protected static

[geek][random] Busy, busy, busy...

2006-05-26T08:32:00.000-07:00

I've moved the blog to a new host, and changed my blogging software from Blogger to WordPress. As a result of this change, over the next couple of yours, protectedstatic.com will stop pointing to this site and will instead mirror the new site... Please update your bookmarks from this blogspot URL to protectedstatic.com. If you're following this site through an RSS feed, the new feed's URL is http://www.blog.protectedstatic.com/?feed=rss2. I've got a feedburner feed out there as well that I'll need to either delete or update... That hasn't happened yet. I'll be leaving this site up on blogspot as an archive for as long as Google/Blogger allows it. As a final housekeeping act, commenting should now be turned off for this URL. There are already enough derelict sites that serve as spam magnets.

[random][geek] Housekeeping

2006-05-25T22:46:00.000-07:00

Just tidying things up... Some formatting stuff got screwed up, and I'm having to go through the archives and republish certain pieces to correct it. Slow and tedious - what fun!

[random] (news.None == news.Good)

2006-05-22T22:57:00.000-07:00

...back from attending to family matters - visited the 'rents in Central MA, followed by sister-in-law's wedding in the Berkshires. Both went much better than anticipated. And what, I ask of you, is there not to like about a wedding where the bride & groom oh-so-thoughtfully provide Glenlivet gratis? All weekend long? I thought as much. Lotsa stuff going on - I've barely touched a networked device aside from the e-ticket kiosk at the airport in a week, so I'll be scrambling to catch up over the next couple of days.

[random] It's gonna be a light week

2006-05-14T23:10:00.000-07:00

To all 10 or 12 of my regular readers (boy, that's humbling ;-) ), don't expect a whole lot this week, either in terms of posting or responding to comments. I'm probably going to be spending more time offline than on over the next 7-8 days, so, like, go read a book or something.

[geek][politics] good Fair Use summary

2006-05-14T22:54:00.000-07:00

So, what is Fair Use? When are you in danger of violating copyright? Do you always need permission to use the works of others? All these points and more are covered in this excellent article on Nolo.com. If you produce content that might run afoul of copyright law, you need to check this article out. [via]

[politics] I'm stunned that this is even a question

2006-05-13T10:09:00.000-07:00

Seriously, WTF?

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Democratic Party leaders are wondering what to do about a candidate for attorney general who denies the Holocaust occurred and wants to “reawaken white racial awareness.” Larry Darby, the founder of the Atheist Law Center, made an abortive bid for the attorney general job as a Libertarian in 2002, but only recently have his views on race and the Holocaust come to light. [...] In an interview Friday with The Associated Press, Darby said he believes no more than 140,000 Jewish people died in Europe during World War II, and most of them succumbed to typhus. Historians say about 6 million Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis, but Darby said the figure is a false claim of the “Holocaust industry.” Darby said he will speak Saturday near Newark, N.J., at a meeting of National Vanguard, which bills itself as an advocate for the white race. Some of his campaign materials are posted on the group’s Internet site. “It’s time to stop pushing down the white man. We’ve been discriminated against too long,” Darby said in the interview.

"[W]ondering what to do"? About someone who believes in the "Holocaust industry" and who is going to speak at a neo-Nazi conference?!? Dump his ass! There, done, was there a dilemma there somewhere? Jesus Haploid Christ, people - he's a power-seeking lunatic, that's all there is to it. Dump him. Do I think you can change political affiliation over a lifetime? Sure. Do I think it'll happen between election cycles? Well, let's just say that I find that pretty damn convenient - particularly a change from Libertarian to Democrat. He's looking for funding, he's looking for publicity, he's looking for power. Standing behind him out of some misbegotten sense of party loyalty (particularly when he is unlikely to reciprocate) is ~~foolish~~ really fscking stupid; it will damage your credibility far more than pitching his pasty white(-supremacist) ass overboard will.

[politics] Under the radar? Or over the rainbow?

2006-05-11T09:25:00.000-07:00

In yesterday's letters to Eric Alterman's Altercation comes this (from Thomas Heiden of Stratford, CT):

Lastly, I don't know how many readers caught this, but Secretary of State Rice told a reporter the administration already has all the congressional authorization it would need to attack Iran. Yes, she did say that. When I have thought about how to protest such a policy, I have realized we are likely to awake one morning to discover it has already happened.

No shit!? I read the news fairly carefully, and that slid past me entirely, so I decided to go through the official transcripts of Secretary Rice's remarks. I've read all of May and half of April, and I can't find a statement like that anywhere. What I have noticed (and perhaps this is what the letter referred to) is an article in The Nation by Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith. Published on 21 April 2006, and titled "Attack Iran, Ignore the Constitution" (and widely mis-cited around the internet as 'Attack Iran, Destroy the Constitution'), it contains the following:

Bush is calling news reports of plans to attack Iran "wild speculation" and declaring that the United States is on a "diplomatic" track. But asked this week if his options included planning for a nuclear strike, he repeated that "all options are on the table." [...] Bush's top officials openly assert that he can do anything he wants--including attacking another country--on his authority as Commander in Chief. Last October, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was asked by members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee whether the President would circumvent Congressional authorization if the White House chose military action against Iran or Syria. She answered, "I will not say anything that constrains his authority as Commander in Chief."

[emphasis added] And, truth be told, this squares with statements to be found over and over again in the remarks by Secretary Rice that I did read: "All options are on the table", "All options are being considered". "All options" has been famously hashed and rehashed on the internet, so I'm not going to go into it here. Do I think that Rice has openly stated that Bush has all the authority he needs to attack Iran? No - she's not stupid, however much I might disagree with her. But I do think that this Administration's single-minded adherence to an Imperial Presidency model makes this very believable. The President has already stated, through words and deeds, that he is not constrained by Congressional authority with which he disagrees. His approval ratings are heading south - he has nothing to lose by attacking Iran, and might, in fact, benefit from it. The American public has a long history of coming together in times of crisis, of extending the President the benefit of the doubt. This President is alientating his conservative base - he might be able to reclaim some of their loyalty by initiating military action on Iran, standing fast and striking hard against Islamofacism or some such nonsense. From the earliest days of this Administration there have been efforts to make nukes more palatable weapons - I remember reading with some disbelief even before September 11^th about the Pentagon's efforts to 'normalize' tactical nuclear weapons - and after 9/11, that tempo increased: if we'd only had these weapons, Tora Bora would never have happened, and the talking heads all nodded seriously with a chorus of yes, that's sensible, but isn't that just a little extreme? Well, came the response, 9/11 changed everything. New weapons for new wars, don't you know. And the bobbleheads went on bobbing, yes, that sounds reasonable, do they have to be nukes? Do they? Oh, they do? Hmmm. We'll have to think about that. We're standing on a scary threshold, if we haven't crossed it already. Like the letter writer, I find it all too likely that I will wake up one morning to find that large chunks of the Iranian countryside have been turned to radioactive slag and ash. The drumbeat has already started, the same pattern is being followed as the lead up to the invasion of Iraq - how do you stop it? After all, it worked so well the first time (for both factions, come to think of it...). I want to believe that I'm just being negative, or overly paranoid. But I just can't help feeling that certain courses of action have already been decided upon - the script has been written, it's just the staging and coreography that remain to be arranged.

[geek] Magicandspells-online.net sucks

2006-05-11T07:56:00.000-07:00

Magicandspells-online.net does not sell 'magic spells'. The fscking morons who run it think that by stealing the blog content of other people they can boost their own Google ratings. Their webcrawler is too stupid to not harvest this post, so this will become part of their content - stolen, just like the rest of their 'content'. And they still won't be in the first 10 pages of Google results - your clients are getting ripped off, sploggers. Fscking morons: sploggers and the rectal warts who hire them.

[geek] 'scuse me while I attend to some... personal business.

2006-05-09T23:04:00.000-07:00

Just taking care of some business, pissin' in the Google juice (I'm a first page result if you google "inmyfinger", one of these splogs - as is someone else who also complained about the theft of their content.) So, to recap: Scandinaviamusic.com is operated by a scumbag who steals other people's content. They do not sell or blog about 80s music mp3s. They steal. They are thieves. Jamtrack.net is operated by a scumbag who steals other people's content. They do not sell or blog about music. They steal. They are thieves. Inmyfinger.com is operated by a scumbag who steals other people's content. They are not a dating service. They do not host legitimate blogs or aggregation portals. They steal. They are thieves. Magicandspells-online.net is operated by a scumbag who steals other people's content. They do not sell or blog about magic or spells. They steal. They are thieves.

[politics] "...x has always had a leftist bent..."

2006-05-09T09:05:00.000-07:00

Pop quiz time! What organization is the value of x? Please show your work; there is no penalty for using calculators, your fingers, or other appedages. Cheating will not be tolerated, and those of you who already have your hands in the air can damn well wait until everyone's had a chance to answer. And I cannot say this strongly enough: show your work! Bing! Time's up. What have you got? The National Education Association? The Congressional Progressive Caucus? The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People? AFL-CIO? SEIU? Nope. The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws? People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals? The Democratic Socialists of America? Nuh-uh. The National Organization for Women? No. The Urban League? Bzzt. Human Rights Watch? Amnesty International? Greenpeace? The National Rainbow Coalition? The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee? Public Citizen? No; oooh, good guess; wrong again; good try; who? Nope. What's that you say? The ACLU? You are so off. So, do you give up? Put down your coffee, and swallow what's in your mouth... This is gonna be good. Wait for it... We want this to be a surprise. (drumroll) It's the Central Intelligence Agency. Let that sink in for a while. And for those of you who didn't heed my warning, I'll wait for you to clean off your monitor and drain off your keyboard. Those of you who inflicted enough damage to require a quick run out to replace a keyboard are going to be out of luck; you'll just have to read this when you get back. Done? Good. Yup, the CIA is of "a leftist bent". Just this weekend, Digby predicted such a thing would occur - but she had no idea just how quickly it would come to pass. As she wrote, it was already in the works; yesterday National Review published the following editorial:

Too often the agency has performed [its] job miserably, the greatest example being its gargantuan miscalculations about the Soviet Union. In retrospect, this is perhaps unsurprising. The CIA has always had a leftist bent, well represented in its upper echelons even under directors of staunchly anti-Communist and pro-national-security orientation.

Wow. Just wow. Read it in full, and get a full understanding of what 'leftist' means to what is ostensibly a mainstream conservative (intellectual!) publication: leftist is anyone who disagrees with Bush. These are the bounds of the debate, as established in the mainstream: you aren't even liberal - apparently it isn't enough that you be tagged with this favored label of invective - now you're a leftist. Disagree with the Iraq war? Leftist. Disagree with the scale, scope, or timing of Bush's tax cuts? Leftist. Disagree with Bush's environmental policies? Leftist. Think Bush's pro-business policies might go too far? Leftist. Think that perhaps science should be the only thing taught in the science classroom? Leftist. Think torture is un-American? Leftist. This is no longer a rational position or a principled position - this is a cult. I haven't decided if it's a Stalinist-style personality cult or a tax-cutting cargo cult, but cult it definitely is. And I fear that its warped sensibilities have bent the current political scene so far off true that it will be decades before the damage is undone.

[geek] Splogs suck

2006-05-06T16:08:00.000-07:00

For those who don't know, 'splog' is a contraction of 'spam' and 'blog'. Some splogs harvest the content of real blogs and then insert random sentences with URLs embedded in them in order to boost the Google ranking of the URL. Others harvest content to boost the overall Google ranking of the splog, which then links to an online store that is vaguely related to the purported topic at hand. Lately, I've had a bunch of sites steal my stuff so that they can appear to be legitimate sites and boost their Google ratings. However, 2 can play that game... Let's piss in their Google juice, shall we? Scandinaviamusic.com steals other people's content. They do not sell or blog about 80s music mp3s. They steal. They are thieves. Jamtrack.net steals other people's content. They do not sell or blog about music. They steal. They are thieves. Inmyfinger.com steals other people's content. They are not a dating service. They do not host legitimate blogs or aggregation portals. They steal. They are thieves. Magicandspells-online.net steals other people's content. They do not sell or blog about magic or spells. They steal. They are thieves. Stop stealing other people's stuff. Y'all deserve the same treatment as spammers. [updated 7 May 2006 9:14P PDT - I evidently forgot to finish the last sentence in the first paragraph - it solely consisted of "Lately, I've", so I finished it.]

[music][random] The song remains the same

2006-05-06T09:31:00.000-07:00

[updated 9 May 05 11:28A PDT] Or not. 39 64! versions of Stairway to Heaven, courtesy of the radio station at my alma mater. Mind you, this was (and evidently still is) the sort of station where you could go from Patsy Kline to Tuvan throat singing to Black Flag to Public Enemy to Thai Buddhist chants to Russian folk songs without (the DJs at least) missing a beat. It's also the station where I once heard a DJ announce "Well, this is an all request show - but it's also our policy to never play any top-40 songs. A caller has just requested Dream Academy's Life in a Northern Town, so... we're going to play it. (pause) At 78 rpm instead of 45." And play it they did. [thanks, Patrick]

[random] Adventures in arts and crafts

2006-05-05T21:00:00.000-07:00

So, the other evening The Boy was working on a school project with his mom while I cooked dinner. He's got this amazingly annoying art thing going on - and you'll probably need some backstory here. You see, The Boy is in one of two full-time K classrooms at his school; the (need-based) tuition we pay covers the extra 1/2 FTE that gives his school 2 full-time K teachers. It also pays for a 3rd part-time teacher who regularly takes up to 1/3 of the kids from each room for more intensive, hands-on enrichment stuff. This 3rd teacher is pregnant and will be taking maternity leave soonish, so the kids are working on a 'thank you'/'happy baby' project. Whew. Back to the story. How is it annoying? I hate to say it, but a bunch of affluent, overly-involved, stay-at-home moms who are at wits ends now that their kids are in full-day kindergarten have Shanghaied this thing and turned what could have been a simple 'thank you' into the 6-yr-old scrapbook version of the Book of Kells or the Bayeaux Tapestry. It's turned into a major pain in the arse, and I've kept my distance on purpose... If I was involved in the day-to-day email exchanges about The Project, I'd have torn off someone's head and shat down their neck by this point. I think it's probably better for everyone this way. So, I'm cooking, and they're working, and all of a sudden I hear The Boy's voice pipe up cheerfully. "Well, that doesn't suck!" Momentary pause. "No, I suppose it doesn't. But I wouldn't get into the habit of using that at school unless you want to spend more time in [the Vice Principal]'s office." (still quite cheerful) "Okay. I knew that." There's some more rummaging and fidgeting as things are cleaned up prior to setting the table for dinner. The Boy, once more, cheerful as before: "It still doesn't suck, does it?" No. No, it doesn't.

[music][random] Friday random 10: "Who shall I say is calling?" edition

2006-05-05T20:35:00.000-07:00

So, like, I just figured that you don't actually need an MP3 player to do this? And, like, I was thinking? That I wanted to, like, try this 'random 10' thing? Because, like, everyone else is doing it? And then I said, like, I have media players installed on my PC that have, like, 'shuffle mode'? So, then, like, omigod! why not? *ahem* No, I'm not a creature of the 80s. Not at all. 1. Who By Fire - COIL 2. Har Hou - :zoviet*france: 3. New Mass - Will 4. ~~East Taunts West :zoviet*france:~~ Torch - The Sisters of Mercy 5. Spellbound - Siouxsie & The Banshees 6. Summer Babe [Winter Version] - Pavement 7. Breathe - Ministry 8. Love Will Tear Us Apart - Joy Division 9. Of These, Hope (Reprise) - Peter Gabriel 10.Disappearer - Sonic Youth ** Bonus! ** 11. Ocean Size - Jane's Addiction Unless I'm actually in the mood to listen to early experimental ambient electronica, 2 tracks by :zoviet*france: is 1 track too much (sometimes it's 2 tracks too much - I've gotta be in the mood.)... I hit "Next Track". And about that whole 'creature of the 80s' thing? Yeah, I lied. So what?

[politics] Who wrote this?

2006-05-04T09:08:00.000-07:00

And when?

The cable news has kept the home folks fully informed as to the progress of this "raghead" hunt, so it is unnecessary to recount any details of battles. The cruelties of Saddam toward these people have been fully discussed, but if the thing were written up by a recent arrival here, he would make a tale just as harrowing. But the old boys will say that no cruelty is too severe for these brainless monkeys, who can appreciate no sense of honor, kindness, or justice.... With an enemy like this to fight, it is not surprising that the boys should soon adopt "no quarter" as a motto, and fill the hajii full of lead before finding out whether or not they are friends or enemies

Guesses? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone? Actually, this quote is attributed to a private from Utah - serving with the state militia in the Philipines, sometime circa 1900 (It is unclear exactly when. This could be a quote from the fighting in the Philipines during the Spanish-American War proper, it could be from the subsequent Moro Insurrection.). I've changed three words from the original, which may be found here - I've bolded the words I changed:

The cable news has kept the home folks fully informed as to the progress of this "goo-goo" hunt, so it is unnecessary to recount any details of battles. The cruelties of Spain toward these people have been fully discussed, but if the thing were written up by a recent arrival here, he would make a tale just as harrowing. But the old boys will say that no cruelty is too severe for these brainless monkeys, who can appreciate no sense of honor, kindness, or justice.... With an enemy like this to fight, it is not surprising that the boys should soon adopt "no quarter" as a motto, and fill the blacks full of lead before finding out whether or not they are friends or enemies

One racial epithet, one oppressor, one racial/cultural mischaracterization. That's it. The language is slightly archaic, but it really could have been written yesterday about Iraq. (I love the reference to 'cable news' - not CNN but Western Union!) Now, there are commonalities in all wars. Racial and ethnic stereotyping play a part in many conflicts, as they are useful tools in dehumanization. They make it easier for soldiers to distance themselves from the carnage; they make it easier for the leadership (civilian and military) to convince soldiers to kill. But I've said before that the Iraq War has quite a few parallels with the Spanish American War. In that earlier piece, I compared the subjugation of the Moros to Afghanistan, but the overall acquisition and occupation of the Philipines also presents some useful and possibly illuminating lessons for Iraq:

An occupied people may be grateful that you've relieved them from an oppressor - but they'll turn on you in a heartbeat if you don't view them as equals, or if you fail to provide them with the rights they expect.

Soldiers will grow more and more demoralized the longer they're exposed to a country that resents their very presence - particularly if they've been lead to believe that they're on a mission to 'do good.'

This resentment makes it a lot more likely that they will respond with disproportionate force, that they will want to dehumanize and humiliate 'the enemy', and in some cases, commit atrocities.

Occupations can have a life of their own - we were supposedly liberating the Philipines, not colonizing it, but it took us 60 years to provide (initially, only limited) independence, and another 30 years to hand over the last keys.

Ignoring the tone, this article does an excellent job of summarizing the US relationship with the Philipines as viewed through the lens of our liberation and subsequent occupation. It also mentions something of which I was previously unaware: in 2003, Bush actually had the temerity to hold up the history of our relationship with the Philipines as a model for Iraq (full text here - "Together our soldiers liberated the Philippines from colonial rule. Together we rescued the islands from invasion and occupation." Erm. Not so much.). While this was more-or-less well recieved by the Filipino oligarchy, this did not go over well with much of the populace, as it glossed over and ignored the historical truths of our long presence in the Philipines. I fear that the myopia that this remark typifies will over time only compound the disastrous situation in Iraq. And I still feel that Iraq will take its place with the Spanish American War in the eyes of history; reading the accounts of our misadventures in the Philipines has only solidified this opinion. (link to the stereoscopic pictures and the original quote via Making Light, link titled "A Brave Feat of Arms".)

[random] Parenting observation #42,198

2006-05-02T08:40:00.000-07:00

Unlike, say, Broken, Pretty Hate Machine has but one obvious use of the F-bomb. So, to recap:

Pretty Hate Machine: Car music score: A-/B+ Broken: Car music score: D

For some strange reason, I have no desire to get a note sent home from school asking me to explain how The Boy learned the term 'fistfuck'. That is all. Carry on.

[geek] Okay, this is bloody annoying...

2006-04-30T22:58:00.000-07:00

[Updated at the end of the post - 30 April 2006 23:35 PDT] Someone is stealing my content! My recent post on atheism was stolen for, of all things, a Christian dating service, while my post on blacksmithing was stolen to promote a 'majikal supplies' site. Unethical, dishonest - and possible violations of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) to boot... See, these spambags (because that's really the league they're in) use a 'spider' program to crawl the web and find posts that contain keywords - doesn't matter what order they're in or if they're in the context that the 'blog' pretends to be. They then pull excerpts with those keywords into fake posts on their website. It's all about steering Google results to these sites - these fake sites then link to bullshit marketing/sales sites (Click here to visit our sponsor!), which is where they then make their money. It looks like maybe the same skeezy outfit took both of these posts - the sites are identical in layout. I suppose they might not be - after all, the same spambags who sell CDs with spam software and databases of email addresses could sell spider software and web templates just as easily. But they certainly look, feel, and smell like they're the same scavenging bastards. I actually went so far as to file a DMCA complaint with the ISP of one of the sites since they're hosted here in the US - I figure that this might count as using my content for commercial purposes without my permission or compensation. The other ISP looks like it's based in the EU with a US office and a server farm in India... I have no idea if a DMCA complaint to them will produce any results. Hell, I have no idea if my first DMCA complaint will do anything. We'll see. It's my content, dammit. It isn't that widely read, but dammit, it's still mine. If someone wants to distribute it (properly attributed) for non-commercial purposes, that's fine by me - but using my writing to boost a sleazy site's "Google Juice" is out of bounds. Update #1: My first complaint worked! The whole skanky domain has been taken down... I just hope that the bastards didn't have a backup. My guess is that they didn't - these morons strike me as being too 'quick buck' oriented to actually, you know, plan for things. We'll see - I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the second complaint.

[politics] The rule of Law and all that...

2006-04-30T11:09:00.000-07:00

Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald: Media finally starting to report the President's systematic lawbreaking But is it enough? According to Greenwald, the Boston Globe has an article (which I'm heading over to read now) detailing nearly 1000 laws that the President has decided don't apply to him - so he's decided not to follow them by using a Constitutionally-dubious version of the 'signing statement'. Where once this statement was used to express displeasure or state reservations, it is now being used to state, baldly, that the President reserves the right to ignore those parts of the law (up to and including the whole bloody thing) if he decides it runs counter to ~~his interests~~ the interests of the country (yeah, right...). This is being done by a President from the same party that controls Congress! You know, the people who are creating those laws Bush is ignoring? And jurists purporting to share his philisophical outlook control the Supreme Court! You know, the people who are supposed to decide if laws are Constitutional? The only remedy would seem to be a Supreme Court decision or a Constitutional Amendment - and I don't see either of those happening any time soon. Does anyone have any idea what this does to checks and blances!? What checks or balances are there on the President's newly-found ability to disregard any law he chooses? That doesn't sound like a Democratic Republic to me.

[music] What happens when you cross Henry Rollins with Fred Schneider?

2006-04-30T10:26:00.000-07:00

Why, naturally you get Black Fag, a Los Angeles-based Black Flag cover band. What did you think you'd get?

The story of Black Fag begins in the small town of New Hope, PA. Singer Liberace Morris was raised in neighboring Doylestown, but found a home among New Hopes thriving gay community. He worked at a vintage clothing/toy store while pursuing musical theatre at the Bucks County Playhouse at night. One night after Pippin rehearsal, Liberace came home to find his boyfriend in bed with another man. While drowning his sorrows at the local watering hole, The Raven, Liberace started singing and playing Black Flags Nervous Breakdown on the piano. The rest of the bar simply ate it upuntil the end of the song, when Liberace stood up and started haphazardly hurling martini glasses around the place. He was permanently ejected from The Raven and convinced that his life was officially over. While lying on the sidewalk debating what type of pills would make for the most dramatic accessory to his final exit, a shadow loomed over him. It was bassist Cher Dykeowski, a biker dyke like no other, who was in town for the annual motorcycle rally. She, too, was a Black Flag fan, and had seen something special in Liberaces performance. Having not had a steady home since her parents kicked her out after she attended her senior prom with her Phys. Ed. teacher, Cher was a wanderer with plans to make her way to California. She offered Liberace the bitch seat on her Harley and, with nothing left for either of them in Pennsylvania, they set off on an epic cross-country journey, which included Cher winning a blue ribbon at the Annual Gay Rodeo in Scottsdale, AZ along the way. (And believe you me, the rest of that trip makes Priscilla, Queen of the Desert look like Andy Warhols Sleep, but thats a tale to be told on another day)

It only gets ~~funnier~~ ~~stranger~~ funnier from there... This may have to be my next music purchase... [via]

[random][politics] Atheism and compassion

2006-04-28T08:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I did something I haven't done in years (probably going back to my Usenet days...) - I took the bait offered by an Evangelical Christian blog that posited that atheists are less compassionate than theists. Now, I don't seek out religious sites, but the post was linked to by a blog I enjoy reading, and, well, given what I'd just written about Rabbi Gellman's Newsweek's article, I couldn't let it pass. I'm glad I did it - I found it quite educational. The blog's author had posted a piece about a single mother who is developmentally disabled, as is her child. How would an atheist respond to her needs, he wondered? Why, the cold heartless logic of atheism leads to disdain in the best case, euthanasia in the worst. An atheist could, he conceded, meet her physical needs, but what if all she wanted was for someone to pray for her? What if all she wanted was for someone to pray with her? Since no atheist could possibly do that, clearly a theist's compassion was superior. (The blog is here, and if you want to only read the comment thread, it's here.) But you see, when push came to shove, they couldn't really justify their stance. No, instead they tried linking socialism to atheism (bzzt! wrong answer!), and they tried laying the atrocities committed by the 20th century totalitarians at the feet of atheism (bzzt! wrong answer!), and spent much of the rest of the time trying to argue that since Christianity was the One True Faith, their version of compassion was superior to that of everyone else. Whoah, there boy! Since when did 'theism' and 'Christianity' become synonymous? And since when did 'not Christian' become the same as 'atheist'? Since when did 'Christian' and 'capitalist' become synonymous? This speaks volumes, does it not? So what happens to their hypothetical compassion when the woman's spiritual needs differ from theirs? Many fundamentalist Christians (like the site's author and the regular commentors) regard Catholicism as misguided at best, heretical at worst - what if the act of devotion that would make the woman happy was taking Communion with her? What if it was going to Confession with her? Lighting candles to the Virgin Mary? I have yet to get an answer that addresses this question. But let's take it a logical step further - what if she wasn't a Christian at all? What if the only way her spiritual needs could be met involved...

...going to a temple, being annointed with paint, donning a garland of orange and white flowers, and saying mantras to Kali, Shiva, or Ganesha? ...going to her ancestral shrine, sweeping off her parents' graves, leaving them food, lighting joss sticks for them, and burning ghost money for them so that their physical needs could be met in the afterlife? ...stripping naked and leaping over a fire, or dancing around a May Pole? ...laying out crystals and absorbing energy from a Vortex?

Somehow I doubt that their 'compassion', as they define it, extends that far. So how does that differ from an atheist's unwillingness to pray with her? I even offered that while I personally could not pray for or with her, I certainly wouldn't have a problem with finding her someone who could. Heck, if I was involved enough in this woman's life to know about her needs and spiritual concerns, I probably wouldn't even have a problem with driving her someplace where she could have her spiritual needs safely met. Would they drive her there, knowing that she was about to engage in actions that, as they see it, condemn her to Hell? If not, why? It's all about meeting her needs, isn't it? I'm not going to say that the compassion of atheists is superior to that of theists - but what I will say is that everyone's compassion has limits. And I think that being aware of those limits helps us be less cruel - more compassionate - regardless of what we believe. If my personal philosophy leads me to a conclusion that is similar to yours, I can only see that as a Good Thing, regardless of how you arrived at that conclusion. I don't care if we share the same path, nor do I insist that others follow my path and my path only. But if we arrive at the same conclusion through different paths, why is it so important that the way I get there matches your way? Expending energy on nonsense like this when there are bigger problems that we all face is foolishness.

[geek] The bugs, they are subtle...

2006-04-27T21:09:00.000-07:00

So at work today, I was greeted by an email containing possibly disastrous news: our software (the version rushed out for the agricultural study, remember?) looked like it might be eating data. After seeing it go live, the client had some (quite reasonable) changes they wanted implemented and gave us a week and a half to get them done. Most of them were content related, not logic, so it wasn't a big deal to implement and test the changes, then turn the app around for another go in the field. So they schlepped out to East Buttcrack, WA, app in hand, for another round of (we mutually agreed) pilot data collection. The primary investigator (or one of his minions) then had the good sense to actually import the data into a stats package they were familiar with and take a preliminary look at the data to see if they had everything they expected - for instance, did the subject IDs in the database match up with those in the hand-written log books? (IMO, it's always a Good Thing when the client is saavy enough to tell if what they're getting is crap or not. They know what they should be getting, while we're pretty much guessing. We try to make as informed a guess as possible, but we aren't the domain experts in what we're trying to model in the software. But I digress...) The client threw up a red flag: one of the interviews that they conducted was missing from the database. Gone. Poof. Vanished into the digital aether. That's not good. That's really not good. Still, for debugging a client-reported defect, we had a lot more data than we typically start with. Again, this is a Good Thing. They brought in the offending machine, and we went to work on it. Sure enough, there in the event log was error after error: SQL transaction failed, again and again and again. We were logging the exceptions, but we weren't alerting the user to them (a design decision I personally disagreed with, but hey...). We probably couldn't have told them to do anything more intelligent than exit the application and start over, but that probably would have fixed the problem. So off we go - what causes this error? Debuggers are fired up, process explorers are going... and they give us nothing. Nada. Bupkus. We can't reproduce the error. Oh, we found the cause of a similar exception that was being logged whenever the app exited (the code worked properly despite itself), but a wholesale failure of a given data-collection session? Nope. That suxors. Lots. And not in a good way. Finally, my coworker (he's a dev, but he's also more of a jack-of-all-IT-trades kind of guy) is free-associating, and wonders if somehow threads were sharing data. No, I tell him - while you can do that with relative ease, we aren't doing anything like that with this app. All the components run inline, in the same thread. We spin off child threads for load balancing, but we don't exchange data between threads. We don't need to, it's a disaster waiting to happen, and, done poorly, it can quickly become the programming version of the Witch House, bending reality beyond anything that Should Be. But maybe he was on to something... He mentioned that it was a fairly common occurence for the field staff to launch more than one instance of the app - the app runs on a Tablet PC, and the 'double-click' with the stylus breaks the rules that Windows follow in a mouse-driven environment. Not much, but it's enough of a deviation that it takes a little while to get used to. Second, with .NET applications, there's almost always going to be lag the first time you run the app. Like Java, the app is compiled on-the-fly; those pieces that get accessed the most often are then pre-compiled for subsequent accesses. This improves performance eventually, but initially it can seem like nothing's happening. And what do users do when nothing's happening? They click again. Third, these tablets are running fairly puny mobile CPUs. This increases the lag time, relative to the PCs upon which these apps are developed. And what does greater lag time mean? Yup, more clicking. So, three or four instances of the app open results in each creating their own database record - but if the lag hits just right, more than one instance of the app will 'share' the record ID of the most recent record. The staffer, realizing that they've got more than one instance running, will toggle around and close out those 'extra' instances. The app, being fairly polite and well-intentioned, will clean up after itself and delete whatever unused database record it is holding on to. If the instance they leave running shares the record ID with one of the instances that got closed, the closing app sees that the database record hasn't been used yet and deletes it. The still-functioning app no longer has a valid record to write to. It's, well, gone. Poof. Vanished into the digital aether. Since we aren't throwing the resulting exception in the user's face, they proceed apace, blissfully unaware that none of their data is being stored. And you can't reproduce the error if your machine is beefy enough. Can't. Won't happen. You can launch as many instances of the app as you want, and each and every one of them will have the correct record ID in memory. If our client hadn't been willing to turn the machine in to us, we wouldn't have ever found the bug. They would have continued to lose data, we would have continued to be unable to reproduce it, and things would have gone south from there. I lose sleep over bugs like this: intermittent and (apparently) unreproducable bugs are a nightmare, and our user base isn't broad enough (and our hardware base is too monocultural) for us to see any kind of hardware-related (or third-party software-related) patterns of errors. In this case, the fix was easy - on startup, see if there's another instance running. If there is, quit quietly and gracefully and bring the other instance to the fore. If there isn't launch away. But all too often, programming depends upon gut feelings and hunches to identify the sources of problems, and when the fixes aren't quite so easy, you run a tremendous risk of ending up with more problems than you started with. Today we were lucky. We won't always have that luxury.

[random][politics] "Trying to Understand Angry Atheists"

2006-04-26T19:27:00.000-07:00

Ah, yes - the "angry atheist" trope. Rabbi Marc Gellman's Newsweek article above, subtitled "Why do nonbelievers seem to be threatened by the idea of God?", can really only be addressed by turning it all around: Why are believers threatened by the lack of God? Let's look at the article in depth, shall we? It starts off well enough:

I think I need to understand atheists better. I bear them no ill will. I don't think they need to be religious to be good, kind and charitable people, and I have no desire to debate or convert them. I do think they are wrong about the biggest question, “Are we alone?” and I will admit to occasionally viewing atheists with the kind of patient sympathy often shown to me by Christians who can't quite understand why the Good News of Jesus' death and resurrection has not reached me or my people.

Okay - all well and good so far.

However, there is something I am missing about atheists: what I simply do not understand is why they are often so angry.

Huhn? And the proof here is...? A sweeping generalization; this really doesn't bode well.

So we disagree about God. I'm sometimes at odds with Yankee fans, people who like rap music and people who don't like animals, but I try to be civil. I don't know many religious folk who wake up thinking of new ways to aggravate atheists, but many people who do not believe in God seem to find the religion of their neighbors terribly offensive or oppressive, particularly if the folks next door are evangelical Christians. I just don't get it.

That sentence in the middle there really gives me pause: "I don't know many religious folk who wake up thinking of new ways to aggravate atheists, but many people who do not believe in God seem to find the religion of their neighbors terribly offensive or oppressive, particularly if the folks next door are evangelical Christians." With the rare exception, atheists aren't the ones trying to force their religious views into law, rabbi. And evangelical Christians are, to my knowledge, the single group most likely to be trying to force a theocratic world view on my society. By extension, this includes me, does it not? That's offensive to me. It's also oppressive. I don't want to live in a theocracy - our rules are goofy enough without explicitly dragging supersition into the mix. And, well... I tend to get a bit touchy when others try to oppress me. If that's anger, then so be it. Personally, I think I'd be being a bad citizen if I rolled over and meekly let such things be done in the name of superstition, but hey! To-mah-to, to-may-to, right? But I gotta say - this isn't looking like a promising bit of writing, Rabbi Gellman.

This must sound condescending and a large generalization, and I don't mean it that way, but I am tempted to believe that behind atheist anger there are oftentimes uncomfortable personal histories.

Yup. Condescending and a huge generalization. Nope, less and less promising by the sentence; nay, by the clause.

Perhaps their atheism was the result of the tragic death of a loved one, or an angry degrading sermon, or an insensitive eulogy, or an unfeeling castigation of lifestyle choices or perhaps something even worse. I would ask for forgiveness from the angry atheists who write to me if I thought it would help.

Woah. Stop the presses. Why are conversion narratives somehow more valid if they're about someone 'finding God'? How many people who profess to be 'born again' have done so because of tremendous personal pain? Isn't that one of the favorite tropes of Christians, for instance? "I was lost but now I'm found" and all that? Why is that the only valid experience, Rabbi? If that sort of hurt requires forgiveness on your part, shouldn't you also be forgiving those who've found a theistic philosophy by which to live? After all, you haven't done anything to hurt them, either.

Religion must remain an audacious, daring and, yes, uncomfortable assault on our desires to do what we want when we want to do it. All religions must teach a way to discipline our animal urges, to overcome racism and materialism, selfishness and arrogance and the sinful oppression of the most vulnerable and the most innocent among us. Some religious leaders obviously betray the teachings of the faith they claim to represent, but their sacred scriptures remain a critique of them and also of every thing we do to betray the better angels of our nature. But our world is better and kinder and more hopeful because of the daily sacrifice and witness of millions of pious people over thousands of years.

Where does it say that atheism does none of those things, Rabbi Gellman? Is not atheism 'an audacious and uncomfortable assault'? Oh, that's right - it's an assault on your theism, it calls into question your beliefs and the necessity thereof. I don't need what I see as an overbearing and intrusive fairy tale personified to tell me not to hurt others. Hurting others is wrong. Why? Because no one likes to be hurt. I don't like it when I'm hurt, so I can reasonably assume that others don't like it either. Where is the need for religion to reach that conclusion? Where does it say that atheists don't participate in making the world kinder and better? Come to think of it, where does it say that one is required to adhere to some kind of theistic belief to be a 'good, kind, and charitiable person'? You yourself admitted that no such condition exists in your third sentence, first paragraph. Which condition is it, Rabbi? If both are true, then why is one condition superior to the other?

To be called to a level of goodness and sacrifice so constantly and so patiently by a loving but demanding God may seem like a naive demand to achieve what is only a remote human possibility. However, such a vision need not be seen as a red flag to those who believe nothing.

No red flags here, Rabbi. If you want to believe in YHVH, so be it. That's fine by me. But again I'm struck by your phrasing - why is it somehow more elevated, more pure, to try and be a good person through mythology than through atheism?

I can humbly ask whether my atheist brothers and sisters really believe that their lives are better, richer and more hopeful by clinging to Camus's existential despair: “The purpose of life is that it ends."

What despair, Rabbi? Perhaps it is such mischaracterizations of atheism that make us, well, a little peevish. How is my life necessarily enriched by believing in folk tales, however well-established they might be? Does believing in a Supreme Other really add that much to your life, Rabbi? Do you really need that Other to see the world as a wonderful and worthwhile place? To me that sounds empty. Crippled. Fearful. Selfish, even: I want more! I want more! There must be more! What if there is no more, Rabbi? What if this is all that there is? You find that reason to despair? Why? What would you be missing? Really and truly, what would you be missing? I can live my life fully, and to the greater good of humanity without once ever needing to grab onto theistic supersition.

I can agree to make peace with atheists whom I believe ask too little of life here on planet earth if they will agree to make peace with me and with other religious folk who perhaps have asked too much. I believe that the philosopher-rabbi Mordecai Kaplan was right when he said, “It is hell to live without hope, and religion saves people from hell.” I urge my atheist brothers and sisters to see things as Spinoza urged, sub specie aeternitatis—“under the perspective of eternity.”

See, I can't make peace with those who ask too much - if that asking too much involves forcing me to submit to a belief system to which I do not subscribe. Merely possessing a theistic belief structure and expressing it publicly are not asking too much. Asking others to be better people, to, in the words of Bill and Ted, "Be most excellent unto each other", is not asking too much. Requiring me to deny my own conscience is. Religion may save people from the hell of hopelessness - but why do they possess that sense of hopelessness in the first place? Might not those very causes of hopelessness be addressed without resorting to theism? Inequity, oppression, injustice, bigotry - why is theism required to combat these? In many cases, theism contributes quite happily to these. Theism is not the only solution - some might say that it has a longer track record of demonstrating that it can't be a solution.

And to try a little positivity. Last Sunday I took two high-school girls to Cold Spring Labs to meet Dr. James Watson. One of the girls wants to be a research scientist, and the other has no idea yet, but I think she will be a great writer. I think they also both want boyfriends. I want them to stay smart and not dumb down to get a boy. Watson spoke and listened to the girls, and they left, I hope, proud about being smart. I know that Jim believes way more in Darwin than in Deuteronomy, but he also believes that at Cold Spring Labs the most important thing is not whether you are a man or a woman, not whether you believe in God. The most important thing, as he says, is “to get something done.” Now there's an atheist I can believe in.

Condescending again: where does it say that atheists are negative? The attitude expressed by Dr. Watson is my own - "by their works ye shall know them", isn't it? Well, my daily works contribute as much to society's betterment as any theists. And being continuously condescended to in such a way, continuously discounted, tends to make one angry, Rabbi. I'm not angry with theists - I'm angry with theism, particularly with any flavor of theism that demands my subjugation. I'm angry with the enshrinement and institutionalization of theism. And I won't apologize for that anger. I will apologize for some things, though. For instance, I'm sorry that you're so insecure in your own faith that my expression of my own deeply-held beliefs makes you uncomfortable. I'm sorry that you can't see how most atheists follow the same path as Dr. Watson. And I'm sorry that your inability to see these truths - a spiritual colorblindness, if you will - requires you to put me down. I'm not about to stop being who I am. If you can't see that as anything but anger, well... I might even be a little sorry for that too. Not because I'm wrong, or unsure of my own choices, my own life. No, I'm sorry that you've stunted yourself. But that seems to be something that your own version of theism demands.

[politics] Buzzwords

2006-04-21T08:05:00.000-07:00

[N]ot everybody who says that really understands what that means. And what words are we discussing here? To what could 'that' possibly refer? Why, 'rape' and 'incest', of course. These words would be from the mouth (does he have to stop breathing when he talks?) of South Dakota State Rep. Joel Dykstra (R-Lincoln County). Remember that: rape is a meaningless buzzword. Incest is a meaningless buzzword. You don't really understand what they mean. I'm having a Pulp Fiction moment...

ZED: Bring out the Gimp. MAYNARD: I think the Gimp's asleep. ZED: Well, I guess you'll just wake 'im up then, won't you?

Think he'd understand those buzzwords then? (via Atrios)

[random] What would you do...

2006-04-20T22:50:00.000-07:00

One summer during college I built a forge in my backyard. Admittedly, this was not your typical suburban backyard. I was still living with my parents, and they own a small farmstead in central MA - seven acres located an hour or so west of Boston, 20 minutes or so east of Worcester. Their house, built in 1740, sits well off the road, unusual in New England Colonial-era houses. Standing at the top of the driveway, looking down towards the house, one can see why: at one time, their driveway was the road. A faint echo of it still curls up the hill behind their house, faint stone walls and a slightly sunken trace extending up through oaks, maples, an apple orchard long gone to scrub. When the trees are bare, it is easy to picture - that trace lines up perfectly with the driveway, the shortest distance between two points, demarcated by fallen rows of granite. It's a very different place now. The farm is still there, but it's an anachronistic island. There's been a lot of development in town. Highway noise is a constant background hum, and Boston-bound commuters start backing up on the on ramp to I-495 at 6AM. There are McMansions, and "horse people" (there were always people who owned horses, even some who made a living at it, but none of them were "horse people"). There are biotech executives and doctors, there's a mall, there's even a small mosque in the neighboring town that serves the Saudi and Pakistani physicians who work at UMass Medical Center. Women in burqas come to buy honey from my parents' hives, while well-heeled homeowners buy their plants and produce. For good or ill, it's not the same place where I grew up by a long shot. So why a forge? Actually, I have a family history of blacksmithing. My great-great-grandfather was a smith, and for years a family legend was that the shop in which he worked was the inspiration for Longfellow's poem "The Village Smithy"; Henry Ford eventually purchased the smithy and moved it to Dearborn Village as part of his attempt to collect as many American icons as possible. (Many sites claim this privilege - for instance, the Maine Historical Society refers to Cambridge, MA being home to "the spreading chestnut tree", as do others. Ford clearly thought otherwise, choosing a site in the Blackstone Valley (from Chestnut Hill Road). As it turned out for us, the shop he purchased and moved to his Michigan museum was that of my grandfather's rival. Heh. Myths die hard...) But then there's the magic of the forge itself. The smithy at Sturbridge Village (a recreation of early Industrial Revolution-era life in New England) has always been my favorite part: the smell of the coal smoke, the sparks, the sound. Raw iron, firm and unyielding, heated to incandescence - it grudgingly allows itself to be shaped, coaxed into sinewey forms. Delicate filigree or stout knife blade; wrought hooks and forge horseshoes: the same tools produce them all. My dad and I took a class together at Sturbridge - under the tutelage of one of their interpreters, we learned how to build and maintain a coal fire, what the proper color should be when the iron is ready to be forged, how to hold the tools, the names of the parts of an anvil. Over the course of the day, we made a couple of wrought iron wall hooks since the making of a hook utilizes most basic smithing techniques: draw and taper both ends of your square stock - one end will be the spike that will be driven into the wall, the other will be formed into the "j" of the hook; fold the spike end at a 90° angle; about an inch below the bend, twist the shank that will sit against the wall for a decorative detail - a couple of inches done with the vise and some tongs will look quite nice. A couple of inches or so below the twist in the shank, shape the curve of the hook itself; as a final detail, recurve the tapered tip of the hook so that it curls back out over itself - don't want to poke through whatever you hang on the hook, right? Each step requires heating and hammering, pivot from fire to forge and back to fire once the glow subsides and the iron grows sluggish under your blows. With a roar of steam, plunge the hook into a bucket of water, stealing the last of the iron's fire. Examine the hook - keep or discard as its condition merits, then start again. All that to make a hook. That's the preindustrial version of your $3-at-the-local-big-box-hardware-retailer wall hook. But it was fun. Dirty, sweaty, and noisy, but definitely fun. I knew I'd have to do that again. But how to do it without paying for another class? I knew I'd have to build my own forge. Given the family history (and a predisposition for collecting antiques), we already had an anvil that was in decent shape, along w/ a squirrel-cage fan (a hand-cranked blower that you'd use in lieu of a bellows). I had some plans from a book that my dad had, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the other parts were readily available. Here's what you need: Ten or so cinder blocks upon which to stand the firepit of the forge. One car tire rim (for the firepit), some black iron plumbing fittings (to connect the blower to the axle hole at the bottom of the firepit), a couple big handfuls of gravel (to put into the firepit to make it somewhat more bowl-shaped) and some furnace cement (to line the firepit and make it nice & smooth & heat-reflective), and presto! Once the refractory cement cures, you've got yourself a primitive but fully functional forge. Get yourself some laundry Borax for flux and a heavy ball peen hammer (if you can't find a 'real' cross peen smith's hammer), and you're ready to go. If you don't already have the anvil & blower, you can make do with a segment of railroad track (often available free as scrap) and a cheapo hair dryer. The hardest part was finding a source for brown coal (the soft, high-sulfur, makes-acid-rain-when-burned-in-industrial-quantities kind) because you can't forge with hard coal. So what did I make that summer? Mostly I made a mess, and a lot of noise. I learned that you can burn steel, that forge welding is bloody hard, and that I need to learn to start small: there is no shame in starting small (but I don't think I've quite absorbed that lesson yet). But I also learned first hand why so many cultures revere smiths - there's something approaching magic in coaxing forth function and form from raw iron and steel. You can't force the metal - you can't make it do anything - if you want your piece to last. And in addition to these valuable life lessons and metaphors, there's an even more practical side to this experience: I've got a head start on my new career path when Peak Oil comes to pass. </sickHumor>

[random] Filed under "Better late than never"

2006-04-17T07:20:00.000-07:00

Okay, this has not demonstrated the best blogging behavior on my part, that's for sure. The latest rumblings of war in particular have had me quite down, and it's been far easier to participate in the forums of others than to put my own thoughts down on pixels. Coupled with an uptick in work stuff (mumble mumble bugs mumble mine mumble stupid build error mumble) and more effort than I'd expected in working on another online project (it's supposed to be fun, dammit!), I've really only been interested in catching up on some reading or parking my arse in front of the TV. That said, I think this week should be better... So by way of getting the ball rolling again, over a week ago I was tagged with this misnamed-as-7-but-really-10 questions thingie. This has been sitting in draft form pretty much since then, so here it is:

What is your favorite word? Currently, it might be 'parse'... <whine>But there are so many from which to choose...</whine>

What is your least favorite word? No question about it: deadline.

What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally? Boy... This is a little too complicated to distill down to one or two things. Creative inspiration I find in lots of places, and emotionally, well, let us never speak of this again. ;-) I don't do the whole spirituality thing at all, but for something that comes closest to touching on all three areas I'd probably have to go with Nature.

What turns you off? Willful ignorance.

What is your favorite curse word? 12 letters, begins with an 'm', rhymes with 'futhermucker'. Though 'bollocks' is probably in more common use.

What sound or noise do you love? The ring of hammer on anvil.

What sound or noise do you hate? Talk radio, political or otherwise.

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? See 2 items up re: 'sound or noise you love'.

What profession would you not like to do? Anything involving poop. Or other people's kids. Or other people's kids' poop.

If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? Sorry - lots got lost in translation. Oh, and yeah: I do have a sick sense of humor.

Anyone else who wants to play, feel free...

[random] Funny, that isn't quite what I had in mind...

2006-04-15T20:50:00.000-07:00

So... this is what 'normal posting' looks like - for varying values of 'normal', I guess. Yeesh. I promise - some real content is forthcoming.

[random][geek] I can stop any time I want

2006-04-10T06:28:00.000-07:00

For the first twenty-four hours I was literally insane and paranoid as many addicts are in severe withdrawal. -- William S. Burroughs, "Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness" Somehow, Comcast really fscked our account up this weekend... Ya go and return an old cable modem, and what happens? Their system starts blocking our MAC addresses. Go figure. I think this has happened almost every time they've updated our account. At any rate, we appear to be connected again. As soon as the cold sweat and shaking stops, normal posting - whatever that is - will resume.

[random][geek] Google in 20 years

2006-04-08T11:55:00.000-07:00

(click on thumbnail to open full page in new window) [via Making Light/PNH's Sidelights]

[random][geek][culcha] High-tech grafitti

2006-04-07T08:00:00.000-07:00

I don't remember where I first ran across a link to instructables - and if you like to tinker at all, it's a site that will prove to be a major time suck - but the first project that I saw there was for an electronic grafitti tool: "Throwies" - an LED, a battery, a powerful but small magnet, and some epoxy: A 'field test' of Throwies (as covered in Wired this morning): The NYC group responsible for this, Grafitti Research Lab, has also come up with "Electro-Grafs" - conductive and magnetic paint used to embed electronics in grafitti tags: I wonder how much power Glow Wire draws...? (all photos are from Grafitti Research Lab's site)

[geek] 30-second science blogging - Viral factories

2006-04-07T07:46:00.000-07:00

Caught this on Wired last night (I can't find the URL now, but it's on /. this morning): scientists at MIT have genetically modified a common virus so that it attracts metal ions and then extrudes them as nano-scale wires.

The resulting nanowires can be used in minuscule lithium ion battery electrodes, which in turn would be used to power very small machines, the researchers report in Friday's issue of the journal Science. [...] They modified the M13 virus' genes so its outside layer, or coat, would bind with certain metal ions. They incubated the virus in a cobalt chloride solution so that cobalt oxide crystals mineralised uniformly along its length. They added a bit of gold for the desired electrical effects. [...] The resulting nanowires worked as positive electrodes for battery electrodes, the researchers said. They hope to build batteries that range from the size of a grain of rice up to the size of existing hearing-aid batteries.

Yeah, the headlines are playing up the 'viral batteries' idea, even though that isn't really what's been done here. But still, I gotta ask (as always), how cool is that?

[politics] So... how old is the Modern Era, anyway?

2006-04-05T08:41:00.000-07:00

Kieran Healy made an interesting observation on Crooked Timber yesterday - what we think of as the Modern Era isn't really that old, even when measured in very human terms. If for our purposes we define modernity as commencing with the Enlightenment (which is more or less where contemporary historians place it), how 'old' is our society if we measure it using a 'Kevin Bacon'-esque degrees of separation model? Surprisingly, the answer is "Not very.":

[Oliver Wendell Holmes] died in 1935, and so there are still many people alive today who knew him, or at least shook hands with him. Holmes was born in 1841, and as a boy he met John Quincy Adams, who was born in 1767. So [...] you are just three handshakes away from a man born before the French Revolution, the American War of Independence, and arguably before the Industrial Revolution, as well.

Healy is trying to impress upon his students that, despite their own perception of the 1980s as being ancient history, 'real' history isn't really all that old. Implicit in his observation is this: the values enshrined in the Bill of Rights are far less entrenched than they are made to appear. From this perspective, it is perhaps less surprising that the definition of these rights, enumerated or not, is still (very much? somewhat?) open to debate. At first, this thought is somewhat depressing - rather than defending mature ideas and ideals, we're guiding them through their late adolescence or early adulthood. On the other hand, this could be flipped around to provide inspiration: this is still a living, dynamic debate; it is still a relatively young debate, and therefore participation in that debate is of paramount importance. Lady Liberty may not have quite the same ruddy glow in her cheeks or youthful flush on her breasts as when she led the crowd to the Bastille - but she's no toothless crone, either. We are still in the early days of (what may still be) a better nation. ('Work as if you lived in the early days of a better nation.' - Alasdair Gray. "If these are the early days of a better nation, there must be hope, and a hope of peace is as good as any, and far better than a hollow hoarding greed or the dry lies of an aweless god." - Graydon Saunders) - [via]

[random][geek] Life... Don't talk to me about life.

2006-04-04T08:46:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the light posting - work's been somewhat crazy (good crazy, not bad crazy), and I've been working on a new version of the Mystery of the Haunted Vampire site. And while I'm still somewhat cranky about some stuff that went down at work last week, I'm now a little more sympathetic to our client's position. You see, the product that we're working on is to be used for a data-collection project related to agricultural pesticides, which means that our client is working on an agricultural schedule, ie. entirely at the whims of Mother Nature. Evidently, the weather in Western Washington has changed such that the apple growers are about to conduct their first major aerial spraying. Data collection will need to begin Right Now, or we run the risk of missing a significant phase of agricultural pesticide use in WA. Fortunately, our client has agreed to use this first round as pilot data. We're probably 95+% code-complete, so everything but uncommon use cases should be accounted for, but still... Personally I'd feel better with another couple of weeks to work on it, but evidently the client is happy with the software as it is now. And who am I to argue with a happy client? As for the MotHV adventures, let's just say that I'm learning lots about MySQL and PHP. The MySQL part is proving surprisingly frustrating - I haven't needed to write a whole lot of SQL code for a while, certainly not nearly as much as I was writing even 3 years ago, and MySQL's dialect of SQL is just different enough from Transact SQL to throw up more stumbling blocks than I'd have thought. It's kind of like having to speak a language that's closely related to but not exactly the same as a second language you haven't spoken in a while... Sort of like comparing your high school or college Parisien French to québécois (or in some cases, kreyòl ayisyen...) - it's almost what you know, but not quite. But it is a perverse kind of geeky fun, so I'll take it.

[geek] Advice for consumers of custom software

2006-03-31T19:19:00.000-08:00

Dearest and most beloved of our customers, for are not all of our customers dear and beloved? when we* tell you that we will humbly deliver to you, for your gracious and considered review, a stable and mostly-'feature-complete' Beta on Monday, the proper response does not include "So, I can put this into production Tuesday, right?" Nor does an appropriate and measured reaction include "That's great! Where's [previously undiscussed feature 'x']?" Such questions can only lead to conflict, sadness, woe, recriminations, and angst such as the stuff of which great sagas are composed. Wailing, gnashing of teeth, rending of garments, and lamentations - all of these can be yours for such ill-considered speech. Exactly who will be doing the bulk of said wailing, gnashing, rending and lamenting may be open to some question. Rest assured, however, that you will do your share. That is all. [*] "We" meaning the development team and/or the management - preferably 'and', but that's a whole 'nuther blog post.

[geek] Doing my part to subvert the digital monoculture...

2006-03-30T08:43:00.000-08:00

Not that our house has ever truly been a monoculture - at any given time we have a doddering Compaq Win2K desktop, a new-ish Dell WinXP desktop, at least 1 XP laptop, 1 Mac OSX Powerbook & 1 i-Mac (purple, thanks for asking...) running... uh... Mac OS 9.x, I think. Don't ask me - all I know is that it's a Mac and it's purple. And that's without counting the PDAs & Java-enabled cellphones... But last night, a penguin joined our household: I brought home a 2nd laptop from work, an ancient and twitchy Fujitsu that's running Red Hat Fedora Core 5. Why? As I've mentioned in previous posts, I've been keeping an eye on Novell's Mono project, and my (Windows-centric) office wants to evaluate it as a development environment... We're doing more work with academics, and, well, it'd be a decent business move on our part to incorporate more Open Source software into our arsenal. Despite Microsoft's efforts to woo the University of Washington with sweetheart pricing deals, there's still a lot of support for and interest in Open Source software at UW. Seeing as how much of our current development is done in C#/.NET, being able to use that codebase on Mono could make it easier to port our software to Linux, which in turn could make us a more attractive candidate for inclusion on grants that required custom software development. So far I like it - it may be the machine that it's running on, but I don't see a whole lot of difference in performance between Fedora & WinXP. On the plus side, I haven't seen anything about it that would prevent me from making this my working (or home) environment, either... My big question now is this: as a Windows programmer who's never bothered with the ins and outs of hardware or OS support, what's the best way to acquaint myself with the arcana of Linux? At any rate, I'm looking for recommendations. Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?

[geek] 30-second science blogging - Tank, I need an exit...

2006-03-27T20:21:00.000-08:00

Wow... I'll let this speak for itself:

The line between living organisms and machines has just become a whole lot blurrier. European researchers have developed "neuro-chips" in which living brain cells and silicon circuits are coupled together. The achievement could one day enable the creation of sophisticated neural prostheses to treat neurological disorders, or the development of organic computers that crunch numbers using living neurons. To create the neuro-chip, researchers squeezed more than 16,000 electronic transistors and hundreds of capacitors onto a silicon chip just 1 millimeter square in size.

How cool is that?

[politics] Do you ever feel as if...

2006-03-27T19:52:00.000-08:00

...you're living in a "Mommy, mommy" joke? Mommy, mommy, why am I running in circles?

Victims described how they were beaten with canes,whips, hosepipes and metal rods, and how other victims were forced to watch as their family members were tortured in front of them. In a report dated February 11[, 2003], Amnesty [International] said other methods of physical torture de-scribed by victims include the use of falaqa (beating on the soles of the feet), extinguishing of cigarettes on various parts of the body, extraction of fingernails and toenails and piercing of the hands with an electric drill. -- The Sunday Business Post (Ireland), 23 March 2003, "Gruesome details emerge of Iraqi torture methods"

Shut up kid...

A little lower are a series of horizontal welts, wrapping around his body and breaking the skin as they turn around his chest, as if he had been beaten with something flexible, perhaps a cable. There are other injuries: a broken nose and smaller wounds that look like cigarette burns. An arm appears to have been broken and one of the higher vertebrae is pushed inwards. There is a cluster of small, neat circular wounds on both sides of his left knee. At some stage an-Ni'ami seems to have been efficiently knee-capped. It was not done with a gun - the exit wounds are identical in size to the entry wounds, which would not happen with a bullet. Instead it appears to have been done with something like a drill. -- The Observer/Guardian (UK), 3 July 2005, "Revealed: grim world of new Iraqi torture camps"

...or I'll nail your other foot to the floor.

THERE was no sign of danger as Mohammed Sammarai arrived at his brother Mustafa’s home for lunch last week, no hint that this would be their last meal together. It was not until after they had been joined by their old friend Ali Ahmad that they heard a commotion outside and realised something was wrong. Even then, the three men — all government employees, all Sunnis — had no inkling of the terrifying events that were about to overwhelm them. [...] “I walked home barefoot in a terrible state,” [Ahmad] said. “I could not call any official to report this. How could I when they were involved?” Two days later he found his friends’ bodies in the city’s Teb al-Adli mortuary. Mustafa’s right eye had been gouged out and his right leg broken. Other parts of his body appeared to have been penetrated by an electric drill, an increasingly common tool of torture in Iraq. Mohammed’s body bore similar injuries. Both men had been shot in the head. -- The Sunday Times Online (UK), 5 March 2006, "‘Driller killers’ spread a new horror in Iraq"

Yeah. I didn't think it was funny either.

[random] In illusion comfort lies

2006-03-26T00:21:00.000-08:00

Ah... just got back from seeing the arrogant-but-talented Andrew Eldritch and his current incarnation of The Sisters of Mercy... Oh, and Doktor Avalanche, of course. Wouldn't be The Sisters without the good Doktor. It wasn't the best show I've ever seen them do, but overall I'd give it a solid B+. The opening act was a weird fit - the former lead singer for The Catherine Wheel did a solid solo set of material from his new album, and closed with "Black Metallic". He was good, but not what the crowd was there for, and not what had been advertised (I wonder what happened to The Warlocks - I'd heard some of their samples online, they'd have probably been pretty good. Of course, maybe that was the problem... Andrew does not like to share the spotlight.). The sound sucked intermittently, there was way too much fog (setting off the fire alarms towards the end of the show), but it wasn't a bad set, with lots of 'old' and 'new' ('Vision Thing' counting for most values of 'new') - there were a couple of truly new songs, so maybe he is finally coming out with a new album! Ouch. Okay, I think I strained my sarcasm gland on that one... I do have to ask what the fuck was up with the crowd? Man, that was one of the uglier crowds I've been in for a while - there was a lot of pushing & shoving, and Seattle isn't usually like that, even when you're right in the thick of it. That's the closest I've come to brawling in a club in, like, more than a decade... On the cool side, since it was an all-ages show, there were a bunch of parents with their kids there - most of the kids looked to be around 8 or 9 years old. We were really close up to the stage, and towards the end, a mom came through with her little girl who promptly got (somewhat cramped) red carpet treatment - she got right up to the front, wound up on some random guy's shoulders - she got to see it all, all through the last couple of numbers and the encores. She even scored some guitar picks - both guitarists saw her, and one reached over and expressly passed the picks to her. That was probably the best part of the night ;-) Youth - so wasted on the young...

[politics] "Every war plan looks good on paper..."

2006-03-21T08:50:00.000-08:00

"...until you meet the enemy." So saith our President, in his second press conference this year, by way of defending Rumsfeld and his prosecution of the war in Iraq. Well, neither Bush nor Rumsfeld appear to remember what this quote (as originally given) really means: when von Moltke said "No plan survives contact with the enemy", he meant that operational rigidity will be the death of your campaign. You see, von Moltke realized that the very nature of warfare guarantees that you cannot count on things going as planned. There is no "Hoyle's Rules for Warfare" that states how the enemy must respond to your attack. This is not chess with its formalized moves nor is it go, with its stylized strategy. This is infantry warfare, unchanged in its basic principles since the late 19th century: kill the enemy before he kills you. Hold the ground you take. Kill the enemy if he tries to retake your captured territory. In Patton's words, don't die for your country; make some dumb bastard die for his country. The 'quaint' rules of the Geneva Accords were arrived at because of these simple and brutal truths of modern land warfare. Those are the only rules one can expect on the battlefield - everything else must revolve around operational discipline and flexibility. The enemy will not fight according to your plan. He never has; he never will. Yet Rumsfeld has been so enamored of his "Transformation" process that he refused to listen to the advice of his generals in planning the ground war. He has refused to modify his tactics in the face of unexpected enemy tactics. He has refused to modify his plan in the face of evidence that it is not working. He is holding to his plan, even though the enemy isn't behaving the way the plan says they should. Rumsfeld has forgotten or deliberately ignored the truths of von Moltke's words, and our military is paying for it. With their lives. And our country is going to keep paying for it long after Bush and Rumsfeld are out of office. And Iraq is going to pay for it with usury-level compound interest. (Note: Blogger's photo upload chokes on this image, so I've hot-linked to the original site where it was found - the image is from Ft. Stewart, GA, and the April 2003 memorial service that the 3d Infantry Division (Mechanized) held. I'll edit the photo later and see if changing the size or compression helps.)

[geek] w00t!

2006-03-20T21:02:00.000-08:00

It was a w00t kind of day for me - pure, unadulterated, happy, geeky w00t dances all 'round. Why? I hear you ask with bated breath... (Okay, I don't hear you asking this at all, but dammit, it's my blog and I'll post what I friggin' want to. So there.) I won't prolong your agony of anticipation any longer: 2 software releases. ([Whaa!?] Yeah, whatever. As if you couldn't guess that a post titled 'w00t!' wouldn't be geeky...) First, Red Hat just released the latest version of their flavor of desktop Linux, Fedora Core 5. Who cares, right? Well, it's one of the first major Linux distros to include Mono pre-loaded. I know - more 'who cares?'. Screw all y'all - finish up your 2 drink minimum and get the hell out. But for those of you who're sticking around, Mono's importance is this: Mono is a multi-platform port of Microsoft's .NET environment. .NET is the core of Microsoft's current generation of development tools - in theory, because Mono has been coded to the standard Microsoft submitted to ECMA, pure .NET code should be relatively easy to port from OS to OS. Windows, OS X, Solaris, Unix, Linux: Mono installs on all of them and provides a consistent Application Programming Interface (API) against which to write programs. Unlike Java, where individual Java Virtual Machines for different operating systems might or might not have support for various features, Mono defines a core set of APIs that will always be present once Mono is installed. Trust me - this could be a Very Cool Thing. Yeah, yeah, SUSE was first to include Mono in their desktop distro, but a.) Novell owns both SUSE and Mono (and you'd expect them to eat their own dogfood) and b.) IIRC, more people use Fedora than SUSE, so I'm a lot more excited about Red Hat. Their decision to include Mono is an acknowlegement that Mono is a mature and stable product. That was w00t dance #1. w00t dance #2 actually came from the Beast of Redmond (yeah, I can hear the Open Source geeks leaving now - don't forget to tip the waitstaff on the way out, 'kay?). During today's sessions at the Game Developer's Conference 06 (GDC06), Microsoft began to roll out parts of their new XNA platform. XNA is a game development toolkit that should go a long way towards unifying and streamlining Xbox 360 and PC game development. It will also extend the .NET API to more readily perform common game-related tasks, as well as allow for a specialized version of the .NET environment to run on the Xbox 360. All this is cool in a (for me) geeky but abstract way - what really got me going, though, was the release of the XNA Build toolset. Games require lots of media, right? Images, video, sound, textures - lots and lots of media. Managing this media gets more and more cumbersome the further into a game's dev cycle you get - and many times, problems with the media content aren't discovered until late into the cycle. To this end, many game companies have rolled their own 'asset pipeline' tools - think version control mixed with content management, and you'll have a broad idea about what's involved. This weekend, I bought (and read) Ben Carter's The Game Asset Pipeline - on the one hand, I learned that there's a lot I don't know about developing games... But more importantly, I learned that there are, like, actually tools and methodologies out there for dealing with game assets. Going into the book, I had a hunch that many of the problems faced by our dev team with our media-rich software were not unheard of - and I was right. Asset management is one of the weak points in our development process right now, and Carter's book laid out both the scope of the problem as well as ways to address it. And then Microsoft stepped in today with XNA Build - an asset manager built on the .NET platform, designed to be integrated into Visual Studio. Guess what's installing on my laptop right now? w00t!

[random] I belong to the ... generation

2006-03-19T18:13:00.000-08:00

While driving to the destination of today's Fresh Air Outing, Compulsory, The Boy asked me to put on some music. "What do you want?" "I don't know; something you like." Hm... Opportunity knocks. Emboldened by my earlier successes, I figured this might be a great time to see where the limits of The Boy's musical perimiters were. Time for reconaissance by fire, dropping artillery about a general area until a you discover something interesting. I figured that as long as we were probing, we might as well go long - Einstürzende Neubauten, it was! "Whaddaya think?" "Too strange." Whoops... Jeez - and I even started off with Feurio! instead of Prolog. Oh well. Next up? Richard Hell and the Voidoids! "Whaddaya think? Too strange?" "No, I like it - turn it up." Hah! Fire for effect! Next outing I'm thinking maybe some Joy Division... or maybe The Clash... or perhaps...

[politics] But hey! At least there aren't any more rape rooms!

2006-03-18T23:20:00.000-08:00

No more mass graves, no more torture. Remember those promises we made in - what was it? April? May of 2003? Probaby around the time that the "Mission Accomplished" banner was unfurled? So what the fuck is this?

[...] an elite Special Operations forces unit took one of Saddam Hussein's former torture centers near Baghdad Airport and made it their own. They called it the Black Room. "In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball," the reporters relate. "Their intention was to extract information to help hunt down Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to Defense Department personnel who served with the unit or were briefed on its operations.

But wait - this is but the merest of prologues.

"The Black Room was part of a temporary detention site at Camp Nama, the secret headquarters of a shadowy military unit known as Task Force 6-26. Located at Baghdad International Airport, the camp was the first stop for many insurgents on their way to the Abu Ghraib prison a few miles away. "Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, 'NO BLOOD, NO FOUL.' The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: 'If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it.' According to Pentagon specialists who worked with the unit, prisoners at Camp Nama often disappeared into a detention black hole, barred from access to lawyers or relatives, and confined for weeks without charges. 'The reality is, there were no rules there,' another Pentagon official said.

"...no rules there". So - anyone tried to track down that "Democracy! Whisky! Sexy!" guy to find out what he thinks now? Not so much 'democracy' or 'whisky' under the mullahs, eh? And as for 'sexy' - well, unless your idea of sexy crosses way past the line of 'safe, sane & consensual' and heads on into 'rape, torture and mutilation gives me a woody', this probaby isn't it.

[geek][random] White elephants galore!

2006-03-17T07:46:00.000-08:00

So the other day, I was driving down by the UW Surplus building and saw that they had an auction coming up this weekend. Being the pack rat that I am (and I loves me some good, cheap tools), I had to take a look and see what they were offering... There're some interesting-looking lots of hand tools - and computers by the shrink-wrapped pallet (PC and Mac... and even some Sun stations tossed in) - but the best item by far (just in sheer "WTF?" terms) has to be this: a USAF 16-man Altitude Chamber, complete w/ vacuum pump. I don't know how often UW expires their auction-related links, so should the above come up with the screamin' 404, video of the device in action can be found here, under "Ballute Vacuum Inflation Testing" - QuickTime MOV or Windows Media WMV. Now that's a white elephant! ;-)

[geek] Of clipper ships, schooners, steamers and yachts...

2006-03-16T22:19:00.000-08:00

Brian Dunbar, over at Space4Commerce, passed along an excerpt from a piece that discussed the motivations for space travel, as well as comparing and contrasting the pros and cons of manned vs. robotic space exploration. The piece he linked to touched upon a number of topics I've been meaning to expound upon but haven't quite managed, so when the comment I was typing on Space4Commerce started to become post-length... well... I decided to actually get my act together and, well, post something. Throughout history, the biggest motivators for mass migrations has been what can crudely be described as economic. There's some magic tipping point where the perceived risk and the actual cost of leaving everything behind and starting over is lower than the 'cost' of staying behind. Rarely is it for ideological or moral reasons - that may be the rhetoric used to encourage people, but behind it all tends to be an economic (if not ouright profit) motive. Someone, somewhere, is expecting to make a profit on the venture - and that profit is what has largely been missing from our current system of space exploration. Financial exposure must be somewhat limited and the promise of profit must be at least somewhat realistic in order to make investing in such a venture tempting - and in the case of the people who would actually make such a voyage and be the pioneers, the cost of participating must be relatively low and the risks of participting must be seen as being lower than the risks of staying put. In the case of European and Asian migrations to the US, shipping was streamlined to the point where steerage was within reach of many of the poorest of Europe's citizens - around the same time, the American West was more or less pacified, and so the costs of mass expansion Westward were lowered for the people who were already firmly established in the Eastern urban areas. That lower cost, those lower barriers - they contribute to the decreased sense of risk on the part of those making the voyage and make it far more likely that someone who wants to go will do so. So where does the space elevator come into this? Well, to torture my metaphors a while longer, I see the effort to build the elevator as the 21st century version of building schooners or clipper ships - while current manned spacecraft efforts are, to keep with the Gilded Age theme, more akin to building wooden racing yachts, like the one for which the America's Cup was named. Sure, you can circumnavigate the globe or move people with a 40m yacht, but the cost is prohibitive... Now the schooner - that can move stuff. And people. In bulk. And in comfort even, if you so desire. The elevator may not even need to be a clipper ship to have a major impact upon creating that tipping point - the elevator could be the proverbial 'slow boat to China'. Those boats may have been slow - but they were responsible for moving tons upon tons of commerce as well as immigrants. One-hundred-fifty years or so ago, these boats were an engine of commerce, of society, of innovation. Their existence reduced barriers - barriers to trade, to innovation, to emigration. A space elevator has, in my opinion, the potential to serve the same role today: a reducer of barriers, a force multiplier, an opportunity engine. This is not to say that current space technology should be abandoned, nor is it to take sides in the robots vs. man debate. Rather, I would simply like to point out that a lot of what counts against manned space flight is, frankly, the cost - and that the mindshift from producing yachts to producing clipper ships or schooners (or even steamships) could go a long way towards lowering that expense. And lowering expense could be a major step towards reducing the perception of risk associated with getting people into space on a much larger scale than we've seen to date. And that could lead to a whole new Age of Exploration, and possibly even some healthy and productive international competition... And both of those strike me as having the potential to be Really Good Things.

[geek][politics] Hey, LiftPort! Here's how to finance the space elevator!

2006-03-14T11:44:00.000-08:00

A month or so ago, Brian Dunbar observed in my comments that y'all should patent aerobraking and then collect royalties. I'm telling you, the time is ripe for such a move! Why? Because IBM was just granted a patent (7,003,497) for (ready? sitting down?) confirming an electronic transaction with an email. Breathtaking in its ~~stupidity~~ simplicity, isn't it? Think of the advantages - you'd have complete financial freedom, and you wouldn't ever be beholden to VC-weasel-suit-types (I've heard the horror stories). Just remember - package it as a business process, and USPTO should go for it like... like... Congressmen for a lobbyist's junket! Oh yeah - I'll want a modest slice if you pull it off... A finder's fee of sorts. Coz' I'm nice that way. It can even be a one-time fee instead of a percentage. Coz' I'm nice that way. [via SIVACRACY]

[random] No, not jealous at all.

2006-03-13T22:47:00.000-08:00

My friend Kristina has posted some photos of the Nasca drawings taken during her recent trip to Peru. ~~We hate her.~~ We're glad she's back safe and sound. And no... I'm not the slightest bit jealous.

[geek][politics] When in (political) doubt...

2006-03-13T22:03:00.000-08:00

...borrow a move from the culture war playbook. Joe Lieberman, Hillary Clinton & Dick Durbin want the CDC to study the latest public health menace - video games:

Long time foes of the video game industry persuade Senate committee to approve a sweeping study of the "impact of electronic media use" to be organized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC.

Because, as we all know, the CDC has nothing better to worry about - and as one of the (alas, all too rare) lucid posters on gamedev.net observed, it'll be about as well spent as the $100 million spent on evaluating the power of prayer over medical outcomes. And if anyone was wondering why I don't trust the DLC and their ilk, just take a look at the cosponsors of the bill.

[geek][politics] ...and great was the fall of it

2006-03-11T12:29:00.000-08:00

Normally, I can't stand CIO Magazine - okay, that's not entirely fair; I find it interesting to see industry trends and who's pushing what agenda, but I have very little tolerance for buzzwords and weasel-speak... And IMAO, the ratio of ads to weasel-speak runs fairly high. Not as high as some of the free trade rags, but still... Let's just say that I read it with a box of Diamond Kosher salt close at hand. So when I was reading the current dead-tree issue (not online yet), I was surprised by how strongly "What Can Tear Us Apart" by Juan Enriquez resonated with me. Enriquez points out a number of factors that have the potential to, as he phrases it, create an "Untied States of America", a confederation (if we're lucky) instead of a federation. Yes, Enriquez has a vested interest in avoiding the scenario he portrays - his company, after all, is a venture firm specializing in biotech - but I think his thesis bears closer examination. Enriquez points out that throughout the world, increased disparities between regional economies has led to increased demands for regional autonomy. He points out that much of the US economy is increasingly driven by fewer zip codes - and those zip codes are largely in metro urban areas in the 'blue' states. This is somewhat simplistic, but really - even in the 'red' states, the economic centers tend to be urban. These economic engines also tend to be on the purple side of things, in contrast to the deep-red exurbs and rural areas around them. Of course, life isn't as simple as the blue-red dichotomy that makes for good media stories and good political theatre... But that political theatre is driving policy decisions that will have an impact upon our economy. The strain of politics that has come to dominate the 'red' states is increasingly incompatible with the economic realities of the 'blue' states - feeding into such internet phenomena as the "Fuck the South" essay or the "United States of Jesusland" JPGs that circulated far and wide in the wake of the 2004 elections. Even within 'blue' states, there are active 'red' constituencies that seek to differentiate and distance themselves from 'those people' in the cities - hell, read the letters to the editor in Seattle's two daily papers, and you'd think that we had Berkely vs. Alabama within a 40 mile radius. And in many respects, we do: it's all right-wing-bigot-this vs. stupid-commie-liberal-that. Enriquez's article ties directly into the two pieces I wrote yesterday (part 1, part 2) - this insistence upon the subjugation of science (and here I'm using 'science' as broadly as possible - education, technology, research) to ideological ends will only exacerbate these existing tensions. The "Fuck the South" essays will multiply - and "Fuck the North" essays will arise in response. And last time that happened, it wasn't pretty... The seeds of the Civil War were sown at various points in our nation's history - some a century earlier, some but a few decades. It takes a while for such seeds to bear fruit, but when they do, stand back; the harvest is be a bloody one. coda: Yes, the title's from Matthew 7:24-27, houses built upon rock and sand and all that... I'm not one for Bible verses, being the unbeliever that I am, but I do appreciate good metaphors and turns of phrase.

[random][geek] You have been eaten by a gru.

2006-03-11T10:05:00.000-08:00

Step into the Wayback Machine, Sherman... We just had to explain to The Boy what text-based computer games were like. There was much pondering. "But what do Grus look like?" "We don't know - the game never told you." "Maybe they come out of their caves." "Yeah - when they ate you. And then who could you tell?" Breakfast resumed, The Boy was clearly dissatisfied. I anticipate at least a couple of days' worth of questions about Grus are in the pipeline.

[geek][politics] The Cathedral and the Laboratory, part 2

2006-03-10T08:44:00.000-08:00

So here's the part where I apologize to those of you who recognize the source of the title - Eric S. Raymond's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar". I'm stretching the metaphor Raymond employed in his famous essay, but I think there are still plenty of parallels to be found. The Cathedral is more than a development methodology - it's a mindset. The Cathedral buttresses itself with dogma and top-down leadership. It sees itself as central to society - without its influence, anarchy and apostasy will rule the realm. To defy the revealed wisdom of the Cathedral is to invite banishment, or worse. The Cathedral sends out edicts, rules, injunctions that Must Be Obeyed. The Cathedral fears challenges and conflict, and values conformity. To challenge the Cathedral is to risk being burned at the stake. The Bazaar represents a far-less formalized command structure. There are rules to be observed and roles that are proscribed, but there is little centralization. Goods and services are valued and devalued based upon their quality as well as the persuasiveness of their purveyors. You can have quality products in the Bazaar and still fail if you aren't capable of selling them. Conversely, if you're charismatic or a smooth talker you can do quite well for yourself, regardless of the quality of your goods or services. But in the Bazaar, you are subjected to the scrutiny of the entire community. Your competitor can see your wares - he may not be able to see behind your counter to see if you are adulterating your product or inflating your claims, but he can directly compare your product to his and quantify the result. Try doing that in the Cathedral. The Bush Administration's approach to science is that of the Cathedral: their priests and prophets must control the message, and the message must conform to Cathedral Law. To disagree with the Cathedral is heresy; to be accepted into the priesthood, you must accept the Cathedral's dogma. No one can challenge the Cathedral's position publicly - there may be Byzantine struggles occuring, but they take place far from the public eye, deep within chambers closed to all but the highest level of initiates. No scripture will be accepted into the Cathedral's canon if it does not dovetail with the approved dogma; the veracity of a statement is secondary to its conformity to the norm. As with the Cathedral, so the Bazaar: where Raymond uses the Bazaar as a metaphor for the Free/Open Source Software movement, I also see it as describing a mindset. The scientific community taken as a whole, the Laboratory, is far more like the Bazaar. Ideas ebb and flow in response to all the actors. Coalitions form and disperse, products rise and fall in value, and everyone shares a common currency: knowledge. Information. Now I have no illusions about the scientific process. I've seen the feuds and petty atrocities that run throughout academia. And, like our so-called Free Market system, there are many 'Invisible Hands' at work trying to steer things towards their own advantage, denying competitors access to market share, denigrating the quality of competing wares. But by-and-large, there is Bazaar-like atmosphere in which this takes place. If you think your wares are superior to a competitor's, you are free to make your case to the entire Bazaar. Again, try that in the Cathedral and see how far it gets you. The Bush Administration is trying to bring the Bazaar under the control of the Cathedral. They only want Cathedral-sanctioned goods and services to be exchanged, regardless of their relative merit compared to alternative goods and services. But they're ignoring the structural weakness of the Cathedral: it becomes infinitely harder to identify problems if you have surrounded yourself with true believers. If your dogma dictates a course of action that will ultimately lead to catastrophe, who will have the courage (or ability) to stand up and say so? Andrew Sullivan is right to criticize the Bush Administration for their policies regarding emergency contraception, HPV & HIV. It would have been better had he listened to what we were saying five years ago; in lieu of that, an apology would be nice, but I'm not holding my breath. What infuriates me about Sullivan and his ilk is their blind unwillingness to see how pervasive the rot is. His inability to see how systemic this rigid and unyielding preference for the Cathedral over the Bazaar, nay, at the expense of the Bazaar (or Laboratory, or Academy) is sadly typical of newly apostate members of the Cathedral. They are beginning to see the hypocrisy in embraces, but are unwilling to criticise it too much for fear of what that will say about themselves. In the end, the merchants in the Bazaar have far less power than the clergy in the Cathedral. They always have, and likely always will. Free trade in the Bazaar depends altogether too much upon the whims of the Cathedral, and today the Cathedral is insisting that the Bazaar submit itself without question to the Cathedral's rule. Who stands for the Bazaar? Currently, I hear many scattered and tiny voices, but from those who could (and should) be allies I hear half truths, lies, apologies, and silence. Why? Because preserving their own access to the Cathedral, either as syncophants and devotees now or priests and bishops in the future, is far more important to them.

[geek][politics] The Cathedral and the Laboratory, part 1

2006-03-10T07:57:00.000-08:00

This morning, Atrios links to the newly-shrill (yet curiously unapologetic - but more about that another time) Andrew Sullivan's blurb about Michael Specter's article in the latest issue of The New Yorker, "The White House vs. the laboratory". The article itself is not online, but Sullivan quotes from it thusly:

Religious conservatives are unapologetic; not only do they believe that mass use of an HPV [(Human Papilloma Virus, a sexually-transmitted disease that appears to cause or otherwise precipitate cervical cancer)] vaccine or the availability of emergency contraception will encourage adolescents to engage in unacceptable sexual behavior; some have even stated that they would feel similarly about an H.I.V. vaccine, if one became available. "We would have to look at that closely," Reginald Finger, an evangelical Christian and a former medical adviser to the conservative political organization Focus on the Family, said. "With any vaccine for H.I.V., disinhibition" - a medical term for the absence of fear - "would certainly be a factor, and it is something we will have to pay attention to with a great deal of care." Finger sits on the Centers for Disease Control's Immunization Committee, which makes those recommendations.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed the Bush Administration's efforts to politicize Federally-funded science. That our homegrown Taliban should prefer death over the remote possibility of someone fucking without their stamp of approval shouldn't exactly be a shock, either. What was a shock to me, though, was the degree to which the Specter was willing to apologize for and minimize the effect of the Bush Administration's assault on scientific integrity. I haven't read the article itself, obviously, but the tone Specter strikes in the Q&A about the article is strikingly different from that conveyed by Sullivan's excerpt:

What are the costs of an anti-science Administration like this one, in both the short term and the long term? Is it possible that we’re witnessing the beginning of a major shift away from Enlightenment thinking, or is that too alarmist a reading of the effect of one Administration’s policies? That’s a little alarmist, I hope. We are in an age when almost anything is technically possible in science. We can break humans down to the smallest component parts. We can mix parts and grow new ones (or soon will). We can manipulate nature and, soon enough, we will even be able to choose the genetic components of our children. None of this is easy to take, and a reaction is understandable. The job of the Administration, and of educators, is to convince people that these powerful new tools can help immensely and not just cause harm. In the short term, that is not happening and we are probably losing some good young people who might otherwise enter science. But a few years from now—maybe 2008, to take a random date—the situation could improve markedly.

It is not alarmist. The positions staked out by this Administration on almost every level fly directly in the face of the ideals of the Enlightenment. Specter also apologizes for the Administration making sure that people placed on scientific advisory boards adhere to philosophies that will appeal to the American Taliban by waving his hands and suggesting that 'every Administration has done it'. But you see - they haven't done it to this degree. The Bush Administration has done this to an unprecedented degree - they have placed their flunkies throughout the civil service, from the uppermost and most publicized positions down to the mid- to upper-management levels. The topmost positions will more than likely be reassigned with a change of Administration, but those embedded managers will continue to wreak havoc on the system for years to come. They have also required loyalty tests when screening people for the advisory board positions: What are your opinions on abortion? On drugs? Did you vote for the President? If your answers are not acceptable to the Christianist cabal in power, you are rejected. These questions are being asked of scientists across the board: oncology, cardiology, nephrology... What does abortion or the "War on Drugs" have to do with someone's scientific qualifications? What does how one votes have to do with their scientific ability?

[geek][politics] Censor, heal thyself...

2006-03-09T11:09:00.000-08:00

It appears that Tomo Foote-Lennox, currently in the news as spokesmoron (and lead censor) for censorware manufacturer Secure Computing (in case you haven't heard, their software classifies Boing-Boing as containing nudity), probably isn't in the position to tell anyone what they should or shouldn't be doing online... It would seem Mr. Foote-Lennox has some unusual proclivities, as well as some less-than unusual ones. Why is it that the censors always seem to be some of the biggest perverts? (Yes, that was rhetorical...) Thanks for catching that one, Kathryn!

[politics] Neo-Nazis move from cyber attacks to arson

2006-03-09T06:41:00.000-08:00

It seems that someone out there is dissatisfied with their attempts to silence The Holocaust History Project using denial-of-service attacks against THHP's servers - they've moved on to arson:

In the early hours of March 6, 2006, a fire broke out at a warehouse complex near San Antonio International Airport, causing extensive damage to the offices of The Holocaust History Project (THHP), an organization that has been, for the last ten years, in the forefront of confronting Holocaust denial online, in addition to providing educational materials to students throughout the world. Arson investigators now have confirmed that the fire was intentionally set and are continuing their investigation. It was just the latest in a series of attacks with the apparent intent to silence THHP. For the past 18 months, the THHP website has been under an unprecedented Distributed Denial of Service attack. This cyber attack began on September 11, 2004, and is being carried out by a specially modified version of the MyDoom computer worm, programmed to target the THHP web server.

As the saying goes, "the best disinfectant is sunlight" - and the best response to an incident like this is to stand behind THHP and their mission: to refute the lies and propaganda of Holocaust revisionists and deniers. This sort of thuggery is not acceptable in an open society, and must not stand. So please consider this my little ray of digital sunshine... (I forget where I first read this yesterday, but Orac appears to be getting credit for bringing this story to a wider audience.)

[random][geek] Never, ever, ever...

2006-03-07T23:08:00.000-08:00

...buy your parents a domain name if they're, uh, technologically impaired. That's all.

[politics] Codicil: WP as an anti-personnel munition & Zogby

2006-03-07T20:34:00.000-08:00

Oh yeah, there was one other thing buried in Zogby's poll of troops stationed in Iraq that I thought was interesting. Remember all the noise out and about in the pro-military blogosphere in early- to mid-November about how white phosphorus (WP) and napalm are perfectly acceptable munitions to use in an anti-personnel role? Well, approximately 80% of the service members surveyed by Zogby disagree with that statement. Think about that for a second: 80% think it is unacceptable to use WP or napalm-like munitions against the Iraqi insurgency. 80%. In case you don't remember, a lot of what was said to discredit those who questioned the legitimacy of the use of WP and other incendiaries in Fallujah consisted largely of variations on "you haven't served"/"you don't know what you're talking about"/yadda yadda. This makes it easy for me to imagine the same criticisms being levelled against these survey results: Zogby underrepresented combat troops, he only surveyed desk jockeys and truckers and quartermasters, and so on and so forth. I don't know what the ratio is of combat arms to combat support to combat service support troops on the ground in Iraq - if previous wars are any yardstick, it's entirely possible that only 20% of our military personnel in Iraq are deployed with combat units (I've found unsourced statements that put the US Military's "tooth-to-tail" ratio at anywhere from 1:10 to 50:50, so YMMV). It's also possible that 100% of those service members who think that WP and other incendiary munitions are not legitimate anti-personnel weapons are not serving in combat roles - they just don't know what they're talking about, because they're part of the tail, and not the teeth. But somehow I doubt it.

[random] Don't Go Disco

2006-03-07T09:12:00.000-08:00

So I'm picking The Boy up from his after-school sports program the other day and I forget to turn off the CD player when I parked the car. The Boy gets buckled in, I buckle in, I start the car... AND THERE'S MUSIC! LOTS OF IT! Whoops. Quickly, I turn down the volume, drawing this plaintive response from the back seat: "Aw, daaaad. I like it loud." Heh. So do I, son; so do I. (title from one of the tracks on the disk in question - from these guys. Like Interpol? Peter Murphy? Joy Division? Early Sisters of Mercy? Then give these guys a listen...)

[geek] 30-second science blogging - One of these days, Alice...

2006-03-06T19:23:00.000-08:00

"...to the Moon!" It seems that Elon Musk and his company SpaceX have been up to more than they've been willing to let on - Musk has been using his PayPal fortune to build a reusable space capsule:

"It took SpaceX just over three years to build both a company and a rocket from scratch, including engines, structure, avionics, two launch sites [and to get through the] regulatory crud," [Musk] said. "If we hadn't been forced to go to Kwaj[alein] (sic), we would very likely have launched by now. As it is, total time from zero to launch will be just over three and a half years."

Well, maybe this doesn't move us that much closer to fulfilling Ralph Kramden's immortal words, "Straight to the moon, Alice!". But it seems clearer to me that we are so getting off this rock... [via /.]

[politics] "Cracking down on illegal immigration"

2006-03-06T10:11:00.000-08:00

It's the new "think of the children":

Congress is headed toward approving a plan that would require employers to check every worker's Social Security number or immigration work permit against a new federal computer database. [...] Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., says "this is not a national ID system." But several bills authorize studies of "tamper proof" Social Security cards or their issuance. The cards would include some biometric data and would be harder to counterfeit.

So remember, the next time you hear "stemming the tide" or some other such nonsense, it's probably just as much about illegal immigration as the Communications Decency Act was about shielding kids from smut on the internet. It's all about control, baby, all about control. [via AMERICABlog]

[politics] These games you playThey’re gonna end in more than tears someday

2006-03-05T09:50:00.000-08:00

I don't get it... On the one hand, we tell India that they are free to build all the nukes they want; on the other hand, we tell Pakistan... eh, not so much. How's that going to look to the Iranians? I mean, India's had nukes since the 1970s, so this is in many ways just a pro forma gesture; on the other hand, India, like Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, so this is what is so glibly described as 'rewarding bad behavior' (as if being able to vaporize Lahore is only worthy of a 'time-out'); on the gripping hand, India has proven itself to be a stable country as well as a non-proliferator. On yet another hand, India and Pakistan have pushed things to the brink of nuclear war, what? Twice? Three times? And on still another hand, I distinctly remember rumors in the 1980s of an Israeli/Indian/South African research exchange, so while India surely isn't in North Korea's league when it comes to sharing nuclear tech, I don't think they're quite as pure on the non-proliferation front as we would currently paint them out to be. Just to keep the hands balanced, as the symmetry of Hindu avatars demands, India is the most populous democracy in the world, and is an increasingly important power... Finally emerging from the shadow of the Raj, India is taking steps towards global leadership, while Pakistan is still mired in military dictatorship. This is probably the most constructive way to engage with India at this time. But I still can't help but think that the take-home message to the Iranians is that we'll support nuclear states - as long as they aren't Islamic states. And that doesn't bode well for the future stability of the broader Persian Gulf/South Asian region.

It's eight fifteen And that's the time that it's always been We got your message on the radio Conditions normal and you're coming home

[lyrics from OMD's Enola Gay]

[random] Aphrodite's island refuge - Milos

2006-03-03T23:36:00.000-08:00

Ever since I got this book as a gift (I probably wasn't all that much older than The Boy is now - I might have been 8, 9 at the most), I've always wanted to visit Greece. And, in what will seem like a completely unrelated point if you stop reading this too soon, this past year I've started to get into sea kayaking. After reading this article about the Greek island of Milos where one can see sites like this: and this: ...I now realize that I now have no reason to not do both at the same time. Looks like I need to get serious about my paddling, eh? Oh yeah - and they have catacombs - what's not to like!?

[geek] Random note about Yahoo! accounts and throw-away Bug Me Not addresses

2006-03-03T09:09:00.000-08:00

FYI, if you want to create a throw-away Yahoo! mail account that no one can ever access (including yourself, so be sure it's a true throw-away!), here's a sure-fire tip I just discovered: use a GUID for the password. What's a GUID? It means "Globally Unique IDentifier"; it's a 128-bit alpha-numeric identifier that is, for all practical purposes, unique, and there are (not surprisingly) plenty of websites that will generate them for you. Why, you might ask, would anyone want to use a GUID for a password? Well, it's secure as hell, and since I was creating a bogus email account that I was going to submit to bugmenot, I wanted an account that couldn't be cracked easily but that I didn't care about. So, log in to your Yahoo! mail account and copy-and-paste the GUID into the "Enter New Password" box and the "Confirm New Password" box. When you click "Save", Yahoo! will dutifully change your password... However (and this is the throw-away part) there must be something wrong with their validation process - the GUID must be too long for their database field, because if you try to log in again using your user name and new GUID password, it won't recognize it. It won't recognize the old password at this point either, so all I can guess is that it truncates the GUID when it saves it without kicking back an error message (Good job, guys!). You could probably sit there and fiddle with it to figure out what the new password is, but why bother? So, for the next 60 days or so (before Yahoo! shitcans the account because no one logs in to it), feel free to use "kmovregistrationsucks@yahoo.com" at sites that require you to provide an email address to view their content (KMOV is a St. Louis, MO television station that had an article I wanted to read...).

[random] "I never tell anyone this" - Unexplored region, indeed; part 3

2006-03-02T22:46:00.000-08:00

[The 3rd installment of aforementioned long multi-part parenting-related post with boring self-absorbtion and introspection.
Part 1

Part 2
You have been warned.] So, where were we? Oh yeah, the results of The Boy's testing. I jokingly described the test results to a co-worker as "Well, we have to tie up The Boy and throw him into Lake Union; if he drowns, then we're okay, but if he floats, we have to burn him." Based on her tests, the psychologist felt very strongly that The Boy should be in APP. In addition to his (scarily) high test scores, he showed some problems with prioritizing and processing information - the manifestations of which we'd definitely noticed, but wouldn't have identified as such. The APP program, with its smaller classes and teachers already accustomed to dealing with mutant kids with exactly these issues, now seemed like the only realistic option. Well, that certainly threw a new wrinkle into things... As we left her office with a grainy photocopy of the test results, we began discussing filing an appeal. My wife fired up her Treo to get the deadine for the appeal from the ALP website, and started freaking out. The deadline had passed the day before. In retrospect, I think we knew that when we scheduled the followup visit with the psychologist - but it hadn't seemed like a big deal because we already had the ALP's initial results and weren't planning on appealing. Can you say 'panic', boys and girls? We grabbed some lunch, and while we waited for the food, we tried contacting the ALP office - with mixed results. Unable to get a satisfactory reply from anyone we reached by phone, we decided to go and be a nuisance in person... We sucked down lunch and flew down to the district's administrative office. Once there, we wheedled a phone number out of the receptionist and actually got to talk to the director of the ALP. As related to me, the conversation went something like this: "Yeah, we're trying to find out what we need to do to file an appeal..." (brusquely interrupting) "Sorry, can't do it; the deadline was yesterday." "Yes, but we only got our testing results today." (pause) "Why'd you wait this long?" "Because we didn't expect his test scores to be so high!" (longer pause) "Do you have his test results?" "Yes." (pause) "How soon can you get here?" "We're in the lobby now." (long-suffering sigh) "Okay; write me a love-note and I'll see what I can do." So, this was to be our appeal: a handwritten note explaining how this had unfolded, with our blurry photocopy of the test results stapled to it. Not the most polished presentation we've ever made, but at least they were taking it... By the time we'd wrapped everything up with the School District, it was just about time to meet with The Boy's kindergarten teacher. She invited us into an extra classroom so we could talk in private, and, squatting on those damn tiny chairs, we laid out what had transpired: The Boy's test results, what the psychologist had said, what we'd done as far as filing our half-hour-past-midnight appeal... His teacher listened patiently and intently - it's pretty clear that she really likes The Boy, which is a good thing, because otherwise I think he'd already be labled as a Troublemaker-comma-Individual-comma-One Each. When we finished, she nodded, and said, "Well, that explains a lot". She paused, and then said "I never tell anyone this... [The Boy] needs to be in APP. Don't even bother with Spectrum - it won't be enough. Parents come to me every year asking if their child should be tested or if they should appeal to try and put them in APP, and I usually say 'No'. But not [The Boy]. If the appeal fails, keep him here for next year, and let him work on the social relations that are forming." She continued - "We've each got 25 kids in our classes, with a wide range of abilities and interests; there are no resources provided for kindergarten other than the teachers, so there are no screening programs or interventions available. I've got six kids in my class alone that I've put down as needing some kind of testing next year; [The Boy] was one of them, but I told the office not to start that process for next year, and that you guys were working on it already. But no; kindergarten is viewed by the state mostly as an exercise in socialization, not education. I don't have anything extra to offer [The Boy], and even if I did, I wouldn't have the time. The classes at Lowell are smaller, and the teachers there know how to deal with kids like [The Boy]." "He needs to go to Lowell." When The Boy's teacher found out that the deadline had passed, she asked if we had an email address for the ALP director - she was going on vacation, but she'd make sure to personally send an email on The Boy's behalf that night. We provided her with the email address, and discussed the pros and cons of filing a '405' with the school (an administrative plan for 'reasonable accomodation' of special needs kids) to get The Boy back on an even keel, and discussed which of the interventions that the psychologist had suggested would be do-able without adding to his teacher's stress. She didn't see any problems with any of the interventions, and we promised to regroup in a few weeks and see how things were progressing. So, all this was on a Thursday - on the following Monday, my wife called the APP office to find out if the fax of the psychologist's full report had come through. Oh yes, it did, thanks for sending it, but we've already made our decisions - the letters are being printed today, and should be mailed out before the end of the week. Well shit. No wonder the woman we talked to at ALP was brusque (nice, but definitely harried)... They were already deep into weeding out the appeals - and all we had supplied was what could charitably be called a bare-bones implementation. The letter would arrive right around the end of the open-enrollment period - should we fill out the paperwork to transfer him to APP and try and submit it without knowing his status? The person we talked to said that while it was their policy to not release information over the phone, if we hadn't gotten the decision letter by that Friday, she'd tell us what the decision was so we'd know what to do about the paperwork before that deadline passed. We got the letter that Wednesday - they granted the appeal, and we filed the enrollment paperwork with a couple of days to spare, so if I've read the letter correctly (and boy! howdy, have I read and re-read that letter), it looks like we're guaranteed enrollment at Lowell. Next fall The Boy's going to school at Dr. X's mansion. It should be... interesting.

[politics] Depressing news

2006-03-02T09:55:00.000-08:00

You know that Zogby poll of the military that lots of folks have already picked up on, right? The one where 72% of the soldiers surveyed favor getting the hell out of Dodge within a year? I finally got around to actually checking out the blurb on Zogby's site, and there are some depressing tidbits in there that have been missing from the coverage of the survey. First, 90% of the soldiers surveyed feel that the Iraq War was retaliation for Saddam Hussein's involvement in the 9/11 attacks. Oh, and almost 40% of them think that the Americans who favor a quick withdrawal do so because they are unpatriotic. Discuss...

[politics] Help me to understand here...

2006-03-02T07:52:00.000-08:00

Here's an emerging theme in the ~~right-wing~~ blindly pro-Bush blogosphere: Right-wing commentators who are criticising the conduct of the Iraq War and the policies that led to it, and who are now predicting the failure of our Iraqi misadventure are misguided but their intentions are good, whereas those of us who are not Fukayama or Buckley but who have been saying exactly the same thing since, oh, 2003 are somehow responsible for the impending failure in Iraq. Wow. That's really some reality distortion field going on there. There's even an amusing corollary to this: Anyone who tries to point out this contradiction is merely attempting to exorcise their guilty conscience over the failures in Iraq! So, here's the equation: ((control of all 3 branches of the Federal government) + ((Democratic fears of being 'soft on defense') = (no meaningful opposition)) + (filling key positions with flunkies, toadies, campaign donors, and 'yes' men) + (unprecedented efforts to control and co-opt the domestic media message) - (warnings by career military and civil service personnel)) = (those damn liberals and their media lost us the war) Speechless, I am... Aren't these fuckers supposed to be the party of "personal responsibility"? [via Sadly, No! and The Poorman]

[geek] Today's dose of geek irony has been brought to you by...

2006-03-01T22:03:00.000-08:00

Google's Quote of the Day generator:

"Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality." - Nikola Tesla

This from someone associated with UFOs, perpetual motion and free energy... M'kay. (To be fair to the genius of Tesla, most if not all of this linkage is due to his eccentricities, not to mention the loopiness of those doing the linking... (Google "tesla free energy" and get back to me, 'kay?) Oh yeah - and the fact that the FBI swooped in after his death in 1943 and impounded all his research... Plays right into the mindset of the black helicopter crowd, it does.)

[random] [politics] Remember, Remember the Fifth of November

2006-02-28T08:20:00.000-08:00

I don't remember exactly when I was introduced to V for Vendetta; in high school, I was good friends with an avid comic collector who spent a fair amount of time in the UK. As a result, I was treated to some tidbits of pop culture before they were available in the US - for instance, he introduced me to Clive Barker's Books of Blood before they were published here, and, I believe, may have possessed the original V series in Warrior magazine. We sort of stayed in touch through college, during which time I know I read DC Comics' serialization of V, but I have the distinct impression of having been introduced to the story during high school. Eh... Regardless, by the time I finished college, I was pretty well hooked on graphic novels: The Watchmen, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Elektra: Assassin, the Sandman series... good stuff, all. But the story that probably had the longest-lasting impact was V for Vendetta. At the time, the story reflected some of the free-floating angst of the era: the potential for nuclear war with the Soviet Union, the increased influence of the right wing in politics, general fear and unease over a society that seemed in some ways as though it was tempted to turn it's collective back upon many of the freedoms enshrined in such milestone documents as the Bill of Rights, the Magna Carta... In the ensuing years, much of that fear and angst seemed quite overblown - the USSR collapsed, the Velvet Revolutions spread across Eastern Europe. Prominent intellectuals proclaimed that the 'end of history' was at hand: from now on, we'd all be one big, happy, globalized society. Okay, so a decade or so later, some of that didn't seem quite so rosy, but by and large, things were still pretty much on an even keel. And then things... ...shifted. Suddenly, a lot of people were saying things that made the world of V seem much, much more possible. I got the trade paper version of V a couple of years ago, and while some of it screams 'early 80s!', most of it seemed a lot less... improbable. Clearly, I wasn't the only one who felt this way:

It's no good blaming the drop in work standards on bad management either, though to be sure the management is very bad. In fact let's not mince words: The management is terrible. We've had a string of embezzlers, frauds, liars, and lunatics making a string of catastrophic decisions. This is a plain fact. But who elected them? It was you. You who appointed these people. You who gave them the power to make your decisions for you. While I'll admit that anyone can make a mistake once, to go on making the same lethal errors century after century seems to me nothing short of deliberate. You have encouraged these malicious incompetents who have made your working life a shambles. You have accepted without question their senseless orders. You could have stopped them. All you had to say was "No".

So it was a pleasant surprise to learn that after years of rumors, V is finally coming to the big screen (thanks, Karen!). I was even more pleased to read some initial positive buzz:

...V for Vendetta is fun, dangerous fun, percussive with brutality and laced with ironic ambiguity and satirical slapstick (a Benny Hill homage, no less!). But gives the movie its rebel power is the moral seriousnessthat [sic] drives the action, emotion, and allegory. That’s what I didn’t expect from the Wachowski brothers (The Matrix), this angry, summoning Tom Paine moral dispatch that puts our pundits, politicians, and cable news hosts to shame. V for Vendetta instills force into the very essence of four-letter words like hate, love, and (especially) fear, and releases that force like a fist. Off come the masks, and the faces are revealed.

You could do worse than Tom Paine comparisons... I am so there, opening day.

[politics] Chilling

2006-02-27T20:57:00.000-08:00

In this photo taken three years before I was born, Alabama State Troopers wait for the Selma Freedom Marchers. (Clicking on the photo will bring you to a story about recently uncovered photos from the Civil Rights era - photos that the Birmingham (AL) News opted to not publish lest they 'embarass' the community.)

[politics] Funny, I don't remember that being there...

2006-02-27T08:16:00.000-08:00

Then:

No Freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any otherwise destroyed; nor will we pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful Judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right. -- article 29, "A translation of Magna Carta as confirmed by Edward I with his seal in 1297"

Then:

...here is a law which is above the King and which even he must not break. This reaffirmation of a supreme law and its expression in a general charter is the great work of Magna Carta; and this alone justifies the respect in which men have held it. --Winston Churchill, 1956

Now:

The boring title of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill hides an astonishing proposal. It gives ministers power to alter any law passed by Parliament. The only limitations are that new crimes cannot be created if the penalty is greater than two years in prison and that it cannot increase taxation. But any other law can be changed, no matter how important. All ministers will have to do is propose an order, wait a few weeks and, voilà, the law is changed. For ministers the advantages are obvious: no more tedious debates in which they have to answer awkward questions.

Got that? No more awkward questions... [via LENIN'S TOMB]

[geek][random] Octavia Butler - a voice in the wilderness

2006-02-27T00:06:00.000-08:00

Noted writer Octavia Butler is dead at 58. I've got a longer piece up over at Mystery of the Haunted Vampire.

[random] Initial results - Unexplored region, indeed; part 2

2006-02-25T14:51:00.000-08:00

[The 2nd installment of aforementioned long multi-part parenting-related post with boring self-absorbtion and introspection.
Part 1

Part 3
You have been warned.] So, in an attempt to pin down the possible causes of The Boy's problems in school, we scheduled an evaluation with an outside psychologist. We also signed him up for the Seattle school district's Advanced Learning Program evaluation, figuring that it might also shed some light on things. Well, we started that ball rolling back in November (scheduling the psychologist for an initial four sessions) and December (the ALP testing). Right before our first session with the psychologist, we got the ALP results back and some bells began to go off. Even before we got the official results back, we knew The Boy did well. You see, the school district's Advanced Learning Program uses a 2-tier model (for full-time academic programs): Spectrum & APP. Spectrum is an accelerated math and reading program hosted by certain schools - they don't typically go too much beyond grade level, and it's a much narrower bell-curve of kids that the teachers have to deal with: bright kids who're interested in and place value upon academics. Hey, even if the kids aren't interested, it's a sure bet that their parents are - the testing is entirely volunary. Spectrum is a 'pull out' program - the kids stay together as a cohort within grades at the school - and we figured that'd provide a more rigorous environment for The Boy. Then he got invited to participate in the 2nd round of ALP testing. This means that he qualified for the Spectrum program; the 2nd round would determine if he was qualified for the APP program. At each level of pedagogy, the APP is housed in a separate school, one each for grade school, middle school & high school - and every subject for each grade is accellerated by 2 grade levels. We had some mixed feelings about this - yeah, the academics'd be great, but we were worried about the stress, and, honestly, the 'otherness' of APP. These schools are kind of like Dr X's mansion, sheltering mutants from a world that doesn't understand or feels threatened by them. No one wants to raise a mutant, right? Therefore, it was with some (mixed) relief when we got the school district's results. As surmised, he'd easily qualified for Spectrum, but there was a pretty substantial gap between his reading score (good, but low enough to disqualify him from APP - and lower than we'd expected) and his math score (which was well within APP limits). Armed with the ALP results, we went to the psychologist, pretty sure what we'd find. At this point, we were mostly hoping to find strategies we could use to manage The Boy, and help him to moderate his own behavior in the classroom. We went ahead and scheduled a meeting with The Boy's teacher for the same day we were to get had the psychologist's results. The testing (we hoped) would provide us with a framework within which we could plan our next steps with his teacher - his teacher readily agreed to this. In the meantime, we would check out the 2 Spectrum schools where we'd qualify for transportation, and see which one would provide a better fit. We could appeal the ALP's decision and try and get him qualified for APP, but didn't really see the need: The Boy was bright (which we knew) and probably just needed a little extra challenge. Spectrum should provide that, we thought. Over the next couple of weeks, I checked out the 2 Spectrum schools and decided that while both had their own strengths and weaknesses, one seemed quite stronger than the other. This decision made, we began filling out the paperwork for the open-enrollment period. Then we got the psychologist's results. I'm glad we didn't mail in the paperwork - according to her tests, he was well within APP limits. Well within. She had some concerns as well. [Too be continued]

[geek] 30-second science blogging - "...the ultimate goal is to make life multi-planetary."

2006-02-25T13:46:00.000-08:00

"I said I wanted to take a large fortune and make it a small one, so I started a rocket business." So said Elon Musk, founder of PayPal, during a speech at his alma mater, Virginia Tech in which he discussed his new venture, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX); the quote in the title also comes from this speech. While his current goal is to take on the space monolith that is Lockheed Martin and Boeing, his long term goal is making it easier for humanity to spread out and ultimately colonize space. I find it interesting that a number of wealthy techies have decided to put their money into space travel - along with Musk's SpaceX, Amazon's Jeff Bezos has his Blue Origin and John Carmack of id Software (Doom, Quake) fame has Armadillo Aerospace... I don't know off the top of my head if there are any others, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were. And while I wouldn't count Richard Branson as a techie, his love of technology is quite apparent in his launch of Virgin Galactic. This 'Silicon Valley'-style approach to space makes this commentary by Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard from a month ago quite ironic. Bemoaning the state of the US space program, it starts:

Where would the U.S. space program be today if run not by NASA bureaucrats but by Silicon Valley geeks and financiers--by crazy entrepreneurs?

..and not once does he even appear to be aware that these alternate programs are already up and running. Dude, these guys are already there - doing an end run around NASA. [via /.]

[geek][politics] More patent stupidity

2006-02-24T08:35:00.000-08:00

Oy...

A patent for the design and creation of rich media services over the Internet, potentially covering Flash, Flex, Java, Ajax and XAML has been granted to America's Balthaser. Balthaser, a US company, has been awarded a patent which it claims covers the design and creation of rich media applications on the Internet. Balthaser announced on Tuesday that it has been granted US patent 7,000,180 by the United States Patent & Trademark Office.

Okay, there's something really, really wrong with the state of US Patents, at least as far as software patents go... Surely someone had created web-based tools to create and publish rich content over the internet by the date these guys filed in 2001, right? You know, that whole 'prior art' thing? Particularly since 2001 is after the whole .com bubble... Geez.

[random][politics] Now I know how Joan of Arc felt

2006-02-23T20:39:00.000-08:00

Now there's a double bill I never thought I'd see: Henry Rollins and Morrissey!

Singer MORRISSEY was quizzed by the FBI and British intelligence after speaking out against the American and British governments. The Brit is a famous critic of the US-led war in Iraq and has dubbed President GEORGE W BUSH a "terrorist" - but he was baffled to be hauled in by authorities. Morrissey explains, "The FBI and the Special Branch have investigated me and I've been interviewed and taped and so forth.

[via Shakespeare's Sister]

[politics] What else is there to say

2006-02-22T08:12:00.000-08:00

but what Steve Gilliard said this morning - 'holy shit' is right... Sectarian tension boils over in Iraq after blast

The [Iraqi] Interior Ministry said four men, one wearing a military uniform and three clad in black, entered the [Ali al-Hadi] mosque and detonated two bombs, one of which collapsed the dome into a crumbly mess and damaged part of the shrine’s northern wall. [...] An aerial photograph released by the U.S. military showed the 66-foot wide dome reduced to a shell of brown masonry and twisted iron, with nearby buildings also wrecked.

One of the more interesting (as the value of 'interesting' approaches 'really fucking scary') pieces of the article is this:

Tradition says the Askariya shrine, which draws Shiite pilgrims from throughout the Islamic world, is near the place where the last of the 12 Shiite imams, Mohammed al-Mahdi, disappeared. Al-Mahdi, known as the “hidden imam,” was the son and grandson of the two imams buried in the Askariya shrine. Shiites believe he is still alive and will return to restore justice to humanity. An attack at such an important religious shrine would constitute a grave assault on Shiite Islam at a time of rising sectarian tensions in Iraq.

Go ahead and Google 'Mahdi'; better yet, Google 'Mahdi Khartoum Gordon', and let me know what you find, m'kay? Back? See any relevant parallels? I thought you might. [Update, 25 Feb 06 4:40PM PST: Unbeknownst to me, Professor Juan Cole was having similar thoughts:

The Twelfh Imam or Mahdi is believed by Shiites to have disappeared into a supernatural realm (just as Christians believe in the ascension of Christ) from which he will someday return. Some Shiites think his second coming is imminent. Muqtada all-Sadr and his followers are among them. They are livid about this attack on the shrine of the Mahdi's father. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is also a firm believer in the imminent coming of the Mahdi. I worry that Iranian anger will boil over as a result of this bombing of a Shiite millenarian symbol.

An Iranian-backed Mahdist insurrection could really screw the pooch for us in Iraq. Really, really screw the pooch.]

[random] Those whom the gods would destroy

2006-02-21T17:46:00.000-08:00

...they first convince to cook Indian food. Now don't get me wrong - I love Indian cooking, and I'm usually not half bad at it. We've got a number of very good cookbooks, and relatively easy access to Indian groceries, and I'd recently had some success making a coconut-fish curry with unripe mango, so I was feeling pretty confident. I decided to make dosa. For the uninitiated, dosa is essentially an Indian crepe. Very popular in South India, this tasty treat is often made from a mildly-fermented rice and mung bean batter. Think sourdough pancakes, only made with rice. And served with potato curry. And coconut chutney. And sambar. Okay, forget sourdough pancakes. But trust me - they're delicious. Done properly, they should look something like the picture at the top of the article. What I made... well... Let's just say that it looked nothing like the picture. I should have known I was cursed from the get-go. When shopping for my ingredients, I couldn't find split, hulled mung beans. Now, I've seen recipes for dosa that simply called for urad dal (mung beans) without specifying that it must be hulled - but almost all the recipes call for it to be split. Undeterred (and not wanting to schlep over Lake Washington to the far reaches of the Eastside where there are larger Indian markets to be found), I opted to press on. Now, making dosa (at least making rice-and-mung-bean dosa) isn't exactly a spur-of-the-moment sort of decision... You need to rinse the mung beans, then soak them with the rice (and a pinch of fenugreek seeds) until they soften - about four hours. Okay, not a big deal - rinsed and soaked, and at the end of four hours or so, both the rice and beans were soft to the touch. Not squishy, more like al dente, but still definitely soft. You then need to puree the soaked rice and beans. Woo-hoo! Can you say 'immersion blender' boys and girls? I knew you could! I probably taxed our cheapo blender by using it for this task, but it held up, and I had myself some rice batter ready for fermenting. This is when I overlooked warning sign #2. The color. You see, dosa batter should be the color of your typical, boring, beige-box PC case. Think ecru or lighter - not white, but white with some degree of brown tint. Mine was the color of the snow on a slushy asphalt parking lot. Kinda white, with a light charcoal tint to it, and flecks of black mung bean hull floating in it. I had the texture right (runny pancake batter, with flecks of rice and bean that feel like granulated sugar), but that color? Wrong. Just. Plain. Wrong. M'kay. The beginnings of trepidation flicker across the back of my mind. Once again, I pushed these feelings aside. I've never made this before, I reasoned; spread this batter across a hot skillet, and it should brown up nicely. Who would ever notice the color then? As per my instructions, I covered it loosely with plastic wrap and popped it into the (cold) oven and turned on the oven light. I'd tested the oven light earlier, and it was a perfect 90°F. Fermentation away! As with most sourdoughs, the longer you can leave it, the better it is. 18 hours later, I pulled it out of the oven. It looked promising - the charcoal color was less pronounced, and it had doubled in volume. Time to thin it with a little water and heat up the griddle, right? Too bad it didn't smell promising. There was a whiff of what can only be described as the most physical kind of corruption about the oven. I stood back as I removed the plastic wrap, and a ghastly cheesy vomit smell filled the kitchen. Dumping! Into the sink! Fast! EPA be damned! Once the toxic sludge was safely out of the sink and on its way down the pipes, I followed it with a stiff chaser from the gallon of white vinegar we keep in the laundry room. In a mercifully brief moment of stench-induced delerium, I had the brilliant insight that if baking soda was a good deodorizer and vinegar was a good deodorizer, then putting both down the drain would be an excellent idea! The image of elementary school science fair volcanoes spewing lahars of thick soupy rice cheese quickly dispelled that thought. So, my moment of culinary hubris has passed... I'm definitely up for giving dosa another try (I've had the finished product before, and it's delicious - this isn't Steve, don't eat it!, after all), but next time I'm going to go out of my way to find the split, hulled dal. I don't know for sure that's what caused my mishap (it could have been airborne molds on the stainless steel bowl, for instance), but at the very least it'll fix that revolting color. That way when I throw it away next time, it'll at least be visually appealing.

[random] Unexplored region, indeed

2006-02-21T09:09:00.000-08:00

[Warning - long multi-part parenting-related post with boring self-absorbtion and introspection ahead.
Part 2
Part 3
You have been warned.] So, the last few weeks have been... interesting. There is, as there must be with a lead-in like that, a back story here. When The Boy finished preschool last spring (a Montessori-lite environment), he had glowing reviews from his teachers, even from the lead teacher, whom he had sorely vexed on many an occasion. You see, The Boy ain't quite right - mostly in good ways, but some that are, shall we say, less than adaptive. He's really smart, and quite good at figuring out what your buttons are, and he's not above pressing them for yucks. He's also not afraid of adults in the slightest, and expects to not be talked down to. That will piss him off mightily - and then the aforementioned button pushing comes in. But by and large, his teachers thought the world of him and had nothing but praise and great expectations for him upon entering kindergarten. Are you sensing impending doom here? If not, adjust the volume on your set, perhaps you're missing the soundtrack here, creepy strings forshadowing doom, doom, DOOM, DOOOOOM! And doom it was. Not big, hairy, major doom like pillars of fire from the sky or anything like that. No, this was more of a subtle, creeping doom: a lot of aggression and acting out, regressive behavior, and generally being (it seemed) willfully ignorant of the social mores of his peer group. If The Boy wanted to wear his balaclava pulled down so that he could play superhero (despite temperatures in the low 60s), then dammit! he was going to. The after-school program at his new school didn't work out at all; he was in a lot of conflict with both the director and some of the older kids, and was being pretty aggressive to boot. None of this squared with his behavior at home, so where the hell do you intervene? There's only so much one can do with delayed consequences... so we found some after-school alternatives, juggled our schedules, and pulled him from the program. Things got somewhat better, but he was still getting into a lot of trouble. He was disruptive in the classroom, and he was drawn to a small cadre of boys who were USDA Prime Grade A shit-stirrers. Oy. One other parent remarked to me in passing that The Boy seemed 'to have a bit of the class clown in him'; one of his classmates made a comment about him not having many friends. Since we spend time in the classroom on a weekly basis and can actually see what he's doing, you'd think that he'd moderate his behavior in our presence, wouldn't you? You'd be wrong. We began to suspect that he was bored more than anything else, so we signed him up to be tested for the Advanced Learning Program, and started the ball rolling to have him evaluated by an outside psychologist, just in case. I suppose 'suspect' isn't quite the right word - 'hope' is probably a better one. I mean, we already knew that he was really smart, so acting out out of boredom certainly seemed to be within the realm of possibilities. 'Hope' is also accurate in this regard: the alternatives (ADHD, some kind of conduct disorder, etc.) weren't pretty. That was a month ago... The results, as they say, are now in. [To be continued...]

[random][politics] Raise the black flag...

2006-02-19T10:48:00.000-08:00

Seems that a couple of weeks ago, someone reported post-punk singer/writer Henry Rollins to the Australian government as a security threat. Why? Because while he was flying from Auckland to Brisbane, some moron saw him reading Ahmed Rashid's book Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam In Central Asia. Way to go, dumbass... Glad to see that keeping informed constitues threatening behavior. Henry's account of his interaction with a very apologetic person from Australia's anti-terrorism office may be found here. The letter he recieved said, in part:

The person who sat next to you on the flight from New Zealand does not agree with your politics or choice of reading and so nominated you as a possible threat. As they were too cowardly or stupid to leave their details I can’t call them to discuss their idiocy with them.

His response?

Please tell your government and everyone in your office to go fuck themselves. Tell them twice. If your boss is looking for something to do, you can tell him I suggest he go fuck himself. Baghdad's safer than my hometown and your PM is a sissy. You have a nice night.

That's certainly, um, succinct. Somehow the exchange seemed so indicative of the peculiar anti-Islamic idiocy that seems to have infected much of the so-called "coalition of the willing". How much more of this goes on that doesn't come to light because one of the parties involved happens to be famous? [via]

[geek] 30-second science blogging - The future is already here...

2006-02-17T23:09:00.000-08:00

...it's just not evenly distributed.* Spaceports are to be constructed in the United Arab Emirates and Singapore (read Space Adventure, Ltd's press release here) and New Mexico has agreed to commit funds for their proposed spaceport. Toss in the most recent successful tests of the components of LiftPort's space elevator, and I'm starting to feel like I'm living in a William S. Gibson novel... [*]quote widely attributed to Gibson.

[politics] So which is it...

2006-02-17T08:16:00.000-08:00

...Thomas E. Ricks' glowing report in the Washington Post about the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Tall Afar:

When the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment moved into northwest Iraq last May, it faced a mess. Just as Fallujah had become a major staging point for attacks into Baghdad, Tall Afar was being used as a base to send suicide bombers and other attackers 40 miles east into Mosul, the largest city in northern Iraq. Instead of staging a major raid into the city for suspects and then moving back to operating bases, McMaster said he took a sharply different tack, spending months making preparatory moves before attacking the entrenched insurgents in Tall Afar. That indirect approach demonstrated tactical patience, a key to effectively battling an insurgency and a skill that doesn't come easily to the U.S. military.

...or Tom Lasseter's substantially bleaker report from Knight Ridder's Washington Bureau about the 101st Airborne in Samarra:

Fifteen months earlier, when the 1st Infantry Division sent some 5,000 Iraqi and U.S. soldiers to retake Samarra from Sunni Muslim insurgents, it was a test of the American occupation's ability not only to pacify but also to rebuild a part of Iraq dominated by the country's minority Sunnis. More than a year later, American troops still are battling insurgents in Samarra. Bloodshed is destroying the city and driving a wedge between the Iraqis who live there and the U.S. troops who are trying to keep order. Violence, police corruption and the blurry lines of guerrilla warfare are clouding any hopes of victory. "It's apocalyptic out there. Life has definitely gotten worse for" Iraqis, said Maj. Curtis Strange, 36, of Mobile, Ala., who works with Iraqi troops in Samarra. "You see Samarra and you almost want to build a new city and move all these people there."

The articles make for an interesting (and depressing) contrast - same tactics, different environments, wildly divergent results. I fear that overall things throughout Iraq are much more like Samarra than Tall Afar... To my way of thinking, KR's Washington Bureau has a much more credible track record on reporting the situation in Iraq than the WaPo - since the beginning, they've been one of the only openly skeptical news organizations in DC, asking the questions that no one else was willing to.

[politics] Better to light a candle...

2006-02-16T17:45:00.000-08:00

...than curse the darkness. Some good candle-lighting by the folks at EPIC:

WASHINGTON - A federal judge Thursday ordered the Justice Department to respond within 20 days to requests by a civil liberties group for documents about President Bush’s domestic eavesdropping program. The ruling was a victory for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which sued the department under the Freedom of Information Act in seeking the release of the documents. U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy ruled that the department must finish processing the group’s requests and produce or identify all records within 20 days.

[politics] Good money after bad

2006-02-16T17:36:00.000-08:00

US$1.4 billion spent over 2.5 years on advertising - for (at best) iffy results...

[politics] Guess I'm an idiot, too.

2006-02-15T08:24:00.000-08:00

How do I know? Scalia told me so.

Scalia criticized those who believe in what he called the "living Constitution." "That's the argument of flexibility and it goes something like this: The Constitution is over 200 years old and societies change. It has to change with society, like a living organism, or it will become brittle and break." "But you would have to be an idiot to believe that," Scalia said. "The Constitution is not a living organism, it is a legal document. It says something and doesn't say other things."

He goes on to say that "[p]roponents of the living constitution want matters to be decided 'not by the people, but by the justices of the Supreme Court.'" Let's see. How'd that work out the last time? Oh, yeah. Not so great, eh? [via Shakespeare's Sister]

[politics] Now there's something you don't see every day

2006-02-14T07:53:00.000-08:00

I missed this entirely: this past Sunday, there was demonstration of ~~neo-Nazis~~ pig-fuckers in Fremont, a neighborhood next to ours. These scumbags have been getting bolder in this area of late - they've been much more open and active, holding demonstrations in Olympia, Seattle & (I believe) Portland, OR. They're planning additional actions in Olympia this spring and summer. sigh Just something else to keep an eye on, I guess...

[politics] From the "Who thought this was a good idea?" department

2006-02-14T07:30:00.000-08:00

Jeebus... Anyone else remember when these jokers were promising to be 'the grownups' of foreign policy?

The United States and Israel are considering a campaign to starve the Palestinian Authority of cash so Palestinians would grow disillusioned with their incoming militant Hamas rulers and return ousted Fatah moderates to power, The New York Times reported on Tuesday. The newspaper, which quoted unidentified U.S. and Israeli sources, said this approach was being discussed at the highest levels of the U.S. State Department and the Israeli government.

So, now that our sole remaining rationale for invading Iraq is 'spreading democracy', what do we do? We go out and try to undermine a democratically elected government with which we disagree. Don't get me wrong: Hamas isn't who I would have picked, but given the choice between the completely corrupt Fatah party and Hamas, I can certainly see the appeal for the typical Palestinian. They want power? Fine - let them have to deal with picking up the garbage and providing police services. I think they'll find it a lot harder than issuing anti-Israeli polemics and firing rockets at Israeli settlements. I'm okay with a carrot and stick approach to dealing with Hamas, but this policy under discussion looks like a fig leaf to me - we're talking carrots, but we're only planning on impementing sticks. Hamas should stand or fail on their own. Otherwise, our talk about democracy in the Middle East is just that: talk.

[geek] Vindication

2006-02-10T13:29:00.000-08:00

From Gamasutra:

Video game pioneer Ralph Baer, whose work was the basis for Pong, will finally receive the 2004 National Medal of Technology along with six other recipients in a White House ceremony on February 14th, following the previous announcement of the honor back in November.

That is all...

[politics] Now that's an interesting wrinkle...

2006-02-09T13:49:00.000-08:00

From Salon, via Steve Gilliard:

[...] The paper wanted to instigate trouble, just not the kind of trouble it got. And in this mission it acted in concert with the Danish government. "We have gone to war against the multicultural ideology that says that everything is equally valid," boasted the minister of cultural affairs, Brian Mikkelsen, in a speech at his party's annual meeting the week before Rose's cartoon editorial last fall. Mikkelsen is a 39-year-old political science graduate known for his hankering for the "culture war." He continued, "The Culture War has now been raging for some years. And I think we can conclude that the first round has been won." The next front, he said, is the war against the acceptance of Muslims norms and ways of thought. The Danish cultural heritage is a source of strength in an age of globalization and immigration. Cultural restoration, he argued, is the best antidote.

(emphasis mine) As always, context is, well, pretty friggin' much everything. Some restoration, eh? See, the problem with seeking out a war is that you're pretty much screwed if you aren't prepared to actually go to war and prosecute a war. Hmmm... Where have I seen that kind of hubris before... It was so recently, too...

[politics][random] Sexual harassment in the classroom

2006-02-09T13:15:00.000-08:00

One student harassing another - okay, I can imagine it happening. Hell, I've seen it happen. Having a sexual harassment policy on the record is, I think, a Good Idea for schools. But how about applying that policy to a 6 year old? In reading the linked article, two things leap out at me (without knowing all the facts, obviously): one, the school overreacted; two, the child's mother is a farkin' idiot. First, the situation:

The first-grader was suspended for three days for sexual harassment after he put two fingers inside a classmate’s waistband, school officials told his mother, Berthena Dorinvil. The boy told her he only touched the girl’s shirt after the girl touched him.

Okay, now the mom:

The boy’s mother called the Jan. 30 suspension from Downey Elementary School outrageous. She said she can’t even explain to her son what he did wrong because he’s too young to understand.

Ahhh!!! The Stupid! It burns!!! It burns us, it does!!! Again, assuming that the story is true as reported (and we're gonna do that because I'm not about to get all Rashômon here), as a parent of an almost-6-year-old, I'm not sure who I'm the most pissed off at here. The school sounds like it fucked up: the kid is 6 after all. If this is his first exposure to full-day school, then he may need help with socialization. Stop listening solely to your lawyers and maybe start asking questions to child development experts, m'kay? Because if your policies can't differentiate between a child that's 6 and a child that's, oh, 12 or 13, then they're just plain fucked up. To the mom: no one is asking you to explain sexual harassment to your child - they're asking you to tell him under what circumstances he may or may not touch people. It's called parenting. Do it. It's your fucking job.

[politics] Shorter Kate O'Beirne:

2006-02-08T09:39:00.000-08:00

Why won't those uppity nigras learn their place?

[politics] Why are we even asking this question?

2006-02-05T16:02:00.000-08:00

From Newsweek: "Can the President Order a Killing on U.S. Soil?". If the answer isn't "Hell, no!", then we've devolved even further than I feared... From the article:

Current and former government officials said they could think of several scenarios in which a president might consider ordering the killing of a terror suspect inside the United States. One former official noted that before Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania, top administration officials weighed shooting down the aircraft if it got too close to Washington, D.C. What if the president had strong evidence that a Qaeda suspect was holed up with a dirty bomb and was about to attack? University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein says the post-9/11 congressional resolution authorizing the use of military force against Al Qaeda empowered the president to kill 9/11 perpetrators, or people who assisted their plot, whether they were overseas or inside the United States. On the other hand, Sunstein says, the president would be on less solid legal ground were he to order the killing of a terror suspect in the United States who was not actively preparing an attack.

What is meant by 'actively preparing an attack'? See, there's a huge difference between shooting down an airplane that is on an attack vector and not responding to the planes that've been sent to escort it down and assassinating someone who is organizing an attack. Okay, so you've got a suspect 'holed up with a dirty bomb' - are they about to detonate it? Are they assembling it? Are they plotting how to deliver it on target? Is the bomb live or armed? Are the conspirators armed? Honestly, I don't see any circumstances under which a 'clean shoot' of a terrorist would be questioned. Are they about to detonate a bomb? Then I have no problem with a cop delivering a double-tap to them. But what about deploying a sniper or other assassin in order to take out someone who we know is planning an operation but who isn't an immediate threat? We wouldn't call it a clean shoot if a cop did it under those circumstances - do we cede the President that much leeway? It seems to me that, as with the ongoing illegal eavesdropping, we already have mechanisms in place to deal with these threats. Are we so afraid of the boogeymen of terrorism that we're willing to relenquish this much authority to the President (and by extension, the Federal Government)? If the answer is 'yes' (as I fear it is), then we're truly fucked.

[politics] One less voice

2006-01-31T08:44:00.000-08:00

The Liquid List has a post up with a great quote to mark the passing today of Coretta Scott King. I'll try to reproduce it here, at some risk of kicking Fair Use squarely in the cods:

Dr. King said of his wife, in an interview in 1967 that, [...] "I must admit---I wish I could say--to satisfy my masculine ego, that I led her down this path [of economic and racial activism]; but I must say we went down together, because she was as actively involved and concerned when we met as she is now."

In her own words, "Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won. You earn it and win it in every generation." * * Can't find a primary source for this quote - it's widely attributed to her online, but the bulk of the citations that Google finds are from term-paper mills, and I ain't gonna link to those...

[random][geek] The sky above the port

2006-01-30T23:12:00.000-08:00

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. —William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984) #30... That's all. [via TBogg]

[politics] Paging Lucretia Borgia...

2006-01-29T10:53:00.000-08:00

Newsweek has an interesting article out about the people within the Department of Justice who resisted the Administration's embrace of torture and refutation of international law. It also provides some insight into the infighting that took place during Ashcroft's tenure - infighting that I suspect led to his resignation. It's a heartening read, if only because it reminds one that there really are people out there who care about the rule of law. Of course, it's a depressing read as well: if this debate had been more public, how much of our current mess could we have avoided?

[politics] From the "Even a broken clock is right twice a day" department

2006-01-28T22:44:00.000-08:00

Andrew Sullivan:

But this is the Bush administration. King George doesn't have to obey the law; and his military can do anything they want.

Kidnapping, hostages, collective punishment of civilians for supporting insurgents: these are all war crimes. This is not some "he-said/she-said" dispute over how white phosphorus was deployed in Fallujah - this is the US military openly admitting to committing war crimes. (Yeah, I know... if you're a regular reader of this blog, you probably read Atrios, which is where the Sullivan link came from.)

[random][geek] End of a technological era

2006-01-28T20:17:00.000-08:00

As of yesterday, 27 Jan 2006, Western Union will no longer send telegrams. (Surprised? Evidently, the telegram isn't quite extinct yet...) One-hundred-seventy-five years, plus or minus a decade - longer than the rotary phone, eh? Not a bad run for the telegram; I wonder if the internal combustion engine'll last as long.

[geek][random] Okay, that's weird...

2006-01-27T09:33:00.000-08:00

My 3-star review of Developing Serious Games was deleted from Amazon. WTF? The only review that's there now is a 5-star review by someone who has no other reviews, and who clearly hasn't read the friggin' book... Grrr... Update: I posted another (3-star) review, titled "Okay, but not great":

I had high hopes for this book, as I work for a small software company that is teetering on the brink of becoming a producer of 'serious games'. Unfortunately, this book failed to meet my expectations. The book is a good overview of the contemporary state of the field. It touches upon games development in general, best practices for software development, ditto for game development; it covers dev tools, platforms & engines; it covers art and sound resources. It discusses funding sources, and the differences between 'entertainment games' and 'serious games'. There is also a good history of 'serious games', starting with the earliest military flight simulators and ending with current releases for, among other platforms, the iPod. In short, it covers everything. And, as such, it covers nothing in particular in much depth. Apart from the history, there really isn't anything in this book that probably can't be gleaned from spending time on Gamasutra.com, gamedev.net, or igda.org. I also found some of the editing to be sloppy. The writing is quite strong, but the proofreading left a bit to be desired: "a" for "an", "fist" for "first". There may not have been a lot of these typos, but the ones I noticed were quite jarring. If you're looking for a 50,000-ft view of the field, this book will probably suffice. If you're looking for an intensely geeky dev-oriented book, you will probably be left wanting more. Don't get me wrong - there are some great things in this book for a developer, such as the appendices with their snapshots of tools and concepts. It is also a great 'all-in-one-place' resource. But I'm not sure if this book will stay on my shelf of 'keepers'; we'll see.

Let's see if this one gets deleted as well...

[geek] 20 years/2 minutes, 45 seconds

2006-01-26T10:48:00.000-08:00

Do you remember this moment? I do. I was at school, coming down the stairs with a couple of friends, heading for lunch. Some kids came running up the stairs excitedly: "Did you hear what happened?" "What?" one of my friends remarked sarcastically "Did the space shuttle blow up?" "Yeah! It did!" Twenty years ago ~~today~~ this Saturday, Challenger disintegrated shortly before noon EST. Two minutes and forty-five seconds later, the crew compartment splashed into the Atlantic, killing all seven astronauts aboard. Two minutes and forty-five seconds.

[politics] In which I call...

2006-01-26T08:16:00.000-08:00

Ignoring for the moment the surreal feeling I experienced upon reading the headline "Bush: Take bin Laden attack threat seriously" (wouldn't that be nice...), I was particularly outraged by this line from Bush's speech at the NSA (paragraph 11 of the article linked above):

Officials here learn information about plotters and planners and people who would do us harm,” Bush said, reading from note cards. “Now, I understand there’s some in America who say, ‘Well, this can’t be true there are still people willing to attack.’ All I would ask them to do is listen to the words of Osama bin Laden and take him seriously.”

(emphasis mine) Mr. President, if you would be so kind as to point out anyone who has suggested that there aren't any groups or individuals in the world who wouldn't like to attack us, I would really appreciate it. No, really. I'm waiting... *crickets* Yeah, that's what I thought. I am also pissed off by the qualified contradiction of the President's words that follows in the next paragraph:

However, no one in the political debate over the war on terror or the NSA program has suggested that terrorists no longer want to attack the United States. Rather, Bush’s critics have argued that the law requires him to get permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to eavesdrop on communications involving Americans.

"[N]o one in the political debate" - uh... how about just "no one": "However, no one has suggested that terrorists no longer want to attack the United States." It's a bullshit mischaracterization for the sake of appearing balanced. It gives credence to the President's bullshit by suggesting that there are some people who think that no one out there in the big, wide world wants to attack the United States. While I'm sure that if you tried hard enough you could find one or two such people, I'm also pretty sure that such people would also be, how shall I phrase it delicately, crazier than the proverbial shithouse rats. (Yes, that's a technical term.) So there you have it, folks; I'm calling it like I see it. Fresh, steaming cow pies for the AP and the White House both. I'm calling bullshit.

[random] Pierced with enchantment

2006-01-24T20:23:00.000-08:00

So, once we finished reading the full Chronicles of Narnia with The Boy, we knew it was really only a matter of time before we tried The Hobbit. We weren't too sure about the language - my impression is that Tolkien's work is somewhat more sophisticated than Lewis', and that's saying a lot - but a couple of weeks ago something made it obvious that now was as good a time as any. It's been a blast... I went and picked up the hardcover edition with illustrations by Alan Lee. After flipping through all the illustrated editions at the UW bookstore, this one was the right balance of images to text: there's a minimum of one full-page color plate and one smaller black & white illustration per chapter, which is seems to be a pretty optimal mix for holding The Boy's attention when the words get too dense (not that he's been afraid to ask what words or phrases mean). We needn't have worried - he's enthralled. I suspect that the illustrations are really just gravy; he's been a rapt listener, even through the archaic phrasing and tongue-twisters such as "Balin bade Bilbo" (you say that aloud after a glass of Jo'burg Riesling, I dare you). There was even one night this week when he was ignoring us during his bed-time routines - the consequence that he incurred was that there would be no Hobbit that evening. He was heartbroken, sobbing, even though he probably wound up with a story that took as long to read as our bite-sized morsels of Middle Earth. So... what next? We suspect that Lloyd Alexander's Prydain books are till too scary, so we'll probably move on to the first Harry Potter book. (The title comes from the description of Bilbo's reaction to seeing the scope of Smaug's horde for the first time - and it does yeoman's work describing The Boy's reaction to the book pretty well, I think...)

[geek] Review of Developing Serious Games

2006-01-23T20:30:00.000-08:00

Serious games are video games that serve a serious purpose: they cover the gamut from the military's most sophisticated simulators to iPod- or PDA-based games designed to assist surgical residents. That's a lot of turf, on a lot of platforms, using a lot of tools... and this book, Developing Serious Games by Bryan Bergeron, shows it... I just got the book today, and just finished it an hour or so ago. Here's my Amazon review ('wickerman' is another, older 'net pseudonym I've used) - I gave it three stars:

I don't know what I expected from this book, and, as a result, I think I probably got what I deserved. I had high hopes for this book; I work for a small software company that is teetering on the brink of becoming a producer of 'serious games', and I was hoping for some kind of bolt from the blue, some kind of revelation. My career, my company at a frontier - should we cross in? Or should we run screaming? Peering into the entrails of this book, what dark auguries could I see? Unsurprisingly, the answer is 'not too much'. That's too much to expect from a book, and honestly, I knew that going in. So what is the book good for? The book is a good overview of the contemporary state of the field. It touches upon games development in general, best practices for software development, ditto for game development; it covers dev tools, platforms & engines; it covers art and sound resources. It discusses funding sources, and the differences between 'entertainment games' and 'serious games'. In short, it covers everything. And, as such, it covered nothing in particular in depth. Labeling on the back to the contrary, I didn't feel like this was a book geared towards software developers. Rather, it felt like an accessible book geared towards anyone with some familiarity with software development: PMs, VCs, CEOs, software devs and testers, media and art specialists... There're a couple of C/C++ code snippets, there's some pseudo-code, but compared to, say, the pages of calculus in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, the technical content of this book is really quite low: if you don't need to understand code, you can probably safely skip these bits and still understand how the big picture bits apply to you in your role. I also found some of the editing to be sloppy. The writing is strong, but the proofreading left a bit to be desired: "a" for "an", "fist" for "first". CRM: sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. There may not have been a lot of these typos, but the ones I noticed were quite jarring. If you're looking for a 50,000-ft view of the field, this book will probably suffice. If you're looking for an intensely geeky dev-oriented book, you will probably be left wanting more. Perhaps I'll change my mind in a day or so, but I doubt it. Don't get me wrong - there are some great things in this book for a developer, such as the appendices with their snapshots of tools and concepts. But I'm not sure if this book will stay on my shelf of 'keepers'. We'll see.

Random and tangential thought... With Amazon's new 'tagging' system, you can create your own taxonomy for your books, much like Technorati or Ice Rocket allows for blog content or Flickr does for images. If, as in the case of this book, a potential reviewer sees that the author has personally tagged the book, what impact do you think that'll have on the review? More fawning? More confrontational? Or will the prospective reviewer be intimidated enough to not post a review at all?

[random] Field observation: why I could never be a teacher

2006-01-23T11:20:00.000-08:00

The lions of the Serengeti ain't got nuthin' on a room of kindergarteners in the presence of a substitute teacher. Fear? Weakness? Uncertainty? Blam! They're on it, teeth sunk in deep, claws raking, head shaking to tear off chunks of steaming flesh. It wasn't pretty. Me, I think her mistake was not responding to them like Ash in Army of Darkness:

Now listen up, you primitive screwheads. See this? This... is my boomstick!

This is why I will never be a teacher.

[geek] 30-second science blogging - Back from extinction: a dead language lives

2006-01-21T10:27:00.000-08:00

Driven by the desire for authenticity, writer/director Terence Malick of the upcoming film The New World wanted the lines of Pocahontas and Powhatan to be spoken in Virginian Algonquin. No problem, right? Too bad no one has spoken that dialect in over 200 years. The linked MSNBC article tells the fascinating tale of the apparently successful attempt to revive a dead language. Quite an accomplishment, given that of the 15 or so known Algonquin dialects of the East Coast, only two survive to this day. Working from 16th and 17th century documents, existing Algonquin grammar, and an academic gold standard 'proto-Algonquin', UNC (Charlotte) linguist Blair Rudes was able to create a fairly likely reconstruction of Virginian Algonquin. His approach was flexible enough that Malick was able to expand the number of Algonquin-with-English subtitles scenes from two to fifty; they were even able to improvise dialog with minimal turn-around time. Not bad for a 'dead' language. How cool is that?