Flutterby™! From 2007-09-02 to 2007-09-30

Texas generates more electricity from wind than California. Observations about "blow hards" and "full of hot air" are left as an exercise to the reader.

Via , via , via. Snarkiness about "journalists" and the fact that only the last of those links is lacking a link to its sources also elided.

[ related topics: Cool Science Current Events Journalism and Media California Culture ]

Mile a Minute Murphy, the first man to ride a bicycle over 60MPH on level ground. Current article on the 1899 stunt behind a Long Island Railroad train.

[ related topics: Trains New York Bicycling ]

Paul MacCready dead at 81

[ related topics: Aviation Current Events ]

Yesterday we drove down on to the peninsula to visit the Hiller Aviation Museum and hang out with Chris. I've driven by the Hiller Aviation Museum a bunch of times but never been in it, and Chris has come up here enough that we definitely owed him a visit.

Traffic was clear, despite the Bay Bridge closure (although look at traffic the other way makes me think that most of that was lucky timing), the museum was fun, they've got a working reconstruction of the first powered aircraft (an unpiloted blimp/fixed-wing combo thingie that looks like it escaped from a Miyizaki film, from the mid 1800s), a number of early gliders, two old Curtiss Pushers, on up through the cockpits from a 737, 747 and one of the SST mockups. With a focus on the Hiller helicopters, all sorts of wild wacky and cool technologies.

And hanging out with Chris was a lot of fun.

Aaaand, while we were sitting outside of Whole Paycheck having a late afternoon chat we got in a conversation with a guy who's big into kayaking, so I may have to make a trek down there early some morning and go paddle around the bay.

[ related topics: Cool Science Aviation Bay Area Art & Culture California Culture Boats Aviation - Helicopters ]

Following up on a conversation from yesterday: The Last Psychiatrist: How To Take Ritalin Correctly (also applies to amphetamines):

Let's conceptualize how these drugs work. Imagine getting a brain scan while you are performing a task. The parts of your brain you are using for the task will light up, brighter than those you aren't using.

Now you drink coffee (1). The whole brain lights up brighter, proportionally.

Now you take amphetamines. The parts of your brain that you are using light up brighter, but the parts you aren't using go darker. Get it? Caffeine is a global brain stimulant, while amphetamines focus your attention, reducing distraction.

Via Mark Atwood.

[ related topics: Drugs Health Antidepressants Work, productivity and environment ]

Because that thread on profiling and Marine language trainers has become a discussion of who it's reasonable to be afraid of, a map of botched paramilitary style police raids in the United States, compiled by Radley Balko.

And, as Radley's efforts in, among other situations, the Corey May case show, these are just the ones we know about.

[ related topics: Law Law Enforcement Community Maps and Mapping Archival ]

Religious Freedom More Important Than Sexual Freedom?

[ related topics: Religion Privacy Sexual Culture Civil Liberties ]

Midwest Teen Sex Show

[ related topics: Humor Sexual Culture ]

Here's an opportunity to do some good: Say No To 2257 is a rundown of the changes being proposed by the USDOJ, and a good overview of why they're a bad idea. Here's Kink.com's rundown of the same issues.

[ related topics: Politics Current Events Sexual Culture - U.S. Code Title 18 Section 2257 ]

Man sues for return of his pornography collection

Dennis Saunders, 59, filed suit against San Rafael police in Marin County Superior Court after the department refused to give back some 500 pornographic movies and 250 magazines his lawyer described as unrelated to the peeping case.

"There's absolutely no legal foundation for them withholding perfectly legal adult-oriented material," Tiburon attorney Jon Rankin said.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Bay Area Law Law Enforcement ]

F@st Company has a redux piece "peeling the layers on Alan Greenspan's real contribution to the economy". My loose interpretations:

1. Sub-Prime Mortgages are his fault
2. He accurately predicted the market and provided good controls...but...
3. He would his predictions public in only vague terms

As I read the little piece, especially as I got to the end about "ignoring the risky disclaimers right in front of us", I thought: this person has never closed on a mortgage and dealt with the hundreds of pages of legalese.

[ related topics: Economics ]

Thief sneaks off with $10,000 bike from Boulder shop

I like to brag about the low crime rate in Boulder but I always qualify that with "except for bicycles". I think bike thieves come from out of state to pick over the bike racks here. And this article speaks volumes about the fact that Boulder is infested with "avid riders" who drop $1000s on their bikes and the general lack of paranoia!

[ related topics: Current Events Bicycling ]

Interesting little rant over at The Boston Diaries about selling ads for the yearbook being part of the grade, it's good to know that that tradition of journalism that people hold up there on a pedestal starts early on with selling ads as a primary motivator.

Yep, just some sighs and "I've long suspected"s from this corner.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Journalism and Media Education ]

Pro Porn Activism blog includes the great Why This Blog and What Is The Anti-Porn Movement?

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Weblogs ]

Vadim Perelman to direct movie version of Atlas Shrugged:

Perelman will work from a draft of the script penned by "Braveheart" scribe Randall Wallace, who managed to boil down the Rand manifesto of 1,100-plus pages into a 127-page script. ...

I'm... uh... not optimistic.

[ related topics: Objectivism Movies ]

Given the emphasis on "piss clear", this seems like the perfect Burning Man power source: Urine powered batteries in AA and AAA sizes, only 500mA, but if you've got 2 gallons of water a day goin' through you not all of that is ending up as sweat. Via.

[ related topics: Burning Man Interactive Drama ]

Thankfully they don't do vasectomies - I would not know what to think.

First, toys, then dog food, and now, yes condoms!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/.../2007/09/04/AR2007090402132.html

[ related topics: Food Dogs ]

Wow. Usually I agree with the 9th Circuit, but this one has me shuddering: Court upholds firing of police officer who developed porn web site featuring his wife:

"His activities were simply vulgar and indecent," said Judge Ferdinand Fernandez. "They did not contribute speech on a matter of public concern."

But one member of the three-judge panel said the court's rationale might apply equally to an off-duty officer who angered some members of the public by marching in a gay pride parade.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Law Law Enforcement ]

Two from Marin Real Estate Bubble, the first is a graph from The Jackson Hole 2007 Economic Symposium Proceedings, the particular paper is Understanding Recent Trends In House Prices And Home Ownership by Robert J. Shiller:

The second is charles hugh smith - The Moral Argument Against All Bailouts, a wonderful rant and "Open Letter To Future Generations", a large portion of which is mirrored at the Marin Real Estate Bubble entry pointing to it.

[ related topics: Ethics Bay Area Economics Real Estate ]

Communist Monopoly - The Board Game (direct YouTube link). Via

[ related topics: Humor Games ]

I've largely avoided getting involved in the Larry Craig thing, the Republican Senator from Idaho who was busted apparently for, eventually, peeping under toilet stalls. He pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor, then it got out in the press and he claimed it was all a mistake, he was going to resign, now he may not. On the one hand I'm happy to see him taken down as a moral hypocrite and general slimeball. On the other hand, if the society were as aggressive in cracking down on heterosexual cruising as it is on homosexual cruising, we'd die off in a generation.

U Dream Of Janie says most of what I wanted to say, and Susie Bright talks about The Sexual Self-Interest of the Cuckolded Wife, and the evils that sexual repression push on, in this case, women.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Ethics Law Marriage ]

This is beautiful. If you spend time on the net you've undoubtedly heard Aussies recently talking about the ludicrous security in place for G.W. Bush's visit to Sydney. The cast of an Australian TV show, The Chaser's War On Everything, have been arrested (more) after getting a convoy of vehicles through two checkpoints and next to the hotel, with one of the cast members dressed as Osama bin Laden. What's really amusing is the spin being put on this, "it worked because they were stopped". So far as I can tell, they got out of the cars at the hotel and didn't look like Canadians (probably didn't sound like Canadians) and only then were they stopped, while everyone else in the city is undergoing huge inconveniences. Almost all security organizations in the world have stopped existing for security and become solely about keeping themselves going. Hopefully a number of high ranking pricks will get fired from the various Sydney security forces for this. Via and Via.

[ related topics: Politics moron Current Events Television ]

The Denver Post had a piece this weekend where they compared the change in housing prices and mortgage default rates on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis. The results are very telling. Neighborhoods with relatively high priced houses ($500K+ in Denver is high) have felt almost negligible effects from the housing bubble compared to neighborhoods with relatively low priced houses (around $250K). The claim, according to the Post, is that people who buy $500K+ houses are better insulated from the economy.

I think they missed the mark. I think this provides evidence of predatory lending practices. I bet the people buying these houses in the lower-priced bracket were more easily persuaded into risky mortgages. There is a direct correlation between literacy rates and income levels. Understanding mortgages can be very complex. The process of understanding becomes even more difficult when you throw in emotional draws like "getting rich quick from the appreciation on your house". But that's my 2 cents...

[ related topics: Language Economics Real Estate ]

As everybody knows by now, actor/politician Fred Thompson has thrown his hat into the Presidential ring. One issue being discussed is his ubiquity on television (particularly Turner Broadcasting) as DA Arthur Branch on the unescapable crime series Law and Order. TNT runs up to 23 episodes of the long-running series each week. Turner has indicated that they might not change anything, as it is questionable that the federal Fariness Doctrine applies to cable TV.

Yet, irony won the day. Thompson declare at midnight Thursday. I was watching the first evening episode of L&O Thursday evening. The episode was an older one, which introduced actress Dianne Weist as the DA, a role she played for about 2 years before Thompson signed on. It was her introduction to the series, and she was welcomed into office by none other than NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani. If they want fairness, they'll get it good and hard.

[ related topics: Politics Technology and Culture Movies Television ]

Susie Bright is on a roll: Susie Bright: The Banality of Colonel Schultz’s Private Bitch, on a New York Times article that explores the documentary Stalags: Holocaust and Pornography in Israel:

...if human beings didn't create massive tragedies, horrible wars, and cruel betrayals, what on earth would we manufacture for the taboos of our erotic lemonade? ...

[ related topics: Religion Sexual Culture ]

Judge acquits nude carpenter of indecency charges.

[ related topics: Nudity Law ]

An SFGate article about troubles at Good Vibrations. I couldn't tell if it was me, society at large, or the organization itself, but at some point Good Vibrations seemed to lose what made it so unique and appealing. As I experienced it, it went from being a different kind of space to a clean, well stocked, well lit porn store: cool, but, at least out here in the Bay Area, not without competition. And then there were the falling-outs that we only saw echoes of, Violet Blue's departure, for instance. Now they're competing in an online space with glossy depersonalized "blogs", and... well... I never get into the city any more.

[ related topics: Good Vibrations Sexual Culture Bay Area ]

Your ACLU dollars at work: Judge invalidates warrantless wiretapping provisions in the "Patriot" Act. Yes!

[ related topics: Politics Law ]

Goodbye, Diana.

New Zealand man has police return cars to him. Finds covert surveillance equipment (bugs) in car. Put them up for sale on the web. Now he's being charged with theft of property.

He says he put the ad on Trade Me to bring attention to what police were doing and because he says they didn't immediately own up to the tracking devices.

He says they initially replied no to an email he sent asking if they had left anything behind and then later changed that to a maybe.

[ related topics: Humor Law Enforcement Automobiles ]

Taking a look at Windows installers, NSIS looks awesome, and the code examples of common tasks is pretty cool.

[ related topics: Microsoft ]

I know a few of you out there are "Second Life"rs... Pet baby unicorns are apparently the latest thing, although the method of acquisition looks ... interesting:

I'd definetely[sic] put "Sensual Stoneworks" on your must-see list. However, for this fashionista reporter... she'll be sitting at home in the corner of her attic, rocking back and forth with her painful memories.

[ related topics: Humor Games Sexual Culture ]

From Medley: "Consumer Reports says 'keep that car'". Largely a "well, duh" article, but sometimes it's nice to have my going against the grain reinforced:

By keeping your car for 15 years, or 225,000 miles of driving, you could save nearly $31,000, according to Consumer Reports magazine. That's compared to the cost of buying an identical model every five years, which is roughly the rate at which most car owners trade in their vehicles.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Automobiles ]

Burning Man is only part of the experience. It's also a road trip there and back which included Arches National Park, T-Joe's Bar and RV Campground, and messing with people's heads at rest stops. A suprising favorite was camping at Pyramid Lake with other 'Burners. It was a bit off road, and the first time down to the magic spot I took a wrong turn that cost me some minor damage. Still, a couple of nights there was worth the entire trip. Surreal landscape, great swimmable water (slightly salty) and friends including Pam and Clem who arrived just minutes before me from Baja Mexico.

Burning Man itself had some spectacular art, "Crude Awakening" was an oil derrick with worshippers. We watched it from far enough away from the art cars (blasting music) to experience the choreographed music and fireworks, puncuated by a huge blast from Nate Smith's fire bombs. Filled with 250lbs of JP-8 and 100lbs of propane. Each. Released in about 1 second, created a fireball and mushroom cloud whose heat was felt from afar. Awesome.

Nancy really liked the zeotrope of swinging monkeys, an apple and a snake. Yet the critical tits ride ended in deep playa, with the party shortened by a major white-out playa storm.

The recumbent bicycle with sidecar worked great, with Nancy teasing others whose sig-other was pedaling quadricycles and other contraptions by shouting: "What?!? he makes you pedal?!?"

I had damaged/replaced a wheel bearing, and destroyed the brakes on the way out via Hwy 50. One the way home, in Salt Lake City I replaced the axle, brakes and bearings with a 3500 lb straight axle, lifting the trailer a couple of inches and enhancing tow-ability and brakes. Henderson Wheel and Axle deserves a plug for being helpful, knowledgeable and cheap ($260 for all parts!). They even pointed me to a nearby mechanic that torched off my old axle for a few bucks cash. I installed the new one on the side of the street across from his shop.

Overall, a great trip. The small trailer worked well at the 'Burn, and helped keep Nancy in a happy place. The burn was large (47k people?) full of "frat boys and tourists" as well as some really kewl people and incredible art. The man burning Monday, and then Saturday was pretty interesting, but anyone who thinks Burning Man is about the man burning is a tourist. It's about the people you are forced to interact with because of conditions, and the people you chose to interact with because of choices.

The sad part comes on the trip home, when you run into "'burners" who are washing their rigs, removing their )^( signs and starting to act like "default world" people again. Nancy and I, Pam and Clem, and other friends try to live the 'burn ethos as much as possible. We hug in public, we take care of each other, we gift, we approach and talk to strangers as if we have known them forever. It hurts walking up to a fellow 'Burner in a gas station and they act like YOU are crazy and they don't know why you are talking to them.

Still, we attempt to tweak the status quo every day. Burning Man recharges those batteries to allow us to continue the fight against mundane isolated normality.

[ related topics: Burning Man Apple Computer Interactive Drama Music Photography Sexual Culture Movies Nature and environment Invention and Design Theater & Plays Art & Culture Beer California Culture Travel Pyrotechnics Pedal Power Race Clowns Bicycling ]

Countrywide Financial to lay off 10,000 to 12,000 over the next three months. Inside The Countrywide Lending Spree looks at why:

The company's incentive system also encouraged brokers and sales representatives to move borrowers into the subprime category, even if their financial position meant that they belonged higher up the loan spectrum. Brokers who peddled subprime loans received commissions of 0.50 percent of the loan's value, versus 0.20 percent on loans one step up the quality ladder, known as Alternate-A, former brokers said. For years, a software system in Countrywide's subprime unit that sales representatives used to calculate the loan type that a borrower qualified for did not allow the input of a borrower's cash reserves, a former employee said.

Wendy McElroy's entry from which I stole these links quotes extensively from the latter. Let's do what we can to make sure there are no bailouts.

[ related topics: Current Events Real Estate ]

Just spent 4 hours cleaning out Diana's Hermes JKV 30 Chocolate tempering machine. Wish I could justify doing chocolate in 40 lb batches, but I can't see it being profitable enough for me to pursue.

[ related topics: Chocolate ]

Gloria Brame finds another story behind the prosecution and conviction of an SM "slave master". This kind of ties in to some of the discussions of consent that pops up here, most recently in that thread about Countrywide's hard-sell tactics.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Ethics Law ]

This one's for Chris, who occasionally posts videos of feats of strength and muscle control: Being Amber Rhea: Hardcore With A Side of Awesome embeds a YouTube video of pole/vertical dancer KT Coates. (no nudity in the YouTube link, didn't notice any on VerticalDance.com)

[ related topics: Erotic Sports Video Dancing ]

One of the occasional discussions in the hiking group is how "meta" a job is. You get your hands dirty making a product, that's pretty concrete. You manage several people getting their hands dirty, that's a little further removed. A new guy in the hiking group has us all trumped: He sells a service that sends consultants out to help your company rework its management of its sales force to... well... you get the picture.

So a question I asked on yesterday's leg burner hike (13 miles with some decent elevation, we clipped it off at about 3 MPH but I carried a couple of extra gallons of water just to make it fair so I'm a little sore this morning) was about how to institutionalize the consulting knowledge. It's one thing to be a smart guy with some ideas about sales that you can present to various organizations, it's quite another to teach people to recognize the patterns when they occur in your clients, and communicate those solutions.

And it's yet another to do so while retaining your company's edge, keeping the ability to do that pattern recognition within your own company while still effectively teaching your clients how to solve their problems. In fact, one of the topics he's run up against recently has been about trying to let a large customer integrate the ideas of his company into their CRM systems.

I see this pattern over and over again, especially in software and hardware where I spend my time: What we're selling to our customers is the ability to solve their problems, but since our profit comes from that process, we don't want to give them the ability to solve their own problems.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this yet, but as I balance two different paths in software, playing with the freedom of open source and sharing and seeing how advanced Linux is, and yet looking to Windows and the Mac because it is that economic friction that lets a system be profitable, I think there's gotta be some monster opportunity here.

[ related topics: Free Software Microsoft Open Source Invention and Design Software Engineering Macintosh Economics ]

Howl: NPR video does an unscientific blind taste test of $55/bottle water versus New York City tap water. The MeFi thread I snitched this from points out some other idiocies:

They're like "what kind of Ph do you have, I need a 9.0 Ph."

Drink your damned milk of magnesia and shut up.

[ related topics: Humor moron Consumerism and advertising New York Video ]

The Real Loss of September 12.

[ related topics: Politics WTC/Pentagon attacks ]

EU abandons forcing Britain and Ireland to go metric only. Hopefully more people will wake up to the fact that the metric system uses antiquated base 10 units, has scales which were shoehorned into meaning something rather than being evolved to have real value to humans, and we can abandon this silly experiment.

How to give your low-end Canon digital camera RAW support (source). And I'm not connecting to their servers right now, but in the "what do I do with that RAW file once I get it?" department, Phil showed me the software from http://www.hdrsoft.com/ . They've got a one-click and it does all the contrast adjustment and such to give you a pretty reasonable lower dynamic range of a high dynamic range image (and they do it from a single or multiple images, so if you're autobracketing RAW files by two stops you should be able to do amazing things), it's good enough to be worth booting into Windows for.

[ related topics: Photography Microsoft ]

Gets Cancer, so he invents a cure - and then with his extra time he turnes salt water in to FUEL. Bye bye Opec?

These nanoparticles are injected into a cancer patient and are attracted to the abnormalities of the cancerous cells, attaching themselves to those bad cells. What's more, the nanoparticles ignore healthy cells.

The patient is then exposed to radio waves and only the bad cells heat up and die. The healthy cells, which have no metal on them, are not warmed up at all and are unaffected.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRh4vwLJAiU

http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=68227

http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=67742

I love it!

[ related topics: Health Movies Current Events ]

Ahhh, Comcast, what would we do without you? Oh, wait, we find that out ten or fifteen times a day.

JPEG image compression algorithm explained (Via, the first comment has a good illustration of the DCT block's effects). If math scares you, then I wrote a little thing on compressing JPG files for a web forum.

[ related topics: Graphics Mathematics ]

The nightclub scene largely bores me, so I've no reason to dig into the backstory too deeply, but apparently, up up in Seattle the cops have been trying to frame a particular nightclub, "Tommy's", with limited success:

"Tell him all he has to do is show you his badge, and we'll let him bring the gun in," Tommy's manager reportedly, and sarcastically, instructed the temporary doorman.

The police report echoes this account, stating only that the doorman "told [the undercover officer] he would let him in if he had a permit." The report ends there.

Giggle.

[ related topics: Humor moron Law Enforcement Guns Seattle ]

In the "Countrywide woes" thread, Eric yet again makes a case for threading in the Flutterby comments.

I know I've asked this before, but... maybe it's time to just switch Flutterby to Slashcode? Threaded comments. Moderation and filtering. Categorization. And a shared code base. Comments?

[ related topics: Law Archival ]

I listened to a bit of the Petraeus hearings yesterday while I was in the car, and, wow, what a bunch of people carefully phrasing the contexts of their questions so that they could avoid discovering the truth. On all sides. Slate looks at the Petraeus and Crocker testimony:

... Republican Sen. John Warner asked Gen. David Petraeus whether the current strategy in Iraq "will make America safer."

Petraeus replied, "I believe that this is indeed the best course of action to achieve our objectives in Iraq."

Warner repeated his unanswered question: "Does that make America safer?"

Petraeus said, "I don't know, actually. ...

via.

[ related topics: Politics War ]

US Primaries 2007: Which right wing authoritarians will face off in 2008? (thanks, Medley).

It is important to recognise that The Political Compass™ is a continuum rather than consisting of hard and fast quadrants. For example, Ron Paul on the social scale is actually closer to Dennis Kucinich than to many figures within his own party. But on the economic scale, they are, of course, far apart.

[ related topics: Politics moron Economics ]

So I was gonna just slap a little Perl together, but as usual politics looks like it's interfering: Anyone got a suggestion for something that'll monitor email latency and availability? Specifically I want to have something that'll send to SMTP and check an IMAP account (probably POP3, too, but those of us who use POP3 on that server are having no problems, so verifying IMAP is the critical part), and probably send outbound SMTP and check that mail somewhere else.

If I'm not going to write and run this myself I want a hosted solution that I can send those who are worrying about this off after so that I don't have to manage it.

[ related topics: Perl ]

Videos of the moment:

• I want my flying car! Bored firefighters lift a car with water jets.
• Glacier Surfing (MeFi entry), people with too much testosterone riding the waves created by glacier calving.
• Oxygen tank shooting into an MRI tube. Following the related videos has some other fun MRI silliness (BoingBoing link)

[ related topics: Cool Technology Video ]

In that last entry I was reminded of an old reference to "glacier yakking" in a William Nealy book. For those of you who aren't whitewater paddlers, William Nealy wrote the books on whitewater in the southeast and kayaking culture. So I did a little searching around, and discovered that William Nealy killed himself in 2001.

[ related topics: Books Sociology Current Events California Culture Whitewater Archival Alaska ]

Giggle-inducing correction of the day:

It's precedent, not president. The President is George Bush. A precedent is something that is meaningful in a symbolic way.

-- Dixon Peer

My takeaway being that... well... George Bush isn't meaningful in a symbolic way.

[ related topics: Politics Humor ]

Two awesome Metafilter entries this morning: The Ghost Fleet of Mallows Bay points to pictures of kayaking through the wreckage of WWI era boats, a Google Maps overview and the story behind the boats. And abandoned plane wrecks of the north points to Abandoned Plane Wrecks of the North, images of DC-3s and the like scattered across the Canadian wilderness.

[ related topics: Photography Boats Machinery Maps and Mapping ]

For you guys in California, my mother recently sent me a link to this MLS listing: a recent built (but unfinished) log cabin on 5 acres for $38K. Browsing that agent's site lead me to this listing: a recent remodeled 2000sq ft house on 50+ acres with two mobile homes for $250K. What does $250K get you in the Bay area? How much would 50+ acres go for?!? I think we're talking about several orders of magnitude difference...

[ related topics: California Culture Real Estate ]

I stumbled on a Mark Steyn music column about sport and opera. In 1990 the World Cup was held in Italy, and the BBC decided not to begin their broadcasts with some drum heavy Europop ditty. Instead, they used Luciano Pavarotti singing Nessun Dorma from Puccini's Turandot, surely the classiest open for any sportscast ever. I challange you to listen to the man sing it and not be moved to your very core.

[ related topics: Music Art & Culture Sports ]

An amusing Twitter exchange between Tom and Dori has alerted me to the presence of the Nabaztag. You'd think from the name that it was something out of the Lovecraft mythos, or maybe eastern European Jewish tradition, but, no, it's this silly little WiFi enabled device with a speech synthesizer, a motor or two (to drive the "rabbit ears" that denote... something) and a few LEDs, and some sort of sensor that (I couldn't deal with the web site long enough to track down too many specifics) may even have some smell capabilities.

And the whole thing plugs in, recognizes your wireless network, and then is driven from their web site, with integration to IM and email for notifications and the like.

I'm still not sure that it's not a lurking horror that slithers in the shadows waiting to suck your soul, but it does look like it could actually be a semi-useful bit of consumer robotics as well. Not so much that I'd actually buy one, but I think it's a trend to watch.

Note: That web site is really NSFW, with gawdawful slow flash and lots of cutesy annoying music and such.

[ related topics: Wireless broadband Robotics Consumerism and advertising ]

Ooooh: Regular Expressions in Hardware (via).

[ related topics: Cool Technology ]

Wow: 3 fatal crashes at the Reno air races this year, the first deaths at the races since 1993 2002 (Thanks, Shadow, for catching my sloppy reading).

[ related topics: Aviation Sports ]

Playing with writing an installer using NSIS on Windows Vista. Now that I've actually tried to use Vista for a few minutes, I quickly realized that a right click on the desktop, "Personalize", "Window Color and Appearance" and uncheck "Enable transparency" is a necessity. There are systems that do window transparency well. Vista is not one of them. Oh, wait, there's a "Windows classic" theme, too. Ahh, much better.

Now if I can just figure out (again) what the magic incantations are to get the Cygwin emacs understanding C-space and C-c, this system might actually be usable. Except that my whole task for today is trying to make installation of a .Net app usable, and figure the right way to obfuscate the components. Checking into Xenocode and other options...

[ related topics: Microsoft moron ]

JanieBelle is spreading the word about Kent Hovind's shenanigans on YouTube, and she linked to "We must not let felonious, lying, evil men like Kent Hovind win."

[ related topics: Religion Free Speech ]

The obvious pull quote from this wonderful Linus Torvalds rant about C++ is:

C++ is a horrible language. It's made more horrible by the fact that a lot of substandard programmers use it, to the point where it's much much easier to generate total and utter crap with it. Quite frankly, even if the choice of C were to do *nothing* but keep the C++ programmers out, that in itself would be a huge reason to use C.

But the closer one is:

In other words, the only way to do good, efficient, and system-level and portable C++ ends up to limit yourself to all the things that are basically available in C.

Link came from Brainwagon where Mark said "Linus is channeling me".

Which brings me to installers on Windows, today's challenge. Why is it so damned hard to say "copy these files to the appropriate place in "Program Files", these to the user's Documents directory as an example, and set up uninstall behavior, and make sure that the supporting frameworks from the systems vendor are installed, either from the distribution media, if available, or from the net"? You'd think that these would be things that'd be specified at the OS in some sort of policy that'd be easy. In Microsoft's case, you'd be wrong.

[ related topics: Free Software Interactive Drama Humor Microsoft Open Source Software Engineering moron Law Journalism and Media ]

Number of partners doesn't explain gay HIV rate:

In fact, two surveys found that most gay men have a similar rate of sex with unprotected partners compared to straight men or women.

So it's likely unprotected anal sex that's largely the culprit. (via)

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

QOTD (note the amusing interchange between Genehack and Medley in the comments...):

The more systems administration tasks I perform, the more I understand why systems administrators tend to hate programmers.

s/programmers/(l)users/ (the "l" is silent...).

[ related topics: Quotes John S Jacobs-Anderson ]

All I want is to be able to tell a friend of mine "Buy this product, run it on the C# .Net Forms app that you've developed, feel like distributing it isn't going to give away everything". So I'm trying to read through the pros and cons of {smartassembly}, Remotesoft Salamander, Xenocode Postbuild and dotfuscator.

This means trying to gauge when articles were written ("Oooh, a good comparison. Oh, 2003"), gauge how trustworthy articles are (everyone claims to be the authoritative .net development source...), trying to figure out how to do this without becoming an IL expert ("Hey, free trial! That means I get to download and run your application and then try to reverse engineer the result and compare that against reverse engineering the result of other processes... there's a good use of my time!").

Unfortunately, it's too late to go grab said friend by the shirt collar, smack him a few times, and tell him he should have used something else. Besides, C# is so friendly when you first fire it up, how can it be wrong?

[ related topics: Microsoft Software Engineering moron ]

I'm laughing at reports of Solar Powered desktop computers (links to Dell and Lenova and others not included on purpose) because I ran my laptop off of solar for most of my road trip. I've been carrying a milk crate with a deep cycle battery and a couple of 15 watt solar panels for years. Recently, those solar panels ended up on top of Pam and Clem's Casita and I bought 2 new ones for our trailer. Add a deep cycle battery (the trailer now has 2 of them) and poof, mega solar power. Ok, so I'm only pumping 30 watts of solar power, but my laptop only uses 75 watts peak, and I'm not using my laptop all day long, so it works well for me, plus powers my trailers water pump, lights, a radio, etc.. And I can still take one solar panel, battery and inverter off the trailer and setup somewhere else.

Things I have learned about inverters: If you are just powering your laptop that draws just under 100 watts, use a 100 -150 watt constant power UPS (often labeled as 200 or 250 watts peak). Most of those big 500+ 750+ watt ones draw a lot more current to produce 100 watts than a small one, so having a small inverter for small loads, plus a larger one for larger loads can save you a lot of battery time when you just need a little power.

Parts list: Deep Cycle Battery $75. Good inverter $75. 15watt Solar Panel: $75 Milk Crate/battery box: $10 - Useful solar power system: Under $250

Yes, I think it's a great idea, but the use of a solar system is so you can have juice where there is none. Do you need that for desktop computers? Does it need to be a $1300 option? Does it need to be a 100-300 watt solar system using state of the art (but flakey {high end solar panels don't work well if even one cell is shaded}) solar cells?

Rant almost over. Next year I hope to see 50+% efficient solar cells, and much more energy efficient laptops, but more importantly: more efficient home lighting, refrigeration, cooling, heating, etc. And maybe the housing financing crisis will mean less empty nesters buying 4000+sqft Mc-Mansions with 10+ tons (12kbtu/hr = ton) of cooling and heating.

So my laugh of the day: Solar powered desktop computers from Dell, HP and Lenovo. Rant over.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design Bay Area Astronomy Work, productivity and environment Art & Culture Travel Pedal Power Bicycling Real Estate Photovoltaics ]

Today is Constitution Day. one of the few National Holidays of which I approve. The consitution is a special document to me - it's the birth of the first fully free nation in history. Born of philosophy of the enlightenment.

It is historic in that it does not provide rights to the citizen's but simply acknowledges all rights and limits the government. The Bill of Rights was put in to stop the Neanderthals who do not understand that the documnet is a limit on government action and nothing else.

Of course we still have the Neanderthals with us, and a front page artice on the web site commemorating the document is about establishing 'racial equality'. (Unfinished Business: Racial Equality in American History) There is no such concept in the constitution nor should there be. Any discrimination by the government for any reason was simple to correct by applying the law of the constitution. Any other discrimination was and should be legal.

Happy Constitution Day!

http://www.archives.gov/nation...nstitution/constitution-day.html

[ related topics: Political Correctness moron Law Civil Liberties Philosophy Archival ]

Fascinating: Christopher Thornberg, founding partner of Beacon Economics, guest lectures at Humboldt State University on the real estate bubble: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Via Marin Real Estate Bubble.

[ related topics: Bay Area Education Video Economics Real Estate ]

A lot of you have been commenting about the backlash against Kathy Griffin making jokes about Jesus in her acceptance of her Emmy. Here's the video. I laughed.

[ related topics: Religion Humor Video ]

Giggle:

A fearful feline that was stuck in a tree for a week, clinging to branches several stories high, was finally blasted to safety with a high-pressure fire hose.

I mean, really, what can you add to that?

[ related topics: Humor Pyrotechnics ]

Mars, Inc. says that the definition of chocolate should remain unchanged, and that products in which other vegetable fats are substituted for cocoa butter shouldn't be called chocolate. Yay, Mars. Hmmm... I thought I'd linked previously to a campaign to keep artificial fillers and fats out of chocolate, but the backstory to this is that various other high profile candy manufacturers, some of whose names are almost synonymous with chocolate in the consumer's mind, were wanting to pump their "chocolate" products full of hydrogenated vegetable shortening rather than cocoa butter.

Good to hear that at least one high profile mass market producer is keeping up standards.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Chocolate Economics ]

Finding your computer's MAC address on Windows, Mac OS/X and Linux.

[ related topics: Microsoft Open Source Macintosh ]

Fred Wilson: Tough Times Ahead For The Web:

I was meeting with a web entrepreneur yesterday. It's something I do at least five to ten times a week.

This entrepeneur said 'but I worry that the coming downturn might have a negative impact on my business plan.'

Not 'a possible coming downturn', it was 'the coming downturn.'

And I found myself nodding my head, not challenging that assumption.

[ related topics: New Economy ]

It's cranky contrarian day here at Chez Dan, I'm struggling through some PHP and I'm a little cranky (the amount of bad example PHP code out there is truly astounding, I'm shocked at how many potential database and other exploits must be exposed to the world).

So it's without surprise that I read that most peer-reviewed published studies are tainted by sloppy analysis:

These flawed findings, for the most part, stem not from fraud or formal misconduct, but from more mundane misbehavior: miscalculation, poor study design or self-serving data analysis. "There is an increasing concern that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims," Dr. Ioannidis said. "A new claim about a research finding is more likely to be false than true."

(via) Perhaps what you'd expect, but of course this morning I was reading about Melissa Farley's "research" on the sex industry (press release challenging Farley's work here) and noted that her work is taken seriously in public policy and isn't even peer reviewed. (From the Eyes Open Now? entry at Renegade Evolution)

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Sociology ]

Over on this other blog I write for, I ranted about "personal choice". I didn't quite distill my thoughts completely, so I'm bringing it over here:

Human beings seem set apart from the rest of the animal kingdom by two major distinctions: our ability to absorb information from our environment (learning) and our ability to apply that information in making decisions (personal choice).

Where I think I wanted to go with this idea is that humans do these two things naturally and automatically. We are constantly learning and constantly making personal choices. I think it's pretty obvious that making a personal choice is an action. However, learning is rarely thought of as a deliberate action - but we do it anyways.

We end up learning "through osmosis" from our environment. The strongest signals in our environment tend to be from "marketing". So much of the information that feeds our choices comes from these strong signals. What results aren't really "personal choices" but rather "directed choices".

This effect seems to correlate inversely with one's ability to actively learn. If learning is considered something "you do" rather than something that is "done to you", then you are more likely to make real "personal choices" rather than "directed choices".

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs Nature and environment Consumerism and advertising Marketing Education ]

Ahh, local news reinforcing my impressions of the residents of certain towns: Tiburon man pleads guilty in foreclosure scam, feds target Ross financial advisor in alleged tax and Ponzi scheme.

[ related topics: Bay Area moron Current Events ]

In yet another argument for limiting federal power, Federal prosecutor is arrested in a sex sting:

A federal prosecutor flew to metro Detroit with a Dora the Explorer doll, hoop earrings and petroleum jelly for a 5-year-old he planned to have sex with, police say.

This is why 2257 and any other law or procedure which allows law enforcement or prosecutors warrantless access to information is a bad idea. (source)

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

In light of the recent disparaging of Arabic speakers, I'd like to extend a hearty ramadan mubarak!

[ related topics: Islam ]

Scientific American has a short bit on a study published in Nature that claims a gene responsible for how we smell androstenone.

Matsunami's team found two variations (or alleles) of the gene associated with different characterizations of androstenone's smell: Subjects with two "normal" copies of the gene, about 62 percent of the study population, described androstenone's aroma as having an intense, unpleasant odor similar to that of urine. If a person had one of each allele, he or she described the scent as ranging from imperceptible to unpleasant, but not intense.

Only 10 of the study participants had two copies of the mutated gene, according to Hanyi Zhuang, a graduate student in Matsunami's lab. "[These] subjects indeed show even lower intensity ratings to androstenone and androstadienone in our study," she says, and even described the smell of the steroids as sweet, like vanilla. The fact that some [of these] subjects could smell androstenone, she continues, "suggests additional odorant receptors are activated by these chemicals."

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Nature and environment Bioinformatics ]

Arrrr! Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day.

May your day be filled with egalitarian revolution against the oppression and strict social order of the monarchies.

Aha! Someone's finally getting a clue about Iraq, and scapegoating Blackwater to take the heat off the U.S. military. Right on. And that's the function of outside consultants anyway, to take the fall for the politically unpopular stuff.

[ related topics: Politics ]

It being Ramadan and all, I've been thinking about religion. More specifically, I've been considering something ziffle alluded to during his attack on the Arabic language: "religious evolution". ziffle made the point that Western religions seem to be "evolving" towards "morality". Positively combining evolution and religion in the same sentence seems almost... well... sacrilegious...

Turning a curious eye to world religions, there seem to be two strong threads: some religions hold on to texts and languages as "the word of God in his own language" and other religions experience major rewrites of their texts in modern languages (like the King James Bible and the Vulgate prior) or entire new texts (like the Baghavad Gita). There seems to be some correlation between which of these two groups a faith belongs and their level of tolerance for other people and new ideas. Unfortunately, Islam holds strongly to the idea of an infallible Q'uran that can only be read in Arabic. You can also see similar threads in Judaism and Israel.

Extending this further, someone recently plastered the building I work in with Ron Paul flyers. These flyers feature pictures of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Madison titled "We Told You So!" The basic idea of the flyers is that the Constitution, as implied by the Founding Fathers, establishes all the federal government we need. Again, a grasping onto an original text which is to be read only in the language of the authors. No evolution allowed...

(You can download said flyer here)

[ related topics: Ziffle Religion Photography Invention and Design moron Law Work, productivity and environment Civil Liberties Archival ]

A Wired article on a black South African man who, 14 years ago at the age of 12, built his own paraglider out of fertilizer sacks.

Being a Zulu in a sport dominated by whites at the tail end of apartheid brought Cyril attention -- not all of it good. "I started flying during bad times," Cyril recalls. Not everyone was pleased to see a black taking to the air -- especially not one who got significant help from whites.

After some ups and downs and walking away from the sport, he's back flying again.

[ related topics: Aviation Current Events Race ]

• For medieval social structure meets nanotech SciFi and saving humanity across the stars, Karl Schroeder has made free online versions of his first novel, Ventus, available
• Columbine has another short story out, The Ring: Water Phantom, though starting with the intro is probably a good idea.
• If you like your bondage and discipline in a sort of freshman women's college dorm angst meets swords and sorcery sort of way, Tales of MU is ongoing.
• Blue Root is six chapters in to a tale of networked sex toys.

[ related topics: Books Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Pornography as Violence, Pornography as Rape Culture: Anti-Pornography Commentary Only attempts to paint all of pornography by quoting a spam that begins:

Blonde whore forced to suck c*** then f***ed!!

View Movie!!

http://***********

Over at Renegade Revolution there's a response to that ranting screed:

I am that whore. I have a name, a real one even, and it is ethnic as hell...and I am not being raped. And Actually, due to my hair dressers machinations, I am somewhat blonde (and trying to decide if i hate it or not). Yet my voice, and the voice of the women in Natalia's post, and the voice of the women I spoke to working for HIPS tonight, and the voices of those at BnG do not matter.



Our message? Let us be, leave us alone, you don't know. Why don't you fucking listen???

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture Movies Spam Sociology Work, productivity and environment Monty Python California Culture ]

Hey, you know how "tasers" were introduced as safe because they're an alternative to deadly force? Apparently Tustin, California police didn't get the memo, check this response to their tasering an autistic teenager:

"If that were your son, would you want him Tased or hit by a car?" Amormino asked.

Uhhh... yeah, so if you hadn't had the taser, would you have drawn your service pistol?

[ related topics: moron Law Enforcement Guns ]

In the learning and personal choice thread, Sean mentioned ThoughtStorms: DoesAbstractionScale (yes, funky intercaps because it's a wiki), and I think that nailed a big issue in software engineering: In engineering in general abstractions are useful, but those abstractions aren't designed to be hugely general: An I-beam is something you can reuse in various different operations, but the larger structure is built on I-beams, not built on generic trusses into which someone may shove an I-beam late in the bridge building process.

Kicked some neurons free for me, worth a read.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

Maryland's highest court fell prey to the "marriage is for procreation" trap and ruled that a state ban on gay marriage was constitutional. Marty Klein takes the easy shots so that I don't have to: Limiting Marriage to Pregnant Brides & Shotgun Weddings:

Even worse is the assumption that the state should restrict the privilege of marriage to those who can have bear children. If that's so, why not test those applying for marriage licenses for fertility instead of STDs? Let's get serious, and prevent people from marrying if they're infertile, post-menopausal, sterilized, unable to get erections, or simply not interested in breeding.

[ related topics: moron Sociology Law Marriage ]

Canadian dollar becomes worth more than the U.S. dollar.

[ related topics: Current Events Currency Economics ]

Ripping off a MetaFilter entry feels like it's cheating, but the entry on Randy Pausch's last lecture deserves some wholesale distribution. Randy Pausch is dying of liver cancer. He's also a virtual reality pioneer, university professor, and lots of other stuff. On September 18^th he gave a lecture on "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams". You can read the Wall Street Journal's summary, but I started up the direct feed on a side computer, in VLC, to listen to it, and it's grabbed me.

For Eric it's a good look at someone who's found tremendous fulfillment in teaching and academia. For me it was a reminder of the earlier days of real time computer graphics. It's got some good notes on parenting, kids, dreams, computer graphics and programming, all sorts of cool stuff. It's funny, poignant, and if you were going to waste somewhere between an hour and a half and two hours on a rented movie, this'd be worth a watch instead.

And he considers the Alice project his professional legacy, if you're interested in VR or teaching programming that looks worth checking out.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Software Engineering Current Events Graphics Pop Culture Education Video Economics ]

Advertising Age: Sex on TV is OK as Long as It's Not Safe (via)

Jim Daniels, VP-marketing for Church & Dwight, Trojan's parent company, said he's frustrated, and instead of integrating his brand into TV, he spends most of his budget getting his product sampled by students on spring break in collegiate hotspots like Daytona, Florida.

"Sixty-five million Americans have an incurable STD. Three million unwanted pregnancies a year -- half of which end in abortion," said Mr. Daniels. "And yet you can advertise Viagra all you like, and Valtrex for [genital] herpes, but not advertise the condoms that would go on the erections that prevent herpes."

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Technology and Culture Health Sociology Consumerism and advertising Television Marketing ]

Six Apart: We Are Opening The Social Graph. Hmmm, I need to find a better tool for managing Flutterby.net before I get too much more encoded into the namespace of that. I need a tool that'll give me better control of things like rel="..." tags.

[ related topics: Web development New Economy Net Culture ]

The tasers and cops don't mix thread seems to tie in with two things from today: Boston police overreact, again, this time to an MIT student with a circuit board art project:

Simpson was "extremely lucky she followed the instructions or deadly force would have been used," Pare said. "She's lucky to be in a cell as opposed to the morgue."

I obviously don't know all the details, but I've done almost exactly what she did to stand out at a conference before, and the assumption that "if I don't recognize it it must be a bomb" is exactly counter to the tactics that'd catch any real bomber. I got this link from Sensible Erection, but Boing Boing has further coverage. [Later edit: AP article on SFGate]

I went over to Boing Boing to track down this entry which points to this Wired Blog entry which quotes U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Nocke on tracking the reading material of airline passengers:

"I flatly reject the premise that we care at all about the latest Tom Clancy novel a traveler is reading," Knocke said.

"But the fact does remain that CBP officials are going to be mindful of whether there is anything that suggests there could be possible violations of a law associated with a traveler or items in possession of a traveler as they make an admissibility decision about that traveler," Knocke said. "That is what they are charged by Congress to do."

In both cases, either the likely terrorists are really stupid (no, wait, stoooopid), or the rationalizations are bullshit and we're just seeing more bizarre security theater and out of control assholes with authority complexes, and the end result is these loose cannons with guns running around saying "be a good consumer, read Tom Clancy novels, not anything that'd actually improve your mind, and don't build anything yourself, just buy prepackaged toys from China, otherwise we might have to shoot you for your own protection".

The terrorists have won.

[ related topics: Politics Aviation moron security Current Events Consumerism and advertising Law Enforcement Boston - stupidity and authorities ]

Sent to Lynn Woolsey, Diane Feinstein, and Barbara Boxer:

Today, Boston area authorities detained a young MIT student at Logan International Airport with what they claim is "a fake bomb". After seeing pictures of the device in question, it's clear that we've had a major breakdown in security, and this is the latest of several failures of Boston authorities to reasonably assess risk, from charging Joseph Privetara with making a bomb threat because he used wires in his reenactment of a scene from Abu Ghraib to their overreaction to the devices used to promote whatever that cartoon show was.

The United States federal government has spent billions of dollars on security in the wake of 9/11, allegedly to make us safer. If law enforcement in the Boston area is still unable to distinguish these devices from actual threats, this money has clearly been wasted.

We should find out why it's being wasted and where it's going. I'm calling on you as my elected representative to open hearings into the potential malfeasance of Boston area authorities and their spending of money that should be earmarked for security, because it's clearly not being spent where it would do good.

Thank you.

[ related topics: moron Law Enforcement Boston - stupidity and authorities ]

Okay, time for a total change of topic: A Thinking Ape's Critique of Trans-Simianism (Via Elf)

Just got the latest issue of Bicycling magazine. The same articles claiming to be the ultimate workout. The same article on "cool upgrades" from the major advertisers. The same glossy ads. And the front advertises "5 easy ways to make your bike faster". Well, I'm trying to shave a few off my lunchtime rides of the Nicasio Valley Loop (17.7MPH today), so I went to the table of contents, which said "116 5 ways to make your bike faster".

Turn to page 116. "Upgrades under $25: 5 ultraeasy(sic) ways to make your bike look and feel new". So where'd the "faster" go? The closest that might do something is the shoe covers, but I know I'm losing time on the climb between Nicasio and the reservoir, and on the leaves on the bike path through Samuel P. Taylor State Park, so I'm pretty sure the making my shoe laces "aero" ain't gonna do it.

Into the recycling bin.

The funniest bit is that Charlene was sure she'd read this issue before. Even though it just came today.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Bicycling ]

From The Latino Comedy Project, Mexican "300" (Via). Gotta work on various things today, but here's The Latino Comedy Project's YouTube page.

[ related topics: Humor Movies Race ]

Charlene's sister called us to go listen to a jazz group up in Novato yesterday afternoon. We needed to head up that way for a few things, so we ended up hanging out at Dr. Insomnia's. While we were listening, I thumbed through a copy of the North Bay Bohemian, and saw the ad for 2 Days In Paris.

Charlene and I both believe that Before Sunrise and Before Sunset are up there in the best few films, so when I saw Julie Delpy's name in the ad as writer, director and lead... well... after our errands we ended up at The Rafael.

After a failed attempt at a vacation in Venice, Marion (Julie Delpy), a French photographer living in New York, and Jack (Adam Goldberg), an American, drop into Paris to spend two days visiting her family and old friends. Translation issues magnifying understandings, family histories and old boyfriends ensue.

I wouldn't elevate it to the level of Before Sunrise, I don't necessarily need to see it again soon, but we laughed repeatedly. On coming out of the theater I commented that it felt either like sketch comedy or like a novel that had been compressed into movie form through the use of voice-overs, but Charlene pointed out that it was really a character study, and as such she didn't need to like the characters or necessarily care about the resolution of their conflict. She's right, I never ended up actually liking the characters of Marion or Jack, but in a way that gave me the distance to both laugh at them, but to see the compounding of the language and cultural differences played very well as a simile for all of those issues in relationships that we keep hidden because it's easier than trying to explain them.

[ related topics: Language Movies Sociology New York ]

Giggle: Marty Klein: on garden variety porn

[ related topics: Humor Sexual Culture Gardening ]

An SFGate article on how California farmers don't get to wallow in the handouts of the federal farm bill:

That's the way it's been since the 1930s, and that's pretty much the way it would stay under the $286 billion farm bill that passed the House in July and the Senate is now considering - yet another five-year plan for agriculture, billed as a temporary remedy for stricken farmers 75 years ago, renewed by Congress as farm income breaks U.S. records.

[ related topics: Politics California Culture Real Estate ]

In the modern archeology thread, JT mentioned kayaking on Lake Isabella around and above old Kernville. I just got a call from Pat McPherson, co-author of River Children, stories of growing up in the Kern River Valley, and he said that there are lots of pictures of the old Kernville area, and it sounds like a few people still hanging on with some pretty impressive archives of photographs and memories who'd love to share and tell their stories.

We don't have a road trip to that area in our near future, but I'm going to see if I can track down a copy of that book, and JT, or anyone else who's down in that area, it might make an interesting addition to your excursions to start with the authors of River Children and maybe buy a few people dinners and get some stories.

And turn the area into more than a throwaway for a Merle Haggard song...

[ related topics: Children and growing up Books Photography Travel ]

Pretend To Be A Time Traveller Day, December 8th.

[ related topics: Community ]

Dave took a road trip. He's still in the process of filling out the travelogue, but he bailed early:

After about ten minutes, I realized that I wasn't having fun anymore, and it was time to call it quits on the plan. Mostly it was due to the heat, but that wasn t everything. In many of the small towns along the way, I'd looked around in vain for a place to eat, or stop for a drink, or anything and it seemed that in so many small towns, there was nothing left.

At least out here in California it seems that every town is becoming an identical strip mall, a big box store, the same set of chain restaurants, suburbia has become commodified, and the identity and character that used to make it interesting to go some place has disappeared. I'm not sure that's always a bad thing, but it seems like something to be pointed out. One of the things that makes where we are appealing is that when we go various other places (the Atlanta area, large swaths of Oregon, etc) they often just look like bad copies of Fresno.

[ related topics: Photography California Culture Travel ]

Figleaf: Masking Real Problems With Tabloid Headlines looks at Washington Post: Human Trafficking Evokes Outrage, Little Evidence.

A woman from Nepal testified that September that she had been drugged, abducted and forced to work at a brothel in Bombay. A Christian activist recounted tales of women overseas being beaten with electrical cords and raped. A State Department official said Congress must act -- 50,000 slaves were pouring into the United States every year, she said. Furious about the "tidal wave" of victims, Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) vowed to crack down on so-called modern-day slavery.

Of course the reality has been that after $150M there have been "..1,362 victims of human trafficking... since 2000...", resulting in 148 federal cases. Once again, Congress gets "Marc Klaas"ed, and we end up with wasted money and fewer civil liberties because of outrage over events that weren't true.

Figleaf 's commentary points out most of the flaws in this, I've got two questions:

1. Where is our press in doing basic back of the envelope questions about these statistics when they come up. It's great that we're seeing this fact-checking 8 years later, but how about some basic back of the envelope "hey, that claims 10% of all illegal immigration is forced" calculation when they're proposing wasting our money and civil liberties.
2. How is any reasonable press letting the people who vote for this shit re-elected?

[ related topics: Politics moron Journalism and Media ]

It is sometimes hard to be a full-on First Amendment "I believe in pornography" person. In fact, I just pulled the "I [heart] Pornography" bumper sticker from my car, partially as a sop to the fact that Charlene occasionally borrows my car and people at schools object to things like that, but also because... well... I don't really [heart] pornography. I think it's something important in our society, and that its expression is necessary for freedom and gender equality and all of that nice stuff, but most porn leaves me frankly flaccid.

Elf Sternberg may have put his finger on it, today he asks "The more widespread porn becomes, the coarser it gets?" Maybe the real fear is that pornography shows who we are, and just as we who seek the fringes have seen all of our enclaves overrun and brought down to the level of the masses, the current rash of downright degrading "gonzo" porn is just a reflection of the mainstream.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Political Correctness Sociology Civil Liberties ]

NIH study says that benefits of flu shots to those over 70 are exaggerated.

It is precisely that success that has led disease control experts in recent years to question the value of the vaccine. With such a large increase in immunization rates, a drop in flu deaths among the elderly would have been expected. But several studies have failed to show any such reduction.

So... uh... maybe the whole "public health, rising vaccination rates are good" thing is conflated a little bit with the "our cronies in the drug business need the sales"? Actually the truth is probably that there just isn't as much immune system to get all riled up by the vaccine in those over 70.

[ related topics: Health ]

I've recently been questioning that tasers have been sold to us as "an alternative to deadly force" and questioning abuses of power but on the case of Andrew Meyer, the University of Florida student now famous for video of him saying "Don't tase me, bro"?

Dude totally had it coming.

[ related topics: moron Law Education Video ]

This has made the rounds once or twice, but I saw it today on MeFi and thought it deserved a little attention: clip on high voltage power line inspection from the IMAX documentary Straight Up:

There's only 3 things I've ever been afraid of: electricity, heights and woman... and I'm married, too.

[ related topics: Cool Science Movies Aviation - Helicopters ]

The FCC is "proposing" a $4k fine against Comcast for a "fake news" segment:

According to the FCC filing, on Sept. 21, 2006, CN8, a Comcast-affiliated network, aired portions of a video news release on behalf of "Nelson's Rescue Sleep," a natural sleep-aid product, without saying who paid for the spot.

This is interesting for a couple of reasons, the FCC hasn't historically had control over the content of cable television, so there's some legal question here, but it's also a very interesting (and scary) step down a slippery slope: how many trade magazines would go out of business if they weren't pimping the products of advertising? Hell, what does that mean when the New York Times is pimping WMD stories from the administration in exchange for access?

Seems like there are a bunch of scary-ass questions about federal power that this raises if it goes through.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Law Current Events Consumerism and advertising Journalism and Media Television Civil Liberties ]

So I'm absolutely loving the new HP Pavilion dv6000 laptop over the MacBook Pro. There's the whole Ubuntu vs OS/X thing, even with the overhead of Gnome things just snap. OpenGL works in X apps. Keys are consistent. And there's just general feel of the hardware, the HP touchpad buttons have real throw to them, it's got two of them (3 would be better, but I can chord) and a lockout button. The hardware functions have independent buttons or are modified function keys, so a fumble-finger overstrike does something in the application, not flopping external monitor settings or flipping the annoying "Dashboard" down.

And... well... the MacBook Pro runs for a little longer than the old G4, but the Linux box actually has battery life. Not battery life like my old Fujitsu LifeBook, but this isn't an ultraportable.

However, if I tweaked it... Mark Hershberger shows some of the tweaks he's using for power management under Linux, inspired by apacheLog: Power saving++.

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source Macintosh ]

Today's Piled Higher & Deeper is worth a look - especially the bit about:

Reality: A student-run lesson on the inevitable failures of communism

My friend who ran a similar snack co-op at the game company I worked for in Chattanooga noticed that he consistently experienced unpaid-for losses at night when only the boss was around.

[ related topics: Games Chattanooga Comics Fashion ]

Dori: One Thing About Ray Ozzie, in which she muses about the directions of Microsoft.

I'm happy to keep Vista on the machine I'm typing this on, because I'm using it to test development stuff. If I were trying to actually use it I'd be calling HP for those XP restore disks.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Humor Microsoft moron ]

Yesterday, I posted a link to one of Jorge Cham's comics and this lead to links to essays on governmental response to "disaster" in neo-liberalism. Reading reviews of The Shock Doctrine (especially the negative one) inspired me to pose a question du jour:

Is capitalism and free markets a more "natural order" for an economy?

In other words, does laissez-faire provide the economic equivalent of the hyothetical "in a vacuum, ignoring friction" environment in which simple mathematical models of physics actually function?

[ related topics: Books Nature and environment Writing Mathematics Comics Economics Archival ]

I think it's common knowledge around here that MP3s are sorely lacking in audio fidelity. I won't even bother with the technical details. I was just browsing around at eMusic and Amazon and started to wonder:

1. Who encodes their MP3s?
2. What settings do they use (96kbps, 128kbps, variable???)?
3. Does anyone actually offer other formats (ogg, aac, etc.)

I first started "buying" mp3s about nine years ago usually in response to promotions eMusic ran in the dot-com hey day. I usually netted some hardware of equivalent value to the money I spent on mp3s. But now I know that even my CDs are subject to some crappy recording engineering and my own ripped music carries over these problems. I'd sure like to be able to buy music in a format that attempts to maintain fidelity.

[ related topics: Books Music Currency ]

Schematics and software for an AVR based MP3 player, and an AVR based USB joystick that speaks USB directly from an AVR128

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Music Software Engineering ]

Because at some point I'm going to go postal over Scarab, and single sign-on be damned, a hosted solution is sounding better all the time: Lighthouse - Beautifully Simple Issue And Bug Tracking

Best lede ever, on an article about Republican efforts to get California to change its electoral vote distribution:

Until this week, Missouri attorney Charles "Chep" Hurth III was best known for a headline-grabbing incident a decade ago in which he bit a young female law student on the butt in a bar.

[ related topics: Law California Culture ]

Interesting: The Daily Mail reports that transcripts of a February 2003 meeting between George Bush and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar say that Saddam Hussein was willing to step down and go into exile, in exchange for half a billion dollars.

[ related topics: Politics Dictators ]

Good Vibrations being sold to Cleveland firm GVA-TWN, which hopes to open stores in other cities. For all that I whine about the trend back towards a repressed culture, perhaps this is an indication that sex toys are really a mainstream trend now.

[ related topics: Good Vibrations Erotic Sexual Culture Sociology California Culture ]

I guess all love affairs end... My recent admiration of The Economist just took a major turn for the worst:

The Economist...accept[s] that letting secret policemen spy on citizens, detain them without trial and use torture to extract information makes it easier to foil terrorist plots. To eschew such tools is to fight terrorism with one hand tied behind your back.

-The Economist September 22nd, 2007. P. 18.

Sir: I find your statement on page 18 of the September 22nd issue favoring torture both illogical and morally reprehensible. Torture does not yield reliable information. Action based on torture-sourced information is largely wasted effort. Similarly unreliable information is precisely what has lead the US into the murky quagmire of Iraq. As for the moral stance, I believe Anthony Hopkins' Capt. Bligh in "The Bounty" said it best: "No Sir! We were born as civilized men and we shall die as civilized men." A civilized death is preferable to life in a society where citizens are treated as criminals and torture is acceptable.

[ related topics: Ethics Economics Archival ]

Argh. Flutterby has, in my (always) humble opinion, been too political recently, I'm trying to not go there, but... welfare Republicans finally decide that something needs to be done about carbon emissions, now that they've figured out how to suck tax dollars to their cronies in the process.

[ related topics: Politics Nature and environment moron ]

Unclear on the concept: Hillary Clinton proposes that every child be given a $5000 bond at birth:

"I think it's a wonderful idea," said Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, an Ohio Democrat who attended the event and has already endorsed Clinton. "Every child born in the United States today owes $27,000 on the national debt, why not let them come get $5,000 to grow until they're 18?"

Because, yeah, the major thing we need to be teaching kids these days is that it's great to borrow against future earnings just because you feel like it, and that money just appears with no effort on your part.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Politics moron ]

Argh. I understand why Vista wants to randomly choose some funky-ass mode to "shut down" into when you click on the "power off" icon, but... I'm the exception, and I want it actually shutting down as the default. So the fact that it tries to be smarter for me just costs me 2 or 3 minutes (at a minimum) every time I hit it. Grrrr...

[ related topics: Microsoft moron ]

I'm trying to write a simple Windows Shell extension. The code is easy. Trivial, even. Getting the damned thing compiled right and the registry stuff set up is total "bang head on wall" territory.

Whatever happened to dlopen, dlsym and dlclose. Was that considered a threat to someone's job security?

[ related topics: Microsoft moron ]

I haven't followed these chronicles in a while, but Meuon forwarded this episode to the Chugalug mailing list, and I thought a couple of lines were up to the standards of the early episodes: BOFH: You think you know a guy...:

"They're just not real computers," the PFY says. "They're the piano accordion of the computing world, entertaining, but not made for professionals."

Yeah, I've been working on that platform, I completely agree.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Humor Macintosh ]

Can a CEO be any more schizophrenic? First, Jobs comes out blasting DRM. Later, he bricks early-adopter's $600 iPhones (just a few weeks after slapping them in the face with a 33% price cut). And with Vista driving Windows XP sales, the big players are trying as hard as they can to make Ubuntu look good! Not to mention other open projects like the OpenMoko - the cell phone that the manufacturer WANTS you to modify!

[ related topics: Apple Computer Wireless Technology and Culture Microsoft Current Events Television Heinlein Macintosh ]

Software hates for the day:

1. RSS2.0 changing the meaning of the link element.
2. Firefox constantly giving me the "you've successfully updated" screen on Windows. For the umpteenth freakin' time this morning. Which I've only noticed because I've been rebooting a lot because...
3. Windows has this feature where you can register a COM object to draw a thumbnail of your document when you're viewing a folder in thumbnail mode. There are two articles on the web describing this process, this one, written 5 years ago, which derives from this one from June of 2000. Nerdly hate continued in the comments.

[ related topics: Microsoft Software Engineering moron ]