Posted 3:42 PM by Floyd

Somebody Should Sue the Internet People

Last weekend my wife and I were considering a trip to San Francisco to visit a museum. I had visited SF-MOMA, the museum of modern art, several years ago. Here are their current exhibitions:

• Diane Arbus Revelations: The famous photographer captures ordinary people in New York.
  
  
• The Minimalist Sensibility, 1959 to the Present. (Man, I'd be pissed if I had done something really cool and ... minimal ... in the year 1958.) The graphic displayed an exhibit which I had seen last time, and which is a prime example of modern art self-parody: Molten lead, splashed into the corner between wall and ceiling to create triangular ingots. The specimens of elements and rocks that you see in natural history museums have more artistic value than this drek.
  
  
• The Photographs of Reagan Louie: Sex Work in Asia. Oh joy: Pictures of skanky Asian prostitutes. I would go, but I heard that there was porn on the Internet too. Not sure if I'll find it.
  
  

Well. Call me a philistine, but I decided that SFMOMA was not for me. I Googled a bit and found out about a very cool exhibit in the Asian Art Museum:

An unsurpassed survey of Chinese art treasures from one of the greatest collections in the world will be on view at the Asian Art Museum in Golden Gate Park from October 14 to December 8 ...

This was great stuff, even if it lacked images of tubercolic whores. Sherry and I had planned to go today. We would drive up to Golden Gate Park and try to park near the museum. (It's very hard to park in Golden Gate Park on Saturdays.) But I painted my deck all day yesterday, and was tremendously sore and tired this morning. So we postponed our trip until the Thanksgiving weekend.

I went back online to make sure that the museum was open on Sundays. What I found was confusing; the Asian Art museum claimed to be located in downtown San Francisco, near the Civic Center! I googled some more and found that yes, the museum had moved last March. Then what of "the Asian Art Museum in Golden Gate Park?" Well here is what I found when I went back to the exhibition web page and read more carefully:

An unsurpassed survey of Chinese art treasures from one of the greatest collections in the world will be on view at the Asian Art Museum in Golden Gate Park from October 14 to December 8, 1996.

Posted 3:26 PM by Floyd

Are you a Civilization player? I've been an addict since August of last year. Recently I discovered the editor, and have created my own scenarios. The first scenario I created involves exploration. You and five computer players start on your own small islands, with room for only a few cities. Each starting island is a moderate distance away from a central continent, with lots of riches and barbarians.

You can download this scenario here. (It's designed for Play the World. If all you have is Civ III, try it and if it doesn't work, I can attempt to backport it for you.)

I am now working on another scenario, which is based on Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld novel. The map is a single river, which spirals from north to south pole. North-south movement is not possible. Resurrection and Richard Burton will not be included.

Update: I forgot to discuss starting civilizations and difficulty level. I removed most of the expansionist civs, as their scouting ability will be of little use when starting on a small island.

You should play this game on a difficulty level one tougher than what you are used to. Starting on a small island is possible in vanilla Civ, so you would think that the computer players would know to make a beeline for Mapmaking. They do not; on lower levels, where you can keep level with the computer players in tech, you will beat them to the main continent by a wide margin.

Posted 1:58 PM by Floyd

We're Not Real Happy About Those Newfangled "Lowercase" Letters, Either

So instead of readme.htm I clicked on install.htm. I then clicked my way to the Windows install, which was just a file link to a setup.exe program. Clicking this link in my Netscape 7 browser did not invoke the install; Netscape would only let me save the executable.

It's weird that the install didn't work on Netscape, because Borland is clearly fond of cutting off its nose to spite Microsoft's face. The installation solemnly warned me that I could not install into a directory whose name contained spaces, such as "Program Files". Installing into "Program Files" has been a standard for what, eight years now?

Excellence endures!

Posted 1:44 PM by Floyd

Great Moments in the History of Quality Control

I am about to install Borland's Opmitizeit Suite, version 5.5. I opened the box and extracted the CD, on which was printed:

To install,
see readme.htm.

There is no readme.htm on the CD.

Posted 1:22 PM by Floyd

Jeff Jarvis posted this a few days ago:

The Guardian asks 60 people what they want to say to Bush. Among the results:

: Harold Pinter: I'm sure you'll be having a nice little tea party with your fellow war criminal, Tony Blair. Please wash the cucumber sandwiches down with a glass of blood, with my compliments.

: Salam Pax: I am glad that someone is doing the cleaning up, and thank you for getting rid of that scary guy with the hideous moustache that we had for president. But I have to say that the advertisements you were dropping from your B52s before the bombs fell promised a much more efficient and speedy service. We are a bit disappointed. So would you please, pretty please, with sugar on top, get your act together and stop telling people you have Iraq all figured out when you are giving us the trial-and-error approach?

: Julie Burchill: George,
Great job, keep it up!

I assumed this was a parody of the IMAO or Scrappleface variety. Imagine my surprise when I clicked the link and found out that these quotes were authentic! Yes, there really is a famous playwright named Harold Pinter who behaves in a manner that would ashame a teenager complaining about his unjust curfew. (And for that matter, everyone's favorite blogger from last March really is a crypto-Baathist and whining ingrate.)

By the way, there's plenty more where Jeff's sample came from:

Dear Jorge,

Look out! Behind you!!

Hahahahahahahaha, only kidding.

Love,
DBC Pierre
Novelist

Posted 9:04 PM by Floyd

My friend Eric and I played at the Palo Alto club last night. We didn't do that well, but we did encounter some very interesting hands.

There were a lot of long and strong suits throughout the evening. Here was my hand on the third board we played:

AKQJ732 65 AJ52 —

I was fourth chair, vulnerable against not. LHO and partner passed to RHO who opened with 1. I bid 4. This was passed around to RHO, who thought for a little while and rebid 5.

I doubled. This is not penalty; it just says that I bid 4 to make. Partner pulled to 5 and there was no more bidding.

LHO led the 8. Here is the dummy (and the bidding repeated):

E/W Vul Matchpoints Dealer: North
Floyd A K Q J 7 3 2 6 5 A J 5 2 —		Eric T 9 8 4 Q 7 K T 7 6 4 3 2

West 4 X Pass		North Pass Pass Pass Pass		East Pass Pass 5		South 1 5 Pass

I ducked in dummy and my jack won the trick. I was fine if diamonds were 3-2, but what if RHO had started with Q9xx? Then I would lose a diamond trick. Fortunately I had a counter. I led a low spade to the ten and ruffed a club with the ace! Then a spade to the nine and a ruff with the king, followed by a spade to the eight and a third ruff.

At this point both hands had one spade, two hearts, and three diamonds. I exited in hearts and what could the opponents do? If RHO won the second heart, he would have to lead into dummy's diamond tenace or give me a ruff-sluff. If LHO won the trick, I could finesse the diamond return, which would win if she somehow had the queen of diamonds, or be covered by RHO, in which case the suit was 3-2. And of course a heart or club return gives me a pitch for my diamond loser. LHO did have the stiff diamond so my caution was rewarded.

Obviously on a heart lead the contract has no play. But what if the opponents led a club? It would take a fine technician to realize that a 4-1 diamond break would have to be catered to immediately -- ruff the club, and cross to dummy three times in trumps, twice for club ruffs and once for a diamond finesse. I bet most declarers would be concerned with the location of the queen of diamonds, and would try to postpone the finesse as late as possible. There will probably not be enough data to make much difference in choosing which opponent to play for the queen; it's better to guess early and cater to the 4-1 break.

An amusing sidenote: Spades broke two-zero, so the opponents were on a heart guess to make six clubs!

The next board we played was a tough defensive problem. All red, fourth chair, I held:

K4 AQT AQJ983 32

LHO and partner passed. RHO opened 1. I overcalled 2. LHO cuebid 3 (showing a limit raise in support of hearts). RHO rebid 3 and all passed.

I made the passive lead of the 3. Here was the dummy:

E/W Vul Matchpoints Dealer: North	Dummy T 9 8 7 6 5 J 9 4 K 5 A Q
Floyd K 4 A Q T A Q J 9 8 3 3 2

West 2 Pass		North Pass 3 Pass		East Pass Pass Pass		South 1 3 Pass

Dummy's ace won the trick as partner played a discouraging 7 (we play upside-down). Then the Q was cashed. Declarer led a spade off dummy, partner played the Q, and declarer won the ace.

At this point I went into a long trance, and finally played the K. Declarer led the K; I ruffed with the Q as declarer pitched a spade off dummy. I cashed the A and crossed to partner's J. Declarer had opened 1 on K532 -- I can't understand why people do this, but so many players do -- and partner's third spade would force declarer to ruff with the king. (If he ruffs low I score the T, which is the fourth defensive trick with the trump ace still to come). I can overruff with the A. Dummy's J pulls my ten, and the nine draws a second round, but partner will be left with the 8 for the setting trick.

Posted 2:51 PM by Floyd

Dear StrongBad:

I lost my wedding band, and thought you might have some idea of where I can find it.

VodkaPundit
Colorado Springs, CO

a:> Dear VodkaPundit,

Did you look inside your golden retriever?

Posted 2:34 PM by Floyd

Check out the incredible autumn color of this little maple tree in my front yard:



(Click the image for the full-sized version.)

People on the east coast like to brag about their beautiful fall colors. When I was growing up in Geneva, New York, these hues included yellows, reds, and oranges. Not shocking fluorescent pink. This being California, perhaps the maple was planted by the legendary transvestite arborist Joanna Appleseed ...

Posted 3:19 PM by Floyd

Those horrible capitalists are lowering prices again! They must be stopped!

Union blackmail? Not at all
LOWE'S BIG BOX STORE IS DUMB GROWTH WITH LOW-PAYING JOBS
By Neil Struthers

The Nov. 12 Mercury News editorial about local labor unions got it all wrong. The editorial accused the unions of threatening blackmail if Lowe's Home Improvement Center does not promise to construct its proposed project in San Jose with union labor. Wrong. It takes very few construction workers to build a big concrete box. That's not what this is about.

The issue is about making smart decisions for our community so that we maximize the economic benefits and minimize the environmental impacts of land-use decisions. There are only a limited number of sites in San Jose suitable for development. We can't afford to waste them on projects that do more harm than good.

...

If we are to increase the tax base and create good jobs, development in San Jose must be based on smart growth principles so we don't squander what makes Silicon Valley special. The Lowe's hardware store is not an example of smart growth. It is just another big box retailer that will clog traffic, worsen air quality, drive local stores out of business, create low-wage jobs and, by the way, destroy a historic building and hundreds of trees in the process.

The claim that Lowe's will increase San Jose's sales tax revenue is dubious at best. It's more likely that Lowe's will steal sales from the more than two-dozen other hardware stores in the city. Taking sales from local retailers may be good for a mega-corporation, but it's bad for our existing neighborhood businesses and provides no net increase in sales tax.

It's a myth that giant operations like Lowe's create good full-time jobs. They compete for market share by paying low wages and burden public services like health care by providing poor benefits. They destroy jobs at existing retailers. The IBM site was home to hundreds of high-quality jobs. That's the kind of smart-growth economic development we need.

...

NEIL STRUTHERS is the CEO of the Santa Clara and Benito Counties Building & Construction Trades Council.

If San Jose really wanted to regulate growth to avoid traffic and pollution, wouldn't the best method be to prevent any new construction whatsoever? After all, there are existing buildings that work just fine. If a store or office moves into an abandoned building, it can just use that structure. Building a new one is wasteful. Think about all the money used for demolition, foundation, walls, etc. that could be used to save baby whales or whatever.

I wonder what the Building and Construction Trades folks would think about that?

Posted 2:42 PM by Floyd

Pointless trivia: Dan Weintraub mentioned in passing that Schwartzenegger was to be sworn in as California's 38th governor. Interesting that while California has been a state for sixty fewer years than the US has been electing presidents, there have been 38 California governors to America's 43 presidents.

California is viewed as new, trendy, forward-looking, cutting-edge. Yet California was the 31st state to be admitted to the Union, contemporary with many states that seem staid and long-standing by comparison. California followed Iowa by four years and Wisconsin by two. Minnesota achieved statehood in 1858, eight years after California, while Kansas was made a state in 1861. Nebraska was only admitted after the Civil War, in 1867.

Posted 12:55 PM by Floyd

Man, that was creepy. I left for lunch just before noon, and came back a half hour later to see my co-worker Muljadi staring at the bashed-in remnants of his car's rear window.

It's difficult to see how it could have been caused by accident, as the car was parked in the middle of a row, and the rear body beneath the window was untouched. (The car is not a hatchback, so the trunk extends two feet back of the window.) Some other people have reported minor incidents of vandalism -- splashed paint and a ding on the trunk.

What's weird is that these cars are parked in a sunny outside lot between two office buildings. There are no windows on the buildings, but there is a glass door in our building, and considerable traffic as people leave and enter the building.

Posted 11:16 AM by Floyd

Joanne Jacobs mocked this letter to the Mercury News decrying militarism at a San Jose Veteran's Day parade:

From my home in downtown San Jose it was an easy walk to Market Street to watch the Veterans Day Parade -- flags, old soldiers, bugles and drums, all giving expression to my own patriotism, especially on this day.

But I left early. In the beginning, the middle, and I suspect the end, something olive green and sinister snaked through the parade. I had not expected it, not to that degree. It was the machinery of war. And from the cheers of the spectators, it seemed the glory of war surpassed the glory of the veterans.

Many veterans fought in wars, and it was guns and tanks that ensured their safe return. But it is one thing to say our thanks and another to so wildly cheer soldiers in camouflage pointing rifles, to applaud so vigorously the World War II entry that proclaimed, ``We did it then, we can do it now.''

I went to the parade to honor our soldiers that gave much and traveled far, not to glorify the wars that took them there.

In these days of yet another bloody conflict, I can think of ways to celebrate Veterans Day without glorifying war. Bring out more school bands, more Boy Scouts, more Sousa marching music, more baton twirlers, more kids waving American flags, more leaflets calling for improved veterans benefits. A parade like that --I think I might have stayed.

Ann Lencioni
San Jose

The stuff about "more leaflets calling for improved veterans benefits" is obnoxious, and I agree with Jacobs' commenters that Lencioni might want to think about whether Boy Scout troops would do a good job of capturing Baghdad. But I do agree with some of Lencioni's argument: I don't think tanks belong at Veteran's Day parades.

I have always been horrified and repelled by Soviet and Chinese May Day parades that showed off those nations' nuclear-armed missiles. (Not that this ever bothered anti-nuclear "peace" protesters in the West.) It's the height of barbarism to be proud of weapons whose only purpose is to destroy millions of people.

I am happy to see soldiers marching in a Veteran's Day parade. Air shows like the Blue Angels are not militaristic, as what is being displayed is precision flying rather than precision bombing. But a tank is a terrifying object designed to dominate the battlefield. It's necessary to preserve our freedom, but it doesn't need to be part of our parades.

Posted 8:34 AM by Floyd

John Ray reports on one of the Left's infrequent dalliances with technology:

I have not been able to get a look at the original research results behind This report that racism can be detected by brain activity. The report is obviously sensationalized in that it refers to “white” racism only. Presumably black racism could be detected in a similar way. But I guess we are not supposed to mention black racism.

Posted 1:19 PM by Floyd

One of James Donald's aphorisms about the radical left is that "wherever the master's boot has been smashing the face of a child, [they] will cheer the master, and demonize the child as an agent of the CIA." There is a corollary: Wherever a large corporation attempts to save consumers money, the left will tell you that this will lead to the consumers' impoverishment, and is the next step on the road to fascism.

Consider this blog post from left-wing Mercury News technology columnist Dan Gillmor:

Fast Company: The Wal-Mart You Don't Know. Wal-Mart wields its power for just one purpose: to bring the lowest possible prices to its customers. At Wal-Mart, that goal is never reached. The retailer has a clear policy for suppliers: On basic products that don't change, the price Wal-Mart will pay, and will charge shoppers, must drop year after year. But what almost no one outside the world of Wal-Mart and its 21,000 suppliers knows is the high cost of those low prices. Wal-Mart has the power to squeeze profit-killing concessions from vendors. To survive in the face of its pricing demands, makers of everything from bras to bicycles to blue jeans have had to lay off employees and close U.S. plants in favor of outsourcing products from overseas.

Actually, the company wields its power for another purpose: to make profits for its shareholders. The low-prices mantra is a means toward that end.

And it's a mean operation, in more ways than should make us comfortable. For example, Wal-Mart pays its people such low wages that they qualify for government programs such as food stamps. They get substandard health insurance, if they can afford it at all. In other words, we're paying hidden taxes for those "everyday low prices."

I first encountered Wal-Mart in the mid-1980s, when I worked in Kansas City. I watched as it marched through rural America, decimating downtown commercial districts everywhere it went. A corporate marauder, Wal-Mart had no mercy, no sense of anything but growth. It was, and is, an endlessly feeding shark.

In some ways, those Main Streets deserved their fate. They were controlled by local folks who'd kept prices high and selections low until Wal-Mart's troops crushed them. But when the giant retailer was finished, it was just about the only retailer making money -- and the profits didn't stay in the towns where the profits were being made. They went back to Arkansas and to shareholders. Raw capitalism.

I don't shop at Wal-Mart. I'd rather pay a little bit more from a retailer that isn't sucking the lifeblood out of America's communities and employers.

Low prices, sure. But the price the nation is paying as a society for Wal-Mart's low prices should give us all pause.

A commenter provided one example of Wal-Mart's rapacity:

The problem with Wal-Mart goes beyond their ability to offer low prices. As discussed in today's New York Times:

"he 70,000 grocery workers on strike in Southern California are the front line in a battle to prevent middle-class service jobs from turning into poverty-level ones. The supermarkets say they are forced to lower their labor costs to compete with Wal-Mart, a nonunion, low-wage employer aggressively moving into the grocery business. Everyone should be concerned about this fight. It is, at bottom, about the ability of retail workers to earn wages that keep their families out of poverty."

And given its size, Wal-Mart can make or break suppliers. For instance Dial Corp. gets 28% of revenues from Wal-Mart. If they were to lose Wal-Mart - ouch. More and more Wal-Mart has no real competitors because of its size - not good for suppliers whose margins get squeezed. Read the Vlasic in the Fast Company article.

"The gallon jar reshaped Vlasic's pickle business: It chewed up the profit margin of the business with Wal-Mart, and of pickles generally. Procurement had to scramble to find enough pickles to fill the gallons, but the volume gave Vlasic strong sales numbers, strong growth numbers, and a powerful place in the world of pickles at Wal-Mart. Which accounted for 30% of Vlasic's business. But the company's profits from pickles had shriveled 25% or more, Young says--millions of dollars.

The gallon was hoisting Vlasic and hurting it at the same time.

Young remembers begging Wal-Mart for relief. "They said, 'No way,' " says Young. "We said we'll increase the price"--even $3.49 would have helped tremendously--"and they said, 'If you do that, all the other products of yours we buy, we'll stop buying.' It was a clear threat." Hunn recalls things a little differently, if just as ominously: "They said, 'We want the $2.97 gallon of pickles. If you don't do it, we'll see if someone else might.' I knew our competitors were saying to Wal-Mart, 'We'll do the $2.97 gallons if you give us your other business.' " Wal-Mart's business was so indispensable to Vlasic, and the gallon so central to the Wal-Mart relationship, that decisions about the future of the gallon were made at the CEO level."

To recap: Vlasic had a nice little business selling pickles in smallish quantities. Then Wal-Mart decided that consumers should be able to buy pickles in bulk quantities. Wal-Mart and Vlasic fought over how much the pickles would cost, and Wal-Mart won -- transferring millions of dollars from Vlasic's pocket to those of Wal-Mart's consumers.

And how do left-wingers react to this? They squeal about how Wal-Mart "has no competitors because of its size" (facially and demonstrably invalid), and how it "turns middle-class service jobs into lower-class jobs."

The only way that a service job can "turn into" a lower-paying job is if that job did not provide sufficient value for the employer -- and, by implication, the consumer. And the only way that a company like Wal-Mart can become a "shark" and can "march through rural America" is when that company is on a relentless mission to lower prices and improve service and selection.

Another corporation in the Wal-Mart mode is Microsoft. Yes, Microsoft sought dominance in the personal computer desktop operating system market. But now that Microsoft has attained a near-monopoly, what does it do? It continuously commoditizes products as part of the Windows operating system. Microsoft gives away software for free! Remember when you had to pay for a browser? For a disk defragmenter? Hell, 10 years ago you had to pay for a TCP/IP stack.

This reminds me of another of Donald's sayings, a slogan for anarcho-capitalism: "The Customer Shall Rule."