Oil was over $80 a barrel not that long ago, and OPEC would love to see it there again. As the OPEC leadership is fond of saying, when it comes to oil the demand sets the price. And as much as we hate to admit it, they are right. This is the real truth behind capitalism - forget all the rhetoric about how the competition in capitalism keeps prices down, that has little to do with the way it actual works in the free market. What is far closer to the truth is that the market - including the oil market driven primarily by OPEC - will find out how much people are willing to pay and that sets the price. Even at the current price of about $60 a barrel, do you know what the profit percentage is for OPEC? It's about 2,900%. It costs OPEC about $2 to produce a barrel of oil, according to 60 minutes.

So the next time you think about complaining about high gas prices at the pump, just remember that it is free-market capitalism at it's absolute finest. The cost of production means nothing, it's all about how much people will put up with paying.

The late Paul Harvey could well have termed this The rest of the story....

You are being lied to about pirates

I've recently launched the Family Advocacy Movement (F.A.M) website developed using Drupal. Drupal totally rocks, and I've learned enough PHP along the way to implement some Drupal modules for the site. The first module I wrote was actually for my Nebraska Chess League site. That module defines a new content type for holding an attached PGN file and uses the jsPgnViewer.js I helped develop to view the game.

Next, I wrote yet another photo/video gallery module for Drupal because I wasn't happy with any of the ones I found. I wanted to be able to create a gallery page and attach a zip file with all the media and that would be all you had to do, and that's what my gallery does. This module will be used on the F.A.M. soon.

The core of the F.A.M. site, though, is a module I wrote called Shared Sites. It's vaguely similar to the Domain Access module, but without any of that module's bugs. Shared Sites allows the admin to configure dependent sites, the default set of which is based on the 50 U.S. states. Every site has the same layout and forums, but the content is keyed to that dependent site. Blogs are universal, however, but all the other content is filtered by the site (state) you are currently switched to.

So that's what I've been up to over the past two months or so, but hopefully I can get back to more blogging and chess playing soon! 

We finally broke in our new Pirates of the Caribbean Scrabble game! And no, we don't play with the screwy optional rules that came with this game. 4 bonus points for spelling Elizabeth? You've got to be kidding me!

Melanie 363, Kent 346. The crazy thing about this game is that on the second turn Melanie spelled cringes to use all her tiles, and then I had my turn and spelled juvenile to use all mine! I've never used all mine before, let alone right after someone used all theirs. The crazier thing was that several turns later Melanie used all her tiles again with the word staring!

I've been taking a good look at Drupal lately. I have some new website projects I was getting ready to start coding, and thought maybe I should look at something like a CMS (content management system) instead. Of course I looked at java ones first, but quite frankly they sucked. That led me into the uncharted (for me) realm of PHP ones, so I grabbed Drupal and started playing around.

It took me a couple of days to get the hang of it, and figuring out what Views did for me was the longest bit. But once I got my head wrapped around most of Drupal's concepts and way of doing things, I was hooked. But then I talked to my brother.

Kevin had just started using another PHP CMS application called Joomla for his personal site. I figured I should take a peek, and off I went to download it and start playing around. At first I thought Joomla looked more advanced than Drupal - it certainly had more eye candy. Then I started adding some extensions like I had done with Drupal, and the bloom fell quickly from the rose. Half of the extensions flat didn't work right, and most I had to register with external sites to even download. I crawled back to Drupal begging forgiveness, and that is where I've spent all my time since.

Since one of my new sites is chess related I was hoping to find a PGN viewer module I could plug into Drupal, but no luck. I have one on NCL that I wrote in javascript and plugged into my java code there for uploading PGN files and viewing them. What I want now is a way to add that to Drupal. Not being a PHP or Drupal coder this might be painful, but I have added it to my infinitely long to-do list, somewhere around infinity/2.

In the meantime, I found it pretty easy in Drupal to create a PGN content type using the IFRAME module and linking that to games on the NCL site. It works pretty well and the playable game shows up on my Drupal site. Not as nice as uploading to Drupal directly, but I'll get there.

I love it when I come across hard facts like this on how much wealthy people pay in taxes. It shows just one aspect of the true legacy of republicans like Bush - they talk about tax cuts but those cuts never reach very far down the ladder. The richest 400 Americans got a 33% tax cut, down to 17.2%. When was the last time you got a 33% cut? If you're an average American, the answer is never have, never will. If you're at the top of the food chain, however, it happens whenever the stalwarts of trickle down economics are in power long enough.

I can't even remember when my tax rate was 17.2%, but I can comfortably guess it was at least 15 years ago. What a government we have working for us common folk...

I've been following the Corus chess tournament and one fellow observer at chessgames.com noticed the following statistic:

Jan-30-09

al wazir: More than two thirds of the games in Group C so far have ended in wins; half of those in Group B have; but in Group A fewer than one third. Make of that what you will.

As I've said countless times before, I believe chess games are lost, not won. The higher the calibre of players, the more likely a draw will result. To illustrate this point, look at the results of games between players of equal rating. The lower the rating, the more likelihood of an error that the other player can seize on to win. But the higher the rating, the likelhood of major errors goes down sharply. I think this is what is shown by the above statistic from Corus. To improve your game, eliminiate your mistakes.

It was likely unavoidable - Illinois governor Blago was just impeached. However the funniest, saddest thing I've read about it was this:

"State government has come to a standstill because of lack of trust in
this administration," Sen. Bradley Burzynski, R-Clare, said before the
vote. "We now have the opportunity to move forward, to begin moving
past this era of corruption, pay-to-play politics and abuse of power."

 Uh-huh. Yup, he was the only bad apple in the whole barrel, I'm sure. Hey Sen. Burzynski - be careful on the phone, dude.

Here is a little ditty in follow-up to some changes at work for 2009:

All [redacted] US
Employees:

The purpose of this
email is to clarify information regarding the (2) Unpaid Days Off that [redacted] spoke of in his presentation, on Jan 8^th.   The two days selected are
May 22, 2009 and December 23, 2009.  This is a cost savings initiative for the
company that we felt all employees will have a stake in and one that we have
determined is needed for 2009.    

Many employees sent
emails asking how we would handle the (2) Unpaid Days.  The majority of the
emails we received from employees stated that they understood the reasons behind
the Unpaid Days.  Their concern on the matter centered around how it would be
handled administratively.  Many felt that they preferred to have their pay
reduced equally for the remaining pay periods in 2009.  This would reduce the
financial impact of having the reduction happening in only two pay periods.   We
have decided that this is the best way to go.

The net result is that
all employees will see a separate line item on their pay statements from
February 15^th – December 31^st.  The line item will be
listed as UPD (Unpaid Days Off).  This reduction amount will be equivalent to
the dollar amount for the two unpaid days, divided by the remaining (22) pay
periods.  This is not what is typically considered a true reduction in pay, as a
reduction in pay would present a lower base salary, AND you would still be
required to work those (2) days. 

Thank you for your
understanding and your dedication as we navigate through these challenging
economic times.   

Best Regards,
[redacted]
Human Resources Director

Now I like that they are doing this, don't get me wrong. What I object to is the typical corporate spin-control to continue to defend this as not a pay cut. Sorry but I'll take the red pill over the blue pill, thank you very much.

As I tell all my chess kids, chess games are almost always lost, not won. Of course the winner has to see how the game was lost by the other player, but the point is that "The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake. - Tartakover". The key to improving your game is to become more tactically aware, and this is hardly ground-breaking advice. But even so, I've been playing a lot of speed games online lately (mostly G/2 +12 or so) and this is a lesson I still need to learn.

I always immediately put my games into Hiarcs 10 and study the missed tactics. When I lose, it is of course due to missing my opponent's tactics. When I win, it's because they've missed mine. But that amazes me is the nature of the tactics I miss even in games that I win:

My opponent just played d5, failing to see my reply of Qc5+, winning the pawn. But look at what I missed after winning the pawn:

I played Qc1+ and went after the h2 pawn, a fine plan. However Bc4 wins the queen! It's incredible the number of such tactics I miss, and I've spent some time trying to understand why I miss them.

Typically the reason is because I'm already focused on some other target, and when my opponent doesn't stop me from going after that target I fail to see what new target might be even better. It's a common failing and stems from not reassessing the entire board after every move - something I've told my green-band chess kids more times than I can count.

The US education system might get a big helping hand from Uncle Sam to the tune of $150 billion as part of Obama's stimulus package. Of course republicans are outraged at this sort of frivolous spending (From the article linked above):

"But Republicans strongly criticized some of the proposals as wasteful
spending and an ill-considered expansion of the federal government’s
role, traditionally centered on aid to needy students, into new realms
like local school construction."

Of course these Republicans had no trouble spending trillions on the useless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but $150 billion for US education is just way over the line!

The twisted logic runs something like this - all this money for US education isn't going to stimulate the economy, so that money is better spent. The translation of this is, not surprisingly, that US corporations don't benefit from helping out education. At least not on the scale that they are used to following those trillions spent on the wars. Which makes the following even harder to swallow:

"One provision, which was sought by the student lending
industry and went unmentioned in early Congressional summaries of the
stimulus package, would temporarily increase subsidies to banks in the
guaranteed student loan program by tying them to a new index, partly
because recent federal intervention in the credit markets has
invalidated the previous index. A spokesman for Sallie Mae,
one of the largest student lenders, said the change was needed to keep
student loan markets fluid. Critics said it represented a potential new
windfall for lenders."

Ahem. "new windfall for lenders"? If the bank bailout already in progress is solid economic policy, then how is this different? My guess is that the members of congress complaining don't have these lenders in their districts/states and so they aren't getting their typical perks for pushing through some legislation.

But don't get me wrong - I think the corporate and bank bailouts are 100% misguided. The whole alleged theory of free market capitalism is the free bit. It's sink or swim, and if you can't swim, you sink - capitalistic Darwinism at its finest. These businesses ruined themselves after paying big bucks to congress to get rules loosened so that they could take bigger gambles. Well those gambles didn't pay off, so tough luck. The government simply shouldn't reward them with bailouts. If the reasoning is that these companies going under will hurt the average citizen, then spend that money on programs to help we the people instead. But therein lies the rub.

Call your US Senator and try to make an appointment to see them. You're nobody, so good luck with that. But a big CEO can surely get one, and they (or their lobbyists) do all the time. That is how US politics/goverment works. We the people really don't count for that much, not when compared to the money spent by companies to lobby congress. So it's no surprise that the agents of our government would rather give a helping hand to business rather than to us. It's nothing personal, it's just (the) business (of government).

UPDATE: I never thought I'd see the day when a career politician actually admits the way government works:

Blagojevich told the state Senate the tapes captured something that "all of us in politics do in order to run campaigns and win elections."

He's speaking here of getting something of value in exchange for legislation. Of course he goes on to maintain that, incredibly, he did nothing wrong. Riiiiiiiiiiight

It is absolutely impossible to escape the Blagojevich circus. I haven't even tried to avoid it, I've actively read a lot about his "plight". It's quite interesting to read and watch him proclaim that he did nothing wrong. His interview with Rachel Maddow is particularly telling, I think. He says he is the "anti-Nixon" because Nixon fought to keep all of his tapes secret while Blago is fighting to make all of his public. Blago keeps up his chant that if we could all hear all of the tapes that we'd agree he did nothing wrong. But he shoots himself in the foot when he says that it was only one of Nixon's tapes that brought him down. Like Nixon, a lot of the other tapes didn't capture him breaking any laws. But he is absolutely right that it just takes the one.

Yet I still have a problem with the sinners stoning the poor, "defenseless" whore. Politics has been run for centuries by selling favors in one way or another. Blago got caught merely talking about selling the senate seat, he hadn't even actually done it yet. How many of those who will impeach him have already cashed in on their policical seats? How many other times has Blago done so without getting caught? The answer is nowhere near zero, I'm sure.

Of course the answer is not to not impeach him - he should be impeached. But so should Bush have been impeached, and I'd guess conservatively half of congress. It's like mice, or perhaps in this case rats - for each one you catch, there are plenty more you don't.

I read earlier today about Citibank's new $50 million dollar luxury, executive jet. In light of their recent $45 billion dollar bailout this is particularly outlandish. But then I realized that big companies - just like our government - lose touch with reality because they deal with such big numbers all the time. They get desensitized to what those numbers mean.

 $50 million is is only about 1/1000 of $45 billion. So this would be like me taking out a loan for $1000 and then blowing $1 on a giant Snickers bar I don't need at the checkout line. When you look at the scale, it's just not that much in comparison. But there is a factor these CEOs (and members of congress, and the president) forget. Scale works both ways.

When you're the little guy, the average Joe or Jane, you're a lot like a tiny little ant to these people. And like an ant at a picnic, those crumbs of bread or spilled bit of water left behind means nothing to the big, scary people, but could very well mean survival to the ant. What is virtually nothing to a CEO or president is almost unimaginable to us. And this is what is wrong with the numbers. When Citibank tries to play down that 1/1000 slice of a $45 billion dollar pie, it's not what it means to them that is important - it's what it means to us. This is a lesson congress and our new president should reflect carefully on.

Melanie and I started playing Scrabble again, and decided to keep a running score total, and screenshots of the final boards. Yes. we are that nerdy. We didn't decide to do the latter until the second game, so the first is lost forever, but the second game is recorded here!

Melanie 271, Kent 321

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Game 3: Kent 319, Melanie 319

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