I get douche chills watching posturing and posing far in excess of what the reality is. Just as that shirtless guy thinks he's god's gift rock star, Leoptard thinks it's an ultra-modern rockin' operating system, actually believing it's so cool and its shit doesn't stink.

It dances around playing its air guitar, while I roll my eyes.

If dope, curse and snore...e......

Brother thalo I think your reaction against the shirtless guy is about while you were watching the video you were afraid "it" moved.

Which is hand in hand the same as how you felt once you installed Leopold. You felt an embrace come opun you so your reaction was to dismiss immediately.

Isn't that video really just about some guy enjoying himself at the concert.

I say dance brother dance.

That Safari pixel bug does not exist for my machine.

The STAR WARS KID is about enjoying yourself, and the world be damned. This is about posturing and posing and thinking you're hot shit when you're not. Sorry man, I think I can tell the difference between some brother dancing vs. peacock strutting. And apparently I'm not alone. I'm pretty sure that's the most douche-chilling vid I've ever seen on YouTube. I showed it to sister thalo, and I thought I'd have to take her to the hospital she was laughing so hard.

I couldn't cancel the secure delete, I had to stop the Finder process to kill that progress bar.

I'm starting to run into sporadic flakiness in Spaces, I think that's getting ready to go south on me again. It often can't tell when I'm trying to drag an open WINDOW, and instead drags the whole space, as if I'm trying to reorganize the spaces. But I didn't miss, I was right on target. So it's starting to forget live areas, like the window manager normally does.

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I couldn't cancel the secure delete, I had to stop the Finder process to kill that progress bar.

Yes that's what I have to do also. Relaunch the Finder.

Both those videos are about laughing at some else.

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Both those videos are about laughing at some else.

Guilty. What can I say? I'm a prick.

Wait I thought you were the Master Baiter?

I set up Spaces. It seems to have it's usefulness. I don't mind using the Dock to switch from app to app.

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The STAR WARS KID is about enjoying yourself, and the world be damned. This is about posturing and posing and thinking you're hot shit when you're not. Sorry man, I think I can tell the difference between some brother dancing vs. peacock strutting. And apparently I'm not alone. I'm pretty sure that's the most douche-chilling vid I've ever seen on YouTube.

I'd like to weigh in on this important issue of our time. First off, I don't dance. I've never been a good dancer. I've never been comfortable dancing. I love tapping my foot to a good tune, but not the whole body heave thing. But some people dance really well. They're very free and creative with it. Then there are us potential douche chill guys who want to get in on the act but are perhaps better off stamping our foot. And just because you don't know how to dance, crotch grapping is not an instant passport to dancedom. It's my firm belief that you have to know how to dance first. No, you don't have to know how to dance as well as Michael Jackson before you can grab your crotch, but if you can't dance at least serviceably and you go for the crotch grab you'll reveal yourself as having no dance chops and probably no crotch chops as well. Grapping the crotch cannot ever be, nor is it now, instant access to cool. Admittedly, there's some controversy over whether he actually grabbed the crotch or just waved past it. But I think it is intent that counts in these matters, or at the very least proximity.

But weighing in on this guy's swaying motion that stands in for pretend dancing (as if he would really let loose if he had a little more room), I think the guy was plug full of alcohol. Half that swaying motion was the result of the drug. The other half – who knows what the hell. I don't want to even think about it. That whole video clip should have been titled "I want you to look at my package," because that's what the guy seemed to be doing. He was leading with the package. I guess he had nothing else. They say to go with your strength, but I'd hate to see his weakness.

I guess I’m not technically douche-chilled by watching that video, for I know I would be worse. Much worse. And at least half of the inanity can be excused because of the effects of alcohol. But it's that other half that anyone near that guy should be worried about. If he's doing this sort of dancing one moment, what next? Ice skating in one of those skin-tight outfits? Will he start wearing glitter? Will he don falsies with tassels and make them spin, both in different orbital directions (as the real pros can do)? Just where would this end?

In retrospect, I think the guy was doing what we all tend to do, just trying to fit in. But I think he ought to do some serious introspection. I think he'll find that hand clapping or foot tapping suit him much better. He could even go for the stoic look. But what we got is what you tend to get when a person doesn't play to their strengths. I side with Rico with his point about not making fun of people who are just average Joes doing what they're doing. And I also side with thalo who notices that average Joes maybe sometimes shouldn't be doing what they're doing.

Oh, oh, listen to the music
Oh, oh, listen to the music
Oh, oh, listen to the music
All the time


By the way, it's nice to have thalo finally admit he's a prick.

LOL, I admitted that day 1. Snob, prick, con-artist, master-baiter. The whole package. But you'd NEVER catch me in tight shorts, bronzed with man-tan, grabbing my package and playing air guitar shirtless for other people's benefit at an REO Speedwagon concert. It just wouldn't happen. It ain't dignified. Lookit those other people. Shirts on, tapping their feet. They don't have that neon "I am a douchebag" sign hanging over their heads like that guy.

I'm glad you are all kind and gentle. Me, I laugh at 3 stooges humor, I watch figure-skating to see them fall. I watch golf only to see them blow easy shots. I watch "Deal or No Deal" to see dreams crushed by mathematical probability, lol.

But again, the choice of that video to symbolize Leoptard is perfect, because lookit how the apologists rush in and treat him like a charity case. he afforded those hair plugs somehow

I'm glad you are all kind and gentle.

Whether one should be kind or unkind, and the advantageous of each, can be modeled and explained by evolutionary game theory, and much better than it can be explained by such concepts as Original Sin or The Fall of Man. We are all kind or unkind at times, although we humans will almost always rationalize whatever our actions are as being good. Nick Lowe said you could be cruel to be kind, and so did the Spanish Inquisition. The realities of the world, and our situation in the world, dictate that we will often be cruel, greedy, deceitful, or unkind because there is an advantage to doing so. It's part of the whole repertoire of possibilities, and people, being as relatively smart as we are, these possibilities fall within our modes of conduct. A virus may be unable of being cruel or kind, but we are. These are just part of the tools we have that we use to survive. And because we all have them, that's one reason human beings spend an inordinate amount of time talking about the rightness or wrongness of events and people. We are constantly sorting this stuff out. We do so almost compulsively. And whatever conduct we agree on (if we ever agree) that is good, our Machiavellian selfish nature kicks in and that will mean that we will look for loopholes to exploit so that we may do what we will to our advantage and then, ex post facto, call it good.

People do extremely horrible things thinking it is good. The nature of being an individual being in a hostile world means that we're going to be selfish and looking out for #1. In doing so, there are advantages in cooperating with others, but also in screwing others. And we tend to do both. It is actually quite rare for someone to say "I watch figure-skating to see them fall" (I tend to watch NASCAR racing to see the crashes) because there's usually little advantage in opening admitting such things. Much better to disguise them or play the nice guy. That's what other people want. That's generally what works – even while you're plowing full steam ahead to personal wealth, status, and power. But as long as you keep that good-guy veneer in place, you're generally good to go, because that's what everyone else is doing. Only at thalo.net (and other rare places) can anyone dare to point out what is really going on. A huge part of any culture is based on "gentleman's agreements" (or gentlewomen's agreements) as to what to turn a blind eye to.

Basically this outlines my main beef with religion. It tends to disguise rather ordinary and worldly pursuits with a bunch of incense, mumbo jumbo, and candle wax. When one really comes to grips with our place in this universe, one then understands (at least in rough) why there is the kind and the unkind. These are just two of the currencies, among dozens of others, which we trade and bank on while living and surviving in this world. Notions of kind and unkind always have market value. It is not the cynic who establishes this, it is the nature of reality. However, for those pursuing a higher morality, being kind cannot just be a marketing ploy or a means to an end (even if our motives usually fall under the radar of the conscious mind – no matter what we humans do, we tend to rationalize it as good). Being kind has to be a goal unto itself. It can, at least theoretically, have an existential weight beyond mere advantage or usefulness. And like I have long said, to truly be good in a way that isn't just playing rationalizing games with one's motives, it means to be giving away some type of advantage. Name one single spiritual or religious entity that does that. No, it's all about building wealth, healthy, and progeny – all the normal pursuits wrapped up in the mystic. You'll likely find only a few individuals who, having see the game we are all playing, decide to play by slightly different rules. But for the masses it is just the same pursuits dressed up in "kindness" or "goodness" defined in such a way that it suits one's usual desires. And then it is no surprise when we find "cruel to be kind" or people being burnt at the stake because it supposedly represents goodness.

I think you're suspicion of kindness is commendable, but the other half of that equation is suspicion of cruelty. There is no automatic sanctity in cruelty even if it is an implicit acknowledgment of the often selfish motives of being kind. That's just being mired in the same-old same-old. And maybe that's all we can do. Maybe there's no way out. We're left to chirp from one side or the other, the cynic or the optimist. We all live in the real world, and no one has found a way yet to live in another one. It would probably be an extraordinary waste of time and energy to try to do something more, to try to take kindness out of the realm of self-interest. Why should one? Who else is doing it really? And yet, at least intellectually, I feel the need to keep the ceiling open for such a thing or else humanity is damned to have the Catholics, Muslims, or Joel Olsteens of the world define what is best.

I always have a rhetorical problem making the jump from, say, laughing at stooges' humor... to being really maliciously cruel. I think people these days, including you as part of this culture, have completely lost the ability to distinguish between a minor cruelty and a major one. You've just belied the fact that in the most minor of cruelties, you see the seeds of greater and more pervasive cruelty.

That's what I don't buy. I see a much larger gulf between laughing at figure skaters who fall on their asses, and being greedy or deceitful and stepping on people's necks to get ahead.

None of which I'll do. I've never gone out of my way to be an amoral prick and destroy someboy out of greed or the need to get ahead.

I suppose I'm kind of alarmed at how QUICKLY you can see minor cruelties, like humor and satire, in the same light as the Spanish Inquisition. Talk about them in the same breath. I think this is a case where theory assumes the worst of people, but the reality is different.

I think part of politically correct culture is to squelch these minor, humorous cruelties, and see them as the infant stage of genocidal maniacs or something. As if making fun of somebody's race or religion is step one to being a nazi or serial killer. I really don't think that's the case. I think people do this because they are threatened by the satirists and humorists of the world. If you DON'T fear these minor cruelties, the people who crave control over others seem to lose leverage. If they can't squelch these minor points of decorum, nobody is likely to call them on something more major.

The problem with seeing everything in terms of evolutionary advantage, is that you get situations like this where somebody simply cracking wise, or laughing at something "inappropriate" becomes this huge moral or survival lynch pin, when I think it's just not that big a deal. The tendency to universalize and ascribe undue importance to trivial crap is a feature of PC society. Sometimes a joke is just a joke. And I think one of the great skills in this world is learning to take one.

But if every cruel crack or easing of decorum is a make-or-break moment in some existential or darwinian model, used to calculate survival advantage, I think that's ridiculous. What better way to LOSE one's sense of humor than to over-analyze it?

I always have a rhetorical problem making the jump from, say, laughing at stooges' humor... to being really maliciously cruel. I think people these days, including you as part of this culture, have completely lost the ability to distinguish between a minor cruelty and a major one. You've just belied the fact that in the most minor of cruelties, you see the seeds of greater and more pervasive cruelty.

That's what I don't buy. I see a much larger gulf between laughing at figure skaters who fall on their asses, and being greedy or deceitful and stepping on people's necks to get ahead.

I see a difference between drawing a picture of a gun and actually shooting someone, if that's what you mean. Maybe in some sci-fi universe that's how things work. It would be like voodoo. You stick a needle into a voodoo doll in order to really hurt someone. Or you draw a picture of a gun pointed at someone and that fills their body full of real bullets. But we don't live in that universe. I was never confused about that.

I suppose I'm kind of alarmed at how QUICKLY you can see minor cruelties, like humor and satire, in the same light as the Spanish Inquisition. Talk about them in the same breath. I think this is a case where theory assumes the worst of people, but the reality is different.

There is cruelty, large and small. But cruelty would be the common denominator. In small doses we (rightly) find it acceptable. But at some point we say "No!" There's a continuum there, from minor stuff on one end to burning someone at the stake on the other. I feel much better about just admitting my minor cruelties rather than trying to deny them and pass them off as the inability of other people to not understand the difference between the Spanish Inquisition and making fun of someone's dancing style.

I think part of politically correct culture is to squelch these minor, humorous cruelties, and see them as the infant stage of genocidal maniacs or something. As if making fun of somebody's race or religion is step one to being a nazi or serial killer.

I think that's it exactly. It's the attempt to say that drawing a picture of a gun is practically the same thing (or will inevitably lead to the same thing) as pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger. Whatever technical term there may be for this human trait, it's certainly based on the human ability to extrapolate. The human mind is always on the lookout for clues of what might happen next, especially if what might happen next is either opportune or dangerous. And if someone, for example, sends us a written note with a death threat on it (in words and/or pictures), we rightly sit up and take notice. This is a useful trait. This is surely an innate human trait. And like any trait that we have, it can fire inappropriately – or it can be gamed by other people for their own nefarious purposes. Those who have such a passionate hatred for guns, for example, may use a child's drawing of a gun to exploit this innate human ability and propensity for extrapolation.

This is one of the human traits that we all need to learn about and become more aware of. It's the same challenge we have with free speech. In order to form a higher and more civilized culture, we must recognize our built-in traits, why they are there in the first place, and understand when they are appropriate guides and when they are not. In this modern world we don't kill or imprison people because we disagree with what they are saying. In olden times (and not so olden times), kings and other leaders might imprison someone for ideas that they perceived as threatening their power. They extrapolated (quite sensibly, really) that the fellow who says "Down with the king" one day might actually physically work for that result. But nowadays, in our more enlightened civilizations, we have agreed to at least one more level of abstraction. Except for some legal exceptions, people can say what they want and the words are to be held as things distinct from actions. Even if it's true that words are often indicative of people's minds, motives, and future actions, we make an agreement that we shall acknowledge a difference between the two.

But the reality is that some kid drawing a picture of a gun pointed at someone might be indicative of his hostility and future actions. And cruelties, large or small, are still cruelties, even if we agree that small ones need necessarily be accepted. But that doesn't necessarily make something right just because it should be tolerated.

The problem with seeing everything in terms of evolutionary advantage, is that you get situations like this where somebody simply cracking wise, or laughing at something "inappropriate" becomes this huge moral or survival lynch pin, when I think it's just not that big a deal.

Either we begin to understand where our human traits came from, and what they are for and what purpose they serve, or we're slaves to the latest fashion in political correctness. The realities of evolution are that it's not a nature vs. nurture dichotomy. We are not completely programmed, but neither are we the total product of culture. It's a complex interaction between the two that defies all simplistic explanations. Some believe that there is inherent right and wrong in the universe, as if it exists with the same reality as the positive and negative charges of electricity. But this has never been shown to be the case. What we instead see is all creatures struggling to survive, and particularly in the case of human beings, we see time and again human beings justifying their actions as good, no matter what those actions are. Even if there was absolute right and wrong, it would be tough ever seeing it through the fog of human rationalization. All I'm saying is that let's take this onboard as an obvious fact. Look at the evidence. Look at the evidence of the huge amount of time humans put into deciding what is right and wrong – just like we're doing now. That's a blatant clue as to what drives us. That's certainly why it is laughably simplistic and stupid to ever think one can write down, once and for all time, the totality of moral truths, whether in religious texts or even as encoded into law. We're always fussing and figuring about the fine points of right and wrong. That perhaps, more than any other trait, defines the human species as different from any other. Do you suppose this trait just fell out of the sky, or is it perhaps encoded in our DNA? Why don't grasshoppers or sheep carry on the same sorts of quibbling over the details of morality as we do?

I'm full-on for quibbling with the details of right and wrong on the usual level of human discourse. Thalo says not to equate guns with drawings. Okay. I buy that. But I'm simply saying that there is another level or perspective from which to view all this. And if we can understand this level, we might make better decisions about what is right and wrong. God knows that if we leave it at the knee-jerk level of human passions that we're not likely to find better answers.

Okay it has been many days now that I have stopped using sleep. My MDD has been running fine ever since. The USB 2.0 card I have is most likely the culprit but I would suggest if you have times when things bog down beachballs that whole cascading effect starts happening then stop using sleep mode. Either leave the machine running or shut down.

And for heavens sake never put the machine to sleep with running apps.

And for heavens sake never put the machine to sleep with running apps.

I do that routinely, and have done so for years, without disaster striking. Kitty has been good to me.

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It's a complex interaction between the two that defies all simplistic explanations.

That's another thing I've never been down with. Looking for a more complicated answer, when a simple one will do. That's often how religions, con-artists, and control freaks operate.

It's always easy to muddy up an issue. Add crap to a question to forbid an easy answer. The trick is distilling the question to its essence.

Scientists now poo-poo 'nature vs. nurture' the same way artists and art historians in my field began to poo-poo cyclical theory in art (that's where every period in art history could be hammered into a pre-classical, classical, and post-classical triad).

And yet, there's a lot... a lot of truth in those ideas. They've simply fallen out of fashion.

To me, ideas that are liberating and crap-cutting are usually easy to spot, and usually revolutionary. While they may not be the god's perfect Truth with a capital T, they're certainly what I WANT to believe the Truth is. Because I live in a reality of personal responsibility, civilization conquering chaos, the value and destiny of human nature and free will.

The alternatives always seem to promote ideas where human beings have absolutely no say in anything, where they're slaves to forces that leave no room for our BEST ideas, like creativity and freedom and civilized culture.

I think in unsettled times, you can almost set your clock by ideas and theories that downplay the human as a master of his/her own destiny. It's easier to explain things in terms of shit happening than it is to demand that people assume responsibility. It's easier to BLAME than it is to act.

I would never trust a scientific treatise, no matter how clever, to tell me that nothing I did mattered, and that human beings don't create their own realities. Even if it were true, I'd behave as if it weren't, and prove it wrong in a de facto sense.

Humans quibble because culture have given them the TIME to do it, to pursue matters intellectual. Culture itself is a free pass from the day-to-day survival danger that other creatures live in. We may be still wired for some of that danger, and hence crave it, but what we're doing is FABRICATING it to fill our emotional needs, after we've taken out its teeth.

I'd have to say I'm more inclined to believe our programming is vestigal, we've surpassed it. And that culture /nurture is WAY more important than even the PC people think. Much of the backlash for or against it is political, not scientific.

Meanwhile, another similarly archaic attitude I ascribe to is the whole Occam's Razor kind of thing. The more complex and intertwined people tell me some issue is, the more I'm CONVINCED it's simpler than that, but they NEED it to be complicated. Again, for some emotional reason.

But when you look at the great scientists and skeptics of the world, they're pretty much the only ones looking for simple, elegant, commonsense answers. They seem to deftly be able to debunk trickery and over-complication with the clearest and simplest of counter-arguments.

My favorite analogy for some of what I'm trying to say here, is the biosphere. One guy might say, oh, holy crap look at how complicated... all these intertwinings and inter-related dependencies. We'll NEVER understand this without understanding how complicated life in all its forms truly is.

I say nah-ah, they're confusing DIVERSE with complicated. The same way Steve Jobs confuses NUMBERS OF FEATURES with functionality.

A given biosphere can be incredibly diverse, but the stuff that drives it really ain't. Simply because life manages to fill available niches, and adapt creatively to some interesting problem, doesn't mean that life, or evolution is a complicated thing. It's actually a simple thing that fractals-itself-up to APPEAR complicated, the way fractals are a simple vocabulary that repeats in organic patterns that are difficult to discern unless you have the key.

I think those keys are out there. Literally EVERY problem that seems overly-complicated, I'd be willing to bet has a pretty simple slap-to-the-forehead answer that humans aren't quite willing to see.

We RESIST "Less is More" because we're afraid it's too close to WANT. Too close to "is that all there is."

I believe brother thalo wanted to create his own Mail stationary. Here's how.

Most of it is abracadabra to me; I don't know if this is a useful tip.

That's another thing I've never been down with. Looking for a more complicated answer, when a simple one will do. That's often how religions, con-artists, and control freaks operate.

Like Barbie said, "Math is hard." Sometimes thinks aren't simple. That's life. Oh, you can pretend that things are simple. And surely a really brilliant fellow will be able to make the complicated far less arcane -- even to the point of sounding simple. It's like the idea of an atom bomb. It's simple, really. You just take some plutonium and shove it all together in the same place really fast and really accurately. But the actual mechanism to do this (and the theoretically physics behind it all) are vastly complex. The "simple" aspect of it tells a story, but it catches it only in a very broad outline. This can be useful, but it's not the whole story.

And con artists are probably best known for over-simplyfing things. Just step right up and get yer Snake Oil. It will cure leprosy, hives, shingles, and mumps. Only 35 cents. Satisfaction guaranteed. It's usually the con artists who oversimplify, who gloss over, who take two or three separate things and try to wrap it into one psychologically comforting band-aid of simple. But a con artist may use whatever technique works. I'll find things simple or complex as needed and trust my own judgment and not pre-judge everything in some grand scheme of con-ism. Sometimes things really are complex because that's the way they are.

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It's like the idea of an atom bomb. It's simple, really. You just take some plutonium and shove it all together in the same place really fast and really accurately. But the actual mechanism to do this (and the theoretically physics behind it all) are vastly complex. The "simple" aspect of it tells a story, but it catches it only in a very broad outline. This can be useful, but it's not the whole story.

Exactly, the idea is simple. Actually, a friggin' TEENAGER could build an atom bomb if they had the right materials. It's really NOT that difficult. The accuracy doesn't have to be perfect to create devastation. I hear it's easier than auto-shop, and there are unfortunately manuals on the internet.

But anyway, the point is, yeah, some of the stuff HUMANS create is complicated... like Boeing 747s and Space Shuttles, and OS X. But the governing ideas, principles behind things aren't that OVERLY complicated. I think we add complexity to things unnecessarily.

Our bodies are complicated collections of specialized cells, and yet each has a clear, simple purpose, and is functional and efficient. We just sometimes fail to recognize the whys of things, and balk at the apparent complexity, without really starting from a foundation that the ORGANISM makes perfect sense, is a triumph of evolution, and the principles that made and govern it are probably not as complex or arcane as we, what, WISH?

Evolution is advantage-taking, niche-filling, resource-exploiting. We can often answer questions like "what does this do?" With speculations like: well, what do we NEED it to do? Fight viruses? Check. Protect our brains from blunt force trauma? Check. Pass on our genetic material? Check.

Seeing complexity as so daunting that we resort to religion or whatever, never looking for those simple, logical answers, is what keeps us back. A complex THEORY never explains squat adequately. But Big-Bang, Evolution, Plate Tectonics... they have varied outcomes, but they are intuitive, unbloated, common sense. A pair of DICE is simple... the possible outcomes are less simple. But once you understand dice, you understand what's going on.

I think math is only as hard as we make it. We have a deep and abiding NEED for those blackboard-filling equations, when "e=mc2" would have probably done the trick.

I think we need to trust that nature doesn't operate with the same arcane nonsense that we ascribe to it. We gild the lily, we're AFRAID of how simple things really might be. If there's good and evil and they're simple, we're up shit's creek. We NEED there to be grey areas, to absolve us. We need complexity as an excuse.

Case in point, making our own stationery in Mail. Now is that ridiculous or what? We have to go to the terminal just to get a piece of ooga-booga arcane nonsense, when it could have been "mystationery."

thanks, yab-man. Exactly what I needed. But it cracks me up that Apple couldn't have made it simpler. Why do they need to retain control over stuff like that?

Exactly, the idea is simple. Actually, a friggin' TEENAGER could build an atom bomb if they had the right materials. It's really NOT that difficult.

It's extremely difficult, actually. If it wasn't the Iranians would have had a bomb a long time ago. They've got lots of teenagers and lots of money. And I certainly think they have access to the internet where there might be plans. Like genetics, the overall theory is simple enough. But in actual practice, it's enormously complex.