Flutterby™! From 2010-10-01 to 2010-10-30

I made a carved white oak shelf for displaying my 12" rooster.

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

The makers of a documentary short called "The Smut Capital of America" are looking for a few bucks to turn their archival footage into a feature length film. Worth a watch if you're interested in the history of porn, or the late '60s and early '70s in San Francisco.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Movies Bay Area California Culture Archival ]

Boston.com: The Big Picture: Human landscapes in Southwest Florida. Aerial photography (it appears mostly taken from Google Maps imagery) of the evidence of the boom and bust cycles in Florida real estate.

[ related topics: Photography Maps and Mapping Real Estate ]

Two blimps collided in North Carolina (thanks Tara Calishain)

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Interesting commentary on California Gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's exchange with a Fresno State student during a recent debate with Jerry Brown. The woman asking the question said that she was brought as a young child to California (ie: student, who said, according to this article, that

She was a student who graduated first in her class in high school and is now an honors student at Fresno State, triple majoring! in poli sci, Spanish, and Latin American Studies.

The question was about the Federal and California versions of the DREAM Act, which would provide a path for this young lady to permanent residence. CalBuzz quotes Whitman's response:

"Here is the challenge we face: Our resources are scarce. We are in terrible economic times and slots have been eliminated at the California State University system—I think they’re down by 40,000 students. Same is true at the … the University of California system. Programs have been cut, and California citizens have been denied admission to these universities and I don’t think it’s fair to bar and eliminate the ability of California citizens to attend higher universities and favor undocumenteds."

My observation that I'd rather have the people who were capable of walking across tens of miles of desert and evading the border patrol and working hard enough to build a life for themselves by doing the crap jobs that American citizens don't want in my economy than many American citizens who sit on their fat sense of entitlement.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Work, productivity and environment California Culture Education Economics ]

[Edit: Sorry, the links to the shelf were wrong]

This weekend: New toilet. Apparently the "rough-in" dimension isn't from the bolts to the wall, 'cause we measured several times and came up with 12" (the standard), and I need to order the 14" adapter as we've got a 2" gap between the toilet and the wall. But we now have a Toto Carlysle II low flow toilet, still need to rewire for the bidet seat that we haven't ordered yet.

And a Paper Towel Holder that I'd hoped to have done for the LumberJocks summer challenge, but missed. I'll be making another one, this didn't come out like I'd hoped, but was a chance to play with dovetails on the milling machine and is better than the stamped metal one it replaces.

Also, a Massaranduba and Ipe shelf for the bathroom, sliding dovetails to hold the end supports on, the shelf is recessed to prevent drips.

[ related topics: Photography Invention and Design Fabrication ]

Open data, democracy, and public sector reform

I know most of you probably don't keep up with television food program hosts, but this is wrong on so many levels I just had to pass it along: Paula Deen working on a line of fresh fruits and vegetables.

[ related topics: Food Television ]

Sometimes you just wanna steal an entry wholesale: this Metafilter entry about modern police interrogation techniques resulting in false confessions is worth a read, especially NY Mag: "I Did It"

[ related topics: Current Events Law Enforcement ]

Asteroids for web pages, use your ship to blast annoying links and images out of any web page. JavaScript gone good.

[ related topics: Humor Web development Games ]

So the Intarwebs are up in arms today over the sad story of a guy who lived in a county in Tennessee, in an area that didn't have fire protection services. Residents, however, had the option of buying fire protection services from a nearby city for the princely sum of $75 per year. Yes, that's a whopping $6.25 a month. But this guy wasn't willing to pay for the upkeep of a fire department, participate in the common good. One news report quotes him as saying:

"I thought they'd come out and put it out, even if you hadn't paid your $75, but I was wrong," said Gene Cranick.

So guy expects that someone else is going to undertake the capital costs of putting together a fire department, and the ongoing costs of keeping it ready, so that in the event his house burns down they can then go after him, newly destitute from losing his house ('cause a guy who'll gamble with $6.25 per month probably won't carry insurance either), for the costs of putting out the fire and keeping a bunch of hundred thousand dollar plus trucks hanging around in running order and staffed with people who know how to use that equipment.

Well, sure enough, someone's got a fire going in a couple of burn barrels in this guys back yard, it gets out of control and gets his house. He calls the fire department. They say "no dice". It gets further out of control, his neighbor, who has been foresightful enough to help support his local fire department, calls the fire department, and the fire department puts out the fire on the neighbor's property.

So guy who couldn't be bothered for seven bucks a month to participate in an existing fire department endangers his neighbor's property, loses his house, and varous people in my social circles on the internet are sorry for him?

Sorry, y'all: The guy got what's coming to him, and if the world is fair his neighbor should be able to sue him for what little assets he has left.

A relative of Mr Cranick apparently was so stuck in this sense of entitlement that he went and punched out the fire chief.

Now there are a lot of complaints that he shouldn't have been allowed to opt-out, the county should have provided the fire protection by default, the fire district should have saved his house anyway and billed him later. A few things on that:

1. Whatever. Whether or not he should have been able to opt-out, he did opt-out.
2. Yeah, it'd be great if the county provided such services. Who's the local government? Residents who get off their ass and make things happen. Presumably not assholes who can't be arsed for $75 a year to stop mistakes before they endanger neighbors.
3. Bill him for it later? If everyone did that, do you think there'd actually be a fire department? Should they be able to run a credit check before they start fighting the fire? How does that work exactly? Probably much like modern emergency rooms: The fire departments would pass the costs on to the people responsible enough to pay their freakin' $75/month, and it'd go up to a grand a month for the people who actually would pay, and then we'd be talking about closing down fire departments, and someone would decide that firefighters had to have special protections so they made real profits in order to keep 'em in business, and we'd be spending 18% of our GNP on fire protection too.

So, yeah, sucks to be Gene Cranick. If you don't want to be the next Gene Cranick, take basic steps to protect your home, including, perhaps, getting involved in your local government to set up systems so that assholes like Gene Cranick who think that the government is some magical thing that will protect them from themselves no matter what can't endanger your home.

News story about the house burning, News story about the assault and battery on the fire chief, Volokh, Metafilter, Sensible Erection.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama moron Current Events Net Culture Gambling Economics Real Estate ]

of the 25 most dangerous neighborhoods in 2010 with the detailed stats: here (might have paywall)

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Jeri Ellsworth: How to Make Glow Powder with Household Chemicals (YouTube).

[ related topics: Cool Science Video ]

A new sex survey: National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior (NSSHB)

... It includes the sexual experiences and condom-use behaviors of 5,865 adolescents and adults ages 14 to 94.

Wow, sexual experiences of 5,865 adolescents and adults? Sounds like a mini Burning Man.

[ related topics: Burning Man Erotic Sexual Culture Health Invention and Design ]

Giant Duct Tape Star Wars AT-AT (hat tip: Jaimey Walking-Bear).

[ related topics: Star Wars Space & Astronomy Aviation - Helicopters ]

Geography often defines the limits of our lives, but also often the limits of memory. In an intriguing little item from Boing-Boing, a tale of Pittsburgh PA's lost cemetaries, flying turkey carcasses, and the holy tooth of St. Anthony of Padua.

[ related topics: Community Maps and Mapping Birds Real Estate ]

MarkV shared this video of a fairly large amateur rocket noting that the propellant used was "rocket candy", a mixture of sugar and potassium nitrate (which I've done before with kids for smoke bombs), although they apparently use corn syrup as a binder (rather than fully melting the sugar, they just cook out the liquid), and iron oxide (rust) as a catalyst.

Discussion ensued, and Mark then pointed out that sorbitol makes a less brittle fuel and has a much lower melting temperature, giving a larger safety margin and making it a good rocket fuel.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Cool Science Food Space & Astronomy Video ]

Zack says:

Ever wanted to take an anonymous survey on the subject of "intimate objects"? Of course you did. Rachel's working on a sex toy for her grad project and needs people to take a survey as part of research. All information is confidential. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/9Z833WV

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

tom passed along Bruce Schneier writing in Forbes on the Stuxnet worm. Would that all journalism was this informative and well written.

[ related topics: virus Writing Journalism and Media Cryptography ]

Bridge City Tools, maker of beautiful amazing woodworking tools, makes a cute little device called the KM-1 Kerfmaker. It's got two sliding segments, you set one to the thickness of the kerf cut by your blade or bit, then the other to the thickness of the stock that you want to cut a slot for. It's then usable as a shim you can use to easily move your fence to cut the two sides of the dado or groove.

Video on how to use it here.

Making variations of this awesome little tool seems to have become a pastime over at LumberJocks. This first group has an obvious kerf width adjustment:

• http://lumberjocks.com/projects/38123
• http://lumberjocks.com/projects/19437
• http://lumberjocks.com/projects/22630
• http://lumberjocks.com/projects/23667

The remaining batch seem to either have the kerf width hard cut into the device, or use a screw on the end to adjust to the kerf, which seems more trial and error than the original or the above projects: 21571, 37513, 37045, 23415, 19912, 37331, 19473, 19665, 37668

[ related topics: Movies Video Economics Woodworking ]

In my (only slightly) younger days, I had a completely creepy stalky obsession and crush on Elizabeth O. Dulemba. I can't imagine how it must have been to be the target of those affections, and I'm grateful that she handled it as graciously as she did.

Anyway, I can't speak to the quality of the writing by her co-author, but you should check out her books and buy 'em if you've got kids in the target audience, 'cause she's an incredible illustrator.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Books Writing ]

Ben Pieratt: In Praise of Quitting Your Job:

Your muse can only be treated as the secretary of a subcommittee for so long before she decides to pack up and look for employment elsewhere...

Luckily, that isn't my struggle, but there's some good musings there.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Normally I wouldn't post something this banal, but in light of Monday's entry about fire departments and protecting people from themselves and the previous Monday's note about the owner of Segway driving a scooter off a cliff here's...

...this video of a guy on a scooter getting frustrated with missing the elevator and ramming the doors 'til they give way and he plunges to what I assume is his death. Here's the DarwinAwards.com entry on the event which, eventually, links to this video of a Korean news report that includes the incident and two other links in Korean: First, Second.

[ related topics: moron Segway/Ginger/IT Video ]

Study finds many iPhone users are Tea Party supporters.

One might make the argument that Tea Party ideology appeals to the significant number of self-styled Libertarians in the tech sector. This could be the case. The fact remains that the Tea Party, as serious journalists don't tire of pointing out, has little in common with the small-government ethos of Ayn Rand or Milton Friedman, tracing its roots more directly to the clinically paranoid Christian Patriot and militia movements of the 1990s.

On Sunday, I wandered over to the Petaluma Mac Expo (missed Dori & Tom because they were presenting at a session and I didn't hang out that long), and the demographics of the attendees did make me wonder if nowadays you got an iPhone with your AARP membership.

[ related topics: Politics Objectivism Current Events iPhone ]

Alka-Seltzer in a bubble of water in Zero G. Via NPC Comic.

[ related topics: Cool Science Video ]

Woman wrecks museum because of unflattering depiction of her religion's founder

Kathleen Folden allegedly screamed "How can you desecrate my lord?" on Wednesday at Loveland Museum and Art Gallery just before breaking some plexiglass surrounding the print of "The Misadventures of the Romantic Cannibals" with a crowbar. She then allegedly tore the print and sat on the floor until police arrived.

Via Elf,

[ related topics: Religion Art & Culture ]

Paris decides (Larry Clark's "Kiss The Past Hello" photo) exhibition about teenage sex is too raunchy – for teenagers (in the Guardian, on France24 press review, in the Telegraph). Via Heather Corinna who observed: "Clark always gives me the creeps, but still...".

[ related topics: Photography Sexual Culture Current Events Art & Culture ]

If you are a fan of the Ok Go videos, don't miss the video for Hollerado - Americana:

This is the "Human 8-bit Video". We wanted to make something cheap and awesome. It was directed by our buddy/chief mad scientist Greg Jardin. It was all shot in one take. It took lots and lots and lots of practice to get it right. A guy in one of the cells also played the serial killer on season 5 of "the wire".

The highest rated comment right now says "This is Ok Go Treadmill Video levels of awesome." Actually, I think it's better. Via Brainlog.

[ related topics: Music Video ]

Columbine asks:

Did you ever wonder where the kid in the Australian version of the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day was going to move to?

If that makes any sense to you (and "the kid" is, I believe, Alexander) the answer's here.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Books ]

Nobel laureate Andre Geim: in praise of graphene.

We considered patenting; we prepared a patent and it was nearly filed. Then I had an interaction with a big, multinational electronics company. I approached a guy at a conference and said, "We've got this patent coming up, would you be interested in sponsoring it over the years?" It's quite expensive to keep a patent alive for 20 years. The guy told me, "We are looking at graphene, and it might have a future in the long term. If after ten years we find it's really as good as it promises, we will put a hundred patent lawyers on it to write a hundred patents a day, and you will spend the rest of your life, and the gross domestic product of your little island, suing us." That's a direct quote.

Via /..

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Current Events Economics ]

Light drinking during pregnancy (1-2 drinks/week) may be good for your child:

Boys and girls born to light drinkers were less likely to have high total difficulties (for boys 6.6% vs 9.6%, OR=0.67, for girls 4.3% vs 6.2%, OR=0.69) and hyperactivity (for boys 10.1% vs 13.4%, OR=0.73, for girls 5.5% vs 7.6%, OR=0.71) scores compared with those born to mothers in the not-in-pregnancy group. These differences were attenuated on adjustment for confounding and mediating factors. Boys and girls born to light drinkers had higher mean cognitive test scores compared with those born to mothers in the not-in-pregnancy group: for boys, naming vocabulary (58 vs 55), picture similarities (56 vs 55) and pattern construction (52 vs 50), for girls naming vocabulary (58 vs 56) and pattern construction (53 vs 52). Differences remained statistically significant for boys in naming vocabulary and picture similarities.

Remember kids, there's a lot that isn't controlled for here, "attenuated on adjustment for confounding and mediating factors" probably means "mothers who drink lightly rather than not at all started out better off". Usual caveat about one study and science by popular journalism apply. SFGate, babycenter Momformation, Time.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Health Wines and Spirits Journalism and Media Physiology ]

William Saletan looks at the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior (which I mentioned on Tuesday), noting among other things that:

... Among women who had vaginal sex in their last encounter, the percentage who said they reached orgasm was 65. Among those who received oral sex, it was 81. But among those who had anal sex, it was 94. Anal sex outscored cunnilingus.

As Elf points out, Saletan is careful to not confuse correlation with causation, but Elf further notes that:

Saleton ruins his analysis with this line: "Women who were getting what they wanted were more likely to indulge their partners' wishes [for anal sex]." Anal is apparently something a woman doesn't like, but something she does in exchange for what she really wants. Saleton has clearly never dated woman who's also an anal power bottom.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Health ]

chmod -x chmod. A slideshow from a talk about the responses to a sysadmin interview question. The question was: "You have a machine that's not connected to the net. Someone did chmod -x chmod. How do you recover it?". Worth paging through to read the responses.

[ related topics: Net Culture ]

Using microwave steam bending to create a coffee cup holder. The project page at LumberJocks.

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

It's National Coming Out Day! Unfortunately, in practice I seem to actually be just as vanilla as I come across in real life. Damn.

Giggle: Wikileaks To Leak 5000 Open Source Java Projects With All That Private/Final Bullshit Removed:

Wesley Doyle, a Java web developer in Toronto, Canada is merely puzzled by the news. "Why do they think they need to do this? Why can't users of my Open Source Java library simply shake their fists and curse my family name with their dying breaths? That approach has been working well for all the rest of us. Who cares if I have a private helper function they need? What, is their copy/paste function broken?"

Via Elf.

[ related topics: Free Software Humor Open Source Software Engineering ]

Oh hell yes: Seattle starts opt-out registry for yellowpages.

The registry would be available online. The registry would be paid for by a 40-cent "recovery" fee to be tacked on to the distribution of every yellow pages book distributed in Seattle. Money collected from the fee would also go toward collecting unwanted books.

It's not quite hitting them with the thousand dollar fine for littering that you could go after any other asshole who threw unwanted paper on your lawn for, but it's a start.

[ related topics: Seattle ]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/arts/design/12farm.html?hp

[ related topics: Graphic Design ]

Next time you need a truly transcendental dish to impress your guests, try this one: Aleister Crowley's recipe for Rice Pilaf. Apparently the step about drizzling the sauce over a naked virgin was left out.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Food Nudity ]

I, for one, welcome our new Chumby powered bipedal walking robot overlords. (Direct YouTube link, Eric Gregori of EMG Robotics, originally posted on imxcommunity.org )

[ related topics: Weblogs Movies Robotics Invention and Design ]

Just a little HDR playing from my run up La Cresta ridge yesterday: http://www.flutterby.net/2010-10-12_Sunrise

Sean posted this Wired piece about a second generation US citizen finding an FBI tracking device under his car. The aftermath of his posting pictures of the device on Facebook is especially telling.

What really amazes me is the size of this device. It's freakin' huge! I would expect that a covert GPS tracking device could be the size of a cell phone (GPS+Comm channel+battery) or even something like an Eye-Fi Geo and a lithium button cell (and just cache data and upload when an open WiFi network is present). Not to mention either of those solutions would be under $100 - definitely not worth retrieving.

It really makes me wonder if it was really more Security Theater. What the incident is really trying to tell the real bad guys:

1. The FBI's covert tracking equipment is really unwieldy (meaning you don't need to bother looking very hard to find it).
2. The FBI is putting a great deal of effort into monitoring even the fringe of what anyone would consider a terrorist (dude's a second gen American citizen) so they must be intensely focused on the REAL bad guys.
3. The FBI iz in UR Fazebuk, reedin' UR wawl.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Wireless Photography broadband Theater & Plays Law Enforcement Automobiles Maps and Mapping ]

I stumbled on this link from Paleofuture, a review of never-built projects for Moscow in the Stalin years. Most of them are the usual bloated gingerbread favored by the Party in those years. In particular, however, I was struck by this plan for a triumphal arch in Red Square. Considering it was designed while Hitler was still rampaging over the Ukraine it's pretty cheeky, if still ugly. However, it reminded me of this building, Palazzo della Civilta Italiana, the Palace of Italian Civilization, built in the mid 30s in Rome by Benito Mussolini, and considered the apotheosis of Fascist architecture. (The Romans also called it the Palace of Swiss Cheese.) What is interesting is that two political philosophies which claimed to illuminate and energize all realms of human thought and inspiration would come up with pretty much the same design forms. Maybe it's just that hysterical romantic despotisms actually reflect the same insane grandiosity, no matter which dialectic they follow.

[ related topics: Politics Graphic Design Architecture Dictators ]

Just read @meuon describe software "...applied to customers systems via subversion." Quoted for truth.

[ related topics: Quotes Software Engineering ]

Observation of the day: Geoffrey Irving pointed out:

If the wind blows with speed v in a random direction, and you bike along at speed u, you lose the same energy as if there was a continuous headwind of speed (u^3+1.5 u v^3)^(1/3)-u. Maybe this is why it feels like the wind always blows in the wrong direction.

[ related topics: Mathematics Bicycling ]

Okay, this should be the new server.

Okay, hopefully this will kick all of the appropriate things and make sure we're on the new server?

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

Consumer Demand for Pirated eBooks Stopped Growing in 2010 as more books have become available in electronic form.

[ related topics: Books Consumerism and advertising ]

David Dobbs: How to Set the Bullshit Filter When the Bullshit is Thick. On interpreting news of scientific studies, pulling from this Atlantic article about the meta-studies of John Ioannidis.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Her Bad Mother: On Freaks And Geeks And Princesses, And Why Lady Gaga Is More Like Jesus Than You Think:

John Stuart Mill argued that eccentricity – that is, the freedom of individuals to be eccentric, to express themselves eccentrically, to hold and propound eccentric ideas and to do eccentric things – was not only a hallmark of a free society, but a necessary feature of any progressive society: new ideas, after all, can only be borne from innovation and experimentation, and old ideas (or values or habits) that are not or are no longer good (however defined) can only be revealed as such when some are willing to reject the old in favor of the new, and this is the province of eccentricity. He also argued, however, that there is a tendency in the mass of any population to recoil against eccentricity – regarding expressions or demonstrations of eccentricity as ‘weird’ or ’strange’ or ‘dangerous’ – and to actively or (more insidiously) passively discourage eccentric behavior or action or speech. Socrates, who was condemned to death for corrupting the youth of Athens with his strange ideas, is one of Mill’s favorite examples of the damned eccentric. Jesus is another.

Hat tip to Medley.

[ related topics: Religion Privacy Invention and Design Civil Liberties ]

Regarding that last entry, Charlene and I recently went to see Waiting for "Superman" and were sorely disappointed. About 10 minutes of actual content squeezed into two hours of attempted drama over whether some kids were going to get into charter schools, with a lot of teacher union bashing in the middle.

But what also struck me about that is the way in which the paragon of education it raised was one of turning out educated children as more uniform commodities. I don't refute the notion that stronger reasoning and mathematics skills are a good thing, but as Eric keeps reminding me about geography, the context in which the knowledge and techniques are applied is often way more important.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Movies Mathematics Education Maps and Mapping Archival ]

IBM, Oracle and Java: The Q&A:

Q: What were the implications of Oracle’s patent claims vis a vis Android for Java?

A: Many, but the most important for this discussion were the chilling effects. By suing Google, Oracle injected uncertainty into the Java ecosystem. Developers are now questioning Java as a language choice. Not in huge numbers, yet, but relative to the sound footing the platform was on previously, it’s an important shift.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Software Engineering Community Databases ]

Krystal Ball’s New Statement About The Scandalous Photos Released Online.

Who cares if, at 22, she took a couple goofy photos at a Christmas party where her ex-husband was wearing a red dildo on his nose and she put her mouth on the fake peen? Dirty politicians, that’s who. “The tactic of making female politicians into whores is nothing new,” Ball wrote. “Society has to accept that women of my generation have sexual lives that are going to leak into the public sphere. Sooner or later, this is a reality that has to be faced, or many young women in my generation will not be able to run for office.”

I'm going to put the full statement in the comments. Hat Tip to Medley (once again).

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Sexual Culture Invention and Design Marriage ]

Thanks, Shawn: Experiment: Town in England turns off traffic lights, surprising results. (Video).

[ related topics: Video ]

Michael Chertoff gives justification to Iran for having nuclear weapons by proposing that deterrence as practiced in nuclear detente should be applied to "cyberware":

"If you have a persistent series of attacks on critical national infrastructure, then you could make the argument that incapacitating the platform used to attack is something that you have to do," Chertoff told ZDNet UK. "If you take the rule that attacks against critical infrastructure enable you to take action against that proximate platform, that would give countries an incentive to take action to secure their platforms."

Now I'm all for going nuclear against Windows users, but I think this dude's off his rocker.

[ related topics: Politics History Current Events ]

The Cato Unbound: Bourgeois Dignity issue is a great set of essays around Gregory Clark's ideas. I have raved before about Clark's book A Farewell To Alms, it's cool to see various other economists looking at his ideas and presenting their own alternative theories. Lots of good reading there.

Thanks to my cousin Matt Lyke for that lead.

[ related topics: Books Writing Economics Archival Books: A Farewell to Alms ]

Fallen Pegasus tweeted:

The difference between generations then and generations now: they are not "purity points", they are experience points, unlock achievements

Civic Commons: What's the ROI for Open?

YouTube video from Yale Daily News of fraternity pledges chanting "no means yes, yes means anal".

Salon's Tracy Clark-Flory has some commentary:

Now, DKE President Jordan Forney has been forced to apologize for this blatant sexual intimidation by calling it "a serious lapse in judgment by the fraternity and in very poor taste." But this sort of hateful crap isn't a "lapse in judgment." It doesn't innocently happen that you're guiding male pledges by young women's dorms in the dark of night chanting about anal rape. It isn't a forehead-slapping slip-up, it's a sign that you need major reprogramming as a human being. ...

And just so we're totally clear on where the dichotomy lies here: The half of the electorate that elected a dickhead of the culture from which this misogyny comes to the presidency for the first 8 years of this millenium is, as I mentioned yesterday, the half of the electorate giving a young female Congressional candidate crap for being photographed with her husband-at-the-time playing around with a jokey Christmas party costume.

*

[ related topics: Politics Erotic Sexual Culture Political Correctness Sociology Current Events Salon magazine Marriage ]

Linking to today's XKCD just so that I can say "shibboleet" to help Google learn about the word.

Following the suicide of yet another bullied young gay teen, Dan Savage wrote:

"My heart breaks for the pain and torment you went through, Billy Lucas," a reader wrote after I posted about Billy Lucas to my blog. "I wish I could have told you that things get better."

I had the same reaction: I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. I wish I could have told Billy that it gets better. I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better.

And they started the It Gets Better Project at YouTube, where people record videos telling teens that "it gets better".

Which is a message I sure wish I'd heard more in high school. But there are some alternate takes: It Gets Different; Leveling Up and Not it: you. You get better. are both messages directed more towards personal change.

The only problem I have with those two messages is that I remember feeling in high school, and even college, that my life was on rails, and I didn't have much leeway to change without completely going off those rails. Saying "you get better" isn't much help to someone who's also simultaneously trying to play the various societal success games as well.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Star Wars Games Sexual Culture Weblogs Pop Culture Education Seattle ]

NYTimes: Benoît Mandelbrot dead at 85. WaPo article.

In the SE thread "todde" says:

He will be buried in a 6x3 foot grave with an infinite perimeter

Y'all have probably already seen this, but apparently Swedish voters are getting fancy with write-in candidates, including attempts to do SQL injection and JavaScript hacks.

Ala XKCD's Little Bobby Tables.

[ related topics: Humor Databases ]

In the "it's a strange world" department, you can get a vacation rental and stay overnight in Bernal Heights on the south end of The Mission District in San Francisco in the very same house where Charlene's dad grew up.

Somewhat related: a few pictures from yesterday's sailing on the SF Bay and visit to the Cable Car museum.

[ related topics: Bay Area California Culture Real Estate ]

AudioScope Demo from Squarehead might make you keep your mouth closed in public. 300+ mics in an array recording everything, that even let you go back in time and refocus what you want to listen to. Simple concept with what seems to be extremely good execution.

The whump.com guide to morals and justice. I'm still trying to decide on that whole "is it better to be eaten first?" question.

[ related topics: Religion Ethics ]

Okay, those of you who exercise and listen to music/podcasts/whatever at the same time, what are you using for audio?

I had some "hook over the ear" things that didn't really stay in too well. My white Apple earbuds don't stay at all, and rattle and clank when I run. Some $3.99 el-cheapo earbuds are better.

I have some in-hear noise isolating ones, but I want to be more aware of my surroundings than that.

Anyone got suggestions?

And this morning's run. I need to tune my "when I left the region" code so that the average speed doesn't look like .23MPH, and I should go run a flat segment again so that I have a baseline for what my straight line speed is becoming, this was a fairly hilly run.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Music ]

This Sensible Erection entry alerted me to Johnny Knoxville's Detroit Documentary. I clicked "play" for background noise while I was typing some stuff, and then got totally sucked into it. On YouTube: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Makes the city sound like some sort of hardcore punk post-apocalyptic land of opportunity, or at least land of hardcore punk post apocalypse, and it'll be interesting to see what grows out of the space. The art redoing of the neighborhood mentioned in part three is The Heidelberg Project.

[ related topics: Art & Culture Real Estate ]

An intriguing video from CBS's 60 Minutes, a silent movie ride down Frisco's Market Street on the front of a streetcar. Digitally remastered, you see more commerce on horse wagons than autos, and apparently a total lack of traffic laws. Passing newsboys wave as the trip ends at the old Ferry Terminal. What is remarkable is the recent discovery by a film historian that the footage was shot only a week before the city was destroyed in the 1906 Earthquake and Fire. It probably wouldn't have survived if the filmmakers hadn't shipped the negative to their distributor in New York the day before the disaster. Even more eerie is the way everybody goes about their business unaware of the caastrophe about to befall them.

[ related topics: Movies Bay Area History Travel Earthquake ]

Bob Guccione dead at 79.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Journalism and Media ]

CJ passed along Frans de Waal in the New York Times talking about Morals Without God.

I'm not sure there's too much in that that'll be new to most of you, other than a reiteration that morals seem to get passed along in an evolutionary fashion, carried by the culture that reproduces them.

[ related topics: Religion Sociology ]

CDC Study Shows Teen Pregnancy About Education, Not Race:

What’s this mean? That while black and Latina teens are most likely to get cheated by retrograde sexual education in public schools, it screws over everybody.

Hat tip to Heather.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Erotic Sexual Culture Television Pop Culture Fabrication Education Archival ]

Today's dose of long-haired hippy doing things on a skateboard that you thought only happened in video games.

[ related topics: Games Movies Robotics Embedded Devices Video ]

Diane Ravitch fact-checks Waiting for 'Superman'.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Archival ]

Unsolicited advertising: "The Chimp Who Loved Me" has given me numerous laugh out loud moments: http://www.thechimpwholovedme.com/

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising ]

Steamed bun vs nori roll (YouTube)

[ related topics: Humor Animation Video ]

Ages ago, at an Alternative Press Expo, I picked up a copy of Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber's Whiteout, and quite enjoyed the tale.

I'd heard vague rumblings about Jeff Parker and Steve Lieber's Underground, but it was Erica Moen mentioning that Steve Lieber found scans of the book pirated on 4chan and responded by participating in the thread and putting higher quality PDFs of the book on his site for free that got my attention.

Steve compares the sales boost that 4chan piracy gave him versus a review on BoingBoing.

Also note that Steve really gets it about "viral" marketing:

FWIW, I don’t think this is likely to be the start of a gentrified 4chan. I was like some guy who stumbled into town with a head injury. The locals patched me up and sent me on my way. Anyone who is dumb enough to look at my visit and think “I can move in and build a Starbucks!” is going to have a very different experience.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Books Comics ]

Chronicle of Higher Education: Why Did 17 Million Students Go to College?:

... Putting issues of student abilities aside, the growing disconnect between labor market realities and the propaganda of higher-education apologists is causing more and more people to graduate and take menial jobs or no job at all. This is even true at the doctoral and professional level—there are 5,057 janitors in the U.S. with Ph.D.’s, other doctorates, or professional degrees.

or maybe the pension on those public-service janitorial jobs is better than anything they could get in the private sector?

[ related topics: Education Economics ]

The lungs have taste receptors, and may dilate when they taste bitter flavors.

Dr. Liggett cautions that eating bitter tasting foods or compounds would not help in the treatment of asthma. "Based on our research, we think that the best drugs would be chemical modifications of bitter compounds, which would be aerosolized and then inhaled into the lungs with an inhaler," he says.

(Via SE)

[ related topics: Drugs Health ]

Ya know, if the Republicans in the last decade didn't put the final nail in fiscal responsibility, the Teabaggers will drive that sucker home.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography ]

This last weekend, Charlene and I flew out to Detroit where my sister picked us up for a visit to family in Whitehouse. Or at least that's what we told family, but the real reason was to visit Dimension of Darkness.

If you're not into the scene, it's a "haunt", not "haunted house", because it's not a house. But the transformation made to an empty storefront in a strip mall is pretty cool. The primary driver behind Dimension of Darkness is my sister Sara's husband Matt who, along with Autumn, a woman who has "gore" tattooed across her chest, a reference which has nothing to do with that particular inconvenient truth, and a few other partners have long wanted to create one of these.

And it's a hell of a lot of work. We went through almost as regular customers on Saturday, my parents and Sara were well enough recognized that the cast gave us slightly special treatment, but my real appreciation for the art of the thing came on Sunday when we went back over to help reset the space for that evening's festivities, and I got to see all that went into the place.

The lighting is all 12v LED, to allow spot lighting without having to have all the fixtures UL listed and every junction inspected. The place is laid out such that no point is more than 50 feet from any exit. Heat detectors on the ceilings, with the alarm system, a calm voice instructing visitors to "please move calmly to the nearest exit", on batteries. And the whole thing is constructed out of fire treated lumber (which is bright pink in its unpainted state, a circumstance that I'm told led to any number of hilarious exchanges with people watching from a nearby bar when they were building the place).

But as impressive as the planning for safety that went into the design and construction is building the place so that the cast of high energy goth kids banging their heads on the wall, and freaked out customers running headlong into places there aren't doors, only destroy the place to a state where it's possible to reconstruct it every day.

It's not really my scene, the demographics are targeted young and we were joking later about things that'd terrify the over 35 crowd (having mortgage payments leap out at you...), but it's really cool.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Politics Space & Astronomy Sociology Work, productivity and environment Art & Culture Sports Marketing Pyrotechnics Graphic Design Machinery Fabrication Marriage Real Estate Model Building Woodworking ]

CJ forwarded along this Guardian article praising the brains of bees. It's probably from a press release about the research of Dr Nigel Raine, whose web page is worth going to for the pictures.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Firesheep is a Firefox plug-in that lets you sit on an open network, click a button to start looking for identifying user information, and then click on one of those identified sessions to hijack that login to a given site. Works for any site which uses simple cookies and an unencrypted HTTP stream. Like Flutterby, or Facebook, or Twitter, or...

Might be time to figure out how to go HTTPS for everything.

[ related topics: broadband ]

QOTD:

Good God, can we PLEASE tighten our borders??!? No, no, I don't care about the Mexicans, but the fact that Celine Dion just reproduced again in our country is unacceptable... Damn Canadians, they breed like rabbits..

— Scott Kindelberger

[ related topics: Religion Quotes Books ]

Anti-news: Mr Blog: Apple’s great Mac OS X bait and switch, on the sudden deprecation of Java on the Mac.

Apple baited me, and a lot of us Linux and UNIX developers, with the charm of a real UNIX OS underneath – more or less everything one gets with a typical modern Linux distribution simply by opening a Terminal window – while being wrapped in a nice modern GUI supporting tons of “mainstream” Apps, like MS Office and Adobe Photoshop. No more dual-booting. No more firing up a Linux VM to do development. It was glorious, while it lasted…

Speaking of which, anyone checked back with Always Innovating recently? The forthcoming Smart Book looks like it might be a completely usable device out of the box...

[ related topics: Free Software Apple Computer Books Weblogs Open Source Software Engineering Current Events Macintosh ]

One of the hazards of buying into closed proprietary technologies: DC Metro looks at the potential problems with replacing their SmarTrip cards.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

RedMonk Analytics: What Operating Systems are Developers Using? In light of the Mac Java backlash (mentioned below), they look at Eclipse users and try to narrow down a few other categories.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Macintosh Java ]

"Rion" (the prodigal son) is pimping tuned up VW's and "Rice Burners" at his new website: Rival House Garage. Not sure what he's really up to, but he takes good pics of cars with "dirty girls". Figured the least I can do is plug his new website.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Real Estate ]

YouTubery of the day:

• Jeri Ellsworth plays with holograms.
• Wood gears, most of which aren't round. If you get bored, skip to 1:40.
• An ad for Bookmans used book store, involving books in domino chains.

[ related topics: Books Movies Robotics Embedded Devices Woodworking ]

p1k3: asides to the entire institution of american journalism, #1, quoted in its entirety, for truth:

Frequently Ignored Questions, re: the Tea Party Movement:

Q. Is this entire movement pretty much just a product of xenophobia, racism, and batshit-insane conspiracy theory, strategically camouflaged by some outraged rhetoric about economic policy?

A. Yes.

Q. Is "grass roots" really the best primary descriptor for social phenomena engineered and financed by a well-coordinated set of wealthy, politically entrenched elites with vested interests in the status quo?

A. Are you fucking kidding me?

[ related topics: Quotes Journalism and Media Conspiracy Race Economics Government ]

QOTD: the Long Fail:

"In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes and then internet famous to 15 people forever. This is the Long Fail." - ND¢

[ related topics: Quotes Net Culture ]

A MeFi comment proposing using error injection to try to gain statistics on how just our justice system really is

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Mathematics ]

If, like me, you're conflicted over reconciling the good times in the early '80s associated with Billy Joel's music with how trite "Piano Man" sounds from adulthood, and how "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant" has gone from accepting that we can't go back to our teens from our twenties to being a ballad of proto NJ Guidos, then you might enjoy the description that goes along with Hussalonia's cover of the entire Glass Houses album.

And the music might help you rock out to the nostalgia without feeling terminally uncool, where even though I'd enjoy the flashback I just could not possibly go see the Movin' Out Broadway Show.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Music Food Theater & Plays Television Real Estate ]

I've recently become aware of some business dealings that I can't go into detail on, where some companies are willing to piss off some vendors and jump through huge hoops to keep some cash for a few months.

And our garbage collection company just gave us a "Pay now for 2011, get December 2011 free" option.

Money seems to be fairly cheap right now, but anecdotally I'm seeing more than a trend of companies willing to pay a lot for some cash right now. The only thing I can see that makes sense to this pattern is that they're expecting some relatively large (> 10% inflation) in the next several months.

I understand the bet on inflation, I've made a few of those myself. I don't understand that they seem to be betting on that narrow a window.

Any insights?

[ related topics: Currency Economics ]

Spirit, the plucky little Mars rover has been stuck in the red sand for nearly a year, two of it's tires inoperable, so barring a marsquake it is not moving. So NASA has programmed it for longer-term studies within arm's reach. And what did it find? Water! This is very big news.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Astronomy Current Events ]

NPR talks about how Corrections Corporation of America is entwined with the Arizona SB 1070 immigration law. One of the things that's happened in California is that the prison guard and police officer's unions have gotten tremendously powerful, so we've got opposition to this year's Prop 19 because they (rightly) see that if we stop arbitrarily creating criminals, the need for law enforcement and prisons will go down. Looks like in Arizona they've been taking a more proactive approach.

[ related topics: Law Law Enforcement Civil Liberties California Culture ]

Jeff passed along a Denver Post compilation of a bunch of WWII images you probably haven't seen (and a few you certainly have).

[ related topics: Photography History ]

Chris in Florida passed along NY Times: Preparing Kids for the Unknown, some musings on what kids may face. Some of it is a little apocalyptic:

... What if “a fully wired, completely interconnected, always-on global marketplace of ideas and innovation” isn’t actually what the future will look like, she asks. “What if we’re raising our kids to succeed in a George Jetson kind of world, but they wind up living more like Fred Flintstone?”

I've known people all my life who were, in one way or another, preparing for the collapse of society, and though history suggests that sooner or later they're gonna be right it's hard to not just ride the bubble while it's here. On the other hand, some of the musings in there are a good reminder that we ought to be thinking about teaching kids to problem solve in a bunch of different environments, and not simply figure out how to regurgitate what's shoveled into them.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama ]

"All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed." — Sean O'Casey (1880 - 1964).

The cute, it burrrns! Part Kid, Part Machine, All Cop. Four year old decides he wants to be a robot for Halloween. Specifically, RoboCop. Parent delivers. Cuteness ensues.

A few more cops came out to talk with us, joking that they were going to have to call their union because it looked like they were being replaced. "Don't worry," I said. "He's just a prototype."

A few more images.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Robotics Law Enforcement ]

Footage from surveillance cameras at the Chickamauga lock and dam near Chattanooga as a tornado touched down there.

• Tornado Camera 04, 2010 10 26 22 58 12 188
• Tornado Camera 02, 2010 10 26 22 57 00 143

[ related topics: Photography Movies Robotics Chattanooga Embedded Devices ]

Bob Barr endorses Russ Feingold:

What I look for in Washington are folks in the Senate and the House who put the Constitution first. Not the "R" or the "D", not partisan politics but the Constitution. And what you have in Russ, and I have worked closely with him over a number of years to try to rein in the Patriot Act, to try to rein in the government surveillance and so forth — this is a man who understands the Constitution, who supports and fights sometimes against his own party to defend the Constitution in the Congress of the United States in ways that are much more consistent and much more proactive than a lot of Republicans.

Passed along by Rafe, who observed: "Hey, look at the people with discernible principles."

[ related topics: Politics Law Civil Liberties ]

Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic: For the First Time, the TSA Meets Resistance, talking about how the TSA plans to make the alternative to the back-scatter body imaging devices pornoscanners so odious that we'll be lining up to step through them.

With a hat tip to MeFite adipocere:

... I will use pornoscan at my next flight, but in return, can we refer to pat-down agents as "flightfondlers?"

"Yeah, let's skip the pornoscan and go straight to the flightfondlers, please. I was not as lucky as I hoped last night."

So someone shipped some packages containing some old cell phone bits and alleged PETN from Yemen, alerted the Saudi Embassy to that fact, and tied up international shipping for a few days. Looks like the circuit board pictured by CNN was a bit of a Nokia 6120c phone, there was nothing here that was actually a working bomb, it was all just parts, the packages weren't detected by standard security screening, someone had to call to make sure that western intelligence agencies knew the packages were coming, and election day here in the U.S. is Tuesday.

Although that last part could just be a coincidence.

[ related topics: Wireless Weblogs Work, productivity and environment ]

There's a monument in downtown Petaluma from 1891 that says "Total abstinence is the way to handle the alcohol problem." Yes on Prop 19.