Blog Notes: November Contents Now Up!

Click here.

One month left til this blog goes dead!

Blog Notes: Eh.

I have a bunch of Doom dispatches that I should be posting.

Instead, I’m closing the blog early for today.

I shouldn’t eat in the evening while blogging. I lose my motivation.

Up next will be the post linking to November’s Contents.

Tomorrow begins the final month of this blog!

Cagney & Lacey

One of the hottest shows on CBS Monday night at 10PM was Cagney & Lacey.

It turns out it has an official website.

And producer Barney Rosenzweig has written a book.

(I must go off on a tangent here. He originally did it POD with iUniverse and there’s a frank discussion of what that was like. I’m hoping Rosenzweig will investigate the possibly of an eBook edition — for people like me who can’t deal with paper any longer.)

I’m pretty sure I watched the entire Daly/Gless series when it aired — or at least once it was parked in that Monday at 10PM spot. Some TV series become “appointment TV” — and Cagney & Lacey was one of those for me.

And now, the great opening titles:

No Frogs, No Bees … And No Acorns?

Acorn Watchers Wonder What Happened to Crop

The idea seemed too crazy to Rod Simmons, a measured, careful field botanist. Naturalists in Arlington County couldn’t find any acorns. None. No hickory nuts, either. Then he went out to look for himself. He came up with nothing. Nothing crunched underfoot. Nothing hit him on the head.

Then calls started coming in about crazy squirrels. Starving, skinny squirrels eating garbage, inhaling bird feed, greedily demolishing pumpkins. Squirrels boldly scampering into the road. And a lot more calls about squirrel roadkill.

But Simmons really got spooked when he was teaching a class on identifying oak and hickory trees late last month. For 2 1/2 miles, Simmons and other naturalists hiked through Northern Virginia oak and hickory forests. They sifted through leaves on the ground, dug in the dirt and peered into the tree canopies. Nothing.

Too early to tell what this means.

Have the frogs gotten better?

Have the bees returned?

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #444: UnFood

Yuk – the sausage rolls with just 6% pork
Big supermarkets’ budget food is selling well but its quality is poor

SOME of Britain’s biggest supermarket chains are compromising on quality by selling budget items such as sausage rolls with as little as 6% pork.

Sainsbury’s and Tesco are working hard to market their low-cost lines as they compete with discount chains to attract cash-strapped shoppers.

This is often coming at the expense of quality, however. An analysis of low-cost foods at the two chains has found, in addition to the sausage rolls, fisherman’s pies with 9% fish and square cheese slices with 11% cheese. The products have been bulked out with ingredients such as water, animal fat and sugar.

Emphasis added by me.

Ew.

But what this reporter missed is something very important in a Comment:

As a retired Chemist I read the labels with some interest. Lists of ingredients now tend to include margarine. It seems that “hydrogenated vegetable oil” is a no no. However margarine IS by definition hydrogenated vegetable oil.

Cynical manipulation of the public by big business as usual.

Emphasis added by me.

Be careful what you stock up on. With some of these items, it’d be healthier to starve.

Another Excerpt From Writer Tito Perdue

The hallucinogenic and mysterious novel he’s writing, The Node, continues with Excerpt Five.

Previously here:

See Writer Tito Perdue In Person!
Writer Tito Perdue: A Second Novel Excerpt
Writer Tito Perdue: Excerpt Of New Novel
Writer Tito Perdue: New Novel!
Writer Tito Perdue: New Website

Advice That Is Still Good

Delete RedSwoosh.exe

In my continuing battle with this goddammed Microsoft-sabotaged PC, I called up Task Manager at one point early in the day and noticed something very strange.

RedSwoosh.exe was listed. But I’d seen that before.

This time, however, it was — when Task Manager was sorted to CPU usage — irregularly popping to the top at the list and eating 97-98% of CPU!

WTF?!!?

I did some research. Red Swoosh as a sole company no longer exists. It was purchased by Akamai and there is no way to get information about the program from them (at least that I could discover).

I remember a long time ago having Red Swoosh recommended somewhere for some sort of P2P app.

And then today I also discovered that Red Swoosh is used by the FoxTorrent plug-in. I have that plug-in, but never used it, and it’s been turned off.

So, I uninstalled the FoxTorrent plug-in and then I went to Control Panel and uninstalled RedSwoosh.exe.

I haven’t done comprehensive testing, but I can say for today, the PC has seemed peppier.

If any of you have been experiencing intermittent sluggishness on your PC, look for RedSwoosh.exe and uninstall it.

Batman: Murdered By Bankruptcy

As in writing bankruptcy.

Batman killed by his OWN dad

Bruce Wayne – who by night is Batman – gets murdered by a man claiming to be the father he thought was dead.

In a highly controversial new storyline Bruce, who first appeared in 1939, is killed by Simon Hurt – the leader of the shady Black Glove organisation.

Simon claims he is really Dr Thomas Wayne, saying he faked his own passing when Bruce was a child.

That’s about as bankrupt as possible.

Previously here:

Holy Eejitcy, Batman!

Today For Today And Not For Tomorrow

the flimsiness of everyday life

It is clear that nothing new is ever built well. Contemporary architectural design seems to take its cue from a combination of the Big Brother house and the office of a focus group, all lime green and oranges, loud circles and fun fun fun. Sitting in the Building Centre with Owen the other day, we discussed what it meant, or must mean. Nothing must remind anyone of the past, everything must be perky, like toys for grown-ups. Relational aesthetics as anti-modernism. Architects must make their mark all the way down, designing bespoke fixtures that break almost immediately and are too expensive to replace. Construction is poorly done, and radically unsuitable for the fiddly baroque toy furnishings that characterise the architecture of the past decade. And yet – wildly over-budget, we have a set piece! Think of the added value to the area! How many mini-Bilbao-effects can we set in motion…

This is an excellent essay. Go read it.

I’m too tired to dredge my mind for all of its implications, but there are many.

And it’s yet another Exhibit to add to the daily-enlarging file titled England Is Doomed.