Flutterby™! From 2010-05-01 to 2010-05-31

Extra small condoms marketed to teens in Europe (Via Sensible Erection).

Seattle's Lusty Lady will close in June. When Charlene and I went and checked out the strip clubs along Broadway in SF, the Lusty Lady there was the only one we found erotic and fun, so it doesn't surprise me that people in the MeFi thread report overhearing conversations from employees that talk about burlesque in their off-hours. Flickr pictures of puns on the Seattle Lusty Lady's sign and a blog devoted to them. A history of the Lusty Lady in Seattle context.

The Stranger: The Kinktrepreneurs, on Seattle's sex accessory businesses.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Bay Area Seattle Burlesque ]

I wrote a little letter to my local CERT guys in response to a warning about soda bottle bombs

The U.S. Department of the Interior Offshore Energy and Materials Management 2010 Offshore Industry Safety Awards have been postponed, via this article.

The Onion couldn't write this stuff.

Virginia's state seal is indecent? - First, it supposedly shows the roman goddess Virtue. a women.It is an androgonous looking goddess... but it's a poor representation anyway. But what has me laughing is the A.G. is trying to cover it up.

What should matter is:

• If she's a goddess, she should look like one: That breast (and entire image) should make babies and grown men cry. It should inspire.
• Wait a minute, why are we iconizing a non-christian deity. Heck, does anyone still worship the ancient roman dieties?
• What about the phallic strap-on looking "sword" in her arm, I think it's illegal in Alabama and maybe Texas too.
• The guy on the ground is wearing a dress, does that make it a queen's crown?

Or maybe: We should accept it as an image from a proud past whose ideals who should aspire to. As is.

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama History Law Television Earthquake Dan & Charlene's July 2003 San Juan Trip ]

40th Anniversary of the Kent State shootings. For those of you who've mused about our current political divide and our country deteriorating into armed violence.

[ related topics: Politics moron ]

The XKCD color survey results. Fascinating.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Tweet of the moment:

RT @DougHed: @GordiansKnot Cloud computing is quickly becoming the "what the hell were you thinking when you slept with her?" of the 2010s

The iPad is really a cloud computing device, and Facebook and similar organizations are all pushing for ways to own your data in the interests of convenience, but just as the original microcomputer revolution occurred because people wanted control over their computing facilities, taking those capabilities away from the centralized IT services, and just as Amazon's cloud computing is now handy because it lets people experiment with server services without having to beg for root on a machine provisioned by those centralized IT services, I think there'll come another time before too long when we start to have second thoughts about outsourcing everything of value to Google and Facebook and Amazon and Apple and their ilk.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Books ]

Jeff Warren, whom Dan and I met at WhereCamp, is featured in a CNN piece about citizen mapping of the Gulf Coast oil spill. I really need to give that guy my balloon...

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping Archival ]

Adrian Colesberry: Pornography: Why do I care?.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Civil Liberties ]

Maciej Cegłowski: An Annotated Letter From Roman Polanski.

Derek Powazek: How To Save A Newsweekly in 5 Easy* Steps.

His #1 is crucial, too many newspapers treat their comments area as a dumping ground and don't engage with their readers; watching the difference between the Twitter discussion locally, that includes some of the local paper's reporters, and what happens on the paper's web site and what they publish, is very telling.

I'm not sure I need a paper version any more, so I'd ditch his suggestion #2. On #3, make it a web site. Don't lock it to the iPad/iPhone/iTouch, those platforms are going to get overrun shortly (and I say that as someone who's spending the day deep in iPad application coding), buying in to the lock-in only makes sense if you've got features which take advantage of those systems, and that's going to cost more than a local news outlet can support.

And the #5 is basically "engage the community that you're reporting on". This should be obvious to anyone publishing a local newspaper...

[ related topics: Journalism and Media Community iPhone ]

Miami airport screener beats coworkers after continued workplace bullying about the size of his genitals, precipitated by a training session at which he was observed in a full body scanner. As user "Krutz" says in the Sensible Erection thread:

I think you're overlooking the wider implications of a bunch of immature mouth-breathers being put in charge of a scanner that allows them to see through clothing.

[ related topics: Aviation Clothing ]

Just because every once in a while I have to close a tab full of "out of control law enforcement" links:

• Village Voice on some tapes made by a police officer of the goings on in the Bedford-Stuyvesant 81^st precinct in New York. Via MeFi.
• Rather than look at 2257 records, Prosecutor Jenifer Yois Hernandez-Vega attempted to use "expert testimony" to convict a man of possession of child pornography, even though the actress in question has a fairly high profile in the United States and 2257 records abound. Via Magic Flute Fine Art Nudes.
• Photographer Eric Rachner was arrested by the Seattle PD for refusing to identify himself. The DA attempted to bring "obstruction" charges. Rachner and his attorney asked for the patrol car videotapes of the arrest. The police said they didn't exist. Rachner discovered that, in fact, they did. Timeline here, also via Magic Flute Fine Art Nudes.
• Haven't watched the video, but YouTube video of the Columbia, Missouri SWAT team shooting a family's dogs in a home invasion that resulted in charges on possession of marijuana paraphernalia.

[ related topics: Drugs Sexual Culture Sociology Law Law Enforcement New York Video Seattle Dogs Sexual Culture - U.S. Code Title 18 Section 2257 ]

It's World Naked Gardening Day! (Via this article)

[ related topics: Nudity Current Events Gardening ]

Widely linked: Sorry, But the iPad is Not 'Killing' Netbook Sales:

And IDC is now forecasting that "mininotebook" (i.e. netbooks and sub-12-inch machines) will sell 45.6 million units in 2011 and 60.3 million in 2013. If I remember the numbers from 2009, they were 10 percent of all PCs, or about 30 million units. Explain again how the iPad will beat that. Please. Even the craziest iPad sales predictions are a small percentage of that.

I've had one for a couple of weeks now. Sometimes I'll grab it to go hang out on the couch and read stuff while Charlene's working on things. Almost always that lasts less than half an hour 'til I run across a page that's just not workable on the iPad, or I decide I want to type something in. I thought this form factor was going to be very cool, but the thing isn't any more comfortable to read either sitting down or lying down with my head up on a pillow than a regular laptop, the text entry is worse, for me, than on an iPhone, the browser is painfully slow.

So if I want to hang out and just read something, the iPhone wins. If I end up interacting with that, the laptop wins. For general reading, most often on the computer I'm reading technical docs, and often I want to make notes or try something out, and we're back to the laptop.

And I've tried playing with the idea that it's something that multiple people can interact with, but I'm just not finding that yet and, frankly, I doubt I will until it gets an SD slot or some way for me to put a lot of images on it so I can use it as the enhanced picture frame it so wants to be.

All this is the gut feel that I'm going into some product planning meetings tomorrow on...

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

Some photographs by Sandra Torralba: Estranged Sex. In her blog she says:

Thinking about it, I definitely want to provoke discomfort and catch the attention of the observer through creating an uneasy and ackward mood, in sticky and ironic pictures that confront us with what we consider shameful and pathetic yet very human and humane. All this for an utter purpose: that of reflecting upon human sexuality and eventually constructing a better, more inclusive and natural one...

Or, as a commenter said on the Sensible Erection thread:

I came for the boobs, I stayed for the art.

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Sexual Culture Weblogs Art & Culture ]

Last weekend I built some raised planters, the hope is that we can let the tomatoes and cucumbers and eggplants trail over the edge rather than having to stake and cage them up. Yesterday I rounded off some edges on them and drilled drain holes, and Charlene went about trucking a bunch of gravel up the ladder to coat the bottom, and then busting open those bags of soil and planting.

This weekend one of the projects is a lighted frame for a fused glass plate that Alec and Zack and Jeanne made for us a while ago. We had a frame that I made from acrylic that used a ring fluorescent, but lighting technology has moved on, this is going to use a coiled LED rope light.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Woodworking ]

I'm all for accessible public officials, but I'd also prefer that my judges be premium judges, not bought and sold at low prices.

[ related topics: Photography ]

An amusing take on how Helvetica conquered the world. I have not seen the film Helvetica, but I intend to now. On the third page of this link there is a hilarious clip from the film where a graphic designer basically attacks all design modes back to Gutenburg. The blogger points out how even fonts can get caught up in what he calls Year Zeroism, where we will wipe out the past completely and build our new world. it goes hand in hand with the common architectural idea that when we get the design of houses right better people will suddenly arise to inhabit them.

[ related topics: Invention and Design History Typography Graphic Design ]

It looks like a way to "ooh, I should add that feature... and that one..." into bankruptcy, but DIY Drones has a $28 UAV controller, and a just released $60 one that uses an ATMega 1280 that, if flown on a hobby-scale airframe that falls within the standard FAA R/C rules, line-of-sight and below 400 feet, could make a really cool aerial photography platform...

Of course to that controller you have to add accelerometers or gyros, and a GPS device, and by the time you're done upgrading everything you're no longer under a hundred bucks, but you are under a thousand...

[ related topics: Photography Toys Maps and Mapping ]

Help! My ancient server is showing its age. I want to replace it in part with a basic NAS box, but when I went to the office suply store, the device they had said it was FTPable and came with special Windows and Mac software. I really just want something I can plug in and access with SMB (NFS would be an extra plus). What should I get?

[ related topics: Microsoft Software Engineering Macintosh ]

I mentioned that I recently took a CERT class. It was a good experience, I think everyone should do it, and it was especially interesting hearing tales from people who'd been involved in the Loma Prieta quake, but there was also more than a little apocalyptic thinking, and it, once again, got me thinking about the costs of preparedness. Yeah, a major earthquake could happen in my lifetime in Petaluma. It probably will. Is it a good idea for me to make sure my house is strapped to the foundation? Yep. Is it reasonable for me to prepare for a week or three without outside access? Maybe. The New Orleans folks certainly should have, but we're starting to get into shaky territory.

Of course the Mormons are working on two years of food storage, and I'm not averse to keeping a lot around and having systems in place to filter my own water (even if that's not much more than a Giardia capable backpacking pump), but at some point there's a risk/reward trade-off that's targeted towards millennial events. How much a part of that do I really care to participate in?

So with that in mind, I present Bruce Schneier on the hazards of worst-case thinking. Via RC3.

[ related topics: Food Earthquake Hurricane Katrina Real Estate ]

Like the concept behind Share Some Sugar, but I'm suspicious of handing over yet more data to some third party arbiter, and I have this "doesn't feel like the way it should work" notion about building those relationships with neighbors.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

TourBoarding - tour cheaply in China by exchanging English for lodging & experiences. (Via SE)

Oh. My. Deity. This is precious in an "aaaigh!" sort of way: Screenshots of a Windows bulk rename program. The things people will do to avoid learning regular expressions and a little bit of code...

[ related topics: Microsoft Software Engineering Education ]

An interesting collection: 50 Remarkable Churches.

[ related topics: Religion Photography Architecture ]

Some notes on digital identity and decentralized identity and the whole schmear: Johannes Ernst: Let’s Implement the Open Pile! It’ll Be Great!. Note, especially, Blaine Cook's comment on his experiences trying to comment.

[ related topics: Weblogs LID (Lightweight IDentity) ]

QOTD, Mark Petrovic tweeted:

Lack of static typing in dynamic languages is a tragic loss. Like being given a 10x better sense of smell, but having your eyes gouged out.

[ related topics: Quotes ]

California SB 572 designates May 22^nd as Harvey Milk Day.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture California Culture ]

My next phone or tablet product will not be Apple. Steve Jobs on how their closed system offers "freedom":

...Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a changin’, and some traditional PC folks feel like their world is slipping away. It is.

Via Big Ed.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Sexual Culture Civil Liberties ]

http://gizmodo.com/5539417/why-i-steal-movies-even-ones-im-in

Excellent well written piece with an awesome viewpoint. Worth reading even though I've read a lot of these.

[ related topics: Movies ]

I loves me some molé, and I've had a hankering to do some cooking, so let's see if I can get to this this week City Brights: Michael Chihak: Main ingredient needed for mole: patience.

Of course I read the headline without the accent on the "é" and had this moment of lawn preservation...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Food Archival ]

Woodworking porn o't'day: This spectacular oval tambour roll-top desk took me to OvalTambour.com (warning: auto play video).

Some pretty looking cam clamps.

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

Plummeting Marijuana Prices Create A Panic In Calif.. Or, as MeFi commenter chavenet observes:

Too Much Marijuana Causes Instability And Anxiety

Probably some interesting observations here about intrinsic cost of the indoor hydroponically grown stuff vs what'll happen when Prohibition ends and it's all grown outdoors.

[ related topics: Drugs Nature and environment California Culture ]

Steve Jobs at the Apple shareholder's meeting earlier this year:

“Something like HyperCard on the iPad? Yes, but someone would have to create it”

Someone did!, and then Apple shut them down.

As you may know, on the 8th of April, Apple changed the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, which impacts our development of revMobile. The new agreement added a clause which required that applications be originally written in Objective-C, C++ or JavaScript. As revMobile applications are originally written in revTalk, not in one of these languages, their policy changes effectively prohibit revMobile on the iPhone/iPad. The new clause also prohibits frameworks and compatibility layers, which also describes revMobile in its present form.

Among the really silly things with the state of iPhone development is that any attempt to claim Flash would run too slowly in the iPad given the state of JavaScript on the iPad is absolutely ludicrous. Slowest damned Java Script EVAR!!1!

[ related topics: Apple Computer Invention and Design Software Engineering iPhone ]

David Hornik: What a Fucking Waste of Time.

The business community's jihad against swear words never ceases to amaze me. I was recently talking with an entrepreneur who had built a service that was populated by user generated content. In our discussion of his product, this entrepreneur went to great lengths to reassure me that he had built the necessary technology to protect against errant swear words finding their way into the content. And it struck me that I have had this exact conversation many dozens of times over the last decade. "Rest assured, no swear words will ever find their way onto our service!"

[ related topics: Community ]

Related to the iPhone whining below... I ran across a book called Taking the Medicine, by Druin Burch, on the use of evidenced based medicine, and how little of what's currently practiced as medicine is little more than folklore. Or at least that's my summary extracted from the reviews I've read. And it's a book I'll probably want to pass around.

Problem is it's only published in the UK. I figured I could order it from Amazon UK, but I try to buy locally, so I'll try Copperfield's first, and then when they say they can't get it... but there's a Kindle version. I could buy it for the Kindle app on the iPhone and iPad, but then, as Charlene points out, she wouldn't pick it up and browse it. And the iPad screen really isn't any great shakes, I'd rather read it on my matte laptop, or, if I'm going to carry it around with me, on something lighter that I can read outside (like an actual Kindle or one of the Sony eBook readers). But that'd sink a couple of hundred bucks of probably obsolete fairly quickly capital investment over the <$10 I'd save by buying the electronic version.

So I guess I'm going to try Copperfield's, and when that doesn't work buy the dead trees version from Amazon UK, and I'm still lacking a use for the iPad...

Related: Techland: Goodbye, iPad.

[ related topics: Books Economics iPhone ]

Ya know, one of the reasons the world continues to work is that "terrorists" tend to be pretty stupid. Want to get into the cockpit of an airliner? Thomas Salme spent a few hours in a flight simulator, forged some papers, and flew 737s for 13 years before he was caught.

[ related topics: Aviation Current Events Work, productivity and environment ]

The Chromium Blog announces the Chrome web app store. Wow. Way to trump Apple at their own game. And this'll also be a big inroad to Google owning the identity space.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Web development New Economy ]

WebM - free video codec for web content. The real test will be to see if Apple allows this on the iPad and iPhone...

[ related topics: Apple Computer Video iPhone ]

Today's XKCD is too full of win to not repost. Note the hover text:

[ related topics: broadband Comics ]

When a whackjob takes some fireworks and lights them on fire in his SUV, it's "terrorism", when someone actually explodes a pipe bomb to damage a mosque with 60 people inside, it's "a possible hate crime". Just so we're clear on terms.

Via Elf.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Pyrotechnics ]

Meet The Facts. Fact checking statements made on "Meet The Press". Or, as the first comment in The MeFi thread points out:

I think when he says "People can fact-check Meet the Press" he means "Don't you people watch the Daily Show?" That's what the Daily Show does.

[ related topics: Journalism and Media ]

I think I've got the Perl scripts I've got that muck with Twitter retooled for the move to OAuth and the deprecation of simple username/password behaviors that's supposed to happen shortly, but if you're not there yet, SuperTweet has set up a username/password to OAuth proxy. Mr Blog has a rundown.

[ related topics: Weblogs Perl ]

Fluted Beams has some sort of steam and compression process which creates hardwood that can be bent cold, then dried. And it sounds like the amount of moisture in the wood while it's still bendable is low enough that it's still easily milled.

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

Holy shit! What does it say when Cracked.com and The Daily Show are the most rational journalistic outlets out there? Cracked.com: The 5 most popular safety laws that don't work is awesome. Via Craschworks.

[ related topics: Law Journalism and Media ]

Somehow we missed "Music Hack Day", but luckily we can partake in some of the awesome that it produced before this becomes the next autotune. The Swinger:

This command line python script (about one line of code per hacking hour) takes two arguments (i.e., a song and a swing factor) and alters (i.e., time-stretches) every beat, one at a time, to give it a swing feel. It works by stretching and compressing every half beat to complementary durations, pulling and pushing the audio, while retaining the original tempo.

But, really, screw the code, what you want is results. "Sweet Child of Mine" is awesome, as is "Money for Nothing" once you get past the intro. Listen here: http://musicmachinery.com/2010/05/21/the-swinger/

[ related topics: Music Cool Technology ]

Had a fun time at Maker Faire, it was awesome to see Diane again after sooo many years, and sit and chat with Shawn and Katrina. And I enjoyed it and don't want to take anything away from it, we were blown away by the Bulatov Abstract Creations Wooden Sculptures, it was awesome to see the Spark Fun booth that I didn't feel comfortable asking after folks who I may know there (does Brennen work there?), seeing the ELEN 4193 guys screenprinting EL displays was way cool, it was a worthwhile day, and yet...

I wrote on my FaceTwit feed that "Maker Faire = Burning Man + vendors - environment - nudity."

I first had this feeling of unease at the Crucible Fire Arts Fest a few years ago, there was a guy with a beautifully restored old CASE steam tractor, may very well be the same one that was at Maker Faire today, and I thought "cool", but I'd also been to visit my sister in Ohio and had seen row upon row of such devices at the Threshers convention.

And for every person who put a washtub around a fat-old-people scooter and turned it into a mobile cupcake, which was very cute, there are ten people welding up last minute repairs at the dirt track on a a Saturday night.

The activities at Maker Faire are very cool, and I want to see more of them, but there's only so much steampunk I can take, and the whole thing seems to me a symptom of a deeper issue. Our grandparents' generation had these things called "hobbies". In many areas of the country they still do these things, still build mechanical contraptions, still sew and embroider, they compost and grow stuff and...

Yeah, TV took over a lot of that, but...

...and it seems like the Maker Faire is a subset of the world in which that element has dwindled to the point where it happens only alongside steampunk cosplayers. So I hope that the throngs go home and bolt something together, and do something that actually involves building and creating. And I don't want to be angry at the Maker Faire because I want to celebrate the creativity and amazing that was happening there, but I'm unsettled about it.

And maybe that's the hallmark of good art.

[ related topics: Burning Man Sexual Culture Technology and Culture Nature and environment Nudity Law Work, productivity and environment Art & Culture Television Pyrotechnics Fabrication Hurricane Katrina ]

Parents TV against: $#*! My Dad Says We seldom watch "TV" anymore, but thanks to the Parents Television Council I'll have to hunt this down and check it out. Checking out the preview on YouTube, it's not the constant string of profanity they seem to think it is. Shatner playing "Ed" reminds me of Archie bunker.

People seem to forget there is always a choice. As a parent, you should have some control over what your child prodigy is exposed to until the age of reason (which varies). The ultimate control is the channel selection and the off switch. Otherwise, we would still be watching Lassie and I Love Lucie. Just imagine life without South Park and the Simpsons. Sigh...

With very few exceptions, there isn't much on TV worth watching the deluge of advertisements for. Hopefully it'll be on NetFlix or Hulu sans ads or with at least better targeted ones.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Movies Current Events Television ]

Apple Insider: Steve Jobs says no to Google's VP8 WebM codec is interesting on a couple of fronts. The notion that the video space is so sewn up with patents right now that people are staying away from it kind of gives lie to the phrase "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts...".

But the other thing is the severe lack of perspective, for instance:

Those insisting on calling H.264 "proprietary" because it is not completely free have never referred to other open, but not free standards (including the MP3 audio format), as "proprietary." ...

Okay, that's just freakin' ignorant. Maybe it's that I was close to ground zero around that time, when Gracenote had distribution rights for the Frauenhofer patents, but... uh... yeah.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Music Law Video ]

Westboro Baptist Church plans to protest at Ronnie James Dio's funeral. Not something I'd normally note except for this brilliance from the SE thread:

balzac said @ 6:31pm GMT on 24th May

At least this makes some kind of crazy person sense: Baptists versus Rock

[ related topics: Religion Music ]

Tweet of the moment: hexmode:

Palin sleeps with BP employee for 18 years, accuses Obama of being "in bed" with big oil. http://bit.ly/9RX4va

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Furniture ]

Yep, Dan's been reading back issues of Fine Homebuilding again: The Watts IntelliFlow washing machine shutoff valves. Because you're supposed to turn off the washing machine water when you aren't running the machine, and nobody does, so this little beastie senses current being drawn by the washer and turns on the water then. Also apparently does leak detection.

[ related topics: Real Estate ]

In JWZ's entry of links about the oil spill in the gulf, user pete23 observes:

I had the fortune to work on $100M of software for them. Applying the same techniques you do to installing a new tank in a refinery wasn't a great way of doing it - and I'm proud we changed that, slightly. Unfortunately, it looks like big-A Agile may have made it into their drilling methodologies too. The story card where a bajillion tons of oil doesn't hit the shoreline was probably scoped into a later iteration.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment ]

It's Towel Day.

Tweet of the Moment: Jesper Andersen:

your favorite porn site has two datacenters and redundant power supplies. BP's safety system is a bag of rocks.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

Scott Rosenberg: The Wall Street Journal: Cavalier about corrections?:

It seems to me that the Journal has every right to say, “We no longer have the resources to fix small errors like misspelled names. You should no longer count on us getting that stuff right.”

On the one hand you can say "The WSJ? That's one of those Rupert Murdoch rags, right?", on the other hand, we've already seen that Cracked.com and the Daily Show are running rags around traditional news outlets. I'd hope that those who call themselves journalists would want to fix that.

But maybe I'm just an optimist.

[ related topics: Current Events Journalism and Media ]

Heads in the sand for our teenagers is a little bit of a rant on this tale of a Virginia yearbook team who solicited anonymous secrets for the yearbook, and their school administration is now recalling the books because some parents bridled at being told the truth.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Books Current Events ]

Following up on the 50 Remarkable Churches item from last week, here is a photoessay on Charles Stade, an architect who came up with a clean, modern approach to church design. Then he repeated it 50 times. The blogger who compiled this item seems to think Stade was doing variations on a theme, but I think "creative rut" might be a more apt description.

[ related topics: Religion Graphic Design Architecture ]

Giggle: Guest Op Ed at The Awl by Harper Lee (Via Kevin C. Murphy).

[ related topics: Humor Sexual Culture ]

Heard on NPR today that it's been 100 years since L.L. Zamenhof first and only visit to the US, to speak at the Esperanto-USA Annual Meeting. Also learned that William Shatner starred in the US film,Incubus released in 1966 in Esperanto.

[ related topics: Movies ]

In Memory of Dr. Tiller: Reflections on the Death of An American Hero One Year Later (via Heather Corinna).

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

I'm reminded of this by Andy's recent crowing about getting 10,000 views with links to various projects others have done. Here's Andy's "Art Box" Tutorial series has a good piece on cutting curved shaped box lids.

[ related topics: Art & Culture Woodworking ]

Tweet of the Day:

Asking Yoo to comment on executive privilege is like asking Mengele to comment on medical ethics. WTF NYT? ( http://nyti.ms/aWgsAL )

Regarding this op ed by John Yoo in the New York Times about Elena Kagan's view of executive power.

[ related topics: Ethics Invention and Design Fashion New York ]

More tweets of the moment, via Shawn: merkley:

I have zipped up this fly a BILLION times and it keeps coming DOWN! STUPID FACEBOOK PANTS!

neilhimself:

Vaguely disappointed to learn that BP's "top kill procedure" will leave its entire executive strata alive.

[ related topics: Clothing ]

Books in the home is as important as parents education in predicting the education level of children:

For years, educators have thought the strongest predictor of attaining high levels of education was having parents who were highly educated. But, strikingly, this massive study showed that the difference between being raised in a bookless home compared to being raised in a home with a 500-book library has as great an effect on the level of education a child will attain as having parents who are barely literate (3 years of education) compared to having parents who have a university education (15 or 16 years of education). Both factors, having a 500-book library or having university-educated parents, propel a child 3.2 years further in education, on average.

Via Sensible Erection. Which probably actually isn't about the books but about the parents attitude towards knowledge and what sources they look to assimilate it from. I'll bet books in the home are inversely correlated with TV consumption. I wonder how this is going to change with the rise of e-reading...

[ related topics: Language Children and growing up Books Technology and Culture Television Education ]

Unusual and creative staircase designs

[ related topics: Real Estate Woodworking ]

Iron Baby (via everybody)

Mortal Kombat - 2010-05-22 - Tanya "Ms Tooney" Jordan Pole Routine (Via crasch)

[ related topics: Movies Video ]

Jokes about plugging holes with BP execs? I laughed. Jokes about Gary Coleman's hospitalization. Found 'em tasteless. Gary Coleman, famous for playing Arnold Jackson on Diff'rent Strokes, dead at 42. Most child stars with unethical parents have a tough time of it, Coleman managed to keep his dignity and life, even working as a security guard or running for California governor, when his former co-stars were knocking over liquor stores and generally falling apart. And the character he created really was a part of defining that era.

"Watchoo talking about, Willis?" indeed.

[ related topics: Television ]

As this YouTube video of various fold-away and multi-purpose furniture shows, Clei designs some amazing furniture for small spaces. Resource Furniture in New York sells it.

I'm going to keep it in mind when I'm designing stuff for our house.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Real Estate Woodworking ]

Literal laugh out loud on this one: Cowbirds in Love #46. Thanks, Erin!

Is This Really The Future of Magazines or Why Didn’t They Just Use HTML 5?. Or, as Scott Rosenberg observed:

ipad magazine apps today=CDROM yesterday. More confirmation http://is.gd/ctzet "the wrong people are working on the problem"

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Sage, the third grader from across the street, and his mom came across to ask some questions, and one digression led to another and he learned how to use a Dozuki and a drill press and a file and we ended up with a vinegar and baking soda soda bottle rocket launcher.

Direct link to the YouTube video.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Video Woodworking ]

Got a little code to clean up, putting another coat of gel stain on some cabinets I'm repurposing for my office, will probably end up helping a certain young lad design a and maybe even build a workbench for our back yard to give him a space of his own, where he can store and work on his stuff away from his little sister, but lest we forget, I'm also taking a moment to re-read what's become an annual tradition here at Flutterby:

Re-reading In Flanders Fields. (2008, 2007, 2005).

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment War Home Improvement ]