sparrow chat

Some of you may have noticed that Sparrow Chat was ‘down’ for a few hours this morning. It all began when one of the computers showed a virus alert, and the CA security software rapidly deleted five files, but left one infected on the hard drive.

Following a virus scan, thirteen more files were found to be infected, and were automatically deleted. A number of them were WordPress files.

On checking Sparrow Chat, I discovered certain sections of WordPress Admin were inoperable and the sidebar modules had disappeared.

Eventually, I discovered the problem was not with WordPress, but with the Firefox browser. Using IE7 I was able to rebuild the sidebar modules and get Sparrow Chat back online.

This all took a couple of hours during which I also deleted Firefox and reinstalled it, to no avail. It still threatened to wreak havoc with the sidebar modules.

Knowing I had an infected file on the hard drive I went online to find some information about the virus – JS/Snz.A.

Imagine my surprise when the CA website knew nothing about it? Further investigation revealed the latest virus software update patch from CA, released this morning, contained a bug causing the software to recognize certain Javascripts as viruses.

There never was a virus, but CA’s anti-virus software had systematically deleted a host of files containing the offending Javascript, some of which were needed to run WordPress Admin with Firefox.

Reinstalling Firefox didn’t solve the problem, but clearing out the cache, did.

So, a very special thanks to the people at CA Security for their cock-up, which wasted hours of my time, and no doubt that of millions of other users of their products.

CA employees must have been celebrating New Year a little early this year, as they were undoubtedly drunk at their work in the office this morning.

Filed under: Not nuclear, thank God

Posted under Sparrow Chat

In Sparrow Chat’s blogroll is a blog no longer written. It remains there, on the list, because I have not the heart to delete it – to snuff it out.

The name of the blog is “Gadflying”. It was penned by a dear friend; a friend not just to me, but to many fellow bloggers on the internet. The name of the writer was Xristi Megas. It was a strange name, but Xristi assured us it was real, no pseudonym.

Xristi died of cancer one year ago today. Her blog remains as a literary epitaph to one of planet Earth’s truly great human beings.

Just occasionally I pay her a visit. Nothing has changed there since her death, but I always harbor a slight hope that one day she may surprise me, and I may find another of her inimitable posts, perhaps railing against George Bush’s latest sinfulness.

Take a moment to pop over and peruse her writings. Xristi was no mean poet.

When she died, I published one of her poems on “Sparrow Chat”. It was about the planet she loved so much. It was called quite simply:

“My Place”

Filed under: Absent friends

Posted under Sparrow Chat

For some, it seems, Santa Claus may not have visited this year. While the vast majority of us were sipping our Christmas port and musing on the blessings of life, that peculiar breed of individuals known colloquially as, “the economists”, were tearing their hair and draping themselves in sackcloth as their earnest entreaties and threats, aimed at the rest of us, failed to bear fruit.

It seems we just didn’t spend enough this holiday season.

Given the state of my depleted bank account, I find that hard to believe, though I suppose my spending has not necessarily been on par with the rest of America’s. The question to arise from all this is: should we worry?

My answer is a simple: no.

While no-one wants a return to the austere days of the Great Depression, I refuse to bother myself because Sam Walton’s bank account has shrunk to an even greater degree than my own. In fact, I have to admit to a sneaking sense of satisfaction at the very thought.

What occurs during an economic recession is that those who labor under the misnomer of being ‘middle class’ in America (“middle class” = those able to borrow money to spend; as opposed to those who can’t, who are known as “the poor”, a blight on society, and socially outcast) find the ratio of their income to expenditure drastically swinging in the wrong direction.

The Sam Walton’s of this world rely on the middle class of America to give them their borrowed money and keep them in the stinking luxury to which they are accustomed. The middle class do this by purchasing for dollars, borrowed from Sam Walton’s friends, goods Sam has paid for with handfuls of cheap rice. When Sam gets those middle class dollars he spends a few to buy more rice, and pay a pittance to his workers, then pockets the thick wad remaining. Meanwhile, his friends earn a nice steady income in interest on the dollars loaned to the middle class to buy Sam’s goods.

An economic recession occurs when Sam and his friends get too greedy and attempt to snatch more dollars from the middle class than they have available. Suddenly, Sam can’t sell his goods, so he can’t purchase more. He’s left with a huge mound of cheap rice on his hands and with an ever-dwindling bank account is forced to eat the rice himself.

In an instant, Sam’s worst nightmare is realized; he’s become one of the middle class he’s lived off so opulently for years. Unable to digest this horror, he leaps to his death from a high building, moments before the Federal Reserve Gods wave their magic wands, lower interest rates, and make the money machines work again.

Everyone is happy once more. Sam’s relatives pocket his money, give him a swanky send-off, which costs them nothing as they own the funeral parlor, and breathe a long-drawn sigh of relief.

Santa Claus has returned to Wall Street.

Filed under: Christmas cheer

Posted under Sparrow Chat

Benazir Bhutto was undoubtedly caught in the middle of Pakistani politics. While the Islamic extremists wanted her dead – to them she was the face of modernity in Pakistan, a modernity that would spell the end of radical Islam – she also had political enemies inhabiting the other side of the tracks.

Most will blame the religious radicals, who will almost certainly claim the act and the glory, and likely they were responsible, but Musharraf could well stand to benefit from the loss of a rival more popular than he, among ordinary Pakistanis.

Whoever it was who planned and perpetrated this outrageous act, the fall-out will create shockwaves around the world, and further complicate the political chaos rampant in a country George Bush has long welcomed as one of America’s closest allies in his ‘war on terror’.

Filed under: Yet another martyr

Posted under Sparrow Chat

There is nothing amusing about the killing of whales, although the BBC sending a reporter with the name Jonah Fisher to the Antarctic on the Greenpeace ship, “Esperanza”, has to raise a smile or two.

The Japanese are at it again. In contravention of a whaling moratorium, and with the apparent intention of killing fifty Humpback whales in addition to the one thousand it will slaughter of other species, to satisfy it’s “scientific research” and the palettes of rich Japanese who don’t give a damn about the consequences of what turns them on culinary-wise, the Japanese whaling fleet has once more set sail for the Antarctic and its annual slaughter of the most intelligent mammal on the planet.

Today, the Japanese government announced it had retracted its permission for the slaying of fifty Humpbacks. The world rejoiced. Japan had bowed to international pressure.

Call me an old cynic, but it’s my opinion the Japanese never intended to slaughter Humpbacks at all. The story was just put out to create a stir, allowing the Japanese to magnanimously withdraw and appear the good guys, while the slaughter of one thousand Minke and Fin whales continues with less international hoo-ha as a result.

There is no reason to kill whales other than to satiate the palettes of the Japanese. The moratorium of 1986 bans the killing of all whales, but allows licenses for “scientific culls”. It is this loophole that Japan utilizes for its yearly slaughter.

Thankfully, there are organizations like Greenpeace, and Sea Shepherd, a marine conservation group who have already made it to Antarctica on a ship named after the conservationist, Steve Irwin, to monitor and harry the Japanese fleet.

Japanese government officials accuse Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd of “….dangerous and irresponsible actions…..” but their own excuses for this unnecessary carnage are both illogical and dishonest.

Japan’s deputy whaling commissioner Joji Morishita, told the BBC:

“It is just like any fisheries – tuna, salmon, for example – the proper way to conduct the fisheries is to do the science to work out how best to manage the resources.”

Someone should point out to Mister Joji Morishita that the whale is not a fish, and consequently cannot be considered in similar context to other fisheries.

It would appear that when it comes down to basic intelligence, Mister Joji Morishita has more in common with salmon and tuna, than with the whales.

Filed under: A lie by any other name

Posted under Sparrow Chat

THIS is how America allows mentally retarded youngsters to be treated.

What is truly disgraceful about this case is not that the adolescents were “punished” unnecessarily, but that it is allowed to happen at all.

If some readers consider I may at times be unduly harsh on America, this story is a prime example of the reason why.

I make no apology.

Read this Mother Jones article from earlier this year.

^{My thanks to Al at “Vineyard Views” for the link.}

Filed under: Just sickening

Posted under Sparrow Chat

The phrase, “War on Christmas”, has reared its ugly head once more. Frankly, it’s boring, repetitive, and hardly in the spirit of goodwill to all men, which, whatever one’s religious bent, is a damned good spirit to hang onto, even if only for a few days during this particularly dark and dreary time of year.

The whole world knows how Americans love a good argument. Nothing is “middle-of-the-road” in this country. It’s a land of extreme views and opinions, all with just one common element – the ability to tear this nation asunder.

Christmas, it would seem, is no exception.

Throughout the land, the debate rages. Should it be called a Christmas tree, or a Holiday tree? Is it right to have a floodlit crib and manger above the entrance to local town council offices? Do children open Santa’s gifts on Christmas morning or Holiday morning?

The country where I was born and raised is a secular nation, yet no-one argues over the naming of holidays. Christmas is Christmas; Easter is Easter, and Pentecost is Whitsun.

You see, America, you don’t have deed and title to Christmas, it’s an international tradition celebrated throughout the world. It matters not if you are Christian, Pagan, or Atheist; Christmas is Christmas. It has been for donkey’s years, and it always will be. So stop arguing about it, and for Christ’s sake just enjoy it!

Neither is Christmas the sole preserve of Christians. Just because they stuck their deity’s name on the front of it doesn’t mean we can’t all celebrate. After all, in America, George Washington’s birthday is a celebrated federal holiday, but while he may have been a cool dude, he was definitely not a god. Most of us who wisely decline to behave in a weird and illogical manner towards Jesus of Nazareth, still consider he was a cool dude.

We’re all aware that the ‘Christ” bit relates to the Christian god, but the festival covers a multitude of other deities, including the Sun, and over the years they’ve all fallen under the general umbrella of Christmas, because the early Christians pinched the date from pagan sources somewhere around the 11th century.

But we pagans don’t object to that. We don’t rise up and insist it is renamed “Sol Invictus mass”, or, “Mithrasmass”, or, “Ishtarmass”. And if we don’t argue about it, America, why should you?

If you truly want to fight and bicker over the names of holidays, why not stick with one of your own, like Thanksgiving. No-one in the US of A rises up in indignation over that name, now do they? Personally, I think it’s a very silly name and hardly in keeping with a nation supposedly secular and tolerant of beliefs. After all, who is an Atheist supposed to give thanks to?

Perhaps it’s time Thanksgiving was renamed. Here’s a suggestion. How about, “Let’s-invite-a-whole-load-of-relatives-around-we-don’t-really-want-to-see -and-stuff-ourselves-so-full-of-food-we-fall-off-our-chairs Day”?

Or, if that’s too long to trip off the tongue, try: “ThanksForWhat? Day” as most Americans I’ve approached on the subject haven’t the faintest idea what they’re actually giving thanks for.

So get the message, America: hands off Christmas. It doesn’t belong to you. You didn’t invent it.

It actually existed long before you did, which means you have less right than the rest of the world to interfere with it.

A VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ONE AND ALL.

Filed under: Christmas cheer

Posted under Sparrow Chat

Whose idea was it to run presidential political nominations over the Christmas holidays? Isn’t it supposed to be a time of “Goodwill to all Men”, and “Peace on Earth”?

How can that be when every news broadcast throughout the nation carries footage of the dross they’ve dredged up as presidential-hopefuls, and paraded like some old has-been’s Ugly Parade, with the grand prize – to live four years in an overly-large mansion and f**k-up even more of the world?

As an observer of American politics these five years – and one with no affiliated axe to grind – the whole concept of party nominations just leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.

It’s nothing more than an ego competition. Those with the least controlling egos are rapidly relegated to the back rows, leaving grossly swollen-headed egomaniacs, with equally inflated bank accounts, vying for the prime position.

You don’t have to be an alien sitting on the moon with a spyglass to work out that the only candidate with any degree of honesty and integrity probably only has it because he’s still politically wet behind the ears.

Yet, out of the top three from each party, he is undoubtedly the finest choice – for exactly that reason.

Why is that the case? Because a lifetime of experience in politics anywhere, except perhaps a banana republic, should produce Statesmen of quality, integrity, and honor.

There is not one Statesman (or woman) among the topmost runners for the presidential nomination; not one iota of statesmanlike quality, neither integrity nor honor, emanates from any one of them. Each is blatantly concerned only with their own success, showing only ‘cupboard love’ for those needed to raise them into power, to be tossed aside as garbage once the counts are finally in, in November 2008.

The prime candidates are already well out of the race. Those who show even a modicum of sensitivity, humanity, and common sense have all fallen, or been pushed over, at the first fence. There is no room in American politics for such as they. God forbid a president should be chosen who refused to bomb Iran for wanting what America has had for sixty years – the ability to run its own nuclear power stations without reliance on outside sources. God forbid the next president should offer the helping hand of friendship to other nations, rather than phosphorus bombs and exploding bullets. God forbid the next president might insist on abiding by the Geneva Conventions, rather than secret CIA prisons and waterboarding.

Don’t be alarmed, America. God will forbid it.

The next President of the United States will continue to utilize phosphorus bombs and exploding bullets. He, or she, will ignore the Geneva Conventions when it suits, and those secret prisons will remain for when waterboarding is deemed necessary.

There will, however, be a noticeable difference between the present incumbent and the next one. Such matters will be dealt with less blatantly, virtually without public knowledge; just as they were before George W Bush took over the reins in 2000.

America will feel better. What the eye doesn’t see, and the ear doesn’t hear, the hearts will not grieve over.

Peace on Earth and Goodwill to all Men?

Not a snowball’s chance in Hell.

God will forbid it.

Filed under: Death of democracy

Posted under Sparrow Chat