European Tribune - Community, Politics & Progress.

Huh?

A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jul 22nd, 2008 at 08:41:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Sarkozy's reform of the Constitution (4.00 / 6)

was just voted through by a one-vote majority. Such a tiny majority is unprecedented, and reflected not only the fact that the socialists (which were favorable to many of the proposed changes) felt betrayed by Sarkozy on the method and on some issues, but also the deep misgivings of a number of rightwing parliamentarians about the reform.

But I have no doubt it will be spun as a triumph by Sarkozy, who will crow again that he had to do it all by himself and managed to personally convince just enough backbenchers not to vote against him.

Sigh...

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (jeromeguillet@yahoo.fr) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 12:49:00 PM EST

Re: Sarkozy's reform of the Constitution (4.00 / 3)

He's having his victory parade days at the moment. But even the "victories" are hollow. And it's the summer vacation, so it doesn't really count.

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 01:54:58 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Victory it is (4.00 / 2)

Sarkozy victory as reforms are approved
France's parliament on Monday approved by the narrowest possible margin one of the most significant packages of institutional reforms since the Fifth Republic was founded by General Charles de Gaulle in 1958.
In a knife-edge vote in an extraordinary parliamentary session at Versailles, the necessary 60 per cent of France's senators and parliamentary deputies backed the controversial reforms intended to rebalance the executive and legislative branches of power.
The vote is an important victory for President Nicolas Sarkozy, who had promised during last year's election campaign to update the country's constitution. The opposition Socialist party, as well as some members of Mr Sarkozy's own centre-right UMP party, had fiercely resisted the bill, arguing it did not go far enough.
Mr Sarkozy, who had reportedly lobbied wavering parliamentarians by phone while on holiday, hailed the result as a triumph for the forces of movement over those of stagnation.

And the narrative is thus fed.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (jeromeguillet@yahoo.fr) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 07:52:33 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Victory it is (none / 1)

What is the content of this "one of the most significant packages of institutional reforms since the Fifth Republic was founded"?

A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jul 22nd, 2008 at 08:41:19 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Monday Open Thread (4.00 / 2)

The temperatures in June and the first half of July was more like those typical for Los Angeles than for Arkansas, except, instead of a marine layer and occasional fog we had a year's worth of rain in six months. It continued for two weeks into July. I have loved the morning lows in the '60s, but that is now gone. Highs are in the 90s and humidity is over 50%. The rains appear poised to return tomorrow, but not the cool temperatures. Back to the usual Arkansas in the summer.

If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.

by ARGeezer (argeezer@yahoo.com) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 12:54:40 PM EST

Re: Monday Open Thread (none / 1)

Very busy at work and will be for the next few months - after nine months of not-a-whole-lot-to-do. I'm down to reading the internets while on debugging breaks.

you are the media you consume.

by MillMan (millguy at gmail) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 01:07:41 PM EST

Welcome to the club (4.00 / 3)

ET - Blogging on breaks.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (jeromeguillet@yahoo.fr) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 01:44:11 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Welcome to the club (4.00 / 2)

Unfortunately, anything I want to write is the sort of thing that requires a spare hour or three and some brain horsepower. Not much of either going spare here at the moment, but I'm nearly rid of the four projects that are wrecking my life.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 01:46:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Welcome to the club (none / 1)

You surely can't mean the animals? ;-)

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 01:58:04 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Monday Open Thread (4.00 / 5)

Ugh, it's stopped raining in Amsterdam, but of course I'm at Schipol now waiting to board my plane. Wi-fi here is a bit pricey too and it seems they do roaming for every provider except the one I use...

by Metatone (metatone [a|t] gmail (dot) com) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 01:48:20 PM EST

Re: Monday Open Thread (4.00 / 2)

damn the internet is like slow glue tonight, must be that ten minute rain we just had, the first in 2 weeks.

i heard of a sat system that will give me 1Mps d/load, 128k upload for €45 a month. the bad news...€1000 to buy the dish, box, installation cost.

seems like there's no other way in these devil-forsaken boonies.

will that b/width support voip?

"These days, there's nothing more ridiculous than the truth." Leonard Pitts Jr

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 02:49:37 PM EST

Re: Monday Open Thread (none / 1)

There's something called 1 way satellite broadband that is cheaper. You download via satellite - getting the speed - and upload via dial-up. If you are not sending large packets of data this could be a solution, but only price comparison would reveal the best option.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 03:05:48 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Monday Open Thread (none / 1)

probably noty that good for VOIP though

Interviewer: What do you believe is behind this recent increase in terrorist bombings? Helpmann: Bad sportsmanship

by ceebs (bunchofwankers (at) gmail (dot) com) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 03:46:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Monday Open Thread (none / 1)

true...

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 04:04:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Monday Open Thread (none / 1)

combination of lack of bandwitdth in one direction, and sattelite lag in the other.

Interviewer: What do you believe is behind this recent increase in terrorist bombings? Helpmann: Bad sportsmanship

by ceebs (bunchofwankers (at) gmail (dot) com) on Tue Jul 22nd, 2008 at 04:58:39 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Monday Open Thread (none / 1)

That lag would maybe preclude VOIP in whatever sat system?

I don't know - have no experience of this stuff, except for briefly investigating a system for uploading video rushes from a foreign location where confiscation of material was a possibility. The cameras were cheap and disposable, but the loss of shot material would have been a catastrophe.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Tue Jul 22nd, 2008 at 05:08:13 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Monday Open Thread (none / 1)

well not necessarily preclude it, just make conversation very difficult.

Satellite Service Battles Lag

The problem is latency: the time it takes an information request traveling at the speed of light to go from your computer to the satellite, be retransmitted to the satellite provider's operations center, and for the response to be uploaded to the satellite and retransmitted to your computer.
All systems have a certain amount of latency, of course, but terrestrial signals transmitted by wire or microwave almost never have to travel more than a couple thousand miles.
With satellites used for U.S. internet service stationed approximately 23,000 miles above the equator, each information/response packet has to make a round trip of about 92,000 miles, producing a noticeable lag -- about 0.25 seconds -- in applications that require near-instantaneous actions.

those quater second second gaps (if everything is working properly) are enough to be noticeable, and throw off mental cues in conversation so that speach appears fumbled, and people dont seem to be replying, the hand off signals that people use in conversation break down with these gaps thrown in, and conversational cues have to be handled conciously. which destroys some of the meaning transfered by conversation.

Interviewer: What do you believe is behind this recent increase in terrorist bombings? Helpmann: Bad sportsmanship

by ceebs (bunchofwankers (at) gmail (dot) com) on Tue Jul 22nd, 2008 at 05:18:39 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Latency as slave trade (none / 1)

Try synching up a master time code signal around a large video production facility ;-)

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Tue Jul 22nd, 2008 at 05:27:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Latency as slave trade (none / 1)

I'll get my Big hammer. ;-)

Interviewer: What do you believe is behind this recent increase in terrorist bombings? Helpmann: Bad sportsmanship

by ceebs (bunchofwankers (at) gmail (dot) com) on Tue Jul 22nd, 2008 at 05:30:09 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Monday Open Thread (none / 1)

Certainly anything over about 250KB/sec should do.

If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.

by ARGeezer (argeezer@yahoo.com) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 03:26:25 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Monday Open Thread (4.00 / 3)

Sat has very long latencies - VoIP would have a built in delay of a fraction of a second.

Not fatal, but it would be noticeable.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 05:19:23 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Monday Open Thread (none / 1)

thanks all. for double the € i can get 2Mega d/load, 256k upload. would that put me in the clear of voip hassles?

people calling me on my landline (soon to be jettisoned, yay!) through skype has been 90% of the time complete torture, between stunning levels of background noise, ruinous distortion and vocoder effect on the tin-robot voice, and signal ebb.

nightmare...

i guess i will avail myself of a skype phone, and when the engineer comes to install/test the system, i'll try out skype.

even at €100 a month including 20% VAT, it may be cheaper than what i pay telecom, if i factor in that i make a lot less calls than i'd like to, to keep the bills down.

what else shall i try out when the engineer's here? youtube for sure, and one of those websites that tells you how much actual bandwidth is happening.

any particular ones anyone can recc?

i just heard on 'click online' last night that there is a 50G free storage available from http://www.adrive.com/

woot!

"These days, there's nothing more ridiculous than the truth." Leonard Pitts Jr

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Tue Jul 22nd, 2008 at 08:30:08 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Monday Open Thread (none / 1)

I get pretty good performance using Skype over my landline (Fastweb, 20 Euro/month), but living in a town might mean I have a better connection.

by gk (g k quattro due due sette "at" gmail.com) on Wed Jul 23rd, 2008 at 02:15:07 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Monday Open Thread (none / 1)

Just got back from sending my current project off via Fed EX. Now I can catch up with yard and house work while not online. At least for a while. Given what is happening to the economy, I am grateful for any work I can do from home.

If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.

by ARGeezer (argeezer@yahoo.com) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 03:30:46 PM EST

Not mine (4.00 / 6)

but worth watching, still...

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (jeromeguillet@yahoo.fr) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 04:30:22 PM EST

Re: Monday Open Thread (4.00 / 3)

I don't even watch the news anymore, but, Jesus, I can still tell that Obama's foreign trip has gone from McCain talking point (demanding Obama go on one) to a McCain nightmare.

Delicious.

Where's your motherf*%&ing flag pin?

by Drew J Jones (blahblahblah@blahblahblah.com) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 04:57:23 PM EST

Re: Monday Open Thread (4.00 / 8)

Doing the rounds as a 'today in pictures' juxtaposition:

Obama practices looking like Neo, again - but what is it with Clan Bush and golf carts?

It's playing as if it's 24 vs The Golden Girls - the narrative writes itself.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 05:34:56 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Monday Open Thread (4.00 / 2)

Yes, I've Bren pretty shocked at how successful the whole thing has been so far. I've been waiting for political games, or perhaps even some bullshit from the military, since the officers -- less so the actual soldiers -- tend to be pretty right-wing. But so far it's gone better than I ever would've imagined.

Certainly nothing backs up Obama and Maliki on withdrawal like the soldiers cheering wildly for Obama.

Where's your motherf*%&ing flag pin?

by Drew J Jones (blahblahblah@blahblahblah.com) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 06:17:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Monday Open Thread (4.00 / 3)

And, anyway, my new buddy at the hotel bar agrees: We'll take Neo over the Cowboy any day.

Where's your motherf*%&ing flag pin?

by Drew J Jones (blahblahblah@blahblahblah.com) on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 06:55:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Monday Open Thread (none / 1)

"Property of #41 - Hands off!"????? WTF?

A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jul 22nd, 2008 at 08:42:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Monday Open Thread (none / 1)

The US - political fantasy vs political reality.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Jul 22nd, 2008 at 10:32:36 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Monday Open Thread (none / 0)

I didn't realize that was General Petraeus next to Obama. There's a nice narrative-transformer added on. They're going on about it at the Great Orange Satan's place. Karzai and Obama were the page 2 pic yesterday in the Times-Picayune. I imagine Obama-Petraeus was front-page today, with Obama-Maliki on the Continued section.

Where's your motherf*%&ing flag pin?

by Drew J Jones (blahblahblah@blahblahblah.com) on Tue Jul 22nd, 2008 at 11:09:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Monday Open Thread (none / 1)

It's a media wipe-out. McCain is being completely outclassed and out-narratived. And you can be sure that the photographers who took these shots knew exactly what they were about.

If the qualification for president is magical super-special c-in-c-ness - which, rather sickeningly, it seems to have become - McCain's alleged experience has just evaporated into media nothingness.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Jul 22nd, 2008 at 01:07:47 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Monday Open Thread (none / 1)

The photos are done by the military's PR folks. I actually think it's more a matter of the military not wanting to appear as though it's in McCain's pocket, and so being inclined to give Obama some good pics and video. The potential pitfalls are clearly in Israel, where I suspect Olmert isn't going to be as prObama as Maliki or Karzai or the Yurpians, but given Olie's recent, erm, "issues" (being charitable), I'm not terribly concerned.

Where's your motherf*%&ing flag pin?

by Drew J Jones (blahblahblah@blahblahblah.com) on Tue Jul 22nd, 2008 at 02:11:10 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Monday Open Thread (4.00 / 3)

Dead baby penguins washing ashore in Rio by the hundreds

But biologist Erli Costa of Rio de Janeiro's Federal University suggested weather patterns could be involved.
"I don't think the levels of pollution are high enough to affect the birds so quickly. I think instead we're seeing more young and sick penguins because of global warming, which affects ocean currents and creates more cyclones, making the seas rougher," Costa said.
Costa said the vast majority of penguins turning up are baby birds that have just left the nest and are unable to out-swim the strong ocean currents they encounter while searching for food.
Every year, Brazil airlifts dozens of penguins back to Antarctica or Patagonia.

Jesus christ.

"This is nothing compared to how Putin rigged Eurovision."

by poemless on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 06:11:13 PM EST

Re: Monday Open Thread (none / 0)

Penguinocide.

"This is nothing compared to how Putin rigged Eurovision."

by poemless on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 06:11:58 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Monday Open Thread (4.00 / 4)

I discovered an interesting disconnect between what the Texas Republicans say and what they do. (Surprized?)

While they are all vehemently anti-railroad for the rest of the U.S., you can get to the following cities by Amtrak:

Beaumont, TX (BMT), Houston, TX (HOS), Marshall, TX (MHL)Longview, TX (LVW), Mineola, TX (MIN), Dallas, TX (DAL)Fort Worth, TX (FTW), Cleburne, TX (CBR), McGregor, TX (MCG), Temple, TX (TPL), Taylor, TX (TAY), Austin, TX (AUS), San Marcos, TX (SMC), San Antonio, TX (SAS), Del Rio, TX (DRT), Sanderson, TX (SND), Alpine, TX (ALP), El Paso, TX (ELP)

That list of cities covers a huge percentage of the Texas population, leaving out only the small towns in the panhandle and near the Mexican border. (Ablinene,Midland, Lubbock, and Amarillo, plus Corpus Christi, you can't get to.)

So while Ohio doesn't deserve a train connecting Cinncinnati, Columbus,and Cleveland, you can get pretty much anywhere you want by train in Texas. One train even goes right past W's ranch...

by asdf on Mon Jul 21st, 2008 at 07:07:08 PM EST

IMF loans strongly correlated to tuberculosis (4.00 / 3)

The rapid rise in tuberculosis cases in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union is strongly associated with the receipt of loans from the International Monetary Fund, a new study has found.

NYT article

A 'centrist' is someone who's neither on the left, nor on the left.

by nicta (nico＠altiva․fr) on Tue Jul 22nd, 2008 at 08:14:42 AM EST

Re: IMF loans strongly correlated to tuberculosis (none / 1)

[Correlation is NOT Causation alert]

A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jul 22nd, 2008 at 08:36:39 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Monday Open Thread | 45 comments (45 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Go to: [ European Tribune Homepage : Top of page : Top of comments ]