Flutterby™! From 2005-01-01 to 2005-01-31

2005 is starting off well for me, I hope it is for all of you. It'll be a year of 'getting things done' and 'taking care of business' much more than last year, but I am also looking forward to having some fun. As you make your 'New Years Resolutions', I compel you to make sure some of them are to do the things that make life: Life.

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

The plan for this morning's hike was that Leo and I would leave our cars up at the intersection of Ridgecrest Boulevard and the Willow Camp Fire Road up on the Bolinas Ridge, bike down Ridgecrest and Bolinas Fairfax Road, meet Bill with at least a van full of people near the dam, and head up Cataract Creek.

I drove up the wet road, through the fog, dodging deer, only to discover that West Ridgecrest is gated and wasn't opened until nine. So I hoped Leo (coming from the other end) would take appropriate action (cell phone coverage was non-existent), dropped on my bike, and zipped back down, where I learned that most everyone had flaked, and that the hike was down to me, Leo and Bill.

Despite the logistics hassles, we still had a good, if cold and wet, hike. I didn't take the camera because I didn't want to disturb our houseguests this morning, but these are representative. The streams of white coursing down through the bright green layer over the reddish brown earth were well worth the temporary discomfort.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Bay Area Bicycling ]

Dang it, Violet Blue, when are you going to make it easy for us to link to permanent entries? Specifically, the 2004-12-21 entry titled "bicycle sex" which says:

Last week I had a great phone conversation. A man representing a porn company called my office at Good Vibes wanting me to pick up titles from his company, and while on the phone he directed me to his website. Talking to him, I looked over titles like "Hot Twats in Uniform" and "Spicy Kung Pao Pussy" (names only slightly changed) and said, "You know, the titles really won't work for us." I explained further telling him that our porn-buying customers are slightly over half male, the rest female and couples. "Oh," he said, "so you need softer stuff for the ladies." I said, no, we didn't want softer porn at all. I explained that John Leslie's all-sex series like Voyeur do really well for us. There was confused silence at the other end. I said, "Women want porn. They just don't want to be demeaned by it." Same goes for many men, I think, but that would've been information overload and I just wanted to get off the phone.

I think this goes for a lot more than porn.

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

Just so you know I haven't forgotten it, and because I need to convince myself I'm making progress: The photo manager is moving forward. Slowly.

Over the break I tore it apart, and have reconstructed it so that I have something that's remarkably similar to my original view: Three panes, the left has "albums" that include a view of the filesystem, categories for the various links, and whatever user defined categories you wish. The middle has a list of image names, the right has image details. Images can be multiply selected, and comments and other meta information can span multiple images. The right two are in a notebook pane, and I'll be moving in my map browser into another pane in that notebook shortly.

I've got a configuration wizard in, and I'm working on XML in and out so that I can share data in between machines.

I'm at the stage where I could really use two collaborators:

1. Someone who codes. I'm not quite ready to hand it off to my first stage of users as there's a bunch of hacking necessary to get it installed and running and I'm trying to make a list of what's necessary to actually use it; someone else getting it running and writing that code would rock.
2. Someone who can do icons and other simple art.

But I'm starting to use it for finding stuff, which I think is a great start.

[ related topics: Web development Photography Content Management Maps and Mapping ]

A group of South African boys that were part of a tribal initiation ceremony that was to include circumcision killed their caretaker:

In recent years, the practice of circumcision has come under scrutiny as dozens of boys have been accidentally killed or mutilated by amateur elders who have seized on the tradition as a way to make money.

[ related topics: Religion Sexual Culture ]

The San Francisco Bay Guardian looks at sex in last year's movies in Baby, it's cold inside the theater:

Indeed, we may be facing a massive turn toward censorship just when mainstream entertainment is arguably the blandest it's been in 40 years. Where was all the screen sex in 2004? Mostly MIA. Searing adult dramas like Closer and We Don't Live Here Anymore talked dirty but showed little, in any case suggesting sex is the remorseless assassin of love.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Movies ]

I've been looking at scene graphs recently. Many of the utilities over at the Virtual Terrain Project use the Open Scene Graph for the sorts of entities which fit nicely in a scene graph (terrain is different, and should be treated as such), and osgCal provides a bridge between that and the character animation tools provided by Cal3d.

And Cal3d has tools for 3d Studio Max, Milkshape and an export script for Blender.

[ related topics: Animation Software Engineering Graphics ]

A big collection of articles on computer graphics, mostly focused on gaming issues. Good for refreshers if you... say... haven't looked at some of the elementary algorithms in several years. I've found one or two bits of misinformation, but nothing unforgivable, and none detract from the texts being good for a memory jogger.

[ related topics: Games Graphics ]

Goodbye, Laura Filsinger. Yesterday evening Charlene and I took Alec out shopping to fit his mom's idea of appropriate funeral attire (On walking out of the fitting room and looking in the mirror: "I aged 60 years in 5 minutes"); if anyone out there has any say in arrangement for memorials to me, I want it on the record right now that such arrangements should revolve around a keg or two in a casual setting, if anyone feels the need to change it should involve tie-dye, and that if my remains are retrieved they're to be given to med students for use in practical jokes.

Up shortly after 4 this morning to drive the the boys to the airport. May everyone involved get through the trials of the next week without too much strife.

[ related topics: Dan's Life ]

Back in 1994, I registered Chattanooga.com - Dan thought it was too long, that we show be cha.us or some such.. All being told, it was one of the few smart things we really ever did. Slightly later we registered Chattanooga.net/.org and even .gov (which I donated to the city later). It's not been "mine" for over a year and I haven't gotten an answer what happened, but it appears it got 'unrenewed' and picked up by the people that now run Chattanooga.com, from Hilton Head SC.

Goodbye old friend..

[ related topics: Coyote Grits Chattanooga ]

Microsoft has released some anti-spyware software. I won't be trying it until I get some good feedback from the world that it's not going to screw up my browsing experience, make my computer run really slowly, or pop-up reminders and questions all the time.

[ related topics: Microsoft Software Engineering ]

Yowza! So some of you may have been aware that there were some... "voting irregularities" in this past election in Ohio. Remember all the members of the Congressional Black Caucus trying to find a Senator to help them follow procedure in filing an objection to Florida's electors back in 2000? Well, it looks like Barbara Boxer has stepped up to the podium this year, which means that... well... the House and the Senate will each take two hours out, come back, and certify the votes.

But good on ya, Barbara Boxer, for at least being willing to make the Senate look that much less stupid in Michael Moore's next film.

[ related topics: Politics History Current Events ]

Hmmm... This is just a placeholder, I haven't delved deep enough to figure out what to do with this, but I may have to implement it on Flutterby: Lightweight IDentity, or "LID", a protocol for personal identity management.

[ related topics: Web development Cool Technology ]

As if we needed more proof that in an information age all is possible, the Guardian reports that noted Australian feminist Germaine Greer will be a contestant on the UK's Celebrity Big Brother, where she will compete against such luminaries as Bridgette Neilsen and a racing commentator. The critic and writer, who we are told rarely wears underwear, hopes to raise money for "her rainforest"(?). There are times I thank God I don't have a satellite dish.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Sexual Culture Journalism and Media Clothing ]

Best. Basketball. Hoop. Ever.

[ related topics: Humor Sexual Culture Sports ]

It's easy to believe that the Republicans and Democrats are interchangeable, but then something really extreme stands up and slaps us: Lyn had a link to a look at the implications of Virginia's HB1677, “Report of Fetal Death by mother, penalty”, which aims to make an unreported miscarriage a Class I misdemeanor:

In Virginia, all losses of pregnancy must be reported by health care providers according to current law. The reality, though, is that countless women experience spontaneous abortions in the first few gestational weeks without even being aware of pregnancy, so not all pregnancies of early gestational age are reported. Women who experience miscarriages at home without a doctor’s care may not even think to inform their doctors, especially if the pregnancy is so early that they have not yet even sought prenatal care. Until this bill, though, no one has suggested it was in the interest of the Commonwealth of Virginia to track down these unreported losses of "products of conception".

If this goes through, and you're in Virginia and female, it'd be a good idea to call your local PD every time you have a late period, just in case.

[ related topics: Health Law Civil Liberties ]

LA Times drops Garfield, to much applause:

Gene Weingarten, a humor columnist for The Washington Post and Washington Post Writers Group, praised the Times decision during his weekly washingtonpost.com chat yesterday. He said the paper displayed "the kind of cojones missing in too many places" and described "Garfield" as "a strip produced by a committee, devoid of originality, devoid of guts, a strip cynically DESIGNED to be inoffensive and bad, on the theory that public tastes are insipid. Now we need others to follow suit. Like the Post."

[ related topics: Current Events Comics ]

ISBN going to 13 digits. Given how my book buying habits have changed, the real question is: by that time, will books still matter?

[ related topics: Books ]

I ended up hearing some of the Alberto Gonzalez confirmation hearings yesterday. Chris Suellentrop sums up the weaseling perfectly:

Leahy's file may have been bursting with questions, but for most of Thursday's nearly nine-hour hearing the committee's Democrats wanted an answer to just one question: Does Gonzales think the president has the power to authorize torture by immunizing American personnel from prosecution for it?

During the hearing, Leahy called this idea, which comes from the August 2002 document dubbed the "Bybee memo," "the commander-in-chief override." And by hearing's end it was clear that Gonzales believed in it. (Otherwise, why not simply answer, "No"?) Early in the day, Gonzales professed the requisite faith that America was "a nation of laws and not of men," but his opinion of the president's ability—however limited—to authorize individuals to engage in criminal acts suggests the opposite.

Go. Read the whole damned thing.

[ related topics: Politics Civil Liberties ]

In an intriquing cross-cultural fusion, the Telegraph of London reports that the Institute of Physics has commissioned a ballet to commemmorate the centenary of Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Called Constant Velocity, it will premiere this May at the famous Sadler Wells theater. An even more interesting fusion may be the combination of this austere concept with the schmaltzy music of operetta composer Franz Lehar.

[ related topics: Music Theater & Plays Copyright/Trademark ]

Dang. Every time petronious makes an entry I end up coming up with lots of stuff. So I'd resolved to make no entries today, except that I'm seeing this USA Today article on the Education Department hiring Armstrong Williams to promote the "No Child Left Behind" act from a bunch of sources, and it deserves a little airplay. I have a lot of issues with things like anti-drug ads paid for with taxpayer money, but this is taking the lying propaganda one step further.

[ related topics: Politics moron Current Events Education ]

Charlene and I were both pretty brain dead last night so we went to rent a video, and somehow the recent remake of The Manchurian Candidate caught our eye. So, popcorn in hand, we sat down to watch it.

It's been a long time since I saw the original with Frank Sinatra, on film, but my memory is that it's a very different film, and both of them speak moderately effectively to their respective zeitgeists. I thought the acting in the new one was stellar, but it fell down when it went just a little too conspiracy theorist; too many people in on the plot to let me continue to believe.

But the triumph of self-determination in this remake was powerful enough to redeem some of the issues I had with the screenplay and the direction. Not a great movie from that standpoint, could have been a lot stronger, and not nearly as rich a set of material to parody from as the original had in the Joseph McCarthy hearings, but a perfectly watchable movie.

[ related topics: Politics Movies Conspiracy ]

Check the schedule and catch the Sex Worker's Art Show.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Art & Culture ]

Shades of Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat: Fast food restaurant robber known as "roofman" escapes from prison, lives in a Toys-R-Us, gracefully concedes defeat when captured because his girlfriend, one Leigh Wainscott, turned him in:

"He was very sad and humbled and felt terrible that he had to deceive us," Wainscott said. "He encouraged me and told me to be strong and to do the things we talked about doing. He wasn't upset."

"I don't hate him," she said. "I'm disappointed and confused. I don't know whether to smack him or hug him."

Manchester also got to talk to his mother after the arrest.

Explaining his capture, he told her, "Mom, I kind of lost focus," she recalled Monday.

[ related topics: Humor Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Bizarre ]

This just in: as a followup to my item from a few days ago that feminist icon Germaine Greer was joining the UK Celebrity Big Brother cast, she has apparently packed and left. She was shocked, shocked to find that the other contestants had their "own agendas", and was distrubed for Bridget Neilsen who discovered that her harridan ex-mother-in-law, Jackie Stallone, had been added to the cast. Greer felt this was just to generate "Tabloid sludge", forgetting the Neilsen IS tabloid sludge. Greer was also disturbed that she failed in an attempt to stage a job action against the producer by having everyone take off their microphones. She is, however, still in negotiation over her appearance fee. It is hoped that when next she agrees to join popular culture she will at least watch the program first.

[ related topics: Sociology Journalism and Media ]

While the landslide in La Conchita, California totally pales in the face of the recent tsunami devastation, it hits closer to home to me because that's the sort of geology and geography that I live near. Being on top of the faults, we Californians can be cocky in the knowledge that the tsunamis will originate here and destroy elsewhere.

But big rains leading to mud slides is something that's part of the regular experience out here. I know someone who lost a house to the waves after watching their back yard disappear feet by feet over the decades, down in Pacifica, and back in, I think, 1998, houses were sliding off the hills in Southern Marin as we blew past the 40 straight days of rain mentioned in biblical records. And this time of year the grass is green, and contrasts beautifully with the brick red slashes at the tops of the slides. These two pictures, comparing the 1995 slide there with the recent one, show both what happened, and the silliness of thinking that a dinky little retaining wall can hold back the dynamic landscape of new terrain.

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area History Current Events California Culture Maps and Mapping Real Estate ]

Just a quick blip. I bought a new Subaru Outback Sport SE last month.- The car rocks but the dealer sucks, and it's becoming a Epic Saga of why car dealerships suck. - Today I find out they titled my car to someone else.. Just thought I'd share my rant.

[ related topics: Photography Weblogs Invention and Design Automobiles ]

Search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq ends:

Chief U.S. weapons hunter Charles Duelfer is to deliver his final report on the search next month. "It's not going to fundamentally alter the findings of his earlier report," McClellan said, referring to preliminary findings from last September. Duelfer reported then that Saddam Hussein not only had no weapons of mass destruction and had not made any since 1991, but that he had no capability of making any either.

[ related topics: Current Events Guns Dictators ]

I have ragged on Frank Lloyd Wright before here, but oddly the topic of bad architecture seems to be in the zeitgeist; within the past few weeks I was using him as an example of why I despise most of the practice of architecture, and now Columbine talks about some of his failings as an architect and points to 2blowhards: Frank Lloyd Wright Isn't God, which coins the Best. Phrase. Ever. to describe the phase in which he designed the Marin County Civic Center: "...his Ming-the-Merciless period."

[ related topics: Bay Area History Architecture Architecture - Frank Lloyd Wright ]

I'm trying to automate a 'typesetting' job that requires dumping lots of data to a single large landscape PDF document that gets printed every week in large quantities by a print company that requires it in a PDF format. Normally, I abhor PDF's.. FPDF.ORG just gave me reasons to actually LIKE formatting data in PDF's. Really easy to create PDF's from MySQL using PHP.

[ related topics: Heinlein Typography ]

Just because you spend all day and half the night feverishly writing code doesn't mean you have look like a schlub. Courtesy of Gizmodo, a USB-powered fingernail buffer!! I think this beats those little fans all to hell.

[ related topics: Health Invention and Design Failure To Connect ]

I don't want to turn this into a political blog, and I don't have time to be really thoughtful about this, but it bothers me that 16 House Democrats are calling for a complete withdrawal from Iraq. Unfotunately, now that we've screwed that situation up, we pretty much have to be there until it's fixed, and "until it's fixed" might not be "democratic elections", because it'd really suck to have Saddam Hussein's regime replaced with, say, something like Iran has right now.

On the other hand, it's worth going back and re-reading the incompetence and/or lies of Paul Wolfowitz testifying before the House Budget Committee about the potential costs of invading Iraq to know that the planning for this little escapade was woefully inadequate, and the consequences weren't reasonably considered.

[ related topics: Politics moron War Dictators ]

So I don't know if I've said explicitly what I'm currently working on here, but since I've been saying things about real-time GPS accuracy and talking a lot about the issues of reconciling map information, you can guess that there's an emphasis on gathering and displaying real-time location information on top of real world geographic data. You might also guess that some of that is for the display of something like military tactical information. I just think of it as developing point-and-uhhh-click interfaces.

But I'm thinking I may get a chance to implement A Fast Fracture Method For Exploding Structures (thanks, Borklog).

[ related topics: Dan's Life Work, productivity and environment Graphics Guns Maps and Mapping ]

Related to my comments about what I'm working on, my next trick is to do some real time graphics with a big texture map. No, I mean roughly 75k by 91k, or just shy of 7 billion pixels. It's in a "MrSID" format right now, I've been running the free converter to TIFF from LizardTech since early this morning, and it's 10% done. And then I've got to do something with the resulting image. Next week is going to be interesting.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Graphics Sports Maps and Mapping Archival ]

Dang it, I am sooo tempted to build me one of these, except for the fact that it'd only do MP3, not Ogg Vorbis: Minty MP3, a CompactFlash based MP3 player based on a PIC18LF452 and a STA013 MP3 decoder chip, built in an Altoids tin (thanks to Adam Curry).

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Music Cool Technology Embedded Devices ]

Towed the trailer on my mountain bike into San Anselmo for groceries today, stopped at San Anselmo Coffee Roasters, where the Saturday morning musicians were having an absolutely killer jam session. I think I heard "...from the Robert Cray band" during one of the breaks, but whatever: I'm learning, especially from some of the email feedback I get here when I mention musicians I hear in Fairfax and surrounding areas, that many big names know the little names who play the clubs in this area and think very highly of'em, and that people play for their own reasons. If you missed this morning at The Roasters, you missed some killer music.

The air today is thick with mist, and there's a wind blowing east to west, so the climb (and it's long and subtle from Lagunitas) up White's Hill was a struggle. Coming back I had the trailer full of groceries, but the climb was short and steep; at the pass two turkey vultures were taking advantage of the ridge lift, hanging stationary in the sky over the slope. Then it was five miles of gentle grade keeping the speed up.

Yesterday, Charlene and I saw a coyote out near the golf course. Today there was a dismembered deer hanging from the barbed wire within 50 feet of the spot. The circle of life continues.

[ related topics: Music Dan's Life Bay Area Bicycling San Anselmo ]

Dinner tonight:

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup Kosher salt

1 head of garlic, peeled and crushed

4 bay leaves, crumpled

8 cloves

8 juniper berries, crushed

1 1/2 tablespoons ground pepper

1 cup hot water

Mix in a heavy plastic bag, then add:

2 cups cold water

Let cool, then toss in a thick cut pork chop or two. Wait 1 hour. Pre-heat the oven to 450 with a pan in it. Heat a griddle, add a little vegetable oil, toss the pork chop on for 3 minutes or so per side, then transfer to the pan in the oven. Cook 'til internal temperature of 125F (10-12 minutes for me), remove pan from oven, cover loosely with aluminum foil, wait five minutes (internal temp should have hit 145F, serve.

Would have been nice with a more complex sauce, but was just fine with applesauce. Thanks to Cooks Illustrated Sept&Oct 1999 for the start on this.

[ related topics: Food ]

This was fun (in that "oh, crap, I was wasting neurons on that?" sort of way)

Thanks to Mark V. I got a whopping 54.

[ related topics: Music Pop Culture ]

Warning: Meta-blogging follows.

Over the years I've somewhat pooh-poohed the claims of gender discrepancies that webloggers like Dori and Shelley have laid at the feet of some of the weblogging community. But recently the point was driven home to me. Hard.

Back in his January 4^th entry, Dave Winer said (and later edited out) that: "Madge Weinstein is the next up-and-coming podcast phenom." So I listened to some Yeast Radio, said "well, okay, if tired drag queen thing is your schtick, but I live near San Francisco so that's kind of old", and carried on.

Mark V has a good overview of the fallout that occurred when Dave and Adam Curry discovered that, gasp, "Madge" might not be biologically female. The Register takes on their outrage.

But what really struck me here was a sudden realization that there were people out there who'd mistake the act "Madge" was playing for attitudes of a real-live woman. Wow.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Weblogs Dave Winer Bay Area Theater & Plays California Culture ]

Google has announced that they'll treat links with a rel="nofollow" as not contributing to the target page's page rank. The various weblog tools vendors have announced that they'll add this tag to links put into comment areas. I'm going to hold off on implementing it on Flutterby until we have comment spam problems, and at that point we'll implement some sort of trusted user capability so that most of the comments still count.

[ related topics: Weblogs Spam Flutterby Meta ]

So speaking of trusted users, I just talked with Johannes Ernst of NetMesh about a few applications of LID. I'm not yet sure how this is going to be a part of the next big thing, but I think it is.

So, if you're a geeky person, you might want to take a moment to set up a LID page for yourself. I've got a bunch of code written to make your Flutterby user info page a LID URL, but based on the conversation we just had I think I need to do the other side of that sooner, and make Flutterby able to log in LID users.

Meuon, we need to talk. Probably voice, not just email, but I'll send you a note in a bit.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Archival ]

Columbine has a great essay and overview of booze that's worth a gander.

[ related topics: Food ]

Leaving your bed unmade could help kill dust mites:

"We know that mites can only survive by taking in water from the atmosphere using small glands on the outside of their body," Dr Pretlove said. "Something as simple as leaving a bed unmade during the day can remove moisture from the sheets and mattress so the mites will dehydrate and eventually die."

(Thanks to Michael Kelley.)

[ related topics: Cool Science Current Events ]

Really, what will we do when network and mail administrators finally decide to make us use encrypted channels so that we'll have to actually remember our passwords and user names when we switch mail from machine to machine, rather than just using Ethereal?

[ related topics: Cryptography ]

In a world gone mad, mad I tell you (thanks, Lyn), what can we look to for solace and reassurance? That there will always be more David Hasselhoff and more where that came from. And the fans of the second are probably the ones who voted for the first.

[ related topics: History moron Current Events Salon magazine David Hasselhoff ]

As Ziffle notes in the Hasselhoff thread, I try to keep Flutterby non-political. But I'm really confused, so help me out: If you see Bush and his administration as reasonable leadership for this country, use this thread to help me understand that. Tell me how you reconcile the lies and incompetence, the attacks on personal liberties, the growth of federal bureacracy (and all of these are documentable from primary sources, so don't tell me about alleged media bias). Those of you who, like me, believe that this administration has been horrible for the ideals put forth in the constitution, stay out of this thread; I'm trying to understand.

[ related topics: Ziffle Politics Law Journalism and Media Civil Liberties ]

I was over skimming through Dave's Picks, he mentioned "ibuprofen", and my first thought was "is that a new Apple product?"

[ related topics: Apple Computer Consumerism and advertising ]

U.S. District Court judge Gary Lancaster declares federal obscenity laws unconstitutional in case against Extreme Associates, AVN article here (thanks to Daze Reader).

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Weblogs Law Current Events ]

Genehack has a link to news that Tennessee State Senator John Ford says that he shares two different households with two different families:

In the hearing, Ford said he lives some days with ex-wife Tamara Mitchell-Ford and the three children they had together. On others, he said, he stays with his longtime girlfriend, Connie Mathews, and their two children.

If you Tennesseeans are hearing anything more about this, I'd be interested in seeing follow-ups. Apparently the breakup with his ex-wife was less than amicable, [edit:]but she's currently testifying for him[/edit]. I wonder if it will come out that he's using this as a dodge, if he's doing this to provide some live-in stability for the children, or if we have a genuine polyamorous situation going on here.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sexual Culture Current Events Marriage ]

Sigh: Supreme Court rules that searches using dogs in routine traffic stops are legal.

"A dog sniff conducted during a concededly lawful traffic stop that reveals no information other than the location of a substance that no individual has any right to possess does not violate the Fourth Amendment," Stevens wrote.

In a dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg bemoaned what she called the broadening of police search powers, saying the use of drug dogs will make routine traffic stops longer and more adversarial. She was joined in her dissent by Justice David H. Souter.

[ related topics: Drugs Law Current Events Law Enforcement Dogs ]

Just some random pictures, here's sunrise this morning over the Bay Bridge (could probably use a little cropping, I was trying to not get that pier on the left in the shot), and a couple of shots from a hike to Carson Falls weekend before last.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Bay Area ]

In light of yesterday's note about obscenity laws being unconstitutional, an anonymous correspondent sends along FindLaw on the recent striking of Virginia's law against fornication.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Current Events ]

Planning some travel abroad? An interesting little site called the Zompist features some intriguing linguistic diversions, including unikely selections from actual foreign phase books, such as how to say "Please take me to the minefield" in Chechen. He also has his own phrasebook. You never know when you'll need to ask, "Are all your jails this filthy?" in French.

[ related topics: Language Books Travel ]

This one's for Diane: rat haus, with pictures.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Next week I am going on a long flight on a Boeing 777. I read its' the first all computer engineered plane. It has fly by wire.

But should I fear this? Windows 2000?

"Each electronics unit comprises a pair of computers—partitioned off from each other—one running a Part 25-certifiable version of the Linux operating system and the other running Windows 2000. Each of the four computers contains a 40-gigabyte, sealed hard drive pressurized to 1 atmosphere to prevent a disc crash during rapid decompression. The Linux operating system, where the Level D applications reside, controls the display and allows reset of the Windows partition in flight."

http://www.avionicsmagazine.co...pub=av&mon=0603&file=0603777.htm

Linux is there so they can reboot Windows? Should I worry?

Ziffle

[ related topics: Ziffle Free Software Microsoft Open Source Aviation Sports ]

Uhhh... Wha.... huh? I'm... well... kinda speechless. And if I have trouble understanding the appeal of Bush, then this puts me way the hell out there beyond "not getting it" into some sort of "what kind of non-sequiter is this?" state: AbsorbShun "Decreases Vaginal Moisture Increases Sexual Satisfaction!" Apparently it's corn starch in a bottle that:

Makes men feel larger. Gives some men longer lasting, harder erections. No pills required.

Huh. Personally, I'm of the opinion that more slippery slidey goodness is better, and that if...

you want to drive men wild with a tighter vagina

you should just do a few Kegels now and then. But what really pegs my stereotype-ometer is that:

AbsorbShun natural powder donates 10% of all profits to World Vision.

World Vision is a Christian relief and development organization...

Wow. Just... wow. Thanks(?) to Sensible Erection who got it from World O' Crap who got it from... ("...got it from Agnes / She got it from Jim. / We all agree it must have been / Louise who gave it to him.").

[ related topics: Religion Sexual Culture moron ]

Probably at least 15 years ago, Shawn Stoddard asked if he could borrow some money to buy a UPS for his BBS. Knowing that Shawn was pretty thorough in his research, and since I was living in Tennessee with its notoriously flakey power (lots of thunderstorms), I told him to get me one too while he was at it. So, $1300 later, I ended up with a Clary; I later found a review that said "this is the best power supply you can buy, but nobody needs one this good for computers". However, all of my hardware glitches disappeared and I was happy.

In this most recent move, I didn't bother to hook it up. It's a noisy beast, has an always-on fan, the batteries were shot, and I thought the occasional reboot of the server would be okay. I was wrong on that last count, power is flakey out here and a recent reboot horked the EXT2 partition on my main drive, so I just installed its second battery replacement, shoved it in a closet downstairs, and wired things up so that it will run the house server and the stereo.

I think this is some type of personal record: computer equipment, in active use, for a decade and a half.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Chattanooga Cool Technology ]

Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends has a long entry that looks at Ohio State research that claims to map the sexual network of an entire high school, with links to the abstract and the full PDF.

The most striking feature of the network was a single component that connected 52 percent (288) of the romantically involved students at Jefferson. This means student A had relations with student B, who had relations with student C and so on, connecting all 288 of these students.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sexual Culture Maps and Mapping ]

/. had a link to Monkeys Pay to See Female Monkey Bottoms, and, apparently images of monkeys with high standing in their pack, while the monkeys would only look at other monkeys with lower standing if they were rewarded. This was partially funded by the Cure Autism Now organization:

"One of the main problems in people with autism is that they don't find it very motivating to look at other individuals," Platt said. "And even when they do, they can't seem to assess information about that individual's importance, intentions or expressions."

Having spent a little time playing some pack dominance games at work yesterday, and as I watch the spread of "podcasting", seeing what ends up popular and what doesn't, I'm thinking "hey, that's me!".

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Sociology ]

Wow, this is extra topical, since on today's hike some of the discussion was about apologists for Stalin, and how various people on the American left talked about the Soviet Union as "the great experiment" up into even the late 1970s. Bill has leant me Koba the Dread : Laughter and the Twenty Million, which I look forward to reading, but it was quite interesting to get this link right before that discussion: Bill Gates praising the Chinese government:

Gates continued by heaping praise on the current generation of Chinese leaders.

"They're smart," he said with emphasis.

"They have this mericratic way of picking people for these government posts where you rotate into the university and really think about state allocation of resources and the welfare of the country and then you rotate back into some bureaucratic position."

[ related topics: Politics moron Current Events Education ]

Apologies for any site wackiness, I'm playing with implementing LID^tm on the Flutterby code base. Expect weirdness today.

[ related topics: Flutterby Meta LID (Lightweight IDentity) ]

I've seen a number of people use the debt load of the governments of Japan and Germany recently to excuse the out of control deficit spending of the Bush administration, saying that in comparison we've got nothing to worry about. I kind of thought that Japan's decade plus of stagnation despite the fact that their government has been spending out of control on unused public works projects, and now having the maintenance costs of all of those new commitments piled on top of the debt load is making things even worse, but I didn't know about Germany's economy.

Well, it turns out the Germans are fucked. Literally: Woman told she has to take a job as a prostitute or she'll lose her unemployment benefits.

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture Current Events Economics ]

If you read and enjoyed Guns, Germs & Steel, you've probably been eyeing Jared Diamond's latest, Collapse. Gregg Easterbrook wrote a review for the New York Times which may or may not be worth reading, but Leo read that review and posted an expansion that's well worth reading.

[ related topics: Books Invention and Design Sociology Community Guns ]