Monthly Archives: September 2010

Sunday Roast: It’s for dinner

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Image source

Popular throughout the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland, Sunday Roast is a lovely tradition going back to the inventions of meat and Sundays.

The Sunday roast isn’t necessarily beef; it can be chicken, turkey, pork, lamb, or even some vegetarian atrocity.  Heh, no offense to vegetarians.  Srsly…

The above Sunday Roast is beef, served with roasted potatoes and carrots, broccoli, salad, and a cute individual Yorkshire pudding.  I must learn how to make those.

What’s for Sunday Roast at your house?

This is our daily open thread — stop drooling, your keyboard will short out.

Watering Hole – September 18, 2010 – Constitution Day: A day late and a dullard short

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Yesterday was a little observed day of national importance: Constitution Day. On September 17, 1787 thirty-nine white males signed the foundational document of the United States Government. It was a compromise document, most notably for its three-fifths solution which gave southern states more representatives in the House of Represenatatives based on their slave population, while agreeing not to address the slavery issue for 20 more years. Given the typical lifespan in those days, they basically expected their children to have to deal with the problem; i.e. they passed a major contentious issue to the next generation to decide. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

For all the Teabagging hoopala over upholding the Constitution, this writer was not aware of a single Teabag Rally in honor of Constitution Day.

The Constitution, like the bible, is subject to interpretation. Unfortunately, those who are hollering the most about upholding the Constitution derive their understanding of it from radio and tv talk-show hosts. They then believe they know more about the Constitution than a Constitutional Law Professor. That this is absurd on its face is beyond their grasp: fear, hatred, prejudice and racism trump reason.

You’ll find the text of the Constitution here, with links to the Amendments.

This is our Open Thread. Exercise your First Amendment right to free speech!

The Watering Hole: September 17 — Fun with basalt

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Photo by Zach Meier

From the Wiki:

The Columbia River Basalt Group is a large igneous province that lies across parts of the U.S. states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

During late Miocene and early Pliocene epochs, one of the largest flood basalts ever to appear on the Earth’s surface engulfed about 163,700 km² (63,000 mile²) of the Pacific Northwest, forming a large igneous province with an estimated volume of 174,300 km³. Eruptions were most vigorous from 17–14 million years ago, when over 99% of the basalt was released. Less extensive eruptions continued from 14–6 million years ago.

Erosion resulting from the Missoula Floods has extensively exposed these lava flows, laying bare many layers of the basalt flows at Wallula Gap, the lower Palouse River, the Columbia River Gorgeand throughout the Channeled Scablands.

I just love our geology.  :-)

This is our daily open thread — rock on!

The Watering Hole: September 16 – Duodecimal Number Systems

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A duodecimal multiplication table
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B 10
2 4 6 8 A 10 12 14 16 18 1A 20
3 6 9 10 13 16 19 20 23 26 29 30
4 8 10 14 18 20 24 28 30 34 38 40
5 A 13 18 21 26 2B 34 39 42 47 50
6 10 16 20 26 30 36 40 46 50 56 60
7 12 19 24 2B 36 41 48 53 5A 65 70
8 14 20 28 34 40 48 54 60 68 74 80
9 16 23 30 39 46 53 60 69 76 83 90
A 18 26 34 42 50 5A 68 76 84 92 A0
B 1A 29 38 47 56 65 74 83 92 A1 B0
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 A0 B0 100

Duodecimal numbering systems arose for a reason. First, the duodecimal numbering system has four common denominators (2, 3, 4 and 6) while a decimal system, which seems more natural, has only 2 (2 and 5,) both primes. This made the subdivision of goods more efficient. We know that this became a popular system because Germanic languages carry the vestiges of this numbering system because of the existence of of verbal values for the numbers 11 and 12 (in decimal terms.) Also we still carry the concept of this system in the measurements for a dozen, the gross (12 dozen dozen) and the great gross (12 dozen gross.) We also have 12 months in the year and 12 signs of the Zodiac.

Base 12 numbers are also a basis in the measurement of time during the day.

If you are into self-punishment and want to know more on this subject and other number systems, you can start here

I hope that this all shows up correctly. This is the first time that I tried out what I tried to present something using material from the blurb on tables.

This is our open thread. Please feel free to offer your own comments on this or any other topic.

The Watering Hole – September 15 – Selection and De-Selection in Ancient Greece

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Ostraca (pieces of broken pottery as voting tokens) bearing the names of Pericles, Cimon, and Aristides (top to bottom). Ancient Agora Museum in Athens.


In ancient Greece, politics was far different from the current election system in the United States. It would be really nice if we could ostracize the likes of Limbaugh, Boehner and Palin.

Who would you pick for Ostracism? This is our open thread. Please feel free to offer your own comments on this or any other topic.

The Watering Hole: September 14 – HTML Navigation Bars

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This lesson will present the result first and then explore the source. This differs from previous exercises as most of the spiel uses material from previous tutorials. So, here is what we get from the code that I will discuss:

The Navigation Bar

Navigation bars are akin to Tables of Contents, but the have uses where a table of contents can fall short. They can serve as ways of accessing external pages (called Inter-Document linking) as well as allowing one to skip through a long document – allowing one to step on to topics of interest in a current page (Called Intra-Document linking.). We will discuss the former first as this tutorial has yet to delve into that aspect of HTML code.

Inter-Document Linking With a Navigation Bar

Inter-Document linking using a navigation bar allows one to bring up an external page to the forefront. You may well have done this very often from a browser using the “link” function. If you look at the code involved, you can see that rocket science is not a prerequisite.

Unordered Lists | Tables | Tables of Contents

Intra-Document Linking With a Navigation Bar

Intra-Document linking using a navigation bar allows one to scroll through a current page. I reformated last week’s Table of Contents spiel in order to provide an example. Again, you can see, that rocket science is not a prerequisite.



.

Chapter 1. | Chapter 2. | Chapter 3.


Chapter 1.

Chapter 1 text…


(Back)

Chapter 2.

Chapter 2 text…

(Back)

Chapter 3.

Chapter 3 text…

(Back)

The source code is below the fold.

This is our open thread. Please feel free to offer your own comments on this or any other topic.
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Senate Republicans vow to raise taxes.

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Republicans in the Senate have unanimously joined forces to oppose any extension of the Bush Tax Cuts for the middle and lower class, unless they get their way and extend it for the rich as well.

Without the Republicans on board, the Bush Tax Cuts will expire at the end of this year, raising taxes for everyone. Obama would like to keep the tax cuts in place for those earning $200k or less ($250k for couples). While any extension of the Bush Tax Cuts adds to the deficit, the break given to the upper crust of society adds $700 billion to the government’s flow of red ink over the next 10 years.

So, do we go another $700 billion into debt and let the rich keep that much more of their money? Do we want our grandchildren paying off that debt? Or do we want to gut the social safety net for the poor and for our seniors, so that the rich can have $700 billion more to play with?

Watering Hole – September 13, 2010 – I Want My Country Back

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Yes, you heard me.  I want my country back… back from the Tea Party and the big corporations that financially support them.  I do NOT want my country to return to the Tea Party and Republican principles of:

  • Repealing the Civil Rights Act because the central Government should not tell States how to treat American citizens.
  • Eliminating the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.  Women should not be voting.  They don’t have time for politics because they need to be in the kitchen cooking and they should be waiting on their husbands.  The bible tells us that women are subservient to men.
  • Returning to slave labor and sweat shop labor practices because businesses should be free to abuse their employees without Government interference.
  • Dismantling Social Security because seniors should have planned better for their retirement.  Too bad and too sad if Wall Street bankers stole most of their IRA money.  Tough luck if the seniors worked at jobs that didn’t have a pension program or 401K program.  If these seniors worked for minimum wage, they still should have thought ahead even if it required providing less food and clothing for their children so that they would have that extra money to save for their retirement.  Some Republican candidates are claiming that Social Security is unconstitutional.
  • Dismantling Medicare because health care is not a right, it is a privilege and the Tea Party does not approve of privileges except when it comes to their idols and themselves.  Besides, only the privileged deserve health care.
  • Eliminating disability payments because people need to be more responsible and not get injured on the job.  This includes our military veterans.  They should stop whining because after all, they volunteered.
  • Forcing Catholics, Jews and Muslims to commit sins by having to read and study the protestant bible in public schools.
  • Allowing property owners to create toll roads.  People have a right to collect money from anyone that crosses their property line.  Good luck with getting to work on time and having any money left over from your paycheck after paying all the tolls.
  • Supporting “Second Amendment” solutions as a means of conflict resolution.  This might also work as a method of population control.
  • Returning to the glory days of lords and serfs.

I want my country back from hate mongers like Beck, Palin, Limbaugh, Malkin, Kristol, Bachmann, Rove, Cheney, and all the rest that appear on Fox News, the opinion network.  The goals for these people are to divide our country and to make piles of money while undereducated people do their dirty work for them.

I want my country back from racists such as Beck, Laura Schlesinger, the Tea Party and the Larouches.  These people are so upset because there is a black family living in, what they perceive as, the White(‘s only) House.

I want my country back from people that profit from the suffering of others (Beck, Palin and Limbaugh).

I want my country back from politicians that place Wall Street above and before Main Street.

Yes, I want my country back.  The one where everyone is treated with respect and  equality, the one where everyone receives good health care, the one where everyone receives a livable wage, and the one where everyone is free to practice their religious beliefs without interference from other religions.

I want back, the country that was progresing forward.  Not the one that is currently heading in Reverse.

This is our Open Thread.  What do you want back?  Speak UP!

Sunday Roast: GOP vs. Democrats — the Income Gap

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On Friday, President Obama held a press conference, wherein one of the topics was the economy — and how we got into the deep trouble we’re in today.  Basically, Republicans (aided by Bill Clinton) over the last decade really, really, really screwed up everything, and we really don’t want more of the same from the same gang of Republicans.

Rachel then chatted with Ezra Klein about this chart:

On the x-axis, we have the Income Growth Rate, which is pretty self-explanatory; and on the y-axis, we have the Income Percentile, which is where we all will find ourselves — from the bottom 20% of income earners (Ma & Pa Kettle) to the top 5% (Thurston & Lovey Howell).

This is empirical evidence of how Americans fare under Democratic presidents and Republican presidents, as found by Larry Bartels, in his 2008 book, Unequal Democracy, and quoted by Larry Noah, in his Slate article, entitled The United States of Inequality, Too Many Republicans.

[T]he narrowly economic focus of most previous studies of inequality has caused them to miss what may be the most important single influence on the changing U.S. income distribution over the past half-century—the contrasting policy choices of Democratic and Republican presidents. Under Republican administrations, real income growth for the lower- and middle-classes has consistently lagged well behind the income growth rate for the rich—and well behind the income growth rate for the lower and middle classes themselves under Democratic administrations.  ~Larry Bartels

As we can plainly see on the chart above, everyone does well under Democratic presidents, while only the top 5% do well under Republican presidents.  The bottom 20%, those who can least afford their income level coming to a screeching halt, suffer the most.

Things are really tough out here.  Are Americans dumb enough and blind enough to either vote Republicans and Teabaggers into office — clearly against their own best interests?  Are we stupid enough to not vote at all?

We shall see, won’t we?

This is our daily open thread — feel free to rant.

Music Night. Happy Birthday, José

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If you listened to American radio at all in the late 60s and early 70s, you could not escape the distinctive guitar and vocals of José Feliciano. I may have gotten sick to death of Feliz Navidad, but I hate Christmas music anyway. And there’s no way to escape the fact that Feliciano was and is a very talented musician. The first video, incidentally, has a few treats. It’s a big old Latin sandwich!

The second video is very much worth listening to, and is an interesting story. The performance referred to was from a Detroit Tigers game in 1968.

More José below the fold, and it’s Music Night, so jump in.

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