Later On

Wow! It never even got to status "Out for Delivery." Here it is! Light blogging for a while, and then probably heavy blogging.

The Older Grandson (in Middle School now) was complaining about The Younger Grandson (going into first grade) to The Eldest: “He never picks movies in the middle!” he complained.

“What do you mean?” asked The Eldest.

“He picks movies like Eat Lead, Motherfuckers or The Care Bears Go To Rainbowland, but never anything in between.”

Thanks to TYD for pointing out this article by Mark Ward:

The computer world is notorious for its obsession with what is new – largely thanks to the relentless engine of Moore’s Law that endlessly presents programmers with more powerful machines.

Given such permanent change, anything that survives for more than one generation of processors deserves a nod.

Think then what the Unix operating system deserves because in August 2009, it celebrates its 40th anniversary. And it has been in use every year of those four decades and today is getting more attention than ever before.

Work on Unix began at Bell Labs after AT&T, (which owned the lab), MIT and GE pulled the plug on an ambitious project to create an operating system called Multics.

The idea was to make better use of the resources of mainframe computers and have them serve many people at the same time.

“With Multics they tried to have a much more versatile and flexible operating system, and it failed miserably,” said Dr Peter Salus, author of the definitive history of Unix’s early years.

Read the rest of this entry »

Man, that was fast. All times shown are PDT:

Click to enlarge. Notice how FedEx sends everything through Memphis. It’s scheduled for delivery tomorrow before 10:30 a.m., so I called to see if I could pick it up. Answer: probably not—it’s likely still containerized, and they don’t always unpack until late in the day. Tomorrow’s fine.

I thought the shipping schedule shows a good example of globalization.

All of the above save the razor came from VintageScent.com, currently on vacation until 30 August.—when he’ll return and found he forgot to renew his domain name. But I think he’ll soon be back in business— Quite a few shavers like his line of products. [Update because I had the wrong URL: it's only one scent: VintageScent.com]

The silvertip badger brush did a very good job at raising a lather from La Toja shave stick, which has a wonderful fragrance. A very nice three-pass shave left my face perfectly smooth and ready for La Toja aftershave, also very nice.

A completely satisfying shave, one of the little pleasures that bring a sparkle to the day.

From Dave Montgomery writing in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson called on the state’s powerful oil regulatory agency Tuesday to open hearings into allegations that Irving-based Exxon Mobil Corp. improperly plugged and sabotaged oil wells in a South Texas county after failed negotiations to reduce royalty payments.

Patterson said the alleged violations could possibly result in more than $1 billion in administrative fees to the state from the nation’s largest oil company. But Exxon Mobil said in a statement that the Republican official’s allegations are "groundless" and "paint a false and misleading picture" of its involvement in the Refugio County wells.

The three-member Texas Railroad Commission heard Patterson’s allegations, but made no comments and issued no decision because the public hearing was not posted in advance, commission spokeswoman Ramona Nye said. She said commissioners will rule "as quickly as possible."

Patterson, a former oilfield roustabout who now oversees 20 million acres of state-owned minerals, is accusing Exxon Mobil of committing "irrefutable, intentional and flagrant violations" of state oilfield regulations. But lawyer Shannon Ratliff, who represents Exxon Mobil, challenged Patterson’s assertions and said the company is prepared to respond…

Continue reading.

I took two years of Spanish in high school, but at that time I had no idea at all of how to study and it was all lost. I’m now taking an on-line course. Partly it’s a good thing to learn a language, partly I want to apply ideas from Polyglot: How I Learn Languages, a fascinating book, and partly I hear a lot of Spanish in the course of daily life here and it would be nice to understand.

The GOP really, really hated the thought that a Supreme Court Justice might possess empathy, and it’s clear that this is no accident: an utter lack of compassion, coupled with intense self-interest, is what drives that party, and Scalia presents a clear vision of their position. Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress:

Almost two decades ago, Troy Anthony Davis was convicted of murder and sentenced to die. Since then, seven of the witnesses against him have recanted their testimony, and some have even implicated Sylvester “Redd” Coles, a witness who testified that Davis was the shooter. In light of the very real evidence that Davis could be innocent of the crime that placed him on death row, the Supreme Court today invoked a rarely used procedure giving Davis an opportunity to challenge his conviction. Joined by Justice Clarence Thomas in dissent, however, Justice Antonin Scalia criticized his colleagues for thinking that mere innocence is grounds to overturn a conviction:

This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is “actually” innocent.  Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged “actual innocence” is constitutionally cognizable.

So in Justice Scalia’s world, the law has no problem with sending an innocent man to die.  One wonders why we even bother to have a Constitution.

This flowchart is really quite interesting. Take a look.

It really does lack any sense of moral balance. And it’s totally dishonest. Lee Fang writes at ThinkProgress:

The AP reported earlier this month that Gov. Bobby Jindal’s (R-LA) administration is planning to request $300 million dollars from the federal government to develop a high-speed rail between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. The trains, which would run at about 79mph, would be part of a larger Gulf Coast rail plan with top speeds of 110mph. Much of the money, however, comes from the Recovery Act, a stimulus measure Jindal not only opposed, but recently called a failure.

In opposing the Recovery Act, Jindal offered the Republican party’s official response to President Obama’s nationwide address last February. Jindal specifically smeared high-speed rail projects as “wasteful spending”:

JINDAL: While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a “magnetic levitation” line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140 million for something called “volcano monitoring.”

Despite Jindal’s political grandstanding, officials in his own administration have praised the idea of high-speed rail. “Long term, we see it as a very valuable economic incubator for the entire corridor, ” said Tom Atkinson, an official in the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development.

Jindal is trying to have it both ways on the Recovery Act. Though he slams it as a “stimulus that has not stimulated,” Jindal recently went on a 64-parish tour handing out jumbo-sized ceremonial checks filled largely with Recovery Act funds (view a compilation of Jindal’s check giveaways here). Rather than acknowledging the source of the money, Jindal printed his own name on the checks.

Though Jindal has been rapidly spending stimulus money for infrastructure projects around the state, his administration has refused to put up signs disclosing each project has been funded by Recovery Act.

In thinking about the article on living apart together that I recently blogged, I was bemused that many of the couples who have decided to live apart are not married. The four possibilities are:

1. Unmarried, living apart
2. Unmarried, living together
3. Married, living apart
4. Married, living together

Numbers 1 and 4 require, I believe, no comment—at least not when I was younger. But the article focuses on 1, which I consider a norm. Weird.

Numbers 2 and 3 are the items of interest, I would think, with the question for 2 being "Why not get married?" and the question for 3 being "Why get married?". But the article is fascinated by 1.

A Ngaio Marsh mystery to try, an enormous stack of DVDs (Bleak House with Diana Rigg, the Firefly series, a 13-part BBC series on the downfall of the European empires in the early 20th century, and others), a Papa Chano’s tongue burrito, and an afternoon free of appointments: I’m set.

BTW, you owe it to yourself to read Susan Blackmore’s The Meme Machine. I got it from the library and I’m so fascinated I’m buying a copy for myself.

Everyone told me to buy a laptop when I bought my last computer, but I got a Dell desktop instead. I just didn’t want to get involved with wireless, routers, and that whole ball of string. But then I really did want to write in my chair, so I ordered the Asus Eee PC that I got with my Membership Rewards points at AmEx, so willy-nilly I had to get a router and get it set up, which I did.

Then the little netbook computer turned out to be really too little for me—particularly the font size—and I didn’t like scrolling to read the entire screen. So the Eee is destined now for The Wife, and I’ve ordered a full-size laptop, an HP, from Costco. It’s been shipped, and I should have it on Friday. Very excited. The posts next week will probably mostly come from the laptop. And it looks as though I’m going to learn Vista, like it or not.

Have you tried cooking with Sichuan (sometimes Szechuan) peppercorns? I read about them some time back and finally ordered some from Penzey’s. Wikipedia notes:

Sichuan pepper has a unique aroma and flavour that is not hot or pungent like black or white pepper, or chili peppers, but has slight lemony overtones and creates a tingly numbness in the mouth (caused by its 3% of hydroxy-alpha-sanshool) that sets the stage for these hot spices. Recipes often suggest lightly toasting and then crushing the tiny seedpods before adding them to food. Only the husks are used; the shiny black seeds are discarded or ignored as they have a very gritty sand-like texture. It is generally added at the last moment. Star anise and ginger are often used with it and it figures prominently in spicy Sichuan cuisine. It has an alkaline pH and a numbing effect on the lips when eaten in larger doses. Ma la (Chinese: 麻辣; pinyin: málà; literally "numbing and spicy"), a flavor common in Sichuan cooking, is a combination of Sichuan pepper and chili pepper.

I made a dish last night of mixed vegetables and tofu, with some broken-up strands of whole-wheat linguini added to the mix, and at the last minute I sprinkled some Sichuan pepper over the top. Very tasty, and the tingling numbness was interesting. I’ll be using more of this. Give it a go sometime.

No particular reason for the excellence of today’s shave: just things coming together. The Omega Pro 48 boar-bristle brush created an exceptional lather from Mama Bear’s English Leather shaving soap, and the still-sharp “Swedish” Gillette blad in the Vision worked efficiently and smoothly. A good splash of English Leather aftershave, and I was delighted by the entire experience.

Another vendor new to me: The Traditional Shaving Company, in the UK. (I believe that it is in fact a traditional-shaving company, not a traditional shaving company—indeed, I don’t know of any traditions concerning shaving companies.) At any rate, if you’re in the UK, it looks like a good resource. Check it out.

Christopher Flavelle has an interesting story in ProPublica:

When President Obama introduced the stimulus plan, he made a bold promise of transparency [1]: “Every American will be able to see how and where we spend taxpayer dollars by going to a new Web site called Recovery.gov [2].” But like so many noble ideas in government, that may be easier said than done.

The government is moving to make detailed information on the stimulus publicly available. Congress has created an independent agency, led by a respected former inspector general, to collect information from those getting the money and to post it, starting in October. However, interviews by ProPublica suggest differing opinions among key officials over whose job it is to make sure the information is reported correctly. Meanwhile, government watchdogs point to errors that plagued a similar transparency effort last year, and note that companies or organizations that mistakenly misreport how they spend the money face no penalties for doing so — or incentives for getting the numbers right.

All of which raises the question: If the information isn’t accurate, what is the value of transparency?

“It seems like everybody on down the line is counting on the guy below them to get it right,” said Craig Jennings, a policy analyst at OMB Watch [3], a nonprofit organization that focuses on government accountability.

The Office of Management and Budget [4] (PDF) says getting the data right is a shared responsibility between itself and the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, the new agency created to build Recovery.gov and post information there. But the board says its hands were tied by Congress, which didn’t give it either the resources or the responsibility to make sure the data coming in is accurate.

The man leading the stimulus transparency campaign is Earl Devaney, a burly former Secret Service agent who served as inspector general at the Department of the Interior from 1999 until early this year. (In May, ProPublica gave Devaney its Investigative Governance Prize [5] for his report [6] (PDF) on the department’s Mineral Management Service.) In February, President Obama tapped him to be chairman of the Recovery Board, which is made up of current federal inspectors general.

Nobody suggests that Devaney’s job is easy…

Continue reading. Footnotes at the link.

Kate Hopkins of the Accidental Hedonist has a post well worth reading about various bottled waters. Two quotations in her post (and there are more):

I sat down and sent out a few emails—filling friends in on my visit to the Fiji Water bottling plant, forwarding a story about foreign journalists being kicked off the island. Then my connection died. "It will just be a few minutes," one of the clerks said.

Moments later, a pair of police officers walked in. They headed for a woman at another terminal; I turned to my screen to compose a note about how cops were even showing up in the Internet cafés. Then I saw them coming toward me. "We’re going to take you in for questioning about the emails you’ve been writing," they said.

And:

Nestle came into Florida and managed to pull off quite the coup.

The company got a permit to take water belonging to Floridians — hundreds of millions of gallons a year from a spring in a state park — at no cost to Nestle.

No taxes. No fees. Just a $230 permit to pump water until 2018.

Nestle bottles that water, ships it throughout the Southeast — much of it to Georgia and the Carolinas — and makes millions upon millions of dollars in profits on it.

The state granted Nestle permission to draw so much water against the strong recommendation of the local water management district staff. Because drought conditions were stressing the Madison Blue Spring, the staff said the amount of water drawn on the permit should be cut by more than two-thirds.

So while Florida is in a bitter dispute with its state neighbors over water use, it’s giving its water away to a private company that bottles and ships it to those very same states.

These can serve as two examples of how companies are not concerned about the public good, only about profits. Not the attitude you want in control of your government.

Read her entire post.

Type 2 diabetes is increasingly common, and my own is currently under good control. But it’s always useful to review valuable tips like these, which The Sister pointed out. (Ignore the ad that first greets you and scroll down.)

The Sister points to this interesting article in Elle, on married couples who maintain separate domiciles. It’s a long list, and it includes yours truly and The Wife. When we married, we enjoyed both our relationship and also having our own space and apartment, so we just continued that arrangement—and a good thing it’s been. Among other things, we have totally different schedules, different ideas of being neat, and she works at home. Moreover, Megs doesn’t like other kitties, and Molly is timid. It’s worked very well for us, as it does for others. It especially works for introverts who require solitude for happiness.

Very good article, well worth reading. I would think that so long as children are at home, it’s less likely to work: it helps a lot to share the burdens of child-rearing. But if no children are involved, it can work very well indeed.