Las Vegas, the Workers' Paradise

An article by Harold Meyerson at The American Prospect details the remarkable history of Local 226 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union at organizing workers at the hotels and casinos of the city of Las Vegas.

Local 226 is probably the largest – and surely the most remarkable – local union in the United States. While most unions have been shrinking or struggling to hold their own over the past several decades, and while hotel union membership has declined from 16 percent of the hotel workforce in 1983 to 12 percent in 2000, Local 226 has grown by 30,000 members since its low point in 1988. It has done that by organizing virtually every hotel on the Vegas Strip, so that roughly 90 percent of the jobs in the city's major hotels are unionized. Considering that Nevada is a right-to-work state where employees can work in unionized workplaces without joining the union, this is a breathtaking achievement.

Meyerson reviews the union's history: HERE came to Las Vegas when the first generation of Strip casinos were being built in the 1950s, during the time that he delicately describes as "when the Rat Pack was just beginning to appear togeter." People familiar with Vegas history know that this is the heydey of the mob in the city. The union's fortunes declined in the seventies and eighties, when organized crime lost its ascendancy and Vegas gambling was taken over by corporate capital. Eight hotels decertified the union during the eighties.

HERE responded by organizing. "We had to convert from business unionism to rank-and-file unionism," says Local 226 official D. Taylor. (A cynic might view this as changing from a tame mob union into a worker's union with real teeth.) They also responded by cutting a deal with Steve Wynn when he was preparing to open the Mirage, the first of the new breed of modern casino-resorts. In exchange for work-rule concessions and the union's lobbying efforts in Washington, Wynn agreed not to block organizing efforts at Wynn properties. When the Mirage opened, it was a union hotel.

Other casino owners were more reluctant to deal with the union. The union drew a line in the sand at Binion's Horseshoe, downtown. The union struck, setting up picket lines in front of Binion's in January 1989.

SF&F readers may remember this description of Local 226's picket line at Binion's from Tim Powers' novel Last Call:

Strikers from the culinary and bartenders unions were walking back and forth carrying signs in front of the Horseshoe, and one of them, a young woman with very short hair, had a megaphone.

"Baaad luck," the striker was chanting in an eerie, flat voice. "Baad luck at the 'Shoe! Come on oouut, losers!"

God, Dinh thought, Maybe I'd have stage fright, too.

Every Thanksgiving Binion's gave a turkey to each cabdriver, and Dinh, known as Nardie to all the night people of Las Vegas, had always dropped off her downtown fares in front of the place. She wondered if she'd soon have to start unloading them back by the Four Queens.

Business at the Horseshoe fell off. Once upon a time, nobody crossed Benny Binion; but Benny was dying, and maybe Local 226 still had mob juice. At any rate, after a strike that lasted nine and a half months, Benny's son Jack, now managing the 'Shoe, signed with the union. Benny died not long after, on Christmas Day of 1989.

After this, other casinos fell into line, except the Frontier, on the Strip. A six-year strike left the Frontier a ruined business, and in 1998 it was sold. The new owners quickly signed with Local 226.

Meyerson highlights the union-run training programs – funded by the casino-resorts – that open job prospects for union members in the lowest-tier jobs, such as housekeeping. With union encouragement, a worker can start in an essentially unskilled job and climb up a ladder of skills. From what Meyerson describes, this is one part of the world of casinos where everybody wins: the workers improve their skillsets, and earn more even at the lowest skill levels; the casino-resorts gets a pool of service-industry labor better trained to meet their hiring needs as they continue to expand; and the union continues to keep its place at the banquet table. Hotel workers in Las Vegas earn 40% more than their counterparts in Reno. Las Vegas dishwashers earn $4 per hour more than the national average 0f $7.45/hr.

This is because the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union fought to keep its place at the table when Las Vegas reinvented itself. At the same time, though, Las Vegas's growth made it possible. Las Vegas has continued to prosper even after 9-11, even after the dotcom bust and the NASDAQ crash. Those who look to Las Vegas to learn how the labor movement can revitalize itself need to keep this in mind.

(via Calpundit)

The Man Who Unfolded Himself; Dreaming While Awake

I'm living in another timeline, one in which the Civil War never happened and slavery never ended. The US government is authoritarian and repressive. I am working to change things, working to free the slaves. A climactic battle approaches, and it looks as if my side, the anti-slavery revolutionaries are going to lose our final battle.

Somehow I have the ability to move along my own lifeline, and I move in time to a situation where I think I can do things differently and change things away from this defeat ... and it works! The slaves are freed, and America becomes a better place than it was.

But in doing so, I break open the gates between the alternate realities. I am now like Billy Pilgrim, only more so: unstuck in not just in time, but in all the possibilities encompassed by my lifespan.

I explore the amazing range of possibilities, moving from lifeline-thread to lifeline-thread quickly. Quick as those shifts are, when I arrive in a thread, I have a sense of the long duration of my life on that thread. The resulting experience has the sense of enormous amounts of detail quickly reviewed, but the detail is there to be examined when I choose to do so.

In the threads that involve defeating the slavers and freeing the slaves, I find myself married to a prominent midwife and natural-childbirth advocate

A bunch of threads pass through Austin, Texas. In some of these threads, the US is broken up into independent states and nations, and Austin is known as the Texas-stadt in some of them, and Texas-richt in others.

I find myself facing a group of tall, slender women wearing diaphanous gowns and silver filigree circlets on their foreheads. They are standing in a tight circle around one of their number. It is clear that they intend to do something sexual with the woman in the middle. They see me, and beckon me to join them. "But I'm a man," I say. One of them laughs, takes me by the hand, and pulls me into the circle. My body is now held close to those of the others, arms around me, my arms around them. One woman's face is particularly close to mine. "You may not touch yourself," she tells me. She smirks lustily when she adds, "You won't need to...." ("But I'm a man," I keep thinking. "Why am I welcome here?") [Later, and I can't recall if it was in the dream or not, I realized that it was possible that on that lifeline-thread, I wasn't a man, but a woman like them.]

Another thread finds me victorious and successful, and partnered with a man: [Omitted]. We sit together on a sofa in our livingroom, entertaining friends. [He] is vigorous and healthy, completely recovered from the effects of his waking-life surgery.

From here the scene segues into a peculiar homoerotic ritual of which I am the focus. There are a number of naked men, perched on ladders or hanging from ropes or swings. One man is tying his penis into a knot around a pretzel-shaped object. Men are singing and chanting. I look up, and a rain of semen falls on my face, my hair and my shoulders. I feel like I ought to be disgusted, but it is part of the ritual so everything is as it should be.

Next I am looking at Frodo Baggins and Gandalf facing each other, and somehow I know that in truth Gandalf is Frodo's grandfather.

At this point, I am awoken by the stirring of D. Potter in bed beside me. She is getting up to empty her bladder. I lay beside her as she gets out of bed, thinking of what I could recall of the dream, and realize that I'm not altogether awake, that it seems as if my REM state has persisted past the moment of my becoming aware of my surroundings. I'm thinking about the dream, feeling like it's particularly important, and wondering whether I should get up to try to write it down then and there, I am also having sudden rapid flashes of images (faces, pictures, landscapes) and sounds. I'm still dreaming, and at the same time I am awake. I decide that it is more important to be with the experience of dreaming while awake, and so I lay there, soaking in the experience of the quick flashes of images, sounds, thoughts.

D. returns to the bed and we snuggle close. "I've been having a really weird dream," I tell her, "but I don't know how to describe it. In fact, I think I'm still dreaming right now." The feeling of the solidity and warmth of her body has a different character from the ongoing dream flashes, and cuts through them, distracting me from them. They fade into normal wakefulness. Not long after that, I return to sleep.

Later in the night, in my dreaming, I find myself holding a book. It is a thick mass-market paperback: Slash, by David Vurt. I read the sales copy on the back cover. It is about a man, a social activist, who is married to a midwife and home-birthing advocate. I find myself disappointed that at least part of my earlier dream that seemed so important to me, should have been lifted wholesale from a book.

Dream Update: Bob Dylan, E-Book Typos, and the Last Stand of the Rohirrim

12-12-2003

Debbie and I are hurrying through the halls of a hotel and conference center, hoping we won't be late for the presentation, which we want to see because it features an appearance by Bob Dylan.

We make it to the function room, and discover to our relief that it hasn't begun and there are still seats. It begins, though, and we discover why the event isn't as popular as we anticipated. It turns out that Dylan is completely incoherent: unable to speak, barely able to sing.

12-15-2003

In the dealer's room of an SF convention, I'm looking at a portable electronic book reading device that (for some peculiar reason) has headphones. I unwind the headphone cable wrapped around the device, and look at its screen.

The text shown is of a vintage SF story from the 1930s, part of an anthology edited by Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden. The line of text has, to my surprise, what appear to be typographical errors. I look up at Teresa, who is standing there on the other side of the table. She shrugs.

It happens that there is a copy handy of the pulp magazine with the original version of the story. I open it up and find the relevant page. Yes, the typos are there in the original as well. Whoever transcribed it had transcribed it verbatim, errors and all. I would have thought that Teresa would have fixed it.

12-16-2003

I'm in Seattle, helping to deal with the aftermath of Deb's mother's death, cleaning her apartment and such. One morning I get up and set up to get dressed, sorting through clothes in our suitcase, picking out clean underwear and socks.

The house is nothing at all like the Notkin family house in waking life; instead it is a sprawling ranch house with lots of sliding glass doors, the sort of thing you'd expect to find in a development in Orange County.

Akiva [my nephew] comes into the room and tells me that if I want to check my email, I can use Windows. "That's okay," I answer, "I have my Macintosh with me; I can use it instead."

It's raining, and it's cold. As I look out of the window, the rain turns to snow. The snow comes down quite thickly.

I go upstairs and encounter my friend [Omitted]. She gives me a big, warm hug, and this evolves into a romantic clinch. She is giving me all the signs of wanting to make love to me, e.g., kissing my fingers, caressing my face, etc. I've wanted this for years, but doubt holds me back: Is this really what she wants for her own sake, or is she just doing this to comfort me for the dreadful times I've been going through? Is this right for her? Is it right for me?

The scene shifts, and I am inspecting my new guitar: I identify it at a Fender Stratocaster; but it bears no resemblance to a waking-life Strat. Its body is long and narrow, and it has a pebbled vinyl finish. I note quite proudly that it has a Floyd Rose locking tremolo bridge. I sling its strap around my shoulders and play a couple of chords. I'm ready to rock.

The scene shifts again, and I'm outdoors, in a grassy valley. It's time for me to join up with the Rohirrim, as the armies of the Enemy are approaching. It is sunset. I can see horses scattered among the trees at the edge of the valley, where the slopes of the hills end at the floodplain.

At the head of the valley, the riders of Rohan are gathering. Some are getting wood together to build a bonfire, around which we will make our stand. There is an opening in the rock wall behind us. I go through and find the secret shelter into which we would retreat if things go badly. Here the king is conferring with his advisors.

I encounter a friend, a fat femme dyke in flowing robes, with colored mylar foil strips and patches decorating her face. [She's nobody I know in waking life.] I'm very glad to see her, knowing that she's chosen to join this in our time of desperate need, on the eve of battle. She asks me how I'm doing. I tell her, to my own surprise at its truth, that I'm the happiest I've been in a long time, that the exhilaration and fear of the prospect of battle has supplanted the dark depression of the recent bad times. I'm at my best, I tell her.

Then I ask her: "Are you sure you want to be here? We're playing for keeps tonight, you know." "I'm sure," she answers.

There is a sound outside the shelter: it's the music of electric guitars! I tell everyone else to be quiet, and peer outside.

It isn't the attacking force of the Enemy as some might have feared. Instead, it is a battalion of soldiers, from the English Army. [It was very definitely "English", not "British", in the dream.] I hail them, and their commander identifies them as the such-and-such battallion of the umpteenth regiment, detailed to assist in the defense of Rohan. I reply that I'm an American, detatched to the First Eored of the Mark for liaison duty. "I hope you have plenty of ammunition for those rifles," I tell him. "We're going to need it." The prospects for our defense are now looking substantially brighter.

The Law of the Ring

This is what happens when law students get fed up with studying:

Sauron: Offer and acceptance

"As a small token of your friendship Sauron asks this," he said: "that you should find this thief," such was his word, "and get from him, willing or no, a little ring, the least of rings, that once he stole. It is but a trifle that Sauron fancies, and an earnest of your good will. Find it, and three rings that the Dwarf-sires possessed of old shall be returned to you, and the realm of Moria shall be yours for ever. Find only news of the thief, whether he still lives and where, and you shall have great reward and lasting friendship from the Lord. Refuse, and things will not seem so well. Do you refuse?"

–The Fellowship of the Ring, in "The Council of Elrond"

It seems to me that's really two, maybe three separate offers. The first seems to be unambiguously an offer for a unilateral contract (to find the supposedly piddling ring for three of the Dwarf rings of power plus the estate of Moria), to be completed by performance. Dáin wouldn't want to bind himself to produce a ring; it's too risky. This seems like the straight-forward reward scenario envisioned as a prototypical offer for a unilateral contract. ...

The Dwarves' best argument is that the contract is unenforceable under the Statute of Frauds. The One Ring itself is of incalculable value. The rings that the Dwarf-sires possessed of old are almost certainly worth more than $5,000,000 a piece, let alone $5,000. Plus Moria is a vast mining tract, so the promise to hand it over can't be conveyed by an oral contract. It's hard to imagine that a disembodied all-seeing eye wreathed in flame can produce a signed writing, and besides, all I see are oral conversations in hissed whispers, maybe a palantír conversation or two – nothing, really, that would satisfy the memorandum required by the Statute.

Read it all. Including the comments. ("You did not mention that it is likely that Sauron's 'offers' contained improper threats/conduct that would likely overcome the will of any offeree. Thus they would be unenforceable agreements and Dain could keep the ring if he met the condition and actually found it.")

(via Scrivener's Error)

Roshambo and Luck

Greg Costikyan has posted to his blog an essay on Roshambo (Rock Paper Scissors), as part of his current theme of seeing what familiar games have to teach contemorary game designers.

Surprisingly, Greg reaches a wrong conclusion:

Rock, Paper, Scissors is surely one of the earliest games each of us learns to play. It can be played in essentially two ways. The first way is by selecting your move entirely at random, making no effort to predict what your opponent will choose. In this case, you will win a third of the time, lose a third of the time, and draw a third of the time.

The second way to play is, if you will "in earnest:" that is, by trying to guess what move your opponent will make next, and selecting your own move in response. This can work, if your opponent is also playing in earnest, and you are smarter than he. In that case, you will win more frequently than with the random strategy.

However, if one player does indeed win more often than random selection would allow, the other player has a strong incentive to adopt a random strategy, since his win ratio will rise from less than one-third to one-third. And if either player (or both) selects a random strategy, the outcome will be random.

Thus, Rock, Paper, Scissors is what I call a degenerate game; it ultimately degenerates into a game with random outcomes, losing any element of strategy—and becomes dull.

What Greg identifies as degeneracy in Roshambo exists in idealized, theoretical Roshambo, but not in the real-world game played by real players.

People are predictable. People can be psyched. People are no damn good at all at being random without artificial aids like coins or dice.

Suppose you, a human being, are playing long sequence of Roshambo throws against a savvy human opponent. Early on, you discover that your opponent seems to be wiping the floor with you, so you defend by trying to be as random as you possibly can. (Perhaps for a bar bet once you've memorized the decimal expansion of pi to many, many places, and decide to throw in accordance with that sequence of digits, modulo 3.)

Your opponent might still mop the floor with you! The game of competitive Roshambo is, among other things, a game of tells. You might be choosing your next throw completely randomly, but giving it away by your stance, the how you hold your hand, the motion of your arm, and so on.

The next level of the game comes when both players are aware of the real-world dimension of Roshambo. They each strive to eliminate tells ... or cultivating them with the intention of using them to mislead.

This is the level of Roshambo at which Perry Friedman is said to play:

Roshambo tournaments are rife with verbal sparring, psychological one-upmanship and manipulating opponents into tells. Former [poker] World Champion Phil Hellmuth, Jr. is generally right at home in such an environment, but met his match in one quarterfinal against Tiltboy Perry Friedman.

Hellmuth strode forth confidently to center ring, his 6-foot-6 inches towering a good foot above Friedman. He assumed his usual table demeanor, threatening to "look into Perry's soul" as he often does with his poker tournament opponents. After a few early ties when both players threw rock, Friedman switched to scissors to beat Hellmuth's paper. Friedman disdainfully exclaimed "rock, rock, paper?!" in a manner that clearly suggested it was an amateurish maneuver. For the remainder of the match, Friedman would outtalk and out-throw Hellmuth, until, leading 9-6, he proclaimed (in his best Scotty Nguyen impersonation): "If you go rock, it all ova baby!" Hellmuth couldn't resist the challenge, threw a rock and lost to Friedman's paper, sending the smirking Friedman to the semifinals. Perry smiled and confessed to the audience that he actually had no soul.

(From "The 2001 World Roshambo Championship")

Could Phil Hellmuth have defended against Perry Friedman's onslaught by randomizing his throws? Perhaps. But he did commit one of the classic blunders. (Classic blunders: Never get involved in a land war in Asia. Never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line. And never, ever take a Tiltboy on in a Roshambo match – or let him organize your PowerPoint presentation [but that's another story].)

That's Just Wrong!

Universal is releasing a live-action cinema revival of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Thunderbirds TV puppet show, directed by Jonathan Frakes. Here's the trailer (all 5.8 MB).

(via boingboing)

November Dreams, December Dreams

11-28-2003

I ride my bicycle downtown and lock it. I meet a woman for a date. It's our first date, so although it goes well, it doesn't go very far. I kiss her goodnight, and as we part ways, I muse on the "three date" rule and its implication for someone who is looking for a partner: Is it socially acceptable to interleave lots of first and second dates with lots of women before that crucial third date?

I return to my bicycle and unlock it. As I'm doing so, a car pulls up to the curb and men with guns get out and go into a building. It's a mob hit. The point of view shifts to an office foyer where the hitmen are firing submachineguns into an office door, and follows them out again.

Meanwhile, I have ducked into an alley and taken cover. The scene transforms. These aren't mafia hitmen; they are guerillas, and I am now a regular army officer. From my concealed position, I fire at the band of guerillas; they return fire and take cover.

The scene has entirely transformed into a rocky river valley, the ground covered with boulders and scree. I am now engaged in a prolonged firefight with enemy guerillas concealed among the boulders. I'm unsure how many opponents I'm facing, and I'm unsure of their locations. I am able to pick a couple of them off with single shots; then I engage in a prolonged exchange of fire with one guerilla, who has a large-caliber gun. I find myself staring down its barrel as I shoot at my opponent. But eventually I take him out.

Then, all is quiet. Are there any guerillas left? Maybe; but if there are, I'll just have to face their taking shots at me as I get out of there.

The setting is urban once again. A sergeant, who had been on guard detail, is wounded, having taken a bullet in his knee. I pick up his telephone and call headquarters to arrange for him to be picked up and taken to a hospital. The emergency room, I muse, is suddenly getting lots of experience handling gunshot wounds and similar trauma. My call gets transferred to my commanding officer, who chews me out for how I handled the firefight. "What do you expect from me? It's the first time I've seen fire in thirty years!"

11-29-2003

(1) I've just been hired for a new job at some kind of technology company. I'm unsure of how to do the job, or even whether I'm actually qualified for it. The nature of the job involved collating together various computer-generated weather reports and forecasts and generating a summary forecast, using my presumed weather knowledge and intuition, with the idea that this would be the best possible forecast. At my interview I promoted myself, saying that my physics degrees made me good for the job, that I had taken meteorology courses from experts, and so on. I've got my copy of Atmospheric Science by Wallace and Hobbs to put on my desk.

But I feel like I'm really unqualified. All I know about forecasting is that "persistence" is one of the best forecasting methods known ... but that it by definition is lousy at predicting changes in the weather.

On my first day on the job I fall asleep at my desk, and wake up late in the day. There are a bunch of full-color weather maps and satellite photos that need sorting, and I spend some time sorting them. But I realize that no one seems to care. My boss is nowhere to be found. I leave my desk and wander around the building. The ground floor is dark office cubicles and machine rooms. The upper floors are well lit, gleaming with chrome and plexiglass. I wander through a training area where customers learn to use the company's products. I talk with the CEO, who doesn't know who I am or who my boss is.

At last, for a relief, it's time to go home. It's a long way home, like a two-hour commute through the mountains. I hop onto my new motorcycle and get on the road. But it is beginning to rain, and I don't feel safe as a newly trained motorcyclist, so in the next town I pull over to wait for the rain to end. There is an older Indian casino there, and I go in, looking for the poker room. The interior of the casino is peculiarly dark and cramped. I find the poker room, but there are no games going (although they claim that a 1-5 stud game goes around the clock.)

(2) I'm spending lots of time in a hotel with a range of partying people. Some are very bourgeois, wealthy, materialist, and others are young hipster types. There is a rivalry going on between two older yuppie couples. The women in both couples seem to have taken a sexual interest in me, with the knowledge and consent of their male partners. But the rivalry is nasty. One couple is merely greedy and materialistic. The other couple, I'm sure, is a pair of scammers, perpetrating some kind of con. I suspect that they want to get me involved in some kind of rigged poker game, either to fleece me or to use my skills to fleece other rich people.

I get away from the yuppies and hang out with the younger people. I go to the communal bathing area and find a group of lesbians there, who invite me to join them. I'm minding my own business, getting clean, but they are engaging in sex play and without warning include me in their play: sensually caressing my arms and back. I reciprocate, but I'm wary of pushing boundaries: I caress arms, hands, and backs, but I stay away from obviously erotic touch.

One woman has had too much sun, and the sunburned back of her neck is peeling. I caress that, and brush away flakes of skin. At once, this is obviously a relief to her, and it is also painful. I try to be as careful as I can.

The materialistic yuppie couple comes in. The woman takes hold of me and holds my head between her breasts. She says we should spend some time alone together now. But then the other couple, the scammers come in. I break free, and the scammer woman takes me by the hand, leading me out of the room. There is a poker game going on, and they want me to play in it. Okay, it's the moment of truth: am I the one being conned here?

12-10-2003

(1) I'm in a political planning meeting with two of the characters from the play I saw last night. [The play was Continental Divide: Mothers Against, by David Edgar, mounted by Berkeley Rep.] The characters were Lorianne (the thin blonde [!] pundit) and Vincent (the black speechwriter). We are planning the campaign of the candidate, whom I really don't like (although I'm concealing this).

A beggar, a black man in ragged clothes, makes his way onto the estate where we are meeting, and accosts me: can I help him? He isn't asking for money or food. Instead, he wants me to help give him an injection. He proffers a hypodermic syringe filled with a clear yellow liquid. He explains that he is diabetic, and needs his insulin shot.

I realize that this is some kind of trap, a setup. The candidate has a hard line on drugs. I don't want to get involved in something that will tarnish my image in the campaign. I tell the beggar that I cannot help him. He drops the syringe on the ground in front of me and leaves. Now I know it's a setup – a real diabetic would have taken his insulin with him, and a real junkie wouldn't let his fix go to waste. It is imperative that I not get my fingerprints on the syringe.

I summon Lorianne and Vincent. I fear that one of them is responsible, having a knife out for me, and I want to let them know that I'm not that easy to knife. I show them the syringe and explain why I don't want to touch it. I don't explain that for the same reasons it would be unwise for either of them to pick it up, but they are both smart enough to figure that part out, and neither of them does. With them as witnesses, I call for one of the estate's security guards, and the three of us watch as the guard disposes of the syringe.

(2) There are five women, clones, who are involved in some covert scheme that might or might not involve world domination and might or might not involve travel to other worlds. They appear to be interested in me as a pawn for their scheme. I don't want to be a pawn.

One of the clones has a daughter, and it's not clear to me whether the daughter is her mother's womb-daughter or else is herself a clone.

The daughter seeks me out for conversation. She tells me that her mother and her clone-sisters are dying, that their scheme is failing. All their hopes rest in her, the daughter, and depend on her reproducing and building up the family's numbers. She wants me to father her children.

As she is explaining this to me, a cat appears and asks for attention. It is Rocky [who died, in waking life, last Sunday]. I pet him while we talk.

I explain my decision: that although I like her, I do not trust her mother and her clone-aunts, and I would not want my children to be part of their schemes.

(3) The city of London faces the conflict between the old and the new, between English tradition and American money. One of the great old townhouses has just been bought by an American oil company, and its tradition-laden name (something like Waterford House) has just been changed to that of the oil company: the Mobiltron Building.

While I am crossing Trafalgar Square, someone falls from a high window into the street below. It is a Hungarian aristocrat. Amazingly, he survives his fall. His body is stiff, as if made of plaster. I talk with him while waiting for an ambulance to arrive. He tells me that he did not jump, but slipped and fell from his balcony.

Later, I am riding a crouded trolley car, trying to get somewhere. One of those weird dream transitions takes place, and I lose the place in the book I'm reading about what is happening. I leaf through the pages of the book to find my place: the name change of the building – too early. Unrecognized, unremembered activity – too late. I try to find the page about riding on the crowded trolley.

12-11-2003

Debbie and I are hiking on a mountainside, roughing it, with camping gear in our packs. We are going downhill, and we are also trying not to be seen by others.

We descend down some tricky steep slopes and walk under tree cover. Then we pass through an open field. There are three sets of railroad tracks dividing the field, which is actually quite flat. Because of the traffic on the tracks, we need to choose the right moment to get across safely.

There is a pause between trains. I run across the field and cross the first track. I look to my right and see another train approaching. I crouch down between the tracks, but after a few moments the train isn't any closer. Debbie crosses the field and joins me. We decide to chance the rest of the crossing. We hop across the tracks and get to the other side of the field.

Here there is a mass of low, thick bushes growing in our way. It is the most formidable obstacle to our journey we have yet encountered. We start to make our way through it, pushing thickly leafed branches out of our way. I notice that the really thick shrubbery in front of us is really shrubs growing on a limestone brick wall. I follow the wall for a few paces and find a breach, which is quite easy to walk through.

We can hear traffic noises – cars driving on a street – below us. In front of us, at our feet, are the roofs of buildings lining that street. I turn around and look back, and notice how high the mountain rises above us. It appears that Debbie and I have descended a lot further than I had realized. There is a great waterfall flowing over a cliff. I hadn't noticed either the waterfall or the stream that ran down from it during our climb.

I think about how to get down to street level, and in a dream transition I am there, following the street back to the main highway. This is not the road we came in on to get to the mountain, but one further along the highway. I move along the highway, and see a sign: "28% grade ahead – steepest grade in Washington".

GlaxoSmithKline Boss Admits Most Drugs Don't Work for Most People

From The Independent:

A senior executive with Britain's biggest drugs company has admitted that most prescription medicines do not work on most people who take them. ... It is an open secret within the drugs industry that most of its products are ineffective in most patients but this is the first time that such a senior drugs boss has gone public. ... [Allen Roses, worldwide vice-president of genetics at GlaxoSmithKline said,]"The vast majority of drugs – more than 90 per cent – only work in 30 or 50 per cent of the people."

(via The Sideshow)

Rule #1

Being an Evil Overlord seems to be a good career choice. It pays well, there are all sorts of perks and you can set your own hours. However every Evil Overlord I've read about in books or seen in movies invariably gets overthrown and destroyed in the end. I've noticed that no matter whether they are barbarian lords, deranged wizards, mad scientists or alien invaders, they always seem to make the same basic mistakes every single time. . . .

1. My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.

from The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became an Evil Overlord

(via Eschaton)

Rule 0x0B

Elf Sternberg tells us the good news about the lawsuit filed by SCO against IBM claiming that IBM's use and distribution of Linux violates SCO's intellectual property rights in System V UNIX.

At a hearing last Friday, the presiding judge granted IBM's first and second motions to compel discovery, giving SCO thirty days to comply, and suspending all other discovery until the hearing next month. IBM is demanding that SCO identify precisely what source code for the Linux kernel is derived from System V. SCO has claimed in public statements that it knows what source code is affected, but it doesn't want to dilute its IP by revealing it. Well, the judge has just told them to put up or shut up.

According to an an observer at the hearing:

There are no offending "trade secrets" from SysV in the IBM case. However: "Trade Secrets" were stolen from Unixware during Monterey and wholesale given to Linux. "Confidential Information" was stolen from derivitive works of SysV specifically Dynix, specifically NUMA and RCU. IBM owns derivitive works but must "use" them as specified by license, namely, treated as part of the original software and kept "confidential". IBM owns derivitive works but cannot step outside of the scope of the license agreement. All of their outrageous public statements, in their entirety, (which the judge ripped them for) had nothing to do with IBM and were all related to SGI and that SGI has acknowledged in some degree.

Elf Sternberg says of the SGI IP leakage, This IP, it should be noted, was never put into production as Linus [Torvalds] deemed it irredeemably ugly and replaced it with something more elegant and independently produced.

Observers of the case report that IBM is beginning to make pointed hints about Rule Eleven. One wonders what has been taking them so long.

"The Turkey Was for the Centerpiece...."

According to the Washington Post, the turkey platter that George Bush showed off to soldiers during his hit-and-run photo op in Baghdad on Thanksgiving was a decoration, not intended to be served or eaten.

In the most widely published image from his Thanksgiving day trip to Baghdad, the beaming president is wearing an Army workout jacket and surrounded by soldiers as he cradles a huge platter laden with a golden-brown turkey.

The bird is so perfect it looks as if it came from a food magazine, with bunches of grapes and other trimmings completing a Norman Rockwell image that evokes bounty and security in one of the most dangerous parts of the world.

But as a small sign of the many ways the White House maximized the impact of the 21/2-hour stop at the Baghdad airport, administration officials said yesterday that Bush picked up a decoration, not a serving plate.

Officials said they did not know the turkey would be there or that Bush would pick it up. A contractor had roasted and primped the turkey to adorn the buffet line, while the 600 soldiers were served from cafeteria-style steam trays, the officials said. They said the bird was not placed there in anticipation of Bush's stealthy visit, and military sources said a trophy turkey is a standard feature of holiday chow lines.

Deeper in the article are choice paragraphs that reveal perhaps too much about the patronizing contempt for the American public held by Bush's handlers:

White House officials do not deny that they craft elaborate events to showcase Bush, but they maintain that these events are designed to accurately dramatize his policies and to convey qualities about him that are real.

"This was effective, because it captured something about the president that people know is true, that he really cares about the soldiers and gets emotional when he sees them," Mary Matalin, a former administration official, said about the trip to Baghdad. "You have to figure out how to capture the Bush we know, even if it doesn't come through in a speech situation or a press conference. He regularly rejects anything that is not him."

To tell the truth, we need to lie. Isn't that rather like destroying the village in order to save it?

(via Talking Points Memo)

Calling Patti Beadles...

In today's Morning Fix, Mark Morford declares a need to start a home poker game:

I want to gather a cluster of a few friends every week and have them bring buckets of spare change and whip up some exceptional food and enjoy much laughter and discussion and raunchy jokes and music and expensive scotch, and stay up too late until the last hand is played out and the last drop of whiskey is enjoyed and everyone goes home buzzed and askew and tired.

Mark seems to think that poker is some kind of Guy Thing, and that it's really about drinking booze and talking sex, with the cards being a kind of ritualistic glue.

Poker night. Once a week, lasting any number of hours, booze and cards and munchies and a handful of close friends, maybe a couple rotating slots for newbies. It would be beautiful and good and as I am in deep appreciative love with the female species I would happily welcome a woman to the table. Or three.

But then again, maybe not. Not that no fine callipygian card goddesses exist who could drink adeptly and bluff skillfully and appreciate the upscale whiskey-tasting experiments and more than hold her own when discussing hardcore sex and politics and religion and the cornering ability of fine European automobiles.

Does this sound like anyone we know?