HAL9000 versus animated vegetables

I know that voice!

Futility

I dreamed last night that I had a personal consultation with Ram Dass. He seemed to understand and empathize with everything I was saying, about the confusion with right livelihood and the frustration with not being able to find a religious community I could tolerate.

Then, he finally offerred his advice. Ram Dass suggested I apply for a software sales position with Sun Microsystems. Then I woke up.

Hasn't the Times Done Enough Damage?

The New York Times apparently has it in for the only reasonable candidate for President. These are the fine folks who brought you the special "Saddam's WMD", as you may recall. Thanks again, guys.

My Introduction to Swing

All this talk about retiring the Kellogg's mascots reminds me of this amazing performance

The Odd Thing About Texas

Despite all the damage that man has done to the world, and incidentally to the reputation of Texas and its politics, in some ways Texas is still a healthier democracy than I am used to seeing elsewhere in the US and Canada. Consider this from the Waco Tribune-Herald (June 4), a quote from state rep Jim Dunnam, D-Waco:

Craziest moment [of the legislative session]: Sen. Robert Deuell R-Greenville and I starting a band this session called the Bad Precedents. We ended up having about 30 members of the legislature sit in with us in various performances.

Of course this doesn't necessarily make for good policy,but it shows a shred of sanity you don't much see elsewhere.

Paris Hilton for President!

Here's why. Some of the best writing I've read in a while, in defense of the proposition that Paris Hilton should be elected president.

Justice is served

sorta.

Speakeasy [Updated]

Update: Amazingly, Speakeasy responded to my complaint before I got around to making it.

Specifically, they found this blog entry, apologized profusely, and informed me that they owe me 93 dollars! I never even placed the call!

I like them again. It really is a shame I had to fall back to cable in Austin.

Apparently they seem to think I'm just too far from the switch or something, though that really doesn't explain the intermittency of the problems I was having.

The resolution of this particular billing SNAFU is impressive. I hope it sticks; I've had fiascos with both AT&T and SBC go on for many months, but I've never had them seeking me out.

===

I liked them a lot in Chicago.

After weeks of fussing they completely failed to get me set in in Austin, so I cancelled. They refunded and swore they would not keep billing me.

Guess what? They are still billing me.

I have had enough exasperating runarounds with incompetent billing offices at phone companies that I intend to keep a log. Speakeasy never disappointed me in the past, but they sure as hell are disappointing me now. Stay tuned.

===

Montreal exactly

Beauty and blemishes alike, captured with an artist's eye and technical grace.

(101 pix; starts out with mostly downtown shots but lots of good neighborhood pix if you stay with it.)

http://flickr.com/photos/thepretender/sets/72157594517249912/show/

bravo!

GMail disaster - false alarm

Never mind! Our error! Google did nothing wrong!

Only In It for the Free Lunches

Lunch at Kona, dinner at Asti today. Life's rough...

Engineers vs economists

Article moved here.

How engineers think

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6972678839686672840&q=type%3Agoogle+engEDU+network+broadcast+scaling

See minutes 4 through 7; compare with how economists think...

Blue light, rain

...
looking for familiar faces in an empty windowpane

listening for the secret searching for the sound
but i could only hear the preacher and the baying of his hounds

willow sky i walk and wonder why
they say love your brother but you will catch it if you try

roll you down the line boy drop you for a loss
ride you out on a cold rail and nail you to a cross

november and more as i wait for the score
they're telling me forgiveness is the key to every door

a slow winter day a night like forever
sink like a stone float like a feather

- Robert Peterson, 1974, Ice Nine Music

not a shred

In my weekly reminder from Robert Park that I have wasted another week of my sorry life, typically filled with sad but interesting news on the frontier between science and politics, I see the following:

Last month’s 5-4 decision upholding a ban on partial birth abortion
ensured that the composition of the court will be an issue in the coming
election. The awkward fact is that all five justices in the majority are
Catholic. Stem cell research draws similar religious opposition from the
Catholic Church and fundamentalists. It’s based on the magical belief
that a soul is assigned to the zygote at conception. The zygote is
certainly alive, with its own unique DNA, but that’s true of a bacterium.
Based on a Genesis passage in which God breathes life into Adam, Jews and
liberal Christians usually argue that the soul arrives when the newborn
draws its first breath. However, there is not shred of evidence that
a “soul” even exists, and it certainly has no place in science or law.

So I'm in total agreement with all of it, except for the one howler. Can you spot it?

In a nutshell

"Economists describe the properties of the broken controller."

This is an important observation which I will explain on "in it" some day. Maybe there's even a paper somewhere, but God only knows where.

iGoogle bug

I had tabs set up on my Google home page. They went away. I had Austin specific data. It went away.

Suddenly I have the layout I was using several months ago in Chicago. All widgets added in the last few months are gone. I contacted my acquaintance at Google and filed a bug report, but I thought I'd blog it as well and see if anyone else had a similar experience.

Vanity Tag Seen on the Mo Pac

TX YE HA

Dinner in Montreal

Traveling from Texas to Quebec as I sometimes do spans perhaps the greatest culture gap in North America.

Texas Texes with ease and confidence, if perhaps you can't call it grace.

Non-French Quebec flounders helplessly. Consider the dinner buffet at the Airport Holiday Inn in Montreal. (Ville St Laurent for the fussy; it's on Cote de Liesse.)

Excellent sopressata and cheap cheddar. Melba toast, crackers and buns. Salade Nicoise and olives. Lettuce. Some shredded root vegetable in a sour dressing that looks very much like fettucini alfredo, in order to cruelly disappoint you. Egg rolls with optional chinese mustard and a sweet sauce that seems to be stretched with gravy. Chicken and vegetable stir fry (tolerable). Steamed bok choy. Tortellini in tomato sauce (I don't know what the filling was; I didn't try them.) No rice for the Chinese dishes, but ample supply of coarse cut french fries. Apple strudel (not oversweet like American desserts and much better than the rest of it).

That wasn't a sampling, that was the whole buffet. And there is Canadian food and Canadian culture in a nutshell. My home and native land!

The rates are good and the rooms are clean, but I do not recommend this hotel for the cuisine.

Charlie Foxtrot

Who is Charlie?


Iraqi Details 'Shocking' U.S. Missteps