do not betray the words - Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai

do not betray the words

do not take them in your hands
and twist them like air balloons

creating wiener dogs and flowers
and imaginary crowns

do not stretch them so thin
that their skins breaks

everything evaporated
torn casings limp on the ground

do not take the words
and make them trophies

line them up on your mantle
shiny and golden and clean

do not make them objects in your
collection trussed in traces of dust

do not play the words

dunk them in the deep end of the pool
with no breath, no air

do not tell the words that you’re coming back
when you know that you’re not

do not pat them on the shoulder
while laughing to your friends about them

the words are simple enough
neutral enough plain enough

the words are atoms of sound

black scratches bent into circuits

they catch your electricity

they await your satisfaction

the words designed
to penetrate within

faster than the hypodermic’s nose
by-passing follicles and fat

the words bounce against your walls
they echo and then want to come out

let the words say you

celebrate you

flipping all your dark corners
inside out

Virtual machines - Ubuntu - Ruby

Update on the gem fail situation.

raptros-v76 suggested a purge and reinstall. Which is, yes, probably for the best. But oh-dear it seems like more work than I want to get into.

Instead I am trying this: I built a Parallels VM with Ubuntu. Install Ruby and Rails on that. Share a directory on my laptop with the VM that contains the code I'm working with.

Edit code on my laptop where I've got a text editor I like and things are setup the way I like them. Execute the work on the VM.

We'll see how this goes.

FOE: headlines

Headlines by the usual suspects. Commentary by Fred.

Headline: “Senator Lautenberg: US Won’t Be Upset if Israel Strikes Iran.” Well, Senator Lautenberg, presumably an Arab, won’t be upset. But with which Americans has he consulted? Me? I guess I missed his call.

Real answer: He has consulted with Congress, 535 commoditized temple monkeys pawing through the ruins of America in search of bribes. The bicameral whorehouse on Capitol Hill works like a vending machine. You put coins in the slot, select your law, and the desired legislation slides out.

Headline: “White House: Solomayor Says She Chose Word Poorly.” She is Blackbush’s choice for the Supreme Mausoleum. Court, I meant. Apparently what she said was that a “wise Latina woman” would reach better decisions than “a white male.” Oh. Then why have a Supreme Court at all? We could just replace it with a wise Latina woman. I wonder who she has in mind.

My thought was, oh god, more smug misandry. More man-bashing from an angry brown female who doesn’t know how her car works. I’m happy with Latinos on the Court, or –as, or women or blacks or Jews. But not another wielder of mortal boredom, blathering about white males.

See why cyanide appeals?

Gem fail - help!

I went to use gem this afternoon and found it broken.

% gem
/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:324:in `use_paths': undefined method `join' for "/opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8":String (NoMethodError)
from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/gem_runner.rb:37:in `do_configuration'
from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/gem_runner.rb:25:in `run'
from /usr/local/bin/gem:23


It does that for everything - query, update, etc.

I'm not going to claim 'I didn't do nuthin': clearly I broke something.  I just don't know what it could have been or when.  What .. the .. heck.

I've been to and fro and maybe it's Friday or maybe I'm retarded but I'm at my wit's end.  Anecdotes, ideas, commiseration?

My environment, fwiw

% uname -a
Darwin natasha.local 8.11.1 Darwin Kernel Version 8.11.1: Wed Oct 10 18:23:28 PDT 2007; root:xnu-792.25.20~1/RELEASE_I386 i386 i386
briandunbar@natasha ~ % ruby -v
ruby 1.8.6 (2007-03-13 patchlevel 0) [universal-darwin8.0]


Dying Pen

It looks like this play acting thing is gonna happen.  Three rehearsals so far, and I read for a different part today, subbing for Mr. Commitment [1].  And it was ... interesting.

Scene: Library community room.    Two actors are running lines.  Director in foreground.

Director: I love your posture ...
Brian: Thanks!
Director: But you have to slouch.
Brian: I am slouching.

Darn Marine Corps brain washing.

Anyway.  The Dying Pen is putting on two performances of 'His and Hers: Six Ten-Minute Plays' at Harmony Cafe in Appleton, June 16th and 17th. 

My bumbling efforts aside, it's really shaping up to be funny and entertaining.

[1] Still looking for a male actor - or wanna-be actor - in the Fox Cities.

Server Fault - manna for IT goobers

Server Fault.  Is.  Awesome.

Server Fault is for system administrators and IT professionals, people who manage or maintain computers in a professional capacity. If you are in charge of ...

• servers
• networks
• many desktop PCs (other than your own)

... then you're in the right place to ask your question! Well, as long as the question is about your servers, your networks, or desktops you support, anyway.

Please note that Server Fault is not for general computer troubleshooting questions; if you paid for that desktop hardware, and it's your personal workstation, it is unlikely that your question is appropriate for Server Fault.

I'm going to be spending a fair bit of time there, oh yes I am.

Oracle: don't make me do this again

Maggie Muggums at Oracle promised she'd get back to me on a problem shortly.  I am not sure in what universe 'shortly' is defined as 'greater than five working days' but while contemplating the blank space where her words of wisdom would be I was moved to limerick.

There was a sysadmin with temper mos' fragile,
Who waited for a fix for his Agile.
He updated the SR,
And called from his car,
And tried to keep his end users mos' docile.

OBEY

Ms. Bela Kosoian of Montreal did not get a $420 fine for failing to hold the handrail on a subway escalator.

Laval police said on Tuesday they issued three separate warnings to Ms. Kosoian before handcuffing her.

The officers first issued a ticket totalling $100, followed by another "for obstructing an inspector in the exercise of his duties," to the tune of $320.

The cops handcuffed and ticketed her for sassing John Law.

Nod your head, smile, and mind your Betters.  That's a good serf.

Heres a nickel, kid ...

Haw.

At a position I held a couple years ago with a fortune 500 company, I didn’t even have Administrator rights on the company issued laptop, it was great, when the issues came up and they did I got to call the corp help desk and they solved them all. I could have had Administrator rights if I filled out one form, but I didn’t want them. I had root on 175 Solaris boxes and a dozen Red Hat boxes, that was enough.

Subject line reference.

Nice. But not safe for work

My wife claims this is non-smutty: you can't see anything.  Me,  I just know it's not work safe.

http://bonerparty.tumblr.com/post/112853385/if-chloe-sevigny-didnt-already-sell-ludicrously

Would that be sweet?

That would be sweet.

I dream of being a successful writer/director/kiss-provider for Kate Micucci,
but when you compare those things with what I wanted to do as a child
it really seems like I’m now low-balling myself. Getting older sucks.

Casting Call - Appleton, Wisconsin

You know the local production I am involved with?

Two rehearsals and it's a bunch of fun. But there is a snag.

One of the guys just stopped attending [1] - won't answer his phone, hasn't shown up at all. Poor form.

Who is male and lives in the Fox Valley and wants one - or maybe two - parts in one - or maybe two - 10 minute plays? I ain't casting but I can forward you to the director.

[1] Dude. You've been in the local paper saying that you want a career in comedy. First Rule for success? Show Up. Second Rule? If you commit, Follow Through.

Swear Jar

I set up a Swear Jar to curb my intemperate swearing. While I do not swear very often it's not a becoming habit.

How much is in there?

$24.

No way. Well we set that up a long time ago ...

Dad. We set it up three months ago.


Perhaps I swear more often than I think ....

The Gang Press of War

Cobb

Peace and prosperity cannot be trusted by the corrupt. They need war and sacrifice and conscription. They mistake liberty for decline because of the way they sinfully indulge their free time. They don't understand the rewards of industry or the moral constraint of free and honest enterprise. All profit is moral hazard to them that horsetrade and try to bankroll virtue with loot of vice. There's always some dirt in their deal, and so they assume that the biggest deals must be hugely dirty. If there were no truth in that such people would never come to power.

I don't know what it might take to get us to shine, to chrome dip ourselves and smooth out our inevitable pits and pockmarks so that life's mud doesn't stick. More likely it's a daily scrubbing that gives us a finer finish. But we cannot wait for the gang press of war. We have to wash our faces every day and prepare to work. An early start beats fast running a steady daily prayer beats shouting and screaming at the last moment. America is moving from crisis to crisis. We are in glum preparation for a dozen wars, we are girding ourselves for economies of shame within economies of doom. We have irony as our sidekick, a snide muse aiding in our craven calculations.

Bolsheviks vs Nazis. No escape.

SMTP - Lamson - Interesting Ideas

Zed - you have an odd ideas of 'fun'.

Sure, the web might get you laid, but email is a hell of a lot more fun. You don’t have to worry about dipshits complaining about “typography” and “design” because they got a Mac for christmas. There’s no CSS, browser wars, real-time availability, scalability problems, or a billion programming languages and frameworks. With SMTP everything is solidified and in desperate need of a facelift, so you can take your time and enjoy writing something useful.

Ah - when you put it that way, I understand.  I have felt the same way about 3270 SNA emulation.

Some interesting ideas here, and at the project page.

No country or state ever yet taxed its way to prosperity.

A letter to the editor in the Herald Times Reporter from Emily Matthews of Kiel, Wisconsin

I had an eye-opening conversation last week. I complained about Wisconsin's high taxes, and someone replied, "We need taxes; people want things." (Translation: "You need to pay taxes to support me.")

My reply? "There's a good old-fashioned way to get things," called work.

Is this how bad it is in Wisconsin? Do folks truly believe government can supply all their desires? That they don't have to work to get paid?

Wisconsin used to be famous for its work ethic!

Employers provide work (jobs); government doesn't. True, there are some government jobs, paid for by the rest of us.

Companies and entrepreneurs create wealth (and jobs); government saps wealth, through taxes.

When taxes get too high, companies leave to resettle in kinder states -- or else close down, and wealth and jobs disappear. Government may try to hike taxes to pay for itself, but this will end up driving more jobs and wealth out of the state.

No country or state ever yet taxed its way to prosperity. Deficits result instead. Wisconsin has the fourth-highest deficit in the nation. Citizens for Responsible Government and W.I.N. are tired of this vicious cycle, and want to do something about it.

Thomas Jefferson said, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have."

Gov. Doyle's proposed bloated budget indeed will be "taking away" from the most productive parts of society.

Emily Matthews
Kiel

Cache Flush

Sex In The Middle Ages: 10 Titillating Facts You Wanted To Know But Were Afraid to Ask. TSIA.

Beyond Folk Activism

Folk activism broadly corrupts political movements. It leads activists to do too much talking, debating, and proselytizing, and not enough real-world action. We build coalitions of voters to attempt to influence or replace tribal political and intellectual leaders rather than changing system-wide incentives.

Cobb: Prick

I get a weird feeling these days. If a little knowledge is dangerous, a lifetime of learning is goddamned catastrophic. And so nothing gives me so much pleasure as doing business with old men. The survival of an intelligent, ethical man into old age is the testament of civilization.

Take off those Air Force gloves. Ma'am.

I didn't do this.



But I wish I had.

I'm here for the free lunch

Ken is conducting sexual harassment training ...

So far, in response to my leading questions designed to create the illusion of audience participation, only one person has suggested that yeah, it would be cool to have team-building in a strip club.

I've done that.

Except, it wasn't team-building exercises . And I wasn't in charge.  And it was lunch.  Did you know strip-clubs have free buffets?

It's true.  Excellent burgers.  The drinks are $5 each. [1]

At any rate it was a payday routine for the guys in the office to head down the street to enjoy lunch together.  Did the ladies complain?  I heard some comments, now and again.  The boss said 'You gals are welcome to come'.

I don't think you'd see that today.

I am sure it was a coincidence but the team that worked on that project - gals included - was one of the better teams I've been on.  We worked well together and stayed together as a team for over two years before the company went kerplooey.

[1] Something I have noticed since moving to Yankee-land.  Dallas has strip clubs everywhere - out in plain sight.  Nice places - if not for the boobs they'd be clubs you could take your mom too.  Up here?  There are a couple of seedy-looking dives, tucked away.

Look before you .. how does that go?

She suggested that I needed to step outside of my comfort zone.

She's right.  She usually always is.

I auditioned for a part in a local  production.

I made the cut.

That's not stepping out of my comfort zone - it's leaping into a friggin' abyss.

The Guy I Almost Was

One of the minor shames of 'the internet' is that genuine art is committed to it's medium and it can go away just like that.

Like this: 'The Guy I Almost Was'.  Very good stuff, and only available on the WayBack machine.

In which I get ranty and use too many italics.

Christopher Bradley writes

I'm not a fan of lotteries for a whole lot of reasons, but they're pretty regressive and they're also gambling. It's regressive because millionaires don't play the lottery - it is designed to take advantage of poor people's hopes and desperation. Which I think stinks. State lotteries are callous attempts by the state to capitalize on poverty by tricking the poor into shouldering a bigger share of the budget through psychological manipulation.

If the Poor didn't spend their money buying Lotto tickets, they'd just piss away the money on something else. That's why they are poor.

My first wife's family ran a liquor store. If a booze house didn't have a state of Maryland gambling machine on the premises all of the traffic would go to to the one down the road.

And oh-my-God did the poor and downtrodden line up so the state could stick it's nasty tentacle into their wallets. Talking about: guys living hand-to-mouth as day-laborers. In their fifties. Gals on welfare with too many kids, not enough money and no daddy in sight. Old gents on a pension just barely getting by.  Guys who caught fish in the Patuxent for dinner because food at the grocery was too expensive.

Twenty years on I want to go back in time and bitch slap them all and tell them to put that god-damned money into the BANK that was across the street.

So, yes, by all means - keep the state out of the gambling business.  It's yet one more damned government agency and the fewer of them we have the better.

But people will always find ways to shit all over themselves.  No government trickery needed.

Enterprise Software

Yet another attempt to Make Things Better. This one has some humor associated with it.

In the context of software, the word “Enterprise” has now officially come to mean software that sucks. Enterprise Software hit the nadir of suckitude at the launch of “Enjoy SAP” This is like the American Dental Association launching “Enjoy Root Canal”. SAP is certainly an easy target, but lets face it, “Enterprise Software” is generally a poorly integrated mess.

The problem is not 'Enterprise Software', but that vendors to pretend that Win32 is a valid platform for doing anything more complicated that Solitaire.

Via.

80 square meters. Per Person

David MacKay, here with a bit of wet-blanketery on wind and solar power.  And nuclear as well.

“As a thought-experiment, let's imagine that technology switches and lifestyle changes manage to halve American energy consumption to 125 kWh per day per person. How big would the solar, wind and nuclear facilities need to be to supply this halved consumption? For simplicity, let's imagine getting one-third of the energy supply from each.

To supply 42 kWh per day per person from solar power requires roughly 80 square meters per person of solar panels.

To deliver 42 kWh per day per person from wind for everyone in the United States would require wind farms with a total area roughly equal to the area of California, a 200-fold increase in United States wind power.

To get 42 kWh per day per person from nuclear power would require 525 one-gigawatt nuclear power stations, a roughly five-fold increase over today's levels.”

Stop Whining

Fire Flight at Katum

In 1968 a C-130 caught some gunfire and had to make very quick landing.  With their wing on fire.

[1414 pm] Britt advises Tay Ninh to clear the runway, and the chatter on Guard Freq fades away, almost eerily. As the airplane crosses the threshhold, Tay Ninh Tower's by-the-book transmission is almost humorous: "Homey 302, you're cleared to land." Well, duh.

Great flying by the crew. Excellent story by the pilot.

More pictures.  I like the one on the left in this page: I'd be walking backwards, too.

that would change EVERYTHING

Boner Party

what if i told you she was dancing to this song? that would change EVERYTHING.

He Did It

Before Lynn Johnston turned For Better or Worse into Soap Opera she was pretty funny.

The Name Game Test

I'd be mighty happy if you could mosey over here and take this test: The Name Game Test.

Be sure and rate the test. And thank you.

A more pure biathlon

Taking the biathlon back to it's military roots ...

A Unitarian Web Application

Twitter

Someone wrote that he was going to explain Twitter to one of his employer’s employees. Basically, what he is going to tell her is that Twitter is just Christianity without the “Christ”.

Twitter is Unitarianism?

Oliver Cromwell's Speech on the Dissolution of the Long Parliament

I do not think Cromwell would go over well today. 

He'd be all 'I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ' and we'd be all 'dude, don't harsh the mellow.'

Yet - when Our Betters in Congress seem intent on pillaging the treasury and feel no compunction to follow the laws they enact - this kind of thing starts sounding real good.

Oliver Cromwell's Speech on the Dissolution of the Long Parliament
Given to the House of Commons

20 April 1653

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you?

Is there one vice you do not possess?

Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter'd your conscience for bribes?

Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil'd this sacred place, and turn'd the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices?

Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd, are yourselves gone!

So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go!

Cross Posted to The Daily Brief.

That's how we do things in Green Town

I committed Twitter. She replied out of the blue:

@bdunbar most people believe that is too oversimplified.

'That' is the True Colors course I took at work. It is a simplified Myers-Briggs assessment. Where MB takes all damned day - or more - to get through you can crank out a TC session in four hours. With coffee breaks.

The point of the thing is to get a company stuffed to the brim with engineers, technical guys and manufacturing geniusi to take on some touchy-feely characteristics. Because it's not enough to build stuff with excellence and quality you also gotta talk to the customer.

Which, I thought, was the job of the sales team. But whatever.


My color spectrum - if anyone cares - is Green - Gold - Orange - Blue.

In other words I'm a nerd who likes being right. Color me shocked.

The good news is that my impulse to call stupid people stupid is validated.

Because that's the way Greens roll.

Currahee

1 - 2 - 3: Currahee!

Warning: do not watch this in front of small children unless you want them to see you weep.

What could go wrong?

Trade in a junker, get up to $4,500 from the government.

Buy the right [1] car just this side of the junk yard [2], license and tag it, trade it in and then make a sweet $4,000 profit.

Act now, while the supply of beater mobiles is plentiful and cheap.

[1] Paging Goldilocks: not too new, not too many MPG ...

[2] It's only gotta run once, for the drive to the dealer.

iGod

I listened to this on the radio.

To listen to Clark talk about "iReligion"--our tendency today to download what we like from world's different spiritual traditions and use them  as we will--listen to today's interview by Veronica Rueckert on Wisconsin Public Radio: Download Rkt090501e

Not sorry I did but oh-my-dear it is such a load of tripe.

The thing he is hustling is all about picking and choosing belief - of making religion serve people instead of people serving religion.  Because (strained metaphor alert) the old time religions are compact disks - you buy the prepackaged bits and that .. is .. that. 

This dude's kick is that the New Thing is for the hip and happening to pick and choose.  Reincarnation here, Trinity there, yoga in the Parish Hall and hey presto - you've got yourself a customized religion.

Slap an Apple-infected lower-case vowel in front and you've got a hook, brother.

It's Clown Eucharist all the way down.





It's like this; Your basic pre-packaged religions are not about having people serve them.  It's about people serving God.  Religion is delivery mechanism for Deity.

What Mr. Strand is dealing in is not God or religion or even much in the way of Faith: he's preaching lifestyle, dressed up fancy language to make some coin and sell a book. [1]

And it's damned odd, but listening to Strand go on and on and talk about lifestyle and faith and never mentioning God ... well it shook something loose in my brain-housing group.

I'll be at mass next Sunday.


[1] Which isn't a bad thing - we all have to eat and if Strand is making a living at this, well bully for him.

Adios, Google Toolbar

Good bye Google Toolbar.

You're cute but you're just not worth the browser stutter and frequent pauses.

Some things will never change

Star Trek.

It is a very good movie.

It is not very good science fiction.

Senior officers still sit in a bubble perched on top of the space ship.

Some things will never change.

do not betray the words - Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai

do not betray the words

do not take them in your hands
and twist them like air balloons

creating wiener dogs and flowers
and imaginary crowns

do not stretch them so thin
that their skins breaks

everything evaporated
torn casings limp on the ground

do not take the words
and make them trophies

line them up on your mantle
shiny and golden and clean

do not make them objects in your
collection trussed in traces of dust

do not play the words

dunk them in the deep end of the pool
with no breath, no air

do not tell the words that you’re coming back
when you know that you’re not

do not pat them on the shoulder
while laughing to your friends about them

the words are simple enough
neutral enough plain enough

the words are atoms of sound

black scratches bent into circuits

they catch your electricity

they await your satisfaction

the words designed
to penetrate within

faster than the hypodermic’s nose
by-passing follicles and fat

the words bounce against your walls
they echo and then want to come out

let the words say you

celebrate you

flipping all your dark corners
inside out

Time Travel Theory

JWZ's theory about time travel.

If your story is not about time travel, but it has time travel in it, then your story sucks.

neutopian

I have a theory that nothing with a giant CGI creature roaring into a camera can contain anything that will make up for that.

crasch

Uhura making out with the Orion alien woman would make up for it.

But no director capable of putting a roaring CGI creature into a film would recognize such opportunities for quality cinema.

A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages

A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages

1972 - Dennis Ritchie invents a powerful gun that shoots both forward and backward simultaneously. Not satisfied with the number of deaths and permanent maimings from that invention he invents C and Unix

Happy Birthday

As I type this, several monkeys are in the kitchen, making their mother a birthday breakfast ...



From Little Dee by Chris Baldwin.

If you're not careful you'll learn something before it's done.

What did I learn today? How to send attachments using unix mail.


uuencode test.zip test.zip > attachment.txt
cat message.txt attachment.txt > combined.txt
mail -s "subject" you@domain.com < attachment.txt


Details here



I cannot believe I've been doing 'unix' systems in one form or another since 1998 and have never had to do this until now. Amazing.

That is not the way story is supposed to go

You people are not following the narrative.

A group of college students said they are lucky to be alive and they’re thanking the quick-thinking of one of their own. Police said a fellow student shot and killed one of two masked me who burst into an apartment.

When armed men enter your home to rob, rape and murder you are supposed to lie back and accept it.  Curl into a ball.  Give them what they want.  Make them tea.  Violence solves nothing and guns are scary.

Plus, with you kids thinking on your feet and taking action you are depriving a platoon of therapists income from counseling the survivors.  Head bangers gotta eat you know.

Stop Helping!

300k here, 300k there, pretty soon it adds up.

What $357,012 buys in 2009 dollars. The mind reels.

Slacker

JWZ

Get a better job or stop slacking off on your master’s time.

Link for context

Four Types

Von Manstein - or Clausewitz - categorized officers into four types.


The brilliant and energetic man makes the best staff officer. He handles routine work with accuracy and completeness.

The brilliant and lazy man makes the best commanding officer. He tends to see the big picture accurately and avoids preoccupation with detail work which might distract him.

The stupid and lazy man makes the best subordinate. He will do what he is told properly, no more no less.

The stupid and energetic man, however, is to be avoided at all costs. He is quite capable of ruining the best laid plans.

I am not the Bicycle Guy

Rode my bike [1] to work several times this week.  Great ride, good workout .. excuse me.


AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH


Sorry. My thigh muscles were gently reminding me that I really slacked off during the winter. Also that the city replaced a perfectly nice grade crossing with a bridge.

Great for traffic - road and rail.

Bad - my formerly level ride to work now includes a friggin' hill.



[1] I ride because it's practical, but I'm no fanatic. Unless you're willing to get to work mussed, riding a bicycle is - what with rain, snow and heat - practical only 1/3 of the year in Wisconsin.

GitHub Octocat

My GitHub sticker arrived today.

How nifty is it?

Both of the older kids wanted it. Badly.  They know a cool mascot when they see it.

Put the hours in

Clever use of the phrase 'should be'

The White House barnstormed NYC in order to take publicity photos.

The sole purpose of the secret photo-op, which sent thousands of New Yorkers running for cover, was to take new publicity shots of the presidential jet over the city.

And won't release the pictures.

"We have no plans to release them," an aide to President Obama told The Post, refusing to comment further.

Well isn't that special.

Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use. Executive departments and agencies should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public feedback to identify information of greatest use to the public.

'Should be' is political speak for 'only when convenient'. George Orwell is not surprised.

Cross Posted to The Daily Brief.

ZSH Redux

How quickly one gets used to the new and ultra-modern . . .

depecated:/:# sceen
ksh: sceen: not found
deprecated:/:# sceen
ksh: sceen: not found
deprecated:/:# screen


Oh zsh: you have spoiled me.

Law Enforcement and fireams safety

Remember: only law enforcement officers can be trusted with firearms.

Greenwald was on duty about 11:40 p.m. talking to the other deputy in a separate vehicle. As the two deputies were talking, a female driver drove into the parking lot and Greenwald made a derogatory comment about her and looked upset, the complaint says. The other deputy made a comment to Greenwald, and Greenwald replied, "Those are killing words" and then pointed his weapon at the other deputy's head for two or three seconds with the gun about four feet way from the deputy's head, the complaint says.

Men, beware

My wife and her friend are looking for a boyfriend. [1] Because the girl is hot, single, and would like a fella.

Men:

1. Spell Check your personal ads. Spelling Counts and nothing says 'circular file' like failure to take this kind of stuff seriously.

2. You're not just being judged by one woman but - if what I observed is typical - at least two: the datee and an interested friend. You poor, sorry, bastard.

[1] For the friend.

Faith

Maybe it's for unwavering faith?

The evening evidently passed without anyone asking any uncomfortable questions, like: what, exactly, is it about a life devoted to Communism that is so admirable?

The Italians will succeed where Germans have failed

The New Chrysler:  49% Fiat, 51% worker-owned.  At least for now ..

Fiat's shareholding will be capped at 49% until Chrysler has repaid in full the loan granted by the U.S. Treasury.

All that treasure thrown at these guys to keep American jobs in an American business.

And it will end up being owned by Fiat.

Who is supposed to do what Daimler could not.

Criminey.

Is it News or The Onion?

You might think this was The Onion. But it's not.

Mike Stouffer, a weekend cook and dishwasher, has had some hard hits in life - abusive childhood, prison time, alcoholism, bad life choices. But a two-page letter he wrote and the simple response he got back has uplifted and motivated him.

"Thanks for the inspiring letter! It means a lot," reads the brief note from President Barack Obama that Stouffer now cherishes like a family heirloom.

Associated Press, I expected as much.

But Fox 11 aka WLUK-TV from Green Bay, Wisconsin? Did no babies die? No murders, no rapes, no child abuse, no arson, no government scandals?  The lege is in session down Madison way - surely some of their shenanigans are worth a few lines in place of this parody.

Fail Fish

Picture via.
Caption via.

D'oh - First Lady Edition

Michelle wore a pair of $540 shoes to a food bank?





Via.

Via.

Reich: Jobs Come First

Jobs Come First

The United States needs an auto industry because automobile jobs are good ones. They pay higher than average and provide good benefits.

I, for one, am thrilled that Mr. Reich is de facto [1] committed to providing above market wages and good benefits. 

And I trust that he will see to it that he puts his full and undivided efforts [2] as a current special advisor and past member of the board of directors at Tutors.com to make sure the employees and contractors at that fine organization are paid above market wages for their valued services and receive a handsome benefits package.

My informants [3] tell me that last year the independent contractors at tutors.com could expect to make $8 to $12 an hour.  Rates for privately hired tutors go between $15 an hour if you live in fly-over country to north of $50 an hour in the Big City. 

Clearly this is an oversight and we can expect tutors.com to live up to Mr. Reich's noble standards.

If the sauce is good for the UAW goose it's good for the tutors.com gander.



[1] How ya likin' that Latin thing?
[2] I don't regard hypocrisy as a vice.  But some people have problems with the idea.
[3] By which I mean a quick google of course.


Via.

Good Morning Local Newspaper

What's up with the local paper?

*click*

GOVERNOR: WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE

*click*

• Even as Governor NAME said everyone is going die and 3 people might be sick with the Worst Flu Ever the state  remains free of confirmed cases.
  
• AP: Most states are unprepared for the Worst Flu Ever. Woe.
• Editorial: What the hell are you people going on about?
• Doctor: We're ready for this. Game .. on .. Worst Flu Ever.
• Story: When experts use big words to talk about Worst Flu Ever it makes people scared.

Fan Service

Fan service - Jonah Hex style.

Odd Times

Vanderleun

Dennis Miller: We're Living In Odd Times When Miss California Gets Tougher Questions Than the Presiden