During the Bush administration, we were used to dumb mistakes, but just because Bush is gone does not mean dumb mistakes have come to an end. Such as giving the Russian prime minister a gift, a button labeled “reset”… except that the mistranslated label actually carried a word that meant quite the opposite. Whatever one has to say about Condoleeza Rice, at least she spoke some Russian…
That’s an ad that is running during local commercial breaks on CNN here in Ottawa, on Rogers Cable.
Too bad that as of yesterday, there is no A-News at Six. We live in interesting times…
I just saw the news… Philip José Farmer, one of the giants of science fiction, died at the age of 91. May he rest in peace.
I’ve been reading Wikipedia about the so-called Sylvia Plath effect. It takes a bit of explaining.
I just finished reading Escape from Hell, the sequel to Larry Niven’s and Jerry Pournelle’s Inferno, itself a superb book, a modern rewrite of Dante’s hell. In this sequel, the principal companion of the protagonist is a woman named Sylvia Plath.
I must say I never heard of Sylvia Plath until this book. I knew nothing about her tragically short life nor about her death by suicide, a month before I was born in 1963. But that’s not why I was learning about her from Wikipedia this evening.
I finished Escape from Hell last night, less than 24 hours ago. Tonight, my wife and I watched the latest episode of The Simpsons. At the end of this (otherwise better than average) episode, there is a brief shot of Lisa holding a book in her hand. It’s the semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath.
One recurring theme in Inferno and Escape from Hell is that the protagonist meets just too many people he encountered in his earthly life for it to be a coincidence. I call such coincidences my Victrola moments… Many years ago, I played a Monty Python computer game which featured a Victrola, a word I never heard previously, but within 24 hours, I heard it in a completely different context. There were a few more instances like this in my life. Now, I can add Sylvia Plath to the list.
What’s this “European socialist model” that Gingrich is trying to frighten American conservatives with? They make it sound bad, like, “Soviet communist model” or “German fascist model”. But last time I was there, “European socialism” was none of that. Why has Europe suddenly become a scary word in the American right’s political vocabulary? While it is reeling from the recession just like elsewhere, Europe has a strong (private sector) economy, a functioning health care system, in many ways a better infrastructure (think TGV!) than the US, a strong united currency, and last but not least, Europe has found a way for the (so far) peaceful coexistence of many peoples who speak dozens of different languages and have waged the bloodiest wars in history against each other. Is this what scares the GOP?
Personally, I’d be much more worried that under the present GOP leadership, America might end up following the Chinese corporatist model…
I take it back. There are still some sane conservatives out there in America. Some even think that right-wing talk radio is destroying conservativism. I only wish they were listened to.
How Radio Wrecks The Right
I am watching Rush Limbaugh on CNN and I shudder. Is this what the once mighty conservative right has become? A middle aged drug addict spewing poisonous populism? And this was once the party of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, or even, gosh, George H. W. Bush?
President Obama gave conservatives a chance to have their say about the stimulus package. They turned their collective backs on him. Unsurprisingly, the result is a stimulus package that serves Democratic priorities. And now they gripe. Even in the middle of a worldwide financial crisis, they’re not addressing real issues, they, Limbaugh among them, have nothing else to discuss but their partisan hatred of Democrats who, in their view, are out to destroy America.
Every time I hear American politicians warn their citizens about the dangers of a government-run health care system putting in the hands of government bureaucrats health care decisions that should be left to patients and doctors, I feel outraged.
I have experienced the government-run health care system in several countries. NOT ONCE was a government bureaucrat in any way consulted… on the contrary, all health care decisions were made by me and my doctor.
Indeed, the only country I know in which health care decisions are routinely scrutinized by (insurance company) bureaucrats is the United States of America, with its privately run health care system.
So I think I can tell with full confidence to my American friends that if what they are looking for is a health care system in which decisions are made by patients and doctors with no bureaucrats involved, a government-run health care system may be the very solution they’re looking for.
I don’t usually write about things such as the Oscars, as the topic leaves me supremely uninterested. However, it is hard to avoid it if you watch, listen to, or read the news. And I suddenly realized something, one of the reasons why I consider awards like the Oscars so irrelevant.
I probably wasn’t even in grade school yet (my guess is that it was the summer of 1968 and my family was watching the Mexico City Olympics) when I observed that there really are two types of sports. The results of sprinters, jumpers or weightlifters are measured by an objective standard: the reading from a scale, a ruler, or the face of a clock. But others, like gymnasts, are judged entirely differently: by a panel of experts who make subjective judgments of their performance. The ranking of a weightlifter doesn’t depend on which scale was used, as all are calibrated to the same standard; the ranking of a gymnast, on the other hand, depends heavily on the constitution of the panel of judges supervising the competition.
But what bothered me most is not that these differences exist, but that the world of adults did not seem to take notice. Grownups all talked about the Olympic gold of a weightlifter the same way as they did about the gold of a gymnast, as if there was no difference.
My disconnect with the world of grownups began around this time, I think. And, as my misgivings about the Oscars demonstrate, it has not ended.
Here’s this infamous political cartoon that everyone was so upset about:
Stimulus bill chimp
But… why? All I see is a clever political cartoon suggesting that the stimulus bill is so stupid, it must have been written by a chimp, perhaps the cimp that police shot the other day, so they need a new one to write the next bill.
Not in my wildest dreams did it occur to me to view this cartoon as racist. With all due respect, not in my wildest dreams would it occur to me that an intelligent person might compare Barack Obama to a chimp. I doubt it occurred to Barack Obama either. He doesn’t strike me as a person who takes offense when none was intended.
The White House cat during the Clinton years, Socks, died yesterday.
Socks in the White House
When the Canadian do-not-call list was brought into existence, I dutifully registered my two landline telephone numbers. Little did I know that the list is available to anyone (including foreign operators who are not subject to Canadian do-not-call legislation) for a few dollars. I have not checked (stupid mistake!) only naively assumed that the list will be implemented properly, meaning that the government will offer a means for operators to submit their list of numbers for do-not-call verification. I never expected that the do-not-call list itself will be made available in its entirety. On the odd chance that I know personally some of the people behind this lousy implementation, I’ll refrain from using stronger words but… this really wasn’t a very smart thing to do, was it.
Fortunately, I never registered our cell phones. And I don’t think I will. I doubt the do-not-call list will stop fraudulent operators from trying to tell us about our vehicle warranties or Florida vacations and why help them by making our numbers readily available in the form of an easy-to-purchase, government approved list?
There are times when I wonder if moving to North Korea might be a good idea.
No, I am not altogether serious, but still… in North Korea, they may send you away for half a lifetime of hard labor for looking cross-eyed at a picture of the Dear Leader, but only in Canada can the driver of a passenger vehicle be fined for smoking while carrying a minor… even though, while the officer was writing the ticket, the minor, being a smoker, got out of the car to have a cigarette herself.
I’ve been listening to a Hungarian public radio station, Radio Bartok, much of the day today. There was some serious classical music there, and by serious, I mean something other than what you would expect to hear from the Boston Pops. There was an arts news broadcast. There was a classic radio play (Ferenc Karinthy’s “Steinway Grand“, a hilarious “play in one act”). In short, there was culture.
Culture that used to be there on CBC Radio 2, too. Until it was at first slowly eroded, and then completely destroyed last fall.
I used to be proud of CBC Radio 2. Whenever I traveled, in the US or in Europe, I always proudly spoke of the quality of our public broadcaster. Alas, those days are gone. Now, I am just ashamed.
And annoyed. Annoyed because neither the CBC’s masters nor its critics really “get it”. The former demonstrated their utter contempt toward their listeners when they attempted to placate them with Internet-only playlists that have no hosts and no commentary, nothing that would give them life. The latter, by bemoaning the fate of classical music on the CBC, not realizing that a lot more was at stake; indeed, that many of the old programs that we mourn were not exclusively classical either, but had a well-balanced mix of music of all genres, so long as it was music worth playing, that is, to a civilized, educated audience.
I received some sad news yesterday from Hungary: my high school math teacher, Gusztáv Reményi, died last week, at the age of 88. He was a very kind teacher. Our class was a specialized mathematics class, and we were supposed to be the best in the country. In this class, being good at math didn’t just mean that, say, you got sent to national math competitions; you were expected to win them. Perhaps this made Mr. Reményi’s job easier, but I suspect that he would have done well with less talented pupils, too, if not because of his teaching style then due to his personality. If you met him and remembered nothing else, you’d have remembered his smile. I last met him a few years ago, at our high school reunion. He was old, he was frail, but the huge smile was still there, just as I remembered.
Here’s a nice plot of yesterday’s power outage, courtesy of my server:
Power on Feb 14, 2009
Interesting how the capacity drop and the recharge curve are both perfectly linear. Makes me wonder how accurate these curves are… do they really represent measured values or just a simplistic guess by software?
On the other hand, both UPSs ran fine for over half an hour, one supplying a server and networking equipment, another supplying a workstation, monitor, and some peripherals. So I really have no cause to complain.
Murphy’s law works well on battery power, too.
Not FIVE SECONDS after I finished shutting down my workstation and my main server, the power came back on. If it only came back just a minute earlier, I’d have been able to avoid the shutdown altogether.
Well, at least the power is back on. I cannot help but notice that ever since the 2003 blackout, power has been a great deal less reliable here than before. Or perhaps it was always like this, I just perceive it differently?
A funny thing happened during the shutdown of my workstation, by the way. I executed a manual shutdown, which in turn was interrupted by the UPS that initiated a hibernation. So the machine went to hibernate. When I powered it back on, it came out of hibernation and promptly proceeded to complete the previously initiated shutdown. Computers can be so literal-minded!
I’m writing this on battery power: we just lost power in our house, and probably more than just our house, as the traffic lights at a nearby intersection are also dark. If power doesn’t come back soon, I’m afraid I’ll have to start shutting systems down. Joyful.
No, it’s not a lovely day. Certainly not in Buffalo. Here’s a picture of what used to be a fine house in that fine city:
House in Buffalo
Unfortunately, the same house looked like quite differently early this morning:
Fiery crash in Buffalo
It seems that, sadly, not all aircraft incidents turn out to have as fortunate an ending as that miracle landing on the Hudson last month.
What a lovely day.