via congress.org
Green = no health care unless you don't need it! Red = help those who need help. The insurance companies win this round of posturing - but thankfully it will go nowhere.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Friday, January 14, 2011
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Sunday, January 09, 2011
Beware Bipartisan Anything
Beware Bipartisan School Reform
If everybody on the Hill is happy, Americans probably shouldn't be.
Katherine Mangu-Ward | January 7, 2011
As an example of what happens when Democrats and Republicans agree, consider the Reagan-era dismantling of the mental-health system. The conservatives wanted smaller government, the liberals did not want anyone locked up against their will -- and now we have lunatics like Jared Lee Loughner with no ability to stop them until they have wreaked their havoc. He was identified as mentally ill ( http://tinyurl.com/2acg968 ) but nothing could be done until it was too late!
Friday, January 07, 2011
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
Watch Joel Meyerowitz, in “Everybody Street”
Interesting interview with a great street photographer.
Joel Meyerowitz, in “Everybody Street”
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth/2011/01/video-joel-meyerowitz.html
Joel Meyerowitz, in “Everybody Street”
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth/2011/01/video-joel-meyerowitz.html
Monday, January 03, 2011
An thought-provoking take on Shabbos observance from DovBear
When you think about it, camping is an odd little ritual. You exert energy pitching a tent and setting up camp, then subsist for the duration on food that is tasty, but hardly gourmet. Real camping enthusiasts drive miles into the woods and do without the conveniences of store bought wood, and indoor plumbing, but even amateur dabblers like me deliberately put ourselves into a situation that, on the face of it, seems uncomfortable. What's the appeal of uncomfortable sleeping arrangements, the pervasive smell of smoke, and limited access to modern conveniences like air conditioning and WiFi?
see the rest of the story at dovbear.blogspot.com
Also applies to Conservative Judaism - or any other ritualistic observance.
Sunday, January 02, 2011
Just testing to see how Posterous treats image files when posting by email.
Posterous is an interesting service that enables easy uploading of many media types to multiple social sites like Twitter, Flickr, blogs, etc. If you are not interested in seeing if Posterous worked, move on, nothing much of interest here.
This is a test post to see what it does to images sizes directed at several destinations. The original attached image size (the flower) is 3209 × 2848 pixels and 1.5 MB.
I am not sure where the text ends up on the various services, and how it will be formatted.
It is also a test of formatting.
This email should post it once, and only once, to each of Blogger, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Flickr, as well as a Posterous blog which I don't really want but it insists on using, as far as I can tell. It could be useful if you don't already have a blog.
My sites can be found at
http://clivemoss.blogspot.com/
http://twitter.com/chmoss
http://www.facebook.com/clive.moss
http://chmoss.tumblr.com/
http://chmoss.posterous.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chmoss/
Actually, I am on other places as well, but Posterous can not get to them.
I have no good reasons for so many sites, only excuses
- My most credible excuse is that I have been doing this sort of thing for many years and as the world changes, I move on, carrying the detritus of a long life in technology and photography
- My other excuse is that I am a geek and I enjoy finding out how this stuff works and wondering why anybody in their right mind would want to do it
Oddly enough, Posterous can be found at www.posterous.com
If a rather unexceptional picture of a flower (which is being sent as an attachment) does not appear, then the test was a partial failure.
In addition, I am embedding, rather than attaching, a 2888x2475 pixel 1.7 MB page of images from our last trip to Turkey, to check if Posterous cares how the image is sent from the Gmail client.
The Right knows they are right. The Left gets left behind.
There seems to be a certain temperamental difference between conservatives and Republicans on the one hand and liberals and the Democrats on the other. In broad strokes, Republicans, especially of the tea-party stripe, are typically proud, at least unapologetic, and sometimes belligerent about their beliefs. Democrats, in contrast, seem to adopt the defensive position by default. ...
Why are Democrats more anemic? One thought comes from the liberal journalist Thomas Frank. Writing in Harper's, Mr Frank argues that while Republicans respond to their base, Democrats have a misbegotten faith in a "Magic Middle" of centrist ideas that are tolerable, at least, to most Americans:
Democrats, for their part, tend to do the opposite, dreaming of bipartisanship and states neither red nor blue and of some reasonably-arrived-at consensus future in which the culture wars cease and everyone plays nicely forevermore under the smiling, benificent sun of free trade and the knowledge industries.
read the full article at economist.com
The Economist often has an interesting take on American politics.
Saturday, January 01, 2011
I always wonder why people sing songs ...
... With no clue at all about what they are saying.
The combination of Google Reader and Posterous included the post below when I shared it with no attribution. I did not write it. It is from the excellent blog "Language Log"
Google Reader and Posterous omitted the heading and credit below. I include it here, with apologies to the original authors.
From the auldies but guidies file
(This post first appeared on 12/30/2004 under the heading "And a Right Guid Willie Waught to You, Too, Pal.")
We like the incantations we recite on ritual occasions to be linguistically opaque, from the unparsable "Star-Spangled Banner" (not many people can tell you what the object of watch is in the first verse) to the Pledge of Allegiance, with its orotund diction and its vague (and historically misanalyzed) "under God." But for sheer unfathomability, "Auld Lang Syne" is in a class by itself. Not that anybody can sing any of it beyond the first verse and the chorus, before the lyrics descend inscrutably into gowans, pint-stowps, willie-waughts and other items that would already have sounded pretty retro to Burns's contemporaries.
But it's my guess that most people take the first two clauses of the song as the protases of a conditional, rather than as rhetorical questions. True, most versions of the lyrics end the lines with question marks (this is the most familiar version, a little different from Burns's):
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And days o' auld lang syne?
But a lot of people leave out the question marks (for example here, here, and here), which suggests that the interrogative force isn't obvious. It may make no sense that way — "if old friends should be forgotten, we'll drink to bygone days anyway." But incomprehensibility only adds to the sense of immemorial tradition, even this happens to be a borrowed one, grafted onto American culture in 1929 by a Canadian of Italian ancestry.
As Eric Hobsbawm has observed, after all, the point of invented traditions like the kilt or the Pledge is to provide "emotionally charged signs of club membership rather than the statutes and objects of the club." And what could be more evocative than a New Year's song that's sodden with quaintly impenetrable phraseology? "Is not the Scotch phrase Auld Lang syne exceedingly expressive?" Burns wrote to a friend in 1793. Well, it works for me, anyway. Have a happy one.
The combination of Google Reader and Posterous included the post below when I shared it with no attribution. I did not write it. It is from the excellent blog "Language Log"
Google Reader and Posterous omitted the heading and credit below. I include it here, with apologies to the original authors.
From the auldies but guidies file
(This post first appeared on 12/30/2004 under the heading "And a Right Guid Willie Waught to You, Too, Pal.")
We like the incantations we recite on ritual occasions to be linguistically opaque, from the unparsable "Star-Spangled Banner" (not many people can tell you what the object of watch is in the first verse) to the Pledge of Allegiance, with its orotund diction and its vague (and historically misanalyzed) "under God." But for sheer unfathomability, "Auld Lang Syne" is in a class by itself. Not that anybody can sing any of it beyond the first verse and the chorus, before the lyrics descend inscrutably into gowans, pint-stowps, willie-waughts and other items that would already have sounded pretty retro to Burns's contemporaries.
But it's my guess that most people take the first two clauses of the song as the protases of a conditional, rather than as rhetorical questions. True, most versions of the lyrics end the lines with question marks (this is the most familiar version, a little different from Burns's):
Should auld acquaintance be forgotAnd never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And days o' auld lang syne?
But a lot of people leave out the question marks (for example here, here, and here), which suggests that the interrogative force isn't obvious. It may make no sense that way — "if old friends should be forgotten, we'll drink to bygone days anyway." But incomprehensibility only adds to the sense of immemorial tradition, even this happens to be a borrowed one, grafted onto American culture in 1929 by a Canadian of Italian ancestry.
As Eric Hobsbawm has observed, after all, the point of invented traditions like the kilt or the Pledge is to provide "emotionally charged signs of club membership rather than the statutes and objects of the club." And what could be more evocative than a New Year's song that's sodden with quaintly impenetrable phraseology? "Is not the Scotch phrase Auld Lang syne exceedingly expressive?" Burns wrote to a friend in 1793. Well, it works for me, anyway. Have a happy one.
Sent with MobileRSS for iPhone
Making life easy (for me)
I am switching to Posterous for all posts to social apps. This post is a test to see what happens. It may result in dual posts somewhere. Sorry. A picture of nothing in particular is attached to see what happens. A boring video for the same reason.
Here goes.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Fast Track for the Elderly - Help or Hindrance?
I went to the Illinois Secretary of State office today to get new a license plate sticker. In and out in five minutes! The office has put in place a fast track for seniors (65 and older). Age has its benefits. However, this approach is a reflection of the general view that equates elderly with poor and infirm. Whereas I enjoy the benefits of the elderly I recognize the unfairness of institutionalized preferential treatment for people who have no real right to preference or deference. The negative side of the silly equation is workplace discrimination and chronic underemployment of the aging.
My generation had the good fortune of being born slightly ahead of the baby-boomer wave. The boom provided a steady supply of workers for the pre-boomers to manage who could fund retirement of the pre-boom generation. When the boomer wave breaks as the generation begins to turn 65 this year, the retirement system breaks with it - and the world economy is grappling with how to support the elderly with health and dignity. Preferential treatment in government offices is a symptom of government trying to address the problem with no observable impact on budgets. It lets the legislators and bureaucrats feel they are addressing the problem without really doing anything. I may as well enjoy it while it lasts.
For folk who do not live in the USA - Secretary of State sounds like an impressive title. It is not. It is the administration department of State Government.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
London Street
I was trying to do some real street photography in London, but all I came up with was boring pictures of people - so I changed my approach and took boring photographs of streets - but I think they are graphically more interesting.
Monday, November 08, 2010
Image Sensor Implant Restores Partial Sight
Just add a Compact Flash card and I will not need to carry a camera any more.
Image Sensor Implant Restores Partial Sight:
"Electronics Weekly, BBC News: German firm Retina Implant reported testing results of the chip that has restored limited sight for people blinded by retinitis pigmentosa and similar diseases, destroying only the eye's photoreceptors, and leave its layers of image processing neurons intact."
Sunday, November 07, 2010
SOFA So Good
We arrived at SOFA, checked our coats, bought tickets, and had our tickets checked by the ticket checker at the door. I noticed that he scanned preprinted tickets, tore bought tickets in half, but just looked at my tickets taking no action.
When we left I pulled out the coat check tags and noticed that they looked remarkably like tickets to SOFA and not at all like coat check tags.
Turns out we had entered the show by displaying our coat check tag, and we now have two unused tickets for SOFA. They would be worth $24 - if the show did not end in 55 minutes.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Living real life in London
We have been in London for three weeks. We have been here long enough to feel that we do not have to run around and "tour" every moment. Instead, we can live almost normally, not like locals, but almost like expats.
We are in Hampstead. This suburb has been an intellectual center of London for many years. All around us houses display the little blue plaques that mark the home of a prominent person or family. Gracie Fields home is a little way up the hill. The Huxleys lived around the corner. Sigmund Freud lived a few blocks away.
Shopping malls are few and far between. High Streets are lined with interesting little shops with much more diversity than can be found in malls. The restaurants are reasonably priced (generally) and serve fresher and tastier food than similarly priced US restaurants.
Last weekend we visited our family in The Netherlands, with a brief stopover in Brussels, courtesy of Eurostar, the train under the tunnel. We missed a strike of Belgian rail workers by two hours. Yesterday we took a train to Oxford to spend the day with Hilda's cousin. Last night Julia and Abigail slept at our apartment. Tomorrow we are off to a coastal resort in Devon for the weekend. And so it goes.
Life is good.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Thursday, August 26, 2010
I don't often see miracles, but...
Hilda's old G5 iMac was misbehaving -- badly. It often died when sleeping. (We can only do it once, but computers can be re-booted after death.) It could not connect to the web over a wired Ethernet connection, but worked (sometimes) over WiFi.
So, I decided to start from scratch. Easy decision, given enough time.
I updated the SuperDuper back-up. All of our data files are also up on Dropbox (somewhere in the cloud) so we have at least three copies of everything. I ran an install from the DVD that was shipped with the system, which wiped the internal hard drive. No problem ...
...until it tried to use the 2nd disk. It was unreadable. Install stopped after 30 minutes, with a high-falutin version of "OOPS" as its message. I tried some later versions of OS X - no go - the machine is the last of the G5s - not an Intel processor. So, being of unsound mind, I decided that I could make a copy of Disk 2 on my other iMac. I have an external DVD drive in addition to the one that is built in.
First try -- not enough space on target drive. OK -- what's on the source? Almost nothing except OS 9, says Finder. Do this magic using Terminal :
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder
Find all the stuff that is not OS 9 (9 is X-1) and copy it to a new DVD disc. Worked! Used the new DVD to complete the install on the iMac. Worked.
Tried to get on the 'Net. No go. Putzed around with the settings on the 2Wire modem supplied by my ISP - ATT U-verse. No way to get on the 'Net - neither Ethernet not WiFi.
Reset some stuff on the 2Wire modem that was designated as "Don't do this unless you are asked to by tech support." I spoke to myself (what I tend to do at this stage) and asked myself to do it (I am my own tech support). Got online. Went through several update cycles to get current versions of everything. Installed the stuff we really need - Dropbox, Skype, NeoOffice. etc.
Fired up iTunes.
Here is the miracle:
Jacob (my grandchild) is approaching his bar mitzvah. iTunes had his barmitzvah portion and Rabbi Frankel's rendition of the related brachas already set up. Where the @##$$% did it find it? Easy answer - on Dropbox - but who told iTunes it was there? Not me!
More miracles may be reported here.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Someone found my iPhone and connected it to the Internet!
I received this e-mail:
Let us hope that the wipe works! RIP old iPhone buddy. My new one should arrive next week. |
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
Monday - In YYZ
Great Airport. Many power outlets. No free wifi.
An oddity. We had to complete a customs form and go through customs and immigration to connect from an international flight to an international flight without leaving the transit lounge.
Just boarded the Air Canada 767 to Tel Aviv. The seats have power outlets! In coach!
Sunday, June 06, 2010
At A Streetcar Named Desire at Writer's Theater
Friday, June 04, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
A walk with an iPhone
Today I went out in the glorious spring weather with nothing but an iPhone. Also, I am posting this entry from the phone - just because. Today's style is old time B&W.
Blogged from my iPhone.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Dog-food is to Dogs as Formula is to Babies
At about 4:45pm our two dog boarders began to harass me. I call them Mutt and Jeff. According to Wikipedia, Mutt is "a tall, dimwitted ... character." Jeff is "an inmate of an insane asylum." Works for me. Their rightful owners call them Sheba and Bernie.
Anyway, they began to harass me. In total unison. Two months ago these two dogs never agreed on anything. I thought they wanted to go outside and poo or pee or whatever, so I harnessed them up and took them out. One peed, the other did not. Yes, these are details, but kingdoms are lost on details - as in "my kingdom for a horse"
Back inside, they were still restless. I gave them their rations of dog-food, which they downed in seconds. About 180 of them.
They were sated, and stopped harassing me, but were clearly not satisfied.
It occurred to me that dog-food is to dogs as formula is to babies. It will keep them alive, but not living.
I know nothing about this subject, so I took the course of the ignorant. Google.
The first article looked promising. It said:
The best food for your dog is . . .
Fresh food. Fresh chicken, turkey, beef, bison, venison, and fish. Fresh raw vegetables and occasional fruit. Fresh brown rice and oatmeal. Fresh yogurt, eggs, and cottage cheese.
This is not "people food." Calling real food "people food" makes it sound as though people are the only living creatures who are entitled to eat fresh foods, and that simply isn't true.
Virtually all living creatures thrive on real, fresh food.
Just sayin'
Walking with Camera, iPhone and Dogs
I usually walk alone, with a camera and iPhone (or iPod or other MP3 player).
We are taking care of a small white Havanese and a large apricot Standard Poodle,
I almost always listen to a podcast and take pictures of whatever attracts my interest. I happily get exercise and learn something while observing the real world - or at least what passes for the real world in the suburbs. Body, mind and soul are all maintained.
Adding dogs to the group complicates the activity. Two dogs and a human result in three different opinions of which direction to go and where to stop and roll in the grass or do whatever else needs to be done. The dogs rarely want to stop to take a picture; I rarely want to stop and poop. The dogs move my hand whenever I want to take a picture; I stop them from rolling in whatever dogs want to roil in. Doggy-bag activity is not one of the higher callings of human endeavor. (I think this could help.)
My blogs entries are mostly pictures with few words - to the point that I often omit captions. Todays podcast ( a discussion of "Creative Nonfiction"} made me re-think. More words may communicate better - and force me to develop a new skill. I have always been an awkward and slow writer. My thoughts rush in parallel - writing demand a linear sequence. It is hard to make parallel lines of thought flow in the logical line that writing demands. Thinking linearly is hard.
Maybe a class in writing could help. Maybe parallel columns could help.
Or not.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
This Week's walk
Not much walking this week - Shavuot and Showers intruded.
A few from the Botanic Garden:
A walk in the woods
This statue of Linnaeus always looks ugly to me
A beaver collecting nest material
Japanese Garden
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Shavuot, Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and Wikis
Shavuot is the most unobserved of Jewish Holidays except by the fully observant Orthodox communities.
For an overview of the holiday, read this
Shavuot in its modern form commemorates the giving of the law to the Jewish people at Sinai. It occurs to me that the form of the "giving' fits very well with the social media of today.
The Ten Commandments (or really, utterances) were given out over Twitter. Concise, clear, no BS.
For forty days, Moses heard the law from G-d, and and put it on Facebook, hoping that the Jewish people would friend him.
Moses started a blog which was ultimately redacted as the Torah - the five books of Moses.
The Tannaim started their own blogs (bloggim?). They blogged a lot but some smart guy decided that something like a Wiki was needed, so the Tannaim built their version of Wikipedia called the Mishnah.
Unfortunately, their discussion pages were lost, so we are stuck with the Mishnah.
But the bloggers of the day were not content. For several centuries they blogged about the Mishnah and people commented on the blogs until a huge body of unorganized halachah and midrash floated around the blogosphere.
Around 500 CE the folk in Babylon and Jerusalem decided that yet another Wikipedia was needed and they each did their own - the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud.
So we now have two Wikipedias (Talmuds, Talmudim) - Babylonian and Jerusalem.
Since then we have had multiple cycles of blogging, commenting, and redaction. The process carries on.
We analyze, comment, complain, contradict. We try to make sense of life, but we give up and live anyway.
The social media of today are new in technology - not in fundamentals. We, the Jewish people, have always lived that way.
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