Now they’re worried about it!

I had to laugh. 

There were two reports coming out of Columbia University that gave me pause.

One was of a student making demands, saying they would continue to occupy some building or other, in defiance of University policies. Then effectively asking for milk and cookies. Saying that the University needed to supply them with food because they were hungry.

What? I asked. 

Clearly this student was a gender studies major. If He/She/It/Whatever, was a history major they might have encountered a concept called a Siege. That is, unless the university thought it would be too disturbing for their students to read about armies starving each other out of fortified towns. If they put a trigger warning on the material then surely no student would have read any part of it.

Then I laughed at the complete and utter stupidity of the entity making these demands.

A second report that made me laugh was the kids essentially begging/demanding that their arrests or involvement in this idiotic protest supporting terrorists not be on their records.

That REALLY made me laugh. “Uh no snowflake, welcome to being an adult where actions have consequences!

Hippy protestors against the Vietnam War in the 60’s had their arrest records follow them throughout their lives. The arrest records weren’t so bad, but the FBI files were really damaging. 

If any of the students had been taught anything of use, they’d have known that from their American History classes. Instead they were apparently being taught genitalia doesn’t define Male or Female but surgical alteration and removal of genitalia is necessary for transgenderism.

Additional scattered reports from around the country about these Pro Terrorist protests really upped my brain’s RPM (Reboot Per Minute counter.)

Copy of mugshot background 4 5.At UCLA or USC (Who cares? Either one wastes the students time and Daddy’s money. How about just letting the student buy their useless diploma at registration, then they can immediately go work at StarBucks.)

Anyway, at one or the other of these so called educational facilities, the Pro Terrorist protestors set up barriers, one could call these barriers a Fence or Wall, that kept “Undesirable students” out of the particular building and associated library. 

But I thought Fences and Walls infringed on basic Human rights. Oh that’s only when we’re talking about immigration. Right! So many rules and so much subtle nuance, it’s hard for an old “Boomer” like myself to keep track of or understand.

The school in question was assisting in this endeavor by providing wristbands identifying those persons who supported the approved political speech. Those without wristbands were social outcasts, therefore worthy of being denied access to their classes and studies in that particular library. You know, the very things they’d paid excessively expensive tuition fees to use.

Seemed a lot like NAZI Germany, Jim Crowe, The Age of COVID, visitors to Epstein Island, or how the billionaires deal with keeping the riffraff out of golf clubs.

So while these wonderfully “educated” children would be quick to point out how wrong it is to segregate people, and quicker still to point out the evil of the oppressors in our society. When given the slightest chance, they became the oppressors themselves. 

I doubt that these moronic children will have any moment of introspection wherein they see they’re exactly the same as the evil they claim to abhor.

It’s a pity. That would be a lesson worth learning.

Georgia Trooper.The X application lit up when a Georgia Trooper got tired of dragging some whiney snowflake out of an encampment.

There’s a priceless video of a student throwing themselves on the ground much like a 5 year old having a tantrum, and this Trooper without missing a beat, picking the squalling pseudo-adult male student, up off the ground and carrying him bodily toward the waiting police vans.

The trooper looked to be about the right age to have children who’d try that same temper tantrum stunt.

The look on his face was almost serene, like this was just him doing “Dad stuff” on a Saturday afternoon at the toy store.

Florida police teargassed an encampment at the University of South Florida. The previously “Committed” students scattered like cockroaches abandoning all their possessions.

This one caught my interest because as a kid I spent a lot of time at the USF library while my Mom was studying or attending classes. Early on, I realized I could do homework in any library. Knowledge was knowledge and books contained pretty much everything that was known.

USF holds a special place in my heart and I was glad to see the Florida Police fumigating the place.

From vietnam to gaza student led protests that shook the v0 13VAy3Vnt7i7rGQodRVTQ0sNpBnaPzHFkwn9ZZltEFc.jpg.My goodness, I sound very much like the elders of my youth discussing the “Damn Hippie Protestors”. I should probably compare and contrast the protests against the Vietnam War and the Pro-Terrorist protests happening today.

Nah, not worth the time. We probably shouldn’t have been in Vietnam, certainly not with the rules of engagement imposed on our troops.

I’ve always believed that if we’re going to be engaged in a war we should be fully committed to winning. If that means the complete and utter destruction of the enemy, and their country, so be it.

I’m not particularly merciful.

I’m also not a big fan of rebuilding our enemies countries. They pissed us off, they could have surrendered any time, they could have opened negotiations at any time. If our enemies chose not to do these things and we pounded them back to the Stone Age, Oh Well…

In the case of Hamas, the Palestinians, and what happened in Israel on October 7 2023. I find that I have zero mercy. My lack of mercy in this situation borders on “negative mercy”, what would that be called, Vengeance? The IDF can, and probably should turn all of Gaza into rubble. Plow Gaza under, along with the bodies, simple, neat, and efficient.

The people of Palestine are a despoiled people, they demonstrated their depravity on October 7, they have chosen this and it’s their problem.

We don’t have boots on the ground (at least we’re not supposed to), so this is Israels issue. I believe we should support Israel due to treaties and contractual obligations. Beyond that, we should keep our mouths shut. It’s none of our business how Israel goes about defending themselves.

I oppose sending aid in the form of food or money to Gaza or the Palestinians at all. Again, that’s not our table or any of our business. We sure seem to be playing both sides of this foreign war and I disagree with that.

As to these useful idiots on college campuses. I’m all for arresting them even if it’s a misdemeanor charge. If they’re here on student visas then send them home. Deport their asses and never renew their visa again. 

You don’t come to someone else’s country and stir up trouble. You be grateful for the opportunity, pay your tuition, and return to your home when your studies are completed. You do not stand on a street corner or college campus screaming “Death To America”.

I know that’s a quaint perspective these days. I still subscribe to the concept of being a good and polite guest in someone else’s home.

Just a little Techno-Bitching!

Artificial intelligence robot 0427211.Some of you may be aware that Apple has, over the past few iterations of their IOS, iPadOS, and Mac OS, been adding more active predictive text input.

Essentially the various Operating Systems try to guess what you’re about to type based on your usual word choices and learned sentence structures. This can be really cool, and helpful, except when it isn’t.

There are two problems as I see it. The first is that if you’re trying to improve your writing, the automated choices presented tend to make you lazy because it’s easier to choose what’s shown than fight the system. Oh, and the system does tend to get in your face if you change your vocabulary and / or sentence construction.

The second problem is that the embedded dictionaries in these operating systems have gotten sloppy.

For example: If I misspell the word sueing the OS changes the word to seeing, instead of changing the misspelled sueing to suing.

Download Free Oxford English Dictionary.The example above is a fairly common mistake that the internal dictionaries should easily recognize and correct in English. (I recognize that there are other languages in these operating systems and those languages have different rules.)

I however am speaking and writing in English so that’s my personal baseline. In English, there are many instances where the ‘e’ is dropped when adding the ‘ing’, but sometimes that rule doesn’t apply. It’s in those times when the automatic dictionary can be mind bogglingly helpful, or an annoying hinderance.

This is common throughout all the platforms.

It would be easy to dismiss this as nothing, until you stumble over it again and again. If you write a blog, or you’re writing a manuscript it gets annoying fast. We all get bumble fingered if we’re typing fast in a moment of inspiration or if we’re tired and just trying to slog our way to the end of the project or our day.

At these times, when we’re not at our best, the autocorrect systems should be helping us instead of muddying our thoughts by selecting incorrect words based on God only knows what kind of algorithm. 

Microsoft Word induces its own decidedly annoying version of this, with its internal dictionary. I have literally become so confused typing a word in Word that I’ve pulled out a paper dictionary to find the correct spelling. Turns out, the word I was misspelling wasn’t that far off. All I’d done is typed an ‘I’ instead of an ‘e’ and had swapped the ‘I’ position in the word. It should have been the 8th character and I put it in the 9th position.

Word not only couldn’t comprehend what I’d done, Word couldn’t present me with any alternative spelling at all.

Since I know that sometimes I’ll use an ‘I” instead of an ‘e’ I tried both. Word stubbornly refused to show me possible alternative spellings, opting to steadfastly highlight the word as misspelled. 

Even when I erased the word and typed it letter by letter from the dictionary into the document, Word highlighted the now correct word as incorrect, after a few moments Word decided to remove the little red squiggle.

Ahem! 

It’s times like these that I speak harshly to my computer because it’s adding to my confusion seemingly on purpose.

I shouldn’t speak harshly to my computer, I should be yelling at Microsoft! It’s their 1 gigabyte bloated program that can’t seem to get out of its own way.

I remember when Word existed on a single floppy disk and worked pretty reliably. Now, I find that I don’t enjoy working with it as much as I once did. These days, it’s slow and ponderous and while I have a very fast computer, Word sucks up a lot of resources.

I’m tending toward lighter faster programs for text processing and only using Word when absolutely necessary.

I suppose the bottom line here is I expect better.

The next version of IOS, iPadOS, and Mac OS is likely to add some kind of AI component running on the devices.

I am not looking forward to this ‘Improvement’. It seems to me, if these software behemoths can’t do simple things like providing useful dictionaries perhaps installing AI software on our devices isn’t a great idea.

What about the students that don’t want to protest?

Columbia protest deadline.Realizing there may be damn few of them, suppose they’re just trying to get through their day, they just want to study for finals, and get this semester of classes behind them.

These Pro Palestinian protestors are disrupting their education. I’m not sure if We The People are paying for the tuition or if their parents are paying the bill.

Either way, whether the students who are not involved in protests know it or not, the Protestors are literally stealing from them. The protests disrupt classes, the students who don’t want to participate, regardless of their religion or personal beliefs are being harassed and made to feel unsafe by the students angrily engaging in the protests.

The passions of the young are easily inflamed and difficult to quell. Physical violence has occurred and more will occur the longer these encampments are in place. Particularly to those students having to cross a minefield of tents attempting to get to class.

Columbia has decided to finish the term virtually. Rendering dorm rental wasted. For those students at other colleges that are not able to attend classes, I ask, will their fees be refunded? The Schools have not fulfilled their obligation to provide an environment conducive to education. Isn’t that part of the educational contract?

240429 columbia university gaza protest nbc news ew 158p 199698 1024x683.Were I a parent, I’d be demanding a full refund for the wasted semester, and suing on behalf of my child or children, the organizers of the protests for time lost in my children’s pursuit of their degrees. I’d be teaching my children that someone wasting their time is as egregious as actively taking material goods.

As we all know, time cannot be replaced.

How will those students with job offers contingent upon their graduation be compensated for the loss of those jobs. Because they might not be able to complete their required classes to graduate on time? Who do they ”Thank for unemployment?

It’s one thing to peacefully protest. That is the right of American Citizens guaranteed by The Constitution. Disrupting other peoples lives to a great extent, shutting down public spaces (even if those places are on private property,) is not. 

Hold your signs, march in the streets after getting proper permitting, protest in a public square or park without obstructing others passing through these areas. I & many others would even defend your right to do so. In this case I loathe the Palestinians, & Hamas. That said, it is my duty to protect peaceful protestors from harm. 

I believe that. For me to do otherwise would be hypocritical. 

But I could not in good conscience protect these protestors, because they’re impairing the rights of other students. The equation is a difficult one to balance. However, the rights of all must be protected equally on no-one will have rights.

I’m glad to see Columbia suspending or expelling students. There must be consequences to actions. Some of the hate filled rhetoric I’ve heard directed at Jewish students is no different than Germany pre World War II. A group saying, “Blacks back to Africa,” shutting down a college campus wouldn’t be tolerated. Saying, “Muslims go fuck a goat” or calling Muslims, “Rapist Goat Fucking, followers of a psycho prophet,” would result in god knows how many hate crime charges, (depending on the country you said it in.)

Yet, it’s okay for non islamic students to wrap themselves in the Palestinian flag or Keffiyehs to tell Jewish students, “You’re not welcome here, go kill yourself, kill all Zionists.” 

Keffiyeh DD 1.Really? None of this seems equal to me. 

I also have to ask, if all these kids are wearing Keffiyehs but are not Islamic,  isn’t that cultural appropriation? We’ve been told for the past 5 -10 years cultural appropriation is a monumental SIN right?

What makes this different?

Nothing!

Except, that this narrative, the narrative of bullies is being tolerated. All sin may be forgiven in service to the greater goal. 

The goal in this situation is to create as much chaos and confusion as possible in the run up to the November election.

The goal is also to harm as many innocents as possible in this country.

Hamas & the Palestinians whose purpose is sowing division here in this country need to be expelled & sent right back to Gaza.