I don't normally draw packages from EPEL, because some of them have conflicted with packages from other repositories that I use. But packages for Haskell on RHEL can be found there, and I haven't found working .RPMs elswehere. On the assumption that one is going to use those EPEL packages, gmp-devel, which is available from RHN, must be installed. To do so, as root, enter

yum install gmp-devel

There are at least a couple of ways to fetch and install the EPEL packages for Haskell. I think that the easiest is to use yum. As root, creäte a file

/etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo

with contents

[epel]
name=RHEL 6 - epel - $releasever - $basearch
baseurl=http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/beta/6/$basearch/
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1
priority=1
exclude=*release

Then as root enter

yum install haskell-platform

(After that, as root I delete that .repo file

rm /etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo

so as not to have those previously mentioned conflicts with packages from other repositories.)

If you’re actually trying to install another version of OpenOffice or under a different version of RHEL, then click on the OpenOffice tag, as there may be an entry on that other version.

My suggested procedure for installing OpenOffice 3.2.x under RHEL 6.x is essentially the same, mutatis mutandis, as that for installing OpenOffice 3.2.x under RHEL 5.x.:

1. If you don't have a JRE installed, then install one. As I write, Sun is at update 22 (while OpenOffice is at update 20), but check with Sun for a more recent version when you are installing OpenOffice. (I suggest that one use jdk-6uxx-linux-xxx-rpm.bin or jre-6uxx-linux-xxx-rpm.bin, rather than jre-6uxx-linux-xxx.bin.) The remainder of these instructions assume that one has a JRE installed.

2. Remove any earlier installation of OpenOffice. As root, enter these three commands:

   rpm -qa | grep openoffice | xargs rpm -e --nodeps
rpm -qa | grep ooobasis | xargs rpm -e --nodeps
rpm -qa | grep fake-db | xargs rpm -e --nodeps

3. Unpack OOo_3.2.x_LinuxIntel_install_wJRE_en-US.tar.gz (or the version appropriate to a devil-language, if you use one of those) to your filespace.

4. Go into resulting OOO32x_mxx_native_packed-x_en-US.xxxx/RPMS/ (or to the OOO32x_mxx_native_packed-x_xx-xx.xxxx/RPMS/ corresponding to your devil-tongue).

5. As root, run

   find . -maxdepth 1 -name "o*.rpm" | xargs rpm -U

6. As root, run

   rpm -U desktop-integration/openoffice.org*-redhat-menus-*.noarch.rpm

   (NB: You may need to log-out and back-in for the Applications menu to be up-dated and list the latest OpenOffice components. Your previous version may continue to be listed on the menu.)

7. As root, run

   rpm -U userland/*.rpm

8. Tell OpenOffice which JRE to use:

   • Launch OpenOffice:

     /usr/bin/openoffice.org3

     (It may not be listed on the applications menu unless you have logged-out and back-in. Before then, you may be able to launch it from the menu by way of a listing for a previous version.)
   • Select

     Tools | Options… | OpenOffice.org | Java | Use a Java runtime environment

   • Choose one of the environments that is then listed.
   • Click the OK button.
   • Shut-down OpenOffice. (The selection of JRE will be in effect upon next launch.)

After one votes in California, one is offered a sticker announcing that one has done so. In my area, the stickers are typically available in English, in Spanish, and in Vietnamese. I ask for one in Vietnamese.

There are people who want English to be constitutionally declared to be the language of America; they are stunningly wrong.

Of most immediate importance, they are wrong because, whenever anything is made a matter of law, it is made a matter of force; behind any law is ultimately a gun. There are times for laws because there are times for force; there are times for guns. But language choice is not such a time. I have only contempt for someone who claims that there is a symmetry between being forced to speak the language of a merchant because he will not transact in another language and that merchant being forced by the state to transact in some other language, or official proceedings being legally restricted to a language utterly alien to important parties. (And my contempt extends to those who would force the use of minority languages, as well or instead of majority languages.)

Perhaps of even greater long-run importance, if a language is made an official language, the state is thereby empowered to determine whether this-or-that communication conforms to that language, which is to say that control of a language is seized by the state when the language is made official. The state develops the power to decide its grammar and its vocabulary.

America was given a foundation, however imperfect, of classical liberalism. It represents a gross violation of that foundation to tell people in what language they must express themselves, and a gross violation of that foundation to offer-up control of one of our languages to the state.

One of our languages. English is one of our languages; there are others. Any language spoken by an American is an American language. (And any name held by an American is an American name.) And there are people who don't know English who are far better Americans than those who would give that language a legally privileged position.

The temptation of Daylight-Savings Time is easy to explain. If one times the activities that need light to occur as little as possible during times when light would have to be artificially generated, then one saves resources. As one moves away from the Winter Solstice, the time between sunrise and sunset lengthens, and the amount of natural light available in the mornings increases. We used time zones so that clocks are synchronized over reasonably large areas, rather than just long lines of longitude. And re-setting clocks is less failure-prone and otherwise cheaper than changing time-tables.

Unfortunately, Daylight-Savings Time doesn't really work. Worse, it kills people.

In the contiguous United States (the lower 48), the difference between the time of sunrise at the summer solstice and at the winter solstice is about two hours, and it's not as if the change takes place all at once. When an hour is added to the clocks, activities that were beginning at about sunrise are immediately beginning about an hour before sunrise; it takes more than a month for the seasonal change to catch-up to the clock change, and later in the year, as sunrise again has begun to take place later, there will be another month during which the seasonal difference is less than the clock difference. And the clocks through-out each time-zone, all the way to its western border, are typically being kept in synchronization with those on the eastern border; with time-zones being about an hour wide, activities that were taking place up to an hour after sunrise on the eastern border are taking place at or before sunrise elsewhere in the time zone. So we shouldn't be terribly shocked that statistically studies haven't been able to tease-out much-if-any actual savings associated with Daylight-Savings Time.

Meanwhile, it has been observed that, as the nation goes on or off Daylight-Savings Time, there is an increase in automobiles hitting pedestrians. That's because drivers adjust imperfectly to the apparent sudden change in how dark it is in the morning or in the evening. They are driving in the morning or in the evening as if it is lighter than it is, and the fact that they are driving as if it is darker than it is at the other end of the day doesn't offset the effects (because the marginal effect of caution is diminishing). When Daylight-Savings Time is begun, there an addition element of people being poorly rested; the effect is not much off-set by people being better rested when Standard Time is resumed.

One of the persisting confusions these days is that between a shaving mug and a mustache cup. In fact, they are quite different things.

A shaving mug is a mug in which soap, cream, or lotion is worked into a lather with a brush, which lather is then applied by brush to some area to be shaved.

A mustache cup is a drinking cup, with a guard to keep the drinker's mustache from being wet by and drawn into the drink.

Though, really, the guard of a mustache cup would simply be in the way if it were used as a shaving mug, none-the-less, in era in which relatively few people use shaving mugs, and almost no one uses a mustache cup, it's not a terrible surprise that the two should be confused. So I don't typically much reäct when seeing one listed as the other (or as both) on eBay.

However, I'm definitely amused when seeing a mustache cup listed as Antique Mustache Shaving Lavender Ladies Cup & Saucer (underscore mine). There were and are women who've been unfortunate when it came to facial hair; and some have had enough of a mustache that they could have got use from a mustache cup as such; but I really doubt that anyone has manufactured mustache cups specifically for ladies.

A few weeks ago, I got a standard seasonal influenza shot. None-the-less, a bit over a week ago (more than two weeks after the vaccination) I became ill with what seems an awful lot like a flu. It can be hard to distinguish a bad cold from a flu, but a even a bad cold should be over in a week or less. It's also possible that I've been hit by more than one infection (one opportunistically following on another), but Ockham's razor argues for one cause. So I'd say that I contracted a flu that was not covered by the vaccine.

I've tried to get some work done; but, mostly, I've felt that the last week-and-something has been lost.

---

During this episode, while dreaming in a feverish state, I invented a very fine pair of characters for Li'l Abner. (An immediate problem is that Li'l Abner ceased to be an on-going story in late 1977.)

One of these characters is Amicable Jones, who is known in Dogpatch as someone who has always been able to settle any dispute amicably. The other character is his father, who was unfortunately unnamed in my dream but whom I'll here call Irascible Jones. Irascible Jones has not been in Dogpatch for a great many years. He's instead been all over the world, creäting conflicts or involving himself in disputes that are never subsequently resolved.

Now it has been learned that Irascible Jones is returning to Dogpatch. Amicable Jones doesn't much want a reünion; not so much because he has some generalized fear of new conflict, but specifically because, to settle his own disputes amicably, he has often given the other party something that, in fact, properly belonged to Irascible Jones.

The self-styled SD Planning Committee, formed to fight cuts to state funding of education, health care, and social services, has posted flyers that declare

We face not a financial crisis, but a crisis of priorities,

I don't know why they end that with a comma, as it's followed by a sentence in which it cannot participate. In any case, it's a somewhat puffed-up way of saying that

Interesting concept, there, that there could be plenty of money in a budget, but that the money is not being well spent. They just might try applying that same concept to just those portions of the budget that are allocated to education, to health care, and to social services. Perhaps, even after cuts, there would be plenty of money, if only it were spent well. And perhaps even if funding to these programmes were increased to the greatest possible levels, it would be spent badly.

Okay, so there's no perhaps to it; that's just how it would be.

---

On the other hand, I have to grimace when I hear or read of linking teacher pay to performance.

I understand the desire to pay teachers based upon the quality of their teaching. And, outside of the teachers' unions, almost everyone understands that it's not a good thing to link teacher pay primarily (let alone directly) to years of service. But I'm pretty sure that real-world attempts to link teacher pay to ostensible measures of performance are going to increase

• disincentives for teachers to accept jobs working with less able students,
• incentives for teachers to teach to the tests by which student achievement is purportedly measured,
• student time tied-up in taking those d_mn'd tests, which themselves teach nothing to students beyond test-taking skills.

A profoundly different model of education is needed to get something that will work.

A part of that model would be to use markets to price teaching, recognizing (amongst other things) that different teaching contexts correspond to different markets.

Unfortunately, another part of that model is for parents to accept a significantly greater degree of responsibility for ensuring that their children are properly educated. The vast majority of parents seem willing to pass the buck to state-funded schools, regardless of their performance. It isn't sufficient to say Hey, I sent my kid to school! The school dropped the ball, not me!

The local Chick-fil-A is advertising that 14 October will be Mother/Son Date Night. Λαιος will be unable to attend, anyway.

The metric system has some points of genuine superiority to those of the English (aka American) system, but that superiority tends to be exaggerated. For example, the every-day English measures for volume tend to be implicitly binary, allowing easy halving or doubling. (If base 10 were everywhere superior to base 2, then our computers would be designed differently.)

One of the things that I was told as a child was that the metric system were superior because it measured in terms of mass, rather than weight, with the former being invariant while the latter would change in the face of a gravitational field. Well, actually, the English system has a unit of mass; it's the slug, 1 lb·sec²/ft, which is about 14.6 kg.

Meanwhile, I observe that, in countries where the metric system ostensibly prevails, people typically use its names of units of mass (gram and kilogram) for units of weight; they even refer to what is measured as a weight. Now, the real metric system does have a unit for weight, because weight is a force; weight can be measured by the newton (or by the dyne, which is a hundred-thousandth of a newton). But people aren't doing that; they're using kilogram as if it means about 9.807 N.

Much as it may be claimed that America is the only industrialized nation not on the metric system, really nobody's on it.

I notice that the Beeb most often wants to speak and write of weight, rather than of mass, but in the most ghastly unit of all, the stone (pronounced /stɛun/, with at least one pinkie extended). The stone is 14 pounds (divisible by 2 and, uh, 7). When weights don't divide into integer multiples of 14 pounds, tradition is to represent weight in terms of a combination of stone and pounds, as in Me mum weighs 19 stone and 12. Of course, if the Beeb were using pounds at all, there'd be the two obvious questions of

and So the Beeb feels compelled just to round everything up or down to an integral number of stone, and somebody's mum either gains two pounds or loses twelve.

I loathe the way that police officials and journalists will use the word suspect as if it means perpetrator, as in

When the register was opened, the suspect partially jumped over the counter and thrust both hands into the cash drawer, police spokesman Joel DeSpain said.

A suspect is one suspected — that is to say surmised — to have done something. To baldly declare that a person did something is to speak with far more than suspicion.

One can have multiple suspects even knowing that an act was committed by just one perpetrator. And one can have no suspects despite knowing that some person or persons must have acted; the use of suspect for perpetrator becomes utterly absurd when virtually nothing is known about the perpetrator. Here

An unknown suspect (or suspects) allegedly entered the garage during the previous night and removed a Cannondale bicycle valued at $500.

the police don't even know how many perpetrators there were. On whom does suspicion fall? Here

officers have no description of the suspect, except that he was wearing a black, red and white bunnyhug

they have a gender and a hooded, tri-color sweatshirt. On whom does suspicion fall?