I should charge admission. This morning was a textbook example of how stupid people react around those they cannot bring others down to their level. First, let me explain something that not everybody out there is going to grasp. Read my lips, “It is a fallacy that unintelligent beings require logical leadership to act in coordination”. That is completely wrong, for eons ago Mother Nature programmed into the truly ignorant a series of non-sensical default behaviors that by trial-and-error ensures that the stupid will not only always be present, but will be a majority.
You understand, I have considerable experience dealing with ignorant rabble. I even once tried to explain to my family the concept of “private property”. But like ants or termites, these beings can defeat most educated men because in a real pinch, they just panic. No brains involved, but it works. While I never was able to convince my family they had no right to help themselves, I did come away from that with a stockpile of techniques to be used when dealing with the less than smart. For example, you have to sidle up to the mob or you will spook the weaker elements.
Be indirect, for the faintest scent of intelligence will trigger their group defense mechanisms. And any hint of holding one of them responsible can spark an instinctual protective frenzy. You want to avoid a stampede. Trust me, you don't ever want to see an old lady stampede, not even on Black Friday. Keeping these in mind, we now proceed to what happened when I returned to the thrift this morning to see if I could find the missing cursor. I could kick myself for thinking that even the most dismal person alive today knows that a slide rule has a cursor. Wrong! There was a different group of women there today, so we are dealing with seven or eight women who between them have a collective 500+ years of experience on this planet. One of them must, by the odds, know what I was looking for. I know a lot about odds.
Nope. Not one of them had the faintest what I was talking about. “A cursor, you say?” “What does it look like?” “We’ll give you your fifty cents back.” These people are proof that the skills of being a successful woman are firmly grounded in the Stone Age. Ma’am, are you aware that, in your lifetime, mankind used a slide rule to put a man on the moon? Say what? Oh, you thought they used “a great big spacehip”. I see.
Even my softest, most indirect approach triggered mild hysteria when not one of them could visualize what I was talking about. These broads spooked fast when it was obvious I held one of them responsible, which in turn provoked the muskox thing, you know, where they circle the wagons. There are a number of ways that small minds do this, such as freezing up, or insinuating you are mistaken, or changing the subject. But you have to admire the feisty ones who try to pretend they are your intellectual equal by rewording anything you ask them. “I don’t know, is the cursor a functional component? You tell me.”
They tried to play dodge-ball, duck the searchlight, and resorted to that children’s game of looking at each other as if I must be making it all up. If you persist at this point, you’ll have a a social situation on your hands, so I got down on my hands and knees and began to craw along the floor, searching inch by inch. It slowly dawned on them I wasn’t buying their excuses and feigned concern. Around this time the sharper ones began to suspect this mysterious “cursor” was something I really, really needed. That I had not driven all the way back there to listen to them jabber.
I’d say their collective behavior says plenty about how they got through life. These old women were innately pathetic at being anything except old women. And they saw nothing wrong with that, I must say. That’s why at 75 they are still working for a living.
I see in the paper the state is cracking down harder on sex predators, but I have to disagree with some of the methods. I draw the line at requiring criminals to supply the police with information about other people, in this case the registration of all vehicles at the premises where the offender resides. I do not condone guilt by association unless there is independently acquired evidence of criminal conduct. Sorry if you disagree, but I don’t think the police have a right to put your name on a suspect list just because the guy who moved in down the hall has a record.
Those who maintain the information is not a “suspect list” have their head in the sand. Apparently those people have never heard of the abuse of identity epidemic that’s been taking place for 25 years. The police are the absolute worst violators of identity information. Folks, the police don’t have the resources or inclination to keep any other kind of lists. It is best to stay off as many of those as possible.
I’m reminded of the time I was practicing music with the Hippie when his lady probation officer showed up. She didn’t ask, she marched in demanding I show her my ID “for her records”. I was quick to call her bluff on that one. She had plainly never been told off before and had a conniption fit. Even the Hippie, that well-balanced individual who has his priorities straight, was insisting I “cooperate” so he wouldn’t “get in trouble”. Well, I don’t care if being on probation means dragging others into your shit, there is a reason I park around the corner and never tell guitar players my real name.
This is what is wrong with mass surveillance. They are not monitoring just the criminals; the bureaucrats use it as an excuse to keep tabs everybody. Those who don’t spot the danger in that lack the IQ to understand how the system really works. It isn’t rocket science to figure out what the probation officer really wanted my ID for. And screw her, that’s a warrantless search of my person. Real Americans don’t do that. I found out later everyone who was at his place was considered a “person of interest”. Psst, that’s you Cowboy Mike.
Come on, didn’t I just say last day that Radio Shack was out of control? Today’s Herald says they are closing eleven hundred stores. It says they’ve tried “slashing costs” but I’d like to see some confirmation of that on their price tags. What’s a pity is that even when these entrenched chains feel their own heat, they are replaced by other chains instead of start-ups with lower prices. The same paper says the psychic who swindled people out of $18 million got ten years (I’d consider it), but the people dumb enough to pay it got away scot free. Why are there never any fools around when I need some spot money?
Oh no, another report that house prices are up. It says 15.3% in January, but later says they meant since January last year. These are based on mortgages, not the rock-bottom cash sales that represent most of the market. Banks only approve mortgages that show a price rise. And how about that wimp who tried to throw the lady passenger overboard the cruise ship. He claims she insulted his family. My message to all those who take these dead-end jobs—no, you are not just as good as the rest of us. You are at the bottom of the freaking food chain so don’t give us that drivel about your almighty pride and how much respect you think you deserve.
I’m having second, or is that tenth, thoughts about continuing to pay [these guitar players] for practice. Things are not moving fast enough by my standards. A decent guitarist should be able to perfect around six or eight songs per week. We are now entering the third month without a full set yet. I should pay by the song and see if that perks things up.
ADDENDUM
And I’m looking at graphing capabilities on Qbasic. I read the code for creating and writing to a file in C+. If you want to know where so much bad code comes from, look there. C+ seems to get closer to machine language every time I see it. People don’t think in terms of “uint_8”, which is the code to send a number to the computer. People think in terms of pressing the Enter key.
Qbasic graphics mode is as typically convoluted as with all early IBM products. Designed for what was convenient on the shop bench. Qbasic has something like 13 screen modes, none of which do everything you want. The ability to print graphs or animate games is dependent on these screens, so they must be learned.
I wrote a small (ten-line) program to put random dots on the screen, starting with 10,000, thinking that would make a nice visual display. Whoa, Qbasic was created long before the fast computers we have now and the monitor fills up instantly. I find I’m having to put in delay loops to watch the action.
For now, I’ll just add more dots until I can see them appearing. We know from the die program the dots are random, so they should evenly speckle the screen. I stepped it up to 100,000 and still, no significant show, then 308,000. Why that number? Screen resolution. My trusty cursor-less slide rule tells me that is 640 x 480. Note, some spots are still not covered, as the program loop allows duplicates. Then a 1,000,000 and I finally saw some artifacting.
At the highest setting it is possible to see the computer operating, but still too fast to watch the individual pixels. This must be the basis behind how the little “spray can” of color works in Paint. The random formula is altered to prefer pixels near the cursor position. A density of nearly 10,000,000 is required to make the black spots “nearly disappear”. (But even an infinite random run would not guaranty to cover every spot.)
Finally, I increased it to 10,000,000 pixels (ten million, not shown here) and found there are still quite a few spots left. This is what deep space looks like through a good telescope. Empty spots remain and I buy lottery tickets? Here are the screens with the densities marked. How went your day?
