This Week I Am Listening To...

Some people catblog once a week. My cats are kind of boring so I'm not going to do that. Instead welcome to the inaugural "Saturday: This Week I Am Listening To..." post. This week Already Dead by Beck.

Time wears away
All the pleasures of the day
All the treasures you could hold
Days turn to sand
Losing strength in every hand
They can't hold you anymore

Already dead to me now
'Coz it feels like I'm watching something die

Love looks away
In the harsh light of the day
On the edge of nothing more
Days fade to black
In the light of what they lack
Nothing's measured by what it needs

Already dead to me now
'Coz it feels like I'm watching something dyin'

I Guarantee I Will Forget to Watch This

Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs and Steel has been made for televison by PBS. This is brilliant for someone like me who thought the premise of the book was really interesting but was too busy/lazy to actually read the thing.

Having said that though I will definitely miss this because I always miss things I want to watch on PBS.

Excuse Me, Are You a Journalist?

There's been quite a lot of discussion on the Interweb thingy about whether or not Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time should be put in jail for not revealing their sources to a grand jury.

A lot of this discussion on the left has been based on the fact that Judith Miller should be behind bars because she's a crap journalist. She turned out propaganda pieces for Admiral Poindexter on Libya in the 1980s and more importantly she did the same thing concerning WMDs in Iraq for Ahmed Chalabi.

Fair opinion, but really missing the point.

Legal opinions shouldn't be decided upon dependent on whether you like the accused or not. It is important for journalists to be able to protect their sources in order to have a free press. Lawyers and Doctors have a level of professional confidentiality to protect their clients, why not journalists? But my real question is; how do you define a journalist? While Doctors and Lawyers need certain levels of qualification to practice anyone can be a journalist. This has become more the case with the advent of cheap desktop publishing, cable access, the internet, and blogging.

I am writing this post, and then publishing it on the web for people to read. Does that make me a journalist? If not then what does? If so then can I protect my sources in a court of law?

Anyone Wanna Buy A House (Revisited)

The house is still for sale. $6,000 less expensive as well. This is a really bad time to be selling a house. The market is very slow, there have been very few people even looking. It annoys Lindsey because she put so much work into making it perfect for sale, and it is in fantastic shape. The most annoying thing about it from my standpoint is that we don't really want to sell it. We bought this house because it really was the best thing in our price range by a long way and was perfect for us as a married couple looking to start a family. If it weren't for a change in our family circumstances we would plan on staying here for the long-haul but it's not to be. But nobody's going to believe you if you put that on the flyer.

"Don't Want to Sell, You're Damn Lucky to Find This on the Market ($109,500)"

This whole process reminds me of when we sold our last car to get one that would fit baby seats. The car was in great shape for its age and model, but it's on sale against a bunch of possible lemons. You just want to shake every possible buyer and say "Do you have any idea how lucky you are to find this one?". But you can't because that's what every other wide-boy out there selling their piece of crap on wheels is saying.

Worst Case Scenario

O'Connor retires.

Bush nominates and congress supports a conservative replacement.

No more swing votes, 5-4 votes for the rest of eternity.

Rehnquist retires

Bush nominates and congress supports a conservative replacement.

Scalia becomes Chief Justice. Replacing an 80 year old conservative chief justice, with a 69 year old conservative chief justice.

Update: Brad Plummer for Mother Jones has a highly plausible scenario concerning the replacement of O'Connor.

Some lunatic winger will get nominated -- maybe even Janice Rogers Brown -- the Democrats in the Senate will say, "Oh hell no" and launch a filibuster. So the battle will rage on for a while, Bush's "base" will get riled up and motivated to send in lots and lots of money, conservative judicial activists will blast their opponents with fairly superior firepower, and bobbing heads in the media will start carping on those "obstructionist" Democrats (bonus carping here if the nominee is a woman, minority, and/or Catholic). Finally Bush will give a very somber speech about withdrawing his nominee, announce that he's very disappointed in the Senate, toss in a few bonus 9/11 references, and nominate some slightly-less-lunatic ultraconservative instead. The new nominee gets treated as the "compromise" candidate, is lauded far and wide as a moderate, and finally gets confirmed after pressure on the Senate Dems to "act like grown-ups" by television pundits who can afford to get their abortions abroad and will have no problem with a Supreme Court hostile to labor and environmental protections.

Henry Kissinger "Sorry"

Henry Kissinger has apologized for insulting Indians, and in particular Indira Gandhi in 1971.

No news yet on if there's going to be any apologies for illegally invading Cambodia, supporting the invasion of East Timor by Suharto in Indonesia, or helping to overthrow a democratically elected president in Chile.

What the F**k Was That?

My street was struck by lightning last night.

I had just got home from work, running to get out of the rain. I had put down my stuff, turned on the kettle for some tea, turned on the computer. Suddenly there was a huge white light with a simultaneous crack of thunder, a fzzzzt from the computer, and then everything went out.

When you get a power cut at night it's a little exciting. Something different. You get the candles out and hang out outside for a bit. Kind of fun unless it's out for a long period of time. When you get a power cut during the day it just reminds you how much you are dependent on electricity. I don't think I own anything in my home that isn't electric any more. All my entertainment, everything in the kitchen including all the ways to cook food, all our record keeping and finances, heating and cooling, the garage door, lighting.

I found it kind of interesting. Tuesday night I had been watching the first episode of Connections by James Burke from 1978 on DVD. In that episode he shows how dependent our modern civilization is on electricity and how if it failed society would collapse scarily quickly and we'd all die pretty quickly as well. In the last 25 years we've only become more reliant on our sources of power so I guess society would fall apart all that much quicker.

All in all a little sobering.

I Do Have to Get Some Work Done Some Time

After looking at every single cartoon on Toothpaste For Dinner I figured I could do some work, you know what they pay me to do, but no. I was told about this. Google's new Earth map thingy. It's quite frankly brilliant. I may as well fire myself now and get it over with.

Let's Be 'Aving You Canada!

The United States just broke the 100 'visitors' mark, Canada is falling behind in second place. In the words of Norwich City majority shareholder and acclaimed TV cook Delia Smith.

"Where are you? where are you? Let's be 'aving you Canada!"

Update: Flatpoint MBA and My Journey to LBS have this counter now and they have visitors from Singapore, Russia, Spain, Italy, and Turkey. Send them my way guys, I want more flags, it's all about the flags!

CENTRAL Time Zone

I went to log in to an online chat scheduled for 1pm for the first year class of 2007.

That would be 1pm CST, not EST.

I'm going to have to get used to that, particularly being 6 hours ahead of the UK instead of 5 hours. Could be worse though, I could have gone to Indiana. Nobody knows what time zone Indiana's on half the time.

Brief News From Europe

It has been announced that the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor will be built in Cadarache, France. If it is successful it'll be a major step forward in nuclear fusion for the purpose of creating power. If I was living in Cadarache I'd be a little worried though. Just having the words "Thermonuclear Reactor" and "Experimental" in the same sentence sounds a little scary.

In Bulgaria the incumbant government of the last Tsar of Bulgaria Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha has been beaten in the parliamentary elections by the Socialist Party. In a world that seems to be going to hell in a handbasket far too quickly it's amazing to see Socialists take over from a former Emperor democratically with no bloodshed.

Eleven Lessons from Robert McNamara

This evening I watched The Fog of War again. It's a documentary on the life of former Ford Motor President, Head of the World Bank, and most famously Secretary of Defence during most of the 1960s, Robert McNamara. I say documentary but really it's pretty much "just" an interview by Errol Morris with McNamara where he talks about his life, and the lessons he has learned from it.

Now McNamara is a devisive figure. He can be held responsible for a lot of the bloodshed of the Vietnam war, and the firebombing of Tokyo (for which he considers himself a war criminal). He is also responsible though, for putting seat belts and other safety devices in Ford cars several years before Ralph Nader produced Unsafe at Any Speed and at least partly responsible for defusing the Cuban Missile Crisis. Part of the attraction of this movie is seeing one of the most brilliant and supposedly arrogant men of his generation explaining his failures. Having said that though there is a brilliant piece of film from an interview in the early sixties where he is asked if he ever makes a mistake.

"What about the contention that your attitude is arrogant, that you'll never admit to being wrong? Have you ever been wrong sir?"

"Oh yes indeed. I'm not going to tell you when, If you don't know when then I'm not going to tell you, but I've been wrong on countless occasions"

Sounds a little less arrogant than a certain man of the people we know and love.

What you see here is a man coming towards the end of his life, (He is now 89 years old) coming to terms with his successes and failures honestly and trying to pass on the lessons he has learned to those who come after. At one pont he quotes a Kipling poem, The Palace, which tells of a man who builds on the failures of others but who then neglects to learn from those failures. This is McNamara's fear. As he says

"They'll be no learning period with nuclear weapons. You make one mistake and you're going to destroy nations."

The lessons that come from the documentary are Morris's extrapolations of what McNamara was saying and I think they can be used, and should be used, by anyone in a position of leadership.

1. Empathize with your enemy.
2. Rationality will not save us.
3. There's something beyond one's self.
4. Maximize efficiency.
5. Proportionality should be a guideline in war.
6. Get the data.
7. Belief and seeing are both often wrong.
8. Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning.
9. In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil.
10. Never say never.
11. You can't change human nature.
    

McNamara's own lessons can also be found here.

Commies Rule

Awesome collection of soviet, cuban, polish and czech commie propaganda posters

I Ran From the Tide, Won't Let You Hide, Won't Let You Hide

Just bought two tickets to see Kasabian and Longwave at Bogarts on July 21st. Tickets were just $10 each (not including the mandatory 57% Ticketmaster mark-up). I'm really looking forward to it now, it's more than likely to be our last concert in Ohio and it should be a good one.

The Last One, Promise

Am I In Now?

I have a University of Wisconsin email address now. lofty at wisc dot edu. It says a lot about the electronic nature of modern society that it takes receiving an email address that really makes me feel like I'm at the school.

My web portal looks just like the one in the examples unsurprisingly. I've had a look around and apparently I have to apply for classes on July 11th. The first downside of being in a large school (42,000 total students) is apparent when you look at the course timetable, it's 146 pages long! Fortunately most of my first semester is set core courses so all I have to do is find the classes that I'm supposed to be in and enroll in them. My first semester classes are:

• Accounting
• Financial Management
• Marketing Management
• Operations Management
• Marketing Research

I'm not overly worried about any of them. The only one I haven't done before in some form is Operations. I'm more worried about interviewing for internships. The first internship interviews are on the 12th of October that doesn't leave a lot of time to get into the frame of mind needed to look for a job.

Update: It looks like the Marketing Research school curriculum is incorrect or out of date and I'll be taking Data Analysis and Decision Making instead of Operations in the first semester. This means I will have done all the courses I'm going to be enrolled in so I can concentrate on finding myself a job and making myself if not indispensible then at least moderately helpful to my classmates.

Your Cell Phone Ringtone Sucks

Continuing with the Toothpaste For Dinner theme. All cell phone ringtones are annoying. Your entire rationale when deciding upon a ringtone should be to minimize this annoyance while still alerting you to the fact that someone is calling your cell phone in an attempt to contact you.

It's My Solemn Duty

I was looking at Toothpaste for Dinner when I found this cartoon that I thought was funny after LovelySalome's post from yesterday.

Heroes of the Labour Party

• Keir Hardie
• David Shackleton
• George Lansbury
• Clement Attlee
• Hugh Gaitskell
• Aneurin Bevan
• Harold Wilson
• Tony Benn
• John Smith

I wonder how they feel/would feel about this. The eldest son of a sitting "Labour" prime minister interning for one of the most right-wing U.S. administrations in history. The sooner Tony Blair is replaced by Gordon Brown the better. The man is a traitor to his party.

I'm Going to Get Used to This Route.

The Business School is at the bottom on the left, the Eagle Heights apartment complex is in the green forested area at the top of the picture. What you're seeing here is basically going to be my route to and from school. It doesn't look so bad, I think I could do it on bike pretty easily as long as it doesn't snow.