The 90s #1

More late-night coding, more music.

Background for the youngins.

Theres a bullet in the heart tonight in the heart of Texas
Shout it to the Dallasites we are rolling home
They shot an angel in mid-flight and now she won't protect us
Shout it to the Bedlamites we are westward ho

Pray the holy war is ending
Like in the films of Hollywood
And the angels are descending (important important)
Like Koreshians said
They would before too long
Sing a lone star song

They had him nailed up to a T with a T for Texas
His disciples with artillery they held the fort inside
And by the time the story broke down at Dealey Plaza
We've already caught the smoke read the TV Guide

Pray the holy war is ending (ending)
Like the films of Hollywood
And the choppers are descending (easy words easy words)
Like Ma Reno said
They would before too long
Sing a lone star song

Lone star song of the south
Words that can't help
But escape my mouth
When they bring down the house
Day upon day
Day upon day
Day upon day

Ooh ooh ooh

Pray the holy war is ending (ending)
Like the films of the Hollywood
And the trumpets blast is blending
With the crack of burning
Wood/would before too long
Sing a lone star song
Lone star song
Lone star
Lone star song
Sing a lone star song
Lone star easy words come on come on

Quick! Fire up the youtubes!

Someone needs to do this to this like yesterday already.

Update: here's a working link to the video. Lots of rich Americans telling us that America sux, dude. Only the Big O can save us.

What are the odds...

Too good to be true

Introducing the Ronco Gaffe-O-Matic!

CNN is reporting that Barack Obama has chosen the worst possible running mate: erstwhile presidential candidate Joe Biden. Since the only thing that has stood between Biden and the presidency is his mouth, and since Obama is no chrysostom himself, this should be lots of fun as the Republicans mop the floor with Obama/Biden. It won't quite be a Mondale/Ferraro blowout, but it'll still be a fun November 4 for Republicans.

Unless the Democrats really do nominate Hillary Clinton - then all bets are off.

Update: I didn't realize, because I don't keep up with Bideniana, that he's a pro-abortion Catholic who believes that life begins at conception. Figure that one out. At least he's consistent, though: he supports the death penalty both for criminals and for children.

Thanks, Barry

It looks like my alma mater, the University of Illinois, is covering for yet another corrupt Chicago politician.

A torrent of silence

I usually find that the solution to a tough programming problem arrives when I'm busy with something else: doing the dishes, showering, or at my internal compiler's favorite time - while I'm falling asleep.

Here's a bit about this phenomenon from Esther de Waal's Seeking God: The Way of St Benedict:

The very act of touching, handling, feeling materal things helps to build a small barrier against the torrent of words, written and spoken, which threaten to monopolize us by insisting that they alone constitute reality. Manual work, particularly if it is solitary - gradening, crafts, for example - helps us to know ourselves for it allows the rhythms of the body to operate and gives the time and space for the unconscious to surface naturally. This is the role which Joseph Conrad was speaking about when he wrote in The Heart of Darkness, "I like what is in the work - the chance to find yourself. Your own reality - for yourself and not for others - what no other man can ever know."

Here's a less mystical take on encouraging the unconscious to surface, from a fellow member of an email list:

In the good old days, when I actually worked for a living and was presented with a particularly difficult engineering or programming problem, I would try to encourage that sort of thinking-without-critiquing. Usually by engaging the forebrain in some intellectually passive activity like driving our California freeways while listening to George Schell of the Cleveland Philharmonic conduct Beethoven. I would often arrive at the lab with some new notion hovering below the surface and spend a few hours not looking directly at it — so as not to scare it away until it gelled.

Unfortunately, that sort of thinking-without-critiquing often looks a lot like goofing off.

Surprised at the Sands

Frank Sinatra's first live album, his 1966 Sinatra at the Sands, is surprisingly good music to write computer programs by, and it's just plain good music at the Copa Room with Count Basie and his Orchestra, with arrangements and conducting by a young Quincy Jones. There are some good reviews at amazon.

With Sinatra's monologues and asides, the album also manages to capture the classic mid-60's Las Vegas full of boozers and two-bit hustlers busy being entertained by the Rat Pack.

Unspeakably awesome

Ken Levasseur's Exploring Baseball with Retrosheet and Mathematica.

The objective of this project is to use the power of Mathematica to manipulate files that have been made available through retrosheet.org in order to do baseball research.

Take a look at the examples!

A king with style

Andrew Cusack takes a look at the new King of Tonga and likes his duds. Personally, I think I could pull off the President Taft look:

Some people really need to lay off the vodka

General Anatoly Nogovitsin (the lean graying guy with all the microphones), apparently speaking for the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, threatened yesterday to wipe out Poland with a nuclear attack.

Seems like a return to the old Cold War days but with everything happening much faster than it used to.

Remembering Nature's Table

Here's yet another great Smile Politely article, this one by Rob McColley about Nature's Table, the old Urbana, Illinois, jazz hangout that was razed in 1991 by the University of Illinois to make way for a big shiny Chemical and Life Sciences building.

The great Twinkie experiment

The guys at Eisenbrauns are running a five-year-long experiment to determine the practical shelf-life of Twinkies. The test for year three was conducted last Tuesday by their webmaster whilst wearing the famous Eisenbrauns cuneiform t-shirt.

Spear in the head, spear in the side, etc.

A compilation of deaths in the Iliad, part of Ian Johnton's Homer collection.

Decline and fall: #2

The decline and fall of Detroit, a 300-year-old city, in two vignettes.

While selling a home for the amount of change most people could find between their couch cushions is unusual, some abandoned homes in Detroit sell for $100; vacant lots can be purchased for $300.

"My 14-year-old son could buy a block of Detroit property," said Ann Laciura, senior servicing specialist for the Bearing Group.

By now the statistics are as well known in London as they are in Livonia. Detroit has lost half its population since its heyday of the 1950s, and every year the city hemorrhages an estimated 5,000 people more. First it was white flight to the suburbs; then with the city's continued spiral into poverty and violence, blacks began to flee to those same suburbs. And while census figures show that whites are returning to some of the nation's largest cities, Detroit is experiencing a flight of a different kind. As the Imbrunones' second funeral demonstrates, Detroit is experiencing the flight of the dead.

A cynical thought

Did we sell Georgia to Russia in exchange for a free hand in Iran?

Strategic considerations

How far to help Georgia?

We've flown Georgia's 2,000 troops back to Georgia from Iraq, which seemed to tick off Vlad Putin. If no one provides further help to Georgia, what next? Does Russia gin up some pretext to reannex Ukraine & Belarus or gobble up the oil-producing little statelets in the Caucasus? Are the independent countries on Russia's borders not really independent at all? How much does this situation parallel that of mid-1930s Europe when Hitler was snatching up places left and right? If Putin continues, when do we tell him No?

One difference between then and now is that most of Europe's energy is supplied by Russia or through Russian-controlled sources. Hitler didn't have that much leverage over Europe in the 30s.

Milblogs

Here are some sources for responsible, intelligent commentary on Russia v. Georgia:

• Mudville Gazette
• Danger Room
• cdr salamander
• The Long War Journal
• Small Wars Journal

And here are some partisan blogs that have sprung up in the last few days:

• Russia and Georgia at War - pro-Georgian
• State Minister for Reintegration - Georgian government office?
• Embassy of Georgia in Estonia
• Website and blog of Temuri Yakobashvili, Georgian State Minister for Reintegration

And here's a decent and heavily-sourced overview from wikipedia, though the quality declines toward the end of the article.

Update: are American troops still in Georgia? A training exercise called Immediate Response 2008 started July 15 and was scheduled to continue for for "the next several weeks". 300 National Guardsmen from our Georgia are among the Americans participating in the exercise.

Ah - it ended July 31, and as of yesterday there were still 127 American military trainers in Georgia, including about 35 civilians.

I wonder...

Now that we have that cleared up...

• Likelihood of you being FEMALE is 1%
• Likelihood of you being MALE is 99%

A crazy prediction

By the end of the upcoming Democrat national convention in Denver later this month, Hillary Clinton will be their presidential nominee. Perhaps with Barack Obama as her running mate. It'll be even more entertaining than the Olympics!