Flutterby™! From 2012-08-01 to 2012-08-31

Romney campaign to make VP announcement via smartphone app. Why distribute a smart phone app just to make the VP announcement?

... Upon installation, the application asks permission to access data about where a user is located, and urges supporters to log in using social networks like Twitter. That could allow the campaign large-scale data harvesting, an invaluable tool for campaign staff looking to tailor advertising and fundraising efforts. ...

Thanks to a tweet from Tom.

[ related topics: Current Events Consumerism and advertising ]

Izhar Gafni made a bicycle out of cardboard (Vimeo video).

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Pedal Power Video Bicycling ]

NY Times: the Last Refuge of Radical America is an interesting look at the "Occupy" movement in Oakland, with some attention paid to the power struggles between the Oakland police department and mayor Jean Quan, why Occupy Oakland was a different sort of movement, and one that lasted longer than the other Occupy camps, the struggles the Oakland PD is having in dealing with the fallout and federal accountability following the "Oakland Riders" scandal and in the huge divide between the citizens and the police department there.

Two pull quotes, the first because I was drawn there by the second from the MeFi link, but wanted to point out that the article goes deeper:

“It’s a shame,” he [Arturo Sanchez, an Oakland CA deputy city administrator] says. “If they had come to us with an agenda, we’re probably one of the few cities that would have written resolutions and lobbied our state legislators and sent a message along with our mayor when she went to the White House.”

The second because what drew me to the article was this section:

But radical Oakland will live on, awaiting its next opportunity to rise up, even as the city itself evolves. For every young tech worker moving into a downtown condominium tower or entrepreneur gobbling up cheap, deserted retail space, there’s sure to be a militant graduate student drawn to a city that has just added another chapter to its long radical history.

I thought it was an interesting use of "graduate student", especially in light of Eric's observation that grad students are disproportionately represented in murders on campus.

[ related topics: Quotes Interactive Drama Bay Area History Theater & Plays Space & Astronomy Law Enforcement Race Archival Real Estate ]

Alcohol Use Patterns and Trajectories of Health-Related Quality of Life in Middle-Aged and Older Adults: A 14-Year Population-Based Study

Conclusions: Persistent moderate drinkers had higher initial levels of health-related quality of life than persistent nonusers, persistent former users, decreasing users, U-shaped users, and inverted U-shaped users. However, rates of decline over time were similar for all groups except those decreasing their consumption, who had a greater decline in their level of health-related quality of life than persistent moderate users. (J. Stud. Alcohol Drugs, 73, 581–590, 2012)

[ related topics: Drugs Health ]

Mars is playing with thermite and sculpture, video here.

[ related topics: Movies Astronomy Video ]

UTF-8 decoder in 27 lines of C.

Via Mars Saxman

[ related topics: Astronomy ]

Valve talks about the performance numbers in porting Left 4 Dead 2 to Linux. Interesting not just that the Linux version is faster than the Windows version, but that OpenGL is faster than Direct3d. Again.

[ related topics: Free Software Microsoft Open Source Theater & Plays Graphics ]

Two from Shadow this morning:

First, a really cool forkless bicycle. And YouTube video. Via a Toxel article.

And he passed along this article about a Kickstarter project to bring a bike-in movie to San Francisco, though it sure seems like this is quite similar to what Petaluma Movies In The Park and Film Night in the Park are doing without the Kickstarter panhandling.

[ related topics: Weblogs Movies Bay Area California Culture Graphic Design Pedal Power Video Bicycling ]

What if every Olympic sport was photographed like beach volleyball?.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Nature and environment Sports ]

From Io9, a rubber-band powered exoskeleton lets a toddler use her arms for the first time. And it comes off of a 3-d printer.

[ related topics: Cool Technology Handicaps & Disabilities ]

Friday Read: Residential Streets and America's Hidden Parking Policy is a look at Amenity or Necessity? Street Standards as Parking Policy (PDF):

The study calculates that these standards have produced somewhere between 740 million and 1.5 billion parking spaces along American residential streets – enough to host all of the passenger vehicles in the world – the vast majority of which are unmarked, unmetered and indeed unused. The authors estimate that the cost of construction of these spaces is in the trillions of dollars, with an annual maintenance cost in the tens of billions. These costs, the authors note, amount to approximately $1,000 annually per home.

I will note that several people on our street have regular get-togethers which means that on, say, Thursday nights a good portion of the parking on our street is occupied.

[ related topics: Heinlein Machinery Fabrication Model Building ]

On LumberJocks a "forest engineer" from Santa Cruz, Bolivia, talks about how the Lacey Act and European FLEGT work in hardwood logging.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Cruising at Spring Lake, showing Ros and Dominica the boat.

[ related topics: Photography Boats Machinery ]

More sailing

[ related topics: Photography Boats ]

Grey overcast humid bike ride to Tomales this AM, but sunny and blue now

[ related topics: Photography Bicycling ]

Houston eatery Beavers has responded to the Chick-Fil-A controversy with a "chick on chick filet":

2 Loving Chicken Breasts

married on toasty buns w/a

Honey Mustard witness +

joined in celebration w/ tolerant

fries $11

Yeah, it exploits the whole "guys watching lesbian chicks" thing, but the place is called "Beavers", and I will drive out of my way to eat greasy bar food at a place called "Peckers" or "Cocks" if anyone wants to open a rooster themed restaurant.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Sexual Culture Food Sociology Birds Marriage ]

Install unbaby.me, browse Facebook, now all baby pictures will be replaced with cats.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Our broken copyright system causes false DMCA takedown of Nasa Mars rover Opportunity videos.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Astronomy Copyright/Trademark ]

on IO9 it is pointed out that the abbreviation "OMG" is nearly 100 years old.

Hey, @511SFbay, can we get the data behind http://511.org so that we can unsuck the web site? I'm trying to use the bus, but: argh!

[ related topics: Public Transportation ]

http://byfat.xxx/if-hemingway-wrote-javascript

While the famous author bit is interesting and humorous, I like how there are slightly different ways demonstrated to do essentially the same thing. Good example of: It is a poor mind that can only think of one way to solve a problem.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Humor ]

So I tried going to work via public transit today. I'd actually gone in last Wednesday, but Charlene picked me up in the evening. This was my first attempt to make it the whole day.

"In" wasn't too bad. The Golden Gate Transit route 80 stops at the end of our street, the bus is a fairly comfortable coach, the trip to downtown Santa Rosa allegedly takes around 35 minutes but actually took closer to 45, where I got on my skates and dodged the passed out drunks on the Joe Rodota Trail to work. Took me about 30 minutes this morning, I have reason to believe I can get it closer to 20. Maybe less.

So call it an hour. Semi-usable time, the bus jostles a bit too much for the laptop, and I have to keep some situational awareness to know when to get off, but doable.

Getting home was hell.

I got out of work and skated fairly expeditiously towards downtown. A few issues on the Multi-Use Trail, people who think that "Multi-Use" includes laying their bikes down in the middle of the path and smoking weed, casual bicyclist weaving all over and making it hard to pass, but still did okay. The Sonoma County Transit 48X leaves the Santa Rosa Transit Mall at 5:22, and I would have made it, if there was any mention on any of the transit related web sites that the Santa Rosa Transit Mall was, in fact, closed for construction and the bus was loading back the way I came.

So I got on the 48 which came at 5:32. One of 4 or 5 riders on the full-sized bus. I finally arrived in Petaluma, thrashed by the ride, about the scheduled 6:27. Maybe even a little before. The bus was loud enough that I had trouble listing to my MP3 player, bounced around enough that I had trouble typing, or even reading the screen (and I've got a pretty solid stomach), I arrived in town queezy, and walked slowly home.

And I was thrashed out enough that by the time I got off I think my MP3 player got pulled off by something and I didn't notice 'til the bus was gone. I need to go through my bags, but...

The whole thing about "the bus is usable time"? Not so much. I'd be way better off if I'd driven. The cost is probably about $6 more for the route in to take my truck, and $7.50 or so for the route back.

But let's talk for a minute about the transit information systems. 511.org doesn't even show me that route 48 that I took home. It shows the bus before, and the bus after.

511.org also doesn't acknowledge that anyone can move faster than a snail's pace. Even if you click "Additional Options" and "Walking Speed" is "Fast", you get something pitifully slow. And that option is lost every time you go back to try something different.

Why would you try something different? Well, that aforementioned Route 80 makes 3 stops that I could get on, and though it's convenient to walk to the end of Mountain View Ave, if I have to take a different mode of transport with me anyway (bike, skates), I may as well catch it at the later stops, because I can travel faster than it. But that later stop is about a mile and a half further, and the longest that 511.org allows is a mile on foot.

If I put in my home address, I only get options at the end of my street. In fact, I need to investigate a little further, but it seems that even with a reasonable walking distance, it'll only show me stops at one of the transit centers in town if I put in a downtown location

Thus I need to try to try a number of options. Although, as we saw earlier, it either doesn't know or is actively hiding buses from me.

Speaking of going back to try different options, it blows away some, but not all, of the options every time you go back. And if you type in an "Almost" match, like "Santa Rosa Transit Center" rather than "Santa Rosa Transit Mall", it then offers you a list of closest matches. Except that neither of them is what you want. So you try re-typing the option in that text box (and careful, the city field has been blown away!) and occasionally you'll get an answer, but most of the time you get "Your session has expired".

Let's not even talk about using this from a smartphone.

The Sonoma County Transit web page tries so hard, and gets a bunch of things better, but there's still a lot of boneheaded web design issues that fail hard. Is there no usability testing? Do none of these people actually use the web to get transit information?

And where the hell was the note that said that the Santa Rosa Transit Mall was out of commission?

This should not be this hard. Even in terms of information presentation there are tons of low-hanging fruit, and I have to believe that if the web pages and schedules are so bad that there are tons of other things that could be improved. Why, for instance, are they running a big huge uncomfortable bus with air brakes that slam the thing around for 6 passengers from Santa Rosa? Why aren't the bus systems running hub and spoke, rather than having the buses in between towns wind through and make umpteen stops in the intervening space?

Anyway, I actually really enjoy the 20 minutes or so of exercise between work and downtown Santa Rosa that this gives me, but I think it's worth the 6 or 7 bucks each way additional that it'll cost me to drive my truck. I'll arrive home more relaxed, having been able to listen to something on the MP3 player or radio, and at a reasonable hour.

And firmly believing that if our transit system were better run it wouldn't have to be that way.

[ related topics: Drugs Interactive Drama Music Invention and Design Bay Area Space & Astronomy Work, productivity and environment Television Sports Travel Graphic Design Machinery Fabrication Skating Bicycling Public Transportation Model Building Woodworking ]

HMS Romney: Launched in 1762, enforced the Townshend Acts, conscripted colonials, fought for British interests. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Romney_%281762%29

The American Conservative: Rod Dreher: Porky Populism is a perfect example of why it's hard to take the modern conservative movement seriously. He writes this long article about the cultural divide on food and class warfare, and then at the very end drops in this false equivalency about sexual freedoms that's just... uh... bizarre.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Food Sociology ]

Dad rebuilds his son's Lightning McQueen Power Wheels (YouTube). It looks like it might actually have enough power now to get into counter-steer situations. Seems like this might be right up the alley of the next "show off your cars" day at Pixar. MarkV? Bill?

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Pixar Animation Movies Graphics ]

Yay! Passed the final inspection on the workshop!

From Forbes: the marketing consultant to American Apparel has been practicing a new hobby: internet lying. He signed up with Help a Reporter Out, which matches reporters with "knowlegable" sources. Think of it as a digital legman. So this guy got quoted dozens of times on subjects he has no information about whatsoever. Among other things, he posed as an insomniac and a vinyl record collector. Only one person ever fact-checked him, and they still ran the piece.

[ related topics: Quotes Current Events Consumerism and advertising Net Culture Marketing ]

Must read for Californians: I Despise Human Trafficking, but I Oppose the Badly Drafted Prop 35

This seems like it needs a legislative fix: having our kids make toys to donate to other kids could be very expensive: http://www.cpsc.gov/info/toysafety/index.html

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

Overdue video: Time lapse of building the hull of our sailboat: http://youtu.be/94_t8PIMk3E

[ related topics: Video ]

politics.co.uk: Comment: Prosecutors, extreme porn and 50 Shades of Grey, or how anti-pornography laws are being used to harass gay men, and how it's possible under those laws to be convicted for possession of images you haven't seen.

A good reminder that it's important to put down strong barriers to keep the anti-porn mob in check.

[ related topics: Politics Erotic Sexual Culture Government ]

Fascinating: The font you use can influence your college essay grades, and can make people more likely to agree with your statements.

[ related topics: Writing Typography Graphic Design Education ]

Cool idea: Position correcting router (YouTube video) does fine computer control of a shape while you do the coarse control by hand.

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Embedded Devices Video Woodworking ]

Two from Shadow:

• Another in the "LOL (UK) traffic engineers" category, Bicycle riders criticise four-metre Dunton Green cycle path. In further LULz, the spokesperson for the developer showed the problem with checklist planning:

"This forms part of Berkeley's strategy for easy access to and from the development – by car, bus, cycle or on foot.

"A train station is also within close proximity."

• Gay gamers kickstart their first convention. The convention is GaymerCon in San Francisco, August 3-4 2013.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Bay Area California Culture Automobiles Machinery Trains Pedal Power Bicycling Public Transportation ]

Another contender for "best parent evaar!": Backyard PVC roller coaster with 12' drop (YouTube).

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Embedded Devices ]

Matt Strong is running a kickstarter for the "Tangibot" 3d printer. It's a version of the Makerbot Replicator, made in China by a guy who knows a little bit about building consumer electronics devices, 'cause he worked on some of the issues involved in the Cricut.

(Yes, I did wait 'til he mentioned that in the video, otherwise I was going to say "[redacted]")

Whether or not you think getting the product cheaper by having it made in China is a good idea, the early part of the video is worth watching because I think he's got some good examples of reasons why people will want 3d printers of their own in a few years as the price comes down.

Also, he mentions tinkercad, 3d CAD on the web.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Graphics Sports Video ]

What I find most interesting about Wired.com: How Your Smartphone Could Stop a Car From Running You Over isn't my previous whines about what sort of idiot engineer thinks that we can equip every child's ball with a WiFi transponder, it's that I'm seeing this in the context of Strongtowns.org: The Original Highway Code, which has some fascinating quotes about how the motor vehicle code changed when we went from seeing killing people with a vehicle as murder, or at least negligent manslaughter, to seeing it as "an accident", and where the legal view of the road went from something for everyone's use, to something for automobiles as the primary user.

That the basic assumption behind this, "pedestrians should wear transponders so they don't get run over", can be expressed without outrage, shows just how far that cultural shift has gone. In some ways it's akin to the sentiment in rural areas that during hunting season, when you go outside you should wear orange clothing and make lots of noise: these people are waving around dangerous weapons, and you should take special measures that the morons don't kill you.

We're only a short step from that to short skirts, frankly.

How do we move back to a culture of driver, or if not driver then vehicular, responsibility? What can we as a culture do to grab the engineers proposing this (and the federal bureaucrats funding this stuff) by the metaphorical shirt collars and slap them downright silly until they at the very least start putting those resources into better sensor and accident avoidance technologies.

If it can't be the driver's responsibility to not run down pedestrians, maybe it can be the automobile's.

[ related topics: Quotes Interactive Drama moron Sociology Law Television California Culture Sports Automobiles Guns Clothing Economics ]

Dueling topless Victorian ladies. Just... uh... because. I mean, no, really, they had a good reason for dueling topless. Very forward thinking.

OffBeatr is Kickstarter for "adult" projects.

Saved for later perusal, Victoria Transport Policy Institute: Transportation Cost and Benefit Analysis: Techniques, Estimates and Implications [Second Edition], specifically for Chapter 2: Transportation Cost Literature Review (PDF)

Via this "Why can't Amtrak turn a profit" MeFi thread, which has this good breakdown of why a 300 mile Amtrak trip is less heavily subsidized than a similar car trip.

[ related topics: Travel Automobiles Trains Public Transportation ]

Okay, this is the coolest "I built an underwater enclosure for my GoPro video camera and trailed it behind us when we were tuna fishing and then a pod of dolphins showed up" video I've seen yet today.

(Hat tip to MarkV)

[ related topics: Photography Video ]

Would anyone be interested in a mass build of one-sheet skiffs at next year's Rivertown Revival? http://www3.sympatico.ca/herbert.mcleod/skiff.htm

I thought I linked this, but can't find it: WashingtonsBlog: Fear of Terror Makes People Stupid in which, citing this Archive.org link to a National Safety Council "odds of dying" publication points out that:

–You are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist

[ related topics: Law Enforcement hubris ]

Gougeon Brothers on Boat Construction. Reading currently.

They started with iceboats, and I realized I don't know if people still do that.

[ related topics: Boats Machinery Fabrication Model Building ]

As y'all know, I haven't been a fan of Ayn Rand since around age 19. There was a period from about age 15 to 19 where I was the guy handing out copies of The Fountainhead. And I did go to the Atlas Shrugged movie on opening night with a friend (who is still a devotee). To be clear, I don't call myself an "Objectivist" but I've read most of her books and appreciate Rand's position in the canon of Western Philosophy.

What I don't get is how Paul Ryan and Ron Paul can square their position on abortion with Rand's philosophy? It seems pretty clear to me that Objectivism would leave the abortion choice up to the woman. And, at most, expect the state to ensure safe and open access to the necessary medical procedures.

Sure, there's the whole issue of the unborn child's rights. And I could see Ayn Rand's philosophical mind struggling with the concept: what rights does an embryo have in utero? I'd have to read back through more of her books than I want to, but I strongly suspect that Rand would side with the mother because her sentience can be objectively established.

[ related topics: Politics Objectivism Books Sexual Culture Movies Bay Area Civil Liberties Philosophy ]

Sailed downtown for the Art Walk

[ related topics: Photography Art & Culture ]

Brainfuck beware: JavaScript is after you!

tl;dr I just made a tool to transform any javascript code into an equivalent sequence of ()[]{}!+ characters. You can try it here, or grab it from github or npm. Keep on reading if you want to know how it works.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs Bioinformatics ]

A gimballed wind vane for our sailboat. Brass, mahogany, purpleheart and Ipe.

[ related topics: Photography Model Building ]

By now this is old, but I'm just getting around to it: tos; dr reads the Terms of Service agreements and summarizes them, so you don't have to.

Dear AP: Full disclosure would suggest that you tell us who sent you the Social Security deficit scare press release you're republishing.

Code is calling "user_has_rights(...)". What sort of commie crap is this? Users take what we programmers give them and are grateful.

[ related topics: Civil Liberties ]

Jobs, abortion, the Global War on Terror, none is as important as the burning question of the day: Killer Robot Cars. Al Sharpton will have report soon on MSNBC.

[ related topics: Politics Robotics History moron ]

One of the reasons I am no longer a libertarian is that this is to be expected: My Sister Paid Progressive Insurance to Defend Her Killer In Court.

[ related topics: Politics Libertarian ]

You wanna know why it's hard to take the modern GOP seriously? Robot Google cars will kill you ads http://jalopnik.com/5934213/au...old-lady--a-florida-political-ad

[ related topics: Politics Robotics moron ]

ICD User Group - Support, education and advocacy for recipients of implantable cardioverter defibrillators, in particular seeking open access for data from the devices implanted in their bodies.

[ related topics: Education ]

The Anti-Planner - How the Feds Put the Brakes on High-Speed Trains. Interesting perspective, I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about passenger rail, but this points out that rail ridership fell off before the interstate highway system, and that the reason for that might have been federal standards for signalling systems that made speeds high enough to be competitive with the automobile to expensive.

[ related topics: Automobiles Machinery Trains ]

I, for one, welcome our 10 meter per second autonomous fixed wing flying drone (YouTube video) overlords.

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Aviation Embedded Devices Video ]

Feminisnt: NPR's On the Media and Sarah Abdurrahman violated Creative Commons licensing, stole from my blog without attribution:

Updated after NPR responded by snidely mocking me on their web site and refusing to so much as apologize. If they would prefer to handle this as an internet flame war, I'll give them one Google will remember until the end of time.]

Attribution for news and such like this is hard, but I've always found the smarmy tone of "On The Media" annoying, and I really think that news organizations need to start being more honest about their sourcing. There was another AP "Social Security is doooomed! Dooomed, I tell you! Dooooomed!" press release rewrite on the wires yesterday without clear indication of which policy think tank SuperPAC sourced it, and a bunch of Romney/Obama back-and-forthing recently has clearly been dueling press releases: If news organizations want to be taken seriously they need to start releasing sourcing information.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs History Current Events Journalism and Media Net Culture Pyrotechnics ]

Sean Connor reworks a load test from a constant high load to a Poisson distributed lower load, and discovers packet loss.

Since he doesn't have comments over there, I'll posit: I've seen some interesting stuff about big cache sizes causing traffic shaping in ways that degrade less well than small cache sizes, I wonder if there's some combination of hub behaviors and router caches that's causing the intermittent stuff to get de-prioritized.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Woodworking ]

Art Institute of California—Orange County animation teacher Mike Tracy alleges that he faces termination because he won't assign unnecessary and expensive textbooks:

Today, the President of the school, Greg Marick, presented me with an ultimatum; either choose a book by Tuesday, Aug 14th or the company will terminate my employment for insubordination. ...

[ related topics: Children and growing up Books Animation Art & Culture California Culture Guns ]

Cheating scandal at the national Scrabble championships:

As the joke goes, it's all fun and games until someone loses an I.

National Scrabble Association notes on Round 23:

Just as round 24 was starting, the tournament director was called over to division 3 and it was discovered that two blanks were not put into the tilebag as they should have been when the board was cleared off to start the game. The player was questioned and admitted to taking them. Dallas Johnson then ejected (a now ejected player) from the tournament. His opponents at this event will be retroactively given forfeit wins.

[ related topics: Games History Scrabble ]

Bulwer-Lytton 2012.

Yeah, you knew this already: Victoria Transport Policy Institute: Whose Roads? Evaluating Bicyclists’ and Pedestrians’ Right to Use Public Roadways

Currently, only about half of U.S. roadway expenditures are financed by motor vehicle user fees, as indicated in Table 3. The portion of roadway expenses funded by user fees is declining, as indicated in Figure 2, because roadway costs increase with inflation, but fuel taxes and registration fees, are fixed fees that do not. Vehicle user fees would need to double to fully fund roadway costs.

Via Karen Lynn Allen's takedown of a troll over on sf.streetsblog.org which includes this table

External Costs (Cents per Mile) (Litman 2009)
Cost	Automobile	Bicycle	Walk
Roadways subsidies	3.3 cents	.3 cents	0.0 cents
Parking subsidies	10 cents	.2 cents	0.0 cents
Traffic congestion	4 cents	.2 cents	0.0 cents
Crash risk imposed on others	8 cents	.2 cents	0.2 cents
Environmental costs	4 cents	0.0 cents	0.0 cents
Totals	29.3 cents	.9 cents	.2 cents

[ related topics: Politics Bay Area Automobiles Pedal Power Bicycling Economics Furniture Government ]

The Invisible Bike Helmet (Vimeo video). Still not sure if it's a product, the money shots are at the very end of the film. Thanks, Shadow.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Currency Video Bicycling ]

SkyPump - I have to admit I like the name, and think the basic design shown is awesome. What I wonder is if it really really works in the real world, or is it just media/PR fodder? Still, the idea of a self contained wind powered electric vehicle charging station is awesome.

How many of these, including manufacturing and eventual disposal of the units and the EV's will it take to offset 1 North Korean or Chinese wood powered vehicle?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Journalism and Media Graphic Design ]

Lynn Beisner - I wish my mother had aborted me

Here is why it is so effective: people freak out when you tell an opposing story. I make even my most ardent pro-choice friends and colleagues very uncomfortable when I explain why my mother should have aborted me. Somehow they confuse the well-considered and rational: "The best choice for both my mother and me would have been abortion" with the infamous expression of depression and angst: "I wish I had never been born." The two are really very different things, and we must draw that distinction clearly.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Guns ]

RT @dane:

Small appliance battery disposal instructions have you smash the device with a hammer after wrapping it in a towel. http://pic.twitter.com/W7KcSZ5b

Note that the instructions start "Please note that this process is not reversible".

(Quadruple geekery bonus points if anyone else knows where I got the title for this post...)

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Interactive Drama Photography Robotics Embedded Devices ]

RT Matt Jones ‏@moleitau:

Imagine my surprise when I clicked "Show Rulers" and a pantheon of giant hyper-dimensional lizards appeared in front of me

[ related topics: Mathematics ]

Great SF author Harry Harrison has died. He's probably best known for his novel of overpopulation, Make Room, Make Room!, which was made into the rather poor Soylent Green. He will be missed.

[ related topics: Books Bay Area Guns ]

I'm "working at home" today, while guys put a new metal roof on the house. What I do for a living is not "work".

[ related topics: Invention and Design Work, productivity and environment Real Estate ]

@BadAstronomer tweeted:

If I ever go to an alien planet, I’m bringing a Giger counter. #ThingsILearnedFomSciFIMovies

So Steve D. of Mad Art Lab built a Giger Geiger Counter.

Via MeFi

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Space & Astronomy Art & Culture ]

You know that big Apple/Samsung iPad vs whatever patent and IP lawsuit that's going on right now? Samsung just brought forward a witness who says he described an iPad like device in 1981 and showed Apple employees prototypes in the mid '90s.

It'd be nice if we could get back to innovating rather than lawyering. Sigh.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Apple Computer Interactive Drama Current Events Work, productivity and environment New York Woodworking ]

Cochrane Summaries - Benefits of antihypertensive drugs for mild hypertension are unclear, Diao D, Wright JM, Cundiff DK, Gueyffier F. Blood pressure drugs used for mild cases have not been shown to reduce heart attacks, strokes, or death rates.

Via Slate.

[ related topics: Drugs Health ]

Still miffed about exaggerations of overlap of views between Paul Ryan and Ayn Rand. We have no evidence on Ryan and amphetamine abuse.

[ related topics: Drugs Objectivism ]

Pixar Animation Studios - Open Subdiv on github. Pixar has released an open subdivision surface library so that everyone's using the same subdiv shapes.

[ related topics: Pixar Language Books Animation Graphics ]

Bitly - dablooms - an open source scalable counting bloom filter library, for

[ related topics: Language Free Software Books ]

Make Projects - A touchless 3D tracking interface is interesting to me because it's a cheap microcontroller based technique for detecting a hand in space, and I've been thinking that there have to be less expensive ways to build a theremin. This may be one of them.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Graphics Embedded Devices ]

From Shadow:

Live Leak - Guy finds stolen bike on Craigslist 160 miles away, sets up home-made sting, confronts the thief and gets his bicycle back, thief gets felony arrest. (video)

[ related topics: Theater & Plays Pedal Power Video Bicycling ]

I don't have time over the next four days or so to give this story the attention it deserves, but Soledad O'Brien has apparently been fact-checking various Republican interviewees, and they've been unhappy about it. A few random links:

• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...ool_b_1778181.html?utm_hp_ref=tw
• http://www.rawstory.com/rs/201...nd-english/#.UCxEj8Pw5MU.twitter
• http://www.upworthy.com/cnn-ac...a-politician-hilarity-ensues?g=2

[ related topics: Children and growing up Politics moron Journalism and Media ]

Facebook Hits Record Low as Insider Stock Sale Lock-Up Period Ends: Columbine was ranting on Twitter about this, but: yeah, the Facebook IPO wasn't about "let's raise capital to create a better company", it was about "let's cash out". See also Zynga and Groupon. If you thought you could make more money by selling to other suckers, more power to you, but here's the thing...

All sorts of web hosting companies have been trying to make personal web hosting profitable. Many ISPs provide blogs with your DSL line. Bluehost will sell you hosting for < $4 a month. There are a few jiggling things around bit with feed readers, but between blogs and feed readers, you can create Facebook in a distributed fashion.

Facebook says revenue for Q2 2012 was $1.184 billion Facebook claims 800 million active users. So their revenue is a buck and a half per user per quarter, or less than $.40/month.

Facebook's revenue for letting you publish a blog and selling ads to pay for it is less than a tenth of what Bluehost is charging. Stock, anyone?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs broadband Currency Fashion Economics ]

UK Insurer Aviva is using smartphone apps to measure driver behavior. The Aviva RateMyDrive app runs on Android.

What happens if I forget to record a journey?

We don't expect you to remember to turn on the app for each journey. However, you will need to complete 200 miles before you are able to get driver feedback and your RateMyDrive quote.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Wireless Current Events ]

UPS e-assisted delivery trike - may be for very limited applications and routes, But awesome anyway.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Nancy forwarded this take of a woman injured by a hit and run cyclist in an organized bike ride. Seems like the "hit and run" is the big part of this, and I don't think I know enough from the story to make an additional judgement. One of the joys and terrors of riding in large groups is drafting with inches to spare, I don't know if this was a paceline gone bad, or an asshole cyclist.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Bicycling ]

Shadow sent along Revenge is a dish best served pink (YouTube). Pranking cycle escalates to redecorating...

[ related topics: Movies Pedal Power Bicycling ]

Driver chases cyclist on to golf course:

Police are looking for an elderly, white, gray-haired man who, in an apparent fit of road rage, chased a bicyclist onto a golf course in Santa Rosa and ran him down.

[ related topics: Weblogs Law Enforcement Race ]

Hangin' yesterday at Junk Creek(?) on the northwest arm of Lake Berryessa

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment ]

The fact that this @FirstAlert CO detector comes with a "special offer" for LifeLock makes me question whether it's a legitimate device.

Anyone got suggestions for camping in Mendocino National Forest over Labor Day weekend? 2WD high clearance truck.

[ related topics: Machinery ]

Hmmm. Pussy, or bacon? Vegetarian advocacy billboard sending unclear messages

[ related topics: Photography Food - Bacon ]

Dr Jen Gunter: Did Todd Akin get his misinformation on rape and pregnancy from Physicians for Life?.

[ related topics: Todd Gemmell ]

Garry Kasparov writes about Vladimir Putin's thugs, Pussy Riot, and the political mood in Russia. (Via JWZ).

Governments reflect the national mood, and though Russia has come a long way in its roots it is very clearly still troubled by the same attitudes and culture that haunted it while it was a part of the USSR, and probably while it was Tsarist before that.

Just a little something to lie awake at night and stare at the ceiling about when you realize that 54% of Americans saying the TSA is doing a "good or excellent" job (LA Times article, Forbes.com article), that there are legitimate Senate candidates (let alone State representatives) who believe that women can't conceive during rape (and vice-presidential candidates who seem to believe that rapists should have say over whether a woman can abort their child), and too many other examples to mention of places where utterly bizarre beliefs are filtering up into government policy.

[ related topics: Politics Weblogs moron Sociology Heinlein California Culture Currency ]

Joe. My. God. points out this interesting bifurcation in GOP politics: Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) has done the only thing a self-respecting Republican can do in the Todd Akin situation:

"As a husband and father of two young women, I found Todd Akin's comments about women and rape outrageous, inappropriate and wrong. There is no place in our public discourse for this type of offensive thinking. Not only should he apologize, but I believe Rep. Akin's statement was so far out of bounds that he should resign the nomination for US Senate in Missouri."

Meanwhile, Tom McClusky, Vice President for Government Affairs for Family Research Council, tweeted:

Conservatives would be much better off if Scott Brown and Ron Johnson resigned. I prefer my senators with loyalty and backbone

Ho. Ly. She. It. If your politician gives any lip at all to the Family Research Council, they're giving leeway to an organization that is ... well ... I'm not sure "blatantly endorsing rape" is much of an overstatement.

The worst part? There are people voting for Akin.

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama Politics Todd Gemmell Political Correctness moron Sociology Marriage ]

Shadow forwarded this LA Times article profile of the two brothers who own Flying Pigeon LA:

In an age when serious cyclists spend thousands on ultra-light carbon-fiber bikes that sport caliper brakes and as many as 27 derailleur-run gears, the Flying Pigeon has one gear and old-fashioned rod-operated brakes.

It's the imported Chinese utility bicycle, runs about 50 lbs. The Flying Pigeon LA shop is branching out into other cruisers now, but I find the emphasis on bicycle as bomb-proof slower speed transportation, especially in the city of the automobile, interesting.

[ related topics: Aviation Current Events Automobiles Pedal Power Bicycling ]

For Charlene's attention: Indian Valley Reservoir in Lake County. 10MPH speed limit on the lake, 5MPH <200Yds from shore. http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/fo/ukiah/indianvalley.html https://maps.google.com/maps?q...efox-a&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&authuser=0

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping ]

Comment OTM: "// END OF FOREACH. Still need to scrutinize this to make sure it is all working right, since I lost track of my brackets."

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Fascinating: I'm not as up on Bay Area political scene history as I probably should be, but activist Richard Aoki, who provided guns to the Black Panther Party, was an FBI informant. Then, as now, we're seeing that it's a fine line between investigating a group and providing them with the means of doing violence (and in many modern cases, urging them to that violence), before arresting them.

[ related topics: Politics moron Law Enforcement California Culture Guns ]

Victorian slang - a guide to sexual Victorian terms (stolen wholesale from MeFi).

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Douglas Adams ]

With a market cap of $623 Billion, Apple is now the most valuable company of all time.

So Foxconn, Intel and others have the actual capital intensive hardware that builds the products, Apple has some real estate and the company culture.

Interesting...

[ related topics: Apple Computer Business Sociology California Culture Currency Economics Real Estate ]

And no room for the bike on the 48X south. Thinking this transit thing isn't gonna work after all.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Bicycling Public Transportation ]

What happens when you widen the downstream road to turn a stretch of highway from a 3 to 2 lane narrowing to a 4 to 2 lane narrowing? The carpool lane adds an extra 10 or 20 minutes to commute traffic between Novato and Petaluma.

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

The politics of trolling: Washington Examiner: Democrats spent $1.5 mil to help Akin win GOP primary

Which references Washington Post: Why Todd Akins win gives Democrats hope in Missouri and Washington Post: Democrats signal eagerness to face Todd Akin in Missouri.

We give to a couple of organizations that have gotten really annoying about asking for funds. One or two of these land an outrage inspiring missive in my inbox at least once a day, several once a week or so. For a few of them, I've been kind of wondering whether they're manufacturing outrage. Turns out that they may be spending quite a bit of money to do just that.

[ related topics: Politics ]

John Sundman: “Mashed Potatoes”, the story of a tattoo. Or, how my daughter, at age 17, put in jail the man who began molesting her when she was seven and raped her when she was nine years old.

[ related topics: Food Eric's Life ]

Ugh. Another moronic "car sharing is the future" smart car article: Capital costs don't change our driving patterns, energy costs do.

[ related topics: Automobiles ]

It's fun being on an adult video business PR person's mailing list, but I only forward things occasionally. However, this time... Gamelink: Porn and Politics infographic, from GameLink Uncovers the Link between Porn and Politics as the Presidential Election Heats Up press release.

[ related topics: Politics Erotic Sexual Culture Video ]

Maybe my mind is just warped, but I see a very penetrating phallic logo for the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce

. What do you see?

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Sexual Culture Chattanooga Archival Furniture ]

NY Times article about the bust in Dalton, GA, "the carpet capital of the world", hammered by both housing bust, and the decline of carpets in general.

[ related topics: Gambling Real Estate ]

An Open Letter to Rep. Akin From a Woman Who Got Pregnant From Rape. As the people forwarding this around have said, it does not go where you think it's going to go, and it's worth a read.

I'd also like to expand a little on that link I posted suggesting that Democrats had helped the extreme candidates in that Republican primary. Among the more radical circles I occupy, there's lots of screaming "campaign finance reform", "it's not the voters", and so forth.

I just want to go on the record right now as saying: It's the voters. That doesn't mean we need to disenfranchise them, that means we need to educate them. But we need to educate all of them, because as long as there are politicians who are getting away with using phrases "legitimate rape" there are people getting away with rape, and we have to start by raising those standards.

[ related topics: Todd Gemmell Archival ]

Oooh, layers and layers on this whole Todd Akin "legitimate rape" thing. Mitt Romney's press release touting the endorsement of "Dr. John Willke, A Founder Of The Pro-Life Movement Nationally & Internationally"

Dr. Willke is apparently the guy who published the "rape doesn't cause pregnancy" theories that Todd Akin subscribes to.

[ related topics: Politics Health Todd Gemmell Current Events ]

Dave Alden has a good rundown of the controversy around parking on Petaluma's Water Street http://northbaydesignkit.blogs...taluma-planning-controversy.html

Stefan Fatsis writes about the stolen blanks scandal at the National Scrabble Championship.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Games History Scrabble ]

The "Root, root, root for the [Petaluma in the Little League World Series] home team" posts confuse my "reads Australian stuff" brain.

Dear "Social Media Experts": The only "Viral Marketing Strategy" I want to hear about involves DIY genetic engineering.

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Journalism and Media Marketing ]

Science Mag: Why cell phone bans don't work looks at Self-reported and observed risky driving behaviors among frequent and infrequent cell phone users.

The suggestion is that the reason that cell phone bans haven't changed accident rates is that frequent cell phone users are asshole drivers, with or without the cell phone. Correlation is not causation.

And more bad law ends up on the books. Sigh.

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

Wood porn of the day: PRM Designs marquetry and woodworks

Edit: See also his pages at LumberJocks,

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Woodworking ]

The military mindset in this article from an Israeli checkpoint guard is astoundingly clear and well written. I'm still absorbing it and what it implies from the perspective given. Much of what he says applies to law enforcement and society everywhere.

Violet Blue on CNet: Where Google spends its PAC money on Capitol Hill.

[ related topics: Current Events Currency ]

Holy crap, honesty in transit status data: RT @caltrain:

NB 233 driver just screwed Mountain View riders by stopping at the wrong spot and keeping the crossing gates closed. T09:12

Yeah, someone's getting punchy, on the other hand this both makes Caltrain human, and says that they understand that acknowledging mistakes matters!

Edit: Damn. RT @mikesonn:

@theGreaterMarin FYI @caltrain feed is user based. Official accounts: @GoCaltrain & @Caltrain_News

[ related topics: moron Public Transportation ]

This needs wide dissemination: Google Bus driver claims photographing him blocking the bike lane is harassment (YouTube)

At 8th and Market there is a Muni bus stop which is regularly used by private shuttles. Sometimes, they park legally and there's no problem. Other times, they block the bike lane, or block the stop when Muni needs to use it.

Normally I stop and take a photo and send it to the SFMTA and Google's transportation manager. This time, the driver decided to step out and accuse me of threatening him via photography. He then threatened to have me arrested.

[ related topics: Movies Bicycling Public Transportation ]

Thomas Roche at TinyNibbles.com: R.I.P. Bill Brent: Author, Publisher and Sex Activist.

When Black Sheets Magazine first came out, I registered some variant of it as a domain name and put up subscription information with a "This is what their web site should have on it" page, and offered it to Bill Brent at a Perverts Put Out event. Nothing ever really came of it, as far as I remember Black Sheets had a few paper issues and then kind of foundered, but it is clear that Bill Brent's influence was far broader than that small presence would suggest.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

An iOS developer was just touting to me the lack of application interop and data sharing as a good thing for security and ease-of-use.

It is, perhaps, an obvious point, but I thought Dave Winer: Protocols don't mean much bears reiterating:

Formats and protocols by themselves are meaningless. That's what I say about specs. Show me content I can get at through the protocol, and I'll say something.

Yep. And this is why OpenID has failed: Nobody wanted to consume it, and it was too difficult to implement. People got involved in trying to shoot a beer can to the moon, and not solving one good use case that everyone could adopt.

[ related topics: Dave Winer Law Beer ]

American Courtesans: The documentary film.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

"Hallelujah!" <-- There, that got Handeled.

John Carmack discusses the art and science of software engineering is a write-up of John Carmack’s 2012 Quake­Con keynote (YouTube video), and talks about software engineering as a social science.

Which is something I am painfully aware of right now.

[ related topics: Games Movies Software Engineering Graphics Art & Culture Earthquake Video ]

Interesting write-up on attempts in LA to remove building and fire code restrictions that require helicopter landing pads on the roofs of taller buildings. There's a whole lot discussion about risk management and design sensibilities and such that could get wrapped into that conversation.

And, of course, that flat helicopter landing pad on the building roof was part of what made Die Hard work...

[ related topics: Aviation Current Events Work, productivity and environment Pyrotechnics Graphic Design Community Architecture Aviation - Helicopters ]

Making Light: Romney lies about tithing. Or strong theory about why Romney is unwilling to release his tax returns.

Thanks Columbine.

[ related topics: Politics Archival ]

The most amazing bong ever. You know who you are. http://twitpic.com/an6hiq

[ related topics: Drugs ]

Yiddish Curses for Republican Jews .com.

Wittier than I expected.

[ related topics: Religion ]

Signs that you may be too much of a Unix geek: Typing "!$ &" and hitting enter is part of muscle memory.

Charlene and I have been talking about how to read a scientific paper, and I thought this would be a good start: Echinacea for treating the common cold: A randomized controlled trial.

rt @someecards

Let's show our solidarity with Lance Armstrong by shamelessly riding our bikes while on drugs. http://some.ly/QyGq5j

[ related topics: Drugs Health Bicycling ]

And Perl's "@a||%h" catches a long-time hardcore coder (not me) unaware. Thinking about Python and syntactic simplicity again...

[ related topics: Perl Open Source Software Engineering Monty Python Python hubris ]

Are Silver Spring Maryland buses taking their cues from Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive?

[Edit: Thanks for the "Silver Springs" correction]

[ related topics: Public Transportation ]

Collectors Weekly: Getting It On: The Covert History of the American Condom.

Amidst the "but Chicago" and "guns bad", its worth mentioning that in the Empire State Bldg shooting, the murderer shot 1, the cops shot 9.

[ related topics: History Law Enforcement Guns ]

Latest Drabblecast, Samantha Henderson's "Maybe the Stars" was dark in a "made me think about culture and compromise" sort of way. Good.

[ related topics: Sociology California Culture ]

Republicans are still bitter over the Battle of Little Big Horn? RNC Official: N.M. Governor ‘Dishonored’ Gen. Custer By Meeting With American Indians

[ related topics: Music ]

Hat tip to Shadow, another group generating outrage out of fantasy, and further damaging self-images by clearly sending the message that "the things that arouse you are not okay": 50 Shades of Anger – Sunderland domestic violence charity calls for erotic novel to be burned. Normally I'd pass this off as yet another set of extremist wackos caught in the 1950s, but I was amused by:

The books can be dropped off at bins at Wearside Women in Need’s head office in Front Street, Concord.

Almost makes ya wanna buy a couple of copies to donate, hey?

[ related topics: Books Erotic Current Events ]

So there's this America's Cup sailboat race that's happening, or just happened, in San Francisco Bay. Lots of people throwing lots of money into penis compensation vehicles, but at least they're relatively quiet.

Anyway, looks like the Oracle team strategy is consistent from corporate to boating: When in doubt, ram the officials' boat (YouTube)

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Movies Robotics Bay Area California Culture Boats Machinery Embedded Devices Currency Databases ]

When it comes to mass transit, the lowest bidder doesn't seem to equate to the lowest cost implementation. Bloomberg discusses how the NYC Second Avenue line cost $5B and how the proposed Northeast corridor high speed rail will cost more than Japan's underground mag-lev. I've been seeing the same results with RTD FasTracks which was originally supposed to extend to Longmont this decade but now gives a best possible scenario of 2035 with significant tax increases.

[ related topics: Politics Current Events Trains Public Transportation ]

Programmers on my Twitter feed talking about "unzipping" and "python development", and I felt kinda flushed there for a moment.

[ related topics: Monty Python Python ]

Emily Willingham: Autism, immunity, inflammation, and the New York Times.

[ related topics: Invention and Design New York ]

Oh, Microsoft, you could have addressed the symptom by correcting URL display in IE, but noooo, you decided to break RFC 1738 instead.

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft moron Net Culture ]

Remember when Loompanics was your source for subversive anarchist materials? Yeah, it's been subverted. Loompanics.com (no links, it sucks) is now hawking "The Ultimate Disney World Savings Guide 2010" and "The Magic of Making Up" and similar tripe. We've lost the magic of badly edited bomb-making techniques likely to kill you if followed.

And the world is poorer for that loss.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Douglas Adams Clowns ]

Backyard Ballistics - a book just made for Dan's back yard. (I don't have one.. but mounted to my deck.. Hmm...)

[ related topics: Books ]

It's benefits choosing time here at work, a reminder that for most of the world, AD&D has nothing to do with role-playing.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Awesome 2 year old MeFi comment: on James Bond as an aspirational character of that generation, and why "We're all Jason Bourne now.".

South Pole Foucault Pendulum, from our neighbors at Sonoma State! Via MeFi

/. reports on an apparent meteorite impact crater in northern Hamilton County, Tennessee.

[ related topics: Chattanooga ]

New York Times gave advance copy of a Maureen Dowd column to the CIA.

UPDATE (12:41 p.m.): New York Times Managing Editor Dean Baquet called POLITICO to explain the situation, but provided little clarity, saying he could not go into detail on the issue because it was an intelligence matter.

"I know the circumstances, and if you knew everything that's going on, you'd know it's much ado about nothing," Baquet said. "I can't go into in detail. But I'm confident after talking to Mark that it's much ado about nothing."

"The optics aren't what they look like," he went on. "I've talked to Mark, I know the cirucmstance, and given what I know, it's much ado about nothing."

Any person asshole enough to use "the optics" in that context is clearly lying about the details. "I can't tell you but really it's not what it looks like" indeed.

The column in question as obtained by a Judicial Watch FOIA request.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Movies Invention and Design Journalism and Media New York ]

Romney was once a successful respected politician. The real questions are: Who has what dirt on him to make him participate in this farce?

[ related topics: Politics moron ]

Ah, the joys of working in telecom: Neighboring cube conversations aren't just about "FOC dates", they include "how many pairs do you have?"

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

You know the cool thing about technology and the Internet? We get to test out all sorts of political and economic theories. Today's lesson is about government regulation of securities and currencies:

Suspected multi-million dollar Bitcoin pyramid scheme shuts down, investors revolt, "Pirateat40" Makes Off $5.6M USD in BitCoins From Pyramid Scheme

Via /..

(To be fair, regulation doesn't stop Ponzi schemes, but it can slow 'em down a bit...)

[ related topics: Politics moron Current Events Beer Net Culture Currency Economics ]

College binge drinkers happier than sober classmates, researchers say. From the press release:

"Binge drinking is a symbolic proxy for high status in college," said Carolyn L. Hsu, co-author of the study and an associate professor of sociology at Colgate University. "It's what the most powerful, wealthy, and happy students on campus do. This may explain why it's such a desirable activity. When lower status students binge drink, they may be trying to tap into the benefits and the social satisfaction that those kids from high status groups enjoy. And, our findings seem to indicate that, to some extent, they succeed."

According to the study, students from higher status groups (i.e., wealthy, male, white, heterosexual, and Greek affiliated undergraduates) were consistently happier with their college social experience than their peers from lower status groups (i.e., less wealthy; female; non-white; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning (LGBTQ); and non-Greek affiliated undergraduates).

Also, Heavy drinkers exercise more (Do Alcohol Consumers Exercise More? Findings from a National Survey, French, Popovici, and Maclean).

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sexual Culture Health Consumerism and advertising Education Race ]

Woot! Disable Java in your browser, there's a working 0 day exploit in the wild: http://www.deependresearch.org...y-vulnerability-information.html

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

Ugh.

This morning: Figuring out how to set up an Apache proxy to deal with some flaws in IE's handling of URLs. This afternoon: Digging through some long arcane code to try to figure out how to cruft global state in to a system built for dealing with atomic state operations.

Ugh.

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source ]

Sounds like they've got bright futures ahead of 'em: Harvard Investigates "Unprecedented" Academic Dishonesty Case:

Harvard College’s disciplinary board is investigating nearly half of the 279 students who enrolled in Government 1310: "Introduction to Congress" last spring for allegedly plagiarizing answers or inappropriately collaborating on the class’ final take-home exam.

Sounds like they... uh... learned the subject matter a little too well?

[ related topics: Politics moron Law Education Economics ]

Went out in the truck, forgot my MP3 player, so ended up listening to the GOP Convention... on KPFA. Surprised the universe is still intact.

[ related topics: Music Pop Culture Machinery ]

Mixed feelings: Getting the "We think your house is worth $40k less than last year" letter from the Sonoma County tax office.

[ related topics: Politics Real Estate ]

mBio (American Society for Microbiology): Residual Antibiotics Disrupt Meat Fermentation and Increase Risk of Infection in cured meats. Via Walnut Keep (our very own TC).

Gamera II human powered helicopter achieves 8 foot altitude record (YouTube video). More at the University of Maryland A. James Clark School of Engineering Alfred Gessow Rotorcraft Center Gamera page.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Movies Education Video Aviation - Helicopters ]

Foreign Policy: In Praise of Slums: Why millions of people choose to live in urban squalor.

[ related topics: Theater & Plays ]

Make: How tracking down my stolen computer triggered a drug bust.

Making cloud backup look like a better idea...

[ related topics: Weblogs Health ]

Collectors Weekly: Love Boats: The Delightfully Sinful History of Canoes:

In 1903, before the trend really took off, a “Boston Herald” article scoffed at the effectiveness of puritanical boating ordinances: “It may not be wicked to go canoeing on the Charles with young women on Sunday, but we continue to be reminded that it is frequently perilous…The canoeist arrested for kissing his sweetheart at Riverside was fined $20. At that rate it is estimated that over a million dollars’ worth of kisses are exchanged at that popular canoeing resort every fine Saturday night and Sunday.”

[ related topics: Boats Machinery ]