Obama update:
Ghostwriters against Obama: I'm not sure why this strikes me an completely and utterly wrong. I suppose it's the way it views books as completely unrelated to the work of 'leading', as though leading was something only done on chat shows, and books were simply a sort of prop, and not a way of thinking and communicating. Other things that came up when trying to find out whether he wrote it himself... spiteful speculation from Lucianne.com and MyDD commenters. He's got the right enemies.
A book review: Fawning dribble? Perhaps. But I will have to read the book.
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09:46:11 AM,
Tuesday 31 October 2006
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On Point with Barack Obama. I was impressed. A politician that realizes his job is to help govern the country, not to win elections for his party. He's just so... reasonable. I may even need to read his book.
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09:32:37 AM,
Saturday 28 October 2006
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Wait. That's odd. Why do I associate Depeche Mode with Harry Potter? How did that happen? Oh, right, because some of you made me read some fanfic.
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04:53:17 PM,
Friday 27 October 2006
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Inexplicable is a good word. Wodehouse used it for all it's worth, particularly in The Luck of the Bodkins, It's the splick syllable that does it. It's also vaguely symmetrical around it.. in-ek-splick-ab-ul. It's quite similar to perhaps the most famous line on television... "you got some 'splainin to do" That has an extra syllable at each end, but they're the same shape, a line of short syllables with a grandiose one dead in the middle. The only other similarly amusing word I could think of is indubitably, which is a different mechanism, with the alternating d's and b's (I pronounce that t as a d, at least when I want it to be amusing), sort of like mississippi or banana, which are also somewhat amusing, but with the added symmetry. Any other inherently amusing words?
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(5)
04:21:06 PM,
Friday 27 October 2006
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You can read the story of 80's electronic retailer Crazy Eddie's fraud and collapse on a fascinating webpage written by it's CFO. The terrifying thing about all these fraud cases is that they only seem to come out after the company collapses. Presumably there is all sorts of sustainable fraud going on everywhere. One of the things that makes it fascinating is how they changed from tax fraud (taking money out to avoid taxes) to stock fraud (putting money back in to raise tho stock price) as they went public, in response to the changing incentives of the situation. If you get into it, make sure you read the 'untold story' section, to get an idea of what his motives are and were. They aren't pretty motives, not all of them, but they're certainly interesting. In a way it's a clean cut example, because it ended with a hostile takeover, so you can point to precisely who was swindled. In so many cases, the swindle is spread across the entire world, so is hard to register.
On a similar note, The story of an aspiring real-estate scoundel, facing foreclosure on 6 houses, with no money and no job, and deserving no sympathy whatsoever. He has a blog. It's absolutely sickening, so I won't link to it. Suffice it to say that he actually still doesn't see anything wrong with real-estate speculation. Apparently Ponzi had a similar problem.
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03:39:55 PM,
Monday 23 October 2006
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house for sale
full-size
The house with the Tree is for sale. I feel a bit like slipping a note under their door, once the new people move in, asking them to take good care of the Tree. I've been trying to edit autumn foliage pictures, but can't seem to manage it. Clouds, on the other hand, are easy.
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07:13:19 PM,
Wednesday 18 October 2006
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The trouble with counter-factuals: If it weren't for parachutes, thousands upon thousands of paratroopers would have been dashed to pieces.
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(4)
03:50:23 PM,
Wednesday 18 October 2006
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Paddle Editor
A screenshot of what I've done in the past week. The diagram in the bottom right hand corner isn't functional yet, but soon you'll be able to drag the lines around to change the shape of the paddle.
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(4)
09:55:52 PM,
Monday 16 October 2006
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A whiskey manufacturer has been paying NPR to bombard me with the following innanity: "Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open." I keep coming up with alternative versions... they only slow you down. You have to make sure they don't get tangled. You hope you never need to use it, but it's nice to know it's there.
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(3)
08:13:12 PM,
Monday 16 October 2006
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An issue to look into for possible inclusion on my list of political issues I can't equivocate about: lifting the tariff on imported ethanol. We currently tax imported ethanol 53c on the gallon, in order to defend the american corn ethanol industry from sugar ethanol, which, unlike corn, is actually energy efficient.
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05:49:51 PM,
Monday 16 October 2006
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Going back to work after a break is like going swimming in the ocean. It is in fact cold, but you quickly get used to it, and wonder why you made so much fuss to begin with. Then, when you to get out, you realize how cold you have actually become, and how glorious it is to be warm.
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05:15:09 PM,
Monday 16 October 2006
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System.Console.WriteLine("PANIC!");
An error message found in an old bit of code; generated if the laws of physics deteriorate to the point of objects trying to move backwards through time. This is the sort of thing foosball table designers don't have to worry about.
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(1)
08:33:42 PM,
Wednesday 11 October 2006
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site & script courtesy of Moss
