Flutterby™! From 2009-12-01 to 2009-12-30

I ended up on the WikiPedia article for Jane Jacobs and read her comment about the freedom to study her wide-ranging interests, she said:

For the first time I liked school and for the first time I made good marks. This was almost my undoing because after I had garnered, statistically, a certain number of credits I became the property of Barnard College at Columbia, and once I was the property of Barnard I had to take, it seemed, what Barnard wanted me to take, not what I wanted to learn. Fortunately my high school marks had been so bad that Barnard decided I could not belong to it and I was therefore allowed to continue getting an education.

Another way in which the structure of the University fails it's students. One of the reasons I ended up getting my BS in Applied Math was because the actually degree requirements for math courses was lower than almost any other BS or BA in the catalog. This meant my hodge-podge of 16-years of willy-nilly courses could be combined into a BS in Math by simply filling in a few holes. When I went back to school, I actually had three possible choices, each requiring a similar number of holes filled: Math, Religious Studies and Psychology. Everything else required a huge string of courses and would have taken 3-4 years at 15-20 credits/semester instead of 2 years at 12-15 credits/semester.

[ related topics: Religion Civil Liberties Mathematics Education ]

Thanks to Eric for the small DVD player: I'm unable getting it to load DVDs, which may be the same reason it was sitting idle in your house, but I adore the form factor and if I can't debug this one I'll be getting another one in that same size.

Thanks to my Dad for sending the Graflex Speed Crown Graphic. There's a whole bunch of interesting project here, hopefully I can keep it in the "this is fun" zone. And I've got the Polaroid back, it looks like The Impossible Project is bringing back instant film production, and Fuji is apparently still making instant films, so both of those would be a way to muck about with this without turning it into more than a walk downtown and an excuse to interact with people.

And thanks to someone whom I won't name, but... I'd had the conversation with him about enjoying playing in large format photography, and he said "I've got a small stat camera you can have, it's got a 2'x2' back. I went last night to pick it up, and really it's way too freakin' big for me to have around as something to play with, even if I were to try to repurpose it into a device for photography. It's a full-on stat camera, in vertical form, with the light booms and everything. I was thinking I'd just steal the lens from it, but it's too much for that. However, we were in his project room and he said "I'm 76 years old, there's a lot of projects I wanted to do someday in here that I'm not going to get to, is there anything you need?". I allowed as how I had some teenagers in my life who wanted to blow some shit up, and he said "my son who's now a doctor was into chemistry when he was a kid, you want chemistry stuff?". So I now, among several boxes of glassware and diagnostic tools other things, have a huge 3 necked flask, with heaters, an accurate PH meter that needs a new probe, and other toys yet to be discovered. I'm regretting getting rid of my triple beam balance, though a basic digital scale would be more useful in the kitchen anyway.

Now I really really really need to build that new workshop. But there'll be some things that go bang in the futures of a few kids in my life, probably starting with some extremely small amounts of nitrogen triiodide...

And if anyone has a use for a stat camera, give me a holler. He'd love to see it go somewhere other than landfill.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Invention and Design ]

Former head of the FDIC believes that TARP has just made things worse

Harvard Medical School Study finds computerization does not save hospitals money (PDF):

RESULTS: More computerized hospitals had higher total costs in bivariate analyses (r ϭ 0.06, P ϭ .001) but not multivariate analyses (P ϭ .69). Neither overall computerization scores nor subscores were consistently related to administrative costs, but hospitals that increased computerization faster had more rapid administrative cost increases (P ϭ .0001). Higher overall computerization scores correlated weakly with better quality scores for acute myocardial infarction (r ϭ 0.07, P ϭ .003), but not for heart failure, pneumonia, or the 3 conditions combined. In multivariate analyses, more computerized hospitals had slightly better quality. Hospitals on the “Most Wired” list performed no better than others on quality, costs, or administrative costs.

The conclusion is that computerization might lead to modest improvements in "process measures of quality". From this ComputerWorld article via MeFi, Wired and /..

[ related topics: Health Software Engineering Economics ]

Square makes a little credit card reading dongle that plugs into the headset jack on a cell phone.

[ related topics: Wireless ]

Interesting

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/702478.stm

[ related topics: Nature and environment Current Events Monty Python ]

Is there anything this magical cut of pork can't do? I'm especially fond of the Peanut-Butter Maple Bacon Fudge recipe.

[ related topics: Food - Bacon Recipe ]

Little Green Footballs: Why I Parted Ways With The Right, Via SE

The Pancake Project. Art in pancakes. If you have kids, stealing ideas from this guy could make you a god to them.

[ related topics: Religion Children and growing up Interactive Drama Art & Culture ]

Worth reading all the way through: Too Much Joy: My Hilarious Warner Bros. Royalty Statement (Via MeFi, among other places).

Still more reasons you should buy your music directly from the bands you see perform rather than waiting for the leaches that are the major labels to suck all the value out of them.

[ related topics: Music ]

Maybe this is another canary in the coal mine

http://www.wired.com/wiredscie...2009/12/blue-whale-song-mystery/

A couple stolen from JWZ:

• Exploding whale video reporter looks back 4 decades later.
• The Necrocard. Full image in the comments.

[ related topics: Video ]

Researchers set out to find a sample of men who haven't seen porn, fail:

“We started our research seeking men in their 20s who had never consumed pornography,” said Professor Simon Louis Lajeunesse. “We couldn't find any.”

First, I question the language: "consumed"? It's still there after I've seen it. Thanks, Chris.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

I've received 8 invites for google wave if anyone is interested in seeing what it's about. It doesn't seem very useful for my purposes, but if anyone wants to give it a shot and see what it's all about, feel free to let me know jftorres3(at)gmail(dot)com or post here and I'll send you one of the invites. If I run out, I'm sure everyone I email the invites to will receive 8 also, so it shouldn't be hard to keep a chain going if I run short.

[ related topics: Social Software ]

Johannes Ernst: Spot the Difference: Yahoo/Facebook vs. Government/Health IT

[ related topics: Health Economics ]

A collection of astronomy links that Chris in Florida has been sending me:

• Ancient gamma ray burst is the most distant object ever seen, red shift of 8.2 puts it at 13 billion years old, 190 million years more than the previous record holder.
• Which leads to the question: Did civilizations form in these other galaxies? Could there be a billion year technology gap?
• Pretty picture of the moment: Dust Sculptures in the Rosette Nebula
• Moving closer and more recent, New map suggests mars was once wet and humid.
• First images of the sun from STEREO’s SECCHI/Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope
• monster waves on the sun

And I'll leave you with an image I shot hand-held with a point-n-shoot through the eyepiece of a telescope set up at the Ferguson Observatory. It was one of the Coronado telescopes. I'm contemplating taking the docent training up there when it comes around in March.

[ related topics: Photography Space & Astronomy Astronomy ]

Giles Bowkett: Blogs Are Godless Communist Bullshit, in which Giles addresses working in the tech industry, calls out Joel Spolsky, discusses economics, and Paul Graham, and makes some good points.

[ related topics: New Economy Work, productivity and environment Net Culture Economics ]

In the "huh, I thought this was the way it already worked" department: At The Dallas News, a New "Bold Strategy": Section Editors Reporting to Sales Managers.

...Says the memo, Carr's sales force will "be working closely with news leadership in product and content development." Executive sports editor Bob Yates and Lifestyles deputy managing editor Lisa Kresl are quoted in the memo enthusiastically signing off on the unconventional marriage; says Kresl, "I'm excited about the idea of working with a business partner on an arts and entertainment segment."

[ related topics: Quotes Invention and Design Sociology Current Events Work, productivity and environment Marriage ]

Caption really not necessary.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Global Warming ]

Yay: Paul E. Ester tweeted:

VIDEO: Jim Bunning is a hero for RIPPING Ben Bernanke a new one (or two!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rka9VbPPMys

"Your Fed has become the creature from Jekyll Island"

Who knew that I'd agree with a conservative junior Senator from Kentucky.

[ related topics: Movies Invention and Design Video ]

Lots of worthy organizations for your consideration in this season of gift-giving, but I think it's worth calling out Scarleteen's current fund drive.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

"I want what I can't have, need what I can't want..." Want to increase your level of satisfaction? This program on " The Infinite Mind " show might have a clue

http://www.lcmedia.com/mind549.htm

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

Although my habit is to use Mapquest when I need directions, I have also used Google Maps on Occasion and it seemd to work OK. However, the Chicago Tribune reports some odd anomalies in their mapping system, such as listing the location of Herzl Community College on Douglas Avenue. The only problem is that Herzl is now called Malcom X college and moved to Congress Parkway 50 years ago. There are other problems, like transposing roads to the wrong county and depicting neighborhood nicknames that haven't been used in a century. And this is in just one city. Any strange geography out where you live?

[ related topics: Community Maps and Mapping ]

Scientists working in the UK have discovered robust evidence that the creation of the earth and moon was a deliberate act. The researchers found that the earth, moon, and beyond were engineered according to a specific equation. They have dubbed it the God Equation.

I don't need no stinking equation, suspected all along He was there, and screwing with me

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyn...uation.php?utm_source=mostactive

[ related topics: Religion Work, productivity and environment ]

Snicker: Simon Edhouse emails David Thorne to ask him to do some design work... for free. Bloggerheads digs a bit deeper (yes, they're both real people). Via Sensible Erection.

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

Glowing wood sculptures. Hat tip to crasch.

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

City Beat Cincinnati looks at (well, not really) nudist camps in southern Ohio, including Cedar Trails which, the article says, is in or on a meteor crater. I mentioned this to Charlene and she said "we have to go"! Unfortunately, meteor craters on that side of the country may not be as obvious or clearly defined as, say, the southwest.

[ related topics: Astronomy Nudity ]

Friday night we were out and about and ended up getting a tree, which was way too large for where we wanted to put it, so we started cropping bits off of if, and then it was just a touch too small. But it kind of worked.

However, this brought up the train issue again. We've been talking about a fold-down loop, but I've got all sorts of engineering questions on how to make that work in the way we want it to, so we just got a sheet of plywood to build in to a prototype. But to get to that I had to get Charlene's organizer out of the shop, which is pretty close, and to do some reshuffling of how things are stored so that I can work on larger pieces during the rainy season. This is the roll-around clamp rack I came up with. Roll-around since I do most of my glue-ups in the back yard, so a way to get the whole stash there seemed important.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Work, productivity and environment Heinlein Machinery Trains ]

Mostly finished the organizer for Charlene. White oak and white oak veneer over plywoods. Learned a lot. And the finish doesn't really match the piece it was built to set on as well as I'd hoped.

Coming from the shop: Cut the pieces for the first curve for the train loop this evening, need to cut the second loop and build a small jig for the Domino so I can put that together and we can get the train running for the holidays, and on a fold down shelf from the wall so we can have it all year round.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Woodworking ]

I don't read a whole lot of mainstream media these days, but a number of people have been referring to some sort of scandal involving sex and "Tiger Wood". That's a name used for a few different species, but probably refers to Goncalo Alves, also sometimes referred to as "Zebra Wood". I'm not sure what this has to do with sex, but perhaps Hardwood Dildos by Hans or Jdildo could help you out there.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture History Journalism and Media Woodworking ]

Just in case your cynicism meter isn't pegged: British Medical Journal review claims that Roche is withholding information on effectiveness from Tamiflu studies. So how about that swine H1N1 flu? Ya think maybe the gloom and doom predictions could have financial incentive?

[ related topics: Health ]

NirSoft: Very weird problem on Windows Vista and Windows 7. Apparently having "Launch" in the name of your executable can crash modern versions of Windows.

The systems that I used to test this problem don't have any installation of Antivirus, Firewall, or any other software that might affect the operating system behavior. So I guess that there is some code inside Windows kernel which says, "If the .exe contains the word 'launch', execute it in a different way than all other executable files."

Cool! (In that "holy crap I develop software for this abomination of a platform and this is the type of idiocy that I have to be aware of in case it bites me" sort of way) Hat tip to Shawn.

[ related topics: Microsoft Software Engineering moron ]

We should have started doing this after Enron, and the more recent Wall Street Meltdown

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5B71VC20091208?rpc=64

[ related topics: Economics ]

Not sure I know where or how they got their data, but The New York Times: The American Diet: 34 Gigabytes A Day is relative to my long-term bet with TC. We need to look at TV a bit there, but looks like nearly 65% is still in the broadcast realm.

[ related topics: Content Management Technology and Culture Invention and Design Television New York ]

I enjoyed Freakonomics, but I've heard nothing but bad about the sequel: Superfreakonomics. Figleaf's Real Adult Sex piles on to the criticism: The Real Lesson of That Dumb Chapter in Superfeakonomics:

The story in Levitt and Dubner’s column about the woman who flies to Texas to do “erotic” things to a guy with his briefcase is emblematic not of advances in prostitution. (I’ll give you a nickel if I can’t find an example of similar fetish-serving sex work any time between, say, 1809 and 1959.) It’s emblematic of all that’s left!

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Economics ]

Why does the word pathological contain: "logical"? I don't know. There are some interesting thoughts in: The Gervais Principle with my favorite quick quote:

"...organizations don’t suffer pathologies; they are intrinsically pathological constructs."

Lots of other interesting links. No, I've never watched the show, now I feel compelled to.

[ related topics: Movies ]

1950s images of nude women, scanned and restored. Of interest to just straight imagery buffs (not just those interested in images in the buff) are some of the before and after shots, with the color correction and cleanup the author is applying obvious.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Nudity ]

Robert Steinback on the failure of the current healthcare system:

I am scheduled to begin dying on Feb. 1, 2010.

That's when his COBRA eligibility runs out, and he can't find anyone who will pick up his insurance. So if you expect that you'll ever get sick, don't use your employer's health insurance, because one day you could become unemployed because they failed, and that could mean a discontinuity in your health insurance. And then you're screwed. In most states.

The first thing we need to do in this whole healthcare thing is remove the employer insurance deduction, or give it to everybody. Even before insurance portability, we need to make sure that people can keep the insurance they've got, and the easiest way to do that is to make sure we can always stay with the company we've got.

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

Last week, the Washington Post ran a correction:

A Nov. 26 article in the District edition of Local Living incorrectly said a Public Enemy song declared 9/11 a joke. The song refers to 911, the emergency phone number.

This correction was widely distributed. Scott Rosenberg: Public Enemy and the Washington Post: The correction as folk art and viral meme talks about why:

But no; the newsroom must wear its tie. And so instead of dialogue we have silence on one side and ridicule on the other.

Which I think was a particularly apt metaphor. If you wear a tie, you're saying one of two things: 1) You're submissive or 2) you're a bullshitting liar and attempting to signal that you're submissive when you're not. Okay, there's 3), you're being ironic and dressing up because dressing up is that sort of theater, but that only applies to things like prom night and "the theatre". If you fail to realize that wearing a tie puts you in one of those first two categories, you're probably in category #1.

I believe that "the media" lack enough self-awareness to qualify for #2, which is why newspapers have been PR's bitch for quite a while now.

[ related topics: Theater & Plays Journalism and Media Art & Culture Marketing ]

This is an amazing image, and since it IS Friday, am recharging my sense of wonder. "The image shows thousands of galaxies, some more than 12 billion years old. The field view of this image would fit behind a grain of sand held at arm's length against the sky. Almost every dot in this photo is an entire galaxy of stars and who knows what fascinating undiscovered mysteries."

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/...universe-after-the-big-bang.html

but, someone posted a corrected link further down the page claiming that it is the actual image: http://hubblesite.org/newscent...09/31/image/a/format/xlarge_web/

[ related topics: Photography Weblogs Television Heinlein ]

the post on the 50's nudes got me thinking, take a look at Frank's work, some interesting images

http://frankpetronio.com/galleries/

[ related topics: Ziffle Erotic Work, productivity and environment ]

Haven't read this yet, but mean to: The Impact of Legal Abortion: Redefining the Maternal Mortality Rate. I'm linking to it because I got it from Heather Corinna who has announced that this weekend Scarleteen has a matching funds fund drive.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Law ]

Hey! Carl Coryell-Martin has resurfaced on Twitter, and he's working on BirdsEye - "Guiding You To Birds" with your iPhone.

[ related topics: Carl Coryell-Martin Work, productivity and environment Birds iPhone ]

this is referring to asteroids striking the Earth and other planetary bodies, not what goes on after a Weight Watchers meeting....

http://news.nationalgeographic...05/09/0915_050915_asteroids.html

[ related topics: Astronomy Current Events ]

"Jam jars store jam, the Sun jar collects and stores sunshine so that you can use it at night." Pass around the sunshine, Sunshine.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Home-made-Sun-Jar/

[ related topics: Java ]

Sarada and I dipped over 150 truffles last night 'til we ran out of chocolate. Today I've got two projects:

1. Get the train loop up on the wall around the tree. Think I've got all the measurements and issues worked out. It won't have a coat of finish on it, and the plywood won't have edging, but this is a prototype anyway (even though this prototype may end up being there for a year or two, which is why I do have the edge banding and intend to put something on it at some point).
2. Build a couple of these Hila science camp tabletop trebuchets. I like the release mechanism, though I'll be doing the bucket slightly differently.

[ related topics: Chocolate Machinery Trains ]

"slav Tichy Nearly 80 years old, Tichy is regarded as a real eccentric by his neighbors in Kyjov, a small Moravian town. His work reflects his obsession with the female body. But while other photographers ask women to pose, and use the best equipment and store photographs with a big care, Tichy did the opposite.

He used to hide in bushes and take pictures of unaware women and girls with his home-made cameras. Once developed they were thrown away and Tichy didn't care about them anymore. "

http://www.radio.cz/en/article/81346

more of his work on Google Images:

http://images.google.com/image...earch+Images&gbv=2&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

[ related topics: Photography Open Source Work, productivity and environment ]

Woot! The train is up! Video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUSR91yTdoc (no sound), lots o' pictures at http://www.flutterby.net/2009-12-13_Train_around_tree

[ related topics: Photography Movies Machinery Trains Video ]

some of these images surpass perfection

http://www.c4fap.org/exhibitions/2009ArtInNature/index.html

Tony Perrottet goes off in search of the remnants of the debauchery of the Edwardian Georgian era. Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Remember when all of those emails that the Bush administration was subpoenaed for were "lost"? Millions of missing Bush administration emails have been found. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has a press release on their lawsuit:

Documents produced so far show the Bush White House was lying when officials claimed no emails were ever missing. The record now proves incontrovertibly that Bush administration officials deliberately ignored the problem and, in fact, knowingly allowed it to worsen.

Via MeFi, additional links stolen from that entry for posterity: TPM, CNN, NPR. Best comment in the MeFi thread:

Maybe this will finally take down the Bush administration.

[ related topics: Politics Ethics ]

Colfax Record: When Same Sex Marriage was a Christian Rite

[ related topics: Religion Erotic Sexual Culture Sociology Marriage ]

Back in 1964, when decent SF films were few and far between (just like now) I saw an exciting one on a Saturday afternoon at the old Milford theater, Crack in the World. Scientist Dana Andrews heads a UN project to drill through the Earth's crust in Tanganyika to release and then exploit the geothermal energy. To speed things up, Andrews borrows a 10 megaton h-bomb from the Americans and blasts through. Of course, it was too powerful and the apocalypse beckons. The heros use another h-bomb dropped into a volcano in the Indian ocean to stop the problem, which ends up involving blowing Tanganyika into orbit. Really.

Sounds like a good matinee? Maybe too good.

[ related topics: Cool Science Space & Astronomy Earthquake ]

I don't know if you've been following this Fake Steve Jobs vs AT&T thing, but you could start at A not-so-brief chat with Randall Stephenson of AT&T, in which Fake Steve takes on AT&T for whining that customers are, *gasp*, using their service:

...when that happens, you do not go out and try to fuck it all up by discouraging people who love your product. What you do, instead, is you fix your fucking shitty ass network you fucking shit-eating-grin-wearing hillbilly ass clown!

This started a groundswell and turned into Operation Chokehold:

... On Friday, December 18, at noon Pacific time, we will attempt to overwhelm the AT&T data network and bring it to its knees. ...

AT&T responded:

We understand that fakesteve.net is primarily a satirical forum, but there is nothing amusing about advocating that customers attempt to deliberately degrade service on a network that provides critical communications services for more than 80 million customers.

Nope. Sorry. Not buying it. Anyone expecting "critical communications services" isn't using AT&T.

The question is: If "Operation Chokehold" succeeds, how the f*ck would you tell? Would every other call suddenly not go through? Would simple text web pages load faster with 3G turned off? Would anything complex simply never load over the 3G network? Like I said: How would you tell? So, Friday at Noon I'll probably pop up my iPhone and watch the little spinny thing go round and round and round and round a bit.

(Full disclaimer: Actually, since I turned off 3G on the iPhone it's been working fairly well, and it's a decent little web browser when running on WiFi. And, frankly, fifteen years ago when Meuon and I and the other unindicted co-conspirators were trying to bring Internet to Chattanooga, I'm pretty sure that we'd have thought that what the iPhone does for me was too implausible to be SciFi.)

[ related topics: Apple Computer Humor broadband Work, productivity and environment California Culture Chattanooga Net Culture Clowns iPhone ]

Thanks, Lyn, for pointing this out: A police officer in D.C. has been arrested on a murder charge. What's interesting about this particular situation is a difference in reporting: Here's the Washington Examiner story, and here's the Washington Post story.

I could start by pointing out that the WaPo clearly pays its employees by the word, but egads the difference in reporting, and how clearly the events are communicated, is amazing, and WaPo doesn't come out well.

Speaking of which, I was listening to this week's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, with CNN reporter Rick Sanchez in the "Not My Job" segment and... wow. First thing: Can we get some reporters who have a clue about the difference between watts and volts?

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Law Enforcement Heinlein Pop Culture ]

While I'm whining about AT&T, others do it differently: Google has clue.

We think about this a lot a Google, because we make [just about] all of our money from advertising," Google engineering director Linus Upson said on Friday at a browser-obsessed conference in Mountain View, California. "It's unlikely that ad blockers will get to the level where they imperil the advertising market, because if advertising is so annoying that a large segment of the population wants to block it, then advertising needs to get less annoying.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Economics ]

I'm having trouble with the release mechanism, and I think I need a heavier payload for these things than the gravel from a walk that I'm using here. These are built on the Hila Trebuchet dimensions and plans, but I'm going to get a whole bunch of pennies for ballast, and a couple of superballs for projectiles.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Woodworking ]

"The eclipse begins at first contact, when the edge of the moon kisses the outer rim of the sun. This image was taken shortly after first contact using a Calcium-K filter. A Calcium-K filter sees the sun in near-ultraviolet light, which is why the image looks purplish."

http://www.exploratorium.edu/eclipse/2006/photo_1.html

[ related topics: Photography Astronomy Java ]

Charlene's nephew, Jamin Chepernich, is finishing up his apprenticeship with Andreas Kreuger, a guitar builder in Germany. I'm not sure theres are permanent links, but Jamin built #295 and #312. This bookmatch back is something I'd frame and put on my wall.

[ related topics: Music Woodworking ]

New York Times: Help Wanted - Boatbuilder And I have cast a keel out of lead (thanks, Grandpa!).

Somewhere out there is a man who can help me build a model boat for my little nephew. This man is between 82 and 84 years old, which means he was a 10-, 11- or 12-year-old boy in 1937, when the book I took the plans from was published.

I take my hope from the future in the kid across the street, who has called me over at least once to check out the cockpit for the spaceship he's building, for which he's scrounged an old speedometer and several other gauges...

[ related topics: Invention and Design Boats Fabrication New York ]

The C Programming Language - Brian W Kernighan & Dennis M Ritchie & HP Lovecraft - 4.10 Recursion

I had heard tales of the... thing that C.A.R. Hoare had summoned up in '62– dark hints of choosing one element from an array, and partitioning the rest into lesser and greater sets, and hellishly recursing until the data were twisted into a sorted list– but nothing I could have imagined would be in any way comparable to the daemoniac, blasphemous reality that I saw.

[ related topics: Humor Software Engineering ]

Just signed up for the Cowgirl Creamery fan page on Facebook, and was reminded that I'll go out of my way to find interesting, relevant and/or amusing advertising. Their current status:

The best gift message we've seen yet: "Cheeses, thou divine companion; Help us all be strong and able; Bless us in our daily labor; Lead us to the dinner table."

[ related topics: Food Consumerism and advertising ]

Howl! HP computers are racist (YouTube video). The auto-tracking feature of the HP web cam follows a white woman's face just fine, ignores when the black man comes into frame. Among a whole bunch of other places, Via MeFi, winner is mytwoleftfeet's comment:

The camera is probably just drunk and straight male. Under those conditions visual tracking is reserved for females.

[ related topics: Humor Software Engineering Race Video ]

Andrea DiMaio: It is Time to Look at Government 3.0 (or Better Understand 2.0).

I ran across this immediately after FaceTwitting "Pondering the difference between politicians who can win, but whose speeches are vague and interpretable, to those w/ principles who lose.", related to some issues of local Sonoma County politics, and after reading yet another tale of a scamster selling ridiculous crap to the CIA causing the terror level to be raised from "hokum" to "bullshit" (Via SE, the comment "ring riot said @ 4:11pm GMT on 21st Dec" is worth a read), and learning that health insurance company stocks are the highest they've been in a year on news that the current give-away to Wall Street that is the healthcare bill is likely to pass.

(I should note that what the scamster sold to the CIA wasn't an implausible idea, steganography in Al Jazeera television signals is totally technically feasible, the hogwash was that any third party without inside knowledge could detect it and decipher it if those doing it had the remotest level of clue).

Anyway, I had a thesis here somewhere but I've been off doing other things with the evening and forgot it. So, no thesis, just random stuff.

[ related topics: Politics Technology and Culture Current Events Cryptography Economics ]

I wish I could find this as a non-AP article so I'd be linking for posterity, but Russian Communist Party asks for a day when people can stop with the criticism of Stalin and focus on the good aspects of his reign. Deputy parliament speaker Ivan Melnikov is quoted as saying:

We would very much like for any discussion of the mistakes of the Stalin epoch to be silenced today, so that people could reflect on Stalin's personality as a creator, a thinker and a patriot

So, just for one day, let's not focus on genocide on scales that made Hitler jealous, let's not focus on the deliberate mismanagement of the Soviet economy, resulting in widespread famine, his destruction of institutions of learning or forward thinking, including killing off smart people wholesale, thereby retarding technological advancement and standards of living... Let's just focus on the good bits of Stalin.

And after that, maybe a moment of appreciation for Mao, and Pol Pot, and the Khmer Rouge, and Che Guevera and maybe even a little love for Fidel Castro.

Then we can go back to reality.

[ related topics: Quotes Sociology Dictators Economics ]

Suggested by Susan Kitchens: Why Sony computers behave the way they do:

Then, at a certain point during development, the engineers take their slick, shiny prototype up to the thirteenth floor and leave it on a massive smoked glasss table in an dark, empty conference room. They go home silently, and drink sake in a melancholy their wives cannot understand.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Consumerism and advertising ]

"The OpenEEG project is about making plans and software for do-it-yourself EEG devices available for free (as in GPL). It is aimed toward amateurs who would like to experiment with EEG"

http://openeeg.sourceforge.net/doc/

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

"The latest research seems to indicate that brain farts are a unique type of cognitive mistake. Unlike errors caused by lack of information or experience, or by distractions, brain farts are innate. They have a predictable neural pattern that emerges up to 30 seconds before they happen."

http://discovermagazine.com/20...ain-2/22-anatomy-of-a-brain-fart

Ballistic penises and corkscrew vaginas - the sexual battles of ducks (Thanks, Rèka)

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Nature and environment ]

The Hook does a profile of Joel Salatin, including a few of the criticisms of him. He's coming out to speak at Tara Firma Farms on February 18^th, I need to make sure I'm invited.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

In the spirit of the season, Sociological Images has a run-down on Krampus, Santa's evil sidekick. Wikipedia has a whole rundown of St. Nick's co-conspirators.

MeFi has a bunch of stuff on that definitive Christmas story, H.P. Lovecraft's The Colour Out Of Space, including Mark E. Smith reading it for the BBC, and the text of The Colour Out Of Space if you'd care to read it to your children yourself.

Not a man breathed for several seconds. Then a cloud of darker depth passed over the moon, and the silhouette of clutching branches faded out momentarily. At this there was a general cry; muffled with awe, but husky and almost identical from every throat. For the terror had not faded with the silhouette, and in a fearsome instant of deeper darkness the watchers saw wriggling at that tree top height a thousand tiny points of faint and unhallowed radiance, tipping each bough like the fire of St. Elmo or the flames that come down on the apostles' heads at Pentecost. ...

So whether, like me, you're putting triple the effort to make sure there's "X", and lots of "mas", in Xmas, or whether you celebrate the birth of Jesus on an entirely different date, have a good afternoon.

And don't shoot your eye out, kid.

[ related topics: Religion Children and growing up Movies Gambling ]

Philip Greenspun takes on Malcolm Gladwell on why U.S. airlines are safer than foreign ones.

[ related topics: Aviation ]

Very heavy stuff, I think that there is a lot of truth to what this man says.

http://www.thesunmagazine.org/...aving_the_indigenous_soul?page=1

"Responsible" adult flies R/C airplane with onboard camera around, kids try to shoot it with fireworks (YouTube).

[ related topics: Children and growing up Aviation Video ]

Just a YouTube video of test firing our trebuchets as we tuned 'em (we figure final tuning will be in the hands of the kids themselves).

Turns out the cheapest ballast that was relatively dense was just pennies, and we've got little smiley-faced bouncy balls for ammo.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Movies Video ]

ProfessorBainbridge.com: TSA: The Stupid Agency.

Yeah. What he said. Can we please have a little sanity in our air travel security?

Recently had a request to make some I/O speak TCP/IP on Ethernet, and Lantronix makes the XPort, roughly the size of an RJ45 jack with serial out to talk to your microcontroller, XPort Pro which can run Linux, and the XPort AR which has power over Ethernet.

Yeah, they're $60-90 in small quantities, but that power over ethernet option is appealing for some of the home automation stuff we've been contemplating...

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source Robotics Embedded Devices ]

Via Dave, sex laws still on the books in Minnesota.

Courtesy of Columbine, Fourth Estate Follies: the year in journalistic malfeasance.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Law Current Events Journalism and Media Government ]

Okay, all of the TSA idiocy in response to this moron who claimed to be a terrorist on Christmas day (best quote, and I don't remember where I got this, was something on the order of "well he claims to be Al Qaeda, but his pants were literally on fire") is really pissing me off: None of the suggestions offered up in response will actually do anything to mitigate the sort of threat he presented. The TSA bozos failed, and they're responding with scattershot panic rather than actual success.

They're helping the freakin' terrorists.

And somehow we're electing and re-electing politicians who seem intent on maintaining this bureaucracy that's helping the terrorists.

But I supposed I shouldn't be surprised: Instant Karma: New US War Target Gets Its Own Terror Icon:

Wow, that didn't take long at all. Scant days after the American war machine took the cloaking device off its direct military involvement in Yemen, we have an alleged attempted terrorist attack by an alleged attempted terrorist who, just scant hours after his capture, has allegedly confessed to getting his alleged attempted terrorist material from ... wait for it ... Yemen!

Kung Fu Monkey re-runs "Wait, Arent You Scared?" from August 2006:

Errr, no. And if you are, you frankly should be a little goddam embarrassed.

[ related topics: moron Current Events Pyrotechnics ]

Those of you who still giggle like an 8 year old at the word "boner" have probably already discovered the Oglaf online comic. Silly dick jokes without the "eeeew" squick factor of Sexy Losers.

A Sensible Erection post led me to another more serious work by the same person, Platinum Grit, and over at Yuhm an interview with Trudy Cooper, the writer/artist/illustrator behind both.

[ related topics: Humor Erotic Sexual Culture Comics ]

The Story of Totlol:

Google releases a public API. They watch what third-party developers do with the API and modify the Terms of Service (ToS) for that API in a way that prevents breakthrough potential. Google may then move to offer a similar service based on their platform rather than the API.

[ related topics: Web development ]

President Obama: It's Time To Fire The TSA

The TSA isn't saving lives. We, the passengers, are saving our own. Since its inception, the TSA has been structured in such a way as to prevent specific terror scenarios, attempting to disrupt a handful of insanely specific tactics, while continuing to disenfranchise and demoralize the citizens who are actually doing the work that a billion-dollar government agency—an agency that received an additional $128 million just this year for new checkpoint explosive screening technology—has failed to do.

[ related topics: Politics moron ]

Sleep mode.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Sonic Finger Audio Plug-ins - Your ears won't believe what they see™ (Thanks, Shadow!)

[ related topics: Music ]