Another example of why this ain't the latest hotness weblog: in general I wait at least 24 hours or so before posting on or commenting on a football result. I've too often fallen victim to spoilers, and I'd hate to be the perp.
Going into this weekend's Premier League matches, Arsenal once again look down on their rivals as they lead the table -- just as they did for most of last season before a crippling injury list proved the catalyst for their eventual late slump to third position.
And how about that table?
Gunners on top. Spurs on bottom. OK, I'm not a traditional Arsenal fan in hating Spurs beyond reason. To be honest, they've never been a threat, so it's hard to find cause to gin up the rivalry. It is a little annoying that every year when the pundits claim Arsenal will lose their top four place, they put up the Spurs as likely replacements. This year instead we're getting what some are calling the LolSpurz. I'm not sure what's going on at White Hart Lane: top manager, top players, and they just can't find top performances. But 'nuff sidebar. It's all about the Arsenal. As for true rivals, it's nice to see Man U so far down, but no one is getting ahead of the September date--the table looked eerily similar last year. Still, a good week is a good week. And what's better than a good run for the youngest Gunners? Vela showing the most outrageous, effortless class in our 6-0 trouncing of Sheffield. Bendtner getting his cool share, and Wilshere looking quite the precocious midfield boss. And of course, I can't say enough about Theo. To top it all off, our club is in great financial health, even if the managers are being circumspect about it. Yeah, we got some debt, but psssst! we're hardly staggering under the same level of debt as many of our rivals, and we have some assets to back that debt, and a very sane interest rate. We'll be just fine. BTW, Man U may not need to panic over the gigantic problems of their sponsor, AIG, but it sure is amusing that they should rightfully be doing a fashion review of their strip. Remember those hilarious cut-out numbers on the West Ham tops last week? How about the "United States Federal Reserve System" seal for the Red Devils? Oh, and since, as a US taxpayer I now own a piece of Manc scum, I hereby order Cristiano Ronaldo to sit in the corner with a rubber chicken in his mouth and a dunce cap on his head every time he makes one of his silly faces. And he'd better not pretend he didn't get the memo. So who's up next? Hull City? They've proved themselves no joke so far, but I can't see it any other than 3-0. Hey, in a week like this, you can't blame a Gunner. Future's so effin bright, I gotta wear Locs!
I've always been a firm independent, and probably right of center for the typical Obama constituency, but Obama himself has made me a lot more of a big-D Democrat than I ever thought I'd be. I find the transformation well worthy of some reflection.
First of all, a bit about how I see myself politically. I'm a classic liberal, which in the US means a hybrid of "liberal" and "conservative". The misuse of the word "liberal" in US politics is absolutely infuriating. If Republicans in the 90s needed a bogey word for Democrats, why pick a perfectly clear political designation in common use, and completely mix up its meaning? I'm a liberal in the sense that I cherish individual rights, and tend towards suspicion of the meddling of governments. This doesn't mean I have no suspicion of markets, but I think it's important to balance the role of governments and the role of markets. The biggest event relevant to that attitude in the US was Roosevelt's New Deal. Roosevelt was the greatest president of the 20th century. Period. I think Lincoln just pips him as the greatest president in US history. But even the work of great presidents can go stale. The New Deal was supposed to be a temporary measure, an extreme response to extreme national distress. It introduced ideas that labor had long fought for—massive regulation of agriculture, industry and banking, and most infamously a huge social welfare regime. All of these are reasonable in small doses to my center-right sensibility, but the New Deal was anything but a small dose. Still, it was desperate measures for desperate times. The only problem was that Labor, having finally gotten what they'd been pining for, engaged in extremely heavyweight political manipulation, and so the program lived on well past it's best-before date. The over-extension of the New Deal had several ill effects. We're still waiting on the ticking time-bomb of Social Security, and many of the welfare programs have put huge brakes on US economic productivity, even after reform, but the biggest effect was in radicalizing entire generations of fiscal liberals, and wedding these to the conservative movement, so that when these finally came to power, notably under Reagan, they pushed for the equally disastrous opposite of the New Deal—almost complete dominance of unregulated private interest. That's the sort of counter-over-reach that's brought us to today's meltdown of financial markets. On fiscal and government policy matters, I tend towards moderate Republicans (such as Christine Todd Whitman to throw out a random name) rather than Democrats. On social issues I think that law should generally balance local prerogatives with evolution of a universal sense of fundamental rights. I tend to recoil from groups looking to translate local moral prerogatives into broad law, and it so happens that at least in the US the groups I see as doing so are social conservatives. That has the effect of making me a Democrat on social matters, and not really a moderate, either. As a random example my healthy respect for Gavin Newsome probably puts me beyond the pale of moderation in such matters. So I figure I'm light red on fiscal issues (F) and deep blue on social issues (S). Interestingly enough, that tends to align me more with people at the top of the Democratic party than at the top of the Republican party. The Democrats' recent leading lights are Clinton (F=light red/S=deep blue) and now Obama (F=light red/S=deep blue). Contrast G.W. Bush (F=deep red/S=deep red) and McCain (F=deep red/S=light red). I think it's clear there has been more moderation at the top of the Democratic ticket. This keeps me independent, with a Democratic lean. I will say that both Dems and Repubs seem to have a penchant for extreme kooks in the legislative branch, which is why I share the public's general contempt for recent congresses. But I have a trump issue. I've spent 18 years of my life outside the US, having been born in Nigerian, and having lived in Nigeria, Europe, and the US. I'm incapable of seeing anything from a purely US point of view. International savvy is my trump issue, and immigrants are my dear constituency. My solidarity with fellow immigrants is very visceral, and very powerful. I identify as an immigrant (well before I would identify as black, for example). Incidentally, my other strong points of self-identification are as Nigerian (before my Igbo ethnicity) and Coloradan (before my American citizenship). I've found how powerful this impulse is: it's more powerful than almost any other political impulse of mine. I admired George H.W. Bush a great deal because of his foresight on China, and his role in détente between the US and China, taken at first at great risk to his career. I was not a US citizen, and thus not eligible to vote in 1992, but that respect for Bush Sr. just about balanced out my strong instinctive liking for Clinton. Of course Clinton quickly and emphatically proved himself on the international stage, in my eyes. Bush Jr.'s global uncouthness and buffoonery is as poisonous to me as his abysmal stewardship of his own country. I could watch every Ali G, Jackass and gross-out comedy and never see a scene as cringeworthy as Bush's attempted back rub of Angela Merkel. And the global picture is what really puts stars in my eyes for Obama. First of all, despite his youth and admitted sketchy experience, he has the bearing and presence of a diplomat with 30 years under his or her belt. He is as close to an immigrant as our constitution will allow in an presidential contender. He might even be able to speak some Indonesian (of course he would never admit that until he was safely elected—too many Americans are inexplicably suspicious of people who can speak a foreign language). So he has strong family connections to Indonesia and Kenya. He has a sister named Maya Soetoro-Ng. And for that reason we had some one with a surname of Soetoro-Ng addressing a major US political convention! Ooh. Checkmate. I'm smitten. Thanks to my global fetish, I'm completely head over heels.
Race has little to do with it. If Obama were Kjell Håkon Knutsen with similar strong ties to Norge, I'd probably be just as moonstruck. Just the fact that he could get people over the fatuous coincidence of the "Osama" rhyme, or soar above the "what kinda fool name is Barack, anyway" factor is worth fighting for. Obama is actually the candidate who for perhaps the first time underscores the fact that Americans don't live on their own, oblivious planet. And I love the fact that he's the sort of guy who can go to Britain, France and Germany and get tens of thousands Europeans to wave American flags. Even Franklin and Jefferson in Paris weren't quite able accomplish that. I'm always having to defend Americans to non-Americans—to explain that most Americans are not as stupid as you'd think from watching our leaders. I believe Obama would help rehabilitate our image abroad on a gigantic scale, and that means a lot to me. A lot. It's not that I think McCain is any worse than the typical US president in the global picture frame. You could put a monkey in the White House and find improvement over G.W. Bush, but McCain actually has a respectable international background of his own. But it's really on the typical order of magnitude, whereas for me Obama completely re-calibrates the scales. There is also the footnote that I'm having a tough time forgetting that McCain in a sillier moment actually sang "bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran" in public. Ugh. When I went to our local Democratic caucus to vote for Obama in my primaries, I mentioned the above reasons for my support of Obama, and I guess those in attendance appreciated the perspective (we had almost 100 people total for our precinct, compared to fewer than ten in 2004, as I was told).
They voted me an Obama delegate for Boulder, and the Boulder delegation voted me for state. I half considered running for the national delegation, until I saw how heavy the campaigning was for that (you'd almost think the prize was 6 years in Senate, the way folks were pitching themselves). Combine that with my (and Lori's) having volunteered a bit for the campaign, and I've gone so much further for Obama than I thought I could ever bring myself to do for a political candidate. I guess that's the way it goes. You never really know what will light your bulb for a leader.
So am I a Democrat now? Hmmmmm. Obama as president would still have a lot of work to do, for me. Most importantly, he has to not just navigate the current financial crises, but he also has to follow through and lead his party towards a rationalization of the remains of the New Deal. He has to do so sensibly and equitably. If he accomplishes that, he will have led his party to accomplish a great deal more than their supposedly fiscally conservative rivals ever managed in all their years of power. I could possibly settle for less than that, but that would certainly be the sort of accomplishment that could truly wed me to a party, and not just to its most extraordinary leader.
Une de mes amies a utilisé l'expression "faire folie de ton corps", le première fois que j'ai l'endentu. J'ai le cherché sur le web et trouvé crieur.com, "Le dictionnaire subjectif (Reloaded)".
crieur.com c'est un dictionnaire subjectif, qui permet au travers de définitions de mots d'exprimer une idée personnelle. Il est ouvert à tous et espère vous faire passer un bon moment à la lecture ou à l'écriture de ces définitions !
Phénoménal! Voila son définition de "faire des folies de son corps":
Sortir, danser, déconner, boire, fumer, baiser, faire tout ce que son jeune âge peut permettre, et ce tout au long de la nuit, pour se retrouver amorphe le lendemain au bureau.
Ce n'est pas L'Academie Française, mais ca rend l'image exacte, eh, vieux?
As an enterprise data architect consulting at Sun Microsystems, I've had a brilliant succession of managers. First there was Kathy MacDougall, who is now my colleague at Zepheira. I worked with her to create SwoRDFish, a semantic metadata toolkit for Sun product information, and in doing so I met Kristen Harris, who turned out to be a rising star at Sun, and with whom I worked closely to improve data architecture for global sun.com Web sites. We were both at a recent Semantic Technology Conference giving a joint presentation on our work, and while there Kristen was interviewed by Scott Koegler of Semantic Report.
If you're familiar with the trade and interested in learning more, Kristen has discussed some of the stuff from the interview in more detail, starting with Captain Data Modeler Chronicles: Prologue.
The main open source project I've been involved in is 4Suite, which provides Python facilities for XML processing. It's a venerable project that's been useful to many, but it's also showing it's age. Time for a reboot. In a joint project of my own company Zepheira and Cleveland Clinic where 4Suite is used in a patient database program. The result of this joint effort is called Akara. Part of Akara is Amara, the low-level XML interface. Progress on Amara has been pleasing of late, and I've started to arm folks up to the opportunities it presents with an e-mail article series called "Seven days of Amara". So far there are two installments out:
And while I'm at it I cooked up a little toy for Posterous combining techniques from the above. The following Python code generated a super-simple summary of my posts to date on Posterous:
-- %< -- from amara import bindery from amara.writers.struct import *
PFEED = "http://uche.posterous.com/rss.xml" feed = bindery.parse(PFEED) w = structwriter(indent=u"yes") w.feed( ROOT( E(u'div', ( E(u'a', {u'href': unicode(it.link)}, unicode(it.title)) for it in feed.rss.channel.item ), ))) -- %< -- In use:
This isn't really Posterous-specific at all. It's works on any RSS 2.0. I do wish posterous would support Atom instead of (or at least in addition to) RSS 2.0, but that's topic for another day.
I hope this gets the developers among you interested in my latest work. Get it hot off the plate, and free/libre! (Apache-style license).
This is a dual-language blog entry. Nigerian Pidgin first, then the translation to en-US.
Dem get dis show for radio "This American Life". I been hear small small part of de show wey dem gist about 419-eaters. Some oyinbo dey make wuru-wuru for de yeye people wey dey send that e-mail. When the show finish dem play Osuofia "I go chop ya dollar", but dem say na de song wey popular among all de 419 people. I think say them go make people confuse. That song popular throughout Africa, and no be guy say we dey make cunning for Oyinbo. Make I tell you truth, O! OK, I lied. I'm switching to en-US all the rest of the way. First I'll translate the above, and then I'll continue... cue sound of ghetto blaster tape rewinding There's this radio show "This American Life". I caught a bit of a recent episode which included a tale of 419 baiters, basically westerners who look to tun the tables on the e-mail scammers. At the end of the show they played Osuofia's "I go chop ya dollar", saying it's a song popular among 419 scam artists. This might be true, but it's misleading. The song is popular throughout Africa and the diaspora, and not because people are celebrating e-mail scams. I think it's worth clearing up the record a bit, but first of all, here's Osuofia. Poverty no good at all, oh Na him make I join this business 419 no be thief, its just a game Everybody dey play am If anybody fall mugu, Ha! my brother, I go chop am
Translation: Poverty sucks, so I joined this business. 419 isn't stealing--it's just a game. Everybody does it. If anyone is stupid enough to fall for it, I'll get away with what I can. National Airport na me get am National Stadium na me build am President na my sister brother You be the mugu, I be the master Oyinbo I go chop your dollar, I go take your money disappear you are the loser I am the winner
Probably no translation needed except to mention that Oyinbo means white man. Osuofia is a character from a few popular Nollywood comedy films, and really what this song is doing is two-fold. It's providing some fictional escape from the too real problem of poverty in Nigeria, among honest people and dishonest alike. It's also skewering the outrageous claims of 419 scam artists, along with the outrageous gullibility of those who fall for such claims. Think of it: you walk up to a man on a small town Nigerian street (say Okigwe, where I went to secondary school). You tell him "hey, if you were to send Americans an e-mail telling them you're the widow of the President, and that if they can get you $10,000 you'll get them $1,000,000 the president stole from his people." You might expect his reaction to be: "I can't imagine who would fall for such a silly story, but if they did, I don't feel sorry for them, because why should they want to help in theft from people who can so ill afford to lose anything?" You could also imagine this man wandering back to work with no lunch (he has to skip that meal to save money) dreaming of what he could do with $10,000 from a greedy, gullible hand overseas. Then a year later you go back to that same man and you tell him "Remember that scam I told you about? Well it's been going gangbusters, and there have been a lot of victims, and now people look at all Nigerians as just a bunch of spammer/scammers." Imagine his combination of bemusement, bewilderment and contempt for both the scammers and the vics. Most Nigerians handle such nonsense with black irony, and this is precisely the spirit of "I go chop ya dollar". I'd say that's obvious to any Nigerian who hears it, and the festive tone of the song is just the broadest clue. 419ers who enjoy the song probably employ intentional double irony. Which means, of course that the use of the song in the close of "This American Life" represents a triple irony. Which is pretty cool, even if they unwittingly gave the wrong impression about the song's audience.
A colleague of mine today took a break from cleaning Ike debris out of his yard (and he's in Columbus Ohio FFS!) and IMed "Wow did you hear about Lehman?" I reflexively replied "O yeah. He dead. A penny for the Old Guy." It immediately struck me how apt The Hollow Men is for Wall Street today. Never one of my favorite poems (T.S. Eliot played self-righteous prig with so much better effect in The Wasteland) it does sometimes ring truer than true.
We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats’ feet over broken glass In our dry cellar
Or for 'nuff American families, I guess, their neighbor's dry cellar where they crash in foreclosure Hoovervilles. Or I guess that's Bushvilles, this time. Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Throw in "back without bone, scout with glaucoma" and you have our purblind referee crew of financial regulators. [Snippety-snip] This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man’s hand Under the twinkle of a fading star.
In other words the desert realm of a lame duck president, and dare we hope the fading is of the false Bethlehem of trickle-down economics? Is it like this In death’s other kingdom Waking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone.
Actually, I think it's worse in Zimbabwe, mirabile dictu. But we're doing what we can to keep up. The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
Yes, the absence is of stewardship in government. Dare we hope the dying stars are lobbyists? In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of the tumid river Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death’s twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men.
OK, OK, it's really not easy for me to bear up such plaintive nonsense, even to serve goring supply-siders. Cheer up mate, life does go on. Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o’clock in the morning.
And see, there goes that T.S. Eliot again, jumping the shark a century before anyone else knew what that meant. Come on, Old Possum; give me something I can work with. Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow
And there is why you can only roll your eyes at the master for so long. After that little bit of silliness, one of the most cutting passages in the entire piece. Oh this is enough of a draught of bile to warm the resentments back up again.
The object that blocks the light, birthing the shadow of inaction is, of course, venality.
For Thine is the Kingdom Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow
And it is under those who most loudly, most furiously declare their pieties, and who claim to be defenders of creation that this shadow grows. Right to life apparently does not mean right to good life, to just life. Life is very long Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow
Thus the Contract with America. Empty promises are no match for venality. For Thine is the Kingdom For Thine is Life is For Thine is the This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.
LHC is never going to end the world, of course, and neither will LEH. I've spent most of this piece railing against government, but let us not forget the clients of our government. The greedy, orgulous, myopic cohort to whom we entrust our life savings. The ones whose whimpering you now hear from the direction of New York. The Guys who were madly dancing and whooping it up as they left a trail of gunpowder throughout the foundations of our parliaments (of fowls and capons). The ones who are now no more than lifeless effigies for us to burn, if we can afford the fuel to light up. The Old Guys. I haven't even a penny for the Old Guys.
There's more to Wikimedia than just Wikipedia, and I use the entire spectrum a lot. I'm writing an article on that, and I also just created a Google custom search engine for this family of sites, including foreign language versions. It's really neat for those basic "OK what is X again?" queries, without all the full Web search noise.
Ah the international break. Lots of boring, perfunctory, uninspiring games and drama between national teams and clubs ( this time we have the hilarious battle of the clowns). Lots of...YAAAWN! Lots of... say what? Theo Theo One Two Three-oh? . Who said Arsenal never did anything for England? Not that I care one bit what The Three Lions gets from The Gunners (And now that Keane-o is trying so hard to lose England its bid for the World Cup, maybe there can be a new villain for the In-ger-lund). So anyway, the break wasn't a complete loss--the confidence will do Theo a world of good. And the good stuff starts again today. Bring on Incey of Lancaster and the Blackburn Billy Boys. One thing you can certainly hold is all the doom and gloom talk on North London (well, if you're a Spurs fan doom and gloom suits you well anyway--JOKES!) Some of us seem to have lost our feeble little minds just because Wenger didn't turn the transfer window into the prime time edition of Celebrity Auction. He thinks our boys are ready to challenge this year, the man who *made* the Flamini you're crying about; the man who *made* the Theo you're marveling at. So who are you to argue, again? Just shut up, get in formation, and back the club . BTW, I have enormous respect for David Moies, but I really dislike the attitude exhibited in his comments after taking a beating from Pompey: "We're probably not in the position at the moment to win Premiership games...." You've heard the like from Rafa Benitez as well, and this is the sort of scant belief you'll never find with Wenger, and this is what separates the great from the truly exceptional. And as for Arsenal's ownership--exceptional as well. As sensible as it gets in modern football. They know a top manager and have always given Wenger their utmost support. There are plenty examples of the sort of ownership I *don't* want my club to have: just a peep from afar at the state of Liverpool, Man U and Chelsea is more than enough, thanks much. It's Rich Brat's Football Manager: Bonanza Edition. Lots of short-term investment, but I really think one of the big clubs could go down in a Leeds-like tailspin soon. Even football is not bigger than economics. And not that he's in the same league, but when I saw that clip of Mike Astley quaffing a pint without a stop for air while our Gunners were pummeling his boys, I thought "Thank goodness my club is class from top to bottom". And that was even before I heard about the King Kev departure. The way Newcastle has played musical managers in past years is exactly what we don't need at Arsenal. As I see it, Newcastle, once a mighty, mighty club, is, well and truly fooked. But hey, they've got their billionaire owner.
And us? We've got some northern scum to attend to. Come on you Gunners!
Gunners on top. Spurs on bottom. OK, I'm not a traditional Arsenal fan in hating Spurs beyond reason. To be honest, they've never been a threat, so it's hard to find cause to gin up the rivalry. It is a little annoying that every year when the pundits claim Arsenal will lose their top four place, they put up the Spurs as likely replacements. This year instead we're getting what some are calling the LolSpurz. I'm not sure what's going on at White Hart Lane: top manager, top players, and they just can't find top performances. But 'nuff sidebar. It's all about the Arsenal. As for true rivals, it's nice to see Man U so far down, but no one is getting ahead of the September date--the table looked eerily similar last year. Still, a good week is a good week. And what's better than a good run for the youngest Gunners? Vela showing the most outrageous, effortless class in our 6-0 trouncing of Sheffield. Bendtner getting his cool share, and Wilshere looking quite the precocious midfield boss. And of course, I can't say enough about Theo. 
To top it all off, our club is in great financial health, even if the managers are being circumspect about it. Yeah, we got some debt, but psssst! we're hardly staggering under the same level of debt as many of our rivals, and we have some assets to back that debt, and a very sane interest rate. We'll be just fine. BTW, Man U may not need to panic over the gigantic problems of their sponsor, AIG, but it sure is amusing that they should rightfully be doing a fashion review of their strip. Remember those hilarious cut-out numbers on the West Ham tops last week? How about the "United States Federal Reserve System" seal for the Red Devils? 
Oh, and since, as a US taxpayer I now own a piece of Manc scum, I hereby order Cristiano Ronaldo to sit in the corner with a rubber chicken in his mouth and a dunce cap on his head every time he makes one of his silly faces. And he'd better not pretend he didn't get the memo. So who's up next? Hull City? They've proved themselves no joke so far, but I can't see it any other than 3-0. Hey, in a week like this, you can't blame a Gunner. Future's so effin bright, I gotta wear Locs!
