As the media and political world continue to occupy themselves with the Republican horse race, the elected representatives of both the Republican and Democratic parties are quietly continuing to spend the nation deeper into the debt abyss. While the amusingly misnamed Budget Control Act of 2011 was supposed to settle the debt-ceiling discussion until after the presidential election this November by increasing the amount of permissible debt by at least $2.1 trillion – a mere 14 percent of American GDP – the speed at which the Congress and the administration have been whipping out the government credit card means that there is a reasonable chance that they will burn through that additional debt in barely one year.
Author: VD
RIP Joe Paterno
Thus endeth the saga:
Joseph Vincent Paterno, the winningest coach in Division I football history — a title that will likely endure given the transient nature of today’s relationships between school and coach — was 85. His death came two months after it was revealed he was being treated for lung cancer.
It is to be regretted that a sick old man spent his last three months living in public shame due to a single moral failure of the sort that many, if not most, men in similar positions of authority have made on one or more occasions. If overlooking the transgressions of a colleague is to be considered tantamount to committing the transgression itself, every single member of the police forces across the country should be in jail, if this is the yardstick applied.
On the other hand, the sad last chapter to Paterno’s life is an object lesson that one mistake, of the wrong kind and at the wrong time, is all that it takes to ruin a reputation built up over decades. Barack Obama, no great thinker he, once said that his daughters shouldn’t be “punished” for the rest of their lives for making a single mistake. Setting aside the dubious assertion of whether or not having children is a punishment, many lives are altered in the blink of an eye by a single mistake. Simply failing to look both ways before crossing the road can end a life and affect a dozen others, just to give one example.
So, it’s fair to remember that Joe Paterno wasn’t a saint. But it is not right to pretend that he was some sort of monster, rather than a decent and much-loved man who once failed to live up to his ideals at precisely the wrong time and place.
Conference Championship Day
It seems astonishing that it was only two years ago that the Vikings were going into the Superdome and I was reasonably confident that they would walk out having taken another step towards for a very winnable Super Bowl. We all know how that ended up, thanks to the usual voodoo.
In the AFC game, I think the Patriots will beat the Ravens without too much trouble. Although they’re playing well, the Ravens defense is getting older, they don’t match up well with Hernandez and Gronkowski, and Belichick+Brady > Harbaugh+Flacco. I thought Houston actually looked like the better team last week and likely would have won without that dreadful decision by Jacoby Jones to try to field a punt better left untouched.
On the NFC side, it feels like the 1980s again. But the 49ers don’t have Montana or Young and I think the Giants will beat the 49ers in a more competitive game than the AFC championship. The 49ers defense is fearsome and hard-hitting, but the Giants offense isn’t a high-precision machine and won’t be disrupted as easily. He may look stupid, but Eli Manning’s apparent inability to recognize pressure becomes a big plus in the playoffs. He takes Barry Sanders’s “act like you’ve been there before” philosophy to new heights; when everyone else is celebrating a big, timely touchdown, he’s looking as if he’s wondering what the fuss is all about.
And looking at it from the conspiratorial angle, you have to think that the league would love to push the REVENGE angle with a Patriots-Giants Super Bowl. It was pretty obvious that the Packers were supposed to make it, but their meltdown was so complete that not even blatant assistance from the referees made any difference.
Last week 3-1. For the playoffs, 6-2.
UPDATE: Make that 8-2.
Too much engineering
I suppose I may be overdoing the B3 a little. A military helicopter passed by in front of me today and my immediate reaction was to slide sideways towards the brick wall of the nearby building. My first conscious thought was to try to remember if my loadout was SMAW or Stinger.
My second thought was that I should probably get back to playing recon….
A portrait in godless courage
Unsurprisingly, British atheists are discovering that snark and striking a superior pose happens to be less effective against some religions than others:
A student Muslim group is demanding the ‘offensive’ image of Jesus and Mo having a drink at the bar, taken from an online satirical sketch, be removed from the social networking site. The president of the Atheist, Secularist and Humanist society at the prestigious University College London (UCL), Robbie Yellon, has stepped down over the controversy….
Secretary for the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies, Michael Paynter,said: ‘Robbie stepped aside because he signed up as president to organise events and run a student society.
‘He did not appreciate the stress he would be under when dealing with a controversy like this, so he wanted to make way for someone else.’
I’ll bet he didn’t. It would appear that being an antagonistic little prick isn’t quite as much fun when the targets are inclined to hit back with vigor. I wonder how long it will take before the more intelligent European atheists begin taking the long view and arguing on behalf of re-establishing Christendom. By now, it must be fairly clear to even the most optimistic atheist that the shiny secular scientific society of their dreams isn’t in the cards and they have leaped from the frying pan into the fire.
Christians may not always succeed in loving their enemies, but they have been remarkably tolerant by historical standards. Now the atheists of the West are beginning to discover what real intolerance looks like.
The evil of Apple
The technocancer is metastasizing post-Jobs:
I have never seen a EULA as mind-bogglingly greedy and evil as Apple’s EULA for its new ebook authoring program. Dan Wineman calls it “unprecedented audacity” on Apple’s part. For people like me, who write and sell books, access to multiple markets is essential. But that’s prohibited:
“Apple, in this EULA, is claiming a right not just to its software, but to its software’s output. It’s akin to Microsoft trying to restrict what people can do with Word documents, or Adobe declaring that if you use Photoshop to export a JPEG, you can’t freely sell it to Getty. As far as I know, in the consumer software industry, this practice is unprecedented.”
Exactly: Imagine if Microsoft said you had to pay them 30% of your speaking fees if you used a PowerPoint deck in a speech.
I’ve downloaded the software and had a chance to skim the EULA. Much of it is boilerplate, but I’ve read and re-read Section 2B, and it does indeed go far beyond any license agreement I’ve ever seen:
“B. Distribution of your Work. As a condition of this License and provided you are in compliance with its terms, your Work may be distributed as follows:
(i) if your Work is provided for free (at no charge), you may distribute the Work by any available means;
(ii) if your Work is provided for a fee (including as part of any subscription-based product or service), you may only distribute the Work through Apple and such distribution is subject to the following limitations and conditions: (a) you will be required to enter into a separate written agreement with Apple (or an Apple affiliate or subsidiary) before any commercial distribution of your Work may take place; and (b) Apple may determine for any reason and in its sole discretion not to select your Work for distribution.”And then the next paragraph is bold-faced, just so you don’t miss it:
“Apple will not be responsible for any costs, expenses, damages, losses (including without limitation lost business opportunities or lost profits) or other liabilities you may incur as a result of your use of this Apple Software, including without limitation the fact that your Work may not be selected for distribution by Apple.”
The nightmare scenario under this agreement? You create a great work of staggering literary genius that you think you can sell for 5 or 10 bucks per copy. You craft it carefully in iBooks Author. You submit it to Apple. They reject it. Under this license agreement, you are out of luck. They won’t sell it, and you can’t legally sell it elsewhere. You can give it away, but you can’t sell it.
Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you. This isn’t so much a walled garden as a concentration camp for the creative. When your actions are being compared disfavorably with Microsoft’s, then the dot is a line to you.
If they fail biology, it’s probably my fault
“Daddy, what animal are you most scared of?”
“The platypus.”
“The platypus? I thought you were scared of meerkats.”
“Everyone is scared of meerkats.”
“They are? But they’re so cute!”
“That’s just what the meerkats want you to think. They don’t call them the Piranha of the Serengeti for nothing, you know. Even lions are scared of them. They can strip a grown lion to bones in just two minutes.”
“I bet meerkats would be scared of the real piranha, though, in the rivers.”
“Sure. On the land, the meerkats would win. In the water, the piranha would. But the platypus would beat them both, by land, sea, or air.”
“PLATYPUS CAN FLY?”
“Sure, that’s why they’re so scary. They have little jets in their hind legs.”
“But they’re so fat!”
“It’s all muscle.”
Shutting them down
The US government takes down Megaupload at the behest of the RIAA, so Anonymous is striking back:
Update: Anonymous says they’ve also knocked off the RIAA’s site—looks down for us at the moment as well.
Update 2: Universal Music Group has also fallen off an e-cliff.
Update 3: Goodbye for now, MPAA.org.
Update 4: Affected sites are bouncing in and out of life, and are at the very least super slow to load. Anon agents are currently trying to coordinate their DDoS attacks in the same direction via IRC.
Update 5: The US Copyright Office joins the list.
It should make for some interesting reading when all the personal information concerning the various RIAA lobbyists ends up being released.
Perry is out
Santorum, Gingrich presumably to follow post-South Carolina….
Vibrancy in the USA
Immigrants are helpfully supplying the beheadings Americans won’t do:
Three beheadings in two different states and they happened here in the United States, not Mexico. Former DEA supervisor Phil Jordan says all three beheadings have cartel written all over them. They happened in Arizona and Oklahoma in the past year. A murder mystery is now unraveling on a stretch of North Reservation Road in Tucson, Ariz. County workers found a headless man lying on the side of the road Jan. 6. The man’s hands and feet were reportedly missing, too.
Of course, there are some fantastic Mexican restaurants now in downtown Iowa, so one has to keep that in mind when considering the cost-benefit balance of immigration. You can’t expect great burritos without a few beheadings. Besides, they’re mostly beheading each other anyhow, right? No harm, no foul.