Chaos Manor Home Page > View Home Page > Current Mail Page > Chaos Manor Reviews Home Page THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR View 462 April 16 - 22, 2007 |
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This week: | Monday,
April 16, 2007
We have a two day reprieve... I have to finish my taxes today. We have two important letters in mail for today. They follow Harry Erwin's (hardly unimportant) letter from England and Spain. Please have a look. ======== Rush Limbaugh, the Constitution is damned clear on Senators and Members of Congress having the right to say what they damned well please in Congress. Live with it. I understand your frustration with the media, but this principle is important. ======= The pages SCIENCE.HTML and REPORTS.HTML summarize some of the interesting stuff. There's more and other, and I need to organize things so it's easier to find. ========= The Imus affair is pretty silly. A man at CBS signs a contract with Imus for $50 million to keep him on for five more years. Then Jackson and Sharpton, become the arbiters of good taste, and the same officials decide to fire Imus. All within their rights, but I suspect it will be an expensive decision for CBS. So it goes.
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This week: | Tuesday, April
17, 2007
As you can see, I have not got my taxes done. Everything seems more complex this year, and TurboTax has decided to be HELPFUL in places where I don't need it to be. I will get it all done, but it's taken a week I wish I hadn't had to devote to it. I can't think of anything to say about the Virginia Tech situation. I keep hearing that the lesson is that Virginia ought to ban guns. I would think that banning overseas students would make about as much sense, but perhaps I have missed something. The pursuit of utopia has no end. I can't wait to get back to Hell. Meanwhile, there is some pretty good mail today, and a new column is up over at Chaos Manor Reviews. ========
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/obituaries/ - Roland Dobbins =================== At least I am done with the taxes. Wasn't as hard as I thought.
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This week: |
Wednesday,
April 18, 2007 Jamie Bishop, RIP (http://www.michaelbishop-writer.com/) ======== The government is assessing the impact of a
new generation of drugs that are claimed to make people more intelligent. From another conference (posted for information only): The first drug mentioned, Modafinil - Provigil in the US and Modavigil in Australia, an invention of the French Lafon Laboratories - interested me when I first learned of it about eight years ago. I couldn't get hold of it until I finally got an Australian sleep specialist to look it up (not then available on the subsidised Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme even for narcoleptics) and a couple of months later, having already prescribed it for a young mother who obviously needed it badly, he prescribed it for me. It works. If I were still in practice at the Bar, I would probably take a tablet at least once in the morning before an intellectually testing day in court and I often take it if I am feeling a bit sluggish before anything from a tennis game to preparing for my paper battles with the tax office. I remember Frank giving it a negative review some years ago, but the only reason I can't give it an unreserved positive review may be my reluctance to take any drug more often than I have to for ordinary health. JG I am not advising anyone to experiment. ======================== I suspect Derb is getting a ton of hate mail: ==================== Compact Fluorescent lamps: Dr. Pournelle: The mind boggles at this one: $2000 to clean up after a broken compact fluorescent lamp:
http://ellsworthmaine.com/site/index.php? jomath
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This week: |
Thursday,
April 19, 2007
Go to http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dockets/07p0085/07p-0085.htm Find the button that lets you email comments on dockets. Tell them not to allow fake chocolate to be called chocolate. Do that early and often. This is serious. For the full story look here
http://www.latimes.com/news/ I have considerable misgivings about the FDA, and in particular its approval process which forbids doctors to buy and the people to buy drugs that are not "approved" by this regulatory nightmare agency. It's not constitutional. But one thing certainly IS constitutional: the requirement that products in interstate commerce state truthfully what is in the product. I don't think the feds ought to be able to forbid you from buying snake oil. I do insist that if the product says it is genuine snake oil it must contain oil from snakes. Truth in labeling. And allowing them to make something of beef fat and cocoa powder and call that chocolate is nightmarish indeed. Let them sell chocalicious or cocoalicious if they like. But if it says chocolate it ought to BE chocolate! Another Chaos Manor watchdog service...
The California 1916 6th Grade Reader is now available to subscribers. See the Subscriber area at Chaos Manor Reviews. There is other material available there and I will be adding more later this month. ================= We take you now to All Seung All The Time news coverage. When I was in school, my history book said of a presidential assassin "He claimed he wanted his name in the history books. His name is known, but historians have agreed not to grant him that wish." I guess that doesn't happen any more, nor, I suppose, can it.
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This week: |
Friday,
April 20, 2007 Globalization must-read (in The Nation, of all places). http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070430/greider - Roland Dobbins =========== I am looking for one-liners for Inferno: people in the Bolgia of Evil Counselors who want out, and call to a possible rescuer. If you have not read INFERNO (our first book) or the extract that is available to subscribers (go to Chaos Manor Reviews and access the subscriber area) this isn't likely to make any sense. I don't guarantee to use your suggestion, but I will consider all suggestions. I have in fact made a major character out of one candidate for the Evil Counselors bolgia suggested by a reader a few weeks ago. It's raining in LA. Lovely. We love it. ============ Subject: Microsoft Vista USB Update Jerry, Microsoft has released a USB "reliablity" update for Vista. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925528/en-us Dean Peters I will have a good bit to say about VISTA in the column this week (or possibly in the opening column for May). In essence I will be saying Do Not Buy Vista, and DO NOT buy a new machine just now because it will have VISTA. Wait for a Service Pack that has some DRIVERS. VISTA is just too darned much trouble for what you get. Wait for the updates. Keep your present machinery and stay with XP. More over at Chaos Manor Reviews next week or the week after. ======= Your link on how to respond to the FDA is a bit cryptic, I searched and
searched that page (it may have changed some) and failed to find an email
link. However one of the classic chocolate companies that opposes the change
has prepared a link to the right FDA site with simple instructions. HELP? My Vista systems can see one of the XP machines, but cannot access them. Interestingly those machines can access the Vista machines. I think we went through this crud once before. I have no idea what to do here. I recall there was some odd setting in my XP system that I had to change, but I don't know what it was -- worse, I didn't do it in some of the machines the Vista systems can see. The Vista systems can see Wendy but cannot access; and the error message is that it's an uncorrectible error. It says it can't ping them. But of course Wendy can connect to the two Vista machines. This is nuts.
I think I really hate Vista: it doesn't know how to network properly at all.
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This week: | Saturday,
April 21, 2007 Now the Vatican is getting rid of Limbo. Fortunately I already know how to deal with that. No rest for the novelist... (and see mail) ======== Jerry Now! In 3D!! The Face on Mars!!! http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070421.html Ed Awwwwww. I am sure Richard Hoagland has an explanation.
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This week: | Sunday,
April 22, 2007 Today was Earth Day. For my sanity I took the day off. It's not that I don't believe in saving the Earth, but I am weary of the madness put forth as science. See you tomorrow.
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