Landis Vinchattle

After a recent WordPress upgrade, I found myself unable to log in again and was receiving HTTP 500 messages.  Kudos to Jeff for his post at http://perishablepress.com/press/2008/02/18/quickly-disable-or-enable-all-wordpress-plugins-via-the-database/ for the quick backend disable of plugins through the database.  I’m sure there are other posts describing the process out there, but his came up near the top of Google’s results for my search and were very simple and straightforward – and solved the problem in short order.  Fortunately I wasn’t under his time crunch to get things fixed, but I appreciate his documenting the fix after the fact.

How to Explain Gay Rights To an Idiot

Simple, humorous, straightforward.  Could probably be stretched to include other rights, but it would dilute the simplicity and the clarity.

Some good things and some bad things from the Iowa caucuses. Opening with some humor, one commenter I read noted the misfortune that Santorum didn’t pull it out in the end, providing the amusement of “Comes From Behind” headlines. In all honesty, Rick “If You’re Going To Live Under My Roof When I’m In The White House You’ll Do As I Say” Santorum is the only candidate who’s a marginally worse choice for your vote than Obama. Romney’s victory is sad and disheartening, though it would have been equally disheartening to see a Gingrich or Perry victory there – these candidates are such a minimally better choice than the status quo that we might as well at least keep what rights we have (as long as, heaven forbid, the current nimwit doesn’t get to appoint any more Supreme Court justices) and save a few million in redecorating costs for the White House.

On the plus side, Michele Bachmann is finally out of the race, though I fear the votes that remained behind her will shift to InSantorum as I see them as the two candidates with the greatest parity on the ticket (with Paul/Johnson as the second closest and Romney/Gingrich rounding out the pairings IMO). Seeing Perry and Gingrich satisfyingly distant is encouraging, but it’s still the first caucus and I’m not sure either of them put any real focus on Iowa. Perhaps best, while Ron Paul came in third, he’ll still get the same seven delegates as the top two vote-takers.

What’s the takeaway? Whatever else you do, don’t vote for Santorum. Or Obama.

I was watching an episode of Super Readers on PBS Kids with my daughters this morning, and they based the story upon a derivative of the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes, simplified a bit so as to perhaps be more easily followed by younger minds and focusing less on the social aspects of not wanting to be singled out by the flock as less competent (and thus going along with ridiculous suggestions so as to “appear intelligent”). The simplification of the story was OK, but it did make me think about the impact of the first time we hear a story, song, etc, and our very common acceptance of that as “right”, and versions we hear later as being “wrong”. I think the adaptation angle of that is OK, and it’s a good mental exercise.

What really got me thinking, though, was the aspect of puppetmastery exercised by a lower level advisory body (in this case, the tailor) to the decisionmaker. I never really caught it in the original story, nor even thought about its being there. But it was somehow exacerbated in this version, such that the tailor seemed to hold the emperor in contempt and believed his importance to be higher than that of the emperor. While that happens in everyday life (look at what some of the advisory councils and cabinet members have been able to push our presidents and congresspersons to do), I hadn’t directly thought before about the subtle or subliminal impact some of these observed relationships – even in entertainment as simple cartoons – can have on kids; I was focused more on the “higher level” message of the programming (in the case of this particular episode, the message was clearly stated as “speak up” – let people know your thoughts and feelings). My real problem in this particular episode was the subjugation of the emperor, and the assimilation into “flock thought”, especially of someone who should be a thought leader and decisionmaker, and thus putting this in the realm of being even more acceptable and appropriate for John Q. Public.

I’ll admit our kids watch some cartoons, and in a perfect world they would watch less and we’d have greater real interaction with community, family, and friends, rendering cartoons and shows to a merely “entertainment” scenario. I will also acknowledge that there is a decent amount of educational value in many of the shows. I know it’s overthinking a simple cartoon, and I suspect I’m reading a lot of what I see as societal problems into my interpretation. I do think there is too little thought put into the decisions we’re making and the direction we’re heading, and it disturbs me and leads me to overanalyze cartoons.

“A politician thinks of the next election.  A statesman thinks of the next generation.”

–James Freeman Clarke