Flutterby™! From 2012-10-01 to 2012-10-31

Philadelphia's Pennsylvania Convention Center loses a $15 million show over electric screwdrivers:

In addition to laying out some ground rules for union members’ behavior (no verbal or physical threats against the conventioneers, no selling or using illegal drugs while on the job, no “shoving,” and no weapons “of any kind”), the CSA also spells out rules and “rights” for the exhibitors. And there it is, right there in Exhibit C, Paragraph E, Subsection 1: An exhibitor “may use hand tools … but not power tools including battery operated tools, or ladders.” My attempts to ascertain whether a flashlight counts as a hand tool have been unsuccessful.

[ related topics: Drugs Health Heinlein Civil Liberties Guns ]

How can we tell the economy is improving? LA Times: Traffic deaths rise an estimated 9% as motorists return to roads

[ related topics: Current Events Economics ]

I so wish I could find the original source for this, because whoever put this together spent some time on it and it's brilliant:

Hazard Fraught Tool Sale Flyer (PDF).

Also as embedded JPEGS on this thread over at Hooniverse.com

[ related topics: Robotics Consumerism and advertising Embedded Devices ]

Awesome: Apparently the DNA Lounge standard contract references Emperor Norton:

15. Whoever after due and proper warning shall be heard to utter the abominable word "Frisco," which has no linguistic or other warrant, shall be deemed guilty of a High Misdemeanor, and shall pay into the Imperial Treasury as penalty the sum of six hundred seventy six dollars. As ordered by NORTON I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, 1872.

Six hundred and seventy six dollars being the inflation adjusted $25 that Norton I originally decreed.

[ related topics: Privacy Economics ]

Lyn has some notes on "trying not to be a free user".

Which reminds me: How do we get back to those wonderful days when we used to have cross-blog conversations?

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Harold and the Purple Crayon as a continuous image.

Dave Edmondson: It is our infrastructure that kills us.

... Where Hailey was hit, the eastbound lane effectively widens to 15 feet as the paint delineating the shoulder is almost worn away. The center turn lane that suddenly appears makes passing cars feel like they aren’t going so fast, giving the illusion that it’s safe to drive even faster than before. Though the speed limit drops to 35 normally and 25 during school hours, that road is built for 50.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Bay Area ]

Audio device manufacturer Teenage Engineering publishes free CAD files for knobs and widgets, allowing you to print your own replacement parts.

The shipping costs for the OP-1 accessories were prohibitively high for the Stockholm-based company, so it seemed natural to simply supply the CAD files. Several CAD files are now available as free downloads on Shapeways, in STEP and STL format. The files are free to download, or you can choose to have Shapeways print the pieces for you for a fee.

[ related topics: Music Graphic Design Fashion ]

Sure, when life gives you lemons you make lemonade. But when life gives you potatoes do you make fries, or vodka?

[ related topics: Food Theater & Plays Wines and Spirits ]

In this Public Access Channel TV revelation, it seems some good Dick will make you..., do things. Hilarious.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Television ]

Larry and Dave both linked to NPR: Do You Know Where Your Children Are? Is That Always A Good Thing?

The map, in particular, is worth a gander.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Maps and Mapping ]

Glen Beck thinks EVE Online and Something Awful are CIA front organizations http://www.gameranx.com/update...e-online-is-a-front-for-the-cia/

Center for Economic and Policy Research: Fiscal Cliff Notes Have no Place on NPR

[ related topics: Economics ]

webRTC.io is an abstraction layer which attempts to simplify webRTC, which is:

... is a free, open project that enables web browsers with Real-Time Communications (RTC) capabilities via simple Javascript APIs.

As far as I can tell, this also means peer-to-peer browser capabilities. Got pointed to this after I wrote a little thing about Meteor Server up to garner some discussion on the Chugalug mailing list. And I'll toss that message in the comments...

[ related topics: Astronomy Community ]

Tom and Dori have handily provided the 2012 Presidential Debate #1 Bingo card generator! http://www.backupbrain.com/201...012-presidential-debate-1-bingo/

I can't believe I didn't link this previously: Pivoting to Monetize Mobile Hyperlocal Social Gamification By Going Viral (In The Cloud) (Vimeo Video)

[ related topics: Video ]

The Infinity Set - Fractal Silverware

So, here is the immediate answer to your questions. I did not use any 3D modelling software. I used a photograph of a real fork/spoon/knife (see the description for the exact URL). Then I spent 3 and a half days modifying it manually with GIMP. So, the fractal was painted, not drawn.

[ related topics: Photography Software Engineering Graphics ]

Hexaflexagons (YouTube Video). A cool little exploration of geometry and topology and paper folding.

[ related topics: Movies Video ]

Libby Anne looks back at Focus on the Family's "Letter From 2012" that they sent out during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Original letter is here (PDF)

[ related topics: Sociology ]

Devil's Panties puts government spending in perspective

[ related topics: moron Archival ]

Dear Google: WTF are you doing with security certificates today? Issues with pop.gmail.com and maps.google.com. Weird!

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping ]

Ugh. Journalism fail. This AP article on NPR and on Fox News and on SFGate.com references a report from "Senate Homeland Security subcommittee", which is chaired by Democrat Carl Levin of Michigan, with ranking Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. It quotes the report, like:

"The subcommittee investigation could identify no reporting which uncovered a terrorist threat, nor could it identify a contribution such fusion center reporting made to disrupt an active terrorist plot," ...

And yet I can't find enough information to figure out which report they're talking about. I assume it's some portion of the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs, but I'm not finding a damned thing under any of those pages. I'm not seeing anything on Carl Levin's senate.gov page, nor on Tom Coburn's page. It's like someone made up the story out of whole cloth, or it's something related to an older report, or...

Whatever it is, it doesn't feel like journalism.

[ related topics: Quotes Politics Software Engineering Current Events Journalism and Media ]

The PhD in Parenting blog is pushing RSS over Facebook, and moving their RSS feed in-house. Wondered when this was going to start happening, it's good to see that some publishers are starting to figure out this web thing.

[ related topics: Content Management Weblogs Spam Real Estate ]

I had not listened to Podcastle yet because I thought fantasy fiction meant swords and sorcery, and I wasn't there. I also loathe stories told as "you". So when someone on my Twitter feed said Episode 211: The Axiom of Choice was a good place to start, I had some issues getting into it.

I'm still not sure what the fantasy element of that story was, other than the long riff on the "Choose your own adventure" tales that were so often fantasy, but it was one of those stories that took a whole bunch of elements that I'm normally not fond of, and made them work.

[ related topics: Erotic Work, productivity and environment ]

Mike Gunderloy wrote a few notes about TENT, a new distributed microblogging thingie, hosted service at tent.is, docs and implementation at tent.io.

Interesting. One thing that does leap out: Discovery is done via

A HEAD request to https://johnsmith.me/ would respond with a Link header pointing to a Tent profile (e.g. https://tent.johnsmith.me/profile)

So your identity URL has to be an aware server, not just a couple of <link ...> tags in an HTML document? Hmmmm...

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

Gary Becker: Reforming the Patent System Toward a Minimalist System.

Note too some of the comments on incentives for pharmaceutical manufacturing and testing, discussing working towards a system which provides returns and incentives for places where outlay and research isn't happening right now, rather than following the fiction that patents support "intellectual property".

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Weblogs Health Work, productivity and environment ]

RT Jason Martin ‏@macomrade:

Please tell me how E85 is better for the environment when it consumes nearly 28% more fuel gallon-for-gallon? http://twitpic.com/b0hbvb

[ related topics: Nature and environment ]

RT Annalee ‏@leeflower

I seriously just saw a 'Columbus day sale' on fake tribal jewelry. I... don't even know where to start.

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

Ya know, I might be interested in the debate if it was moderated by Tom Lehrer, but Jim Lehrer? No.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

I, for one, welcome our pigeon spray-painting robot overlords.

[ related topics: Robotics ]

Truth: "It's like... I want to build machines that kill people. I really, really do." http://pvponline.com/comic/2012/10/03/geriantics

That feeling where you were hoping to work from home, but changed your password yesterday and now the VPN wants it...

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Gig Tank Winner goes Comcast! and Gig City Hoax.

Backstory: Our city government and EPB has been advertising Gigabit connections to the 'Net cheap. They and the local muckitymucks have been pretending to attract high technology businesses that can "leverage our cheap bandwidth" with incubators and dot.com.wannabe events.

When a home grown beloved technology wizard actually wants it.. and can use it. It vaporized.

[ related topics: broadband moron Current Events Consumerism and advertising Chattanooga ]

Chattanooga "Gig Tank" winner gets his company's internet connection from Comcast, not EPB:

He pleaded with EPB officials to run a strand of their famous gigabit fiber to Iron Labs' office in the CitiPark building, a block and a half from the utility's downtown headquarters.

There's a lot that's interesting about this, but also a lot that suggests that the "gigabit" fiber in Chattanooga is a publicity stunt, and that EPB doesn't really know how to run a network...

[ related topics: broadband Current Events Chattanooga Net Culture ]

Startup develops x86 emulator for ARM microprocessors. So soon you'll be able to run Half-Life in Windows... on your cell phone.

[ related topics: Wireless Microsoft Current Events ]

RT: Brian Ellner ‏@Brianellner:

Jay-Z has 99 problems, but gay marriage ain’t one: http://shar.es/56tN2 via @TheFour2012 cc @chriswarcraft

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Sociology Marriage ]

Awesome: Messing with visitor's to Seattle's Space Needle. Artist does mural of giant spiders on roof. Via

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Art & Culture Seattle Archival ]

A billion people a month now log in to Facebook. Facebook revenue estimates for 2013 are $6.6 billion, up from $5 billion last year.

So Facebook is expected to make $.55/user/month.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Fact-checking Romney's "I like coal" statement.

Snicker.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

MRI images of vegetables.

Via MeFi

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

The Silicon Valley shuttles revealed:

If you love inner-city living so much that you're willing to commute almost two hours a day, then I expect you're someone who's happy with the basic proposition of city life. That means that you're used to being in close proximity to strangers, so I'd guess you'd be a willing passenger on a public transit system if that transit system were useful.

So the real story here is not the upscale demands of "elites" but the story of "underfunded Caltrain" and and more generally the way that infrequent, slow and poorly connected transit systems are forcing these big employers to run so much expensive service of their own.

Via JWZ.

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

RT Data Pointed ‏@DataPointed

Chilling: the path (http://bit.ly/SFZ2la ) of the '99 Oklahoma City F5 tornado shows up in my population change maps: http://bit.ly/SFYY4S

For posterity, in case bit.ly ever disappears, the path is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bigoutbreak.png , the second link is http://www.city-data.com/forum...ay-3-1999-tornado-reflected.html and the map of population change is http://www.datapointed.net/vis...th-rings/oklahoma-city-oklahoma/

[ related topics: Law Television Community Maps and Mapping ]

Awesome Sauce gifsockets!!!11 (Vimeo video). Using clojure to create a streaming animated GIF that sends varying text strings to the browser.

At the github page for gifsockets they note:

"This library is the websockets of the '90s" - Somebody at Hacker News.

Especially amusing 'cause I just started playing with Meteor server and real-time web stuff.

[ related topics: Language Books Animation Astronomy Current Events Video Archival ]

OH: "Yay! I'm starting to become American. I'm mumbling a lot more now." -- A Canadian cow-orker.

Dear political organizations: What makes you think that last night's debate warrants more than 3 emails from *each* of you today? #yeesh

[ related topics: Politics Privacy moron ]

Anti-news: Free birth control leads to fewer abortions.

[ related topics: Health Current Events ]

Something else to be paranoid about: Consumer Reports says rice contains worrying levels of arsenic.

No federal limit exists for arsenic in most foods, but the standard for drinking water is 10 parts per billion (ppb). Keep in mind: That level is twice the 5 ppb that the EPA originally proposed and that New Jersey actually established. Using the 5-ppb standard in our study, we found that a single serving of some rices could give an average adult almost one and a half times the inorganic arsenic he or she would get from a whole day’s consumption of water, about 1 liter.

Via LA Times, via Rebecca's Pocket.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Food Consumerism and advertising Television Currency ]

Operagasmic: Opera libretti translated for modern audiences: now with 50% more dick jokes!

Target sets up deliveries via in-store QR codes. (Same story at LA Times). Shop at target by scanning price tags with your cell phone, get it delivered at home. Various gadget-y web sites are pushing this story as though it's the retail of the future (ie: lockergnome), it sounds like it's just dipping toes with a few toys to understand the market, but I can see possibilities

[ related topics: Wireless Current Events Currency Economics ]

Saw this story all over my Twitter feed yesterday, and then Shadow forwarded along the Boing Boing article on the Maine GOP attack ads against Democratic state senate candidate Colleen Lachowicz for playing World of Warcraft, which is a good jumping off place.

Yes, I expect that knitting and cooking will be under attack next.

[ related topics: Politics Food Woodworking ]

Almost-Eagle Scout denied award and kicked out of Scouting because he is gay.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Current Events Dan & Charlene's July 2003 San Juan Trip hubris ]

I'm trying to disassemble an Oracle system so I can suck out some data. A couple hours with SQLplus (server is far far away and my only access is SSH into a Linux box) and I'd like to kill something. It's like the dark ages of databases again. It (Oracle 11g and SQLplus) seem to be missing commands and features (or similar features) that are ANSI SQL standards and well supported in PostgreSQL and MySQL.

I'd kill for: "limit 10" or equivalent when poking at tables I don't (yet) know much about.

At least: desc $tablename works.

[ related topics: Free Software Star Wars Open Source Cryptography Databases Furniture ]

The entreprenurial spirit always finds opportunities: In New York City, where school students are not allowed to have cell phones on the premesise, the rise of the cell phone valet van.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Wireless New York ]

For @nonelvis "Untitled Web Series About A Space Traveler Who Can Also Travel Through Time" http://www.theinspector.tv/

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Space & Astronomy Television ]

Via Shadow: ZERO S Electric Motorcycle

Confession: when I hear the phrases "helicopter parents" and "free-range kids", I envision some sort of Alaskan wolf hunting scenario...

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

In light of the spinal meningitis outbreak that's happening right now, the New York Times looks at compounding pharmacies, and why you would and wouldn't want to use them.

[ related topics: Health Invention and Design Current Events New York ]

RT Lame Pun Coon ‏@itsdrenthe

The TSA have caught zero terrorists, but police have caught over 400 TSA criminals in the last 10 years.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

Animated GIF of a guy doing an insane flip off his bike from Shadow. You know how there's art that's inspiring, and art that just makes ya sit there with yer mouth open going "Wha... How... Uh...". I'll give this guy a pass for not landing on the pedals.

[ related topics: Animation Aviation Art & Culture Bicycling ]

Argh. Organizations which want online registration should make their stupid web forms work. *cough*4H*cough*

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment hubris ]

Human Powered Free Running Machine (YouTube video). One of those absurd Rube Goldberg machines meets parkour acrobats, with... remember that feeling in that golden age of film and stunts where spectacular human timing actually felt like it meant something? Yeah, I got that hit watching this, like watching the "Live and Let Die" boat jump or the "Man With The Golden Gun" spiral car jump.

[ related topics: Movies Theater & Plays Sports Automobiles Boats Machinery Guns Video Parkour ]

Why film schools teach screenwriters not to pass the Bechdel test.

Yep.

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

Steve Bogart passed along Eva Wiseman in The Observer: Named and shamed :For "entertainers", violence ought to be a bad career move. If only because their personalities are revealed as being the opposite of entertaining...

We need to start connecting celebrity abusers to their crimes. We need to state that when they beat up their girlfriends, these entertainers cease to be entertaining. Because if we allow ourselves to forget their bloody histories, or view their work through a kinder filter than their actions, we are going to have a problem reassuring teenage victims that experiencing violence at the hands of those they trust is not acceptable.

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

Just got a German phishing attempt, which made me realize that the scam emails meant to appeal to stupid people are primarily in English...

[ related topics: moron hubris ]

The Anti-Planner: The European Transport Myth.

... When measured in terms of passenger miles, instead of trips, European transit mobility looks a lot less impressive. ...

I think there are other complexities here that this article doesn't go into as deeply as it perhaps should (hey, look, Dan's sniping at terse blogs! Pot meet kettle!) is that it also observes:

... a two-mile trip can access four times as much land as a one-mile trip. ...

As much land, but I'm willing to bet that most of the difference between a 6.5k automobile miles per year country and a 15k automobile miles per year country (yep, the U.S. is the outlier) is that population and development clustering means that the 12½ square miles of the 2 mile trip may have as much to access as the three square mile range in the 1 mile trip...

[ related topics: Travel Automobiles Public Transportation Real Estate ]

RT @jessamyn:

Columbus is the 2nd-most hated explorer in the world, after Internet Explorer (not my joke). Rethinking Columbus: http://bit.ly/VR7oM7

[ related topics: Net Culture ]

New York Times: To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets:

On the other hand, many researchers say, if you force or pressure people to wear helmets, you discourage them from riding bicycles. That means more obesity, heart disease and diabetes. And — Catch-22 — a result is fewer ordinary cyclists on the road, which makes it harder to develop a safe bicycling network. The safest biking cities are places like Amsterdam and Copenhagen, where middle-aged commuters are mainstay riders and the fraction of adults in helmets is minuscule.

Via JWZ and via Dave Alden

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama Weblogs broadband Invention and Design Bay Area Sports Pedal Power New York Bicycling ]

Annoying push-survey from @Zinio: Interested in pushing crappy celebrity tabloids at me, uninterested in actual feedback.

And, honestly people, is @SurveyMonkey really the best UI you can do for your push-polling? Because damn it's annoying.

[ related topics: User Interface ]

Marketwatch: Your right to resell your own stuff is in peril.

At issue in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons is the first-sale doctrine in copyright law, which allows you to buy and then sell things like electronics, books, artwork and furniture, as well as CDs and DVDs, without getting permission from the copyright holder of those products.

Yes: We need it solidly enshrined in the law that you own what you purchase. Of course this'll play hell with all sorts of copyright and DRM issues, and that's okay. This "you rent the ability to do only what we want you to do with it" that we're seeing, especially in embedded devices, has to lose its legal protection.

[ related topics: Books Music Robotics Law Consumerism and advertising Embedded Devices Copyright/Trademark ]

Forum participant: "FWIW, I have a grad degree in urban planning." Okay, I'll use short declarative sentences with simple words.

[ related topics: Community ]

California Public Utilities Commission files cease-and-desist orders against SideCar and Lyft, both of which are smart-phone app based ride sharing services:

... Lyft and SideCar connect people needing rides around San Francisco with drivers who pick them up in private vehicles. Drivers are screened and insured by the companies, and collect "suggested" but voluntary donations for their rides.

So, yeah, there's a lot of fancy footwork around many insurance and regulatory issues happening here...

[ related topics: Bay Area California Culture ]

Switzerland has reduced the size of its active reserve army since the fall of the Soviet Union, but still can call up 200,000 citizen soldiers is needed. That's the equivalent of 8 million men in the US. Now they are building up the army again, and buying more jets. What do they know that we don't?

[ related topics: Current Events ]

So apparently there's more difference between AA and AAA than just if the "power greater than myself" is under the hood.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, those other two schmoes: here's a presidential candidate we can all support: http://m.prnewswire.com/news-r...oes-to-washington-173142041.html

Edit: http://www.sanrio.com/HelloKitty2012

[ related topics: Current Events ]

You've probably already seen this: PLOS ONE: Feelings of Disgust and Disgust-Induced Avoidance Weaken following Induced Sexual Arousal in Women, Charmaine Borg, Peter J. de Jong

Via Scientific American: Sexually Aroused Women Are Harder to Gross Out

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Washington's King County Sheriff makes a case for marijuana legalization:

"With alcohol being highly regulated, we're able to have a more reasonable discussion about it, in societies and in our families," Strachan told The Seattle Times' Jonathan Martin, in announcing his support for the pot-legalization Initiative 502 on this fall's ballot.

With pot, "people are sort of winking at it," he said. "It lives in this kind of limbo — it's illegal, but also not." So we have created an "ambiguous, confusing message we're sending to our kids."

[ related topics: Drugs Children and growing up Libertarian Law Community Seattle ]

Salon is getting in to the "top X things" lists link-baiting scheme, but they got me with this one: Least scientific members of the House Science Committee.

[ related topics: Salon magazine Real Estate ]

MeFi user robocop is bleeding

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good tumblr, must be in want of a picture of a cat in a costume.”

Republican Candidate In Arkansas Says Parents Should Seek Death Penalty Against ‘Rebellious Children’:

Here’s the key passage from Fuqua’s 2012 book, “God’s Law: The Only Political Solution“:

The maintenance of civil order in society rests on the foundation of family discipline. Therefore, a child who disrespects his parents must be permanently removed from society in a way that gives an example to all other children of the importance of respect for parents. The death penalty for rebellious children is not something to be taken lightly. The guidelines for administering the death penalty to rebellious children are given in Deut 21:18-21:

Now on the one hand I'm all "dude, I've been preaching abortion should be cheap and available through the 55^th trimester for years!" and it's great to see people finally reading the Bible carefully and coming on-board, on the other hand I'm wondering if, based on the appeal to Deuteronomy, how this guy feels about cotton-poly undies.

Via Elf Sternberg, who has an additional dose of the crazy and ignorance of scripture from the "Christian" talk radio station he picked up the story frome.

[ related topics: Religion Children and growing up Interactive Drama Politics Books Sexual Culture tolkien moron Sociology Gambling Archival ]

Yeah, I've got Dura-Ace components that have failed in regular road cycling that I've replaced with Ultegra just so they're stronger, so file this one mostly under "things I wouldn't attempt unless sponsored", but also: "attempt". This gets pretty hardcore: Martyn Ashton - Road Bike Party (YouTube video)

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Sports Embedded Devices Pedal Power Video Bicycling ]

Go CNet! HP Photosmart 7510 e-All-in-One review :

The bad: There's no Ethernet port for a tethered wireless connection ...

Uh. You wanna tell 'em, or should I?

[ related topics: Wireless ]

Amtrak targets human trafficking. Yep, the bogey man of the new century is overrunning our transportation network. Now that the war profiteers have been run away because people finally realized that hijacking a train and driving it into a building wasn't a real threat, they're off after "human trafficking"!

Sounds so much sexier than "kidnapping", doesn't it? After all, kidnappers are easy to identify, where as trafficked humans might look amazingly like teenagers escaping abusive families or something. You can see how we might get confused.

[ related topics: broadband Invention and Design History Current Events Machinery Trains Public Transportation ]

TechDirt: DHS: Our Reports To Congress Are Successful Bullshit (from the yeah,-we-already-kinda-figured dept).

But the DHS report circulated to Congress, which DHS says is a success even though it's bullshit, was written up after they called out their own fusion center for making stuff up. I think most reasonable people would suspect that such successful excriment is part of the fear mongering around so-called cyberwars and the trumped up need for Congress to pass some kind of cybersecurity bill. ...

Really some commentary on Wired: DHS Issued False ‘Water Pump Hack’ Report; Called It a ‘Success’.

[ related topics: Politics ]

Stevenage giant cycle lane creates pedestrian confusion. Wow, mark something as a bike path and pedestrians avoid it.

[ related topics: Current Events Monty Python Pedal Power Bicycling Furniture ]

Many thanks to Greg Sabourin for hosting the Petaluma Urban Chat crowd on Killara as we cruised up and down the river this evening.

Wow! Cheers for the Petaluma Water Ways Projects page, with links back to plan docs! http://www.cityofpetaluma.net/parksnrec/projects.html

What I love most about biking to work: that shot of adrenaline when the first driver tries to kill me is stronger than coffee.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Seriously, asshole in the truck turning left from 6th on to Mountain View, there was a vehicle in that location.

[ related topics: Machinery ]

Thank you @GoldenGateBus driver for finding a solution for a few stops while the bike rack was full!

[ related topics: Bicycling ]

Today's Sheldon has some interesting observations on iconic imagery.

Someone shook the Etch-a-Sketch and he decided to start running a campaign: Romney promises no abortion legislation http://www.pulse.me/ap/69cd1cd...um=referral&utm_source=pulsenews

(Of course even if he managed to hold that opinion for the next few weeks, that says nothing about SCOTUS appointments, or signing laws that came to him that weren't part of his agenda.)

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Sports ]

All the hullaballoo over the "Romney hates Sesame Street" dust-up has got me thinking again about assorted government services that seem counter-productive to those of us with upper middle-class backgrounds.

Head Start seems to have extremely compelling evidence that it pays off very well for low-income families (for instance). I don't know in particular what evidence we have for or against PBS children's shows (and not having had broadcast TV hooked up for close to a decade, I'm a bad sample for their adult-oriented content, if reruns of Lawrence Welk qualify for that), but volunteering with some low-income families has made me more sympathetic to Sesame Street as a child-rearing aid in some circumstances.

So, tossing more random crap into the mix: Ban under-threes from watching television, says study: Doctors should curb amount of time children spend watching television to prevent long-term harm, say paediatricians.

The American Academy of Pediatrics says (PDF):

This updated policy statement provides further evidence that media — both foreground and background — have potentially negative effects and no known positive effects for children younger than 2 years.

And "The Canadian Paediatric Society discourages screen-based activities for children under 2." and suggests that you "Keep television, computers and gaming equipment out of your child’s bedroom."

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Games Technology and Culture moron Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment Television ]

Dubai's old Bastakiya district holds new lessons for urban planners:

The results showed that in non-windy conditions in Bastakiya in June, temperatures were 34.9°C, compared with 36.6°C in a grid-based development.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Current Events ]

Etta James cover of "Light My Fire": "...and our love become a funeral parlor." WTF?

[ related topics: Pyrotechnics ]

Ed Bott: The Do Not Track standard has crossed into crazy territory:

Via email, two other members of the working group expressed confusion. One asked, “What do you mean by marketing? What would be permitted?” Another said, “I don’t follow.”

(This is how polite people in standards groups say "WTF?")

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Work, productivity and environment Marketing ]

Metafilter user "Eyebrows McGee" talks about sitting on a school expulsion committee:

But fully half of the expulsions I processed in this batch read, "No one appeared on behalf of the student." Not ONE ADULT in the ENTIRE WORLD was willing to show up for an 11-year-old's expulsion hearing. No parents, no grandparent, no relative, no guardian, no pastor, no social worker, no employer or neighbor or coach. Not one adult for a 15-year-old on track to graduate who was in the first trouble of his career (the principal expelling him (properly, under the rules) asked us to give him a suspended sentence, which lets him stay at school as long as he doesn't screw up again, because he's a good kid).

This is why we have to start with free contraception and comprehensive sex ed. And education.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Erotic Sexual Culture Work, productivity and environment Education ]

Second Windows virus scam call this week, and the asshole called back! And looks like he's trying a third time. Fucker.

[ related topics: Microsoft virus moron ]

Data suggests that Newark red light cameras have reduced crashes.

[ related topics: Photography Television ]

Todo: Find an email font that better distinguishes "rt" from "nt". Tired of getting my hopes up over Third Panty Candidates.

[ related topics: Microsoft Typography Graphic Design ]

Just because I know y'all are going to be inundating me with links about this, and I'm already seeing a whole lot about the USADA doping scandal because I live in a strong cycling area, and Levi Leipheimer is a local icon.

Levi Leipheimer in the Wall Street Journal: Why I Doped:

Having made sacrifices for my dream, several years after I turned pro, I came to see cycling for what it was: a sport where some team managers and doctors coordinated and facilitated the use of banned substances and methods by their riders. A sport where the athletes at the highest level—perhaps without exception—used banned substances. A sport where doping was so accepted that riders from different teams—who were competitors on the road—coordinated their doping to keep up with other riders doing the same thing.

I've never much "gotten" high level sports, or even professional sports, and I think this is why: Why are the athletes playing? If they're playing to win the game rather than playing for the joy of the game, then the game becomes secondary: It's about playing the meta game; sometimes that's about selective throwing, hustling, or what-have-you, and sometimes that's about circumventing both the letter and spirit of the rules. It's about being declared a winner rather than winning, and if you're playing by the rules, you're probably the only one.

So why not? Cycling is very clearly a sport that has technique components, but nutrition management overrides most of those. And once you're carefully monitoring caloric absorption and re-uptake rates, and modifying food characteristics to optimize those, the line between doping and being competitive becomes very very blurry. And, as Levi points out, if you're the one guy complaining in a field where everyone else is tacitly participating, you're the crank.

Thus: Why is anyone surprised? This is exactly what almost anyone would do in a similar situation, and it's the reason I'm happy to go out and ride 50 or 100 miles, but don't really need to take things harder than that.

BBC Sport: Lance Armstrong: Fall of a sporting hero.

... accused of not just fixing a race, or a match, or even a season. He has fixed an era.

and if you loved cycling enough to play in those leagues and were offered the chance to do so for just a little piece of your soul, who among us would know where that blurry line got dark enough to say "no, too far"?

Because none of us have heard of the people who chose to not play, though we've probably ridden with them.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Games Health Food History Theater & Plays Monty Python Sports Fashion Pedal Power Bicycling Economics ]

Worth noting: All of the farmers I know are in favor of Prop 37. All of them. Despite what the Monsanto ads say.

"I can never unknow that this is a thing", and now you too are forever saddled with the knowledge that there is a Sexy Vampire Menstrual Pad

Tweets mentioning Vice Presidential Debates in KY. If that were "jelly", I'd watch it.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Movies ]

ReFacebook Tara Calishain:

Dear Snoop: DUDE WHAT THE HELL

Snoop Dogg Debuts Parody Music Video “Pocket Like It’s Hot” an Ode to the HOT POCKETS® Brand

[ related topics: Music Current Events Video ]

In the pre-debate run-up, Columbine has been Twittering off YouTube videos of music by one Thurl Ravenscroft. Not doing anything for me, there's obviously some nostalgia component, but...

Thurl Ravenscroft: Children's Day at the Morgue. Suddenly I like the guy.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Music Movies ]

Discussion about tuning and A440 vs A424 made me realize that classical musicians always take things further. Rockers are content with 420.

[ related topics: Community ]

An Engineering Approach to Wind Chime Design And Build.

Mostly because Charlene and I have talked a couple of times about building a real door bell...

[ related topics: Graphic Design ]

I'm in Portland this week for State of the Map US and NACIS. Since I'm not travelling officially for the US Geological Survey, I can't use either the government-owned laptop or netbook I usually carry. And since I haven't owned a laptop myself since 2006, I was at a quandry. I really didn't want to buy a new laptop just yet, so I dug out the vintage Toshiba Satellite that I paid about $300 for in 2006 and my wife retired a year ago, upgraded the RAM and put in an SSD with a fresh install of Ubuntu 12.04 Desktop. I also added an IOGear Bluetooth adapter, a generic USB 801.11n adapter, and a replacement battery.

So far everything is really snappy. The SSD means boot times are super fast. It also means swap space is a little more reasonable. Chrome is pretty much unusable but, oddly, Chromium works just fine. I will stick to Firefox for now.

I have QGIS setup and my Python develoment environment. If this machine proves to sluggish, I have Remmina remote desktop setup to connect over SSH to a virtual machine at home with more horse power.

This is an experiment because I haven't gone for this long in a Linux-only environment in over a decade. It's great to see how well Linux works with common hardware. And love or hate Unity, Ubuntu is a huge improvement over the Linux desktop environments I've used in the past.

[ related topics: Free Software Interactive Drama Wireless Open Source Nature and environment Invention and Design History moron Space & Astronomy Monty Python Shoes Cryptography Maps and Mapping Marriage Python ]

Yes, it's very nice that you used the hip cool module to generate that web form, now how the F#^%k do I change the fields based on the data?

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising ]

Another reminder that the Cold War sometimes got very hot: in The Telegraph of London a story about HMS Conqueror, the only atomic submarine to ever sink an enemy vessel. Apparently a few weeks after it sent General Belgrano, pride of the Argentine fleet to the bottom, it was engaged in stealing a towed-array sonar system from under the nose of the Soviets.

[ related topics: History Current Events ]

New signage seen on the London Underground.

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

The new @sonicnet employee food vending area is called "S-Mart". That's right: "Shop smart. Shop S-Mart." No boomsticks there, though.

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

ABC News: Cross in the Closet: Straight Christian Lives a Year as Gay Man. Is an article about the new book from Timothy Kurek. Looks like it might be fascinating, and there are one or two evangelical Christians I know who have had enough experiences with opening their horizons that they might be ready for it.

[ related topics: Religion Books Sexual Culture Health Invention and Design Current Events ]

The problem with being bald is that I'm completely incapable of sporting a punk-as-hell mohawk.

The junk Grace Quan and scow schooner Alma are visiting Petaluma today

[ related topics: Photography ]

Among Petaluma events today: Morning, local politics; afternoon: butchering/charcuterie demo. Yes: Laws *and* sausages.

[ related topics: Politics Food Government ]

Cotati Octoberfest: German oompah band playing "Arrivederci Roma".

A side of Petaluma you probably haven't seen

[ related topics: Photography ]

Turn around point, upper Petaluma River

[ related topics: Photography ]

The Alma heads out of downtown Petaluma, past the Ghiardelli Barn, towards the Marina.

[ related topics: Photography History ]

Interesting: New York Magazine: The Man Who Had HIV and Now Does Not. Basically, guy on AIDS drug cocktail for long-term maintenance came down with leukemia, managed to arrange bone marrow transplant from donor with mutation delta 32, disables CCR₅, an immune system cell receptor which is a pathway for AIDS infection, now has no detectable HIV in his system.

The process is too expensive for AIDS patients generally, but this has re-invigorated AIDS and HIV research.

[ related topics: Health Invention and Design New York ]

Shadow forwarded along DIY Urbanism: No Permits, No Red Tape, No Going Back. Looks at Mike Lydon and Street Plans Cooperative, the Build A Better Block movement in Dallas, and more.

A few weeks ago, I helped a friend install a dock down in Tiburon, and ended up with a dock float. Today I went down and put the boat in the Petaluma River at the end of "F" street, a nightmare of slippery rocks and muck. Later, I gave the dock float to the Friends of the Petaluma River at the Petaluma River Heritage Center, and it was all I could do to not keep it, build a dock, and go float an unpermitted dock at the end of F street.

Discussion when I dropped it off suggested that at some point I may be able to find some co-conspirators...

[ related topics: Bay Area Boats Machinery Community ]

Wat - Destroy All Software Talks. A little bit on JavaScript.

I'm laughing so hard I need to run to the bathroom.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

RT Rob Kroese ‏@robkroese

I'll know that I have a grasp on quantum physics when I stop giggling at "double slit experiment."

The Atlantic: Dark Social: We Have the Whole History of the Web Wrong

Sure, Facebook is 22% of inbound links to The Atlantic, Twitter is 11%, but there's another 56+% of links coming in that aren't so easily classified. Communication without the big-ass centralized context of modern "social media" is big.

[ related topics: Journalism and Media ]

Yes, Microsoft has found another way to tax computers: Linux Foundation UEFI Secure Boot System for Open Source

[ related topics: Free Software Politics Humor Microsoft Open Source moron Current Events Journalism and Media Shoes ]

Trying to maintain code which uses yet another "make the simple stuff different and the hard stuff inconceivable" framework. #killmenow

Frameworks should tie languages/technologies together, not add an additional layer which also needs to be understood.

Very worrying: RT: Marnen Laibow-Koser ‏@marnen

New TSA sign, seen at DCA today. This one's kind of worrisome. Any lawyers know if it's even legal? http://pic.twitter.com/DZ7QAecU

Seems like the TSA is getting very very worried that anyone's documenting their actual working methods.

Now that The NYCPD's "stop and frisk" intimidations are being caught on tape, it's time that we enshrine the right to record law enforcement and "security" operations in legislation, and it would be nice to build the social momentum to put that right in the Constitution.

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Interactive Drama Robotics Invention and Design Law Work, productivity and environment Law Enforcement Civil Liberties Embedded Devices Video ]

RT @Medley:

Listen here, young fella', I don't have TIME to go to STORES and deal with CLERKS. Just. No. It's 2012. Dropship that sucker. Now.

Saved here because I've been having the "retail is dead" discussion with people. It's all just crystal-ball-ism, but I'm running into this attitude more and more.

[ related topics: Sports Community ]

Mobile web developers, what's the first thing visitors to your site are going to look for? Yes: "Go to full desktop site". Make it prominent

Via Erin through http://i.imgur.com/1yQM1.png , original source unknown.

[ related topics: Photography ]

San Francisco's attempt to cut down on littering and trashing the city has hit a legal roadblock: Yellow Pages ruling endangers SF ban. Notable for this comment by the industry guy trying to convince us that http://www.yellowpagesoptout.com works:

"We're trying to get phone books into the hands of people that want them and not to the people that don't," Norton said. "This decision isn't going to change any of that."

To which I can only say: "Hahahahahaha! Bullshit." We've signed up there, multiple times, we still get your trash in the front yard.

We've also called and emailed to stop "delivery" (throwing in our front yard) of the "free" advertiser supplement from the Press Democrat. It stopped for a few weeks.

Assholes. Time to start returning this trash to the advertisers who support it. By wrapping bricks in it.

[ related topics: Books Bay Area Law Consumerism and advertising California Culture ]

Anyone out there involved in publishing: non-fiction, memoir with some thriller/modern-crime? I know someone who could use advice...

A massive and illegal geoengineering project has been detected off Canada’s west coast.

I'm getting kind of a Lex Luthor supervillain feel off this: This is what happens when someone aware of only a few of the issues goes off and does some giant project to change the world forever.

While everyone else is afraid of bad guys with suitcase nukes, we've got people who think they're going to be heroes massively mucking about with poorly understood ecosystems.

[ related topics: California Culture ]

Howl. Okay, first, see this rant one Richard Neill posted to the "Bodyform" Facebook page about being misled about periods, menstruation, and feminine hygiene products.

Then go watch this YouTube video wherein Bodyform responds.

If they faked "Richard", holy crap that's a company willing to take risks with their brand. If they didn't, then I'm really impressed by their ability to roll with the humor and one-up it.

Via Salon.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Humor Sexual Culture Movies Robotics Embedded Devices Salon magazine Video ]

When the searches lead to web pages titled "...an elegant ... framework", but don't contain answers to the simple freakin' question.

Addendum: Okay, any Perl jocks used Rose::HTML::Form and Template Toolkit? I've got a *simple* sub-form question that I can't figure out.

http://www.romneytaxplan.com/

Snicker. Cute, one joke site, but still... snicker.

Shadow passed along Barack Obama vs Mitt Romney. Epic Rap Battles Of History Season 2. (YouTube), but I think Frank Sinatra vs Freddie Mercury - Epic Rap Battles of History Season 2 (YouTube) was better: I've seen a lot of Freddie Mercury covers and impersonators, and this one captured that certain dangerous sexy thing he had going on pretty well.

[ related topics: Ziffle Movies tolkien Astronomy ]

Oh, the Schadenfreude! Oracle's 72 foot America's Cup catamaran capsized and is being pulled by the current out the Golden Gate Bridge.

[ related topics: Bay Area Databases ]

There aren't many advantages to having given up drinking, but not watching the debates is one of them.

Hey, Larry is blogging again. Hint, hint to the rest of y'all who are givin' it away for free to DiaFaceTwitTentWhateverSpace

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

That satisfying feeling where you watch Windows shut down for the last time before wiping the drive and installing Linux.

[ related topics: Free Software Microsoft Movies Open Source ]

One of the advantages of abstaining from alcohol is that I can't watch the debates.

But I did see some of the blow-back from Twitter.

• http://bindersfullofwomen.tumblr.com/
• https://twitter.com/RomneyBinders
• RT @genehack: "Obama hits on 47% - CHUG MOTHERFUCKERS."
• Too many "Bingo"s to mention.
• RT @TSAGov: "Honestly, this debate is pointless. Regardless of who wins, you have four more years of #TSA. #Swag"

[ related topics: John S Jacobs-Anderson Movies ]

Love the noir introduction to the Dreamhost October newsletter.

Hat tip to Tom Negrino.

Washington Post: Paul Gionfriddo: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.

Mental illnesses cost as much as cancers to treat each year, and the National Institute for Mental Health notes that serious mental illnesses can reduce life expectancy by more than 25 years. That reduction is almost twice the 13 years of life lost, on average, to all cancers combined. ...

[ related topics: Health ]

NPR article with video on a University of Maryland team's work towards the Sikorsky human powered helicopter prize.

[ related topics: Aviation Work, productivity and environment Education Video Aviation - Helicopters ]

RT Sheeri K. Cabral @sheeri:

If corporations are people, how can I put one on the registry of sex offenders?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture ]

RFb Larae Meadows:

"Philosophy has been wrestling with this for centuries" does not mean anything. We should rename philosophy pre-science.

[ related topics: Philosophy ]

Prop 37 opponents have loopholes in their loopholes: http://www.earthisland.org/jou...ts_have_holes_in_their_loopholes

Java gets more patches than an Eagle Scout.

Upgrade if you use it, disable it if you don't.

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

Nancy Folbre in the New York Times Economix blog: Contraceptive Economics.

Republicans typically embrace cost-benefit analysis. But they seem reluctant to accept its application to the impact of contraceptive access on public health. ...

[ related topics: Weblogs Health Invention and Design Currency New York Economics ]

The Bay Area's Clipper RFID transit payment card payment history, and therefore the user's transit movement, is subpoenaable:

“Absent a subpoena or a search warrant, we would not turn over any information,” Goodwin said.

Transit riders can remain anonymous if they pay for a Clipper card in cash and do not register it, he noted. People who don’t register stand to lose any money on their card if it is lost, stolen or stops working.

Careful out there, kids. And, yeah, it's really convenient to have my Clipper card debit my credit card when it runs out, but I'm wondering if I should go back to cash, just because.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Privacy Work, productivity and environment Law Enforcement California Culture Currency Public Transportation RFID ]

Comfort Me With Offal:

From James Beard Award winner Ruth Bourdain comes the definitive manual for eating, drinking, and fondling food.

See, for instance, Exclusive Excerpt: “A Zest for Life” in which the author describes smoking mozzarella with Mario Batali.

Snicker.

Via nonelvis

[ related topics: Drugs Food ]

Using PDF for electronic documents is like trying to build a mechanical horse to keep your buggies relevant in the age of the automobile.

[ related topics: Automobiles ]

When the authorities talk about a "suspicious package", they never tell you what the package was suspicious of.

How much is a Facebook "Like" worth to a company?, links to a Syncapse study that claims $136.38.

Syncapse has adopted a unique approach to understanding the financial returns that social members on Facebook provide to a business.

Okay. I pointed out earlier this month that Facebook revenues this year are about $5 billion, and that a billion people a month use Facebook, giving Facebook revenues of just under $.42/user/month.

So Syncapse is claiming that a Facebook fan is worth 327.3 Facebook-user-months.

If this is true, the Facebook is doing a lousy-ass job of extracting value.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Current Events Heinlein Archival ]

Brennen has some interesting musings on his personal trajectory

This thing about the Internet: It too used to seem vast, something like the pages of a book with no discernible beginning or end. Or rather, something like the space inside of the experience of a book, of many books. It used to be a frontier, an unknown city full of the sound of construction, a series of doors opening onto strange corridors, a shifting surface through which other minds could be seen moving in realtime, could be approached and known.

But go read the whole thing, because there's something big that's been lost in the shift to "social" media, Twitter, Facebook, and in the dominance of the web by commerce rather than ideas.

And that malaise, I think, is echoed in the larger society, where we've lost a sense of a larger direction, of new frontiers to be explored. Some of that is that the 'net has revealed that most people are idiots and we as a species are likely to blindly march forward into a mass extinction event, but... well... on the third hand...

[ related topics: Books Invention and Design Space & Astronomy Journalism and Media Net Culture Machinery Fabrication Model Building ]

Why am I pessimistic about the future of humanity? Well, Dave came up with one this morning. I'll go backwards from him.

First, check out the Coursera terms of service:

Notice for Minnesota Users

Coursera has been informed by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education that under Minnesota Statutes (136A.61 to 136A.71), a university cannot offer online courses to Minnesota residents unless the university has received authorization from the State of Minnesota to do so. If you are a resident of Minnesota, you agree that either (1) you will not take courses on Coursera, or (2) for each class that you take, the majority of work you do for the class will be done from outside the State of Minnesota.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has more, and Slate has still more, but, yes, seeing that taxi drivers and building contractors are able to keep prices up and quality low by artificially restricting entry into the market, Minnesota universities have gotten into the game.

It's not like you need more evidence that higher education is more shakedown scam than legitimate learning opportunity, but there you have it.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Games Work, productivity and environment Education Economics ]

Hey, Santa Rosa: I've got some time to kill between the end of work and "Trust" at the SRJC at 8PM. Post-work meetup, anyone?

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

In forums that include both kinksters and nerds, I need to read carefully: "latex" is not "LaTeX".

[ related topics: Community ]

Inside Higher Ed: (Mis)Judging Female Scientists. A University of Chicago professor posted on his Facebook feed:

"My impression of the Conference of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans. There are thousands of people at the conference and an unusually high concentration of unattractive women. The super model types are completely absent. What is going on? Are unattractive women particularly attracted to neuroscience? Are beautiful women particularly uninterested in the brain? No offense to anyone..”

This is a run-down of some of the reactions. I particularly liked On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess: What We Learn When Professorly d00ds Take to Facebook…:

Now, Dr. Maestripieri’s comments will certainly come as no great shock to the women who read them. That’s because those of us who have been around the conference scene for a while know that this is pretty par for the course. There’s not just sekrit, hidden sexism in academia. A lot of it is pretty overt. And many of us know about the pockets of perv-fest that can occur at scientific meetings. ...

[ related topics: Invention and Design Current Events Education Conferences Hurricane Katrina ]

Tomorrow: Mole & Tamale contest-dinner http://petalumaartscenter.org/...ule-2012-ENGLISH-FINAL.indd_.pdf followed by Rocky Horror http://www.petaluma360.com/art...e=-Let-s-do-the-time-warp-again- Petaluma rocks!

[ related topics: Community Rocky Horror Picture Show ]

Br J Sports Med doi:10.1136/bjsm.2011.085662, or Television viewing time and reduced life expectancy: a life table analysis:

Results The amount of TV viewed in Australia in 2008 reduced life expectancy at birth by 1.8 years (95% uncertainty interval (UI): 8.4 days to 3.7 years) for men and 1.5 years (95% UI: 6.8 days to 3.1 years) for women. Compared with persons who watch no TV, those who spend a lifetime average of 6 h/day watching TV can expect to live 4.8 years (95% UI: 11 days to 10.4 years) less. On average, every single hour of TV viewed after the age of 25 reduces the viewer's life expectancy by 21.8 (95% UI: 0.3–44.7) min. This study is limited by the low precision with which the relationship between TV viewing time and mortality is currently known.

Via NY Times Well Blog: Get Up. Get Out. Don’t Sit., via JWZ: Great news, everybody! Television is only twice as bad for you as smoking!.

This is where my "I don't have a TV" smug becomes unbearable: Bite me.

[ related topics: Drugs User Interface Weblogs Technology and Culture Movies Theater & Plays Current Events Television Gambling Archival Furniture ]

Someone on Facebook posted a re-statement of Pascal's wager:

I would rather live my life as though there is a god and die to find out there isn't, than life my life as though there isn't and die to find out there are.

The fallacies are obvious, and I've been trying to rephrase things a bit to post without being totally offensive. Right now I'm headed towards:

I would rather live my life as though there were elder gods and die to find out there aren't, than life my life as though there aren't and die to find out there are. Will you be among those eaten first?

I don't think I'm there yet.

[ related topics: Religion Political Correctness Theater & Plays hubris ]

Elf Sternberg: Jon Stewart proposes a policy that we cannot sell.

Capitalism isn't good, in this conservative formula, because it generates wealth. It's good because it forces people to live precarious, desperate, "disciplined" lives. It forces people into an ascetic self-denial, and fearful of the consquences of "paganistic self-expression" (as ur-conservative Isaiah Berlin called it).

Yes. That's what the modern conservative movement, with its alliance between ascetic branches of Christianity and the looter branch of wealth, has become.

[ related topics: Religion tolkien Theater & Plays ]

Hey, can someone out there remind me of the big study which showed the ability to create a causal explanation for contradictory "facts"?

A little CSS'll take that server error right off of that page...

"Trust" at the SRJC Student Center. Tomorrow 2 and 8, Sunday at 2. Very good production. Recommended!

[ related topics: Theater & Plays Work, productivity and environment ]

Chuck Marohn has a couple of debate questions he'd like to see asked of the Presidential candidates. I would too.

If you hang out with any Republican supporters right now, the cries of "What about Bengazi?" have become louder than the fringe progressives asking about WTC Building #7.

Washington Post: David Ignatius: CIA documents supported Susan Rice’s description of Benghazi attacks.

In short: Where there are differing stories, that's 'cause the CIA supplied 'em.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics moron ]

Kottke: Twitter, Facebook, and old new media is Jason riffing on Andrew Sullivan's observation that:

... Which is why, I believe, institutional brands will still be at a disadvantage online compared with personal ones. There's a reason why Drudge Report and the Huffington Post are named after human beings. It's because when we read online, we migrate to read people, not institutions. Social media has only accelerated this development, as everyone with a Facebook page now has a mini-blog, and articles or posts or memes are sent by email or through social networks or Twitter.

[ related topics: Weblogs Invention and Design Journalism and Media ]

Go. Now. Listen to the latest episode of Planet Money: Why Preschool Can Save The World http://www.npr.org/blogs/money...why-preschool-can-save-the-world

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Currency ]

Bob McWhirter: Remote Worker, Distributed Team. I'd go further than he does: It's entirely possible to have an entirely on-site workforce, and not have a team.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Great rundown of the administration's reaction to the Bengazi incident: http://www.motherjones.com/kev...ng-through-fog-benghazi-brief-qa

[ related topics: Music ]

Wood porn! David C. Roy - Wood That Works - Kinetic wall sculptures in wood.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Woodworking ]

"You're not a nerd, geeks aren't sexy and you don't "fucking love" science."

If you think geeks are so sexy or cool, bang one. Go to any university and find a computer or physics lab at 2AM and take your pick. Until then, go commit cultural fraud someplace else ...

Via qDot.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Sociology Education ]

Science!

University of British Columbia - Cycling in Cities Research Program: our injury study:

We found that route infrastructure does affect the risk of cycling injuries. The most commonly observed route type was major streets with parked cars and no bike infrastructure. It had the highest risk. In comparison, the following route types had lower risks (starting with the safest route type):

• cycle tracks (bike lanes physically separated from motor vehicle traffic) alongside major streets (about 1/10 the risk)
• residential street bike routes (about 1/2 the risk)
• major streets with bike lanes and no parked cars (about 1/2 the risk)
• off-street bike paths (about 6/10 the risk)

Note particularly the graph of route preference vs route safety, MUPs appear to be less safe than major streets, but separated cycle tracks are safest.

via DC Streetsblog: Study: Protected Bike Lanes Reduce Injury Risk Up to 90 Percent

[ related topics: Bay Area Software Engineering Sports Education Pedal Power Bicycling ]

Fairy Tales for 20 somethings (Via MeFi)

RT Rebecca Blood @rebeccablood:

"Governor" RT @anildash: I need to find a business-appropriate way to say "this mf right here...". Suggestions?

RT Rory Mo-Ran @roryontour

Why do porn sites have a share to Google+ option? I don't want my friends knowing I use Google+

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Exploiting a hole in NTFS to build a Windows "USB stick of death".

[ related topics: Microsoft ]

Yesterday I retweeted Andrew Clay Shafer (@littleidea):

arguing 'cloud' is cheaper for baseline capacity over anything but the shortest time frame betrays a failing in basic arithmetic

Which is cute, but not strictly true: There's also the case where adminning your machines has fixed costs, but you're only using fractional capabilities.

But it also got me thinking: Yesterday I was listening to the Petaluma City Council deliberating over an extension and modification of the garbage collection contract. With the great rush towards "privatization" in government services, on well established processes, where do the efficiencies come from? Clearly those who want to take over the process from the city think they can run it more efficiently and take the profits (and those who push for this think there are these opportunities), but I suspect that most often those profits are things that involve either quality of service or ability to respond to changing circumstances, or similar.

In unredlate news, Amazon's EC2 cloud service has been having troubles again...

[ related topics: Books Software Engineering moron Law Current Events Mathematics Pop Culture ]

Talking beluga whale named Noc is revealed. Audio link here.

The paper is Current Biology: Spontaneous human speech mimicry by a cetacean

[ related topics: Music Nature and environment Video ]

A neighboring town, Cotati, currently has a measure on the ballot to ban roundabouts.

The Economist: Circular infrastructure: What goes around talks about why roundabouts are such a good thing.

[ related topics: Economics ]

I was 10 minutes in the dentist's office, on the edge of the city, when the drugs began to take hold. Need a lawyer and a convertible...

[ related topics: Drugs Health Law ]

Hard to keep track of candidate transgressions, but robocalls are a big strike against.

Medical reports are claiming that the hyper-caffienated energy drink Monster Drink can jazz you up so much it could kill you. It is unclear if afficianados of such beverages consider that a bug or a feature.

[ related topics: Antidepressants Biology Coffee ]

Working from home. House being repainted. Dentist visit today. Somehow the grinding and scraping inside and out all just came together.

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

Boarding pass bar codes contain unencrypted information about which security screening a passenger will receive:

“If you have a team of four people [planning an attack], the day before the operation when you print the boarding passes, whichever guy is going to have the least screening is going to be the one who’ll take potentially problematic items through security,” said Soghoian, now a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union. “If you know who’s getting screened before you walk into the airport, you can make sure the right guy is carrying the right bags.

“The entire security system depends on the randomness,” he said. “If people can do these dry runs, the system is vulnerable. We at the ACLU are not fans of profiling — we think it doesn’t work and has civil liberties issues. The watch-list approach doesn’t ensure security.”

Via How the TSA has, again, failed on simple technology.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Movies Aviation Work, productivity and environment ]

Sometime things I see at work confuse me.

[ related topics: Photography Work, productivity and environment ]

Via Violet Impudence comes disneyworldwonders.tumblr.com on Mulan:

Can I just say that I think this is the way Mulan should appear int the parks. In the beginning of the movie they make it very clear that the dress she wears to meet the matchmaker is not comfortable nor does it represent her personality. She spends the whole of the film proving that she is not a prize to be won or just a pawn to be married off at earliest convenience. She proves her worth in this outfit. She saves China in this outfit. She falls in love in this outfit. She risks her life, makes her strongest friendships, and changes the entire country IN THIS OUTFIT. Then they have her walk around the park in the same outfit she wore in the first scene of the movie and I think it is really negative toward her character. That is not who she is.

Yes.

[ related topics: Photography Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Movies Nature and environment Sociology Archival Marriage ]

Tara pointed me to the Distributed Wind Policy Comparison Tool (Flash) by way of KCET: Rooftop Wind Power for Your Home? New Web Tool Can Help.

Unfortunately it's just a state-based look at tax and government economic policy around small-scale windpower, not geographically detailed enough to be useful in telling what your "wind class" is. But it does suggest that I'd be paying $.42/kWh for wind power if I put up a turbine.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Invention and Design Bay Area moron Current Events Economics Energy Monitoring ]

Troy Hunt ‏@troyhunt

Nice: Lance Armstrong bug - when the code never fails a test, but evidence shows it's not behaving as it should.

By way of John.

[ related topics: John S Jacobs-Anderson Television ]

Texas Attorney General warns UN poll watchers that they'll be arrested if they come within 100' of a polling place.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Law ]

As if the New York Police Department threatening, harassing and shaking down pedestrians without cause, and terrorizing those who'd try to expose corrupt practices (Thanks, m, for the reminder on Adrian Schoolcraft), and using undercover informants to attempt to bait people into making statements that could be taken out of context as incriminating isn't enough...

NYPD Officer Accused Of Plotting To Kidnap, Cook Women.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design Food Law Enforcement New York Video ]

The New Yorker: Brainstorming Doesn't Really Work:

The first empirical test of Osborn’s brainstorming technique was performed at Yale University, in 1958. Forty-eight male undergraduates were divided into twelve groups and given a series of creative puzzles. The groups were instructed to follow Osborn’s guidelines. As a control sample, the scientists gave the same puzzles to forty-eight students working by themselves. The results were a sobering refutation of Osborn. The solo students came up with roughly twice as many solutions as the brainstorming groups, and a panel of judges deemed their solutions more “feasible” and “effective.” ...

Continued reading at least 'til the point where they talk about debate and criticism increasing the productive output of such sessions far more than acceptance of all suggestions.

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

Drunk usability testing.

Trying to figure out logistics for Baja whale watching in early January. Anyone got experience?

Forbes: Why Communities Should Decide What Telecom Networks They Have:

Why is this happening? One reason is that across much of the nation, commercial broadband companies are using their political and economic clout to stifle competition, particularly from municipalities. Individually and through trade groups and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the industry is bent on shutting down existing publicly-owned broadband systems and blocking the development of new ones.

When Forbes is defending public utilities against protectionist companies...

[ related topics: Politics broadband Invention and Design moron Community Economics ]

Your giggle video of the day: Magician Rich Ferguson doing a Halloween "head drop" trick on the streets of San Luis Obispo.

[ related topics: Humor Movies Video ]

Pedestrian Observations: FRA Stonewalling. One some of the Federal Railroad Administration rules that are making passenger rail very difficult to implement:

The section about the FRA’s approach to safety regulation is full of false claims. Let’s start from the easiest: it is completely false that American trucks are heavier than European trucks. ...

As @TheGreaterMarin tweeted: "Contact your rep about FRA regulations, which keep passenger rail to a minimum"

[ related topics: Machinery Trains ]

We know that automobiles kill far more people than firearms, but what about when we restrict that sample of people to just police officers? Law enforcement deaths (2002-2011) from Auto Crashes (470) + Struck by Vehicle (140) > Shot (570)

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Automobiles ]

Ever wish you could do what you did when you were 20-something or 30-something and disappear for a couple of weeks, focused exclusively on exactly one project, eating and sleeping as needed with no "normal" schedule and complete disregard for everyone and anything else. If I disappear (and am more anti-social that normal) in a few weeks, you'll know it finally got to me and I jumped into that abyss.

I've had a few days lately of incredible focused productivity with few interupions. It feels luxurious and am craving more.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Ear worm: "...the joker ain't the only fool..." Curse you, @robkroese! Other news: his novel "Mercury Rests" starts out strong.

[ related topics: virus moron Astronomy Current Events ]

Larry's got a little look at the Atlanta area seeing a spike in public corruption cases. One of the things that strikes me every time I get my prejudices confirmed on this is that part of prosperity is building a consistently applied playing field, that the difference between a first world country and a third world country is largely public official accountability and a level playing field.

My experience of the deep south is that those traits aren't as prevalent as they are in more economically successful regions.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

A couple o' quick links:

• Kill Zone: Et Tu, Amazon: An author's fan reports that Amazon is removing the fan's reviews of the books, and further, threatening to remove the books from the online store if he tried to contact them again. Huh?
• John Scalzi: A Fan Letter To Certain Conservative Politicians. Warning: Rape triggers abound. But he says it powerfully.
• Dori looks at Windows 8 and concludes that Microsoft doesn't get it.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Humor Books Microsoft moron ]

What if only the good guys are bad guys in their own mind?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

A look into the future from 1969: We will all have picturephones, and the miniskirt will survive.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Public Services ]

#BaldForBieber #NotReally

Billboard: 'Bald for Bieber' Hoax a Massive #Fail.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Porn PR guy (@bsgpr) on my Twitter feed has a 4Square check-in from "Virgin Management". Unsure as to whether this is a R. Branson property.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

From Tara: The top seven alternatives to the Google Maps API.

It muddles up a couple of things, the difference between tile/data servers and APIs and whatnot, but I want to read that a bit more closely, see if there are things I'm not using as I could.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Maps and Mapping ]

Confession: when I hear academics talk about "cross-disciplinary submissions" I get kinda ... flustered. #thoughtthiswasamathpodcast

Ballot is in the mail. Y'all can stop campaigning and doing political status updates now.

[ related topics: Politics moron ]

Alarmingly Useless: The Case for Banning Car Alarms in New York City. In which it is pointed out that thieves are deliberately setting off car alarms to cover the sound of breaking glass as cars are stolen.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Law Automobiles New York ]

RT Eivind Uggedal Eivind Uggedal ‏@uggedal

Screencast on Linux: ffmpeg -f x11grab -s $(xrandr | grep '\*\+' | awk '{print $1}') -i :0.0 -vcodec libx264 -sameq screencast.mp4

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source ]

Dear @OrchardSupply: The constant barrage of next-weekend coupons just reinforces that should be ordering online instead of timing purchases

Keith Knight on the Apple ruling

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Apple Computer Humor ]

Fence gate, in progress. Charlene and I don't know "simple".

[ related topics: Photography ]

Oh, *that*'s what the fireworks in a residential neighborhood were about last night. Seems some pro athletes did what they got paid to do.

So when they calculate the the economic value of a pro sports franchise, I assume they include the buses burned and windows broken, right?

[ related topics: Microsoft Economics Public Transportation ]

Listening to the latest Planet Money. Solid reminder that donating to issues advertising is stronger than to candidates or parties.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Consumerism and advertising Pop Culture Currency ]

Torn between linking to all the reviews of Windows 8 and Surface on my blog, and knowing that any attention rewards Microsoft mediocrity.

[ related topics: Humor Weblogs Microsoft moron ]

When The Doctor Says This Won’t Hurt A Bit — And Incredibly, It’s True.

But what happens is, I always wonder, where does the notion of competence come in? In other words, we are strangers. I’m coming into a room, you don’t know how competent I am, and I’m going to do something to your child. And I think some of the granting of competence is the change in your child’s emotional state…

[ related topics: Health ]

Skud: No, I still don't want to work for Google. On corporate culture, the Google+ #nym policy, recruiters, and...

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

Wow. Clay Bennett's editorial cartoon in the Chattanooga Times Free Press nails it. http://www.timesfreepress.com/...gop-hanger-cartoon-clay-bennett/

[ related topics: Current Events Chattanooga ]

The bus ride has me thinking "I want to to read and respond to these blogs offline", then realized I was reinventing NNTP. Sigh.

[ related topics: Public Transportation ]

You don't know. I could be in the control group.

"Politics envelop council race". Uh, possibly the most obvious headline *ever*? http://www.petaluma360.com/art...le=Politics-envelop-council-race

[ related topics: Politics Community ]

Snicker: Dumbest tweet of the year award goes to Jonathan Martin at Politico:

The D.C. bubble is filled with the dumbest people pretending to be smart this side of a Davos conference.

Hat tip to Steve.

[ related topics: Conferences ]

Rescue of a model airplane using a helicopter.

[ related topics: Movies Aviation Toys Aviation - Helicopters ]

Catching a drone with a helicopter, in mid-air.

[ related topics: Aviation - Helicopters ]

Idly wondering if the @ComfortablySmug tweets and photoshopped misinfo pics are mainstream media false-flag operations...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Journalism and Media ]

Antioch University students pay for online courses provided through Coursera from University of Pennsylvania, for which the professors get some small pittance.

How long do you think that many rent collectors will continue to be able to suck off that revenue stream?

[ related topics: Current Events Education ]

FEMA head during Katrina criticizes Obama's handling of Hurricane Sandy, via Bush’s FEMA Director During Katrina Criticizes Obama For Responding To Sandy Too Quickly.

[ related topics: Politics Hurricane Katrina ]

Iä! Iä! Cthulhu Fhtagn. Or: Physicist writes Possible Bubbles of Spacetime Curvature in the South Pacific, or an exploration showing that H.P. Lovecraft's Call of Cthulhu could have happened.

The most wonderful thing in the world, in our opinion, is the ability of the human mind to correlate many seemingly unrelated pieces of information into a jubilant whole. We are born ignorant, imprisoned by the islands of our personal experience; but intelligence, logic, and diligent study are like glorious seaworthy vessels which allow us to travel boundless and brilliant oceans. The great ambition of science is the piecing together of dissociated knowledge to create hard tempered theories, and then the bravely facing of their philosophical implications in order to begin the process anew. In this way we have climbed towards the brilliant truth, and have lifted our human state into the glory of an age of enlightenment.

Via MeFi

[ related topics: Invention and Design California Culture Philosophy ]

MeyeNCRAFT Part 1: Exploring Minecraft Using Only Eye Movements (YouTube).

[ related topics: Movies ]

You know what I really love? Applying the same operation to 14 items, in a GUI. Click. Scroll. Click. Scroll. Click. Scroll.

Went from the election to hurricane Sandy to Disney/Lucasfilm in 2 days. What'll be the next disaster to swamp my social media feed?

[ related topics: Journalism and Media ]

What Will Be the Most Memorable Image from Sandy? has a few videos, but then asks a good question:

All of which makes me wonder, Why don’t we have this much control all the time? Why do we exhibit our power over the system only during moments of meteorological crisis?

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Journalism and Media Television ]

Looking at the pictures of flooded NYC subway tunnels got me thinking: Would underground submarine mass transit be cool, or what?

Edit: And wondering if Lex Luthor's hideout got flooded had Columbine send me some great pictures of the old City Hall Subway Station that the lair was a nod to: http://www.jamesmaherphotograp...the-old-city-hall-subway-station

[ related topics: Photography Public Transportation ]

Gimp Monkeys (Vimeo Video). Climbing El Cap with fewer limbs.

"...and then my leg just fell off."

"In the list of reasons to bail, that's probably a pretty good one."

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Video ]

Instead of stopping delivery, tossing those yellow pages straight into recycling bin ups the % of municipal garbage diverted from dump!

Gotta find some good in the fact that YellowPagesOptOut.com doesn't work. Sigh.

U.K. Police Officer on the airline security situation

[ related topics: Aviation Law Enforcement ]

Hey, someone out there recently linked to a study which showed increased sales tax revenues after bike/ped friendly rework. Help me find it?

[ related topics: Politics Bicycling ]

"3 of every 4 states that have enacted a ban on texting while driving have seen crashes actually go up..." http://www.env-econ.net/2012/10/moral-road-hazard.html

Via http://blog.lib.umn.edu/levin0...t/2012/10/moral-road-hazard.html

[ related topics: Ethics ]

Hope for our future: "Breaking Bad will probably inspire more people to pursue chemistry than The Fountainhead inspired people to become architects." http://www.metafilter.com/121424/The-Chem-Coach-Carnival#4655368

And the rest of the links at the top of that MeFi entry are worth reading.

Mina Naguib: The little ssh that (sometimes) couldn't. On tracking down an intermittent SSH connection initiation hang.

[ related topics: Weblogs Cryptography ]

The cynic might suggest that Chris Christie has seen the disaster that is the Romney campaign and is positioning himself for 2016.

Hire someone to sit next to your driver, 3 passenger minimum for cars entering Manhattan: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/l...er_limits_xk4ootzZZyEV3tcW8dke6I

[ related topics: Current Events Automobiles ]

Amused that MeFi currently reports local-to-me users as "...and 707 others", given that I'm in the 707 area code...

[ related topics: Aviation ]