Saturday, March 16, 2002- - -
Great minds think [somewhat] alike?
Personally, in times of indecision I always ask ‘What Would Machiavelli Do?’ I’m beginning to suspect similar thought patterns from the Bush II administration.
@11:01 AM
Local Blogger Makes Good!
Outstanding! I see that we have a new ‘semi-pro’ in the ranks. Megan McArdle writes about Netscape’s Folly in Thursday’s Salon.
@11:00 AM
Via Anton Sherwood, I’ve noticed these quasi-libertarians cropping up in letters to the editor at Reason and Liberty (no active website). A frequent argument of this set parallels that espoused by Bill Bennett a couple years back—that the public school teacher’s First Amendment rights ought to trump your right not to have your children proselytized in school by their teachers.
Regardless of the issue, the message seems always the same: “Freedom for me, but not for thee.” I would hope that most folks see this as the perversion of the libertarian ideal that it is.
@10:59 AM
Friday, March 15, 2002- - -
Bill Quick unleashes his trademark caustic wit on Reuters. But I always thought it rhymed with hooters, rooters, as in ‘little pigs.’
Hmm. Yes, although their tactics were reprehensible and despicable, the donkeys did save us from Bob Bork.
Tipper should be committed as a public service.
Yep. Lure all the tourists in so they’ll spend their money. That’s a great way to build your economy. and your kids will be able to get good jobs at those resorts. Making beds, waiting, tables, and cleaning the pool.
Yes, but. Those governments don’t want their people partaking of the fruits of the 21st century. Socialism, communism, reactionary Islam, and tyranny are all defunct strategies in the 21st century. They don’t want to go there.
@8:00 PM
Some hopeful noises are finally being made on the Indian Trust issue
In response to questions posed by lawmakers who expressed skepticism that the broken system could ever be fixed, senior officials said Indian Country probably won't accept an effective termination of the Individual Indian Money (IIM) trust. "I don't personally think that the individual Indian allottees would think that is the right idea," said Deputy [Interior] Secretary J. Steven Griles. ..
Why, of course not. Who would want to be let alone to manage their own affairs?
"But that doesn't mean it isn't the right idea," he quickly added. ..
.. Griles and Swimmer told members of the House Interior Appropriations subcommittee that certain problems could be avoided if Congress stepped in. If the land remained free of local and state taxation, stayed within reservation boundaries and was kept out of non-Indian hands, they said eliminating the IIM trust might work.
"I think there obviously is some value . . . if there were a way to having less than a full trust duty to those properties," said Swimmer.
Made during an oversight hearing on trust reform, yesterday's remarks were the first concrete admission that the Bush administration would accept some sort of dismantling of the individual system. The issue was raised briefly last month by Associate Deputy Secretary Jim Cason, who told the Senate Indian Affairs Committee the idea was rejected in favor of reorganization of trust duties.
Yep. Gonna have to pry their sticky fingers off that money one at a time. But perhaps it can be done.
@6:39 PM
Incidentally, check out the Lalo Alcaraz ‘your visa is denied’ cartoon at Indianz.com. Your tax dollars at work, indeed. Check out the rest of the site too. A very different perspective and concerns with a lot of other issues you won’t hear about every day.
@6:36 PM
Finally someone asked a key question in the Indian Trust case
"The Department of the Interior has not placed a dollar value on the amount of the problems that have come from the mismanagement," [Interior Secretary Gale Norton] said in response to a caller who wanted to know where the money has gone.
Say what? The question: “Where did the money go?” Gets the answer: “We don’t know how much money has been lost.” Sounds like some boot-scootin’ side-stepping going on down in DC. A lot of fiddlin’ too.
Secretary Norton goes on to say that "most" of the payments to Indian beneficiaries have been made. "We've had to make some estimated payments for some types of those transactions because we didn't have the complete computer system going," she said.
Norton made her comments during a half-hour appearance on the C-SPAN program "Washington Journal." She was asked two questions about the Indian trust debacle.
Over a month has gone by. Another month. And still some people are waiting.
Says Elouise Cobell, plaintiff in Cobell v Norton: "I see Native people dying every day because they can't afford health insurance .. one woman I know has seven oil wells on her property, and she gets about $1,000 a year."
Yes, and that’s when she gets it. How would you like to have gone without a check of any sort since early December? This is the only income some of these folks have. $1000 a year. In the heart of the USA.
@6:04 PM
Hey! It hasn't been 12 months yet. Where did that ad come from? Of course, I'd gladly pay $12 a month. This has been very entertaining.
@5:33 PM
Oh baby, I’ll make the earth move for you!
Drop a burrowing bomb this big and it’s going to rattle the dishes 100 miles away.
Frankly, despite accusations of squishiness, given the ordnance we’ve expended already, I think Bush II is probably wise to start preparing people for the fact that we may never find the remains of OBL’s vaporized butt. But he’s got to be dead or we’d have gotten another tape by now.
@4:41 PM
Via His Unholiness, Incorrigible I, aka Stephen Green comes some unsurprising news: Harry Browne [Butt Weasel!] is at it again. Is there anyone left out there that doesn’t realize that this guy is a snake oil salesman of the first order?
Update: But please Stephen, don’t give up on the libertarian ideal. Harry Butt Weasel Browne doesn’t speak for all of us. He’s just a conman who’s hijacked a small part of the Party of Reason.
@3:55 PM
Yeah! The InstaPundit is weakening! ‘Senator Reynolds’ does trip right off the tongue..
Hmmm. I wonder if anyone’s told Tipper about what you hear when you play a CD backward?
@3:22 PM
The latest in PC
In this morning’s Red Star Tribune (no link to article) we have an article about the “Fightin’ Whites,” the UNC Greeley intramural basketball team. They’re now selling ‘Fightin’ Whites’ T-shirts! Cool, I think I’ll order one.
What’s so amusing? Well, here’s the original article, word for word with what the Star Tribune prints, except that somewhere between the original author, the AP, and my print addition, a slight spelling change has taken place. They’re actually the “Fightin’ Whities”! I've got to have one of those shirts.
Update: I notice in the article that they have to check the University guidelines before they can sell the shirts. I'll bet they're required to 'correct' the spelling..
Update II: Now I'm covered with embarrassment. It looks like this was the original article. Although it didn't appear in my google search it was linked at the bottom of the first article I linked, above. The article also states: "The intramural basketball team's official name is "Native Pride." But the team calls itself the "Fightin' Whites" - and is widely known by the more in-your-face "Fightin' Whities" - as a jab at nearby Eaton High School." So there's some question about the 'official' spelling of their unofficial name.
@7:44 AM
Gonzaga thought they got no respect before.. Chortle. Snigger. Guffa.
@6:44 AM
No one ever pleads permanent insanity, do they?
My first post on the Andrea Yates case was probably as incoherent as anything I’ve written, at least from my point of view. I stand by what I said, I think it’s all probably correct, but it was also entirely off the point of what I meant to say.
My original intent in writing the piece was to point out that we can never really get inside someone else’s mind. We can’t know for a fact what was going through Ms. Yates mind when she killed her children. In my humble opinion we shouldn’t care. While I think her behavior provides an operational definition of insanity, I think driving a jetliner into a crowded building is [almost] equally insane. So what?
I wouldn’t argue for the death penalty in either case, but I will argue that for the safety of all the rest of us, anyone who does something like this should be removed from society forever. For this reason, I really don’t believe in the insanity defense. Especially because it’s always ‘temporary’ insanity and often of the sort that’s already been ‘cured.’
I can see a place for an insanity plea in sentencing, as Ms. Yates would appear to belong in a rubber room. But that rubber room should have no exit to the outside world. Not ever.
@6:00 AM
From a can of spray solvent: “WARNING: This product contains a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer.”
And we all know that the State of California is an authority on the subject.
@4:53 AM
Thursday, March 14, 2002- - -
Who cares who put it up, as long as they come down, that’s not my department ..
Dang! I’ve been so concerned with my computer ‘bombing’ that I almost forgot about the Google bombing!
The pissant pedant in me requires that I point out that although folks are crediting Megan McArdle with the idea, Megan’s post links an earlier post by Ben Sheriff, who appears to have constructed the first google bomb at the instigation of Charles Johnson, and has since been on a one man google bombing mission. None of this is important as long as the bombs keep dropping, so here’s mine.
Marc Herold Afghan casualties
Herold Afghan casualties study
Afghanistan civilian casualties
Herold collateral damage
Marc Herold Afghanistan study
Afghan casualty figures
Marc Herold Afghan casualty figures
dead Afghanis
dead Afghans
Herold Afghan WTC casualties
Herold study Afghan casualties
Herold Afghan casualties study
Afghan civilian casualties
Afghan collateral damage
Herold collateral damage
Marc Herold Afghanistan study
Update: It’s entirely understandable that the history of the event ended with Megan. BlogSpot was being very flaky about the time all this occurred and I got a 404 the first couple times I tried the link to Ben Sheriff.
@2:09 PM
Sgt. Stryker is starting a spin off blog for all ‘the personal shit.’
I’d taken something of this same tack when I set up A Boy and His Blog for all the serious quasi-professional stuff. I’ll still make use of the little humanitarian when I have photos available and can post some of the interesting stuff I do, but I haven’t been over to the ‘Boy’ myself in quite awhile. I should drop the link in my favorites here until there’s something there worth reading.
I’d given thought to creating more blogs to sort the serious from the zany, but I decided that folks who read only the serious stuff would think me one grim sucker while folks who read only the zany would think .. well, probably what you all think anyway. Ah well, I decided to leave well enough alone for now. I can’t decide myself sometimes if I’m being serious and there’s times when I must laugh to keep from crying.
@9:02 AM
Just as I suspected. Glenn Reynolds is off to California and there’s just as much activity on his blog as usual. Did anyone attending that speech yesterday take note of which side the good Professor is parted his hair? The peepul have a right to know..
@8:55 AM
Halleluiah! Blogger recognizes my cookies!
Oops, no it didn’t and still doesn’t. My server had taken a ‘time out’ so the silly computer fixed me up with a previously saved ‘temporary internet file.’ Sure fooled me for a couple minutes, though.
@8:52 AM
I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now .. The Byrds
But Professor, doesn’t a mother killing her own children pretty much define “Insane”?
Rather than a subconscious view of ‘child as chattel,’ there may be a deeper, indeed instinctive reason why fraternal and maternal filicide are viewed differently. Ms. Lithwick touches on it when she says “.. the law treats individuals who burn down other people's houses as criminals and institutionalizes those who burn down their own.”
From a sociobiological perspective, maternal filicide is certainly not a rational behavior in terms of genetic survival and, except in very unusual circumstances, we would consider it highly aberrant behavior for females of any species.
On the other hand, for the male, killing children he knows or suspects are not his offspring can be rationalized as a pro-genetic survival trait—reducing competition for one’s own offspring—thus rational rather than aberrant behavior. In fact, we do see fraternal filicide throughout the animal kingdom, including the remainder of the hominoids, but only very rarely do we see maternal filicide.
It’s pretty much beside the point, but the statistics in the Slate article are as sloppy as any I’ve seen. First, what is the sample size? Given the media hysteria over the Yates case, I suspect it’s exceedingly low. What is the nature of the sample? Do these ‘murder’ statistics include the horribly sad ‘shaking the baby’ deaths that come more from ignorance than malice? None of these numbers mean a thing without this information.
Given this, only a newbie blogger would be forgiven for the link provided in the Slate article: “A 1969 study by Dr. Phillip Resnick, the "father" of maternal filicide .. found that while mothers convicted of murdering their children were hospitalized 68 percent of the time and imprisoned 27 percent of the time, fathers convicted of killing their children were sentenced to prison or executed 72 percent of the time and hospitalized only 14 percent of the time.”
The link doesn’t take you to Resnick’s study supporting the statistics, but rather to a CBS News article on Resnick’s testimony in the Yates case which neither presents nor defends any statistics whatsoever. The link only gives the appearance that Ms. Lithwick is linking her source for the stats. Furthermore, these statistics only show that the courts can be more sympathetic for filicidal mothers than for their male counterparts. Neither they, nor any of the other statistics in the article go to the question of whether Yates is ‘insane’.
Ms. Lithwick asks: “While it may once have been true that women were the sole—and often frustrated—caregivers of small children, mothers now work, yet they don't kill their colleagues; they kill their babies. Why?” This is just silly. If I wanted to be flip I might suggest that Ms. Lithwick has never been around children much. But frankly, I suspect that it’s just a hell of a lot easier to kill an infant or child than it is to kill another adult.
Finally, note that in the CBS News article it does state that: “.. Yates confessed to killing her kids and even prosecutors concede that she was mentally ill back then.”
I’ll leave this with one last thought: No one ever pleads permanent insanity, do they?
@7:41 AM
As everyone who uses Windows 98 and Internet Explorer 5.5 is surely aware, Microsoft has announced this morning [now yesterday] that Internet Explorer 6 is now available for download for users of Windows 98. Frankly, considering the number of problems I’ve been experiencing with the internet in the last few days, and I know I’ve been comparatively lucky, all I need is another batch of bugs. I think I’ll ride with IE 5.5 until I hear some reviews on the new product.
@7:36 AM
Via Steve Den Beste, this is just plain unbelievable:
Huffman Aviation in Venice, Florida, has been notified this week that the Immigration and Naturalization Service has approved applications for student visas for Mohamed Atta, and Marwan Al-Shehhi.
Approved them? OK, I guess they can start their flight training now..
In case anyone could possibly have forgotten, Atta and Al-Shehhi trained at Huffman in July 2000 and were aboard separate flights that struck the towers of the World Trade Center.
This sounds like a disgruntled INS employee trying to make trouble for the agency. If it’s not a disgruntled employee There Had Better Be Big Trouble.
@7:34 AM
That was pretty wild. Perhaps the good Professor was right. Norton Antivirus just downloaded 2.2Mb of updates & definitions. That’s about 10 times what I usually get.
Of course, I may never get to tell you about it, because two hours later (0520) BlogSpot is still down. I hope there’s no connection.
Whoa Nellie! (x 10) I’ve never seen this message before (received at 0520):
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, dev@pyra.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Apache/1.3.19 Server at blogspot.com Port 80
But I didn’t do anything! I also suspect that poor Ev has gotten about 5000 emails already. should I add to the load? Sure, why not..
Before BlogSpot came back up I had to dash to Casper for the day. We didn’t return until late evening. My ISP is generally pretty overloaded in the evening and I avoid blogging during those peak-use hours, so the next several posts above were actually written yesterday.
@7:30 AM
Tuesday, March 12, 2002- - -
Ah, the pseudo mythical Blogger crash. BlogSpot is working fine but Blogger is off in 404 land as of 1440 MST. How will you all get along without me? Ah! Now it's back.
Luckily, I had to see my lawyer and insurance guy anyway. One of those 'what does "the party of the first part agrees to indemnify the party of the second part for any activity of the party of the third part that may later be deemed immoral, illegal, or fattening" mean?' sorts of things.
What’s scary is that I’ve been at this long enough that I’m actually starting to understand what all that stuff means, and worse, why it’s in there.
@5:42 PM
This is interesting. According to Michael Standaert, writing for Reason Online: “Denmark .. appointed Skeptical Environmentalist author Bjørn Lomborg an environmental economic advisor in late February, causing shock in many Green groups there.”
The horror! Appointing someone who can actually fact check their silly asses.
Standaert goes on to say: “Since its formulation, observers have accused the Kyoto protocol of being a paper tiger. Whether that tiger is endangered or extinct will likely depend on the flexibility and strength of the European Union.”
Adios Kyoto.
@5:34 PM
Of course, all talk of appeasement, the ‘we should help them and give them things and start more schools and dig more wells and ..’ mentality, is totally off the mark. It is precisely ‘our things,’ all the trappings of civilization, that these troglodytes abhor. Of course they want these things, but only for the select few. Note that OBL has no problem with video as long as he’s the subject. But no movies for the masses. That would be a sin.
@12:21 PM
The problem here, is that the Euros have always looked on NATO as a sort of ‘my big brother will kick your ass’ alliance. I doubt they ever considered they might be asked to come to the aid of the big brother US, nor are they really being asked to do that now. After all, it really is civilization as we know it that we defend against these terrorist nihilists.
There’s a parallel here to the Moral Hazard phenomenon described by Megan McArdle: They know we won’t abandon their people in need, no matter what crap their aristocracies pull. They have every reason to believe that ‘what goes around comes around’ is invalid in this case. Given that, there is no reason for them to give us more than token assistance. Anything else would not be in their best interest. They’re ‘free riders.’ They know it, they like it that way.
Of course, this same equation holds for our friends in the Anglosphere and it speaks volumes that we have gotten far more than token assistance from them.
@12:06 PM
Steve Den Beste answers a question I’ve been wondering: “Where are the well-written liberal [anti-war] web logs? .. A thoughtful writer cannot make a compelling case against fighting this war; only thoughtless or incompetent or deluded writers are even willing to try.”
I’m not aware of anyone who’s seriously taken the Den Beste Challenge.
I hate war. Friends and the sons of friends are fighting this one and I am horribly afraid for them. But I see no choice. There is no way to appease these nihilists except to capitulate and allow them to annihilate us. You can argue to go live in a cave with them or you can argue to rip them up, root and branch, and till that ground with salt.
If there is a middle ground I certainly don't know where to find it.
@10:23 AM
Incidentally, go check out this photo of the new WTC memorial lights. Via Megan McArdle, it's a better angle than the shot on the print media front pages. And photos always seem to look better on screen than in newsprint.
@9:42 AM
There’s been speculation on this for awhile and I think it’s well founded. Ol’ Osama is one dead string bean.
@9:40 AM
Jackalope ranching may start looking pretty popular if we don’t get some more precipitation this year. It was drier than a popcorn fart last summer, and the summer before. Megan McArdle is right. The DOA won’t let US agriculture be destroyed. Unfortunately, the lion’s share of the subsidies go to .. well, the Lions. The big boys with the clout. The little guy who’s struggling already won’t get nearly enough help to hang on.
Perhaps this is the way it should be—survival of the fittest. It stands to reason that the bigger and more successful and productive a given farm is the more it would hurt the general economy to lose it. But go tell that to the family that’s been scratching out a living on the land for four generations. Of course, if they have been scratching out a living on the land for that long they’ve weathered far worse than this.
If worse does come to worse I might consider buying a jackalope ranch myself. It isn’t a bad investment if you don’t have to make a living from it. They’re not making any more land after all.
@9:37 AM
That's right. I said subdermal burrowing larvae. They will make your skin crawl. And take it from me, the cure is nearly as bad as the affliction.
Am I on a morbid and juvenile roll this morning, or what?
@8:05 AM
EEEEUUUWWW!!
Via Fritz Schranck we have this little item on necrotizing fasciitis in Arizona. The flesh-eating bacteria. A friend had a dog who contracted a lingering form of necrotizing fasciitis. Not to be too graphic, the poor mutt slowly rotted alive. The smell was delightful.
Curious, not to mention a bit alarmed to learn that such things exist, I did a little googling on the topic. Turns out there’s about 1500 different species of bacteria thought to cause the disorder. The most well known lingering form in humans is leprosy. Yuck!!
It's usually contracted through some break in the skin, or through the soft tissues of the nose and throat. But just in case you're not sufficiently crawly yet, here's a particularly nasty way to catch it..
Stay tuned. Tomorrow we'll talk about subdermal burrowing larvae.
Update: I’ve done a bit of fact-checking as it’s been a while since I researched this. As usual, definition is everything and the definition of necrotizing fasciitis varies wildly. It seems that some folks define necrotizing fasciitis fairly narrowly, and refer only to the sort that develops from severe Group A streptococci infection—yep, same critter that causes strep throat. For what it’s worth, the Encarta Encyclopedia says it ‘can be caused by any type of bacteria.’ Don’t you feel safer already?
@6:55 AM
Here’s a sex column with some sex in it. Perhaps there’s some good coming from journalism departments after all?? Go read it and then say ten Whoa Nellies!
@6:23 AM
Speaking of venison chewing, I’ve been suffering too many distractions, like work, to wax poetic about dinner. However, we did have a most delightful round of venison Philly steak sandwiches for lunch yesterday. Alas, it was the last of the venison and many long months to wait for more.
Worse than that, my spring turkey license application came back. So if there’s to be any turkey poking next month it will have to be over on the Black Hills where general licenses are available. However, the feral peacocks are back and as many years as they’ve survived the coyotes they’re about as wiley as a turkey. No season or hunting regulations governing them that I know of—technically I suppose they are ‘livestock at large’ but we’ve tried to find an owner and no one claims them.
And peacock is mighty tasty..
I’d better sharpen a couple broadheads while I read the blogs this morning.
@5:30 AM
Monday, March 11, 2002- - -
My dad wants in on the action. He forwards this one:
A US Air Force C-141 is scheduled to leave Thule Air Base, Greenland at midnight. During the pilot's preflight check he discovers that the latrine holding tank is still full from the last flight.
So, a message is sent to the base, and an airman who was off duty is called out to take care of it. He finally gets to the air base only to find that the latrine pump has been left outdoors and is frozen solid so he must find another one in the hangar, which takes even more time.
He finally arrives at the aircraft and is less than enthusiastic about what he has to do. Nevertheless, he goes about the pumping job deliberately and carefully (and slowly) so as to not risk criticism later.
As he's leaving the plane, the pilot, an Air Force Major, stops him and says, "Son, your attitude and performance has caused this flight to be late, and I'm going to personally see to it that you are not just reprimanded, but punished."
The poor guy says, "Sir, with all due respect, I'm not your son. I'm an Enlisted Airman in the United States Air Force. I've been in Thule, Greenland for eleven months without a furlough, and reindeer are beginning to look pretty good to me. I have one stripe, it's two thirty in the morning, it's twenty degrees below zero and my specialty here is to pump shit from an aircraft. Now just what form of punishment did you have in mind?"
@9:34 PM
UffDa! I finally put the draft review copies of the Big Report in the mail this afternoon. I am a happy camper.
@9:33 PM
I’ve refrained from comment on the steel tariff issue. If there’s anything I know less abut than international trade I don’t know what it would be. But I do find Virginia Postrel’s take on the tariff interesting:
“Now suppose the Russians or the European Union take their complaints about the steel tariffs to the WTO and get a favorable ruling: "Bad America. You are violating your trade treaty obligations." All that ruling means is that these countries can put their own tariffs on U.S. goods—not exactly a form of invasion. But now the Bushies can get rid of the steel tariffs and blame the foreigners and the big, bad WTO. Everybody wins except the steel lobby. “
Could they be that Machiavellian? Count on it. Especially since she should have added the democrats to the losers column in this scenario.
@9:32 PM
Pope Incorrigible I? Whoooooa Nellie! Next thing you know we’ll have lawyers running for political office. Worse things could happen in this case, however.
@9:30 PM
A Jeff Gearino article in today’s Casper Star (no link) says something that always trips my trigger: “Wyoming native Carole Smith said the biggest change she’s noted since Sept. 11 has been a renewed sense of patriotism across the nation and a growing appreciation of government.”
I’ve no doubt that this little social experiment we call the United States of America is, and will remain one of the greatest achievements of all humankind. I love this country and I’m damn glad I live here. However, every time I hear someone whining about how people nowadays just don’t “trust the govmint like they used to” I want to puke.
The very design and structure of our government is due to the fact that our founders did not trust government of any kind. They knew that government is a necessary evil that should be kept on a very short leash. The Constitution and Bill of Rights are that leash.
Folks, every single elected politician in the country has sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution. By their subsequent actions you may judge what that oath is usually worth.
"Everyone knows how praiseworthy it is for a ruler to keep his promises, and live uprightly and not by trickery. Nevertheless, experience shows that in our times the rulers who have done great things are those who have set little store by keeping their word, being skillful rather in cunningly deceiving men; they have got the better of those who have relied on being trustworthy."
Machiavelli The Prince
@8:27 AM
Sgt. Stryker fingers a ring-knocker. This would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad.
@8:22 AM
Sunday, March 10, 2002- - -
Oh Oh. Low morale over at Sgt Stryker’s. Says he: “I've been thinking about this website and why I keep at it and whether it's any good or not.”
No Sarge, you’re not going to be the next Hemingway. Neither am I. But if you’ll settle for J.D. McDonald I’d say you were well on your way. A beautifully turned phrase is great but there’s something to be said for authenticity of voice as well.
I very much look forward to your book about this little conflict.
@8:11 AM
I’m experiencing the bizarre disappearing archive #9999999 problem. Now I think I see what Anton meant, it is different than having the archives missing/off-line problem I was having.
I can follow this link and it works fine. Likewise I can follow the link from there over to Anton and it works fine. But even if I try physically cutting the link and pasting it to the address bar I lose the archive number trying to go to Megan’s hooters and wind up with a 404.
The poor ol’ bear has been limping lately. The InstaPundit voices my suspicion that there’s something nefarious going down. I’d wondered if it isn’t a nasty new virus, considering the problems everyone seems to be having. I’ve been updating my virus protections daily of late but haven’t caught anything that I can detect.
@7:14 AM
Anton Sherwood cites Reason saying Get those guns off the street!
I agree. They’ll get all rusty and beat up.
@7:09 AM
I think this is what's called begging the question.
@6:20 AM
A google of “big hooters” just returned about 22,200 hits (Holy cow! Haven’t you guys got anything better to do?) but Megan isn’t in the top 20 yet..
@6:14 AM
Gut-wrenching photo of Stephen Hawking on the cover of this month’s print edition Reason. And an absolutely transcendent picture of him inside. I wouldn’t mind having a poster of that one. Actually, it’s probably the effect created by the combination of the two photos that makes the second so great.
@6:13 AM
The more I struggle with the figures and references and footnotes for this report, the more I appreciate the Blog format. Permalinks work far better than static references and footnotes. Saves the writer a lot of skull sweat and saves the reader the footwork of tracking down the references.
Now if only someone could come up with a word processor that used something like permalinks for figures and references. Unfortunately, the resident expert (Gentleman & Scholar) has retired. Retired in the Travis McGee sense, I hope..
@6:11 AM
Saturday, March 09, 2002- - -
I see that my cat-herding abilities are improving by leaps and bounds.. Still only the six comments from last night. But only one Mousterian!
What? My spell checker recognizes “Mousterian”? I must have added it, but I can’t imagine when..
@9:12 AM
I can hear it now. ‘But, but, but .. The Peepul Have a Right to Know!’
Fine. Broadcast ‘Live from Baghdad’ all you want. But you have to do it anonymously. We’ll soon find out how loyal you are to those Peepul.
@8:57 AM
And speaking of the Northern Wyoming Daily News: These guys led the charge last summer along with our Chamber of Commerce (Motto: Free market system? What free market system?) in trying to raise sales taxes 1¢ ‘to promote economic development’ in Worlando, Wyo. They never did quite explain how taking a million bucks a year out of general circulation was going to improve the economy. Yet the one proactive thing the paper could do to promote Worland—namely get their butts on the internet—doesn’t seem to be a consideration.
Yes, that’s a hint guys. And no, it’s not a zero sum game—Certified Economic Development Professionals have to eat too.
@8:56 AM
Outstanding!
Via the Northern Wyoming Daily News (Motto: Internet? We don’t need no stinking internet!) I see that Wyoming’s congressional Joint Budget Committee is considering opening the entire state budget to cuts with no immunity!
Good. Perhaps someone has finally figured out that the more useless the government program the stronger the bureaucratic firewalls around the program will be. Now we can wait and see who squeals loudest over the ‘no immunity’ bit. That alone should tell them where to start cutting..
@8:01 AM
A red-letter day for sex fiends!
Anton Sherwood has Big Booty and Megan McArdle has Hooters after all! I knew I should have joined the begging chorus sooner..
@7:32 AM
Friday, March 08, 2002- - -
Now speaking of figure captions, I’ve got about 147 of them I’ve got to get straight today. Ta for now..
@9:16 AM
Here’s some good news: “The upgraded version of "The Art of the Rifle" is now available for sale. The illustrations are properly in color, but there is still some trouble with the captioning.
Sigh. Somehow I’d hoped that someday I wouldn’t have to fight with the damned figure captions anymore. Apparently that’s a lifetime battle.
Regardless, if you own a rifle and haven’t read The Art, you should. I was raised by marksmen (and markswomen!) and grew up shooting in competition. When I read The Art, my initial reaction was ‘Doesn’t everyone know this?’ but then I think of some of the fine shootin’ I’ve seen in the hills and I have to answer myself that ‘no, everyone obviously doesn’t know this.’ In fact, if you enjoy reading with a critical eye, read The Art and then go back to reading your favorite gun rag. Look at how those supposedly ‘expert’ gun writers employ their slings (if they use one at all). As one old wag put it ‘they talk some mighty fine groups.’
My only argument with The Art is that the Colonel doesn’t advocate using a sling shooting off-hand. It’s not allowed in competition, thus generally not taught in marksmanship training. I’ve seen few people who know how to do it, but if using a shooting sling can improve your field shooting 20-30% in other positions, it can make a 100% improvement in your off-hand shooting. At the very least you won’t have the wind flapping that strap around.
@9:16 AM
A true glimpse into the soul. This morning Amazon says: “Hello, Anthony Swenson. We have Business & Investing, History, Home & Garden, and other Books recommendations for you. (If you're not Anthony Swenson, click here.)” Yep, I’m going to be a stodgy old prick. But if Business & Investing weren’t on the top of the list I’d probably have to get a real job and wouldn’t have time for this.
And don’t start emailing for business advice! All I know about business I learned from working in them, managing them, and owning one. I could write a book on what not to do, but I ain't rich yet..
@8:40 AM
OK. Whatever has happened to paragraph breaks in Blogger, which is currently stringing everything together into one long 'graph, they magically reappear when you Publish to Blogger*. No blood, no foul. It's not how well the bear dances..
Update: *I meant to say BlogSpot, of course..
@8:39 AM
I’ve long been a big fan of Bureaucratic Bullshit as perpetrated by REMFs and recently outlined by Sgt. Stryker. Oddly enough, the Barbarian* and I had been having a similar discussion. Would you believe that The One Guy, the Single Most Objectionable Jerk of an officer we knew made two stars? Yes, and he left footprints on a lot of backs along the way. Including both of ours.
It is a strange business. You would think that in the military cultivating the respect and loyalty of your troops would be Job 1 (Ok, Job 2—training should be Job 1). I sure wouldn’t want to go into combat with a bunch of guys who hated or mistrusted me. But of course, that reasoning only holds if you see the military as principally a fighting force, not a means to self aggrandizement.
But if you want to see where the real priorities lay, get a copy of the Army Officer’s Guide. I see versions for the Air Force and Navy as well, but I’ve never read them. (BTW, I suspect it’s always out of print or available only used. You don’t buy it, they issue it to you along with that first set of gold bars.) I don’t know what’s become of my copy so I can’t quote any figures, but my recollection was a chapter on how to dress for High Tea at the Post CO’s for every sentence mentioning the troops.
It was a very handy reference for those of us who dug out the dress blues grudgingly and only if we couldn’t assign ourselves to some important TR that day. Getting all the insignia and ribbons and bolo badges on straight and in the right place can be a serious chore and man is it obvious if you don’t get it right. But the whole book was geared to ‘how to be a successful REMF.’ Chapters and chapters on the customs and courtesies—even ‘how to walk’ when you’re with a senior officer (I’m serious), all geared to the apple-polishing aspects of the career-minded.
And god help you if you’re entitled to wear a PUC with more clusters than your boss’s (It doesn’t seem to matter that those clusters came from action back in the Indian Wars!). Or wear cavalry insignia while assigned to a regular armor unit. Or..
*Speaking of whom, I wonder what's happened to the lad? I never got a response from my last email.. I don't suppose the internet ate that too. There was a lot of e-indigestion last week.
Update: The good Professor responds: “But surely even the Roman legions had REMFs.”
Yes, I imagine they did. And REMFs aren’t the problem. Actually REMFs are necessary.
The problem is that while the warriors are out fighting the wars the REMFs are back in garrison writing the rules for promotion. I’m sure this was well established tradition by the days of the legions.
Here’s an analogy: Imagine writing a book, The Lawyers Guide. Something to give the law school graduates as they head out the door. What would you put in it?
Now imagine finding a book entitled The Lawyers Guide. You whip it down from the shelf and find that the entire book is devoted to How to dress for court and How to suck up to the judge.
It’s not that dressing for court and sucking up to the judge aren’t important, just that in my humble opinion they shouldn’t form the strategic basis for a career in law.
Unfortunately, smart dressing, quick talking suck-ups seem to do well in most any profession.
Nor is the military unaware of this problem. I understand that at the beginning of WWII a large number of peacetime career officers were RIFed to make room for the warriors.
We need two Armies, no less, no more.
One for Peace and one for War.
One for Polish and one for Gore..
Update again: reader Robert Martin responds:
"The bit of verse at the end of your post is exactly on point. We do need two Armies, Air Forces, Navys, etc. And you are correct about the housecleaning at the start of WWII. That's how Eisenhower moved up quickly from Col. to five stars. Ernest King is supposed to have observed, in a possibly apocryphal statement, that his elevation to Chief of Naval Operations was because "When the shooting starts, they send for the sons-of-bitches."
"A peace time military requires a set of skills that may serve poorly in wartime. And the reverse is also true. Peace time requires attention to budgets, missions, force structure, and administrivia just to keep a military in existence in the face of the intentional and unintentional designs of democracy to do things other than realistically prepare for war. The skills needed to navigate that swamp do not necessarily serve well in combat, but they are essential nontheless. Combat calls for a certain intolerance of those tendencies, concentrated attention on the mission, and an unsentimental devotion to finding the people and materials required for the job and holding them to duty. See Eisenhower's housecleaning in North Africa after Kasserine Pass. Herman Wouk expressed it well in the soliloquy on the importance of Capt. Queeg at the end of The Caine Mutiny. The trick is to know which set of abilities is required at a given time."
Indeed that is the trick. I wish I could have been a good REMF, I really, really do. But I slept through 'Customs and Courtesies' - saving my strength for the night firing ranges.
@8:31 AM
By my calendar notation, today is 020308. or just .308 day for short. In celebration I think I’ll go see what the Colonel is doing.
Eulogizing Jonas Savimbi. Says the Colonel: “Well, they finally got Jonas Savimbi. There was possibly the greatest unsung hero of the Cold War. Savimbi fought the Communists to a standstill in Angola for decades, with no help from us. He was not "African-American" (unsatisfactory term). He was, on the contrary, a first-string African, and he will go down historically with Chaka as one of the great heros of his people. I never had the honor of meeting him, but I got pretty close on two occasions, and I regret the loss.”
@8:26 AM
All right! It looks like I've got 15 more minutes to blog before Blogger goes down for 'major upgrades'! Too bad I won't last that long..
@12:46 AM
Dang by the time I got that whole mess (below) blogged up I forgot to credit Richard Bennett with the PC Mag link that got me so wound up.
@12:44 AM
This is a classic. John Dvorak is trolling for links again. This week he reviews The Cluetrain Manifesto.
Says he: “The book is written by a cast of characters who were apparently caught up in the dot-com scene at its peak, and they managed to capture in one book almost all of the lunatic fringe dingbat thinking that characterized the Internet boom. Through the miracle of self-serving Web logs—or blogs—they have managed to keep these now- retro thoughts alive and kicking in cult form.”
Ok, I haven’t read the book, I take it he didn’t like it.
Says he [despite the dot crash]: “Yet the apparent faith in this odd vision of an idealistic human-oriented internetworked new world/new economy marches forward. I imagine all these folks holding hands in a large circle, rolling back and forth, with some in the middle of the circle, spinning and chanting and hugging, all naked. I'm betting that most of these folks go to Burning Man and all of them write blogs about it and how cool it was. They link to each others' blogs and read what they say about each other—all highly complimentary.
“In fact the brown-nosing that goes on between bloggers singing each others' praises makes the worst office kiss-ups look tame by comparison. I mention this anomaly since these Cluetrain folks all believe the opposite to be true. Somehow networking like this, according to the Cluetrainees, reveals truth—when in fact it supports and forces the worst kind of conformist behavior. Try to find a blog that is ever critical of another blog. I've never seen it.”
Oh? Look four posts down. And what happened to the book review?
But I digress. Let's look at the cornball 95 Theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto. Let's start at the beginning and go through the first ten in order.
1. Markets are conversations. Exactly WHAT is this supposed to mean? Is this supposed to be thought-provoking? Maybe if your IQ is 5. To me it sounds like something someone would find written on a napkin after a two-week LSD bender. The manifesto starts with this nonsense and get worse.”
And so does the review. Most who’ve done much reading of the libertarian literature should recognize the concept of a market as an exchange of information. But I suppose that might not be obvious to someone with experience writing on napkins during two-week LSD benders.
Ah well, needless to say I didn’t think much of the ‘book review’ as thinly disguised blog critique. But he has learned a trick or two, nobody’s sneaking their blog address into their comments this week.
Responds Vansant: “Go create your own blog, John. We'd all be happy to comment. I might even blogroll you.... “
To which we get this truly precious reply from Dvorak:
“I have been thinking along these lines. And I will do a blog or two. Despite the fact that I seem critical of this phenomenon, I am, in fact, supportive. It's just the nutty aspects that annoy me. Also there is a belief that these people are pioneers. I have one more column coming up where I take some of these pioneering notions to task as well as some other over-used commonplaces. And, yes, this is something of an attention-getting exercise. Somebody has to do it.”
Supportinve eh? wouldn't have guessed that. But after the review he’d just written I guess I’d grant him expertise on ‘nutty aspects’ in writing. Perhaps it's the competition he can't stand? And speaking of pioneers, Dvorak isn’t a common name in my neighborhood—you don’t suppose he’s still smarting because people didn’t like his keyboard?
Never having heard of him before, unless he was the inventor of the silly keyboard, I got interested enough to google him up.
Now this is interesting. According to Wired: “His irreverence and bad attitude don't subvert the dominant paradigm enough to cost him the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year he pulls in through his Ziff-Davis-based publishing sinecure. Dvorak considers Infoworld's Robert X. Cringely his only true computer-columnist competitor, meaning Cringely also takes a stand of critical distance on the computer industry. Some sources maintain the two writers share other traits, such as journalistic sloppiness, mendacity, and nastiness.”
Hundreds of thousands a year for this drivel? That figures.
But Wired isn’t done. Does he write his own columns? “Called by more than one source the Mark Kostabi of computer columnists, John C. Dvorak says he writes all 17 of the columns he turns out each month, an attainable feat, he asserts, because the word-counts average out to 500 per day. Wife Mimi is also a collaborator. Probably more a matter of semantics than anything else; depends on how you define "research" as provided by assistants and what it means to "write" a column.”
Maybe that’s why his review of blogging last week and the ‘book review’ this week come off as if written by some whiney wannabe?
And Wired goes on: “Said to use French Catholic philosopher Jacques Ellul's Technological Society as a guide for turning himself into a Coyote-Trickster who profits from the computer industry's media carnival. Ah! I thought I recognized that smell..
Finally, Wired raps it up with a bold closing note: “John C. Dvorak reduces some journalists and PR people to spluttering incoherent rage - or cowering - all off the record. And bad things happen to people who refer to him as other than John C. Dvorak in print.”
Let’s see, how did I refer to him? Oh well, I suspect referring to his writing as drivel probably pisses him off too. So we started with the premise that Dvorak was a whiney wannabe. Looks more like a whiney has-been now, eh?
@12:27 AM
I’ve been reading Ed Feser’s essay “What Libertarianism Isn’t,” Will Wilkinson’s response, and the comments on Wilkinson’s page. It strikes me that there’s one wee problem with this argument on all sides: Who defines “traditional morality”? It’s not exactly a monolithic concept. I imagine that what Feser means and what everyone else accepts that he means is ‘traditional WASP morality’ as opposed to the sort of traditional morality practiced by the Taliban, and of course, Feser would faint if he were confronted with the Innuit version of traditional morality.
Given the ‘Free Minds’ bent of libertarianism, I’d be very surprised if there aren’t just about as many visions of libertarianism as there are libertarians. Thus, I find it interesting how many non-libertarians have come forward lately to explain what libertarianism is, or should be all about. If I were a democrat and some republican wanted to tell me what democrats should be about, I might suspect ulterior motives..
@12:19 AM
Thursday, March 07, 2002- - -
Could It Be?
At 9:40 am yesterday March 6th the BLM Wyoming State Office sent out an email! Next thing you know they’ll be putting in indoor toilets & such.
@3:52 PM
Wednesday, March 06, 2002- - -
Ah, yes! The damnable report is about done. All the final organization and heavy assembly is done and we have a print draft to mark up. Final tweaking. Checking the footnotes and references. Delightful. And a damned nice product if I do say so. Now we have a pretty straightforward synthesis of some work that was pretty well done and well documented. A relative piece of cake. With any luck we’ll make it to AZ by the end of March for a few well deserved days of fun in the sun.
I am learning a few things about the capabilities of MS Publisher through all this. The capability to insert captioned photos and illustrations into text and produce a polished product is great. But those photos and illustrations can combine to create enormous files pretty quickly. Ram and hard drive storage are the limiting factors. Thus, any more than five or six pages becomes a document that’s slow to load and save and manipulate. This is fine when your whole product is a 20 page report and you can do it in four parts. When the product exceeds 100 pages, adding a paragraph to Part 3 that will require repaginating Parts 3 through 26, becomes unwieldy. A product that filed text separate from illustrations and only integrated them on screen and at print time would seem to be much more efficient of memory.
Perhaps there’s some way to reconfigure MS Publisher to merge images from a separate file? Who knows. I’ve only been using it for two years and I’m barely beginning to figure out the major features. I shouldn’t knock MS Publisher. It’s light years beyond what we were using. We rarely produce reports with more than 50 pages in a single document. We may produce dozens or even hundreds of supporting documents and each of these independent documents may be another 15-20 pages. Publisher is about ideal for producing these little <50 page jobs. Organize all your pictures and illustrations and maps and such to tell the story and then block copy text from the support documents and wind it through all the images. Very neat. It just gets cumbersome quickly for documents of over 50 pages or so. Fewer pages if you have a lot of digital images.
The big problem I see is the quality of photos. If you’ve only got a couple you can print them on glossy photo paper, but that becomes pricey real quick when you need six copies of a report and each one has 25 pages with photos on them. We print the photos on a good quality inkjet paper and accept the fact that they’re a little muddy-looking. If bright clear images are necessary, we include them on a CD. Three or four years ago we were developing film and rubber-cementing photographic prints into the reports. We drafted maps and stuck little labels on them. And used a severely limited number of images, a lot of which were Xeroxed. Then we started scanning and digitizing. Now, none of this stuff is touched until it’s printed out as part of the report and our reports are profusely illustrated. And if we could get broadband service we wouldn’t print it out then. Well, except that the feds internet connections don’t appear to be functioning at the moment.
@8:45 AM
Here’s a strange bit from the Instapundit: “A couple of notes: people have emailed me to say that the venomous Ted Rall cartoon making fun of 9/11 widows has been removed from the NYT site, no doubt in response to Charles Johnson's campaign. And someone said that the Olive Garden piece that James Lileks savaged so beautifully is mysteriously missing from The Guardian. Reportedly, you can still find it with a keyword search for "Olive Garden," but it no longer shows up among Matthew Engel's columns, with a noticeable gap where it should be. The power of the Blogosphere in action!”
Beware that dark side, Luke.
@7:08 AM
Tuesday, March 05, 2002- - -
Brother can you paradigm?
Via Doc Searls, I see we have another mainstream media article on blogging. Says the Minneapolis Star Tribune: “People who blog are known as bloggers -- creators of online journals known as Web logs -- filling cyberspace with everything from nuanced analysis of the news to loopy rants about themselves.”
In my case of course, it’s loopy rants about the news and nuanced analysis of myself.. Whatever. But while I’m being omphaloscopic I note that the Minneapolis Trib article neatly sums up at least a large part of ‘the reason I do this’:
Says the Trib: “Blog traffic soared in the days after Sept. 11, in many cases because bloggers were frustrated by the performance of the mainstream media and wanted to grab control of the information flow. It has come to be called warblogging, with amateur journalists going toe-to-toe with the pros. An often-stated blog manifesto is that it allows people to self-publish at little or no cost without relying on the media's self-appointed gatekeepers.”
from my point of view, putting up with the toppled-over-to-the-left media was bad enough when the big issue of the day was Gary Condit or whichever of the 659 gun control laws currently being proposed was being touted at Rosie’s today. Other than in my business, where I have my own news network, unless the tax assessor was at the door the doings of government were largely irrelevant to me, and the people who covered the doings of government were thus even more irrelevant. But September 11th brought a whole new realm of relevance to government and media and punditry.
I found that it was very much one thing to listen to some pack of morons prattle on about how much taxes should be raised to pay for all these sorely needed new government services—after all, I knew that more taxes are always inevitable so long as the great democratic Masses demand their bread and circuses and for so long as some of that money rubs off on its government handlers. I might occasionally lose my temper with some genius of the genus ‘it won’t cost a thing, the govmint is paying for it!’ and write a letter to the editor, but I’d hardly get too upset if the letter got mangled or went unpublished.
But I simply couldn’t bear any more cute airheads telling me that all the government needed to do was take some of these tanky things and tie these parachuty things to them and drop them from these airplany things and all the terrorists would surrender to the nearest news agency. And that was Bill O’Reilly. Listening to the Wagnerian theme music that announced another episode of ‘America Strikes Back’ on CNN started making me long for the days of a House Un-American Activities Commission to give that bunch a touch of the whip. I even listened (politely, I might add) to a couple of ‘See! Joe McCarthy was right!’ rants by the fossilized local Birchers.
The credibility of the major media couldn’t have gotten any lower with me than in the month or so after September 11th. I still can’t stomach the television news and the coverage of the Big Ice Skating Scandal was starting to give me flashbacks, what with all the breathless mugging outside some nondescript building in Utah.
I concluded that there’s something gravely wrong with the media when it’s obvious that a lot of the folks mugging for the camera think that the most important thing they do career-wise is mug properly. There’s something even more weirdly wrong when these camera-mugging newsreaders start facing loss of their careers for improper mugging at importune times.
So I’m not at all sure that we’re seeing a paradigm shift in the way we process and distribute information or that Blogging will be The Next Big Thing. I wonder sometimes how long I’ll keep this up—as long as it’s entertaining.. But I’m not at all unsure about the premise that any half-bright semi-literate can compete with the Big Boys. The Big Boys just aren’t that big anymore.
@6:53 PM
Here’s a good one via mother-in-law.com: Dave Kopel takes a whack at the Surrender Monkeys at the Denver Post. Kopel agrees with Mom: “The problem was not, as some of Paige's defenders claimed, that he made an underwear joke (even Mormons sometimes joke about Temple garments), but the overall tone of the piece, which was angry and hostile, not funny.” But Kopel makes an interesting observation:
“Woody Paige's Feb. 12 column in The Denver Post making fun of Mormons has generated by far the biggest anti-media firestorm in Colorado in recent years. ..
“Protests against Paige began pouring in immediately. ..
“How could Paige, and whoever edited the column, not expect the response that they provoked? I think the response lies in the blind spots about religion that are pervasive in today's media.
“Last fall, when the University of Colorado played Nebraska twice in high-stakes football games, Paige wrote several columns mocking the entire state of Nebraska, denouncing its inhabitants as bumpkins with nothing on their tiny minds except football. While the columns provoked a bunch of angry replies from Nebraskans, no giant controversy resulted.
“The difference with the Utah column, of course, is that making nasty fun of someone's religion is much more offensive than making fun of their state in general. This point may not be intuitively obvious in the generally secular newsroom culture. ..
“Given that Paige and the Post have both apologized quite sincerely, I don't join with the people who are demanding that he be fired..
From the sound of it, I can understand why some folks might be feeling a little insulted, although I’ve still not read the original piece. However, Woody Paige is an inky-fingered punditoid who relies for his daily bread on amusing sufficient people that the Denver Post feels it worth their while to give him space and a no doubt meager stipend. He has a reputation for being a bit caustic, but he’s an angel by bloggosphere standards. I can maybe understand the apologies and pulling the piece off the internet. And I understand why some folks wouldn’t feel that this apology was sufficiently groveling.
But I don't understand demanding that he be fired. Ok. You think he’s a prick, don’t read his columns, but demanding that the guy lose his job, even such as it is, seems a bit over the top.
And frankly, I still think pulling the offending column off the ‘net is a Cheese-eating thing to do.
@5:47 PM
I’d read that the BLM in Wyoming was supposed to be back online this last week, but email still isn’t going through, or at least isn’t being responded to. Perhaps one bureaucrat’s greatest fear has come true, that the government’s computer operators saved a copy of all the email that’s been bounced since early December and now they’ve turned their computers back on to find 2500 back-dated emails waiting for them.
@6:59 AM
I went searching for a dose of aggravation and found it in the usual place, in this Denver Post Sunday editorial that sums up the Cobell v. Norton Indian trust case background with the observation that since the Reagan administration Secretaries of the Interior have been telling congress that the DOI could fix the problems with the Indian trusts if only they had enough money. Says the DP: “Lack of money isn't why DOI hasn't untangled the Indian trust fund mess. The real problems are DOI's lack of accountability and determination to get the job done.”
Imagine that. The government’s purse has a hole in it and the people being sprinkled with all those stray funds just can’t bring themselves to fix the hole. There should be a final ruling in Cobell v. Norton by the end of this month, but as the judge has noted, the government hasn’t obeyed any of his court orders yet.
In the mean time, I don’t hear a lot of celebration from Indian Country about the arrival of the promised and now long overdue trust fund payments.
@6:58 AM
Virginia Postrel comments on her Reader Darren Cahr and the choice between suburb and city (posted 2/27): “Give people the benefits of both city and suburb and they'll stay in town. What a thought.”
Those are the two choices, aren’t they?
Incidentally, we made the 90 mile trip to the suburbs and visited WalMart on the designated first Sunday of the month. If anybody was ‘Whirling’ it wasn’t with empty carts. Actually, WalMart was fairly slow on Sunday morning so they probably would have enjoyed a good whirl.
We greased up at the Cowboy Bar in Meeteetse on the way home—sourdough mushroom melt & fries. And I noticed that the place is going yuppie on us. Two of the four beer taps are now devoted to ‘microbrews’ from New Belgium down in Ft. Collins. In this case their Sunshine Wheat and Fat Tire. Imagine that, cowboys like beer that tastes good. A pitcher of the Wheat with mushroom melt and piled high sourdough roast beef sandwiches, salty, greasy fries, and cheap catsup.. Heaven on a Sunday afternoon. Except that being Sunday we missed our dose of Jerry Springer.
The food and beer were just as good as usual, but none of the weekday afternoon regulars were there and even with a good restaurant the place was deserted at 2 on Sunday afternoon. It would be interesting to set up a TIVO and vary the times of Springer episodes at regular intervals to see how that effected the size and composition of the bar crowd. Play it off against several other popular programs.
Hmmm. As a ‘professional’ I could set up the scenario and write off the ‘costs’ as research. And bill myself as an entertainment consultant to the recreational beverage industry.
Why it’s perfectly obvious: Some TV programming draws a thirsty crowd. With TIVO technology becoming cheap, how could any thinking bar owner not want to find out what programming most appeals to the neighborhood crowd? A scientific study could show whether people preferred Jerry Springer over NASCAR v. Disney cartoons. Collecting the data in real time, till receipts tabulated by TV programming, and with TIVO to customize and control the programming, a person might take advantage of all the ‘Stop in and have a beer and watch.. on the way to..’ crowd in shifts all day long. And because till receipts were part of the study it could be shown whether the programming was effective in increasing receipts.
On the other hand, this might be one of those cases where we were better off not knowing. Suppose it was proven that the very sight of Pat Robertson drives people to drink? What if you owned a bar and you could increase your monthly receipts by 5% by playing unending reruns of the 700 club? Would we see lines of bartenders applying for jobs at calling centers? Could a cheap, mass-marketed TV optimizer spell teotwawki for the bar industry? Hey, people thought karaoki was harmless too.
@6:56 AM
My Life as a Blog..
Via Virginia Postrel: Southern California blog fans can see Glenn Reynolds and Mickey Kaus discuss "My Life as a Blog: How Internet Weblogs are Changing the Shape of the Media" at the UCLA Law School on Wednesday, March 13, 4:00-5:45 p.m. in the Moot Court Room (1310) of the Law Building. The event is organized by Eugene Volokh, the UCLA law professor who spoiled all the fun a while back by calling in the authorities.
I suspect we’ll be seeing a lot of cloning around over at the InstaPundit’s while the real Professor is in California..
@6:52 AM
Monday, March 04, 2002- - -
Ok, Ok, I'm still working on the attachments for the last little item. But you asked for industrial.. Take this unit for instance. With a Powerful 12V (2Ah) battery and a 46" long, 1" diameter flexible shaft, it vibrates at 12,500 VPM and operates for 20 minutes on a single charge. If that's not enough it comes standard with a second battery. It's also provided with a protective cover on the switch and battery to prevent contamination. This thing will stir concrete.
@7:27 PM
Foul fiend that I am, I’ve been placing mere pecuniary interest ahead of the art these last few days. Gladly, I see that others have been holding to higher standards. I’ve thought of holding a Wyoming blogfest .. but then I do that every time I do this.. Whenever I do this strange thing we call Blogging I wonder.. is this the next IT? Will blogging revolutionize the internet the way the Edsel revolutionized auto manufacturing?
We stand at the dawn of a brave new world..
@7:25 PM
Nothing like a little honest work to make me feel abused.. I've got some serious deadlines looming on the big report and it requires a lot of concentration. It's amazing how many little details go into a big report and I'm at the shuffling photos and maps and illustrations into the text part. I'm usually pleased with the final result, but the denouement can be hell. But not to worry, I've been saving all my better jibes, japes, guffas, etc.
I haven’t been following the bloggosphere too closely over the last few days, but I see I’m not the only one who’s been having problems with the internet in general or Blogger in particular. Stephen Green has moved the VodkaPundit in search of the proverbial greener pasture.
I’ve never noted any particularly greater frequency of problems with Blogger than I experience with Windows infernal memory overflow problems, server time-outs and busy signals, and whatever. But then it seems I’ve always been the last user of a rickety old system whether it was an about to be salvaged mainframe, an about to be mothballed mini, or a crashing 6-year-old pc, I’m used to the persnickety outfits going hip-pockets-up on me. I probably wouldn’t know what to do with a computer system that didn’t crash once a day, so perhaps I’m not the one to judge, but I don’t have any particular gripes with blogger.
@7:07 AM
I’m still nosing the grindstone and it’s been a slow week for events. I see the big event in the Bloggosphere is MommaBear editing the Dodgeblog. She’s disgusted that anyone would pay big bucks for the tape of the execution of Daniel Pearl. It’s amazing and disgusting that some news agency would want to air this under any circumstances.
@7:05 AM
Tuesday, February 26, 2002- - -
The problems at my ISP seem to have healed themselves and the down time has allowed me some serious nose-to-the-grindstone moments. I’m finishing up a major section of the project I’ve been working on all winter. I’ve finally got all the maps, photos, artifact illustrations, radiocarbon dates, feature information, and all the other minutia where it can be laid out in one place. Very interesting. Putting it all together into a comprehensive report is requiring a lot of concentration. The materials are from one of the largest archaeological excavations ever conducted in Wyoming and the final result will be worth the effort. And I will be heartily glad to be done with it.
@7:55 AM
Sunday, February 24, 2002- - -
And then it's back. The internet is being snarky and cranky today..
@12:00 PM
Hmmm. Now my ISP is gone again. Shut down just as I was starting a series of blogs. A lonely feeling losing internet access. Makes me identify with the rank filers at the BLM and BuRec & such. I imagine someone somewhere is taking advantage of the weekend ‘downtime’ to do some upgrade or repair..
@11:59 AM
Dave Barry goes to the Grand Cities
Dave Barry says: “I went to Grand Forks, N.D., in January. .. I arrived at Grand Forks International Airport on a subzero Tuesday night. I have never been so cold in my life. And that was inside the terminal. Outside it was much worse. I'm pretty sure wolves were stalking me as I staggered across the wind-whipped parking lot, wondering if there could be a colder place on the planet.”
No Dave, There isn’t any colder place. Siberia is about the same. Extreme continental climate. I saw a bull moose in the alley behind my apartment one might when I went to school there, so I wouldn’t be surprised by wolves, either..
Barry goes on: “During my visit, roughly once every four minutes a North Dakotan would remind me, in a nice way, that they have hardly any crime up there .. I can't argue with them: It does feel very safe up there, and everybody does seem to get along, despite the fact that the population is quite diverse, ranging all the way from people whose ancestors immigrated from Norway, to people whose ancestors immigrated from a different part of Norway.”
@11:45 AM
I see in today’s Red Star Tribune (020224; no link) that the BLM is supposed to be back on line. I’ll send off an email and see..
And I shouldn’t be so hard on them. Today, Levendosky says “National ID cards strangle freedom.“ A topic we can agree on. That is unusual.
@11:44 AM
That was interesting. My ISP went AWOL. No internet. For several hours yesterday. That was OK though, I spent most of the day and this morning putting up new curtains in the living room and bedrooms, and resting on my laurels.
@11:43 AM
Saturday, February 23, 2002- - -
Without having much clue how the mechanics of Blogger and the internet really work, I note that Anton Sherwood is experiencing the mysterious missing archives problem:
Says he: "While I'm up: I notice that my archive index has only one entry, when it ought to have three. I'll change the link to point to the directory, and trust y'all to find what you're after."
I've had 'disappearing archives' problems and one of the primetime bloggers mentioned a similar problem a few days ago. Of course, I can't find that link again. The gist of the problem was that the default 'Internet Options' he had set for his browser were accessing a previously downloaded version of a blog that had been saved in his 'Temporary Internet Files' folder, rather than getting a refreshed file from the net. Because the archives that make individual permalinks work seem to be in a separate file that's not downloaded and thus not available offline, his browser hacked the "#9999999" sub-reference extension and took him to the top of the blog he was accessing, rather than to the individual item link he was trying to follow.
I've noticed that I can recreate this problem by trying to follow internal links within this blog (links where I've referenced something I’ve previously written in this blog), while I'm working with an off-line version of the blog that's saved in my 'Temporary Internet Files' folder. Rather than finding the individual post, this drops the "#9999999" sub-reference and takes me to the top of the blog.
When working with an off-line version of my blog that's saved in my 'Temporary Internet Files' folder, the archives entries also disappear.
Of course, this is all complete BS because it's not science at all, It Is Magic. Sometimes the magic works and sometimes it doesn't. If fiddling with the default Internet Options vis Temporary Internet Files doesn’t work, try threatening it with a hammer..
@11:08 AM
Friday, February 22, 2002- - -
Anton Sherwood takes on Social Darwinism and the whole silly idea of letting the state select the winners and losers in society. A wee excerpt from an excellent analysis: “In a world dominated by the ethic of trade, fit means uniquely or efficiently satisfying the desires of others. In a world dominated by so-called Social Darwinism or bureaucratic egalitarianism, fit means able to play the rulers' game.”
Yes, the lovely Game of Princes, speaking of which:
Farther along and drawing on his run-in with Tom, Dick, and Harry, Anton opines that: “I have the impression that, to the police, whatever they do to you is "no harm no foul" so long as you're not wrongly convicted, no matter what inconvenience and discomfort you've suffered meanwhile. But that impression comes largely from television shows sympathetic to the police.”
Hmm. Actually, as Anton had observed elsewhere, it’s apparently common for our law enforcement and court system to feel that there’s no foul even if they knowingly execute an innocent, so long as it’s done within the letter of the law.
We used to have peace officers. Now we have law enforcement officers. The difference is more than just semantics.
@7:17 AM
Andrew Hofer takes on that music I only hear when I accidentally turn on NPR. You know what he means, that stuff that sounds like someone beating a cat with a bass fiddle.. Says Andrew: “Musically enjoyable? not really. And I got the sense 98% of the audience was pretending to enjoy it in that "Emperor's New Clothes" sort of way. Why do we do this? Because it is "important"?
No. Having a good fly rod is important. Having a place to use it, priceless..
@7:14 AM
Kick ‘em While They’re ‘Down’
A while back I received a note from J Bowen: “Greetings from No Watermelons Allowed, where you have been linked for a while now.
I remember a few years ago there was some fuss about reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone. You're in Wyoming - how did it go over?
This is a very sore topic for a lot of people here. There's three sides to the argument: The ranchers, a lot of whom don't want any wolves anywhere under any circumstances; the wildlife lovers who want to come to Yellowstone and *actually see* a wolf; and those of us who knew there were already wolves in Yellowstone (I'd seen one just north of there near Gardner MT). Note that in the second article no one disputes that there were 'naturally occurring' wolves in the area.
Here’s the rub: The 'naturally occurring' wolves didn't seem to hunt in packs, didn't vocalize much at all, and seemed much more nocturnal than the Canadian Gray Wolves. The population of these wolves was very small and they hadn't been studied much at all, but it appears entirely possible that, based on behavior, they were a distinct subspecies.
Unfortunately, the original reports of the Dec. 1997 court case, Judge William Downes presiding, in which the American Farm Bureau Federation challenged the introduction of the Canadian wolves don’t appear to be available on line. In that case, under oath in court, some US Fish and Wildlife Service jerk admitted that they knew there were already wolves in Yellowstone and that they might be a distinct subspecies. But under political pressure from the great democratic Masses, they went ahead and introduced Canadian wolves anyway.
There were two or three possible explanations for the wolves in Yellowstone prior to introduction of the foreigners: They may have been there all along and survived due to their unusually elusive behavior; they may have been a recently developed subspecies (due to genetic isolation of the population); or they may have been introduced clandestinely by folks who couldn’t wait for the feds to do their nefarious job. As the gene pools of the 'naturally occurring' and introduced wolves have been inextricably mingled, we'll never know now.
Bottom line, under intense political pressure the US Fish and Wildlife Service may have knowingly caused the extinction of a very rare critter. All the wildlife organizations who brought that pressure to bear now celebrate this as a great victory ‘for the wolves.’
Good job, boys.
@6:09 AM
Thursday, February 21, 2002- - -
This is getting ridiculous. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, presiding in the Cobell v. Norton Indian Trust class action said today that he has been "duped" by the federal government, criticizing officials and attorneys for playing "word games" with the assets of 300,000 American Indians.
"It's beyond my belief how the court ever gets control," Lamberth added.
But Lamberth questioned whether forcing the Department of the Interior to fulfill its trust obligations would improve matters. Attorneys representing the Individual Indian Money beneficiaries have asked for a court order to do just that.
"What good would that do?" Lamberth wondered. "They haven't obeyed a court order I made yet."
@7:04 PM
Via the InstaPundit (where else?) I’ve found another delightful blog: Rich Hailey’s Shots Across the Bow. A lot of well thought out commentary on a variety of subjects.
@6:39 PM
Here’s another good one for all my fellow winos: Coastal Ridge California Cabernet, 1999. I picked up a bottle yesterday, about $6, and had a glass. It was OK. But I forgot the bottle on the counter and it did some serious breathing overnight. Now it’s very nice. Rich varietal blackberry flavor, good legs, quite full, long finish, a bit of oak, and just a hint of tannin. It probably won’t keep much longer but I called today and ordered a case. Not good for emergencies, let it breath a long time.
BTW, did I mention that at altitude everyone’s a cheap drunk? Another good reason to move to Wyoming.
@6:37 PM
The ol’ Coyote has been in business as a blogger for one month now. I’ve reached some tentative conclusions: The best part of blogging is the response I’ve gotten. I’ve received some very interesting and totally entertaining email and ‘met’ some interesting people. And I’ve gotten some very odd email and met some odd people—but so far no one odder than me .. Through Sgt. Stryker I’ve relocated an old friend I haven’t seen in 20 years. Most significantly, I’ve been forced to think very carefully about a lot of things I thought I just knew.
@6:36 PM
The tricks our minds can play on us. Earlier I’d said that my first full time job involved working with an IBM 4341 mainframe. Funny that I forgot the summer I spent pumping septic tanks..
@6:36 PM
Here’s something that makes me Bellicose
Via Anton Sherwood comes this report from Salon, who say: “Because of the urgency of the death penalty case examined in the following article, we are taking the unusual step of making this Premium story available to all Salon readers.” Mighty white of them..
Says Salon: Missouri is determined to execute Joseph Amrine for murder even though every prosecution witness and the jury foreman now say he's innocent and new witnesses point to another man. Why? A federal law says the evidence came in too late. ..
He is facing execution despite the fact that the three prisoners who testified against him at his trial have subsequently recanted their testimony. They say they were pressured by prison authorities to lie, and then rewarded for it.
Amrine's case is important because the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals used his appeal in establishing a precedent limiting the ability of criminals to introduce new evidence of their innocence. A three-judge panel held that the testimony of other inmates .. was not sufficient to require a new hearing, because the defense could have obtained that evidence at the original trial, through due diligence, but did not.
Legal experts say that precedent placed a chilling new limit on death-penalty appeals. In plain language, it means there may be eye witnesses to a murder discovered after a trial, who were never heard by a jury, who can attest to a person's innocence. But if for some reason the defense overlooked them or failed to call them at the trial, the person should die anyway.
We wouldn’t want to see a convicted murderer getting off on a little technicality like that, would we?
@7:01 AM
Apparently bellicosity, or at least reporting of such isn’t allowed in Canada. This link from the InstaPundit “.. could not be found.”
Luckily, we have another take from security at Salt Lake on bellicosity levels in the Great White North: A Canadian skater kept approaching the stairs up to the ice, only to be told that, for security purposes, we had to stop everyone, even if we knew them: "I'm not a security threat: I'm Canadian."
Gotta love ‘em.
@6:33 AM
Samizdata excerpts a press release from the London based Libertarian Alliance about an outrageous case in Britain. The release doesn’t appear to be on-line, but here’s the gist of the situation:
Says the UK News Telegraph: John Lambert, 58, of Spalding, Lincs, is understood to have been at home watching television with his wife when Darren Taylor, 29, and another man allegedly broke in and confronted them.
One of the robbers is believed to have held a 12-in knife to Mr Lambert's wife's throat and demanded £5,000. It is thought that in the ensuing struggle Taylor, of Market Deeping, Lincs, was stabbed to death.
After the incident on Feb 10 Mr Lambert, who was not injured, was questioned by police for two days before being released on bail pending further enquiries.
According to Samizdata, Libertarian Alliance spokesman and Director, Dr Chris R. Tame, says:
"It is a sign of a morally corrupt society that Mr Lambert should have been held by the police for two days and is even now facing the insult of further police inquiries. ..
Yet again it is quite clear that the police, like all nationalised industries, have no real interest in their "customers", but would rather persecute both those who defend themselves and other easy targets. ..
I understand that Mr. Lambert killed Taylor with the thug's own knife. Good thing he didn't shoot him.
@6:08 AM
The Indianz bailed out NYC?
Chris Lombardi at The Nation has an overview of the Cobell v. Norton case, with some good background on Indian Trusts. Here are a few excerpts:
The trust was set up in 1887, when Native people were judged incompetent to manage the income from their lands. The Interior Department was charged with managing the lands while the Treasury Department would oversee the trust, invest the funds and compensate the lands' owners. "In a way, the US government has been a real estate broker, buyer, bank and accounts-payable agent," says Cassandra Sweet, a Seattle journalist who has written about Indian treaty rights issues.
Says Elouise Cobell, plaintiff in the suit: "I see Native people dying every day because they can't afford health insurance .. one woman I know has seven oil wells on her property, and she gets about $1,000 a year."
Cobell's suit, a class action now representing nearly half a million Indians from dozens of tribes, made two demands. One, that the trust system be fixed--that is, made transparent and be required to operate according to generally accepted banking principles. Two, that a historical accounting be made of the money lost over the trust's 110-year life.
So, where did the money go?
Lombardi goes on to say: Funds from the lands managed by the trust were dumped into Treasury's general fund, using an accounting code not unique to those properties, and thus turned into a slush fund that was apparently used to bail out Chrysler and New York City during its fiscal crisis in the 1970s, among other purposes over the course of the past century.
"I've never seen more egregious misconduct by the federal government," said Judge Royce C. Lamberth in his decision for the plaintiffs in early 1999. In November 1996 it became clear that key documents were missing in five Federal Reserve offices. The Clinton Administration waited two years to produce the rest, leading to contempt citations against both Babbitt and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin--and shortly afterward, Interior admitted destroying 162 boxes of documents.
Lamberth then appointed both a special master, Alan Balaran, and a court monitor, Joseph Kieffer, to track the government's cooperation. Over and over again, Interior and Treasury have claimed to be fixing the problems with the system only to have Balaran and Kieffer come forward to say that they'd barely begun, Kieffer using phrases like "government malfeasance" to describe what he'd found.
What do Cobell and her lawyers want? For starters, a night or two in jail for Norton, "to get her attention." More broadly, the demand is for the trust funds to be placed into receivership with some neutral financial institution, until it functions under generally accepted fiduciary principles. Native American banking systems have grown more and more sophisticated, with a late-2001 merger creating the Native American National Bank. Under the leadership of people like Cobell, they're savvy about what's being done with their money. They're demanding a neutral arbiter, not Norton's proposed bureau, which would, according to Cobell, "just move some of the same bureaucrats into another division."
Even the right-wing Washington Times says simply, "The mystery is why Mrs. Norton, or the folks in the West Wing, don't just settle the case once and for all." If they don't, and soon, not only will Norton and her deputy Neal McCaleb be at risk of jail time or fines (which Lamberth has said will be paid out of their pockets and not government coffers) ..
Ah! Perhaps if this issue could be re-framed as a right wing conspiracy the Indianz might see more concern from the major media.
@5:13 AM
Promises, Promises
February 12th, the Department of the Interior issued this press release re Cobell v. Norton:
WASHINGTON - Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton announced she has authorized the Office of Trust Funds Management to begin issuing estimated oil and gas payments to Indian trust beneficiaries.
Now, via Indianz:
[U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth] overseeing the trust fund exploded in court on Wednesday, threatening to hold Secretary of Interior Gale Norton in contempt for failing to make millions of dollars in long-delayed payments to Indian landowners.
Department officials and attorneys admitted yesterday none have been made.
"I don't understand the continued delay," Lamberth said. "I just don't get it."
He’s not alone.
@4:29 AM
Via Indianz comes further proof of the widening influence of bloggerdom. In an obvious attempt to capitalize on this recent and wildly successful marketing ploy by Samizdata, Land O’Lakes has announced a $30 million advertising, marketing and public relations campaign that will carry an enhanced logo of the Indian maiden and the new slogan, "Where Simple Goodness Begins."
@4:27 AM
Wednesday, February 20, 2002- - -
A reader writes: “Blogspot is down again for the umpteenth time in 4 days...I thought they were getting their act together...is there some way that the blog-readership community could mount a campaign to suggest to them they get their act together??? If, like a lot of companies, they have failed to heed the obvious signs of an increase of an exponential factor instead of linear growth in activity, they should be spanked.
I should be spanked too, but we don’t always get what we want..
In the mean time, besides buying the header ads from blogs we like, there’s something else that at least some of us can do to avoid and relieve the clogged pipes:
Figure that most folks’ presence is requested in the workplace at 8am or 9am local time, Monday through Friday. Coffee breaks come either on the hour or on the half, mid-morning and mid-afternoon. Figure that the boss probably frowns on blogging on the job.
From this, I would predict that all the wage slaves might have a tendency to get in a little surfing and blogging in those few minutes before they are ‘on the clock’ in the morning and during their morning and afternoon breaks. Thus, the predicted highest traffic times for Blogger should be in the morning 7:45-8:00, 8:45-9:00, 9:30-9:45, 10:00-10:15, and 10:30-10:45. There might be a bit of a spike between 12:00-1:00 pm from those who eat at the oars. Then there should be spikes between 2:00-2:15, 2:30-2:45, and 3:00-3:15.
Now take a look at the Samizdata graph of visitor time zones. I would predict that Blogger usage over a 24 hour period should also conform to this graph. Thus, the highest traffic and slowest access should be at the times stated above, WST. Next busiest at those same times EST, and so on.
Someone with a stop watch and plenty of time on their hands could test this prediction by graphing Blogger access time at five minute intervals throughout the day. Of course, to be statistically valid you’d have to collect data for a month or more. Perhaps someone with more computer sophistication than I could find some way to derive this data from existing logs of access, if such exist. either way, have at it.
I use this reasoning to select log-in times when I blog and it seems to hold up fairly well. Figuring from my MST local time, I don’t even try to blog: 5:45-6:00, 6:45-7:00, 7:30-7:45, 8:00-8:15, and 8:30-8:45, 8:45-9:00, 9:45-10:00, 10:00-11:00, 10:30-10:45, 11:00-11:15, 11:30-11:45, 12:00-12:15, 12:30-12:45, 1:00-2:00, and 1:00-1:15, 3:00-3:15, 3:30-3:45, and 4:00-4:15. With times in bold being the heaviest due to the high west coast usage. Note also some overlaps.
So in MST, my weekday windows of opportunity are: before 5:45, 6:00-6:45, 7:00-7:30, 7:45-8:00, 8:15-8:30, 9:00-9:45, 11:15-11:30, 11:45-12:00, 12:15-12:30, 12:45-1:00, 2:00-3:00, 3:15-3:30, and 3:45-4:00. I figure that any time after 4 pm MST is toast due to heavy evening internet use.
So my 9:00-9:45 window is opening now.. Yep. Blogger is being relatively spry for its age.
Update: This reasoning derives from my experience in the bad old days of computerdom, when I noted that the geeks and the matrix mashers tended to be pale and pasty people. We'd all meet in the bowels of the CompSci building about 2am and work until dawn, then go home and crash when the proles showed.
Update #2: A reader responds— Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics!
...kinds of liars...
Your wonderful listing of times of possible usage w/possible bogdown levels is masterfully presented; howeverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr................ I don't think it even begins to explain the number of times that the damn little platelet popped up that the server couldn't even be found, according to my ISP, which usually, but not always, means that the hosting service has been pulled off-line. Also, there are not usually corresponding spike categories on Saturday and Sunday.
My very first REAL full-time job included compiling and analyzing data surrounding a particular economic activity in which the corporation was involved, because certain members of the corporate regime were absolutely certain that there was always a strong cause/effect relation, merely because the numbers seemed to run in some vague similar pattern. Right off the bat, at that tender age, I developed a HIGH level of skepticism about "statistics are always valid".
I do see a possibility that there may have been some correlation between blogspot's troubles and the Internet Traffic Report loggings out of Iowa; there's a great resource available [here]. With all sorts of more detailed stuff by clicking on through. Somewhere I remember picking up a tidbit that blogspot was located in Iowa.
I'd be the last to suggest that my statistics are valid, since I don't have any.. Only a hunch that there's a reason Blogger is so much faster at 4 am.
All I'm suggesting is that you'll have fewer problems if you try to hit Blogger and BlogSpot at times when they should be seeing lower use. It certainly doesn't account for times when it inexplicably goes belly up a 3 am, which it does. Saturday and Sunday might as well be written off. Some folks must surf all day, all weekend. And I shouldn’t talk, sometimes some of those folks is me.
However, if I'm even close to correct, the schedules of the 15 jillion users of blogger and thus, where they are located, should matter a lot more than where Blogger itself is physically located. That's why I point to the Samizdata visitor graph.. Moving Blogger to Siberia shouldn't help the situation.
Only a bigger pipe and/or higher capacity server will help and that costs $$, so buy those header ads!
As for the 'Error 404 site not found' messages, I think these are grossly overused to cover a variety of ills, including 'the pipe is full somewhere between here and there.' Note that one of the first things the message usually says is to hit 'refresh' and I've found that frequently works. I also got a 404 from every site I tried to visit one day - it turned out someone had dug up the fiber optic line outgoing from my ISP. While I could contact my ISP, they couldn't contact anyone. Yet the error message was just the standard 'site not found' over and over.
I have noted that when Blogger is down for maintenance a message comes up advising of that. Thus, I suspect that the problem is primarily one of clogged pipes and overloaded servers, possibly including some at points beyond the control of Blogger.
I advise patience. Of course, my first full time job involved working with an IBM 4341 mainframe operating in IBM OS 360, and programmed with punch cards [chad anyone?] so I’ve become accustomed to a good deal of computer-aided frustration.
But perhaps we should spank Ev, just on general principles. And he did start Blogger after all, suggesting to me that he might enjoy a good spanking..
Update #3: I'm posting this and the previous update during my 2:00-3:00 pm window. Blogger seems to be working just fine. Maybe it's just magic..
@9:11 AM
Here’s an interesting bit of trivia. An event that hasn’t happened in 891 years and won’t happen again for another 110 years. But it happens tonight at 8:02pm MST:
LONDON: Two minutes past eight on Wednesday night marks a millennial mathematical curiosity with time and date forming a rare triple palindrome - 20:02, 20/02/2002 - reading the same backwards and forwards. ..
John Cremona, pure mathematics professor at Britain's Nottingham University, said the last time that date and time were aligned in this way was on the morning of November 11, in the year 1111.
He said that the time, date and year would be palindromic again in 110 years, at 12 minutes past nine in the evening of December 21, 2112 - or 21:12, 21/12/2112.
Yep. In the notation I’ve been using to keep track of my off-line archives it will be 200202202002. Cool.
@9:08 AM
J. Bowen asks: “If life does not begin at conception, when does it begin? At what point does an individual have a life that we are obliged to honor?”
Hmmm. A lot of my friends are the ‘rents of soon-to-be teenagers, the actively teenaged, and those recently released from teenagery. I suspect that, if pressed, most would admit that at one time or another they have considered Robert Heinlein’s modest proposal that abortion be made retroactive to the age of 18. I believe that Heinlein meant the responsibility for such decisions to lie with the parents, but there are times when I wish the privilege were extended to the neighbors..
@9:07 AM
Dan Rector links to Dave Barry, who’s alive and well, and standing in a line to see the Luge.
@9:06 AM
Tom, Dick, and Harry: Anton Sherwood recounts the showdown at the South Hayward BART station.
When Heinlein suggested that ‘an armed society is a polite society’ I believe he was including the police in that polite group. Yes, most emphatically.
@9:04 AM
Tuesday, February 19, 2002- - -
I’ve noticed that you could graph when everyone on the coasts gets to work and when they take coffee breaks, just by the slowdown on Blogger.
@12:04 PM
Speaking of Cheese-eating Surrender Monkeys here’s a good example from the Northern Wyoming Daily News:
Woody Paige, the irrepressible sports columnist for the Denver Post, yes the one who called Invesco Field at Mile High the ‘Denver Diaphragm,’ (it looks like one and that’s what the people at Invesco called it secretly) has had his article from February 12th yanked. Purged. Flushed. Deleted. February 14th he apologizes, which will give you some idea what the article on the 12th was all about. (He mentioned weird underwear, among other things)
According to the Daily News, the cheese-eaters at the DP say that his article was only published in the first place because of an ‘editorial oversight. Dang! How did we let that get by?’
We called my mother-in-law, who subscribes to the DP and she confirms that it was indeed a nasty cut, but pulling it off the internet does seem a bit much after it’s seen ink. Come on guys, we want to read it too!
@12:03 PM
And now I feel guilty. I see that Bill Quick has his favorites re-organized in alphabetical order. I haven’t updated mine is weeks. Although I’ve purged one that’s defunct, I’ve got a lot of good ones that need to be added.
@12:01 PM
The InstaPundit doesn’t pussyfoot around on this one: “The drug warriors are losers and liars, to put it bluntly. Letting them anywhere near the war on terror is a recipe for defeat.” Nice to know that someone teaching law school is furthering that message.
As an attorney friend tells me, ‘It’s a victimless crime. There’s generally no complainant. Therefore, they couldn’t get a conviction without testilying at some point.’
@8:54 AM
Ah well, as an old Sergeant once told me (no, not that Sergeant, it was MSG Jon King, long, long ago), men are like street cars—there’s another one along every five minutes. Or was that women? It has been a long time. Never mind.
@8:52 AM
Good grief! I’d better have another 500ml of caffeine drip. I’ve been reviewing what I’ve blogged this am and realize that I can’t decide if I’m working with my right mind or not. half of this reads bottom up, and half top down. Tsk.
@8:23 AM
Via Sgt. Stryker, who’s gone on leave[!] comes this strange item:
WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 — The Pentagon is developing plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations as part of a new effort to influence public sentiment and policy makers in both friendly and unfriendly countries, military officials said.
Perhaps that explains this. Looks like they’re working on Reuters [or Tom Tomorrow ... Naah!] already. But remember, you read it in the newspaper. It must be true..
And of course, about the time Reuters realizes they’ve been gooned, certain folks could make it come true and goon them again. On leave, eh?
@8:22 AM
Great minds think alike?
KABUL: Afghanistan's interim administration will establish a a special court to try journalists who violate the country's new media law, Culture Minister Syed Makhdoom Raheen said on Thursday.
"Media persons under no circumstances should stand side-by-side with criminals," Raheen said.
He said the court would start work "very soon."
The new media law also allows Afghan citizens to establish privately-owned television channels, radio stations and news agencies for the first time in history.
Damn, I hate it when that happens.
Now see what you’ve started, Suman? You’ve got me reading the Times of India. Incidentally, note that Suman has a new URL. His redirect is working, but update those links!
@6:40 AM
Ha! The gauntlet is thrown!
"I’ve heard that the emerald in the navel of the golem of Torr is the size of a tea bag. A family-size tea bag. But we’d need the Barbarian to lead that quest..
@5:53 AM
Has everyone gotten into the nitrous this morning? You be the judge:
Thanks to Tom Tomorrow we have this report:
"C-130 planes dropped white-coloured paper envelopes with a photo of President Bush and two bills of $100 each," said Abdul Hadi, a resident of Chaman on the border with southern Afghanistan.”
Says Tom Tomorrow: “Yes, you read that right. Check out the link for yourself. Since today's not April first, this appears to be on the level.
“No wonder Dubya needed to increase the military budget.”
Of course! I always believe what Abdul Hadi has to say. And now we know what all that email of the good Sergeant’s has been about. “Send some my way, Dude!”
But didn’t you see the dateline Tom? There’s a perfectly good explanation—it was Valentine’s Day! Probably more little fibs told that day than any other..
My only question: Do the bills have pictures of Bush?
@5:51 AM
We are the majority, I say! We Are! We Are!
I searched for my daily dose of aggravation in Indian Country but found only a taste of subtle Indian humor. Not much doing on Prez’s Day on Capitol Hill. So I surfed on over to This Modern World. The art of the Permalink isn’t all that seems to be beyond this guy. Yesterday he showed that he can take on the nose-pickers of the world and Win!. But like he says “.. as always, I could be wrong™.”
Isn’t that like patenting the dot in dot com? Truly a humble man with a great deal to be humble about.
Bush is in the Whitehouse. The election was over a year ago. Get over it. Or don’t get over it. Chew chad, dude.
@5:45 AM
In breaking news from Indian Country Tomorrow comes this story filed by their Washington correspondent, Brian Takes-Any-Story.
An angry Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.) challenged National Congress of American Indians President Tex Hall to a traditional Indian rodeo belt buckle contest Friday. The two had exchanged jibes throughout a routine Senate hearing.
Testifying on the new federal budget, Hall insisted that a national task force of tribal leaders be convened to examine the document, which he said was developed without lengthy and meaningless consultation with Indian nations.
"Once again, this administration has ignored our right to slow things down and make sure nothing happens," said Hall, also chairman of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation.
But things turned nasty when Hall said of Campbell: "He was a white man until he decided to run for Congress. .. Then he turned back into a white man when he joined the Republican party."
Issuing the buckle challenge, "Meet me at Blackie's at noon!" responded Campbell, banging his gavel.
"I'm not a betting man," said Osage Nation Chairman Charles Tillman, "but if I were, I'd place my money on Hall. I've seen his stuff and boy, it's monstrous."
They meet today. Onion eat your heart out.
@4:16 AM
Monday, February 18, 2002- - -
I guess I’m just disorganized. The InstaPundit says he gets “.. several hundred emails a day. .. I do the best I can, but I post this stuff in between teaching classes, watching kids, and cleaning up cat vomit. It's not my life, and it shouldn't be yours.”
I don’t get anything like that much email, even counting all the spam about BS the BLTG. And Fred doesn’t do hairballs much. Short hair I guess.
But the SuperPundit might have added: Get your own Blog and you can have your name in pixels all you want!
And did I mention that it’s a lot of fun?
@12:36 PM
I knew there was a reason I liked this guy. He's younger, more clean-cut, and much less cynical, but he even looks like me.
@12:34 PM
Hmmm. I notice that Megan McArdle has gotten 24 comments on this post in less than 48 hours. Perhaps it is time to do that article I’ve been planning on industrial sex toys..
Here’s a good one. The variable speed and reversing trigger switch provides 0-500 rpm, and the 7.2V battery pack allows for longer run-time and charges in one hour.
Unfortunately, I’ve run out of time for now so I’ll have to cover the attachments in a later post.
@11:57 AM
The forward-leaning Perry de Havilland discusses the nature of democracy and sees a bright future:
“The situation has developed in which nation states forcibly appropriate over 50 per cent of a nations wealth and yet this is seen as legitimate due to a 'democratic mandate'. Yet the reality is that not only is it immoral, it is unsupportable in the long run. ..
“I see the disintergration of the politicized legal edifice over which left and right fight as being a long term economic inevitability, not necessarily from catastrophic collapse (though most likely Japan and some of Europe will do just that) but from the gradual technologically driven creeping irrelevance that will see that what follows the current order is something both familiar and excitingly different.”
This is a vision that should be shared by many more. Please go read it.
@11:54 AM
John Weidner waxes eloquent on what is also one of my favorite forms of architecture, CCC rustic. Asks he: “What does it profit us to bestride the whole world, if we can no longer build things like this?”
We could .. but starving help is hard to find these days.
@11:52 AM
Anton Sherwood weighs in on the great gun debate: “I'm not convinced that it's that bad. As I see it, if your thug shows you a knife with the implied threat to use it, he has already escalated to deadly force; if I'm wrong on that point, then your showing a gun is not deadly force either. Either way, you're not obligated to assume that he'll put his knife away if you give in. Disclaimer: That's logic, but I can't promise that it is law!”
True. A ‘reasonable man’ might well feel in immediate and serious danger in this situation. But shoot the sucker and you can be assured that in his death throes he’ll drop the knife down a storm drain..
@8:08 AM
Also from Anton Sherwood: “One of my friends is thinking of organizing an `activities day' for our circle, and invites me to run a workshop relating to my most visible hobby, mathematical beauty. Okay, I said, but what would we do?”
Divide and multiply?
@8:07 AM
Eeeuuww!
Via the ol’ Bird Cage Liner (020218; no link) the AP has this story:
“Noble, Ga. — Distraught families began the wrenching task of trying to identify loved ones Sunday in this rural community where dozens of decomposing corpses were being removed from a crematory.
“Authorities said they had recovered 97 bodies — including one infant — from storage sheds and scattered in woods behind Tri-State Crematory in this hamlet about 40 kilometres south of Chattanooga, Tenn.
“Officials were requesting federal assistance and equipment to help process the remains, a task which has overwhelmed local resources .. Investigators believe the crematory had stacked the corpses for up to 15 years.
The crematory's operator, Ray Brent Marsh, 28, was charged with five counts of theft by deception, a felony, for taking payment for cremations he didn't perform. Walker County and state authorities said other charges are likely against Marsh.
When asked why the bodies had not been cremated, Mr. Marsh said the crematory incinerator was not working, Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokesman John Bankhead said late Saturday.
“.. authorities suspect Mr. Marsh may have provided ashes from wood chips to clients as the remains of loved ones. Authorities have asked families to return ashes for examination and have established an information center.
“Governor Roy Barnes declared a state of emergency in Walker County. The declaration makes state assistance available to local authorities for the cost of the operation.”
@7:34 AM
Speaking of Snarky and Cranky
Via Kathy Kinsley: Jonah Goldberg says that what makes him snarky and cranky are “.. the hardcore conspiratorialists, mostly on the Left but with growing company on the Right, who believe that the "corporate-controlled media" are censoring the real story ..”
I’m sure this is particularly troubling to Mr. Goldberg considering his recent in depth exposé on racism at the Westminster Dog Show.
@7:10 AM
Also via Kathy Kinsley: Mark Steyn of the National Post Online says “I was in the Canadian VIP pavilion at Salt Lake when Jamie and David were cruelly cut down ..”
They let him in the VIP pavilion? Considering the long list of illuminaries present, I guess they had to make room for one person with some wits.
@7:09 AM
Steven Den Beste asks: “When is this country going to reform product liability law?”
Probably right after all the lawyers leave congress.
@7:08 AM
Amen
I’m not so sure that a huge scoop of arrogance isn’t a necessity for a successful general. If he wasn’t absolutely cock sure of himself he’d probably melt into a weeping puddle the first time he had to make the decision to send a few thousand men out to face the enemy.
But affecting arrogance to hide impotence is a most annoying trait.
@7:07 AM
Via PunditWatch: Can there be many bigger oxymorons than Campaign Finance Reform? And I’m glad that between the axis of evil, looming war in Iraq, OBL still missing, Congress Enron-whacking, the awesome Olympic skating scandal, and Bush II’s blue tie to discuss, there was still room to work in something truly troubling—the condom blowout.
Well, if you’d had a condom blowout you’d find it troubling.
@7:06 AM
How could he keep us in suspense so long?
Barry Harkness makes an interesting observation in his comment to Megan McArdle’s post on unverified reports from Iran that Osama’s right hand man is in custody. Harkness wonders whether the always photogenic and never camera shy OBL could be alive, given how long it’s been since he put out a tape.
@7:05 AM
Suman Palit says he’s broken his writer’s block. I assume this is something like being tongue-tied. As you may have guessed, neither is within my experience. But I’m very glad Suman is over it because he’s come out with an outstanding, in depth piece that rivals anything I’ve seen from professional journalism. It also shows the potential of the blog as an educational device.
Starting with the historic and archaeological record and working up to the present, he details the nature of the Israeli—Indian relationship that explains today’s events. Finally he forecasts that Israel and India will form the two ends of the "Pincers of Democracy", to counter the "Axis of evil".
Someone should tell John Dvorak. In the mean time, read Suman’s article.
@5:05 AM
The agnostic, dyslexic, insomniac
Lying awake at night wondering if there is a dog. If there is I’m sure he looks on our antics as somewhat akin to Silly Pet Tricks, or those Funniest Home Videos programs. Conversely, we probably have as much understanding of him as a cat does of what we’re really about.
@5:03 AM
Silly Statist Tricks
Here’s a good one: The Wyoming Business Council. They must be serious, they have a Five Year Plan - announced in April 1999. The law creating the WBC was enacted with a five-year sunset. It took them two years to come up with their five-year plan, so they sunset June 30th of this year. This is a problem, as their five-year plan was to show results in its last two years.
The WBC has a corporate structure, and employs private business practices. Or at least the statist view of private business practices. Like lining their pockets with the ‘proceeds’: John Reardon, the first “chief executive officer” of the Wyoming Business Council, resigned amid controversy after 16 months on the job. He drew a $135,000 annual salary that was substantially higher than anyone else's on the state payroll, including the governor's. After a few months in office he decided that things were going so well that his staff deserved a bonus—including $35,000 for himself.
And lets not forget that Reardon was such a Wyoming booster that he bought a house in Fort Collins, Colorado and commuted to work in Cheyenne.
Things have changed a lot at the Council since then, but there’s still a few things a little odd about the WBC. For starters, there’s the leader of the organization: Bless his pointy little head, Tucker Fagan, “CEO” of the Council, spent 30 years in the Air Force. Nothing wrong with that, but from his bio I can’t see that he’s ever been employed by a private business, much less managed or owned one.
They do have some highly trained Certified Economic Development Professionals on staff to take up the slack, however. There are two sorts of Certified Economic Development Professionals: Economic Development Finance Professionals and Housing Development Finance Professionals. Each certification program is a rigorous series of four courses, each five days in duration, so you can see that they have the very best on staff.
The high staff quality has resulted in fantastic results. They shovel out the government grants and loans as fast as anyone possibly could. One of the biggest beneficiaries of this largesse is this little outfit, the Sierra Trading Post. It’s easy to see why they’d need a lot of help from Certified Economic Development Professionals, isn’t it?
So if you live in Wyoming and your congresscritter asks, please tell him not to let the sun set on the Wyoming Business Council.
@5:02 AM
Well, my email has gotten completely out of hand. I haven't gotten around to figuring out how to count hits but someone must be reading this stuff. If you’ve emailed me and I haven’t answered I apologize. In some cases it appears I may have missed some notes entirely, or I may just be running a little behind. I refuse to use some auto-answer BS, so bear with.
@4:57 AM
Sunday, February 17, 2002- - -
I protest!
Thanks to Samizdata, who’ve named him (her? It?) Blog of the Week, I’ve found this character, The Blue Button. She’s stolen some of my best rants before I could even write them. If he’d whisper his name I’d curse it out loud!
Of course, she could have hammered on ELF a bit harder. When they spike trees to ‘sabotage economically’ they’re also putting the working folks at the sawmill in deadly danger. ‘Doesn’t harm anyone’ Like Hell! Spiking trees has killed people and maimed more.
Update: According to Fox News, via The Blue Button, this clown is willing to go to jail to protect the organization [ELF] from "political manipulation." Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Colo., chairman of the House Resources Committee's Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health has subpoenaed him. The good congresscritter could make it happen. He should.
@8:14 AM
Megan McArdle has A Modest Proposal that has nothing to do with Irish babies and a lot to do with these babies. Anyone more than a year or so old can be excused for finding this a bit intimidating. But take heart, she’ll earn that wealth. I bet the backaches are setting in already.
Update: Here's the original proposal in case you haven't read it lately.
@8:12 AM
I love Steven Den Beste’s Butyl Mercaptan idea. You know what it smells like, it’s the ‘odorant’ used to make otherwise odorless natural gas stink. That’s why we produce it by the ton. It only takes a tiny bit added to a large volume of gas to accomplish this. Mixed with a heavy oil it could be applied in a coarse aerosol with little danger of fire. Diesel would be a good choice, it won’t burn without great heat and compression. That’s why it’s used as motor fuel in armored vehicles. The mix would eventually evaporate, thus it’s self decontaminating. Spray it from UAV’s and the fool who shot one down would regret his mistake. Oh, and did Steven mention that it really, Really stinks?
And then there’s the air-burst lard bomb.. How insensitive of me.
@6:58 AM
I’ve been following the “Warblogger Brain Trust” analysis of war in Iraq with considerable interest. I was particularly delighted to see that the Hungarian Barbarian has written to Sgt. Stryker. I’ll have to look him up. It’s been a long time, and no one knows better than he what a pain in the butt I can be.. There! I’ve emailed him.
I guess what particularly chaps me about the whole scenario is the well-founded assumption that Saddam will use his own civilian population as a human shield while we catch hell in the ‘court of world opinion’ if we cause any civilian casualties.
Either the chattering classes who scream ’you caused civilian casualties’ are completely ignorant, or they are completely evil. Or, they lie somewhere on the continuum between those two poles. We should treat them as if they were the later.
Regardless, I favor a modified siege scenario, and I realize that this is a gross oversimplification that does not fully answer Saddam’s NBC threat, but I don’t want to go on for pages:
In his comment to Sgt. Stryker, Emory Almasy is correct: We have overwhelming air and ground superiority on the field of battle and that isn’t going to change. Any “Saddamites” that present themselves where we can get at them are target practice. Our ground forces would do well to get to the battle before the Hogs and Apaches had all the fun.
So.. Let Saddam pull his forces into Baghdad and the other built up areas of his choice. As Patrick Phillips notes in another comment to Sgt. Styker, there’s no clean way to dig them out, so don’t try. Build a ‘fence’ around these populated strongholds. Establish checkpoints to let unarmed civilians out and make it clear that we will welcome them with food and medicine. But allow nothing in without serious negotiation. Treat it as the hostage situation it would be. Cut off all food, water, and utilities as Steven Den Beste suggests. And most important, allow the Saddamites no contact with the outside world. Propaganda is his only effective weapon—cut that off completely.
Saddam and any who want to stay in the compounds can do so. In the short-term this would essentially maintain the status quo of containment, only with a much smaller, easier to watch container. It avoids house-to-house fighting in the cities. It wouldn’t be quick, we can expect that food, water, and utilities would be horded for Saddam’s army, but we can console ourselves by looking forward to dealing with Saddam when he comes crawling out on his knees. Missile batteries, artillery, NBC assets, and such offensive capabilities shielded in built-up areas that might strike back would be the only targets in populated areas that we would take out of necessity.
With any luck the civilian population will revolt before they die of thirst and we won’t have to deal with Saddam at all. Or Saddam's army will try to break out and it's target practice.
The downside: If Saddam starts losing his human shield he may get very ugly with his own people and the chattering classes are sure to blame this on us. But we can’t win ‘em all. However..
@6:56 AM
As Sgt. Stryker notes, propaganda is Saddam’s most effective weapon. He wants to fight the war on TV. Somehow, we must find a way to deny this to him. If we can issue a ‘you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists’ ultimatum to entire countries, why can’t we do the same to the chatterers who give aid and comfort to the terrorists with their every word? At the least, broadcasting “Live from Baghdad” would have less allure if it had to be done with a bag over one’s head.
Treat shouting ‘civilian casualties’ just like shouting ‘fire’ in the proverbial crowded theatre. If someone wants to discuss civilian casualties they should put the blame squarely where it belongs.
@6:51 AM
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