Ranting and Roaring

I’m back. I got upgraded to Business Class on the direct flight. It was actually First Class seating — I couldn’t touch the seat in front of me, even if I stretched out with my foot. How can I go back?

This is my last day in Vienna until the fall. My family has been patiently waiting for me in Toronto for the last two weeks.

Now, after the important work is done, they’re looking for what went wrong. That’s the way to do it. It’d be funny if it was an error with the State’s mines/maps department though.

One further passing comment: all this “God gave us a miracle” stuff is starting to grate on me.

Oh, one further futher comment: Ultrawideband imaging may solve this problem in the future, as it can “see” through rock.

The Matt Good fan site Running For Home magically reappeared several days ago, as if nothing had happened (and as if no bridges had been burned). Anyone know what the story is?

Remember Spotting the Losers: Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States? Here’s a study in contrasts for you. In the US, when nine men got trapped underground in a mining accident, everyone who could help rallied to rescue them within 4 days. In the Ukraine, where hundreds of miners die a year, an accident at a poorly organized air show took the lives of scores of people. The reaction? Immediate and swift condemnation and punishment of the most likely scapegoats they could find.

I love the new look of N.Z. Bear’s site. Plain ASCII rocks.

There’s been another case of a pilot (co-pilot, in this case) allegedly showing up drunk for his flight, this time on Atlantic Southeast Airlines.

There’s some sort of perverse incentive system going on here, with some similarities to the Nick Leeson/Baring’s Bank situation. In the Leeson case, once things started “going south”, there’s was no reason for him not keep digging in deeper hoping that things would turn around and rescue his position. Of course, they didn’t and this doubling-up is what brought down Baring’s. In the case of airline pilots, I assume that if they miss work they will be demoted, fired, punished, or what have you. Thus some pilots will say “the hell with it, I’m good to fly”, even if they’re obviously (to us) not. People occasionally make mistakes, and the system should recognize it.

Here’s my suggestions: one (or maybe two) “I can’t make it” passes issued a year to each pilot, where a pilot can simply phone in and say “I can’t make it to work today”, no questions asked, no record kept, and absolutely no recriminations. We could also stipulate that the phone call has to be made to work at least 3 or 4 hours before flight time, to at least give the airline a chance to replace the pilot.

Please note that I’m not saying that traders should get a pass for criminal behavior! That’s where the similarity ends (before the pilot gets on the plane).

If as per Mr. Diction^*‘s suggestion, I was to install this cat typing detection and punishment software on my computer, I would be in big trouble: my lousy typing style would no doubt have my computer yelling “Bad Kitty” at me all the time.

^*

“There’s a hole in my heart, deep as a well, for that poor little boy, trapped half-way to hell”. I wasn’t planning to make that Simpsons reference, but as the title line says, Holy Sh*t, they rescued those nine miners in Pennsylvania. One of the ungrateful bastards asked what took them so long, but I think he was joking

I look forward to the stories from these men, but I dread the inevitable MOTW.

A dreadful day for BAR, the Arrows, and Kimi Rakkonen. Schumacher lapped all but one the opposition. Ho hum, at least I’ll get the watch the Tour finish today.

VodkaPundit’s theory of political wariness.

The Agitator asks which is which? Cherry Treats, Lucky Star, Love Melody, Daisy Sweet…

A must read article on the state of the Sauds (via LGF).

Sorry, I couldn’t find a way to squeeze an extra syllable out of that last line. Update: ah, that’s better, I added an extra one to the third line.

Damian Penny reports that Canadian Prime Minister’s rapist-son is accused of raping another woman, this time in Yellowknife. I guess it’s official as it’s on CBC now.

For those worried about poor Michael’s fate, don’t: the fact that he was adopted by the Chretiens, his genetical ancestry, and racist-sentencing guidelines passed by the Chretien government means he’ll be out in the bars looking for a “date” soon enough again.

But like, we’re the best country in the world, or something like that. Anyhoo, he’s originally from Kuwait, which has recently showing French-type levels of gratitude for saving their sorry asses.

It’s like the Everready Bunny, but without any useful social purpose: St. John’s old fogies Billy and the Bruisers release a third album.

John Entwhistle, late bass player for The Who, died from cocaine use.

I was re-reading the anti-Lomborg rant that Damian Penny received several weeks ago (being reminded by Mark Wickens). I’ll draw your attention to one particular sentence fragment — “in a world where there is no democracy at the global level”. The left loves the word “democracy” and I believe this is what makes the boys and girls at Samazidata believe that it is a pejorative: in both cases, what is meant specifically by “democracy” is not a system of laws, checks and balances, and a societal history which citizens, politicians, and the judiciary respect; but rather a system that says that you must obey me if I’m elected.

I’ll also mention in passing how obvious the tie between “political” input and the “science” output is. This is also very true of David Suzuki’s works. In the radio series “Naked Ape to Superspecies“, which I had the misfortune to listen to parts of, Suzuki trots out various unreconstructed Marxists to criticize “western science”, in the bizarre belief that this somehow makes for a convincing argument.

There is one interesting nugget below — truth, if not elusive, is often incredibly difficult to nail down exactly. Lies aren’t that difficult to detect at all.

“Practice Random Acts of Self-Restraint“. Plus a Simpson’s WAV.

I f*cking hate ‘em. I really do.

Mark Wickens thinks they are hot. However, as much as I’m not a fan of XML, this wonderful Amazon Lite site could have been implemented better using the formula: -SOAP +XML +XSLT/XPATH +XHTML. Or to put it another way, dump the SOAP, .NET, web-services stuff and simply serve a version of the page from the requested URL as XML that can be transformed into XHTML for the user’s reading pleasure. If you’re really geeky, read all about REST.

A decent UI design is a must too — it doesn’t matter what the hell is under the hood if the interface sucks.

Dennis Connor’s new yacht, USA-77, sank. It happened in only — er, “only” — 55 feet of water and has been recovered already.

Let’s see: a student is physically attacked by officers of the university, denied access to evidence in a stacked kangaroo court, stripped of his privledges, and sentenced to public humiliation and re-education. There’s nothing wrong with an education at American University. Campus officials say everything super because they’re so well trained and totally fair and such.