Flutterby™! From 2006-05-01 to 2006-05-31

This morning, driving out to help Athena and Forest move, we had someone close behind on the way down White's Hill, and in Fairfax that turned into a downright tailgate (despite the fact that I was tooling along at above the speed limit). As Sir Francis Drake turned from one lane each way to two, he went zipping around us, and I remarked to Charlene, "never a cop when you need one". But, lo, two blocks hence there was indeed a cop with a radar gun parked in the High School parking lot... And three blocks after that balance was restored in the universe. Yay to the San Anselmo police!

As of this afternoon Zack, the youngest of the rat boys, is an award winning actor on stage and screen, with a super dark adaptation of Stephen King's "Night Surf" that he made with a couple of friends that showed in a local film fest. We sat through all two and a half hours of shorts, and disagreed slightly with the judgement of the judges, but quibbles, mostly.

And although helping them move on a moment's notice was a hiccup in the schedule and something of an annoyance, and take me away from a hike, I still got a workout from it. So life is good.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Dan's Life Movies Bay Area Law Enforcement California Culture San Anselmo ]

Proving perhaps mostly that cynicism is genetic, my Dad forwarded me a Tom Toles cartoon about the alleged lobbying reform bill that had the appropriate undertones for Flutterby.

You know, there was a time when congressweasels and senators actually worried about ending up without a career after a term, and one or two ended up as eleveator operators. We need to bring that back.

[ related topics: Politics ]

New Yorker article on the history of automobile navigation. I did not, for instance, know that in-car turn-by-turn nav systems were nearly a century old.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Automobiles Cool Technology ]

Some little tips about building your own RC helicopter, including things like using a CD drive motor as a generic brushless drive motor and some cool stuff on building your own blades (from Mars)

[ related topics: Music Astronomy Model Building Aviation - Helicopters ]

The data from the GPS of yesterday's bike ride around the Tiburon loop is awful, jitter that looks to be a quarter mile or so off course. I think what happened is that I didn't give the GPS enough time to acquire the satellites. So of course this morning, for the Pine Mountain/Alpine Lake/Mount Tam loop I got there a few minutes late, pressed the button and tossed the unit in my pack without double-checking anything, and... it didn't get turned on.

Bummer, 'cause I was riding with some strong pedalers, we averaged 14MPH despite the extensive climbing, and I'm starting to get more confident on the descents, there were a couple of descending hairpins that were... interesting. A good ride, I feel like I'm moving up a bit both speed and skills wise, although a few early break-aways followed by total bonking and still not being sure that I'm not accordioning the line when I'm in the middle of it mean that I'm still hanging towards the rear of the front pack.

Except for that one day when Charlene and I were on the tandem on a Marin Cyclists "A" ride around Tiburon loop... Tandems move...

Hundred miles on Saturday, I think I've met the group I'm going to try to ride with, if I'm comfortable with them I'll worry more about hanging with them than going for speed, but it'd be nice to be under six hours (elevation is roughly the same as today, which means that I should be able to up my speed considerably).

And the discussion with the folks I'm keeping up with now has turned to 200 milers...

[ related topics: Dan's Life Bay Area Community Maps and Mapping Bicycling Bicycling - Tandem ]

Michigan police accuse woman of polygamy scam:

"In polygamy cases, usually it's a man who is married to more than one woman," Tobin said. "In my 12 years here, I don't remember there being a case involving a female polygamist. I haven't even heard of such a case."

This apparently revolved around her marrying someone, milking them for all she could, and moving on without benefit of divorce.

[ related topics: Sociology Law Current Events Law Enforcement Marriage ]

Give me your tired, your poor,

your buddled masses yearing to breathe free,

the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Since you folks rightly called out my inappropriate re-use of language on yesterday's entry about a woman using marriage in her con artistry, a query: A reader who shall remain anonymous for the moment has asked for resources on polyamorous relationships. I haven't been in those circles for a while, and I think it'd be interesting to make another survey of the field, especially looking at where various other cultures intersect with poly folk. If anyone has good leads to follow on this, drop 'em here or email me privately and I'll forward 'em along.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Sociology Marriage ]

I got asked to help out on the 2006 Marin Century today, and we got to talking, and they already have The various Marin 50k/100k/Century/Double Century routes in Google Earth format.

Should you undertake one of these efforts, you may see me along the course, cheering you on. But I thought it was cool that an organization that seems to be struggling with web design (schedules still pop up in PDF, other wackiness) has their Google Earth capabilities down, and I think I'm beginning to see where Google could go with this if they can define that platform.

[ related topics: Bay Area Graphic Design Bicycling ]

QOTD: Donald Rumsfeld:

"I'm not in the intelligence business,"

[ related topics: Quotes Current Events Monty Python ]

Undisclosed Location (sung to the tune of "Octopus's Garden"):

I'd like to be,

Far from DC,

At an undisclosed location,

In the Shade. ...

[ related topics: Politics Humor Pop Culture ]

Kevin Smith: On the Perils of Strip Clubs. Yes, there's an interesting twist at the end.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

While looking for information on National Masturbation Month(which is May, that's now, so get to it!) I ran across two things from Come As You Are, a sex toy store up in Canada:

• A call to Stop the war on masturbation.
• Two ads for the store which will never get aired, but which made me laugh.

[ related topics: Humor Sexual Culture ]

Retailer Target branches out into police work. It sounds like they're using their in-house loss-control techniques to help out various law enforcement agencies, although at least one of the anecdotes involves the director for assets protection accompanying a SWAT team on an arrest, which makes me wonder... Do they wear plastic windbreakers with little bulls-eyes on the back so that you can tell 'em from the FBI and the police?

And I'm still tempted to try to track down a windbreaker with "SUSPECT" in white across the shoulders...

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Law Enforcement ]

This one from CNN: "David Blaine's hairless parts take a beating".

[ related topics: unclicked links ]

Today's ride was the beautiful Wine Country Century. I met up with a group from Marin Cyclists, including one guy who'd done the Devil Mountain Double in fourteen and a half hours.

So while I enjoyed the scenery, I didn't really spend much time looking. We flew. I did a lot of drafting. Clearly I have some things to work on in nutrition and hard rides, about mile 38 my calves cramped hard, and that was an off-and-on problem. We hit the 70 mile mark at an average of 18.5+ MPH, but I made the mistake of eating some fruit, and bonked on the next climb after that stop. One of the group got a flat, I caught back up, but dropped again shortly after.

However, my wildest dreams were roughly 6 hours. 5:45 bike time, roughly 6:20 wall time. Yeah, even a wrong turn and short detour near the beginning, with bonking hard and losing my drafting buddies for the last thirty miles, and dealing with cramps for 60 or so, I pulled in better than 17MPH for the course.

I'm happy. Sore and tired, but happy. And pretty buzzed on the endorphins, too.

On the other hand, I talked with Rob today and I'm totally cool that he wants to do the Tollhouse Century as a relaxed all-day stroll rather than a few hours of trading trafts at 20+MPH. Had a couple of scary moments with wheel overlaps today, and spent way too much riding the brakes.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Health Physiology Bicycling ]

Been chilling today, trying to beat a head cold, but we got back last night and I put together some Honeymoon Trip Highlights (short and sweet). It'll take us a while longer to finish collecting wedding pics and glean through them. The Disney Cruise (4 nights on the Wonder) was exceptional.

[ related topics: Travel Marriage ]

Dan and I spent some time playing with my cameras while he was here and talking about crazy lens systems. This is an example of faking a tilt-shift lens. I think for KAP, using a real tilt-shift lens would be impossible...

[ related topics: Photography Coyote Grits Aerial Photography ]

Video of the day: Ride of your life, a little low altitude airplane flight that made me go both "wow, cool" and "that guy's freakin' nuts".

[ related topics: Aviation Video ]

Interesting day in computer graphics: Pixar no longer exists, and SGI files for bankruptcy.

[Edit: td points out that I should have been more specific: It's not that Pixar as an entity no longer exists, it's PXAR the separate stock no longer exists.]

[ related topics: Pixar Animation Graphics ]

I'm not much on linking to New York Times articles (mostly because of their archive policies), but Contra-Contraception is worth a read if you have any questions about what the anti-abortion crowd is really after.

One thing that happened, which Dr. Wood and many others may have failed to notice, was the change in conservative circles on the subject of contraception. At a White House press briefing in May of last year, three months before the F.D.A.'s nonruling on Plan B, Press Secretary Scott McClellan was asked four times by a WorldNetDaily correspondent, Les Kinsolving, if the president supported contraception. "I think the president's views are very clear when it comes to building a culture of life," McClellan replied. Kinsolving said, "If they were clear, I wouldn't have asked." McClellan replied: "And if you want to ask those questions, that's fine. I'm just not going to dignify them with a response." This exchange caught the attention of bloggers and others. In July, a group of Democrats in Congress, led by Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York, sent the first of four letters to the president asking outright: "Mr. President, do you support the right to use contraception?" According to Representative Maloney's office, the White House has still not responded.

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture moron ]

Wow! I'm hearing some good buzz about the 3-state 3-mountain challenge hosted by the Chattanooga Bicycle Club. The cue sheets for all three versions are available online, but one report says "...a police officer or two at every intersection - even out in the country." Cool!

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Chattanooga Maps and Mapping Bicycling ]

The Perfect Mark: How a Massachusetts psychotherapist fell for a Nigerian e-mail scam.

[ related topics: Spam moron ]

Partially for the subject matter, and partially 'cause the headline on the front page was Flutter 'Bye: an article on the paucity of butterflies in California this year, notably the Painted Lady, but lots of others too.

Jessica Hellmann, an assistant professor of entomology at the University of Notre Dame who researches butterflies throughout North America, has reviewed Shapiro's data and said it is critical in determining long-term changes in butterfly populations.

"We have similar observations for 2006 in California," Hellman said. "It is only because Art has 35 years of data that we can say 2006 is bad and is worse than it's been in a long time.

"Without long-term records, we can't quantify the growing influence of humans on biological diversity."

[ related topics: Butterflies Nature and environment California Culture ]

I keep waiting for the perfect day to take a picture, but I've realized that we're into summer and it's just noot going to happen. However, I forgot my camera today, so I can't give you a picture, but...

One of the issues with an early stage startup is no budget for an office. Some days, however, being able to bounce "why isn't this...?" or "what the he...?" off of someone else in real-time is good. So this morning (after missing the 6:30 over the hill folks and riding the Tiburon loop instead and being glad I did 'cause I'm clearly still not back to full strength after Saturday) I'm up in a cow-orker's condo overlooking Tiburon, with San Francisco just visible framed between Angel Island and Belvedere, and the Golden Gate Bridge peeking out above the hill on the right.

Yeah, the view out our deck back in Lagunitas ain't bad, but this'll do for variety.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Bay Area Bicycling Real Estate ]

I want to link to Study: Lesbian's Brains React Differently, which allegedly sources from an article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, but I can't find the study there (although I have found a previous study by one of the same authors on brain response in homosexual men) and the most prominent author's website doesn't have any mention of this either.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Health Current Events ]

This article about the troubles of telegraph avenue whines about the usual suspects:

But some believe that an increasing number of people are avoiding the neighborhood because of the homeless who frequent the area -- especially the youth. And one city official said the merchants of Telegraph Avenue simply have not kept up with the times.

I used to enjoy wandering along Telegraph, all the Berkeley characters, spending time in Moe's and Cody's, picking up the vibe, but last time Charlene and I went up that direction it wasn't the homeless youth who turned us off to the area... it was the lack of them.

Telegraph Avenue used to have culture. It was punks and hippies and downright weirdos and edgy culture and cheap eats and... well... I don't remember if there actually was a Starbucks there, but there may as well have been. The police presence was more obvious, there were various signs warning of dire consequences for drug posession, and the boutiques on Fourth Street have more character.

I haven't been back to Telegraph since, and, given that Cody's is closing their original location, if I ever head back up that direction it'll only be to park for an event on campus.

There was a big push to "clean Telegraph up". Telegraph had been one place where wandering through the drug dealers and the raving naked people and the street vendors wasn't a "am I going to get knifed?" experience, like even the Tenderloin can be, it was a place where all of those cultures could mix. Then there was a big push to "clean the place up", and... well... there's nothing left.

Be careful what you wish for.

[ related topics: Bay Area Nudity Sociology Law Enforcement California Culture ]

As the World Cup tournement begins in Germany, the locals are promoting the glories of Teutonic history with giant sculptures of great German inventions, including the Theory of Relativity (how do you show that in only 3 dimensions?), the automobile, and the modern soccer football shoe.

[ related topics: Sports Automobiles Shoes ]

So the local high school board has come back with yet another bond issue. I'm always unsure on such things, you'd think a school in a wealthy area that's been around for a gazillion years would be able to pay forward rather than borrowing, but maybe there are issues of accounting shenanigans when such things occur. On the other hand, we're told that:

High school modernization will cost taxpayers LESS than projected in 2001 — even with the proposed new $80 million bond!

Because:

• The initial bond, passed by over two-thirds of voters in 2001, projected an average annual cost of $32.80 per $100,000 of assessed home valuation.
• The current projection for the 2001 bond is actually 37% lower at $20.43 per $100,000
• The projected average annual cost of both the 2001 and 2006 bonds together is $29.44 per $100,000 — STILL 10% LOWER than projected in 2001

For those of you having trouble following along at home, we're in the midst of a housing bubble. I'm having trouble finding hard real estate data for the full period, but let's conservatively say that housing prices have risen, say, 11% a year. That means, in fact , that the projected average annual cost of both bonds together is, in fact, half again the cost of the initial bond.

Hopefully the people writing these flyers aren't also the people teaching math.

On another note: At the aforementioned coworker's place yesterday, we were talking about real estate, and while his place is probably worth about a million on the open market, the next door condo rents for $2.2k/month. Figure that out.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Bay Area Mathematics California Culture Economics Real Estate ]

Women are good at reading faces of men:

The first part of the study provided confirmation of work done previously by other groups, using different methods. When asked to rate the men's masculinity, the women agreed on who was top and who was bottom, and their rankings correlated with the testosterone levels from the swabs. What was novel was that when asked to rate the men's liking of children from the photographs, they ranked them in the same order as the researchers had done from the interest the men themselves had shown in pictures of infants.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sexual Culture Physiology ]

Any time you need a little dose of statistical surrealism: Marin Real Estate Data.

[ related topics: Humor Bay Area Real Estate ]

Gun Owners of America explains why it agrees with MoveOn.org on network neutrality (via Rebecca Blood).

[ related topics: Politics broadband Guns ]

Because the occasional Mark Morford link is good for the soul: Christian Virgins Are Overrated — Think sex and drugs destroy America? Try naive chastity. Oh, and "Purity Balls":

Let's just say it outright: The superiority of virginity myth, it is a massive, underreported disaster. It is a ridiculous and exhausting misconception that must be eradicated like a cancer. Perhaps French philosopher Voltaire said it best, nearly 300 years ago: "It is one of the great superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue." So true.

[ related topics: Religion Sexual Culture Health Philosophy Mark Morford ]

View the results for a "Search Engine Optimization Contest" and see why the web and search engines are full of 'Grey Goo' instead of meaningful content. You will see over 4 million pages returned for a BS term that did not exist until the contest. Ugly.

[ related topics: Machinery ]

European scientists are planning to build a new observatory, deep underneath the Mediterranean Sea. It will detect neutrinos passing through the entire mass of the Earth, and will consist of a cubic kilometer of detectors serviced by robot submersibles. I wish the Sci-Fi channel would do a movie about this, instead of cheesy Chapacubra stories starring Dean Caine.

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Invention and Design Astronomy ]

Normally I'd be reluctant to link to a new comic strip with only one strip published, but in this case the creator is Jim Hillin and more readers might help motivate him: Wireheads, and it's advertised to draw from his experience in the visual effects industry. I hope to recognize some of y'all there.

[ related topics: Movies Graphics Comics ]

Cranked out of Mountain View Road onto Sir Francis Drake eastbound for a mid-day ride, looked up, and there were flashing lights up ahead. Two police cars had three exotics pulled over, said overpriced compensation vehicles had numbers on the side. I thought about stopping to read the stickers, find out what particular rally they were involved in so that we could ridicule them here, but it was too nice a day, so I once again appreciated the constabulary and their effects on my neighborhood, reset the bike computer, and cranked away.

20.5 MPH to Fairfax. And I didn't see one of those other cars on the way, so I'm counting this one as beating a Lamborghini.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Bay Area Law Enforcement Bicycling ]

There is an update to "the other place", an abstract rambling about evil and charity and thanks, put there because the line between public and private is once again a hard one to dance around.

Email me if you want the URL.

[ related topics: Dan's Life ]

Everybody's linking to: Federal Source to ABC News: We Know Who You're Calling:

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.

[ related topics: Politics Current Events Civil Liberties ]

Reading between the lines of the New York Times wedding announcements: http://nytimesweddings.blogspot.com/

[ related topics: Humor New York Marriage ]

Some old news: USDA(?!) employees given talking points on Iraq, ex-General describes Rumsfeld as arrogant to many faults, more government trolling through domestic telephone records.

Have you expressed yourself to your senators or congresscritter yet this morning?

[ related topics: Politics moron Current Events Work, productivity and environment Phreaking ]

I've been geeking over computers since the early days - when Compute! magazine ran cover articles like "Is 64K really just a status symbol?" Now I'm genuinely surprised when something makes me really excited - especially when it's a commonplace item like a mouse. I recently got a Microsoft Wireless Notebook Mouse 6000 and plugged it into my laptop. Because it has some new buttons, I went ahead and installed the driver. I usually prefer using the default OS driver and just ignore the bell-and-whistle buttons.

After 30 minutes of using the mouse (including the side-scroll wheel), I turned around to do something on my desktop PC. Suddenly the mouse that I have used every day for the past four years felt awkward and foreign! You really have to try it to see what I mean and I'm sure if you've been buying mice regularly, you won't notice the difference. But in this small arena, kudos to Microsoft.

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft Invention and Design History ]

Are we going to the chapel?:

Now that the mainstream media and the right-wing thrust the fight for gay marriage upon us, we can’t ignore it or let it go. Still, we need to be careful that we don’t trade orthodoxy and conformity for our dreams of sexual liberation for all people. Fighting for gay marriage is important because some of us want to be able to oragnize our lives in that way. We should not, though, make it the standard by which we all live our lives or assume it to be an end victory by itself. The measure of our relationships should not be their durability or compliance with existing heterosexual standards. Rather, we should measure how well we treat each other in whatever type of relationship we form.

(via Must See HTTP://)

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Sociology Journalism and Media Marriage ]

I found this interesting, both from a sexual culture standpoint, but also because of my usual misgivings about our current attitudes about incarceration as a way to shape society: Study refutes idea that many inmates get HIV in prison: Surprise finding was frequency of sex with staff

The study revealed a surprising and unexplored aspect of HIV infection in prisoners. Of the men who became infected behind bars and acknowledged having homosexual sex there, half reported that their partners were prison staff, not other inmates. Whether guards were the source of infection, or became infected themselves, in any of those liaisons is unknown.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Sociology ]

VeriSign introduces the Personal Identity Provider using OpenID. I need to upgrade the Flutterby CMS to handle OpenID as well as LID, and use YADIS for discovery.

[ related topics: Content Management LID (Lightweight IDentity) ]

Ever since I briefly lusted over the Garmin 305 bike computer, I've been thinking about what it would take to build my own ultimate bike computer. It all seemed like it was going to be a lot of work, I'd probably use a fairly slow microcontroller, a text LCD with an integrated controller, I'd have to write a bunch of interface code, maybe even a filesystem to write to a some sort of CompactFlash or similar card for logging...

Then today something got me to look at Gumstix, and... GPSstix adds a USB client, stereo audio in/out, a GPS receiver and an LCD controller to a basic 200 or 400 MHz computer with an MMC slot for storage that runs Linux. Tie that to a 128x128 color cell phone display, a gig or two flash card, and with a little client software I could have scrolling color maps while every measurable aspect of my bike, body and route was logged for later review.

Right now the only thing keeping me sane about this is that I don't have hard numbers on power consumption, and "< 250 mA" implies "you might get 4 hours out of a set of NiMH AA cells", otherwise... I really don't need a project like that right now. I really don't need a project like that right now. I really don't need a ...

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source Software Engineering Embedded Devices Maps and Mapping Bicycling ]

A bunch of people are up in arms over this Washington Post article about a new CDC/ADTSR report on "preconception health":

New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves -- and to be treated by the health care system -- as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon.

The article then goes on to pull up some choice quotes to make it seem like the report does indeed treat women as primarily mechanisms for reproduction. So I tracked down Recommendations to Improve Preconception Health and Health Care --- United States: A Report of the CDC/ATSDR Preconception Care Work Group and the Select Panel on Preconception Care, and I'm not getting nearly the "you must assume your primary purpose is to breed no matter what the other consequences" vibe for as far as I've read it, but what did strike me was:

Data from the Pregnancy Risk Assessment and Monitoring System (PRAMS) in four states (i.e., Maine, Michigan, Oklahoma, and West Virginia) indicated that 38% of mothers who planned pregnancies and an additional 30% who did not plan pregnancies had one or more indications for preconception counseling, including use of tobacco or alcohol, being underweight, or delayed initiation of prenatal care (47).

So... uh... let me get this straight here: If you're not planning on having a kid, you're more likely to have a lifestyle that will lead to having a healthy kid?

No wonder the anti-abortion crowd wants to enforce unplanned pregnancies.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sexual Culture Health Child-Freedom ]

Regarding yesterday's mention of the announcement about VeriSign PIP and OpenID, if you're developing net identity systems that incorporate YADIS (and if you're developing identity systems at all, you should be), you need to go to http://yadis.org/conformance/

The tests aren't official yet, and there's one known bug that snuck in at the last minute (it doesn't recognize content negotiation right now, and it should), but hopefully this will make debugging your YADIS application much easier.

[ related topics: Web development Net Culture LID (Lightweight IDentity) ]

It happens that the expression of "do not resuscitate" wishes is having an indirect impact on my life right now, so it seemed apropos to point to this: 80 year old woman has "Do Not Resuscitate" tattooed on her chest:

So, will Wohlford's tattoo stop an Iowa doctor from resuscitating her? No, said Dr. Mark Purtle, who works at Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines.

Purtle said Iowa law defines when caregivers are permitted to end life-sustaining measures. A tattoo isn't enough, he said.

[ related topics: Health Current Events ]

Elmhurst, Ill., Loves Gay Porn: Which U.S. city seeks the most sex? Who wants to impeach Bush the most? Ask Google Trends. I'm not convinced that Google Trends is as interesting or useful as it seems at first blush, because the top cities lists looks pretty similar whether you search on "porn" or "christianity", and straying too far afield from top search words yields nothing.

[ related topics: Religion Politics Humor Sexual Culture ]

Hey, look, seven years after I ranted on Flutterby with Requiem for the Independent Bookstore, the mainstream media catches up: Tyler Cohen: What Are Independent Bookstores Really Good For? Not much. (via Rebecca Blood)

[ related topics: Books Journalism and Media Net Culture ]

Video squib about a one legged New York City bicycle messenger.

[ related topics: New York Bicycling Handicaps & Disabilities ]

I believe that headline writers go their whole lives waiting for moments like this, and I could also be convinced that this story is a well-targeted publicity stunt by the Glory Hole homeless shelter in Juneau, Alaska: No more Bear Meat in Glory Hole. As a comment pointed out in the Sensible Erection thread:

think the last line in the article is just as good as the headline. Apparently the Glory Hole is protein-poor.

(And if you don't get it, don't worry, we'll just think that much more highly of you.)

[ related topics: Humor Sexual Culture Alaska ]

In case you haven't got your fill of innuendo in a fifties educational film format: Billy's Dad is a Fudge-Packer (alternate site, with short squib by the writer/director). (Via Must See HTTP://)

[ related topics: Humor Movies ]

Z360 panoramas, full 360 degree panoramic images that are pretty cool.

We're all gonna dieeeee! Find out the likelyhood of various causes of your demise at the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control's WISQARS Leading Causes of Death Reports, 1999 - 2003.

[ related topics: Health ]

Unintended consequences of border restrictions, or why further restricting an economic system that already cares little for legality is probably a bad idea.

[ related topics: Economics ]

Increasingly, Google seems to be doing Evil. In fact it seems like they have left all ethics at home, in the 'ends justify the means' approach. Having had some issue with them recently about adsense - they won't keep detail on clicks charged for even though they trumpet that they have room for all the worlds data, I concluded they had lost all moral standing.

Now it seems the company who invented unbiased news summarizing, has now embraced restriction of speech - depending upon the topic - here http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5517 they are now filtering out any site that shows the evil nature of Islam. Can Flutterby be far behind with me writing here?

Islam is evil - no doubt about that - they want to do away with Western Civilization and all the freedoms it provides - it has taken over Europe already, from top to bottom.

I recently read two books by Oriana Fallaci; 'The Rage and The Pride' for which the Islam influenced French Courts put her on Trial for saying 'they breed like rats', and her latest: 'The Force Of Reason' in which she traces the whole history of the takeover of Europe by Islam, how it happened and why. She of course has escaped to New York where Freedom of Speech still exisits.

She shows here that the Left, of which she formerly was a part, now embraces Islam, and finally concludes the common denominator is that they are 'anti individualism' and that the people in Europe now are not as intelligent as they were 300 years ago, and what is needed is a return to 'Reason'. She characterizes herself as an 'Atheist Christian' which those in Chattanooga might find interesting.

And the book describes in detail the limitation of free interchange of ideas under the banner of 'no hate speech'; Hate Speech being anything that hurts their feelings - while they kill playrights and blow up statues of the Buhdda, they are offended by identification of their ways!!

So to see that even Google has fallen to their evilness, I now see that Google has gone beyond the pale, and is fully evil, top to bottom.

Will it be possible to stop them? I hope so but it will take a long time. Google is Evil.

Hiding in Mayberry where free speech is still a Right.

[ related topics: Religion Books Music Privacy Ethics Nature and environment Invention and Design Writing Current Events Television Civil Liberties Chattanooga New York ]

Lest anyone think I only pick on Republican traitors, Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat from Louisiana, caught on tape in a bribery scandal.

[ related topics: Politics moron ]

The "Bay To Breakers" was run yesterday. Best quote goes to SF Mayor Gavin Newsom:

However, the mayor did have one gripe: "I didn't see any naked people. They had alcohol checkpoints. I felt like I was in another Bay Area county.''

pictures of assorted costumed (and naked) people.

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area Nudity California Culture Gavin Newsom ]

In some of the literature I was digging through for information on training, now that I'm diving into this bicycling thing slightly obsessively, I ran across a couple of references that fructose was a precursor to blood triglicerides that became low-density lipoproteins (one such article in Science Daily, PubMed if you want to dig deeper) that led to... well... all the issues we normally associate with [gasp] "high cholesterol". In fact, in my amateur poking around, it looked to me like the usually fingered culprits, saturated fats, had little or nothing to do with the stuff that causes such problems, which lead to various indications that claims about the "glycemic index" of sugars probably lead to some almost exactly backwards decisions related to diabetes as well.

I've also had some experience with people playing with SSRIs (Flutterby mentions here and here, at least), and the results of those have indicated to me that for the most part such treatments are a matter of "hey, try this, see if it works".

So when people wonder at the rise of alternative medicine and the various health related scams (and boy I've seen some doozies), well... The reality is that a good portion of the medical establishment seems to be pretty darned full of hooey, and doing things that, while they may lead to higher profits, appear to be counterproductive for patients.

Yeah, I'm underinformed and taking easy shots, but the point is... it looks like most doctors are too: Business Week looks at Dr. David Eddy and his push for "evidence based medicine"

Even when common treatments are proved to be dubious, physicians don't rush to change their practice. They may still firmly believe in the treatment -- or in the dollars it brings in. And doctors whose oxen get gored sometimes fight back. In 1993, the federal government's Agency for Health Care Policy & Research convened a panel to develop guidelines for back surgery. Fearing that the recommendations would cast doubt on what the doctors were doing, a prominent back surgeon protested to Congress, and lawmakers slashed funding for the agency.

Well, yeah, and before the "Food Pyramid" we had the "Four Food LobbiesGroups".

Oh, and an article on the politicization of the health effects of kimchee.

[ related topics: Politics Health Food moron Current Events Sports Bicycling ]

This morning I received a letter from Wells Fargo Mortgage Company: To wit: "We shipped a COMPUTER and the computer was stolen, It happened to contain your name, address, SS# and Loan Number...."

Anyone else had their data stolen? Why do they ship computers? Why not transmit the data.

They do say the data is double encrypted -- so should I feel safe?

Ziffle

[ related topics: Bay Area Machinery Cryptography ]

In light of the discussion about evidence-based medicine and a few other things that are going on in my life (Charlene's biological mom has had a close-call which, in a merciful world, would have taken her, and there's now a lot of "how do we arrange for ...?" questions raised), it seems a reasonable thing to make plans for my eventual demise. Not that I'm expecting it any time soon, but when it does I'd like to be remembered fondly.

So, I've often said that I'd like my body to be used by medical students for practical jokes, but where does one start to investigate ways to dispose of a body so that it'll be of most use to the world, and be least likely to allow the funeral industry to suck any other assets from causes that I might actually like my resources to support? And, short of tattooing "do not resuscitate" on my chest, what's a good resource for putting together a living will?

[ related topics: Health Law ]

Elf Sternberg: Culturally approved bigotry:

Such cultural bigotry doesn't really exist in America. Popular cultural consensus doesn't portray each Jew, or Muslim, or Hindu as "wrong" about the choice he makes every day to retain his identity as Jew, Muslim, or Hindu. We can be confident that the media isn't going to attack anyone because of his or her specific beliefs about god or the supernatural.

Of course, if you don't actually believe in that stuff, then you're fair game. It's okay for popular television and movies to depict atheists, agnostics, and secularists "seeing the light" and coming to cherish their belief in a supernatural reality "beyond our own."

Elf also linked to yet another anti-contraception absolute loon with a tenuous grip on reality showing why the anti-choice crowd must be stopped:

Anti-lifers have developed a compelling strategy to force normalization of MAPs [ed: morning after pills] on America. They need income from this lucrative pill to compensate for lagging abortion sales, a downward trend they expect to continue.

If you want a good look at the scary ass ideas out there that proved that we have a loooong way to go in the "culture wars", read that one and weep. They aren't after Roe v. Wade, they are after Griswold v. Connecticut.

[ related topics: Religion Sexual Culture Technology and Culture Sociology Current Events ]

Preach it: Athene: If You Are Looking For A Way To Be Against Gay Marriage:

You want to talk backlash? I'll give you a backlash, you paunchy ex-jock hanging out at the Alumni Club afraid some guy is gonna hit on you because he's blinded by your sex appeal and can't see what all the women in the place see: a guy who listens to Springsteen's "Glory Days" and actually gets nostalgic about high school, you fucking kitchen appliance. I'll give you a backlash, you upright churchgoing family of 2.5 and a dog that thinks seeing something that makes you uncomfortable constitutes an intrusion of some sort. You know what? Seeing stuff you don't like is called America, and if you want to start outlawing stuff you don't like, get in line behind me, pal-o-mine because I've got a list of shit that pisses me off that I've been making for years, and every time you mention your goddamn sacrosanct throat and what's getting shoved down it, you move closer to the top. You want to see a backlash? Keep talking.

From Genehack (here) and Medley.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Sociology Current Events Marriage ]

The SF Chronicle's Matier and Ross give a little free advertising to Femme de Maison, what's apparently an upscale "gentleman's club" in the Berkeley Hills. And now I've given them some free advertising too.

[ related topics: Erotic Bay Area Consumerism and advertising Burlesque ]

Having tried it more than once I can say emotionally it seems wonderful, but legally its a minefield. A recent ruling in England says it all: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2196058,00.html

"The ruling will serve as a deterrent to marriage. But prenuptial agreements will provide a good degree of protection — and I predict it will not be long before they are made binding. It's not if, it's when."

"...said he would advise wealthy young men not to marry"

Alienation of affection and adultry is not longer a factor in a divorce, there or here.

What happens is one party wakes up and says to :) herself: 'I can have all that and not have to deal with him and I get the children to raise the way I want to boot'. And a few weeks later your life is shattered.

I have looked at apartment houses (to purchase) and gone through all the units and you get a sad, scary view of the truth; divorced guys paying 43 percent of their after tax income in child support so the ex can carry on with the live in boyfriend, in the house the husband bought, and the divorced guy is trying to live on the remainder, deal with the pain of the divorce, trying to overcome the hatred of him taught to his children by the ex, fighting depression about some guy living in his old house, screwing his ex while the children are there, and living on the child support he is sending under penalty of jail. And trying to put gas in his car and pay his rent on the left overs. His life is basically over emotionally.

I advised my sons not to marry. If they want children thats scary enough but definetly don't marry her - it's too dangerous. This took me a long time to come to; I want to think there is a world where men are appreciated and the wives are grateful; I wonder if that is just a wish for a world long ago and far away...

Notwithstanding some here who are married here and perfectly happy, does this bother anyone?

Disclosure: I get an F in relationships it appears; of course finding female free market nudist polyamorous atheists is not that easy; maybe its easier for Christian-Christian, etc. but upon reflection they divorce at high rates too don't they? (We used to call it Petite Atheist Intellectual Nudists or PAIN for short in the Mens group but we have outgrown that now. :) )

Ziffle in a whole new world.

[ related topics: Ziffle Religion Children and growing up Interactive Drama Politics Sexual Culture Invention and Design Theater & Plays Nudity Sociology Consumerism and advertising Automobiles Shoes Economics Marriage Real Estate ]

This one's for Eric: Video of a guy getting lifted into the air by his kite. Scary. One of those harnessed kitesurfers, so it's a little mitigated by that, but almost 40 seconds swung at the end of a hundred plus feet of line looks bloody terrifying.

[ related topics: Aviation Video ]

Study finds no marijuana-lung cancer link (SFGate link to the story)

Instead, the study, which compared the lifestyles of 611 Los Angeles County lung cancer patients and 601 patients with head and neck cancers with those of 1,040 people without cancer, found no elevated cancer risk for even the heaviest pot smokers. It did find a 20-fold increased risk of lung cancer in people who smoked two or more packs of cigarettes a day.

[ related topics: Drugs Health ]

Went to a talk last night by Elena J. Hanuse over at the San Geronimo Valley Community Center. Back in 1984, at the age of 52, Elena set off across the country on foot, a thirty nine hundred mile eighteen month journey she wrote about in One Step At A Time: My 18-Month Walk Across America. When she's not being a strong part of the community here in the valley, she's now traveling around the country in a small camper, still finding stories and talking to people.

But one of the things she mentioned was how much more closed and isolating schools have become in the intervening twenty years, how schools used to be a fantastic place to meet and talk with people, and now they're carefully guarded and strangers (like her) are kept as far away as possible. And then this morning I see this story: Physics teacher under fire for gun experiment: Parent's complaint raises issue about legality of stunt.

Every year, physics teacher David Lapp brings his Korean War era M-1 carbine to school, fires a shot into a block of wood and instructs his students to calculate the velocity of the bullet.

Fantastic demo. Gets the attention of the kids. Makes physics fun. And yet some busybody whiner of a parent complains, not because it's a physics demo, but because it's an ohmygod scary freaky firearm. Sheesh.

[ related topics: Children and growing up History Pyrotechnics Community Guns ]

Old news for most of you, but I figured I should link to Wired magazine publishing the evidence that AT&T has been assisting the NSA in their spying on you, and that they've explained why.

A few weeks ago I was having some misgivings about participating in The Free Network Project. I was concerned that there were legitimate cases where being able to track the author or source of a document was important. I'm now thinking that that importance is being overshadowed by a government and its collaborators out of control.

And for all those who claim that such measures are necessary to "stop the terrorists", like our future CIA head Gen. Michael Hayden: I wouldn't be as concerned about it if you guys showed the slightest fucking modicum of competence in your pursuit of "the terrorists". Instead we see repeated actions which look a heck of a lot like your real goal is to keep us all in a state of unease.

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

Having a conversation recently about toes with a friend - we were matching personality with 'index' toe length. That is the toe next to the big toe. Is your index toe bigger than the big toe and what is your personality like?

I dated girls with a longer index toe and it seemed like it was always a conflict - whats your experience?

http://www.pauldavidson.net/20...got-freaky-long-toes-girlfriend/ : freaky Toes?

http://www.topendsports.com/fun/bodysurvey/toes3.htm : "I have a longer second toe than my big toe and that basically makes me a total weirdo. In fact, all us big second toe people should wear banners declaring our weirdness" and " I think that a man with a dominant big toe that often overlaps the second toe is insecure in a family of girls.".

And to continue the weirdness, Finger length testosterone, and agression: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050309132535.htm

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Sociology ]

Bwahahahaha! DefendDelay.com, a site to assist with Tom Delay's legal defense, uses Stephen Colbert video to defend Delay. Think Progress has more (via RC3/OI).

[ related topics: Law Video ]

I haven't yet downloaded and run this yet, but after looking around a bit I think I will: Super Columbine Massacre RPG! appears to look at the media portrayal of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's attack on Columbine High School in Littleton Colorado in an interesting light. An interview with a survivor (he was left paralyzed) of those shootings about this game makes me believe that some of what the creator of the game says he wanted to accomplish actually came across.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Games Coyote Grits Journalism and Media ]

Interesting back and forth between the Mayor of Portland, Oregon, and the FBI. Mayor Tom Porter's open letter to the community describes a Special Agent approaching a City employee:

He asked if she knew any City Council members. He asked if she would be willing to pass information to him relating to people who work for the City of Portland. He said that while he had duties in other areas, the agency was always interested in information relating to white collar crime and other things.

Which he interprets as trolling that perhaps goes a little bit beyond the norm. The FBI has a response.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Coyote Grits Current Events Work, productivity and environment Law Enforcement Beer Community Race ]

Chris Bridges: Help, I'm Turning Into An Anti-Porn Activist. Chris Bridges is the host at Hoot Island, and the version there has some interesting comments. The end result, though, seems to be that those of us who'd like "something better" but aren't sure what it is aren't nearly the market that the current consumers of porn are.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Consumerism and advertising Economics Archival ]

Flutterby is changing, and those changes leave me thinking that I ought to take some of the minutiae of my everyday life and put it somewhere else. I'm also realizing that I don't want my journaling as split up as it is, and while I'm not quite ready to go as clamped down as Columbine, rather than having "the other place" I'd rather have ways to tag some articles for public consumption, some for just me, and some for various classes in the middle. In other words, I'm looking for a first step towards reviving the snippet manager.

One of the technologies I've wanted to look at on that front is Ruby, and Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby seems like a good start.

[ related topics: Douglas Adams ]

Giggle: The Normal Rockwell Code.

[ related topics: Humor ]

In the vein of "evidence-based medicine". Theodore Dalrymple questions the common wisdom about opium:

When, unbeknown to them, I have observed addicts before they entered my office, they were cheerful; in my office, they doubled up in pain and claimed never to have experienced suffering like it, threatening suicide unless I gave them what they wanted. When refused, they often turned abusive, but a few laughed and confessed that it had been worth a try. Somehow, doctors—most of whom have had similar experiences— never draw the appropriate conclusion from all of this. Insofar as there is a causative relation between criminality and opiate addiction, it is more likely that a criminal tendency causes addiction than that addiction causes criminality.

[ related topics: Drugs ]

Stolen from Backup Brain, Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers(IMDB page), available online in the YouTube version, Google Video version, Atom Films version a short film about percussion with found objects.

[ related topics: Music Movies Video Real Estate ]

There have been a couple of stories recently about a guy who died recently on Everest, and all the various other climbers who walked on past him. I think it's interesting looking at the various stories, the summit of Everest is something that costs close to a hundred thousand dollars unless you're actually good enough to be a guide on the climb, and you only get one shot at it, so there's a big incentive to not waste any resources or energies that might mean you (or your clients) don't summit.

I think in all cases when you go out of the mainstream society (in fact, most cases when you're in it) that you're responsible for your own well being, so I've no beef with those who walked on by, and I've been an enabler (guide) to those who were experiencing environments far beyond their solo abilities, so I have no problem with the notion that guides and resources are stretched thin and that most of the participants are incapable of saving themselves, but...

I wonder what the value that those "short roped" to the top get, it can't all be personal satisfaction, much of it has to be a social status thing, "Wow, you made it to the top of Everest", and I think a culture which encourages that sort of behavior, accomplishment by proxy, could perhaps stand a little introspection.

[ related topics: Ethics Sociology ]

Bought a slightly used recumbent bike yesterday, It's a Canadian made cromoly frame long wheel base recumbent labelled 'Mikado C-35 Touring' aka "Quetzal C105" with 105 gears.. (3 gearsets..). It's a little heavy by 'Elite' standards, but it was $500.00. - A good price for a like new bike and a great way to find out of I really want to invest in an 'Elite' one later. Taken it on some short rides already, it likes to go fast, uphill/upMtns will be interesting.

[ related topics: Photography Invention and Design Bicycling ]

This is way cool - like riding two belt sanders - only faster!

http://www.scarpar.com/index.php

Think of the military applications as well! From the Desert comes the Marines - at 60 MPH!

Ziffle

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Bicycling ]

Next time I take on advanced JavaScript, like attempting to write special purpose plugins for FCKeditor (which is incredible) please point me back to this post.

The steps:

• Edit Code, CSS stylesheets, pop-up pages.. etc..
• Save
• Point browser to another webpage
• Clear Private Data (Ctrl-Shift-Del in FireFox)
• Close Browser
• Open Browser (set to test page w/login/password and special vars to set test conditions as home page)
• Test Function in Development
• Cuss - cause it almost works like you want it to.
• Rinse, Repeat as Necessary.

I know the browser SHOULD clear all with a Ctrl-Shift-Del, but I swear sometimes it doesn't.

[ related topics: Mathematics ]

Dori & Tom's rave about Cyrus in Healdsburg got me thinking about going out to eat. I think I've mentioned here that while I've eaten out at some pretty exotic places, when I think back about the times I still remember the details of the food (rather than fondly remembering the overall experience), only in a few cases are the standouts expensive restaurants.

I've wondered at the value of going out to eat when I'm in such a mindset. Cyrus sounds wonderful (although there's a lot of pleasure I'm deferring 'til we're in a better cash-flow situation), but I don't know that if I'm in that mode of trying to separate the experience from the food that I'd be able to appreciate the experience.

So it was in that fairly utilitarian space that I picked up Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, a book which asks "since we omnivores can eat anything, what should we eat?" Refreshingly, as my area is fairly heavily steeped in some of the fuzzier aspects of "natural foods", it does so with a remarkable lack of preaching.

Pollan follows four meals from their sources, a burger and nuggets from McDonald's, with the associated trips to the cornfield and the feedlot, a salad from Whole PaycheckFoods, taking him to Earthbound Farm's facilities to see how spring mix is made and Petaluma Poultry to see what makes a "free range" chicken different from a caged one, thence to herding cattle and killing his own grass-fed truly free range chickens at Polyface Farms under the instruction of Joel Salatin, a farmer who believes in local production and consumption, and finally into Northern California, the woods to forage mushrooms and kill a wild pig, the streets of Berkeley to garner fruit off of trees shedding on to the sidewalk.

He does not, however, come to an answer of an objective "better". Each system has its positives and negatives, and just as he's not willing to spare the vegetarians as he examines the tasks of killing his own meat:

A deep current of Puritanism runs through the writings of the animal philosophers, an abiding discomfort not just with our animality, but with the animals' animality, too. They would like nothing better than to airlift us out from nature's "intrinsic evil" — and then take the animals with us. You begin to wonder if their quarrel isn't really with nature itself.

he also doesn't shy away from the fact that because widespread corn monoculture factory farming is the dominant form of food calorie production there are obviously things to recommend it (even if most of those things are the huge federal subsidies which make it possible).

But I started this little ramble off talking about how I've been distinguishing the food from the social experiences surrounding the food, and the reason I'm running around grabbing random strangers by the shirt collars and screaming "you have to read this book!" is that Michael Pollan makes a very good case that we mustn't separate the food from the experiences and relationships that lead to the sustenance we consume. Food comes to us with various overt and hidden benefits, it's not just a matter of a few thousand calories a day and we're done, and reducing any part of that experience to a commodity has political, social, physiological and environmental effects that we should make as informed consumers who are aware that the decisions of those around us have an impact on our lives.

So I'm recommending this one because it acknowledges that food is about more than taste, and that life, and the ability to make rational informed decisions, involves a knowledge of the processes of the world and an understanding about how our consumption and production fits in to those processes. And I desperately want those around me to be more aware of their own place within the mechanisms of the culture and nature.

[ related topics: Politics Books Nature and environment Food Bay Area Sociology Consumerism and advertising California Culture McDonald's Michael Pollan ]

Michael S. Cox is still a spammer (This is a follow-up to Michael S. Cox is a spammer).

[ related topics: Spam Net Culture ]

To understand this picture you'll have to view one of the larger versions and look for forms...

This formation is visible from Lake Sonoma, north of Healdsburg.

[Edit: Charlene thinks this version is better, here's the version I had first]

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Nature and environment ]

This one's for Topspin: Rockstar Games, the folks who brought you Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and The Warriors video game, proudly present... Table Tennis? Huh?

And... uh... not to put too fine a point on it, but how far have we sunk when our virtual worlds are emulating something that's so easily done in the real world?

[ related topics: Games Sports ]

This sequence of sinking the aircraft carrier Oriskany to create an artificial reef is interesting partially because of the little boat they put on the deck to hold the explosives control equipment that floats free and is just fine in the downwash above a huge sinking ship.

[ related topics: Boats ]

What's special about this number? (via Rebecca Blood)

[ related topics: Mathematics ]

More to make you feel like your government really is here to protect you: The Agent Who Might Have Saved Hamid Hayat, about the FBI's grandstanding and media plays over the "terrorist cell" in Lodi California, and a debunking of the "terrorists using video games to recruit" scare (video). I lifted that latter one from the Sensible Erection entry titled Terrorists Use Games to Recruit - or not.... The first comment reads:

oh, but they are: http://www.americasarmy.com/

which normally I'd chalk up to flamebait, but as details of the incident in Haditha leak out I am more and more concerned about... well... it seems like we're putting bullets in a lot of chests and brains, but I don't think that's the right path to "winning hearts and minds".

[ related topics: Games moron Journalism and Media Law Enforcement Civil Liberties California Culture Video ]