Freedom Fries

Raisa

2012-03-02T20:16:00.025+01:00

So let’s get this straight. David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, has not been riding on this horse, or so his speaker affirmed yesterday. But today, at the EURO summit about the End of the World, he gives another press conference to rectify his overworked speaker and confirm that he, in fact, did ride said horse.

David Cameron, British Prime Minister

Raisa, the horse

Yes, really?

Well he got the horse from Charlie Brooks. And Charlie is a friend since 30 years. Over 30 years. And he’s a good friend. And he’s a neighbor in the constituency; they live a few miles apart. Aahpaaht. But he hasn’t been riding the horse since the elections of 2010 (that brought him to power; we love posh accents, because we can actually understand them). Before the elections, however, yes he did go riding with him, Charlie, his friend. Charlie has a number of different horses (who hasn’t), and one of them was this former police horse Raisa, which he did ride, and we are all very sorry to hear that Raisa is no longer with us, and he doesn’t think he’ll be getting back into the saddle anytime soon. Snick.

Rebekah Brooks

Raisa Gorbatchev

So what?

Did Cameron mount a presser to apologize to the former Soviet President Gorbachev for riding on a horse with ~~no name~~ the name of Gorbachev wife Raisa, who is no longer with us either, since she tragically died in 1999? No. What is it then? Well, Charlie, you know, Charlie Brooks, he’s the husband of Rebekah Brooks, the perennial editor of The Sun, the Murdoch tabloid. And Rebekah had, of course, no idea that some of her Sun news-room men were hacking mobile phone voicemails left and right to score the next scoop, no, she didn’t, she is --- at least was completely innocent, until she unexpectedly stepped down to spend more time with her family, and perhaps with Raisa, the horse. Mind you, Rebekah (the name alone) had nothing to do with rumors that she and her newspaper were in cahoots with the Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard), and paid police officers for underhand information, although, mind you, paying for information has always been done, everybody does it, until Rupert Murdoch admitted three days ago that there had been a “culture of illegal payments” at The Sun, of which he knew nothing of course, and he’s so shocked to learn about all the filth that has been going on. And heads will roll (except his own, of course).

Yes, and? Raisa was on loan from the Metropolitan Police. It was a police horse. On loan. The Metropolitan Police had loaned Raisa to the Brooks (Charlie & Rebekah).

Anyhow, everything should be forgiven now, since Cameron won’t get back into the saddle any time soon.

Why is nobody loaning a horse to us?

Freedom Fries feuilleton (109)

2012-03-02T18:50:00.000+01:00

Previously: George W. Bush worries about his legacy. Samuel Fisher, the media tycoon, worries about LYNX, his TV network. Pamela N. Timbers, dean of Berkeley law school and a former colleague of Barack Obama at Chicago law school, worries about John Yoo, the author of the torture memos. Also involved is George Lukacs, the famous hedge fund personality, another old friend of Pamela. There are rumors that Bush could be abducted to Spain to face trial for crimes against humanity. In Yoo's case, it's more than a rumor. Now Chang Man Yoon, the Yoo look alike, is on his way to Madrid.

He can’t sleep on planes. Perhaps you can sleep in Business Class, he never traveled in Business Class, it’s only two rows away, you can practically hear them snoring through the curtain. It’s not the size of the seat, he’s economy size himself, and he’s okay sitting upright. He was a horse in his previous life, sometimes he falls asleep standing. No, it’s the angst of people being caught in the 99 percent bracket. Or it’s the vibes of the girl in the seat across the aisle who is plowing patiently through Ann Coulter’s latest book under the guidance of blinding overhead reading lights. The elderly lady between him and the aisle isn’t sleeping either. But she pretends. Like everybody else. There is so much behavior going on. He has set his Iphone alarm nonetheless.

His Iphone vibrates. He enjoys the simmering gizmo touch on his skin longer than strictly necessary. He will have to unsleep lady next to him, who has yet to recover from a visit to her bipolar hairdresser. He will have to get up, open the overhead bin (things could fall out), get hold of his bag, get hold of the ray balls, close the overhead bin (things could fall out), and make it to the lavatory. Wig and makeup can wait until they’ve arrived in Madrid. He will try to get out without provoking her reaction. He will step over her legs without touching her in any which way whatsoever, and she will keep up appearances in any which way whatsoever, since she is person with a round, funny face. So he gets up, climbs across her legs, inadvertently touching her knees of course, or other parts of her round body, but she understands, or pretends.

Inside the lavatory, he sits down and pees, although that wasn’t the purpose of his visit. Why taking care of the locators now? It’s supposed to confuse Obama, should he be reckless enough. Taking out the entire plane, it would possibly increase his ratings; politicians are reckless. He unbinds the Omega watch, and positions one GPS marble next to the lavabo. He opens one with his nifty hook. The watch just fits, thanks to its pliable leather belt. He snaps the ball shut. The GPS signal is trapped inside the sphere now, supposedly unable to penetrate the iron clams. Now the other one. That’s easy, the metallic marble disappears easily inside the second ball. No more signals from Dr. John Yoo. Lost without a trace above the ocean blue. Chang returns to his seat, de-seats in reverse, the lady still pretending. “Feels good, doesn’t it,” she says to Chang.
-“Huh,” Chang says.
-“Peeing.”

Stay tuned for the next installment on Friday, or read the entire story published so far here.

A puzzle becomes a conundrum

2012-03-01T20:03:00.023+01:00

Jacki (Jakki in her latest correspondence --- she's living in AZ, any hints of culture war?) sends a link to an interactive puzzle with a parachutist and a lot of blue sky. We publish it (right column), and send the link to a few friends. We also try it ourselves --- it's fun, try it yourself. And if you don't think it's fun, try it nonetheless, it's billed as a reliable Alzheimer test, so you must do it anyhow. You need to know.

Let's start with us. We move around a few pieces, and find the whole thing eminently solvable, no need to go all the way. Sure, this kind of approach is called handwaving in mathematical circles, and it is frowned upon widely, but we have been frowned upon so much lately, we've frowned out. Handwaving is what we do. Go away, Dr. Alzheimer.

Next, we get a message from Sacha. He has solved it! (So you can trust FF's handwaving!). There's only one little problem. One piece of blue sky appears to be redundant, extraneous even. That unused leftover piece --- not a thing supposed to happen with a puzzle. Disquieting, isn't it? "Does it mean I have an especially bad case of Alzheimer?" Sacha writes peremptorily.

Then we get a message from Dirk. He solved it. The puzzle. Sure, we think, Dirk has been a Boeing 747 captain all his life, he knows about airborne. However, there's another little problem. There's no piece missing in Dirk's solution, which he proudly attaches as a screen shot to his victory letter.

Dirk's solution

Now what? Could it be true? Sacha has Alzheimer? No, spare the thought, of course not, he doesn't, but he needs to know nonetheless, perhaps see a doctor, do some tests, see another doctor, get a second opinion. Better late than never. Early bird catches the worm. We have to inform Sacha of Dirk's solution.

Sacha returns his solution stante pede, also as a screen shot, accompanied by the desperate question: "What am I doing wrong?"

Sacha's solution

Interesting, isn't it? Perhaps it's something about the gravity. Sacha's parachutist is upside down, perhaps he needs less gravity, so one puzzle piece isn't needed? Perhaps Sacha doesn't have Alzheimer, or perhaps we do? This whole gravity thing, didn't it start when an apple fell on Newton's head? The crane traumatized by a hard, macrogeometric object? There are lots of apple trees in Sacha's garden...

Anyhow, we inform Dirk of Sacha's solution. Dirk comes back with another sreenshot...

...and writes:

Sacha,

1st: Get organized! Separate the pieces, put them outside of the rectangle, count them (14).
2nd: Put them into the rectangle, piece by piece. That's all... :-)

The para glider is not supposed to make a looping!

Subsequently, there's some correspondence going back and forth between Dirk and Sacha to which we are not privy, but we are happy to learn that Dirk has generated more screenshots which should do away with any further misunderstandings once and for all:

Before

After

Very helpful, Dirk. A watertight solution. If only the Greeks would know about this, they would stop squandering our taxpayer's money and start solving puzzles efficiently. The Euro saved.

Sacha replies:

"Thanks for all the technical support, guys. At last I got it right-side-up, and no pieces left over! But something still doesn't look right.

My 6 year old daughter does it in under 60 seconds - alas, she won't let me watch how she does it."

Well, that's easy, Sacha, your daughter doesn't have Alzheimer. Oops.

And yet. Sacha sends another screenshot...

...which proves you can have Alzheimer and still have the last word.

Your best friend (Sacha)

2012-02-29T11:35:00.002+01:00

Class war, folks, class war

2012-02-28T19:41:00.001+01:00

Coming home

2012-02-27T20:12:00.004+01:00

Let's reiterate this: Rick Santorum wants to re-institute Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT). That's not principled politics! That's not the way to deal with Sodom & Gomorrah. DADT was a compromise between the incoming president Bill Clinton and the then Military Chief of Staff, Colin Powell. Prior to DADT, homosexuals in the Armed Forces were simply kicked out, whether they told anybody or not. You're a wimp, Rick, a compromiser, a team player.

Tongue in cheek (Glenn)

2012-02-26T07:13:00.000+01:00

The artist vs. the critics

2012-02-25T19:22:00.001+01:00

"The Artist," a silent movie made last year here in France, is widely billed as top choice for best film in the upcoming Oscar outreach. We haven't seen it. But here is a critical appreciation of the film; watch it with us (it's also shorter):

Update: here's a clip with all contenders

Aus aktuellem Anlass

2012-02-25T08:08:00.001+01:00

For the beltway addict in you

2012-02-23T22:03:00.007+01:00

Good Luck and Good Night:

And while we are at it, the latest poll numbers:

It's all in the mind

2012-02-23T20:49:00.002+01:00

Yes, it is what you think it is: click for a larger image.

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

Winter in the Kingdom

2012-02-21T14:45:00.001+01:00

Perry sent this picture of his farm in Concord, Vermont.

-"Isn't that the place were Obama was supposed to given a speech on bipartisanship?"
-"Nomen est omen...or was it the other way round?"

"Do I really need a second term?"

2012-02-21T09:13:00.002+01:00

Find a (contra)caption

2012-02-19T12:11:00.003+01:00

Yes, it's a snap from that House hearing

Sunday morning matinée (Pete)

2012-02-19T11:03:00.001+01:00

Did He Just Play A Trance Song On A Guitar? brought to you by

I don't miss the sex

2012-02-18T21:56:00.001+01:00

The gay marriage debate in the Washington State House of Representatives:

FF is happily married gay-wise, of course. Holland does the trick.

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

Freedom Fries feuilleton (108)

2012-02-18T11:13:00.001+01:00

-“We’ll have to do something.”
-“Fuck.”
-“We need to think about our options.”
-“Fuck.”
-“There are five options, Sir. One: we do nothing. Downside, newscycle in jeopardy.”
-“Fuck.”
-“Two, we intercept him, and calm him down. Downside, we may founder on his free will.”
-“Fuck.”
-“Three, we render him back to the United States. Downside, he might go straight to the talkshows and spill the beans there.”
-“Fuck.”
-“Four, we take him out on his arrival in Spain. Downside, we own a corpse.”
-“Fuck.”
-“Five, we take out the entire plane. Downside, collateral damage.”
-“Fuck.”
-“We need an executive decision.”
-“Fuck.”
-“We’ll have to wake the President.”
-“Fuck.”

***

He is having sleeping problems lately. Sometimes, he dreams that he can’t sleep, and when he awakes, only his boner is proof of Morpheus’ embrace. No, terrible, let’s edit that. Only his boner is proof that he actually did do sleep. Not great either. Only his boner is proof…he’s turning his head in the plumped pillows of his king-size maple wood bed. He hears a voice. Hillary’s voice. “It’s 3 am and your children are safe and asleep. But there is a phone in the White House, and it’s ringing (ring). Something’s happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call (ring). Whether it’s someone who already knows the world’s leaders (ring), knows the military, someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world (ring). It’s 3am, and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want answering that phone?”

He’s awake now. The red phone rings.

Stay tuned for the next installment on Friday, or read the entire story published so far here.

Freedom Fries second anniversary

2012-02-17T08:15:00.005+01:00

.
"The conference room is still occupied by these bloggers."

Without any benefit for the country

2012-02-15T18:32:00.004+01:00

Greece in 1858

From the FAZ, here in translation:

The French writer Edmond About noted the following about the Greek situation, back in 1858:

"Greece is the only know example of a country that is insolvent since it came into existence. If France or England would find themselves in a comparable situation for only one year, they would face catastrophy. But Greece ... Greece is at peace with its insolvency since 20 years [Modern Greece was established in 1830]. All Greek budgets, from the first through the last, show a deficit.

If a civilized county fails to cover its expenditures by receipts, it proceeds to borrow money internally, from its own people. The Greek government never tried to do that, and for a good reason --- it would have failed. The protecting powers of Greece [Great Britain, among others] had to guarantee the solvency of Greece so that it could borrow in the international markets.

Subsequently, the money raised is squandered by the government without any benefit for the country, and the protecting powers have to cover the interest payments themselves. Greece cannot pay."

Freedom Fries feuilleton (107)

2012-02-11T10:14:00.004+01:00

The White House Situation Room is a 5,000-square-foot intelligence management center located on the ground floor of the West Wing of the White House. It is run by the National Security Council staff for the use of POTUS (President of the United States) and his advisors to deal with crises at home and abroad and to conduct secure communications with the outside.

President John F. Kennedy created the Situation Room in 1961, when he blamed the Cuban Bay-of-Pigs debacle on the lack of real-time information. The room features secure communications systems, in particular audio- and video installations built into the wood-paneled walls. It is staffed by senior officers from various agencies in the intelligence community and from the military. They stand watch on a 24-hour basis, monitoring world news and keeping senior White House staff apprised of significant events.

Rahm Emmanuel, the talented White House Chief of Staff, enters the premises. “Fuck,” he says, “fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

The senior officer in charge of night-time operations (his name is classified) assumes waiting mode. He knows Emmanuel well, in particular the inflections of his expletives. Is Emmanuel done already? Not yet.

“Fuck.”

Now Emmanuel is done; there is something definitive about the pitch of the last expletive, something to end all expletives for the next 15 seconds. “Yes, Sir,” the senior officer says, carefully emphasizing both syllables equally, “it’s the way the cookie crumbles. Dr. John Yoo, former deputy director of the OLC under George W. Bush, author of important judicial briefs that guided the White House through the jungle of Gitmo and Abu Ghraib. He is bound for Madrid, where he is scheduled to arrive at seven thirty am. local time on IBERIA flight 2450. Spain. Spain! He’s wanted for interrogations in Spain, by this judge, you know, Garzon, or whatever. NSA thinks he lost it. They suspect a Paulus moment. Okay, well, perhaps they don’t mean it, they are intellectuals. Anyhow, it could be serious. The ramifications for the news cycle. What with the President’s address on bipartisanship in two days in Concord, Vermont?”

Stay tuned for the next installment on Friday, or read the entire story published so far here.

Portuguese for beginners

2012-02-10T16:51:00.002+01:00

Candid camera: the finance ministers of Portugal, Gaspar, and Germany, Schäuble

Schäuble is apparently saying to Gaspar that Germany will give the Portuguese more money once they are done with the Greek.

Staying in touch (Dirk)

2012-02-10T16:21:00.002+01:00

Find a caption

2012-02-07T18:43:00.000+01:00

2012-02-06T20:46:00.000+01:00

Holmes and Watson meet again

2012-02-05T21:24:00.001+01:00

Sunday matinée

2012-02-05T18:38:00.000+01:00

Freedom Fries feuilleton (106)

2012-02-04T10:53:00.002+01:00

NSA headquarters, Fort Meade, MD

Screens, display, technology. Not as luxe as the new Chinese spy offices, more an interior to match the outside of an ordinary ten story black-glass-building, over-sized, sure, located next to an over-sized car park area, sure, but nothing special. Many movies have tried to emulate its interior feel, and too many have succeeded.

It’s night, the car park is largely empty, and Special Agent Smith is lost in his thoughts. He’s part of the elite GPS unit that monitors the location of high-value individuals like politicians, celebrities, outlaws, people that should not disappear on the wrong side of NineEleven. Andrew Young, his trusted colleague, has covertly fallen asleep, and he’s snoring, he must have missed the last AA meeting. We’re here because something is going to happen soon. And yes, it’s an electronic alert that is beeping vigorously all of a sudden. Smith uses his elbow.

Both agents are now looking at a large screen, because that’s what modern spies do for a living, like everybody else. This particular screen displays a lot of dots, scattered over a large map of Northern America. One lonely dot is blinking, and it’s located to the east of the continent, over the open water of the Atlantic Ocean. A closer look. Dr. John Yoo, the dot’s capture says.
-“John Yoo,” Young reads out aloud. He’s supposed to know about the guy, like he’s supposed to know about all the dots, but John Yoo has somehow fallen through the cracks of his alcohol-addled brain.
-“It’s the torture guy,” Smith says, “the enhanced interrogation memo person. He’s on GPS because the Spains may want him.”
-“Let’s track his history. He’s bound for Europe.”
-“Match him with the flight map.”
Agent Smith works the keyboard. It’s IBERIA flight 2450 from San Francisco International to Madrid, Spain.
-“He’s not supposed to go to Spain.”
-“Perhaps he changed his mind.”
-“Howso?”
-“Perhaps he’s against torture now.”
-“Doesn’t make sense.”
-“People change their mind all the time. In particular our people. That’s why they need us in the first place.”
-“Still doesn’t make sense.”
-“He had a Paulus moment, he’s changing sides. Righting wrongs.”
-“We have no time for this, Andrew.”
-“He’s at which alert level.”
-“Let’s see…” — the alert level was supposed to be integrated with the display, but the promised software had not worked and the liaison person was in hospital with failed suicide — “…Holy shit, it’s bad, he’s red, he’s red.”
-“Absurd.”
-“He’s red, code red, we have to inform the White House.”
-“Stupid, a little jurist nobody has ever heard of.”
-“He’s red, it’s not our fault.”
-“Obama’s sleeping.”
Smith picks up the phone.

Stay tuned for the next installment on Friday, or read the entire story published so far here.

How to get 9 million viewers (French for beginners)

2012-02-03T18:17:00.001+01:00

"C'est en faisant n'importe quoi qu'on devient n'importe qui."

Goats on the loose

2012-02-02T19:32:00.013+01:00

We are on our morning walk, striding past Alain's house, as he stops us and asks for help. "Les chèvres." As you possibly know, Le Trayas employs goats to control the brush growth around the hill to protect us from forest fires. And the goats are on the loose again. During previous outings (using openings that wild boars had helpfully created in the fences), they had already devastated well-tended gardens, and climbed on neighbors' roofs, dislocating roof tiles and provoking costly leaks.

Fences have been mended, and electric fencing put into place two rows deep, but the goats have learned to jump over said fencing now to seek out the greener grass on the other side.

Alain packs me into his car. We cannot see through the icy windshield. Alain devines us up the hill to meet the goats, but we survive. The goats are on the road, one step away from the no-longer-so-well-tended gardens of our neighbors. Alain brings out a plastic box with goat feed that he shakes rhythmically to attract their attention. The animals are unimpressed.

Goats, Alain. Note the snowy top of the Pic d'Aurelle (323 m) in the background. The yellow shadow is a blossoming Mimosa

The goats are everywhere, in particular in Josie's garden, grazing on the terraced meadows below her infinity pool. Max (Annie's husband --- Annie, our neighbor, the famous cook) and I are charged to chase the goats back to where they belong, wherever that may be.

Josie's infinity pool

Josie's villa

Josie

Max

Josie is famous for her crie de coeur, "mon amour, mon amour," which she extends to her husband Gianni when he is in sight, but Gianni is not in sight, so Josie restricts herself to friendly gestures gracefully delivered from her balcony.

We learn that the idea is to lure the goats back into their shed and lock them up there until le bureau can reach a decision on their uncertain future. This is easier said than done. Some give-and-take ensues, involving Jojo, (le réproducteur) the only male element of the herd and a necessary condition for the numerous offspring that causes the herd to seek more food on the greener side of the fence. Jojo is stubborn ("balls").

Jojo, réproducteur

goats, unwilling to enter shed

kerfuffle, involving Alain and goats

Pasha

The goats are quite unwilling to enter the shed, seeking all sorts of flimsy excuses despite our well-meant efforts. Finally, Pasha, the wonderdog, arrives on Annie's leach. The goats are quite impressed by Pasha and do what he wants. A happy ending ensues.

Max, rasender reporter, Alain, Annie (note the leach, Pasha in off), picture taken by Josie

Arousal alert (Tony)

2012-01-31T21:03:00.001+01:00

Republican primaries go Shakespeare

2012-01-31T18:44:00.002+01:00

Listen:

It's snowing

2012-01-31T17:11:00.001+01:00

Can you discern the light snow cover on this hill?

Picture taken from the northern window upstairs at 17:00

Language lives

2012-01-31T11:39:00.000+01:00

Erin McKean invited submissions of neologisms in her last column in the IHT. We reply:

Dear Erin,

in your IHT column, you invited the submission of neologisms. Here's a list I *thought* to have come up with during the last two years:

Trump House (play on White House)
to birther (raising the issue of Obama's birth)
public parts (opposite of "private parts")
de-seat (getting up, in analogy to de-plane)
kay (as in: 100k)
thanky
murderee
palinized
rational exuberance
period porn
beltway addicts
palin' around
to unanswer (a question)

http://morefreedomfries.blogspot.com/

Now, before I wrote (composed, haha) this email, I checked the originality of my inventions via Google, and found out that all --- except for the last two ("palin' around" is of course a play on Sarah Palin's expression "[Obama] pallin around with terrorists") --- had already been invented elsewhere before. But still.

One last remark: the prefix negation "un" is getting a lot of mileage recently. To unanswer here is meant to duck a question in a fuzzy way, like in: "The way Barack un-answers things."

Kind Regards, Michael M.

Pic de l'ours (2) (Carole)

2012-01-31T09:26:00.001+01:00

Do you recall our picnic on the Pic de l'ours...and the words: "since we forgot to bring the domestiques, or the folding chairs, or the picnic baskets with special compartments for the Bolly..." ? Carole sends this picture:

Pauline, Serge, Chang, Michael, Pete

Sunday night bedstory

2012-01-29T19:32:00.000+01:00

Captcha from Gabrielle de Vietri on Vimeo.

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

2012-01-29T19:02:00.004+01:00

George Osborne, Chancellor (Treasury Secretary) of the UK:

"If you're in a single currency as the UK knows, as the US knows, you have to transfer fiscal resources around the countries to make good the differences in regional competitiveness," he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
"To make the single currency work in the long term, there are going to be permanent fiscal transfers in my view. That can be done in an opaque way, through a central bank, it can be done in a semi-opaque way through eurobonds, or it can be done through direct budget transfers, but that is what's required to make a single currency work."

Gingrich on the moon

2012-01-28T11:05:00.020+01:00

So we are toying with the idea to put up a post on Gingrich's plan to establish a human colony on the moon during the next decade, eventually numbering 13,000 people so that they can apply for US statehood (never mind that the US signed international contracts that put the moon beyond the reach of national sovereignty claims, and never mind that it's an old election ploy, employed by both Bush sr. and jr. in their bids for a second term). Newt Gingrich, who happens to be member of the Republicans, a party against waste, deficits, and monetary excesses (except when they aren't). Now, in all fairness, Gingrich posited that the initiative would have to be financed by the private sector, but still, whether it's private or public money, sending the money to the moon will cause problems if there isn't enough of it left. So we roam the internet to find out. The answers are not very precise ($$ 100,000,000 per person comes up several times, which would amount to 1 trillion, 300 billion for the entire project, roughly the price of the Iraq war if you don't count the human suffering --- but that's only about getting the rednecks to the moon, not about keeping them there, well, perhaps it's worth just getting them there, let's think about the oxygen later, 1.3 trillion for 13 thousand, that amounts to ... yes, exactly a one with 16 zeros for all American rednecks (hundred million), or roughly 7,692 times the price tag of the Iraq war, as we calculated it). Anyhow, we abandon the idea of a post until we think of Wolfram Alpha, the site for precise answers (Wolfram developed the Mathematica application without which modern physics could not exist). Wolfram Alpha. Here's Wolfram's answer:

Note the last line: "Computed by Wolfram Mathematica."

Update:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Update, update:

Glenn sends this play on Gingrich's marital math:

Freedom Fries feuilleton (105)

2012-01-27T10:58:00.003+01:00

Previously: George W. Bush worries about his legacy. Samuel Fisher, the media tycoon, worries about LYNX, his TV network. Pamela N. Timbers, dean of Berkeley law school and a former colleague of Barack Obama at Chicago law school, worries about John Yoo, the author of the torture memos. Also involved is George Lukacs, the famous hedge fund personality, another old friend of Pamela. There are rumors that Bush could be abducted to Spain to face trial for crimes against humanity. In Yoo's case, it's more than a rumor. NowChang Man Yoon, the Yoo look alike, is on his way to Madrid.

He’s asked to stand upright and raise his arms. “If you touch my junk, I’ll have you arrested,” the young guy shouts, so everybody can hear.
-“You gave up a lot of rights when you bought your ticket,” the officer replies.

Chang will never learn how this story ends (badly), as the screening tunnel agent taps on his shoulder. There is a problem with his luggage, but they have expected this.
-“Sir, could you please unpack your bag for me,” the security agent commands with flat, evenhanded politeness. Chang unpacks the bag. The officer is not interested in his underwear, nor his reading material, nor in the inconspicuous pouch containing a chestnut-colored, totally misleading wig, not in his toiletry with unmanly makeup lotions or an oversized box with wet tissues. He’s searching for the things that created two suspicious spots on the baggage screening monitor. And there they are, two fist-sized metallic balls. The agent turns the spheres in various directions, around several hypothetical axes, as if symmetry counts.
-“Sir, what are these,” he asks.
-“They are my talisman,” Chang replies — the prepared answer.
-“Why do you need two talismen, isn’t one enough?” Chang did not expect this comeback, but it doesn’t matter.
-“I inherited them from my grand aunt. I had to promise het to keep them together, always.”
The agent weighs the spheres in his hands.
-“They are hollow, right? What do they contain?”
-“Nothing, as you said. They are hollow.”
-“I think I can’t let you travel with these.”

Chang picks his key ring from the dirty plastic x-ray basket, selects a suspiciously looking tiny hook, picks up one sphere, turns in around, and inserts the hook into a tiny hole at its top. Gadget time. The ball snaps open. It’s empty. The other sphere is empty too. The agent shakes his head. Chang is so nervous, he gets cocky: “My grand-aunt inherited them as well, they were used by the Illuminati during the great Planetary Alignment. They were used for secret precious stones.” The agent shakes his head again.
-“Can I see your passport, Sir,” he asks.
Chang hands him the counterfeit passport.
-“My God, John Yoo, Professor Yoo, the author of the famous torture memos. Keeping America safe. Proud to meet you, Sir.” He hands the passport back to Chang, picks up the patriotic spheres and puts them back into Chang’s bag (between the reading material, not the underwear).
-“May I ask you, Sir, you related to the Illuminati?”
Chang recalls the gaunt gentleman with this math-speak that worked so well.
-“By transitivity,” he replies. “My aunt was. It runs in the family.”
-“The Great Alignment, you’ve got anything to do with that?”
-“Haven’t you seen Barbara Croft? The Great Alignment was 7000 years ago. It failed.”
-“My God, that was before the beginning of time. Have a good trip, Sir.”

Stay tuned for the next installment on Friday, or read the entire story published so far here.

Lol (Glenn)

2012-01-27T10:49:00.001+01:00

And while we are at it: have a look at Krugman's latest column on job creation (right column).

Pic de l'Ours

2012-01-24T20:39:00.017+01:00

We haven't blogged about a local excursion since our trip to the Plateau de Calern with Doris & Dirk last year, and we haven't blogged about our penultimate excursion, the previous Sunday, 10 days ago, because we forgot our instruments --- not the instruments that draw the housewife's attention as she opens the door for the plumber in one of these clips (those instruments we did bring) --- but the instruments that the rasender reporter should never forget, but did, in this case, thus depriving him of proof of the house of the forestier (what would be the English word?) built a century ago smack on the slopes of the Mont Marsaou, the second-highest hill in the Esterel, a post belle epoque structure (the house) in measured, utilitarian style, or a proof of the curtains of said house, which have withstood the taste of times for eons now, or of the source nearby, which spends pure, refreshing water through a minuscule tap and forces users to crouch into obscene positions of which we have no proof now, or the forestier's horse, (HORSE) which owns the place, and came to join us at our picnic, and suggested to eat first Serge, who declined, and then his partner Pauline, who declined as well, and then Chang, well, the proof by induction is complete, one, two, three, infinity, we all survived.

The excursion was such a success, we had to repeat it. Pete suggests the Pic de l'Ours, which is right next to our hill, and we bring sandwiches, water, and the camera, and meet at Pete's villa, which is the best on the hill:

Pete? Yes, it's our Pete, Pete McK, who discovered the giant wave two years ago (follow-ups here).

Back to the excursion: our destination is not far. We reach the top of Pic de l'Ours in less than an hour. Up there, at 500 m altitude, you have a view of the entire world. And here's the part that includes St. Tropez (you need to know, it's exactly at the center of the picture):

The conversation revolves around Serge's youth in Algeria during the war of independence (he got almost killed several times, and his stories have a funny authenticity, you think you're in the Hurt Locker movie), Pauline's life in Canada, hospitals (we all get older), and the weather, which is the best we ever had.

Since we forgot to bring the domestiques, or the folding chairs, or the picnic baskets with special compartments for the Bolly, we have to improvise, sit on tiny rocks, eat boiled eggs, and stay sober. We try. We take pictures.

Serge unfolds a hammock and invites me to test it. The rasender reporter at rest:

And we are done. Earlier than we thought. We're heading back. Time for the bubbly (3 bottles):

Chang, Serge, Pauline, Carole, Pete (note the abandoned glass)

Update, Update: Pete sends a picture of the forestier's horse:

2012-01-23T20:10:00.004+01:00

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

Update, update:

The power of imagination --- the imagination of power (Dirk)

2012-01-23T19:33:00.002+01:00

-"Karl Marx could have made this up."
-"Yes, he liked these turns."

Update, update:

(Hat tip: Maarten Marx)

Find a caption

2012-01-23T17:50:00.001+01:00

(Hat tip: Bear Central)

Before ... after: A new approach to the European debt crisis (Dirk)

2012-01-23T14:56:00.002+01:00

Look, no hands

2012-01-23T14:34:00.001+01:00

Robots build tower.

More here.

Freedom Fries feuilleton (104)

2012-01-22T08:22:00.001+01:00

Previously: George W. Bush worries about his legacy. Samuel Fisher, the media tycoon, worries about LYNX, his TV network. Pamela N. Timbers, dean of Berkeley law school and a former colleague of Barack Obama at Chicago law school, worries about John Yoo, the author of the torture memos. Also involved is George Lukacs, the famous hedge fund personality, another old friend of Pamela. There are rumors that Bush could be abducted to Spain to face trial for crimes against humanity. In Yoo's case, it's more than a rumor. NowChang Man Yoon, the Yoo look alike, is on his way to Madrid.

They have reached a wall of glass doors (bulletproof), which separate the TPA area from the unsecured part of the terminal. Canine team member are breathing fire while being kept on a very short leach by their human guidance officers. Another dedicated officer, also human, inspects Chang’s counterfeit passport with a brief nod. Plan A (there would be no Plan B in this case). Next are the metal detectors. The detectors supposedly know about GPS locators, since many high-placed officials are obliged to carry them these days, so Chang should be okay with Yoo’s two detectors on his body, but you never know. And they might already have the new backscatter x-ray machines in use, which undress you radioactively before their eyes. Who knows how these machines would react to the locators. Yes, there’s one backscatter machine parked on the wall, two metal closets facing each other, space in between, blue marks on the on the floor where the citizen will surrender.

Commotion right in front of him. No, it’s not the gaunt gentleman who has jumped the entire queue by now, it’s a young guy. He’s asked to go to the backscatter. “Why me?” he protests. He has been selected at random, he’s being told right into his olive-toned face. He does not believe it, we’re all behavior detection specialists, aren’t we. “X-ray means cancer,” he says.
-“Not necessarily,” the backscatter operation officer comes back — there could be a grin in his eyes.
-“But sometimes.”
-“Stuff happens” — still the eventuality of this grin.
-“You can’t force me into this machine, I know my rights.”
The young guy is informed of the opt-out alternative, which means a full pat-down.

Chang, studiously ignoring the young man’s troubles, has placed everything metallic in a dirty plastic basket for the baggage screening tunnel and strides toward the metal detector. He stops, takes a deep breath (he’s ticklish), and marches through the detector’s arch. There’s a funny noise. He turns around. A digital display blinks: ‘GPS locator.’ Plan A. So far. Meanwhile, the young guy is led past the metal detector toward the scene of the patdown, an open cubicle next to the conveyor belt at the back-end of the screening tunnel. He’s asked to stand upright and raise his arms. “If you touch my junk, I’ll have you arrested,” the young guy shouts, so everybody can hear.
-“You gave up a lot of rights when you bought your ticket,” the officer replies.

Stay tuned for the next installment on Friday, or read the entire story published so far here.

Asymmetric warfare

2012-01-21T21:39:00.000+01:00

From the Frum Forum:

My Dem friend Rich Yeselson asks: "Can you imagine if Barack Obama mentioned that he'd been president of the Harvard Law Review as often as Newt Gingrich reminds us that he taught history at West Georgia College?"

What would you do?

2012-01-21T20:51:00.000+01:00

Good question. And here's part of the answer, from the Atlanta Jewish Times:

…Give the go-ahead for U.S.-based Mossad agents to take out a[n American] president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice president to take his place, and forcefully dictate that the United States’ policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies.

Yes, you read option three correctly. Order a hit on a president in order to preserve Israel’s existence. Think about it. If I have thought of this Tom Clancy-type scenario, don’t you think that this almost unfathomable idea has been discussed in Israel’s most inner circles?

Another way of putting “three” in perspective goes something like this: How far would you go to save a nation comprised of seven million lives…Jews, Christians and Arabs alike?

You have got to believe, like I do, that all options are on the table.

And here's a screenshot of the same, for the faint of heart.

The escalation continues. America, digging deeper and deeper into the hole.

My people will not get in touch with your people

2012-01-20T21:21:00.003+01:00

Getting even, or: German for beginners

2012-01-20T18:35:00.001+01:00

UPDATE, UPDATE. This is even better:

Look, no hands (Tony)

2012-01-20T08:23:00.001+01:00

Italian for beginners (cont'd)

2012-01-19T19:48:00.002+01:00

Italian for beginners

2012-01-17T19:13:00.005+01:00

The washed-up scriptwriter sends this clip, and asks the question ""fact or fiction?":

And here's the transcript:

—De Falco: "This is De Falco speaking from Livorno. Am I speaking with the commander?"
—Schettino: "Yes. Good evening, Cmdr. De Falco."
—De Falco: "Please tell me your name."
—Schettino: "I'm Cmdr. Schettino, commander"
—De Falco: "Schettino? Listen Schettino. There are people trapped on board. Now you go with your boat under the prow on the starboard side. There is a pilot ladder. You will climb that ladder and go on board. You go on board and then you will tell me how many people there are. Is that clear? I'm recording this conversation, Cmdr. Schettino..."
—Schettino: "Commander, let me tell you one thing..."
—De Falco: "Speak up! Put your hand in front of the microphone and speak more loudly, is that clear?"
—Schettino: "In this moment, the boat is tipping..."
—De Falco: "I understand that, listen, there are people that are coming down the pilot ladder of the prow. You go up that pilot ladder, get on that ship and tell me how many people are still on board. And what they need. Is that clear? You need to tell me if there are children, women or people in need of assistance. And tell me the exact number of each of these categories. Is that clear? Listen Schettino, that you saved yourself from the sea, but I am going to...really do something bad to you...I am going to make you pay for this. Go on board, (expletive)!"
—Schettino: "Commander, please..."
—De Falco: "No, please. You now get up and go on board. They are telling me that on board there are still..."
—Schettino: "I am here with the rescue boats, I am here, I am not going anywhere, I am here..."
—De Falco: "What are you doing, commander?"
—Schettino: "I am here to coordinate the rescue..."
—De Falco: "What are you coordinating there? Go on board! Coordinate the rescue from aboard the ship. Are you refusing?"
—Schettino: "No, I am not refusing."
—De Falco: "Are you refusing to go aboard commander? Can you tell me the reason why you are not going?"
—Schettino: "I am not going because the other lifeboat is stopped."
—De Falco: "You go aboard. It is an order. Don't make any more excuses. You have declared 'abandon ship.' Now I am in charge. You go on board! Is that clear? Do you hear me? Go, and call me when you are aboard. My air rescue crew is there."
—Schettino: "Where are your rescuers?"
—De Falco: "My air rescue is on the prow. Go. There are already bodies, Schettino."
—Schettino: "How many bodies are there?"
—De Falco: "I don't know. I have heard of one. You are the one who has to tell me how many there are. Christ."
—Schettino: "But do you realize it is dark and here we can't see anything..."
—De Falco: "And so what? You want go home, Schettino? It is dark and you want to go home? Get on that prow of the boat using the pilot ladder and tell me what can be done, how many people there are and what their needs are. Now!"
—Schettino: "...I am with my second in command."
—De Falco: "So both of you go up then ... You and your second go on board now. Is that clear?"
—Schettino: "Commander, I want to go on board, but it is simply that the other boat here ... there are other rescuers. It has stopped and is waiting..."
—De Falco: "It has been an hour that you have been telling me the same thing. Now, go on board. Go on board! And then tell me immediately how many people there are there."
—Schettino: "OK, commander"
—De Falco: "Go, immediately!"

Update (Telegraph):

In a pre-planned stunt advertised on Facebook, captain of The Concordia, Francesco Schettino, sailed perilously close to the coast of Giglio so that the ship's head waiter could salute his family on land.

Minutes before the cruise ship hit the rocks, the waiter's sister Patrizia Tievoli had posted on Facebook that: 'In a short period of time the Concordia ship will pass very close. A big greeting to my brother who finally get to have a holiday on landing in Savona.'

Euromess

2012-01-17T18:57:00.000+01:00

Let them eat cake

2012-01-17T18:42:00.002+01:00

It's possibly Newt's swan song, for what it's worth:

Pure speculation, or Troops of Truth (2) (reposted)

2012-01-14T09:31:00.013+01:00

Remember our not-so-prescient words from a recent post:

"And the press of the Free World is eating this up as if it were Yorkshire pudding."

Our words, or something else, triggered Arthur Brisbane, public editor of the NYT, to wonder publicly whether the press should try to sort out the truth, for a change.

And he gives an example:

On the campaign trail, Mitt Romney often says President Obama has made speeches “apologizing for America,” a phrase to which Paul Krugman objected in a December 23 column arguing that politics has advanced to the “post-truth” stage.

As an Op-Ed columnist, Mr. Krugman clearly has the freedom to call out what he thinks is a lie. My question for readers is: should news reporters do the same?

If so, then perhaps the next time Mr. Romney says the president has a habit of apologizing for his country, the reporter should insert a paragraph saying, more or less:

“The president has never used the word ‘apologize’ in a speech about U.S. policy or history. Any assertion that he has apologized for U.S. actions rests on a misleading interpretation of the president’s words.”

Yes man, great. Politics went off the cliff because politicians could be sure that the press would eat their Yorkshire pudding all the time, reporting anything with hands-off neutrality, then seeking middle ground somewhere between facts and absurdity. This should stop. Yes, press of the Free World, this should stop, so stop this and join the depleted ranks of the Troops of Truth, of which this blog is a shining example (spell checker still does not know the word "blog"). And whenever Romney and his ilk say something, check first whether there is some factual basis to it. Like in: "I want to be your President because I know how to strap my dog to the roof of my car when I go on family vacation to Canada, and the dog's name is/was Blondi." This statement is well-anchored in facts, and it can pass your editorial muster without any additional comments, even if he got the name wrong, since the real name of his dog was Seamus, there is no need for editorial commenting, since the dog's name is auxiliary to the fact of dog-strapping (flatus vocis)...

...even though it was the name of Hitler's dog. Stop, wait, wait, which government agency did I intend to shut down, no, that wasn't Romney (Romney didn't even get it for a spit second, as he was suggesting, helpfully: "The EPA?"), we get confused here, perhaps ... Anyhow, this post is already too long, so we stop now.

PS: 80% of the Republican attacks on Obama are just insinuations. "Obama want to bring the US under UN goverment," "Obama wants to introduce European-style socialism," (no socialism here, by the way) etc. Did you realize that? Just insinuations. Perry, where are you when we need you?

Newt, the socialist (or communist)

2012-01-13T20:47:00.001+01:00

Freedom Fries feuilleton (103)

2012-01-13T17:59:00.003+01:00

Previously: George W. Bush worries about his legacy. Samuel Fisher, the media tycoon, worries about LYNX, his TV network. Pamela N. Timbers, dean of Berkeley law school and a former colleague of Barack Obama at Chicago law school, worries about John Yoo, the author of the torture memos. Also involved is George Lukacs, the famous hedge fund personality, another old friend of Pamela. There are rumors that Bush could be abducted to Spain to face trial for crimes against humanity. In Yoo's case, it's more than a rumor. NowChang Man Yoon, the Yoo look alike, is on his way to Madrid.

There are two lines extending, meandering, bulging out of the security zone. They’re not well-defined, passengers are shuffling more or less next to each other; there is a lot of body language.

Chang has chosen the left queue. An error. The right queue is moving faster. Chang isn’t in an expansive mode, but he’s so nervous, he can’t help to chat up the complete stranger next to him, a gaunt, tall, elderly gentleman. “The other line is moving faster,” Chang says.
- “Torre’s observation,” the gentleman retorts dryly.
-“Huh?”
-“Torre’s observation. ‘The other line is moving faster.’”
-“I didn’t know.”
-“Now you do,” the gaunt gentleman replies while he — ever-so-gentlemanly — is making one step forward. It’s one step too many, practically getting him in front of Chang now, and, as if to kill two birds with one stone, he’s adding, “note the parsimony of Torre’s statement; Torre could have said ‘the other line is always moving faster,’ but we don’t need explicit universal quantification here since we can treat the queue itself as a free variable. Torre’s observation. A beautiful statement.” Another step, and the gaunt man has posited himself squarely in front of Chang.
-“I don’t believe it,” Chang says, using his usual defense. He should have thought of something better, he realizes, as the gaunt man turns his head around, purposefully, 180 degrees or more. “That’s a pity,” he says, “since it’s an easy corollary of Torre’s observation, implied by the comparative verb phrase, that our own line is moving as well.”

Their queue is now struggling past a large, old-fashioned announcement board, one of the kind that informs about wedding receptions in the Garden Room, black background, removable, white plastic letters, and it reads: “As always, passengers may notice a variety of security me sures at U.S. airports to include the use of physical bag checks, random gate screening, explosive detection tehcnology, canine teams and behavor detection officers.” Should we suspect spelling errors? An official is posited casually next to the board, practically leaning on it, and she’s straight from central casting. The two girls next to Chang — yes, there are now two girls next to him now, rich girls, horse girls — have observed the misplaced letters, pointing at the board, giggling, exchanging views on the federal government. If looks could kill. But that’s where the story ends; the officer is trained in the behavior of rich horse girls that don’t blow up planes. The girls are in front of him now.

Stay tuned for the next installment on Friday, or read the entire story published so far here.

Happy birthday to you!

2012-01-13T10:40:00.002+01:00

Beam me up, Scotty (Dirk)

2012-01-11T19:09:00.000+01:00

Pure speculation (Swiss for beginners)

2012-01-10T22:21:00.031+01:00

Philipp Hildebrand, the CEO of the Swiss National Bank, had traded on the foreign exchange markets a few days before his bank had forced a peg of the Swiss Frank with the EUR that would guarantee an enormous profit to himself personally. No, wrong. It turns out, it was only his wife Kashya (nice name, boobs, attractive, a former porn star perhaps, no, just a former foreign exchange (FOREX) trader, owning an art gallery now, tasteful art, not the shit the Occupy WallStreet socialists would buy, or couldn't because they are too poor), Kashya, who knew nothing of her husband's plans to peg the Swiss Frank to the EUR at 1.20, and who, by exchanging enormous amounts of Swiss Franc at the right time, would make an enormous trading profit. Note that we don't use the word "speculation", the word "speculation" has been defenestrated, even here in France it's "trading" now (imagine the French pronunciation), since "speculation" triggers the wrong instincts --- instincts that were already abrogated by Queen Victoria, her of the Victorian age, the woman who famously informed her cabinet that a "wife knows everything her husband knows." So it was only Kashya, and it was only a matter of convenience that she did use her husband's account since the poor thing did not have a trading account in her own name, but it's clear that it was her, and not Hildebrand, who did the trade, since she, as a FOREX trader, obviously knew the future.

Kashya and Philipp Hildebrand, note the plant in the background

And the press of the Free World is eating this up as if it were Yorkshire pudding.

Imagine you're writing a movie script. What's next?

A missing email perchance, an email mysteriously absent from the records that the Swiss National Bank supplied to some socialist atheist Muslim investigator who had been instituted to go to the bottom of this and went there, and could not see anything wrong since the missing email was missing. Or was it somebody else, a highly-payed person (he/she) from a worldwide accountant firm with an interminable name? Like PriceWaterhouseCoopers? Yes, that's it, PwC. PwC, which failed to spot an accounting error of 54.5 billion EUR in the accounts of the Deutsche Hypobank only 6 weeks ago? The largest accounting error in the history of the planet? That's the ticket if we need somebody to go Santorum.

And now what? Somebody's dropping a glass, it shatters, and Colombo has a heureka moment? Somebody's issuing a wallowing cry in the dark that comes from the mark, or at least from the printing presses of the Neue Deutschmark in the Swiss basement? Somebody's impersonating the dog that didn't bark in the dark? Somebody's writing a poem?

We don't know. What we do know, however, is that the missing email resurfaces, reappears as mysteriously as the account of Hildebrand's trading account itself had resurfaced (which it should not have, since there's the Swiss banking secret, and furthermore, it was sheer coincidence that Hildebrand's wife did trade in her favor on the FOREX market while Hildebrand was deciding on a peg with the Euro that would guarantee her a profit, Queen Victoria be damned).

Queen Victoria

Now, it is now that the script writer reaches the delicate point where he/she has to go into the finer points of the matter, points which the attention span of his audience may not tolerate. Details, folks (we reproduce the text here, since the link broke already once):

In der Dokumentation von Philipp Hildebrands E-Mail-Verkehr, die den zwei Prüfstellen zur Verfügung gestanden hatte, fehlt eine entscheidende Passage. Dies haben am Dienstag auf Anfrage übereinstimmend Kurt Grüter, Direktor der Eidgenössischen Finanzkontrolle und Claudia Sauter, Kommunikationsdirektorin beim Wirtschaftsprüfungsunternehmen Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) bestätigt. Die Version, die den beiden Prüfern Mitte Dezember von der SNB zur Verfügung gestellt wurde, endet am 16. August 2011 um 7 Uhr 36. In dieser Passage weist Philipp Hildebrand seinen Kundenberater bei der Bank Sarasin sinngemäss an, in Zukunft ohne sein Einverständnis keine Aufträge mehr von seiner Ehefrau Kashya für Devisentransaktionen entgegen zu nehmen.

Sowohl PwC wie auch Finanzkontrolleur Grüter führen dieses E-Mail in ihren Prüfungsberichten als entlastendes Element für Hildebrand an, von den Transaktionen seiner Frau nichts gewusst zu haben. PwC kommt zum Schluss, der Kauf von 504 000 $ Dollar in einer turbulenten geldpolitischen Phase sei zwar heikel, aber reglementskonform gewesen. Insbesondere wird gewichtet, dass Philipp Hildebrand die umstrittene Devisentransaktion noch am selben Tag dem Leiter des SNB-Rechtsdienstes meldete. Dieser gab drei Wochen später Entwarnung unter dem Vorbehalt, es sei sicherzustellen, dass es keine Wiederholung gebe. Unter dieser Prämisse mag erstaunen, dass einen weiteren Monat später, am 4. Oktober, auf dem Konto von Philipp Hildebrand ein ähnlicher Betrag, 516 000 $, in Franken zurück gewechselt wurde.

Wichtiger ist aber, und das ist erst seit Montagabend bekannt, dass der E-Mail-Verkehr zwischen dem zurückgetretenen Nationalbankpräsidenten und seinem Bankberater eine Fortsetzung fand. Der Berater erinnerte Hildebrand an jenem 16. August um 8 Uhr 00 daran, dieser habe ihm im Gespräch tags zuvor gesagt, es sei in Ordnung, wenn seine Ehefrau den Dollar-Bestand erhöhen wolle. Dieser Wortlaut gibt der Dramaturgie eine entscheidende Wende und dürfte dazu beigetragen haben, dass Hildebrand am Montag seinen sofortigen Rücktritt erklärte.

Wie ist es aber zu erklären, dass ausgerechnet diese Passage in jenem Dossier fehlt, das den Prüfern zur Verfügung stand? Laut Auskunft von SNB-Mediensprecher Walter Meier ist der Nationalbank die vollständige Version erst am vergangenen Donnerstag, unmittelbar nach Hildebrands erster Pressekonferenz, von der Bank Sarasin zugestellt worden. Die den Prüfern im Dezember gelieferte, offensichtlich unvollständige Version stammt laut Meier nicht von Hildebrand selber, sondern vom E-Mail-Account des Leiters des SNB-Rechtsdienstes. Dieser war bei der letzten E-Mail des Bankberaters, im Gegensatz zum vorausgegangenen Mail-Verkehr, nicht mehr unter Cc als Mit-Empfänger aufgeführt.

You get the gist. Everything is OK. Hildebrand's story is consistent. There's just one minor problem. There was another email, or phone call, or whatever, from Hildebrand, to his bank, to the effect that the last trade was OK (it will never happen again, but the last trade was OK), and that it was OK to "augment" this trade (so as to enlarge the position that led to the profit).

Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, some wit once observed. Hildebrand stepped down yesterday. Life's not fair.

Give it to him, Newt, give it to him

2012-01-09T20:43:00.003+01:00

The latest issue from a Gingrich related PAC (trailer)

Don't ask, don't tell

2012-01-08T20:15:00.007+01:00

We already commented about this on the NYT site for Dowd's column today. Let's post anyhow, since it concerns a baffling problem, at least baffling for us. Rick Santorum styles himself as a principled opponent of gay sex everywhere, and in particular in the military. And promises a return to the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy that Obama dropped last year.

Huh? Don't Ask Don't Tell? That's a policy Bill Clinton introduced upon taking office in 1992, a foul compromise with the Chiefs of Staff who were vigorously opposed to the new president's promise to discontinue discrimination against gays in the military. Before 1992, homosexuality was outlawed there, and offenders were dishonorably discharged.

So you are a principled opponent of gay sex, and you're branding yourself as a principled social conservative, and then, what? Don't ask don't tell. Why not going back to better times when homosexuality was simply illegal? Why not? What makes you taking a muddled compromise position?

If this were a classical column, we would possibly have an answer, but this isn't a classical column, and we don't.

PS: In the good old days (early 80's), I had a gay lover who served in the USAF. On his personal statistics, one could get laid by ca 25% of the same sex service personnel. And that was before DADT.

The second NH debate (from this morning)

2012-01-08T18:15:00.000+01:00

Good, wearing ties now.

Let's get to the bottom of this Santorum (Glenn)

2012-01-08T18:02:00.004+01:00

So we thought that Santorum's Google problem was of recent origin (except for the original Latin meaning of the word, which involves the body part, but not the fluids). But no. Glenn enlightens us from Baltimore:

There is a weekly paper in Baltimore called City Paper.
I believe many US cities have a version of it.
It is a (very) alternative version of The Baltimore Sun. It has pages
and pages if ads for sex services including, of course, gay sex for
sale.
There is a column, "Savage Love" every week with the old Ann Landers or
Dear Abby format. Note: those two were sisters. This column was a bit
different in that most of the questions were sexual in nature. I used
to read it religiously as the writer was/is very clever not only in
his answers but in his choice (perhaps made up) of questions.
(Translation: I read it for the sex.)
Many of the questions were from gay people. And, the columnist was
gay. That guy gave the name to Santorum's Google problem because of
all the gay bashing that Santorum did while a Senator. I remember when
he coined it. Santorum. I was there at its birth. What an honor.

Google answer

2012-01-08T09:28:00.005+01:00

Finally, a dream come true. On the cover of the Rolling Stones. Better: on the cover of Google. Have you seen our previous post, ending with our pious desire to end up in the limelight of the internet? Our 15 minutes of fame, on the first page of the search results for Google problem:

We could have prayed, and then concluded that God answered our prayers, but we didn't pray, since we're atheists. And we got there anyhow. By the same standards, doesn't this amount to a proof that God does not exist? No? No, because God let it happen anyhow? Really? Come to think of it! It doesn't matter, since Santorum exists, and it would not have happened without him. Thank You Rick, Thank You.

It'll get cheesy if we would go on, just an allusion: the Roman Senate could, by majority vote, decide on the divine status of departed politicians. Hint. Hint!

Google problem

2012-01-07T21:21:00.032+01:00

It's a neologism, we think, not ours unfortunately, and we are late, late, the meme is at least 12 hours old, not including the provincial delays we are running up here in the Mediterranean woods, but there it is:

Santorum has a Google problem.

Link, link, click. Who doesn't have a Google problem, one wonders.

But here we have a little story that tells you why our problem is different from Santorum's:

Earlier, at a town hall meeting in the basement of the public library in Keene, Santorum was gently confronted about health insurance by an emergency room nurse who had just worked an overnight shift and apologized for being tired.
She said her son, who recently graduated from college, had been diagnosed with cancer at age 5. Why, she wanted to know, should her son pay more for health insurance as an adult when he had done nothing wrong and had not caused his own health woes.
“You believe that someone with a healthcare issue should pay the same amount as a healthy person?” he asked.
The nurse replied that she did.
“That’s not how it works,” said Santorum, comparing health insurance to auto insurance. “People with higher risk should pay more. Why should we charge more to people who have done everything right?”

"That's not how it works." You see him standing there, piercing his pious lips? "That's not how it works." Uttering a phrase that's completely besides the point: "That's not how it works," a phase that contextually confounds normative and factual standards, and, in its confusion, is wrong on the factual side, since that's how health insurance does work in most western societies. And the fact that it works this way is often attributed to our Christian heritage, to the Gospel, to the words of Jesus, "help the weak, help the poor."

This, what was the definition, this

frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex

Being the nerds we are, we would like to draw your attention to the fact that the original definition, now 4 days old, in the Urban Dictionary, is slightly more complex, ie.

"Santorum: The sometimes frothy, usually slimy, amalgam of lubricant, stray fecal matter, and ejaculate that leaks out of the receiving partner's anus after a session of anal intercourse."

It's a fairly stiff insult by our standards, worse than any Sicilian swearing we've ever heard of. And he deserves it, folks, he deserves it, as President Obama would say (no, he wouldn't).

Let's relax now. We've been to Keene, NH, several times, since there's an airfield there where you land when your commuter plane gets indisposed in mid-air. There's no tower, but a sign next to the tarmac, that read (in my days, 1985): "Pilots, when windy, use northern runway." Next to the airfield, there is an extremely popular fish restaurant where you would eat red lobsters, glad to have survived yet another emergency landing. There's also a college, Antioch College. Antioch was the capital of Syria in Roman times, famous for its homosexual demographics.

Let's hope this post shows up on the first page of the Google search results, but it possibly won't.

Update: Santorum as Socrates (he has a point here, we think):

Update update: Kennedy was known as the man who killed the hat. And now, Santorum, Romney, Gingrich, etc. they are all in this together, not wearing a tie while discussing polygamy. You're running for the presidency, for God's sake. Aren't you obliged to wear a tie? The men who killed the tie, that'll how history will judge you.

PS: Spell checker does not know Santorum (as opposed to Obama, Romney, etc).

Update, update, update: You don't want to miss Maureen Dowd on this.

Freedom Fries feuilleton (102)

2012-01-06T17:25:00.002+01:00

Previously: George W. Bush worries about his legacy. Samuel Fisher, the media tycoon, worries about LYNX, his TV network. Pamela N. Timbers, dean of Berkeley law school and a former colleague of Barack Obama at Chicago law school, worries about John Yoo, the author of the torture memos. Also involved is George Lukacs, the famous hedge fund personality, another old friend of Pamela. There are rumors that Bush could be abducted to Spain to face trial for crimes against humanity. In Yoo's case, it's more than a rumor. And Chang Man Yoon, the Yoo look alike, is on his way to the airport in Yoo's Lexus.

Distracted, he almost misses the interstate exit, but the Lexus GPS won’t let him, so he turns right at the last moment and follows the left turn of the overpass across the freeway toward the three arches of San Francisco International airport. With its rickety scaffold construction, the terminal looks more like the building site of a new theme park, but the car park on his right looks solid enough. He should find a conspicuous parking lot, Liz had asked him. Let them catch Yoo’s car in flagranti. Finally, on the 11th floor, he spots a lot next to the ramp. He maneuvers the Lexus into the space, grabs his own bag, grabs Yoo’s attaché case, gets out, locks the car. He will miss the plane. He runs. He looks ridiculous. He suffers a total lack of gravitas, the more so since Yoo’s fancy case and Chang’s own bag make an odd couple. The agent will notice, call security and have him arrested for inconsistency.

He enters the terminal. There are queues everywhere, except for his flight, the Madrid flight. It must have closed already. One Madrid agent is still present, sitting behind the counter, anticipating him with the smile of a trained oncologist. “You’re closed already, right,” Chang says.
-“You will live,” the agent replies — no, that’s not what he is saying, he says: “No, Sir, the plane was delayed on the incoming leg, we’re still open.” Yoon hands him his e-ticket and a counterfeit passport in Yoo’s name. The passport was expensive, and looks the part, used and worn. The agent ignores the ticket (they always do) and confides Chang’s new identity to the booking computer. A split second. The agent’s forehead wrinkles, relaxes, his black hair whips. He raises his head, his eyes no longer sad, but positively gleaming. “Dr. Yoo, Professor John Yoo of Berkeley University, you must be the author of the famous torture memos. You are a celebrity now. And still so young. Proud to meet you, Sir.” The agent reaches across the counter, grabs Chang’s right hand, and shakes it with an awkward gesture. Chang didn’t expect this. He looks at his hand.
-“All Chinese look the same,” he muddles the issue.
-“I thought you were Korean,” the agent retorts as if doesn’t matter, “anything to check in?”

Swaine Adeney Brigg case

Chang raises Yoo’s attaché case. The agent nods approvingly; unbeknownst to him, Chang has inherited a Swaine Adeney Brigg case, the sum of 250 years of British craftsmanship, gracefully bestowed upon the esteemed jurist by some well-heeled admirer of robust interrogation techniques. Now the bag. “This is carry-on,” Chang says, reluctantly raising his own luggage piece into the agent’s purview, who’s eyes dim a little.
-“It’s okay,” the agent comes back, he’s seen it all, terminal cases, slipping celebrity standards. He hands the passport back to Chang. “Have a very fine trip to Spain Sir, you deserve your holiday.”
-“Not yet, not yet,” Chang replies. “Will I have enough time for the security check?”
-“Nobody gets lost in an airport, believe me,” the agent replies mysteriously, and points to the left. “Better hurry a bit.” Chang hurries.

There are two lines extending, meandering, bulging out of the security zone. They’re not well-defined, passengers are shuffling more or less next to each other; there is a lot of body language. Chang has chosen the left queue. An error. The right queue is moving faster.

Stay tuned for the next installment on Friday, or read the entire story published so far here.

Everybody hates Obama

2012-01-06T14:02:00.002+01:00

Obama greeting students on Wednesday at Shaker Heights High School in Ohio, where he spoke on the economy

From the NYT: "Just three hours after President Obama announced that he was defying Congressional Republicans to fill a high-level regulatory position while lawmakers were out of town, Mitt Romney sent out the obligatory news release ripping the president. “Chicago-style politics at its worst,” Mr. Romney fumed, accusing the president of “circumventing Congress.”

"The statement was just what the White House wanted. It put the Republican presidential front-runner squarely on the side of the Republicans in Congress, a group with toxic poll numbers that the president’s campaign hopes will hurt his rivals for the White House."

Ronald Searle died

2012-01-06T07:28:00.000+01:00

Circus cat, secretly rehearsing Hamlet

Update: He lived nearby, actually, in Draguignan (north of St. Tropez), where the headquarters of the French Artillery are located, the final stop of the local choochoo-train that also stops in Le Trayas

Primary numbers

2012-01-05T19:32:00.001+01:00

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

2012-01-04T21:49:00.000+01:00

Going solar

2012-01-03T12:12:00.007+01:00

is a great fan of solar energy, in particular the photovoltaic kind --- silicon panels converting photons into electric currency. It's (1) conceptually simple, it's (2) pollution free (the footprint of the manufacturing of the panels aside), it's (3) the future, as economics of scale and technological progress make panels cheaper and more efficient, and, last but not least, it's (4) grating the Tea Party and its ilk, who cannot object.

We're not posting for the first time about this. From memory: solar energy will undercut the price of nuclear energy by 2014.

John Farrell has created a dynamic map as to the competitiveness of solar energy in the US electric grid. According to his calculation (the price of solar energy decreases 7% per year, the price of established grid energy rises by 2%), 2013 will be there first year when solar parity is reached someplace --- unsurprisingly in San Diego, California, where the long forgotten Herbert Marcuse learned to hate west coast hedonism.

Please pay attention. The world will need a new technology push to break out of its structural slump, and solar energy might be the ticket.

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

You don't want to know where we found this...

2011-12-31T17:49:00.004+01:00

...on the website of the Cleveland Tea Party Patriots. This is the post for 2011. Let's see tomorrow whether there will be wishes for 2012 as well.

Update: so we checked this morning (Jan 1, 1012) and there are no 2012 wishes. None whatsoever. Is the New Year in decline?

I hate Obama. I can't stand the guy!

2011-12-30T20:18:00.003+01:00

-"Perry, where are you when we need you?"

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

Freedom Fries feuilleton (101)

2011-12-30T09:22:00.001+01:00

Liz tries to remove the watch from Yoo’s wrist. Yoo resists, he is coming to his senses. He knows. They know. A kerfuffle. The forces of darkness lose, and Liz hands the watch to Chang Man. Yoo is still standing there, still stark naked, the genitals still swinging a bit. Inchiavabile. A thought. Another swipe with the GPS signal detector along the socks, reaching down to the shoes. Another gotcha squeak from the detector. A second locator must be hidden in his shoes. Another kerfuffle? Liz has a better idea. Give me the shackles, she orders Chang, and snaps them around Yoo’s ankles, left and right. Yoo tries to resists, and stumbles in the process, lying on the ground now. A second pair of shackles neutralizes his arms. His shoes gleam in the dark. They are not radioactive, but much too large for Chang Man’s tiny feet. We’ll need new footwear for Yoo, she thinks, gets hold of a knife, and attacks the suspicious shoe. “Have you ever tried to undo a patent leather shoe with a knife?” Leona asks helpfully. Liz needs to be careful, the locator must survive intact, as Yoo must survive intact himself. The locator turns out to be a tiny metal marble, hidden in the sole.

Plan A minus. Chang Man Yoon won’t wear Yoo’s clothes, but it doesn’t really matter. He wraps Yoo’s double-duty Omega watch around his wrist, grabs his own travel bag, and takes charge of the Lexus. Somebody activates the shutters, they crack open. Yoon backs up, turns the Lexus around in the narrow alley (no scratches, no scratches), and disappears in the direction of Oxford Street.

***

He’s pushing the pedal to the metal. Being late is the primary angst of all Koreans, and today’s angst is more justified than usual by the latest threats from the Transport Security Administration, issued yesterday after the involuntary demise of yet another Al Quaida operative in downtown Pakistan. The security screening will be harrowing, lines stretching into eternity. Or infinity. What’s the difference, Chang wonders.

San Francisco International Airport

Stay tuned for the next installment on Friday, or read the entire story published so far here.

The Greek have now...

2011-12-30T09:10:00.003+01:00

...yes...

...let's hope the computers won't go on strike...

Fundamentalism in trouble (Dirk)

2011-12-29T07:41:00.004+01:00

And while we are at it, lets reminisce: We are driving across the US, as usual, have spent the previous night in a hotel in Wyoming where the Gideon Bible is an accessory to every night table, have read the Genesis chapter, have crossed into the God-fearing state of South Dakota, and are driving past a evangelical billboard saying: "Noah planned ahead.." (the import being that you should plan ahead, too, etc). Well, no, Noah did not plan ahead. He was ordered by God to build the arc.

One of the tricks of today's American fundamentalists is their illiteracy; they have, in fact, not read the Bible.

Give it to him, Mitt, give it to him

2011-12-28T18:46:00.015+01:00

We've started posting about Newt Gingrich long before he became a candidate, about the dog he strapped to the top of his car when the family went on vacation to Canada --- halt, stop, that was Mitt Romney --- about the end of his first marriage, anyhow, when he had the divorce papers served to his first wife who was in hospital with cancer, and about the end of his second marriage, when he was presiding over the failed impeachment of Bill Clinton on adultery grounds while having an affair with a staffer, now his third wife, who is an alien --- and when we say alien, we mean it, not just a little Mexican mouse, or somebody from Kenya, no, some seriously extra-terrestrial person with light years under her belt. We spent attention to his theocratic fantasies of late, and developed a little theory well-received at the University of Metaphysical Sciences, involving the Archangel Gabriel, the cave, and other paraphernalia from a previous, and regrettably successful attempt to start a monotheistic religion.

Now he is a candidate. And he lives in Virginia, a large state, population- and delegate-wise. And he fails to register for the primaries there because he's disorganized, erratic, and generally unqualified to assume the US presidency. And he's grandiose in his own masturbatory ways. So he compares his failure to register in Virginia with the échec of Pearl Harbor. Let's ask Mitt Romney about this.

“I think he compared it to Pearl Harbor. I think it’s more like Lucille Ball and the chocolate factory,” Romney replied on MSNBC. Please watch:

And while we are at it: Taking a page out of the Book of Mormon, the new leader of North Korea (Kim Jong-un, was that the name?) has strapped the coffin of his father to the top of his car for the funeral procession across the icy plains of Pyongyang, the capital, where it's possibly just as cold as in Canada. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, they say.

And now for our final, and definitive Christmas post (Jacki)

2011-12-26T18:02:00.003+01:00

(We performed it on Christmas eve 1985 during our visiting stint at the Rockefeller College, SUNY, Albany, to rave reviews from a disoriented faculty)

Yesterday, Dec 25, or: Stimulating the economy

2011-12-26T12:37:00.005+01:00

Carole, Pete, Max, Chang, Fredrik, David, Yvonne, Bill, Marianne, Jenni, Kiki

We're doing it since a couple of years, celebrating another record in the number of Christmas card received, follicles lost, kilos gained, alcohol consumed, etc.

Logistics is important, since each friend is supposed to contribute a plate with food. Jenni prepared her famous roast. Max prepared a foie gras. It's easy, he says. I ask Annie, his wife, for the recipe.

Jenni's roast

Max's foie gras

Oh, it's difficult, she says. Well, the essentials involve (1) getting hold of a duck liver, (2) getting rid of the central vein in the liver (unpleasant), (3) getting rid of the fat around the liver, (4) marinating the liver in Sauternes.

Software project always take three times longer than budgeted, buffets always provide three times more food that necessary, whatever you do.

Buffet, served on the terrace outside (it's still very warm)

The boys line up in alphabetic order according to follicle count.

Fredrik, Michael, David, Pete McK. (him of the giant wave)

Not everybody is bald, that's why some male participants (Bill, Chang, Max) are missing.

The girls are having a good hair day, life's unfair.

Marianne, Jenni, Kiki

German for beginners (Dirk)

2011-12-25T16:27:00.001+01:00

-"You know what, Germans actually don't know that other nations think they have no sense of humor."
-"Impossible."

We wish you a happy X-mas

2011-12-25T11:59:00.000+01:00

When we entered la bonne bourgeoisie in 2003 by buying our house here on the coast, we learned a lot about the world, including the world of X-mas cards. Such cards are sent across social networks to maintain ties by exploiting the pivotal holiday occasion, and then exhibited proudly near the entrance of one's dwelling for all visitors to see. Obviously, one's social status is related to the quantity of cards on display, as well as their quality (cards can cost up to 20£$€, and look the part). But quantity --- as the philosopher would say --- converts ("schlägt um") to ("in") quality, and it's not necessarily the other way round, in particular since visitors are not supposed to inspect cards too closely (privacy). Am I making this sound very French?

Sheraton sécretaire in the hall

The first year, we received ca. 10 cards. Since we were new to the game, we didn't write any. That didn't keep the cards from coming. Their numbers grew, and we wrote back. Our best year was 2007, when we were able to over-decorate the pretty sécretaire in the hall (a Sheraton replica) with more than 25 cards, although it was already clear that we would never make the cut of the better society here on the hill. @ some neighbo(u)rs the cards would overload the table in the hall (we are the only ones with a Sheraton replica, but it doesn't matter, nobody else here has ever heard of the guy, and I wouldn't raise the issue if not Alan Hollinghurst had mentioned the Regency éboniste in his first and absolutely oversexed gay novel The Swimmingpool Library), enfin, @ our neighbo(u)rs the cards would overload the table in the hall --- and additional auxiliary furniture --- summing up to a total of 200, or 300 X-mas greetings.

To repeat, it was clear that we would never reach the exalted station of 300 cards, but we were entering the year 2008, and candidate Obama was winning the presidential elections with, yes, what was it, something about HOPE. The card numbers were growing, and the trend is your friend, as they say on Wall Street.

Come Christmas 2008. I am not going to elaborate about my peeking out of the door in merry expectation of the card-carrying postwoman ("facteur"), as lesser bloggers would. Bref, there were fewer cards. We blamed it on Wall Street and the crisis. But 2009 wasn't better. And 2010, when the crisis had abated, the card number had shrunken to 2003 values, around 10.

Doris (picture taken by her husband, Dirk (yes, the Dirk) ca. 1968)

A trend is a trend unless reversed, as they say on Wall Street. Today, one day before Christmas, we may expect the X-mas card business to have plateaued. Cards are sent early, it's too late for more. Time for the final count. How are we doing this year? We received 2 ("two") cards, both from the same person (Doris, also a neighbor, and she does not have a computer).

How is this going to end? Will we drop out of the world? Will the numbers turn negative next year? "Why can't we live together in peace?" (Jack Nicholson, as American president, in Mars Attacks).

It's the internet, stupid, I hear Bill Clinton say, who has possibly received 100,000 cards.

Holy cow!

2011-12-25T11:56:00.002+01:00

Yesterday night, the sky above Germany

Find a caption

2011-12-25T01:13:00.002+01:00

Freedom Fries feuilleton (100)

2011-12-23T09:02:00.004+01:00

The garage shutters crack morosely. Chang Man Yoon, who’s operating them, has been told to hide in the corner, Yoo should not see him, obviously. The Lexus turns wistfully into the dimly-lit shop, the brownish Ford in tow. Liz, still holding the gun to Yoo’s neck, has reached into the shopping bag and handed a bluish leather thing to Zack. “Stop,” she commands, as if Yoo could drive this any further. Where is Jim? Anyhow, now or never. Zack, with a single gesture, straps the leather thing over Yoo’s head. It’s a sensory deprivation hood, used for psycho-therapy or kinky sex. If he could only see himself, Leona thinks one of her dirty thoughts, but Yoo cannot see himself; instead, he’s overcome by a sensation of complete confinement. Jim appears with his stroller in the opening, belatedly. Chang has the shutter rolling down, cracking. “Get out,” barks Liz in her new voice, but Yoo cannot hear her under his kinky hood. It takes Liz a little while to realize this, they have failed to anticipate the hood’s effect. Stupid. Is this still plan A? She sticks the fake gun into Yoo’s side. Yoo reacts, gets up, hits the car frame with his hooded head. Well, the hood is well-padded.

Omega watch

John Yoo

Mickey Mouse watch

Deprivation hood (kinky)

They are on a tight schedule, Liz knows. Removing the hood, so Yoo can regain the initiative? “Hold him tight,” she orders Zack, falls on her knees, and unbuttons Yoo’s trousers. A hasty blow job to keep Yoo confused? No, they need Yoo’s clothes to perfect Chang Man’s disguise. Meanwhile, Jim tears Yoo’s jacket off his shoulders, the tie, the shirt. Yoo’s standing there now, stark naked, the head covered by the lewd hood in bluish-gleaming leather, the belly protruding, the genitals dangling, the brogues still on his socked feet. He wears long socks. As many hard-working professors, Yoo is a bit fatter than anticipated, Chang will look ridiculous in Yoo’s clothes. Plan A minus. Chang leaves his corner, and hands another device to Liz, a longish metallic stave, not unlike a portable metal detector. A swipe of Yoo’s clothes. Nothing. A swipe of Yoo’s body. The metal detector squeaks gotcha. Yoo’s watch is the culprit. Yes, it hides a GPS marker; the geographical coordinates of downtown Berkeley appear on the detector’s display. That’s easy. Fortunately, it’s not a Mickey Mouse watch, preferred by so many disgruntled Berkeley professors, but a decent Omega model with a bland face, possibly selected for Yoo by the Secret Service. James Bond could wear it on a bad day. Liz tries to remove the watch from Yoo’s wrist. Yoo resists, he is coming to his senses. He knows. They know. A kerfuffle.

Stay tuned for the next installment on Friday, or read the entire story published so far here.

Eine kleine Büromusik (Dirk)

2011-12-21T08:32:00.001+01:00

Ordinateur (French for beginners) (Vincent)

2011-12-20T11:00:00.003+01:00

The "urban word" of today, Computer, is defined as a "machine for downloading porn."

And, by sheer coincidence, Vincent sends this:

Une enseignante francophone expliquait à sa classe que dans la langue française, les noms, contrairement à l'anglais, sont désignés au masculin et au féminin. Par exemple : maison est féminin.. une maison ; crayon par contre, est masculin...un crayon.

Un élève demanda à l'enseignante de quel genre est donc le nom ordinateur [computer].

Au lieu de donner la réponse, l'enseignante a séparé la classe en deux groupes, garçons et filles, leur demandant de décider d'eux-mêmes si ordinateur est masculin ou féminin. Elle a demandé à chaque groupe de donner quatre bonnes raisons pour appuyer sa recommandation.

Les garçons ont décidé à l'unanimité que "ordinateur" est effectivement du genre féminin (une ordinateur) parce que:

1. Personne d'autre que son créateur ne comprend sa logique intérieure;
2. Le langage de base que les ordinateurs utilisent avec d'autres ordinateurs est incompréhensible pour quiconque;
3. Même la plus petite erreur est conservée en mémoire à long terme pour être ramenée à la surface plus tard;
4. Aussitôt que vous utilisez régulièrement une ordinateur, vous vous exposez à dépenser la moitié de votre chèque de paie pour acheter des accessoires pour elle.

Le groupe de filles, toutefois, a conclu que l'ordinateur est de genre masculin parce que:

1. Afin d'accomplir quoi que ce soit avec lui, tu dois l'allumer;
2. Il est bourré de matériel de base, mais ne peut penser par lui même;
3. Il est censé régler beaucoup de problèmes, mais la moitié du temps, c'est lui le problème;
4. Aussitôt que tu en utilises un régulièrement, tu te rends compte que si tu avais attendu un peu, tu aurais obtenu un meilleur modèle.

Les filles ont gagné !

The view from Chang's bed this morning

2011-12-19T09:23:00.000+01:00

A Christmas Carol (Jacki)

2011-12-18T19:53:00.002+01:00

A married couple has been out Christmas shopping at the mall most of the afternoon, when she suddenly realizes that her husband has “disappeared.”

Disoriented, she calls her husband’s cell and asks “where the hell are you ?”
“Darling, remember that jewelry shop where you saw the diamond necklace and totally fell in love with it; and remember that I didn’t have the money at the time and said ‘Baby it’ll be yours one day.”

Somewhat embarrassed and with a blushing smile, she replies “Yes. I remember that my love.”
“Well, I’m in the bar next to that store.”

Ditto (Siggi, Dirk)

2011-12-17T08:00:00.001+01:00

Dirk sends this...

...and writes: "This has been around for a while but still. As the story goes, the guy that owns this house lives north of Cincinnati, Ohio .. Police were constantly being called for traffic jams and accidents in the neighborhood so they asked him to shut it down during certain hours. Instead he started charging by car load to pay off duty police to be there."

And while we are at it:

Freedom Fries feuilleton (99)

2011-12-16T09:48:00.000+01:00

A horn blows from behind. Yoo turns around. It’s the brownish Ford that has been following him for unclear reasons all the way from the campus with a campy woman behind the wheel. Another horn blow. The woman waves her hand. The baby man grabs the handle of his carriage and disappears with the baby. A second horn chiming in from further behind. Little Italy. The shopping crowd starts to pay attention. Something is not right, he can smell it. Let’s get away from this. He gets back into the car. More smells, as he nestles into the driver’s seat, he has a sensitive nose. He closes the door. Something cold and metallic is touching his neck.

***

John Yoo follows orders. For the time being. Until he starts thinking again. They won’t have much time. There’s a side alley just 50 feet from the scene of the crime, barely 15 seconds into their outlaw career, and it features a defunct car-repair shop, which they’ve rented under false pretenses. “Turn here,” Liz says in a new alto voice that she hasn’t practiced long enough. Yoo turns.

***

The garage shutters crack morosely. Chang Man Yoon, who’s operating them, has been told to hide in the corner, Yoo should not see him, obviously. The Lexus turns wistfully into the dimly-lit shop, the brownish Ford in tow.

Stay tuned for the next installment on Friday, or read the entire story published so far here.

Euromess: Greek's public services

2011-12-15T21:13:00.006+01:00

We grabbed this picture from Kathimerini, the Greek broadsheet, where it illustrates a story on Greek's public services.

Whats wrong here? Well, we see two printers for two computer, where one printer would have been enough (easily providing capacity enough for 10 or 20 other computers). And if we dig a bit deeper, we see the two ladies both being on the phone, one completing a form by hand (which would, if the computers serve any purpose, have to be inputted (apologies) to the computer by hand). Why are they not communicating by email, or other network channels?

In anticipation

2011-12-15T12:48:00.003+01:00

Perry sends this picture...

...and writes: Carrying the Christmas tree home. We are dressed in orange because it is hunting season (and you do not wish to be shot). This is on a road that I built with my excavator.

Hunting season start (Dirk)

2011-12-14T16:35:00.000+01:00

Let's call it a Christmas (Jacki)

2011-12-13T16:45:00.008+01:00

FF received some fairly hectic chain mail about the importance of calling a Christmas tree a Christmas tree. In this spirit...

$0,000 $$$

2011-12-13T08:27:00.002+01:00

How many Thai does it take to change a light bulb? (Dirk)

2011-12-13T08:16:00.001+01:00

Russia on the horizon

2011-12-12T19:02:00.000+01:00

OK, we don't know whether this is Sarah Palin's porch, but it is a porch in Wasilla, Alaska. (Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

Find a caption

2011-12-12T10:58:00.001+01:00

(This Fort GT was wrecked by its owner on its maiden trip)