Isaac Laquedem

Monaco develops RV resorts

So read a headline in Tuesday's Oregonian.  I envisioned caravans of RVers winding through the south of France, headed toward the Casino of Monte Carlo and the principality's other gaming establishments, deftly maneuvering their ungainly vehicles through the narrow hillside streets on their way to indulge in an evening of James Bond fantasy.

Alas, the story let me down; the Monaco Coach Company of Coburg, Oregon is opening RV resorts in the western states.  Still, it was a nice image, if only for a moment, of a parade of vacationers parking their rigs and changing into black tie and a dinner jacket before they practiced their high school French on the croupiers.

Cousin Curt could really ski

                                     In Memory of Cousin Curt (1941-2008)

The fax of business life

Fifteen years ago someone described a certain professional to me as "very old-fashioned -- he doesn't even have a fax."

This year someone described a different professional to me as "very old-fashioned -- he doesn't even have e-mail and you have to send papers by fax."

Why you should not whisper in court even when the judge is silent

This week at our county courthouse, an attorney gave the presiding judge a reason to set over (delay) the trial of his client, made a show of consulting his calendar, and then asked the judge not to set the next hearing in his client's case before a certain time in the morning.  After the judge granted his request, he turned and whispered to another lawyer, a little too loudly, "I just make all this [----] up."

A puzzled jury is excused after 66 days

An Australian trial had gone normally for 65 days, with the jurors attentively taking notes, until someone in the courtroom observed them writing vertically as well as horizontally.  As the Associated Press reports, it turned out that several of the jurors were filling the box in two senses: they were solving sudoku puzzles.  On the 66th day the judge reluctantly stopped the trial and excused the jurors from further service.  The trial will start over in a few weeks with a new jury.  The lawyers have likely learned that they need to be more engaging to hold the attention of the jury, and the jurors are probably a lot better at number puzzles than they used to be.

How to approach a Person Of Standing to make good on a charitable pledge

Eight or ten years ago, the trustees of a local non-profit (let's call it Civic Group Alpha) were going over their list of unpaid pledges and noted that one board member, a Person of High Standing who was not present at that meeting, hadn't paid his pledge, a substantial one in the several thousands of dollars.  The board agreed to discuss at its next meeting how to tactfully approach the Person of High Standing to pay his pledge.

At the next meeting (also skipped by the Person Of Standing), one trustee said, "I'm on the board of Civic Group Beta (another society-laden group), and the Person Of Standing hasn't paid his pledge to us either."  A second trustee said, "I'm on the board of Civic Group Gamma, and the Person Of Standing has a large unpaid pledge to us also.  Not only that, but one of the other board members there is a trustee of Civic Group Delta, and she said that the Person hasn't paid his pledge there either."  Each of these pledges was for several thousand dollars -- at least one was for more than $10,000 -- and caused the various Civic Groups to recognize the Person as a major donor.

Every board has a wag.  The wag on this board suggested that Civic Group Alpha write the Person along these lines:  "Dear P.O.S.:  You generously pledged $X,000 to our group last year, which we haven't received yet.  We'd like to close our books on the year.  We understand that times may have been difficult for you this year, and we'd be happy to work something out on the installment plan if you aren't in a position to honor your pledge in full at this time.  Very truly yours, Alpha President."  The wag then suggested that Civic Groups Beta, Gamma, and Delta send the identical letter on the same day to the Person of Standing, which they all did.

According to the Knower of All Things, the Person Of Standing paid all the pledges by return mail and resigned from the boards.  Where the Person of Standing obtained the funds so quickly is a question they didn't try to answer.

The unbreakable code is a prime topic of conversation

Some years ago I invented an unbreakable cipher.  I had the good fortune to encounter a cryptographer a few days ago, and told him the method.  He excused himself for five minutes, and when he came back he told me how to break it. 

They've made some progress in cryptography in the last 30 years.  The most significant development was the RSA method, which depends on identifying two long primes (originally, about 60 digits each), multiplying them to get a 120-digit number, and then using that number to encode the message in such a way that you can't decode it unless you can factor it into the two 60-digit primes.  It was and is possible to factor a 120-digit number into its primes, but at the time you needed a lot of patience; if I recall rightly the computational power of the early 1980s was such that it would take approximately the lifetime of the earth to do it.  One side effect of the RSA system was that you could announce a portion of your code to the world, and others could use it to encode messages to you, which only you could decode because only you knew your two primes that produced your public key.  It was something as if you could announce that your public key was 91, but only you knew (or could calculate) that its two prime factors are 13 and 7.

Computers got faster and more powerful, and then someone invented a method to factor 120-digit numbers more efficiently, meaning that 60-digit primes weren't strong enough.  My cryptographer friend said that Microsoft now uses 300-digit numbers for its encrypting, requiring two primes of 150 or so digits each.  No doubt eventually encryption will use primes in the thousands of digits.

The Supreme Court rules for the Gitmo prisoners and against President Bush

The Supreme Court ruled today (pdf of the opinion here) that the alien combatants held at Guantanamo, the United States naval base in Cuba, have the protections of the habeas corpus clause of the United States constitution, and that Congress cannot withdraw that right from them by statute.  (A provision of the constitution says that the writ of habeas corpus may not be suspended, except in case of invasion or insurrection, neither of which has occurred.)

I will leave to others to comment on how the Supreme Court has repeatedly rebuffed President Bush on this issue.  The thing that most struck me about the decision was its characterization of one of the administration's arguments.  The Justice Department argued that the constitution did not apply at Guantanamo because Guantanamo was not United States territory, but was under the sovereignty of Cuba, and the United States acknowledges it to be under the sovereignty of Cuba.  That begs the delightful question of whether the United States -- which agrees that the base is under Cuban sovereignty -- would obey an order of a Cuban court to release the detained persons.  Somehow I don't think the Justice Department's lawyers thought that one through before they made their argument.

All over the rest of the world, they get news from all over

The modest English-language newspaper in this Asian capital carries news far beyond its small size.  The copy I'm reading (24 pages) has stories from 29 foreign nations in addition to two dozen items of local news.  The business section alone carries reports from 13 nations.  The sports section has news from 9 nations.

Being in a large nation, we often forget -- or never realize in the first place -- how interested the small nations are in what we're doing, and the efforts their leaders make to keep in touch with the rest of the world.  One item notes in passing that Kevin Rudd, the prime minister of Australia, is a fluent speaker of Mandarin.

Taiwan's minister emigration problem, part II

Jason Yuan has been pushed off the front page of the Taiwan press for a day, at least; the Secretary-General of the Executive Yuan of Taiwan, a Mr. Hsieh, called a press conference to admit that he had once held a green card, but that it had expired before 1991.  Two other ministers announced that they had held Canadian residency; one got rid of his already and the other is working on it.

In one sense, the opposition party is complaining about government ministers having committed acts that the opposition sees as showing disloyalty to Taiwan.  Viewed differently, however, the opposition is complaining that the ministers were being disloyal when they might equally be described as being prudent.