Flutterby™! From 2012-07-01 to 2012-07-31

It's 105+ at the house and 110+ in downtown Chattanooga. Nancy says the air conditioning was struggling to keep up. Being a )^('r, I have a few odd things laying around, like a 40'x10' piece of industrial shade cloth. Now it is stretched across the front/southern windows of the house to provide some shade and dampen the solar load through the windows.

[ related topics: Burning Man Photography Microsoft Chattanooga Archival Real Estate Furniture Photovoltaics ]

Shadow forwarded along See Bikes Hacked to Make Music in Ingenious Short Film ‘Bicycle Sounds’. Also a a direct link to 'Bicycle Sounds' on Vimeo.

Not quite as cool as I'd hoped, but not bad...

[ related topics: Music Pedal Power Bicycling ]

"A massive search party is organized for a MISSING GIRL. Why they didn't find her (and a lesson on STRANGER DANGER)"

Folks — Here’s a story that manages to encapsulate exactly why “stranger danger” is such a stupid — no, HARMFUL — concept to preach.

[ related topics: hubris ]

Care2: Spanking Linked to Mental Health Problems in Adulthood is a summary of Pediatrics: Physical Punishment and Mental Disorters: Results From a Nationally Representative US Sample and American Academy of Pediatrics: Spanking Kids Can Make Them More Aggressive Later:

[ related topics: Children and growing up Health ]

According to Gawker, in 2007 the New Yorker wrote an interesting profile of Adam Ghadan, the California head-banger who converted to Islam and became a leading member of Al-Qaeda. But then things got weird when Adam wrote the New Yorker a letter in reply!

[ related topics: Journalism and Media California Culture Islam ]

xoJane: Sarah Woolley: Why I wince through Hollywood sex scenes and not porn:

Nor am I thrilled to learn that Naomi Watts “kept on weeping and falling to pieces” during the Mulholland Drive masturbation scene. Or that Marie Schneider was “crying real tears” and “felt a little raped” after Marlon Brando had a bright idea about a packet of butter in Last Tango In Paris - a scene that wasn’t negotiated with Schneider before filming.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Caffeine linked to lower skin cancer risk. Is there anything coffee can't do?

[ related topics: Health ]

Peru's 'One Laptop Per Child' effort marred by teachers' ignorance, spotty Internet:

"The magical thinking that mere technology is enough to spur change, to improve learning, is what this study categorically disproves," co-author Eugenio Severin of Chile told The Associated Press.

This may be the Inter-American Development Bank report mentioned in that article:

The results indicate that the program increased the ratio of computers per student from 0.12 to 1.18 in treatment schools. This expansion in access translated into substantial increases in use both at school and at home. No evidence is found of effects on enrollment and test scores in Math and Language. ...

The Economist quotes:

Part of the problem is that students learn faster than many of their teachers, according to Lily Miranda, who runs a computer lab at a state school in San Borja, a middle-class area of Lima. Sandro Marcone, who is in charge of educational technologies at the ministry, agrees. “If teachers are telling kids to turn on computers and copy what is being written on the blackboard, then we have invested in expensive notebooks,” he said. It certainly looks like that.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Quotes Interactive Drama Software Engineering Mathematics Net Culture Education Economics ]

NY Times: Alex White, professional snitch.

Now in the living room, the TV reporter was saying how a 92-year-old woman had died in the incident, and people were suggesting that the police had shot her. Two and two came together in White’s mind. They did it, he suddenly knew. They messed up. They killed that old lady. Now his heart pounded as the implications became clear. And they want me to cover for them.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Law Enforcement Television Race ]

We hold these truths to be self-evident... http://www.archives.gov/exhibi...ters/declaration_transcript.html

[ related topics: Archival ]

So crasch had this picture of a window in a cob home in England that I want to keep around for reference 'cause I really like those shapes.

And then there are the days when LivingSocial offers you a reduced price subscription to "O: The Oprah Magazine" #makethepainstop

So it's "store" in the US and "shop" in the UK, and yet we don't go to the mall storing...

Chemistry day! Charlene is making white glue, with organic milk from west Marin and Sonoma.

[ related topics: Bay Area Race ]

Not enough smart logical thinking people in the world.

Last night we went owl watching http://www.flutterby.net/2012-07-05_Owls

If Franklin had been successful in making turkeys the national bird, would we be able to buy 70lb flightless bald eagles in the supermarket?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Birds Dan & Charlene's July 2003 San Juan Trip ]

Whoopsie: Last night's 18 minute San Diego fireworks show went off prematurely, in 15 seconds.

Video at the LA Times. Different video at ABC News.

[ related topics: Current Events Pyrotechnics Video ]

When you borrow a screwdriver from a sysadmin's desk and notice the blade has chunks burned out of it...

[ related topics: Net Culture ]

Fascinating: EPB_Chattanooga tweeted:

About 26,000 outages right now. If you can't get through via phone, tweet is your address to report it. Thanks.

EPB is the Electric Power Board, and along with power they're also an ISP with fiber to the home. What's fascinating is that this is a solid indication of how we've gone from voice primacy to data primacy.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Chattanooga ]

I love it, a university admits flat out that it's not about the demonstrated knowledge... University sues student who 'studied too fast'

[ related topics: Education ]

you can't crumple up a web site and stuff it in the bottom of your charcoal lighter. #paperlessoffice #deathofnewspapers

New Statesman - This is what online harassment looks like.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Net Culture ]

Requesting 'target="_blank"' rather than teaching users about modifier keys is a symptom of the decline of civilization. #sigh

CJ had a Facebook entry that linked to New York Times: Preparing Kids For The Unknown, which is commentary and expansion on Brain, Child: Armageddon Mama. I had to check the dates twice, because they could as easily have been inspired by the current heat wave and derecho and whatever else as by the February 2010(?) event that they appear to have referenced.

Only problem: What if that isn’;t at all what the near future will look like? 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'm sympathetic. It's easy to make a plausible case that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Where once I dived in to the virtual world, now I'm spending as much or more time improving my skills as relates to the physical one. More than one friend has, independently, stated that come the end of the world they're going to use whatever means they have to show up on my doorstep, because I clearly have the skills necessary to thrive in a post-apocalyptic world.

On the other hand... much of the reason I have these skills is that my parents thought similarly. We lived far from the city, with ducks and goats and sheep and a huge garden, and I learned to sweat copper and hotwire tractors and tape drywall about the same time I was learning to solder...

Which is the problem with any bubble: The pessimists only win when their timing is dead on. We live in a time of unprecedented economic and technological expansion. It's been going on for two or two and a half centuries.

It might continue for forever, there's little debate that humans are dramatically impacting the environment, there's more debate over what that impact will be longer-term and it's possible that we'll suddenly come up with new energy sources that mean we can continue pushing out the Malthusian limits that, up until the Industrial Revolution, played out for millenia. It's also possible that over the next decade weather patterns will shift such that ¾; of the humans on earth starve or die in natural disasters.

The problem is timing: Because even if you give that latter scenario the most credence, it could as easily happen after my lifespan. In fact, with either doom and gloom or a Polyanna-ish belief in eternal prosperity, most scenarios have my lifestyle pretty much unchanged for the rest of my expected span. Human lives are inconsequential in geologic epochs, timing that market's gonna be pretty damned hard.

So should you raise your kids to be rough and ready survivalists? I think my parents did a pretty good job with me, and it's likely that those skills are ancillary to ones that have helped me thrive in the world I ended up living in. It turns out that margins for safety aren't conducive to hard growth, and if you do so you're betting on something that might just hit your grandchildren. Or it may happen tomorrow.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Nature and environment Invention and Design Theater & Plays Writing Law Heinlein Education New York Economics Gardening ]

OH: "As a designer, I'm strongly against putting any information on the web site."

Wrongfully convicted man freed with DNA evidence released from Colorado prison without even the $100 debit card usually given to parolees:

While he was in prison, he didn't receive any job-skills training because he had been sentenced to life without parole. He earned $12.80 a month sewing prison garments and doing laundry.

"I couldn't take computer classes or anything else to better myself, Dewey said. "Life without parole meant my 'out date' was 1,000 years in the future. They weren't going to teach me skills I could use on the outside."

There doesn't appear to be prosecutorial misconduct, so it doesn't look promising for him to get anything in civil suits...

[ related topics: Heinlein ]

Officers in Australia's Northern Territories mistaken for strippers:

Bride-to-be Wendy Haddon says the visit from the police added to the colour of the evening.

"Well, we thought they were going to be the strippers, actually," she said.

"But, no, they weren't. Bugger.

More, more.

[ related topics: Current Events Law Enforcement ]

Busy weekend, but I managed to eek some time for rigging the bobstay on my Schooner Sultana model

[ related topics: Photography ]

Anti-news if you've been paying attention: Rolling Stone - Rick Perlstein - How FBI Entrapment Is Inventing 'Terrorists' - and Letting Bad Guys Off the Hook.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Current Events Law Enforcement ]

SCOTUSblog: Tom Goldstein: We’re getting wildly differing assessments, on how CNN got the Affordable Care Act reporting wrong. Fascinating inside look at news being made.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Just 'cause they deserve a little linky love even if they're not totally off the ground yet: Okatag Clothier is a new custom clothing shop starting up in Petaluma.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design Clothing ]

When we talk about climate change, we talk about rising sea levels, or changing weather patterns causing drought, or more air conditioning, but here's one I hadn't thought too much about: How about the fact that our infrastructure is based on a number of products that have been engineered to work in a fairly narrow temperature band. Like asphalt.

A picture from the record heat: Airplane wheels sinking into asphalt.

[ related topics: Aviation Work, productivity and environment Global Warming ]

Dear Reporters Without Borders: Why you run awesome ad campaign but not put version on your site to draw viewers there?

Violet Impudence's Tumblr Feed has these great pictures from the Reporters Without Borders "Censorship Tells The Wrong Story" ad campaign.

Same photoset at Creative Advertisements for NGOs and a Forbes.com article

[ related topics: Books Photography Privacy Free Speech Civil Liberties Government ]

QOTD:

"We want to be instantly recognized as a force to be reckoned with. We want them to see us coming a mile away in our new uniforms."

A U.S. Marine Corps spokesman describing the MARPAT camouflage pattern, as reported in the Wikipedia entry on MARPAT cited as "Blechman, Hardy; Newman, Alex (2004). DPM: Disruptive Pattern Material. Department of Publications, Maharishi. ISBN 0-9543404-0-X."

From this Metafilter entry on the $5 billion failure that is the U.S. Army's new "Universal Camouflage Pattern" that was based on MARPAT.

[ related topics: Quotes Invention and Design ]

Pitch for a wine with hints of "Cassis". Uh. French commune, sea snails, black currant, misspelling of Cassia, or...? #pretentiousmuch?

[ related topics: Wines and Spirits ]

Monday Note: Transfer of Value. On how organizations like the Huffington Post are trolling and rewriting other news outlets' content as link bait in order to drive traffic.

Via /..

I'm taking this as further confirmation of my theory that advertisers don't want intelligent consumers, and we're the product.

[ related topics: Current Events Consumerism and advertising ]

Can anybody tell me some inside secret to Captcha? I've never managed to submit an acceptable response to one of their challenges. Just spent ten minutes and many profanities trying to get access to support at Western Digital.

Via crasch: Don't waste your time in crappy startup jobs

Clam eating salt on the table (YouTube). Via MeFi.

[Edit: Link corrected]

[ related topics: Movies Furniture ]

I always cringe when linking to pop-psych articles that reinforce my prejudices, so take this with that initial level of cringe:

Time: What Child Prodigies and Autistic People Have In Common (Alt news.yahoo.com link) riffs on this link to Ruthsatz and Urbach: Child prodigy: A novel cognitive profile places elevated general intelligence(PDF).

The intense world theory propounds that all autism carries the potential for exceptional talent and social deficits. The social problems, the theory suggests, may ensue from the autistic person’s dysfunctional attempts — social withdrawal and repetitive behaviors, for instance — to deal with his heightened senses and memory.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

TheRumpus.net: Revising the Revisionists. On the 1898 Wilmington, NC massacre and coup, and the rewriting history and... sorry... whitewashing that's occurred since.

22 Reasons Why Design Was More Awesome In The '80s.

(Via MeFi)

[ related topics: Graphic Design ]

Market Urbanism: What I learned today about SNCF and California HSR

So, what does all this mean? It means that the CHSRA very well might have been offered private funding for the plan, but turned it down because it didn’t fulfill desired political objectives of going through towns in the Central Valley onto the main trunk line (again: SNCF’s I-5 proposal would have connected Bakersfield, Fresno, etc., just through spurs rather than the main line, not on every single LA-SF trip). This would be okay if the CHSRA was public about it, but they stand accused – by the LAT and by David Schonbrunn – of covering it up. (Obviously it would also have been in Parsons Brinckerhoff’s interest to ditch the SNCF plan, and of course there are many people who have been employed both at PB and CHSRA.)

(HSR: High Speed Rail. SNCF is the French high speed rail operator)

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Bay Area moron California Culture Travel Trains Economics ]

Auto-play music or video on a web site is the new <blink> tag.

[ related topics: Music Invention and Design Video ]

Giggle: Children warned name of first pet should contain 8 characters and a digit:

Popular pet names Rover, Cheryl and Kate could be a thing of the past. Banks are now advising parents to think carefully before naming their child’s first pet. For security reasons, the chosen name should have at least eight characters, a capital letter and a digit. It should not be the same as the name of any previous pet, and must never be written down, especially on a collar as that is the first place anyone would look. Ideally, children should consider changing the name of their pet every 12 weeks.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Humor History ]

I don't mind the Twitter ads, but I do wish they had a way for me to say "not relevant to me" to specific ones (ie: San Diego job fairs).

[ related topics: Heinlein ]

The great thing about all of those RPC services is that we now have a gazillion different retry-on-failure strategies and implementations.

Wired Business: Why You’re Not Friends With Your Neighbors. Interesting little fluff piece at Nextdoor and neighbor interactions. Via MeFi.

How Half-Life 2 Episode 3 will end (YouTube).

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Embedded Devices ]

Whatever you're opinion of the Affordable Care Act, it's pretty obvious that the politics here have gone way the hell off the rails: Republicans are completely dividing along partisan lines and ignoring actual policy positions.

"...Only in America could a Democratic president pass Mitt Romney’s health plan and fund it partly through John McCain’s best idea from the last campaign (taxing some employer-provided plans) and be branded a “socialist.” "

[ related topics: Politics Health Work, productivity and environment ]

The U.S. Census Bureau’s American FactFinder, which everyone in the universe hates, cost taxpayers $33.3 million. So that’s great.

When people talk about wastes of U.S. taxpayer money and then mention social assistance programs in the next breath, I dismiss them. When they mention organizations like IBM, then I take them seriously.

[ related topics: Currency ]

Come to think of it, the last time I swapped circuit boards on a hard drive to recover data was a Seagate as well. An ST-251. In 1989.

Is Facebook damaging your reputation with sneaky political posts?.

I recently discovered an app that I didn't think I'd allowed any permissions at all posting on friends' timelines (A birthday card thing that I'd clicked through on because someone had sent the card to me, but thought I'd set the "posts only visible to me" flag). Seems like it might be time to reserve a specific browser for Facebook.

Hat tip to Steve and Lyn.

[ related topics: Politics moron ]

Australian iron ore railroad setting up for driverless ("engineer-less"?) operations.

Forming a key part of Rio Tinto's AutoHaul project, the larger contract worth A$317·5m covers the development and delivery of an automated train management system for the 1 500 km network. Ansaldo STS says the first large-scale deployment of driverless heavy haul trains in the world will provide a significant enhancement in ‘flexibility and capacity’.

[ related topics: broadband Current Events Machinery Trains ]

Spent two hours this morning in meetings to establish a to do list in priority order. Two more hours into actual productive work, the customer Skypes me to change the priorities, with new deadlines. Time to post to Flutterby, surf the web.. and cool down before I get productive again.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Work, productivity and environment California Culture ]

Ugh. Java wouldn't bother me so much if the portability were really more than creating non-deterministic seg faults.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Software Engineering ]

In the heat of the 2008 election, I made a statement that if McCain chose Condi Rice as his running mate, he would stand a much better chance of winning. Of course, McCain made a famously horrific choice for VP that made the election Obama's to lose.

It seems Condi's name is coming up as a serious contender for second-man on the GOP ticket. What's interesting is how excited the media is about the possibility and how disinterested she is in the position.

Of course the far right don't like her because she's as moderate as Romney was before the primaries!

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Sociology Journalism and Media Sports ]

If you understand who Bruce Scneier is and a little bit about crypto: http://www.schneierfacts.com is absolutely hilarious.

For example: "Bruce Schneier once decrypted a box of AlphaBits."

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Cryptography ]

From Anno Domini 1652: The First Coffee Ad. I had no idea that Turks did not suffer from the Stone.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Coffee ]

"To be a crafter is tilting toward the subversive, for the crafter is ipso facto a nonconformist right down to the gene for valuing labor." -- Art Espenet Carpenter

[ related topics: Bioinformatics Art & Culture ]

Getting from here to there: Some Thoughts on City v. Suburban Growth. Challenging The Wall Street Journal report that cities are growing faster than the suburbs.

[ related topics: Economics ]

I probably wouldn't note the passing of '7 Habits' author Steven Covey except that:

Covey passed away at Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center at 2:15 a.m. due to "residual effect" of a bicycling accident in April, according to a family statement. Covey, who has nine children and 52 grandchildren, was surrounded by his wife, Sandra, and each of his children at the time of his death.

79 and dead of a bicycling accident.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sociology Sports Pedal Power Bicycling Marriage ]

Okay, I realize *now* that it stands for "Fair Access Policy", but seeing an exchange about who's going to warn the users about "FAP abuse".

If you're a person who knows about "50 Shades of Grey", I direct you to the laugh-out-loud https://twitter.com/50ShedsofGrey

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

QOTD on the Olympics, Guardian.co.uk commenter AndronicusComnenus:

When it comes to the games i think we've been labouring under a misapprehension: We thought we were hosts like the queen is at a posh garden party, when actually we're hosts in the way that John Hurt is in Alien.

[ related topics: Quotes Games Weblogs Nature and environment Sports Bicycling Gardening ]

Shadow pointed out that Tour de France officials are asking police for help in tracking down the thumbtacks that were the source of 30 punctures during the race. @Fake_Dispatch posited that:

Tour de France marred by punctured tires. "Hypodermic needles were falling out of the pockets of all the race leaders."

Meanwhile, Central Park riders have been warned about thumbtacks.

[ related topics: Current Events Law Enforcement ]

Mother Jones: "A Queer and Pleasant Danger": Kate Bornstein, Trans Scientology Survivor:

KB: I think it comes down to South Park. South Park blew the lid off of talking about Scientology. All they really did was tell the truth. Once that happened, more and more people started to talk about it. I finally got to the point where it was more important to me to reach out to my daughter than it was for me to protect myself from any divine retribution from the Church of Scientology. But I think in their estimation I'm too much of a freak to be believed anyway.

[ related topics: Religion Scientology Journalism and Media Eric's Life LID (Lightweight IDentity) ]

One of my favorite pet peeves is the metric system: The units aren't in human scales. Comparing temperature scales: https://twitter.com/sciencegod...tatus/224266204255232000/photo/1

[ related topics: Photography ]

Gawker: Just because you don't like a study doesn't mean it is wrong:

I would like to point out that nowhere in the paper do we assert that *All women watch sports to be with their husbands," Whiteside told me. "As you mention, feminist blogs have been critiquing the study, (and I would, too, based on what they think the findings say) but it is based in feminist theory and very much thinking about gender roles and the production of gendered subjectivities through everyday interactions (including watching sports) in the home. What we do say is that many of the women we talked to said they love watching sports because of the teams they favor, but *also like watching sports because it is a time to connect with their families. We expand on this point in the paper."

On the media reaction to Whiteside and Hardin, Women (Not) Watching Women: Leisure Time, Television, and Implications for Televised Coverage of Women's Sports. Via MeFi.

I'd like to see a follow-up tracking down the press release from which articles like the LA Times article are re-written.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Movies Theater & Plays Current Events Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment Television Marriage ]

Shadow passed along Are You Reading This, Amazon? Fab.com’s Secret Retail Sauce.

Interesting notes about curation becoming more important again...

[ related topics: Books Graphic Design ]

70 year old Santa Rosa resident Arthur Webb finishes 135 mi Badwater Ultra in 31:34. What have you blamed on your age recently?

Oh, look, California's energy consumers have been further funding the leeches on Wall Street: LA Times: Manipulation of California energy market gives consumers a jolt:

What's worse, it shows that we haven't learned anything from Enron's bogus energy trading, the disclosure of which helped destroy that firm in 2001 and land several of its executives in jail. To the extent it was designed to exploit loopholes in energy trading rules, experts say, the scheme allegedly perpetrated by JPMorgan Ventures Energy Corp. is cut from the same cloth as Enron's infamous "fat boy" swindle, which cost the state's ratepayers an estimated $1.4 billion in 2000.

(Via MeFi)

I've been thinking recently about why I'm no longer an Ayn Rand quoting Objectivist libertarian. One of the reasons is that I've found precious few examples of the independent capitalist innovator who doesn't vote Democrat nor embrace an engagement with an economic system, the other is that most of those successful are simply leeches on the system. Seems like this is yet another example of that.

[ related topics: Politics Objectivism Libertarian Consumerism and advertising Television California Culture Economics Real Estate ]

Remember the guy who stripped down to show the TSA he wasn't carrying weapons? UPDATED: Portland's "Naked American Hero" on Trial—Not Guilty!.

The TSA is still interested in your privates, though: Man with ‘world’s biggest penis’ stopped at SFO security:

“They wanted to know if I had something in my pockets, and when I said no, they asked if I had some sort of growth,” he said.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Sexual Culture Weblogs Nudity Guns Archival ]

Ryan Holiday in Forbes.com: How Your Fake News Gets Made (Two Quick Examples):

Why does this happen? Because there are pageviews in it. Accusations and controversies make for great headlines. A dubious source, properly laundered on other blogs first, are all it takes for an eye-catching headline. A click is a click, whether or not the story turns out to be true. The fact that companies like American Apparel get stuck dealing with the negative insinuations and implications—or in the other case, that flimsy science indicts a whole industry of people—doesn’t matter.

[ related topics: Law Current Events ]

AZ Living: Bikers Against Child Abuse make abuse victims feel safe:

"It's scary enough for an adult to go to court," he says. "We're not going to let one of our little wounded kids go alone."

In court that day, the judge asked the boy, "Are you afraid?" No, the boy said.

Pipes says the judge seemed surprised, and asked, "Why not?"

The boy glanced at Pipes and the other bikers sitting in the front row, two more standing on each side of the courtroom door, and told the judge, "Because my friends are scarier than he is."

As the MeFi thread says: "There's something wrong with that link. The words get blurry near the middle of the article, and it's hard to keep reading."

The organization's web site is Bikers Against Child Abuse.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Bay Area Theater & Plays Law Current Events ]

I have resigned my position on the Petaluma Technology Advisory Committee. Still very interested in local open data and mesh networking!

The Cost of Connectivity: A comparison of high-speed Internet prices in 22 cities worldwide.

[ related topics: Net Culture ]

Amen: The Myth of the Scofflaw Cyclist

My point isn't that two wrongs make a right or that drivers are worse than cyclists. My point is that it's hypocritical to call your neighbor rude, because his loud stereo makes it difficult for you to focus on your backyard chainsaw sculpting.

Bay Area's MTC running up trial balloons for a GPS based VMT (Vehicle Mileage Tax)

“We’re not interested in where they go. We’re only interested in the amount they travel,” said Rentschler. “But for some folks, that’s a distinction without a difference. Anytime you talk about getting information from people, whenever that conversation comes up, it’s another hurdle you have to overcome.”

He's wrong, of course: Knowing where people are traveling could be hugely useful, and transportation planners would love to know where they're traveling. But being able to add a time-based tax to vehicle travel would be hugely useful.

[ related topics: Politics California Culture Sports Maps and Mapping ]

Athletic body diversity reference for artists.

This is a photoshoot of various Olympic-level athletes by Howard Schartz and Beverly Ornstein titled “The Athlete”.

[ related topics: Art & Culture Sports ]

Bringing a new meaning to the phrase "Bible Thumper": "A woman smothered a romantic rival with a pillow and beat her - possibly with a Bible - while chanting religious passages as part of what she called an exorcism, a prosecutor said Thursday."

[ related topics: Religion Invention and Design ]

Having been to the circus, I am now the go-to guy on issues of elephant physiology. Metaphorically.

Forbes(!): Who Is The Smallest Government Spender Since Eisenhower? Would You Believe It's Barack Obama?

[ related topics: moron ]

Jessamyn passed along this picture of a sign in front of the 50 Shades of Grey display at a bookstore. Yet another problem the purveyor of dead trees has to deal with.

[ related topics: Nature and environment ]

Coworker begs off of a walk for coffee with "I've got Starbucks this morning". Distinction unintentional, but apt.

Yeah, I got sucked in to reading internet commentary on last night's shooting spree in a Longmont Aurora, CO movie theater, which led me to wonder what the per-capita firearms death rate was in rural vs urban settings.

Urban–;;Rural Shifts in Intentional Firearm Death: Different Causes, Same Results, Branas, Nance, Elliott,Richmond,and Schwab:

Results. The most urban counties had 1.03 (95% confidence interval [CI]=0.87, 1.20) times the adjusted firearm death rate of the most rural counties. The most rural counties experienced 1.54 (95% CI=1.29, 1.83) times the adjusted firearm suicide rate of the most urban. The most urban counties experienced 1.90 (95% CI=1.50, 2.40) times the adjusted firearm homicide rate of the most rural. Similar opposing trends were not found for nonfirearm suicide or homicide.

[ related topics: Movies Theater & Plays Net Culture ]

Flash of realization: If you're looking for an analogue to paper books right now, consider film circa 2000.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Books ]

Taking a stick and removing everything that isn't a spoon is very centering.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Jack Daniels shows how you write a cease and desist for trademark violations letter. The letter itself, when compared to the cover of Broken Piano For President, looks like a bit of an overreach, I don't think anyone would really confuse the book with the liquor, but I'm not up on my finer points of trademark law, and I think the approach the letter takes is clearly the right way to do such things.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Books Music Television Copyright/Trademark ]

User & password for cluborchard.osh.com apparently different from that for osh.com. Sigh. Online dentity fail.

Does flash photography really damage art? The persistence of a myth.

[ related topics: Photography Current Events Art & Culture ]

Fascinating story on the non-reporting and estimation of crowd sizes of protests in Japan by Japanese media. Yesterday's hike topics went a number of interesting places, but Leo's back from Japan for a short while and brought some insights about how Japanese news media reports are different from the English language outlets in the same city, and how carefully controlled the message is.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Current Events Journalism and Media ]

Romney advocates mandatory porn filters (YouTube video):

"I want to make sure that every new computer sold in this country after I'm president has installed on it a filter to block all pornography, and that parents can click that filter and make sure that kids don't see that kind of stuff coming in on their computer."

Examiner.com article on Romney's statements.

I will offer that he's probably smart enough to understand that what he's proposing won't work, in which case this is pandering to idiots.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Erotic Sexual Culture Movies Robotics Invention and Design Law Work, productivity and environment Embedded Devices Video ]

You've probably seen that picture of Mitt Romney posing with the Fisher family in Elko Nevada, where the kids seem to be out of order and the shirts spell "Money"? It's a fake. It was funny the first hundred and fifty times, but please stop reposting it. Thank you. http://www.snopes.com/politics/romney/money.asp

[ related topics: Children and growing up Politics Sociology Currency Clothing ]

Fascinating: Advertising Age: How Blank Display Ads Managed to Tot Up Some Impressive Numbers, And No, Most People Didn't Click on Them by Mistake.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising ]

National Same Sex Kiss Day at Chick-Fil-A is August 3^rd!

Unfortunately, the closest (hmmm... almost typo'd that to closetedest) Chick-Fil-A is in Fairfield, and going to Fairfield has no appeal.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Happiness is developing against a SOAP API that's returning "503 Service Unavailable" errors.

Anyone else see this license plate and think "395"? #nerd (I suppose it could also be 39D)

[ related topics: Photography ]

I took an interesting walk Sunday in Coutonou, down the main (paved even!) road my hotel is on and saw this pedal powered art vehicle that looks like it belongs on the playa at Burning Man. Just outside of the camera view are people sleeping on the sidewalks, street vendors and the chaos that some might call traffic. That this block was fairly orderly, and had art on it was as surreal as the art itself.

[ related topics: Burning Man Photography Art & Culture Travel Pedal Power Archival Woodworking ]

I suspect that Obama will be high enough in the polls in California that I'll have the luxury of voting third party, but I found The American Conservative: Noah Millman: I’m An Obama-con, Except For the “-con” Part an interesting look at Obama vs Romney from the economically conservative standpoint, rather than the socially conservative field on which the battle appears to be being fought.

[ related topics: California Culture ]

Dear library trying to protect me from myself: I know what I'm doing. I want to run as root. Please STFU and work.

[ related topics: Language Books Bay Area Work, productivity and environment ]

Shadow posted this to the 50 Sheds of Grey entry:

Hotel Replaces Bibles With 50 Shades of Grey.

“(But) because everybody is reading ‘Fifty Shades of Grey,’ we thought it would be a hospitable thing to do, to have this available for our guests, especially if some of them were a little bit shy about buying it because of its reputation.”

That's the Damson Dene Hotel

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Aviation Current Events Travel Archival ]

Robert Cringely asks (rhetorically): Are Indian high schoolers manning your IBM help desk?.

The answer, of course, is a semi-qualified "yes". The "aha" moment is when we realize that Indian high schoolers are, therefore, smarter and more technically savvy than U.S. IBM customers.

Gunsmith makes rifle with 3d printer.

[ related topics: Graphics ]

Education bubble? What education bubble? Yale and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation are teaming up to pay the salaries of recent Yale PhDs to teach at other colleges:

Among strategies under consideration is a cost-sharing plan whereby Yale would pay part of the salaries for recent Yale Ph.D.s to teach at small liberal arts colleges and other universities within a a two-hour driving radius of New Haven. With this pooled funding, Yale could increase the number of post-doctoral fellows it supports, and the fellows themselves would find new teaching opportunities and gain pedagogical experience.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Current Events Work, productivity and environment Currency Education ]

I either just got the best scam of my life, or helped out a fellow traveller. Not sure which. I'm inside the hotel (which requires some access) and just had a dinner when a french speaking decently dressed black man with a travel bag approaches me, Turns out he also speaks some English. He says his flight got delayed and he is trying to buy insulin because he ran out. He pulls out blood sugar meter out of his bag.. his last read > 500. I offered him some Glucophage, he said he needs insulin.. (I thought it would at least help). Says the pharmacy (3 blocks away, I keep track of such things when travelling) only takes cash... We had a couple minute discussion, he offered to leave things with me.. I gave him the 10,000 west african francs I had (about $20usd). I figured he deserves it for the most unique and best scam I have ever encountered, or he really needs it. If I find rigged blood sugar meters at the local market tomorrow, I'll know which.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Health Aviation moron Travel Community Race Economics ]

"For your safety, Firefox has disabled your outdated version of Java", which happens to be the one downloaded from the link provided. Grrr.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Handicaps & Disabilities ]

Happy Sysadmin Appreciation Day! https://www.xkcd.com/705/

[ related topics: Net Culture ]

QOTD: George R.R. Martin in a Reuters interview

“I can describe an axe entering a human skull in great explicit detail and no one will blink twice at it. I provide a similar description, just as detailed, of a penis entering a vagina, and I get letters about it and people swearing off,” he said.

“To my mind this is kind of frustrating, it’s madness. Ultimately, in the history of [the] world, penises entering vaginas have given a lot of people a lot of pleasure; axes entering skulls, well, not so much.”

[ related topics: Quotes Sexual Culture Sociology Writing California Culture ]

Back in around the turn of the millenium, I was interested in a notion that I think we universally called "interactive drama". The notion was that somehow by modelling the core aspects of story and human interactions we could create games that were more compelling. And more a lot of things.

At some point my interest in games waned fairly sharply. The particular incident was when I was trying to get the timing down just right to unlock the final hidden area on the Dreamcast version of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2, and I suddenly realized that I'd spent an hour developing an absolutely special case set of reflexes. And the mailing list I ran, that at one point had some pretty high profile people on it, petered out, and it's one of those things that I think about occasionally as I watch things like the way modern shooters adapt to provide a difficult but not impossible set of adversaries, no matter what your skill level (and how you can game them...).

Anyway, with this morning's news of the Zynga/Facebook/ stock crash, I realized that we'd all disavow it strongly, but what Zynga has done, with its understanding of just how much to tickle and reward users, is basically what the "interactive drama" community aspired to.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Games Movies Law Current Events Community Birds Economics ]

Marlite has fiberglass panels with embedded wood veneer, that I wanted to put somewhere so that we could learn more about 'em for possible use in the bathroom remodel.

[ related topics: Robotics Embedded Devices Woodworking ]

Forbes.com: Unsafe gun safes can be opened by a 3 year old.

I've been thinking a bunch recently on government intervention. On Wednesday, I saw CPSC Sues Maxfield & Oberton Over Hazardous Buckyballs® and Buckycube™ Desk Toys, which seems far overreaching.

But then we come back to the gun safe story, and that contains elements of both why things like CPSC standards are a good idea, and how government regulation, the alleged California DOJ certification, can fall completely flat.

[ related topics: Bay Area moron California Culture Guns Woodworking ]

Pedestrian Observations talks about transit funding and why the "99% talk hurts consensus":

And after thinking about this, I realized how it shows exactly how despite appearances, the “We are the 99%” slogan is the exact opposite of any sort of democratic consensus. It silences any notion that there are different interests among the 99%. The auto workers and Providence’s carless residents are both members of the 99%; they have diametrically different interests when it comes to transportation. But in the Grand Struggle, the 99% must be united, and thus the leaders shift any discussion to the common enemy, no matter the relative proportions of the amounts of money in question.

[ related topics: Television Community Currency Public Transportation ]

The Craigslist posting of the century!!

http://corvallis.craigslist.org/tls/3158918527.html

Hotel Du Port, at night, Cotonou Benin Right in the middle of a container ship yard.

Cotonou There is a strange mix of luxury and hardship. Diesel Fumes and Strange Machine Noises mixed with techno from the nightclub next door.... all night long. An oasis, in the middle of the desert. Drinking water is important. Waking up with noises of someone building something large... 6 feet from your head. People in strange colorful outfits, or not much at all.

> Black Rock City: Ditto. Same but different.

[ related topics: Photography Travel Archival Furniture ]

Just filled every available crack with caulking. Nouning verbed nouns weirds language, but...

RT @HiltonT: I'm not usually a Sacha Baron Cohen fan, but this new character he's playing, 'Mitt Romney,' is hilarious.

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

Why are building codes a good idea? Egypt's finding out: The real estate pirates behind Alexandria's collapsing tenements.

[ related topics: Current Events Real Estate ]

Yesterday we sailed up the Petaluma river from the marina at the Sheraton to downtown, had dinner at Thai Issan, and sailed back, just catching Scott and Susan putting away Makoto after their day out, the first time I've seen her in the water, before heading home.

If you're in to 34' pieces of furniture, this Wooden Boat forum thread is about the restoration of the Makoto, I hope he puts those pictures in a place where the whole thing is visible and you don't have to copy and paste through...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Boats Machinery Community ]

Fascinating: The Mundanity of Excellence: An Ethnographic Report on Stratification and Olympic Swimmers:

Stratification in the sport is discrete,not continuous. There are significant, qualitative breaks — discontinuities — between levels of the sport.

It's not how much you do it, it's what you do. via MeFi.

[ related topics: Sports ]

Limited Run (formerly Limited Pressing) announces their retirement from Facebook because they suspect ads are being bot clicked:

What's important here is that in all of our years of experience, only about 1-2% of people coming to us have JavaScript disabled, not 80% like these clicks coming from Facebook. So we did what any good developers would do. We built a page logger. Any time a page was loaded, we'd keep track of it. You know what we found? The 80% of clicks we were paying for were from bots. That's correct. Bots were loading pages and driving up our advertising costs. So we tried contacting Facebook about this. Unfortunately, they wouldn't reply.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Handicaps & Disabilities ]

Scaled ship replicas. This is relevant to some of my sailboat and wooden boat building interests...

[ related topics: Boats Machinery ]

Special for my erotica writing friends: The Fifty Shades Generator http://www.fiftyshadesgenerator.com/

[ related topics: Erotic Writing ]

The Suidobashi Heavy Industries 001 is a giant "mecha" type robot that a human can ride inside. Alas, they don't have walking down yet, but this caught my eye because...

I recently discovered that my cell phone camera has a mode where it can trigger the shutter when the subject smiles. It's kinda cool. The weapons control for this device works similarly, the (BB) guns and fire when the pilot smiles.

Via Sensible Erection

[ related topics: Wireless Photography Robotics Pyrotechnics Guns ]

Thoughts before bed — OH MY GOD. I JUST WITNESSED THE SINGLE GREATEST MOMENT IN HUMAN HISTORY.

[ related topics: Religion Furniture ]

I have no idea why I find this as absolutely hilarious as I do, but... Context in this YouTube video.

[ related topics: Photography Movies Birds Video Archival ]