Category Archives: eMedia

Government-Managed Media Nothing New

By | | , , , , ,
Leave a comment

What bothers me is not that “clean-room” procedures will actually be followed, since they are claimed. What bothers me is the justification for “early access” to begin with:

“For years, journalists participating in the lockups have shown up at DOL at the appointed time, then entered a limited-access area to receive the new data and prepare news stories for release as soon as official embargoes end.

The system insures that major news organizations get the data as soon as possible and allows journalists covering the release get a jump on providing analyses and opinion about the data.”

—Washington Examiner, 13 April 2012

Why do they need “a jump” on anything? This is as hostile to the general public as the infamous Japanese Press Club. Let them find … Continue reading →

O Glorious Workaround!

By | | , , , ,
Leave a comment

This blog seems to be up and running again!  Links are working!  Everything is working.

One of the valuable things I am taking from ITIL training is the confidence to STOP tinkering with things.  I have developed a workaround for this issue: category links were not working, and now they are.  Now it has cost me my preferred URL style, but that;s fine.  That;s not my problem, although “problem” is the key word.

In ITIL, Incident Management is exclusively focused on restoring a service, whereas Problem Management is focused on understanding root causes and preventing repeated or similar occurrences through permanent changes (or deciding that the changes are not worth it).

I have done the Incident Management portion of this, and I figure that the problem management portion … Continue reading →

Little Gramscian Monkeys

By | | , , ,
2 Comments

Get yourself a cup of coffee. The time has come to speak of LGF.

For those who do not know, Little Green Footballs (LGF) is a forum blog run by Charles Johnson, and which was influential and well-respected in its day.  I enjoyed my time there greatly, but I’ve never been able to get right with what Charles Johnson did to a user named “Dianna”.[1]  She’s one of the nicest people one could hope to befriend online, who did him no harm or even insult. Oh sure, Zombie went over the line at times and God knows BabbaZee lived over the line and only occasionally wandered back on this side of it. But when BabbaZee was right, she was right, and she knew about totalitarian control structures. On the … Continue reading →

Best Spam Ever

By | | , , , ,
Leave a comment

Somebody has taken blog comment spam to the next level.  Somehow, this comment made it past Akismet (the Cloverfield monster of blog spam defenders):

Whenever I read one of your posts, my balls get even bigger.

Naturally, the comment was accompanied by a link to a commercial site, in this case a page on the highly suspect site “Evaporative Humidifier Reviews“, which I am going to simply link here and wish the guy good luck.  If all spam were this funny, the web would be a different place.  I hope you get lot of hits, dude.

Respect for Huma

By | | , , ,
Leave a comment

I am disappointed in some of the comments I see about Huma Abedin, wife of disgraced classless jerk Anthony Weiner.

Anthony Weiner mixed up his personal and professional lives, and did so in a really offensive way. The original actions are outrageous, and his subsequent actions even more so.

Huma on the other hand, has done nothing of the sort. I’d like to know how taking cheap shots at her at this point is anything other than yet another example of attacking a pretty woman with whom one disagrees.  She’s pretty and there’s a media firestorm in her house, so I understand the interest.  But not the vitriol.

She seems to be the only person on the democrat side who hasn’t made a hash of this.  There was … Continue reading →

Reading Graphs

By | | , ,
Leave a comment

There’s a blog, Political Calculations, which is immensely satisfying to a highly political data junkie such as myself.  So it’s a good blog, but the proprietor really hoses his interpretation of this graph:

[government spending] has literally “gone vertical” during the last two years.
In mathematical terms, that’s the sort of thing you see when you divide any number by zero. Applied to the chart above, that means that the relationship between the change in total government spending and the typical income earned by an American household from year-to-year is now “undefined.”

The problem is that this is a bivariate graph, and the concept of slope in terms of dy over dx does not apply.  More precisely, it has little meaning, and manifestly … Continue reading →

New Apple Technology Stops iPhones From Filming Live Events – FoxNews.com

By | | , ,
Leave a comment

Well, Apple, I certainly hope that the purpose of this patent is to lock away the technology.  Hint, hint.

A patent application filed by Apple, and obtained by the Times, reveals how the software would work. If a person were to hold up their iPhone, the device would trigger the attention of infra-red sensors installed at the venue. These sensors would then instruct the iPhone to disable its camera.

via New Apple Technology Stops iPhones From Filming Live Events – FoxNews.com.

Stunning and obvious potential for abuse.  Why not surreptitiously install the infrared things wherever a well-connected entity feels like ensuring no evidence exists?  And don’t bother me about the whole world not being exclusively on iPhones.  Once something like this is functioning and legal, it’s everywhere.

… Continue reading →

Robert Fisk: The Unbearable Uselessness of Obama

By | | , , , ,
Leave a comment

Infamous columnist Robert Fisk has an interesting piece on the uselessness of Obama:

Amid all these vast and epic events – Yemen itself may yet prove to be the biggest bloodbath of all, while the number of Syria’s “martyrs” have now exceeded the victims of Mubarak’s death squads five months ago – is it any surprise that the frolics of Messrs Netanyahu and Obama appear so irrelevant? Indeed, Obama’s policy towards the Middle East – whatever it is – sometimes appears so muddled that it is scarcely worthy of study

all quotes in this post via Who cares in the Middle East what Obama says? – Robert Fisk, Commentators – The Independent

He is right and wrong.  He rightfully points out that the US position has been … Continue reading →

Legal Note: Feel Free

By | |
Leave a comment

I encourage all re-use of my content ( and specifically authorize publication or syndication for commercial purposes) under the Creative Commons Attribution license, CC-BY.   See the link at the bottom of nearly every post and in the footer of nearly every page for details.

In general, all text published here is my content, unless noted (such as the inclusion of Dr. Sanderson’s complete text in my post “The Arrival of D Major“).

Images are in many cases either Fair Use or of unknown provenance. One of my projects is to ensure that all images are licensed under my name as CC-BY or carry pass-through licensing such as CC-BY, but I have not even begun this.  I therefore make no claim on images, and offer no license.  … Continue reading →