The debate spawned a torrent in the Twitterverse. Of the best,(CNN's 25 Funniest Tweets) these were the ones I thought memorable:
Phil Plait -- After reading all the variations of the debate drinking games, I have decided to simply remove my liver and set it on fire.
Tara Ariano
-- Frankly, neither candidate is working hard enough to land the
immigrant feminist small business owner non-voting socialist vote.
Fired Big Bird -- If you don't vote Obama, Mitt Romney is going to be eating me by the end of November.
Dave Weigel -- This is like watching a tax law professor debate an investment advice infomercial host
A members of a listserv to which I was added through no fault of my own passed along two famous quotes about economics, both of which were unknown to me:
Thomas Sowell:
"The first lesson of economics is
scarcity. There is never enough of anything to satisfy everyone who
wants it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson
of economics. "
From Frans de Waals' book, "Chimpanzee Politics" :
"...Harold Laswell's famous definition of politics as a societal process determining 'who gets what, when, and how'..."
I finally got around to reading the September 3, 2009 edition of the New York Times. It had been yellowing in the back seat of my car. I figured it was mellowed enough.
It was an interesting read: SEC investigation of its own failures to find Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme, an overview of Ted Kennedy's posthumously published autobiography, the murderous bank robbery in Iraq by security forces, and two bits that caught my eye:
1) An announcement of BP's discovery of huge oil deposits in the Gulf of Mexico with the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. Seven months later BP, the rig, and teh word "disaster" would be linked in the news.
2) This quote from Eric Hoffer, the self-taught "stevedore philosopher": "Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves." It is in much the same vein as the atheist claim that atheists are acting on a higher moral level because they are doing good by choice and not be fear of divine retribution.
3) Although not as memorable as the Hoffer quote, there was a note in the financial section that Freedom Communications, founded by the staunch Libertarian, R. C. Hoiles, was filing for bankruptcy. For a firm which had as its founding principle the sanctity of private contracts, bankruptcy protection should have been an anathema. The article points out that debtors who charged a higher rate for understood that their higher rate was predicted on greater risk and a place further back in the repayment queue.
I was listening to WNYC's New Sounds program tonight. The most accurate way to describe the sounds is this: voices straining to imitate fire engines screeching over a string quartet.
Jeez, I could just imagine what junk the host had to listen to to have selected the awful stuff he was playing. The song came to an end to applause. What I'd been listening to was not music chosen by the host, but a live performance by Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble along with the Todd Reynolds
Quartet from the record release party for Monk’s latest album, “Songs of
Ascension”.
Right away I thought of a Jules Pfeiffer cartoon in the Village Voice which showed a prototypical 50's early 60's era beat type identifying the film everyone walked out on as a test.
Someone somewhere will claim some wretched excess as art. Between songs the host, John Schaefer said, "You explore the boundary between noise and music." I think she's gone over to the dark side.
I left a post on the page indicating that I'd never heard her music before, but midway through the first piece the Garcia effect kicked in. (I thought that was the most succinct and civil way of saying that I'd never voluntarily listen to her music again.)
Put another way, I'm too old to waste my time for this. When I was younger I watched Antonioni's "Red Desert" twice because I couldn't believe that it was so bad on the first viewing. It was.
I don't intend to repeat the error with Monk. Time has become too valuable.
In a Radiolab (http://www.radiolab.org/2007/jun/04/) broadcast on zoos the term "dendritic arbor" was used to describe the growth of dendrites after a monkey was transferred to a more enriched environment.
My immediate thought was to formulate a sentence using the term. After a few attempts, perhaps influenced by having read an article about hallucinogenic mushrooms leading to a gruesome murder I settled for "Drugs were implicated in the pruning of his dendritic trees." Not bad, but something involving topiary would have been better, e.g., "His dendritic trees look like topiary."
I came across a piece of paper on which I'd written:
Not murder in the first
Not murder in the second or third
That woman brought down her man
as a hunter brings down a bird
It sounds like a lyric for Frankie and Johnny/Albert. I suspect it came from a performance on Prairie Home Companion.
A web search didn't get any useable hits in 4 pages. It did turn up a link to Raymond Hamilton, an associate of Bonnie and Clyde in a Google book, "Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde". The book contained this quote:
Americans have fought one war to win their independence and another to preserve the Union. Now they face a new war, between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess. " ~ former president Theodore Roosevelt in 1910
Nice quote, but doesn't seem so applicable to today's situation.
Under the influence of hallucinogenic mushrooms, mixed martial arts fighter Jarrod Wyatt of Crescent City, California ripped out the heart and tongue of his sparring partner. The story (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48953331/#) and the accompanying comments just left me numb. According to Wyatt the two believe they were in "a struggle between God and the devil".
On Thurday, September 6, 2012
Wyatt agreed to plead guilty before his trial to spare all (his family, his victim's family) from reliving the events. He'll be serving 50 years to life.
What an obvious waste. My father would comment, "This was so unnecessary." in response to avoidable mishaps. The comment was suitable for events large and small. It's applicable here. All they needed to do was not take the mushrooms.
Perhaps it is a curious facet of law that Del Norte County District Attorney Jon Alexander "said it was
important to him that Wyatt admitted to killing Powell, and that it was a
premeditated murder that wasn't the result of drinking psychedelic
mushroom tea".
In his 50th anniversary appreciation of Anthony Burgess's Clockwork Orange in the New York Times Book Review (9/1/2012), Martin Amis used the word, recrudescence, an unfamiliar term. I doubt that I'd ever seen it before. the definition is simple enough:
breaking out afresh or into renewed activity; revival or reappearance in active existence.
Sounds like a term which could be trundled out to describe the dieting habits of the American public, but Amis used the term in reference to self-punitive guilt.
The days are lyrically nice. It's early spring, girls are in their summer dresses (more on this in a second), and the weather is delightful warm, sunny with a slight breeze. The fair skinned are slathering themselves with sun block. Those in pursuit of a tan are well on their way. The only fly in the ointment is civilization's implosion in the aftermath of the upcoming environmental collapse - nothing new here.
Girls in their summer dresses: many years ago I found myself staring at a young woman in my chem lab section. I could not tear my eyes away from her. It was embarrassing. I'd been teaching the section for about 10 weeks, but on that spring morning I was staring at her. Why? After a few minutes the realization hit me and I started laughed out loud: She was the first female student I'd seen in a dress in seven months. For at least 8 months every female student had worn slacks or jeans.
Jeff Greenfield's analysis of Paul Ryan's acceptance speech on Yahoo! Finance was particularly disappointing. Greenfield pointed out several errors/lies/misrepresentations in the speech and then went on to explain that the Republican/Conservative faithful can dismiss the particulars because they'll attribute the charge to a tainted source, their traditional whipping boy, "liberal media".
That this is now accepted, that demonstrable facts can be dismissed because one doesn't like the source of the information bodes ill for this country. (Is it ironic that Sally Kohn's article on Fox News, Paul Ryan’s speech in 3 words boiled it down to this: Dazzling, Deceiving, and Distracting.)
Alluding to Nazis is now a marker of the point where a debate/discussion goes off the rails. However in this case, my immediate thought was "The Big Lie", perfected by Paul Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda under Hitler. I'm not drawing a parallel between Ryan and Goebbels, but the phenomenon of repeating a falsehood loudly and persistently that others will repeat the statement as given truth.
As for the particulars in Ryan's speech:
The claims that Obamacare cuts $716 billion of benefits from Medicare when in fact the cuts are to payments to hospitals, not benefits.
Ryan accused Obama of promising to keep a GM plant open for "hundreds of years" after he was
elected, only to have it closed in the first year. In fact, GM closed the plant before Obama even took office.
Boston Magazine had a sobering article about 38 Studio, the video game company started by Curt Schilling, the baseball player. In a nutshell, the never-say-die, positive thinking which served him so well in sports doomed his company.
I passed the link to the prof who teaches the entrepreneurship course. It might be required reading for sports stars.
The point is made that fame and expertise in one field does not presage business ability. The article made clear that those in the trenches didn't now how dire things were until checks started bouncing. In one of the tougher ramifications, one employee found himself with two mortgages, a pregnant wife, and no income. (He was hired with the understanding that a firm hired by 38 Studios would arrange for the sale of his house. When 38 Studios stopped paying the firm, the mortgage then became the employee's responsibility.)
All very sad.
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/2012/07/38-studios-end-game/
In brief (http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/07/26/12970220-woman-charged-with-cashing-mummified-friends-checks?lite):
A 72-year-old Michigan woman [ Linda Lou Chase] who authorities say kept the body of her
longtime companion [Charles Zigler] in her house for more than 18 months after he died is
being charged with cashing more than $28,000 worth of his benefit
checks
Now the really interesting thing about the case is that she didn't do anything other than cover the body. Cashing the checks was illegal, but:
Most of Michigan’s current laws concerning bodies deal with
inappropriate disposition by a licensed mortician or removal to
interfere with a criminal investigation.
“She literally did not
move the body – so moving a body before the medical examiner could
examine it doesn’t apply,” [chief assistant prosecutor] Blumer said.
Gotta love the comments. "50 Shades of Grey", the current erotic bodice ripper favorite, has terrific comments on Amazon:
Identifying himself as "a male senior citizen, a semi-retired
gynecologist whose customary literary fare is spy novels and military
techno-thrillers", david shobin/thatch pond corp wrote, "At my age, my arthritis flared up just reading about Ana's sexual
gymnastics. And for some reason, I kept thinking about her contracting
genital warts."
"DS from LA" used the Kindle search function, to tabulate the repetitive physical references to eyes rolling (41), lip biting (35), lips "quirking up" (16 and, no I don't know what it means either), "cocks
his head to one side" (17), etc.
edenae pointed out that when " characters speak to each other they have to remind themselves who they
are talking to 'Hello Mrs. Steele', 'How was your day Mr. Grey', 'It was
fine Anastasia', 'Oh good, mine was great Christian.'"
Elly Abs had some quibbles: "EL James has very limited vocabulary and frankly if a man screamed my
name every time he reached climax i would have to slap him into next Tuesday."
DocKaren "dockaren" : "The best thing to come of this book are the multiple cleverly written
reviews posted here that describe how repellant this book is much more
eloquently than I could ever hope to."
There was an article about Lindsay Lohan getting a new half-sibling because her father's girl friend, Kate Major was pregnant. Who is Kate Major?
You may know who Ms Major is, but I'm clueless. Celebrity magazines at the supermarket trace the amorous exploits of bold faced names I don't recognize. It doesn't make a real difference, but I usually feel that there are two stories: the one which is written and the one about the implications of the story.
For example, the latest biggest Hollywood bust up between Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes has fascinating legal plotting behind it. Ms Holmes ability to get sole custody of the child will have matrimonial lawyers doubler checking the custody arrangement clauses in their prenups.
Anyway, about Ms Major: a web search found this mug shot (http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/gallery/kate-major-mugshot/):
Kate Major's mugshot from early 2012. Not to be confused with her other recent efforts.
It made me wonder if fans argue about which mugshot made the object of their obsession look the most or least wasted. "Oh yeah, the DWI mug shot in Santa Monica was so much better than the DUI in Maryland."
It reminded me of an article in the local college paper from a student who stated that the best way for her to control her drinking was to think of her mother's reaction to her mug shot.
Yesterday, Sunday July 1st, marked the first American appearance of Endeavour the prequel to the popular Inspector Morse series. The episode had a well turned praise which started as an insult: One of the secondary characters says to Morse, "Poor old Morse. You were never Oxford material. Too bloody decent by half." (http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/endeavour-morse)
A thought about forensics occurred to me. A death appears to be a suicide because of the powder marks on the skull, but nothing was said about gunshot residues on the deceased hand. Is this classic misdirection?
This past week Doonesbury has been concerned with Alex's Wedding to Toggle. Sunday's strip in which Mike is stunned to see his little girl in her bridal dress brought an outpouring of posts from men recounting their own emotions on seeing their own daughters marry.
In follow up strips BD tries to explain the rules of marriage to Leo. It brought this response from L. Rodriguez | Guaynabo | Puerto Rico | June 18, 2012:
RULES
Okay, Leo, here you have the Three Main Rules
of Marriage, in a nutshell:
Men always have the last word in a
discussion, as long as they say "Yes, dear." (My cousin uses the same line: "I never have any trouble with my women [his wife and daughter]. I just look them in the eye and say, "Yes, dear." Works every time.")
When men demand hot
water, they get hot water. Doing the dishes otherwise is not reasonable.
No matter what, women always end up kneeling before men. And when
they are kneeling, you will hear them say "Get out from under the bed!".
(Sigh.)
Best of luck.
A few days later this post:
POOF!
CB's Grandma | Baltimore, MD | June 21, 2012
Today's strip is so true. You see a little girl pretending to be a bride and then poof! She is one. One second she's playing with a doll, and then poof! It's not a toy, it's your grandchild.
Reminded me of a Benny Anderson poem on Prairie Home Companion.
The free-float method used the total market value of the available stock to calculate the value. The Portuguese market has fallen 70% since 2007, but, still, to have a single American supermarket company worth more than the entire Portuguese stock market is simply stunning.
A former coworker asked me for an alternative to the stock market. He was certain that the American economy was going to tank regardless of who wins the election. How the bleep do I know? There are corporate bonds, annuities, and other strange things like investing in paying cash for lottery annuities. (As the words left my mouth I remembered that Scott Rothstein's Ponzi scheme (and his 50 year sentence) was based on paying cash to people who'd won large malpractice awards.)
This coming on the heels of news reports of the decline in middle class wealth makes me want to pack MREs, flashlights, extra batteries, and toilet paper and head for a cave.
As part of a database project I thought I'd demonstrate how entering a fake item in the ITEM table would automatically enable the new item to appear with its image when the user tried to place an order.
My fake item was named "xxx". Can you see where this is going?
I'll chalk it up to being tired. I searched for "XXX" hoping to see something like the Super Bowl XXX logo,
although I imagined silver X's on a blue background.
What I got was thumbnail images of women who thought it was clothing optional day. Nice under other circumstances, but definitely not what I wanted at the time. I spent another fruitless minute looking for a logo for "yyy" or "zzz".
In the end, I made my own XXX image at a make-your-own-logo site:
It's nothing to write home about, but it served the purpose which was to figure out in code how the image should be manipulated to fit the online form.
The May 31st edition of the NY Times had a short article by Ry Cooder about Doc Watson in which Cooder described the first time he heard Doc Watson. Watson, Clarence Ashley, Fred Price, and Clint Howard sang "Daniel Prayed" on the UCLA campus.
Cooder remembered thinking, "these men know something about music I'll never know, even if I practice and study all my life. You have to be born into that."
For myself, I remember one memorable moment of a Doc Watson concert. (I've forgotten the guitarists Doc referred to, but you'll see it doesn't matter.) Doc said, "I always like the way the Johnson brothers played. Earl Johnson played like this." Doc played a little. "And Ray, he played like this." Doc played a little more. "And together they sounded like this."
It sounded nice. Then jaws dropped when we realized that what sounded like two guitars was Doc on a single guitar. Most of us laughed and applauded. The poor folkies were probably wondering if they should head off to the bathrooms to cut their wrists right then and there or wait until after the concert because it was at that moment that they realized that they would never, ever, be that good.
He told a joke about a Quaker farmer who owned a cow which would swat him with it's tail and try to kick him or overturn the milk pail. Imitating the farmer patting the cow on the head, Doc said, "I will not beat thee, but in the morning I will sell thee to a Baptist."
I cherish the memory of that concert because I believe it was the first time I heard him sing "Otto Wood the Bandit". I was taken with the way he sang Otto stressing both syllables as"Ot-tow" instead of "Otoh". (I was unaware that that was the way the song was originally sung. See for example The Carolina Buddies recording at http://www.oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-9/9-6/otto-wood.html.)
If you want to get some measure of the man and why he was so revered listen to Terry Gross's 1988 Fresh Air interview with Doc Watson. The interview proceeds as one might expect when interviewing an unassuming legend until Terry respectfully asked him about the death of his son Merle. With the honesty that marked the man, he recounted that he was so devastated that he didn't want to play anymore. If he hadn't been persuaded to keep playing he might have stopped. His wife had stopped singing, being unable to deal with Merle's death. A very moving interview.
“There was a feeling… that Doc was sort of like a spectacular natural feature
of the landscape; inevitable, fully formed, iconic. He seemed ageless,
and his so-called disability and spectacular transcendence of that along
with his folksy manner made him a kind of mythic character, sort of a
household god.”
I can only add that those who never had the opportunity to see him in person have missed something memorable.
I picked up some Jo Nexbø paperbacks at a garage sale on the morning of the computer science final two weeks ago. "Headhunters" has yielded two quotes in the first 50 pages:
"The lease had been signed, the extensive decoration work was under way and our financial ruin secured." (p 34)
"An artist who maintains that he has been misunderstood is almost always a bad artist who, I'm afraid to say this, has been understood." (p 41)
Asasellobulgakov made this comment on 5/27/2012 to a YouTube video of Andres Segovia (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9efHwnFAkuA) "Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.
I like it!
WWJD = "Who Wants Jelly Donuts/Jack Daniels"
Zombies hate fast food.
A comment on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReW9uUYm-DA, John Fahey - Poor Boys Long Way From Home:
"I'll give you a little tip about the blues, folks: it's not enough to
know which notes to play. You need to know why they need to be played"
- George Carlin
cicerone - a person who conducts and informs sightseers (C18: from Italian: antiquarian scholar, guide, after Cicero, alluding to the eloquence and erudition of these men)
Newsday, the Long Island paper carried a story about a contest over child support payments between Christie Brinkley and her former husband, Peter Cook.
At one point in the hallway, Brinkley responded to a remark made by
Cook's new wife, Suzanne, by putting her hand on her shoulder and
telling her, "When you find out he's been cheating on you, I'll be here
for you.
"You need to get a new line," Suzanne Cook told Brinkley."
I've imagined hypothetical catty exchanges between a hypothetical former significant and current other who refuses to rise to the bait:
Former: "By the time we broke up he wasn't much in bed."
Current: "Maybe he's taken lessons."
Former: "After we broke up I learned how good lovemaking could be."
Henry Blodget's article on Yahoo Finance was direct and to the point: "JPMORGAN PROVES IT: Wall Street Is Just Kids Playing With Dynamite".
The story was a reaction to the announcement of a $2 billion trading loss from JP Morgan-Chase. It is well worth a read/listen. (For a Reuters review see, "London Whale took big bets below the surface".)
The part of Blogett's story that will twist people's knickers is the statement that people who do damage do so without endangering their own compensation. The expectation that someone with a multi-million dollar compensation who screws up will lose their job and then get a position at a hedge fund with better compensation.
The term "London Whale" has been attached to this announcement because Bruno Iksil, the trader at the center of the furor, acquired that nickname because of the size of his trading positions. It would be reasonable to expect that working for a bank the size of JPMorgan-Chase that their trades would be larger than average. Iksil had 3 years of success prior to this. I haven't seen a story to determine whether JPMorgan actually came out ahead even with the $2 billion loss.
The big deal apparently is that the money which was used for the trading was money which was not supposed to be used for hedging. Ooops. Of course the weasel factor looms large as to whether the money in question was for insurance or a hedge. The former would have been OK. The later a no-no.
Masterpiece Mystery's revised updated Hound of the Baskervilles is to be avoided
That may be old thinking. In this day and age, with easy access to video editing tools someone is sure to put all the good bits together (Sherlock elucidating his prodigious powers of reasoning) to reduce the wretched hour and a half to a thoroughly enjoyable couple of minutes.
There was a wealth of confusing, blurry camera work in the manner of Blair Witch Project. (I'm guessing actually. I never saw the film.) Whereas car chases could be relied upon to fill out a TV show's time slot, this episode used blurry sequences.
Perhaps I was bothered by the ease with witch Sherlock and Watson cold so blithely waltz into a super secret super secure facility with Mycroft's security card. (Mycroft is Sherlock's smarter brother.)
Now folks, in the age of cell phones please explain how Sherlock, using his brother's All Access swipe card would not have a picture. A brief glance at the face on the card would certainly arouse some suspicion. I should have switched channels, but I decided to give it a chance. Wrong decision.
Do you think the card Sherlock swiped "some time ago" would still be valid? One would think that after Philby, Burgess and MacLean (and that scum, Anthony Blunt ) the Brits would have stepped up their security. At the very least the cards would expire periodically.
Yes I know one shouldn't take these things seriously, but I'm offended by such stupidity.
Corey Booker, mayor of Newark, NJ rushed into a burning building to rescue a neighbor's daughter. Fire officials cautioned that such heroics can often end badly. Here's a link to a CBS News story. (The story contains a typo, "here" instead of "her":
The WNYC news story quoted Corey Booker as saying, "I was chiseled, now I just jiggle." ("When chiseled turns to jiggles" might make good copy in a come-on for a health club. It might be in use already, but a quick search with Google didn't uncover it. )
I would have liked to quote directly from the WNYC site, but it was down for maintenance:
I went looking for a picture of the 450' x 4' vinyl cartoon mural attached to the scaffolding around Google's New York headquarters at 111 Eighth Avenue. The cartoon went up today. WNYC had some pictures, but I was unable to find an image of the whole thing.
Instead I found this:
It seemed just the thing for people I know who feel that the government is watching them. In their mind, the surveillance is not specific, just business as usual for the government. I quickly fired off a link for our amusement.
I was gathering paper to recycle when I came across the name "Stephanie Plum" written on a sheet of paper. The paper was originally a note from the department secretary about a student, but had been annotated with notes about MARIE assembler, a few phone numbers I didn't recognize, but seemed to be local, and some calculations related to computer memory addressing.
A web search quickly found Janet Evanovich's web site and then Katherine Hegl's film, "One for the Money". The film was not released for critical review. Uh oh! A very bad sign.
Stumbling through the May 16, 2011 hard copy edition of InformationWeek I found "Pepsi Takes Vending Machines Social". Who knew? Certainly not me. It's amazing what I miss by not watching TV or listening to commercial media. I seems that you can buy drinks as gifts for other people in the form of
redeemable codes delivered via text messages. It doesn't work in bars.
Might this work in countries where corruption steals from the destitute? the public-private key encryption probably figures into the authentication of the request. If I can think of it, others must be working on it.
(I couldn't find the article on line, but this is similar: http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/retail/229402472?cid=nl_IW_daily_2011-04-30_html.)
While rooting through some papers I found some notes from a staff meeting. A former director had said, "I'm quite the FileMaker guru." She said this shortly after indicating some confusion between a database and a database table. My notation after the quote was "Perhaps she was tired." In truth it's closer to the classic "a legend in her own mind."
I resisted using Dreamweaver for some reason. The only help I really need is an editor which will color code some components of the language. Make the comments chartreuse, key words blue, character strings purple, etc. and I'm satisfied.
It only took a brief exposure to Dreamweaver whining that I hadn't closed an open quote - Hey! I'm not finished typing - that I realized the real power of the application.
Just that nagging is enough to get me to do what I usually do, but more consistently. In my configuration Dreamweaver puts a red bar in the margin when there it detects an error on a line. This means that if I start to type a quoted string, I will see the red bar within a few seconds of typing a quoted string unless I have already typed the closing string. Good practice is to start writing the quoted string by typing the opening quote, then the closing quote, and then filling in the actual text.
Is is so affirming to not see the red bar that I've found myself coding more carefully. And of course the predictive features where potential variables are listed in a popup makes it even easier.
And PHP? Ask and the documentation returns clear explanations and easily understood examples. What's not to love?
Contrast that with Python's documentation. Language boosters hurl invectives at any perceived slight of their one true language. I do not want to do anything like that here. If I spent the time to study Python I'm sure it would take less than a week for me to speak rapturously of Python's glories, but I would still whine about the official documentation.
For years I've told students how much better their technology is than the stuff we learned on. Unfortunately it now means that instructors can demand more from their students (Students rarely win. Just recently I saw a student turning in a hand drawn graph. When I asked him why he didn't - I didn't get a chance to finished the sentence before the student answered that that the instructor wanted it hand drawn. I can understand that. Hand plotting gave me a feel for data. But after doing several, why not give the kids a break?)
I on the other hand am just enjoying writing in PHP because the documentation has clear examples and, because I haven't yet run up against the limitations of the language, loving it.
This is about a post, "Passives, Pandas, and Dangling Modifiers", to the The Chronicle of Higher Education Lingua Franca blog discussing a mistake about the passive voice and dangling modifiers. The post contains a joke told by presenter Sandi Toksvig, presenter of a Radio 4 comedy news program:
“Though overweight, uninterested in sex, and notorious for their very
poor diet,” she said, pausing for exactly the right fraction of a second
while we took this in, “they were still very glad to see the pandas
arrive.”
I originally thought the "they" would be the Scottish Conservative party, but it was actually the Scots themselves.
Kuduro is a type of African music I first saw mentioned in an interview with a tailor originally from South Africa. Figuring that youtube would be be the best place to look I came across a video which featured a number of stunning dance/acrobatic moves. (As I write this I suspect that the "stunning dance/acrobatic move" may be just ho-hum ordinary for those in the know about the culture, but just new to me.)
About 1:23 seconds into "Buraka Som Sistema - Sound of Kudur"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CkXhtw7UNk a young man takes a step, seems to kick one leg out from under him with the other leg and taking a silent screen worth prat fall twirling his legs as his body spins in mid air so that he lands face forward. (Looking at the sequence over and over the timing varies from 1:23-1:28 minutes into the video.)
While one part of my mind is marveling at their physical ability another part is wondering about monetizing their skill. After watching the sequence over and over a more accurate description is that he seems to be executing a weird low level pole vault where he walked past the bar, and then threw himself backwards over it.
Starting from "'It' Girls Work Both Sides of the Camera" in the Thursday Styles section of the February 16th 2012 NY Times about fashion models taking up the camera I learned about web sites/blogs streetfaces (part of Flickr), Face Hunter, Sartorialist (actually TheSartorialist) and took to the web to see for myself.
One of the first pieces of advice a novice photographer gets is to determine the point of interest. With people, that generally means getting in close. Looking at these fashion sites, I was struck by the fact that most of the photos are full length shots and the photos do not have the "Instamatic look" of amateur photos.
Duh, well the photographers know what they're doing. Perhaps it's just that the subjects aren't full face facing the camera with their hands rigidly by their site, a corpse propped upright.
For some reason this image (http://www.thesartorialist.com/photos/on-the-street-most-chic-paris/) caught my eye. I didn't find the person or the style particularly appealing, but the comments drew my attention, especially this response to a previous comment:
Do I detect a twist of envy in some of these comments? From a Buddhist
perspective, I would gladly pay the price of spending an eternity as a
moth for the pleasure of being reincarnated as her boyfriend, even if
just for a day. ~ j. crisp October 22, 2007 at 12:11 pm
While most comments related to the fashion I was surprised that one photo (I can no longer locate) of a young woman on a bicycle in London drew considerable criticism because she was riding without a helmet.
Thrillists subject line was "Kickflip These Onto Your Face", but their lead, quoted above, was clever I thought: the email promoted JackThreads's salvaged wood frame eye glasses.
Recyclers should appropriate the phrase for their own use: "Giving trash a good name".
The Queens SK8 with "vintage ebonised arms" and special hinges for a "highly satisfying skull grab" is shown below.
I remember a snippet of a Sanford and Son episode where Red Foxx, playing the older Sanford dismisses the stuff in the back of his son's truck with, "This stuff gives garbage a bad name." (Maybe it was trash getting a bad name, but you get the idea.)
" I knew that the actual objectives of war were always camouflaged by well-designed lies that exploit collective fear and perpetuate national myths." -
by SINAN ANTOON "Fifteen Years Ago, America Destroyed My Country" https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-anniversary-.html
"... Canonical is still committed to pushing envelopes others are only now learning to lick and fold." From http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10things/10-things-the-linux-desktop-can-be-proud-of/3093.
She: I want to get drunk and do something stupid.
He: I'm something stupid. Do me.
Paraphrased and stolen from Prairie Home Companion:
What he took for a gleam in her eye was only her special contacts.
Marriage is like bridge: you start with a heart and a diamond and end with a club and a spade.
If the going gets tough look for the nearest exit.
Multi-tasking means reading on the toilet.
The difference between death an marriage is that when you're dead you don't wish you were married.
A paranoid schizophrenic though he was following someone
Did you hear about the paranoid schizophrenic? He always thought he was following someone.
From Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me: Rick Santorum has nothing to boast about. Caligula's horse was also a senator.
From http://www.jokesplace.com/joke/mentalhealth.html:
If you suffer from paranoid schizophrenia, we know who you are and what you want. Stay on the line so we can trace your call.
If you have obsessive compulsive disorder, press 1 repeatedly.
If you are hearing voices, listen carefully and a small voice will tell you which number to press.
If you are dyslexic, press 96969696969696.
From Car Talk: The difference between death and marriage: When you're dead ...
EMC said its sponsorship was part of its Information Heritage
initiative, in which it has been digitizing historic documents and
making them publicly available.
The letter by Marie Antoinette is thought to have been addressed to Louis XVI's brother Charles Philippe, Count of Artois, who in 1824 became Charles X, King of France.
The letter, which is only 10 lines in length, reads, "The sentiments of
those who share my pain, my dear brother-in-law, are the only
consolation I can receive in this sad circumstance." The letter is then
signed, "Your loving Sister-in-Law and Cousin Marie Antoinette.
Sentiments being the only consolation is universal. What can others do about our sorrow?
(If this were the 60's drugs would be answer proffered for any situation.)
A few days ago I received a call at the office. A female voice asked me if I remembered our previous conversation. "No.", I said. "I have no recollection of ever talking to a female stock broker."
It's true. She went on to relate the date she called, her recommendation, and some personal information intended to convince me of her veracity, probably the first car I drove. (In her sales training they probably use the word "truth" instead of "veracity", but that's the way I speak. Also, I usually lie about the car, claiming to drive a much cooler car than I ever drove and because that information is frequently used online to establish identity. ) Would it be possible to pass along contact information from one broker to another?
"Go ahead." I said, "Do your stuff."
"Stuff?"
"Your sales pitch."
She didn't get all huffy, but, like the pro she was, she asked, "Are you familiar with ARM Holdings, ARMH?"
I said I didn't, but just as soon as she started to explain why she thought I would make a killing because Apple was rumored to want to buy the company I interrupted. (A bad personal habit, but beating someone to the punch line to jokes is a blood sport around here.)
"Oh the ARM processor? Yeah it's in cell phones, netbooks, and ..." I went on a bit and then asked her if she knew what percentage of Apple's income came from cell phones.
She didn't know. (I've got a small 3-ring binder with sales calls scripts. Scenarios where the mark has fun with the caller isn't covered.)
Only a few days before I remember seeing a pie chart of Apple's income sources (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/microsoft-apple-and-google-where-does-the-money-come-from/4469). I spent a few minutes giving her the benefit of my minimal analysis of Apple's finances and the limitations of the ARM processor.
Anyway she wanted to establish a relationship right there and then. I suggested that she trust in the Postal Service. (I was once advised to have those things sent via the Postal Service instead of FedEx because sending fraudulent material through the Postal Service is a federal offense.)
My first thought when I saw the headline yesterday was "How nice." Reading that he had a wife and 4 children only made me wonder if he'd bought enough life insurance.
Charles Krautheimer said, "And you know when people die, you say they are irreplaceable as a cliche. But I think in this case, it's true." (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/03/01/krauthammer_breitbart_is_irreplaceable.html) Let's hope he's correct.
There was an obituary some years ago about a guy who'd worked on Wall Street, been convicted of some financial malfeasance, and then spent the rest of his life after prison working with the poor, people with AIDS, and the homeless. The obit had a quote from former New York City mayor Ed Koch saying that the guy had nothing to apologize for. The same could not be said about Breitbart.
Contrary to those who would comfort me with expectation of Breitbart's retribution in the afterlife, he went too quickly for the pain he caused.
The "XYZ Affair" was a 1798 incident in the administration of John Adams in which French representatives made unreasonable demands of the United States representatives. War was narrowly averted, although there were two years in which the nascent American navy captured a number of French privateer vessels.
An email had a link to CES. Following the link I was struck by the striking resemblance of the eye candy to Patty Hearst. (For those too young to remember or too lazy to do a web search, Patty Hearst was the heiress to the Hearst fortune who was kidnapped ("dragged naked and screaming") from her boyfriend's apartment by members of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Go look up the rest.)
Blackmail is such an ugly word. Consider it coerced behavioral modification for the stubborn. - from "10 less-than-ethical ways to get ahead" by Alan Norton http://http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10things/10-less-than-ethical-ways-to-get-ahead/2988
I found this scrawled on a business reply envelope to the World Wildlife Fund:
Christina Monet "Sleep It Off" might have been something I liked. Below it there was a quote I haven't been able to place: "The wedding present was a horse named cocaine." It might have been from Bernardo Bertolucci's 4-hour opus, 1900, at least that's what a web search turned up for "wedding present was a horse named cocaine".
Also on the envelope: "Consultant: self-unemployed"
This just in (2/7/2012) from a link from CodeProject ® some DBA jokes (http://www.codeproject.com/Lounge.aspx?msg=4147624#xx4147624xx):
"Give a man a mug, he drinks for a day. Teach a man to mug..."
"The difference between an ostrich and the average voter is where they stick their heads."
And from an article on "21st Century Skills" in the March 2012 issue of Campus Technology: Our schools are still generally organized around answers rather than questions." Michael Wesch, Kansas State University.
In his obit, a letter Howard Halpern wrote to the NY Times shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 was quoted:
“we are unlikely to harm a friendly neighbor because she has strong
views about equal rights for women, but if we call her a ‘femi-Nazi,’
she becomes ‘the other’ — evil, dangerous, hated.”
I'll remember this the next time someone uses a similar term. I doubt it will have much effect, though it may throw someone off their stride to have someone else tell them that their choice of terms is to consciously paint someone they don't like as the other.
It seemed to work in the short term for the Nazis against Jews and gypsies, Idi Amin against ethnic Indians, Hutu Power Hutus describing the Tutsi as cockroaches (and those of their own who wanted co-existence as traitors), and any Balkin ethnic group of your choice.
How would it be phrased? "Are you trying to paint them as one of Howard Halpern's 'Others'?" Would there be a pause for an explanation?
A link lead to a site on money.MSN for items which are illegal to sell in the United States. Besides Cuban cigars I learned that showerheads in America have been legally constrained from delivering more than 2.5 gallons of water per minute since 1992.
I haven't investigated whether that means that shower heads which exceed that limit can't be manufactured, imported, sold, installed, or used. There's a big difference especially because the Hansgrohe Raindance Imperial 600 Air Showerhead (the "28403001" to the cognoscenti) currently offered for $3,383.34 at homeclick.com, (in stock and "will ship in 24 to 48 hours").
At that price someone might want to buy the 28403001 as outre sculpture.
I don't remember this generating howls of protest against government regulation, but what with the New Hampshire primary just days away I look forward to this being part of a response to a question about specific regulations preventing America from assume it's rightful position in the world.
Bad Idea T-shirts provided a bit of joy this weekend. Our society has been criticized for getting its wisdom from bumper stickers and T-shirts. This post isn't going to help. The graphics aren't particularly good, but I liked some of what I saw:
"Some people are like Slinkies: They aren't really good for anything, but they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down a flight of stairs."
What color does a Smurf turn when you choke it?
"DADD: Dads Against Daughters Dating - Shoot the first one and the word gets around"
Is this is a corollary to Dan Hedaya's line in Clueless? IMDB lists the quote as "Anything happens to my daughter, I got a .45 and a shovel, I doubt anybody would miss you." I prefer the way I remember it: "I've got a .45 and a shovel. I know how to use both."
And while stumbling through the quotes for Clueless I tripped over this exchange:
Cher: If it's a concussion, you have to keep her conscious, okay? Ask her questions. Elton:
What's seven times seven?
Cher:
Stuff she knows.
When I sent a friend in western Virginia the "paddle faster" image he responded that it was a common bumper stickers around there. It made him nervous.
A link from ThrillList lead me to Excursionist™which promises "Travel tailored to your passions".
There's a lure for some, but not for me. While others dream of schussing down remote peaks, horseback safaris, going on archeological disks, I still fantasize that someday I'll have enough time to read the NY Times every day and make headway against my to-read list.
Camel adventures in the Sahara, Holi in Jaipur, dog sledding in Norway, and on. It's got to be my sour outlook that squashed the appeal of travel. The fill-in parts of traveling - making reservations, arrangements, waiting here and waiting there, the parts that are not in the snapshots - seem so off putting.
I love to hear about my brother's experiences, climbing rickety stairs to the best noodle shop in Dam Ca Na or consulting on new restaurants in Japan, or my former kennel boy explaining the difficulty of bus travel in Java and the wilting heat on the Arabian peninsula - all great stories, to hear, but not something I want to do.
For those who still have money and need something to talk about it should be great. I'm content to read about it in the times.
Oh, just remembered: the only time I felt a strong need to travel was way back when I was a freshman in college. It was a speech class, a guy in Air Force ROTC was giving a talk about the wonders of Bermuda, with pink sandy beaches, warm tropical breezes, and crystal clear water. He had a travel posted taped to the wall. Outside the wind was howling, lashing snow against the windows. Yeah, I wanted to be in Bermuda.
The feeling has past.
I picked up a hat on the street today which has unique care instructions. (The white line is an artifact of the office scanner.)
What happens if the hat is washed? Can parents be charged with endangering the welfare of child if the child starts waving the hat around? Should I destroy the hat lest it fall into the wrong hands?
Life used to be so simple.
I emailed this along to a friend who surprised me with a reply which was more thoughtful than the message:
Perhaps we humans, or at least some of us, should have similar tags. Those instructions would presumably be treated with the same respect as the one on the cap (to be honored in the breach thereof)
Do not abuse this person in any way
Do not hurt this person.
Not a toy
Wash gently in warm water
Harry (whose tag apparently got ripped off early in life, perhaps as collateral damage during a ritual cutting performed on most males in our culture)
In the course of his interview with On the Media Paul McMullan, a News of the World reporter, mentioned swapping Sylvester Stallone's mother phone number for David Beckham's. His point very simply was that he was giving the public what they wanted.
If the public didn't buy what the papers pandered the paper wouldn't shovel it. Drug dealers use the same rationale.
Paul McMullan gained notoriety as the journalist, who, after being tipped off by a cop, about Jennifer Elliot (Denholm Elliot's daughter) desperate search for drugs, persuaded her to pose topless. With the unerring logic of humiliation Jennifer Elliot eventually committed suicide. The interview is worth a listen.
"Higher Gossip" is a newly published collection of pieces by the late John Updike. Updike was almost universally acknowledged as one of the finest writers America produced. The excerpts in the NY Times review by Michiko Kakutani (Last Notes From a Man of Letters, November 29, 2011) provides ample support for his stature as a wordsmith.
He describes Kurt Vonnegut’s view of the universe as “basically atrocious, a vast sea of cruelty and indifference”
He describes Raymond Carver as managing to carve from a “near wreck of a
life” — penury, heavy drinking, illness — “stories of exquisite
directness, polish and calm that sit in the mind like perfect porcelain
teacups,” though they often depict lives “beneath the threshold of any
aspiration higher than day-to-day survival.”
He writes about the resentment younger writers may feel toward “the
gray-haired scribes” who “continue to take up space and consume the
oxygen in the increasingly small room of the print world.”
The SEC charged Citigroup with betting against investment "opportunities" it had created. As investors were taking losses the bank made $160 million. The SEC allowed a consent judgment against Citigroup settling the case to be filed the same day it filed its lawsuit against Citigroup.
Did someone smell a rat?
WNYC's blog, citing today's AP story, "City Judge Rejects $285M SEC-Citigroup Agreement" quoted U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff as writing "in any
case like this that touches on the transparency of financial markets whose gyrations have so depressed our economy and debilitated our lives, there is an overriding public interest in knowing the truth.
"In much of the world, propaganda reigns, and truth is confined to secretive, fearful whispers Even in our nation, apologists for suppressing or obscuring the truth may always be found. But the SEC, of all agencies, has a duty, inherent in its statutory mission, to see that the truth emerges; and if it fails to do so, this court must not, in the name of deference or convenience, grant judicial enforcement to the agency's contrivances."
In much the same way the public needs to know what dealings went on behind closed doors to bail out the banks. It's the public's money. We may not now be sophisticated enough to understand what went on, but hey, give us the numbers and some talking heads and we'll see if we should pick up our pitch forks and burning brands or nod our heads at the wisdom of our representatives.
The NY Times from November 20 had an article about Gary Chapman, pastor of the Brentwood Hills Church of Christ, author of "5 Love Languages". In his taxonomy love is expressed by:
words of affirmation,
gifts,
acts of service,
quality time, and
physical touch.
He claimed that he knew in high school that of the two options of working in a Christian framework, he would be a pastor because missionary clashed with his dislike of snakes.
The same issue described the marriage of Sunny Jacobs and Peter Pringle. Jacobs along with her husband and children were passengers in a car which was involved in an incident which left two Florida law enforcement officers dead. Both Jacobs and her husband were sentenced to death. Her husband was electrocuted by Florida. Later, the third adult in the car who turned state's evidence admitted to being the shooter. She was released after 17 years in prison.
Pringle was sentenced to death in Ireland for the death of two police officers following a bank robbery. He was saved by several events: 1) Commutation to 40 years without parole, 2) the transcript of his confession was written before he was interrogated, and 3) Ireland abolished the death penalty. It is not clear that he was innocent.
Their nuptials were attended by three notable actresses,Brooke Shields, Marlo Thomas, and Amy Irving, who had portrayed Sunny Jacobs in the play "The Exonerated".
The "Modern Love" column by Charlotte Alter, a senior at Harvard, contained this gem: "They say that each generation thinks it invented love. But from what I can see, my generation seems to fear we’ve forgotten it."
By now people where I'm teaching know that when I say, "I'm checking my porn." I'm checking the stock market. After the recent stomach churning drop in response to the Greek debt crisis compounded with the Italian debt crisis (from "Too big to fail" to 'Too big to save") Dow Jones is up over 2% today with the index over 12,000.
I can stick some standard boiler plate here about market expectation, consumer confidence, phases of the moon, and technical factors, but I'll simply say that I am astounded. Of course there's still an hour for people to come to their senses and send everything into the dumper.
The right wing has done a phenomenal job over the last 40 years in getting the hoi poli to have a vested interest in the stock markets. With pensions from most worker's disappearing as a factor in their future, money has gone to mutual funds and stocks and with it their expectations.
I try to imagine what others go through when they reach for the brass ring and the merry go round disappears. (I've long abandoned the belief in a "golden retirement". My attitude and expectations are similar to my father: all he wanted was a comfortable place to read.) Can social unrest be far behind if even modest aspirations may soon be out of reach?
Something will happen, but I can't see what it will be.
I got the news on tonight's Prairie Home Companion. Tom was the sound effects guy on PHC. I don't think it strange that I miss someone I never met, but who's work I heard every weekend. I'll never hear a chicken cluck, a wapiti's mournful cry, or pterodactyl screech again without thinking of Tom.
Tom's passing will probably be the end of the annual Radio Sound Effects Championship which always ended with Tom's challenger being disqualified for hiding a whistle in his nostril. One part of the contest featured 10 sound effects in 30 seconds. From 2008 this included a helicopter, a swarm of bees, a flying goose, a knife thrown into a door, a firecracker, a tennis
match, a cantaloupe falling from a great height, a giant sneeze (SNEEZE, BELL), an incoming
rocket, and arrows shot from a quiver and landing in a bowl-full of lime jello.
The article "Socratic Backfire?" by Kaustuv Basu in the October 31, 2011 issue of Inside Higher Ed
discussed the case of Steven Maranville whose denial of tenure seemed to be based on his use of the Socratic method. Specifically his students objectioned to being asked questions even though they hadn't raised their hands and being required to work in groups.
I would have thought that being business students this would be regarded as training for corporate life. Silly me.
In a comment, Larry Gillis proposed a warning label:
WARNING: this course may make you think. Occasional discomfort or, in rare cases, actual embarrassment, may occur. If thoughtfulness lasts more than four hours, please consult your physician.
Of course there is more to it. The professor is blind. He gave up a tenured position to at the University of Houston to move to Utah Valley University. It seems that department chair and an associate dean approved his teaching style.
We'll see how the plot thickens.
It reminds me of text that faculty have found important to include in their syllabus from the use of electronic devices and deportment to their grading rubrics. More than one instructor felt it necessary to include in the syllabus an advisory that the syllabus was work in progress subject to change or that the syllabus contained material which needed to be mastered, but would not necessarily be covered in class.
On this last point the instructors usually justify not covering material in class by saying that if the student knows the material the student's time will be wasted by having the instructor go through it one more time. A more constructive approach is to assign material with exercises. If the student has difficulty or questions about the exercises it became the student's responsibility to ask the instructor to cover the material or elucidate a problem.
With some of the technology available to us a short video that helps the one student this semester may help half the class two semesters from now.
From Wikipedia I got these quotes: "You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be led." (Laurel, Brats) and "I was dreaming I was awake, but I woke up and found meself asleep." (Laurel, Oliver the Eighth)
What was impressive about the life of Stan Laurel was that when he realized that he and Oliver Hardy would not be able to make the films they wanted to make he stopped working. There were some appearances here and there, but he seemed content in retirement. Nice if you can do it.
In medias res or medias in res (into the middle of things) is a Latin phrase denoting the literary and artistic
technique wherein a story begins either at the
mid-point or at the conclusion, rather than at the beginning (ab ovo, ab initio). (I thought I saw the term in A.O. Scott's review of the film "Anonymous", but apparently not.)
The presumed advantage of in medias res
is to open the story with a bang, and then fill in the rest after the reader/listener/viewer is hooked.
It made me think of some disturbed souls of my acquaintance who assumed that everyone was familiar with the dramatis personae of their lives. Stars of their own life and that of everyone else. At the time I thought it made them special, not realizing how double edged that descripton can be.
On meeting they'd start a conversation assuming you were already familiar with their live, referring to people by nicknames and places by short hand reference. "We were all down at The Corner" presumed that you knew that "we" referred to the usual crowd of friends minus Larry who used to be a friend, but was now, because of the tiff with Sooz, no longer, and "The Corner" was the south west corner of the student center.
"the careful practice of ripening cheese... a series of tedious, ritualized procedures (washing, flipping, brushing, patting, spritzing) that are meant to inch each wheel and wedge toward an apex of delectability."
Uh-oh. As someone who only draws the line at eating cheese from a spray can, "ritualized procedures" fired its sh*t detectors. Biodynamics, phases of the moon, unnatural acts with common objects. Still I buy into it. Paying attention to what's happening is more likely than not to produce a better cheese. (Of course to my uncle Hal, "good cheese" was an oxymoron.)
The Times taste sampling of 3 cheeses supported the idea that attention to the cheese resulted in a better cheese.
Living close to the bone it's unlikely that I'll ever taste an artisanal cheese. Chalk it up to parochial tastes, inherent cheapness, pedestrian aspirations, something.
Oh, wait. It's could be like the time my brother brought a special meatloaf over for us to sample. I could tell it was special because there were two different textures of meat separated by pistachio nuts and the slice had a crust around it. Nice meatloaf I said. When my brother was able to stop laughing he identified it as a hideously expensive pâté. (I can't recall the exact figure, but as I remember it, a pound of that pâté costs as much as a ticket to a first-run Broadway show.) Tasted OK though.
Going through life once? Oh that. I had a recent conversation with an aunt, the wife of the uncle who wouldn't eat cheese, who said we only have one shot at life. Why not enjoy it? Why suffer? In the specific, she was referring to fixing up her house and eating good food. My mind translated this to dying as my money runs out: having a fatal attack with the last morsel of that hideously expensive pâté.
That would be OK in my own home, but not in a restaurant. Keeling over in a restaurant would stick my estate with the bill and inconvenience the establishment. Not a socially responsible way to go.
