Add This Up

Explain this to me:

Scott Brown wins a Senate seat in the US.
The Democrat party's majority goes from 60 out of 100 (technically 58 + 2 independents) down to 59.

So they don't have the 'super' majority to push through legislation without any discussion, but they do still have the majority.
And they have the majority in the House of Representatives.
But with Mr Brown's election Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, now says that the Democrats do not have the numbers to pass Obama's health reform bill.

Now as far as I can work this out it must mean that Ms Pelosi cannot count on the support at least one sixth of Democrat votes in the Senate. How many can she count on in the House?

Naturally the Democrats are holding the Republicans responsible for some 'great evil' (not letting them provide inefficient, ineffective, and expensive provision of basic health cover for all), but isn't the issue really that the Democrats are not united on this?

Isn't the issue that Democrats in the Upper and Lower Houses cannot agree on abortion?

(The Upper House Democrats voted to change the legislation to not fund abortions, whilst the Lower House Democrats are adamant that the bill must fund abortions.)


I went to a 'sceptics' gathering at a pub this week. One of my Eastern European friends called to ask if I was interested. Me (Anglo-Australian), the Latvian guy, and two guys of German derivation. Have I mentioned before that I generally have a two hour time limit with Germans? Seriously, the way their brains work just starts to grate after a while. Anyhow, this 'meet and greet' was just a get-together to have a drink and a chat listed on a public activities website in town. Organised by a small number of former members of the Sceptics Society.

'Former members'? Yeah, the reason being that most of them turned out not to be 'sceptics', i.e. people who question any statement or thought to challenge its inherent assumptions and force it to hold to the truth. No, they were just storm troopers of established orthodox 'scientific' theory. If it is published in the media as a 'generally accepted fact' then they defend it against all. If it is 'on the edge' then they denounce it.

A few centuries ago they would have been fanatical defenders of the Flat Earth theory. (Sorry, the Flat Earth Fact.)

But some of the others that attended were worth listening to. They had open minds and were willing to consider and discuss things until the absolute facts were known.


I had an interview for a contract on Thursday. It is not my first preference - I am still angling to get on that ERP project that I can't name. And it is exactly half of what I got on my last two contracts (and almost half of what I got for the two before that). But it would pay the rent. The irony is that is is equivalent to the half dozen offers that I turned down in Singapore. And how I wish now that I had taken one of them and then enrolled in SMU part-time to finish a masters. I would still be in SG, which is, in my view, immeasurably preferable to being in AU.

The only major issue I have with living in Singapore is getting hold of English language Manga. Seriously! Here I have a list of standing orders with Pulp Fiction, and the stores are full of English language books in alphabetical order. In SG the only place that has a lot of manga in English and in order is Kinokuniya. All of the manga-specialist stores are in Chinese and their small selection of English titles is not arranged alphabetically. Well, not English alphabetically, I have my suspicion that it is alphabetically in Chinese. So you have to search the whole lot to find what you are after. It would be alright if Kinokuniy took orders, but they don't.

Totally different with comics; I found a small comic stall on the third or fourth level of Funan, one of the IT centres. (Funan, Sim Lim Tower, Sim Lim Square, and 'The Verve' was opening whilst I was there - each have a dozen or more floors of IT stores. Sim Lim Square focuses on cameras and things, Sim Lim Tower on computers, Funan is more mixed.) Anyhow, this stall had American comics at their US price in Sing Dollars. So if the covers said US$2.95 then it cost SG$2.95 - they would cost AU$7.95 in Australia! I was so stoked to find him! If I was living and working in SG then I would definitely be taking up comics again. (Mostly Marvel, but also Dark Horse, Image, Top Cow. I don't read DC.)


Over January I have kind of gone half nocturnal due to the heat; some weeks it is upper thirties and touches forty for a couple of days, then some weeks it is upper twenties to lower thirties, but all in all it has been encouraging me to not go outside until evening. Kind of like Singapore in that respect. But if I start working again then I will have to start getting up at 6:30 again. That is probably the hardest part about working, the getting up in the morning bit.

The contract would be building budgeting and forecasting models and reports in Business Object Planning. Which I can do in my sleep. Apparently they have Oracle Financials and Hyperion but they didn't talk about the latter; it's probably not Hyperion Planning but one of the other applications in the suite.

In a way I enjoy the periods between contracts where I am not working, where my time is my own. Yeah, I know that I get far too slack, but time without stress is nice. If only I could find some way that I could get twice the average income and only have to do half the average work.