Monday, March 3: I need to do a bit more research on this, but I’m leaning toward the Mac. I’ll wait until after the next software upgrade. I’ll keep you posted.
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This year I’m turning 40, celebrating 10 years of sobriety and two years of self-employment, and I may have an exciting personal announcement to make by year’s end. I’m ready to do something wild: switch from a PC to a Mac! 
I want to treat myself to a new laptop, one that’s lighter and more powerful than my Compaq Presario, which I intend to sell. I’m willing to spend no more than $1,000 (well, a little more). I’ve used PCs for years, but I think MacBooks ($1,099) are adorable (I’m such a girl). That’s not the best reason to buy one, of course. I’m thinking of getting the 13-inch screen, 5.2-pound, 1.83GHz MacBook, but I don’t know a thing about Macintosh. I appeal to Mac users and other geeks:
1) Should I stick with the PC or go with the Mac? Benefits? Drawbacks?
2) Is there a such thing as a powerful and lightweight PC that costs $1,000? If so, who sells it?
Update: To answer a few questions…What I mean by “powerful” is fast and able to run programs without running low on memory. I have an iPod, so I’ll run iTunes and store lots of music, video podcasts, and audio files. I don’t do much photo editing, and I do no movie editing. I watch DVDs on my Compaq because I don’t have a DVD player (and really don’t need one). I’ll watch them on the new laptop as well.
I want a powerful laptop that I’ll use mostly for writing, and I’m tired of lugging around a nine-pound machine when I travel. I use MS Word, but I’m not wedded to it, and I hardly ever use my Outlook account. Bottom line: I find the Mac aesthetically pleasing, but I want more reasons to buy one than appearance.
Thanks for the advice!
by La Shawn on February 28, 2007
in General
*** Scroll down to answer a few soul-searching questions ***
I’ve always envied people who claim to love their jobs and thought, “That’ll never happen to me.”
I’ve never considered myself lazy, just not-too-motivated at times. The only jobs I genuinely enjoyed were flight attendant for a major airline and letter writer (Legislative Correspondent is the fancy title) for a U.S. senator. The pay was lousy, but I liked working on “the Hill.” Every other job, every single one, I didn’t like.
I’d go on interviews, feigning interest in the position while thinking about the health coverage and steady paycheck. Although I did what I was hired to do, I never got excited about projects or strived to move up or stand out. No matter how cool the job looked to people on the outside, it was drudge work to me. I longed to put the time and energy I spent getting ready for work, taking the Metro to work, working all day, and returning from work into my own business rather than someone else’s. It took me awhile to figure out how to do it.
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by La Shawn on February 28, 2007
in Liberals
I missed this story when it was published in January. Unlike the romanticized picture Barack Obama has drawn of his Kenyan father, the elder Obama was a drunk and a bigamist. Interesting.
(As a former drunk myself, I’m well aware that any book or investigative article written about me will include that sorry chapter of my life.)
You know, I never thought much of Obama’s father in the first place because he abandoned Barack and his mother. I had no idea he’d abandoned his first wife and children, too. I haven’t read Obama’s book about his father, Dreams From My Father, but I suspected it probably didn’t contain the whole truth about the kind of man he was. For instance, Obama says “racism” tore apart his white mother and black father, but in reality, his mother divorced his father after she found out he was still married to someone else, whom he’d abandoned back in Kenya. (Daily Mail) His first wife was pregnant with their second child when he left.
According to the Daily Mail, Obama’s father married a third time to a woman he’d met while married to Obama’s mother. A nephew told the paper that polygamy is part of African culture, implying that there’s nothing unusual about an African having multiple wives. I’m no expert on African culture, but I believe would-be wives in polygamous cultures know about previous wives, and Obama Sr. hadn’t told his second wife about his first wife. Deception and bigamy.
Well, when you’re running for office, your life and the lives of people you know are scrutinized. Since Barack “He speaks so well!” Obama is positioning himself as someone overcoming racial obstacles and claiming that his parent’s divorce and his father’s “issues” were caused by racism, his story is ripe for nitpicking.
Addendum: Believe me, I have plenty of “issues” in my family as well (understatement alert), and I’d hate for my loved ones’ lives to be on display. But if I wrote a book about one of them without telling the whole story (and blamed their bad behavior on white or black racism, which I’d never do, even to sell a book), I’d expect detractors and people with grudges to pick the book apart. You can’t have it both ways. Ideally, Obama’s father’s life would be irrelevant, but one’s family is relevant if you’re running for public office. That doesn’t mean the person running for office is held accountable for what someone else did, but he/she should expect scrutiny.
Wednesday, February 28: Response Day for Nifong. I hear the best defense is a good offense. I can’t wait to find out what he has to say…
Later…In standard “mistakes were made” fashion, Nifong says he didn’t intentionally violate ethics rules. (Response in macromedia - anybody have a PDF copy?)
Even later… Nevermind. PDF copies available here.
Tuesday, February 27 @ 3:20 p.m.: The bloggers are buzzing about a new motion filed in the Duke sexual offense and kidnapping case. We know that DNA lab dud dude Brian Meehan testified that he and Mike Nifong conspired to withhold exculpatory evidence. Among the 1,800 pages of discovery, defense has uncovered more info.
In Addendum to Motion to Compel Discovery; Expert DNA Analysis (PDF) filed today, defense contends that Meehan failed to disclose that DNA found in the accuser’s rectum didn’t match the lacrosse players indicted for the crime or any other male tested. (Pardon me, but yuck) The DNA of at least two males was found inside the accuser, and 11 of the 22 rape kit DNA extractions were from males other than the accused lacrosse players. According to the motion, the defense is still waiting for more data from Meehan’s lab. Defense believes there’s a “statistical likelihood” that the missing information will prove even more exculpatory.
In other words, the accuser was loaded with DNA from men other than the ones she claims raped, sodomized, strangled, and beat her, but Nifong and Meehan didn’t think the defense needed to know all that.
I sure hate it. 
Sources and blogger reactions: KC Johnson, John in Carolina…
Earlier…I’d love to have been a fly on the wall during this conversation. Hopefully, all charges against Finnerty, Seligmann, and Evans soon will be dismissed, and the stripper-accuser will be charged with making a false police report, lying to officials, and whatever else they’ve got…
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Since November 2003, I’ve documented on this blog all the reasons why race preferences have got to go. Here is one more. Instead of simply hiring the most qualified job candidates, a private prison firm doing business with the government rejected candidates based on race and hired others based on race. Qualified blacks, Asians, whites, and American Indians (Thank you for not calling them Native Americans!) were passed over for hispanics.
According to the Department of Labor, the issue is not that “affirmative action” is inherently unfair to all candidates, but that it wasn’t properly applied in this situation.
What is going on? The Civil Rights of 1964 was supposed to end the government skin game. But 43 years after people were killed and injured in the name of justice, and paid with blood, sweat, and tears for the right to be judged without regard to their skin color, our government is still judging citizens as members of racial groups instead of as individuals with equality before the law.
I can’t tell you how frustrating this crap is. I am tired of hearing and reading stories about people suing because the government didn’t discriminate in favor of them and listening to pea-brains defend the government’s use of race. What was the Civil Rights movement all about, for crying out loud? Our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents killed Jim Crow so their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren could breathe life back into him? Why would any citizen want to give government the authority to judge us based on race? Well, as long as “our” race is the one receiving the benefits of the skin game, what does it matter?
Absolutely disgusting. If I wanted to stoop as low as my detractors, I’d call them self-haters for not having the decency even to be a little embarrassed for defending lowered standards for blacks. I mean, what’s more self-hating than that???
But I don’t, so I won’t. The things I’d say to such people if I weren’t a Christian…
I blog about this topic so much because race preferences are foul and demeaning, and liberals need to know that not all blacks want or need such patronizing policies. No amount of historical wrongs or present-day grievances — zero — will ever justify the odious practice.
At a time like this, I have to remember a line (with the smilie next to it) from a similar post. [Double secret coded message] Indeed! Have a restful weekend, readers.
(Hat tip: Discriminations)
by La Shawn on February 23, 2007
in Education
This post is dedicated to every black liberal who has ever said I never write anything positive about black folks or offer solutions to problems disproportionately impacting blacks. Most of the time, positive news and solutions are implicit in my posts, though sometimes I’m explicit.
For instance, suggestions like, “Get married and build a nest before you have children” or “Take responsibility for your own lives and accept the consequences of your actions” or “Take responsibility for your children’s education” apparently are not detailed enough for some people. And I never mention white people or what they ought to do to help blacks or what they owe blacks, which seems to tick people off the most. Since I can’t please everyone, I aim to please no one.
When I read “Black Parents Seek to Raise Ambitions” this morning in the Washington Post, I almost cried. Why? An excerpt:
Twelve-year-old Alex Carter is an A student who loves science and reads a book a week. So it surprised his father when he announced last year that he didn’t want to enroll in an honors class that his teacher recommended for the following term.
“That class is for the smart people, the nerds,” Alex told him. His father replied, “Well, who are you?”
Alex is a junior league football player, an avid golfer and a lifelong suburbanite. He’s also one of only a handful of African American students in his seventh-grade class at Eagle Ridge Middle School in Ashburn. He dreams of becoming a professional athlete like his dad, Tom, who played cornerback for the Washington Redskins. But as he nears his teenage years in a predominantly white school in Loudoun County, his parents are concerned that he could abandon academic pursuits because he thinks they are better left to his white classmates.
How did young Alex come to believe academic pursuits are for white people? Blame the subculture or gangsta culture or the mainstream media or the rain, if it makes you feel better. The point is that the kid’s head was in the wrong place. But instead of invoking the “legacy of slavery” or classroom bias or a lack of government funds (although some urban school districts tend to have the country’s highest per pupil expenditures) or any excuse with the word “racism” attached to it, Alex’s parents did their job: took matters into their own hands and pre-empted a potentially huge problem:
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Guess what, everybody? Everybody, guess what? Putting armed men on the border to watch for Mexicans and other Central Americans sneaking over actually deters them from sneaking over. Can you believe it?
The New York Times, the Gray Lady herself, says (emphasis added – free reg. req.):
All along the border, there are signs that the measures the Border Patrol and other federal agencies have taken over the last year, from erecting new barriers to posting 6,000 National Guardsmen as armed sentinels, are beginning to slow the flow of illegal immigrants.
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The new measures range from simply putting more officers out on patrol to erecting stadium lights, secondary fences and barriers of thick steel poles to stop smugglers from racing across the desert in all-wheel-drive trucks. The Border Patrol has deployed hundreds of new guards to watch rivers, monitor surveillance cameras and guard fences.
I’m stunned. Really. I’m getting the vapors. Something as simple as standing watch over the border prevents would-be illegal aliens from crossing the border. Just think…if we’d done this a couple of decades ago how fewer illegals we’d have in the U.S. Simply guarding the border…protects the border!
Revolutionary. Unimaginably stupendous. The weight of it all. Preventing illegal “immigration” prevents illegal “immigration.” Whoa. Feeling light-headed…I think I’ll go and…
Update from a friend: La Shawn is…uh…unconscious at the moment. She muttered something about the “sheer genius of protecting the border by protecting the border.” She’ll return shortly, I expect.
(Photo credit: New York Times)
Update II: Meager, but you’ve got to begin somewhere. Start heavily fining businesses that hire illegal aliens, and prosecute habitual offenders under the RICO statute. And it would be nice if Christians confronted their so-called illegal alien brothers and sisters about their crimes. But churches seem reluctant to preach against it. Some even push for open borders.
Previous posts:
A new style of music called rap (also called hip-hop) infiltrated my small southern hometown sometime around 1980. I remember playing The Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” on my stereo before and after school, trying to learn the words. I was a 13-year-old cheerleading, crush-on-the-quarterback-having fan of rap music.
The kids I hung around all listened to rappers like The Sugar Hill Gang and Kurtis Blow, including some of the white kids. I’ll never forget how funny the lyrics of The Sugar Hill Gang’s “Apache” sounded coming from a white guy who sat behind me in math class. Imagine someone with a serious southern drawl chanting, “Apache, jump on it!” Toto, we’re not in Harlem anymore!
But that was 27 years ago. The rap music I grew up with began to evolve as people experimented with the genre and pushed it to the extreme. Throughout the 1980s, new styles of music and dance influenced by rap hit the scene, and it all was still innocent, relatively speaking.
Gangsta rap, supposedly only a subgenre of hip-hop, though gangsta rap is what people associate with hip-hop, became popular in the early 90s. I admit that I used to like the in-your-face, aggressive, heavy sound of Public Enemy, but my taste in music had grown up with me, and I left rap behind. In the knick nick of time. (New York Knicks on the brain…)
During the 90s, I first noticed how overtly sexual rap music and videos had become. The “fun” rap associated with my youth was gone for good. The new rap was not just aggressive; it was downright subversive. Admittedly, music that young people like tends to be somewhat subversive to begin with, but gangsta rap broke the mold. It was dangerously subversive…and nasty. One of its defining elements is the nihilistic, gotta-get-mine-don’t-care-if-I-die, fu**-you, murder-you fixation on instant gratification and thuggishness in pursuit of “females,” who are no more than sexual props, objects thugs use in the most degrading way to get off.
Well, that’s my opinion of gangsta rap, anyway.
There is no way to separate music from culture, so it’s no surprise that gangsta rap is a subculture. If you can stand it, watch a few disgusting gangsta rap videos on Black Entertainment Television (BET), and you’ll see that everything I wrote is true. Don’t take my word for it.
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Monday, February 26: Post is closed, but continue discussion at Nifong Hits the Circuit; Unusual Leftist Recommendations.
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Thursday, February 22: John Ham in NC blogs (emphasis added):
“The News & Observer today has a story with a similar theme to my post yesterday pointing to the differing reactions to the Duke lacrosse rape allegations and the Feb. 11 rape allegations at an off-campus fraternity party. What could possibly explain the lack of uproar? is the question the N&O asks but never answers because they are afraid to mention the words white and black.
“By talking to the very people who rushed to judgment in March of 2006 — the infamous potbangers and irresponsible professors who pushed a concern for due process out of their minds in their zeal to make ideological points last year — the N&O comes to the nonsensical conclusion that fatigue over the Duke lacrosse case is the reason for the lack of outrage this time.”
I almost snorted coffee out of my nose upon reading that gem. Fatigue, indeed. That’s BS.
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Update (2/16) III: A white college student fed up with the obsessive and silly pursuit of skin color diversity at the expense of common sense and fairness writes:
“Every morning, I sit down with a delicious Dewick breakfast, coffee and the Daily. As of late, every morning, I make it to the Viewpoints page and read a heart-warming article about tolerance, diversity and community. Then every morning, I roll my eyes, shut the Daily and reach for a newspaper from the real world. This morning, after reading that not enough white people came to the town meeting and that intro-level English classes should be turned into race relations classes, I have had enough.”
Read the rest.
Thanks for linking, Michelle. Check out this Washington Post article about MM.
Update (8:21 p.m) II: Want more proof that race preferences are on the way out? An hispanic cop sued because he claimed his department passed him over for lesser qualified blacks. And he won $254,000. Despite what liberal justices on the Supreme Court say, race preferences are unlawful and cannot be justified, even for god-almighty “diversity.” Expect to read about more such lawsuits filed by whites, hispanics, and Asians, and be prepared to see blacks and hispanics fighting to be THE-preferred-minority-group-in-charge. Pitiful, the whole bloody game.
(Hat tip: Discriminations)
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…incognito, incommunicado…
Are you doing or receiving something special today?
Tuesday, February 20: Oh, the joys of diversity!
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Commenter Israel writes:
“I think I might be able to answer Shade’s question posted earlier [about why Rosanna Pulido is called a race traitor because she opposes illegal "immigration"]. First of all Shade, I am Hispanic, 53 years old, U.S. born as are my parents (both Hispanic). In my immediate family we still speak, read and write Spanish as a second language and are very proud of the contributions that we as Hispanics have given our country through our culture, heritage, and plain old good citizenship. For example, starting with my father (now 83) in 1945 to the present a total of 26 (and counting) members on my father’s side of the family have served in our country’s armed forces. We have served in virtually every armed conflict since 1945 either through the draft or as volunteers.
“Yep, we still eat tortillas and make tamales at Christmas time. We don’t pretend to be anything other than what we are. Most definitely we are Americans first and thankfully my parents raised us with the belief that the content of a person’s character defined them; being brown and Hispanic was just a matter of circumstance.
“Unfortunately, it is my and my family’s observation that some of our Hispanic brethren choose to define themselves in a mindset that I term: I am Hispanic, therefore I am. I think that this mindset colors everything in those terms and creates a very narrow perspective of one’s experience. These fellow Hispanics create a definition of what it means to be a “Real Hispanic.â€
“And so because my family and I view illegal immigration as just that – illegal immigration. We are deemed traitors, Tio Tacos, sellouts, self-haters, you name it by these “Real Hispanics.â€
“We don’t speak up publicly, but I assure you that at family gatherings this issue comes up and we vent our anger. Supporters of illegal immigration would not find a warm welcome at our family gatherings.”
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Tuesday, February 20: Greetings! This post is closed. There’s been an arrested in the second Duke rape case, so continue the discussion here.
Update (2/14): Alleged victim is white; alleged rapist is black. Hmm…what broad social commentary will feminists come up with now? Will the New Black Panthers return to Durham to lecture their “brother” on the evils of his allegedly brutish behavior? Will the Group of 88 sign another “listening” statement? If I see a single column from a feminist ranting about this incident the way they did with the lacrosse case or hear one chastising word from a black militant toward the alleged rapist, I’ll videotape myself eating a boiled rat and upload it for the world to see.
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An 18-year-old Duke University student said she was raped in the bathroom at a house party early Sunday morning. The man is described as “late teens or early 20s, about 6-foot-1 and wearing a black do-rag, a gray sweatshirt and blue jeans.” (Source)
So, who was this do-ragged dude? Is he one of the “several male Duke students” living in the house?
Let’s not ask the questions we all want to ask. We’ll wait for more facts to emerge before we do that, OK? (Yeah, right!)
Whether or not a rape occurred, I hope the Durham police and DA’s office do a much better job investigating than they did in the Duke lacrosse “rape” case.
Feel free to post links and more info about this developing case. More to come…
Update: The Chronicle, Duke’s student newspaper, reports what other stories have omitted: the suspect is black. It’s important to note race as a descriptor if the alleged rapist isn’t in custody. This men-in-their-thirties-style crap is irresponsible.
Duke blogging: The Johnsville News, Durham-in-Wonderland, LieStoppers, Crystal Mess, John in Carolina…
(Photo source: Sparkling Earth)
by La Shawn on February 9, 2007
in General
You’re not getting older; you’re getting better!
It’s one of the telltale signs of aging.
Since I was 14, I’ve worn corrective lenses for distance viewing in the form of spectacles or contact lenses. (I typically wear contacts or prescription sunglasses when I venture out.) Every few years I’ve needed a stronger prescription. Last year I noticed that viewing small print or objects with small detail with my glasses on started to become a bit uncomfortable. “What goes on here,” I wondered.
A couple of weeks ago, my eye doctor confirmed my suspicions. I needed…bifocals!!!
I knew it was coming. My mother said that seemingly overnight, after she turned 40, she needed reading glasses. (Most people I know over 40 need reading glasses.) Before that, her vision was 20/20. My brother, one of my sisters, and I inherited near-sightedness from our father (who needed but didn’t wear glasses), apparently. Now I, the eldest Barber child, must wear…bifocals!!!
Actually, they’re progressive lenses: extra thin lenses with no lines. Whew! No one will ever know — except a few thousand LBC readers — that I’m wearing…bifocals.
My formerly near-sighted sister had Lasik surgery last year, and she loves the results. During the holidays, she laughed a couple of times as she watched me squinting around, looking for my glasses. I’d have the surgery done, too, only I’m afraid I’d become the first Lasik patient rendered blind from the procedure.
Well, that’s a bloody nice way to start the weekend! Commiserate with me and share your “aging” stories. For example, how did you feel when you found out you needed reading glasses?
