Being a packrat is fun and sometimes useful. But there comes a time...
So you wouldn't believe the amount of Jim-stuff heading for the landfill, including my first iMac (eMac?), a desktop from the 90s, big heavy old brute running something like OS8.
It served me well, and there is a lot of stuff on the hard drive. I will probably never look at it again, but I might want to.
.
So, you experts among my readers, supposing I pull the hard drive.
Is there a process for retrieving the information from the old drive alone if I ever want to?
Or do I need some sort of separate hard drive to download the old stuff to before I junk the computer?
Or what?
TIA.
Jim
(A nod here to all my old friends, acquaintances, and enemies from Over Yonder.)
Sep 23, 2014
Nautical distractions (4)
If I am not mistaken, today will go down in the history of a small Iowa city as the Day the Beard Got Flushed.
Tomorrow the freshly shaven takes his departure, and I like to imagine that he glances at the Mississippi River on his childhood doorstep and thinks: "See ya. I leave you now to master waters far greater than your little peetrickle flow."
I look forward to having him here again on one of his early leaves so that he may confirm his suspicion that his new employer will never equip him with arms so fine as those he knew in his extreme youth.
Thanks a lot, Charlo, and fork you, too
Eventually I got around to reading the Reason take on Charlo Greene's "F--- it. I quit" skit and even scanned a few dozen reader comments. Disheartening.
Of course television journalists aren't. They get paid to draw audiences to commercials for gunk to make your underarms smell better. That makes them shills. But they pretend to be journalists, and most of the public goes along with the gag. They have contracts with their stations to maintain that pretense. Part of the ruse is to appear objective. A big part is promising not to say
"f--k" on camera.
Charlo broke her contract and became an instant "libertarian" hero -- if the bulk of the Reason comments is any guide -- because she vulgarly pimped a personal political opinion on her employer's time, employer' property, employer's spectrum, and likely as not wearing her employer's clothing.
It was about pot, of course, and it's irrelevant that her personal opinion and (most of) ours are identical. The war on some drugs is illogical, expensive, stupidly waged, and very often downright cruel and immoral. (Hey, toss a grenade trew that there door Rambo; there probably ain't no little girl sleeping in da crib.)
The remnants of journalistic integrity need to be preserved. When a reporter outs a crooked or stupid or venal politician, we should be moved to an initial presumption of accuracy. When she reports a failed policy we should be able to assume that something needs quite a little more thought.
That happens only when the profession creates its own reputation for reportorial virtue, and that is the opposite of attention-whoring.
Why yes, Charlo, I do mean you.
Of course television journalists aren't. They get paid to draw audiences to commercials for gunk to make your underarms smell better. That makes them shills. But they pretend to be journalists, and most of the public goes along with the gag. They have contracts with their stations to maintain that pretense. Part of the ruse is to appear objective. A big part is promising not to say
"f--k" on camera.
Charlo broke her contract and became an instant "libertarian" hero -- if the bulk of the Reason comments is any guide -- because she vulgarly pimped a personal political opinion on her employer's time, employer' property, employer's spectrum, and likely as not wearing her employer's clothing.
It was about pot, of course, and it's irrelevant that her personal opinion and (most of) ours are identical. The war on some drugs is illogical, expensive, stupidly waged, and very often downright cruel and immoral. (Hey, toss a grenade trew that there door Rambo; there probably ain't no little girl sleeping in da crib.)
The remnants of journalistic integrity need to be preserved. When a reporter outs a crooked or stupid or venal politician, we should be moved to an initial presumption of accuracy. When she reports a failed policy we should be able to assume that something needs quite a little more thought.
That happens only when the profession creates its own reputation for reportorial virtue, and that is the opposite of attention-whoring.
Why yes, Charlo, I do mean you.
There's nothing new about mulish tyranny
In late autumn, 510 years ago, seaman Christopher Columbus was in a painful bed in his rented house near Seville. After four voyages of discovery he was still "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" by royal decree of Ferdinand and the dying Isabella, but the title was becoming hollow.
The exhausted, gouty old Italian sailor was ending his days at the mercy of conspirators at the Spanish court, sitting that winter in Segovia, nearly 400 miles of barely passable roads and ruts to his north. He needed to get there to plead in person for what he had been promised in 1492.
Three possibilities existed. One was a coach, for some reason not available to him. Another was the high-stepping Spanish horse, too fidgety for his racked old body. Finally, the mule.
And here we get to the parallel ideas of 1504 and 2014, crony capitalism department. Samuel Eliot Morison explains:
Columbus' remaining six months of life are interesting, perhaps poignant, but beyond the point here, which is that government was, then as now, in the hands of the greedy market perverts who will, for a price, decide who can sell what to whom and for how much.
It has become a little more subtle these days. Who can doubt the mule-ban followed direct bribes from horse breeders to someone privileged to whisper into royal ears. In our democratic times, the bribe takes another form, and the political payoff comes in votes. Voting blocs, actually. For the thoughtless greens there is Solyndra, for instance. For the war hawk industry there are Halliburton and Blackwater, for instance. For general welfare-statist lobby there is Acorn, for instance.
I guess that is one reason I rarely give full voice to the contempt I have for the Obama clique and all its predecessors back though Wilson, at least. The enemy is not so much the men and women of the statist left and the statist right. It is the corrupted idea they serve.
These elected royals didn't invent oligarchy, crony capitalism. They are simply its latter-day minions, tools of the thoughtless notion that they -- like all politicians -- have the right to dictate your every decision and reap the rewards from grateful winners in a government-controlled marketplace..
Jackasses, you might say. Not totally responsible for their actions, but surely in need of the greatest discipline.
---
The quoted passage is in the one-volume edition of Morison's "Admiral of the Ocean Sea," the Little-Brown 1942 edition, p. 664.
The exhausted, gouty old Italian sailor was ending his days at the mercy of conspirators at the Spanish court, sitting that winter in Segovia, nearly 400 miles of barely passable roads and ruts to his north. He needed to get there to plead in person for what he had been promised in 1492.
Three possibilities existed. One was a coach, for some reason not available to him. Another was the high-stepping Spanish horse, too fidgety for his racked old body. Finally, the mule.
And here we get to the parallel ideas of 1504 and 2014, crony capitalism department. Samuel Eliot Morison explains:
Columbus ... requested royal permission to ride a mule. The Andalusian horse-raising interests, it appears, had become so alarmed at the increasing employment of mules as saddle animals that a law had been passed forbidding their use for such a purpose. Columbus believed he could endure the gentle gaits of a mule but not the somewhat jittery paces of an Andalusian horse; so he applied to the King for a mule permit, and it was granted. (emphasis mine).
Columbus' remaining six months of life are interesting, perhaps poignant, but beyond the point here, which is that government was, then as now, in the hands of the greedy market perverts who will, for a price, decide who can sell what to whom and for how much.
It has become a little more subtle these days. Who can doubt the mule-ban followed direct bribes from horse breeders to someone privileged to whisper into royal ears. In our democratic times, the bribe takes another form, and the political payoff comes in votes. Voting blocs, actually. For the thoughtless greens there is Solyndra, for instance. For the war hawk industry there are Halliburton and Blackwater, for instance. For general welfare-statist lobby there is Acorn, for instance.
I guess that is one reason I rarely give full voice to the contempt I have for the Obama clique and all its predecessors back though Wilson, at least. The enemy is not so much the men and women of the statist left and the statist right. It is the corrupted idea they serve.
These elected royals didn't invent oligarchy, crony capitalism. They are simply its latter-day minions, tools of the thoughtless notion that they -- like all politicians -- have the right to dictate your every decision and reap the rewards from grateful winners in a government-controlled marketplace..
Jackasses, you might say. Not totally responsible for their actions, but surely in need of the greatest discipline.
---
The quoted passage is in the one-volume edition of Morison's "Admiral of the Ocean Sea," the Little-Brown 1942 edition, p. 664.
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