Dickensian

This was in the shape of a male child, about ten days old, and well stocked with clothing of a decent description, a new single blanket outside, and its bodyclothes of nice swanskin, with a handsome cap on its head…. We should add that in the bosom of the child was found a slip of paper with his name “JOSEPH KANE” and alleging that it had been baptized by a Priest of the diocese.

A little genealogical research turned up this gem:

FREE-WILL OFFERING. – A few days ago “some person or persons unknown,” thought proper to bestow on a worthy parish Priest, the Rev Father MONAGHAN, a very handsome gift, meant we supposed to be a Christmas box, though a little before the time. This was in the shape of a male child, about ten days old, and well stocked with clothing of a decent description, a new single blanket outside, and its bodyclothes of nice swanskin, with a handsome cap on its head. Thus appareled it was placed in the well of his reverence’s jaunting car, where it was found next morning, in the arms of Morpheus, and apparently happy with its cradle. His reverence not accepting the compliment, sent for the police, who searched for an owner but without success, and the “free will offering” has been consigned to Brookeboro “workhouse. We should add that in the bosom of the child was found a slip of paper with his name “JOSEPH KANE” and alleging that it had been baptized by a Priest of the diocese. The writing was evidently the production of a respectable female, as none other could have used the pen to such perfection. – Armagh Guardian.

[From Co. Cavan; Ireland Newspaper Abstracts]

There’s a story in that.

is this right?

Given: 36 inches annual rainfall a collecting roof 8 x 8, raised 2 feet on one side/end for a moderate slope (total area 61.9 sq ft) 22.32 gallons of water per foot of rained-on area That all adds up to 1,383.11981 gallons of water annually. That seems like an awful lot of irrigation-quality water from a pretty small system (a simple shed roof, with or without a shed under it).

Given:

  • 36 inches annual rainfall
  • a collecting roof 8 x 8, raised 2 feet on one side/end for a moderate slope (total area 61.9 sq ft)
  • 22.32 gallons of water per foot of rained-on area

That all adds up to 1,383.11981 gallons of water annually. That seems like an awful lot of irrigation-quality water from a pretty small system (a simple shed roof, with or without a shed under it).

Check your area here.

values

Look – corn ethanol is basically dumb, and subsidizing it is subsidized dumb. But this isn’t really the problem here:

[From Corn ethanol is the worst thing since sliced Hitler « The Poor Man Institute]

What’s going on? It isn’t that there isn’t enough food. It’s that the ability to fill up a gas tank with gasoline is, in the “wisdom” of the marketplace, the highest value use of the food crop.
[…]
Is the demand for one luxury meat meal really bigger than the demand for ten subsistence grain meals? This is true only if the wealthy person’s desires are valued more than the poor person’s desires. A starving Haitian’s desire for a scrap of bread exceeds your desire for your favorite meal by a considerable amount, but his ability to pay is constrained by your desire for steak.

We’re more concerned with feeding our cars (with corn that could be eaten by people) and housing them (by favoring zoning and urban planning that favors sprawl over density) than in feeding and housing people.

one more time

trying to work out what has changed in either mysql5 or WordPress. Or are they ganging up on me?

Alrighty, then. something was not right in the mysql upgrade of yesterday. for some reason (safety?) the mysql_upgrade script doesn’t run and restarting mysql without it means the internal mysql data tables are out of sync with what the engine expects. and it always helps to go for speed: make BUILD_OPTIMIZED=yes BUILD_STATIC=yes. seems a bit more sprightly now . . .