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"Faisal Shahzad's Motive Shrouded in Mystery," … It must be terribly frustrating to the jihadis: we're completely upfront about our goals and rationales, and they still don't take us seriously. What do we have to do?
More here
Pithy commentary from my colleague Roland McGrath, regarding placing complexity into debugging tools vs. penalizing everything else.
[14:57:49]yeah, well, we’re silly. we let the compiler people make the right optimization decisions and then don’t degrade them to make writing debugging tools easier but instead work on making debugging tools work with optimal code. solaris is big on hyping how fabulous their debugging tools are because they quietly constrain them to working in the easy cases by degrading the compilations.
Here in southwest Ontario this afternoon, there was an unusual weather pattern. Looking straight up, one could see clouds moving in opposite directions. It was like an animation in a planetarium (remember those?): standing still, but the whole upper hemisphere rapidly shifting/rolling, with some smaller foreground objects moving in other directions. This is the first time I noticed this in a natural steady-state setting.
This METAR from nearby Hamilton says part of the story:
CYHM 071900Z 02009KT 4SM -SHRA BR FEW015 BKN047 OVC070 09/08 A2991 RMK CF2SC5AC2 SLP134
So at the ground level, we had a mild northeast breeze (from 020 degrees at 9 knots) carrying a few clouds at 1500 feet.
The next solid overcast cloud layer was at 7000 feet. The METAR doesn’t show the movement, but the upper winds forecast does:
STN YYZ 3000 6000 9000 12000 18000
FDCN01 1005 2008+04 2425+01 2446-03 2553-14
So at 6000 and especially 9000 feet, a wicket southwesterly wind blew (200 degrees at 7 knots, then 240 degrees at 25 knots).
Approximately half of my handful of readers may remember a certain event about, oh, fifteen years ago. June 7, 1995 to be exact.
Here is the University of Toronto Police’s take on the matter:
June 7 9:15am While working as a cashier for convocation ceremonies, the victim received a note from a man stating he was robbing her. A man was apprehended a short time later. Investigation revealed this was meant to be a prank. Criminal charges are pending. Ref. # 95-940-0001-027
I love the police and authorities of all sorts, honest, but that description does not do justice to what really happened.
It was graduation day for my engineering bachelor’s degree, along with perhaps a thousand others. The students gathered in the Hart House building for the compulsory fitting & rental of a ceremonial ‘gown & hood’. These wonders of clothing decorate the soon-to-be-departing bachelors of whatever. Considering the nature of engineering students, and the lengthy rental queues, some rowdiness was bound to occur. My initial contribution to this was subdued. I wore a pair of sunglasses and a very fine red beret. While by that time my brief time with the Canadian Armed Forces had concluded, this piece of paraphernalia accompanied me to other endeavours. It stood out like a sore thumb, which at the time seemed about appropriate.
The lines grew long, and the three artsie™ cashiers were making such slow, so slow, so dreadfully slow progress that some other sort of entertainment became necessary. I started humming tunes, thinking back upon the music of my youthier youth. By the time I got to the cash machines, Boney M. was firmly stuck in my head. By lucky (?) coincidence, their song Ma Baker has just gone around my mental jukebox, and I was in the mood for fun. So I quickly transcribed the first few lines of the lyrics onto the back of the ‘gown & hood’ rental form, the front of which was already dutifully filled out with my name, address, bank account numbers, location and nature of bodily tattoos, signed disclaimer of liability in case of allergic reaction, and one really awful UofT logo. Actually, Juimiin and I had for some reason swapped cards, so I ended up handing in her card with the lyrics, and she mine.
I handed it over, with a grin and with $80 to cover the fees. The cashier gave me $15 change, leaving some $40 to be returned later as a security deposit. Regarding those $40, I winked and said “I’ll be back for the rest later.” With the required uniform now in hand, I rejoined my classmates and had a generally boring time for the next ninety minutes, until it was our turn to join the people-snake our way into Convocation Hall for the ceremony
A few minutes into this snaking, two of Toronto’s Finest tapped my elbow (successfully sneaking up behind me), and asked me to come with them. They delivered me into the rear of their cruiser. She was picked out of the line the same way, after being identified / ratted-out by a certain friend.
The next half hour is kind of a blur. One of the police dudes asked me to admit that I indeed “passed a note”. Not being appropriately educated, I did, and gave identification etc. I believe I was told that I was being “held for questioning”. I removed my sunglasses and lovely beret. Then I was locked in the back, in the searing heat, with no air conditioning. Every now and then, the cop came back, asked something inconsequential, then went back inside the Hart House, presumably to talk with the victim. At one point the cop explained that the cashier was in tears, afraid for her life, or something like that. I produced plenty of humiliating apologies. Eventually, he let me go to join my graduating class.
The whole time I was in the police car, Juimiin (being an accomplice or at least associate), was yakking it up with a lady police officer on the nice shady sidewalk. They were exchanging jokes, notes about working conditions, and about police exercise regimen. (It now occurs to me that Juimiin may have been subtly interrogated by this lady cop with this casual discussion, in which case bravo!) Sympathy for me, there was none. Juimiin in fact blamed my capture on my wink, and my beret, neither of which was or is a central feature of my character. My parents were of course furious.
In case you were wondering, the rest of the ceremony was utterly uneventful. There was never a follow-up from police or anyone else. A few years later I applied for and received a restricted-firearms license, meaning that my hideous offence did not even warrant an administrative delay to legal handgun possession. In Canada! The red beret was bequeathed to my old IBM colleague Ted Wewiora some years later. I hope it served him at least as well.
The saddest part of the whole affair is to imagine it from the point of view of the cashier girl. Me, a thin weakling of an engineer wearing a goofy hat, rents a ‘gown & hood’, and leaves behind a note with his name, address, $80, and a block of text that might be interpreted either as a threat, or as homage to bad disco music from the 70s. We know what she chose — but what a conflicted jumble of logic that must have been.
The markers are ten minutes apart, representing just under nine hours of solid driving. Someone must really like it.
During last night’s return flight from KCMH, there was a brief air-traffic-control “teaching moment”.
We were just hanging a left on taxiway C (charlie) onto C5, down in the southwest corner of the airport. We were preparing to take off on runway 10R (the lower of the two parallel runways). There was also traffic using 10L (the upper one). The weather was great clear VFR, but all the nearby traffic was under IFR control.
Before long, we were cleared for take-off, with an instruction that after take-off, we were to turn directly toward to the first waypoint on our route home, APE (Appleton VOR). I read that back, spelling out that this would be a left turn (since it was to the left of the runway heading), and headed for the runway. While I was still rolling on, lining up with the centerline, I heard the tower issue a take-off clearance for a jet on runway 10L.
Do you see the problem? Two airplanes were concurrently cleared for take-off, one without a specific turn instruction, and another with an instruction to turn … right into the other one’s path.
I stomped on the brakes and stopped GXRP. Tower was discussing something with another airplane, but a few seconds later I spoke up on the radio — “CGXRP is holding on 10R, because of the other take-off traffic.”. I think the controller’s mind clicked within a few seconds, must have said ‘oh crap’ to himself, and issued new instructions. “CGXRP cleared for take-off, fly runway heading.”. Once both airplanes were in the sky and getting away from each other he was extra attentive: “CGXRP, maintain visual separation from that traffic, turn left toward APE…”. Problem solved.
Everyone makes mistakes; we need to pay attention to try to catch them. Thus endeth the lesson. Amen.
When you have a sudden back ache possibly caused by muscle spasms due to recent overload, and if your lovely wife offers her weight as an inaccupressure sitting treatment for the region, politely decline. It may save you the debilitating escalation of said pain for the next 16 hours.
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
From this article on the Czech elections:
The Communist Party in this country remains the only one surviving in the former Eastern Bloc and, to its many critics, is a dangerous anachronism. The Communists still extol Lenin and Marx, and advocate the redistribution of wealth and the country's disengagement from NATO, making the party a potential spoiler for good relations with the rest of Europe and the United States.
Whoa there, what does it say in the middle of the list of offensive characteristics of the communist party? “advocate the redistribution of wealth” OK, so how come so many american politicians get a free pass for doing the same thing? And don’t you dare call them socialist or communist or anything. It’s for the best, you understand.
Always trying to help, but remaining invincibly ignorant about the wisdom of the market, observe multiple instances of a government in spasm trying to take over private industry, and imposing a pricing model by fiat.
Example 1: ontario aims to put physicians on salary
Having smothered the market in health services with monopsony, the same kind of “single payer” monopoly that US leftists are trying to impose there, the government is shocked that money still somehow plays a part. The doctors don’t work for free! Those who don’t get paid enough can go to competing jurisdictions. Hospitals cost money to run! Patients who can have “free” health care want, shock, an infinite amount of it! To the educated highly-self-regarded class in the political elites, how much of this can possibly be unexpected?
Example 2: ontario full-day kindergarten threatens daycares
The ontario government, in a deal with its teacher unions, has decreed that it will not compete with current providers of daycare / preschool / kindergarten facilities. It will simply mandate that the new taxpayer-funded full-day kindergarten program (ages 4/5) shall be provided entirely in the public school system; and that kids are not to go to private before/after-school programs either. In other words, it’s nationalization of this segment of the education service sector, but without the decency to buy out of the current providers who are statutorily precluded from competing. By the way, with civil service unions in full control of the public education system, would you
Example 3: Toronto’s golden greenbelt opportunity: Fletcher
The Ontario Green Belt is a region where by government fiat, private farmland is no longer convertible to future development. This is to control the horrors of “urban sprawl”, where some healthy cities get bigger. This is a distortion of the real estate market: the farmers could formerly use their land as collateral for larger loans, because they anticipated a development sale a decade or two hence. With the “green belt”, their land value has dropped, since the land was in a way pseudo-nationalized too. In the same chicken-shit way as with kindergartens, of course no compensation was paid to those affected by this taking. And yet, in the linked article above, we have that intellectual giant, former (?) communist Paula Fletcher, arguing that there is “no cost” to applying “green belt” restrictions to other new areas. The “no cost” she is bragging about is that same expropriation-without-compensation trick that some governments are so fond of. But people certainly pay.
Example 4: ontario ends rebates to pharmacies
Over time, the ontario government reduces the price it is willing to pay for medicines for the provincial “free” health care system. Over the years, the pharmacies and drugmakers have found ways to counteract the market distortions by finding other ways to maintain profits, via indirect means of markups and rebates. Now ontario is about to declare illegal such arrangements, and by the way, to cut the health care system’s drug payment rates again. The pharmacies / drug-makers are howling of course, making a lot of their income suddenly illegal. Hm, do you think they were paid compensation for this particular pseudo-nationalization by regulation? Surely I jest — no, suck it up, suckers, says the province.
The commonality to these is that private property, perfectly ordinary private contracts, are casually devalued or destroyed by governmental acts, where there is no constitutional restraint placed upon them. In the case here in ontario, there seems to be no effective recourse to the law even when expropriation is blatant. The effect is a metastasizing government, fed by tax money, spewing more spending, standing on the throats of the people engaged in private enterprise. But it’s all for the public good, you see….
This cannot go on too long before the productive population does a california and leaves. I wonder how bad things have to be for people to pull a John Galt shrug. I’m sure the lefties in charge of tightening the vise are wondering the same thing. Perhaps the world financial debt crisis will explode soon enough to provide an answer.