[thought for the day] tuesday evening

There is absolutely no one, apart from yourself, who can prevent you, in the middle of the night, from sneaking down to tidy up the edges of that hunk of cheese at the back of the fridge.

[Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson]




Absolutely no invisible text this time - damn - you caught me.

[making ends meet] the bottom line

Wasn't his wife's enough for him?

[chicken little ] meet dr pangloss

It's everywhere - Citygroup writedowns and now:

France's biggest retail bank, Credit Agricole, is contemplating asking shareholders for 5.9bn euros (£4.7bn; $9.1bn) to help its financial position.

The move comes after more write-downs at its Calyon investment banking unit as a result of the credit squeeze.

Meanwhile, the country's second-largest bank, Societe Generale, said its own write-downs had led to a 23% fall in profits in the first quarter of 2008.

"The fact that they need another six billion euros of capital is worrying and I'm staying cautious (on the stock)," one Paris dealer said.

So how should we react? Sackerson quotes Michael Shedlock:

"The worst of the crisis in Wall Street is over," Buffett said today on Bloomberg Television.

Warren Buffett's mistake is not comprehending the magnitude of the derivatives mess, the magnitude of the fallout of the housing bust, and the magnitude of the fallout of a global credit boom now going bust. The economic reality is that this is closer to 1929 as opposed to 1987.

Don Boudreaux though quotes David Harsanyi who feels the important thing is:

Seeing past the Chicken Littles

Sackerson comments:

Well, many Chicken Littles make a Chicken Big, and she's coming home to roost.

Are you a Chicken Little or a Dr Pangloss?

[beer safe] buckle up now campaign

People are asking a lot of questions about this:

The man was pulled over on the Ross Highway, south of Alice Springs, about 3.30pm on Friday, when officers on patrol noticed the vehicle was unregistered and uninsured.

But what they found inside the car shocked them. Four adults occupied the car with two in the front and two in the rear seats.

[A] carton of beer was buckled safely in the rear centre seat between two adults, while the five-year-old boy crouched on the floor.

Here are some of the questions:

1. Was it XXXX or VB in the car?

2. Is Alice really going dry and where will people get their beer from?

3. Why was the slab unopened and buckled in? Why wasn't anyone drinking at the time?

4. Was the boy mistreated or was he hiding from the heat down there?

Personally, my drop of choice is lower right.

[google rankings] something strange here

JMB wrote of google page ranking and I'm more than grateful to google but I did a bit of a check:

URL: http://michellemalkin.com/
PageRank: 7/10

URL: http://www.order-order.com/
PageRank: 6/10

URL: http://iaindale.blogspot.com/
PageRank: 6/10

URL: http://devilskitchen.me.uk/
PageRank: 6/10

URL: http://nourishingobscurity.blogspot.com/
PageRank: 5/10

Right, so these weren't the only people I checked and I was shocked. Firstly, look at the ones above me here - Michelle Malkin for a start, Fox on Sunday, known America wide, 220 000 hits a day - only 7/10?

The Britbloggers here - multiple times my visitors and known throughout the country. 6?

Next I went to another major UK blogger up with them in terms of stats and I'm not showing him as he came out the same as me and he'd be horrified - he's a huge UK blogger.

Then I went to some lesser bloggers and was shocked to see them also on 5. One of my best blogfriends from BP whom everyone visits on 0/10!! What? Or another major American blogger with "Comments 153" on one post alone - rated as 5/10. I shake my head.

Let alone people on 5 who really shouldn't be there while some others with top blogs are on 4 or 3.

How are the rankings calculated? I'm not actually arguing with the google machine as I'm sure it comes out as this score. Is it on photos or diversity of posts or what? If on photos, then someone showing a lot of totty would probably have a high ranking supposedly.

Or perhaps the bloggers who deal in politics don't get many google referrals due to the temporary nature of politics.

And while we're at it - a personal message for John Hirst:

Thanks, young man - you've made a grown man cry today. That's friendship for you. [Actually I didn't cry - bit of editorial licence there - but I did have a coffee!! Yes, that's the main thing.]

[presidency] just asking, that's all

Nothing really new except that it's interesting why she is continuing so tirelessly. I see two scenarios:

1. She just can't face that the numbers are against her and she's in debt;

2. She might be looking beyond an Obama defeat in November and contemplating running for the nomination in 2012.

Perhaps this latter is the real thing. On the McCain front, Ron Paul is planning to ambush McCain at the GOP convention and after the way he's been shut out by GOP and media alike, especially Fox, one wonders about it.

He seems like a man with nothing to lose and he's more than likely to tell some home truths. Much of what he's been saying is the truth though he shoots wide now and then - everyone knows but doesn't want to know.

You have to smile at what he wants - back to the gold standard, no Federal Reserve, small government and out of Iraq. On the first three - what chance against Morgan and the rest of them? The game's already locked up.

And his ambushing of the Nevada convention where they flooded the place with Paul supporters so that the GOP planned another convention somewhere else secret so that Paul supporters would not get to hear of it - talk about corruption in politics. Ha ha.

What a weird situation - if Paul was nominated he'd trounce Obama or Clinton, picking up disgruntled white democrats as well as real conservatives but the GOP would disown him and the Democrats would never forgive him.

Is he more than nuisance value now? Will people listen? Judge the two men for yourself in this head-to-head:

[indiana jones] latest could well be a dud

The latest offering in the relaunched Indiana Jones franchise may be a turkey:

A harshly critical review of Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull appeared on aintitcoolnews.com last week from a poster who identified himself as "ShogunMaster." Rife with details from the film, the review said, "This is the Indiana Movie that you were dreading." The problem, said ShogunMaster, was the lack of tension.

"During the whole of the movie there was not a single moment that I thought our hero Mr Jones … was in any sort of peril or even significant inconvenience. In most cases you were so many steps ahead of the characters that it was really just an arduous wait for them to get through it."

The man who posted as ShogunMaster said he is a cinema executive who saw the film at an exhibitors' screening.

I wonder if it is one adventure too far and immediately Arnie springs to mind in his third Terminator. While I personally liked that offering and thought that the John Connors and Kate Brewster characters were great and while Arnie held up his end and while Kristanna Lokan was a honey - still people didn't like it and it bombed.

When to stop? Perhaps we should ask Rod Stewart and Mick Jagger that.

[blog crawl] 2nd round for your delectation

Well, the last Blog Crawl seemed to go down pretty well so let's try it again.

The idea this time is to replace the initials with the actual words from the linked post. Let's try

Sometimes I like to msuh and sometimes I lrsomsr. To overcome this gfpbboc, sometimes I dboaes but I find tftdwywapmwi.

Fsrtacmu:

Better than all of these is to do absolutely nothing. Aycdwyltatbbymsp ...

Tnnttmftvi; idiaaps.

Answers

meander slowly up hills, love revamping some of my stalwart recipes, general feebleness punctuated by bouts of cruelty, drink beer on an empty stomach, total freedom to do whatever you want always paralyzes me with inaction, For some reason this cracks me up, Apparently you can do what you like to alleviate the boredom but you must stay prone... There's no need to thank me for this valuable information; I'm doing it as a public service.

[heraldry] quiz with a difference

Well, it had to come - I've been pfaffing round with this heraldry thing and you know know I do quizzes. So ... match the coat of arms and clues with the character. Simple. :)

Black and white is perhaps appropriate for a mathematician and all round clever clogs. He caused me enormous grief in geometry lessons at school and you can keep your calculus, thank you very much.

Another mathematician - though what a dolphin has to do with maths escapes me. Another all round clever clogs too but this time in the new world Boston boy.

A close look at the crest and helm should give its owner away immediately. Perhaps he should have included a pair of crutches in the design.

I really like this one and it's surely appropriate for the Rideau Hall incumbent.

It's a moot point whether it'll be his father or him. Hope he's recovered from the skull injury.











Answers

Rene Descartes, Ben Franklin, Paul McCartney, Michaella Jean, Prince William

[new mac] using it, it watches me

Oh I just love this one about a burglary of an apartment in New York, including a Mac owned by an Apple employee:

While police in White Plains, N.Y., were coming up empty with their investigation, Duplaga learned that her computer was being used on the Internet and turned on the Back to My Mac feature installed on her Mac from another Mac, according to the report.

The feature allowed Duplaga to see immediately how the computer was being used at the time, as well as operate it remotely. Recalling that she had a camera installed on the computer, the fast-thinking Duplaga snapped images of one of the burglary suspects before he realized what was happening, according to the Times.

Duplaga showed the image to friends who recognized the suspect as someone who attended a party at the apartment.

The longer I use my Mac, admittedly a 17" Tiger, the better it gets. For goodness sake, it even self-repairs. Together with the camera feature, Little Snitch and other goodies, it is constantly updating and the system is so easy to use.

The downside is that one needs to switch off voice control when there's a lady in your arms because sometimes the sounds are picked up by the green flashing receptor and tend to turn on a film or dance music or whatever.

Once the computer even took a snap unasked for. Need to adjust the controls methinks.