Bombing liberally

U.S. takes the lead on behalf of cluster bombs - Salon.com

Slightly more than two months after he was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, President Obama secretly ordered a cruise missile attack on Yemen, using cluster bombs, which killed 44 innocent civilians, including 14 women and 21 children, as well as 14 people alleged to be “militants.” It goes without saying that — unless you want Rick Perry to win in 2012 — this act should in no way be seen as marring Obama’s presidency or his character: what’s a couple dozen children blown up as a part of a covert, undeclared air war?

And before it's over there's a whole lot more.

The universal flowchart

Noted by our Midwest bureau

Newt! Newt! Newt!

As Foes Flounder, Gingrich Gets Bump in Poll - NYTimes.com

But now, with nearly all the Republican presidential candidates having seen their hopes of emerging as the alternative to Mitt Romney rise and plummet, Mr. Gingrich is getting another shot, if only by default. A CBS News poll out Friday has him running near the front of the fractured pack, alongside Mr. Romney and not far behind Herman Cain.

Maybe the "super committee" will become the "super dooper committee"

Deficit 'super committee' may put off decisions - latimes.com

Reporting from Washington—

With time and compromise slipping out of reach, the congressional "super committee" may punt its toughest deficit decisions to next year rather than strike a deal that would enrage both parties' political bases heading into the 2012 election.

Bankers suffer attack of vapors

Mario Batali vs. Wall Street: Hitler, Stalin Comparison Leads To Banker Boycott

Wall Street bankers are threatening to boycott Mario Batali's restaurants after the celebrity chef suggested that they might be comparable to Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

Who knew there was a tchotchkes lobby?

‘Swag’ industry warns of job losses from Obama executive order - The Hill's On The Money

The promotional products industry is worried that President Obama's executive order to cut back on federal agency "swag" could lead to job losses...

So much for that idea

Employer health insurance hits new low: Gallup | Reuters

(Reuters) - The percentage of Americans who have health insurance through their employer slipped to a new low of 44.5 percent in the third quarter, a drop of over 5 percentage points in three years...

Well then, fixed that

News from The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The State Department is ordering the developer of a pipeline that would carry oil from western Canada to Texas to reroute the project away from environmentally sensitive areas of Nebraska.

That decision could delay a final U.S. decision on the project until after the 2012 election.

Testing a voice app

The app is called Vlingo and it runs on an iPhone.

...iPhoned

Unclear on the concept

Harvard Keeps Occupy Harvard for Harvard Students Only - National - The Atlantic Wire

The Harvard iteration of the Occupy protests is ironically, appropriately, and unwillingly now the most exclusive Occupy protest in the country.

Whew, finally, no more fat monkeys

Experimental drug slims obese monkeys - USATODAY.com

An experimental drug that targets and kills fat cells in the blood appears to help obese rhesus monkeys lose weight, a new study suggests.

Shaw, from the introduction to Pygmalion

Online Reader - Project Gutenberg

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. They spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it sounds like. It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him. German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to Englishmen.

Wake me up when they find the needle

Fleeing suspect found in Michigan leaf pile

Police investigating an alarm at a Michigan restaurant used a thermal imaging device to find a fleeing suspect hiding in a pile of leaves.

But certainly not me

Jonah Goldberg: Ugly tone in politics? Blame Brokaw - latimes.com

You know who I blame for the terrible tone in American politics? Tom Brokaw.

Score one for DSL

DSL has apparently a much smaller capacity for internet data than cable but it seems to have enough capacity for me (this in a world where people go ga-ga over the difference between 3G and 4G when both are essentially dial-up modem speeds) and it's cheaper – a big selling point around here. And now another distinction. It took Verizon eight days to restore our phone service after a freak snowstorm brought all our lines down 10/29, but the Comcast cable that serves the downstairs appartment has yet to be restored, 11 days in. So if the internet had been on the cable, well, just imagine.

Plus, for the first-floorians, it's now been two consecutive Sundays and two consecutive Monday nights without football. That's bad.

Extreme Poverty Is Now at Record Levels -- 19 Statistics About the Poor That Will Absolutely Astound You | | AlterNet

http://www.alternet.org/story/153005/extreme_poverty_is_now_at_record_levels_--_19_statistics_about_the_poor_that_will_absolutely_astound_you/

...iPhoned

Buckeyes are nuts

Ohio poll worker bites voter on nose | The Raw Story

CHICAGO — An election monitor bit an Ohio voter on the nose Tuesday...

But no plaque for that

Obama nixes federal swag - MJ Lee - POLITICO.com

As a part of President Barack Obama’s efforts cut down on spending, here’s what you’ll be seeing less of: swag....

What exactly falls under the category of “swag”? Plaques, “non-essential items used for promotional purposes” like clothing, pens and mugs, and “other unnecessary promotional items that agencies purchase.”...

On Wednesday, the White House will also announce the finalists of the SAVE Award...

The bad news is, it's almost dark by 5:00...

…but the good news is...

(another iPhone picture)

I'll bite

AP Is there anything cuter than a baby elephant reaching for a pineapple? http://t.co/pfA9f9fD -CC #APphotos 11/8/11 4:17 PM

Hangers on

(an iPhone picture)

So does this mean I am only part-time unemployed then?

Full time unemployment in decline - CSMonitor.com

Today’s employment situation report showed that in October the full time unemployment rate declined to 9.6% of the civilian workforce remaining near the highest rate seen in 41 years.

The joy!

This guy should be a banker, maybe

Feds forced to return nearly $1 million to Gallagher’s 2000, a Queens strip club  - NY Daily News

Robert Potenza, the pistol-packing owner of Gallagher’s 2000 in Long Island City, ran afoul of government agents who suspected the strip club king had made more than 100 bank deposits in amounts less than $10,000 in order to avoid federal reporting requirements.

Now tell us something we don't already know (or at least suspect)

Waiting For The Cable Guy Cost U.S. Almost $40 Billion In 2010: Survey

Waiting for the cable guy isn't just frustrating, it is also extremely expensive: A new survey has found that waiting longer than usual for in-home services like cable repair and Internet installation is costing Americans $37.7 billion per year.

Will Bloomberg ride in on a white horse to save...wait...save who?

Bloomberg: My plan to balance the budget - Edward-Isaac Dovere - POLITICO.com

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will on Tuesday lay out a proposal to balance the federal budget by scrapping the Bush tax cuts entirely and raising the Social Security retirement age.

 

W00T! Steampunk to the core

Computer Experts Building 1830s Babbage Analytical Engine - NYTimes.com

Researchers in Britain are about to embark on a 10-year, multimillion-dollar project to build a computer — but their goal is neither dazzling analytical power nor lightning speed....

What it may do, though, is answer a question that has tantalized historians for decades: Did an eccentric mathematician named Charles Babbage conceive of the first programmable computer in the 1830s, a hundred years before the idea was put forth in its modern form by Alan Turing?

The devil is in the fine print, dude

As H.P. Shops, Its Bankers Do Very Nicely -- Andrew Ross Sorkin - NYTimes.com

How much would you pay for advice that turned out to be questionable? Would about $81 million sound unreasonable?

That’s how much Hewlett-Packard is estimated to have paid out in fees to its investment bankers in the last two years for advising it on a series acquisitions that have all been vocally scrutinized by investors. During the same period, Hewlett-Packard’s market value has fallen by more than $40 billion.

Let me be the first to welcome our new Christmas Tree Promotion Bureau

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-11-08/html/2011-28798.htm

...iPhoned

So then, 64 what, exactly?

Intel's newest lands in an old standard: Commodore 64 | Nanotech - The Circuits Blog - CNET News

For the uninitiated, the Commodore 64 Keyboard PC was introduced back in 1982 packing a MOS Technology 6510 1MHz (yes, that's one megahertz) chip running the Commodore kernal accessed via BASIC commands....

Well, a lot has changed in 30 years....

And no service contract?

News from The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- China is dumping counterfeit electronic parts into the Pentagon's supply chain, two senior lawmakers alleged on Monday, putting U.S. troops at risk and undercutting the American economy.

Hard life on Chicago's North Side in the 1940's...

Amazon.com: The Man with the Golden Arm (50th Anniversary Edition): 50th Anniversary Critical Edition (9781583220085): Nelson Algren, William J. Savage Jr., Daniel Simon, Kurt Vonnegut, Studs Terkel: Books

A literary tour de force, here is a novel unlike any other, one in which drug addiction, poverty, and human failure somehow suggest a defense of human dignity and a reason for hope.

...Nelson Algren's best-known (and probably best) novel was also the inspiration for a 1955 movie starring Frank Sinatra as Frankie Machine and Kim Novak as Molly-O (and a theme song that, we guess, was played by every high school marching band in the country that year).

New to our reading list.

Duck!

Asteroid close encounter tomorrow night! - Boing Boing

Don't forget that a 1,300 foot asteroid, about the size of an aircraft carrier, will fly by Earth tomorrow even closer to us than the moon....

All right then

Michele Bachmann Suggests Mitt Romney Is ‘Frugal Socialist’ | Election 2012

So I didn't really miss too much, did I.

Not over yet

News from The Associated Press

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- Tens of thousands in the chilly Northeast remained without power Sunday, eight days after a rare October snowstorm knocked much of the region into the dark.

 

Oh brave new world

Minnesota: It's OK to use a GPS tracker on your spouse if you co-own the car

 

October 30

IMG_0465, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

The morning after. A big, heavy, wet snow, although no more than many other winter snows we've seen here over the years. What made this one special was its freakish earliness (October 29) and the fact that so many trees still had leaves so late in the season. The leaves caught the snow and tree limbs were popping all over town. For a while, it sounded like a giant popcorn popper.

October 29

Yes, October, I said – this is the tree branch that wiped out our power, phone, and cable TV and blocked our driveway for bonus points. October 29 was a Saturday. The driveway was cleared the following Tuesday, the power restored Friday, and the phone lines (including DSL) was fixed yesterday afternoon – eight days after the snow. Turned out there were a couple of million other people up and down the Eastern seaboard with much the same problem.


IMG_0464, originally uploaded by tedcompton.

Verizon guy...

...in the driveway, as we speak. 

...iPhoned

Gates

Photo: Phil Compton

Still no network

For a moment this morning I got so bored I started dusting.

Fortunately I've recovered. But where is Verizon? Does Verizon still exist in this strange, disconnected world?

...iPhoned