Thursday Night Gallimaufry

And once again, we have my quick opinions on a variety of things I’ve run into in the last little while.

• I am fascinated with the mystery of what WalMart might be doing in their giant, mysterious data center. I’m guess that it might be related to “lowering prices every day”, but doing so by means that your average consumer might not be so comfortable with were they aware of them. Possibly I’m overestimating the average WalMart consumer–let’s say instead that there are lots of ways for WalMart to remain profitable with lower prices that involve massive data warehousing and computation capabilities, but many of them certainly make me uncomfortable.
• Today I had a bottle of Virgil’s Root Beer. It was very good. I will buy more. I am not as impressed with their exotic source locales for herbs and spices as they want me to be, but I am impressed with the taste, and the very short ingredients list.
• Boy, that US dollar is in the tank–did you see where the Euro is over $1.60 now? For the record, while I am enjoying the “cheap” books compared to the last decade, I am more than a little concerned at this point. Maybe Bernanke should listen to Volcker a bit, eh?
• “Imagine a starter of hot garlicky parmesan doughnuts dipped in an intensely mushroomy cappuccino. Then perhaps a trio of homemade linguine doused with acqua pazza, a buttery pumpkin confit with creamy sheep’s cheese, and a tangle of chick peas, olives and kale. Finally, a warm chocolate and chestnut tartine with cinnamon prunes and cognac ice-cream.” Yes. I am now drooling. And I’m hardly going to be “popping across the pond” to sample Terre à Terre, am I? Thanks Gavin.
• Attention Mainstream Media: just because a car is electric does not make it green. If you want to work the green angle you have to tell me more than what the car costs to buy, and how far it can go on a charge. You also have to tell me how much power it takes to charge the car, so I can figure out whether or not I’m actually using less energy. I know it’s hard for you to grasp this, but the electricity that comes out of the wall is mostly still generated from fossil fuels (at least in the US it is–I’m pretty sure it’s more than 70% nuclear/hydro in Ontario), it’s not magical fairy power. It would be nice, just once, to see a mainstream article address that point, and the follow-on point that due to power loss during transmission the amount of fossil fuel used to generate the power to charge my “green” car might be significantly more than it would have taken to just fill the tank.
• Next month I am going to have the opportunity to make use of the Bridgeport & Port Jefferson. ferry. I haven’t been on a drive-on ferry since the Dublin Swift. Also: is there anything worth making the effort to see in Long Island? I’m mostly going to be stuck in Islandia.
• I got a laugh out of the noir Bogart Lord of the Rings that Will linked to tonight. Check it out.
• Italian horror comics in the sixties were apparently one messed up exploitative bag of crazy. Not Safe For Work. Will require brain scrub.
• Hell Is Other People’s Code. This short article captures something about programming that I have often tried to express, but perhaps never with as much success as it is expressed here. Sadly, the people who most need to get the point of this article could read it and completely fail to understand it.
• You know how I was mentioning that there are a few places where the Yanks have better theory than us, even if they can’t seem to put it into practice? Well that whole separation of Church and State thing is one of those places. Hell, we didn’t write our damned Constitution until 1982, and it still starts with a first clause that read “Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law”. Bah, I say. And therefore, you will not be surprised to find out that I totally salute the lost cause of correcting the American Pledge of Allegiance.
• It’s not my favourite thing, but I like hypocrisy as much as the next godless savage.
• Have you seen searchme.com? It’s a flash interface that offers search options as you type, renders the resulting pages in the “iTunes album cover” type view, with the search terms highlighted, and probably does a few other things I didn’t notice. I’m not leaving Google yet, but I suspect there will be more and more of this kind of thing.
• Well, I guess it’s one way for the owners to get some of those salary expenses back. Still, being forced to drink Gatorade should be a legitimate cause for legal recourse.