Today is Saturday, 12 December 2009.

Einstein is often attributed with defining insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." He may be on to something there: Congress has been tasked, now and again, with Health Reform. Currently, a plan that came out of the House that appeared to win some praise as potentially reformative has been undergoing revision, compromise and 'adjustment' in the Senate -- primarily a lot of objection and obstruction from folks less interested in reform than in actually claiming to have made changes without actually impacting their gravy train from the insurance lobby.

Basically, lots of wheel spinning, no real lessons learned, increasingly complicated items to deal with and no understanding of how to effectively address the issues. Imagine if we applied a similar approach to life and parenting?

Click to enlarge. Attribution: xkcd.¹

Mark Twain made an interesting exploration on revisions and revising:

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "gj" anomali wonse and for all.

Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

    Mark Twain (1835 - 1910),
    "A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling"

With that in mind, I bid you a good day.

This is an Open Thread.

Today is Monday, 7 December 2009.

It is the 68th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, which signaled the entry of the US into the second world war in a big way.

The Japanese code name for the attack was "Operation Z" -- apparently, Plan A gave way to Plan B, all the way through the alphabet and restarting again with Operation A, then Operation B... Erm...or not.

Click to enlarge. Attribution: xkcd.¹

A further bit of relatively little-known information: in 1944, the Japanese launched another attack against the United States using "Fu-Go Weapons" -- balloon bombs. The US Government knew about the effort and went to great lengths to keep any reports of the attacks out of the media in order to prevent the Japanese from learning of -- and learning from -- reports of any damage. One adult (a pregnant woman) and five children in Oregon were killed on May 5, 1945 when they came across a balloon and tried to pull it free from a tree, setting off the unexploded bomb.

War is, and shall always be, hell.

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Today is Saturday, the fifth of December in the year 2009.

I wonder if Cornyn and Vitter are feeling a bit like the teacher in the panel below right about now, when their attempt to sponsor an amendment designed to embarrass Democrats into opting out of the Public Option attracted several Democratic co-sponsors, effectively causing the faux legislation to blow up in their faces and become a tool that might just help get a ~robust~ Public Option passed into law...?

Click to enlarge. Attribution: xkcd.¹

No faculty members were injured during the creation of this post. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental unless otherwise indicated. Do not exceed 212 degrees F when dressing the content for inclusion in pie or as an addendum to a small children's choir.

And last but not least, keep hands, feet and any other loose appendages behind the protective barrier.

This is an Open Thread.

Today is Saturday, November 7. In 1913, French novelist Albert Camus was born. In 1916, Jean Rankin became the first US Congresswoman. And in 2009, airport security checks continue confiscate containers of water to prevent the off chance that a passenger will find a way to make water bottles explode.

Click to enlarge. Attribution: xkcd.¹

Sometimes, offering too much information in order to help nudge "the inane" a little further into the realm of "the relevant" can really gum up the works.

This is an Open Thread.

Today is Monday, November 2, known as "All Souls Day" in some quarters. It's also a big business day for some small, established start-ups in the New York area:

Click to enlarge. Attribution: xkcd.¹

No wonder there are so many conflicts between science, secular education, religion and the separation of church and state.

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Ever get one of those nagging feelings that something was wrong but you just couldn't put your finger on what it was?

Or, perhaps worse, you finally figure it out and yet can't locate the problem?

Those types of issues can keep a person up at night.

Attribution: xkcd.¹

When was the last time you got that nagging little feeling that something was wrong somewhere? Did you figure out what it was? How long did it take you to determine where the problem was, then what the problem was?

Heady stuff for a Monday, eh?

This is an Open Thread.

It's fall foliage season in the Northeast and in those areas of the world that have a fall and winter season. The foliage is creating a changing canvas on a sea of color, challenging us to try and ignore the beauty or to come up with something better:

Click to enlarge. Attribution: xkcd.¹

Could you tell if your favorite fall foliage photos were Shopped? Does it matter -- are you a "purist" of photographic form or function, or something else entirely?

This is an Open Thread.

Everybody dreams.

Sometimes, our dreams act as our mind's way to shuffle, sort, identify and understand the events of the day. Other times, they appear to be reflections of our wants and desires, or our frustrations and disappointments. Sometimes we dream about work. Sometimes about events or people we are barely acquainted with.

In a similar way, as the internet begins to permeate the socio-cultural and economic areas of our lives, social networking services like Twitter and Facebook spread, and the unforeseen impacts upon daily life appear to constantly bring new and different challenges along with them.

Some people just can't get enough -- for them, the internet becomes their primary method of interacting with the world around them, and losing their connection to their favorite blog or social networking site would be the stuff of nightmares. For others, the thought of always being able to maintain an online presence could be a dream come true...if only there weren't so many darn trolls:

Click to enlarge. Attribution: xkcd.¹

What are dreaming about?

This is an Open Thread.

GreyHawk spent most of the weekend backing up and repairing his primary machine; during the course of the backup (which ran ~23 hrs), the "Time Remaining" estimate fluctuated wildly. It ranged from 1.5 days to near four days -- all of which were, ultimately, proven wrong.

Now I think we know why:

Click to enlarge. Attribution: xkcd.¹

...in technical support parlance, this wouldn't quite be a "loose nut between the screen and keyboard" so much as "garbage in, garbage out" in terms of that section of MS Windows responsible for estimating file copy operation times...

This is an Open Thread.

Here's a handy little flowchart to print out and share:

Click to enlarge. Attribution: xkcd.¹

Now, everyone can be the local expert. All they have to know how to do is read a flowchart...

This is an Open Thread.

Ever have one of those days where you have to make a split-second decision, and what seems to be a well (if quickly) reasoned choice suddenly reveals itself to be nothing of the sort?

Click to enlarge. Attribution: xkcd.¹

Sometimes, we just have to accept that rush decisions aren't always as reliable as we'd like them to be.

This is an Open Thread.

Image courtesy of xkcd.com. Used with permission.

Sometimes it seems as though sites like icanhascheezburger, lolcats and ihasahotdog have taken on lives of their own, quickly becoming phenomena unto themselves and permeating pop culture across the spectrum of daily experience.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

see more dog and puppy pictures

And sometimes, people just need to get out more.

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So, have you heard that Wikipedia banned the Church of Scientology from its site?

Bummer, eh?  :)

This is an Open Thread.

This is an Open Thread.

OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!

        -- Rudyard Kipling, The Ballad of East and West
       courtesy Bartleby.com

The EU (the "west") says that the dollar is secure as the world's reserve currency while China (the "east") calls for a new global reserve currency -- a call which the EU, naturally, rejected.

Attribution: xkcd.¹

Meanwhile, experts wonder if the EU-China Trade agreements will soon fall under even closer scrutiny as the severe undervaluation of the Chinese renminbi and other barriers to full and equitable trade practices start to cast a jaundiced eye on the nature and extent of the reciprocity of those agreements:

The European Union (EU) presented on Tuesday, October 24th, 2006, "EU-China: Closer partners, growing responsibilities" which establishes the bases for a new, extended partnership and cooperation agreement with Beijing. This new agreement is necessary since the current 1985 "Trade and Co-operation Agreement" does not reflect the recent surge in trade between the two regions. Even though China has passed the first law targeting money-laundering, the EU keeps criticizing that China’s current market barriers, intellectual property violations, and continuous state intervention to maintain an undervalued currency are undermining the beginning of a prosperous new era of EU-China economic relations -- especially, if the currency devaluation were to continue, even after being member of the World Trade Organization (WTO). In fact, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that despite China having allowed more movement in the currency since September, a faster appreciation of China’s currency, the renminbi, is required since the surge in China's net exports and increase in its foreign exchange reserves demonstrates that the currency remains extremely undervalued. Furthermore, China is also being heavily criticized for opening the market to foreign banks too slowly, stating that a "free for all" would "damage the system." This situation will be a truly devastating zero-sum game for Europe because the EU will be loosing jobs and reducing the living standard, while subsidizing China's poverty with European money. For this reason, EU has stated that "there is a growing risk that the EU-China trading relationship will not be seen as genuinely reciprocal. Political pressure in the EU to resist further openness to Chinese competition is likely to increase if these problems are not addressed."

So much for a Sunday morning free of complex thoughts and concerns.

This is an Open Thread.