OK, I've created a new Blog which is pretty much gonna take over from this one. The new address is:
  http://home.earthlink.net/~elzorroviejo/blogger.html
As of yet, there isn't very much there, and I don't have commenting turned on yet, but it's coming...it's coming. I also have to edit the template and a buch of other things. It should be ready to rock and roll, though, by sometime late tonight.
 
I will post here once more to let anyone still hanging around that the new site is up and fully ready for business (which is most certainly is not at this moment. But not now; now I have to go do some actual work around here before I go play for an hour or so...Laters....
 
UPDATE! I'm turning off commenting here and moving it to the new blog. I think I'll leave this up for a month or so before I kill it and migrate entirely to the new site. The commenting will be gone by tomorrow morning. (As if anybody cares!)

Disregard that abortive effort below (ie. the second post of October 19, 2002). I left out a couple quotation marks in three of the links and managed, thereby, to totally screw up the post to the point where I can't get in to edit it. That (me being so stupid) really sucks! So, following is what I meant to post the first time.
 
TCS: Tech Central Station - Where Free Markets Meet Technology
 
I stumbled across this site courtesy of another New Joisey Blogger. It is an interesting mix of tech and conservative politics. I feel a little funny recommending it to anyone who happens to stumble across this, but recommend it I do--with the caveat that one has to approach this site with a certain degree of...of...caution, I think, is the word I'm looking for. Don't take their every word as gospel and understand that their agenda might not be the same as yours (or mine, as the case might be.)
 
For example, there is a good article by Brock Yates (my God! I remember Brock Yates writing for Car and Driver back in the 60s when I was in my twenties) about hydrogen fuel cells and their highly suspect future as an automotive fuel source. I don't want to read this kind of stuff except that his facts and his science (to the best of my ability to verify them) are sound. Then there is another article about wind generators and their limitations as an alternative source of electricity. Another of my pet technologies given a severe, and seemingly warranted, downgrade. However, there is, I think, a silver lining in all this: namely that both could eventually contribute significantly so long as sufficient resources are devoted to furthering their technology.
 
There are other articles which I think are plain wrong, and deserve opposition. The thing is that whether I agree or disagree with an article, they all make me think about the science involved, the economics involved and the politics involved. These are not strident polemics from the fringe right. They are pieces by, as far as I can tell, intelligent people who are trying to rationally, and with supporting evidence, advance their agenda. This is not a bad thing, and I recommend TCS to all and sundry.

TCS: Tech Central Station - Where Free Markets Meet Technology
 
I stumbled across this site courtesy of another hydrogen fuel cells and their highly suspect future as an automotive fuel source. I don't want to read this kind of stuff except that his facts and his science (to the best of my ability to verify them) are sound. Then there is another article about No comments:

OK, I've been a baaaad boy in that I haven't posted anything in two weeks! This is supposed to be a daily exercise rather than a "whenever I feel like it" event. Mea Culpa and I'll really, really try to do better in the future. In fact, to try to make partial ammends and to catch up on things I've been doing/thinking, I will try to post a bunch this weekend. (However, I do have to split my writing time between my Blog and my Diaryland site where I'm supposedly posting chapters from the novel I'm working on --and have been working on, on an intermittant basis, for the past 15 years: that works out to about a chapter a year, more or less. I will be happy to supply my diaryland address to anyone who is interested [he said in a blatant attempt to see if anyone is reading this site.])
 
Last weekend, my wife and I went up to the Adirondacks to close the family cabin for the winter. We did not get up there at all this summer, which was a mistake. I get such a feeling of renewal being there that I have to make going up a priority rather than a luxury. The cabin is on the west shore of a medium sized lake, and it is totally surrounded by state parkland. This means that there is no road access to the place. Consequently, there are no modern utilities: no electric, no gas, no plumbing. Cooking is done on a woodstove; heating is by said stove and a big fieldstone fireplace; water comes from a spring which is about 1/2 mile distant by land (a little less by boat); sanitation is rudimentary--an outhouse; finally, light is from a couple Coleman lanterns and some kerosene lamps. When you are in residence here, life truly gets back to basics.
 
We have issues with this place. The biggest issue is that, in 1956, the town hall where the deed was registered burned down. When the town "reconstructed" its records, it screwed up our deed--giving us about 1/10th the land we were supposed to have. My grandfather died soon after this, and neither my uncles nor my father ever noticed the discrepancy until sometime in the early '70s. By then, if we had made waves about it, the state would have probably taken our camp (paying "condemnation" prices-hah!) rather than losing a couple acres of "state park". Now the situation is probably pretty much beyond redemption. The back taxes alone would be enough to put an end to any thought of reclaiming our land unless one of us was lucky enough to hit the lottery: 46 years of back taxes and interest would probably hit 6 figures. *sigh*
 
Other than that little problem, we are going to have to replace the kitchen in the very near future. The kitchen is actually a shed attached to the main cabin. The problems are that the roof leaks, badly, and one of the main floor joists is about 3/4 rotted through. I want to sneak in a little expansion of the room (which is now about 10x10) when we make those repairs. An added 5-6 feet in depth and another 2 feet in width would give us more room to move around and more storage room as well. I'm working on my cousins to bring 'em around. I think we could get away with it with the town without incurring any official notice, but the rest of the family aren't all that confident. We'll see what happens in the next year.
 
I also have a set of plans which I call "the hit the lottery" scenario. It would involve turning the main cabin, which is now 18x28, into one with measurements of 24x40. Obviously, that would require construction permits and official approvals, which would, in turn, require large expenditures in both legal prep and in doing things like making "voluntary" donations to various public institutions (towns, state park commissions, etc.) I don't look for this to happen any time in the near future, but I can dream...
 
OK, enough for now. I have to go work on the great sideboard restoration project for a couple hours. This piece of Victorian furniture has to be in place in our dining room by Thanksgiving. More on this as it progresses.

I was engaged in an exchange of posts in a forum I frequent concerning the state of American schools. (OK, actually it was about teaching things like comparative religion in the public schools to start, but the discussion widened.) The problem we face as a society is that, on the whole, our children are receiving a less than adequate education. For one thing, the way the school year is currently configured, there is simply not enough time to teach our kids what they will need to know to be effective adults. Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that the people who have been advocating year around school schedules are right.
 
Specifically, the school year should consist of three terms, a trimester system, with two 14 week terms and one 15 week term. That leaves 9 weeks of vacation time for school districts to apportion out as they see fit. I could see something like: last week in December and first week in January, two weeks in April, one week in July (over the 4th), three weeks in August and one week in November (over Thanksgiving). That gives schools 43 weeks of instruction time. Take another five to seven days off for national holidays and school professional development days, and actual instruction time ends up at about 42 weeks per year. Currently most states mandate about 180 school days per year. This would raise the total to about 210. That's about a 17% increase in class days and it eliminates the long summer vacation which usually results in the first month of the fall semester being devoted to "refreshing" what was taught the preceding year.
 
I wouldn't want to make this proposal too detailed since I think individual school districts should be allowed latitude to come up with schedules that fit their constituency. Of course, rather than call for a trimester system, the same results could be attained simply by mandating a 210 day school schedule--that's 210 days with kids in the classrooms--then arrange the schedule in whatever manner an individual school board might see fit. However, the trimester system seems to be the most elegant solution.
 
The trimester system could be readily adapted by secondary schools (i.e. high schools). Make each course worth one credit per trimester. Require 60 credits to graduate from high school. Set up a core curriculum of required courses--something on the order of:
English and Literature: 8 credits
Math: 8 credits
History and social sciences: 8 credits
Foriegn (second) Language: 8 credits
Physical science: 8 credits
 
This would leave room for electives and advanced placement courses and would give us people ready to be productive members of society. Anyhow, this is what I've been thinking about this weekend.

Update on deregulation. Seems the interstate trucking industry was deregulated in 1980. Out of the 50 largest interstate trucking firms existing at the time of deregulation, exactly 4 are left today (Source: CNBC interview 9/24 with CEO of Roadway.) That is not what deregulation is supposed to accomplish. Rather than more competition and diversity, we have less. Once again the conservative right was totally and completely wrong in their their approach and execution. And these are the same people who have a lock on access to Bush and who are arguing incessantly for war with Iraq.
 
I don't trust them or their judgement further than I could throw the Washington Monument...

News: When is hacking a crime?
 
OK, I'm not a fan of the creeps out there who spend their feeble, wasted lives trying to do damage to other people's computers and data. I am a fan of people who look for flaws (read bad programming) in software and then force the software makers to fix said flaws. If software makers did not, periodically, have their virtual feet held to the figurative fire, we would be awash in badly designed and badly executed software.
 
Which is why I think the above link should be must reading. Somehow, the "gray hats" of the article must be protected from the corporate and governmental types who would restrict them.
 
Read the article.

Bottomless pit threatens phone industry
 
Well, Stanley, here's another fine mess you've gotten us into. I direct that to those brilliant people who decided that Ma Bell should be broken up and subject to the gentle suasions of a competitive market. What we are risking here is the destruction of what was (and still is, although just barely) the finest telephone system in the world.
 
They say that phone service has gotten cheaper and that innovation has increased. To which I reply that I'm not all that sure that those are good things in this instance. There was a lot to be said for telephone system that works as a regulated utility.
Aside: I might say that the same thing can be said for our airlines. Competition seems to be eliminating all the grace notes of air travel. In other words, it is no longer fun to take a trip (which is probably why all the major airlines are hurting these days. DOH!)
All I can say is that I'm not gonna be real happy when I wake up one day and find that all the pieces of Ma Bell have come back together, albeit in a slightly different configuration, and that this new entity will be basically operating in an unregulated environment. Then do prepare to be liberally and royally screwed while the politicians play catch-up.

Last weekend, from 8:30am Friday morning until 6:00pm Tuesday evening, my wife and I were custodians of our granddaughter. If you haven't noticed by now, as of this coming Saturday I'll have been a grandfather for 8 months. Anyhow, while we loved having our Dulce here with us, we found out why God gives babies to the young--by Tuesday night, we were exhausted!
 
We took her to the Woodbridge Mall on Saturday where we bought me some much needed clothes and her a new car seat. However, the real fun of the trip was watching her reaction to this new experience in her life. She has been to the Bridgewater Commons mall, but that place is not nearly so big and glitzy as Woodbridge: All those shiny things! All those bright lights! All those people!! It was very cool! I loved the way she absorbed all those sights and sounds like a little sponge.
 
Being a grandfather does have its perks, it appears. As long as they are here, I'll take the downside (I ain't getting younger) with at least a little grace...

The stock market is falling again. I'm pretty much sitting on the sidelines watching the train wreck take place these days, but it is still painful. I mean, what are people thinking? There are over 6 billion people on this planet, and the number keeps growing every day. The only way we are going to be able to survive as a species is to utilize all the high tech gizmos we can lay our hands on. That means that the high tech, and related, sectors of the economy should be strong and leading the charge.
 
So, what do we get instead? We get the bejeezus being knocked out of those stocks. Now, unless you are a stock trader, the daily or even yearly fluctuations in price should not mean a great deal to you. What you want out of the economy is for your investment in something today to be worth more than inflation's bite maybe 10 years out. But there is a rub here: when stock prices drop significantly, the perception by many people is that the economy is in trouble. While that perception is often true, in some cases it is a false indicator, and that is the problem today. However, even though the underlying reality militates for a strong economy, the psychology of the market is leading us in the opposite direction. That leads corporate decision makers to start making pessimistic assumptions about the economy, and, thus, they cut back on expansion/purchasing plans. The prophecy of the doom-sayers becomes self-fulfilling.
 
The real danger is that the companies and technology we are going to desperately need in the near future will not be available because we have killed them now.
 
What is that old Chinese curse? "May you live in interesting times."? Yeah, I think that about describes the opening of the new millennium. I just hope we survive these "interesting" times...

OK, the first thing I want to note is that, as I write, I'm listening to "Starman's Neverland" on www.live365.com. This is extremely mellow music. It fits my current mood to a "T". I heartily recommend it to all and sundry.

It has been an eventful couple of days since I last posted. I've been avoiding doing this because, frankly, I knew that I would want to write a lot about what was going through my mind and happening in my life, and I wasn't sure I wanted to commit that much time to my Blog right now. But, I do need to write about some things...so I'll try to get as much in as I can before I have to stop.

CNN.com - Bush to seek approval for action against Iraq - Sep. 18, 2002
 
I'm not even sure we really elected him president. I'm damn sure that we didn't elect him "God". He is asking Congress to abdicate in favor of...himself. This is not a case of Saddam actually attacking anybody: there is just the threat of an attack. But, correct me if I'm wrong, wasn't that the situation that pertained from 1946 until the present vis-a-vis both the former USSR (and now its constituent states) and the U.S.? The whole world has lived with the threat that an unbalanced Russian or American leader could wipe out most life on this planet with the push of a button.
 
I don't like Saddam Hussein one little bit. I think the world would be a better place if he were no longer on it. However, I think that there are better ways to eliminate Saddam than by invading his country with a sizeable military force. Specifically, I'm thinking of a couple Special Forces "A" teams each with a master sniper armed with a .50 caliber sniper rifle. Sooner or later, Saddam is going to be on the reviewing stand for some parade. The .50 caliber sniper rifle is accurate at some 2 miles (plus) range. Hell, the shooter and his team would be two blocks away before the bullet hit...and another two blocks further away before the sound got to the bodyguards.
 
Never take credit for the shot. Speculate like mad about all the potential shooters out there. Solemnly avow that we "would never" stoop to political assassination. Give the boys who did the job just about anything they could ask for...on the Q.T....and then get on with life.
 
That, my friends, is what a real President would do in a situation like this. But, then, the Shrublet is not a real president, I guess, because I certainly don't expect him to do something like this...No, I expect him to try to finish what his daddy couldn't. I expect him to commit the U.S. military to the "cleansing" of Iraq. And I expect us to become hated the world over. I expect the occupying army in Iraq to take constant casualties from a populace who would rather die than see us telling them what kind of government and which leader they should adopt. I see Americans and American corporate Icons around the world becoming "legitimate" targets in certain fundamentalist minds. In effect, I see, with the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Terrorist War against the U.S. picking up a couple notches of intensity.
 
What I don't see is any good coming out of this. And that scares the bejeezus outta me.

News: Windows Media Player 9--no uninstall?
 
Well, once again Redmond, WA's Evil Empire shows its true colors. What were we thinking when we thought breaking the company up would be too draconian. As I see it, the move to make everything an "O/S upgrade" is an attempt to make any future attempt to break up the company undoable. I use Windows Media Player v7.0 for exactly one online music site (The University of Pennsylvania's WXPN's online stream is only available via Media Player v7,) for everything else I use either RealPlayer or WinAmp with the latter being my "preferred" player.
 
The arrogance of Microsoft in forcing their media player on the public should boggle the mind, but, it is almost shrugged off as "business as usual." Call it a vestigial remnent of my youthful rebeliousness, but the more Microsoft tries to dictate how I will "compute", the less likely I am to use their products. I have been threatening to go to Linux (or Mac OS X) for about a year now, this is just one more push in that direction. Oh, btw, for all you who use a Mac O/S or an earlier version of Windows (that is any version other than Me or XP), there will be no Media Player v9 for your O/S's.
 
And the encircling ropes squeeze tighter....

The reason the Haloscan comments weren't working earlier today is that they were being hit with a DOS (Denial Of Service) attack. A DOS attack means that the server in question is being swamped by an overwhelming number of false requests. This means that either some jerk, who missed out on the last 50,000 years or so of Human evolution, is causing this out of the smallness of his being or some bad guy is doing his share to attack the shameless agents of satan. In either event, males who behave like this should end up singing soprano in the boys choir (so as not to be able to pass their obviously flawed genetic material on to another generation). Women who engage in this sort of behavior should be sent to cloistered convents where they can spend the rest of their lives contemplating God (or their navels...whichever); they can be let out immediately after they experience menopause...the whole object of this exercise is to remove that persons genetic contribution to the species gene pool. However, I would make their release conditional on their never having access to a computer or the Internet again in their lifetimes.
 
Of course, denying a person access to a computer from this time forward dooms said person to life as a second class citizen in any computer literate society. Not that a non-computer literate person could not/cannot achieve a position of wealth, power and/or fame in a computer driven society, it is just that that sort of achievement is rapidly becoming extremely difficult. Thus, computer hackers should be sentenced to lives somewhat down the foodchain in our society. Works for me...

Well, this is another fine mess you've gotten us in, Stanley. Which is my way of bringing up the fact that Haloscan is among the missing this morning. Attempts to access their home page, pings and even trace route fail to find them. And that means that their servers must be off line. I hope that this is not a systemic problem... or that Haloscan has quietly expired and shuffled off this mortal coil. Right now, only time will tell. Until it does, however, if you want to say anything to me, you'll have to use Email.

And now a little rant about software:
 
I can't use "Blog This" in Opera. It won't let me. So, I have to use Netscape, but Netscape has suddenly decided not to let my Winamp work. So, I have to have both browsers running if I want both music and "Blog This" operating. I have tried everything I know to fix either/both problems to no avail.
 
This sucks!
 
On another note, three entries prior to this one (oops, I forgot how I have these displaying...the entry I'm looking for is the first entry displayed for 8/31--which makes it the next one as you scroll down...heh, heh), there is a story about how Netscape is losing ground to MSIE. The problem, of course, is that Microsoft so crippled Netscape during the Browser Wars that Netscape could no longer survive as an independent entity. So, it was sold off to AOL, which is no better (in many ways) than Microsoft.
 
AOL has limited options open to it if Netscape is to survive as more than a marginal player in cyberspace. The first thing AOL has to do is make Netscape the default browser for it's online users. The second thing AOL has to do is make Netscape non-commercial. By non-commercial, I mean that Netscape needs to stop being a sales tool. Netscape needs to be a neutral tool for surfing the net.
 
AOL needs to concentrate on making Netscape's underlying code error-free and to dump the Internet malls and product ties that clutter up the Netscape landscape.

CNN.com - 10,000 march against wealth divide - August 31, 2002
 
So, here we are. The totally self absorbed, Me Generation policies of our unelected president seem designed to drive an insurmountable wedge between the US and the poor of the world. This country, which was once a beacon of hope to that same constituency, is now perceived as the prime source of repression and exploitation in the world.
 
And, children, we have nobody to blame but ourselves. As far back as the Club of Rome's report "The Limits to Growth" written in 1972, we have been repeatedly warned that our profligate use of the world's resources would, in the end, come back to haunt us. In a real way, hundreds of millions are beginning to look at the events of 9/11/01 as the opening salvo against a rapacious and unsustainable society. (Aside: I think the men who planned and carried this attack out were/are evil people who were not supporting the above agenda. But that doesn't lessen their ability to claim they were...and thus become martyrs to the "Cause".) G.W. Bush's refusal to attend this conference, and the obstructionist stance of his delegates are both morally reprehensible and acting against the best interests of this country.
 
At times like this, I dispair for my country.

Blair Unsure on Right Iraq Tact
 
AAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!! Where do these people come from? It would be nice if they had a passing acquaintance with the English language! The above headline comes to us courtesy of Netscape's "Top News" feature. Obviously, what the poor being who wrote that headline meant was "tack" (to reverse, change or modify abruptly one's ideas, conduct, or attitude).
 
One would think that some editor would have caught this, but it was probably only run through the spell checker which would have passed "tact" as a perfectly good (albeit inappropriate) word.

Data shows Netscape browser usage down to just 3.4% This link is to a Computerworld article which details the ultimate decline and fall of the once preeminent Netscape browser. Once again, the Evil Empire from Redmond, WA is on the march. However, if we steadfastly refuse to use MSIE except when forced by embedded style sheets (and even then you can foil IE by just copying the URL and then pasting it into your own browser) and if we actively urge others to switch to another browser, then we might, slowly, erode Microsoft's market share...and, incidently, its power.

I still haven't finished the deep *cough-cough* piece I was writing. The more I struggle over it, the more I think that it won't ever be finished. No great loss, I think.
 
OK, because I don't want to be one of those old farts who constantly repeat themselves, telling the same story over and over again ad nauseum, I went back and checked to see what I've written so far about grandparenthood. Having found the one short entry, I know what I can talk about without worry of being repititious. One thing I did find was that I had already mentioned my sweetie's name in an earlier entry. Not that I think I get a lot of traffic, or that said traffic is going to go digging around in archives for out of date tidbits, I'm just a little uncomfortable mentioning the names of kids on the web...so I'm editing that post and my baby will be Dulce from hence forth.
 
All of my children were born when I was in my twenties. I enjoyed them immensely as babies and children, but I hadn't a clue what I was doing. My three kids are like peas in a pod...very close together in age, so I didn't have a lot of time to reflect between the time one finished any particular stage and the time the next one arrived at said stage. Plus I was somewhat involved with myself...doing what it took to provide those kids with the necessary food, clothing, shelter and the fad of the moment.
 
With my Dulce, I have much more of both perspective and knowledge to work with. Consequently, being with her as she begins this journey through life is, in many ways, richer than it was the first time around. Possibly, because I have found myself, lately, thinking more of endings as I move into the fall of my years, being around Dulce makes me think of beginnings--and this is a good thing. It is cool to watch her become absolutely mesmerized by something I hardly give a thought to as she struggles to make sense out of this world. As she does this, I remember again and again that she is doing this totally cold, no road maps, no associative memory hooks, no anything other than what is physically in her head to help her in this task. It is boggling to watch her solve problems. Her current problem is one of movement: she needs to learn how to crawl, but, until we figure out the movement of legs and arms, rolling suffices (unless Granddad is kind enough to put her in a walker thingy...she has figured out that pushing makes her move, but she hasn't quite got direction in hand yet...)
 
But now it is time for lunch: more to come later...

I've been writing a blog entry for about three days now, and it still isn't finished. (It's political in nature...'nuff said.) Rather than wait until that one is finished, I thought I'd comment on my first day as Nanny Granddad.
 
OK, a step back here: For the last three years or so, I've been doing consultant work and day trading out of my home office. Well, the day trading part got hammered bad last year, and the consulting went in the toilet right after 9/11. By this summer, the wolf was starting to prowl around the yard. At my age, going out and finding a "real" job that is actually something I want to do (and that pays what I think I'm worth) is...difficult to say the least. But, something had to happen: the bill collectors aren't known for their sympathy and empathy.
 
My son and his lovely wife were dealing with their own little problem over the summer. Our granddaughter was born last January, and her mom's maternity leave was over in June. Something had to be done with the baby. Well, my wife is a Montessori teacher and, as a teacher, she had the summer off. So, she (we) volunteered to be the baby's primary care over the summer. During that time, the kids were supposed to be looking for either day care or a nanny. Well, the search, for various very legitimate reasons, was not fruitful.
 
The end of the summer was fast approaching, and panic was beginning to set in. So, about two weeks ago, I mentioned that I would be happy to continue taking the baby for the day, but it looked very much like I needed to go out and get like a Home Depot type job to bring in some badly needed cash. Whereupon, the kids put their heads together and came back with a counter offer: they'd pay me to take care of--I'm tired of calling her the baby...let's call her Dulce (sweet) from now on--Dulce. They say that, instead of me trundling out to work in someplace I probably would not like, they would be happy to make up at least some of that income. Well, it works for me. I get to do stuff while she takes her nap(s) and sometimes while she is playing with her "stuff". And I don't have to go work for Home Depot. It's a win/win scenario as far as I'm concerned. And, as soon as I can (because I'm still doing stuff that I hope will result in a rebuilding of the family fortune), we can dispense with their contributing to our welfare.
 
So, I'm going to write about being a grandfatherly Nanny. And my first entry will come tomorrow. Tonight, I have other fish to fry, metaphorically speaking. So, goodnight Blogland.
 
Quick aside: I'm listening to a streaming program over Live365 which is almost like I programmed it myself. The channel is Radio Free Idaho, and it is run by a lady who has the same musical tastes (in this genre) that I do. I highly recommend blogging while listening to a nice streaming audio program. ta-ta...

So, the good news is that it finally rained last night. The bad news is that it was too little, too late. The state has clamped the severe water use restrictions back on. According to the local news rag, we are shy some 18 inches of rain since last August. Over the past four years (48 months), rainfall has been below "normal" in 34 months. Again, according to the local rag, the last time we had a drought this bad was 1964-68. I remember that time. My parents moved to "the country" (OK, Bedminster which my New Jersey readers will point out is not really "country") right in the middle of the drought. This was the first place they had owned where they had to deal with a well, and my father freaked. He had us taking showers where we got wet, turned the water off to lather up, then back on to rinse. It wasn't until the fall of '68 that we got some rain and the family water restrictions were lifted.
 
So, I'm hoping that this rain, and the rain we're supposed to get towards the end of the week, coupled with my liberal use of the soaker hose (very, very water miserly...only uses a teeny bit of water and that goes directly to the roots of the plants,) will save my bushes. The lawn is being left to its own resources: either it comes back or it doesn't. If not, I spend next spring dealing with it. I'm afraid that all that is going to survive is the crabgrass. I don't know how that stuff manages to survive...even thrive... under conditions that are killing virtually everything else that is green.
 
I do think Judy has saved the tomatoes. The first couple had what looked like mold damage, but what we were later told was caused by lack of water, so we have been watering the vegetable garden every night for the past couple weeks. We also got a Miracle Gro feeder and have been feeding the veggies every other week. I think that we will be in produce for the rest of the summer if we can keep this up. As I understand it, the water restrictions do allow for the watering of vegetable gardens.
 
I do feel for the people of Central Europe. This country hasn't seen floods that deadly in...in...well, I don't think in my lifetime; perhaps the Jonestown flood of 1889 or the Galveston Flood of 1900 (Yeah, yeah...hurricane...but most of the loss of life was caused by flooding...so, it counts!). And the damage estimates are in up in the multi-billions of US dollars range.
 
I note that Global Warming doesn't necessarily mean that it gets hotter (although that is a probable outcome). No, all this means is that there is more energy in our system so there are likely to be more severe "weather events". Our drought here on the East Coast of North America and the heavy rains in Europe fit the model very well. As far as I'm concerned, we have been warned. Now the question becomes one of whether we can do anything to mitigate the effect we are having on the environmental control systems of the planet.

Volunteers End Hunt for Va. Girl
 
What is going on? This year has seen a rash of horrible crimes against young females, both here and abroad (I am thinking of those two poor children in England as I write this.) Is it just because the news organizations are getting better at disseminating lurid, sensational news or is it maybe that there are so many more of us these days that things like this are just bound to happen more often?
 
My own take is that there is such a thing as evil in this world, and it does not only take the form of zealots killing innocents for political/religious reasons. We have been lulled, over these past 50 or so years, into thinking that "evil" is a relative term and that there is no such thing as a conscious evil entity trying to subvert our souls. C.S. Lewis had it right when he wrote the Screwtape Letters. There are evil spirits at large who are trying to gain possession of us. And, since we have let down our guards--so to speak--they are finding it easier to subvert people to the point where they are capable of doing these horrible things.
 
Not that this makes much difference in how we, as beings living in this material realm, should react to individuals who perpetrate crimes against children. Anyone who would harm a child has become, in my opinion, anathema and has forfeited any claim to mercy. These people strike at our very future and should, again in my opinion, be permanently removed from this sphere of reality.

Bush Warns Democrats on Spending
 
I love this shit. Instead of listening to his father reminisce about supply-side economics (that's where all the tax cut as a panacea for all troubles bullshit comes from), he should be reading the Peter Principle and start thinking about what it means to be promoted to one's level of incompetency.
 
According to this news report, GWB is blaming the Democrats for the current budget deficit. Seems that the Federal Government is looking at a 165 billion dollar deficit this year, and it is all the Democratic controlled Senate's fault. Seems the Senators have asked for a couple hundred million more than the Administration in areas such as public housing, agricultural research and NOAA. In addition, Bush rejected $5.1 billion in "extra spending I did not ask for." This money was, in part, for airport security and aid for both Israel and the Palestinians.
 
Of course, it is hard to see how this all adds up to the 165 billion the Feds are going to fall short this year. Perhaps it is all those tax cuts George is pushing through for his wealthy friends. Just maybe it was that 1.35 trillion dollar tax cut that he demanded (and got) from a Republican controlled house and a Senate which was too afraid to challenge him.
 
If the Democrats don't take full advantage of this opportunity to wrest control of Congress from the Republicans, and begin the task of making GWB another one-term Bush president, the shame will be on their shoulders.

Cyberspace is cool. It is large and it has all sorts of different environments one can explore. There are a lot of nice people out there, too, but, at the same time, there are an inordinate number of not nice people inhabiting this space. This is because, for the most part, one can be anonymous out here. Look at me, for example: I have no reason for this particular nom de computer other than not wanting to give a potential creep any sort of entré into my life. In personal emails with individuals, I would be happy to include my real name, but I don't leave it lying around out here.

Earlier this week, my primary email address, which ends with @ix.netcom.com was, along with everybody else who has that address to the right of the "@" sign, had problems with my email. (Couldn't receive or send: both POP and SMTP servers were experiencing "problems".) So, I send out an email from a secondary address to all my family and important contacts telling them to use this other address until the problem is corrected. Now, this secondary account is one of my "anonymous" accounts: begins with "ezv". So, my idiot nephew (who is 15) writes back "Do I know you?" ( he hadn't a clue that his old uncle actually had an alias out there.) What was he thinking? I reamed him a new asshole when I got his reply. Don't ever, I told him, reply to an email from somebody you don't know. If nothing else, they'll probably sell your email address to some slimy spam artis. and that is the best outcome you can expect (I sold his address--he should start getting the porn, mortgage refi ads, credit repair ads, work at home ads, that guy from Nigeria within a few days.) I told him that he didn't even want to imagine the worst possible outcome.

I have been stressed recently. Money sucks...or rather, not having any sucks...especially when you had it and then it all went away. And it is my own damn fault. I thought I could play with the big kids on The Street, and, instead, they beat me up and took away my lunch money. So, now, being uncomfortably past the half century mark, I find that I have to go out and *shudder* work again. Not that losing a lot of money wasn't hard work: it was. It consumed my days and nights for the better part of 2 1/2 years. Of course, my real bitch is that, once again, I tried to do something without enough capital. (I've done that before...) If I had started out with about 25% more capital, I'd have survived the learning curve and would still be in the game. But I didn't, and it is not very productive to play the "what if" game...so I won't anymore.

Starting Monday, I put on a suit and go job hunting for at least a couple hours a day. It sucks, but that is what one has to do...

So, today I learned that this looks different between browsers. I use Netscape and Opera as my two primary browsers, and I must say that Opera does not display this site in anywhere near the same manner as Netscape. I also learned how to get stuff that no longer appears on my active posts page here in Free Blogger.

This old dog can learn new tricks, it seems...

I am, among other things, a new (well, six months worth of new) grandparent. Six months ago, I was not at all psychologically ready to be ?Granddad?. Grandfathers were people like my grandfather(s). Namely, men who were slightly older than God and who were somewhat remote personages. Well, I still marvel at how such a young man as myself could arrive at the gates of grandparentdom, but I vow that, having arrived, I will not be this remote, august figure I remember from my youth.

I have much more to say about Dulce, but that will have to wait until later?gotta run right now?

The Politics of Pessimism

For some strange reason, business leaders seem to turn towards the Republicans for political leadership when the empirical evidence of the past century seems to indicate that Republicans are bad for the economy and Democrats are good for it. Virtually every Republican president since, and including, Hoover (Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush and Bush) has managed to make a hash of the national economy. One of the reasons for this economic ineptitude could be that Republicans are basically pessimists who place self-interest above anything else. The American President who really initiated the great tech boom of the last 30 years was John Kennedy. However, as the fruits of the seeds he sowed back in 1960 began to truly burst forth in the latter half of the 1990s, the conservatives, lead by George Bush, began vigorously to attack the idea that this expansion was sustainable. Their efforts have become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and we will not get out from underneath this until we replace our political leaders in Washington.

The Republican record with the economy has not bee a good one. Beginning with Hoover, who presided over the Crash of 1929 and the beginning of the Great Depression of the 1930s, only Eisenhower escaped a strong recession under his leadership. Eisenhower can be seen as an anomaly since he was not a strong Republican: rather, he was primarily a hands-off president who had the economic momentum left over from the industrial expansion of World War II and the continuing needs of the Cold War to prop up the economy. The Nixon/Ford presidency inherited the Vietnam War, but managed to still hash up the economy further. Under their watch we had the first Energy Crisis and the introduction of the term “stag-flation” to the lexicon. Ronald Reagan, in his single-minded pursuit of the destruction of the “Evil Empire” came very close to spending the country into penury. It is not unrelated that, under his watch, the stock market experienced in October of 1987 the worst crash since 1929. It is also indicative that George Bush, after winning an almost bloodless war against Iraq, managed to lose the Presidency because the economy was so bad.

All, with the possible exception of Eisenhower, share one trait in common: they had a very pessimistic view of the national government. The first thing almost every Republican president does upon entering office is announce massive cuts to government spending in all areas except the military. Republican philosophy maintains that individual self-interest must be paramount over public “good”, and that the public interest is best served when wealth in concentrated in a relative few private hands. To this end, they uniformly advocate a regressive tax policy that always benefits the rich to the detriment of the economy as a whole. The Republican penchant for cutting social and basic research spending actually attacks two of the basic pillars of our economy: consumer spending and technological innovation.

The single seminal event in the second half of the 20th Century was President John Kennedy’s call to place a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. When he issued this challenge to the nation, computers were massive machines that were very limited in power. Yet, to get a man to the moon, we needed to develop small, lightweight and very powerful computers to help guide the Apollo capsules to the distant moon and back again. It was this need which gave impetus to the development of printed circuits and, ultimately, the silicon chip. This was the genesis of the computer industry that has been driving our economy for the past twenty years. The investment in the space program has, therefore, returned to our society dividends beyond anyone’s imagination.

The power of the economic engine created by the needs of the space program in the 1960s has been growing in strength over the intervening years. This economic engine often had to contend with contravening economic currents generated by the political actions of Republican presidents and politicians, but, even against these adverse trends, it burst into full (if brief) flower under the Clinton presidency of the 1990s. However, by 1998 the conservatives were strongly attacking the current prosperity as an “unsustainable bubble.” As the Presidential elections of 2000 neared, the volume and intensity of the attacks on the economy grew increasingly shrill. In the end, Bush and the Republicans sold their vision and the seeds of doubt were placed in the collective mind of America. The idea that the economy was in trouble became, in fact, a self-fulfilling prophecy. As a result, the recession, which was initially presented as potentially a “mild” correction, became increasingly severe.

It needs to be understood that the underlying strengths of the technological economic engine are still there. All of the conditions which brought about its rise are still extant. The current recession can be attributed in large part to the pessimism engendered by the Republican presidential campaign and the overly enthusiastic dampening measures taken by the Federal Reserve Board in the period 1999-2000. The climate of pessimism will not abate until we remove the Republicans from control of national policy. The first step will be to elect a Democrat controlled Congress in 2002. The second step will be to make George Bush, like his father, a one-term president. To this end, the Democrats must find a strong national candidate soon, and begin to promote that person on the national political stage. There is one person, though, who should not be considered: Al Gore. He is politically damaged goods who has had his chance and lost.

The Republicans, when installed in the White House, have presided over numerous instances of economic recession/depression. This record of economic failure can be, in large part, attributed to the pessimism inherent in Republican political philosophy. The seeds of the technology fueled economic surge of the last 30 years were sown by President John Kennedy when he challenged the nation to place a man on the moon by the end of the decade of the 1960s. This nascent economic boom burst into brief flower during the latter half of the 1990s, but the Republicans worked tirelessly to undermine this prosperity. We are seeing the results of this effort in our current economy, and we will not be able to truly begin to repair the damage done until we replace the Republican leadership in both Congress and the White House with optimistic, activist Democrats.

One of the things I intend for this Blog is to act as a vehicle for a series of columns I want to write. I’ve been doing this (writing unpublished columns) off and on for about 25 years. I think it is time that, if I’m not ever going to be published by some “Name” newspaper, I get some of this stuff out where (maybe) others might read it. I’m going to use a newspaper column format and try to limit myself to 750-1000 words, and I’m going to try to do this at least three times a week. So, without further ado, I will proceed to my first real column.

RAIN: Radio And Internet Newsletter reports that two Washington state Congressmen have introduced legislation to exempt "Small businesses" from the recent Internet webcaster royalties imposed in June by the Librarian of Congress. This is the first time I have stumbled across this newsletter, but it seems to be a good source of information about webcasting in general. I plan to add it to my repetoire of "web sites to visit on a regular basis."

Speaking of that, my "bookmarks" file is becoming extremely unwieldy. I'm going to have to start instituting some sort of "sunset" rule which gets a link deleted if it hasn't been visited in [some-lenght-of-time].

OK, today is the day. I'm adding a whole bunch of links to Blogs I think are interesting. Of course, I've only just started dipping my toes into this broad river of Blogdom, so I could be mistaken about some of these (meaning that they really aren't that interesting at all). I think I'm going to try to organize these into some kind of order which will aid in choosing whether to visit or not.

I should note that I'm playing on the machine today instead of going out and doing triage on the flora. We had a nice rain last night here in Somerset County and I think the bushes and flowers will survive a day without attention; the lawn has already been given last rites, so, if it stages a miraculous recovery, that'll be a bonus. I'm also going to take a break from building my "natural rock" borders to all the street-side planting beds. I've already moved probably close to a ton of rock from my mother's place up in Bedminster this summer. I'm gonna take a break this weekend.

The problem is that things like the entertainment industry is, in fact, a form of monopoly. There are relatively few producers of mass entertainment and a relatively vast number of consumers. You want to get Hollywood's attention? Call a one month boycott of all movies and television shows other than news or sports broadcasts. If you could claim 60% compliance by the general public, Hollywood would feel the bite in their pocket books. Of course, it wouldn't work. It wouldn't work for two reasons. First, although a month would put a big dent in their income streams, it would not be enough to make 'em scream "uncle!" No, for that the boycott would probably have to last for at least a year. And that brings us to the second reason this would not work: I doubt that 60% of Americans would give up TV watching and/or movies for a year. We consume TV and movies relentlessly. I truly don't think the majority of Americans would give either up for the requisite time needed to bring Hollywood to its knees.

Well, the stock markets dove again today as more "bad" economic news came out. Again, it was news that owes its existence more to psychology than to actual economic fundamentals. Although, that is not quite correct. Economics is not (for all its practitioners try to make it out to be) a hard science: It is, more than anything else, smoke and mirrors, but let's not open that can of worms right now.

The can of worms I want to open is that which belongs to our "glorious leader", President Sonny-boy. I understand that he is not the brightest bulb on the tree, but I wonder if he can say "Hoover". I wonder if (in the dark of the night) he thinks about the possible comparisons that may be drawn between himself and Mr. Hoover. George Bush spent a good four years (Clinton's second term) telling the country that we should be afraid of the prosperity we were enjoying and that it was bound to end badly...and soon. Well, he got his wish -- only now he is finding that it is not as easy to rebuild the economy that he spent four years trying to trash.

Now, before people start screaming about how it is the greedy corporate executives (Enron, Worldcom, Adelphia etc.) who are to blame, I would point out that most of what they are in trouble for (other than Adlephia, which is a special case) occured in the past two years. If the economy hadn't taken a sudden turn down, Worldcom and Enron would probably still be sailing along building the Brave New World. Sure, what they did was wrong, but they did it more out of desperation and the hope that things would turn around before their house of cards got caught in the downdraft. Note that borth Enron and Worldcom depended upon their stock carrying a high valuation so that it could be used as a form of currency to fund their operations. When the declining market took their stock down, management became more and more desperate to find a way to last until the market turned...which they fully expected it to do. After all, weren't the fundamentals that fueled the original strong economy still there?

Well, yes they were! And, for that matter, they still are. What we have is an economic downturn that was manufactured almost completely out of thin air. Some day this will be a textbook case of mass psychology and manipulation of society via mass media. And it can all be laid at the feet of the conservatives.

And now we begin. Everything before this was more on the order of learning the fundamentals of the medium than actually adding something of value. Actually, I'm not all that sure that many would call this post valuable since it is mainly going to be about me. In fact, the next few posts will probably be about me as I attempt to give any readers who stumble on this Blog an idea of who I am.

So, let's start.

To begin with, I am not really a fox. My given name is Jim and I live in Central New Jersey. Actually, I live within 20 miles of where I grew up, but it took 20 years of living in places as disparate as Maine and Florida to get back to this corner of the world. I have a love-hate relationship with New Jersey: on the one hand, it feels "right" in climate, vegetation and the place names I deal with daily. On the other hand, it has gotten too damn crowded! The population has more than doubled since I was a teenager while the infrastructure (major and secondary roads, to be exact) has not kept pace. Further, many of the rural--or at least ex-urban--places I knew and loved as a kid are now housing developments of either MacMansions or townhouse/condo communities. I used to love to drive; now I avoid it whenever possible because it is no longer a fun thing to do in this state.

So, how did I end up with all this zorro crap? Well, it goes back to Eight grade. That was the first year I started taking Spanish. Our teacher assigned us all the Spanish equivalent of our English names for use in his class: Jim (James)=Diego. Well, at that time, Guy Williams was dashing across our black and white TV screens as the first Disney incarnation of Zorro. Like many of my peers, especially those of the male variety, I thought Zorro was pretty cool. Zorro's public identity (a la Clark Kent/Superman) was Diego DeLaVega. Diego...sounds familiar. I began to use Zorro as my Spanish class moniker that year, and continued to use it in Spanish classes all through highschool. Then, upon graduation from that hallowed place *snicker*, I promptly forgot about Zorro as my alter ego for some 25+ years.

We fast forward to the early 90s when I got my first taste of cyberspace. Compuserve was my first contact with this world. It was intoxicating. One of the services Compuserve offered was one of the first virtual communities: a place called The Point. Well, here I was introduced to "handles" or "nicknames" for the first time. (No, I was never really a CBer, so I never had a CB "handle".) I had to choose a handle, and the thought of being anonymous was strangely enticing. So, I pondered; I thought; I had five or six of those cartoon "aha" moments in which the light bulb goes on...then goes back off. Finally, I was getting desperate when I noticed that one of the admin people went by the handle "The Fox". All of a sudden, bells went off and I remembered my high school Spanish class. I could be "El Zorro". I liked it. I went with it.

For the next couple of years, whenever I was in a situation where I wanted to preserve my anonymity, I went back to the Zorro nickname. Then, came a day when I was told that "Zorro" was already taken. This was about the time that the Zorro movie starring Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas came out, and Zorro had become, again, an icon for the many. Well, I was distraught. However, I began to give it some thought, and I came to the understanding that I was no longer the Antonio Banderas character, I was the Anthony Hopkins type of Zorro...namely an old one. And that realization brought me to El Zorro Viejo, or The Old Fox.

When I opened this Blog, I decided that I didn't want to give out any of my POP3 email addresses, so I cranked up my Netscape browser and logged on to Netscape.net. I thought that I would sign up for my El Zorro Viejo address and be done with it. But nooooooo.....someother identity napper stole my handle, so there I am, bereft of a good alias for the "public" email account. But I am not El Zorro for nothing. Grabbing my handy-dandy Spanish-English dictionary, I find a couple possibilities for "sly" or "crafty". I settle on socarron (the "o" should have an accent to show it is stressed, but Netscape wouldn't take that character so, alas, you just have to know that the last syllable is stressed) because it doesn't have as many unfortunate "Americanisms" attached to it as some of the other possibilities.) And that is how a "Jim" becomes El Zorro Viejo with the email addy of "zorrosocarron@netscape.net". Wasn't that interesting? *NOt*

As an aside to all of this, I ran across something interesting. First, when I went directly to Babelfish to check on a translation, I came up with what is essentially an "restructuring" notice. I'm afraid that Babelfish is going commercial and that what was once free will be no more. However, when I went to my bookmark, I was directed to Alta Vista which has a translation site powered by Babelfish. I'm thinking that it is old technology, though. Finally, when I did a web search on "socarrón", I turned up the fact that Google's automatic translator can't handle it either. There are plenty of references to it on the web, just Google (and Alta Vista) can't translate.These first bumbling steps of AI are interesting, but they probably best spotlight how much still needs to be done. (Google's Spanish to English translations are virtually unreadable...)

And that's enough for this afternoon. I'll try to get the next (and probably last) piece autobiographical prose out the door tonight. So, for now, Hasta la vista and Vayan con dios, amigos mios.

This is a template change...let's see how it does...pass #2 since I didn't like the first one...and this is pass #3 to check on some style edits...and this is to check on a couple more html edits...and now I want to see if I have this right:   ...ok, I did have that right...now I need to check something else (ok, a link...I've added a link...)

Housekeeping: I've changed the time setting to Eastern US and it is showing up in my edit/post window, but hasn't made it to the site yet. Maybe this'll do it...

addendum: Memo to self: This is a learning experience. From now on, prior to hitting "post&publish" for anything longer than a couple lines, I copy and paste the post into a text editor until I'm sure it has made it to the site.

This sucks! I wrote this huge long post which was quite good, actually, and then, when I hit "post&publish" I got an error message. And now it seems that my post has totally vanished into the blackness of cyberspace and that I have to start over...but I will never be able to recreate that post and, besides, the muse has gone and I have no real inclination to start over. Damn!

Oh well, maybe later tonight...

OK, I want to see if this change was made...so I'm posting this little bit just to make sure. Problem is, I'm not really sure this is gonna change anything...we'll see, huh?

Well, the first pass didn't work, so now I see whether the second try has an effect (Yeah, in an attempt to seem more competent than I really am, I edited this for the second pass as well...)

OK...I've added the Haloscan comment code so I should now be able to accept comments in the unlikely event that somebody actually wants to say something back to me...

CNBC sucks! If I had to choose one thing that has screwed up the stock market, it would be the cable news channels...especially CNBC. Instead of breathless anchors archly pouring oil on whatever fires they can find, the finanacial news channels should be the Dow Jones Broad tape scrolling by. Hell, I'd pay money for that. But no...we're stuck with the talking heads who haven't a clue and the "on-air personalities" (I won't be so bold as to call them actual journalists) whose job is to hype the disaster de jour. They fed, and got fat, on the "irrational exuberance" of the 90s and are doing the same on the "infectious pessimism" of the 00s. I am reminded of Don Henley's "Dirty Laundry", Maria et al fit the role perfectly!!

So, I pick up my copy of Information Week and there is this cover story about Blogging...and the next thing I know is that I'm here and typing something inane. Oh well, this is just to get me started...break the ice, so to speak...get rid of that blank page in the typewriter. (For those of you who are true children of the 90s, a typewriter was something like a printer with a key board. You entered your thoughts directly to hard copy and skipped all the computer stuff. While I preferred the electric models, I also owned at least one totally manual portable -a Royal, if I remember correctly- model. The upside was that they were not expensive and they were portable. The downside was that, even with correct-tape, mistakes could end up meaning one had to retype a page...or many as the case may be. But, I digress...)