Flutterby™! From 2013-02-01 to 2013-02-28

I need to print this out and post it above every monitor: George H. Heilmeier's Catechism:

A set of questions credited to Heilmeier that anyone proposing a research project or product development effort should be able to answer.[1]

• What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon.
• How is it done today, and what are the limits of current practice?
• What's new in your approach and why do you think it will be successful?
• Who cares?
• If you're successful, what difference will it make?
• What are the risks and the payoffs?
• How much will it cost?
• How long will it take?
• What are the midterm and final "exams" to check for success?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design ]

Nostalgia: "Described by Dan Lyke as "the subset of SGML that Microsoft's developers could understand"" http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/html

[ related topics: Humor Web development Microsoft moron ]

ATF rents storefront, loses machine gun, trashes building, stiffs landlord with utility bills and damages

Gerald Nunziato, a retired ATF agent who supervised undercover operations, said he was shocked at the number of mistakes made during the operation. He questioned the decision to leave the agent's truck at the coffee shop with guns inside.

"That bothers me the most," Nunziato said. "The last thing you want to have is a gun stolen. If that gun is used to shoot someone, that is so personal."

[ related topics: Guns ]

So it has come to this: Linux on a Nspire CAS CX graphing calculator.

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source ]

Not being a TV person, I've only heard of "Parks & Recreation" through mentions by other people, but JWZ linked to a clip mocking molecular gastronomy that I found hilarous.

[ related topics: Weblogs Technology and Culture Movies Robotics Television Embedded Devices ]

Last year I linked to Symantic's Threat Activity Trends which pointed out that church websites were more likely to try to infect you with viruses than porn websites (and that's ignoring infectious memes...).

Now Cisco says that porn, piracy and gambling sites are safer for your web browsing than clicking on online ads.

The highest concentration of online security targets do not target pornography, pharmaceutical, or gambling sites as much as they affect legitimate sites such as search engines, online retailers, and social media. Users are more 21 times more likely to get hit with malware from online shopping sites and 27 more times likely with a search engine than if they'd gone to a counterfeit software site, according to Cisco.

So much like the social media trend of robots following robots, it makes me wonder what the product of this ecosystem is?

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture Health virus Robotics Software Engineering Journalism and Media Machinery Gambling Archival ]

SOAP. AAAAaaaargh! If anyone who was involved in creating this abomination hasn't scrubbed it completely from their resume, the world sucks.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

A/B testing is apparently showing vendors that harassing us sells more product. STOP REWARDING BAD BEHAVIOR, PEOPLE!

Monkey business around Iran's claim to have launched a monkey into space.

Michael Elleman, an Iranian missile expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told The Times today: “There’s been no independent confirmation from outside Iran that the launch did take place, and that the payload contained a monkey, and that the monkey survived.”

And the pictures of the before and after monkey appear to show different animals.

[ related topics: Photography Space & Astronomy Current Events ]

Why does education seem negatively correlated with ability to understand wider consequences of actions?

[ related topics: Education ]

Vice.com: Molly Crabapple: Shooter Boys and At Risk Girls:

When I see a kid getting tattoos, listening to violent songs, smoking weed, or playing games shellacked in gore, I see a kid trying to find their own place in the world. Some place authority, however kind or cruel, hasn't touched.

I rebelled because I was a child and I wanted to be human.

[ related topics: Drugs Politics Games Pop Culture ]

Applebee’s Overnight Social Media Meltdown: A Photo Essay.

[ related topics: Photography Writing Journalism and Media ]

If my social media feed is correct, a bunch of fat white guys in suits are winning the erectile dysfunction ads right now. #betterthingstodo

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Journalism and Media Race ]

Second gate installed

[ related topics: Photography ]

So, wait, it's been 1485 since an English king was killed in battle? C'mon, people, we can do better than this!

Developmental Fluoride Neurotoxicity: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Conclusions: The results support the possibility of an adverse effect of high fluoride exposure on children’s neurodevelopment. Future research should include detailed individual-level information on prenatal exposure, neurobehavioral performance, and covariates for adjustment.

Aside from the meta-analyses, this was looking at studies from China in which there are areas that have well water with fluoride concentrations at greater than 1 mg/L. The EPA's maximum contaminant level goals (MCLG) is 4 mg/L and the secondary standard (SMCL) is 2 mg/L, it looks as though the U.S. national target for drinking water is generally to raise it to .7 mg/L (Fairfax VA water authority, Denver Water), but I'm having trouble finding anything on recommended levels at the a href="http://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/">The CDC's page of fluoridation information.

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

via a lot of places (includeing MeFi): Oliver Sacks on memory and forgetting and plagiarism in the New York Review of Books:

It is startling to realize that some of our most cherished memories may never have happened—;or may have happened to someone else. I suspect that many of my enthusiasms and impulses, which seem entirely my own, have arisen from others’; suggestions, which have powerfully influenced me, consciously or unconsciously, and then been forgotten. ...

[ related topics: Books Invention and Design New York Gambling Archival ]

That XML::Compile::WSDL11 is the best Perl SOAP tool says horrible awful things about SOAP and Perl. #codinghippyhatesSOAP

[ related topics: Web development Content Management Perl Open Source hubris ]

Chronicle of Higher Education: Power of Suggestion. A look into all of those "priming" psychology studies, and that nobody seems to be able to replicate them:

Bargh's study had 92 subjects. So far Cesario has run more than 2,500 through the same experiment. He's found absolutely no relationship between bathing and loneliness. Zero. "It's very worrisome if you have people thinking they can take a shower and they can cure their depression," he says. And he says Bargh's data are troublesome. "Extremely small samples, extremely large effects—;that's a red flag," he says. "It's not a red flag for people publishing those studies, but it should be."

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Skating Education ]

Reserve Bank of Australia looks back at economic predictions over the past 20 years, and finds randomness:

"The reality is that a random walk is what you would get from chance," said Bill Mitchell, a professor of economics at Charles Darwin University.

"The Reserve Bank employs numbers of people on very high pay and what they're admitting now is that their - all of this so-called science - has produced nothing more than what a roll of the dice could produce."

[ related topics: History Current Events Education Economics ]

Ask MeFi: What's the "Bless Your Heart" of your field:

Realization: if we can figure out how to get bored patent clerks, we'll have solved *two* problems!

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Interactive Drama ]

Baseball, cycling, now soccer. The truth is that all professional sports are pro-wrestling, just without the cool costumes.

[ related topics: Sports Pedal Power Bicycling ]

Okay, yeah, it's a Tumblr repost, but it's also quite apropos given some recent experiences with academics:

Via, by way of.

[ related topics: Photography Education Archival ]

You know the part I really love about SAAS and cloud computing? The one where I click, go make coffee, and the page is still loading.

Why the Duluth News Tribune is canceling ‘Blondie’

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Announcing MoSQL: live-replicate data from MongoDB into PostgreSQL.

An obvious solution is to periodically dump your MongoDB database and re-import into PostgreSQL, perhaps using mongoexport. We experimented with this approach, but found ourselves frustrated with the ever-growing time it took to do a full refresh. Even if most of your analyses can tolerate a day or two of delay, occasionally you want to ask ad-hoc questions about "what happened last night?", and it's frustrating to have to wait on a huge dump/load refresh to do that. In response, we built MoSQL, enabling us to keep a real-time SQL mirror of our Mongo data.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs Theater & Plays Databases ]

http://www.wimp.com/birthrate/ - An interesting infoblip on Birth Rate vs. Child Mortality. What really impressed me was how he presented a complex set of statistics in a short story and visual I understood.

[ related topics: Mathematics ]

Sigh: "The requested service is temporarily unavailable. It is either overloaded or under maintenance. Please try later." #grrrr

Everybody into the bunker next Friday, Feb. 15th. Asteroid 2012DA14 will pass by the Earth at a mere 17,000 miles out, closer than the TV satellites in the Clarke orbit.

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

Finger slip o' t' moment: "non-demoninational".

The Justice Department’s chilling ‘targeted killings’ memo

President Obama once promised that “whenever we cannot release certain information to the public for valid national security reasons, I will insist that there is oversight of my actions — by Congress or by the courts.” But on this crucial issue, where his White House has claimed the power to summarily execute U.S. citizens without any outside oversight, Obama has refused to release the rationale.

[ related topics: Politics Law Enforcement Race Real Estate ]

Podcasting Community Faces Patent Troll Threat, EFF Wants To Help.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Free Speech Community ]

Site plagiarizes blog posts then files DMCA takedown on the originals.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

http://plannerspointing.tumblr.com/

Planners Pointing

Whether you are a city planner, a mayor, a traffic engineer, a zoning lawyer or a community member...no matter. When we point, we plan.

[ related topics: Law Community ]

Canadian business groups lobby for right to install spyware on your computer.

Thinking that a critical element of Vendor Relationship Management is an app that helps me remember sexist booths at trade shows.

[ related topics: Television ]

Statement from Megan Phelps-Roper, formerly of the Westboro Baptist Church, on the occasion of leaving that church.

Up until now, our names have been synonymous with “God Hates Fags.” Any twelve-year-old with a cell phone could find out what we did. We hope Ms. Kyle was right about the other part, too, though – that everything sticks – and that the changes we make in our lives will speak for themselves.

Damsel, Arise: A Westboro Scion Leaves Her Church

[ related topics: Religion Wireless ]

Remember when programming was figuring out cool algorithms and data structures, rather than trying to wrangle frameworks into submission?

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

I was musing a bit for the ProjectVRM mailing list.

We talk a lot about personal identity, but as I was reading through the thread on advertising, I started to wonder about how I can be better about tracking vendor identity.

In a business's CRM system, there is, if I'm a high enough value customer, a mechanism for tracking various attributes about me. But in general, it's cheaper to deal with me in aggregate, do A/B testing with a bunch of people and if I happen to be in the group that goes off and finds another vendor, oh well, we'll try again later.

So let's turn this around: What can I do to track vendor behavior? How can I reliably aggregate vendor information to be a better informed customer? In short, how can I game the vendor, the same way they're gaming me?

This started out with me just thinking about how I can, for instance, track Twitter outrage and not do business with the companies that have incredibly sexist booths at CES (which seems to be remarkably coincident with "companies that have booths at CES", but I digress). Seemed like an app that had some notion of vendor identity (and a little bit more further down on the difficulties of that) and let me track various friends responses to that vendor could be useful.

But then I started thinking about how little information I can gather as an individual, so I started brainstorming on the whole notion a little bit more.

A couple of examples of how, for example, we might turn A/B testing on its head: Does this vendor respond with a better deal if I'm aggressive and angry on the phone, or if I'm calm and reasonable? How much under their first stated price should I counter-offer? What other comps am I likely to be able to negotiate from this vendor?

Because I'm happy to volunteer that I am far more likely to be a long-term customer if you don't try "introductory pricing" games on me, and I'll give you my email address in exchange for emailed receipts, and would rather you didn't try to lure me into the store with "rewards" and weekly coupons, but all of these things are largely implemented as part of an overall store identity strategy.

Whereas if I more clearly understand the marketing and branding strategy up-front, "we sell the cheapest possible thing that can be called an X" vs "we sell a mid-range X with a large markup and lots of hand-holding", or "we have high prices but reward long-term customer relationships by making you play coupon games" vs "we have the same price for everybody", or "we're open on Sunday afternoon, and mark up appropriately" vs "we're open 7 to 5 on weekdays to sell to the contractor trade", then I can pick and choose which vendors best match me.

Obviously many vendors are trying to game me, and so would rather not reveal this information to me, but the ones that are trying for a cooperative relationship with me frankly already largely know me on a first-name basis. I'm not as worried about finding ways to find systems to manage my relationship with them.

So how do I build that sort of Vendor Relationship Management?

And then, deeper than that, since so many vendors provide their value primarily by merchandising products designed and made by other manufacturers, how do I give individual products identity so that I can actually differentiate and compare between the $5 and the $50 pliers from one vendor vs the $35 pliers from another?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Games Law Consumerism and advertising Marketing Conferences ]

So that ex-cop who's getting the LAPD to shoot all those innocent bystanders? Guy understands how to leverage resources!

Identifiers are not identity: Do not drive a grey Nissan pickup on SoCal today... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...t-innocent-people_n_2638701.html

[ related topics: Automobiles ]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/zurk/files/

Thank you Zurk!

Thanks to you, my little old Chumby Classic is very happy, and playing music without Chumby.com. Nancy was looking for a small cute music player for her office. and while a Squeezebox Radio would have worked, it is not as cute... and it's $175.

Recycling a Chumby is a great answer.

[ related topics: Books Music ]

Help us map concrete art in Petaluma! Submit pictures of those sidewalk scratchings: http://aquscafe.com/concreteart/

[ related topics: Photography Art & Culture Maps and Mapping ]

Just 'cause high school principals need to know that shenanigans have repercussions: Principal Shirley McNichols of Bear Creek High School pulls student paper over front page article talking about campus safety policies:

"I feel like their reason (for confiscating the paper) because it would incite student panic is unreasonable," said [Bruin Voice Editor-in-Chief Justine] Chang. "I think (administrators) were embarrassed by how they are portrayed in the article."

[ related topics: Children and growing up Nature and environment Current Events Douglas Adams ]

Idea: Passing around keys for ad-hoc short-range networking (ie: home control, sharing) by taking pictures of each other's phone screens.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Jim Bursch observed:

I bet there is a correlation between advertising rate margins and industries in which deceptive practices survive. Many of the highest valued search terms on Google are in the financial industry.

So, how much of the advertising industry is supported by socially wasteful industries practicing deception? How much of Google's revenue is derived from those industries?

One of the ways in which I can tell you that, despite all the metrics and data and click-through rates and what-not, the web has not yet overtaken other forms of advertising is that when I go to LumberJocks, I rarely see woodworking related advertising. I usualy see financial stuff, or other high margin stuff not focused on woodworking. In harsh contrast to what happens when I read Fine Woodworking (and, yes, I read that on the tablet, but it's still print as the primary media). Poynter: The one chart that should scare the hell out of print media points out that advertisers are spending a lot of money on print advertising relative to time spent there, and relatively little on digital advertising relative to time spent there, and yet on digital they're doing more and more annoying and intrusive ads.

And are largely those same "socially wasteful industries practicing deception" that Jim mentions.

Joe Andrieu mentioned:

Identity is simply that by which we are correlated in the recipients mind across points of contact.

We can self-identify as different things, even in different contexts. But the ultimate construction of our identity is in the hands of those who perceive us.

Yes! Joe gets what I was trying to say in my oft-retold "bike shop" story.

[ related topics: Current Events Consumerism and advertising Journalism and Media Machinery Currency Fabrication Bicycling Archival Model Building Woodworking ]

Two from Shadow that I almost hesitate to pass along, because dwelling on the stupidity inherent in humanity, especially when those people are riding bicycles, feels kinda tacky. But schadenfreude won out.

• http://www.break.com/pranks/th...-backwards-while-texting-2413634
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v0oLiWlB-M&feature=youtu.be

[ related topics: Movies Bicycling ]

Virginia House panel OKs a fine on motorists who "door" cyclists. Given that it can't be legal to open a door into a passing car, I'm shocked that such a thing would be necessary and/or considered.

Via Shadow.

[ related topics: Law Automobiles Real Estate ]

Oh, cool: Ending Saturday delivery will shift junk mail earlier in the week. Recycling pick-up is Friday! http://www.forbes.com/sites/ma...back=.gde_83339_member_212236839

[ related topics: Heinlein ]

The Onion: Hungover energy secretary wakes up next to solar panel.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu's Facebook update:

I just want everyone to know that my decision not to serve a second term as Energy Secretary has absolutely nothing to do with the allegations made in this week’s edition of the Onion. While I’m not going to confirm or deny the charges specifically, I will say that clean, renewable solar power is a growing source of U.S. jobs and is becoming more and more affordable, so it’s no surprise that lots of Americans are falling in love with solar.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Sexual Culture Food Archival Furniture Photovoltaics ]

Fred Ross: A farewell to bioinformatics:

My attitude towards the subject after all my work in it can probably be best summarized thus: “Fuck you, bioinformatics. Eat shit and die.”

Bioinformatics is an attempt to make molecular biology relevant to reality. All the molecular biologists, devoid of skills beyond those of a laboratory technician, cried out for the mathematicians and programmers to magically extract science from their mountain of shitty results.

[ related topics: Food Bioinformatics Work, productivity and environment ]

Kezuroukai, Planing Competition Finals 2012.

Amazingly thin wood shavings. How amazingly thin? 9 microns, or about a three-thousandth of an inch.

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Embedded Devices Woodworking ]

RT @whump: "If you're a legitimate American, the body has a way of shutting that drone down." https://twitter.com/whump/statuses/299950956265762816

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Invisible Fences: An Interview with Dean Anderson. On virtual fences, GPS based barriers, remote sensing, and the good and bad of using those technologies in pasture management and cattle raising.

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping Aerial Photography ]

Anyone have speakers and/or a wireless microphone we can borrow for the Chuck Marohn/Strongtowns urbanism chat group on Tuesday evening?

[ related topics: Wireless ]

"A sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from Magic."

[ related topics: Invention and Design Cool Technology ]

Jessamyn: Should it be okay to sue librarians for saying your books are bad?

McMaster's statement on their helping defend Dale Askey from the Edwin Mellen Press lawsuit.

[ related topics: Books ]

Shadow forwarded along Cenodoxus: I REALLY hope this idea doesn't fall through like the death star did, a long Reddit comment on high speed rail which captures a lot of the skepticism I have about it.

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

RT @AlecMuffett:

EPIC HACK OF THE DAY: traceroute 216.81.59.173 # DO THIS NOW /ht @gravax

[ related topics: tolkien ]

Fingers crossed, but it looks like rpi-update may have solved the lock-up problem! Now to solder up some driver circuitry!

The Atlantic: The real Cuban missile crisis. Yet more indication that we've had a bunch of whackjobs whose primary purpose is advancing the military industrial complex and redirecting money in leadership roles.

Indeed, Washington’s self-regard for its credibility was almost certainly the main reason it risked nuclear war over a negligible threat to national security. At the same meeting in which Kennedy and his aides were contemplating military action against Cuba and the U.S.S.R.—action they knew could bring about an apocalyptic war—the president stated, “Last month I said we weren’t going to [permit Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba] and last month I should have said … we don’t care. But when we said we’re not going to, and [the Soviets] go ahead and do it, and then we do nothing, then … I would think that our … risks increase.”

[ related topics: History Currency ]

The *one time* I actually want to use Google+, and it's broken in Chrome right now. That the backup is Microsoft's Skype makes me scared.

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft moron ]

Charlene: "I like that bandsaw" Me: "It's a fun tool, isn't it?" Charlene: "Yeah. It's mine now."

So Charlene and I were digging through the underbelly of the web last night looking for some square dancing stuff, and we discovered a few things. The most interesting of which seems to be that "Gay Square Dancing (Wikipedia)" is a split of square dancing that, within the genre or at least here on the west coast isn't necessarily labeled as such, but in the eastern U.S. is seen as a division of the form that has become distinct enough, and with enough heterosexual participants, that "gay" has just become a label for it, and not necessarily attached to sexual orientation.

It's not just bears and leather and drag. Which explains a lot about the culture we're seeing, and why when I mentioned square dancing previously on Flutterby, Meuon and I saw it so differently.

But we were looking for flourishes and stylings, and stumbled across the Contra Syncretist YouTube feed, a lot of detail work from contra dancing that could be equally applicable to square dance.

Although with a number of these moves I commented "and here's the part where she gets dizzy and pukes on your shoes", because there's an awful lot of spinning there.

Bonus: Meosis Square Dance, an educational video that... well... the uploader notes:

"If you have watched to this point you deserve a f***ing medal or some s**t like that"

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture Movies Sociology Work, productivity and environment California Culture Shoes Video Archival Woodworking ]

Getting it wrong: Bill Moyers interviews Susan Crawford: Why U.S. Internet Access is Slow, Costly and Unfair. I totally agree that U.S. Internet access is slow and costly, and that the monopolies haven't served us well, are continuing to not serve us well, and that they're playing with bundling issues to try to keep us from a truly connected person-to-person network in order to maintain the dominance of the centralized content providers.

However, this has the two big flaws of "social justice" and "digital divide" thinking. The whole "digital divide" fallacy has been mentioned previously on Flutterby:

• it ain't the "digital divide"
• On CETF "Get Connected!
• The "digital divide" is not about access.
• Systemic flaws and government spending

(And many other times) In short, poor families keep doing poor family things, rich families do rich family things, the access to the tool doesn't change that.

But the other thing is that we have

SUSAN CRAWFORD: Well, here's the problem. For 19 million Americans, many in rural areas, you can't get access to a high speed connection at any price, it's just not there. ...

Yeah, this is the problem with subsidizing rural living: When we transfer money from the urban cores out to the rural areas, we're funding automobile culture. Just like when we build roads with income taxes rather than funding their construction and maintenance with use-based fees.

[ related topics: Politics broadband moron Sociology Law Enforcement California Culture Net Culture Automobiles Machinery Currency Fabrication Archival Model Building Government ]

Salt preserved Meyer lemons, with dried chili also from our garden

[ related topics: Photography Gardening ]

So what sides do you get with ex-Benedict?

Cracked.com: 6 Completely Legal Ways The Cops Can Screw You.

And this is even before the prosecutor starts extorting pleas by pressuring other people.

[ related topics: Law Law Enforcement ]

Please endorse me for Sauerkraut Management and Okra Folding on LinkedIn. If we're gonna go absurdist, go big! #brightlycoloredmachinetools

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Bwahahaha! Coworker just bit by DBI->selectrow_arrayref reusing an array. There's an open source developer somewhere that needs a smacking!

[ related topics: Free Software ]

Just used the "640k should be enough for anybody" line because I thought "more than 16k: is it just a status symbol?" was too dated...

Field name in SOAP definition: "HandOffPersonMame". Gonna pass in "Life is a banquet and most poor sons of bitches are starving to death."

http://gigaom.com/2013/02/11/t...ires-smart-grid-startup-consert/

Has a great line: "...this is yet another one of those startups that found itself knee-deep in the valley of death between pilots and commercial deployments..."

I wish I had a rod and staff.. will mad skillz and a .45 suffice?

Clouds are vapor: Home Server vs. VPS - a quick Cost and Performance analysis http://tidbitsfortechs.blogspo...erver-vs-vps-quick-cost-and.html

[ related topics: Theater & Plays ]

Interesting: The New York Times paywall is working better than anyone had guessed.

Digital subscriptions will generate $91 million this year, according to Douglas Arthur, an analyst with Evercore Partners. The paywall, by his estimate, will account for 12 percent of total subscription sales, which will top $768.3 million this year. That’s $52.8 million more than advertising. Those figures are for the Times newspaper and the International Herald Tribune, largely considered the European edition of the Times.

Although a search reveals just as many pundits claiming that the numbers don't really work out that way and the paywall is hurting the NYT.

But, I'd like to go another direction here: When subscription fees pay for our media consumption, how will we do product and service discovery in a post-advertising world? I'm thinking about this in the context of seeing how Amazon Prime is changing how I view commerce,

[ related topics: Books Weblogs Invention and Design Consumerism and advertising Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment New York ]

I just realized: Flutterby.com's first entry was February of '98. Means I've been doing this "social media" thing for more than 15 years!

[ related topics: Journalism and Media ]

Ghost in the Machine: Fact checking Lincoln.

The Wall Street Journal: Tony Kushner Fires Back at Congressman’s ‘Lincoln’ Criticism

Kushner argues that that facts were changed to serve the larger story: “These alterations were made to clarify to the audience the historical reality that the Thirteenth Amendment passed by a very narrow margin that wasn’t determined until the end of the vote.

Sigh.

[ related topics: Automobiles Economics ]

The Atlantic: 'Imagine the worst possible scenario': Why a Guantanamo prosecutor withdrew from the case:

A week later, Couch sent Swann a memorandum. "Due to legal, ethical, and moral issues arising from past interrogations of this detainee, I refuse to be associated with any further prosecution efforts against him," it said. "As a legal matter, I am of the opinion these techniques violate provisions of the 1984 United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and any statements produced by them should be excluded as evidence against this detainee pursuant to Article 15 of the Convention. If these techniques are deemed to be 'torture' under the Convention, then they would also constitute criminal violations of the War Crimes Act, 18 U.S. C. §2441."

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Ethics History Law ]

Maple Bacon Roses.

Bacon Kevin Bacon (Video)

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Art & Culture Flowers Video Food - Bacon ]

that's two cars through that red light *while* I was crossing. Complainers about bicyclists and stop signs can suck it.

Hey, checkout the "whois" for ansistandard.org... I'm reluctant to give them my credit card info, even as pissed off as I am at ANSI...

Whitehouse.gov: Presidential Innovation Fellows: MyData Initiatives:

The Round 2 MyData team will work with public sector and private sector organizations to continue to expand the ability for Americans to securely and privately access their own data from wherever it might be, and encourage the development of private-sector tools and services that help people utilize their own data for their own benefit.

They could start by shepherding legislation restoring warrant protections to data hosted on rented/leased servers.

[ related topics: Privacy Work, productivity and environment ]

Yesterday evening, Charles "Chuck" Marohn of StrongTowns.org teleconferenced in to the Petaluma Urban Chat meeting to give a variation of his "curbside chat" talk and do a short Q&A. As a part of that, he had pictures from a Memphis neighborhood that did guerilla street markings: For a few hundred bucks in paint they completely revitalized the street, storefronts went from vacant to becoming premium property, they got pedestrian and bicyclist traffic, bottom-up change worked well.

In that vein, I was browsing this MeFi entry on clearing bike paths in the Netherlands and ran across: How some committed cyclists paved the way for Calgary's pathway snow clearing: apparently a couple of Calgary cyclists started clearing a few bike paths on their own, and then after doing this for several years, one day Calgary got 18" of wet heavy snow, and...

But something happened that day. All the runners and cyclists who had grown accustomed to a cleared pathway started complaining to City Hall. Why haven’t you cleared the pathway yet, they asked. Get out and do your jobs, they demanded. The trouble was, the city never cleared that pathway. It was Kerr and Gruttz and those volunteers. But after five years, Calgarians had come to expect it, and the assumed it was city workers doing the job.

Both an inspirational tale (for us active citizens) and a cautionary one (for city engineers and managers).

[ related topics: Photography Heinlein Bicycling ]

RT @brennan:

Someone needs to try calculating the total cost of XML to world GDP over the last decade or so.

&

Preferably factoring in programmer treatment for depression / anxiety / stress-aggravated chronic illness.

[ related topics: Web development Content Management Software Engineering Economics ]

http://perl8.org/

Help me out here, I need to figure out where my arithmetic is faulty. Let's say that, per the Florida state Generic Cost Per Mile Models that a 6 lane interstate costs $6.8m/mile. For simplicity's sake, we can say that we're going to finance that over 30 years at house-like rates (Municipal Bonds are cheaper than a mortgage, but I'm going back-of-the-envelope here), so that's about $600/month per hundred thou of loan, or capital costs of $49 thousand bucks a mile a year.

Let's say that it needs to be resurfaced every 15 years. We could probably stretch it out to 20, but it's heavily traveled. That's a little over $1.6 million bucks every 15 years, or $111k/year. So the whole thing costs $160k/mile/year.

And we've built those 6 lanes to handle commute level capacity, that's 3 lanes each direction, and in the mornings each of those lanes is flowing at capacity for two hours, 1800 cars an hour a lane.

We built it to max out that commute time capacity, so, for the sake of argument and because we're also ignoring the cost of overpasses/bridges and additional intersection furniture, let's sweep under the rug the one or two lanes we'd have to have for non-commute capacity.

That's $14.81 dollars per mile per vehicle that we need to make in revenue to support that road segment. Let's say 250 business days, that's $.06/mile/vehicle we need in revenue. With me so far?

Federal gas tax is $.184, California state gas tax is $.36 plus 2.25% gasoline sales tax, we'll grab that off of $4/gallon, or $.634/gallon. Cars are averaging about 22 MPG right now, so that means gasoline taxes are giving about 2.9 cents per mile in revenue.

Which means that gasoline taxes are covering less than ½; of the cost per mile of that interstate you're commuting on. If that capacity is built for a shorter rush hour, the numbers are worse.

Where am I wrong? Or is why our infrastructure is crumbling because we can't afford to pay for it really this simple?

And at this point, you Californians will want to plug-in real numbers for things like, say, the 101 widening between San Rafael and Healdsburg, and... well... sorry, didn't mean to do that to you.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Mathematics California Culture Economics Real Estate Government ]

Always disappointed when a flash mob doesn't actually involve a mob flashing.

Girls With Slingshots points out some little-used features of your Facebook Instagram device

Shortpacked: Dark Knight Returns: The CliffsNotes.

[ related topics: Books Space & Astronomy ]

RT @ftrain:

someone smack a 2.0 on this it's dead

Cool! Portland is using Bluetooth MAC address scanners to measure road speeds.

Bonus link California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) Traffic Data Branch.

[ related topics: Wireless Weblogs California Culture Macintosh ]

Slate: The World’s Oldest Pornography: It’s at least 3,000 years old, and it’s bi-curious.

The Kangjiashimenji Petroglyphs are bas-relief carvings in a massive red-basalt outcropping in the remote Xinjiang region of northwest China. The artwork includes the earliest—and some of the most graphic—depictions of copulation in the world.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Health ]

Tesla Motors: A Most Peculiar Test Drive:

After a negative experience several years ago with Top Gear, a popular automotive show, where they pretended that our car ran out of energy and had to be pushed back to the garage, we always carefully data log media drives. While the vast majority of journalists are honest, some believe the facts shouldn’t get in the way of a salacious story. In the case of Top Gear, they had literally written the script before they even received the car (we happened to find a copy of the script on a table while the car was being “tested”). Our car never even had a chance.

Worth a read, goes more into the practice of journalists reinforcing myths rather than reporting facts.

[ related topics: Weblogs Law Journalism and Media Automobiles Furniture ]

On BoingBoing, Rob Beschizza looks at the Toledo Blade lashing out against the blog that scooped it and provided the more in-depth story.

The original story was Deadspin: “I’m Down For Drinks, Laughs, Sex”: The Sexual Harassment Claims That Brought Down Toledo’s Running Coach.

And yes, the Toledo Blade has a really strong history of repeating what its sources tell it without doing even the basic sanity checking on stories they're getting told. This is just yet another example of Toledo Blade fail.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Weblogs Journalism and Media Sports ]

RT Emily Nagoski, PhD @enagoski:

Roses are red/ violets are blue/ they're both hermaphroditic sex organs/ and that's perfectly normal. Happy Sex Nerd Valentine!

And when people mention "VD" I think "Venereal Disease", but unlike fellow Petaluman @DrJenGunter who said:

When you tweet "V Day" I think "Vagina Day."

When I hear "V Day", I think "Vulva Day".

But whatever associations you have with it, Charlene and I are coming up on 14 years of hanging out together, and I continue to enjoy her company, and am glad that our continually evolving relationship continues to be fun and fulfilling.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Flowers ]

Some things in the maker movement can make you go Hmmm...Mmmmm..

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Confession: I'd really like to see some Princess Cruise Lines/Tesla vs New York Times/LAPD Rogue Cop crossover fanfic.

[ related topics: Invention and Design New York ]

Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy rounds up the videos and news reports on the big meteor event in Russia.

Edit: RT @megabee:

Oh, shit. We live on the Earth where Kal-El's rocket landed in Russia!

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Astronomy Current Events ]

Wow: Fascinating look at an Amazon social engineering hack to steal a Kindle

[ related topics: Books Weblogs ]

RT William K. Wolfrum ‏@Wolfrum

Not only did Drugs win the War on Drugs, they were greeted as liberators.

[ related topics: Drugs Health History ]

The Columbus Dispatch: Buckeye leaf mistaken by Tennessee police for marijuana leaf:

Before they let her go on her way, the officers advised Jonas-Boggioni to remove the decal from her car.

“I said, ‘You mean in Tennessee?’ and he said, ‘No, permanently.’

You stay classy, there, Tennessee cops.

[ related topics: Drugs Law Enforcement Chattanooga Automobiles Maps and Mapping ]

Playing with freehand router inlay with walnut and brass butterfly from the bead store

[ related topics: Butterflies Photography Model Building Woodworking ]

Charlene is playing with a piece of wormed redwood on the bandsaw

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment ]

More freehand inlay, a slice of wormed redwood into a koa scrap

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment ]

Charlene is playing with the bandsaw and redwood, I'm playing with freehand router inlay...

[ related topics: Nature and environment Woodworking ]

Free Range Kids: Dear Principal, please get rid of the cameras. In which economist Alex Tabarrok talks about the surveillance society and our kids.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Photography Economics ]

Two One from Shadow:

• SMBC Theater: 50 Shades of Domestic Gray (YouTube)

One that I'm seeing from multiple places, and thought I got from Shadow, but...

• The Geeks Who Cracked The Orca Card, in which your travel history is revealed from your RFID.

I think it was Genehack who twittered:

• The Coming War: A Military Doctor’;s Field Guide To Masturbating In Afghanistan

[ related topics: John S Jacobs-Anderson Health Movies History Theater & Plays Douglas Adams RFID Dan & Charlene's July 2003 San Juan Trip ]

Trying again with that inlay from yesterday

[ related topics: Photography ]

How do I make the "Calling from the technical department of your computer" phone calls stop? Can't we nuke their call center or something?

Caltrans about to spend $9m to get more Amtrak riders. Last time I wanted to ride Amtrak, it turned out I forgot my license ('cause I'd taken it out to buy the stupid ticket online and left it beside my computer) and couldn't.

Based on their dumb-ass ID policy, and a few other annoyances, it's hard for me to get excited about the train unless the benefits way override the other costs, and for the few trips where the train might make sense that isn't terribly obvious.

If Amtrak wants riders, they can be more friendly to them.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Machinery Trains Handicaps & Disabilities Public Transportation hubris ]

Cost savings associated with improving appropriate and reducing inappropriate preventive care: cost-consequences analysis, Hogg, Baskerville & Lemelin. In southern Ontario, with 90,283 patients:

The total cost of the intervention over 12 months was $238,388 and the cost of increasing the delivery of appropriate care was $192,912 for a total cost of $431,300. The savings from reduction in inappropriate testing were $148,568 and from avoiding treatment costs as a result of appropriate testing were $455,464 for a total savings of $604,032. On a yearly basis the net cost saving to the government is $191,733 per year (2003 $Can) equating to $3,687 per physician or $63,911 per facilitator, an estimated return on intervention investment and delivery of appropriate preventive care of 40%.

Via a comment on JWZ: Blimpocalypse Continues. Terror Blimps: STAND DOWN., which pointed out that:

So how about this: converting to single payer health care in the US would save enough (e.g., by catching cancers at early outpatient-treatable stages instead of in emergency rooms at later stages requiring expensive treatment and long-term hospitalization) to extract all 10 petagrams of carbon output from seawater at $50/tonne?

(that last link is PDF)

[ related topics: Weblogs Health moron Economics ]

Interesting perspective: Getting from here to there: Privacy Concerns About Black Boxes in Cars are Overblown:

... EFF is right that transit riders deserve better service through innovative use of data. So do drivers! Marginal cost insurance is a good thing, not a bad thing. In addition, black boxes in cars can help assign blame in crashes more accurately so we can stop with the nonsense that a driver killing a pedestrian or cyclist was not the result of criminal driving. More data about usage can--no guarantee here as details matter--improve transport for everybody, including: marginal cost pricing, enhanced safety, lower cost travel for those who impose the least stress on transport systems, better routing and scheduling, stronger commitment to the user pays principle, punitive charges to lunkheads who shouldn't be driving, etc. ...

[ related topics: Privacy Free Speech Public Transportation ]

How to instill false memories in 4 easy steps.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Nudes check out nudes at Austrian museum.

[ related topics: Erotic Current Events Art & Culture ]

So apparently Guy Fieri didn't register the domain name for his restaurant. Or maybe he did. The problem with satire is keeping up with reality, and now I'm not sure: http://guysamericankitchenandbar.com/

Either way, I LedOL.

[ related topics: Food ]

Cooney Marine's tubing bender (YouTube). Just in case your mind needed a little "wait, what?" and "whoah, I want one of those for my garage" this afternoon.

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Law Embedded Devices ]

Listening to the Petaluma City Council massage ordinance deliberations. Very disturbed by the PD and CMTC use of language and wording.

[ related topics: Pop Culture ]

Sun Sentinel: Cops among Florida's worst speeders, Sun Sentinel investigation finds:

A three-month Sun Sentinel investigation found almost 800 cops from a dozen agencies driving 90 to 130 mph on our highways.

Many while merely commuting in their patrol vehicles. The data on speeding was derived from toll pass records: Evidence that good things can come from comprehensive vehicle tracking.

[ related topics: Current Events Law Enforcement Java ]

Those publicly funded stadium boondoggles are now even more publicly funded: GEO Group, Inc, the nation's second largest for-profit prison operator, buys naming rights to the Florida Atlantic University football stadium.

The satire writes itself.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Civil Liberties Sports Education ]

Among the things to love about XML namespaces: I have yet to find one of those "http://..." specifiers that doesn't 404. #misuseofconvention

[ related topics: Web development Content Management ]

I'm going to take the Larkspur ferry to the 2nd Personal Clouds Gathering: meet before the meet? http://personalcloud2.eventbrite.com/

[ related topics: Public Transportation ]

Josh Brandt on Google+:

alias updick='/usr/bin/uptime | perl -ne "/(\d+) d/;print 8,q(=)x\$1,\"D\n\""'

[ related topics: Perl Open Source hubris ]

February 21st, 9 years ago, I met Nancy. While I sometimes jest she derailed me, in reality she put me back on the tracks. It is a wonderful thing to love and be loved in return. She mentioned the date this morning, and it struck me weird how long it had been and how much of my life "we" are. While cliche, in many ways it seems like yesterday, and yet also the way it always has been.

It warms my heart to be endorsed for "Subversion" on LinkedIn...

Back in 1996, "Google Glass" ran Emacs (YouTube).

[ related topics: Movies ]

Academic assholes and the circle of niceness

TEDxSF - Nicole Daedone - Orgasm: The Cure for Hunger in the Western Woman (YouTube).

[ related topics: Movies ]

Hmmm... Reports in the wild of Amazon Prime being charged 15% more than non-Prime customers...

Edit: Debunking the Amazon Prime pricing myth.

[ related topics: Books ]

1st time on a college campus in ages. Passed the "Orientation" office. I thought I was born this way, but academia marches on.

[ related topics: Education ]

Welcome to hell, here's your 10 hour "Careless Whisper" saxophone loop (YouTube)

(previously)

[ related topics: Movies ]

Doc: "Parsing and validating XML data will increase the chances of sending a successful transaction", also specifies values invalid by XSD.

[ related topics: Web development Content Management ]

Cell phones have that shutter click sound as a holdover from mechanical cameras. Can we have laser printers do the dot matrix bzzt bzzt bzzt?

[ related topics: Photography ]

So I guess the reason the Feds aren't prosecuting bankers is that it would mean acknowledging cocaine as a performance enhancing drug?

[ related topics: Drugs Health Theater & Plays ]

Homeland Security: Not Searching Your Laptop Doesn't Benefit Your Civil Liberties, So We Can Do It.

(Hat tip to Jay, even though Pitas seems to be down right now.)

Hmmmm... TREDIS - Transportation Economic Development Impact System. Must learn more.

First impressions: Inside TREDIS says:

Unlike “black box” methods, each of the key elements of TREDIS is well-defined and clearly documented, using techniques backed by peer-reviewed publications and approved by public agencies. The key elements are summarized below; see the resources section for further documentation.

But that resources section link doesn't immediately lead to information about the models like I'd hope it would.

At any rate, if the Strong Towns thesis is correct, understanding and figuring out how to provide better data than the TREDIS model provides is probably the first step towards fixing the mess we've gotten into by over-spending on underperforming infrastructure.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Economics ]

Crochet meets Terry Pratchett: Amigurumi Discworld, by way of Knithacker's link from Columbine.

[ related topics: Weblogs Terry Pratchett ]

32 maps you never knew you needed

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping ]

Many sources have said this is a must-read, I haven't dug in yet: Stephen Brill in Time: Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us

Apparently, in both software engineering and economic impact studies, "best practices" means "made some stuff up and presented it earnestly"

[ related topics: Software Engineering Economics ]

I could swear I've linked to a different version of this, but it bears re-reading: Letter from the prostitute that didn’t want saving, 1858

Now, what if I am a prostitute, what business has society to abuse me? Have I received any favours at the hands of society? If I am a hideous cancer in society, are not the causes of the disease to be sought in the rottenness of the carcass? Am I not its legitimate child; no bastard, Sir? Why does my unnatural parent repudiate me, and what has society ever done for me, that I should do anything for it, and what have I ever done against society that it should drive me into a corner and crush me to the earth?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Sexual Culture ]

Reading TREDIS marketing materials... How do I get someone to pay me to build transportation network impact model software?

[ related topics: broadband Software Engineering Consumerism and advertising Marketing ]

50 miles on the bike, hour and a half of square dancing, now dinner and into the attic to staple the electrical rewiring #norestforthewicked

[ related topics: Bicycling ]

Fuck you umpteen millionth site that wants to be an OpenID provider but not a consumer. In this case: Launchpad.net

[ related topics: Law Consumerism and advertising ]

I've got a bunch of Canon EOS glass that I'm really not likely to buy an updated body for. Anyone interested in EOS lenses?

"We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together." Ein Volk, ein Yahoo, ein Mayer. #yesiwentthere

Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy - Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax System in All 50 States.

Major tax overhauls are on the agenda in a record number of states, and “Who Pays?” documents in state-by-state detail the precise distribution of state income taxes, sales and excise taxes and property taxes paid by each income group as of January 2013. It is a critical baseline against which future proposals can be measured.

So here in California, the lowest 20% pay 10.6%, the top 1% pay 8.8%. Picking a few other states where I know Flutterby readers reside, in Tennessee, that's 11.2% and 2.8%, Georgia 11.3% and 4.9%, Colorado 8.9% and 4.6%.

[ related topics: Politics California Culture Chattanooga Economics Government ]

Working on my Linux powered doorbell, and revisiting data sheets for reusing parts I designed 10 years ago. I have learned a lot since...

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source Work, productivity and environment ]

Need: Shadow passed along this picture of a carved wooden hat.

Modern Broadway: More Miserable Sequence - Forbidden Broadway Volume 2 Unoriginal Cast Recording (1991) (YouTube video):

Do you hear the people sing, singing the hit songs from Les Mis? It is the best show of a classic since they modernized The Wiz.

Via MeFi: At the end of the play we're another year older.

[ related topics: Movies Bioinformatics Theater & Plays Video ]

Reading the FHWA's "induced demand" denialism along-side claims that economic expansion requires increased mobility is hurting my brain.

[ related topics: Economics ]

BTW, seeing sources that *today* is the anniversary of Oregon's 1919 penny a gallon gasoline tax, first in the nation.

[ related topics: Politics Currency ]

Realization while skating to work: yards are open to the street in front, but have high opaque fences separating themselves from the MUP.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Skating ]

Quick, what was the time-frame of this court decision:

... This right of the people to the use of the public streets of a city, is so well established, and so universally recognized in this Country, that it has become a part of the alphabet of fundamental rights of the citizen. While the tyranny of the American system of government very largely consists in the action of the municipal authorities, this right has not yet been questioned, or attempted to be abridged. There can be no question, then, that a citizen riding on a bicycle in that part of a street devoted to the passage of vehicles, is but exercising his legal right to its use, and a City ordinance that attempts to forbid such use of that part of a public street would be held void as against common right.

That passage comes from pamphlet on the rights of cyclists, referencing the Kansas Supreme Court decision (City of Eudora vs. Miller. 30. Kansas 494.) of 1883 (which number I got from Kansas Attorney General Opinion No. 79-222 (PDF) (from 1979 on a decision about county vs city maintenance of a bridge).

Which I got turned on to from this excerpt from the decision which references a now-defunct Geocities page by way of this answer to an Ask MeFi about the legality of "reliable transportation" meaning "car" in job listings.

[ related topics: moron Law Heinlein Beer Civil Liberties Automobiles Pedal Power Bicycling ]

Dave Alden's "From Today to TOD - Retail" got some musings from me going, and I'm gonna mirror 'em in the comments here

Federal Highways Administration: "Is Induced Travel Real?":

Economists use the term "induced travel" to describe the additional demand for travel that occurs as a result of a decrease in the generalized cost of travel, including both travel-time and out-of-pocket costs. However, this term is often misused to imply that increases in highway capacity are directly responsible for increases in traffic. ...

FHWA: Economic Analysis Primer: Forecasting Traffic for Benefit Calculations then goes on to state that drivers who formerly avoided trips or used alternate routes will now use the new routes, and that:

Other drivers will "unchain" existing trips into multiple trips or make new trips that they might otherwise have avoided due to excessive delay associated with congestion. Some individuals may shift from transit to automobile. Drivers may also make longer trips (to more remote locations) than they did before the improvement. Other traffic responses can and do occur.

The real question here is: how come traffic engineers don't have more incidents of spontaneously exploding heads?

[ related topics: Invention and Design Automobiles Economics Public Transportation ]

Emergency Medicine Literature of Note: JAMA and Procalcitonin:

Someday, I'll publish another article summary that doesn't involve a conflict-of-interest skewering. ...

In which the Journal of the American Medical Association publishes a paper endorsing an assay that, in the literature, has been inconclusive at best, but where the paper authors are all paid by a vendor of same.

Bypassing Google's two-factor authentication.

TL;DR – An attacker can bypass Google’s two-step login verification, reset a user’s master password, and otherwise gain full account control, simply by capturing a user’s application-specific password (ASP).

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

I just realized: the dialect of a good portion of this spec/standard is probably an Object Oriented COBOL! More is clear now.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

So I'm writing Perl to talk SOAP over XML to a Java re-implementation of a COBOL system. My life has gone seriously off the rails.

[ related topics: Web development Content Management Perl Open Source Software Engineering Writing hubris ]

The language of the academic thesis/gov't report/standards body, was developed to obscure the lack of actual information in the document.

ANSI should publish a "derives from" tree for standards, so that you know how many tens of thousands that $430 156 page doc really costs.

Bloomberg: Turn Down the City Lights and Make Streets Safer:

The research bears this out. In 2008, PG&E Corp. (PCG), the San Francisco-based energy company, reviewed the research and found “either that there is no link between lighting and crime, or that any link is too subtle or complex to have been evident in the data.”

Yes. Light pollution is a real thing.

[ related topics: Bay Area Current Events California Culture ]

Reading Jeff Speck's Walkable City on the ferry & thinking about auto subsidies. Can we solve this sequester issue by abolishing the FHWA?

[ related topics: Public Transportation ]

They're testing the new lighting display on the Bay Bridge...

[ related topics: Photography Invention and Design Bay Area California Culture ]

From Bloomberg news article anent "Liberty University", Jerry Falwell's legacy:

Nonprofit private and state schools alike are discovering what for-profit colleges such as Apollo Group Inc. (APOL)'s University of Phoenix and Washington Post Co. (WPO)'s Kaplan University figured out more than a decade ago. Faced with a swelling number of overleveraged student borrowers, cuts in public subsidies and paltry endowment investment returns, they are embracing the Internet as a viable alternative to (sic) educating students.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...rses-fuel-falwell-s-college.html

[ related topics: Current Events Education ]

The Centrifuge Brain Project (Vimeo video):

Gravity is a mistake

A short film about education. And amusement park rides. And don't be drinking when you watch it, I'm blowing coffee out of my nose in between typing...

[ related topics: Movies Education Video ]

That thing where computer geeks look at a problem for 5 minutes and think they know more about solving it than the experts, & they're right.

Holding a gun makes you more likely to think that others are holding guns: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120321152627.htm

[ related topics: Guns ]

Larry had a link to Forbes: The Best Gun Control Measure Is Always A Job:

Harry Moroz over at Next American City and Richard Florida of The Atlantic, having both analyzed data provided by the Centers for Disease Control from 2006-2008, came to similar conclusions when looking at the impact of inner cities on gun deaths.

Florida wrote, “…the consistency of our findings across metro and state levels strongly suggest that gun violence is not just the product of troubled or deranged individuals, as is commonly portrayed, but is both associated with and embedded within the economic and social context of places… we find strikingly consistent associations between gun violence and key markers of socio-economic disadvantage — poverty, income, education, class, and race. Of course, center cities bear the heaviest concentrations of such socio-economic disadvantage and we are likely to find even stronger associations and more magnified patterns there, as Moroz does for unemployment.”

It's been a while, but I remember digging in to statistics back around when Bowling For Columbine came out, realizing that the U.S. had higher knife murder rates than other countries had murder rates, and that when we normalized for demographics I wasn't any more likely to be directly affected by gun violence than in those other countries. Which essentially made it a poverty problem.

I haven't gone back and verified these numbers, but I now believe that the poverty problem has, as a major contributor, a legacy problem, and that early childhood development programs, education, and poverty intervention programs are how we break that legacy problem.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Content Management Weblogs Robotics Heinlein Mathematics Marketing Embedded Devices Guns Education Economics ]

Violet Blue: What happened with my Security BSides talk.

I found out a few hours later that I had been targeted by a feminist organization, The Ada Initiative. I learned that the woman who smiled at me while talking to the BSides SF organizer was Valerie Aurora, from the Ada Initiative.

I also learned that what happened with my talk wasn’t a case where someone who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time as a survivor of sexual trauma or abuse, which is how it was presented to me. Instead, it was an organization that had planned to get my talk removed. I wonder, if I had offered to omit the section about GHB from my talk, which they did not know about, would the talk have been permitted by these people and the threat of problems for the organization lifted?

[ related topics: Drugs Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture Bay Area Law ]

Love seeing colleges advertising their animation & computer graphics programs amidst the Oscars/Rhythm & Hues protests.

[ related topics: Animation Consumerism and advertising Graphics Education ]

Word of the day: "lalochezia", n.: Emotional relief gained by using indecent or vulgar language.

RT ‏@olix0r: "darmok and jalad were at tanagra before it was cool" https://twitter.com/olix0r/status/306842477376204800

RT @whump: "Best What These Thinly Disguised Native Americans Need is a White Guy Trope #FakeHugoAwardCategories"

[ related topics: Race ]

Sergey Brin says that if you're wearing Google Glasses, you're a dick. Or something. http://livewire.talkingpointsm...ays-smartphones-are-emasculating

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

"Inverter Turbo Defrost"? File under "microwave buttons that scare me"

[ related topics: Photography ]

Two from The Register:

Malware has infected Moscow's speed cameras.

Vint Cerf: The "Internet of Things" needs to be locked down.

And I think that latter exposes some bad thinking about security. Yes, I'm currently thinking and talking online about ways to send messages and proxy permissions information between lots of cheap connected devices, but if the power grid is fragile enough that hacking load can cause outages, then it's the power grid that needs to be fixed.

Every element needs to be robust, depending on a big distributed system alone is not the right approach to take.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Net Culture Cryptography ]

Speaking of the "Internet of Things", a few from a tab dump:

GigaOm: Qualcomm’s decidedly different plan to connect your devices to the internet of things is the press release for AllJoyn: Proximity Based Peer-To-Peer Mobile Application Development Framework. Right now looks more like a system for phone-to-phone communication, but there are a whole lot of places where a better short-range system than Bluetooth would be awesome.

MQTT - Message Queuing Telemetry Transport is a publish-and-subscribe protocol for lightweight low-bandwidth data. Mihini is a Lua-based framework and runtime that I believe uses it. Need to explore more.

[ related topics: Wireless broadband Astronomy Net Culture Archival Java ]

Today in higher education:

Community college forces professor to bar public from a class with an adult film star:

The idea that there were security concerns about the event was laughable, Schwyzer said. Administrators "told me with a straight face that their concern wasn't about the subject matter of the course, but about the potential for protest," he said. "If I invited someone to talk about the horticulture of Southern California and didn't fill out all the forms correctly, this wouldn't be happening. I find it implausible that this isn't about the content." ...

UNC-Chapel Hill holds surprise inspections of classes to make sure they’re real. Really, what can you add?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Space & Astronomy Current Events Civil Liberties California Culture Community Education Aviation - Helicopters ]

On the one hand: The uncanny valley! It burrrrnnsss! On the other, this... uh... Audrey Hepburn Starring in Galaxy Chocolate UK TV Advertisement (YouTube)

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Movies Television Chocolate ]

Hey, remember when Berkeley cleaned up Telegraph Ave? It worked, there's nothing there now: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/...legraph-Ave-upgrades-4314110.php

[ related topics: Bay Area ]

On the ProjectVRM and Personal Identity mailing lists, a guy named T.Rob has been tossing in some well thought out ideas and input. I met him on Tuesday night at the Personal Clouds gathering.

Anyway, he just passed around Clouds, identity and geek crushes which has some good musings on the use of an identifier, and revealed that he has a blog: The Odd Is Silent.

For instance, a hope that energy will get more expensive: Cold Fusion = The End of the World.

Like I needed more to read.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

An interesting followup to last week's spectacular Chelyabinsk meteorite strike: a newly discovered comet might hit Mars next fall. If it does, then the terraforming will have begun.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Astronomy ]

That thing where you're listening to NPR and can tell the reporter is using the interviewee's script because obvious questions are unasked.

[ related topics: Pop Culture ]

Your tear-jerker for the day: New York Times: We Found Our Son In The Subway.

[ related topics: Invention and Design New York Public Transportation ]