I'm Baaaaack!

Had my 'puter in the 'puter hospital for several days. I actually started reading books again.

You Never Know...

...what you're gonna find when you clean house. In anticipation that I may be in for a new computer sometime later this year, I've been going through some old, old bookmarks, that were in a folder called, surprise, surprise, Old Bookmarks. I've been deleting dead ones and deciding which ones I may eventually transfer to my active, current bookmarks, and which ones I will just pitch with my old computer. In the process I came across this one (I don't remember bookmarking this, at all) about the infamous smallpox infested blanket. Anyway, it's a keeper:

Indians and smallpox

Far and away, the best comment in the entire thread is this one:

"And here is what bothers me so much about modern "scholarship." At what point did history become ethics? Why should we subvert the elusive search for facts to moralist concerns? So what if they are on or off the hook? If you want to be a preacher, go preach. If you want to save theworld, go into politics. If you want to invent a world free of evil, take prozac. It was said in Ecclesiasties and it still is true today, people suck. They did then, all ofthem. THey do now, all of us. History is the history of self-interested, competing, aggressive, selfish, murderous humans. At what point did it become a morality play? -Dave WIlliams, George mason Univ."

Right on, good sir!! That is what the study of history is about. Getting your lame brain into the mindset that prevailed in the distant past; understanding what people of a by-gone era could have known and not known; judging them by the standards that prevailed in their time, not according to standards and knowledge that exists today. And the smallpox blanket thingy is one of the most pernicious and long lived examples of how not to do the craft of history,

Silly Season Begins

Parliament resumes.

Okay. Ignore everything below. The good old "reboot" trick works again, although I do think it's time for a new 'puter.
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It seems my computer is fried. I can no longer cut and paste, which means no linkies.

Time for a new one, I think.

If it's not one thing, it's another.

Being in a State of Forced Withdrawal

Yesterday, as I was at the counter preparing to pay for some stuff I was buying at a local hardware store, the Internet died. Neither my bank card nor credit card worked. Thankfully, I had my chequebook with me. So I paid for my stuff by cheque, something I rarely do anymore. I'd almost forgotten how to fill out a cheque. The clerk had to print the sales receipt and write on it with her own hand that it had been paid for by cheque # such and such.

When I got home, my access to the Internet was down, too. As it turned out, there had been some major Sasktel cable severed at a construction site in Regina and a large swath of territory in Southeast Saskatchewan was without Internet or cell phone access. People couldn't even call 911 if there was an emergency. However, strangely enough, texting was possible.

Being an Internet freak, I kept trying to go online, but to no avail. On the radio, in the evening, a Sasktel spokeswoman said the problem may not be fixed until well into the night. So I packed 'er in early last night.

One good thing about it is I got lots of other stuff done, like long overdue housework. But communities all along the TransCanada highway from Regina to very nearly the Manitoba border were without access, so it sure shows how a major disaster might affect us all, if the Internet and cell phone service is knocked out. Good thing we still had electricity.

There's A Name...

...for my affliction.

Or as Bore in Victoria, BC says in the comments:

"O.M.G. does this mean I getting dumber from this website?"

Lots Of Things In This World...

...really suck. This is one of them. This guy, together with Bill Gates, revolutionized the world. Although most of my life was spent without computers, I barely remember what life was like without them. Blogging software and Google rest on their foundation.

He died way too young.

Let's hear it for the nerds!!