Does everyone have broadband now?

This morning I got a message from Microsoft that I needed to download a critical update (Windows 2000). This happens every so often and isn't a big deal, but today's download was 31MB. Even with my 1MB broadband connection it took a while to download and install this update. I figure if I was still using my old 56kb/sec modem I'd have started at 6am and finished around midnight.

{And, yes, I do run my updates regularly. It was only last week that I scanned for updates and there were none.}

I can't help thinking that a 31MB download is sheer laziness. Microsoft just couldn't be bothered cutting this monster down to size.

Anyway, downloading and installing this delayed the Newshound this morning. Thanks, MS.

Bush side-step

Gerard Baker has an interview with President Bush in today's (London) Times. Baker ranges over many topics, but the President avoided answering one very important question:

Not content with dispensing the presidential autograph, Mr Bush reaches into a cabinet full of memorabilia and produces lapel pins and, for my colleague, a baseball with the presidential seal.

The shift to sport is an opportunity to ask him the question burning in the minds of many British people — what does he think of the takeover of Manchester United by Malcolm Glazer, the US sports franchise owner? “I read about that on ESPN.com,” he says.

But he is non-committal, so I ask him if, as a former owner of a baseball team, he would have liked a piece of an English cricket club. “I never watched cricket. I did play rugby at Yale, though — at full back,” he volunteers.

So, Bush has nothing to add on Glazer's take-over of Manchester United. You'd imagine that with all the support Blair has afforded to Bush since September '01 that the least he could expect is that Bush would arrest Malcolm Glazer and the rest of his family. I know Blair's not a United fan, but imagine the kudos he'd get in Britain if he 'saved Manchester United'. All those who rioted yesterday would be Blairites for life – the kind who hang posters and prevent trouble whenever he's speaking.

More importantly, I never knew there were baseballs with the Presidential seal. I want one of them.

Also, how about the fact that Bush played Rugby. Is he really American at all?

Growing old

This is how to do it right.

Friedman on Ireland

NY Times columnist Tom Friedman addresses how Ireland came to be "the richest country in the European Union after Luxembourg".

Anyone who's been paying attention will find nothing new here. What's interesting is noting what he includes and doesn't include in his list of policies that fueled Ireland's dramatic economic improvement. For instance, he never mentioned European Union structural funds, which have been substantial.

He also mentioned free education – twice – despite the fact that he undermined his case for free secondary education by illustrating that Ireland's economy was still a basket case nearly twenty years after its introduction. I'm not sure what role free second level education may have played in the boom, but I'm even more doubtful about free college/university level education, which he also cites as a growth factor.

He dropped in a reference to National Health Care, something that many here would say we don't have. I don't think National Health Care, such as it is here, played any role whatsoever in the turnaround.

He says Ireland's advice is "simple".

Make high school and college education free; make your corporate taxes low, simple and transparent; actively seek out global companies; open your economy to competition; speak English; keep your fiscal house in order; and build a consensus around the whole package with labor and management - then hang in there, because there will be bumps in the road - and you, too, can become one of the richest countries in Europe.

I think this list should read:

1. cut taxes – especially corporate taxes
2. be open to trade
3. join the EU, get loads of money from bigger, richer nations who hardly notice how much you've taken them for
4. at the same time compete aggressively against those same EU members for foreign direct investment and (a real plus here) ensure that other EU members adopt anti-competitive tax policies, which help make you even more competitive.

Finally!

The M50 (ring road around Dublin) is finally nearing completion. It looks finished when I drive by it. Of course, it's only two lanes when it should be 3 at a minimum, probably 4, but I'm hoping it'll have a positive effect on traffic in this part of N. Wicklow.

I've been waiting for this road for the past 6 years, but my patience is as nothing when you realize that the road was first proposed 34 years ago!

The new (& last) section of the M50 will be open on Thursday. What's kind of cute is that the signs are already up. That means anyone who doesn't know better (say, a tourist from England coming off the Rosslare ferry) is being directed onto the new road, which of course is not yet open.

No matter how much Ireland changes, these little oddities are what make visiting here special. Being confused by road signs is part of the charm, or so people here would love to imagine. Otherwise, it's just infuriating incompetence.

Humane treatment in Guantanamo Bay

A bi-partisan committee of US Senators has praised the operation of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and recommended that the facility remain open. This is exactly the type of investigation I was hoping to see.

Or course I realize that this report will be dismissed by many people, especially outside the US, but Senator Wyden, in particular, is not in the Bush team's pocket. I also realize that no Senator will say anything without assessing its impact on his potential re-election. It was a casual first step of what I hope will be a more serious attempt at assessing the costs and benefits of 'Gitmo'.

Jury duty

Seems the Irish government is going to address the facts of economic life for self-employed people that I mentioned last September.

One of the issues expected to be examined is the potential remuneration of self-employed people who have to take leave of absence from their own companies to serve as a juror.

Under the current system, self-employed people are excused from jury duty because of the negative impact a leave of absence could have on their business.

Last September I wasn't aware that self-employed people are excused from jury duty under the current system. That wasn't clear from the jury summons I was looking at.

Tennis in Irish

As mentioned at SluggerO'Toole, TG4 (Ireland's Irish language TV station) is showing a lot of Wimbledon. I'm not a huge fan of tennis, but I've watched a bit of the TG4 coverage and I can see why it's doing so well. They're just showing tennis.

Over on the BBC you get loads of chatter whereas the people who are in charge of TG4's broadcast have - correctly - assumed that few people want indepth analysis of tennis in a language they only barely understand. And, because the game is simple so is the language. It's not hard to pick up a few words when you (a) know what word would be used in English and (b) hear the same few words over and over again.

One other good thing they've done is show matches that the BBC has decided not to show. Tonight was a good example. With the third set of the match between Federer and Ferrero winding down, the BBC left to show their scheduled programming. Suddenly I remembered that TG4 might have it on and they did, despite the fact that the schedule said that the tennis would end two and half hours earlier. So, I got to see the end of what was a pretty entertaining, if short, match.

I do watch programs on TG4, but usually only when they're subtitled or in English. Sporting events are different. I don't need subtitles and I can actually get a feel for the language. It's a great idea.

News story of the day

In case you missed it, there have been two games in the Bronx over the past two days. Yesterday's was a rout, 10-3 in favor of the good guys. On Friday night, the Mets won 6-4. Another win tonight will turn the House that Ruth built into a House of Horrors for the forces of darkness.

UPDATE: Last night's game provided further proof that this year's Mets team is not quite ready for prime time. When you lead with 3 outs to go you HAVE TO close out the deal. Oh well. I suppose we'll have to be happy with 2 of 3 in the Bronx.

Live Aid - more harm than good?

David Rieff raises the question as to whether Live Aid did more harm than good in the mid 1980s in an article in today's Guardian. Rieff argues that Live Aid (along with many aid agencies and foreign governments) did help feed people during the Ethiopian famine 20 years ago, but it also helped the Ethiopian government implement a forced resettlement program during which as many as 100,000 people may have died. Rieff argues that the Ethiopian famine was as natural a disaster as the Ukrainian famine under Stalin.

Rieff presents a balanced picture of both the good and bad of aid money's use at the time. Médecins Sans Frontières's Claude Malhuret described the assistance the aid agencies (including Live Aid) provided for the resettlement program as "an exercise in deadly compassion", but MSF decided to pull out of Ethiopia and they may have felt the need to justify that decision.

Hard to know who's right, but I think it's good to question whether aid agencies can be too useful for repressive regimes.

Judge quotes Springsteen

A man who was convicted of manslaughter in Cape May, NJ was sentenced by Judge Raymond Batten, who quoted 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) from memory.

Down in town the circuit's full with switchblade lovers so fast so shiny so sharp, and the wizards play down on Pinball Way on the boardwalk way past dark, and the boys from the casino dance with their shirts open like Latin lovers along the shore chasin' all them silly New York girls.

I bet being a judge can be a real buzz sometimes.

More on flies

Until today I was convinced that it was only in my imagination that there were more flies than usual this year. However, when I saw some of the garbage cans out, filled to overflowing, I started to wonder if the new pay as you use it garbage collection system might have led to an increase in the fly population.

Until this year, we paid an annual fee for 52 collections. Everyone put their garbage can out every week. This year, however, we pay so much for the collection service and then a variable amount depending on how often the can is put out. I know we've cut way back on our garbage to where we're only putting the can out once a month. The incentive to keep to that schedule is that a 13th pick-up this year will result in an additional €31 in costs.

I know a lot of people in this neighborhood have cut way back on their pick-up frequency. I would bet almost nobody is having their garbage collected more than twice a month. That means there's a lot more garbage just hanging around in this neighborhood than would have been the case in times past. And, with the sudden burst of warm weather I suspect flies are having a field day.

I knew it!

There's a very good reason I'm 30lbs over my "playing weight" and finding it more and more difficult to fit into pants that I would have previously considered 'tent-like'. Running is bad for you. At least, running in modern, high tech sneakers.

Of course, now I have no excuse. I just need to get out there barefoot and make sure I run on the front of my feet, not the heels.

But, maybe I'll just wait twenty years to see the results of the studies into this newest fad. Yeah, that's what I'll do.

Flies

Somebody has to develop screens for windows here. I'm so sick of flies and moths, although I've noticed that my backhand (with rolled up newspaper) has greatly improved this past few days. I should probably head to Wimbledon right now.

Will we ever tire of this stuff?

Okay, so some guy has written a book about Hillary Clinton that contains a lot about Mrs. Clinton's sex life. I, for one, have little need of additional information about the former first lady's sex life.

I really, really, really wish this kind of stuff would fade away into the background where it resided for so long. Why does this stuff need to be discussed publicly?

Surely a day will come when we, as a society, will spurn – either out of disgust or boredom – this sort of tripe.

Europe's Jefferson Airplane

Mark Steyn is probably the most loved/hated columnist among bloggers. I usually find him amusing even though he frequently overreaches. Today he's right on the money describing the disdain that some of Europe's leaders have for "the people". Jean-Claude Juncker's 'the people of France and Holland didn't really vote NO to the constitutional treaty' is the low-hanging fruit for Eurosceptic columnists, but I prefer Steyn's description of d'Estaing, who described the work of the convention he led as comparable to the work of the founding fathers of the United states.

"It is not possible for anyone to understand the full text," declared Valery Giscard d'Estaing. "Europe's Jefferson" has apparently become Europe's Jefferson Airplane, boasting about the impenetrability of his hallucinogenic lyrics. The point is the French and Dutch shouldn't have read beyond the opening sentence: "We the people agree to leave it to you the people who know better than the people."

Like watching a car wreck

I don't even like Formula 1 racing. In fact, I don't like car racing at all. Yet, after I heard what a mess the United States Grand Prix was, I watched more than an hour of the rebroadcast of yesterday's race. Just couldn't take my eyes off this thing even though (or because) it was a complete farce.

This was just a complete joke of an event. Six cars, three teams competed. Only one team had cars with any chance of winning, so it was a battle of teammates. More than 100,000 angry fans for a sport that's been trying to crack America. I suspect it'll be a good while before that succeeds.

In case you haven't had enough of U2

For those of you who need more U2, Dave Fanning has a very long interview with Bono and The Edge in yesterday's Sunday Independent. Be warned, however, I couldn't follow chunks of it because the editing is so bad. At the end of the article is note about Fanning's upcoming radio shows with U2 in studio, available at 2fm.ie.

UnAmerica – dead

I really enjoyed Eamonn Fitzgerald's post on the Rise & Fall of UnAmerica. UnAmerica was born on February 15, 2003 in protest at the coming war with Iraq.

Politicians rushed in to declare the birth of a "European nation" based on "soft power", and the philosophers Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida rushed out a proclamation called "Europe's Renaissance", which pamphlets as diverse as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, La Repubblica, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, La Stampa, El País and the Süddeutsche Zeitung hurried into print.

However, after two short years, UnAmerica has been killed off.

"Chickens coming home to roost"

When Fr. Andrew Greeley writes about Church-related matters I feel he writes authoritatively, but when he wanders into matters political his arguments are alternately dated (c. 1950) or wacky. His latest column is more the latter.

He says that the war in Iraq is creating more terrorists, as evidence he cites the 90 suicide bombings in Iraq during May. He then claims that some of these suicide bombers will soon be detonating themselves in the US.

It is not unreasonable to expect that other young men will soon be destroying themselves in this country as they blow up Americans in shopping malls and restaurants and hospitals and churches. The chickens of the criminal war in Iraq will come home to roost. No matter that the majority of Americans disapprove of the war. It is too late for that now.

Maybe he's right and maybe he's not, but I'm 100% certain that it's easier for a potential suicide bomber from Saudi Arabia to enter Iraq via Syria than it is for him to get to the United States.

What's truly wacky, however, is that Fr. Greeley seems to be ignoring the somewhat inconvenient fact that there was a fairly serious terrorist incident in the United States before the war in Iraq. This terrorist attack was carried out during the Bush Administration, but it was planned mostly during the Clinton Administration despite "President Clinton's agonizing reluctance to engage in military action overseas".