Deputy Mayors

The government has requested that the number of deputy mayors for Haifa and Jerusalem be reduced to three from the normal complement of eight. I would have though one was enough.

BBC

I saw the programme that caused so much grief on BBC World last night. I fail to see what the fuss is about. There were two minor factual errors and a general tone of disapproval of Israel's nuclear programme. I did object to the allegation that non conventional gas was used in the Gaza strip though. Peres did a masterful job of saying nothing in an interview though.

It will blow over as usual.

Spam ... do something

My new, never published work account has started getting spam. Scott Richter is behind a lot of it. He sends around 80 million messages a day. His domains, OptInRealBig.com and saverealbig.com are 'block on sight' whenever he shifts providers. He used to be with Sprint but they cut him off for not paying his bills. They don't mind the spam as long as he pays.

Bad news if you happen to have an ip address in this range.

209.236.22.0/27, Scott Richter (On listed Eddy Marin spam house)

BBC gets it in the neck

First Alastair Cambell, the Prince of Darkness charges in and now Israel. Good to see the BBC being controversial. Behind the welter of charge and counter charge, the facts normally go missing.

Vignettes from Israel part 3

From Uri Avnery

HUNDREDS OF “RABBIS OF JUDEA AND SAMARIA”
ARE UNDERMINING THE DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS

They want to paralyze the government, damage the Knesset and demolish the court system, in order to enable the “Judea and Samaria” rowdies to dominate the occupied territories and impose their will on the public at large.

These rebelling rabbis are state employees. All of us pay their salaries, in addition to car and clothing expenses, director-grade insurance and 13th-month salary, as well as bonuses for the holidays’ and for the acquisition of holy books.

All TV channels allow them many hours on the screen, while peace activists are almost completely banned.

We pay ourselves for the destruction of Israeli democracy.

Vignettes from Israel part 2

The Farm lobby is one of the major power centres in Israel. There are around 18,000 Israelis engaged in agriculture of whom about 10,000 view farming as their main occupation

They dominate Israeli politics.

Vignettes from Israel part 1

From Ha'Aratez:

Doron Rosenblum

You have to understand: terrorism knows no boundaries , and our eyesight isn't what is used to be,either. And besides it's not healthy for the fears and bitterness of residents and heads of local councils to accumalate in one place. The alerts, the rocket threats, the dud shells, the nerves, the terrorist attacks, the shootings.. Its about time that you analogs also got it into your heads: obsession with security belongs to all of us. Let's make sure it's distributed fairly and equally, without depriving any place in the country.

Bog blog

Thanks to Pickle Juice for the suggestion of a Bog Blog. I shall pursue the idea when my sensitive parts have healed.

Illness

I'm ill with some stomach bug. Postings will resume when I can get away from the loo.

Luck, lucky man

I am so fortunate. The guy behind me goes on holiday next week and while he's away I get to borrow his waste paper basket. The Company can't afford to buy me one just yet.

Macs are slower than PCs

I knew that. Did you know that? Macs suck anyway. Try designing and inserting your own expansion card in while and you'll agree.

Much as I wonder about Bill Gates, Steve Jobs is just weird. I suggest that failing to acknowledge your own child shows a character flaw the size of the Grand Canyon.

Blog of the day and week

Say hello to Oscar Jr who has a 'Blog around the World' thing going. Well worth a visit. Spot the blog from Mongolia.

memo to self

When trying to write to a file under Windows CE, use the following snippet.

::EnterCriticalSection(&m_crit);

::SetFilePointer(m_hFile, 0, 0, FILE_END););

::WriteFile(m_hFile, buffer, nBytes, &dwWrittenBytes, NULL););

bOk = (dwWrittenBytes != (DWORD)nBytes););

if (!bOk) goto exit_function;);

::FlushFileBuffers(m_hFile););

exit_function:);

::LeaveCriticalSection(&m_crit););


OK, so the labels are bad. This code worked whereas my far more elegant code didn't.

Protect aging hippies

This piece in the Economist has me worried. Jail time for protesting?

Brianh Blum has a nice piece on a Bar Mitzvah at Hogwarts school. Go read.

Interesting day

Alisa points out the significance of June 22nd to a Russian. It is also 450 years since the UK and Russia exchanged ambassadors.

Peres

That was quick. Just after being elected Leader of the Labour party off he goes to the summit in Jordan. That man can travel.

She who must be obeyed.

She has turned back to painting so I'm being very gentle, bringing in food and supplies as required hoping that this will carry on for ever.

Regretfully, her first subject is youngest fighting teenager's classmate who died of leukemia this spring. Various visitors found this too much. More on this later. My first swim this year in the over-large swimming pool attached to Israel went well. No jellyfish (Medusa locally) and few people. The water felt like warm milk.

George Galloway (twit)

I have no time for George Galloway who was accused some while ago of accepting large sums of money from Saddam Hussein. It appears that the allegations are untrue and based on forged letters sent to the Christian Science Monitor of Boston.

Will all those who were so quick to condemn, be just as swift to follow up?

Sigh..... I thought not.

WIBNI's

'Wouldn't It Be Nice If' (WIBNI) is a phrase I dread when working with software. You sweated to complete the product, beta testing has come and gone, the customer has taken delivery, the early bugs have been fixed and things are going well.

Then the customer starts coming up with wibnis and a manic product manager sees nothing wrong with continuing to make extensive changes , for ever, at no charge under the flimsy grounds that 'they have a support contract'. Hey, I'm supposed to service and repair your car, not turn it into a Ferrari!

Peres wins

So Peres makes it. With a low turnout of the party central committee, he beat the other two candidates. I wonder what happens next and when he will make his first trip abroad to solve the problems of the Labour party.

Peres on a roll

The Israeli Labor party is having an election of sorts. Peres is running for the rather ridiculous post of temporary chairperson for a year in order to rehabilitate party. His efforts to get the other candidates to withdraw have had a limited success. Fuad has dropped out having got someone sucker to sign in blood that Peres will step down after one year. Ho, ho. Peres has had problems with elections before though. He keeps losing them.

There again, so did Menachem Begin until he finally made it.

Blog of the Day

So NZPundit has been around for a while. It's the first time I read his whole blog and very much enjoyed the work popup page. That bit's on the top right. The other stuff is worth reading as well. Pity about the dark background but that's just me probably.

Why does the blogger spell checker want to replace the perfectly good word 'blog'?

No good news

In the absence of any good local news, the recent killings of a 7 year old and a yet another suicide attack. I offer this snippet courtesy of Reuters that sexual equality continues apace.

It would appear that Western woman is just as likely to have an affair as her husband. I shall be viewing my friends wives with interest.

Blogger

Blogger is playing up again. It's time to finish that Perl script I was writing to download all posts.

Remember Afghanistan?

This article from the BBC is a bit worrying. People wishing the Taliban were back?

The US in particular is said to be opposed to any expansion of the security force as this might interfere with its ongoing efforts to capture or destroy the remnants of al-Qaeda and the Taleban.

This shouldn't be allowed to happen. You fight terror and built up a society at the same time, not in sequence.

Spam and Microsoft

Looks like Redmond is using some of it's cash pile for a reallly good cause now. Sueing spammers. Hooray!.

Outlook Express 6.0

You probably all knew this or you're using Macs or Linux boxes. If you have Outlook Express 6, you can turn off reading HTML email via options and the read tab. If I have to download various cruddy spam emails, at least I don't have to see it.

It also stops making a connection to the host web site so bye bye Web bugs.

So go on, upgrade now.

Blogger

Hey, those posts are supposed to be Tuesday's not Monday's. What's going on?

OK, found it, my time zone settings were reset to GMT - 12 hours.

Allison

Allison enjoyed here little holiday up North. You're all welcome to come to the most beautiful part of Israel.

Taxes

Matthew Yglesias comments that Federal tax cuts have prompted a rise in State taxes. No suprise there. I cannot find a breakdown of Federal to State public spending though.

Israel and progress

I watch, read and wonder about the Road Map and it's progress. I was to have written a obituary but that's on hold for now. If Hamas could be driven down, they may be a chance after all. In the meantime, unemployment here hit 10.6% which is worrying. I may not have been paid but I still have a job.

Spammers fight back.

A few auto bounces to one of my email boxes today. Some spammer using my email address in the 'from' field. One of the problems with the current email system is that this is trivial to forge. It's called a Joe Job.

Spamcop, the auto larting machine is under a DOS attack and it's usenet server is down. The email and web server is fine though. It's currently processing around 7 spams per second

Spews is still going and various cartooney lawsuites pop out on a regular basis.
I have taken to manually larting various china net addresses recently with no result. As our BOFH is/has left/pushed/thrown out for a Linux/Apache job, I get first dibs at the mail server. 'Blackholes Are Us' gets put in tomorrow.

I fancy spews myself.
For those frea speach chicken boners out there, try listening to this all day.

Cheapskates

After a difficult weekend, I have persuaded an old Seiko 9 pin dot matrix serial printer to finally accept the fact that it is supposed to be able to print Hebrew and I'm never going to give up until it does. Doing this via Unicode Java and custom dll's running on a iPaq Pocket PC nearly drove me insane but it is finally done.

For those lucky people whose eyes have glazed over while reading the above, I envy you. I really do.

My boss is happy, the customer were about to call in a HP consultant costing $6,000 for one week. I got to do it for free (I still haven't been paid).

What I want to know is which mindless prat decided this was a good choice for sales agents on the road and what should I dream about doing to him/her.

Blogger update.

Blogger has an new Interface to Blogger Pro. I'm still investigating moving though.

Beach, breakfast and bitches

What a nice start to the day. A walk on the beach with friends, a fine breakfast to follow with magnetic therapy thrown in for free. I feel so much better and I'm showing Shimshon my blog.

Blog of the day.

Dean's World is the blog of the day. Another fine liberal.

Forgeries, yellowcake, Niger and Iraq

From this NY Times article by Nicholas Kristoff, it would seem that the CIA knew early last year that the claim that Iraq brought uranium yellowcake from Niger wasn't true. This didn't seem to work it's way up though. The left hand seems to be in ignorance of the right hand here.

"It was well known throughout the intelligence community that it was a forgery," said Melvin Goodman, a former C.I.A. analyst who is now at the Center for International Policy.

Still, Mr. Tenet and the intelligence agencies were under intense pressure to come up with evidence against Iraq. Ambiguities were lost, and doubters were discouraged from speaking up.

Divers alarums

Less than happy days at workplace. Our sysadmin , unhappy at not being paid, resorted to lawyers, court summons and promptly got paid off, sacked and thrown out.

I won't be going along to Jeruslam this Shabbat to join in a Forum Shalom demo. Somehow, it doesn't seem right.

Another bloody bomb

Another bombing and sixteen dead. I suspect that the Road Map died as well. I despair at there ever being peace here.

Car day

Yesterday was car day. It's two years old and needed:

A major service.

Insurance renewal

Road Tax

Annual inspection

Now 'She Who Must be Acclaimed' did most of the grunt work on the phone. All in all it went smoothly enough. This is the first time I have had to put a car through a road test. In the UK, it's called the MOT and takes a long time. In Israel it's done while you wait by a small team of inspectors and takes around five minutes.

The whole thing was quire efficient and painless. I was musing on what makes a successful society and one of the key indicators is how the small things are done. The lift I use every day has a inspection certificate. The mechanic who fixed the balky on board computer has a certificate to prove he's qualified. Good for Israel. Perhaps terrorism will always be with us but Israel works.

Internet Connection Speed

Ok, it's not ready for the consumer yet, but this Vulture Central report on a bi Pondian experiment in Ethernet speed caught my eye. 2.38Gb/s would be around one audio CD in 2.3 seconds or 200 full length DVD films in an hour. Gosh...

Future posts

I can't see the last two days future posts at all. Is it time to move blogs I wonder?

Update. It was me. I didn't hit publish hard enough.

There's a new Iraqi blogger around (via Salam Pax). Go to G. In Baghdad even though there is only one post there.

Bell curve and blogs

John Naughton has a nice piece in the Observer. Blogs are open to all but don't show a normal distribution in popularity. Instead, we follow a power law where the top two sites accounted for 5 per cent of all in-bound links and the top 12 per cent accounted for more than half of all links.

Sounds about right. Stop visiting VodkaPundit for a while then.

Is lying about the reason for a war an impeachable offense?

Jonh Dean, the ex White House Nixon counsel, opines on impeachment and WMDs.

Frankly, I hope the WMDs are found, for it will end the matter. Clearly, the story of the missing WMDs is far from over. And it is too early, of course, to draw conclusions. But it is not too early to explore the relevant issues.

A piece on the relevant law issues but worrying news for the Bush campaign and indirectly, Tony Blair.

BlogRoll

Blogroll is here. My first ever.


The talking dog is vexed with an article about self delusion.Such delusions
-- fueled by the likes of, well, many, including moi -- play right into the hands of the Bush
Administration, and ergo, are to be avoided. At all costs. Hmmm

Aron has a link to some quotes on WMDs. The whole blog is worth a read.


Allison , who has moved blogs recently points out the the
Palestinians are using aid money to buy arms. Again.


Jane Gelt repeats an old joke about who runs the country. I first heard the
British version of that back in the 1970's.


Burnt toast moans that the Royal Mail in the Uk is giving up shifting mail
in trains and putting it all on lorries. Boo.



Alisa who also gave up on blogger some while ago announces that
doctors have found Abu Mazen's balls. You'll have to go there for an explaination.


Morrish Girl has won a prize. Go say nice things to her.


Ruminate this claims that 'Bush's assault on the Constitution' is what we
should be exercised about.


Quite contrary wonders about Bush's vision of riding herd on the peace process.


Matthew Yglesias who is the most prolific blogger I know muses on WMD's and trailers and
intelligence.


Merde En France asks when is a Frenchman a Moroccan. When he's arrested
for terrorism of course.


Tal G, in the second most beautiful city in Israel, is not convinced by the road
map.



Talk Left points out that the USA is deporting people who surrended to the INS.


Sisyphus Shrugged explains that the Olympic bomber , supposedly an
anti Semite - has a Jewish lawyer.


Emily has become hard to understand but has a poetry link and a Friday five that
made me laugh.



The No War blog is puzzled by the Grauniad doing flip flops over one of tit's
stories.


Bloggerheads is of to Boston. Left Pondians, lock up your daughters and hid
the valuables.


Tom Watson M.P. has a list of what his constituents are worried about. Includes
the downstairs toilet.



The head heeb continues with excellent coverage on Africa.


Rebecca has been busy but offers us some links.


The Hasidic Rebel has a secret. Shush, don't tell anyone.


Veiled for Allah explains that the Patriot Act is pure
wrong.



Salam Pax asks "what is so wrong about saying "thingy" a lot?"


War Liberal talks about TV channels and buy sports broadcast rights. Two
billion for the Olympics?


Sue Bailey celebrates Thomas Hardy's 163rd birthday. She doesn't like the
'Kentish Town Stop the War' people.



Demosthenes asks if 'attacks on neo-conservatism are actually Anti-
Semitic'. No.

Bigwig et al,point out that they are not a tech site. Anyone who says
different gets shot.


Jez blog has a blogroll which gave me the impetus to do this one.


Imshin is introspective . She's also blogging in Hebrew.


Bitter Lemons has four essays worth reading as usual. Two Arabs, two Israelis.

What a lovely day

We went to Kibbutz Mizrah to help celebrate their 80th birthday. Many happy returns.

As well as wonderful whiff of nostalgic cow manure, which smelt heavenly, the warm smell of cow and a great selection of cheese and treff, we watched various performances.

Ahh the memories. All those years shoveling cow shit when I was young. A great introduction to working in today's modern industries.

Hoildays and food

A very large meal last night has us all full to the back teeth. Over coffee, the conversation turned to the Hebrew language and it's oddities. Conclusions were:

No one knew the Hebrew word for 'rudder'

We were unable to find out why cheese features heavily on the menu for this festival

There is a proper Hebrew word for buttonhole but nobody had ever heard of it.

As you can see, the recent events at Aquaba were much on our mind.

Road Map and travelling

As I read it, Prime Minister Sharon promises to clamp down on the settlements and Prime Minister Abu Mazen promises to clamp down on Hamas and Islamic Jihad. We shall see. While I have my doubts about a Palestinian state I can't see an alternative. I wonder how the sub plots will work out?. Sharon versus the NRP and his own hard liners. Abu Mazen versus Arafat and his lust for power.

Either way, happy holidays, it's a half day here and I'm Javaing and C++ing. I feel even better after an early morning workout with Unreal Tournament.

Still no contract yet and no money either. The Bank makes cross muttering noises but subside when we threaten to change banks. It also helps to have a relative working there. In Israel this is called 'Protezia', or pull, influence. Life is much easier when you have an inside track.

Salam Pax

I'm sure you've all read Salam pax in the Gruaniad.

My friend G might be right after all when he was trying to convince me that the sentence "reasonable imams in Hawza" is not an oxymoron.

Nice idea

Pickle Juice has a nice idea. Go read then just do it.

The Curse of Egghead

The Curse of Egghead is broken. Yona Yahav won as Major of Haifa. It was a horrible low turnout of around 28% which is very worrying. Jerusalem has it's first Haredi mayor so well done there. He can't possibly be worse than the last incumbent who used it as a political shelter until he got back into government.

Aussie Bible

I am grateful as ever to the Reuters Oddly enough section which points out that an Australian translation of the Bible is available.

Richards also reconstructs Psalm 23 as "a bush ballad" which begins: "God is the Station Owner, and I am just one of the sheep. He musters me down to the lucerne flats, and feeds me there all week".

Greening the Planet

According to this organisation, carbon dioxide is good for the Earth. So good in fact, we need more of it, not less.

A not for profit group, it appears to be supported by the oil industry. So yah boo sucks to all those tree huggers (like me) who are concerned about global warming.

Greening Earth Society is a not-for-profit membership organization comprised of rural electric cooperatives and municipal electric utilities, their fuel suppliers, and thousands of individuals

Ask a blogger

If you really want to know, ask a blogger, or so says John Naughton from the Observer.

In fact, when it comes to many topics in which I have a professional interest, I would sooner pay attention to particular blogs than to anything published in Big Media - including the venerable New York Times. This is not necessarily because journalists are idiots; it's just that serious subjects are complicated and hacks have neither the training nor the time to reach a sophisticated understanding of them - which is why much journalistic coverage is inevitably superficial and often misleading, and why so many blogs are thoughtful and accurate by comparison.

Aren' we good?