08.29.06
US Senator fights good government
This is sort of fun. Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) proposed a bill that would create a public, searchable database of all Federal contracts and grants. Good idea, eh? No problem—except one US Senator put a secret hold on the bill which keeps it bottled up. A “secret hold”?
Yes. They allow that. It’s not a rule or anything formal: they just do it. It’s sort of the opposite of good government—something we see a lot of in Washington DC.
At any rate, TPM Muckraker has been tracking down the guilty Senator, aiming to expose the secret. They have, with the help of their readers, eliminated almost all the Senators and have only a few left. My money’s on Ted Stevens (R-Alaska): the “bridge to nowhere” guy.
Cute project: survival kit in an Altoids tin
Via Boing Boing, here’s how to pack a survival kit in an Altoids tin. These would make dynamite stocking stuffers for Xmas for outdoorsy people. I’m an indoorsy guy, so my survival kit would include things like a bookmark, a nice pen, a Moleskine, etc.
Here’s the table of contents, which includes how to make a couple of larger survival kits in addition:
The Pocket Kit (in an Altoids tin)
The Day Kit (in a larger tin)
The Wilderness Kit (in a fanny pack)
Making Your Own Kit (roll your own)
New way for whistleblowers to get the word out
Whistleblowers are using YouTube to get the word out—a good idea, given the degree to which the press is not pushing the government. The article in the Washington Post is interesting, but it very strangely includes no link to the video De Kort made. The oversight is glaring, and I really don’t understand why such an obvious point was not included.
The WaPo article begins:
Michael De Kort was frustrated.
The 41-year-old Lockheed Martin engineer had complained to his bosses. He had told his story to government investigators. He had called congressmen.
But when no one seemed to be stepping up to correct what he saw as critical security flaws in a fleet of refurbished Coast Guard patrol boats, De Kort did just about the only thing left he could think of to get action: He made a video and posted it on YouTube.com.
“What I am going to tell you is going to seem preposterous,” De Kort solemnly tells viewers near the outset of the 10-minute clip. Posted three weeks ago, the video describes what De Kort says are blind spots in the ship’s security cameras, equipment that malfunctions in cold weather and other problems. “It may be very hard for you to believe that our government and the largest defense contractor in the world [are] capable of such alarming incompetence and can make ethical compromises as glaring as what I am going to describe.” In response to De Kort’s charges, a Coast Guard spokeswoman said the service has “taken the appropriate level of action.” A spokeswoman for the contractors said the allegations were without merit.
Megs on the new chair
This is a repeat from the old blog, but I happened across the photo… I had just put the new chair in place, went into the other room, and came back to find that Megs had taken over. She likes it a lot. La-Z-Boy Buchanan in leather.
A word on watches
This is my watch: the Casio Model GW700A-1V. Not exactly a Patek Phillipe, but OTOH it’s a hell of a lot more accurate, plus I don’t have to wind it. It picks up the signal NIST broadcasts and synchs itself with the atomic clock each night (actually, hourly each night from midnight through 5:00 a.m.). Moreover, the face is a solar cell that recharges the battery, so no battery replacement needed. I really like it.
In fact, not only the watch but also all my clocks are radio-controlled. I love it when the time changes and they all reset themselves—twice a year I get to feel smug until I go out to the car and have to reset that clock by hand.
The NIST-F1 is accurate to within a second every 20 million years. Eat your heart out, Patek. But that’s nothing: recent advances have promised a clock accurate to within a second every 70 million years. Read the rest of this entry »
Kitty report on big kibble
Both Megs and Sophie like the big kibble. In fact, Sophie promptly chewed down the entire handful, carefully picking it out of the smaller kibble, then came into the study, jumped up on the desk, and burped. Sophie is not what you would call a “refined” kitty.
Grow hemp, don’t import it
By a 2-1 margine, the California state assembly passed a bill to allow growing industrial hemp in California. Industrial hemp, which is non-intoxicating, having no THC, is perfectly legal to import, but is illegal to grow—this, of course, makes no sense except to the DEA. With the US trade balance the way it is, you’d assume that it would be better to grow the hemp here rather than import it. In the days of WW II, it was even considered patriotic to grow hemp (see Hemp for Victory).
The Governor will sign the bill or not by the end of September. In the meantime, discussions are raging. Check out this thread and in particular read the entry by COMALite J that was posted 2006-08-29 01:10:24 AM.
Palinodes and the Martini
From today’s A.Word.A.Day:
palinode (PAL-uh-noad) noun
A poem in which the author retracts something said in an earlier poem.
[From Greek palinoidia, from palin (again) + oide (song).]
The illustrator and humorist Gelett Burgess (1866-1951) once wrote a poem called The Purple Cow:
I never saw a purple cow,
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I’d rather see than be one.The poem became so popular and he became so closely linked with this single quatrain he later wrote a palinode:
Confession: and a Portrait, Too,
Upon a Background that I Rue!Oh, yes, I wrote ‘The Purple Cow,’
I’m sorry now I wrote it!
But I can tell you anyhow,
I’ll kill you if you quote it.”It was the same Burgess who coined the word blurb.
-Anu Garg (garg wordsmith.org)
“The more lighthearted palinodes were more successful, such as Geoff
Horton’s recantation of his youthful view that a martini should be
shaken rather than stirred.”
Jaspitos; I Take It Back; The Spectator (London, UK); Jan 24, 2004.
Knowing the originator of “blurb” is nice, but even nicer is to see someone admit a terrible mistake: Geoff Horton acknowledging that a Martini should be stirred, not shaken.
