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Y'know, you could really spend a lot of time sifting through all the Coingate coverage from ONN and Toledo Blade.
The really amazing thing is that each new development brings with it a
twist or turn that you might not have seen coming. Take, for
example, the case of Ohio's Attorney General Jim Petro, who is now
facing the possibility of a contempt hearing before the Ohio Supreme
Court...
Attorney
General Jim Petro has been given until Monday to explain to the Ohio
Supreme Court why he should not be held in contempt for not complying
with its order to release coin investment records requested by a Toledo
newspaper.
The
newspaper had asked the court to enforce its July 13 order that the
state release transaction and business records from Tom Noe's
now-closed coin funds.
Petro
has about 120 boxes of records seized from Noe, whose handling of a $50
million state investment in rare coins sparked the investment scandal. (full story)
Just for the record, Petro will be appearing before the same justices who have declined to recuse themselves
despite alleged conflicts of interest regarding campaign contributions
which they received from Governor Taft. The ONN article
goes on to note that Petro has already released 3 boxes of records, but
that the AG's office is "reviewing" further documents before they are
released, because Petro is "shielding documents necessary for the
criminal investigation." Like Mr. Taft, Jim Petro is a Republican. He plans to run for governor in 2006, as Taft has now met his two-term limit.
Governor Taft is doing some "shielding" of his own
these days as well. He has released a handful of internal reports
related to BWC (portions of some documents have been blacked out),
although a substantial amount remain under wraps. According to
Governor Taft, he claims he "needs to shield the records to
govern effectively." Govern effectively? There's a joke in there
somewhere, but it's just too easy, folks.
The
Franklin County prosecutor says ethics charges have been filed against
Governor Taft's former top aide and an assistant to the aide.
Prosecutor
Ron O'Brien says he and Columbus city prosecutors jointly filed one
misdemeanor charge each against Brian Hicks and Cherie Carroll.
The
charges accuse them of accepting a condo stay and dinners from a
Republican Party donor who also won a state investment contract. (full story)
And just who was
that "Republican Party donor who also won a state investment contract,"
you ask? Why it was none other than Tom Noe, of course! But maybe you saw that one coming after all.
(Believe it or not folks, this is the short version.)
Tuesday night seemed to be as good a night as any to upgrade my Mac OS to Tiger.
I have upgraded Mac operating systems before and occasionally I have
experienced a bug here and there, but nothing truly horrifying or
catastrophic. I had other things to do that evening, including
helping out with the kids and getting some more work done on our
three-months-and-running bathroom refurbishment project. As I inserted
the first disc into my computer, the last thing I recall thinking was,
"Ah...How long can this take?" So, I started the Installer and
sat down to eat dinner with Thomai and the girls.
About 20
minutes into it, I went over and checked the computer. Now even
with the benefit of hindsight, I can't honestly say what
worried me at this point, but hopefully it will be sufficient to
just say, "Something didn't look right." Soooo...I decided to
abort the Installer. I am pretty sure this was my first
mistake. I prompted the Installer to quit and I was asked how I
wanted to restart the computer...My options were basically to restart
from the CD or the HD. I was really reconsidering my decision to
upgrade at this point, so I thought, "Better restart from HD and make
sure everything still works." The HD icon didn't look right — It
said something like "Macintosh HD: OS 10.4" and I briefly thought
"That's weird; I don't have 10.4 yet. That's what I am upgrading
to. I wonder how this will work." Yep, that's what I
thought. Then I hit "Restart."
Time to reconsider an old cliché or two:
Murphy's Law: If anything can go wrong, it will.
Corollary 1: Nothing is as easy as it looks. Corollary 2: Everything takes longer than you think
When
I restarted, I got a gray screen with the power icon in the background
and a message stating "You need to restart your computer" in about 8
different languages. Over top of all this was computer code that
was mostly gibberish to me, although I did note the word "panic" and
"We are hanging here..." among the code. I have seen Macs do
stranger things, so I manually restarted again and hoped for the
best. The same thing happened. It was time for my first
meltdown of the evening.
Our eMac is full of materials
that we have created and amassed for years and years. Journals,
stories, photos, songs, web-based projects...And I don't really have a
good way to back it all up. I have never really gotten around to
buying a huge external storage system for backup (although we have a 10
GB external HD that we have used for selected projects) and I can't
bring myself to back up on scores of CD-Roms that become useless once I
update the original versions on the HD. At this point in the
evening, I am thinking all of that is gone. It's about 6:30 PM.
I
tried restarting a total of about 5 times with each attempt ending the
same way. It was around about this time that I started cursing
how stupid I am for even attempting any of this to begin with. I
told Thomai what was going on so she could share in the misery.
I
decided to restart from the CD and I restarted the Installer.
Installation (when uninterrupted) takes around 2 hours. So I set
it to work and sat down and stewed, obsessing about how expensive it
would feel to take the computer in for service and how nerve-wracking
it would be to know that someone would have all my personal files (if
they hadn't already been deleted by now) at his or her disposal to
peruse for two weeks or longer. We were both on pins and needles
while life went on around us. The television was on and the kids
were running around and playing while we felt the computer grinding
away silently in the corner of the room.
I had a brief moment of
optimism when installation appeared to be successful for disc
one. The computer restarted and basically froze. I
restarted, waited and then it froze again. Not a good
feeling. I have owned at least 5 Mac desktop computers 3 laptops
(of varying quality) and I have only experienced 2 significant system
failures in the past, but I have never had so much to lose. Time
for my second meltdown...
I called David, who is a good friend
and a fellow Mac user. David is out on the West Coast. It
was 5:00 his time and I apologized for calling. His response was
classic...Something like "No problem; I'm at work, so I can talk as
long as I want." We chatted for a minute. He sounded a
little concerned but cautiously optimistic. He suggested I call
our mutual pal Brian, who is on the East Coast. Brian was
great. Very businesslike, but almost therapeutic at the same
time. He would make a good psychologist (Yes, that is a
compliment). He said things like "No worries" and then asked me
if I back up my HD. I had to tell him the truth, to which Brian
responded: "You have learned a valuable lesson tonight." Very
true, very true. Brian walked me through a few things and told me
he was optimistic that I hadn't lost the data on my HD. He ultimately
recommended I attempt installation again. The two-hour process
began anew.
In the meantime, Thomai put Zoya to sleep and Kalli
kept us company for a while. Once Kalli went to sleep, we tried
to watch television while we stewed about the situation. If there
was anything worthwhile on TV, we were too preoccupied to know it.
Around
11:00, the Installer indicated the software on disc one had been
successfully installed. The computer automatically restarted and
then slowly made its way to the Installer, prompting me to insert disc
two. We were almost done, but it was difficult to be
optimistic. I tried to maintain a "reverse karma" attitude,
figuring that if I resigned myself to the fact that all was lost,
somehow things might magically work out (Yes, I know how irrational
this is). At one point, I even grabbed the phone book and started
writing down phone numbers for local Mac repair services.
Initially, disc two wouldn't install. Installer would cycle
through to "keynote" and then stop and restart. This happened
three times or so. I ultimately restarted off the CD and started
installation of disc two again. This time it worked.
At
about 11:35, my desktop finally appeared. We knew everything was
intact when we saw my desktop pattern, which is a vintage picture of
Ozzy and Randy Rhoads. We both yelled out, hugged and collapsed
on the sofa. Let's return to the title of this particular entry:
Wyszkowski's Second Law Anything can be made to work if you fiddle with it long enough.
Indeed.
After
making few phone calls and sending an e-mail or two, the adrenaline
wore off and we got a half-decent night's sleep. All is in order
now...In fact, everything is working better than ever!
Over
the last 30 days or so, I know have already posted 2 other entries
featuring photos of Randy Rhoads. I can't resist posting one more
so everybody can see the image that made us shout out in unrestrained
elation after enduring 5½ hours of pure agony. Two horns up!
Vera
Mukhina's giant statue "The Worker and The Collective Farm Girl" caused
a sensation in 1937 when it topped the Soviet pavilion at the
International Exhibition in Paris; it later became the symbol of the
country's largest movie studio, Mosfilm. In 2003, the corroded statue
was taken down section by section from its pedestal near the
All-Russian Exhibition Center and handed over to restorers. After
restoration, it will stand on top of a shopping mall to be built near
the exhibition center. (full article with picture)
A shopping mall?
If I ever win the lottery, maybe I can have it moved to Ohio.
Then I'll be as cool as the guy in Fremont, Washington that put a statue of Lenin on a local street corner.
COLUMBUS
- Gov. Bob Taft asked the Ohio Supreme Court yesterday for a
"protective order" to prevent a Democratic state senator from
questioning him and Chief of Staff Jon Allison under oath about failed
investments at the Bureau of Workers' Compensation.
Kathleen
Trafford, a Columbus attorney hired by the attorney general's office to
represent Mr. Taft, said the sole issue in the lawsuit filed by state
Sen. Marc Dann, a Youngstown-area Democrat, is whether reports to the
governor from his high-ranking aides are public records under Ohio law.
[...]
Mr.
Taft's chief legal counsel has said the records are exempt from the
public records law because of executive privilege. Mr. Dann has said
executive privilege does not exist in Ohio law. (full article)
I had a quick look through the Ohio Constitution and Mr Dann is right - it's not in there. What is "executive privilege,"
you ask? A fellow named Michael C. Dorf wrote a a bit on the
matter for FindLaw in a piece entitled "A Brief History of Executive
Privilege, from George Washington through Dick Cheney"(full article). Most notably, Dorf explains:
The
(US) Constitution nowhere expressly mentions executive privilege. Presidents
have long claimed, however, that the constitutional principle of
separation of powers implies that the Executive Branch has a privilege
to resist certain encroachments by Congress and the judiciary,
including some requests for information. (full article)
The most notable (or "infamous,"
if you prefer) invocation of executive privelege was by the Nixon
Administration during the Watergate scandal. The decision from
United States v. Nixon includes this nugget which effectively deflates
Taft’s current position:
[N]either
the doctrine of separation of powers, nor the need for confidentiality
of high-level communications, without more, can sustain an absolute,
unqualified Presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process
under all circumstances. The President's need for complete candor and
objectivity from advisers calls for great deference from the courts.
However, when the privilege depends solely on the broad,
undifferentiated claim of public interest in the confidentiality of
such conversations, a confrontation with other values arises. Absent a
claim of need to protect military, diplomatic, or sensitive national
security secrets, we find it difficult to accept the argument that even
the very important interest in confidentiality of Presidential
communications is significantly diminished by production of such
material for in camera inspection with all the protection that a
district court will be obliged to provide.
[…]
To read
the Art. II powers of the President as providing an absolute privilege
as against a subpoena essential to enforcement of criminal statutes on
no more than a generalized claim of the public interest in
confidentiality of nonmilitary and nondiplomatic discussions would
upset the constitutional balance of "a workable government" and gravely
impair the role of the courts under Art. III. (full text of decision)
Add to this the July 13th
decision by the Ohio Supreme Court that the Ohio Bureau of
Workers' Comp must "provide the Toledo Blade newspaper with copies of
transaction records that disclose the sellers, dates and purchase
prices of rare coins purchased on behalf of BWC by Toledo-based Capital
Coin Funds..."(summary of decision)
While executive privilege is not
explicitly provided through the US Constitution, the right against
self-incrimination is covered in theFifth Amendment. Perhaps Governor Taft better have a read of that, because it looks like he may need to invoke it very soon.
The Toledo Blade, which is the
paper that broke the "Coingate" story is archiving their coverage in a
"Special Report" section entitled "Coins, Contributions and BWC."
Is it just me or does anyone else see an eerie resemblance between Karl Rove and Francis Buxton, the evil rich kid who stole Pee Wee Herman's bike in "Pee Wee's Big Adventure"?
Despite
the fact that I recently received some very wise advice to avoid "‘Top X [rock-related]
list’ articles," I could not resist picking up a copy of the September
2005 issue of Metal Edge
magazine, which boasts a spread on the "Best Album Covers." Now,
rather than dwell too much on the negative again, this time I’ll note
what was done well…with the understanding that I reserve the right to
point out just a few problems as I go. Note that I only took
about 10 minutes to look through this article in the store, so I might
have overlooked something here or there. I didn’t want to pay 5
or 6 dollars just so I could take the magazine home, read it once and
then wish that I had my money back.
The best thing about this piece was that "the best" weren’t presented
through an authoritative list or in any kind of "ranked" order. A
handful of editors and staff writers got together and each presented
their short lists. The lists had some old favorites that most might
agree on, but in many cases, there were some relatively obscure picks
peppered in that made things even more interesting.
I was a little surprised that the only Led Zeppelin
cover that I noticed was for the 1990 Box Set. If you’ve ever had
the pleasure of holding an original Zeppelin LP in your hands, you know
that the artwork and production value of their stuff is quite
superior. "Led Zeppelin III" and "Physical Graffiti"
are two of the best examples, but again, you need to look at the LPs,
because some things (like the spinning wheel on "Led Zeppelin III" and
the switchable apartment window images on "Physical Graffiti") just
don’t transfer will to the CD format.
And if Zeppelin makes it on the list, then obviously The Who should be there as well, with one of my all-time favorite album covers, "Who’s Next." I didn't see it on there, but maybe I just missed it.
Kiss received an honorable
mention in one of the introductory paragraphs, but I looked through and
through and I didn’t catch a glimpse of the covers for "Destroyer"
or any of the solo LPs. That sure is a heck of an oversight,
seeing as how Kiss set the standard for rock and roll cover art back in
the 1970’s. And I didn’t spot Iron Maiden’s "Killers" or "The Number of the Beast" anywhere, either. These are some of the quintessential metal album covers.
Ozzy Osbourne’s "Randy Rhoads Tribute"
got a nod as one of the "best," which was a great, great choice in my
opinion. It’s a fantastic cover and an outstanding live album. Our
girls love this album. If you don’t believe me, just take a look
at this: (view QuickTime movie).
Below is a picture of the wasp
nest that I found earlier this evening while I was out mowing the
lawn. Soon afer this picture was taken, I sprayed the area
thoroughly with poison, thereby killing all of these flying, stinging
menaces.
It's not the biggest nest I've ever seen, but it's always a bit
unnerving to come face to face with one of these, particularly when
it's teeming with wasps and it's at eye level.
While
driving home from work this evening, I turned on the car radio in
search of a news update on today's events in London. Instead, I
endured the ranting of a local right-wing radio host who was intent on
making his case as to why the London bombings prove that the U.S. is winning
the "war on terror." I wrote about three-quarters of a page of
notes after I got out of the car, as I intended to blog about the
absolute insanity of the tripe that passes for journalism (or maybe the
right word is "infotainment") in the U.S. today.
But as I
watched tonight's evening news, the scenes of horror drove home the
most important lesson of today: The working people of the world are
those who are suffering and dying in the war between the rich and
powerful of the world and the alliance of fundamentalism and
terrorism. This is as true for the residents of London, Madrid,
and New York as it is for the people of Chechnya, Baghdad, Jakarta and
beyond.
So there's no point in engaging the inflammatory
rhetoric of some jingoistic talking head. Not only would such a
digression serve to trivialize the tragedy of today, but it would
distract us from the real problems and challenges that lie ahead.
Recommended Reading: The Rise and Fall of Political Islam by Mansoor Hekmat Ending Terrorism is Our Task by Mansoor Hekmat
Well,
it's happened again...I visited a thrift store this weekend with the
best of intentions, and I walked out with an item that is utterly
fascinating yet completely useless.
This time around, the item in question is a copy of the 1988 book
"Gorbachev: Has the Real Antichrist Come?" I paid a whopping
99¢ for this prize, which is a bit steep compared to the
59¢
that I shelled out for my vintage copy of "Sets In Order" a few weeks
back. After briefly flipping through the pages of this book, I
was undeniably hooked. As if the book's cover wasn't compelling
enough...
Judge ye not a book by its cover, lest ye be judged by its author...
So,
this freakishly bizarre acquisition is now a permanent part of my
library. But why keep it all to myself? Something this
weird must be shared and enjoyed by all! Onward...
The author of this book, Robert W. Faid, bases his thesis on the
premise of something called " The Theomatic Number System"
As mind-numbing as this sounds, it's pretty simple:
Ah, I should have known that there would be something Greek afoot here.
Now, this probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense by itself...Come
to think of it, even with all the other supporting "evidence," it still doesn't make sense! Here are some more sample's of the author's "evidence":
1)
Using the "theomatic number system," Gorbachev's full name, when spelled in Russian, yields 666 x 2.
2) The 7 Warsaw Pact nations represented the "seven heads of the beast," as described in the Book of Revelations.
3)
The Russian word for "peace" also (supposedly) means "world," so when Gorbachev says "I want peace," he is
actually saying "I want the world!"
Ooooh, scary.
Some 198 pages later, with a bit more "theomatic numbers" and a fair
amount of "prophesy," Mr. Faid leads us to this conclusion:
So there you have it: A healthy mix of Biblical "scholarship" and
"prophesy" leads us to the virtually irrefutable probability that
Gorbachev is indeed the Antichrist. I bet Gorby himself had no
idea! Do you think the folks from Pizza Hut knew this back when they signed him as a celebrity spokesman?
PS: What luck! You can still order this book from Amazon.com! Whoo hoo!
Our
good friend Antonis was kind enough to send us some pictures from the
G8 demonstration in Edinburgh on July 2. The initial rally seems to
have been quite productive and relatively peaceful, although recent
press reports suggest that some tension is building in
anticipation of the upcoming G8 summit in Gleneagles. One would tend
to wonder if all those police warnings and threats might beget a little
more tension that what was already present, eh?.
