Events

The Washington Post reports that the Republicans are now proposing restrictions on lobbying. This news comes shortly after Charlie Pace threw his "last" package of horse into the fire. Some lawmakers say GOP leaders are blaming lobbyists rather than examining the legislative processes that have invited corruption, such as the proliferation of home-district pork-barrel projects that have become prime ways to reward campaign supporters. So, let's review: The majority party, that set up a lobbying program...

"There are SBA loans for this. And I understand for some the word SBA means Slow Bureaucratic Paperwork. I hear it loud and clear."—George W. Bush Reported in today's Doonesbury Daily Dose.

Former Vice President Gore's address to the Liberty Coalition yesterday is worth reading. He draws a direct line between the authoritarian mindset and incompetence. This is not a casual relationship; the executive's power grab encourages incompetence and lessens our security. Says Gore: In the words of George Orwell, "We are all capable," he said, "of believing things which we know to be untrue and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right."...

Ah, this is more like it. Chicago in January: Windy, snowy, drizzly, and just above freezing. Yum.

I got all excited that the Roberts Court had upheld Gonzalez v. Oregon, until I realized the Chief Justice was in the minority with Justices Scalia and, you will be surprised to know, Thomas. Rehnquist would have voted with the majority, I think, so this signals Roberts may not be the Warren some of us were naively hoping for. I'll have more salient analysis shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court publishes the opinion online. For now, I'll just have to go on the Associated Press report, which appearsto...

The Inner Drive Extensible Architecture™ contains a very useful namespace called Quantitative that contains classes and interfaces to use in measuring things. Essentially, there is a trio of interfaces, IQuantity, IUnit, and IPhenomenon, that allow you to create and convert any kind of measurements. The principal implementation of IQuantity is the Numeric structure. To convert feet to meters, you do this: IQuantity feet = new Numeric(100, new Foot()); IQuantity meters = quantity.ConvertTo(new Meter())...

Peter Dreier, professor of politics and director of the urban and environmental policy program at Occidental College in Los Angeles, writes in today's L.A. Times that the paper should revive its history of reporting on labor issues: Up until the 1980s, most major newspapers, including The Times, had a regular labor reporter. Today, few papers, The Times among them, have even one reporter exclusively assigned to cover labor. That may be a consequence—even a cause—of declining union membership. But The...

Down the hall from Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters is the office of nutritionist and author Monique Ryan, who, in yesterday's Chicago Tribune, weighs in on the pressing issue of Anne's and my favorite TV show, Lost: Why is Hurley still fat? Says Ryan: You would expect that maybe he would [lose weight], but you'd have to sit down and look at what he's eating the whole day. He might also be an individual with a very slow metabolism. We tend to assume that everybody has complete control over...

A while ago we at Inner Drive attempted to install a new Webcam which, in short order, stopped working. Logitech promptly sent a replacement, which so far works fine. So the Inner Drive Webcam is now much sharper, and less prone to falling, than it used to be: The only disadvantage is that it doesn't work in Terminal Server mode, so if the server kicks over unexpectedly, the Webcam will be static until we can get to a terminal and fix it. (We'll experiment with that later on.) Also: The camera, a...

It seems a train conductor in Chicago had some musings about the new Chicago smoking ban, which he shared with riders on an inbound commuter train yesterday. Seems these musings contained a bad word: Veering from his script notifying riders about the ban, the conductor used a vulgar sexual epithet over the Metra train's public address system to describe the city officials who enacted the ordinance. Seems he's looking for a new job now. For my part, I can't figure out what epithet he used, but I'm...