The major news out of Ireland, far and away, is that Ireland is going to hold a referendum on the eurozone treaty; the vote could be held by summer. The EU didn't want that to happen, because throwing a vote on the eurozone to the voters right now is kind of like throwing Lebron James into a room full of angry Clevelanders.
However, there are thousands and thousands of people who could write on that more eloquently than me. Economics isn't exactly my wheelhouse. I'll let those more eloquent writers who better know what they're talking about do that, and go do something a little less heavily covered.
So, also in Irish news is that airline Ryanair will be offering in-flight online gambling. If you've never heard of Ryanair, this may seem surprising, but if you have heard of Ryanair, you'll know this to be par for the course.
Ryanair, if you don't know the name, is notorious throughout Ireland and, indeed, Europe as well. On their face, they are a low-cost airline. Behind that face, though, all you're promised is a cheap plane ticket. Everything else is up for grabs, sometimes to the point where the authorities have to step in and force them to include certain things.
Here's some of the more mundane things Ryanair dings you for, but among the other things Ryanair considers worth charging a fee for, or eliminating:
*Check-in desks at the airport. Gone.
*Checking in at all. That's a 5-pound charge. And remember, you have to do it online, or that's another, larger fee.
*Window blinds. (This was one of the things the aviation authorities made them put back.)
*Reclining seats.
*Seat pockets.
*Seats.
*Toilets. They were going to remove all but one toilet from their planes, charge for use of that toilet, and offer 4-pound standing-room-only seats. The authorities struck down the standing-room-only part; the airplane manufacturer refused to remove the toilets.
*Being fat. There was even an online vote to decide how, specifically, to charge the fat tax. And then they decided it would take too long to figure out who to hit with it, so they dropped the idea.
*Having someone load the bags onto the planes for you. Do it yourself, you lazy tourist.
*Oh, yeah, and if you find out at the airport that you have to check the bag, that'll be 100 pounds in the high season. For the first bag. For those in the United States, here's the conversion. When I clicked, it was $158.84.
*Stranded passengers. Even if you personally are not one of them, you're asked to pay up to compensate them.
*The advertised prize for being the millionth customer. (She took them to court. Ryanair lost.)
*The co-pilot. (Needless to say, this one won't be happening.)
One supposes that by allowing online gambling, Ryanair hopes passengers will win enough money to pay for all the charges.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
What Part Of 'Mild Winter' Do You Not Understand?
Okay, fellow Wisconsinites. By request of my mom, who alerted me to your recent exploits, we need to have a chat.
Winter's been mild around here. You know that. I know that you know that. It's a very common topic of discussion here. We barely get snow. We got a decent snowfall here a few days back, but that's mostly melted. Barely any other snow's fallen all winter, at least in this part of the state. The weather has been warm enough that some of the time, it's been rain instead.
Now, Oshkosh isn't all THAT far north of Watertown. It's 63 miles to Oshkosh. You're north, but not by too much. So you haven't seen it get too cold either.
So let's, you and I, go through a little review course on the finer points of mild winters.
Q: What happens in mild weather? More to the point, what doesn't happen?
A: Ice freezing.
Q: What happens to frozen ice in mild weather?
A: Why, golly gee, Mr. Wizard, I believe it melts!
Q: Does ice frozen on Lake Winnebago melt as well?
A: I should goddamn hope so.
Q: What kind of event can you not hold on a lake when the ice is melting or has melted?
A: An ice fishing contest, among others.
Q: Why is this?
A: Because the ice might not be able to support the weight of those people and objects on the ice, and those things might break through the ice.
Q: What should you not put on a frozen lake when it is melting?
A: A motor vehicle, unless you're doing that thing where you park a beater out there and start a pool on what day it goes through, which kind of pollutes the lake so please stop doing that while we're on the subject.
Q: Should you listen to police when they advise you not to take a vehicle out on thin ice?
A: Yes.
Q: Should you listen to police when they advise you of this multiple times?
A: For the love of all that's holy, yes.
Q: So why the blue hell did you ignore multiple warnings from police and put 50 cars on Lake Winnebago on a mild day towards the end of a mild winter for an ice fishing contest, creating conditions under which 36 of your cars went through? Especially after cars had been going through the ice all month?
A: ...still waiting for an answer.
Winter's been mild around here. You know that. I know that you know that. It's a very common topic of discussion here. We barely get snow. We got a decent snowfall here a few days back, but that's mostly melted. Barely any other snow's fallen all winter, at least in this part of the state. The weather has been warm enough that some of the time, it's been rain instead.
Now, Oshkosh isn't all THAT far north of Watertown. It's 63 miles to Oshkosh. You're north, but not by too much. So you haven't seen it get too cold either.
So let's, you and I, go through a little review course on the finer points of mild winters.
Q: What happens in mild weather? More to the point, what doesn't happen?
A: Ice freezing.
Q: What happens to frozen ice in mild weather?
A: Why, golly gee, Mr. Wizard, I believe it melts!
Q: Does ice frozen on Lake Winnebago melt as well?
A: I should goddamn hope so.
Q: What kind of event can you not hold on a lake when the ice is melting or has melted?
A: An ice fishing contest, among others.
Q: Why is this?
A: Because the ice might not be able to support the weight of those people and objects on the ice, and those things might break through the ice.
Q: What should you not put on a frozen lake when it is melting?
A: A motor vehicle, unless you're doing that thing where you park a beater out there and start a pool on what day it goes through, which kind of pollutes the lake so please stop doing that while we're on the subject.
Q: Should you listen to police when they advise you not to take a vehicle out on thin ice?
A: Yes.
Q: Should you listen to police when they advise you of this multiple times?
A: For the love of all that's holy, yes.
Q: So why the blue hell did you ignore multiple warnings from police and put 50 cars on Lake Winnebago on a mild day towards the end of a mild winter for an ice fishing contest, creating conditions under which 36 of your cars went through? Especially after cars had been going through the ice all month?
A: ...still waiting for an answer.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Today's Recycling Tip
Your local recycling center is probably not equipped to handle your torpedo. The materials used in the torpedo can be recycled- well, at least most of them; don't know if it's 100% recyclable- but that will require a much more dedicated deconstruction than your local place is able to do.
Also, what the hell were you doing with a torpedo?
However, if you have Christmas lights you want to get rid of, please feel free. Seriously. If you still have the Christmas lights up, take them down. There are people in Watertown alone who've already reconfigured them for Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day in the time you've left them up.
Also, what the hell were you doing with a torpedo?
However, if you have Christmas lights you want to get rid of, please feel free. Seriously. If you still have the Christmas lights up, take them down. There are people in Watertown alone who've already reconfigured them for Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day in the time you've left them up.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Way-Way-In-Advance Endorsement Note
So let's see. What's been going on in politics lately?
Well, only.... this. And this. And this and this and this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, these, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this.
This is all just in the past couple weeks, mind you. And I've very likely missed some things, as well as leaving things out from beyond the past couple weeks. It is just a field of thisles as far as the eye can see.
Behind each and every one of those links lies a different glimpse into the eyes of madness, mostly shockingly and alarmingly so and one or two of which we've already discussed here. And in each and every glimpse, it is one or more Republicans who are being shocking and alarming. It has become so constantly heart-stopping to watch that it's almost- but not quite- deadening to the senses. And by all appearances, it is going to get worse before it gets better, and it will not get better by November, let alone better enough to even so much as get back to even.
So here, way out in February, I'm already making an official endorsement for the November elections. It shouldn't be a gigantic shock that I'm backing Barack Obama for re-election.
That's not the endorsement.
The endorsement is a blanket endorsement to any candidate for office, anywhere in the country, that is running against a Republican. Whichever one has the greatest probability of winning their respective race. Usually that will be the Democrat, but I'm allowing that there will be some races where a third party candidate is more likely to win; any such candidate gets my blessing as well. Priority 1 is that the Republican loses.
This may seem a bit reckless. This may seem like I'm, well, pick your favorite term if you're a Republican reading- a water-carrier, a flunky, an apologist, a liberal toady of the loony left. Well, if this makes me loony, then call me loonier than a Canadian coin. There are, obviously, Democrats who do bad things as well. To claim otherwise would be ridiculous. But to sit here and give the 'both sides are bad' argument is just as ridiculous, not to mention lazy. You cannot plausibly make a list as long as the one I just did of things that are just as bad, done by Democrats. You cannot. You certainly can't do it using just the past few weeks.
If it were just that, that wouldn't be cause for a blanket, straight-ticket endorsement. There is, however, also the partisanship to take into account, specifically the extreme level of No True Scotsman behavior going on, again particularly on the Republican side of the aisle. Wavering from the extreme faction of the agenda in any way, even temporarily, even on one issue, is grounds to be branded a RINO- Republican In Name Only- and abandoned in favor of someone even more extreme. What you see in the Republican primary is a race founded, built, teetering precariously, and now collapsing on that principle, as Matt Taibbi points out in his review of the Arizona debate. The two candidates in the primary considered 'moderate' were Tim Pawlenty and Jon Huntsman Jr. Neither ever really got into the race, and Pawlenty was the very first candidate out of the running. Pawlenty dropped out on August 14, ten days before Jonathon Sharkey.
In this environment, reasonable Republicans simply cannot survive. They are rendered politically impotent, or run out of office outright in favor of the latest vision of what constitutes a 'real Republican'. This is why I'm invoking the Lincoln Chafee Corollary: even if the Republican in office is a genuinely decent guy- and I know some still exist- they still have to go solely because of the R next to their name. Chafee was swept out of the Senate in the Democratic wave of 2006 primarily due to the R next to his name. The voters of Rhode Island in essence told him 'Lincoln, we like you, we respect you. That's what makes this so hard.' And then they booted him for Sheldon Whitehouse.
Which highlights one other thing: the decent Republicans may in fact be Republicans In Name Only. Chafee certainly was. After his defeat, he formally changed allegiance to independent, endorsed Obama in 2008, and without the R next to his name, he went back in front of the voters of Rhode Island in 2010, and they made him governor. On Wednesday, he was named co-chair of Obama's re-election campaign.
What I'm getting at here is that the no-true-Scotsman process leads to what I hold to be an unacceptable risk of any given Republican, anywhere in the country, doing something that is just as crazy as anything in the opening list, and that, at least for the time being, no reasonable Republican can hope to accrue influence amongst the people they're made to regard as partymates. And any gain in ground, at least in this election, is only going to be regarded as a 'mandate' or whatever word constitutes a greenlight to go even more extreme than this. They're going to think that this is what America wants and needs. It's that simple. That can't be allowed to happen. This is not about partisanship, even though it is, if that makes sense. This is about being a decent human being. There is, of course, some level of disappointment in the Democrats not doing more, but there is little that can be done when one side not only needlessly obstructs the process, but actively runs things this far in the opposite direction. Before anything else can be done, the elements of madness must be removed from the process.
There's an old saying about the US House of Representatives that the most important vote they cast is the first one: the one for Speaker of the House. Everything that occurs over the course of the ensuing two years hinges on who's got the gavel. Similar statements can be made up and down the ballot, and that first vote, that decision on who controls the process, is the one I'm focusing on.
Because people who make the moves like those above should not be controlling the process.
Well, only.... this. And this. And this and this and this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, these, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this.
This is all just in the past couple weeks, mind you. And I've very likely missed some things, as well as leaving things out from beyond the past couple weeks. It is just a field of thisles as far as the eye can see.
Behind each and every one of those links lies a different glimpse into the eyes of madness, mostly shockingly and alarmingly so and one or two of which we've already discussed here. And in each and every glimpse, it is one or more Republicans who are being shocking and alarming. It has become so constantly heart-stopping to watch that it's almost- but not quite- deadening to the senses. And by all appearances, it is going to get worse before it gets better, and it will not get better by November, let alone better enough to even so much as get back to even.
So here, way out in February, I'm already making an official endorsement for the November elections. It shouldn't be a gigantic shock that I'm backing Barack Obama for re-election.
That's not the endorsement.
The endorsement is a blanket endorsement to any candidate for office, anywhere in the country, that is running against a Republican. Whichever one has the greatest probability of winning their respective race. Usually that will be the Democrat, but I'm allowing that there will be some races where a third party candidate is more likely to win; any such candidate gets my blessing as well. Priority 1 is that the Republican loses.
This may seem a bit reckless. This may seem like I'm, well, pick your favorite term if you're a Republican reading- a water-carrier, a flunky, an apologist, a liberal toady of the loony left. Well, if this makes me loony, then call me loonier than a Canadian coin. There are, obviously, Democrats who do bad things as well. To claim otherwise would be ridiculous. But to sit here and give the 'both sides are bad' argument is just as ridiculous, not to mention lazy. You cannot plausibly make a list as long as the one I just did of things that are just as bad, done by Democrats. You cannot. You certainly can't do it using just the past few weeks.
If it were just that, that wouldn't be cause for a blanket, straight-ticket endorsement. There is, however, also the partisanship to take into account, specifically the extreme level of No True Scotsman behavior going on, again particularly on the Republican side of the aisle. Wavering from the extreme faction of the agenda in any way, even temporarily, even on one issue, is grounds to be branded a RINO- Republican In Name Only- and abandoned in favor of someone even more extreme. What you see in the Republican primary is a race founded, built, teetering precariously, and now collapsing on that principle, as Matt Taibbi points out in his review of the Arizona debate. The two candidates in the primary considered 'moderate' were Tim Pawlenty and Jon Huntsman Jr. Neither ever really got into the race, and Pawlenty was the very first candidate out of the running. Pawlenty dropped out on August 14, ten days before Jonathon Sharkey.
In this environment, reasonable Republicans simply cannot survive. They are rendered politically impotent, or run out of office outright in favor of the latest vision of what constitutes a 'real Republican'. This is why I'm invoking the Lincoln Chafee Corollary: even if the Republican in office is a genuinely decent guy- and I know some still exist- they still have to go solely because of the R next to their name. Chafee was swept out of the Senate in the Democratic wave of 2006 primarily due to the R next to his name. The voters of Rhode Island in essence told him 'Lincoln, we like you, we respect you. That's what makes this so hard.' And then they booted him for Sheldon Whitehouse.
Which highlights one other thing: the decent Republicans may in fact be Republicans In Name Only. Chafee certainly was. After his defeat, he formally changed allegiance to independent, endorsed Obama in 2008, and without the R next to his name, he went back in front of the voters of Rhode Island in 2010, and they made him governor. On Wednesday, he was named co-chair of Obama's re-election campaign.
What I'm getting at here is that the no-true-Scotsman process leads to what I hold to be an unacceptable risk of any given Republican, anywhere in the country, doing something that is just as crazy as anything in the opening list, and that, at least for the time being, no reasonable Republican can hope to accrue influence amongst the people they're made to regard as partymates. And any gain in ground, at least in this election, is only going to be regarded as a 'mandate' or whatever word constitutes a greenlight to go even more extreme than this. They're going to think that this is what America wants and needs. It's that simple. That can't be allowed to happen. This is not about partisanship, even though it is, if that makes sense. This is about being a decent human being. There is, of course, some level of disappointment in the Democrats not doing more, but there is little that can be done when one side not only needlessly obstructs the process, but actively runs things this far in the opposite direction. Before anything else can be done, the elements of madness must be removed from the process.
There's an old saying about the US House of Representatives that the most important vote they cast is the first one: the one for Speaker of the House. Everything that occurs over the course of the ensuing two years hinges on who's got the gavel. Similar statements can be made up and down the ballot, and that first vote, that decision on who controls the process, is the one I'm focusing on.
Because people who make the moves like those above should not be controlling the process.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Read A Map
No, no. Not Google Maps. Google Maps is not going to help you here. Those old-school paper maps? Much more helpful.
Why? Because it's a Name X In Y Minutes quiz today. You're going to be given a list of 144 geographical abbreviations, and your task is to say what those abbreviations stand for. You have 20 minutes. (My score: 128.)
And if you think it's just going to be countries, you are in for a shock. There are administrative divisions, terms for landforms and bodies of water, anything and everything that you might see on a map.
Why? Because it's a Name X In Y Minutes quiz today. You're going to be given a list of 144 geographical abbreviations, and your task is to say what those abbreviations stand for. You have 20 minutes. (My score: 128.)
And if you think it's just going to be countries, you are in for a shock. There are administrative divisions, terms for landforms and bodies of water, anything and everything that you might see on a map.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
The Online Bomber What Bombs Online
Today's activity comes through Neatorama; it's something creator Alex Wellerstein calls 'Nukemap'. Or, to be caps-lock correct, 'NUKEMAP'.
What you have is a marker placed on Google Maps; you may place it wherever, or you may pick one of the presets- major world cities that conventional wisdom says would be the primary candidates to have a nuclear bomb dropped on them if things ever came to that, as well as historical nuclear sites such as Bikini Atoll, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and that Nevada test site.
Then after that, you select a yield- the strength of the bomb. Again, you're given a number of preset values- you can pick Fat Man, Little Boy, some of the warheads currently in the American arsenal, the smallest and largest warheads tested by North Korea, maxing out at 'Tsar Bomba', a warhead from the USSR that only saw one test in 1961 and was primarily created to make the biggest possible boom the Soviets could come up with.
Then click 'detonate' and see how much area gets devastated. In my case, the Tsar Bomba that was tested, centered over my house, would create a thermal radiation radius (which is third-degree burns for everyone inside of it with exposed skin) from the Madison isthmus to about West Allis/Wauwatosa/Mequon, not far outside downtown Milwaukee. Going south, it stops a bit short of Janesville and Elkhorn; going north, the blast eats the Horicon National Wildlife Refuge whole, reaches into Kettle Moraine State Forest and gets uncomfortably close to Fond du Lac. Watertown itself is inside the radiation radius, inside of which everybody's going to die and it's only a question of how long it takes for the radiation to kill you, and most of town would be within the actual fireball if I didn't live towards the edge of town.
If you're not one of my Wisconsin readers, plot that out over your house. Go ahead. Map's right there.
What you have is a marker placed on Google Maps; you may place it wherever, or you may pick one of the presets- major world cities that conventional wisdom says would be the primary candidates to have a nuclear bomb dropped on them if things ever came to that, as well as historical nuclear sites such as Bikini Atoll, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and that Nevada test site.
Then after that, you select a yield- the strength of the bomb. Again, you're given a number of preset values- you can pick Fat Man, Little Boy, some of the warheads currently in the American arsenal, the smallest and largest warheads tested by North Korea, maxing out at 'Tsar Bomba', a warhead from the USSR that only saw one test in 1961 and was primarily created to make the biggest possible boom the Soviets could come up with.
Then click 'detonate' and see how much area gets devastated. In my case, the Tsar Bomba that was tested, centered over my house, would create a thermal radiation radius (which is third-degree burns for everyone inside of it with exposed skin) from the Madison isthmus to about West Allis/Wauwatosa/Mequon, not far outside downtown Milwaukee. Going south, it stops a bit short of Janesville and Elkhorn; going north, the blast eats the Horicon National Wildlife Refuge whole, reaches into Kettle Moraine State Forest and gets uncomfortably close to Fond du Lac. Watertown itself is inside the radiation radius, inside of which everybody's going to die and it's only a question of how long it takes for the radiation to kill you, and most of town would be within the actual fireball if I didn't live towards the edge of town.
If you're not one of my Wisconsin readers, plot that out over your house. Go ahead. Map's right there.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Stay In School
First off, Wisconsin, there's a primary today, perhaps, depending on where in the state you live (we don't have one in Dodge County). This is the first election where you're going to need a photo ID, so make sure you bring it with you.
That said, today I'd like to issue a simple reminder to kids to stay in school, concentrate on your studies, learn as much as you possibly can. Here's why. If you do, if you get really really good at math and science and really stick with it, one day, you may get to do this.
Although you gotta wait until you're really really good. Launching rockets into the aurora borealis isn't one of those experiments you get to try at home.
For something you can technically try at home but really really probably shouldn't because your parents will strangle you, here's an experiment colloquially known as 'Elephant Toothpaste'. You'll need a big test tube, some hydrogen peroxide (the more potent the better), dish soap, and potassium iodide (that last one may be a little tougher to get ahold of than the others; in a pinch, yeast will do). You might also want to add some food dye. Combine and back off.
And for something you really, really, REALLY should not try at home, here's what happens when you try to make liquid nitrogen ice cream. In a blender.
That said, today I'd like to issue a simple reminder to kids to stay in school, concentrate on your studies, learn as much as you possibly can. Here's why. If you do, if you get really really good at math and science and really stick with it, one day, you may get to do this.
Although you gotta wait until you're really really good. Launching rockets into the aurora borealis isn't one of those experiments you get to try at home.
For something you can technically try at home but really really probably shouldn't because your parents will strangle you, here's an experiment colloquially known as 'Elephant Toothpaste'. You'll need a big test tube, some hydrogen peroxide (the more potent the better), dish soap, and potassium iodide (that last one may be a little tougher to get ahold of than the others; in a pinch, yeast will do). You might also want to add some food dye. Combine and back off.
And for something you really, really, REALLY should not try at home, here's what happens when you try to make liquid nitrogen ice cream. In a blender.
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