I was looking through the "free" section of Craig's List to see what my chances were to give away stuff. Saw this poignant ad headline:
Dirt in Pittsford - no longer available sorry
One can only imagine the craze the original posting must have provoked.
While dropping off my rental truck a short while ago, I looked at the ground right behind where I had parked my car. I saw two-thirds of a broken CD, with the handwritten label "Fuck Mix." Next to it was a torn-off doll's head. I can't get this image out of my mind. If I weren't so thrashed, I'd drive back over there, camera in hand.
I'll spare you the other 900+ words. I'll just say: this would have made a great picture.
In other hilarity at UHaul: When I showed up this morning to pick up the truck, I had to wait about a half an hour to get the key. Seems the previous renter had dropped off the truck the night before, but brought the key home.
Me: "Don't you have spare keys for just such eventualities?"
Proprietor: "Yes. That was the spare key."
Lesson: If you only bring two cigarettes for the errand, because you think it'll be quick, you're plain asking for it.
But it all worked out well. Even got a shout-out of "Welcome to the neighborhood!" from a passerby, while unloading. The moving crew, though 50% undersized, did a fine job. The only one to break something was yours truly. The movers were kind enough not to snicker.
With political parties, probably not a whole lot. Still, one can dream.
I'm reading an article about Japan's recent election. The Liberal Democratic Party didn't have a great day. The main opposition party? The Democratic Party.
How great would the U.S. be if those were our two parties?
So, I go to get my hair cut, because tomorrow is the big moving day, and I've about had it with pushing sweaty strands out of my eyes during the past few days of packing.
I drop by World Hair, put my name on the list, go outside for a cigarette, browse through Utta Clutter's sidewalk display, come back in, and get handshook and seated by Kim.
She has the body of a twenty-year old, but she gets my lame joke about that '80s band, Haircut 100.
"Sure, they had that one hit." 
I can't remember it, so I say, "I can't remember it."
"Boy Meets Girl."
There are many ways to read this hopefully, and maybe even to extrapolate.
Not for me, though. I'm late for shuffleboard.
The headline:
Cheney Receives New Battery for Heart Monitor
(story)
Well, actually … maybe it's in there to prevent beating.
I often wonder what's up with the world when I look at the NY Times Top 10 Emailed articles list. Sometimes there's an interesting outlier. Too often, though, the articles on the list have to do with some perceived social phenomenon or another. Emphasis on perceived.
There's an old saying in the newspaper busines: Twice is a coincidence. Three times is a trend!
I'd like to believe this saying originated with crusty and cynical reporters, hard-bitten, just-the-facts types. Rose-colored view of the past or not, today's news biz seems overwhelmed by people who miss the irony in that statement. Articles often sound like the reporter heard some tidbit amid idle cocktail party chatter, spent an hour or two on the phone the next day to see if anyone else had anecdotes like that, and then banged out a piece on something Sweeping The Nation.
From today's list, we have two examples. The first, "When Whippersnappers and Geezers Collide," describes the rift, no, gulf, no, chasm of misunderstanding between the managers at giant corporations and the twenty year olds who intern for them.
The second, "Cake, but No Presents, Please," describes the latest craze in the Perfect Parent Parade: guest toddlers now come bearing money to be donated to the candleblower's charity of choice.
Gah. I wish I had a bird. Then I could have a cage. Then I'd need to line it.
P.S. I know you're itching to point out that this blog post is itself an example of noting some dubious trend, based to a mere two examples. Don't make me drown you in supporting evidence.
Named Jinnet. Who posted this link: the Monty Python Video Wall.
See you in a few weeks.
Somebody's making sure that the new address will be her new address, too.
But she mellowed shortly afterward, in fact, she relaxed to the point where a favorite napping place did not seem objectionable, even if stood on end. (It, not her.)
This is a new theme I'm trying to get everyone on teh Internets to do: post pictures of your cat.
Could be huge! (It, not her.)
In case you have yet to barf:
I was going to augment the title thus: Moving Pictures, No Tales. But the manx is sensitive about that sort of pun.
A sign in Berkeley, CA, of all places:
Okay, so I quoted a little out of context. Let's look at the big picture.
I do expect to see the first picture swiped and reposted a few times. Let me know if you come across it.
(Title in flow from the last post I put up)
It says here:
NASA administrators promised fast action today in response to an internal investigation that said astronauts had flown after drinking heavily on at least two occasions.
At first, I thought it might mean before flying a plane. (Astronauts at least used to be allowed to commandeer jets at will.) But, no, this is before getting on a rocket:
… Col. Richard Bachmann Jr., who headed the panel, said that one of the astronauts referred to in the findings flew on a Russian spacecraft, and another was cleared to launch on a space shuttle.
I find this hard to believe, for at least two reasons. First, the obvious one, which was alluded to by an unnamed astronaut quoted in the story: these people are practically locked in a clean room for several days before flight. I can see that it might be a game to try to sneak in a nip or two, but really, drunk?
Second, the wait for an astronaut before actually getting a flight is years. Who would screw that up, after jumping through all those hoops, and waiting that long?
This story has the smell of a hidden agenda. Your conspiracy theories are welcome. Mine is pretty tame: some politician or other insider wants to kill all crewed space flights.
And no diaper jokes.
The blurb, from the NYT's front page:
A spokesman insisted the attorney general did not mislead Congress, but said national security factors prevented clarification.
Read the whole thing, if you want. I can't be bothered.
Who here caught the 25 July NY Times Tech Talk podcast?
The real excitement begins at 3:33 from the beginning.
Thanks, Tom and J.D.
I composed this post on 2007-07-25, and noticed 2007-08-16 that I had forgotten to publish it. Or maybe I was scared.
Under a ruling this month by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, such surveillance -- which does not capture the content of the communications -- can be conducted without a wiretap warrant, because internet users have no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in the data when using the internet.
(h/t: Matt Egan)
Also of note in today's NYT: Liz Robbins's coverage of NBA commissioner David Stern's recent press conference.
Stern, of course, was speaking about Tim Donaghy, a referee who had been accused of betting on NBA games that he worked. I'd not heard of Donaghy before this news broke a few days ago. Robbins reports that over the past two seasons, he's only worked eight playoff games. I watch the playoffs pretty closely, and the fact that he was completely unfamiliar to me makes me think these probably weren't marquee games.
I'm not at all trying to excuse Donaghy, if the accusations turn out to be true. But I do wonder, how much interest could there have been in betting on these games in the first place?
As of this moment, the NY Times's fourth-most emailed story is a survey of current doings in particle physics.
What's up with that?
It is a good article. The author, Dennis Overbye, always does a nice job demurkifying things. There's also a fun flavor of gossip running throughout -- one thread in the story has to do with physicists, their blogs, and the rumor mill therein.
A couple of weeks ago, on a "Science Saturday" edition of BloggingHeads.tv, physicist Sean Carroll talked about the frequent interest he sees, among laypersons, in what's happening on the cutting edge of research in his field. Even here in Amurrika. This "most emailed" ranking adds weight to his assertion. A real sign of hope, I'd call it.
By the way, the headline is "At Fermilab, the Race Is on for the 'God Particle'." (The term refers to a particle called the Higgs boson, the search for which cannot be called anything other than a holy grail for particle physics.) This made me think that was the explanation for the high ranking, but a moment later, I realized that just clicking on a link to a story with a catchy headline and making the effort to share it are two different things.
Also by the way: I thought Leon Lederman was the guy who came up the term "The God Particle." Overbye does not give a source. It could well be that he didn't write the headline, of course. Anybody know if Lederman was the originator of this phrase, or if he borrowed it from someone else?
Lederman did say he titled his book as such because the publisher wouldn't let him call it "The Goddam Particle." This is one of my favorite books of all time. If you want a more in-depth look at what Overbye's article discusses, this is a good place to go.
One arena in which the Brits are the unquestioned world leaders is the wording of signs. Here's an example, captured by KK:
Truly tiny point (you know how I love to strain at 'em!):
In the Dawkins reading that I mentioned yesterday, he at one point says "circa," but pronounces it "kirka." I was unable to stop pondering this all day today.
None of the dictionaries that I looked at, both online and here at home, provide this alternate pronunciation. Not even the OED.
Thus, I turned to the preeminent source for all matters linguistic, and asked, "Could it be that Dawkins is imperfect?" Dan replied:
I'm afraid he is perfect, if a bit pretentious. The classical pronunciation (as best as scholars can determine), used during Roman times, was "kirka", spelt "circa". Then in the Middle Ages it was changed variously to "chirka", "tsirka", or "sirka", depending on the local vernacular).
That sure sounds good.
I Googled "circa kirka" and found two pertinent hits before I lost patience paging through the results. One used it in passing as an example, on page 48 of a MEGO-inducing rant about phonetics when Hebrew and English are both involved. The title of the work is Glorious Incomprehensible, so I hope you'll forgive my lack of attention.
The other merely noted the utterance by a college English professor. This prof apparently had a reputation for obscure, and correct, alternate pronunciations. One of the commenters on this post does say something along the lines of Dan's explanation.
To put this issue to bed (as if you all aren't already asleep), I'd like to hear if any of you have ever heard a (smart) person pronounce "circa" as "kirka." It would be especially interesting to hear from the British contingent of the reading masses.
Thanks!
Did you know that the Washington Post got hold of a list of the attendees of those "energy task force" meetings held in early 2001? You remember. This was probably the first hint of Dick Cheney's fetish for secrecy, even before 9/11. A NY Times editorial mentioned it, so I looked at the WaPo's site.
Here's the article I found. You might also read the transcript of an interview with one of the reporters who wrote the article.
No huge surprises; i.e., probably whomever you suspected was there, was there. Still, it's good to get these things on the record.
Here's a nice example of the Orwellian naming and incestuousness that characterizes the Bush & Cronies' way of doing business:
One advocacy group that visited was the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, founded in 1998 by Grover Norquist and Gale A. Norton, who became Bush's first interior secretary. Later, the group was run by Italia Federici, who was involved socially with Steven Griles. Griles, then Norton's deputy at Interior, was recently sentenced to prison for obstructing a Senate investigation of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Paul Krugman's op-ed piece for today looks at the U.S. Internet infrastructure. It's a clear summary of a big problem.
Excerpt:
The numbers are startling. As recently as 2001, the percentage of the population with high-speed access in Japan and Germany was only half that in the United States. In France it was less than a quarter. By the end of 2006, however, all three countries had more broadband subscribers per 100 people than we did.
Even more striking is the fact that our "high speed" connections are painfully slow by other countries' standards. According to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, French broadband connections are, on average, more than three times as fast as ours. Japanese connections are a dozen times faster. Oh, and access is much cheaper in both countries than it is here.
[…]
What happened to America's Internet lead? Bad policy. Specifically, the United States made the same mistake in Internet policy that California made in energy policy: it forgot -- or was persuaded by special interests to ignore -- the reality that sometimes you can't have effective market competition without effective regulation.
You see, the world may look flat once you're in cyberspace — but to get there you need to go through a narrow passageway, down your phone line or down your TV cable. And if the companies controlling these passageways can behave like the robber barons of yore, levying whatever tolls they like on those who pass by, commerce suffers.
America's Internet flourished in the dial-up era because federal regulators didn’t let that happen — they forced local phone companies to act as common carriers, allowing competing service providers to use their lines. Clinton administration officials, including Al Gore and Reed Hundt, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, tried to ensure that this open competition would continue -- but the telecommunications giants sabotaged their efforts, while The Wall Street Journal's editorial page ridiculed them as people with the minds of French bureaucrats.
And did you catch the subtle dig at The Moustache of Understanding? Hee hee!
But, seriously, Krugman's piece is well worth reading.
No, not that guy. I'm just noting that I passed the milestone first. Without using the clear or the cream.
This is post #756. Thank you for your attention. Gotta go. Commissioner Selig ought to be calling any moment.
Update
2007-08-16 14:59 EDT
So much for my counting skills. Actually, after some blog maintenance -- deleting remnants of draft posts -- this is now post #753. But I still whupped him.
Can you believe the level of OCD that would compel me to note this?
In an otherwise entertaining article sent to me by KK, I came across one ear-itant: Hyping a new video (read: commercial) made by Christopher Guest, Intel spokeswoman Nancy Bhagat said: "… the pure entertainment value will be positive for our brand imagery."
Sheesh. Can't you people keep your jargon straight? Stale though the phrase may be, brand image is what you wanted. Imagery is what you say when you want to be pompous about some pictures that your spy satellite took.
And speaking of ear-itants, do you suddenly find yourself chanting "who, who, who-who?"
Sorry about all this. I haven't had much coffee yet.
I finished Scott Rosenberg's Dreaming in Code last night. It kept me up way late.
Spoiler alert: I do say a little about what happens in the book. Also, while I don't explicitly say how it ends, you might pick up clues.
Still here? Okay, good!
I'd heard about this book before it came out, and I was looking forward to it. As fate would have it, I renewed my Salon subscription around the time it was released, and I noticed that I could get a copy as a fringe benny. Nice! Anyway, it took the usual six weeks for delivery, and then I stuck it in the pile of books to be read when I have enough time to read them in one sitting, and … I finally got around to it.
Dreaming in Code is too often portrayed as the software version of Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine. This is an understandable blurb or elevator pitch, but it's limiting and it's more than a little unfair. Rosenberg does frame the book as himself playing fly on the wall, watching a team of programmers trying to design and build a killer app named Chandler, and so the parallel is obvious. But (going on long-term memory here) Kidder wrote as though he was absolutely new to what he was reporting on. Rosenberg, by contrast, displays at least some chops -- he starts by telling a great story that took place way back in the year 2000: sweating it out alone, under the hood, in the dark hours of early morning, responsible for a key upgrade to Salon's web publishing software.
Rosenberg's experience and evident long-time interest in fighting playing with computers lets him go beyond Kidder's approach. Throughout, he steps away from just reporting on the daily grind. He gives history, he brings in other points of view, and he lets himself intrude when he's not with the Chandler team. I was going to say he provides context for the inner story, but it's a lot more than that. Toward the end of the book, he devotes the better part of entire chapters to an overview of software development, as an industry and as an art. He examines why it's so hard, and without being a doomsayer, why it might never get much better.
To my mind, Rosenberg's global commentary is the better part of the book. Some of the coverage of the Chandler woes reminded me of cringe moments from my own code monkey life. I was also a little irritated by the company's set-up: this was a project with a vague holy grail, a ton of internal cash, and no real deadlines. They had a rock star CEO who attracted rock star programmers. Consequently and unsurprisingly, Chandler immediately suffered paralysis-by-analysis.
It is a tiny drawback to Rosenberg's book that he chose a somewhat atypical company to cover, but it's not, ultimately, that important. What happens compares to most other software development efforts. The only difference, I suppose, is that the plug would have been pulled in other cases; Chandler is still alive.
To be fair about it, the goals of Chandler were admirable. It was to be something that truly let you organize disparate bits of information -- your calendar, email, chats, your own notes, pictures, everything -- all so that it would be easy for you to find, to stay on top of, and to share. You and your friends could not only read each other's Chandler stuff, but you could allow each other to modify it as well. Everything would be available on any computer you might sit down at. Full peer to peer sharing -- no irritating uploads to a server, no clunky Web interface. And best of all, you wouldn't have to restructure your brain to use the program. No irritating constraints. No wrestling with a piece of crap "written by programmers." Intuitive, flexible, infinitely extensible (and did we mention open source?!). Just the way a computer program should work.
Also in fairness: Had I been asked in the beginning, I would have killed to join this effort.
After I finished reading Dreaming in Code, I wondered who I might recommend it to. I suspected people who do software development for a living or as a serious hobby would share my annoyances with the foibles of the Chandler team. I also wondered whether plain and simple users would be scared off by some of the geekery. But, I kept thinking, this is a great book!
So here's why I recommend it.
First, it's really well-written. I'd put Rosenberg's ability to make words flow off the page up against anybody's. When someone writes as well as he does, the topic is almost beside the point.
And for you, specifically?
Maybe you write code, or at least like to tinker. Here's what's in store for you: Rosenberg is sympathetic, without being in any way apologetic, to the developer point of view. If you know what "Hello, world" means, you'll at least like the war stories from software's first fifty years. You'll love the detailed links and references in the notes. You might feel sympathy and a sense of kin to many of the book's characters. And I'm willing to bet you find real meat in Rosenberg's ruminations and prognostications about the whole sorry mess.
Maybe, on the other hand, you don't write code. You think computers should Just Work. You wonder when we'll no longer need wizardly incantations to accomplish what should be easy. You long for a day when "user interface" does not equate to "what were those boneheads thinking?" So what's in store for you?
Maybe, just maybe, you'll be awed by the effort, put forth by so many, to fulfill these dreams.
(Updated below)
For some time now, I have been trying to articulate a response to the teeming masses who say that Richard Dawkins "goes too far." It comes as no surprise that he doesn't need my help, as a new video that I just watched makes clear.
The video is about a half hour long. There's a somewhat funny intro by someone else that lasts about eight minutes. When Dawkins takes the mic, he spends most of his time reading from a new preface that he composed for the paperback version of The God Delusion (currently only available in the UK).
Dawkins's preface, or at least the part that he read, is a response to the professional critics of his book. It's what you'd expect from Dawkins: simultaneously witty and devastating. In short, a real treat.
In case you don't notice the link on the video page, you can also watch the Q&A that followed Dawkins's reading. (I just noticed it myself.)
Thanks to the phabulous Pharyngula for noting the link.
Update
2007-07-22 17:56 EDT
BTW, during the Q&A, Dawkins refers several times to Julia Sweeney's one woman play, "Letting Go of God." You can see a video excert that she performed at the TED conference, listen to a different audio excerpt on This American Life, and check out more audio excerpts, some of which overlap the ones just mentioned, right on her site.
Dawkins also reads a note passed to him, reporting that Sweeney would be appearing that evening on CSPAN. It turns out that this latter video aired 14 July 2007; a link on this page points to the video. (This link may break as time goes by, at which point you'll have to invoke your search skills.) Sweeney's talk, "Why I Am An Atheist," starts at about 56:30 in. It's new material, and hilarious.
KCRW's Left, Right & Center finished up this week with a chilling note: Tomorrow, Dick Cheney will officially be the Acting President of the United States. George W. Bush will be undergoing a colonoscopy, so he's going all Section 3 of the 25th Amendment on us.
Let's resist the temptation to ask how Bush being unconscious for a few hours tomorrow afternoon will differ measurably from his state of awareness the past six years, or to wonder, really, just how much of a change in power is this? Let's also be grown up enough to avoid nominating auxiliary instruments to be used during the probe of the First Anus.
Instead, let's just indulge in the thought of Sugar Ray Leonard uncontrollably flashing back to his bouts with Roberto Duran:
Photo credit: Xinhua/Reuters
Or the dawn of a new day? We excerpt, you decide:
From the NYT, with a little mild emphasis added:
President Bush’s top counterterrorism advisers acknowledged Tuesday that the strategy for fighting Osama bin Laden's leadership of Al Qaeda in Pakistan had failed …
The Bush Administration admitting failure? And with regard to the turrurists?
In other news, the Flat Earth Society issued a press release acknowledging: "Things do look a little curvy at the edges."
I've held off posting about recent security updates for most programs that I use, under the assumption that anyone reading this blog has by now set up these same programs for automatic notification or updating, or just doesn't care.
However, this seems worth special notice. Brian Krebs has reported two important patches, neither of which triggered update notifications on my system: Flash and Java. Both of these run primarily as plugins in your browser, which means you really should update them as soon as possible.
Krebs's post has all the details and pertinent links, including how to show which version you have and where to get the update, for both applications.
One thing that he mentions that I'll reiterate: On Windows only, the Java update process doesn't remove old versions. Since this is a potential security hole, you should remove them yourself. Just use Add/Remove programs, as described by Krebs. On various PCs, I either removed all the old ones before installing the new version, or did it afterwards. Didn't seem to matter either way.
Updating both was simple, following his links. Total time: about 5 minutes per PC.
The Mac update for Flash was equally painless. Mac will issue its own update for Java, says Krebs. I just ran Software Update; nothing yet.
Sun's Java page for Linux did not specify that the upgrade applied to Ubuntu, so I'm going to wait a few days and see if the built-in Ubuntu Software Updates offer anything. The Flash update was painless.
Okay, new to me. But I'm glad to hear about it. Here's the lede from the NYT's own announcement, dated 4 May 2007:
The New York Times today named its next public editor, Clark Hoyt, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and editor who oversaw the Knight Ridder newspaper chain's coverage that questioned the Bush administration's case for the Iraq war.
Not quite the outsider that many were hoping for, as I noted this past March, but evidently, at least some cred as a pro journalist. You can find links to all of his columns so far by visiting the public editor's home page.
Hoyt's first piece ran on 10 June 2007. (This is the only one you have to pay to see, since it ran as an opinion piece before his official start date, and has since become part of the NYT Archives.) He examined placement of a story about a foiled terrorist plot to blow up fuel tanks at JFK. The NYT had decided against page 1 placement, since the editors felt the "plot" was more wishful thinking than something truly nipped in the bud. Hoyt thought there was a case to be made for putting it on page 1 to emphasize that it wasn't a big dramatic story, which was how it was being hyped by most TV reporting. In other words, the real story, as Hoyt saw it, was as another example of the Bush Administration maybe, just maybe, playing the fear card. It's not a dramatic exposé, of course, but he raises some interesting, if subtle points.
Inside baseball in any arena is always a matter of taste; I'll be the first to acknowledge a genetic predisposition to fascination with newsroom goings-on, and also to acknowledge that this interest is not widely shared.
If you're still with me …
Hoyt also (gasp) has a blog on the NYT site. His first post, dated 26 June, talks about the NYT's policies concerning their employees and outside compensations. The NYT clearly bans just about all gifts and cash, which would seem to reassure, but I thought he missed touching on one obvious issue: Given the constant demand for bodies in the 24/7 news world, people who write for the NYT have many opportunities to appear as talking heads. Even though they can't take appearance fees, it's obvious that such appearances contribute to building their "brand identities," as the current jargon would have it. Lots of these people also write books (which the NYT policy permits), so the appearances act as advertising for the authors and their new books, and so there is an indirect financial gain being realized. Also, every appearance by a reporter or columnist constitutes a de facto product placement for the Times itself.
I'm not advocating a ban on outside appearances, or writing books, for that matter. I like hearing what reporters and columnists have to say outside of their usual space in the paper. I just think Hoyt should have touched on this.
P.S. Hoyt deserves props for charging the NYT with tamely accepting George W. Bush's ongoing Al Qaeda mantra and his conflation of the 9/11 hijackers to the group in Iraq that has adopted the name. This piece is, in fact, what brought the new PE to my attention -- thanks to GreaterBoston.tv's "Beat the Press" podcast.
Hey! I just thought of a topic for which there is no Wikipedia page: the Ralians!
I now join the rest of humanity in admitting that I, too, have no interest in writing one.
I've been on a bit of an astronomy/cosmology surfing expedition the past couple of weeks, and delving into the archives of some good blogs, I keep coming across reminders of last year's furor: the question of Pluto's planetary status. (Hey, even I briefly weighed in on this one.) I'm tempted to go through my browser's history and build a page of nothing but clever posts about the issue, but for the moment, here are two:
Here's the meta-comment on the whole mess, from Sean Carroll:
Most everyone who writes about it admits that it doesn’t matter, before launching into a passionate defense of what they think the real definition should be.
And from the same site, but a different author, yet another example of why it's usually a bad idea to let governments mandate science: "States have Rights, but I don’t think this is one of them."
