Excuses
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So I had this really penetrating essay on prescription drug costs to post tonight. (Not really, but it sounds good, doesn't it?) Actually, I spent the evening updating WinAmp to fix a security vulnerability. Then I downloaded Ubuntu Linux to try out. (As if I don't already have enough half-finished projects in the works.) I would work on the essay now, but the Head Rat and I are going to watch the new version of Dune that was released today.

(Once again I am reminded that chronic Bloggers are the only individuals in the world that will post 200 words to explain why they won't be posting to their blog today.)

by Cziltang 
Posted: Tuesday, January 31 2006 10:20:17 PM

When can I get my glow-in-the-dark bacon?
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(Via the Register) Researchers from Taiwan have successfully bred fluorescent pigs.

No, really. They did. And they are damned proud of themselves, too. Apparently this is a significant advance over the "partly fluorescent" pigs bred by other researchers.

(I'm sorry, I can't do any more of this. I'm trying to be serious, as fluorescent pigs will provide a means to do disease research without doing biopsies and other invasive procedures on the pigs. It's just that I'm fighting this overpowering urge to make some really, really bad jokes...)

by Cziltang 
Posted: Monday, January 30 2006 10:56:39 PM

Falling Sand
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This is just cool, no matter how you cut it. I can't explain what is so mesmerizing about it, but it is one of the coolest on-line diversions I've ever run across.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Monday, January 30 2006 09:25:52 PM

Skylark
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It was a very long week last week, and it has been a very strange weekend. We've been to the emergency room. The Head Rat insisted on balancing the checkbook with me (OK, that doesn't sound so bad, but I do it on the computer. That means we have conversations like: "OK, close the window." "Is that the big red X?" "Yeah, click the big red X."). I spent 15 minutes engaged in an "emoticon" exchange with Rat Jr. where we attempted to see who could find and use the most annoying foreign language audible emoticon in Yahoo Instant Messenger (if you are one of the fortunate individuals who don't have a clue what I'm talking about here, take a few minutes and give thanks to the deity of your choice that you A) don't have children, B) your children still speak directly to you rather than IM'ing you from the basement, C) you have a life, or D) any combination of the above that leaves you blissfully ignorant of the subtleties of IM culture. Of course, if you said C, you are probably lying because you are reading this, and while that isn't absolute proof, it doesn't speak highly of the complexity of your social calendar). And we just finished watching "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" (which features the Johnny Mercer song "Skylark". Remember "Skylark"? This is a post about "Skylark").

Well, actually it isn't. It just occurred to me that there is no such thing as a "Groundlark" which makes the whole "Sky-" part redundant, no?

 

by Cziltang 
Posted: Sunday, January 29 2006 09:14:27 PM

Making a fool of yourself
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(via Kate at Small Dead Animals) an excerpt of James Lileks on "Simple rules for making a fool of yourself on the Internet":

Swear angrily. Not just the classics, but the ones relating to excretion and genitalia. Nothing shows you're a serious thinker like a torrent of obscenities. It's the reason Courtney Love is invited to speak to the U.N. so often. Added bonus: Lots of cursing means no one will suspect you're a Christian. If you are a Christian, you'll be one of the cool ones who listens to Howard Stern spank lesbian midget strippers. Which automatically means you're pro-choice, so whatever with the G-d thing.

Update: As much as I like Lileks, I was going to pass on this link, but after a bit of contemplation, I couldn't let "lesbian midget strippers" go.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Sunday, January 29 2006 09:05:22 PM

It’s okay because it’s just a big business
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I've been meaning to address the recent Maryland law regarding Wal-Mart's health benefits, but, I think this will do just fine:

From Planet Moron (yes, it is satire...)

What’s the best way to address the fact that 786,000 Maryland residents are without health insurance? Pass a bill that targets the 17,000 who suffer from chronic employment. With their oppressively regular paychecks and access to health benefits, these desperately jobful citizens were clearly crying out for help.

(...)

Called the “Wal-Mart bill” because its provisions coincidentally affect only Wal-Mart, it had originally been vetoed by Republican Governor Bob Ehrlich. Overridden this week by the Democratic-controlled legislature, it will require the retailing giant to spend a set 8% of its payroll on health care for its employees.

Wal-Mart's current mix of pay, benefits, hours, locations and working conditions managed to convince 17,000 Marylanders to freely choose to work there rather than the three million other jobs available in the state. However, because these decisions were made by individuals and not state-certified experts, they were clearly suspect. Now that the professionals have had a look we know that 8% is the "correct" number.

(...)

Still, what will Maryland do about its remaining 769,000 residents who do not have health insurance?

One company down, 134,446 to go!

by Cziltang 
Posted: Thursday, January 26 2006 01:00:22 AM

Understanding Politicians
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From Perry de Havilland at Samizdata:

"Understanding politicians and what they are likely to do is much easier once you realise that almost everyone in politics (even the 'nice guys' who wear sensible cardigans and remind you of Wallace and Gromit) have more in common psychologically and morally with your typical member of a street gang than with most of the people who actually vote for them."

 

by Cziltang 
Posted: Thursday, January 26 2006 12:21:05 AM

More on Helping the Needy
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I was talking with an acquaintance a few days ago about helping the needy. I was basically maintaining my assertion that the government should not be in the "helping the needy" business and that we should be responsible for helping those around us. We were talking about what is available, what is needed and what is working in our area. In response, she kept insisting that in places like Los Angeles there are thousands of homeless and unemployed, her point being that what I was proposing wouldn't work in those places and that government was needed to do the job. Aside from the fact that the existence of thousands of homeless in LA seems to me to make a pretty good case that government isn't doing and can't do the job, I realized there is another point here.

I know a bit about the local area. I know a bit about what is needed. I don't know squat about the problem in Los Angeles. And, that is the point. I don't know what is needed in LA. I don't know what would work in LA. I don't know the details, the peculiarities, the obstacles in LA. I don't know about Chicago or St. Louis or Detroit or New York or anywhere else. And neither does anyone in DC. The idea that bureaucrats in DC would be able to design and administer anything other than a "one size fits all" system of generally throwing money at the problems in local areas is absurd.

We, here in our local area, know what is needed here in our local area. We should be responsible for making it happen rather than waiting around for someone in DC to guess and send money.

Update: Or someone in Topeka. When you get right down to it, what makes sense here would be a lot of wasted money and resources in the county where my parents grew up, because the problems in a rural area and the problems here require different approaches. All the more reason why we should do it ourselves and not wait for someone somewhere else to decide what we need.

 

by Cziltang 
Posted: Tuesday, January 24 2006 01:20:45 AM

It's about time
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(via the Agitator) I ran across this article which summarizes the health benefits of drinking coffee. And, no, I don't mean that decaf crap. I'm talking about REAL coffee.

(also via the Agitator) As Radley Balko says, "Push the button. Go on. You know you want to."

by Cziltang 
Posted: Monday, January 23 2006 12:39:29 AM

Old Guy Quiz
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Our friend from Idaho e-mailed me a little history test. Theoretically, the older you are, the better you will score. It is about odds and ends in daily life in the 40's and 50's (more or less, although some of these questions ask about things that carried over into the 60's). If you like that sort of thing, I've posted it here, with a link to the answers.

(I was amused that I knew the answer to the first question because the first car I ever drove was a 1962 Dodge Dart. Oh, and if you are young enough not to get the question about the RC bottle even after you read the answer, drop me an e-mail.)

by Cziltang 
Posted: Sunday, January 22 2006 10:50:53 PM

Essays
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While I was thinking about it, I added a couple of essays to the essay page, including the Butter Police rant mentioned below.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Tuesday, January 17 2006 10:15:54 PM

Lipidleggin'
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A couple of years ago, I wrote about the Butter Police. As is often the case, it turns out that several people beat me to the punch. Through a trail of web site links I can't even begin to re-create, I found this short story called Lipidleggin' by F. Paul Wilson, written in 1978.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Tuesday, January 17 2006 07:32:38 PM

Damned if you do...
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This is weird enough to be in my Stupid Criminal Tricks section, but it isn't mine:

(Via the Register) Hitman jailed for lack of death

by Cziltang 
Posted: Tuesday, January 17 2006 07:23:01 PM

Helping the Poor
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Everywhere you go on left side of the blogosphere, you see articles and discussion about the plight of the poor: the gap between rich and poor is widening, the poor are so much worse off than ever before, the poor need this, the poor should have that. For purposes of discussion, leave aside any issues of personal responsibility (why is it that if you are rich you are a greedy, evil bastard and it is all your fault, but if you are poor you are a victim and nothing about your situation is your fault?) Leave aside issues of whether or not the poor in the modern world are really worse off than at any time in the past. Leave aside the fact that a lot of the discussion of the poor on the left sounds like someone talking about their pets (you know, they are amusing and entertaining in an endearing sort of way, but they are something you talk about, not talk to, unless in that stupid pet owner, baby-talk kind of way, because they won't understand anyway). Leave aside any issues of how we got to where we are. Let's concentrate on the situation at hand and talk about helping the poor. After all, it is society's obligation to take care of it's poor, right?

Well, that may be morally true. It may be morally wrong for us to allow people to suffer. So, OK. I'll play along. We are obligated to do something to alleviate the problem, so let's all help some poor people. How do we do that? Well, we could all take personal responsibility for the problem. Feel free to jump in and contribute some time or money to help, OK?

The left suggests that while that is a nice gesture, it won't solve the problem. Some of us don't have the time to help. Some of us don't have the money. Some of us aren't willing to help (for a variety of reasons). The services provided might not be sufficient in scope or quantity. Some people in need might slip through the cracks. If all of the help we provide the poor comes from us and the not the government, we would be solely responsible for our fellow man, which is a big responsibility. (Aside from everything else, a lot of good people would spend their lives feeling guilty that they just can't help enough.)

If we meet our societal responsibilities through government programs, we don't have to feel guilty if someone slips through the cracks. It is someone else's problem. They should do something about it. We don't have to be so concerned about giving of our time and money. We don't have to wrestle with dilemmas like: Do I really need a shiny new car or should I help my fellow man? We don't have to make time to volunteer and risk missing the latest episode of "Desperate Housewives." Meeting our societal obligations through government programs has the added advantage that government programs aren't dependent on donations, they are funded by taxes. Most of us pay taxes. In theory, someone who has more money pays more taxes and therefore shoulders a larger part of the burden of helping the poor. If we are individually responsible, someone might not contribute what we think is their fair share. If help is through government programs, when people slip through the cracks in the system, we can be morally outraged and blame it on "them" (those rich bastards with more money than me).

And there it is. If the government takes care of it, those "greedy bastards" won't get out of their moral obligations. I won't have to cough up as much of my own money for charity (and I don't have to feel guilty about it) and I'm not responsible for ensuring that it is used wisely or effectively. (Which is, of course, morally lazy, hypocritical, and irresponsible as most of us are just as keen to keep our own little pile of money as the "greedy bastards" we are so fond of excoriating, and besides, it is easier to let someone else worry about it.)

But let's put all that aside and concentrate on purely practical matters. Government is the worst possible entity to provide services to poor people. Look at the response to hurricane Katrina. Look at the track record of government programs and responses versus the track record of private sources of aid (when they weren't being prevented from helping by the government). The responses of government programs were and continue to be dismal failures compared to what motivated individuals and groups were and are able to do. But, in spite of the evidence, the political left continues to clamor for more government programs, because if it isn't working, the obvious answer is create more programs and throw more money at the problem. The logic: private charity is more efficient and effective than government programs. Government programs are inefficient and wasteful. Let's have more government programs. It doesn't make any sense, does it?

Well, there is a set of conditions where it does make sense. Assume for a moment that your primary concern is not helping the poor and that helping the poor is merely a convenient pretext to advance your primary concerns. Assume for a moment that your primary concerns are re-distribution of wealth and finding more ways to exercise control over people's lives. Under those conditions, it makes perfect sense.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Monday, January 16 2006 05:10:50 PM

Lurker Essays
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I've been lurking on various left-of-center websites recently. I guess my blood pressure wasn't high enough. So, I've been working on some responses on various topics. I don't really know where all of this is going, but as I work them out I may or may not post them here. I will say this, while I do not categorically deny the existence of societal scale forces, the biggest problem I have with the left is the fundamental notion that people are helpless victims of everything under the sun. That people need to be made to be "better" (according to the definition of whoever it is that is making the proposal). That "they" can't be trusted to do what's good for them and that "they" need to be controlled. (While the same can be said for the right, it just happens that the issues I've been looking at tend to be "left-driven".)

Pick a social issue. Any issue. The argument always breaks down at the most fundamental level to this:

1. A is bad.

2. X needs to do B to fix A.

3. Let's make X do B.

Let's try it:

1. Lack of Health Insurance is bad.

2. Wal-Mart needs to provide Health Insurance.

3. Let's make Wal-Mart provide Health Insurance.

or

1. People get hurt and killed by guns.

2. We need to eliminate guns.

3. Let's sue the gun manufacturers out of existence.

or

1. Smoking is bad.

2. People need to not smoke.

3. Let's make people pay ridiculous amounts of tax on tobacco to force them to quit.

or

1. Being fat is bad.

2. Food purveyors need to stop making fatty food available.

3. Let's outlaw Big Macs.

OK, that's overly simplistic, but it always involves the left believing that if they can just make "them" do (or stop doing, as the case may be) X, everyone will be happier, better, healthier, etc. and since "they" won't do it on their own, we need to force them.

Also implicit in this thinking is that no one should have to suffer the consequences of their actions. The easiest example is the "fat" case. In this mind set, the reason people are fat is that evil corporations provide unhealthy, fatty food in stores, vending machines, restaurants and fast food joints. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that they have shoveled immense quantities of various foodstuffs into their mouths over a long period of time and the only exercise they have ever gotten is to walk to the fridge to get another piece of pie and a coke. In other words, they bear no personal responsibility for their choices.

(Oh, and by the way, I picked the "fat" case because until recently I weighed over 300 pounds. I didn't get that way because McDonald's sells greasy food. I got that way because I shoveled too much food into my mouth and didn't exercise enough. The weight I've lost didn't get lost because someone made McDonalds quit selling Quarter Pounders with Cheese. I can eat just as unhealthily at home. I've just chosen not to.)

 

by Cziltang 
Posted: Monday, January 16 2006 01:58:45 PM

Check this, you bureaucratic weasels!
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In the State of Kansas there is a program called the Chickadee Checkoff. This program allows Kansas taxpayers to designate part of their tax refund (like $1) to be used by the Department of Wildlife and Parks to aid conservation efforts for non-game species. (It works like the election finance check box on your Federal tax return.)

Big spender that I am, I checked the box for a buck last year. Yesterday I got a postcard from the Department of Wildlife and Parks thanking me for my contribution last year and reminding me that my "continued support for these vital programs is appreciated". The postage on the post card was 24 cents.

If I had wanted to contribute 76 cents, I would have done it.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Sunday, January 15 2006 12:26:50 PM

Wedding update
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The lady who contacted me yesterday about performing the wedding wrote back today. It was a very nice e-mail. It appears they are going to solve the problem by having a civil ceremony at the Courthouse. I wish them well.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Thursday, January 12 2006 05:55:24 PM

Hofmann/100
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I intended to mention this yesterday and then forgot about it.

(Via the Register) Albert Hofmann turned 100 yesterday. Most people my age don't know who Albert Hofmann is, and even fewer younger folks. Albert Hofmann is the guy who discovered LSD. And, I think significantly, after having experimented with LSD (in the truest sense of the word) he is still alive and kicking and will be delivering a talk at an LSD symposium in Basel, Switzerland this week.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Thursday, January 12 2006 05:46:55 PM

This will have to do
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I've got an essay (or perhaps two, and that is part of the problem) floating around in my head, but I can't seem to get it (or them) finalized. So, I'm going to go back to the idea of DRM and intellectual property rights.

If you have been paying any attention to the Sony situation through the past few months, you are familiar with the BIG MUSIC approach to IP: hardware and software to prevent "piracy" based on the assumption all music purchasers are thieves and that without such controls, we will all engage in routine piracy.

I find this insulting, and was quite interested to find that not all producers of Intellectual Property (in this case, books) feel the same way about us.

From the Baen Free Library website (and, by the way, it is a site with frames, so you have to click on "home" to get to this page):

Introducing the Baen Free Library

by Eric Flint

Baen Books is now making available — for free — a number of its titles in electronic format. We're calling it the Baen Free Library. Anyone who wishes can read these titles online — no conditions, no strings attached. (Later we may ask for an extremely simple, name & email only, registration. ) Or, if you prefer, you can download the books in one of several formats. Again, with no conditions or strings attached. (URLs to sites which offer the readers for these format are also listed. )

Why are we doing this? Well, for two reasons.

The first is what you might call a "matter of principle." This all started as a byproduct of an online "virtual brawl" I got into with a number of people, some of them professional SF authors, over the issue of online piracy of copyrighted works and what to do about it.

There was a school of thought, which seemed to be picking up steam, that the way to handle the problem was with handcuffs and brass knucks. Enforcement! Regulation! New regulations! Tighter regulations! All out for the campaign against piracy! No quarter! Build more prisons! Harsher sentences!

Alles in ordnung!

I, ah, disagreed. Rather vociferously and belligerently, in fact. And I can be a vociferous and belligerent fellow. My own opinion, summarized briefly, is as follows:

1. Online piracy — while it is definitely illegal and immoral — is, as a practical problem, nothing more than (at most) a nuisance. We're talking brats stealing chewing gum, here, not the Barbary Pirates.

2. Losses any author suffers from piracy are almost certainly offset by the additional publicity which, in practice, any kind of free copies of a book usually engender. Whatever the moral difference, which certainly exists, the practical effect of online piracy is no different from that of any existing method by which readers may obtain books for free or at reduced cost: public libraries, friends borrowing and loaning each other books, used book stores, promotional copies, etc.

3. Any cure which relies on tighter regulation of the market — especially the kind of extreme measures being advocated by some people — is far worse than the disease. As a widespread phenomenon rather than a nuisance, piracy occurs when artificial restrictions in the market jack up prices beyond what people think are reasonable. The "regulation-enforcement-more regulation" strategy is a bottomless pit which continually recreates (on a larger scale) the problem it supposedly solves. And that commercial effect is often compounded by the more general damage done to social and political freedom.

There is quite a bit more, and definitely worth a read. Not to mention the books.

 

by Cziltang 
Posted: Thursday, January 12 2006 12:22:10 AM

Another reminder that the Internet is a tiny place
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If you Google "minister russell kansas" there is a link to Ratlands about 8 pages deep in the search results. How, or more importantly, why do I know this? I received an inquiry today from someone looking for a minister to perform a wedding in Russell, Kansas. It just goes to show that if you leave annoying pieces of trivia about yourself lurking about on your website, you never know who might find them.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Wednesday, January 11 2006 11:41:07 PM

Politics and Money
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Nothing like a nice short, completely rational and well-considered post on the Abramoff scandal by Frank J at IMAO entitled "Politics and Money: So What?" to offend people. (Oh, come on. It's humor.)

I don't get this whole Abramoff scandal. First, it doesn't involve shooting or explosions, so it's boring...

I also recommend A Frank Guide to Homeland Security Alert Levels

by Cziltang 
Posted: Thursday, January 05 2006 11:50:32 PM

Branded Search Engines
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I stumbled onto Mark Cuban's blog a couple of days ago. (If you're not familiar with Mark Cuban, he started a company (Broadcast.com, I think) and made something like $6 billion selling it to Yahoo, or something like that. Anyway, he now owns the Dallas Mavericks and has some other ventures. Among them is a search engine called IceRocket. Unlike Google, for instance, which ranks web pages based on traffic, IceRocket ranks pages based on freshness, i.e. most recent first. It defaults to a search of blogs, but you can also search the Web, News, Images, Phone Pics and Multi Media. If you poke around on the site, you can find some interesting tools, including a page that will let you check on the frequency that a topic has been cited for the last 2 months or so.)

In a recent post, Cuban talked about the future of search engine design. Specifically, he asked:

In other words, is there such a thing as a best answer for most questions and is that what a significant number of search users want ? Or will we see the same trend that we have seen in TV news. That we want our objective answers painted red or blue. That objectivity is very subjective.

He suggests that in the future, personal searches will either be algorithm based (like we have now) or branded. He says:

Branded is just what it implies. I trust a given source of data for my search. I trust this source for this type of search, that source for another. I want my news from foxnews.com or i want my news from CNN.com. If i do a search on intelligent design, i will have an expectation that my results will be ranked differently from each.

(...)

I have zero doubt that in the future there will be sliders or some equivalent that represent “the flavor” of search that users will look for. Looking for information about the war in iraq… push the slide rule to the right till you reach Bill OReilly flavored search, or slide it to the left for the Al Franken flavor. The results are then influenced by the brand you prefer to associate with.

OK, there are issues with how you would do this, but I think at some level, I kind of like the idea. When I'm searching for reasonable discussion on a particular topic, most of the time I would rather skip the moonbats and cranks and concentrate on articles posted by people who can carry on a civilized discussion, which is easier to find in the middle of the political spectrum. With a "branded" search engine I could do that. And if I needed to sample the lunatic fringe on either end of the spectrum, I could do so without wasting time reading civilized, rational thoughts.

I'll be interested to see how long it takes for someone to come up with this thing.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Thursday, January 05 2006 11:07:40 PM

Safety
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Howard (the Smedley Log) has a nice short piece in reference to the Mine Tragedy in West Virginia. He is a little more animated about this subject than he usually is, and I think with good reason. (I encourage you to follow the link in the article to the piece by Will Bunch.)

In general terms, I tend toward Libertarian. I pretty much want to leave other people alone and I want to be left alone, especially by the Government. Mostly, I am in favor of the Government getting out of pretty much everything it has its finger in.

OK. That's the general statement. There are exceptions. I want airplanes to be inspected. I know that the hard-core Libertarian position is that airline safety will take care of itself, the theory being that if we aren't lulled into a false sense of security by the appearance of inspections by the government, that we as consumers will choose to fly on airlines that have a proven safety record. If enough people get killed on a particular airline, the rest of us will stop flying on it. Well, I guess that might work, but personally, I don't want to be part of the market test.

Likewise, I want to see significant safety enforcement in truly dangerous occupations, like underground coal mining. The idea that the fine for an accumulation of coal dust (the most likely fuel source for the explosion at the Sago mine) is $60 boggles my mind. A mine operator can allow a potentially lethal accumulation of coal dust and gets fined less than a speeding ticket? What's wrong with this picture?

Unlike a lot of the left side of the blogosphere, I don't see this as a Union (or lack thereof) problem. I see it as a regulation problem. In a country where we regulate damn near everything and seem to be hell-bent on completing the process on the few things that aren't regulated yet, is seems counter-intuitive, but we don't take regulation seriously. If practically everything you do is a violation and is not treated seriously by even the folks who do the regulation, you end up worse off that you would have been if there had been no regulation. Because we have all these regulations we excuse ourselves from using anything remotely resembling common sense or taking any responsibility for our actions. And I'm not talking just about workers here. We seem to have developed this idea that as long as the government is doing inspections and handing out meaningless fines, the powers that be don't have to worry about it. If it was really a problem, the government would do something serious. (Here's the point where you rant to yourself about the present corrupt/inept administration and/or the politicians/political party of your choice and tell me how it is all their fault.)

Personally, I believe that expecting the Government to fix our problems is the problem, not the solution. And, I have a solution to the safety problem in the Coal Mining industry. I'll get to it in a minute. But first...

(Cue mindless elevator music. Fade in on a set of shelves in the file room across the hall from my office.)

We have a set of moveable shelves in our file room. Basically, each shelf sits on a track and, using a crank on the end of the shelf, you can move the shelf down the track. This saves an incredible amount of space because instead of having an aisle between each shelving unit, you can roll all of the shelves to one side or the other and you only need enough open space in the room for one aisle. You walk between the pair of shelves you want, and the others stay rolled together with no space in between. To keep them from moving while you are putting stuff on them or removing stuff from them, there is a little pin in the crank mechanism you can push in to lock the shelves in place.

During a recent inspection, we got written up because the shelves weren't locked in place. Apparently someone, somewhere, in some branch of the Government got squished by someone rolling shelves like these into them while they were in between them. Of course, in the best American Tradition, they sued. So, now we get written up for a safety violation because someone got bumped by a shelf. Ooohh. Every time we go in there we risk a nasty bump unless we follow all the required safety precautions. Kind of seems silly compared to dying in a coal mine explosion, doesn't it?

So what is my solution to the problem of workplace safety? Remove all safety regulations. For the mining industry, simply require that all mine administrators, from the CEO on down spend half their work days working out of offices cut off the side of the main shaft near the bottom of the shaft. What, you say? All those computers, phones and other electrical equipment might set off an explosion? Well, maybe that would be a tiny bit of an incentive to authorize the purchase and installation of better ventilation equipment and the water equipment needed to tamp down the coal dust. No million dollar a year CEO is going to take a significant risk on dying in an unsafe mine. The added benefit of this system is that you don't need a corps of inspectors or their supervisors or their supervisors on up the line in the bureaucracy to act important and do next to nothing. And you don't need any high government officials to occupy the positions of power from which they can make sweetheart deals for their former associates or from which to accept bribes or from which to be susceptible to political pressure. All you need is to be able to verify that the CEO and his staff spend half their work days underground and that could probably be handled by a real cranky environmentalist imported from Berkeley.

Similarly, I would like to see the office safety regulations removed for my facility. I personally would have no problem spending half of my work days in the aisle between our moveable shelves, risking a nasty squish perpetrated by a rogue secretary with an attitude and a powerful need to get her hands on a printer cartridge.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Wednesday, January 04 2006 11:48:48 PM

Because You need a laugh
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(via Chizumatic) You need a really good blonde joke.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Wednesday, January 04 2006 10:28:10 PM

Words (#1)
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There's nothing like menopause, depakote and having teeth pulled to make someone bright and cheery.

Head Rat, 1/1/06

by Cziltang 
Posted: Sunday, January 01 2006 04:56:37 PM