Blog of the Day

Mari Wood is the blog of the day. She is a Jane of All Trades, an adjunct instructor of composition, freelance web designer, distance educator, returning graduate student, child care advocate, struggling writer, wife and still-breastfeeding mother.


I wish I could do that.

Blogger

Well, I'm not spending any more time on editing the template, only for blogger to replace 'href="<... ' with 'href=><'.
I'll wait till they fix it.

Blessed are the Peacemakers

Winston Churchill said this on the death of Neville Chamberlain:

It fell to Neville Chamberlain in one of the supreme crises of the world to be contradicted by events, to be disappointed in his hopes, and to be deceived and cheated by a wicked man. But what were these hopes in which he was disappointed? What were these wishes in which he was frustrated? What was that faith that was abused? They were surely among the most noble and benevolent instincts of the human heart-the love of peace, the toil for peace, the strife for peace, the pursuit of peace, even at great peril, and certainly to the utter disdain of popularity or clamour. Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged. This alone will stand him in good stead as far as what is called the verdict of history is concerned.

Think once, think twice and think again.

Blogger

Well, blogger has been flaky for the last 30 hours or so. I foolishly tried putting in google search and all I got was a badly chewed template. Must back up before changing next time. Comments should be working properly as well. Please test if you read this. Ta.

Moledet/ National Union

On their web site, Moledet , one of the smaller factions in the new government, says:

1. Government Decision: declaring the Palestinian Authority an Enemy.

2. Military Action: Destroy Terror infrastructure by removing all terrorists, weapons and bomb factories from Judea, Samaria & Gaza.

3. Nullify the Oslo Accords and dismantle the Palestinian Authority.

4. Following the cessation of hostilities, negotiations will commence under international auspices to solve the refugee problem through their relocation to Arab countries and the dismantling of refugee camps.

5. Acceptance of two countries for two people on two sides of the Jordan:

the Jordanian – Palestinian state with Amman as its capital, and the Jewish state with Jerusalem as its capital.

6. Arabs remaining in Judea, Samaria & Gaza become citizens of the Jordanian – Palestinian state.

Arab Palestinians holding Israeli Citizenship will be offered alternate citizenship in the Jordanian Palestinian state.

7. If the Arabs of Judea, Samaria & Gaza breach the terms of this plan, they will be expelled to their state on the other side of the Jordan River.

Now do they really think this could work? How can Shinui work with them to do, well, anything?
The web site of the National Union and Tkuma (Hebrew) is down at the moment. Has been for some time. Not a fish is happy with the new Shinui ministers. So am I. I just can't see how they can all agree on anything.

What if it's all not for real

I woke up from a dream. As I have Blogger Pro now, when a nice post pops into the echoing space where my brain lived before all the neurons leaked out, I put into into drafts. Then it's there to fill up an empty day. In my dream I was writing a wonderfully yummy Perl script to automate the process. Then I thought, why not take the process one stage further and write a script to generate the text as well. Consider Goggle News. They have software that scans all the news sources, collates the results and presents it on a nicely formatted web page. Take that one step beyond and the script could write a comment on a story of the day.Sounds neat doesn't it?
Then have you thought that perhaps someone has done it already? That favourite blog you read could be a semi intelligent bot with good text parsing capability?
Scary stuff. I ran through all the ones I have links for. I was wondering if Emily is for real. Of course she is. What about Andrew Sullivan. Has anyone actually met him? I know Imshin is real.
I shall post more on this when I have done some research.

After all, if someone can write a script to generate a blog, I'm sure I could write one to recognise it.

Blog of the day

The buzz machine is the blog of the day. Nice one.

Much ado about a lot

There is just so much to post about, I hardly know where to begin. I will mention, in passing, the two ladies who I stopped and helped to change a wheel this morning. Please don't drive on that silly little emergency only spare wheel. Go buy a real one. I hope they get to the University OK.

England's sword has an fascinating piece on the trial of a Muslim cleric in England. Apparently the jurors were to be excused if they were Jewish or Hindu. That's a slap in the face for 'twelve impartial people'. So Christians, Seventh Day Adventists and agnostics are OK then. What rubbish.

The Politech mailing list which I subscribe to has a piece today about a new argument between the US customs and EU officials. Apparently:

- by legal statute (title 49, United States Code, section 44909(c)(3)) and
its implementing (interim) regulations (title 19, Code of Federal
Regulations, section 122.49b), air carriers operating passenger flights in
foreign air transportation to, from or through the United States, must
provide Customs with electronic access to PNR data contained in the
automated reservation/ departure control systems ("reservation systems");

Hence the problem. Customs will become the 'owner' of this data. Current EU data legislation says this can't be. If you collect data , it must used for the purpose it was intended. Handing it over to another agency whenever they want is illegal. My brain tells me that there must be a way round this.

Blog of the Day

The Green[e]House effect is the blog of the day and gets blog rolled. I'm grateful as ever to the The Talking dog for these. He's doing a fine job and finding out new and different blogs.

Blogger and Google

I spy with my little eye, Google ads right above the page. I don't mind Google buying Pyra at all. If there is one thing Google is good at it is organising large amounts of information. I especially love the simple ads, context helpful and well designed. My current favourites are the new page and the extensive usenet archive available to anyone for exactly no cost at all.
Now, if it had been Microsoft, I would be writing very different words.

Israelis and time

Israelis have many qualities. One I have experienced many times is a very warm open hearted generosity and willingness to help. One less than endearing quality that a lot of Israelis also have is a certain disregard for time. I exempt our Prime Minister from this as he is famous for starting cabinet meetings when they should start. His predecessor, Barak wasn't which is suprising in an ex military man.

Recently, we expected a delivery. The man with the van said between 7-8 p.m. I won't bore you with the details but we ended up unloading at 10.30 at night. 'She Who Must Be Obeyed' has driven me to foaming fits on occasion with 'I'l be two minutes'. She once kept me waiting at Paddington station for two and a half hours. This was pre mobile days.

Most people shrug and live with it but now I can reveal why this is so. It is not because of the nature of Israelis. No, it is a little known fact that underneath Jerusalem, due to it's holy nature, there is a small neutron star some thousands of metres below the surface. This orbiting large mass has an effect on local time and the inhabitants. Israel's victory in the Yom Kippur war, when the IDF crossed the Suez canal was entirely due to an unfortunate mix up over which day was Wednesday. The inability of Saddam's modified Scud missiles to hit anything in Gulf War I wasn't due to poor engineering at all but rather the local gravity shifts.

The International House of Logorrhea

I am indebted beyond measure to The International House of Logorrhea for bringing to my attention a number of unusal words which I plan to make use of.
'Bletcherous' meaning 'having an ugly design, was surely coined with bad web sites in mind. I am indulging in cubation will be my answer when unwanted household chores are thrust on me by 'She Who Must Be Obeyed'. However, one word stands out in this wonderful list.

'Beerocracy'. 'Government by brewers or brewing interests '.
Well, who could have thought it? Either someone at some point in time, experienced a beerocracy or desired a beerocracy. The Head Heeb has a wonderful post on First-past-the-post in Israel. I read this with interest as electoral reform is surely overdue here. So, my proposal is of course 'Beerocracy'.
Cheers.

Blog of the Day

Wage Slave is the blog of the day. Some of you might be interested to read the ScoreCard of evil. It is certain than some of you will not. By the way, I'm looking for a public source of any Blair speech since he became PM that contains the word socialism. Can anyone help?

Programming and Falafel

When I came to Israel, the first thing I did was look for a job. Sounds obvious you may say, but not to an Israeli. Most people making aliyah will make for a Ulpan or language school for six months. We couldn't afford it. As my wife is a Sabra she was classed as a returnee and thus she and our family didn't get State support. No matter, C++ is the same anywhere. Trying for evening Ulpan was hard.The last two places I tried only had application forms in Russian.

I had expected things to be different but on taking my first job, found that life worked much the same in Israel as elsewhere. Apart from a strange attitude of 'we're a startup so work late', everything seemed to meld into a warm fuzzy feeling of 'I can do this'. As the applications were in English, being a native English speaker was an advantage. Not speaking Hebrew didn't seem to matter much either, everyone spoke English of sorts and some very well. As the entire place was staffed with Russian immigrants, their command of Hebrew wasn't that great either.

My trouble started when I started speaking Hebrew in public. I should have waited. Determined to at least order lunch, I practiced and memorised words. It got to the stage where I could order without stumbling. Then the day came when my tangled neurons confused the Hebrew word for 'glass' with a rather rude Arabic word. Luckily the waitress laughed it off as did the other 30 customers in the downstairs restaurant where we ate.

Since then I have been reticent to speak in public. I have called a sheroot (communal taxi) driver a fish which he didn't take kindly to. I still have problems with the Hebrew for six and seven. I'm grateful that they're not too far apart as I can live with having one extra can of beans. It's not as though I was mixing up 5 and thirty five.
Well, this is my second Israeli job and it looks like I'll be needing a third at some point.
Both have been good to me with excellent company.

Benjamin Netanyahu - A Durable Peace

On pages 347 of the English hardback edition Bibi says:

My view of an equitable and secure arrangement for the status of a Palestinian entity is based on a simple principle. The Palestinians should have all the powers to run their lives and none of the powers to threaten Israel's life. This means that the Palestinian entity should enjoy all the attributes of self government which includes its own legislature, executive, judiciary, passports, flag, education, commerce, tourism, health,police, and every other power and institution controlling the individual and collective life of Palestinians.

The on the next page he says:

These arrangements would leave the Palestinian entity with considerable powers and certainly all the ones for self government. Yet they are not compatible with the idea of self determination, which is what many normally associate with the concept of statehood. That is why when I am asked whether I will support a Palestinian State, I answer in the negative.

Could this work? If it's not a state, what is it?

Blog Of the Day

Ruminate This by Lisa English is the blog of the day. Lovely layout and good content. She gets blogrolled. Thanks to the Talking Dog for the link.

USA Boycot on all things French

The recent dispute between the USA and France/Germany over the correct course of action to be taken against Iraq has had a unfortunate side effect. A growing consumer boycott of all things French has led to an almost total dearth of French kissing, French Toast, French drapes and French fries. McDonalds staff have been instructed to tell customers that all their fries are 100% American and contain no French ingredients.

However, the greatest effect has been on French kissing. Movie customers have booed scenes in recent films where couples indulge. Anguished teenagers have flooded help lines and agony aunts pleading to be told on 'How do I do it now'? Teen magazines and online web sites have been inundated with advice columns demonstrating ways of showing affection without being thought unpatriotic. Says one tearful 15 year old from Spokane 'My boyfriend and I just learnt how to do it right and now they say we can't. It took us ages what the the braces and all. It's like, all so unfair. Just because of a stupid war someplace I never heard of. Anyway, that French guy at the UN is really neat'.

The New York Philharmonic has cancelled a upcoming series of concerts featuring Strauss and other composers due to a strike by French Horn players. They are demanding a switch to the English horn and a rewrite of the program notes. Supermarkets have reported a drop in sales of French Dressing and manufacturers are proposing calling it Spanish Dressing in thanks to Spain's committed support for military action.

A New New city council proposal to dismantle the Statue of Liberty and send it back has met with resistance though as opponents cite costs concerns for the debt laden city. An appeal for Federal funds is planned.


© Carmel Times. All rights reserved. 2003.

Blog of the Day

Ultimate Insult is the blog of the day from Tess and Mark and thanks for this link to a nice 404 page.These Weapons of Mass Destruction cannot be displayed. .

Seven Hundred years of English Cooking

There has been some debate recently over at the Group Captain's blog and others about English cooking versus American cooking. I am not qualified to comment on American cooking but I would like to recommend this book, Seven Hundred Years of English Cooking by Maxime McKendry. She is an American with a keen interest in mediaeval cooking. The foreword says:

The long but much maligned tradition of English cookery- which , to most people, including the Anglo Saxons themselves, consist mainly of steak and kidney pie, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, fish and chips, lamb and mint sauce, tripe and onions and suet pudding - has been largely ignored or at best dismissed as too bland. This book is a triumphant vindication of seven centuries of English cooking.

A twelfth century recipe example:

Displaye that crane: Take a crane and unfolde his legges and cut of his wynges and his legges and sauce him with poudres of gynger, mustard, vynegre and salte

Somewhat on the simple side. How about this for a meal? This is what was offered to the King (Henry VII) at Horsley in Surrey in the summer of 1533.

The first course consisted of salades of damsons, artichokes, cabbage leaves, puslane and cucumbers, with which were served cold dishes of stewed sparrows, carp, capons in lemon, larded pheasants, duch, gull, brews, forced rabbit, pasty of venison from fallow deer and pear pastry. This was followed by a hot course of stork, gannet, heron, pullets, quail, partridge, fresh sturgeon, pastry of venison from red deer, chickens baked in caudle and fritters.Once these dishes were removed the third and last course was served, consisting of jelly, blacmange, apples with pistachios, pears with carraway, filberts, scraped cheese with sugar, clotted cream with sugar, quince pie, marchpane and rounded off with the customary wafers and hioppocra, the cordial of spiced wine which was the Tudor equivalent of a glass of port.

One of my own favourite puddings is Dorset Apple Cake. As a West Country man, I love this dish.
1/4 Lb of Butter or Lard
1/2 Lb flour
3 oz Sugar
1 tsp baking powder
3 hard cooking apples, finely chopped
1 Egg beaten
A little milk, scrumpy, brandy , calvados or applejack.
I little caster sugar
Rub the fat into the flour, add the other ingredients and then the apples and egg. Care must be taken to put in only just enough milk to blend the paste, because as the apples bake they will release a good deal opf the moisture in them. In Dorset, a small amount of scrumpy brandy is used (alas , illegal to make now) but Calvados or applejack will do as well. Grease a shallow baking tin, put in the mixture and bake for half an hour in a moderate oven. Turn out of the tin and dredge well with caster sugar and serve cold.

Here is a simple recipe for trifle, the Queen of English puddings.
A dessert made with cake soaked in custard with layers of peaches and slivered almonds

Ingredients:
3 pints custard
2 oblong sponge cakes (7x11 inches)
3/4 cup sherry
1 tin strawberry jam
1 large tin sliced peaches
1/2 cup toasted slivered almonds
1/2 pint cream, whipped
1/4 cup strawberries

Method:
Make 3 pints custard according to the directions on the packet.
Cut sponge cake into thin slices, then put half into 1 large or 2 smaller seving bowls.
Sprinkle with half the sherry, then spread with half the jam.
Place half the drained peach slices on top and sprinkle with half the toasted almonds.
Pour half the custard over.
Repeat layers, cover and chill.
Just before serving, top with whipped cream and strawberries.

Serves 20

The English have nothing to be ashamed about. It is true that a great deal of home cooking these days owes more to food technologists than to the garden but I remember well the reaction of my French friend when he came to live with us and ate his first English meal. 'But this is excellent!' he said in amazement. My Mother could really cook well. Her roast rabbit was always a great success except for one occasion when a guest broke a tooth on a piece of lead shot. I got quite good at skinning and gutting them.

Blog Of the Day

Talk Left is the blog of the day. Here follows a sample.

"U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks wrote an eleven-page order stating that "nude overtly political speech in the form of a 'living nude peace symbol' is expressive conduct well within the ambit of the First Amendment."

Tariq Aziz gets hissed

I was pleased, no, make that delighted, to just see on CNN, that Tariq Aziz was hissed by the assembled press corps when he refused to answer a question from an Israeli journalist. On the subject on the UN I take comfort from the fact that as Iraq hasn't paid its UN dues for many years, it no longer has a vote in the General Assembly. In addition, the number of Israelis working at the UN will increase. Getting there slowly.
I've been re-reading 'A Durable Peace' by Benjamin Netanyahu. He makes interesting arguments. I shall post more on this.

Peace and the Future

I recommend this article by Menachem Klein on 'The Origins of Intifada II and
Rescuing Peace for Israelis and Palestinians'. It's rather long but worth reading. His viewpoint is unlikely to ring true to many Israelis though. A few quotes:

Second, the Israeli authorities have declared repeatedly that Arafat is irrelevant. But they contradict themselves by saying that Arafat is responsible for ordering and coordinating every terrorist attack. While demanding reforms, they say that Israel will no longer respect and recognize Arafat's authority, and that reforms while Arafat continues in power are unacceptable. But since Arafat has been elected as the Palestinian leader in charge of the Palestinian Authority and is likely to continue that role, there can be no reform without him.

Third, Israel argues that the IDF has reoccupied the Palestinian territories to prevent terror, that only Israeli forces and security can prevent terror, and that Arafat does not want to prevent terror and encourages terrorism. Yet terrorism continues and Israel continues to demand that Arafat stop it, although Israel has said that Arafat is no longer in charge and that the IDF has taken over responsibility for security. This is illogical.

This seems right. When Infifada II started, Afarfat wanted it both ways. An area under Palestinian control where the IDF couldn't go and terror to force concessions from Israel. Israel wants in both ways as well. A Palestinian Authority to blame and one it doesn't have to talk with. If not the old PLO/Fatah then in five years time it will be Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

There is no way to reform the Palestinian central authority until Israel withdraws. Also, it is unrealistic to demand a cessation of terrorist attacks before Israel withdraws. This will never happen. Until there is a final status agreement, we will continue to experience terror, by both sides. The lessons of South Africa and Northern Ireland show that until agreement is signed and even for a while even after agreement is signed, there is terror, since there are groups that reject any compromise and will continue to try to block peace. If you condition a political breakthrough on ending terrorism, you encourage terrorism, you do not end it.

I suspect Sharon is trying to do a deal before the USA turns it's full attention onto our problem. Now we can only wait. I shall be in Tel Aviv tomorrow at the Stop War protest. Hope to see you there.

Tareq Aziz says that Iraq lack the means to attack Israel. Well, that's little comfort as i don't believe anything that an Iraqi official says. Today, as we were all home being ill, I decided to open one of our gas mask boxes to try it on. yes, I know you should wait but having read the IDF homecommand brochure I wasn't certain that 'Her Indoors' or me for that matter could cope.
How right I was. Several minutes fumbling with instructions and wrappers and ties, we got the thing on and tested for air tightness. When my beloved tried it, she immediately stopped breathing, started choking and finally ended up with a panic attack. Those things are not recommended for asthma sufferers.
Being the good citizens we are and mindful of self survival, we trot of to the local home command centre to see if we can turn it in for a better one. No such luck. We need a signed form from our doctor which must be mailed to a medical team at Home Command (no fax or e-mail). We wait for this to come back and then we go get one of the masks that cover the upper body and have a pump.
However, the staff did provide one useful piece of advise. 'If the siren goes and you haven't got one, come back here and we'll issue one'. Our incredulous faces produced nothing but a shrug. Excuse me , 4 minutes warning? I shall see if you can buy one today.

Blog of the Day

Live From Brussels is the blog of the day. Fitting really as Belgium seems to be bent on annoying just about everyone these days. Don't blame the 'Bored programmer' though, he points out that 'I still think our foreign policy with respect to Turkey and NATO is totally wrong. But that doesn't mean we are a nation of cowardly, Jew-hating, racist pedophiles who happen to make good beer and chocolate.'
I tried a Belgian beer one. It was named 'MorteSubito' which was very apt as I remember very little after I drank it.

Universal Church of Interactive Network

Some more commandants from the prophets of my faith:

Thou shalt not use a computer to harm other people

Thou shalt not interfere with other people's computer work

Thou shalt not snoop around in other people's files

Thou shalt not use a computer to steal

Thou shalt not use a computer to bear false witness

Thou shalt not use or copy software for which you have not paid

Thou shalt not use other people's computer resources without authorization

Thou shalt not appropriate other people's intellectual output

Thou shalt think about the social consequences of the program you write

Thou shalt use a computer in ways that show consideration and respect

Universal Church of the Interactive Network
No more for today. I feel icky and I have a appointment with a dentist and a large extraction tool.

What to do with human shields

My November has some interesting ideas about alternative uses for human shields.
'If human shields want to defend something useful, how about doing one of the following:

strapping themselves to automobiles to act as human bumpers against drunk drivers

make themselves human filters by wrapping their lips around the exhaust pipes of automobiles in order to reduce toxins being released into the atmosphere'

You can read the rest here:My November .
Reminds me of a book I got for Christmas once, 101 things to do with John Major (remember him?). In the meantime, I'm ill and going to bed. Night night all.

Blog of the Day

The Bitch Girls are the blog of the day. There are four of them:

Bitter Bitch

Spooky Bitch

First Bitch

Classy Bitch

Baby Bitch

Worth a look.

Update: I forgot

Preppy Bitch

Left Bitch

As a suitable penance, I have nailed my left hand to the computer desk. Bang!. Oww!

I'm sure you're wondering what I did at work today. Alright, you aren't really but let's pretend you are. I'm currently make some major changes to one of our many software projects. The code we have works fine and I am very busy rewriting it. Yes, you read this correctly, I am throwing away a large chunk of perfectly functional code and replacing it with new, untried , untested software. 'What?' I hear you say. 'Why are you doing this?'.
Well, I'm certainly not the only programmer in the world being paid to do this. I suspect there are many tens of thousands doing exactly the same thing. The reason why is that the programmer who wrote this excellent code forgot one important ingredient. He or she forgot to provide any documentation or meaningful comments. So, when I needed to make some radical changes, I found myself having to work out how the code worked in the first place. It's easier to write the missing functional specifications and then write fresh code than to reverse engineer what we have. Now you know why software is buggy, expensive and late.

Iraq, suppliers and hypocrisy

The Chicago boyz like to make assumptions .

Let us take it a step farther. Let’s assume that the French and Germans have been actively assisting Iraq to acquire WMD, especially nuclear weapons. Why would they do this? First, of course, money. That has to be part of it. In the German case, I think it is probably the main part. But they are running huge risks just for money. There must be more. What?

Sure.. try this link.The Corporations That Supplied Iraq's Weapons Program. Oh look, Unisys ,Alcolac International ,Rockwell ,Tektronix ,Sperry Corp. Now those don't seem European to me. Humbug. That list does not include German companies as it was a German newspaper that pinched it from somewhere in the UN.

WarBoogers

I see that War Boogers have had a competition to see who rants the best. Interesting to see that VodkaPundit and InstaPundit made it to the 'Most Overrrated Blogs' section even though InstaPundit won. Even more interesting is Not a Fish ,my favourite Israeli blog, was one of the judges. Didn't see a post on that anywhere. The most blood thirsty is an interesting category. The winner, Cold Fury would be right at home watching the Christians get ripped to shreds. He another one of 'If you disagree with me you're a traitor' brigade. Imshin, you've been keeping bad company.
Nice to see the female winner A Small Victory has come out against Patriot Act II. Oh , I shouldn't have followed those links. Here's Anti Idiotarian saying that Greenpeace are 'Envirofascists'. Uggh.
I have one of the winners in my blogroll as well as Imshin. I enjoy reading contrary viewpoints as I do change my mind from time to time. Reading some of those links though makes me wonder a lot. I suspect that people blog what they wouldn't say in public.

Blog of the day

Well, I'm not sure I should but Curmudgeonly & Skeptical is the blog of the day. I must put all these in a list.

Unity Government - Why?

I have been pondering , together with friends, on why Ariel Sharon so much wants to have Labour with him in a coalition government. No, it's nothing to do with ' There's a war going on'. Israel didn't have , or need, a unity government in 1948, 1956, 1967 (only briefly), 1973 or 1982. So why now? The answer lies in other questions. Why was Menachem Begin so keen to have Moshe Dayan as Foreign Minister? Why didn't Likud join Barak when he called for a unity government in 2000? I shall ponder this some more and read any comments with interest.

Sharon and Talks

I can't be the only one who has raised an eyebrow at Sharon holding talks with Ahmed Qureia. I've spent the last year every Shabbat with a big sign saying 'Start Talking' and every member of the rather large club 'Small Minded Reactionaries for a Better Israel' shouts out, 'But there's no one to talk to'.
I always assumed that they thought that every Palestinian had gone on an extended holiday without leaving a forwarding address.
Now we hear that Sharon was having cosy chats over hummous and falafel with Abu Ala, one of the Oslo negotiators. In all the blogs and papers I've read in the last few days, everyone is treating this as a perfectly normal event.
But 'Why not?' I hear you say. Because Sharon has been telling us for two years, no talking while the terror continues. I haven't seen it stopping have you?
Consistency has never been a big thing with the right wing in Israel.

Blog of the day

The Mad Bull is from Jamaica. He's also interested in just what a woman's breasts are for. He's also blog of the day.

Q: Why are a woman's breast's like a electric train set?
A: Designed for children, played with by men.

That reminds me. Is it me or do Israeli girls/woman have larger breasts then woman from other countries? I would happily volunteer for a survey. My very ever first real job was working in the QA department of $LARGESEMICONDUCTOR$ company. We had endless racks that did nothing but test transistors (the component not radios). One month, the failure rate doubled. On investigation, we found that static was the main culprit (as usual) and that this was caused by the girls who loaded the racks starting to wear nylon underwear rather than cotton. As the very junior new sprog, it was my unpleasant task to check up on the girls and it was then I found out how cruel females can be when they put their minds to it.

Blog of the Day

Derek K. Miller, Writer & Editor, Vancouver, Canada - penmachine.com is the blog of the day even if he doesn't have comments (yet). Thanks to comp.risk for the link.
Another good Canadian blog. A good post on fatality rates a bit further down on the main page.

Perhaps the screaming nightmares will stop now.

In my dim and murky past, one thing regularly reappears with sickening clarity every so often. I spent most of my UK working life as a contractor which meant that I worked for whom ever would pay me. The economics are similar to a call girl. The customer pays and I get screwed.
One of the many odd places I ended up was $ODDPLACE$ in a pretty village West of London. It had one major disadvantage which was being situated one mile from the end of Heathrow's main runway. When Concorde came in to land you could not be outside a building,it hurt. As, in common with most UK office buildings, it had no air conditioning , so during the brief hot season, you had to open the windows. Every three minutes, all talking had to stop as yet another plane came over.
I was designing a field testset for military jet engines at the time, specifically the afterburner safety system. I would talk about the hordes of feral cats that lived there but I won't . Perhaps I could tell you about the morning shaving routine, where volunteers would blindfold themselves and shave each side of their faces with different razors but I suspect you're not interested. Possibly you'd like to snuggle up under the duvet and listen while I tell you about the uninhabited new office block that was slowly sinking into the murk. No, I didn't think so.
How about the Friday laugh session where one of the project managers used to regale us with the weekly Aircraft Safety Notification report digest, listing all the horrible things that had happened to passengers in the last week. I particularly liked the one where a sleeping passenger was rammed by a coffee trolley. The Trans Atlantic flight where all the flight deck crew fell asleep was a hoot as well. Lucky one of them woke up in time to land at Newark I suppose. No, not interested?
Would like to hear about the tank protection system that could put out any internal fire in less than three seconds? It also put out the crew as well if they were lucky enough to survive the fire or incoming anti tank shell but what the hell, the tank would be available for a new crew.
No, the thing that has me waking in a cold sweat was the testset I was working on. Never mid the electronics, the special power supply, the calibration of UV detectors and the like. It was getting the colour of the box it was to be housed in that makes me scream. The customer, a proud large UK company, insisted on particular shade of orange. I had to have a special batch of paint made for it. That took aeons to get right. When I finally had it, it wouldn't adhere to the box. That had to go for acid treatment at a cost of thousands. Bearing in mind that I was an electronics engineer , not a mechanical one, I made it in the end but my hair started to fall out that year. Oh, and I got the first ever speeding ticket.
I do feel better now. Perhaps the screaming nightmares will stop now.

Blog of the day

Merde In France is the blog of the day. Very readable owing to a dual English/French column layout and it also gets blogrolled. The blogsphere needs more blogs like this.

I read this from alt.humor.best-of-usenet:

Newsgroups: ed.general

> Hi,
> The Daily Mail had a free flights offer a couple of weeks ago. I
> saved up all the tokens and now I don't know where to send them. Does
> anyone happen to have a note of the address. I think it was printed
> only once in the paper - and I forgot to copy it!

Sorry, but even if I knew I just couldn't bring myself to have anything to do
with that loathsome(sic) spiteful bigoted hate-filled rag. I could no more help
you than I'd help you track down a nice new shiny set of jackboots to go
kicking the shit out of darkies. You should be ashamed of yourself for even
admitting to reading it, since it marks you down as a small-minded
fear-driven self-obsessed mean-spirited conceited self-righteous idiot.

Nothing personal. But I detest you.

--

Now you know why I love usenet. If you can't get a newsfeed change your provider or read via Google Groups.

Words and octane

Having guests for dinner is sometimes useful. Our long standing Israeli ex farmer friend works at the local garage for pocket money. Together we worked out that in Israel petrol (left pondian gas) is Delek or Benzine, diesel is Solar and paraffin is Neft. Do not buy medical paraffin, it's too expensive. You can get Neft from Arab run garages. not Jewish ones. Oh, and I've found that Mulberry tress may be useful for silk, but it's a very messy tree. Some work last weekend with the chainsaw and it's now firewood. One large slice in the very old cast iron stove lasted from 1 a.m. to around 9 a.m. and the house is snug and warm.
The medical paraffin reminds me of my youth. We used it as a drench for calves with stomach trouble.Raising calves is hard work. They are taken from their mother's before they are weaned and then have to be taught how to drink milk mix from a bucket. So, our technique was to:

Stand to the side of the calf.

Grab tie rope around neck.

With the free hand, insert fingers into mouth from the top.

Insert calf muzzle into bucket.

Repeat

You end up with chewed fingers, cuts and raw skin.. On cold winter nights, it's unpleasant.

Now I have a title

So now I can post via email. Posts have a title as well. Hooray!

Why Imshin is the weakest link

Israel’s employment problem.

Imshin’s post prompted me to generate this easy to read post on Israel and public employment.

Forget the defence budget for a moment. Ignore the recession. Don’t think about the violence. Sit back and let me tell you a tale.

In the year 2000, there were 6,283,300 people in Israel. That’s everyone, Jew, non Jews etc. 4,910,500 were Jewish, or claimed to be. The working age population from 17 to retirement was 4,486,600. That’s everyone again including immigrants for that year.

Now the total number of people in employment that year was 2,221,200 souls. Out of that lot, 662,400 were employed in the public sector. Is 29% of the available labour force in the public sector a good thing or is it not? Too high? Too low? Or is it like Goldilocks porridge, just about right.

Lets turn to another country. It has to be the UK of course.
In 2000, there were 29,218 workforce jobs which I take to mean people in employment. There were 5,072,000 in the public sector including NHS trusts and the like. That’s 25%.

So, on the face of it, Israel is a bit too high, but not by much though. So where’s the problem? The answer lies in the ratio of working population to population size. In the UK there were 58,654,500 people living in the UK that year. That means that 49% of the population were in work. Now lets do the same calculation for Israel. That comes out at 39%. Now we see the problem. It’s not that there are too many public servants as a percentage of the population but that there are too few people in employment to support that number. As Israel can’t do much about employment, the obvious solution is to cut the number of public servants.

Note that these figures are crude. A better measure would be work force activity, which would give a accurate picture. Also, these calculations are for 2000 and it’s 2003 now. I suspect the picture is much worse.

This is what is meant when people talk about a country having ‘structural problems’. Successive governments have allowed a growing public sector without ensuring that there is a healthy private sector to support them. While private sector workers get sacked or have their pay reduced, public workers enjoy secure employment supposedly in return for being paid at less than market rates. There is also the question of demographics. To be an accurate comparison, we would need to examine why the working population is Israel is lower then expected. Perhaps immigration has changed the age groups. Is there a baby boom going on? What are all those people doing if they're not working? Could the yeshivas be that full? I forsee another post coming on this one once I get the statistics.

That there will be reductions is certain. The only question is by how many. So, sorry Imshin. You are the weakest link.




All figures are from the Bank Of Israel or the Statistics office of Her Majesty’s Government and refer to the year 2000 unless otherwise stated.

http://www.statistics.gov.uk
http://www.bankisrael.gov.il/deptdata/

I know. Lets solve all of Israel's problems by moving it someplace else.

So this blog post has the answer.Yisroel.

...dreams of an Israel relocated to Baja California, inhabited by happy Jews eating gefilte fish tacos...

Oh well.

Secretary Powell

That speech last night was very convincing. So , if Iraq does have WDM, what does the world do about it? Moan and groan for a while then get stuck in I suppose. The next big date is the 15th February. Time to get so more tinned food and supplies. Why can't I buy paraffin in Israel. All my Israeli friends shrug when I ask them My Mother's wonderful lamp would be so useful for when and if the power goes.

Condellaza Rice speaks out

In a surprise move, Condoleeza Rice, the National Security Advisor , condemned Vietnam today in a speech to businessman at the annual Rotary Club Conference in Fort Worth, Texas. Here is an extract from her speech.

'The Republic of Vietnam has repeatedly and consistently flouted international treaties and United Nation resolutions ever since it took power illegally in 1975. The Geneva Accords of 1956 have never been implemented. The 1975 Treaty of Paris , which called for national elections has been ignored. Recently, Vietnam has again failed to ratify the non proliferation treaty and recent national resources have indicated that Vietnam is test firing an intermediate range ballistic missile.
Ladies and Gentleman, Vietnam has joined the axis of Evil. President Bush has directed myself and the Secretary of State to draft a Security Council resolution condemning Vietnam's behavior over the last twenty five years. They have tortured and imprisoned their own people, invaded another country and are a menace to the stability of the region. We are determined to push for regime change and promote the welfare of the suffering Vietnamese people. If necessary, the USA will us force to correct this unbearable situation'

Well, I made that all up of course.