Remember me bragging about my really big volume? Now I’m running a really big fsck. Who woulda’ thought?
Before it would even start, fsck demanded at least 28GB of swap space. So I made a 32GB swap file on the root disk, and now I have a process that’s running at 19.2GB of virtual RAM.
I hate storage.
I will, apparently, be at Supercomputing in Austin this November.
Rock.
Judith Warner has a nice piece in the NY Times today about the frustration of waiting for some kind of justice with the Wall Street crisis. Not so much social justice in a grand scheme, but the mere satisfaction of seeing those guys who chose to go make money and money alone, who have been making hundreds of thousands in base salaries and millions in bonuses, finally lose out over us people who decided to make stuff. “Greed is good,” was originally intended as a morally damning phrase, but moral damnation means remarkably little to a recent college graduate offered a couple of million dollars. For a couple of decades raw greed has been so profitable that any lingering guilt over producing nothing with one’s work could be allayed with hot cars and downtown condos. The sneering arrogance of the petty stockbroker with a year’s experience was something to behold. The “Masters of the Universe” seemed to lose all social skills because, well, social skills don’t matter when greed is good.
“These were the guys who, in college, I used to step over on Sunday mornings when they were lying in a pool of their own vomit,” he said. “And now they’re earning millions and millions – in bonuses alone.”
I was sort of looking forward to those guys getting their come-uppance. Instead, it appears that we (as a society) want the game to continue. The bailout seems focused on preventing any fundamental changes of the rules … which means that greed will continue to be good, and while some will get out, others will find new ways to game the system and set ourselves up for another of these in a few years.
We will, of course, not see an equalization at the very top. The truly wealthy did not play these games with their own money – they played it with ours.
Finance should be a boring profession. jrtom linked to a decent summary on the origins of the credit crunch. Apparently the old rule of thumb was “3-6-3” for banking. Pay out 3% on deposits, charge 6% for loans, and be on the golf course by 3pm. Banks that operate under that assumption simply don’t go out of business unless there is a massive run on the banks and they get swept up in it. On the other hand, the people who run those banks make 5 and low 6 figure salaries. They will very rapidly be bought out by banks offering millions in exchange for screwing up the whole US economy.
A moderately profitable bank, doing sensible business, won’t be able to retain executives, staff, or even compelling office space against the wall stree behemoths.
See you in a decade or so.
I don’t post much about my life these days. It’s not that it’s boring, in fact there’s too much going on to even bother post-haste typing.
I’ve been pondering saying something snitty about the whole Sarah Palin thing, but have resisted the urge. After all, I claim that I don’t care about any of that stuff.
That said, I do appreciate a good snark … and there’s so much to snark about with this one. Fortunately, it’s been said – with more bile and vigor than I could possible have mustered. The Rolling Stone published Mad Dog Palin, which is arguably the most vicious piece of mainstream political snark that I’ve ever seen. I feel that all the nastiness I might have mustered may now safely pass me by. It’s been said, and more nastily than I ever could have:
In that moment, the rank cynicism of the whole sorry deal was laid bare. Here’s the thing about Americans. You can send their kids off by the thousands to get their balls blown off in foreign lands for no reason at all, saddle them with billions in debt year after congressional year while they spend their winters cheerfully watching game shows and football, pull the rug out from under their mortgages, and leave them living off their credit cards and their Wal-Mart salaries while you move their jobs to China and Bangalore.
And none of it matters, so long as you remember a few months before Election Day to offer them a two-bit caricature culled from some cutting-room-floor episode of Roseanne as part of your presidential ticket. And if she’s a good enough likeness of a loudmouthed middle-American archetype, as Sarah Palin is, John Q. Public will drop his giant-size bag of Doritos in gratitude, wipe the Sizzlin’ Picante dust from his lips and rush to the booth to vote for her. Not because it makes sense, or because it has a chance of improving his life or anyone else’s, but simply because it appeals to the low-humming narcissism that substitutes for his personality, because the image on TV reminds him of the mean, brainless slob he sees in the mirror every morning.
— EDIT —
Okay, fine. One little bit: In her own words.
Also, we’re screwed.
In the past few days, the researchers have seen areas of sea foaming with gas bubbling up through “methane chimneys” rising from the sea floor. They believe that the sub-sea layer of permafrost, which has acted like a “lid” to prevent the gas from escaping, has melted away to allow methane to rise from underground deposits formed before the last ice age.
They have warned that this is likely to be linked with the rapid warming that the region has experienced in recent years.
Methane is about 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and many scientists fear that its release could accelerate global warming in a giant positive feedback where more atmospheric methane causes higher temperatures, leading to further permafrost melting and the release of yet more methane.
Still “unconfirmed,” but hey … positive feedback loop anyone?
Went to grappling night at Judo this evening. We set an interval timer for four minute rounds with 30 second breaks, and everybody wrestles until they decide to quit. I lasted from 7:30 to 8:45 with two or three breaks … which is not bad in my book.
I’m not as bad as I once was, but I’m far from good. Also, my peers have improved more rapidly than me because they’ve continued to press while I’ve held back because of the shoulder injury … so in comparison I’m falling behind. It’s all good though. I’m patient. I’m not supposed to be good at this sport yet. That’s part of the fun is *getting* good.
The high point was working with Roger, who is a fourth degree – and one of our school’s current “go out on the international circuit and kick some butt” representatives. You know how pythons kill? They don’t so much crush, as they let the smaller creature breathe out and quickly close up the space so it can’t breathe in. That’s what wrestling with Roger is like. Slow, deliberate, and increasingly confined … with no really clear option or path to get out of whatever he’s working towards. Add in the fact that he outweighs me by 20 pounds of muscle, and it’s … how to say … a good learning experience.
When something and its nonexistence
Both are absent from before the mind
No other option does the latter have:
It comes to perfect rest, from concepts free.
I’m trying hard to maintain my optimism. Obama is the first politician I’ve ever outright *supported*, and he’s running in a year when it ought to be a total landslide for whoever the democrats run. The Republican administration has screwed the pooch so royally and completely over the past 8 years that the best they can do is to send Bush on a series of international trips and hope that we’re all morons. The fact that they’re busily popping the economy and writing themselves severance checks indicates to me that they’re hedging their bets.
Sadly, their plan to get re-elected appears to be working.
As usual, Tim Kreider says it better than I can:
Yesterday I spent about an hour on the phone talking to my friend Megan about the collapse of the American Empire. We discussed the historic failure of the economy, and the dismal possibility that the ineducable dullards of the Red States, infatuated with the smug, preening middle-school bitch goddess Sarah Palin, are actually going to vote for another four years of the same. She and I are both, for the third time in a decade, resigning ourselves to the impotent, bitter position: Live it up, shitheads. Have a ball. Good luck getting those manufacturing jobs back. Oh and let us know how Iraq works out.
Don’t be fooled by the media selling you a close election. It’s not close. Go out in record numbers, vote early, vote often.
