Polyamorous Vegan Cryptographers

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I'm on earlies this week. Yesterday I took my heap-o-work to the director's office and created a to-do list. Of 42 items. Back in my own office, between 9.45 and 4.30 I achieved six of the tasks. And naturally more jobs came in over the course of the day. I'm getting better at all delegating, but even so.
Today I have training from 9.30 to 1 then a meeting til 2. Then a short team brief. I'll have maybe three hours for yer actual work. Tomorrow I have training from 9.30 till 4. I will get v little work done at all.
I hate to think what my to-do list will look like on Monday.

dnalounge update

DNA Lounge update, wherein the axe falls.

Current Music: Szeki Kurva -- Stars Are Shining

A Written Statement

http://randomreality.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2009/11/10/4377409.html

I really need to get hold of a proper written statement so that I can make sure the format and language is more realistic, rather than sounding like one of my statements to a coroners court. What this hopefully shows is that the story is not going to be all first person/interviews.

-----

Personal report of Cpt. P. Almert, Bureau des Impôts 12th March 2011.

On the date in question I was commanding an armed fire-team at Jersey Airport. Our duties for that day were to provide a rapid response to any situation that required a less than lethal/lethal response.

I was initially informed of the incident by officer Tregourny, he had called for general assistance over the radio to the arrivals terminal. As we were nearby I instructed my team that we would provide this assistance.

On arrival to the scene I saw that a number of passengers were bleeding, in the confusion and panic of the public it took me approximately four minutes to reach officer Tregourny. He then indicated two people who seemed to be the cause of the disturbance.

The adult male had gained possession of an asp and was using this to attack member of the public, I later learned that this asp was issued to officer Hawes (deceased).

The adult female was attempting to scratch anyone who approached her, as I watched she removed a shoe and brandished it as a weapon.

At this time I did not see the female child.

As the scene was unsecured with large numbers of the public still present it was my decision to utilise less than lethal options.

Officers Ferruge and Halls advanced upon the two adults and with assistance from the rest of the fire-team subdued the two assailants with incapacitant spray and non-lethal blows and control techniques.

It was then I received a call from our control desk that another attack was happening in the female toilets of the arrival terminal.

As the rest of my team were still dealing with the two adults I made the decision to attend the scene on my own in order to secure the safety of the public. I knew that as soon as the rest of my team were free to assist they would make their way to my location.

I approached the female toilets with my issued incapacitant spray in my hand. From within I could hear the sound of a female screaming.

I entered the toilet and made my way to the end stall. It was there I found the female child biting into an adult female’s stomach. My instant assessment was that the wound that the child had caused was immediately life-threatening.

I shouted a warning at the child and she turned to look at me. Her mouth was covered with blood and in her hands she held viscera of the adult female.

As I prepared to use the incapacitant spray the female child leapt at me and knocked me aside, my spray was also dislodged from my hand.

I was knocked to the ground and the female child turned to attack me again. I was aware that this child had the chance of inflicting serious or life-threatening injuries to me. I was also aware that the attacked female needed immediate medical attention.

I then discharged my pistol into the female child three times, all three rounds striking the child in the chest.

I believe that the female child died immediately from these wounds.

I then radioed my team for assistance and called for immediate, urgent medical assistance for the attacked female.

I later learned that the attacked female died from complications of surgery.

Sadly, not theoretical
Poll #1483748
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 42

Which is worse to be ear-wormed by?

View Answers

Die Gedanken sind frei
0 (0.0%)

99 Luft Balloons
9 (21.4%)

Both, switching back and forth
3 (7.1%)

Both at the same time, in some kind of lovecraftian mash-up
10 (23.8%)

You think those are bad, try (see comments)
13 (31.0%)

I would like to complain about this poll
7 (16.7%)

I may have to break out I Don't Like Mondays or, god help me, Joe Hill.

The Neurologist
She says words and such are in the left temporal, so ordered an urgent brain MRI. I got home after the imaging center closed, so I'll call tomorrow.

I dropped the book off at the library on the way up and had dinner at Carabbas on the way back (I knew I'd be too late to call even if I came straight back). Washing cat blankies is getting moved to tomorrow, and I may nap this evening.

The part that hit when I fell is just achy now, so clearly I didn't hurt anything very badly.

Holding page

I've written today's blog post on paper. I'm on a train. Will update tomorrow!

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Out and About

RT @rebelraising: #polljack - you can also vote that greater maternity rights DON'T make women less employable! tinyurl.com/y8j7du6 #

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moments between posts
This also happened today:

09:23 When you own a kitten, not only is there no point crying over spilt milk, it becomes a cause for celebration.
09:40 Love getting the number 16 to work. I checked on googlemaps; the route's no longer, and I get trees and rivers instead of shops and spires.
13:12 In the post office queue. The floor is wipe-clean now, and the bureau de change has morphed into a terrifying biometrics booth.
13:18 It's a bit quieter and less scary than it used to be, under the shiny black eyes of the cctv, but no faster. I shall be late back to work.
13:29 Had to edit from 'a lot less scary' to 'a bit less scary' as still some tattooed nutjob was muttering and trying to tear up the barriers.

If I had a million dollars
I'd buy a light-sail ship.

The Dragon's Tales beat me to it but I worked in a Barenaked Ladies reference. Space is better with Barenaked Ladies.

The Rest Is History
I'm sorry I'm too busy to give this historic anniversary the long and loving treatment it deserves, but:

It isn't often that the world changes, in a way that's so big and dramatic and unmistakable that everybody in the world sits up and takes notice, that everybody everywhere is conscious they are experiencing History with a big History Channel capital-H. The world itself seems smaller at these moments, as we sense our connection to each other and to history and to all time. And when one of those real, history-pivoting moments happens, 9 times out of 10 the event is something bad--an assassination or a disaster or a sneak attack. How many times in an average life does the whole world change for the better, overnight? Those moments are worth remembering.

I met Lisa (

papersource) ten years ago today. Happy anniversary, baby.

What did you think I was talking about?

(Further reading.)

"Liberal."

I posted in more-or-less stream of consciousness fashion the other day about treadmills and the horse sense that words aren't sticks or stones, won't break your bones, and thus cannot hurt you. Which is mostly true until statistics put you in front of the one person you'll meet actually wounded by that word, and it's not really about you, at that point, is it?

And if this is about consensus and everybody deciding some words aren't useful or – hell, allowed, even – so what? This isn't censorship – it's voluntary, and done primarily out of real care. Despite what I had to say in the last post about on-the-job word ninnies, I am about the job at the job, and my actual response to other people's reaction to the way I talk is...I tone it down when I know I'm around somebody the swearing will bother.

I know who I can say "fuck" around when I'm exasperated and who I can't. I'm pretty sure I can't after the first time I see your Footsteps plaque or you mention how great Vespers was the other night or what you're teaching in Sunday School this weekend or whatever. And then we have a pact we don't talk about: I hold back on the trucker talk, you hold back on the Jesus talk, and we don't jump down each other's throats when some of it slips out.

If you can't do that, hold it in for other people, you're a jackass and you'll just keep getting in trouble and wondering why. If you run to HR whenever somebody's else's Stuff That Irritates You comes out, everybody around you will hate you, you will not get that tolerance when you need it, and...you probably won't figure out why, either.

***

Tweedle me deedles.

Read the rest of this entry »

Originally published at Minor Bun Engine Made Benny Lava!. Please leave any comments there.

Mud
With a car to restock the freezer and beer cupboards on Saturday, I also managed to do the walk up the Otter from Buddleigh Salterton. The river walk and Otterton's poohsticks stream are very pleasant, but the side path was well trodden by cows. I can cope with 2" deep mud, but was defeated by the 4" at a bend. Game of the day, at the end of the shingle bank where the river finally meets the sea, was throwing pebbles across the channel onto an small inclined ledge, alternating the gentle grazing attack with the high embedding lob.

More mud round the west side of the Dartmouth estuary, battling the wind funnelling down the valley, and admiring Dartmouth Castle, which is really a Henrician Device Fort, though oddly split into separate blocks. Bayard's Cove is just a ring shell, and the Kingswear houses climbing the hill across the river look great. The car ferry is ingeneous, a small boat pushing a 6 car barge on 2 ropes, flipping end on end against them to ensure a ro-ro crossing.

Nearby Blackpool Sands is a pretty crescent coarse sand beach, site of a not-at-all famous defeat of a Breton invasion force, just up from Slapton Sands where we didn't see the eclipse, with the tank still there.

Poll #1483520
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 86

Resolved: John Tory should become the next leader of the federal Conservative Party of Canada

View Answers

Yes (I vote CPC [non-communist])
0 (0.0%)

Yes (I don't vote CPC [non-communist])
16 (18.6%)

No (I vote CPC [non-communist])
1 (1.2%)

No (I don't vote CPC [non-communist])
4 (4.7%)

Yes (I am not Canadian)
10 (11.6%)

No (I am not Canadian)
2 (2.3%)

I would like to offer some unsolicited advice on how Canada should adopt American customs (and then I'd like to strip-mine Algonquin Park)
16 (18.6%)

I don't understand the issues involved
31 (36.0%)

Some other option not listed above
3 (3.5%)

I would like to complain about this poll
3 (3.5%)

That is not dead which can eternal lie/And with strange aeons even death may die.
Randy McDonald pointed out this article

John Tory leads the pack of undeclared candidates for mayor of Toronto by a wide margin, according to a new poll by Angus Reid Strategies.

Of decided voters, 46 per cent said they would vote for Mr. Tory, former leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, who came a close second to David Miller in the 2003 mayoral race. Ontario Deputy Premier and Infrastructure Minister George Smitherman polled a distant second, with 21 per cent of decided voters saying they would pick him.

the comforts of clutter
At this time of year I go into dormouse mode, and start lining my nest with things. Shiny things, gleamy things, dreamy things, pretty things, tasty things. Like most British mammals, I don't entirely hibernate, but I like to spend a lot of time in my cosy nest, and I like my cosy nest to be well-lined, like a winter coat.

I think that being surrounded by beautiful, interesting things, things that remind you of good times, mementos and souvenirs, gizmos and gadgets and bit and bobs is deeply soothing --especially when the weather gets grim and going out seems like less and less of an agreeable prospect. You feel set up, taken care of. There's no shortage of entertainment and interest.

This isn't to say that I bring everything home, or that everything I bring home I keep. There's a world of difference between despairing clutter and that excresecence of mindfulness, that fills the homes of people who love stuff.

It's time for late harvest now, time to look at all of those random things that have followed me home in spring and summer, and see what will stay, and what will be passed along. To ask of them the usual questions:

Is it beautiful?
Is it useful?
Does it make me happy?
Is it entirely itself?
Can it be used to make something else?
Will I actually get round to doing that?

And then some to keep, and some to pass on. Some to hold onto and some to let go. Until everything is in its place (more or less) and the whole happy round can start again.

Paul Krugman is wacky
On the economic benefits seen once Reagan was elected:

Take the United States, which wasn’t damaged in the war. Take per capita real GDP. Give hostages by taking data from 1950 to 1980, which means including the 1980 recession, but stopping at 2007, so that the current slump isn’t included. Then here’s what you get:

Growth in per capita real GDP from 1950 to 1980: 2.2 percent per year
Growth in per capita real GDP from 1980 to 2007: 2.0 percent per year

Oh, and if we look at real median family income instead, we get:

Growth from 1950 to 1980: 2.3 percent per year
Growth from 1980 to 2007: 0.7 percent per year

Sorry: there’s no measure I can think of by which the U.S. economy has done better since 1980 than it did over an equivalent time span before 1980. It may be something you’ve heard, it may be something you’d like to believe, but it just didn’t happen.

At the pre-1980 rates, real median family income would be about 50% higher than it is now. I cannot begin to list all the disruptive social implications of that happening (for one thing, it might have prevented credit card debt on the scale we see today [1], although it could also have led to an even larger debt per person, depending). The drop in per capita real GDP works out to about a 5% tax on per capita real GDP, which I am sure we all agree is a cheap price to pay for whatever it was it paid for.

1: Why is debt not inheritable in the US?

On the stupendous productivity growth rates since Reagan's election:

Actually, no. Productivity data here (zip file). Labor productivity rose an average of 2.3% per year from 1950 to 1980, 2.0% from 1980 to 2007.

But there’s more to the story. Postwar productivity growth had three eras: a period of rapid growth from the late 40s to the early 70s, then a big slowdown that lasted until the mid 90s, then an acceleration that continues to this day.

Ambulance chasing monkeys
That's two unsolicited calls in three days from an illegal cold-calling agency calling itself the "Accident Investigation Bureau" which claims to be from the UK government despite the operative being a very thickly-accented Indian or Pakistani with a false English name who has absolutely no idea about who I am - it's news to me about having a car crash 12 years ago - and who cannot answer basic questions about his supposed employers. Withheld number of course, so TPS is useless here; does anyone know who they really are and how to get these monkeys off my back? Come to think of it, does BT have a facility by which withheld numbers can be blocked?

Those who know me best know that fools such as the above are not suffered gladly by me, and my mood is not helped by the swivel-eyed Fraser Nelson from the Spectator popping up on the Execution Channel™ trying to extract even more mileage out of the Janes case as I type, berating the hapless Gordon Brown and all but branding him autistic while praising Blair and the foul chequebook journalists of the Murdoch press to the skies. Lord knows I'm not the greatest fan of Brown or his party but the behaviour of NewsCorp and the usual suspects over this matter has been lower than a Jack Russell's arsehole. Good to see there are at least some other bloggers outwith the regular dissentient voices who feel the same way too; Mr Eugenides asks the questions that need answers in this excellent post (shame that some of the comments are by and large the usual bloggertarian bile, but it's not about them). Would that more Conservative bloggers showed the common decency that the Greek Baby does here.

Don't fancy rolling in to work later this afternoon, but a Man's Gotta Do what a Man's Gotta Do. At least there's pubbage to look forward to at the weekend - and a scrap G4 Powerbook I've just picked up for peanuts on eBay which appears to be an easy fix if I take a few bits out of that rather iffy G3 upstairs, and the remains of that should cover the cost. Should keep me going until I find a suitable netbook; if nothing else it's good to see the first fruits of those daily clicks starting to appear in the bank account (£53 and rising).

Current Music: Victoria bloody Derbyshire on 5 Live. Why didn't they hire Delia Derbyshire instead?

Jersey

http://randomreality.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2009/11/10/4376741.html

Once more I find that I'll be checking some research when I come round to editing this. Right now I'm struggling with SAD. Where I was on schedule two days ago I'm now dropping behind because I'm self-medicating on World of Warcraft which is the only thing that'll get me out of bed at the moment. Maybe I'll get a chunk done later today.

-----

I got to Gatwick airport for our flight to Jersey with plenty of time, despite my luggage (one carry on and one booked suitcase, plus several pockets full of gadgets) weighing a ton. Judith was waiting for me through security sipping an over priced coffee.

Our flight was due to leave on time so we had time for a breakfast, something light for me while Judith tucked into a plate piled with bacon, sausage and eggs. With more coffee.

The was a joke once upon a time that the safest flight would have an autopilot, a dog and a pilot on the flight deck. The autopilot would fly the plane, the pilot would feed the dog and the dog would bite anyone who tried to turn the autopilot off. It was no longer a joke. Too many planes had crashed when one of the pilots had started showing symptoms of CLBD-7, either the hallucinations or the paranoia. So the new policy for all airlines was three pilots and one autopilot. The autopilot would fly the plane and it would require codes from at least two of the three humans in order to be turned off.

Crashes were now at an all time low.

The few times I’d flown were in the big commercial jetliners, so the little propellor plane that would fly us out to Jersey made me a little nervous, there is something strange about sitting in your seat at the back of the plane, yet being able to see all the way down to the door of the flight deck.

I think that Judith noticed my nervousness and she just grinned and me and told me that we’d no doubt be flying in smaller, and far more rickety planes than this. All I could think of was the comedy films where the hero was flown over mountainous terrain in a plane held together with bailing wire and flown by a crazed lunatic. It didn’t make me feel any better.

The flight was through beautiful weather, looking down and the ground, the cars, the towns, the fields, it all seemed so peaceful - as if there were nothing wrong with the world.

We soon landed at Jersey after Judith took advantage of the duty free to buy a huge bottle of vodka.

The sun was shining and the skies were blue as we cleared customs, it was a scene spoilt by the remnants of the machine gun outposts pointing at the doors of the airport. It was the reason for those that I was here to talk to Ben Slade, who was a Jersey Senator during the early years of the outbreak.

We caught a taxi to his townhouse at St. Heliers.

“We were worried”, he told me after pleasantries were made and tea was served, “We had heard reports of an unusual disease, the same stories we all heard, of people suddenly going crazy, of being overcome with mental problems, of violence and terror. You have got to remember that no-one knew what was happening in those days. We didn’t know that the incubation period was so long. After all we’d just got over the second wave of Swine ‘flu, isolation had worked for us there.”

He was right, in the second wave of Swine ‘flu, Jersey had implemented strict quarantine policies - thermal imaging at airports and docks, reduced internal travel, mandatory health checks for people in certain professions. This had limited the spread of disease in Jersey to minimal levels.

“We thought that we could do the same with this new disease. After all, we’d barely wound down the Swine ‘flu systems so it would be a minimal matter to bring them back into effect. Of course, then we’d had the airport attack.”

“I read the reports after the attack, they said that we were just unlucky, that a family with a predisposition to the disease had all manifested symptoms on the same flight from Russia. I can only imagine what it must have been like, three people running through the terminals, attacking people, biting them. You may ask why our security didn’t shoot them, but can you imagine shooting an eight year old girl just because she is biting people?”

“We weren’t sure that it was the disease at first, but the newspapers got a hold of the story and it was on the front page for several days. That caused panic and the public demanded that we do something. So we got more strict. Tests on people before they could leave the airport. Of course that took time, especially because we didn’t know what we were looking for.”

I interrupted him, “What happened to the people who were bitten?”

“Oh, they were sent to a quarantine camp. Well, the Jersey people were, those bitten who came from other countries were denied entry and sent back to where they had come from. Possibly not a wise idea in retrospect but the officials at the airport were scared, they acted without understanding what had just happened. I think they had seen too many zombie movies”.

“More and more people were being turned away, mostly those with high body temperatures - we didn’t know that this way of screening was useless, and with the frenzy whipped up by the papers about these ‘zombies’, we were forced to do something”.

“And so we closed the ports and the airports to non-commercial traffic.”

“No private citizen would be allowed onto the island, only those with a valid commercial reason, and they would largely be restricted to the ports and terminals. No-one would be allowed to come onto the island to stay. We had been lucky after all, the only cases of CLBD-7 that we had were from those bitten at the airport. There were no cases of infection within Jersey proper”.

“But there were attempts to enter the island, after all, we were famously ‘infection free’, us and Madagascar at least. So people fleeing from France and the UK tried to breach our borders. They would sneak aboard the mail planes, or aboard the container ships brining us supplies. After one or two near misses where someone managed to breach the cordon we put up the machine gun posts.”

“Understand that we didn’t want to do that, we didn’t want to end up shooting people who were just trying to be safe, but you have to remember that we were all scared in those days, we thought that Clubbed was going to end the world, that we’d all be dead, or worse, within ten years. We wanted to to be safe long enough to give the scientists a chance to find a cure.”

“But that day never came. Instead, despite our paranoia, we started to get cases of infection within our borders. We now know that this is because the incubation period was so long, that the infected were already living here before the first symptoms started showing up on the world stage, but that we’d been lucky that in our cases the incubation was very long. I suppose it’s just because we have less people here to be infected.”

“I still remember when the WHO declared Jersey as ‘infected’, all our precautions had been for nothing, the people shot while running for the fences were killed for nothing. The quarantine camps were a waste of time and the endless hours that I and my fellow senators spent trying to protect the people of this island was for nothing”.

I asked him why he stepped down from being a senator.

“You might think that it’s because I was ashamed of what I’d done, the people who we’d killed in an attempt to save ourselves. But it wasn’t, it was much simpler than that - my wife was showing signs of infection and I didn’t want her to go through it on her own, with me away from home for long hours at the States building. So I shucked my duty to the island for the duty of caring for my wife”.

jarrettsville by Cornelia Nixon
I'm not giving spoilers by telling you that the author, Cornelia Nixon, is a cousin thrice-removed from the protagonist. She dedicates the book to her mother who has the family name in her name, and there's material in the back that talks about it (I always read back material first).

This book is based on a real story. It starts immediately after the Civil War in a northern Maryland county that went both directions. In some families, some sons went Rebel and others went Federal. We watch Congress be rude to each other, but they don't kill each other, burn down cabins, kill horses, etc. This happened all over that area after the War.

The book is written in a number of first person sections and I expected it to be annoying, but she did it quite well.

The first few sections are people who see Martha Jane Cairnes shoot Nicholas McComas to death, verifying that she did it in cold blood. She insists on being hanged that day. The next section is long and is from Martha Jane. She was chaste, but when she met Nicholas McComas, she felt something in her heart. They become closer and closer and she starts to want sex, even though she doesn't quite recognize what she wants. During this time, the Cairnes' freed slaves leave the household because Martha Jane's mother was very rude to the mother. The adult son of the freed slaves goes to work for Nick and Nick provides a cabin for the family.

The next section is Nick and it overlaps Martha Jane's by a very short time. Nick has had a fair amount of sex and his own wandering makes him wonder about Martha Jane. She didn't scream when they finally have sex. She seemed to understand it too well. And she grew up with the freed slave that works for him. Could she have had sex with a Negro? That would be disgusting! Nick asks Martha Jane to marry him, though he keeps moving the date. He eventually moves to Pennsylvania near some Amish and runs sheep there. He comes home once and runs into Martha Jane, who insists on having sex with him. Nine months later, there's a baby. He accepts it as his, but wonders what color it is. One last time, they set up a wedding and Nick is actually just outside the window, but goes home. Martha Jane is broken and tells him that if she sees him again, she'll kill him. He comes back to the town for the Federal anniversary celebration of the end of the Civil War, she finds out, and heads to the saloon and kills him. He thinks as he dies that they'll be together in heaven forever.

The next group of sections are from her trial, a number of people in the court, and then a longer section by Martha Jane's mother. Her mother never really liked her and was furious when she had a baby before she was wed, and she was as ready for Martha Jane to hang as she was. But when she sees the very white baby boy with Nick's eyes, and how Martha Jane cares for him, she starts to change her mind. The jury comes back with a verdict, and you'll have to read the book to find out what that is.

You should read it anyway; I highly recommend it. Besides the family tree and information in the back, there's an article from the NY Times that covers the trial.

The background tells us a lot about what happened in that time and place, like a brocade drape where the story is embroidered on top, giving us depth as well as the story.