Blogging on and off since 2003
Don’t watch this when you’re drinking or within reach of any sharp objects. As reported in Best Week Ever:
The cast of The Times They Are A-Changin, the new Broadway musical featuring the music of Bob Dylan, dropped by The View this morning to
butcherperform the classic song “Like A Rolling Stoneâ€.
Apparently one reason that people couldn’t be evacuated from New Orleans by air is that there weren’t enough metal detectors, x-ray machines, air marshals, and TSA personnel. I have this vision of a group of refugees – with no more than the clothes they’re wearing and a few plastic carrier bags of personal effects – being forced to take off their wet shoes for x-raying….
Required reading for the fashion-conscious.
(Via Susan on the ASML.)
So Tom Cruise thinks he was a noted playwright in a prior life. What a raving loonie…..
“Shakespeare was deja vu for me,” said Tom Cruise. “It was so cool. I felt as if I had seen his words already, knew them all by heart. Then, after I began studying scientology, I realized the words had come from my heart in a previous life. That’s why I say that as glorious and enviable as my present life is, making ‘War of the Worlds’ and all those other great movies can’t compare to writing ‘Romeo and Juliet’ or the sonnets.”
Well, that final point is certainly true. But “glorious and enviable”??? Reminds me of Zaphod’s line in HHGTTG: “If there’s anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now!!”
(Via Huffington.)
I was just chatting to my brother about library information systems – he works at the Bodleian Library in Oxford – and he mentioned that “the Bod” is implementing some new systems from VTLS in Virginia. Naturally, I checked out their web site. I assumed that the VT in the name stood for Virginia Tech – after all, both institutions are based in Blacksburg, VA. Nope – VTLS stands for “Visionary Technologies in Library Solutions”. (That has to be one of the most blatant acronym redefinitions I’ve come across.) Digging further, I came across this gem:
“Built according to the standards and best practices set forth by the Digital Library Federation’s Electronic Resource Management Initiative, VERIFY brings a plethora of benefits to staff and users alike.”
Plethora?!?! Perhaps they should try using their own software to locate a decent dictionary or thesaurus….
File this under “Lawyers saying stupid things on behalf of their clients”*. Massport, the agency that operates Boston’s Logan airport, has been deploying WiFi throughout the terminals, and charging $7.95 a day for its use. (Cheapskates like me have not been tempted.) Now Continental wants to provide free WiFi in its frequent flier lounges, just as it has elsewhere. Since Massport can’t come right out and say, “No, we don’t want you undercutting our monopoly,”, they need to find another argument. And they have: Continental’s WiFi is not safe.
Last month, a Massport attorney warned the airline that its antenna “presents an unacceptable potential risk” to Logan’s safety and security systems, including its keycard access system and state police communications.
Massport told the airline it could route its wireless signals over Logan’s Wi-Fi signal, at a “very reasonable rate structure.” In response, however, Continental said using Logan’s Wi-Fi vendor could force the airline to start charging its customers for the service.
Hey, guys: WiFi is WiFi. If Continental’s isn’t safe, then neither is Massport’s. Of course the truth is that both are perfectly safe. I wonder if the Massport lawyer knew that he was spouting bull-guano, or whether some BOFH in Massport fed him a line. Either way, Massport looks pretty stupid.
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* There’s a lot of it about. You may have noticed this story in the L. A. Times [free registration required] about the woman whose child was fathered by a seminarian, now a Catholic priest in Whittier, OR. When she applied for an increase in child support, the archdiocese’s lawyer responded that ‘ the child’s mother had engaged “in unprotected intercourse … when [she] should have known that could result in pregnancy”‘. Oops.
I don’t understand cyclists. (Massachusetts cyclists, anyway.)
I was driving home from work last week, and took a short cut along a slow road with three or four traffic lights in the space of a couple of miles. The lights seem to be timed so that one is forced to wait for a few moments at each of them. I was in a group of about five cars, waiting at the first light, when two cyclists, riding expensive-looking bikes, wearing the requisite amount of Spandex, and eyes hidden by mirror shades, flashed past us and ran the red light. The signal changed, the cars started off, overtook the cyclists, and stopped at the next red light. Once again, the cyclists flashed by and ran the red light at full speed. And so on.
This was not an uncommon experience, just a dramatically clear instance of a familiar pattern.
Now I was under the impression that the cyclists’ cri de coeur was “Same roads, same rights, same rules”. So what gives? Yes, I know about signals with detectors that don’t respond to bicycles, but that didn’t apply in this case. And I’ve come across detailed explanations of how – with toe clips and other gear – it’s unsafe to force cyclists to come to a full stop (which seems an extraordinary admission, and an invitation to ban such dangerous equipment). And I’ve read comments by cyclists who claim that drivers are picking on them, and ignoring the far more numerous violations committed by drivers. This seems simply false to me. When it comes to observing red lights, stop signs, and the like, the vast majority of drivers follow the rules; the vast majority of cyclists (here in Massachusetts, anyway) do not. And the police…?
I don’t understand.
I just noticed what my local public television station is showing tonight: frontline: death of a princess: “It was perhaps the most controversial film in the history of public television — the story of a young Saudi princess who was publicly executed for committing adultery.” It wasn’t just controversial: it changed my life.
Back in 1979-1980, we were going through a tough patch financially. (Most people were – this was the era of “stagflation”.) I had a decent job at CMC, but I really needed something that paid a bit more. At that time most of the oil companies in the Middle East were starting to ramp up their IT and HPC activities, and the trade papers were full of advertisements for positions in Saudi Arabia. The typical deal was fairly complicated, but extremely lucrative. Contractors (male only) lived in company housing, were paid tax-free through numbered Swiss bank accounts, worked their tails off writing Fortran and PL/1, and got two 2-week vacations a year (either at home, or wherever the family wanted to holiday). The minimum contract was two years, with a nice bonus for extending. There wasn’t much to do except work, although I had an idea of getting a personal computer (a Commodore PET or similar) and doing some applications development.
I contacted one of the “body shops” that handled the contracts, went through all the interviews, and was accepted. I was perhaps a week away from giving my notice at CMC and fixing a travel date to Riyadh. And then the BBC showed Death of a princess. The next day (May 7, 1980), the agency called me to say that the Saudi government had broken off diplomatic relations with the UK and had frozen all visas for UK nationals; my contract was therefore cancelled. A few weeks later I saw an ad for a job in the USA… and the rest is history. But it could have been very different.
Nice cartoon in Salon today by Ruben Bolling: Creationists challenge the teaching of water’s freezing point. (As usual, click the thumbnail to view it. If you’re not a Salon subscriber, you may have to jump through a small hoop.)
The punch line: The creationists found unlikely support among students in China and India. "Yes, America, we would like very much if you would teach your children religious dogma instead of science. We'd like their jobs."
