Editorials

A big clump today...taking care of most of last week...

First..on a side note...this was published in response to the BBC asking about a problem at Google this morning....

"There was a fault. We don't know the nature of it yet. Everything has been solved. We are still making initial enquiries, " a Google spokesperson told BBC News.

Let's parse this for a second...
1st sentence..ok..good..an admission of a problem..great.
2nd sentence..also OK..the techs charged with fixing the problem do not have notifying a "spokesperson" high up on their list of priorities..nor should they..
3rd sentence...What!!! You don't know what it is..but you've "solved" it? Well done. Personally, I find it tricky to solve my problems when I don't know what is causing them..but maybe that's just me...
4th sentence...ummm....now wait a minute...not only don't you know what it is, but you are just beginning to look..yet you've solved it. Wow. Who let the weasels out? I wouldn't think anything of this from almost anyone else...but I expect better from Google.



A valid point about what a bunch of screaming hypocrites the repugs are...not that the same can't likely be said of any pol....^_^



But...how will they ever manage to pull themselves out of the hole they dug if their execs have to fly around in last years jet? Have you no compassion?



Isn't it amazing how perspective changes how you see things. I suspect the people being talked about here actually believe this argument, and feel picked on.



Jon Stewart had a wonderful take on the possibility of some of these people being housed in US prisons...and that's basically...what are the repug congressman afraid of? We are the number one country in the world for imprisoning people. Certainly we can handle any of these guys. It's not like we're bringing them in to work at the local Quickie-Mart. If some are worried about it...put them in the same prisons we hold some of our more incorrigible gang members. I forsee lawyers begging to get them returned to Guantanamo...for some nice relaxing torture...^_^



Yes...this is like about what most "consumer" oriented government agencies look like after 8 years of repug neglect and outright sabotage of their intended purposes. Interesting that they are now beginning to feel that maybe they are actually supposed to perform the mandate that they were created for in the first place....keep corporations from killing their customers. (You'd think any sane organization would have that as at least a minimum goal...but it seems not...hence controlling agencies....).



Why I have always been confused about flirting..^_^.



If only.....
Maybe some Limpballs brand Peanut Butter Product...special offer cheap for all his listeners...overstock sale....

Corporate Weasels - An Example

How to tell you are dealing with weasels instead of an honest company. Read the following statement from Linden Labs:

On 27 January our overnight L$ transaction settlement process was
instructed to initiate twice. We quickly caught it and halted the
activity, but for a limited number of Residents, we paid weekly
stipends twice. In order to remedy this overpayment, we will regard
your stipend of 3 February to be paid early. Stipend payments will
resume as normal for you on 10 February. If you find things don't look
right upon review of your account records, please contact us via
support, and we'll take a look.

On behalf of all of us at Linden Lab, we apologise for this error.

The Linden Lab Billing Team

Here is the translation into real speak:

Hey everyone, we goofed up, and by mistake a limited number of people were paid their stipend twice. Rather than taking responsibility and either tracking down those over payments or just taking the incredibly small loss and forgetting about it, we have decided instead to inconvenience all of our paying residents...few as they are compared to the general population...and have them all log in and check their accounts, then, if they were not double paid, they can just figure out how to wend their way through our increasingly Byzantine support system and hope that the problem is remedied sometime in the next month or two. We assume that most of them won't bother for the piddling amount we pay in stipends, and our "mistake" will turn into a net profit, which those of us who caused it will use as a plus on our next performance review when we ask for a raise. It's a good thing our customers are too dumb to figure this out, or our number of paying customers would be dwindling even faster than it already is.

On behalf of all of us at Linden Lab, we assume we will once again get away with screwing the few people who care enough to pay for access to our system.

The Linden Lab Billing Team (Ka-ching!)

Please note the above is satire and as such falls under fair use rules.

Editorials and suchlike items...

Before I get on my high horse...here's a link sent to me by co-blogger tara...and is probably better and more useful than anything I've come up with since I started this...

http://www.archive.org/index.php

Classic TV, Movies, Animation, Books (both e and audio), a live music archive that has close to 60,000 concerts....just a brilliant resource. I suggest bookmarking it at once.


A quick glimpse at current opinion...



I believe one of the readers of this blog is one happy scientist all of a sudden...^_^

An example of how not everything that is considered bad is always bad. There are circumstances where layoffs are a good thing.....

I don't have a cartoon on one issue that interests..and that's the BBC's (and now SKY TV also) refusal to air what even the makers agree is a plea for aid to Gaza that will be focusing heavily on the "poor victims in the Gaza strip" and the destruction wrought on them by the "overly aggressive Isralies". Many protests about how the media is being controlled by the evil jews and parliamentary votes have been scheduled. I think the tone of the protests makes it easy to see that the normal anti-semitic stance of the Brits (something they have been trying to convince the world is not true for years) is still very much the special of the day. Kudos to both BBC and SKY for making a decision on neutrality and sticking to it...and to those on the other side...stop whining..you won...your leaders said so....and they wouldn't lie would they? Why not take a quick trip down to Gaza and help them celebrate their "great victory". I'm sure an influx of English speakers of European descent will be welcomed with all the warmth and hospitality that is usually shown to them in the region. Maybe even phone ahead so they have enough time to get the swords nice and sharp....

...and to show that not everything brings forth a political diatribe...here is this years McLaren F1 car...which...except for the silly looking tiny rear wing, (mandated by this years rules), I think is a pretty good looking racing car.

Vatican, and other stories..

This from the BBC newsite:

The Vatican has condemned President Obama's move to restore US funding for family planning clinics abroad that give advice on or carry out abortions.

One Vatican official warned against the "arrogance" of those in power who think they can decide between life and death.

This from me....

Talk about arrogance. That comment sounds to me like the most perfect description of the Vatican that I have ever read. Am I really supposed to take my moral authority from a group of people who just today re-instated as Bishop a man who preaches the Holocaust didn't happen? An organization that is better known for it's denigration of women, abuse of children. torture of innocents, and generally perverted behaviors of it's various leaders over the centuries than for it's "good works". I suggest they shut up, get their own house in order, and say about a billion Hail Mary's before I'll even consider making them even in the top 10 of places I look to for moral guidance.

STFU.

Had to get that in as soon as I saw it. A bit less thought than usual...but it really made me angry. Let me toss in a couple other things I have sitting around while I'm here.

Well, I wanted to end with this...but since the window doesn't scroll when when I drag the picture...and the edit window is tiny...I can neither get this one below the following one and vice versa...anyway...I find the above good advice..^_^

And as for this one....I think it will take more than 1 instance to convince me....^_^

Editorials

Thought it was time for me to take a look at the visual pundits again....



And what else would anyone expect from Mr. Ditto and the Heads? What I say to Limpballs and his cohorts is..America. Love it or leave it. I know of a country that is run just the way they would like this one to be. It's depicted in the cartoon below.....I'm sure that the NeoCons would not only be welcome..but would fit right in....





You can tell I feel bad for them. Tell you what...let's give them the same voice that they gave everyone who wasn't a neocon for the last quarter century. After all..if it's good enough for the goose....^_^



Yep..just like Hamas says..it's another great victory over Israel. I don't know what the rest of the world is whining about. Hamas says they won, that they have gotten even stronger and will continue to shell southern Irael with even more accuracy and frequency. I certainly don't see why anyone else should be interested in sending aid and support to the victor. Possibly there is some way it can all be re-routed to the poor loser Israelis..

Editorials

Well, I guess it's time once again to pontificate and show how little I truly know about Life, the universe, and everything...^_^



Those who know me know that this is pretty much my sticking point with religions. They talk all sweetness and light....but watch your back...




There is one good thing in general about this country..that keeps most of us here even when it goes badly wrong...as shown above. Even the fascists leave when they lose an election. Can you imagine these characters just packing up and leaving power after being in charge of maybe 95% of the rest of the world's countries? Maybe I am naive about this...but this time I wasn't all that sure it would happen.




Good point. Let's keep theses guys in our sights...and also remember to thank Bernie for at least mostly preying on them too...not just the small investor funds.....

Editorials

I haven't seen all that much that interests me to start the year...which explains the slow updates a bit..^_^. Just the standard Republicon moaning about the sky falling...and don't try and do anything about it..all offered attempts at solution or mitigation will only make things worse. Trust them...they know all about making things worse...






Hey..why not. It's worked for hundreds of years with rhino horn and thousands of other "medicines". This is good in 2 ways...gives the animal kingdom a break with something that actually works..and maybe gives some tribal elders a reason to hang on in this life instead of going for all those virgins in the next. A bird in the hand after all....^_^







You know what? I'll bet the dem congresspeople think the reason they got elected and even may have an override majority is because of what great leaders they are. They had better wake up. They rode in because of one of the most unpopular presidents ever. I would suggest that they had better be seen to be helping the new guy, right or wrong, if many of them seek to be around longer than the next 2 years......(and hope he's got it right). They need to remember that congress almost never ranks above a president in popularity, no matter how unpopular he is. The president has to be a real moron to drop below congressional approval ratings. Just because the got lucky with the last one doesn't mean that their luck will hold.

Sir Terry Pratchett

Congratulations to the new Sir Terry, who received a knighthood in the New Year's Honour's list. He has been one of my favorite writers since even before he stumbled upon the Discworld (yes, I actually read and liked Strata), and any publicity which may bring in new readers is a good thing.

So, an anecdote.

I met Sir Terry about a year and a half ago, at a talk and book signing in a book store in eastern PA, what I would call a large mom & pop operation, not a huge chain store. It amazed me that an author of his stature (and sales) was, after a quarter century, still working the circuit. He certainly didn't have to, as any increase in sales made by this appearance was I am sure measured somewhere way to the right of the sales decimal point. Once it was my turn to have my book signed I let him know that I had spent a couple of months in my misspent adulthood working as assistant engineer on the Meatloaf "Bat out of Hell" album...an album I know from reading that he has expressed a fondness for. This led to him recounting a more recent encounter with the album, as he chose it to listen to while he was getting a tube shoved into his heart for a look/see, and in turn I answered a couple of questions he had regarding it's recording. After taking up way too much of his time (a look at those behind me in the queue was enough to confirm that...), he turned to sign my book. I was looking forward to some clever turn of phrase that would make the signature more distictive (he is a prolific signer...the joke being that an unsigned Pratchett is worth more than a signed one...^_^). He signed and handed me back the book, which I put in my bag. When I got to my car and looked at the signature, I was quite a bit more moved by it than any clever remark. It read "Thanks".

I have regretted ever since that I did not at least give him my email address, just in case he ever decided that there was something else that he wanted to know the answer to about the album. I sent it off to his drop website....at just about the same time he announced he has been diagnosed with a form of early onset Alzheimers disease..at which point he was swamped by thousands of emails, which he acknowledges he will never be able to get to. Maybe this will pop up on a google search someday when he is taking some surf time....and maybe, if I don't need too many more bypasses....I'll still be around to respond...^_^.

I think I'll toss a couple of editorial cartoons from last week in here now...



I suppose that here is where I open myself up as a target to the left...to the everlasting surprise of my normal right wing targets. I don't understand the whining about this from people and organizations I more normally would tend to respect. You don't let a group of people in the territory next door sit there and lob missiles at you over and over again. Period. I personally admire the restraint of the Israeli's for putting up with it as long as they did..at least on their end honoring the "cease fire" that had been brokered by Egypt, even through Hamas continuing to call for the death of Israel as a state, as well as the death of it's peoples. Here's a quick clue for all you Muslims out there, and your apologists. If you stop screaming "kill them all" and make even a slight attempt to join even a 19th century civilized world, maybe you could get some sympathy when you scream about the Israeli "attrocities". At least they are doing it out in the open, with all the world watching. Not skulking into the local market to blow up some women and children with a bomb strapped to their ass.... Grow up. If you spend all your time telling me you are going to kill me, then start driving past my house everyday tossing rocks, don't bitch at the shotgun blast through the windsheild....



...and in what way were we expecting them to behave differently? They are the same greedy bastards that caused the problems...then and now. Maybe if some of them could be brought to trial, like the exec's in China who's lives are on the line for adding industrial chemicals to their milk products, there would be less of this...or at least they might have the decency to hide it better....



Talk about sour grapes...here's a cartoonist that only wishes this is what the end of his life will be like...^_^