Wisdom about war from "The Lord of the Rings"

I am rereading J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings many years after my last reading.  At the front of the copy, on 11 Jan 2002 I wrote:

“Do we Orc-hestrate our wars?  We are the Fellowship and our enemies are the Orcs.  We slaughter hundreds of them without qualm and bury with great honor the few of us who suffer more than scratches.  See p. 58.”

On p.  58 I bracketed:
‘Deserves it!  I daresay he does.  Many that live deserve death.  And some that die deserve life.  Can you give it to them?  Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.  For even the very wise cannot see all ends...'

Gandolf gave this response to Frodo’s condemnation of Gollum who is “as bad as an Orc, and just an enemy.  He deserves death.”

Staying home changes nothing, you must vote for change

“The real change will come when those who felt compelled to stand on principle and not participate in an election in which they felt they were being forced to choose between “the lesser of two evils” realize the staggering magnitude of the gap between those ‘two evils.’”
“Soul Survival in Trump’s Hell”, Charles Blow, New York Times, 2017-09-11.

Ignoring important papers while praising a piece of cloth

“It amazes me that those who are so adamant about the public standing for the national anthem seem to ignore the Constitution and Washington's Farewell Address, the latter just after having it read as a ritual.”

My comment to “A Rebel, a Warrior and a Race Fiend”, Charles M. Blow, New York Times, 2017-09-25, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/opinion/columnists/trump-race-nfl-nba.html?comments#permid=24189583.

The Lord giveth and the Corp taketh away

The New York Times had an article on Mary D. Nichols, chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, the work the board does, and some of the opposition to the this work.  See “U.S. Climate Change Policy: Made in California”, Hiroko Tabuchi, 2017-09-27

It is amazing the corporate and “conservative” opposition to this work.  On the other hand, the comments were overwhelming in favor of clean air and the necessary regulation to obtain it.  And the profits to be made by leading the world in providing a clean environment instead of making matters worse.

Thus my title.  You would think that “conservatives” would be all in favor or preserving the clean air and water that “God gave us”.  Instead, they seem hell-bent on destroying them, bringing us back to days of heavy smog and burning rivers.

My own little comment was to a contributor who had been in China recently where pollution is endemic but the government is taking steps to improve the air quality.  I pointed out that “we the people” had enough of the pollution from backyard burning barrels.

Simple solution for a vexing problem

The Logitech Solar Keyboard for my iPad stopped working.  No matter how long I pushed either of the two switches on the right, the keyboard did not work.

My only choice was to type with one finger on the screen.

I looked on the web for a solution, but none seemed to work.

I looked at the situation again a few minutes ago and one suggestion had about having Bluetooth connected.  I checked the Bluetooth settings on my iPad and they were all off!!!  I had turned them off to avoid a Bluetooth connection from my iPhone.

i reset the Bluetooth setting on my iPad, and voila, the keyboard works.

I figure that I saved myself $600-800 dollars.  I was getting closer to replacing the iPad with a new one including several add-ons.

Donald Trump has worn me down

When I read the reports of Donald Trump’s address to the United Nations, I could not get over the feeling that it was George Washington’s worst nightmare.

Washington warned against factions.  Donald Trump is creating them faster than I can even type “faction”.

In his Farewell Address, which the Senate reads every year and then ignores, George Washington warned against factions:

“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.”

Donald Trump railed against North Korea and Iran.  George Washington warned against being too close to other nations and against being too hostile to foreign nations:

“Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favorite, are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp
the applause and confidence of the people to surrender
their interests.”

I plan to send this reminder to my Senators: Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar.  If you are a U.S. reader, I hope you will send something similar to your Senators, regardless of their party.

But I have no idea how many real, live U.S. readers I have.  Every so often I get a big wave of Russian readers.  My feed is generally United Kingdom readers.  I get a lot of French readers, but I only have three correspondents in France.  Are these other readers really French, or are they Russian trolls?  I do know that at least one U.S. troll site is really a Russian front.

These trolls and Donald Trump have worn me down.  I don’t really know when I will be inspired to post more here.

Partisanship: quote of the day

“It’s not a partisan issue.  We are working for our republic, and not for Republicans."
- Charles Fried, solicitor general under Ronald Reagan






See https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/us/politics/prominent-republicans-urge-supreme-court-to-end-gerrymandering.html

Political sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander

The Republicans are up in arms because Sen. Al Franken, MN-Dem has put a hold on the nomination of Judge David Stras to the Eighth Circuit Court because he considers him "too conservative".  See Star Tribune, 2017-09-06 for more details.

I don't know what the beef the Republicans have with Franken.  After all, they held up Obama's nominee for months in the hope of a Republican president appointing a Justice of the Supreme Court more to their liking.  They held up Judge Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court from March until Donald Trump was inaugurated.

The Macintosh Has Lost Its Way

After some of the problems that I’ve had with the Apple, I reread Guy Kawasaki’s The Macintosh Way.  I remembered it as being about how to design user-friendly software, but it is about all the ways to make a great software company from product design to user groups to interaction with other companies.

What I was looking for is on pages 55-56:

“Great products are elegant.  They may have many features, but the features are tastefully and transparently implemented.”  P. 52

However, "elegant" and “transparently implemented” have gone by the wayside.  See “Computers Under the Control of Magicians”, “Don’t get caught on Sierra”, and “More Update Craziness”.

A counterpoint is “Now Apple’s really ‘for the rest os us’” by Michael Gartenberg, Macworld, 2010-06-23.  But I think things have gone quite a bit downhill since 2010.

Disposable employees, not investments in people

"Middle managers are next..."  reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut's "Player Piano".  Even middle managers and secretaries had to have Ph.D.s and were subject to layoff.

I posted the above to https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/upshot/to-understand-rising-inequality-consider-the-janitors-at-two-top-companies-then-and-now.html?comments#permid=23959553:23960540.

I think an indicator of this problem was renaming personnel departments as human resources.  I’ve also seen the thought that evil is treating people as things.

Sci-Fi with many twists and turns

I just finished ALIVE by Scott Sigler.  I picked it up randomly yesterday at the library just to pass some time.  I finished it this afternoon, partly to avoid other tasks, partly because I wanted to get to its end.

At the end he has a note “AN OH-SO-POLITE REQUEST FROM THE AUTHOR”.  His request is “no spoilers.”  Among other justifications he cites, “A reader only gets one chance to be surprised.”

So, if you want quite a few surprises, I recommend ALIVE by Scott Sigler.  You might find it so intriguing that you don’t go to bed until you finish it.