Time to change time

Welcome to International “Screw up your calendar week”, otherwise known as the changing of the clocks to Daylight Savings Time (DST) in America. For those elsewhere, or if you happen to live in Arizona, Hawaii, or certain parts of Indiana, or if you happen to live elsewhere in America and have appointments with those living in AZ, HI, or IA, or anywhere else in the world, be sure to check that your appointments haven’t shifted by an hour. For the next two weeks, though, America will be one hour closer to Europe. Oh, and then check again in two weeks.

This debacle is brought to you by the last Republican U.S. Congress who somehow thought that shifting DST would actually save energy. It didn’t, according to one blog and a report on NPR. Whatever.

My beef with this semi-annual nonsense is simply this: don’t change the rule again. Doing so causes chaos to everyone’s schedules, requiring software updates on numerous platforms. It’s a mini-Y2K bug that gets periodically legislated into our programs.

In Donald Trump’s Book, There Is Only One Chapter: Eleven

Another day, another Trump bankruptcy. The Wall Street Journal reports that, once again, Trump Donald Trump’s organization will screw its creditors out of their investment. This time it’s the Trump Entertainment Group that includes Trump Casinos. It’s their third appearance in bankruptcy court in four years.

Don’t get me wrong. I think individuals and companies need bankruptcy protection laws, and I was opposed to the changes in the law that were made earlier this decade that made it harder for individuals to declare bankruptcy.

But this is a clear case of abuse, this from a man who scrutinizes other peoples’ business plans on live TV. It leads to the question, if you actually win at Apprentice, what lesson are you actually learning? And one has to wonder, what kind of morons would invest in this guy’s businesses? I mean really. One bankruptcy normally all but kills a consumer’s credit for many years. Where does he get the suckers?

What’s the cure for Steve Jobs’ Illness?

Apple A lawsuit? That is what some shareholders are rumoured to be considering, because they feel as though they were kept in the dark about the struggling CEO’s health. While Jobs is known to be an aggressive man in many respects, his health is something he may have very little control over, as we probably know lots less than we don’t about the human body.

One thing we do know is that stress isn’t good. And would could be more stressful than having to worry, not only about one’s continued survival, but also about having answer depositions about that subject? What if such a lawsuit prevails? Would it mean that it is now tortous to become ill or to simply to be optimistic about one’s own chances?

Many AAPL shareholders have done remarkably well, thanks to Jobs. The least we can do is let the man deal with his illness in peace.

The Next Terrorist Threat: Canada Geese

Evil Geese But for some fancy flying by Captain Chester “Sully” Sullenberger and his co-pilot Jeffrey Skiles, a menacing flock of geese would have managed to pull of the same feat that Osama Bin Laden’s gang of thugs took pains to plan and execute. La Guardia Airport is as close to Manhattan as an airport can get. It wouldn’t have taken much for that plane to kill many people. The geese almost got their way.

Now it has been shown that geese can wreak havoc on our infrastructure, especially those Canada geese that crap all over the east coast. Probably the Canadians planned it that way. Blame Canada, too. Next we should probably invest in goose protection technologies. I’m sure DARPA is already on it. Harboring geese? Better beware. I’m sure you’re being watched already. How do you think Bin Laden managed to get them positioned? Did he pay them off? Did he seed their trail right through Queens? Let us flock to investigate and excoriate the guilty.

In the meantime, as we evict the 43rd president from the White House, a man who defined his administration by the war on terror, who led from a place of fear, and who capitalized on the fears of others, let us shut the door on this sorry chapter of our history by endeavoring to remember the miseries we have to go through at airports, the violations of our privacy that were made in our names, the destruction of our international reputation through the reckless disregard for human rights and international law, and now goose poop, which perhaps is best cleaned up with the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, as they have no better use.

And yet more WSJ crap: “MN Recount was unconstitutional”

Once again, the WSJ is moderating away any criticism. Another example is a whine about how the statewide recount somehow compares to what happened in Florida in 2000. Nonsense in so many ways, not the least of which would be remedy. There may be one area in common, which is that the U.S. courts probably shouldn’t have jurisdiction in a state matter.

It is my recollection as well that The US Supreme Court had said that the decision should not be cited as precedent. While I can’t find the statement, the obvious logic was that the Supreme Court was under the gun for a decision where the electors had to meet, which is not the case here. A decision under pressure often leads to bad law and charges of partisanship. While I would accuse the Wall Street Journal of such partisanship with incessant and inane attacks against seemingly any and every Democrat, I do not so charge the court. However, the logic behind the decision is questionable, based on their starting point as to whether or not they even had jurisdiction to intervene.