In my father's footsteps

The New York Times has a blog by Paul Clarke about drinking:

...During my formative-drinking years, when alcohol was still a relative novelty, I had something that many of my harder-drinking friends did not: parents who demonstrated a responsible relationship with alcohol. My father and sometimes my mother would crack a cold beer on hot days, and wine was regularly served at dinner on weekends and special occasions to everyone including the kids. They kept a decently stocked liquor cabinet, but usually only opened it for drop-by guests and the occasional dinner party, which were celebrated in good cheer but were seldom if ever followed by awkward phone calls the next day.
This open yet modest approach to alcohol was in contrast to the paths taken by the families of some friends and neighbors, whose habits ranged from over-indulgent to abstemious and were sometimes an odd mix of the two: it was not lost on me during my secular Bible Belt upbringing that some of my hardest-drinking friends – whose relationships with booze were often of the vomit-in-the-shrubbery, loss-of-all-personal-control variety – were from religious homes in which alcohol was seldom if ever served.
Knowing that my six-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son will likely start to experiment with alcohol in (let’s be realistic) about a decade, give or take, I fully realize that every time my wife or I take a drink around them, a message is being sent. There are several directions this can go, and I understand I’ll never have total control over any of them. If completely banishing alcohol from our home would protect them from any of its hazards later in life, it’d be an easy choice, but as my old hard-drinking friends demonstrated, that’s just a bit too simple and naïve to be a realistic option.
Instead, I try to mirror the moderate approach taken by my own parents, leavening this with the lessons I learned from these hard-drinking friends who had more rigid upbringings, along with those I pick up from watching the unique slice of life visible in Las Vegas and New Orleans: when it comes to alcohol, an extreme approach at either end of the spectrum can be bad news. Too much is always too much, and none at all can also be too much; but tacking an even course between the two is usually just enough.

Rico says his father was always a Scotch drinker (small glass, single ice cube, maybe a splash of water in the early days when he drank blended whiskies), but Rico has ended up even more abstemious (once you have a brain injury they— meaning the ladyfriend— get cranky if you drink too much, and they define 'too much' as not very much at all), and drinks only single-malt Scots whiskey (and therefore expensive, especially in the benighted state of Pennsylvania), in shot glasses, straight (no ice, no water, no gawd-forbid anything else).

Serial commas

Rico says the thing he rewrites in almost every purloined post, whether from a publication or another site, is the lack of the use of the serial comma.
What's a serial comma, you ask?
That's the one that comes after the penultimate item in a list like this one: the first thing, the second thing, the penultimate thing (followed by its proper serial comma), and the last thing.
Why is it important, you ask?
Rico says he will use this example (courtesy of his friend Rani Cochran, lo these many years ago, back when Rico didn't even work for Apple yet), a real acknowledgement from a real book:

I want to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God.

That would read a little different with a serial comma, wouldn't it?

Red? Blue? Seems to matter

The New York Times has an article by Pam Belluck about the influence color has on you:

Trying to improve your performance at work or write that novel? Maybe it’s time to consider the color of your walls or your computer screen. If a new study is any guide, the color red can make people’s work more accurate, and blue can make people more creative. In the study, published on the website of the journal Science, researchers at the University of British Columbia conducted tests with six hundred people to determine whether cognitive performance varied when people saw red or blue. Participants performed tasks with words or images displayed against red, blue, or neutral backgrounds on computer screens.
Red groups did better on tests of recall and attention to detail, like remembering words, or checking spelling and punctuation. Blue groups did better on tests requiring imagination, like inventing creative uses for a brick or creating toys from shapes. “If you’re talking about wanting enhanced memory for something like proofreading skills, then a red color should be used,” said Juliet Zhu, an assistant professor of marketing at the business school at the University of British Columbia. But for “a brainstorming session for a new product or coming up with a new solution to fight child obesity or teenage smoking,” Dr. Zhu said, “then you should get people into a blue room.”
The question of whether color can color performance or emotions has fascinated scientists, not to mention advertisers, sports teams and restaurateurs. In a study on Olympic uniforms, anthropologists at Durham University in England found that evenly matched athletes in the 2004 Games who wore red in boxing, tae kwon do, Greco-Roman wrestling, and freestyle wrestling defeated those wearing blue sixty percent of the time. The researchers suggested that red, for athletes as for animals, subconsciously symbolizes dominance.
Effects that were perhaps similarly primal were revealed in a 2008 study led by Andrew Elliot of the University of Rochester. Men considered women shown in photographs with red backgrounds or wearing red shirts more attractive than women with other colors, although not necessarily more likeable or intelligent.
Then there was the cocktail party study, in which a group of interior designers, architects and corporate color scientists built model rooms decorated as bars in red, blue, or yellow. They found that more people chose the yellow and red rooms, but that partygoers in the blue room stayed longer. Red and yellow guests were more social and active. And while red guests reported feeling hungrier and thirstier than others, yellow guests ate twice as much.
Experts say colors may affect cognitive performance because of the moods they engender. “When you feel that the situation you are in is problematic,” said Norbert Schwarz, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, “you are more likely to pay attention to detail, which helps you with processing tasks but interferes with creative types of things.” By contrast, Dr. Schwarz said, “people in a happy mood are more creative and less analytic.”
Many people link red to problematic things, like emergencies or the X on failing tests, experts say. Such “associations to red— stop, fire, alarm, warning— can be activated without a person’s awareness, and then influence what they are thinking about or doing,” said John Bargh, a psychology professor at Yale University. “Blue seems a weaker effect than red, but blue skies, blue water are calm and positive, and so that effect makes sense too.”
Still, Dr. Schwarz cautioned, color effects may be unreliable or inconsequential. “In some contexts red is a dangerous thing, and in some contexts red is a nice thing,” he said. “If you’re walking across a frozen river, blue is a dangerous thing.”
Indeed, Dr. Elliot of the University of Rochester said blue’s positive emotional associations were considered less consistent than red’s negative ones.
It might also matter whether the color dominates someone’s view, as on a computer screen, or is only part of what is seen. Dr. Elliot said that, in the Science study, brightness, or intensity of color— not just the color itself— might have had an effect.
Some previous cognitive studies found no effect from color, although some used mostly pastels or less distinctive tasks. One found that students taking tests did better on blue paper than on red, but Dr. Schwarz said the study used depressing blue and upbeat red.
The Science study’s conclusion that red makes people more cautious and detail-oriented coincides with Dr. Elliot’s finding that people shown red test covers before IQ tests did worse than those shown green or neutral colors. And on a different test, people with red covers also chose easier questions. IQ tests require more problem-solving than Dr. Zhu’s memory and proofreading questions.
When Dr. Zhu’s subjects were asked what red or blue made them think of, most said that red represented caution, danger, or mistakes, and that blue symbolized peace and openness. Subjects were quicker to unscramble anagrams of 'avoidance related' words like “danger” when the anagrams were on red backgrounds, and quicker with anagrams of positive, 'approach related' words like “adventure” when they were on blue backgrounds.
The study also tested responses to advertising, finding that advertisements listing product details or emphasizing 'avoidance' actions like cavity prevention held greater appeal on red backgrounds, while ones using creative designs or emphasizing positive actions like 'tooth whitening' held more appeal on blue.
When the participants were asked if they believed red or blue would improve performance, most said blue for both detail-oriented and creative tasks. Maybe, Dr. Zhu said, that is because more people prefer blue.
The study did not involve different cultures, like China, where red symbolizes prosperity and luck. And it said nothing about mixing red and blue to make purple.
For what it’s worth, many newsroom walls at The New York Times are bright tomato-soup red. The newspaper’s facilities department says there are no blue rooms in the place.

Rico says this comes at an appropriate time; we're about to paint the ladyfriend's apartment, and the palette has just shifted from blue to brown (a kind of red), so Rico guesses we'll be more accurate and less creative...

Water is heavy

An article by Sharon LaFraniere in The New York Times suggests that the Chinese may have brought their recent earthquake upon themselves:

Nearly nine months after a devastating earthquake in China's Sichuan Province left 80,000 people dead or missing, a growing number of American and Chinese scientists are suggesting that the calamity was triggered by a four-year-old reservoir built close to the earthquake’s geological fault line. A Columbia University scientist who studied the quake has said that it may have been triggered by the weight of 320 million tons of water in the Zipingpu Reservoir, less than a mile from a well-known major fault. His conclusions, presented to the American Geophysical Union in December, coincide with a new finding by Chinese geophysicists that the dam caused significant seismic changes before the earthquake.
Scientists emphasize that the link between the dam and the failure of the fault has not been conclusively proved, and that even if the dam acted as a trigger, it would only have hastened a quake that would have occurred at some point. Nonetheless, any suggestion that a government project played a role in one of the biggest natural disasters in recent Chinese history is likely to be politically explosive.
The issue of government accountability and responsiveness has boiled over in China in the past year. The grieving parents of thousands of schoolchildren killed in the disaster have already made the 7.9-magnitude earthquake a political issue, charging that children died needlessly in unsafe school buildings approved by negligent or corrupt officials. More public anger erupted last year when the government failed to prevent the sale of tainted milk powder that sickened nearly 300,000 children and killed six. “Any kind of government-related disaster presently is very, very damaging and politically extremely sensitive,” said Cheng Li, the China research director at the Brookings Institution.
If it is proved that the earthquake “was related to a man-made situation and not just a natural disaster, the government will be very uncomfortable with that kind of report because of the whole issue of government accountability,” Mr. Li said.
Questions about the Zipingpu Dam are especially delicate because China is building many major hydroelectric dams in the southwest, a region which has abundant water resources, but is considered prone to earthquakes.
In a petition to the government in July, a group of environmentalists and scholars said the fact that government scientists had underestimated the risk of the May earthquake raised questions about a host of other dams built in the same valley and along five other major rivers, according to an article published by Probe International, an environmental advocacy group. Chinese authorities have steadfastly dismissed any notion that reservoir-building in Sichuan Province placed citizens at any added risk, and they have blocked some websites of environmental groups that suggest that dangers have been overlooked.
In a December article in the Chinese magazine Science Times, two scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences strongly denied that the dam played any role in the earthquake. “The earthquake research community outside and inside China has widely accepted the notion that the Wenchuan earthquake of 12 May was a huge natural disaster caused by massive crustal movement, because no reservoir triggered-quake with a magnitude eight has ever occurred in history,” said Pan Jiazheng, an expert in hydroengineering, according to a translation published by Probe International.
Scientists generally agree that a reservoir, no matter how big, cannot by itself cause an earthquake. But Leonardo Seeber, a senior scientist with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, said the impact of so much water could hasten an earthquake’s occurrence if geological conditions for a quake already existed. He said the best known example was a 1967 earthquake triggered by the Koyna Dam in a remote area of India, with a magnitude of about 6.5 and a death toll of about 180 people.
Mr. Seeber said that, while the link between the Sichuan earthquake and the Zipingpu Dam was not yet proven, work by Christian Klose, a Columbia University researcher specializing in geophysical hazards, suggested the stress caused by the water’s weight might have hastened the quake by a few hundred years. “It would have occurred anyway,” Mr. Seeber said. “But, of course, the people who were affected might think the timing is an important difference.” Mr. Klose estimated that the weight of the water in the Zipingpu reservoir amounted to 25 times the natural stress that tectonic movements exert in a year. The added pressure, he wrote in an abstract to an unpublished study, “resulted in the Beichaun fault coming close to failure”.
Fifty stories tall and big enough to hold more than one billion cubic meters of water, the Zipingpu Dam astride the Minjiang River was billed as one of China’s biggest water control projects. Officials said the $750 million project, part of a grand plan to develop regions in China’s south and west, would generate 760,000 kilowatts of electricity, irrigate more farmland, help control flooding and provide more water to industries and residents of nearby Chengdu, a city of more than tenmillion.
Almost as soon as construction got under way in 2001, one expert, Li Youcai, voiced fears that officials were underplaying the risk of a major earthquake in the region, but government officials rejected his argument, according to an article published last year on China Dialogue, a website devoted to environmental news.
Officials allowed the reservoir to fill with water in late 2004. Fan Xiao, a chief engineer with the Sichuan Geology and Mineral Bureau, said that from late 2004 to late 2005, the data showed 730 minor earthquakes, with magnitudes of 3 or less. When the major earthquake struck last May, it originated 3.4 miles from the reservoir. The rupture in the Earth’s crust stretched for 185 miles, initially moving in a direction that Mr. Klose said was consistent with the pressure from the water’s weight.
Mr. Fan, the chief engineer for the regional geology investigation team, told reporters soon afterward that he believed that the reservoir influenced the timing, magnitude, and location of the earthquake. “The main lesson is that in building these kinds of projects we need to give more consideration to scientific planning, and not simply consider the electricity or water or the economic interests,” Mr. Fan said.
The debate reignited in December when two scientists with the China Earthquake Administration and three other researchers published a study in the Chinese journal Seismology and Geology. They concluded only that the weight of the reservoir’s water and diffusion of water from the reservoir below the Earth’s surface “clearly affected the local seismicity” over a period of nearly four years before the fault ruptured.
The Chinese researchers called for further study to see whether the reservoir helped trigger the earthquake. One of them, Du Fang, with the Sichuan Earthquake Administration, said Thursday that it was impossible to know whether the reservoir influenced the earthquake without more research. “The possibility exists,” she said. Ms. Du said she and other scientists were free to research the issue fully. “We scientists are free to research the topic we proposed, as long as it is worth studying,” she said. “I don’t feel any restrictions on access to the data from the government.”

Rico says they built reservoirs (though nothing of this scale; a billion cubic meters is a lot of water) on top of the San Andreas Fault in California, and saw increased tremor activity.

Boo-hoo for the illegals

The New York Times has an unsigned (normal with them) editorial about the immigration issue:

In Phoenix on Wednesday, more than two hundred men in shackles and prison stripes were marched under armed guard past a gantlet of television cameras to a tent prison encircled by an electric fence. They were inmates being sent to await deportation in a new immigrant detention camp, minutes from the center of America’s fifth-largest city. The judge, jury and exhibitioner of this degrading spectacle was the Maricopa County sheriff, Joe Arpaio, the publicity-obsessed star of a Fox reality show and the self-appointed scourge of illegal immigrants. Though he frequently and proudly insists that he answers to no one, except at election time, the sheriff is not an isolated rogue. As a participant in the federal policing program called 287(g), he is an official partner of the United States government in its warped crackdown on illegal immigration.
The immigration enforcement regime left by the Bush Administration is out of control. It is up to President Obama and the new secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, to rein it in and clean it up. This applies not just to off-the-rails deputies like Sheriff Arpaio, but to the federal enforcement agencies themselves.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol have been shown in recent news accounts to be botching their jobs. Border Patrol agents in California have accused supervisors of setting arrest quotas for undocumented immigrants, and a recent Migration Policy Institute study showed that a much-touted campaign of raids against criminal fugitives was a failure. It netted mostly maids and laborers, who are no reasonable person’s idea of a national threat.
The burden of action is particularly high on Ms. Napolitano, who as Arizona’s governor handled Sheriff Arpaio with a gingerly caution that looked to some of his critics and victims as calculated and timid. Ms. Napolitano, who is known as a serious and moderate voice on immigration, recently directed her agency to review its enforcement efforts, including looking at ways to expand the 287(g) program. Sheriff Arpaio is a powerful argument for doing just the opposite. Now that she has left Arizona politics behind, Ms. Napolitano is free to prove this is not Arpaio’s America, where the mob rules and immigrants are subject to ritual humiliation. The country should expect no less.

Rico says he doesn't get the whole 'poor babies' thing over illegal immigrants. They're here, they're illegal (and know it), and they're getting thrown out, unfortunately not faster than new ones are getting in. Try breaking the law in Mexico and see how they treat prisoners there. In a rational country (which this isn't), Joe Arpaio would be a national hero. As for 'ritual humiliation', well, they don't beat them, they don't starve them, and they don't shoot them, all of which would certainly encourage them not to come back...

Civil War for the day

The actual (scanned from an original in the collection of the Civil War Library & Museum in Philadelphia) signature of Robert E. Lee.

Bedside manners

Rico says that, if the ladyfriend wasn't so gub-phobic, he'd order one today...

Funny, until it happens to you

Rico says his cousin sent him this one:

A woman came home, screeched her car to a stop in the driveway, ran into the house, slammed the door, and shouted at the top of her lungs: "Honey, pack your bags. I won the lottery!"
The husband said, "Oh, my God! What should I pack, beach stuff or mountain stuff?"
"Doesn't matter," she said. "Just get out."

Had to happen

Once Spielberg got mentioned as one of Bernie Madoff's victims, it wasn't long before the comparison was made between Bernie Madoff and Oskar Schindler in Swindler's List...

(Which reminds Rico of his old spoof at Apple when Steve Jobs got replaced: Spindler's List...)

That was inevitable

Once Steven Spielberg got mentioned as one of Bernie Madoff's victims, it was only a matter of time, of course, before someone made a comparison between Bernie Madoff and a perverse Oskar Schindler in

Swindler's List

Quote for the day

Rico says it's Shelby Foote, yet again:

"Accepting the historian's standards without his paraphernalia, I have employed the novelist's methods without his license."

Defiant? Not unarmed, you're not

Rico says one of the unmentioned concepts in reviews of Defiance (in the polite media, at least, of which his Rant is not one) was how rapidly the Jews realized that, in order to survive, they needed to be armed.
While there are Jewish organizations (Hadassah, the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, and the National Council of Jewish Women, among others) that (foolishly, with no sense of history) support gun control, there are groups like the Jewish Defense League and Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, both of whom are vehemently against gun control. The JPFO even filed an amicus curiae brief in the recent Supreme Court case on gun ownership:

"If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars."
Silveira v. Lockyer, 328 F.3d 567, 569 (9t~~ Cir. 2003)

They're still out there, but fewer

The New York Times has an article by Souad Mekhennet and Nicholas Kulish about Tarek Hussein Farid, born Aribert Ferdinand Heim:

Even in old age the imposingly tall, athletic German known to locals as Tarek Hussein Farid maintained the discipline to walk some fifteen miles each day through the busy streets of Egypt’s capital. He walked to the world-renowned al-Azhar mosque here, where he converted to Islam, and to the ornate J. Groppi Cafe downtown, where he ordered the chocolate cakes he sent to friends and bought the bonbons he gave to their children, who called him Uncle Tarek.
Friends and acquaintances here in Egypt also remember him as an avid amateur photographer, who almost always wore a camera around his neck, but never allowed himself to be photographed. And with good reason: Uncle Tarek was born Aribert Ferdinand Heim, a member of Hitler’s elite Waffen-SS and a medical doctor at the Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, and Mauthausen concentration camps. It was behind the gray stone walls of Mauthausen, in his native Austria, that Dr. Heim committed the atrocities against hundreds of Jews and others that earned him the nickname Dr. Death, and his status as the most wanted Nazi war criminal still believed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center to be at large.
Dr. Heim was accused of performing operations on prisoners without anesthesia; removing organs from healthy inmates, then leaving them to die on the operating table; injecting poison, including gasoline, into the hearts of others; and taking the skull of at least one victim as a souvenir. After living below the radar of Nazi hunters for more than a decade after World War Two — much of it in the German spa town of Baden-Baden where he had a wife, two sons, and a medical practice as a gynecologist — he escaped capture just as investigators closed in on him in 1962. His hiding place, as well as his death in 1992, have remained unknown until now. Investigators in Israel and Germany have repeatedly said that they believed Dr. Heim was alive and hiding in Latin America, near where a woman alleged to be his illegitimate daughter lived in Chile. Witnesses from Finland to Vietnam and from Saudi Arabia to Argentina have sent tips and reported sightings to investigators.
A dusty briefcase with rusted buckles, sitting nearly forgotten in storage here in Cairo, hid the truth behind Dr. Heim’s flight to the Middle East. Obtained by The New York Times and the German television station ZDF from members of the Doma family, proprietors of the hotel here where Dr. Heim resided, the files in the briefcase tell the story of his life, and death, in Egypt.
The briefcase contains an archive of yellowed pages, some in envelopes still sealed, of Dr. Heim’s letters and medical test results, his financial records, and an underlined, annotated article from a German magazine about his own manhunt and trial in absentia, even drawings of soldiers and trains by the children he left behind in Germany. Some documents are in the name Heim, others Farid, but many of the latter, like an application for Egyptian residency under the name Tarek Hussein Farid, have the same birthday, 28 June 1914, and the same place of birth, Radkersburg, Austria, as Dr. Heim.
Although none of the ten friends and acquaintances in Cairo who identified a photograph of Dr. Heim knew his real identity, they described signs that he might have been on the run. “My idea, which I’ve taken from my father at that time, is that he was in dispute with maybe the Jews, but he took refuge in Cairo at that time,” said Tarek Abdelmoneim el Rifai, the son of Abdelmoneim el Rifai, 88, Dr. Heim’s dentist in Cairo and close friend.
A certified copy of a death certificate obtained from Egyptian authorities confirmed witness accounts that the man called Tarek Hussein Farid died in 1992. “Tarek Hussein Farid is the name my father took when he converted to Islam,” said his son Rüdiger Heim. In an interview in the family’s villa in Baden-Baden, Mr. Heim, 53, admitted publicly for the first time that he was with his father in Egypt at the time of his death from rectal cancer.
“It was during the Olympics. There was a television in the room, and he was watching the Olympics. It distracted him. He must have been suffering from serious pain,” said Mr. Heim, who is tall, like his father, with a long mournful face and speaks softly and carefully. Dr. Aribert Heim died the day after the Games ended, on 10 August 1992, according to his son and the death certificate.
Mr. Heim said he learned of his father’s whereabouts through his aunt, who has since died. He said he did not come forward because he did not wish to bring trouble to any of his father’s friends in Egypt. As the number of surviving Nazi war criminals has dwindled, his father’s case has grown in prominence.
Despite the newly uncovered evidence of Dr. Heim’s time in Egypt, it is impossible to definitively close his case, with the location of his burial site still a mystery. His death would be a significant but hitherto unknown milestone in the winding up of the passionate and at times controversial hunt for Nazi war criminals that led to the trial and execution of the Holocaust planner Adolf Eichmann but never managed to catch up with Josef Mengele, the most famous of the Nazi doctors, who died in Brazil in 1979, as forensic tests later proved.
While the secret lives of Nazis in countries like Argentina and Paraguay captured the popular imagination in books and films like The Odessa File and The Boys From Brazil, the Heim case casts light on the often overlooked history of their flight to the Middle East. Until political winds shifted, ex-Nazis were welcomed in Egypt in the years after World War II, helping in particular with military technology. Rüdiger Heim said that his father told him he knew other Nazis there, but tried to steer clear of them. Even so, how Dr. Heim was able to elude his pursuers for so long, while receiving money from Europe, most notably from his late sister, Herta Barth, and corresponding with friends and family in long letters, is unclear. “The Arab world was an even better, a safer haven than South America,” said Efraim Zuroff, the Israel director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who had been searching for Dr. Heim and traveled to Chile last July to raise awareness about the case. Mr. Zuroff expressed surprise when informed of Dr. Heim’s apparent fate, saying the center had been about to raise the reward for information leading to his arrest to $1.3 million from $400,000.
The only time Dr. Heim was ever jailed was after World War II when he was held by the American military in Germany. But the military released him, apparently unaware that investigators in Austria were building a case against him. A United States war crimes team took testimony about his crimes from Josef Kohl, a former inmate at Mauthausen, on 18 January 1946, less than a year after the German surrender.
“Dr. Heim had a habit of looking into inmates’ mouths to determine whether their teeth were in impeccable condition,” Mr. Kohl said, according to a transcript of the interview. “If this were the case, he would kill the prisoner with an injection, cut his head off, leave it to cook in the crematorium for hours, until all the flesh was stripped from the naked skull, and prepare the skull for himself and his friends as a decoration for their desks.”
Mr. Zuroff said that because Dr. Heim was at Mauthausen for a short time early in the war, in the fall of 1941, he was “aware of no people alive today who suffered at his hands and can give first-hand testimony of his crimes.”
German investigators said that Dr. Heim was careful throughout the postwar period when less-controlled people might have let down their guard. Investigators noted that Dr. Heim, a talented ice hockey player, stayed out of pictures when his hockey team posed for its group portrait, even after they won the German championship. Dr. Heim owned an apartment building in Berlin, which investigators said for years provided him with income for his life, incognito.
At the headquarters of the Baden-Württemberg state police in Stuttgart today, small magnets freckle a map of the world, marking the spots where clues or reports of sightings surfaced. Investigators said that they had searched continuously since his disappearance in 1962, checking more than 240 leads and ruling out several people thought to be Dr. Heim. While they never caught him, they appear to have come tantalizingly close to his hiding place in the Middle East. “There was information that Heim was in Egypt working as a police doctor between 1967 and the beginning of the ’70s,” said Joachim Schäck, head of the fugitive unit at the state police. “This lead proved to be false.”
According to his son, Dr. Heim had left Germany and driven through France and Spain before crossing into Morocco, and eventually settling in Egypt. “It was only sheer coincidence that the police could not arrest me because I was not at home at the time,” Dr. Heim wrote in a letter to the German magazine Spiegel, after it published a report about his war-crimes case in 1979. It is unclear whether he ever sent the letter, which was found in his files, many of which were written in meticulous cursive style in German or English.
In the letter he also accused Simon Wiesenthal, who was interned at Mauthausen, of being “the one who invented these atrocities”. Dr. Heim went on to discuss what he called Israeli massacres of Palestinians, and added that “the Jewish Khazar–Zionist lobby of the U.S. were the first ones who in 1933 declared war against Hitler’s Germany.”
The Turkic ethnic group the Khazars were a recurring theme for Dr. Heim, who kept himself busy in Cairo, researching a paper he wrote in English and German, decrying the possibility of anti-Semitism owing to the fact, he said, that most Jews were not Semitic in ethnic origin. Mr. Rifai recalled that Dr. Heim had shown his family many different drafts of the paper, which were among the papers found in the briefcase that The Times and ZDF television obtained. A list also showed plans to send drafts of the paper to prominent people around the world— under the name Dr. Youssef Ibrahim— including the United Nations secretary general, Kurt Waldheim, the United States national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Yugoslavia’s leader, Marshal Tito.
He formed close bonds with his neighbors, including the Doma family, which ran the Kasr el Madina hotel, where Dr. Heim lived the last decade before his death. Mahmoud Doma, whose father owned the establishment, said Dr. Heim spoke Arabic, English, and French, in addition to German. Mr. Doma said his neighbor read and studied the Koran, including a copy in German that the Domas had ordered for him. Mr. Doma, 38, became emotional when talking about the man he knew as Uncle Tarek, whom he said gave him books and encouraged him to study. “He was like a father. He loved me and I loved him.” He recalled how Uncle Tarek bought rackets and set up a tennis net on the hotel roof, where he and his siblings played with the German Muslim until sundown. But by 1990, Dr. Heim’s good health began to fail him and his illness was diagnosed as cancer.
After his death, his son Rüdiger insisted that they follow his father’s wishes and donate the body to science, not an easy task in a Muslim country where the rules dictate a swift burial and dissection is opposed. Mr. Doma, who wanted to put Uncle Tarek in the family crypt next to his father, opposed the plan. The two men rode in a white van with the body of Dr. Heim, which had been washed and wrapped in a white sheet in accordance with Muslim tradition and placed in a wooden coffin. Mr. Doma said they bribed a hospital functionary to take the body, but Egyptian authorities found out, and Dr. Heim was instead interred in a common grave, anonymously.

Rico says that, some day, the last Nazi will be dead (and, hopefully, screaming eternally in Hell), and the souls of the six million (and that of Simon Wiesenthal) can begin to rest in peace...
But if an otherwise 'normal' doctor (top photo), can perpetrate such horrors on innocent people (center photo), then it is both meet and just that he end his wretched life in a shithole like the Kasr el-Madina in Cairo (bottom photo), or worse...

Terminally cute

Rico says the ladyfriend came upon this at Wimp.com and called me in to check it out. He's as cute as our Bud, and even springier. (And he's what would've eaten our Bud if we hadn't rescued him, thus the 'fox poop' jokes at Bud's expense...)

Not good

It reads 100.5 this morning (when, traditionally, your temperature is supposed to be low), so we're off to Dr. DeStefano later when he gets in. It'll probably turn out to be a virus, which they have nothing for, so it'll be "Go home and go back to bed", as if I couldn't have figured that out by myself and saved fifty bucks in co-pay...
Rico says that he was wrong, as usual, and got a full suite of pills (no shot this time) to kill what's ailing him.

Civil War for the day

A recreation, of course, there not being color photos in Lincoln's day.

Jimmy Buffett, who knows

Rico says one of his friends (okay, it was the Quaker Kid) sent him this classic:

Ungrateful bastards

Rico says never trust a country you can't spell. al-Reuters has the story:

Kyrgyzstan began moves Wednesday to close a U.S. military air base in the former Soviet republic which is vital for supplying US-led troops fighting in Afghanistan. Manas is the only remaining US airbase in Central Asia. It has been at the center of U.S. regional military planning since Uzbekistan evicted U.S. troops in 2005 in a row over Tashkent's suppression of a protest in the city of Andizhan. The base is used as a staging post for the US-led military campaign against the Taliban, and its role has been heightened as Washington seeks to reinforce supply routes that bypass Pakistan, where supply convoys face security risks.
Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev made the announcement in Moscow after talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who pledged more than $2 billion in loans for the country, which faces economic crisis. The Kyrgyz announcement comes just over two weeks after the inauguration of Obama, who plans to increase troops in Afghanistan to counter the Taliban, and could be seen as an early challenge and signal from Moscow to Obama. One political analyst in Moscow said it was "the worst moment for such a move." Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have said they want to improve relations with Obama after ties hit a post-Soviet low in a row over a war in Georgia.
Analysts have said Afghanistan could be an issue on which the interests of Washington and Moscow largely coincide. But the United States will most likely see the Kyrgyz announcement as an attempt by Moscow to check US influence in Central Asia when Obama has made Afghanistan a priority. It could dampen any optimism about better relations between Russia and the United States and could be seen as the latest attempt by Moscow to roll back strategic gains made by Washington after the Soviet Union collapsed. But Moscow may see the action over Manas as a first gambit in efforts to review and alter the way the United States and Russia cooperate in Central Asia. Russia has suggested that itself, China and their Central Asian allies should have a stronger say in international attempts to restore peace in Afghanistan.
The Pentagon has described the Manas airbase, where 1,000 personnel are based, as "hugely important", but the State Department has said operations in Afghanistan can continue without it. The base's closure would be unlikely to affect Obama's plans in Afghanistan, but it could cause problems at talks. Robert Simmons, the NATO secretary general's special representative, said in Kyrgyzstan Monday the base was "a vital link in our fight against international terrorism" and any decision to close it would be regrettable. Washington would face a more complicated logistical supply chain if access to the base near Bishkek is cut just as U.S. troop numbers are set to increase from 36,000 to 60,000.
NATO has been pressing for logistical support from Russia to back up the forces of its member states in Afghanistan. NATO spokesman James Appathurai said on Wednesday: "There are no NATO logistics going through Manas. Individual NATO countries do use it for their logistics purposes, including the United States, but NATO as an organization does not."
Medvedev has said that Moscow and Bishkek will continue to support operations in Afghanistan, but he did not spell out how this would work.

Rico says fuck 'em; down the road they'll want something from us (probably money), and we can say "sorry, it just didn't work out"...

No one under forty will understand this

While we're quibbling

Rico says Defiance is still a great movie, and you should go see it immediately, but there's just this one little thing...

Having made a couple of historical movies himself, Rico knows how difficult it can be to get things right (thus his hours of Photoshop, frame by frame, to remove the Vibram soles from a pair of boots that got by him and on tape), but Hollywood has a lot of people who get paid a lot of money to do just that.
So what's with the (late in the film) shoulder strap full of twelve-gauge cartridges on one of the Jewish fighters?
Twelve-gauge, fine; they had hunting shotguns, appropriate to the period.
But nice bright-red plastic high-brass shells? (Not made for, oh, another thirty years.)
Worse yet, in a shiny black plastic holder? (The same.)
Gag.
It didn't ruin the movie for him, but it did piss Rico off...

So, what's that, winter forever?

Rico says that, given who wrote this (and when; Rico just noticed that it's © 2008), it has to be a spoof but, if so, 'tain't funny, McGee:

What was to be a day full of festivity and celebration turned into one of tragedy when legendary groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, was found dead in his home on Monday in the early morning.
At approximately 6:13 AM, when Mr. Phil had not yet emerged from his home, an Inner Circle member of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club discovered the body of the beloved groundhog. A confused and concerned crowd that had gathered for the traditional Groundhog Dog tradition was told to leave with little to no information as to the reason for the abrupt dismissal. “The last thing we wanted was for people to panic,” said a spokesman for the PGC. “We didn’t want to present the facts until we knew them.”
Investigators arrived on the scene and soon after declared that Mr. Phil’s death was caused by a drug overdose and alcohol poisoning. Though no note was left, all the evidence gathered pointed to an apparent suicide. Mr. Phil was found face down on the floor, surrounded by empty bottles of Groundhog Punch and prescribed anti-depressants. It was a particularly difficult sight to see for those close to the groundhog.
When news broke of the tragedy, thousands of adoring fans returned to the site of Mr. Phil’s home, leaving flowers, photographs and various sentimental trinkets to honor their lost hero. Punxsutawney resident, Jeffery Riles, 56, described the ordeal. “I just could not believe it. He has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember—I just can’t believe he’s gone.”
Though foul play had been ruled out by investigators, some skeptics have already suggested that Mr. Phil’s suicide could have been foreseen and prevented. Staten Island Chuck, a longtime friend and colleague of Phil, said in an emotional interview, “You could tell those guys at the PGC were overworking Punx. He hadn’t been himself recently. He was tired, always tired, and you could see that.”
It is true that in the past eight years Mr. Phil had only predicted one early spring, and as a result spent most of his time in his home. It is unknown whether or not the PGC’s knowledge of Phil’s emotional state will be investigated, and when asked about these allegations, the press correspondent of the PGC told reporters that they were not ready to release an official statement as of yet. “This is a tough time for us all here,” said a spokesman, “The last thing we need is a bunch of insensitive finger-pointers during this deeply tragic time.”
Punxsutawney Phil is no stranger to mystery though. For one, his official birth year is unknown. There were some who claimed he was immortal, though few truly believed this. After receiving the results of the autopsy though, coroners were puzzled by the fact the Phil’s bones have dated back nearly to the age of the dinosaurs. These strange results seem to shine light on the immortality myth, but make his death seem to be even more of a mystery.
It is no mystery, though, that Punxsutawney Phil’s death has affected millions nationally. Vigils have been held in almost every major city across the US, and President Obama called for an official moment of silence at 8 PM Monday evening. A private funeral service for friends and family is to be held on Thursday in Phil’s hometown.
It seems many have seen a shadow this Groundhog Day, and it must to be difficult to imagine a spring ever coming after this cold winter.

Rico says that, okay, because of the overdose thing, it's funny, but it's not that funny...

Both sides of it, but not exactly it

Rico says there's a song from his childhood that's been running through what passes for his brain of late; it's called 98.6, by some singer named (just) Keith:

Hey 98.6 it's good to have you back again, oh
Hey 98.6 her lovin' is the medicine that saved me

The reason? Well, Rico's temperature was over 100 for two days (so if he sounded a little delusional since the weekend, that would be why), and now it's 'only' 99.1, after being below normal earlier today. As for 'her lovin', that would be the ladyfriend, of course. She hates it when I'm sick...

Civil War for the day

Confederate artillery (with that confusing early battle flag in the background; this is why they changed to the Stars & Bars) at some unknown reenactment.

Another one bites the dust...

Rico says Tom Daschle withdrew his nomination to run Health & Human Services in the Obama adminstration. Seems he 'forgot' to pay $140,000 in taxes when due. Nice trick; most people get sued by the IRS or go to jail for 'forgetting' stuff like that...

Mazel tov

Rico says he got taken to see Defiance tonight, and enjoyed himself immensely. The stars— Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber (who looks just like my Russian-Jewish friend Ben, no surprise there), and Alexa Davalos— were great, the plot was sufficient to keep you occupied for over two hours (even after the interminable ads and trailers), the photography was incredible (no forest has looked as good since the scenes in Seven Samurai, with the same little fires in the night), and the ending was believable.

Rico says they're blocking the posting of any clips, the weasels; go to the IMDB site to see all of them... (Fuck that, just go see the movie.)

Really stupid, really funny

Rico says sometimes you gotta post stuff, even if it's ridiculously silly...

Unlucky

The boatyard proudly brings out its latest creation for the owner, only to have the cradle slip...

Lucky, lucky, lucky

Rico says only skill and pure dumb luck (okay, a lot of skill) on the part of the pilot saved all those people on Flight 1549. So next time you get on a plane and they say something about life jackets and evacuation procedures, this is why you should listen...

Civil War for the day

The cavalry of the Blue and the Gray square off at some reenactment.

Stupid, but funny

Why some software really is different

The New York Times has an article by Andrew Revkin about the latest from Google Earth:

Two and a half years ago, the software engineers behind Google Earth, the searchable online replica of the planet, were poised to fill an enormous data gap, adding the two-thirds of the globe that is covered by water in reality and was blue, and blank, online. But until then all of the existing features on Google Earth— mountains, valleys, cities, plains, ice sheets— were built through programming from an elevation of zero up.
“We had this arbitrary distinction that if it was below sea level it didn’t count,” recalled John Hanke, the Internet entrepreneur who co-created the progenitor of Google Earth, called Keyhole, and moved to Google when the company bought his company in 2004. That oversight had to be fixed before the months and months of new programming and data collection could culminate in the creation of simulated oceans. On Monday, the oceans will be the most significant of several upgrades to Google Earth, with the new version downloadable free at earth.google.com, according to the company.
Another feature, Historical Imagery, provides the ability to scroll back through decades of satellite images and watch the spread of suburbia or erosion of coasts. Click a function called Touring and you can create narrated, illustrated tours, on land or above and below the sea surface, describing and showing things like a hike or scuba excursion, or even a research cruise on a deep-diving submarine.
The two-year push to fill in the giant blue blanks came through a chance encounter in March 2006. Mr. Hanke was poised to receive an award from the Geographical Society of Spain for his pioneering work building Web-based models of the planet. But he was preceded at the dais by Sylvia Earle, a former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who was there to receive her own award for deep-sea exploration and popularizing ocean science. She turned to him and said she loved the way Google Earth allowed users to see how one thing relates to another on the planet. But Dr. Earle bluntly added: “You’ve done a great job with the dirt. But what about the water?”
Since that time, Dr. Earle and Mr. Hanke have been partners in the long effort, as she explained, “to make sure the mountains don’t end at the beach.” She assembled an advisory panel including Jane Lubchenco, the Oregon State University marine biologist since chosen by President Obama to head the oceanic and atmospheric agency. “I’ve been struggling my whole life to figure out how to reach people and get them to understand they’re connected to the ocean,” Dr. Earle said. “But I go to the supermarket and still see the United Nations of fish for sale,” she said. “Marine sanctuaries are still not really protected. Google Earth gets all this information now and puts it in one place for the littlest kid and the stuffiest grownup to see in a way that hasn’t been possible in all preceding history.”
By choosing among 20 buttons holding archives of information, called “layers” by Google, a visitor can read logs of oceanographic expeditions, see old film clips from the heyday of Jacques-Yves Cousteau, and check daily Navy maps of sea temperatures. The replicated seas have detailed topography reflecting what is known about the abyss and continental shelves— and rougher areas where little is known.
With only five percent of the ocean floor mapped in detail, and one percent of the oceans protected, Google executives and the marine scientists who helped build the digital oceans said they hoped the result would inspire the public to support more marine exploration and conservation. During a recent test drive of the new features at Google’s San Francisco office, I swooped in over Hawaii and dived beneath the undulating wave-dappled surface of the Pacific to explore canyons, reefs, and other features that are now charted precisely everywhere that government data exist.
I also revisited Greenland, the North Pole, and Alaska’s North Slope. And, in less than a minute using the Touring feature, I created a rough narrated travelogue retracing reporting assignments in the Arctic, dropping in YouTube videos for any visitor to view on location.
By hovering over Galveston, Texas, clicking on a pointer and sliding it forward along a bar reflecting years of data, I was able to watch seaside communities expand and then abruptly wash away after Hurricane Ike. The feature powerfully conveys the increasing interplay of humans and the environment, for better and worse, as populations grow and spread.
The addition of the oceans posed many technical hurdles, not the least being aligning disparate data sets so water meets land in precisely the right places, Google engineers said. Other snags will almost certainly pop up as millions of users scour the new terrain. But many of the ocean scientists who quietly worked with Google over the last two years to pull together vast data sets are elated at the prospect of the seas’ getting new visibility, and respect. “It’s a way of raising awareness from thousands to billions overnight,” said Richard W. Spinrad, the N.O.A.A. assistant administrator for research, who served on an advisory panel.
Barbara Block, a Stanford University biologist whose tagging projects have helped clarify the hidden lives of bluefin tuna, great white sharks, and other depleted species, said the blue side of Google Earth could also increase public support for marine conservation. “We cannot as a community conserve what we cannot see,” Dr. Block said. “We’ve worked with the Monterey Bay Aquarium for years to put giant bluefin and white sharks on display, and if we’re lucky two million people a year come and see the animals and discover their color, beauty of motion, and form. With the Google oceans feature, we potentially can reach hundreds of millions.”
And, said Peter Birch, product manager for Google Earth, the presumption is that wherever lots of eyeballs and mouse clicks land, there is sure to be advertising revenue. In the three years since its public unveiling in 2005, Google Earth has become a mainstay of students, travelers, businesses and researchers seeking a one-stop place for posting or finding information about the world, on topics as diverse as hotels and hiking trails, species’ ranges, and climate data. In that time, the software package has been downloaded on half a billion computers. Visitors spend one million hours a day perusing Google Earth and the related Google Maps.
Some commercial websites, including shipwreckcentral.com and wannasurf.com, have already been actively promoting ocean activities and will now enable divers or surfers to add their own narrated, illustrated “tours” of favorite reefs or beaches to Google Earth’s layers. Organizations seeking to reconnect people directly with nature expressed guarded optimism when the new features of Google Earth were described. “Electronic images can boost awareness and sometimes even inspire, but there’s no substitute for direct experience in nature,” said Cheryl Charles, the president of Children and Nature Network, which seeks to end what it calls “nature deficit disorder” in modern plugged-in society. “Hopefully those exploring Google’s virtual oceans, especially children, can still find the time to get wet, as well.”

Rico says that, with a father who is a world-famous oceanographer at Scripps (and who's friends with Sylvia Earle), he can only applaud this effort...

See the video here.

Just what we didn't need

Rico says this came from a reliable source, but keep an eye on the news:

Are you ready for the House Bill titled HR 45, Blair Holt Licensing and Record Act of 2009. It will make it illegal to own a firearm unless it is registered with a database in Washington. As a gun owner you will have to be fingerprinted, you will be required to provide your drivers' license number, Social Security number, you must maintain a valid address at all times, submit to mental and physical health records being put on file, you will also be required to file any address changes and any ownership changes even if private sale. Each update will cost twenty-five bucks and, if you fail to comply, you will lose your right to own firearms. This bill and its language mirror almost completely one by soon-to-be Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel that was defeated last year in the House of Representatives. Will the citizenry be as lucky this time?
Pass this on to everyone who believes in strict Constitutionalism, and remember that laws only apply to those who obey them. Criminals by definition and nature do not abide by laws. New laws and restrictions only apply to the law-abiding citizen, and are not written with the criminal in mind. It is not about having laws on the books to prosecute individuals, it is about taking guns away from the people so that no one has them in the first place.
The Founding Fathers of this Nation understood all of the above and, because of this, they wrote the Second Amendment into the Constitution. They knew that at some point in every society's lifespan, the need for the population to arise would come about; to this end, they made the Right to Keep and Bear Arms against a tyrannical state an absolute right that could not be revoked. They did this because the first thing tyrants and despots do is to remove a populations right to defend themselves. When this is done the tyrants have no problem with the destruction of society as we know it. Protect your Second Amendment...

Rico says it's another in the "oh, gawd, gubs are bad and the people who own them are worse" bullshit that passes for legislative thinking in Washington these days...

Oopsie

Rico says heads should roll, but they won't:

For about forty minutes early Saturday morning, a URL with a single backslash was inadvertently checked into a list of potential malware sites operated by Google, with some help... maybe... from StopBadware.org. As a result, its search results partner, Google, was flagging nearly every website on the planet as a potential conveyor of malware.
It was an everyday human error, it turns out, and Google admitted as much right up front: "Unfortunately (and here's the human error), the URL of '/' was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and '/' expands to all URLs," reads a blog post from Google Search VP Marisa Mayer Saturday afternoon. "Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file. Since we push these updates in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing between 6:27 a.m. and 6:40 a.m. and began disappearing between 7:10 and 7:25 a.m., so the duration of the problem for any particular user was approximately forty minutes."
That sounds gracious and humbling enough, and anybody who's ever typed the wrong character and caused an avalanche of problems can relate to Google's position. But StopBadware, which was supposedly Google's partner in all of this, effectively accused the company of out-and-out lying later that day. Specifically, it said Mayer was wrong to say that StopBadware maintains the list that Google uses. "Google has posted an update on their official blog that erroneously states that Google gets its list of URLs from us. This is not accurate," read a post from StopBadware's Maxim Weinstein later in the day. "Google generates its own list of badware URLs, and no data that we generate is supposed to affect the warnings in Google's search listings. We are attempting to work with Google to clarify their statement."
Well, Google did make an adjustment to that statement, as it turned out, effectively admitting that the partnership with StopBadware was more limited than Google said it was at the time. "We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to come up with criteria for maintaining this list, and to provide simple processes for webmasters to remove their site from the list," reads Mayer's adjusted text.
But that revised explanation would appear to contradict the stated cause of a malware-flagging glitch that happened almost exactly one year ago. At that time, StopBadware was flagging RealPlayer's Message Center as being malware in and of itself, a decision that was apparently being reflected in Google's search results for a time.
StopBadware's flagging of RealPlayer wasn't a glitch, though; it was intentional, and it was Maxim Weinstein who took credit for doing so at the time. "When RealPlayer 10.5 is installed, the advertising features of this 'message center' are enabled by default for users who choose not to register their personal information with RealNetworks after the software is installed," Weinstein said in a statement last year. StopBadware.org is a non-profit organization that compiles an ongoing list of malware based on consumer complaints. Up until last weekend, it had been generally believed that StopBadware provided Google with hard information, not just advice.
But that's not what StopBadware's own FAQ reads: "Google independently checks the web for badware and badware-linking code, and places warnings in its own search results. StopBadware's role is to help site owners who want to remove the warnings to learn about badware and website security. StopBadware also administers an independent review process through which a website owner can request the removal of a warning. Although Google's warning pages contain a link to the StopBadware.org site for more information, the decision to post a warning page is an independent decision made by Google, not by StopBadware, and does not reflect any testing or review by us in advance."

Rico says he's just happy his site hasn't gotten a badware label; it sounds non-trivial to get it off...

Sneaky bastards

The Los Angeles Times had an article about a suicide bomber who went after some cops in Afghanistan, but the internet ate it before Rico could post it...

Super Bowl commercials are getting out of hand

The BBC has an article about something unexpected during the Super Bowl:

Sports fans in Arizona got a surprise when their TV coverage of American football's Super Bowl was interrupted by a pornographic film. Tucson-based KVOA-TV said it was "dismayed and disappointed" after some cable viewers had their match coverage disrupted towards the end of the game. The company said the material was only seen by viewers of one cable network.
"KVOA will investigate what happened and make sure our viewers get answers," company president Gary Nielsen said. "When the NBC feed of the Super Bowl was transmitted from KVOA to local cable providers and through over-the-air antennas, there was no pornographic material," he added.
Comcast, the cable company whose viewers saw the material, said it was investigating. Local media outlets reported that they received calls from furious viewers. The clip showed a woman unzipping a man's trousers, followed by a graphic act between the two.
"I just figured it was another commercial until I looked up," viewer Cora King told the Arizona Daily Star. "Then he did a little dance with everything hanging out."
The interruption happened just after the last touchdown by the Arizona Cardinals, who lost the match to the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Rico says he didn't watch the Stupid Bowl, with or without the additional video...

Was one trillion, now just one

Rico says it's one of those 'only in fucked up little countries nobody cares about' stories:

Zimbabwe is revaluing its dollar again, removing twelve zeros from the currency with immediate effect. The country's central bank is introducing seven new notes in an effort to stave off economic collapse. The country is in the grip of world-record hyperinflation. The most recent estimate in July 2008 put it at 231% per month. Only last month, a Z$100 trillion note was introduced and the government moved to allow people to use foreign currencies alongside Zimbabwe's dollar. The announcement will see Z$1 trillion reduced to Z$1. The denominations of the new notes are Z$1, Z$5, Z$10, Z$20, Z$50, Z$100 and Z$500.
The governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, Gideon Gono, said: "Yesterday's trillionaires, I am sorry, will not be able to buy their favourite drink today." Mr Gono gave no updated inflation figures.
Last year, the central bank was forced to take 10 zeros from the local unit in an effort to make the currency more manageable, but the zeros returned within a few months. On Sunday, US$1 (£0.71) was equal to Z$3 or Z$4 trillion.
In a separate bid to tackle inflation, the government last month allowed businesses to charge in foreign currencies and said those businesses could pay their workers in foreign currency. Until then, only licensed businesses could accept foreign currencies, although it was common practice. The government added that the country's stock exchange, which has not traded for two months, would also be licensed to trade in foreign currency, once listed firms and the exchange provide evaluation criteria.
John Robertson, a leading Harare-based economist, said Mr Gono's latest statement contained some positive measures but did not go far enough. "It would appear he is trying to restore the Zimbabwean dollar, but, given the choice of multiple currencies, who would want to trade in Zimbabwe dollars?" he told the al-Reuters news agency.
Zimbabwe is also facing a deepening humanitarian crisis. A cholera outbreak has killed more than 3,000 people, according to the World Health Organization, and the World Food Programme says seven million Zimbabweans are in need of food aid, up from 5.1 million in June.
The country's situation has been worsened by the political crisis that resulted from last year's disputed presidential elections. But, last week, Zimbabwe's opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said his party would join a unity government with President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF. After the announcement, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan led calls for world leaders to help rebuild Zimbabwe's economy.

Rico says 'rebuild Zimbabwe's economy'? As what? A carnival ride?

So much for global warming

The Washington Post has an article by Kevin Sullivan about London's problems with the weather:

A beautiful yet crippling blanket of snow fell across much of England Monday, causing transportation nightmares but giving rise to thousands of cheery snowmen in a nation barely equipped for heavy winter weather. Nearly a foot of snow had fallen in London by mid-day, and another solid dump was expected Monday night in what meteorologists called the heaviest snowfall in nearly two decades. Snow also caused transportation disruptions in France and Ireland, as the icy weather blew westward across northern Europe.
It was essentially a national snow day in Britain. Most schools closed, and millions of workers were unable to make their daily commutes. The capital's entire fleet of red public buses, which carry at least six million people daily, were off the roads, unable to move from their garages. London's iconic subway system suffered severe delays all day, and weary-sounding officials blamed the problems on Victorian-era engineers who apparently failed to adequately plan for heavy winter weather when they designed the world's oldest underground system. Major highways were brought to a standstill, with reports of traffic jams of more than fifty miles on the M25, the highway that rings London.
London Mayor Boris Johnson suspended the "congestion charge", an 8 pound (about $11) daily fee for motorists driving into the city center. Travelers reported that people were hopping out of their cars on the jammed highways to toss snowballs at each other to pass the time. Johnson said the city had "done pretty well in what are absolutely extraordinary circumstances," but he added a plea to Mother Nature. "My message to the heavens is, you know, 'You've put on a fantastic display of snow power, but that is probably quite enough,' " he said.
Air travel was also a nightmare, with service at most of greater London's five major airports either suspended or severely curtailed. Runways at Heathrow Airport were closed mid-morning after the nose wheels of a Cyprus Airways plane slipped off a taxiway shortly after landing; no injuries were reported. One traveler who landed Monday morning on a flight from New York used his cell phone to call a BBC radio program and complain that he and his fellow passengers had been stuck in the plane on a taxiway for almost four hours.
Sarah Holland, a spokesman for the Met Office, the national weather service, said it was the most severe snow since 1991. "People aren't used to this, it is rare to see snowfall of this amount," she said.
In North Wales, two climbers were killed in the severe weather on Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales and a popular hiking destination. Emergency services officials said ambulance service would be limited to life-threatening calls only, and hospitals urged people to postpone all non-emergency visits. But, for many people, Monday was a rare chance to play in a country where deep snows are rare, and often disappear as fast as an ice cube on a kitchen counter.
In Green Park, a tree-lined expanse alongside Buckingham Palace, people made a small army of snowmen, and others rushed up to have their photos taken next to such a rare sight in London.
"I love it! This is my first time!" said Louisa Burlamaqui, 25, a Brazilian tourist sipping coffee in a Starbucks next to the park.
An American man in shorts, T-shirt and a woolen cap tossed a Frisbee as the heavy snow fell. Asked if he was from the United States, he responded with a big laugh, "Who else would be doing this?"
At Buckingham Palace, the changing of the guard proceeded as scheduled at 11:30 a.m.. but the soldiers in their gray flannel coats were reduced to clomping and trudging in the deep snow, instead of their normal crisp marching steps. Across from the palace gates, Becky Mayes said her normal one-hour commute into the city turned into a three-hour ordeal. And it was only when she arrived that she realized her workplace was shut for the day. But Mayes, who built a small snowman in the park with her boyfriend, said the snow seemed to be bringing out the best in people. She said total strangers were talking and laughing with each other. "There's a different vibe out here today," she said.
In Hampstead in north London, Josephine Rabinowitz and her friend Mark Mindel, both sixteen, had the day off from school and were strolling along a busy shopping street when two young men pelted them with snowballs from across the street. "That normally doesn't happen around here," Rabinowitz said. "Adults and teens are becoming kids again."

Rico says that, obviously, 'another solid dump' doesn't mean the same thing in English that it does in American...

Not what Rico thought it was

Alaskan Volcano Still Rumbling and Grumbling

Rico says nope, not Sarah Palin, but Mount Redoubt. It's an AP story:

Alaska's Mount Redoubt continued to rumble and emit steam Sunday, but showed no dramatic burst of energy from the previous day, geologists monitoring the volcano said. Geologist Tina Neal at the Alaska Volcano Observatory said scientists still believe an eruption is highly likely. "It could erupt later today, or in two weeks, or not at all," Neal said. "It looks like a volcano that wants to erupt, and our general impression is that it's more likely to erupt than not. But there's still a possibility that this one could just go back to sleep. There's a lot of uncertainty."
As a precaution, Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage, one hundred miles northeast of Redoubt , was moving some of its aircraft to McChord Air Force Base in the state of Washington. Officials said the base was starting with five C-17 cargo planes and could relocate other aircraft if deemed necessary. "We're just trying to be proactive and protect our assets," said First Lieutenant Erin Slaughter. "Our aircraft support other missions, such as delivering supplies to Iraq and Afghanistan, and this relocation will allow them to still do all those missions even if the volcano does erupt."
Flyovers by geologists Saturday found a quickly growing area of vigorous steaming at the 7,100-foot level on the north side of the mountain. Volcanic gas also was detected. No flyovers were conducted on Sunday. Scientists on Saturday noted that a hole in a glacier clinging to the north side of the volcano had doubled in size since Friday, spanning the length of two football fields. The area is just below a dome that formed the last time Redoubt blew in 1990.
The activity adds to concerns that Redoubt is close to blowing again. An eruption in December 1989 sent an ash cloud 150 miles that flamed out the jet engines of a KLM flight carrying 231 passengers on its way to Anchorage. Pilots were able to restart the engines and land safely. The observatory last week detected a steep increase in earthquake activity below the volcano, upgrading its alert level to orange, the stage just before full eruption.
Volcanologist Dave Schneider said seismic activity on Friday was the most pronounced, shaking constantly. Since then, activity has been less intense and more intermittent, but still far above normal for Redoubt. "Volcanoes are kind of like kids. Each has their own personality, their own levels of seismicity," Schneider said. "Redoubt is pretty much above any volcano's seismicity. It's a very restless volcano at present."
The warning that the volcano was likely to blow prompted a rush on dust masks and car air filters in Anchorage, as well as closer communities. Alaska's volcanoes typically start with an explosion that can shoot ash 50,000 feet high and into the jet stream, but there are warning signs because magma causes small earthquakes as it moves.

Rico says it was funnier when it was Palin...

Click the post title and go vote

Rico says he did, and was a little surprised by the totals (only revealed after you vote), but then again this is the sort of thing that typically gets passed along by gub nuts like Rico, not the anti-gub folks...

Jumping the shark

Rico says Robert Fulghum has been at the "hey, look at me, I'm writing a book" game for a long time, with a lot of success. He's written literary classics like All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It, What On Earth Have I Done?, and the poignantly titled Uh-Oh. But with his latest, Third Wish, he may have outdone himself. (For those unfamiliar with the phrase 'jumping the shark', go here.)
This is how Amazon promoted the book via an email:

First published in the Czech Republic (where it quickly became a bestseller), Third Wish is a sweeping, lavishly plotted novel in five parts, bound together by a profound love story that spans the globe. It is at once a classic quest novel and a rich parable for our times, inspired by the works of Lewis Carroll, Milan Kundera, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, among others. Presented in a boxed set as two richly illustrated paperback volumes with an accompanying CD musical soundtrack, this is a true one-of-a-kind novel.

Rico says there's so much there in one little paragraph... "a bestseller in the Czech Republic"? Whee! Total population: ten million. Total bookbuying population: maybe a million? Numbers needed to become a bestseller? Not very many; figure a few thousand in that market. A "sweepingly, lavishly plotted novel in five parts"? Save us from that many words by this author... A "profound love story that spans the globe"? Profound isn't usually what we're looking for in a love story... "At once a classic quest novel and a rich parable for our times"? Sort of Lord of the Rings combined with, oh, some Biblical parable or other? Hardly. "Inspired by the works of Lewis Carroll, Milan Kundera, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, among others"? Rico says he cannot imagine three more disparate authors, among others... Plus it's got a CD, with gawd knows what sort of "musical soundtrack" on it...

Rico says he coined a new acronym yesterday that applies here: FdC, or fuque du clusteur. That's French (sort of; the proper translation would be baise de faisceau, according to Babelfish) for clusterfuck.

What we have here, in the immortal words of the late Strother Martin in Cool Hand Luke, is "a failure to communicate"...

Civil War for the day

Doing other things

Rico says he was busy, all day, working on the renovation of the ladyfriend's apartment, thus no posts. Sorry.

Civil War for the day

Enfield rifles used in reenactments.