Words of Wisdom?

From alt.books.tom-clancy

Why does anyone think that this terrorist war has so much to do with religion?

Bin Laden wants to be the new Mohammed, which would give him control of a
formless nation of 1.5 BILLION citizens, and the power that would come with it.
His objective is political, not religious. He wants to be the biggest kahuna
around. A lot of people think that way. Some are politicians. The rest are
madmen. The two groupings overlap

Wherever the Prophet Mohammed is now, he is probably displeased that the
religion he founded on sound and admirable principles is being perverted, not
unlike Christianity by the crazies in Northern Ireland. in Catholicism we call
this blasphemy.

Religion rarely causes war. Rather, it defines the respective teams in wars
which are always about economics, one of the few facts that Karl Marx got
right. Anyone on the NG who gets numerous porn spams on the 'Net will
understand that people will do damned near anything for money. Even very
uncomfortable things

The average Muslim wants the same things that the average Christian or Buddhist
wants: a nice house, an steady job, and a better life for his kids—this is
what the polling date in Iraq shows rather explicitly. Our newsies do not
report this, of course.

If there is anything America has demonstrated to the world it is that all
people are pretty much the same. We have every culture in the world represented
here. Bring them here and the first generation works at menial entry-level jobs
and tries to get its kids educated. The kids become doctors and lawyers, and
their kids run for Congress. Along the way we also get some decent baseball
players. During World War I the Army, which is a very progressive institution,
tested its draftees and proved that Blacks were smarter than Jews. (This may be
why people declare that the SAT and other mass tests are biased, by the way.
Blacks spoke English Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe did not.) Now, today
I doubt that anybody would be so bold as to suggest that any group is smarter
than Jews. What makes people succeed are strong families and respect for
education. The Jews had and still have these advantages. I hope I'm not going
too fast for anyone here,

Religion is what we all choose as our way of talking to God. To succeed a
religion MUST elevate the spirit and give us hope for the future. Islam does
this well for over a billion people. It is not a religion made for and by
psychopaths. It's a way to talk to God, not Lucifer.

Recognition of this fact—the practical utility of religion—is a foundation
stone of the United States of America. The First Amendment of the Constitution
is supposed to protect freedom of religion, though there are some today who try
to transform it into freedom FROM religion, which is a stand worthy only of
contempt. In "The Sum of All Fears" I tried to propose that if we recognize
religions by the good things they uphold, we could defuse much of the
perversions which come about from people who in fact if not in form spit upon
the faiths they claim to represent and promote.

The smartest thing we Americans can do today is to embrace Islam and its
values. To do so would go a long way toward isolating the Islamic "guerillas"
from the peasant sea in which they must swim to survive. But when does the
government do anything smart?

Appeal to a man's best instincts, and you will see those instincts. Treat him
as a sociopath will help to transform him into one.

TC

AIN'T WINDOWS EXPLORER GRAND

OFFICE WISDOM
From the BBC show The Office

Original Text
Personally I like No. 11


David Brent's Office Wisdom
1. Eagles may soar high, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
2. Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.
3. There may be no 'I' in team, but there's a 'ME' if you look hard enough.
4. Process and Procedure are the last hiding place of people without the wit and wisdom to do their job properly.
5. Remember that age and treachery will always triumph over youth and ability.
6. Never do today that which will become someone else's responsibility tomorrow.
7. Every time you open your mouth you have this wonderful ability to continually confirm what I think.
8. Show me a good loser and I'll show you a LOSER!
9. Put the key of despair into the lock of apathy. Turn the knob of mediocrity slowly and open the gates of despondency - welcome to a day in the average office.
10. It's the team that matters. Where would The Beatles be without Ringo? If John got Yoko to play drums the history of music would be completely different.
11. What does a squirrel do in the summer? It buries nuts. Why? Cos then in winter time he's got something to eat and he won't die. So, collecting nuts in the summer is worthwhile work. Every task you do at work think, would a squirrel do that? Think squirrels. Think nuts.
12. When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
13. Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue.
14. If your boss is getting you down, look at him through the prongs of a fork and imagine him in jail.
15. If you can keep your head when all around you have lost theirs, then you probably haven't understood the seriousness of the situation.
16. Never do today that which will become someone else's responsibility tomorrow.
17. You don't have to be mad to work here! In fact we ask you to complete a medical questionnaire to ensure that you are not.
18. If you treat the people around you with love and respect, they will never guess that you're trying to get them sacked.
19. If at first you don't succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.
20. You have to be 100% behind someone, before you can stab them in the back.
21. If work was so good, the rich would have kept more of it for themselves.
22. Those of you who think you know everything are annoying to those of us who do.
23. There's no 'I' in 'team'. But then there's no 'I' in 'useless smug colleague', either. And there's four in 'platitude-quoting idiot'. Go figure.
24. Know your limitations and be content with them. Too much ambition results in promotion to a job you can't do.
25. Make good use of your cylindrical filing unit, the one you mainly keep under your desk.
26. Quitters never win, winners never quit. But those who never win and never quit are idiots.
27. If you're gonna be late, then be late and not just 2 minutes - make it an hour and enjoy your breakfast.
28. Remember the 3 golden rules: 1. It was like that when I got here. 2. I didn't do it. 3. (To your Boss) I like your style.
29. The office is like an army, and I'm the field general. You're my footsoldiers and customer quality is the WAR!!!
30. Set out to leave the first vapour trail in the blue-sky scenario.
31. Statistics are like a lamp-post to a drunken man - more for leaning on than illumination.
32. A problem shared is a problem halved, so is your problem really yours or just half of someone elses?
33. Is your work done? Are all pigs fed, watered and ready to fly?....
34. You don't have to be mad to work here, but you do have to be on time, well presented, a team player, customer service focused and sober!!
35. I thought I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it was just some b*stard with a torch, bringing me more work.
36. Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them.

Quality Journalism

I just caught this piece of Chicken Little-ing that was in Saturday's edition of the finest rag in town, the Courier-Mail. Oooh, 'Newspaper of the Year', it reckons. When a paper's Assistant Editor can be that bloody stupid, I submit the 'newspaper of the year' should pull its head out of its arse.

In brief, the article is about the introduction of digital radios into Queensland (specifically, Brisbane, but there's more to come) policing. These radios are encrypted, and OMFG teh police are KEEPING SECRETS we're THREE DAYS from EVERY POLICEMAN IN AUSTRALIA BEING CORRUPT help help we're being REPRESSED!

Now, the article makes it sound like the radios were introduced, like, yesterday. They've been in use for about two or three months. That's right, the restriction of media freedom that *is* radio encryption is so bloody important that a breathless article about how now the police have no checks on them can come in a couple of months after the fateful event occurs. Now there's a man with his finger on the pulse.

Working, as I do, at the Police Communications Centre, I have a fair idea of the kinds of information flow that happens in and around crimes and crime scenes. And I can state, here and now, quite categorically, that Mr. Koch's (I prefer not to pronounce the last bit as a guttural) fears are:

BULLSHIT.

As any investigative journalist, nay, someone with a functioning brain, would know, police corruption is not something that happens over the police radio. I'm sorry, but police do not say they're stopping off at illegal brothels for free nookie, they do not record that they let someone off because their bribe was big enough, they do not talk about how they beat suspects with phone books. Even, and this is the really tricky part, even if they actually do those things. Which most, if not all, of them don't.

As for his claims that police will not inform the media about crimes and such if it does not reflect police in a favourable light? Again:

BULLSHIT.

Everything that comes through the PCC, of a certain type - everything - goes to the media section. We do that. People should know the big things going down. And because we are not on the scene, we don't know how the police are going to turn out. You see, it doesn't matter. We pass it over. Not only that, his characterisation of police traditionally disliking their own media section came as something of a surprise to the police I work with. If he was an investigative journalist... he'd have found this out already.

Now why did the QPS invest in a multi-million dollar encryption dooberwacky for the radios? It's fairly simple - we deal in people's shit. A lot of things that police need to know (are the people here suicidal, are the people there sane, are the people elsewhere living in piles of their own shit, what are the occupant's names, what sort of traffic history do they have) are things that really don't need to be announced to the world at large. Or at least to anyone who might happen to have a scanner. With the encryption, police can pass their personal mobile numbers over the air for other coppers to contact them without worrying that some freak with a scanner, a pen and some paper's going to start prank-calling them. (And the mobile thing can come in very handy, so don't scoff.) We can say that certain houses belong to QPS members, without worrying about some dickhead with a scanner and a grudge trying to set fire to it.

And that's not even mentioning the criminals that keep scanners in their houses or vehicles the better to evade police...

But one final thing before I end this rant... I'm quite fond of this little paragraph of his.

It is not being melodramatic to state that this move is the most serious threat to police accountability in Queensland since Tony Fitzgerald brought down his 1989 findings that the service was then riddled with corruption.

No, Mr. Koch. It's not melodramatic. It has to make some vague kind of sense to be melodramatic. Tony Fitzgerald was the opposite to a threat to police accountability. What is melodramatic is your claim that there will be nothing newsworthy because police won't tell the media anything. Or maybe it's not melodramatic, just piss-poor lazy, given that it's a journalist's job to find things out. Heaven forbid.

In summation, Mr. Koch, your article is paranoid, self-important, opinionated, irrational...

BULLSHIT.

In other news, Escape Velocity: Nova is evil, evil.

In still other news, I'm currently as hoarse as a hoarse thing.

Heh

Not a Suprise... Really...

When people wonder why followers of Islam have such a poor reputation in Western Countries, you only have to wait until people do something stupid like this, to a member of their own family no less. My favourite quote

"I'm only doing this for your own good - I love you like a Muslim sister.

Then again, when Dad's locked up in Guantanamo merely because he thought it would be fun to run around Afghanistan with a rocket launcher, he can only try to follow the example he's been taught.

Hasbro - so when do we play this?

Breaking News

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Why is this Woman Crying?

Because the Israeli Defence Forces detonated an explosive belt they found in her house. To my way of thinking, the logical step to avoid this kind of thing is to not keep explosive fucking belts in your house!!!. Of course, I'm probably just not being sensitive to her cultural need to be able to blow up school children or something like that. Then again, it does seem to be a time-honoured tradition amongst certain well-respected leaders in today's society...

Extreme Sports - Russian Style

A MISUSE OF WORKPLACE HARDWARE...A.K.A...WE GOT A NEW TOY
This is where I work:

This is Little Steve (and my boss, Flick, in the background):

Yours truly:

Little Steve hard at work:

Little Steve yawning hard at work:

I believe I have my stapler:

...and a Barrel of Arse Monkeys

Eeek! A dinosaur!

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Printer On-Line

Yes, I now have an ex-demo office printer, a Minolta Magicolour 2300. A laser office printer. A colour laser office printer. A network colour laser printer. Which seems to be working.

And here's a hint as to what image printed out for its test run...

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They'll Miss Me When I've Gone

Least impressive suicide evar?

We Welcome Our Communist Masters

This time, it's not Jet Li in Bodyguard from Beijing. No, this is a reason we should be happy to live under North Korean Communism.

This is what happens when you buy a Bacardi Breezer in Outback Australia

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Greatest RPG Evar???