Month: February 2002

Richard Cohen comments on Why Daniel Pearl Died: “But I don’t think I am being irrational when I say that the hideous murder of Daniel Pearl was not just the work of ‘barbarians’ — the phrase du jour to describe his killers — but the inevitable result of policy. Throughout the once-tolerant Islamic world, anti-Semitism — hatred of Jews — has become both common and acceptable.” More and more, the truth about the Arab world, that the governments, the so-called peaceful moderates, are as much to blame for the hatred of Jews and Americans as the radical Islamists like bin Laden. The biggest difference is that the radicals aren’t two-faced liars. Still bad though.

My father adds his two cents: “This is, indeed, very sad, and perpetuated in large part by those who would keep their populaces in ignorance and poverty, while blaming everything on a convenient scapegoat. What should happen is a program of using Muslim Americans who can carry a different message to those parts of the world. I don’t know if it’s possible, but it can’t hurt a lot to try.”

So yesterday’s power outage was caused, according to the wonderful folks at Pacific Gas & Electric, by a bird flying into a substation. Knocked out power to 11,000 people for over two hours. A bird? How did a bird get inside in a way to create this kind of damage? One would hope that these single points of failure would be designed with the understanding that animals can be intrusive but apparently not.

I was out and about this afternoon, enjoying the beautiful weather that is one of the major reasons I had for moving here six years ago. Actually I was out to see the doctor about the pain my hands, which is apparently caused by compressed ulnar nerves and can be corrected easily (phew!). But still, here we are in late February and the Sun is shining and the sky is blue and I can be comfortable in a shortsleeve shirt. Such a contrast from the last few winters I had in New Jersey before moving here.

I come home, though, to find this rather unpleasant story in my inbox courtesy of a buddy who recently had twin boys: Springtime, Taxes, and the Attack on Iraq. For better or worse, the author has way to much credibility to easily dismiss so regardless of the general pronouncements that nothing will happen soon with Iraq one has to be ready. Not my idea of a beautiful spring day but perhaps necessary nonetheless.

Karl Martino, proprieter of paradox1x, a fellow native New Jerseyan, guitarist, web geek, and Hitchhiker fan, has unveiled the Tri-State Syndicate. I have no idea what he means by this, other than weblogs by people who were born or live in the states of New York, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania, but hey a link is as good as a nod, or so Rod Stewart mean to say 30 odd years ago. And haven’t they been odd years? I would say definitely. Conversely Karl has laid out some good, and not odd, Principals From Programming too.

A case from Ohio reached the US Supreme Court today, a fight between a municipality and the Jehovah’s Witnesses over the right to knock on doors without a permit. The town claims they never turn down applications for the permits (there is no charge for the permits) and the applications are to help protect the residents from conmen and the like. The Jehovah’s Witnesses claim they have a 1st Amendment right to anonymous free speech. They position is that if people do not wish to be solicited all they need do is post a No Soliciting sign out front. I believe in this particular case, the law should be struck down.

I find myself conflicted though. Anyone who knows me understands I have no interest in the Jehovah’s Witnesses and in fact I usually don’t bother to answer the door when they ring. But take this a step further, regardless of the permit requirement’s consitutionality. Their position is essentially equivalent to the opt-out approach espoused by direct marketers: If you don’t want us to come in, you need to do something to tell us; otherwise we have the right to contact you. I would suggest that my home is mine and if I haven’t asked you to knock on the door, you have no right to do it (that is, the opt-in approach). I am a firm believer that privacy overrules free speech and I would extend this to telephone and mail (snail or e) solicitation as well. I truly believe in free speech, anonymous or not, even for causes I despise, but only in a public space. My home, my telephone, my mailboxes are mine and I don’t want you coming in unless I invite you. As one of the comments on MetaFilter says, the right to free speech does not guarantee an audience.

This is the age of the Internet, no? And Pacific Gas and Electric is the home team energy supplier, yes? So how come these idjits can’t post outage information on their website? My power was out for two plus hours this morning. A call to the automated information line says they are experiencing a system failure and restoring power might not occur until 2:00. Not great but no big deal. I headed over to the wonderful Mountain View Public Library to use their PCs and internet access, thinking I would check for details and also to see when power is actually restored. But no, they don’t actually publish this information! Hey, if the automated phone system has the data, there’s no way that piping it to the website would be difficult. By the way, did you know that the MV Library allows folks to bring their own laptops and hook into the network? Next time for sure I’ll be bringing my own rather than use the crippled old machines they have.

This Australian film stars Anthony Lapaglia (don’t be surprised at his accent, he’s a native of Oz), Geoffroy Rush, Barbara Hershey, and Kerry Armstrong as husbands and wives whose paths cross through work and play. Lantana is a drama that compares the lies that bind couples to the lantana, “a genus of tropical shrub with small, colorful blooms that hides a dense, thorny undergrowth.” In fact director Ray Lawrence consistently uses shots of lantana to move our viewpoint into scenes, beginning with the very first frames of the movie. Perhaps he and writer Andrew Bovell were a little unsure their audience could pick up on a more subtle take but overall I did enjoy this character-driven piece.

Lapaglia is married to Armstrong who is a patient of psychiatrist Hershey who is married to Rush, then Hershey disappears after her car breaks down on a dark country road and police detective Lapaglia investigates. Rachel Blake, who attends a salsa dance class with Lapaglia and Armstrong, sees her neighbor toss a ladies shoe into some lantana across the street and has her husband Glenn Robbins (from whom she is separated) call Lapaglia, with whom she had a brief but ended affair. When Lapaglia shows up at her house, Robbins recognizes him from the pub where they had met a night or two before after Robbins was accosted in the street by Hershey. Confused yet? Don’t worry, the movie doesn’t tax your mind keeping track of all these connections. An arthouse film worth seeing.

A secretive group of lawyers and academics is preparing a lawsuit against companies that benefited from slavery in America before it was outlawed 140 years ago. Of course, some of the allegedly targeted companies didn’t even exist then, they just happened to have acquired companies that did. Apparently this “powerhouse team” is willing to ignore legalities if it suits their needs in favor of using public opinion to force targets to acquiesce. But hey, I’m Jewish and my forefathers were slaves to Egyptians a few thousand years ago, so let’s go claim money damages on the current government. Alan Dershowitz, where are you when your people need you?

Most of the database vendors include a clause in their licenses which prohibit anyone from publishing results of a benchmark test without permission. Typically this has led to a paucity of independent, verifiable published test results. So when I saw Timothy Dyck’s article Server Databases Clash in eWeek today I was pleased and yet quite surprised. Then again his results showed Oracle coming out on top and while that company is usually the toughest in prohibiting publication perhaps these results made a difference in their attitude. I wrote to ask him about this and if and when I get an answer will post it.

CNet posted an article this morning (BEA aims to broaden its developer pool) about the new WebLogic Workshop tool that BEA has just announced. This is probably one of the closest matches in terms of product and target market to my experience and skills, yet my resume has been submitted there twice by BEA employees I know and I haven’t gotten so much as a phone call. These people do not understand how much they are missing by not getting me in as Product or BusDev Manager for WebLogic Workshop. Damn!

This dish works well with leftover white rice but if you have none make some. Ground beef or ground pork could be used in place of the sausage but remember that sausage is preseasoned if you do.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 pounds beef sausage, remove meat from skins and chop into bits
  

• 1 lb diced tomatoes with liquid
  

• 6 oz tree ear mushrooms, rough chopped
  

• 6 oz button mushrooms, rough chopped
  

• 3 shallots, sliced thin (would have used some onion but my dinner guest doesn’t eat them)
  

• 5 cloves garlic, chopped finely
  

• 1 tbsp plum sauce
  

• 1 bunch fresh basil, chopped finely
  

• 2 tbsp oregano (feel free to substitute fresh)
  

• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

• Heat extra virgin olive oil in skillet, medium heat
  

• Stir in garlic
  

• Add shallots, stir well, let oil infuse flavors for 1 minute
  

• Add tomatoes, stir well
  

• Add sausage, stir well so that meat is covered thoroughly by other ingredients
  

• Stir in half of the basil and all the oregano plus salt and pepper
  

• Simmer for 5 minutes
  

• Add plum sauce and stir in mushrooms, a little more salt and pepper
  

• Simmer for 5 minutes
  

• Remove from heat, stir in remaining basil

garret responds to yesterday’s post here admits regulation does not bring perfect behavior. I agree that it’s better than nothing but also that people (and I mean people in general) are not willing to pay for the current level of regulation, much less more. The article to which garret linked that began this discussion points out that Ohio passed a law four years ago “requiring crematories to be licensed and inspected. Today, not a single license has been issued and no crematory has been inspected.” Here in the Bay Area we have a similar issue with stores that sell water: they are supposed to be licensed and inspected by the county but most of the businesses don’t even know they are required to have a license and the county doesn’t have enough staff to inspect the few such businesses that do bother to take a license. And I can only imagine the outcry if the county were to increase taxes to fund more inspectors. So, garret, let’s pass more useless laws, most of which are tailored to corporate desires anyway. You cite Enron and the S&Ls but these scandals came because the executives took advantage of the laws they conned Congress into enacting; why would you expect better results just from more of the same?

I started using two interesting pieces of software and thought I would mention them in case anyone else would like them too; also, they are both free as in beer and props to the authors for making them available. IE Booster is an add-in for Internet Explorer 6 that adds a number of functions to the IE6 context menu (a context menu is the menu that opens when you right click on a window) [Phil Ringnalda]. The other is Crazy Browser, an application that lets one open multiple Internet Explorer instances in one window instead of one window per instance [via Canned Platypus]. In fact, both were used in writing this entry. Thanks guys!

garret points to Crematory Case Highlights Gaps in Oversight of Funeral Business and makes the comment: “once again, business cannot be counted on to ‘do the right thing’; oversight and regulation are required for all industries.” [garret never uses capital letters online, I think his shift key is broken.] I always get a laugh when I read comments like his, which is not say that I disagree with him about the need for greater regulation. We get two opposing forces moving strongly here though; in my mind I see two John Henrys grasping the ends of a thick metal chain with their legs digging deeper and deeper into the ground as each tries to pull the chain in his direction. One force is the desire to ensure goodness by passing more laws and setting up more watchdog groups.

On the other side is the propensity of some small percentage of the population (5%? 10%? I can’t really say with any precision) to not abide by these laws, due to greed, ego, or psychosis. Many religious people would say this latter group is held in thrall by Satan and demonstrates the need for for more prayer and churchgoing. But of course I’m not a religious person in that sense, far from it, so I won’t. I will say to garret and those with similar views that throughout history laws have been passed and policeman of various ilk hired in greater numbers over these years and yet these misbehavers are still with us and still getting away with their deeds. Some are indeed caught and sometimes punished but I would point out that in each case the bad act had already been committed. So despite all the laws and the ever larger policing forces, some people are not deterred from their bad acts and if you add more laws and more police, they will still not be deterred. Still, I am not in the least saying we should forget about laws and police. I am saying that no one over the age of 12 ought to be surprised when another Robert Tulloch and Jimmy Parker, or Michael Francis Brown, or Kenneth Lay, or Ted Kaczynski violates one law or another.

After interviewing for the Atlanta GM opening and being left twisting in the wind over the hiring of Marvin Lewis, Rich McKay took an apology and about $14 million over six years to stay in Tampa Bay. Hey, you give me $2.3 mill a year and a coach like Jon Gruden and I’d probably suck it up too. Meanwhile, Gruden retained the entire holdover defensive coaching staff led by DC Monte Kiffin and rumors have brother Jay Gruden moving over from the Arena Football League to take an offensive assistant slot, perhaps even OC although Jon will call the plays as he did in Oakland.

The situation in Oakland is, shall we say, fluid. That is, there are lots of rumors and little hard fact except that whoever comes in as coach will have to keep all the assistants. Since one rumor is the new coach will be current OC Bill Callahan and the other strong one is Bill Tuna, I mean Parcells, that probably won’t be a big hurdle. Given Al Davis’ history, the team may not rush to hire anyone before the free agent period and draft combine happen on March 1. With either of those guys as coach and the two extra draft picks from Tampa Bay, one has to think the 2002 Raiders will easily surpass this past season’s ten wins.

Let’s start out by saying that this is a James Bond movie, released in 1967. But Bond is not played here by Sean Connery, the vastly underrated George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, or Pierce Brosnan. Instead there are many agents named James Bond, although the real one is David Niven and there is a Jimmy Bond, James’ nephew, played by Woody Allen. James has a daughter, Mata Bond (the luscious Joanna Pettit), Moneypenny is here (the luscious Barbara Bouchet), a very young Jacky Bissett as Miss Goodthighs, and Ursula Andress (luscious and also the original Bond girl in Dr. No) are just some of the luscious women. Have you picked up on my vibe that this is like no other Bond film? With five directors and even more writers, Casino Royale is all over the place and at the end just gets ridiculous–I am not surprised at all that Joseph Heller is one of the writers. Peter Sellers is in here somewhere as a baccarat expert who plays one of the Bonds and takes on the original novels villain (Orson Welles as a SMERSH director). I laughed, this film has an amazing melange of ’60s and British humor, with some Woody slapdash thrown in. Robert von Dassanowsky has an interesting article, Casino Royale at 33, that gives a great deal of the history and reaction to a movie that was quite controversial at it’s release: “It’s really a courtly epic in ’60s drag, kids!” Recommended!

Okay, this sounds really strange, I know, but I’m watching the E! True Hollywood Story episode on the greatest drug comedy duo of all time and one of the first things they bring out is Cheech’s dad. Who is a retired Los Angeles policeman. Talk about the minister’s daughter! So how did this Chinese guy from Canada and Mexican from East L.A. meet? Cheech was in Canada dodging the Draft (this was the late ’60s) and wandered into a strip club run in Vancouver by Chong’s family. Not that Chong was some innocent either, he was 30 years old at this point and already had three daughters by three mothers, the most recent mother a 15 year old.

Apparently I am far from alone in not having a good experience with Europcar since Joe Santilli has gone to the trouble and expense of putting up a website on the topic. His story is unpleasant and he’s clearly Googled the subject to come up with a list of other people who’ve complained. That’s how he found my little story, which was included on his list. On the other hand, as a reasonably large firm, one has to wonder if less than 20 complaints are all that significant and mine wasn’t all that much of a horror story (at least the inconveniences from Europcar weren’t).

Arnold was looking to get back his big action movie following after the lackluster results of The 6th Day and The End of Days with Collateral Damage. Frankly, 1994’s Junior and True Lies were his last really successful movies (and True Lies 2 is his next movie to be released). With some strange luck, Schwarzenegger made this movie about terrorism coming home to America before Sep. 11, which ought to have been a bigger help at the box office than it has been. I guess that’s because the movie basically stinks.

Arnold is his usual self and the scenario seems open to the possibility of a taught, tense movie but director Andrew Davis seems to have blown his creative wad with The Fugitive and, to a lesser degree, Under Siege. He reuses too many elements from those movies, most noticeably the jump from a height through water; in The Fugitive Harrison Ford jumped off a dam and here Schwarzenegger jumps through a nasty waterfall. Elias Koteas is decent as the asshole CIA agent but Davis and first time scriptwriters David and Peter Griffiths made him an idiot in the end. Francesca Neri plays her Selena about as well as one could ask but again the script takes her in a strange, unbelievable turn at the end. Of course, the little deaf terrorist’s son bonds instantly with Arnold, which also is completely believable. Let’s just say that Collateral Damage has enough plot holes to drive a small truck through. Not recommended.

At a press conference today with President Bush, Chinese president Jiang Zemin claimed that China Has Freedom of Religion. Yeah right. Jiang claimed to have read many different religious texts, but I think the one he has in mind in this instance is Orwell’s 1984.