Flutterby™! From 2011-08-01 to 2011-08-31

EEG triggered automobile braking could save 130 milliseconds. The paper is EEG potentials predict upcoming emergency brakings during simulated driving.

[ related topics: Automobiles ]

Back when I played games, the apex of gamer humor was "Barney Doom". Red Faction: Armageddon's unlocked-at-a-high-level weapon is a unicorn that farts rainbows (YouTube). Popular culture that I probably would have gone just fine without knowing.

[ related topics: Humor Games Movies Sociology California Culture Guns ]

Via @SonicNet, help the @EFF protect your privacy and oppose the data retention bill.

[ related topics: Privacy Free Speech ]

Using an X-Acto knife we bought from Wal*Mart. Forgot that Wal*Mart versions of products are sucky and cheap and not what you get elsewhere.

Not even realizing that the only thing missing from my opinion of Google+ is screaming "Wake up, sheeple!" has convinced me I'm wrong.

Marin IJ: Novato toy store to become members-only amid shoplifting crisis. Apparently Dollhouses, Trains & More is becoming a club which involves a membership form and a scanned driver's license if you want t shop there.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Bay Area Machinery Trains ]

Slate: Don't Turn Left! A new kind of intersection eliminates dangerous, time-wasting left turns.. On the diverging diamond intersection (YouTube).

[ related topics: Movies Invention and Design ]

"You know, George", Guido said while idly swinging the baseball bat, "you should have known better than to cheat a friend; to waste the chance that you were given." Behind him, Guido's henchmen shifted uncomfortably. "Tonight the music was so loud, you wished that you could lose the crowd," and there, in the dark alley behind the club Guido wound up with the bat over his shoulder: "Now you're never gonna dance again." cue: wailing saxophone.

[ related topics: Music Sexual Culture Sports ]

So in my continuing effort to get people to steer away from the lamer "social networking" sites with super restrictive content policies and back to places where the're trying less to own the conversation, let me point out Shawn's Tumblr.

and via Shawn's Tumblr, the QOTD comes from Mark Morford: Christian Virgins Are Overrated / Think sex and drugs destroy America? Try naive chastity. Oh, and "Purity Balls":

There is no sacredness in the virgin. There is only the fear, were she to be educated and empowered and really let loose, of what she could become.

[ related topics: Religion Drugs Quotes Erotic Sexual Culture Health California Culture Mark Morford ]

Awe. Some.: Arturas Zuokas, mayor of Vilnius Lithuania, has the right idea about dealing with people who park in bike lanes.

Thanks, Shadow!

[ related topics: Photography Current Events Bicycling ]

Amazon App Store: Rotten To The Core, on being an Android developer.

[ related topics: Books ]

So this recent "blunt trauma to the ribs" incident got me thinking about some of the major injuries and illnesses I've sustained. These are the major ones, I've cracked helmets in accidents not listed here.

• Broken left arm, crashing a tricycle down a hill, I think first grade. Cast for 4(?) weeks. Best 4 weeks of my early grade school, 'cause I now had a built in club and wasn't the runt of the class for a short time.
• Pulled ligaments in my left knee, skiing accident, somewhere around third or fourth grade. Cast for 6 weeks.
• Concussion with temporary amnesia following an incident of some sort at a Boy Scout Jamboree. High school somewhere.
• Bicycle crash with severely sprained arm, I think I remember being told it'd have been less severe if I'd broken the arm, and substantial road rash. High school.
• Pneumonia for most of a high school semester. '84?
• Broken foot, climbing fall, '88 or so. I think I only learned this later, after the following incident, when a doctor looked at X-rays and asked me "when did you break your foot?", 'cause I just kept on truckin'.
• Similar major foot sprain, probably '90. I think this was when Eric and I were going down to the boulder at Signal Point and I ended up on crutches. It was also when I learned that you can't skip steps going downstairs on crutches. Secondary ouch effects.
• Facial scarring. Inline skating crash in the Provident parking lots. Probably '91.
• Concussion, inline skating crash, late '91 to '94. Yes, I was wearing a helmet. I was skating at the riverpark, misjudged a jump at a curb cut. Had that "oh crap, I'm losing peripheral vision" issue...
• Knee hit a rock in a mountain biking crash over in Wildcat Canyon, Berkeley. '96-'98. Notable not because it was a major hit but because it's my baseline for most pain I've experienced. Walked my bike out of the canyon, but couldn't talk while doing so.
• Inflamed tendons in my chest, circa 2001. Scary, I couldn't walk quickly because I couldn't breathe enough to suck in air to actually move.
• ACJ separation. 2008 crash at the skate park.
• Last Saturday, blunt force trauma to the ribs, possible break.

Anyone remember others? I know I've cracked a helmet or two in mountain biking crashes when I lived in Fairfax, but those didn't really result in injury. A couple of scary moments paddling, but again nothing I'm remembering as "out for a month". I know there are one or two other "this hurts like hell" doctor's visits, but those seem like the biggies.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Health Bay Area Sports Skating Whitewater Pedal Power Bicycling Archival ]

Waldo Jaquith - The merits of government apps contests. A nice short summation of why these government apps projects, like Code For America, don't seem to be producing anything.

Mentioned are two by Andy Oram: Challenges aired at Health Data Initiative Forum and App outreach and sustainability: lessons learned by Portland, Oregon

[ related topics: Weblogs Health Community Government ]

You know that recent study (that I tastefully ignored) that purported to find a correlation between browser usage and IQ? It was a hoax.

[ related topics: Current Events Monty Python ]

Las Vegas one of the kinkiest cities in the country? Not so much:

When I interviewed Las Vegas-based professional dominatrix Rowynn Eire earlier this summer, she had this to say about Vegas’ relationship to sex: “Las Vegas is the most sexually conservative city I’ve ever been to. Sexuality is not celebrated here; it’s only parodied.”

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Current Events Guns Gambling ]

From the Regretsy forums, a tale about okra. I'd long known about this because in Tennessee during the heavy flyover surveillance, if you grew okra you'd eventually get a visit from law enforcement asking to look in your garden. The general feeling was that if you ever did want to grow marijuana, you'd just grow a bunch of okra 'til you got one of these visits...

[ related topics: Drugs Interactive Drama Law Enforcement Chattanooga Community Gardening ]

Mariachi Connecticut serenades a beluga whale at the Mystic Aquarium.

[ related topics: Movies ]

Looks like a Gerrymander! Old vs new California political districts http://www.sacbee.com/2011/07/...senate-assembly-or-congress.html

[ related topics: Politics Invention and Design moron California Culture ]

The 2011 Pwnie Awards have been announced. Well worth reading through the list if computer security at all interests you.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Two new-to-me comics:

• Love and Capes. A romantic comedy about the challenges of dating a superhero.
• Battlepug. A young man who's village is destroyed a by a giant seal seeks vengeance, aided by his pug. Warning: Slooooow server.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Comics Dan & Charlene's July 2003 San Juan Trip ]

That truck driver you flipped off? Let me tell you his story.

[ related topics: Machinery ]

My.NameIs.Me is Skud's platform "Supporting your freedom to choose the name you use on social networks and other online services."

[ related topics: Privacy Civil Liberties Government ]

MIT news: The too-smart-for-its-own-good grid.

What they found was that if consumer response to price fluctuation is large enough to significantly alter patterns of energy use — and if it’s not, there’s no point in installing smart meters — then price variations well within the normal range can cause dangerous oscillations in demand. “For the system to work, supply and demand must match almost perfectly at each instant of time,” Roozbehani says. “The generators have what are called ramp constraints: They cannot ramp up their production arbitrarily fast, and they cannot ramp it down arbitrarily fast. If these oscillations become very wild, they’ll have a hard time keeping track of the demand. And that’s bad for everyone.”

I'm finding similar things in traffic management and traffic forecasting.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Theater & Plays Current Events Consumerism and advertising Work, productivity and environment ]

Awesome: How To Build A Newsroom Time Machine:

Want to freak out a newsroom full of college journalists?

Sit them down at manual typewriters and ask them to plunk “2011″ onto a piece of paper.

I've set type from a California Job Case. I LOLed. Via Sean Conner who added some personal observations.

[ related topics: Law Journalism and Media Heinlein California Culture Typography Education ]

Dear potential LinkedIn contact whose name I don't recognize: "Dean Graziosi Real Estate Millionaire Club" under "education" seems fishy.

[ related topics: Education Real Estate ]

Anti-news: Unscrupulous "Internet" providers are running web traffic through proxies and doing evil things to search results. Apparently this goes beyond Comcast's Comcastic policy of breaking DNS, to actively using proxies to alter web traffic.

In my perfect world we'd be able to legally define "Internet" to preclude shenanigans like this and turn the FTC and civil litigation on the entities which claim to be offering "Internet" but are actually offering some sort of online service which happens to have a broken Internet gateway.

[ related topics: Current Events Sports Net Culture ]

McMaster University: That anxiety may be in your gut, not in your head:

"The exciting results provide stimulus for further investigating a microbial component to the causation of behavioural illnesses..."

Via MeFi.

Abstract in Gastroenterology: The Intestinal Microbiota Affect Central Levels of Brain-Derived Neurotropic Factor and Behavior in Mice. More in Chronic Gastrointestinal Inflammation Induces Anxiety-Like Behavior and Alters Central Nervous System Biochemistry in Mice (PDF)

[ related topics: Current Events Television Education ]

Hanne Blank: Learning to Love the Rain: The Queer Vitality of Sexuality Beyond Identity.

What I am here to do is to ask you to consider this: that having an identity which is constantly the subject of negotiation is a good thing, that not resting, not having a fixed dwelling place, keeps our queerness -- and all queerness -- vital and alive. I am here to ask you to consider that the cultural consolidation of identity limits one's ability to become liberated from a culture whose practice is to only recognize consolidated, group identities. Consider for a moment that there are ways to establish identity and community without sacrificing mobility, flexibility, change, and challenge.

Thanks, Shawn.

[ related topics: Erotic Sociology California Culture Community Education ]

One of the things I need to figure out a good strategy for is to go back through the Flutterby archives and nuke off the links which now go to SEO spammers. Here's another tactic to be aware of:

How To Destroy Wikipedia SERP Results, on yet another way the spammy Google gamers are crapping on the web.

Via Mark

Relatedly: I would love it if the Google "nuke this result from my search list and never show me anything from this domain again" button were easier to get to. Especially when I'm searching for recipes or food related issues. If I never see "Emeril" or "Food Network" again it'll be too soon.

[ related topics: Weblogs Archival ]

Given the broken rib, I've acknowledged that I'm not going to be doing anything physical for the next 6 weeks. At least.

The plan for the office involves a bookshelf in which we'll have an area for display of a model. Charlene and I have both said "It'd be cool to have a boat model". Because, of course, every cherry motif office has to have a ship model in it. Part of that "man cave" thing.

I sat down and started working on the Canon Creative Park papercraft model of the Esmerelda, but on Friday realized that I'd screwed something up, and to fix it I'd have to go back and rebuild large portions of the hull.

So I thought about how the papercraft thing was hedging my bets, how I really needed to stay the hell off these ribs for a month and a half, and yesterday we wandered over to Hobby Town and left with the Model Shipways schooner Sultana.

And that, of course, got me home and Googling and to the modern recreation of the topsail schooner Sultana, launched in 2001 and the book Schooner Sultana: Building a Chesapeake Legacy.

So a "open this box and you have everything you need to build this model" (which is already revealed to be a lie, but I'll go into that with the build notes) has turned into "and I need to spend a bunch more on getting references", 'cause although the plans are good it'd be really nice to have pictures of detail every time I get stuck.

Speaking of pictures: an April 2003 trip aboard the Sultana, an August 2003 longer cruise aboard the Sultana.

[ related topics: Books Photography Work, productivity and environment Heinlein Travel Boats Machinery ]

Lagunitas Brewing has a plan to save Samuel P. Taylor State Park. Since I've lived both in Lagunitas (right next to the park) and Petaluma (where Lagunitas Brewing is now), I like both of these things.

Slate: The Doctor and the Pomegranate: Antioxidants don't work, but no one wants to hear it..

[ related topics: Health Work, productivity and environment ]

NY Times: Virginia Heffernan: Education Needs a Digital-Age Upgrade:

Ms. Davidson herself was appalled not long ago when her students at Duke, who produced witty and incisive blogs for their peers, turned in disgraceful, unpublishable term papers. But instead of simply carping about students with colleagues in the great faculty-lounge tradition, Ms. Davidson questioned the whole form of the research paper. “What if bad writing is a product of the form of writing required in school — the term paper — and not necessarily intrinsic to a student’s natural writing style or thought process?” She adds: “What if ‘research paper’ is a category that invites, even requires, linguistic and syntactic gobbledygook?”

What if, indeed. After studying the matter, Ms. Davidson concluded, “Online blogs directed at peers exhibit fewer typographical and factual errors, less plagiarism, and generally better, more elegant and persuasive prose than classroom assignments by the same writers.”

That's Dr. Cathy Davidson, her book is Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn. I may wander down to the bookstore and order this.

Anyone wanna weigh in on what this may mean about education bubbles?

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Books Theater & Plays Writing Work, productivity and environment Education ]

Yay! Gender and age are no impediments to hacking: 10 year old girl demos zero day exploit at DefCon:

The girl first discovered the flaw earlier this year because she was bored with the pace of farm-style games.

Thanks, Shawn.

[ related topics: Games ]

Yeah, I'll give this viral ad some press: Johann Sebastian Bach, Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, performed by a wooden ball rolling on a xylophone in a forest. Making-of video.

[ related topics: Movies Video ]

It occurred to me that what we need in cars is a feedback mechanism for risk. Instead of a radar detector, which tells you where the cops may be, the risk detector would give you a snapshot of your current risk of having an accident. There could even be a second readout that gives your risk of having a fatal accident. There are four potential inputs (of increasing technical complexity):

1. Your driving behavior. Some insurance companies are already tracking driver risk to modify premiums. A simple ODBII reader could tell things like: average speed, rate of acceleration (and deceleration), number of lane changes, frequency of left-hand turns.
2. Your position overlaid on a map of risky roads and intersections. Just join a table of accident reports with the database in your GPS. Viola.
3. Driver behavior around you: get input from backup sensors and maybe put an array all around the vehicle. Are cars around you changing lanes unnecessarily? Are they flying past you at high rates of speed?
4. Driver history: everyone has a device on their dash that they have to insert their license into in order to start the car. The device broadcasts the number of points against your license so that risk detectors can factor this in for drivers of vehicles within accident range.

The point is to give the driver an understanding of elevated risk and allow for it. For instance by increasing following distance, avoiding lane changes, making right turns instead of left.

[ related topics: Music Aviation History Law Enforcement Automobiles Maps and Mapping Databases Furniture ]

The worst failure of this age isn't the unwinnable war or a horrendous economy, it was capitulating to required JavaScript in web browsers.

[ related topics: History Economics ]

Black Belt Sorvi Hero, the hot new video game about... woodturning. On a lathe. But, like, with a lightsaber, dude!

[ related topics: Games Invention and Design Video Woodworking ]

Slate: Overdone: Why are restaurant websites so horrifically bad?

[ related topics: Food ]

Cranky OTD update of yesterday: JavaScript is like having a child: Yes, there are good examples, but most people shouldn't.

Interesting: ERS/USDA: Rural Development Strategies: Federal Funds and Development Policy: Tables. Federal government spending per capita, broken down by rural and metro areas. Not what I'd expected. Although us west coast urban dwellers do seem to be getting the least.

Via Daily Yonder: Monday Roundup: A Confused Times Editorial.

[ related topics: moron California Culture Furniture ]

Time Magazine, 1936: Transport: Four Frictions:

Making traffic control the subject of his thesis at Harvard in 1924, red-headed Miller McClintock became the first man ever awarded a doctorate in traffic. Two years later, when Studebaker Corp. offered to finance a Harvard traffic bureau, Dr. McClintock was put in charge. Supported now by the Automobile Manufacturers Association, the Bureau and its chief are recognized as the No. 1 U. S. authority on traffic control, have produced a complete new theory of highway troubles. Says Dr. McClintock: "If we could apply all we know, we could eliminate 98% of all accidents, practically all congestion."

Via Transportationist

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs Invention and Design Beer Automobiles ]

Really, .NET has no simple way to do a POST with CGI encoding? It's like programming in 1994 all over again.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

People! If you're going to write out "slash" rather than using the character conveniently provided for you down there below your left pinky, underneath the question mark, specifically "/", may I humbly request that you please please please do so only in contexts where it is not potentially ambiguous with the genre of fiction.

Specifically, I just read someone refer to "mom-slash-writers" and wondered if that was anything like "Kirk-Spock slash writers".

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Star Trek Writing ]

Sonic.net: The Five Levels of ISP Evil

There are a number of reasons I worry about the future. I think human impact on our environment has been underestimated and we may yet overgrow our food supply, or have already fucked up substantial ecosystems which keep humans alive.

However, and this might seem odd to the "peak oil" folks: the future energy is not one of those concerns. Yet another exhibit of why: E. Coli engineered to produce biofuels and petrochemical substitutes from simple starches:

Just how fast are Rice's single-celled chemical factories? On a cell-per-cell basis, the bacteria produced the butanol, a biofuel that can be substituted for gasoline in most engines, about 10 times faster than any previously reported organism.

"That's really not even a fair comparison because the other organisms used an expensive, enriched feedstock, and we used the cheapest thing you can imagine, just glucose and mineral salts," said Ramon Gonzalez, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Rice and lead co-author of the Nature study.

Via JWZ

[ related topics: Nature and environment Food Journalism and Media ]

Anastassia Elias does cool papercraft sculptures inside toilet paper tubes. Alt link on Google+.

Thanks, Shawn!

[ related topics: Photography ]

BART turns off Cell Phone Service to prevent POSSIBLE protest.

While part of me agrees with:

At the same time, BART may have been within its rights, said Professor Jordan, a criminologist at Western Connecticut State University, in Danbury. “They didn’t try to shut down the protest," she told CNN. "They simply turned off the cell service so it couldn’t become viral. It really is just a cost/benefit analysis of where your freedom of speech begins to threaten the public safety.

Given our current society reliance on cell phones for "public safety", this seems very stupid. What about the other people that might have called 911, or really needed to, if there was an event.

The other part of me finds the idea that they (we?!?) "pulled an Egypt" about as scary as possible. That, in the USA, we have resorted to such tactics makes me a combination of angry and sad.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Wireless Privacy Law Law Enforcement Civil Liberties Trains Education Public Transportation Government hubris ]

http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/archive/2011/08/14

A couple from Bruce Schneier's latest CryptoGram newsleter:

"Antiterrorism" facial recognition software with large numbers of false positives causing driver's licenses to be suspended in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts began using the software after receiving a $1.5 million grant from the US Department of Homeland Security as part of an effort to prevent terrorism, reduce fraud, and improve the reliability and accuracy of personal identification documents that states issue.

Ya see, if we were honest in our journalism we'd say "...as part of an effort to transfer taxpayer dollars into the pockets of snake-oil salesweasels."

Interactive billboards with facial recognition software are being deployed.

Adam Harvey's CV Dazzle is fashion and style designed to mess with facial recognition systems.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs Software Engineering Current Events Journalism and Media Graphic Design Cryptography Fashion ]

I could have sworn I mentioned this story when it first broke, but I can't find it now. Anyway: Mark Ciavarella Jr, the judge in Pennsylvania who took a million bucks in bribes from the operator of juvenile detention facilities to send kids there, has been sentenced to 28 years in prison.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Law Guns ]

Two from Shadow:

• Science Friday video on a Maxwell von Stein's flywheel hybrid bicycle.
• Slashdot looks at the carbon footprint of bicycling. The comments thread of which, of course, quickly descends into people talking around the issue of population...

[ related topics: Software Engineering Heinlein Sports Pedal Power Video Bicycling Archival ]

NudeRaces.com. Nude foot races. So far just two 5ks in Florida, with the last entry (for a race in 2012) last year. I think I've mentioned that I'd love to find a short ultra (50 miles or so) with relaxed time requirements, one that I could run naked would be double-plus awesome...

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Nudity Race ]

NY Times: Warren Buffett: Stop Coddling the Super Rich.

A little tearjerker to make you think a little bit about your medical advance directives: JerryRig.com: Dear Mom.

Okay, I'm no fan of Ron Paul, I don't think he's necessarily behind the causes of liberty and freedoms, given that he's for forced conception and uses "states rights" as a dodge for all sorts of local indignities. However, it is totally worth watching The Daily Show: Indecision 2012 - Corn Polled Edition - Ron Paul & the Top Tier, both for the commentary on Ron Paul, and for the reminder that most of your media outlets are clearly just parroting someone's talking points. Wonder which portion of the Republican machine seeded the "Top Tier" metaphor...

[ related topics: Movies Journalism and Media Civil Liberties ]

"Excessive use of castings sets you back, craftwise, to the stage of plastic kits..." -- G.F. Campbell

I'm reading Cathy Davidson's "Now You See It", and having to remember that just because Malcolm Gladwell asserted it doesn't make it wrong.

Shadow forwarded along this Wired note about Merrell's new high-heeled bike shoe.

I am totally not sure where to go with this.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Shoes Bicycling ]

Argh. We've been putting off getting new phones, but I just had AT&T drop several calls and SMSs on their own network. Time to switch.

[ related topics: broadband Invention and Design ]

Fuck the Space Shuttle: Space-X plans November 30^th flight to the ISS.

(Thanks, Larry)

[ related topics: Aviation Space & Astronomy ]

I am not happy with Google's new page rank algorithms. Not just because Flutterby.com has dropped from a 5 to a 4, but because I'm having more trouble now finding the actual event venue web site (Main Stage West) amongst all the ticket sellers and calendar aggregators, struggling to find the details from the cooking blogs amidst the flawed recipe spammers like Food.com and Cooks.com and the Food Network.

[ related topics: broadband Invention and Design Food ]

I haven't said anything here about the London riots because... hell... it's the other side of the world, and what can the events in a monarchy tell us about life here in our democracy? I have, however, been reading once again some history about the 1700s. On the one hand, yeah, busting up small shops is petty theft, on the other hand the Brits have a long history of brutally and viciously exploiting their lower classes and this merely seems like the latest volley in that fight.

A few links: First, New Statesman: Damn or fear it, the truth is that it’s an insurrection:

Bankers loot the Treasury, MPs fiddle their expenses . . . and then the establishment turns on deprived young people in England’s inner cities and calls them criminals. The August disturbances weren’t riots: they were the revolt of the working class.

And why David Starkey is a racist. Starkey is a historian who was on some panel show who blamed the current unrest on "black culture". Which reminded me of that line from The Replacements:

Do you not get it, lads? The Irish are the blacks of Europe. And Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland. And the Northside Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin. So say it once, say it loud: I'm black and I'm proud.

[ related topics: Quotes Politics Music Weblogs Movies Invention and Design Sociology Work, productivity and environment Law Enforcement California Culture ]

Oh. My: A trailer for the movie Hysteria. Maggie Gyllenhaal, Hugh Dancy, Jonathan Pryce, and Rupert Everett and the invention of the vibrator.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Movies ]

Peter Shankman: The Greatest Customer Service Story Ever Told, Starring Morton’s Steakhouse. Yeah, it's a publicity stunt. Yeah, Morton's is chain food, like an upscale McDonald's. But effective customer relationship management: Yes. This is what that's like.

[ related topics: Food McDonald's ]

I am a sucker for Bach's Toccata & Fugue in D minor. Here it is played on wineglasses

[ related topics: Movies ]

"Enough chit-chat. It's science time!!" http://www.nicky510.com/comic/we-have-ignition/

Catholic Church forgives abortion during the pope's visit to Madrid:

The "special" concession for a pregnancy-termination act normally deemed a sin punishable by excommunication is a result of an appeal by Madrid Archbishop Antonio Maria Rouco Varela for the Vatican to offer women who had abortions access to "the fruits of divine grace that will open the doors to a new life," Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said.

"Canon 1398 provides that...

... "a person who procures a successful abortion incurs an automatic (latae sententiae) excommunication." This means that at the very moment that the abortion is successfully accomplished, the woman and all formal conspirators are excommunicated.

I'm wondering if the Catholic Church has a tie-in promotional deal with airlines; if you're feeling bad about being automatically excommunicated you could fly to Madrid for forgiveness. Or if they're just losing enough membership in metropolitan Spain that they're having to make dispensations for that portion of the population.

Via this MeFi thread in which it is pointed out that:

Presumably you could shoot a newborn in the head, though, and not be automatically excommunicated and still eligible for sacramental absolution.

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama Sexual Culture Invention and Design Aviation Current Events ]

Dear ntia.doc.gov, stop breaking the web. If you're going to redirect to HTML from a PDF doc, why not publish in HTML to begin with?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

RT @FreeSpit

Asked a motorist why he honked while passing me, and he said I was "holding him up." We had this convo after I caught him at a red light.

Anyone wanna take The Economist's graph of % change Q4 2007 to Q2 2011 in real GDP growth per person and normalize it by the size of each country's bailout?

[ related topics: Economics ]

The return of distance pricing for wholesale ISPs?

Via The Transportationist

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

I know I've been exposed to too much academia when I'm starting to think positively of Pol Pot and Stalin #bringonthere-educationcamps

Jen McKen: i won’t photograph ugly people

Let me explain. Last night I posted on facebook the following: “If I’m wrong, please speak up. I came across a page on facebook that was created (by someone under a ficticious name) thats purpose is to bully, ridicule and say mean and hurtful things about their class mates. While visiting the page, I found several teenage girls that have scheduled sessions with me for their senior pictures. I am emailing them tomorrow to cancel their shoots. I do not want them to represent my business and I am beside myself at how MEAN and CRUEL they were on that page.” As I was drafting the email that I was going to send out to the clients my phone was blowing up with comments.

Via Jezebel: Photographer Refuses Cyberbully Clients

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Weblogs ]

MVC (or whatever you call it in your techno-theocracy) = How to do simple in a complex manner.

I think the paradigm/architecture works better in real-time local applications with event driven handlers better than it does for web-stuff, unless you are using lots of ajax-ish stuff. For basic web stuff it's like shooting cockroaches with a bucket full of Jello(tm).

[ related topics: Technology and Culture ]

Working on my model boat while my ribs heal: http://www.flutterby.net/2011-..._Sultana_Schooner_Model_Progress

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Boats Machinery ]

A few videos of people doing things very very well:

• Kilian Martin: A Skate Illustration - skateboarding, including one-footed manuals.
• Ken Block's Gymkhana Four: The Hollywood Megamercial - probably the last overpowered automobile drifting video you'll need to watch, the irony is thick in this one as they pan from the exhaust pipe the "powered by Ford Eco Boost"...
• Danny Macaskill: Industrial Revolutions - bicycle trials, shot beautifully.
• Boyanka Angelova does things with floor gymnastics and a ball

[ related topics: Movies Automobiles Skating Pedal Power Video Bicycling ]

Fun: a big table of how to do common operations in PHP, Perl, Python and Ruby

[ related topics: Perl Open Source Monty Python Python Furniture hubris ]

Charlene's seeking out recipes for "bath bombs". If I hear "Allahu Akbar" come from the direction of the lavatory, I am not going in there.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Another from Shadow: Manhattan bicyclist Juan (JC) Rodriguez has racked up $1500 in fines by running 3 red lights.

Department of Motor Vehicles spokesman Nick Cantiello says cyclists are subject to the following fines for red-light violations: $190 for the first offense, $375 for the second, $940 for the third.

They don't, however, face $80 in surcharges that motorists get and there are no license points to worry about.

So my sympathyometer is reading zero.

[ related topics: Sports Gambling ]

Well worth reading all three parts:

• Part 1: Why Amazon can't make a Kindle the USA.
• Part 2: Does it really matter that Amazon can't maufacture a Kindle in the USA?
• Part 3: Amazon & Kindle, it's not just manufacturing.

[ related topics: Books Gambling ]

Grist: Helmet laws get in the way of bike-sharing programs.

Externalities are hard.

[ related topics: Bicycling Government ]

From Boing-Boing: the gift for the man who likes his ideas hot-- an edition of Farenheit 451 bound in asbestos!

[ related topics: Burning Man Technology and Culture Art & Culture ]

So, would you name your WIFI network "FBI_Surveillance_Van"? Sounds like a good joke, like the guy in my building whose network is "Get_your_own". However, what if the guy who found the network was planning to pull a Columbine at his high school?

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama broadband Law Enforcement ]

An example of the low rate of turnover in transportation: Alan Swift was given a new 1928 Phantom I, S273 FP Rolls Royce when he graduated from college, he drove it until he died in 2005.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Current Events Art & Culture Education ]

Just tossing this out there for an "I told you so" in 20 years: As we get congestion and road use pricing, I want a system that's smart enough to suggest that there's a show I might enjoy in my destination city if I go the night before and stay over, when going early might be cheaper...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

The first Google result for "chili recipe" claims:

This is the best chili recipe you'll ever make. It was the blue ribbon winner at a chili cook-off, garnering a prize worth $20,000 according the the recipe book it came from.

It, of course, specifies Hunts™ tomato sauce and Louisiana™ hot sauce. Except that whoever retyped this didn't bother capitalizing or adding the trademark symbols

Is this what the net has become? Pirating manufacturer's recipes from hard-copy into link-baiting pseudo-blogs in an effort to sell more ads to other link-farming spammers?

Sigh.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Books Food Copyright/Trademark ]

Disappearing words: wittol, drysalter, and alienism. Via Time: Researchers detect disappearing words that are falling out of usage.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Whoah, a 5.8 earthquake in Virginia: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/ear...ecenteqsus/Quakes/at00lqe6x3.php

[ related topics: Earthquake ]

I was gonna just snicker and close the tab on this announcement that bull semen closed an I65 South on-ramp near Nashville when I noticed that

The canisters fell off a Greyhound bus just after 5 a.m. as the bus traveled around the curve of the ramp just south of downtown Nashville.

And that made it complete.

[ related topics: Public Transportation ]

Further progress on my model of the Schooner Sultana: http://www.flutterby.net/2011-..._Sultana_Schooner_Model_Progress

I've been getting a whole bunch of spam recently that assures my privacy and anonymity. The spam that triggered me doing this says "We ensure your privacy".

It's good to know that while Google+ and Facebook are busy ensuring that I have none of that, at least the spammers are looking out for me...

[ related topics: Privacy Spam Monty Python ]

Richard Green's Real Estate and Urban Economics Blog: Cost and Benefit:

I listened to a colleague of mine on Friday discuss how nothing adds to our carbon footprint like flying-and I have little doubt that he is right. Mark Twain one wrote, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” I am pretty sure that is right too.

Via.

[ related topics: Weblogs Aviation Heinlein Economics Real Estate ]

I have been thinking recently about the idea that we may actually apply a negative factor when including capital costs in transportation calculations. "I have the resource, I may as well use it". "The portion of the trip that's fixed cost actually goes down the more I use this resource".

Knowledge Problem: Raising MPG standards, part 2: Morris well explains the relative advantages of raising the gasoline tax points out that when we increase CAFE vehicle mileage standards, we're actually pushing more of the cost over on to capital portions, and probably encouraging people to drive more.

[ related topics: Politics Travel ]

on Twitter, @JonHuntsman comes out as accepting science:

To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.

differentiating himself from the GOP front runners: White-Hot GOP Race Down To Two Mentally Ill People, Person Who Lost Nomination Last Time.

This is being well received, for instance MeFi user weapons-grade pandemonium praised the statement:

He should be commended for using the scientific method of licking his finger and holding it up to see which way the wind is blowing.

[ related topics: Guns Race Global Warming ]

Larry has a good story of things working out.

Love it when life works that way.

[ related topics: Weblogs Work, productivity and environment ]

Worth a read: Jeff Bezos on Amazon and innovation. Via Lyn.

[ related topics: Books ]

Sexual satisfaction tied to overall 'successful aging' as reported by women age 60 to 89.

A study by researchers at the Stein Institute for Research on Aging at the University of California, San Diego finds that successful aging and positive quality of life indicators correlate with sexual satisfaction in older women. The report, published online in the August edition of the Journal of the American Geriatric Society, also shows that self-rated successful aging, quality of life and sexual satisfaction appear to be stable even in the face of declines in physical health of women between the ages of 60 and 89.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Health Television California Culture Education ]

• Steve Jobs resigns as CEO of Apple (RT @Spiegelmania: "Steve Jobs Announces Retirement, All My Friends Pre-Order Retirement")
• Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda resigns from Slashdot

[ related topics: Language Apple Computer Humor Books Macintosh ]

This potatoes "au gratin" recipe. Quoted the "au gratin" 'cause there's no cheese, just crush some garlic, wipe the baking pan with it, thin slice potatoes (from the garden), mix some salt, pepper, nutmeg with cream, layer potatoes and cream, pour the rest in over the top, bake for an hour and a half.

That and green beans with pesto from the garden lay a good base for a summer meal.

[ related topics: Quotes Food Gardening ]

From the Standing in Front of a Firehose Department: Buckminster Fuller explains the Theory of Relativity, in a telegram. It's interesting to see that the No All-Caps rule was needed in 1936.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Bizarre ]

Oh. Dear. Lord. Dovetail tape: http://www.richardshed.com/product/dovetail

QOTD: 'ReferenceError: Insufficient resource "caffeine" in namespace "universe";' -- Cameron Kilgore on the Chugalug mailing list.

[ related topics: Cameron Barrett Quotes ]

Microsoft .NET: The only high level programming network that insists you carry the cognitive load of network byte traffic to do simple stuff

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft broadband Software Engineering moron ]

Seeing the first social media check-ins from Black Rock City. Gonna be a ghost town in the Bay Area for the next few...

[ related topics: Journalism and Media California Culture ]

For Eric: Why Yoga Can Be So Irritating (Although You Should Go Anyway!):

In addition to being somewhat crazy—a shrink once diagnosed me with borderline personality disorder, which I thought was a bit of a stretch until I realized that, like everyone else, he just wanted to have sex with me—I am a yoga teacher. I don’t know what your idea of a yoga teacher is, but should you, recoiling in horror as you read along here, find yourself asking, "But how does someone like this become a yoga teacher?"—the short answer is that I gave a man with a beard and his hot wife $3,200 dollars. ...

Hat tip to Tom.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Erotic Sexual Culture Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Marriage ]

"The only business model left is to sue people."

It's a slightly edited quote from a website, but as I talk to small technology start-ups, they are being told to reserve 20% or more for "licensing fees" from as yet un-known IP holders that will be suing them. Of course, it's their lawyers that are telling them this.

If you're interested in legal issues at all and you're not on the mailing list for regular decision summaries from http://law.justia.com/subscriptions , get yer browser over there.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Law ]

My friend from the Pixar Interactive Group days is running Bitnana Software, and has a few notes about Steve Jobs. On Facebook I responded:

I remember the aplomb with which he answered your "what's with the turtlenecks?" question in one of the PIG meetings. There was one of those movies about the personal computing boom that was kind of harsh to Steve, and Leo commented that it showed why you wouldn't want to work for him, but not why you would. My interactions with Steve were generally in the "why we would" side of things.

And a few years ago I was down in Cupertino at Apple, talking with their developer relations guys about some issue involving paging that was causing some code to run slower than it should have, and I saw Steve in the parking lot. We nodded to each other, smiled, and carried on. I've no idea if he remembered me, or if I was vaguely familiar, or if he didn't recognize me at all, but I got the feeling that in his day that little acknowledgement was a detail that mattered.

I think that's a trait of a good leader. Even if every time I break down and buy a modern Apple product I'm horribly disappointed.

[ related topics: Pixar Apple Computer Interactive Drama Humor Weblogs Animation Movies Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment Graphics Sports Woodworking ]

Why Shutting Down Cell Service Is Not Just Against The Law, It's a Really Bad Idea. On BART's recent decision to shut down cell phone services inside stations in order to disrupt protests.

Rather than, you know, offering up better training and management so that their police force stops killing passengers.

[ related topics: Wireless Weblogs Law Enforcement Trains Public Transportation ]

My grandfather on my mother's side was involved in the Red Cross and emergency services agencies in the New York City area for most of his life. The last time I talked with him (before he died), one of the concerns he was still interested in was what would happen if a hurricane and storm surge hit New York City, burying Rockaway and portions of Brooklyn in ways that'd rival how Katrina hit New Orleans.

Hopefully, this won't be that weekend, but if I lived in the area the storm track for Hurricane Irene would make me want to nail up some plywood and get the hell off the islands for the next few days.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design New York Hurricane Katrina ]

Florida welfare drug testing reveals that those recipients use drugs at a rate 1/4 of the general population: http://flutterby.net/H635a7

[ related topics: Drugs Health ]

I wish transit users' interests were aligned with those of transit customers: just spent most of the day gathering pictures and information to make a better guide to Golden Gate Transit route 22 for Charlene's students.

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area Douglas Adams Public Transportation ]

"Somewhere, there are two kids in a garage building a company whose motto will be "Don't be Google"." -- Digwuren the Gray

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

Google deploys "high speed" fiber to a few homes near Stanford, 1/3rd speed of Chattanooga or Sebastopol. http://flutterby.net/AeHPCS

[ related topics: Chattanooga Education ]

Charlene knows how to do all of this with Libre Office, but she's teaching computing and may need to be using Microsoft products soon, so this is saved for reference: A message to new Outlook 2010 or Word 2010 users.

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft Invention and Design moron ]

Today's ride: Forestville to Cazadero, over the ridges to the coas, south along 1 to Jenner, back in along the river. 22-24mph for the first 14 miles, probably 60 miles total, many thousands of feet of climbing. First time in the saddle in a long time.

Wow, I've driven past the location at which the default Windows XP desktop image was shot, numerous times: 38.248966, -122.410269 (Google Maps link.

TNW: Ever wonder where the Windows XP default wallpaper came from? which pointed to JW's Recognitions: Bliss. De meest bekeken foto aller tijden.

Via MeFi

[ related topics: Microsoft Aviation History Maps and Mapping ]

US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit says public has right to video police in public places. This in response to Simon Glik's arrest when he used a cell phone to videotape a drug arrest on the Boston Common. Of course I expect this will get escalated, but it would be really nice to get a solid definitive decision from the Supreme Court.

PDF of the ruling, which came Via Slashdot which I got to from a tip from MarkV.

I think I mentioned before that in our visit to Massachusetts last year we were very uncomfortable with some of the police behavior we witnessed there.

[ related topics: Wireless Health Law Law Enforcement Civil Liberties Video ]

Interesting to see how this shakes out: Iran may be launching a man-in-the-middle attack against Gmail SSH/HTTPS connection. Via @hkashfi tweet, via @mikkohypponen tweet

[ related topics: Cryptography ]

UK supermarket chain Tesco, which goes by the name "Home Plus" in Korea, unveils virtual shopping in Seoul train station. YouTube PR video.

Kiosk in the train station has a display of products with QR codes, you scan those with your cell phone, product is delivered to home "right after you get home". If they can figure out how long it's going to take you get home and schedule trucks appropriately, this is pretty advanced.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Wireless Movies Machinery Trains Video ]

Of WikiLeaks, Security Clearances, and How Both Could Hamper Your Career.

My concern was a possible broader effect on my future employment. If after leaving the Army I were to become a journalist, for example, and a source provided different information to me, to which I had never had access from classified sources, but which the source claimed was classified, would the nondisclosure agreement prohibit me from publishing that information like any other journalist? The Army lawyer smiled and actually asked, "You mean like the Pentagon Papers?" He assured me that the nondisclosure agreement should be read to apply only to the classified information I would be given access to as a result of signing the agreement. "After all," he said, "if you didn't receive it from official sources, how would you even know it was authentic?" I was satisfied and signed.

What seems to me especially interesting about this is that in denying access to the Wikileaks documents to lawyers for Guantánamo detainees, those representatives of the government appear to be confirming the validity of the Wikileaks documents. So...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama moron Law Journalism and Media Graphics ]

Speaking of identity, I wish Golden Gate Transit and Google Maps could agree on street names.

[ related topics: Bay Area Maps and Mapping Public Transportation ]

Murder. It should be justified if not required when: IT Director and minions have been delivering CSV files with variable table and field names for months as only option of exporting 2+gb of data from "proprietary legacy system"... AND when you finally watch them do an export it's via hand typed queries on a MySQL 4.1 server, on Windows, via some oddball GUI.

Temporary sanity caused by "mysqldump" and nice clean data is all that saved them, and me.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Microsoft Movies Open Source Databases Furniture ]

How to delete the DigiNotar certificate from your Mozilla browser. DigiNotar is the certificate authority that allowed the recent Gmail Man-in-the-Middle attacks. It appears to have been used for attacks on email users in Iran, but you never know, and if we can't trust a certificate authority in one geography we should probably avoid them elsewhere too.

[ related topics: Open Source ]

WTF, Yahoo!? http://www.flutterby.net/2011-08-30_Yahoo_Survey_Fail

On the one hand, this is disaster porn. On the other hand, some shit went down: BuzzFeed: 25 Frightening Photos Of Hurricane Irene’s Destruction

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Sexual Culture ]

The SCO suit against Novell looks like it's finally dead.

Bonn, Germany, introduces "sex tax meters" for street-walking prostitutes.

[ related topics: Politics Erotic Sexual Culture Current Events ]

Dr. Jen Gunter: Why Porn Bums Me Out claims that:

In 2008, 14.3% of adult performers in California were positive for chlamydia and 5.1% had gonorrhea (Goldstein et al Sex Transm Dis July 2011). About 25% of adult performers with either gonorrhea or chlamydia are reinfected with one or the other (or both) within 12 months.

This is inconsistent with other data I've found on infection rates within the adult performer community, and I'm going to have to dig further.

The paper is High Chlamydia and gonorrhea incidence and reinfection among performers in the adult film industry. Goldstein BY, Steinberg JK, Aynalem G, Kerndt PR. From the Sexually Transmitted Disease Program, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, Los Angeles, CA..

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture California Culture Community ]

Rumor has it, my neighbor is going to try to shoot some photos down everyone's dress at Burning Man (via Chris in the CrisisMappers list:

As an exercise in monitoring rapid growing 'displaced persons', rumor has it DigitalGlobe will tentatively (NO guarantees!! but hopefully!!) be collecting imagery of the "Burning Man" event within a minute or two of:

• 8/31 19:21UTC
• 9/1 18:57UTC
• 9/1 19:27UTC
• 9/2 18:21UTC
• 9/4 19:18UTC
• 9/5 19:03UTC
• 9/5 18:33UTC

Not sure precisely which sensors yet either.

[ related topics: Burning Man Photography ]

Remember the machete slingshot? He's back, destroying a car with a slingshot: http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=_AySuafZ8to

(Thanks to Mr. Hasty)

[ related topics: Movies Automobiles Archival ]

I want the Neils Bohr one: Monsters of Grok - fake band shirts for history's greatest thinkers.

Via MeFi projects, also on the MeFi front page.

[ related topics: Heinlein Clothing ]

W3: Personal names around the world. Well worth reading if you ever expect to put up a form asking for a person's name.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Substitute teacher fired because of his porn star past. (Via Shawn). I realize this is Florida and all, so we have to kind of expect that they're generally backwards and wrong, but you'd think they'd at least aspire to joining the civilized world.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Erotic Sexual Culture History Space & Astronomy Aviation - Helicopters ]

So by now you've probably seen the demo video for the Wacom Inkling, a little pen/case combo, the case clips to the top of your paper pad, the pen is a pen, the combo records your writing and drawing as vector data with pressure information.

The Wacom Inkling page doesn't go into details about how they're getting from that to the various other formats, but at $200 if I it links to Linux and SVG in any meaningful way, I'm super interested.

It's kind of like the Livescribe, Charlene has one and loves it, and Eric is enamoured of his, but this one seems more focused on capturing the vector data, which better matches things like me drawing building and woodworking plans.

See also the APen, which suffers from some bad information design on their web site.

[ related topics: Free Software Interactive Drama Movies Open Source Writing Law Graphics Mathematics Video Woodworking ]

Goodbye Google!. A blog about excising Google from your life.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

QOTD: "Graphic designers only do it for the money, but real artists do it for the pure, uncompromising love of socially acceptable access to naked people." -- Ankylosaur

[ related topics: Quotes Nudity Art & Culture Currency ]

Not really news: Split-Minded about Smoking points out that many smokers appear to be self-medicating. About 20% of the population in the U.S. smokes, but, 80+% of schizophrenics smoke.

“They should use other forms of medication,” I hear you say. Great idea, except for the fact that anti-psychotic drugs are very expensive, do not work very well for most people, and have extreme side effects. Tardive dyskinesia is the most common side effect. This makes it very hard for the body to move in normal ways at normal speeds. Also, there are common metabolic side effects that are quite similar to an individual having diabetes. (Just what someone with a severe mental illness needs!) Thus, the cheapness, effectiveness, and availability of cigarettes offer most schizophrenics some succor. Smoking leads to schizophrenics having a 30-60% increased risk of respiratory disorders and heart disease, but is this a risk that is worth taking?

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

Catholics object to Irish law requiring them to stop covering up the rape of children.

Link text via theweaselking, Via JWZ.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Weblogs Current Events Monty Python ]

This article about bike lanes has a great animation about the actual width of a bike lane. Further evidence of why bike lanes are a bad idea (though I like wide shoulders!). via JWZ.

[ related topics: Weblogs Animation Invention and Design Bay Area Bicycling ]

Upon 2020: It’s Time To Abolish SSL Certificate Authorities.