Doubt's Log

I’ve been working on being an event calendar curator ala Jon Udell’s system and was stuck getting a good calendar feed from the King Country Library System for my local Snoqualmie library. As in most projects, you start with some HTML page of calendar entries. In this case a search for Snoqualmie Library leads to this URL:

http://eventinfo.kcls.org/evanced/lib/eventcalendar.asp?ag=&et=&list&cn=0&private=0&ln=36

Which is missing the ICS feed. So the next step in the process is to try fusecal, which had done the trick many times before. However this time the page formatting was preventing fusecal from having useful event titles.

Today I came back and looked at the problem afresh. My first thought was that I could have something scrape the VCS links on the page and build a ical, but I really didn’t want to own any automation on my own servers (and I wasn’t ready yet to write a service on something like azure). So I poked into the link to the software maker of this calandar: Evanced. Fortunately there I discovered that some ical feature had been added to an eventsxml.asp. Putting that on the KCLS url I got:

http://eventinfo.kcls.org/evanced/lib/eventsxml.asp

Yay, I can see one event in XML. This is progress. Some sample code for client side rendering of eventsxml.asp gave me a couple parameters to try:

http://eventinfo.kcls.org/evanced/lib/eventsxml.asp?dm=xml&lib=all&alltime=1&nd=14

The next step was to filter to my specific library. Back on the HTML page there was one url parameter that seemed to be relevant; that ln=36. On the eventsxml.asp the same parameter doesn’t work, but lib=all was a tempting place to put my magic number “36:

http://eventinfo.kcls.org/evanced/lib/eventsxml.asp?dm=xml&lib=36&alltime=1&nd=14

Bingo! Now I’ve got a nice xml feed for local library. However I need ics. and trying dm=ics didn’t work. Remember back to the feature list calling it ical, I tried

http://eventinfo.kcls.org/evanced/lib/eventsxml.asp?dm=ical&lib=36&alltime=1&nd=60

Which along with the North Bend, Carnation, Fall City and Duvall is now in my delicious events curator list for Snoqualmie valley.

• AIG’s latest problems has triggered some discussion of the economic D word.
• The savings rate in January has gone up quite a bit (6%?)
• More then 50% of hospitals are operating at a loss with the increase of people without insurance as they lose their jobs and the hospitals “safe” investment take losses.
• Dow hits 6700
• Take aways from Gene Robinson talk on Speaker’s Forum
  • argues the translation of passages regarding homosexuality is lacking understand of the cultures in which the bible was written.
  • Example, spilling seed in the light of the belief that all genetics are in men and women are only wombs.
  • There has been reinterpretation of many of the other passages regarding regarding sexuality, slavery and marriage
  • What’s an –ism? it’s set of prejudices, values and judgments backed by the power to enforce those prejudices in society. Which leads to a structure in society where one group to benefit at the expense of another group. Someone in the first group doesn’t have to believe or act on the prejudices or values to still benefit from that structure in society.
  • At this point the main problem in US Society is Hetrosexism and the strong negative religious interpretation of homosexuality.

• Apparently Republican Economic Theory has returned to the Treasury View which is summed up as “Government spending crowds out private spending or investment, and thus has no net impact.” which is sorta weird since it’s a return to the macro-economic theory of the 1920/30s.
• We dodged a bullet called Bush’s Social Security Privatization which had an implicit assumption that 1) the market only goes up on a 10 year basis and 2) you can trust the risk evaluations of securities. Both of which has been proven false in this current crises.
• The recent crises is destroying the illusion of increasing wealth/lifestyle afforded by credit. This leaves the stagnation of medium incomes, which demonstrates that trickle-down theory is BS.

• Lilly's Big Day
  I’m left speechless that the republican version of being business friendly is to attempt to uphold a technicality that destroys such a common sense law (capped at $300,000 btw).
• A Stimulus For Today And Tomorrow, And That's OK

  the Director of the CBO estimated the multipliers for both "purchases of goods and services by the federal government" and transfers to states for infrastructure spending at 1-2.5, for transfers to persons at 0.8-2.2, and for "temporary, well-targeted tax cuts" at 0.5-1.7.

• Principles of the American Cargo Cult
  A set of underlying popular media assumptions.
• Life at Wall Mart
  A wired chief gets a different view of Wall Mart employment. I’d have to say that I think he focuses exclusively on the positive in the assumption you’ve read the negative in a different book.
• On the Slate Political Gabfest this week, they did a good job explaining the disincentives for republicans to work or vote for any stimulus. However after years of ignoring fiscal responsibility, it’s bizarre to malicious to swing so hard the other way on a stimulus bill in the midst of such a problematic economy. Even worse is to again show that they only have one “solution” to any situation.
• Airlines Defining Anyone Disruptive as Terrorists
  This was 100% predictable.

• Can Conservatives Face Up To Their Dead Ideas?
  Commentary about a Bruce Bartlett piece in Politico specifically in the realm if a constant push for tax cuts is responsible and/or effective.
• What Are Chicago's Economists Thinking?
  Apparently the freshwater economists are going crazy. Brad in this article points to some of the reactions.
• Apparently Obama is a Serious Player with respect to republicans on the stimulus package:  (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/us/politics/28obama.html)

  “This was not a drive-by P.R. stunt, and I actually thought it might be,” said Representative Zach Wamp, Republican of Tennessee. “It was a substantive, in-depth discussion with our conference, and he’s very effective.”
  “He knows that the debt and the deficit are huge long-term problems as well,” Mr. Wamp said, “and he made a compelling case. He sounded, frankly, a lot like a Republican.”

  This only increases my concerned that Republicans are not participating in the process purely on political concerns.

I’ve been claiming that pundits like Ann Coulter were a type of entertainer for a long time, but it was impressive the way Monday’s Daily Show nailed it home.

Regarding the message “There’s probably no God".” on 800 London Buses (in response to a religious one telling people to look up a biblical verse telling them they are going to hell), there was a woman tourist from LA is quoted: “I think it’s dreadful,”  … ”Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I don’t like it in my face.”

I really enjoy the irony, and the bonus irony that the “probably” was added to meet advertising guidelines.