Germany, Bush, Neanderthal and Marx

I read an article on ZDnet today. The article reported that the Germans had been depicting Bush in editorial cartoons as a chimpanzee but just today, German officials had referred to Bush as a Neanderthal because of his lack of ehrm, well, judgement on environmental issues that face the entire globe.

The author remarked that he thought Neanderthal was further advanced than Chimpanzees.

I thought I would put my degree in anthropology to use for once and answer his question for him. So I went to the "Talk Back" portion of his article to reply and before replying started reading some of the things people had posted there.

I confess that I got completely caught up in answering the ignorantsia who had posted there. By the way, I just made up the word, 'ignorantsia' to combat the anti-intelligence, anti-science, anti-environment, etc., masses who call anyone that is smarter than them the intelligentsia. Please feel free to use it and pass it on.

I should know better than to get into online arguments with the ignorantsia but I couldn't help myself. One guy was equating Marxism and socialism with the issue of global warming. How could I not respond to that? He thinks that the environmentalist movement is all some evil plot hatched by anti-capitalists, anti-American Marxist types. Huh?

Another guy in California was posting six year old like arguments, basically if someone didn't agree with him, his answer was, "if you hate America so much why don't you leave?"

I wasted at least an entire hour posting replies. At first I attempted to use reason to make these crazy paranoid people realize that not everybody is out to get them. It didn't help that one of the people I agreed with was a British citizen with an inelegant fondness for the term, "fat-sucking Americans".

One reasonable and compassionate person was getting bombarded with hate replies because he used Al Gore in one of his posts. It makes me sick that the neo-conservative machine has somehow managed to make a Nobel prize winning American into a goon.

But back to the original content of the article. Apparently the Germans have regularly been depicting Bush in their cartoons as a chimpanzee like character. But after the frustrations of his unbending unrelenting policies or lack of policies on the enviroment, one German official was said to have referred to our little Texas president as a Neanderthal.

Now I take issue with that. Homo sapien neanderthalis was not the brute that science museums of the 60's created. HSN (or Neanderthal) was thoughtful, intelligent and this has been proven. HSN buried his dead. HSN took care of the elderly and the sick. Unfortunately by referring to Bush as a neanderthal, the Germans have once again relegated the hard working, caring HSN to uncaring brute and I for one, am mad about THAT.

Windows Vista made me switch to Mac

Actually that title is not wholly true because it was more than just Windows Vista that prompted the switch. There was also the troublesome fact that I spent about two months trying to remove a mutated virus that had invaded my Windows XP operating system despite my daily updated virus removal program. I was using Tred Microcillin's Internet Security program. When I got the virus, I had to go to a volunteer driven website that you post your problem to and when someone has time to answer (and they ARE volunteers after all), they would ask you to do something and post back your results. I went through this for two months and finally was able to remove the virus but my computer was never the same.

There were actually three factors involved in my decision to get the iMac. Number one reason: VIRUSES, number two reason: Windows VISTA, number three reason: my old hard drive was getting full and it was time to buy a new computer.

I don't regret the switch at all. I bought the iMac in February while I was out in Seattle visiting my sister who is a Mac Genius at a local Apple store. I was able to get the family discount which helped.

It has taken me a short while to get used to things but so far I love my Mac and can't imagine going back. My husband is using my old computer because his Windows XP machine's hard drive failed. Another sign that it's time to move on from Windows.

I've been using IBM compatibles since the early 1980s.

The only thing I miss about my Windows machine is a little program called Irfanview. But I've learned to live without it and have found a lot of great features about the Mac that I had no idea existed.

There is this cool workflow automator program that allows you to record frequently used actions so you can automate them. Okay, I admit, I haven't gotten this down to an exact science yet but I'm working on it. It's a lot of fun.

I am still of the same opinion I was earlier, that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have nothing to do with me and I could care less about who they are, their history, who did what, etc. In fact, I find the legendary Steve Jobs followers who hang on his every word with something akin to cult followers, well, just plain creepy. It's the only thing I don't like about having become a Mac owner. And I just try to distance myself from it. I bought this iMac because I felt it would better serve my needs as a computer owner and that is the only reason.