Category Archives: America

UPDATE II: SURFACE By Microsoft (Leaves The Idiot Pad In the Dust)

America, Business, Human Accomplishment, Technology

At 15:14 into the unveiling of the Microsoft Surface tablet, Windows chief Steven Sinofsky says that Surface “provides the best WiFi reception of any tablet today.” The Surface’s dual Wi-Fi (“wireless networking technology that uses radio waves to provide wireless high-speed Internet and network connections”) antennae are the part My Contact in the bowels of the beast nailed.

Well done, genius.

Congratulations to all for bringing to market this “well-designed, very cool” product, over which industry experts are already gushing: It goes “toe to toe” with Apple’s iPad, says one, and even bests it (as “it runs as a full computer,” and sports a physical keyboard), says another.

Although I’ve been kept in the dark until now, I’m looking forward to receiving one of these as soon as possible. What piques my interest in that the Surface is a transportable PC, a facility the idiot Pad never offered. (I don’t need mindless entertainment; I want the ability to transport my work wherever I go, without the burdens imposed by a cumbersome laptop.)

UPDATE I (June 20): This is the stuff that makes one patriotic, right guys? American-coordinated ingenuity (with wise division of labor, naturally). Damn straight. (Wives are always kept in the dark … but, all I can say is that they deserve a medal. What a marathon effort The Surface has been.)

And, as someone who has never been tempted by the Idiot Pad: Yes, my instincts, on seeing what this thing accomplishes were very much, “This is a good fit for me.” And it has a keyboard and the easy ability to use a mouse with it, as opposed to the frenetic finger f-ck the traditional laptop requires.

UPDATE II (June 21): In this context, and on a personal note, the pressure of the effort above over months has had some unexpected consequences. (I heard it said that in the US there are two types of engineers: overworked or unemployed. A tough economy would indeed force increases in productivity: fewer and fewer workers are doing more and more of work.) The upshot: My husband has come down with pneumonia. I will be taking some time to look after him (and hoping to remain uninfected).

THE WND COLUMN will resume next week. RT will be featuring a golden oldie. Make sure you Click to Like, Share and Tweet it.

Mercantilism Vs. Militarism

America, China, Energy, Neoconservatism, Trade

When a world power such as China pursues its national, economic interests, instead of busying itself with unprovoked, non-defensive wars, as America does—analysts in the US call it a free rider.

“China,” pontificates Niall Ferguson, “contributes almost nothing to stability in the oil-producing heartland of the Arabian deserts and barely anything to the free movement of goods through the world’s strategic sea lanes. …In terms of geopolitics, China today is the world’s supreme free rider.”

So that is what the US has been doing in the Middle East! Fostering “the free movement of good” there. I suspect the millions of Iraqis who’ve been displaced and murdered pursuant to our invasion in 2003 would dispute that notion.

Chinese mercantilism is not free trade, but is it not better than American militarism?

UPADTED: Porno Mom And Her Freaky Family (The Noble Savage Model)

America, Celebrity, Ethics, Family, Gender, Psychiatry, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Sex

The following is an excerpt from “Mother’s Day Disturbia: Porno Mom And Her Sucky Kid”:

“Unseemliness” is how Charles Murray might call the May 2012 Time Magazine cover, genuflecting to modern motherhood in America. In “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010,” the libertarian political scientist mentions the “collapse of a sturdy code” [of conduct] in American society, rendering the nouveau riche upper class indistinguishable in that sense from the ever-accreting lower class.

“Obscene” better captures the mien of the Madonna and child that brazenly stare into the camera—and at America. TIME’s cover-models are Jamie Lynne Grumet, 26, self-styled, “attachment” parent, and Aram, her chunky, garden gnome of a child. …

In any event, Aram is a real feeder, if you know what I mean.

Grumet junior is large for his tender age of four. His gaze is cunning, never cute. The miniature man already reaches up to his non-gnomic mom’s waist. To help Aram reach the prized pair—mom’s perky breasts—TIME’s artistic director has used a stool.

All the better to satisfy mom’s “maternal” urges, “Nudge nudge, wink wink. Say no-more, say no-more.”

One other tender touch: Porno-mom’s pelvis is tilted slightly in the direction of her gnome’s grubby hands.

At this stage, bullying would be the best corrective intervention this kid could hope for. In a better world—one in which propriety had not been pulverized—odious Aram would be taunted mercilessly at play school. Were he to make it that far, boob-boy is sure to be smacked about the head by a few manly college boys, later in life.

For now, Aram remains the play thing of bigger bullies, caught as he is in a maelstrom of mommy dearest’s making. Horrified, television spectators watched the advocacy for the onansim known as “attachment parenting,” with the fascination with which you’d watch maggots crawl in-and-out of a CSI corpse.

“A lot of people say, you know, you can’t really be intimate with your husband if you’re co-sleeping and … those are kind of myths, too,” vaporized Mrs. Grumet on NBC’s Today show, to the leering approval of the mad-hatter behind Jamie Lynne Grumet’s Method Parenting.

Dr. William Sears was on set to dispense Delphic advice to moms who don’t measure-up. “These are tools, not rules,” this tool of a doctor effused.

Viewers of this uniquely American vaudeville were assured by Mrs. Grumet that…

Read the complete column, “Mother’s Day Disturbia: Porno Mom And Her Sucky Kid,” now on RT.

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UPDATE: THE NOBLE SAVAGE MODEL. There is no way that what this “boob of very little brain” is doing is right. She has conditioned the boy to be a nuisance and a cling-on to satisfy her (possibly not maternal) needs.

Somehow people defer to Third-World women as a models to emulate. Why? Is it because backward is more natural? As I point out in my book, Into The Cannibal’s Pot, these women often breast-feed their toddlers even when they themselves are HIV positive, for fear of being stigmatized by their tribesmen and women. Is this model of magical, irrational thinking one that the morons of the western media are promoting?

Besides, in primitive, poor societies, what you see are women who are forced to let starving toddlers, who might weigh what a one-year-old western toddler would, hang on their shriveled breasts—breasts that yield very little by way of fluid. This “practice” is dictated, mostly, by starvation.

The Noble Savage argument is ignoble. It is no model for advanced, western societies. All Arguments from Primitive Cultures for the “onanism” of “attachment parenting” are plain pathetic.

UPDATE II: Manhattan Le Magnifique

America, Capitalism, Ilana Mercer, Racism, Technology, The West, Trade

YES, MANHATTAN’S STILL THE GREATEST. I say so in reply to Barely a Blog reader Sunny Black.

Another reader, “Contemplationist”—he was at the libertarian-cum-Objectivist New York City Junto gathering, where I featured as speaker for the month of May, 2012—had once admonished me on the blog: “You gotta see things to believe them.”

As I crisscrossed Manhattan in high-heels (naturally) on lengthy walks, I was overcome with a surge of patriotism for very specific (and modest) reasons.

I had hoped to keep this passion and the attendant insights for a new column on a new forum. Stay tuned.

No other city I’ve visited in my longish lifetime measures up to Manhattan (New York City). Paris sucks by comparison—and I loved that city in the 1980s, before “les beurs”—the darling buds of France, aka her raging Muslim youths—took over.

Manhattan Le Magnifique.

UPDATE I: Huggs: People were okay and efficient, compared to the sullen slackers of the Pacific Northwest. On the subway, certain sorts glared angrily and refused to let you sit down, preferring to hog the entire bench. I was only too pleased “they” did not lunge at me, though. No wilding attack. And Central Park is the most beautiful place ever for a runner. I was up Sunday at 6:00AM because of jet lag, I guess. By 7:00am I was running. There were many many people doing the same. Fabulous.

UPDATE II: At the South-Street Sea Port, on the East River, near Wall Street. What a skyline.