POLITICS: Zero Tolerance for Zero Tolerance: "Radley Balko has a smart op-ed in the Washington Post about draconian zero tolerance measures against parents who wisely choose to supervise underage drinking.

Imagine for a moment that you're a parent with a teenage son. He doesn't drink, but you know his friends do. You're also not naive. You've read the government's statistics: 47 percent of high school students tell researchers they've had a drink of alcohol in the previous 30 days. Thirty percent have had at least five drinks in a row in the past month. Thirteen percent admitted to having driven in the previous month after drinking alcohol.



So, what do you do with regard to your son's social life? Many parents have decided to take a realist's approach. They're throwing parties for their kids and their friends. They serve alcohol at these parties, but they also collect car keys to make sure no one drives home until the next morning. Their logic makes sense: The kids are going to drink; it's better that they do it in a controlled, supervised environment.



That's exactly what a Rhode Island couple did in 2004. When they learned that their son planned to celebrate the prom with a booze bash at a beach 40 miles away, William and Patricia Anderson instead threw a supervised party for him and his friends at their home. They served alcohol, but William Anderson stationed himself at the party's entrance and collected keys from every teen who showed. No one who came to the party could leave until the next morning.



For this the Andersons found themselves arrested and charged with supplying alcohol to minors. The case ignited a fiery debate that eventually spilled onto the front page of the Wall Street Journal. The local chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving oddly decided to make an example of William Anderson, a man who probably did more to keep drunk teens off the road that night than most Providence-area parents.



In fact, the Andersons were lucky. A couple in Virginia was recently sentenced to 27 months in jail for throwing a supervised party for their son's 16th birthday, at which beer was made available. That was reduced on appeal from the eight-year sentenced imposed by the trial judge. The local MADD president said she was 'pleasantly surprised' at the original eight-year verdict, and 'applauded' the judge's efforts.

Eight years for supervising their son's drinking? MADD isn't just mad. (And I mean mad as in 'nuts.') MADD is petty. MADD is vindictive. MADD now has enemies who are not drunk drivers.

(Written by: Michael_J_Totten)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

metacycles

I've been struggling to place where I have seen this funerary media circus surrounding Peter Jennings' death before.

I think the best comparison, albeit a loose one, is the death of Di.  Sure that event took on ridiculous overtones, but Jennings' death has similar overtones of the media losing one of its own, combined with that earnest outpouring of public grief from the many that themselves only knew him through the focussed lens of the media.

And to those who would say "Lo Siento Mucho, I hardly knew thee" - please shut up.

My favourite bar

My favourite bar
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Toast at 125th st.



A bathroom, looking at a poster for Anchor brewery through the mirror.

observations

There's a woman reading Highlights on the subway with the rapt attention often given to Cosmo.

Ldd is your friend.

I spent several days tearing my hair out over failures of installing rhythmbox on my debian system.


Then I ran ldd on one of the troublesome libraries and discovered that a library in
/usr/local/lib was being called. It turns out that I had compiled some version of gnome years ago and put it in /usr/local/lib, which was conflicting with the much newer gnome libs in /usr/lib.

One "sudo mv /usr/local/lib /usr/local/lib.old" and I was good to go.

Wakatake made an excellent birthday present...

Discussion: Wakatake Onikoroshi (Junmai-Ginjo): "What is your tasting note for this one?? I find this light with a dry finishing of citrus and hint of melon. By the way, Onikoroshi' means 'demon slayer,' and there are many sake around Japan sold under this product name. Once upon 'Onikoroshi' referred to sake that was so bad it would kill a demon that drank it. But Wakatake decided to embark on against-the-grain(or rice) marketing, saying their sake was so darned great it would kill a demon that drank it.

Kanpai
Paul (AzianBrewer)

Join this discussion.

"

(Via The New York Sake Meetup Group: What's New.)

Coding humor into their style sheets: "

Filed under: Humor, Odds and ends

Now this is funny. When Apple first released the Mighty Mouse last week, C.K. wondered if Apple had gotten the legal clearance to use the name, first made famous by the cartoon character, of course. The fact that they did doesn't make this screengrab of the Mighty Mouse page's source code any less amusing. Note the clever class attribute used for the legalese portion.

It's good to see they can still make a joke over there once in a while.

[Via I Heart Apple]

Read	Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

"

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog.)

Peter Jennings, The Eulogy:

What Antonia said.

Btw, I miss my roommate.

And Allen wants "us" to get a Netflix subscription.

userfriendly : 31 jul 2005 (8161): ""

(Via User Friendly the Comic Strip. by Illiad.)

Worth checking out...

MUSIC: Germans Love David Has... I Mean Johnny Cash: "I've just heard the most bizarre version of 'Space Oddity' since The Langley Schools Music Project:

For the past few years, producer Jennifer Sharpe has amassed a small collection of what she likes to call 'foreign tongue recordings.' They're versions of hit songs from the American charts, sung by the original artists, usually in German, Italian or French.



The singers learned the lyrics phonetically, line by line, taught by a language coach. Sharpe says the songs were recorded in a time when English-language songs had a tough time making it in Europe.

I don't know much about the German language, but I'm pretty sure the Beatles butchered it unmercifully.

(Written by: Cigarette)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

I just discovered information about the Choose Your Adventure Book Inside UFO 54-40 - a clear precursor to the Sliders TV series, and one of the gems of the CYOA series.

Apparently the book had an Easter Egg...

/me wants it.

Soft Power.

POLITICS: Iraq’s Sergeant Sheik: "U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Dale Horn managed to earn himself the unlikely title of ‘Sheik’ in Iraq. Here’s how he did it.

Late last year a full-blown battle between insurgents and U.S. and Iraqi forces had erupted, and U.S. commanders assigned a unit to stop rocket and mortar attacks that regularly hit their base. Horn, who had been trained to operate radar for a field artillery unit, was now thrust into a job that largely hinged on coaxing locals into divulging information about insurgents.



Horn, 25, a native of Fort Walton Beach, Fla., acknowledges he had little interest in the region before coming here. But a local sheik friendly to U.S. forces, Mohammed Ismail Ahmed, explained the inner workings of rural Iraqi society on one of Horn's first Humvee patrols.



Horn says he was intrigued, and started making a point of stopping by all the villages, all but one dominated by Sunni Arabs, to talk to people about their life and security problems.



Moreover, he pressed for development projects in the area: he now boasts that he helped funnel $136,000 worth of aid into the area. Part of that paid for delivery of clean water to 30 villages during the broiling summer months.



Mohammed, Horn's mentor, eventually suggested during a meeting of village leaders that Horn be named a sheik.



Some sheiks later gave him five sheep and a postage stamp of land, fulfilling some of the requirements for sheikdom. Others encouraged him to start looking for a second wife, which Horn's spouse back in Florida immediately vetoed.

(Written by: Michael_J_Totten)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

Here's a question from this. Does the ionosphere block frequencies in the 2.4Ghz range? If one can reach 125miles with WiFi equipment, perhaps communications with satellites in Low Earth Orbit may be possible with the same equipment.

TECHNOLOGY: 125 Miles of Wireless: "Last year at Defcon, four kids from Ohio cobbled together scavenged satellite dish equipment, loaded it onto a truck, and dragged to the desert outside Las Vegas to see how far they could send an unamplified wireless signal. They set the record at 55.1 miles, and on the last day of the conference when they stepped up to accept their award, one of them jokingly asked if anyone wanted to buy their equipment so they could get home.



This year, the same four friends loaded up even more gear and set out for the desert again, with the intention of shattering their record... which they did. They shot a decent wireless signal almost 125 miles into the desert, across the border into Utah.

Contestants had to establish an 802.11b or 802.11g Wi-Fi link using two laptops with home-brewed or commercial antennas, and see how far apart they could place the computers and still get a connection with or without amplification.



The team, iFiber-Redwire, competed for the second time in the Wi-Fi shootout contest last weekend at the DefCon hacker conference here, and achieved a 124.9-mile unamplified connection from atop a mountain in Nevada and a small mound in Utah. (Wired magazine helped sponsor the contest.)



That was several dozen miles farther than the 55.1-mile link that won them the contest last year. They maintained the connection for three hours.



Ben Corrado, Justin Rigling, Andy Meng and Brandon Schamer, all 19 and 20 years old and hailing from Ohio, were hoping to demolish a 192-mile record set by an amplified air-to-ground link in 2003, but were limited by terrain and time.

Even though they had some sponsorship this year, the team was plagued with problems. One of their laptops died in the desert and would only function if held upside-down. Their path to their destination for the shot was blocked by a forest fire. While rigging up their gear, one of the teammates fell from a scaffold and broke his leg.



That's some pretty amazing stuff from young engineers. I can't wait to see what this team is doing in a few years.

(Written by: Shalome)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

MUSIC: Sigur Rós Song Title Translations for New Album: "Sigur Rós will release two songs, 'Saeglopur' and 'Glósóli', from their upcoming new album, Takk, on August 16th as downloads on a new site (not launched yet). 'Glósóli', however, will not be available for download in the U.S. for perhaps five minutes, possibly less, depending on P2P upload speeds. Takk will be released on September 13th.



Meanwhile, here are translations of the new album's song titles:

1. 'Takk' = Thanks

2. 'Glósóli' = Glowsun

3. 'Hoppípolla' = Hopping into Puddles

4. 'Med Blódnasir' = I've Got a Nosebleed

5. 'Sé Lest' = I See a Train

6. 'Sæglópur' = Lost at Sea

7. 'Mílanó' = Milan

8. 'Gong' = Gong

9. 'Andvari' = Zephyr

10. 'Svo Hljótt' = So Quietly

11. 'Heysátan' = The Haystack

As we reported earlier, the lyrics for this album are in an actual language, Icelandic. Hopefully someone will take the time to translate those as well when the album is released.

(Written by: Keith)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

Bass culture: "In the comments section to yesterday's entry I quote an article in Monday's Guardian in which Julian Baggini and other philosophers examine imaginary scenarios designed to present typical modern problems and paradoxes. I particularly liked the first example, in which a 'cosmopolitan' called Saskia is annoyed that a white waiter brings her poppadoms in an Indian restaurant, because she wants to be multicultural herself but prefers the wait staff in the 'exotic' restaurants she visits to remain monocultural. 'Saskia highlights one of the great inconsistencies of contemporary western liberalism,' comments David Goodhart. 'The Canadian scholar Eric Kaufmann calls it asymmetrical multiculturalism, meaning that minority groups should express their ethnicity while dominant ones should transcend theirs.'

I usually refer to 'asymmetrical multiculturalism' as the strange collusion between liberal internationalists and conservative nationalists. Marxy put it rather more bitchily in a debate we were having yesterday about the meaning of a swastika he saw on a Harakjuku fashion-punk: 'I'm against right-wing politics, Momus is for, as long as they aren't Western peoples.' (My counter-argument was that there's nothing inherently right wing about preserving national cultural differences: artists, museum curators and restauranteurs do it as well as right wing bigots. What's more, the punk in question was decontextualizing a foreign symbol; he was more like the non-Christian Japanese women who wear crosses around their necks than a rabid nationalist.)

(Via Click opera.)

I feel sorry for all of you suckers passing your breaktime huddled around a cold exterior fire escape door shotgunning a cigarette before returning to the grind.



(Kt had this picture taken in Maui.)

Added to the list.

New World of Wine Stores: "

Navigating a wine store can be as difficult as trying to walk against traffic in Times Square. Aisle after aisle of labels that might as well be written hieroglyphic codes and cramped little spaces, which are almost begging you to knock a bottle off the shelf, is enough to drive you to drink (hmmm…coincidence or marketing strategy?). Well, times they are a changing - Discovery Wines, a unique and innovative wine store in Alphabet City, is setting out to change the face, or should we say interface, of wine stores.

The second you walk into Discovery Wines you are aware that this isn’t your typical wine shop. The bright modern space feels welcoming and airy – baby stroller and dog friendly – but what really separates Discovery Wines from any other place we have been are the touch screen panels around the store. These touch screens are like having your own personal sommelier guide you through the place. They give out information on wine based on the way we drink wine – a crazy concept. Let’s say you are cooking a chicken dish and are looking for a wine to pair it with – the amazing touch screen has an answer. Or suppose your are feeling a little crazy and are looking for an exciting red wine from Turkey for under $10 – the amazing touch scene has 4 options. Or the best feature yet, let’s just say the green label with the cute little ducks catches your eye, just walk it over to the amazing touch screen to scan and it will tell you what it tastes like, what foods to pair it with and even about the 16 brothers that picked the grapes off of the south side of the hill.

Ellisa Cooper, one of the owners of Discovery Wines, says ‘their mission is to fix what’s wrong with wine stores today.’ Some of the ways they have achieved this is through bright open spaces, offering lesser-known affordable wines (70% of the wines are $20 or less) and of course through those amazing screens. And all the time you save from not aimlessly wondering around the store can be spent at their wine bar, where they offer daily tastings.

We are certainly entering into a new era in the world of wine. It is no longer some esoteric, unapproachable subject. It’s fun, accessible and relaxed. The world of wine is getting a much overdue facelift– and we think it looks pretty amazing.

Discovery Wines, 10 Avenue A between Houston and 2nd Street, (212) 674-7833

"

(Via Gothamist.)

Yes.

MUSIC: Christopher Lee: Saruman the Metal: "What do you do for an encore after a lifetime spent playing film badasses like Dracula (ten times), Saruman, and a Star Wars Sith Lord? Something that celebrates horror, Tolkien fantasy, and science fiction: metal. And so, 82 year-old actor Christopher Lee will perform at the upcoming Earthshaker Festival in Geiselwind, Germany.

He will sing with two bands, Manowar and Rhapsody, according to concert organisers.



Lee will be accompanied by a live orchestra and a choir and will perform alongside heavy metal bands such as Grave Digger, Dragonlord and Forces of Evil.

Suggested name for Lee's band: Man-flesh.



(via brooklynvegan)

(Written by: Keith)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

I'm so trying this tomorrow.

Elevator hacking: "

Calling this a hack is way too generous, but TheDamnBlog has a little tip for getting the most out of your next
elevator ride. Apparently lots of elevators have an express mode that lets you override everyone else’s selections and
go straight to the floor you’re going to. You just press ‘Door Close’ and the button for your floor at the same
time. Should work on most Otis elvators, as well as a few other models that are out there, but don’t blame us when you
accidentally go plunging to your death (blame TheDamnBlog, if you must).



[Via Digg]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
© 2005 Weblogs, Inc.

"

(Via engadget.com.)

I once picked Mr. Kernaghan up from the airport back during the activist late nineties at Michigan. He's a good man.

In the post just below,...: "

In the post just below, I linked to an article about Charles Kernaghan, a man who spends his life shaming big corporations over their use of child labor and sweat shop labor in the products they have made overseas. Over at his site, Matt Yglesias responded with the standard, but quite powerful, argument that we in the West (or the developed world) often project unrealistic and even harmful expectations on to wages and labor practices in developing countries.

So for instance, rotten working conditions for far under a dollar an hour may be bad. But the conditions may be less onerous and the pay at least marginally more generous than what some of these people would otherwise be making in the agricultural sectors of their national economies. And maybe that's why the company owners are able to get people to work at what seem to us to be inhumane conditions. (As a general matter, people in the West underestimate the sheer wretchedness of agricultural labor and the endemic nature of rural poverty.)

In any case, that's the argument. And while I think it somewhat discounts the related issues of rural overpopulation and mechanization, on balance it's a strong argument.

There is one thing, however, that this line of reasoning misses: political violence. Which is, after all, the grand-daddy of extra-economic inputs.

You can't make a solid argument that wages in other countries have found their natural level if one of the major 'inputs' is organized political violence to keep wages low and labor activism inert.

To put it more concretely, one part of a real market in labor is the ability for people to protest conditions, either actively (through organizing) or passively (through quitting or refusing to work). But if people who try to form labor unions are murdered then that whole theory falls apart.

This certainly doesn't solve the thicket of questions about globalization and third-world economic development. Nor does it invalidate the broader argument Matt is making. But on this particular point I think it makes clear that we're dealing with more than invisible hands.

"

(Via Talking Points Memo.)

Let me put extra emphasis on this New York Moment:

I feel very proud that God put me to walk that street this morning and just to go get a beer and get some chips and to save her.

Baby in a Gift Bag Found in Brooklyn: "

A newborn baby girl was found in a gift bag that was hanging on a chain link fence in Brooklyn. The girl, about a week or so old, is in stable condition, but the residents in Bushwick who found the baby were surprised that someone could leave the baby this way. There were a few interesting quotes. Karen Vaughan, who found the baby while heading to a store for cigarettes at 4AM, told the NY Times, 'I was like, 'Yo, look, a baby.'' Another man, Calvin Johnson, who also found the baby, told the Daily News, 'I'm very distraught. But I feel very proud that God put me to walk that street this morning and just to go get a beer and get some chips and to save her.' Another resident told the Times, 'I'd like to give [the mother] a nice beating.' Police are looking for the mother, and Brooklyn DA Chester Hynes emphasized that babies should be taken to 'any firehouse, police station, or hospital...The baby will be okay and no questions will be asked.'

Photography by Newsday

(Via Gothamist.)

Free beer and planets for all!

The new planet, and its moon.

The evidence points to it being smaller than Pluto, and right about Sedna's size.

passing the time

Laundry picked up in the form of clothes left behind.

Popsicles dripped on shirts. Shirts cleaned in the sink.

Supposedly atrocious food from Swish, left by the roommates to whet the appetite of yours truly.

The Two Towers on Encore WAM late at night. Yes we apparently get Encore WAM (thanks to Yulia for pointing that out.)

I found my Mogwai, in Ogg format. Silly iPods, no mogwai for you.

Tomorrow, Jets Camp with Cy.

Also drinking Tang, the choice of astronauts everywhere.

No Comment.

Kylie?

CULTURE: Europe: Drought... Australia: Man Drought: "Australia is facing a drought of men as continued migration to the northern hemispheres larger economies leaves behind a gender skew:

New figures show there were 20,000 fewer men than women aged 30-something in Australia last year, according to a report by accounting firm KPMG, reversing a long period in which there were more men.



The study, which uses data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, shows that in the 12 months to 2004 there was a surplus of women in every age group between 29 and 55.

The skew has had a remarkable effect on national culture:

'The man drought is leading to a shift in consumer culture; you have more women buying apartments, taking out finance loans; women are evolving their own single culture,' Mr Salt said.

(Written by: SomeOneUK)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

3rd Case of Mad Cow in the US.

Do I hear 4?

USDA probes possible 3rd case of mad cow disease: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A cow suspected of having mad cow disease will be retested in British and U.S. laboratories for confirmation of what may be America's third case, the U.S. Agriculture Department said on Wednesday."

(Via Reuters: Top News.)

Bad Rain Forests. No Carbon Sink.

Amazon Carbon Cycling: "

At first blush, this doesn't seem like terribly good news, but it does give us a bit more information to use when thinking about our climate response options. Researchers studying the carbon cycle in the Amazon River basin (particularly the uptake and release of CO2 by the region's plants) have found that, rather than sequestering the CO2 for decades or centuries, the carbon is cycled out back into the atmosphere within five years. Among the implications of this discovery (assuming it's confirmed) is that the Amazon rain forests are not good candidates for long-term capture of CO2, and that we need to pay close attention to the actual carbon cycle for each biome before assigning sequestration targets.

(Posted by Jamais Cascio in QuickChanges at 02:05 PM)"

(Via WorldChanging: Another World Is Here.)

I would like to modify my request for a Savannah. I want a Savannah that has been modified to have those missing 247 base pairs... so that it can taste sweet food.

Just because.

Pharyngula::Cats, candy, and evolution: "

P.Z. Myers on the non-sweet tooth of cats:

Pharyngula::Cats, candy, and evolution: What this protein does is detect sugar, and then instruct your taste buds to start sending nerve impulses up to your brain.... Cats don't get to experience that... their TAS1R2 gene carries a substantial mutation that destroys its function.... There is a small deletion near the beginning of the sequence that chops out 247 base pairs. This deletion puts the remainder of the sequence out of register... turning it into non-functional nonsense, and also generating multiple stop sequences.... Poor kitties. They don't even know what they are missing.

It's nice to have an explanation for why cats prefer fish to candy bars, but there's more to the story than that. It's also another piece of evidence for evolution. The cat TAS1R2 gene has been thoroughly blasted into uselessness, but there is obviously more than one way to do that. A larger deletion that took out the whole gene would be just as effective, as would a 1 base pair deletion at the beginning of the sequence. Any random scrambling would do. So how do you explain this?

The sequence was analyzed in house cats, but the gene was also examined in samples taken from a tiger and a cheetah. They have exactly the same mutation... 'plagiarized errors ', a phenomenon that is most simply explained by common descent. The last common ancestor of house cats, tigers, and cheetahs had this mutation, and passed it on to all of its progeny.

We can also make an evolutionary prediction: I expect that lions, leopards, and lynxes will also have the same 247 base pair deletion... the scar of this ancient gouge in their DNA will be present in all cats...

One question: is there any sense in which it is... adaptive for cats to not like fruit? Fruit is, after all, a quick source of energy--easily digested calories. One would think that a cat that liked fruit would have more energy for the hunt.

Or is this just an example of genetic drift at work? The few animals that speciated into the ancestral cat lineage got this mutation, and it wasn't (very) harmful, so they didn't become extinct. And thereafter there was no way to undo it.

"

(Via Semi-Daily Journal.)

Since we're talking about the makeup of the ideal family these days...

Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (City Journal/Reducing Poverty in the Long Run Department): "

it's a dirty job. Bradford Plumer reads City Journal so we don't have to:

Bradford Plumer: City Journal always strikes me as one of the most noxious magazines around... its writers... wade into decades-old debates... disregard all... research, and then flatly declare that liberals are stupid and conservatives were right all along about everything. Exhibit A is Kay Hymowitz's piece this month on how... legions of liberal academics... have kept people poor and stupid for 40 years... [and] the one true cause of black poverty is that most black children grow up in fatherless homes. Liberals, Hymowitz declares, need to step out of their 'don't blame the victim' mentality and realize this hyper-obvious fact.

Well, okay. Plenty of liberals have been thinking about the importance of family structure for quite some time: she even mentions two (William Julius Wilson and Sara MacLanahan), and then there was, um, the last Democratic president--a pretty prominent liberal, when you think about it. (Hymowitz makes it seem like Clinton was only 'forced' to worry about family structure in the post-Gingrich era, but in fact, his 1992 campaign speeches included lines like, 'Governments don't raise kids; parents do.') Beyond that, though, the relationship between marriage and childhood problems--let alone wider poverty--is complex and deserves a bit fuller treatment than the shallow gloss Hymowitz gives.

As it happens, the other day I was reading a collection of essays called The Future of the Family, edited by none other than Hymowitz' hero, Pat Moynihan, with a literature review of the effects of fatherlessness co-authored by... yet another one of Hymowitz' heroes, Sara MacLanahan! And lo, the results are a bit more ambiguous than the City Journal essay suggests.... MacLanahan argues that... fatherlessness is associated with lower test scores, greater levels of poverty, behavioral problems, delinquency, etc. for children.... What's not clear... is why... perhaps poverty causes both fatherlessness and negative outcomes for children, in which case single motherhood wouldn't be the root problem. One study, for instance, found that 'when pre-divorce circumstances are taken into account, the associations between family disruption and child outcomes become smaller, sometimes statistically insignificant.' (Not all studies, though.) And then some of the findings are just plain odd. For instance, the academic achievement gap between kids in one- and two-parent families is moderately small in many social democracies like Sweden and Iceland--smaller than the gap in 'neo-liberal' states like the U.S. or New Zealand--suggesting that a sturdy safety net can overcome the supposed disadvantages of single-parent families. On the other hand, the achievement gap is even smaller in Mediterranean countries....

Basically, it's just not clear.... The facts here aren't speaking for themselves, or else they are, but in ancient Aramaic.

[I]nsofar as the fact of single motherhood itself is actually a 'problem' (and I'm not convinced it is, but let's suppose...), there are basically two remedies. One, we can try to reduce the number of divorces by, say, making divorce harder... that seems like a terrible option....

So let's look behind door #2. And door #2 is... reducing out-of-wedlock births in the first place. This seems like a pretty unambiguously decent policy goal, especially since 60 percent of all births are unintended.... Now the tried-and-true way to reduce unintended out-of-wedlock births involves teen-pregnancy prevention programs that emphasize, yes, condoms and other 'icky' items. (Hell, they can teach abstinence too, since that seems to work, though 'abstinence-only' programs pretty clearly do not.)... But these are all pretty well-known liberal policy goals, I daresay.

"

(Via Semi-Daily Journal.)

University of Michigan Engineering won the 2005 North American Solar Car Challenge.



Why am I not surprised?

Women's shaving cream sold as Men's shaving cream.

I wonder which costs more?

I think back to Einstein, who in the name of simplicity washed and shaved with the same soap.

Transsexual Shaving Cream: "Mark Frauenfelder:
Todd Lappin recently bought a travel-sized can of Gillette shaving gel. 'Being a discriminating consumer, I was drawn to the product by its burly packaging and subtle-yet-masculine scent,' he writes. Imagine his shock when the label came off the can a few weeks later, revealing the true nature of the product. See the photos for yourself. Link"

(Via Boing Boing.)

GM Doesn't Give You A Free Lunch.

TECHNOLOGY: GM "Super Weed" Found In UK: "A weed with genes from genetically modified crops has been found in the UK by government researchers. The genes make the weed resistant to several weed killers.

[Friends of the Earth] said Government researchers found a GM version of the common weed charlock growing in one of the fields used in the Government-sponsored farm-scale trials of GM crops.



The plant was resistant to the weed killer used in the GM trial and was confirmed as containing the gene inserted into the GM oilseed rape.



It is the first known case of such an occurrence in Britain and overturns previous scientific assumptions that charlock, a common weed found alongside oilseed rape in Europe, was unlikely to cross-breed with GM oilseed rape.

The UK population has been wary of GM technology, especially when it has been applied to food. Some of that is fear caused by ignorance, but the knowledge that modified genes can cross from GM crops to wild plants isn't going to make GM technology more popular.



('Oilseed rape' is known as 'canola' in the US.)

(Written by: dem_z)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

The video is hilarious.

Pregnancy Test: Monday Afternoon Silliness: "

Filed under: Cult of Mac, Humor, iPod Family

We interrupt our normal schedule of insightful Apple punditry with the following PG-13 rated Apple-related skit.





Thanks to Vince of hackaday fame for pointing this out. He got the 411 on this video from a hackaday reader named 'wetsmellydog.'

Read	Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

"

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog.)

The day

The day
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

The books are finally sitting on the sofa, at rest.

FW: [IP] more on TSA Violated Law, GAO Finds - illustrates a WIDEspread problem!

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Saturday, Jul 23, 2005 4:06 pm
Subject: [IP] more on TSA Violated Law, GAO Finds - illustrates a WIDEspread problem!

Begin forwarded message:

From: Jim Warren <jwarren@well.com>
Date: July 23, 2005 3:00:44 PM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Re: [IP] TSA Violated Law, GAO Finds - illustrates a WIDEspread problem!

At 5:59 PM -0400 7/22/05, David Farber wrote:

> Begin forwarded message:

> From: prsingel <prsingel@pacbell.net>
...
TSA employeess did indeed violate a federal privacy law when they
secretly expanded the nature and extent of testing of a new passenger
screening system, according to congressional investigators.
...

This, in fact, illustrates a WIDEspread problem, in all levels of government. It works like this:

1. An enforcement agency pleads that they need more powers/latitude/ authority etc., in order to protect innocent citizens / do their job / etc.

2. The legislative body grants them their wishes, but with limits and prohibitions on how those new (or current!) powers can be exploited by the agency.

3. The enforcement agency -- as an administrative decision, or by [some of] its officials acting as "rogue agents" -- exceeds those powers and their authority ... sometimes grossly exceeding it.

4. The legislative body is [sometimes] "outraged", at least when it's sufficiently embarrassing, and it's elected members posture and whine and cry "helpless" crocodile tears about such administrative "excesses".

BUT ...

It is the legislative body that is at FAULT! Why?

Almost invariably, when they grant new powers and impose new limitations, legislators FAIL to, at the same time, specify any PENALTIES -- especially CRIMINAL penalties -- for any agents, officials, administrators, etc., who violate their legislated prohibitions.

I.e., the legislators specify limitations and prohibitions, but commonly do NOT specify any penalties if their limitations and prohibitions are ignored or violated!

Can you imagine the same legislators enacting prohibitions or mandates on PRIVATE citizens -- who are NOT part of their too-cozy government -- without ALSO taking great care to, at the same time, enact penalties ... civil and/or criminal ... for CITIZENS who violate those prohibitions and mandates?!

Solution: EVERY time a legislative body -- local, state or federal -- proposes to enact some limitation or mandate, EVEN if it's on <gasp> other government officials and agencies, they should (must!) ALSO, at the same time, as part of the same legislation, ALWAYS enact/ include PENALTIES to be imposed if [when] government agents violate the enacted limits/prohibitions.

And since violations are by officials acting under "color of authority" -- acting on behalf of that very legislative body -- who violate their prohibitions, the penalties should be MANDATORY. (Let's not give the administrative branch the freedom to decide whether it will prosecute itself!)

Doing anything less simply INVITES and ENCOURAGES "over-zealous" agents and "well-meaning" officials to IGNORE the law's toothless limits, and do whatever they damn-well please. (I.e., the much- vaunted "rule of law" only applies to citizens; not government officials!)

--jim

-------------------------------------http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/

New York according to MSN's new map service.

Perhaps they are a little bit out of date...

Cy's place last night was filled with upstate NY wine, Shana, Jeanne, Cy, moi, Karen, Bec, and Apples to Apples.


The game rocks.

And I wants it.

The Catholic Church begins a campaign against a book "denouncing it as logically and historically flawed".

Where do we begin with this...

CULTURE: Work Of Fiction Is, Er, Fictitious: "The Da Vinci Code is described as 'an intelligent and lucid thriller'. I haven't seen anyone describe it as an accurate account of history so it's confusing to see some people take it so seriously.

THE Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales begins a campaign today against Dan Brown’s bestselling The Da Vinci Code, denouncing it as logically and historically flawed and a risible hoax.



A new Catholic website aimed at Da Vinci fans is timed to coincide with today’s feast of St Mary Magdalene, depicted in the book as the sacred vessel, or Holy Grail, who bore Jesus Christ’s children. The site, designed by the Catholic Enquiry Office (CEO), a national office of the Church, includes biographies of St Mary, Bible extracts, prayers, articles, web links, images and a cake recipe.



It includes question-andanswer sessions listing alleged historical, artistic and religious errors in the book, such as its depiction of the Catholic organisation Opus Dei.

Wait, did someone say cake?



The source article has some quotes from Catholics who hate the book.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the prelate appointed by the Vatican to defend the Church’s reputation, has described the novel as a ‘castle of lies’ that ‘distorted’ the truth.



Cardinal Bertone, the Archbishop of Genoa, says that the novel is a deliberate attempt to discredit the Catholic Church through absurd and vulgar falsifications.

The article then goes on to interview Monsignor Keith Barltrop (the director of the CEO), and he contradicts the article's earlier claim that he's campaigning against the book.

‘We are not trying to take on The Da Vinci Code.’ Rather the Church was ‘shameless’ in availing itself of the chance to evangelise, he said.



He added: ‘There is huge interest in the book. It poses as the truth but it clearly is not. It is a damn good read but it is a long way from the truth.



‘People are engaged in a lot of things, from aromatherapy through to tarot cards to this sort of thing. Rather than be negative about it, we see it as symptomatic of a seeking mentality that, for whatever reason, does not get channelled to organised religion.’

I really hope that's just a front and that they've dispatched monk assassins.

(Written by: dem_z)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

Italian Men

Italian Men
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

First they steal our women...

FW: [IP] Requiem for a fictional Scotsman

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Sunday, Jul 24, 2005 8:39 am
Subject: [IP] Requiem for a fictional Scotsman

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Kevin G. Barkes" <kgbarkes@gmail.com>
Date: July 24, 2005 7:41:03 AM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Requiem for a fictional Scotsman
Reply-To: "Kevin G. Barkes" <kgbarkes@gmail.com>

Other kids worshipped baseball players. My hero was a fictional
Scottish engineer from the 23rd century.

Before the terms geek and nerd entered the vernacular, we were called brains, or, more cruelly, weirdos. We built Heathkits, disassembled
televisions and tape recorders, and bribed the librarian to give us
first crack at the new issues of Popular Science and Popular
Electronics, usually by changing the ribbon or switching the golf
balls on her newfangled IBM Selectric.

The normal people left us alone until they needed their eight tracks fixed, or someone to set up the projector for health class, or install a new ink pad on the mimeograph machine. Task completed, we would be
summarily dismissed with a curt thank you. We'd return to the
backstage of the auditorium/gym, the traditional sanctuary of the
oddballs on the audio/visual team.

Scotty was our hero because he was one of us. Instead of the
backstage, he was buried in the bowels of the Enterprise's engineering section, which wasn't even in the main part of the ship. There he
ruled, serenely, totally in control, obtaining supreme satisfaction in the knowledge that while the idiots on the bridge were supposedly in
charge, he was the one who made possible their continued existence.

And then there was the Spock business. We Scotty aficionados resented the Vulcan science officer. In the first place, the whole "I'm totally in control and have no emotions" thing was patently dishonest. He was like the guy on the AV squad who discovered girls over the summer and was suddenly Mr. Cool. Yeah, right. When his girlfriend dumped him for the football team towel manager (quasi-athlete is still better than
certified nerd), he nearly fried the pre-amp in the PA system by
replacing the 1 megohm resistor in the main power supply with a 1K
unit while in his emotionally distraught state.

Spock was our high school principal, a pointy eared deus ex machina who appeared and broke the rules of the game. I recall spending days
overhauling the motor and drive assembly of an old Wollensak
reel-to-reel mono tape recorder, finally getting its wow and flutter
back within specs. Rather than praise my efforts, the principal said
"Oh, we'll just buy a new one." Buy a new one? The possibility had
never even been presented to me! This is the parsimonious wretch who
only two weeks ago made me use rubber bands to replace the capstan
drive belt to save 50 cents! No wonder Scotty drank himself into
oblivion when he was off duty!

The Star Trek writers used Spock and abused Scotty in the same manner. They placed the Enterprise in some ludicrous situation which had no
resolution, then sent Spock down into engineering to order Scotty to
perform some action totally in violation of Trek's already delusional laws of physics.

Until the arrival of Bill Gates, Scotty was the first expression of the belief that the nerds could probably run things better, but were
disinclined to deal with such mundane challenges. Notice that when he was forced to take the con of the Enterprise- usually because Kirk was being held captive by the father of the native princess he'd just
boinked into delirium, and the hyper-intelligent Spock had been
rendered unconscious by a judiciously applied blunt object wielded by an alien with the appearance and IQ of a turnip- Scotty was by far the best strategic commander of the lot.

When you saw him in the captain's chair, you knew Kirk and Spock had screwed up yet again- but you also knew things would turn out fine
because the Scotsman would handily defeat the enemy du jour and would beam his sorry superiors' behinds back up to ship before the last
commercial break. And then what would happen? The episode would end
with Kirk and Spock congratulating themselves on their ingenuity while Scotty had already disappeared back into the depths of engineering to deal with the real responsibility of keeping the ship running.

Those of you who have saved customer presentations, demos and initial installations from ten-thumbed marketing types know what I'm talking
about. The suits go out for a night on the town to celebrate their
technical savvy and sales skills, while you're stuck in the cheap
hotel room with a poorly stocked mini-bar that you're not permitted to access anyway because of the cost, on the phone resolving a customer
crisis while simultaneously answering inane support questions via
e-mail. And frankly, you're happy about it. Who wants to listen to
salesmen talk about sports?

But I digress.

Finally, Scotty embodied the benefits of technology and the "can do" attitude that pervaded the 60s. Oh, he might complain mightily about
some absurd demand being placed upon him: what geek isn't conservative when it comes to maintaining stable environments for critical systems? But he believed, as did his real-world counterpart Gene Krantz, that
"Failure is not an option." It's the unspoken challenge that motivates those of us for whom Scotty is the ultimate role model.

Montgomery Scott, the fictional character, will continue to perform engineering miracles indefinitely on film, video, DVD, and media yet
to be devised. For that, we are grateful. But I sincerely mourn the
passing of James Montgomery Doohan- ironically, on the 36th
anniversary of the first manned moon landing- who made Scotty the
cultural icon he became.

The word is given, Mr. Scott. Warp speed.

-- Regards,

KGB

-----
Kevin G. Barkes
Email: kgb@kgb.com | Web: www.kgb.com
Commentwear by KGB:
http://www.commentwear.com
Eff the Ineffable, Scrute the Inscrutable:
http://www.cafeshops.com/kgbstuff.9211569
KGB Report:
http://www.kgb.com
National Temperature Index:
http://nationaltemperatureindex.com
DCL Dialogue on line:
http://www.kgb.com/dcl.html
Random Quotations Generator:
http://www.goodquotations.com
Over 12,000 searchable quotations.

-------------------------------------
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/

A Brilliant Idea.

Beautiful City Billboard Fee: "

How much of the world around us is covered in advertising? It's nearly impossible to escape brand logos (I see about 10 in front of me at my desk, without turning my head). Is there some way to use advertising space for a civic purpose?

The Canadian art group Them.ca thinks so. They've proposed the 'Beautiful City Billboard Fee' for the city of Toronto, requiring that all billboard advertisements pay a special tax, based on the size of the sign. Funds derived from this tax would be disbursed to artists for the creation of public art.

This is clever on a few levels. The proposed fee is small enough that it won't cut significantly into advertising (that is, it won't put anyone out of business), but with the number of billboards in the city, will still generate six million dollars each year. At the same time, with the fees going directly to public art instead of to the city's general coffers, there will be limited incentive on the part of the city to allow for a greater number of billboards. The proposal has broad community support (over two-thirds of Toronto residents polled are in favor), and is in line with a number of other proposals and initiatives Toronto is considering.

Writer David Bollier (from whom I heard about this project) links the BCBA to a piece of public art in Vienna called 'Delete!'

For a period of two weeks in June, Viennese shopkeepers agreed to let Christoph Steinbrener & Rainer Dempf put monochrome yellow fluorescent foil on all advertising signs, slogans, pictograms, company names and logos on Neubaugasse, a popular street for shopping. (Only signs needed for public safety were uncovered.)

The result (reproduced above; a larger image is at the artists' site) is a clever-yet-sobering demonstration of just how much of our public space is taken up by commercial messages. Some reactions from Viennese (including graffiti saying 'I need consumer information! Argh!') can be found at Moblogging Vienna.

(Posted by Jamais Cascio in The Means of Expression - Media, Creativity and Experience at 12:24 PM)"

(Via WorldChanging: Another World Is Here.)

It's the end of the world as we know it...

Background on Bretton Woods 2.

The beginning of the end of Bretton Woods 2?: "China's central bank posted the following announcement on its web site today: 1. Starting from July 21, 2005, China will reform the exchange rate regime by moving into a managed floating exchange rate regime based on market supply and demand..."

(Via Daniel W. Drezner.)

Whole Whit Wherewithal

Would it be wrong for me to return Harry Potter 6 at this juncture?

Both I and a roommate have finished it.

I'm not convinced I want to keep a copy.

It's not in British English anyways...

FW: [IP] yet-another INCREDIBLY-stupid airport "security" story

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Wednesday, Jul 20, 2005 7:54 pm
Subject: [IP] yet-another INCREDIBLY-stupid airport "security" story

Begin forwarded message:

From: Jim Warren <jwarren@well.com>
Date: July 20, 2005 4:26:42 PM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>
Subject: fwd: yet-another INCREDIBLY-stupid airport "security" story

Just received this from a friend. If true, it's ... well ... [what words???]

--jim

> This was taken from today's issue of an email newsletter published
by the AirFinance Journal. Gotta love it.

> And finally
Before deploying from Savannah, Georgia, to Iraq by a chartered
airliner; the troops of the 48th Brigade Combat Team, a National
Guard unit, had to go through the same security checks as any other
passengers.

> Lt. Col. John King, the unit's commander, told his 280 fellow
soldiers that FAA anti-hijacking regulations require passengers to
surrender pocket knives, nose hair scissors and cigarette lighters.
"If you have any of those things," he said, almost apologetically,
"put them in this box now."

> The troops were, however, allowed to keep their assault rifles,
body armour, helmets, pistols, bayonets and combat shotguns.

-------------------------------------
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/

FW: [IP] Anyone know if this is for real?

I agree. We call these Republicans who are all talk about National Security Chicken Hawks.

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Wednesday, Jul 20, 2005 3:19 pm
Subject: [IP] Anyone know if this is for real?

Begin forwarded message:

From: EEkid@aol.com
Date: July 20, 2005 3:12:41 PM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Anyone know if this is for real?

CIA Agents Letter to US Senate and House

18 July 2005

AN OPEN STATEMENT TO THE LEADERS OF THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AND THE SENATE.

The Honorable Dennis Hastert, Speaker, U.S. House of Representatives

The Honorable Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader, U.S. House of Representatives

The Honorable Dr. William Frist, Majority Leader of the Senate

The Honorable Harry Reid, Minority Leader of the Senate

We, the undersigned former U.S. intelligence officers are concerned with the tone and substance of the public debate over the ongoing Department of Justice investigation into who leaked the name of Valerie Plame, wife of former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, to syndicated columnist Robert Novak and other members of the media, which exposed her status as an undercover CIA officer. The disclosure of Ms. Plame�s name was a shameful event in American history and, in our professional judgment, may have damaged U.S. national security and poses a threat to the ability of U.S. intelligence gathering using human sources. Any breach of the code of confidentiality and cover weakens the overall fabric of intelligence, and, directly or indirectly, jeopardizes the work and safety of intelligence workers and their sources.

The Republican National Committee has circulated talking points to supporters to use as part of a coordinated strategy to discredit Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife. As part of this campaign a common theme is the idea that Ambassador Wilson�s wife, Valerie Plame was not undercover and deserved no protection. The following are four recent examples of this "talking point":

Michael Medved stated on Larry King Live on July 12, 2005, "And let's be honest about this. Mrs. Plame, Mrs. Wilson, had a desk job at Langley. She went back and forth every single day."

Victoria Toensing stated on a Fox News program with John Gibson on July 12, 2005 that, "Well, they weren't taking affirmative measures to protect that identity. They gave her a desk job in Langley. You don't really have somebody deep undercover going back and forth to Langley, where people can see them."

Ed Rodgers, Washington Lobbyist and former Republican official, said on July 13, 2005 on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, "And also I think it is now a matter of established fact that Mrs. Plame was not a protected covert agent, and I don't think there's any meaningful investigation about that."

House majority whip Roy Blunt (R, Mo), on Face the Nation, July 17, 2005, "It certainly wouldn't be the first time that the CIA might have been overzealous in sort of maintaining the kind of top-secret definition on things longer than they needed to. You know, this was a job that the ambassador's wife had that she went to every day. It was a desk job. I think many people in Washington understood that her employment was at the CIA, and she went to that office every day."

These comments reveal an astonishing ignorance of the intelligence community and the role of cover. The fact is that there are thousands of U.S. intelligence officers who "work at a desk" in the Washington, D.C. area every day who are undercover. Some have official cover, and some have non-official cover. Both classes of cover must and should be protected.

While we are pleased that the U.S. Department of Justice is conducting an investigation and that the U.S. Attorney General has recused himself, we believe that the partisan attacks against Valerie Plame are sending a deeply discouraging message to the men and women who have agreed to work undercover for their nation�s security.

We are not lawyers and are not qualified to determine whether the leakers technically violated the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act. However, we are confident that Valerie Plame was working in a cover status and that our nation�s leaders, regardless of political party, have a duty to protect all intelligence officers. We believe it is appropriate for the President to move proactively to dismiss from office or administratively punish any official who participated in any way in revealing Valerie Plame's status. Such an act by the President would send an unambiguous message that leaks of this nature will not be tolerated and would be consistent with his duties as the Commander-in-Chief.

We also believe it is important that Congress speak with one non-partisan voice on this issue. Intelligence officers should not be used as political footballs. In the case of Valerie Plame, she still works for the CIA and is not in a position to publicly defend her reputation and honor. We stand in her stead and ask that Republicans and Democrats honor her service to her country and stop the campaign of disparagement and innuendo aimed at discrediting Mrs. Wilson and her husband.

Our friends and colleagues have difficult jobs gathering the intelligence, which helps, for example, to prevent terrorist attacks against Americans at home and abroad. They sometimes face great personal risk and must spend long hours away from family and friends. They serve because they love this country and are committed to protecting it from threats from abroad and to defending the principles of liberty and freedom. They do not expect public acknowledgement for their work, but they do expect and deserve their government�s protection of their covert status.

For the good of our country, we ask you to please stand up for every man and woman who works for the U.S. intelligence community and help protect their ability to live their cover.

Sincerely yours,

_____________________________________

Larry C. Johnson, former Analyst, CIA

JOINED BY:

Mr. Brent Cavan, former Analyst, CIA

Mr. Vince Cannistraro, former Case Officer, CIA

Mr. Michael Grimaldi, former Analyst, CIA

Mr. Mel Goodman, former senior Analyst, CIA

Col. W. Patrick Lang (US Army retired), former Director, Defense Humint Services, DIA

Mr. David MacMichael, former senior estimates officer, National Intelligence Council, CIA

Mr. James Marcinkowski, former Case Officer, CIA

Mr. Ray McGovern, former senior Analyst and PDB Briefer, CIA

Mr. Jim Smith, former Case Officer, CIA

Mr. William C. Wagner, former Case Officer, CIA

http://www.crooksandliars.com/stories/2005/07/19/ciaAgentsLetterToUsSenateAndHouse.html

-------------------------------------

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/

"Teh Sappy"

We remember one who inspired us today. Karl Rove and John Roberts can wait until tomorrow.

To engineers in popular culture

the war heroes that played them

may their dreams inspire our futures.

As Wil says:

one to beam up . . .: "

Newsday:

LOS ANGELES -- James Doohan, the burly chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise in the original 'Star Trek' TV series and motion pictures who responded to the command 'Beam me up, Scotty,' died early Wednesday. He was 85.

Doohan died at 5:30 a.m. at his Redmond, Wash., home with his wife of 28 years, Wende, at his side, Los Angeles agent and longtime friend Steve Stevens said. The cause of death was pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease, he said.

I'm too shocked for a thoughtful eulogy right now. Everyone who watched Star Trek liked Scotty, but everyone who met him loved Jimmy . . . I'm sure I'm not the only person today who feels like they lost a friend. My thoughts are with his family.

"

From the comments:

I had the distinct pleasure of working with Jimmy in my capacity of sign language interpreter at a Star Trek con in Chicago several years ago. I don't think Jimmy thought of anyone as just a fan. He loved spending time with them and treated each person as if they were a long-lost friend, including me. On Saturday night, Jimmy hosted a dinner for the fans, dressed in full Scottish regala. He patiently posed for pictures with each individual attendee and with groups. When it was the security team's turn for a photo, they asked me to join them. Quite an honor. Jimmy saw me coming and called for me to stand next to him. He put his arm around my shoulders, his other arm around another woman from the security team. Just as everyone smiled for the camera, it failed. The photographer apologized and said the batteries had died...it would take a few minutes to replace them. Jimmy just grinned and in that famous burr said, "It's alright, laddie. I've got a beautiful woman in each arm. Hell, take your time!" That broke everyone up. I will miss his wonderful sense of humor and gentle spirit. My thoughts and prayers are with his family.

Posted by: VoxyLady at July 20, 2005 10:34 AM

(Via WIL WHEATON DOT NET: Where is my mind?.)

HR-2 bot walks, talks, sets fires:

Almir Heralic at the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden looks like he may be the next toymaker to the king
— either that, or he’s getting ready for world domination. His HR-2 robot may be small — think
Kondo KHR-1, rather than
ASIMO — but don’t let its size fool
you. According to Heralic, his bot has fluid movement, a neural net, speech functions and stereo vision coupled with
facial recognition and tracking capabilities. We just hope that the pic shown, from Heralic’s website, is meant to
merely show HR-2’s scale, and not a predilection for playing with matches.





[Via Slashdot]

(Via engadget.com.)

Software Patents suck.

This patent appears to cover my Feed Reader and some RSS feeds that it reads.

Flexible subscription-based event notification: "Subscription-based notification using event channels that each correspond to a particular scope. Each channel manages notifications through the use of a a schema definition. The event subscriptions identify the position and attributes that any desired event notification"

(Via FreshPatents.com: Notable Patent Applications - 03/03/2005.)

Ladies & Gentlemen, welcome to Sunni Shia Deathmatch...

Interesting Times Ahead For My American Friends: "

President Bush will select U.S. Circuit Judge John Roberts Jr. to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the nation’s highest court.

A quick google finds this:

…those who know Roberts say he… is a reliable conservative who can be counted on to undermine if not immediately overturn liberal landmarks like abortion rights and affirmative action.

Indicators of his true stripes cited by friends include: clerking for Rehnquist, membership in the Federalist Society, laboring in the Ronald Reagan White House counsel’s office and at the Justice Department into the Bush years, working with Kenneth Starr among others, and even his lunchtime conversations at Hogan & Hartson. ‘He is as conservative as you can get,’ one friend puts it. In short, Roberts may combine the stealth appeal of Souter with the unwavering ideology of Scalia and Thomas…

"

(Via Warrenellis.com.)

Hello Soylent Green

Hello Soylent Green
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

The comments just keep getting better and better:

Hilarious Passion of the Christ poster in Japan: "Mark Frauenfelder:
Here's a crazy ad that appeared in a subway station in Tokyo for Passion of the Christ.

It appears that some advertising company was asked by a Tokyo distributor to do a special ad for Christmas for the Passion of the Christ DVD. Apparently nobody who was actually Christian got to review the ad before it was posted for thousands of people to see on their way home for Christmas Eve.

Not many Christians in Japan, I guess. I once asked a Japanese friend if he knew what Christmas was about. He said it was to commemorate 'Julius Christ's birthday.'

Link (thanks, Mark Hurst!)

Reader comment: Save Gallardo says: 'The whole thing with sects in a foreign land & collision of cultures is pretty interesting. I remember being approached by a Chinese Christian in Xian, (there's some irony there, I suppose), who didn't seem to have very firm grasp of his apparently new-found faith.

Anyway, I thought you might enjoy this story that Brad Warner, author of Hardcore Zen, and a Buddhist teacher who lived in Japan for many years tells about a debate he witnessed between Japanese Hare Krishnas & Japanese Jehovah's witnesses: Link

Reader comment: Tian says: 'My sister has been living in japan working for a pharmaceutical firm
for over ten years now. She said the Japanese celebrates Christmas by
eating KFC chicken. Apparently the resemblance between Colonel
Sanders and Santa Klaus has mislead them to believe the Jolly St. Nick
would jump down the chimney with buckets of delicious fried chicken.

what the hell, all you white people look alike."

(Via Boing Boing.)

Can somebody explain to me the point of a p2p file sharing application for a phone?

If you're already paying for the bandwidth that can support p2p, why not just carry a small laptop or computer with a normal sized OS around...

Symella, a Gnutella client for Symbian Smartphones: "

This is way cool! Download it here.

"

(Via Om Malik on Broadband.)

Overheard in my apartment: "The mouse is smarter than two lawyers, a businessman and a journalist."

There will be laws against this:

I decided to sleep with Nuvo next to me on my large bed, plugged in and recharging through the night. Its blue power light slowly pulsated, as if it were breathing.

During our first night together, I was woken by movement. Something had activated Nuvo, and it moved its arms slightly and turned its head toward me. Half asleep, and a little annoyed, I mumbled, "Nuvo, sleep," to which it shook its head no.

It took three tries before Nuvo straightened and shut down, the blue light serenely pulsating again. I was reminded of those sci-fi films in which robots, like HAL in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," turned on their keepers.

My boyfriend called me the next day and asked if I was sleeping in the same room with Nuvo. When I told him we were sleeping in the same bed, there was an awkward pause.

A brilliant article on companion robots interacting with humans, and it isn't even speculative fiction.

Dangerous

Discussion: New Sake Flights: "Co Co has added a Sake tasting to their drink menu. It is $10.50 and you choose three selections from four different types (Dry, Strong (I think), Mild & Other.)

They have a great selection of Sake & Shochu.

They also have a $19.99 all you can eat Sushi and a $25 all you can drink special 7 days a week.

The service is great!

co co sushi restaurant & bar
154 W 26th Street, New York, NY 10001
Between 6th & 7th Avenue
P: 212.243.4800 | F: 212.229.2073

http://www.cocosushi.com/

Lefty

Join this discussion.

"

(Via The New York Sake Meetup Group: What's New.)

I'm really really tempted to get this...

Left Behind: "

Left Behind is the latest free offering over at eReader and it sounds....a strange read. Passengers aboard a Boeing 747 en route to Europe disappear. Instantly. Nothing remains except their rumpled piles of clothes, jewelry, fillings, surgical pins, and the like. All over the world, in a flash, cars are left unmanned. Terror and chaos continues worldwide as the cataclysm unfolds. For those left behind, the apocalypse has just begun. This bestselling end-of-time fiction series tells the riveting stories of people who, after the rapture of the church are 'left behind' to experience the tribulation and other events prior to Christ's return to Earth. With the prophetic teachings of the Bible as the background, this dynamic apocalyptic series begins with this first volume.

(Via PalmAddicts.)

The term used by the US government for sending people to other countries to be interrogated by foreign intelligence services (read tortured) is "Extraordinary Rendition".

An interesting coincidence is the use of the term "rendition" in the context of sending escaped slaves back to the states of their origin in Antebellum America. This usage is found in South Carolina's Declaration of Independence during the US Civil War:

The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.

The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.

Ok, so maybe the Ginny thing was a bit over the top, but Weaseley's jinxed automatons spouting on the Rights of Man... Crazy and yet brilliant.

7 words you can't say in kindergarten.

CULTURE: Bale Banned From the Batmobile: "Christian Bale, who played the title role in Batman Begins, has been barred from driving the Batmobile in any future publicity outings after he got in an accident with it on the way to the film's Canadian premiere.

The disappointed star said: 'The best part of the job to be allowed to drive the Batmobile. But it's safe to say the locals were bemused to see it cruising down the street.



Unfortunately, one guy saw the Batmobile and completely freaked out. He must have thought aliens were coming to land and smacked into the side of it.That was the last time I was allowed to drive it on a public highway.'



'It really flies. I asked if I could keep it but they wouldn't let me!'

Bale then chopped the drunk driver into tiny bits with an axe.

(Written by: Keith)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

I don't want to give anything away, but Ginny, gay? Total bombshell.

END HP6
GOTO HP7

AUTOBOTS WRITE IN CAPS.

TOM DESANTO TRANSFORMERS PRODUCER: "

TO ALL THE FANS (BOTH AUTOBOT AND DECEPTICON) FROM ONE TRUE BELIEVER TO ANOTHER WELCOME TO THE LAUNCH OF THE TRANSFORMERS WEBSITE AND THE COUNTDOWN TO 07-04-07. MUCH LIKE THE BEGINNINGS OF X-MEN IT HAS BEEN A LONG AND HARD ROAD, BUT I PROMISE YOU IT WILL BE ALL WORTH IT. FROM THOSE FANS WHO KNOW ME FROM X-MEN AND GALACTICA THANKS FOR THE TREMENDOUS SUPPORT AND FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DON'T I AM THE FANBOY WRITER/PRODUCER WITH OVER 30,000 COMICS WHO GOT TO MAKE X-MEN, A MOVIE I DREAMED OF DOING SINCE I WAS A KID. AFTER X2 I WENT AFTER TRANSFORMERS, ANOTHER FILM I DREAMED OF MAKING ONE DAY ( I HAVE LIST OF DREAM MOVIES SO STAY TUNED ) AND AFTER A PHONE CALL TO MY FRIEND, BROTHER, AND FELLOW PRODUCER DON MURPHY, DON AGREED TO PARTNER WITH ME ON IT AND WE WENT INTO HASBRO. WE PITCHED OUR HEARTS OUT ON HOW WE WOULD HANDLE THEIR CHARACTERS AND LOW AND BEHOLD WE GOT THE RIGHTS AND WENT AROUND HOLLYWOOD KICKING DOWN ALL THE STUDIO DOORS ( DON IS THE MASTER OF THAT). WELL AFTER A LARGE STUDIO BATTLE, DREAMWORKS AND PARAMOUNT EMERGED VICTORIOUS AND WE COULD NOT ASK FOR BETTER PARTNERS. WITH STEVEN SPIELBERG EXEC. PRODUCING AND MICHAEL BAY DIRECTING WE COULD NOT ASK FOR A BETTER DREAM TEAM TO BRING OPTIMUS PRIME AND MEGATRON TO LIFE. SO REST EASY AND KNOW IF YOU ARE A FAN, THAT SO AM I AND I'M ON THE INSIDE AND WE WILL GET IT RIGHT, IF YOU ARE A NOT A FAN.... YOU WILL BE.


SPREAD THE WORD AND AUTOBOTS TRANSFORM,


TOM DESANTO

"

(Via Transformers LIVE.)

Human-nonhuman sex is legal in 17 states, including Washington State.

I assume that in the other 23 states, it is popular enough to be legislated upon.

CULTURE: Hung Like a Horse, Dead as a Doornail: "A Seattle man has died, and the cause of death has been ruled 'Death By Sex with a Horse'.



When a car dropped the man off for treatment, a camera picked up the license plate of the driver's car, which led police to find a farm, operating in Enumclaw, apparently known as a place people could go to have sex with livestock.

'A significant number of people, we believe, have likely visited this farm,' said [sheriff's Sgt. John ] Urquhart.'

The horse sustained no noted injury, and bestiality is not against the law in Washington State. However, authorities did express concern that animal cruelty could be a factor in the case.

'[...]because investigators found chickens, goats and sheep on the property, they are looking into whether animal cruelty — which is a crime — was committed by having sex with these smaller, weaker animals, he said.'

I am at a loss fo a witty comment, so will just say 'Euuuuuuggggh'.

(Written by: ElizaGirl)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

I've always like poutine...

Toyota Votes with Its Feet for the Canadian Model: "

Brayden King observes Toyota voting with its feet for the Canadian rather than the American model:

Pub Sociology: More concern about the costs of employing U.S. workers: Via the apostropher and Blog on the Run, I found this story about a new Toyota plant being built in Woodstock, Ontario... despite the offer of millions of dollars in subsidies to put the plant in the U.S.... Toyota is tired of training ignorant (i.e. illiterate) American workers, and the second is that in the long run it's cheaper to operate in Canada because of the reduction in corporate health care costs.

Industry experts say Ontarians are easier and cheaper to train - helping make it more cost-efficient to train workers when the new Woodstock plant opens in 2008, 40 kilometres away from its skilled workforce in Cambridge. 'The level of the workforce in general is so high that the training program you need for people, even for people who have not worked in a Toyota plant before, is minimal compared to what you have to go through in the southeastern United States,' said Gerry Fedchun, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association....

He said Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained - and often illiterate - workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use 'pictorials' to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment....

In addition to lower training costs, Canadian workers are also $4 to $5 cheaper to employ partly thanks to the taxpayer-funded health-care system in Canada, said federal Industry Minister David Emmerson.

'Most people don't think of our health-care system as being a competitive advantage,' he said.

...Universal health care might not be the anti-business gateway to socialism that some on the right want you to believe.... Other countries increasingly have a comparative advantage in production industries because their workers are better trained (or at least as well trained) and less costly.... [P]art of the U.S. disadvantage comes because the standard of living in the U.S. is so much higher... but if we offer a superior level of human capital we should be able to find a niche... when even that advantage begins to deteriorate (AND health care costs serve as a disincentive), we should be worried.

"

(Via Semi-Daily Journal.)

The trusty WRT54G routers I have deployed everywhere are starting to show their age. I'm suspecting some sort of wireless activity by newer routers that causes the wireless chipsets in the WRTs to go haywire.

On top of that, the reception in my room is extremely sketchy, and even though I have setup my Airport Express as a WDS (wireless distribution system) access point, my laptop with a first generation airport card can not connect, making it useless.

So I'm looking at replacing my primary router (I have two) with some Pre-N MIMO router.

The questions I have:

Will Pre-N routers have any better handling of 802.11b wireless cards (extended range)?

This is the primary reason I'm looking at these.

If this is true, can they handle MIMO/Pre-N mode simultaneously with 802.11g & 802.11b? Belkin's router specifically says that their router handles b,g & pre-m better than anybody else.

Also, what router would you recommend?

I'm thinking of the Belkin Router, though at $150, it is pretty expensive...

Alternatives?