Oval

My employer is consolidating four buildings worth of staff into a spiffy new building, downtown.

It's all cool because it's an easier ride on my bike, downtown Neenah is pretty nifty, and the site is a mill that has been shutdown - reusing the property for office space is miles better than just leaving it empty.





I'm not sure about working in a yellow, oval building, but I'm sure we'll grow to like it.

The American way of War

The American Way of War - confusing the snot out of our enemies for over two hundred years!

Op-For notes that "Somewhere a safety officer is quietly weeping..." Beyond that, this sort of thing has to be deeply confusing to the enemy: "Achmad, they have leaving their humvee of the uparmor and are making with the pelvic thrusts in the road!"

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

Brett Favre, last month:

Hey, it's been good, it's been great, I'm gonna miss y'all. Bye.

Brett Favre, this week:

Unless, you know, you guys need me. Then I'm in.

Sorry Maine - sucks to be y'all

Wisconsin: We have awesome unofficial mottos. Other states, not so much.

Wisconsin’s motto, Stay just a little bit longer, is so much more welcoming than Maine’s, Full of grumpy cranks.

That's a little unfair to Maine, isn't it?

Name: Bruce Gagnon
Location: Bath, Maine, United States
Check out my new book "Come Together Right Now: Organizing Stories from a Fading Empire" - updated thru 2008

Maybe not so much. Sorry, Maine.

Slither

This is Older Monkey's snake. She is a Red Rat Snake.



Pretty, hunh?

I find it hard to believe but that wee little cave on the right? She fits - all of her - inside.

It's called OODA

In which Joel Spolsky goes out of the way to describe a concept of strategy that already has a catchy name

Here is how it works. You fire at the enemy. That's the fire part. And you move forward at the same time. That's the motion. Get it?

You're firing because then your enemy has to take cover. He can't fire back at you when he's cowering behind a wall. But firing is not enough. You also have to move forward, or you won't make any progress. Moving forward brings you closer to the enemy. And closer enemies are easier to hit. You need both -- fire and motion -- to accomplish anything. Almost every military tactic, whether it's employed on air, sea, or land, is a variation on this fundamental pattern.

That part is fine. But then he extends his metaphor and runs into trouble

What do you do if you find yourself reacting to a rival's agenda instead of setting your own? The answer is to break the cycle as fast as you can. If you're a small company, you can't afford to respond to somebody else's fire. The big guys have 10 times the ammunition. So instead, you have to lure them into a Thermopylae of your own creation, where size doesn't matter.

What he's talking about - and going on at great pains to explain - is the OODA Loop. Which is, essentially, acting on your opponent faster than they can take action; by acting on them, quicker than they can act on you, you force them into a cycle of reaction. Eventually they run out of room, airspeed and capital and they crash in flames and you enjoy the lamentations of their women.

It was articulated by Colonel John Boyd in the bad old days of the Cold War - but I suspect the bones of the matter were felt by the great Captains long before there were overhead slides. [1]

There was a great Marine Gazette article that explained it well to a grunt, way back in the 80s: When artillery is falling where you were 30 minutes ago - you're in their OODA Loop.



Thing is, Joel is a smart guy - it's hard to believe that he doesn't know about this. So why the prose to explain a concept that is already explained?

Also .. I wouldn't use Thermopylae. As last stands go, it was magnificent and heroic but ...

Go tell the Spartans, thou who passest by,
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.

Unless you have no choice, Heroic Last Stands are to be avoided, not embraced.


[1] Bedford Forrest was supposed to have said "git thar fustest with the mostest," which is certainly the spirit of the thing. Except he didn't, according to Bruce Catton. I just learned something, to my sorrow.

Victory .. or at least progress

Maybe .. just maybe .. this is what victory looks like.




It's not the Red Army hoisting the hammer and sickle over the Reichstag



or Patton demonstrating how he feels about the German Army



but then it's not that kind of war.



See also a slide that's got so much going on it almost hurts my head.

General Scott would be proud.

Commentary at The Belmont Club.
Also at Austin Bay's blog.

Slides from General Petraeus' testimony this month before Congress.

That's what little girls are made of

Rachel Lucas: Sugar. Spice. Strawberry Shortcake. My ass.

Snicker.

See also People You'll See in Hell: Lori Drew

A boat

Ew - look at that. Page after page of boring, pedantic nonsense.




That's better.

The future of news

Except I don't think it's 'news' so much. I get the feeling that in a dozen years the idea of a discrete show dedicated to 'news' is going to seem as quaint as tail fins are to us.

Can't happen? Ask the guy running your daily newspaper a dozen years ago if there is anything to the idea that 'the internet' could gut his classified ad revenue ...

What am I talking about? This - it's a site that carries streaming live news from dozens of video feeds and cams - LiveNewsCameras.com - Watch Live Streaming News From the USA and World - Beta Version.

The key feature is a moderator who scans the feeds and, from time to time gives you a pointer to the more interesting items. The moderator - or at least the current pointer, one Athenia Veliz - is not a professional broadcaster, coiffed and reading from a teleprompter. There are minutes long pauses between audio. She pauses, she looks around, pushes her hair back, bangs on the keyboard and mouses around ... she's just this person, working for a living.

For some reason this works better than watching a Ken Doll read the news. Go figure.

Go click. Give it ten minutes and you'll either like it or throw a puzzled glance like a dog trying to understand Shakespeare.

Update:

About three seconds after I hit 'send' on a mash note .. the pointer was reading it on the air.

How nifty-keen is that?

Semper Fi

The Marine Corps has affected me in odd ways. When I read this

my P-38 is on the way

My first thought was .. he's excited about a can opener?

Accidents in the home

The Munchkin Wrangler writes

Our kitchen and dining room/second living room are combined into one large room, with the wood stove, kitchen range, and chimney forming a sort of island. Quinn has declared this space his personal tricycle racetrack, and he’ll ride his Radio Flyer at top speed around the circuit several times a day.

Haw. My sister had an oval floor plan in her old house - kitchen, living-room, dining-room, hall and back to the kitchen. I noticed one of her kitchen cupboard doors was .. well there was only half of it there.

Hey JP, I asked my oldest nephew, what happened to the door?

I broke it with my tricycle.

Ah.

In quiet, awed tones he continued: Mommy was mad.

I'll bet.

.. take the midnight train goin' anywhere ..

Manualist plays Don't Stop Beliving

Manualist plays Take On Me. [1]

Click. Listen and bask in the Awesome.

I can't top the comments from Whatever .. so I won't try.

* He knows he rocks. He’s like the Shaft of hand-farts, and that’s awesome.

* If hand-fart covers of 80s pop songs are wrong, then I don’t want to be right!

[1] This link is probably being Whatever'd - it's slow to load.

Disobedience is in our DNA

From Wretchard, a speech Charlton Heston made before a Harvard Law School forum in 1999.

Disobedience is in our DNA. We feel innate kinship with that Disobedient spirit that tossed tea into Boston Harbor, that sent Thoreau to jail, that refused to sit in the back of the bus, that protested a war in VietNam. In that same spirit, I am asking you to disavow cultural correctness with massive disobedience of rogue authority, social directives and onerous law that weaken personal freedom. ...

So that this nation may long endure, I urge you to follow in the hallowed footsteps of the great disobediences of history that freed exiles, founded religions, defeated tyrants, and yes, in the hands of an aroused rabble in arms and a few great men, by God's grace, built this country.

Rights

I have no idea where I snagged this quote from - it was simply there in my scratch pad.

I actually agreed with Heston about guns. Not because I think that having a bunch of people carrying guns makes society any safer- of course it doesn’t- but because I’d imagine that trying to instill gun control in the United States at this late date would be as realistic as asking everyone who uses illegal drugs to report to their local police station and turn over their stash. Also, call me a paranoid, but I don’t like the idea of agents of the government having all of the guns. This just isn’t a good time to talk about yielding more rights to the state.

If not now, when? If not you, then who?

Is there ever a good time to yield rights to the state?

Suspension

My nephew was given an in-school suspension ... for bringing oregano to school in a baggie.

It's not as lame as suspending a kid for sniffing marker [1] but ... suspension for bringing a spice [2] to school with no intent to sell? Dude was trying to look cool and hip in front of his peers not rip the potheads off.

So .. ya. If the school was trying to make a kid look cool to the thugs and potheads - suspension is the way to go. I'm biased but he's not a thug or a pothead - he's a kid in a difficult family situation who wants to fit in and be cool.

Looks like the authorities in Numbnuts, Virginia are doing their best to push him firmly the wrong way.

[1] Hat tip to UTI.
[2] No, I'm not naive but there is a difference between looking like pot and being pot.

Win for the kids

For those of you joining us from out of state - a summary;

A virtual charter school was founded some years ago. These are the Good Guys. The Wisconsin Educators Association Council - aka the teacher's union aka the Bad Guys [1] joined a lawsuit [2] questioning the legality of the school. The local court found for the defendant (hooray) the appeals court for the plaintiffs (boo) which then tossed the matter up to the State Supreme Court.

Things get mucky at this point; the State won't meet until after the beginning of the next school term. The Department of Education [1] announced that since everything was all helter-skelter there was no way they could send the funds to the charter school because, you know, it's legality was up in the air.

Which left our Heroes in a precarious position. A friendly legislator enacted legislation that would fix all of the problems that the court had found with the current law, plus answer all of the problems that the Governor [1] had with the same legislation in the last session.

The forces of evil gathered and summoned their minions. Feathers flew, the dust was thick, the People were heard from in great numbers, compromise was reached. It was pretty much as epic a battle as you could find in Lord of the Rings, but instead of dark riders and millions of orcs the bad guys had money and bought politicians.

For my money, well meaning bureaucrats and lobbyists are easily the equal to armies of goblins and orcs.

At any rate a compromise was reached - this is politics - and generally speaking this is a big win for the children of Wisconsin. [4] We now joint the press release, in progress ...



From Wisconsin Coalition of Virtual Familes

April 7, 2008

We've received word that Governor Doyle intends to sing SB396, the virtual school rescue bill, this afternoon during a small, invitation only ceremony at the Capitol. Our bill will be among several that are expected to be signed at that time.

This is not a public event where our physical presence is required, but we wanted to get this important news to you this morning.

We are extremely glad that legislators of both parties finally worked together and that, with the leadership of Representative Brett Davis, and Senators John Lehman and Luther Olsen, this bill enjoyed near unanimous support and will be signed into law today.

As you know, we opposed the imposition of the enrollment cap, demanded by the Governor, which will soon become law along with the other provisions of the bill. However, the legislation's good far outweighs its bad. Today is a day for each and every Coalition member to rejoice. This educational innovation will now be allowed to continue to grow and thrive in Wisconsin. We came all the way back from the brink of closure after the December Appeals Court Ruling: Our schools have been saved.

While we will work together to address the enrollment cap and other important issues in the months and years ahead, today is a day to rejoice and celebrate a job well done. We were up against the State Teachers' Union, perhaps the most powerful special interest in Madison. After a couple of lengthy lawsuits, several variations of legislation, multiple public hearings, an 1,100 person rally and dozens of action alerts like this one, we can finally say, definitively...

We won.

Congratulations. Now, on behalf of the Wisconsin Coalition of Virtual School Families, you are hereby empowered to give your kids a hug/high five/gold star from us!

Please note that my participation in all of this was limited; I went to a rally, I wrote letters, I pestered my assembly rep and senator. Older Monkey testified in front of the Assembly but that was all his doing - my input on what he said was limited to .. well saying 'good job' when I read what he wanted to say.


[1] Booing and hissing as in an old fashioned melodrama are appropriate at this point.

[2] Which, to be fair, was initiated by Concerned Citizens in the virtual charter school's home district. Though you never heard much from them, not even in WEAC's propaganda. [3]

[3] Things that make you go 'hmm'.

[4] Generally that phrase makes me itch. But consider that I gain nothing from this but the continued existence of my children's school. I am not a paid lobbyist nor a politician nor a bureaucrat.

Attitude

Attitude

Trust But Verify

Travis writes ..

Apparently there is no honor among thieves (or, at least, nurses who were dumb enough to sign an incorrect inventory, and now want to pass the hot potato to the next sucker), and so you should follow some simple rules to avoid being the next sucker.

Also ....

If you're the motor pool NCO don't just accept the operator's word that the vehicle is in the same condition that it was when he checked it out.

When you are the ongoing Sergeant of the Guard do the weapon and ammunition count in the armory yourself.

And so on.

Trust but verify are words to live by.

Petronius the Arbiter

There is a scene in Heinlein's 'The Door Into Summer' where Petronius the Arbiter (a cat) engages in a battle with two of the Black Hats.

If I ever thought Heinlein's description of Pete's battle with Miles and Belle was overdone, I no longer would after seeing this video ...


Via.

More from Sociological Images

Nose Art!

And in addition to updated images of scantly clad women (often posed on a phallic looking warhead)

Is it possible for a warhead to look non-phallic? Form follows function - a warhead exists to penetrate stuff with minimal effort.

A vagina shaped warhead would be sub-optimal for this purpose.

Sub-Optimal

Via Sociological Images - a theoretical anti-rape device.

Femdefence is an on-going project first presented in 2003. The project includes the creation of an imaginary product, which bears the project’s name. The “product“ is a kind of protection against rape, somewhat similar to a tampon in that it’s user carries it inserted into her vagina. The basic idea is that the woman carries the protective device in her vagina. In it there is a sharp pin which has a penetrating effect on the perpetrator’s penis in the event of a rape.

I submit that anti-rape device that require the victim to be prostate before use is sub-optimal.

Furthermore, unless you spend a lot of time with your head in a cloud if airy nonsense, this is a solved problem.





And the victim .. well she won't exactly be a victim .. can remain upright and unhurt.

Now - I do know that the point of Sociological Images is to present imagery for comment and not to (say) come up with real ideas for genuine problems. But that post was especially goofy.

Homage

Vanderleun points out

The world's first web server HERE, and the world's first web page looked like THIS.

Somehow, when I make a web page it comes out looking like that.

It's not because I have the design sense of a somersaulting giraffe, it's homage.

A Thing I Did Not Know About This Morning

Kohlberg's stages of moral development

Kohlberg's stages of moral development are planes of moral adequacy conceived by Lawrence Kohlberg to explain the development of moral reasoning. Created while studying psychology at the University of Chicago, the theory was inspired by the work of Jean Piaget and a fascination with children's reactions to moral dilemmas.^[1] He wrote his doctoral dissertation at the university in 1958,^[2] outlining what are now known as his stages of moral development.

His theory holds that moral reasoning, which is the basis for ethical behavior, has six identifiable developmental constructive stages - each more adequate at responding to moral dilemmas than the last.^[3] In studying these, Kohlberg followed the development of moral judgment far beyond the ages originally studied earlier by Piaget,^[4] who also claimed that logic and morality develop through constructive stages.^[3] Expanding considerably upon this groundwork, it was determined that the process of moral development was principally concerned with justice and that its development continued throughout the lifespan,^[2] even spawning dialogue of philosophical implications of such research.^[5][6]

Kohlberg used stories about moral dilemmas in his studies, and was interested in how people would justify their actions if they were put in a similar moral crux. He would then categorize and classify evoked responses into one of six distinct stages. These six stages are grouped into three levels: pre-conventional, conventional and post-conventional.^[7][8][9]

Fascinating. A lot of this looks like common sense stuff - but it's nice that guys with big brains on board have bothered to observe, confirm and write it all down.

BSG is Back

And I am doing a happy dance.

Lileks on Video

Missing your daily dose of Bleat because James Lileks went on hiatus until April 7th?

Never fear - every Friday he posts a video review at SmartFlix. Here is this week's edition ..

Let’s Grow Mushrooms! No. No, let’s not. I know some people regard them as delicacies, but I can never shake the childhood definition of mushrooms: slimy brown things that glopped out of a can, all the same size and shape like congealed lump of smoker’s mucus shoved through a Play-Doh Fun Factory.

It's not nearly as good as last week's entry ' .. on dog Training'.

Once we’re at Fenster’s house, we meet his dog. A poodle. (Of course.) Fenster, we learn, paid to have his poodle learn how to fetch sodas from the fridge. The dog uses a rag tied around the door to open the fridge. If I may interject: we trained our dog to do this. We praised him to the skies and said good dog aren’t you just a good dog yes you are. Then it struck me: teaching a dog to open the fridge is like tossing your teen the keys to the liquor cabinet. Plus, the dog would have to bring the sodas in his mouth. I’ve seen what he eats.

But even a 'pretty good' effort from Mr. Lileks is miles better than the wrack some commentators put out on a weekly basis.

A rant deleted

I had a rant all ready to roll.

It started with a blockquote from comments on this blog post

These are bizarre and terrifying

and

I just want to clarify where these come from. It seems relevant. They totally freak me out,

and

The idea that the only way we think we can make a safer, better society is for everyone to carry a gun is incredibly sad. It's also individualistic--the answer to racism, rape, and gay bashing is to carry a gun, not have any form of social organizing.

and

The Holocaust ones are particularly offensive. When the agents of the totalitarian state come for you, they always come in groups. What are you going to do, pull your gun and have three of them shoot you before you can shoot one of them? Either way, you're just as dead.

Referring to Oleg Volk's imagery, like this



and this



and this



and wrapped up with this picture



Then I did something foolish with cut-paste and it all went into the bit bucket.

Just as well - the people who responded to the post are intelligent, smart and all I was doing was tossing the rant bomb around.

How Will We Get to the Beach?

It's hard to tell from the cover but the lady with the turtle strapped to her head is a hottie.


Eye candy for Dad, counting games for the monkeys - I give this book five stars!

Democracy is great - except for that will of the people jazz

For those of you from out of state, this is what he's complaining about; we elect our state supreme court justices to ten-year terms. When there is an vacancy the governor appoints a judge to fill the position until the term expires.

It's wacky but that's how we do things here. I suppose the guys who wrote the state constitution just loved them some Democracy or something.

A fellow who was appointed by our current governor lost an election this week. We join the blogger in mid screed ...

But they know what they did and what they do. The popping of champagne corks in country clubs, gated-community mansions and right-wing radio studios could be heard throughout the state – or at least in the North Shore and western suburbs – and throughout the nation, where the attack on the independent judiciary is driven (and funded) by the same devious greed-heads who brought you Junior Bush and the war in Iraq.

I am not sure how a fair and open election [1] is an attack on an independent judiciary and a political appointment by a single man is not. Me, I think it would be the reverse.

We've always been at war with Eastasia.

[1] 51% - 49%
[2] I just now discovered this - the right to hunt and fish is written into our state constitution. That is totally kick-ass.

Good Morning, Dog

Dog jumps up on the bed.

Good morning, Dog.

Um, hi.

What does my good girl want? Let me scratch your ears.
,
No, it's not that, I mean that feels nice but ..

Yes, I know. Breakfast.

No, listen I"m trying to tell you ..

What?

** urk ** urk ** urk **

Oh.

Yeah. Sorry about the mess on the blanket. Hey, I feel better now!

Lovely.

RAMTHA

Speaking of two tons of crazy in a quarter-ton truck, I present: RAMTHA

Ramtha is the entity that Knight says she channels. According to her, Ramtha was a Lemurian warrior who fought the Atlanteans over 35,000 years ago. She says that Ramtha led an army of over 2.5 million across the continents, conquering two thirds of the known world, which was going through cataclysmic geological changes. According to Knight, Ramtha led the army for ten years until he was betrayed and almost killed.

I guess that makes Ramtha a sort of George Patton? Maybe an Eisenhower or a MacArthur.

Oh, there is more.

She also owns the copyright to Ramtha

You can copyright deity?

and conducts sessions in which she pretends to go into a trance and speaks Hollywood’s version of Elizabethan English in a guttural, husky voice.

Why would a 35,000 year-old warrior - a sort of Patton or MacArthur of his era - speak in Elizabethan English? Maybe he snuck in for a quck visit in in 1503 to acquire the language .. but then he hasn't updated his dialect? This might be evidence that he's not a terribly bright entity.

It's possible he's having us on about conquering the world thing.

At any rate I'm not sure a guy who was born before there were IPods has a whole lotta perspective on the modern era.

And he looked at me and he said: "Beloved woman, I am Ramtha the Enlightened One, and I have come to help you over the ditch" And, well, what would you do? I didn't understand because I am a simple person so I looked to see if the floor was still underneath the chair. And he said: "It is called the ditch of limitation", and he said: "And I am here, and we are going to do a grand work together."*

She omitted the part where Ramtha rolled his eyes and thought for a long minute about finding a new channel who understood obvious metaphor.

Ed Thompson for Governor

Ed Thompson spent $20 in his successful bid for the mayor's office of Tomah, Wisconsin.

Thompson spent $10 for black and white paint to make appropriate changes to the highway signs. He said, “I paid my handyman, Terry Waddell, another $10 to clean up and paint the signs.”

Tomah isn't the big city of, say, Neenah, but it's not a whistle-stop either - 8,419 people per the 2000 census.

Thompson referred to his frugal $20 campaign as a metaphor for how government should be run. In his previous term as mayor he cut city expenses by 13% while improving services to the community.

Thompson says that large expenditures should be decided in referendum by the people, not by a handful of city council members. “The people have been left out of the political process at all levels,” he said. “I want to change that.”

He went on to say, “We’re going to change government at the grassroots level. I want to show that libertarian values are American values, that we, the people, don’t want government bureaucracies meddling in our private lives.”

Why the hell didn't we elect this guy to the governor's office back in 2002?

Because Libertarians have a lot of good ideas but can't win elections. Phhhht.

Agitprop

Dangerous delusional bullshit - now free for people attending the 24th National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.

This is the leaflet that has been prepared for us to hand out to those "space warriors" who will be attending the Colorado Springs confab next week. Since we know that some of them regularly view this blog they can get an early glimpse.

The von Braun quote is from 1950, and he was talking about working for the German Army in 1932.

In 1932, the idea of war seemed to us an absurdity. The Nazis weren't even in power. We felt no moral scruples about the possible future abuse of our brain child. We were interested solely in exploring outer space. It was simply a question with us of how the golden cow would be milked most successfully.

In fine agit-prop tradition, they spelled General Schriever's first name wrong. But they get style points for Euro-izing it to emphasize the 'Nazis developed the space program' theme.

I wonder if it even matters that the only source for General Schriever's quote [1] are far-left papers that repeat the quote and don't provide context.

[1] I admit it was a hasty search - corrections welcome!

Think before record

Crazy people on the internets should think before pushing 'record'.

• Babe. It's spelled 'racisim'.
• "Leave Brittney alone, you bastards!"
• That woman is about two tons of crazy in a quarter-ton truck.
• Making threats to pseudo-anonymous people on the internet .. oh, I am all trembly.

You're clicking that link at your own peril: You Have Been Warned.

Update: I am not one of the people she is calling out for racism.

April Fools Day is dead to me

With help from my merry prankster wife, April Fool's Day has lost whatever marginal charm it once had.



Ya, kinda like that, if you subtract the blood and power tools and the goober on the PC and add a woman who has had a serious heart attack only a few months ago and a guy home for lunch.

That is all.

Cartoon from Stuff Happens.

Recursive Blog Entry - Pale Albino Edition

Email funnies - now in blog form.

Brian: Between clown Eucharist and that stations of the cross thing, for the life of me I can’t see a compelling reason why I should go back [ to the Episcopal church ]

TJIC: the Catholic church has a lot going for it. Doctrinally, pretty darn close to what the Episcopal Church was a while back, long history, plausible claim to correctness… OK, my bylaws-mandated dose of propaganda has been delivered…

Brian: Roman Catholic agit-prop received - you can tell your albino Jesuit handler that you done good for the day.

I'd be lying if I said that paying a call on the local parish to see what is what isn't tempting. My sister converted years ago, when I attended chapel in the Marines [1] it was the Roman Catholic mass not the Protestant service. Plus all the cool kids are Catholic!

[1] Which wasn't very often, granted.

Down the Barrel of a Gun

When he wrote

And I don't mean to toot my own horn, but the original size of this photo makes a real incredible wallpaper. Put it up and see if you get reactions from co-workers/family. Go ahead, I double-dog dare ya!

He wasn't kidding. It looks awesome on my big CRT at work.

Things in Zimbabwe are bad

Things in Zimbabwe are bad.

How bad are they?

Things are so bad in Zimbabwe that the ruling party can't even rig an election.

A PC - 1950's style

A modern relay computer.

Sure it's clunky to program and can't run Windows but when an EMP bomb scrags all the electronics in North America, guess who is going to be the only guy with a working computer?

Your mouse and your CRT and your hard drive won't be worth much then, will they Sparky? Ah ha ha ha!

Decline

S4C's favorite radical-conservative is heard from ..

I returned last night from a one day trip to Bethlehem, PA. to speak at annual dinner of LEPOCO which was celebrating its 42nd year of peace work in the former steel town.

Upon arriving at the airport I was taken for a quick drive by the old steel works which has long been closed and is rusting and crumbling like other ancient ruins of industry across the nation.

They started their work in 1965. That's when the steel industry in the area started to tank.

Coincidence? I don't think so. We need to awaken the proles that their hard earned blue collar jobs have been stolen with the assistance of the very people that claim to protect them! Fruits come to the gardeners that remain steadfast in nurturing the plants in the garden and those people have been very, very steadfast indeed. It's morning in America and we need to wake up and smell the coffee. Up and at 'em America!


Is it as funny when the indoctrinated look like you?
Is it as cool, as kitschy, as righteous?
Is it as easy to scream “Revolution now!”
if you knew you’d have to give up some of your shit?
Is Mao still a genius when he tells you that your bougie urban
intellectual ass needs to stop reading books and go out into the fields to work?
Did Mao experiment on your family that to make a better world?
Did you know that communism is not theoretical for everyone?

Kelly Tsai - 'Little Red Books'


[1] Nothing in this post is meant to be taken seriously. Except the parts that are.

sqlite3 - commiting to the memory bank

How-To write data to a sqlite database.


natasha:~/rails/azure/db briandunbar$ sqlite3 development.sqlite3 "select * from stuff";
natasha:~/rails/azure/db briandunbar$ sqlite3 development.sqlite3 "insert into stuff (title,description) values ('chair','four legs');"
natasha:~/rails/azure/db briandunbar$ sqlite3 development.sqlite3 "select * from stuff";
1|chair|four legs


Assumes
A sqlite db file named development.sqlite3.
This database has two columns 'title' and 'description'.
That one has nothing else to do on a gloomy afternoon.

Results
Data is written.
Cockatoo looks at you funny when you chuckle madly.

Little Dee

Plus it was neat when things went 'boom' ..



See Little Dee by Chris Baldwin for all your humor needs.

Spring is Here

Spring at S4C.

* The trampoline is up. [1]

* This morning ...

Older Monkey tapped on my window

What?

OM: The frog [2] didn't make it - I found him floating in the pond.

Ah. Where is it?

OM: On the bench.

Well, can you .. bury it?

Five minutes pass. Then from the kitchen I hear ...

Older Sister: Oh my Gawd what the heck is wrong with you! Take that back outside! Ew, that is gross!

OM: Hahahhhaha okay now I'll bury it.

Kids are cool.

[1] I'd take credit for it but Older Monkey asked if he could. Confident he'd need help I went outside and ... done. Kids are amazing and they grow up way too fast.

[2] We have a pond. It's not deep enough for the fish to survive the winter so around September they come inside the house. Last summer we acquired a small frog for the pond but he refused to be caught. We hoped for the best ...

Prosperity

If you could conserve your way to prosperity





Haiti would be rich.

Spiritual consultations

Hmm.

Though Wright and Obama do not often talk one-on-one often, the senator does check with his pastor before making any bold political moves.

How is this different from consulting with a Astrologer?

if you're not careful, you might learn something before it's done - cat and screen

cat makes line numbers

natasha:~/foo briandunbar$ cat foosrt
3
46
52
10
30
natasha:~/foo briandunbar$ sort -n foosrt | cat -n
1 3
2 10
3 30
4 46
5 52


You can put the hostname in screen. Here I've got it in the status line

natasha:~ briandunbar$ cat .screenrc | grep caption
(snip)
caption always "%{wB} %H %{kk} %{gB} %n %t %{kb}| %{wb}%W %= %{kk} %{wB} %D %Y.%m.%d %C %A "
(snip)


Which looks like this ..





Subject Line Tip O' the Hat.

Rack Screw Recommendation

A man who knows his screws.

Most common relay racks for holding electronic equipment have mounting holes in the uprights tapped for 10-32 screws (although there are exceptions). In many places people use whatever sort of screw is available - round head, pan head, binder head and others. As a result of years of experiences, I am now recommending that the preferred screw for holding equipment in racks be the Bud Industries part number 7346 screw.

Boom, done, no argument.

And he's probably right.

Saving so you don't have to eat kibble

It appears that the Obamas are not investing seriously in their retirement ...

Where does Obama Invest His Money?

Ryan Ellis of the American Shareholders Association has examined the Obama returns for calendar years 2001 to 2006 and found that, in all of those years, the couple reported a mere $1,188 in dividends in 2006 and another $2,754 in dividends in 2005. In the previous years, they reported no dividends of any kind.

Given all this, Mr. Ellis asks why the Senator is so “hell-bent on pursuing punitive taxes on capital that would wreck America’s retirement savings?” His answer: Perhaps it’s “because, by and large, he doesn’t have any skin in the game.”

Wait ... he's a lawyer, six years my senior, with essentially no retirement savings?

He's not hell-bent on punitive taxes for it's own sake - he's auditioning for a job with a cushy retirement plan and perks out the wazoo and pretty much a rock-solid guarantee of work after his term is over.

Most people, in a competitive job interview for a coveted billet, will naturally say things that the interviewers want to hear.

He's pursuing the American Dream! Gob'less America.

via.

Documentation

Under the 'you fix it once, you own it' ethos ... I own a report application and server.

The application is so poorly documented that it appears that I've been running OracleAS on this host for going on a year now - but the report tool is really using OracleAS on yet another host so the only thing the server must do is run the application.

It's a little like having a heater running full blast in the basement, venting to a room that no longer exists so there is this farging pipe hanging out of the house venting a blast of warm air into the chill of the Wisconsin winter.

Clarke Event

Protected Static wrote ...

Larry Sessions, a columnist for Earth & Sky, has suggested in his blog that the gamma-ray event whose radiation reached us a few hours before Arthur C. Clarke died, and which occurred 7.5 billion years ago, be named the Clarke Event. The outburst, which produced enough visible light to render it a naked eye object across half the universe, is officially designated GRB 080319B. What more fitting tribute to Clarke than to associate his name with the greatest bang since the big one?

The Clarke Event. I like it.

I second the motion and move that the measure be sent to the floor for immediate consideration.

And by 'sent to the floor' I mean everyone start referring to it that way as if it's the most obvious thing in the world.

Which it is.

Unclear on the concept

This guy

Who was the person who called Steve Martin a Guinuess. He is far From it. He holds the worst comedy act in history. What an idiot this guy is. The King Tutt thing and the Ex-cuse me Thing, had to be the most stupid comedy sketches. Threr are Comic that deserve praize, Like Robbin Williams, I just feel Steve Martin runs around praizing himself and waiting for people to agree with him. "The Jerk" pretty much somes it up. He is one.

falls firmly into the 'doesn't get it' category.

Dialup

I got this many visitors in the last week, by people using dial-up;

Visits - % visits
39 - 1.98%

Who are you people? Why dial-up? Do you like your current provider? What would it take to make you switch?

All kinds of awesome - OS X Edition

Assume you have OS X. Open terminal and type this in, press return.


/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Versions/A/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background


Your screensaver is now running as background.

Via.

.. and a Con broke out

Brin, Niven and Pournelle [1] showed up for a government panel and a Con broke out.

“Do you know how politically incorrect you are?” Pournelle asked (Niven).

“I know it may not be possible to use this solution, but it does work,” Niven replied.

“My guess is we won’t need quite so many paid agents of the state to do that for us, which means maybe we can try being a republic instead of an incompetent empire,” he (Pournelle) said, then railed against the Transportation Security Administration for treating passengers like “subjects” rather than “citizens.”

The 45-minute panel discussion quickly deteriorated as federal, local and state homeland security officials, and at least one congressional aid, attempted to ask questions, which were largely ignored.

Instead the writers used their time to pontificate on a variety of tangentially related topics, including their past roles advising the government, predictions in their stories that have come to pass, the demise of the paperback book market, and low-cost launch into space.

David Brin, keeping on the topic of empowering citizens with mobile phone technology, delivered a self-described “rant” on the lack of funds being spent to support citizen reservists to back up the military, homeland security officials and first responders in times of crisis.

“It is impossible for you to succeed without us!” he shouted at the assembled officials, while banging his fist on the table and at one point jumping off his chair to wave a mobile phone in their faces

I love it.

[1] And twenty-one others.

Via.

Bruce

When a reply to a comment on a post turns into a long reply .. it's not time to edit, it's time to make it a post!

Sorry... It hit a nerve. In St. Louis, I worked for a woman-owned/minority-owned IT firm. We worked as a subcontractor a lot, and it was taken for granted by the White programmers we subcontracted to that I was a good programmer, while my Black coworker (who was a better programmer than I) had to prove himself continually.

I ran into that when I contracted at the Resolution Trust Corp.

Bruce was the desktop guy. Bruce was good at his job, very professional.

Bruce was also black, a big guy and worked out with weights. His weekend job as a bouncer paid about as much as he was making at RTC.

As do we all from time to time, Bruce had problems to deal with. Where a skinny dude like me can express frustration aloud, when Bruce did it was threatening, or at least that was what we were told by the folks running RTC.

That was weird, to me. I'd just spent eight years in the Marines - guys like Bruce were an asset. The Marines liked physically fit, whip-smart guys. Guys like that got the schools, the meritorious promotions, the interesting jobs.

Guys like Bruce were in the technical fields and made rank and were the go-to people.

Eventually, RTC folded into the FDIC, our contract was assumed. Bruce didn't make the jump with us - he found a better opportunity [1] and was giving serious thought to getting out of IT and doing the bouncer gig full time.

Which sucked - I'd rather have a dozen guys like Bruce working with me than some of the other guys on that crew. [2]


[1] RTC's desktop support needs were minimal and non-taxing - 99% of the desktops were PCs with the hard drive ripped out, booting from floppy and running menu driven from the Banyan Vines servers - all the action was happening on the LAN side. The FDIC was about messed up eleven ways from Sunday and had all kinds of issues and problems on the desktop side - they really needed Bruce there.

[2] They were good guys and gals on that contract [3] but one guy ... he was good but only within the narrow confines of what he knew; give him a problem where he had to think and he was lost.

[3] One of whom I have to thank for the job - thanks, Jay!

Young Mrs. Clinton

So .. in this shot



does Lisa bear a passing resemblance to Hillary Clinton?

Hyperbole - Air Force Style

SecDef Gates to Air Force: Please send most of your Predator drones to the Middle East.. Thanks, Guys!

The Air Force fussed back ...

Some officers said pressure from Gates resulted in one plan that could have taken the Air Force down a path similar to the German Luftwaffe, which cut back training in World War II to get more pilots in the air.

"That was the end of their air force," said Col. Chris Chambliss, commander of the Air Force's Predator wing.

I will allow that untrained air crews are not effective but I suspect the strategic bombing campaign, the Normandy landings and drive East into Germany, the drive West by the Red Army and shooting down an ass-load of fighter planes had more to do with shutting down the Luftwaffe than cutting back training hours did.

What he said - Episcopal Church Edition

For complicated reasons I walked out on the Episcopal Church a few years ago. I'm able to go back - I've moved out of state, the priest has been fired [1] so there might be a sort of 'ollie-olllie-oxen-free' thing going on. But I have not gone back. Matthew has part of the reason why ..

How many people have to leave before our leadership acknowledges that there is a problem? How small can the Episcopal Church get and remain viable? If there is no physical resurrection, no life after death, no real theology or ethics or even morality other than “God won't fix in a box” then what reason is there for the Episcopal Church?


The Baptists have better sermons, the Methodists have much better music, the Catholics have better liturgy, the Orthodox have greater solemnity, and the Presbyterians just know what's going to happen. And all of them have Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour. So why be an Episcopalian? What do we have to offer that is valuable?

Between clown Eucharist and that stations of the cross thing, for the life of me I can't see a compelling reason why I should go back.


[1] and possibly had his collar revoked - one could hope so. Certainly his wife has divorced him for his shenanigans, why not the church?

Gunpowder and Lead

I do not hold with shooting people who got it coming. We've got laws and courts and they generally work pretty well.

There are always exceptions of course ...

County road 233, under my feet
Nothin' on this white rock but little ol' me
I've got two miles till, he makes bail
And if I'm right we're headed straight for hell.

Yet your average guy high on testosterone is more than capable of putting a woman into the hospital. Aggression, shock and upper body strength will have their way. Yup, the police are minutes away when seconds count.

His fist is big but my gun's bigger
He'll find out when I pull the trigger

Unless she's armed.

Click the link above for an an awesome video, set to Miranda Lambert's equally awesome 'Gunpowder and Lead'.

As Matthew noted the only think it lacks to make it the perfect country and western song is Momma and trains.

Get your MIT degree now while it still means something

A letter from Jerry Pournell's Chaos Manor.

Jerry,

WRT MIT, Hahvahd, Yale, et al opting to provide free tuition for the poor folks making under a hundred grand a year or thereabouts, I can foresee a very interesting if unintended consequence.

They are fiddling with ONE variable in a dynamic system -- apparently in the belief that OTHER variables will behave as constants.

What *I* expect is that the new regime will result in a massive *increase* in applications to these schools, because the previous tuition levels acted as a self-limiting mechanism. In other words, scads of students who *would* have applied -- and qualified -- did NOT apply, because they knew they could not afford the tuition, so why bother applying in the first place?

Now, though, with *that* out of the way, they will be buried in applications -- and the only way they'll be able to deal with this is via triage.

The only question is what they will use as triage criteria. I suspect they will be uber-PC about it, and amp-up the quotas -- "privileged classes" will be given "preferences" and "non-minority" students will be confronted by aa spectacular raising of the height-bar.

The first graduating class under this new system ought to be... interesting. A small number of VERY qualified graduates, and a LOT of "eased-through the system" kids who will expect to *continue* the "preferential ride" in the real world. (Of course, given current events, the "real world" will not likely be of a mind -- or ability -- to provide a "nurturing environment" to those who've become accustomed to it. Yes, interesting. That's the word for it. Interesting.)

Ron

As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly

Except .. they weren't turkeys. They were eggs. Plastic easter eggs. Dropped from a helicopter.

The idea behind the Cartersville EggDrop was to replace the old boring egg-hunt thing with a helicopter dropping 10k Easter eggs onto a small section of a football field. After the event a neighbor said to me after the egg hunt, this had to be an Easter egg hunt engineered by men with no women involved. I added that it was most likely ex-military men.

He's got a point.

The first sign of a plan gone wild revealed itself as we approached a fenced-in football field that already held about 5.000 crammed-in people. My first instinct was to turn and run, but I doubt that I could have explained my flight to the 5-year-old with a vice grip on his Easter basket . EggDrop ground zero was the 50 yard line, and it was surrounded by yellow event tape at a radius of about 20 yards. When the helicopter made its first pass, that yellow event tape was no match for the thousands of screaming kids who burst through to catch the falling plastic eggs. The real problem, though, was that the organizers had not expected that the first drop of around 700 eggs would pelt moms, dads, and unsuspecting eight-year-olds.

I would never ... never ... have expected that result.

At one point, I ran over to M-I [3]

They had a helicopter and a tank? That is all kinds of awesome. God Bless the South. [1]

and tried to explain to him that no parent is going to leave the field without the right wounded children, myself included. I further pleaded with him to radio the helicopter and ask them to hold off dropping any eggs until things could be sorted out. He informed me that he did not have radio contact with the helicopter.

Say 'hello' to my good buddy, Murphy!

As I pushed my way to the 48 yard line, I saw my two boys sitting on the ground crying. Meanwhile, goofy old Ray Liotta [2] in the helicopter was circling with another drop of about 700 more plastic eggs, which cascaded onto the field amidst rippling pops as the egg shells bouncing off every man, woman, and child.

It ended well - in that John escaped with his kids. I did some due diligence via Google and, sure 'nuff, there was a helicopter drop of eggs and there was a fair amount of chaos, confusion and general hurly-burly.


[1] I mean this sincerely.
[2] Not really Ray Liotta - but that would have been a nice touch. John bypassed the obvious 'Turkeys Away' reference and compared the situation to 'Operation Dumbo Drop'
[3] On further review this isn't really a tank - I have no idea what he's talking about. But a tank would have been cool.

Cross Posted to The Daily Brief.

Book bleg

I - and about ten others - were employee of the month, last month [1]. My reward is a $25 dollar gift certificate at Amazon.

Now .. what do I get?

Agile Web Development with Rails, 2nd Edition.

The Rails Way (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series).

Advanced Rails.

Deploying Rails Applications: A Step-by-Step Guide.

The Stone Canal.[2]



[1] Yes, go me. I rock. In all due modestly, however, my participation in the event that resulted in this award was minimal and unimportant.

[2] Tossed in as a small joke - a used copy for $1.35 is a no-brainer. How is it that I've read (and re-read) the rest of the books in the Fall sequence but not that one?

the Litany Against Being Transported Into An Alternate Universe

The Litany Against Being Transported Into An Alternate Universe:

If I'm going to be happy anywhere,
Or achieve greatness anywhere,
Or learn true secrets anywhere,
Or save the world anywhere,
Or feel strongly anywhere,
Or help people anywhere,
I may as well do it in reality.




From Overcoming Bias.

Art by Michael Whelan for Larry Niven's Integral Trees.

A long delayed reply

Ben wrote a long post where, first he said that irk him and then he attacked a broad army of Conservative straw people. At first I was confused - who are these people he attacks with such vigor? Then I realized ... that's me.

Well, then.

We're compelled to defend our ideology with zeal and anger, and to do our best not to really listen to our opponents lest their ideas sow any doubt in our minds.

Speak for yourself. If you don't listen to other people, if you don't have a conversation, you learn nothing.

Me, I defend my ideas with humor and good fellowship; life's too short to be pissy.

As for ideology, I have tried hard to not have one. True ideologues are bores at parties [1] and no fun to be around.

What do I believe in? I believe that if you work hard and catch some lucky breaks you can get ahead. I believe that the prepared man makes his own luck. I believe in the power of love. I believe that the government is best when it governs least. I believe in solutions that work, above all else. Keep your powder dry. I believe that puppies are cute and smell pretty darn good.

Don't you want to pick them up and tickle their little bellies?

The rest of Ben's post is worth skimming; if only so you can see what I'm talking about. I have tried, and failed to come up with responses to his points; he's aiming his arrows at conservative straw men. I lack the imagination to twist my perspective around to properly answer.

But of course all this thinking about how we need to change and improve things is hard to do. Maybe only people under 30 have the energy for it, and then they convert to conservatism later in life out of sheer exhaustion.

Or I'm just a tired old man. Ya, that's it. Hit the ol' nail on the head, Ben.


[1] Anyone who has been cornered by an Open Source zealot at a party knows exactly what I mean.

Strike!

Oh, the LiveJournal strike.

This is a strike.



So is this.



See these guys? They're striking. In Poland. In 1982. They could have died doing this, crushed under tank treads.



This the Homestead Strike. It ended in a battle (with real guns!) between goons and strikers.



Not writing content in yorur LiveJournal blog for a day is not a strike - it's getting all pissy and moany because the guys that own the servers are changing things and you don't like it.

T.R. Fehrenbach - A few presidents made a difference

What does my favorite historian and pundit have to say about the current election?

Every four years, we're told that "this election" is vital; we can either change the world or terrible things will happen if the other side wins.

If you believe this, I suspect you are either very young or a fool.

Me, I'm a (Samuel) Johnsonian, believing in regulating imagination by reality and instead of thinking how things may be, seeing them as they are. In short, what is, is.

Like most thinking Republicans and the smarter sort of Democrats, when my candidate lost, I found the best revenge was making money. Fact is, most of us do better when our side is out of office because we are not distracted by politics.

Amen. Let's just elect someone and get back to doing what matters.

Speaking of that, it's time to go make dinner.

Screen is the awesome

And what good is screen? You can make it do all kinds of awesomeness. Like this.



That's all from a terminal session. Don't ask me what his .screenrc looks like - I grabbed the screen pic hours ago and I can't for the life of me divine in my history folder where I got it from.

Probably way more information than I want flooding my eyeballs. But my, ain't that impressive?

Update:

Duh - the pic came from this thread.

Screen with heavily customized hardstatus
(hostname/pop3 total/packet loss + ping avg/storage array space/free mem+swap/1min CPU load/clock)

and splits, running mildly customized IRSSI in the bottom and a wide variety of fun stuff up top. htop's in the topside - favorite top replacement so far.

My hardstatus info is mainly provided by self-written scripts using awk/sed/xargs to mangle data from stuff like 'free' and 'df'.

Wow.

Spring

That's Switzerland?

I was expected something a little more .. European? Dr. No's ski chalet? A castle perhaps. This is John Walker's house - he cashed out of AutoDesk and retired.

That house could be anywhere - heck it looks like a house that could be up in the Dells.

screen follies

Looking into the mysteries of screen [1] I ran across this ..

In X-windows world screen inspired several minimalist windows managers that is usually bungled with linux mini-distributions.

Sure it's a typo. But I am not fully convinced that it is.


[1] Specifically, I wanted to modify the status screen to include the host name I was on. This appears [2] to be More Bother than I wanted to get into, so we'll just leave 'hostname' in the prompt where it belongs.

[2] For a number of reasons to arcane to get into here.

Dreaming in Pun

I made a pun, in my dreams.

We were in Iowa, at a race track. Somehow Little Monkey and I became covered in a foul, nauseous mess.

Well, says I, I guess you know [1] we're in De-puke Iowa!

I love this cartoon.

I don't recall feeling grossed out during the dream and it was miles and miles better than one I had last week where I was faced with a 'Road Warrioresque' thug and all I had was a pistol scavenged from an emergency kit.

And the damned thing didn't work - proving that automatics are not the weapon of choice for a survival kit. And it continued not to work as I applied immediate corrective action to the pistol. Until it finally did.

Bleh. Dreams like these I can do without.

[1] I of course mean no harm nor foul to the good citizens of Iowa.

Rule Number Eighteen

Chris Gerrib writes

In the process of writing yesterday's entry, I found the USMC Rules for Gunfighting. It's both true and amusing.

Thank God I never had to apply these to 'real life'.

Watch their hands. Hands kill.

Except that one, once. Kinda-sorta.

I was reasonably sure the guy wasn't armed and he was what he looked like he was, which was a yokel from town delivering a new ditch witch to contractors aboard base.

But, god-damn. When a uniformed Marine roars up in a government vehicle that vaguely resembles a police car, parks it so the motor block is between you and he, unsnaps his holster and yells 'show me your hands' you do not stand there with your paws in the pockets of your overalls going 'hunh?'

I did relish the look on his face when I un-holstered my M9 and chambered a round [1]. Hands were extracted and poked up in the air with gratifying speed.

For my enjoyment, even better was my next direction: to pick up the phone, mounted on a pole about two feet from his head, that had been ringing for five minutes.

If I'd been an ass I would have asked him to read the sign mounted above the phone:

VISITORS: ANSWER PHONE IF RINGING OR PICK UP PHONE TO CONTACT THE SENTRIES.


Cross Posted to The Daily Brief.

[1] Readers might be wondering if drawing a pistol was a tad extreme. To this I will answer that this was not the main gate at Camp Lejeune but a rather more secure facility - we weren't there to mess around.

An armchair grunt would also take issue with my not drawing the weapon as soon as I exited the vehicle. To this I can only say that it wasn't until I exited that vehicle that I observed he had his hands covered at which point the situation went from 'drive out there and tell the asshole to answer the phone' to 'potential use of deadly force'.

Thin

I had the opportunity to use Thin over the weekend.

Thin is a Ruby web server that glues together 3 of the best Ruby libraries in web history:

• the Mongrel parser, the root of Mongrel speed and security
• Event Machine, a network I/O library with extremely high scalability, performance and stability
• Rack, a minimal interface between webservers and Ruby frameworks

Which makes it, with all humility, the most secure, stable, fast and extensible Ruby web server bundled in an easy to use gem for your own pleasure.

Or more simply the description on the Google Groups page.

Thin is the fastest Ruby web server ever built.

I ran it against some of the half-assed apps on my local machine. I've gotten used to seeing things load .. well not slow but not so zippy, either. Chalk it up to a dev environment and move on.

Except that using Thin these apps are very very quick. Greased lightening quick.

We'll see if this holds true if (when) I move any of this to a 'real' web server. Still, I am impressed.

Because things like this irritate other people

It seems [1] that when I write about things more elevated than unix, fart jokes and boobs it makes some people "unreasonably angry and defensive."

What the hell - I'm Scotch-Irish and my grandpa was from Liverpool - it's in my genes to make people feel that way. So in the spirit of being a pugnacious Celt ...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_campaignplus/20080317/ap_ca/on_deadline_arrogance

“Barack is one of the smartest people you will ever encounter who will deign to enter this messy thing called politics,” his wife said a few weeks ago.

I am not thrilled when pols tell me that I’m lucky they’re devoting the might of their considerable selves to public service.

Go out and create jobs and wealth if you’re so damn smart, you fargin’ hacks. I want my politicians unimportant, competent and drab. If they're smart they just get us into trouble.

Via.

[1] Yes I owe you a reply .. it's coming.

Kate Beaton

Kate Beaton is cool - a webcomic that features simple drawing and clever dialog will make me happy, always.

Plus with her 'History Project' you get a snappy Readers Digest crossed with Robot Chicken summary of history!

The North-West Rebellion

Lous Riel: What am I going to do? I have two fists, one is the will of the Lord and the other is miracles. Bam, Bam! That's what I'm going to do!

Gabriel Dumont: Miracles! God damn it we need bullets! Are you even fit to lead this thing?

Battle of Hastings

Harrold Godwinson: Men, today we fight for our country, our freedom! These Normans, they have nothing on us!

Solider 1: I dunno, don't they have the Papal flag?

Solider 2: And a cavalry.

Solider 3: They have arrows! Do we have arrows?

Solider 4: I have a shovel!

Via Dresden Codak - whose webcomic also makes me happy but trying to puzzle out the details in his art makes my poor brains hurt.

Stuff Happens - Simplicity

Simplicity.

A thing I did not know this morning

Iguanas have three eyes.

We were at a pet expo today. Older Monkey gets all excited about critters with not enough fur, not enough legs etc so he was haunting the reptile table. While he was debating the wisdom of adopting a rat snake [1] I peered at an iguana the size of a Germen Shepherd and thought that, hunh, that thing on it's forehead looks like an eye.

And it is!

The two species of lizard within the genus Iguana possesses a dewlap, a row of spines running down their back to their tail, and a third eye on their head. This eye is known as the Parietal eye, which looks just like a pale scale on the top of their head.

*Click*

The parietal eye is a part of the epithalamus, which can be divided into two major parts; the epiphysis (the pineal organ, or pineal gland if mostly endocrine) and the parietal organ (often called the parietal eye, or third eye if it is photoreceptive). It arises as an anterior evagination of the pineal organ or as a separate outgrowth of the roof of the diencephalon. In some species, it protrudes through the skull.^[4] The parietal eye uses a different biochemical method of detecting light than rod cells or cone cells in a normal eye.^[5

Cool.


[1] It's home, in an aquarium tank, in his room. I'm not a huge fan of the thing but it's small and harmless, he spent his own money on it and it's not going to make messes on the floor so what the hey? Plus if it gets loose and lost in the house it can spend it's days in the basement killing rodents - it's a win-win!

Rorschach Test

I guess it's one of those funny ink-blot test kind of deals ...

As said by Alan Cooperman from The Washington Post: “Each picture in Armed America could be a pro-gun advertisement - or an anti-gun poster. That’s what makes the book so riveting.”

'Cause I see neither a pro-gun ad or an anti-gun poster; all I see is a variety of interesting tools.

Except for the guy with the hairless cat.



It's not a cat, it's a kzin with a gland problem.

Those things are just wrong.

Lova Canal revisited

Everything I knew about Love Canal is wrong.

Granted that isn't much because I never really thought about it. I read the news, I figure I'm an informed citizen.


Here is 'Love Canal' as I knew it, in condensed form.

Unscrupulous Businessman to henchmen: Look! A handy canal where we can dump our chemicals! Ha ha - it's good to be a capitalist with no morals!

Henchmen: You said it, boss! Let 'er rip, boys!

Chemical dumping proceeds merrily. The dumping in question is not illegal exactly but it sure 'nuff is immoral and not done with full respect for quality control and other measures that one might expect.

Sometime later the land in question passes in an unspecified way from the business to the good hearted apple-cheeked citizens who build schools, buy houses and generally live the American Dream.

Citizens: Eek - there is goo in our front yard! And in the playgrounds! Aiiii!

Unscrupulous Businessman: (Whistles a merry tune while counting his bundle of money - think Scrooge McDuck in his money vault.)

Local Government: Well .. I'll be a monkey's uncle! We had no idea.

National Government: We'll save you ma'am, from the folly of short-sighted businessmen in the pursuit of the almighty dollar! Take THAT you fiend (POW) and that (KA-BLAM)!

Unscrupulous Businessman: Oh dear, if only I'd been more socially conscious and aware of the environment!

Citizens: Thanks God for the government, the righter of wrongs and the leveler of playing fields!


What really happened is more like this

Businessman to staff: Okay, we've got a canal for waste disposal, it's funded and maintained, meets EPA standards. It's not going to leak is it?

Staff: No way, Jose - you know how much we'd have to pay in fines? There is five feet of clay on top - we're set.

Businessman: Great, 'cause it's my head on the block if it does .. who's that?

Local Government: Boy - that sure is a pretty parcel of land you got there. A school would look really good on it, maybe some houses with nice suburban streets ...

Businessman: It's a waste dump! It's chock full of goo and poisons.

Local Government: ... and a playground for the tots, not to mention tax revenue for the city ...

Businessman: Here, let me dig a few holes and show you. (grabs a shovel, digs - green stuff floats to the top).

Local Government: Golly. That sure is smelly. We'll tamp it down with Play-Doh - it'll be fine.

Businessman: Well, I'm not going to sell it to you.

Local Government: Ho ho! I'll use eminent domain! You _must_ sell it.

Lawyer: Boss if they just _take_ it we're in a world of doo-doo. Since it's gone one way or another if we sell it and have them sign some paper saying that they know it's a festering toxic dump ..

Businessman: (visions of lawsuits and jail dancing in his head) Will that work?

Lawyer: It should - rule of law, remember? Got a better idea?

Local Government assumes title of the land, builds houses, school. Years pass.

Citizens: Eek - there is goo in our front yard! And in the playgrounds! Aiiii!

Local Government: Well .. I'll be a monkey's uncle! We had no idea.

National Government: We'll save you ma'am, from the folly of short-sighted businesemen in the pursuit of the almighty dollar! Take THAT you fiend (POW) and that (KA-BLAM)!

Businessman: What the heck is this? You're fining us millions of dollars after we _told_ those monkeys from the city it was a bad idea?

National Government: (Proudly poses as the righter of wrongs) And let that be a lesson, fiend!

Citizens: Thanks God for the government, the righter of wrongs and the leveler of playing fields!

All online USENIX proceedings now free

Via email comes the news - all online USENIX proceedings now free

I'm delighted to report that USENIX, probably the most important technical
society at which I publish (and on whose board I serve), has taken a
long - overdue lead toward openly disseminating scientific research. Effective
immediately, all USENIX proceedings and papers will be freely available on the
USENIX web site as soon as they are published. (Previously, most of the
organization's proceedings required a member login for access for the first year
after their publication.) The proceedings are available at:

http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/

Coolness.

Unclear on the concept

David Mamet is no longer a brain-dead liberal. The essay is worth the read, no matter what your orientation is [1]. This jumped at me.

As a child of the ’60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart.

I do not know how Mamet feels about (say) health care. Given his stated former thinking, we can assume he is (or was) for more government involvement in the health care system, not less.

I do not understand this. You accept deep down in your soul that government is corrupt [2] - but you want more of it? And to put it in charge of your bodily functions?

Via.

[1] If you assume I'm a right-winger of some stripe .. well you're not wrong but you're not right, either. Left and Right have ideas and notions that make me itch.

[2] You gotta admit there is something to that.