Stormbringer's Thunder

Buona sera. Yours truly is a bit wound up about a different approach to posting. I believe that I will be posting more often, but with less text; I want to become more efficient with my thoughts and words. Sure, the occasional lengthy treatises and rants will appear, however. "I gotta be me", as the song goes. Things may change. After all, everything is a work in progress (to use another saying). But to use one of my own sayings around the office, "We'll see what happens". Unfortunately for people who want short messages, this is not going to be one of them. It's my usual length. But it's very good, keep reading, it'll take you about two or three minutes. To the right is an example of extreme clutter . Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy those are who already possess it. —Francois de La Rochefoucauld, French author & moralist (1613 - 1680) When Hal the Hacker gets on a project for me, he has all kinds of stu

Buona sera. I was able to catch some of the usual Christmas movies that I like to watch every year. Now, wait a minute! I am not going to be going on about Christmas, exactly, and then I'll drop it. I'm as glad the season is winding down as much as almost everyone else. So anyway. Hard-hearted and heavy-handed employers make labor burdensome. Labor, by its nature, is seldom a joy. But treating your employees poorly, or even neglecting opportunities to bring them a little joy, is a good part of what causes labor to be a burden. In National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Mr. Shirley suspended the Christmas bonuses. He was becoming a miser and was more interested in saving a few dollars than in the best interests of his employees. In this case, the Christm as bonus was expected every year, and they counted on it as part of their salaries. When he had to look at the Griswold family, he said, " Look, uh, sometimes things look good on paper, but lose their luster when y

Buon giorno, Pardners! Do you ever have that experience where something occurs to you and you ponder it for a while, then it finds its way to the back of your mind and camps out for a while, then it comes back so you can consider it again? It happens to me occasionally. Sometimes, the cycle repeats itself several times. Well, one of those thoughts seems to have come to fruition. Tommy the Knocker and Nicky hate it when I talk that way ("comes to fruition"), and they don't like my title. Too bad. There are people that put "The State" above all else. Your liberties do not matter to these Statists . All that matters is government control, making you bow to the state. According to Mark Levin, Statists are not necessarily liberals. I see it that liberals are more likely to be Statists (so I have a slight disagreement with the great one), and in America the extreme leftist liberals do not believe in the rights of the individual. All that matters are their own

Buon giorno. While doing some follow-up research on my " Arrogant Atheist " series, I came across some interesting bits of projection (where you do something, deny doing it, and then say that someone else is doing it). Also, I find some interesting rationalizations for arrogance. While skimming an atheist group, I saw some comments by someone that is a "Christian" (I put the term in quotes because this person is so liberal in theology, it's pretty much "anything goes") tells the atheists, "You're so much nicer than the so-called 'Christians' that I run across", and how Christians shame themselves, etc. Meanwhile, the sneering and condescending approaches of the atheists is excused. Why? Because the ultra-liberal "Christian" had more in common with the atheists than with people that believe the Bible to be true. Of course there was agreement! Also, use of deliberately antagonistic expressions such as "xians"

Buoa sera. Not too long ago, I was involved in a discussion in an online forum regarding things that we find irritating. One fellow is upset about anti-intellectualism, and wondered why it exists in the first place. I felt that I was bright enough to attempt to offer a bit of an answer (it was a public forum, after all). After I gave that answer, I kept thinking about the subject and have more ideas to offer. Why are people anti-intellectual (or dislike those who call themselves intellectuals)? Smug. The "intellectual class" is so much more clever than those of us who actually have to work for a living, and they let us mere mortals know it. Here is a smug, arrogant article that is just reeking of attitude and helps prove my point. Impractical. They gather together to discuss "ideas" and "knowledge", but appear to be unable to take care of even their own needs. Hey, Mr. Brain! Can you change a tire, or only discuss the physics involved? Torque this , Pa

Edited content for clarity on Tuesday, November 24, 2009. Buon giorno. Yes, I think my title is funny. This past weekend was an emotional, mental and physical roller coaster. It was time to reformat my hard drive. Dump the scraps of leftover software and things I really do not need, reload it with stuff that I know is better and go at it with my increased knowledge. Reformatting has been a source of bad news for me for a long time, mainly from trying to get the computer to resemble what I had before. I have no problem helping someone else with it, but for me, I get anxiety attacks based on experiences with my first Windows computer (HP does this to people). It happened again. First, I could not get anything to show up on my monitor. After checking some things on Nicky's computer, I decided to reformat it again. Still nothing, just a flashing cursor in the upper left corner. I looked up some more "solutions" online and tried them. No dice. I connected with a Hewle

This post is long overdue. I am going to go on record and say flat out that I am against abortion. If you have the courage, hear me out. Warning: This discussion is going to be very direct and some people may find it offensive. "Offended" in this case is wimp talk for "I can't handle the truth". My facts are confined to the United States. The principles still apply wherever you are, though. But first, I have to tell you that I am not so extreme that I say "no" to all abortions at all times. The exceptions that I accept are when the life of the mother is in actual danger (none of this philosophical nonsense, I want facts), rape or incest (only one percent of abortions occur because of these factors). Ninety three percent of abortions are for social convenience. Millions of abortions are performed, and most of those are because women can't keep their legs together. Sure, it's OK in their lust-crazed minds to do the bang tango, unprotected, w