Updated Proverb.

They say that procrastination is the thief of time. It isn't. Work is the thief of time.

A little bit of self-indulgence

To the post-modern British patriot who found this post and the attendant comment thread so reactionary and objectionable, might I point to the following from the New York Times (in a great story about the athletic achievements of team GB):

'Britain, which will host the Summer Games in 2012, may not be able to stage a no-expense-spared Olympics the way China has. The week before the opening ceremony, Tessa Jowell, Britain’s minister for the Olympics, said that the Bird’s Nest in Beijing would be the last “iconic” Olympic stadium. Organizers must already be wondering how to follow Beijing’s cast-of-thousands opening ceremony; re-forming the Beatles is not an option.' (the rest...)

Now stop bothering with this petty point scoring by me and read the much more mature post on energy below. Thank you.

2012 fireworks cache, Stratford East

PS: As the kids say, Hhar me now, bo, selecta, swallow back, holler, big up ya self, everything that I in, coming at ya like Cleopatra, come in a couple of bars, recognize, represent, keep it real, you gotta check ya self before ya wreck ya self, swallow back... and hello.

Malkin Hates Scarves; Stays Mum on Gerry Adams-Style Beards

Right wing screeching lunatic whose ability to have perspective was surgically removed commentator Michelle Malkin has become convinced that celebrity cook Rachel Ray is shilling not just for Dunkin Donuts but also for terrorists.

Setting aside the conflation of secular Arab nationalist/partner with Rabin/winner of the Nobel Peace Prize Yasir 'Arafat with Islamist jihadists who have only flourished in the occupied territories as a consequence of the US and Israel's refusal to support and compromise with moderate Palestinian leaders (and for good measure, confusing them with Al Qadea acolytes in Iraq), the sole reasoning behind the idea that Ms. Ray is somehow Osama bin Laden's personal chef is that a stylist draped her with a scarf resembling a keffiyeh (or shemagh)- traditional Arab head gear.

To be crystal clear then; Ms. Malikn and her pals believe that wearing a keffiyeh allies one with terrorists.

Someone had better tell that to the US Navy Seals and Britain's elite Special Air Service, both units being currently engaged in anti-terrorism operations around the globe:



God knows what Malkin and her pals would have made of the command patch for Eisenhower and the allied troops that stormed Normandy on D-Day. Flaming phallic sword? Rainbow? "Promoting the homosexual agenda" or something equally moronic, one supposes.

You're Welcome

On behalf of the defunct yet still poisonous British Empire, I would like to offer a big "no problem, our pleasure" to the rest of the world for ugly emergence of tribal strife in the false construct of Kenya. Just add it to the pile of Palestine/Israel, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and many other countries and regions created out of whole cloth in a back room of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office withought thought to ethnic or regional faultlines, or deliberately buggered up by withdrawing imperial administrators.

We might even be better than the French at this blowback business. By comparison to us and Johnny Frog the Americans are real rookies at this unintended consequences malarkey.

In Brief....

Hello!

Gosh, aren't we all busy? Why yes, yes we are. I of course am no exception to this general busy-ness trend and despite constant promises to myself and others that I will blog more and slump exhaustedly on the couch less, I am afraid I have being doing far too much of the latter. Must be the weather. And the 7 month old who is far too much fun to play with (see figure a).

Figure A- Weaselette in a sturdy bag. From the other blog.

Anyway, a few thoughts before I'm off away to the kitchen to desecrate some channa dhal with some fried prawns:

On their dashboard page, Blogger proudly says:

"We are excited to announce that Blogger is now available in three more languages: Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian!"
Right there, the key to peace in the middle east. With blogging now available in their native tongues, Israelis, Palestinians, Iranians, et al will no longer be able to see to squabble and fight as their heads will be up their own asses, like the rest of us bloggers. No katusha rockets today- all of Hamas are too busy flaming each other in the comments of a post about a random bit of gossip about Mahmoud al-Zahar's beard trimming technique. Genius.

I hope the writer's strike ends soon so that Rob Riggle can get back to work on The Daily Show and no longer has to make those unbelievably awful Budweiser commercials. I had no idea that quality copywriters had come out in sympathy with their WGA bretheren.

Finally, in their commercials, MacDonalds are now pulling a Campbells and are inserting basic unmutable facts as selling points. In the case of Micky D's, it seems that they are proud to serve "USDA inspected beef". Awesome! Their burgers are made from meat that's at least pet food grade! What they would like us to think of is "USDA Prime", but show me prime beef that you can sell a 1/4 pound of (with bun and extras) for 99c and I'll show you what you thought was rabbit was cat (a long story involving my grandmother, the butcher's shop, World War II, rationing, and the lesson to never buy game without its head on).

Tata,
Keep it special out there.
Weasel

Feeling a Little Chippy

A sign from Waldo County as seen this weekend, courtesy of Rock-around-the-clock-land's own Canada Dry groove armada Mike:


Nothing to add, really.

Memorial Day 2007: They Died for Our Freedoms?

They died in Europe, for Europe, and for ideas bigger than any nation
It is Memorial Day in the United States. Originally known as Decoration Day when instituted in 1868, the holiday was intended to recognise the sacrifices made by both sides in the American Civil War, up until that point the bloodiest conflict by the ratio of combatants killed or wounded the world had yet seen. As the years passed the holiday lost its association with a specific conflict and has come to serve as a national day of remembrance for all Americans killed in war from the fight for independence to the current day.

An exercise in national remembrance is a worthy thing, especially in an age where distractions and invitations to disunity abound. A little contemplation does us good, whether as individuals or in collective units. It is disheartening (although inevitable) however to constantly hear the rhetorical pablum that has become associated with Memorial Day.

The most common irksome phrase, and the one I want to waste this post considering, is "They died for our freedoms". One hates to be churlish when considering the memorialization of victims of circumstances largely beyond their control, but no, no they didn't.

At no point since the Civil War has the United States been involved in an existential war, the loss of which would result in the external imposition of an entirely new form of government resulting in the substantial loss of the ideals of freedom enshrined in the constitution. (I must say "ideals of freedom" as even today every promise of liberty contained in the constitution encounters either legislative caveats or extra-legal constraints on its route to the people. If the constitution had been fully implemented from the start and free of impediment today there would be no need for the Supreme Court to act as a freedom adjudicator).

The majority of the United States' wars fall into one of two categories- expansionist or ideological. In the expansionist phase, there was little risk that the Plains Indians, the Mexicans, or the Spanish colonial administrators of Cuba and the Philippines would have mounted a cavalry charge up Pennsylvania Avenue, deposed the president, and planted their flag in the Rose Garden. In the ideological phase, although fraught with dangers and with the prospect of a much-diminished America should defeat ensue the wars were fought overseas in support of concepts- democracy, human rights, vengeance, the free movement of capital, and so on- not to protect hearth and home. Even if Eisenhower been pushed from the beaches on D Day or if Nimitz had his fleet sunk from under him in the Pacific there was very little chance that New York would have been conquered and named "Neue Berlin" or Los Angeles would see a sushi restaurant on every block (oh, wait a minute- bad analogy). Defeat in an expeditionary war of ideology does not mean the end of the American way of life. There are proofs of this: Vietnam and Somalia.

So as you can see, it is not true but rather merely infantile and unthinking to say that the vast majority of America's war dead "died for our freedoms". In many cases they died for no less worthy causes (such as the freedom of others) and in some cases they died for fantasies (such as the idea that the USS Maine was sunk by the Spanish, or the idea of Iraq as a oasis of peace and democracy in a Middle Eastern nuclear free zone). They did not die however, to stop the Germans over-running, oooh, lets say Remsen, Iowa.

But is it such a bad thing, to simplify the idea of Americans dying for a mess of (sometimes contradictory) concepts to "They died for our freedoms"? After all, the sentiment and drive behind the desire to remember come from good places. While it is true that a wish to pause and take stock of those who have suffered for the name and beliefs of one's particular tribe is quite admirable, the problem is that the over-simplification of why they died does a double disservice. First, it is a demonstration of laziness unbeffiting those who fell. If one wants to remember beyond going through the motions, it would behoove one to know a little of the circumstances in which these many, many people died. Second, the phrase "They died for our freedoms" is a thought-killer and in antithesis to many of these freedoms people allege folks died for. Like "Support our troops" it is a mashed potato sentence; easily spoonfed to infants and the aged alike, slipping down the throat with ease, and easy to digest. It also kills debate- many people may dislike pre-emptive war, feel ashamed at the slaughter of the Native Americans, or question the utility of dropping cluster bombs on villages that may house a few insurgents among the civillian population, but who hates freedom?

Alas, the currency of this phrase will probably only grow. While in the shower this morning I heard some gormless DJ (on a sports radio station, no less) exclaim with more than a hint of gleeful malice in his voice that he held no truck with those who thought that journalists, litigators, politicians, and thinkers had contributed to the sum of human freedoms- all freedom comes at the point of a bayonet. Tell that to Gandhi, who was all four and liberated hundreds of millions of Indians in the face of the bayonets.

By all means take time to remember. But also take time to think. And what ever you do, don't confuse Abraham Lincoln's phrase: right makes might, and not the other way around. Confusion of freedom and national identity with the boots and banners of the military is what did for the Prussians and ultimately, if left unchecked, it will do for the United States as well.

A Web of Self-Contradiction

Down in Brooklyn, chum Listmaker asks:

"On Meet the Press, Newt Gingrich kept referring to Al Qaeda as Al Kai EE DA. Is that the way you actually say it or is Gingrich just even more of an asshole than I thought he was?"

I say when in doubt go with the BBC, whose diction Gingrich appears to be copying in this case. Mastery of pronunciation does not mean that Newt has a bloody clue what he is talking about however.

After reading Listmaker's query I began to ponder the range of pronunciations and how they effect my opinion of the speaker. Hearing ignorant Bush Administration cowboys bang on about "Eye-ran" and "Eye-rack" makes my spit curdle, but so does the sound of a PC leftie making a meal out of "Nick-oooh-raugh-wah". Unless our Sandanista boosting authenticist says "Paree", "Meh-hi-ko", "Moskva", "Roma" and so on, they should probably stop attempting to re-live the glory days of Reagan's second term and get back to knitting ugly, itchy sweaters. The quest for too much authenticity is as annoying as a cavalier disregard for how people pronounce the names of their homes. But make no mistake, both set my teeth on edge.

As with all things, some sort of compromise is the best way forward. Sensitivity to the origins of a place name and local pronunciation is good but should be held in the context of one's own linguistic tradition. Sentences should run naturally but not grate on the ear of listeners beyond one's immediate circle (for the reverse of this listen to any speech by a member of the Bush Administration or any statement by any junior Republican member of the House of Representatives at any point in the past half century).

And if all else fails, and you want to trump former speaker Gingrich, you can always turn to the BBC Pronunciation Guide, produced by the Beeb's Pronunciation Research Unit. The only side effect is that you may start sounding like Helen Mirren or Colin Firth, but that surely is a small price to pay.

At the very least I'm going to print this out and send it to that annoying bastard at Maine Public Radio who consistently pronounces the word for an assemblage of chairs, tables, etc as "Fhur-naht-chooor". I swear he does it just to piss me off.

An Idiot and a Blowhard

No, the title doesn't apply to me in this instance, you bloody comedians. I write instead of Charles Laurence, columnist for the otherwise fab online digest The First Post, who apparently has no problem presenting himself as a shrill and demanding member of the society for seeing no further than the end of their own noses when moaning about the supposed shortcomings the modern mail system.

In his column Laurence decries the fact that a book he was having sent from Santa Barbara, CA to Woodstock, NY by media mail had yet to arrive by December 4, even though it had been mailed on November, 14. He won't get any argument from me that such slow service in this instance is a bummer, but it is the busiest season for the mail and around the holidays one imagines a lot of product is sent via media mail (especially with the burgeoning effect of online shopping). Personally, I find that when I order something that comes by media mail, it takes between one to two weeks to arrive; a great improvement incidentally over the month to six weeks mail order deliveries often took before the rise of the internet. But as I say, in this age of instant gratification and heightened expectations thanks to decades of exemplary on-time service by the USPS, he probably is right to feel a little aggrieved at the delay.

But then Laurence has to clack away at his keyboard further, angrily displaying his inability to consider context and a marked tendency to compare apples with oranges.

"Bring back the Pony Express!" He harumphs, "Oh how much better things were then!"

He is certainly right to point to the Pony Express as a breathtakingly exciting event in American mythology. What's not to love about the image of horsemen galloping across the plains with mail bouncing in their saddle bags, connecting the coasts through sheer guts and endurance? As a mail service however, it blew chunks compared to the humble modern United States Postal Service.

Although it's fastest delivery east to west, that of Lincoln's inaugural address, took an astonishingly quick 7 days, 17 hours, the standard delivery times for the short duration of the Pony Express service were 10 days in the summer and between 12 and 16 days in the winter. Still not too shabby. One did however have to pay handsomely for the privilege. How much? Well as Laurence so snottily suggests in the closing words of the column, let's "do the math":

First, what would it cost to send a 1lb book "3,000-odd" miles from Santa Barbara to Woodstock by media mail today? According to the USPS website, $1.59.

What then would it have cost to send 1lb of anything via the Pony Express 1,966 miles along the sole route it operated between St Joseph, MO and San Francisco, CA (delivery to points onward being out of their hands) at its rock-bottom cheapest in 1861? Well, the rate of the day was $1 per 1/2 ounce, so our 1lb package would have cost $32.

Already we see that the Pony Express cost about 20 times more that than the USPS to move a 1lb package, but that doesn't allow for the relative value of the dollar in 1861 versus 2006. So I think we should take a look at that.

Thankfully, there is a nifty website which spares us the need to do a bunch of back-of-the-envelope figuring. Measuring Worth indicates that 1861's $32 would be worth $731.80 today*. I dare say that if Mr. Laurence was willing to pay $731.80 to have his package delivered the vendor would probably overnight it.

And what of the 1861 cost of our nominal 1lb package, which set us back $1.59 today? In 1861 dollars, $1.59 would be 0.07c. Or let's put it another way: $32 in 1861 was about 31% of the average annual wage for an unskilled worker. $1.59 is about 0.01% of the average annual wage for an unskilled worker today. And by the weakness of his intellect Mr. Laurence certainly appears unskilled. Never mind paying $731.80 to have a book delivered, he's just bloody lucky he hasn't been found out and can still earn enough cash to be able to afford reading material in the first place.

Still, I hope he gets his book before too long. And I hope it has lots of pretty pictures.

UPDATE: Something else was gnawing away at me about Laurence's piece, so I checked it out. According to Mr. Grumpypants, the USPS's "official slogan" is "Fly the eagle". Bullshit. The history of the USPS states "Contrary to popular belief, the United States Postal Service has no official motto". Not only is he pissy, it also appears Laurence is incapable of doing 3 minutes worth of research.

(*MeasuringWorth.com only runs up until 2005 but you get the point. For the truly pedantic, if you want to figure the exact worth of $32 today I think the underlying rate of inflation for 2005-2006 was about 2.5%)

Overland Express

6 grand US all-in, leather, anti locks, bish-bosh, the works
Occasionally I think I'm working in the wrong part of my field. Working for an organisation at the coal face is pants when I could be working at the mid-level admin stage, blethering on about "coalitions" and using more acronyms than a NASA engineer.

I was sitting in the window-less function room of a non-descript roadside motel all day yesterday, trying to figure out how to best share information on s*bst*nce ab*se pr*v*ntion pr*gr*ms among various agencies and organisations that work with the public directly in a manner appropriate to a small and widely dispersed population like Maine's. At one point I was listening to my group brainstorm, paitiently waiting for them to get to the service delivery bit so that I could add my two pennies worth, when one of them made a very popular suggestion.

"Why don't we have a convention?" She said, adding "We could take two days, get everybody together and meet under the theme of 'Celebrating our Successes'!"

While everyone else went batshit ecstatic about the idea- "Oooh! A convention! Two days! With booths!"- I wearily began cataloging all the work I wasn't getting done while sitting pretending to actively consider whether or not we should set the convention date then the convention budget, or vice versa.

"Bear Grylls doesn't have to put up with this." I thought to myself. "I'm gasping for a ciggie and could really use a drink."

Sensing that the discussion wasn't going anywhere while the colour of the backdrop behind the keynoter's podium at the still-imaginary convention was still under deliberation, I retreated into my head for a bit to ponder a plan I had started to form while reading The Economist in the karzi before heading out that morning.

According to the business and finance section, China's domestic car makers are turning out knock-off models of popular Japanese, European and US marques at blistering speeds (100 new models were rolled out in China this year alone). Also, thanks to government subsidies brand new cars (like the fully loaded Shanghai Maple pictured above) sell for pennies on the dollar when compared with their US counterparts. They are also left hand drive. Furthermore, due to the relative affordability of brand new cars there is little in the way of a second hand market, which means I could even pick up something like this for a song (complete with ambasadorial/commissarial flags):



All I would have to then is either drive it onto a ship in Shanghai or drive it overland across Asia and Europe and then load it as cargo bound for the east coast of the US.

What I need to figure out is that with the flight to China, import/export duties, road tax, gas, and sea freight from either Shanghai to Los Angeles or Rotterdam to Boston would I still come out ahead versus the more mundane purchasing experience here in the United States? And would I be able to time my trip in order to regretfully miss the convention?

I May Be Prolix, But Is It Bollix?

Perhaps "90 years ago" would have been better than "Four score years ago and ten"
In the comments section of my last post, an anonymous commenter wrote:

Yawn, yawn, yawn - another verbose, opinionated and pointless rant from your incredibly high horse.

Fair play to anonymous; I'm always on the lookout for constructive feedback. I treat this blog as a scratch pad, so anonymous may have a point. Everything I post is a first draft, almost stream-of-conciousness thread and I do very little editing of myself. The trouble is how do I tell if anonymous's comment is a statement of opinion or fact? Luckily, there is such a thing as a verbosity index.

Therefore moving forward should any of my posts strike you as too wordy and in need of a little editing, you can check your instincts by using the following formula:

# of letters in the longest word in a sentence x # of words in said sentence / the square root of the smallest number of words that could have been used to convey the same concept (as defined by Washington State University's "Agribusiness: Do You Understand Economese?"
How "opinionated" and "pointless" my posts are, along with the height of my hypothetical horse, remain subjective conjectures however.*

(*That sentence is probably going to score me high, tant pis)