Live from Austin!

I’m in Dallas for a business event. I decided to drive up, rather than deal with airlines and security and all that hassle. Average travel time by air is 1 hour. Add in 1.5 hours at the airport, and a 3.5 hour drive starts to look pretty attractive.

A good way to get a feel for the size of Texas is to drive across it. A good way to get a feel for Dallas Fort Worth airport is to note that it’s larger than the whole of Manhattan island. Texas itself is bigger than France; they sell T-shirts that say so at the mall.

The journey up was mostly uneventful. There were plenty of pickups and SUVs weaving across lanes without signalling, but that’s normal for Texas. The most amusing incident was when I was passed by a pickup that had been painted in a desert camouflage yellow color. I noticed on the door that the driver had wanted to suggest his involvement in the first Iraq war: he had stuck on some vinyl letters that spelled out

OPERATION
DESSERT STORM

Maybe my laughter was uncalled for; maybe he’s actually a pastry chef. I was tempted to try for a photo, but I’d have had to accelerate to about 80 mph to catch him, and then operate a camera with one hand while driving, and it just didn’t seem like a good enough reason to risk death.

One of the things I’d like to do if I were rich, is start a restaurant. I decided years ago that I’d have a Desert Menu. The items on the menu would all be named after actual deserts; the Gobi would be (say) green tea ice cream, the Keros would be baklava, the Great Victoria would be pavlova, the Karakum would be Turkish delight, the Chihuahuan would be flan, the Antarctica would be ice cream, and so on.

Democratic Presidential hopeful John Edwards has spoken eloquently about the plight of the poor in America, saying that “poverty is the great moral issue of our century.” In his 2004 speech to the DNC, he said:

John Kerry and I believe that we shouldn’t have two different economies in America: one for people who are set for life, they know their kids and their grand-kids are going to be just fine; and then one for most Americans, people who live paycheck to paycheck.

As the official “John Edwards ‘08 Blog” put it recently:

Income inequality means more than 40 million people lacking health insurance or millions more having insufficient health insurance that does not cover preventive care. The gap between the income or wealth of those with the highest ammount (sic) of money in a society and those with the lowest can be a source of disease in itself.

[...] For instance, one study showed that a young man living in Bangladesh where poverty was severe but fairly uniform had a higher life expectancy than a young man living in Harlem, in the USA, a land where income disparity is the worst of any of the so called first world nations.

In the mean time, John Edwards has just purchased a 28,000 square foot mansion on an estate outside Chapel Hill NC, having sold his previous mansion for $5.2 million. The new Edwards estate is expected to be valued at over $6 million.

The main house itself is a mere 10,000 square feet or so. The rest of the floor space is in the recreation room—or rather, the 15,600 square foot recreation building. I can already picture Christmas with the Edwards family; perhaps the kids will play charades on one of the two stages, while John practices his speeches from the other. If they have guests for Christmas and run short of space, the master bedroom is 600 square feet, so they’ll always be able to put 10 extra king size double beds in there.

Of course, last month when John Edwards announced his intention to run for President, he didn’t do it from his home. No, he went to New Orleans, and helped a few poor people renovate a house that is probably smaller than the roofed walkway connecting the two sections of his own humble abode.

For some unaccountable reason there has been a little carping from the peanut gallery. People seem to think that the Edwards lifestyle is a little out of keeping from someone who says he’s so upset by income inequality. Me, I have no doubt that John Edwards cares deeply about the plight of the poor, and I’m sure he’ll be employing a dozen or so to sanitize his toilets, vacuum his rugs, clean his pool, and polish his basketball court. And his squash court. And his four storey observation tower.

Once again, reality is all too eerily reminiscent of a story from The Onion.

It’s called XDR-TB, eXtreme Drug Resistant TuBerculosis. It’s spread by droplets in the air—perhaps by a cough or a sneeze. There are no drugs to treat it. 98% of those infected, die within two weeks.

Currently in South Africa, but perhaps coming soon to a homeless person near you.

On Friday, I was gazing out into the back yard when I saw a hawk swoop towards the house, turn to the side at the last moment, and try to grab a squirrel from the fence.

I’m glad to report that he failed, but the squirrel was clearly very disturbed by his near death encounter. He leapt onto the trunk of the nearest tree, and called out—a type of sound I hadn’t heard from a squirrel before. It was a kind of squeak, starting low in pitch and going higher. I’m assuming it’s squirrel for “Holy crap, guys, look out, there’s a bird of prey around!”

Royal Bank of Scotland charges man £3,400 in bank charges. Man goes to court, claiming charges are illegal under UK law. Bank doesn’t bother to show up or contest the claim. Court rules in man’s favor. Bank doesn’t respond when payment of debt is demanded.

Man sends in debt collectors, who seize fax machines and computers from the local high street branch in front of startled customers, and tell the bank the equipment will be sold to pay the debt unless the bank coughs up the money it owes.

Freakin’ awesome.

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health analyzed nicotine yield of cigarettes sold in Massachusetts from 1997 to 2005. The result: cigarette manufacturers have been gradually boosting the level of addictive nicotine by an average of 1.6% per year, or 11% over the 7 year period studied.

Something to bear in mind while watching re-runs of the South Park episode “Butt Out“, in which Parker and Stone bravely defend the cigarette corporations for providing a little harmless pleasure to people, who after all smoke of their own free will.

I’ve written quite a few times about horrible airline experiences, primarily at the hands of American Airlines. Well, there’s one airline I’ve never had a bad experience with, and that’s Virgin Atlantic.

Which is probably why the US government doesn’t want to allow Virgin to start operating in the US. Lip service to the free market is all very well, but if a foreign airline is allowed to show US passengers that flying doesn’t have to be a miserable experience, where will it all end? I mean, take a look at VA’s cattle class cabins. They’re better than Delta’s first class.

So, if you’re the kind of pinko subversive who thinks sucky, bankrupt American airlines should see some competition, there’s an online petition you can indulge in. Or you could even write some paper letters.

It’s snowing. There are icicles on our roof. There’s ice on the outside of my office window (I love having a well insulated house). I remember this…it’s “winter”, isn’t it?

I imagine Texans are going into a state of blind panic. The roads are probably full of accidents. Fortunately we stocked up on food a couple of days ago, and can just sit in the warm and enjoy the show.

I’m not sure why Google video always seems to hose the first few seconds of the video.

I hear that Eli Lilly are attempting to censor the Internet. Their target is an archive called “ZyprexaKills”, a tar file compressed with gzip containing leaked internal Eli Lilly documents relating to their antipsychotic drug Zyprexa.

As well as going after people who provide the file for download, Eli Lilly have been filing DMCA complaints against people who link to sites that have the file for download, or merely provide instructions on how to find it. The EFF are defending such sites.

Those who know me well will recall that I have a character flaw: if someone tells me I shouldn’t be allowed to read something or watch something, I immediately develop an overwhelming urge to do so.

In this case, I find myself somewhat conflicted. A lot of the anti-Zyprexa people appear to be anti-psychiatry crackpots, and I imagine the Church of Scientology has an interest somewhere; but on the other hand, it seems that Eli Lilly promoted unapproved use of their drug, engaged in a decade-long attempt to downplay its risks, and settled with 28,500 people for $1.2 billion rather than risk going to court to defend charges that the drug led to diabetes and other illnesses.

So although I’m a great believer in the healing power of psychiatric drugs, I also think this is a case where the public has a right—a need, even—to know the facts.

If you’re interested, a quick web search will turn up sources for the Zyprexa documents; I’m sure you don’t need me to spell out the procedure. Eli Lilly are going to discover that trying to remove the file from the Internet is rather like trying to remove the pee from a swimming pool.