Flutterby™! From 2004-05-01 to 2004-05-31

May 1st 2004, Eric, occaisional Flutterbarian, long time friend of Dan's, mine and other Flutterbarians, becomes Eric and Asha Wolf in a beautiful ceremony.. Congratulations Eric and Asha.

[ related topics: Photography Coyote Grits ]

The still pictures don't capture anywhere near how cool it was to watch the gray whale mother and child swim up the coast along Limantour Beach, in west Marin, on their migration from the birthing grounds down in Baja up to the northern Pacific. What was most amazing was just how close in they were, right off of the surf line (as you can see in one of the images below).

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Nature and environment Bay Area ]

How did I miss this? Researchers in the University of Washington's Department of Bioengineering have found that prolonged exposure to 60Hz magnetic fields can cause brain DNA damage. Such fields are generated by common household appliances like electric razors and hair trimmers. Once again, my grooming habits are vindicated. In the most recent Funny Times Raymond Lesser elaborated:

This apparently confirms something many of us have suspected; people with the most elaborately coiffed hair are probably missing more than a few brain cells. And the longe rthey work perfecting their hairdos, the more serious the brain damage becomes. This also explains why many scientists look like wild-eyed, half-shaven maniacs....

[ related topics: Health Work, productivity and environment Physiology ]

This morning we decided we wanted to do something out of the norm. Trying out a tandem bicycle won out, so we searched a bit, called one place in the city that promised us a reserved bike, but just as we were running out the door called us to say they didn't have one. So we searched a bit more, got warm fuzzies from Blazing Saddles right down in the tourist district.

The tandem was a hell of a lot of fun, and a great way for the two of us to share exercise, since we're mismatched in that category. Despite still working on the communication issues ("Okay, I'm going to stop pedaling now..." versus "ow, what the hell?"), and me leaving Charlene in Golden Gate Park to go get the car 'cause her knee was bothering her, we've spent the past hour and a half scouring the web for tandem info.

The idea of a recumbent appeals, we're going to have to look for various options. So far the "whoah, that sounds really cool" awards go to the DoubleDay from Bike Friday and the Bilenky Viewpoint, with us also interested in taking the RANS Screamer and the "Double Vision" tandem which I can't find a product page on right now.

Of note: When I took off to go get the car, I looked at the map, saw a big detour through the Presidio, and thought I'd just cut over to Divisadero, not remembering that where I ended up meeting Divisadero was the highest point on it. I have never been so happy to have more steel out behind me as I was descending those hills towards the Marina. However, turning up the hill by the Cowell Theater, I hit some dirt and couldn't get that long rear-end to stick for anything. The huge wheelbase made it forgiving, so I stayed up, but I spun a lot on the way up the hill.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Bay Area Sports Pedal Power Bicycling Bicycling - Tandem ]

Huey Lewis and the News is singing: "I'm looking for a new drug.."

Well, actually not a drug.. I'm looking for a product or service that can be offered electronically that has real value. Why? Because a customer is offering an online product package of e-books in a pseudo-networking-marketing 'you too can be a sales rep' website. "Q" can sell anything, and has 400 plus really good sales associates that has proven that he can sell absolute dreck worth almost nothing for a premium price. My complaint, and "Q" admits it, is his product package sucks. I'm looking for something that either already exists, or that some enterprising Flutterbarian can create for a few grand that has some real world value.

[ related topics: Books Health Invention and Design Current Events Consumerism and advertising Marketing ]

Dinner at Unicorn in Berkeley last night as birthday dinner for Sam. I'd like to taste a few more things there, it was quite good, but a few things were somewhat pedestrian and I'm wondering if my palate was just off last night.

But the company was great.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Bay Area ]

Bought a new toy last night: A KHS Tandemania Sport from Team Karim in Berkeley. It's a 1998 model still in the box, the frame geometry is slightly different and there's no suspension on the rear seat post, but we got a decent price break and we can alter the few different components if we see an issue with 'em.

It's pretty low-end, not one of the tricked out bikes I mentioned lusting after, but we realized that we could spend all summer looking for just the right bike and learning enough to know what we wanted, and we wanted to start riding now.

But after dinner last night we stayed up 'til nearly one assembling it. I'll do final tightening and adjustments tonight (Charlene works), and we'll be able to do an inagural ride on Thursday evening. I'm super excited about having a regular exercise thing we can share.

And while we're riding as often as possible this summer and learning what we do and don't need in a tandem we'll be actively looking for something better.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Invention and Design Bay Area Bicycling Bicycling - Tandem ]

My anonymous correspondent has once again pulled out a cute one: http://www.fuckforforest.com/

Each year, huge areas of rainforest are systematically being cut down. Invaluable animal and plant life is being decimated to make way for commercial interests.. . For too many humans, development has become more important than the balance of nature. Is humanitys cynical behave more powerful than idealism..

?Fuck for forest? are concerned youngsters, fighting to preserve the environment. We believe it is possible to use people?s need for sexuality as a way to raise money for nature. And create interest for preserving our forests. It is time to pay respect, and give something back. Fuck for forest, and give the profit to the earths threatened nature...

[ related topics: Erotic Nature and environment ]

I'm not sure exactly how this relates to the bet between Todd and Dan (me) on on-demand content, but I was waiting for something today and flopped over to The Doc Searls Weblog and saw that today he had a link to The Horror of Blimps, which was mentioned here over a year ago.

I was amazed because I have this impression among my regular reads that memes spread pretty darned thoroughly. It's this cultural isolation that leads me to believe that people will want a more broadcast form.

[ related topics: Weblogs Todd Gemmell Sociology Archival Dan and Todd's Bandwidth Bet ]

China shuts more than 8,600 internet cafes:

"Any such place allowing juveniles to enter or allowing unhealthy information to spread through the Internet will face rigid, severe penalty," Xinhua said.

[ related topics: Current Events Net Culture ]

Oprah? what have you Done

Snitched from Metafilter: Average IQ by state and how they voted in 2000:

Note to Republicans: This chart is not as bad as it looks. The correlation of electoral votes to IQ is a loose one. There are many variable that are obviously not included. Connecticut, for example, probably has a significantly higher rating now that George Bush lives in Texas.

[ related topics: Politics Sociology ]

We had that flurry of Flutterby interest in social software, but aside from answering the occasional friend request trickling in from Orkut I've largely forgotten about those sites. I'm still not sure that the whole networking thing has promise, but a possible tool: Mine FOAF data (including the separate registration of email addresses for those who wish to keep their addresses obfuscated) and build automated "2 degrees" mailing lists.

[ related topics: Social Software ]

Okay. Howinthehell did I get to this ripe old age without having someone bend my ear about the joys of tandem biking? We still need to work out a better rack system than "take off the pedals on one side and loosen and slide around the rear handlebars and tie the front wheel so the front handlebars don't smash the back window", but we took the bike out to Samuel P. Taylor State Park this afternoon and rode the bike trail (old railroad grade) from one end to the other. We're both giddy with just how cool it is; like the best of touring biking, but sociable and with that element of learning how to communicate that is so cool.

I'm now going to be one of those annoying evangelist types until the newness factor wears off, 'cause this is just plain neat.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Bay Area Bicycling Bicycling - Tandem ]

Wow. If you're interested in issues of usability and interface I strongly recommend The Dynamics of Non-Visual Bicycling (.DOC file, use a Google search to get an HTML version). It's all about people with vision impairments, including those with total blindness, riding mountain bikes, and it's got some great descriptions of the limits of sensing in human physiology.

[ related topics: Physiology Bicycling Handicaps & Disabilities ]

I finally learned enough XSLT to use it for a project at work. I'm impressed. It's a slightly different approach than I took when I developed the Flutterby code base templating system, and I don't remember now why I didn't use it (maybe it wasn't there yet...), but it did what I needed it to relatively painlessly and I'll consider using it for future projects. Best yet, it let me develop the transforms in my favorite environment and move 'em to .NET on Windows once I had things running nicely.

[ related topics: Microsoft Coyote Grits Nature and environment Work, productivity and environment Sports ]

Went into the city last night to catch Dick Bright's SRO at Bimbo's 365 club. The opening band was truly atrocious, the drummer was overly ambitious and dropping triplets, the bass player had good rhythm but no sence of tone.

But Dick Bright's SRO rocked, and we danced 'til 1 A.M. The cover was pricey ($20/each), but the band was worth it.

[ related topics: Music ]

Dang, no pictures. But we headed out this morning to Point Reyes to see if we could find some biking there, discovered it wasn't nearly as flat as Dan remembered, so went back to Bear Valley to pedal the tandem out to Arch Rock (which I should have some pictures of, but don't have the whatever to dig out right now). So we wandered over the arch to the bluff overlooking the ocean, listened to the birds squabbling and the waves breaking on the cliffs below, and saw a whale. Darned late in the season. But overall a good ride, a good walk, beautiful flowers, can't ask for much more.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Nature and environment Bay Area Bicycling Bicycling - Tandem ]

It's not )*(, but it's still good: Nancy and I went to Lake Eden Arts Festival and enjoyed a weekend of cool people, good music, poetry, some dancing and just chilling in a beautiful place. Best act was a bit of a suprise: a group of 10 trombones, a tuba and a drum set that rocked the house as a 'Gospel Jam Band'. They had people with their arms in the air dancing and clapping as these musical evangelists blew power and glory into the room on a Sunday morning.

[ related topics: Burning Man Music Art & Culture ]

Especially in light of the revelations that the prisoner conditions at Abu Ghraib aren't necessarily the exception and that they're hanging some enlisted guy first, I think it's important to note that there are a few heroes in this situation. Sgt Stryker points out a few of them, notably the unit that originally ran the prison:

"There was one incident when we were asked to keep detainees awake, to wake them up with metal drums. We said, `Absolutely not.' I stopped them from doing it," said Armstrong, a 37-year-old child protective services worker from Las Vegas.

But, more importantly, the person who brought the abuses at Abu Ghraib to light, Specialist Joe Darby. This is a guy who certainly risked his career, probably his life, to point out that things were wrong, and who will probably have to watch his back for at least the rest of his time in the military because he spoke out when wrong was being done.

[ related topics: Sociology Current Events War ]

Sourced from Medley: Judge orders couple not to have children.

Monroe County Family Court Judge Marilyn O'Connor ruled March 31 that both parents "should not have yet another child which must be cared for at public expense."

This seems perfectly reasonable to me, government services are a privilege, and they should not be abused.

[ related topics: Children and growing up moron Sociology Law ]

In light of that thread on weight management, here's The big fat con story:

The case against fat proceeds on the assumption that if a fat person becomes thin, that person will acquire the health characteristics of people who were thin in the first place. Although this assumption may seem like simple common sense, it is, like many commonsensical assumptions, quite dubious. If a person who is physiologically inclined to be fat loses weight, this does not transform that person into someone who is physiologically inclined to be thin. To understand the implications of this distinction, consider that bald men die sooner, on average, than hirsute men, probably because bald men have higher levels of testosterone, which appear to lower life expectancy. Given this, surely no one would conclude that giving a bald man hair implants would improve his prospects for long life.

The article points out that much of the increase in "obesity" and Type 2 Diabetes can be chalked up to the lowering of the ranges which qualify a person for each of those, not necessarily that more people actually have blood sugar issues.

It also flirts with, but doesn't fully say, that exercise rather than dieting is what's likely to have the positive health effects, and points out the cultural differences in notions of how heavy it's appropriate to be.

It's this last one that I find most interesting:

When asked to define "beauty", the white girls described their feminine ideal as a woman 5ft 7in tall, weighing between seven and seven and a half stone (ie, someone thinner than the average model). By contrast, the black girls described a woman whose body included such features as visible hips and functional thighs.

Perhaps in looking to explain the preoccupation with weight and size we should glance toward the industries that beneit most from selling insecurities.

Not that I'm planning on putting back on what I've lost any time soon; I have more energy now and I'm getting more exercise. Just a reminder that our notions of health are as politicized and driven by issues of the consumer culture as anything else.

[ related topics: Health Sociology Consumerism and advertising Race Physiology ]

9 miles in strong wind yesterday, 20 miles plus a reasonable sized hill (the bike path along 101 from Corte Madera to Mill Valley) today. Best investment so far: a cycling computer with a cadence readout to settle those "you're pedaling too fast/slow" arguments, and a 2 liter Camelbak for Charlene, which she drains quickly (I, on the other hand, am ending up with yellow pee, so I'll have to get one too...).

And yes, we will try to get some pictures. Got to get someone else to take 'em, for obvious reasons. And where we can get someone else to take 'em (the neighborhood) the background isn't terribly cool. This Saturday it'd be nice to take the time to ride to Sausalito, walk around enough that we aren't saddle-sore any more, and ride back, and that would make a nicer backdrop, so maybe I'll try to carry the camera along then.

Since Charlene is the stoker, she gets the ride in the back, like when you were a kid and sat in the back seat in the bus so you could get the big bumps. Sprung seat post for Charlene coming Thursday, Spiderflex seat sometime (hopefully not long) after.

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area Bicycling Sausalito ]

I liked the announcement for the 2004 masturbate-a-thon enough that I put it in the Wiki. The official site is at http://www.masturbate-a-thon.com/ if you're feeling public-spirited on Sunday!

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Bay Area ]

CNN: New video games push the sexual envelope. Or, at least mainstream publishers pick up on what the fringe developers have been doing for a few years now.

[ related topics: Business Games Sexual Culture ]

This one's for crasch: The Fab New World of Prefab Houses: SF architect brings eco-friendly, modernist design to the average home buyer. Unfortunately, they don't have pictures of the actual thing, just renderings of designs, and the floor plans look pretty trailer-ish. There's no reason that prefab panels couldn't be used to make prettier houses than what they've got in that article and the links from it.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Bay Area Architecture Real Estate ]

Naomi Darvell ponders the dildo:

But you first hear "dildo" from such writers as Middleton and Shakespeare himself. (Winter's Tale 4.4: "He hath songs for man or woman of all sizes; no milliner can so fit his customers with gloves. He has the prettiest love-songs for maids; so without bawdry, which is strange; with such delicate burdens of dildos and fadings...") Both the Middleton and the Shakespeare sound quite suggestive, "without bawdry" notwithstanding. But the first straight-up (so to speak) description of a dildo as a sex toy is courtesy of Thomas Nashe, in "The Choise of Valentines" (circa 1592):

Sorry, you'll have to follow the link to get the full verse...

[ related topics: Sexual Culture History Theater & Plays ]

John Koopman visit's Joe Gallant's porn movie beginner's class:

One of the actors, Dino Bravo, tells the class he used to work in finance, wore a suit every day. He hated it.

"I work in the porn industry and I can tell you this is the most honest work I've ever had," he says. "And it's simple. Someone offers me a certain amount of money for me to be in a scene. I make the scene. I take my money. Simple."

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Movies Work, productivity and environment ]

The same George who passed me the source for that entry on La Ribot gave me a pointer to a newsblip on the Swatch Bunny Sutra.

Hmmm... I guess I'm just an old "cheap and rugged" kind of watch guy.

[ related topics: Humor Sexual Culture Current Events Cool Technology ]

The suspended seatpost arrrived yesterday, we didn't go biking because Charlene was on call, and I've no idea if we're going to make it out today, but since we cleared 20 miles we're starting to think about potential overnights in west Marin. And it'd be cool to be able to do shopping with the tandem. That means we need some cargo capacity.

So:

• Notes on building some heavy duty bike racks.
• Some discussion of building and mounting touring bags.
• pictures and notes from sewing some really nice looking nylon panniers
• The Amazing Bike Bucket and Bike Bucket Mk. II look like a really good place to start.

A trailer might happen, but that's extra rolling resistance, and I'll need some weight on the bike anyway because I need to do some starting and stopping drills that are better done without the stoker on the bike (but with equivalent weight), so somewhere in these links is a good place to start.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Bay Area Bicycling Archival Bicycling - Tandem ]

I find Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends fascinating from a "believes more hype than Wired" standpoint, with the occasional nugget of "that's cool".

Back in the late multimedia boom days there were several companies in the U.S. that claimed to have discovered the "primary colors" of scent, and were gearing up to market computer peripherals that would give the web (or whatever) smell. Well, Roland informs us that they're back: Delicate aroma of wine from a computer near you.

Which is a pretty damned amazing way to sell your product, "we can take on years of tradition and culture and maybe even a bit of science and duplicate a process which takes a huge long time and costs a lot, for a few dollars on your desktop".

This is either something truly spectacular which will revolutionize food science, or a spectacular example of total marketing idiocy.

[ related topics: Food Current Events Wines and Spirits Marketing ]

One for the alternative energy crowd: The Strauss dairy in West Marin brings a methane digester electricity generator online.

[ related topics: Cool Science Bay Area ]

According to the Guardian, the highly explicit British film Nine Songs is premiering at Cannes this week. It concerns an Englishman reminiscing about a torrid love affair while flying over the desolate glaciers of Antarctica, its sex scenes interspersed with performances by new-wave bands. I now realize that a new insta-plot has been added to the other freeze-dried scenarios used by the Sundance crowd, such as the sensitive coming-of-age film set in American suburbia; or the incisive unnarrated documentary about people from Texas and their trucks.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Movies Antidepressants Machinery ]

Why do we live near San Francisco? The Bay to Breakers race was run yesterday:

Asked what a Bay to Breakers would look like in Crane, population 1,400, Doug Bennett said, "There'd be 16 people with Bibles in their hands telling you how bad you are.

As the front page teaser points out, Elvis lost to the Kenyans.

[ related topics: Bay Area California Culture Sports ]

You may, at some point, ask yourself what it is about venture capitalists that makes their contribution to the economics of startups just so important. Wonder no more, here's the average day of a Venture Capitalist. Giggle.

[ related topics: Humor Work, productivity and environment Economics ]

The Nation references Colin Powell talking about the WMD claims (Thanks, Dave). The NBC News' Meet The Press transcript for May 16 has this excerpt from Powell:

I'm very concerned. When I made that presentation in February 2003, it was based on the best information that the Central Intelligence Agency made available to me. We studied it carefully; we looked at the sourcing in the case of the mobile trucks and trains. There was multiple sourcing for that. Unfortunately, that multiple sourcing over time has turned out to be not accurate.

So why is Powell passing the buck to the CIA when it seems like it's The Pentagon that's all buddy-buddy with Ahmad Chalabi (who seems to be the clear coordinator of the "multiple sourcing")? And while I'm no fan of Paul Bremer, how does this affect support for Bremer's struggles with the Iraqi Governing Council? Especially since another take on the oil-for-food corruption inquiry has Republican Christopher Shays taking on Bremer:

"We have serious reservations about the way the investigation [into corruption] is being handled and are awaiting the answer to a range of questions we have put to the Bush administration," Christopher Shays, a Republican Congressman from Connecticut said.

I try to avoid being part of the tin foil hat brigade (although if you're feeling really cynical and paranoid see Nick Berg's Killing: 50 Fishy Circumstances, Contradictory Claims, and Videotape Anomalies (Thanks, Rafe)), but I keep getting the feeling here that we're seeing ripples on the water and being asked to look elsewhere.

We now return you to your less serious Flutterby, now with more propagation of false memes.

[ related topics: Politics Current Events War ]

Oh yeah, same sex folks are getting married in Massachusets, and apparently more and more people are aware that public statements of hate have an annoying way of outing relatives:

But Ray McNulty, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Family Institute, one of the leading organizers of opposition to same-sex marriage, criticized some of the protesters, saying there was no need for hateful speech.

"What's going on down there is legal, and as far as I'm concerned, give those people their happiness for the day," McNulty said.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Sociology Law Current Events Marriage ]

Saw Troy - I liked it. At first I had trouble with some of it, but later I fell in love with it. No time to go into depth but, it wouldn't hurt to reread The Illiad first http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~joelja/iliad.html for essential background. I also now am a fan of Brad Pitt- wow what focus. He got Achilles mental state just right! Rambo is nothing compared to Achilles.

They have a lot of gods - its quaint in a way, and refreshing not to listen to the usual BS about God and JC and so forth as they don't come along for another 1200 years. Achilles is not real caring about what the gods think so thats nice too. A free thinker hero!

Recommended, with caution - the script wanders and is a little thin at times. Borrows some action and actors from Brave Heart and LOTR 3 (ugh) and I believe there were 1000 ships and that was not done digitally!

Still - if Hollywood could only write a real heroic script... In some ways the Illiad is better than the movie.

All over a woman - Hector, Priam, Achilles, Agememnon - now those were the days! Attack, kill, fuck, eat and drink. aahhh -

Ziffle

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Movies Food Machinery ]

I'd used VistaPrint before and they had done well.. so after pricing GeekLabs full color cards with custom artwork locally, ($200 plus over a week as they job it out) I thought I'd see what VistaPrint could do. Although I had to use my WinXP/MSIE system to do the custom layout, they have an online text/graphics system that is perfect for doing business staionary design, and it worked very well. I uploaded logo graphics and did a custom text layout with a good selection of fonts and layout features (I used Courier and no features), but printed on the back as well.. Paid them just under $70 and got them in under a week via UPS. What was shocking is: they looked exactly like it displayed on the web when I ordered them. Kudos VistaPrint!

I'd like to have supported a local small printshop, but the difference in price and service capabilities (for a techno-literate customer) was staggering.

[ related topics: Language Graphics Heinlein Typography Graphic Design ]

While some people are crowing that a shell which might have contained Sarin was discovered in Iraq, I'd caution them that if you were one of the folks who crowed that the mobile hydrogen factories were proof then you should be cautious that even the kings of spin aren't claiming victory:

In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cautioned that the sarin results were from a field test, which can be imperfect and more analysis needed to be done.

And also that non-government groups have whipped up Sarin in a bathtub before, there's no particular reason to believe yet that even if this was that particular agent that it existed under Saddam's rule.

I'm not quite ready to give the free pass that Joshua over at the red pages offers up simply because I think we haven't yet gotten to the point of needing that sort of explanation.

[ related topics: Current Events War Dictators ]

I got to thinking yesterday, after poking around thomas.loc.gov and the Senate, House of Representatives and Pentagon pages, that I want a new kind of news outlet.

I will pay money to support a news organization that:

• when it uses publicly available records, press releases, transcripts or briefings for quotes or information, links to them. If such releases aren't published online by the organization offering them, makes those documents available alongside the stories and condensed versions in as close to their original form as is possible.
• is clear about their sources; differentiates between when a quote is in response to a question from an interviewer rather than lifted from a press release or other transcript.
• has information pages on each of the organizations and people that it references in a given story, even if those pages are just links to other stories in which those people have appeared, along with the link to, say, their official government or role pages.
• spiders the aforementioned resources to offer up voting records and other sorts of "I want to see this more in depth" information for bills passed and people mentioned.

In short, I want a news outlet that isn't trying to carry the bad practices of the newspaper forward into the hypertext era, that isn't trying to lie about its own sources, and that isn't being a paid shill for advertisers and PR people who know how to manipulate undercompensated reporters.

[ related topics: Quotes Politics Consumerism and advertising Journalism and Media ]

You know... well, ya know something when you hear "light switch" and think "someone who can go dom or sub" and not "a device for altering the brightness of the room".

[ related topics: Humor Sexual Culture Dan's Life ]

This morning I was going to take the car in for servicing, which didn't come together, but did mean that I spent a long time in the car this morning. And what was on the radio was the Abu Ghraib hearings. I haven't heard that many carefully studied weasels and non-answers in a long time. I'd thought that Billmon's deconstruction of DoD spokesperson Lawrence Di Rita's non-refutation of Sy Hersh's New Yorker article on Abu Ghraib (thanks, Medley) was maybe a bit nitpicky, but these guys engaged in the worst sort of weaseling, and I wish I could find a transcript so I could get the exact words, but I heard quite a few "did you authorize X?" questions answered with "I did not authorize a subset of X to group Y during the timeperiod T1 through T2" which left no doubt in my mind that, at some point, "X" had indeed been authorized.

With that in mind, Rafe had a few things that nobody disputes at this point:

1. Torture is part of the interrogation process at Guantanamo.
2. The Pentagon sent the guy who set up the torture program at Guantanamo to Iraq to make recommendations on how they could extract more information from prisoners they had captured.
3. He ordered that the guards at the prison be placed under the authority of the interrogators, and that the purpose of the guards was to set the conditions for successful interrogation.
4. The guards at Abu Ghraib started torturing the prisoners.

Just so we're clear on what people are and aren't managing to squirm clear of.

With that in mind, I send you over to Dan Savage: Paris Hilton Goes to War: The Bush Administration Is Waging a War on Porn While Soldiers Waging War in Iraq Make Porn:

Which brings us to the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. In a story in the New York Times last Saturday, a senior defense department official said that Army investigators had collected "several hundred pictures" as a part of their investigation, "but most do not depict Iraqi prisoner abuse. The vast majority are pornographic pictures involving only American soldiers." This piece of info was dropped into the story toward the end and no further comment was made.

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture History War ]

Had lunch with Brian Warner today, the topics were wide ranging and deep, but one of the things that came up was a need for a geek gathering. Something in the Bay Area reminiscent of some of the gatherings and show-n-tells of the mid '90s, transcending Flutterby and Scotch Night (which has withered of late).

If you're in the Bay Area and would be interested in a gathering in which the mentioning of seeking of sysadmin or web design jobs would be strictly prohibited, drop a message or an email and let's see what we can work up. We need this.

[ related topics: Bay Area Work, productivity and environment California Culture Net Culture ]

U.S. soldiers raid Chalabi's home.

During the raid on Chalabi's home in Baghdad's Mansour district, American soldiers surrounded the compound and armed Americans in civilian clothes and flak jackets were seen milling about.

A Chalabi aide, Haidar Musawi, said a U.S.-Iraqi force surrounded the compound about 10:30 a.m., while Chalabi, a member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, was inside. They told Chalabi's aides they wanted to search the house for wanted officials in Chalabi's party, the Iraqi National Congress.

Half of me wonders what this'll do to the alliances within the governing council, the other half of me is gleefully giggling "payback's a bitch, ain't it?". About freakin' time some heat got put on this guy.

[ related topics: Politics Current Events War ]

Proof, once again, that Republicans just don't get it. I've got no problems with gun shows at government owned facilities, but I have to pass along this little exchange from the debate resulting in gun shows being banned and the Exotic Erotic ball being allowed at San Francisco's Cow Palace:

"You are voting to keep live sex acts in a state facility going on," Sen. Bill Morrow, R-Oceanside (San Diego County), told his colleagues. Morrow also passed out advertisements for the event, which takes place in October, on the Senate floor.

In response, Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, D-San Francisco, deadpanned: "I've never heard of any kids on a playground killed by a live sex act."

[ related topics: Children and growing up Politics Sexual Culture Bay Area moron California Culture Guns ]

Saw some stuff that made me wonder what Alexa does, so I tried searching for my favorite generic topic of late, tandem bicycling (yes, Polly, we're going to try to get some pictures this weekend). Once I figured out where in the hierarchy they'd hidden it, and that they'd called bicycling "cycling", I came across a few goodies, notably a a travelogue on a 1992 tandem tour of Northern California, which might provide some good notes for a region we'd like to explore. Jacky Hood's web page has links to notes from a few other bicycle tours that look like fun.

[ related topics: Photography California Culture Pedal Power Bicycling Bicycling - Tandem ]

It started as a simple trip up to Novato to check out a warehouse sale on batik rayon, but on the way back we got distracted by garage sales, and by the time we got home the tandem (which seems to have gained the name "Sally") was stacked high with kitchen implements, games, clothing, and an electric ice cream maker. And this is the first picture of us with the tandem, at the end of our driveway, with aching thighs. 27 miles, a few decent hills, an average speed (when we were in motion) of over 9 mph and a max of 28. We're getting good with the cadence, too, we went from 80 being the absolute max a week ago (and I got hollered at good if we exceeded that) to holding 92 on one stretch, and we have a comfortable level ground speed of 19-20MPH.

Tonight Charlene works and I hang out with Alec, do some talking about all of those questions that come up towards the end of high school. Probably get pwn3d a lot, too.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Games Dan's Life Travel Clothing Bicycling - Tandem ]

Two things to get yer blood pressure up this evening:

• USDA guts standards for "organic" labeling
• In an effort to appeal to the hippy granola eaters, Dubya gets papers to report that he can't ride a bike. Did this peg anyone else's cynicism meter as hard as mine? "Hey, I know what'll get their minds off of Abu Ghraib...". The original story has gone 404, but this is a follow-up to earlier reports that he can't ride a Segway either.

[ related topics: Politics moron Current Events Segway/Ginger/IT Bicycling ]

An SF Gate article pointed to the USGS report: Shifting Shoals and Shattered Rocks — How Man Has Transformed the Floor of West-Central San Francisco Bay. This looks like a fascinating piece to be read from end-to-end, with maps of how fill has altered the shoreline and depth at various locations, comparative figures of shipping needs over the past century and a half and how attempts to deepen channels a hundred years ago have caused different issues in these days of supertankers with 40' draft, and sketches of the old Arch Rock that used to be out west of Alcatraz and was blasted away in 1901.

[ related topics: Bay Area History Maps and Mapping ]

Via Billy Wildhack: Water park cancels nudist event after pressure from Christian groups:

15,000 nudists were expected to descend on Wild Water Adventures for a private party this September, but after intense pressure from local churches and the public, the popular water park cancelled the party plans.

Hmmm... If someone went out and organized the opposition to this, is there any way to bring the law to bear against them under the anti-racketeering laws or something? If ever there were a place for the government to step in against a monopolistic restraint of trade...

[ related topics: Religion moron Nudity Current Events ]

Finished Moneyball this morning on my walk to the office. I was slightly disappointed, but only because the first few chapters raised my expectations so high.

In the abstract, Moneyball is a business book about measuring quality. While it nominally follows the management of the Oakland As, especially their general manager Billy Beane, it's about how that group of people took the ideas of a bunch of amateur statisticians about what really matters in winning baseball games to choose players more efficiently. Of course, as in all institutions, it's also about the ingrained attitudes and prejudices that keep excellence out of the final product.

In the process of exploring the exploitation of that economic friction that results from the difference between those who play the game well and those who manage the game well, and that the career path often leads from one to the other despite those being largely separate skills, author Michael Lewis tells some entertaining misfits-to-heroes stories that warm the heart of even the most jaded baseball detractor (ie: me), and has more than a few lessons that I think could be brought from that business into others.

He also takes some well deserved shots at sports journalism.

Surprisingly, this one's not an "oh my you must read this immediately" book, but if it ended up in your bag on an airplane trip I don't think anyone out there'd be dissappointed.

[ related topics: Books Games Bay Area Journalism and Media Sports Economics ]

Heather Smith looks at nudity in the Bay Area:

Despite the beach-centric nature of that case, redoubtable Berkeley lawyer Bill Simpich — who has done pro bono defense work for Debbie Moore and Marty Kent of Berkeley activist theater troupe the X-plicit Players — says that Section 314 plus the 1972 ruling make it possible to scamper around California like a little naked pixie, scattering naked dust hither and yon.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Bay Area Nudity Law California Culture ]

So while our Utah trip left me thinking that a 4WD vehicle would be nice, I'm rather glad that we're starting to think we can fill that void with the tandem bicycle and some reasonable upgrades to take it on rougher road. One of my concerns in buying a 4WD vehicle was safety.

Today Scoble had a link to pictures of identical 40MPH front-impact crash tests of a MINI Cooper and a Ford F150, and the ensuing thread goes into the usual stats on actual deaths per mile, not just results from crash tests.

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Automobiles Bicycling - Tandem ]

I want a big shout-out to the folks at Logix4U who've just told me that their self-installing inpout32.dll driver for parallel port hardware control for Windows is free as in free. They've said it'd be nice to get a donation, and I'll definitely find a way to funnel some money their way, but if you're using that now otherwise worthless slot on the back of your PC for fun stuff may I strongly suggest giving Logix4U some attention, and I'm gonna plug their ActiveX control library too.

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Microsoft ]

Yet another strike against neckties: Doctor's ties harbor bacteria. So now you can point out that not only are tie-wearers endangering their own health, they're risking the health of the rest of us too. Disease-spreading unhealthy bastards.

[ related topics: Health moron Fashion ]

I was going to head into the city last night to catch Digital Verité at its new digs, but at the last minute Alec called me up asking for advice and guidance on college scheduling. He's getting the usual "you gotta declare a major" stuff, and needed someone to sit down with him to cut through the crap and point out that you plan on dropping a class, and you should work your schedule so that it doesn't leave gaping holes when you do, and how to get beta on professors. That kind of thing.

So we went through the list of required classes and through the catalog and did wrote down all the ones that looked interesting, all the ones that were necessary, and then tried to build a schedule around the critical classes, and we came up with what might actually be a pretty good solution.

However... In the process of going through this I had the "oh, that'd be cool", then we'd go read the course description and I was taken back to actually sitting in some variant of that class, and I had to work hard to not suck the life out of the process. Amazing what a few years of college did for my cynicism level back then, even more so what the intervening years have wrought.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Dan's Life Education ]

At friends reccomendation, Nancy and I saw Shrek2 last night. It might be cute enough for kids, but it was clearly aimed at an older crowd. Hilarious, fun, and well done (I'm not a computer animation critic). Puss and Boots was great.. Learning that Pinochio wears womens underwear is hilarious.. and well.. We laughed out loud and stomped our feet a lot. - Oh.. and if you have not seen it yet, hang around past what you think is the end.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Animation History Shoes Education Clothing ]

Suprise! - I'm late posting this, but I wanted to share this with my Flutterbarian friends... Nancy worked hard and got a wide assortment of people together for a suprise birthday party. Special thanks to hosts Pam and Clem as well as everyone else that came. [ main link ]

[ related topics: Photography ]

I'm still not sure what the scope of this gathering will be, Charlene will be recovering from some surgery (spent most of today in waiting rooms, mostly to find out that the hard work will be tomorrow...), we're not really set up to do anything big, but we did pick up a honkin' pork shoulder that I'm going to smoke (...now to find some huuuuge papers...), we'll also have some veggies and a few sausages, and have the grill hot. If anyone's planning on being in the central Marin area on Sunday evening (I'll have to wake up super early to get the smoker going, as that'll take 12-14 hours...) we'll be at home and welcoming guests. 54 Willow Ave in Fairfax (there's generally space to park on the street on the next block up), phone is 415-454-4889, or danlyke@flutterby.com. It'll be super casual and not go too late, but if you were already in the area drop by.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Coyote Grits Food Bay Area ]

One of the games we picked up on that infamous garage sale-ing trip was Equate. It's something like Scrabble played with arithmetic. With a tag like "High-scoring fraction tiles motivate players to learn about fractions" I figured this'd be one we opened up, looked at, and passed along to one of the kids learning fractions that we know, but after a cut-throat game last night I think this one might stay here. I can see a whole bunch of strategy in rack management, and a bunch of ways that I need to start thinking about larger numbers differently.

It seems to adapt rather well to differing math levels, and I think it's one that'll have a reasonable amount of play value. Worth considering if you're into such games.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Games Dan's Life Scrabble Mathematics Education ]

I have a confession to make. I went to see a Macaulay Culkin movie. On opening night.

And we loved it. Went to see Saved! tonight and laughed. A lot. Along with the rest of the theater. It's a film about a couple of students in a heavily Christian (with a capital "C") high school, crises of faith, hipocrisy and belief. But what impressed me most about the movie is that heavy satires often devolve into a preachy sermon for something. Although everyone who's lived in the Bible Belt has seen first-hand most of the vignettes lampooned in this movie, it's hard to imagine anyone secure in their faith not laughing as hard as us atheists as Hilary Faye (Mandy Moore) angrily hollers "I am filled with Christ love!", or snickering as Pastor Skip (Martin Donovan) tries to get hip with the kids while preaching out "Who's down with G. O. D.?"

Yet in that framework the movie manages to make us care about wheelchair bound Roland (the aforementioned Macaulay Culkin) or the pregnant teen Mary (Jena Malone), who's faith got her into that state, and whose crisis of faith is the centerpiece of the movie.

The ending, and in fact the story as a whole, wasn't quite pulled off with the same strength as the individual parts were, but there were enough laughs that I can recommend this one.

[ related topics: Religion Children and growing up Dan's Life Movies Pop Culture Handicaps & Disabilities ]

Wow. The New York Times has dropped any pretense of objectivity in this article on the bicycling habits of Bush and Kerry that's mostly just a "Bush is really studly on his mountain bike and Kerry's one of those Spandex^tm wearing road bike weanies" piece, and that uses the Drudge Report as a source for Kerry quotes. That's really freakin' sad.

[ related topics: Politics Journalism and Media Bicycling ]