Words of Wisdom

In the vein of Heinlein's Notebooks of Lazarus Long, here are some of my accumulated words of wisdom.
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Duty.  Honor.  Country.

Women and children first.

Clean up your own mess.

It's easier to keep up than to catch up.

There's no such thing as a free lunch.  (RAH - TMIAHM - TANSTAAFL!)

Do the right thing.

Bad news does not improve with age.

Tell the truth and shame the devil.

Tact, like other social niceties, and an effective lubricant.

McChuck's basic rules of human behavior, from whence all others derive-

1. People are lazy.
2. People are emotional, not logical.
3. Only women know that all their children are their own.

Civilization is only a few missed meals away from anarchy.

The brain is in charge - after the belly and the gonads.


Everyone is self centered.

Men and women are fundamentally different.

Men can't think logically about women.

Men rule the world.  Women rule the men.

Children are not short adults.

The goal of parenting should be to raise children to be good adults, and the next generation of good parents.

Progress happens when somebody gets pissed off enough about something to do something about it.

Never cause avoidable harm.

When you have to, kill quickly.

My country is more then the dirt upon which I walk.  It is my people, my language, and my culture.  An attack upon my culture is an attack upon my people.  An attack upon my people is an attack upon my country.

Socialism (communism, Marxism, progressivism, et al, ad nauseum) is the most corrosively destructive force of the modern era.

Socialism is not an economic principle - it's a religious dogma.  (Economics is the study of the relationship between supply and demand.  Socialism denies any such relationship.)

Communism is simply socialism accelerated through brute force.  It works (if one can say it works at all) by insisting that all pegs are round, and proving this by pounding them into round holes.  Using a big hammer and a sharp knife whenever necessary to make them fit.  It's for their own good, after all.  All those not-perfectly-round pegs are counter-revolutionary, and must must reshape themselves or be liquidated.

Economists are wrong.  People do not act in their rational self interest.  They act in their emotional self interest.

If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

The future belongs to those who show up.  Have children and pass on your culture, or become irrelevant.  (Demography is destiny.)

Most people don't reach actual adulthood until their late 20's.  Some never do.

The one thing all your failed relationships have in common is you.

You are unique - just like everyone else.

Dogs crave your affection and approval, and will do almost anything to get it.  Cat's don't really care all that much, as long as the food keeps showing up, and you pet them only when and for how long they desire.  This is why we see so much of ourselves in them.

All cultures are not equal.  A tribal headhunter in New Guinea is fundamentally different from a Western businessman.

No, we can't all just get along.

We'll all be equal when we're dead.

People are not all the same.  They're obviously all different.

Evil is real, and comes from denying reality and treating people like things.

Socialism killed over 100 million of its own people in the 20th century trying to enforce an alternate view of reality, and treating people as interchangeable widgets.

God is real.  But that doesn't mean that He takes a particular interest in your personal life.

In the beginning, God treated us as children, and provided miracles.  Now we have grown, and He wants us to start acting like adults.  We must learn to understand the world He made for us, and make our own miracles.  That's why He made the universe with rules that our intellects can discover and understand.  He made people with emotions to understand other people, and fill the world with love an joy.  Those are the every day miracles that are so common we usually don't recognize them.

Science is real.  God is real.  These are not contradictions.  Evolution is real - but who said it couldn't be given a nudge here and there, now and then?

The early books of the Bible are allegory, not literal fact.  They were stories for children who could not yet understand the complexities of the world.

"And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself."  

God wants you to be nice to other people.  Most of the Bible is an attempt to explain what the word 'nice' means.  Often using negative examples. 

There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Real life happens

It's June.  That means it's raining here.  When it rains, our telephone doesn't work.  That means our DSL internet doesn't work, either.  The Telephone Company Which Shall Not Be Named says the line is fine.  Of course, they have to tell us this over our cell phones, because the telephone line is dead.  They say the problems are inside our house.  Fine, the wiring here is a bit iffy, especially after the pet rabbit peed directly into one of the phone jacks.  (Not sure how he managed that angle, but they are agile creatures.)

I have yet to figure out how 'it's raining' affects the wiring inside the house.  One of the nice things about this house, is that it keeps the rain on the outside.  Now, the telephone pedestal for the neighborhood is next to my house.  It's corroded, rusted, and has holes in it.  Wasps keep trying to build nests in it.  (Yes, I'm a killer.  It's me and my kids, or them.)  I found a snake coming out of it once.  (OK, it was a rather small snake.)  But obviously, the problem is inside my house.  That's why the internet and phone service drop quality are reduced in direct proportion to how wet it is outside my nice, dry house.

After all, who am I going to believe?  TTCWSNBN, or my lying eyes?

So, no blogging for me for a few weeks.

And then the motherboard on the computer died.  To be fair, it had a good run.  The house was hit by lightning a few years ago, resulting in havoc upon the more delicate electronic equipment therein.  Like the TV, the kids' game player, and portions of the motherboard.  Specifically, the network jack and the firmware Linux system.  Yet, the computer continued to soldier on for a few more years before finally giving up the ghost to a heating issue.  (It would turn on for a (decreasing) few minutes, then lock up.  Something, somewhere is heating up and causing a terminal fault.)

Fortunately, it is now only raining every other day, so the telephone works most of the time, and I at least have dial-up quality from my 3Mbps DSL connection.  The kids' homework computer (an all-in-one touchscreen) has been given the spot of honor on the desk.  The old computer has been disassembled for parts.  The three internal hard drives are still good, and still have some important data on them.  I can't install them in the all-in-one, but I can probably obtain a SATA external housing.  I need at least one to retrieve the data from the old computer.

The question then remains - do I try to get cable internet with the Provider of Doom?  It's a bit more money (for, admittedly, faster average service), but the fine print seems to involve souls.  I don't read Latin.  At least, I think it's Latin.  That last bit might be the Dark Tongue.