Cox Crow

How many pints are there in the 5 liter Heineken mini-keg? Google:pints+to+5+liters.

Yep, that’ll do for the party.

Oops. Read that label incorrectly. I bought more than 10 pints.

This month in Cato Unbound, the Cato Institute hosts discussion of the question, “Should Libertarians vote Democrat?” I expect this is to coincide with their piece on the libertarian voter, whom they feel is somewhat influential.

The libertarian vote is in play. At some 13 percent of the electorate, it is sizable enough to swing elections. Pollsters, political strategists, candidates, and the media should take note of it.

I’ve been suggesting that for at least six years now, and since I’m one of the most influential people on the Internet, you can see what kind of effect I have had. Perhaps the similar suggestions from Mr. Moulitsas will carry more weight. The suggestion is not that classical liberals should vote for Democrats, but that the Democratic Party needs to remember classical liberals.

The question for me, however, is not whether I should vote for the Democratic candidate, but whether I am well-represented in Congress. Luckily, the votes of Sue Kelly (R-NY) are a matter of public record. Now, if I were actually to read the bills before casting judgment on her vote, I would be more responsible than most members of Congress.

Rep. Kelly’s competition for the seat is John Hall. On the issues we don’t see eye-to-eye. However, I’m feeling anti-incumbent this year even more than usual. This game is about the balance of power, not between Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum, but between the government and me.

I heard one interesting thing on the radio this morning, and one annoying thing. That’s about par. The interesting thing was an article in The Lancet on the rate of death in Iraq since March 2003, which suggests that contrary to official reports, the mortality rate is 18.8 deaths per 1,000 persons (slightly more than twice that of the United States).

(Perhaps just as interesting is that the second most-linked item in the Newsgator sidebar is the article itself, which neither The New York Times nor The Washington Post bother to reference by link.)

The annoying thing was the question on WAMC’s Roundtable.

According to the National Science Foundation, women earn half of all bachelors degrees and 37 percent of all doctoral degrees in science and engineering, yet they make up less than 20 percent of the science and engineering faculty at four-year colleges and universities. Why do you think that is? [links added]

Because they find better careers?

Apparently this is a subject of no little concern; the National Science Foundation is distributing grants to colleges to help remedy the discrepancy.

WTF wants brownies with a pizza?

I’m not as well-travelled as I’d like.

From b3co.com, via Kellan.

One thing I’d like to do is see how far I can travel down the East Coast of the U.S. on local rail lines. Maybe one day when the youngest is older, and I have more vacation time.

I am slow to upgrade my home desk. One might say it’s because I’m cheap. One might also say it’s because the Company issues a portable desk which suffices, annoying though it may be. But our printer broke, and these cheap ink-jet printers are not built to be repaired. So, we bought a new one, an HP Photosmart C4180.

And all went smoothly until I was informed that the drivers are not available for my operating system. I suppose we’ll have to buy that too. Maybe it’s time for a new computer after all.

Oh, well.

SQL injection is an attack on computer database systems where an attacker exploits an assumption made by the programmer about the kinds of data that will be entered in the application. The assumption is that no one will use reserved characters, such as the apostrophe. However, this assumption is often false.

The Australian state of Victoria addressed the situation of Swift’s Creek in the following manner.

It is often argued that the name should be Swift’s Creek, with a possessive apostrophe, as the creek was named after Swift. In correct English usage this would be accurate; however under the Victorian Government’s Geographic Place Names Act 1998 apostrophes are omitted in all place names. This is to avoid confusion and debate on just this issue, and therefore no place names in Victoria are officially spelt with the possessive apostrophe.

There’s a bug in Tivoli Storage Manager, where, given a set of tapes to process in order to reclaim the space occupied by expired data, it fails to complete the task because it runs out of scratch tapes. Then manual intervention is required to finish the job. Let me describe the situation, and let you describe the bug. It’s an elementary problem.

You have two empty containers, and five partially full containers, as shown below. You must move the contents of the five partially full containers to the empty containers, leaving as many free containers as possible when you are done. Place the containers in the order in which you will move the contents.

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In a day that needed a bit of levity, Rick points the So-Called Austin Mayor’s suggestion that some perspective is needed. Wired provides that perspective with this handy chart. Recall, after all, that the goal of terrorism is not necessarily death, but fear, and fear is not often in proportion to risk.