Flutterby™! From 2008-09-02 to 2008-09-30

100 Protesters "processed" - scroll down, see the "violent" protesters surrounded "2:1" a group called "Recreate 68" that supposedly even had a "permit" to do a little peaceful protesting. The close-up make me wonder what an evil violent thing peace protesting could be.

George Orwell, you were only off a few years.

Don Lafontaine dead at 68. Movie trailers from here on out will be a little less majestic.

[ related topics: Movies ]

QOTD: From this list of questions sent to 2006 candidates for Governor of Alaska, where the question was:

Are you offended by the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?

Sarah Palin replied

Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.

As was said over at Danger West, "If English was good enough for Jesus...".

And, of course, even the mainstream media is questioning Sarah Palin's stance on sex education issues given that her 17 year old daughter is 5 months pregnant.

It's like the Republicans actively want to lose this election.

[ related topics: Religion Quotes Politics Humor Sexual Culture moron Education Alaska ]

Palubicki: I think the lesson to take from Gustav is to hope that a natural disaster hits you during an election year.

Thanks, meuon, for the reboot! The logs clearly say that the Flutterby server is running out of RAM, it appears to be doing it on Sunday mornings, but I can't see anything particular out of the ordinary going on.

[ related topics: Flutterby Meta ]

Hey, is anyone out there currently using and happy with a PDA? My Palm Vx is gathering dust somewhere, but I'm starting to want something that'll do ToDo and Calendaring. I'm currently leaning towards an actual paper notebook, but if anyone's got an electronic suggestion I'm listening.

I'm wanting to do a longer edited version of this, because we've got some good footage, but... Yesterday, Forest came over to hang out. We wired up some valves for the irrigation system (it's amazing how much easier crawling under the house is when there's someone at the hatch with a flashlight to commiserate to), did some work on the kitchen cabinets, and then decided to have some fun. We went down to the local mini-mart and got a 2 liter of A&W, brought it home, drilled a hole in the cap, put a bike tube valve through the hole, filled it half full of water, pumped it up, turned the cap off, and the thing launched out of our front yard and hit the telephone wires. Hard. And the neck of the bottle was all flared.

So we filled a cooler full of water, got in the car, went to Albertsons, bought a bunch of the cheap soda, and went to a local park. Did a bunch of launches, had some fun talking with people there, but after a while kind of felt like we should give the park back to other people, given that with our lack of aim a full quarter to a third of the city block was "down range".

However, the day still wasn't "over", there was no big culmination to playing with bottles at 100+PSI, so we decided to pump one up 'til it exploded. We pegged the meter on my bike pump, which goes to 160PSI, and still no boom (From previous experiments, I expected the cap to be history at about 120PSI), so, with the camera rolling, I grabbed a screwdriver, and from a safe point, dropped it.

Here's a little video, I'll do some higher quality (with a little more context, if everyone involved is okay with appearing in pixels) later. Yeah, we were kinda shocked we didn't have police cruisers in the neighborhood shortly thereafter.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Video ]

One of these days I'll make it to the Burn. But some fellow geowankers posted this to the listserv:

Tom Longson had modified a tricycle bike to hold a camera with a 360 degree camera, he and his brother Jay collected Street View type data of at least the Esplanade, Center Camp, and the Temple.

Jeffrey Johnson went up flying I think Wed, Thur, Fri and Sat and captured pretty complete aerial imagery of the city as it grew.

Mikel Maron did kite aerial photography, including this awesome image from directly above the man.

The Burning Man Earth Crew had a map of the city in Garmin format, so you could actually do things like navigate to a specific Art piece. At least a few members of the public (for a particular definition of 'public' :-) got the map loaded onto their Garmin's.

Andrew 'Haggis' did a lot of pre-playa modeling of the city in Sketchup, and captured texture maps on the Playa.

I took about 45 gigapans, including going up really freaking high in a cherry picker and taking this gigapan.

You can zoom in on the Man's heart and read most of the signatures and inscriptions. (this is a draft stitch - the final stitch should get rid of most of the vignetting).

[ related topics: Burning Man Photography Art & Culture Maps and Mapping ]

A Denver cyclist goes riding during the Democratic Convention.

[ related topics: Politics Bicycling ]

A video update with some slow motion (yeah, I'm still playing with my video editor) to my "Boom" entry.

I've been playing with Google Chrome since yesterday's release and it seems like a nice little browser. It's still in beta, and only for windows xp/vista at the moment, however it's surprisingly fast, follows css standards very well, and doesn't consume gobs of memory. Reading the comic book about how it works seems like they have some very interesting ideas... although reading a comic book about a product gives me the willies for some reason.

[ related topics: Web development Technology and Culture Marketing ]

Here's a succinct summary of the political season so far, and a suggestion for an alternative candidate for this election: Change we can submit to.

[ related topics: Politics Humor ]

This MeFi entry pointed to a fairly long article The Believer - The Henry Ford of Literature, about publisher Emanuel Haldeman-Julius and his "Blue Books" of the early 20^th century, inexpensive editions of the classics interspersed with books on sex ed, contraception, and similar subversive ideas.

In the midst of his publishing heyday, when asked how he might be remembered, Haldeman-Julius speculated that his obituary would mention how “I sold hundreds of millions of [books] and usefully served a portion of my generation with fairness, sincerity, and intelligence…. It may mention my forthright attacks on all forms of Supernaturalism, Mysticism, Fundamentalism, and respectable and dignified bunk in general.

“It may even go so far as to say that I changed the reading habits of Americans and created millions of new readers for the book publishers who followed me.”

The article itself kind of drags, Haldeman-Julius sounded like an interesting guy who had troubles with the establishment, but it's the sort of tale that has similar endings to so many in the 1950s: his downfall included publishing stuff critical of the FBI, which resulted in investigations by the IRS, and eventually ended up with him found floating in his swimming pool.

What was interesting, though, was this MeFi comment comparing Mike Gunderloy's efforts with Factsheet 5 to those of Emanuel Haldeman-Julius:

These people, institutions, events that make a huge difference but are unknown a generation later -- they're amazing to me. It seems to me it's a clear error to say that we learn they didn't matter because no one chooses to remember them, but that seems to be the way we're going in a Wiki-world, "Wisdom of Crowds" future.

[ related topics: Politics Books Sexual Culture Sociology ]

Makes me optimistic: 11 year old girl field strips and re-assembles an AR-15 in 53 seconds. thanks, crasch.

[ related topics: Guns Video ]

QOTD: TheBrad on spam:

Spam e-mail encourages me to "say goodbye to poor performance in bed". Heck, I do that already, except I try to be polite about it.

[ related topics: Quotes Sexual Culture Spam ]

Since numerous commenters in the MeFi thread say that anyone who lives without TV will tell you about it, it's a moral imperative that I link to this: Out There: People Who Live Without TV is a fluff piece about Living Without the Screen: Causes and Consequences of Life without Television by Marina Krcmar.

[ related topics: Books Technology and Culture Sociology Television ]

The Matlock Blog: Drink. Drive. Go to jail. Really?

Somewhere, a Texas prosecutor is smiling. It dawned on me. Those billboards are not about deterrence. Whoever came up with that slogan wasn’t thinking that the campaign was going to stop anyone from having a drink before driving. The purpose of these billboards is to contaminate the jury pool.

[ related topics: Sociology Law Wines and Spirits ]

If you were concerned about high productivity today, you could solve that with Fantastic Contraption, a little game based on a Flash physics engine about getting a piece into a target area. Via Sean Leather.

Once you've solved an area, you can go back to the menu and see how other people solved it. Or you can search on YouTube...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Games Work, productivity and environment Machinery ]

Based on this posting and this posting over at Philip Greenspun's weblog I bought Farewell to Alms by Gregory Clark. I don't want to get ahead of myself, I'm just through the introduction and into the first chapter, but in much the same way that we ended up buying 3 or 4 copies of Omnivore's Dilemma, just to make sure that everyone in our circle had a chance to read it, I think this one is going to be similarly thought provoking about economics.

More as I get further.

[ related topics: Weblogs Economics Michael Pollan Books: A Farewell to Alms ]

I think it was Nancy, the signature is a little tough to decipher, mailed us a copy of Witold Rybcyzynski's The Most Beautiful House In The World, a light little piece by an architect about starting to build a workshop in which to construct a boat, and ending up with a home. It's an interesting ramble by an architect about architectural considerations of house design, but in the end felt a little bit light, a dilettante dabbling in construction and an architect who, like, it seems, most architects, has never really delved into what makes a space livable, more what makes a space "pretty".

There are a few insights, I'm not sorry to have read it, but I still want to find that book on architecture that goes deeper.

[ related topics: Books Space & Astronomy Graphic Design Boats Machinery Cryptography Fabrication Architecture Real Estate Model Building ]

Continuing through Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms, the assertion from chapter 2 is that up until 1800, in Britain's economy, and indeed the economies of the rest of the world, Thomas Malthus was right: War and disease raised the standards of living by lowering the population, as the populations grew, standards of living fell. As I read through I find myself popping over to the net to refresh myself on various historical items to see what sort of things were happening when the graph directions change from positive to negative.

I'm now into chapter 3, where he's illustrating that before the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, hunter gatherer societies actually appeared to have higher standards of living than agrarian economies. Among other data, he's looking at average heights of adults, calories produced per work day (where records are available) which is also related to purchasing power measured in calories, and some adjustments for types of calories.

Further, his assertion is that modern non-industrial economies have a lower standard of living than non-industrial economies before the industrial revolution. I have a feeling that this is going to be tied into foreign aid in later chapters; if you take an agrarian or hunter-gatherer economy and remove causes of death then population grows, causing limited calories to be spread further, and the quality of those calories to go down.

[ related topics: History Work, productivity and environment Economics Books: A Farewell to Alms ]

There is a lot of push towards incredibly powerful web toolkits. Very complex javascript, lots of embedded flash. But that requires powerful client computers, and all that JavaScript/ActionScript has fits crossing domains, for good reasons. So you have to go back to old school. Enter PHP and GDlib creating graphics on the fly at the web server. This Geek Gauge example in PHP will create (given some assumptions) nice looking graphs as an image and will try to resize itself and the data nicely based on parameters given.

It's useful for embedding data displays low tech browsers as well as things like Chumby's, Google Gadgets and other widgets where everything but images seem to be cached, relayed, or protected from embedding data from other sources.

The best part is the looks you get when showing to "Web 2.0 kids" who can't conceive of doing it without an IDE, JavaScript/ActionScript and possibly a fat embed/object download..

[ related topics: Children and growing up Photography Robotics Graphics Embedded Devices ]

It has been said that happiness is a warm Uzi, but don't underestimate a sharp chisel and lots and lots of clamps.

[ related topics: Guns Woodworking ]

Contiki: A Memory-Efficient Operating System for Networked Embedded Systems - Looks interesting along with FreakLabs, an Open Source Zigbee Stack. Of course, the name alone makes it wonderful

[ related topics: Free Software Robotics Embedded Devices ]

Fly Clear - a speed pass for airport security and other things. Why is this better than my passport?

[ related topics: Aviation ]

George McGovern on how he picked his VP candidate.

Hey, anyone out there got a recommendation for a Craigslist watcher? It's probably about 45 minutes of Perl, but before I do that I figured I'd see what else is out there. I just want something that'll keep track of a category and tell me if a keyword match comes up.

There are a couple out there, for instance Ad Notifier, but we don't run Windows consistently enough to use a Windows box, and as I look around at some of these other packages I'm somewhat nervous about spyware.

So, either existing Linux, or running on someone else's server, and if we have to pay a few bucks that's okay.

[ related topics: Microsoft Perl Open Source ]

The cat was being particularly noisy last night, so we threw her out, and as a result this morning she's especially eager for human companionship. Insert your own captions.

[ related topics: Photography ]

In trying to track down what's making the Flutterby server run out of memory, I've also decided that I'm going to see if I can migrate Flutterby.net from MediaWiki to something more reasonable for the type of site it is.

The immediate problem is URL remapping: I'd like to keep all of the extant links intact. I can do this a couple of ways, I'm planning on moving this whole thing to MediaWiki on a private server and then using mw2html to extract the MediaWiki content, but managing the redirects and such seems like a royal PITA. Anyone done this? Do I just give Apache a monster list of redirects, or set up a CGI handler that does a database lookup or straight string remapping and then sends a redirect?

I also seem to be having issues with mw2html getting all of the files.

[ related topics: Free Software Interactive Drama Open Source Databases ]

The one thing I don't like about Petaluma is that our grocery store situation isn't nearly as cool as it was down in the Fairfax area. We have G&G, Whole Paycheck Foods, Petaluma Market and Trader Joe's. Better than some areas, but when compared to Good Earth and United Markets they kind of pale; Petaluma's options tend towards the "lots of frou frou processed stuff", but fall a little shy on basic ingredients and produce.

Case in point: I was at Whole Paycheck, saw that they had decent asparagus, and thought it'd be cool to make an aioli or mayonnaise to go with it. I knew we were out of refined olive oil, and unrefined olive oils don't let a mayo fluff up right, so I went to the olive oil. At least two feet by the full height of the shelf in assorted different "extra virgin" olive oils (which, these days, is almost just straight-up code for fraud, unless you know the orchards you're buying your oil from), but not a single refined olive oil.

I laughed out loud at the absurdity, and decided I'd make a Hollandaise instead.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Food Bay Area Economics ]

Always date your web content: Stock analyst finds story on big newspaper web site saying United Airlines is declaring bankruptcy, publishes recommendations, UAL crashes, article is actually six years old. Story originally ran in Chicago Tribune, resurfaced through some glitch of content management on South Florida Sun-Sential, also owned by the Tribune company, and

Its impact on United's stock was swift and terrible. In the span of 10 minutes, 24 million shares changed hands. The stock, trading at $12.45, crashed to $3, according to Nasdaq.

Via.

[ related topics: Content Management Aviation Journalism and Media Economics ]

From The Times reporting on the video that's currently discrediting the U.S. military's account of a Afghanistan strike:

The US military said that its findings were corroborated by an independent journalist embedded with the US force. He was named as the Fox News correspondent Oliver North, who came to prominence in the 1980s Iran-Contra affair, when he was an army colonel.

Uh. Whisky Tango Foxtrot? The military is turning to Ollie North for corroboration? Yeah, there's some credibility for ya.

[ related topics: Robotics Current Events Journalism and Media Embedded Devices Video ]

Chris writes in email that he's volunteering for the first annual Seasteading conference, October 10, 2008, and thinks some of us might be interested.

Aaaand, even if the conference doesn't work for you, on Saturday there's kayaking around Waldo Point to look at the various houseboats off Sausalito and dinner at the Forbes Island floating restaurant, both of which look fun!

And if that doesn't work for you, further follow-up meetings for those interested in seasteading.

This weekend we had fresh blood at the hiking, someone who manages health care facilities, and as we talked about he politics of health care policy I realized I was hedging my bets too much because I don't hang around enough libertarians any more. This sounds like a good easy way to take a step the other direction.

[ related topics: Politics Bay Area Boats Conferences Sausalito ]

David Simon: The escalating breakdown of urban society across the US. One of the people behind "The Wire" writes about the police machinations used to catapult Martin O'Malley from mayor of Baltimore to governor of Maryland, and why juries in the most crime ridden areas go easier on the accused.

And if you're not familiar with "The Wire", I've only heard recaps from other people and seen the famous investigation scene in which the only dialog is the word "fuck" on YouTube.

[ related topics: Drugs Journalism and Media Law Enforcement Television ]

I've seen a whole bunch of links to this Leviton 3 plugs in the space of a normal 2 plug outlet, so here are some curmudgeonly harrumphs about why I won't be installing these in my house.

• The reason I need more plugs in an outlet is wall warts. This does nothing to make more room for wall warts.
• Although the only place that this is actively done is hospitals, the right way to mount 3 prong sockets is with the ground pin up, so that dropped objects that might short will fall one way or the other, and short to ground, not across hot and neutral. This is impossible to do with this plug.
• It claims to be a 20A socket, but it also says:

  AC Horsepower Ratings
  At Rated Voltage:	1 HP

  which seems contradictory.

Needless to say, my objections are technical enough that I expect to see these things take over the new and refurbished home market like bad ideas in a Congressional hearing.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Space & Astronomy Economics Real Estate Furniture ]

Women Against Fantasy Sports.

[ related topics: Sports ]

Darwin award winner of the moment: Car burglary suspect in San Francisco runs from police, vaults 3 foot wall not realizing that there's 200 foot drop on the other side of the wall. Whoops. Always scope your territory first.

[ related topics: Bay Area moron Law Enforcement Automobiles ]

http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/ complete with RSS feed, so your feed reader can notify you if it does. I'd be tempted to throw random HTTP "410 Gone" or "503 Service Unavailable" errors in there, just for giggles.

[ related topics: Humor Cool Science ]

Interesting Wall Street Journal article on recent (2001-2008) federal spending increases. Next year federal expenditures will reach 21.5% of GDP, the highest since 1992, and:

If the cost of the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac prove to be large and are taken into account, next year federal outlays could be higher as a share of the economy than at anytime since World War II. In this decade alone, federal spending has increased by almost $1.2 trillion, or 57%.

Via.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama History Macintosh Gambling Economics ]

Ars Article about additions to the now approved "Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights of 2008" that create more copyright enforcement, including some apparently overbearing search and seizure powers.

It's worries about privacy that have ISP's routing the internet around the USA.

Make me want to setup a bittorrent server.. or at least donate some more money to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

[ related topics: Privacy Free Speech Current Events Civil Liberties Net Culture Currency Copyright/Trademark ]

If your adrenaline-by-proxy is running a little low and you need a little reminder that you're getting old and don't do all the crazy shit you used to, may I suggest the 10 or so minutes that is Claremont HD, two skateboards runs down Claremont Avenue from Grizzly Peak on long boards (I'm not totally hip to the lingo that kids these days are using to refer to their planks), passing cars and doing all sorts of other completely irresponsible stuff that makes the heart pound.

Best quote is from one Gavin Owens in the comment thread when it devolved into a gear discussion:

Fuck the boards... What kind of balls are they using!

And, yeah, the start of the film is a little slow, it could have just been one run, bla bla bla. Via this MeFi thread.

[ related topics: Children and growing up moron Sports Maps and Mapping ]

On Saturday we are going on an Oceanic Society cruise ("...a three hour tour...") out to see the Farallons, and Charlene expects to be completely wiped out when we get back, but... Bill's favorite movie, The Big Country, is playing at The Rafael tomorrow evening, and I'm going to try to make that.

[ related topics: Movies Bay Area ]

QOTD: Henry "If you've got a bazooka ..." Paulson on the price of the Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae bailout:

"On CNBC on Monday morning, when asked about how big the bill might be, Mr. Paulson replied, “We didn’t sit there and figure this out with a calculator.”

Via. Uh. Yeah. So how do you do the cost/benefit analysis then?

[ related topics: Quotes Politics Current Events Economics ]

Is Barack Obama Muslin (.com)? A commenter in the MeFi thread points out that fabrics and politics have a long tradition:

Thus joining the proud tradition of Linen B. Johnson and Ronald Rayon.

Continuing to explore the fabric of our political culture, it's also been asked: Is Sarah Palin A Satinist (.com)? I think that about sews it up.

[ related topics: Politics ]

Random pictures from Saturday's excursion out to the Farallon Islands. First time I've seen 'em up close, usually it's from the 20 miles or so away of up on the slopes of Mount Tam. As always happens on overcast days, I'm still having trouble getting my camera settings right, at least this time I managed to get the contrast setting on the camera turned down, but I should have kicked up the ISO by a few stops, and... well...

The experience was awesome, the pictures less so. These are: A white sided dolphin playing in the wake of the boat (I'll try to edit up some video), an albatross of a sort not normally seen in these parts (and these are amazing birds, slope soaring off the waves, wing tips just above brushing the ocean), obligatory Humpback whale breach ('cause if you get a picture of it, that's cool), and a badly stitched panorama of the largest of the Farallons, with the water tower/lighthouse visible on the top (and I had no idea what that much accumulated bird crap without any sort of ecosystem to digest it smelled like...).

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Boats Machinery Birds Race Video ]

"Danny" was the linux nut at a regional large company with many locations. Had been for years, and while IT had a decent budget, Danny kept it down by using a lot of FOSS Solutions where he could. A Linux mail server here, a few OpenVPN connections via public internet.. a couple of Samba servers for odd file servers and a backup of the main MS one. Had even ported a few business apps to LAMP, they just worked. Because things just worked and Danny didn't complain much, Danny lost his job. Management's perception was he wasn't doing anything hard and wasn't spending gobs of money on problems... They let Danny go, he smiled, took early retirement and hit the road with his wife (he's also a caver/explorer). That was about two months ago.

I just got done proxying some emails to Danny while on the road. He's had a nice vacation and is heading back. He was surprised it only took two months, he expected it to take 6+, as he left things in good shape. Seems they called in some "experts", the proposals were starting to add up as others started to inherit Danny's world and didn't understand it. Seems they needed an Exchange server, lots of Cisco VPN gear, some .Net developers, a DBA. The licenses alone were adding up to a few years of Danny's formerly modest salary.

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source Work, productivity and environment Net Culture Currency Marriage ]

How to Take Better Dirty Pictures Or: Mikey’s Guide to Photographing Naked Babes. (or maybe just,"How to photograph nudes")

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Nudity ]

He may not know how to use email, but an advisor is claiming that John McCain helped create the BlackBerry.

... a top McCain policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin. Waving his BlackBerry personal digital assistant and citing McCain's work as a senator, he told reporters Tuesday, "You're looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create."

Related only in that it's political news, Science Debate 2008 has answers to their 14 questions from both major candidates.

[ related topics: Politics moron Current Events ]

Wow. So not only is the Federal Reserve indirectly buying equities owned by failing firms, the U.S. federal government is purchasing outright large portions of failing insurers. This is how socialism happens, not through creeping social programs, but through Republicans bailing out their failed buddies with public funds, spreading tentacles from the public to the private sector in a way that makes Hugo Chavez look like Hugh Akston.

[ related topics: Politics moron Current Events Economics ]

Nassim Nicholas Taleb: The Fourth Quadrant: A Map of the Limits of Statistics, or why we shouldn't assume that just because the inputs to a fractal or non-linear system have a statistical distribution that the outputs will, and what that has to do with the current financial system meltdown (Via).

[ related topics: Mathematics Economics ]

Two musings from yesterday's work:

• I don't mind debugging in solder, but I need to remember to not have coffee when I expect hardware problems.
• One of the reasons I loathe developing in Microsoft's .NET framework is that it's like coding for an embedded system without schematics and a 'scope. Sure, you've got documentation for what the designer of that portion thinks is going to happen, but it's a black box, all you can do is send stuff into it, get output from it, and guess at what's going on inside. And far too often that's not what the designer is telling you should be happening.

[ related topics: Microsoft Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment Embedded Devices ]

I Spent 16 Years in Jail for a Crime I Didn't Commit. Here's What Should Be Done. by Jeffrey Deskovic. (Via)

[ related topics: Civil Liberties ]

It's an interesting notion that by (hopefully) temporarily reducing the value of a commodity to zero (ie: you have it, but you can't sell it), you stop the decline in value of that commodity: Russian stock exchanges suspend trading.

Apparently the terrorists are campaigning for John McCain: Al Qaeda blamed for U.S. Embassy attack in Yemen.

DOW plunges 300 points, and here's something I don't get: I'm not much of an investor, but how blind did you have to be to the current economic conditions to not see that this sort of crap was going to be happening about now? What about human behavior and belief is so irrational that this deflation didn't happen two years ago, but instead has just kept bouncing around waiting for the reality to strike?

[ related topics: Business Politics Economics ]

From Violet Blue, who credits Thomas Roche with the discovery (this image screencap and bolding/emphasis is mine):

[Edit: Thomas Roche's original Google 'bukakke' blog entry]

[ related topics: Humor Sexual Culture ]

Ya know, I'm not one to play the "For the childrunnnnn" card, but it just clicked... Two years ago I saw the connection between Republicans and pedophilia, but the McCain campaign has really brought this particular Republican perversion out in the open: Not only is John McCain attempting to pass off Barack Obama's efforts to protect our children from pedophiles as something else, now Talking Points Memo is reporting Sarah Palin's firing of Walt Monegan was because he was seeking federal funds to combat sexual abuse:

...According to Peggy Brown, who heads the Alaska Network on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, Monegan wanted to use the federal money to hire retired troopers and law enforcement officials, and assign them to investigate the most egregious cases of sexual assault -- including those against children.

Via Washington Monthly, Via Elf.

Seems to me that this may be an example of Republicans protecting the interests of their campaign contributors going beyond just the usual government graft and corruption...

[ related topics: Children and growing up Politics moron Law Enforcement Alaska ]

Chattanooga State in Second Life - another chapter in the long running epic saga of Chattanooga State trying to do online education. Lots of buzz about using 2nd Life as a teaching medium, but the real issue is teachers/content creators that grok the medium and can use it effectively. They've had the exact same issues since Dan and I helped them try to use NNTP style threaded discussions and e-mail back in.. 1994-1995? They worry about Classroom 2.0 when Classroom 1.0 hasn't been finalized yet, despite a few hundred years, nay thousands, of poor pedagogy. Stanford Engineering Everywhere seems to be a more practical approach. I probably should "take" Intro to Computer Science | Programming Methodology

The funny part, they still invite me to meetings and ask me questions, and I give them the exact same answers I did in the 90's, but with lower expectations.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Spam tolkien Heinlein Chattanooga Sports Education ]

Porn up, rape down (PDF) (Google HTML) (SSRN link) by Anthony D'Amato of the Northwestern University School of Law:

There is, however, one social factor that correlates almost exactly with the rape statistics. The American public is probably not ready to believe it. My theory is that the sharp rise in access to pornography accounts for the decline in rape. The correlation is inverse: the more pornography, the less rape. It is like the inverse correlation: the more police officers on the street, the less crime.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Sociology ]

Treasury to provide cash to Fed market liquidity operations, or, as John Robb put it:

The US Treasury moves to bail out the Federal Reserve.

[ related topics: Economics ]

Talkleft: FBI Crime Report: Violent Crime Drops Most in Areas With Less Incarceration (Via), working off the FBI's 2007 Crime in the United States report and the Justice Policy Institute summary of that.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

Quick, who said the following:

The fundamental business of the country, that is the production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis.

No, silly, that was Herbert Hoover on October 25, 1929. John McCain said:

I think still -- the fundamentals of our economy are strong.

From The American Prospect.

[ related topics: Economics ]

Friday is Talk Like A Pirate Day, should you run across any Pastafarians who take this seriously, and talk like real pirates, you might find a Somali to English dictionary useful.

[ related topics: Heinlein Flying Spaghetti Monster ]

I may have to start taking college classes again just so I can get access to journals, so I can read articles like Ejaculation as a potential treatment of nasal congestion in mature males. As if y'all needed another good reason. This Neurotopia blog entry provides a little bit of summary information, however.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs Education ]

QOTD:

don't look now, but I think our government just socialized everything EXCEPT medicine!

(Jen B, by way of Genehack)

[ related topics: Quotes Politics Health Economics ]

I once heard Carol Queen assert that much of the "common knowledge" of the physiology of sexual organs in the human female is messed up by the selection bias of cadavers that get dissected: Intact corpses tend to come from old people, and that impacts how we learn about internal physiology.

For a look at some of what's been learned about that, Betty Dodson sketches the internal structures of the clitoris (Via Susie Bright), and, if you're up for something more explicit, this YouPorn video of a masturbating woman's vulva has some amazing opening up and lubrication in quantities that only a few years ago were commonly thought to come from urine.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Video Physiology ]

Yesterday I got on a plane in Atlanta with a Pelican Carry On Case packed full of some very unique electronic gear for en electric utility. Of course, the x-ray machine operator just kind of stares at in on the screen... If anything could look more like an action movie suitcase bomb than what I had, I'm not sure how. I laugh, she relaxes and three big guys take my case over to a table. One is watching me, and I'm in a good mood, expecting a little chaos with lots of extra time before my flight. The case is opened, they don't touch or move anything, and he says "I don't know what I'm looking at." closes it and they let me take it and go on. I'm feeling so much safer.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Movies Aviation Law ]

I had breakfast with a programmer from the Netherlands, he saw my Tux logo and started a conversation, we both had accent issues while speaking "English". His insight: "Until you American started outsourcing programming to other countries, it seemed all good software came from the USA." He was blown away that I had a very multilingual system running on my laptop. He had just cussed us for being so English centric ;) Also note that he hated Micro$oft even more than I did, because he worked with it every day.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Sports Woodworking ]

On FS-45/Peavine Creek Rd (the hella steep and curvy road behind Ocoee #3 Powerhouse) between Tumbling Rock Campground and Sylco Campground, I chanced upon this big beautiful 'shroom in a fairy ring of others that was about 30ft around. And, of course, the obligatory image from the area to vex Dan. :-)

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Chattanooga ]

YouTube video of a light system controlled by a strain gauge in a stripper pole (Via). The video's a bit boring, but I like the concept.

[ related topics: Erotic Cool Technology Video ]

People with strong reactions, measured as skin conductivity and eye movement, to unexpected noises or pictures of threatening situations tend to endorse political positions that emphasize group protection over individual liberties:

Hibbing defined those "protective policies" as more defense spending, more government resources directed at fighting terrorism and tighter controls on immigration. "People in this group are more willing to sacrifice a little of their privacy to protect the social unit," Hibbing said. "On the other hand, the subjects who reacted less strongly to the stimuli were more likely to favor policies that protect privacy and encourage gun control."

Times Online article, ScienceNOW article, Via MeFi and other places.

[ related topics: Politics Privacy Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Current Events Guns ]

W00t! Here's a doozy from a Wall Street Journal article on the Wall Street giveaway:

Mr. Paulson is resisting efforts to limit the pay of executives whose firms participate in the program and plans to fight it "hard," according to a person familiar with the matter. He fears that provision would render the program moot, since many firms might choose not to participate.

You mean if rewards are tied to performance then those involved might actually choose to fix things rather than suck off the welfare nipple? Gosh!

[ related topics: Politics moron Economics ]

Milled a new threshold out of Ipe and put in the first cabinet for the kitchen this weekend. No pictures yet of the cabinet 'cause it doesn't have the drawers in and is stuffed in a corner, but trust me, it looks good for what it is. Also ran edging on a bunch of ply that'll become our pantry shelves, hopefully this evening I'll get time to do two rips to get the edging to the right width (easier to do when it's glued to the plywood) and cut the horizontals. Aaaand, reviews of drawer slides coming soon.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Home Improvement ]

LOLFed: LOLcats style captions for the Federal Reserve.

Oh. Dear. @DEITIES. Thomas Kinkade does NASCAR. Truly, the apocalypse is at hand. Via lostorbit.

[ related topics: Sports ]

In amongst all the other choice pull quotes about the idiocy of the massiv etheft currently under way in Washington and Wall Street, Elf found a doozy that I'm going to interpret slightly differently: From Roll Call: White House Dispatches Team to Push Economic Bill:

[White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony] Fratto insisted that the plan was not slapped together and had been drawn up as a contingency over previous months and weeks by administration officials. He acknowledged lawmakers were getting only days to peruse it, but he said this should be enough.

So the administration has admitted to seeing this coming for "months and weeks", but suddenly it's a "work all weekend" situation with tons of pressure to pass the bill. I'm all for fluid credit markets, but remember that Greenspan complained of "irrational exuberance" back when the Dow was at 6500, and many of us have been calling this housing bubble for the better part of a decade. I'm not saying the Internet age hasn't brought us a very expanded economy, but, let's face it, houses should cost half of what they do (and I say this as someone who just bought at the peak) and the Dow shouldn't be over 10k. Spending the next generations into even deeper debt to keep up those unsustainable levels is evil, pure and simple.

[ related topics: Current Events Economics Real Estate ]

Some fantastic pictures from the Planes of Fame airshow in Chino, California.

[ related topics: Photography Aviation California Culture ]

Church Sign Generator .com - .. anytime you need a sign from God.

[ related topics: Religion ]

Making fun of postmodernism is so last millenium, but just in case it hasn't gotten old for you, Athena Farrokhzad and Tova Gerge offer a Manual for postmodern childrearing (Via).

[ related topics: Children and growing up Education ]

Somebody has spent way more time than me investigating Linux distributions: If Linux distros were women

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source Sociology ]

Asia Times: E pluribus hokum or When the gamblers bail out the casino:

Paulson's dreadful scheme will become law, because Americans love their bankers. The bankers enable their collective gambling habit. Think of America as a town with one casino, in which the only economic activity is gambling. Most people lose, but the casino keeps lending them more money to play. Eventually, of course, the casino must go bankrupt. At this point, the townspeople people vote to tax themselves in order to bail out the casino. Collectively, the gamblers cannot help but lose; individually they nonetheless hope to win their way out of the hole.

Vanity Fair uses Paulson's words to explain the current situation, like this choice quote from June:

“In an optimal system, market discipline effectively constrains risk because the regulatory structure is strong enough that a financial institution can fail without threatening the overall system. For market discipline to constrain risk effectively, financial institutions must be allowed to fail.”

The latest John McCain campaign ploy in Shel Silverstein style:

"I cannot go to Senate today",

said grumpy old man John McCain.

"My pressure's up, my penis is down,

My first wife lost her pageant crown.

(Via Bitter Girl) There's a push to get together to watch the debate tomorrow, assuming McCain shows up, but I think if I have to hear the POW story as a non-sequiter "answer" fifteen more times someone's gonna get hurt. The good news is, however, given McCain's intimate knowledge of the S&L scandal he's got experience in dealing with financial disasters.

[ related topics: Politics History Current Events Television Gambling Economics ]

Giggle. Okay, one more economics note: The Dark Bailout. Via Tom Negrino.

[ related topics: Humor Movies Economics ]

Many of you have probably seen this astonishing admission of incompetence:

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

Nonelvis points out that this is coming from a representative of a government department tasked with:

...managing the U.S. Government's finances effectively, promoting economic growth and stability, and ensuring the safety, soundness, and security of the U.S. and international financial systems.

and yet they're admitting that they're pulling numbers out of their collective asses and are throwing oatmeal against the wall to see if it sticks. Luckily, there are people paying attention, Martin Wolf points out that Paulson's plan is not a solution to the crisis.

Meanwhile, "The best-performing hedge fund manager of the past two years has closed down his funds and is returning money to investors after concluding that the danger of losing money from a bank collapse is too high." If you're a good money manager, this is what you do.

[ related topics: Politics moron Economics ]

The Naked Clown Calendar, to raise funds to find a cure for Multiple Sclerosis.

[ related topics: Nudity Clowns ]

Oktapodi.

[ related topics: Animation Movies ]

Speaking of lack of moral hazard: Automakers just got $25 billion in loans, and are expected to ask for another $25 billion next year (More, more), even adjusted for inflation this is like 6 times the much debated bailout of Chrysler back in 1980.

I realize that the argument here is that if we let these companies fail we'll have huge swaths of the Midwest out of work, but isn't this the same basic issue as welfare: We want to make sure the kids don't suffer, but in doing so we have to provide a free ride to parents who didn't make wise choices? Except in this case it's that we want to make sure the workers don't suffer, but in doing so we have to provide limos and vacation houses in Vail to the execs.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Ethics Work, productivity and environment Automobiles Economics ]

Got together with Bill and Phil last night to watch the debate of the Presidential debate. Wow, McCain is remarkably inarticulate and puts an amazing about of conditional clauses in his run-on sentences. I doubt the guy said a complete coherent sentence all of last night.

Having said that, I think McCain won because I think his voter base isn't looking for insightful reasoned answers, I think they're looking for a "booyah" football coach sort of experience. Stringing together a bunch of unrelated observations and ignoring that they don't actually lead to the conclusion that one is trying to draw has worked effectively for that voting block before. A great example is McCain's reference of the "Putin is our president" poster, evidence that shows that the political situation in South Ossetia is quite a bit more nuanced than McCain let on.

So McCain is the person you'd vote for if you're looking for a football coach style president.

However, another note... If I understand McCain's health care proposal, McCain is proposing to drop the employer's deduction for health insurance costs, replacing it with a maximum $5000 personal deduction. Anyone else think this is a way to force the individual states into providing health care? It takes a bunch of upper income people with good health care plans who will suddenly realize that they can deduct the full extent of their health insurance if they're paying it as taxes to their state, but not if they're paying it directly to the insurer.

Interesting that McCain is doing his damnedest to push health care completely into a government service.

Finally, what's up with Jim Lehrer's use of the word "ruler"? Truly we've lost our way...

[ related topics: Politics Health moron Television Sports ]

Food for Halloween: Eyeball Caprese.

[ related topics: Food ]

I've decided it's time to upgrade my camera. I've been using point-and-shoots for quite some time. I get pretty good results and don't have to worry about fragility or investment. But I've exhausted the capabilities of these cameras. I 'm constantly adjusting exposure, shutter speed, ISO, etc. While I've always been careful to buy point-and-shoots with lots of manual settings, the menus are not setup for quick adjustment. And, because the glass is so small, the resulting images have limited application. I've pushed this to the limit as well, producing 4x6 foot posters and using images I've taken in Asha's cookbook.

So I want to upgrade. I think DSLR is the way to go but could be persuaded to go pro-sumer. On the pro-sumer side, I'm partial to the Olympus SP-570UZ. I've seen some impressive results with this line of cameras dating back almost a decade now. By sticking with Olympus, I'm also leveraging my prior investment in xD cards and Olympus accessories.

On the DSLR side, I'm considering the Olympus E520, the Canon Rebel XSi and the Nikon D60, the Pentax K200D, and the Leica V-Lux-1 10 or even the Sony 300K.

Any thoughts? Any preferences? I'm not prepared to spend more than $1000 and I know there is probably a lot more camera to be had to more money.

[ related topics: Photography Eric's Life ]

Next up on the non-fiction reading list is Dishonorable Passions: Sodomy Laws in America, by William N. Eskridge, Jr. It's not a light read, and I'm just working my way through the 1881-1935 chapter right now, but what strikes me is how strongly correlated, throughout history, the anti-pornography and anti non-procreative sexual practices forces have been with those who are against any sort of equal rights for women.

These things come in waves, and just because we've made tremendous strides in the past four decades or so doesn't mean it can't all come crashing down.

In this new millenium we have been backsliding quite a bit, Chris over at Sex in the Public Square talks about The Shrinking Public Square, on Audacia Ray's struggles with CitiBank, iTunes, and Google Checkout.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Weblogs History Civil Liberties ]

IDEA - The International Dialects of English Archive, a resource for audio files of English spoken by native and non-native speakers of English.

[ related topics: Language Theater & Plays ]

CNN compares and contrasts Tina Fey lampooning Sarah Palin, to Sarah Palin. Damn, that's spooky.

[ related topics: Politics Humor moron ]

Jon Stewart compares George W. Bush in 2003 vs George W. Bush in 2008 [Edit: Diane corrects me, it's Jon not John].

[ related topics: Politics Humor moron ]

During the last campaign, the armchair quarterbacking following the Dean implosion convinced me that much of the irregularities that appeared among the advisors and in how the campaign was run was simply that a good portion of the staff were finding ways to take all of that spectacular internet fundraising and funnel it to their own pockets. Similarly, when Cam worked on the Clark campaign, and reported later that it cost him a bunch of money, I cynically wondered how many just slightly further up the chain weren't making a decent salary.

Josh Marshall calls out McCain-Palin campaign advisor Rick Davis's shell companies to suck off a couple million bucks o' campaign contributions there. Yet another reason, as if you needed them, to give to issues advocacy organizations that are at least up front about their expenses and salaries, and let the campaigns adopt those positions as they need to attract those voters.

I'm still not sure where to stand on the whole bailout thing. For history's sake I'll point out that the DOW has been ping-ponging all over today, and closed down 778 points, but a few reasons I'm not sorry to have seen the first pass at the bailout shot down hard in the House of Representatives:

1. Radley Balko catches the recently outspoken Barney Frank (D-MA) talking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac back in 2003 (NY Times article):

'These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''

2. If the bailout plan really has the possibility to pay back the taxpayers in the way that's being sold to us, why isn't private capital diving on these equities?
3. I'm all for leaving the decision making to people who honestly have the time to delve into the issues, but it sure seems like everyone who's had time to delve into these issues is screaming "no" to the bailout, and I think it's quite telling that the vast majority of those voting "no" are up for re-election [edit: in contested races].

[ related topics: Cameron Barrett Business Politics Economics Real Estate ]

Faith based prostitution:

But in his latest court argument, the Tucson man says he hired women at Angel's Heaven Relaxation Spa — near University Medical Center — not to sell sex but to comfort the afflicted through the religious act of "laying on of hands."

As taxpayers are being screwed, I'm happy that someone may be getting off.

[ related topics: Religion Sexual Culture ]

The problem with live theater is that you buy tickets with your credit card, so they have your personal information, then you go to a show, but for the next mumbledy gazillion years the theater is calling you every month asking if you'd like to buy a subscription to the next umpteen shows.

It's kind of like donating to public radio or public television, the donation isn't what causes hesitation, it's the prospect of dealing with the subsequent deluge of junkmail when they sell their subscriber list.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Theater & Plays Consumerism and advertising Television ]

From John McCain's remarks on the financial crisis:

...I will never, ever be a president who sits on the sidelines when this country faces a crisis. Some of you may have noticed, but it's not my style to simply "phone it in."

Washington Post database of Senate members who missed votes from the 110^th Congress.

[ related topics: Politics Current Events Databases ]

"Video showing the destructive re-entry of Jules Verne ATV at the end of a successful mission to the International Space Station." (Via MeFi)

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Video ]

I'm leaving town shortly, back on Thursday, so I don't have time to watch this Harvard panel discussion on economics, but Elizabeth Warren's pointer to it says:

At a Harvard panel discussion yesterday, economist professor Ken Rogoff made an interesting point: The liquidity crisis isn't real.  Or, to restate it: Any liquidity crisis is caused by the promise of a government bailout. Ken said that his many friends in investment banking said that there is plenty of money to invest in financial services, but right now it is "sitting on the sidelines."  Why?  Because the financial services industry does not want to pay the terms required to get that money back in circulation (e.g., give up equity).  As he put it, why do business with Warren Buffett who will negotiate a tough deal, if you believe that the government will ride in soon with cheaper cash?

[Edit: The comments to that entry say it was actually Greg Mankiw, and claims that Elizabeth Warren took it out of context, now I really wanna see the video]

To me it seems like... well... a parable:

We live in a neighborhood. Maybe not the best neighborhood in the world, but it ain't bad, and people from other neighborhoods are clamoring to live here, so we're kinda happy here. Some folks starts to build a high rise in our neighborhood. At first we're a little concerned, 'cause we do occasionally have natural disasters here, but the promises of how modern buildings are going to turn our little neighborhood into a very desirable city in a few years keep us from protesting too loudly. Yeah, the engineering looks a little shakey, in fact one of the guys working on this building even refers to the idea that it can be built as high as is planned as "irrational exhuberance", but construction continues.

It seems like this building has hit a reasonable height, but down the street a used car dealer comes in and says "hey, you can use scrap steel from my used car business to build that thing even higher!". Many of our neighbors say "great, I'm gonna get a condo in that building". Soon, some of us who were uneasy with the building in the first place start to notice that a disproportionate number of people seem to be dying in crashes of cars bought from the used car lot, so we start to look closer at the building. And now we notice that if the building falls over, it's gonna wreck a good bit of our neighborhood, crush our houses and shrubberies.

And we start saying something.

Now the guys building this building and the guy with the used car lot catch on to this and say "Woah! This building's on shakey ground! We need everyone in the neighborhood over here, quick, to hold this building up! We need to buy lots of support to keep this building from collapsing all over the neighborhood!"

And those who have had second thoughts about this building are starting to say "well, why don't we take a couple stories off the top, rather than just putting temporary reinforcements around the bottom?" Of course our neighbors who bought condos in this building are hollering at us that if we take stories off the top, they'll lose their condos, so they're siding with the used car guy.

No matter what, you don't take the first deal you're offered by the used car guy. And, indeed, collapse may be imminent, but it seems like double-checking the engineering of the people who brought us the unstable mess is in order before we start slapping 2x4s on the first story of this skyscraper to figure out how to really keep this thing from falling over, or at least to figure out how to take off a few of those unsustainable stories safely.

Oh, and if I hear one more person blaming tranches and bad rating systems on the 30 year old legislation that is the CRA, I'm gonna have to lay about with me with a clue stick. I'm not necessarily a fan of the CRA, but the arguments I've seen blaming all the sub-prime lending by non-CRA conforming organizations on the CRA are beyond absurd.

[Edit: Fixed "tronch" to "tranch" spelling]

[ related topics: moron Economics Real Estate ]