Is this how time normally passes? Really slowly, in the right order?

Saturday, July 30

Cool

Hidden (Urrrrk) Talents


Your Hidden Talent
You have the power to persuade and influence others. You're the type of person who can turn a whole room around. The potential for great leadership is there, as long as you don't abuse it. Always remember, you have a lot more power over people than you might think!

Yup, and as soon as I finish barfing, I'm going to take over the world!

(via the Llamas)

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Life

The Salmon Mousse!

Or in my case, the Chicken with Cashew Nuts.

Bleargh.

'Scuse me.

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Wednesday, July 27

Cool

Quick Precis, Then

WWII for n00bs.

(via Peeve Farm)

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Tuesday, July 26

World

Complaints?

No, that's next door. This is getting shot in the head lessons:
Heavily armed police swarmed a double-decker bus packed with tourists in Times Square today and later shut down Penn railway station after an irate passenger said he had a bomb.

In a dramatic sign of the city's edginess since the London bombings, police evacuated buildings, shut Midtown Manhattan streets and forced about 60 terrified tourists to march off the double-decker bus, with their hands up, in the heart of Broadway.

Officers in riot gear handcuffed a group of apparently harmless South Asian-looking men with British accents because a jittery tour bus worker thought they were suspicious.

...

A Gray Line dispatcher called police saying the men had backpacks and their pockets "stuffed" - a possible warning sign of suicide bombers, said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.

Well, that one we can chalk up to nerves following the attacks in London, but the second case is something special:
Later Penn Station was paralysed when a disgruntled passenger walked up to a ticket counter, put his suitcase on the counter and declared he had a bomb, authorities said.
Not too bright, as Best of the Web would say.

Meanwhile, what the hell is this?

By the time the bus neared Times Square, cops carrying heavy weapons decided to cordon off Broadway and stop the vehicle, a decision police officials defended as appropriate.
I know that you try not to repeat particular words too frequently, but I don't think that "cops" has any place in a serious news article outside of a direct quote.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:31 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Sunday, July 24

Geek

My Name Is Pixy And I Dance The Dance Of High-Speed Internet Access

Happy days are here again,
The sky is (checks outside) bright and clear again,
I've got ADSL again
Throw that modem in the bin!

P.S. Ten pengos to anyone who can place the reference in the title.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:24 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Friday, July 22

Life

It Never Shines But It... Something

It seems that I have broadband again. In stereo. I decided to get two ADSL connections at Pixy Central Mk II (via two different ISPs), because what with MuNu and everything, I'm online about 28 hours a day and just can't have outages.

Problem: I only have one working ADSL modem right now. Darn. I guess I'll just have to make do.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:37 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Thursday, July 21

World

On Being The Wrong Size

And just as there is a best size for every animal, so the same is true for every human institution. In the Greek type of demo­cracy all the citizens could listen to a series of orators and vote directly on questions of legislation. Hence their philosophers held that a small city was the largest possible democratic state. The English invention of representative government made a democratic nation possible, and the possibility was first realized in the United States, and later elsewhere. With the development of broadcasting it has once more become possible for every citi­zen to listen to the political views of representative orators, and the future may perhaps see the return of the national state to the Greek form of democracy. Even the referendum has been made possible only by the institution of daily newspapers.

To the biologist the problem of socialism appears largely as a problem of size. The extreme socialists desire to run every nation as a single business concern. I do not suppose that Henry Ford would find much difficulty in running Andorra or Luxembourg on a socialistic basis. He has already more men on his pay-roll than their population. It is conceivable that a syndicate of Fords, if we could find them, would make Belgium Ltd or Denmark Inc. pay their way. But while nationalization of certain industries is an obvious possibility in the largest of states, I find it no easier to picture a completely socialized British Empire or United States than an elephant turning somersaults or a hippopotamus jumping a hedge.

J. B. S. Haldane, On Being The Right Size

Haldane was a biologist, and the problem with socialism is really one of information, but nonetheless he nailed it. Socialism suffers dreadfully from scaling problems. It works fine for small, close-knit groups (families), and inevitably collapses into ruin for large heterogenous groups (the Soviet Union).

Haldane - a socialist himself - pointed this out in 1928. It took several more decades for others to realise just how right he was. Some still haven't grasped this fact.

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Wednesday, July 20

Life

Too Tired To Blog

Good: Found the controller for my sound system.

Not so good: It was in bag number 15.

Not good at all: Fell down the stairs while carrying a box of books and landed on my head. Good thing I don't keep anything important in there...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:50 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Tuesday, July 19

Life

Crapdoodles

You know that rat's nest of useless old cables you threw away because you didn't have the time to untangle and pack them? Recall that odd-looking black thingy caught up in the middle of it all? Well, that's the controller for your 4.1 channel speaker system. Yes, the good one, the one you carefully packed and moved all the other parts for, the one that won't work at all without that controller.

Where is it? Well, it's in a white plastic bag. Which is in a black plastic bag. Which is in the garage, along with 17 other identical black plastic bags. Which the nice men are going to take away tomorrow afternoon.

Oh. Oops.

That will make for a fun start to your day, won't it?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:31 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Monday, July 18

Life

Now Blogging From An All-New Undisclosed Location

The move was a mitigated disaster (the movers did a very good job, but I wasn't ready in time), but at least it happened, and I am now up and running - ish - from Pixy Central Mk II.

I'll be busy for the next few days (now I have to go back to the old place to clean it...) but after that it's all MuNu all the time, excepting short breaks for my day job and sleep.

P.S. I'm still on dialup. Dialup, Pixy says, is slow, really slow. You won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindboggling slow it is. You may think it's slow when you've gone over your monthly download limit, but that's just peanuts to dialup.

P.P.S. Multi-purpose appliances are great until they break. If you have, just by way of an example, a combined washer/dryer, it's really good because you can put dirty clothes in, turn it on, and come back later to find them clean and dry. But if it breaks down, you end up hand-washing everything and then hanging it up to dry in the bathroom.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:08 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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