When — if ever — is it proper to delete a post?

I remember looking at these and thinking, Migod, that’s high, but Style Spy spotted a pair of these in Austin — at The Domain, if you’re keeping score — and issued this recommendation:

Oh, those just tick all the boxes for me. Big, chunky, statement-y shoe (I’m still in the throes of this phase), patent leather — love, nice wide forefoot strap to keep ‘em from biting into my tender white flesh, interesting monochrome buckle that gives good detail without distracting from the shape of the shoe, good sturdy ankle strap to keep ‘em from falling off my hoof, Cinderella-like, as I trip down the palace stairs, fantastic neutral color that is going to go with everything.

Except for this minor detail:

Oh, and they’re $700.

Don’t think of it as seven hundred dollars: think of it as $140 per inch of height.

As in, you don’t:

Clothes will be strictly forbidden on the premises of Germany’s first hotel for nudists, which will open shortly in the southwestern Black Forest region.

Investors plan to set up a hotel catering exclusively to nudists in the picturesque Black Forest town of Freudenstadt, which incidentally translates as Town of Joys.

Guests will be required to remove their clothes at the entrance and must be naked at all times while on the premises, according to the strict house rules that have already been posted on the Internet.

And you will behave yourself:

The rules state that all guests must put towels on chairs and loungers before using them, that there be no sexual harassment and that all sexual activity in commonly accessible rooms is strictly forbidden. People who break the rules will have to put their clothes on and leave.

You’d be thrown out of an American naturist resort for similar offenses, so this doesn’t strike me as particularly harsh.

(Seen here.)

No one believes this from me, so maybe they’ll believe it from the Oklahoman’s Don Mecoy:

You know that person that everyone in the office thinks is a little odd — just a smidge off-center? The Dwight Schrute of the workplace? (If you can’t identify this person, it may be you).

I’m pretty sure it is.

Turns out, that guy or gal is helping you get work done, according to a recent study.

Let’s see what that’s about:

[A]ccording to new research co-authored by a Brigham Young University business professor, better decisions come from teams that include a “socially distinct newcomer.” That’s psychology-speak for someone who is different enough to bump other team members out of their comfort zones.

Researchers noticed this effect after conducting a traditional group problem-solving experiment. The twist was that a newcomer was added to each group about five minutes into their deliberations. And when the newcomer was a social outsider, teams were more likely to solve the problem successfully.

The research is published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Although Mecoy sees another possible explanation:

Perhaps those folks just make us want to get out of the room more quickly, cutting down on the cross-chatter and lame jokes that can bog down [a] meeting.

I try my hardest to contribute in my own inimitable fashion to corporate meetings, generally by not attending if I can possibly avoid it.

As reported here in the spring of ‘06:

Standard & Poor’s has upgraded Oklahoma City’s bond rating to AA+, the second-highest rating on the S&P scale, a testimonial, they said, to a “diverse, expanding regional economic base that serves as the state’s economic engine.” With this better credit rating, the city will presumably enjoy lower interest rates on future bond issues.

Well, you can forget that “second-highest” stuff:

Oklahoma City residents can expect to spend less on building streets and bridges, thanks to receiving the highest debt rating possible from Standard & Poor’s.

The move from AA+ to AAA puts the city into an elite group of the best municipal credits in the market.

“When it comes to economic news, this is as good as it gets,” Mayor Mick Cornett said Tuesday in a news conference at City Hall.

In these times, almost any good news is welcome, but getting more bang for one’s borrowed buck — the city has a bond issue coming out next week — is definitely a boon.

John Cage’s piano piece (well, technically, anyway) 4′33″ gets mentioned here pretty much any chance I get.

And this week the first movement, Tacet, is a free download at the iTunes Store:

John Cage was a modernist composer with a playful sense of humor. In 1952 he wrote this short piano piece, which instructs the soloist not to play any notes at all — the only sound you hear being provided by audience and their surroundings. The ensuing argument over whether this counts as music quickly made 4′33″ the most famous and controversial composition of Cage’s career. Today, the work is most widely understood as a challenge to the concept of silence — even when there’s apparently nothing present to make a sound, you can always hear something if you listen hard enough.

Then again, to me anyway, the really amazing aspect of 4′33″ is that someone was once accused of plagiarizing it.

(No, I’m not putting up an MP3, wiseguy.)

You know the slogan: “Don’t mess with Texas.” And that goes for you, too, Microsoft:

[A rider] in the proposed two-year, $182.2 billion state budget — expected to be taken up Wednesday by the Texas Senate — would require state agencies to get written approval from the Legislative Budget Board before buying Vista technology related to an operating system, equipment or licenses.

Sen. Juan Hinojosa, D-McAllen, added the provision in committee and said it’s meant to block purchases of the technology, which has been targeted by criticism: “Don’t buy it, because it’s not worth it.”

Hinojosa, Senate Finance Committee vice chairman, said, “We have a lot of problems with the Vista program. It had a lot of bugs. It takes up a lot of memory. It’s not compatible with other equipment, and it’s supposed to be an upgrade from the XP program that is being used by state agencies, and it’s not.”

We were unable to confirm the rumor that the Alamo has gone Macintosh.

(Via the Consumerist.)

Venomous Kate is calling it a day:

After 6,053 posts over the past six years — and that’s not even counting the entries at my other three blogs or at Pajamas Media — I’ve reached a point where I no longer feel the least bit interested in spending my days online.

I know the feeling. Almost. (Though I’m still around for some reason.)

In the past two months, as I’ve spent increasingly less time online, I’ve discovered something profound: it’s not that I was dissatisfied with the life I was living, it’s that I was living too much of that life online.

Staying away from the computer on a regular basis has given me the time and mental energy to appreciate my loved ones, to accomplish projects I previously believed I didn’t have time for, and to simply take pleasure in being without feeling the compulsion to share every detail of my existence with the online community. (It’s also helped me shed 17 of the far-too-many-to-admit-in-public pounds that I’ve put on in the past 6 years as my life dwindled to the space between my bed, fridge and laptop.)

That’s the problem with life online: it makes phrases like “increasingly less” seem to make sense.

But that’s just me having a hissy fit because I know I’m going to miss her. (“Gee whiz, Kate, six years? They kept Guiding Light on for seventy-two!“)

Steve Lackmeyer mentions consultant Jeff Speck, who most recently told us what a miserable place central Oklahoma City is for pedestrians, and quotes this report from one of the news babes:

To put this into perspective for those of you who drive, at $10.66 a pothole, that $20,000 study [by Speck] could have paid for 1,876 potholes to be filled.

I’m assuming the station sends someone to her house to pick her up every day, because no one who actually drives in this city would be impressed by a mere 1,876 potholes.

Or the Expedition, or the Yukon XL:

Just one of the T-shirt designs at snoburbia, “making fun of snobbery, overachieverism and suburbia, as well as celebrating where you live — snoburbia.”

(There’s also a blog, which I know some of you have been reading.)

Lost in the uproar over the Rickrolling of General Motors was this announcement regarding the supposedly-doomed Saturn marque:

“In the next three weeks, we will announce a long-term partnership that will provide Saturn with world-class cars,” said Todd Ingersoll, who owns Saturn of Danbury [CT] and Saturn of Watertown [also CT].

“This will ensure the brand not only survives but flourishes.”

Ingersoll has been leading a task force organized by Saturn’s Franchise Operations Team. It has been looking at ways to spin off the brand from General Motors.

The task force was established in December after GM officials said they would focus on the four core brands of Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC and Buick.

Still unannounced, of course, is the name of this proposed partner. I’m guessing, mostly by the process of elimination — who else is there? — that Saturn is trying to hook up with PSA Peugeot Citroën, the second-largest automaker in Europe, which has had no presence Stateside for many years, unless you count Lt. Columbo’s Peugeot 403.

In the meantime:

Ingersoll said Saturn will transition during the next two years from vehicles in the company’s current lineup produced by GM to vehicles that will be produced by the new long-term partner, which he declined to name.

He also declined to comment on whether the long-term partner would purchase the Saturn brand, provide vehicles for an independent Saturn, or whether the future organization would be some hybrid of both options.

Either way, it’s too late to save Saturn of Northwest Arkansas, which closed two weeks ago.

This week’s Carnival of the Vanities, the 328th, appears during the G-20 summit, and has been duly tagged “G20″ by Andrew Ian Dodge.

I note here that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, were it an independent nation, would have the 18th largest economy in the world, which would theoretically qualify it for the G-20. Pennsylvania, incidentally, was created by a land grant from King Charles II to William Penn — His Majesty had owed a debt to Penn’s father — 328 years ago.

As I whined the day my fence was hit:

I am at a loss here, in several senses of the word. It’s my understanding (which may be incorrect) that this fence is a shared resource, but the likelihood that I’ll pry anything out of the apartment owner is pretty low.

And once again I am wrong: some time today he dispatched a maintenance type (I assume) to attempt to repair the damaged section. The tenuous connections to the posts are now less so, and a reinforcement has been added to the lower crossbar.

It’s not very pretty, I suppose, but it’s solid, and it’s better than I had any reason to expect. I will dispatch a letter tomorrow thanking the owner for his attention to this matter.

From the Little Axe Ledger:

Cleveland County is one of only three counties in Oklahoma that does not levy a sales tax. That ends April 1, when a ¼ cent sales tax goes into effect. County voters approved the tax last December to finance construction of a new jail at Franklin Road and 24th Avenue NW.

Hmmm. I live in one of the holdouts — Oklahoma County — but what’s the other?

The Tax Commission made a list [link goes to PDF file], and after checking it twice, I find that Hughes County has no county sales tax.

On the other hand, Holdenville, the seat thereof, will sock you for 5 percent, over and above the state levy of 4.5.

(After that Tax Commission link dies, you can find the current numbers here.)

A letter by Matt DePree, Denver, CO, to the editor of Car and Driver:

Car and Driver is as much fun as a strip club run by the campus feminist collective. In a magazine that should be full of appreciation for cars, every feature article includes some mea culpa about carbon footprints, peak oil, or some other Al Gore cliché. The more fun the car, the more embarrassed you seem to be writing about it. Readers interested in car magazines aren’t interested in your political opinions, and if we were, we’d appreciate your advocacy on behalf of awesome cars instead of shame.

Does Guns & Ammo include a sentence in every article about the tragedy of handgun violence? Does Vogue mention eating disorders or the suffering of furry animals? If it makes you feel better, change your title to Frisky Sheepherder so your writers are less embarrassed to hand out their business cards.

[Insert "Dodge Ram" joke here]

I’ve kvetched about passwords before, but the demands keep escalating, as poor Smitty discovers:

Please enter your old password and a new password in the spaces below using the following password rules:

The password must be at least 14 to 30 characters long.
The new password must differ from the old password by at least 4 characters.
Passwords ARE case sensitive.
Special Characters are allowed in the password with the exception of the single quote (‘), double quote (“), and less-than sign (<).
The password must contain at least:

• 2 uppercase alpha characters [A-Z]
• 2 lowercase alpha characters [a-z]
• 2 numeric characters [0-9]
• 2 special characters [ ~!@#$%^&*()-_+={}[]:;,>/ ]

The password must not:

• contain spaces
• contain the single quote (‘), double quote (“), or the less-than sign (<)
• be the same as your user-id

How about B!teM3;Ucr@pwease1?

(Note to any and all sysadmins: If this shows up on your password list, well, I tried.)

Still obsessing over bonuses and the taxation thereof? Adam Gurri boils down the pertinent section of the Internal Revenue Code:

Corporations that pay their executives more than $1,000,000 in salary do not receive particular tax deductions associated with business expenses. But, corporations that pay their executives more than $1,000,000 in performance-based compensation (read: bonuses) will receive those tax deductions.

Obviously I’m not the guy who defines “performance” — that’s up to the board of directors — but it seems pretty clear to me that Congress opened this can of worms, inasmuch as they’re to blame for the tax code in the first place, and as usual (see Zymurgy) they’re failing to recan the critters properly.

Moses is Departing Egypt: A Facebook Haggadah.

Somehow I suspect this isn’t quite, um, Orthodox.

(Seen here.)

All photo paper is not equal: just because it works in your DeskJet, you cannot assume it will work in a color laser.

From the “Been there, done similarly” files:

[I] called the home alarm system company. A while ago I got a plaintive wail from the junction box: LOW BATT. A call to tech support gave me a complex series of instructions designed to revive Lowbatt from his confused, enervated state: unplug the transformer, disconnect the leads, let it sit for a while and think about what it’s done. This I did — and when I reconnected the leads, the battery wailed again.

So. Called them up. This call may be monitored for quality assurance. They all say that, but only this company gives you the Beep! every 30 seconds like you’re on an Apollo mission. In the middle of the conversation the tech accidentally cut me off. They didn’t call back. I called back. We fixed everything, but I was wondering if I could replace the battery.

The tech said sure. Just go to any store that sells them.

I said I was thinking that they could replace the battery. It being their product, and all. It is an interesting question — I don’t expect DirecTV to replace the batteries in my remote, but this thing is the size of a battery you’d find in construction equipment. He said he’d check to see if I had the protection plan … Yeah, you do. But the earliest date I can see for Bismarck is April 8.

I’m not in Bismarck, I said. That’s North Dakota. I’m in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Well that’s the service area I’m seeing here. It says they’re backed up because of the Red River flood.

That’s nowhere near where I am.

He seemed irritated.

Are you near interstate 94 and interstate 29? he asked.

“I’m a few miles from 94, and 247 miles from 29.”

Well that’s what I’m seeing here.

Great. If this guy was in charge of a Predator drone, we’d be at war with Switzerland.

Suddenly I feel better about my alarm company, which so far has yet to provoke any international incidents.

From the fall of 2007:

So I popped open the cabinet, to the extent that “popped open” applies to a metal box that’s sealed with Phillips screws, and found the offending component. Looked just like a Sears DieHard sent through the debigulator: same lead-acid chemistry, same 12 volts, though obviously not up to the task of starting a car. I grat my teeth and betook myself to Batteries Plus, where they had a whole shelf of the little bastiges.

And while they didn’t dispatch a tech, they did send me a spare — and a bill for $25.

What can you say about a game where your best shooter is Shaun Livingston?

Okay, that’s unfair — to Livingston, who has busted a nut trying to get back into the NBA after that godawful knee injury in ‘07 just about killed his career altogether. And indeed, Livingston’s return to active duty — he scored 10 points and reeled in three rebounds in 26 minutes — was the one ray of sunshine through the blackness inside the Ford as the Trail Blazers stomped all over the Thunder, 107-72.

I’m serious. Take out Livingston’s five-for-six from the floor, and the Thunder shot barely 32 percent. Then again, the Blazers’ defense was impeccable: they rolled up 57 rebounds (OKC managed only 35), and rookie forward Nicolas Batum bottled up Kevin Durant all night, holding KD to 13 points, the most any of the Thunder could manage.

Meanwhile, Portland poured in the points: LaMarcus Aldridge had 35, plus 18 rebounds to boot; Brandon Roy had 15; Steve Blake had 14 plus 10 assists. And Joel Przybilla hit only one bucket, but he hauled in 11 boards.

So for me, anyway, this was the Shaun Livingston Show, and once again, I marvel at the prescience of Thunder GM Sam Presti, who, unlike apparently everyone else in this league, didn’t think the poor fellow was washed up. One good game perhaps proves nothing; then again, Livingston did score in double figures five times in eleven games for the D-League’s Tulsa 66ers before getting the call. Besides, “all he has to do to earn a consistent spot in the rotation is be better than Earl Watson.”

The Pacers are here Sunday.

It’s the third of April. Do you know where your Social Security card is?

(Suggested by HeatherRadish.)

According to this writeup at Autoblog, Saab will be reporting to the district court in Vänersborg on Monday, which isn’t surprising — and that “[t]here are reported to be nearly 20 interested parties looking into what Saab has to offer after the company filed for [bankruptcy] protection in February,” which is.

Only once have I ever gotten seat time in a Saab, in a middle-1980s 900 hatch, and the experience was memorable, not just for the inevitable fumbling for the ignition switch (between the seats, as usual), but for the ease with which the little Swede slipped through traffic on I-40 westbound, and for the prodigious noise from under its beak.

“Um, you’re going a trifle fast,” came the voice from the passenger seat.

I looked at the dash again, and for some reason, I’d conflated speedo and tach; I was doing somewhere upwards of 80 — and still in third gear, yet.

The trick, of course, was to slow down without looking like I was slowing down. I’m better at that now than I used to be.

And the experience of one driver, for less than one hour, a quarter of a century ago, counts for nothing in this matter, but I still hope someone manages to save Saab.

Not much to choose between them, but you definitely don’t want both:

DO NOT INSTALL IE8 ON VISTA HOME PREMIUM!!!!!

Any time you can get more than one exclamation point out of Steven Den Beste, you have to figure he really means it.

(Via Jaquandor, who notes, “none of this crap happens on a Mac!”

The opposite, I’ve decided, of “listlessness,” which was something distressingly evident in last night’s thrashing by the Blazers. Joe Smith, previously a Cleveland Cavalier, traded to Oklahoma City this season, now a Cav again, remembers this sort of thing:

“In Oklahoma City, we had a great group of guys, enjoyed each other’s company in the locker room, but on the floor, things weren’t going as planned. It was a big debate because I felt we dug that hole together… I’m not the kind of guy to give up or quit on any team regardless of what the situation is.”

What makes the Cavs different:

“The difference between here and Oklahoma is that … we go out there with an attitude of ‘we’re supposed to do it’. There’s no if’s, and’s or but’s about it… That’s the type of confidence and attitude we take into every game … the good thing about it is what this team has a chance to do. After a long career, that’s kind of what can make my career a good one. To have a chance to win the title.”

The Thunder will have to “do it” a few more times, or a lot more times, to get into that mindset. It’s easier for Joe Smith: he’s spent as much time in this league as all of last night’s Oklahoma City starting five combined. (Nenad Krstić is the old man: this is his fifth season. Smith’s in his fourteenth.) With time, experience, and (eventually) wins, they’ll become listful — I hope.

“When we try to pick out anything by itself,” wrote John Muir, “we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” Florida doesn’t produce any substantial number of cars, but the collapse in the auto market is hurting Florida more than you’d think.

Think grapefruit:

Ever wondered what’s in those huge car carriers on their return voyage from delivering cars from Japan to the US? Exactly. Grapefruits. US shipping firm Great American Lines Inc.’s Sunbelt Spirit is one of the few vehicle carriers in the world that has refrigerated holds for carrying agricultural products. Because it can carry as many as ten times more grapefruits than conventional container ships, transport costs are lower. Result: This vessel alone delivers almost a fifth of all Florida grapefruits shipped to Japan.

Now the tart part: “The ship’s March voyage was its sole round trip scheduled for this season, which runs from last November to this June, compared with the three last season,” says the Nikkei. Its main business of carrying Toyota and other Japanese-made vehicles is, well, rotten. As a result, Japanese imports of Florida grapefruits are expected to fall by about 20% in volume terms.

Currently, grapefruits are sold for about a dollar each at supermarkets in Tokyo. Japanese grapefruit lovers are girding for higher prices because the juicy fruit will be in short supply. The next unintended consequence: Florida grapefruit growers want their bailout, too.

This is potentially a much greater hit to Florida grapefruit growers than, say, the use of statins for cholesterol control.

I’m in Mary Fallin’s House district (OK 5), so I got this 9 x 12 postcard from her with the following headline: What are “tax and spend” liberals in Washington doing with your money?”

Well, duh. They’re taxing and spending. That’s what they do.

As always, there’s the dubiously-worded Constituent Survey, where the questions are loaded and the answers are always what the officeholder wants to hear.

Fallin might have a tad more credibility on this issue had she not originally switched her vote on the initial bailout package.

And there are two words you won’t see anywhere on this card: “tea party.”

Agent Bedhead quotes a Trent Reznor tweet: “YZ is alive.”

Whether this means that we’re actually on our way to Year Zero, or that we’re going to see a Nine Inch Nails album translated into another medium entirely, is not entirely clear. I’ve mentioned Year Zero, the album, before:

“Zero,” in this case, equals 2022, at which time the former United States of America, having been repeatedly attacked by terrorists, is replaced with a theocracy with more or less absolute control over the populace. If this sounds even more abrasive than your standard Trent Reznor rants, well, wait ’til you see it on HBO.

At the time, Reznor had said that he’d pitched the idea to the cable network, and it was well-received, which suggests that something might actually become of the premise. At least, I am trying to believe so.

She was, however, a bird, and after a few questions I determined which bird: a sparrow which had been fluttering past my window for a week or two. How it is she came to acquire humanoid form, I never did quite understand, though I do remember the name of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck being dropped somewhere along the way. Nor did I understand why, in acquiring said form, she used as a model someone we all knew: instant acceptance without question, I’m guessing, and indeed, she was routinely greeted as though she were the one she’d copied, though it proved to be a blessing that the two of them never actually met.

I hung up a set of curtains behind the couch for a nesting area, and she asked me to bring her music, promising to keep the noise down. Her tastes apparently ran to the latter-day big bands: Paul Whiteman didn’t do a thing for her, but Toshiko Akiyoshi did. And vinyl, if possible, instead of CDs; something about the Compact Disc didn’t agree with her hearing.

What? Oh, that. Didn’t happen. I didn’t try. She had said that there were only a few days a month when it was even possible.

And right before one of those days, she became ill. I came back to her darkened corner; she told me to go away. I went to the phone instead.

The ambulance came, and they loaded her onto a gurney. I followed in my car. When we arrived at the ER, the doors were thrown open, and one attendant looked dazed: “I don’t know what happened. She gave out with a cry, and all of a sudden, she was, like, gone.”

I looked up into a tree, its branches nicely framed by the moonlight. I had no reason to think she was there, but the light was better.

[This is what happens when you get up early, cut through a swath of Web work, and go back to bed when the sun comes up.]

The New York Post has ruled that Michelle Obama comes off better in this Battle of the Outfits than her French counterpart, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy:

In one corner, Michelle called on one of her designer go-tos, New York-based Thakoon Panichgul, for a custom-made floral silk jacquard coat and contrasting dress.

In the other, Carla pulled out a velvet lamb skin coat and Babe bag by her favorite legendary Paris house of Dior.

But “babe,” not so much. Even in kitten heels, Mrs. O towered over the French president’s hot wife. Her guns easily overpowered her fashion opponent’s.

Mrs. Sarkozy sullied herself by choosing a putty non-color that managed to turn the former supermodel into a drab dame.

I concede on that “non-color” — there’s something of cheese mold about it — but Mrs. O has once again managed to come up with something that could be flattering, but isn’t. I think it’s the pattern: just a little bit too large and unsubtle, even for her Amazon-lite bod. (Like she’s “dragging around a shower curtain,” says Webutante.)

To me, it’s a draw. Your mileage, of course, may vary.