2007 — 27 Feb: back to Phill Jupitus
To my horror, and unlike BBC's 6Music, my preferred choice of satellite radio station (NPR worldwide — their equivalent of the BBC's World Service) now seems to be prematurely gearing up for coverage of the next U.S. presidential election (already!) While I personally will be delighted to see an end to Dubya's reign of shabby, ignorant, incurious, indifference to the world he "bestrides" on the West's behalf like a sewer rat... the prospect of 22 months of detailed blow-by-blow coverage of a parade of puppet power-junkies1 to raise money and dash hopes in inevitably doomed bids to feed their strange addiction is enough to get me twitching that dial.
Discussion with his current studio guest of "the best sneeze you've ever had" is a lot less snotty than many a politician. Indeed, it positively glistens by comparison even at this time of the morning, trust me! Go, BBC!
IBM heir today; gone tomorrow
A touching story from the USA pages of the Guardian's web site under the admittedly eye-catching heading: "IBM heirs try to cut lesbian ex-lover out" and complete with variant spellings of the word "inheritance". It seems to be all about the fight (by the Watson family trust) on behalf of Ms Olive Watson (IBM founder Tom's grand-daughter) between her and her ex-lady friend Ms Patricia Spado to collect a share of a trust fund worth around $10,000,000 (which is surely small change these days in the IBM world?). Ms Spado and Ms Olive Watson used to be what's called "an item". Indeed, Ms Watson named Ms Spado as her sole beneficiary and later legally adopted her (though it is not clear as what). Surely if you adopt your lover as a legal relative, doesn't that make your subsequent relationship technically one of incest? These are murky waters indeed.
Of course, in the "old" days of IBM, if a couple of employees got married the wife had to leave the company. In later years, she would only have had to leave the department. These days she can stay in her husband's department. Check out pages 101 and 102 of Herb Grosch's "computer: bit slices from a life" if you don't believe me! But there have always been different rules for the rich and powerful. I think it was "Wally" from the Dilbert strip who opined that there was no point in having power if you didn't abuse it.
BRIC heir today; in charge tomorrow
In an article that begins, rather astonishingly, "Throughout the twentieth century, the list of the world's great powers was predictably short: the United States, the Soviet Union, Japan, and northwestern Europe" I learn that:
[...] by 2010, the annual growth in combined national income from Brazil, Russia, India, and China — the so-called BRIC countries — will be greater than that from the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Italy combined; by 2025, it will be twice that of the G-7 (the group of highly industrialized countries).
I'm assuming Professor Drezner, who likes his acronyms, is assuming GWATCDR.2 IBM, bless them, is busily investing in bricks, mortar, and BRIC.
An apology
Molehole's server was off the air for some indeterminate period earlier this morning. A "fact" I only realised when I ventured out of bed and onto the Interweb thingy. The wireless network router had got itself into a bit of a tizzy.