Flutterby™! From 2005-12-01 to 2005-12-31

According to the Guardian, the UK school system is going back to using the "phonics" method for initial reading lessons, reverting to a traditional system that keeps coming back every few years. The nuns taught me phonics back in 1956 and it took just fine. But then, I suspect that I was the sort of extremely verbal, symbol manipulating type of kid who would have learned reading without much trouble, regardless of the system used.

Some will learn better by one method, some by another. The article states that in phonics kids learn the words faster but comprehension a bit slower. As in any educational method, individual adjustments are important, and cannot be factored out of the equation. If I hadn't come from a family of avid readers, who knows what would have happened.

I saw a show recently about how babies acquire language, and how at one point they can learn foreign phonemes (like in Manderin Chinese) that adults never pick up. Apparently this discovery led to a rash of Spanish and French teaching videos for babies, most of which failed. Why? Because babies don't learn language from hearing it; they learn language from hearing people use it. We can't forget the human factor.

[ related topics: Language Children and growing up Sociology Education ]

In light of Meuon's advice on how to get laid...

I mentioned that we were going to try the Goat Cheese Tart with Marinated Beets and Arugula. To make the tart shells, I adapted the buttery roll dough from Shirley O. Corriher's book Cookwise, page 42, heavily modified to what we had on hand and what I remembered to put in:

• 3/4 lb butter
• 1 1/2 cups bread (high gluten hard wheat) flour

Freeze both, shave the butter into the flour, freeze again, roll this mixture out, scraping the butter and flour off of the rolling pin, repeat. You're trying to get fine flakes of butter covered with flour. Meanwhile, make a very wet yeast dough:

• 2 cups bread flour
• yeast
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1 cup rice milk (original recipe says regular milk, we didn't have any on hand)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon honey (the original recipe says barley malt, I can't believe we didn't have any, but there you are)

Original recipe specifies a few other things, including some extra fat, but this worked just fine. Mix the dough thoroughly (you can't really knead it 'cause it's so wet, but when your arm is getting tired or your starting to smell the smoke from your mixer, that's what you should be thinking), let rise, punch down, let rise once again, this time in the fridge (this could be an overnight rise), then roll out on floured work surface, sprinkle some of the original butter and flour mixture on, fold over, roll out again, sprinkle again, and so forth.

Cut and place into small tart tins, poke bottom (doesn't help much, you'll still have to poke after cooking), and cook at 425°F for 8 minutes.

I only had 6 tins, this gave me 18 tart shells in 3 baking batches.

Meanwhile, take 5 oz or so of a soft goat cheese (I used half of a Trader Joe's 11 oz goat cheese roll), two eggs and two yolks (the whites went into a mousse), and whip together. Bake at 350 for 10-15 minutes.

Top with pickled beets (recipe to follow) and arugula.

[ related topics: Books Dan's Life Food Archival ]

Yes, proving once again that it isn't the tool that makes the animation, I've been playing around with the software I'm working on (see the DigitalFish web page). And I'm even about to get critiques on it from a real live animator, I just sent off the cue sheets today and I expect I'll be doing some tuning tomorrow...

So I present to you a couple of QuickTime clips. Apologies, I haven't tested for this codec on anything but my Mac. We have the the obligatory hopping lamp, the assignment was animate a bouncing ball so of course I had to give that ball a reason, and a basic walk cycle with a violent ending.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Animation Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment Macintosh ]

Hey, would one of you RSS reader users who's getting a 404 on my animations tell me details about your setup and what's going on? I went to try to figure out if I was getting any hits and saw all sorts of wacky "I wonder what's generating that URL" type weirdness.

[ related topics: Content Management Flutterby Meta ]

Our friend Ross is a professional keyboard player. Charlene's heard him play, but until last night I only knew he was good because trying to coordinate schedules with him to get together is darned nigh impossible as he's always got a gig, and few of them are public events.

But he's got a regular appearance on Friday nights in Napa with the Philip Grady Smith & The Gentlemen of Jazz at Uva in Napa, and he's raved about the drummer for those sessions, one Dave Black, who played with Ellington back in '54.

So Charlene, Sarada and I drove across the top of the bay and up from Vallejo to find the restaurant packed, with the only tables far from the stage. So we hung out for a bit while the band set up and a table cleared out. It was a busy night, even though we were in the right room there was a table of 40 in between us and the band, and the place is somewhat loud.

Those issues aside, we were not disappointed. The band was quite good, we stayed through two sets, and with this line-up at ten 'til ten the band walks off stage and lets the drummer go wild for ten minutes or so. If you're not a musician or a percussion fan it might fall flat on you, lots of "wait, where's he going with that, it sounds so arhythmic", so if you go keep your own beat, and note that no matter how far he rambles from the rhythm and multiples of two, he's still nailing that beat. Which is why the musicians who play with him love to do so.

And Ross can really tickle the ivories. Despite the long trek each way we'll be going back.

The food was tasty, too. Simple fare cooked very well. I had ravioli with sage in butter, Charlene had lemon roast chicken, and Sarada had gnochi in a gorgonzola sauce that could easily have been too much, but wasn't. Desserts were equally tasty, a lemon liquer soaked lemon cake on thin slices of papaya, and a chocolate hazelnut concoction that the waitress warned us was "rich", but worked nicely for me.

[ related topics: Music Dan's Life Food California Culture Chocolate ]

The A/W95 single seat homebuilt helicopter. In fact, here's a whole page of small homebuilt helicopters.

[ related topics: Aviation - Helicopters ]

Part of the wackiness of our life has been that, along with the houseguests who stayed on our deck most of the summer, Charlene recently regained contact with her developmentally disabled brother under less than optimal circumstances. She essentially raised him for the first 7 years of his life, and attributes some of her affinity for her job, aiding special education students, to that experience.

And he's really a sweet guy. If there's a frustration with him it's that he finds so much of life fascinating and inspiring, and often feels it necessary to share the discoveries that make it so with you. Even if, in fact, you were the one who just showed him how cool something was: "Hey, Alan, take a look at this. Isn't it neat?" Alan looks, is momentarily distracted so that I can get on to the next task on my list, and then interrupts with "Dan, you have to come see this!"

So with the fact that Charlene now can have semi-regular contact with him again, it means one more person to find holiday gifts for.

Alan loves red vehicles. When we took him clothes shopping we rewarded him with a trip through the toy aisle, and he really wanted a fire truck. Which, surprisingly, they didn't really have.

So we've gone looking for a fire truck. Tonka is now a Hasbro company, and the best of their fire trucks is this cheap plastic thing with a sound "feature".

Ertl has some cool fire trucks although mostly vintage rather than modern, but that line appears to be in their custom "we'll put your logo on this for a 2,500 unit minimum order" category.

Community Playthings has a number of wooden vehicles, including this solid maple fire engine for $102, but aside from the price it seemed a little abstract (you can't say "he has the abilities of an N year old", because some bits are and some bits aren't) and there was no way I was going to paint that beautiful block of wood fire engine red.

After a short time pondering this, Charlene and I decided that the best option would be to build one. In fact, we could make it bolt together, give him a ratchet and an adjustable wrench and let him do final assembly himself. And we're pretty sure he'd love tools. So we went to the hardware store, and... well... photos and drawings for building your own rugged wood fire engine with extendable ladder will be following shortly.

But in the mean-time I also asked the hiking group for leads, and Lisa suggested a few vendors who carry higher quality toys: Hearth Song, Back To Basics Toys, and The Handmade Homemade Toy Shop Catalog, which has a 3d wood fire engine puzzle that's a bit pricey, but is something I'll consider down the road.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Dan's Life Nature and environment Toys Handicaps & Disabilities ]

Ever since Mark Hershberger posted this quote:

True, there are those who try to prove to us that religion is a comforting escape, a refusal to struggle, man’s self-betrayal, dead and immovable dogmatism leading us away from hard questions and searching. However, those who make such claims invariably supress words which describe the very heart of religious experience and religious faith: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst…”; “Seek and you will find…”; “I came not to bring peace, but a sword…”.

I've been trying to find the words with which to respond. Especially not when he's got a mental model of faith that's complex enough to understand that religious "Truth" and objective reality must be disparate:

This, of course, is the problem with the Kansas City Schoolboard, many Christian biology students, and a whole host of other people who must believe that Truth is factually accurate.

At the hike last weekend, Bill had a copy of The End of Faith by Sam Harris that he'd started reading, and he said "If you buy it it'll save me getting it for you for Christmas". I bought it, saw why he was enthused about it, but started to get into it and get bogged down, and this weekend Bill said "yeah, started strong, but... sorry." I'll tear it apart once I finish it.

However, Harris brought a whole bunch of my thinking together in disparate ways, the final crystallization happened with "Karl Popper has told us that we never prove a theory right; we merely fail to prove it wrong." (p.75)

This is my beef with religion, with homeopathy (even though I'm known to take the occasional arnica treatment), and especially with the anthroposophy of my early grade schooling: None of these belief structures are disprovable. The Lord works in mysterious ways, that homeopathist didn't fully understand the metaphorical importance of your ailment, if it isn't observably true then at least it's mythically true (this one also shows up in "Chinese medicine" a lot, see "triple burner").

Now I understand the role that belief plays in physiological function. I know that ritual can do wonders for psychology. However, the hard questions here revolve around finding disprovable theories that explain these connections, and since I can be counted as a critic of religion then, yes, that's one of the questions that I see get ducked.

The final value of a theory is how it helps us to understand natural processes. There's a reason that drug researchers don't seem to have adopted intelligent design: it doesn't help us make any predictions about how organisms or genes will behave. While many who gain strength from their religious convictions disavow those particular sets of beliefs, any time we're willing to accept theories that aren't disprovable, or discount a discipline because theories were disproven, we're falling down the same path of accepting mechanisms and explanations which can't possibly make sense. That only impedes understanding.

[ related topics: Religion Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Health Bioinformatics Philosophy ]

When Mark said "CPU disappears in a puff of logic!" I was prepared for a melt-down, or some smoke or something. Nawww, if you like the destruction of computer bits check out this video of what happens when you remove the heat sink from an overclocked AMD Duron. The summary reads:

They overclock a cpu over 4ghz, remove the heatsink, and boom! "Theres a hole in the motherboard!"

[ related topics: Humor Cool Technology Video ]

Over at Backup Brain Dori was bragging on Healdsburg and mentioned an article about the pastry chef at Cyrus Restaurant that has a couple of neat recipes.

Most folks I know right now are skipping dessert, but I desperately want to make the Coconut Panna Cotta with Meyer Lemon Jam, even though each serving looks like it pretty much uses up the fat quota for the day.

[ related topics: Food ]

The playing about with food recently has reminded me that I never took an organic chemistry class, nor learned it through other means. Yes, I know, doing it right means about 2k rote memorizations, maybe I'll end up trying to database that portion of it. At any rate, can anyone recommend a good text on the topic? Does the VirtualText of Organic Chemistry look like a good place to start? The WikiBooks: Organic Chemistry looks pretty sparse, but maybe that's better for me.

[ related topics: Food Databases ]

FullStory: An Index of Completed Web Comics looks like a good resource, especially for those of us who are waiting on pins and needles for stories that update in bursts every few months.

Which reminds me that I need to set up an archiving system for my right hand links over there, 'cause there was one serial that ended up with the protagonists hanging out in schoolgirl drag at an anime convention in the desert and... well... It's long since finished (and it actually had a full story arc), but I wish I could dig it up, 'cause occasionally I want to reference it.

[ related topics: Comics ]

A week or three ago the Flutterby server locked up. It still responded to pings, but I couldn't get into it to see what was going wrong. So I had 'em reboot it, and let it run, monitoring it somewhat carefully.

After a few days, I noticed something curious: There were multiple copies of the TrackBack checker running. The script is set to fire off once a day, runs through all of the outstanding TrackBack requests, and verifies that the requested page actually has a link to the page it claims to. Bogus requests were coming in so fast that my machine wasn't keeping up with them.

So: Future communications systems will have to have trust issues engineered in from the start, and implementations which don't verify that trust will have to be quickly squelched, otherwise the system will become worthless.

And I coould write a multi-threaded version that might be able to keep up with the spam and bad links and all, but I'm declaring TrackBack dead. A good idea in theory, but yet another commons ruined.

[ related topics: Web development Weblogs Spam Software Engineering ]

Today is "A date that will live in infamy".

[ related topics: History War ]

Lapis - A magical pet adventure...and stealthy primer on female sexual pleasure. From an article on the game:

The more they stimulate the bunny, the happier he becomes until eventually he begins flying through the air. But Lapis is also an unpredictable creature who needs a variety of sensations. Sometimes, no amount of stimulation is going to work.

Comment in worst-taste, from the Sensible Erection thread on the link:

On GameFAQs it says the easiest way to win this game is to put peanut butter on the DS touchscreen and have your dog lick it off.

---mao tse helen

[ related topics: Games Sexual Culture ]

Murderer denied bar admission:

A convicted murderer who graduated from law school after getting out of prison was denied admission to the bar Wednesday by the Arizona Supreme Court because of a lack of "good moral character."

I'm not even sure where to start on this one. I'll let y'all insert your own obligatory lawyer jokes here.

[ related topics: Ethics Law Current Events ]

Over in the belief versus understanding thread I was looking for common ground so that I could gain some insight into the psyche of some people that I respect who hold core tenets different from my own.

This is not that thread: Professor who proposed Intelligent Design class as a study of mythology rather than biology beaten:

University of Kansas religious studies professor Paul Mirecki said that the two men who beat him made references to the class that was to be offered for the first time this spring.

[ related topics: Religion moron Current Events Education ]

I mentioned reading The End of Faith by Sam Harris, and then said I was going to take it apart. I don't think it was a powerful enough book to bother really tearing apart. Sure, the first few chapters felt good in a "booya, go us atheists" sort of way, but then some of his contradictions started showing up, like when he proclaims that the intent (not even the ends) justify the means, or when he spends time showing the idiocy of torture in the history of Christianity in rooting out things like witchcraft and heresy, and then writes an impassioned defense of its use in "the war on terror".

So in the end (which comes about half-way through the book, the rest is notes on stuff referenced in the text) I felt very much like he'd trivialized a discussion that I'd very much like to be having. It ends up being yet another "let's pile on Islam and the fundie Christians in the wake of September 11^th" rather than a "how is faith negatively impacting our culture and our public policy" discussion.

I think the second one is interesting, but I think it needs to be had while keeping in mind that faith may be an evolutionary mechanism. Think about it: If you're not willing to accept the notion of an afterlife or a divine reward, then you probably aren't willing to die for your culture. Bing, that culture has just lost its ability to make war. Similarly, I'll bet the feelings of faith and the desire to procreate are more than slightly correlated.

I'd also offer up to those who claim that faith and organized religion are to blame for the evils, rather than a deeper human need to belong to something greater, that Kamikaze pilots more often referenced their "beautiful hometowns" and their families than their country and their emperor...

[ related topics: Religion Books History Sociology Community ]

Howl!: Mel Gibson or Saddam Hussein?

[ related topics: Humor moron Dictators ]

I have long contended that wearing a suit sends a message to the world that you're corrupt and evil. I had no idea that not only do many people agree with me, they seem to admire those traits:

There, standing in the dock of a Baghdad courtroom on charges of orchestrating mass murder, was Saddam Hussein wearing a pinstriped suit made by Mr. Cesur's Istanbul-based clothing company. Whenever the former Iraqi dictator reached inside his jacket for a pen, the "Cesur" label was flashed on TV screens across the world.

But rather than taking a nosedive, Cesur's sales have been booming since Mr. Hussein's court appearances began this fall.

Uhhhh... Yeah.

[ related topics: Fashion Clothing Dictators ]

Italian lawmakers consider 20% porn tax:

"I believe the porn tax is important not for moralistic reasons, which don't concern me, but because I think that at a time of difficult economic conditions for families it is right to tax products that are not essential," lawmaker Daniela Santache was quoted as saying by the ANSA news agency.

So why not include, say, mainstream movies and music?

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture Current Events Economics ]

Bike fit stuff: While many cyclists go for as narrow a pedal spacing as posible, some eschewing a third chainring just for that reason, others find that they reduce knee pain by spreading the feet further apart. KneeSavers are little studs that screw into your cranks, and then your pedals screw into the end of them. Put here for future reference 'cause Charlene sometimes has knee issues, and it's yet another thing to try.

[ related topics: Pedal Power Bicycling Bicycling - Tandem Dan's Life - Tandem Toys ]

What happens when biodiesel goes beyond the waste of deep fat fryers?

In promoting biodiesel - as the EU, the British and US governments and thousands of environmental campaigners do - you might imagine that you are creating a market for old chip fat, or rapeseed oil, or oil from algae grown in desert ponds. In reality you are creating a market for the most destructive crop on earth.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Economics ]

Officials have fenced-off a statue of "Victor Noir" because of worries about damage:

Officials concerned about damage to the icon's groin area have erected a fence around the grave, and a sign prohibiting indecent rubbing.

Noir - whose real name was Yvan Salman - was killed by Pierre Bonaparte, a great-nephew of the Emperor Napoleon, after bearing him a challenge to a duel.

There's also said to be a Penthouse photo shoot from the late '80s involving this statue...

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Current Events ]

Violet Blue has some interesting ramblings on Tribe.net deciding to enforce 2257 compliance.

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

"It's not what a program does that matters,

It's what a program does when it doesn't.

I remember Dan saying something like that years ago.. and now it's on the main screen of "Anchor", an accounting system I am writing as I find new and interesting ways to break and circumvent things. (I just paid for the same PO a third time.. Bad.). Just wanted to say thanks for the near nursery rhyme muttering bouncing around in my head.

[ related topics: Coyote Grits Invention and Design Software Engineering Writing ]

Ever been in that situation where you got your subway token okay, but the person next to you is having trouble with the machine, and the train is coming, so you say "here, have one of mine", and the guy gives you the cash he was trying to get the machine to accept and... yeah, the fantasy is that you both make your train. In Atlanta you end up hand-cuffed and fined.

The lesson? If you're in Atlanta, be an asshole. At least that way you don't end up in trouble with the law.

[ related topics: moron Current Events Public Transportation ]

Augh. You know what bothers me most about trying to keep a Windows machine running in this household? The feeling that anything I do is utterly disconnected from when the damned thing decides to start working.

Boot the machine in Linux? Network interface comes right up. Boot it in Windows? Uhhh... sometimes it comes up, sometimes it doesn't. Bring up the network configuration, click on "Repair", sometimes it'll repair, sometimes it won't, sometimes it'll tell me it couldn't but, lo and behold, all of a sudden the network starts running again.

Even more fun: Open up the printer because we were trying to print to a network printer, see "...unable to connect." Okay, I can see that that might have been a problem when the network was down, but we can browse the network drives on the server, so let's close it and re-open it and... oh: "...unable to connect" again. And, yet, what's that I hear? Yes, the printer that you claim to be unable to connect to just decided to print that job you claim to be unable to send.

Look: If you're still running Windows at home, don't. My dad's having good luck with Suse, there are lots of other Linux distros out there, if you're not up to running that then buy a Mac. If you're running Windows at your office, tell me the name of the company so I can buy stock in your competitors, anyone who's putting their IT staff through this crap is bound to fail in the mid-term.

But let's not send one more dollar to these incompetent bozos who clutter up our internet with virus laden spam spewers because they can't be bothered to get security right, and who fight cooperation and good user experience with every single character their programmers type.

Just. stop. it. Anyone continuing to purchase Microsoft products at this point is pissing in our well, salting our commons, and needs to be excommunicated from polite society. I'm not in favor of torture, but finding a good spot of desert, surrounding it with a minefield and machine gun towers, and letting the bastards starve seems like an appropriate response.

[ related topics: Free Software Microsoft virus Spam Open Source moron Consumerism and advertising Work, productivity and environment Macintosh ]

Went to this morning's Identity Meeting. A good get-together, got me thinking that I need to implement OpenID for Flutterby, to go along with LID (and I haven't even checked to make sure that I've kept up with the spec for that lately), but YADIS should be out (with implementations!) by the end of the week, and that'll be kind of an overarching discovery mechanism to say "which of these protocols does the user support and want to use".

Also got more interested in some of the ideas that the RDF folks have been hollering about for quite a while in terms of distributed classification. Some of the things that the PubSub folks were talking about in conjunction with the soon-to-be-out XRI-with-URLs sounds like it might be a reasonable way to share things like topics for entries in a way that doesn't degenerate into Technorati tags.

But overall I got a feeling of two things: One, that I'm glad to be back in application software, there's just too much handwavy buzzwordy stuff in the web app space, obscuring some fairly simple, although occasionally profound infrastructure; and, two, that it'd be really cool if there were another person or two playing with similar weblog software who'd like to try the occasional interop experiment...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Content Management Weblogs Software Engineering Space & Astronomy LID (Lightweight IDentity) ]

Card dump from today:

• Chris Jones from Radar Networks
• Christopher Allen of Life With Alacrity, "A blog on social software, collaboration, trust, security, privacy, and internet tools...".
• Constantine Gus Spathis from PubSub.
• Christopher Carfi of Cerado who, if he'd go to three colors rather than two on his card, could loft his business card into my "very cool" design; it's spare, it's on rough card stock, it has a "Notes" section on the back, it's definitely in the direction of the cards I really admired back when I slung negatives in a high end print shop.
• Kalya Hamlin of Identity Woman was one of the organizers.

And shout-outs to the usual suspects, Doc Searles, Johannes Ernst, et al.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Privacy Weblogs Software Engineering Net Culture Graphic Design Economics Social Software LID (Lightweight IDentity) ]

BrainOpener is finally being updated! Two I found interesting:

1. A list of how long various foodstuffs last. I'd like a little more detail on why they made some of their decisions, but it's interesting in conjunction with my current reading of On Food And Cooking(2^nd edition).
2. htmlunit is a Java framework for building web robots that knows about JavaScript.

[ related topics: Web development Food ]

Vote Chris Christmas Rodriguez to replace Santa this year. Requires QuickTime, don't be drinking anything, hat tip to Violet Blue.

(Okay, they kinda peter out after the first two or three...)

[ related topics: Humor ]

There's a dead tree down the road a bit that I walk past. This picture is from quite a while ago, but this morning there was the hammering of construction across the valley, answered by the hammering of one of these dudes (I was gonna say "little peckers", but that'd be unnecessarily crude, no?), making quite a cool morning tattoo.

[ related topics: Photography History Machinery Fabrication Archival Model Building ]

Mark mentioned Orthodixie which mentioned a BBC article about a German church youth group that did a calendar with racy scenes from the Bible, including a topless Delilah cutting Samson's hair and a fig-leafed Eve standing in a church offering an apple.

Well, what separates bloggers from "real journalists" is that we're willing to do the hard research so that we can point y'all to the original source material: www.bibelkalender.de has a few pictures and a bunch of text, note the "english version" link in the upper left corner:

After a few conversations we all agreed that we would not forcefully take Bible scenes and portray them nude but to take such scenes in which nudity was already present.We found that the "old masterpieces" were of great helpand they were not as sensitive in their antique portrayals.

Frankly I was hoping for illustrations of the bit where Lot's daughters get him drunk and...

[ related topics: Religion Photography Erotic Sexual Culture Current Events Journalism and Media ]

Just thought Matt Kruse deserves some link love for an excellent examples and source code of a pop-up Javascript data selector. Nice Stuff..

Yes, I am becoming a dark Lord of Javascript and Ajax...feel the force... cash the checks..

[ related topics: Web development ]

While Charles Benton in Berkeley is probably the leading US guru for Kite Aerial Photography (KAP) and Dr. James Aber is the leading guru for scientific applications, Yvan van Hoorickx wins hands down for artistry! His site is absolutely amazing!

[ related topics: Photography Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Bay Area Aerial Photography ]

Interestingly, there were several forums in which the topic of "gold farming" in World of Warcraft recently came up, which lead to Leo sending a tale of a scam played out in Eve Online.

[ related topics: Games ]

On Ken Blackburn's Paper Airplanes there's a description of making the the 27.6 seconds time aloft in an indoor arena paper airplane record.

[ related topics: Aviation ]

crasch had a link to Volokh thread on hostility to atheism in the United States:

This strikes me as quite troubling — 50% of Americans have an unfavorable view of people whose great sin, as best I can tell, is that they refuse to take on faith what others are willing to take on faith. I'm pleased that hostility to Jews and Catholics seems to be much less than what it used to be in the past. I hope the same will soon happen as to Muslim Americans and Evangelical Christians; that one may disagree with some Evangelical Christians' political agenda, for instance, is surely no reason to view them unfavorably as people (just as one's disagreement with most American Jews' liberalism is no reason for viewing them unfavorably). Yet the high level of disapproval of atheists should make us worry about American religious harmony and tolerance more broadly.

I don't necessarily want to re-stir the "religion is good/bad" discussion of my Belief vs Theory musings, but I do find it telling that a difficulty to accept statements without proof or disprovability arouses that much ire in the general populace and makes, for instance, one ineligible for public office in the eyes of most.

[ related topics: Religion Politics Community ]

While carrying enough gold to sink your average rowboat, The Vatican Information Service reports that Pope Benedict XVI had some harsh words for the materialistic attitudes that threaten to take over Christmas. Benedict is reported to have said "In today's consumer society, this season unfortunately suffers from the 'contamination' of commercialism that risks changing its true spirit, characterized by reflection, sobriety and a joy that does not come from outside, but from within." while wearing enough silk to make tents for pretty much most of the homeless in the San Francisco Bay Area and a good portion of those without shelter in Santa Monica as well.

In decrying the way that this season has been cheapened by the acquisition of things for their own sake, with no thought to how the desire to accumulate stuff actually enriches our lives, he continued:

Immediately after the feast of the Immaculate Conception, many families begin to prepare their nativity scenes, as if to relive, together with Mary, those days filled with trepidation which preceded the birth of Jesus. Bringing the nativity scene into the home can be a simple but efficacious way to present and transmit the faith to children ... A nativity scene can help us understand the true secret of Christmas, because it speaks of the humility and the merciful goodness of Christ, Who 'though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor'.

Whereupon the Chinese ambassador to the Vatican kissed his ring, saying "thank God we're going to sell so many plastic nativity sets this year it'll be obscene!"

[ related topics: Religion Humor Current Events Consumerism and advertising Fashion ]

The universe is punishing me for not always carrying a camera.

1. This morning I drive over to Woodacre to help out a friend who got locked out. Pick up a hitchhiker who, at first I think, is smoking a bit old cigar. As I stopped he stubbed it out, but as he got in the car I could smell that it's the largest blunt I've seen outside of a Cheech & Chong movie. He offered a hit, I declined. I love west Marin.
2. Run down to the post office, and on my way this gorgeous little songbird is pacing me in the bushes, fully visible, and doesn't fly away when I look over.
3. A big ol' red tail on the power lines observes me as I walk underneath him. We make eye contact, he continues to watch me, then looks away, then back, but makes no move to fly.

Each of these would have made a better illustration for Flutterby than Pope Benedict's mug shot.

[ related topics: Drugs Photography Movies Nature and environment Bay Area ]

Amish man extorted out of $67k by prostitute who threatened to out him to his community and publish pictures of him on the net.

Sad that his community was so judgemental and narrow-minded.

[ related topics: Religion Sexual Culture Community ]

In Portland, Oregon, hangin' with family. Net access spotty. Back Sunday evening, possibly with stories & pictures.

[ related topics: Dan's Life ]

Sitting here in the coffee shop at Powell's Books, and my dad mentioned that the Atlanta Botanical Gardens has a really cool garden model railroad display. Turns out that's by Paul Busse of Applied Imagination, he's got some pictures from the Atlanta Botanical Gardens display here. If you're in that area, go see it soon (comes down by the first), it looks really cool. I'll be keeping my eyes out for work by him out this way.

[ related topics: Photography Trains Toys Gardening ]

Good Story about how a robot saved the day, but is also a case study as to why a really function robot must have more human hands/grippers to operate existing tools and work on equipment. Or it'll have to have lots of custom made built-in tools. M2 is a crude robot compared to QRIO but dispite some malfunctions, got a job done.

[ related topics: Coyote Grits Robotics Law Work, productivity and environment Heinlein Mathematics ]

Eric invited me to a 'Yoga for Guys' session yesterday.. He might be onto something here. His all guy session focused on some basics, with some good "if you can't do it this way, try it this way" instructions. New twists included a non-yoga-ish music selection ranging from Satriani and Santana to apropos classical, referring to the 'strap' as a 'bondage device', and a general good sense of humor with a smidgen of banter. The break included some cold frosty micro-brews, and off we went again for another session. Eric also demonstrated more advanced execution of the same routines, so we could visualize what the goal was, but he did the actual moves with us, the same way most of us did. I'll be there next time and I'll try to bring a couple of friends. Kudos Eric.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Humor Music Invention and Design ]

Greetings from the slopes of Mount Hood, where the sledding is good, and the beavers cavort in the ice laced streams. I'm staying with at the house of my sister and her husband (and their new son) just off of Hawthorne Ave in Portland Oregon, a funky little neighborhood with lots of vintage clothing stores, a place called "Smoking Glass" advertising "functional glassware" (and a few other head shops). Having a good visit with them, my parents, and a few hours with an 80 some-odd year old cousin some number removed who lives in a cabin up in the aforementioned foothills and who, despite knee surgery and advanced age and two canes managed to lead us down an icy snow-covered deer trail that I'd have not followed. I wanna be like her when I get old.

Oh, and here's the obligatory "blue screen" on the check-in kiosk, if you trust your IT needs to Microsoft this is the sort of image you're projecting to your customers. Can your business afford this?

Net connection courtesy of "Coffee People", on Hawthorne Ave.

[ related topics: Drugs Microsoft Health moron Consumerism and advertising Clothing ]

For my dad, from the Chugalug mailing list and a discussion about converting vinyl to CD: GramoFile, built for dealing with big audio files and the issues of digitizing an LP and converting it to a chaptered CD.

[ related topics: Music ]

The United States Constitution, Article II, Section I says of the President:

Before he enter on the execution of his office, he shall take the following oath or affirmation:--"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

The constitution turns to the Legislative branch to make laws, and for the sake of argument we'll say that U.S. Code Title 50 Chapter 36 is a constitutional law. For those of you not familiar with this law, it allows the executive branch to set up secret wiretaps without court order for up to 72 hours, and provides a judicial review for those wiretaps. This judicial review is by a court set up to do nothing but look at the legitimacy of said eavesdroppings.

Why, then, did our current President decide that he needed to go outside even that level of judicial review in spying on U.S. citizens:

President Bush, brushing aside bipartisan criticism in Congress, said Monday he approved spying on suspected terrorists without court orders because it was "a necessary part of my job to protect" Americans from attack.

I'm very, very afraid.

[ related topics: Politics Privacy moron Law Current Events Civil Liberties ]

Before I left for Oregon last Wednesday, we went to see Narnia. I'm not sure how to review the movie since I think a lot of the appeal is for people who loved the books, and it's been a looong time for me since I read the books. Short version: It wasn't the effects that constantly pulled me out of the illusion, it was the screenplay and the direction. The Christianity metaphors were applied with a sledge-hammer, The charm of the original books, which Charlene and I both remembered as things like the relationships with the talking animals, got lost in the later big battle scenes.

A watchable movie, not a bad one, but... well... while I don't want to offer up any spoilers there's a scene where Aslan the lion is in peril, and it was all I could do to keep from whistling "In the jungle, the mighty jungle...".

[ related topics: Religion Books Movies ]

Go away for a few days, and HGR1219 picks up the slack: an alternate view of King Kong, and a headline which reads "Police whack giant snow penis", with pictures. Seems like there are some pretty clear First Amendment issues there...

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Movies Law Enforcement Civil Liberties HGR1219 ]

Stolen from Dave Goodman: Make-a-Flake.

[ related topics: Photography Archival ]

Remember when Dubya claimed that the congresscritters who voted for the war on Iraq had access to the same intelligence data he did? The Congressional Research Service says he lied:

The President is able to control dissemination of intelligence information to Congress because the Intelligence Community is part of the executive branch. It was created by law and executive order principally to serve that branch of government in the execution of its responsibilities.

[ related topics: Politics History moron Current Events War ]

droidMaker apparently does a good job of telling the story of modern techno-centric film making, including the birth of Pixar. Any Pixarians read it yet?

[ related topics: Pixar Animation Graphics Heinlein ]

Okay, it is finally time: I'd like to take some advertising on Flutterby. I'm interested in advertisers who provide something of value (ie: no hotel or airport parking aggregators), the ads can be images or text, but no animation or pop-ups, and page layout, sizes and such are all to be determined. I no longer care about whether or not you're doing it just for search engine value, because search engines are already falling down on this front, but I'd also really like it if the advertised products and services were actually germaine to a Flutterby readership. Suggestions?

[ related topics: Flutterby Meta Consumerism and advertising ]

Schneier on Security: The Security Threat of Unchecked Presidential Power

[ related topics: Politics Law Current Events Cryptography ]

Intelligent decisions are being made about intelligent design. I like the option of an elective:

"The board is discussing the possibility of adding a comparative religion class as an elective that could include intelligent design."

And I also like:

" ...not disparaging the thought that the universe is (intelligently) designed, which is good because I think it is... Do I think science can prove it? No, I do not, so it has no business in science class." "

[ related topics: Religion moron Graphic Design ]

Edward Burtynsky has some cool photography of industrial processes, wastes, and installations.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Supreme Court of Canada rules that sex clubs are legal:

"Criminal indecency or obscenity must rest on actual harm or a significant risk of harm to individuals or society. The Crown failed to establish this essential element of the offence. The Crown's case must therefore fail," wrote McLachlin.

Now if they'd just stop confiscating smut at the border...

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Law Current Events ]

Shelley has some interesting comments on how Wikipedia works

[ related topics: Sociology Net Culture Community ]

First they came for the hardcore pornographers, and I did not speak up because I was not a hardcore pornographer: Sanford Wasserman sentenced to five years in prison for distributing "obscene materials". Wasserman, a Florida resident, was convicted in Montana because that was where U.S. Attorney Bill Mercer was able to find a jury of people who were both turned on by video tapes which "...depicted violent "gang rapes" of women, sexual intercourse between humans and animals, and other sexual activity which involved urination, defecation and sadistic and masochistic conduct.", and were ashamed of that reaction.

I feel it necessary to point out that I wasn't likely to be a customer of Wasserman's productions, but I think it should also be noted that nowhere in this press release is there mention of kidnapping, extortion, or anything else that would indicate that the films were made by people acting under duress. And in this time we had people like Mel Gibson putting two hours of S&M leather fetish in mainstream theaters, with nobody threatening to stick him in jail.

Hopefully we can educate the rest of the country on the value of The United States Constitution while The U.S. Attorneys (and, recent events would suggest, the President) run roughshod over it.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Law Civil Liberties Video ]

From Terry Pratchett's Thief of Time:

In the second scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised, a story is written concerning one day when the apprentice Clodpool, in a rebellious mood, approached Wen and spake thusly:

"Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?"

Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: "A fish!"

And Clodpool went away, satisfied.

[ related topics: Quotes Terry Pratchett ]

The Tribe.net 2257 Extended Dance Remix is an essay on how Tribe.net's new 2257 compliance push is destroying a lot of community, but it's also a good look at why "social networking" websites, indeed any centralized attempt at "social networking", must fail. At some point on the net we have to offer up portions of our identity to third parties, if to no one else then to the domain registrars (although I believe that there will be solutions to this, I've got some ideas for an architecture that I'd like to see implemented), but to offer up large portions of the content we create and, more importantly, the relationships we build, to faceless VC funded companies is foolish at best.

So here's the challenge: If you use one of these services, figure out what it would take to implement technologies like FOAF and whatever else to decentralize that process so you can protect yourself. If you have a favorite cause that uses these technologies, do your best to educate that community so that it can be decentralized. And encourage everyone you interact with online to start discussions about identity systems that users own, so that you don't get a whole lot of your online identity tied up in a service that can change things on a whim.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design Sociology Writing Community Architecture Sexual Culture - U.S. Code Title 18 Section 2257 ]

Over at Digital Warfighter, Pablo attributes the following to somewhere on Fark.com:

New corollary to Godwin: As criticism of any issue increases, the likelihood of the Bush Administration linking it to 9/11 approaches 100 percent

[ related topics: Politics Current Events ]

Close on the heels of the news that Barbie dolls are often mutilated by their female owners, HGR1219 informs us of National Barbie-In-A-Blender Day.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Humor Current Events Toys HGR1219 ]

Over at Pursed Lips, Debra has done her first audio edition (I'm shying away from the term "podcast"). Although I haven't listened to it yet, her notes indicate that she talks about Rode Hard, Put Away Wet: Lesbian Cowboy Erotica, which I'm disappointed I didn't know about earlier 'cause I know just the person for whom this would be an awesome Christmas gift. Oh well, it'll have to be unaffiliated with a holiday, 'cause it's just too perfect.

[ related topics: Books Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Talking Head Vibrators:

... are the first of its kind vibrator that delivers audio as well as physical sensation—offering different sound chips for different moods, and with the ability to record a voice yourself with a recordable sound chip, coupled with a state of the art silicon vibrator with “rabbit” feature that brings an extra new dimension to your sensation.

Hey, anyone wanna switch the sound boxes in these with some other talking toys? I'm envisioning "Math is hard"...

And the first person who makes a "hard to speak with your mouth full" line on this topic that doesn't feel entirely forced gets mad props. And the SE thread might get there before we do.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Invention and Design ]

When Nancy forwarded me the news about Britain's planned vehicle movement tracking system, that would track the movements of every automobile and truck in that country and hold the data for two years, she did not say "Holy fuck, is that ripe for abuse or what?", so I'll say it. Yow, I guess when you've been softened up by years of IRA violence you'll submit to anything, but I hope that we here in the U.S. are smarter than this. Really I do.

Using a network of cameras that can automatically read every passing number plate, the plan is to build a huge database of vehicle movements so that the police and security services can analyse any journey a driver has made over several years.

Wow. So what is a country that's headed the right direction in terms of government control and civil liberties?

[Title is courtesy of Nancy, too]

[ related topics: Photography broadband moron Current Events Law Enforcement Automobiles Machinery Databases Mark Morford ]

There are books made for travel. Light paperbacks that you don't much care if you lose, and if you finish them during the trip you leave 'em in the seat pocket in front of you or pass 'em on to someone else (a few airports even have really good used book stores, I remember a really good one in either O'Hare or Mitchell). On Food And Cooking is not one of those, but nonetheless it's what I found myself lugging along on my recent Portland trip.

My sister, with a few month old child, saw me lugging that around and said "try this". This was Comfort Me With Apples, by Ruth Reichl. Subtitled "Love, Adventure and a Passion for Cooking", it's the memoir of a woman living in a Berkeley commune in the 1970s, developing a career around being a food critic, and indulging in the bourgeois passions that her housemates claimed to loathe.

Good food is as much about context as it is about the flavors. It's about the memories of matzoh ball soup and thinly sliced tongue in my Oma's dining room, with juice out of the good glasses from the china cabinet, or the holiday dinners at the other grandparents, with the tables laid end-to-end out the entrance to the dining room and into the living room, on one particularly large gathering turning to form a large "L", or the lamb with mint jelly, lamb that our family had raised and butchered, served at a Passover Seder, with the raucous laughter of my parents' friends, especially a few of my dad's work buddies who told jokes I didn't understand but understood were slightly risqué...

Now my kitchen isn't the most consistent in the world. I've had some real disasters. With guests. But there are few restaurants that I'd rather go to for the food than when Charlene and I have taken time to get the ingredients right and nailed the flavors. When we go out, especially to a high end place, it's usually for the rest of the experience, for the sense of ritual that accompanies a meal.

At some level Reichl understands this, that's part of why she's telling the tales that accompany the recipes, but she tells the tales of love falling apart, of guilty trysts in Paris or LA, of personal upheaval, without the self-examination that would put into context why she's helping to deify chefs that even she acknowledges are succeeding not through food but through personality, and why she's unable to find her own center.

On the other hand, even as we witness the tribulations that eventually end up with her living in LA, there are some interesting tales, and even a few good recipes: It's a horribly 1970s thing, lots of meringue and buttercream, but I have got to try the Dacquoise...

A fun read, actually almost a perfect travel book, and I'm going to pass this along to Jeanne, but much like a dessert that doesn't quite click it was good in the consumption and left me feeling somewhat hollow afterwards.

On other fronts, I got to see Powell's City of Books while I was up in Portland. In the era of the internet I never thought I'd be really excited by a bookstore again, but if you are, or have ever been, a book lover then it's almost worth going to Portland just for that store. And there's enough other cool stuff in Portland that it's worth putting it on your "to do" list. Why is this pertinent? The Powells.com interview with Ruth Reichl.

[ related topics: Books Food Bay Area Sociology Travel Net Culture ]

After fighting with the network card and stupid printer drivers on Windows XP (Printer works fine under Windows 98 on Charlene's laptop, but under XP on the desktop we couldn't get the right combination of stuff going to get good photos), I broke down and installed Gnome to give Charlene a reasonable environment on the desktop machine. She'd previously had a desktop Linux machine on which she'd used OpenOffice.org, but had gone back to Windows when she got her laptop. With Nautilus and GnomePhotoPrinter she's been cranking through the old images, printing lots of stuff, and in conjunction with the aforementioned OpenOffice.org and TuxPaint to doodle out some icons for her developmentally disabled brother I think she might actually get to the "can we put Linux on the laptop?" stage pretty soon.

My dad's been enjoying Suse, and... well... I just need to break it to the rat boys that I'm not going to keep a Windows machine around for games any longer, if they want me to play something with 'em it has to run under Linux.

[ related topics: Free Software Interactive Drama Photography Games Microsoft broadband Open Source Nature and environment Handicaps & Disabilities ]

I'm not generally one for big honkin' hunks of braised meat, but this braised lamb shank "Experiment On a Vaguely Northern African Theme" is filed away for safekeeping...

[ related topics: Food ]

With other contributors piping in more, and the thought of taking advertising, I once again need to tackle that prickly issue of design. And even back in the first days of a few other contributors (that'd be, what, half a decade ago?) I got some "I'd like to be able to filter just to you" feedback, whereas I'm happy to get other contributors 'cause I want this to be my favorite web page.

So I've been thinking about ways to:

• Present longer articles better. Maybe with a teaser, maybe with a click/cut.
• Look at topics & classifications: Don't want to filter on the whole darned (and rather nebulous) current topic system, but a way to filter by contributor and by gross topic (ie: food, tech, freedom & politics, sexual culture, erotic stuff, outdoors) might be nice.
• Integrate advertising.

If anyone has favorite sites with interesting layouts, I'd love to get ideas.

[ related topics: Flutterby Meta Consumerism and advertising Graphic Design ]

Pope given immunity in sex abuse suit:

U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal cited a motion filed by the Justice Department, known as a "Suggestion of Immunity,'' in which the government said allowing the lawsuit to proceed would be "incompatible with the United States' foreign policy interests.''

[ related topics: Religion Sexual Culture Law Current Events ]

Charlene, on getting those "score them with the edge of the scissors blades and they curl" ribbons to work right:

"It's mathematical honey, a certain angle, the right pressure. Kind of like sex."

[ related topics: Dan's Life ]

Aaaugh! Okay, I can make puff pastry from scratch. I know the feel of hand-made pasta dough. I can, sometimes, find my way around a kitchen. But think "okay, we'll be really smart and show up at the party with something nobody expects from us, like a 'broken glass' Jello^tm dessert with graham cracker crust" and all of a sudden... From thinking that "24-26 graham crackers" means, like, 24-26 graham crackers, to not getting that "1 packet of gelatin" means 1/4 oz, not a whole box, to just missing the sugar in the pineapple juice portion, I'm just freakin' unable to get this damned thing right.

Sigh. Glad it's a dessert, so the fact that I'm two hours behind schedule means maybe it'll actually harden like it's supposed to if we can drag out the party...

[ related topics: Dan's Life Food ]

The rat boys have been learning Japanese, and Alec's girlfriend is from Japan. Lesson learned at last night's party? Do not play Google Seppuku with people who know kanji.

And, as Bill says: Axial tilt is the reason for the season.

[ related topics: Dan's Life ]

Background: Carl Hartley was COL's lawyer in similiar fights regarding TN Sales Tax for internet services, software development services, and such. I heard these noises from the State of TN several years ago. Today, it makes a Slashdot Article which references the Chattanoga Time Free Press with This Article: "A state board is proposing a sweeping change to make computer software used in business subject to property taxes.."

What they were trying to do years ago, was actually assess the value like property. ie: So what if you paid $500 for a web site, and it's tied to a LOT of revenue for your business, they may assess that it's value is much higher, and tax you on an appraised value.

Wonder where GeekLabs should move to?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Software Engineering Law Net Culture ]

I mentioned that we were looking for a fire truck toy for Alan, Charlene's developmentally disabled brother. Charlene goes down tomorrow to deliver it, in parts, with tools for assembly. We think it'll be easy enough to put together that he can do it, and while it's rough (there's a bunch I'd change for the next revision, mostly revolving around better wood and more time spent finishing), we think it'll work just fine. I meant to have plans and drawings for building the toy, but enough got winged that it'd be kind of fruitless to put scans of my original sketches up here.

The ladder was built out of a piece of oak edging and bits of quarter inch dowel for the lower section, and cut with a saw bit on a rotary tool from a piece of quarter edge baseboard for the upper part.

Everything else goes together with 1/4-20 bolts, with two dowels on the light assembly that both serve as a holder for the ladder and alignment as the light assembly mounts to the top of the cab.

The wheel wells were cut free-hand with a router, then I dropped the bit and ran the edge of the bit shaft along the edge of the well to do an in-cut.

And here's the bottom of the base-plate showing the T-nuts and the axles, which were cut from a length of 1/4-20 rod and put in place with nylon locknuts.

Wheels are replacement 2" diameter 1" wide castor wheels.

The whole thing is meant to be assembled from this stage with a ratchet and a crescent wrench by someone who's somewhere between two and seven in assorted cognitive abilities. He'll need a little guidance, but we think everything will go together fairly well and give him not only a toy, but a sense of "I built it".

And if this works then we can start to push gift ideas off onto the other brother who's got some really nice fine cabinetry skills and the tools to apply them...

[ related topics: Children and growing up Dan's Life Fabrication Toys Handicaps & Disabilities Archival ]

It used to be rocket science getting oddball printers to work in Linux. LinuxPrinting.org deserves a hug for having a print driver (.ppd file) for an odd Kyocera-Mita network printer/copier/fax that had me printing to it via CUPS in minutes. And suprise: It prints .pdf formatted files extremely well. Useful for printing out attractive reports, invoices, etc.. fpdf.org makes creating pdf's easy, and now the Linux/LAMP system can print them directly as well.

Played Loaded Questions last night with Charlene's brother's family. Learned new and interesting about each other. Recommend the game.

[ related topics: Games Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Sociology ]

Did a little more aerial photography today. While it might not make the millions that meuon thinks, I'm hoping it will help fund graduate school for me. I'm now looking into licensing arrangements for photographs. How does one charge for digital images and how does one manage copyrights?

[ related topics: Photography Chattanooga Eric's Life Archival Aerial Photography ]

Back from delivering the fire truck, one exchange with Alan, the developmentally disabled brother:

Charlene: "Alan, are you pulling my leg?"

Alan: "No, you're pulling my leg. Get off of my leg, Char!"

[ related topics: Dan's Life Handicaps & Disabilities ]

In response to a message my mom forwarded which claimed that autism rates were sharply rising in the U.S., I went off and did a quick search on said rates. What I found was the usual assortment of "yes it is/no it isn't" back and forth. On the one hand, the CDC points out that "Autism was added as a special education exceptionality in 1991" and there are no clear signs that the increase of diagnosis indicates an increase in incidence, others show the sorts of exponential trend-lines that seem a little steeper than just a constant number of new diagnoses per year that one would expect to level off after the various age groups in the sample categories are filled.

What I don't see immediately is whether the incidence of developmental disability is rising. What one would expect to see, if autism is just a new re-classification inside developmental disability, is that the overall rates are remaining the same. On the other hand, I'm also aware that schools are able to get more funding if they can classify kids as developmentally disabled, so I'd guess that that number is rising sharply too.

Statistics is hard.

I'm also wondering if anyone has informed opinion on the EPA & DuPont PFOA settlements. While I'm seeing a lot of fingers pointed, I'm not sure I've found anyone who's willing to come forward with evidence for PFOA and cancer in humans (and there are several things that cause cancer in rats and not mice, so cancer in rats isn't necessarily an indicator), aside from compounds that result from overheating and burning.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Invention and Design Mathematics Education Handicaps & Disabilities ]

Because having the browser tab open with the Flash plugin playing is sucking down a lot of CPU, I'm passing this one along before I have a chance to look at it: This or That is "America's favorite burlesque gameshow", now airing in select cities, apparently.

[ related topics: Television Burlesque ]

Movie of the moment: Russian Climbing (via). 8:24 of some pretty awesome parkour.

[ related topics: Video Parkour ]

Further proof that those airport searches aren't about safety: Student sues over airport arrest, she had a couple of condoms filled with flour ("She said she made them as a joke and would squeeze them to relieve stress.") on a domestic flight, airport screeners arrested her on suspicion of drug trafficking and held in jail for three weeks.

You can argue that customs agents have the right to search on entry to the country. You can argue that transportation safety agents have the right to search for contraband which might make flying unsafe. But "you're traveling, we can search you for whatever the hell we want" bothers the hell out of me.

I'm not sure that traveling with condoms filled with flour is the smartest thing in the world, on the other hand I've seen condoms or balloons filled with beans and, yeah, squeezing them is pretty therapeutic, so I can't even say that I think she was being stupid.

But no matter what, I hope she wins.

[ related topics: Aviation Law Enforcement Civil Liberties ]

Fremont police officer attacked by pack of Chihuahuas.

[ related topics: Bay Area Current Events Law Enforcement ]

Anti-news: Older women have better sex:

A paper recently published in The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality cites research showing younger single women "were less likely than older single women to report orgasm during sexual activity."

Unfortunately, while this story quotes a lot of sources, it doesn't give any clue as to what that study is. The abstracts of The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality are available from SIECCAN (Sex Information and Education Council of Canada), but I don't find any likely candidates for the study in question in those abstracts.

[ related topics: Quotes Erotic Sexual Culture Current Events Graphic Design Education ]

Antigravitas led me to Atomic Rocket, lots of information on how to get your rocket ships right next time you're writing a sci-fi story.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Writing Machinery ]

It's the story (with a picture) of a penis cake. And this inaugurates the Food - Cake topic...

[ related topics: Erotic Food Food - Cake ]

Linux Sex Positions - The Open Source Kama Sutra, involves... well... posed penguins, with lesbian and gay versions.

[ related topics: Free Software Humor Erotic Open Source ]

Hot-Babe is a Linux CPU meter,

...a small graphical utility which displays the system activity in a very special way. When the CPU is idle, it displays a dressed girl, and when the activity goes up, as the temperature increases, the girl begins to undress, to finish totally naked when the system activity reaches 100%. Of course, if you can be shocked by nudity, don't use it!

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Open Source Nudity ]

Trading Spouses finds the Dark Side -

http://www.break.com/articles/tradingspouses2.html

The movie will start playing for you; the difficult part for me is feeling like - are people shocked at this woman? I have gotten used to it around here -

This is why Christians should not be allowed to vote.

Ziffle

[ related topics: Movies ]