Didactylos

Selfish Americans

2005-07-04T18:29:14Z

Why is it that Americans -insist- that the US is the most generous nation on the planet? By any yardstick, they are not. The USA may give the largest dollar amount in aid, but per capita its contribution is pathetic. It is a quarter of what they promised, and if you factor in the quality of the aid (all those conditions) the US gives the LEAST of all developed countries.

Yet the average Joe remains persistent in claiming that America is Number One, in this as in everything else. But they are not, just as they are not first in all the other things.

In my online discussions of aid, Americans have uniformly claimed that a) aid doesn't work, b) they don't see why they should give anything, and c) Africans should fend for themselves like everyone else and stop looking for handouts. All the other developed nations get it. The US does not. Why?

Now, I'm not so simple that I'll claim (a) isn't a valid point. But aid does work - it just needs to work better. And it would work better if the US didn't demand that US aid be spent in the US. All the subsidies don't help either. If Bush doesn't back down at the G8, then clearly he needs -such- a slapping. Selfish, the lot of them. *sigh*

Bank holiday weekend

2005-05-27T17:18:38Z

And my nephew has achieved his first anniversary. I have purchased for him another annoying noisy toy (all toys fit this category now) but at least this one will make him chase after it.

So, I will be taking myself to some kind of family gathering tomorrow. I don't know if any non-family are invited - I failed to check. My family are more than enough to cope with on their own!

Now I just need to catch up on my sleep....

What a waste of a day.

2005-04-22T17:23:50Z

Shortly after starting work this morning, the power died. Without a computer, there was little I could do. However, it wasn't until 15:00 that we were finally allowed home.

On the plus side, I now have a tidy(er) desk, and I folded a beautiful white Kawasaki rose (not an easy task using copier paper). I used to be able to do it from memory, but this time I had to look up some of the more tricky bits. I think it has the longest, most tedious pre-fold of any model I have attempted, except possibly the horse. No, make that including the horse. The horse is a harder model overall though, although I have yet to fold it using a big enough piece of paper to include the hoof details and get the mane and ears right.

Trust

2005-04-05T18:25:53Z

Easy to say "trust me", isn't it? Unfortunately, the words mean little on the Internet. However, there are ways you can ensure a measure of trust.

One of these methods is the Thawte 'Web of Trust'. It is much like the PGP web, except it is really a hierarchy. On the plus side, it has much more practical use than PGP, but on the flip side, Thawte is a Verisign company - and I don't trust them at all. I trust Thawte to quite a large degree though.

Put simply, it is a mechanism to get email signing certificates that guarantee your online identity. It doesn't work for anonymous identities, though - your identity is tied to real world ID.

In conclusion, I am getting a lot of paperwork filled in, so that I can assign 'trust' to others. Maybe I can do a small part to get the thing moving. (It's not new, but so far only security geeks seem to care.)

Stuck on a bus, watching the snow.

2005-03-02T08:44:18Z

I haven't seen snow lay so fast and cause so much disruption in a long while. For some reason, the bus driver decided to take a detour through Tong, with the result that I am stuck in the middle of nowhere and will be late for work. Very late.

This is totally pointless.

What a wet and snowy week.

2005-02-25T18:10:00Z

Too much snow for convenience, too little for any fun. Enough to make me late for work, but not enough to get me any days off.

A little further into the Pennines, and there was snow aplenty. I need to learn to drive so I can live in the middle of nowhere and work from home. Loner? Me?

Coffee...

2005-02-06T13:53:35Z

Last week I was so tired you would not believe. I just wandered around in a daze and waited for the weekend. Yesterday I was mostly sleeping. Hopefully next week I will be a little more human, post a little more and get more done at work.

Some hope...

As I suspected...

2005-01-31T18:06:21Z

I'm an Evil Genius!

Wackiness: 4/100
Rationality: 52/100
Constructiveness: 46/100
Leadership: 20/100

You are a SEDF--Sober Emotional Destructive Follower. This makes you an Evil Genius.

You are extremely focused and difficult to distract from your tasks. With luck, you have learned to channel your energies into improving your intellect, rather than destroying the weak and unsuspecting.

Your friends may find you remote and a hard nut to crack. Few of your peers know you very well--even those you have known a long time--because you have expert control of the face you put forth to the world. You prefer to observe, calculate, discern and decide. Your decisions are final, and your desire to be right is impenetrable.

You are not to be messed with. You may explode.

Of the 85784 people who have taken this quiz since tracking began (8/17/2004), 14.3 % are this type.

Despite this, my score is borderline White House staffer / Fountain of Knowledge / Hippie. Which describes me pretty well, I think. I see myself as an Evil Genius, I love The West Wing, and I'm a liberal know-it-all.

In other news, I don't know what it is with my sleeping patterns, but I'm beginning to suspect I'm making myself tired on purpose, so I don't stress so much at work.

I hope I am wrong.

Yesterday, my shiny got amnesia.

2005-01-27T18:04:56Z

Turned it on, and I got the screen calibration screen. When it started all the rest of its "first boot" shenanigans, I knew I was doomed.

Lucky me, despite not having a complete backup, all my data was safe. It took a while to configure all the many settings and persuade it to sync my files, but I did it in the end. This was why I didn't post much yesterday. Some of the poor design choices drove me insane. And why, why, why, can mobile devices not get the time from the mobile network? It could set the timezone while it's at it, too.

I have a complete backup now.

What to say?

2005-01-25T18:15:15Z

On Monday, when I was buying my morning coffee, a random woman asked me why I was looking pissed off. I told her, "It's Monday".

Today, she was there again. She asked me why I still looked pissed off, despite it no longer being Monday. Well, let me see... you're smoking in the coffee shop, you keep asking stupid questions, and you are clearly a wossname short of a thingummybob.

Of course, I said none of this. *sigh*

Strange day.

2005-01-22T19:55:42Z

I'm not doing anything significant today. 7tree_hugger's parents came over and helped me prune my roses and clear up the remaining fragments of my garage roof. Just don't mention "asbestos". If I can afford to, I'm going to put a capping layer on the back garden. It needs returfing anyway - what with one thing and another, it is a muddy, mossy morrass.

My landlord's agent called again, breaking my balls about my little brother's mini, which is sitting innocently on my drive under a tarpaulin. It will go when it's sold. Anyone want a mini body, circa 1959, badly rusted? Anyway, if he keeps at it I might just call the Environment Agency. Or worse, my landlord ;-)

Quizzish stuff

2005-01-21T17:49:41Z

Swiped from Slamlander. This one has me pinned.

You scored as Visual/Spatial. You probably feel at home with the visual arts, maps, charts, and diagrams. You tend to think in images and pictures. You learn best by looking at pictures and slides, watching videos or movies, and visualizing. People like you include sculptors, painters, surgeons and engineers.

</td>

Visual/Spatial

82%

Logical/Mathematical

75%

Verbal/Linguistic

75%

Intrapersonal

54%

Bodily/Kinesthetic

39%

Musical/Rhythmic

32%

Interpersonal

25%

The Rogers Indicator of Multiple Intelligences
created with QuizFarm.com

The daily commute

2005-01-21T07:54:09Z

Sitting on a bus, watching my life trickle away. I'm going to rant on the subject quite often, but the journey is no worse than usual today - so far.

I should really take more pictures of sunrises. Today's lurid attempt would not look out of place on a scifi cover.

Blogging is.

2005-01-19T21:29:47Z

Where to start? Here, obviously. Hello, world.

Now to go on a friend hunt.