The lineup:

YouTube - Ornette Coleman Quartet :: Roma 1974 #1

Ornette Coleman: saxo ; James Ulmer: guitarra ; Sirone: bajo; Billy Higgins: batería

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere

On Eurozone budgetary constraints

Cross-posted from Credit Writedowns

"Slovenia becomes the new problem child of the EU". This is the headline today in Handelsblatt, a leading German financial newspaper. Below is a translation of that article and a few comments:

Slovenia was long regarded as a model country. But now it is becoming a new problem case for the euro-zone. The government needs to cut vigorously to avoid Greece's fate.

Jean-Claude Juncker, chairman of the Euro group, and Luxembourg's Prime Minister, has called on the small country to take drastic cost-cutting efforts.The government in Ljubljana must not increase the national debt. Otherwise a fate similar to Greece's could threaten Slovenia.

In 2007, Slovenia was the first Eastern European EU country to join the euro zone. The small country of two million inhabitants has long been regarded as economically sound. But since the financial crisis, the national debt has grown from year to year. According to the latest estimate by the EU Commission, the budget deficit for the year will have risen to 5.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). In 2010, the ratio stood at 5.6 percent. The public debt will account for 42.8 percent of GDP in December. A year earlier, it was 38 percent. Euro group chief Juncker criticized foremost that the Slovenian population rejected the revamping of the state pension system and an increase of the retirement age in a referendum earlier this month. "Slovenia must now get to grips with problems elsewhere. An agreement on pension reform would have been the easiest way," Juncker said, according to the Slovenian news agency STA. The government must now take "quick and brutal" decisions.

Another target lined up?
Hard to see how the eurozone gets out of the crisis loop without addressing the deflationary bias (mentioned later in the NC piece...)

And check out who else is playing here!

YouTube - Benny Goodman Quartet - Moonglow

Benny Goodman, clarinet; Lionel Hampton, vibes; Teddy Wilson, piano; Gene Krupa, drums. With George Duvivier on bass. Hey, that Lionel Hampton's gotta be the King of Swing!

Happy Bithday to You.

Happy Birthday dear Twankeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

(you worthless loud mouth son - of - biiiiiiiiiiiiiich)

Happy Birthday to You!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wp4O7v5320

Good lyrics.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

A preliminary hearing conference has been set for four people charged with kidnapping an 18-year-old Oklahoma City man and tattooing the word "RAPEST" on his forehead before shocking him with a stun gun and beating him unconscious.

Only in Oklahoma...

Now where are we going and what's with the handbasket?

A picture may be worth 1,000 words, but Narces Benoit's decision to videotape a shooting by Miami police landed him in jail after officers smashed his cell-phone camera.

It was 4am on May 30 when Benoit and his girlfriend Erika Davis saw officers firing dozens of bullets into a car driven by Raymond Herisse, a suspect who hit a police officer and other vehicles while driving recklessly. Herisse died in the hail of lead, and four bystanders also suffered gunshot wounds, the Miami Herald newspaper reported. 

Police noticed the man filming the shooting and an officer jumped into his truck, and put a pistol to his head, Benoit said. The video shows officers crowding around Herisse's vehicle before opening fire, followed by indistinguishable yelling at onlookers, including Benoit, to stop filming.

The cop yelled: "Wanna be a [expletive] paparazzi?" Benoit recounted in a TV interview.

~ strong guitar/sax backing music all through, but especially after 3:00

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

We have been functioning with only one computer on line at a time for a week since the lightning strike. I got a replacement router by Netgear but could not get it to work. The tech I got it from told me I needed to run the config CD. I have a cable modem and when I ran the CD it responded: "You appear to have a static IP. Is this correct?" I thought it was the case and checked "yes",  but I got a field that required the IP, submask, etc. etc. I called SuddenLink, the cable supplier and asked them for that information. They said the router should pull that info from the modem, said the modem was seeing the router and referred me to a Netgear site for further help, but the site turned out to be for pay. I blew up and exited the site. SuddenLink called  back the next day to ask if I had resolved the problem and I gave them and ear full about not being able to give me my own IP, etc. But the representative did suggest googling "what is my IP", which I entered into the router form, but I didn't have data for the other fields.

Monday I called the vendor and the tech came out. I learned a lot about using the command prompt and configip, but we could not get the router to pull the modem's IP, subnet, etc. and kept getting a 192. IP number, which was just the router. We had been able to get onto the web by plugging one machine directly into the modem, but after we powered down the modem, unscrewed the cable and touched tip to ring with a finger, waited 30 seconds, reconnected and repowered -- voila! Now we couldn't even get to the internet with one machine.

Called Suddenlink and made an appointment for this morning. When the tech did not arrive, I called the manager of the local office, who referred me to his trouble dispacher, who informed me that I had been scheduled for the next day!! Within half an hour a tech arrived, sold me a new modem, and everything worked, no config required for the hardwired computers! Hurray!  I will worry about the password protection for the wireless connection later. After having spent the whole day waiting for service it just feels good to have both computers hardwire connected to the internet at the same time.
Called SuddenLink,

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (and a half)

P.S.  We can't catch a break.  If we don't get rain, meaning "thunderstorms" during the summer, there's a high danger of wildfires; if we do get rain there's a high danger of wildfire.  


Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere