Flutterby™! From 2005-03-01 to 2005-03-31

Next time you get the sesame chicken lunch special over at the 17th Happiness Chinese takeout place, don't complain about the rice; you may be eating a building material for the ages. According to the Telegraph of London, experts have determined that the ancient Chinese used sticky rice as a mortar for many construction projects. Sounds like a good idea, but it might put a new perspective on the issue of termites.

[ related topics: Food Fabrication Architecture ]

Bwahahahaha! Debra had a link to a gossip-column report on a screening of Inside Deep Throat in NYC, this being thirty some-odd years later of course there was post-film discussion with distinguished panelists:

Mitchell looked on helplessly as McKinnon did her thing, claiming that the film we had just watched was promoting the acceptance of rape. At one point, however, her righteous zeal became unhinged when she claimed that it was not possible to do deep throat safely, that it was a dangerous act that could only be done under hypnosis. "What's so funny?" she snapped as the audience rippled with mirth. Todd Graff's hand shot up - "I can do it," he said, and the room echoed with a chorus of gay men going "me too!" (Gigi Grazer - wife of Brian - later told Graff to stop bragging and that she could do it better than him and had the rocks on her fingers to prove it. Touché).

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Movies ]

At first I thought it was some political thing, but Red Vs. Blue is hardly that. But it's still hilarious. If you are bored waiting for Windows to install (or just reboot), watch a few episodes (assuming you have a second computer...). I had to go to Interet Archive to get some of the older episodes. It's also interesting to check out Flutterby on the Wayback Machine.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Microsoft Movies moron ]

Wallace & Gromit, in theaters October 7^{th, 2005.}

[ related topics: Humor Movies ]

Non-stop code refactoring and clean-up this morning, with a breather in between before I dive back into this stuff again. The breather is Susie Bright talking about Hunter S. Thompson's death, both reminiscences of him, but also a few good harsh words about the cultural treatment of suicide:

If Thompson planned his death like other friends of mine have, he likely set a deadline; he might have confided to one or two. Because it's illegal to plan your death anywhere but Oregon, (and most people do want to die at home) the hardest task his family would face would be knowing that they couldn't be with him when he died without facing criminal charges.

Loved ones who collaborate with their dying friends' wishes either hide their presence, or they clear out. Can you imagine if you had to be born alone?— If it was against the law to have your family and friends close around you?

It's not too far from there to the related issue of health care costs. today's SFGate.com has an article about a woman who refuses to leave a hospital, and Leo points out some hard truths about "universal health insurance".

[ related topics: Health Sociology ]

Why do I think Republicans are morons? Consider Republican Ted Stevens and his attempts to control content on subscription television:

"There has to be some standard of decency," he said, but noted that "no one wants censorship."

Okay, Ted, you've got me there: what the fuck is it when you use the government to restrict communication between consenting adults? I think maybe we need to name something after Ted Stevens, in much the same way as we've honored Rick Santorum.

[ related topics: Politics Technology and Culture Free Speech moron Television ]

the url is for a columnist out of Pittsburgh describing the decision. Basically a 1998 Alabama law banning 'marital aids' has been upheld by the 11th circuit and the Supreme Court last week refused to take the case (denial of certiorari).

He quotes from the Alabama argument: "it is enough for a legislature to reasonably believe that commerce in the pursuit of orgasms by artificial means for their own sake is detrimental to the health and morality of the State."

All I can say is: there's a reason we call it Alabamastan.

radix

[ related topics: Quotes Sexual Culture Health Law ]

Grad student says that wild turkey mating is a collaborative, not competitive, endeavor.

The male, approaching a female in a courtship ritual with two or more of his brothers, will blush brilliantly red and blue about his face and throat, fan his broad brown and white tail, lower his outspread wings and emit loud thrumming noises through his air sacks as he prances in a shuffling strut.

And while he engages in his display, his brothers do so, too -- but silently and without the strut, in a kind of cooperative semi-courtship -- and they also turn to ward off any hostile interlopers seeking to court the same female.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Birds ]

A lot of people have been up in arms over the "AutoLink" feature in Google's toolbar. Scoble calls it "evil", while on the other side Dori compares it to printing web pages. Here's my take:

Demanding that a web page be viewed only in a certain way is akin to those asshole movie folks who create DVDs that can't be fast forwarded through. The whole point of HTML was (back in the day) that a given local system could use the hints provided in the markup to render it appropriately to the end-user, whether that was in a text-only mode (many of you probably don't remember text-only modes), or via a voice synthesizer, or whatever.

I have issues with people who take web sites and republish their contents wholesale, changing things like link targets (often to point to "herbal v!@gR@" sites), but if you, in the privacy of your own home, want to do this to my web page, more power too you. Furthermore, if you want to sell people a tool to make their web pages more useful, more power too you.

Just as I actually support those folks who make that DVD player that can take external edit decision lists for a given CD and play an edited version of a movie. If you're not republishing it or calling it your own, you're free to make any re-interpretation of something you wish.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Privacy Weblogs Movies ]

Steve Fosset manages to stay awake for 40 67 hours. In other news, Burt Rutan is still brilliant.

[ related topics: Aviation Current Events ]

This is why campaign finance "reform" laws are a bad idea: Your link to a candidate's web site may be considered a contribution by the FEC. Hopefully we'll see some good First Amendment lawsuits on this one.

[ related topics: Politics Current Events Civil Liberties ]

Ya know how sometimes those neurons just misfire...

It is my pleasure to acquaint you with this proposal for the purpose of investment in your company. I am Miss Sarrah Fredrick the only daughter of late George Fredrick from Sierra Leone.	Please allow me to introduce myself,
My late father was a Gold and Diamond merchant based in Freetown Sierra-Leone. As a result of the political instability of Sierra-Leone, my late father came to Cotonou Benin republic with the sum of USD12,500,000.000(US$12.5m) which he deposited in a Financial and Security Institution here in Cotonou Benin Republic West Africa	I'm a man of wealth and taste I've been around for long, long years I've stolen many a man's soul and faith
	I was around when Jesus Christ had His moments of doubt and painI made damn sure that Pilate washed his hands and sealed his fate
for security reasons I am here seeking for an avenue to transfer this money to a reliable and trustworthy individual for investment programmes.	Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name, but what's puzzling you, is the nature of my game?
I am here as a refugee because of the political crisis in my Country Sierra Leone...	I stuck around St. Petersburg when I saw it was time for a change...

And then the correlation falls off, but only a little.

[ related topics: Religion Politics Humor Music moron ]

Mark Morford on the Alabama sex toy sale ban.

So then. They're not just dildos, baby. They're a flag of righteousness. They're an emblem of all that is right and good and delicious and that must be defended to the death. Dildos are, in short, a beacon of hope. Wave yours high, won't you? And then point it in the general direction of Alabama, and laugh.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Mark Morford ]

Glen Matlock, former drummer for the Sex Pistols, says "Something ought to be done about the swearing" on TV (for the archives, 1 2 3 4).

[ related topics: Music Sociology Current Events Television ]

Why am I dubious that attempts to bring political change to a nation from outside of it can work? Half of Russians view Stalin in a positive light. Governments, especially dictatorships, are illusions in the mind of the governed.

[ related topics: Politics moron Sociology ]

Okay all you geodata freaks: If you haven't seen World Wind, go now, sit through the huge download and fly around earth imagery. Very cool, was just going from noting cars on the streets with 1 meter USGS imagery and flying back up to looking at the western half of this continent.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Cool Technology Maps and Mapping Maps & Mapping ]

Today's "happy coding experiences" are brought to you by:

• Virtual Terrain Project, a handy system of tools and libraries for managing both the art path and rendering of terrain data.
• Open Scene Graph, a handy library to represent 3d geometry.
• FreeGLUT, a free and more modern implementation of the GLUT cross-platform application framework for OpenGL.

And last, the library which has been most fun and handy today:

• GLGooey, a set of GUI elements which use OpenGL for rendering, providing skinnable controls which can be transparent and integrate in with your 3d scene rather nicely.

I can highly recommend all of them, separately, or in concert.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Graphics ]

Via NPR and Mother Nature. What happens in Fairbanks Alaska if you leave the water running and keep extending the pipe upward? A 160ft ice tower which is suitable for climbing, of course. The guy's comments on ice climbing in sub-zero weather and government are worth a read also.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment ]

An interesting article in the Guardian about the Web's unfinished promise to eliminate the middleman in business transactions. The author tells of a website that might give banks a run for their money, by directly connecting people with cash to people who need loans, for a small fee. While it does sound a bit like a bookie laying off a large bet on other bookies, and the uninsured nature of these loans gives me the willies, this guy makes some good points. Amazon didn't eliminate the middleman (bookstore) so much as take over for a bunch of them. The last few items I bought through them were actually supplied by their smaller partners, which I suspect is far more cost-effective than running your own warehouse. Now its all middlemen, connected by the Web and UPS. And the small bookseller's biggest enemy might not be Borders or Barnes & Noble, but rather a bunch of guys running distributerships in their garage.

I am also intrigued by his suggestion of a community service bureau that might broker things like borrowing lawnmowers and power tools. Isn't Craigslist something like this? Maybe we havn't seen the end of the Web's development.

[ related topics: Books Technology and Culture Community Currency ]

Man on Fire caught my attention last night on cable. I was in a odd mood, which may have helped. Although a lot of it was formulatic it was shot in interesting ways. What caught me was how cold the violence was. Not glorified, little build up. It just happened. Very cold and calculated. If you are in the mood for a good revenge violence movie.. worth catching.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Movies Pyrotechnics ]

If your tired of assembling crappy furniture from Ikea (it's amazing how much money you can make by leaving out one screw from each sofa kit), try these amazing laser-cut pieces from Ronen Kadushin , where you hand bend a flat piece of metal into a new piece.

[ related topics: User Interface Invention and Design Graphic Design Furniture ]

Apologies for the lack of entries from me over the last week, and thanks to those who helped pick up the slack. My parents were in town, left yesterday morning, and Charlene and I spent the rest of yesterday goofing off and doing nothing. Out to Limantour Beach to nap on the sand and listen to the surf break (the fog never lifted, so it was cold, but very soothing), and we rented a pair of movies, Harvie Krumpet and Pieces of April.

Harvie Krumpet was one of those cute little clay animation pieces that had a few laughs, not a wasted watch, but nothing that spoke to us deeply.

However, especially given the week with family, and partially because it crept up on us by being a little slow and apparently light (and even mean-spirited) in the beginning, Pieces of April was one of the most powerful movies we've seen in a while. When the climax hits, it's an instant tear-jerker.

It follows the slightly punk April, who lives in a run-down tenement in New York, and her black boyfriend Bobby, as they prepare to host a Thanksgiving visit from April's estranged suburban family. To get a feel for the depth of the estrangement we also follow the family as they deal with the grandmother's Alzheimer's, the mother's most-likely losing battle with breast cancer, on the drive into the city.

As her boyfriend leaves to run an unspecified (and, from the context, we assume unsavory) errand, April prepares to put a turkey in the oven, only to discover (after clearing out the assorted items that had been stored there) that it doesn't work. So we have the escapades as April meets her assorted neighbors in the hopes of borrowing oven time as each of them makes similar preparations, along with all of the conflicts that come up from the rest of these personalities.

And when it all comes together there's a tremendous feeling of "where the hell did all of these tears come from". Recommended.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Animation Movies Food Sociology New York ]

RC3 had a link to a New York Times article on the G.A.O.'s attempt to curb propaganda news segments produced by the government and pointed out that Eric Umansky had distilled the article to its salient points:

And on Friday, the Justice Department and the Office of Management and Budget circulated a memorandum instructing all executive branch agencies to ignore the G.A.O. findings.

What disturbs me isn't that the Bush administration is instructing the executivate branch to ignore the G.A.O., it's that so many news sources are playing along with this (or are just too damned lazy to check their sources). The article has numerous examples:

Even these measures, though, do not fully capture the reach of her work. Consider the case of News 10 Now, a cable station in Syracuse owned by Time Warner. In February 2004, days after the government distributed its Medicare segment, News 10 Now broadcast a virtually identical report, including the suggested anchor lead-in. The News 10 Now segment, however, was not narrated by Ms. Ryan. Instead, the station edited out the original narration and had one of its reporters repeat the script almost word for word.

The station's news director, Sean McNamara, wrote in an e-mail message, "Our policy on provided video is to clearly identify the source of that video." In the case of the Medicare report, he said, the station believed it was produced and distributed by a major network and did not know that it had originally come from the government.

[ related topics: Politics moron Current Events Journalism and Media Video ]

And, just because we've been way too straight-laced for a while here, how about some classy outdoor nudes from DivineLibertine, all thanks to our friends over at Sensible Erection.

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Nature and environment ]

The big scoop has arrived! In 1962 the US conducted secret nuclear tests in the Sudan, and the Sudanese government wants an explanation, as does Al Jezeera....oh, nevermind.

[ related topics: moron Journalism and Media Conspiracy ]

Occasionally I'll get a fowarded "sign this petition" with a good pedigree. This one doesn't necessarily pass all my tests, but the path by which it got to me is one I trust: Call for Orangutan Rescue petition signers.

Besides (not so obscure Terry Pratchett reference), one of these could be the librarian.

[ related topics: Politics Nature and environment Terry Pratchett ]

Court strikes down California's ban on same sex marriages:

The judge also rejected arguments by opponents of same-sex marriage that the current law promotes procreation and child-rearing by a husband and wife. "One does not have to be married in order to procreate, nor does one have to procreate in order to marry," Kramer said.

[ related topics: Sociology Law California Culture Marriage ]

From Wes Felter's run-down of SXSW comes Colorization using Optimization, pictures and a paper on a way to colorize black and white images with some really simple input, in these instances a couple of line doodles.

[ related topics: Photography Graphics ]

Here's one to bring tears to your eyes: NASA's latest psa on exploration.

[ related topics: Animation Space & Astronomy Astronomy Current Events ]

More nerd ego-stroking from Paul Graham: What the Bubble Got Right.

Dressing up is not so much bad in itself. The problem is the receptor it binds to: dressing up is inevitably a substitute for good ideas. It is no coincidence that technically inept business types are known as "suits."

One of the things that happened during the bubble is that those who'd adopt camouflage started dressing like nerds. Those same people would have been in a suit and tie had that camouflage been effective. There are some other good ideas in the essay.

[ related topics: New Economy Fashion ]

$50k or the rabbit gets it: http://www.savetoby.com/

[ related topics: Humor Net Culture ]

Although I was more likely to design spaceships in my school notebooks when I was a kid, most of us did also try to design our own autmobiles as well. And some people went on to build them. Kvadd's Strange Cars is an extensive site dedicated to images of rare and unusual motorcars, bizarre custom jobs (like VW microbuses with tank treads), and improbable traffic accidents. Obviously a labor of love. I also note that Kvadd's domain is registered in Niue, which I believe is a sandbox with two palm trees, like in a New Yorker cartoon. I wonder why? (link via Jalopnik.)

[ related topics: Nostalgia Invention and Design Automobiles ]

This morning's curiosity comes from Nancy, who forwarded along This Into That, an artist in Berkeley making furniture and such with recycled materials, the things being done with old books are particularly cool.

[ related topics: Books Bay Area Art & Culture Furniture ]

Fascinating: New Scientist: 13 things that do not make sense. From an experiment in homeopathy to methane on Mars, well worth a read.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Space & Astronomy Astronomy ]

If you've ever read a newspaper report about the size and intended destination on a drug bust and thought "wait a minute, they're saying that Graysville Tennessee has an underground drug economy large enough to sink the GDP of Germany?" Slate has a rundown on an alleged "91 lbs of LSD" bust.

[ related topics: Drugs Politics Journalism and Media Law Enforcement Economics ]

Hey, all, my Dad is struggling with a Linux install, specifically he's been having issues getting Knoppix installed onto a hard drive in order to get a running Debian system (since I run Debian, I could help him from there). I gave him a Via Eden board and a 45 gig drive when he was out here, does anyone know of an upcoming installfest in the Atlanta area that I could ship him off to? Or a Chugalug like organization where someone who knows could dupe him a set of distro disks?

[ related topics: Free Software Dan's Life Open Source Embedded Devices - Via Eden ]

Much brouhaha has been made over Google Maps, including JJG's breathless proclamation that the platform he calls "Ajax" is the wave of the future (I'm being a little unfair to Jesse, so cut him some slack on that). Well, now that Google Maps supports Opera, I decided to try it out for some trip planning for a visit to the Sierra we're doing this weekend. While the "wow, the bear dances" factor of the dragging and scrolling and the dynamic tile updating was, indeed, cool, after a short time I was back at maps.yahoo.com because when the page loaded, I knew I was looking at the right thing. The more I see web apps come into their own, the more I think that Microsoft is looking in the right direction with notYET, even though I desperately hope that that abomination isn't the one that eventually rules. I'd really rather see some combination of Python and Gtk become the standard for such things, or maybe that companies find ways to provide the services component of these things in a way that application authors can use them and the appropriate money can gety spread around.

[ related topics: Web development Microsoft Maps and Mapping Python ]

Sometimes our timing rocks, and sometimes it sucks. In this case we seem to have scheduled to follow a moderate winter storm into the Sierra. We're heading out late this afternoon, and staying down in Mariposa because the full-on motels there, an hour and a half off the Yosemite valley floor, are cheaper than the tent cabins in the valley are right now (A few years ago I think we got 'em for $30/night, right now they're upwards of $60 for canvas walls with no food lockers), so we get heating and the ability to bring our own food in exchange for some travel (we might even bus in, although we're taking the tandem for toodling around the valley). And that time is to the floor, there's lots south of the valley we haven't explored much yet (maybe even do some cross country skiing, if the snow level is low enough, it's supposed to be 7k feet).

Anyway, with the storm coming in and supposedly clearing on Sunday, it should look something like this, only with a little more white on the cliffs, more pictures over in the Yosemite Pictures Wiki entry:

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Nature and environment Food Law California Culture Sports Race Public Transportation Archival Bicycling - Tandem Yosemite ]

I suppose I'm now in a headspace that other Flutterbarians have already achieved (the social aspects of technology never really interested me that much) but various random thoughts have been firing more frequently in response to the growing availability of creative, indie products. Tuesday's post about marketing over at Grumpy Gamer finally brought it together for me.

Ron points out that yes, the Internet has proved to be the Great Leveler in terms of distribution capabilities, but distribution is not the key component of success (which, for the purpose of this discussion, I'm defining as "number of people who know about and consume your stuff"). It's the marketing, stupid. And that is where we're stalled.

(continued in the comments so I don't take over the front page)

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Net Culture Marketing Community ]

And on a lighter note...

For those interested in game development, 3d or both Ogre3D was recently the Project of the Month over at SourceForge. It's an LGPL license, which (apparently) means you can develop proprietary and commercial apps with it. (Only modifications to the Ogre3D source need to be shared back with the community.) Also supports Windows, Linux and OSX.

I've only started reading about it, but it looks pretty full-featured and robust.

[ related topics: Free Software Games Open Source ]

Another day, another study that indicates teens who pledge abstinence engage in more risky sexual behavior.

... Overall, pledgers were six times more likely to have oral sex than teens who have remained abstinent but not as part of a pledge.

The pledging group was also less likely to use condoms during their first sexual experience or get tested for STDs, the researchers found.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Current Events ]

In a nice, short weekend trip to Atlanta which included Dim Sum, boots from REI for Ann, and a trip to the always wonderful Harry's Farmers Market in Alpharetta, our decision to go see Born Into Brothels was an excellent idea.

Typing about the movie's affect is even difficult. It stuns not only with the direct, honest approach to the issue, but also with amazingly twisted social fabric it deals with. The complex interplay of the "ordinary" lives, the unmet needs, the aspirations, and the resignation of the children defies comprehension. It's like trying to make sense of someone who would swerve a car deliberately toward a child.

In a world obsessed by "Reality TV" this is a dose of the real thing.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Movies Sociology Television ]

It has come to our attention that some denizens of the east coast are amazed at the price of gasoline:

Got gas on the way to work this morning. Paid US$2.19/gallon. boggle

John, if a picture is worth a thousand words, consider this 500 "bite me"s.

[ related topics: John S Jacobs-Anderson California Culture Automobiles ]

Uh. Yeah. Thanks a lot, Jay, now I need to go wash my eyes out with steel wool: Jar Jar Binks porn. Ouch.

[ related topics: Star Wars Sexual Culture Animation ]

Anti-news: /. had a link to a Telegraph article reporting on a study that shows that students with less access to computers do better at learning:

However, the study, published by the Royal Economic Society, said: "Despite numerous claims by politicians and software vendors to the contrary, the evidence so far suggests that computer use in schools does not seem to contribute substantially to students' learning of basic skills such as maths or reading."

Indeed, the more pupils used computers, the worse they performed, said Thomas Fuchs and Ludger Wossmann of Munich University.

Anti-news to anyone who's been paying attention. Alas, I don't see more on the Royal Economic Society web page, and the 2005 Media Briefings page doesn't yet have anything for March.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Education ]

One of the things I like about "Easter" is that when the Christians assimilated the spring rites, they didn't even bother to rename the holiday. See "Oestrus". So what with the start of spring this past weekend and Easter come next, and the season being one of birth and fertility, I think it's appropriate that I announce some changes. Some of you have already heard, but: After only a short time, I'm leaving Planet 9 to take a position at Digital Fish. And I'd like to specifically thank Larry for a conversation we had back in 1995, and Ziffle for his repeated pointing me to Rich Dad, not because I'm taking Robert Kiyosaki's route of real estate, but because it got me thinking about risk, asset building, what I know how to do and what I don't understand, and why I live in the Bay Area in the first place.

This is a big step for me, for reasons which I hope will show over the next year or so, but it's something that I think will refocus me in good ways.

Which is a long way of explaining one of the several reasons that Charlene and I felt like we really needed to get the hell out of town last weekend. Despite the forecasts we headed down to Yosemite. And I've still never seen Yosemite in weather like that. So we hit the valley, stopped at Bridal Veil Falls, realized we weren't going to see anything, and turned the car south on 41 up to Badger Pass.

It's been a while since I've been in the snow, but we got the chains on before other tourists in the changing area had figured out which end to lay down, rented some skis, and got a lesson for Charlene. I'd still remembered most of what little cross country skiing I'd done ages ago, but, alas, nothing more: I still don't have a telemark turn.

We had fun banging around in the snow for a bit, then went back into the valley to see the film at the visitor's center in the valley. This was the first time I'd ever wanted to sit inside and watch something other than the natural surroundings when I've been in Yosemite valley. Alas, they weren't showing the film that day, but in a conversation about flowers in the area, the guy at the desk of the visitor's center said "try the hike to Hite Cove".

When we got there the light (what little there was) was fading fast, but we did see a few wildflowers, despite the fact that the lack of sun meant that the poppies at least were closed up tight:

On Sunday we decided that forecasts of clearing weather or no, we weren't going to see much back in the valley, so we toodled up Highway 49 through gold country. More on that tomorrow.

[ related topics: Ziffle Photography Nature and environment California Culture Yosemite ]

A while back, I started playing with ways to take digital aerial photographs from a suspended platform. My initial attempt using a Mini-ITX computer didn't work too well. It is too heavy for the balloon I am using. A larger balloon would increase my operational cost signficantly as well. Remembering Dan's comment on using the NTSC out on the camera got me thinking in a new direction. I ended up buying an Olympus Stylus 410 and a Radio Shack A/V Signal Sender. The Olympus gives me 4Mpixels, NTSC out for the viewfinder AND an IR remote. The A/V Signal sender transmists the NTSC signal to the ground, retransmits the IR remote signal, and can be powered effectively by two 9V batteries in parallel. The entire gondola now weighs in under 1kg with full power. More information here.

[ related topics: Photography Invention and Design Work, productivity and environment Eric's Life Maps & Mapping ]

I've been watching with horror as the Terri Schiavo case unfolds. I'm not sure I can add anything to this, most of you know that I consider the state taking away the right of a citizen to die of their own choosing to be precedent towards the state taking all decisions away from that citizen, and the courts have found convincingly that Terri Schiavo did not want to be kept alive in this state.

But here are some resources to add to the debate.

• Abstract Appeal has an information page on the Schiavo case, including links to the various legal decisions (like the one above).
• Here's the Texas State Law that allows a provider to withdraw treatment that many people are mentioning, note that it specifies that the physician making the decision to remove treatment must be backed up by a review committee. Note too that a Texan in a persistent vegetative state died on Thursday after his health care provider pulled the plug.
• Given reasonable editing and enough video tape, I could probably get you to believe that a plant was responsive to attention. Legislators who are using videos as evidence rather than relying on the overwhelming consensus among those who've interacted with Terry Schiavo should be ashamed, and then voted out of office.
• Everyone should check their local state laws and make sure that they have the appropriate "living will", "durable power of attorney", or "advance directive" prepared as appropriate, lest they become trapped in an incapacitated body and used as a political tool without their consent. An SFGate.com article provides a bunch of links for Californians.
• A decade plus of life support is damned expensive, and came mainly out of our tax dollars.
• And, yes, political hay is being made of this, and innumeracy will be taken advantage of.

[Edit: Changed "Terry" to "Terri"]

[ related topics: Politics Health moron Law ]

I consider releasing mercury into the air I breathe an act of violence. But, having said that, Charlene pointed out a weird bit of synchronicity yesterday when she wondered why a study which purports to show correlation between high levels of environmental mercury and autism made the news when the article she read (I've no idea if that's the one) only devoted a sentence way down to point out that this study did nothing to show cause, just correlation.

So I went searching, and noticed that a March 1991 internal memo from Merck talking about the mercury risks for vaccines showed up last month.

"When viewed in this way, the mercury load appears rather large," Dr. Maurice R. Hilleman, an internationally renowned vaccinologist, wrote in a memo to the president of Merck's vaccine division.

I found both those things showing up now interesting because I've been aware that the EPA is introducing new rules about smokestack emissions of mercury and the new rules are being roundly criticized. I know little about the rules, although I tend to side with those who say "cut it more", but I have to wonder if I'm making up patterns where none are, or if the path that some of these issues are taking into the media is well orchestrated.

(Don't worry about it, I'm safe, my tinfoil hat is blocking the transmissions.)

[ related topics: Politics Health Current Events Journalism and Media ]

I've mentioned that some audiophiles appear to be smoking way too much crack:

Even more recently, I had a client with a Firewire drive with 24 bit AIFF files. He transferred a song from one drive to another. Again, we loaded both the Firewire file and the Mac hard drive file onto my DAW so each could be instantly selected. With morbid curiosity, I stood in front of my console where I could not see which file he played - and in 3 out of 4 comparisons, I heard a difference. The Firewire file was warmer in the vocal and the snare was less dry sounding.

And I've made fun of people who pay $4.5k for 8 feet of speaker cable...

But there may be a theoretical difference in cables based on more than just "lower gauge is better", the surface area of the cable has an effect on impedance. I haven't followed the math, and it looks from the graphs like the falloff is roughly .02dB at the top of the audible range, but... well... Okay, I'm still not buying $100 AC power cords, but now maybe I'll be able to stifle my snickers somewhat when people start going on about this stuff... Maybe.

[ related topics: Drugs Music Cool Science ]

It seems likely that at some point most of us will end up in organizations that decide to undergo a massive technology upgrade. Many books have been written about the pitfalls in such a project, but problems still occur. Infoworld has an interesting piece on the Trilogy disaster, where the FBI's huge project to upgrade their computer systems collapsed under its own weight.There are many problems and many guilty parties, such as a total rethink of the project after 9/11, a monomania for paper-based systems probably inherited from J. Edgar Hoover, and a deliberately obtuse vendor. When you realize that the FBI appointed 5 CIOs in 4 years, and that an average of one spec change per day was sent to the vendor, failure isn't an option but rather an inevitability.

[ related topics: Books Law Enforcement WTC/Pentagon attacks Failure To Connect ]

This sounds fascinating: a look at Goetz Aly's new book Hitler's People's State: Robbery, Racial War and National Socialism, about the economics that needed to be supported by war, and how that created a political climate that maintained support for Hitler.

[ related topics: Politics Books History Dictators Economics ]

I just got asked to look a a job where I'd be doing web programming in basic. It's not line numbered, but close enough to be masochistic. Anyone worked with Theos/Corona?

[ related topics: Software Engineering Heinlein ]

As promised, albeit a little late, some more notes on our weekend. The weather looked like it wasn't going to lift after all, so rather than going back into Yosemite we decided to tool on up Highway 49, lookin' for adventure and whatever came our way. We saw a sign for a historical society in Coulterville, and, despite it being early on a Sunday, decided to stop.

So we dropped into the tourist info place, had a nice little chat on what was in the area, dropped into the little B&B/variety/antique store across the way (which was one of those wonderful places like you always hope you're going to find when you go to an estate sale, with lots of cool old tools and neat stuff) and chatted with the proprietor (and, yes, left with a few things...), and then went over to the historical society. We were prepared for your average town historical society, given that the narrow gauge steam engine out front was woefully incomplete and reconstructed with 2x4s if you looked closely, but instead we had a great time browsing some really cool exhibits, including someone's incredibly detailed reconstruction at 1" = 1' of some of the old buildings in town. Highly recommended.

I've tried to rework this a bit to capture the green of the mariposite in the roadcut just down the hill from Coulterville, but the overcast and the auto white balance were working against me. Picture quartz, but kelly green.

Having explored as much of that as we were going to see, we started back up the road towards Sonora. Stopped in at Railtown 1897, decided that it deserved a trek back later on in the season, and headed over to Columbia.

Columbia is an old mining town that's now a combination museum and mall, with assorted stores and shops in some of the old buildings, displays in others, even a house or two with a real live resident, and various docents in costume (although only a few of those this time of year). Had fun bouncing through the town, talking about Charlene's childhood memories of the place ("I was told this was a ghost town, so when I thought of ghost town, I thought of people all over the place").

It's also an old mining town, and in the center of it all it's obvious that someone thought that using hydraulic mining techniques on their building lot would result in something, giving some really interesting rock formations in the area.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Photography Theater & Plays Art & Culture Machinery Trains Architecture Real Estate Yosemite ]

On my wanders underneath the bay bridge recently, a couple of times I've seen movie production type stuff being set up or torn down. This last time I saw that it was part of the TV show "The Evidence", accompanied by these bright yellow arrows pointing you towards evidence. Apparently this is one of those shows where the detectives don't have to look too hard.

[ related topics: Movies Bay Area Television ]

Last night we had to shuttle Zack around a bit, and went to the Cafe Amsterdam on the way home. The band was She's Out There, consisting of Susan Z, Liz Pisco and Christie McCarthy, with one other woman whose name I missed occasionally stepping in for a guitar solo. It took about three songs to grab me, but once they did we stayed through the whole set. And in a club where sometimes I wish the band would play a little louder because people talk when they eat, with 40 or 50 people in it, the volume was just fine because people stopped talking when the music started. We're putting them, collectively and singly, on our "go out of our way to see" list.

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

This "finishing stuff up" is tough on me, I'm coding madly, but going stir crazy in the house. So I'm sitting in San Anselmo Coffee Roasters, which happens to be a haunt of lots of cyclists as well. Women adjusting Lycra® as they get back on their bikes is doing nothing for my ability to focus.

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

Why police authority scares me, incident #481321: Houston policeman confiscates cell phone, distributes pictures on it:

It began as the fairly routine arrest of a drunken-driving suspect on a Houston street.

It quickly evolved into a maze of questions as investigators checked out reports that a Houston police officer had found nude photos of the driver stored in her cellular phone, downloaded them and later showed them around the courthouse.

(Thanks to Sensible Erection.)

[ related topics: Wireless Photography Sexual Culture Law Enforcement ]

Utah may be beautiful, but I think I'd have trouble with the fake beer and the occasional artillery shell landing in a back yard.

[ related topics: moron Current Events Beer ]

Apparently free speech is only for the state controlled media, (what happened to real investigative journalism?) and now the amazing source of interpersonal communications and expression known as the "blog" or personal website is now under fire. I'm not an alarmist normally, and RedState.org is not what I would call objective, but the idea that now our political commentary on blogs could be regulated makes me think of Bush as Hitler.

• News.com: Bloggers narrowly dodge federal crackdown
• RedState.Org's commentary/news article

The Constitution is still online: http://www.archives.gov/nation...s/bill_of_rights_transcript.html and still says:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It's still an amazing document, and worth a re-reading every once in a while. The leaders of this country should read it at least monthly.

[ related topics: Religion Business Politics Photography Privacy Weblogs moron Law Current Events Journalism and Media Civil Liberties Pyrotechnics Dictators Archival ]

Got this claim of ownership for "the copyright to Flutterby" this morning.

You need to be aware that a book has been written using that name (among others) and that when the book is published you may find yourself in a position where you may be asked by our attorneys to relinquish the domain name.

Anybody have any idea of what sort of scam he's running? Obviously he's woefully uninformed about intellectual property law...

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Books Weblogs Copyright/Trademark ]

I had heard about "the infamous coffee cup scene" in The Usual Suspects over and over again, but never seen the film. So on Saturday evening we rented it. On Sunday we watched it again, and then once more with the audio commentary on until we got so disgusted with the film we had to turn it off.

Snappy dialog, devastating acting, fantastic direction, and yet, in the end, I think we both hated it because what could have been a wonderfully tight caper story that tied together in a beautiful way had slapdash writing with numerous holes and inconsistencies that ultimately rendered the story meaningless. It was like watching a David Mamet film with a deus ex machina ending, and the resulting letdown midway through the third viewing was one hell of a disappointment.

[ related topics: Music Movies Writing ]

Do other C++ programmers find themselves as weirded out by the idea that we're sprinking our code with std::vectors as I do? Unfortunately, in my twisted mind "STD" doesn't bind to "standard name space" and "vector" is a path of travel, not a collection.

Sigh. It's weird being me.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Dan's Life Software Engineering ]

Maybe the RIAA is right and P2P file sharing is a bad idea. From the unlikely venue of Michelle Malkin comes the story of an avid file sharer who also disseminated his tax return files throughout the Web, including Social Security Number, address, bank account numbers and other juicy tidbits. Beware!

[ related topics: Privacy Television File-sharing protocols ]

According to the Telegraph of London, the British Department of Health has released statistics on Britons admitted to hospital for various accidents and misadventures. It's interesting to note that 54 Limeys were injured by lightning strikes, and that "Volcanic eruption" (37) injured more people than "Cataclysmic storms" (24) (I had no idea that the UK was so tectonic!) However, what really worries me is the figure of 107 casualties caused by "unspecified forces of nature". Bad karma? Cosmic Justice? What goes around finaly comes around? How can we protect ourselves?

[ related topics: Health Nature and environment Current Events Monty Python Mathematics ]

This scream of frustration brought to you by Microsoft's Visual C++: "Because so-called 'standards' are for weenies, and besides we like our approach to namespace scoping rules better."

[ related topics: Dan's Life Microsoft Software Engineering moron ]

The usual assortment of fears for the day: The U.N. thinks it should be more involved in the Internet (via /.). Specifically, the head of the ITU, one Houlin Zhao, thinks that's a good idea. If you guessed from the name that perhaps he comes from a culture that doesn't value freedom much, you'd be right. Zhao formerly worked for China's Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications.

But I'd be just as scared if he came from the FCC. Kevin J. Martin, the new head of the FCC has been quoted as saying of the First Amendment that:

...these rights are not without boundaries. They are limited by law. They also should be limited by good taste.

(via David Chess.) And, alas, we've known for a while that the Democrats are no more wiling to stand up for free expression than Republicans, here it is again: /. also points to a story which has Senator Hillary Clinton signing on with Republicans Sam Brownback and Rick Santorum.

She wants a $90 million investigation to be launched into the impact of games and other electronic media on the "cognitive, social, emotional and physical development" of children, according to a Sunday Times report.

People have been pouring money down that sinkhole for many years now, and the best that anyone's come up with yet is "we just don't know". But we really know by the allies someone chooses; we have, of course, run into Senator Rick Santorum before and I'll let you do our own searches on Brownback.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Quotes Politics Privacy Current Events Civil Liberties ]

A fascinating article by a 30 something unmarried Indian woman living in the United States about marriage and Indian culture (alternate source).

At a recent dinner party, when I was trying to explain how single-minded Indian parents can be, my friend Jaidev jumped to the rescue. “Imagine you are on a safari in Africa with your parents,” he said. “A lion strolls by, and then perhaps a tiger. Your mother turns to you and says, ‘Son, when are you getting married? You have a girl in mind? What are your intentions?’”

[ related topics: Sociology Marriage ]

Fascinating article in the Guardian on wiring the brain to control prosthetics.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life...re/story/0,13026,1448140,00.html

A NY Times op-ed article on abstinence education in Africa: When Marriage Kills:

The stark reality is that what kills young women here is often not promiscuity, but marriage. Indeed, just about the deadliest thing a woman in southern Africa can do is get married.

[ related topics: Sociology Education Fashion Marriage ]

The Apple folks finally got me. In preparation for my new job, I should have a 15" PowerBook on its way. Went for that over the 17" because whenever I see folks carrying the bigger one I get this vision of the Three Stooges, one of them with a board on his shoulder, knocking down innocent bystanders. Cool, and all, but I want something I actually feel comfortable carrying.

So, suggestions on making the migration appreciated...

[ related topics: Apple Computer Dan's Life Macintosh ]