Posts from — August 2011

I’m still playing with bits and pieces, but there were a few items of interest:

Ms Bachmann has a ‘cunning plan’ to lower gas prices to $2.00. The picture with the article shows her clutching a $20, but I assume she knows the difference. I could lower the price of gas to $1 overnight – start pumping in liters. If the half-gallon size of ice cream can contain only a quart and a pint, and the $10 bag of dry cat food can go from 20 pounds to 16, why not? Business does it all the time.

The next innovation in employee pensions is the ‘401L’. Employers will deduct a dollar from workers’ paychecks and give them a lottery ticket. The odds of having enough money to retire are about the same as a 401K, and it saves businesses a lot of money and accounting overhead.

HP is exiting the PC business, screwing everyone who bought their pad or any of their mobile equipment first. I assume that someone will pretend to buy the division, as it has been a very long time since HP actually made anything with their trademark on it.

Oh, yes the market tanked again. The DOW closed below 10K and the T-Bill yield is barely 2%. There were more than 400K unemployment filings again, home sales tanked, and Merrill Lynch is saying double-dip is on the way. This is the awesomeness of austerity.

In response to some of Texas governor Rick “Goodhair” Perry’s recent statements, Dr. Cole has an interesting question on history.

While some have degrees marked Summa Cum Laude or Magna Cum Laude, Rick Perry’s degree from Texas A&M is stamped Barely Made It, so I doubt he will understand the question, much less know the answer.

They really don’t want anyone in the lower classes to retire. The corporate overlords want to destroy every form of pension available to anyone, and force them to work until they die, so they can loot all of the money people put away for a little peace and quiet at the end of their lives.

They have already looted all of the decent pension systems in the private sector, and now they are going after not only Social Security, but the military retirement system.

They brought in a panel of ‘business leaders’, you know, the people who destroyed the economy, and asked them to recommend changes in the retirement system. These people don’t understand the core place that the retirement system fills in maintaining ‘good order and discipline’ in the military, or the necessity of the system to keeping experienced people in the military after they have received extensive and very expensive training and education.

Suggesting that the military go to a f**king 401K system after the disaster not three years ago, is insulting and demeaning to the members of the military. Do they think that the military doesn’t understand what happened to people when the markets crashed?

Twenty years in the military is not the same as twenty years in a normal business, so normal business practices, even good ones, don’t work. If you are going to convince people to give up many of their civil rights, and face the possibility of being killed as part of their job, you had damn well better be prepared to offer them more than a f**king 401K at whatever advanced age the corporate owners to finally allow them to retire.

I remember why I hate new computers.

OK, I figured out how to turn off the touch pad [extremely simple when you know] and am using a wireless mouse, so that problem is solved. [No, I did not buy the Couch Mouse.] So now I can work in a more normal fashion.

I beat up on the file manager and forced it to do some things my way, so now I have my tried-and-true e-mail client working on the new machine by simply copying the directory to the appropriate spot on the new disc and running the install program again.

In the midst of that I was aware that Firefox 6 has been released and decided to update it on the new machine. That was a mistake, having nothing to do with Firefox. Apparently Toshiba and M$ detected an update in progress and decided to join in. The Firefox update would never have finished at the rate M$ and Toshiba were hogging bandwidth, so I cancelled that and waited.

M$ predicted the Apocalypse if I didn’t immediately update the machine that had just downloaded 78 updates yesterday, and added a further ‘critical update’ before the original updates finished. They lie and tell you, that you can continue working, but you know they are going to re-boot the computer at the end, so you sit there waiting.

So, after that mess was done, I got to deal with Toshiba, which decided for the first upgrade to the machine to do a BIOS burn. It is a multiple step process that requires accessing the BIOS set-up and the use of functions keys at various points along the way. Not too many ways someone could screw-up their new computer [/sarcasm].

So after all that drama, I finally updated Firefox, and it informed me that an Adobe Flash upgrade needed to be installed. M$ and Adobe on the same day really puts a strain on my anger management program.

Hopefully I will be back to some real blogging later tonight.

Position: 34.7N 61.6W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: North-Northeast [030°] near 18 mph [30 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 60 mph [ 95 kph].
Wind Gusts: 70 mph [110 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 70 miles [110 km].
Minimum central pressure: 1003 mb ↑.

Currently about 250 miles [400 km] Northeast of Bermuda.

Gert is heading out into the Central Atlantic at an ever accelerating pace and poses no threat to any coast. It will probably transition to a post-tropical storm tomorrow over the cooler water, as Franklin did.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

David Cameron had better be prepared to park within the lines and drive below the speed limit for an extended period the way things are going between him and the British police.

The CBC reports that U.K. police upset over U.S. ‘supercop’ consultant

Several U.K. police organizations have blasted Prime Minister David Cameron for turning to a U.S. law enforcement expert to help tackle gang violence in Britain in the wake of recent riots in urban centres.

Former New York city police commissioner Bill Bratton was confirmed Friday as the government’s anti-gang expert, offering his services for free and saying the British government cannot “arrest their way out” of systemic problems facing the country.

The criticism, led by Association of Chief Police Officers leader Sir Hugh Orde, underscored deep tensions between police and Cameron’s coalition government over who was most to blame for the failure to stop the four-day rioting that raged in parts of London and other English cities until Wednesday.

The UK police shouldn’t be upset, because Bratton will probably recommend a return to the traditional police practice of ‘community policing’, i.e. get the cops out of cars onto the streets they patrol to establish a connection to the community.

Cameron won’t do it because it means more officers. The whole purpose of patrol cars was to reduce the number of officers, and since Cameron wants to cut the budget, he won’t go along.

Naked Capitalism has a sizable list of experts in multiple fields who have been warning about riots for some time: Austerity and Runaway Inequality Lead to Violence And Instability.

If you don’t trust the ‘liberal academics’, read the MI6 or Pentagon versions. They are all saying the same thing – austerity is a really bad idea if you want to maintain public order and avoid riots.

Position: 30.2N 63.3W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: North-Northwest [345°] near 12 mph [19 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 45 mph [ 75 kph].
Wind Gusts: 60 mph [ 95 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 70 miles [110 km].
Minimum central pressure: 1008 mb.

Currently about 170 miles [275 km] South-Southeast of Bermuda.

Gert should be due East of Bermuda at about 7AM CDT tomorrow. The biggest threat will be from the surf on the eastern coast of the island.

A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for Bermuda.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Position: 27.9N 61.6W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West-Northwest [290°] near 10 mph [17 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 35 mph [ 55 kph].
Wind Gusts: 45 mph [ 75 kph].
Minimum central pressure: 1011 mb.

Currently about 360 miles [580 km] South-Southeast of Bermuda.

A Tropical Storm Watch is in effect for Bermuda.

This will probably be TS Gert in the morning, and it is on track for Bermuda.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Reading the BBC article, Cameron’s law: PM planning crackdown on rioters, the first thing that came to mind was ‘unintended consequences’. If you have rioting, isn’t it possible that some people wouldn’t be organizing looting, but might need an ambulance, the fire service, or other emergency responders? If someone dies because they can’t get help due to the communications shutdown, whose fault is that?

CNN is reporting that Cameron is talking to former NYC and LA chief of police, Bill Bratton, about dealing with gangs. I can’t imagine why, as Bratton is going to tell him that the police have to improve relations in the community and earn the respect of local people. Cameron wants to throw people in jail to prove he’s ‘tough on crime’.

The oddest thing I’ve encountered regarding the riots is this BBC video featuring historian David Starkey. The man claims that the riots prove that Enoch Powell‘s 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech predicted these riots.

The guy should have been wearing white robes and a hood for his appearance. Even though the only common characteristic of the rioters was class, he still wants to make it a race war, with whites as the victims. He claimed that the white rioters were subsumed in ‘the black culture’ which is somehow connected to the Jamaican form of English. Apparently if the people in the communities spoke with a ‘Received Pronunciation’ [RP] accent, the riots wouldn’t have occurred, or some such general silliness.

Most readers would be unfamiliar with Enoch Powell, but he was George Wallace with an upper-class British [RP] accent. He was using the turmoil in the United States in 1968 to justify racial discrimination in Britain.

Position: 39.7N 55.5W [ 4PM CDT 2100 UTC].
Movement: East-Northeast [070°] near 22 mph [35 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 40 mph [ 65 kph].
Wind Gusts: 50 mph [ 80 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 80 miles [130 km].
Minimum central pressure: 1004 mb.

Currently about 730 miles [1170 km] Northeast of Bermuda.

Franklin is in the North Atlantic, due East of New Jersey and due South of the island of Newfoundland. It will not approach land and the water is getting colder, so it will fade out of existence.

I won’t be following Franklin, but there are three Invests in the Atlantic which I’m watching. One of them might pose a threat in the next few days. The most recent years have been very strange.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

So we had a thunderstorm this morning and it fried the Ethernet card in my regular computer.

I’m typing this on a laptop that I just bought today to tide me over until I can build a new box. The best thing I can say about it is that is was cheap. It doesn’t have the worst keyboard I’ve ever used, the ASR Teletypes that were standard in the military and early mini-computers will always have that place, but it is nothing a typist wants to live with for long.

I’m using strange software until I have time to do some downloading and the individual who created the touch-pad on this machine has obviously never used a keyboard, given that it is located exactly where you want to rest your wrists.

I may or may not get into the bank accidentally destroying my ATM card, and then having their ‘card printer’ commit suicide when they tried to replace it, but it has been that kind of week.

I may or may not be around.

The BBC reports on the police response … to David Cameron:

But Sir Hugh [Orde, the President of the Association of Chief Police Officers] – who is seen as a leading contender to become the next Met Police commissioner – told the BBC on Thursday that the subsequent restoration of calm on Tuesday night had not been down to political intervention.

“The fact that politicians chose to come back [from holiday] is an irrelevance in terms of the tactics that were by then developing,” he told BBC Two’s Newsnight.

“The more robust policing tactics you saw were not a function of political interference; they were a function of the numbers being available to allow the chief constables to change their tactics.”

Hmm, ‘irrelevance” and “political interference”, I don’t think Mr. Cameron should count on police officers to vote for him.

Burning Eyes

Turn down the lights!

[Editor: This re-run of Excise is brought to you by my eye doctor who dilated my pupils today. I’m sitting in the room with the lights off and the windows blocked. The screen brightness is at its lowest level and I’m wearing sunglasses. I see extremely well at night, so this procedure is very painful for me and taking pictures outside isn’t going to happen.]

Friday Ark

The class war that is flaring up all over.

Ellroon quoted Herman Melville: “Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity, nothing exceeds the criticisms made of the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.”

That reminded me of the similar statement by Anatole France: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”

The wealthy ran wild and destroyed the economy, but the punishment falls mainly on the lower classes, and this is presented as justice. The politicians and media don’t seem to understand why the lower classes might be more than slightly upset.

Scientist have discovered that all species of primates seem to have an innate sense of fairness. Humans don’t need laws to know when they are being treated unfairly. If they resort to violence and destruction, it may be that nothing else seems to work. It’s a variation on the old saying ‘don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time’, i.e. if you are being punished, you may as well do something that justifies the punishment.