Left wingnuttia, just like right wingnuttia...

... i.e., gullible.

The case of Debrahlee Lorenzana, who claims she was fired from Citi for being too attractive, is a case in point. She has made all these claims against specific bank managers, but has nothing to back up these claims other than her own word. Yet left wingnuttia, gullible fools they be, have bought it hook line and sinker.

Sigh... look, anybody can file a claim that makes accusations. That doesn't mean the accusations are true. Crap, Orly Taitz files a claim every other day saying that President Obama is a secret Muslim Nigerian and thus not *really* President, but that doesn't make it true. As much as I agree that Citi is evil, Citi is also a giant bureaucratic corporation and you can be damned sure that if she got fired from Citi, there's a thick file on her telling exactly why, because it's almost impossible to fire someone from those big corporations like that unless you've got everything documented to a fare-the-well. You think it's hard to fire a teacher, you ought to see what it takes to fire a full-time employee of Citi or any other Fortune 500 company. It ain't easy, nosirree, they'll shuffle a person to a different position or to a different department long before they fire that person.

So what does Citi say? "Ms. Lorenzana has chosen to make numerous unfounded accusations and inaccurate statements against Citibank and several of our employees. While we will not discuss the details of her case, we can say that her termination was solely performance-based and not at all related to her appearance or attire. We are confident that when all of the facts and documentation are presented, the claim will be dismissed."

Note that this is *not* the typical non-denial denial that basically says nothing. This is pretty damned specific, which says to me that Citi's law critters think they have a pretty good case. And furthermore, this case is going to be heard by an arbiter, not by a jury, so why the media blitz? Arbiters aren't swayed by media pressure, indeed, a media blitz typically prejudices them against the person. What that tells me is that Ms. Lorenzana already knows she doesn't have a case and will lose when it goes to arbitration, so she's using this opportunity to punish the people who fired her by dragging their name through the mud -- and gullible fools are buying it.

My speculation on why she was fired? Language skills. Watch her interviews on YouTube. She struggles with English pronunciation big-time. She was hired as a business banker in a midtown branch, where the majority of people she met would be white businessmen -- and her English language skills simply weren't up to dealing with them. My bet is that her personnel file is full of complaints from customers demanding to be reassigned to some other representative because they couldn't understand her, at which point she was transferred to a non-customer-facing position -- a typical response of a large corporation to such complaints. My understanding is that she felt that this was punishment and a demotion, and stopped showing up for work regularly, at which point she was fired. Of course, we'll never actually know, since arbitration proceedings are not entered into the public record... but my suspicion is that the arbiter isn't going to take a long time to rule against her, and then she's going to be on the news yet again claiming the arbiter was biased against her because she was "too attractive". Siiiiiigh!

-- Badtux the Skeptical Penguin

Comcast strikes again!

So.... Friday my Internet was working. Last night, it was not -- it claimed I needed to activate it. When I tried to activate it, it said I had no address and that a technician appointment was scheduled for on . Siiiiigh! The good news is that a sales person was able to associated my account with my actual address, cancel the non-existent technician appointment, and set me up to be activated, which I then went ahead and did. So I'm online again. Yay!

Regarding the kittehs, the furry bastards slept near me all night, then woke me up at 6:30AM this morning to be fed. So I fed them and they chowed down, then did their business in the cat box. Yeah, I think they're going to be just fine, it's when a cat goes off their appetite that ya have to worry...

One worry was that TX DB was 50.5 Dbmv, which is slightly above spec, in the yellow zone. But according to Speedtest.net I'm getting 20mb/sec downloads and 3mb/sec uploads, so clearly that isn't hurting anything. So I'm not going to worry about it.

-- Badtux the Groggy (6:30AM!) Penguin

Hyperactive hobbit

A 16-year-old Bjork with her first serious band Tappi Tikarrass shouts punk rock lyrics in Icelandic into the microphone, inbetween making manic dashes around the stage and jerking around spasmodically. Somehow I doubt she needed to go jogging to get more aerobic exercise after this performance :).

Bjork's history of fashion mistakes appears to be a long-standing one, whether it's dressing like a hobbit at 16 years of age to play a festival with a band whose name translates to "stick a cork in her ass", or dressing like a swan at the 2001 Oscars. What is amazing is that a) her voice is definitely already there as are significant portions of her later singing style, she's downright righteous at the microphone, and b) she appears to be absolutely fearless, she's 16 years old, she's in front of a significant percentage of the Icelandic population at this festival and she doesn't seem intimidated at all. So while I can't understand a darn thing she's singing, and frankly this band was juvenilia and not particularly representative of her later work, I can definitely respect what's happening on stage here.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Grr

The Mighty Fang has disappeared! I know that fat furry bastard is somewhere in this house, but where? Last time he disappeared, I found ... oh wait, he just walked into the room, yawning. Where the crap was he hiding? I checked *everywhere*!

-- Badtux the Panicked-but-now-relieved Penguin

Aaand... done (mostly)

There's a few chairs and odds and ends and things, but by and large everything's here. Now to cook me some tasty tuna and noodles while slurping down Gatorade (it got HOT today, close to 90F with high humidity).

The kittehs, BTW, are in major league freakout mode. The Mighty Fang is lurking behind the refrigerator (which is a narrow space, now he's a narrow kitteh heh!) while occasionally howling his displeasure, Mencken lurked in the back of the master bedroom closet until finally he decided to come out and walk around while howling his displeasure.

Comcast has Comcratastically killed my Internet connectivity again. Sigh! So light blogging until I can get on something faster than a tethered iPhone...

-- Badtux the Mobile Penguin

M-day

Drinking coffee, getting ready to go get the truck and meet the workers here at 9am. No blogging for you today, mateys! Oh, the kittehs are going to be *so* mad at me, they're going to get to spend quality time in the bathroom (eep!)...

-- Badtux the Moving Penguin

I like pizza

Swearing at Motorists, "Real Thing", starts about a minute in after Doughman gets his pedal situation resolved and jumps off some of his nose powder energy. You see why Scout Niblett might want to cover Dave Doughman's songs.

This video appears to be recorded in a dorm or other small space. Someone described this band as "The White Stripes that doesn't sell any records". I'd say not -- it's a bit noisier than the Stripes.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

I feel safer

Department of Homeland Security protecting me from spraycan-armed artists.

Phew, glad I'm being protected so well from art that lacks approval from the Commissar of Arts!

-- Badtux the Sovok Penguin

Drunks don't need an excuse to drink

Scout Niblett does one of the quieter tunes, "Duke Of Anxiety", off of her album The Calcination of Scout Niblett. Have I mentioned that you should buy it? :). I wasn't thinking about Scout and her beat-up old Fender Mustang when I bought my Squier Classic Vibe Duo-Sonic, but those two guitars are kissin' sisters, main difference is that the Fender has a tremolo. Either guitar is a great guitar for making noise, and while this song is quieter than Scout's usual output (probably because it's a cover of a song by Swearing at Motorists), it's still plenty noisy.

-- Badtux the Noise-likin' Penguin

Cindy Sheehan doesn't get it

Cindy says, in an interview by PlanetGreen:

PG: In the time since your son’s death, you have been on a journey that I’d guess you could’ve never seen coming. What has been the biggest surprise over the past six years?

CS: Democrats and Republicans are equally corrupt and are both working against our interests.

Oh poor naive woman. Look. Every single one of those bastards in Congress got elected by the majority of voters in their respective district or state. They're not there because they were installed by some evil dictator. They're there because the American people want them there.

But why, you ask? Why does the American public keep electing corrupt tools to Congress? Well... the problem is that most Americans *like* it that way. Because they feel that if they ever “make it”, they deserve to be coddled by a corrupt crony political class too. Of course, they never will “make it” — if you’re born rich in the US you tend to die rich in the US, if you’re born poor in the US you tend to die poor in the US, with very few exceptions to the contrary, we have a very stratified society with almost non-existent social mobility compared to civilized nations — but every American loves to dream that he’s going to figure out some way to make a million bajillion bucks and then be in the same place as the rest of the oligarchs, with corrupt politicians at his beck and call.

So Cindy Sheehan’s observation gets a big shrug from most Americans. And they continue voting for the same corrupt politicians they’ve voted for over and over again, rather than for someone who isn’t in the pocket of the oligarchs. Indeed, the more corrupt you are, the more bribe money err “campaign contributions” you’ve accepted from the oligarchs, the more likely you are to be elected here in the USA. Baffling, astounding even, but true.

- Badtux the Cynical Penguin

Mission accomplished

Futon disassembly mission accomplished. I opened the patio door, and the kittehs promptly went outside to sun themselves on the patio. While they were thus occupied, I broke down the futon. The Mighty Fang then came back in to inspect the results.

My question is this: See those cat puke stains on the carpet to the right of the picture? Well, the kittehs spend a lot of time *under* the futon (indeed, it's one of Mencken's favorite hangouts) so why aren't there any cat puke stains where the futon was?!

The furry bastards just enjoy making me hop skip and jump over the cat puke, methinks...

-- Badtux the Cat-oppressed Penguin

And *another* female singer...

Taken by Trees is the solo project of Victoria Bergsman, former lead singer for the Swedish band the Concretes. This one, "Lost and Found", seems rather 60's pop-ish, complete with the finger snaps. Pleasant enough, but I think tomorrow I'll get someone more noisy...

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Futon disassembly issue

T-3 days until move. Got the bed disassembled today (and it's amazing how much cat fur migrated to under the bed in the 1 year it's been in its current location, I filled up a vacuum cleaner bag with the stuff!), and went to disassemble the futon. I taped up one box that was on the futon, but encountered a problem taping up the second box... Uhm, The Mighty Fang did not appreciate my interruption of his nice nap on the sheets and towels inside that box, and decided to go somewhere else. So I taped up all the boxes and cleared the futon so I could disassemble it, then when I got back from taking the boxes to the garage (where they're living until the movers come Saturday morning), I encountered another issue: Uhm, okay. I give up. I cannot resist TMF's powers of furball cuteness. I'll try again tomorrow ;).

-- Badtux the Cat-plagued Penguin

Mission Accomplished!

From a 1999 BP advertisement.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

The Israeli embargo: What's it for?

I feel like I'm in a fucking history class right now. First, Israel attempts to re-enact the Warsaw Ghetto with the Palestinians in the starring role, and then the Palestinians attempt to re-enact the Exodus 1947 except with Israel substituting for the British. Successfully, I might add. They baited the Israelis into doing exactly what they wanted the Israelis to do -- re-enact the Exodus 1947 situation exactly, except with Palestinians in place of the Jews and Israelis in place of the British. And thing is, the Israels *knew* this is what the activists wanted. Fuck, the activists even *told* them so, *dared* the Israelis to do what they did. And the Israelis took the bait anyhow.

So anyhow, the next thing I get from Israeli apologists is, "well, the embargo is necessary to keep military weapons out of Gaza." Really? Courtesy of Andrew Sullivan, let's look at some of the military weapons that Israel is embargoing at the moment...

OMG! F33R the Coriander of Mass Destruction! Flee the Chicken Bombs of Biological Warfare! Beware the Canned Fruit of Genocide!

Uhm, honey, if you're gonna claim that the embargo is about keeping military weapons out of Gaza, how about restricting it to things that, like, are usable as military weapons?

But of course the embargo isn't about keeping military weapons out of Gaza. It's about keeping the Palestinians as impoverished and embittered as possible so that they will remain enemies of Israel. See, Israel's politics requires that Israel have enemies. Israel's current leaders came to power because they rant that Israel is under seige, Israel is threatened by enemies on all sides, and only they are qualified to protect Israel. If there was a viable and thriving Palestinian state, the fact that Israel has no real enemies anymore would be embarrassingly clear, and their whole political situation would become unviable. As I have pointed out in the past, Israel no longer has any external threats to its existence, so Israel's toxic politics requires that they manufacture one -- and what better one than those poor schlobs the Palestinians, who lack any ability to be a real threat and thus are safe to turn into enemies?

-- Badtux the Geopolitical Penguin

Noisy Door

This is The Aislers Set. Their recorded songs are sort of Brit-poppish, but they got quite noisy live, similar to Amy Linton's previous band Henry's Dress except without her voice getting processed to hell and back. This song is named "Red Door".

The band basically broke up in 2003, and I have no idea where Amy Linton went from there. According to Brooklyn Vegan she is apparently playing drums in New York now, but that's probably just something she does for fun when she's not doing her real job in whatever her real life has become, because only a fanatic tries to make a life in music -- a fanatic, or someone who just doesn't have any other talents. Luckily there's enough who try it before discovering that fact that I'll probably never run out of bands to showcase here, heh.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Drilling relief wells -- how do they know they're there?

As has been noted, pretty much the only proven way of stopping a flowing oil well that you can't close off from the top is by drilling a relief well and killing it from the bottom. So you have a few miles of drill casing going deep into the Earth, and you want to intercept it 4,000 feet below where it enters the surface so you can inject some heavy drilling mud into it, then, once the mud column gets heavy enough to stop the flow of oil, inject concrete into it to plug the oil well once and for all. It sounds like you're trying to hit a needle in a haystack, right? Well, yes... except it's not quite as hard as it looks.

One of the more revolutionary things to happen in the oil industry during the past thirty years is directional drilling. Old oil fields have been re-drilled with directional drilling rigs to send out radial "feeder" wells from the main bore hole to collect oil that was otherwise uncollectable, and oil wells can be steered to the exact location of a reservoir as imaged via geological "thumping" (the use of sonic waves to map the underlying structure of the Earth). This has allowed exploiting reservoirs that previously were considered uneconomical to develop, and extended the lives of other reservoirs that were considered near their ends.

Needless to say this requires knowing where, exactly, the head of the oil well is at given points in time. MWD tools are used to do this. The following measurements are generally taken by the logger at the top of the well and integrated by a computer into a map of where the MWD tool is at a given time: Temperature, bore length (as measured by how much pipe has gone down the hole) X/Y/Z gravitic measurements (pendulums) to determine inclination of the well which, with the bore length, tells you how far down you actually are, and X/Y/Z accelerometer or magnetic field measurements to tell you where on that plane of X feet deep that you're located. The reason for the temperature measurements, by the way, is simple -- these devices are mechanical devices (at least the gravitic and accelerometer devices are) and are temperature sensitive, measurements must take temperature into account. Each tool is unique, and is calibrated by putting it into a temperature controlled chamber, zeroing it out, then moving it to a predetermined angle and direction at a variety of temperatures, then plotting a temperature response curve.

In case you're wondering why I know so much about this, I wrote the software that did the calibration and testing for one of the early directional drilling tools back in the 1980's. But anyhow, while they don't run MWD tools all the time because the tools are expensive and the vibration and temperature tends to kill them over time, they do run them often enough (generally when they have to pull pipe to change the bit, which is a good time to do a survey) so that they have a pretty good idea of where the hole is. But remember, we're talking about needle in the haystack, "pretty good idea" means "within 100 yards" and we're trying to hit a 32" casing in that 100 yards? Sounds like a fool's chore, right? Well, not exactly, because the casing is metal, and thus interferes with magnetic fields. Once you're within that 100 yards, all you need to do then is look for the pipe using the same magnetometer technology as the "metal detectors" that you see occasionally at the beach.

So anyhow, the core problem now is simply getting the relief wells down there. The formations appear to be rather fractured and the original well was a PITA that required regular interventions to get it through the formations in terms of adjustments of mud weight and drilling tools. The wrong mud at the wrong time can lead to the hole collapsing and the drilling tool being lost, requiring significant work to re-route the hole or fish out the tool. But with two relief wells being drilled, the chances of one making it to the gusher and doing a bottom kill on it are as close to 100% as you can get. And, alas, that's the only thing that's going to kill the gusher now, because according to the oil people at the Oil Drum, it appears that the integrity of the casing and blowout preventer at the top have been compromised to the point that closing in the well from the top simply won't work, it'd just blow the casing and BOP right out of the seabed, resulting in an even worse situation since then you have no (zero) resistance stopping the oil from turning into basically an oil volcano.

So that's the inside scoop. Bottom kill is the only proven technique for dealing with the current situation, there is no (zero) technology that will successfully execute a top kill on a flowing well, and given that we can't close in the well to stop it from flowing because it'd blow out the casing and turn this into an oil volcano, bottom kill is "it". This situation is why many nations require deep sea drillers to have a relief well drilled to bottom kill vicinity before penetrating the reservoir, so that a bottom kill can be executed within days, not months, if necessary. But that doesn't happen here in the USA because that would cost money to have two drill rigs out there, even if one of them could be idled after the relief well was drilled, and we can't have that, right? I mean, spend money just to keep from poisoning the whole upper Gulf of Mexico? Perish the thought!

-- Badtux the Oil Penguin

Chair hog

Pyglagia wants happier news. Here, dude. Have a seat. Oh wait, Mencken already occupied both of them :).

-- Badtux the Cat-dominated Penguin

Dressy

Henry's Dress was a short-lived band (1995-1996) that combined punk/noise music with shoegazer singing/vocals. Unfortunately Amy Linton's voice was mixed *way* down under in the mix, I haven't the foggiest notion what she's singing about. Something soothing, I'm sure, like cutting someone with a razor blade.

Amy Linton then went on to form a Brit-pop band, The Aislers Set, tune in tomorrow...

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Fat kittehs

T-4 days before the move...

All boxes are either packed or started (clearly the ones I'm living out of are still open and in flux). I've started disassembling furniture, the dining room table lost its legs today (my dining room table is now the patio table off the patio, since its legs simply pull off rather than unscrew), tomorrow the bed loses its frame and the dresser loses its mirror.

The cats have been surprisingly mellow since I took them off their diet. They go right to sleep after eating, so if I keep a plentiful supply of kibble around, they sleep rather than pester me. Hmm... do they have me trained, or what?

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I won't be posting. I'll try to keep up with email using my iPhone, but my Internet connection is going to be in flux. My usual stream of music videos will, however, appear -- they're spooled up until nearly the end of June at the moment.

-- Badtux the Moving Penguin