It's Tough To Soar Like An Eagle When You Are Surrounded By Turkeys

Wake Up America!! From the WaPo

James Choate came to Washington last night from Birmingham, Ala., joining five friends on a mission to save the lives of American elementary school children.
Choate, who works in an advertising mailhouse back home, flew through scary thunderstorms to attend the Gathering of Eagles, where he and others stood wearing buttons that said "Never Trust Democrats with National Security."

Choate said he and his friend felt compelled to come to Washington because most Americans refused to believe that "the terrorists have got people planted all over the country from Al Queda who are preparing to go on one day into many elementary schools in our country and kill our children. We have this on good authority, we have sources."

Choate said he was disappointed to see how few people turned out to the Gathering of Eagles. "Most of the country doesn't want to believe it, " he said. "Everybody's getting a false feeling of security. Every morning, I wake up and just hope another 9-11 hasn't happened overnight."
Choate said he and his friends, who he called true patriots, are doing their duty to spread the word that "most Muslims are out to kill us or convert us to Islam."

Choate and his friends said the poor turnout was "disturbing," but said they nonetheless were stirred by the support of those who did attend; the group from Birmingham plans to spend the rest of the weekend seeing the sights of the nation's capital .

Emmy

Unbelievable.

Really. I didnt beleive my son when he told me this was an Emmy Award winning video. I'm ... speechless.



Actually, it's kind of catchy...

Random Bits of Conversation with my Son

Me: "...thats not a gun, it's a Wand of Ambulance of Summoning!"
Geoff: "+3 vs. trolls, orcs and muggers"

Geoff: "How about the National Terrorism Center?"
Me: "They can't call it that! They'd have to call it the National Counter-Counter Terrorism Center"

Geoff " ...on Fox!"
Me: "Fox is just a base propaganda channel"
Geoff: "Why do you think that?"
Me: "I heard it on the John Stewert"

Kathy Griffith is my New Hero

Wonderful!



In her speech, Griffin said that "a lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus."

She went on to hold up her Emmy, make an off-color remark about Christ and proclaim, "This award is my god now!"

"Kathy Griffin's offensive remarks will not be part of the E! telecast on Saturday night," the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences said in a statement Monday.

First Pavarotti Joke

Pavarotti arrives at the Pearly Gates and rings the bell
to be let in. St Peter opens up and says, "Oh it's you
Luciano, come on in, squeeze through".
Pavarotti says, "Hold on, I've got an envelope for you,
from the Pope". St Peter opens it up and reads it...

..HERE'S THAT TENOR I OWE YOU'

(say it out loud if you dont get it)

Arecibo to Close??

Sad if true

The National Science Foundation, which has long funded the dish, has told the Cornell University-operated facility that it will have to close if it cannot find outside sources for half of its already reduced $8 million budget in the next three years -- an ultimatum that has sent ripples of despair through the scientific community.

While I strongly agree that we need to do more hard science and I understand that something has to give to fund new projects, it would be a shame to close Arecibo.

Chaos Hawks

Well said:

Having admitted, however, that the odds of a military success in Iraq are almost impossibly long, Chaos Hawks nonetheless insist that the U.S. military needs to stay in Iraq for the foreseeable future. Why? Because if we leave the entire Middle East will become a bloodbath. Sunni and Shiite will engage in mutual genocide, oil fields will go up in flames, fundamentalist parties will take over, and al-Qaeda will have a safe haven bigger than the entire continent of Europe.

Needless to say, this is nonsense. Israel has fought war after war in the Middle East. Result: no regional conflagration. Iran and Iraq fought one of the bloodiest wars of the second half the 20th century. Result: no regional conflagration. The Soviets fought in Afghanistan and then withdrew. No regional conflagration. The U.S. fought the Gulf War and then left. No regional conflagration. Algeria fought an internal civil war for a decade. No regional conflagration.

Maybe It's My Lack of Imagination

MIT re-invents the billboard with the Hyposurface!

(via)

Reaction to the Hyposurface usually evolves quickly from "What could this be used for?" to "What couldn't this be used for?"

Color me pedestrian but I dont see much here. Sure it's cool and all, but this looks like any number of trade-show gimmicks one can see at Sibos, SIFMA or any other tradeshow where folks have more money than sense.

Like the digital waterfall (here running for Jeep)

Security Theater (of the Absurd)

Well done!

Eight ABC cast and crew members and three hired drivers have been charged with entering a restricted area without justification.

The group was arrested after staging a fake motorcade through Sydney's CBD and were stopped near the InterContinental Hotel where US President George W Bush is staying.

One of the Chaser crew was dressed as Osama bin Laden. (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Australia has spent $A165 million on security for APEC. There have been black hawk helicopters, police and troops and snipers deployed as well as this concrete and 10 foot high wire fence erected that surrounds the CBD of Sydney. It has created absolute havoc with traffic, public transport and people trying to get to work. You can't get over the bridge into the city. An absolute mess, and the folks of Sydney are a bit pissed with it all. But hey, there is this VERY real risk of terrorism we are told ad nauseum, so what the heck. It must all be necessary. It's a bargain for $A165 million, to guarantee our safety.

Then these guys from the ABC comedy show, The Chasers War on Everything, are able to put together a fake Canadian diplomatic motorcade of a limo with 2 escort SUVs with little Canadian flags flapping, and that was good enough to get past $A165 million dollars worth of security planning and three security checkpoints and pull up to the front of the Intercontinental Hotel where President Bush was staying on the 29th floor.

The comedian actor Chas Licciardello, who was dressed and disguised as Osama Bin Laden, popped out of the limo at the hotel and reportedly shouted "Where is my friend Bush? It has all been a misunderstanding!!!" Now the police recognise that something is not quite right and they pounce on the perpetrators, and arrest all involved, 11 in total.

The police officials and Minister of Police and various and sundry other authorities went into major spin damage control, even claiming that the security was good because arrests were made. (email from a reader).

Why It's Likely I'll Write in Ron Paul for President

From the GOP debate on Wednesday:

MR. HUME: This round of questions is going to be based on a scenario which we think is quite plausible that any of you as president might well end up facing. It concerns Iran, and these are the circumstances.
Its nuclear program has continued to advance. U.N. weapons inspectors have -- are now saying that it appears that Iran is on the verge of being able to produce and may even be producing nuclear weapons. Iran has suspended its cooperation with the U.N. nuclear agency and asked the inspectors to leave the country. Cross-border incidents in Iraq involving elements of the Revolutionary Guard that continue to increase and are a continuing problem for U.S. forces there and for the Iraqis as well. The U.N. Security Council has imposed some economic sanctions on Iran, but has refused to authorize the use of force against that country. In addition, the threats by Iran’s leader against Israel have become more pronounced and more extreme.
What do you do?
Congressman Paul.

REP. PAUL: For one thing, one thing I would remember very clearly is the president doesn’t have the authority to go to war -- (cheers) -- he goes to the Congress.

MR. HUME: What do you do? So what do you do? (Applause.)

REP. PAUL: He goes to the Congress and finds out if there’s any threat to our national security. And thinking back to the 1960s when I was in the Air Force for five years -- and with the Cold War going on, and the Soviets had 40,000, and we stood them down and we didn’t have to have a nuclear confrontation -- I would say that we should go very cautiously. We should back off. We should be talking to Iran right now. We shouldn’t be looking for the opportunity to attack them. They are at the present time, according to the AEIA (sic/IAEA), cooperating, and by the end of the year they’re supposed to be willing to reveal all that they are doing.

So instead of looking for this scenario where it is inevitable that we have to attack, I think we ought to be talking about how do you get along with some people that are deadly like the Soviets and the Chinese and the many others. We don’t have to resort to war every single time there’s a confrontation.

I almost always vote for the person I think should actually be president, regardless of whether or not they are running. In 1996 I wrote in Colin Powell. I broke that rule in 2004 and voted for Kerry because I believed the stakes were too high not to. We could do a lot worse than Ron Paul, and frankly, we have.

Conservapedia *has* to be a Joke...

From the Conservative Alternative to Wiki:

Kangaroos

According to the origins theory model used by young earth creation scientists, modern kangaroos are the descendants of the two founding members of the modern kangaroo baramin that were taken aboard Noah's Ark prior to the Great Flood. It has not yet been determined by baraminologists whether kangaroos form a holobaramin with the wallaby, tree-kangaroo, wallaroo, pademelon and quokka, or if all these species are in fact apobaraminic or polybaraminic.

After the Flood, these kangaroos bred from the Ark passengers migrated to Australia. There is debate whether this migration happened over land[6] with lower sea levels during the post-flood ice age, or before the supercontinent of Pangea broke apart[7], or if they rafted on mats of vegetation torn up by the receding flood waters.[6] The idea that God simply generated kangaroos into existence there is considered by most creation researchers to be contra-Biblical.
Other views on kangaroo origins include the belief of some Australian Aborigines that kangaroos were sung into existence by their ancestors during the "Dreamtime" [8] and the evolutionary view that kangaroos and the other marsupials evolved from a common marsupial ancestor which lived hundreds of millions of years ago.[9]

A majority of biologists regard evolution as the most likely explanation for the origin of species including the kangaroo.

Sweet Jesus

Shuttle Endeavor Photos

Props to McBride for passing this along, these are amazing and beautiful.

The Very Axis of Evil

From PZ Myers:

The managing editor of a small town newspaper in Wisconsin, Rose Eddy, is very upset with certain vicious hate groups, so she made up a list for her staff and announced that they will not be accepting ads or information from them, ever. And then she publicized it, declaring her unimpeachable moral probity in the pages of her newspaper. Here's her list of awful, terrible people who must not appear in print:

The Nazi Party. Bad, very bad. I think this one has been condemned by history well enough.

Al Qaeda. A known terrorist organization that wants to destroy America — the very symbol of evil today.

The Ayn Rand Institute. Um, well. OK. They are kind of selfish libertarian creepazoids, who seem to be infamously pretentious … but they don't seem to be quite in the same category as Nazis and fanatical terrorists.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Nazis, Al Qaeda, Ayn Rand, Elvis, and atheists. Ms Rose Eddy has a very peculiar pattern of discrimination, I think. How could she have left off mimes, Amway salesmen, and Paris Hilton?

Physics and Economics

There is an interesting article over in Slate this week based on this paper mapping economic output networks of nations. The goal is to answer a deceptively simple question, “why are poor nations poor?”. The answer, it seems, is pretty complicated and has more to do with synergistic network effects than it does with basics like natural resources or access to transportation networks (e.g. the sea). Worth a read when you have a chance as it lays out a strategy for building a set of incentives that would move a national economy to a more successful probability space.

That is, if you assume an economy is a sphere…

The physicists' map shows each economy in this network of products, by highlighting the products each country exported. Over time, economies move across the product map as their export mix changes. Rich countries have larger, more diversified economies, and so produce lots of products—especially products close to the densely connected heart of the network. East Asian economies look very different, with a big cluster around textiles and another around electronics manufacturing, and—contrary to the hype—not much activity in the products produced by rich countries. African countries tend to produce a few products with no great similarity to any others.

That could be a big problem. The network maps show that economies tend to develop through closely related products. A country such as Colombia makes products that are well connected on the network, and so there are plenty of opportunities for private firms to move in to, provided other parts of the business climate allow it. But many of South Africa's current exports—diamonds, for example—are not very similar to anything.

At Work

A conversation:

Brian Jackson [11:34 AM]:
we should expand the alphabet to ensure that all TLAs are unique
Mark Horvath [11:34 AM]:
then makes words out of the letters
it would be a TLAacaust

Other Heroes News

A New Trailer and a New Interview(Spoilers).
The Flying Petrelli Brothers and, unfortunately, about Syler seem to be regulars now.

Am Excellent Review of the New (and last) Harry Potter Book

Though the book's low print run makes it obscure and hard to find, you might be able to track down a copy at your local bookstore, if you search hard and check that it hasn't fallen behind works by more successful authors.

here. Spoiler light and I agree with the jist of it.

Syler is Spock!

Holy cow!

Where the Dinosaurs Went

A strange and somewhat mystifying blend of fiction, some facts, more fiction and enough illogic to make Spock bleed from the ears.

Of course, it's a Genuine Chick Track!

Getting Frugal with the Sun

How long is the Sun going to last? According to our best understanding of astrophysics today, the total lifespan should be around 12 billion years, of which we have arrived at about the halfway point.

But what if we built a Dyson sphere? Could we extend the life of the Sun indefinately? One astronomer thinks so:

So just how much energy is available? If all the Sun’s mass converted to energy at current output it would last 14.5 trillion years. But it’s a giant fusion reactor instead. Proton-proton fusion, and associated reactions, convert 0.7% of the mass into energy. As the Sun is currently 74% hydrogen, proton-proton fusion would last 75 billion years using all the hydrogen. If we ignited helium fusion after that we might get another 30 billion years.

Some of the energy involved in the Sun’s evolution is from gravitational collapse. About half the Sun’s mass will collapse into a white dwarf liberating a few billion years worth. If the Sun could be collapsed further then even more would be liberated. The absolute limit is, of course, when the Schwarzschild radius is reached and we’ve made a black hole. If we collapsed the Sun into a quark-star just 6 km in radius we might extra a few trillion years of energy out of it.

Via reverse baryogenesis we might then extract all the mass-energy out of the remaining quark mass, thus getting the full 14.5 trillion years. All up we might extract 20 trillion years out of the Sun. But what happens then?

It's an interesting article, here.

The exactly, polar opposite is here.

Dear Miriam...

Home

It' like they know my secret dreams...

Well Said

This pretty much sums up my view, although I tend to be a bit harsher.

I have never believed that the American people are unwilling to take casualties in war. I do think that they are unwilling to take casualties in a war they do not believe is justified, or that is being badly run. And who can blame them?

...

To my mind, our prosecution of the war in Iraq has been only slightly less incompetent than that. George W. Bush is not so childish that he thinks that you can kill people by pointing your finger at them and saying "BANG!" But he is childish enough to think that looking tough is a substitute for serious thought and careful planning; that striking an attitude is all you need to do to get what you want.

Showing the People our Balls

The U.S. military said Monday it regretted any offense it may have caused by giving out a soccer ball with the word Allah written on it as part of a public relations exercise in Afghanistan.

At least one of several balls dropped by helicopter to children in eastern Khost province had a small picture of the Saudi Arabian flag. The flag features in Arabic script the Islamic declaration of faith, which contains the words Allah and the Prophet Muhammad.

Villagers were “upset and angry” when they saw the ball, said Khost Gov. Arsalah Jamal.

“They wanted to demonstrate, but we explained to them it was a mistake,” he said.

Muslims treat with the utmost respect any printed matter containing verses of the Koran or the name of Allah or his prophet on it. Most would find the idea of kicking a ball emblazoned with those two names as deeply offensive.

here

Even I know better than to do this. Every time I look at the way the wars are being run, I keep asking myself, "just how many clowns are going to get out of this car?"

Future Darwin Award Winners

It's simply a matter of time.


(via)

Ask Miss South Carolina!

This is what happens when media training goes wrong.

In her defense, I can tell she's trying in her own way to bring the answer back to her talking points, which seem to have something to do with the poor, Iraq, South Africa and lip gloss.

(via)

Her Name was Bertha, Bertha Butt, one of the Butt sisters

a blast from the past. More specifically, a song from 1972 or so:

"Troglodyte"
(As recorded by Jimmy Castor Bunch)
JIMMY CASTOR BUNCH

What we're gonna do right here is go back
Way back into time
When the only people that existed were Troglodytes
Cave men, cave woman, Neadrothol, Troglodytes
Imagine the average cave man at home
Listening to his stereo
Sometimes he'd get up and dance
He'd move something like this "dance dance"
He'd get tired of dancing alone and look in the mirror
And say "gotta find a woman"
"Gotta find a woman, gotta find a woman, gotta find a woman"
Then he'd go down to the lake where all the girls
Would be swimming or washing clothes or something
And he'd grab one by the hair
You can't do that today fellas
'Cause it might come off
You have a hand full of hair
And she'd be swimming away from you
This was a big woman, big
Her name was Bertha, Bertha Butt -- one of the Butt sisters
She looked down on him
And started to crush him
Then she began to play him
He looked up at her and said "sock it to me"
"Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me"
She looked down on him
And said "I'll sock it to you daddy"
And you know what he said
He started it all way back then
I ain't gonna lie to you
He said "right on, right on"
Hot pants, hot pants
Uh uh uh.

(c) Copyright 1972 by Jimpire Music.- HIT PARADER, October 1972

Bill Nye Will Be Joining Us in Hell

Oh Bill, you damned, damned scientific you,

Bill Nye, the harmless children's edu-tainer known as "The Science Guy," managed to offend a select group of adults in Waco, Texas at a presentation, when he suggested that the moon does not emit light, but instead reflects the light of the sun.

As even most elementary-school graduates know, the moon reflects the light of the sun but produces no light of its own.

But don't tell that to the good people of Waco, who were "visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence," according to the Waco Tribune.

Nye was in town to participate in McLennan Community College's Distinguished Lecture Series. He gave two lectures on such unfunny and adult topics as global warming, Mars exploration, and energy consumption.

But nothing got people as riled as when he brought up Genesis 1:16, which reads: "God made two great lights -- the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.

"The lesser light, he pointed out, is not a light at all, but only a reflector.

At this point, several people in the audience stormed out in fury. One woman yelled "We believe in God!" and left with three children, thus ensuring that people across America would read about the incident and conclude that Waco is as nutty as they'd always suspected.

This story originally appeared in the Waco Tribune, but the newspaper has mysteriously pulled its story from the online version, presumably to avoid further embarassment.http://www.wacotrib.com/news/content/news/stories/2006/04/06/04062006wacbillnye.html

Bedtime for Gonzo

I had wondered why the Senate had given in on the President's unconstitutional wiretapping program, even if only for the next six months. I had half-suspected that Bush had given them Gonzales because, pretty much, that would be the only horse worth trading. It seems that intuition was astute and I should have listened to it more carefully.

Now it gets very interesting. I wonder if part of the deal was an agreement from the Senate to confirm Bush's next choice. Seems likely as Gonzales, and his refusal to prosecute contempt of congress charges, was the only thing standing between the President and any real oversight. Assuming Congress does it job, it's now possible to get Rove up on the hill. Also, props to the White House for a) releasing this on a Monday to avoid the Sunday news shows and b) doing this on the weekend before Labor Day. Should be interesting.

Also, on another note, I'm back from 2 weeks of moving, travel and general tomfoolery.

Employee Evaluations

I once wrote the shortest, cruelest, employee evaluation ever. It was for an older employee who was trying to "break into" the software programming business at age 60. After a year of futile attempts to write programs, he came up for evaluation. The sum total of my comments follows, verbatim:

D.N.R.



----- Original Message -----
From:
Sent: Friday, August 17, 2007 7:50 PM
Subject: FW: Evals
Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 09:56:49 -0700F
These are actual quotes taken from Federal Government employee >performance>evaluations...
1. "Since my last report, this employee has reached rock-bottom and has>started to dig."
>>2. "I would not allow this employee to breed."
>>3. "This employee is really not so much of a has-been, but more of a definite won't be."
>>4. "Works well when under constant supervision and cornered like a rat in a>trap."
>>5. "The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
>>6. "This young lady has delusions of adequacy."
>>7. "He sets low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve>them."
>>8. "This employee is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot."
>>9. "This employee should go far, and the sooner he starts, the better."
>>10. "Got a full 6-pack, but lacks the plastic thingy to hold it all tog>ether."
>>11. "A gross ignoramus -- 144 times worse than an ordinary ignoramus."
>>12. "He doesn't have ulcers, but he's a carrier."
>>13. "Some drink from the fountain of knowledge; he only gargled."
>>14. "Takes him 2 hours to watch '60-minutes'."
>>15. "He's been working with glue too much."
>>16. "He would argue with a sign post."
>>17. "He brings a lot of joy whenever he leaves the room."
>>18. "One neuron short of a synapse."
>>19. "If you see two people talking and one looks bored, he's the other one."
>>20. "A photographic memory but with the lens cover glued on."
>>21. "A prime candidate for natural de-selection."
>>22. "Donated his brain to science before he was done using it."
>>23. "Gates are down, the lights are flashing, but the train isn't coming."
>>24. "He's got two brains cells, one is lost and the other is out looking for it."
>>25. "If he were any more stupid, he'd have to be watered twice a week."
>>26. "If you give him a penny for his thoughts, you'd get c hange.">
>27. "If you stand close enough to him, you can hear the ocean."
>>28. "It's hard to believe he beat out 1,000,000 other sperm."
>>29. "When she opens her mouth, it seems that it is only to change feet."
>>30. "When his IQ reaches 50, he should sell."

Second Life Homes

The NYT takes up Second Life home design. Personally, thats why I particiapte in SL at all. I enjoy building, designing and selling homes and, frankly, I dont have enough liquid cash in RL to take the exposure you have when working with real homes. I have made a minor business out of buying, improving and selling properties, just profitable enough for me to build the next one.

It's nice to finally have a hobby that doesn't involve counting aces and 10s.

"Verily, verily, I say unto thee that thine energy is as thine mass times the speed of light multiplied unto itself."

... things Jesus should have said if he wanted me to believe.

This is an excellent essay, pointed out to me by another Pastafarin, Brian.

Interestingly, the theist response is completely based on the logic of proving negatives, e.g. prove Jesus didn't exist, prove all religions are false etc.

Fun with Wiki!

From the always wonderful, Wonkette!

...some rakish Wikipedia vandal erases the entire entry for Harry Potter and replaces it with “Snape is the half-blood prince and kills Dumbledore.” This hilarious prankster’s IP address was logged, as in all Wikipedia edits, and it turns out it came from the Republican Party of Minnesota. This is just one of the many little treats revealed by a new site that lists all edits made by any organization you can think of whose offices have internet access. Wired is tracking the better ones, and here are some of our favorites...

Wired's list here

I have to admit, it 's a little more bi-partisan than I thougth it would be.

The Same Color Illusion

A little mind-blowing...

In case you were wondering, one of the guys at work shows they are, in fact, the same.

wiggy!

Hippies!

Hooray for my people!

Emotion is the Enemy When Trading

This is very funny!

"... and I *hate* mushrooms!"

Moved

I finally completed my move this weekend, collecting all the stuff I've had in various forms of storage for the past 18-60 months, and putting it in one condo. It's a very nice 1200, penthouse in Belltown, exactly 12 feet above the apartment Microsoft corporate housing had placed me in.

I've started to purge stuff, but I have found all sorts of unexpected surprises including:

My old Astronomy 101/201 lectures (still good!)
Old photos from different phases of my life
A whole cache of Geoff's baby pictures (birth -> 8 years old)
An unopened box (still sealed in myler) of 3rd Issue Magic the Gathering cards (circa 1994)
A whole cache of old MtG decks I had built.
A full set of calaphon cookware
Old art I made at the beginning of my art career.
A custom tailored, blue sport coat I had made in 1995 (not even close to fitting but I did salvage the gold buttons)
A bunch of King Richard's Faire stuff I bought in the mid-90s, including an elvish looking wool cloak (itchy), a pirate shirt (moth eaten), a vest (colorful but now ill fitting), and an elf-hat.
Tax returns galore!
An old Galactic Cannibles T-Shirt from my grad-school softball team.
Diplomas from Penn State (B.S. Astronomy) and Seoul National University (Ph.D. in Mathematics)
Stock Certificates from Kurzweil AI, CertCo and Lernout and Hauspie (all defunct).
My original offer letter from the University of Massachusettes.
Pictures of various New Years Eve and Superbowl Parties from when I lived on Ringgold Street.
An unopened card from my mother dating back to the late 90's
Pictures of my Grandfather (now deceased 20 years).
Pictures of the $10,100 home my then sister-in-law purchased for our small family in Altoona.
My stone from Old Main at Penn State (chipped out of the foundation of the building during a drunken binge in 1985, this thing weighs 30 lbs if an ounce).
My ancient Bose speakers.
Insulin with an expiration date of Nov. 1988
A picture of me from my brief (2 session) modeling career at UMass.
Old computer programs from the VAX.
Ugly, ugly shirts from a time in my life when I had even *less* style than I do now.
A box of Christmas Presents for my sister I never sent (they are from Tiffany's and I'm going to send them this weekend).

more as boxes get unpacked...

And He Build a Crooked House

For those few of you who a) aren't furries but b) have a passing interest in Second Life, I have finally designed and built a house from the ground up.

Kings Bishop (80,80)

Also, I am selling non-existant land for non-existant Linden Dollars and make a real US$ profit:
Bundz (224,96)

Warrior Forge

I picked him up at Fort Lewis on Friday. He did well, is in good shape and pretty excited about his future career. They must have exhausted him because he slept for 5 hours once I got him home, despite the hub-bub of moving. He's also told me he slept 15 hours the first night back.

He left me a cache of all his pictures from the camp, which I'll post up or host this evening. (unless he beats me too it).

All in all, it was pretty good. I have to admit, I thought it was a bit of a rubber stamp, but cadets were dropped as late as the day before graduation. He told me the tale of "Scrunchy" a "guy in his troop who had been enlisted in another branch before and was being a jerk to his teammates the whole time. He failed Land Navigation four times and was on his final attempt the day before graduation. He was lost, naturally, and asked another cadet (to whom he was a jerk) for help and was refused. "Please, you gotta help! If I fail out, I'll have to go live with my Mom!" Poor Scrunchy.

Their training also included "cultural awareness" which caused me to raise an eyebrow. He explained,

Geoff: "Well, they had to after what happened last year. See, we do these role play exercises where privates and other enlisted pretend to be civilians in villages. We are given a mission, say, capture a terrorist, and we have to work with the "civilians" to achieve the objective. There are a lot of variables and so sometimes the missions change mid-way through, and the privates are generally jerks to us, so they love it.

Apparently last year one of the cadets was a little too "gung ho" with one of the sessions. A private was playing the part of a village elder and the cadet was supposed to persuade him into giving up some information on the position of some insurgents. The cadet was rude and obnoxious so the private wouldn’t tell him what he wanted to know. The cadet solved the problem by putting a bag over his head and mock-executing him!"

Me: "wow!"

Geoff: "The cadet was expelled and off the base in under two hours, which is pretty impressive since they were deep in the wilderness."

Me:"hahahahaha"

Geoff: "And now we have to have cultural awareness training instead of hand grenade training"

Me: "actually, it's the same. These are just verbal grenades"


Also, his camp was called "Warrior Forge" which made me think of something Klingon. Geoff noted that this was the latest in a string of continually improving names.

Geoff: "It started as Summer Camp"
Me: "Where you made wallets?"
Geoff: "Exactly! so they improved the name in the '90s"
Me: "Kamp Krusty?"
Geoff: "no, to Adventure Camp"
Me: "hahahahahahahahahahaha sounds like it ought to have a water slide and a man in a Batman costume"
Geoff: "So you see, Warrior Forge is actually a huge improvement..."

Quiz Time

First, I took this:

You Are 52% Democrat

You aren't a full fledged Democrat yet, but it's likely the party that fits you best. You probably consider yourself an independent Democrat. You usually support the party, but you also think for yourself!

How Democrat Are You?

Not surprising, I thougth it would come out about there

Then this:

You Are 4% Republican

If you have anything in common with the Republican party, it's by sheer chance. You're a staunch liberal, and nothing is going to change that!

How Republican Are You?

I think the test is a mess. I could only find one thing I agreed with and then only in part. If those statements are representive of the true state of the GOP, they are dead already.

And this:

You Are 91% Feminist

You are a total feminist. This doesn't mean you're a man hater (in fact, you may be a man). You just think that men and women should be treated equally. It's a simple idea but somehow complicated for the world to put into action.

Are You a Feminist?

This was almost completely a set of questions about personal choice, and I beleive the more more choice the better. That it applied to women was incidental to my answers.

I'm not sure that qualifies me as a "feminist" as much as it would a "libertarian".

Then this!

You Are a Learning Cook

You've got the makings of an excellent cook, and the desire to be one. But right now, you're just lacking the experience. You couldn't be a top chef yet, but you could be an apprentice.

Are You A Good Cook?

I like cooking! It's like chemistry you can eat afterwards. Safely. Without bugs crawlign under your skin. Usually.

(via)

Progress in the Containment of Anti-Matter

Cool!

HiPAT is part of the incremental work that needs doing as we build the capacity to create more antimatter and store it efficiently. But there are other storage approaches, as exemplified by the work of Japanese researcher Masaki Hori. Currently working at the Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics, Hori wants to change the paradigm by using radio frequency waves rather than magnetic fields to store anti-protons. He calls his device a ’superconducting radiofrequency quadrupole trap.’ and thinks it can offer antimatter storage in a device the size of an office wastebasket. His next move is to go to work on what’s in it.

Also in Second Life News

I was on vacation all last week and had some time for a project I wanted to do. I've had a design for a house kicking around in the back of my head for awhile now, so I bought some land in a nice region of SL and built it from scratch. Check it out if you ever go into SL

Kings Bishop 64,80

The Bank Run

Wonkette has the goods on the current financial crisis in Second Life:

The current crisis revolves around Ginko Financial, a Second Life bank that was offering ludicrously high interest rates. Ginko, which is actually based in real-life Brazil, somehow, now apparently can’t just print more Second Life funny money to pay off the debts, so there’s danger of a big panic. Think of the run on the bank scene in It’s A Wonderful Life, except instead of heartfelt speeches and ordinary Americans worried about their life savings, there are big-breasted furries and forty-foot-long penises.
As panic spreads throughout the user base of the phony baloney video game/virtual porn dungeon, expect to see the John Edwards Second Life campaign headquarters torn apart by a desperate mob, its constituent pixels used to buy virtual food and huge flying turds for a terrified populace.

Department of I-Swear-I-Am-Not-Making-This-Up

what I have wanted since I was 12 years old... a Vomit Ray!!

The plan is that riot-boffins from Pennsylvania State University's Institute of Nonlethal Defense Technology, will try the vomit-dazzle beam out on volunteers this autumn. Hopefully they'll do it on a tiled floor, or put down some plastic sheet or something.
"There's one wavelength that gets everybody," chortled Lieberman, worryingly. "Vlad calls it the evil color."
Good old Vlad. What a card.

I will pay *any* amount of money for this.

*any*

Dignity

Yeah! Get some perspective!

Rome

I had a chance during the last few days to watch the first 11 episodes of HBO's "Rome".

Really outstanding! Well worth your time and energy, I cant wait for the second season to come out on DVD. I have to admit, I'm a late student to Roman history, but I have really enjoyed it lately as I catch up. If I were teaching a class, I'd definately use scenes out of it to teach specific principles of government, freedom, populism and class warfare.

Really well done.

Bruce v. TSA

Bruce Schneier, security expert and cryppie, interviews the head of the TSA. Question 1:


Bruce Schneier: By today's rules, I can carry on liquids in quantities of three ounces or less, unless they're in larger bottles. But I can carry on multiple three-ounce bottles. Or a single larger bottle with a non-prescription medicine label, like contact lens fluid. It all has to fit inside a one-quart plastic bag, except for that large bottle of contact lens fluid. And if you confiscate my liquids, you're going to toss them into a large pile right next to the screening station -- which you would never do if anyone thought they were actually dangerous.
Can you please convince me there's not an Office for Annoying Air Travelers making this sort of stuff up?

The answer here.

Spoiler: they are, in fact, just making shit up.

Politics + Religion = Rational Discourse

or, sometimes not. The Kansas GOP seems to be moving from a philosophical/political movement to a quasi-religion.

More worrisome for the GOP have been the high-profile defections we saw in 2006. First, the former head of the Kansas Republican Party, Mark Parkinson, left the party to become the running mate of Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. The pair won easily.
Then former Johnson County District Attorney Paul Morrison left the GOP to run for state attorney general, trouncing the Republican incumbent, Phill Kline.

There were others, and there are bound to be more now that moderate Republicans have learned the secret to beating their conservative adversaries: Avoid a losing battle in the primary, where the most-conservative voters hold sway. Switch parties and eke it out in the general, winning the support of Democrats, independents and moderate Republicans.

Maybe this isn't a loyalty issue so much as it's one of substance. To be fair, the Dems flirted with some pretty quirky ideas also when they were lost in the woods.

Personally, I vote for the candidate that makes the most sense, which means no one I have voted for has won an office in more than a decade.

Except Barney Frank and Ted Kennedy.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Kennedy. But, he's a very senior guy who knows all the rules and delivers the goods. And once in a while he stands up for things I think are right. His past is, lets say, water under the bridge,

43

FTR, today is my 43rd birthday. I am more surprised than the rest of you that I lived this long, more proof of the lack of a vengful god. Here's to another year of apostasy!

Angels, meet Pin: Pin, Angels

The god-volken are having the usual sectarian debate about who is more correct in their ghost hunting, Brownback or Huckabee.

"Last Sunday, the Brownback for President campaign privately contacted the Huckabee campaign and asked them to intervene and stop this anti-Catholic whisper campaign," said John Rankin, Iowa communications director of Brownback for President. "After two days, the Huckabee campaign did not respond, which left the impression that they would not take action to end the anti-Catholic whisper campaign by their supporters. While we are all delighted that Mr. Saltsman is a lifelong Catholic, we deplore the anti-Catholic whisper campaign being perpetuated by Huckabee supporters. The Huckabee campaign's response lacked a clear denunciation of the offensive contents of the email."

This happens when you ust make shit up and expect everyone to believe. Would you feel comfortable with either of their fingers on the nuclear trigger? Me either.

Asperger test

I, for one, have never self-diagnosed with Asperger's although I can certainly see some of the more obvious symptoms in my personality, e.g. strong concentration skills especially with numbers, a rich inner life, introversion, noticing details other folks miss etc. I've always assumed that these characteristics are also shared with general intelligence and I, frankly, got a pretty full helping of that. I've worked fairly hard the last 15 years or so to become less introverted and more social, something I think an Asperger's patient would not do. Also, among a certain set, a self-diagnosis of Asperger's becomes an excuse for being lazy or rude and not putting any energy into social dynamics.

So I took the following test pretty honestly, but expected a negative result: AQ Test
Guess what?

I don't have Aspergers! I scored a 22, within the error bar for the average computer scientist and a little below the average math contest winner. I was very slightly dissapointed with the latter.

I was actually a little worried at one point in the test because it asked about randomly memorizing license plates and phone numbers. "ut oh!", I thought, then remembered not only the phone number of the hotel I am staying in (which I dialed a month ago), but the license plate numbers of my last 3 rental cars. "hmmmm.. not good"

It's nice to know this is "normal" behavior.

Klielbasia, The Accordion Playing, Lunch Lady Drag Queen

Provincetown has a lot entertainment to offer, some of it unique, even to a world traveling, play-going dillitante like myself. So when I was handed a flyer for Kielbasia, by a tall, accordion wielding drag queen with a hair net, I was not taken too far aback. Normally drag shows can be funny and, as a class, I've never met a group with a faster, sharper sense of humor than drag queens. As some of you know my mother's parents are Polish, so Kielbasa, Accordions and Polkas are all part of my childhood, although I have never seen them presented in drag form before. So I bought a ticket for the 10 pm show and had a drink.

It's impossible to summerize her act here. Anything you can think of pales in comparison. Let's just say, if you see this, you'll never look at polkas the same way again...

War and Chickenhawks

Glenn Greenwald unpacks the myths (and truths) in Dean Bartlett's 9/11 generation. Dean's particular line of reasoning I find unusually offensive. If I became a proponant of a war, I am 100% certain I would find a way to substantively support it financially, and physically. Dean's "logic" and, by proxy the logic of those who have been writing similar agitprop, is basically that of the younger, tag-along brother. It conflates just wars for a purpose with all wars, generalizes issues of freedom and liberty, and, to be honest, takes credit for other people's work. Both pieces are worth a read becuase Dean is so unabashedly dishonest in his arguement.

The question I still have after reading it though is this: who is he writing *for*? The President has a jaw-dropping 71% disapproval rating becuase the american public has finally given up listening to him. Even the right is beginning to suspect that, after 5 years, the plan may be a bit off track. Who is reading this stuff anyway?

Or is it just to annoy people like me, who went against this at the beginning? Is this just sand-in-the-eye stuff?

"The Only Newspaper Brave Enough To Tell The Truth" Closes it's Doors

One of my absolutely favorite newspaper, the Weekly World News, is closing it’s doors after almost 30 years. I loved this rag, simply because a) it was so silly and b) I knew one of the guys who wrote Ed Anger.

My all time favorite story was “Moon Is Giant Space Creature’s Skull”, but I can’t find an online reference to it.

My Technical Writing instructor at Penn State had a side job writing the Ed Anger column for awhile in the late 80’s, which was a lot of fun. Tom was actually one of the best teachers I ever had, giving us very clear directions on how to breakdown writing, data presentation and logic very clearly to get to the point, training I still use to this very day. We asked him once how he wrote the Ed Anger column,

“Well, first I start drinking… then I call a friend and start talking. We try to think of 3 unrelated things, then link them together. For example, the other night we came up with Arabs, the Olympics and transsexuals. We then link them together in headline form, hence: Cheating Towelheads Stole Our Gold Medals! The rest just writes itself…”

I, for one, will miss it..

Select articles from the WWN

An At Home Fusion Reactor

Summary:
A 4" diameter stainless steel fusor with a 1" stainless steel spherical inner grid
0-30KV 15mA power supply (homemade, variable)
20 micron vacuum pump (modified for more convenient intake)

Hopefully, when the plasma is present the pressure will dip into the ~5 micron (or less) range so that I won't have to waste too much Deuterium.

When the fusor is done, it will be able to perform Deuterium + Deuterium fusion to create 3He + n (50% of the time) and Tritum (3H) + p (50% of the time). It is able to overcome the coloumb barrier with the very large electrostatic field that can be created (in excess of 30KeV) and therefore is explained by physics - this is NOT cold fusion! In fact, it isn't anything new; this system of fusion has been around since the 1960s when Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of electronic television, came up with the idea. It was later improved by Hirsch and Meeks.

here

(via)

I need to have a good long look at the physics behind this. It would be kind of cool to build one of these though.

UPDATE: Sweet Jesus! It's real!

On October 8, 1960, the Mark I produced a steady­state neutron count when deuterium was admitted into the device with very low power application. The central feature during these tests was not the neutron count itself. What was sought in these tests lay in the control of the reaction under increasing power application. Farnsworth established and charted increasing neutron counts with increasing application of electrostatic power. It is suggested that the reader obtain and study copies of the Fusor (patent 3,386,883).

Someone, I am Confident, We'll Eventually Hear About on the News...

and when it happens, you'll say, "Hey, that was that guy Mark blogged about..."



So Darren asks Joanne out. Joanne accepts. They eat at China Grill. (Nice restaurant. I've been there.) Darren pays, despite Joanne offering to split the check.

At some point after the meal, Darren gets the idea that Joanne didn't like him.Rather than just chalk it up to a bad date (hey, it happens, right?)

Darren... Well, Darren has other plans. DARREN EMAILS JOANNE ASKING HER TO SEND HIM $50 FOR HER PORTION OF DINNER.

Yes.

I paused and re-read that about 30 times, too. I couldn't be serious, could I? He actually didn't email that, did he? Oh, but he did:

Being a jerk-date

(via)

Second Life

While I've been recovering at home, I took up the recommendation of one of my colleagues and tried Second Life. It was an interesting experience, and answered a few questions I had always had.

Some observations:

1) It's not quite anarcho-capitalism. It's close though, at least in concept, to what the more utopian anarchocapitalists I know tell me the future could be like without government. There are no (or very, very few) sales regulations. If you can make it, you can sell it at whatever price you can get for it. The market is aggressive and active. For example, land there sells (with or without covenants) for between L$10-L$15/m^2 on average (L$ = Linden dollars, the in game currency). If, you offer land for sale less than that, it goes *immediately*, but if you go above that, it can sit for quite a while. I accidently sold a plot for L$6000 instead of the L$60,000 I meant to type and it sold in a pico-second. I was not happy, but the new owner was thrilled. Many of the benefits/responsibilities of anarchocapitalism are there, including going around armed (there is a good business in both arms sales and security systems to keep people off your property). You can manufacture anything you want to create, and sell unlimited quantities, except for land. You can buy and sell land, create or break land-use covenants and, in general, make a profit off anything you want.
Where it differs from AC is around how the few rules are enforced. Where AC would have no central government, SL has the operating system which, among other things, enforces property rights, i.e. you cannot take land by force. The system also eliminates things like roads, right of ways etc. because you can fly anywhere you want. The system can lock folks out of property (i.e. you can erect an impenetrable force field around your property). Most of the things you’d want a government for, are there as part of the OS. In my view, this is approximately the correct function of government. Oh, and there are taxes in the form of a monthly maintenance fee proportional to the maximum amount of land you owned that month. And, being no fools, you pay that fee in US$ not in L$.
2) Real Estate folks make all the money, but it’s a high volume, low margin business. When you add in the taxes for property ownership, you start to get some inflationary effects. I see how to make it work, but it’s a full-time job.
3) No one needs that many digital t-shirts
4) Absolutely no one needs that many furry foxtails.
5) It has many of the things I enjoyed about The Sims, in it. I can buy some property, construct a house, decorate and furnish it (which for some reason I love to do), and sell it at a modest profit in about a day. There is *LOTS* of interior design stuff there, and some very clever work going on. If I were a designer, that’s where I would go. If I were a teacher, that’s where I would send my students.
6) A lesson I learned: If you don’t have a security system installed, lesbians will come into your house while you are gone, fuck in your bed and, if you catch them at this, not understand why you are ordering them to get dressed and get out.
7) While there is some interesting geography there, much of it gets flattened for use. Almost no one allocates their space for a nature park.
8) Unrestrained capitalism looks pretty seedy for the most part.
9) Zoning regulations are your friends in the real world. I never appreciated that until now.
10) Most people are reasonable, but not terribly imaginative.
11) Virtual Reality, while advanced from the ‘80s, still has a long way to go. SL does not have the quality or character of any decent commercial MMORPG.
12) It is also not as addictive as a MMORPG.
13) While you can exchange US$ or L$ (and vice versa) the exchange rate is terrible and there are a LOT of fees. I don’t recommend doing this, but if you do, one massive transaction is better than many little ones.
14) People will form communities around anything. The Island of Scottish-only, diaper wearing adults taught me that much.
15) SL sims dance far better than the people behind them.
16) The Swedes have excellent taste in design.
17) If you ask a priest in game where he thinks the soul of a SL avatar goes when it dies, you’d better pack a lunch.
18) You can camp out in front of the Hare Krishna Church in SL and offer to give them flowers, but they generally wont take them.
19) “age play” is creepy and vaguely evil. It is also, seemingly very popular and makes me think humanity is not a great thing.
20) There are “fat avatars”, which people enjoy playing. Good for them I guess.
21) Land prices are fairly high, L$12,000 for 1024 m^2, but houses are really, really cheap, ~$250->$1500 (for a top of the line castle). This seems vaugely non-intuitive.
22) if you buy a big assed house boat and drop it in the water infront of your beach house, your neighbors will think you have a small dick.


I'll probably continue for a little while until I run out of money or get tired of designing things. I have a really good idea for a house I want to build, but that will invilve some time.

Neo-Con Jokes

AS has been collecting them and, why not? My favorite so far:

Q. How many neocons does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A. Neocons don't bother with light bulbs. They declare a War on Darkness and set the house on fire.

Phenegan, begin again.

When I was in the hospital earlier, I was prescribed Phenegan in fairly generous does for nausea. It became obvious to me within a few moments of the first does that the stuff has neurological properties, I started shaking uncontrollably and recognizably started to hallucinate, although very lightly. Pleasant, vivid colors and a few interesting closed-eye patterns (mostly like complex Chinese brocades). I’m not sure most people would have noticed. It absolutely made me sleepy.

Interesting though that this is the third or fourth time I’ve seen a connection between CNS impacting meds and the stomach. I’m not sure what it means, but it seems to be true. When I was in the emergency, they kept checking on me and one of the nurses mentioned that Phenegan sometimes "makes folks go a little loopy", and made the universal crazy sign with her hand. Given it's origin as an anti-psychotic, I'm not terribly surprirsed that sometimes happens. Human brains are complicated and no two are really the same, a flexibility I find quite amazing really given that we have 95% of the same cognitive functionality.

I have 5 pills left which they shipped home with me. Hopefully I can save them for "later".

Coming Home Early

This week is our big annual meeting in Florida, for which my team and I have been planning for 8 weeks.

I got extremely sick on the plane down. Extremely sick. My stomach has been bothering me for a while now, so much so that's it's not uncommon for me to throw up after dinner. I've been meaning to see a doctor about it, but there hasnt been much time (see above). I also commonly drink red wine with supper, so the dark, reddish/black fluid I had been barfing up with a coffee-grounds texture was not immediately alarming.

Except Monday when I landed, was throwing up every ten minutes, and realized it was the same substance, but I had not had any wine. The I realized, "Hey, maybe that's blood!"

It was.

I've been in the hospital in Orlando for the last 2 days, getting stablized. I'm flying home to seattle tonight via Delta (who, quite generously updated me to First Class for free when they heard why I was coming home), and then I'll get treated in Seattle.

There is a condition diabetics get where the little flap in your stomach that prevents food from going back up, breaks, causing exactly the type of problem I have. The blood was coming from my esophagus which has been damaged over the last few months by the breakdown of this part. The debate at this point is whether or not I'll need surgery to correct it, and I expect an answer when I see my doctor at home.

Not great.

BTW, I missed my speech today which involved giving away that ounce of gold I purchashed last month. One of my co-workers gave the speech (and presumably the gold) today, but I'm very dissapointed I didn't get to pull my coup d'grace myself.

ugh.

Not Even Wrong

Disingenuous doesn't even been to describe this.

Matt Yglesias comments

That doesn't even remotely resemble a best fit curve. They've drawn the line straight-through an outlier. And look how steep it is at the right hand side. They're asking us to believe that the marginal impact of increasing corporate income tax rates above the Norwegian level is not only negative, but massively negative in a way that none of the non-Norway data bears out. It's an insult to everyone's intelligence. At this point, one needs to think that letting Rupert Murdoch destroy the WSJ news pages might be better for the world than letting the WSJ news pages' credibility continue to provide a "halo effect" to the editorial page.

The Death of Homo Economicus

The final nail in the coffin of the myth of the rational economic decision maker:

In “The Neural Basis of Loss Aversion in Decision-Making under Risk,” in the January 26 Science, Poldrack, Fox and their colleagues Sabrina M. Tom and Christopher Trepel presented the results of their fMRI study, in which they offered subjects a prospect of accepting or rejecting a gamble that offered a 50–50 chance of gaining or losing money. As the potential for gains rose, they found increased activity in the mesolimbic and mesocortical dopamine systems (dopamine is a neurotransmitter substance associated with motivation and reward). As the potential for losses increased, they found decreasing activity in these same reward-sensitive areas. Interestingly, it appears that losses and gains are coded by the same brain structures—the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, associated with decision making and learning in the context of reward and punishment, and the ventral striatum, associated with learning, motivation and reward. Individual differences in loss aversion were predicted by how much more the brain was turned off by losses than it was turned on by gains.

(here)

Capitalism Meets Communism

Google is offering a rare public glimpse of China's new ballistic-missile submarine, according to a researcher at the Federation of American Scientists.
The new submarine was photographed by the commercial Quickbird satellite in late 2006, and the image is freely available on the Google Earth Web site," wrote Hans Kristensen on the Strategic Security Blog.

Kristensen identified the submarine, pictured alongside a naval pier, as a Jin-class vessel, one of five that China is expected to build.

Comparing the Google Earth image with a picture of China's existing Xia-class submarine, Kristensen was able to discern some of the features of the new submarine.

"The Jin-class appears to be approximately 35 feet longer than the Xia-class [submarine], primarily due to an extended mid-section of approximately 115 feet that houses the missile launch tubes and part of the reactor compartment," Kristensen wrote.
But the picture was not clear enough to resolve a debate over whether the Jin-class submarine has tubes for 12 or 16 nuclear-tipped missiles.

Discovery of the submarine image is likely to cause consternation within China's military, which generally keeps as low a profile as possible. If so, it wouldn't be the first time that Google Earth has caused worry inside China's government. In 2006, government officials reportedly expressed concerns over Google Earth imagery of the Zhongnanhai leadership compound in Beijing, an area normally off-limits to prying public eyes.

On the Road Again

Getting ready this week for next week's annual company meeting. Unlike most years before this we are not in full blown panic mode getting ready, with most of the presentations done, reviewed and even rehearsed. We've been working on this for 8 weeks now (yes, 8 weeks of wasted time). For my part, I've got a 75 minute presentation I'm responsible for and I believe at this point we'll be okay. I have one gimmick I am going to use which should ensure that people talk about the session for a few days afterward*.

All that said, I heard yesterday that my grand-boss (by boss' boss), has no keynote presentation. None. for the last 2 months teams of folks have been working away, meeting, talking, rehearsing and checking little boxes so that we are all in lockstep and all follow the exact same format**. Now we find our uberleader hasn't been marching with us at all, but is instead going to have people throw something together for him Sunday night***.

I can't decide if I think he's an irresponsible jerk or a hilarious non-conformist. :)

*I'll blog about this later, it's something of a "secret" at work because my boss is notorious for stealing other peoples ideas and claiming them as his own. I have been heard to say within his earshot, "I need to see the room floor plans so I know how to position the lasers without blinding anyone" and "The Orlando Fire Chief is a fascist jerk for making me get a permit to turn off the smoke detectors"

** after a lecture from my boss about how we are supposed to "win" by coming up with clever, creative, memorable gimmicks, he then launched into an hour long lecture about all the formatting rules for presentations and how we all had to look *exactly* alike prompting me to remark, "Wait. You mean we're supposed to beat the competition by doing *exactly the same thing they are doing*? Can we out-mediocre them?"

*** this looks like a brown-nose festival to me, so I have politely declined participation.

Avatars

I found this over at Andrew Sullivan's blog, it's a NYT photo piece on people and their on-line avatars.

I was a little surprised how many were from the game I play, City of Heroes.
For those of you who are curious, my avatars can be found on my SG site, in the the changing card window on the right. I run BluShield and Captain Physics (the later named for a comic book I wrote in college) and have lead the Vangaurds for about a year. It's fun and I have set a surprising number of sane adults there, although there have been the usual problems with the less-than-well-socially-adjusted.

FTR, between 15-20 hours a week, mostly weekends and late evenings.

Well Said

This is primarily for my son, who wont be able to get to it for another 28 days, but I have to say it seems reasonable.


(all of it here)


Ultimately, all of these scandals and revelations force us to confront the basic issues of why the Iraq War was launched in the first place. What do we know now or suspect to be largely true?
1. The WMD intelligence was flimsy, and there is a good deal of circumstantial evidence suggesting the inner core surrounding Bush all knew this and went to war anyway. This has as much been admitted both in the infamous Downing Street Memo and by Paul Wolfowitz.
2. Democratization and humanitarian relief only became an issue once WMDs fizzled. The president's lack of movement on Darfur also suggests 'human rights' and democracy aren't a motivating force with this administration.
3. 'Terror' - as with WMDs, there is a strong possibility this reason was knowingly overplayed by the inner core. They refused to move on Zarqawi and Iraqi Islamists, who were irregardless a minor force in Saddam's Iraq and lurking in areas of the country that Saddam could not reach them. We also know the president pulled away reinforcements from Afghanistan in order to put them in the deployment pipeline for Iraq as the now infamous as Tora Bora took place.
So, what was the reason? Consider this possibility...
The Bush/Cheney axis came to power in 2000 with an idée fixe that the primary threat to US security were traditional 'hard power' issues of national security. Thus, the pulling out of the anti-ballistic treaty and the early scuffle with China over a US reconnaissance flight in the South China Sea. (remember way back then?) There was also, importantly, a preexisting belief, especially among the neocons but really, as seen by your willingness to buy it, throughout the conservative establishment, that Iraq, but especially Iran and its offshoots were dire threats to US interests in the region.
Ultimately, those interests are two - Israel and oil. While this is not the place to discuss the influence of what some call the 'Israel lobby' in the United States, the fact remains, however, that the dominance of the religious right in the Republican party made pleasing them an important factor in any political calculation...and Israel plays an important part in the elaborate 'End Times' mythology popular among the christianist religious right.
As for oil, it is too crass to say oil profits is what motivated the invasion, but it is disingenuous to argue against the role that security of oil supplies and access to them played in the Bush/Cheney decision-making process. Indeed, access to oil and oil security has been a large part of the reason we are involved in the Middle East and stretches back to World War II when Roosevelt met with and forged a relationship with the reigning king of Saudi Arabia on an American warship off the coast of Egypt in 1945. It was the reason why we overthrew Mossadeq and backed the Shah of Iran in 1953. It’s why we intervened against Iraq in 1991. Oil and oil security have ALWAYS been at the forefront of US Middle-East policy.
This being the case, consider the geopolitics of oil supply after 9/11. We had been, first of all, been literally run out of Iran in 1979 and, after 9/11, the fact stands that the majority of the hijackers were Saudis and the man ultimately behind the operation, Bin Laden, was a rich Saudi. Saudi Arabia represents the pinnacle of Islamist autocracy and stands 100% opposed to American values – and yet we were dependent upon them for military bases to protect the Gulf’s oil assets. Couple this also with these facts:
1. World, but especially Chinese, demand for oil had been growing and continues to grow exponentially. 2. Western and western-friendly oil assets are either all in sustained decline or approaching the point of decline from peak oil production. 3. The last time world oil discovery outpaced world oil consumption was twenty years ago. 4. The remaining massive, potentially politically accessible deposits of oil left remaining available to the industrialized West were all contained in the Middle East.
Under these conditions the Iraq War makes sense geo-strategically, politically, in fact in almost every way. Regime change creates a secure client state in the middle of the world’s last remaining great oil patch at time of dwindling supplies. It protects Israel, and so satisfies the pro-Israel part of the party. Insofar as it uses the rhetoric of ‘freedom versus terrorism’ it can be spun ideologically in a way that garners support and splits the opposition – thus creating the political el dorado of Rove’s ‘permanent majority’. It provided lucrative contracts to the military-industrial complex. It gave the pro-Republican officer corps a prestige boost and something to put on their resumes. It appealed to liberal interventionists like Thomas Friedman, nauseating moralists like you, and salivating imperialists like Bill Kristol. Throw in an arrogant, ignorant president with a messianic complex and a chip on his shoulder, a subservient, politicized mass media, an incompetent opposition, and a supremely ignorant, panicked, and fearful citizenry and the question inverts itself. Under these conditions, how could we NOT go to war against Iraq in 2003?
The rest, as they say, is history.

Way too Charming...

On the possible evolutionary underpinnings of the persistence of gays in the general population.


Homosexuality survives, not because gay men, per se, are adaptive, but because the gay gene makes straight men more successfully heterosexual. McKnight hypothesises that this homosexual genetic loading endows some straight men with two crucial characteristics - enhanced sexual drive and charm

...

We have the occasional gay man (3% of the population according to McKnight) merely as an effect of too much of this libidinal and charming genetic loading in one individual. In McKnight’s terms, exclusively homosexual outcomes are a by-product of an enhanced heterosexuality.


As they say in the Orbit gum commercial, "Fabulous!"

Personally, I think #5 is the most like explaination.

(via)

Male Restroom Etiquette

true dat

Tridentine

No, it's not an ad for gum.

The Holy Roman Catholic Church throws another sign it's losing it's battle with the 21st century by... wait for it... regressing to an earlier state (when presumably it was more powerful and popular).

I'm guessing we'll soon see the Church pull out it's old yearbook photos, reminise about about it's time as quaterback and suck in it's gut in the mirror while promising to "lose that extra 20 lbs".

Best Headline this Week

The Harry Potter review from Slate. The subtitle is, Harry Potter hits Puberty.

The Great God Lardicus

How to create your own god in 10 easy steps!

My favorite:
9) You need to confuse everybody. This will make sure that nobody can be really certain WHAT they believe, because it is all so non-sensical to begin with. And when you don't spell it out exactly (or even if you do) you know how those funny humans will all magically just get along, right!


I wonder if it follows the L. Ron model or the Smith variations.

Eyeball Tattoo

The procedures themselves were effectively painless because there aren’t nerve endings in the surface of the eye, and we did additional control with lidocaine drops which numbed the lids. After pain is fairly minor, although we all have bruising and some discomfort. I have what appears to almost be blistering between the sclera and conjunctiva which is worrying me a little but so far I don’t have reason to believe this is abnormal. Aftercare, at least in my case, is antibiotic drops and a patch.

here
via

My comment: "yyyyaaarrrrrrgggggggg!!!!!!!" followed by a reflexive crotch protection move.

If it's physically possible, humans will find a way to do it.

Sunspot 963

The sunspot's two dark cores are each larger than Earth, and they are connected by an unstable magnetic field that crackles with C-class solar flares. The eruptions have been entertaining onlookers. "I watched in amazement for hours as the magnetic loops swayed back and forth," says Larry Alvarez of Flower Mound, Texas. He made a movie of the action using his SolarMax90 solar telescope.

here

You're in the Army Now

My son Geoff begins 32 days of basic training at Fort Lewis today. He's a little apprehensive about it, but I am certain he will do just fine.

Good Luck Son!

Understatement of the Day

From the WaPo

"And there seems to be an inordinate number of vampires, generally not a sign of community health."

Red States Summarized In One Image

Absinthe Minded

Absinthe, the spirit of imagination to many, and the devil incarnate to the U.S. government, is being approved on a case by case scenario by the Feds. Banned since 1910 due to unproved health dangers from the substance thujone, found in wormwood, an ingredient in absinthe, it has been the subject of controversy for centuries. Many folk tales and rites and rituals have grown around it and its supposedly hallucinogenic properties.

More here

I can't wait to try this. Should be interesting.

“let me know when you’ve got it open”,

An interesting set of comments on the thesis, "God must exist because millions of people believing for 3000 years can't be wrong"

Automan

I actually watched this once.

Once.

The description is completely accurate:

Automan was a show about a programmer who made a computer program to help him solve the many crimes that plagued his life. What made this computer program so special was that, when fed enough power, it would manifest itself in the real world. It would also be wearing a seatbelt and have immaculate blow-dried hair. Automan is chiefly remembered for being the only show in existence to make Knight Rider look plausible and well thought-out.

The Citizenship Application for TJICistan

Travis has a job available and gives some really good, well reasoned advice to would-be employees:

When I ask for two references, with contact information, this is because I want two references, with contact information. However, there is another reason: the job I just posted requires good attention to detail. 20% of you failed to include references, and this makes my job easier - I can immediately respond to you and say “I’m sorry; this position is not a match”, and then delete your email. Only 160 emails to go!

When I ask for your resume to be cut-and-pasted, instead of being included as an attachment, this is because I am stuck in the 1980s, and use a non-MIME aware email reader. Also, it’s another opportunity to filter out candidates who can’t read closely, or follow directions. We’re now down to 120 emails.

The job was listed as “customer support”. If you start your cover letter by asking about the “sales associate” position, or the “nanny job”, I know that (a) you’re applying for 100 jobs at once, and you’ve gotten confused; (b) you don’t have the attention to detail that this job requires.

...

etc.
I strongly recommend reading it, as his winnowing procedure is pretty much SOP at every company I have ever worked for.

Then we get to:

Finally, I prune the emails with spelling errors. Spell checkers are free, and they’re easy to run. You don’t care enough about this job to try, so you’re gone. 40 emails left.

Unfortunately, Travis tends to be a do-as-I-Say-not-as-I-Do kind of guy:

Logan Williams Says: July 4th, 2007 at 2:36 am
“… I turned the *add* off again 8 hours later.”
“Finally, I prune the emails with spelling errors. Spell checkers are free, and they’re easy to run. You don’t care enough about this job to try, so you’re gone. 40 emails left.”
Finally, I prune the blogs with spelling errors. Proofreading is simple, and necessary to editing. You don’t care enough about this blog to try, so you’re not going in my RSS reader. 20 Reddit submissions left.

Boed Says: July 4th, 2007 at 5:49 am
“But, come one, make things a bit easier for me, please?”
“and permission to listen to your iPod all day log.”
“Spell checkers are free, and they’re easy to run. You don’t care enough about this job to try, so you’re gone. 40 emails left.”
hmm……a bit of a contradiction wouldn’t you say?


Thus Travis would eliminate himself from *my* pool of potential jobs as I recognize the Do-As-I-Say or "Two Sets of Rules" boss as being incompatible with my personality. And I haven't even read the job description!

*snicker*

Seriously though, it's good advice.

Terror

Folks who know me well know I have two irrational fears, one which I have mastered, one which I have not.
The first, mastered fear, is of heights. (Actually it's of falling *from* heights.) (Actually, actually, it's of hitting the ground after falling from heights, but you get the idea).
The second... well, (and remember I said it was *irrational*) it looks like this:



Icthyphobia is my curse. Oddly, I even know why I have this, it involves an act of child abuse on the part of my father when I was about 4 or 5, yet it doesn't make a bit of difference. I have not completely conquered this one. Not yet anyway.

Sinful by Nature

In totalitarian societies, the law is beside the point. Laws are written in such a away that compliance is completely impossible for most or all citizens. This gives the state leverage over the population because citizens can always be counted on to be doing *something* illegal at any time, and the threat of a prison sentence can be used to get them to do things they ordinarily wouldn't do, e.g. turn in a family member or friend, cover up goverment miss-steps, kill or torture etc. If you wonder why I am so adamently opposed to "Wars on $metaphore", it's because they often bear a striking resemblence to this idea. The War on Drugs has some prime examples, but the War on Terror is not without it's charm in this area.

Governements did not invent this idea though. The stole it whole cloth from religion.

Here's a great example of the idea that we all have "orginial sin" and therefore must subect ourselves to the Church to make it right with the gods.

Elegant, And Best Served Cold

From (the usually suspect) Yahoo News:

The family of Ron Goldman has purchased the rights to O.J. Simpson's canceled book, "If I Did It," from a court-appointed bankruptcy trustee in a settlement reached Monday. The book rights will be held in the name of Ron Goldman LLC, Goldman family attorney David Cook said.

...

Ron Goldman LLC will own Simpson's name, likeness, signature and story and will hawk it to satisfy this terrible judgment. Justice has arrived in Miami," Cook said.

The Goldmans own the copyright, media rights and movie rights. They also acquired Simpson's name, likeness, life story and right of publicity in connection with the book, according to court documents.

The Goldmans want to rename the book "Confessions of a Double Murderer" and plan to shop it around, Cook said.

Libby

One interesting thing to note: if the President had pardoned Libby, Libby would have lost his 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination and could be compelled to testify before congress.

Endlessly.

It was a smart move.

Deep Weirdness about Spin States

The consequences of half-integral spin are one of those things that, I always assumed, were mathematical and not physical. i.e. you learn that the identity operator for spin in quantum mechanics is 720 rotation, not 360 rotation. It seemed odd and, now I can see that it was simply explained to me wrong by a professor who (in retrospect) didn't understand it either. Why do you have to rotate twice to get back to zero?

Feynman not only understood it, but gives a very clever way of internalizing it.

He really was the best of his generation.

A Sin Of Which (unusually) I am Not Guilty

At least with respect to biologists:
From PZ:

Authors, film producers and directors, special-effects teams go to physicists, especially astrophysicists, to check that their worlds are workable, credible; they go to astronomers to check how far from their sun a planet should be, and so on. They even go to chemists to check atmospheres, rocket fuels, pheromones (apparently they're not biology….), even the materials that future everyday clothes (not only spacesuits) will be made of. They do go to self-styled "astrobiologists", who are usually astronomers or astrophysicists who remember some Biology 1.01 (or think they could if pressed). Between them they invent reptiloid "aliens" (who are cold-blooded enough to do all those dastardly things no warm-blooded American male could do…), feline aliens (who have the psychology of the household cat writ large, especially by more mature female authors…), dinosaur "aliens"…. Or giant ants. Or were they mut-ants, I don't remember (but how many screen mutations have you seen that change the recipient, not its progeny?). Or a vast array of "alien" human actors with a bit of wax, as easy on the Special Effects Dept as the Pure Energy aliens, or the Aliens on mid-day TV shows who magic things out of the air and see through clothing (do their eyes emit or receive X-rays?), and which otherwise free the writers from having to produce a consistent plot. Or Vulcans who can produce viable offspring with humans (when even our cousins the fish can't - mermaids are even less breedable than Spock). These people know that they don't know about physics, or astronomy, or chemistry. Those disciplines are real science. So they get help. But the biology seems so 'obvious' to them … and they don't realise that it feels just the same to be sure and wrong as sure and right! Of course, those of us that agree biologists can see that all those anthropomorphs can't be alien, they're vertebrate mammals and must share our ancestry here on Earth.

I stear clear of commenting too much on biology, I simply don't understand it well enough. I'm happy to *speculate* on life bearing planets, but I'll usually admit pretty quickly that I don't know much about the science.

Astronomy YouTube of the Day

APOD ups the ante.

Harder than I Thought

Free Online Dating

The Parker Model

Astrophysics IV was, in it's way, one of the most interesting classes I ever had. Easily one of the most difficult (made all the harder by the instructors merciless taunts about our lack of intellectual talent and constant quips about what we got wrong on our quals), we spent the better part of a semester on one of my favorite subjects, magnetohydrodynamics. Specifically, how MHD applies to star formation and how the Parker Model for solar wind and accretion disk coupling works.

Now days, there is just a cool video.

That was the Longest 3 minutes and 51 seconds of my adult life

Coffee

Girl Genius does a riff on what it would be like of someone invented a machine that made coffee taste as good as it smells. You know, the Anti-Starbucks.

Heil Honey I'm Home!

I could not make this up.

Shyness Cure

Medical science is now touting a "cure" for shyness, a condition I would argue is neither medical nor involuntary. Fortunately the so-called "cure" has a list of side-effects longer than my arm, so it seems unlikely to make much headway.