June, 2012 archive
iProfiling 4
From El Reg, which notes that, whatever her ancestry and linguistic skills, the customer is American. Follow the link for the story accompanying the video.
“I just can’t sell this to you. Our countries have such bad relations,” 19-year-old Sahar Sabet was told after she tried to buy an iPad in her local Apple Store. She had been talking with her uncle in Farsi.
As my mother would have siad, just iGnorance, pure and simple iGnorance.
Facebook Frolics, Fuicide Dept. 0
Science 2.0 considers the signs of the fail:
. . . Grievances triggered by Facebook’s culture include obsession with appearance and acceptance of sexually provocative behavior; increased negative self esteem, vulnerability to bullying, depression caused by jealousy and comparing one’s life to peers and inability to project one’s true self.
In other words, the same problems teens have had for thousands of years, but now we can blame social media.
Follow the link to find out what the heck “fuicide” is.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
A polite bedside manner is necessary:
Willis had surgery on his foot and his nurse stopped by to change his bandages.
“She picked her medical bag up and then we heard a little popping noise,” Willis said. “She turned and told me she had been shot. She started to fall and I caught her. Then I got a handful of gauze and put it on her.”
This was in a rural area where target practice is common.
Folks, even a .22 short will carry for over a mile. Bullets are dumb, so shooters need to be smart.
Too many of them are dumber than the damn bullets.
Apple Patent Suit Declared iSmog 0
First, a judge gave Oracle their walking papers, and now, this:
The ruling came from Judge Richard Posner in Chicago federal court. He dismissed the litigation between Apple and Motorola Mobility with prejudice, meaning it can’t be refiled.
Judges seem to be educating themselves to see through the lawyerly smokescreen about software patents.
Software patents are ludicrous, because they are attempts to patent ideas–attempts to keep other persons from carrying out that idea in a better way. Suppose some dude in the 1880’s had patented the concept of powered heavier-than-air flight and threatened to sue the Wright brothers when they finally got it–er–wrignt?
We would never have had the opportunity to sit in metal tubes for hours at a time without air conditioning while waiting for those “mechanical difficulties” to be remedied.
What can be copyrighted and licensed is software code, which is a work product, the fruition of an idea.
Even a Forbes columnist thinks they are evil.
Putting the Heat on Thunder 0
I don’t have much use for professional basketball or hockey on television. (Frankly, these days, I don’t have much use for any pro sport that doesn’t involve bats and diamonds).
A generation ago, when I lived in the Washington area, back in the days of Elvin Hayes and Wes Unseld, I attended some Bullets (now the Wizards) and Capitals games at Cap Centre and quite enjoyed seeing them live, but the games just move too fast to fit in a box.
Part of the pleasure of watching the Bullets was that they were a team, not a superstar with an entourage of lackeys on the court.
Nevertheless, I rather enjoyed seeing the Le Bron James haters get their comeuppance–not because I’m a big fan of James, but because the hatin’ was getting tiresome after Lo! these many years.
Now comes Sam Sommers to point out that, not only was the hatin’ getting tiresome, but it was also based on a simple, simplistic, simple-minded interpretation of events:
But as sports fans, as in so many other walks of like, we gravitate toward the simple narrative in thinking about other people. Most sports fans wanted LeBron to stay in Ohio and try to bring his hometown team a championship. He made a different choice, and when he did so in notoriously poor and artless form, his die as villain was cast.
“Suffer the Children” Leads to “Render unto Caesar” 0
The jury is back in the should-have-been-a-RICO trial in Philadelphia. At least one person can no longer hide behind his cassock.
Msgr. William J. Lynn, found guilty on one count of child endangerment, is the first church official nationwide to be convicted for enabling or covering up clergy-sex abuse. He faces up to seven years in prison.
He was found not guilty on two other counts and the jury deadlocked on his co-defendant.
Plus Ca Change 0
One hundred years ago, robber barons ruled Montana:
. . . oligarchs were making their desires known.
A massive corporation controlled legislators and judges, and a commentator observed that “local folks now found themselves locked in the grip of a corporation controlled from Wall Street and insensitive to their concerns.”
An expert testified before the U.S. Senate about “large sums of money that have been expended” on campaigns and how “many people have become so indifferent to voting.”
Dan Morain considers how the Citizens Benighted ruling is greasing the skids accelerating the dominance of our modern robber barons. Follow the link to see how the past is repeating itself.
Lies and Lying Liars 0
At the Guardian, Michael Cohen considers Mitt the Flip’s exceptional mendacity, something in a class by itself, and why reporters don’t call it out more frequently and emphatically:
Now, in general, those of us in the pundit class are really not supposed to accuse politicians of lying – they mislead, they embellish, they mischaracterize, etc. Indeed, there is natural tendency for nominally objective reporters, in particular, to stay away from loaded terms such as lying. Which is precisely why Romney’s repeated lies are so effective. In fact, lying is really the only appropriate word to use here, because, well, Romney lies a lot. But that’s a criticism you’re only likely to hear from partisans.
(Examples of Mitt mendacity at the link.)
The Commander Guy explains why Republicans lap this stuff up:
TSA Security Theatre 0
Turnabout ist verboten.
Fast and Fabricated 0
Excerpt:
Very clearly, Obama started this . . . in 2006, when he secretly hypnotized George W. Bush.
Via Raw Story.
Congress Issa Contemptible 0
The Booman sums up the performance.
The chances had to be about zero. They started accusing Holder of being a racist before he got his parking assignment at the DOJ. Go to Google and type in “Eric Holder racist” and you get 2,470,000 results. Type in “George Wallace racist” and you get 400,000.
The Southern Strategy is alive and well growing.
The Rich Are Different from You and Me 0
PoliticalProf:
Median US income, 2011: $51,000.
Tax deductions Anne Romney took in 2011 for care and upkeep of her horse, Rafalca, who is now going to the Olympics in dressage: $77,000.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
(snip)
The four-week moving average increased to 386,250, the highest since the week ended Dec. 3, from 382,750.
Last week included the 12th of the month, which coincides with the period the Labor Department uses in its survey of employers to calculate monthly payroll growth. The four-week average for the May survey week was about 10,000 lower, indicating little progress this month. The employment report for June will be released on July 6.
Bloomberg thinks that the big news is that the decrease was less than their “experts” expected.
They left out the part about their experts almost always being wrong–sometimes high, sometimes low, but almost always wrong.
