Flutterby™! From 2008-03-01 to 2008-03-31

Should anyone ever be tempted to upgrade MediaWiki running on top of PostgreSQL without backing up first: Don't. Just sayin'.

[ related topics: Sports Databases ]

[ related topics: Photography Comics ]

Debra's got another book, and along with Pursed Lips, a website for promoting her printed materials and Thin Air Codex, a web log about ebooks.

[ related topics: Books Erotic Sexual Culture Weblogs ]

I'm having incredible problems picking out the lesser of the evils in this election (and, yes, my "Cthulu for President: Don't settle for the lesser of the evils" bumper sticker is still on my car from the '96 elections), but I admit to a few giggles over watching the Hillary Clinton campaign implode with its childish sniping, so when this video was described as "Bill Clinton endorses Obama", I snorted my drink through my nose.

At NY Times, Jeffrey Rosen calls Obama a "Card-Carrying Civil Libertarian". I definitely wouldn't go that far, but between the likely contenders, McCain, Clinton and Obama, he's looking like the lesser evil.

Sigh.

[ related topics: Politics ]

6 pictures of an Airbus A320 catching a monster side gust while attempting to land. Says the (German speaking) source I got this from:

According to the report wind blew with 55 mph (90km/h) at the moment of the incident. None of the 131 passengers onboard was injured and after a somewhat longer place round the pilot landed savely on that airport. However the plane lost the winglets on the left wing when it touched earth.

Yow.

[ related topics: Photography Aviation ]

ARRL homebrew HAM radio challenge winners announced (Via).

Entrants were required to submit a home constructed voice and CW, 5 W minimum output radio by August 1, 2007. The radio had to be reproducible from no more than $50 of new parts.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Current Events ]

Joan writes:

...I'm in search of a database and thought someone on Flutterby might be aware of the type site I need. Is there an all inclusive site where you can plug in a commercial household/cosmetic/food product and get a complete listing of ingredients? I'm trying to check some products for allergy purposes and would like a one stop exhaustive location, and haven't found one so far. I'm told from my maintenance and safety director at work that there is a MSDS site under construction that will include printable MSDS sheets for industrial chemicals, but I'm not sure that would include what I'm needing. Thanks for any suggestions.

I know that there's the USDA Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, and the NIH Household Products Database is a start in that direction, but I don't know of something more specific, and I kind of doubt it exists because there's a whole lot of stuff that companies don't generally want people to know about their products.

[ related topics: Food Work, productivity and environment Machinery Fabrication Databases Model Building ]

Why didn't I try this earlier? I haven't tried to order a circuit board yet, but the ExpressPCB software appears to run just fine under Wine. I've got problems with icons and menus showing up when trying to run SketchUp, but this removes half my reason for rebooting the laptop into Windows.

[ related topics: Microsoft Software Engineering Wines and Spirits ]

I have noticed recently that Google tries to be more inclusive by giving me the singular and plural versions of what I type, and sometimes even expands verb tenses. Tara Calishain has a particularly egregious example of Google's "correction" behavior gone wrong.

There's room out there for another search engine...

[ related topics: Machinery ]

"It Doesn't Matter Which You Heard": the Curious Cultural Journey of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", via del.icio.us/uncorked.

[ related topics: Music Sociology ]

As if I needed more things to destroy the illusory world that movies are trying to set up, Paul asks: "Why Do Ghosts Wear Clothes?"

Really, why would a ghost be wearing clothes? If a ghost is the spirit of a person, wouldn't that spirit be floating around in the buff? Do your clothes follow you into the after life? Do your cotton and wool fabrics have their own afterlife? What about synthetic fibers?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Movies Boats Fashion Clothing ]

Okay, since some of y'all are art snobs, this is brilliant: The Hockneyizer: Create a simulated collage from a single photograph. Via bifurcated rivets.

[ related topics: Photography Art & Culture ]

A court decision yesterday has sent shockwaves through California's homeschooling communities, the 2nd circuit California appeals court found that:

It is clear to us that enrollment and attendance in a public full-time day school is required by California law for minor children unless (1) the child is enrolled in a private full-time day school and actually attends that private school, (2) the child is tutored by a person holding a valid state teaching credential for the grade being taught, or (3) one of the other few statutory exemptions to compulsory public school attendance ... applies to the child.

It's hard for me to argue that, in the specific circumstances of the case, the parents didn't need a little smackdown, and I've seen some truly horrendous things done in the name of home schooling, but the evil California Teachers Association is crowing about this, and given the horrific state of teacher credentialing in California, contacting your state legislator and getting 'em to change this situation seems like a good thing.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Law California Culture ]

Declan McCullagh Cypress interviews Semiconductor's J.T. Rodgers, and part 2, some interesting observations on politics, west vs east coast attitudes, and solar cell technology.

[ related topics: Business Politics Weblogs Current Events Photovoltaics ]

From the Telegraph of London: "John Denver Karaoke Sparks Thai Killing Spree."

[ related topics: Music Current Events Journalism and Media ]

Geek Life Road Map - Notice the quick path from "No" in D&D, and the RIP G.G.

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping ]

We've had a TomTom (720) for a couple of months now, overall it's been one of the best technology purchases I've made. Today it proved itself above and beyond "useful". We were hungry for an early lunch traveling back from Dauphin Island Alabama, and pulled off at generic exit #96, near Evergreen Alabama. You know the exit, Waffle House, McDonalds, etc.. I clicked 'Find Resturants near our location" and one of the listings was 'Beacon, The Restaraunt 2.x miles' - we zig-zag towards town and following TomTom's lead find this odd plain place with a big parking lot. It's right after 11am on a Sunday and they just opened. Walking in, to the right are three long rows of tables, all together like 3 big tables. To the left is a high counter of food warmers, with two older black women primping the food line. Place smells like fried chicken and bacon grease. Nancy, her parents visiting from Alaska and I roll the dice and call "lunch". Meat and 3+, drinks and desert for four for $32.00. The food: incredible. Best lima beans and cornbread stuffing I've had in my life. Nancy had 2nds of the lima beans for dessert, and neither of use normally like lima beans. Right after we sat down, Church must have let out....they started coming in. For a while I thought we would be the only 'pale' people in the place, but soon enough it became quite an interesting mix of a crowd. There is something glorious about the way older black women get dressed for Church, matching hats, scarves, shoes.. and attitude (good, righteous and friendly).

TomTom may enable, yea encourage, the rediscovery of the wonderful crooks and crannies of America.

[ related topics: Religion Food Shoes Birds McDonald's Real Estate Alaska Furniture Food - Bacon ]

Chris had called for a hike this morning, but it didn't start 'til 10, and was just Mountain Home Inn down to Muir Woods and back up. However, there was silence from the usual scotch night crowd, and I felt like being social, so rather than go do a bike ride I drove down to the southern ridge of Mount Tam. Nobody else showed up, so being the heartless villain that I am, I asked Chris if he felt like a little bit of aerobic hiking, and took him up Temelpa.

At some point, undoubtedly trying to foil my dastardly plans by getting me monologuing, Chris asked if my parents were athletic, and I answered "no, not really", but then I realized that I didn't have a baseline. They didn't "work out", and I don't remember the family hiking or biking anywhere near the level I do now, but we did paddle the length Allagash Wilderness Waterway as a family, when we were in the Grand Canyon my dad and I hiked to the bottom and back in a day, and I thought of this sort of thing as normal.

So, what's a baseline for "athletic"?

By the way, the view from the top of Tam was spectacular, it didn't come out in my camera (lousy contrast in the blues at the high end of the range), but we could see clear to the Sierra, and some snow capped peaks north, another person at the top thought in might be the top of the Kings range.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Nature and environment Sociology Work, productivity and environment California Culture Boats Bicycling ]

I was alerted to Strange Maps by a link to a map of U.S. area codes in which rapper "Ludacris" claims to have "hoes", but the other maps there are well worth checking out. (Via)

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping ]

ACLU: U.S. Terror List Now Exceeds 900,000 Names. The ACLU Watch List Counter is a page illustrating the idiocy that is the FBI "Terrorist Screening Center", in which 1 in 300 people, that's nearly 1/3 of the number of people the U.S. currently incarcerates, and most of them are in 'cause of the misguided "war on (some people who use) drugs".

Seems like the assorted authorities are not making a good case that the threats to our liberties and freedoms are external...

[ related topics: Politics moron Law Enforcement ]

Cool pictures of steam trains in a coal mine in China.

[ related topics: Photography Machinery Trains ]

Worth a listen: Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer talking about Montana's refusal to implement RealID, on NPR. From John Robb.

There are two idiocies here: One, that prostitution is illegal and an incident like this shouldn't destroy a career, but two, that... well... Elliot Spitzer caught soliciting prostitution, which is slightly different than the headline... Okay, make that three idiocies here: The headline reads "Spitzer is Linked to Prostitution Ring", although maybe they're only using that to echo the man's hypocrisy:

In one such case in 2004, Mr. Spitzer spoke with revulsion and anger after announcing the arrest of 16 people for operating a high-end prostitution ring out of Staten Island.

"This was a sophisticated and lucrative operation with a multitiered management structure," Mr. Spitzer said at the time. "It was, however, nothing more than a prostitution ring."

The good news is that hopefully one more lying hypocrite will be tossed out of politics. Alas there's no shortage of replacements.

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture moron Law Current Events ]

Interesting: Complaint seeks clarification on McCain's status as a "natural born" citizen, since he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. Those of us who were born outside the U.S. would love to have this one nailed down...

[ related topics: Politics ]

The Woodworking Channel (now a search engine spammer), looks like at least several hours of Sam Maloof talking about his technique.

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

The Chain That Binds: Cycling and Coffee's Unlikely Partnership

[ related topics: Food Sports Bicycling ]

On Saturday I braved the slightly damp mud in the crawlspace to take care of a few issues under the house, among them, at a cost of something like $8 in materials, I insulated the hot water pipes. I have to say that I'm completely amazed at the end results, there were all sorts of times when we had to run the water to get hot water where now we don't. I scoffed, and did it only because Charlene insisted and because I had to be under the house anyway, now I'm a big believer: Go, apply foam tubes, your life will be far more pleasant for it!

[ related topics: Real Estate ]

Police: Allow Sex in All Dutch Parks:

The draft memorandum says that fines will be maintained for dogs running around off the leash that, for example, cause nuisance to sunbathing or cycling users of the park. "The research showed that many people find this disturbing," according to the alderman.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Law Enforcement Bicycling Dogs ]

Should you think that a faster way to make finger boards would be to make two at a time by using a plunging circular saw to cut strips in the middle of a birch board, and should you then be tempted to try to cut the resulting set of 3/32" wide fingers with 3/32" wide spaces into two fingerboards diagonally with said circular saw... don't.

Always wearing eye protection is definitely a good thing. Perhaps a fine dovetail saw would have worked, but the circular saw quickly reduced my nice birch potential fingerboards to splinters.

Doing the fingers individually from the end of the board, however, worked fine.

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

Violet Blue interviews the Wet Spots, alas, I think we'll be out of town when The Wet Spots play San Francisco on the 21^st and the 22^nd, but as consolation here's the Labia Limbo video.

[ related topics: Music Erotic Bay Area California Culture ]

Maple Bacon Lollypops (From MeFi, which includes all sorts of other bacony coolness, like Honey Bacon Apricot Cornbread with maple ice cream drizzled with hot maple syrup and chunks of bacon).

[ related topics: Food - Bacon ]

If you're into photography, just go read this MeFi entry about the CHDK firmware for Canon cameras. The CHDK firmware for many lower end Canon point-and-shoots has a raw mode, adds various histogram features, but also has a scripting setup of some sort to do automatic bracketing for infinite depth of field or high dynamic range shooting, and a time lapse mode.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Over at The Boston Diaries, there's a link to a first person account of surviving a breakup of an SR-71 at Mach 3.2

[ related topics: Aviation ]

Playboy Playmates, 1971 to 2008. Note particularly the hair styles, both on the head and elsewhere. One "landing strip" in 1992, but the shaving didn't start in earnest 'til 2k.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture History ]

Tube Coping Calculator, enter tube diameters, angles and offsets, and it'll get you back a pattern you can use to cut the joint shapes with. Via.

Supermarket Domino, six minutes of products knocking each other over in a Finnish supermarket.

[ related topics: Video ]

Last week an honor-roll student and president of his student council was suspended for buying Skittles (the rainbow of color). This week, a 15-year-old girl gets suspended for stopping an out-of-control bus full of school children.

School administrators can be total morons.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Current Events Public Transportation ]

Just because it's down the street from Meuon: The BoingBoing entry on the Signal Mountain flying saucer house selling.

[ related topics: Chattanooga Real Estate ]

The End of Alt: A Memoir:

When I was a wide eyed nineteen year old with a digital camera and a dream, it was a different story: someone like me could (and did) start a porn site -- one that, free from the pressures of the corporate world, could explore different territory from mainstream porn. But the dream is dead, kids. If you want to be in the online porn scene these days, you've got to have cash -- and as a result, "indie" porn ain't so indie anymore.

[ related topics: Nostalgia Photography Sexual Culture Sexual Culture - 2257 Changes ]

Joseph Weizenbaum, father of "Eliza" and early natural language processing algorithms, dead at 85. Via Paul interviewing Eliza on the subject.

[ related topics: Artificial Intelligence ]

Petaluma has a number of street musicians, including "Petaluma Pete", a guy with an upright piano on a cart who plays ragtime and similar on various street corners. Petaluma360 follows Petaluma Pete around as he plays in all the stores in Petaluma that have pianos in them. Yeah, downtown really is like that.

[ related topics: Music Bay Area ]

Anti-news: More expensive wines taste better, even when they're the exact same wine.

[ related topics: Wines and Spirits Consumerism and advertising ]

Jeff passed along a video of a quadruped robot that's worth a look. Some subset of this has made its way around before, it's the Boston Dynamics "Big Dog". The inevitable MeFi thread has the usual trains of thought about robot overlords, culminating in this line:

The comfort you've demanded is now mandatory.

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Machinery Trains Video Dogs ]

Anthony Minghella dead at 54. Normally this one would slide under my radar, but on Sunday night we had some mindless stuff to do in the living room, and in browsing through the video rental place we stumbled upon Breaking and Entering, written and directed by Minghella. About midway through we nearly simultaneously said "this is not a 'background noise' movie", and though we watched it out we're going to have to see it again. I'm not sure it's a great movie, but it's an interesting character study that definitely seems worth another try.

[ related topics: Movies Video ]

You Chattanoogans will understand...

Eddie Robinson

Clyde Edmond "Eddie" Robinson Jr., 61, passed away Saturday, March 15, 2008, at home. He was preceded in death by his father, Clyde E. Robinson Sr. Eddie was of the Church of Christ Faith, a veteran of the Navy and the owner/operator of the Coffee Shoppe in the Doctors Building.

Eddie is survived by his wife, Hisako; his mother, Monteen Robinson; and his brother, George (Debbie) Robinson Sr., all of Chattanooga; and a sister, Teresa (Lee) Hennis, of Los Angeles, Calif.

A chapel service will be Wednesday, March 19, 2008, at 11 a.m. at the funeral home with Minister John Cupp officiating.

Burial will follow at Chattanooga National Cemetery with military honors.

Visitation is from 2 to 7 p.m. today, March 18, at the funeral home.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions can be made to Hospice of Chattanooga, P.O. Box 19269, Chattanooga, TN 37416.

Active pallbearers will be Roy Cooper, Jerry Morris, David Holm, Jon Delashmitt, George Robinson Sr. and George Robinson Jr.

Arrangements are by J. Avery Bryan Funeral Home, Chattanooga.

Anybody who makes it, give Hisako (although she mostly broke down and Americanized it by spelling it "Chaco") a hug from me.

[ related topics: Chattanooga ]

Arthur C. Clarke has passed through the monolith.

[ related topics: Business Current Events Monty Python ]

googleDrive: drive a little car around Google Maps. (The location lookup looks to be completely hosed for the U.S....)

[ related topics: Automobiles Maps and Mapping ]

In taking over for the disgraced Eliot Spitzer, new New York Governor David A. Paterson and his wife, Michelle Paige Paterson state right up-front that they've had affairs. Via Sexual Intelligence.

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture New York Marriage ]

Damn it!:

According to the study, published in February in Oikos, a highly respected scientific journal, the more beer a scientist drinks, the less likely the scientist is to publish a paper or to have a paper cited by another researcher, a measure of a paper's quality and importance.

My path to greatness has been thwarted.

[ related topics: Beer ]

Hmmm... I'm not sure if this says more about Flutterby, or about AOL users, but my Dad forwarded AOL Psycho's analysis of, I guess, searches by AOL users that ended up at Flutterby.com.

[ related topics: Flutterby Meta Sociology ]

Air Cannon Antenna Launchers - Useful for a quick antenna launch, or fishing.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy ]

When I was a litle kid there was a TV show called Captain Z-Ro, which made time travel its main premise. Since then I've seen lots of shows, movies, and books that deal with it. However, has anybody ever dealt with the administrative details? Now they have.

[ related topics: Nostalgia Books Technology and Culture Movies Television ]

Since we're going for the humor today, Philip Greenspun visits the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Fallingwater:

It was interesting that Wright, so far ahead of his time in many areas, was apparently able to predict the hip-hop aesthetic.

(Note to irregular readers: pointing out flaws in Frank Lloyd Wright architecture is a long-running sport here, although I guess it's not sport if it's shooting fish in a barrel)

[ related topics: Humor Consumerism and advertising Architecture Architecture - Frank Lloyd Wright ]

This artificial article has me laughing. It shouldn't, but as I read about a guy that makes $240/week (12.5k/year) driving a Firebird spending $65/week on gas, my mental image is of that young man, with a mullet, fat tires, a jacked up rear end, and a sticker in the window saying: gas, grass or ass going home to watch Smokey and the Bandit on VHS. "Going out to eat" means eating inside at McDonalds, or under the porch at the BBQ Shack. Yeah, I'm picking on a stereotype, but they picked Camden Alabama, Population < 3000. I can't help it.

Oh, and when I was 18-21, about 80% of my income went to my ride: gas, insurance, tires, parts, speakers...Did I get any sympathy? No.

[ related topics: Business Movies Food Current Events Currency Gambling Economics McDonald's ]

Anti-news: Comprehensive sex ed may cut teen pregnancy rates:

Using data from a 2002 national survey, researchers found that among more than 1,700 unmarried, heterosexual teens between 15 and 19 years old, those who'd received comprehensive sex ed in school were 60 percent less likely to have been pregnant or gotten someone pregnant than teens who'd had no formal sex education.

Via. Such quick one-offs have mostly dropped off my radar, but I've had a few "what the average American is learning from the mainstream media" moments recently, and sanity needs more coverage.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sexual Culture Current Events Journalism and Media Pop Culture Education ]

Huh, I thought I'd posted this already, but it could very well be that when I was shown it I was asked to not talk about it. Wait, aha, here's the previous entry, completely enigmatic and saying nothing about what it was... Anyway, Shawn forwarded me MORAV, a promo web site for a story series (I saw it as a pitch for a TV show with various tie-ins) involving giant robots. Two years ago Fon Davis, one of our neighbors in Lagunitas, showed me through his shop where they were working on this stuff, from various articulated and servo driven models to an exoskeleton used to do animation.

[ related topics: Animation Robotics Television Woodworking ]

Archeology.org: Historical Evidence of a Zombie Attack at Hierakonpolis

[ related topics: Humor ]

I'm fine with my awesome Festool saw. Really. But Fine Woodworking looks at the new SawStop contractor's saw. No more excuses for table saw accidents whatsoever.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Woodworking Festool ]

We've been trying to slowly go metric in the shop. It ain't easy, I've got a 150mm rule in millimeters, which isn't nearly small enough (in fact I'm not sure how anyone manages, half a millimeter is pretty darned big, 1/64" is a nice small size), we got a set of digital calipers that switch back and forth between metric and Imperial, and we got a tape measure, but it's only metric on one side, so I have to be sure to get it on the right side of whatever I'm measuring.

People in other countries have better tools, one of which is Talmeter, what looks like a fabulously designed markingmeasure/tape measure. Want. Can't find anyone who'll ship it to the U.S., but want.

[ related topics: Machinery ]

Elf had a great set of links yesterday, among other people he linked to Mike the Mad Biologist: Another Fight About Framing and Evolution: Can I Play?.

Larry recently had some musings on understanding atheism from his Christian perspective, which I mused a bit about in his comments, but that framing essay made an important distinction that I think is handy from the other side, from us atheists trying to understand people with religion:

Personally, I think Dawkins in his written arguments and public utterances incorrectly conflates three phenomena: religion as cultural identity, supernaturalism, and deism/theism.

I'm not quite sure how to make those splits, but that essay (which is good for other reasons) reminded me that religion is more complex than wackos pushing "creation science".

[ related topics: Religion Sociology ]

The official online Scrabble dictionary.

We have the dictionary and the word builder in dead trees format, but this may be handy...

[ related topics: Games Nature and environment Scrabble ]

A friend of mine is looking for a video guru. Not so much codecs as further up in the pipeline. If you've worked on video editing or delivery software and are interested in working in southern Marin, drop me an email.

[ related topics: Bay Area Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment Video ]

I'd mentioned that we were looking at hot water recirculators. We broke down and got the Metlund D'MAND S-50. The reasons we went with the more expensive solution were:

• We wanted an on-demand system rather than one that recirculated the water all day. With all of the other systems we found this would have required a communication system back to the hot water heater and a timer there, at additional cost and complexity.
• We read horror stories about the systems with simple mechanical valves at the far end costing huge amounts in heating because every time the cold water pressure dropped (ie: for outside use, for instance), the hot water flowed across.
• We've got galvanized steel pipe, so we went with the smallest pump we could find.

All of the pros and cons of water heaters got hashed out in the previous thread, although we also found out in the mean-time that water in winter costs us 3x as much as water in the summer, because that's when they determine our baseline for waste recovery charges. Rather bizarre, given that summer's when we should be conserving water, but who am I to challenge bureacracy.

At any rate, we got it for the convenience factor more than the cost savings, and as a convenience device it is very cool. Looooong baths no longer have the "have to cool down the bath to warm it up" problem. Punch a button by the bed-side, by the time we get to the morning shower it's warm.

The only down-side was the wackiness of the fittings they sent to hook it up, but our house is old and weird, and a quick trip to the hardware store fixed that.

[ related topics: Real Estate ]

My own little Dirty Found, Part One, in which Debra explores an early relationship with pornography:

... We'd been robbed, not in the traditional sense of having something of value stolen from us, but in a way that reminded me that we were girls and not entitled to the things of men.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Some news from the economic front - The administration is well on its way to solving the perceived problem. A Brazilian guy who did a great job on rehabbing our tile floors said he will be moving back to Brazil shortly, as the dollar has fallen far enough that he no longer has the economic incentive to stay here. And we thought this administration didn't have a plan!

[ related topics: Current Events Heinlein Currency Economics ]

I'm finding this disturbing. In my mind, the lack of an active role by western feminist organizations in advancing the rights of women in places like Afghanistan and the lack of support given to Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones are part of a pattern. And I'm not sure this problem is limited to just feminist groups. It seems like there is a patten of organizations that are glad to use free airtime and play ball with politicians but their bottom line seems to be the organization, not the people they claim to be advocating for.

I'm trying not to make this a left-right thing, I acknowledge there are other opinions wrt the Clinton impeachment.

(oops, link didn't show...) http://www.radionetherlands.nl...southamerica/tswi-080329-Bolivia

[ related topics: Politics Civil Liberties ]

Cepstral's Allison Voice and their implementation of it is the best $30.00 I've spent in a while . Asterisk systems come with flite, aka: Festival Lite, which sounds like a computer. "Allison" is very good, and matches the existing recorded voice in Asterisk very well. It reads sentences very naturally compared to other voices I've worked with for 508 Compliance. It just made a project a lot easier than I was expecting.. which was to expect to have to record a -lot- of voice from live humans, and paste it together as needed.

[ related topics: Theater & Plays ]

A bunch of people have been referencing This CNET article about the FBI posting fake "child porn" hyperlinks to get search warrants against the IP addresses that visit them (one source), this seems horribly fraught with danger: If someone gets a hold of one of these URLs, they can then spam all of their enemies, but it seems even worse than that: If the courts are upholding these searches as valid, what's to stop the FBI from sending an email with an embedded image and camping out in front of the appropriate house, waiting for that mail to get read?

Seems like that slippery slope is getting very very steep.

[ related topics: Privacy Sexual Culture Law Current Events Law Enforcement ]

Bicycling lesson of the day: When someone suggests a new electrolyte drink, don't simply mix the powder to a sweetness that seems reasonable and assume it's good. Specifically, don't assume that the sweetener actually contains usable calories, as opposed to, say, stevia, and don't assume that it's got reasonable amounts of salt in it.

Ouch. 40 some odd miles (out to Tomales and back), and I haven't ridden in a while, but damn I was dragging and cramped on the ride home. Didn't help that I had a minor case of something digestive early this morning, but... Ouch.

Gonna have to toss in a scoop of Hammer SE and a teaspoon of salt if I'm going to use the rest of that one.

[ related topics: Physiology Bicycling ]

Nancy has a WinXP system (laptop) at home. She has to use one at work and there is no reason to change for what Nancy normally needs to do. It has a guest login so others can use it when visiting. Normally few problems, Nancy just checks e-mail and a few websites with it.

Last night, Lou (Nancy's Daughter) pops by, and asks to use Nancy's computer to print out a coupon. Sure, no problem. Only it won't print as 'guest', she asks to login as 'notguest/Nancy' so she can print out the coupon (saving her $10+ on cat food), and in doing so installs: "coupon printer". I jump her. badly. Installing software on someone else's system without asking is the ultimate in bad manners for me.

At first glance last night, I confirmed what I read online like this article, and also found other things as browser add-ons that may or may not have been directly related, but were not things that were in that system a few days prior. One 'plug-in' was simply labeled "Research" (now disabled, MSIE doesn't un-install such vermin easily). I'll clean it up more when I'm not steamed.

The "new generation" hasn't got a clue what they are doing with computers.. even when they (like this one) is a CompSci major.

[ related topics: Spam Invention and Design Food Software Engineering Current Events Work, productivity and environment ]

When DVDs first came out, the computer graphics weenie in me hated 'em: I saw all the blocks and artifacting and aliasing, and preferred VHS, although even then I admitted that it was probably because I was used to the VHS artifacts and not yet used to the DVD artifacts. HDTV is out, but apparently Comcast is re-compressing the HD signal in order to squeeze out a little more bandwidth: A discussion forum entry comparing Comcast's HD to FiOS HD, once again someone doesn't have their codecs tweaked right.

[ related topics: broadband Graphics Video ]

I mentioned this in the Sex workers in Bolivia abandoned by feminist groups: The Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy #1.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Civil Liberties ]

Giggle: (New York Governor) David Paterson twitters

[ related topics: Humor New York ]

Somewhere recently, perhaps it was last week's episode of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, I heard a discussion impugning Margaret Thatcher's womanhood, so it amused me to see this aside in a New Yorker look at director David Lean:

("She is all woman, all woman, all woman!" he hissed excitedly to Alec Guinness as they surveyed the Prime Minister during a soirée at 10 Downing Street. "And heavens, with his experience he would have known," Guinness added later in his journal.)

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

I have a problem: I've come to a number of conclusions about the world, how it works, and what the impacts of various activities are on our culture. So when I see things like New Statesman reviewing Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry, a book debunking the current deluge of "sex trafficking" statistics, I think "well duh" and "boy, I wish a lot of people would read this".

I'm sure that on the other side there are other books that they'd like me to read, but I've been through a few and have largely discounted them, just as I'm sure they'll discount a rational look that might actually help to alter the circumstances of those who need a hand up because doing so would undermine the myth that's keeping various "helping" organizations flush with cash.

[ related topics: Politics Books Sexual Culture Sociology Economics ]