INTERESTING: Bobby Fischer, American chess master

Friday, January 18, 2008

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080118/D8U89N681.html

World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer Dies
Jan 18, 7:26 AM (ET)
By GUDJON HELGASON

*** begin quote ***

REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) – Bobby Fischer, the reclusive American chess master who became a Cold War icon when he dethroned the Soviet Union’s Boris Spassky as world champion in 1972, has died. He was 64.

***End Quote***

They say the line between genius and madness is very grey.

I played a lot of chess as a child. (I was a rated chess and bridge player. And, if I was born a couple of decades later, then I might have been a poker millionaire. I knew the math side; would have had to learn the people side.) I knew of Fischer before he was “popular”. I followed his games in the chess rags and chess clubs in the Greenwich Village. In fact, at chess, you can quickly see that you are out classed with no hope of ever getting better. His games were like that. I found many people, who while better than I, opined that he was the “Cassius Clay” of our “sport”. After that point, you’re either just kidding yourself or wasting time. So, I moved on to find my niche at something I was unique at. (I’m still looking!?!)

I hope he found peace.

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Posted by reinkefj

LIBERTY: Spread the cost across all American taxpayers largely for the sake of whom?

Friday, January 18, 2008

http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs72.html

Libertarian Foreign Policy in the Hobbesian Crosshairs: A Reply to Bret Stephens
by Robert Higgs

***Begin Quote***

Nobody “forced” Americans to begin to build a navy in the 1790s. Government officials and seafaring merchants decided to do so and to deploy this force against (among others) the pirates to whom the government had been paying protection money. They might instead have continued to pay off the Barbary raiders. Or they might have rested content to let the merchants of other nations, perhaps Great Britain, which already had a large navy, handle the shipping of American goods in the Mediterranean. The fact that U.S. leaders resorted to force does not demonstrate that they chose the best option. This option did, however, socialize the costs of engaging in the Mediterranean trade, spreading it across all American taxpayers largely for the sake of the traders who had an immediate interest in the matter.

***End Quote***

Here’s a interesting formulation of gooferment.

SOMEONE has a problem. Whey then make it a gooferment problem, it can be FIXED regardless of cost. TAXPAYERS pay and SOMEONE benefits.

Look at everything the gooferment is in and you’ll see the same paradigm and meme in play.

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Posted by reinkefj

RANT: Hey Governor Corzine — still wanna hear about state cars? … (continued) …

Thursday, January 17, 2008

You don’t? TOO BAD!

This morning 17 January 2008 @ 0730 local

… on Route 295S milepost 47 …

… a white suv TD 1161 …

… at a leisurely 75+ (Your serf speed limit is 65) …

… never left the left lane (Do you teach them to do that, or is that a qualification for working for the state of nujerzee!?)

Any way I am sure that he was hurrying to get away from the scene of the crime in trenton. (Everything politicians and bureaucrats do in Trenton is a crime!)

… just to protect and serve me.

Arghhh!

P.S.: Next time you talk to your buddy George (Everyone knows there’s not a dime worth of difference between Democans and Republicrats. Look at old man Bush and Clinton — pals. “Yuck, did we put one over on them.”), please ask him if he could tell his minions to observe the state speed limits? (So much for the tenth amendment!) I saw “Go Army” car US Gooferment plate 66-15-08 at milepost 59.5 on 295 South zipping by in the left lane. What does that person think they are … “the Guv”?

Arghhhhhhh!

P.S.: Dear reader, I don’t write these every day. Just when I ARRIVE early for work, particularly agitated aggravated and have to wait for my employer workstation to get online.

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH SERVICE: BIGCONTACTS not big enough and too expensive

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

http://blog.econsultant.com/how-to-replace-microsoft-outlook-address-book-with-online-service-big-contacts

How to replace Microsoft Outlook address book with online service: Big Contacts
14 January 2008

***Begin Quote***

Problem: How to replace Microsoft Outlook address book with online service: Big Contacts

Solution: Big Contacts

Site: http://www.bigcontacts.com/

***End Quote***

The limits are set at a 1,000 contacts per user. You can have two thousand users. So, in theory, 2M contacts. But, on Outlook I have over 19k of contacts in various and sundry categories.

SO BIG ain’t BIG enough!

NOT RECOMMENDED!

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH SOFTWARE: EMAIL’s reply all

Monday, January 14, 2008

FROM A RECENT EMAIL

***Begin Quote***

We’ve had a “national outbreak” of the “reply all” virus.

It’s really not a virus. But it might as well be.

It’s when, to get off a distribution, some poor soul — usually in a fit of pique — does a “reply all” and says “take me off the list”. Others respond with a “reply all” to either chime in about getting off the distribution, or castigate the transgressor. If the distribution list is really large and / or there are lots of computing centers involved, it can create an overwhelming “fire storm” of messages that can overwhelm an infrastructure.

It usually takes some one in Leadership saying politely “shut up”, or the equivalent, to stop it. I’ve appended an attempt to damp it.

I just thought you’d want to pass along a warning about the use of “reply all”.

Lest it be followed with the “pink slip” virus. :-)

***End Quote***

I don’t blame people. I blame poorly designed software.

How hard would it have been to say “Confirm reply all to a distribution list”?

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Posted by reinkefj

LIBERTY: The Supreme Court today declined dying patients

Monday, January 14, 2008

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/14/AR2008011401709.html?hpid=moreheadlines

Supreme Court Declines to Hear Experimental Drug Case
Petitioners Argue Terminally Ill Should Have Right to Drugs Not Yet Approved by FDA
By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 14, 2008; 4:36 PM

***Begin Quote***

The Supreme Court today declined to consider whether dying patients have a right to be treated with experimental drugs not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

***End Quote***

Silly citizen. You need the FDA’s protection. Even if you die waiting, you’ll be “safe”. Your betters know what is best for you!

How dumb are we?

How much protection does Big Pharma want?

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Posted by reinkefj

MONEY: the most dangerous tax

Monday, January 14, 2008

http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/inflation-tax

***Begin Quote***

Today, the federal government burdens us with one of the most dangerous taxes it can impose — the inflation tax. When the federal government finds that it cannot afford its out-of-control spending, and is unwilling to directly tax the public, it resorts simply to creating the money out of thin air.

***End Quote***

Here we have the ultimate tax.

A tax on money. A tax on savings. A tax on the poor. A tax on those on fixed income. An escalator that drives all costs up.

And, it creates a positive feedback loop for the cost of gooferment. The Fed inflates so the cost of what the gooferment pays goes up. The gooferment needs more money. The Fed inflates more. A positive feedback loop that any injineer will tell you will ultimately and rather quickly destroy itself. And, in the process, politicians, bureaucrats, and unions get ever increasing pay raises.

A tax on anything dollar denominated.

How silently insidious?

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Posted by reinkefj

JOBSEARCH: it’s always the same drill

Monday, January 14, 2008

From AN EMAIL

***Begin Quote***

Well, it’s always time to move forward.

Stay in XXXXXXXXX or do something else? Full-timer, consulting, road warrior?

Geographic comfort zone? Relo?

Have you figured out your elevator speech yet? (Mine is “I extract value it large-scale usually legacy or brown-field IT infrastructures.”)

***End Quote***

For newly minted Turkeys, it’s always the same drill: What do you want to do, where do you want to do it, and how do you want to be compensated?

Ain’t life a kick in the ass?

Someday, the first contact with a newly axed turkey will contain the answers to those questions. Until then, I’ll just respond to them asking for help, by asking them.

Then, I’ll buy a lottery ticket.

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Posted by reinkefj

LIBERTY: Government anti-poverty programs are a classic

Sunday, January 13, 2008

http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=8204

***Begin Quote***

Government anti-poverty programs are a classic case of the therapeutic state setting out to treat disorders created by the state itself. Urban poverty as we know it is, in fact, exclusively a creature of state intervention in consensual economic dealings. This claim may seem bold, even to most libertarians. But a lot turns on the phrase “as we know it.” Even if absolute laissez faire reigned beginning tomorrow, there would still be people in big cities who are living paycheck to paycheck, heavily in debt, homeless, jobless, or otherwise at the bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. These conditions may be persistent social problems, and it may be that free people in a free society will still have to come up with voluntary institutions and practices for addressing them. But in the state-regimented market that dominates today, the material predicament that poor people find themselves in—and the arrangements they must make within that predicament—are battered into their familiar shape, as if by an invisible fist, through the diffuse effects of pervasive, interlocking interventions.

***End Quote***

Like the supposed “war on drugs”, the supposed “war on poverty” is another one that’s been lost. It would seem that the only purpose of the “poverty war” was to enhance the number of gooferment bureaucrats on the payroll.

Thanks, LBJ!

Can we now admit defeat and try something that works?

Liberty.

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Posted by reinkefj

FUN: The 2007 Darwin Awards are out

Sunday, January 13, 2008

http://darwinawards.com/

Taking apart munitions with a chisel?

One has to that the various nominees for voluntarily removing themselves from the gene pool.

Freedom to make bad choices.

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Posted by reinkefj

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