Posts by richard
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I installed Safari 4 this afternoon -- it IS very fast, and the "12 sites in one frame" feature makes me think that it might be time to get a 30 inch monitor.
But then my mail crashed twice in 5 minutes, and then I noticed the macintouch.com page from which I learned about the beta also had a comment saying "Safari 4 made Mail crash" -- so it was back to Safari 3 for me. (And a reboot both times)
But on the happy front, I did figure out why my little Mac Mini server was hammering its external disk for half an hour at a time (a problem caused by an odd set of circumstances which not even Google seemed to have heard of.)
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Re Obama, I got the following from my father, apparently a quote from Chris Rock: "Excellent black people have always been compensated for excellence. Always. The real equality is when we can have a black president as dumb as George Bush. That's when we're really equal. That's when the dream has come true."
I must admit, coming back to the US just in time for the inauguration, it really did feel like the end of a long national nightmare. It is not so much that I disagree with many of Bush's policies, but the ignorance and incompetence he and his team displayed in pursuit of their goals is simply breathtaking. They simply ignored evidence that was inconvenient, whether it was global warming, or going into Iraq without enough troops to get the job done quickly (However repugnant fighting an unnecessary war might be, fighting it badly is arguably a great deal more evil)
And to further cheer my day, we have this
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/01/22/steven-chu-addresses-the-national-labs/
marking the return of the United States to the reality-based world.
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Well, in NZ it's different: public schools kick some serious butt. It's not what I hear about the US of A.
It depends where you live. To a large extent, schools are funded by cities and towns, with input from the state and federal level -- imagine if your rates ("property tax") paid for your schools.
And well-off town often have excellent public schools (and fairly hefty tax bills) -- these schools can be excellent, by any standard.
But towns with higher levels of poverty won't have the tax base to pay for schools of the same standard, and may have more "problem cases" that will cost money to deal with.
This simplifies matters, but the US public education varies dramatically from place to place.
No Child Left Behind was an attempt to establish a de facto national standard (since it is tied to Federal money), but it is driven by testing and however well intentioned it might be, it has grossly distorted the "marketplace".
It is not the intention behind NCLB that is the problem, but the implementation and unintended consequences.
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Russell,
Something like this:
http://www.insectnation.org/projects/nightclimbing
Oddly enough, I remember someone (who had spent several very happy years at Cambridge) showing me a copy of this book back when I was a student at Canterbury, and it was clearly a treasured possession. But they do this sort of thing properly in the old country.
And, as it happens, I was in Cambridge a couple of months ago and popped into Heffers, and saw a big stack of the reprinted edition for sale -- what was once dangerously underground (or dangerously above ground, in this case) is now safely retro...
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And we won't have Winston Peters to kick around anymore. Which, when you put it this way, sounds like less of a good thing than it actually is.
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And even if we can't vote, permanent residents (ie green card holders) can give money to candidates for Federal office. A sort of voluntary self-taxation, to go with the compulsory kind.
I must admit, the taxation without representation thing irritates me a little (usually around April 15). On the other hand, I get a good deal more from the US government in grant money than I could ever pay in taxes, so it is probably churlish to complain too vociferously, even if I can't spend that money on myself.
And, if we do become citizens, we can vote in the next one, and then for Hillary in 2016....
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Ah. Little known fact about Vikings: Despite the repetitive images, Vikings never had horns on their helmets.
Certainly unknown on the streets of New Haven, I can promise you that.
Although I did once see a fancy ceremonial helmet in a museum in, I think, Copenhagen which had a decent pair of horns. Presumably this was someone's best helmet, and not for everyday wear.
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Personally, I would like to see Graham Capill (but surely he is still in prison?) seated next to Garth McVicar.
But I would put both of them on the Andes-bound plane, rather than the dinner party.
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I saw what I believe to be the School-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named's entry on Wikipedia -- it lists "Famous Alumni", consisting of one guy who teaches at [a university], five under "politics and business" (including one guy with a PhD in math from a well known US university) and then a whole slew of sportsmen.
But they final entry on the list truly seems to catch the spirit of the place. He is the guitarist for a band whose name appears to be a subtle reference to the demon weed -- and which "played alongside" (presumably band-speak for "opened for") such notables as Slipknot, Korn and "Pungent Stench"