Who Dun It - part the first

Just a short note. Real short. Since the Max9 door plug blow-out on that Alaska plane (Alaska has had its own case of shoddy maintenance), there've been contradictory reports about whose employees last fiddled with said plug. Early on the finger was pointed at Boeing workers in Renton, then reporting that, yes it happened at Renton, but the workers were from Spirit (no explanation why they were in Renton in the first place, but it sure looks like they were/are there), now reporting just says Boeing in Renton.

One more case of McDonnell-itis?? Enquiring minds need to know.

Boeing Boeing - part the fifteenth

Well, I find more confirmation laying Boeing's screwups at the feet of the "acquired" McDonnell-Douglas. This has been an open secret, among those in touch with airplane manufacture, ever since the buyout/merger/takeover.

What got lost in all this shuffling is a corporate culture that once prized engineering and safety, replaced by one that seemed to be more focused on delivering profits over perfection. The Boeing community in Seattle has been vocal about attributing this slide to the acquisition of McDonnell Douglas, whose leaders took over Boeing's top jobs and reshaped the culture around cost control.

As the old saying goes, "you're not thief until you get caught". May be the 787/737 fiascos will be the slap in the head that fixes things? Nah.

X (not, nee Twitter) Marks the Nightmare

It should not be novel to hear from me that XML is the devil's spawn. It might be novel to read a lengthy (more or less)post mortem of a major IT scandal on-going in the UK. Not much in USofA news, but has been around since I subscribed to "The Guardian". In a nutshell: some years ago, The Royal Mail was partially privatized, and eventually the Post Office system was computerized. In the UK, there are some 14,000 post offices, some large proportion of which are just counters in some small business in some village run by that small business owner. When all this shifting happened, back in the late 1990's, it was decided to computerize said 'offices' with a centralized system. The datastore of record is Oracle.

The origins of what is called Horizon is convoluted, but began with a software contract with a (no longer extant) company called ICL, now part of Fujitsu; the latter very much in the dock, as the Brits say.

Here's where it gets interesting. Almost immediately, Horizon began dunning small business owners of Post Office locations with account shortfalls, i.e. theft from the Post Office. Many were convicted and sent to prison and some committed suicide. Yes, you read that last bit correctly.

The linked paper goes into much detail about the debacle, but the interesting (at a technical, not social, level) bit is that these chuckleheads who coded Horizon built it on Oracle and XML!!! This at the time when using XML was rudimentary; kind of like servlets in raw java before myriad frameworks.

Great idea!! Mix relational with hierarchical!!! What could possibly go wrong?

Basically, everything.

Because Legacy Horizon was developed before the use of XML became widespread, Attribute Grammars fulfilled this function [not yet implementations of XML Schema] in Legacy Horizon.

Yeah, just a bunch of un-verified character strings. What could possibly go wrong?

If you're still interested, much more reporting continues.

Cui Bono - part the first

Well, at long last the Newspaper of Record, aka NYT, has fessed up that macro is tough to do. And twice on the same (dead trees version) day. One says that macroeconomics blew it, while the second says that inflation is down again.

They're both interesting reads, so I commend them to you.

Macro is tough to do for two related reasons: 1) almost no macro data is census, but samples and 2) it's in the interest of Big Players to spin what data is available to suit their agenda. We saw that sort of shit from Gov. DeMented during Covid. If you ever believed that the experience in FL was as asserted by Gov. DeMented and his henchmen, there's a really historic bridge from Brooklyn ripe for sale. And, of course, there's the case of Orange Jesus and his $10 billion net worth.

The first report does, more or less, get to the heart of the matter: economists, as most data wonks, predict from past data and experience, even when the events driving current experience have no precedent in the available historical data. Covid disruption, to put it nicely, is most closely modeled on the Spanish Flu pandemic (and, no, it didn't come from Spain). Any data from more than a century ago, even if the macro folks looked at it, would be structurally irrelevant to today.

So, why did the macro wonks claim that the Sky was sure to Fall any day now? Because they ignored the structural reality staring them in the face. The Fed had plenty of data showing that, coming out of the height of Covid, that two facts were unambiguous: households had hoarded a few trillion Bongo Bucks because so much supply had shrunk. While approaching normalcy post-Covid, it was believed that supply would ramp up. Didn't happen, in large part because so much supply is centered in China, and Xi is a xenophobic imbecile who demanded his Zero Covid, no foreign vaccine nonsense. Cui bono, anyone?

The net result has been it's taken somewhat longer to burn off that hoard of cash. Now that the tank is nearing empty, and supply is returning to pre-Covid levels... well, wattayano, supply and demand are kissing each other on the lips.

Will the Soft Landing stay on course until Election Day? Orange Jesus has said he wants, among other evil events, a great recession for Sleepy Joe at least as bad as the one that got Dubya tossed from the White House. No, he didn't explicitly mention Dubya. Likely his brain no longer remembers back that far. Correct me if I'm wrong, but he's behaving more and more like Alzheimer's Ronnie in his last days as Prez. Saints preserve us.

The Oracle of Atlanta - part the third

Well, CDC has moved JN.1 into the current-week column (full data, not estimate) of the data set, and it's now shown as 42.1% and a bit lower than the first published (estimated) value of 44.2%. Aren't stats wonderful?

By The Nmbers - part the forty second

Oh my! The Orange Jesus has run up a new bill for shooting off his mouth - $83,000,000.

Way back when he lost the first Carroll case to the tune of $5,000,000. In that case, he set to appeal and had to post a 110% bond, or $5,500,000.

If past is precedent, then 110% of $83,000,000 is a whopping $91,300,000!!! That takes a hurtful chunk out of his asserted $400,000,000 in pocket cash. I guess we'll find out if he really does have that much folding green. Or, may be, he'll go begging to this sub-GED knuckledraggers to pay his bill. As he always has.

By The Numbers - part the forty first

Now that Gov. DeMented has slunk off stage extreme-right, he can go back to book burning in sub-GED Florida. His own peaceable Kingdom. He, and his sub-GED acolytes, know that ya don't need no book larnin to walk behind a plow and make babies! We'll still party like it's 1829! So far, I think, he's only able to degrade public schools; the private ones can do so at their leisure. But what's the scope of private 'schools' in FLA?

Some data from the State, which is aggregated

Total enrollment in private schools - 445,067
Private schools - 2,556
Christian - 515 (80,291)
Jewish - 55 (12,231)
Non-sectarian - 968 (they don't tell us)
Montessori - 166 (15,869)

And, oh yeah, the knuckledraggers of PragerU have full reign in Gov. DeMented's state. Party like it's 1829!!

What? Me worry? I forget

There's been years, if not decades, of conflict between PhARMA and the Rest of Us over the contribution to new drugs by the Damn Gummint and academia and other NGOs. One study found 100% of new drugs over a decade or so were based on foundational findings from that group. In other words, drug companies steal from the commons. Of course they do.

Overall, NIH funding contributed to research associated with every new drug approved from 2010-2019, totaling $187 billion.

So, as you might expect here, comes yet another research finding from academia that drug companies will attempt to leverage without sharing the fruits. We'll see. May be drug companies will hope we forget?

The study from Dr Nicholas Ashton, of the University of Gothenburg, and colleagues is published in the Jama Neurology journal.

America The Bountiful

Only in America. Well, one would hope. Rednecks unite!

A Kentucky state lawmaker and 2018 winner of the television competition Survivor had to hastily scrap a proposed measure that — if approved — would have unintentionally legalized sex between first cousins.

And, if you believe it was "unintentional", then there's a bridge in Brooklyn you'll just love to buy.

Music Lesson

If you're into CD music, from way back, and eschew things like streaming and such, you're in for a surprise. I sure as shit have been. New Beethoven symphonies are generally dismissed as a waste of time. But, then, I read this piece which mentions the set from Osmo Vanska and the Minnesota Orchestra. He/it sounded familiar, so off I went to let my fingers do the walking through the Yellow Googles.

Much praise from most everywhere. The 4/5 and 2/7 discs arrived today, and they're mind blowing. Not that they are Beethoven as has never been heard before; I'm not giving away my Kleiber 5/7 any time soon.

But these discs do represent something that has been possible since the dawn of the CD: dynamic range as would be heard in a concert hall. The Red Book dynamic range is in the realm of 100db, but most CDs are compressed to all get out. These, the ones I have in hand but it's safe to say the entire set, are anything but. If you normally set your volume control to, say 10 o'clock, expect to set to midnight. If you don't the piano moments will be nearly inaudible. OTOH, be prepared to hold on to your hat during the crescendos. You will test not only your ears, but the quality of your phones and/or speakers.

Vanska also follows the recent Del Mar edition, so you will hear a slightly different symphony.

By The Numbers - part the fortieth

As I type this, the future whereabouts of Bill Belichick aren't public. I am among, what I suppose is, a minority here in snowed-in New England in that I've little use for the man. The sports pundits have been cumming all over themselves for years proclaiming him the GOAT of not just foobaahh coaches, but all head honchos in all sports. Horse shit.

Here's the number:
without Brady - 84 and 103

Yeah, that's genius. Some claim that, at least, he's the guy who got Brady. Well, not so much. He wasn't actually the GM, after all.

Brady - 199th pick in sixth round
Belichick is widely regarded as a genius for turning lead into gold, but few ever ask the obvious question: why was it that Bill ignored Brady for 5 rounds, too? Could it be that 199 was a 'what have we got to lose' toss away pick? Or did he believe the meh Combine numbers same as everybody else? Enquiring minds need to know.

A GOAT foobaahh coach gets more wins out of a roster than their revealed talent warrants. Bill ain't ever come close to that. If he were such a coaching guru, he'd have turned Bledsoe into Brady. He wouldn't have stunk out the joint after Tom Terrific went South.

The Oracle of Atlanta - part the second

Well, CDC has moved JN.1 into the near-week column of the data set, and it's now shown as 38.8% and the upper PI limit just a tick higher than the first published value of 44.2%. Aren't stats wonderful?

RIP TGIF

One of life's guilty pleasures was watching Anthony Bourdain traipse around the world, reveling in local food, quite often street offerings. At various times, he drew not laudatory comparisons with what he ate there to American equivalents; the American versions he lumped into the category "TGI McFunster's". I admit that in times past I and the little woman spent time at one of those establishments, but not for the food and/or drink, but the satellite video trivia. Don't recall the name of it, alas.

But now we find the list of locations being axed, some here in The Land of Steady Habits. What's surprising is that the one in this shithole town is spared, but the one in the tonier town of Newington is not; off with its head. A puzzlement. The same seems true of the dead ones in Taxachusetts; they're among the nicer suburbs of Boston. One/only in Columbia, MD is also listed. For those not in the know, Columbia was/is a semi-ritzy 'planned community' attached to Washington. When I was a Fed, Columbia was a town for the upper-crust bureaucrat. Hard times have fallen?

It's Gander Time

Sleepy Joe is scheduled to give a speech later today and according to reports it's to tell the USofA that Orange Jesus and his cabal are a threat to democracy and so forth. Pussy Prose. May haps there is an alternative?

Perhaps the better approach is to tell us that if Orange Jesus gets his way with SCOTUS, whatever they say about Orange Jesus applies to Sleepy Joe, too.

Orange Jesus asserts:
1 - there was no insurrection
2 - but even if there were, POTUS is immune from prosecution
3 - what he said early on, "I have to the right to do whatever I want as president" really is true and for all POTUS

If SCOTUS rules that such is the case, then Sleepy Joe does have the authority, through Executive Order, to find Orange Jesus unfit to be on any ballot. Orange Jesus is toast, and there's not a thing he can do about it.

What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Retribution's a bitch.

May haps Sleepy Joe will reveal a set of truck nuts banging against his thighs, not the pair of wrinkled raisins he's demonstrated to date.

By The Numbers - part the thirty ninth

Well, Happy New Year. And, since this is likely the most important year in the history of the USofA since 1861, let's look at some of the numbers which will affect the outcome.

Crooked Hilary vote total:  65,853,514 
Orange Jesus vote total:    62,984,828

Sleepy Joe vote total:   81,283,501 
Orange Jesus vote total: 74,223,975 

~7,000,000 more for Sleepy Joe, but ~5,000,000 came in CA. Electoral College - Boo!!

%-age of GDP from Sleepy Joe counties:    71%
%-age of GDP from Orange Jesus counties:  29% 

Sleepy Joe support from the sub-GED crowd:    28%
Orange Jesus support from the sub-GED crowd:  35%

Blue state Federal dependency:  12.4% 
Red state Federal dependency:   22.6% 

[remember those Congresscritters from Red states crowing about Damn Gummint aid to them, which they voted against?] Education: Red states are dumb as a sack of hair. (Select BA or higher.) jobs - Covid-19 skews both numbers

Sleepy Joe new jobs:   13.2 million 
Orange Jesus new jobs:  5.2 million  

Sleepy Joe baksheesh:           $0 
Orange Jesus baksheesh: $7,800,000 (at least)

Sleepy Joe's favorite teeVee show:    "How The Universe Works"
Orange Jesus's favorite teeVee show:  "Swamp People"