Would someone please explain to me...

- how a so-called "plug and play" wireless mouse and USB transmitter can simply and repeatedly not work at all on my laptop, even when given a fresh set of AAA batteries and a steady light on the transmitter?

- why on God's green and pleasant Earth someone would write a piece of enterprise Website creation/maintenance software to depend on no less than three separate versions of the Java runtime engine—1.4.1_02, 1.4.1_06 and 1.4.2_12—concurrently resident on the user's computer to do various operations? (One version to edit or check back in fragments, another to navigate and a third to do Baal only knows what else.) And why would they not at least try to reconcile the sumbitch to use only the most current version?

Today's Epigram

From QuotationsPage.com:
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see. —Arthur Schopenhauer

BusinessWeek on how pandering to the base is hurting the GOP

This article on BusinessWeek Online reports how the increasing emphasis on illegal immigration as a "wedge" issue by the Republican party—and in particular by the current crop of candidates for its 2008 Presidential nomination—is driving big-money business supporters away in droves...some even into the arms of the Democrats.

The problem Rudy, Mike, Mitt et al. face is this: they must take an ever-harder line on illegals (even when it contradicts their own earlier stated positions and/or policy record on the issue) in order to win over the party's base, which controls the nomination process...and is mightily P.O.'ed that millions of non-citizens are being allowed to stay within our borders in violation of the law. They emphatically do not want to hear about how our economy would collapse without illegal labor, or how impractical it is to round up 12 million wetbacks and send them back to their countries of origin. (By that logic, they argue, we shouldn't bother enforcing laws against robbery, rape or murder, simply because there are too many people committing such crimes.) They don't want to hear about penalizing employers, and especially not about "a path to citizenship," which they read as "amnesty"; they want to hear about "securing the borders" (read: arresting and evicting all the trespassing Spics, gooks and ragheads) and an end to their tax dollars being spent providing government services and documents in any language but English. If you came here illegally, you don't belong here, period...and letting you stay here renders immigration law meaningless. (See my earlier "Devil's Advocate" post from a few months ago for my fuller understanding of the Tancredoist view of immigration.)

But the "round 'em up and send 'em home" rhetoric that is needed (or believed to be needed) to win the nomination could come back to haunt the eventual nominee when he must campaign for the votes of the general electorate, most of whom are of a far more moderate mind about illegals and immigration in general (Your Humble Correspondent included, I hasten to add). And, as mentioned, it drives away supporters who have a stake in immigrant labor being widely available and really cheap...or those who are just plain turned off by the nativist tilt of the party's platform.

All in all, it does hearten me with hope that we will in fact see a Democrat take the oath of office as President come 20 January 2009.

Updated holiday trip details

After consulting with the Songbird, I have a corrected version of the travel plans posted two days ago.

( The revised itinerary, with notes. )