May, 2010 archive
Collateral Damage 0
Always a Day Late and a Dollar Short 0
One evening, back when I was a road warrior and stuck in a hotel with a colleague, my colleague said, “Wow!” and pointed out the window towards another wing of the hotel.
Just as she turned away from the window.
The Seal Is Un-Broken (Updated) 0
No more CSA Virginia State Seal.
Kook-kook-a-choo.
Addendum, Later that Same Evening:
Field comments. He has not heard about the reversal yet, but his post is worth a visit. A nugget:
Spill Here, Spill Now 2
Scientific Blogging, where I found this picture, has links for keeping up with the damage.
As Brendan points out, “gusher” would be a more accurate description than “spill” in this case.
Spidey Sense 0
Webbed wonder wraps up would-be wastrel:
The 45-year-old owner of the Adelaide Comic Centre, who was dressed as Spider-Man, clocked a customer “behaving suspiciously” at the back of the shop. So he sprang – or rather loped – into action.
Details and video at the link.
Water Main Down 1
The water main break in Boston is big news.
Indeed, calling it a “water main” seems an understatement; it was the primary aqueduct brining water to much of the Boston metropolitan area. The back-up water supply is not treated sufficiently to be drinkable, so residents must boil water for cooking and drinking.
They do not have to take their buckets and dip water out of Boston Harbor–which might well dissolve the average bucket–or lug it from a well to the house the way my Granddaddy did for many years.
Adrian Walker, whose own tap water was affected, suggests that the media reaction may have been overstated (emphasis added):
But has panic become the new normal? A ferocious survival instinct was on display this weekend, even though this isn’t really a threat to survival. The psychology was familiar to anyone who watched the city shut down a few months ago for a blizzard that never came. It’s as though the capacity for distinguishing between a problem and a crisis has gone away.
He has a point. Panicking does not solve problems; it destroys thought and prevents solutions.
Demagoguing politicians and commentators prefer the language of panic–bombs! invasion! evil-doers! massive hordes! communist socialist fascism! brown people!–to create fear, leading to panic, leading to followers, leading to power.
Panic launches columns and speeches and rants that we’re not taking this, that, or the other seriously enough.
(We see this across the spectrum of American thought, but I believe, based on my own experience following news, that this tendency leans right.*)
Enough theses, thoses, and the others paralyzes action through panic overload.
I used to have a boss for whom the A Number One Priority was always the last executive to call him on the telly fone. He taught me this:
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When everything is a priority, you have no priorities.
Fortunately, the folks working to patch the hole decided their job was not to panic, but to solve a problem.
The hole is patched and water may start flowing again in as little as two more days.
___________________
*Daily Kos–it is linked on the sidebar–to pick a well-know left-leaning forum, has its share of “end-of-the-world” diaries that appear via its right sidebar. Note that they are posted by members–anyone can register and post there until and unless they get banned for violating the rules of the site–not by the Front Pagers.
Nevertheless, the left has nothing to compare in numbers, vehemence, or audience to Rush Limbaugh or Cal Thomas or Charles Krauthammer and the like for sheer mouth-foaming the-end-of-the-world-is-nigh-ism.
The Impossible Dream 0
A reporter at the local rag, in a spirit of experimentation, tries to go 24 hours without using anything made in China. Along the way, she highlights the intertwined networking of a globalized economy.
A nugget:
The hair dryer is suspect, as is my hairbrush, since the United States imported $8 billion worth of Chinese plastics in 2009, but I cannot go to work with wet hair. My toothbrush says “Assembled in America from U.S. and international components.” How many countries does it take to make a toothbrush?
Public Discourse . . . 1
. . . has gone right into the crapper.
Karen D’Souza discusses this in the San Jose Mercury-News. A nugget:
My older son was horrified when I informed him of the history of the term “sucks.”
It never occurred to him.
Critical linguistic analysis does not seem to be a trait of the young. (I’m getting old; he’s a Captain in the Army and not young any more. I’m even more not younger.)
He still didn’t stop saying it, though.
Upgrading Ubuntu Linux 2
I upgraded the Ubuntu Linux OS on my laptop to the newest Ubuntu release this weekend. Except for a hiccup from my ISP, it was flawless.
Read more at Geekazine.
In a world without walls, who needs Windows?
If You’re Brown, You’re Going Down 0
Raw Story:
Follow the links and read the posts. Then come back and claim that racial and ethic bigotry is not involved. Then try to sell me that big old bridge between Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Remember, I’m a Southern Boy. I know the code.
Spill Here, Spill Now 0
The BP off shore drilling platform operated by Deepwater Horizons had a history of mistakes, spills, and accidents.
We are not surprised that Halliburton was involved.
Bacon’s Rebellion recounts the myths of off-shore drilling.
Indeed, these could be the myths of privatization of legitimate governmental functions.
Follow the link for a full explication:
- Myth One: High technology will save us.
- Myth Two: For-profit companies always operate for the public good.
- Myth Three: You always know who works for you.
- Myth Four: If a company says it is green, believe it.
Related: In 1999, U.S. report found failure of offshore rigs’ blowout preventers common.
Blowout prevention costs money. Money cuts into profits. Profits > Public Good. Q. E. D.
Cuccinelli Continues His Assault on the Present 0
Tom Levenson reports about Cuccinelli’s attack on science. A nugget:
The reason is, or should be obvious: once you start telling folks which answers are acceptable and which are not, you’ve just told those scientists under your power that they can’t think without thinking first whether those thoughts are acceptable.
And another thing: Cuccinelli may think he’s just stuffing climate change back in a box where it belongs. He may actually hope that hounding Mann may scare others off from daring to probe temperature records, or increasingly detailed global models or what have you.
He probably has, in fact, at least in VA. As noted above why would any atmospheric scientist, any geologist any planetary scientist whatsoever want to risk the career trashing experience of a full-on state-sponsored attack on your work, your records, your colleagues and students — just the time, years perhaps, lost to demonstrating to the political officer the orthodoxy of your views would be intolerable.
Spill Here, Spill Now 0
Bloomberg reports on the fishing industry in Louisiana as it drowns in oil:
“If a guy can’t go fishing, and a guy can’t go crabbing and a guy can’t go get oysters, what good is the fuel?” he asked. “If they shut you down for four, five, maybe 10 years, what are you supposed to do in the meantime?”
White Fright 0
The Bradblog looks at the demographics of states that keep trying to restrict women’s right to abortions.
The findings are interesting. The writer concludes that it’s not about the babies, it’s about white babies.
I’m not sure I buy it, but, for folks who follow this issue, it makes fascinating readings.
QOTD 0
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from the Quotemaster.
If you board the wrong train, it’s no use running along the corridor in the other direction.
Spill Here, Spill Now 0
Blue Ridge Data has some data on off-shore oil spills through 2007.
Read it and weep.
Also, what Digby said.
My Cable Provider Is Less Than Desirable 0
Last night, I was upgrading my laptop from Ubuntu Karmic Koala to Lucid Lynx (don’t blame me for the names–blame Mark Shuttleworth).
After two hours, with 11 minutes to go in the download, the cable connection rolled over and played dead. I had to power down the router (that’s fancy talk for pull the power plug out), then power down the modem, reconnect the modem and wait for it to come back to life, then reconnect the router.
Fortunately for me, the download picked up where it left off.
This is not an isolated event.
My connection frequently rolls over and plays dead and I have to go through the disconnect-reconnect routine when I’m doing big downloads.
I do not do BitTorrent. I don’t even like BitTorrent.
I do not download music and movie files from illicit sites and I observe copyright, but I occasionally do big downloads–big legal downloads of free and open source Linux distributions, software upgrades, newsgroup posts, and the like. And this outfit regularly fails in the middle of them requiring me to disconnect-reconnect or, at worst, start all over and hope to get lucky.
It’s not me. I’ve been doing this stuff too long.
In five years of using Comcast, I did not encounter the problems I have encountered in five months of using this outfit.
My ISP advertises itself as “Your friend in the digital world.”
Yeah.
Right.