David Price: superhack

War on Iraq, wingnuts
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This is the most hackish thing Dean Esmay David Price ever wrote, until the next thing EsmayPrice writes, (to paraphrase a certain sarky blogger:

Little noticed this month was the news that Iraq’s electricity production has set a new all-time high in September of around 6,860 MW, including 2,000 MW or more of non-public generation (p40), illegal under Saddam (because like any good national socialist despot, he outlawed private generators). Oil revenue also set a new record of $3.79 billion (p39).

When he’s talking about “non-public generation” he means people with diesel generators people! He thinks his readers are stupid enough to read that and go “Whoo! Power to the free market!”. Well, perhaps he’s right; every writer gets the audience he deserves. But does he really believe anybody else will not realise that, you know, having to rely on your own generator to get electricity is not a good thing? Especially when you’re not living in some shack in Alaska five hours from the nearest village, but in a multimillion city? Or would David be happy to trade in his state controlled electricity for some free market solution?

The Dragon Reborn – Robert Jordan

books and books review, fantasy
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Cover of The Dragon Reborn


The Dragon Reborn
Robert Jordan
699 pages
published in 1991

The Dragon Reborn is the third book in the Wheel of Time series and as such it does not quite have the worst artwork in the series. That honour is reserved for either the previous book The Great Hunt, with its depiction of Trollocs as humans with curved helmets or the sixth book, The Lord of Chaos, with its incompetent romance novel cover. No book in the series however has what you can call good art, or even art that bears much resemblence to the books its used on. That’s not unusual for any book of course and normally I don’t care too much about what’s on a cover, but the Darrell Sweet artwork on these is just too embarassing, especially when read in public. But never mind eh? It’s still much, much better than reading Dan Brown where people can see you.

Moving on to what’s between the covers, The Dragon Reborn is the last book in the series to duplicate the quest structure of The Lord of the Rings and also the last book in which the various storylines neatly come together in the end. It’s not the end of the series, as the series has no end, but it’s a end. From the next book, The Shadow Rising onward, things would be much more complicated. It’s also a sort of beginning, as this is the first book which is not dominated by Rand as the main character; in fact he’s hardly in it, with much of the action focussing on Perrin, Mat and Egwene/Nynaeve/Elayne in three different storylines, which come together at the climax of the book, just as with the previous two books.

Read more…

Hillary or Rudy

2008 US election
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That might be the horrific choice on offer next year in the American presidential elections, the worst of the Democratic candidates versus the nutties of the Republicans. Not a very inspiring choice, not that there’s any Democratic candidate much better, or any Republican less worse. I well understand why so many Americans don’t vote anymore, as it changes nothing.

Nothing, I hear you say, but what about the War on Iraq, or the Supreme Court, or Healtcare, or… And sure, you’re right, having a Democratic president, even one as awful as Hillary would be slightly etter than yet another Republican nutjob. With Hillary in the White House, the ongoing war against the poor would be covered up somewhat, more people would get slightly less poor, the structural racism and sexism in American society would be lifted somewhat and there would be slightly less and slightly less insane foreign military adventures on offer.

But that’s all. Hillary won’t give up the god-given right of the United States to meddle in other countries affairs, nor will she do anything that will offend big business too much. At best she will provide a breathing space, four or eight years in which the battered US middle classes can recover somewhat, the military can get itself back into shape after Iraq and Afghanistan and things can go back to normal. Which is better than what Rudy would offer, more craziness, but not much better.

To me, the upcoming elections feel somewhat like a rerun of 2004, with a rightwing Democrat against a loony rightwing Republican; the big change is that this time, the Democrat will probably win. But it’s hard to get excited about this, as it seems that four more years of war and disaster hasn’t lead to a more radical alternative. Ghu knowns I’m not hoping for a socialist, but at the very least an actual liberal, somebody who has not bought into the War on Terror, would’ve been nice.

Linky, linky

2008 US election, Life under Capitalism
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The post over at Crooked Timber about how Americans now have worse teeth than a decade ago is interesting. Interesting, in that the discussion in the comments tries hard to avoid the simple truth as to why that is: lack of dental insurance. Too scary perhaps.

Meanwhile, The Guardian reports on vulture capitalism, the practise of buying up third world debts then suing the country in question in an European or American court for the debt plus interest. Many of such funds are based in London and it probably won’t surprise you either that some of these funds have ties to highlevel US politicians…

Lawyers, Guns and money is worried about Giuliani, who has stuffed his campaign chockful with the nuttiest of neocons. Personally I don’t doubt he would be a disaster as president for America, but for the rest of the world he might be the better choice than a more competent candidate like Clinton. Because whoever becomes president will always be someone willing to use US military force abroad, and somebody a little bit nutty might be opposed more and earlier.

Does that make sense? Perhaps not.

Na het plassen handen wassen

This 'N That
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Sorry for “cheating”yesterday and only posting a book review; some days blogging just isn’t on the cards. Don’t know what it is, but it might just be the onset of flu season. Fortunately for us, at Making Light Jim MacDonald Who is an EMT in real life has some advice on how to deal with flu, (get your doctor to get you a flu shot if you’re at risk!) including a guide to washing hands:

1) Turn on the water and get it to a temperature you like.
2) Lather up using soap. (Soap does not kill germs in the time that the germs are exposed during hand washing. There’s stuff that grows fine on a bar of soap. The surfactant action of soap helps the running water flush the germs away. That’s how it works. It’s purely mechanical. Antibacterial soap is a waste of time and money, and just helps breed antibiotic-resistant bugs.)
3) Rub your hands vigorously together, paying special attention to the fingernails, getting up onto the wrists, for as long as it takes you to sing one stanza of The Star Spangled Banner or two verses of Little Mattie Groves.
4) Rinse off the soap with the running water.
5) Dry your hands with a paper towel.
6) Use the expended paper towel to turn off the water.

Which is all very well, but does not work so good when the toilets at work do not have paper towels, but one of those cloth towel dispenser thingies with the towel on a loop, so hence you need to use your elbow to turn off the tap. Also, no soap, just some liquid gunk of obscure provenance. Not to mention cow-orkers you hear peeing, you hear flushing, you hear leaving the toilets, but who you not hear washing their hands… For some reason, there a lot of those around in IT.