalition of these airheads in Michigan who want
legislation to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.85 per
hour. Did they notice that they are advocating a 33% pay increase.
In all of the years I was gainfully employed, the best pay raise
I ever got was less than 10%. These were merit raises I was getting.
I never got a non-merit raise. I wonder if these same fools would
like to have the price of their burger and fries doubled. It's
the old question of how much do we want to reward failure? If
you want to do charity, do it, but don't do it with someone else's
money. Give your own money away.
Another Bunch:
We also have some morons who want to have legislation to stop
advertisers from advertising to children. It's all about non
nutritional food items, like candy. It's another case of parents
wanting to abdicate their responsibility and transfer it to government.
The kids don't buy the candy, the parents do. Children's nutrition
is the responsibility of their parents, not their government.
Torture:
Rice was on television denying the charges of prisoner abuse
even in the face of the government manual that details a set
of approved tortures. She says they don't torture prisoners because
it does not work. Bush says the same thing, but they still have
this manual that details how to torture prisoners. They say,
"Yes, but what we do is not really torture. It's approved."
They just don't get it. They are right. Everyone knows that torture
does not work, whether it's approved or not. Why won't they stop
doing it?
What these prisoners are doing is jerking us around while
pretending to confess. Our resources have been mis-deployed in
false alarms from these informants time after time. Whether we
torture them or not, they are not going to help us. The will
do their best to misdirect and confuse us. Why doesn't someone
get it?
Stephen Breyer:
He is a jurist who was appointed an associate justice of the
U.S. Supreme Court in 1994 by Bill Clinton. Of course, he wrote
a book. He called it "Active Liberty." Alfred A. Knopf
published it. I read about 2/3 of it. If I got it right, it's
a standard rationalization for ignoring the constitution. It's
the old argument, "Well yes, the constitution says that,
but they didn't really mean what they said. They meant something
else." How dare you Breyer! You are an associate justice
and you have a right and a duty to vote what you believe is right.
But please, take personal responsibility for it. Don't lay it
off on what you imagine someone might have thought more than
200 years ago. The framers said what they said and they meant
what they said. To assume anything else is a gross disservice
to some great men!
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