Assuming the existence of some future point when I have more energy, I will explain further why our bedroom is now in a different part of the house, and why my desk is in that room too. The story involves architects, a contractor, vast sums of money, permits, the acquisition and filling of a 10×15 climatically controlled storage space, the expectation of permits, an as-yet-undetermined number of real and proposed septic tanks, vast sums of money, the partial destruction of our kitchen, the Sisyphean expectation of the final permits, and of course random and unpredictable delay.
Meanwhile, however, as we appear to have hit a period of delay until the waveform number of future septic tanks collapses to an integer and either produces a permit or a lawsuit, I have cancelled my plans to cancel my plans to go to England for two weeks of Xmas revel with the in-laws. Rather than stay here and grade exams, I will use my ticket. [Much more than you probably want to know about the dangers of buying air tix online in the extended entry.]
I am not the only person I know who abandons Miami when the weather is at its coolest (ie just warm), driest (ie just a little damp) and most perfect in order to go spend a fortnight in the exciting outskirts of Didsbury, a suburb in the outskirts of Manchester, England, which is a somewhat dark and wet and cold and dark and wet and cold place at this time of year. After all, my wife and children do it too. But they are 50 to 100% British, so they may be genetically predisposed to enjoy four daily hours of what is euphemistically called “sunlight”. (Lest I be suspected of Manchester-bashing, it’s a great town, and often very nice in the summer time.)
I intend to keep adding to the blog while in Didsbury, but as my internet access will be POTS rather than broadband, and metered POTS at that, I may have fewer posts, and they are likely to have much more about England and the rest of the UK than is the normal fare here.
Adventures With Orbitz
At one point in the pre-festivities, at a moment when permits seemed belatedly attainable, I attempted to call British Airways to see if I could delay my departure for a few days, with the rest of the family going on ahead of me. I knew it was a cut-rate ticket [Albeit, not cut-rate enough!], from Orbitz, so I expected some penalty. What I got was much weirder. The man from the BA call center said that his computer didn’t show enough about the ticket for him to even tell me if changes were possible. The travel agent had not released sufficient fare details for them to know the conditions. I would have to call the travel agent direct.
OK. I found a phone number for Orbitz. They passed me around to various desks, and eventually I was told that
So I called back BA. No dice. They can’t see the record, and even if they could they wouldn’t look at it. If you buy from a travel agent, they won’t change the outbound under any circumstances, just the return. Policy. No debate. End of story.
Another example of why we need to bring back shame to politics. (Honor and decency would be better, but shame at least provides a decent simulacrum).
Having admitted he got free work on his home from contractors (bribes? kickbacks?) and from aides (theft of public services? extortion?), and then lied about it (amazingly, the press is clearly more comfortable saying this part was wrong), Connecticut Governor Roland is hanging tough: Rowland Vows to Stay On as Governor. It’s not even his first offense! “Earlier this year, Mr. Rowland paid a State Ethics Commission fine for paying less than market value for vacations at home owned by people who did business with the state.”
That there is as little shame among the political class in New England as there is in California is hardly surprising. What’s interesting is whether the New England public is quite as inured to this as the folks who voted for Schwarzenegger. The NYT story suggests that it might not just blow over: A University of Connecticut poll released this week showed that 55 percent of Connecticut residents thought the governor should resign. Four newspapers called for him to step aside and some lawmakers have even talked about the possibility of impeachment.”
Wouldn’t it be a change to have an impeachment trial about an impeachable offense?
Michael D. Birnhack & Niva Elkin-Koren, The Invisible Handshake: The Reemergence of the State in the Digital Envitonment, 8 Virginia J. of L. & T 6 (2003).
This is the sort of article that crystalizes a lot of things you maybe sorta half-knew or half-understood and puts them all together. It’s about how the state was always there, even in the supposedly liberarian online environment, and how it turned to new gatekeepers and control nodes to remain dominant, taking advantage of the public/private distinction to use ‘private’ means to do things that would be much harder if attempted with ‘public’ tools.
Conventional wisdom will soon converge on the surprising failure of the Saddam capture to produce any long-term move US public opinion. You read it here first (don’t miss the “chopped down Christmas Tree”!).
Peter Deutsch’s classic is reprinted by the always entertaining Risks Digest
Essentially everyone, when they first build a distributed application, makes the following eight assumptions. All prove to be false in the long run and all cause big trouble and painful learning experiences.1. The network is reliable
2. Latency is zero
3. Bandwidth is infinite
4. The network is secure
5. Topology doesn’t change
6. There is one administrator
7. Transport cost is zero
8. The network is homogeneous
Truth hurts. And having unplugged at home from the direct ethernet connection and returned to relying on wireless…from a new desk position that is just at the edge of its range for decent signal strength…let me tell you that latency can get much bigger than zero.
FEC Fines Ashcroft’s Senate Bid For Breach … and ….
Judge Rebukes Ashcroft for Gag Violation. Personally, I think this deserved much more than a slap on the wrist. The AG should be held to the highest standards and ought to set a better example than this.
Please understand: there have been a lot of bad AG’s over the years. Ed Meese. John Mitchell. But there have also been a lot of good ones. We shouldn’t have to settle for this.
Whatever his other peculiarities, William Safire has always been good on privacy — having been wiretapped himself by Nixon he understands how intrusive it is to have the government recording you. Today he shows he’s good on anti-privacy too, that is the freedom of information: Behind Closed Doors. Of course, working in a profession which depends on access to public information may have helped inform this view.
The Bush administration’s position in the Cheney energy task force case is maximalist. If there were a term beyond “extreme” I’d use it. Deciding in its favor would tilt the separation of powers much further towards the White House; deciding against it only preserves the status quo.
Note, however, the actual court of appeal decision is on a narrow ground of standing, not the merits, suggesting that this need not necessarily be anything more than another step in what’s proving to be an effective delaying tactic. Alas, the dissent relies on a fire-breathing version of separation of powers which, were the Supreme Court to adopt it, would not only gut the Federal Advisory Committee Act, but would take us another step towards a Royalist model of government.
See also John Dean (yes, that John Dean), GAO’s Final Energy Task Force Report Reveals that the Vice President Made A False Statement to Congress