Davidson, who came close to beating UNC in the first game of this season, gives a basketball clinic to Wisconsin, a very big fast team with significant talent. Davidson knocks off another major conference champion.
Not quite this year's George Mason, but probably the closest we're going to come.
You know what? Davidson can beat Kansas. They match up really well.
That means, God-willing and if the creeks don't rise, that if the Tar Heels have the privilege of defeating a very fine Louisville squad tomorrow evening, that there wold be a re-match, Davidson v. UNC. Both teams started the season by playing against each other, now one of them is going to finish the season the same way, the other will play for the championship
Friday, March 28, 2008
Friday, March 21, 2008
GMail users: Dots are meaningless in usernames, did you know?
'r.dewald' at gmail dot com is the same as 'rdewald', or 'rd.ewald', or 'r.d.e.w.a.l.d'
I got a rather warm and suggestive e-mail sent by a person who appeared to be from London intended for someone who seemed to live in LA about an upcoming visit. It was addressed to r.dewald at gmail dot com.
I looked up some help on that and I discovered they disregard the dots. Once you sign-up for username@gmail.com, u.sername, us.ername, u.s.e.r.name, and u.s.e.r.n.a.m.e become unavailable.
So, all you smarty-pants firstname.lastname@gmail.com users out there, well, your dots are meaningless, d.u.d.e..
I got a rather warm and suggestive e-mail sent by a person who appeared to be from London intended for someone who seemed to live in LA about an upcoming visit. It was addressed to r.dewald at gmail dot com.
I looked up some help on that and I discovered they disregard the dots. Once you sign-up for username@gmail.com, u.sername, us.ername, u.s.e.r.name, and u.s.e.r.n.a.m.e become unavailable.
So, all you smarty-pants firstname.lastname@gmail.com users out there, well, your dots are meaningless, d.u.d.e..
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Joke: A Gambler Goes for an IRS Audit.
The IRS decides to audit Ralph, and summons him to the IRS office.The IRS auditor is not surprised when Ralph shows up with his attorney.
The auditor says, "Well, sir, you have an extravagant lifestyle and no full-time employment, which you explain by saying that you win money gambling. I"m not sure the IRS finds that believable."
I"m a great gambler, and I can prove it," says Ralph. "How about a demonstration?"
The auditor thinks for a moment and said, "Okay. Go ahead."
Ralph says, "I'll bet you a thousand dollars that I can bite my own eye."
The auditor thinks a moment and says, "It's a bet."
Ralph removes his glass eye and bites it.
The auditor"s jaw drops.
Ralph says, "Now, I'll bet you two thousand dollars that I can bite my other eye."
Now the auditor can tell Ralph isn't blind, so he takes the bet.
Ralph removes his dentures and bites his good eye.
The stunned auditor now realizes he has wagered and lost three grand, with Ralph"s attorney as a witness. He starts to get nervous.
"Want to go double or nothing?" Ralph asks "I'll bet you six thousand dollars that I can stand on one side of your desk, and pee into that wastebasket on the other side, and never get a drop anywhere in between."
The auditor, twice burned, is cautious now, but he looks carefully and decides there"s no way this guy could possibly manage that stunt, so he agrees again.
Ralph stands beside the desk and unzips his pants, but although he strains mightily, he can"t make the stream reach the wastebasket on the other side, so he pretty much urinates all over the auditor"s desk.
The auditor leaps with joy, realizing that he has just turned a major loss into a huge win. But Ralph"s attorney moans and puts his head in his hands.
"Are you okay?" the auditor asks.
"Not really," says the attorney. "This morning, when Ralph told me he"d been summoned for an audit, he bet me twenty-five thousand dollars that he could come in here and piss all over your desk and that you"d be happy about it."
The auditor says, "Well, sir, you have an extravagant lifestyle and no full-time employment, which you explain by saying that you win money gambling. I"m not sure the IRS finds that believable."
I"m a great gambler, and I can prove it," says Ralph. "How about a demonstration?"
The auditor thinks for a moment and said, "Okay. Go ahead."
Ralph says, "I'll bet you a thousand dollars that I can bite my own eye."
The auditor thinks a moment and says, "It's a bet."
Ralph removes his glass eye and bites it.
The auditor"s jaw drops.
Ralph says, "Now, I'll bet you two thousand dollars that I can bite my other eye."
Now the auditor can tell Ralph isn't blind, so he takes the bet.
Ralph removes his dentures and bites his good eye.
The stunned auditor now realizes he has wagered and lost three grand, with Ralph"s attorney as a witness. He starts to get nervous.
"Want to go double or nothing?" Ralph asks "I'll bet you six thousand dollars that I can stand on one side of your desk, and pee into that wastebasket on the other side, and never get a drop anywhere in between."
The auditor, twice burned, is cautious now, but he looks carefully and decides there"s no way this guy could possibly manage that stunt, so he agrees again.
Ralph stands beside the desk and unzips his pants, but although he strains mightily, he can"t make the stream reach the wastebasket on the other side, so he pretty much urinates all over the auditor"s desk.
The auditor leaps with joy, realizing that he has just turned a major loss into a huge win. But Ralph"s attorney moans and puts his head in his hands.
"Are you okay?" the auditor asks.
"Not really," says the attorney. "This morning, when Ralph told me he"d been summoned for an audit, he bet me twenty-five thousand dollars that he could come in here and piss all over your desk and that you"d be happy about it."
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Sunday, March 16, 2008
On Swiftboating
So, it begins. The Rev. Jeremiah Right is being trotted out as Obama's swiftboat. This takes me back to the original swiftboating. Here's the analysis that should have been done then, and it applies now.
Let's assume the worst is true, that is, that Barack Obama's primary connection to this church is along the axis of the criticism Rev. Wright delivers about government and politics from the pulpit. What is actually going on here?
Black preachers' polemics are comforting to people who are angry, frustrated and hurt by racial injustice in this country. When angry and frustrated people can share such in a group setting of speeches and prayers rather than acting it out through physical violence or destruction, peace is made. That may not be the only thing going on, but it is part of it.
This is not black and white. I live in a black neighborhood, a mix of African immigrants and African-Americans. They have legitimate grievances. This country is supposed to be about giving mankind an opportunity to speak freely and air grievances.
You know what else? You do know. We all know. This country is not just a force for freedom and justice on this planet. That's not just because honest mistakes are made. The USA is a mix of good and bad just like everything else is. Look at the world. This is how it is. Those who have grievances against us are not simply hiding behind some flimsy argument in order to justify doing us harm. They have legitimate grievances against us.
Our collective inability to admit mistakes and issue apologies is our greatest threat to our own national security. The best defense against terrorism is the strength to formally say "we were wrong, we're sorry." This country, which denies access to medical care to millions, incarcerates hundreds of thousands for addiction, and participates in unknown numbers of other mistakes, will not be able to assert itself as the moral force it once was until it can deal with the nuances of human behavior, which means that mistakes are made, apologies are due, and the public peace requires a reasonable tolerance for accepting being offended. The US government needs to be held to the same standards. We don't need to assert this notion that we are faultless and divinely-inspired in order to be strong.
I sat in many a church pew when I was growing up hearing all kinds of offensive and over-the-top inappropriate rhetoric spewing from some self-impressed preacher's mouth. I don't remember any of it. I'm sure Senator Obama is in the same shoes. He is a man who struggled with finding and refining his identity as an African-American most of his life. I'm not surprised that he found a connection to that culture in church, most upper-middle class African-Americans do as well.
But being willing to listen to a polemics about pain and oppression is good training to be President. We need someone who can hear an argument without being immediately convinced by it. This is the entire reason that GWBush doesn't like to "debate himself." Being unwilling to balance and manage conflicting, even paradoxical, points of view is not a sign of strength, it is arrogant, aggressive and assertive, but not strong.
So, this is the bloody and violent politics that has to stop. We shouldn't require that Obama denounce his pastor in order to be President. He already has, but it's not right. If sitting in Rev. Wright's pews truly had the power to motivate someone to harm the US government that would have happened long ago. We'd have hoards of hooded US terrorists blowing stuff up and assassinating officials right now. It's not rhetoric that causes terrorism, Rhetoric is the little blue tulips decorating the icing on the cake. Violence and injustice causes terrorism, and more often that not the terrorists target the wrong people out of their own biases of ill-will and political myopia.
Have you ever noticed that terrorism flourishes best in environments with no freedom of speech and association? People who can freely speak and associate get into stupid and petty arguments, but the more the public order, the more those arguments become verbal and transactional (finance).
So, in 2004, the suggestion was made that Sen. Kerry's Vietnam experience was less heroic than claimed. Ask someone who has been in combat. It probably was, but one must evaluate that in the context of the awareness that combat is confusing and complicated, an overload of sensory input occurs, and there simply aren't ways to ever really know what happened. We tell a nice story because we need to stay hopeful to pursue our collective goals, but the facts are a mix of bravery and cowardice, good and evil, smart and dumb, and it all depends upon which fraction of the facts you attend to. You can tell any story and it will be "true."
This is the way Sen. Kerry's swiftboating is analogous to Sen. Obama's. It presumes an underlying simplicity of analysis that simply doesn't exist. There's too much going and too little of it is under Senator Obama's control to draw any conclusions germane to his qualification to be the Democratic Presidential nominee from the speeches and writings of his pastor. Yes, it would be nice if it were that simple, but it is not.
Further, it is violent and mean-spirited. What kind of people are we, really?
Let's assume the worst is true, that is, that Barack Obama's primary connection to this church is along the axis of the criticism Rev. Wright delivers about government and politics from the pulpit. What is actually going on here?
Black preachers' polemics are comforting to people who are angry, frustrated and hurt by racial injustice in this country. When angry and frustrated people can share such in a group setting of speeches and prayers rather than acting it out through physical violence or destruction, peace is made. That may not be the only thing going on, but it is part of it.
This is not black and white. I live in a black neighborhood, a mix of African immigrants and African-Americans. They have legitimate grievances. This country is supposed to be about giving mankind an opportunity to speak freely and air grievances.
You know what else? You do know. We all know. This country is not just a force for freedom and justice on this planet. That's not just because honest mistakes are made. The USA is a mix of good and bad just like everything else is. Look at the world. This is how it is. Those who have grievances against us are not simply hiding behind some flimsy argument in order to justify doing us harm. They have legitimate grievances against us.
Our collective inability to admit mistakes and issue apologies is our greatest threat to our own national security. The best defense against terrorism is the strength to formally say "we were wrong, we're sorry." This country, which denies access to medical care to millions, incarcerates hundreds of thousands for addiction, and participates in unknown numbers of other mistakes, will not be able to assert itself as the moral force it once was until it can deal with the nuances of human behavior, which means that mistakes are made, apologies are due, and the public peace requires a reasonable tolerance for accepting being offended. The US government needs to be held to the same standards. We don't need to assert this notion that we are faultless and divinely-inspired in order to be strong.
I sat in many a church pew when I was growing up hearing all kinds of offensive and over-the-top inappropriate rhetoric spewing from some self-impressed preacher's mouth. I don't remember any of it. I'm sure Senator Obama is in the same shoes. He is a man who struggled with finding and refining his identity as an African-American most of his life. I'm not surprised that he found a connection to that culture in church, most upper-middle class African-Americans do as well.
But being willing to listen to a polemics about pain and oppression is good training to be President. We need someone who can hear an argument without being immediately convinced by it. This is the entire reason that GWBush doesn't like to "debate himself." Being unwilling to balance and manage conflicting, even paradoxical, points of view is not a sign of strength, it is arrogant, aggressive and assertive, but not strong.
So, this is the bloody and violent politics that has to stop. We shouldn't require that Obama denounce his pastor in order to be President. He already has, but it's not right. If sitting in Rev. Wright's pews truly had the power to motivate someone to harm the US government that would have happened long ago. We'd have hoards of hooded US terrorists blowing stuff up and assassinating officials right now. It's not rhetoric that causes terrorism, Rhetoric is the little blue tulips decorating the icing on the cake. Violence and injustice causes terrorism, and more often that not the terrorists target the wrong people out of their own biases of ill-will and political myopia.
Have you ever noticed that terrorism flourishes best in environments with no freedom of speech and association? People who can freely speak and associate get into stupid and petty arguments, but the more the public order, the more those arguments become verbal and transactional (finance).
So, in 2004, the suggestion was made that Sen. Kerry's Vietnam experience was less heroic than claimed. Ask someone who has been in combat. It probably was, but one must evaluate that in the context of the awareness that combat is confusing and complicated, an overload of sensory input occurs, and there simply aren't ways to ever really know what happened. We tell a nice story because we need to stay hopeful to pursue our collective goals, but the facts are a mix of bravery and cowardice, good and evil, smart and dumb, and it all depends upon which fraction of the facts you attend to. You can tell any story and it will be "true."
This is the way Sen. Kerry's swiftboating is analogous to Sen. Obama's. It presumes an underlying simplicity of analysis that simply doesn't exist. There's too much going and too little of it is under Senator Obama's control to draw any conclusions germane to his qualification to be the Democratic Presidential nominee from the speeches and writings of his pastor. Yes, it would be nice if it were that simple, but it is not.
Further, it is violent and mean-spirited. What kind of people are we, really?
Friday, March 14, 2008
763 Songs, 1.9 Days, 3.4 GB
That's the playlist from the 2008 SXSW 2008 Showcasing Artists torrent that Sam posted.
I imported them into iTunes, made a Smart Playlist keyed to "Album is SXSW 2008 Showcasing Artists," then I synced up my iPod touch to replace all of the music on the iPod Touch with this playlist.
Now I have a SXSWpod, so I am just going to listen to the whole thing over the next week or so, and that'll sort of be like being in Austin with a wristband, but without having to drive around and park (or pay hundreds of dollars).
Cool. I think I'll do this every year...
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
(Another reason) why macs rule.
I loaded up a BitTorrent client so I could grab the torrent that Sam posted for the SXSW Showcase tunes this year. I only have about 2.5GB on my internal HD, so I set the torrent to save the files to an external HD.
Problem: the BitTorrent client saves the active fragments to a directory on the internal HD, so my HD was about to get full as I am about a third of the way through the torrent. I can't find a setting to move this temp directory. I can set the folder where completed files go, I can set the folder where incomplete files go, but not the folder where actively fragments are cached, essentially meaning I can't process a torrent larger than about 2GB, which makes the whole torrent thing a bit useless.
So, being a Unix geek at heart, I decide to move the directory used by the client to an external HD and create a soft link using 'ln -s source target' so that the app just traverses the tree normally, but actually using the external HD.
Works fine, I have about 700GB available now for torrent processing. Sweet Unix Control.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Finally over the Flu
Three weeks and two days after I first noticed the symptoms, two weeks and six days after the onset of the acute phase of the illness, and one week and two days after I was able to return to ambulatory life (working and such), I can finally say that I am free of any and all remnants of this influenza.
Wow, that was one nasty illness. I can certainly see how this can kill the frail and/or elderly.
I actually had more than the flu, I had the flu first and then I developed a bacterial pneumonia about a week afterwards, which probably opportunistically set-in because of my weakness. The pneumonia responded predictably to antibiotics, so even though that *sounds* like the more serious illness (and certainly, left untreated, it can be fatal), it was actually the easier thing to deal with since I began rapidly recovering after I started taking antibiotics.
The last "phase" of all this, i.e., this last week, was something analogous to having a mild cold. I had a painless but productive cough, I felt sub-par, and I had that nasty metallic "I'm sick" taste in my mouth all the time. Today is the first day that I have noticed that was gone.
Today was also the first day I wanted to be physically active, wanted to clean up the house, wanted to cook, and wanted to do the other things that characterize my ordinary life. I began lusting after random women I see around town again today, which is probably the most robust indication that my body is back to normal.
What did I learn from all this? I have hand sanitizer everywhere (office desk, home desk, by the doors to both places, by the public terminals at work, etc) and I have a new appreciation for why it makes sense to cut sick people slack. Being sick sucks.
Wow, that was one nasty illness. I can certainly see how this can kill the frail and/or elderly.
I actually had more than the flu, I had the flu first and then I developed a bacterial pneumonia about a week afterwards, which probably opportunistically set-in because of my weakness. The pneumonia responded predictably to antibiotics, so even though that *sounds* like the more serious illness (and certainly, left untreated, it can be fatal), it was actually the easier thing to deal with since I began rapidly recovering after I started taking antibiotics.
The last "phase" of all this, i.e., this last week, was something analogous to having a mild cold. I had a painless but productive cough, I felt sub-par, and I had that nasty metallic "I'm sick" taste in my mouth all the time. Today is the first day that I have noticed that was gone.
Today was also the first day I wanted to be physically active, wanted to clean up the house, wanted to cook, and wanted to do the other things that characterize my ordinary life. I began lusting after random women I see around town again today, which is probably the most robust indication that my body is back to normal.
What did I learn from all this? I have hand sanitizer everywhere (office desk, home desk, by the doors to both places, by the public terminals at work, etc) and I have a new appreciation for why it makes sense to cut sick people slack. Being sick sucks.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Rant: The winner of the March 4 Democratic primaries.
The winner was the politics of fear, character assassination, ill-will and greed.
If Hillary's tenure as First Lady for the Governor of Arkansas and then the President of the United States qualifies her as a Presidential nominee then Laura Bush should be a strong contender for McCain's running mate.
If "experience" was such a strong quality for leadership in the executive branch then why were Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney such abject failures?
No, what we have here is a campaign in desperation turning to the tactics of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove (strategies which Atwater disavowed on his death bed). This kind of stuff does get votes from the Walmart-shopping, CNN-watching, American Idol-watching, McDonald's-eating idiotocracy in this country. You may call this "winning" but what these people have gotten this country is a sub-prime mortgage meltdown, $104/barrel oil, the scorn of the rest of the planet, an increasingly crappy health-care system that is only good at making money from people's suffering, and an economy that relies on poisoning the planet in order to function.
But, you're so smart because you "win."
So, Hillary is perfectly willing to use these tactics because winning is clearly more important to her than public service. I'm afraid Obama has been so bitten by his greed that he's starting to turn this way as well. He has not yet turned the corner, but he's looking down that side-street. McCain is looking good by comparison. If Hillary ends up with the nomination because of her continued reliance on the politics of personal assassination and pandering to the idiotocracy, my choice will be between McCain and not voting.
Yes, I'd rather lose than win by tearing people down. But it breaks my heart, it breaks my heart that a campaign based on hope can be so easily torpedoed by fear and ill-will. It breaks my heart that people buy a slogan like "experience" without taking the briefest look at what that really means. Being First Lady is not experience in government. Besides, it's not experience we need, it's judgment, and Hillary has just revealed where her values lie. The voters of Ohio and Texas have revealed that there aren't enough people in this country who can see beyond the blinders of their own shallow preferences and aversions. There are more people willing to concur with ill-will and shallow pandering than those willing to risk being hopeful.
So, I'm back where I was before Obama"s campaign emerged. Democracy cannot succeed as a system of government unless the governed care about government. There's no way to force people to care about government until they lose it. Humanity seems singularly unable to work out this problem. There's just not enough people in this country who get it. That makes me sad.
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