Jimmy Buffett - Mele Kalikimaka

Welcome back to the Christmas music season! [evil laugh]

It's 70° here at Camp Borepatch - so warm that a buddy is riding his Harley over to store it in my garage until he moves next month.  I dare say it will be colder when he picks it up ...

#OCCUPYDOGPARK

I was leaving the dog park when I came up on a minivan mom and her two kids.  The boy was throwing rocks, and I watched him closely as I went to drive past.  Sure enough, he wound back and let fly.

Little 3 year old punk is all ready for Occupy Wall Street, it seems.  His sister broke into tears for some reason, and minivan mom tried to explain that while he had been throwing rocks, he wasn't throwing them at anything.

I'm afraid that I was a little cross with her, explaining how young Junior tracked the car's movements before he threw the damn thing.  I was watching his eyes the whole time.

Fortunately (I guess), Dad showed up to pick up the brood and gave me contact info.  We'll see if it was all made up or not.

Damn kids start early these days ...

Happy birthday, video games!

On this day in 1972, Atari announced the release of Pong.



Now video games make more money than Hollywood.

So 97% of scientists believe in Global Warming?

Sounds pretty settled to me.

(via)

Mmmmm, leftovers!

Nothing quite beats Thanksgiving leftovers for a quick feed when you get back from the dog park.  Of course, your Gormogons have some handy tips for Thanksgiving leftovers.

Most brain-dead PR team ever

That's one top-notch new media team, right there:

MALAYSIA airlines has been slammed for its latest tweet that promotes its end of year specials. The tweet was criticised for its poor choice of words, which read, “Want to go somewhere, but don’t know where?”

Critics say the tweet was insensitive, following a devastating year for the airline that saw them lose two planes resulting in the deaths of hundreds of passengers.

Flight MH370 disappeared between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing on 8 March with 230 passengers on-board including 6 Australians. The plane is still missing.

Flight MH17 was shot down four months later by rebels over the Ukraine killing all 298 of its passengers. It was carrying 36 Australians.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln - how did you like the play.  Sheesh.

You can only rent beer

May as well cut out the middle man ...

Richard Scarry's 21st Century jobs

Heh.  I local the Climate CHange Denier and NSA collection van.  But no community organizer?

(via)

Ghosts of Thanksgivings past

Summoned from the depths of memory.

Me, I remember when I was in High School.  I was on the winter track team, and was thin as a rail despite going back for fourths.

I remember when we lived in England, and took the day off.  Everyone at the office knew what this was about, but only intellectually.  They had never really been to one of these celebrations.  I thought that was quite a loss - it would go quite a long way to counter the myth of the "Ugly American"* if they really thought on how this day is all about gratitude from sea to shining sea.

I remember Thanksgiving dinner with the family of #1 Son's best friend.  They were from China, but lived next door.  The idea of going around the table saying what they were thankful for was new to them, but was a wonderful experience.

Me, I'm grateful that my view today isn't this:

I hope that this day gives you something to be thankful for.  Gratitude is good for the soul after all, and the Feast is not just to nourish the body.

* My experience is that Americans are much nicer tourists than anyone from Europe, and that the "Ugly American" trope hasn't been true for 30 years, if it ever was.

Postscript to reader Renee: Your email made my day, and is something else that I am thankful for.  Thank you for sending it.

How about a "Reset Button" for relations with Australia?

I guess that this is more of that "Smart Diplomacy", or something:

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop criticises US president Barack Obama for a speech in Brisbane last weekend in which he claimed climate change threatened the Great Barrier Reef. It is highly unusual for an Australian foreign minister to openly criticise a US president. Ms Bishop also said Australia currently had no intention of committing extra forces or resources to the mission against Islamic State, even though the White House had discussed it with the Abbott Government. –Radio Australia, 20 November 2014

I can't remember the last time that a US President gave an address in another country that was immediately rebuked by that country's foreign minister.  Man, it sure is a good thing that we don't have a cowboy in the White House making the world hate us ...

A Thanksgiving prayer

May the blessings of this day shine most especially on those who stand a post far from home.  The food is the least of their sacrifice.

Quote of the Day

About those riots:

The unseen winners in the aftermath of the shooting of Michael Brown, and now of the refusal to indict his shooter, are those middle-class and upper-class people who approve of the riots but who of course are not affected adversely by them. It is not their neighborhoods that are being trashed. It is not their neighborhoods that will go into decline as businesses leave. No, but they believe that they are doing the right thing in supporting the rioters. Maybe they even have a nice job in the media or as a professor in which they can propound their views for all the world to hear while calling anyone who disagrees a racist.

But there’s a nasty little joke about stock brokers who lose their client’s money that can be adapted here: the broker made money, and the firm made money, and two out of three ain’t bad. So, how about this? The media representatives didn’t have their neighborhoods trashed, and the ivory-tower theorists didn’t have their neighborhoods trashed, and two out of three ain’t bad.

But remember - those people are smarter and nicer than you or I.  They keep telling us that.

I hadn't realized there was so much money to be made playing games

The computer gaming world is facing a cheating scandal:

Over the weekend, Valve had a little autumnal clearout of their suspected Counter-Strike: Global Offensive cheater list. In among the script kiddies and third accounts being handed Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) bans were some familiar names to those who follow pro CS:GO. None other than Titan’s Hovik “KQLY” Tovmassian and Epsilon’s Gordon “SF” Giry were banned, just hours before their teams were set to fly out to DreamHack Winter in Sweden, forcing both the tournament to drop the teams and the teams to drop the players.

The tournament prize purse is something like $6M, so it's not really a surprise that some people are cheating.  Still, that's a lot of money, and it's only one tournament.  I guess this is where you insert a joke about a parent encouraging his kid to spend more time playing games ...

Remember how Obama was a super smart, super cool technocrat?

You know, one who would set policy based on the smartest analysis, rather than the way it was done by Chimpy McHalliburton?  Yeah, me neither:

President Obama completely fumbles when George Stephanopolous asks him how he’d respond if a future president takes the same action on taxes that Obama has taken on immigration. Incredibly, Obama responds as if he’d never heard or thought of this argument before, stumbling blindly along immigration talking points without answering the actual question.

Stephanopolous asked: “How do you respond to the argument, a future president comes in and wants lower taxes. Doesn’t happen. Congress won’t do it; so he says ‘I’m not going to prosecute those who don’t pay capital gains tax.’”

“The truth of the matter is George,” said the President, haltingly, “The reason that we, have to do.. uhm prosecutorial discretion in immigration, is that we know, that we – are not even close to being able to deal with the folks who have been here a long time…” Obama then pivoted to immigration talking points, without addressing the original question.

Nice crease in the trouser leg, though.

The silence of the antivirus industry

Hmmmm:

A public autopsy of sophisticated intelligence-gathering spyware Regin is causing waves today in the computer security world.

But here's a question no one's answering: given this super-malware first popped up in 2008, why has everyone in the antivirus industry kept quiet about it until now? Has it really taken them years to reverse engineer it?

...

For one thing, it doesn't operate like conventional spyware: Regin doesn't form a remotely controlled botnet – suggesting its masters really didn't want it to be found – nor does it harvest personal financial information.

Instead it collects intelligence useful to state spies. Coupled with the fact that virtually no infections have been reported in the US, UK or other Five Eyes nations, some to suspect it's the work of the NSA, GCHQ or their contractors.

The NSA's fingerprints look to be all over this.  Of course, they've been all about intelligence gathering for, well, forever. 

It is interesting that it's taken 6 years for the antivirus industry to catch this, but it's plausible that the unusual behavior and small number of infected devices explain that.

Whether it's good politics to spy on our allies like this is another discussion.

No, I didn't see that coming

Basil Hayden

My new favorite bourbon.

It's been a long time

... since I've made Mickey Mouse pancakes.



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I got back on a motorcycle today

Cowboy up.



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Breakfast of (Kentucky) Champions

Hot Brown and Ale 8. And a birthday party. Been quite a while since I've been around small kids. It's as fun now as it was then.



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