My computer woes

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve got a very old computer. By “very” I mean something on the order of seven years or so; I really don’t recall.

I get teased because many of the letters on the keys have worn off. I have a kit of handy sticker thingees you can use to remedy that, although I’ve been dragging my feet at actually fixing it. I touch-type anyway, and as long as I place my hands properly I don’t really run into any problems (in fact, when I learned to type in junior high, a class taught by a very strict teacher, we had IBM electric typewriters that had blank keys, to make sure we learned our stuff properly).

The problem is that my computer has accumulated the slings and arrows of time, and it’s gotten quite balky lately. Yes, maybe I could clean it or clear it, but I’ve become wary of such operations and when I read about them I become more wary. Also, although I use a computer a great deal, much more than the average person, and although I know lots of tricks to get what I want out of my computer, I’m not a techie in any way shape or form and I rely much more on habit. That’s why transitioning to a new computer or any computer change at all fills me with dread.

The cost is the least of it. It’s the decision – which one to get? And then of course the transfer of the information and the customizing of the settings, in addition to learning a new operating system. My computer has Windows 7, and I know that’s not “supported” any more, which might be part of the problem. But learning how to use the latest iteration? Arghhh!

I know all you computer-loving folks will have suggestions. I welcome them although I may not follow them.

ADDENDUM: I probably should have added that I use a laptop, and I travel with it so I don’t like it to be too heavy. However, at home I hook it up to a larger screen for ease of viewing.

I also hate “chiclet” keyboards so that limits it considerably unless I get a separate keyboard, and that’s bulky. In addition, I dislike Apple products. I used to have a Mac and I hated it the entire time i had it (4 years) and never ever got accustomed to it.

I’m not the easiest person when it comes to computers.

Jon Gruden, thoughtcrime, and technology

The New Neo Posted on by

Until a couple of days ago I’d never heard of Jon Gruden. Now, of course, I’ve read of his resignation as Raiders coach in the face of the revelation of some private emails he sent some years ago that demonstrated “racist, homophobic and misogynistic comments.” He seems to have hit the politically incorrect trifecta there.

Several of his statements focused on football commissioner Roger Goodell. For example, he called him a “clueless anti-football pussy,” which I suppose is considered misogynistic? Or is it anti-gay? Or is it just anti-Goodell?

I don’t know, but I’m not interested in analyzing Gruden or his email sins. I’m far more interested in whether he’s been guilty of any discriminatory acts against anyone. Has he? Or is it all thoughtcrime from about three to ten years ago (which seems to be the approximate time frame involved)?

In fact, although Gruden’s old emails were against allowing gay players in the NFL, his actions were otherwise:

The email appeared to show a complete disconnect from Gruden’s messaging when his own player Carl Nassib came out as gay before the start of the 2021 season and became the first active openly gay NFL player.

Interesting, no?

I’m tired of this zero tolerance policy for any human being who’s ever expressed – or even thought – a nasty thought. I never liked policing that sort of thing. I’ll choose my friends, but other than that I cut people a lot of slack as long as they’re just talking amongst themselves and not doing anything to anyone. In that, I know, I’m quite outdated – but what else is new?

My more pressing interest is how it came to be that all these private emails were investigated. Apparently they were uncovered not because of any suspicion that Gruden had committed a criminal act or actually any offense at all:

The emails were reviewed as part of an NFL workplace investigation into the Washington Football Team. Gruden’s emails about Goodell were flagged in the investigation. Among them, were disparaging remarks about NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith.

So it was just some sort of fishing expedition? What’s that all about, and why is it okay? I don’t think it’s okay, at least not from what I’ve read so far.

Gruden denies being a racist, and adds:

I was in a bad frame of mind at the time [in 2011], and I called Roger Goodell a [expletive] in one of these emails too. They were keeping players and coaches from doing what they love with a lockout. There also were a lot of things being reported publicly about the safety of the sport that I love.

Doesn’t matter to those with a zero policy against thoughtcrime – until they themselves get caught, that is.

DeMaurice Smith had this to say:

The email from Jon Gruden – and some of the reaction to it – confirms that the fight against racism, racist tropes and intolerance is not over. This is not about an email as much as it is about a pervasive belief by some that people who look like me can be treated as less…

Actually, the fight against those things will never be over, because people are human and humans will be humans. That includes people of every race, ethnicity, and sex (all 500 of the latter, or however many there are at this point according to the left). The fight should be against what’s said in public and more importantly what is done to people, but since that fight is far closer to being over, other fights apparently must be fought, including those against thoughtcrime. That’s a dangerous game that will do more harm than good, and already has.

I also find this phrase interesting: “a pervasive belief by some that people who look like me can be treated as less.” How pervasive is that belief? I submit that it once was quite pervasive but no longer is at all pervasive and in fact is limited to a very few. What interests me most about the phrase Smith uses there is that he segues almost seamlessly from thought to action, without emphasizing that any action at all must be involved – from a belief (evidenced by insensitive and nasty remarks with a racial bent) to the way a person is actually treated.

Smith added this:

…[T]he news is not about what is said in our private conversation, but what else is said by people who never thought they would be exposed and how they are going to be held to account…

A purge?

As I said, I’d be curious whether there is any evidence that Gruden treated any black (or other minority) player worse than other players because of bigotry. I haven’t heard anything, but of course it’s possible. But I think it’s certainly possible to harbor stray bigoted thoughts that might be expressed in a moment of pique and yet never act out any such thoughts in actions. Surely if Gruden was such an awful bigot, such actions would be easy to demonstrate.

And then there’s the whole issue of emails. Along with other technology, they make it far easier than ever before to spy on people and go back in time to do so. It doesn’t take long to scan an enormous number of emails for certain words or phrases. Letters, on the other, hand, are far harder to obtain and search, and far less likely to even be saved.

When we first were using email, who ever envisioned these sorts of developments? Someone probably did, but that someone wasn’t me. I guess it all comes down to whether you value liberty – and liberty of thought, even if offensive – or whether you think it’s perfectly fine to snoop into people’s supposedly private communications in order to see whether their thoughts and expressions of those thoughts have always been sufficiently pure.

[NOTE: Some of the comments at that link are pretty clever. Here’s one: “Look at emails, etc. from all coaches, players in the NFL from the past ten years. Bet the NFL would have to shut down entirely. Problem solved.”]

The strange case of Kamala Harris

The New Neo Posted on by

You may have noticed I don’t write much about Kamala Harris. Early on, though – August 2019 – I pointed out that she is remarkably unlikable:

Have you ever noticed how voters can forgive a candidate almost anything if they like that person? One of Hillary’s big problems, for example—one Obama correctly sensed in the 2008 race, when she was his main rival—is that she’s “unlikable.”

So is Kamala Harris, IMHO.

It didn’t take long to perceive this about Harris. But as time has gone on, I will also say that she’s gotten much more strange. I don’t know whether this represents an actual change, or whether it’s just an impression that grows stronger and stronger with greater exposure.

But this video caught my attention as a good example of that strangeness. In it, she seems to be following a script (as are the kids), but her affect in certain parts of it is so fake and her over-acting so unctuous that it gives me a bit of the ceepy-crawlies:

Harris seems uncomfortable in front of the camera, uncomfortable in front of people, uncomfortable in her job as VP. I’m not sure why, although I’ve read a lot of speculation. Does she feel pushed out, is she upset that poll numbers are so bad, does she realize she’s out of her depth, is she frightened? Or is she just a strange, strange person?

New England stone walls

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Yesterday I noticed a discussion in the open thread about stone walls in New England and elsewhere. I thought I’d link to a post I wrote about stone walls, but – as sometimes happens – I discovered there was no such post published and that I was thinking about a draft I wrote many years ago and never published. So perhaps the time has come for it to see the light of day.]

In rural (or even semi-rural) New England the stone walls are just about everywhere:

Walk into a patch of forest in New England, and chances are you will—almost literally—stumble across a stone wall. Thigh-high, perhaps, it is cobbled together with stones of various shapes and sizes, with splotches of lichen and spongy moss instead of mortar. Most of the stones are what are called “two-handers”—light enough to lift, but not with just one hand. The wall winds down a hill and out of sight. According to Robert Thorson, a landscape geologist at University of Connecticut, these walls are “damn near everywhere” in the forests of rural New England.

He estimates that there are more than 100,000 miles of old, disused stone walls out there, or enough to circle the globe four times.

I can well believe it.

When I first moved to New England eons ago, I was puzzled by the ubiquity of those stone walls in the forests. I very quickly learned that the forests are second growth and the walls were built when the land was mostly cleared fields (the rocks themselves were a by-product of clearing the once-glaciated land).

By the middle of the 19th century, New England was over 70 percent deforested by settlers, a rolling landscape of smallholdings as far as the eye could see. But by the end of the century, industrialization and large-scale farms led to thousands of fields being abandoned, to begin a slow process of reforestation.

What actually happened was that the midwest opened up, and farming was so very much better there that farmers moved away. There are still plenty of farms in New England, but they’re small.

More here:

The origins of New England’s wall stones date back to between about 30,000 and 15,000 years ago, when the Laurentide ice sheet—a remnant of which still exists in the Barnes Ice Cap on central Baffin Island—made its way southward from central Canada and then began retreating. “It stripped away the last of the ancient soils,” writes Thorson in “Stone by Stone,” “scouring the land down to its bedrock, lifting up billions of stone slabs and scattering them across the region.”

As the ice sheet melted and receded, it left behind deposits of unsorted material ranging in size from clay to massive boulders chiseled from the slate, schist, granite and gneiss bedrock of northern New England and Canada. The bucolic rolling hills and meadows of New England are formed of rich glacial soil called lodgment till—up to 60 meters thick—that was “almost single-handedly responsible for the success of the agricultural economy in New England,” Thorson says. A thinner, looser layer of rocks and sand called ablation, or “melt out” till was left above the lodgment till. Most stone walls are composed of stones from melt-out till, which were “abundant, large, angular and easy to carry,” Thorson says, compared to the smaller, more rounded stones from the deeper lodgment till.

Although New England’s stone walls are popularly associated with the Colonial era, there weren’t actually many rocks lying around in the soil at that time. As evidence, Thorson cites Swedish botanist Peter Kalm, who toured New England in the mid-1700s. In his “Travels in North America,” Kalm observed of its forest soils, “[T]he Europeans coming to America found a rich, fine soil before them, lying loose between the trees as the best in a garden. They had nothing to do but to cut down the wood, put it up in heaps, and to clear the dead leaves away.”

Likewise, Colonial-era books on farming, encyclopedias and recorded observations do not mention stone walls, Thorson notes. Instead of stone walls, Colonial farmers used rail and zig-zag fences made of wood—far more abundant at the time than stone—to pen animals. It wasn’t until the latter half of the 18th century that early stone walls were first widely constructed in New England. Even then, other than in long-farmed interior areas such as Concord, Mass., the stone was typically quarried or taken from slopes rather than from fields.

The region’s stones lay deep in the ground, buried under thousands of years’ worth of rich composted soil and old-growth forests, just waiting to be freed by pioneers clear-cutting New England’s forests—a process that reached its peak across most of New England between 1830 and 1880…

I hadn’t known that. I’d assumed the stones had been there for the earliest of settlers from Europe. But the stones were actually products of forest clearing, and it got worse in a snowball effect:

Widespread deforestation exposed New England’s soils to winter cold—scientists estimate winter was 1 to 1.5 degrees Celsius colder on average during the Little Ice Age than it is today—causing them to freeze deeper than they had before. This accelerated frost heaving, and gradually lifted billions of stones up through the layers of soil toward the surface.

These stones weren’t conducive to farming, so, aided by their oxen, farmers hauled the stones to the outer edges of pastures and tillage lands, typically unceremoniously dumping them in piles that delineated their fields from the forest. (Some of these so-called “dumped walls” would later be relaid more intentionally when improved tools and equipment made rebuilding easier.) In the early days, artistry in stone wall building had to wait. The first priority was survival, which meant clearing land to grow crops and raise livestock.

The settlers were not unfamiliar with the process, either, because “New England” turns out to be aptly named:

…[R]ock in New England is similar to rock in England and Scotland. England and New England have similar natural landscapes because both lands have a similar geologic history. Millions of years ago, England and New England were formed within the same mountain range near the center of Pangaea. So, he says, “the similar fieldstones on opposite sides of the Atlantic were created practically within the same foundry.”

But there was one important difference between these New World and Old World stones: Britain had long been deforested, with its subterranean stones brought to the surface, so its stone walls had been constructed hundreds, if not thousands, of years earlier.

Much much more at the link.

And then – of course – there’s Robert Frost on the subject.

I’ll close with a scene from one of my favorite movies, Jan Troell’s “The Emigrants.” Warning: this scene is not a cheerer-upper. The film is set in Sweden during the mid-1800s, and this clip illustrates one of the many many reasons this family and many others emigrated to Minnesota:

Whatever happened to Brandon?

The New Neo Posted on by

Not that Brandon.

I mean Brandon Straka, the political-changer founder of the WalkAway movement, who was arrested and charged for some of his actions on January 6th in Washington DC. Well, here’s the latest (hat tip: commenter “AesopFan”):

On January 6, Brandon Straka found himself standing on the Capitol grounds. He did not go into the Capitol, foment violence, or engage in violence. Nevertheless, he was arrested and charged with two felonies and a misdemeanor. On Wednesday, Straka pled guilty to the misdemeanor and walked away from the rest. It was still overcharging but it’s a decent outcome and a symbolic one…

Given the unequal application of the law, it’s a travesty that Brandon even had to plead guilty to a Class B misdemeanor.

I was wondering what happened to Straka, and now I know.

How did Rosanne Boyland die, and how has it been covered?

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember 34-year-old Rosanne Boyland? She was one of the five people who died of various causes during or shortly after the January 6th Capitol demonstration (or “insurrection,” according to the left).

Why am I going into the story again at this point? The reason is that the January 6th Capitol incident continues to be used by the Biden administration as a justification for just about every crackdown on the right they can get away with. And what’s more, I recently had two discussions with close relatives, talks that made it very clear to me that both (highly intelligent) people have swallowed the January 6th MSM/Democrat narrative hook, line, and sinker and that it is still operating very forcefully in their political considerations. One person even said to me that, if January 6th hadn’t caused me to conclude by now how extremely dangerous the right is, I was a lost cause.

The edifice on which the rank-and-file Democrat’s perception of the meaning of January 6th is built is composed of thousands of bits of information, one piled on the other to create a very sturdy building indeed. To even begin to break it down would require showing the person a great deal of competing information, and that would require that the person have the motive and will to take the time to look at it. That doesn’t happen very often, and that’s why the MSM does what it does in order to set the narrative early and defend it against any later news that could undermine it.

The original story about the cause of Boyland’s death was that the marauding Trump-crazed crowd had stampeded and crushed her. But her autopsy results from last April indicted that she had actually died of an amphetamine overdose:

The D.C. Medical Examiner’s Office on Wednesday revealed that Roseanne Boyland, one of five people who died amid the Capitol riot, died from accidental “acute amphetamine intoxication”—instead of being crushed by the MAGA crowd as previously reported. The New York Times was the first to report on January that Boyland, a 34-year-old from Georgia who wanted to be a sobriety counselor, was seen in body-camera footage being trampled by rioters as her friend screamed for help.

Apparently Boyland fell amidst the crowd because of the drug reaction, and the crowd did not immediately realize what was happening, but it was the OD that killed her. However, if you were to poll most people on the street, I doubt the majority have ever heard of the autopsy results.

I also recently read claims that Boyland actually was beaten by a police officer and that this is shown in video. I offer that with a large caveat, however, because the assertion was advanced at Gateway Pundit, a source I don’t think it’s good to rely on. Also, I watched the video and can’t make head or tail of it, so I can’t determine whether the charge is true or not. What’s more, the autopsy made no observation of any wounds or bruises consistent with beating, as far as I know.

However, the news stirred up some curiosity in me about a related issue, which is how the MSM covered the Boyland autopsy results. When I did a search at the NY Times website, the most recent mention I could find there for Boyland was at the end of May (quite a while after the autopsy results were issued). The amphetamine overdose autopsy certainly wasn’t featured in any of the headlines listed, nor in the subtitles accompanying them. However, the stampede theory was heavily referenced in early headlines such as these:

[From January 15th]: “Videos Show How Rioter Was Trampled in Stampede at Capitol”

Rosanne Boyland died after losing consciousness in the crush of a pro-Trump mob as it surged against the police. Here’s how it happened.

[from January 28th] “Body Camera Footage Shows Capitol Rioters Trampling Over Woman”

Video obtained by The Times provides a police officer’s view of the deadly battle to defend a key entryway from the surging mob.

And here’s the headline and subtitle for that May 30/31 article, the final one the Times has written so far about Boyland:

“Death of QAnon Follower at Capitol Leaves a Wake of Pain”

Rosanne Boyland had never voted before 2020, but she fell prey to dark conspiracy theories, family members said. She died on the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, and they are still not sure why.

So the focus now shifted to Boyland’s family and their pain, and the headline and subtitle seem to indicate that her cause of death remains a mystery. The way the article was framed and introduced, I don’t think it would necessarily be read by a whole lot of people unless they were interested in delving into the family’s psychological situation. My guess is that most people who had taken in the earlier articles’ contention that Boyland had died in a Trump-follower stampede would not be revisiting this at all. But if they did, they would be reading a while before they came to any mention of the autopsy results, and the article very much downplays them even when it does get around to discussing them.

It’s a long article of about 1800 words. The very beginning indicates the family has no idea why Boyland died. It describes the fact that she seems to have been a QAnon supporter, and that this alarmed her family and friends. It mentions her former drug addiction. But it’s only about 500 words into the article that the autopsy is mentioned, and it’s done this way, emphasizing the trampling again and introducing serious doubt about the autopsy results:

The family is also still struggling to understand how she died. From the video of the chaotic siege, it appeared that she had died after being caught in a crush of rioters. But the autopsy by the Washington medical examiner’s office did not find evidence of trampling and concluded that she had overdosed on amphetamines.

Family members said it was likely that the only amphetamine in her body was the Adderall she took every day by prescription, though it appeared that she might have taken at least twice her prescribed dose.

“We just want to find out what happened, to be able to rest,” Ms. Cave said. “This has been so messed up. We just want to grieve the normal way.”

So the Times covers the autopsy (for the first and only time, as far as I can tell) from the doubting family’s point of view. The article also gives several links to videos that supposedly support the trampling hypothesis, but no link is given to the autopsy report or to any article about the autopsy report. Then, after a lengthy discussion once again of Boyland’s belief in conspiracy theories such as QAnon, and after we also learn about her felony drug conviction and her continuing struggle against drug abuse, we read this only about 140 words before the very end of the article [emphasis mine]:

Ms. Boyland could barely be made out at first in the footage of the crowd’s surge up the Capitol steps — a short figure, outfitted in a black hoodie and American flag sunglasses.

She disappeared into the mob inside the tunnel presidents use when they emerge for their inaugurations. It was the scene of some of the day’s most brutal hand-to-hand fighting, and videos showed rioters crushing police officers between doors and warning that the crowd could become dangerously packed.

Just minutes later, after a push by the police that sent the crowd tumbling back out of the tunnel, she could be seen lying on her side, after which two men dragged her away from the door and began trying to resuscitate her.

It appeared to be a case of trampling. But then the medical examiner concluded that she had died of “acute amphetamine intoxication,” a ruling that left her family, convinced that she had not relapsed into drug abuse, flummoxed. She had been taking Adderall regularly under a doctor’s prescription and had not been seen to have any adverse effects, they said.

Several forensic pathologists and toxicologists who reviewed the autopsy report said in interviews that the level of amphetamine in her blood — most likely from the Adderall — had been enough to be potentially fatal.

Iain M. McIntyre, the former chief toxicologist at the San Diego County medical examiner’s office, said the level could be consistent with her having taken both of her 30-milligram daily doses at the same time, something Ms. Cave said her sister sometimes did. Mr. McIntyre said the high dosage of amphetamine, along with the raucous scene, her heart disease and obesity, could have been enough to make her heart stop.

And remember, this is in a woman with a lengthy history of very serious drug abuse.

So that’s the takeaway. See how the Times manages to report on the autopsy, and yet still write an article that will keep the narrative intact?

Happy Post-modern Indigenous People’s (Columbus) Day

The New Neo Posted on by

In honor of Columbus Day, I refer you back to this post from twelve years ago by Dr. Sanity. Nothing much has changed since then regarding respect for our western traditions and history except that things have gotten worse.

And in line with those thoughts, today I discovered this quote from Jim Bennett (hat tip: Instapundit):

This is primarily an effect of the Calvinist Puritan roots of American progressivism. Just as Calvinists believed in the centrality of the depravity of man, with the exception of a minuscule contingent of the Elect of God, their secularized descendants believe in the depravity and cursedness of Western civilization, with their own enlightened selves in the role of the Elect.

Meanwhile, fall is a tad delayed in New England, but it’s getting here. Columbus Day is traditional leaf-peeping time, and supposedly it’s arrived in the far north, so here’s a photo I took in years past:

“Out of Time” – compare and contrast

The New Neo Posted on by

“Out of Time” was a Rolling Stones song from 1966, and not an especially big hit for them. I had the record it appeared on, “Aftermath,” and I don’t even remember the song. But I came across this cover version by the Bee Gees when they still were Australian teenagers in 1966, and it features Robin Gibb at the age of 16.

It’s an oddity for a number of reasons. One is that the Bee Gees almost never did cover songs, although when they were little kids they did lots of them. I guess this was a transition time for them, from being a kid act in Australia to being a teen act in Australia. It was shortly before they moved to England to get more global exposure.. Another odd thing is their choice of a Stones song, a group they don’t resemble, and one with a sound very unlike that of the Bee Gees – although on a few occasions later on (“Heavy Breathing,” for example) the Bee Gees went to more of a rock sound.

I’m putting it up because I think it’s a good example of the maturity of Robin’s voice at that age, and the remarkable range he had. The person manning or womanning the camera seems to have had a bit of a fascination with Barry’s flowered-pantsed butt, as well, and the go-go dancers are quite the thing, too:

Here are the Stones doing the original:

And this guy had a bigger hit with it than the Stones did. On this recording, apparently Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were singing backup: