Toadfish Monastery

Well, about two weeks ago my wife was picking up my son from school and a lady skipped a red light and rammed on the side of her car with this lovely result:

Note the letters "TL" on the windshield, despite being able to move on it's own power the car was totaled.

This is the best car I ever had and I have to thank the fact that my son, who was on the passenger side, had no injuries from the crash save a small scratch on the side of his forehead.

Today I went to take some pictures for the lawyer (can you believe the lady despite running the red light claimed that she crossed on green and that my son (!) was driving because she saw him coming out of the car from the drivers side?! [as if coming out from the passenger side was possible!!!!]. The paramedics cleared that one easily).

Aaanyways, I created this thread to add your own car blues, hopefully not as violent as mine. I had the feeling we had something somewhere but I couldn't find it.

Today I had lunch with my crazy cousin who's getting married next week and as usual he was trying to 'illuminate' me about the conspiracy of the bankers to take over the world. While I'm skeptic about the world government conspiracy etc, some of his arguments usually remain in my head after wards because they kinda make sense, which got me thinking: if the world's wealth has finally concentrated enough in the hands of a few, it would be perfectly logical for them to coordinate their efforts and directly or indirectly take over. It could be argued that the period of peace between wealthy nations of the so-called western world is the result of this concentration (it wouldn't make sense to bombard my neighbor if my plants are in it's backyard), and considering that after the end of the cold war previously closed markets opened, that same wealth has been making inroads there lowering the 'threat' level from those countries.

But if that's really the case wouldn't they take better care of their "farm"? While you have chaos small players benefit, but the big players benefit with stability and in consequence the logical path for those who own 50%+ of the wealth of the world would be to actively seek that stability, and while some efforts on the subject are mentioned, there don't seem to be very effectual at the moment.

IOW the big conspiracy that is supposedly taking place would make sense but -unless I'm missing something- isn't happening, which begs the question: why?

Any takers? 

Given that we have so many threads about certain Redmond, WA company and its oh-so-reliable software, I thought that we could make one for news, links and comments on the alternatives.

Today I read on The Inquirer that the French Gendarmerie after switching to OpenOffice is already half on its way to replace windoze with Ubuntu.

QuoteGuimard says the Gendarmerie since 2002 found out that open source applications usually are better at handling open standards than proprietary software. Moving to centralised Imap servers for email, lead the organisation to deploy Mozilla Thunderbird on the desktops. Making all the web applications work equally well,resulted in the roll-out of Firefox across the organisation. "Users need no training to use a web browser."

In 2007 the Gendarmerie decided to replace even the desktop operating system. Guimard: "Moving from Microsoft XP to Vista would not have brought us many advantages and Microsoft said it would require training of users. Moving from XP to Ubuntu, however, proved very easy. The two biggest differences are the icons and the games. Games are not our priority."

From BBC news:

Quote from: victim"There was fire, and so much white smoke," she says. "The missile melted my children. My daughter-in-law melted in front of my eyes."

My thoughts on the subject are too 'incendiary' to post them here.

Here I am, the happy winner of the guess the movie thread, I have nice DVD from which I want to extract a few screenshots, and...

1st try: my main PC which is a nice an powerful quadcore beast I use to play FPS games, burn movies and to connect to the SQL database I work with. I have a version of PowerDVD installed, sure it should work, right? Wrong, I don't remember where the heck the key is and I can't use the bloody SW. Well, there's VLC free and all, sure I can use that. Nope, something is wrong with it because while it plays the movie it crashes while trying to do the screen capture. (Why DVD Shrink doesn't have a screenshot function?)

2nd try: older celeron Compaq laptop with Intervideo which loads but apparently is incapable of playing a movie (!).

3rd try: I have a nice and shiny new Dell laptop with Vista ( ) that surely is up to the task. Mmm, media player plays the movie but no screen capture option

4th try: lets try the alternative. I just installed Ubuntu 8.10 in my son's computer. I already know that it doesn't come with the codecs to play almost anything so I try to install them. Totem plays the menu but fails on the movie (I supposedly installed libdvdcss2 but apparently isn't working. I'm hating the 'deferred processing' thing). Could it be that VLC will work eventually (still installing...).

Ok, so PowerDVD works on my main laptop (a dual core Acer) and now I'm taking them with it although it sometimes decides not to do so. 

Why the hell is so bloody hard to take a pic of a DVD I own and paid for?!?!?! How is it possible that if I made a copy removing the bloody macrovision I can do it in Totem without problems?!?!?!?!

Edit: I finally made it work in VLC-Ubuntu, it wasn't intuitive, it saved who-knows-where until I configured the folder, closed and opened it again. As much as I hate to admit even as beautiful the latest version of Ubuntu works you still need to be a pro to make it do all the stuff. 

Instead of treating English like Latin we can do the opposite:
http://www.wimp.com/sweettranslation/

This is possibly the most disturbing news I read on the subject: apparently a consortium of telcos is planning a concerted effort to do away with our ability to go everywhere on the internet for the year 2012 or even 2010.

Quote from: http://ipower.ning.com/netneutrality2Bell Canada and TELUS (formerly owned by Verizon) employees officially confirm that by 2012 ISP's all over the globe will reduce Internet access to a TV-like subscription model, only offering access to a small standard amount of commercial sites and require extra fees for every other site you visit.

[youtube=425,350]t89WwcsOj9U[/youtube]

This is a look into the past (1999) and the discussion on Redesigning the International Financial Architecture.
After reading and referencing the crisis of the past decade in Asia and S.America I found some interesting bits about bail-outs and regulation (my emphasis):

Quote from: Bilderberg 1999 meeting
How can one begin to establish international regulators when there are such conspicuous rivalries between regulators within countries, especially America? And how do you design a system that bails in the private sector? Several participants returned to the basic theme that the markets have globalised but the regulatory systems have not.
[snip]
Several private-sector bankers rose to defend their profession. One American banker pointed out that creditors have often been extremely flexible, not least in the bail-out of Long Term Capital Management. The public sector is simply behind: witness the delays in changing the rules about investment banking in the United States. A British banker believed that trust is key.
[snip]
The third panellist wanted to see the IMF become a catalyst for change; if not, capital controls will be more likely. The first panellist admitted that the IMF has not always explained its case well. But he argued that the question of the power of a lender of last resort is tied into that of how to bail in the private sector. Until a way is found to keep the private sector involved, it will be very difficult to have an effective lender of last resort.

My take -in hindsight- is that some of the 'conspiracy' claims about the infamous group may be rightly related to the collusion between regulators and the ones they should be supposedly regulating.

How would I 'love' to read in next year's meeting transcript how to prevent the impending regulation. 

Again encouraged by our beloved Darlica I dared to create a thread for parodies hoping that if you know some you'll post them here for all to enjoy.
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My first suggestion is Movies in 15 Minutes. Cleolinda is a very talented parody writer that for some reason hasn't been able to print her book of parodies in the US (the book is available in the UK though). Her original parodies were written in her livejournal and are free to read for all. As with many parodies, watching the movie first will make it easier to understand, but then again if you are not watching the movie, the parody might be a better deal  (for instance I refuse to see Hidalgo but I enjoyed the parody very much).

Oki, I'm a First Person Shooter (FPS) junkie. I love first person games because I feel that I'm immersed in a different place that I can explore away from my daily routine (I played this kind of games since the original Doom Shareware back in the XX century so ).

Encouraged by our dearest sibling Darlica, I thought it would be a nice idea to have a thread for those of us who like this kind of games.

For a current recommendation I would suggest Bioshock for those who haven't tried it yet. You can play it on a console (Xbox 360 and soon in the PS3) or in a PC (which ideally should have a decent processor and video card). The story is influenced in part by Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (although I doubt the take from the authors of the game is the same) with a few interesting twists.

Today my wife received in the snail mail an 'interesting' DVD titled: Obsession, Radical Islam's war against the west. This was sent by The Clarion Fund which upon some research happens to be a 501(3) non-for-profit organization (not deserving it*). This is a propaganda film trying to convey how Islam is out to get us, and despite claiming to be non partisan, according to a blog I found researching the movie, an article in their website (now removed) endorsed McSame.

I wonder what else they have in stock for the next two months. 

* I work for a valid 501(3) to know that these quacks don't deserve name nor the tax exemption.

This one is brought by my crazy cousin who happens to be a Ron Paul convert. According to some sources not only the speaker system conveniently failed while reading the votes for RP during the convention but anyone inside the convention who had any buttons or material from RP had their stuff confiscated.

Linky

I get the party unity line etc, but is this 'normal'? Is it a crazy conspiracy theory or is there any substance to the claim? (heck, would the same thing happened to -say- Kucinich at the DNC?).

Ok, this is the classical quirk story but according to some Swedish scientists:

QuoteThere are, of course, many reasons why a person might have relationship problems, but this is the first time that a specific gene variant has been associated with how men bond to their partners

Finally the get out of jail card we men were looking for... 

As we sometimes don't devote too much time on the 'headline news' I was thinking that we could add our comments on such in this thread. True, sometimes there is not much to say with those but it may spark a bit of debate.
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To start, the Russian invasion of Georgia. I was checking on cursor and that led me to this interesting article in the Financial Times:

Quote from: FT articleIndeed, most of the world is bemused by western moralising on Georgia. America would not tolerate Russia intruding into its geopolitical sphere in Latin America. Hence Latin Americans see American double standards clearly. So do all the Muslim commentaries that note that the US invaded Iraq illegally, too. Neither India nor China is moved to protest against Russia. It shows how isolated is the western view on Georgia: that the world should support the underdog, Georgia, against Russia. In reality, most support Russia against the bullying west. The gap between the western narrative and the rest of the world could not be greater.

I for one philosophically blame the US on the whole affair, first by giving a terrible example on the misuse of power on Irak, and then by taunting the Russians with NATO offerings to their neighbors (including the missile plans). It has become an idiotic way to escalate things that I can't see as beneficial to anyone.

As a note, I don't personally condone the actions of the Russians in Georgia, but I do see the double standard of the US/NATO in all its glorious detail on this issue.

(1). Door to door proselytism, religious Radio & TV
(2). Limits on advertising in campaigns (market of ideas vs money).
(3). Nazi apologists would fall under that category, although who determines what is a lie*?
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I was reading this article from The Economist about religion and this caught my attention:

Quote from: The EconomistThe promotion of religious liberty is an axiom of American foreign policy, not just in places where freedom is obviously under threat, but even in Germany, which gets gentle scoldings for its treatment of Scientology.
[snip]
In Greece, it is unconstitutional to proselytise; that makes life hard for Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons.

Is it possible to regulate speech? Is it desirable? In matters of religion is it ok to prevent proselytism? How about politics, is it fair to prevent a millionaire from drowning the airwaves with his speech? Is it ok if a church or special interest group does it?

*Should UFO 'witnesses' be denied their right to tell what they 'saw'?

Despite we normally don't sink in the 'news cycle' I was curious about what you siblings think of this:

Is this the classic case of unforeseen consequences, or a calculated publicity coup?

I wasn't sure if this belonged in environmental or in science, but considering there are 2 more threads on cooling here I chose this folder.

http://gtalumni.org/Publications/magazine/sum98/einsrefr.html

This sounds like a very neat idea specifically for (again) air conditioning if it's efficiency is enough for it. Perhaps Bob knows more about it but I'm very intrigued with the concept using thermal solar as the source of energy.

Apparently listening to others communications by the government is OK now...

Quote from: The InquirerSWEDEN'S PARLIAMENT has narrowly approved a controversial law that allows authorities sweeping powers to eavesdrop on all e-mail and telephone traffic that passes through the country.

Ok, this is a plea for help, most likely from the expert sibling on all things AC (I'm looking at you Bob ). The breaker for the AC compressor jumps. A lot. In fact at this moment it simply refuses to go up despite the fact that I replaced the breaker for a higher capacity one (30A to 40A). More so, even after turning the AC off the breaker still jumps as if something were drawing power from it. Yesterday I had the same problem and I replaced the breaker thinking that it was faulty but what caught my attention is the fact that it was failing just after midday when the heat is at its peak (~92F).

I wonder if this is a problem with my AC (perhaps shorting?) or with the power coming into my building simply overloading (it shouldn't happen but why in the afternoon?).

1. Premise: The price of oil is rising and the trend will remain for the short to medium term.

• According to analysts, we are reaching (according to some we reached already) a production plateau with no easy ways to increase output.
• The current trend is for an increasing demand specially from resurgent economies like China and India
• The only unexplored place on Earth with potentially large reserves is the Antarctic continent, which is off-limits and would be very expensive for exploration and exploitation.
• Even if a large reservoir is found today it would take at least 5 years to put it into production.

Conclusion: Demand is growing faster than supply. Prices can only stabilize when the supply and demand are balanced.

2. Premise: The imbalance in oil supply and demand puts pressure on alternative fuels, specifically Bio-fuels.

• Legislations both in Europe and the US are forcing the use of some biofuels in regular gasoline and Diesel
• There is pressure from the public to get carbon neutral fuels.
• There is competition between production of biofuels and food.
• Even if biofuels are net producers of energy (like sugarcane ethanol) we still have the same arable land.
• This pressures are forcing the prices of food up as more 'valuable' crops are chosen by farmers worldwide

Conclusion: The price of food will rise more or less shadowing the price of oil until a balance is reached.
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Ok, so here are my questions:

1. Are those two premises above correct? What arguments can mitigate or even invalidate them?
2. Is it moral to profit from a bet on the market when the conditions of such market are likely to cause a huge distress on large portions of Earth's population?
And this is the cynical one:
3. What is the most effective way to profit from such market?

Discuss.