Flutterby™! From 2008-06-01 to 2008-06-30

Brilliance! The Letter in the Bottom of the Pond (direct link to larger Flickr version). There will be "easter egg" letters buried in the next major projects I do...

[ related topics: Humor ]

Late last week I was getting bounces to a few Comcast email accounts, and wondered what was going on. Apparently a couple of kids took down Comcast for kicks, and then gave Wired an anonymous interview:

"The situation has kind of blown up here, a lot bigger than I thought it would," says Defiant, a 19-year-old man whose first name is James. "I wish I was a minor right now because this is going to be really bad."

They've fingered Network Solutions as the culprit, a charge that company, as it has every time it's been the weak link in the past decade and a half, has denied. The crackers also claim that when they did get control over the domain, they called up Comcast's technical contact and told him, but that he blew them off:

"If he wasn't such a prick, he could have avoided all of that," says EBK. "I wasn't even really thinking. Plus, I'm just so mad at Comcast. I'm tired of their shitty service."

As a former Comcast subscriber, I sympathize.

[ related topics: Humor broadband moron ]

Y'all know I highly recommend Musee Mechanique (warning, autoplay sound) to anyone visiting San Francisco. Now the East Bay has its own version, Playland - Not At The Beach. It's a bit more spendy, but if you're a fan of either pinball or the old animated dioramas, this seems like it'd be worth a trek. Via this SF Gate article on the new place.

[ related topics: Animation Bay Area ]

Nancy forwarded along this article about "Homouroboros", a stroboscopic zoetrope that was at Burning Man last year and is now on display down in San Jose. The Peter Hudson Design web page has more.

[ related topics: Burning Man Animation Bay Area Art & Culture ]

Seen today at the exit ramp from northbound 17/280 onto eastbound Stevens Creek: a paunchy, well-groomed panhandler in shorts, sneakers, sunglasses, and baseball cap. His cleanly made sign read:

"I've run out of GAS. I'm from out of town.

Please help."

There was a red plastic gas can at his feet and a ring of keys on a green lanyard hung from the bottom center of his sign.

[ related topics: tolkien Nature and environment Sports Shoes ]

How to make a sculpted dog cake. Elisa Strauss of Confetti Cakes sculpts a labradoodle. Via.

[ related topics: Video Dogs Food - Cake ]

Fresno high school valedictorian to be deported:

Seventeen-year-old Arthur Mkoyan's 4.0 grade-point average qualified him to enter one of the state's top universities. But he and his mother have been ordered back to Armenia after their last appeal for asylum failed.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Politics California Culture Education ]

Reason Magazine contrasts Bob Barr's handling of a racist organization's endorsement with Ron Paul's handling of a similar situation. I'm not a particular fan of Bob Barr, but I'll probably end up voting for him, and I think this is a telling difference in campaign style.

[ related topics: Politics Political Correctness ]

QOTD: Boxer Ernie Griffith muses on killing Benny Paret in a match, and his sexuality:

I keep thinking how strange it is ... I kill a man and most people understand and forgive me. However, I love a man, and to so many people this is an unforgivable sin; this makes me an evil person. So, even though I never went to jail, I have been in prison almost all my life.

Via.

[ related topics: Quotes Books Sexual Culture ]

Wired Magazine has published a short piece notifying us that perhaps 700 pieces published by them since 2000 cannot be sourced. They were all by one writer, using two names. She also wrote for other IT publications, and sourcing is as thin there as at Wired. They are not removing the items from their online archive, but appending a note that the articles may, in fact. be fiction. Maybe if they spent less time on the snazzy graphics and famously unreadable headline fonts they might have noticed something.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Technology and Culture Writing Graphic Design ]

K-Mart is selling "True Love Waits" pants:

Whether she is lounging around the house, going to practice, or doing her chores. These soft athletic style crop pants will keep her comfy. Perfect for wearing with her favorite sweatshirt or tee. These athletic pants boldly proclaim just where she stands by pointing out that "True Love Waits" in a large screen print on the front and back of these pants.

Gotten to from here, which I got to from here which

Leaving aside snide comments about the desirability of reproduction amongst K-Mart customers (remember that "abstinence education" graduates have higher unplanned pregnancy rates than graduates of sex education classes that teach all the facts), I'd like to address two points.

First, that these are marketed to parents buying for their daughters, meshing nicely with Figleaf's musings on our cultural dictate of women as 'the "no-sex" class', and feeding into a very Taliban-esque notion that women are responsible for all the abstinence decisions.

Unless, of course, someone can find these in men's styles, in which case that'd negate my second point: I can think of nothing that deserves to be worn in some completely ironic context more. I'm thinking "Burning Man", with the crotch cut out of 'em, or similar. But the appear to be unavailable in my size. Damn.

[ related topics: Religion Burning Man Children and growing up Sexual Culture Sociology Clothing ]

Several of my clients use gmail and google apps, and therefor I use it to access mailboxen where I pretend I am one of "them". It's no longer stable, and this morning is a bad one. Seems to be more and more frequent. Makes me happy to have my own mail servers.. sometimes there is true power to being a loner instead of one of the many.

Here's an interesting site, StangeMaps. My favorite? A floorplan for Sherlock Holmes' flat at 221B Baker Street. Also, check out the Cheese-map of Canada.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Maps and Mapping ]

Medley takes apart an announcement that the FBI is looking for something to do:

The FBI unveiled a task force yesterday to investigate public corruption and government fraud in Northern Virginia, saying the poor economy and an influx of federal dollars into the region could tempt officials and business owners to take bribes or divert contracting dollars for their own use.

Now I'm the first person to suspect wrongdoing, but the article continues:

"We're not standing here saying that the environment is systemic of corruption," Joseph Persichini Jr., head of the FBI's Washington field office, said at a news conference announcing the initiative. "It's reasonable to believe that if a high amount of dollars are coming into a region, that's opportunity. . . . We believe that every citizen is entitled to ethical public service."

I guess the "war on terror" thing has played out in the list of "things we can scare people with to continue to keep our budgets up"?

[ related topics: Ethics Current Events Law Enforcement ]

Brad Guigar speaks negatively of "orphan works" copyright reform legislation.

[ related topics: Copyright/Trademark ]

Salt Lake Tribune Article about a "Sex Ed" teacher that may have answered questions about "homosexual sex, oral sex and masturbation".

The kids admit they were asking the questions.

If they can't ask questions to their teacher, and I'm guessing they can't ask their parents and get a straight answer... that leaves them the internet and experimentation with each other.

The icing on the cake:

Rep. Carl Wimmer, R-Herriman, opened a bill file this week and said he will introduce legislation in January that would enforce criminal penalties on teachers who deviate from state law governing sex education, which requires that it focus on physical and emotional development of adolescents, healthy relationships and the threat and prevention of diseases. The law prohibits promoting or encouraging sexual behavior. His bill also would create a registry to record the names of teachers who violate the law.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture Health Net Culture Education Food - Cake ]

Marin County judge imposes life sentence for 0.03 grams of meth. This anti-meth site says a quarter gram cost roughly $25 8 years ago, I'm having trouble finding more definitive resources, but an effective dose seems to be about that quarter gram, so, three strikes or not, this guy got life for a tenth of an effective dose, probably little enough that you'd be tracking that much on your shoes if you walked through a bad part of town.

Reason magazine has more debunking of methamphetamine hysteria.

Later: The DEA is claiming a dose of meth costs roughly $70 on the street. Tell me again how this is a drug of poverty? Someone's lying. Again.

[ related topics: Drugs Bay Area moron Law Current Events ]

I'm sure there's nothing here that regular Flutterby readers aren't familiar with, but here's a short history of vibrators. (Via)

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

I was wondering what had happened on this: Star Simpson "apologized for the actions that nearly led to her being shot by State Police as a suspected terrorist." She's been sentenced to 50 hours of community service for wearing a shirt with embedded blinking LEDs in an airport.

Katherine Mangu-Ward sums it up:

Simpson "is scheduled to return to MIT this fall for her junior year but will spend the first semester with other MIT students installing an electrical power grid in a Guatemalan village."

You know, after she finishes those 50 hours of community service.

The fuckwits are winning.

[ related topics: Politics Aviation moron Current Events Law Enforcement Clothing ]

Sacramento city and county officials pushing for ordinance to make it illegal for those under 18 to swim without a life jacket.

Parents allowing minors to swim in public waterways without a vest would be guilty of a misdemeanor.

Dickinson said the new law would be worth it, if it saved "even one life."

Great. So we'll get a bunch of adults who don't know how to swim. Yeah, that's freakin' brilliant.

[ related topics: moron ]

New York Times: Explorer - Sonoma County Calif. - On the Trail of a Sustainable Feast.

[ related topics: Food Bay Area ]

A bit of history with which I was unfamiliar: The Royal Ship Vasa: Sweden's Emblem of Power. In 1626 or thereabouts, Sweden's King Gustavus Adolphus decided that he wanted a monster war ship, so he dictated the dimensions to his ship builders. 64 guns, a thousand ornate carvings, the stern rising 50 feet above the water. In 1628, despite some obvious flaws in stability during testing, the boat left port, sailed less than a mile before a gust of wind caught the boat, made it heel far enough to start taking water through its gun ports (that had been opened to fire a salute as it left harbor), and sank.

An inquiry was, of course, opened, but nobody was punished. When the problem is that nobody said "that's a bad design" to the king, calling out the culprit generally doesn't happen. Applications of this as a parable to modern projects, particularly those in software, are left as an exercise for the reader.

More on the history and the salvage, raising and restoration of the Swedish ship Vasa.

[ related topics: Politics History Boats ]

Stolen from Columbine: 42 versions of "Harlem Nocturne". The resulting thread has a couple of suggestions if, like me, you get hooked in the exploration.

[ related topics: Music ]

Hey, Microsoft, it's great that in .NET's "Graphics" class you provide a transformation matrix for your drawing commands so that I can scale the curves I'm wanting to draw. I can even figure out how to work backwards and undo the fact that you transform the pen width in some way (which seems inconsistent with the notion that I can scale independently along axes, but I'll roll with it). What made the whole thing completely unusable, however, is that the curve subdivision doesn't happen in device space. What the hell?

[ related topics: Microsoft moron Graphics ]

Oh dear. Please tell me this happened on the east (other) side of the freeway: Petaluma man hurts daughter while chasing her boyfriend (that he didn't like) with a machete. Yesterday it was cows on the freeway. Suddenly this place feels pretty... uh... small town rural.

Salon: Scenes from a group marriage:

I was a normal 9-year-old boy with two parents. And then, after a fateful camping trip, I had four.

Via Sensible Erection.

[ related topics: Sociology Travel Salon magazine Marriage ]

London cyclists to be allowed to go the wrong way up some one way streets. (Via Shadow)

[ related topics: Law Current Events Bicycling ]

More rent-a-cop follies: Reporter Hassled By Union Station Security While Reporting a Story on Photographers Being Hassled at Union Station. Fox5 reporter Tom Fitzgerald was doing a story on harassment of photographers by security:

While he was there interviewing Amtrak's spokesperson on the subject, who in fact told the reporter that photography is absolutely allowed inside the Amtrak portion of the station, a security guard came up to the Fox 5 crew and told them turn their cameras off.

The video of the report is here.

[ related topics: Photography moron Law Enforcement Trains Video Public Transportation ]

MarkV gets a mention on MeFi for his telescope making pages.

Jay linked to The Interocitor: If I were a terrorist mastermind (part 1): Secret messages, which makes the obvious link: If you want to send obscured messages without revealing the target of the messages, use steganographic techniques inside spam messages.

Then today I saw a spam message and made the link: I believe that The Freenet Project works by sending around a whole bunch of encrypted data, making sure that every node sees a sizable portion of what, to that node, looks like noise, and only those who can decrypt it get the intended message.

Now I'm convinced that there's a large "freenet" like network operating through steganography in spam messages.

And, like the author of that article, I now believe that the best thing we can do to fight terrorism is to fight spam.

[ related topics: Spam broadband Cryptography ]

Particularly low minus tides on Saturday and Sunday morning. I was pushing for Saturday, but it seems like Sunday is a better time. McClure's beach to Kehoe beach via Elephant Cave and the coast. -.7 at 9:32 means we should start southbound at 8:32.

If you're a strong hiker (failure could mean needing rescue by the Coast Guard) and want to see a stretch of coast that's apparently spectacular but that few people ever experience, drop me an email and I'll give you logistics.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Nature and environment ]

I have vague memories from my early years (ie: probably younger than 2) of some elaborate outdoor model railroad/village sort of installation. My guess has always been that this is somewhere in Europe, but I've never actually put the pieces together 'til I was browsing Bird's Eye Tourist, a blog devoted to cool things on Google Earth and MS Live, and saw an entry about Madurodam, in Scheveningen, The Hague, in the Netherlands.

Here's the MS Live view, and here's a page on visiting Madurodam.

[Edit: Fixing MS Live view link]

[ related topics: Trains Toys Maps and Mapping Model Building ]

As research for some products I may be working on I've ended up with a Chumby. It's a little touch screen 320x240 stand-alone WiFi flash player. It's quite hackable, runs Linux, you can SSH into it or run a Flash movie off a USB drive, but they even provide Gerber files and schematics, so you can do things like build smart daughter-boards or hack a big display on to it. But it sure doesn't need any technical sophistication to just use.

I think the best way to think about this is that it's a soft squeezable clock radio combination news scroll that you can solder on.

Right now I have it rotating between a couple of weather widgets, a clock, and a photo application that pulls images off my in-house web server, while it plays an interview with The Chapin Sisters off of KCRW.

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Photography Weblogs Open Source Embedded Devices Embedded Devices - Linux ]

Okay, if anyone out there knows a little bit about Perl and character sets, I need some help with that UTF-8 character people have been running into... More in the comments.

[ related topics: Flutterby Meta Perl Open Source ]

AVWeb on the recent crash of a B2. From the accompanying video:

You're about to see one point four billion dollars worth of aircraft destroyed by a little bit of water.

[ related topics: Cool Science Aviation Current Events Video ]

Anti-news: McCain, spying and executive power: A complete reversal in 6 months. I admit, Obama may be scary, but he isn't nearly as scary as McCain.

[ related topics: Current Events Salon magazine ]

"Because 'no one knows the day or hour'."

http://www.vimeo.com/1109226

Is Radiohead's Nude played by a bunch of HD's as speakers, a printer as drum set.. a Sinclair ZX Spectrum as Rhythm and Lead.. and a scanjet as Bass. Let it play past the first 20 seconds. Awesome.

[ related topics: Music Erotic Sexual Culture History Nudity ]

We had an awesome hike this morning: McClure's beach to Kehoe beach, via the coast. Caves. Surf. Rogue waves. Time pressure from the turning tide. Starfish and anemone so brilliant your art director would say "tone that down a bit".

[ related topics: Dan's Life Nature and environment Bay Area California Culture ]

Interesting New York Times flash Widget showing Clinton vs Obama voters, one interesting thing is that their income brackets seem to be completely inadequate, ending at "> $50k",

[ related topics: Politics Invention and Design Bay Area New York ]

So there's this clip going around of Bill Moyers handling a Bill O'Reilly producer with aplomb. The thing that struck me about this is that this may be the start of the anti-sound-bite: The rational response to thugs like O'Reilly and his crew re-editing and twisting words is to make sure the entire conversation gets viewed in context.

Dave Winer mentioned having the complete political campaign conference calls, and how that made him view both news and media differently, I think it's time we start demanding the background material from our media outlets in general: Give us the press releases that the AP story is just a rewording of, make available the half hour of video from which you've culled the 5 seconds. Don't just wave that "journalism" flag high, because that shit's getting old and there's no accountability.

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

I've had several wacky cell phone connections today, calls where one side of the conversation goes through, the other side doesn't. This culminated in Phil calling me, me not hearing him, so I called him back, and he said "yeah, I just noticed that Apple released a new iPhone today". We laughed for a short while over how irrelevant that news is given the bad luck I've been having with AT&T's sorry-assed excuse for wireless coverage and service.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Wireless iPhone ]

While certain advocates are pushing a forced march towards an Orwellian society to solve a problem that I haven't seen any evidence actually occurs, by mandating standardized government ID to ensure that voters are actually citizens and are actually who they say they are, a more pressing problem appears to be overlooked: SFGate.com looks at "ghost voting" in the state legislature.

If one or two individual voters slip through here and there, that's a hell of a far cry from that sort of crap happening at the state level.

[ related topics: Politics moron California Culture ]

Bacteria make major evolutionary shift in the lab.

Twenty years ago, evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski of Michigan State University in East Lansing, US, took a single Escherichia coli bacterium and used its descendants to found 12 laboratory populations.

One strain develops the ability to metabolize citrate. Because intermediate samples were stored in a freezer, they can go back and replay to figure out where the mutation occurred in that one population.

Lenski's experiment is also yet another poke in the eye for anti-evolutionists, notes Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago. "The thing I like most is it says you can get these complex traits evolving by a combination of unlikely events," he says. "That's just what creationists say can't happen."

Via SE.

[ related topics: Current Events Biology Education ]

QOTD:

I've seen men in fur suits masturbating on stuffed animals. I've seen high heels stepping on snails. I've seen women farting on birthday cakes. I've seen guys wearing white socks in two inches of water in the bathtub. I've seen a tutorial on how to jack-off with a pair of Keds. And I've seen some weird stuff, too.

And if you're not interested in following that link to see the weird stuff (although the essay is rather funny and the weird stuff is safely behind yet another link), XKCD explains "Rule 34".

Got that link from Mefi, which has this gem from "Pastabagel" in the comments:

I look at the porn coming out of Germany and Japan, and I think, man, I really hope we don't lose this war in Iraq.

[ related topics: Quotes Humor Sexual Culture Comics ]

David Weinberger reports on a presentation by Don Burke and Sean Dennehey from the CIA, quoting a 1944 booklet on how to sabotage a business:

1. Insist on doing everything through "channels." Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
2. Make "speeches." Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your "points" by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate "patriotic" comments.
3. When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further study and consideration." Attempt to make the committees as large as possible - never less than five.
4. Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
5. Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.
6. Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
7. Advocate "caution." Be "reasonable" and urge your fellow conferees to be "reasonable" and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.
8. Be worried about the propriety of any decision - raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.

Clearly, "the terrorists" have infiltrated management. Here's the conference session's web page, and here's the BoingBoing entry.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Conferences ]

Help Wanted: Over $50K/yr+Free Health Care+FREE HOME and No Takers.

But his biggest problem is that he can't find help. He says farmers in his area have been trying and trying and trying. They just can't find anyone to move to a small town where it is four hours to the nearest decent airport. He thinks he could hire two, maybe four people full time.

Must be the wages? "Can't be that," he says, "I will nearly pay whatever it takes...with overtime, they could make almost $80,000 a year." On top of that, he will pay all the health care coverage and let people live in one of the houses he owns in his local small town, "just because I thought it would help me attract a family." Beef is free too, and he doesn't need to go to Costco to buy it for the lucky family, either.

Via The Boston Diaries, which also points to these comments on the job that, I think, make it all the more clear why it's hard to do things like start high tech companies outside of the big hotspots.

[ related topics: Food Sociology Current Events Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment Real Estate ]

Crakakakakakakak! Boom! Five minutes of people shooting and things being shot and exploding from the Oklahoma Full Auto shoot.

[ related topics: Guns Video ]

Old sk00l blogger and inspiration for Flutterby Cam is organizing BlogCamp, three days of zip lines, ropes courses, hiking, campfires and other outdoor stuff near the Grand Tetons, in Wyoming.

[ related topics: Cameron Barrett Nature and environment ]

Wow, not only did Scott McClellan have a change of heart, apparently so did George W. Bush:

... "I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric."

Phrases such as "bring them on" or "dead or alive", he said, "indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace".

And "man, like, you know, phrases such as 'Mission Accomplished' indicated to people that, like, I was so stoned out of reality that I didn't know what the f*ck was going on, dude", he did not continue.

It's kinda like when you're working with a developmentally disabled person, and you can tell that somewhere down in there they know that they're not capable of doing what they want to, and it's so frustrating to them. Except that usually it's more something like expressing to you that they really want apple sauce for lunch, rather than wanting to immantentize the eschaton and bring on Armageddon.

[ related topics: Drugs Politics Current Events Handicaps & Disabilities ]

I read that law enforcement agents had discovered and destroyed 27,000 marijuana plants in Sugarloaf Ridge State Park, near Kenwood Sonoma County, and then just a bit later got an email that read "June high-priority weed alert". I blinked, looked closer, and it was from the National Park Service. So I blinked again, and, no, they weren't connected, it was a couple of photos of non-native invasive plants to be on the lookout for.

But there was a moment of trying to put those pieces together there...

[ related topics: Drugs Law Enforcement ]

I built a prototype of one way we might want our kitchen cabinet doors to look. This'd be if we go with inset doors, I need to build a sample frame for this.

I also think that we'll be staining that maple to look a little bit more like the slight orange tint that maple has when you leave it out in the sun. We're still going back and forth on stile shape and the profile we're going to use. Aaaand, the pore filler in the mahogany wasn't colored dark enough either; when using oil as the finish on the baseboards this didn't matter much, but with wipe-on poly the pore filler didn't get saturated enough to darken.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Woodworking Home Improvement ]

I've got two questions brought up by spam: First, who the heck is "Moses Fulk"? Second, given the avalanche of high quality pictures of scantily clad people on the net, why would a spam advertiser steal something from a magazine scan so bad I can see the moiré pattern?

On the other hand, I've actually read a few of the comment threads over on SFGate recently and... well... maybe the world really is that stupid.

[ related topics: Spam Consumerism and advertising ]

In the "things I shouldn't have expected to work in the first place" department, simple Windows Forms apps created with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 will not compile and run properly in Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2005, even though the forms layout and such shows up nicely in the Visual Studio interface.

Oh, and C# on Linux and Mono don't have the "Generic" collections classes (may even be missing templating altogether?), and are also missing may of the Windows Forms controls.

[ related topics: Microsoft Work, productivity and environment ]

The BlogoSphere, according to Vanity Fair. Like trying to place a Libertarian on a scale ranging from Liberal to Conservative, I think there's another axis needed to place Flutterby.

[ related topics: Politics Libertarian Sociology California Culture ]

Hey, in case your media exposure is, like mine, minimal, spend a bit of time looking at news reports about the current flooding in the midwest. It's pretty huge, 500 year flood levels. I don't want to play prognosticator with minimal information, but it looks Katrina huge, and this is all going to flow downstream.

Seems like at the least the American Red Cross could use a few extra bucks.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Splash and Dash is a good example of American socio-political stupidity. An expensive one, that we are paying for. Foreign tankers making round trips to the USA from Europe, just to collect a tax credit by adding .1 percent of American Diesel.

Interesting Candy Design - Click, laugh, enjoy. - I'm going back to work now.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Graphic Design ]

A bicycle built for two (and a boat), a tandem with a side car carrying a sailing canoe.

[ related topics: Boats Pedal Power Bicycling Bicycling - Tandem ]

If you see a suspicious package on the subway in London it's probably highly confidential terrorism policy documents:

The documents outline how trade and banking systems "can be manipulated to finance illicit weapons of mass destruction in Iran," The Independent reported.

The papers also describe methods to fund terrorists and address "potential fraud of commercial Web sites and international Internet payment systems."

While we're talking about terrorism policy idiocy, you know that middle eastern government with a despotic repressive government and an unstable political system? No, silly, the one we're giving nuclear technologies to.

[ related topics: Politics moron Public Transportation ]

Or What hath Google wrought?

Great article from the UK (Andres Sullivan) on how Google might be changing how we think.

"When I was younger I would carry a single book around with me for days, letting its ideas splash around in my head, not forming an instant judgment (for or against) but allowing the book to sit for a while, as the rest of the world had its say the countryside or pavement, the crowd or train carriage, the armchair or lunch counter. Sometimes, human beings need time to think things through, to allow themselves to entertain a thought before committing to it."

Some have suggested a web sabbath a day or two in the week when we force ourselves not to read e-mails or post blogs or text messages; a break in order to think in the old way again: to look at human faces in the flesh rather than on a Facebook profile, to read a book rather than a blog, to pray [!] rather than browse.

It does not appear to me that the net has improved most peoples methods of thinking, however.

All over the web this weekend, the Associated Press has decided it needs to come up with it's own version of "fair use". Evidently, the AP is upset that blogs are using too much material from AP stories and not directly linking. This is kind of silly because blogs that don't directly link are likely not being read as widely as blogs that regularly link. And publishers shouldn't arbitrarily limit quotations because they cannot (and should not) predict the context of the quotations.

TechCrunch and others have announced a boycott. Evidently the AP is listening... a little...

"We don't want to cast a pall over the blogosphere by being heavy-handed, so we have to figure out a better and more positive way to do this." - AP Vice President Jim Kennedy

[ related topics: Weblogs Journalism and Media Copyright/Trademark ]

Dave attributes this one to Flutterby, but I don't see it here, so...

Whether the top marginal tax rate is above 90% or below 30%, Federal revenue as a percent of GDP has been about 19.5%, for the past half century.

[ related topics: Politics History Economics ]

Petaluma has a skate park. I have skates. On Saturday, I took my inline skates down to the park and played for a bit, gaining some humility. On Sunday's hike I carried 5 gallons of water, just to make it fair, so I was a little sore on Sunday afternoon, but I went down to the park anyway to try something my legs were just itching to do, and managed to land a couple of "up the bank forward, turn, hop forward to backward and come back down backward" moves.

Then the hot shots on the bicycles showed up and started doing real stuff, so I went shopping, but this skate park stuff is fun.

[ related topics: Skating Bicycling ]

Burning Man art: Flaming cyclist (Direct LiveLink video).

[ related topics: Burning Man Art & Culture Video Bicycling Bicycling - Tandem ]

Why didn't I think of that? Penis Reduction Pills

[ related topics: Humor Sexual Culture ]

I'm not really sure WHY Bacon is a recurring theme on Flutterby. But it is. Perhaps this will end this delicious genre, for I submit to Flutterbarians: Canned Bacon

[ related topics: Food - Bacon ]

Ragging on audiophiles is too easy, but every once in a while I think we need a good laugh. Colin pointed out the $500 "Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable" 1.5m Cat5 cable:

Made of high-purity copper wire, it's designed to thoroughly eliminate adverse effects from vibration and helps stabilize the digital transmission from occurrences of jitter and ripple. A tin-bearing copper alloy is used for the cable's shield while the insulation is made of a fluoropolymer material with superior heat resistance, weather resistance, and anti-aging properties.

In other words, it's a Cat-5 cable. The reviews are silly.

[ related topics: Humor Music moron ]

A little political coverage: YouTube video: The Real McCain 2. In his own words. Snicker.

[ related topics: Politics moron Journalism and Media Video ]

During one of the recent Flutterby discussions on gender roles, a regular here forwarded me How I Became A Mensch, in which the male author praises his return to more traditional gender roles. In the process he both lambastes the Maoist tendencies of some early feminists, and describes how at 50, he finally figured out the issues that led to the sort of relationship that worked for him:

A woman surrenders her power, in trust. This is how a woman expresses her love: by trusting. In this way, women actually empower men. If a man betrays this trust, he loses his power.

In return for her power, a woman gets what she really wants: a man's power expressed as his intense, undivided love.

Except, of course, this isn't just for him, this is his proscription for all men and women. It doesn't take much searching to find pretty strong counter-examples, like the tale of this woman.

This has been sitting in my tab list next to How To Be A Feminist Boyfriend, a similarly proscriptive and stereotypical rant from the other side of the fence, and one which leads me to want to write a "how to be a feminist girlfriend" which includes tasks like "change your own damned oil/lightbulbs/...".

In short, in both cases my response was that though there's a veneer on both that looks like truth, and though I'm the last person to deny people the option of consensual dominant or submissive relationship choices, I believe that both are falling into the trap of the "local minimum". It's easier to buy into the existing cultural stereotypes, and to treat your partner solely as an expression of that stereotype, than to build the sorts of relationships that we'd actually thrive on.

Then, with the snarky tag Next Up, Researches Suggest Water May Run Downhill, Figleaf linked to this New York Times article, "Same Sex Couples Offer Insight Into Gender And Marriage":

"Heterosexual married women live with a lot of anger about having to do the tasks not only in the house but in the relationship," said Esther D. Rothblum, a professor of women's studies at San Diego State University. "That's very different than what same-sex couples and heterosexual men live with."

Other studies show that what couples argue about is far less important than how they argue. The egalitarian nature of same-sex relationships appears to spill over into how those couples resolve conflict.

Which would suggest that people tend to get along much better when they can view each other as... well... people, rather than, say, "a rudderless boat" (that needs a man as a rudder).

Having said that, evidence continues to accumulate that some gender reactions are innate (Via), but that doesn't mean that we have to treat those reactions as inferior or superior, just as potential traits of the individual to whom we are relating.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture Health Nature and environment Invention and Design Theater & Plays Sociology Boats Machinery Education New York Archival Marriage Real Estate Woodworking ]

Talking Jesus Doll, with prayer book:

The Talking Jesus Doll is a religious treasure that recites key verses from the Bible aloud. Just press the button and the Talking Jesus Doll speaks to your child.

Via, in the comments of which are all the wise-cracks I could possibly imagine.

[ related topics: Religion Humor ]

A few months ago, I set up a business account with Wells Fargo. We'd grown dissatisfied with our previous bank, our mortgage is there, and we were thinking about moving all of our banking over there, just to make one login for everything. There was a little confusion when I signed up, because Bank of Petaluma had just been acquired by Wells Fargo, and the staff didn't yet have everything ironed out. But I got the account set up, deposited two checks, really liked the way the ATM deposit receipt gave me scanned images of the checks, life was good. I was even able to use the online banking stuff.

And then at some point, the on-line banking started giving me:

Please try again later. Wells Fargo Online® is temporarily unavailable.

For that reason, among others, we decided to move our personal banking to Redwood Credit Union (RCU). After a few weeks of "Please try again later. Wells Fargo Online® is temporarily unavailable.", I decided to move my business account as well. So I opened an account at RCU, and they called me back and said "Would you bring in supporting paperwork? Your EIN looks to us like an SSN." So I did.

Today I went over to Wells Fargo to close out the old business account, and I discovered just what sort of disaster they'd managed to create. Somehow they'd gotten my EIN as my SSN, and associated that across the mortgages in such a way that it just tied their system in knots, which was the real cause of the timeout message. It's taken two visits over there to get things somewhat straightened out. Really nice pleasant staff dealing with some really bizarre and byzantine systems. Because we're moving our banking, we needed to cancel some automatic payments, and the hoops we had to jump through to get the right places to send money to were beyond comical.

Among various interesting things I've learned (the primary one being "screw identity theft from strangers, be careful of giving your personal details to Wells Fargo"), the interesting thing to me is that the databases between those two financial institutions are linked such that a screw-up between my EIN and my SSN on the part of Wells Fargo can propagate over such that RCU gets a warning that my EIN appears to be an SSN.

As I said, I don't think this was a people failure, I think this was a systemic failure, and I think it'd be fascinating to see more of those systems than I glimpsed today.

[ related topics: Privacy Currency Databases Economics ]

noted pilot Janet Christine Dietrich, first woman to get an Airline Transport Pilot License, one of 13 women to train for the Mercury space program, dead at 81.

I'm going to have to read more about the Mercury 13

[ related topics: Aviation Space & Astronomy ]

Charlene had picked up The United States of Arugula some time ago, and recently I picked it up. It's an interesting romp through the history of foodies in the U.S., from the New York Herald Tribune introducing pizza to its readers in 1939, up through... well... Niman-Schell has become Niman Ranch. What's especially interesting is comparing and contrasting this version of events to others, such as those put forth in The Omnivore's Dilemma or numerous local accounts.

I also find the coastal differences, at least as recounted in this book, fascinating: The west coasters doing interesting things with locally grown stuff, often as an off-shoot of hippy "back to the land" culture, the New Yorkers going gaga over whatever they could import from foreign lands.

[ related topics: Books Invention and Design Sociology California Culture New York Real Estate Michael Pollan ]

I just clicked through to a New York Times article, and the interstitial ad had "Pain Killer / Party Starter" fade in over a pill, fade out, and fade in "Your Health / Their High". In small type down there in the lower left there was a "Parents, the anti-drug" tag, so I assume that this was more propaganda from the as always hilarious "ONDCP", but now I'm obsessed with finding out what drug they were talking about.

That sounds like fun!

[ related topics: Health moron Consumerism and advertising ]

Awesome: Stewart Butterfield's resignation from Yahoo letter. Via Eric Wagoner.

Dear Microsoft,

If you're not going to provide Visual Studio C++ 2005 Express for download, then the version of Visual Studio C++ 2008 that you're providing is not "beta", it is your release. That is all.

[ related topics: Microsoft moron ]

I'm going through what is essentially a payment system and it's various interfaces, web, e-mail, text, SMS/text... getting ready for a production install that will get hammered by the general population as well as those with "intent and intelligence". I'm realizing that about 50% of the code in the entire system is dedicated to detainting and logging inputs from humans as well as "trusted systems" it interfaces to. Including writing out logs of any "deleted" data.

I want a detaint(<world>) function. Not just for code and systems... but for the world. There would be a lot less people, I wonder which regex(s) I would get nailed by. Which is part of what I am running into. In truly paranoid mode, not much works nicely. You have to back it down a few notches and trust some people.. just a little. Then we'll have to slap a few hands.. and we'll learn some new things.

[ related topics: Spam Invention and Design Theater & Plays Writing Work, productivity and environment Mathematics Sports ]

Just in case you didn't think Flutterby was too geeky for you recently, the lesson of the morning: When reading the busy flag from a Hitachi 44780 LCD controller, you can't bring up R/W and E (enable) simultaneously, R/W must be brought up first. Even if it's just a clock cycle (I'm currently running the device at about 8MHz) difference. No wonder most authors simply recommend waiting 160 microseconds.

Next up, exploring sleep modes for ultra-low power behavior.

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Embedded Devices ]

Fear Of Heights

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Television ]

Cody's Books: RIP:

The Board of Directors of Cody's Books made this difficult decision after years of financial distress and declining sales.

According to Cody's president, Hiroshi Kagawa, "[It] is a heartbreaking moment .. In the spring of 2005 when I learned about the financial crisis facing Cody's, I was excited to save the store from bankruptcy. Unfortunately, my current business is not strong enough or rich enough to support Cody's. Of course, the store has been suffering from low sales and the deficit exceeds our ability to service it."

[ related topics: Books ]

In between carving out cuts in our lawn for the irrigation pipe for our pop-up sprinkler system, work, some embedded systems development I've been doing on my own, and a hike, I finished The United States of Arugula, subtitled "The Sun-Dried, Cold-Pressed, Dark-Roasted, Extra Virgin Story of the American Food Revolution". It starts by quoting a 1931 New York Herald Tribune story announcing the new-fangled pizza ("...pronounced 'peet-za'...") to the unwashed masses, and follows through the James Beard and Julia Childs eras up to the modern overrunning of the Vegas buffets by the likes of Puck and Emeril.

I wanted to love this book. It started strong, it made me hungry, it got me cooking again, since we've moved my attentions to the kitchen have been mostly in the "what gets us fed" vein, and yet in trying to tell the story of a revolution not yet finished, it becomes a tragedy: In leaving us with the franchising of the celebrity chefs, rather than telling a tale of triumph over the bland processed factory foods of the middle of the last century, it drops us back into a "meet the new boss, same as...".

The last chapter is essentially the author, David Kamp, giving each of the modern celebrity chefs a turn-by-turn attack on Alice Waters, and in those final few pages I nearly threw the book against the wall when I read:

... "McDonald's could have a huge impact," the activist Ronnie Cummins, the director of an advocacy group called the Organic Consumers Association, told The New York Times in 2005. "They could be the company that changes agriculture toward a more organic and sustainable model." And even if McDonald's did this for less than pure reasons — like, say, because they discovered that they could make a fortune selling a McNiman Bolinas Burger with organic lettuce and tomatoes and Marion Cunningham's All-Natural Special Sauce at a three-dollar markup over a Big Mac — well, what's the harm?

It's not that I deny the attractiveness of the "know what you're going to get" aspects of McDonald's, or even the appeals of standardization and mass-production, and, in fact, I get behind any efforts by the fast food giants to bring the quality of their product up. It's just that food is one of the strongest ritual elements in our lives, it's a cultural identity, and a strong reflection of our culture. If we celebrate the removal of art from the process, the subtleties and twists and influences of individual creative endeavor, if we assume that a restaurant is good because some personality who thinks we lack salt and butter in our diet manages to come up with a procedures manual that any kid out of cooking school can duplicate without too much effort, what are we celebrating in our culture?

In leaving those who'd turn food back into the GM style assembly line process, even if it is the metaphorical Cadillac brand, with the last word, Kamp puts a finalé on a symphony that's not nearly through all of its movements, and loses the opportunity to celebrate the things which could continue to inspire our culture. I want to go to the farmer's market and find things that I couldn't buy in the produce section of the local super market, I want the next generation to be aspiring to bring something more to the process than branding and investment acumen, I want them to be exploring the problem space and coming up with a diversity of solutions.

And in that way, I suppose the book succeeds. That he chronicles yet another revolution that isn't, that's stopped early in the popular mind, may yet inspire those of us who thirst for more.

[ related topics: Books Food Sociology Consumerism and advertising Pop Culture Economics McDonald's ]

Trying to dig in trenches for pop-up sprinklers. Haven't done hard physical labor in a while. Hands are blistering, which is expected with extensive pick work.

I haven't done an actual perc test on this clay yet, though I should, but I bet it's measured in microns per fortnight.

Next up, finding an irrigation controller that'll do a minute on, five off, for an hour or so.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Work, productivity and environment ]

"Rat shit, bat shit, dirty old twat. Sixty-nine assholes tied in a knot. Hooray! Lizard shit! Fuck!"

-George Carlin (1937-2008)

RIP.

[ related topics: Drugs Humor Death ]

MagCloud "...enables you to publish your own magazines. All you have to do is upload a PDF and we'll take care of the rest: printing, mailing, subscription management, and more."

Half of me wants to say "Oh, look, the customization of manufacturing is finally arriving", the other half of me wants to say "It's like writing an HTML viewer for a BBS", the fact that the concept can exist makes it obsolete.

We're letting all of our magazine subscriptions expire in favor of online ones.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Writing ]

Would you work with micromanaging boss, no salary, and all your work thrown away?

The job has:

• $0 salary and no equity (you’re supposed to be compensated in experience)
• no benefits other than vacation and sick time: no insurance, for example
• no possibility of promotion or raise, ever
• no job description: just do what you’re told
• micromanaging boss asks about project status every hour

...

Via.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Work, productivity and environment Education ]

Random video: 728 ton mass damper in the Taipei 101 skyscraper moving around during the recent earthquakes (Direct YoutUbe link, though the background in the other blog entry is worthwhile). And, continuing the physics theme, lady lets escalator rails spin her around.

[ related topics: Earthquake Video ]

Looks as if the good folks in San Francisco will have an opportunity to vote in November to rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant.

During the inauguration, the group also wants supporters to participate in a "synchronized flush"- a way to send a gift to the renamed plant, which supporters say, would be a "fitting monument to this president's work."

[ related topics: Humor Bay Area California Culture ]

Visibility outside is a few miles and the air smells of smoke. Lots of fires, burning all over California. The closest (big) fire, four thousand some-odd acres over on the border between Napa and Solano county (Hope Todd and family are doing okay), doesn't even show up on the full sized version of this map, available from the NASA Earth Observatory Natural Hazards web site on the current California wildfires.

And in case that NASA link ever goes bad, here's a local copy of the big current image.

[ related topics: Photography Todd Gemmell Bay Area Space & Astronomy Maps and Mapping ]

"Political Compass" for the 2008 U.S. Presidential primaries.

[ related topics: Politics ]

Spot Messenger claims to be a GPS position transponder that transmits via satellite, for as little as $100/year. They have four levels of position message, casual progress tracking, check-in, help from friends and family, and help from government authority.

[ related topics: Cool Technology Maps and Mapping ]

Huh. Charlene had sent some samples off for one of these hair analysis things, and just for giggles we sent mine off too. I got the sheet with the numbers back but there were no units on it. I did some searching around for literature on the subject of hair analysis, and then talked to the person who was supposed to interpret this sheet. She didn't know what the units were either. She did, however, suggest a "cleansing" regime to deal with the mercury.

This morning I tracked down the units the lab is allegedly using (links elided to protect the guilty):

We report our results in Mg%(milligrams percent) or milligrams per 100 grams of hair. This means that 100 grams of hair would contain the reported number of milligrams of the minerals listed. Some possible equivalent ways these units might be referred to are milligrams percent and milligram per deciliter.

So ignoring the fact that "milligrams per deciliter" is a measure of mass per volume and milligrams per hundred grams is a measure of mass per mass, the latter being a reasonable set of numbers, the former being absurd for something like hair, we get to interpreting what "0.106 Mercury" means. I'm having trouble finding that one paper again, but I ran across a paper on one of the CDC or NIH web sites claiming that the norms were in the 10 micrograms per gram for non-seafood eaters, 25 or so for seafood eaters. Which means that, according to this lab, I'm an order of magnitude below the norm.

Hmmm... I'm, well, skeptical.

[ related topics: Health Physiology ]

Can't type this one repeatedly without cracking a smile department: stream.SafeFileHandle.DangerousGetHandle() (explanation for .NET nerds)

[ related topics: Microsoft ]

Today is Bike to Work Day in Boulder (and Denver). Lots of the usual - packed bike paths and good breakfast food. At least for those of us lucky enough to avoid the bears.

[ related topics: Current Events Bicycling ]

I just looked at my mail on my desk at work. There's a flyer for the Federal Information Security Conference 2008 being held in Colorado Springs. The keynote speaker is (I kid you not):

Major General Lord, Cyber-Commander

Wasn't he the bad-guy in some video game I used to play?

[ related topics: Games Work, productivity and environment Video Conferences ]

Bwahahahaha! UK students outsource IT classwork to India. The workshop on the topic. Via this re-pagination of the original press release masquerading as an article via this /. article.

[ related topics: Current Events Education ]

Aaand, thanks for all the "happy birthday" notes. Yep, I've survived four decades, evidence that the universe has bizarre and strange workings which won't ever be fully understood.

Interesting. We just got back from a "please come volunteer for us" session with "The Family Connection", a program of COTS, the organization that runs the local homeless shelters. The idea of this particular program is providing support from five or so regular folks that a person in transition from temporary shelter to normal life can call upon for support, from trying to figure out how to approach potential landlords to dealing with kid logistics. We're not going to be able to make the next training session, but given that this is roughly what we've ended up doing for a few folks recently, albeit without the other 4 people and the support of those who've seen the process happen before, it seems like a reasonable place for us to put in a few hours a month trying to make a difference in our community.

[ related topics: Sociology Community ]

I've been tossing info about the fires here, but here's what it's like in practice. This was taken from our driveway, probably an hour before sunset this evening. No filters.

[ related topics: Photography Archival ]

When various people (Scalia, DOD officials, etc) say that those released from Guantanamo Bay have "returned to the battlefield", what do they mean? And the Seton Hall Law Center for Policy and Research publication that first article pulls from.

[ related topics: California Culture ]

What did it cost for Democrats in the House of Representatives to sell out your privacy in granting the telecommunications giants immunity for whatever illegalities they may have committed in following the illegal instructions of the Whitehouse in tapping your telephone? About $8k.

Those Alaskans, with arguably the most corrupt legislators in the union, have started an effort to buy back their legislators. My main concern is that ours don't appear to stay bought.

[ related topics: Politics Privacy Alaska ]

A few observations for the afternoon.

Justice can only occur in situations of power imbalance at the discretion of the entity with the most potential for violence. Among peers, justice exists in the détente between parties with equal capacities for violence.

Seen in my daily reads, but I can't find it again right now: Futurists have been looking forward to the singularity/age research payoff/whatever, and people living for hundreds of years. Politicians tend to be older, and often retire by dying. A 500 year lifespan would mean that many of our current politicians would have been alive during the Protestant Reformation.

[ related topics: Sociology Law ]

This story about illegal water barrels in several states, specifically Colorado, and not re-using water seems contrary next to agendas like USGBC's Leed Certification which actually encourages catching rainwater, potentially even for things like showering, flushing toilets.. There are some excellent comments below the story as well.

Went over to Hertz equipment rental this morning to look at what they had for trenchers, 'cause Cal West's trenchers all looked way bigger than would be reasonable in our yard. Ended up coming home with an electric jack hammer. Worked all day, with a short break to help a friend move mattresses and a trip to the hardware store when I broke a trencher shovel (rental, glad I got the damage waiver) and our little cart (replaced with a beefy wheel barrow). Got all the trenching done in the front yard, still need to trench about 30 feet in the back yard, but I think I'm clear of all the underground stuff.

Interesting note, I called USA North to have the various utilities come out and mark where things were so that I didn't cut anything critical. The various entities came out and wrote things in chalk on the lawn. "OK" appears to mean "somewhere in this vicinity there's some fragile stuff" (the main water line is less than 6" down, the other "OK" was somewhere near but definitely not on the sewer line), a detailed diagram means "we think there's a gas line here, but it's deep enough that you'll never find it".

[ related topics: Dan's Life ]

Caught the latest Pixar movie. I won't bother deconstructing the CG - I'm sure there are people more expert than I floating around here. The story was cute but seemed somewhat derivative - not sure what it's derived from yet but it'll come to me. Overall, it wasn't Ratatouille or Nemo but still a fun movie.

[ related topics: Pixar Animation Movies Graphics Boats ]

Renegade Evolution has an interesting "porn meets fair speech" conundrum: Anti-porn slide-show uses images without permission. Claims they're "fair use", which they probably are, but, they're not being published in a 2257 compliant manner. Please, can we get a federal prosecutor to come down on these disingenuous creeps?

I'm working with some folks right now and we're dealing with some.... interesting notions for playing patent, trademark and copyright law to control interoperation with software and devices and do DRM. I hadn't thought about using embedded porn...

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Copyright/Trademark Sexual Culture - U.S. Code Title 18 Section 2257 ]

The web version of the article that got printed in the new glossy printed regional monthly magazine of The Family News Network, which makes her a published author. WooHoo! Congratulations.

[ related topics: broadband Invention and Design Sociology Current Events ]

Guy lives on the island of Jersey, discovers he has a buried German WWII bunker in his back yard (longer noisier original thread). I got this from a MeFi thread, in which mr_crash_davis wins the comments:

"...even if they end only with the uncovering of a big hole in the ground."

Just a big hole in the ground? Holy crap, do you know how excited I would be to discover a weatherproof steel-roofed underground RV storage tunnel and workshop that size on my property? You'd be able to see my boner from space!

And a little back-story on the German occupation of Jersey.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Cool Science Space & Astronomy ]

I haven't had a hankering to do web development for a bit, but Google's App Engine looks intriguing, write your apps in Python, they give you a version you can run on your own servers, or you can run it on their infrastructure. Here's notes on how to do full-text searching in Google's App Engine.

[ related topics: Web development Python ]

The car chase from Bullit played along-side the location of the scene on Google Maps. (Via)

[ related topics: Movies Automobiles Maps and Mapping ]

I don't think polyamorists have a particular code of style - but polygamists sure do! And now that the FLDS families are reunited, they are leveraging that fame into a web fashion industry.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Fashion ]

Today is the 100th anniversery of the mysterious Tunguska Event. Crashed UFO, comet, chunk of anti-matter, wandering little black hole: you decide.

[ related topics: Astronomy Heinlein Conspiracy ]