Keeping you in the dark

Tony B.liar : Thursday was the day when Tony B.liar, PM of the UK, had to give evidence before the judge investigating the suspicious death of Dr.Kelly, an UK weapons investigator in Iraq. PM is an abbreviation, of course, probably for the Latin pro mortem? Before that, Hoon had cowardly tried to pass the buck.

In the late afternoon B.liar had denied treating Dr.Kelly shamefully, what else would you expect from a politician? Now was it not pure coincidence that much of the SE of England and London had a total electrical blackout just then, so that commuters could not get home to watch B.liar's evidence on TV? Not that the TVs were working then either. C.G.Jung wrote a lot about synchronicity, I just like conspiracy theories :-)
And I Rage, rage against the dying.... Friday brought us the good news that the much distrusted spin doctor twisted-mouth Campbell will resign, so there is justice in the world, after all. Never been able to trust a Campbell (BTW: The name Campbell derives from two Gaelic words, "cam" meaning twisted and "beul" meaning mouth), since Glencoe (1692) and Culloden (1745), when Argyll sold out to the English.

Dodi : Finally, after six whole years of official prevarication and procrastination, an inquest is to be made into the death of Dodi, the last in the line of Princess Di's lovers. Shoes must be worn in the coroner's court. Hush puppies, probably Corgies.

Cyberterrorism : CNN reports that "U.S. cyber investigators have identified a teenager as one author of the Blaster worm unleashed weeks ago on the Internet." US is fighting a war on (cyber)terror. And who are the cyberterrorists? Americans. One Jeffrey Lee Parsons(sic!) from Minnesota. Is it coincidence too, that the district attorney responsible is from the Seattle district?

The war against terror is a Bush wag-the-dog invention. According to the CIA's own statistics, 2002 had the least terrorist attacks since 33 years. That's 9 in Europe (Basques mostly), 29 in the Near-East, 50 in Latin America (mostly due to drugs and oil in Columbia), 99 in Asia and none in the US. And that's not due the success of Bush's war, otherwise Washington would proclaim a great victory. No! Bush's foreign policy breeds more terrorists and feeds Al Quaida. And the Patriot Act has done much harm to US civil liberties. The time has come to repeal it. But the Bush administration will invent terror levels and invent stings (c.f. earlier this month), just to keep their own countrymen on a short leash. Recall Bush!

posted by Stu Savory on 30th August 2003 at 06:11 Central European Time ;)

United we stand, divided we fall

United we stand : Martin Luther King gave his famous 1963 speech in front of a crowd about 250,000, telling them: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Sadly we have become complacent. At the remembrance march in Atlanta yesterday the crowd count barely reached 300 :(

Divided we fall : Continuing yesterday's mental arithmetic theme, division by prime numbers under 20. A number is divisible by 2 if its last digit is too (i.e. 0,2,4,6 or 8). A number is divisible by 3 if the sum of its digits is too. Example: 534: 5+3+4=12 and 1+2=3 so yes. A number is divisible by 5 if the last digit is 5 or 0.

Most people know (only) those 3 rules.

Test for divisibility by 7. Double the last digit and subtract it from the remaining leading truncated number. If the result is divisible by 7, then so was the original number. Apply this rule over and over again as necessary. Example: 826. Twice 6 is 12. So take 12 from the truncated 82. Now 82-12=70. This is divisible by 7, so 826 is too.

There are similar rules for the remaining primes under 20, i.e. 11,13,17 and 19. I have moved them all to this link.

posted by Stu Savory on 29th August 2003 at 06:31 Central European Time ;)

Prime Time

posted by Stu Savory on 28th August 2003 at 07:19 Central European Time ;)

Nine billion names, plus one now.

Nine billion and one : Jimi Hendrix has been named as the Guitar God. He was the greatest guitarist in rock history, according to a list produced by Rolling Stone magazine. For years he has been at the top of my Guitarissimo list too.

BTW: The headline I used today refers to the very famous short story by Arthur C. Clarke The nine billion names of God. Theme: High in a Tibetan monastery a lama uses a computer to run permutations on the nine billion names of God. The task, begun three centuries before, was expected to take 15,000 years, but such is the power of modern computers that the names can now be churned out in under 100 days. What, one wonders, does God have in mind for humanity (not to mention the universe) once this task is complete?

In His name : The fatal exorcism about which I blogged yesterday has rightly been declared a homicide. Fundamentalism is a dangerous concoction, regardless of which religion, even if your name is not Ayatollah, Dubya or Torquemada . Re Torquemada, TIME Magazine is racked by the question Is the US Army stretched too thin?.

I'm 59 : According to scientific studies, we old folks still do have a sense of humour beside our heightened sense of outrage. But you may think the humour slow and outrageous, after reading my blog :)

posted by Stu Savory on 27th August 2003 at 06:59 Central European Time ;)

Llamedos and Llaregub

A better fate : Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord (Romans 12:19). But in some cases He has a Druce(sic!) up his sleeve. US Catholic priest John Geoghan had been sent to jail for forcing a fate worse than death upon the children put in his trust. Fellow prisoner Druce took the short cut and gave the bugger(er) a better fate. Apropos short cut, Mrs. Bobbit has an idea there, instead of applying celibacy to the catholic priests, she suggests applying castration, thus cutting the problem off at the root.

Gratuitous Education 1: The Greek word ekdikeo appears six times in the New Testament writings, and means "to execute retributive justice; a determination to execute judgment for; to avenge or punish a wrong."

Fatal exorcism : A self-appointed US priest David Hemphill with a total congregation of six was 'exorcising' a child last friday. The US boy died during the 'exorcism'.

Gratuitous Education 2 : Been reading my Shakespeare again. It was Henry II (of England) who said Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?

Gratuitous Education 3 : In case you didn't understand today's headline: the two words are the names of Welsh villages in Welsh poet Dylan Thomas' much acclaimed play Under Milk Wood. The village names were written backwards by Dylan Thomas.

posted by Stu Savory on 26th August 2003 at 06:14 Central European Time ;)

Some really bad ideas

Fetching Results : Over at Mandarin Design Meg suggested checking our Link-fetch times. So I checked my blog. Two really slow fetches : GeoURL (14 secs) and - not unexpectedly - the link to the medieval church (57 secs). The latter will disappear when I archive this month's blog next weekend, and maybe I'll drop the GeoURL link, as it doesn't generate much traffic anyway. Bad idea to link to them?

Using MS SW in a nuclear plant : This really takes the biscuit for a lack of common sense about IT-security! An Ohio nuclear plant used crap MS SW in the safety monitoring loop of its nuclear reactors! One Virus and it could have meant Blooey! And sure enough, the Slammer worm crashed the nuke facility net!

Having to learn to be funny : Sound great, until you find out that this Learning to be funny online course is by Readers Digest. Gonna skip that one, fer sure!
Instead, I'll just ask you consider this :
Won’t It Be Wonderful, When Iraq Becomes Just like America?. Puke.

Text Messaging : If you have just been reading Hebrew (which has no vowels) or have been sending text messages (SMS) via your mobile phone, it is NOT a good idea to start blogging, lest you end up with a blog entry like this one :
- f u cn rd ths i hv blggd wth nrly n vwls agn ;)

WiFi : The local tax office moved into a new building and saved cabling costs by installing a WLAN (wireless LAN) but didn't think to turn encryption on. Just wardriving around the block yesterday showed that at least 1/3 of the companies using WLANs - including a doctor and a lawyer - made the same mistake. What a great chance to sue the lawyer!

Sobig F : Nineteen mails containing the SoBig F virus this morning :( Why don't people use virus killers, or keep them current? Then this virus/worm crap couldn't spread.

posted by Stu Savory on 23rd August 2003 at 05:54 Central European Time ;)

Beware, more killers abroad

Sniper : Scarcely had the infamous IRA 'Sniper' T-Shirt (shown here) been removed from the Sinn Fein Website (on Jul 30 2003), than there is another sniper on the loose in the USA. Maybe he bought their stock.

THREE new sniper killings so far.

This is what happens when the NRA Lobby demands that uncontrolled access to weapons be kept in the constitution, which was written for another day and age. The constitution say "the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed". It doesn't say anything about registering them!

So register all firearms and keep photos of bullets from sample firings on file so that rifling marks of all weapons are on file for identification of crimes like these. That is: find the bullet - look in the rifling-mark files - identify the weapon - look in the registration file - identify the owner of the gun. That should be easy enough in this computerised age. If we can do it in Europe, even states with third-world power infrastructures (I mean the US blackouts here, not the White House, this time) should be able to manage it.

The problem will be getting all those gun freaks to register all the weapons they already have. Still, the UK managed fairly well, when it outlawed handguns.

Killer churches : Over in Ireland, the church is killing off its alter boys, it is alledged, which is something different at least from their usual fate.

posted by Stu Savory on 22nd August 2003 at 05:54 Central European Time ;)

Hey, I'm now certified only 36% EVIL :)

The Gematriculator : Yesterday I surfed over to visit my favourite UK pub-landlord The Master of the House, who specialises in pub quizzes, at which I like to try my hand. Fred Brunswick however has a link to a wierd religious sect who offer an online scan of websites to calculate - according to their 666-algorithm - just how evil (or good) the submitted sites are. So I submitted this blog's URL to The Gematriculator.

And here are my results, they rate this blog as being a genuine 36% evil (don't tell Dubya, or he'll come looking for my nonexistant WMD), but mostly (64%) good. Hoodathortit :) ???

Fundamentalism vs. Harry Potter : I'm not a christian (as you may have deduced from my EVIL-rating above, and I think some of those born-again fundamentalists (like Dubya) go too far, even censoring what other people may want to read. Now it is stated explicitly in the bible 'You shall not practice augury or witchcraft' (Leviticus 20 v26). So you get fundamentalist teachers excluding Harry Potter books from the classroom because he's a wizard! They are not alone. There is quite a movement in America that regards Harry Potter as unsuitable reading for children. The One True Church (any one of them) is still trying to mindwash us. By the way, did you know that the wizards' hocus pocus is derived from the Latin-speaking Church's hoc est corpus? Maybe those fundamentalists should think about their own roots?

posted by Stu (36%) Savory on 21st August 2003 at 06:66 Central European Time ;)

Looking for Mr. Right

Schwarzenekkid : Given that photos like this one of the next Calipornia (sic!) governor are floating around on the web, and that lots of people are still looking for Mr. (moderate) Right, I was just wondering what chance Gray Davis has, let alone Larry Flynt. Diane Feinstein didn't even submit papers, let alone a similar photo :) I guess Schwarzenekkid will get the Gay vote and a goodly part of the female hetero vote if he publishes er//election posters like this.

Predicting marriage success : Researchers at the University of Washington have devised two formulae that they say allows them to predict, with a 94 percent success rate, whether a new marriage will last. And all it takes is a 15-minute interview, claims the Chicago Sun Times.

The actual book, The Mathematics of Marriage is available from Bradford Books for some 42 dollars plus small change. And 42 is the answer, as we all know, from Douglas Adams :) So come on all you singles, invest in your future, like Ms. Lewinsky who puts her money (still called dollar Bills, not dollar Dubyas) where her mouth is ;) There is also a humourous reference to the book at the Megastar website.

Saddam : US GIs have an intelligent new approach in their search for Saddam.

posted by Stu Savory on 19th August 2003 at 06:09 Central European Time

Mordor in the Dark Ages

Blackout : What caused the US east-coast blackouts? Years of under-investment by power companies have left behind a US electricity grid that is woefully inadequate to meet increased demand. One trip-out cascaded, leaving millions in the dark (like a political speech by Dubya). At least we couldn't read Dave Whiners blog, so there were other advantages besides great street parties in NY :)

In the UK, energy policy is leading towards long blackouts in twenty years time.

Fighting Science : What sort of pluperfect arrogance prompts a scientifically illiterate President of Fantasyland to reject the considered conclusions of 2000 world-class scientists, and then, to arrange the ousting of the scientist in charge of the intergovernmental panel that came to those conclusions? Dubya willfully obstructs science and ignores results that contradict his evangelical beliefs or hinder his powerful friends in industry. He has taken numerous actions to distort or suppress legitimate findings in spite of the costs they inflict on solid scientific research. Of course there are so-called scientists like Landrigan whose science (so-called WTC Air Pollution Study) is so abysmally bad as to deserve to be ignored. I really do despise people who abuse science for their own political objectives, regardless of which political camp they are in. These twerps are pushing us all back into the dark ages.

posted by Stu Savory on 16th August 2003 at 06:19 Central European Time

Wrong Directions

Keep left : No, that's not a political slogan, nor is it a UK traffic sign, though it might have been both. Yestreen, in the inn, I overheard some parents who were loudly admonishing their left-handed child to hold his knife and fork the right way around. "Don't you learn anything in school, lad?" Being the busybody that I am, I interrupted the scene saying "Let him grow up left-handed! It's natural for him. He'll be better in school if he's left as a left-hander. Don't force him to become a reluctant right-hander. After all lots of talented and famous people were left-handed!" . The parents objected to this, saying "Oh, yeah? Then name four right now!" So I did:)

"Ed Aldrin, Hans Christian Anderson, Jeanne d'Arc, Niel Armstrong, Phillip Emanual Bach, Kim Basinger, Beethoven, Bonaparte, David Bowie, Al Capone, Jim Carrey, Lewis Carroll, Caruso, Castro, Chaplin, Cassius Clay, Clinton, Phil Collins, Tom Cruise, Marie Curie, de Niro, Richard Dreyfuss, Duerer, Dylan, Einstein, Escher, Ford, Bill Gates, Goethe, Whoopi Goldberg, Goldie Hawn, Jimi Hendrix, Rock Hudson, Wolfgang Joop, Kafka, Klaus Kinski, Paul Klee, Lagerfeld, Maradona, Paul McCartney, Michelangelo, Marilyn Monroe, Demi Moore, and Mozart, that's fortyfour and I only covered A to M!"

The man protested weakly, half-jokingly, well there probably weren't any lefthanders with names in N-Z".

I replied "How about Navratilova, Newton, Nietzsche, Ed O'Niell (Al Bundy to you, sir!), Pele, Picasso, Cole Porter, Prokofieff, Rachmaninow, Raphael, Reagan, Robert Redford, Keanu Reeves, Julia Roberts, Rubens, Telly Savalas, Albert Schweizer, Monika Seles, Ayrton Senna, Mark Spitz, Ringo Starr, Sting, Toulouse-Lautrec, Mark Twain, Ustinov, da Vinci, Queen Victoria, H.G.Wells, Karl Wendlinger and Prince William (GB). That's another thirty, making seventy-four, just from memory!"

"Never heard of half of them!" protested his wife.

"Well that tells us something" I replied sweetly. "He'll be able to learn all about all of these people and even incompetent right-handers like Bush, if he doesn't have to waste his schooldays on chiral re-assignment!"

BTW: I'm a right-hander, so don't flame me for this posting, OK?

It was a Sting : Deceit, pretence and artifice are all allowed in order to catch (or cause people to become) criminals in the USA. And why not, many US burgers ask. After all, deceit, pretence and artifice are all allowed in order to cause people to become President there too :(

posted by Stu Savory on 14th August 2003 at 15:09 Central European Time

Heiko Teegen, an Obituary:(

More sadness : Did you ever have the feeling that Jove is hurling ever more and more thunderbolts and that they are getting closer every day? Thats how I feel this month. Fearful, sad and powerless. At the start of the month, Hizzy died (see my blog entry August 1st). Now my friend Heiko Teegen is dead.

Heiko Teegen was the best and most respected aviation journalist in Germany. Also the most feared, in this case by incompetent civil servants. Heiko did not suffer fools gladly. No sir! Especially those aviation civil servants whom he thought were neither civil nor serving the flying public enough. Heiko published the magazine Pilot und Flugzeug, regularly lambasting incompetence wherever he found it. And believe me, he found it! We weaker souls followed the paths he trod for us.

Heiko organised many long-distance trips for us small-plane pilots, be it to Oshkosh USA, South America, Middle East or Australia (for the deep of pocket). Oshkosh was great, pilots there did a double-take at the German registration numbers on the flock of transatlantic singles :)

Heiko recently started an aircraft company High Performance Aircraft, may they and his magazine continue and prosper in his name. Heiko died unexpectedly last week after a day's motorcycling in this horribly hot weather. No accident, probably just the heat, which even has been above blood-temperature here (>40C).

I wish him a High Flight. I will miss him. Rest in peace, Heiko.

posted by Stu Savory on 13th August 2003 at 06:02 Central European Time

The Good, the Bad and the Guly.

The Good : Last Sunday I was speculating that robots are taking over many jobs and putting us one-by-one out of work. But there are jobs which require much knowledge, care and above all sheer human compassion. These are doctors and nurses, especially in emergency situations. Some of them blog, perhaps as cartharsis? So I went looking for some doctors' blogs, especially those who tell us about their everyday stress and compassionate care. To name but three of these good and dedicated people (and good blogs), I would like to point you to :-

• Mr.Hassle's Long Underpants (Doc. Shazam)
• Kill as few patients as possible (Doc. Bradley)
• Code Blog - Tales of a Nurse (various, but this author is one of the best).

The Bad : Dubya is rich. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth. But have you ever wondered where the money came from? George "I'm No Longer Drunk" Bush's family fortune is old, and it's big. Part of Dubya's money comes from grandfather Prescott (he's the one that desecrated Geronimo's grave) Bush's financial alliance with fascists. In fact, several business operations managed by Prescott Bush were seized by the US government during WW II under the Trading with the Enemy Act.

So when on On April 19, 2001, President George W. Bush, heir to the Holocaust, spent a little part of Holocaust Remembrance Day with survivors, I just wondered if any of them knew this - and if so, what they were thinking?

Here is another of the Bush family’s dirty little secrets. The president’s oil companies were funded by the Bin Laden family and by wealthy Saudis who also financed Osama bin Laden. Americans deserve to know this; it seems to have been suppressed by their own media. Perhaps federal agents should freeze the financial assets of the Bush family too.  It would not be the first time Bush-family assets were seized by the US government for trading with the enemy.

At least now we can bet on whether Bush will be impeached and even what the US 'gummint' is really up to. Dubya can play too - I doubt he'd get it right though ;)

The Guly : Ferrari are in for a tough time during the rest of the Formula One season. BMW have built a great car for Montoya. The Bridgestone tires on the Ferrari don't appear to work as well as the Michelin tyres the others have. So Michael Schumacher is going to have to go all out in order to remain F1 champion. There is going to be exciting racing for the rest of the season, as Schumi cannot afford to make another mistake.

Bet you thought that Guly was a spelling mistake, eh, and wonder why I'm babbling on about Ferraris, they are certainly not ugly :) Well, Guly is an adjective - pertaining to Gules - and gules is the heraldic term for (blood)red :) So Ferrari's racing colours are guly, man! Maybe Meg can add Gules to her list of named colours now :lol:

posted by Stu Savory on 12th August 2003 at 05:55 Central European Time

Things Gubernatorial

Our Knee : Assume Gray Davis does get recalled from California governor. Assume Arnie wins the vote (as opposed to rigging it, like someone else I could mention). I've been trying to imagine their speeches.

The Grey one's stepdown speech would probably sound like a dis-appointed vulture arriving too late at the dead donkey. That's a democratic (Clinton) joke, BTW, about getting no more ass, OK :)

Arnie (the ratchett-man) would probably say "There's been more backsliding around here than in the Boston catholic church! Corruption must be torn out root and branch! And even arm and leg and eye and tongue! It's time to wipe the slate clean! I consider blood very efficient for this purpose . . ."

posted by Stu Savory on 11th August 2003 at 05:49 Central European Time

Time to go now?

Rossum's Universal Robots : In 1921, the Czech author Karel Capek produced his best known work, the play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), which featured machines created to simulate human beings. Robota is Czeck for Worker.

Have you ever wondered how many jobs have been and are being annihilated by robots of one kind or another (and this time, I am not referring to the White House occupant). This morning I filled my car at a self-service gas-station with automated billing. No-one cleaned the windscreen or offered to check the tyres or oil. Then I got some cash from an ATM, open 24*7*365 naturally. Several village bank branches have closed recently. It even offered me a loan had I wanted to buy some small robot myself, e.g. to mop the floors. I prefer chatting with the domestic help thank you. I bought a train ticket with seat reservation via the Internet. There are only 2 people staffing the local train station ticket office nowadays, so the Internet is faster & saves a trip into town. Robots are stealing our jobs, folks. But I'm no Luddite or fan of those boring hip/hop thrashers Rage against the Machine.

Go read this Robotic Nation vision by Marshall Brain(sic!).

In contrast, Marvin Minsky, the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab whizz-grandad, suggests that Artificial Intelligence (A.I) is brain dead. Now I do agree that there has not been much progress for 20 years on common-sense reasoning (in AI , let alone the White House). Twenty years ago I worked in the AI research field myself, but the progress was less than the hype, so I changed focus. Nevertheless the creeping automation is affecting employment rates. So when it is time for us to go, we all may well be unemployed anyway. Well, we all have to die somehow, we just have to make a realistic estimate of how we're gonna go.

BTW, today's headline is a line from Blade Runner, the last words of the android hero. If you missed Ridley Scott's movie, borrow a copy from your local movie-rental store. Well worth seeing!

posted by Stu Savory on 10th August 2003 at 11:21 Central European Time

Flashbacks

Nagasaki mon Amour : Back on August 8 2001 in his article Nagasaki mon Amour Lowell Ponte asked the question: Should the United States on August 9, 1945, have dropped a second atomic bomb on Japan (Fat Boy on Nagasaki)? This is an article still worth reading. But if you prefer conspiracy theories, go read what this right-wing Christian wrote on his antiwar website. And fear his vote.

Dubya ninetynine : Back in 1999, Molly Ivens gave us the low-down (there were no high-ups) on him. Everybody wanted to know about Dubya. He's the Man, the Republican nominee, the next President of the United States, All the polls said so. And sadly it became so. You should understand that you need to elect someone else - anyone else - in 2004. Please!

posted by Stu Savory on 9th August 2003 at 09:31 Central European Time

Hey Babe, I'm hot!

Meltdown : It' really getting hot in Europe (38 C here yesterday). Uncontrolled forest fires in Portugal, France and Spain and now even rainy London(UK) is getting hot. So hot in fact that Madame Tussaud's famous waxworks have a problem. The wax figures are beginning to melt! So the staff are dragging in ten-kilo blocks of ice and have the air-conditioning going full blast. Mind you, given some of the lifelike figures (like Kylie Minogue, photo on the left), some of the male customers were having their own private meltdown!

The Governator? : Arnie the Barbarian is hot too. Hot to become the next governor of California, replacing Gray Davis (the Incredible Hulk////Flop). The Terminator will be a republican candidate. The rest of his clan (he married into the Kennedy clan) are of course Democrats. That must be an interesting marriage :) But I think he'll find out that politics is not such a sinecure as being in the movies.
Apropos movies : a recent report tells us which movies the US presidents preferred to watch. Most of them identified with "High Noon". Dubya of coarse(sic!) prefers Austin Powers, it's more his intellectual level.

My 15 minutes : Andy Warhol once said that everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame. Mine were yesterday, in the regional German newspaper, which did an article on my Crypto webpages. These come out as number one, top of the list, if you Google for Chiffriergeräte which is German for coding machines :-)

posted by Stu Savory on 8th August 2003 at 06:01 Central European Time

Enola Gay

US Week of shame.
"Lo, I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." J. Robert Oppenheimer (quoting from the Bhagavad Gita). The US is the only country to have used WMD - atomic hellfire - on unsuspecting civilians.

The mayor of Hiroshima in Japan yesterday marked the 58th anniversary of the world's first atomic bomb attack (by the US on 6th August 1945, followed 3 days later by Nagasaki) by criticising the pursuit of new nuclear weapons technology.
"The world without nuclear weapons... that bomb survivors have sought for so long appears to be slipping under a thick cover of dark clouds that they fear at any minute could become mushroom clouds," Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba said.

In a typical display of US tactlessness, gross mistiming and arrogance, a two-day conference to plan the future of the American nuclear arsenal, including the development of tactical mini-nukes, is being held this week at StratCom, the headquarters of US Strategic Command in Nebraska. "It is shocking, disgusting and disgraceful that US defence department officials are meeting in the very week of the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in which over 110,000 people died. The US is pressing the world to get rid of nuclear weapons yet is doing the exact opposite itself." states the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, an opinion with which I wholeheartedly agree.

And in case you didn't understand today's headline, it is a reference to the name of the WW2 B-29 bomber Enola Gay which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima; part of today's history lesson for those who suffered a zero-goal US education.

posted by Stu Savory on 7th August 2003 at 06:01 Central European Time

It's the Economy, Stupid!

More Bush spin : Dubya, would you believe it, is now claiming that his politics are leading to an economic turnaround!. Fer Gawsakes, doesn't the dumbwit realise that he has ruined the US Economy and dragged down large parts of the world economy too? Look at this simple picture. On the left, the US economy improves (climbing trend, deficit decreases) and there is even a surplus (green columns) in the centre.
It's the Clinton era.

Then, post-2000 , the economy takes an abrupt downturn, the surplus disappears and there is every year an increasing deficit.
It's the Bush era.

And this is an official US government chart, as you will note. Need I spell it out even more? Even the simplest product of the zero-goal US education system should understand that he/she needs to elect someone else - anyone else - in 2004, even if it does mean that the rednecks need to change their pet-carriers!

posted by Stu Savory on 6th August 2003 at 06:07 Central European Time

Backward in time.

Vati-can't : I read that the One True Church (there are lots of them) - in this case the Vati-con (sic!) - disapproves of single-zex marriages. As Shakespeare wrote "Get thee to a nunnery!". BTW "Vati-can't" is a bilingual (German-English) pun, folks, "Vati" being the diminutive form for "Father". And in the U.S. there is a row about the election of their first openly gay episcopal bishop (and his bishoprick, maybe?).

Meg @ font : I see that Meg is now experimenting with some different fonts. So maybe she'll be inspired by this UK cartoon ;-)

Doing Time : There is a UK idiom used for someone being sent to prison Doing Time. So presumably the UK police have to collect the Time from somewhere, or (dare I say) plant it themselves (pun, geddit?). Photo courtesy of Mary Jane Warner, maybe? :-)

Middle Ages Insight : Its really hot here in Germany these days, the temperature is predicted to reach 40C (that's more than bloodheat) today. Given the hygiene they had back in the middle ages, I just realised why the things down the front of their trousers were called flies.

posted by Stu Savory (new photo) on 5th August 2003 at 06:26 Central European Time

A whiter shade of pale

Sorry Meg : I must apologise to Meg. She has been recently evaluating how named colours appear in different browsers. Looking at the paler pastel colours on my laptop's TFT display at work, some colours are all but indistinguishable. I thought that was maybe due to using Opera as my browser. Today (Sunday) I looked at her postings - again using Opera - but this time viewing on a CRT monitor. And now I can see the difference in the colours, so Opera is OK, the problem was caused by an insipid, indifferent TFT display on the laptop. So I retract what I suspected.
And I hereby openly apologise to Meg (and to Procul Harem, for the pun).

UK Typo of the week : Tony Blair's Sedgefield Labour Party Website has a magnificent typographical error ( or maybe they know something about which we mere mortals can only guess ) : they refer to the PM as Tony Bliar ;)

Weak passwords : How strong are your passwords? We all know that Mickeysoft does not have particularly strong security. I rant about this regularly in my blog. Last week the folks at Lasec made their "Advanced Instant NT Password Cracker" available on the web. Whilst 46.5% of the submitted URLs remained uncracked within the self-imposed 3 CPU-minutes time-limit, a whopping 38.5% were cracked in an average 7.7 seconds! And as part of their conditions stipulated for partaking in the online trial, the cracked passwords were posted to the Lasec website for all to see! Be sure that 1875 participants (38.5%) subsequently turned a whiter shade of pale!

posted by Stu Savory on 3rd August 2003 at 13:26 Central European Time

Another good man gone :(

Steve Hislop dead : Sad but true, Steve "Hizzy" Hislop has died at 41. Steve was a Manx acquaintance whom I met whilst marshalling on the Isle of Man. He won the TT races 11 times and was current UK superbike champion. Not so long ago he got his chopper pilot's licence and it was in his helicopter that he died. Just down the hill from where my parents used to live, in the Scottish borders, as it happens. I went for a 400 mile ride this morning, to stop thinking about it :(

posted by Stu Savory on 1st August 2003 at 18:02 Central European Time