Die, Caps Lock, Die

One of my peeves against propagated obsolete legacy is the caps lock key for computers. I hate it. In the 32 years that I've been using computers, I don't think that I've ever hit it intentionally. It is where it is because typewriters used it to mechanically lock down the shift key. But I have yet to meet anyone who types in all caps, except to indicate online screaming. Even then, it isn't hard to hold a shift key with a pinky while typing with the other 9 fingers. But now there is a fix! In every version of Windows since W2K, there is a secret patch that lets you convert any key to another. I've chosen to make CAPSLOCK into a simple shift. If I really need to lock caps, I can do it through software, or convert another useless key (e.g. scroll lock) into caps lock. I found the magical tool in JohnHaller.com's Useful Stuff essays: Disable Caps Lock. It's a simple registry tweak that he found at annoyances.org (where they have full technical details). Just download and launch the tweak. You get warnings, But it works! Just follow the directions and you'll never be bothered by caps lock again.

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Nader in Omaha

Tuesday afternoon, I was privileged to be able to attend a speech by Ralph Nader, followed by a question-and-answer session and a book-signing. He was promoting his new book, Only the Super-rich can save us! If you weren't aware that he has a new book out, you aren't alone. In fact, his presence in Omaha wasn't well-publicized. I managed to see this article in the local paper which alerted me to both the fact that he had a new book out, and that he was in Omaha. I was fortunate enough to be able to arrange for some time off work, and went to the 3:00 session at McFoster's Natural-Kind Cafe. Unfortunately, I completely forgot my role as a blogger and so I was woefully unprepared to take notes or photos. So rather than direct quotes, I'll discuss some of the main themes of his speech, as well as the question-and-answer session. Nader was scheduled to speak at 3:00 p.m., but didn't actually take the podium until about 3:15, largely due to the enthusiastic crowd gathered around him peppering him with questions and having their books signed. He spoke for about a half-hour, then took questions for roughly another hour. I estimated the crowd to number about 80, and it was standing-room only in the small upstairs room at McFoster's. His speech stuck pretty closely to the themes of the book, which asks us to re-imagine the last several years. The book begins with the disastrous fumbling of Hurricane Katrina, and a fictionalized Warren Buffet aghast at the apparent inability of a former first-world country to provide relief to its own citizens. Using his vast economic resources, he marshals the needed supplies and delivers them to a devastated New Orleans. The experience haunts him though, and he decides to convene a group of billionaires to solve some of the most pressing crises confronting American democracy. Using untold billions of their own, they are able to finally provide an effective foil against the big-money interests that would continue using the system to unjustly enrich themselves.

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Womens Rights in the 21st Century

I found a fascinating post on one of the blogs I regularly read: Weekend Diversion: An Amazing Group of Women. It is mostly about the Asgarda women of the Ukraine, a small group of (mostly young) women working for the rights of women in an environment plagued with sex trafficking and other abuses of women, Eastern Europe. There is also a video of Loudon Wainwright singing "Daughter". Well worth clicking over to hear the song and see pictures of essentially a modern tribe of Amazons. Meanwhile, I wondered if the United States is the only nation in which there are so many groups of women actively protesting against rights for women. Like Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, who worked diligently to persuade women to vote against the Equal Rights Amendment, and continue to agitate to prevent any laws from passing that explicitly give women protections already enjoyed by men. Pro Life groups are also essentially anti-women's rights, and largely manned by women. It is basically a matter of whether the government or a women may legally decide who or what may live within her body and what may be expelled. Men already have this protection, granted by their reproductively deficient bodies allowing them to claim any foreign internal organism as a hostile alien.

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More Quotes

I periodically post my most recently collected quotes (over the past 3 months). I just love collecting quotes, because there's a novel in every sentence--it's high-impact reading. I collect these from many sources, though more than a few of the following were presented to me by The Quotations Page, which I use as my homepage. Enjoy! "I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him." Booker T. Washington "If you cut yourself in half and both sides lived, which side would be you?" Anonymous on Reddit.com “Think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are stupider than that” George Carlin "If a thing isn't worth saying, you sing it. " Pierre Beaumarchais (1732 - 1799) "Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves." Carl Jung (1875 - 1961) "Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster, "To the Vanishing Point" "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." George Orwell “I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Thomas Edison, on asked how it felt to fail 10,000 times before he figured out the light bulb. "It is a curious thing... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste." Evelyn Waugh (1903 - 1966)

Complexity is the problem. Moving it from hardware to software, or vice versa, doesn’t help. Simplicity is the only answer. There was a product many years ago called the Canon Cat. It was a simple, dedicated word processor; done very nicely in Forth. Didn’t succeed commercially. But then, most products don’t. I despair. Technology, and our very civilization, will get more and more complex until it collapses. There is no opposing pressure to limit this growth. No environmental group saying: Count the parts in a hybrid car to judge its efficiency or reliability or maintainability.
-Charles Moore, who is a pioneer software developer. The 'Forth' language he invented is still in use today, particularly by NASA "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." Upton Sinclair "We hit Iraq because we could. That's the real truth." Thomas Friedman "Man is ready to die for an idea, provided that idea is not quite clear to him." Paul Eldridge

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Guess this author

The more things change, the more they stay the same, it seems. See if you can guess who authored this quotation on capitalism vs. socialism: (all emphases are mine)

The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor—not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. In this respect, it is important to realize that the means of production—that is to say, the entire productive capacity that is needed for producing consumer goods as well as additional capital goods—may legally be, and for the most part are, the private property of individuals. For the sake of simplicity, in the discussion that follows I shall call “workers” all those who do not share in the ownership of the means of production—although this does not quite correspond to the customary use of the term. The owner of the means of production is in a position to purchase the labor power of the worker. By using the means of production, the worker produces new goods which become the property of the capitalist.

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