Flutterby™! From 2008-10-02 to 2008-10-31

I've always feared getting run over by a txt'ing teen - but I'd never dreamed that the train engineer would be the text-murderer...

[ related topics: Pop Culture Machinery Trains ]

I don't have it in me to watch the Vice Presidential candidate debate tonight, but if you're into that sort of masochism, Dori has made up a Bingo card generator to make the thing more interesting.

[ related topics: Politics ]

Fastest way to get me to throw your junk mail in the recycling bin without opening the envelope, or to delete your email unread? The phrase "Must act now" on the outside or in the subject line.

http://www.sadtrombone.com/ (Via Dwayne Anderson)

Financial crisis QOTD:

Oh dear. Now California wants a $7 billion bailout. This may be the first time the Treasury has been asked to buy toxic debt by the issuer of the debt, rather than by the holder.

Maybe we should have encouraged them to take the first deal from the used car salesman, 'cause it looks like the new deal is worse.

[ related topics: Quotes Current Events California Culture Economics ]

Somali pirates tell their side, they just want money so that they can keep protecting the ocean they patrol:

He said that so far, in the eyes of the world, the pirates had been misunderstood. “We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits,” he said. “We consider sea bandits those who illegally fish in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas. We are simply patrolling our seas. Think of us like a coast guard.”

Which, of course, reminds me of the allegations that the Mafia flourished in New York because it was protecting the Italians from the Irish cops, when asked to make a decision between competing corrupt police forces, the Italian neighborhoods chose their own. The lines distinguishing a government and its police force, a group of armed vigilantes, and a gang of thugs are suble.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement New York ]

I have two packages I want to use for a project, efsl, a filesystem with an (L)GPL-like license that allows for static linking, and some crypto stuff, it looks like cryptopp has a "public domain" license.

In both cases I can set up systems to abide by the license requirements. I can push the appropriate chip level driver code back up into both their distributions, and make it available myself.

What I need to do is to convince nervous people further up the chain that nobody's going to come back and say "wait, that's my code!". With a commercial product, there's someone to sue. With non-commercial products like this, how do I determine who to send some money to so that my clients feel indemnified against future lawsuits over ownership?

I'm not even worried about situations like someone appropriating the open source code, filing patents on it, then going back at the initial author (full listing of court filings and motions here, via /.), I'm more worried about the perception by my clients that someone could open source code they don't own, and we'd then be liable for that.

Heck, this might even just be some sort of insurance that my company has to buy.

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source Law Cryptography ]

So y'all remember the XKCD on Rule 34:

which threatened WetRiffs.com in response to Rule 34, "if you can imagine it, there is porn of it"? Yeah, they've got content there now (involves nudity).

(And, yes, XKCD not only encourages redistribution, they encourage hot-linking.)

[ related topics: Humor Photography Erotic Comics ]

Some silly articles that caught my eye that definitely don't deserve their own entry:

• The headline reads "Six locals good enough for college". Great, Santa Rosa, good to see that a town of 150k can send six kids to college. (explanation: it's about football players)
• Fake crack deal lead to Tenderloin slaying. A crack addict offing his dealer in San Francisco's Tenderloin isn't normally something I'd point out, except that the alleged murderer's name is "Leroy Brown". The article doesn't say if "... he's got a custom Continental, and an El Dorado too".
• Bank robber advertises for construction workers with own vests, safety goggles and respirators, uses them as decoys, and then escapes in an inner tube (alt, alt).
• I had no idea that the 11-99 Foundation "get out of your ticket" license plate frames cost a $5k donation

And, no, I'm not going to say anything about last night's debate. Well, okay, only this: am I disappointed that politics have sunk this low? You betcha.

[ related topics: Politics Bay Area Current Events California Culture Sports Education ]

Scoble mentioned the Google 2001 index. This evening, Charlene and I have been searching for information on electric skillets, we don't want something huge, we won't allow any more "non-stick" pans in our kitchen (too much hassle), and we want a temperature range that goes down to 180°F.

Searching on all the variations we're coming up with on electric skillets largely comes up with the spammers. Shopping.com, NextTag, all of those sites that make their money by sucking off traffic from places you'd really want to visit. And there are pages and pages of this crap. In fact, searching on places to buy cookware near us buries the actual vendors down under pages and pages of "yellow pages" knock-offs with the same spammerisms.

In fact, many of those spammers are just using Google ads.

There's a lot missing from the Google 2001 index, but searching there actually gives the sorts of results I might be interested in, personal experiences and such. Of course it's woefully out of date, but it does reaffirm my feeling that the net peaked sometime in the mid '90s and has been sliding downhill since.

And, yes, so far as I can tell Google is still the state of the art in searching. At least this evening. Yahoo is bizarrely useless, and Cuil is just hilariously bad.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Net Culture ]

The Last Bubble

That was it. The housing boom. The leveraged buy-outs. The high flying hedge funds. Mega houses. Super cars. Big dreams of endless credit. All gone. All over. Done, once again.

As we face the economic wreckage of the second credit bubble in a century to rebuild, our leaders will promise restoration of the mirage. But our old debt based reality was a fantasy, a dream. We have no more chance to recreate it than we have in the morning after waking from a lovely dream to fall asleep again back into it while the alarm is ringing.

A site I like is itulip.com

The parties over. Now back to work.

[ related topics: Erotic Aviation Work, productivity and environment Economics Real Estate ]

High speed video of fungus shooting spores, accelerating them at 180,000G to 55MPH. The Fastest Flights in Nature: High-Speed Spore Discharge Mechanisms among Fungi. Via.

[ related topics: Cool Science Nature and environment Video ]

Steve Warshak, "Enzyte" penis enlargement fraudster, sentenced to 25 years in prison and $93,000 in fines:

Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals and other defendants in the case were ordered to forfeit more than $500 million.

This is the winner who sold the placebo, and when refunds were requested asked for a note from the purchaser's doctor verifying that, in fact, the purchaser had a small penis. Via

And House in Saginaw sells for $1.75 on eBay:

She will pay additional charges, aside from the dollar and change it cost her to win the auction. Back taxes and a trash/weed clean-up will set the final price tag around $850. The fee is due by Tuesday, March 31, or the city will foreclose on the property.

Half of me, exposed to California, thinks we're overpopulated and houses will continue to go up because of population pressures. The other half of me... Apparently the purchaser isn't going to go see the property, just try to flip it, so we'll never find out how many days it takes to hitch-hike to Saginaw now Via.

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture Bay Area Law Current Events California Culture Real Estate ]

Dow industrials plunge 500 amid global sell-off:

Investors are realizing that the Bush administration's $700 billion rescue plan won't work ...

Uh, it took 'em to today? To be fair, the sentence continues:

... quickly to unfreeze credit markets, and many banks are still having difficulty gaining access to cash.

But still, wasn't that the point of the plan?

And it looks like the Obama campaign has just decided to get serious about this whole campaigning thing, http://www.keatingeconomics.com/ promises a "full documentary available at 12 PM Eastern", but currently has a lot of text looking into John McCain's role as one of the Keating 5.

[ related topics: Politics Economics ]

Dang it, I don't want more political links. I'm sick of not being able to tell Saturday Night Live from the real thing. I think this new "Keating 5" video that's circulating is an awful piece of film that's blunt and idiotic. I'll do anything but watch the debate tonight.

But Sarah Palin has Intermittent Gunderson Syndrome is... well... all of those things that I'm trying to avoid, and yet I can't turn away from.

[ related topics: Politics Movies moron Theater & Plays Video ]

From this fluffy overview at Cleantech comes Tendril, makers of electricity monitoring systems. The Tendril Insight looks like a slightly updated version of the BlueLine Innovations Power Cost Monitor that's been previously mentioned.

[ related topics: Cool Science Consumerism and advertising Energy Monitoring ]

Betty White On The Late Late Show, Craig Furgeson, 10-06-08. As Brad said, "There is nothing I don't like about this video clip".

[ related topics: Politics Humor Current Events Video ]

I think Michael Crichton's State of Fear has/had a good message, and it applies to current economic politics as well as global ecology issues. Especially when you see snippets like: this US House C-Span snippet. where apparently martial law in the US was the FUD button being threatened if there was not an immediate bailout. The State of Fear message was: Government/Media rules by keeping that state of fear going.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Movies Economics Real Estate ]

Bunny! OMG! (Google search of MetaChat) Courtesy of Wendell.Me. when I asked for an antidote to the news.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Giggle: What happens when a biologist learns to knit. Stolen from Columbine..

[ related topics: Humor ]

New York City National Debt Clock runs out of digits.

[ related topics: Invention and Design New York ]

The Economist: Oh death, when is thy sting?. In 1968 a committee at the Harvard Medical School defined death by cessation of activity in the brain. This is a quick little article about why we might want to re-think that.

[ related topics: Biology ]

I wish that Violet Blue: Sex doesn't sell went a little deeper into the topic, she starts by pointing out that the Village Voice has dropped Rachel Kramer Bussel, Audacia Ray (who has her own list of recent dropped sex columns) and Tristan Taormino, along with various other media cutbacks, She asks a few questions of Steve Hall, of Adrants, but I think there's room to go much deeper on this topic.

I'm not sure how to structure that essay, though, I know that the world feels a lot less sexy of late, I think there's a metaphor for a lot of stuff in how the nation is embracing a "sex is something you use to force unwilling teenagers into marriage" former beauty pageant queen as a candidate for the Vice Presidency, and I think that there's also a metaphor for "beauty pageants" in that. I think sex in advertising is really more the unfulfilled promise of sex, Maybe it's that repression sells, "can't have that, so have this beer instead".

Anyway, no answers here.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Sociology Writing Consumerism and advertising Journalism and Media Beer Marriage ]

American Airlines announces that it will filter porn on in-flight internet services:

American, the nation's largest carrier, said it hasn't gotten reports of passengers viewing "inappropriate content" on the Gogo in-flight service but said filtering was "an appropriate measure to take."

Oooookay. So, you spend your mumbledy-mumbledy bucks on your in-flight internet services, and then you discover that, as EKR over at Educated Guesswork points out, someone has decided that Mother Jones is porn (we already know that Flutterby is), and...? I can't see this working out well for customers or for the airline, but, in light of Violet Blue's "sex doesn't sell" observation, it disturbs me that this sort of stupidity is seen as a good business move.

But then, in this socialized economy, claiming business hardship and sucking off government funds while rewarding the executive team lavishly is the norm, so maybe bad business moves are good business moves in this context. And airlines have a hell of a lot of experience in sucking off the public teat.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Aviation moron Current Events Work, productivity and environment Net Culture Economics Archival ]

Tilted Twister - A Rubik's Cube solver made from Lego Mindstorms.

[ related topics: Robotics Lego Mindstorms ]

C'mon, Move to Canada!

If John McCain and Sarah Palin win in November, it's likely to be more than many Democrats can stand. Slate V imagines how the Canadian government might try to capitalize on this liberal anxiety.

[ related topics: Politics Humor ]

Sex Ed comix, with an Irish accent. There is a sound track.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Education ]

Let someone else say it:

[ related topics: Erotic Comics ]

Columbine passed along a Princess Bride web meme:

Man in Black: Then why are you smiling?

Inigo Montoya: Because I know something you don't know.

Man in Black: And what is that?

Inigo Montoya: I... am not left-handed.

[ related topics: Movies ]

Tom and Dori, next time you're looking for "debate bingo" inspiration, check out How to argue effectively. The author summarizes at least half of the two debates I've watched thus far.

[ related topics: Movies ]

Washington has a "death with dignity" proposal on the ballot. Dan Savage writes about it:

I Hate to Play the I-Just-Watched-My-Mother-Die Card—But, Um, I Just Watched My Mother Die

[ related topics: Ethics Law Seattle ]

Notorious B.O.A.L.T. raps the rules of evidence.

[ related topics: Law Video ]

I have been openly hostile to the notion that the 30 year old CRA played a pivotal role in the current financial meltdown, and have rolled my eyes a bit when looking at the die hard libertarian "government intervention caused this mess" calls while revelations are coming out about the extensive lobbying to allow the various brokerages and banks to use lower reserves while dabbling about with the hugely leveraged gambling.

However, I haven't read a breakdown yet of the various legal and cultural steps that lead to the current disaster that made sense. Plenty that didn't.

In the comments to Arnold Kling: My Fantasty Testimony there was a link to Independent Policy Report: Anatomy of a Train Wreck: Causes of the Mortgage Meltdown by Stan J. Leibowitz, which seems to be doing a pretty good job of laying out the political influences that led to the desires to create these wacky mortgage backed securities, why the rating agencies were happy to let the bad numbers through, how political climate impacted the cherry picking of studies that god fed back into the models of the rating agencies, and so forth.

[Edit: No endorsement of Arnold Kling is implied, he's been spectacularly wrong before]

[ related topics: Politics Libertarian Sociology Law Gambling ]

Why is unfettered NSA wiretapping bad? Report: NSA listened in on personal military calls:

The linguists said National Security Agency interceptors routinely monitored and recorded the private calls of U.S. military personnel, Red Cross and other humanitarian workers; personal discussions that had entertainment value— pillow talk or phone sex— were shared among intercept operators, they said.

If you don't give up your privacy, the terrorists will have won.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Erotic Privacy Sexual Culture ]

Difference between gay and straight? About a six-pack. McCain-Palin? Appealing to Joe Six-pack. I'm not sure if these two things are related.

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture ]

I'm hoping that addiction to The eyeballing game will result in better performance. No evidence to that effect just yet, however.

EDIT: OK, maybe there's some slight evidence: I finally broke 4.0 and am now working on beating my 3.51 personal best...

[ related topics: Games Theater & Plays ]

World's Biggest Motorcycle. Via, YouTube video here.

[ related topics: Cool Technology Fabrication Video ]

Awesome little animated short film: Noteboek, by Evelien Lohbeck.

[ related topics: Animation Movies ]

Remember all of that hullabaloo over how circumcision prevents HIV? Circumcision HIV impact doubted. Via a Week in sex news roundup over at sexuality.about.com, which also asks:

Did you know that eHarmony claims responsibility for 43,000 marriages each year in the U.S.? Doesn’t that mean, statistically speaking, that they are also responsible for 21,500 divorces each year? Shouldn’t they be stopped?

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Health Sociology Current Events Monty Python Gambling ]

Wow. Today's Sinfest perfectly nails the fallacy of the current bailout plan.

[ related topics: Humor Comics Economics ]

Paris intellectuals make case for porn: Film festival's X-rated action is 'by and for women' is just the usual fluff piece on, I hate to say it this way but, yet another "women make and like porn too" film festival. However, one of the comments in the Sensible Erection thread that linked to that article is worth a shout-out, the comment by Omegaphobic at 11:08am GMT on 12th Oct is a good rant about why commercial porn is so un-sexy.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

So T-bills have gone negative, if only for a little while. It took me a moment to wrap my head around what that meant; basically that it was easier and cheaper to let the Federal Government keep the ticks that meant dollars than to get physical bills and store them.

Now comes news that safe sales are on the rise, and I've got an idea: Let's figure out how to train teenagers to use acetylene torches and set up a franchise operation to help people get their money out of their safes when they forget the combinations. Start out for, say, 10% of the value of what they get out of the safe. I think this'll be a booming market in 3-4 years.

[ related topics: Current Events Currency Economics ]

Bail set at a million hundred-thousand dollars for TSA airport baggage screener Pythias Brown who stole out of luggage and sold on eBay. Other version of the story. TSA, making you feel safer.

Lara Uselding, a TSA spokeswoman, said 465 transportation security officers have been terminated for theft since May 1, 2003, or 0.4 percent of those employed by the agency.

Or at least those are the ones they caught. Silly question: If this guy could walk off with that much stuff from luggage, what are the chances that, oh, I don't know, someone similarly dishonest but with different motives could put stuff in luggage?

Yeah. I feel safer. What sort of lame-ass security procedures allowed crap like this? Kip Hawley is still an idiot.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Aviation moron Current Events ]

Not only does the TSA let employees walk off with your baggage, they don't have control over uniforms or security credentials: Report slams TSA failure to track security passes:

WASHINGTON — The agency overseeing security at the nation's airports failed for years to track security passes and uniforms of former employees, creating widespread vulnerability to terrorists, says a government watchdog report obtained by USA TODAY.

[ related topics: Politics Aviation moron Current Events ]

"Frauenzimmer" - Bordelle in Deutschland: Lack, Leder und Lavalampen, pictures from Patric Fouad's new book of images from brothels in Germany. Via.

[ related topics: Books Photography Erotic ]

Reading Crypto-Gram is always good, but there's a note about the two classes of weapons when it comes to air travel that's worth a read:

Contrast that with a terrorist plot that requires a 12-ounce bottle of liquid. There's no evidence that the London liquid bombers actually had a workable plot, but assume for the moment they did. If some copycat terrorists try to bring their liquid bomb through airport security and the screeners catch them -- like they caught me with my bottle of pasta sauce -- the terrorists can simply try again. They can try again and again. They can keep trying until they succeed. Because there are no consequences to trying and failing, the screeners have to be 100 percent effective. Even if they slip up one in a hundred times, the plot can succeed.

I don't want to admit to anything here, but... uh... I know how to get a knife in to the passenger compartment of a commercial airline flight, reliably, with essentially zero down side to a failed attempt. The prohibition against blades, at least of a relatively small form factor, doesn't work. What does work is cockpit doors, but if we were serious about actually being secure, rather than just making a pretense, we'd stop confiscating nail clippers and pocket knives, 'cause the only thing that's doing is getting people used to law enforcement profiting from confiscations, and helping out the pocket knife and nail clipper industry. In the same way that vandals breaking windows help the economy.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Privacy Microsoft Aviation Work, productivity and environment Law Enforcement Cryptography Guns Economics ]

Cheney treated successfully for abnormal heartbeat. Good news, if he'd died, then W. would have been president.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Flyer at the coffee shop this morning was advertising someone's talk on "integrated consciousness", and I thought "the problem with integrated consciousness is that when it breaks, you have to replace the whole being".

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising ]

I heard a good rant this morning from a staunch Reagan-esque Republican that just might, when no-one is looking, vote for Obama because he thinks McCain/Palin is just too unpalatable. While rationalizing various things that I found both informative and entertaining, he hit a gem (approx quote):

"..and when Obama is elected, if any ______ tells me "The Man" is keeping him down, I'm going to tell him to shut up and get a fucking job. That shit won't stick anymore."

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Heinlein ]

Yesterday, Brad twittered:

Because this is what we are supposed to do in America. We're supposed to help each other out. http://twitter.com/cw/statuses/961326127

So I followed that link, in which Chris Wetherell said:

Sadness is: a voter with hand tremors asking my gay co-worker to help mark her ballot to remove rights of gay couples in FL. He did.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Civil Liberties ]

An interesting report from the Manhattan Institute: we don't need more power stations so much as we need better wires. They propose a massive program to install 1 Million volt capacity cabling atop the current regional power grids to create a truly national electricity grid. The idea is to maximize the potential of our existing eneration capacity, plus whatever other systems (wind,solar) may come. At first I thought he was talking about super-conduction, but apparently not. I'd like to see some candidate take up this idea.

[ related topics: Cool Science Photovoltaics ]

This little beasty was parked outside of Aqus yesterday morning, the trim above the front wheel reads "Fantasy Vehicles by Adrian - San Francisco", but I neither managed to find Adrian for conversation, or find a web page on the web.

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area ]

It's been a busy week. On Sunday, I was going to spend some time putting another coat on the pantry shelves, but Charlene said "It's going to be windy, why don't we do my cedar closet instead". The cedar closet actually involves splitting a closet in two, and cutting a hole through another wall for a door to the second, so we're mid-way on that process, but we have got the box for both built, including most of the plasterboard firewall between the two spaces, and got much of the lining and the hanger rod up in Charlene's space.

Meanwhile, I managed to get the next two coats on the pantry shelves, so last night, in addition to work on the closets, we got those installed. They're built in two pieces, with that center trim strip held on with cams so that we can remove the whole thing when we re-do the wiring (it's currently held 1½" away from the wall to allow the plug for the stove) and when we replace the floors. Obviously, we're nowhere near doors for this yet, we don't even have the drawers for the place where the pots and pans are jumbled over on the right yet.

Somehow I lost 1/2" in this whole thing (or maybe it was taken up by thickness in the linoleum I didn't manage to meaasure), so those carcases go straight to the ceiling. Gulp.

More on the current construction over at Flutterby.net.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Home Improvement ]

Former FEC Head Brad Smith on campaign finance "reform", and why John McCain won't shake his hand.

[ related topics: Politics Free Speech ]

The Things He Carried, Jeffrey Goldberg writes in The Atlantic about playing with airport security theater.

[ related topics: Aviation Theater & Plays ]

I'm linking to Mark Hershberger's "Why I'm Voting For Obama" because Mark and I have some very different views about some basic ethical and moral cores, and in that essay and the subsequent conversation I had a few revelations about my trying to understand what I'd seen as unreconcilable contradictions between belief and action. Mark manages to articulate his beliefs in a way that's helping me to understand him.

[ related topics: Politics Ethics Writing ]

McCain and Obama speak at the Al Smith dinner. I'm just mid-way through, McCain's spoken and Obama's being introduced, and I've laughed a couple of times.

[ related topics: Politics Humor ]

So you like the profoundity found in the lyrics of the Brothers Gibb, but that disco crap just isn't macho manly enough for you? Tragedy, an all metal tribute to the Bee Gees (warning: Sound autoplays)

(Dang it, the automatic category suggester came up blank, and I had to pause before assigning this both "Humor" and "Music".)

[ related topics: Humor Music ]

Holy crap, we really did move to Petaluma before Petaluma was cool: Survival Research Labs relocates to Petaluma. Take that, San Francisco.

[ related topics: Bay Area California Culture ]

Mark Hershberger quoted extensively from Adam Curtis- The Living Dead 1/3: On the Desperate Edge of Now, with the text "We won the war, therefore we must have deserved to win." I don't have time to watch the video right now, but I'll republish the portion Mark decided to quote quote, with emphasis intact:

My crucial memory, and the memory that really starts all of my other memories about the war is waking up in this pine forest my first morning in the war.  It was still dark, but just barely getting light and as it got light, I was astonished to see within 3 or 4 feet of me, several bodies, dead bodies, of German boys who had been killed, I think, the day before by the unit we were relieving.



These boys were just exactly like me. And they were killed, their eyes were open, and their faces were as white as marble, greenish-white.



And at that moment, when I saw what I was involved in, actually, for the first time -- my training had never told me this -- many of my adolescent illusions about reason, the governance of the world by reason, and common sense, and the idea of progress fell away all at once.



And I realized, in that one moment, that I would never be again in that world of childhood innocence, where the world is run by reason and events contain a certain amount of justice.  I knew now that I was enmeshed in a world of injustice and unreason.  That I would have to learn how to survive in that world, or how to make sense of it, later on.

Paul Fussell

Infantryman in US Army

1944-1945

Yeah. I can't pretend to know anything about combat, but there's a hell of a lot in the loss of "...that world of childhood innocence, where the world is run by reason and events contain a certain amount of justice" that you don't have to see corpses of people you've killed to experience.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Quotes Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Movies Ethics History ]

This weekend's gonna hurt, I can tell already. The rental place opens at 8, I'm getting a jack hammer and finishing the irrigation system in the back. Charlene's out of town, so it's just gonna be me and the endorphins, with a break for a hike tomorrow morning.

[ related topics: Dan's Life ]

QOTD, U.S. Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-FL), on being asked how many affairs he's had:

"You're asking me over a lifetime? I'm just saying I've been unfaithful and I'm sorry for that."

[ related topics: Quotes Current Events Archival ]

One of those fun bar conversations is "how much is 'fuck you' money?", how much money would you have to have to tell people what you really felt, and damn the future economic consequences? Andrew Lahde ran a hedge fund that returned 866% it its one year, betting on the sub-prime collapse. He's decided to close the fund. He won't say how much he made, but it's that amount. A couple of sources for his "goodbye" letter, which is well worth a read: Alphaville, Portfolio.com (PDF), The Big Picture. Via.

[ related topics: Weblogs Currency Economics ]

Chris forwarded along this note about early West Virginia voters angry about malfunctions in electronic voting machines:

Virginia Matheney and Calvin Thomas said touch-screen machines in the county clerk's office in Ripley kept switching their votes from Democratic to Republican candidates.

I think it's Grey's Law that states "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice." I've seen what the touch screens on the credit card machines at the grocery store do to my signature. I notice that ATMs have gone back to buttons along the side. I've looked a little bit at touch screen technology. Doing touch screens right is hard, it's not a mature enough technology to be using in applications like this. If you must use technology in voting systems, use scannable paper ballots, and recall any voting officials who don't have something that leaves a solid physical audit trail.

[ related topics: Politics Current Events ]

Chris has a wrap-up of the Seasteading 08 conference, sounds like it was fun, and I'm sorry I decided to ride the bike to the canceled kayaking, 'cause I missed the ferry building to pier 39 meander.

[ related topics: Bay Area Conferences Bicycling Public Transportation ]

There's a Bay Area firm that'll be offering Zeppelin rides out of Moffett Field, Oakland Airport, and Charles M. Schulz (Santa Rosa) Airport for about $500 an hour. Some people question the business model:

Dianne Armer, a San Francisco financial adviser with LPL Financial Services, was puzzled by the timing of the launch. "I'm spending my days talking people off the ledge," she said of the global financial crisis. "They're telling family members there won't be the usual holiday presents. Five-hundred dollars for a ticket?"

The company is Airship Ventures, I generally find blimps to have a really annoying sound profile, I don't expect the zeppelin to be any different, so except for the novelty I can't say I'm really enthused about seeing them overhead, but, hey, aviation is cool.

However, if I were buying flights over wine country, I'd do it in something else.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Cool Science Aviation Bay Area ]

A few cool pictures of rare aircraft.

[ related topics: Photography Aviation ]

Let's build an MP3 decoder, stepping through the MP3 decoding processes a bit at a time, with source code. Via Brainwagon.

Learn You a Haskell for Great Good! I don't understand Haskell, I'm not sure when I'd use it, it also looks like the absolute antithesis of objects, which I've found to be very useful, but I suppose that's a reason I should learn a little bit more about it.

[ related topics: Music Weblogs Open Source Software Engineering ]

Dear Irritrol and Orbit, do either of you make a 1" anti-siphon valve that doesn't leak and drip? Two of the four Irritrols I've got do, and while I commend Orbit for building a manifold with 3 valves up, I'm getting dribbles from one of them, and at least one of the other temporarily turns on when the pressure changes, like when I kick on the hose.

Other than that, the irrigation system in the back needs me to crawl under the house and run one more wire (more valves in the back than I'd planned on) and back-filling. And enough time for this nasty blue PVC glue to scrape off my hands.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Real Estate Home Improvement ]

P1k3 has a quick intro to GNU wdiff, including a "how to make it do HTML markup":

Or maybe you're looking for something to display on the web. wdiff -w '<del>' -x '</del>' -y '<ins>' -z '</ins>' one two gives us:

Here is some text.

I <del>will soon change</del> <ins>have changed</ins> it.

I've been meaning to figure this out so I could integrate it into the "comment history" feature, now I just need to do the integration...

Whoah! Flickr has LOLFEED format. This looks a hell of a lot easier to use than RSS. Anyone know if there's some sort of standard out there? Because I'd totally publish Flutterby feeds in LOLFEED...

[ related topics: Web development Content Management ]

When it comes to home improvement, our big projects generally get started on the weekends. This is a bit of a problem, because none of the commercial places are open on the weekend. Saturday, this meant that I ended up paying extra at OSH and getting stuff that wasn't exactly what I wanted rather than going to the local irrigation supply place (which also has people who actually know their stuff). On the cedar lined closets, it meant going to Lowe's, where I bought a box of "stainless steel" square drive screws to help assemble things.

Unfortunately, those screws may as well have been made of wax, the square-drive bit tore out of several of them, they were utterly worthless.

So I've just made a fairly large screw assortment order from McFeely's in the hopes that their screws are actually usable. I'll report back as I incorporate them into various products, but that's a symptom of what I see as "Home Depot-ization", where the cheap crap drives out the good because the consumers and the low-balling contractors aren't willing to pay for decent stuff. I cringed when Biden mentioned "Home Depot" in the vice-presidential debate.

For some projects I just don't buy from the big box stores, the plywood waits 'til I can make a run to somewhere that has the good stuff in stock, but short of carrying inventory that I don't have the space for, I don't know how to solve this problem more generally. My local extremely friendly and helpful hardware store doesn't carry the high end stuff because, and I've had this discussion with them, they're dealing with the home-owner who needs a tool that'll last through the rest of the weekend, just so they can finish whatever they didn't plan ahead for.

Seems like an issue in general economics, anyone explored this?

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Economics Home Improvement ]

I saw this go by earlier, but my outrage meter is generally so pegged that it just flew by. Violet Blue talks about Christopher Handley, a comic book collector who's facing 20 years in prison for the content of some comics shipped from Japan (Manga.About.com page which links to the CBLDF page on the Christopher Handley case). As Renegade Evolution said:

Ahem, attention morality police and smut patrol: fuck off, for real. The first amendment is not a goddamn suggestion…

The thought police are out there.

[ related topics: Books Sexual Culture Civil Liberties Comics ]

Rafe points out that today marks the 30^th birthday of the MUD. Richard Bartle has a few thoughts:

So standing back and looking at it, the answer as to why there is not a lot of fuss over this 30th anniversary is that in the great scheme of things, it isn't actually important. The mainstream isn't interested because virtual worlds haven't had much impact; developers aren't interested because the paradigm is obvious; players aren't interested because knowing doesn't add anything to their play experience; academics might be interested in the historical facts, but anniversaries don't figure in their analyses.

I think there are two things to point out to that:

1. "The mainstream isn't interested because virtual worlds haven't had much impact", true, and yet....
2. "developers aren't interested because the paradigm is obvious"... well... no. One of the things that the MUDs had (have?) that the modern MMOs don't is a user developable world. I don't currently have an actively changing web code base, flutterby.com is stable and works, and I haven't figured out how to tackle a replacement for the off-the-shelf stuff I'm running over at flutterby.net, but I think that to some extent the early days of weblogs were people who might otherwise be playing around with the MUD environment, but started thinking that maybe those efforts at construction would be better played out in something with general interest.

I think that was the start of my disillusionment with games, that as a framework for connecting with other people they were too structured and too constricting, and as an environment for development and learning and breaking conceptual thinking they were playing too much in someone else's world.

[ related topics: Games Weblogs Net Culture ]

Awesome: Assorted artists riffing on the widespread Shepard Fairey "Hope" Barak Obama poster. Via JWZ's collection of the best of them, which had these gigglers in the comments: 1, 2.

[ related topics: Politics Humor Photography Current Events Art & Culture ]

Over at Eros Blog, Bacchus excerpts a few passages on the complicated romantic situation of John Stuart Mill from this New Yorker review of a new biography of Mill.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture History ]

Anti-news: McCain endorsed by al Qaeda supporters. The message, by someone who goes under the name Muhammed Haafid, says that the goal of al Qaeda is to exhaust the U.S. economically and militarily, and that:

"This requires presence of an impetuous American leader such as McCain, who pledged to continue the war till the last American soldier," the message said.

[ related topics: Politics History moron Current Events War ]

The nice thing about a partner who ends up using more egg whites than yolks? I get to make custards and Hollandaise and such. This morning I was rooting around for vanilla and found the rose water instead. Alas, the kitchen was busy, so I was distracted and left out the sugar. Still, with a touch of maple syrup, it's pretty tasty. Here's what I meant to make:

• 2 cups ½&½
• 4 yolks
• 2 Tablespoons rose water
• ¼ cup sugar.
• pinch of salt

Blend, pour into ramekins, and bake at just a touch over 300°F in a water bath until firm, about an hour.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Food ]

I mentioned seeing the "Fantasy Vehicles by Adrian" scooter, yesterday I met Adrian, his web site is at AdrianArt.com

[ related topics: Erotic Art & Culture ]

How come when I play first person shooters and hit "r", my guy doesn't reload as fast as this guy reloads in real life. From this bizarre Mefi thread celebrating caps lock day.

[ related topics: Guns Video ]

Been waiting on a vendor to get back to me with some info, so I've been finishing up the cedar lined closets, which lead to some twitter silliness:

danlyke using pneumatic hammer. Thinking 'brad nailer' sounds too much like porn star name to be a tool... uh... That didn't come out right.

danlyke Additionally confused that I'm in the closet using Brad Nailer.

[ related topics: Erotic Woodworking ]

Climate Progress: Is the Chicago Climate Exchange selling “rip-offsets”? Uh. Yeah. Did anyone actually think that buying "carbon offsets" in an unregulated and unaudited market wasn't just a big scam? If you feel guilty, buy and preserve some land (maybe by way of The Nature Conservancy) and plant a freakin' tree.

[ related topics: Nature and environment moron Economics Global Warming ]

Today's Sinfest: The Great President

[ related topics: Politics Humor ]

Eric Freitas is building clocks. I don't like his site design or the JavaScript pop-up to read more, but his entry on gear cutting was neat.

[ related topics: Graphic Design Fabrication ]

The Education Trust organization claims that the United States is the only industrialized nation in which children are less likely than their parents to graduate from high school.

One of the things that seems weird to me is that the discrepancies on graduation rate statistics seem so high. I'd think it'd be relatively easy to sample a population, ask about a high school diploma, and break it down by year.

At any rate, if you're looking for some doom and gloom, there's your morning dose.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Mathematics Education ]

The TSA has an almost amusingly stupid response to that Harpers Atlantic article (linked previously), the comments which take the response apart point by point are the good part.

[ related topics: Weblogs Archival ]

Two from today's SFGate: A quick look at Sam Maloof and a similar look at James Krenov to accompany an article pimping work by Mendocino area woodworkers in SF.

[ related topics: Bay Area Work, productivity and environment Woodworking ]

The current Land Speed Record is 763 MPH. Now, British engineers are working on a vehicle called the Bloodhound which will not break the record but hopefully shatter it. The Goal: 1,000 miles per hour! The fuel pump alone is a V-12 racing engine. Mudflaps optional.

[ related topics: Sports Automobiles Machinery Cool Technology ]

Learning about Atmel RZRAVEN has notes about using the AVR Raven platform (Eval kit has two devices with joystick, LCD, audio & thermometer, and one USB stick, running ZigBee) under Linux. The platform will also run IPv6 with Contiki, including a tutorial that looks like it might solve the Linux issue nicely (additional snapshot release note and video).

[ related topics: Free Software Hardware Hackery Music Open Source Robotics Current Events Sports Embedded Devices Education Video ]

Mark Morford feels it. I feel it. Do you feel it?

The fact remains, the sheer volume of expansive energy surrounding Obama's run has been absolutely astonishing, a global outpouring of positive interest and awareness like almost no other leader, no other potential slap of progress we've experienced in modern American history. From the international headlines down to the forgotten corners of our own culture we normally never hear from, the message is the same: Something is about to upend. Something seems like it's about to give way. And the good news is, we might finally be ready.

[ related topics: Sociology Current Events California Culture Mark Morford ]

There are things which, once seen, cannot be unseen. This cake hints at them.

[ related topics: Food - Cake ]

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Software want us to stop software testing!

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft Ethics Software Engineering ]

Annoyance of the moment: PyUSB reporting a read timeout with a usb.USBError("No error"). The work-around is

try:

    response = handle.bulkRead(0x81,50)

except usb.USBError, error:

    if error.message != "No error":

        print "Unexpected error:", error

        raise error

[ related topics: Software Engineering Python ]

Oh, look, John McCain's got a brother Billy Joe, who's apparently an idiot. At this point I almost feel sorry for the guy, having a brother who's publicly a bozo is just piling on.

[ related topics: Politics moron ]

If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide, right? Government computers used to find information on Joe the Plumber, it's not clear whether or not the access was illegal, but it's why collecting lots of data in one place may not be the best thing for citizens (Via).

[ related topics: Politics Privacy Current Events ]

Remember the Angola by Motorcycle thread over at Adventure Rider (linked to from here)? Here's another one that doesn't have the same terror and fear of the unknown and sociological discovery, but has some cool images: Your best travel pic ever. (Via)

[ related topics: Photography ]

Mormons face flak for backing Proposition 8:

"Don't think they're all against you," said Alonso, 27, explaining that she was Mormon and that despite her religious leaders' support of a ballot measure banning same-sex marriage, she was actively opposed.

As she walked away, she said, "I'm afraid that a gay or lesbian friend might hear that I'm Mormon and think that I want to tear their marriage apart."

The story points out that there's a web site, MormonsFor8.com, that's tracking Mormon donors to the pro Prop 8 campaigns.

This weekend, Charlene and I went to the wedding of a relative. The wedding was completely appropriate to their cultural identity and belief system, but as the minister talked about the concept of marriage within their church I was shuddering and thinking "holy crap, I hope they have a safe word." I doubt they do.

If churches want to define marriage in that way, that's fine, but the government has no place being involved in a religious institution that's that narrow. Were these various factions calling for a constitutional amendment to remove any sanction of marriage by the state, despite my use of that short-hand to make some contract agreements easier, I'd vote for it. However, the campaign against Proposition 8 is based on building a more restrictive culture with less options, and it scares the hell out of me.

So if pressure is being put on the believers in a church to filter up and change the organization higher up, so be it.

[ related topics: Religion Sexual Culture Sociology California Culture Marriage ]

My car died on Friday, and on the tow into the shop the guy in the truck was listening to a talk radio program discussing San Francisco's Proposition K, which would legalize prostitution. One of the "against" arguments was from someone who self-identified as a stripper, who complained about what this would do to her job.

I think this totally nails the anti-prostitution argument. Whether the competition is to marriage or to strippers, anti-prostitution rules are about removing choice and engaging in protectionism.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Bay Area Sociology Marriage ]

Wow, it's almost like the DOJ is trying to deliberately lose the corruption case against Ted Stevens (R-AK): Jury finds mistake in Stevens indictment. This case has already had an almost hilariously (if the guy weren't so demonstrably corrupt) bad prosecution, with defense testimony being the most damning so far.

[ related topics: Politics Law Current Events ]

Melanie Berliet writes about being a naked sushi model.

The next moments proved to be intensely erotic, oddly enough, as Koko flittted daintily around the table, decorating me with scarves, bright pink flowers, and the fans that would serve as trays for the sushi, sashimi, and shumai. Never before had I felt like a piece of art. Rather, never before had I been so bent on winning an internal debate: Naked Body Sushi Modeling Equals Art, Not Exploitation. Luckily, Progressive Adventurous Melanie almost always trumps Conscientious Melanie. Fully outfitted with fish and decor, I felt poised, happy to be part of the Nyotaimori process.

Via Kottke, who also linked to the Nyotaimori web site, which I didn't find nearly as compelling as the description of being on the other side.

[ related topics: Erotic Nudity Art & Culture Furniture ]

LA Times: The case for videotaping interrogations. Police officer Jim Trainum talks about the first time he extracted a false confession from a suspect:

... I used standard, approved interrogation techniques -- no screaming or threats, no physical abuse, no 12-hour sessions without food or water. Many hours later, I left with a solid confession.

Via, Via.

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Law Enforcement ]

Red Sex, Blue Sex is a New Yorker article about early pregnancies among evangelical christian youth with amazing revelations like: "evangelical Protestant teen-agers are significantly less likely than other groups to use contraception". Duh. Still, interestingly written and thought out article. The descriptions of "Purity Balls" and such are downright scary to me.

[ related topics: Religion Erotic Sexual Culture Technology and Culture Invention and Design Pop Culture ]

I'm a legal geek (but not a lawyer). Found this on Volokh: http://www.volokh.com/archives...0_26-2008_11_01.shtml#1225159904

Figured the free speech and technical assessments would be of interest to many here. Note that the gov't missed an opportunity to try to apply precedent from drug-sniffing dogs, so there may be more evolution of caselaw on this particular issue.

Synopsis: Guy is getting evicted, some guy hired by the landlord gets his stuff, including a computer. Finds kiddie porn pic, calls cops. Cops did not get warrant before collecting an image of the hd and extracting MD5 signatures from the drive. Prosecutor claims that 'hashing' files isn't a search. Judge disagrees, bars evidence.

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Erotic Privacy Sexual Culture Health Robotics Law Law Enforcement Embedded Devices Cryptography Dogs Archival ]

IP Law Observer: Antitrust Laws Did Not Prevent Reverse Payments to Generic Manufacturers to End Patent Validity Challenges. The case is In Re Ciprofloxacin Hydrochloride Antitrust Litigation, Fed. Cir. No. 2008-1097 (October 15, 2008), Bayer pays money to generic manufacturers to stop their lawsuits challenging the patents on Cipro, this is not deemed anti-competitive under antitrust laws because the patents give them a monopoly on Cipro.

I'm not necessarily in favor of the antitrust laws, but this is clearly another place where the patent system is messed up and being gamed.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Law ]

Well, we voted yesterday evening. Did the usual sit down with the voter information guides and the computers and run through the various options, although most of the issues were pretty simple this election. I mean, voting against the MADD endorsement is icing on the cake when the "law and order" propositions (6 and 9) were already mostly funded by a fraudster with some frightening notions of consent (to be fair, he's only been indicted, not convicted, and he was building a "sex cave", which I count as the only mark in his favor), the "give money to Texas oil men under the guise of green initiatives" props were pretty blatant, and the h8ers are beating people up with their own signs. Lots of "no", although a grudging "yes" for Prop 5, because although it isn't the right thing to do it is a step in that direction, and it pisses off the right people.

Locally, the town council race was a little harder to dig through, but Petaluma's Proposition K, which is not to be confused with San Francisco's Prop K, was fairly simple. It's allegedly a rollback of water rates (from Petaluma's already absurdly low water and sewer costs), I'd already made up my mind on it, but Charlene was reading the stuff for the first time, got through the "pro" argument, and said "Wait, how is this supposed to work? This makes no sense." It was good to see that she came to the same conclusion I did, but about 5x faster than me.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Bay Area California Culture ]

I both don't have TV, and live in a non-battleground state (except for the execrable Prop h8), and I've already voted, so I'm blissfully ignorant on most counts, but I found this Twitter exchange amusing:

windowseat: Thank you, Barack Obama, for the ad buy which caused pre-emptions of Knight Rider and Gary Unmarried, but not the wonderful Pushing Daisies.

whump: @windowseat see, Obama is good for America. He preempts Knight Rider, thus raising the country's collective intelligence.

Besides, how can you call anything "Knight Rider" if it doesn't star The Hof?

[ related topics: Politics Television David Hasselhoff ]

Oh HAI: LOL Cats Fridge magnets (thanks, Borkware).

The comment thread on this MeFi entry on the works of the Beard family is worth a perusal. Daniel Carter, Lina, and Adelia Belle Beard wrote books on outdoor activities for kids of that era, some are freely available: On the Trail: An Outdoor Book for Girls. Shelters, Shacks, and Shanties and Boat-Building and Boating.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Books Sociology Boats Machinery ]

Another one stolen directly from MeFi: This entry on Porsche's recent manipulation of VW stock that totally hosed a bunch of short selling hedge funds is well worth exploring. Several laugh out loud giggles, but also an interesting exploration of the process whereby there appeared to be demand for 107% of VW's stock.

[ related topics: Automobiles Economics ]

Y'all may have seen that Deep Throat director Gerard Damiano died, something I'd generally mark without note except for this comment:

The cause was complications of a stroke

I'm not sure what technique he was using but I gotta be more careful.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

Big Buck Bunny is a short (10 minutes or so) film created with Blender to push the tools for dealing with "character animation tools for cartoonish motion and deformation", hair, fur and grass, and large outdoor environments. This is another in the series, along with Yo Frankie, a test of the game engine, and the short film Elephants Dream.

Big Buck Bunny has come a long way, both story and technology wise, since Elephants Dream.

[ related topics: Free Software Games Animation Open Source ]

I heard there was a secret chord, that George (and George) played and it pleased... uh... the Beatles fans, but you don't really care for music, do ya? (Hey, I'm not gonna suffer this earworm alone...)

[ related topics: Music ]

Result of a coffee shop conversation yesterday: Enphase Energy makes "micro-inverters" for solar installations, so instead of using one big inverter, you put an inverter on each panel. Simplifies wiring, gives you efficiency information for each panel assembly (so you know what's getting shaded, which ones need cleaning, etc), and they're a Petaluma company.

[ related topics: Photovoltaics ]

Anyone remember when "Better dead than Red" was the rallying cry in the conservative areas of the country? When self-reliance and self sufficiency were the rallying cry among those who called themselves Americans? No longer.

Harpooned: The Japanese Cetacean Research Simulator, a vertical scrolling shooter in which you use explosive harpoons to turn whales into cat food and whale burgers, for science! But don't hit the boats full of protesters, that will cost you money in legal fees!

[ related topics: Humor Games Boats ]

Hey, if you're the sort of person who'd respond to the "send us money to send our military people something for Thanksgiving" telemarketing call I got, please, get out a little bit more. If you don't know someone serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, or someone whose offspring are serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, you seriously need to meet people. Or, more likely, you need to get to know the people you do know a little better. There's no reason anyone needs to be paying professional fundraisers a cut to send someone in the service a card or a magazine subscription or a care package, just do it yourself.

Thank you. That way we can cut down on annoying telemarketer calls.

Old Soviet bitter-enders are attacking a Ukrainian actress as a traitor for hobnobbing with a man who killed hundreds of Societ citizens--- James Bond! The actress in questions appears in the current film Quantum of Solace. It is unclear if the James Bond they object to was the Sean Connery Bond or the Daniel Craig version. Certainly not the Geroge Lazenby Bond.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Movies red neck culture ]