Plus ca change
well, I’m back. I’ve been in New Zealand for a month, and had fun rebuilding my computer after getting home (it’s rather like my grandad’s hammer now, as all that remains of the original is the box and the power supply – still cheaper than buying a new one to the extent I’ve treated myself to a 19-inch TFT screen, and I can now read text without squinting). In the interim nothing much seems to have changed, just more of the same old rubbish. The people who want to control every aspect of our lives (for our own good of course) are extending their tendrils of surveillance and instruction; and those who should be standing up to them are still shuffling their feet, looking at the ground and waiting for someone to tell them what to do.
I must have missed the announcement that the terorists have won, though. Did it happen while I was away? Anyway, we’re now officially told to be terrified all the time. And apparently the threat to our culture and way of life is so severe that the government have decided to lock out freedoms away and change our way of life to keep it safe. For as long as it takes.
Now that all looks to me as John Reid, Princess Toni et al. just don’t get it. But then, it’s pretty clear that they never did.
It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
Thomas Jefferson
August 29th, 2006 at 12:16 am
Your grandfather’s hammer had a power supply? Cool :-P
I know what you mean about a new monitor. I have an aging 17″ Sony CRT here and it’s starting to get very tired after years of sterling service. It looks like I’ll have to join the flat screen world soon.
As for Mr Jefferson’s quote, I would take the US founding fathers a bit more seriously if they didn’t use words like “behooves”. Whenever I see that word I instantly think of horses’ feet and everything else just takes on a rather comic air.
August 29th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
Of course. You don’t think it powered itself? It was detachable though. One arm power with built-in thumb detection.
Re: ‘behoove’. Chambers dictionary gives both spellings, and ‘behoov’ as the pronunciation, noting ‘behov’ (with a long ‘o’) as unhistorical. Another example where US English retains an earlier pronunciation, perhaps – or where British English has adopted, if you will, a ‘spelling pronunciation’. Rather in the way that people now pronounce ‘brrr’ as ‘berrr’, where my grandparents knew quite well it was a conventional way of spelling the sound people made in cold weather – a sort of labial trill.