Category: food

Some days ago, during the long layoff from school, I awoke from sleep in the midst of a dream, a rare enough occurrence as I almost never recall dreams, but this one even more rare: the dream had some kind of form, some narrative thread. The press of affairs prevented my writing down anything more than just the barest details, but since then I have been working through my recollection — something more than a snapshot, less than a sequence — and seeing characters ad wondering what they have in mind. I read a quote somewhere, attributed to William Faulkner, that his technique consisted of nothing more than turning some characters loose and taking notes as he followed them around. I have no idea where this is going: I feel like I’m just transcribing events, rather than making them up.

Now playing: Robbie Robertson – The Sound is Fading via Radio Paradise

I.B.M. Said to Put Its PC Business on the Market:

I.B.M., whose first PC moved personal computing into the consumer mainstream, has put the business up for sale.

I heard a piece on NPR today about IBM’s sale of their PC hardware business and how they brought out the first personal computer . . . eh? Even discounting the Altair (most people do), the Apple I and Apple II were on the market before the PC: Apple took out an ad in the business press to remind people that IBM wasn’t first to market.

And locating a copy it was this hard. <sigh>

Now playing: Must Be Santa (Polka) by Brave Combo from the album “Must Be Santa! The Rounder Christmas Album”

Our latest addition: a circa 1915 Smith & Barnes cabinet grand piano. Structurally sound, aesthetically rough, but the price was right. Once the moving, tuning, and basic repair costs are factored in, it will still be a worthwhile acquisition.

Grover Norquist wants to drown the federal government in a bathtub, and is rubbing his hands with glee as the generation that saved America from the real Axis of Evil dies.

Grover the Top

Now it’s no secret that Grover’s one of those people who not only wants to win elections against Democrats, but would just as soon see us all dead. But it’s uncharacteristic of him to rely on Demographic Destiny to kill off the Greatest Generation and destroy the Democratic Party base. I figure Grover wants to be the angry executioner, not just the cheerful pallbearer.

Bush grandpére was doing business with Hitler’s financiers and corporate supporters, while his son was fighting their allies in the Pacific . . .
How Bush’s grandfather helped Hitler’s rise to power

The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

His business dealings, which continued until his company’s assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.
[ . . . ]
But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis’ plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler’s rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.

And if truth is stranger than fiction, what could top this?

With his latest masterful novel, Philip Roth has written a very personal story about his pre-WWII childhood in Newark, NJ. The twist is that the world he paints is significantly different from what was then reality. Charles Lindbergh, dashing American hero for piloting the first transatlantic flight a dozen years earlier, has defeated FDR in his bid for a third term in 1940 to become the 33rd President of the U.S. The Republicans are in charge, and Lindbergh’s sole charter is to keep the U.S. out of WWII. An isolationist in real life, Lindbergh was known for his anti-Semitic sentiments, and Roth creates a revisionist history by building his case for an America that turns against its Jewish citizens. He has meticulously assembled archival materials, such as Lindbergh’s actual radio address in which he accused the British and the Jews of trying to force America into a foreign war.

The Quotations Page:

To repeat what others have said, requires education; to challenge it, requires brains.

–Mary Pettibone Pool

Sunrise at Cannon Beach, Oregon — mist, fog, and mood.

The New York Times > Washington > Procurement: White House Officials and Cheney Aide Approved Halliburton Contract in Iraq, Pentagon Says:

[I]n the fall of 2002, in the preparations for possible war with Iraq, the Pentagon sought and received the assent of senior Bush administration officials, including the vice president’s chief of staff, before hiring the Halliburton Company to develop secret plans for restoring Iraq’s oil facilities, Pentagon officials have told Congressional investigators.

 Fourteen Defining Characteristics Of Fascism:

9. Corporate Power is Protected – The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

[ . . . ]

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption – Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.”

Daring Fireball: Broken Windows:

Windows is like a bad neighborhood, strewn with litter, mysterious odors, panhandlers, and untold dozens of petty annoyances.

One of Mr Gruber’s better efforts, tying in nicely with Jane Jacobs[1] as well as the other reference he cites.

I brought up a similar point earlier today, on the invisibility of Windows processes. [Mac-users-discussion] video conversion:

What’s ironic about this for me is recalling the late 80s and early 90s when Windows was even less useful than it is now (DOS was still what people used) and the knock on Mac OS was that there was no terminal to run commands in. There was some implied moral superiority in using a CLI versus a graphic interface. Now, of course, the command line in Windows is an application rather than a complete interface to all the subsystems. I feel superior, but then I did in the old days, too.

fn1. Her 1961 book Death and Life of Great American Cities details how successful communities work to keep people safe and connected. 2004’s Dark Age Ahead follows this up but as a warning rather than a discussion of observed successes.

Jon Udell looks into the promise of Longhorn (any symbolism to this being the name of a type of cheese, and a bland one at that?), with an eye to looking into WinFS. I’ve groused about this[1] before[2]: I looked forward to reading Jon’s piece. I still don’t quite see if the data in the data store can be accessed without being in a Longhorn-based or WinFS-based system. To put it another way, right now I can take a disk out of damn near anything and read it on a linux or FreeBSD system. [3] If I take a disk out of a WinFS system, can I read the data? Or do I need to “install” it into another WinFS system and allow it’s database/filesystem internals to mount the disk or otherwise access that data?

Continue reading “wondering what WinFS really does”