In Sleeper (1973), there is discussion between Miles and Luna over belief in God. Luna starts, asking Miles. Miles responds in a typically Allen fashion. After Luna complains that she doesn’t understand anything Miles says, he asks if she believes in God.
“Well, I believe there is somebody out there who watches over us.”
“Unfortunately it’s the government.”
Why aren’t there more local millers in Tanzania?
Or, why is international aid or investment required in order to process cassava, as this story on Marketplace seems to suggest?
Sounds like there’s a missed opportunity there.
I’ve found that I put off going to work because I know the Internet connection there is limited.
I’ve just started John Keegan’s The First World War
What if Alfred von Schlieffen had read One Hundred Hungry Ants while working on his plan?
What do the text utilities on AIX have against following the manual and manipulating newlines properly? Is it just that AIX is from IBM, and IBM software is half-assed?
$ uname -a AIX myhost 3 5 00C2D2804C00 $ echo " 1 2 3 4 5 2 1" | tr -s [:space:] '\n' 1 2 3 4 5 2 1 $ echo " 1 2 3 4 5 2 1" | tr -s [:space:] '\012' 1 2 3 4 5 2 1 $ echo " 1 2 3 4 5 2 1" | sed 's/ /\n/g' n1n2n3n4nnn5n2n1
By properly, I of course mean “How GNU does it.”
$ uname -a Linux myhost 2.6.9-55.ELsmp #1 SMP Fri Apr 20 17:03:35 EDT 2007 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux $ echo " 1 2 3 4 5 2 1" | tr -s [:space:] '\n ' 1 2 3 4 5 2 1 $ echo " 1 2 3 4 5 2 1" | tr -s [:space:] '\012' 1 2 3 4 5 2 1 $ echo " 1 2 3 4 5 2 1" | sed 's/ /\n/g' 1 2 3 4 5 2 1
Turns out that tr(5) was not matching the class [:space:] or the class [:blank:], but would match and transform the single character ' ' (space). Still not sure WTF is up with sed(5). The simple solution to this problem, of course, is to avoid AIX.
We’ve been very busy with work over the past month, preparing for a release this past weekend, and so parts of my normal routine have slipped away, such as grooming and eating dinner with my family. One might almost think that I work for a start-up in which I have a great personal stake. Anyway, I now have a pile of newspapers on my desk. I will likely read the comics and editorials, then dispose of the rest. While I have a certain fondness for reading the news on paper, it’s become almost pointless.
What keeps the local paper relevant is local news, of which it does not have enough.
Isn’t a shame that the only people with any incentive to comment are trolls or spammers?
Was watching a clip on The NewsHour of President Obama’s gathering in Florida today, and was struck by how like an evangelist he was. It doesn’t come across so much in the words, below, but in the mannerisms.
HENRIETTA HUGHES: The housing authority has two years’ waiting lists. And we need something more than the vehicle and the parks to go to. We need our own kitchen and our own bathroom. Please help.
BARACK OBAMA: OK, Ms. Hughes, well, we’re going to do everything we can to help you, but there are a lot of people like you. We’re going to do everything we can.
I recognized the tone of President Obama’s voice at the beginning of the press conference last night. Katie Couric called it “stern.” That’s a polite way to put it.
It was the tone of voice I use when I mean to imply that the rest of y’all are a bunch of [expletive] idiots. Let me explain it again in clear, simple terms that a fool could understand.
He calmed down a bit and began bantering after the lecture.
Why is it that banks can create money out of thin air but I can’t?
To the person who purchased something from Amazon by clicking on a link from this site, thank you.
Now I have the difficult, but enjoyable, task of selecting something from the 262 items on my wish list.
We’ll be watching the pomp and circumstance with the kids this evening, perhaps with a tub of popcorn and some hot chocolate.
I’ve liked WordPress because the interface has been straightforward, it’s easily upgraded, and the developers have done an excellent job of maintaining backward compatibility so I don’t have to think too much about it.
I just noticed that my feed URI is in an infinite loop, and likely has been since I installed WordPress 2.7 around December 11.
While I’ve left my half of the configuration unchanged — the rewrite rules that make the friendly URIs work — the WordPress team has deprecated the file that did the work: wp-feed.php. Unfortunately, the documentation is not quite up to date, so this may take some poking and prodding before it’s fixed. In the meantime, I’ve put the 2.6 version back in.
I tend to be very happy with reading websites through their syndicated feeds rather than directly. Recently, with all the political and economic ferment, I’ve become even happier. It’s a cesspool out there. If the original author of the piece is not an idiot, then at least 90% of the people who comment on the piece are. You see the same thing on USENET or IRC or any of the other older Internet media. But at least on IRC you can /kick them in the ass. There’s something about the level of discourse that makes you want to reach out and punch someone.
Do you know what provides lots of jobs? Inefficiency.
While touring China, [a businessman] came upon a team of nearly 100 workers building an earthen dam with shovels. The businessman commented to a local official that, with an earth-moving machine, a single worker could create the dam in an afternoon. The official’s curious response was, “Yes, but think of all the unemployment that would create.” “Oh,” said the businessman, “I thought you were building a dam. If it’s jobs you want to create, then take away their shovels and give them spoons!”
I would like a quick way to yell back at the radio while I’m driving, and have that yell posted on my web site.
For example, yesterday Terry Gross assumed that electronic medical records are needed, and that they were an appropriate target of Federal stimulus funds. No! If electronic medical records were as desperately needed, then the businesses in the health care industry would build something. There’s absolutely no need, whatsoever, for government participation or funding.
(I suppose if you want easier access to the medical records of the population, then electronic records are easier to search, even with a warrant: SELECT citizen_name,citizen_address FROM citizens WHERE peanut_allergy = 'Y' AND political_party != "Democratic";
)
Don’t get me started on our “crumbling” infrastructure. It’s not. Those potholes appear in New York streets every year. The roads are in great condition, even many in poorer States. Bridges? Maybe if they had not been poorly designed, then they’d last longer than 40 years.
As a young man with few dollars, I used to spend some time admiring the engraving on those few I had. I’ve long been struck by the phrase printed on Federal Reserve Notes: “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.”
It is somewhat odd that some think dollars, or other currency, has value in and of itself, when the value the currency has is only in relation to the demand of others for it. By others, we mean primarily the entity printing the currency: They demand it in taxes.
Consider a schoolyard bully who is satisfied with anything I have in my pockets. Any of those things may be used to pay for his protection. But suppose that one day he decides that he will only accept Hershey’s chocolates. This gives Hershey’s chocolates a special value in the schoolyard, and trade of those chocolates between children may result. Further suppose that the bully gives his friends special tokens of affection, and will not pummel those who hold them. These tokens would also have value, and may be exchanged for Hershey’s chocolates, or for other goods. In time, the bully may decide that he no longer likes chocolate, and will only protect those who have his favors.
The bank just sent a summary statement of the escrow account we use to pay the local and school property taxes. One achieves a certain distance from the taxation by letting someone else manage it for you. It was a big number, but not as big as the amounts I’m paying in other taxes.
If the Federal government finds it necessary to spend money to stimulate aggregate demand, and doesn’t want to just hand me the $1 million previously suggested, then I would appreciate a tax holiday. That would increase our available cash by quite a bit.
