9/25/2016

Thoughts On A Sunday

What a difference a day makes.

We were in the 70's on Friday, the mid 60's on Saturday, and in the upper 50's/lower 60's today. Each day was colder than the one before.

I guess fall is coming one like gangbusters!

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I was talking with one of the regulars down at the village store Friday morning when he mentioned he'd been looking through some of the records at town hall, specifically the minutes of the Selectmen's meetings going back to the 1800's. He was curious to see what the most common subject came up on a regular basis and he was surprised to find that it was pretty much the most common topic we see at our meetings in the present: roads.

The problem with town roads is an ongoing one and one we're still dealing with over 200 years after the founding of our little town.

Some things never change.

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We know Hollywood has been running out of ideas and have resorted to doing the dreaded remakes of classic movies and rebooting popular TV series from the 60's, 70's, and 80's.

Some have been absolutely dismal failures. (Ghostbusters or National Lampoon's Vacation anyone?) Others have had some success (Hawaii Five O). Yet others we will have to wait and see if they survive, like MacGuyver and yet another Star Trek series.

The latest TV 'reboot' in the works? Magnum, PI.

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So, tell us something we don't know, will ya?

It turns out that Noam Chomsky hasn't been wrong just about politics all these years, he's been wrong in regards to his linguistic theories as well.

I've always found him to be condescending and close-minded, like many Progressives.

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I can see that they really didn't think this one through.

A court ruling could make changing a baby's diaper a crime.

Last week, a ruling in the Supreme Court of the State of Arizona determined that any act that involves “intentionally or knowingly” touching a child under fifteen’s “private parts” would be deemed child molestation – and one of those very acts could be diaper changing. What?!

That would mean even a doctor or a parent changing a baby’s diaper would be breaking a law, even though they’re just doing their jobs, according to the report. Yes, that sounds crazy, but the majority ruled that the laws should be applied literally, and “therefore require no mental state beyond a person’s intentionally or knowingly touching a child’s ‘private parts.'”

My response would be to take babies with full diapers to the judges' chambers and let them deal with the consequences of their ruling.

As the Instaprof says, “The law is an ass.”

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It's NASCAR weekend hear in New Hampshire with the second of the two of the Cup races taking place today.

I don't often watch NASCAR anymore unless they're racing at Loudon...and maybe Daytona. I would watch it today except I wasn't able to find out on which channel it would be aired. I checked the usual suspects and found nada.

WTF?

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Anyone who's been paying attention understands that wireless networks – WiFi – are both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is the ability to stay connected to the Net without being tethered by wires. The curse is that WiFi is nowhere near as secure as many believe it is, particularly when wireless access points/routers do not have their security settings configured properly.

This is even more true for intelligence agencies the world over, but that doesn't stop their agents from using smart phones and WiFi anyways.

As we know all too well, the National Security Agency has spent years perfecting ways to slurp up the data we generate as we go about our digital lives. Public desire to be ever-more connected plays right into the hands of the agency as it taps phones, exploits software vulnerabilities, and writes algorithms to scrape data that could incriminate would-be terrorists (or else intrude on the privacy of the innocent).

Spies’ intimate knowledge of the ways in which digital communications can be infiltrated has prevented them from adopting technology that most us take for granted—smartphones, tablets, even Wi-Fi. But not using such technology can slow down their jobs. “We’d be cutting off our noses to spite our faces by denying us those kinds of tools,” [said] Matt Conner, deputy chief information security officer of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

No matter how secure you think your WiFi network is, there are always security holes and backdoors waiting to be exploited by forces friendly and not so friendly.

This is something I've always known and why I don't have a smart phone. Any wireless device I do use generally has no personal information on it nor do I make any kind of transactions with it. With few exceptions, everything on it is uploaded via a wired connection and the WiFi (and Bluetooth) functions are shut off.

Am I being paranoid? Wrong question. The question is am I being paranoid enough?

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Gee, as if I needed to be told this!

Never take advice (particularly romantic advice) from feminists, and specifically from gender feminists. (Yes, there are different flavors of feminists. So-called equity feminists are more old school. Gender feminists have some serious mental issues and are not grounded in reality. They're the ones constantly pushing the “rape culture” and “oppressive patriarchy” memes to death.)

Read the whole thing.

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On tonight's World News on ABC, Tom Llamas stated that 100 million Americans are expected to watch the first debate between Hillary and Donald.

I have not yet decided whether I will be one of them if for no other reason than I am heartily sick of the whole process and still have about 6 weeks to go before we can end it.

On the other hand it might be amusing to see if Hillary self-destructs with her 'customary and usual' responses to questions about the economy, taxes, health care, education, and everything else. I also would like to see if Trump will cut of Lester Holt if he starts pontificating. As I read somewhere (I don't remember exactly where...maybe Instapundit), if Holt goes off on a tangent the best thing Trump can do is tell him “The American people are hear to listen to me and Hillary, not you.” It might be the only way to keep the debate on topic.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where a large number of boats have been pulled out for the season, the number of summerfolk has dwindled to nothing, and where we actually had to turn up the thermostat this morning to take the chill off.