In case you hadn't noticed, "Lovers embracing by a fountain" has been replaced by "500 Internal server error." I much preferred the former.

Hm, yeah, look at that! All the CGI scripts on the site seem broken, in fact; I will write to the Esteemed Web Hosting Peoples. Tx for noticing!

Edited by author 10-04-2008 07:57 PM
 Hello! I have been a long time reader of your log (since the good ol' sims 2 days) and what kept me reading after the depature of The Sims was your very unique take on world news and the fact that you are actually quite funny.
However I must post a protest about the comment you made on 30th of September regarding the "bailout" of Wall Street:

"Ha ha ha ha ha ha bite me!

Run your own fucking country, assholes.

If your economy depends upon the US government stealing a trillion dollars from its citizens, then as the lolcats say, U R DOIN IT WRONG.

[rude sounds]" <--that comment in paticular

I am from Wales, in Europe, and we don't actually run our own country (Gordon Brown does it for us) but I digress.

The points that this rambling message is trying make are:

1. Many people such as yourself are complaining that the goverment will need money from the US taxpayer to help Wall Street. Isn't Wall Street actually run and funded by American taxpayers? Admittedly, not every American is a shareholder, but I'm sure a fair number are.

2. While I do agree with your point that Wall Street would recover from the recession eventually, many small banks which are closing now will have no way of recovering. Our towns local bank has been shut down because the economy simply isn't stable enough to justify owning the bank. If America had "bailed out" Wall Street, many banks would have been saved from closure.

3. "Run your own fucking country, assholes."- Globalisation (sp?) means that no country can truly have its own economy any more. If a similar crash had happened in Britain months ago, then America would have felt the reprucussions, albeit on a smaller scale. And at the end of the day, America is HUUUGE (pop. 305 mil.) especially compared to Wales (pop. 3 mil.) so what chance do we stand really?

Sorry for cluttering up your message board with my overly long post. Apologies also for my spelling and grammer (English isn't my first language). An please let me assure you that this is in no way a personal attack on yourself. I just like debating :D

Thanks much for the message, Emily! As I said in the entry (and I meant it!), I was rather horrified to find myself thinking that way; I posted it not so much because I think it's a correct reaction as to document and wonder about the fact that it was the reaction that I had.

On the specific point:

1) Not at all! Wall Street is a bunch of private firms, not run or funded by American taxpayers anymore than it's run or funded by Venezuelan or Welsh taxpayers.

2) It's true that not bailing out the current failing institutions would likely have led to quite a bit of pain, banks closing, etc. However, now that Congress HAS bailed them out, they will take even MORE risks (since, after all, if anything goes wrong someone will step in to save them), and the NEXT meltdown will lead to even more pain. Sacrificing long-term health for the short-term illusion of health: bad idea!

3) I know, isn't it awful? :) I think it would be ideal if countries could freely trade with one another, but ALSO arrange things so that if one country has a problem like this, other countries don't find themselves so entangled. Probably impossible, but hey...

hullo. Teucer has revived your curvature of the earth nomic:

http://einos-nomic.blogspot.com/

"Tale lara croft tomb, cradle nagiaa bronx, pack beyond. Saints, few recognized catholic church! Lille addition, passengers vehicles freight. Land km, sq mi region. Demand april may executive addict dies marathon, game sirius!"

Oh, so close to a pangram. Missing only j. I suggest:

"Tale lara croft tomb, cradle nagiaa bronx, pack beyond. Saints, few recognized catholic church! Lille addition, passengers vehicles freight. Land km, sq mi region. Demand april may executive addict dies jogging, game sirius!"

"The hydrogen atom..." is missing only Q.
"A wedge..." is missing J, Q, and Z.
"Not that there..." is missing J, X, and Z.

If a spammer ever manages to construct a proper pangram, the results could be dire.

I don't know if this helps but for C=S, the number of cards on top of other cards tends to C/e as C goes to infinity.

Oh, and doing the same calculation in Excel for C=24, S=24 (taking the values for T(24,F) from rows 277-300 of the "flattened" table) gives A_av = ~8.641905