Flutterby™! From 2010-01-01 to 2010-01-31

Happy passing of an arbitrary cultural moment. Apparently some annoying grammar freaks are proposing that there's a correct pronunciation for 2010. Frankly, I don't care if you pronounce it "twenty ten" or "two thousand ten", it'll always be 2.010E3 to me.

Of course the "new year" is bringing out all the end-of-the-world predictors and whackjobs: Biblical scholar predicts rapture for May 21, 2011:

This is not the first time Camping has made a bold prediction about Judgment Day.

On Sept. 6, 1994, dozens of Camping's believers gathered inside Alameda's Veterans Memorial Building to await the return of Christ, an event Camping had promised for two years.

Uh. Yeah. Guy's got cred. After all he's made predictions before.

Other amusement that came across the FaceTwitSpace feeds was that end-of-year observations tended to fall into three categories: "Reno or Vegas?", "celebrating N years sober" and "which vintage champagne is best?". In roughly ascending age.

The good news is that the subpoenas served to bloggers who published the revised TSA rules have apparently been withdrawn.

Which leads us to the "come back with a warrant" door mat.

Ninite installer for Windows (Via SE), starting to provide functionality for a few basic Windows apps that's been available for Linux since 1995:

Ninite installs software fast with default settings and says "no" to browser toolbars and other junk.

JWZ: How to use FaceBook with a feed reader. There are three more feeds I need to drop in my reader.

[ related topics: Free Software Privacy Microsoft Open Source Aviation Software Engineering Current Events ]

Dave Barry's year in review: 2009.

NYTimes: Safety of Beef Processing Method is Questioned. Major food processor uses vacuum to suck remaining everything (including spinal cord bits, hello mad cow/CJD) off the carcass, processes with ammonia, mixes with ground "beef" to sell to fast food and school lunch programs.

Via MeFi, from which came this related article which points out that this crap (literally) shows up in products like "American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties."

Buy your meat from a local farm. Work towards changing the laws letting the slaughter happen on that farm again, so that you can be aware of the process. Grind your own beef, or if you let someone else do it make sure that they're more than happy to let you watch (ie: your local butcher).

[ related topics: Children and growing up Food Government ]

After my music note themed speaker shelves I've been thinking about a shelf for the bathroom. Seeing some images from Chris Newhard that were on the wall of Aqus Cafe (May require Facebook login), more of Chris Newhard's work at the Solomon Dubnick gallery, although neither of those have the one that inspired me, made me think that a nude profile would make a great shelf support.

So I'm looking for some images to inspire me on a profile that'd work for this. Male or female is fine. Probably arms overhead, definitely a curved torso. This image from Vintage Pulchritude, or maybe the woman on the left of this one, the second down here, but all of those are going to require some re-imagining to try to see as a shelf bracket, including figuring out what to do with arms that would be out in space, and none of them has as strong a sense of profile as I'd like to find.

Anyone got a suggestion for inspiration?

[ related topics: Music Photography Erotic Sexual Culture Weblogs Space & Astronomy Nudity Work, productivity and environment ]

A few months ago (or longer, when are we gonna do lunch again?) TC and I were talking about the economics of solar panels and I mentioned that I thought energy costs had to go up by roughly a factor of 5 to get widespread residential adoption. I based this on my gut feel that people aren't willing to commit to a decades long payoff schedule when the marketplace is filled with noise about breakthroughs in cheap solar that are just around the corner. As a consumer, why should I commit to $.13/kW/Hr for thirty years when a nickel per is just around the corner?

I realize that, in fact, energy costs aren't going to go down appreciably, but I've been seeing rumblings now that maybe I need to go back and look at what current prices of solar are. I mean, pointing out the idiocies of Fox commentators is shooting fish in a barrel with a hand grenade, but Tom Rooney makes some impressive (if slightly vague) claims in SPG Solar CEO vs Bill O'Reilly on Solar. I wonder how many of those claims would be true without the massive tax incentives?

[ related topics: Politics Consumerism and advertising Economics Photovoltaics ]

A couple weeks ago, I ran into the Boulder Public Library to get a library card. Being a "professional academic", I have access to the University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries (there are six on the Boulder campus) and the US Geological Survey Libraries. That's an amazing amount of bibliotechnic resources. I can even request books and articles through literally hundreds of other libraries via inter-library loan.

So why was I tromping into the Boulder Public Library within an hour of opening with my driver's license and recent utility bill in hand? To get a library card and reserve one of dozens of Kill-a-Watt power usage meters that the library now checks out through a joint program with Xcel Energy's SmartGridCity. Even though they just started checking them out that day and I was in within an hour of opening, I ended up number 37 on the wait list (for 14 units, max three week checkout).

Public libraries may be struggling to stay relevant in this era of Amazon and Kindles. But I think they are really finding their niche - it's just not in lending out dusty tomes of decade-old best sellers. I just jumped onto my own local library's website, the Longmont Public Library, because I saw an announcement that they, too, will be lending out Kill-a-Watts. While there, something else caught my eye: downloadable books-on-mp3 and videos!

All for the low, low price of FREE! I can download MP3s of recent releases and classics like The Canterbury Tales, A collection of Kurt Vonnegut novels read by the author, even Atlas Shrugged.

[ related topics: Books Current Events Education Public Services ]

Health News Review: It doesn't make sense for us to review TV health news anymore:

Some have said that one definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

If our critiques aren’t helping TV health news, it’s time to devote more attention to other news organizations where, perhaps, our constructive outreach efforts may do more good.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs Technology and Culture Health Current Events Television ]

More fodder for my bandwidth bet with TC (that I should really put more energy into resolving):

Hunter Walk, the director of product management for the company, told the New York Times: "Our average user spends 15 minutes a day on the site. They spend five hours in front of the television. People say, 'YouTube is so big,' but I really see that we have a ways to go."

[ related topics: Technology and Culture broadband Television Dan and Todd's Bandwidth Bet ]

Johannes Ernst, of LID and thence OpenID fame, has started prognosticating: Upon 2020, musings on what the world might look like in a decade. His first entry is Technology's Future is Deeply Intertwingled, and I was going to comment there, but realized that this particular sort of navel gazing is better kept on my own site. So, two observations:

First: Back in the early Naughties I was at some weblogger gathering when "tags" and "folksonomies" were all the rage, and someone asked what I thought, and I scoffed and said "in Library school, the Dewey Decimal System is a full semester course". Of course I also went home and implemented a classification system for my blog, but even today I find that it isn't as useful as I'd hoped, and, further, that classification is (as Nelson points out) really really hard even when one person builds the taxonomy.

I think there's great value in "the semantic web", I'd love to see more people publishing more information that lets me use online data outside of the human interpretation context, but, alas, I also think there are huge gains in building heuristic systems (which may evolve into something "smarter") to interpret data in the context in which we wish to use it. Acknowledging, for instance, that people aren't likely to standardize on a format for dates of events, and instead building systems to parse text for event information.

Which brings me to: In your example, it'd be really nice if you could get the straight data stream for traffic and overlay it on to the display of your choice, but if the publishers of that data or the display are getting their revenue stream from alternate sources then they've got a financial incentive to make that data less useful to you.

[ related topics: Language Books Weblogs LID (Lightweight IDentity) ]

Magic Flute Fine Art Nudes: Conversation With An American Cop:

SH: “Let me stop you there to ask, as you understand it, has the guy broken any laws in taking that photograph?”

Bob: “I don’t think so. That’s not important. What’s important is to discourage that kind of photography. And to learn who the guy is to see if he repeatedly photographs similar subjects.”

[ related topics: Photography Law Enforcement ]

Holy crap. I hope this isn't true:

Brad Graham, longtime public relations manager at the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, has died at home in St. Louis. There are no details yet. He was 41.

Brad was one of the early webloggers, his "Break Bread with Brad" gatherings brought together a lot of people in that culture, I probably met as many people face-to-face at those gatherings as I did at the Dave Winer organized ones, and his continued role in the weblog culture, on various IRC chats and mailing lists, was one of sanity and humor. He hadn't blogged in a while, but he was active on Twitter.

I'm mostly straight, Brad is a hypothetical reason I stuff that qualifier in there.

Damn. He'll be missed.

[ related topics: Weblogs Dave Winer Theater & Plays ]

In a project that has been "relationship managed", the coders (1 in S. Africa, a .net wizard and me) were finally allowed to communicate directly on the interface. A simple one posting XML to create records. We've spent hours and hours in a storm of DTD specs like snowflakes, strange business logic tossed like snowballs, XML validation issues hitting like hail, all fueled by a person in the middle to whom XML is a religion (he co-authored a "definitive" work on XML). Everyone trying to pretend they are large companies with lots of process management and documentation flow.

the 3 company flow has been: Code-Monkey->IT Manager->Biz-Dev <-> Biz-Dev-MiddleMan <-> Biz-Dev <- Code Monkey

Finally in desperation, the code monkeys are allowed to play together. ala: Monkey<->Monkey. In about 1 hour.. specs are laughed at and tossed, redefined, both sides re-coded and tested, and magic happens. The best quote was from the biz-dev guy on the other side: "We didn't know it COULD work that way".

Worth getting up at 4am to play with the code monkey on the other side of the world for.. now I want a banana.

[ related topics: Religion Web development Content Management moron Work, productivity and environment Clowns ]

David Chess discussed the "Doctrine of First Sale" in the context of the fascinating recent decision in Werner vs Autodesk. Worth reading, both for the court's dry humor and for discussion of the difference between a "mere licensee" and an owner, and how the software license process transfers some rights and not others to the purchaser.

[ related topics: Law ]

With Charlene out of town for two months, I figure this may be my chance to re-rip all the CDs to FLAC and get us switched over to the Chumby as a player. So yesterday I went poking around for the easiest way to rip. The fastest machine here is a Windows Vista 64 box, it looked like the best way to do this was with WinAmp Pro, so I laid down my $20, got my download and my license key, copied and pasted same into the license box, and got...

"Invalid Registration Key"

So I sent off a support request and haven't heard back yet. Which leads to two questions:

1. What's the easiest way to rip CDs to FLAC?
2. Am I just as well off with 384k MP3s?

(Yeah, I know, I'd do Ogg Vorbis, but then I'd still end up transcoding them to something else and it'd all be a royal pain in the tuchus.)

[ related topics: Music Microsoft ]

Brainlog linked to Cliff Mass asking how good UW students are at math.

Here's a PDF of the test (in the missing diagram for 3b, it's a right triangle with angle α, a is the adjacent side, b is the opposite, c is the hypotenuse) which you should take before you compare your results to those of Cliff Mass's students in the Atmospheric Sciences 101 class (PDF, with answers). I found the results jaw-dropping. I was never a terribly good student, but none of these are more than fairly simple 11^th grade high school problems.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Mathematics ]

"Man, I love it when I get a chance to trot out my "the G-Spot as a historical construction" speech."

[ related topics: Erotic ]

Bwahahaha! New scanners break child pornography laws (note that the UK is seriously out of control on "child porn" laws, the U.S. looks positively reasonable in comparison. Sigh).

A 12-month trial at Manchester airport of scanners which reveal naked images of passengers including their genitalia and breast enlargements, only went ahead last month after under-18s were exempted.

JWZ described this as The Buttered Cat Effect:

What happens when the immovable object of terrorism meets the unstoppable force of kiddie porn?

The Sensible Erection thread is predictable, but does give some ideas:

KingPellinore said @ 1:48pm GMT on 5th Jan [Score:4 Insightful]

You know what this means?

Somewhere out there is a woman who works security for the airport who will, one fateful day, be proposed to by her boyfriend...

...with an engagement ring up his ass.

Silly question: Given the amount of fear and uncertainty that gets spread with these stupid ineffectual attacks, how long before someone just wears nitrocellulose pants and lights those on fire? Also, if these things are showing down to the surface of the skin, any reason to not carry those few ounces of Semtex rectally? Although, frankly, if actually killing people were the goal, rather than goading the TSA into collateral damage, other scenarios (including Larry's redacted one) make more sense.

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture Aviation ]

This evening’s Sonoma County Woodworkers Association meeting was at Luthier's Mercantile International Inc. up in Windsor. The presentation on guitar building was excellent (as every SCWA presentation I’ve been to has been), but they also had a scrap pile, $5/lb. Maybe $105 for that haul isn’t a tremendous deal, as a lot of that wood is pretty thin, but I think I can get 5 pairs of book matched Walnut door panels out of that, I’m going to cut the guitar sides in pieces and use them as a curved top to a jewelry case, there’s at least three other bookmatched door panels there, some curly maple that I can put into a couple of drawer fronts, and a few other pieces that’ll add some accent and pop.

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

The web page for the Parrot AR.Drone is over capacity right now, but the demo video for the iPhone controlled 4 propeller helicopter with onboard video looks pretty damned awesome. The augmented reality game demo looks over the top cool.

[ related topics: Games Video Aviation - Helicopters iPhone ]

Maxine Udall: The Price of Casino Like Finance Is Higher Than We Think, Elf had some commentary:

It's not just that management came out of business school and has no clue what engineering does, but that the talent management has to work with has been skewed downward by the immense seduction of money pulling talented engineers and scientists into studying financial alchemy rather than biochemistry or architectural engineering.

I think think speaks to some of the frustrations that Meuon expressed when management needlessly inserted itself into a process.

Which brings me back to the original essay:

Don’t get Maxine wrong. She is not making a case for central planning. Maxine remains committed to capitalism: free markets when they function well, regulated markets when they don’t. The above are simply additional arguments for reining in and regulating casino-like behavior and casino-like rewards in any market, not just capital markets.

I wonder what the trade-off is. By pretending that there was government involvement we've legitimized what was formerly a shady business. What used to be the purview of numbers runners, gangsters, and addicts down on their luck is now "being responsible" and "saving for retirement". Smart people look to running the casino as now being a socially acceptable way to make (more than) a living.

Would we be better off had these institutions not been given credibility following the Great Depression? If, culturally, we'd had 70 years of "Wall Street is a bunch o' scam artists, keep your money close" rather than the SEC?

I don't have any answers, and browsing this MeFi entry on the current woes in Iceland just gives me more questions.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Currency Gambling Economics Government ]

Genehack: Old Skool 4 Life. John calls out some thought provoking comments on the old blogger community and digital longevity from the Brad Graham / Bradlands / TheBrad memorial thread on MetaFilter.

[ related topics: John S Jacobs-Anderson Community ]

Just because by the time Charlene gets home I hope to have all remnants of CD culture removed from our house, RC3: Physical CDs, what should I do with them?

There's going to be strong pressure to not keep them, though the notion of them backing up a license, and as backup material, has some weight. Throwing them out seems a waste, but giving them to someone is pretty clearly piracy...

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Music ]

Regarding fear based law: Dr. Marty Klein - Fantasy On Trial (Again)

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Law Law Enforcement ]

Star Trek wetsuit. The old style uniform. Unfortunately, it's a red shirt. Via.

[ related topics: Star Trek Clothing ]

Lyn remembers Brad Graham.

100 game themed cupcakes

[ related topics: Games Food - Cake ]

Roger Ebert: Nil by mouth.

I mentioned that I can no longer eat or drink. A reader wrote: "That sounds so sad. Do you miss it?" Not so much really. Not anymore.

A good rumination on a lot of things that are worth ruminating on.

[ related topics: Food ]

On Erosblog, Faustus compares two paintings by James Montgomery Flagg, one of which is the "Uncle Sam Wants You" illustration, and asks which would be more likely to get you to join the army?

[ related topics: Politics Erotic ]

Launching a Christmas Tree with 32 Estes D12-0 model rocket engines:

I think that this just really goes to what it means to be an American at Christmastime.

[ related topics: Movies Space & Astronomy ]

So the other day I was talking with a friend about how busy life was, and mentioned that I was building a CNC router. He said "why not buy a milling machine?". I allowed as how I was interested in larger throws and such, but he happened to have a smaller mill that he'd just replaced that he was looking to get rid of or less than it was going to cost me to finish up the router, and it was already done. 12" throws in X and Y, which is big enough for the project that's first up.

It's a "Central Machinery" mill, which is basically the Harbor Freight house brand, which means that I'm in for a lot of tuning and tweaking. But I'm planning on fitting my own steppers to the thing anyway, and I'd be in for a lot of tuning and tweaking anyway if I built my own.

However, I don't yet have a vise for the thing, or any bits. I looked online, and some of that inventory looked promising, so this morning I went up to Harbor Freight for the first time. The clamping kit and any milling bits are online only items, but I saw a drill press extension table, which is something I've been needing to build, and the price was about what I expected to pay for the materials, so I figured "how badly can they screw that up?"

If I figure it as raw materials it was an okay deal for a couple of pieces of melamine coated MDF, and some T-track, handles and clamps, and it got me an extension table with a half-hour or so of tuning. But, yeah, I had to remove almost every screw and clean out several of their cuts to make it usable. Turns out you don't get what you don't pay for. Who knew?

In other things, I met up with Chris at Little House on the Trailer this morning, he came up because he was interested in the Sing panels that they've used in some of their buildings. We hung out there, got in to a conversation about intentional community, in which Polcum Springs was mentioned and then, because Chris had recently asked about Festool rental, I made him come back and we took some oak that I'd found on the side of the road and turned it into what we hope will soon be a bar top for his digs. That piece is currently clamped up (yay! I finally have enough clamps!) and drying in the shop.

[ related topics: Machinery Community Real Estate Woodworking Festool ]

Light Stalking: 22 Dazzling Bird Photos

[ related topics: Photography Birds ]

Review of Arizona CODIS database throws doubt on DNA matching, FBI isn't allowing a review of their data:

The first clue that something might be amiss came in 2005, when limited data was released from the Arizona state database, a small part of CODIS. An analyst who compared every profile with every other profile in the database found that, of 65,493 profiles, 122 pairs of profiles matched at nine out of 13 loci and 20 pairs matched at 10 loci, while one pair matched at 11 loci and one more pair matched at 12 loci. "It surprised a lot of people," says signatory Bill Thompson of UCI. "It had been common for experts to testify that a nine-locus match is tantamount to a unique identification."

Kind of like fingerprints: We have years and years of assertions that matches are precise, but the science for claiming that is pretty shakey. Via SE.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Databases ]

Never thought I'd be quoting Cory Doctorow here, in the context of the TSA lying about the capabilities of the full-body scanners:

Osama's still free, how about you?

Thanks, Viv.

[ related topics: Civil Liberties Government ]

A case reported by Professor Volokh: A man was convicted of forgery and possessing forgery instruments. The Forgery: a faked urine sample. The forgery instrument? Something called a Whizzinator. I was afraid to read further.

[ related topics: Law ]

Worth reading: Ex-Guantanomo guard meets with former prisoners to apologize.

[ related topics: Politics Current Events Propaganda ]

I need to find an evening to do some more cooking: a different technique for making the perfect pastry cream.

[ related topics: Food ]

Bad idea: Don't carry condoms in DC (or SF or NY), you could be charged with prostitution.

In D.C., police can declare "Prostitution Free Zones" where officers can pick up (I mean, arrest) anyone suspected of sex work. And they've been accused of using carrying three or more condoms as proof of intent to sell sex -- rather than intent to spend the weekend getting jiggy with a guy.

This is what happens when law enforcement and public health have different goals. And it's been a while since I was concerned with condoms, but three? Sounds like a regular evening to me.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Health Bay Area moron Law Enforcement ]

Bunch of people are linking to the reporter breaks "unbreakable" phone at CES, which makes me want one of those phones.

But the MeFi thread pointed out The Glock 21 Torture Test, someone doing things to an automatic pistol that are unspeakable. But which also make me want one.

[ related topics: Wireless Guns ]

So on Sunday afternoon, Forest and a few friends came over and we made nitrogen tri-iodide. First attempts to purify iodine out of potassium iodide failed (will have to try this again), so we went and got the little brown bottles of the tincture from the drug store, and pulled out a fairly dirty elemental iodine using the hydrochloric acid (available as "muriatic acid" from your favorite home improvement store) and hydrogen peroxide.

Dropped chunks of that in ammonia, mixed thoroughly, poured through a coffee filter, and... well...

It was cold on Sunday. And overcast. And humid. And that danged coffee filter didn't dry for anything. So we pulled out a hair dryer and started blowing it at the coffee filter. Shortly we heard snapping and crackling, and we realized that the stuff was exploding as it dried and the air hit it.

So we stood around for a little while, and then said "wait, what if we turn the coffee filter over so the paper is protecting the explosive from the air currents?" So we did, and we continued drying the stuff, looking around for other interesting things, when all of a sudden there was a loud "snap" simultaneous to holes appearing in the bottom of the coffee filter.

We resolved to try the whole process again when there was sun and a chance that the stuff would dry out on its own.

But there were a few additional snaps and cracks as I was sweeping up the surface.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Cool Science Health ]

Some amazing images from the NASA HiRISE project of pink mountains and tendrils that look like trees in the Mars landscape. Note especially the detail picture of the avalanche in motion. Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog titles this "another dose of Martian awesome".

I got this from JWZ's LJ, where spider88 observed:

Awesome that the planet of men is covered in vulvas.

To make sense of the picture, it's probably better understood if you flip it 180° and you can see that what looks like trees are actually the tendrils running down the sides of the dunes. But then it looks less like vulvas.

The MeFi thread linked to Mars:2020:Springtime, an amusing little animation of what it might be like to live on Mars.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Weblogs Animation Movies Nature and environment Theater & Plays Space & Astronomy Astronomy Sports ]

Home-built positive pressure respirator.

• If you haven't looked at 3d printing in a while, it's worth some time poking around Shapeways. The SE thread linked to this stainless steel Möbius strip, but I was also impressed that some of the other stuff people are using their process for isn't much more expensive than mass-produced.
• You've undoubtedly by now seen the New York Times peek into mapping Netflix queues. Some of this is where the lines get drawn arbitrarily, but I was impressed by how it showed the east/west Petaluma cultural divide (click on the Bay Area map and drag up). Via.

[ related topics: Cool Science Invention and Design Sociology Maps and Mapping ]

David Steinberg: A fond farewell to Aunt Peg:

Juliet Carr, better known by her screen name -- Juliet Anderson -- and adored by fans as her adult film persona, Aunt Peg, died peacefully in her sleep Monday night, January 11, at her home in Berkeley. She was 71.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Bay Area ]

Mark J. Rebilas: 50 of my favorite photos of the Decade.

Nancy suggested Clark Little's pictures of waves breaking.

[ related topics: Photography Weblogs ]

Quoting Elf's entry in its entirety:

Customers who bought "Communion Wafers, Box of 1000" also bought:

No, really. You have to go see.

[Hat Tip: Andrew Sullivan]

Also, check out the third review down.

[ related topics: Religion Humor Sexual Culture ]

Robert Scoble: The Push and Pull of China, on Google's recent announcement that they're willing to forgo the Chinese market.

[ related topics: Economics ]

Gordon: an open source implementation of Flash in JavaScript

[ related topics: Free Software ]

Bacon Bourbon Caramel Corn - Because everything is better with bacon and mo-better with bourbon.

[ related topics: Food - Bacon ]

I recently bought a shload of 608ZZ bearings for a project that's gotten postponed because I now have the milling machine. One of the projects Charlene and I have been talking about is a lift for a piece at the head of the bed that'd serve as a retractable bookshelf/whatnot. Today, VXB.com sent me a "get a free set of digital calipers with an order of $20 or more, so I went and browsed through their thrust bearings and decided that a set of $8 calipers wasn't worth speindg $30 on those bearings pre-emptively, but it did get me searching around, and apparently my Google-fu is lacking.

Anyone got an idea on how I'd figure a reasonable working axial load for a 608ZZ bearing?

[ related topics: Fabrication Furniture ]

Dori Smith: My (current) opinions on HTML5.

[ related topics: Web development ]

Analog Devices’ Motion Sensing Technology Helps Cannondale’s Simon® Mountain Bike Suspension System Read the Trail.

I'm not even sure what commentary I can add to this. Looks like they've got accelerometers coupled to the shock absorber rebound valves on mountain bikes. Okay, it's sort of a cool idea, but I'm betting that few bikes equipped with said technology will ever make it as far as the fire roads...

[ related topics: Pyrotechnics Bicycling ]

Just got back from seeing Uncanny Valley Fern Gulley, aka Dances with NPCs. Visually stunning, though the previews were a bunch of films from directors who clearly haven't gotten the "subtle works better in 3d" message. Animation had a bunch of places that pulled me right out of the story, and the story? Well...

I mean, it was fun watching jakesully2154 level up, sex under the rope lights with the blue chick gives me some ideas for bedroom decor when Charlene gets back in town, but I was seriously considering leaving around the time when they introduced the stiffly flying creatures that flapped mechanically, and got downright disappointed when no one hollered "Leeroy Jenkins" (YouTube) (Wikipedia explanation) when the humans take on the tree boss.

And at the end, when the Ewoks are taking out the At-Ats?

Give me the film about the Sigourney Weaver character and the helicopter pilot and I'd have been transfixed. As it was, I was itchy in my seat from not too far in.

This was all made worse because I rented The Big Country last weekend. Also visually stunning, but with characters played by actors who could carry scenes with no dialog, and a screenplay that wasn't so on rails you could almost hear the conductor screaming "All Aboard!".

[ related topics: Animation Movies Graphics ]

ACLU says that information from laptops searched by Customs and Border Patrol agents has been shared with outside agencies at least 300 times.

The last several times I've been out of the country I cleaned up my laptop and made sure that I could get the data I needed over an encrypted link. That was because I was headed to China controlled territories, and I had not idea of my rights or what to expect, but it turns out it's a good idea for when you're headed back into the country. Until this ridiculous policy is changed you'd definitely be a fool to carry any proprietary information for which you have liability should it be released on physical media, and it's probably a good idea to wipe any local keys and your ~/.ssh/known_hosts, carry hard copy of your server IDs to prevent Man-In-The-Middle attacks, and restore that information from a password protected link when you're clear of customs (either way).

Here's the ACLU's analysis data.

[ related topics: Privacy moron Civil Liberties Cryptography ]

Krebs On Security: Would you have spotted the fraud? Some fascinating pictures of a remarkably well camouflaged ATM skimmer, complete with camera to record your PIN.

[ related topics: Photography ]

I can't find a link to it, but there's an email circulating around allegedly from the USGS describing the follow-up to Noah's flood and the winter of '98 (I think it was): Northern California's supposed to get 10-15 inches of rain in mountainous regions in by Wednesday, 4-8 in the low-lying regions. The real hazard is going to be in So Cal, where recent fires combined with this should lead to all sorts of mudslides and houses sliding off hills. John S.J. Anderson pointed out this computer model image of the incoming jetstream and one of the variants of the message as posted to Dave Farber's IP.

The amusing thing is that I'm going through my "maybe" spam folder, and finding a number of things marked "Urgent" and "Read" and such which, of course, make filter more likely to think they're spam.

[ related topics: Spam Earthquake ]

I can see a number of the Ranco ETC temperature controllers in my future. Immediately: One for the ceiling fan (probably an ETC-111000-000), and one for a crock-pot in the kitchen (same, but in the prewired module, with plugs on both sides for $15 more).

[ related topics: Food ]

Sweth Chandramouli: Tyrone Hayes says it's unsafe for humans.

"I'm not saying it's safe for humans. I'm not saying it's unsafe for humans. All I'm saying is that it makes hermaphrodites of frogs." ( http://www.mindfully.org/Pesti...trazine-Mutates-Frogs16apr02.htm )

Hayes and others have continued to study atrazine, though, and with more data, the case is pretty clear that there's a high probability that atrazine is in fact unsafe for humans.

The article says:

New York Times Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. appears close to announcing that the paper will begin charging for access to its website, according to people familiar with internal deliberations.

The Metafilter thread has the usual satisfying feeling snark (from user allen.spaulding):

I'll only pay for stories when the reporter maintains in appropriate relationships with the article's subjects and then falsifies information with the express intent of lying to the public and goading us into war. I can get all of my light entertainment elsewhere for free from other sources, including my plagiarism (although The Times has always done such a nice job with that one). But you really can't beat The Times for gross violations of journalistic integrity married with war-mongering. It's worth every penny.

But also some helpful iunsight(from user Cool Papa Bell):

This is an interesting, related article, with the thesis that the only text content on the Web that can be sold effectively is stuff that is "wildly unique and immensely useful." The NY Times is not sufficiently unique to charge for content. Consumer Reports, on the other hand, has a well established reputation of unimpeachable product reviews.

and telling questions, like this from theora55:

Google has figured out how to make money with micro-ads. No annoying floatie ads (hello nytimes.com), no blinking ads, no ads pretending to be content (hello msn). Craigslist is killing newspapers giving away classifieds, with a plain vanilla screen(thanks, craig). Why have the big content producers sucked so hard at selling content-related micro-ads?

[ related topics: Web development New Economy Sociology Consumerism and advertising ]

The Shadow (autoplay audio) informed me about this story via the Engadget link: Audioholics gets a $3,500 Lexicon BD-30 Blu-ray player for review, opens it up, discovers it's a $499 Oppo BDP-83 player with a wrapper case, as in even mounted on the same chassis.

[ related topics: Music moron ]

Mark Hershberger: Haiti and other disasters.

This is a drum I've beaten since probably the late '90s, but as we're designing software, can we drop the notion of a document that loads into a local cache and needs to be saved regularly? Web development is helping this process, and there are probably aspects of the "File" menu we can't get away from, but if we can work on thinking about software without pushing that memory/disk dichotomy into the way that we use software, we'll end up with happier users.

There's no reason that we as software developers and designers can't take on that cognitive load ourselves, once, rather than making the user do it every time they user our apps.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

Those Darn Accordions - Tandem Bike (YouTube). Brilliant song on tandem bicycling and relationships.

[ related topics: Movies Sports Pedal Power Bicycling Bicycling - Tandem ]

In the Times Online, Natasha Walter pimps her forthcoming book Living Dolls in an excerpt entitled "How teenage access to pornography is killing intimacy in sex". It's a meandering piece that throws a bunch of assertions and opinions against the wall to see if something sticks. More cogently written is a response: The Pursuit of Harpyness: The Thin Line Between Pearl-Clutching and Concern, which asks why critiques of pornography always engender flame wars.

I am sympathetic to MacKinnon and Dworkin largely because, from reading and thinking about their analysis of porn for several years now, I understand them to be starting from a place where they define pornography as material that exploits women.

I haven't read anything else on The Pursuit of Harpyness, so I don't know how the pro and anti porn flame wars go there. In fact, for the most part I've just been ignoring the anti side, except when I run across Ren pointing out some of the sillier (and more hateful) idiocies of it, but let's re-cast this paragraph a bit: What if the author had said "I'm sympathetic to the ideals of PETA, that pet ownership is slavery and all meat is murder. Why can't we have a civil discussion about the evils of domestic cats and hamburgers?"

Pretty much the same thing.

So when the first article says:

I do not believe that all pornography inevitably degrades women, and I do see that the classic feminist critique of pornography is too simplistic to embrace the great range of explicit sexual materials and people’s reactions to them. Yet let’s be honest. The overuse of pornography does threaten many erotic relationships, and this is a growing problem. ...

Well, she's put a little bit more verbal Vaseline® around it, but it's essentially the same thing. "Really, I don't believe all porn is bad, but pornography is destroying the fabric of the universe! I mean, the bad porn, of course." This is why the reaction to such statements is so strong: Use another word for what you mean, but if you go redefining words on the fly, try to say "really, I want to have an open discussion about this, but I'm going to 'define pornography as material that exploits women'", then you don't really want to have a discussion about it.

And you have no right to whine when you're called on it.

Having said that, I believe that much of modern porn is horrendous. But I think for the most part it's just a small reflection of the evils of the larger culture, and we fight that by having discussions about how we can find more fulfilling interpersonal relationships, not by demonizing and strawman arguments.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Sociology ]

Two short animated CG films:

• Pigeon Impossible, on the dangers of using a superweapon briefcase in a public place.=
• Les Dangereaux: A Ninja Love Story.

[ related topics: Animation Movies Graphics ]

Apropos the discussion that has sprung up on the "A rambling on anti-porn" entry, Heather Corinna writes about pornography and relationships:

In other words, the one time a partner’s porn use really was a problem for me was when that person’s attitudes about the people in porn framed them as less-than-human, as commodities, objectified them in a way that I just wasn’t comfortable with. And sometimes those attitudes bled over into our sex life, particularly if that pornography had been used very recently. I did put a kibbosh in that relationship on having porn be used as foreplay (either with me or alone) in our sex life because when it was, I did experience a bleed-over of those dynamics in our sex that created a dynamic I really wasn’t comfortable with, and made me feel like I was in some way also kind of nonconsensually being made part of the sexual dehumanizing of someone else. ...

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

Stashed here because I should really read more of it: CleanTechnica: Apple’s New Smart-Home Dashboard Saves Money, Energy. Via Jaimey Walking-Bear.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Invention and Design Currency ]

French anti-AIDS pro condom graffiti on bathroom wall ad. Via Tom who says "You bet it's NSFW."

[ related topics: Movies ]

Bunch of people have been pointing out that police in New Orleans have been using an "unnatural copulation" law to label prostitutes as sex offenders, meaning that now not only are they poor and struggling, they have all of the ridiculous restrictions on where and how they can live.

Tabitha has to register an address in the sex offender database, and because she doesn’t have a permanent home, she has registered the address of a nonprofit organization that is helping her. She also has to purchase and mail postcards with her picture to everyone in the neighborhood informing them of her conviction. If she needs to evacuate to a shelter during a hurricane, she must evacuate to a special shelter for sex offenders, and this shelter has no separate safe spaces for women. She is even prohibited from very ordinary activities in New Orleans like wearing a costume at Mardi Gras.

The law under which she was convicted seems to me to be clearly unconstitutional in light of Lawrence v. Texas, but it's probably also a matter of having the resources to challenge the local schmucks far enough to get that conviction overturned.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Law Enforcement ]

Nepal to court gay tourism.

Nepal is set to legalise gay marriage later this year and will celebrate the change by promoting the country as the gay tourism capital of Asia.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Sociology Marriage ]

I was just browsing the site of Flutterby participant Linus Akesson, and saw that he won third place in the 2008 Underhanded C Contest. It's worth going and reading through the 3 winners of the 2008 Underhanded C Contest, especially if you write code with security implications [Edit: all code has security implications].

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

Because of the re-shuffling, we now get the Olympics every two years. The only one that really has anything interesting, the Winter Olympics, is coming up in a few weeks. I've become disgusted enough with the process that is the IOC that I'll be doing my best to ignore it. But a little pointing and scoffing now can't hurt, right?

At The Literary Review of Canada, athlete Laura Robinson talks about some of the shames of the International Olympic Committee.

... The BCCLA sees this as a major victory, but is also asking VANOC to rescind a clause in its contract with artists that stipulates that the artist must “refrain from making any negative or derogatory remarks respecting VANOC, the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Olympic movement generally, Bell and/or other sponsors associated with VANOC.” In addition, the Writers Union of Canada has written to VANOC twice—first over the harassment of Shaw and then, in December, over the detention and interrogation of U.S. writer Amy Goodman at the Canadian border on her way to do a reading at the Vancouver Public Library.

In other news, this year's Winter Olympics promises to be the greenest ever... no, silly, it's not like they're being environmentally responsible, they've got a lack of snow. And the ski resort at which the downhill races are to be held is about to be auctioned off.

Yes, this snark is brought to you via the fine folks at Metafilter

[ related topics: Politics moron Current Events Art & Culture Sports ]

Nancy is working on a project for school, and needs some input on what motivates volunteerism. She's collecting data via printed brochures that are being distributed, as well as her new: online survey. If you spend some time volunteering, please volunteer to take the survey as well.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Invention and Design Work, productivity and environment ]

Flying R2D2 - you're doing it wrong:

You know I can't help but like Star Wars. Even with the new stuff, I watch it. Recently, I was watching the Clone Wars cartoon and noticed something odd about the way R2-D2 flies. I know what you are saying...."the odd thing is that he flies at all. Why didn't he fly in episodes 4-6?" Who knows.

Worth a good physics refresher.

[ related topics: Star Wars Movies Aviation ]

Mr. Plimpton's Revenge: A tale told on Google Maps (Via).

[ related topics: Writing Maps and Mapping ]

This one's for Chris: Cargo Containers Could Help House Haitians (thanks, Mars).

[ related topics: Real Estate ]

I'm just going to steal the links from this LumberJocks entry that cherry-picks from Harald Huf's build of a model Sukhoi Su-27. If you want to skip to the money shot, here's the YouTube video of the bird in flight and pictures of the completed bird in flight, but that misses all sorts of spectacular from the overall build process, like the lay-up of the fuselage shape, or the detail on the metalwork from which the molds were made.

[ related topics: Aviation Fabrication ]

Thank you Shawn: Prop 8 Trial Tracker: Day 8 Part 5, David Boies (B) questioning William Tam (T).

B: Your paper says that after Netherlands legalized SS marriage, Netherlands legalized incest and polygamy. Do you believe that?

T: Same sex marriage may not have led to legalization of incest and polygamy, but it happened.

B: Who told you that?

T: I found it on the Internet. ...

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture moron Sociology Net Culture Marriage ]

An interesting note from Roger Simon: Amazon is offering a 70% royalty to authors who publish exclusively on the Kindle. This is opposed to the 10%-20% offered by regular publishers. Of course, there will be no advances, and I rather suspect that your promotional budget will be $1.98. I think this would be very attractive to first time authors, and will finish off the self-publishing industry. However, will established popular writers find this a better deal? I guess it depends on how many Kindles are out there.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Books Writing ]

AMERICAblog pointed out a German television bit on those full-body scanners (direct YouTube link). The comments on Bruce Schneier's link and commentary to this point out that though the test was only from one side, it caught his pocket knife only because he told them about it, and it didn't catch any of the explosives he was carrying, and he wasn't even carrying said explosives internally.

While we're rolling our eyes at security theater, a TSA agent planted white powder in a traveler's bag "as a joke". Additional article. The TSA says the screener in question is no longer with the agency. Surely there'll be criminal charges here, no? (Consumerist link, MeFi link).

And that took me over to the TSA blog, which had this wonderfully silly announcement that there are no children on the no-fly list:

... And as I’ve said before, TSA is working to implement the Secure Flight program, which brings watch list matching back to TSA from the airlines. When people provide their date of birth and gender when booking their flight under Secure Flight, it will eliminate about 99% of misidentifications once its fully implemented.

Yeah, because adding date of birth and gender checks to false names will definitely find the evil-doers.

[ related topics: Drugs Politics Technology and Culture Aviation moron Current Events ]

Okay, our health care system may suck, but at least we're not Cuba: Cuba cold snap kills 26 at psychiatric hospital. (Via Elf)

[ related topics: Health ]

So there's a big kerfluffle over several planned developments in Petaluma. I'm not going to go too much into the details because this is about journalism, not the specifics. Anyway, the city council is currently dominated by people who are concerned that with more big box strip malls Petaluma's downtown could die and we'd be undifferentiable from any other town in California that has a highway through it, except that we've only got two lanes, so commuting is kinda tough from our town.

Recently, the developer sued the council.

1. Here's the local paper's version of events. Pretty fluffy, if you don't know the issues theres a whole hell of a lot of background missing.
2. Here's Michael Aparicio's version published on Empire Report, an upstart citizen journalism web site. Note the background, the description of the approval process, the citing of specific sections of the Environmental Impact Report.
3. Here's a local blogger with the text of the lawsuit.

You want to know why newspapers are dying? Because they turn out crap like #1, when other people are making #2 and #3 available on the web and they're not. I've entered a discussion related to this in the context of the Press Democrat over on Gina Cuclis's site, and mirrored my comments from that thread.

[ related topics: Bay Area History Journalism and Media California Culture Community ]

Larry linked to this video on bicycle safety, where a motorist harasses a cop on a bicycle. Alas, retribution didn't come Dirty Harry style.

[ related topics: Law Law Enforcement Video Bicycling ]

Okay, if you're not reading OkCupid OkTrends blog about the mining of their dating website data they do, you should be. Fascinating sociology, the latest making the rounds is The 4 big myths of profile pictures in which they look at all the things they thought they knew about effective profile pictures.

Relatedly, Kia Matthews ran an extremely flawed social experiment. She's black. She borrowed a picture from a white friend, and set up two identical accounts on an online dating site, one with each picture.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Weblogs Race ]

Pixar vs Dreamworks.

[ related topics: Pixar Animation Graphics Comics ]

Interesting: Whole Foods offers health insurance discount to employees based on BMI and other factors

Eligible Team Members will have an opportunity to increase their discount by meeting specific criteria related to significant health measures. These measures include blood pressure, cholesterol, body mass index (BMI), and being a non-nicotine-user.

I'd raise a lot less of an eyebrow if the BMI were a more scientifically based criterium.

[ related topics: Health Work, productivity and environment ]

In yesterday's State of the Union address, President Jobs didn't say anything about healthcare, but he did unveil a bold new initiative: the Apple iPad. It's basically an iPhone with a thyroid problem, 9.7" diagonal 1024x768 screen, no camera, on-screen keyboard or a physical one provided by a docking station. There have been complaints about the name, on another forum Topspin suggested

C'mon, Dan. Write a cool flight sim for the thing. "Give your iPad wings!

I've tried to be cynical and nerdly about the whole thing, but the reality is that I want one, or a least the promise of what it suggests is possible, for these reasons:

• It's a more social laptop. It's the sort of thing you could pull out of a purse at a gathering and show picures on. It's also the "What other films was Joey Lauren Adams in?" device, you can do the IMDB/Wikipedia thing while still being engaged with people, because flat on the table other people can read it too.
• It's an ebook reader without being a dedicated ebook reader. Yeah, the screen isn't nearly as nice as a Kindle, but I'm not sure that matters for much of what I read online.
• People joke about "best universal remote ever", but it could be an interface to a host of devices. Some of which I can only hint at here.

Reasons it sucks:

• Just buy a netbook. Cheaper, faster, does more stuff. Runs Flash.
• No camera. Maybe. I haven't played with the iPhone 3GS, but the camera in the 3G barely qualifies and could easily be replaced by a Bluetooth camera
• No SD card slot. You get this through an external adapter. But it also means that Apple's charging one hell of a premium for non-volatile storage.
• Fragile. Yeah, it's an Apple product. You will need AppleCare. I can't tell if it's the glass screen of the iPhone, but at that scale it'd be a double-whammy.
• iTunes. That's a biggie for me.
• No USB host. Well, kinda, there's what looks like a limited USB host capability in that SD card reader, but this makes that "best universal remote ever" thing a little harder.

So along those lines: Anyone know of a device that'd plug in to the USB side of an FTDI USB chip and give you a Bluetooth interface? There are a lot of devices out there that use the FTDI to TTL serial USB chip for their USB interface, something that did that would open up a whole bunch of possibilities...

[ related topics: Apple Computer Wireless Photography Invention and Design Macintosh iPhone ]

Fur TV - TellingItLikeItIs.tv has a couple of pro-condom commercials with puppets that made me laugh.

An Australian pole dancer's routine that's pretty amazing. Fully clothed, safe for work, but rather than concentrating on the unsubtle pedophilia that is Olympic gymnastics, why don't we have more of that on TV?

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Television Sports ]

Jeff brought to my attention the tale of a 100 year old teacher who finally got her college degree a day before dying. What particularly struck me about this is that we used to consider a 2 year degree fine for teaching elementary school.

I don't know if our standards for 2 year degrees have gone down, or what other variables are involved, but I'm pretty sure it's not that our elementary school standards, at least in the schools she taught at, are any lower today.

[ related topics: Education ]

Vicacopter, a UAV for $100 + cost of the airframe. PIC on the aircraft, communications to a ground station. The current airframe is a tri-rotor system, but they've got earlier versions which ran on a straight hobby helicopter device.

Via Brainwagon.

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Embedded Devices Aviation - Helicopters ]

A bunch of people have been recommending this. Yes. This is why our wars are failing: Blackwater's youngest victim

Unhappy Hipsters is snarking at the pictures with people in 'em from modern architecture photography. Since I've been reading a lot of said stuff recently while looking for ideas on the house and on building my workshop, I found this horribly amusing.

[ related topics: Photography Architecture Real Estate ]

My trips to Hong Kong and that area have left me with a fondness for Cantonese. A short YouTube video on how to swear in Chinese. Via Violet Blue.

[ related topics: Movies Hong Kong Video ]

While we're (okay, I'm) all gaga over the iPad, it's important to remember that tablets have been around for a decade (I remember driving down to the South Bay to see the NEC that Scoble was so excited about back in the day). And MSI showed a tablet running Android at CES, and Asus is developing an Eee pad.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Current Events Cool Technology ]

Insurance Institute for Highway Safety/Highway Loss Data Institute: Laws banning cellphone use while driving fail to reduce crashes, new insurance data indicate. Looks like they're starting a push to abolish all cell phone use while driving, this may escalate into a China style ban on talking while driving:

"The laws aren't reducing crashes, even though we know that such laws have reduced hand-held phone use, and several studies have established that phoning while driving increases crash risk," says Adrian Lund, president of both the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and HLDI.

[ related topics: Wireless Current Events Government ]

I went up to the Apple store to look at Macs yesterday evening so I could do some development for the iPad. I'm really smitten with the idea of this device.

Continued in the comments, in which I lust after the Always Innovating Touch Book.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Books ]

A meteorite crashed through the roof of a doctor's office in Virginia, nearing beaning the physician. He and his partners donated the celestial visitor to the Smithsonian. Not so fast, says the doctor's landlord. They say the meteorite landed on their property, and they want some cash for it.

[ related topics: Health Astronomy Law ]