| Shoe On Other Foot... |
[Feb. 8th, 2010|11:11 am] |
And speaking of people making pacts "with the devil"...
Former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, speaking during his trial for war crimes at The Hague, decided he had nothing to lose, and threw Pat Robertson (as in, American televangelist, Haiti-made-a-deal-with-the-devil Pat Robertson) under a bus last week. Taylor, who is guilty as hell of having perpetrated a series of mass atrocities during the Sierra Leone war (not to mention at home), revealed the long-suspected details of his and Robertson's gold exploration venture in Liberia, indicating that as part of the original deal, Taylor would give Robertson's company a license in return for Robertson lobbying the new administration on his behalf.
Or course, by Robertson's own tortuous train of thought (which I won't dignify by calling logic), Liberia probably made a deal with the devil. If Liberia did, Robertson was one of the devil's agents, or possibly even the devil himself, and since he believes that prayer can defeat demons, one wonders if he prays for himself. He probably needs it. |
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| And Now For Something Completely Different... |
[Feb. 3rd, 2010|06:58 pm] |
Want to learn more about the economic theory of recessions and depressions? Want to watch rap videos made by old, dead, white guys? Want to seriously raise your geek rating through the roof? Well now, thanks to this, you can do all three. Just watch this video and you will have it stuck in your head all goddamned day be enlightened.
I don't know why I think this is awesome, but I do, and I don't even like the Austrians. |
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| Getting Away With Murder |
[Feb. 3rd, 2010|12:43 pm] |
Remember Moussa Dadis Camara? He managed to get himself in trouble lately by, oh, being responsible for the rape and/or murder of hundreds of people, which is the sort of thing that slips out of the media's eye.
Of course, that's not the way he tells it.
( Camara's Day in Court )
ETA: Where did all my links go? |
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| Mullen Against DADT |
[Feb. 2nd, 2010|02:09 pm] |
All right, that's Mullen and Gates on board. The only question is how much support they'll get from the rest of the services. Where the head leads, the body may follow, but in this case the body's been very good at foot-dragging. We'll know more once we see what the other Joint Chiefs do and how they structure the review, but this is about as good of a start as you can get in the Pentagon.
Maybe they're finally tired of losing people to a stupid policy. Keep an eye on how this develops. |
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| I Think I May Never See... |
[Feb. 2nd, 2010|01:56 pm] |
So in python, if you want to copy a file, you can use a function called shutil.copyfile()
But if you want to copy a directory, you use a function called shutil.copytree()
Although this explains how I just spent serious time trying to figure out why python was telling me that there was no such function as shutil.copydir(), I have to ask: How does that make any sense? |
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| Bill v. Silvio |
[Jan. 29th, 2010|09:52 am] |
"Rich people spend a lot more money on their own problems, like baldness, than they do to fight malaria."
Bill Gates, who has just pledged $10 billion to develop vaccines for the world's poorest countries, speaking about Silvio Berlusconi, Prime Minister of Italy, whose numerous public relations fiascoes, including the fallout of his hair transplant problems, have obscured the fact that he helped cut Italy's foreign aid budget in half for 2009. |
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Mostly for ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) mergle |
[Jan. 27th, 2010|09:12 am] |
From VOX, via Chris Blattman, a conclusion that will surprise nobody who has done much work in Academia (or probably anywhere else for that matter), but is interesting in quantifying what we all knew.
The prior research on corporate boards of directors suggests there is a critical mass of female directors on the board which is necessary before fundamental changes occur in board operations. Similarly, we test whether this was true in academia and find that a critical share of the board of trustees of an academic institution of 25% must be reached before the gender composition of the board influences the speed with which an institution diversifies its faculty across gender lines.
Some other interesting statistics in the cited papers, which have a fairly large sample size. |
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| It's Not Always Bad News... |
[Jan. 16th, 2010|10:57 am] |
Some good news from the morning round-up. Several web sites, including BBC, are reporting that, damage to the port aside, a freighter ship has finally managed to dock at Port-au-Prince. It's unclear how fast they can unload her cargo of bananas, but if they can get her up to the dock they can find enough hands to unload her one container at a time if necessary.
So far the relief effort has been going almost entirely through the airport, which has been so busy that they've had to put a stop order on it for non-registered flights. For reference, the largest US transport planes in common usage, the C-17s, with no passenger cargo, can carry 77.5 metric tonnes. A heavy Panamax freighter can carry up to 50,000 tonnes, and the largest freighters carry over 100,000. This could make up the difference between the 180 tons that the BBC is reporting having landed so far, and the 5-10,000 tons per day that Haiti probably needs. Every jetty they open will be more lives saved in the coming weeks, and if they've already managed to tie one ship to the docks, they're way ahead of where the pessimists thought we would be.
We'll know more about getting supplies to land once the amphibious ships are in place. They have the well decks, the helicopters, the landing craft, and the vehicles to get supplies ashore, so we're basically waiting for them and hoping. |
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| Late to the party |
[Jan. 15th, 2010|01:51 pm] |
Earlier I linked to a David Brooks column in the NYTimes of Jan 15, 2010 as a direct part of this post. However, it's been pointed out to me that even though we start at the same point, his final conclusions are sufficiently objectionable that attempting to relate the two arguments causes confusion. To that end, I have removed the reference, since it is irrelevant to the final post I made. I am leaving the rest of the post as-is to preserve the original source of the argument, although I am putting it under an LJ-cut since this is getting long. I should repeat that this affray was entirely my fault for not making myself clear.
( To preserve your friends-page ) |
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| What is this Midwest thing? |
[Dec. 19th, 2009|02:41 pm] |
I don't understand this whole "Midwest winter" thing. Imagine it. It's December. It's starting to snow fairly regularly, in fact there'll probably be at least some snow on the ground from here until March. The winds are getting bitter and cold, the roads are getting icy, and it's crowded everywhere because the Christmas season is in full swing.
Is this weather perfect for:
a) Building snowmen or snow forts with kids?
b) Curling up in a heated room with a blanket and your hot drink of choice?
c) Starting road construction on as many vital major roads as possible?
If you answered c), you probably live in Illinois. Although the term "live" may not be biologically accurate once the rest of us catch up to you. |
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| WTF BK |
[Dec. 17th, 2009|08:59 am] |
What? What? What?
I think I made myself sick just by looking at that. |
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| Eritrea loses |
[Dec. 15th, 2009|10:41 am] |
Eritrea doesn't have a very good record in soccer these days. First they lost a match to Tanzania, knocking them out of the Cecafa tournament. Now, they've lost the whole team.
Apparently the team's plane landed in Eritrea, but the only person still on board was the coach. The team has appeared to have absconded, probably somewhere in Kenya.
This amuses me because it was only yesterday that Isaias was saying that Eritrea was doing fine, and that only the stupid people were leaving a country commonly through to be beset by economic, social, and political troubles.
The young Eritreans who are leaving, he said, are simply "weak."
"We are not at all bothered," he said, referring to the swelling diaspora that sends home money totaling about a third of the economy. "The best brains do not make the wrong choice for their lives."
Now, this is just a suggestion, but you might not want to put all these stupid people on your national soccer team, and just give them their own jet. I'm just sayin' |
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| Thoughts on Afghanistan |
[Dec. 11th, 2009|01:47 pm] |
It's been over a week since the Obama speech, and the bullets have mostly stopped flying. For now.
I've spent some time ruminating over various arguments, especially from the strategic minded, and I've come to three conclusions on Afghanistan, none of which I particularly like. I know that nobody bothers to read what I write when it comes to news and politics, but here they are anyway.
( Three Things About Afghanistan ) |
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| Weather |
[Dec. 7th, 2009|09:20 am] |
BULLETIN: Cold white stuff is cold.
ALSO: Difficult to drive on.
P.S.: Would not be so difficult to drive on if I didn't have trouble doing the 0 to 60 in three seconds ninety degree turn out of my apartment complex when it's dry.
P.P.S.: Also, I appear to have lost my non-hideous gloves.
All in all, does not bode well for winter. |
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| Oh, and November is over |
[Dec. 2nd, 2009|09:53 pm] |
Every November I try to keep up with you-know-what, just to keep myself on track with something. This year I got through over 71,000 words, which is pretty good for me. Now I just have to keep going for what I guess is about 150,000 more and I'll be done with story arc number 4 (probably the longest of this particular work). Although why anyone would read through something that long is frankly beyond me.
I think I need to take a few courses in succinctness.
But at least my heroine finally got to completely freak out over discovering the periodic table. |
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| He Escaped! |
[Dec. 2nd, 2009|01:18 pm] |
DETROIT - In a press release today, the federal government revealed that Fritz Henderson has escaped from supervised custody and is now loose in the public domain. Henderson was part of an program created by the Obama administration to experiment with filling unwanted but necessary jobs in the US with workers sedated by a potent mix of narcotics, in order to prevent them from experiencing undue suffering. Henderson was subdued by US agents in March of 2009 by means of drugs in his coffee, after which he was transported from his natural habitat to a new position, and kept both tranquil and satisfied through continual injections while performing the duties of his new post.
However, according to an anonymous source within the Obama administration, a clerical mishap led to his dosage being reduced earlier this week. According to reports, Henderson became increasingly confused and agitated as he slowly became aware that he was not, in fact, a highly paid secretary, but was in fact the CEO of General Motors. The stress of being the head of America's largest industrial failure apparently got to him, and spooked by an expense report, he "went berserk" and escaped into the wild, mauling one of his handlers in the process. Reports indicate that, once out of the position of GM CEO he should shortly return to his natural state and will no longer be a threat to the public. However, sources within the administration indicate that there will be trouble finding a replacement willing to take over the burden of being the face of American corporate failure.
The federal government plans a session in Detroit to discuss the situation today, and invites all people with MBAs from prestigious universities to attend. Coffee will be provided. |
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| Well, that went as expected |
[Dec. 1st, 2009|07:48 pm] |
I think that was about as close as a sitting President can come to saying "Afghanistan is good for tossing the Quaffle, but remember that the Golden Snitch is still in play".
He mostly said what I expected, which wasn't precisely what I wanted, but he is at least making an effort to adopt a medium-length view of where the US should go, and reminding us that in the long run what happens in Afghanistan may not be that important. Also he said some very good things about the fact that primarily this will end up being an Afghan problem, but I don't know how exactly he intends to handle this. I need to think about this for a while. |
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| Beer |
[Nov. 29th, 2009|04:39 pm] |
Today I bought beer for myself for the first time in my life. This also means that today is the first time I've tasted beer. My inability to consume alcohol means that this is not something I commonly engage in. After the first taste (wine-style, take a sip, swirl it around in the mouth, spit it out, wash it out), I'm not entirely sure what all the fuss is about, but I was never very good with wine either, so maybe I'm just bad with alcoholic beverages. |
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| Benedict? |
[Nov. 22nd, 2009|03:41 pm] |
Ever seen one of those ad campaigns that just manages to give completely the wrong message? Like somebody just has no idea what they're actually saying?
I ran across one of those today, not a campaign but a slogan under the sign for Villa St. Benedict, on the outskirts of town which said, if I wasn't misreading it: Senior Living in the Benedictine Style.
Senior living in the style of the Benedictines? What's not to love? The long litany of required prayers? The prohibition on consuming meat? The absolute obedience required to the abbot? The paranoid anti-clericalism? The mandatory hard labor? I mean, who wouldn't want to live in the Benedictine way after retirement?
I'm sure that's not what they meant, but in case they do I have something new to threaten my father with in his old age. |
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