Saturday, April 02, 2011

The Ration-Book Thinking of our Governmental "Betters"

Stupid EU cookie law will hand the advantage to the US, kill our startps stone dead
Says TechCrunch
From 25 May, new European laws will dictate that “explicit consent” must be gathered from web users who are being tracked via cookies. That translates into warnings which will put off consumers from EU sites, while US-based startups will be free to continue as they are. How convenient huh.

Although businesses are being urged to work out how they gain ‘consent’ from users, this is bound to cause consternation.

The new European e-Privacy directive is supposedly to protect privacy, although seems to be operating in a bubble. Privacy controls have existed in Web browsers for years. Indeed there are even privacy specific browsers. But consumers have consistently ignored them and carried on happily using cookies, with many people knowing that cookies actually help the browsing experience.

French flocking to London for its favourable fiscal and regulatory climate

It is rational interests, rather than cultural affinity, that draw this type of Frenchman to London
writes The Economist in its article on The French community in London (Paris-on-Thames):
high-paid work, lower taxes (especially on wealth), and the chance to raise bilingual children. …
The superior beauty and efficiency of Paris often come at the price of dynamism. Many young French arrivals in London say they are fleeing rigid social codes, hierarchical corporate culture and a sense of distance from the global swirl of people and ideas.

…Many young French of African or Arab origin also say that there is less discrimination in Britain.

Friday, April 01, 2011

Steyn, On the 80’s Retread Goings On in London

It’s all very Carnaby Street.

Instead, the Polish and Balkan baristas were hurriedly dragging in all the sidewalk tables and chairs before the Socialist Workers’ Party chaps showed up in search of projectiles. Nobody in the Socialist Workers’ Party actually works, which is one reason why it’s Mitteleuropeans frothing your coffee rather than any of the natives.
So right after watching the real proletariat trying to save their hides in the face of the puerile children’s crusade, we get to go from the Mittel-Europäern to the Middle-Minded:
Still, on balance I prefer the class-war thugs trashing the joint, who at least have the courage of their convictions. The “nice” people bussed in from the shires struck me as some of the most stupid people I’ve ever met anywhere on the planet. One elderly lady from Yorkshire told me she was there because her grandson’s university fees were likely to go up.

... SNIP ...

She stared at me blankly. “Well, I don’t want to argue,” she said politely. “I just think it’s a disgrace.”
It’s all a matter of “being nice” this desire to take and take for ones’ illusions and comforts. After all, if one is truly nostalgic for a Britain of the 70’s and 80’s, you might as well note a feature of that nation that has gone unchanged the whole while:
I was in a cranky mood because I hadn’t had my coffee. “You can protest all you like,” I said. “But this country’s broke, so all you’re doing is postponing its reacquaintanceship with reality, and ensuring that your grandson and his contemporaries are going to be stuck with the tab because you guys spent their future.” I pointed out that in her part of the world – northern England – as in Wales and Northern Ireland, the state accounts for three-quarters of the economy. And it’s still not enough for the likes of her and her pals.
And all of that is BEFORE every other single issue faction tries to salve their perspectiveless guilt by proposing the same dedication to THEIR issues. Either way, it’s a class firm in their belief that only a huge, paternalistic, government with obscenely high levels of power can solve problems, and that the solution to each problem starts by sucking more capitol out of society.

Not only can Ian and Nigella not add, but they don’t want to know the ugliness of knowing what those numbers do to them of the rest of society.

Violence Against Doctors in the 'Hood

And when I touch you on this spot, does that hurt?

The 'hoods in France are reft by violence, both between gangs and against honest people, including even doctors

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Despairing Ahmadinejad

Don't cry! One day, you too will have your own nuclear tragedy!

• Sob! It ain't fair, the Japs have all the fun!

Leftists: Crash Testing Civilization Whenever they Can

The recreational revolutionaries drawn to Wisconsin to overturn the will of the majority “for the sake of the majority” have nothing on the suffering sisters of Sappho across the pond:

Last summer the Fawcett Society attempted to create a precedent: they challenged the legality of a government budget. In response to the coalition's proposal for deficit reduction, which foresaw 500 000 public sector job cuts, the feminist pressure group put in an application for a judicial review. The Treasury, they claimed, appeared to have failed to honour its legal duty under the Equality Act to give "due regard" to the impact on women.
There are takers, and there are makers. You can guess which one Gal-Queda can be counted among. The expectation is simple: all of society exists to serve the political purposes of feminists employed outside of the Private Sector where both economics, and socially responsible decisions can be bypassed in the interest of a small political coterie.
It does not mean that they can be made exempt from the hash facts of life by a mere accident of birth – much as the selfish cretins of political feminism think that this is not what equality and equal opportunity actually mean. I wonder if there are any women left who don’t realize that they are nothing but a corrupt cartel, willing to fight to the last gullible “student volunteer.”

Tepco's CEO Expresses His Shame

I will have trouble looking my grand-children in the eyes!


Wednesday, March 30, 2011

You are Only Free to Agree with Him

And little else

If we have a serious problem, we are tasked to re-engineer the world using the best political, psychological and technological tricks we can come up with.
Thinks Jullain Assange of the “Realpolitik” construction of a new society structured to eradicate what he calls global warming. He himself eschews the cutsie-poo “we win either way” Realpolitiker referencial terms like “climate disruption”, “climate change” and so forth.

Save your “tricks” for the women you can’t seduce.

The Debate in France The Debate in Japan

Plantu treats us to another strange France-Japan comparison

I don't see your face!

Airplane Etiquette: Undue Deference Is Not Applicable When Exiting an Aircraft

Have you had trouble on a flight due to bad behavior by your fellow passengers?
To the question at the end of Dr Helen's post on airplane etiquette, I answered as follows — maybe some of you have a comment on the remark?

The most trouble I have had on a flight was not due to bad behavior by my fellow passengers, but to good behavior by my fellow passengers!

Indeed, the behavior on airliners that most annoys me is not that made by obnoxious people but that made by the supposedly politest of people — albeit at the worst possible moment.

People should realize that being deferential and coming to a complete stop in order to allow someone else to pass in front of oneself is not — repeat, not — applicable when disembarking from an airplane.

Specifically, the plane has landed and come to its final resting place, and now some (most?) passengers are standing, crowded together, in one long line along the narrow aisle and are waiting at least somewhat impatiently — for reasons logical (having to catch a connecting flight) or otherwise — for the door to open to get off.

But the most compelling reason to want to get off the plane is to get out of the crowded line, and for this reason. Everybody is invading each other's personal space, which is something that causes discomfort, anger, and/or anxiety. That can be temporarily bearable, because we all realize that nobody had any choice in the matter, but within reason, and for a do-gooder to slow up that process is most irritating, precisely because blacking everybody is the deliberate choice of (what I call, with full awareness) that egotist.

If anything, at this point, for some person to stop, and bring the entire flow of impatient exiting passengers to a stop — while waiting for some waif who is in no hurry to get off to skip into the center aisle, reach above her head to first get one bag out of the overhead compartment, then another bag, plus her coat, and a sweater, followed by her boyfriend who has to slide through to the aisle and engage in the same activities — is disrespectful to the people behind him.

Of course, this doesn't mean anyone should be a boor. And sure, stopping can be fine if it is but a simple pause when you can tell a person in front of you is set'n'ready (standing, watching when he or she can join the flow) to jump into the moving flow and take off at the same speed (or lack thereof) as everyone else. But too often some person will stop for a passenger who is seated, or has barely stood up, and is taking her time and seemingly in no hurry to get off, and is more or less oblivious to what is going on in the aisle.

In fact: the people taking their time are probably doing so on purpose precisely because they don't like having their space invaded and invading other people's personal space, even less so then other people, and are waiting to exit when everyone else has left for that very reason.

Now, what has happened is that suddenly some do-gooder has created an artificial empty aisle (the part of it ahead of where he has deliberately made himself a blocking obstacle) and is pressuring them to go ahead and enjoy that (artificial) empty aisle, before he allows the natural course of things to resume its course, and they feel rushed to do so.

But the question arises: what business is it of our virtue signaler, and what business did the Don Quixote have in deciding that that handful of tranquil people taking their time is more important than the dozens of passengers who are itching to exit the plane, recovering their personal space in the process?

It's akin to stopping one's car at a green light, making all cars behind come to a stop, i.e., breaking the flow of the traffic, and that in order to "politely" allow a car on the perpendicular roadway to make, say, a right-hand turn on a red light. No! Keep the traffic flowing and trust in the capacity of the other driver to move in her good time, i.e., when her light turns green (in other words, when there is a "natural" break in the flow)…

If anything, this type of aircraft deference is not only impolite, and annoying, to the people who are ready to leave the aircraft or in a hurry, it is also impolite to the passenger that the champion of politeness is supposedly being polite to: that passenger may be in no hurry to get off, and she is now feeling pressured to speed up when she would be just as happy taking her time and leaving later or even being the last person off the aircraft… No, pressure has nothing to do with politeness…

2016 Update: Two further thoughts: 1) people have eyes in the front and not the back of their heads, and that's one reason they are less aware of people behind them than those in front of them;

2) The middle aisle could be thought of the highway and the seat rows as the side roads, and a driver on the highway does not, or ought not to, come to a stop, halting all the traffic behind him, in order to allow a car or two from the side to enter said highway — even if he has not been (see the previous paragraph) using his rear-view mirrors. (I actually once saw this happen on the ring road périphérique circling Paris!) There is nothing impolite or uncivil whatsoever in having the side roads' drivers wait for, and yield to, the drivers on the highway.

In mid-March 2016 (almost exactly five years after the above post), I was in the aisle of an airliner that had landed in an East Coast airport watching the front people quickly exit when suddenly the flow came to an abrupt stop.

After what seemed like five minutes, due to the deference of one "polite" (!) middle-aged gentleman's who was apparently not going to advance any further until every single person in the five or six seats ahead of him had cleared their seats, emptied their luggage compartments, and headed for the exit, I finally couldn't take it anymore, and to this polite gentleman I finally made something like the following statement in a strong and clear voice:
It is very nice of you, and very polite of you, and very civil of you to wait for the people in front of you to leave the plane before you do, but at least a few of them do not seem in much of a hurry to get out, and maybe if you were as nice, and as polite, and as civil to the people behind you — those who got up the second the engines were turned off, among other reasons to catch another flight — perhaps the people in front of you will not mind if the people behind you are allowed to exit first…
That provided a kick in the seat of the pants of the polite gentleman and got the flow moving again, and once in the terminal, a couple of passengers gave me a smile or a thumbs up…

2018 Update: doesn't it seem like the virtue signaling is close to leftist government, which likes to do things like combat poverty by using other people's money? The person coming to an abrupt stop in the middle of an aisle is not only being (allegedly) chivalrous (and showing his — alleged — chivalry), he is forcing everybody else to be chivalrous as well — whether or not they have reason (valid or otherwise) to rush off the plane (and, again, the main reason is to recover one's personal space as quickly as possible). Like the leftists, aren't they demanding that we all ignore, or belittle, our feelings and our instincts and become like robots?

• The fact is that airlines have no incentive
to end their cumbersome boarding processes

Do airline companies assume that
terrorists can only afford a seat in economy class?

• Do Airline Safety Rules Make Sense? Yes,
But Not in the Way You Were Taught to Think

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Google Reveals That French Web Surfers Are Obsessed About Whether Their Politicians — and Foreign Ones — Are Jewish

An Internet tool that flags up popular search words has spontaneously revealed a deeper trend
reports Expatica (as we are treated to more Jewish news from Europe):
French web surfers' exceeding curiosity about whether their politicians are Jewish.

Observers say the phenomenon betrays an obsession in a country with a sensitive history of anti-Semitism.

…try entering the name of a politician such as Dominique Strauss-Kahn -- the International Monetary Fund head who could challenge for the French presidency next year -- in the French version,

As you type, a list of suggestions appears below the search field, revealing what words other web surfers commonly associate with the name.

Along with terms such as "IMF" and "2012" -- for those interested in his global finance work or prospects in next year's French presidential election -- the fourth commonest search offered in French is "dominique strauss kahn juif" (Jewish).

The "Jewish" term is also offered for searches about France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, his Prime Minister Francois Fillon, and several other members of his three-month old cabinet.

The newspaper Le Monde said that a comparison of searches on various language versions of Google revealed that Autocomplete linked Jewishness to politicians far more commonly in France than in other countries.

…Autocomplete on the English language appears not to flag up "Jew" or "Jewish" regularly for prominent US or British political figures, though such words do appear for some foreign leaders.

But reveals Francophone curiosity about Britain's prime minister, offering "David Cameron juif."

…The Le Monde report's author Stephane Foucart wrote that his findings reflected "a subtle and latent form of anti-Semitism, which seems only to manifest itself when face to face with a computer."
As N Jo points out,
I'm fairly sure that they [the people doing searches for the word Juif] aren't looking to convert.

It's time to buy a box of Matzoh crackers in honor of the French who can't go to sleep at night until Mother checks under their big-boy bed for Jews.

Paris Sera Toujours Paris - III


Monday, March 28, 2011

All Your Memos are Belong to us

Wikileaks human prop Julian Assange reveals how scared he is of people and how hostile he is to the human condition. Behold some of his bitter and fearful, melodramatic and auto-lionizing Vogon poetry:
The Strawberry

I was travelling across a golden meadow when I encountered the tiger. I fled, with the tiger close behind.

Coming to a precipice, I caught hold of a wild vine and swung myself over the edge. The tiger sniffed my scent above.

Trembling, I looked down to the beach far below and saw a second tiger pacing the sands. Only the vine sustained me.

Two mice, one black and one white, came out of a crevice and started to gnaw away at the vine.

I saw a luscious strawberry nearby. Grasping the vine with one hand I picked it with the other. How sweet it tasted!

[with apologies to Zen]

Three Policemen on Trial in Northern France for Shouting Nazi Slogans While Carousing in Bar

The next time you hear a Frenchman sputter (or snicker) about how reactionary, how clueless, and how racist Americans are, remind him of the five Frenchmen (three policemen and two butchers) who are on trial in Amiens for exclaiming "Sieg Heil", "The ovens must be opened again", and "Death to the Jews." As more Jewish news reaches us from Europe, Le Monde's Patricia Jolly tells the story of what happened that night of revelry in 2008 inside a Northern France pub:
Les cinq hommes trinquent. "Sieg Heil", "il faut rouvrir les fours crématoires", entend alors, incrédule, un groupe d'enseignants tout proche. Alerté, [le gérant du pub, Thierry Martin] constate que les compères font le salut nazi. Il entend aussi "Heil Hitler", "Mort aux juifs". "Difficile de composer le 17 quand des policiers font quelque chose de délictueux, a-t-il raconté au tribunal. J'ai plutôt essayé de les faire sortir car je pensais qu'ils étaient armés."

…[le brigadier-chef Fabrice Lengelé (39 ans)] aurait alors ajouté : "Je fais partie du White Power. Je préfère briser ma carrière plutôt que de laisser mon pays colonisé par les bougnoules ou les négros."

…[Dans] une discothèque proche du commissariat où se sont retrouvés les quatre compères restant, vers 2 heures du matin … Lengelé a insulté un client d'origine maghrébine "venu au contact" pour se placer entre lui et "une blonde" avec laquelle il discutait. Mais le policier nie avoir traité son interlocuteur de "fils de pute" et de "bic" en portant sa main à la hanche comme s'il était armé. [Laurent Chanteux (41 ans, patron de la boucherie)], lui, a giflé un autre client d'origine maghrébine qui discutait paisiblement dehors avec [Frédéric Delhalle (41 ans)], un de ses employés]. "Sale bougnoule, retourne dans ton pays", a ajouté Chanteux devant Delhalle qui s'interposait.

…Frédéric Delhalle … s'est présenté au tribunal sans avocat. "Je n'ai pas les moyens et je n'ai pas cherché l'aide juridictionnelle. Cette affaire m'a brisé."

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Cries Heard from the Fake Crisis Management Center

The desperate pleas are deafening!

Spectrum crisis vs. bandwidth crisis

However, the "spectrum crisis" is only part of the equation wireless providers and network operators face. Another challenge is the "bandwidth crisis," the increased demands on bandwidth as a result of the growing number of mobile users...
TMC Net:
...Nevertheless, all telecommunication sectors experienced a slow down following the global financial crisis...
Capacity runs short DESPITE a slow down... now THERE'S a crisis, if nothing else than of basic cognition.

Japan's Martyred Towns

Accompanied by photographer Hisashi Murayama, Le Monde's Jérôme Fenoglio visits Otsuchi and Taro, two "martyred" Japanese towns devastated by the tsunami…
Jérôme Fenoglio, envoyé spécial du "Monde" au Japon, raconte sa visite des villes dévastées de Otsuchi et de Taro, à 150 km au nord de Sendai.