Monthly Archives: May 2017

For our callers abroad, BDB reports that the local dial-in numbers can try to trick you into hanging up by prematurely and erroneously informing you that there are no other callers. Upon your entering the access code, the voice tells you there are no other callers even if there are. Then it asks you for the host code or to just hit #. Do the latter.

US: 515-604-9908

Access Code: [see “BDB Chat” tab above]

International Local Dial-in Numbers Corresponding to 515-604-9908

Albania +355 4 454 1702

Argentina +54 351 569-7183

Australia +61 2 8077 0505

Austria +43 1 2650524

Belgium +32 3 294 11 50

Brazil +55 11 3042-5274

Bulgaria +359 2 495 1701

Cambodia +855 96 696 7824

Chile +56 2 3210 9930

Colombia +57 6 7334210

Costa … Continue reading →

I just bought a new chair. I have gone backless. I am getting a standing desk and this will be the chair I will use with it. Before this I have worked in a typical low back with arm rests office chair and with a high back with arm rests office chair.

I was going to put a picture on this post of the new chair but I hear BDB has a strict policy of no photos of stool samples. (Is this true, MLH?)

What type of office chairs have you used? What chair are you using now? For Pencil, where do you park your eraser?

Continue reading →

Evidently this charming guy lives in my quaint hometown of around 7,000 people, about an hour north of Philadelphia. Yesterday after raucous May Day preening through the streets of the City of Brotherly Love, he and about 30 other Summer of Rage adherents smashed windshields, threw paint and propelled marbles at high speed through the new windows of a three-block section Philly that is being renovated – gentrified – with damage estimated at $100,000.

Happily, eyewitnesses flagged down cops and they caught this fella and a woman fleeing the scene, and arrested them.  Turns out, by police accounts, he is 45 and lives in a house here with … Continue reading →

I attended the services for my older sister last week and during the course of that I saw and interacted with generations of the clan from children to teenage to millennial to geezers and all the points in between.

On the long flight back, I pondered the sharing of perspectives. My nephew, who is fifty but will always be thirteen in my mind, gave a eulogy to my sister, his mother that opened up a view I could grasp but never appreciated. He talked about being raised as the only child of a single mother, struggling with the economics and striving to better their condition. While I knew that, my view of my sister was always from the family we shared growing up, not her struggles as a … Continue reading →

Holy cow, this Mulvaney guy is good.  I’m watching the live WH daily press briefing.  This guy is on the warpath.  If even half of what he says checks out, things are not so bad as they seem.

Regardless, the way that he says it is a refreshing change of pace.  He’s the director of something, and I hope he sticks around.  This guy ought to be giving all of these briefings.

Generally speaking, when someone compels you to give up your money, it is considered illegal and the miscreant is prosecuted by the law. This is true for armed robbery, robbery, burglary, theft, fraud. All are forms of illicit taking of one’s money.

Except the government. When the government takes your money, it is claimed to be a big civic virtue. It is good. It is “healthy” – or “fair”, whatever that terms means. Excuses for taking your money abound. The oldest one is, “?How else would the government be able to do anything.” Indeed, the Articles of Confederation did have one glaring weakness – they lacked any form of the government being able to fund its activity.

The progressive side of the ledger will attempt to argue that … Continue reading →

Sunday was the 4th of the 20 races in F1 this season. It was held in Socchi, Russia, which has turned into quite an athletic locale. It is actively working to host a whole host (?see what I did there) of games and contests, including soccer, basketball – and a world F1.

This is the 3rd year Sochi has been the site of a F1 race. The previous 2 were all Mercedes, with the silver cars holding the front row and Lewis Hamilton winning both races. But the season to date has held promise of new competition and so it was at Sochi.

For the first time since 2006 I believe Ferrari held the front row, Sebastien Vettel qualifying for the pole and his teammate, the Finn Kimi … Continue reading →

I have been reading “Making Habits Breaking Habits” and came across this word. It is making actions automatic. We do this a lot. Half are lives are in automatic or repetitive actions YMMV.

Key things I have learned so far is we are somewhat Pavlovian. We respond to certain locations and situations the same way. We sit in the same pew. We take the same “roads” through life. If you want to break or start things breaking up the routine helps. That “comfy chair” will set you up and you won’t even know it.

We also react to people in automatic ways. We take them for granted and stop listening. (“Not me dear, other people. What were you saying again?”)

This might not be related but do you … Continue reading →

Author Michael Crichton coined the term “Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect”. Crichton named it after his friend the Nobel Prize-winning physicist. Gell-Mann’s name was used to invoke the concept that we all may be experts in particular fields (his being physics).

The amnesia effect is that you read a story in a publication on a subject you know about and find numerous errors. You then turn to the next story (on a subject you know less about) and, forgetting your earlier experience, assume it is any more accurate.

Newsweek has just set a very low bar for the amnesia effect, in an article entitled “USS CARL VINSON ‘CANNOT SHOOT DOWN MISSILES’“.  The writer is a London-based “Asia reporter” with a CV that evidences zero … Continue reading →

Well, here we go again.  We shall sprinkle a few troops about, just enough to get somebody killed.  We’re going to send 300 more Marines to the twice-abandoned Helmand province, because I guess things are different now.  From the execrable Yahoo News aggregation of an AFP story:

“In those days Afghan security forces were tiny and just got started,” Brigadier General Roger Turner told AFP. “With the leadership in place now they… are poised to do much better.”

Well we also had something like 12,000 troops in Afghanistan at one time, and that didn’t seem to help.  Actually, it … Continue reading →