jluix.com

Between, between and drink a chair. That’s abuelita-speak for “come in, come in and have a seat.” Welcome to my blog.

Thank you Chris from breddy.net for your generous hospitality in hosting it.

If you ever find yourself applying for a software-engineering position and you’re asked what a deadlock condition is, answer this.

Interviewer: What is a deadlock condition?

Candidate:
What if I were to tell you that I have an answer, but that for me to answer that question I would need your answer to the question?
And what if you, in turn, were to tell me that you also have an answer, but that for you to answer the question you would need my answer?
Have I answered your question?

Today Castro showed up to his birthday party wearing an imperialist, Adidas, red, white, and blue, American-flag sweat suit. Granted, these are also the Cuban flag colors, but its stripes are blue, not red. The American flag stripes are red. So, if this is in fact the real thing, doctors must’ve performed a political transplant operation converting the communist dictator into a blue-blooded Yanqui, the most ingineous sabotage possible!

Are the Adidas-modeling Castro photos fake and inaccurate? Some signs evincing a hoax.

1. The guy looks good enough to appear on television. Why doesn’t he?
2. Why not published by Granma, the official paper? Don’t be surprised if it’s later claimed that some punks at Juventud Rebelde were just having fun with Photoshop.
3. Obvious inconsistencies with last known real photos.
4. Looks better than before operation.
5. “Be ready for adverse news” hint in purported message.

When, years ago, I first read these lines in Richard III, Castro immediately came to mind. May the day they’re finally realized arrive soon, if it hasn’t already.

At hand, at hand,
Ensues his piteous and unpitied end:
Earth gapes, hell burns, fiends roar, saints pray.
To have him suddenly convey’d away.
Cancel his bond of life, dear God, I pray,
That I may live to say, The dog is dead!

http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/richardiii/richardiii.4.4.html

I had also emailed them to Val at babalublog and Marc at Uncommon Sense. Marc published them here.

The Miami Herald provides an intriguing interpretation of today’s note from “The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t.” It reports that “among older generations of Cubans, the term ‘adverse news’ often is used as short-hand for ‘a death in the family.”’ The Spanish was “noticia adversa.”

The current Cuban tragicomedy resembles more and more the “bring out yer dead” scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
The Dead Collector: Bring out yer dead.
[a man puts a body on the cart]
Large Man with Dead Body: Here’s one.
The Dead Collector: That’ll be ninepence.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I’m not dead.
The Dead Collector: What?
Large Man with Dead Body: Nothing. There’s your ninepence.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I’m not dead.
The Dead Collector: ‘Ere, he says he’s not dead.
Large Man with Dead Body: Yes he is.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I’m not.
The Dead Collector: He isn’t.
Large Man with Dead Body: Well, he will be soon, he’s very ill.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I’m getting better.
Large Man with Dead Body: No you’re not, you’ll be stone dead in a moment.
The Dead Collector: Well, I can’t take him like that. It’s against regulations.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I don’t want to go on the cart.
Large Man with Dead Body: Oh, don’t be such a baby.
The Dead Collector: I can’t take him.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I feel fine.
Large Man with Dead Body: Oh, do me a favor.
The Dead Collector: I can’t.
Large Man with Dead Body: Well, can you hang around for a couple of minutes? He won’t be long.
The Dead Collector: I promised I’d be at the Robinsons’. They’ve lost nine today.
Large Man with Dead Body: Well, when’s your next round?
The Dead Collector: Thursday.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I think I’ll go for a walk.
Large Man with Dead Body: You’re not fooling anyone, you know. Isn’t there anything you could do?
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I feel happy. I feel happy.
[the Dead Collector glances up and down the street furtively, then silences the Body with his a whack of his club]
Large Man with Dead Body: Ah, thank you very much.
The Dead Collector: Not at all. See you on Thursday.
Large Man with Dead Body: Right.

Now that Sun has dropped the “2″ from “J2EE” yielding “JEE,” which incidentally can be expressed arithmetically as J2EE / 2 = JEE, how should “JEE” be pronounced,

1. Spelled out, J-E-E, or
2. gee, rhyming with bee or ni, or
3. As something else altogether, as in “Alistair Cockburn” rhymes with “slow burn?”

The sound reproduced by the modern CD is inferior to what its predecessors achieved. That’s what Bob Dylan seems to have just said. I’m no expert audiophile, but CD’s, at face value, sound much better than LP’s, at least that’s what I remember, as I haven’t listened to vinyl since the ’80’s. And if he’s down on the CD format, I wonder what he thinks of iTunes’ AAC format. For music I really care about, I’ve been buying CD’s assuming the sound to be authentic whereas AAC offers a water-downed version of the original. And what about Hybrid SACD? Mr. Dylan, does this mean I shouldn’t go ahead and get me a copy of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan? What’s a Bob Dylan fan to do in these Modern Times?

Human rights are for humans. Cubans need not apply.

Liberals’ double standard when it comes to human rights in Cuba has always puzzled me. Why is it that they so love, admire, and support those who systematically deny the Cuban people their unalienable Rights, rights they demand for themselves? My best guess thus far has been to attribute it to political expediency. Carlos Eire, T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History at Yale University, attributes it to racism.

The worst thing about being a Cuban exile, at least for me, is having to field proposals such as that pitched at me by the New York Times, which display utter disdain for us exiles.. Why is it, I ask myself, that any editor at the Times should look down her nose at Cuban exiles who rejoice at Fidel’s demise, and then look for some Cuban who will confirm her bigotry?

Why should any well-educated North American utter a contemptuous remark reminiscent of Marie Antoinette’s “Let them eat cake� to me, hoping that I will agree with such inane and contemptible prejudice? Does she not know that every freedom she enjoys in the United States is illegal in Cuba? Does she not know that all those Cubans on Calle Ocho are jumping for joy at the thought their country might be able to enjoy the same freedoms she takes for granted? Does she care? Even worse, why is it that my opinion should have to pass some test before it is expressed?

How can this be?

Unfortunately, the answer to all my questions is brutally simple. When it comes to Cuba, bigotry is still acceptable in the highest circles. An insidious kind of prejudice still underlies the thinking of many well-educated North Americans when it comes to Cuba, a prejudice that allows otherwise reasonable people to accept or even praise political and social repression of the worst sort from any third world leader who pays lip service to egalitarian goals.

And the foundation on which this bigotry rests is at bottom a racist one: there are still far too many comfortably affluent First World people who judge all Third World people as inferior beings who must play by different rules. .

This is why Fidel not only escapes the kind of censure other dictators normally receive, but continues to be revered, despite the fact that he has ruined Cuba, driven twenty percent of the population into exile and imprisoned, tortured, and executed thousands more people than his Chilean counterpart Augusto Pinochet ever did. The mere fact that he boasts of free education and health care for his dark-skinned people makes him a great leader.

I’m not completely convinced the cause is purely racism, though I have seen evidence to this effect. A very liberal New England university professor and his wife once argued to me that the Chinese did not really need “Western-style” human rights, you know, freedom of speech, religion, press, etc… Such concepts were too advanced for them to handle and also maintain order.

But what about the Chilean case? Liberals denounce Pinochet’s human rights abuses, a right-wing dictator of a third world country.

So, perhaps the answer is both racism and political expediency. Liberals, in a means-to-an-end calculus, are able to overlook human rights violations perpetrated by left-wing dictators if the oppressed are unlucky enough to reside in the third world.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it’s washed to the sea?
Yes, ‘n’ how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
Yes, ‘n’ how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn’t see?

H/T: Babalublog.