Archive for June, 2009
A Little Maintenance
We’re in the process of updating our theme; so, if you notice that something isn’t working or appearing correctly, please let us know.
We took the best of our old theme, which we had adapted from a theme by Nate at Refueled.net, and modernized it quite a bit. Plus, we made it bluer; we didn’t like the purplish look on certain monitors.
Regular readers and friends, please let us know what you think.
There are still many small tweaks and annoyances to correct, but it seems ready to be used.
Is He a Good Student?
The Wall Street Journal is chock full of good op-ed columns today, June 22, 2009. This is the third one we’ve written about, and we’d write about a couple of more if we had the time.
Fouad Ajami’s may be the best of the lot. It is entitled Obama’s Persian Tutorial. It is much recommended, especially because he does a nice job of summarizing Obama’s world view and diplomatic tactics and linking Obama’s perspective (and self-perception) to Jimmy Carter’s failed worldview and Presidency.
Despite our high regard for the column’s content, we do take issue with the title, and here’s why. It is a minor quibble, but one worth making as we believe it is illuminating.
Many years ago, a friend and former colleague had an excellent line that he relayed to us. He mentioned that he had been at a party the previous weekend, and he told another party-goer that he was a professor. The person asked what he taught. Our friend replied that he wasn’t sure what he taught or if he taught anything at all, but he stood in the front of a room filled with MBAs and talked about finance. (For the slow-witted who happened upon our site by accident: the fact that he was lecturing or “teaching” didn’t necessarily mean that anyone was learning.)
Now, as everyone knows, a “tutorial” is type of lesson. So, something could be learned from a tutorial, or not. The question is: will Mr. Obama learn anything (of substance) from the tutorial? We’re not sure. Why? Because it is quite possible that his ego and his hubris will prevent it. He is certainly bright enough. That happens with MBAs (and other students) and with athletes of all ages. They “know better,” and may have been successful; so, why listen and learn? They already know everything that they need to know. (What a wonderfully simplistic worldview. (That’s what makes ignorance so blissful.)
So, will Mr. Obama learn anything? Let’s hope pray so. Otherwise, we could relive that tragedy know as the Carter Presidency, and that wouldn’t be much fun, now would it, precious?
Geographic Good Fortune
We did nothing to deserve it, but we are very grateful to have been born in the United States. (Granted, that was tempered by being born near Pittsburgh, but we write that qualification mainly in jest.) In fact, we doubt that we did anything prior to our birth to deserve it, and haven’t done much since that day to be worthy of citizenship, but, hey, we do tend to pay our taxes on time and under-utilize our share of government services. (That has to count for something and likely makes us some sort of oppressed minority.)
One need read no more than the first Opinion page in today’s edition of The Wall Street Journal to get some indication of the enormity of our geographical luck. In a previous post, we mentioned L. Gordon Crovitz’s column on Chinese censorship and the complicity of western firms, which is at the top of the page. Glad we’re not there.
There’s also a column about problems in South America that is in the middle of the page. Glad we’re not there.
Finally, there is a short essay about Iran at the bottom of the page: Iran and the Tragedy of Bad Ideas by Andrew Klavan. Glad we’re not there, too.
It is a very, very good essay. Mr. Klavan writes about a movie, “The Stoning of Soraya M.” and why he found it to be so compelling. He explains why it shouldn’t be compelling, e.g., given the title, there’s not much suspense. Moreover, she was innocent; so, it is no satisfaction or justice when punishment is meted out.
Instead, Mr. Klavan writes how one woman’s senseless execution represents all that is wrong with that nation’s government and that culture, and that is what he finds so gripping. We think the fact that such an appalling event occurred only 23 years ago and still occurs today is what strengthens the movie’s grip on the viewer. Yes, it is a “tragedy of bad ideas” although “ideas” is an overly generous term to describe the impulses, urges, and tendencies that would permit such transgressions.
So, as we go to eat dinner, and thank God for our blessings, we’ll also to remember to thank Him for our geographical good fortune.
How Do You Say, “Hans Brinker,” in Chinese?
“The Great Firewall of China”
According to The Holland Ring, almost every American has heard of the tale of Hans Brinker. We’re not sure if that is true, but he is the little Dutch boy of fiction who noticed a small leak in a dike and plugged it with his finger.
Little Hans stopped the levee from failing and prevented a flood that saved many fictional lives and much fictional property, and everyone lived happily ever after. We heard the tale when we were a child, and being a skeptical youth, couldn’t imagine anything good happening at the break-point of a levee. (That impression was validated when we moved to St. Louis in the year of the great flood: 1993. Levee after levee failed, including one of the last ones in the Chesterfield Valley. A nine square-mile lake, approximately ten feet deep, filled overnight.)
While reading L. Gordon Crovitz’s column in today’s edition of The Wall Street Journal, we were reminded of that fictional little Dutch boy. The column, High Tech’s Great Leap Backward, describes how the Chinese government is attempting to limit access to information on the Internet and is trying to get Western manufacturers, including U.S. firms, to assist them. That censorship is nothing new. In fact, several firms, including Google, have a long and ignoble histories of conspiring with the Chinese government to limit freedom and the access to information.
What is different and newsworthy is that on July 1, all new PCs sold in China must include that very strict censorship function – although dysfunction is a much better word. (If you missed it, last week there was an article in which a U.S. software firm claimed that the Chinese government had stolen its code for use in the new censorship effort; we don’t have time to find the link.)
In the fictional tale, little Hans was able to stop the deluge. We doubt that the Chinese government will be so lucky, and that’s a very good thing for many people yearning to be free. We’re sure there are a multitude of earnest, yet misguided, Chinese Hans – what’s the plural of Hans and how would Gollum pronounce it – attempting to stem the rising tide of information from both within and outside of China. In fact, we’re hoping to get blocked by the most populous nation in the world as it will give us something else to write about. There is joy in being free and subversive.
At our site, after eliminating the large, domestic search engines, we get more hits from Being than any other location – most likely from web indexing servers. (They don’t show on our visitors’ map because we don’t count them as visitors, so we keep them in the different statistics database.)
We think the initiative will fail because people aren’t that much like North Sea water. Well, there are similarities: many people can dirty, polluted, smelly, suffocating, and many seek the lowest level (of whatever their nearest), but in one crucial way, they’re different. When the little Dutch boy was preventing water from entering the valley, he did not face any army of folks digging in the other direction, i.e., seeking it. Humans will respond and react according to their own, God-given free will. (That’s why in our mind social science is more interesting than physical science, including fluid dynamics and levee-building.) So, we suspect the regardless of the ingenuity shown by the censors, through effort and determination and creativity and divine inspiration, freedom-loving individuals will seek their freedom. (We wouldn’t be surprised if they’re stringing fiber-optic lines in tunnels under the Great Wall. Now wouldn’t that be a story!
If any Chinese bureaucrats do read our posts and pages, we’d like to direct them to our essay, Common Managerial Mistakes in Decentralized Organizations. See little Hans, you can’t have it both ways: your organization – whether its a firm or an economy – can be centralized or decentralized, but you can’t garner the benefits of decentralization – the energy, the creativity, the local knowledge, the faster, more informed decision-making to name a few of them – without bearing some of the agency costs, too. Through intelligent design of control and incentive schemes, those costs can be mitigated but they cannot be eliminated without what some may refer to as “unintended consequences.”
In other words, it’s not the old Burger King slogan: you can’t have it your way.
When you eliminate all of the costs of decentralization, you eliminate all of the benefits, too. That’s something that Extremists never, ever appreciate. You see, if you eliminate all of the costs of autonomy, you’re left with a centralized organization/command structure, i.e., no autonomy. That may keep you in charge, but it probably won’t do much for your nation’s GDP or its ability to feed its own people or take care of its elderly. (Please see the end of the above-reference essay for a few examples of dysfunctional managerial types.
Finally, this is for our readers that work at related hardware or software firms or search engines and who cherish their freedom and who love The Lord of the Rings. We ask, when did it become your career goal to assist Sauron and strengthen the vision of his lidless eye? “Don’t be evil,” my ass. You may want to consider the trade-off that we addressed in Principles Lost and More.
Computer, We Hate That Commercial!
Computer, what type of moron talks to an inanimate object like a bicycle? (For some reason, we find the gawky, spinster-in-the-making redhead talking to and then riding the bicycle to be much worse than the dweeb talking to the fishing rod.)
Dear computer, you sit there dusty with your fan whirring while I suffer an allergic reaction to the inane commercial. Yes, computer, I will require medication to dull the pain and curb the tendencies and impulses. Plus, computer, the TV is too expensive and the neighbors are too close and the sound of the 45 being fired is too loud to do an Elvis. (And, computer, it is less fun with modern monitors – rather than it was with old CRTs – and why wake the children and spur a visit from members of the Northern Regional Police Force?)
Honestly, computer, we find the woman so annoying and voice-over so irksome that we can’t remember which allergy medicine they are trying to sell. To be extremely honest computer – if such a state exists – if it weren’t for the fact that we truly cannot recall the brand, then we would still dishonestly pretend to not remember because we have no intention to help publicize the drug. We’re sure that you would understand, our electronic friend, that a woman talking to a bicycle could also be used for a multitude of other drug ads, particularly for medications used for depression and illnesses of the mind. (Although we don’t see how it would fit with E.D. ads, especially the ones with the two bathtubs.)
Yes, computer, there are many sufferers of allergy medicine commercials and medical ads of all types, and we are one of those with chronic pain.
We’ll stick with our generic, CVS brand – with the good (federally-protected) decongestants – to fight allergies, and we’ll self-medicate to ease the psychic pain of being inflicted with corporate stupidity as we stare at your electronic cousin my silicon-based friend.
Nobody Cares*
*Except, possibly the malicious.
There’s an op-ed piece in today’s edition of The Wall Street Journal about something called lifetracking, Tracking Life in Graphic Detail. It’s by Christine Rosen, and it’s on the Taste page in the Weekend Journal section.
It seems that many self-absorbed individuals publish all the details of their lives on the web, including graphic, sexual details and data like their GPS-location details, too. (We publish our opinions to strangers on the web for a variety of reasons, including as a cathartic way to spare the family at the dinner table. Whether the children deserve that courtesy is much in doubt.)
We suppose that such folks who publish those kinds of details are too self-absorbed to realize the risk and potential harm they face from stalkers, burglars, and other malicious persons. Think of the human equivalents of Digger the dermatophyte. They do exist and our culture breeds no short supply of them.
So, when you’re blasting the details of your oh-so-interesting-life to the world, please realize that you may be annoying a psychotic ex-lover, informing a stalker of you constant whereabouts or telling the neighborhood burglar that you’re not home. (Yeah, given their fallen natures, we’re deeply suspicious of men (and some women, too), which is why we believe that it is the Second Amendment that ensures the freedoms promised by the other nine.)
By the way, the pedant in us must take issue with one of Ms. Rosen’s statements. She writes: “Enthusiasts of lifetracking compare their quest for turning information into self-knowledge with the great diary-keepers of earlier eras…” Sorry Ms. Rosen, but as we often write, details are not information. Other than in a few rare cases or for those individuals who may use such details for the above-mentioned malicious purposes, it seems that such self-reported data are worthless details that – by definition – are ignored and unconsidered. In that respect, they have similar, zero, signal-to-noise ratios of most text messages sent by teenagers: see the first three linked posts, especially Texting, Dante and McLuhan.
By the way, there’s another essay on the same page about equally obscene levels of self-absorption. That column is entitled, This Boomer Isn’t Going to Apologize, and it’s by Stephen Moore. Of course, it’s another story about baby-boomers and how they think the the world should think and care (only?) about them. (Please grow up!)
In his column, Mr. Moore notes the tendency at many graduation ceremonies this Spring for speakers in their fifties and sixties to apologize for their generation’s many mistakes. It seems that, childishly, they can’t let their children’s graduations be about the children. They feel compelled to inflict their own feelings (and shortcomings) on their children and the proceedings because it must always and everywhere be about them.
While it is a pleasant surprise to see folks, who are quite old enough to be adults, attempt to take responsibility, we’d prefer that they just shut-up and go away.1 Because, frankly, it’s not all about you, and as we state in the title, it is the case that nobody cares. Tell it to your priest, but remember, they’re only human and bore easily, too.
- It is a tad bit refreshing after reading about Robert Rubin, who was the topic of our post, The Seventy-Year-Old Teenager.) ↩
Peggy’s Wrong about Obama’s Timidity
That’s What It Is.
Thursday evening we posted a brief note encouraging the freedom seekers who are now (quite bravely) protesting in Iran. We doubt that any of them will ever see our post, but we felt compelled to write something nonetheless. They are very brave people who deserve our support and prayers.
We were about to go to bed this morning when we decided to peruse The Wall Street Journal’s web site, where we noticed a new column by one of our favorite writers, Peggy Noonan. Her essay is entitled, Whose Side Are We On? You Have to Ask?
In it, she correctly notes that it is silly to even pose such a question to Americans. It would be nearly impossible to find anyone in this country, who is in full possession of their mental faculties who does not overwhelmingly support freedom and the freedom seekers in Iran (or anywhere across the earth).
Unfortunately, she errors in defending the President’s tepid, timid, and weak response to date.
He needn’t call for the fall of the mullahs or offer military assistance to the freedom seekers. That would insert himself and the USA into the event, and that might not be wise. We doubt that any of his sane critics have demanded such statements.
Instead, all he needs to do is to state the truth: the American people overwhelmingly support anyone seeking to acquire the same freedoms that we enjoy. As such, Americans will endeavor to set an example of how a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people can be governed by the rule of law and not by tyranny or whim. (As we have for the past 225-or-so years.) That as an elected representative of such people, his thoughts and prayers are no different than most Americans; they are with all people yearning for freedom. What’s hard or wrong about that?
Note: it’s late, and we might edit this post in the morning.
Good Luck Iranian Freedom Seekers
We get only an occasional web site visitor from Iran.
We blame that absence on the repressive Iranian régime as we’re sure there are many intelligent, knowledgeable, and sophisticated Persians looking for insights that span from deer to girls basketball to the financial crisis to risk-neutral default rates.1 We write the previous sentence in jest – but only slightly.
During the past year or so, we have begun to truly appreciate the freedoms (of speech, of religion, of the right to bear arms, of mobility, etc.) that we possess as a citizen of the United States. (We especially enjoy the freedom to criticize elected and appointed government officials and employees.) We certainly don’t think there’s any special about us, and wish all people of the world enjoyed the same freedoms that many of us take for granted. So, while it may not mean much, for you infrequent visitors, know that our prayers and good wishes are with the protesters and freedom seekers in Iran.
In his “Best of the Web” column/blog, James Taranto castigates President Obama for his timidity on Iran.2 What a perfectly descriptive adjective of the President’s inaction and near silence with respect to Iran: “timidity.”
That being said, timidity does have it place. We wish that Mr. Obama had been equally timid and reserved with his domestic policies. Instead he felt free and bold to interfere in the financial markets, the automobile industry, global warming, the “stimulation” of the economy, and now the healthcare industry. (Perhaps he thinks he knows more about those industries and phenomena than he does about Iran, but is that an apt conclusion? We doubt it.)
However, regardless of Mr. Obama’s missteps, Iranians should know the the hopes and prayers of many Americans are with them and against their autocratic rulers – even if Mr. Obama won’t say so. So, we’ll say it: good luck and God bless you in your struggle for freedom against the tyrants.
Paul Volcker Has It Right
(His Recommendations Were Ours)
Paul Volcker had an excellent op-ed column in Tuesday’s edition of The Wall Street Journal that we’re finally getting around to mention. It is entitled, “Moral Hazard and the Crisis.” It’s not actually a column but excerpt of a speech that he recently gave in Beijing.
If they haven’t read it, regular visitors of our site can skip Mr. Volcker’s speech because we have already discussed just about everything that he proposed, including the elimination of prop-trading at insured institutions; the titular problems of moral hazard and the crisis and how the government’s response will exacerbate anti-social behavior; our call for nationalization (or receivership) as a way to mitigate moral hazard; and issues with mark-to-market accounting, particularly in our post on A Wee Bit on Mark-to-Market Proposals. (The accounting issues are where we would disagree most as there are fewer true markets by which to mark than Mr. Volcker seems to believe.)
Mr. Volcker’s recommendations sound so sensible, conservative. and market-oriented that we wonder how he could have endorsed Mr. Obama for President in early 2008? Whether one considers Mr. Obama’s approach to be a “light touch” (as Mr. Obama states) or heavy-handed meddling (as we see it), prior to (and after) the election, Mr. Obama has been consistent in his stated desire for more government involvement. As we wrote many times prior to and after the election, we don’t see how such involvement would mitigate any of the critical problems that the financial system faces. It only makes them worse. (See our archive on TARP, especially the older posts on the second page.)
Computer Problems
Despite a few interesting weeks of activity in the world, we have not posted much lately. That’s because we’ve had a variety of computer problems at world headquarters. We woke up last Wednesday morning to a BSoD or Blue Screen of Death on our desktop/network server. Our Western Digital Raptor hard drive had failed. It was unbootable and inaccessible.
We replaced it the following day with a bigger and slightly faster VelociRaptor.
At the same time, we decided to upgrade from Windows XP (Media Center) to Vista Ultimate. As we wrote a few months in Walt Mossberg is Wrong, Again, in our experience Vista tends to be more stable and faster than Windows XP. That’s not the sentiment (or should it be sediment?) that you’d get from dear old Walt or a variety of other writers or bloggers, but skepticism is in order when reading “stuff” on the web (except, here, of course, where we have enough skepticism for ourselves and everyone who visits).
We must admit to making a mistake when we purchased the new operating system; we bought the 64-bit version instead of the 32-bit version that we wanted. When it arrived and we noticed the “64”, we figured we’d give it a try, and we have been very pleasantly surprised. Perhaps it’s the new hard drive, but the 64-bit version is fast. It is stable, and it has run every 32-bit application that we have loaded.
Many bloggers and writers have complained about the lack of 64-bit drivers, but many of those complaints seem to be several years old, i.e., from 2006 or so. So far, we’ve had no problems installing any of our hardware, including an older USB, HDTV tuner; an Epson R1900 printer, and a Canon MP830 multifunction device. We have one rather esoteric piece of equipment left to install – a Graphtec Robo Pro 5000 – but based upon what we read on-line (oh dear) we think it will work, too.
Vista 64-bit provides a few other advantages over 32-bit Windows, too. We’re finally able to use all 6GB of our installed memory, so there is less hard-drive caching, and 64-bit operating systems are supposedly less susceptible to 32-bit viruses. (We have no personal experience with that claim, but it makes sense to us.)
Despite being disruptive and time-consuming, the crash wasn’t a total loss. Our systems are stronger and better than they were. (Hah! Don’t you wish the same were true of the financial system!) After almost of week of use, we only wish we had made the same “mistake” during the recent purchase our two portable workstations.
Speaking of which, unfortunately, the desktop’s hard drive failure was only 0ne-half of our hard drive problems.
For a few weeks, our M4400 laptop has been behaving badly with frequent, unexplained crashes. After we finished repairing the desktop, the condition of laptop’s hard drive worsened; however, unlike the desktop drive, the laptop drive isn’t completely dead, but it quite a nuisance.
Now that the replacement hard drive has arrived from Dell, we’ll spend the rest of the day reinstalling our programs. We should be back to posting our viewpoints either tonight or tomorrow.
By the way, we’re quite happy to have installed Norton 360 backup. It worked automatically and well on both machines, and spared us a lot of misery and irritation and time and money.
Not Seeing the Obvious
Last month, we wrote Let the Girls Play, which was subtitled, The Problem’s Worse when Coaches Can’t or Won’t Shut-up.
Here’s another example of extremely bad coaching.
We recently attended a game in which we noticed that one of the starting point guards couldn’t dribble without looking at the ball. When she looked at the ball, she was a fine dribbler, but unfortunately, she couldn’t tell when anyone was open on (1) fast breaks or (2) when she was “running the offense” from the top of the key. Because we were sitting on the end line, it was quite easy to notice the bad habit every time she brought the ball up the court.
Short passes to other guards weren’t the problem, but hitting the open person under the hoop was an impossibility unless she had already stopped dribbling.
When we inquired, we learned that the girl – who looked to be about 16 – had the same coach for the past several years; this upcoming season is to be the fourth year in a row. It’s only in those situations that you realize the difficult odds that children face when dealing with incompetence in positions of authority.
Looking at the ball while dribbling is an easy enough problem to fix – almost every six-year does it, but most 16-year-olds don’t – but if your coach (or your parent) doesn’t notice, what hope do you have to improve? A bad habit remains a bad habit and becomes something to cling to during stressful episodes, i.e., when the game is to be decided. Clearly, that can lead to bad outcomes for all involved.
What’s worse is that when we asked a few of the players after the game, all were aware of it, but no one would mention it. Even the least experienced player knew about it, but the coach, who was not young, did not. We suspect that at least a few of the girls didn’t mention it because it gave them an advantage when competing against her. We suspect that others imagined that the girl wouldn’t take kindly to the criticism.
Yeah, we know, there’s almost a countably-infinite number of analogies in corporate and political life every single day. Regardless, it’s still sad, but then that’s why we’re the president of our own firms.
GM’s New Owners
So, according to many news agencies, General Motors (GM) will enter bankruptcy today after at least forty years of mismanagement. We’ll leave it to older folks or historians to pinpoint the long-ago beginning of the end. There is much to write about its epic failure, but so much has already been written and will be written by others that there is little new to write.
From the reports we’ve seen, the federal government will own either 60% or 72.5% of the reorganized firm. (We taxpayers have already spent tens of billions and will spend many more tens of billions – if not hundreds of billions– more before it all ends.)
In December, we wrote Auto-makers and Management Fads, in which we noted that GM and the other car makers seemed to have embraced every single (and silly) management fad of the recent past – to no avail.
With little left to say, today we ask only a few questions.
For a moment, let’s ignore failed communist states around the world. We ask: is there any surviving organization with a worse record of mismanagement, over-spending, and inefficiency during that forty-year time period than General Motors?
Is there an organization that has embraced as many silly fads or hired more consultants than GM, yet still wastes hundreds of billions – possibly trillions – of dollars per year?
How about one that has taken over other organizations in similar financial peril, and promised quick and profitable turn-arounds? Ever heard of Amtrak, which was taken over in 1971, dear reader? That’s not quite forty years ago – merely 38.
Yes, we’re thinking of our very own federal government of the United States of America.
Now that GM will be run with all the efficiency of the federal government, does the reader expect a turn-around any time soon?
If so, we’d be happy to acquire some prime, Detroit real-estate for the reader to purchase from us.
Cats in Woods and Fields
They Never Look Innocent & Probably Aren’t
No, the title isn’t a code phrase nor does it have an alternative meaning. It is what it is; it’s about domestic cats that we occasionally see in the nearby woods and fields. (It’s called Penn’s Woods for a reason.)
Our little bit of exurbia is surrounded by woods and a few fields. When walking the Basenjis, we see many kinds of wildlife, e.g., last evening we saw a whitetail doe suckling a newborn fawn in a small clearing new a meandering, zig-zaggy stream. Across the road from the deer, there is a pond with a school of rather large carp, a couple of goose couples raising their goslings, and at least one industrious muskrat that we see most mornings when we head in that direction. (In December, we wrote about a big buck that was killed just west of the pond.)
Nowadays, the old man, Bart, as in “Bart, Bart, the Basenji part” has no interest in that muskrat or any other one. Ten years ago in Minnesota it was a different story. When he was a mere five, the little mutt from the shadows of the Budweiser plant in South St. Louis and his leader at the time – our first Basenji, Scooter – caught one. Bart being a bit more energetic and a bit less bright than Scooter took the muskrat head-on. Scooter, slyer and older, took it from behind. Scooter killed it but not before Bart required three stitches on the tip of his nose. Anyway, where were we…
Of course, already by the end of May, it’s difficult to see anything in the local woods. It’s a jungle out there. Not a tropical jungle, but a temperate, hardwood jungle. We’re not sure if it meets the technical definition of a rain forest, but given the usual precipitation during the warm months in Western Pennsylvania, it can’t be that far off: not many wildfires, here. Moreover, there are vines intermingled with the trees: mainly wild grapes and prize-winning poison ivy. Maybe it’s not poison ivy, maybe it’s poison oak, but a few vines have to be at least three-inches in diameter. Anyway, where were we…
The cats that we see in the fields, and, when possible, in the woods are not feral cats. They have owners and live in or near houses or barns. However, whenever we see them in nature they always look like they’re going to-or-fro trouble. They walk as if they’re either stalking some poor little something or are just coming back from killing a poor little something. (Of course, their prey are only poor, little somethings when they’re outside your house – not inside it. Then it’s “Eek! Eek! Where are the traps?”)
It’s not just our local, Wexfordian cats. After observing the feline phenomenon, realizing it and pondering it a bit on a walk, we concluded that we couldn’t recall ever seeing a cat in the woods that didn’t look guilty of something.
We have nothing against cats although we do tend to be more allergic to them than poison ivy, but we ask: has the reader ever seen a domestic cat in the woods behaving innocently?
