The Domesticated Primate

Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back

2010-01-14T09:49:00.001-08:00

Life, Inc. is an excellent book dealing with the problems of money and corporatism. Not that I would have expected anything less from Douglas Rushkoff.

People, especially those that lack nuance, might think from reading the summary that this is going to be some "communist" screed or the like. Not the case at all.

Highly suggested reading for those interested in a peek behind the curtain.

Eating Animals

2010-01-07T09:47:00.000-08:00

Eating Animals - what a great book. If you're vegetarian, vegan, or having second thoughts about being an omnivore, or even just thinking about reducing your meat intake...an interesting reflection on our weird relationship with animals.

My favorite takeaway was the question he poses of two hypothetical people ordering lunch, and asking which is really the more sentimental: the person who orders based on what he/she LIKES to eat, or the person that makes a choice of conscience?

Really lays bare the notion that veg*ns are the ones that are the (only) ones that appeal to emotions, or at least it did for me...I've never really bought into that notion anyway, but this sums it up nicely.

I've never read anything by the author before - I only saw the movie Everything is Illuminated - but I may have to look into reading more...

Demolition of the Drexel Shaft

2009-11-19T07:09:00.000-08:00

Saw this on BoingBoing. This was something my dorm room overlooked in frosh year...R.I.P, Drexel Shaft.

H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast

2009-11-16T12:48:00.001-08:00

I'm really liking what I've heard so far on the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast.

If only I had found it before Halloween...but ah well, there's always next year. Maybe I'll find some others, too - apparently there are some podcasts that read the stories, too. Could be interesting, especially with music/sound FX.

Max tip

2009-11-09T15:32:00.000-08:00

I don't like importing CDs with iTunes - it is really not all that flexible in that regard.

Max is much better - however, it seems a lot of CDs are not in the MusicBrainz database.

Unless...you submit the Disc ID first (requires signing up), search and find match for your album - which is probably entered - and THEN re-query.

Ta-da! No more having to resort to falling back on iTunes lame import, or typing in titles into Max. Sweet.

The Most Selfish Generation

2009-09-15T13:39:00.000-07:00

Loved this piece in Salon.com.

Old People to America: Drop Dead

Meanwhile, according to the Urban Institute, up to 22,000 Americans are literally dropping dead each year due to lack of health insurance, and thousands more suffer through a lowered quality of life from failing to receive treatment for debilitating and chronic diseases.

I’m 62 -- old enough to cash in my 401K, yet still too young for Medicare -- and, despite my advancing age, some might view this as just another infantile boomer rant. But I want to put in a word for the idea that the elderly among us are just plain selfish -- as is any group with health insurance that believes what’s good for them is threatened if made available to others.

Some of the comments are great.

Of course, the astroturfing planners use this selfishness to maximum effect. While the "greatest generation" is being bussed into townhalls by FreedumbWorks to yell cogent aphorisms (such as: "NO!" and "BOO!" and "NO PUBLIC OPTION!" and "NO DEATH PANELS!!!") at people, what happens is that we have a battle between generations, while the class warfare - that no one is ever supposed mention, lest they be accused of conducting it themselves (classical projection crafted by the right-wing meme-masters) - rages on, and the elites are winning that class war, believe me.

New blog

2009-09-13T15:47:00.000-07:00

I've recently printed up some personal business cards (yeah, that sounds a bit like "military intelligence") and thought I'd put an address on there. So I thought I'd start up a new blog as a placeholder of sorts and put that on the card.

This new blog focuses on Java and really, any programming-related nerdery, and you can find it at http://java-and-etc.blogspot.com/.

That way, I can also separate any job/programming-related rambling from this blog of more general rambling, and I can point people that use my open-source projects at that new site, too.

Let The Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in)

2009-08-31T16:47:00.000-07:00

Well, this was a nice little gem to find.

Without giving anything away...this one is definitely not the average vampire flick.

The Holy Mountain

2009-08-25T08:55:00.001-07:00

I just finished watching The Holy Mountain...my first Alejandro Jodorowsky movie. I've had his movies on my "to see" list for almost two decades now. It's just been that they've been so hard to find, or when one could find it - it wasn't on Region 1.

Turns out the library has The Holy Mountain and El Topo. I checked this one out first, and finally got around to finishing it today.

I'm not going to say I understand 100% of it, but it's a true marvel to behold. Lots of alchemical/Kabbalistic/hermetic/Rosicrucian type of stuff in there, to be certain. I was totally blown away by trying to take it all in.

And, as an American, I have to say I recoiled at all of the full frontal and some of the more violent imagery. Even so, it's not the usual run of the mill movie, and there is something to be said for that. I can see why it's a cult movie.

Now, if I could just find that soundtrack....

The Trap

2009-08-24T10:01:00.000-07:00

Finally finished watching all three parts of the documentary The Trap. Another great one from Adam Curtis, IMHO. If you haven't seen his others, specifically, the The Power of Nightmares, drop everything you're doing and watch it on Google Video ASAP.

In this one, he follows the ideas of negative liberty vs. positive liberty, and how the assumption that the first one is an inevitable worldwide outcome, and how the second one will always lead to tyranny is a "trap".

Well, that's a very simplistic version of what he covers, but that's the basic summary.

Along the way, lots of oxes get gored, specifically, the still standard economic model (but under attack for years - from more vocal folks like Adbusters and Chomsky) of every human being a perfectly rational processor in some sort of perfect multicore processor we call the "market", and that markets are somehow the ultimate expression of democracy.

NPR's All Songs Drops the MOTHERLOAD

2009-08-15T09:43:00.000-07:00

If you like live music, you should sub to the NPR Live Concerts from All Songs Considered podcast.

It's always been good, but recently, they dropped tons of content on there - mostly shows from the Newport Folk Festival. Insane amounts of music showed up in the feed. It's going to be weeks before I make my way through all this.

And....if you haven't heard this already, if you consider yourself a music-lover, you simply must go over and listen to the live Dark Was The Night concert. That is such a great show...

iTunes...Meh

2009-08-13T09:17:00.000-07:00

Still making the switch to OS X...I have a favorite app for Windoze that I liked for ripping/encoding called Easy CD Extractor. I rarely buy for-fee software, and like to stick to open source, but that was good enough IMHO to spring for.

In any case...iTunes doesn't seem to give you control over the filenames of an "import".

If there IS a way to do this, I guess I can live with iTunes as my ripper/encoder, but if not...that's a non-starter, and I need a better program for ripping/encoding.

Songbird doesn't seem to have that ability (yet) and I don't see an add-on for it, either.

Any suggestions for a good open source encoder/ripper for OS X?

The Switch To OS X

2009-08-12T08:32:00.000-07:00

I finally broke down after all these years, and decided to get a MacBook Pro. The tipping point was being able to do iPhone development.

It just came Tuesday, and I'm making the switch.

Any techies out there that have suggestions on best of breed tools, definitely let me know. I'd also be interested in what sort of virtualizing others do.

Currently seeking best of breed tools for:

SFTP client.
Winamp style mp3 player. I'm using SongBird right now, but sometimes it seems bit overbearing. Why do so many apps insist on "importing" my library of songs? I just want to point at them and play them. I want to blame iTunes, but I'm not sure who kicked this off.
Best way to launch apps. Not sure what the out-of-the-box solution is to do it without using touchpad at all. I had a pretty good solution for Windows - putting stuff in start menu - and using key combos to start apps. Kludgey to set up, but nice once it's ready and once the paradigm is understood. I need something like this for OSX. I'm thinking I'm just a noob, and it provides one already.

I'm also all ears when it comes to good books for making the switch. I'm still having some issues finding the right combo of keys, and doing things the OSX way.

Finding a good way to lock the screen with a key combo was much more of a PITA than I would have expected - pretty disappointed that was so hard to figure out. Doing this in KDE or GNOME or Windows was much simpler. Apple could definitely do a better job than that - and no, the hotspot thing doesn't work for me.

Firefox 3.5 and DenverLibPlus and CheckFox

2009-07-14T20:59:00.000-07:00

If you are looking for updates for these, they are coming, I promise. They've been updated some time ago, and submitted to the Addons site, and are awaiting review.

In the meantime, if you cannot wait...I suggest using the Nightly Tester Tools to force an install of them.

I googled up this tutorial that explains how to do this...

Reason #9,458 That Firefox Rules: LastFM Firefox Extension

2009-05-24T08:32:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I've been using Pandora long before I ever used Last.FM. But after finding Last.FM, I'd get sort of irritated that I wasn't getting the "credit" for listening to tracks on Pandora.

Oh, and if you are even the slightest fan of music, and haven't heard of either site, well, what are you waiting for? ;)

I never really bothered to look into solving this problem of not getting credit until recently, but I found an elegant one. Though there is at least one site that sets out to resolve this - you have to give your login info for Last.fm to it...and it didn't seem to work, at least not for me.

Well, Firefox to the rescue! This plugin, the LastFM Firefox Extension, integrates with Pandora (and other sites) and sends info to Last.Fm for you.

Reagan - Trying To Counter The Myths

2009-05-02T08:21:00.000-07:00

All I can say is.....finally. There may be other books out there that try to set the record straight on Reagan, but I don't know if they are trying to do what The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America does, and that is to try to use an understanding of just what a disaster Reagan was and use that information to understand why things are the way they are now, including, most especially, the economy, but also, the political climate.

My only beef is that it wasn't about twice as long and didn't go into more detail.

Screenscraping HTML With TagSoup and XPath

2009-04-29T20:10:00.000-07:00

So, long story short: we have something we are trying to use that doesn't work as advertised, and so I had to build a quick n' dirty tool I could use to query one of that app's pages for things and act on that.

HOWEVER: that page is in, of course, HTML, and everyone that's worked in and around web development knows how well-formed that often is (HA!), even if the data I want is in an HTML table.

I'd like to turn the page into a DOM (somewhat reliably - though it doesn't have to be perfect for my uses) and search it with XPath, etc.

Turns out TagSoup seemed to come up in my searches, and I quickly found a way to use it to turn it into a DOM and pull out the bits I care about quite effortlessly with XPath.

Kudos to the author of TagSoup, and thanks for the TagSoup -> DOM writeup. Check write up link for more info and the imports, but it really boils down to this:

URL url = new URL(whatever);
XMLReader reader = new Parser();
reader.setFeature(Parser.namespacesFeature, false);
reader.setFeature(Parser.namespacePrefixesFeature, false);

Transformer transformer = TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer();

DOMResult result = new DOMResult();
transformer.transform(new SAXSource(reader, new InputSource(url.openStream())),
result);

// here we go - an DOM built from abitrary HTML
return result.getNode();

Transcendent Man

2009-04-26T16:19:00.000-07:00

Prepare to evolve!

Looks like Kurzweil's movie, Transcendent Man, started showing this weekend - unfortunately, the "worldwide" premier seems to be all in NYC, though. Sigh.

Oh well, at least on the site for the movie Transcendent Man, you can sign up for upcoming dates in your neck of the woods, if you don't happen to live in the Big Apple.

Denver Has a Maker Group!

2009-04-25T08:02:00.000-07:00

Denver now has a Makers group! Its first meeting was this Thursday at Club Workshop. The next one is tentatively May 21st. They are going to try for the third Thursday of the month.

Turnout was HUGE, especially given this was the first meeting, and a little out of the way, even if right off of I-25 - i.e., not right in DTC, and not right downtown Denver. I got there right about 7, and parking lot for Club Workshop already appeared to be full, and people were parking on street or other parking lots.

The topic was by John Maushammer, talking about his Pong Watch. He gave an overview of how he decided on components - things like size, battery life, being rechargeable, the cpu, cost, etc...he detailed how he went about designing the watch case, how he first prototyped in wood, how he went from designing in CAD, and then having a sort of low-tech 3d printer (forget the brand - but it was something he got from Ebay and said was much like a Dremel, but hooked up to a computer) carve it out of the wood, then aluminum, (and later, plastic, I think, for the face of the watch) for him.

He talked about how he created the board himself from a kit, how he sautered. He talked about how the instructions he needed barely fit in the thousand instructions the CPU permits. The code was in C, so you don't know ahead of time how many instructions that will result in. I forget the CPU type. In fact, I didn't have any way to take notes except by Blackberry, so all this is from memory.

It was all very interesting. He of course brought in the pieces so people could come up and see them. The down side was that there was no PA system, so it was a bit hard to hear him at times, especially when people were coughing or talking. I had to leave early too - didn't stick around to mingle or take a look at all the things brought, since I just happened to be exhausted that day as it was.

A bunch of Denver Mad Scientists showed up, too. Since people were invited to also bring in their projects and/or talk about what they were working on, one of the Denver Mad Scientists talked about what they do. They are known for many things, but the most famous is having the first robot battles. They were also the first to have pumpkin guns on the Front Range.

One guy jumped up and talked about his experiences with using a laser product to engrave wood. Another jumped up to talk about his net gun.

Before the talks the folks from Club Workshop walked us through a short intro to what they do, and that sounds incredibly interesting, too. They offer all kinds of classes in all sorts of things. They even sound open to starting up classes based on interest. Someone during the meeting if anyone knows anything about patent lawyers, and the guy from Club Workshop (forget his name, but I think he owns it) asked if there was interest in a class on filing patents...

And the classes sound very - get this - affordable, so if/when I'm ready to tackle some of these things, I know right where I'm going. I'd really like to learn to weld, and they offer that. They also offer a yearly membership, in which a few classes seem to be included.

PDFTK - The PDF Toolkit

2009-04-21T19:13:00.000-07:00

I recently found that I wanted to split a very large PDF document into two smaller documents, and copy the table of contents, or at least the parts relevant to the second half, into the second document, too. That's so I wouldn't have to go looking back and forth between the two documents. You can imagine similar scenarios for an index, too - you may want to copy this to the first document.

So, how does one do that? Well, I started searching around for open source tools, and at first my keywords didn't seem to be turning anything up fruitful. Add in "linux" to the search, and voila, I quickly came upon pdftk.

Splitting a file into two is a two step process. You first write the first part, by giving it a page range. Let's say your doc is 500 pages and you want to split it into two, 250 page, documents.

pdftk orig.pdf cat 1-250 output part1.pdf

Then you do the second part this way:

pdftk orig.pdf cat 251-500 output part2.pdf

Now you have two documents. In my case, I wanted to add the contents to the second part, as well.

I couldn't find a way to do that in one step - say by giving two page ranges - but I did just accomplish it by writing a temp file. Say the relevant parts I wanted to add to the part2.pdf were pages 10-20 of the orig doc. I would save those off this way:

pdftk orig.pdf cat 10-20 output contents.pdf

Then, I merged the contents.pdf and part2.pdf this way:

pdftk contents.pdf part2.pdf cat output final-part2.pdf

And I was done. Not bad, not bad at all.

Hacking Your Own Printer

2009-04-19T12:22:00.000-07:00

This week, the laser printer we have at home decided that it would no longer print - halfway through a 74 page document. The last 20 pages didn't come out. Argh. Send the last 20 pages again. Still nothing. Try a test page. Still nothing.

Double check the lights on the panel and look up what they mean.

So, the toner light has been on the laser printer we have at home here for....well, a long time. Now, the status light also went red, which means "I'm not printing; get a new cartridge".

Which is weird, because the document looked just fine - even the last page. I shake up the toner cartridge, stick it back in. Still no go.

Go online, price the toner replacement (this would be the first time - I've been using the cartridge that came with the printer.) at the local big box retailers. I see that I can get THREE of the high capacity replacements (7500 pages vs. 3500 pages) for less than one of the regular capacity at a local big box.

So, I order some, but...would still like to print. Does the printer supply an override of some kind to let the USER and not the PRINTER decide when it's time to change the toner?

So I google some, and find that a strategically-placed piece of electrical tape lets some people print 500-1000 more pages just fine with the same model. I take a look at the cartridge, and I can see what they are talking about, and after a bit of rummaging, I find some electrical tape at the house. A few seconds later the cartridge is back in, and the status light is no longer red!

Clear out the printer queue, and voila, I have my complete document printed out.

It's not that I'm poor, but I just abhor waste and inefficiency. 500-1000 more pages is substantial. This toner came with the printer and lasted a long time - but getting it to last even longer is just fine with me.

H+ Magazine

2009-04-17T19:27:00.001-07:00

It looks like RU Sirius' podcasts went dark for a reason? Apparently, he's been working on big things: h+ magazine.

Okay, what is h+ magazine, you ask? Well, it deals with transhumanism. And if you don't know what transhumanism/extropianism is, well....hm. Hard to explain that in a soundbite, at least for me. Probably best just to send you off to the Wikipedia entry on transhumanism.

Maybe one way to sum it up, though, is this: fundies are still battling issues culturally that were settled scientifically 150 years ago (like evolution), and they are so busy fighting something that's already lost that they just have no idea what is in store for them.

So far, it looks like H+ magazine is free in PDF form, and they have plans to generate a dead-tree version soon.

Over 101 Reasons NOT To Be a Vegan

2009-03-27T15:33:00.000-07:00

Okay, this list is tongue-in-cheek. I'm not vegan, but I sure can identify with some on this list, since I'm vegetarian:

Over 101 Reasons Not To Be a Vegan

I cannot tell you how many times I've been asked if I eat fish or chicken. I just don't understand this question. I really don't.

I've even had one person insist that "some vegetarians" they know eat fish and chicken. Really? Who knew? I wonder why these same "some vegetarians" don't just throw pork and beef into the mix, too? I mean, while we're just ignoring commonly-accepted definitions of terms, why not?

Some gems:

67. People you eat out with get exasperated when you try to determine what exactly is in the food you are ordering. (If it were an allergy, it would be fine, but since it's a choice, it's weird.)

69. You are tired of your vegetarian lifestyle being the big topic of conversation at EVERY business dinner you ever attend.

71. When the neighbor found out you were vegetarian after inviting you to a barbecue, he now thinks it's funny to announce to you every time he's cooking some sort of steak, roast, lamb, or ribs for his family.

92. The vegetarian option at the restaurant is a grilled cheese sandwich, grilled on the same grill they're grilling the burgers & steaks on.

93. Relatives who bring Kentucky Fried Chicken over when I invite them over for a meal.

94. Always having to answer "Why don't you eat meat?" In spite of all the reasons I could cite, the truth is that I just don't want to, and I shouldn't have to justify it every day of my life.

95. Being told "You can pick the meat off." In exasperation, I once replied,"Well, for me that would be the same as if I crapped on your food and told you you could just pick it off. Would you?"

98. I occasionally meet people who "used to be vegetarian" but "outgrew it" (ie. began to find it inconvenient).

99. I've come to realize that just because someone claims to be a vegetarian doesn't mean that they actually are. They just eat a lot of vegetables, and somehow don't associate chicken and fish with "meat".

118. Your employer has Chik-Fil-A cater lunch for everyone and can't understand why you didn't "just eat it this once" instead of taking a break to get real food.

134. Because when you tell them you are a vegan in a hospital they will bring you turkey and say, "Some vegetarians eat turkey."

137. Because you can't stand telling one more person that Jell-O is an animal product and having them say, "Oh no it's not."

The Corporate Abuse of Language: Team

2009-03-23T17:01:00.001-07:00

It's hardly any secret that corporations often act to subvert and/or completely change the meanings of some terms, at least as part of initiatives carried out via their PR efforts. These are usually aimed at targets outside the corp, though.

The ones I find most grating, though, are the ones that they inflict on the people within the corporation, and not those without. At least the PR stuff you can take measures to actively block - using spam filtering, ad blocking in your browser, and turning OFF your television.

These are meant to target those within the corporation so that workers within the corporation internalize the nonsense being spewed, along with their position within the corporate structure. I'm almost 100% sure this is intentional.

Unfortunately, I cannot just set up filtering for internal corporate memos.

One of those efforts at subversion I find so, so insidious is the way corporations use the term "team". It's "team" this, and "teams" that. Teamwork, team player, blah blah blah...yadda yadda yadda - Goooo Team!

The notion that teams exist within corporations is complete horseshit, and even a child can see through that. With all the constant barrage of internal PR, an adult sleepwalking through life will repeat this horseshit without any trace of irony however. Now that's education.

Real teams would have members which all get compensated in the same way, or at least be conducted as a meritocracy.

Real teams wouldn't allow the buddy system or nepotism to influence the way in which rewards are doled out.

Instead, the "teams" within corporations often have people who even go so far as sabotaging the "team", while still getting rewarded just as much as, and often more than, people actually trying to do their jobs.

The "teams" within corporations often keep net-negative performers, because of those very same reasons: who they know.

And yet, you read the average intra-corporate memo, and it's team, team, team. The hypocrisy and abuse of language just sets my teeth on edge.

The New Miro - And Building Feeds for Youtube

2009-02-22T10:18:00.000-08:00

Well, a little while ago, Miro 2.0 made a big splash. Of course, within a day or two, I downloaded it, especially because I read it was supposed to be less of a hog (the older one often made my laptop overheat and shutdown, but a lot of apps do that to my laptop, to be honest).

Anyway, I installed it, and had a problem right away. It simply wouldn't run, and told me to check the log. I posted about it on their feedback site, and got a suggestion to try one of the nightly builds.

I did so, and that one works. I like what I see so far. I like how the video can now be split off from the main screen - however, I don't like that the controls for the video stay with the main screen. Maybe there is an option to change this; I haven't looked yet.

But here's one thing I found out how to do, and this is pretty cool: you can build your own RSS feeds via this site Ubeek.com, and add them as a channel to Miro. I don't think this is a new feature of 2.0, per se, but still, pretty cool.

Youtube needs to open things up to Miro and let it work directly with Miro, but in the long term, I wonder how viable Youtube will be, anyway, at least for the more knowledgeable digerati.

They seem to be opting for the walled garden approach, and cranking up the censorship, and there are lots of alternatives to them, anyway.

I still like searching for some documentaries on video.google.com, but, if given the choice, I'd much rather queue up things via something like Miro and watch them offline. I also want an app to start building up things I like and start recommending things, and do it in one place, and be agnostic to any one website, such as Youtube and/or video.google.com. Something like StumbleUpon, but instead of just for websites in general, to do it for videos (and maybe audio) in particular.

It looks like Miro is starting down that path, but from what I can tell, it's for channels, not down to the video.

Everything's Cool

2009-02-21T15:18:00.000-08:00

This is a great documentary. It covers global warming issues - dealing a lot with the global warming denialists and the people that fund them, for one. It also deals with how science was meddled with under the W regime.

You can view the trailer here:

Everything's Cool trailer

The Origin of Republicans By Natural Selection

2009-02-12T19:53:00.000-08:00

I wouldn't go so far as to say that some neoliberal/conservative/libertarian notions about the economy are dead, per se, but they are probably notions that people will want to set aside for a while.

Obama is tired of your...."stuff"

2009-02-08T22:02:00.000-08:00

Warning: NOT safe for work!

Obama is tired of your "stuff".

But...very hilarious.

Investigate Bush for War Crimes? We Don't Have A Choice - We Must

2009-02-08T11:02:00.000-08:00

A great deal of Americans have been kicking around this notion of "well, Bush and crew may have committed war crimes, but we really don't have the time and/or inclination to investigate him for war crimes", or it would "be too divisive", etc.

I wonder if people would be able to use this same logic on, say, the trial of OJ Simpson? Wasn't that also "divisive"?

I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time. Besides, as Jack Clark's podcast points out, we are legally obligated, as a country, to investigate Bush and crew for possible war crimes he committed.

The transcript is here: Rule Of Law: A Criminal Investigation Of The Bush Administration's Torture Program Is Legally Required

...and the mp3 is here.

Happy reading/listening. Here's a taste:

To start off with, listen to Attorney General Eric Holder being questioned at his confirmation hearing by Vermont Senator Pat Leahy:

audio: Eric Holder and Pat Leahy

LEAHY: Water boarding has been recognized to be torture since the time of Spanish Inquisition. The United States has prosecuted American soldiers for using this technique. Earlier in the last century, they prosecuted Japanese soldiers for using it on Americans in World War II. But the two most recent nominees to serve as attorney general of the United States hedged on the question of water boarding.

They would not say that if an American were water boarded by some other government or terrorist anywhere in the world, whether it would be torture and illegal. They maintained it would depend upon the circumstances.

Do you agree with me that water boarding is torture and illegal?

HOLDER: If you look at the history of the use of that technique used by the Khmer Rouge, used in the Inquisition, used by the Japanese and prosecuted by us as war crimes. We prosecuted our own soldiers for using it in Vietnam.

I agree with you, Mr. Chairman, water boarding is torture.

OK, got that? Holder says point blank, water boarding is torture.

Now listen to excerpts of Dick Cheney recently being interviewed by ABC News:

audio: Dick Cheney

KARL: Did you authorize the tactics that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

CHENEY: I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, that is the agency in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it.

KARL: In hindsight, do you think any of those tactics that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others went too far?

CHENEY: I don't.

[…]

KARL: [O]n KSM, one of those tactics, of course, widely reported was waterboarding. And that seems to be a tactic we no longer use. Even that you think was appropriate?

CHENEY: I do.

Sounds like an admission to me. Doesn’t it to you?

The True Meaning of Liberal, Leftist and Conservative

2009-02-07T17:49:00.000-08:00

I ran across a writeup on The True Meaning of Liberal, Leftist and Conservative, and thought it was really quite excellent. I've grown pretty weary of how abused these terms are.

It gets interesting when he discusses the antonyms of liberal:

If you're not ‘LIBERAL,’ what are you? By definition using antonyms, you are: uneducated, unintellectual, closed of heart, selfish, narrow, contracted, mean, small, fascist, racist, bigoted, homophobic, stingy, closed-minded, supportive of monarchies and slavery, against FREEdom of religious expression and speech, low in birth and mind, anti-American.

If you've been out bashing ‘liberals’, you're probably all of these things, as this would perfectly describe someone who would go out ‘liberal bashing’ (FREEdom bashing), which is also known as ‘liberticide’ – the destruction of civil liberties. (Webster's International Dictionary, 1893)

'Liber' (as in liberal), is also the root word of ‘liberty’ (FREEdom from restraint); ‘Libertarian’ (one who holds to FREE will); ‘libertine’ (a FREEd man); ‘liberalism’ (the principles of liberals); ‘liberalist’ (one who is a liberal, or who favors the principles of liberals.); ‘liberalized’ (FREEd from narrow views and prejudices); ‘liberate’ (to make FREE); and several others. Liber is Latin for "FREE."

In fact, the root word ‘liber’ is also the Latin word for ‘book’. This is because many ancient philosophies believed you could only FREE your mind through education and reading by learning the ‘logos’ (thought to be the written word of God). Where you FREEd your mind was in the universities and/or libraries, which held the books.

If we believe the stories told to us by our high school his-story books, then LIBERAL is what this country’s forefathers were and wanted!
(Note: I'm intentionally excluding the works of Howard Zinn, James Lowen, Michael Parenti, Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky etc. in order to make a point.)

Lost

2008-12-31T15:09:00.000-08:00

Not since Twin Peaks have I have been this interested in a broadcast TV show's story arc. A few came close - maybe X-files at times. HBO and Showtime have had some really good shows, but they aren't broadcast TV, obviously, and have more flexibility.

I recently checked out Season 4 of Lost from the library and since it had so few episodes, we were able to watch it in a few days over the holiday break.

So many cool references I picked up:

1. Dean Moriarty? Wow!
2. Philip K. Dick's Valis? Double wow!
3. They played a PIXIES song! Okay, now that's just too much cool in one show. ;)

Here's to no shark jumping in January...

The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder

2008-12-28T17:34:00.001-08:00

Someday, I should draw up a list of (recent) books I think constitute a list of books all real patriots should read. This would definitely be on it. Mr. Bugliosi makes a really good case for the title of the book, IMHO.

BUT, as a bonus, there is a section on just how much of a failure Shrub has been in the war on terror - and in fact demonstrates that it would almost be impossible that the man could do any worse! Contrast this section with the treatment Junior gets from the "liberal media" on the war on terror. This section, section 5, should be condensed a bit and printed in some newspaper or magazine that would be bold enough to print it. Better yet, print it in full.

Vincent Bugliosi is an America hero in my book.

Some Great Choonz

2008-12-13T10:04:00.000-08:00

I've been listening to the much-hyped Girl Talk. So far I've only heard Night Ripper. Haven't listened to Feed the Animals yet. Night Ripper is outstanding, and, if the new album is as good as or better, I think, he's worth the hype.

That is, if you like remix/mashup/re-purposing type of stuff. If you like The Avalanches and/or the Danger Mouse Grey Album, you should really like Girl Talk.

HOWEVER.

For all the hype that Girl Talk gets (and I've seen them discussed even in Wall Street Journal - mostly about the copyright stuff, though), for some reason, in all that hype, I never see much talk about The Kleptones.

Now, if you like Girl Talk I promise that you'll love The Kleptones. They just kick ass, and they released a new work, called Live'r Than You'll Ever Be - The Kleptones At Bestival 2007.

Trust me. Download it and put on your mp3 player, and thank me later. You can find that and more of their stuff at The Kleptones download page at kleptones.com.

McSame Jumps The Shark

2008-10-28T16:57:00.000-07:00

Actually, how many times did the man jump the shark? Well, that's a matter of debate. I started using the phrase when he selected Palin.

But it's pretty clear that McSame, as well as the Republicans in general, has jumped the shark. I hope the Dems pick up 60 seats in the Senate. I hope that insane witch Bachmann loses the election. And I hope Palin is just a historical footnote.

Although I didn't know it for a long time - until I went looking for an image or bumper sticker about McCain and Bible Spice jumping the shark - Daily Kos has an excellent piece on this, as well as a poll, asking: When did McCain jump the shark?

Bad Moon Rising

2008-10-26T16:50:00.000-07:00

If you've ever wondered who the guy is behind Washington Times, or who helps fund a lot of the Wingnut Welfare outfits, look no further. Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created the Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right, and Built an American Kingdom tries to detail what the media hardly ever touches on: Sun Myung Moon and his influence.

Tell Me a Story

2008-10-02T17:32:00.000-07:00

In this great commencement speech at Caltech, Robert Krulwich gives some great advice to future scientists.

It's titled "Tell Me a Story". You can listen to it at the link above. I first heard this thanks to an episode of Best of The Left podcast.

I was able to find a partial transcript of it:

When you are asked "What you are working on?", should you think, "There's no I way I can talk about my science with this guy, because I don't have the talent, I don't have the words, I don't have the patience to do it. It's too hard. And anyways, what's the point?"

…

[In writing his Principia,] Issac Newton didn't care to be understood by average folks. But here's the argument I want to make to you guys this morning. You're not going to hear this advice often; I suggest you may never here it again. When asked about your work, do not do what Isaac Newton did. No, no, no!

When a cousin or an uncle or a buddy comes up and asks you "So, what are you working on?", even if it's hard to explain, even if you know they don't really want to hear it (not really), I urge you to give it a try. Because, talking about science, telling stories to regular folks, is not a trivial thing. Scientists need to tell stories to non-scientists because science stories, and you know this, have to compete with other stories about how the universe works and how the universe came to be. And some of those other stories -- Bible stories, movie stories, myths -- can be very beautiful and very compelling. But to protect science and scientists (this is not a gentle competition), you've to get in there and tell yours, your version of how things are and why things came to be.

…

[T]here is a tension here among scientists between two kinds of truth: math and narrative. But the job that we face, and I should come clean with you and tell you what's really on my mind here, is to put more stories out there about nature that are true and complex -- not dumbed down -- but still have the power to enthrall, to excite, to remind people there's a deep beauty, a many-level beauty, in the world. And what scientists say is not their off-hand opinion; it's hard won information. It's carefully hewn from the world. It's not the bunch of ideas from a tribe of privileged intellectuals who look down on everybody…But it's my sense that if more scientists wanted to, they could learn how to tell their stories with words and pictures and metaphor, and people will hear and remember those stories and not be as willing to accept the other folks' stories. Or at least, there will be a tug of war. And I think the science stories will, surprisingly, win.

I'm reminded of Sagan and the series Cosmos. Parts of it may be outdated, and he certainly had slings and arrows aimed at him...but I remember, quite vividly, sitting down and watching this with my Dad when I was a young one. So much so that I own the series on DVD today.

This Is Your Nation on White Privilege

2008-09-18T17:05:00.000-07:00

This piece just about says it all. Entitled "This is your nation on white privilege":

September 13, 2008, 2:01 pm

This is Your Nation on White Privilege

By Tim Wise

For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll “kick their fuckin' ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.” 

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals. 

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you. 

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful. 

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist. 

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look.” 

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt. 

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America. 

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a “trick question,” while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced. 

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a “light” burden. 

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole “change” thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain… 

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

Whither DenverLibPlus for FF3?

2008-09-01T09:11:00.000-07:00

The short answer is that I've grown rather lazy.

Well, that's not entirely true. The fact is that I've updated this addon to work with FF3 quite some time ago for beta 5, since I switched to FF3 long ago, and I use this addon myself. That upload was still in the review queue when I uploaded a new version to be compat with the release candidate/ FF final.

That got rejected by the review process due to a rather annoying bug - and it's taken me a while to get around to fixing that and uploading a new one. I've finally done that, and if approved, will be version 0.6. If you view the notes for the various versions, that a few other rather important fixes are in there, as well - works well with tabs, doesn't misfire and try to work on other sites, etc...

It seems that you can actually find the "experimental" versions when you click on the see all versions link.

Unfortunately, you'll have to log in to install any experimental versions. Hopefully, 0.6 will get through the queue soon, but if you are impatient, there's your route to getting a FF3-compatible version of DenverLibPlus.

Enjoy.

Great talk at TED

2008-08-24T09:12:00.001-07:00

I know, I know, saying there is a "great talk at TED" is like saying...well, let's just say it's sort of a given to have a great talk at TED.

But I found David Keith's talk on geoengineering and the ethical considerations of it really interesting:

David Keith on climate change

R.I.P., Brody

2008-06-05T18:44:00.000-07:00

We miss you.

Amazon Forums Greasemonkey Script

2007-12-27T15:33:00.000-08:00

I added a new GreaseMonkey script to add a page navigator bar to the top of Amazon Forums - that way one doesn't have to scroll to the bottom to jump back in forth in the pages of replies on a topic. So far, that's all it does, but I welcome other ideas.

You can find it here:

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/16775

Nova: Judgement Day

2007-11-15T06:17:00.001-08:00

So I had been looking forward to this for some time, and man, I was not disappointed. It was fun knowing ahead of time knowing the IDiots were going to get spanked. I knew Judge Jones had used the phrase "breathtaking inanity". I knew that there was lots of divisiveness in Dover during (and probably after) the trial, but I didn't know that people were getting death threats. I didn't know the judged needed 24/7 protection after the ruling either! What loving Christians! The fact that these people feel so insecure in their beliefs so as to make death threats to others over science shows that they themselves don't, or can't, believe the Bible literally...but so desperately want to cling to that notion that they'll do almost anything, apparently, to force that uncritical, blind, belief on others.

And as for the science brought into the trial, Nova gives nice insight into how the case was presented. It was nice to see the creationists get their ass handed to them, and justice was served, although I'm sure they are in no way done wasting the time and money of taxpayers, educators and (worst of all) children. Personally, I think they should have gone after some of the defendants for perjury.

As for the wedge document, I knew about that - and plan on reading the book about the wedge strategy. Nova provided a nice explanation of how creationists "evolved" (ironic, huh?) into ID, with the "cdesign proponentsists" found in drafts in that crazy ID book. I agree with the people over on Pharyngula's comment section - that "cdesign proponentsists" would make a nice t-shirt phrase. I see cdesign proponentsists has already made the urban dictionary.

Ultimately, though, I actually just lost my ire for a lot of the Discovery Institute group that are pushing ID. Now I just feel sorry for them, really. I wasn't familiar with the Fuller guy that Nova had on to talk about ID, but I just really felt bad watching Fuller talk about what he seemed to believe. The stupid, it hurts, but I did feel sorry for the guy. And Behe - hooboy, he must have felt a real sting of shame after admitting, on the stand, that his definition of science would include astrology. That hurt, and again, I just felt sorry for him.

As for the guy who was on the board - I don't feel sorry for him. Perjury for "traditional values" - ouch, the irony hurts! Even after the trial, he was calling the judge an ass. He should feel lucky he didn't have perjury charges. That's serious business.

As for some of the people that started or ended phrases with "I'm a [good] Christian, so...", ugh. Whenever someone starts a sentence like that or ends it with "...because [I'm|we're] Christian(s)" I just know I'm going to hear something outrageously stupid or hateful. So one guy says something along the lines of "As a Christian, I just find the idea of kids being taught evolution deeply offensive". Oh, look, reality offends someone! Boo hoo! Saying that evolution offends you is as deeply stupid as saying that finding out the earth is not flat offends you. Or that finding out that the Earth isn't at the center of the universe offends you.

Hearing people make statements like that offends ME, let me tell you. The downside of free speech is that you also have to hear some terribly stupid opinions from the willingly uninformed.

Kairo/Pulse

2007-11-13T19:42:00.000-08:00

I accidentally saw the remake for this Japanese "horror" movie - it wasn't bad, but it was definitely done as a horror movie. The Japanese original may have been marketed as a horror movie (although I'm not sure how it was pitched to the Japanese public), and it had a few memorable creepy moments, no doubt, but it's really a big comment on technologies and their power to isolate and atomize. And although a slow burner and it could stand to be cut down a bit on length, it will leave a much longer impression on a viewer than the average slasher flick...maybe in an unsettling way, but it's definitely good art by that measure. And I guarantee you will give some shadows and/or stains on the wall a second look after this flick. ;)

I don't know what it is, but there's either been a lot of great Asian cinema in the past few years, or else DVDs are just now being cut for Region 1. Either way, I like it. I've been on a real tear of watching movies from the library in general, and I hope to write up my impressions of a few more of them soon.

IPhones and Laughingstocks

2007-11-04T15:30:00.000-08:00

So, when the iphone was introduced, I was probably one of the few people in America who just didn't care. I say "America" because of what Mossberg writes below - a lot of the world didn't understand the buzz over iPhone, either, I'm sure. I was more interested in the Apple Tv, but everyone was tripping over themselves to talk about how Apple's entry into the mobile world is "changing everything". Which I just found puzzling. Oh sure, Apple fans will buy it. And people who fetishize over consumer electronics and other trinkets will buy it and/or chatter about it incessantly.

Here's why I find it puzzling - people who have used the iPhone interface will say "it's just amazing", but almost never really can articulate why. How does a new interface change everything about an experience that's terrible from a consumer level as a whole? And the iPhone actually makes that experience *worse* - by having only one provider, and picking a slow network. Yawn, okay, you can touch your interface and have it do stuff? How about choice of altering it without accidentally bricking it? How about being able to switch providers?

And don't think I'm just some Apple hater. My dad bought one of the first Macs and I remember it fondly. I used it for many a high school paper, and I also used a Mac all the way through university. I own an iPod (my second one, actually), and I've kicked around the idea of getting an OS X machine. I just think a lot of Apple fans uncritically adopt whatever thinking Apple wants them to adopt...and they buy whatever Apple wants them to buy. I overheard one Apple fanboy at work talk, with great fanfare, about something that Leopard adds to the mix, and it's something that Linux has had for well over a decade. From what he was describing, it's called virtual desktops. XGL can even spin the desktops in 3D for a few years, too. I smiled and kept that one to myself, since this person has never been able to speak about Apple in a rational way.

Anyway, it looks like I'm not the only one who thinks that the world of cellphones needs a real shakeup and some real changes. Mossberg, a person who's opinion I value for the most part, has written a great op-ed about the cellphone industry in America, saying that we in America are basically laughingstocks when it comes to the state we're in, and comparing it to Soviet Russia.

Keep your touch interface for now; I want real changes. I've bought the hardware; I'd like to think the phone is *mine*, not the carrier's, and not the manufacturer's. The current state truly is an embarrassing one.

Who knows, when my contract on my Blackberry is up, I may just look around and find that the version of iPhone offered at that time is an attractive one and I just may buy one. But I won't be so brainwashed as to go around saying that Apple has "changed everything".

Rapture - How Biotech Became The New Religion

2007-11-01T06:30:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned this before, but I think there are changes on the horizon that are going to make today's "culture wars" over things like stem cells and abortion look like childish pursuits in comparison.

So I've been on a tear trying to catch up on the who, the how, etc, and so have been trying to fit in a few books on transhumanism. This book covers the personalities behind these changes - the people on the fringe, the authors that inspired them, and the people in mainstream science that are on the forefront of manifesting these things.

It tends to jump around a bit more than I'd like, but it does try to cover a lot of territory in just over 200 pages, so that may be why. Given the range trying to be covered, it could have been doubled in size, I think.

Interestingly, the book talks about Venter a lot, and he was just on the Colbert Report this week. Go figure.

Miro and Casa Bonita

2007-10-30T06:45:00.000-07:00

I've been viewing some content on Miro (formerly known as Democracy Player) and I found at the top of my "New" list a video from Trucker Tom on Casa Bonita.

For those of you not in the Denver area, but have seen South Park, it's that Casa Bonita. Casa Bonita was one of the first places I was taken when I came to Colorado and it is a memorable place.

For those of you who give a rip about "HD" content, Trucker Tom does his stuff in HD. In fact, Miro say that they have more HD content than anyone.

Dark Music For Tortured Souls

2007-10-29T20:16:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm not a tortured soul, even though I do have musical tastes that include gothic and industrial. But Halloween is my favorite holiday, so Soma FM's doomed station goes perfect with the season. I just may have to send them $50 and get a t-shirt in the bargain since I've been listening to this station a lot off and on the past week...their mix goes *perfect* with the season. Anything that has Coil in the set list gets my approval. Real horrorshow.

Speaking of Halloween, I went looking for Masters of Horror on VOD because I thought that season 3 would have started by now. Turns out that Showtime didn't pick up Season 3. Ack, I was hoping it would be a yearly tradition that would run for a while. Oh well, there's always Fearnet and Fear Fest.

Vegetarianism

2007-10-26T06:31:00.000-07:00

I've been doing the vegetarian thing for about a year now. It wasn't really that hard to make the switch - I had already cut out the beef and the pork years before, and was only eating poultry and fish. Making that last step was only really difficult for group situations, like work. I still get the occasional snarky comment from people (all men, it so happens) but I think I can ignore the ignorant without too much worry...I'm not sure why it is, but men sometimes have to make mention of how much they need a big steak, etc., upon hearing that I'm vegetarian. I think it has something to do with being insecure in their manhood or something. The idea that having a steak makes a man more manly is of course retarded. I've seen women eat steak, bacon and hamburgers and NONE of them spontaneously changed genders. Funny, that.

Of course, advertisers know that many men suffer from such fragile egos and prey on just that to sell meat. I saw a giant ad in Rolling Stone that showed slabs of meat, with the title that says, "We love vegetarians" with message further down that says "...more meat for us". Hardy-har-har-har. Yep, keep preying on those fragile egos. Maybe this ad targets women, too, but somehow it seemed more for the men.

Anyway, I switched for a plethora of reasons. One is that I've been uncomfortable with eating animals since forever - and that was before getting information on the horror that is factory farming. But I think the health reasons finally pushed me over to vegetarianism. Alternet had a good article on 15 reasons to switch. I doubt this will change many minds, but it does provide a nice summation of why someone might want to consider at least reducing their intake.

As for the picture, that was probably one of THE reasons I finally switched - the sheer arbitrariness of eating some animals while others, at least in America, people shudder to think of eating. Like cats, dogs, and horses.

The Cult of Personality

2007-10-07T06:59:00.000-07:00

Virtually everyone working for the corporate world has probably been subjected to one unscientific personality test or another. It's almost guaranteed that you aren't told how unreliable and almost useless those tests are.

Recently, I already had The Cult of Personality on hold, and found out we were going to be subjected to a round of tests where I work at. This time it was DiSC, but often it's something like Myers Briggs. When I groaned aloud about it when someone asked if I was "excited" about it, I said it's just modern-day phrenology. Which just sort of got a blank look. When I tried to explain phrenology, she just sort of spaced out. It turns out I was attacking her personal belief system, because she's apparently a big fan of personality tests.

Well, it turns out this book started off with a discussion of phrenology. It progresses through ink blots and others on up to Myers Briggs. I had to chuckle because this book discussed people (esp. managers) that love the tests so much that they put their type on their business cards. After our round of tests, we had at least one individual that put it in their email sig.

One meme I took away from this book is that the reason they remain so popular is most likely due to the Barnum effect - these personality descriptions read a lot like horoscopes. One of the smarter guys (and a real smart aleck, in a good way) asked the person administering the test, if they've ever tried studies where everyone got the results of the person next to them, and studied whether people agreed with the descriptions. I highly suspect he was thinking along the lines of trying to rule out the Barnum effect. Of course, if you have a lot of money to make from administering these tests, you really aren't going to work too hard to debunk them. So the answer from the test giver was "I don't think so", and a frown.

Fans of Myers Briggs might be surprised to learn the manner in which it was developed, and just how unreliable it is. Bop on over the the Wikipedia page and read the "validity" section and the reliability section. Very interesting, indeed.

Anyway, if you've been skeptical of these tests, I suggest reading this book.

More Americana: Roswell

2007-09-17T12:43:00.000-07:00

It's hard to think of a town more quintessentially 20th-century American than Roswell - there is a WWII/Cold War tie-in, and also a fringe culture helping to boost the town - when I was talking to one of the many tourist shops' proprietors, it quickly came to light they were California hippies out to get in their kicks, and more power to them.

The town is on the map due to early work in rockets; later it garnered more fame due to the UFO story - and now there is a tie-in to aliens and UFOs throughout the whole town - the lamp above is what all the downtown lamps look like at night. Even huge MNC's like Wal-Mart and McDonald's had their UFO/alien tie-in.

We had a blast there checking out the Roswell conspiracy museum, and buying up various alien doodads and checking out some of the elaborately done tourist trap type stuff - crashed UFOs, alien autopsies and all. Unfortunately, we just missed out on going to the Goddard museum. We may have to do a "rocket tour" of NM in a coming vacation as there is so much to see - I'd like to see the Trinity site, too, but that's only twice a year, by tour only. We were able to get onto the White Sands (below) but we had to wait a bit, as the site opened a bit later that day due to military tests.

Phil Hendrie Update

2007-09-01T11:03:00.000-07:00

So after posting yesterday about Phil, I dug around a bit more, and found this site that is archiving shows at least until an official place comes online, and apparently they are free for now...get 'em while they're hot.

It looks like he came back on the air June 25th. I started listening to the first show, but didn't get far before I had to pause it and do something else. I'm looking forward to having his usual insights about life and whatnot.

Now, if I could just figure out what the heck happened to sweetfeatheryjesus.com - it looks like the site has no references to Phil anymore? The whole site was about Phil, including the name...hrmmm. Maybe it will get back to form soon.

Phil Hendrie is BACK!!!!

2007-08-31T15:46:00.000-07:00

When Phil decided to hang it up last year, I was so bummed. Now, he's back. I gotta confirm I can find him on the dial in Denver and in any case, sign up for his backstage pass if there is one - I like to listen on the iPod ideally - hopefully, he's canned that lame "podcast" software that wasn't a real podcast, and has instead embraced the RSS.

This is great news.

If you don't know who Phil is, he runs a great show, and it's a playful way to test people's gullibility and reality tunnels. It almost never grows old for me.

Another Slice of Americana

2007-08-31T11:39:00.000-07:00

As part of our trip, we stopped in at Santa Fe. This was a photo snapped of a (homeless?) man's pets. If you think your eyes deceive you, they don't; that really is a mouse on top of a cat on top of a dog. Apparently, they like to hang out together.

Ideas for mixes

2007-08-31T06:26:00.000-07:00

I recently picked up a new (to me) magazine, called Good. The bright background a picture of an AK-47 caught my eye when I was at Whole Foods. The mention of Bucky Fuller and an article on Mormons sealed the deal.

They apparently have ideas for various group projects in the back each issue, and last month's was for themed mixes. Being a fan of putting together mixes myself (I recently made one for the road that I called "UP" - as in upbeat.), my interest was peaked, so I went to their site to find others' mixes.

This one caught my eye, as it's in the same vein as my UP mix, and I also included Sly and the Family Stone on my mix:

Trenchtown Rock - Bob Marley
Caravan - Van Morrison
Dance To The Music - Sly & The Family Stone
The Beast And The Dragon Adored - Spoon
Uncle John's Band - The Grateful Dead
Play It All Night Long - Warren Zevon
The Late Greats - Wilco
Late In The Evening - Paul Simon
The Spirit Of Radio - Rush
Sir Duke - Stevie Wonder
Rock & Roll - Velvet Underground
Old Time Rock And Roll - Bob Seger
Johnny B. Goode - Chuck Berry

Pretty cool idea - I'm surprised they didn't get more submissions. Okay, so the above is pretty common stuff, but I thought the 80's mix was an interesting idea, and definitely had a cool cover! Some of the 80's tracks I don't know, and when I do, I didn't know they were covered:

How Soon Is Now - t.A.T.u.
The Heart Of The Matter - India.Arie
Brass In Pocket - Kelis
Where Is My Mind - Nada Surf
This Charming Man - Stars
She Sells Sanctuary - Keane
Rock The Casbah - Solar Twins
Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want - Muse
Ghost In You - Mark McGrath
The Killing Moon - Nouvelle Vague
Under The Milky Way - Tearwave
Love Will Tear Us Apart - Fall Out Boy

Fox Attacks Iran

2007-08-22T17:28:00.000-07:00

Saw this wonderful short video called Fox Attacks Iran mentioned on newshounds.us. I just cannot believe the ridiculous saber rattling coming from this administration and their enablers (like Faux). They are going to lie their way into another quagmire if they aren't stopped. And the Democrats are such a spineless "opposition" party.

I'd just like to re-invoke my hypothesis on how liberals actually think, while conservatives almost always feel, despite what the spin-doctors like to say. They let the emotional arguments that make no sense whatsoever bypass any rational faculties they might have and go straight to the reptilian brain (for example, arguments on flag burning and gay marriage are particularly embarrassing)...and that's why it doesn't matter that a network like Faux can't get anything right - at least correct in "the reality-based community", anyway. They don't need to get anything right, and in fact getting things wrong is probably necessary. They just make up their own fantasy world, and so many people follow them. Witness how conservatives flee from even something like Wikipedia - they have to make their own little reality in something called Conservapedia. Just shameful. And they have the cojones to actually repeat phrases like "intellectual honesty" - I notice that seems to be a favorite of Hannity's. Laughable, just laughable.

A Slice of Americana

2007-08-21T20:10:00.000-07:00

...and a little of Britain and Europe, by way of Beatles and Cirque du Soleil. :)

I haven't been making many posts here lately because we went on a road trip through 4 states - 5 if you include Colorado. We saw Love, but along the way to Vegas, saw many things, among the more notable being:

Roswell, Carlsbad Caverns, White Sands, stayed in the famous wigwams on Route 66, the Petrified Forest, the Grand Canyon, the Grand Canyon skywalk, and the Hoover Dam.

Yeah, it was a lot to pack into a rather short time (after all, Americans do have the least amount of vacation in the industrial world), but it sure was fun. And we sure bought a lot of t-shirts. :)

DIY Coffee Roasting

2007-08-21T14:09:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across an interesting article in a recent Utne magazine. It referenced an article in ReadyMade magazine about roasting your own coffee.

What peaked my interest was that beans that are fair-trade, organic, shade-grown, can supposedly be found cheaper if you are willing to buy them green and roast them yourself. I'm usually willing to roll my own sleeves up, and lately, I've been striving to be more of a Renaissance man [*] and do more DIY stuff, so this shouldn't be too much of a challenge.

Roasting my own coffee sounds like an intriguing idea - especially if I can avoid an assload of pesticides, and do it cheaply. Turns out that you can do it with an air popcorn popper. Okay, that was interesting...turns out we have the very popper model that some people recommend, so I ordered some sampler set from a company I found - I got about 5 pounds for about $30-some after shipping. I could probably find it cheaper, but wanted to try out the different types.

So the shipment came last week. I was going to wait until the weekend, but I couldn't hold out more than a day or two, so on the way home, I went to Costco to get a coffee machine (for the past few years, I've only had an espresso machine) and I tried it out when I got home. No one else was at the house yet, so if I created a stink, no one would complain. I followed these directions. All one does is plop about 1/2 cup to 2/3 cup of beans in the popper, put the top on, set the timer on the microwave to keep an eye on the time. Listen for the first crack, wait until most of the chaff has blown out, then take the top off and watch the beans closely. The timer is probably your friend, too, as it's probably a good thing to use as an upper bound. One tip I didn't see anyone else give was that you want to get ready to dump those beans out as soon as you turn off the popper - I think they get much more heat transfer from the surrounding metal in there after the air stops blowing and they stop moving and press against the sides and bottom. Pour them out into a metal collander and stir until they are cool enough to touch. Leave them out about 12 hours, then seal in a glass jar. Best used ASAP.

They smell unbelievably good. The coffee tastes awesome - I'm trying different roasts next - most of them so far have been just a bit lighter than a city roast. It's also much easier than I thought, and if you're careful, not very much cleanup at all to do. The first time, I was blowing the chaff into the collander, saw the beans getting very hot after turning off the air, and dumped the beans in the same container. Took a bit of doing to get all that chaff out of my beans...

[*] Without sounding too pompous - what I mean by that is not focusing on any one skill to the exclusion of all others - taking the specialization is for insects attitude. I've taken this attitude with my car ever since I bought it (used) - the only thing I haven't done with it is replace the serpentine belt and regular oil changes.

All other stuff that happens, I try to fix myself - so far, I've swapped out front rotors and brake pads, replaced the ignition coils, replaced the MAF sensor, as well as swap the rims and tires between all season and winter each fall and spring. Not only have I learned a bit here and there, I've saved unbelievable amounts of money (I figure doing the ignition coils myself saved me at least $600, and possibly more. The parts cost about $260 and I've had someone tell me the dealer charged them $1000+ to do that for their Maxima) and avoided the raise in blood pressure one gets from getting ripped off at the mechanic.

As for the serpentine belt, I'm glad I didn't try to tackle that one myself. I took it to a Sears, and the mechanic there apparently had a bit of a time getting it done. The guy looked like a seasoned guy, too, not just some kid in high school doing it as a summer job.

Tobe Hooper - What Happened?

2007-08-08T10:02:00.000-07:00

I recently watched both Lifeforce (re-watched, actually) and Mortuary. What a juxtaposition! Lifeforce is one of my favorite sci-fi movies of the 80's - although I've only seen it a few times - once on TV back in the 80's, so it was heavily edited, and a few weeks ago on VOD. Intriguing concept, a lot of fun, maybe somewhat flawed in parts, but overall, very enjoyable flick. This was from a time when movies obviously weren't focus-grouped into the big budget sci-fi crapfests (think almost anything with Wil Smith in it) that they are now.

I checked out Mortuary on DVD from the library and watched it in the same week as watching Lifeforce...and afterwards, was just left scratching my head. This is from the same guy that did Poltergeist (well, that's controversial, but anyway) and Texas Chainsaw Massacre? It was watchable, and at times entertaining, but...let's just say I'm glad I didn't buy it on DVD.

BTW, I suggest watching (or re-watching to refresh your memory) Lifeforce, and then clicking on over on the 100 things we learned from Lifeforce thread on IMDB (I think you'll need a free login) - this list is done in homage to that list of things learned from Independence Day, I suppose. Pretty funny stuff. I like these:

96. Doctors played by Patrick Stewart will explode if sedated, viciously beaten and taken up in a helicopter.

95. The upside is his entrails will form a nude Mathilda May!

94. The downside is you'll be aroused by Patrick Stewart's entrails.

WSJ & Murdoch

2007-08-06T17:44:00.000-07:00

I was out on vacation, and was sickened to find out that Murdoch acquired WSJ. I've subscribed to WSJ for most of the past 4 years...but probably won't be renewing. The only way it could be worse is if the Moonies owned WSJ like they own Washington Times.

I'll adopt a wait-and-see attitude to how it changes...he said he won't buy something just to ruin it, but given his track record of getting his start with tabloid journalism and using his properties such as New York Post and Fox News as his personal mouthpiece, I don't hold out much hope. And by "ruin it" - that's highly subjective - he could make it just another tabloid rag and make money. Depending on your perspective, that's not "ruining" it at all, though I suspect for current subscribers, that would ruin it.

Sure, the WSJ is a conservative newspaper - the op-ed often laughably so. Some of the op-eds are like reading the funny papers. But even the op-eds are not as shiny object-oriented and cartoonish as something like Fox News.

I fully expect front page stories on the likes of Paris Hilton, to be honest. :(

The Bible Motivational Poster

2007-07-25T19:24:00.000-07:00

Saw this one over on Pharyngula. Had a good chuckle.

From my constant attacks on fundies, you'd think I'm some sort of God-hating angry athiest. I'm really not. I'm not sure what I'd call myself these days - probably the closest term I can think of is "deist". But I do get fired up when our selection process for politicians seems to be about choosing people with good hair, good talking points about non-issue wedge topics like gay marriage, abortion, and flag burning, and oh, yeah, making sure they have the same metaphysical, non-verifiable belief system as a good portion of the population, because, you know, that's important stuff. A Christian never did anything immoral or anything. :eyeroll:

Why do I keep carping on about this? I guess it's because when you see people like the Republican Ted Stevens talking about the InterTubes, right now you just get embarrassed for him. And you laugh. Because it IS funny. Riotously so.

How is it that these are the people that are making decisions about things they haven't a clue about, and aren't getting educated about? Why not try to select people that are knowledgeable or at least, more importantly are inquisitive about the world, the world that we live in and can talk rationally about? Because the issues the Internet raised/raises is/are tres simple compared to the sort of ethical and scientific questions we will have to wrestle with in the coming years, and people who think the Bible is a good source of science or even morals are not going to be able to cope - that is, make sound judgements. They will do things like equate blastocysts to fully grown human beings. They will do things like compare internet connections to tubes. And it won't only be funny, it will have consequences.

If these people cannot wrap their minds around net neutrality, I tremble to think of how they'll deal with the issues that are coming fast and furious from science - especially in biology. Hell, many of them still don't accept evolution (notice I don't say "believe" as that implies superstition). For instance, synthetic creation of new life is one. Electing people that are using the Bible to lead is just like electing cavemen to lead us - they are throwbacks and just won't have the coping skills to lead.

Longevity Site

2007-07-25T18:40:00.000-07:00

I found a new site...or rather, one found me. :) It's called longevitymeme.org. A very cool name. Longevity Meme. I like it. My earlier posting on True Mutations and Designer Evolution got picked up by a site I found intriguing, and a bit of my posting was commented on. This is a bit recursive; I'm quoting a site quoting me talking about a book. :)

For instance, and this is the most glaring one (although I didn't corroborate this) is that a new drug cannot be brought into the U.S. market unless it's to treat a condition or disease. Read that again. So, if something is developed to extend life or extend your current capabilities, like vision or hearing, it will not be approved. It's the 21st century. How can this type of thinking still be with us?"

It's quite true, and exactly why there are not dozens of companies in the US directly aiming at extending the healthy human life span. Those with the inclination are forced instead into disavowing any thought of treating the aging process. Their technological breakthroughs are relegated to patching up age-related diseases after the fact rather than reaching for rejuvenation and prevention of aging.

Anyway, I suggest clicking on over there as they provided links within that text to back up those statements appended to my remarks. Very nice. The bummer is that this backward thinking is true. :(

In other news, by sheer luck or synchronicity or whatever, disinfo.com just today also posted a link to an article about transhumanism in Reason magazine just today that longevitymeme also picked up and commented on earlier. Maybe this whole transhumanism thing (this longevity meme, if you will, but to me, transhumanism encompasses a lot more than just longevity) will start getting more legs. I noticed lots of coverage recently for the CR diet, and I notice that things like vegetarianism/veganism/raw veganism seems to be more and more common, etc. - the connection being that people are trying to live longer, though the switch may also be due to morality, I dunno. I know my switch to vegetarianism involved both, but I'm a bit of a hypocrite since I still eat eggs/cheese, I suppose, and which is also ethically dubious.

Anyway, maybe there are more Prometheans and Icaruses (Icarusii? Icarusix?) among us than I thought. And that can only be a good thing, IMHO. :)

Shiny Object News

2007-07-25T06:14:00.001-07:00

Over on GOP Exposed, Jeff skewers the recent bout of shiny object news (you know, stories about cats stuck in trees, random fires and arrests, Paris Hilton, iPhone, bullshit "terror alerts" etc.). It's really quite funny, especially if you have grown tired of what passes as "news" these days (and I'm also *really* tired of Apple fanboys in tv and in print acting as if the iPhone is something revolutionary - yawn)...television news is just painful for me to watch anymore, although I suspect that's more due to my waking up rather than any real change in television news. Jeff also shows how PBS and later CNN piloted the sort of uneven shout shows such as Hannity and Colmes. He does this by playing a clip from author of Cable News Confidential (Jeff Cohen) - required reading if anyone thinks this nonsensical "talk show" that features a moderate representing the liberal paired with a brand-name conservative firebrand started with Faux News.

I've seen old shows of Crossfire, I know what he's talking about. And that's PBS, the network that's supposed to be communist if you believe the dittoheads. Funny it never occurs to them that some of the old liberals are probably more correct about the acronym PBS meaning Petroleum Broadcast System, since even in the early days, so much of its funding came from Exxon, etc. But as usual, even the appearance of independence (or any truth about certain issues leaking out) is extremely undesirable. As long as you are given "choices" - like choosing between Nike and Reebok, that means you have "freedom" and you're well-informed. I get to choose between news from a MNC like NewsCorp that got started by Murdoch doing tabloids or an MNC that also does defense contracting...bleh.

Anyway, make sure you listen to the last segment in full - Jeff Cohen talks about how Ann Coulter would not come on to debate him about the book - he was fine with going on himself, since she wouldn't go on. But no. She went on alone and talked about her controversial book, without any counterpoint. Why do these people always flee from any sort of intellectual honesty?

Transhumanism: Prometheus Vs. The Puritans?

2007-07-21T06:11:00.000-07:00

What if you could live effectively forever? What would it mean to both you and society and its institutions? Would religion have any value or meaning anymore? What groups would hold us back from achieving such things?

I've recently read two books that had a lot of similarities: Designer Evolution and True Mutations. I've long been meaning to read some stuff from/on the Transhumanist/Extropian crowd, and these books I had holds on at the library, became available around the same time.

The first book, Designer Evolution, is a transhumanist manifesto, and tries to lay some groundwork for a new philosophy for the future of science, most especially the science dealing with biology. Simon Young, the author, makes the assumption that there will be breakthroughs in medicine and/or technology that will make human lives extended to hundreds, then thousands of years. What will this mean to theists, liberals, etc., and how will they resist it? What will it mean to their philosophies to have science basically negate the reason for their philosophies? The author also makes the interesting argument that we should not make the same mistake of the past, that is, that science negated a lot of past philosophies but didn't leave the lay man much in the way of a replacement, and so, for many, the dominant philosophy became nihilism.

The second book is from RU Sirius (who runs two podcasts, contributes to Ten Zen Monkeys, and was the founder of the magazine Mondo 2000). This book is comprised of interviews with very interesting people, and just about every page your brain will probably come into contact with new and interesting ideas, or new ways of looking at things. It doesn't deal with just transhumanism, or even mostly, it's just different peoples' takes on a possible future, but since biotech is all the rage right now, it seems to come up here and there.

What really jumped out at me from both of these books is that much is possible, if we as a society (or the world) could just get past the "monkeys with car keys" stage - we could achieve some truly great things. Maybe not absolute immortality, but maybe a much better and longer quality of life, for starters.

Part of the stuff that needs to be discarded, IMHO, is dogma. That includes dogmatic religion, but also includes dogmatic ideologies that hold us back - this idea that man is meant to suffer is retarded and outright cruel, but it drives some of our laws. For instance, and this is the most glaring one (although I didn't corroborate this) is that a new drug cannot be brought into the U.S. market unless it's to treat a condition or disease.

Read that again. So, if something is developed to extend life or extend your current capabilities, like vision or hearing, it will not be approved. It's the 21st century. How can this type of thinking still be with us? I know it's in our myths - it's right there in Genesis (the aversion to knowledge, the aversion to being god-like, the shortness of life -something about 120 years). It's in the Prometheus myth, too, and there are other "lessons" about man reaching for godhood in probably thousands of other myths.

But as Designer Evolution makes clear, we've been "playing god" every time we reach for an aspirin, or when we developed open-heart surgery - why the aversion to extending life and making it extremely better? In other words, why should we let myths hold back bio-tech? I think I have a solution and it involves choice: let the theists, the humanists, the hard-core liberals and gaians, etc., choose NOT to extend their life, etc., but let's not let them hold back developments to do so...they can live the normal life, unenhanced, and those of us who are interested in living longer, fuller, lives free of pain and unfettered by mythological fears can do so...

Dudeism

2007-07-10T05:47:00.000-07:00

So Ray sent me this link. Dudeism joins the long list of fake churches/cults and deities, such as the Invisible Pink Unicorn, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Discordionism, the Church of the Subgenius, and Pastor Jack's Church of Tom Jones.

On a related note, Tiffany and I went to see The Big Lebowski last night thanks to Film on the Rocks. Though I didn't notice them, Tiffany saw at least a few dudes wearing a robe, just like their hero.

Republicans Provide No Leadership

2007-07-07T15:16:00.000-07:00

I had this meme of "Republicans provide absolutely no leadership on anything" bouncing around in my head for months. I was turning the concept over and over in my head, trying to find a few examples where they actually provide some leadership on things. And by "leadership", I mean real, demonstrable examples of laying a path for the future, not hearkening back to some mythical golden age in the 1950's - I'm sure it wasn't as good as even white Christian males remember it, and for virtually everyone else, it was absolutely not great. I also don't mean by "leadership" endless resource wars and global hegemony or wars on nouns. That's just pathological behavior masquerading as leadership.

At the same time, I was pondering how so many liberals and "hippies" had/have so many things right, and are forging ahead to try to create real solutions to real problems of the here and now, as well as the future. While doing this, they are not relying on the "authority" of superstitious traditions of Abrahamic descent, either, and not denigrating science. Instead, for the most part, they embrace science - it's the best hope for resolving these problems. Meanwhile, many in the religious right actually look forward to catastrophic events. What kind of leadership is that?

So I was stewing in these very thoughts, when I came across references to an op-ed stating that the hippies were right. Says it so much better than I could have.

ADD: A$$hole-Driven Development

2007-07-06T05:54:00.000-07:00

This was a link referenced in the Javaposse podcast.

This site lists some of the real proceses, although unspoken, that development shops really follow. Forget Test Driven Development, XP, Scrum, etc. These describe what are *really* going on. :)

Asshole Driven development (ADD) - Any team where the biggest jerk makes all the big decisions is asshole driven development. All wisdom, logic or process goes out the window when Mr. Asshole is in the room, doing whatever idiotic, selfish thing he thinks is best. There may rules and processes, but Mr. A breaks them and people follow anyway.

Another unspoken process:

Get Me Promoted Methodology (GMPM) - People write code and design things to increase their visibility, satisfy their boss’s whims, and accelerate their path to a raise or the corner office no matter how far outside of stated goals their efforts go. This includes allowing disasters to happen so people can be heroes, writing hacks that look great in the short term but crumble after the individual has moved on, and focusing more on the surface of work than its value.

Here's one from the comments:

Teacher’s Pet Driven Development (TPDD) - when one developer is a favorite of a manager and thus bypasses all logic, design and reasoning in favor of the pet’s whims.

Yup, if you've been a developer for even a few years, you've probably seen these three and many of the ones listed on the site.

I'm reminded of the Antipatterns catalog; one of my favorite being the GoldenHammer. Who hasn't been somewhere that has a Golden Hammer? I've been places where the NetNegativeProducingProgrammer AntiPattern is combined with Teacher's Pet Driven Development. Not pretty.

Gmail and Firefox - Resolved!

2007-07-05T16:47:00.000-07:00

Okay, somehow I think I finally stumbled upon the solution. Mind you, I had tried just about everything - deleting the entire firefox installation dir and reinstalling, and starting totally fresh w/o plugins, wiping the cache, etc. Still had no luck.

Today, I was telling my IT guy about this and he suggested trying another profile (firefox -p on the command line). I tried that out, thinking, hell, why not? I couldn't remember if I had cleared my profile before on one of my re-install tries. Nope, still not working. Hrmmm...

Then I started thinking about that damn Google Talk feature - any way to turn it off? It could be causing the problem, and besides, it kept logging me off my IM session in Trillian.

I clicked on the option in the bottom: "standard without chat", and yep, it disables it.

AND - Firefox now works again with Gmail for me! I bet most people claiming they never had problems with Gmail + Firefox are not using the Google Talk feature. Try it out - turn it on and see how you fare, I'm curious. I, for one, will not be turning it back on. :)

Gmail and Firefox

2007-07-04T10:37:00.000-07:00

I've been struggling with this one for weeks now. I have yet to find a solution. Gmail just will. not. work. with. Firefox.

This has started ever since 2.0.0.4 update. I've tried re-installing and running without any plugins whatsoever. Still get timeouts on some script on the page. It doesn't work on FF at work on XP, at home on Ubuntu or W2K. I hate using the non-Javascript enabled version of Gmail, and I hate using IE, not that it's an option for Ubuntu, anyway.

The puzzler is that Google calendar and blogger work fine. No other issues for other sites using Javascript. It's just Gmail as far as I've noticed, and it's got me so irritated, I'm actually thinking of using a shitty mail site like Yahoo or Hotmail (horrors!). I've done some searching around, and the few people talking about this don't seem to have any solutions that work for me.

Any ideas, throw them my way.

Musical Brilliance - The Kleptones

2007-06-10T10:11:00.000-07:00

I meant to write about this guy's work before. Somehow, I forgot about the Kleptones for a while, and probably should have mentioned his work when talking about the book Darknet. Like Nine Inch Nails, "The Kleptones" is one guy. Oddly enough, there is NIN sprinkled throughout 24 Hours. It seems a natural choice to me - Trent Reznor seems to have a very studio-heavy type of musicianship, and someone constructing something like mashups would seem naturally drawn to his work.

Anyway, John reminded me of the Kleptones again last week - I had mentioned them to him, and since he has a much better memory than me, he eventually got around to listening to them months after I said something to him. Since he brought it up, I thought I'd go check it out again...this time using Songbird. This was the first time I heard 24 Hours, and I really enjoyed the tracks. Listening to this stuff is like trainspotting of the highest order - though there is much I do not recognize - I wonder which has more samples - 24 Hours or the Avalanches' Since I Left You, which was composed from about 3500 samples. Not sure it rises to that many samples, but there are a lot in there. I'm pretty sure I even heard samples of the comedian Bill Hicks.

Though the term "mashup" appeared relatively recently, I don't think the idea is all THAT new...I remember some station from Harrisburg in the late 80's constantly playing this thing put together (probably not by that station - I imagine stuff like that is made somewhere else and sent to all affiliates) that compared Def Leppard's Pour Some Sugar on Me with an earlier track they did, in an attempt to mock how similar it was. That's the first time I can remember hearing something that would approximate a mashup, but the wikipedia entry says the practice goes back at least to the 1950's. Well, there you go. Everything old is new again, or something.

Well, enough babbling from me - just go check it out. His work is online at www.kleptones.com.

Brian Regan

2007-06-07T16:51:00.000-07:00

Brian Regan is one of my favorite comedians. And I was pretty jazzed to see that Comedy Central will be having a special this coming Sunday. Actually very jazzed about that. I've seen him on various spots on Letterman and whatnot, but I cannot remember a full show being shown on TV, and he deserves recognition as he's one of the most underrated comedians in my opinion. I have to find anyone who has heard the Brian Regan Live CD who didn't find it hilarious.

I also noticed that he apparently has an upcoming album - about time, I think it's been ten years since his last (and only) album.

The Persuaders, Cool-hunters and the Reptile Brain

2007-05-31T18:00:00.000-07:00

I finished watching The Merchants of Cool. A few weeks ago, I had checked out The Persuaders, also narrated by Douglas Rushkoff and a Frontline documentary. Both of these are essential watching for anyone who's not much of a reader, and yet wants to step outside the consumer culture a bit and take a peek at those trying to pull the levers behind the curtain.

I was pleased as punch to see that Clotaire Rapaille made an appearance to talk about SUVs and the reptile brain in the Persuaders. He was the one who was quoted in High and Mighty, a scathing book about SUVs I enjoyed very much. What he says about Hummers is hilarious:

CLOTAIRE RAPAILLE: My experience is that most of the time, people have no idea why they're doing what they're doing. They have no idea. So they're going to try to make up something that makes sense. Why do you need a Hummer to go shopping? "Well, you know, in case I need to go off road." Well, you live in Manhattan. Why do you need a four-wheel drive in Manhattan? "Well, you know, sometime I go out and I go in"-- I mean, this is-- you don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand that this is disconnected. This has nothing to do with what the real reason is for people to do what they do.

Merchants of Cool deals more with marketing to Generation Y, and talks about cool hunters and trying to market to kids who are (supposedly) resilient to mass marketing like never before. I say supposedly because although both Gen X and Gen Y may be cynical, I don't know. You see, I have what I think is a unique imprinting, as much of my childhood, I went WITHOUT television, yet lived in America, so I usually notice when I see the indoctrination of those who drink down culture, especially that which comes over the television. Ironic that I now work within the cable industry, but there you go.

For example, I went to see Shrek 3 this past weekend, and there were several Gen Y sitting behind us. I can actually remember when the part running up to a movie only had trailers. I remember being so pissed the first time I saw a commercial at a movie...I actually booed. So did others in the audience, so it must have been a first for them, too, or they were influenced by me, who knows. It was a Heinz commercial. Since then, it's progressed to where I think movies ought to be free now. Why? Consider all the product placement often WITHIN the movies these days, as well as static ads for local businesses intersprinkled with full motion ads running at the beginning - and the trailers often don't even start until after the scheduled time, one is getting just as much exposure to brands as one gets when flipping on cable or over-the-air stuff.

While I suffer through this crapola fest before the movie with a grin-and-bear it attitude (and later notice the sly product placement), the Gen Y'ers are actually actively engaged by it. They are talking about it, laughing at the little "plots" that these spots have, etc. I don't think marketing has to be as sneaky as all that, and I doubt that Gen Y is any less responsive to marketing in this way any more so than Gen X or sandwich or Baby Boomers or anyone else. Not as a group, anyway. And think of the superbowl - many actually ADMIT that they tune into it for the commercials. I'll never forget a moment in college when one of my housemates asked two of us why we muted the commercials. The other housemate and I just sort of froze and stared at him for a heartbeat or two, not really sure how to answer such an odd question. The other roommate actually WANTED to hear the commercials? Where to start with this guy? Both of us usually followed a pattern when watching television: watching a "main" program, then switching to a "secondary" one during the commercial break on the main program. If they had synchronized commercials, or there wasn't anything worthwhile, we'd bounce around other channels or mute commercials on the main one. This was pre-DVR days. I've had a Tivo since 2000, and I've found I like commercials even less as a result and almost never watch live television these days.

Anyway, the other housemate just answered the question like this - "Welllll....um, commercials are annoying! They are louder than the show, and they are all lies, to boot." To which we got an eye-roll and a head-shake from the other housemate - he thought *we* were the crazy ones - he wanted to hear the commercials, and that was that. I guess he didn't want to miss out on that "water-cooler talk" that people seem to find so important.

I wish Frontline would do some more similar documentaries, and delve into why people of all generations fall for so much stuff without asking WHY they do it. The SUV thing was touched on, but it really could go for a full show's treatment. It could be expanded into the selling of the "outdoor culture" - even for those that never set foot outside? I notice lots and lots of yuppies carrying around say, Nalgene bottles, (I call these Yuppie baby bottles) and wearing things like hiking boots and hopping into an SUV for their drive through suburbia to get home when most of these people don't do much outdoors.

Anyway enough rambling from me, I saw that Douglas Rushkoff (obviously another fan of Robert Anton Wilson) is offering a course on this sort of stuff (persuasion in media) at maybelogic.net this fall, maybe I'll check it out and ask him some of this stuff then...

Songbird

2007-05-27T10:32:00.000-07:00

This looks to be very promising - I soooo want to stop using my creaky and barely-working W2K box that I use to sync my iPod and that's one of the last things keeping me from shutting that box down. I was looking for something that would import playlists as Banshee doesn't seem to do it. For listening to podcasts on a Gen 2 Nano, you just about are FORCED to create a smart playlist, as IMHO, Apple broke the podcast functionality otherwise...Apple gets all these usability brownie points from their fanboys and from themselves in their own commercials, but they can stumble like anyone else, apparently.

But on to Songbird: I've seen Songbird mentioned before, but I'm not sure they had a release at the time.

I downloaded the developer's release, and it seems to work well enough - at least it didn't crash. I haven't yet tried to sync the ipod (it looks like their FAQ needs updating as it says portable devices aren't supported yet, but there seems to be a plugin), but the demo is so cool that it's worth using it for those capabilities alone. I did try out the audioscrobbler stuff and it seems to work - at least if the music you are listening to is local. So far, nothing was scrobbled when it was listened to over the net, which is a bummer.

Serious Redneck Road Rage

2007-05-18T13:13:00.000-07:00

I just recently finished Suburban Nation and it talks a lot about the pathology that comes with a car culture. One of the things mentioned by one of the authors, IIRC, was the way in which American suburbs are not only antagonistic toward walking BY DESIGN (see the book for why), but also that they have experienced antagonism from drivers. The author mentioned that they get someone (always male, usually driving a truck or SUV with dark tinting) shouting at them in anger while passing by.

Why anyone would do this is beyond me, but I've experienced the same thing while putting around on a mountain bike or a recumbent. And it's not always some high school punks - it's often guys at least in their 50's or 60's. I usually figure the guy is trying to overcompensate for something else - maybe getting a ridiculously big vehicle with darkly tinted windows isn't helping his low self-esteem enough, he has to shout at peds and bikers, too. Whatever.

Then I read this story on Boing Boing. Figures the guy was driving a Dodge Ram - that seems about right. I fervently hope they find the driver. He needs to spend 10-20 years in jail.

Another Way Democrats Drive Me Nuts

2007-05-17T17:23:00.000-07:00

If you've read much of my comments here, you might come to the conclusion that I'm a Democrat. Well that isn't the case even if lately, they seem to be the least criminal of the two major parties.

Here is an example of how they drive me crazy. So a few months ago, there was a big campaign to write your representatives about impeaching Bush. I wrote about this previously. Well, a few weeks ago, I got a letter back from one of the representatives - and it was a form letter telling me that they were not interested in doing that, as that wasn't "on the Democratic agenda" (roughly paraphrasing).

Talk about needing a spinal transplant - stand up for principles, to hell with what the agenda is. All one needs to look at is the wiretapping. That's all you need. You don't even need to talk about things like the Downing Street memo and other issues with this administration. The case to impeach based on ignoring FISA law seems pretty cut and dried.

Bill Maher pointed out that this administration has turned what the U.S. was supposed to be about on its head, and he's absolutely right. Government is supposed to be as transparent as possible, while individual privacy is supposed to be as sacrosanct as possible. That's all backwards now. You have an administration that STILL refuses to let us know what went on for energy policy meetings in 2001 and then orders the NSA to do blanket wiretapping on all of us.

But what should I expect - barring a few outliers (I recently had a comment on this blog telling me to check out a new initiative some Dems are starting) most of the Dems have their eye on the 2008 presidential election. My point is that people obviously voted them in there as a reaction to the criminality and incompetence of this administration - now do something about it.

Christopher Hitchens - What Can I Say?

2007-05-16T19:31:00.000-07:00

Saw this mentioned on Pharyngula. I disagree with Hitchens quite a bit, although he's one of the few talking heads/pundits/writers who can make arguments that actually have some weight to them. Witness his defense of the Iraq war - I happen to totally disagree, but he doesn't make the silly and emotional arguments that the neocons and dittoheads do...

No, I applaud the man for having the balls to say what almost no one in the public will say - and have the wit to back it up. He'll defend Iraq when even when not popular, even giving the bird to Bill Maher's audience while actually on the show. He came on and faced the fire. He'll come out and say he's an atheist when that's HUGELY unpopular here. I don't agree with either of these positions, but I applaud him. On this Falwell love-fest - I totally agree with someone coming along and popping the bubble of lovey-doviness and pointing out the elephant in the room - that Falwell was a despicable, evil little man, even if he did hide behind the shield of religiousity and preaching the word of Jaysus.

Witness the flaying:

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Kudos also to boing boing for cataloguing his most atrocious statements almost immediately after the announcement of his death:

* “AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals”

* "It appears that America's anti-Biblical feminist movement is at last dying, thank God, and is possibly being replaced by a Christ-centered men's movement which may become the foundation for a desperately needed national spiritual awakening."

* "If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being."

* After the September 11 attacks Falwell said, “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen."

* “Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions”

* “[Homosexuals are] brute beasts...part of a vile and satanic system [that] will be utterly annihilated, and there will be a celebration in heaven.”

I don't think it's appropriate to dance on anyone's grave, but when someone dies and they WERE NOT decent, it's not appropriate for the media to pretend as if they were.

Oh, and I love the fact that Freepers are all agog that Hitchens could say such things about Falwell AND Mother Theresa. I guess emotion will always rule most of that crowd...

Deeply Distorted Morality

2007-05-16T19:08:00.000-07:00

There was a local story about a poor couple who got shafted - they apparently bought a house with concrete a few inches under their yard...one of those little human-interest type stories that are always in the "news" for some reason. Anyway, Tiffany was browsing 9news site and mentioned this to me. Here's the grabber, though:

The Hersheys also admit some of their neighbors didn't like the view.

"I was told I was a disgusting human being because my lawn looked like this," said Jennifer Hershey.

Check out that morality. All I can say is, "wow". No wonder some people have such disproportionate reactions against things like Xeriscaping.

Sigh. Oh well, I guess it's the imprinting. Probably 99% people born into a culture or a "way of life" are never going to question the "logic" of it all...

Thoughts on Leadville

2007-05-13T17:12:00.000-07:00

This Saturday we visited Leadville and saw the various tourist-y things. We did the tour of the Matchless Mine and got lots of info about Baby Doe and Tabor. At the peak of this silver mine, Baby Doe and Tabor were getting $10,000 worth of silver a DAY...at least according to the guide. That is a lot by today's standard, but I used an inflation calculator, and that would equal $216,401.75 in 2006 dollars. But despite all this money, it didn't end well for either of them. He ended up working for the same amount his workers that worked for him went on strike for: $3 a day, doing back-breaking work. A lot of things went through my mind during this tour, as the topics raised during this tour and being in Leadville in generally seemed to constantly evoke parallels with things I've just recently been reading or listening to on podcasts.

1. Hubris. My god, the hubris. Neither of these people seemed to come from really poor backgrounds, yet they seemed to be spending what they earned like Anna Nicole Smith on steroids. How does one spend $10K a DAY and not save something for a rainy day? Okay, there are some who could do that pretty easily, but how about $216K?

2. The Wizard of Oz and the populist interpretation. This is one book I've got to read...I've heard (and probably most everyone has heard) about all the symbolism in this book about gold standards, etc. But just this past week, I was listening to the Occult of Personality, and he goes into it in some depth with a guest, even though they are more interested in the Theosophy behind it (Apparently Baum was a Theosophist). It made me think I should learn more about this dual metal standard that so many wanted. Also brought up thoughts again about the book "The Little Money Book" that talks about the very meaning of money and where it gets its value. Hint: it's more than just about gold.

3. Living structures. Here was this 80-some year old woman living in essentially a shack, and getting by, by herself. She could walk into town and wasn't shuttled off to some old home to live out her years. I've recently finished some books on suburban design vs. new urbanism or books that critique the suburban fiasco, and this really struck me - this woman who no longer had anything could live in this shack. I'd think today she'd either be put in an old folks' home, a mental institution (maybe before Reagan) or be homeless. One of the critiques of suburbia is that anyone unable to drive (under 16 set, the very old) are essentially stranded and quality of life suffers terribly.

4. Class warfare. And not the "class warfare" that the conservatives mean, either. I mean class warfare conducted by elites against everyone else. It seemed like sweet justice that here was the former owner being reduced to working at the same place for the same $3 a day after his fall from grace. But it didn't really change the situation for the better for anyone else, either.

5. Credit card debt. The Tabors essentially lost the mine because they were living on credit. Instead of paying down debt with their huge daily windfall, they kept mortgaging the mine. Eventually the bank took it over. There were chuckles about how silly those people could be in the past...and yet. The data as a NATION as far as credit card debt goes looks not much better.

6. What real work is like. The miner's job was (and I assume still is most places) an awful one. I had a great-grandfather who died from black lung he obtained by mining coal in Pennsylvania. I don't even get my hands dirty at work at all, and don't break a sweat. The biggest danger is repetitive motion injury and such a sedentary lifestyle. I basically live like a king compared to those that did/do real work, even though I'm maybe in the upper-middle class at best. No real deep thoughts there, it just really strikes home when you are reminded of what real work is like.

It's interesting how a short little trip can really get the gears spinning on some topics.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis And Functional Languages

2007-05-07T20:02:00.000-07:00

So I've been trying to take seriously the writings of Paul Graham and ESR and give learning Lisp a go (again - learned a bit as a side-effect of some AI courses). And during that endeavor, my mind has been stewing over the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The basic idea behind Sapir-Whorf (another recurring topic of RAW's, but I also noticed that it popped up in a book by Clifford Pickover I read recently) is that language determines thought.

It's just that something like this is so hard to measure, that I'll just say that to me, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis seems correct to me at least in particular instances. Lisp really bring this to the fore, but if you have been through various programming paradigms, you probably already have noticed something similar, if maybe on a smaller scale. I doubt it's just me who has noticed this, and if I remember correctly, the GoF Patterns book as well as Paul Graham made this explicit, but I wonder how many have tied this to Sapir-Whorf.

If you know Design Patterns, think about how this language of common ideas may have changed your thinking. If you went from non-structured programming to procedural (say, Basic or assembler to Pascal) or from procedural programming to OOP, you've probably noticed a change in your thinking.

The leap to really grokking Lisp has really wrapped my mind around the axle, though. I understand why, until Paul Graham started really championing it that it garnered very little interest except among a few anointed. For one, the term "macros" is inherently loaded and doesn't really explain what is possible in Lisp. I won't get into the whole "Lisp is slow" nonsense - anyone familiar with Java will be familiar with this canard which lingers even when Java has been proven to be as fast as, sometimes even faster than, C++.

However, this is a very special case of "languages" - programming languages aim to express thought in a way that is deterministic - unlike most natural languages, and so developers (well, I'll extrapolate my experience here to others) working in a particular language can often start thinking in a language, and so having a language that is designed to carry thoughts into action may have more likelihood of demonstrated Sapir-Whorf to be true...

Bucky vs. Bernays - Two Big Thinkers, Two Different Paths

2007-05-02T17:30:00.000-07:00

So in the past few weeks, I've finished up two biographies on two men who have a lasting impact on all of humanity, even if most of humanity has not a clue that they do...Edward L. Bernays (Father of Spin) and Buckminster Fuller (Buckminster Fuller's Universe).

The timing was mostly an accident of the Denver library hold system...both holds came through about the same time and so I read both in the same time period. It turns out that they have a lot in common: both believed in thinking really, really big ideas and then setting about trying to realize them.

Both men have huge, lasting impacts. Bernays often promoted himself as the father of PR, and while that's not entirely true, many still look to him for ideas/inspiration in PR. Chomsky constantly uses the phrase "manufacturing|engineering consent" in reference to Bernays. PR influences EVERYTHING in our daily lives - everything from the fatuous like celebrity spokespersons to hard science (see Big Tobacco and Big Energy, for example) to decisions to go to war - see Iraq War I and stories about throwing preemie babies off of ventilators, see Iraq War II for stories about Pat Tillman or Jessica Lynch.

The idea of whether there is any "benefit" from PR is dubious at best. Then there's Bucky. Consider: the World Game, front-wheel drive, the geodesic domes and his inspiration for others to even name series of molecules such as fullerenes after him, and even further out, yet-to-be-implemented structures such as Cloud 9 - floating cities based on geodesic domes. Bucky's bio was really quite inspiring to read - it was basically what one man who decided to ignore the profit motive and instead focus on what he could do for humanity's benefit. Sure, almost every feel-good bio you care to pick up will read something like this, but usually it's a bio about something meaningless for humanity such as a celebrity or a sports star. Bucky actually set out to try to solve key issues like sheltering all of humanity cheaply. My thoughts on education mirrors his as well - I've written about this earlier, but I'll recap - I think education in institutions has a certain amount of value (I've done the bachelor's thing, and am considering an MBA), but it also has certain traps and one of the biggest is the tendency to stamp out like-minded individuals to serve institutions. Bucky was mostly self-taught, and virtually his entire life shows this.

On a much more personal note, while my father built the house my mother and my father still live in, my family lived in a yurt for a few years. The finished house also happens to be round as well. I'll have to ask him sometime if he was inspired at all by Bucky to do that, even if it's not a geodesic dome...I know at one point that he had Bucky's Nine Chains to the Moon on his bookshelf.

I've read various RAW books over the years, and obviously RAW admires Bucky very much. Being born after the 60's, I've seen geodesic domes everywhere - I even lived on a commune for a short while at a very young age that had a geodesic dome house. Our school, even in the heart of Pennsyltucky, had a playground that had a geodesic structure for climbing on. I even remember reading Slashdot stories on buckyballs. But until reading RAW constantly flogging just how great Bucky was, I never thought to figure out who was behind all this and read more about him. I'm glad I finally did, and it's yet another reason I continue to value RAW's contributions to humanity, as well. As for Bernays, as an individual, he seemed affable enough, but I think the world could use a few less people trying to manipulate public opinion for corporate profits and government's evil deeds. I could invoke Godwin's Law, and mention the Nazis were apparently fans of his work. But even without the Nazi consideration, ponder this: does this planet need more Eddie Bernays creating more "manufactured wants", or does it need more Buckys trying to actually solve real problems that face real people?

Eco-Living in the Burbs

2007-04-27T07:12:00.000-07:00

Alternet.org had a recent article about HOA nazis that I found rather amusing - there are some local developments that come to mind when they are discussing the aversion to hanging out laundry. Saving power to dry clothes? How gauche! It's not like our garden produces enough for us to live on, and it's not like we have solar panels, but we do compost, we do garden, and we do hang out laundry - Colorado is well-suited to that. I don't care if our neighbors find it gauche or think that we are white trash for doing so - it makes ecological sense and our wash also can get done faster, and there is nothing in my HOA to forbid it.

As an aside: the last time I can remember seeing someone else hanging out wash was on a train trip about a month ago between Philly and Harrisburg - specifically, when passing through Lancaster, the place of my birth, you could see farmhouse after farmhouse hanging out wash. And that's in PA, which is much more humid, and much less sunny on average. Frankly, I think Coloradans are leaving a lot of money on the table by not trying to harness the sun to at least dry their clothes.

Anyway, the idea that aesthetics (and perceptions about "property values") can trump truly long-term planning for sustainable living just hearkens back to some sort of mythical 1950's suburban paradise that never did exist, anyway. Some of these covenants specifically rule out composting, for example. And vegetable gardens! Sorry, that's just crazy and irresponsible.

One comment as a result of this article evokes what pops into my mind:

I have a mental image of the masses living in these regulated subdivisions, huddled in their 3,000 sq ft homes trying to keep warm in the dark during power failures(no solar/wind power of course- how tacky), gnawing on their manicured lawns (calorie content of tulips?), wearing smelly dirty clothing(clothes lines are so lower-class), with their 3 car garage filled with the SUV's they cannot fuel......

Of course, Colorado does have a dash of sanity in its laws. Even the most draconian of places like Highlands Ranch cannot stop someone from having solar power, at least. I'm not sure about wind, though, and laws like this really ought to be at the federal level, too. Also in those comments was one from Israel in which the commenter notes that putting certain things into new houses is instead required there. Sounds a lot more forward-looking than the morons running some suburbs here...

However, Colorado does have one extremely backward law - the law against rainwater barrels. Gaiam sells such devices - you can put them under a downspout to divert water into and then hook garden hoses up to. Those are illegal in Colorado. I imagine if water becomes enough of problem, that might be repealed. I'd imagine before that happens, lawns might be made optional instead of required in some 'burbs, and maybe even illegal.

Leary vs. Freud

2007-04-26T20:04:00.000-07:00

So I was reading a book by Leary during my lunch at work, and some guy stopped by to ask what I was reading. I oblige the question by flipping the book closed and show the cover. The guy is like "Leary?!! You mean the druggie guy?". Rather than comment about the interesting characterization he chose, I rolled with it and just said it was one and the same. He moseyed on, probably thinking I'm a "druggie" as well.

I guess I'm not exactly a "mainstream" guy if that's not already patently obvious from this blog...but the reaction of this person I found very interesting, and it made me wonder how and why some people get characterizations such as "druggie" when a term like that for someone such as Leary is so obviously limiting and, well, ignorant. I guess William S. Burroughs would get the same narrow characterization from the mainstream, as well.

Sure, he quite literally did what could only be called proselytizing for psychedelics in particular LSD. But that's not the sum total of the man, not by far. Giving Leary a characterization like this is like labeling Freud a "cokehead" or a "druggie" for his use of, and advocacy for, cocaine and stopping at that narrow characterization.

While pondering this, I recently subbed to Boing Boing's Get Illuminated podcast, and the first podcast talks about Leary (with Rushkoff). The fact that the man is still being talked about today shows that he's not merely some "druggie".

I have not (yet) read biographies of either Freud or Leary, but I suspect even an overview of the two would give me a clear picture of why one is still okay to discuss in polite circles (without getting into the details, anyway) while the other seems to get the dismissive label. I wonder if it's more the time they advocated drug use, if it's the type of drug they advocated, or the challenge that they may or may not have posed to authority. I know Leary wrote and spoke directly against authority, but then so did Ben Franklin, so what is it about Leary that made him so dangerous (enough to have Nixon call him out on that)?

Having ALSO just finished reading a biography on Edward L. Bernays (who just happens to be the nephew of Freud), I also wonder about the power of propaganda and just how this might have been used against the likes of Leary to achieve that characterization.

SelfMadeScholar.com

2007-04-22T17:21:00.000-07:00

The site selfmadescholar.com was another site StumbleUpon overturned for me.

I find this idea very intriguing - I've always been annoyed over the two extreme opinions that can be found on learning in this country. One is the over-veneration some have for official routes of learning. On the other hand, there is the thinking that leads to some denigrating people who have "book smarts" (vs. "street smarts", usually, with the assumption always being, of course, that the person holding forth with this argument is street smart. Usually, the real motivation for this argument seems to be jealousy.). My problem with the over-veneration of institutional learning is that many with degrees don't learn that much during school to start with, and almost consciously make a decision to stop any and all learning immediately after. This is a broad generalization of course, but there is a strong anti-intellectual streak in this country, and learning is considered even more especially "geeky" if conducted outside the context of a university. One will often hear the phrase "getting a life" when anyone is trying to learn or gain a skill outside the socially-accepted norm of university, unless it directly relates to a profit motive. The other, very real, danger is that someone with too much institutional learning can be a total ass.

The trick, then, seems to be to avoid being an anti-intellectual knuckle-dragger AND to avoid being an elitist jerk about the degrees or knowledge or skills one has gained.

Don't get me wrong - I have a degree. I just don't view it as my only education - or the end of it. That's partly why I read so damn much. But as the article currently on the home page of the site suggests, there are many other routes to learning. Some of them are much more immersive and experiential. Some of these suggestions remind me a bit of some of RAW's suggestions, and which partly drove me to take my family out and learn snowboarding last year. Learning how to do something can be very fun AND educational, and it's not always about having your nose in a book, or sitting in front of a computer. This year, I hope to learn how to refine my current (nearly nonexistent) golf game.

The folks writing some pieces over at selfmadescholar seem to have found a way down this middle path. They've done a better job at expressing some things that I absolutely agree with AND they've done an excellent job of indexing absolutely FREE courses and categorizing them. Very nicely done. Of course, one of the providers of such courses are to be expected, such as MIT OpenCourseware.

Some of this site also reminds me why I like some of what I listened to/watched from The Teaching Company. While their materials are not free, what I've been exposed to was of good quality, and you may find of some their stuff at the library.

Vonnegut

2007-04-22T12:46:00.000-07:00

Hard to believe we've lost Vonnegut, too. In the past few years, we've lost three authors that ranked very high in my personal list, anyway: Hunter S. Thompson, Robert Anton Wilson, and now Kurt Vonnegut. Well, at least we can honor him by repeating his favorite joke here:

"Kurt is up in heaven now".

A cool timeline on YTMND

2007-04-15T10:36:00.000-07:00

Found this via StumbleUpon: a very cool timeline of the future...makes all the differences we have on this little blue marble look really quite silly.

Uncanny the sort of cool stuff StumbleUpon will find for you once you train it for a little bit.

Misplaced Anger - Imus

2007-04-11T18:45:00.000-07:00

Jesus. So they were able to get Imus yanked from MSNBC simulcast...I have to admit I haven't really followed this (non)story, but it's for things like this that I could never get 100% behind liberals. This Soviet-style show trial of Imus is just so disgusting. I've never listened to the guy, and it sounds like this set of comments along with past ones are outrageous, but all the anger, hand-wringing and hyperbole over this? Honestly, give me a break. Just turn the damn show off if you don't like it. The political correctness crowd always makes me want to vomit. People like Bush and his buddies on Fox and Rush and his many imitators can repeat disinformation served up as talking points ad infinitum, but someone makes some random comment that may be racist, that's when the picketing and the boycotts start. Sheesh. The whole thing just makes me embarrassed to hold so many other liberal views. I think so many liberals have abandoned their principles on this PC issue - it's perfectly okay to disagree with what someone says, and yet still tolerate that speech but that's what makes this country so great.

If liberals want something to get angry about, get real and get angry over something that has serious substance. Where's all the outrage over Bush lying about wiretaps and Iraq? Where's all the outrage over Gonzales condoning torture? How about some outrage over disinfo with the mainstream media itself?

I'm watching Countdown with Keith Olbermann as I write this, and witnessing Jesse Jackson going on and on in self-righteousness and it makes me want to vomit. Why does one group only have a handful of people that supposedly speak for them? Who the hell elected these guys, and why does the media genuflect in front of them over such asinine "issues"? Just about every time I've glanced over at CNN this whole week I've seen Imus or Al Sharpton on the screen. It's almost as if we aren't in Iraq, or that people aren't trying to lie us into yet another war, this time with Iran.

The Rest of the Trilogy

2007-04-09T17:23:00.000-07:00

So I watched the rest of the revenge trilogy that Oldboy is a part of. More great cinema, although I didn't like them nearly as much as Oldboy. What is great about all three is the ambiguity. It's very hard to find that amount of ambiguity in mainstream films. In the case of these movies, you are left thinking about the stories and characters long after the movie credits roll. By ambiguity, I mean that in the world of these movies, there are no black and white, you're-either-with-us-or-you're-against-us type of characters. Everyone is flawed, everyone comes across as sympathetic - just like the real world.

Oldboy

2007-04-05T05:46:00.000-07:00

This was another Amazon recommendation, and I'm glad I watched this one. The library had it, so I had nothing to lose but time.

This movie was so riveting I had to wait a few hours (had some stuff to take care of) and re-watch it. Some of it was way too visceral for me - such as the sushi bar scene and one of the first scenes where a bad guy gets his due. Ouch.

It also has one of the coolest bad-guy sidekicks I've seen since a Bond movie.

I can totally understand why Quentin Tarantino is such a fan, and I had the same experience another commenter on imdb/amazon had: after a few minutes, you forget you're reading subtitles vs. hearing it in English.

I just checked the other two in the "trilogy" out of the library and I will watch them soon. I hope they are even half as good.

Lulu.com - Excellent Idea

2007-04-03T15:56:00.000-07:00

I have to wonder if this isn't a disruptive technology - to the classic model of printing, that is. Let me recount my experience with it. I've known about Lulu for years, but have never really had the occasion to use it (as a publisher or a consumer).

But - I ran into a book that is out of print, and all used copies are ridiculously priced - the specific book is On Lisp, by Paul Graham, and used copies run as low as $200 to about $400. That's insane, especially for a paperback on technology, even if it is supposed to be one of the better texts covering Lisp. I happened to know (and it's mentioned in the comments) that this book happens to be released on PDF by the author. So I go download that. But this is a long book, and I find myself getting very restless very quickly trying to read a book on the screen. So I kick around the idea of asking Paul if he'd be open to letting me publish it on Lulu. Then I think I should look around on there first to see if it's already there - and sure enough, On Lisp is already there.

Shipped, the book came to less than 1/10th the cost of a used copy of the book. And the printed PDF was nicely bound, IMHO. Way less than the cost of having Kinko's do it, too. The interesting thing, and why I think it may be disruptive, is that it's printed on demand. The author/publisher doesn't have to eat all the cost printing a huge run upfront. I suppose that can be bit of a put-off for those that want their books NOW, but hey, it's being ordered on-line anyway. They seem pretty flexible as they also sell PDFs online, as well.

Do I think this will change the entire business of books? No way. I imagine that it will continue in the current fashion for the big blockbusters. But for self-publishers of off-beat topics or out of print books that have been reclaimed by the author, I see a changing landscape.

Amazon - Library Scripts

2007-03-31T08:13:00.000-07:00

I discovered my Amazon+library Greasemonkey scripts no longer seemed to be working. It seems Amazon had changed their layout enough to throw off the code that searches for the title location. I've updated the Denver version, and will update the others as I get the chance. The new version is 1.2.4.

"Mistakes Were Made"

2007-03-29T17:57:00.000-07:00

Is anyone else really sick of this overused phrase? Especially when it's said by the person who's made the "mistake"? Usually they aren't "mistakes" at all. I remember Chomsky mentioning this phrase in scenarios like Vietnam, etc., and making a similar observation - about how our foreign policy is indeed no mistake at all, "mistakes" like Vietnam, Iran/Contra and blatant terrorism like Operation Gladio are part and parcel of an overriding theme.

It's just that I've noticed it being used quite a bit in the past few weeks - and it passes almost without comment - except on the Intertubes, of course. Gonzalez has said "mistakes were made" and Maj. Gen. George Weightman said "mistakes were made". Besides stepping down, do these people ever really pay the price?

QuickCheck is now CheckFox

2007-03-29T05:25:00.001-07:00

I've updated QuickCheck and in the process, also changed the name to CheckFox. This happened a few weeks ago, but Mozilla was undergoing changes at their addons site.

A user had pointed out that the accelerator key for the menu item "Check" conflicts with the "C" of Copy, so the change was to switch it to a different accelerator key - "H".

What does CheckFox (formerly known as QuickCheck) do? In a word, it allows one to check /uncheck any checkboxes on a page if they are selected.

Cure

2007-03-18T12:17:00.000-07:00

This is one movie that doesn't give cut and dried answers - and you had better pay close attention during some sequences, or you're likely to miss something. When the credits began to roll, I must admit I was left scratching my head. And happily, not in a pretentious, Tomie kind of way (if you've seen that movie, you'll probably know what I mean - the comic book might have been better, but man, did I hate that movie's ending).

This movie starts as a rather straight-ahead detective type movie - with a minor twist that you'll see in the first few minutes...it quickly gets rather odd, however, but it does tend to hang together. Some sequences were evocative of some of Argento's more lucid stuff - dreamy, but not unexplainable.

The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane

2007-03-08T19:09:00.000-08:00

I went into this one blind like I prefer to do - this was an Amazon recommendation based on other films I've bought/watched. Although I went in as blind as possible, I somehow knew this was originally slated as a made-for-TV movie, so I wasn't setting the bar too high.

What a great little flick! I cannot believe I had not heard of this one before. If you think Martin Sheen creeps you out in The Dead Zone, wait until you see him in here. And Jodie Foster does an excellent job as well. Not to be missed, and probably much better without any spoilers, even a synopsis. I hate to sound like an old man, but the 1970's really had a lot of movie gems.

The only drawback was at least one scene with that signature 1970's whakka-whakka-whakka porno-sounding music, but, eh, what can you do?

American Fascists

2007-03-06T17:16:00.000-08:00

This book is probably more appropriately called CHRISTIAN American Fascists, as that is the topic at hand. If one skips over to Amazon, the usual one star reviews can be found, which a book like this always attracts. Many of the arguments against this book - if the reviewer has even read the book that is, and not just following what his pastor or someone like Rush told him - deal with the fact that the author is talking about the extreme cases. Well, of course he is. These people don't represent the majority of Christians, and Dominionists don't even represent the majority of the religious right, and that is the thrust of this book - that the vanguard of fascism elsewhere never needed a majority and that they seized power because there was little serious response from the mainstream liberal societies, and that therefore these people in the far religious right represent a very real threat to our liberal society and "way of life". These people don't want a reasoned debate, they want to demonize their opposition and many of them would just like to seize power and install a theocracy, and in fact, view the very idea of the "marketplace of ideas" and dissent as treasonous and/or heresy (which is probably why they can't really grasp science all that well). This isn't a conspiracy theory, many in this group have expressed their thoughts on this - you can see footage of one of these "Christian" "leaders" demanding just this sort of thing in The God That Wasn't There or in The Power of Nightmares.

I hope the many conservative critics of this book are correct and I hope the author is wrong. The very recent history has shown that we at least seem to have a temporary reprieve from the advance of these nutjobs - with all the scandals last fall and the decisive defeat of many of the nuttier politicians that are under the sway of these people - e.g., Santorum (although it looks like Fox News has employed that evil, evil man). The problem with most critics of this book is that they denounce the author as someone from the "far left" - apparently "far left" means anyone that criticizes even the craziest among Christians, Republicans, or in the Bush clan. This author has religious bona fides and if any of these goofballs calling him "far left" had bothered to look into that, they wouldn't have tried tarring him with that label.

As I read along and the author painted a picture of these people living in little hermetic bubbles of alternate realities and entire parallel systems, I had to step back and just think about that. Just reflect on this, and what comes to mind is that famous quote that an unnamed Bush staffer gave that was dismissing the "reality-based community". A religious right wingnut can home school his children and indoctrinate them into his worldview, listen to all right wing radio on Clear Channel, or tune into all Christian radio, or watch only Fox News and the Christian television. It's getting even more ridiculous, though: they are trying to construct an alternative "science" (too bad it's really only a political movement and meets no requirements of science at all) in ID, or in critiques of stem cell research and even are so hateful and ill-informed that they come down against HPV prevention.

They even have to construct their own realities on the internet via Conservapedia and CreationWiki, apparently because reality offends them so even on the intertubes - apparently there is a godless communist conspiracy (probably even "sekulur hyooomanist") to use C.E. and B.C.E. instead of the B.C. & A.D., which requires a response to the "liberal" Wikipedia. They even created their own version of Linux.

These people are really embarrassing to sentient beings everywhere, and I can't help but think that if these people get power that we'll have our own version of Lysenkoism in the U.S. - politically correct "science", politically correct "history", etc...Orwell, call your office.

As an aside - to provide some levity, I checked out Bill Maher's "I'm Swiss" DVD from the library around the time when I was reading this book - in there, he was moaning about Christians that prefix something they are about to say with, "well, I'm a Christian..." as if that is a trump card they can throw down that demonstrates how just and moral they are, which of course it doesn't. Other commentary about "moral" Christians were in there, but I really remembered that comment, as I know exactly what he's talking about there, and it's very annoying. If Equal Time laws ever get re-enacted, I hope that Christian radio and television is forced to run Bill Maher, Penn Jillette, etc., commentary as a counterbalance. That'd make my day. :)

Anyway, go read the book, it's really quite good, even if it contains some rather terrifying notions. If you aren't aware of what the Dominionists are and what they are up to, it will open up your eyes.

UPDATE: I went surfing to some favorite sites after writing this, and stumbled across a story on evangelicalright.com talking about TheVanguard.org - talk about an interesting choice of a name!!! VANGUARD? Oh, man.

On The Edge

2007-03-01T08:21:00.000-08:00

The very first computer that I owned was a C64, and probably like many others, I've been puzzled by the historical revisionism of most coverage of the beginnings of the PC (in the generic sense) - it's all about Apple, IBM and Microsoft, and that's not historically accurate for anyone who has any sort of memory at all.

I was very young at the start of it all, and so don't remember the PET or the VIC-20 (except for some older kids that had one and mentioned it), but I do remember the C-64 - quite vividly. In fact, I kept mine until about 2000 and sold it on Ebay. I'm a software developer today, and I'd have to say that the C-64 played a large role in my early interest in computers, even if it was mostly for gaming.

Though much talk about early PC days centers on Apple and IBM, but the sheer numbers of computers that Commodore sold (C64 is the single best selling computer of all time) and their big lead on technology (see: the Amiga) shows that coverage is severely lacking and flawed if not outright biased. In fact, as this book shows, if Commodore had not been so internally dysfunctional, things today might be quite different. This book obviously aims to correct sloppy coverage of early PC days, as well as to document just what caused Commodore to fall from such heights.

There is enough geekiness in there to please the nerds like me, but not so much as to be alienating - it's mostly about the politics of business and the clashes of egos. This tale really deserves it's own movie, similar to the Pirates of Silicon Valley.

And with that, I'm off to install the Commodore emulator VICE again - I need to find a decent controller for my laptop. :)

"This is who we are"

2007-02-26T18:29:00.000-08:00

I finally watched the last episode of MillenniuM, and although it had its share of uneven episodes, this ranks way up there in my list of favorite television. The writing is usually very good - at least the overall "arc" of the series, anyway, the acting is incredible, and the mood just outstanding. So it's only a natural that it ended up on the same trash heap that so many other shows I've liked have ended up - being cancelled early, etc.: Twin Peaks, Carnivale, MST3K, and Arrested Development. Even though it wasn't given nearly enough time to be fleshed out, it was still very satisfying television. Unlike so much other television, nothing is spoon fed, and there is lots of ambiguity - which probably didn't help ratings. The Friday time slot probably didn't help matters, either.

You Gotta Love the Guerilla Marketers

2007-02-17T18:40:00.000-08:00

At least these guys - the authorities and the major corporate media wanted us all to cower in fear, and expected these guys to take their fear-mongering seriously, too. And these guys weren't going to play into the bullshit. It's been a few weeks, but I've never seen the full coverage before of their press conference - in which they want to talk about haircuts of the 70's. What a great way to raise a great big middle finger to the stupid media and the authorities at the same time. I wish they'd pull out a non-apology apology like, "I'm sorry the media and the authorities are such artards"

I listened to Penn's show in which he talked about this whole stupid thing, and I just knew he'd have the same opinion as me on this - no big surprise, as he usually tends towards the rational. Of course you know there'd be at least one nutjob to call in to disagree, and he got it. Some raving redneck of a woman who had the "lock them up and throw away the key" sort of "tough on crime" attitude. Hilarity ensued, at least for those of us trying to use our brains, and not just the brainstem. I'd bet anything that if she voted in the last two elections, she voted for Bush both times and is still proud of it...

Cable News Confidential

2007-02-11T13:48:00.000-08:00

This book is great - you can read lots of media criticism that can tend towards the dry side, but you won't find that here. It's instructive AND funny. It's odd that he mentions that the Daily Show is the most trusted name in news or the like, as the Daily Show often accomplishes the same thing - instructive and funny.

I highly recommend this book. If you honestly think the media is liberal, or even if you don't, I invite you to read this book. Mr. Cohen has obviously been in the trenches and has stories to tell, and he makes this book a fun and light ride. Along the way, you may learn quite a bit and find some things that may surprise you.

I get spun up about so-called "news", but I find that remembering a few things while I watch the latest tabloid journalism on CNN helps put my anger at least on simmer:

1. It's not there to inform, it's there to make money, and that's job #1. Clearly. If it was, we wouldn't be mired in silly trivia like we are about cuckoo astronauts and blonde bimbos. I like watching bimbos flounce around on the screen as much as the next guy, but I'll never be fooled into thinking that qualifies as news.

2. Having people know what is really going on is the LAST thing that's desired. It's not like a secret cabal is pulling the strings; these are big corporations that own these networks. Having people know that people are dying to support their vampiric practices is not going to benefit them over the long haul.

3. Television news is really show business. It's big hair and makeup and quick witty retorts and no substance. When I see someone propped up as supposedly a far leftie that sides with the obviously far-right or they seem full of doubt about their convictions I know it's a put-on. It's best to think of this as the same as "professional" wrestling - it isn't real, and a real liberal isn't some namby-pamby spineless poofter like the ones they put on these shout shows. If they were, they'd be shutting off their mike.

4. The anchors and newsreaders are essentially actors. I find actually thinking of them as literally actors helps. So when I hear about O'Reilly, Coulter, or Hannity's latest outburst, I just take a breath and remember that they are just actors playing a part.

The Corporate Cult

2007-02-06T18:58:00.000-08:00

So I've been listening to Rich Zubaty's podcast, The Rude Guy, and I thought I'd give one of his books a try.

Much like his podcast, it's bound to challenge your assumptions. I have to say that the defense of ID was something that almost made me put the book down. ID is baloney, and evolution is basically the backbone of modern biology. The argument can be made that evolution should not be used to disregard religion and/or spirituality, however. That still doesn't mean that ID/creationism has any merit whatsoever in a science class.

Like I said, there is something here that will probably conflict with most everyone's basic assumptions. While overall the book is an attack on corporations, it's the way in which it is carried about that is unique. The attack makes the argument that corporations are basically feminine structures, catering to feminine desires, with a resulting feminization of the culture. Interesting stuff to chew on. It would certainly explain why many conservatives mis-read the causes of culture (the "long shadow" cast by corporations that Chomsky refers to - I forget who originally used that phrasing) and mis-identify, say, the "news" as being "liberal" because of a few socially liberal issues that also happen to dovetail with corporate interests, such as feminism (usually resulting in two incomes which equals more consumption) or attacks on religion (turn people away from anything higher to a religion of acquisition of consumer fetishes).

One thing he mentions in his podcast and again in this book is feminism, and just how distorted its definiton of gender "equality" is. Gender "equality" would be furthered if, say, Hillary or Condi were President. What is not discussed is also having equal representation of women in dirty and dangerous jobs. Only having equal representation in the prestigious/high paying jobs counts. Also rarely discussed is having women register for the draft. Clearly, this isn't really being serious about gender "equality" at all, is just a lot of hot air. These are thoughts I must admit I've had in the past, and mostly kept those to myself, even if they should be blatantly obvious. The few men I've mentioned such things to almost always try to change the subject as if they are afraid of harboring thoughts that aren't doubleplus good.

Rich Zubaty has no such reservations about expressing himself, and it's very refreshing. Just today, in fact, I listened to a podcast in which he laid out why he thinks soldiers don't actually protect us, that in fact, ever since WWII, they enslave us. Highly recommended listening, and definitely not for the faint of heart.

FOX. QED.

2007-02-05T20:09:00.000-08:00

That's it. That's all she wrote. Nothing else needs to be said about Fox News. No more need for media critics to denounce it with explanations and with Faux supporters just saying they are "liberals" who "hate America", yadda yadda, ad nauseum. It's over. Any "debate" is no longer necessary.

Murdoch admitted it, so all the arguments are over. All the dittoheads can stop pretending they don't know Fox is full of it when they claim to be "fair and balanced".