7-5 Boston, Bottom of 6th and...

The commentary is awful.

It's the Red Sox NESN (New England Sports Network), with a bunch of ex-Sox players doing the commentary. And they are truly awful.

For instance, they've just been discussing Carl Crawford - the man's in his first season with the Red Sox, coming from Tampa Bay on a $140M contract. They've said he's a formidable athlete and he's having a low season (he's down around .254). So the commentators tell us that having your routine disturbed could be an explanation.

WTF?!?

The man is good enough to get a huge contract. He's having a bad season. It happens.

They also commented that a ball the Red Sox fans let go would have been scooped up if it had been a Yankees hit, guffaw, guffaw, guffaw.

Good grief. Talk about banal commentary. If there wasn't that ridiculous 5 second video delay, I'd turn to John Stirling and Suzyn Waldman on CBS/NY. (It's one of the two New York City news stations; it's on 880AM. We just about get it down here.) If we were in NY, we could watch the game on YES (the Yankees TV channel) and have Michael Kay and Paul O'Neill provide intelligent commentary.

The game is all over the place; at least the players (and Joe Girardi (!)) are being adults - last night they were doing their best to prove that they weren't.

Carolyn Ann

Procrastination. It takes effort...

Somebody went looking over my early blog entries, today. They used an anonymous proxy; I'm not sure why they care about hiding, but, whatever. They searched November 2005; I have no idea why. My first blog post was on Oct 26th, 2005. I didn't know that. :-) (Why should I remember a thing like that?)

In that post I detail how the world began, because surely it started when I started blogging? ;-)

I wonder what my mysterious searcher was looking for? They did concentrate on anything relating to Suzan's malodorous "Women Born Transsexual"; they also did a search for my favorite bigot (I'll leave the bigots guessing who that might be :-D ). Actually, it looks like they came from Suzan's miasmic mutterings. They probably read her blog post about me; the one where she launches into a tirade about me and then refuses to let me use her venue to respond. You know, the one where she changed one of her comments so that she didn't look quite as big a fool. :-)

The same system (Win7, 1900x1000 screen resolution) popped up as coming from San Francisco. I love San Francisco! I could be there, right now! I'm not. Darn it.

I need to get a motorcycle running and get myself to San Francisco! I could be enjoying a wonderful Ghirardelli ice cream on Fisherman's Wharf. Instead, I'm tied to a desk (metaphorically...) and can't even see a window! (Well, I can, but it's more dramatic to allege a dungeon-like workplace. ... Well, perhaps not if it happens to be in my house! :-) ) I could plan a beer at the Union Square Hotel; the last time I walked in there the barkeep said "Sam?" It had been too long between visits, but he still remembered I like Samuel Adams Boston Lager. Or I could go hang out at a motorcycle shop or two; there are some. I'd like to do Lombard St, again. And climb Hoyt Tower. And...

I'd better get back to work. :-)

Carolyn Ann

Clean URL's in Drupal 7 with MAMP

Sorry - techie time. :-)

Back in January, Kathryn Cornelius wrote about the solution to "clean URL's" in Drupal 7.

Clean URL's are the ones without lots of question marks and paraphernalia in them. Wordpress, for instance, loves to put lots of confusing stuff into its URL's. Well, it does if you don't configure it properly. But for my purposes, a clean URL means the difference between my client looking professional and appearing to not have much of a clue. As she is very professional and extremely competent and beautiful, too (I might be a tad biased... I married her a couple of decades ago. :-D ), I figure it's best to project all that. Except the married bit; I don't think her clients care about that. Except I couldn't get clean URL's to work in my development environment. I could in my Ubuntu-based staging area, but not on my MacBook. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes...

Clean URL's. They're important.

For those not in the know, MAMP is a web server and database package for the Mac. Right! To the solution! :-)

If you do a clean install of MAMP 2.0.1 (or 2.0.2), the lines Kathryn writes about in httpd.conf don't exist - you have to put them in.

My line 378 in httpd.conf now reads as Kathryn describes:

<# The following line is no. 371
<Directory "/Applications/MAMP/bin/mamp">
Options Indexes MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

<# The following line is  no. 378
<# This is the section you might have to put in.
<Directory />
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
</Directory>

(# is a comment line in .conf files, and it's still the US/Canadian symbol for "number", so I used it twice. Just to confuse you. :-D No, no need to thank me... :-) ... ... ... Okay, I changed it. :-) )

To find out if your Drupal 7 install supports clean URL's, go to "Configuration, Search and meta data"; it's half way down the page, below the fold, on the left, below "Media". Why it's in "Search [etc]" I have no idea; it's the sort of thing that should be in Configuration/System. However, it's there and that's that. If you don't see this:

You'll see button that says something like "Clean URL's" or "Test Clean URL's" - I neglected to take a picture of it before I did my changes, sorry. Press the button; it's the only one on the page so it shouldn't be too hard to figure out which one you need to press... :-) If nothing happens, you need to look at httpd.conf and add the above lines.

The file will be:

/Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/httpd.conf

(Do yourself a favor and make a copy of it before altering it. Unless you know what you're doing, in which case you probably don't know how to fix it when you inevitably do a typo screw up... Like I did. Oh, and use a code editor to do the changes, not Pages or Word. I use TextWrangler, the free version from the Bare Bones website. For some reason the version you can download from the AppStore is a bit limited in what it can do; I haven't confirmed that, but the AppStore version won't let me change /etc/hosts, for instance.)

Do a search for "<Directory />". It should be the only instance, but if it isn't, use your noggin' and pick the right one. If your httpd.conf has the lines, but AllowOverride says "AllowOverride None", you need to change it as Kathryn describes.

Restart your servers and press refresh, or reload your site - and you should see the picture above.

Okay. Back to my irregularly scheduled ramblings... :-)

Carolyn Ann

Bubble of gold?

There's a favored mantra in certain conservative circles: gold is king.

Glenn Beck pushes the idea; Ron Paul loves gold, Tea Party buffoons advocate a return to the gold standard, investors flock to it in times of uncertainty and so on. People love gold. It's the one thing that can never be touched, never be worthless.

A commodity, albeit a valuable one, is the be all and end all.

Does that sounds familiar? It should.

Gold is currently trading at record highs - around $1,900 a troy ounce. It's been climbing and climbing and climbing - fortifying the various accolades and claims like it was... Oh, wait... Like it was an Internet stock in 1998 or a house price in 2007. Or a tulip in early 17th century Holland.

Steven Davidoff, writing as the Deal Professor in the NY Times Deal Book wonders if there is a gold bubble. I don't think that's the right question. I think the right question is "when will the gold bubble burst?" And who will go down in flames when it does?

Carolyn Ann

PS I wrote this before I actually read Mr Davidoff's piece. That's why I'm not quoting him, although he has a lot of interesting and wise things to say about gold and the market. :-)

Nothing unusual?!?

Apparently SWAT-style police raids are so common in Russia they've got a nickname, "masky show". The raids, it seems, are carried out at the behest of the Kremlin (aka "Vladimir Putin"), often by extension. In this case it was a Siberian court case.

Doing business in Russia isn't for the faint-of-heart. As BP has continually discovered. And ExxonMobile probably will. When money, supplied by the barrel, meets base corruption there's an inevitability about the result. I'm not saying that Vladimir Putin is corrupt; I'm saying he's so corrupt the word can't possibly describe him. His cohorts and enablers are corrupt; Mr Putin is beyond them. He makes Silvio Berlusconi look like a rank amateur (which, to be honest, isn't that difficult to do). He makes India's political caste look almost clean and Japanese politicians look like paragons of virtue. When Arab dictators want to buy off, disparage or remove the opposition, they look to Mr Putin and wonder how he dares go so far.  Admittedly none of those is especially difficult. Think of it this way: there's a difference between Derek Jeter, Wayne Rooney and Pelé and any member of your local kindergarten sports team. The only nation that can teach Mr Putin about base level corruption is China, and they try very hard to make sure the world knows it.

The result will always be the use of official forces, even the creation of such forces, for the express purpose of keeping the corrupt bosses in power. That was the case throughout the old communist world, it's the case in any dictatorship and it's the case in any political system that can't tolerate dissent (South Africa, under apartheid, for instance.) The biggest difference between Russia and, say, Syria is that Mr Putin doesn't feel any need to keep a secret police force secret - he considers it much more effective if it's visible, clad in black and is heavily armed. It's much easier to hide a real, venal, secret police force behind such glittery props.

So while black-clad cops rushing into an office, machine guns at the ready, intimidating any and all might be a common occurrence in Russia, it's still jarring to read someone say:

“They were just a group of comrades with the badges of special forces, in black outfits, with assault rifles, nothing extraordinary.”

What gets me is why these oil companies and the like still think that they're dealing with a rational nation-state. Did their executives never watch "The Godfather"?

Carolyn Ann

That's not so reassuring...

Ah... It's so reassuring to read something like:

No one knows what to do to fix the economy.

Catherine Rampell in the NY Times. The very first sentence of her lead story is the one I've just quoted. It's one of those "sentence as a paragraph" things; I like them, myself - but not when they state the obvious, er, I mean convey such unwanted certainty.

With the House Republicans acting like children lending out their ice cream cones, interest rates running at all-time lows and a new round of quantitive easing (printing money...) the available choices are few and far between. What's actually needed is a new round of stimulus spending - deficit be damned! - and a few programs to get people back to work. Retraining, moving assistance (go where the jobs are), basic tax cuts for the middle class - that sort of stuff. Entrepreneurs shouldn't be forgotten; give them a decent tax holiday and so on. You know: spend some money.

(You know, it would have been cheaper, and much more effective, to have given every taxpayer in America $50,000 than bailing out Wall St! Seriously, it would have been about $300B cheaper if my sums are right.)

The problem, of course, is that while Washington (i.e. House Republicans) hold the economy hostage, and actively work to ensure that it's stagnant as we ramp up for the 2012 elections, no one has any confidence that Congress will actually become adult. Mature would be great, but I think we'd settle for "adult". As in "not throwing a tantrum". Heck, at this point I think people would settle for "wild teenager". At least they spend money like it grows on trees!

Carefully targeted tax hikes and some spending cuts are the way to go. Insanely pressured "deficit commissions" aren't.

So thanks, Ms Rampell. I think I'll go hide under the bed covers now. Can someone give a shout when things get better? Thanks...

Carolyn Ann

18 years? Quite deserved, really...

A Minnesota hacker has just been sentenced to 18 years for trying to destroy his neighbor's life.

What Barry Ardolf, he's 46 years physical years old and presumably about 4.6 in mental age, did was quite horrible: he was allegedly spotted kissing his neighbor's four year old lad on the lips. This resulted, quite naturally, in the lad's mother calling the cops. After that, he waged a bit of a battle that went beyond a meaningless blogwar: he hacked the family's email accounts, posted pornography to his coworkers, emailed a threat to Joe Biden and generally tried to destroy his neighbor. He was discovered, tracked and finally arrested. And now he's been tried, found guilty and sentenced.

He's had to forfeit his house and computer equipment (I don't think either will be a concern; 18 years is a long time), and is on his way to prison.

Because he couldn't control his temper. A well deserved sentence and not in the least bit draconian.

Carolyn Ann

Nato's teachable moment?

Personally, I've been writing about Europe's almost complete lack of military preparedness for years. Europe has relied on US hegemony to take up its slack. From combating piracy on the high seas to arguing that September 11th is an American problem, European politicians and voters have generally decided that soft power is enough. And yet when a problem occurs that needs European intervention, and Libya certainly was such a situation, European politicians skedaddled, proved inadequate to the task (but not to the grabbing of glory), berated their top soldiers for telling the truth about military preparedness and generally did as little as they could.

I keep thinking about the Falklands War; Britain couldn't possibly fight it, now. They don't have the strategic bombing capability, nor the ships of war. They've got a chap in defense who seems to be more in favor of currying his boss than in actually preparing Britain's military for the next set of threats. It often seems that British soldiers will go into battle wearing sneakers and carrying blunderbusses because they're cheaper.

One of the adages of warfare is that militaries always prepare to fight the last war they were in. For British and European militaries, that's no longer the case - their civilian leaders have decided that whimsical thinking is much better. Perhaps no one will wage a war? Perhaps Kosovo and Serbia won't start fighting? Perhaps Belarus will actually become a democracy? Perhaps faeries really do live in the bushes at the bottom of the garden?

At this point Europe can be counted out as a serious power in the world; between the dithering over the Euro, Germany's hasty run to anti-nuclear sentiment, David Cameron's eager importation of totalitarian ideas, Italy's corrupt and philandering leader and an wishy-washy unwillingness to deal with far right, fascist, parties, Europe has basically told the world "Carry on, we're a bit incapable right now!"

The only thing European politicians can offer, right now, is a half-hearted "we'll try better"; they keep their fingers crossed behind their backs and really hope no one notices when they don't. Europe's leaders need to find their backbones and start being leaders. The threats the world faces have changed; the need to have a capable and funded military hasn't. As Canada recently discovered, you can't be peacekeepers if you don't have the capacity to wage war. Heck, Libya was a limited war, cheap and with a clearly defined strategy. Sure, targeting was a problem, but the soldiers and airmen figured that one out, but the strategic weapons had to be supplied by America.

Sure, Britain and France supplied the impetus and Italy the airbases. British and French special forces are rumored to be helping the rebels; but that didn't stop Mr Cameron from de-mothballing the Ark Royal - there's a proven need for an aircraft carrier, and Britain has to borrow France's? That's not a "realistic" military force. That's an embarrassment! It was a cheap war, but Europe seemed to desperately want Donald Rumsfeld in charge. He never seemed to figure out that wars simply do cost money.

(And yes, America vacillated a little; but President Obama stuck with his decision, strategy and goals.)

Nato's teachable moment? How about the voters learning that the current crop are a bunch of decision-avoiding nincompoops who can't even promise to defend against existing threats, never mind the new ones that developing?

Carolyn Ann

Some fools betray their simple-minded arrogance

I see WikiLeaks has scored the greatest own-goal of its short history. The bamboozling dimwits of WikiLeaks decided that having official opprobrium wasn't enough - now they want everyone with half a brain to be mad at them, too!

What did they do? They released a cache of diplomatic cables... With the names of informants included!

Because they wanted to counter the "misperception" that they'd not been busy.

Talk about idiocy!

This isn't a blow for Internet Freedom - it's a blow against the people who are helping promote freedom. By doing things like being candid with American diplomats. Including their names can lead to them being arrested, tortured and shot. Only a bloody-minded fool wouldn't think of the consequences, and only an arrogant simpleton would consider such a release to be part of some majestic chess game. The blood of an unknown number are on the hands of WikiLeaks; why do they pursue "freedom" by practicing idiocy?

The only reason they want to tell everyone they've been busy is to keep themselves in the news. They've become addicted to their own coverage, clearly! Out of the news, out of mind. As an organization, WikiLeaks has shown itself to be shrewd and fairly intelligent; it's also demonstrated callous disregard for life, an idiocy that is stunning in its ineptitude and incompetence and a deep, immature, desire to yell "We're relevant! Hey, over here! We're relevant!" Little children have more consideration for the consequences of their actions than the now dubious intelligence of WikiLeaks!

While they were only embarrassing governments and making things a trifle awkward for diplomats and big banks, I had no quibble with their release of the diplomatic cables. Especially as they showed American diplomacy to be mostly competent, intelligent and oriented toward protecting American interests. But once they neglect to protect the sources, they lose my support and I hope the support of many others.

They've gone from being an organization that tries, with an astonishing and notable lack of success, to embarrass the dictators of the world to being some simplistic far left anti-American didacts.  They may be relatively new, but they have just committed one of the oldest activist sins in the book: they assumed cautious, tentative and tacit support as an overt endorsement. And in doing so have damaged their reputation beyond repair.

Arrogant fools soon come to know that pride precedes the fall. Simple fools pay pay no heed to consequences. The problem for WikiLeaks is that they've got both in one man. The other problem for WikiLeaks is they now have to explain why such a stupid and meaningless reason led to the hasty destruction of lives for those who were trying to further the freedom they claim they fight for. I'm not holding my breath for the explanation; while it would be good to read, it will be a long time coming. Mostly because with this release Mr Assange has shown himself to lack courage but desperately need attention. Freedom? The man has just imprisoned too many to be taken at all seriously now.

Carolyn Ann

Pot fails to notice it's yelling into a mirror

I'm not going to say a word about this whiny, shrill post from Teagan. :-)

I will provide a synopsis, however. And some thoughts about the topics it raises. :-)

Teagan is annoyed with Jenny; it seems Teagan doesn't particularly like Jenny, which is no big deal. The reason for Teagan's umbrage is because Jenny wrote a post and coined a term, Serious Transsexual. The term is used with a healthy dose of tongue-in-cheek sarcasm.

First things first: I disagree with the humor-not-traveling argument; there's plenty of such humor to be found in American literature and performance. George Carlin and Mark Twain are generally considered past, and passed, masters at such expression, for instance. I don't think Jenny should dumb down her humor, simply to accommodate the humorless, either. Considering the tenor of some transsexual women's ideas and writings, her joke was bound to be successful. Poking fun at those who disdain and dismiss you isn't offensive. Well, it might be to those who recognize themselves in the propped up mirror.

I'm going to ignore the topic of holding yourself to the same standard you hold others; it's a well-worn one. Sacred texts predating the Bible admonish against such foolishness, and still no one obliges such ministrations with any attentiveness whatsoever! Actually, I'm not going to ignore it entirely: your newly found disgust, or even mild annoyance, with something reasonable like comment moderation is more convincing when you've not been a trifle censorious yourself. Demanding special allowance for yourself and not providing any basic consideration to others also has a long and continuing history of being ignored.

[Added: I will note that Jenny doesn't comment moderation switched on. And I don't recall Jenny ever having comment moderation on; mind you, if she did, it could be for a perfectly reasonable reason: such as she wanted it on!]

Teagan notes that she expected Jenny to ride roughshod over her moment in the sun; she probably expects me to write something, too. Frankly, I thought long and hard about doing so; I decided that Jenny's post raised some interesting points and that Teagan's response showed something else.

Personally, I thought Jenny's post was humorous and she makes an important point. Life is too damn short to censor oneself for worrywarts. Wear whatever makes you happy, Jenny. And don't dumb down your musings! :-)

Carolyn Ann

Linux is... How old?

One for Angel and Bill (and any other technically inclined reader out there in Blogreaderland... :-D ): A CNN article about Linux at 20.

(Good grief. Is it 20? I can remember thinking it would make a good OS back when dinosaurs ruled the land. Or was that just Microsoft's shadow?)

Carolyn Ann

Pages and Word(s)

I've been bring to settle on a word processor. I like the general simplicity of Pages (Apple's offering), but it's not very bright and in some cases is downright hostile (try creating a table of any sophistication). On the other hand, Microsoft's Word is a superb workhorse. Except it's like a one of those big old Dray Horses: big, not too swift and needs attention in often surprising ways.

And, oy, that Ribbon! It's an answer to a problem that doesn't actually exist. People, I think, said "we want access to the features that make sense!" Microsoft, being from the Planet of Engineers, said "Ah, context! We like context." And they invented the Ribbon. Which is contextual, I suppose. Clearly, no one thought to consult a designer when they developed the stupid thing. The kindest words I can come up with as "obtrusive", "never lets you forget it's there" and "wow, that's a lot of buttons!" (Heck, it has more buttons than a Honda Goldwing! And they have a lot of buttons!)

I don't mind the context stuff; it's the obtrusiveness I object to. On the other hand, Pages, as I've said, really doesn't like straying outside of what it knows. And it doesn't know much. Sure you can place pictures and type around them; you can format a decent family newsletter if that's your thing. But if you want to actually write something - pick Word.

(If you want to write a book, or an article, you can do no better than Scrivener, from the folks at the wonderfully named Literature and Latte. It's everything you need for the Great American Novel (or British one; L&L is a British company). Now, if only it could do technical documentation, it would be the absolute bees knees.)

Oh well. Back to the old grindstone. (Life is tough. Having to write technical documentation with a very capable word processor on a more than capable MacBook Pro. I know, I know. It's difficult to know how I manage it... Okay. Procrastination time over. Hmm... Wonder what's on Facebook... :-) )

Carolyn Ann

I'll send you an email to tell you the email system is down...

This little piece reminded me of something...

Years ago I was an admin for a large banking network; it was early days in the whole "networking" thing, and the connection, there was only one, to London was often down. Well, my boss came to me and said "London's down again!" So I replied "Okay, I'll send them an email and..." I paused while I wondered why my boss was smiling, getting to hysterical laughter. "Ah..." I said.

(The memory is funnier than the retelling of it... :-) )

Carolyn Ann

Don't have time for nuthin' else

A worthy goal:

I could backspace over my third-rate thoughts and turn them into second-rate thoughts.

I think I'll give that a try. One day, soon. But not too soon. Because I think everyone should try being foolish. (Note to a certain individual: foolish is not "destructive" or "hateful". Foolish is trying something even though you're told it's stupid, undoable or silly.) And I'm still working on being foolish; I don't have time for thinking.

Carolyn Ann :-)

All is well?

As the world, well the Mid-Atlantic, the North East and "the media" get back to normal, stuff has been happening out and about, here and there and somewhere else. Rick Perry is making progress; Michele Bachmann's campaign has become a white elephant and Mitt Romney is again proving his deep desire to be a dodo. The Libyan rebels won - it's getting very difficult for the Republicans to snidely observe that Democrats are soft on military matters - and Europe's leaders are proving they're eager to follow anyone who has not a shred of political or fiscal courage. Japan seems hell-bent on maintaining a stagnant economy and a deeply corrupt, self-serving and intrinsically destitute political system; India is facing up to the reality that they have to get rid of their deeply corrupt political system, but are waiting for the appropriate payoff in order to do so.

All is well with the world. :-)

Carolyn Ann

All over bar the breezes

So that was quite the week - an earthquake and then a hurricane! You'd think we lived in California and Florida... Mind you, it is New Jersey!  ;-)

The rain was fierce, there's no other word to describe it, and the wind was brutal. The flash-flood warning has just been lifted; and the threat of tornadoes has gone away. One touched down, apparently, about 2 dozen miles away - a little too close for comfort, really. The TV was in and out for a wee bitty; but that's to be expected - anything like a decent downpour will stop the satellite signal. Our power stayed up, amazingly. It flickered a few times, which sent the internet (the entire internet, sorry :-) ) into a bit of a tizzy, but other than that the greatest threat to life and limb was tripping over a sleeping cat. They're all outside (except for Spot, who had a sleepless night - I assume - and is still snoozing in a cute little bundle in the corner of the wicker sofa) now; although Jeremy and Oscar want to come back in for some milk. They'll get some in a wee while.

Astonishingly, I don't think we lost any trees! Being in the middle of woodland has its advantages, I suppose. Heck, there's a flower pot on the deck railing, and it's still there. Chicken looked a little bedraggled this morning; she was glad to get some seed for breakfast, I think. She probably had a rough night in one of the trees. Late in the evening, she flaps her way up to a branch about 10 foot or so up. It's quite a noisy business with lots of flapping. With the wind last night, she'll not have had much sleep at all!

Thanks for the messages of concern. :-)

So it's all over now. The trees are still swaying, but in general we got off very lucky! (The wind is still managing to slam doors in the house!)

Carolyn Ann

Tornado warning...

Oh great... We're now under a tornado warning.

The rain and wind are brutal out there!

The worst of the storm is still 6 to 8 hours away!

10:45 PM: It's been downgraded to a tornado watch. Phew.

It's getting worse out there!

It's getting worse out there! The rain is definitely much worse; the wind has gotten worse and there's a flash flood warning. At least the tornado watch went away! Although there's been a tornado in Delaware and there's a warning for Atlantic City. We're about half way between the two affected areas!

DirecTV is in and out; power has stayed up for now, but we're still expecting to lose it within the next few hours.

A quick view of the storm:

(The circle is the limit of the Dover Air Force Base Radar)

It's big. And the satellite just went out, again. The rain is pounding down!

Update: Wow! It's just gotten a heck of a lot worse!

Carolyn Ann

Bang goes that illusion...

Mrs: How is it outside?
Me: Fine, sunny. Perfect day for Hawaii!
Mrs: You're in New Jersey, not Hawaii.
Me: Bang goes that illusion, then...

Carolyn Ann

Staten Island evacuated. Finally...

Mayor Bloomberg ordered the evacuation of Staten Island today. Asked if this had anything to do with the approaching storm, Mr Bloomberg's spokesman, I.M. Seely, said "No, not really. I mean, have you seen Staten Island? Technically speaking, it's a part of New Jersey! Anyway, we've decided that the garbage dump needs expanding, and as it's part of Staten Island, we can save a ton of money by simply shipping everyone, I mean evacuating, the island to New Jersey!"

Residents said "Fuggedaboutit!"

Carolyn Ann

Your taxes shouldn't pay

In a surprising speech, Michele Bachmann tried to prove her small-government credentials by telling a Tea Party gathering that she wouldn't approve any government involvement in emergencies. "The government didn't cause this hurricane, the government is not responsible for cleaning up afterwards!" she said.

"Your taxes should not go to helping those who decided to live in the path of a hurricane!" She exhorted her fans. They agreed. "We are not paying for your disaster, East Coasters!" She continued. "President Obama couldn't stop the English invading in 1712, he made no effort to stop the Great Depression and he didn't stop the recent recession! And now we find he can't stop a hurricane! While I'm President no hurricane will reach the coast of the United States!" she told the cheering crowd.

(Editorial note: the English invaded in 1812. Mr Obama wasn't president in 2008 when the recent recession started and he wasn't born in time for the Great Depression.)

When asked about the speech, Grover Norquist, the anti-tax activist who has much of Congress by the balls (he showed us the glass jars holding them) had an instant orgasm and said he endorsed Michele Bachmann for everything from county dog catcher to President of the United States. "If you decide to live where tax-and-spend liberals are going to have natural disasters, you don't need the government helping you if a disaster should hit! And now I have to run home because a hurricane is coming! I hope the government is doing its job and stopping the hurricane before it reaches my house!" He said as he scurried off.

Rick Perry, when reached for comment said "That durned hurricane is treasonous! If it comes down Texas way, it's gonna get a mighty rough reception!"

Reporting to you, live from the campaign trail, as the hurricane hits the East Coast,
Carolyn Ann

I'm ready...

So the gutters are cleaned. The cats are tied down (that was a job and a half! :-) ). The back deck has been looked at; nothing was moved, but I did look at it. We've got lots of water, iced tea and lemonade. Some flashlights and battery-operated lanterns.

Now all we need is this wee storm they're predicting.

The satellite TV will go down and the internet will go down (if it goes down for me, it goes down for everyone... Sorry about that. :-) )

Okay. I'm ready.

Carolyn Ann

Hypocritical idiots - they're the same the world over

David Cameron over in Britain and the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in San Fransisco have certainly provided lots of hope to Iran, Syria, China, Myanmar and a few other places who restrict social media. Both Mr Cameron and the BART have adopted or are suggesting, the tactics of dictators - closing down cell phone access and, with it, Facebook and Twitter access.

I wonder if either can spell "hypocritical idiot"?

What's actually not surprising is that authoritarian-minded "leaders" are everywhere. You'll note that the Chinese government, David Cameron and the head of the BART police all said that limiting social media was needed to keep the peace, to promote harmony, if you will. So while the Arab Spring was enabled by social media, when it's your turn - it's bad, bad and bad. It's bad enough that in America we have an FBI that has almost secret police levels of monitoring; in Britain the cops use registration/license plate tracking to keep tabs on people. Because those systems are hooked to a  fast computer network, the cops can keep track of you pretty well. Not to mention all those CCTV cameras - monitoring you and yours. Sure they make you safer; trading personal safety for endless monitoring isn't about safety - it's about ensuring that the cops have the tools they need to prosecute you if you're a "troublemaker".

Public safety is always given as the reason to monitor a population. The veneer of free expression is preserved as the ability to express yourself is undermined.

It takes courage to stand up for free speech. There are those on the left who would ban the expression of heinous ideas; there are those on the right who seek to impose order upon society. The pious demand that blasphemy be banned; the activists demand the adoption of their lingua franca, the ignorant proclaim their patriotism. The authorities seek to limit how you can protest. It's endless. All of them tell you they're protecting free speech and dignity.

From where I sit, I'd say we need protecting from those who seek to protect us.

Carolyn Ann

24 hour coverage from the 24 hour TV station?

The Weather Channel, a 24-hour channel devoted to the weather, is telling us they're going to be broadcasting 24 hours a day through Hurricane Irene. That's so reassuring...

(How will the rest of America know what their weather is? Look out the window? That's so 20th century!) :-)

Carolyn Ann

New Jersey is being evacuated...

So there's a strong breeze headed our way. It's so strong, someone gave it a name - Irene.

The emergency people are evacuating New Jersey. All of it. ... Okay, a little bit of it. There's no drama in saying "emergency people are evacuating a little bit of New Jersey!"

It'll be here over the weekend; couldn't it wait until Monday? Oh well, I'll tie down anything not already fastened; the cats won't be happy. But I'll make sure they're tied down.  Somehow I don't think Angel's Cat Organizer will do the job.

(Good grief; there's a YouTube video on the Weather Channel showing some twit windsurfing with his jet-ski in Boca-Raton, Florida. There's risk and there are really stupid ways to die.) ... (The presenter is wearing a cute blue dress and has a great hairstyle. Let's concentrate on what's really important!) :-)

First we have and earthquake and now we have a hurricane! Who says life in the really quiet rural bits of New Jersey are dull?!? :-) .... Okay, "exciting" isn't a word I'd use to describe living out here. We get excited when hear a whippoorwill or an owl.

Some advice for you: don't go skydiving until the storm has passed. You might end up in Connecticut - and who wants that? :-)

Carolyn Ann

Get me gender roit? Okay?

John Welch and I recently had an argument about religion; specifically, what religious institutions brought to the table. His, quite adamant, assertion was that I was a no-good for nuthin' atheist and as such had no skin in the game.

...

Oh sod it.

Here's what I said:

I'm re-entering this discussion a tad late, it seems. "She" is not the correct pronoun. Do your damn research, John 

And fuck you. As well. You presume as much as much as you assume 

You know what? Normally I'd say that anyone who used personal history to prove a point was on losing ground. In this case, I think it merely shows that you, yes you, perhaps don't consider the lives of others. This isn't technology - this is life. 

Here's where I get personal. 

I grew up with your damned church groups. At five years old I was questioning the judgement that underpins the ethos you espouse. At 25 the little ol' ladies of the local church were planning my frickin' wedding! To a Jewish gal. Tell me about your fucking social societies. Tell me about your support groups. They're the same biddies that told me about "God's plan" when my Granddad died from Black Lung. I was a fucking kid. 

It might interest you to know that I've been an atheist since I was five -count 'em, one two three four oh, 'es questioning Noah's Ark is 'e? - five fucking years old. And if you can't respect that -  I'm arguing with a fool!  

You know what? Forty two years later, I've just buried a dear friend. I never knew her husband; he died of cancer not long before I moved to the States in 1989. I knew her kids; Pamela who was killed in a skiing accident at 15 years old. Her son, who killed a man when he was 19. I saw him, just the other day - he was in shackles, attending his Mom's funeral.
You know what she said, John? Before she died? "It's too much". So much death surrounded that woman and she was so full of life.  She was willing to accept that people believed or didn't. She was there for me when I got of hospital, after my breakdown, she knew I was an atheist, and she was there for my Jewish wife throughout the 30 odd years they've known each other. That's friendship. What you tout isn't friendship, it's ersatz concern! The sort I saw after my Granddad died; "oh let me help" Fuck that. You want to help? You think some religious group is going to come running when my uncle is diagnosed with dementia (can't say I've noticed them), or my cousin falls off a motorcycle and is paralyzed from the waist down? A rugby player? (Nope, I've never seen 'em around him or his Mom and Dad; quite the opposite, in fact. How about that!) You think those half-wits are going to attend when he's given the wrong medicine and ends up with a mind far quicker than he can talk? You argue the church will be there when my twin brother almost dies? Sorry - I didn't notice any of those self-aborsed fools around when that happened. Perhaps they'd be there if he had actually died in that car crash? I'm sure their comfort would have been, well, imperious.
That's who you want turning up? Those nonentities who are fine as long as you don't have anything seriously wrong with you? The people who are there as long as nothing is actually demanded of them? They provide the placation when a dear friend dies? Or are they the ones you look at and say "You didn't know my Granddad!" Because, so far, I'll take the fucking negligent love of an atheist over the "wonder" of any pious fool. 

I've seen it, John. I've fucking seen it. 

Take your hypothesizing and fucking shove it. Fucking shove it. I know about religion. Pam was religious. My Mom's a lay preacher. I grew up with that fucking church; it was stifling! I know about fucking religion. It's not for nothing I despise religion. I know what it brings and what it neglects. I know about the communities religious institutions provide. They were a part of my life for far too fuckin' long! Persuading me to "accept" a god I know I doesn't exist. Horrified when I point out that morality doesn't need a god (and yes, you did get close to that). So fuck you, John.  

You think I'm atheist because it's trendy or something? I've been a fucking atheist since I was five. I remember the moment; just as I remember the moment, at 9, that I figured out negative numbers and that the root of -1 was impossible. But I grew up in your fucking church groups, John. I grew up in them. It takes the death of someone special, Pam, to drag me into a church. Hate them? No. Pity them? Never. They are beneath pity. That's what I think of church groups. 

Do you get it, now? John? If not - then fuck you, John. Fuck you. I have no truck with the religious, but I do a mighty damn lorry with those who tell me I don't know what I'm talking about. Especially when they can't even get my fucking gender right.

That was a trifle unfair. Sorry. :-(

Carolyn Ann

Steve steps aside

What can anyone say? I wish him well.

There are those live through others. No one can ever say Mr Jobs did that.'

Damn, it's bad enough knowing you have a finite time. No one needs a medical reminder.

Carolyn Ann

So... What's with BofA?

I'll be upfront: I like the Bank of America building in San Francisco. Especially the bar (is it still there?) that was up high - what a view! :-)

The bank itself? Not so much...

So what's with the damned firm lately? Is it actually damned, or is it merely fighting for its life after an incompetent management has done with it? It closed up this evening, although after-hours trading seems to be giving the not-much-confidence vote.

Henry Blodget at ClusterFuck, er sorry, I mean ClusterStock has a thing or two to say about BofA. Interestingly, they responded. And they used the same script that did Messrs Mubarak, Qaddafi and Ali so well. A certain Mr Assad is wedded to it, as well. It goes something like this "It's all your fault!" :-)

I love Mr Blodget's response.

"Right on the nose" is a good way of describing it. Come to think of it, I've seen that sort of response from a few transsexual separatists. It's easy to blame others; it's hard to point to yourself. Still, it's amusing to see how responses vary so little!

What I don't agree with is Mr Blodget's idea that Tim Geithner needs to, one, do anything or two, keep any trigger a secret. Traders are street-wise (the good ones are, anyway); they'll easily guess the trigger price that would cause Tim to get involved. $2? $3? $2.79? Or $2.21. Personally, I'd lean to 2.79 or 2.21, but no one has ever accused me of being a good trader... :-) No, the reason I'd not keep such a number secret is that I don't think the government should be dictating the short sell price of a bank stock - especially when it's Bank of America, which is responsible for (if memory serves, I haven't looked this up) about one fifth of US consumer deposits. Here's the thing: if BofA really is worth a couple of hundred  billion, the stock is way too low. I agree with the market - they are over-pricing their assets (don't forget: they own Merrill-Lynch which sent itself into purgatory because it dramatically over-estimated its own value!).

Will BofA get a bailout? That's the main question. Will Tim let it fail? Will Barack? And, at this point, will John Boehner? It's not as important as Lehman (oddly enough, I don't think it is). But it's pretty important to Main Street America.

So... Will the Tea Party let Main St America fail because they are bound to a facetious principle? Or will they admit that sometimes a bank needs saving because not to save it will send gold to three grand an ounce and that's not good? Because when you think about it, the price of gold is too darned high already.

Carolyn Ann

Earthquake!

We've just had an earthquake!

It was a small but it definitely freaked me out a bit.

I was sitting here, trying to figure out a Drupal problem and all of a sudden the house started shaking.

Ah - apparently the epicenter was around Richmond VA.

Carolyn Ann

Every couple of years...

There's a pattern at work - every couple of years there's a spate of new technologies. Not incremental improvements, but fundamental shifts. Going from 10 transistors on a chip to 1,000 is - in retrospect - incremental. Going from a million or so to lots of millions of transistors? That's a new way of doing things. The same thing happens in software - you look at something and it's "okay". The next time you take a look, it's all over the (tech) news and gossip columns (which is why you remembered it) and whatever it is is* simply amazing!

*I've been trying to write that (is is) since I was knee high to a grasshopper! :-)

It's actually quite predictable: people know how to do "x". They learn how to do x to the point where they think "I can do this better" and they do so. This is ∆x (delta-x). And then there's either a fundamental discovery - "Oh, this shiny new stuff can do a zillion bits of information in the space that old tacky stuff took for 3!" - or people just get better at whatever x is. Or, the problems with x become so irritating a solution is sought and, more importantly, found. (Of course, there's no explaining Microsoft Windows*, but... :-) ) Software is more the latter.

* MS Windows is not software. MS Windows is proof Satan exists. No, he's not called Steve Balmer. ... Wait? What? Atheist? Yes I am. No, no contradiction; if Satan didn't exist, MS Windows wouldn't... What's that? Consistency of argument and belief? Never heard of it... I think it ran up that alley over there... :-D  <- :-)

Someone works with "product x" and sort of likes it. They say to themselves "This is neat..." And then they say "But I think it misses the point; I know the point. I'll write a new solution and be rich and famous." They then write their new solution and give it away. Which solves the famous bit but doesn't do much for the "get rich" bit. Other people come along and they write books about the new solution. Which solves their "get rich" (as in: be able to pay for a 99c MickeyD's Happy Meal (without going into debt)) problem but not the original author's. With luck, the now famous but still not rich software guy gets hired but no one actually knows why he's famous. "Something to do with computers, I heard?" 

The new solution gets neglected and someone tries it and says "This isn't bad, but I think it misses the point..." 

Well, it does. Because the problem changed. But it didn't, did it? ;-)

Carolyn Ann

Secure? From me, yes.

I"m so behind on my Flickr photos!

There's actually a good reason for that... I can't remember the password for the wifi connection. Oops. :-)

You see, the disk that has the iPhoto database is hanging (not literally, you understand?) off a wire sticking out the back of the wifi router. I know what the password should be, but it appears that I made a typo - which isn't very surprising. I use really long convoluted, almost random, passwords.

So, when I have the time (a few minutes), I'll reset everything and get access to our iPhoto database again.

(Never had this sort of trouble with Windows... That has no security whatsoever, so this sort of problem never turns up... Mutter, mutter, mumble, etc...)

Carolyn Ann

The profligate room-mate

It has been recently touted that Standard & Poor's, the ratings agency, should be split from its parent, McGraw-Hill. The most obvious reason being that Terry McGraw's little toy box is a money pit funded by S&P and that being in such a corporate entity compromises S&P's alleged "objectivity".

Yeah, well. The first bit is true.

Full disclosure: Once upon a time I worked for S&P.

Since the day I joined that company I've wondered why they were part of the McGraw-Hill "empire". There's no logical reason for it, except for the "cash cow" bit; it's milked for all its worth as well. What McGraw-Hill's executives know about finance, Wall St and ratings can be written on the back of a stamp with most of it left blank.

(Please, don't ask me how I know. I still cringe at the memory.)

S&P is hindered by McGraw-Hill. I'm not saying they'd make better decisions, today's departure of S&P's head honcho proves that McGraw-Hill has the same appetite for risk it always had (i.e. "none"). When you're subsidizing other businesses, you can't invest in your own. And that's the position S&P finds itself in - it's so busy funding the school publishing division it can't invest in the people and technology it needs.  (I wonder if they've still got that antique company EMC doing their storage?)

But the main reason S&P should be spun off from McGraw-Hill is that they're likely to lose the latest legal battle. You see, all the ratings agencies hide behind a fiction: they argue they provide an opinion; it's a well-informed opinion, but it's still an opinion. Except when it isn't. Which is where S&P starts to get into trouble.

The market runs on ratings; if S&P didn't exist, someone would invent it. The market has, by some oddity, settled on three main agencies, two big ones and an influential minnow. S&P rates both stocks and bonds; the two divisions were (essentially) different companies for the longest time, but I think that's changed in the last fe years. That being said, most of the time traders make their own market; if you need S&P's opinion about an equity issue, you're probably selling what should be penny stocks to gullible fixed income (e.g. pensioners). But you do need S&P ratings if you're buying fire insurance on your neighbor or lending a town, school district, county, state or nation some money. If it's not your money you definitely want the nod from S&P.

Taking each in turn. Yes, you can buy insurance on, for instance, someone defaulting on their obligations. What's interesting is that US Treasuries don't have an insurance market while Italy, for instance, suddenly discovered that not only was there a market but it was betting against it! This is the sort of thing that brought AIG and the world economy to its knees a wee while ago, if you recall. (If you're a member of a Tea Party, please consult a reputable historical reference like the NY Times. No, Fox News is not a reputable historical reference; they are an hysterical reference at best.) Goldman Sachs and Chase basically bet that AIG didn't have the money they promised; as it turned out - they didn't. Neither did Merrill Lynch or a few other banks. The fire-insurance on your neighbor analogy is disturbingly accurate; there's a reasonable amount of suspicion that, while not colluding (goodness me, they didn't need to!), both Chase and Goldman bet against AIG and then set about ensuring their bets worked out! If you need another analogy, you might want to Greece about its experience with Goldman Sachs. (Yes, they helped Greece figure out that it was insolvent, after helping ensure that it was, actually insolvent.)

Where was I? Oh yes. Let's say your township is installing a new sewer system. Or new sidewalks. Common projects, for sure. Very expensive projects as well. Townships don't save up to for these projects; they issue bonds. If you're George Bush and are itching to wage a war you don't raise the money to wage it by taxing the people - you borrow it from China. And so on. Or you're George Osborne, looking at the old bank account and realizing that you don't have enough coming in to fund the NHS. You need to go to the market and borrow a billion quid or two. Big projects need big dollars. Governments don't save. Ergo, they issue bonds. Those bonds get bought. The people  who buy those bonds want some assurance that they'll get repaid the money they just lent (they don't really "buy" the bonds). Enter the ratings agencies.

Correct me if I'm going astray, but I really don't see anywhere for a school and technical book publisher in this story. McGraw-Hill's flagship, BusinessWeek, well... Is it published anymore?

S&P needs to be separated out from McGraw-Hill. If what I know about the firm is still true, and I have no reason to assume it's not, S&P is making the profits and the rest of McGraw-Hill spends them. Isn't that like you making the money and your room-mate spending it?

Which is why Terry McGraw won't part with his only source of pocket money.

Carolyn Ann

Ah. So they really don't know what they're doing...

So it seems that Google is making it up as they go...

“The priority is the patents,” Mr. Harris said, noting that the acquisition had come together quickly, suggesting that Google has not had time to devise its entire strategy. “Then they’ll have to address how to get their arms around manufacturing.” 

In announcing the deal, Larry Page, Google’s chief executive, said that the two companies would “create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem.”

That should encourage a lot of folk...

The price is around $501-$503. So the market has gotten over its initial panic. Still... Synergy? I know it's helpful if a startup thinks like one but Google is a highly effective, brutally competent competitor and facilitator. It's not a startup. I hope Mr Page isn't thinking he could be the next Steve Jobs. That would mean a loss of focus and one thing Mr Jobs has is focus.

Of course, the other way of looking at this deal is that Google isn't making it up as they go. The only other conclusion, then, is that Larry Page doesn't have a clue what he's doing. I'll be generous: he might have an inkling*.

Carolyn Ann

That was fast!

A quick check of the news on Sunday morning had the Libyan rebels on the outskirts of Tripoli. Another check at the end of the day had them pretty much taking the place! Quick? You could say that!

Apparently they had a lot of strategic help from NATO; the US targeted Qaddafi's command and control system, leaving the army with way of knowing where to go. And the rebels are a bit more organized; not bad for what started as a rag-tag group!

The next question is how to help the Syrian protestors. Whatever you do, don't look to Benjamin Netanyahu for any advice. The man is trying to keep his job. Not that he deserves to; he's made so many strategic mistakes, has done so many about turns and made so many false promises it's a wonder Israel doesn't have more enemies! In Congress...

Carolyn Ann

Mai Lai reaches the transsexual world (it's been there awhile)

There's an article in the NY Times about how far some transgender and transsexual women will go to become feminine. Basically, they'll destroy their future health and wellbeing for what amounts to "quick gratification".

The implications of far-reaching and can be quite chilling.

And just think, Queen Emily and Lisa Harney of Questioning Transphobia condone such things. They, after all, support the right of people to buy hormone tablets without a prescription; it's not even a step to consider injections of silicone with just as little knowledge and as much confidence that nothing will go wrong. Their argument isn't even "the end justifies the means" - a tenuous and dubious philosophy at the best of times! No, the idea they support is "the desired end justifies the means". It can be summarized as: we have to risk destroying ourselves in order to create ourselves!

The fact that gender reassignment surgery is a complicated and potentially dangerous process is meaningless to people like those two. It's meaningless to so many others, too.

The basic point is that no matter what, destroying yourself to become yourself is a meaningless goal. It's stupid, too. The community activists should be working toward making the process safer, not arguing that being irresponsible and putting yourself in needless danger is okay because the desired end might actually work out! But they're not; they're trying to help you destroy yourself because "the system is unfair". Like teenagers trying "to stick it to the man". Even notice how no one ever says what "it" is or who the "man" is?

(Just as an aside, Suzan, in that conversation, in response to Michelle Bradley, asked "Since when did SRS cost 30K?" According to Laura Rena Murphy, the NY Times reporter of the article, it can cost up to $70,000 to look more feminine! So unless you're willing to go around looking like a bloke in a dress, it can cost unto $100,000 to get what you want.)

I'm not in the slightest bit religious, but sometimes I think "Lord, keep us from those who try to be our friends". They're way more dangerous than those who want to destroy us! With friends like Lisa Harney, Suzan and Queen Emily, the transsexual community has no need of enemies. Although they have those aplenty!

Carolyn Ann

Eating their neighbors isn't really an option...

No matter how I look at it, I just can't figure out the Google/Motorola merger. $12.5B for what? An ailing business with a lot of patents? Considering Google's track record, I have to argue that the quality of the patents must awfully good - in which case Motorola Mobile wouldn't be in as much trouble as they are. Google would have been better off licensing the patents - they could have gotten away with, oh, five or six, perhaps as high as eight billion if the license was exclusive and they were terrible negotiators. They're not that, so purchasing an entire company doesn't make sense.

I don't buy the whole "tablet" and TV-controller argument, either. They could easily buy the TV market, simply by paying a few billion to Motorola. Heck, that could have been gotten for about two or three billion and some clever technology and Google is nothing if not clever. They're the next Sun Microsystems when it comes to "clever".

I don't believe, for a minute, that no one thought about the Android market; purchasing a mobile phone maker and competing with the other mobile phone companies? All it needs is an enterprising, and well funded, competitor to walk in and take over all of that market. Heck, one or two visionary Linux engineers could produce a competing OS in a matter of weeks. Much of it is already in place!

So why spend a third of your available cash on a company like Motorola?

Google has made some strategic mistakes, that's a given. Their payments to Mozilla are not just a way of keeping the browser market alive, they're a way of preventing Microsoft from taking over more of the search market; but it also locks Google in - launching a new browser is not exactly a walk in the park, as Google has discovered. And then there was Google Wave; a solution in search of a problem, it was a massive moment of idiocy for Google to "go big" with that one. I doubt anyone could ever give the elevator speech about Google Wave; mostly because it was too big an unwieldy and had no clearly defined purpose. After some initial applause for Google+ it's sort of dropped off the radar; virtually no one is writing about it. I don't know how many users they have, but they need to work much harder to conquer the network effect of Facebook. FB is like MS Windows - people know it, trust it and are very reluctant to change. We're not talking "bleeding edge" fans; those who try every new thing going. FB is now a part of people's lives, like television. Twitter? They're struggling; they've just had a lot of management turnover and a fresh injection of cash. Unless they figure out a business model, which at this point has to be "get bought", they're likely to close down. Google might have bought them, but I doubt they would now. Although, to be honest, if they can make a purchase as baffling as this Motorola purchase, I can't say they won't buy Twitter, either!

The only possible explanation has to be that Google has something big up their collective sleeve; something that's potentially worth much, much more than the $12.5B they're prepared to lay out. Heck, they must be serious - there's a $2.5B penalty clause (I think it was $600M for Motorola). Walking away from that deal would be an awfully expensive mistake; not even Google's management would emerge unscathed from that one.

Well, we'll see. The markets haven't been kind to Google since the purchase was announced. It's down to $490 as of this evening, from a recent high of $541. That's a steep drop, just about 10% in three days. Obviously they're playing their decision close to the chest; I'm not sure they can get away with that for much longer - they're not a privately held company and they have to tell the shareholders something. Otherwise they'll continue to be hammered; I dread to think what the overnight markets are doing to them! (I wouldn't be surprised to see them at $460.) Like I said, we'll see. I hope it's good, otherwise Larry Page might have a lot more free time to study executive management. Personally, I'd be willing to give him the free time for paying 60% over market for Motorola! That's a lot of premium. Hopefully the reward they offer is commensurate with that.

Carolyn Ann

You're mixing up your "yours", dear...

It seems to be fashionable to get "your" and "you're" mixed up. I've seen it a lot more, in blogs and Facebook, over the last few weeks; as if the difference between the two was either negligible or nonexistent. I can understand its usage on Twitter; given such limited space, odd contractions are the norm and you'd darn well better know that! ;-) I can even recognize that it's more than a convenience on Facebook; sometimes people update their FB pages from their phones; if you've ever used one of those keyboards, it can often seem to be far too much trouble to type an apostrophe. It's as if the designers said "Who needs an apostrophe?"

I can understand "its" and "it's"; it's [...] possible "its" is a typo; my last MacBook, for instance, had a wonky apostrophe key, thanks to LC* who sat on the keyboard one chilly morning. But the possessive determiner your isn't a typo for the contraction of you are.

*Little Cat, because, er, she's little and a cat. :-)

It's not like "trans", which is a lazy contraction for transgender and transsexual. That has a vague meaning, best left unexplored. Your and you're have different meanings; the fact that they're homonyms doesn't excuse anything.

Alas, I think the computer culture will, over time, allow your to be a contraction for your are; at some point only the arcane and fussy will adhere to the ancient standard. Meaning will be derived from context; indeed, it seems that is the predominant affect blogs, tweets and Facebook are having on the language.

Oh well. :-)

Carolyn Ann

Thunder, lightning, baby take my hand it's...

There's a storm brewing out there. It's not an angry storm, more of a "I'm going to get angry if I don't get my way!" sort of a storm. A petulant storm. The lightning is pretty brazen; frequent and bright, it's a dazzling show. The thunder that accompanies is a bit of an off-tune symphony; continual and with, it seems, a repeating theme. Occasionally Thor shows he's in charge, other times it's apologizing for disturbing our sleep.

And now the rain comes.

Listening to it, I think we've gone from petulant to seriously annoyed. The booms are angry, loud, base. There's a continual background of rumbling; the lightning seems to be more frequent. Now a deep, long earth-shaking boom; a crack followed by a cool rumble. A quiet spot; a murmur.

I never took thunder seriously until South Dakota. Now, they can actually frighten me. Even having a thunderbolt pass within a few yards of me - it was years ago - couldn't shake my complacency about them. Those two storms in South Dakota? Like I said, some storms frighten me. This isn't one them. This one, I wish we had a porch; I'd sit out there, in a nice dress (I (almost) always dress(ed) up for a storm!), away from the rain splashing in, enjoying a glass of wine or a good Single Malt and watching the storm. It's what I did in Brooklyn, anyway. :-)

Carolyn Ann

A sordid lot, indeed

So I was watching Jon Stewart this evening (link when it comes up on his site) as he displayed various commenters on Fox News - vilifying the poor. I couldn't help but wonder if any of those buffoons - they are nothing but - ever thought about how their arguments came across to anyone not in the choir. The most disturbing thing about the snippets was that Mr Stewart didn't take them out of context. They supplied the context and all he did was summarize their views, with their own words.

Cruel, heartless, Robber Baron defending charlatans. The entire sordid lot of them. A bunch of ghouls they are.

They put on a display the more facile left attacks and the likes of Robert Tressell understood only too well.

I wonder if those buffoons ever consider that their words, in their context, could make them ghouls? I doubt it. If you can spout such evil, you're not going to be too concerned that you're defending what someone as wealthy as Warren Buffet considers to be indefensible. Mostly because Mr Buffet is right, but also because the morality of defending a robber baron society has to grate on the soul.

You know the worst of it? The people who are harmed by a robber baron society are the ones who seem most intent on bringing its return. Whatever happened to Kanas? What the hell happened to common sense?

Carolyn Ann

Remembering Pam

It's been a bit difficult to concentrate on anything, today. I keep thinking of Pam and what a wonderful person she was.

The thing about Pam was just how accepting of people. My god did she know a lot of them! You'd go to her parties wondering who you'd meet; you never knew if it would be a pop star, a fashion mogul, or a guy who collected playing cards from 19th century American railroads. It often seemed she knew everyone!

One time I was across the road from her apartment, on Hudson St, having just bought a nice present (a lamp in the shape of the Empire State Building) for the Mrs; I think it might have been around Halloween, I was in one of my endless phone calls to office; this was pre-cellphone and there was a phone on Hudson at the corner of Christopher. Anyway, this guy, a deep mahogany skin and height that placed him, without heels, among the clouds - he was wearing really high heels and a bright lime green bikini, crossed the street.

Funny the things you remember.

I remember visiting her; I was in the neighborhood and hadn't seen her for a bit, so I rang her bell. Hudson, the dog, knew me well and he came gallumphing into the house. The only bit he neglected was the screen door. He ended up wearing the "dog door" as a tutu; and he was as happy to see me as I him. I wish I'd a camera that day! We both laughed so.

Going to see Pam was always a treat. She was there for the Mrs when I had my breakdown, and she was there for me when I got out hospital. Which was quite astonishing as I was in the middle of building her garden when I that happened. Working on her garden was a wonderful therapy; dealing with the bizarre conditions in that well of a garden - it caught the sun just so - was like being in Paris. That didn't quite come out right (as the saying goes). I had a lot of fun building those planters and planting them; years later they still looked pretty good!

Pam loved life. She was surrounded by death, it seemed. So much of it happened to her immediate family within such a short time, it's difficult to think of it any other way. Because of that, probably, she had an infectious love of life. She didn't care if you were gay or straight, wore a frock or pants - if you loved life, you were welcome in hers. If you didn't love life after a few minutes with her, you were incapable of doing so. Or deliberately trying not to. I loved being in presence.

I remember sitting on her deck in Rhode Island one weekend; we'd gone up for the weekend and had spent day wandering. Sitting on that second floor deck, we drank some beer and she started the barbecue; it took forever to light up. I threw a ball for Hudson; he'd gallop off after it, and run up the stairs to do it all over again. The three of us talked well into the night; Hudson eventually settled down to sleep on my feet. (He's a big and heavy pooch, too!) I have no idea what chatted about; I just remember it as a perfect late summer eve. We probably discussed the latest shows on Broadway, the movies, books and news. It's a special memory; but that's what Pam gave you - nothing special, but it was oh so special at the same time.

When you know someone for a little over twenty years, you do collect memories. Going with her to the Model Train Show at the Bronx Botanical Gardens - one of my favorite pictures of Pam is from such a visit. She liked those; the Garden always had some group wandering about (well, they were confined to a small area outside the cactus gardens); one year it was a cappella group, another a Mariachi band. Pam would always stop and listen. If they were off-key, couldn't hold a time for their life and were a ragtag bunch she'd observe that "they tried".

I'm not one prone to answering the phone; considering how much I dislike the sodding things, it's a wonder I answer them at all. But when Pam called, I always answered (the wonders of caller ID, I guess). An hour or so later, she'd go about her business; I know all her friends discovered the same thing - they'd talked about their lives for an three quarters of an hour and she'd fill them in hers for the remaining 15 minutes. She loved to hear about your life; she was interested in what you were doing, not what she was about. We visited in her hospital at Christmas last; even as sick as she was, she still shone. That smile of hers; you needed sunglasses.

She was given a year to live, what, about a year and half, two years ago. She was, I think, trying to see her son safely home; he still has a few years to do.

I'll miss her.

Carolyn Ann

David Marbus/Markuze/etc - arrested at last!

The Montreal PD finally (!) arrested David Marbus, aka a lot of other names. He's a well-known dilettante of atheist blogs; frequently issuing death threats and dire warnings, the man is a bane. He's peculiarly persistent - apparently he's email PZ Myers every day for years!

As Tim Farley describes in this article about the arrest, it's almost a badge of honor to have been harassed by the moron. It was a sort of signal that you'd arrived or something! I was rather glad that he tired of writing to me; he basically stopped when I sent Mojoey a profile of him (I wrote about the fool as well). Others weren't so lucky. But the Montreal PD didn't do anything until a local journalist put it all together. Well, it might also have been when he discovered Twitter.

This morning I saw Helen had written of the arrest; it was actually a bit of a relief. When it comes to vindictive, angry, nuts, you can never be sure. (When I described my ongoing argument with Dana Lane Taylor, the first thing the wife said was "she's a bit close, are you sure she doesn't know where we live?" These days you do have to be a bit concerned about angry idiots.)

Anyway, this twit didn't do much to hide who he was; the only thing that protected him for so many years was Montreal PD's laxity and the fact that those he targeted were all over the world. Local police departments didn't necessarily care about some nut in Canada. It took a concerted effort to piece together the scale of this prick's efforts - beyond all reason, to be honest. Hours a day, every day, hundreds of email accounts, tons of Twitter accounts. The idiot takes "obsession" to new levels.

Anyway, read Tim Farley's article about the arrest; it's quite interesting and shows how concerted and coordinated data collection is going to be needed to combat these trolls from hereon. Because where one paves the way, others are more than happy to follow.

Carolyn Ann

A friend died this morning

A very dear friend, Pam, died this morning on her 70th birthday.

We're going to miss her. :-(

Carolyn Ann

Repeating history

David Campbell and Robert Putnam, two professors at Notre Dame and Harvard, respectively, have an interesting op-ed in today's Times, "Crashing the Tea Party".

They point out that the Tea Party is not a movement of neophytes; it had, from the very beginning, leadership from political partizans. Its supporters are generally white and they are generally anti-immigrant. Initially they attracted a lot of extremists; far right racists and the like. That problem seems to have been solved, but their underlying racism is still quite visible. Oh, they're not individually racist; they probably treat people with consideration no matter what their skin color, but I still think the majority of Tea Party supporters dislike, or distrust, non-whites. I still believe they're a bit perturbed by the color of Mr Obama's skin.

As you might suspect, considering how much religion plays into Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann's campaigns, and doesn't really factor in Mitt Romney's - they're into that overtly political Christianity. I think that also explains why Ron Paul is being ignored - his supporters probably aren't into that whole "insertion of religion into public life and politics" thing.

Anyway, Messrs Campbell and Putnam point to an interesting comparison: the Tea Party are a bit like the anti-war Democrats who backed George McGovern. Lots of hellfire, blowhards and noisy supporters all accompanied by an alienated middle.

The writers caution that the Tea Party "risk repeating history". I allege they are repeating it.

Carolyn Ann

Piece, problems and a bit of glue?

The thought occurred to me that I really enjoy programming. I like that I can take a big problem and turn it into a set of small problems. I find it satisfying to solve those small problems and have something I can point to and say "I did that!" I enjoyed woodworking for the same reasons, but there I had a physical object to point to. Assuming it didn't fall to pieces in the meantime...

Whoever said deconstruction never had a use? :-)

Carolyn Ann

Oh you have got to be fucking kidding...

Over on T-Central I noticed a post from "The Trans Box"; I don't the blog, but the title was interesting: Bordering on the Bizarre (the forest and tree problem) -

As was the slug:

Now I am not one to have an issue with a debate, even a heated debate about issues, just keep it civil and stay away from scoring points against your oppon...

I clicked. As one does. :-)

Kathryn Martin, the owner of The Trans Box, was writing about a post by Anne - of Elle As Asi  fame - concerning "that" marriage in Cuba. You know the one: she's a transsexual woman and he's a gay man. They got married and noted it was the closest Cuba has ever got to gay marriage. Ms Martin notes the fuss in the comments section.

Now, I know Anne is prone to hyperbole and exaggeration, but this little snippet goes above and beyond:

What you are saying is that YOU, and you PENIS PACKIN' "sisters", will use ANY means to acquire the rights of women...what a pack of LYING, SHAMELESS HYPOCRITES!! 

I happen to agree with the others that this "wedding" made me ill. However, it should also serve as a warning to just how dire the situation has become. 

Just like the riots in England, the down-grade of the US credit rating, te disaster of Fukishima, the fall of Egypt...these are just harbingers of things to come.

A marriage is as bad as the riots in England? The down-grade of America's credit rating? The fall of Egypt? Why stop there? The election of Hitler, the death of Caesar at the hand of Brutus, the Ides of March, the 1918 flu epidemic, Claudius doing the evil on ol' Ham's Pop, the cat coughing up a fur ball and so on and so forth. A marriage. Between two people who love each other. It makes her ill. And a few others, judging by the comments.

In the comments, one (Teagan) said that the words of a dissident blogger, quoted by the BBC, made her ill: 

... Yoani Sanchez, who acted as a godmother at the ceremony, said that while the marriage was not technically a gay wedding "it is the closest we have come".

Let me see... They're sickened by a wedding in a dictatorship... Because of how it's described? 

And what the marriage represents to the gay and transgender/transsexual communities in Cuba?

I'll "allow" Anne to speak for herself:

What is blatantly, disgustingly, and sickeningly clear, is that the legal status of this "woman" is being USED as a sacrificial SCHILL [sic] for SSM/Gay Marriage.

(Just how difficult is it to spell "shill"? Anne gets it wrong and Teagan does, too! I have no idea what SSM is.)

The range of commentary on the internet is what you might expect. What's astonishing is how some in the American transsexual community really demand that not only do Americans abide by their rules, but that those strictures be adhered to by the members of a different culture! In a different nation!

Ms Martyn nailed it when she noted:

"All of them celebrated this day because it opened a door, a softening of the hard line a new outlook. That is what mattered that day and the couple of course who made this committment to each other."

Ms Martyn ends her post with: Sometimes I want to just knock and ask: "hello, anyone home?"

Well said, m'dear.

Carolyn Ann

Monetary Policy as Treason?

Rick Perry seems to have decided that the best way to outsmart Michele Bachmann is to out-stupid her. Yesterday he said:

"If this guy [Ben Bernanke] prints more money between now and the election, I don't know what you all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. I mean, printing more money to play politics at this particular time in America history, is almost treacherous, treasonous in my view."

Which proves one of two things, or perhaps both. One, Mr Perry definitely doesn't understand economic or monetary policy, or, two, he really doesn't want America to get out of this slow-moving recovery or not. At least not until he's in the Oval Office.

The thing is, the Fed is thinking of a third round of quantitative easing - printing money. With interest rates being so low and money flooding into Treasuries, they don't really have a lot of room to maneuver. And jobs are the #1 priority right now. A QE3 would help reduce unemployment and perhaps it would force some of these companies to start releasing the piles of cash they're sitting on.

Whatever happens, the only people who could applaud a stupid statement like that don't understand monetary policy and don't want to. All they really want is that nigger out o' the White House.

Carolyn Ann

Ain't gonna happen, no way no how

A rather dim editorial from the NY Times ends with:

Before Congress starts running with another very bad idea, President Obama should press to extend the tax now. And he should start explaining why — for the sake of the economy, the environment and a functioning transportation system — this tax will need to rise.

The short version is that the Federal Gas tax, 18.4c a gallon*, is due to expire at the end of September. Fresh from his "victory" over the debt ceiling, Grover Norquist - the delusional anti-tax advocate - is urging his minions fans in Congress to go "cold turkey" and do away with the thing. Despite the fact that it funds things like roads and bridges and also mass transit.

*The editorial contains a decent comparison: in Britain, the gas taxis about $4 (£2.43) a gallon!

If there was a way for states to assume the maintenance and reconstruction of roads, fine - but such a mechanism isn't in place. Nor would it be funded; various governors such as Rick Scott (R-Fl) would deny there was a problem and let the state's infrastructure crumble, pushing the problem to whomever came after him. Others, such as Rick Perry, wouldn't do much with it; they'd take the money and count it as state income and oh look he's balanced the books again (he went to the same economics school as Sarah Palin). Towns and cities wouldn't assume the burden - they're strapped for cash as it is. And so on.

Okay, ending the tax, letting it expire, seems like a really bad idea. And indeed the case can be made that it needs to go up a bit. But in this political climate? If the gas tax can be kept it'll be a miracle.

Thanks, Mr Norquist, for ensuring that a great nation has the infrastructure of a third world nation.

Carolyn Ann

"Transvestite people", huh?

William Bratton, the exalted police commissioner of New York and Los Angeles is, probably, heading for the UK (well, he's there already) and Scotland Yard's recently vacated top cop job. The man has a reputation, well earned, for changing the police forces he works with (New Orleans PD could do with some change, I understand...). One of the things New Yorkers noticed was an increased diversity in the cops when he was the boss; it helps if the police reflects society.

Well, the man was interviewed by The Guardian and he said this:

He told the Guardian he was a "progressive", pointing out that he hired more people from ethnic minorities, women, gay people and transvestite people to make the police forces he ran reflect the communities they serve.

Transvestite people, huh? I know there's a big difference in English between the UK and the US, but I'm a little surprised to see it includes general acceptance of a word usually considered derogatory! Mind you, it's not for me to comment - I haven't lived in Britain for over 20 years. I was just a little surprised is all.

Carolyn Ann

Stupid User Error or "What was that primal scream about?"

Drupal isn't a monolithic system; it's made up of a lot of bits of code that are called "modules". One set of these modules provides security services for a website; they basically make sure that if you're not supposed to be able to do something that you can't do that thing.

(Oo do that voodoo that you do so well... :-)  Sorry. Couldn't resist.)

Anyway, configuring a new module, that is one you've written is really easy. The Drupal website even provides a template you can use. Easy, right?

So I spent most of the afternoon trying to figure out why a module I'm in the middle of writing wouldn't give me a way of configuring the permissions, the security bit. I tried rewriting it. I installed a debugger. Nothing. Nada. Not a thing.

Flummoxed, I went downstairs and watched Wolf Blitzer for awhile. Back to the problem. Still nothing. And then I noticed something... I hadn't "enabled", or switched on, the module. You do that by clicking a little check box. Oops.

Click that little check box and viola! It worked...

Only took me about 8 hours to figure that one out.

Carolyn Ann

Punitive punishment?

The riots in London and elsewhere have produced one interesting side-affect: punitive punishments. Six months for a bottle of water, five months for receiving a pair pants, six months for a couple of tennis rackets, a five months pregnant woman remanded for sentencing - she had a flat full of looted electronics. And on and on and on and on.

The Cameron government is really cracking down on the rioters and looters, as well they might. The disturbances were not just shocking, they were epitomized by the looting; at its height, it seemed the rioting was intended to provide cover, a distraction, for the looters. There's lot of natter about why the riots happened; frustration, anger, whatever. I'm not sure it matters; I don't think there really was any reason for it. The initial protest? Yes, there was a reason for that, but for what happened afterwards? It wasn't a "moral collapse", it was a lack of self-control and a bit of wanton opportunism. I suspect it's similar to the wide-spread insurance fraud that happened in Florida after Hurricane Andrew; those people were caught and their punishments were outsized compared to "normal" fraud. Opportunism goes both ways: the looters get the chance to temporarily own some nice stuff and in return society gets to give them something very painful in the hopes that others don't emulate the ne'erdowells. It's also like those idiotic G8 protestors; they smash windows as if that might mean anything.

Is draconian punishment warranted in such circumstances? I think so - after all, no one forced these people to loot or accept clearly stolen goods. If someone gives you £680 worth of tennis rackets for a £20 debt, immediately after a riot, I think you can assume they've been purloined. The rioters weren't protesting a dictatorship (no matter what the foolish far left says); they weren't protesting cuts to the social safety net. They were frustrated - and that's no reason for a riot.

I don't think the juvenile offenders should be named and shamed, but the adults? Sure. They knew what they were doing. Getting caught up in the moment is no excuse. Getting caught is something many of them can look forward to. Not having any impulse control is no excuse.

Carolyn Ann

Google has to go to the ATM...

So Google is buying a cellphone maker, Motorola, for $12.5B. Just like you and me, if they don't have enough on them, and have forgotten their wallet, they have to go to the ATM.

Oh, wait... They are the ATM! Never mind.

Carolyn Ann

Confirm ... what?!?

Eclipse Marketplace install dialog box. It says "Confirm Selected Features" and "Confirm the features to include in this provisioning operation"

I guess that's better than saying "Installing..." or "Install these packages" (Hint: no it isn't.)

Carolyn Ann

They want a Krakatoa for an inkstand!

Bagehot, in an indictment of David Cameron's front bench, quotes Benjamin Disraeli dismissing Lord Gladstone's front bench:
"...a range of exhausted volcanoes... not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest!"

(To be fair, Bagehot notes that the same can be said of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, aka Labour.)

I think the analogy can be applied to the Congressional Tea Party Caucus:
“We live too much in books and not enough in nature, and we are very much like the simpleton of a Pliny the Younger, who went on studying a Greek author while before his eyes Vesuvius was overwhelming five cities beneath the ashes” (Anatole France)

On the other hand, I think they're more intent on ensuring that a burst steam pipe turns into a Krakatoa.

Carolyn Ann

Drupal's learning curve

Earlier this year, someone created an all too accurate depiction of the Drupal "learning curve", as compared to other content management systems:

It seems no one knows who created the original image, but whomever it was certainly depicted it accurately. (Johan Falk has an another interesting take on the DLC... :-) )

Carolyn Ann

Not in a million years

Now that network neutrality has pretty much receded from the headlines (it was a win for the phone companies. What? You're surprised?), the next arena is shaping up: data limits.

Phone companies are pleading poverty and are, basically, saying that they have to stop people using their network to do things like download data, watch movies, listen to internet radio, use Facebook and tweet and FourSquare their lives away. What they're actually trying to hide is that they don't want to invest in their networks - because they haven't figured out how to charge for it. Just as AT&T (and BT) stood in the way of innovation, now the phone companies not only stand in the way of innovation, they go after it with bricks and bats.

Because of severe underinvestment and a lack of any real competition, the internet in America is a bit pathetic. By adhering to obsolete system architectures (they're cheaper to build) and by using their political and legal clout to destroy would-be competitors, the phone companies have managed to place themselves in a monopolistic position. they now control all, or all but a very small portion, of the internet usage in America and Canada. I don't think there's a cartel, but I don't think that matters - the overall affect is of very aggressive cartel.

It wouldn't take much to develop a wireless cell-phone based network that could adapt to increasing data usage; the capacity needed can be calculated using standard calculations. The sort that have been used for decades and are taught in every statistics & probability class (indeed, they form the basis of such classes!). The money is there to develop cheap, quick efficient routers; the technical expertise exists on both sides of the Atlantic and none of it would require much risk taking.

All it needs is a phone company to be imaginative and say "it doesn't actually matter how much data a person consumes!" But that requires a phone company that can think about billing in a new way and I think that is a million years in the future.

Carolyn Ann