Fake News Manual

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I just finished reading Umberto Eco’s Numero Zero, his last book, which was published in 2015. If his name is not familiar you may remember hearing about his first novel, The Name of the Rose, which was made into a movie of the same name starring Sean Connery.

The book is a historical novel and not Eco’s best work. The point of interest here is Chapter 5, in which the narrator (a fake newspaper editor) explains to his editorial staff “… how it’s possible to respect, or appear to respect, one fundamental principle of democratic journalism, which is separating fact from opinion.”

He goes on to explain that, by quoting someone else the journalist can introduce opinion into an article:

These statements, once put in quotes, become facts — in other words, it’s a … Continue reading →

I can get two months free.

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Wait, I have to pay $55 to get that free. See this is a deal because instead of getting 12 months for about $40 (old deal), I can get 14 months for $55. Sure it is more expensive but I get TWO FREE MONTHS.

The e-mail told me what a wonderful customer I was.  They even used my first name. Soon I will be invited over for lunch, right? I wonder if that lunch will be free.

 

Brinksmanship

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I am watching the Democrats and their prom date, McCain tut tutting about the President’s warning to the Korean Punk.

We tried the obsequiousness, we tried bribery and we get our current situation.

Time to lay it out there. They launch a missile roughly in our direction, we lay waste to the place.  No wait and see, no game playing, just dirt turned to glass where a country used to be.

Believe it or not, that was our national policy with the USSR for decades.  It worked.  They knew if they fired a missile in our direction it would be a very bad idea.

Trump just brought back the only strategic approach that works, the willingness to kill millions if they fire at you.

The N Koreans should have … Continue reading →

Remiss in my Doodie

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Sorry for the difficulty, folks.  I think I have it beat.  The nice thing about a database connection error is that it points to the likely locus of the problem.  Once it became a more permanent error than intermittent, it helped narrow down the likely causes.  Also, I dusted off some old skills and dug into the thing.

Seems we’re up.

The Engineer Speaks

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What follows is an anti-diversity manifesto from an engineer at Google.  This guy will be fired, and then should run for public office.

NOTE: I drafted this when the news broke, on about 05 AUG.  It needs re-formatting which I was halfway through when I was pulled away for a while on family business.  More on this later.

Reply to public response and misrepresentation

I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes. When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population level differences in distributions. If we can’t have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem. Psychological safety is built on mutual respect and acceptance, but unfortunately our … Continue reading →

LED the Lighter Side

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IMG_3738I had four four foot 40W fluorescents fail. They were sporadic and took time to give up the glow. I finally changed to four foot LED light bars. Think 4 white light sabers stuck on the ceiling. They are suppose to last 40,000 hours. They might outlast us all.

Recently at Chez 10, I have a round LED blob on the ceiling. That comes with a remote control that dims and has a timer to turn it off and to turn it on. I can change the color some two.

For those not living in the backwoods of Pencilvania, do you have LEDs? … Continue reading →

Blog Lives Matter

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Thank you for the reports of blog issues.  As far as I know, there were a couple of instances of weird page loads and “database connection” error messages.  I suspect these were caused by server reboots or sommat at the host.  I don’t see any strangeness about right now.

Even in small outfits, there are multiple servers to divide the workload not only work load balancing, but for segregation of roles (enhances manageability, security, scalability).  These servers need to be synced to deliver the final product.  When emergent maintenance (or poorly sequenced planned maintenance) disrupts the cooperation of these servers, the send error message back and forth.

You can only receive an error message from a server you can reach.  Assume that when your request for a page … Continue reading →

Two Cheers for the Patriarchy

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OK, maybe three cheers. I came across this article published in Foreign Policy about ten years ago. Surprisingly for this rag, the article promotes the patriarchy:

Throughout the broad sweep of human history, there are many examples of people, or classes of people, who chose to avoid the costs of parenthood. Indeed, falling fertility is a recurring tendency of human civilization. Why then did humans not become extinct long ago? The short answer is patriarchy.

…

Through a process of cultural evolution, societies that adopted this particular social system — which involves far more than simple male domination — maximized their population and therefore their power, whereas those that didn’t were either overrun or absorbed. This cycle in human history may be obnoxious to the enlightened, but … Continue reading →