ekbworldwide

Yo! GOP Raps

noreply@blogger.com (ekbworldwide) — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 19:35:00 +0000

The photo is real, the additon is mine.

Boy, a lot of people go grocery shopping at Wal-Mart.

noreply@blogger.com (ekbworldwide) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:10:00 +0000

In 2006, Wal-Mart’s grocery sales were $98.7 billion. This means the company controls approximately 20% of the retail grocery and consumables market.

source: Wal-Mart and America’s Food Supply - walmartwatch.com

In some states it's it's much higher than 20%.

[June 21st, 2009]

Wal-Mart gets more than half the grocery dollars spent in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Mississippi and is the top grocer in the other states that border Arkansas, according to Shelby Publishing Co. Inc. of Gainesville, Ga., which tracks the supermarket business.

Globally, Wal-Mart had $401.2 billion in sales for its fiscal year that ended Jan. 31, and grocery items accounted for 49 percent of that figure, according to the company's annual report.

source: In grocery sales, Wal-Mart sacks competition - wakeupwalmart.com

Hey congress & med schools - when students do it it's called plagiarism - so why are you doing it?

noreply@blogger.com (ekbworldwide) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:03:00 +0000

Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies.

In House, Many Spoke With One Voice - Lobbyists’ - nytimes.com

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Senator Charles E. Grassley wrote to 10 top medical schools Tuesday to ask what they are doing about professors who put their names on ghostwritten articles in medical journals — and why that practice was any different from plagiarism by students.

Med Schools Quizzed on Medical Ghostwriting - nytimes.com

You know your country is in trouble when med schools act like congress.

Kettle calls pot black! Afghanistan will form major anti-corruption unit!

noreply@blogger.com (ekbworldwide) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:58:00 +0000

The Afghan government says it will form a major anti-corruption unit to investigate graft among senior officials.

Afghanistan to Form Major Anti-Corruption Unit - voanews.com

I read that first sentence and then I started laughing so hard I started shaking. Good grief.

In seriousness - if Obama starts doing unintentional Dubya impressions every time he uses the word "freedom" or "democracy" - I'm going to want to scream.

[T]he Afghan government should address the task of reducing corruption within the next six months.

Oh yeah, timeline: in the next six months. That's amusing.

[Afghanistan's Interior Minister] said that Afghan ministers must examine all of their employees in that time to determine whether they were hired based on merit or cronyism.

If so, do they get a (secret) bonus?

We need to leave Afghanistan.

I guess Clinton will be tv fairly soon giving some mumbo-jumbo like "Concrete steps are now being taken to address problems in in the Afghan government..." Oh, yes - address the corrupt-, um, I mean problems. But why give them six months? Why not six days? Or six hours. It's a joke. We need to leave.

The bizarre "FED" death in Kentucky and politicized yelling

noreply@blogger.com (ekbworldwide) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:37:00 +0000

In September Bill Sparkman was found in a remote area of rural Kentucky. He had a rope around his neck, he was tied to a tree, his arms and legs were bound, he had a blind-fold over his eyes, and the word "Fed" was written on his chest.

Death of Bill Sparkman - wikipedia.org
"Bill Sparkman" - Google News [sorted by date]

In older articles - I don't know what to believe - he was described as being naked. Beyond the very strange details of this case - is something else entirely: political yelling.

The case can serve as a sort of litmus test for overly passionate political beliefs. Passionate people on the right seek out the details they think show that he killed himself while their counterparts on the left look for details that show suicide was impossible. I'm not sure of the passionate libertarian position. Is it that people should have the right to kill themselves in bizarre ways?

The political dimension disturbs me. We don't have enough information - yet people are screaming that they know what happened. I wonder if a couple years from now it will have become "normal" for people with opposing political viewpoints to be looked at as one step below child molesters.

All the brouhaha reminds me of the Obama "Should Obama be killed?" Facebook poll - also from September. Thomas Friedman even jumped into the fray and did so before more details were known:

What kind of madness is it that someone would create a poll on Facebook asking respondents, “Should Obama be killed?” The choices were: “No, Maybe, Yes, and Yes if he cuts my health care.” The Secret Service is now investigating.

Where Did ‘We’ Go? - nytimes.com

I couldn't believe he wrote that. When I read those lines my immediate thought was "How does he know a kid didn't create the poll?". And it turned out a kid was involved and the Secret Service closed their investigation.

Some possible scenarios in the death of Bill Sparkman come to mind.

---

There's the "he committed suicide for the insurance money" explanation. The idea being that - despite the bizarreness of it all - he was able to commit suicide in a plausible enough way that the police had to proceed slowly over months until they started to see the evidence in a different way.

Well - I don't buy that. I don't buy that at all.

---

There's the "he committed suicide for the insurance money and he had help" explanation.

Hmm...

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He was murdered for the insurance money.

Hmm...

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A nut job murdered him for another reason. And the killer has an odd mental process.

Hmm... well it's possible.

---

He was murdered - and there was a cover up.

Reality usually doesn't mimic comic book plots - so I doubt it. Then again - I've never been to Kentucky.

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There's the genius who is suicidal explanation.

And I mean a real genius, somebody with the mental powers of Richard Feynman. Somebody that smart could figure out a way to:

write 'FED' on his chest in way that would entirely hide the fact that he wrote it himself
bind his hands
bind his feet
tie himself to a tree
blindfold himself
hang himself
do all of the above in a way that was (nearly) foolproof and manage to keep a relaxed mental state and not make mistakes despite the desired endgame being his own death

Calling this "unlikely" is a vast understatement.

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There's the beyond-the-grave explanation:

he hung himself and his ghost did all those things

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There's the absolutely incompetent police investigation explanation:

all the things he did could easily be explained - there was something that he stood on to hang himself, there was a marker was in his pocket, etc - and they couldn't figure things out for months and months.

A murder investigation is hardly a minor crime. CSI Kentucky might (easily?) botch the analysis of a simple local robbery - but a suspicious death that generates nationwide coverage is another thing entirely.

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If you use Occam's razor - it seems to me that the most likely explanations from the ones I listed are:

He had help in committing suicide for the insurance money.
He was murdered for the insurance money.
He was murdered by a nut job.

The police have gone public with the theory that suicide is possible so number one gets my, um, vote.

News Corp. to Google "Piss off"

noreply@blogger.com (ekbworldwide) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:29:00 +0000

Okay, I have to admit that Rupert Murdoch didn't actually say it. But he sure is thinking it.

In an Sky News interview, the crotchety old man of News Corp. said that he's thinking of removing his websites from Google's indexes.

The interview is 37 minute long and is up on Youtube. I listened to it, but I didn't watch it. Murdoch in high defintion is something I want to avoid.

I read a few articles - but nothing worth linking to. Here's a Google news search link (sorted by date): intitle:"news corp" google.

In the interview he calls himself an "environmentalist". I think he's getting loopy.

He also says "I've never fired an editor for disagreeing with me on politics." I find that absolutely impossible to believe.

75% of kids can't join military - are fat, have health problems, have no diploma or have a criminal history

noreply@blogger.com (ekbworldwide) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:58:00 +0000

In a study it calls "Ready, Willing and Unable to Serve," the group says Pentagon analysts have concluded that 75 percent of people ages 17 to 24 could not qualify for military service because they are obese or have some other health problem, lack a high school diploma or have a serious criminal history.

Military finds 75 percent of today's youth can't serve - mcclatchydc.com

Hey, Pentagon how about sending a few billion (or better yet more) over to education? That would help the kids and maybe some of them would even join up.

It seems pretty ominous when the military starts to complain that three out of four kids can't even join the military. It's not as if military is med school.

I am considering starting up a brand new blog with a single theme: "You know your country is in trouble when...".

California "burns" and CA politicians fiddle

noreply@blogger.com (ekbworldwide) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:34:00 +0000

If California were a business - it would have gone bankrupt already.

California politicians should be busy, very busy, making efforts to fix their economy, fix their tax revenue system and making efforts at bipartisan reconciliation.

Is that what they are doing? No.

I think Nero was born a couple thousand years too early.

Tacitus said that Nero's playing his lyre and singing while the city burned was only a rumor. Popular legend remembers Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burned, but this is an anachronism as the instrument was invented a thousand years later.

Great Fire of Rome > The fire and Rome's reconstruction - wikipedia.org

Well, Wikipedia, "Nero did nothing as Rome burned." is missing something. And "Nero played his lyre while Rome burned" doesn't have any zing.

California politicians have been doing their own version of fiddling. Although this mouthful "The California governor sent a 'fuck you' message and other politicians were fixated on cat declawing as their state fell into economic ruin." defies being made into a saying.

What will the politicians in that state next focus on? Hemlines?

Variations on "lipstick on a pig"

noreply@blogger.com (ekbworldwide) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:18:00 +0000

The image is from an interactive Flash thing at memetracker.org. The quotes are here: Variants of the "lipstick on a pig" quote. And there's The top phrases from last month.

If you want to see an example (and you may not) of how the memetracker was used to help create a lengthy data-filed article here's a link - Covering the Great Recession from journalism.org.

spinn3r.com was also used in the making of the journalism.org article. The homepage title is "Spinn3r: RSS Content, News Feeds, News Content, News Crawler and Web Crawler APIs".

The article has no neato flash interactive things. It's a mass of data, graphs and charts spread out over seven pages. There's no way to put everything on a single page (The print link only allows you to print the current page).

I made it to the middle of page six before I experienced massive data overload. If I was getting paid and this was a column - I'd still provide you with summaries. But I'm not so for this you are on your own.

The site is fond - in fact very fond - of the nasty sounding term "newshole". The following definition is from way back in the net dark ages of 2001. Yet the word never caught on. I can't imagine why.

Newshole
A newshole is the amount of print-space or air-time available to report the news. The size of the newshole is affected by the amount of advertising, which not only takes up print-space, but also determines the number of pages in the paper (how much the news organization can afford). At a daily newspaper, the newshole changes each day, and editors and their reporters are given a certain number of column inches to fill. The articles that are printed are prioritized according to newsworthiness. Thus, reporters not only attempt to complete a story by the press deadline, but they also compete with other reporters to have their stories printed.

Learning the Culture and Language of the Media - ericdigests.org

Newshole seems to me to be the sort of word that isn't quite apt for what it describes. To my ears it has a ring that matches a subset of the tabloid-like (i.e. mainstream) news realm - junky video based tv news coverage.

How we gonna fill up the newshole at the end of the show?
Easy. Just jam the hole with that "dog that can climb trees" story.
You can't go wrong with a feel good animal story at the end.
Nope. You sure can't.

Wall Street & main street should be the same - if you break the law, you should go to jail

noreply@blogger.com (ekbworldwide) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:18:00 +0000

Yeah, I know. Quaint concept.

But if some judge in an American city said to a thief, rapist, mugger or whatever "I censor you and you have to pay a fine." the public would erupt. The badly named blogosphere would explode, the talking heads on tv would be rabid, editorialists would editorialize. Adjectives and tortured allegories would also run rampant.

Liberals would be emailing and phoning their congressperson and the Fox News tea baggers would - of course - be out on the street with their pitchforks and automatic weapons.

Oh, but these are bankers. The media and the public isn't exactly on fire about this story. Google search: 42 for JPMorgan "Charles LeCroy" | "Douglas MacFaddin". 42 hits if you use the names of the two people the SEC pointed out by name. That's pathetic.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. has agreed to pay $75 million in fines and forfeit $647 million in fees to settle federal regulators' charges that it made unlawful payments to friends of public officials to win municipal bond business in Jefferson County, Ala.

JPMorgan Settlement: Bank To Pay SEC Over $700M Over Charges Of Illegal Payments - huffingtonpost.com

Let me introduce you to the two known (alleged) criminals involved. They both worked at JPMorgan.

Charles LeCroy was the banker who pitched the refinancing to Jefferson County. Douglas MacFaddin was the former head of the New York-based bank’s municipal derivatives desk. They made than $8 million in undisclosed payments to close friends of county commissioners.

I think it's safe to call those "undisclosed payments" what they really are: "bribes".

The bank concluded the case without admitting or denying the allegations. SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami said in a statement: "The transactions were complex but the scheme was simple. Senior JPMorgan bankers made unlawful payments to win business and earn fees."

Oh, SEC, you've finally caught somebody. How are you going to punish the shark-like firm and a couple of its tiny pilot fish?

JPMorgan was censured and agreed to refrain from future violations of the securities laws. LeCroy and MacFaddin didn’t agree to settle.

What. The. Fuck.

C'mon. Censoring and fining firms is going to help fix Wall Street. People need to learn that Wall Street isn't some ethical-free zone where they can do what they want. They need to see that their actions can have decidedly negative outcomes to the one thing they are most concerned about. Themselves.

What's needed is real justice. In a word: jail.

The people, all the people, that broke the law they need jail time. It's as simple as that. And not time spent at some country club prison where the prisoners can relax as they read their books, lift weights and eat their three meals a day. I'm talking about jail, jail. Good old fashioned, don't pick up the soap in the shower jail. The federal pen. The big house where fear is tangible and not something you experience when watching a horror movie.

Bankers aren't dumb. The thought of spending years in jail scares them as much as it does you. Of course, sending just two people away would be a tiny step. But at least it is a step. I guess there's some same chance they might actually get a jail sentence. But even if that happens it certainly won't be jail, jail.

This isn’t the first time LeCroy faces allegations of making payments to politically connected firms to win work. In January 2005, he pleaded guilty in a federal corruption investigation in Philadelphia involving city bond business steered to political supporters of former Mayor John F. Street.

JPMorgan Ends SEC Alabama Swap Probe for $722 Million - bloomberg.com

Yup, you can't deter somebody if the threat of punishment is an empty threat. Even dogs getting trained can grasp that.

The UN - war's comic relief?

noreply@blogger.com (ekbworldwide) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:48:00 +0000

You know how it is when you watch an action movie. There are characters there whose sole purpose is to distract you from the one dimensionality of the stars. And they make you laugh too.

It seems that the characters at the UN play a similar role in war (time).

Spokesman Aleem Siddique said the UN would relocate about 600 of its roughly 1,100 international staff, with some being moved to safer sites within Afghanistan and the rest withdrawn from the country temporarily.

The UN said the evacuation would not disrupt its operations.

UN to pull out foreign staff from Afghanistan - dailytimes.com.pk

Oh, we're running away. That's true. But running away will not effect operations!

Head of the UN mission, Kai Eide, also issued a warning to Karzai that Afghanistan could no longer count on international support unless he cracked down on corruption and initiated reforms, AP reported.

Karzi stop being naughty! If you continue to be naughty... well... it's just not right! You must stop your naughtiness!

Even when the UN makes an offical [open air quote] resolution [close air quote] - it doesn't mean a thing.

Well, unless it involves something like them running away. When they flee - do they travel first class? Or business?

Proposed HTML 5 tag: ＜sarcasm＞

noreply@blogger.com (ekbworldwide) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:53:00 +0000

Wall $treet, Madoff and the power of presentation

noreply@blogger.com (ekbworldwide) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:42:00 +0000

There has been something in the Madoff saga and Wall-Street-hundreds-of-billions-of-dollars-money-grab that I couldn't put my finger on. Finally, today, I could scratch the itch.

Individuals, regulators, firms, regulatory agencies - so many players in brouhaha - confused what appeared to be true with what actually existed. Certainly there's loads of complexity, technology and math at play too, but (re)consider Madoff's clients.

I was reading a dull as carbon article that was focused on the computer systems Madoff used. In the middle of yawning - I noticed this:

The end result was phony trade confirmations and wholly manufactured - but official-looking - statements for 4,903 investment advisory clients.

My first thought was "official-looking"? Of course they were official-looking. What else could they be? But, I kept reading and reading and reading and then there was this:

“The statements were always perfect, neat and immaculately presented. They came on time and everything was like clockwork,” said Ambrosino, 56, a victim and now activist representing a group of about 400 Madoff investors

[print link] How Bernie Made Basket Cases of His Customers' Accounts - securitiesindustry.com

Her comment is the sort made after con artists have escaped with the goods. The victims, the marks, never suspect a thing and they put all their trust in an agent of their own destruction. They say: I would have never imagined that things weren't as they appeared.

A con based on human relationships is one thing. You can't live without trust. But this is another reality. This is about money. And serious money at that.

Madoff had nearly 5,000 clients. For a decade plus of time (longer?) Madoff was issuing "official looking" statements entirely divorced from reality. Yet how can it be that clients, regulators, people with fiduciary responsibilities - hell anybody who should have checked or was supposed to scrutinize the documents didn't notice discrepancies?

All that lack of responsibility, all those people, all those eyes, all that time, and all those statements month after month.

As for Wall Street and more legitimate *cough* *cough* activity - mcclatchydc.com currently as an entire section of its site dedicated to Goldman Sachs.

And if you think that deception is only for straight up criminals, think again. Goldman's marks, um I mean, clients, were Qualified Institutional Buyers:

DuVally said the firm sold virtually all its subprime-related securities to Qualified Institutional Buyers, a class of sophisticated investors that are afforded fewer protections than small investors are under federal securities laws. He said Goldman made all the required disclosures about risks.

How Goldman secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash - mcclatchydc.com

You can be sure that the concept "afforded fewer protections" didn't go unnoticed at Goldman Sachs. They aren't a wildly lucky, yet run of mill con artist like Madoff. They are the brightest of the bright in their field. And they know exactly what they are doing.

Oops

noreply@blogger.com (ekbworldwide) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:47:00 +0000

Somehow I thought that the book cover for Going Rouge: Sarah Palin An American Nightmare was the real cover for Going Rogue: An American Life. Darn it. The fact checking department is in danger of getting fired. That's all I have to say.

Walmart Funeral Options

noreply@blogger.com (ekbworldwide) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:06:00 +0000

Walmart Funeral Options - when you want to show your loved ones that price is an object.

Mom, I just went to Walmart. And guess what? I bought coffin box for dad for under $900! Since it was so cheap - I had money left over. I bought myself a flat screen tv! [The daughter heads for the kitchen.]
I wish you'd die too.
Mom, what? I didn't hear you.
Oh, I was just talking to myself.

For the record: the above is satire. However, it is true that Walmart is selling caskets: Search results for Casket - walmart.com

I swear - really - that I wrote the satire before I checked the search link. One of the cheapest caskets is that one - Dad Remembered Steel Casket.

Peggy Noonan - The biggest long-term threat to America is that the democrats make everybody unhappy.

noreply@blogger.com (ekbworldwide) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 01:37:00 +0000

Sorry, this blog doesn't have a cartoon, despite the cartoony nature of the title.

Peggy Noonan: We're Governed by Callous Children - wsj.com

The biggest threat to America right now is not government spending, huge deficits, foreign ownership of our debt, world terrorism, two wars, potential epidemics or nuts with nukes. The biggest long-term threat is that people are becoming and have become disheartened, that this condition is reaching critical mass, and that it afflicts most broadly and deeply those members of the American leadership class who are not in Washington, most especially those in business.

Boy, I thought things were complicated.

I thought the Wall Street credit default swap casino and Washington's winking at the dice being thrown had something to do with the current state of affairs.

And I thought there was some guy named Dubya who had a scary side kick and they started those wars. And their poor decisions helped create a huge amount of government spending, huge deficits and foreign ownership of our debt.

But if I understand it correctly none of that matters, recent history is unimportant and the biggest long-term threat to America is simple. The democrats make everybody unhappy.

The democrats must have a lot of power to create misery too. They aren't just a short-term threat, but a long-term one.

And the unhappiness burden is not spread out evenly. Unhappiness ignores the values of democracy. Everyone is not equal.

"Members of the American leadership class who are not in Washington" are the most unhappy. And business leaders feel the worst of all. Man, they must feel really really bad.

I'm going to take a wild guess that to be a member of the "members of the American leadership class" - you can't just watch the platinum edition of "The Colbert Report". I'm guessing your compensation package has to be at least in the high six digits. If not a million.

I thought that the people losing their jobs or people who got screwed out of their retirement savings were in the worst shape. But, no. Pity the poor business leaders. It must be hard to suffer as they do - traveling around first class.

Let them eat top sirloin!

boycott vs. buycott - it's a stupidity contest

noreply@blogger.com (ekbworldwide) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:28:00 +0000

Americans - or as the talking heads say on tv "the American people" - are becoming as fracked up as congress is.

It seems that for many people the important thing is to attack/ridicule the other side. And they think that anything done by their side can't be crazy.

A: I'm boycotting whole foods to prove my obedience to political correctness!
B: Oh, yeah? I'm going to spend my money where you shop to prove how stupid you are!
A: Boycott!
B: Buycott!

It's a stupidity contest.

Sidebar, the phrase "the American people" annoys me to no end. When talking heads sound like politicians you know your country is in deep trouble.

Is it just my imagination or has Wikipedia become drab? The page description for buycott is "A buycott is the opposite of a boycott; that is, an active campaign to buy the products or services of a particular company or country."

What? That's it? No mention of current happenings? C'mon! The page also has a link to an article that's four years old. The article/link has the zest of a page from a high school text book.

A new "too difficult" - too difficult to regulate. Oh shit...

noreply@blogger.com (ekbworldwide) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 13:39:00 +0000

On October 20th PBS broadcast an episode of Frontline called "The Warning":

In the midst of the 1990s bull market, one lone regulator warned about derivatives' dangers - and overnight become the enemy of some of the most powerful people in Washington.

FRONTLINE: The Warning - pbs.org

There are four ways to watch it:

[link] Grab a torrent for it (or whatever). The link a google search for a torrent hash.
[link] Watch it online or buy the dvd.
Wait for a rebroadcast

"The Warning" deals with (OTC) derivatives market. In 2007 it was estimated to be about $595,000,000,000,000 - and that's no typo - it's 595 trillion dollars.

And it's not just that the market is gigantic beyond imagining. Two recent articles mention a new and deeply disturbing twist on the "too big too fail" argument. It's the idea that derivatives are "too difficult to regulate". The articles are

A quote from Richard Feynman - on physics - is worth considering.

If you can't explain something to a first year student, then you haven't really understood it.
Variant: "If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't really understand it."

Richard Feynman - Wikiquote

Feynman was a genius (a wizard among geniuses), a Nobel laureate and most people know him from his so sad it's morbidly funny explanation of why the space shuttle Challenger exploded. I wish he was alive today. I wonder what he'd say about the mess we've gotten ourselves into.

Our reliance on the derivatives market doesn't seem that something real. It seems like something out of (science) fiction. We've created a fantastically hideous apparatus that is the engine and the very foundation of the world economy and it hums away.

We are at the part of the story where some very unpleasant facts are becoming known. The apparatus can't be explained in its entirely. Nobody knows how - or even if - it can be modified or changed. All that is clear is that turning it off could in fact undermine the entire world economy. And it hums away. I don't think the story is going to end well...

New Jersey has no law against bestiality.

noreply@blogger.com (ekbworldwide) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:50:00 +0000

Boy, New Jersey is more rural than I ever imagined.

During a bizarre hearing there yesterday, a Superior Court judge dismissed animal-cruelty charges against a Moorestown police officer [Robert Melia] accused of sticking his penis into the mouths of five calves in rural Southampton in 2006, claiming a grand jury couldn't infer whether the cows had been "tormented" or "puzzled" by the situation or even irritated that they'd been duped out of a meal.

"If the cow had the cognitive ability to form thought and speak, would it say, 'Where's the milk? I'm not getting any milk,' " Judge James J. Morley asked.

Animal-cruelty charges dropped against Burlington County cop - philly.com

President Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize [What?]

noreply@blogger.com (ekbworldwide) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 10:47:00 +0000

I'm as liberal as they come, but c'mon. Will all other prizes be based on popularity contests too? I guess I'm going to - gasp - agree with right wing voices on this: What were they thinking?

Schwarzenegger's Conan camel punch becomes a crime?

noreply@blogger.com (ekbworldwide) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 06:56:00 +0000

Dogfighting Case Gets Its Day In Court - npr.org

The Supreme Court hears a major free speech case on Tuesday that asks whether the government can make it a crime to sell or possess any depiction of animal cruelty.

[Critics worry that viewing / possessing a copy of (etc)] the scene of Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan the Barbarian punching a camel might someday be prosecuted as a crime.

And producers would have to spend oodles of money to convince a jury of the "serious value" of the film being prosecuted. As one lawyer puckishly put it, with Conan the Barbarian, "serious value" might be a stretch.

Just how the justices will react to this case promises to be interesting. There almost certainly are dog lovers on the court — and hunters. Indeed, Justice Antonin Scalia has a wild boar's head on the wall in his basement. It is unknown whether he used a dog to catch and hold the animal during the hunt, a commonly used technique illustrated in one of Stevens' films.

So Scalia has a boar's head in his basement... Well, I wouldn't be surprised if he had a human head down there too.

Visiting Mrs Nabokov [text of 1979 interview of Polanski by Amis]

noreply@blogger.com (ekbworldwide) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 20:29:00 +0000

Somebody uploaded it to the pastebin at mozilla.org. Here's the link.

A pastebin is a place to put snippets of code. To copy the "raw" text - scroll to the bottom of the page and copy what's in the text area.

I do believe that the somebody will re-upload the interview if that link dies.

For the record - I don't know how accurate the text at the link is compared to what appears in the book. I suppose it's nearly 100% the same.

The interview of Roman Polanski is from a book by Martin Amis called Visiting Mrs Nabokov: And Other Excursions. Unfortunately Amis is the kind of writer that makes the worst interviewer. Everything he writes is really about himself. I guess about 2% of the "interview" is actually quotes from Polanski.

How to use Firefox to stop the freaking return of blink.

noreply@blogger.com (ekbworldwide) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:07:00 +0000

For the impatient (:D) scroll down to "How to stop it".

The blink tag makes the text inside it blink. Or if you prefer something more technical:

The blink element is a non-standard presentational HTML element that indicates to a user agent (generally a web browser) that the page author intends the content of the element to blink (that is, alternate between being visible and invisible). The element was introduced in Netscape Navigator and has some support in other web browsers, but support for the feature is absent from Internet Explorer.

Blink element - Wikipedia

The agage.com homepage has a javascript blink-like hack in the top left corner. The blinking text reads "Subscribe to Advertising Age today!".

Blinking is two things that advertisers love- it's very annoying and hard to ignore. It's the browser equivalent of a an abrasive pitchman talking fast and loudly at you. But the blink tag is pretty much dead. It has no support in IE - and the default setting in Firefox is "disabled". If it's not supported or disabled - the text is ordinary - nothing happens.

The hack is devilishly simple. It sets opacity to 0 and then in timed increments raises the opacity little by little until it's at 1. And it loops. Blink is only on/off. The hack is even worse. But slowly ramping up the visibility it's that much harder to tune out.

Animated gifs can be used to simulate blink - but tools exist to block images and/or disable the animation. From an advertisers perspective making blinking text based on javascript is better since it's harder for the average person to disable the damn thing.

How to stop it

If you have Firefox, the Adblock Plus add-on and a "helper" add-on for it called Adblock Plus: Element Hiding Helper it's easy to remove the annoyance. Click text until you get this filter:

adage.com##*#top-message

and after you click "Add filter rule" button - it's gone. And no more blink.

Edit - I edited that filter to be more universal. But more than one filter might be needed to stop that blinking text site-wide.

DWI in New Mexico #2: the "Operational Deployment Resource Allocator"

noreply@blogger.com (ekbworldwide) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:25:00 +0000

To help them catch drunk drivers police in New Mexico want access to a law enforcement only website. The tool is called the Operational Deployment Resource Allocator. Despite the fancy title - from what I understand - it's a just database of the locations of crashes that were alcohol related. Maybe a better name is a "database of alcohol related crashes". I imagine that the title is an effort to make the database sound more impressive. And to justify a higher cost.

The article I read was at a tv news website and it said "if the DWI Resource Center gets additional funding from the Department of Justice, the website could be available within a year." The article also confused the issue by saying that 12 state agencies are already using it.

The article didn't say if the website is nationwide. A google search for "Operational Deployment Resource Allocator" [in quotes] yielded just one hit - the article I read. But national or not minor graft is a hallmark of this state. A nickel here, a dime there. Collecting and output data is not exactly rocket science. I bet the website provides information that could be created and maintained with right off the shelf software like excel. It's certainly a given that whatever the price ends up being - it sure won't be cheap.

The article had this chart for Albuquerque with this caption above it "Below are the worst intersections for DWI collisions over the Labor Day weekend:"

I guess I shouldn't be too surprised in the lack of thought the tv station showed in publishing that chart. My opinion of tv-based "reportage" couldn't be lower. But still, didn't they just for a moment consider all the possible viewers of that chart?

I wonder if they'll show it on the news. I won't know - I never watch tv news. Maybe they've shown it already.

People in Albuquerque who planned to really live it up this weekend might see that chart and think "Hey, when I going home hammered I better avoid those intersections - there could be DWI checkpoints there."

DWI in New Mexico #1: New Mexican man gets 22nd drunk driving offense

noreply@blogger.com (ekbworldwide) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 07:47:00 +0000

The officer that arrested the man found him on the ground near his vehicle. I know what happened. He peed outside and didn't get the message. That's an image of a urinal cake which is part of a multi-million dollar ad campaign that informs New Mexicans how serious the state enforces drunk driving laws.

This state has a serious drinking problem and the state government seems incompetent in dealing with it. It's not unusual to see articles on somebody's 5th or 10th (etc) DWI. Or worse yet - read about drinking and driving that lead to an accident and tragedy.

Any number of urinal cakes notwithstanding - real enforcement of the law is necessary. PR in bar restrooms doesn't cut it.

Not only was it his 22nd arrest - he was nearly five times over the limit. His blood alcohol level was .393 percent and the NM limit is .08 percent. The police said the man was arrested five times before in New Mexico and at least 16 times elsewhere.

The suspect faces a felony DWI charge. A state policeman was quoted saying he doesn't know if the 51 year old man has had any prior DWI convictions. No convictions(?) - I can't say I'm surprised. Well, stay tuned - DWI in New Mexico may become an occasional series.