9/11

Per Diem and the World's Verdict

Jonathan Freedland: The world's verdict will be harsh if the US rejects the man it yearns for.

Well, golly, if the world yearns for Barack Obama they can damn well invite him to run for office there. Although somehow I doubt the son of an African would even be in the running for the top job in, say, England.

Perhaps I'm wrong. But England has plenty o' black people. Have there been any in slots comparable to Secretary of State, let alone in the running for Prime Minister?

But the headline is not the only bit o' nonsense.

She (Governor Palin) even seems to have claimed "per diem" allowances - taxpayers' money meant for out-of-town travel - when she was staying in her own house.

We have this thing called research.  Doing a modest amount of this is revealing.  Her own house is in Wasilla.  The state capitol is in Juneau.  The distance between the two is what is commonly called 'a whole bunch' - call it 600 miles.

Per diem is used to offset additonal expenses incurred living away from home. It's pretty common - I'm surprised Mr. Freedland seems unfamiliar with the concept - which is usually the case when an author wraps something in scare quotes.  Perhaps he needs to talk with his HR rep at the Guardian - I suspect he's earned some during his travels for his employer and might be owed some money.

Cross Posted to The Daily Brief.

Banana Junior

Ladies and Gentlemen - the Banana Junior 6000.





State of the art in 1984. This model appears to have aged well.

Berry Laker

Berry Laker linked to my blog with these words

A good read from a good American from another blog site from Northeastern Wisconsin, (Neenah to be exact).

Brian, keep up the GREAT work.

Please give Brian a read and enjoy his insight.

Haw.  Guess Paul didn't go back in the archives to when I was still doing 'Anti Mopery'.  Insight (laugh).  Oh, man, he has no idea what a krep blog this really is.

Euphemism

Soni coins the best euphemism for orgasm ever.

A few calmer heads noted that, indeed, within the context of long-term game play there could conceivably be instances of sexual congress alluded to (off stage, as it were) as part of the campaign. Say, if two characters get married, or someone has to seduce the demon queen in order to get access to the Fiery Gem of Splody Goodness.

Okay, you have to be somewhat clued into RPG games to really get it.

Stocks

I sold some stock yesterday [1].

I told myself I would not, would not, would not calculate the diff between yesterday (trading at $24) when I executed the sale and last month (trading at $30).

I couldn't help myself. The diff for the shares sold is $2,233. Well, snot, I feel like a goober for not doing this last month.

And I am certainly not going to repeat the exercise for August 2006 when the stock was trading at a record $40. No, Siree, Bob. A man's gotta be able to sleep at night, and the past is a closed book.


[1] Well, aren't I Mr. Moneybags? Well, no. This comes from the employee stock plan I used to participate in. The company has done quite well for itself over the last year, in spite of employing slackers such as myself.

Haw

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/

Pad your time estimate

I tell myself three times:

Add a 30% buffer to my time estimates for jobs that can be loosely categorized as 'looks deceptively easy'.

Lockpick Pornography - Joey Comeau

I don't know if the actual book is any good but the 'about the book' on the website has promise ...

I want to make bumper stickers for politicians and gay rights advocates. They'll read "My other pro-tolerance message is also condescending."

Fourteen

He's fourteen today.

Time flies by really terribly fast. I scoffed at this idea years ago but it's true: one minute he's itty-bitty and gumming things and the next he's climbing trees and a few minutes from now he'll be off doing grown-up things and living his own life.

Which is the way it should be.

But grab on to those moments and hold 'em tight. They don't hang around forever.

Someone take back this song

Or take it away. One of those. It's begging to be used.

Ann and Nancy Wilson didn't like the GOP playing Barracuda[1]. Fine - it was a dumb choice and it hasn't aged well.

If the GOP is going to reach back to the 80s for theme music [2] they could do worse than Lou Reed's 'There Is No Time'.

It's got a rockin' beat to get the crowds on their feet and dancing. It's got guitars and drums and frickin' Lou Reed doing that growl-talk-sorta sing thing he does. I've listened to it like six times all the way through - the things I do for you people - and it's still got my toes a tappin'.

And the lyrics are about perfect. If McCain is running the Maverick Express [3] and really is doing the hey we're really sorry about the whole 'we lost our stuff when we got the keys to the treasury in 1994' thing ... you couldn't hardly improve on this:


This is no time for celebration
This is no time for shaking Hands
This is no time for backslapping
this is no time for marching Bands

This is no time for optimism
this is no time for endless Thought
This is no time for my country Right or Wrong
Remember what that brought

There is no time
There is no time
There is no time
There is no time

This is no time for congratulations
This is no time to turn Your Back
This is no time for circumlocution
This is no time for learned speech

This is no time to count Your Blessings
This is no time for private Gain
This is the time to put Up or Shut Up
It won't come back this way again

(chorus)

This is no time to swallow Anger
This is no time to ignore Hate
This is no time to be Acting Frivolous
Because the time is getting late

This is no time for private vendettas
This is no time to not know who you are
Self knowledge is a dangerous thing
The freedom of who you are

This is no time to ignore Warnings
This is no time to clear the Plate
Let's not be sorry after the fact
And let the past become out fate

(chorus)

This is no time to turn away and drink
Or smoke some vials of crack
This is a time to gather force
And take dead aim and attack

This is no time for celebration
This is no time for saluting Flags
This is no time for inner Searchings
The future is at hand

This is no time for phony Rhetoric
This is no time for political Speech
This is a time for action
Because the future's within Reach

This is the time
This is the time
This is the time
Because there is no time

(chorus)

Yes, I'm serious, Lou.

YouTube the song. There are no music videos there but there are some really lame cartoons done up with the lyrics - including one where the artist oh-so cleverly drew a Hitler mustache on George Bush.

[1] On the other hand, they can hardly complain about the publicity. Heart .. whozat? people under 30 were asking themselves. If Ann and Nancy were savvy they'd cut a quick response song and release it on the internets.

[2] And why not? The 80s featured a lot of kick-ass music. Also really dorky music videos - but they were just learning how mix music and those new-fangled teevees so you can't blame usthem.

[3] Or whatever it is.

Scalzi: A Previous Message Repeated, Slightly More Forcefully

In which John Scalzi dresses down Democrats, liberals and the like and introduces a new phrase I shall take up and use when appropriate.

Please stop acting surprised and resentful about any of this. The GOP will crush you — again — if you keep doing it. For fuck’s sake, they’ve played you exactly the same way since the 2000 election. Will you please exhibit a learning curve. You’ve been here before.

Exhibit a learning curve. I like that in so many ways.

Steve Kagen's Plan for Energy for Americans

Hey, look! Steve Kagen is playing the Populist card! Boy, I'll bet you didn't see that one coming.

I like the way he phrased it in his commercial.

• Drill for new oil in America. And guarantee that oil is sold only to Americans only.
• Invest in every single form of renewable energy available.
• Prevent price manipulation everywhere in the world.

I'd like to see the specifics of how, say, we're supposed to keep a fellow in Kuwait from trading in the energy market. If we thought the world hated us for invading Iraq, just wait till we prevent them from making money.

Someone is gonna get it

I mean, pow.

I spent eight years in the Marines, disassembled my M16A2 I don't know how many times. Call it a bunch.



See that ring just aft of the handguards? To remove the handguards, you slide it back, then sort of pry the guards out. The problem is if your rifle is new or new-ish or even middle-aged the spring is super-duper tight and it's a bitch to yank that thing back far enough.

Well science has marched to the rescue. And once I saw this I smacked my forehead: duh.




Insert the bendy bit into the magazine well, clamp the straight bits around the ring and lever that sum'bitch down.

So obvious. And it would have saved my paws wear and tear over the years. I'd like to go back and smack myself for not even thinking about this.

Cross Posted to The Daily Brief.

Palin Rumors

Oh, look. A Sarah Palin Rumor debunking site. They're up to 69.

Charley James is a Nazi

Charley James wrote an article for the LA Progressive called Alaskans Speak (In A Frightened Whisper): Palin Is “Racist, Sexist, Vindictive, And Mean”

“So Sambo beat the bitch!”

This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

We know this is true because a anonymous waitress said so. Also a guy says he knows this is true because everyone in Alaska talks that way.

Then he justified the article in Sarah Palin and Me.

Do I wish more people would have spoken to me on the record and for attribution? Absolutely. Do I regret writing a piece that relied upon so many anonymous sources? Not one bit.

I think a commenter on that last article had it right. The comment has been deleted - excellent show of tolerance of diversity, guys - I reproduce it below.

Comment by Mary Moore
2008-09-06 21:45:09

Uh huh.

An old college friend of mine recently contacted me to tell me about a woman he knows. This woman - we’ll call her “Ethel” - is a dog walker who has a client in your neighborhood. In hushed tones, she told me that she has seen you painting racist and ethnic slurs on the homes of some of the people who live in your neighborhood. She also verified that you have a Nazi flag in your garage. I won’t violate her trust by revealing her name; she is terrified of retribution. But I know that the story is true because she says here are other people who have seen the same things! In addition, “Ethel” has been my friend’s dog walker for years - and my friend said that she would no sooner tell a lie than she would fail to scoop the poop!

Do I wish more people would have spoken to me on the record and for attribution? Absolutely. Do I regret writing a piece that relied upon so many anonymous sources? Not one bit.

Remember - you read it here first - Charley James is a Nazi.

Reformers: A Hymn of Hate

Reformers: A Hymn of Hate
Dorothy Parker

I hate Reformers;
They raise my blood pressure.
There are the Prohibitionists;
The Fathers of Bootlegging.
They made us what we are to-day--
I hope they're satisfied.
They can prove that the Johnstown flood,
And the blizzard of 1888,
And the destruction of Pompeii
Were all due to alcohol.
They have it figured out
That anyone who would give a gin daisy a friendly look
Is just wasting time out of jail,
And anyone who would stay under the same roof
With a bottle of Scotch
Is right in line for a cozy seat in the electric chair.
They fixed things all up pretty for us;
Now that they have dried up the country,
You can hardly get a drink unless you go in and order one.
They are in a nasty state over this light wines and beer idea;
They say that lips that touch liquor
Shall never touch wine.
They swear that the Eighteenth Amendment
Shall be improved upon
Over their dead bodies--
Fair enough!

Then there are the Suppressors of Vice;
The Boys Who Made the Name of Cabell a Household Word.
Their aim is to keep art and letters in their place;
If they see a book
Which does not come right out and say
That the doctor brings babies in his little black bag,
Or find a painting of a young lady
Showing her without her rubbers,
They call out the militia.
They have a mean eye for dirt;
They can find it
In a copy of "What Katy Did at School,"
Or a snapshot of Aunt Bessie in bathing at Sandy Creek,
Or a picture postcard of Moonlight in Bryant Park.
They are always running around suppressing things,
Beginning with their desires.
They get a lot of excitement out of life,--
They are constantly discovering
The New Rabelais
Or the Twentieth Century Hogarth.
Their leader is regarded
As the representative of Comstock here on earth.
How does that song of Tosti's go?--
"Good-bye, Sumner, good-bye, good-bye."

There are the Movie Censors,
The motion picture is still in its infancy,--
They are the boys who keep it there.
If the film shows a party of clubmen tossing off ginger ale,
Or a young bride dreaming over tiny garments,
Or Douglas Fairbanks kissing Mary Pickford's hand,
They cut out the scene
And burn it in the public square.
They fix up all the historical events
So that their own mothers wouldn't know them.
They make Du Barry Mrs. Louis Fifteenth,
And show that Anthony and Cleopatra were like brother and sister,
And announce Salome's engagement to John the Baptist,
So that the audiences won't go and get ideas in their heads.
They insist that Sherlock Holmes is made to say,
"Quick, Watson, the crochet needle!"
And the state pays them for it.
They say they are going to take the sin out of cinema
If they perish in the attempt,--
I wish to God they would!

And then there are the All-American Crabs;
The Brave Little Band that is Against Everything.
They have got up the idea
That things are not what they were when Grandma was a girl.
They say that they don't know what we're coming to,
As if they had just written the line.
They are always running a temperature
Over the modern dances,
Or the new skirts,
Or the goings-on of the younger set.
They can barely hold themselves in
When they think of the menace of the drama;
They seem to be going ahead under the idea
That everything but the Passion Play
Was written by Avery Hopwood.
They will never feel really themselves
Until every theatre in the country is razed.
They are forever signing petitions
Urging that cigarette-smokers should be deported,
And that all places of amusement should be closed on Sunday
And kept closed all week.
They take everything personally;
They go about shaking their heads,
And sighing, "It's all wrong, it's all wrong,"--
They said it.
I hate Reformers;
They raise my blood pressure.

They have met the enemy . . .

I don't know how long they've had the Cedarburg (Wisconsin) visit planned but we heard about it last week. Work obligations kept me close to home but I would have liked to have gone. Over 1,000 people showed up to see Senator McCain and Governor Palin ...

What? Oh. Owen reports the actual headcount was 12,500, registered as they entered the door. The state troops estimated 20 - 30,000 - TMJ4 on Youtube.

Twelve or twenty thousand - not a bad turnout.

I'm sure declining newspaper circulation has nothing to do with sloppy reporting like that. Completely unrelated.

Cross Posted to The Daily Brief.

Mess

Ryan Anderson at First Things quoting Will Saletan . . .

Remember that before you judge or poke fun at Sarah Palin. She’s not the candidate whose daughter messed up. She’s the candidate who didn’t get rid of the mess.

Continuity

No one is above the law.

Mr Biden said at an event in Deerfield Beach, Florida: “If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation, they will be pursued, not out of vengeance, not out of retribution, out of the need to preserve the notion that no one, no attorney general, no president - no one is above the law."

I said what, yesterday?

"The Obama-Biden administration is not going to start off saying, "God, let's go take a lot at what [happened]." The American people want to know what we're going to do, not what happened."

Someone find Joe Biden's continuity guy and fire him. The guy is not doing his job.


In other news, the Senator called Governor Palin's acceptance speech 'Extremely well-delivered'. He added that Governor Palin was the first mainstream female candidate who is articulate and bright and clean and a damn fine looking woman.

Definition of a Community Oganizer

Sarah Palin - 9/4/2008

I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities. I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening.

We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.

While a a grand bit of speechifying that doesn't actually say what a community organizer does. South Bend Seven has - I think - the best definition ...

Community organizer is a bullshit job, no matter how many reverse scare quotes he uses. It's essentially municipal-level reverse-lobbying, in which you try to maneuver a couple dozen neighborhood leaders into supporting your cause instead of working on one whale. Community organizers and lobbyists are just power-politic hustlers trying to leverage other people into doing things for them.

'Best' in a Devil's Dictionary way of course.

Power-Politic Hustler is not something I'd want on my resume [1]; I would prefer Community Organizer as well.


[1] For that matter I was once a LAN Administrator. Can't have that on the ol' resume either. This works if people know their recent IT history - it works less well with HR types and pointy-haired bosses. LAN Admin... don't they just work?

Well, yes. Now they do. People used to have to know how to crank-start a car and drive a manual shift, too. Times change, technology advances. Maybe someday we'll advance beyond the need for people to organize communities.

I have too many text editors

Too many text editors? I know - it's like Hugh Hefner saying 'Wow - I've got way too many blonds around here.'



But it's true. For a long time I used TextWrangler. Then I tried TextMate. And I like it just fine.[1]

Today I wanted to excise some bits from the first five characters of each line of a file with several thousand lines.


cut -c5-80 foo


Yes, like that. I learned how to do this in TextMate easily enough (Text - Filter Through Command - shove in the cut command and hey presto).

That was last week. Today I was utterly frustrated because I couldn't find that option in TextWrangler. Where in the heck was it? After a long minute of wondering if somehow the menu hadn't morphed on me ... the truth hit. Duh - wrong editor.





Time to trim things back a bit. Now, which blond do I get rid of?


[1] Yes, I've also got emacs running and it seems like a fine choice buy oh wow the learning curve.

Senator Obama and the deadly 'Uh'

Senator Obama, about that 'uh' thing.

Last night, David Letterman presented the "Barack Obama 'Uh' Count," in
which they parsed his appearance with Olbermann and counted the verbal
pauses of the candidate often praised for his eloquence.

30, in a reasonably short clip.

I have not done a whole lotta public speaking, but I did learn this handy little tip from Grady S., champion salesman - when you have the nearly uncontrollable urge to say 'uh', mentally pause. Don't .. say .. anything.

It might feel like it's taking forever but the people listening will never notice. And if they do you'll get a reputation as a thoughtful speaker. And the rest of us won't have to hear you trip over your 'uh's.

Seriously dude, it's distracting.

Bell Labs - RIP

Bell Labs - Requiescat in pace

On August 28, 2008, Alcatel-Lucent announced it was pulling out of basic science, material physics and semiconductor research and will instead focus on more immediately marketable areas including networking, high-speed electronics, wireless, nanotechnology and software.^[3]

So .. what did Bell Labs do for you, anyway?

Radio astronomy. Transistor. Laser. Information theory. UNIX. C. GPS.

And where are we to look for new innovations and fundamental research?

National laboratories and universities. With federal research grants.

That is, the same people that run the DMV and invented the IRS are funding physics research.

Well, that's a big ol bit of Fail.

Heck with patience, let's go kill something

Ladies and Gentlemen, the U.S. Navy's new submarine hunter: P-8 Poseidon.



MadRocketScientist: "I think the P-8 kinda looks like the A-10's bigger, more patient cousin."

Yes, yes it does.

Cub Scouts are just little Global Capitalists so they must die

Or as Phil Sheridan supposedly said in an earlier conflict: "Nits breed lice."[1]

A little later, a busload of Cub Scouts were en route to the
convention, where they were to present the colors to open the
convention. A group of protesters--liberals, Obama supporters, or
whatever [2] --blocked the road, surrounded the bus, and attacked it,
rocking the bus back and forth, denting and scratching the sides, and
generally terrifying the children trapped inside. The left-wing
protesters attacked a number of buses in the same way, but there is
something especially despicable about attacking a group of Cub Scouts.

Attacking a busload of children. Stay classy, y'all.


[1] The phrasology changes, but the sentiment stays the same. Nice to see we've come so far since the 1860s.

[2] I suspect Anarchists. Democrats are out protesting but turning over vehicles is what the A crowd is up to this week.

Civil Liberties

When William writes

Massive police raids. Heavy police violence. Attempt to impede RNC delegates mostly failed.

He really means

Dropped sandbags and concrete from overpasses onto the roadway, aiming for charted buses.

Freedom of expression and civil liberties my ass - shenanigans like that can kill people.

I do not know the extent of William's involvement - if any - with trying to kill people on the freeway. I hope it's 'none'.

America cannot afford Sarah Palin as Vice President

She’s too hard on racist, child-abusing wife beaters.

The first step

I've been cutting down on caffeine. A cup at work, then water for the rest of the day.

Maybe two cups. But a lot of water.

At home we've long since switched to decaf. But .. no problem! I've got a tin of instant. It ran out. I didn't get any at the store today because .. well .. I am trying to cut down.

This evening a massive withdrawal headache ambushed [1] me and wrapped my head in a dull cloud of pain.

Me: I'm .. uh .. going down to the gas station to get some coffee.
Her: ?
Me: Well, we're out of the leaded instant stuff and I've got a headache.
Her: What you need is some Tylenol ...
Me: (snarling) What I need is some coffee.

Woah.

The first step is admitting you have a problem. Granted this isn't heroin or booze or snorting dandelions but .. still. I'd be happier not having a headache when I go without.

So .. decaf for me. If you see me with a cup of leaded from here on in, hit me on the head.

Thanks!

[1] In 'A Rumor of War', Philip Caputo related that at OCS one of their tactical instructors yelled at them 'Ambush is murder and murder is fun'.

I don't know about the murder part but I did participate in a training exercise where we executed a hasty near ambush on the Blue team. The look of surprise on their faces was very satisfying. I hasten to add it's not because we were so good but more that we were motivated and they were trudging along wishing they were somewhere else.

Dumb Radicals

What are they teaching young people in school these days?

Assitant Police Chief Bostrom has talked about the St. Paul Standard, and on the anniversary of last years’ critical mass police riot, we saw its true face. The ramsey county sheriff’s dept and the SPPD raided the RNC convergence space and detained over 50 people in an attempt to preempt planned protests of the rnc on Monday.

If you want to be taken seriously you should

• Remember Mrs. Robinson's advice: Spelling Counts. [1]
  
• Employ encryption.

The former makes the adults in the room take you seriously. The latter keeps John Law in dark about what you're up to, so you don't get raided before you can do your thing.

How to encrypt your email.

Encrypt your Gmail.

GNU Privacy Guard.

htpasswd.


[1] Esther Robinson, 8th grade Civics teacher in 1980-'81, Jenks, Oklahoma.

Palin and the Vikings

And I don't mean the Minnesota Vikings, neither.

Not everyone is pleased with Sarah Palin

A former McCain supporter steps forward to voice his displeasure with the pick of Sarah Palin for Vice President ..

Sarah Palin Facts - this thing might be getting out of hand

Sarah Palin Facts - Little Known Facts About the Alaska Governor.

Little Known Fact: Sarah Palin will send Biden a pre-debate cheat
sheet. The sheet will have tips on defending against Kung Fu Death Grip.

Little known fact: Sarah Palin is on loan from the Justice League.

Little known fact: NFL teams may draft Sarah Palin, if they forfeit all their other players forever, to maintain league parity.

Little known fact: Sarah Palin would have just had an Eagle drop the Ring into Mount Doom.

I say 'might' be getting out of hand. So far we're skating right up to the edge of 'good hearted joshing', but not over into 'unhinged hero-worship'.

Ugly Stick

Jesus Hector and His Disciples in a Sidecar ...



Who went and hit Ubuntu (8.04) with the Ugly Stick?

The default background looks like someone tossed a hand grenade into a bird nest.

Discretion

"Why do the Vickys have such a big clave?" Nell asked.

"Don't ever call them Vickys," Rita said.

"Why?"

"It's a word that people who don't like them use to describe them in kind of a bad, unfriendly way," Rita said.

"Like a pejorative term?" Nell said.

Rita laughed, more nervous than amused. "Exactly."

"Why do the Atlantans have such a big clave?"

"Well, each phyle has a different way, and some ways are better suited to making money than others, so some have a lot of territory and others don't."

"What do you mean, a different way?"

"To make money you have to work hard-to live your life in a certain way. The Atlantans all live that way, it's part of their culture. The Nipponese too. So the Nipponese and the Atlantans have as much money as all the other phyles put together."

"Why aren't you an Atlantan?"

"Because I don't want to live that way. All the people in Dovetail like to make beautiful things. To us, the things that the Atlantans do– dressing up in these kinds of clothes, spending years and years in school-are irrelevant. Those pursuits wouldn't help us make beautiful things, you see. I'd rather just wear my blue jeans and make paper."

"But the M.C. can make paper," Nell said.

"Not the kind that the Atlantans like."

"But you make money from your paper only because the Atlantans make money from working hard," Nell said.

Rita's face turned red and she said nothing for a little while. Then, in a tight voice, she said, "Nell, you should ask your book the meaning of the word discretion."

- The Diamond Age
Neal Stephenson

Readers who are interested the fine details of what Nell and Rita are talking about in 'The Diamond Age' are directed to the book's wiki page.

Briefly ...

The book takes place after the State has been rendered unworkable. Hooray, anarchy! Except that people still need - or at least desire - organization. Thus, people have chosen to divide themselves into Tribes or Phyles. If you're not in a tribe, you're a thete and the lowest of the low.

Vickys' are Neo-Victorians or Atlantans. Neo-Victorians are a tribe that has rejected the cultural excess of the late 20th early 21st century and turned to a polite and well-disciplined culture, based loosly on the Victorian era. When you have a well-disciplined culture that takes learning, morals and manners seriously, you get a lot done. Thus Atlantans and the Nipponese have a lot of the wealth in that world. Plus they dress really well.

Also, at least partly because of cultural repression, Neo Victorians make excellent warriors.

A clave is where people of a particular tribe live.

An M.C. is a nanotube matter compiler.

Diss

Senator McCain: 'Congratulations on your nomination. Job well done.'

Senator Obama: It's not because John McCain doesn't care. It's because John McCain doesn't get it.

Funny how a fellow congratulating an opponent on a job well done plays well when the congratulatee is busy rhetorically dissing him.

Madame Vice President

Hmm.

I'm not as clever, but I decided to use Google to see who popped up the most. I figure a Wisdom of Crowds approach might provide some clues. I found currently these numbers:

"John McCain" Romney - 4.3 Million web hits, 12,100 News hits, 101,000 Image hits, and 198,000 Blog hits.
"John McCain" Huckabee - 3.2 Million web hits, 1,157 News hits, 79,000 Image hits, and 127,000 Blog hits.
"John McCain" Thompson - 2.5 Million web hits, 1,500 News hits, 82,000 Image hits, and 76,000 Blog hits.
"John McCain" Giuliani - 2.8 Million web hits, 3,300 News hits, 74,000 Image hits, and 124,000 Blog hits.
"John McCain" Lieberman - 1.8 Million web hits, 8,300 News hits, 41,000 Image hits, and 43,000 Blog hits.
"John McCain" Hutchison - 0.5 Million web hits, 490 News hits, 17,000 Image hits, and 4,400 Blog hits.
"John McCain" Pawlenty - 0.4 Million web hits, 10,100 News hits, 11,000 Image hits, and 3,400 Blog hits.

Playing along we have ...

"John McCain" Rice - 3.2 million web hits, 5,430 News Hits, 202,000 Image hits, 33,213 Blog hits.
"john McCain" Powell - 1.6 million web hits, 758 News Hits, 90,400 Image hits, 15,592 Blog hits.

By this measure Ms. Rice is as likely a candidate as Mr. Huckabee, Colin Powell comes in ahead of some other contenders.



Madame Vice President. Has a bit o' a ring to it.

The CycloCrane - Invention, A Dangerous Guest

Ladies, and Gentlemen - the CycloCrane.




The Problem: bulldozers tear up the ground scratching out roads to the logging site. Helicopters can lift the logs out so you don't irritate the local Greens - but rotary-winged aircraft are expensive to operate.

The Solution: A lighter than air craft that rotates the bag for control and lift. The intention was that the operator sit in a cab suspended by cables underneath the bag.

It's a solution for more than just logging. Helicopters aren't just expensive - they're loud. And they have a lousy failure mode. [1] CycloCrane was meant to pick up as much as 35 tons at a time. There should be a lot of business for a machine like that, as anyone stuck on a two-lane road behind half a double-wide can appreciate.





An innovative idea. Too much so. They ran out of funds, the 80s kicked in and fuel prices went down. Aerolift tried to interest the government. The government expressed cautious interest. Then the Cold War ended.





Invention, A Dangerous Guest

For technology to flourish, someone has to take a chance. In the end, the CycloCrane company did fail. That old blimp hangar is now an airship museum. The CycloCrane forms one of its many exhibits. It floats there as a permanent reminder of the almost quality of so much wonderfully inventive technology.

But should it also be a grim warning to us? Don't gamble on five-legged horses? I obviously don't think so. So I begin with the first issue that comes at me out of that Tillamook blimp hanger. It is, "Why do the reckless survive?" Reckless people expose themselves to more danger. Surely that threatens their Darwinian survival. You'd expect each generation to be more careful than the last. But recklessness does survive -- generation after generation.

The hunter who won't face a buffalo starves. The parent who won't risk her life to save her child faces Darwinian extinction. Writer Melvin Konner asks us to look more closely at risk-takers. He explains that psychologists identify four faces of that person:

Click to read more.


[1] If stuff stops working generally what happens is you crash really fast into stuff. If that stuff is water it's worse - the first thing machine does is flip over. Then it sinks. This all happens very quickly.

Abuse

Speaking of attacking itty-bitty women - I'm listening [1] to 'The Diamond Age' by Neal Stephenson.

I don't think it's spoiling anything if I write that the chapters describing Nell's early life as a mistreated young girl are just about the saddest thing I have read in a long, long time.

[1] I've read it before - but listening to it does put some interesting emphasis on parts of it.

Fat tub of lard attacks small woman - film at ten

Big fat white guy attacks an itty-bitty woman on the streets of Denver.

Asshat.

No, really. What happened to politeness and gentility? Gee-zus.

Statistics - food prices and infant mortality

Infant Mortality: Measurements Not Consistent

In international comparisons of infant mortality, the U.S. usually ranks behind most other countries, many of whom have socialized medicine (see chart above, click to enlarge). But do countries around the world measure infant mortality consisently and uniformly? Apparently not, see explanation below from a doctor:

The main factors affecting early infant survival are birth weight and prematurity. The way that these factors are reported — and how such babies are treated statistically — tells a different story than what the numbers reveal.

Low birth weight infants are not counted against the “live birth” statistics for many countries reporting low infant mortality rates.

According to the way statistics are calculated in Canada, Germany, and Austria, a premature baby weighing less than 500 kg is not considered a living child.

But in the U.S., such very low birth weight babies are considered live births. The mortality rate of such babies — considered “unsalvageable” outside of the U.S. and therefore never alive — is extraordinarily high; up to 869 per 1,000 in the first month of life alone. This skews U.S. infant mortality statistics.

Over 100 Years, Food Prices Have FALLEN By 82%

The chart above (at the link) shows the real, inflation-adjusted prices of eggs (in 2008 dollars), annually back to 1890. The price we're paying today for eggs (in real dollars) is about 1/7 of the price 100 years ago, a decline of 85% compared to the price our grandparents, great-grandparents or great-great grandparents paid in the early 1900s.

The Truth About Russia in Georgia

Everything you know about the Soviet - Georgia War of 2008 (might) be wrong.

Virtually everyone believes Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili foolishly provoked a Russian invasion on August 7, 2008, when he sent troops into the breakaway district of South Ossetia.

Virtually everyone is wrong. Georgia didn't start it on August 7, nor on any other date. The South Ossetian militia started it on August 6 when its fighters fired on Georgian peacekeepers and Georgian villages with weapons banned by the agreement hammered out between the two sides in 1994. At the same time, the Russian military sent its invasion force bearing down on Georgia from the north side of the Caucasus Mountains on the Russian side of the border through the Roki tunnel and into Georgia. This happened before Saakashvili sent additional troops to South Ossetia and allegedly started the war.

Read, as they say, the whole thing.

See also Americans play Monopoly, Russians chess.

The Raven - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Coleridge, ''The Raven''

Underneath an old oak tree
There was of swine a huge company
That grunted as they crunched the mast
For that was ripe, and fell full fast.
Then they trotted away, for the wind grew high:
One acorn they left, and no more might you spy.

Next came a Raven, that liked not such folly
He belonged, they did say, to the witch Melancholy!
Blacker was he than blackest jet,
Flew low in the rain, and his feathers not wet
He picked up the acorn and buried it straight
By the side of a river both deep and great.

Where then did the Raven go?
He went high and low
Over hill, over dale, did the black Raven go.
Many Autumns, many Springs
Traveled he with wandering wings:
Many summers, many Winters
I can't tell half his adventures.

At length he came back, and with him a She
And the acorn was grown to a tall oak tree.
They built them a nest in the topmost bough,
And young ones they had, and were happy enow.

But soon came a Woodman in leathern guise,
His brow, like a pent-house, hung over his eyes.
He'd an axe in his hand, not a word he spoke,
But with many a hem! and a sturdy stroke,
At length he brought down the poor Raven's own oak.
His young ones were killed; for they could not depart,
And their mother did die of a broken heart.

The boughs from the trunk the Woodman did sever;
And they floated it down on the course of the river.
They sawed it in planks, and its bark they did strip,
And with this tree and others they made a good ship.

The ship, it was launched; but in sight of the land
Such a storm there did rise as no ship would withstand.
It bulged on a rock, and the waves rush'd in fast;
Round and round flew the Raven, and cawed to the blast.
He heard the last shriek of the perishing souls--
See! see! o'er the topmast the mad water rolls!

Right glad was the Raven, and off he went fleet,
And Death riding home on a cloud he did meet,
And he thank'd him again and again for this treat:
They had taken his all; and REVENGE IT WAS SWEET!

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Pasty

Rock a little faster in my chair

Travis questioned the economics of podcasts.

I commented

I don’t listen to a lot of podcasts. When I’m in front of a computer working, I don’t need the distraction.

When I’m in front of a computer playing a longish podcast I’ve gotta spend the entire time listening. If I listen in chunks I loose interest.

To which ngvrnd replied

pod- and vod- casts convey lots of out-of-band signals, often of interest to those who don’t suffer from autism-spectrum conditions.

Zing! Well played, Sir.

Ruby as a sysadmin tool: SFTP

My mission tonight - make Ruby SFTP file transfer work.[1]


#!/opt/local/bin/ruby
require 'rubygems'
require 'net/sftp'

Net::SFTP.start('hostname.com', 'userid', :password => 'deprecated') do |sftp|
sftp.upload!("/local/directory/output", "/remote/directory/")
end


52 kb of data - copied like that (snap): admirably fast.  Some minor problems to work out.

• Authentication bits in plain text make me itch.  I need to encrypt those values.  This should not be a problem in 2008.  This is not a show stopper on my local disk [2] but it needs to happen for a server.
  
• Error detection.
• The sample above fails if the remote directory exists.

[1] For not good reason except that it's fun .. and I think that Ruby should make an adequate system administration tool. Stuff like this is important if you're going to use it that way.
[2] It should be a problem. Unencrypted anything in 2008 is ungood.

I got this medal for working the Midnight Mall Madness Sale

Dress greens out, dress blues in for Army




Excuse me - which way to the food court?


Via.
Graphic Via.

Acme SAC

Acme SAC. A programmer's editor, shell and user interface expressly designed to make you feel less intelligent than you thought you were.




I skimmed Acme: A User Interface for Programers. Unix terminal windows are really teletypes and are an archaic way of talking to a computer - no argument there. Gotta be a better way - preach it! Basic concepts, explanations, check.





I fire it up at work. Hmm - it needs a proxy to communicate outside the corporate firewall - half the demos and 'isn't this nifty' stuff in the readme are elsewhere! And where do I set a proxy up at? Okay, wait till I get home, then. It comes with a shell - awesome. Or not so much - the shell seems to live in it's own weird little world and I can't get to my files to see them. No wonder when I open a new window with a valid path it tells me I'm full of poo. And so on.

And the point of an editor, shell and so on that won't let me at the files I already have are what?

I can't tell if what I'm looking at is a learning curve that looks like a sheer wall ninety miles high or some kind of practical joke played on an unsuspecting world by minanthropic computer nerds from AT&T.





A long, long time ago I joined the Marines. I was introduced to what was then the brand new M16A2. Guys in the fleet were running around with clapped out 'A1s and we got weapons right .. out .. of .. the box.

The training material was geared to teaching guys who had been shooting the 'A1 about the new and improved A2. Half the introductory material was going on about the differences. They were selling the weapon.


If it's Mattel, it's swell.


I didn't need to be sold. I didn't care that a weapon I'd only seen on TV had feature X and was replaced by feature Y and why it was so much better. Just teach me how to shoot the weapon I've got, and stop wasting my time with bullshit.



A better rifle. And a better looking rifle.

As the M16A2 training material, so Acme SAC.

What I need are not reams of theory and endless mailing lists of smug hyper-smart computer guys running vast arrays of Plan 9 and Inferno networks giving me a long back story on why this is the greatest thing since sliced cheese. I don't want to learn how to tear the motor apart - maybe later, but not now.

Now, I want to get in and drive. How to find the friggin' files I was working on pre Acme SAC. How do I get it to talk through a proxy. Can I use it to SSH to another system - 'cause I think that would be pretty nity. Can it be a better editor than TextMate?

Just a tutorial that is designed with your average ordinary guy, is all I'm looking for.




Please?

George Orwell diaries - in blog form

Interesting!

The Orwell Prize, Britain’s pre-eminent prize for political writing, is
publishing George Orwell’s diaries as a blog. From 9th August 2008,
Orwell’s domestic and political diaries (from 9th August 1938 until
October 1942) will be posted in real-time, exactly 70 years after the
entries were written.

Episcopal Suicide Bombers

Noah explains how we know that the recent bombings in Pakistan were not the work of Episcopalians.

No way it’s Piskies - they actually got something done. There wouldn’t
have been bombings, just Exploratory Commissions on Suicide Bomb
Planning, with sub-committees on Vests, Explosives, Nails and Other
Fasteners (’screw’ is heteronormative), Enhancing the Experience (rat
poison, etc.), Integration of Suicide Bombing into the Millennium
Development Goals. Then there’s the indaba groups, where all
present will talk about how the Commission affects them, how they feel
about the difference between various different targets and methods, and
all will engage in active listening, as we learn to ‘live into the
Suicide Bombing’ together with the creative tensions of how we see
Suicide Bombing differently, but are part of the same Murderous Drive.

You have to be precise

At Dinner

Hey, Younger Monkey - want another helping of chow?

Yea, please.

You have to say 'yes' or 'no'. 'Yea' 'naw' 'yup' 'nope' 'nuh-uh' ... don't convey what you mean with clarity. They're not precise [1].

(eye roll) Yes, please.

Thank you!


Later That Night

Did you wash everything when you took your bath?

No.

Hey - you know you're supposed to wash everything[2].

Well. I didn't wash my skin on the inside or my blood or my bones.

Wha?

Daddy. You have to be precise.

Then he smiled - a nice smile - and brushed his teeth.


[1] Some of you will accuse me of being a nit picky wretch. And you would be right. All I can say is that you were not present for a truly monumental tongue lashing on this subject from the company gunnery sergeant when you were eighteen and reporting to Infantry Training School. Stuff like that has a lasting impact.

[2] He has this thing going on where he misses great chunks of his body when washing. So that he'll have clean everything else and muddy elbows. Or a grubby neck. He's eight - but I'd prefer a clean child after a bath not one with a grimy neck.

Classical music with shining eyes

Yes, I wrote 'classical music' in the title. No, don't look at me like that. Shut up and watch this:

Benjamin Zander: Classical music with shining eyes. (YouTube)

Or go to www.choralnet.org, then click on Music & Passion with Benjamin Zander.

H/T Billy Ockham
Cross Posted to The Daily Brief.

Nerd Achievments

I have a very vivid memory. We're at my Grandparents house in Fort Rock. My Aunt, sitting at the kitchen table shouled "I won!". She'd spent a few hours with a deck of cards at solitaire and ... she'd won. A minor victory but good for a few cheery moments.

Well ... I won!




That's Civilization II, running on the medium-hard level. I don't usually play it to completion but there we are.

Got the mother-lovin' spaceship to Alpha Centauri while having my shins kicked by some aggressive and advanced Mongels allied with low tech but annoying Vikings.


And yes, Fort Rock is about as deserty and sage-brushy as it looks in those pictures. Helluva place to grow alfalfa if you ask me.

Arr Matey

She had a box of, oh, at least a hundred of these on the counter.


Two Ounce Vial


Guess who wandered by and decided they'd make a most excellent hidden treasure?


Miscreant and all around Boy.

Not one or two vials. All of them.

He and his friend did a truly righteous job hiding them. Some by the pond, some along the fence, some in his friend's sandbox. Dozens and dozens of years from now people are going to dig these up and wonder "what they hey?"

Google Lunar X-Prize

Michael Laine passes this along from ISU

I am at the International Space University (www.isunet.edu) this summer, and we have to do a group project... Mine is an assessment of the Google Lunar X Prize, and some of its potential outcomes. To that end, could you please use your network(s) and ask people to come to this link, and respond to our survey.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=ebBzH_2bOoybbNVWyJVjvuZQ_3d_3d

It should take less than 5-10 minutes, It's not very deep or time consuming. But we think it will be pretty useful to the Foundation, and to many of the competitors.

Of course you will have access to the report and the survey results when we are finished. The 'meat' of the report will be about 100 "actionable recommendations" to a variety of stakeholders (Foundation, competitors, space agencies, private space sector, etc.)

If you do send it out, please email me back and tell me which lists you posted it to, and a bullet point description of who the target of that list is.

Feel free to pass this along to whomever you think should see it.


Thanks, my team and I appreciate it.

Take care. MJL
Michael J Laine

Not many people read this blog. No, it's true! But some do, and if they tell six people and if those six tell six more .. copy, paste, pass it along.

And I know that some actual smart people [1] from SpaceX wander by, and XCOR shows up in my referrer log now and again. So who knows?


[1] Yes, their rockets blow up and this might be proof of that funny old saying about how to make a fortune in space launch [2] - but they are still in business. And XCOR has attracted investment [3] - way to go! They're doing something right out there.

This is not (I think) some kind of fad like on-line pet foot stores but the beginnings of the real-deal commercial space-age.

[2] How do you make a small fortune in the launch industry? Start out with a large fortune.

[3] Desert Sky Holdings Makes First Institutional Investment in XCOR.

A Thing I DId Not Know This Morning

You don't need two eyes for depth perception. No, I knew that - what I did not know was that there were terrestrial examples of that. Behold, the mantis shrimp

Each compound eye is made up of up to 10,000 separate ommatidia of the apposition type. Each eye consists of two flattened hemispheres separated by six parallel rows of highly specialised ommatidia, collectively called the midband, which divides the eye into three regions. This is a design which makes it possible for mantis shrimp to see objects with three different parts of the same eye. In other words, each individual eye possesses trinocular vision and depth perception.

Comment of the Day

by miriam

I think our gaming group is pretty much all anti-obama. We might be gullible enough to buy AD&D 4.0, but we’re not buying “yes we can”.

Cooking with onions

Cut a red onion into rings. Wrap in a twist of foil. Pour vodka into the twist. Keep pouring until it's full. Wonder why you even have a bottle of vodka - who in the house drinks this stuff? Wrap a second layer of foil around the twist because there is a leak in the twist and vodka is leaking onto the counter. Briefly ponder the wisdom of cooking with something that smells like edible lighter fluid.

Place on the grill next to the burgers. Cook until done. Mmmmm-mmmm.

.

Madness

1. "We don't care. We don't have to - we're Oracle."

2. Never ever never go down the road of buying into an Oracle Solution - this way lies madness!


The Madwoman of Chaillot is the story of a modern society endangered by power and greed and the rebellion of the "little people" against corrupt and soulless authority.

Paws

Nobody I know ..





But boy-howdy look at those paws. Also ...




Awww.

Alligators

Posting a (slightly edited) comment from Soni's blog. Because I do want to post something here every day and I don't feel like fooling around. I've got stuff to do.

This ... was my day. My entire day.

My latest true love at work is a whacked bit of enterprise software. The application keeps data in MS SQL Server 2005. I need to extract data from it’s db that the application won’t let me get at in the way I want. It can produce HTML or PDF reports at the click of a button but I can’t script that function and parsing the data in HTML is a PITA anyway.

I want it generated by script in ASCII, bitches. Then I’ll slam it into our documentation wiki. Eighteen times a day if I want to. Because I can.



So I install the sql command line tool. Except that 2005 (unlike 2000) installs in a locked down mode. So I need to run the tool to expose the db to the command line tool ..

Did I come here to drain a swamp .. don’t recall .. wow look at that alligator!


Productivity Monster

The configuration tool is .. not .. installed in the Start menu. It does not appear to be on the server at all. This appears to be a once-in-a-lifetime kinda deal so extraordinary that MS’s technet is silent on the subject.

Well … TechNet says in a distant way .. just run the tool. It’s not there? Oh, g’wan - you’re not looking hard enough.

Meanwhile the work that I had to set aside to tend to this is piling up. And it’s the ‘fun’ work wherein I play with Unix boxes and *nix applications that certainly have their failings but the operating system getting … in … my .. way is not one of them.


This is not our server room - but the equipment looks familiar.

Thug

Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."




Tom Matzzie: "Shut your mouth or I'll release the hounds."

If the recipients act in a way he disapproves of — namely, donating to certain conservative or Republican causes — Matzzie and his new nonprofit group, called Accountable America, will unleash what the New York Times describes as “a variety of potential dangers, including legal trouble, public exposure and watchdog groups digging through their lives.”

Not just a gross violation of manners and civil discourse - it's also against the law. See 42 U.S.C.§ 1985(3) ..

if ‘two or more persons conspire to prevent by force, intimidation, or threat, any citizen who is lawfully entitled to vote, from giving his support or advocacy in a legal manner, toward or in favor of the election of any lawfully qualified person as an elector for President or Vice President, or as a Member of Congress of the United States; or to injure any citizen in person or property on account of such support or advocacy.’


Threatening people in the name of saving the Republic. Nice piece of work there, Sluggo.

New Dog

This is Wispy.



She followed my wife home from the rescue shelter a few weeks ago.

Ain't she just a bundle of cute?

The pain and the agony

I noticed today that (wow all of a sudden - how funny) that I no longer can edit 'things' in my Ruby on Rails sandbox application.



I hear you, Troi.

Anyway after slogging around the code ... why hey, it's because I introduced RESTful_ACL which broke things in a weird and so-far unknown way.




The difficult half of troubleshooting is knowing where to start. So it's all smooth sailing from here on in.




What?

Closing Time - Assessing the Iranian Threat to the Strait of Hormuz

Closing Time - Assessing the Iranian Threat to the Strait of Hormuz
Caitlin Talmadge

Link. (PDF).

Summary: Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz, with mines. A US-led coalition of Naval and Air forces could demolish their air and naval forces, then clear the mines.

What a world, where we gotta fret over crap like this.

Blastwave - what the heck?

Hey!

All assets of Blastwave.org Inc. are frozen until further notice. All Solaris(tm) related open source software work and services are cancelled.

All websites, documents and binary software packages that bear the mark Blastwave or Blastwave(tm) are no longer available until further notice.

Questions may be directed to 416 - 798 - 3410.

Wed Aug 6 14:28:24 GMT 2008

I use those packages! Put 'em back!

The World's Worst Stripper

Not a lot of actual .. stripping going on, really.

NSFW. Not very ... eh. Words fail me. Click at your peril.

I've seen worse. No, I'm not a regular patron but when you're 20 and overseas in the service .. you go see the show, at least once. I went back, now and again.

In this case myself and few other Marines found ourselves in the midst of the sad, run-down collection of strip clubs and bars outside Camp Foster. Just a pale echo of the glories in Kin-ville, a few miles up the road. The only redeeming quality these places had was they were within walking distance of Camp Foster.

When the best thing you can say about a place is that it beckons to Marines so down-and-out they can't scrape up cab fare ..

On a weeknight. The week before payday. Two so-so Filipinas - and you have to hunt long and hard to find a so-so Filipina - were sort of .. not gyrating, just kind of waving their arms around. Like dorky kids in junior high school they were kind of .. dancing but not dancing. Moving, to be charitable and to abuse the positive notions of that word.

About as sexy and inviting as watching grandma shuffle around the kitchen heating up last night's meatloaf.

Via MAV.

iNo!

You know what's fun about having a bird that can make a sound like this: iNo!

Saying this to him:

'Charlie, you have bats in your belfry.'

iNo!

It's all in the timing, really.



Not our cockatoo - I've yet to see him do this while I have a camera.

RESTful_ACL

I was staring at this problem - I want to have control over bits on a webpage, by user and lo! Someone has already done most of the hard work for me: RESTful_ACL.

RESTful_ACL is a simple Access Control Layer for Ruby on Rails. It restricts access on a fine-grained level to any RESTful MVC stack. While the ACL structure and engine are provided by this plugin, the implementation is fully up to the user. Every application is different and everyone likes to setup their User / Account / Role resources differently; this plugin will allow you to do your thing and keep that thing locked down.

Please see the wiki (http://github.com/mdarby/restful_acl/wikis/) for more information.

Awesome. And the creator, Matt Darby, manfully resisted the urge to call it 'ACTS as ACL', which is a good thing.

A World Split Apart

A World Split Apart

by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The split in today's world is perceptible even to a hasty glance. Any of our contemporaries readily identifies two world powers, each of them already capable of entirely destroying the other. However, understanding of the split often is limited to this political conception, to the illusion that danger may be abolished through successful diplomatic negotiations or by achieving a balance of armed forces. The truth is that the split is a much profounder and a more alienating one, that the rifts are more than one can see at first glance. This deep manifold split bears the danger of manifold disaster for all of us, in accordance with the ancient truth that a Kingdom -- in this case, our Earth -- divided against itself cannot stand.

Read it, here.

That just ain't right

Mr. Obama wants to cut us all a check for a thousand bucks, flensing the oil companies for the dough.

I'm against stuff like this in principle, but if Uncle Sugar wants to send a few bucks my way .. well I'm not going to send the check back, now am I?

I dunno about the supply and demand stuff - I'll leave that for the guys that attended college - but the numbers in this just don't seem right.

There are 209 million of us eligible for this money. Not counting overhead that is $209 billion dollars worth of checks being sent around.

According to some smart guys at ISRIA profits for the oil industry in 2007 were $155 billion [1]. I see a shortfall of $54 billion.

Hell, I'm not even sure some of the companies in the report are even American. BP - in't that British Petroleum? Royal Dutch Shell - hell, I didn't even know the Dutch still had a monarchy, let alone a big friggin' oil company. You learn something new everyday.

So ... yeah. I dunno where it's all going to come from - maybe ExxonMobil can take out a payday loan or something from the Cash Store.

[1] HTML version of the PDF, here.

Hat tip Boots & Sabers

Knowledge is obvious and lame in retrospect

I learned something today with Ruby on Rails that was daunting and full of 'wow' before I dug into it - and indeed I approached the learning curve with some trepidation.

And after the fact it's all so easy and lame that I wonder what the big freakin' deal was.

Ain't it always the way?

Falcon I launch set for this evening

I know what I'm doing this evening ...

Hawthorne CA – August 2, 2008 - Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) has scheduled the launch of the Falcon 1 Flight 3 mission for Saturday, August 2nd. The launch window will open at 4:00 p.m. (PDT) / 7:00 p.m. (EDT) and remain open for five hours. If launch is delayed for any reason, SpaceX has range availability to resume countdown through August 5.

Lift-off of the vehicle will occur from SpaceX's Falcon 1 launch site at the Kwajalein Atoll, about 2500 miles southwest of Hawaii. Falcon 1 launch facilities are situated on Omelek Island, part of the Reagan Test Site (RTS) at United States Army Kwajalein Atoll (USAKA) in the Central Pacific.

SpaceX will provide live coverage of the Falcon 1 Flight 3 mission via webcast at: www.SpaceX.com. The webcast will begin 30 minutes prior to launch and will include mission briefings, live feeds and launch coverage from the launch site at the Kawjalein Atoll, as well as a special video tour of SpaceX facilities by Elon Musk, CEO and CTO.

Update: Failed to reach orbit - the stages didn't separate. Not great but like the man said, rocket science is easy, it's the engineering that's tough.

Burke's Law of Metadynamics

Burke's Law of Metadynamics

In the course of the chat, Burke came up with approximately the following statement, which has stayed with me since:

"Systems dump excess energy in the form of structure."

It may not sound like not much, but it's rather profound. It essentially says that a system operating in surplus won't stay so, but instead will act to build up its own structure at the expense of the surplus. Looked at the right way, it's a nutshell explanation for the existence of life - an eruption of structure in response to excess solar energy.

I doubt the meat of the statement was original with Burke, but given his gift for a turn of phrase, the formulation may have been. At any rate, I've never seen it elsewhere. It keeps coming up in my own thinking and writing, so I've decided to memorialize it as "Burke's Law of Metadynamics" for reference by myself and anyone else who cares. The 'Burke' is obvious, the 'metadynamic' sets it aside from rules that operate within dynamic systems of fixed structure; it is a statement instead about the malleability of structure.

It's been long since I've done ecosystems work, so that's not the reason it keeps coming up. Experience has show me that the statement applies equally to human organizations and systems, particularly if you substitute 'wealth' by analogy to 'energy'. In that form it's a more succinct statement of several of John Gall's Laws of Systemantics.

rejection: a series of slips and falls

rejection: a series of slips and falls
by Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai

not good enough
not tall enough
not proud enough

not strong enough
not long enough
not efficient at all

the measurements are coarse
the analysis is off
the passion is feeble
the feeling is false

the oceans are polluted
the guns are loaded
the schools are bookless
the woman is wearing pantyhose

the excuses are many
the reasons are few
the verbs are passive
the solutions futile

there is nowhere to go
no redemption, no future

there is nowhere to go?
no redemption, no future?

the eyes are round
the tongue is parched
the bosom is resounding
inside beats the heart

the muffled timpani
that refuses to dull itself
it survives the low-flying
machetes, the beheading
machines that swing
so close to the surface

the obstacles are insurmountable
the choices are few
faith is flagging
hope doesn't know what to do
doesn't know what to do
doesn't know what to do

she comes up from her cross-legged
meditation, with a piece of chalk,
she draws the frame of a door,
a curve of a knob, she invites herself
to please just knock