unraveling
31.July.03
Just back from 8 days and 7 nights on the main Salmon River, floating
through the top of the Idaho batholith. It was a fantastic trip through
the wilderness and through history, travelling with some Sierra Club
volunteers and Forest Service employees, pulling
spotted knapweed, cleaning beaches, and collecting old tires, pieces
of jet boat and the like, floating them on out of there. We saw bighorn
sheep, deer, otter, mink, osprey, kingfishers, a black bear and a lot of
beautiful side creeks and canyons. After a couple of days of clear
water, we had an afternoon squall and thunderstorm which
remodeled some of the canyon above us and turned the river to a
frappacino frothy brown for a couple days, settling to a bit on the gray
side after 4 days of clear weather. We slept on sand most of the time,
and the last 4 nights, much of the group was out under the stars,
leaving the tents for less pleasant weather.
I didn't take my camera, knowing that I couldn't get 8 days without a
battery charge and not wanting to use disposables, so I'll have to hope
that those who brought theirs will share some pictures. This is my
"after" picture back home, before the shower and shave. I think I
probably enjoyed the place more without messing around with a camera or
any other electronic device for a week.
23.July.03
Gone
boatin'.
Back later.
21.July.03
Google's cache does a lot of useful things, including
circumventing site registrations in some cases. NY Times
Digital and others are eager to close the loophole, which sounds
rather like the music publishers trying to stop the traffic in
pirated music. Yes, it could work, but is there a better way to
make a business out of this? I wrote to the NY Times a while ago
telling them that their pay-for-article 7-day archive was consistently
above the threshold of what would open my wallet. I might pay
something like $5/month to have access to their whole archive of
articles, but I suppose that seems way too low to them (even as
it seems maybe too high to me).
The interesting ZDNet article includes this provocative tidbit:
"The average lifespan of a Web site is 100 days, according to estimates by
the Internet Archive." That makes mine well above average, closing in on
3 years at this domain, with almost all of what's been published still
there for your reading enjoyment, and at the original URLs.
Thanks to Envisional's interesting weblog of
brands, trademarks, piracy,
and online trends for that, and lots more.
The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) came as something of a surprise
on top of the CIA, FBI, and so on. Now we read about the
Office of Special Plans (OSP). In
The
Guardian. Spooks on top of spooks.
20.July.03
Yesterday was hot, hot, hot, and I played three tennis matches
in it. That's going too far. If I'd won the first one, singles at
8am, I would have been in for a fourth. Chet Schwerd and I made a game
try at the #1 seed in 3.0 doubles, but they solved the puzzle after
we came back from 3-0 in the 2nd set, and rolled over us in the 3rd:
4-6, 7-5, 1-6 from our perspective. The third match was "consolation,"
but I don't suppose it consoled our opponents; they managed to eke out
only three games against us, 6-1, 6-2. The doubles draw had 3 teams
that should probably be playing 3.5, and 3 that are accurately rated;
the final today will be more interesting than our
consolation final.
Scott Hatter (shown here) took
the final this morning, so I can imagine I'm 2nd. That's two
tournaments in a row that I got beat by the winner; at least this time I
had another match first.
Here's a surprise:
Ford's
SUV fuel economy is getting worse, not better. "We're making
so damn much money selling huge vehicles, and we realized that our
customers really don't care about fuel economy -- why bother?" a Ford
spokesman might have said.
Our chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Myers provides the
quote of the week, at least:
"Intelligence doesn't necessarily mean something is true."
The NY Times' team report on "the hunt for evidence" lays out the nuance
chain, with lots of cover for the nation's defenders. The
truth-by-repeated-assertion justification of the moment is that even if
the "evidence" was sketchy and/or djinned up, we did the right thing,
after all. That's arguable, at best, but I'm reasonably certain it can
be sold to the American public. One good terrorist attack between now
and the election, and the nascent investigation goes into the dustbin
and dissent becomes treason once again.
Michael Kinsley's writing
opinion, not news, so he's not constrained from reducing the Bush
argument to its embarrassingly naked essence:
"The Bushies say (1) it wasn't really a lie, (2) someone else told the
lie and (3) the lie doesn't matter."
James Carroll knows something about
speaking truth to
power and why it doesn't always get heard.
Henry Waxman is working on asking questions of those in power.
It all boils down to this: what did you know, and when did you know it,
and why have you been lying to us?
19.July.03
Played some insanely hot tennis yesterday afternoon. No, I didn't take
my game to a new level, but rather the
weather was insanely hot. The numbers from the airport weather
station showed 101°F while we were out at Timberline. I played a
kid half my age, and we split 24 games right down the middle, sort of.
I won the better 12 of them: 6-3, 0-6, 6-3. Three matches today, if
I win the first. (Otherwise, just 2.)
18.July.03
You wouldn't notice that there's an
elephant
in the living room from reading conservative pundits, but some of
middle America is
starting
to get a notion that something is rotten.
The liberal pundits are having a full-blown safari, of course. Try
Arianna
Huffington on the Mis-State-Ment of the Union:
"They just don't seem to grasp the concept that when you're sending
American soldiers to die for something, the reasons you give -- all of
the reasons -- should be true. Instead of a sword for Mr. Tenet,
somebody should get this bunch a copy of All the President's
Men."
Remember when "shredding" meant really, really getting rid of the
evidence?
That's not good enough anymore. Start thinking about
"pulping, pulverizing and chemically decomposing sensitive data,"
if your single-shredded documents are more valuable than
$2,000 per cubic foot, or your cross-shredded documents are worth more
than $10,000/cu.ft.
17.July.03
Here's a new concept:
digital shoplifting. Is a photo of a magazine page (especially when
taken with a crappy cellphone cam) the same as the real thing? Doesn't seem
like it. Please don't call me with another magazine, I get enough of those
at home already.
And here's an old one (in a new wrapper), a
Java
slide rule. Running the thing made my computer run a bit hot,
with the fan kicking up to high speed. I don't
remember ever overheating my manual slide rule.
Thanks to Greg Aharonian's
Patent News
Service for both links.
Speaking of lies, the Bush administration is doing a lot of dancing
under fire about the bogus intelligence that sucked us into war in Iraq.
I think it would be a wonderful thing to have such moral certainty,
but it's a shame it doesn't come with moral righteousness. Whatever
excuse we used, it's
all OK because we did the right thing, and once upon a time, Hussein
posed some sort of threat to somebody. As I listened to today's sound
bites, it occurred to me that sanctions and inspections worked.
Iraq had WMD and was a threat after the first Gulf War, but we contained
the threat and coerced them into destroying the worst of their weapons.
Too bad we weren't smart enough to recognize that we'd won, and
continued with Phase 2, constructive engagement that would have
empowered the Iraqi people by getting the economy on track. And we
would have their oil flowing the way we want.
I don't know, do you think that's all nuts? It makes more sense to me
than the current Washington circus, at any rate.
William Rivers
Pitt reminds us that the African uranium and false claims about the
nuclear weapons development was not just a last minute public relations
push; it may have also provided the final push for the Congress' action
to give Bush war powers. Joseph Wilson reported back in
February of last year that the Niger connection was bogus,
and we're supposed to believe the protestations that speechwriters,
fact checkers and the President himself somehow missed all that
a year later? How stupid do they think we are?
More importantly, how stupid are we?!
"There is no 'The President wasn't told' justification available here,
no Iran/Contra loophole. He knew. He lied. His people knew. They
lied." Forget about the blue dress,
these are high crimes against the Constitution.
It's not just the WMD and the war that this administration is lying
about, they're doing their best to hide
bad economic news
too. That debacle is getting harder and harder to keep under the couch,
though, in spite of today's pseudo-good news that
the
recession ended in November 2001. (Tell that to the millions who
lost their jobs since.)
Krugman's back from vacation, and he's got something to say about
the economy, too: "Here's another sentence in George Bush's State of the
Union address that wasn't true: 'We will not deny, we will not ignore,
we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other
presidents and other generations.'"
16.July.03
ACHD is creating its annual nightmare on Elm (and many other) street(s).
It's time for the dreaded chip seal, the spreading of tar and
gravel over residential streets, turning them from decent outdoor space
into a dangerous, unpleasant and messy blight. When I ride my bike to work,
my route used to be slightly over 4 miles with less than a mile on arterials
and the rest cutting through subdivisions. I was elated to see them remove
the old pavement on one street and replace it with "black powder," smooth
asphalt. Pembrook connects Milwaukee and Maple Grove with a lovely 45°
diagonal (with a small retrograde section to decoy cut-throughs), and
less than two months after the pavement replacement, they've covered it with
-- you guessed it -- a fresh layer of gravel.
So I road most of the way to work today on arterials, riding through the
gravel litter that's leaked out from the side streets.
Make that forecast for the soaring deficit
50% larger as the Republicans carry out their plan to crush big
government through economics. Almost half a trillion dollars
next year. As a percent of the total economy, we're approaching WW2 and
Ronald Reagan's deficit levels. Bush's spokesman assures us this poses
"no threat to the economy."
Tom Friedman reminds us that regardless of the WMD issue, the future
of Iraq is a more important issue. He has suggestions, and a
celebration of the gathering of a "multireligious, multiethnic Governing
Council of Iraqi men and women" last Sunday.
Suggestions for Bush's next tour (ha!) of Nigeria in this
letter from Africa, offering a more genuine experience of how things
are there. "In the decidedly grittier world most Nigerians inhabit, the
president would eat delicacies from the street, things like goat head
and pounded yam, and he would quench his thirst with water that did not
come from a bottle, or even a tap. If there was time, he might fetch
that water himself, balancing a plastic jug on his head, to get an idea
of how so many African women start their days."
15.July.03
Outgoing press secretary Ari Fleischer used a briefing on his last day
to castigate the press for a "media feeding frenzy that misinterprets
why America went to war," the
NY Times reports. So what would be the real reason, Ari? All the
stuff we were told seems to be going up in smoke. Forgive us if we seem
a bit confused.
Hurricane
Claudette has knocked Texas for an unexpected loop. I have a
sister-in-law named Claudette, and I can't help but think of her
and the hurricane connected in some way. Probably just a
coincidence.
13.July.03
The day of Van Gogh's
Moonrise, plus 114 years. It'll be rising again at
Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in a couple hours.
I haven't turned on the wireless feature of my router yet, since neither
of the computers that are in (or visit) the house have wireless cards,
but when I do articles like
this
one about "Walk-by Hacking have encouraged me to do what I can to
keep from blabbing everything all over the neighborhood.
Wise guy and Nobel prize winner Myron Scholes has had his
fabulous tax dodge deconstructed by lead Justice Department lawyer
Charles Hurley. It's not a trap
Myron, it's the truth of the matter: the purpose of the elaborate set of
deals was to avoid taxes that were due, and that ain't legal.
Digging through old photos, Jeanette found a fun one of me and a Moscow
pal, in our salad days. I tracked him down on the web and sent him a
copy, he returned the favor with something from his archive, also seen
here, with a bunch of his family and
friends. The last picture on that page is of me, too, waking up at
his apartment after a most memorable Mardi Gras celebration in north
Idaho. Long ago and far away. (The one he sent was of me answering
the yellow phone at JP's Bikeshop.)
12.July.03
Getting into that hot summer weather thing, the thermometer clearing
100 in mid-afternoon. Fortunately the humidity dropped out of the
teens at the same time, but still, that's hot. So far, the
nights are staying cool so our diurnal "air conditioner" is working.
Morning wind is working, too, and a bunch of
us had a good time splashing around in the lake early this morning.
Ok, it's just the usual corporate boilerplate, but this is too funny.
Eunice, from the MSNBC support team, responded to my feedback about a
Newsweek Opinion piece whose "printer friendly" format trimmed the
author's name along with all the usual cruft. "That's not
right," I wrote, and got this reply:
"We understand that you are experiencing issues when printing on the
specified page. We have forwarded your mail to the appropriate
department. The issue will be checked on. Meanwhile, we appreciate your
patience and regret any inconvenience. Please let us know if there is
anything else we can assist you with."
The frightening part is that someone thinks this sort of
"communication" might actually have a salutory effect.
It's too bad old Ronny couldn't be there for the commissioning of an
aircraft carrier in his name. I like the touch in the
USA Today story that a bottle of "sparkling wine" was used.
None of that frenchy Champagne stuff for us.
Richard Virenque saved Le Tour
from being totally anticlimactic, with a
breakaway into the mountains, grabbing a two and a half minute lead
and the
yellow jersey after today's stage. (The half-minute was thanks to a
train passing between the peloton and the breakaway, if you can believe
that.) Next up, the big hills: the Col du Galibier and L'Alpe
d'Huez.
7.11 2003
Today's date reminds me of
a little puzzle
I solved once upon a time, and whose answer I've since forgotten (so I
could do it again if I wanted to). I don't recall seeing the 2nd of
those two questions, though; that could be new work. JQT and I shared
the joy of discovery, many years ago.
Cringely wonders how, once we have this database "of an
unprecedented scale, (which) will most likely be distributed, must be
capable of being continuously updated, and must support both autonomous
and semi-automated analysis," we're going to protect the privacy of
everyone in it. Big Brother is already here, and he's a little bit
overweight and sloppy.
They're getting some great mileage out of the
sausage
mascots in Milwaukee... can you say "slow news period"? The
league's sense of humor is not that flexible, and Simon's out two large
(plus the $432 disorderly conduct fine) for his batting gaffe.
Rick Schlesigner, the Brewers' exec VP didn't see it as funny (or just a
stupid mistake) either, but apparently wound himself up into a high
dudgeon, judging by the quote in
the NY Times. "I can't put into words the anger I feel and the
sense of outrage I have." Get a grip, dude.
You can't learn from your mistakes if you're convinced you never make
any.
Eleanor Clift
on hubris and the Bush administration. "If Bush really was misled,
wouldn’t he want to know who embarrassed him? Who made him a liar? In a
White House as obsessed with loyalty as this one, the fact that no heads
rolled strongly indicates this could go all the way to Cheney, if not to
Bush himself. Who knows how much Cheney tells the boss. Bush is not a
detail guy. He may not have wanted to know."
How nice for them that
George Tenet volunteered to fall on his sword for the "failure of
intelligence." The NY Times story notes that "CIA and administration
officials said that despite the mea culpa, they did not expect Tenet to
resign." Oh yeah, someone this pliable, we want him to stay there.
Hmm, now we find that the "pillar of the so-called Texas miracle in
education," the Houston school district got to be the best by --
making
the numbers up. That doesn't look so good. Our federal
Secretary of Education is the former superintendent in Houston.
"The state audit, issued last month, recommended that the whole Houston
school system be ranked 'unacceptable.'"
Then there's this response:
"'The Texas miracle was not about high school performance, it was about
elementary school performance,' said Donald R. McAdams, an 11-year
member of the Houston school board and author of the 2000 book
Fighting to Save Our Urban Schools... and Winning! Lessons from
Houston."
10.July.03
It was 7 years ago today that HP announced that it was closing its Disk
Memory Division, putting me and 1,500 or so others into the job
market. Coincidentally, I'm in the market again. Still on the payroll,
but needing to find a new position in short order. Scott Adams
provides some help in working through the
seven stages of grief.
The word "suspend" doesn't have quite the connotation of "stake driven
through the heart" as we would like, but it is good news that the
SFO runway expansion plan is no longer active. "It has become
evident that neither the political will nor the economics exist to
pursue the Airfield Development Program ... at this time," writes
airport director John Martin. The blindingly obvious can't stay hidden
forever.
US PIRG provides a
fact
sheet on debit cards. They look like credit cards, but the
rules and regs are very different and could bite you.
Will the arms race between copy protection and free information
lead to
anonymity
doomsday? Dvorak in PCWorld handicaps the risk.
"When Clinton came, he shook hands, people danced," said former Mayor
Urbain Alexandre Diagne. When Bush came, they
locked everybody up for the day. Did they make sure the video
cameras didn't pan the (missing) crowd, too?
Canadians are jiggling with glee at
becoming
interesting by pulling themselves of the cultural gravity well to
the south. Naomi Klein suggests that the economic and political orbit
has not been disturbed, however.
That whacky celestial metaphor must be from having heard an NPR bit on
one of our stellar neighbors,
Antares. It's a red giant, and we do mean giant: placed
where our Sol is, it would subsume the orbits of Mercury, Venus and,
yes, Earth. That is one big star.
9.July.03
James Carroll figures that
Bush meant exactly what he said on September 14, 2001. Missions
from God can be frightening things.
8.July.03
You might think
pension
relief had something to do with helping out people who live on
pensions, but you'd be wrong. The plan in the works from the Bush
administration is relief for big corporations with big pension
liabilities, enlarged by the current low interest rates. (Corporations'
pension assets won't grow as fast to cover future obligations.) This is
way beyond sound-bite complexity, and in the dog days of summer,
constituents eyes will be rolling and necks lolling at the thought of it
all, which means the gummint will likely have its way. My bet would be
that pensioners and pensioners-to-be are getting set up, with a
short-term interest rate rijiggering, followed by a later clean-up that
would make the system more rigorous. Believe that
when you see it, and no sooner.
The Brits got part of the intelligence from the CIA, before it was
vetted by our
fact-checker, and then passed it back to us, whereupon the President
used it as a centerpiece of his State of the Union speech. Now
we all know that it was
"incomplete and perhaps inaccurate" (er, perhaps?!), but really we
want to know what did he know and when did he know it?
I agree with Ambassador Wilson: We have to find out.
This sounds too much like the energy traders selling electricity back
and forth and raising the price each time.
Famous quote department:
"If possible, fabricate big human interest story, like flying saucers,
birth sextuplets in remote area to take play away."
From the NY Times'
Word for Word feature last Sunday, regarding the 1950s CIA
adventures in Guatemala.
Add that story to the list of references to our neighborhood as "the
ends of the earth" references; not just Idaho this time, but the Pacific
Northwest being a place where one can lose oneself. (Hey, it's working
for Sasquatch!)
Each moment of life, and each moment of life's ending is precious.
It's good -- if painful -- to be able to share in
the
depth of another's pain from time to time, so that we might better
appreciate our moments of joy.
Here's a patriotic idea for the 4th of July: the
Government Information Awareness program. Keep tabs on wayward
pols.
6.July.03
James Traub, on the Temperament Wars: "It is just a fact that the
Republicans are now the party of passionate convictions, while the
Democrats are the party of grave reservations. The Democrats are
essentially devoted to tempering the harm caused by the Bush
administration, which is not much of an agenda at all, though it
certainly makes a virtue of moderation."
Richard Falk sees it in slightly stronger terms.
Q. Can you tell us your definition of traditional fascism?
"Yes: the convergence of military and economic power on behalf of an
ultranationalist ideology that views its enemies - internally and
externally - as evil and subject to extermination or extreme
punishment."
Whaddayasay we launch a satellite into a comet and
watch
the explosion? "Deep Impact" sounds like a lot of fun, doesn't it?
Good animations of what they expect for the 4th of July in 2 years,
from JPL.
Rick Santorum, the
perfect incarnation of the closed mind.
In the
Kingdom of
Forgetting: judicial obstructionism, balanced budgets, deterrence,
all forgotten. I thought it was particularly interesting to read that
124 of Bush's 126 nominees for judgeships have been approved.
5.July.03
Quite a show last night, eh? It had been an unusually quiet week
leading up to the 4th, with private investors in fireworks apparently
saving all their ordnance for the Big Night. We slipped down to the
cool and quiet basement before the bombardment was over, shut the
windows and doors to keep out the smell of gunpowder.
The court victory of Idaho (and other) environmentalists over
the Energy Department made the
New
York Times yesterday. Leaving waste buried in shallow pits just
isn't good enough, but not everyone has quite caught on yet:
Joe Davis, a spokesman for the Energy Department, said, "If this
decision stands, it could lead to a tremendous burden on the taxpayers
with respect to cost of cleanup, and jeopardize our ability to clean up
our sites sooner." In other words, if we actually have to clean this
stuff up, cleanup of 88 million (or so) gallons of liquid waste from
nuclear bomb production will cost a lot more.
4.July.03
Sounds of the holiday: it's too early for fireworks, so we have the
music of the saws: chain, table. Oh wait, it isn't
too early for fireworks after all. Still too early for the sounds of
fire engine sirens, but probably not by much.
Sister Joan Chittister wonders if
there's
anything left that matters:
"The unspoken truth is that either as a people we were misled, or we were
lied to, about the real reason for this war. Either we made a huge -- and
unforgivable -- mistake, an arrogant or ignorant mistake, or we are
swaggering around the world like a blind giant, flailing in all
directions while the rest of the world watches in horror or in
ridicule."
Arianna Huffington considers the new-found notion that we went there for
humanitarian reasons, and
finds it
wanting, judged by our inaction for Africa.
An earlier story about
where old computers go to die (thanks to Mark Odell for the link)
is a bit more unsettling than the question of whether or not to use
domestic prison labor in the recycling process.
(This just in on that question:
Dell decided that the net net is "bad PR.")
This technology business is a curious jungle of paradoxes: improvements
in computers have far outstripped our most of our needs (if not our
wants) for computing power, and suffer from deflationary pricing. We do
more with less, but the "less" is an increasingly complex amalgam of
materials requiring engineering-intensive assembly with difficult
economics for recycling and scrap recovery. Large flows of money,
energy, materials, etc., create larger flows of less-useful materials
(i.e. trash) thanks to that darned 2nd law of
thermodynamics.
Reduce, reuse, recycle is definitely the motto for the new
millennium, but figuring out the right way to do the latter and finding
enough economic incentive to protect the people involved is not
easy.
Mark also forwarded a pointer to a better version of
the Happy Birthday story than Snopes has.
"More than cake, more than candles, more than presents, a birthday in
this country needs a rousing, off-key rendition of Happy Birthday to
You to be complete" they say, but my own preference is for a
sizeable chorus of trained voices, improvising harmony.
Perhaps the
reward money will be just the needed incentive, but I can't help but
wonder if we were willing to invest in infrastructure, trade, education,
etc., we wouldn't make more rapid progress than by offering $25 million
each for the heads of Saddam and Osama, $15 million for Uday's and
Qusay's.
"Bring 'em on" says Fearless Leader, as this morality play
descends even further into blackness. Of course, we are
trying to jumpstart Iraq's infrastructure at this point, it's just that
we tore it all up, first, in our pre-emptive decision to change its
leadership.
The people right next to the sharp end of Mr. Bush's big stick
want our boys home, rather than trying to be police in a country
rather hostile to the idea. The "going well to going badly" ratio in
the polls has dropped from almost 6 to 1 (86:13) to a narrowing majority
(56:42). Something tells me that gets worse before it gets better.
Insert disclaimer about how evil the old regime was here, and how that
apparently suffices to wash away the lies that took us into the war.
I don't profess to know what the right way out is, but it sure seems to
me that we're the wrong way in.
Woo-hoo, the Boise Weekly
has content on-line again. Now if they could just exorcise those
Microsoft demons making mush out of many of the characters,
they'll be all set.
You can now own your own
piece of the Rock while helping the Park Service clean up their
construction debris. It's a win-win deal.
Signs of the times: Forbes.com featuring a slide show of
the best federal prisons. "So where does a man who has everything
go to do hard time? While convicts don't get to choose their poison, er,
prison, they can make requests. With that in mind, we reviewed the
federal penitentiary system and picked the five very best places to go
to prison."
My webhosting provider --
Westhost -- has
upped the storage limit in my package from 100 to 250MB, at the same old
price. Not all aspects of deflation are negative, to be sure! I'm
going on 3 years with them, and am still a satisfied customer.
A recent Idaho Statesman
story about sharing the road with bicyclists included a
sidebar about the rules and regulations that apply to bicyclists.
It was nice to see in print the sensible permission to roll through stop
signs when the way is obviously clear. They didn't include something
that seems too obvious to mention:
ride on the right side of the street! I'm always astounded when
I see adults riding down the wrong side. Tempting natural selection, or
what?
Is this a Persian aphorism that got translated to English, or was it made
up on the spot for describing the futility of trying to prevent
youngsters in Iran from getting to the full riches of the internet?
"It's like removing a ladder leaning against a building so a bird won't
fly off the roof."
Political criticism, pornography, weblogs:
it's all happening, in Farsi.
3.July.3
A.R. Cox has an
outstanding spoof
on an Internet Exploder error page, currently topping Google for
"weapons of mass destruction." There may be more hidden on the site,
but it looks like 2 good spoofs and a bunch of Amazon Associates links
for related books. This seems like an interesting effort at a
money-making scheme (unlike my low key
Associates link which reliably produce pocket change but
not a lot more), with a pretty minimal investment.
Any time something rolls through both houses of Congress too easily, I
get suspicious. The House and Senate Medicare bills need to be
reconciled before they go anywhere, which may mean that what was passed
was window dressing with plausible deniability for all.
Jacob
Hacker's opinion is that the plan is really to cripple Medicare
under the cover of the Holy Grail that everyone has been talking about,
a prescription drug benefit. That seems fairly likely with the
Republican House, Senate and Administration lining up behind it.
The
2010 Olympics are going to be in our neighborhood. That's 2 in a
less than a decade!
2.July.03
Here's what the telemarketers think of you if you don't sign up for the
nationwide do not call list:
"James F. Lyons, president of Optima Direct, a direct-marketing
consultancy owned by Omnicom Group Inc.'s Rapp Collins Worldwide, says
telemarketing won't disappear. Consumers who don't sign the national
registry, he reasons, may be more responsive to phone pitches. 'We'll be
giving the dog what the dog wants to eat,' he adds." (WSJ)
Signups are over 10 million and climbing, in less than a week.
Not only does the US not want to be part of the International
Criminal Court, we're prepared to
blackmail any country that has the temerity to try to bring charges
against our citizens there.
Andreeson's whine about the
lack of
browser innovation sounds like sour grapes. If only we had him still
leading us? Puhlease. I don't know where he's been, but Opera v6.05
(not even the latest version) is way better than what I was using 5
years ago (that 'N' browser).
1.July.03
The start of a new month, with summer in full swing. Sunday was hot,
with a SE breeze that didn't quit into the night, but it eased up a bit
and now it's lovely - low 90s, sunny and of course dry, dry, dry.
Hopefully the 4th of July fireworks won't start too many fires.
Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post about how
Republicans Rule.
In spite of the country being split almost exactly 50-50 (remember the 2000
election? the Senate?), the Republicans are solidifying their hold on power
by ensuring that lobbyists are vetted for Republican loyalty first and
foremost. And "high-powered lobbyists routinely shape, if not write, much
legislation these days, and block despised proposals from ever seeing the
light of day." Remember those "energy task force" meetings with the Veep
that were so confidential we couldn't find out which firms were writing
national energy policy to suit themselves and the Administration?
Kurtz cites a
Krugman column, and they both cite Nicholas Confessore, in
The Washington Monthly. (The WP gives hyperlinks, the NYT does not;
c'mon guys, get with the program.)
Signed off Earthlink for the last time, after the 2 months of "courtesy"
coverage to try to dissuade me from leaving. They made a soft pitch for
People PC's $9/mo. cheap-o dialup service "in case you need a backup."
I haven't yet, and I damn well better not if I'm paying $50/mo. for this
cable connection.
Business methods patents (and applications) galore in the insurance
industry: these just don't seem like something that should be getting
20 year patent protection.
raveling
Tom von Alten
tva_∂t_fortboise_⋅_org
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Saturday, 02-Aug-2003 15:17:12 MDT
http://www.fortboise.org/blog/200307.html
