Darius Bacon's Friends

catamorphism

Time:

3:57 pm.

Poll #436982
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Valentine's Day?

View Answers

It's fun
10 (30.3%)

It's just a way for greeting card makers to make money
18 (54.5%)

It's a conspiracy to make single people feel bad
13 (39.4%)

I feel like I have to do something for my partner(s) on Valentine's Day
7 (21.2%)

I expect my partner(s) to do something for me on Valentine's Day
3 (9.1%)

*yawn*
25 (75.8%)

Comments: Read 9 or Add Your Own.

mmcirvin

Subject:	Registration required, but you're not missing much
Time:	6:35 pm.
Music:	Talking Heads - Animals.

This Washington Post article on the future of digital music has a musty smell. What is this strange "Inter-Net" of which you speak? You're saying that in the future people won't buy music in any physical format? HOW CAN THAT BE?

As usual, there is no explicit acknowledgement in the article that many people now buy CDs primarily as a source for music files that they immediately rip onto their computers and listen to that way; and that precisely because CDs are a quarter-century-old, uncompressed, unprotected format, this actually gives them more control over the music they bought than most digital download services do. Personally, I'm not so much of a fanatic about un-DRMed, lossless encoding that I can avoid the temptation of instant download sales, but it would nevertheless seem to be a fact worthy of note in an article like this one.

To get me to buy Abbey Road again, just offering it as a download would not work (even assuming that the minions of the ghost of the Beatles got over their Luddite opposition to this), because I've already got better; Paul or the walrus or whoever would have to either provide enough added value to entice me, or do something evil to make it impossible or inconvenient for me to listen to "She Came In Through The Bathroom Window" on MP3.

Then there is this paragraph:

A subscription-based service will be built into the latest version of Microsoft Windows; for between $10 and $20, users will access songs for a monthly fee but will be unable to burn them onto CDs. The only way they'll be able to listen to them is via a digital music player such as the iPod, or on a computer.

I think the likelihood of the phrase "such as the iPod" applying in the preceding is approximately nil, at least pending several more rounds of industry arm-twisting. Again, the article seems to completely ignore the WMA vs. AAC format war that is simmering behind the scenes.

Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.

pegkerr

Subject:	Grayness
Time:	4:56 pm.
Mood:	morose.

It is a sloppy, dreary, gray, rainy day. The girls have been outside, getting drenched, happily shoveling water away from sidewalks, stomping through dirty melting mounds of snow, tromping through the mud--until they became so cold that they hammered on the back door to be let in, their hair plastered in little rat tails on their cheeks and neck. Delia shivered so hard that I chased her into the bathtub, but even that didn't seem to warm her, so I made her a cup of hot tea to warm her from the inside.

I spent the afternoon trying to pick up and cull the mounds of paper that flow into any American household, especially with kids. I discovered the permission slip I'd signed for Fiona weeks ago that she was supposed to hand in for the five day overnight trip with her school. It was due to the school February 1. Way to go, Fiona. I went down to the basement and tried to set up the flourescent lights I'd purchased for starting new plants, only to discover that the hanging chains were included, but not the mounting hardware.

I am gray and sloppy and dreary myself, as I have been for weeks. I am dull and stupid and work, frustrated by the computer at home, so I haven't tried to write since November. And utterly sick of myself. I wish I knew what would warm me from the inside. But all my inner heat (joie de vivre? zest? imagination? hope? what?) continues to trickle away, leaving me with nothing but bleak shivers, tiredly groping blindly for something, anything, that could keep me warm.

Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.

markelle

Subject:	& she a punk who rarely ever took advice...
Time:	3:01 pm.
Mood:	crappy.
Music:	The Verve Pipe - The Freshmen.

Upon reviewing my syllabus for English, I stumbled upon an interesting little assignment due this Thursday.

ESSAY ONE.

Say WHAT, mother fucker?!

I have a partially complete essay that I started last semester and just sort of abandoned. My hope is to resuscitate it and somehow make it work for this assignment. If I finish it tonight, I can drop it off by his office tomorrow to get some feedback before it's due.

I feel so lazy right now. I kind of want to take a nap, but I know that would be the worst thing I could do at this point.

In other news, I haven't gotten anything for Matt for Valentine's Day yet. I don't think he's gotten me anything, either...so maybe we should just make a pact to go giftless this year. Either that, or we can just pick out our own gifts when we go shopping together. *shrugs*

Oh yeah...there was a monster-ass nail in my tire. They patched it up for only $17, though, so my car has pretty much been restored to its former glory.

Bitchin'.

Comments: Add Your Own.

redbird

Subject:	The Gates: Central Park, 1979-2005, by Christo and Jean-Claude
Time:	5:16 pm.

This is not exactly an art review. It's more partial and personal than I would want to be if I was writing a review.

What we have, basically, is seven miles of torii, strung along the paths of Central Park, with orange fabric hanging from them. Lines and curves of orange, drifting gently, and sometimes not so gently, in the wind against a bright blue February sky.

Orange isn't my favorite color, never will be, but it was the right choice for this. It contrasts wonderfully with the sky, and adds joy to the grays and browns of a temperate zone winter. Orange works in The Gates for reasons akin to why I came to love cardinals for their flash of red in January's grays and dark greens.

<

cattitude and I spent a couple of hours this morning wandering around Central Park. We started at 86th Street and Central Park West, and drifted non-randomly south, east, and west again, coming out at Columbus Circle. Most of the people were walking slowly, talking and looking around and taking many many photos. There were volunteers--identifiable both by aprons with "The Gates" printed on them, and by poles with tennis balls mounted on one end--answering questions and handing out fabric swatches. I'd already felt the fabric: it hangs low enough, between breezes, for me to reach up and touch, and, like most public art, this is touchable by anyone who so desires.

I don't usually wander around Central Park in the wintertime: I have Inwood Hill Park for that. So I hadn't realized how many of the lawns were closed for the season, to avoid damaging dormant grass. The effect was of huge orange rings around various shades of green (and bits of brown). The paths parallel, meet, intersect, and sometimes dive under bridges. We saw one underpass which is reached by a staircase, with gates along the stairs. From above, it was a glorious sequence of shining orange. From below, the several panels of fabric blended into one, and the sun was in the wrong place to shine through from that side. The artwork skips the Ramble--a sound choice--so the loop only goes partway around the lake.

The fabric is thick enough that, with my dark sunglasses on, I could look through it at the sun, and it was bright but not painfully or dangerously so. (At least, I hope it wasn't dangerous: it didn't feel as bright as many a thing I have looked on in presumed safety, and the glasses claim to block 100% of ultraviolet.)

We left the park a little before noon, by which time it was getting pretty crowded at the southwest corner. I'm going away next weekend, but that still leaves me time to see more of it, and by the light of different times of day.

Enough snow to cover the ground, and then blue sky after, would be stunning, but I have no idea if we'll get that lucky in the next two weeks.

Addenda:

•This is the first art exhibit I've been to, large or small, indoor or out, at which the viewers were offered fabric swatches.
•The pond and adjoining lawn just north of Belvedere Castle have a nice new sign designating them as a "Dragonfly Preserve." This is an excellent thing.
•

cattitude saw the first robin of Spring, also just north of Belvedere Castle.

Comments: Read 6 or Add Your Own.

jmhm

Subject:	follow-up day
Time:	3:24 pm.

Today the papers seem to be full of the latest chapter of some old stories, so I thought I'd give you some context

Above the fold, we have Lt. Gov Steele of Maryland, the hand-picked second in command of Republican Gov. Ehrlich (not a very nice person-MD), who has been having some trouble lately (of which more at World O'Crap, while Newsday adds the delightful detail that "the Prince of Darkness" was paid for his political fixing out of the budget of Human Resources and Juvenile Services)

Lt Gov Steele has been busy too

Ken Mehlman, the newly elected head of the Republican National Committee, chose to make his first official event appearance in Prince George’s County on Feb. 8 in a campaign to attract GOP supporters.

"We’re now making a real effort to make up for time lost," Mehlman told a full house at Prince George’s Community College. "If you give us a chance we’ll give you a choice." Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, who introduced Mehlman, said that the Republican party had done a disservice to African-American and minority voters by not paying them enough attention.

"You weren’t the ones who walked away from the party; the party walked away from you," Steele posited. "This is about the party walking back to African Americans [and minorities]."

This is not Lt Gov Steele's first experience with being the black face of the Republican party (Josh Marshall has archived the inaugural act of reaching out to the african-american community of the Ehrlich administration so you can take a look). Happily, their level of involvement didn't drop off after the election. I think we can count on national Republicans to offer the same level of consideration.
( and in other news... )

Comments: Add Your Own.

catamorphism

Time:

12:07 pm.

Article on why Larry Summers is a sexist asshat

IN 1964, the world record for the women's marathon was around 3 hours, 30 minutes, and the men's record was around 2:10. At the time, most people believed that this huge performance difference was based on biological differences between the sexes.

Fast forward to 2005. The women's world record (2:15.25) is still slower than the men's (2:05.38). But in the past 40 years, the best-performing woman has trimmed an hour and 15 minutes off her time. The best-performing man, less than 10 minutes.

[....]

Third, even if we discover one of these small sex differences, we cannot know why it exists without further research. If you had attributed that 80-minute marathon gap in 1964 to some vague biological essence, it turns out that you would have been wrong, because once we added training opportunities, athletic facilities, resources, role models, and yes, Title IX, to the mix, the sex difference shrank considerably.

[....]

I believe that biological explanation should carry the burden of proof, not the default option. You can say that something is, for example, genetic only if you can isolate the actual gene or genes and demonstrate the effect. In other words, arguments that appeal to biology must describe the biological mechanism, not merely tell a story that sounds plausibly Darwinian.

I like the last part I quoted there the best. I'm tired of hearing stories about how "hormones" make men and women different from people who can't even give an intro-biology-level explanation of what a hormone is.

Comments: Read 34 or Add Your Own.

funos

Subject:	Me-Time
Time:	12:35 pm.
Mood:	content.
Music:	Jamiroquai - Falling.

Not that long ago, I used to take pride in figuring out how to live very well on very little by myself. It was another problem to solve, a good study in social responsibility, and a paring down to what mattered.

I guess I forgot how in uprooting and rushing over here. So I resumed by spending some me-time. Restocked the fridge. Got a bit of ice cream. Tidied up my room and finally put up some more art, including Jack Vettriano's Birth Of A Dream, which shows well to me the state where the worker and the worked upon both reach a state of rest.

A while back, at redsash and corbet's move, I rifled through a pile of publications being discarded. Found the Spring 2002 issue of On Spec, a Canadian speculative fiction magazine. Bus reading. Sure.

Later on, I notice one of the author names on the cover: Natalka Roshak, author of "Ynngla". I read (and enjoy) the story, and eventually find the author blurb.

Yep, it's the Natalka I had a huge crush on back at Shad Valley Sherbrooke 1992. It's her first published story.

What're the odds... :)

So dronon wants to start a dark teenage years meme. OK. I've already got those archived. Enjoy. Feel free to cringe.

Cleaned out my music archive. Still have far too much to consider putting on CD today. On the other hand, what's left is all good, so a random shuffle on XMMS has never been so pleasing.

Recently played:

Ennio Morricone - The Man With The Harmonica
Motorhead - Murder Show
Phish - You Enjoy Myself
David Bowie - Who Can I Be Now
Crystal Method - Tough Guy
Toto - Mindfields
Johnny Cash - The Wall
Leonard Nimoy - Lost In The Stars
J.S. Bach - No. 15 in B Minor
Anthrax - Friggin' In The Riggin'

And so on...

Bumped into the nightowl housemate. I see him maybe once every two weeks at most since his schedule is inverted. He works in a cryogenics lab for one of the professors. We don't know what the project's about but it's exotic, requiring supplies like liquid He3 (an isotope of normal He4) and Co60 (a gamma ray source). It involves going down to milliKelvin temperatures. The Cobalt 60 is used as a thermometer. Apparently, at points that close to absolute zero, nuclear decay becomes a function of temperature! Blows my mind!

We drank some mead and spiced rum while I showed him clips from "The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen", "Meet The Feebles", "Fritz The Cat", and "Donald Duck: Donald Gets Drafted".

Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.

mmcirvin

Subject:	Holding to truth
Time:	11:11 am.

...And if you want something with more kick to it than Mark Schmitt, here's a typically brilliant Poor Man essay musing on how Clint Eastwood could possibly have become a boogeyman of the Left.

Which inspires some typically despairing and frightened responses in the comments. I sympathize with them completely. Somehow the people who have all the political power are still going around insisting that people like me are an existential threat to the nation. What, indeed, do you do in this situation? Get a gun and a vasectomy and hunker down for the End of Days?

The Editors, I think, actually have a cooler head than I do. The LiveJournal tradition when faced with political desperation is to pour one's immediate feelings directly on the page. But my immediate feelings when I get upset over this stuff tend to be, to put it succinctly, nutty and paranoid and not at all constructive. I suspect that at least part of the game plan of the Ann Coulter/Sean Hannity types is to goad liberals into becoming sufficiently frightened that atavistic fight-or-flight responses take over, and we either flee the country or become afraid to identify ourselves (thereby increasing their power) or, even worse, become violently crazy, transform ourselves into some facsimile of the boogeyman they make us out to be, and provide ready-made material.

So most of the time I back up and try to look at the situation rationally before typing. Or if not rationally, at least somewhat hopefully. I'm one of those Enlightenment children that some activists regard as dangerously naive. Gandhi's favorite word "satyagraha" literally meant something like "truth force" or "holding to truth". I'm personally hopeless as a leader, too suspicious to be much of a follower, and a slacker as an activist. But one thing I'm personally pretty good at is getting worked up over what I see as offenses against truth, and trying to tease out what's actually going on. This kind of thing may have a limited audience; I'm perhaps not going to reach the statistically average American with it; but I can probably reach somebody.

A while back—I think it was in the weeping and gnashing right after the election—Teresa Nielsen Hayden chided American liberals for believing that creationism was an important issue when so many worse things like prisoner-torture and an ill-conceived war and economic stupidities were going on. But besides the actual practical consequences of teaching kids nonsense in school, it's important to me because it's a particularly egregious offense against truth. The environmental stuff is similar. In both cases, too, there's the fact that, as Feynman put it, you are yourself the easiest person to fool but nature cannot be fooled; in the long run I don't think that these strains of craziness in the United States are going to roll back the Enlightenment, but they might well do a lot of damage to the US itself (and, in the case of global warming, to everyone else too). In a hostile climate there's sometimes a tendency to believe that if we only give way on this or that thing, we'll gain enough on the margins to win some election. But I don't regard the truth-based issues as negotiable.

The main thing I have to work on is being a little more vocal about it in real life as opposed to the Internet, to actually call people on it when, say, the DDT-ban-as-genocide myth comes up in conversation. Hard experience growing up as a tactless, big-mouthed liberal kid in a fairly conservative community taught me that you don't come storming in with guns blazing, but these days I can sometimes err on the side of politeness.

Comments: Add Your Own.

ginmar

Subject:	And what the hell, while we're at it
Time:	5:25 am.

Ahem. I just thought of this, so what the hell:

Can we all just agree that anybody who says they love the sinner but hate the sin is just a twit? Doesn't work that way, Sparky. I susppose you could make this argument in some cases if the act was innocuous enough, but when it comes to homosexuality, the act is what it's all about. You can't separate the act from the person; it's what makes them gay, their attraction to members of the same sex. Expecting them to be celibate is not something straights would ever demand of one another, so why do they so restrict gays?

Imagine if we had "Be Gay for A Day" days, where straight people got to deal with all the bullshit that so-called moral people heap on gays.

Oh, boy, the kitten has discovered the computer power cord. Not good at all. Must go prevent imminent feline electrocution.

Comments: Read 26 or Add Your Own.

los_angeles

Subject:	where to go?
Posted by:	spasa.
Time:	11:52 pm.

hey im one of the girls going on the cali trip w/ sugar1 , so i have my own lil set of questions. If anyone is able/willing to answer, it would be awesome!

1- where to look for good/used music records (cheap would b nice too)
2- what's a good place to catch a good local performances (reminder - we're only 17).. that improv idea testaclese posted, sounds interesting.. but umm.. in march!?
...related: good theatre play in march ne1 knows about?!
3- is it really that bad going out at night? (like it says in some tour books) cuz i find it kinda .. over exaggerated, but hey ... i dono?~
4- jazz/blues cafés?
5- Six flags water park or raging waters?
6- surfing.. which company and which beach would be good for learning, rentals.. etc etc
7- any kool galleries? ( i wanned to say underground galleries, but i wasnt sure if that would explain it?! )

anyways, i hope im not annoying anyone with these questions... we'll probably have more later on. all help is appreciated! thanx

Comments: Read 12 or Add Your Own.

jmhm

Subject:	it doesn't get better than this
Time:	1:30 am.

despite the dogged support of his great friend Judith Miller of the Times, Ahmad Chalabi has lost a certain amount of official support since his ties with Iran have become public knowledge.

He does still have one influential friend in Iraq

One Iraqi who may hold the key to Mr. Chalabi's future is Moktada al-Sadr, the young cleric who led a series of armed uprisings against the American military last year. According to aides for both men, Mr. Sadr has promised to back Mr. Chalabi in his bid to become prime minister. Despite his outlaw status - he is under indictment for murder and has been in hiding for months - Mr. Sadr fielded several candidates in the election. Together, his allies appear likely to emerge as the largest single block inside the Shiite alliance, with as many as 21 seats.

Mr. Sadr's backing would give Mr. Chalabi a substantial boost toward his goal. Without it, Mr. Chalabi's chances seem slim.

Mr. Sadr, known for his virulently anti-American views and Islamist leanings, seems an unlikely ally of Mr. Chalabi, a pro-Western moderate who supports the continued presence of American forces in Iraq. But in an interview last week in Najaf, Mr. Sadr's chief aide said that Mr. Sadr had decided to back Mr. Chalabi. The aide, Ali Smesim, said the other candidates were pursuing their narrow agendas.

Mr. Chalabi, who is popularly believed to be the source of much of the mistaken intelligence the adminstration ~~used as an excuse for~~ relied on when justifying an invasion of Iraq is the leading candidate of the man who Our Fearless Leader indicted for inciting violent resistance in Iraq

Mr. Bush feels that the Iraqi people should be allowed to "deal with" Mr. al-Sadr.

On the other hand, it could be that our purple-fingered respect for Iraq's sovereignty is such that we will cheerfully accept it if the iraqi people vote to support a man our chief administrator has labelled "an outlaw" and the leader of "an illegal militia" who "publicly supported the terrorists groups Hamas and Hezbollah" and whose "methods of violence and intimidation are widely repudiated by other Iraqi Shiaas" as the power behind what would be the throne if it weren't a democracy we were building over there.

Whatever. I just suggest that they don't let Chalabi get his hands on the checkbook.

More and more it looks like we really are giving them a government just like ours.

Only probably, at least in public, facing Mecca.

Comments: Add Your Own.

koimistress

Subject:	ring the bells that still can ring
Time:	9:55 pm.

As of yesterday, I'm at liberty from my last job. This is good news; all the way home my mind was playing disco and I was dancing in my underwear. (Metaphorically. "Yessss! Novel! Gilgamesh! A little time to do my own work! Yesyesyesyesyesyes!" I was feeling free and adventurous, so I drove home in the rain past Echo Park, which I'd never seen in my nine years in LA, and stopped to look at the ducks, the forlorn paddle boats, and the towers of downtown, their tops vanished in mist. Then I vroomed along Silver Lake Reservoir, another place I'd never seen -- all those houses on the hill, looking like goddamned Tuscany. And me, I was freeeeee!) (As Steely Dan burst forth from the CD player like apple blossoms in spring. "I'm ready to cross that fine line… learn to work the saxophone, and I'll play just what I feel; drink scotch whiskey all night long, and die behind the wheel.")

In fact, you could only get a glimpse of my state of mind if you clicked on this man. (I have no idea who he is, but love him as I do.)

I got home and told

houseguest_tm the news -- though I'd already spammed many of my friends before I packed up my computer. Within the next hour, five people from my work world called to chat/gossip/discuss future plans.

Unfortunately for my vows of freedom, I have two job meetings scheduled for next week, and I must admit that one of them is something I'd ditch free time for in a heartbeat. Still. I said to

houseguest_tm, "Let's go to dinner at the little French place down the hill." And so it was done. The "little French place" is a lovely and bizarrely underpriced bistro run by a cute French man with a charming smile, who brings more cute French people over to help. The spell of the place is that the food is so good, whatever you have the first time you visit, you continue to order forever. And to that, I will only add, warm goat cheese salad with walnuts and tomatoes. In strawberry season, you have only to ask, and a bowl of cut strawberries will be brought to your table whether it's on the menu or not.

(I made the mistake of going there for lunch once on a weekday, and discovered that it was packed with executives from nearby Universal, all talking about their deals. Nooo, mais nooo, this is not what the magical little French place is for! Ceci n'est pas une pipe dream!)

Last night I ordered a glass of wine, something I'm usually too boring to do. "It's the Chardonnay of freedom," I explained.

houseguest_tm nodded, as though I'd actually made sense. "From the great folk song, made famous by Pete Seeger," I added. She took this in stride. I threatened, "I'm tempted to start singing." Fortunately chocolate mousse of the gods was brought to the table, and I was diverted, as my ability to sing is pretty much nonexistent.

Ah, cherié. (In moments of deep emotion, I become Morticia Addams.) I have a lot of work to do to prepare for those two job meetings, so ironically the next week is rather booked. But today I went to Kay the Wonder Stylist, who made me look sassy, and I drove

houseguest_tm to the airport, for she has many missions in life. Now she's gone, and I'm sad.

But free! It's the hammer of justice! It's the Chardonnay of freedom! It's the song of love between my brothers and my sisters, all over this land.

Comments: Read 16 or Add Your Own.

apod

Subject:	In the Center of the Virgo Cluster
Time:	9:56 pm.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050213.html

See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.

In the Center of the Virgo Cluster
Credit & Copyright: Jean-Charles Cuillandre (CFHT), Hawaiian Starlight, CFHT

Explanation: The Virgo Cluster of Galaxies is the closest cluster of galaxies to our Milky Way Galaxy. The Virgo Cluster is so close that it spans more than 5 degrees on the sky - about 10 times the angle made by a full Moon. It contains over 100 galaxies of many types - including spiral, elliptical, and irregular galaxies. The Virgo Cluster is so massive that it is noticeably pulling our Galaxy toward it. The cluster contains not only galaxies filled with stars but also gas so hot it glows in X-rays. Motions of galaxies in and around clusters indicate that they contain more dark matter than any visible matter we can see. Pictured above, the center of the Virgo cluster might appear to some as a human face, and includes bright Messier galaxies M86 at the top, M84 on the far right, NGC 4388 at the bottom, and NGC 4387 in the middle.

Comments: Read 11 or Add Your Own.

onasc

Time:

11:55 pm.

You god damn fool, Chomsky always comes first! Of course, all I could do is yell at myself, but hey, whatever.

I've been working on a little HTTP/1.0 low level state machine and high level parser for an assignment at school. We're building proxy servers, and it's actually not such a bad idea to do it right using Input/OutputStreams and a few more abstractions. It's well done IMO and laid out with low coupling and high...whatever that other computer science term is... Ah Ha! High cohesion. I joked to myself that it would be possible to do something stupid like HTTP over file system or instant messenger. And then I thought about actually doing something stupid like that. Heh. It follows the typical layered Java I/O design.

HttpRequestReader request = new HttpRequestReader (new HttpInputStream (generic input stream));
HttpReplyWriter reply = new HttpReplyWriter(new HttpOutputStream (generic output stream));

My parents came over to take me out to dinner. I would like to keep this chapter of my life to the point: My mom thought the fake fire place was warming her up and commented on it to the staff. (It was fake.) My dad asked for condiments that were already on the table. Then they "forced" me to go buy new shoes cause mine were completely falling apart. Just cause there's a huge hole in the side of my shoes doesn't mean they need to be replaced! I felt so silly at the check out like I was 12 again! Otherwise, I did have a good dinner and now I have new shoes.

Comments: Add Your Own.

jmhm

Subject:	my object all sublime I shall achieve in time to make the punishment fit the crime
Time:	11:50 pm.

the punishment fit the crime

Ex-Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina will get a severance package worth about $21.4 million, but stands to reap another $21 million after she was forced out by the computer maker's board last week, a newspaper reported Saturday.

The additional amount reflects the estimated value of her Hewlett stock and options as well as her pension, which were not included in her severance package, the New York Times reported.

Fiorina was forced to resign Tuesday after the computer maker's board concluded she hadn't boosted Hewlett's sagging stock or its fortunes after the company's merger with Compaq Computer.

She will receive $14 million in severance pay and a $7.4 million bonus for 2004, according to terms of the agreement submitted Friday in regulatory filings -- even though Wednesday the board singled out her failure to accelerate the company's strategy, the newspaper reported.

But more than $21.1 million in additional compensation was not reflected in the severance package, the report said.

This includes options granted in 2003 now worth about $1 million, restricted grants of about 826,000 shares that, coupled with her other Hewlett holdings, have a current market value of $18.2 million, and a pension that compensation specialists said could be worth at least $2 million, according to the newspaper.

In fairness, that's just under $2500 for every employee she put on the street in the course of tanking the value of two companies, which is not that much, really

of a reward

Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.

~jozafiend~