Flutterby™! From 2008-11-01 to 2008-11-25

Over at Sexuality.About.com, Cory points to and comments about the news that sex toys are now completely legal in the Fifth Circuit (Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi). In the case of Reliable Consultants, Inc. v. Earle, the counsel for the State of Texas does not intend to seek a writ of certiorari, which means that the February 12^th ruling stands.

"Because of Lawrence [v. Texas], which overturned Texas' anti-sodomy statute], the issue before us is whether the Texas statute impermissibly burdens the individual’s substantive due process right to engage in private intimate conduct of his or her choosing," wrote Judge Thomas Morrow Reavley for the panel. "Contrary to the district court’s conclusion, we hold that the Texas law burdens this constitutional right. An individual who wants to legally use a safe sexual device during private intimate moments alone or with another is unable to legally purchase a device in Texas, which heavily burdens a constitutional right. This conclusion is consistent with the decisions in Carey [v. Population Services Int'l] and Griswold [v. Connecticut], both cases involving distribution and use of contraceptives], where the Court held that restricting commercial transactions unconstitutionally burdened the exercise of individual rights."

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Law Current Events Civil Liberties ]

Happy Tenth to More Like This.

NY Times looks at the new movie Cliente:

The posters were advertising “Cliente,” a popular movie that revolves around clichés about prostitution and gigolos in France. Judith, the client, who is played by Nathalie Baye, one of France’s highest-paid actresses, is not a pathetic, lifted rich woman of a certain age and nothing to do. Rather, she is a hard-charging, 51-year-old television shopping-channel anchor and director who, after her marriage falls apart, wants good sex without strings and is willing to pay handsomely for it.

Via.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Movies Sociology Consumerism and advertising Marriage ]

We're planting some winter crops, and in the process decided to yank up a tarragon bush, which is now in the dehydrator. The house smells yummy. Fresh tarragon is a much better flavor than dry, but I'm gonna try a Bernaise with it anyway.

[ related topics: Food Gardening ]

Condom use promotion ads from the French AIDES group: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7235c_aides-girl_creation and http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6sj6e_aidesboy_creation (Via)

[ related topics: Erotic Video ]

I've seen this AP article about using scare tactics on voters, but I haven't heard of this happening until this election.



Threatening to arrest black people at the polls, deport native-born people of Mexican descent, and even telling people that the Republican election is on Tuesday and due to crowding you should show up Wednesday for the Democratic elections... I'm thinking this will be an interesting turnout tomorrow

[ related topics: Politics Law ]

Warning: Swallow your milk before reading further...

“White people are faced with either a negro or a total nutter who happens to have a pale face,” Rocky Suhayda, American Nazi Party leader.

Read more here.

[ related topics: Race ]

The Caliente Resorts, a nudist community near Land O' Lakes, Florida, wants to establish the first clothing-optional polling site.

[ related topics: Nudity Current Events Community Clothing Real Estate ]

Study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Andrew Elliot and Daniela Niesta of the University of Rochester claims that red turns men on. I do find a few things interesting:

When using chromatic colors like green and blue, the colors were precisely equated in saturation and brightness levels, explained Niesta. "That way the test results could not be attributed to differences other than hue."

My minimal knowledge of the physiology of the eye suggests that the response curves of the cones may not be as easy to model as all that. On the other hand, the study doesn't claim any causes.

Via, Via.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Current Events ]

I'm not in a place where I can watch video right now, but the CNN Headline reads: McCain: 'I will never let you down'. I have this distinct feeling that if I were in front of a machine that had audio, I'd get Rickrolled.

[ related topics: Politics Music Video ]

As I write this, McCain is giving his concession speech. Barack Obama is the new President-elect of the United States.

Now hoping for "No" on California Prop 4 and 8.

Addendum: Still hoping beyond hope on 8. Wanting to rip into Obama for various things, but my @DEITIES, that guy can talk. As much as certain policy stances scare the hell out of me, I think the country needs a JFK or a Reagan, and Obama can speak. I'd forgotten what it meant to sound Presidential, after 8 years of a mumbling idiot, we've got an orator.

[ related topics: California Culture ]

One Velociraptor Per Child - a low-cost, connected velociraptor for the world's children's survival.

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

A neat documentary that my hiking buddy Dave shot and edited is now on YouTube: Hidden Bounthy of Marin.

[ related topics: Movies Nature and environment Bay Area ]

Tee hee hee, it looks like the McCain folks are getting testy about Sara Palin's future prospects, reporting that the $150k shopping spree was an under-statement:

An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast," and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

[ related topics: Books Fashion ]

Gloria said "I found the spanking savior", and I thought this was creepy enough to pass along. It's a detail from the full sized page. Based on this page which lead me to this book, I believe that to be a page from one of David Berg's "True Comix". Berg was the founder of The Family

But I didn't toss this up to snicker at pedophilia, at least not completely. Okay, one more snicker, in this thread, Erica says:

OK, now I’ve seen everything. I am speechless.

I never knew Jesus was left-handed.

This caught my eye a little more because I recently read Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon. It's the first in a series of historical romance (with a little time travel thrown in), I quite enjoyed it, but I was struck by the attention paid to a particular spanking in that story line, and, once again, have had my eyes opened to the kink all around us.

[ related topics: Religion Humor Books Sexual Culture Sociology ]

Obama has conquered the larger world, now for the microworld!

[ related topics: Heinlein Cool Technology Propaganda ]

NoFo: Proposition Hate.

Two helicopter schools call the Santa Rosa Airport home: Makin Air helicopters and Sonoma Helicopters.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Aviation - Helicopters ]

Eliot Spitzer gets off without charges, while one woman who just took calls and booked appointments for Emperor's Club V.I.P. faces up to five years. So the hypocrite who was purchasing services while attempting to prosecute those providing those services walks, while the woman answering the phone faces jail time. Yeah, that's justice.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Law Law Enforcement ]

Mcor Technologies is claiming a 3d printer that apparently works by gluing a sheet of paper to the lower surfaces, cutting it with a mechanical blade, and repeating the processes.

[ related topics: Graphics Cool Technology Fabrication ]

Charlene has been on a diet that involves her going through a lot of vegetables. It ain't cheap, but she probably peaked around a size 18, she's down to a size 8 now, so I can't complain. What it has done, however, is change how I think of the food portion of our budget. Groceries are now a big portion of the pie chart, which means that things that used to be extravagances in the food budget are now noise. When we're spending that much on kale and chard every week, does it really matter how much the olive oil that we buy every few months costs?

As China's food system experiences systemic breakdown (and do you know how much Chinese cream is in your butter? How about your candy bars?), and that olive oil is increasingly suspect, this is letting me get in touch with our food supply chain a little bit more. I eat less cheese, but it tastes a lot better, and I think I know which fields those cows graze. Today the Press Democrat has an article on the local olive oil business.

In general, I think this is the trend of the libertarian thinking on food safety: We can't trust governments to keep our food supplies safe, we have to start rebuilding those personal relationships ourselves. This is going to cost a lot. The costs of food as a percent of our budget are going to go back up to the proportions that they were earlier in the last century, possibly even higher. And this will have an impact on the rest of our spending...

[ related topics: Politics Libertarian Food Bay Area Current Events ]

Craigslist to start charging for erotic services ads, the real purpose of the move being so that they have credit card and other identifying information for when they're subpoenaed by cops trying to prosecute prostitution.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Law Enforcement ]

Denver Channel 7:L ACLU says undercover police officers deliberately scuffled with uniformed officers during the Denver Democratic National Convention, resulting in the pepper spraying of the undercover officers. The actual ACLU letter to Richard Rosenthal of the Denver internal affairs investigation says that DPD undercover detectives were trapped in a cordon operation, and decided to attack the uniformed officers so that they could be removed without blowing their cover.

Yeah, unstable situation, large crowd, the DPD decide that the best thing to do is start throwing punches. There's some good judgement. In response, some uniformed officers, who didn't recognize the undercover officers, deployed the pepper spray. At least there's some justice in that.

Honestly, between the tactics deployed in Denver and those used in Minneapolis at the Republican convention, seems like we can just assume that any part of a large crowd doing violent things is police officers.

Via SE, which also links to the SF Examiner article on the ACLU letter.

[ related topics: moron Current Events Law Enforcement ]

Went last night to see Robert Kull talk about his year alone in the Patagonia wilderness. His book is called Solitude: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes. We really enjoyed the talk, didn't feel moved to read the book, however, because it seemed like the personal struggles he was chasing weren't necessarily ones that spoke to me. I may go back and get it, though, because just thinking about the logistics of "drop me on an island, see ya a year later" makes me go "wow".

At any rate, it's worth a consideration, certainly worth exploring his web site a bit.

[ related topics: Books ]

A couple of people have brought up this anti-porn "documentary" called "The Price of Pleasure". In my RSS feeds, I've been watching various dancers and porn performers and the like comment about it, including some amusing comments about how nice it'd be to get some with-it U.S. prosecutor to go after the producers for their very obvious 2257 violations. Since it's been mentioned recently, Ernest Greene goes to a Price of Pleasure screening.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Sexual Culture - U.S. Code Title 18 Section 2257 ]

I think Worst. Bug. Ever. is a bit of an understatement, but if you have one of those new Google phones, don't text rm -rf /* until you update your firmware... Apparently the last line of the initrc brought up a shell in the background, and all user I/O went through the same device...

Which brings me to: Anyone got a favorite method for putting together an ARM GCC toolchain on Linux?

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source ]

I don't have the budget or the space, but I want: JLT Clamps has clamping systems to hold your work piece. In one piece, and it looks like in whatever orientation you'd like to do your glue-up in.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Woodworking ]

Aides: Obama suggested more help for auto industry. Philip Greenspun spends one day in a General Motors vehicle:

How about the rest of the car? The rear hatch kept popping slightly open while driving, generating some road noise and a warning message… underneath the tachometer in 1970s-style LED letters.

Yes, letting the big U.S. automakers fail would play hell with the midwest's economy, but can we afford to let them continue on this doomed path?

[ related topics: Politics Automobiles Economics ]

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,

And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est

Pro patria mori.

---Wilfred Owen

Annotated version here.

[ related topics: Politics War Poetry ]

Japanese technology, scans veins/arteries in your fingers (sounds like a variation on the retina scan). Apparently it's already been rolled out: http://technology.timesonline..../tech_and_web/article5129384.ece

[ related topics: Current Events ]

[ related topics: Photography ]

For a while we've been trying to cook one set of meals, but with Charlene's recent diet, our two sets of cooking have diverged. Even when we have the same meal, we end up doing it in two different pots so that we can have different cooking times and different spicings and saltings.

This, along with starting to get the kitchen to a usable space, means I'm starting to cook again, although there are things I avoid because they'll just be too much temptation for Charlene to have around, it's fun to play. So I'm back to reading the various "molecular gastronomy" blogs.

MarkV linked to Khymos, a website and weblog dedicated to molecular gastronomy.

Which brings me to molecular gastronomy in general. I recently picked up Twinkie, Deconstructed, Steve Ettlinger's romp through the ingredients in a Twinkie, from enriched wheat bleached flour, looking at the factories in Switzerland and China necessary for the production of that, to Delaware for Polysorbate 60 and the mines of Oklahoma for calcium sulfate. A good read, I've a few minor reservations, but I'll be passing this one around.

However in my recent push to understand more about what I eat, I've started to think a little bit more about the comment petronius made when I mentioned places to source some food chemicals: "Interesting....home-made synthetic food!" It's one thing to better understand what's going on in the kitchen, to replace lore with knowledge, ritual with effective tools, but I'm finding myself cringing from the idea of more of my food coming directly from petrochemicals. I don't, for instance, know if we've got an "obesity epidemic" in this country, but it seems like there may be something to the notion that replacing beet and cane sugar with high fructose corn syrup wholesale is doing something more than if those calories were just as available, only cheaper.

[ related topics: Cool Science Weblogs Food ]

Michael Lewis looks at the end of the Wall Street boom:

Whatever rising anger Eisman felt was offset by the man’s genial disposition. Not only did he not mind that Eisman took a dim view of his C.D.O.’s; he saw it as a basis for friendship. “Then he said something that blew my mind,” Eisman tells me. “He says, ‘I love guys like you who short my market. Without you, I don’t have anything to buy.’ ”

(Via MeFi) The screwed up nature of the investment market meant that those shorting, betting on a fall, were helping to drive the market up.

I've been thinking about the notion of hidden information: If you know something and the other party to the transaction doesn't, when are you ethically compelled to offer up that information. That the car they just test drove has a timing belt about to break? That secret catalyst in the process by which the special sauce gets made? Under which cup the pea is? I don't have an answer, but Wall Street hasn't been asking the questions, for decades.

[ related topics: Gambling Economics ]

Wired Science blog reports on an article in Science about plastic lab gear contaminating lab results:

The additives are used to prevent static buildup, reduce stickiness and eliminate bacterial colonization. But many have been shown to interact with proteins, and to leach from food containers into their contents. Holt's team is just the first to quantify this in a laboratory context — and in labs, where researchers can use thousands of pipettes and other disposable tools in a day, there's no way to avoid plastic.

"Interpretation of data is being complicated by these issues, to the extent that it seems possible that incorrect conclusions have been made based on 'contaminated' data, and that such conclusions have been published," wrote Holt and his colleagues. "Our progress ... is being hampered and costing more than it should."

Extrapolation of possible impacts on use of similar plastics for food preparation are left as an exercise to the paranoid reader, but when we re-work our plumbing I'm leaning towards copper.

[ related topics: Food ]

I think I've got the geek interview question down to 3 questions;

• What languages(s) do you have experience in?
• What development environment do you use?
• What language can you write code in without an IDE prompting you and a cookbook website or book lookup for every command.?

or I can just ask the last one. The answer is typically -none-.

I'm down to not caring what language, if they actually understand and code in it, I'm betting they can probably code any other. Note: HTML and XML are not programming languages.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Books ]

Goldman Sachs was just caught pushing CDOs as a hedge against the California municipal bonds that it was also selling:

Goldman stood to profit from several aspects of California's borrowing, which involves the sale of bonds to investors. First, it collected millions of dollars in fees for bringing the bonds to market and finding buyers. Then it marketed a financial instrument known as a credit default swap that is essentially an insurance policy against a bond default.

Via John Robb. Here's what I don't get, though: People seem to be pushing the notion of the CDO as "insurance", as if you'd buy California Munis, and then you'd buy a CDO to pay off in the event of failure. Where's the extra money coming from? I mean, if a bookie offers a payoff of 2 to 1 to both sides, there's no cut left for the bookie. I guess it kind of makes sense if the "against" bet is on catastrophic failure only, but it sure still seems like there are gamblers on both sides who are leveraged out and unable to pay if their bets fail because they believe that their bets can't fail. And that means we haven't hit bottom yet.

[ related topics: California Culture Currency Economics ]

Dear lazy web, I want a Firefox plug-in that lets me automatically log in to a bunch of sites. Several sites seem to think that "remember me forever" means about a day, and at other times I think Firefox may have long-term cookie memory issues, but I want a button that goes and logs me in to all the different sites I come across.

Bonus points for a tool that doesn't give me a button, but recognizes when I'm going to a site and logs me in invisibly. This shouldn't be hard, it could be simple URL matching and some basic "go to this URL, fill in this form" capabilities.

Very Low-Cost Sensing and Communication Using Bidirectional LEDs. By using two pins to drive a LED and current limiting resistor, they can sense how much light the LED is sensing when the LED is off. This was initially used to adjust the LED brightness to ambient light levels:

Compare this to the cost of adding IrDA [7] (about $7) or Bluetooth [8] (more than $10) to a product. Using even a simple mechanical connector can cost several dollars because of the required level-shifting and electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection circuitry. Using an existing LED for communication can also save manufacturing costs because expensive plastic molds for the housing need not be altered to accommodate a dedicated infrared transceiver, antenna or physical connector.

Via Brainwagon.

[ related topics: Wireless Embedded Devices ]

A number of people have been pointing to NY Times: A Senior Fellow at the Institute of Non-Existence, about how after Fox News(!?) reported that Sarah Palin didn't know Africa was a continent, not a country, a couple of guys created a (or used an already existing) fake McCain advisor named "Martin Eisenstadt" who took in MSNBC with his confirmation of the story.

Here's the thing: So far as I can tell, Sarah Palin has point blank admitted to the confusion, see the video at the Alaska Daily News, around 6:55:

"If there are allegations based on questions or comments I made in debate prep about NAFTA, about the continent versus the country when we talk about Africa there, then those were taken out of context."

The only fraud that the "Eisenstadt" guys are admitting to is to being the named source, not to the original rumor. This "create a straw man and discredit the strawman, thereby destroying discussion of the original topic" is a fairly common GOP tactic, and it looks like the NYTimes bought it.

[ related topics: Language Politics Journalism and Media Television ]

Spoonflower - on-demand custom printed fabric.

[ related topics: Clothing ]

I'm reading Katharine Harmon's excellent collection You Are Here: Personal Geographics and Other Maps of the Imagination. Actually, reading is a misnomer as it's about 98% maps and similar illustrations. Included a map of the Town of Mayberry by Mark Bennett, a native of Chattanooga.

Also available in his book TV Sets: Fantasy Blueprints of Classic TV Homes.

[ related topics: Ziffle Books Art & Culture Television Chattanooga Maps and Mapping ]

Okay, I know I'm not totally stupid about such things, but if you've got any idea how to successfully load the output of buildroot on to an AT91SAM9261-EK (or, for that matter, an AT91SAM9RL-EK or AT91SAM9XE-EK) Atmel ARM dev kit, using SAM-BA, could you give me a hand? I thought I understood the process, I think I know where everything should be going, but at best I'm getting:

RomBOOT

>Start AT91Bootstrap...

>AT45DB62D detected

>Invalid Boot Area...

>Start application at [0x23f00000]

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Interactive Drama Robotics Shoes Embedded Devices ]

We were in the bookstore last week, and while I picked up Twinkie, Deconstructed, Charlene picked up Wesley The Owl, by Stacey O'Brien. It's the autobiographical story of a young woman working at the Caltech labs who takes in a barn owl with neurological damage in its wing, and the 19 subsequent years that the two lived together. Simple sentences, not a complex read, but a fascinating and tear-jerking look into human-animal relationships, owls, and biology in general. The talk of the halls and quirky characters at Caltech made me remember aspects of Pixar fondly, there were a bunch of laugh out loud moments, and some waaay too cute pictures, though they're black and white and low quality, so I'll be looking for the threatened additional media.

[ related topics: Pixar Books Photography Nature and environment ]

I had no idea that there was so much riffing on the Pixar logo. A few short snickers: 1, 2, 3, 4

[ related topics: Pixar Humor Animation ]

ErosBlog's Bacchus writes about Google's removal of sex sites.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

A long long time ago, Dan and I built a system for providing property tax information and we provided it online using TBBS and it's xBase/dBase tools. We would read gobs and gobs of data, and pre-process it and index it. I remember this taking all night or longer on a 486. Then we could display things as they wanted it, quickly and efficiently as the information was in the desired format. It's a simple technique. Effective. I'm now using it for other things, and comparing my techniques and code to much more expensive and bigger systems that run intensive for/while queries for many things. We "normalize" the data as we collect it, constantly. It takes a couple of extra queries and inserts for every data acquisition point. It takes big flat tables with some redundant fields that technically would not be properly normalized.

But damn, it's fast to display and analyze data when it's preprocessed.

Thanks Dan. and then there is a story about a web browser written in dBase, but that is another story...

[ related topics: Politics Furniture ]

Forest wanted to blow something up. After last time, I was a little nervous about spooking the neighbors, so I thought "well, let's put it under water". So we filled a wastbasket with water, tied a 2 liter soda bottle to a couple of bricks, pumped it up to 150PSI, and took an 8 foot long strip of plywood with a screw driven through the end of it to pop the bottle.

When the water cleared, the wastebasket was destroyed, splayed open like a banana peel, the bottle, of course, was completely unrecognizable, and, after a few seconds, something clattered and tumbled on the top of the shed roof. We started taking stock of the destruction and realized that about a foot of the end of that plywood strip, complete with 3" screw driven through it, was what came tumbling down way over there.

Forest couldn't understand why I was reticent to blow anything else up this evening. Alas, the camera was in a weird mood, so, no video.

[ related topics: Dan's Life ]

It is often said that classic journalism means stating Who, What, Where, When How and Why in the first paragtraph of a story. Rarely has it been so well demonstrated as this lede from the Daily Star of London:

Incest monster Josef Fritzl is fighting plans to lock him away in a psychiatric prison with a brain-eating cannibal who hates paedophiles.

[ related topics: Current Events Journalism and Media Civil Liberties ]

Silicon Labs makes current sensor chips which do the integration and temperature calibration automagically, including a $19.95 current sensing evaluation kit that takes up to 10A in and gives 2.0v out. I think I want to figure out how to build something with the 20A chip, but couple this with an AVR RAVEN and even at off-the-shelf and lots of capability that'll never get used this is close to "put one on every socket in the house".

[ related topics: Cool Technology Real Estate ]

When will the floppy disk die as a save icon?

Two notes:

1. "Save" is stupid. The idea that you create a temporary copy of the document in order to work on it is an outdated extension of computer limitations.
2. Three thousand years developing written language and we're now worried about decade old hieroglyphs.

[ related topics: Weblogs Work, productivity and environment Community ]

In talking about his father losing his house in the recent SoCal fires, Dave Goodman also had a mention of his stepmother getting injured in the 1980s L-Tryptophan fiasco, and linked to Organic Consumer's Association: Looking Back at Genetic Engineering's First Deadly Disaster: L-tryptophan.

Which brings me to Twinkie, Deconstructed. The table of contents is the ingredients list of the Twinkie snack cake, and Steve Ettlinger leads the reader through his quest to discover the source of each of these, from visiting refineries in Delaware to gypsum mines in Oklahoma, describing niacin factories in Switzerland and vats of yeasts producing riboflavin along the Yangtze. It left me wanting more information, which is good, I suppose, and it left me with a general unease about my food supply.

I think that's a good thing. Maybe it's just that we're in the midst of trying to figure out the extent of the melamine scandal, but in light of some of the difficulties and deliberate obfuscations Charlene and I have found in looking at vitamin supply chains, I'm not at all at ease with the notion that large portions of my food supply are as unlike "food" as this book suggests (and I've no reason to dis-believe).

Recommended, especially if you need more urging to eat things that you can recognize how they came into being from sources that you know and trust.

[ related topics: Books Health Food History Consumerism and advertising California Culture ]

Dear organization of the moment, we love you, we've given money to you, and we plan to give money to you in the future. You have the records of us giving a reasonable donation, consistently, every year.

If you call us every two weeks saying "help, it's an emergency, send us more money", we're going to start to become skeptical that the organization is run by professionals.

On Sunday morning, Charlene and I got on the tandem and rode over to the east side of town, down around Schollenberger park and along the river and the wetlands, and then up by the airport. Stopped and watched the activity along the line, and got out of the way for a guy driving, must have been a Model A, out of the gate. He stopped and got out, and I asked if what he flew was as classic as what he drove.

He said "kinda, it's a Pietenpol Air Camper". We talked for a bit, he said "yeah, you make the turn from cross-wind on to final, looking toward the runway there's struts and wires everywhere, it's a 13 year old boy's dream". Now that I'm home I can see what that means: Here's the journal of a guy building one, Wikipedia's page on the little two seat high wing open cockpit plane has a few pictures, the EAA has a little squib on the "light sport aircraft" before there was such a distinction, and now I want to see this guy's plane.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Movies Aviation Current Events Bicycling - Tandem Woodworking ]

While I'm concerned about the sources of my food, Chris forwards along an article that raises concerns about the sources of our computer parts: And now the Manchurian microchip.

I'm a little bit skeptical, but only when I'm thinking about non-targeted applications. I think it'd be tough to, for instance, stuff something in every Ethernet transceiver. But maybe it's about a lot of little pieces, a virus, a back door in an Ethernet controller, and they only have to come together every so often.

[ related topics: virus Food Current Events ]

Authorities are condemning the act of kayaking a 300' dam spillway in Wales. Woot! Look at how high that first guy skips off the hole at the bottom! And, damn, if that second guy has any sense he had to change his underwear after his run, those low-head hydraulics created by flat ledges can be deadly (because the upstream ledge is uniform, there's no irregular spots in the hole through which you can escape).

[ related topics: Whitewater Video ]

Can I gripe here on Flutterby?

I am entirely frustrated with Chattanooga State and don't have anywhere else to vent. I have long said that getting that little piece of paper when I graduate means that I have successfully navigated academia bureaucracy, not necessary that I've gotten an education in anything else. All the crap that follows below proves my point.

I had three problems recently with Chattanooga State's various online systems.

[Edit: Dan and Nancy have decided this eats too much of the front page, so we've continued it in the comments]

[ related topics: Language Children and growing up Interactive Drama Politics Books Software Engineering History moron Work, productivity and environment Chattanooga Education Clothing Phreaking ]

It's been a hellish several days, but I now kind of have a handle on cross-compiling Linux for this ARM platform I'm dealing with. At this point, two things still frustrate me:

1. buildroot still seems to be creating my modules with a different version magic string than my kernel.
2. I haven't figured out why libusb isn't seeing the USB devices that my kernel is loading, and, by extension, why this isn't getting forwarded to BusyBox for hot-plug management.

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source Embedded Devices - Linux Clowns ]

This one's for Diane: training rats to detect landmines and diagnose tuberculosis.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Philip Greenspun's plan for an economic recovery package:

We know what America's future looks like if we continue along our present path. It looks like Michigan.

[ related topics: Politics Economics ]

GNUARM, a GNU ARM toolchain for Cygwin.

Typealizer thinks that Flutterby.com is ISTP, and that my personal stuff over at Flutterby.net is ESTP. Give it a URL, it gives you a Meyers-Briggs personality type.

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality ]

Yet another response to my LumberJocks query about drawer slides (to which I really owe the world a follow-up), Gangzhou siyi bumper equipment technology is a Chinese manufacturer of, among other things, small hydraulic dampers.

It is easy to rag on Thomas Kinkade, it is more difficult to mock Thomas Kinkade and be humorous. We can call his branding strategy for affiliated products "dreck", and ridicule his guidelines to artists working on his branded properties as "Thomas Kincade's 16 guidelines for making stuff suck", but...

I'm the first person to giggle over Sad Kermit, I like my art edgy and unsettling, but I why don't get there's this tremendous social outpouring to mock the comfortable, to ridicule those who seek that sense of peace and calm that paintings of cozy little well lit cottages give them. I guess this is an extension of my realization that Zig Ziglar, Tony Robbins and that ilk aren't teachers, they're cheerleaders, and why do we cynically denigrate them in that role?

[ related topics: Humor Sociology Art & Culture ]

Bisphenol A leaches from 'safe' products:

Food companies advise parents worried about BPA to avoid microwaving food in plastic containers, especially those with the recycling No. 7 stamped on the bottom.

But the Journal Sentinel's testing found BPA leaching from containers with different recycling numbers, including Nos. 1, 2 and 5.

"There is no such thing as safe microwaveable plastic," said Frederick vom Saal, a University of Missouri researcher who oversaw the newspaper's testing.

Yep. One of the cooking techniques I'd love to play around with is "sous vide", but I don't trust even moderate heating of the plastics I've used in vacuum sealing, and as I've played with such things more I'm getting further skeptical. We're moving away from plastic food storage containers to glass, as well, although that's not just because there may be leaching issues, it's also because glass containers seem quite a bit more durable.

[ related topics: Food ]

To get into the exhibit to see: Model railroad in the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers. Conservatory of Flowers web site, the exhibit runs through April 19.

[ related topics: Bay Area California Culture Trains Toys ]

Last night we went to a fundraiser at the Marin Art and Garden Center for The Hungry Owl Project, an organization that, among other things, builds and distributes boxes for barn owl nesting, with the hope that if agricultural lands in our area can manage rodents and other pests by encouraging predators, they can use less rodenticides and pesticides.

Enjoyed the entire evening, the owls and other birds, rescued by WildCare, were fun and cute, and Joe Mueller did a good job with quips, but I want to see Jack Barclay talk on his topics of expertise more. He's all about burrowing owls, apparently spends much of his time in the areas around San Jose airport watching them, but on a bunch of potentially incendiary topics he had well reasoned informed responses and an ability to mix his obvious love of the creatures with with a broader view that makes me want to hear him talk again.

I was thumbing through the proceedings of the barn owl symposium book that he'd brought with him, and asked "why does it seem like there's an inverse correlation between reported aircraft bird strikes and bird population", and his answers about data quality looked to some of the larger human sociological issues.

He's doing a talk next Tuesday at the Golden Gate Audubon Society in which he's looking at owls and the impact of the windmills at the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area, and I don't think we're going to be able to make it, but I'd love to hear his perspective on that issue.

As for the fundraiser, It probably cost us about the same as or less than (if it's a big name show near Union Square) a play in the city, was at least as fun, and did better things for our area.

[ related topics: Aviation Bay Area Art & Culture Birds Gardening ]

Holy crap, this is freakin' brilliant: Bike Hero (Note: If you're not at least passingly familiar with "Guitar Hero" it won't mean anything to you) (Via Sean Leather).

[ related topics: Music Games Video Bicycling ]

Wall Street Journal blog: Rich are cutting back on payments to their mistresses.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Weblogs Economics ]

In a strange confluence, we have the Lakota tribe quoting Ayn Rand - Long time listeners will understand the irony in this -

Quoting Atlas Shrugged, they open:

The Free Lakota Bank is the world's first non-reserve, non-fractional bank that issues, accepts for deposit, and circulates REAL money...silver and gold. All of our deposits are liquid, meaning they can be withdrawn at any time in minted rounds.

When you open an account at the Free Lakota Bank, there are 2 specific things we do not want: your name and your social security number. It is not our job to track the movement of our clients' money; we do not want to know who is depositing, where it comes from, or at what rate it enters or leaves our bank. We believe money is anonymous and not subject to tracking.

Lakota - the word will always sound sweeter now. Seriously - its a great idea - hope they mint a Ron Paul coin too!

I wonder if they are really Lakota and if they are actually on a reservation and therefore free from US interference?

Mayberry PS and no 'god' on the coin - how refreshing!

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama Objectivism Sociology Heinlein Currency ]

Whole Paycheck had a 2 for 1 special on Beeler's Bacon, so I picked up two, and, for giggles, one of those was the "cured in apple cider" Apple Cinnamon bacon. I still have to try the other straight-up smoked bacon, but the Apple Cinnamon bacon was disappointing. Even in a BLT with home-made mayonnaise.

[ related topics: Food - Bacon ]

Ralph Lorenz Frisbee Research (Via P1k3's Link Dump)

The generation 2 frisbee incorporated a more powerful microcontroller (Netmedia BX-24), powered by 6 1/3AAA NiMH cells. Sensors include ADXL202 2-axis accelerometer as before, infrared altimeter, 2 photodiode sun sensors, a magnetometer, an experimental upper surface pressure sensor, and a speed-of-sound anemometer.

[ related topics: Robotics Embedded Devices ]

It always amazes me that people don't know how to tie knots. I remember a particular challenge in Boy Scouts involving a steep slope, holding myself up with one arm hanging on a rope, and tying a bowline around myself with the other, one-handed.

Viviane's Sex Carnival had a link to how to tie a bowline with one hand, if you're a beginner at such things, but YouTube user TyingItAllTogether has a whole bunch of how-to-tie videos, including a lot of the decorative knots that I probably knew at one point, but have mostly forgotten

So whether you need the basics (and whatever reason you need it for, I'm not asking...) or more advanced work, looks like there's some good how-tos there. And the knot tying videos are all safe, even if I found 'em through a site you might not want to look at in school.

[ related topics: Erotic Work, productivity and environment ]

It's the usual end of term pardons for the president article, but the teaser on the SFGate.com front page caught me up short:

President shows leniency to 16 people including a Grammy winner, pesticide user, cocaine dealer.

Ya know, there are a lot of things I'm willing to forgive. People make mistakes, various things that are illegal shouldn't be, and some people are truly reformed. However, he's letting off a Grammy winner? Good lord, do you have any idea what sort of impact on society this could have? And think of the children. If we have lots of young kids thinking that they can grow up to be Celine Dion without any consequences, it's gonna be anarchy!

[ related topics: Politics Pop Culture ]

I just created this Wordle for the main page of Flutterby. Is there a way to get a flat version of all of Flutterby?

[ related topics: Photography ]

Argh. Two "this should be easy" questions:

1. I'm attempting to compile CUPS with Buildroot. I can get by all the silly security crap with an SSH tunnel so that I can attempt to configure this thing, but I'm getting 404 errors, so it looks like CUPS isn't finding its templates. Anyone dealt with this stuff? CUPS isn't my favorite piece of software even when it's working... Real answer: Ignore CUPS, just compile Gutenprint, but cross-compilation is mucked up in Gutenprint build scripts.
2. Anyone got a super-simple GadgetFS example, probably using libusb?

[ related topics: Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment Cryptography ]