I received an interesting piece of malevolent e.mail to-day.

It represents itself as coming from "Daily Top 10" <Aleksandra-namgof@asntechnologies.com> which isn't very slick, but the subject is given as CNN.com Daily Top 10, and the body looks very authentic: Some of the links were indeed to servers at cnn.com, but the video links were to http://97folders.org/news — proceed there only at your own risk. When I looked at that site, it attempted to persuade Windows users to download and install a program named adobe_flash.exe, which contains trojan malware which AVG identifies as I-Worm/Nuwar.V.

(Now, someone might expect users to know, from the site-name of 97folders.org, that this wasn't a legitimate CNN site, but the fact is that I've more than once been sent by a legitimate — if none-the-less goddamn'd stupid — organization to a site with an odd name. So I won't much blame anyone who trusts this site.)

When run on a Windows system, this malware adds

to the System folder (typically \WINDOWS\system32\). If you know a system on which this file has been installed, delete it. A file of this name is not part of an original installation, so if you find one then it is probably an artefact of an infection.

The trojan horse will also make a number of modifications to the WIndows registry. If you know how to edit the registy, then delete keys containing either the string CbEvtSvc or LEGACY_CBEVTSVC.

According to McAfee, if the code has been resident for about 30 minutes or more, then it will have attempted to download further malware.

Readers of this 'blog might recall that I collect working slide-rule tie-clips, and readers of my defunct LJ might recall that I have a collection of ordinary slide rules (to which I almost never make additions, because I had limited ambitions and most of these have been met).

Recently, the Woman of Interest mentioned the slide-rule tie-clip collection to her maternal grandmother, who volunteered that her late husband (grandfather to the Woman of Interest) had had one, and offered to give it to me. I was happy to accept, as none of my other such tie-clips has a family significance for me. I also learned that this man had had a slide rule, a Pickett & Eckel of unknown composition, but that it was not in working order; the rules wouldn't slide, and there was a lot of white powder on the device. I offered to fix it and return it, but the outcome of that offer was that it was given to the Woman of Interest, for whom I was to fix it.

The slide rule arrived on Monday (along with a bag of premium salt-water taffy, perhaps to sustain me as I worked on the device). It proved to be a Model 500, and I decided that it were of a light-weight metal with plastic laminate for the scales, and that the white-stuff were probably corrosion product. Some of Pickett's later slide rules were definitely made of aluminum, and aluminum oxide powder is typically white, but I didn't find confirmation on-line that this model were made of aluminum. Nor was I sure that other metal parts wouldn't be damaged by water; the braces, bolts, and rivets might be of a different metal, and the indicator spring was surely not aluminum. Meanwhile, I had to be careful about that plastic laminate as well.

Having gone to the local drug-store for something else, I wandered around the aisles looking for something to use to clean the slide rule, and saw jars of petroleum jelly. That seemed a great choice; it could be used to wet areas without water, loosening and suspending the oxide and other dirt. Any residue could function as a lubricant and water repellent, and it shouldn't reäct significantly with the metal, plastic or marking colorant. There would be no odor. The only down-side is that the residue will tend to hold onto particulates with which it has come into contact, but occasional wiping should fix that. (Unfortunately for the store, I already had a tub of petroleum jelly at home, but I'd bought that from them, years ago.)

Anyway, I carefully disassembled the slide rule, cleaned it with the petroleum jelly (and the indicator plates with hot water), reässembled it, and made sure that the scales and indicator plates were in good alignment. The slide rule is back in working order.

Year	Winner		Runner-Up
	Name	Affiliation	Name	Affiliation
1948	Truman	Yeehaw-Midwesterner	Dewey	Yankee
1952	Eisenhower	Midwesterner	Stevenson	Yankee-Midwesterner
1956	Eisenhower	Midwesterner	Stevenson	Yankee-Midwesterner
1960	Kennedy	Yankee	Nixon	Californian
1964	Johnson	Cowboy-Yeehaw	Goldwater	Cowboy
1968	Nixon	Californian	Humphrey	Yankee-Midwesterner
1972	Nixon	Californian	McGovern	Yankee-Midwesterner
1976	Carter	Yeehaw	Ford	Midwesterner
1980	Reagan	Faux-Cowboy Midwesterner-Californian	Carter	Yeehaw
1984	Reagan	Faux-Cowboy Midwesterner-Californian	Mondale	Yankee-Midwesterner
1988	Bush, GHW	Wannabe-Cowboy-Yeehaw Yankee	Dukakis	Yankee
1992	Clinton	Yeehaw	Bush, GHW	Wannabe-Cowboy-Yeehaw Yankee
1996	Clinton	Yeehaw	Dole	Midwesterner
2000	Bush, GW	Cowboy-Yeehaw	Gore	Faux-Yankee Yeehaw
2004	Bush, GW	Cowboy-Yeehaw	Kerry	Yankee

McCain has chosen to be a Cowboy, and Obama a Yankee-Midwesterner, though neither of them seems to have been raised thus. Nancy Pelosi is pressing Obama to accept a Cowboy-Yeehaw as running-mate.

Indicia of magazine for sale on eBay: Ace Annual, published semi-annually in 1973.

And the world is even faster-paced to-day.

My best thinking seems to be done in the shower. Yester-day, in the shower, I came up with the idea for what may in fact be a killer app.

The thing that distinguishes a killer app is not that it provides an excellent solution to a problem so much as that it provides an acceptable solution to an excellent problem. That is to say that a killer app may not have ideally efficient code, but manages to do something very desirable that other programs pretty much aren't doing at all.

Some time ago, I wrote a simple pair of programs for the use of the Woman of Interest and myself. Their functionality is very limited, and they were written under an assumption that now seems more dubious. So I was thinking about how to rewrite them into something more powerful, and quickly developed the general idea for the hypothetical app.

Later, I returned a phone call from my friend Phillip (a programmer), and during the course of our conversation sketched the idea for him, telling him that I would want to discuss it at some future date. But Phillip quickly got very actively interested, and discovered that I had coherent answers for related programming questions. (What I don't have are answers for some of the marketing problems.) Basically, he wouldn't let go of the subject, and we ended-up talking for hours. Phillip had one excellent technical suggestion about how to improve the app. He's planning to research potential sources of competition, and then get back to me.

The nature of the app is such that, if some party produces a decent implementation and gets a significant number of users before anyone else produces a decent implementation, then that party can probably profit for years, by virtue of path dependency. But, if a well-funded rival recognized the potential market before there were already a substantial number of users for the app, then that rival might be able to get utterly displace the first party. Hence, I'll remain annoyingly vague about the idea, until I either abandon it or have product ready to move.

Your mermaid, not unlike your cat, knows that you are made of meat.

My favorite history of economic thought is A History of Economic Reasoning by Karl Přibram. This book significantly shaped my thinking about the history of Western thought in general, and helped me to better understand some competing economic theories and how to resolve the conflicts amongst them.

I ran across a copy of an older book by him, Cartel Problems: An Analysis of Collective Monopolies in Europe with American Application for sale on-line, and ordered it.

It arrived on Friday. The copy is really in rather nice shape. But it bears the marks of an odd history.

The book was published by the Brookings Institution in 1935. On the first page after the copyright page, in the inside margin, is hand-written 1-6-55 Gift Brookings Instit. So my guess is that they had a bunch of copies still in stock in 1955, and decided to reduce their inventory by giving them away.

At one stage, it was in the browsing library established by William Allen White[1] in Kenyon Hall of the College of Emporia, a Presbyterian institution in Kansas, which had a strong focus on religion at its inception, but became more secular in the '50s and '60s.

The copy was moved from the White library to the John B. Anderson Memorial Library of the College.[2] A book-plate of the Anderson Memorial Library was pasted-over some previous plate (which I suspect was also of the Anderson Memorial Library), and over a stamping in ink below that, which reads FROM WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE (which I think must refer to the library, rather than to the man, as White died on 31 January 1944).[3] I believe that the 1-6-66 is simply a misreading of 1-6-55, that the College was given the copy in 1955, and placed the copy in the browsing library, and that the volume was later moved to the Anderson Memorial Library.

The Anderson Library itself was closed in 1968, but I presume that its entire collection was moved to the Laughlin-Lewis Library of the College.

The College of Emporia was closed at the end of 1973, but the site and facilities were bought in 1974 by The Way International, a heterodox Christian corporation. The college was thoroughly renovated over the next dozen years, but closed and its plant sold at auction in 1991.

I think that it was at about this point that the copy of Cartel Problems found its way to the Wallace Library of the Criswell Center for Biblical Studies, In Dallas, Texas. The Wallace Library stamped its name in ink onto the Anderson book-plate, onto the title page, and on a card-pocket on the inside back-cover (which bears no other marks).[4]

One might wonder what a place calling itself a Center for Biblical Studies was doing with a 1935 book on industrial organization. Indeed, the Criswell Center — now Criswell College — is a Southern Baptist institution, and the majors offered do not include social sciences or business. My guess is that the Center acquired this book in a lot, and just thoughtlessly put it in their stacks. Eventually, someone actually asked, and the book was liquidated.

It isn't clear from the condition of the book that anyone has ever actually read the thing. With the exception of a price written in pencil on the free front end-paper, all the observable wear-and-tear is plainly the result of the scribbling, pasting, and stamping of librarians, or shelf-wear, or possibly attributable to the book having been moved a few times.

---

[1]William Allen White was an important progressive journalist and political activist, and (for reasons unknown to me) They Might Be Giants use an image of his face in the video for Don't Let's Start and elsewhere.

[2]The John B. Anderson Memorial Library was established by Andrew Carnegie in memory of a Colonel Anderson, who had made his personal library available to working boys, including Carnegie, and had later served on the Board of Trustees of the College.

[3]Additionally, there is a raised impression of ANDERSON MEMORIAL LIBRARY / EMPORIA,KANSAS on the title page and on page 101.

[4]Additionally, CRISWELL CENTER / FOR BIBLICAL STUDIES is stamped in ink in the margin of page 29.

• The LJ Syndication Journal corresponding to this 'blog only presents public entries. Other entries are placed in a friends-only category, to make them relatively easy to find if you have an account at this 'blog. (There really aren't many a friends-only entries, though.)
• If you have an account with this 'blog, but have forgot your username or password, then just let me know. I can easily recover the username or reset the password. And if you'd like your username reset, that would be easy as well.
• Comments to entries should be made at the 'blog, rather than at the syndication journal; I'm not automatically notified of comments to the syndication journal, and the entries at the syndication journal are erased on a regular basis, along with any comments there.
• There's been a poor, lonely poll at the 'blog, which has received answers from only three brave souls. I'll probably move on to a new question soon.

paternity test

For some time now, tales have circulated that John Reid Edwards has fathered a child by a mistress. A specific alleged mistress has certainly had a child, but an Andrew Young (not Andrew Jackson Young jr, the famous activist and politician), a friend of Edwards, has claimed to be the father.

Young could do a lot to quash the claims that Edwards is the real father, and rescue Edwards' foundering political career, by the expedient of a paternity test — well, that is to say that Young could do this if he is truly the father. And, if Young is not sure that he is the father, but Edwards is sure that he is not the father, then Edwards could take the paternity test.

Of course, that's not happening. For some reason.

illegal campaign contribution

Meanwhile, the National Enquirer, which has been the doing most of the investigating and reporting (with the rest of the media generally ignoring the story or reporting on the reporting) now reports that a wealthy supporter of Edwards has been providing $15,000 per month to the mistress, and unspecified sums to Andrew Young.

Unlike the Enquirer, I wouldn't call this hush money. (We have little basis for presuming that the alleged mistress or Young would speak-out if not paid.) But, if Edwards is the father and thus would presumably be otherwise be bearing some of these costs, then these payments are a campaign contribution, well in excess of legal limits.

Now, personally, I'm opposed to limits on campaign contribution — they are a gross violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution — except that the politicians who themselves effected those limits should be bound by them.

I'm not sure just where Sergeant Colwell locates the bravery here. I am, unfortunately, sure that there will be mutterings about how, really, America is ultimately responsible for this attack.

Addendum:

They beat a very brave retreat.