All posts by djones

newspaper, opinion, weather

Moody Monday

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Today was one of a sequence of odd weather days here on the plains. It was close to 60 degrees today and is forecast to be 70+ degrees tomorrow. This is happening during a time of the year when it typically reaches a high of -10 for the day. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t object to the anomalous warmth. At least not if the wind would die down a little. Today the wind was gusting to 60 mph and stayed windy all day. It is almost like the Santa Ana winds from when we lived in LA. The negative ions in the air make everyone a bit testy and the continuous howling keeps things (and dogs like Molly) on edge. Oh well, give it a week and it’ll probably become more seasonable and I’ll be complaining about the cold.

One of the local newspapers emailed me over the weekend to get my opinion for their weekly opinion piece. You know, one of those “the roving reporter asked these people X and are their one liner responses with a bad picture of their heads” type of piece. The paper must be planning a special piece connected to their inaugural reporting. So anyway, the question was “What issue should the new President first address? (and why)”

This question is one which could take literally days and 100’s of pages to fully explore. In fact, I am sure that Mr. Obama and his transition team have been doing exactly that. He is probably forced to read a couple of hundred pages of position papers from the team every day. But since this is a one liner type of reportage (the twitter of news?), I have  to be brief and concise. And I don’t have to consult with my transition team either.

So what did I answer? I was short and sweet:

The economy should be addressed first. If people are working, housed, and fed then the other problems can be handled on a more timely schedule.

How’s that for a typical politician’s waffle fest? In this case it happens to the the truth from where I sit. I suspect there are other views and positions, but to me it seems clear that the biggest problem preventing considered action on the myriad of other problems *is* the economy. People are running in fear. Those who have already lost their jobs are facing  homelessness and hunger. Those who haven’t are scared of being put in those situations. People who are scared and running in fear tend to be neither able nor amenable to solving problems

So how would you have answered the question?

horace rumpole, john mortimer

Death of a Character

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I was saddened to read of the death of John Mortimer in yesterdays paper. If the name Mortimer doesn’t ring any bells, maybe the fact the he was the creator of Horace Rumpole and the “Rumpole of the Bailey” series will help. For most of us here in the United States, that is how we knew of Mr. Mortimer.

It is interesting that Sir John (knighted in 1998) really was a barrister in Britain. In fact, to many Britons he might be better known for his defense of free speech and human rights than for his role of creating and writing the Rumpole series. He was the champion of the Sex Pistols in their battle against their records being declared obscene. He was also the champion of author Hubert Selby, Jr. whose “Last Exit to Brooklyn ” was deemed unacceptable under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959 in Britain. In one of those six-degrees of separation oddities, he was also the defender the London edition of Oz magazine when they published an issue written and illustrated by student readers. (And that is noted because one of the objectionable illustrations was drawn by none other than Robert Crumb who went on to found the underground comix movement with characters like Mr. Natural , Fritz the Cat , and of course his ongoing “Keep on Trucking “.) Mr Mortimer journeyed as far a Nigeria to defend playwright and poet Wole Soyinka from criminal charges. In short, he was in some sense a barrister’s barrister or as we would say here in the States, a “lawyer’s lawyer.” Which makes it all the more amazing to me that he could write a continuing string of stories and books.

The legal cleverness shown by Mr. Mortimer and his Rumpole character might have roots in Mr. Mortimer’s father, Clifford Mortimer, who was a famous divorce lawyer. The New York Times noted that Mr. Mortimer’s father “once established adultery with no more evidence than a pair of footprints upside down on the dashboard of a Austin Seven.” The elder Mortimer went blind when John was a youngster, but carried on without acknowledging it or discussing it.  Clifford was also known for his temper and harsh tongue. What a combination! I think it would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall when the the two Mortimers got talking (or fighting or …). Sir John was a noted liberal who “hated vegetarians, atheists and animal-rights activists”. It makes his impassioned defense of free speech issues even more interesting.

What I remember most about the Rumpole stories has little to do with law or even English jurisprudence. It is the characters.  Horace Rumpole himself, quoting Keats and drinking claret at Pommeroy’s wine bar every evening. Rumpole’s absolute slovenliness and untidiness and confusion; right up to the point where he stood up in court and was clear, concise, and brilliant. And then there was Hilda, his wife, known generally as “she who must be obeyed”, always trying to protect Rumpole from his own vices. One thing that was interesting to me is that every Rumpole story seemed set in the same time and social milieu. In fact Sir John acknowledged that he intentionally did not develop his characters. That in and of itself is amazing considering it covered 30 years of stories, novels, and TV scripts.

Rest in peace John Mortimer. You and your creations will be missed.

farce, stupid saturday

Stupid Saturday (a bit late)

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First up in the parade of stupidity for today is that famous trio of me, myself, and I. I managed to rip about half the fingernail off my right index finger, so typing and mousing is a bit slow and error prone at the moment. Why does it make the stupid list? Because I wasn’t paying attention when I released the spring clamp and boing – it sprang along with some skin and part of the nail. Boneheads of the world unite!

Next up we have a pair of “only in your dreams” stories. First is one from a technical blog and the second from a medical blog.

From the c0t0d0s0.org , the blog of Joerg Moellenkamp comes this suggestion for a new web 2.0 (and a little swipe at the popularity of twitter ):

When you look at the Web 2.0 ecosphere, you will recognize, that the most unlikely services wins. Or did you really expected that one of the most used services allows you to send 140 chars in a time when 10 GBit/s per lamda is quite normal? Well … i have an idea for a Web 2.0, too: It´s called http://www.iknowwhereyourcarparks.com.

It´s a solution for a worldwide problem: Your girlfriend or your boyfriend found a new significant other and you need the position of the car to proof your eternal love by cutting a heart into the tyres of the car? You want the job of a colleague thus you have to mob him out of his job and want to place some horse shit on his car when the sun burns? No problem …. http://www.iknowwhereyourcarparks.com is the solution.

You just place a request into the service: At first you describe the car. License plate, colour, type, exact model of the car and possible locations. As much as possible. But just the licence plate and the colour is displayed to others Then you specify a reward and you pay it via PayPal to the service. Interested people can lookup searchrequests in their region. When they find it, they have to describe the car. When all conditions match, the money is transferd to the account of the finder. The service is financed by a service fee of 5% per transaction.

read the rest of Joerg’s article here . I really like Joerg’s blog, even down to the punish name which is a play on the disk device name from Solaris .

From the pen of #1dinosaur at dinosaurmusings comes this suggestion about the plane crash in the Hudson River:

New evidence just in about the recent airliner water crash being termed the Miracle on the Hudson, in which a US Airways jet was disabled by a flock of birds before being forced to make a watery landing in the Hudson river, with no fatalities thanks to the skill and courage of the pilot and flight crew:

The latest reports are stating that the birds involved, a “flock of geese,” were Canada geese. This is clear evidence that the incident was in fact an act of terrorism by Canada against the US.

Calls for the Department of Homeland Security to investigate the incident ought to be forthcoming.

So now you have it. All the stupidity that I care to type for now.

P.S. You did realize that both of these are tongue in cheek farces didn’t you? They are!

humor, sistersalad

The Grammar Rap

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Every once in a blue moon, I come across something that tickles my funny bone to the extent that I can’t resist sharing it with the world. And no we’re not talking here about anything my grandmothers may have done. (And you’ll notice that I followed the video’s advice and used the right we’re and not were!) So here is a tidbit of proper grammar and humor that has me hooked. 

Without further ado, I give you  sistersalad !

meeting, potholing, trains, water

A Meeting Up the Road

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I just got back from a meeting of mayors and commissioners in a neighboring county, about 45 miles up the road from here. It was a first since the town hosting the meeting is the arch-rival of our own town with a long history of rivalry going back to the late 1800’s. The mayor of M (as I shall call the neighboring town), Jack, called and invited me to attend last week. You might remember Jack from this post where he arranged for me to be railroaded into the Presidency of District 1 of the Colorado Municipal League. It is kind of funny that Jack and I have developed a relationship to get things done in cooperation just as we are both term limited out of office. I’m gone in November and Jack is done in January.

So I grabbed the city manager and we journeyed up the road to attend the meeting. We weren’t sure what to expect, but expected it to be interesting none the less. We got there and were welcomed with open arms by Jack and the rest of the attendees. It turned out to be a useful meeting all around, as we got to hear what projects each of the towns and the other county were pursuing, what the biggest problems they were facing were, and how they were approaching these issues. And the interesting and unsurprising thing – they face the same problems and issues we face.

The biggest issue for all the attendees was water. Here in the water short American West, you would expect it to be the number one topic and it was. But it was like the old parable of the blind man and the elephant. Each of us had a different aspect of the water problem to consider and as a consequence it looked different but had a common theme. Some of the towns had been slow to recognize the importance of securing decreed water rights earlier and were now in the (expensive) process of acquiring some. Others had adopted long range transport of mountain water shares and were now dealing with the costs and distribution issues. Our city had the foresight to secure water rights, but we are now facing the changing regulations determining out treatment processes as discussed here. Many of the attending cities are very interested in our experience since we are the guinea pig for how to handle the new regulations. That’s because we are the largest city out here and thus get stuck going first through the regulatory maze.

Then there was discussion of nuts and bolts, things like budgets and revenue projections. Topics such as potholing and crack sealing and … One outcome was a chance to coordinate some projects to put together unified bids which might result in lower costs due to overall size. We already have one project underway between our city, M and M’s sister city. It is a project to determine what would be needed to have the various railroad crossings in our communities declared part of a quiet zone. We have ~30 coal trains (one mile long trains transporting coal) a day passing over the tracks that bisect our communities. That wasn’t too bad until the federal regulations on train horns changed a few years ago and they became 100dB+ annoyances at every crossing, even those controlled by gated arms and lights. But there are pathways to make such intersections controlled to a point where the train horn regulations can be abated. The problem is that a city like ours has 7 such intersections and a naive approach can cost more that $1 million per intersection to achieve quiet zone status. So the three cities pooled funds and grants to have an engineering study done to see if there weren’t cost effective methods to achieve quiet. This becomes a further quality of life issue since th number of coal trains will rise to 40-50 in the coming year and may hit 100 or more in a few more years. This is because all the trains are being routed out here rather than through the high population areas due to yet another changed federal regulation.

Well, that should be enough rambling on topics of absolutely no interest to 99% of the readers of this blog.
For extra credit – did you know what potholing was before you read the link?