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Thanks ZapRoot.

The debate will be my 3:00, sorry, won’t make it. But what’s funny that factcheck.org will be posting debunks of false claims by the “contestants” real time. So if you are going to watch, it would be funny to keep wire.factcheck.org open. Yes, you can be sure those will be made on both sides.

Oh and while we’re at it, by these standards, I am a better VP than Palin. A commenter here called this “feeling substituted embarrassment”.

Watch CBS Videos Online

Hidey is doing just fine, too soon to tell if the drugs are working. We will re-evaluate in a week or so, new scans et al.

All I know is it’s just wrecking the humans, making us crazy beyond belief.

We watch every eatage, every poopage, every peeage. If I was a critter in this house, I would be so paranoid.

Well, I guess it’s all part of the dealing with the disease.

Still, Hidey presses on, always light and fire in her eyes. And in spite of all the nasty stuff that she is enduring, she comes to bed, and always puts a paw out to touch.  She always has been connected, and remains so.

Sorry, couldn’t resist

Its Hidey’s birthday! For now, she’s kinda happy prowling the yard. Perhaps a pirate party hat later.

Just got home on a  gorgeous fall afternoon.  Sun was out, leaves falling, so critters got a day out. Well, Hidey and Magoo did, Zoey ran right back inside.

First thing Hidey did was hop up on the rail and give me a stern look.  Yes dear, I will behave.

Then she did some grass eatage, and wandered off to do some raspberries.  Nasty dogs had taken all the low ones, but Hidey still got a few.

Good day for Hidey. I want to give her ten thousand more days like this.

Tomorrow is Chemotherapy day.  If she does like last week, she’ll be out doing grass eatage on Friday.

What a good kitty.

And another bank bites the dust. From this side of the pond we have never understood the shelter of Chapter Eleven. That is something that simply doesn’t exist in Europe. If a company goes broke, it goes broke, what in the US would be called Chapter Seven. This simply ends mismanaged or falling behind companies, weeding out the chaff. In my country there is something called “deferral of payment status”, a sort of micro Ch. 11, protecting you from immediate liquidation by upset creditors, but it’s in no way comparable. The biggest issue, as we see it with Chapter 11 is that the competition NOT needing the shelter is still playing by the normal rules, giving the sheltered company competitive advantage it surely doesn’t deserve. The end result could be the competition failing and ultimately filing for… Chapter 11! Something that has happened with the airline industry (yes, this is a gross simplification, I know).

Having said that, on this side a few nasty bags of tricks are played too, and one could argue that at least Chapter Eleven is played out in the open. Alitalia, the state owned national carrier, is loosing 4.5 mln dollar a DAY for ages now and recently the Italian government pumped 450 mln Italian tax payers dollars into this IC patient. Of course it’s all gone by now and nothing has changed. That “fuel injection”, hehe, is illegal under European law though and we’ll see what comes of it.

Added September 17th: Same goes for Olympic Airlines. The Greek government is facing steep European fines for illegally injecting 130 850 million Euro’s (185 mln 1.2 billion dollars) in it. But then, how much is that, compared to 85 billion dollars for AIG? Well, how about per capita (I took the countries inhabitants. If I had to use the European population as baseline, I would have to dig for say all the illegal airline state support cases.)

Alitalia: $8
Olympic Airlines: $18 $120
AIG: $285

To be fair, the airline state support has been going on for ages, we’re looking at the tip of the iceberg.

Ok, I fully admit, I am an idiot and a lazy bastard, but here we go again, as both are so fueled by corporate stupidity. Here we go.

Yesterday evening, I missed BBC’s “last night of the proms”, which is fully broadcasted here. Actually we do have BBC1 and BBC2 (that is the UK channels, not the world channels) on our cable. So. I wanted to watch it on the BBC website right? Wrong! Only UK IP addresses can watch it. Oh but wait, at least I can listen (which unfortunately is less than half the fun on the last night, but alas). Wrong: needs Real (shrudder) Player nagware, no thanks, or BBC’s Microsoft technology DRM crippled iPlayer (payed for by the British taxpayers), no thanks.

Anyone got a better link?

I am already downloading the 2007 proms through bittorrent to Miro. But wait……

On TED, there was this rather funny video of British scientist Jonathan Drori, asking smart people the following 6 questions, 4 of which were answered and 2 were left as homework. He states that most educated people have them wrong! Actually, he states that most children understand gravity better befor than after school. I pose the questions here to you, just for the fun of it. I will post the answer in the comments, so you have to click to view them.

1. A seed weights almost nothing. A tree weights a lot. Where does the mass come from?
2. Can you light a bulb with a battery, a bulb and a single strand of wire?
3. Why is warm in summer and cold in winter?
4. Can you draw a simple model of a solar system?

And the homework questions are (beware of the tails!):

1. Explain why a plane flies (and take into account why planes can fly upside down).
2. Explain why the sea is blue (even on cloudy days).