I Suggest You Start Buying Gold and Diamonds...

China Loses Faith in Dollar

DAVOS, Switzerland - China has lost faith in the stability of the U.S. dollar and its first priority is to broaden the exchange rate for its currency from the dollar to a more flexible basket of currencies, a top Chinese economist said Wednesday at the World Economic Forum.

At a standing-room only session focusing on the world's fastest-growing economy, Fan Gang, director of the National Economic Research Institute at the China Reform Foundation, said the issue for China isn't whether to devalue the yuan but "to limit it from the U.S. dollar."
[...]
"The U.S. dollar is no longer - in our opinion is no longer - (seen) as a stable currency, and is devaluating all the time, and that's putting troubles all the time," Fan said, speaking in English.

"So the real issue is how to change the regime from a U.S. dollar pegging ... to a more manageable ... reference ... say Euros, yen, dollars - those kind of more diversified systems," he said.

Now, I have no education in economics, but I'm thinking that this is A Bad Thing. Or at least, the precusor to a bad thing. Before long we're liable to have the "newdollars" that RAH used in "Number of the Beast" to keep us from having to pay $500 for a loaf of bread.

Now I Really Feel Old...

D&D turns 30.

Dungeons & Dragons is 30 years old, and its influence on culture is unmistakable

With D&D having just turned 30, it's clear that all those shy D&D lovers have been getting a lot more than just the last laugh. They rule Silicon Valley. They play bass in big thrash-metal bands. They take serious meetings in Hollywood. In our entertainment-based economy, the act of making stuff up — the heart of D&D — is a well-compensated skill set.

I never played D&D (or it's current version, AD&D) much... I didn't know any gaming geeks when I was in high school when it first came out, and I didn't get out to meet them when I was in college, the prime time for getting heavily into gaming. No, I started after college, and by that time my buddies had moved past AD&D to games like Runequest, GURPS, Hero (later Champions); and as time went by, Shadowrun and Earthdawn. However, as my circumstances changed (i.e., I had a kid and then got a job where I worked odd hours and weekends), I had to give it up. I still miss it, though... It's a nice way to blow off steam, being able to confront concrete problems with simple solutions -- that is to say, being able to go stop the Bad Guy and Be A Hero.

Although I know a few people that fit the stereotypical "gaming geek" mold, with poor social skills and worse hygiene, most of my gaming buddies have ended up 'normal' lives -- spouses, kids, jobs. I certainly don't know any that ended up the way Jack Chick would have you believe we all go -- chanting black masses and believing we can do real magic. I think it's a pretty good way to build imagination -- it certainly beats sitting in front of the TV or a computer screen.

This Must Be That Random Musings Part...

Well, it's the end of another week. George the Lessor's coronation is over, so maybe we can hear about something else on the news for a while. Although apparently the only newsworthy item most of the networks can find is Donald Trump's upcoming wedding. I see from scanning the various blogs that Karl Rove is trying to change the debate about SS privatization by forcing everyone to not call it "privatization". Unfortunately for Bush's Brain, there's too many instances out there where the repugs have been calling it exactly that, because that was the preferred term of the neocons. I don't want to echo too much of Josh Marshall's words, though, so go read him. :)

I should find an RPG group around here somewhere... I need some fantasy to distract me from the mess I feel the neocons are making of the country. Looting some dungeons or saving the world from nameless horrors from beyond space and time would be just the ticket.

I'm Just Sayin'...

I keep wanting to say that I have discovered for myself how seductive it is to find stuff on other people's blogs and repost it here. :) Not that I'm copying other people's commentary or anything like that, just finding links to interesting things on their sites and echoing the links here, instead of going out there and trawling the web to find my own interesting stories.

For example, I kept meaning to stick a post in here a couple of weeks ago on a screwup that occurred here in NC at a hospital in Durham... It seems that a maintenance crew was working on the elevators and drained the hydraulic fluid off into a couple of empty detergent drums. The drums were re-sealed but not re-labeled, and someone came along and hooked them up to the hospital's instrument santiation system -- for three months (I think it was) the hospital's instruments were being "santiatized" in used hydraulic fluid!

But you know, I like to get out there and read all my favorite blogs, and they have so many good stories of national interest that I let doing my own thing get pushed onto the back burner. Oh, well... it's not like anyone but me has been here yet.

The Adventures of Sgt O'Reilly

This is great... James Poling is offering a reward for anyone that can verify Bill O'Reilly's claim to have "seen combat." You can hear it being thoroughly lampooned by Al Franken here.

Hail to the Chimp, er, Chief...

Maybe this is an unconscious admission that Gore really did win the 2000 election....

Bush said it's important to celebrate a "peaceful transfer of power" and that he suspects inauguration guests have been generous in donating to tsunami victims. "You can be equally concerned about our troops in Iraq and those who suffered at the tsunamis with celebrating democracy," he said.

"Transfer of power." What, has his clone been running the country for the last 4 years? Is this going to be the newest excuse for all the screwups we've endured? And what the hell is that last sentence supposed to mean? Do we translate that as meaning "It's okay that the troops are underfunded and we were slow to send money to the tsunami victims because we're spending $40 million to "celebrate democracy"?"

Outrage overload. Or maybe by now, outrage fatigue.

Some in Black Tie, Some in Body Bags

Go read. Moving, and depressingly true.

And Speaking of Security...

Heard this today on the radio and meant to post it, but forgot about it until I was reminded of it a little while ago...

Global poll slams Bush leadership

More than half of people surveyed in a BBC World Service poll say the re-election of US President George W Bush has made the world more dangerous.
Only three countries - India, Poland and the Philippines - out of 21 polled believed the world was now safer.

And yet the right wing still scoffs at Kerry for bringing up the opinions of Europe about Dubya's little adventure. Guess when you're a member of the Fightin' 101st Keyboarders you don't have to care what the rest of the world thinks.

Keeping 'Murika Safe

Saw this on someone's website today (I think maybe This Modern World).

ST. HELENS, Ore. Oct 28, 2004 — So far as she knows, Pufferbelly Toys owner Stephanie Cox hasn't been passing any state secrets to sinister foreign governments, or violating obscure clauses in the Patriot Act.

So she was taken aback by a mysterious phone call from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to her small store in this quiet Columbia River town just north of Portland.

"I was shaking in my shoes," Cox said of the September phone call. "My first thought was the government can shut your business down on a whim, in my opinion. If I'm closed even for a day that would cause undue stress."

When the two agents arrived at the store, the lead agent asked Cox whether she carried a toy called the Magic Cube, which he said was an illegal copy of the Rubik's Cube, one of the most popular toys of all time.

He told her to remove the Magic Cube from her shelves, and he watched to make sure she complied.

Hmmmm.... I wonder if the next set of people to be vanished into the gulags is going to be the ones sharing mp3 files?

Man, I Love Those Chick Tracts!

Psycho Dave gives us his own, um, psycho version of one here. Enjoy.

He's Not Stupid, He's a Sociopath

Or so says this fellow.

If only. Miller's rendering of the president is bleaker than that. In studying Bush's various adventures in oration, he started to see a pattern emerging.

"He has no trouble speaking off the cuff when he's speaking punitively, when he's talking about violence, when he's talking about revenge.

"When he struts and thumps his chest, his syntax and grammar are fine," Miller said.

"It's only when he leaps into the wild blue yonder of compassion, or idealism, or altruism, that he makes these hilarious mistakes."

You know, I dislike the man probably as much as any other liberal does; because he lied us into a war, he likely stole the 2000 election and possibly the 2004 as well, his administration has raised NewSpeak to new levels -- the list goes on and on. But sometimes I think to myself, how does this man function if he has this much bad wiring in his head?

Sometimes Occam's Razor is the best way to go. Maybe he really is just a ex-drunk idiot.

The Madness of George W. Bush

Go read. Really.

(Wow, three posts in one 24-hour period... you can tell the boss ain't around tonight. ;) )

Would a Really Sincere "I'm Sorry" Do?

Chimpy expresses his "regrets" -- sort of.

Speaking from the White House, the president said he had learned that his words sometimes have unintended consequences. " 'Bring 'em on' is a classic example," Bush said. "When I was really trying to rally the troops and make it clear to them that I fully understood what a great job they were doing . . . some interpreted it to be defiance in the face of danger. That certainly wasn't the case."
[...]
Bush said he had learned he must be mindful of the consequence of words. Addressing reporters, he instructed: "And so put that down as a - what would you call that? - a confession or a regret, something."

Gee, I guess that makes up for all those dead people now.

Didn't any of these people go to bible school?

Someone just pointed me to a story (click here) where, in a poll, a third of the respondents couldn't name all four gospels; and 12% identified Noah's wife as (wait for it) Joan of Arc!

Well, I guess when the world is only 6000 years old and you have guys living for over a century, it's understandable that you'd think all this history was just all squashed together. Besides, Terry Pratchett's Discworld series (which I am in the process of re-reading for the umpteenth time) reminds us that "then" and "now" and "later" are all just human concepts anyway, that time is really just all one big "thing".

New Theory on Bush's Bulge

From This Modern World comes news of a new (well, new-ish) theory of what that bulge on Bush's back is. You may remember back during the presidential debates there were a number of explainations flying about, from radio prompters to Chimpy's own "it was a badly-tailored shirt". Now The Huston Independent Media Center weighs in with it's own explaination -- it's a LifeVest portable defibrillator.

Interesting... we might get the real story sometime in 2010, after he's safely out of office. Unless he croaks first, or the damn thing goes off in public, or something.

Update: Tom Tomorrow has an update on his site about this -- an erudite reader pretty much disputes every point made in the above article.

It's happening already...

I warned you that I'd probably end up ignoring this place before long. I see it's been over a week since my last post, even though I've had two four-day weekends at home that I could have at least said hello. Heck, I could have even taken the opportunity to learn some more HTML and added a few links to favorite places like Eschaton or This Modern World , or even pointed you guys to Bob Harris for your pudu fix; or GPF , one of my favorite webcomics.

Man, typing that link code is a pain. Of course, I didn't bother until after typing them all to notice that there's a little weblink icon up in the corner to create that stuff for you.

No, instead I spent my time playing "Morrowind", an computer RPG from about 2 years ago (I think), that I bought last Christmas and never finished. In fact, it crashed on me not long ago and I ended up wiping out all my saves and having to start all over again. Now I'm trying to re-organize myself again to keep track of all the various main quests, faction quests, and miscellaneous quests that the character can get involved with; not to mention trying to manage the character's level increases so that I can maximize the bonuses at level-up time.

Did I mention I'm a geek and a min-max RPG player? I used to play "real" RPGs, like GURPS and Champions and EarthDawn and Shadowrun -- now I don't have a group to play with anymore, although my son is expressing interest in gaming (because of his cousin, I think); so my wife and I are playing a few Shadowrun games with him every now and again. She's worried about him catching the bug and becoming a full-on gaming geek, though -- you know, one of those guys that spends all their time in dark rooms and never bathes? I think maybe we can keep him from that, though, he seems to be fairly level headed.

OK, well, I think that should make up for missing a week. ;)

Welcome to 2005

I'd like to say something optimistic about the upcoming year, but frankly I'm suffering too much from outrage overload. Plus, with disasters both man-made (like, say, Iraq) and natural (Indonesia's recent troubles) all around us, it's hard to have a bright outlook right now. And frankly, the prospect of four more years of BushCo should be enough to make anyone feel the need for a drink or five. I can only hope that the SCLM grows a backbone and starts holding that administration's feet to the fire about the crap they keep trying to push off on the rest of us.

I reckon one of these days I ought to follow along with the rest of the crowd and have my animal pictures on Fridays... I don't have house cats anymore, so no catblogging, and my dogs just aren't photogenic enough -- the weiner dog is pretty odd, but she would really need video to do her justice -- so that kind of limits my options. I guess I could hang around the local aquarium shop and take pictures of reef tank fish...