Saturday, May 17, 2008

[thought for the day] saturday evening

Methinks 'twould be wise to heed the writing on the wall.

[light blogging] and the case of the disappearing breakfast

Mine is meatier


Light blogging this morning, not for any "problematic" reasons but because I have five clients today - work goes on, even if other things don't. :)

Plan to blog later.

Of greater concern is that I lost my breakfast. True. I made it all right - just a sort of soupy thing with mince, buckwheat, cabbage and peppers in a tomato-ey sauce but it's tasty and I didn't want to lose it.

Went to the living room - nope, not there. Not in the kitchen, not in the hallway. Ah, I was absent minded, I thought - it'll be in the loo. Nope, not there.

Hmmm. I'll tell you if I ever find it. Plus the toast just burnt writing this and it's sitting there on the board now, black and fuming. I apologized to it.

Now where is that soupy thing?

Friday, May 16, 2008

[thought for the day] friday evening


Tomorrow is a new day.

[systemic failure] trumps all

There are analogies everywhere.

Captain Blackadder is unprincipled, intelligent, scathing and lives on his ability to get out of scrapes. Just how he ends up in a WW1 trench at the Somme, ready to go over the top on the order from above is largely due to systemic failure and the dislocation of people who might have helped him, being in the wrong place at the wrong time and being maddeningly unaware of the real situation and how little time is left.

No one is specifically down on Blackadder but as he discovers - every avenue he tries, every string he pulls, every favour he calls in - they all come to nothing. For example, having already dismissively discussed the old chestnut of sticking two pencils up his nose, putting underpants on his head and saying 'Wibble', as a means of escaping the front line on the grounds of insanity - he has a much better plan.

The general owes him a favour. This is his very last chance and he manages to get a call put through from the front line where he is. Naturally the general is not impressed and says they're now all square - here's some advice on how to escape - stick two pencils up your nose, put underpants on your head and say 'Wibble'.

With his last chance gone, he resigns himself to his fate.

Similarly with Hillary, whom this blog has mercilessly berated - now today I feel some sympathy for her. Even with a few victories under her belt, including the last triumph, nevertheless the die has been cast and she is being dragged inexorably to the due date of the convention where she just does not have the capacity to reverse the result, barring a miracle, despite substantial support from certain well placed sections of the community.

That was me today. My main support could not move without a report from the man who had promised him that he'd help - this was two weeks ago in a total time frame of four weeks. Still today the report had not come through so MMS phoned him, puzzled. Oh the man hadn't understood he was meant to help - he only thought he was finding things out in general.

Mad scramble, phone calls left, right and centre at the highest echelons - all willing to help but alas, system wise, now too late. Direct line to the one man in the country who really does have the power to help. Away on holidays and had extended them to the end of next week. So powerful people willing to do what they could but the other end of it just not in town.

And even if it does, by some miracle, produce an eleventh hour extension of time past the end of May, which technically it now can't, requiring representations to Moscow which take up to a month - even if that did happen, it would buy another week or two.

Cut to the Higham story. He came over here years ago and unwisely risked all on one throw for one particular lady. Someone in Germany thought it the most romantic story she'd heard [more exciting than the book actually puts it]. Heady days with huge risks, all depending on remaining here and looking as if it would be successful. Life on the edge and intoxicating.

It wasn't successful though but Higham still found himself in a position where he could survive, he increased his business round town and as long as he remained local, there was more than sufficient coming in to have a quite reasonable life, depending entirely on word of mouth connections. Everyone gave him to understand that this was their desire too - that he remain - so foolishly he sold up overseas, no family now alive and consolidated here.

In short, there was absolutely nowhere out there to go but multiple choices within this town. This year, as a result of various setbacks and with his partners all doing stints overseas for a number of reasons, the margins were very fine, coming into the summer. But that hardly mattered as he was in a secure position in an inexpensive country and June/July are the traditional months where the finance rolls in.

This flat for example - his as long as he remains but the moment he goes, all equity gone - nothing leaves the country with him except his pack.

That's why suddenly today he saw the end. Booted out ten days from now, cut off from his local supply lines, no access for legal reasons to his western money, nowhere to go out there, having consolidated everything here, end of this blog, end of these friendships, end of local friendships - a new life on the run. Exciting for a 30 year old except that he's not 30 anymore.

And there it is. One can only laugh and with one overriding nightly theme - that Higham has a date with an airport twelve days from now [eleven days tomorrow] and nowhere beyond that in any sustainable way.

Not entirely true of course. Certain blogfriends [three of them] have made kind offers and they would be lovely but the operative word is "sustainable" and to return to first person, singular, I can't drop myself on someone else for more than a few days simply because I was foolish enough not to provide myself with an escape route.

Sleep now.

[church rises] tourism in a drought area


Reuters reports:

Perhaps the most striking image of Spain's drought, so severe it has forced Barcelona to ship in water, has been that of the underwater church which emerged from a drying dam.

For most of the past four decades, all that has been visible of the village of Sant Roma has been the belltower of its stone church, peeping above the water beside forested hills from a valley flooded in the 1960s to provide water for the Catalonia region.

This year, receding waters have exposed the 11th-century church completely, attracting crowds of tourists who stand gazing around it on the dusty bed of the reservoir.

Like it. Like it very much. Might pop over for one of the services. Would they be praying for rain?

[friday caption time] would like to have one of these

[facebook] the social network war



Facebook has banned Google's Friend Connect access to the Facebook API, saying:

We've found that it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users' knowledge, which doesn't respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service.

Oh, that's a good one. As Michael Arrington of Tech Crunch says:

Facebook is all about openness and data portability, as long as that doesn't involve openness or portability of data, it seems ...

Arrington adds, tongue in cheek:

This of course has nothing to do with the fact that Facebook launched their own nearly identically named product called Facebook Connect three days before Google's Friend Connect.

This is how it has been described:

Facebook announced its Facebook Connect, what it calls the "next iteration of Facebook Platform," which allowed third-party developers to develop social applications for the site. When it is rolled out ---also "in the coming weeks"-- participating sites will be able to share Facebook users' friends lists, their "real identities," photos, and videos.

There's a fine line between being supercautious and paranoid but this blog feels there are legitimate issues. Daviswiki gives a run down on some of the privacy issues ...

Facebook is commonly referred to as Stalkerbook, due to its many features that allows you to track people in your network, especially when you are friends with those people.

And Ian Parker said:

Just remember who funded the building of Facebook and why it is there.


It was funded by DARPA's Information Awareness Office, and is there to collect information about you and build a profile on you.

Thats why they don't like pseudonyms.

In an article on the organization some time back, Ian Grey commented:


I've deactivated. I did [this] after reading your first post and a bit of surfing about the dodgy stuff. This is when I realised I couldn't actually unsubscribe! I'm Still in LinkedLn and MySpace though.

Longrider summed up my thoughts when he commented:

As mentioned on your other post, I have never signed up to this "service" - nor have I signed up to MySpace. Nor will I ever. It's easy enough, should one try, to find out my real identity, but I reserve the right to publish under a pseudonym. And, frankly, any organisation (remember Blogburst?) that claims rights to my material can take a walk.

Given this organization's antecedents, given that it is an information gathering and disbursing machine to "trusted third parties", given that there is no unsubscribe function and given the really intrusive nature of the questioning they do on you, in a jaunty style of language, e.g. "what's the story here', it seems most unwise to allow any but the most perfunctory details to go to them.

At best you're going to be spammed. At worst, you are on a giant database to be used at their discretion. At least it is to be hoped that they're not incompetent, like these people:

Even if we ignore/excuse the massive amounts of lost data already by this government as institutional failings of the system and processes of the Civil Service rather than government ministers, these last two cannot be explained away like that.

Thunderdragon then goes on to explain.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

[thought for the day] thursday evening


Possibly not the most intelligent decision, beneath a conceivably descending scimitar, to indulge in Leonard Cohen:

As someone long prepared for the occasion;
In full command of every plan you wrecked -
Do not choose a coward's explanation
That hides behind the cause and the effect

Ha, ha, how did he know that? So, in lieu of an operational net connection, whisky and Cohen is a heady brew:

I was pretty good at taking out the garbage
Pretty good at holding up the wall
I'm sorry for my crimes against the moonlight
I didn't think the moon would mind at all

There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

So you can stick your little pins in that voodoo doll
I’m very sorry, baby, doesn’t look like me at all

But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags that Time cannot decay,
I'm junk but I'm still holding up this little wild bouquet.

I wish you all good evening and see you come the day.

:)

[interim report] indecisive signs

This post is specifically for the friends who have shown a kind interest in my situation of the past three weeks and its denouement today.

The news is that there's no actual news but most definitely some signs. Three or four of us are reviewing those signs right now, trying to see if they indicate anything. Various representations were made on my behalf and I have no way of knowing how they went.

However, this morning I was asked to submit all my documents [passport etc.]. That's all. This is being viewed by some positively but it could equally mean that they want one final look before definitively saying no. I'm being advised not to think this way.

The other move is that the Min will be in town tomorrow and wants to see me at 2. That also could be a good or a bad sign. So the fact that the authorities have been so swift - they promised to give an answer some time today or after today and asked for the docs first thing this morning - well best to just wait until tomorrow and put it out of mind in the meantime.

Another problem which has cropped up is that there is something wrong with my internet connection. Either it is the provider or it is what the Mac says - a problem of the port connection. Hope it's the former but it means I get internet for a few minutes only.

Therefore this has been pretyped and posted quickly. I'll try to come back with a thought for the day later but apologize that I haven't been able to check any mail today.

Plus we've had no hot water in our house for a week and no one knows when it will come back but the good news is that the lift has started working again. Lovely cool 8 degrees today with hail and 25 knot winds.

More later if the internet works.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

[thought for the day] wednesday evening


At 50, everyone has the face he [or she] deserves.

[George Orwell]

[blàr chùil lodair)] let's reenact it, shall we?


The Quiet Man does some interesting things and one of them is:

I've just been to see a re-enactment of the Battle of Olney Bridge, a battle in the English Civil War.

Well that's lovely, TAOQM but that got me thinking - if you, dear reader, were to re-enact a classic battle, which one would it be? For me it would be Culloden, not through any dislike for the Scots, mind but because I once saw Billy Connolly re-enact the Highland Charge all by himself and thought that was worthy of an accolade.


Overview of the battle

The weather was very poor with a gale driving sleety rain into the faces of the Jacobites. The Duke's forces arrived around mid day and initially deployed in three lines. Upon observing the ground and rebel dispositions, the Duke thinned his army to two lines.

It began with an artillery barrage and the Jacobites were under heavy fire. Although the marshy terrain minimized casualties, the morale of the Jacobites began to suffer. Several clan leaders, angry at the lack of action, pressured Charles to issue the order to charge.

They did eventually do this and even reached British forces and then in a total of about 60 minutes the Duke was victorious.


The Highland Charge

One of the most fearsome aspects of the Scots was this all out charge and:

The government troops had finally worked out bayonet tactics to challenge the dreaded Highland charge, [supposedly learnt from the Blackwatch, the original Highland Regiment in the British Army], and broadsword. The Jacobites lost momentum, wavered, then fled.

It was done this way - as a row of Scots would reach the government troops, each of the loyalists would thrust his shield out front to counter his immediate man but would jab 45 degrees to the right, behind the shield into the Scot diagonally opposite.

It was surprisingly effective.

So what's your battle you're thinking of re-enacting?

[travel] five to try before you die

The danger, coming up to a possibly enforced overseas trip in peak travel season on no money, [just don't want to contemplate that prospect today], is not to be negative.

So when I read this piece on cliched holidays:

Finally, you round a corner, fight off a few more touts in your crap Italian, and there it is: the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Oh, and a large grassy area... Filled with about 10,000 of your closest friends... Each taking their own "hilarious" shot of their Contiki tour buddy pretending to prop up the falling tower.

... after shuddering a little, it seemed best to go the opposite way - go positive. Here are five travel things, IMHO, it's probably essential to do at least once before you get old:

1. Tick off some of the essential places - London, Paris, New York, Rome and their environs;

2. Safari of some kind either in Africa, the north of Australia, the Gobi, wherever;

3. Some sort of spiritual journey - either to the land of your forefathers or to the Holy Land - some sort of pilgrimage in the Chaucer tradition;

4. Some activity based trip, e.g. skiing in Kitzbuhel, hunting in Namibia, whatever;

5. The grand tour or luxury cruise - saved up for, transported to far off lands, all facilities laid on. Just the once, mind. Mine was the Grand Tour of Europe.

One we particularly enjoyed, sharing driving duties, was to hire an open-topped Megane and tear all over Tenerife, particularly at the peak, way above the clouds. That took some beating.

Some other ideas were advanced here.

Our Richard Nixon

Martin Kelly writes:

At times, Simon Heffer is a very nasty and aggressive journalist whose efforts invite easy ridicule.

His hatchet job on Boris Johnson immediately prior to to the London mayoral election conveniently omitted to mention his own role in fomenting one of the greatest crises of Johnson's career, and how Johnson's actions might have shielded him from his due measure of public opprobium.

Yet, in yet another of his tedious attacks on David Cameron's apparent lack of ideological purity - the intensity and regularity of these attacks make one wonder whether Heffer is either an obsessive or just another petty authoritarian who'd have gone far on the Committee of Public Safety, one of life's natural park-keepers - Heffer stumbles across a possible key to unlocking public understanding of Gordon Brown.

With a typical lack of charity, he describes Brown as being, "a terminally wounded, uncharismatic introvert with a selection box of personality defects and you start to see the answer. " Indeed - he's from the same mental mould as Richard Nixon.

One doubts whether he cries in front of a portrait of Nye Bevan in the same way Nixon cried in front of Lincoln's; but just about everything else is there. Pity Heffer couldn't make the connection.

[pretty woman] and the world of asset stripping


If you're not in the world of business, it might puzzle you how the world economy has got to where it is. This article traces the beginnings of Sears through to its current sorry state and in so doing, affords us an insight into the mindset of modern business.

May I humbly suggest, regular readers, that even if this is not your cup of tea, it will reward your patience to read it through because it's not just about finance - it's about people as well:


As the United States spread west to the Pacific coast on its manifest destiny after the Civil War, it was the general store that civilized it. With so many small Western towns popping into existence in the late 19th century, the general stores were able to act as local monopolies, charging monopoly prices.

In 1888, Richard W Sears came upon the idea of selling his wares directly to the public through printed mailers, using the new technology of the railroads to circumvent the established distribution networks of the general stores, in much the same way as Amazon.com [today].

Sears, along with his partner Alvah Roebuck, soon developed a reputation for quality merchandise at reasonable prices [and] it was natural for Sears, Roebuck to shift its focus from mail order to actual retail stores. In 1925, Sears opened its first retail outlet, [and] by the end of the Roaring Twenties the company was opening a new retail outlet in an American city every two days

Looking ahead and projecting the tremendous outpouring of American population from the cities to the still nascent suburbs, the company started an ambitious expansion plan that placed hundreds of new Sears stores right alongside the new Interstate highways It also branched out beyond America's borders.

These were the halcyon days of homogenized American suburban middle-class conformity, when Sears was the number one retailer [leading to] the Sears Tower in Chicago in 1974.

But, as the children of the baby boom grew and moved out [they] demanded more personalized consumer choices.

The "me" generation of the 1970s [now] put their money first at Kmart, later at Wal-Mart; those that were willing to pay up for more trendy fashions did so at more upscale clothiers Macy's and Nordstrom's. Similar market segmentations occurred with the company's once-lucrative appliance businesses.

By 1991 Wal-Mart replaced Sears as America's leading retailer and has never looked back since. Sears, its stores consistently seen as stodgy and old fashioned, its "all for one and one for all" marketing philosophy seen as out of step with the times, lacking in "pop", settled into a graceful, steady decline.

That was the condition of the company in 2004, when it had the misfortune to catch the attention of modern turbo-finance capitalism.

Some people, when they see some poor unfortunate lying on the ground, help the person to their feet. Not modern turbo-finance; it saw Sears lying in the gutter, decided like a vampire that there was no reason why the very lifeblood should not be drained from it.

Edward S "Eddie" Lampert, a 42-year-old former Goldman Sachs bond trader, through his ESL hedge fund, established a 53% majority controlling interest in Kmart, which, in the futile attempt of trying to compete with the larger and more efficient Wal-Mart had bankrupted itself. Lampert closed stores and slashed jobs, restoring the company to operating profitability.

By 2004, Kmart's regular stream of income reached $3 billion [but] Lampert had no intention of plowing this sum back into the company, to modernize its dowdy stores, or, more importantly, its creaky supply and distribution system. He was going to use Kmart's cash stream to [help become] a younger, and richer version of Warren Buffett.

By early 2005, Lampert's ESL hedge fund was folding both Sears and Kmart into a single corporate entity, to be called Sears Holdings.

Overnight, Lampert became one of the titans of American retailing [and] in running perhaps the most fabled, trusted name in American commerce, Lampert gave every indication that he cared very little about the enterprise that others before him had labored over a century to build.

A fictional predator


Same-store, year-over-year sales, the key metric for retail success, have spiraled down month after month, quarter after quarter, even though the first years of Lampert's reign were a time of significant US economic growth.

Retail advertising budgets have been slashed. Funding for maintenance, upkeep and renovation for the stores have been cut way back; at many shopping centers, the Sears store is becoming more the mall eyesore than its anchor.

As for investing the capital to maintain healthy levels of inventory in both stores, so that customers don't find empty shelves when coming in to look for a product and then turn around and never come back, well, that's not all that important anymore, either.

You might think that [there would be] approbation and sanction from Wall Street.

Not true. During the first two years of the Lampert reign, the stock market adored Sears Holdings, up 15% in 2005, 47% in 2006. Had the stock market entered a dimension where bad corporate practices were now good, and incompetent management now adored?

In reality, what has been happening [is] that the operating expenses for both entities have been cut to the bone, in order to free up the billions that Lampert would use for hedge fund speculation at ESL, to generate large returns for the shareholders and keep Sears and Kmart alive long enough to bleed them dry.

Those were the days when the funds had discovered a very simple way to make absolute scads of money [but] things sure changed in 2007. Many of the hedge fund strategies [like] huge heavily leveraged bets on subprime mortgage paper, came up lemons last year. Sears Holdings' profits fell 99% from the third quarter of 2006 to the same period of 2007. The stock is down 50% from its high in April of 2007, as opposed to a less than 5% decline by the RTH retail index.

Lampert's ESL bought an $800 million stake last year in Citigroup, just before the subprime storm made landfall and now the stock went from $51 to $24. Herb Greenberg of the Moneywatch named Lampert as the worst chief executive officer of 2007; considering last year's competition, quite the distinction.

The sorry saga of Sears illustrates just how far distorted American ethics and values have become from exposure to the great credit and money carnival of the past few years. "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned," Karl Marx wrote in 1848.

In this case, nobody thought twice, nobody blinked an eye, when Wall Street took a truly unique American institution, Sears, and turned it from a fine, respected American society matron into a common streetwalker reduced to pimping through the night for Eddie Lampert.

Kevin Phillips notes that "By 2004-6, financial services represented 20 to 21 percent of gross domestic product, manufacturing just 12 to 13 percent."

Somewhere along the line, America got the idea that the buck generated from financial services was equivalent, or even superior to the same buck made actually making and sustaining something - such as the great brand Sears once was.

America's ... dream of endless wealth created through little or no actual work, [has met] reality. Very few observers think that Sears can survive much longer, still under withering competitive pressure from Wal-Mart and being bled to death by the likes of Lampert.

The old world charm of shopping where the prices were reasonable and the quality guaranteed - all that seems to have fallen to modern practice. From American diners to chains like Sears - do people really, truly, want to see all that swept away?

Does anyone care any more? Is this the sort of person we now revere?


A few words about Eddy Lampert from Time

No one has more faith in Eddie than Eddie. Which may explain why he's so comfortable leading Wall Street in the new world of high finance, one in which hedge funds like his and giant buyout firms are going toe-to-toe in the arena known as private equity. Lampert is part of the new breed of hedgies who have gone from passive investing to actively buying and managing firms to seek outsize returns.

Here we have a fundamental divide - the modern person concerned only with the online bargain and the catalogue, seeing nothing lost in the scramble for the dollar, living for efficiency and maximization of profit at all costs, the days of plastic and the chip, as against the person operating at a different level who appreciates quality of service, the friendly bank manager's one to one relationship, the passbook, the pleasure of shopping in a historic department store where the pride of the staff is plain to see and the presence of human values instead of pitiless self-interest.

I'm not naive enough to think that there was ever a halcyon era or that Sears were not motivated by profit but I'd argue it was not from profit alone - there was a certain pride in creating something from nothing and then maintaining it - the lure of the name or the plain common sense in shopping there.

Surely there is still a place in the commercial world for old-fashioned values; surely it can even make sound business snese. I'm given to understand that accountants interpret it as goodwill.


Eddie


Tuesday, May 13, 2008

[thought for the day] tuesday evening


There is absolutely no one, apart from yourself, who can prevent you, in the middle of the night, from sneaking down to tidy up the edges of that hunk of cheese at the back of the fridge.

[Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson]




Absolutely no invisible text this time - damn - you caught me.

[making ends meet] the bottom line


[chicken little ] meet dr pangloss

It's everywhere - Citygroup writedowns and now:

France's biggest retail bank, Credit Agricole, is contemplating asking shareholders for 5.9bn euros (£4.7bn; $9.1bn) to help its financial position.

The move comes after more write-downs at its Calyon investment banking unit as a result of the credit squeeze.

Meanwhile, the country's second-largest bank, Societe Generale, said its own write-downs had led to a 23% fall in profits in the first quarter of 2008.

"The fact that they need another six billion euros of capital is worrying and I'm staying cautious (on the stock)," one Paris dealer said.


So how should we react? Sackerson quotes


"The worst of the crisis in Wall Street is over," Buffett said today on Bloomberg Television.

Warren Buffett's mistake is not comprehending the magnitude of the derivatives mess, the magnitude of the fallout of the housing bust, and the magnitude of the fallout of a global credit boom now going bust. The economic reality is that this is closer to 1929 as opposed to 1987.


Don Boudreaux
though quotes David Harsanyi who feels the important thing is:


Seeing past the Chicken Littles


Sackerson comments:


Well, many Chicken Littles make a Chicken Big, and she's coming home to roost.


Are you a Chicken Little or a Dr Pangloss?

[beer safe] buckle up now campaign

People are asking a lot of questions about this:

The man was pulled over on the Ross Highway, south of Alice Springs, about 3.30pm on Friday, when officers on patrol noticed the vehicle was unregistered and uninsured.

But what they found inside the car shocked them. Four adults occupied the car with two in the front and two in the rear seats.

[A] carton of beer was buckled safely in the rear centre seat between two adults, while the five-year-old boy crouched on the floor.


Here are some of the questions:

1. Was it XXXX or VB in the car?

2. Is Alice really going dry and where will people get their beer from?

3. Why was the slab unopened and buckled in? Why wasn't anyone drinking at the time?

4. Was the boy mistreated or was he hiding from the heat down there?

Personally, my drop of choice is lower right.

[google rankings] something strange here

JMB wrote of google page ranking and I'm more than grateful to google but I did a bit of a check:

URL: http://michellemalkin.com/
PageRank: 7/10
URL: http://www.order-order.com/
PageRank: 6/10


URL: http://iaindale.blogspot.com/
PageRank: 6/10

URL: http://devilskitchen.me.uk/
PageRank: 6/10

URL: http://nourishingobscurity.blogspot.com/
PageRank: 5/10



Right, so these weren't the only people I checked and I was shocked. Firstly, look at the ones above me here - Michelle Malkin for a start, Fox on Sunday, known America wide, 220 000 hits a day - only 7/10?

The Britbloggers here - multiple times my visitors and known throughout the country. 6?

Next I went to another major UK blogger up with them in terms of stats and I'm not showing him as he came out the same as me and he'd be horrified - he's a huge UK blogger.

Then I went to some lesser bloggers and was shocked to see them also on 5. One of my best blogfriends from BP whom everyone visits on 0/10!! What? Or another major American blogger with "Comments 153" on one post alone - rated as 5/10. I shake my head.

Let alone people on 5 who really shouldn't be there while some others with top blogs are on 4 or 3.

How are the rankings calculated? I'm not actually arguing with the google machine as I'm sure it comes out as this score. Is it on photos or diversity of posts or what? If on photos, then someone showing a lot of totty would probably have a high ranking supposedly.

Or perhaps the bloggers who deal in politics don't get many google referrals due to the temporary nature of politics.

And while we're at it - a personal message for John Hirst:

Thanks, young man - you've made a grown man cry today. That's friendship for you. [Actually I didn't cry - bit of editorial licence there - but I did have a coffee!! Yes, that's the main thing.]

[presidency] just asking, that's all

Nothing really new except that it's interesting why she is continuing so tirelessly. I see two scenarios:

1. She just can't face that the numbers are against her and she's in debt;

2. She might be looking beyond an Obama defeat in November and contemplating running for the nomination in 2012.

Perhaps this latter is the real thing. On the McCain front, Ron Paul is planning to ambush McCain at the GOP convention and after the way he's been shut out by GOP and media alike, especially Fox, one wonders about it.

He seems like a man with nothing to lose and he's more than likely to tell some home truths. Much of what he's been saying is the truth though he shoots wide now and then - everyone knows but doesn't want to know.

You have to smile at what he wants - back to the gold standard, no Federal Reserve, small government and out of Iraq. On the first three - what chance against Morgan and the rest of them? The game's already locked up.

And his ambushing of the Nevada convention where they flooded the place with Paul supporters so that the GOP planned another convention somewhere else secret so that Paul supporters would not get to hear of it - talk about corruption in politics. Ha ha.

What a weird situation - if Paul was nominated he'd trounce Obama or Clinton, picking up disgruntled white democrats as well as real conservatives but the GOP would disown him and the Democrats would never forgive him.

Is he more than nuisance value now? Will people listen? Judge the two men for yourself in this head-to-head:



[indiana jones] latest could well be a dud


The latest offering in the relaunched Indiana Jones franchise may be a turkey:
A harshly critical review of Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull appeared on aintitcoolnews.com last week from a poster who identified himself as "ShogunMaster." Rife with details from the film, the review said, "This is the Indiana Movie that you were dreading." The problem, said ShogunMaster, was the lack of tension.

"During the whole of the movie there was not a single moment that I thought our hero Mr Jones … was in any sort of peril or even significant inconvenience. In most cases you were so many steps ahead of the characters that it was really just an arduous wait for them to get through it."

The man who posted as ShogunMaster said he is a cinema executive who saw the film at an exhibitors' screening.

I wonder if it is one adventure too far and immediately Arnie springs to mind in his third Terminator. While I personally liked that offering and thought that the John Connors and Kate Brewster characters were great and while Arnie held up his end and while Kristanna Lokan was a honey - still people didn't like it and it bombed.

When to stop? Perhaps we should ask Rod Stewart and Mick Jagger that.

Monday, May 12, 2008

[blog crawl] 2nd round for your delectation


Well, the last Blog Crawl seemed to go down pretty well so let's try it again.

The idea this time is to replace the initials with the actual words from the linked post. Let's try


Sometimes I like to msuh and sometimes I lrsomsr. To overcome this gfpbboc, sometimes I dboaes but I find tftdwywapmwi.

Fsrtacmu:

Better than all of these is to do absolutely nothing. Aycdwyltatbbymsp ...

Tnnttmftvi; idiaaps.


Answers

meander slowly up hills, love revamping some of my stalwart recipes, general feebleness punctuated by bouts of cruelty, drink beer on an empty stomach, total freedom to do whatever you want always paralyzes me with inaction, For some reason this cracks me up, Apparently you can do what you like to alleviate the boredom but you must stay prone... There's no need to thank me for this valuable information; I'm doing it as a public service.

[heraldry] quiz with a difference

Well, it had to come - I've been pfaffing round with this heraldry thing and you know know I do quizzes. So ... match the coat of arms and clues with the character. Simple. :)



Black and white is perhaps appropriate for a mathematician and all round clever clogs. He caused me enormous grief in geometry lessons at school and you can keep your calculus, thank you very much.







Another mathematician - though what a dolphin has to do with maths escapes me. Another all round clever clogs too but this time in the new world Boston boy.
















A close look at the crest and helm should give its owner away immediately. Perhaps he should have included a pair of crutches in the design.

















I really like this one and it's surely appropriate for the Rideau Hall incumbent.
















It's a moot point whether it'll be his father or him. Hope he's recovered from the skull injury.











Answers

Rene Descartes, Ben Franklin, Paul McCartney, Michaella Jean, Prince William

[new mac] using it, it watches me



Oh I just love this one about a burglary of an apartment in New York, including a Mac owned by an Apple employee:

While police in White Plains, N.Y., were coming up empty with their investigation, Duplaga learned that her computer was being used on the Internet and turned on the Back to My Mac feature installed on her Mac from another Mac, according to the report.

The feature allowed Duplaga to see immediately how the computer was being used at the time, as well as operate it remotely. Recalling that she had a camera installed on the computer, the fast-thinking Duplaga snapped images of one of the burglary suspects before he realized what was happening, according to the Times.

Duplaga showed the image to friends who recognized the suspect as someone who attended a party at the apartment.


The longer I use my Mac, admittedly a 17" Tiger, the better it gets. For goodness sake, it even self-repairs. Together with the camera feature, Little Snitch and other goodies, it is constantly updating and the system is so easy to use.

The downside is that one needs to switch off voice control when there's a lady in your arms because sometimes the sounds are picked up by the green flashing receptor and tend to turn on a film or dance music or whatever.

Once the computer even took a snap unasked for. Need to adjust the controls methinks.

[strange] the adventure of the high diving scissors

Just had a more than strange experience.

We all misplace things and under pressure of time the brain does weird things. You know it - you could have sworn you'd done this or that when you hadn't, as subsequent events proved.


An example


Years ago, in Melbourne, I went to buy a fishtank in a street called Chapel Street. Parking the Honda hatchback just down from the shop, I had my things on the passenger seat as the tray near the window is useless when the car is moving.

As I often did, I took the bag and packets and all, went round to the hatch and deposited them in the "boot" under the cover, closed the hatch and went into the shop. Found a tank I liked and went back out to the hatch to get my credit card.

It wasn't there - neither in the bag or in any other place in the boot. Dismantled the boot, took everything out, searched near the spare wheel and so on.

Nope.

OK - closed the hatch, went back to the front and looked everywhere on the passenger side, on my side, under the seat, down the sides etc.

Nothing ... and so on ... and so on ...

Tried to think out some of the stupid things I'd done in the past to see if they'd shed a light on it.

No.

Went back to the driver's seat to collapse for a few minutes, glanced over and there it was - sitting on the tray nearest the window, the one I never used.


Today


Well, this starts months ago.

Lost a pair of black handled scissors at that time - simply couldn't see them anywhere in the kitchen where they live and assumed I'd taken them through to the other room. Drew a blank and wasn't particularly concerned - I had another pair.

Time passed, the cleaning girls hadn't seemed to have found them and I'd forgotten about the incident. Twenty minutes ago now I was in the kitchen getting coffee when I heard a slide down the side of the benchtop unit, glanced across and was stopped in my tracks.

Now this gets complicated.

On the bench, at that end, I have an open mug with tablets in foil for headaches, stomach or whatever. Above is the end of the shelving unit on the wall.

Sitting bolt upright in the mug were the missing scissors.

Had the scissors been perched on the shelving unit, fallen off, hit the side, done a reverse pike and softly landed in the thin china mug, moving the tablets aside and creating a space to reside?

And why now? There'd been no disturbance, no vibration. Plus those scissors could not have been up on the shlving unit as they'd last been used for cutting paper.

Also, the sound I'd heard was something going down the side of the bench unit, not from above.

I've just looked now and something had indeed slipped down - a tablet packet which had been sitting 10cm from the mug, which itself hasn't moved from its place.

Hmmm. Now that is more than weird.

[blasphemy] disestablishment and oppression


Tiberius Gracchus has replied to this first post of mine which quoted Ginro who quoted Cranmer and he replied thusly:

Two questions James:

* what is blasphemy and when would you prosecute it?


** how can you be in favour of a law that makes it illegal to say various things- and still say you support free speech and freedom?

The short answers are:

* It would be prosecuted only if it was a state level case of another religion attempting to supplant the first - including Marxism. Co-existing, yes but not supplanting the country's traditional faith. In a country like Libya, for example, the same rule would apply to the other religion.

** This can't be given a short answer because it is the crux of the matter.

When it was pointed out, by commenters, what this bill really meant, your reply, Tiberius, was:

Apparently I was wrong - I apologise for not realising that we should all be living in a truly Christian state where blasphemy was punished by boring a hole through someone's tongue (as in seventeenth Century Protestant England) or burning them at the stake (sixteenth century Catholic England).

Is that a measured and reasoned answer, Tiberius, taking into account the historical context of those things?

As was pointed out by all from Ann Widdecombe to Cherie [in "Above and Beyond the Call of Duty"] - two ends of the political spectrum - this is not a religious but a political question and a lot rides on it.

Do you know of or have you heard of anyone prosecuted under the blasphemy act in the last 50 years? So it sits in there dormant. It was dormant legislation and would only ever be invoked under the circumstances in * above.

Ann Widdecombe MP

Brown's government does not do things on spec - it does them as part of a cynical agenda and the agenda, somewhere down the line, is going to involve coming up against the charge of blasphemy and treason - a double whammy. He knows this is an obstacle so the way must be cleared, with no comeback from conservatives.

The first stage of the draconian agenda is already in place - a Big Brother state which few now have any illusions is becoming a reality - and the next stage is to disestablish the Church.

Now in principle and in a perfect world, I agree that Christianity is a matter between the individual and his Maker in the true protestant manner.

However, the full implications of this bill, who is introducing it and for what long term purpose, must be opposed with vigour, even if one doesn't exactly hold with blasphemy laws as a concept, which one doesn't.

The entry point of this bill is Christianity because that's the sole area today where no one is going to raise a fuss, as almost no one has - it's now a safe move for Brown to disestablish a Church which successive archbishops have already termited, to the point where the message is largely irrelevant in most people's eyes.

But as Cherie says, it is the thin edge of the wedge and even with her political bent, it's as plain as day where this is going. Cherie says:

Gracchi, freedom of speech is one of those values with which I whole heartedly agree! But this bill means that I and my UK countrymen can't express our opinion about what we value, it is the thin end of the wedge!

Ignore the religion aspect and see what this really means for our country!
If you check out my blog you will see I don't go along with anything in your last paragraph ;-)

The CofE [of which I'm a non-practising member, being over in Russia] and Catholicism before it, has been Britain's bulwark against the encroachment of far more aggressive, far more coercive ideologies and you, Tiberius, as a historian, are either wilfully ignoring this or else you really don't see it, through some idealized notion of how free the new society is going to be.

It is a delusion, a blind. Historical precedent and current history show an entirely different scenario. As Gerald Howarth said:

[A] Jewish headmistress, whom I was sitting next to at a lunch ... said, “It is very important to our school that there continues to be an established Church, because it provides some protection to us in the practising of our religion.”

There are three choices in the move towards the New Feudalism:

1. Leave a largely anachronistic Church [in most people's eyes] in place as the established faith, with the effect that all other faiths are free to practise, as well as protecting the freedoms of speech and association - was this not so up to the Nu-Lab era?

This also leaves the country's "oneness" intact, its traditional base in place and its history therefore a continuum.


What this also does is prevent 2 and 3 below, by the simple expedient of leaving them technically treasonable.


2. Remove the blasphemy law which, as Ann Widdecombe, Gerald Howarth, Ginro, Cherie and many others have noted, now gives the government carte blanche to disestablish the church, thereby removing the last obstacle to the Big Brother state which the EU has already enacted and is waiting patiently in the wings to implement.


Make no mistake - the vacuum left by the removal of a largely shell like church would be filled very quickly by a different ideology - there would be no freedom of worship at all but the criminalization of the ordinary citizen [see Cherie's post] - that's where this thing is headed.


The EU monolith is socialist in conception and its modus operandi is compliance. It foresees collapse and war [read Miliband's comments on the EU army].


3. The only other force with the power to fill the vacuum is Islam and it is making huge inroads in the country. Rowan Williams' comments about Sharia Law are instructive.

Given that you only really have these three choices - the ideal of a happy, tolerant society not being one which the current state is going to allow to occur - which of the three variants would you choose?

Because if you sit back under the mistaken impression that saying good riddance to an established church you despise is going to lead you to an illumined nirvana, it's going to lead you to the exact opposite.

A state very, very un-British in nature.


David Miliband, Minister for the EU



Let the last words be your own, Tiberius - do you really want to groan under the yoke of a state such as in 2 or 3 above?

I appeal from Tiberius the Lion Feeder of Christians to Tiberius the Rational, who states:

Put simply in a totalitarian state like North Korea, you can't live a life based on Wensleydale and tea - you can't just decide to build a rocket to go to the moon (theoretically you could in the West) and you can't be madly, loveably, endeeringly and frustratingly often eccentric.

That's the reason its important to be free - its so Wallaces and Gromits continue to flourish in our society.

[cultures meet] heartstopping moment


Really fascinating little piece on a Californian finding himself in the Emirates and asked two simple questions in the street - where are you from and what is your religion.

Gulp. My heart was in my mouth. Read it here.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

[thought for the day] sunday evening


"In order to keep a true perspective of one’s importance, everyone should have a dog that will worship him and a cat that will ignore him."

[Dereke Bruce]

[country quiz] five more to send you mental



1. More women than men are currently enrolled in the universities, it's slightly more than twice the size of Oregon, accepting a second serving is one of the best ways to show appreciation to the cook, was under Muslim domination from 711 to the mid 11th century, introduced the batata.

2. The country's name means "big village", the head of the government was born in Port-au-Prince and worked with shelters for battered women, there was a controversy in 2005 over a visit to one of its sikh gurdwaras, it's third language is Chinese.

3. It's largest city has dengue fever, it has four time zones, a lawless tri-border area, the world largest hydroelectric power plant by energy generation, high mortality, the German speakers are largely the Hunsrückisch, has only 150 000 Jews but the largest Japanese population outside Japan.

4. Average area of home 97.6 sq. m, 74 times smaller than the USA, its top university once had rules that specifically forbade students from bringing bows and arrows to class. Appearing in the shape of horses, mules, or dogs, the Gytrash haunt solitary ways and lead people astray in the north of the country.

5. Not strictly a country, it once formed a part of Raetia. In 1806 it threw off its feudal lord, it has one of the world's highest standards of living, in 2007 Dr. Bruce S. Allen and Mr. Leodis C. Matthews were appointed its first two consuls and it is a double landlocked country.


Answers

Spain, Canada, Brazil, England, Liechtenstein