On-line Opinion Magazine…OK, it's a blog

In their never-ending war against economic stability and prosperity, the Austerians can claim another victory. The BBC reports that UK economy in double-dip recession

The UK economy has returned to recession, after shrinking by 0.2% in the first three months of 2012.

A sharp fall in construction output was behind the surprise contraction, the Office for National Statistics said.

A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of contraction. The economy shrank by 0.3% in the fourth quarter of 2011.

BBC economics editor Stephanie Flanders says it “adds to the picture that the economy is bumping along the bottom”.

If you look at the accompanying graphic, you need to remember that the Conservative government won control in May of 2010, so, to be fair, they weren’t really impacting the UK economy until 2011.

It is ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand, which is similar to the American Veterans Day, in that it began as a remembrance of World War I, and has become more generalized over the years.

“Anzac Day commemorates the involvement of Australian and New Zealand troops in a World War I campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey.”

The Gallipoli Campaign began as a Winston Churchill [then First Lord of the Admiralty] plan that spun out of control and got a lot of people killed on both sides with nothing much changing, but then, that was quite common in World War I.

Peter Weir made a movie, Gallipoli, which, if nothing else, proves that Sergeant Alvin York, and T.E. Lawrence weren’t the only people who fought in World War I.

Fred Grimm of the Miami Herald wonders: What is the University of Florida thinking?

Ever wonder how we’re perceived, out there in the techie universe?

“Amazed, shocked and angered,” said Zvi Galil, dean of the college of computing at Georgia Tech, reacting to the news that Florida’s flagship university intends to gut its computer science department.

The University of Florida, contemplating a 30 percent budget cut, intends to jettison the department’s teaching assistants, cut more than half the faculty and abandon research. Galil fired off a letter last week to UF President Bernard Machen, “to express, in the strongest possible terms, my concerns about the reckless proposal to dismantle the Department of Computing and Information Science and Engineering.”

Galil then wrote something slightly at odds with our politicians’ pretty talk about Florida’s high-tech future. “And I am by no means alone — the entire computer science/computing community is dumbfounded by the news coming out of Florida. It is unbelievable that a major AAU university would even contemplate such an action in the information age we live in today — an age fueled in great part by computer science!”

The University is cutting $1.7 million from the CISE/IT budget while adding $2 million to the athletics [football] budget. That shows their priorities.

I guess they assume that companies will just use H-1B visas to bring in any tech people that they want, so no need to ‘waste money’ on teaching Americans, so may as well use the money to recruit football players for the real business of Florida universities.

The BBC reports on the latest government wiped out by the Austerians: Dutch government falls in budget crisis

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has tendered his government’s resignation to Queen Beatrix, paving the way for early elections.

His cabinet was plunged into crisis when Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV) quit talks aimed at slicing 16bn euros (£13.1bn) from the budget.

Mr Wilders refused to accept austerity demands to bring the budget deficit in line with EU rules.

His party was not part of the coalition but supported the minority government.

Dutch broadcaster Nos said Mr Rutte spent almost two hours on Monday afternoon at the queen’s palace in The Hague where he made the cabinet’s resignation official.
…

The Dutch economy, the eurozone’s fifth largest, has survived the eurozone crisis relatively well with a national debt of around 65% of economic output but its projected budget deficit falls foul of new EU rules requiring eurozone governments to keep below 3% of GDP.

A recent forecast from the Netherlands’ Central Planning Bureau estimated that the country’s public deficit would rise to 4.7% of GDP.

The Netherlands has been asked to submit its budget measures to the European Commission by 30 April, although it is not clear how firm that deadline is. Since 5 March, the two coalition parties along with the Freedom Party have been trying to reach agreement on budget cuts before the deadline.

Mr Wilders, who was said to have stormed out of talks at the last minute, said the coalition’s proposals would harm economic growth and affect many people’s spending power. Socialist Party leader Emile Roemer said he too was not prepared to support the attempt to bring the budget deficit below 3% by 2013.

When Geert Wilders is the voice of common sense, you should know you have really failed to grasp reality.

As Greece, Ireland, and Spain have shown, austerity in a weak economy is the quickest way to drive that economy into recession.

Saint George is the patron saint of England, Georgia [the country], Bulgaria, Portugal, Catalonia, and the city of Moscow. Orthodox countries tend to celebrate George on November 23^rd.

PETA condemns George for his senseless slaughter of dragons. The YWCA condemns the condemnation and wants to know when PETA is going to volunteer to be DragonChow™

It is UNESCO’s International Day of the Book.

It is also the birth and death day of Billy the Bard, who was a great writer in desperate need of a spelling checker.

Master Shakespeare gave all of the best lines to villains supplying low humor to those who have read the Folio, e.g. Arlen Specter quoting Iago, reputedly in support of Clarence Thomas.

The BBC is reporting on the first round of the French election: Francois Hollande ‘wins first round’

French Socialist Francois Hollande has won most votes in the first round of the country’s presidential election, estimates show.

They suggest he got more than 28% of votes against about 26% for centre-right incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy.

The two men will face each other in a second round on 6 May.
…

It is the first time a French president running for re-election has failed to win the first round since the start of the Fifth Republic in 1958.

With 80.9% of voters turning out, this is a good indication that the reality of Sarkozy’s policies is not popular with a lot of French voters.

Polls have been indicating for some time that Hollande had a comfortable lead over Sarkozy in a two-person race, but the loss in the first round was not expected.

The first round is like a US primary, with the top two candidates going on to the second round.

She’s the only planet we have, if we blow it, we can’t pack up and move.

Wikipedia as an Earth Day entry, with links to other sites.

McClatchy noted that a California watchdog wants bloggers to report campaign connections. Why not start with the broadcast and print media reporting their income from individual campaigns before annoying bloggers.

Bloggers with ties to individual campaigns are normally rooted out by other bloggers. A lot of blogs are obviously politically partisan, including this one, but I took the Oath of Poverty back in 2005 and can guarantee that this blog costs me money [but no where near what a boat, or even a bicycle costs.]

As for advertising, on the ‘free’ sites, the money goes to the host, not the blogger. Some bloggers do have advertising as a revenue generator, but almost all of them use one of the ad networks to deal with it, and have limited choice as to what appears in their ad spaces.

If you write something in favor of a candidate, her/his campaign might direct an ad buy on your site. If you think that it will affect someone’s opinion, you haven’t looked at the cost of ads on blogs [hint: they won't support buying coffee at Starbucks, and maybe not at 7-11].

Some campaigns buy against type, a practice easiest seen at PZ Myer’s place with all of Christian advertising that appears. Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona has been advertising on leftie blogs lately, which is another ad buy against type. I have never seen anything nice said about him at any of these sites [well, nothing that wasn't obviously dripping with sarcasm].

Blogging by its nature is rooted in opinion, and if someone suddenly starts writing against their established pattern, people notice. If there was as much attention paid to banks as is paid to lowly bloggers, we might not be in the ‘Great Recession’.

CBS reports on a looming problem for some people who use the ‘Net: Hundreds of thousands may lose Internet in July.

When the Feds busted a hacking ring, instead of just cutting off a half-billion Internet users whose machines were infected by the ring’s software, the Feds set up a clean server to allow those people to remain on-line and give them time to remove the infection. Apparently more than half of those infected haven’t done it yet, and funding for the server runs out in July.

DCWG.org is the official location to check to see if your Windows computer is infected, and the site has instructions for killing the sucker.

This was a redirection Trojan that also disables your anti-virus software, so many people are probably totally unaware that they have a problem beyond the fact that the ‘Net seems to be running slower than they remember.

This was a very nice thing for the Feds to do, but I wonder why they didn’t take it one step further, since they were redirecting these people’s machines and send them to a site that notified them that they were infected, before sending them to where they wanted to go.

A simple notice that told them to use an uninfected computer to get instructions to fix the problem from the maker of their anti-virus software, or another reputable site.

Only hacker sites ‘magically’ find a problem with your computer that they just happen to be able to ‘fix’ if you click on the link, so the Feds should not go beyond notification.

While the US media report on what the Vatican claims, the BBC thought to ask the those accused for a response: Leader of ‘radical’ US nuns rejects Vatican criticism

The leader of a group of US nuns the Vatican accuses of flouting Church teaching has rejected the claims.

“I’ve no idea what they’re talking about,” Sister Simone Campbell, head of Network, a Catholic social justice lobby, told the BBC.

“Our role is to live the gospel with those who live on the margins of society. That’s all we do.”

You should watch the video of the interview. At one point Sister Campbell expresses her opinion that the Bishops and Vatican “should grow up”. She backtracked immediately, but that is really her feeling about the matter – that the Catholic ‘good ol’ boy network’ doesn’t know how to talk to women, and hasn’t advanced beyond the ‘girls have cooties’ stage of elementary school.

Tonight is the anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 people and dumped millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico for 5 months.

There is still oil in Gulf, and on our beaches under the sand. The Gulf’s environment is still seriously impacted, with sea life obviously sick and deformed, and I still wouldn’t recommend anyone eat anything caught in the Gulf.

The tourists are coming back, but Gulf fisheries may not.

Despite this reality, we have people starting to talk about opening up the Gulf to more drilling, and some of them are in the Florida legislature. If they keep it up, they may find that the ‘Stand Your Ground’ law has a lot of support among people who depend on a clean Gulf of Mexico for their livelihoods.

No Rest For The Wicked

Damn paparazzi!

[Editor: Lucrezia was being her normal, nasty self. It took over a dozen shots before I got one with her face in it, and I had to enlist my neighbor's help to do it.]

Friday Ark

According to the BBC the Vatican orders crackdown on ‘radical’ nuns in the US

The Vatican has ordered a crackdown on a group of American nuns that it considers too radical.

It says the group is undermining Roman Catholic teaching on homosexuality and is promoting “feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith”.

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious is the largest organisation of Catholic nuns in the US.

Echidne goes to the core of the problem: the nuns are acting uppity.

‘Noz has a problem with the Vatican’s thinking that concentrating on “poverty and economic injustice, while keeping ‘silent’ on abortion and same-sex marriage” is a bad thing for the nuns to be doing.

Charlie Pierce pulls no punches in his view of this latest action by the Clan of the Red Beanie. Charlie notes that the Vatican is upset because the nuns didn’t support the lies of the US Conference of Bishops that Obamacare would provide government funding for abortions.

Charlie also outlines the recent history of the archbishop put in charge of the investigation and his judgement concerning child abusers among the priesthood.

It is beginning to look like the Vatican is conducting a purge.

McClatchy notes that Palestinians boycott meeting with Israel’s Netanyahu that would have been first in 20 months. Essentially the Palestinians said that Netanyahu hasn’t done a single thing to move the peace process forward, and done several things that have made a settlement of their issues less likely.

The Likud concept of negotiations is very similar to that of the House Republican caucus. In both the other side must agree to everything they propose before there will be a meeting, and then they will add new conditions at the meeting. Nothing the other side proposes is to be considered.

Take the negotiations with the Iranians. The Israelis want the new underground complex at Qom dismantled before any negotiations can take place, and having meetings to establish the agenda for a future meeting of the principals just gives the Iranians more time to work on the nuclear weapons that even Israeli intelligence agrees they haven’t been working on since 2003.

The Iranians are expected to prove a negative, just like Saddam Hussein. Since Saddam couldn’t prove he didn’t have WMDs he was attacked. Knowing that Iran can’t prove that it doesn’t have a nuclear weapons program, the Israelis want to attack it.

Dr Cole covers one of the current Israeli talking points in Iran’s Forbidden Nukes and the Taqiya Lie.

If Zero would like to reduce the price of gas, and to at least show that he isn’t going to embarrass the Nobel committee even further with yet another war, he should make a strong statement. This should suffice: “The United States will respond to any unprovoked attack on the nation of Israel.”

Don’t comment on it. Don’t explain it, beyond saying that it is the US policy. Let the Likud worry about what it means. That’s how NATO got involved in Afghanistan, and is the guarantee of the NATO treaty. Israel isn’t even an ally of the US, like the members of NATO, it is just a ‘friend’, like Saudi Arabia.