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03

2005-03 posts.

  1. 2005-03-02t16:56:41Z. RE: Art 2D+time . Conservation . Cyber Life . Cyber Tech . Entertainment . Faith, Philosophy . Health . Local . Martial . Math, Science, Technology . Money . Obituaries . Politics . Quirky . Relations [SFW ] .
  2. Making aaBlog v2, Part 3. RE: Cyber Life . aaBlog .
  3. 2005-03-09t19:43:29Z. RE: Conservation. Cyber Life. Cyber Tech. Faith; Philosophy;. Health. Local. Martial. Math; Science; Technology;. Medium 2D. Medium 2D+text. Medium 2D+time. Medium 3D. Medium Audio. Money. Play. Politics. Quirky [Possibly NSFW]. Relations [SFW].
  4. 2005-03-11t23:17:29Z. RE: Cyber Life. Cyber Tech. Education. Faith; Philosophy;. Flow. Health. Geography; History;. Local. Martial. Medium 2D. Medium 2D+text. Medium 2D+time. Medium 3D. Mind. Money. Play. Politics. Relations [SFW].
  5. Fairness and Freedom. RE: Faith; Philosophy;. Politics. Rambling.
  6. Objective and Subjective. RE: Faith; Philosophy;. Rambling.
  7. 2005-03-24t03:32:30Z. RE: Conservation. Cyber Life. Cyber Tech. Food. Local. Medium 2D+time. Play. Relations [NSFW].
  8. Terri Schiavo. RE: Faith; Philosophy;. Health. Politics.
  9. I am open source. RE: Cyber Life. Cyber Tech. Faith; Philosophy;. Martial. Money. Politics. Rambling.
  10. 2005-03-31t19:43:21Z. RE: Conservation. Cyber Life. Cyber Tech. Faith; Philosophy;. Food. Health. Life. Martial. Math; Science; Technology;. Medium 2D. Medium 2D+time. Medium 3D. Mind. Play. Politics. Quirky [Possibly NSFW]. Rambling. Relations [SFW].

2005-03-02t16:56:41Z | RE: Art 2D+time . Conservation . Cyber Life . Cyber Tech . Entertainment . Faith, Philosophy . Health . Local . Martial . Math, Science, Technology . Money . Obituaries . Politics . Quirky . Relations [SFW ] .
2005-03-02t16:56:41Z

Art 2D+time

Conservation

  • The Tangled Webs They Weave
    • 'After 15 years of research, Dr. Randy Lewis, a professor of molecular biology at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyoming, and his team say they have determined the sequence of genes underlying the spider silk protein. '
    • 'The silk is pound-for-pound five times stronger than steel and three times tougher than today's high-performance synthetic fibers used to make protective clothing. It's these and other properties unique to dragline silk -- the type of silk that spiders use to make the 'spokes' of their webs -- that makes it an ideal substance from which to make a host of lighter, stronger materials that are also tougher and have more stretch.'
    • 'That has researchers turning to alternative means of production, which includes combining silk-making DNA into plants and animals that can produce it en masse. Lewis, for example, has already been working to combine the spider genes with bacteria and alfalfa plants. After the plants have grown, the spider silk genes are extracted to produce a material that Lewis says is nearly 85 percent pure silk, and could be used to extract protein to spin fibers as soon as next month.'
  • TreeHugger.com
    • 'TreeHugger is the definitive, modern yet green lifestyle filter. It will help you improve your course, yet still maintain your aesthetic.'
    • Man, conservations has never looked so hip!
  • Dual Flush Toilet by Caroma
    • 'We've talked about the no-flush urinals, but what about toilets for the *other* waste us humans continually produce? The folks at Caroma have figured it out with the dual-flush toilet. But don't be fooled, this toilet doesn't flush two times it actually has two different buttons, one for, er, how do we say this, #1 and #2 and it uses 0.8 and 1.6 gallons of water, depending on the flush. This single innovation with its Half Flush and Full Flush technology can reduce water usage by up to 67% compared with the traditional toilet that uses 2.9 gallons in a single flush. Caroma guarantees that this toilet is reliable, simple to use and has proven itself through a decade of rigorous testing.'
    • Genius!

Cyber Life

  • InnerGeek.us. I think I've taken this geek test before. I scored 51.28205% - Super Geek. I could have scored higher if I had cheated AND avoided the trick questions which (I assume) would actually lower your score.  SPOILER: Counting exactly to 31 on one hand is easy: binary digits.
  • Wikipedia suffered a power failure so significant that it is publicly noticeable!
    • 'At about 14:15 PST some circuit breakers were tripped in the colocation facility where our servers are housed. Although the facility has a well-stocked generator, this took out power to places inside the facility, including the switch that connects us to the network and all our servers. (Yes, even the machines with dual power supplies -- both circuits got shut off.) What's wrong? After some minutes, the switch and most of our machines had rebooted. Some of our servers required additional work to get up, and a few may still be sitting there dead but can be worked around. The sticky point is the database servers, where all the important stuff is. Although we use MySQL's transactional InnoDB tables, they can still sometimes be left in an unrecoverable state. Attempting to bring up the master database and one of the slaves immediately after the downtime showed corruption in parts of the database. We're currently running full backups of the raw data on two other database slave servers prior to attempting recovery on them (recovery alters the data). Update 19:20 PST: We have at least one database server with intact data. When we have a second up and running, we'll be able to put the site back online in read-only mode as we continue.'
    • I noticed it at 2005-02-22t05:59:09Z. I felt as if the sun was being eclipsed.
    • That sure provides incentive for their fundraising efforts.
      • Wikimedia needs your help
        • 'You may have noticed recent slowdowns, and periods of downtime, for Wikipedia and her sister sites. We are working to make our system more efficient, but traffic on the Wikimedia servers is doubling every four months. Wikipedia.org is already one of the top 200 most popular websites on the Internet and will likely be in the top 100 before the end of the year.'
        • Right now they have $27,000 (USD) out of their goal of $75,000.
  • Hotmail, MSN Search. I tried them both again today (2005-02-22t21:02:09Z) using MSIE 6 instead of Firefox. They're both still buggy. How can a company as big as Microsoft be this bad?
  • A dynamic DHTML all text clock/calendar [view on MSIE only]. And I thought that we had seen the last of mouse trailing animations!
    [IMAGE: Sample of the DHTML clock and calendar]
  • Customizing Firefox. A collection of some nice Firefox extensions. I just installed the following:
  • IE drops below 90 percent market share
    • ' For most companies, 87.3 percent of a global market might seem just fine. But most companies are not Bill Gates' Microsoft. Founded by Earth's richest man, the firm still stands astride the world when it comes to browser usage; but the might of its Internet Explorer is just a little diminished. On Monday, two reports were released -- one American and one Continental -- that show IE's share of the browser market dropping below 90 percent. advertisement Click Here! The culprit? Last year, Mozilla Foundation launched Firefox version 1.0, an open source browser lauded as both faster and more secure against popups and other irritations of online life. Last month, Mozilla said that since the launch of version 1.0, there have been over 25 million Firefox downloads. '
    • 'Maybe that figure is nothing that ought to concern Gates' software leviathan--unless one compares it with IE's 95.5 percent market share in June 2004.'
    • Whee!
  • The world could really use Google Calendar
    • 'There's been a lot of speculation about Google Calendar recently. And you know what? I sure as hell hope they do it. There's been so little innovation in the world of on-line calendars these last few years. Perhaps Google getting into the act would finally change that. '
    • Dave Jung started the meme with "I know what Google's going to do next!" on 2005-02-22. By coincidence, I posted that Gmail needs a calendar on the same day.

Cyber Tech

  • SimpleCode.
    • 'Enter normal (X)HTML in the markup box below. Press "Process" and it will spit out entity-encoded markup suitable for <code> examples. Use spaces in increments of two for nesting indents.'
    • Nice and simple. Reminds me of my own Cheat Sheet.

Entertainment

  • Brad Bird on an Incredibles Sequel
    • The Incredibles was the obvious choice for the Best Animated Film Oscar in 2004.
    • The 2-disc DVD set coming out on 2005-03-15 looks sweet!
  • Fantastic Four. 2005-07-08 release. IMDB. Trailer. The effects looks good but I hope the story matches. Of course they have to have Dr. Doom as the super-villain!

Faith, Philosophy

  • Last night (2005-02-22) I went to another Landmark Education event.
    • To see my previous blog on my first LE event see 2004-12-17/21 My Landmark Education Experience.
    • The first event was the "Landmark Forum". The thing I went to was the "Landmark Seminar in Action". Here's the main differences between the two:
      • The LF focuses on introducing you to their "technology". The LSA focuses on having you practice their technology.
      • The LF is all day Friday, all day Saturday, all day Sunday, and several hours on Tue. The LSA is three hours a Tuesday for 10 Tuesdays.
      • You pay for the LF and it includes for free the optional LSA.
    • They gave us two options last night: (A) Attend all ten seminars. Or (B) Specify which seminars I'll miss and arrange to make them up. I created for myself a new possibility: (C) I will not attend any more seminars.
    • Their "technology" is fine. It's effective stuff. However:
      • There's a lot of stuff that's effective. Much of the Landmark technology is public knowledge. And of course there's nothing wrong with Landmark restating, repackaging, rephrasing, etc., etc.
        • Stilling the "Already always listening" or being present to the chatter that goes on in our heads is practiced by many people. EG: Japanese martial artists are familiar with mushin ("no mind"). Fighting occurs so fast that you cannot have that chatter, you have to reflect/respond like a mirror, but your training has to enable a good response.
        • The concept of making distinctions and using distinctions to free yourself is common. The aphorism of "Knowledge is power" encapsulates the idea that nuances in knowledge are important.
        • The fact that possibilities/dreams have to be kept alive over time is perseverance, patience, "Rome wasn't built in a day".
        • Honoring your word (over circumstances), integrity, authenticity, the power of your word, etc. There are many fine applications of this but it can also be used to manipulate. I feel that the LE focus on this crosses over to a fixation.
        • Breaking the vicious {cycle of "what happened" and "interpretation" leading to a false reality} is something to be present to, but can also be used to manipulate.
        • The idea of becoming present to chatter, assumptions, in-authenticities/rackets/stories, strong suits, etc. is all about an ongoing process of awareness, reinvention, and transformation. People do this naturally.
        • Being aware of opportunity costs, of possibilities of freedom, power, and expression are nice common ideas.
        • "Anything is possible" is an overstatement. Period.
      • Their constant repetition of "Landmark", "Landmark Forum", "Landmark Education", etc. is annoying. Their constant selling of Landmark is annoying. Their persistence on getting us to sell Landmark to others is annoying.
      • I understand that understanding their technology is not the same as vigorously practicing their technology, esp. in conjunction with others that are also actively practicing with the technology. However: I got it. I got it. I would be more inspired to attend if the sessions weren't so crassly commercialized.
  • Illness Perspective
    • Several days ago I was sick. It was no big deal: Just some laryngitis, congestion, muscular ache and headaches. I was just pondering how my my feelings or psychological being were colored during my illness. I was reviewing my weaknesses, the bad things in my past, etc. and dwelling on them. The best self-help was perspective: I kept drawing upon perspective to keep me aware that my outlook was a temporary condition due to illness, that my place in the universe was as it was, etc.
    • I imagine that people in really dire situations (long term illnesses, limb loss, parents of dying children, etc.) must have it much worse since the condition is not temporary. The issue I think is not that you or someone you love is dying, because in one sense we're all dying, we all die, and that everything is transitory. A larger issue then must be the quality of life.
    • Pain and suffering, the absence of pain and suffering, are certainly important factors that affect the quality of life. The proximity and awareness of quality of life also affects your quality of life. Each of us is unavoidably aware of our own QoL. We are also more keenly aware of the QoL of those who are close to us (or at least we should be). However there is so much pain and suffering in the world that trying to stay aware of it all is not pleasant and can be immobilizing, hence most people focus on their proximity.
    • While we have some control over our QoL by will power, determination, character, perseverance, etc., our QoL is also determined via genetics, stratus born into, circumstances, chance, etc. Plus even if you manage to maintain a high QoL and die painlessly in your sleep, a good human being should also be aware of the QoL of others. So no matter who you are, eventually you're going to run into QoL issues.
    • I have long felt that you should do what you can about the QoL for your self, for your loved ones, and for others. However I have also long thought that a larger issue than QoL is the issue of a meaningful life. Lately I have been thinking about how inescapable QoL issues are and acceptance of them. For example: I have to eat, I have to rear my young, I have to clean myself, I have to clean my environment, I have occasional illnesses and injuries.
    • This line of thought leads to hope, peace, patience, love, and meaning. If I have to do laundry, which many see as a meaningless, time consuming task, then I can improve my QoL and meaning in my life by doing it peacefully, calmly, and out of love for myself and my family. This concept can be applied to any aspect of life, from our best moments to our worst.
    • And that's what I got out of being sick.
  • "Martial Arts: The Truth Behind It". It reads like a joke but I think the Fundamentalist Christian writer is serious. How pathetic.
  • Christian Jugglers Association. I've always liked jugglers.
  • DigiBless.com.
    • 'At our site you can have all of your electronic documents blessed with a blessing of your own choice, using our Holy Server. ... By adding your url to our website, our blessing algorithm will visit your site and bless all of the files it finds there. The site will then be added to our list of Blessed Sites.'
    • He he he.
  • dltk-bible.com
    • With stuff like a recipe called "Jesus Walks on Water: Prepare blue Jello in indvidual plastic cups. When Jello sets place Sour Patch kids (since they are shaped like people) to stand on top of Jello."
    • I have much more appreciation for the peaceful, fun, I-just-want-to-be-happy Christians than the Fundies.

Health

  • For the Worst of Us, the Diagnosis May Be 'Evil'
    • I'm going to over-quote because it's a likely to go offline article and because I've always felt that we need to study evil in order to increase good.
    • 'Most psychiatrists assiduously avoid the word evil, contending that its use would precipitate a dangerous slide from clinical to moral judgment that could put people on death row unnecessarily and obscure the understanding of violent criminals. Still, many career forensic examiners say their work forces them to reflect on the concept of evil, and some acknowledge they can find no other term for certain individuals they have evaluated. In an effort to standardize what makes a crime particularly heinous, Dr. Michael Welner, an associate professor of psychiatry at New York University, has been developing what he calls a depravity scale, which rates the horror of an act by the sum of its grim details. And a prominent personality expert at Columbia University has published a 22-level hierarchy of evil behavior, derived from detailed biographies of more than 500 violent criminals.'
    • ' "Evil is endemic, it's constant, it is a potential in all of us. Just about everyone has committed evil acts," said Dr. Robert I. Simon, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown Medical School and the author of "Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream." Dr. Simon considers the notion of evil to be of no use to forensic psychiatry, in part because evil is ultimately in the eye of the beholder, shaped by political and cultural as well as religious values. The terrorists on Sept. 11 thought that they were serving God, he argues; those who kill people at abortion clinics also claim to be doing so. If the issue is history's most transcendent savages, on the other hand, most people agree that Hitler and Pol Pot would qualify. "When you start talking about evil, psychiatrists don't know anything more about it than anyone else," Dr. Simon said. "Our opinions might carry more weight, under the patina or authority of the profession, but the point is, you can call someone evil and so can I. So what? What does it add?" '
    • ' As part of an extensive, in-depth interview, a trained examiner rates the offender on a 20-item personality test. The items include glibness and superficial charm, grandiose self-worth, pathological lying, proneness to boredom and emotional vacuity. The subjects earn zero points if the description is not applicable, two points if it is highly applicable, and one if it is somewhat or sometimes true. The psychologist who devised the checklist, Dr. Robert Hare, a professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, said that average total scores varied from below five in the general population to the low 20's in prison populations, to a range of 30 to 40 - highly psychopathic - in predatory killers. In a series of studies, criminologists have found that people who score in the high range are two to four times as likely as other prisoners to commit another crime when released. More than 90 percent of the men and a few women at the top of Dr. Stone's hierarchy qualify as psychopaths.'
    • 'Checklists, scales, and other psychological exams are not blood tests, however, and their use in support of a concept as loaded as evil could backfire, many psychiatrists say. Not all violent predators are psychopaths, for one thing, nor are most psychopaths violent criminals. And to suggest that psychopathy or some other profile is a reliable measure of evil, they say, would be irresponsible and ultimately jeopardize the credibility of the profession.'
    • ' "I think the main reason it's better to avoid the term evil, at least in the courtroom, is that for many it evokes a personalized Satan, the idea that there is supernatural causation for misconduct," said Dr. Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist in Newport Beach, Calif., who examined the convicted serial murderer Jeffrey Dahmer, as well as Lyle and Erik Menendez, who were convicted of murdering their parents in Beverly Hills. "This could only conceal a subtle important truth about many of these people, such as the high rate of personality disorders," Dr. Dietz said. He added: "The fact is that there aren't many in whom I couldn't find some redeeming attributes and some humanity. As far as we can tell, the causes of their behavior are biological, psychological and social, and do not so far demonstrably include the work of Lucifer." '

Local

Martial

  • Rules? In A Knife Fight?: Redrafting The Rules Of Engagement In The First Terrorist War
    • What a lovely slippery slope. Next thing you know we'll be torturing them... o wait, we already did. OK, next thing you know we'll nuke them.
    • 'It is ritualistic for most Americans to assert that they "Support our troops," but the truth of the matter is that far too many Americans are becoming far too interested in making sure our troops are behaving correctly than actually supporting and sustaining them. Knowing well that nice guys finish last, it is past time for Americans to ask themselves how 'nice' they want to be in fighting the Terrorist War.'
    • 'Democracy and freedom for others cannot be the goals of war. They can only be the fruits of something more primary -- victory. Absent the goal of victory, this will indeed become "The Forever War," and America cannot sustain such an effort. In historic terms, the American will to wage war suffers a serious fall-off after three years unless victory can be see as a clear end state, and only then if progress toward victory is repeatedly demonstrated . We are already beyond the three year limit, and it is unlikely that Americans can be made to care much longer, in the face of trickle-down casualty rates, whether or not Iraqis ever become free and democratic.'
    • 'Regardless of the ostensible goal of our actions in Iraq -- the establishment of a functioning democracy -- the more compelling goal for America's national-interest must remain the military domination and control of the Middle East by any means necessary. Failure to achieve this will place the fate of United States and the developed world in the hands of rogue regimes able to achieve nuclear weapons, and ready to employ them. If the world is to cross the dangerous divide of the next decade, this cannot be allowed to occur.'

Math, Science, Technology

  • Engineers devise invisibility shield
    • ' The key to the concept is to reduce light scattering. We see objects because light bounces off them; if this scattering of light could be prevented (and if the objects didn't absorb any light) they would become invisible. Alù and Engheta's plasmonic screen suppresses scattering by resonating in tune with the illuminating light.

      Plasmons are waves of electron density, caused when the electrons on the surface of a metallic material move in rhythm. The researchers say that a shell of plasmonic material will scatter light negligibly if the light's frequency is close to the resonant frequency of the plasmons. The scattering from the shell effectively cancels out the scattering from the object. '

    • Sounds good but then the article proceeds with a lot of catches.

Money

  • Buyer has been bold about name changes
    • 'Will the name Marshall Field's become a footnote in Chicago retailing history? Federated Department Stores Inc., which on Monday finalized its proposal to purchase Field's parent May Department Stores Co., is not shy about changing the names of the regional retailers it buys. If the deal is approved, Federated is expected to accelerate its rollout of the Macy's and Bloomingdale's names into national brands. Federated's chief executive said Monday that the retailer would convert most of May Department Stores Co.'s holdings--which also include Filene's, Famous-Barr and Kaufmann's--into Macy's.'
    • I think the "Field" name will be a footnote. If I travel around the country and I want to go to a "Macy's" style department store, then I'd want it to have a nationally familiar name. Calling the stores in Chicago "Macy's-Field's" would be a good compromise but I wouldn't expect it.
  • Honey, I shrunk the dollar
    • ' As a former Clinton Commerce Department official, David Rothkopf, notes, despite all the talk about Social Security, many Americans are not really depending on it alone for their retirement. What many Americans are counting on is having their homes retain and increase their value. And what's been fueling the home-building boom and bubble has been low interest rates for a long time. If you see a continuing slide of the dollar - some analysts believe it needs to fall another 20 percent before it stabilizes - you could see a substantial, and painful, rise in interest rates.

      "Given the number of people who have refinanced their homes with floating-rate mortgages, the falling dollar is a kind of sword of Damocles, getting closer and closer to their heads," Mr. Rothkopf said. "And with any kind of sudden market disruption - caused by anything from a terror attack to signs that a big country has gotten queasy about buying dollars - the bubble could burst in a very unpleasant way." '

    • ' Why is that sword getting closer? Because global markets are realizing that we have two major vulnerabilities that this administration doesn't want to address: We are importing too much oil, so the dollar's strength is being sapped as oil prices continue to rise. And we are importing too much capital, because we are saving too little and spending too much, as both a society and a government.

      "When people ask what we are doing about these twin vulnerabilities, they have a hard time coming up with an answer," noted Robert Hormats, the vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International. "There is no energy policy and no real effort to reduce our voracious demand of foreign capital. The U.S. pulled in 80 percent of total world savings last year [largely to finance our consumption]." That's a big reason why some "43 percent of all U.S. Treasury bills, notes and bonds are now held by foreigners," Mr. Hormats said. '

  • Getting Back To Work: A Personal Productivity Toolkit
    • 'Now I know that procrastination is a habit, and so is productivity. You can disrupt your negative behaviors, and reinforce your productive ones. It takes some work to implement this system, but by doing so, you'll learn what to avoid and what to do to be more productive.'
    • Such a promising topic but it sort of fizzled.

Obituaries

  • Jef Raskin (1943-03-09/2005-02-26)
    • ' Viridian writes "Jef Raskin, GUI pioneer, interface expert, Apple employee #31, and the man most credited with the creation of the Apple Macintosh, died of cancer on Saturday February 26, 2005. It was Raskin who named it after his favorite fruit, the McIntosh apple, although he said that he changed the spelling to "Macintosh" to avoid potential copyright conflicts with McIntosh, the audio equipment manufacturer." ' [/.]
    • Odd that even after Jef's died, Steve Jobs will not speak of him. The rest of us, however, say thank you Jef for your work on GUI.

Politics

  • Dinner with my Right-leaning friends
    • I had dinner with my Right-leaning friends several days ago* and one of the topics my friends touched upon was exploitation. The topic aimed at me was whether it was "exploitation" to have goods made by foreign labor while paying them a wage so low that they couldn't afford the goods they were making. I basically said that it wasn't exploitation if they paid a fair wage. After all I, like many other workers, make a product that I personally couldn't afford. They responded by saying that companies like Wal-Mart pay more than local companies so the locals flock to Wal-mart for work. And this proves that it wasn't exploitation but that Wal-Mart was actually a benevolent company.
      *2005-02-18: The evening, by the way, was not mainly about politics. It was about gathering as friends. We ate a ridiculous amount of food, reminisced, yakked, and drank. It was a fine evening and we discussed many other things. My only regret was that we spent too much money. Food and drinks at Fogo de Chão [FogoDeChao.com] was $100 per person. However, we have been having a tough time getting our schedules coordinated and it seems that to get a bunch of people to commit to something, sometimes you have to get them to put money down in advance.

      The biggest news was that one of my dear friends announced that he will probably move to Las Vegas in several weeks. He will be severely missed but it's a good reason to visit Las Vegas!

    • The conversation sort of ended there. They were happy and content with their analysis, plus I could barely hear half the things being said on the far side of the table all evening, so I let it slide. It was an odd topic to bring up since I have stopped discussing Right v Left politics with them since a month before the 2004 Presidential election. Most of the evening when we discussed politics, we talked more objectively about what we think is happening, will happen, or should happen.
    • Privately, though my original sentiment still stands: It is only unfair exploitation if they pay an unfair wage or demand unreasonable labor. It doesn't matter whether it's foreign or domestic labor. EGs:
      • Child labor should be unacceptable in any country. The only place I consider child labor reasonable is if the child is your own child helping out with your own home, business, property, farm, etc. It should be very rare to have families where the parents cannot make money but the children can. If families like that are common place in a country, then that country has too many exploiters. American companies should not condone, copy, or be blind to such practices.
      • Harsh labor should be unacceptable in any country. Jobs that demand harsh labor should come with benefits to make up for the risk and suffering.
      • Every country should have a minimum wage. Even a sub-cost-of-living minimum wage is better than no minimum wage at all. If America is so dependent upon undocumented, illegal labor here in the U.S., then I imagine that there must be even more latitude on foreign soil, esp. in less developed countries.
    • No one doubts that Wal-Mart is exploitative in the sense that they are very efficient. Whether Wal-Mart unfairly and illegally exploitive is up to investigation. Who will do that? Who has the power to investigate such a profitable company? Whether Wal-Mart is unfairly but legally exploitive is a matter of conscience. It is likely that Wal-Mart is better than local employers and are following local laws, but as such a wealthy country we should have higher standards than that. Just because human beings are far away, doesn't make them less human. Wal-Mart could break the cycle of poverty for thousands and still have ridiculous profits --but they don't.
    • Speaking of high standards, I personally am willing to pay more for companies that are more ethical. I personally buy eggs that are raised cage free. I personally do not shop or invest in Wal-Mart.
    • Related:

Quirky

  • Girl Basketball [video]. A bunch of guys toss a girl through a basketball hoop. The bums are too busy celebrating to notice that she bumped her head.
  • How to destroy the Earth
    • 'Mission statement: For the purposes of what I hope to be a technically and scientifically accurate document, I will define our goal thus: by any means necessary, to render the Earth into a form in which it may no longer be considered a planet. Such forms include, but are most definitely not limited to: two or more planets; any number of smaller asteroids; a quantum singularity; a dust cloud.'
    • Sweet, sweet. This should be a foot note on the classic Evil Overlord list [EvilOverlord.com/lists/overlord.html].

Relations [SFW]

  • The smile that says where you're from
    • : )
    • ' While we British smile by pulling our lips back and upwards and exposing our lower teeth, Americans are more likely simply to part their lips and stretch the corners of their mouths. So distinct is the difference that the scientist behind the research was able last week to pick out Britons from Americans from close-cropped pictures of their smiles alone, with an accuracy of more than 90%. '
    • ' Infants use the Pan-Am smile when unknown adults enter a room as a gesture of appeasement and, Keltner says, so does the actress Julia Roberts. "She has a wonderful smile, but it does not often reach her eyes in public. By contrast, Angelina Jolie not only smiles broadly, and twinkles, but also tilts her head a little, which pushes the pleasurable body language into a higher gear. That is a smile which is impossible to resist." '
    • ' The power behind the smile may also be more potent than anybody has previously realised: Keltner recently released a study of photographs of women in college yearbooks dating back to the 1960s in which he separated the Duchenne smilers from the artfully posed. Researchers then tracked the women down and found that those who had smiled most happily at college overwhelmingly tended to have had the happiest lives since they had graduated. "It's a virtuous circle," Keltner concluded. "Happy smiley people cheer others up around them, which in turn makes them more stable and less prone to depression or divorce than those who faked it in their yearbooks." '

2005-03-04t23:34:07Z | RE: Cyber Life . aaBlog .
Making aaBlog v2, Part 3

Six months ago, I had blogged about upgrading my blogging system (Part 1 and Part 2). I haven't had time to work on it until this week, but I think I've finished version 2!

As mentioned before, the big change is that a permalink to a post will bring up an individual post instead of a whole month's worth of posts. This should help folks with smaller bandwidths. Of course, my archives will still be accessible by the month.

I'm too lazy to put in "next/previous post/month" options. However I think I still deserve a little "I did it! I did it! It works! It works!" dance.

2005-03-09t19:43:29Z | RE: Conservation. Cyber Life. Cyber Tech. Faith; Philosophy;. Health. Local. Martial. Math; Science; Technology;. Medium 2D. Medium 2D+text. Medium 2D+time. Medium 3D. Medium Audio. Money. Play. Politics. Quirky [Possibly NSFW]. Relations [SFW].
2005-03-09t19:43:29Z

Conservation

  • Germany shines a beam on the future of energy Nation gambles on amped-up push for renewable power
    • ' Muhlhausen, Germany -- A solar-power project built by a Berkeley company may point Germany toward a pollution-free future. Set in the heart of Bavarian farmland, the 30-acre facility went online earlier this month, becoming the biggest solar energy plant in the world.'
    • 'PowerLight's three Bavarian solar parks, consisting of 57,600 silicon-and- aluminum panels, will generate 10 megawatts of electricity -- enough to power 9,000 German homes. The amount of electricity produced is much less than power plants fueled by coal or natural gas, but with very low operating costs, the solar project is expected quickly to turn a profit while emitting zero pollution. Schroeder's left-of-center Social Democrat-Green coalition has turned Germany into the world leader in renewable energy since it took office in 1998. Billions of dollars have been spent on wind and solar projects, and Schroeder, in a politically risky move, has sharply increased taxes on petroleum products in an attempt to reduce consumption of conventional fuels.'
    • 'The campaign accelerated a year ago when Germany enacted a law forcing electric utility companies -- and, ultimately, all electricity users -- to pay higher rates to businesses or individuals who generate solar or wind energy and feed it back into the grid. With this guarantee of revenue, solar panels have become commonplace on new German houses and huge new windmills are a typical sight in rural areas, especially in the more windy north.

      "This is part of our commitment as a government, to make Germany the world leader in alternative energy and in taking action against global warming, " said Juergen Trittin, Germany's environment minister. "We are willing to do what is necessary."

      The country is now the No. 1 world producer of wind energy, with more than 16,000 windmills generating 39 percent of the world total, and it is fast closing in on Japan for the lead in solar power. Wind and solar energy together provide more than 10 percent of the nation's electricity, a rate that is expected to double by 2020.

      It has become a profitable business, too, with about 60,000 people employed in the design and manufacture of wind and solar energy equipment. '

  • 'The lion shall lay down with the lamb. But first, it shall lay down with the tiger, the leopard, and the jaguar. And then smaller cats will lay down with different smaller cats, and then there are those gazelles and bears that were always hard enough to tell apart anyway, well, now we can't seem to keep them apart. Long live the anomalous felids!
    posted by breezeway' [MeFi ]
  • Poor Bubba the 22 pound lobster died. However the funny thing is that on 03-02, BoingBoing made a post called "Massive lobster" which talks about the wonderful live lobster, then the very next day they come out with "Bubba the Lobster (RIP)" and "Lobsters bigger than Bubba".

Cyber Life

  • The Most Hated Advertising Techniques
    • Design Element Users Answering
      "Very Negatively"
      or "Negatively"
      Pops-up in front of your window 95%
      Loads slowly 94%
      Tries to trick you into clicking on it 94%
      Does not have a "Close" button 93%
      Covers what you are trying to see 93%
      Doesn't say what it is for 92%
      Moves content around 92%
      Occupies most of the page 90%
      Blinks on and off 87%
      Floats across the screen 79%
      Automatically plays sound 79%
    • The key concept is that people hate that stuff, not just dislike but hate.
    • And some of the good techniques:
      • 'indicate what will happen if people click on them,
      • relate to what people are doing online,
      • identify themselves as advertisements,
      • present information about what they are advertising, and
      • provide additional information without having to leave the page'
  • Open Office 2.0 Beta Candidate Released [/.]. ' "The OpenOffice.org 2.0 beta candidate has been released. You can find the feature guide that covers the wide array of improvements over the current 1.1 release. There are a bunch of problematic UI quirks in 1.1 that have been fixed in 2.0." Feature categories include increased interoperability with Microsoft Office, Asian Language Features, Developer-Specific Features, and new Internet based features. Commentary and an interview with Colm Smyth available at NewsForge.com. '
  • The New York Public Library Digital Gallery. 'NYPL Digital Gallery provides access to over 275,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more. '
  • Ghosts in the Machines: What Happens to Your Online Self When You Die? [MeFi]
  • 'Uncyclopedia. Why put up with Wikipedia boring or questionable entries? Uncyclopedia has the straight dope on Life, Universe, and Everything.
    posted by MiltonRandKalman' [MeFi]
  • The Book Stops Here
    • 'Jimmy Wales wanted to build a free encyclopedia on the Internet. So he raised an army of amateurs and created the self-organizing, self-repairing, hyperaddictive library of the future called Wikipedia.'
    • 'Now Wales has brought forth a third model - call it One for All. Instead of one really smart guy, Wikipedia draws on thousands of fairly smart guys and gals - because in the metamathematics of encyclopedias, 500 Kvarans equals one Pliny the Elder. Instead of clearly delineated lines of authority, Wikipedia depends on radical decentralization and self-organization - open source in its purest form. Most encyclopedias start to fossilize the moment they're printed on a page. But add Wiki software and some helping hands and you get something self-repairing and almost alive. A different production model creates a product that's fluid, fast, fixable, and free.'
    • I love Wikipedia so much that it is pleasant to hear people talk about it.
  • The new Gmail features (Picassa integration and basic HTML viewer) are no big deal.
    • I'm still not switching from Yahoo Mail for several reasons:
      • No WYSIWYG or raw HTML composing.
      • You can have contacts but you can't make contact lists.
      • There is no calendar.
      • You can't make folders for your inbox.
      • Spell check is nicely implemented but slow.
      • And a bunch of other stuff that make it clear that Gmail is still a beta service.
    • On the other hand, they have some nice stuff:
      • 1 GB of storage but the 250 MG at Yahoo is enough for now.
      • No advertising.
      • The auto complete is nice but Yahoo has something similar.

Cyber Tech

  • SOAP is boring, wake up Big Vendors or get niched
    • 'Evidence continues to mount that developers can' t be bothered with SOAP and the learning requirements associated with use of the standard for information interchange. It is often described as "lightweight", but its RPC roots keep showing. Developers are turning their backs on the standard. Folks that is, building interesting information splicing apps--semantically rich platforms like flickr and Amazon are being accessed by RESTful methods, not IBM/MS defined "XML Web Services" calls. Now it seems the Creative Commons is responding to RESTful demand. Or more pertinently-not responding to SOAP demand because there isn't any.'
    • Related:
  • I think that Microsoft has been in one of its ugliest technical lulls in years.
    • MS is lagging but they persist and will continue to dominate because they have such a large base.
    • MS is betting a lot on .NET and their next version of Windows and SQL Server. It's simply taking too long. People are forking off in different directions because we can't wait for Microsoft which may be working on some fork that no one wants anymore. Google and others are already working on searching your own laptop and network (besides MSN and MSDN searching has no "intelligence").
    • One of the foundations of .NET is XML and Web Services. Their XML is fine but Web Services has been stumbling as this REST issue shows.
    • One of the foundations of Visual Studio .NET is the "multiple languages" capability. Do they think they're fooling anyone? The differences between VB .NET, C#, J .NET, etc. is just syntax, since they are all translated into CIL (Common Intermediate Language) bytecode, hence the difference is trivial. The class library is nice, but the CLR (Common Language Runtime) virtual machine only runs on versions of Windows, whereas the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) runs on different operating systems.
    • MSIE v Mozilla/Firefox browser. Firefox is better and yet because of the prevalence Windows, there are many sites that do things that are not standard and MSIE specific. EG: Yahoo, Google, and (of course) MSDN.
    • MS does manage to get some things right. EG: I work with MDX (related to OLAP, data mining, business intelligence, MDX, multidimensional analysis, etc.) and MS is busy setting up trans-industry standards for this field while the competitors are closed and proprietary.
  • AMD jockeys with Intel in multi-OS race
    • 'Advanced Micro Devices will detail its "Pacifica" virtualization technology by the end of this month, enabling software companies to start working with the feature, which makes it easier for a computer to run several operating systems simultaneously. The Pacifica technology is scheduled to arrive in processors in 2006, later than the comparable Vanderpool technology--now officially called Intel Virtualization Technology--that is promised to appear this year in Intel chips. What's not clear is whether the two technologies will be compatible, raising the prospect of complications for some software makers. '
    • Screw a dual boot, I want to run multiple OSes concurrently. I hope it runs fast. I remember running virtual Window OS on a Mac OS and it was too slow.
  • Intel's Dual-core strategy, 75% by end 2006 [/.]
    • "Intel is moving ahead rapidly with their dual core chips, anticipating 75% of their chip sales to be dual core chips by the end of 2006. With AMD also starting to push their dual core solutions, how long until applications make full use of this. Some applications already make good use of multiple cpu's and of course multiple applications running at the same time instantly benifit. Yet the most cpu intensive applications for the average home machine, games, still mostly do not take advantage of this. When game manufacturers start to release games designed to take advantage of this, are we going to see a huge increase in game complexity/detail or is this benifit going to be less than Intel and AMD would have you believe?"
    • Yes, I'll delay replacing my laptop so that I'll have dual core and dual OSes!
    • Related: AMD Plans Simultaneous Desktop and Mobile Chip Releases [/.]
  • The Code is The Design [/.]
    • ' "In 1992 C++ Journal published an essay by Jack W. Reeves called 'What Is Software Design?' Many credit this essay as being the first published instance of assertions such as 'programming is not about building software; programming is about designing software' and 'it is cheaper and simpler to just build the design and test it than to do anything else'. developer.* Magazine has republished this groundbreaking essay, plus two previously unpublished essays, under the title Code as Design: Three Essays by Jack W. Reeves." '
    • UML, pseudo-code, English, whatever. It's all about communicating --otherwise you're talking to empty air. Whether your app works once is another story.
  • Magnetic Stripe Snooping at Home [/.]
    • "Have you ever wondered what information is actually stored on all those cards you have in your wallet? Well, it turns out you can find out yourself! An excellent project, Stripe Snoop started by Billy Hoffman, a Georgia Tech computer science student, contains schematics, source code and a wide variety of information about the standards used to store all sorts of information on your magnetic cards."
    • I've had to do work with magnetic striping before but I can think of funner things to do when I'm not working.
  • Microsoft Loses Key Engineer to Google [/.]
    • ' "Microsoft Watch reports Marc Lucovsky, one of Microsoft's key Windows architects has defected to Google. His confidence in Microsoft's ability to ship software seems to have waned, too. Some hypothesize Google working on an OS but in the wake of Google's inroads into Ajax tech applications (GMail, Suggest, Maps), I think Google may have other plans for the chief software architect for Microsoft's .Net My Services ("Hailstorm")" CT Many users are reporting 404s on the Microsoft Watch article, but its working fine for others. Hopefully they'll fix their server soon. '
  • Intel 6xx Series Reviewed and Benchmarked [/.]. Whee! It's 64-bit and it's not a Pentium.
  • A Linux Nemesis on the Rocks
    • 'SCO's lawsuit is floundering -- and now the struggling software company faces regulators' scrutiny and questions about its management'
    • Hopefully SCO will disappear from our radar so we can focus on positive change.
  • The Newly Inspired Bushy Tree [MeFi]. 'A re-visiting and revising the famous Bushy Tree diagram of the lineage of visual interactive computing systems '

Faith; Philosophy;

Health

Martial

  • Two killed in Wheeling shooting
    • 'When officers arrived, they found the bodies of Roman A. Drobetskiy, 34, of Wheeling and Arkadi Stepankovski, 29, of Des Plaines. They found a third man alive at the scene and covered with blood. He was taken to police headquarters for questioning.'
    • This would be just another crime to me except that Arkadiy Stepankovski is the head of System-Chicago.com, the local branch of a Russian martial art called Systema. I belong to the ChicagoSwordplayGuild.com and several of our members take Systema and we were even going to have a Systema seminar in April.
    • Condolences to the family.
    • Violence happens. However, unless you are a professional combatant (EGs: soldier, police, security) or you live in a violent environment or seek violence, you will never do real combat regularly.

Math; Science; Technology;

Medium 2D

  • MakingRoom.com. 'MakingRoom is a magazine about the process, intention and results of image-making.'

Medium 2D+text

Medium 2D+time

  • 'Soviet Animation On the heels of the post on Soviet music, here's a link to 10 short video clips of well-known Soviet-era cartoons. (Set your browsers to cyrillic KOI8-R encoding.)
    posted by gregb1007 ' [MeFi]
  • Watch it shred [videos]. Oddly fascinating to see videos of different things being shredded.
  • Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith trailer. I've seen most of the footage before. Lucas CGI still looks unrealistic. (The automatic and needless resizing was annoying.)
  • 'Superfriends/Office Space mashup. This video-mash of footage from Superfriends cartoons combined with the audio track from Office Space is stupendous. It's not just that the creator managed to get the lips to synch up really well, but there's also the hilarious choice of clips and shots, and the judicious use of original Superfriends sound effects. This thing is about the funnies thing I've seen all week. Month. Link [This Place Sucks video]' [BoingBoing]

Medium 3D

Medium 3D+time

  • Suite Vollard: the only revolving building in the world. I'm dizzy already.
    [PHOTO: A revolving building]
  • 10-minute motor spinning for hours [BoingBoing]
    • 'This morning I spent ten minutes making the motor from the Howtoons cartoon in Make. It consists of one AA battery, two safety pins, a magnet, some Scotch tape, a piece of telephone extension cable wire, a pad of Post-It notes, and a little nail polish. It's been spinning for four hours so far. I like the clickety clickety sound is makes. I shot a little movie of it in action. (It's an MP4, so you might have to download it to watch it.)
      Link '
    • That's so cute. If a kid does stuff like this on his or her own, then it can really install a sense of "ownership" or identity about engineering.

Medium Audio

Money

Play

Politics

  • 'Frank Luntz GOP Playbook Now Online: No Downloads, Searchable Text I can't stress enough the importance of reading this document. It is absolutely amazing how politicos co-opted so much of our language and led us down the path to THEIR agenda. Unfortunately, the monstrous PDF file previously available for download made that a 'challenging' endeavor. Thus, I thought it was very important to bring to everybody's attention the existence of an online, readable, searchable, text version of Frank Luntz's Playbook. It is a masterpiece of manipulation and an historic political document.
    posted by jb_thms' [MeFi]
  • Going Nowhere: The DLC Sputters to a Halt [MeFi]
  • 'What Bush got Right. Recent events: Syrian withdrawl. Palestinian reform. Egyptian Elections. Libyan disarmament. Iraqi elections. The Domino Theory in action.
    posted by dios' [200 comments at MeFi]
    • Like I've said all along, it was the right war but done the wrong way at the wrong time. There were no WMDs in Iraq (just in Iran and North Korea), no real U.N. support, no Muslim support (like his dad did). Torture is still wrong. However, that's all in the past and it would be good for us to focus on the future.
  • Missile Counter-Attack Axworthy fires back at U.S. -- and Canadian -- critics of our BMD decision in An Open Letter to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
    • 'I know it seems improbable to your divinely guided master in the White House that mere mortals might disagree with participating in a missile-defence system that has failed in its last three tests, even though the tests themselves were carefully rigged to show results. But, gosh, we folks above the 49th parallel are somewhat cautious types who can't quite see laying down billions of dollars in a three-dud poker game.'
    • 'As our erstwhile Prairie-born and bred (and therefore prudent) finance minister pointed out in presenting his recent budget, we've had eight years of balanced or surplus financial accounts. If we're going to spend money, Mr. Goodale added, it will be on day-care and health programs, and even on more foreign aid and improved defence. Sure, that doesn't match the gargantuan, multi-billion-dollar deficits that your government blithely runs up fighting a "liberation war" in Iraq, laying out more than half of all weapons expenditures in the world, and giving massive tax breaks to the top one per cent of your population while cutting food programs for poor children.'
    • 'Lloyd Axworthy is president of the University of Winnipeg and a former Canadian foreign minister.'
    • I love Canada. Too bad it's so cold up there.
  • U.N. landmine commercial won't air in US [BoingBoing]
    • I'm going to post the whole BoingBoing post here. I hope they don't mind for the sake of the cause. I will however store the image locally.
    • It's a sad case of people burying their heads in the sand. Tip O'Neil said that "All politics is local" and this is a case of trying to raise empathy for the landmine cause by making people imagine that it were local.
      A U.N. commercial depicts American girls playing in a soccer match. A girl steps on a landmine and there's a big explosion. Kids get blown apart. CNN and other networks don't want to air the ad.
      [PHOTO: What if young American were getting hit by landmines?]The explosion appears to kill and injure some girls, sparking panic and chaos among parents and other children. Shrieks of horror are heard through much of the spot, and a father is shown cradling his daughter's lifeless body, moments after celebrating a goal she had scored.

      It closes with a tag line reading: "If there were landmines here, would you stand for them anywhere? Help the U.N. eradicate landmines everywhere."


      You can view the ad here. (Here's a torrent file). Link and another Link
    • StopLandmines.org

Quirky [Possibly NSFW]

Relations [SFW]

  • Infants, Children Prefer Sounds Over Pictures And Only Slowly Become Visually Oriented, Studies Find
    • ' "We found that sounds are dominant over visuals from infancy, and only slowly through childhood do visuals become more important," said Vladimir Sloutsky, professor in the Center for Cognitive Science at Ohio State University. "The younger the children are, the more dominant their auditory system seems to be." '
    • 'For infants, sounds are preferred almost exclusively. Older children tested at 4 years of age generally preferred sounds over visuals, with the exception of familiar objects -- they paid more attention to a familiar visual when it is paired with an unknown sound.'
    • 'Overall, the new research showed children seem to be able to process only one type of stimuli at a time -- usually sounds, but sometimes visuals. Adults, on the other hand, can process both sounds and visuals together, but prefer visual information.'
    • I guess I need to come up with even more variations of "goo-goo gah-gah"!
  • Finger length predicts physically aggressive personalities, study shows
    • '[Dr. Peter] Hurd and his graduate student Allison Bailey have shown that a man's index finger length relative to ring finger length can predict how inclined that man is to be physically aggressive. Women do not show a similar effect.'
    • 'researchers have found a direct correlation between finger lengths and the amount of testosterone that a fetus is exposed to in the womb. The shorter the index finger relative to the ring finger, the higher the amount of prenatal testosterone, and--as Hurd and Bailey have now shown--the more likely he will be physically aggressive throughout his life.'
    • Hmm. I wonder if giving someone the bird is subliminally correlated to this.
  • Rhesus monkeys can assess the visual perspective of others when competing for food
    • 'Researchers Jonathan Flombaum and Dr. Laurie Santos, both from Yale University, have found that rhesus monkeys consider whether a competitor can or cannot see them when trying to steal food.'
    • 'These latest results, however, suggest that rhesus monkeys can do much more than just follow the gaze of others; they can also deduce what others see and know, based only on their perception of where others are looking. These data potentially push back the time during which our own abilities to "read the minds of others" must have evolved. Moreover, they suggest strongly a reason why these abilities may have evolved in the first place, namely for competitive interactions with others. Finally, these results lay the groundwork for investigating the neural basis for this kind of social reasoning in a readily available laboratory animal -- an urgent endeavor for developing a better neural understanding of diseases such as autism, in which this kind of social reasoning appears impaired.'
    • Why those shifty eyed thieves!

Words

  • Word of mouth 'winner for books'
    • 'John Bond, manager of HarperCollins' literary division said the findings were "fascinating". "Publishers often stand accused of becoming ever more sophisticated and cynical in their pursuit of creating instant author brands, when ultimately it is as likely to be good old-fashioned personal recommendation that really sells," he said.'

2005-03-11t23:17:29Z | RE: Cyber Life. Cyber Tech. Education. Faith; Philosophy;. Flow. Health. Geography; History;. Local. Martial. Medium 2D. Medium 2D+text. Medium 2D+time. Medium 3D. Mind. Money. Play. Politics. Relations [SFW].
2005-03-11t23:17:29Z

Cyber Life

  • American kids gorging on a diet of media, report finds
    • ' That multimedia juggling act has been mastered by many American children and teenagers, according to a study released Wednesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation, an independent health-care philanthropy. The report shows that youths are increasing the time they spend with "new media" (computers, Internet and video games) without shedding the old (TV, print and music). Consequently, students are stuffing an increasing amount of media content into their lives, using more than one medium at a time and packing 8 1/2 hours of media content into just under 6 1/2 hours each day. '
    • ' Those 8 1/2 total hours--which do not include exposure at school or as part of schoolwork--are up an hour from five years ago, with the biggest increase coming from video games (now at 49 minutes a day) and computer use (slightly more than an hour). The study also found that children's bedrooms are plugged-in places, with two-thirds having a TV in their bedroom. The percent of kids with VCR or DVD players in their rooms rose to 54 percent from 36 percent over the last five years, and 37 percent have cable or satellite television. '
      • Why when I was 7, all we had in the house was a small black-and-white TV that required a pair of pliers to change the channel!
    • 'Titled "Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 year-olds," the study involved more than 2,000 participants who completed questionnaires and kept media diaries.'
    • ' Dr. Miriam Bar-on, a pediatrician at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, said in an interview that the sheer amount of time spent tethered to TV and videos (nearly 4 hours a day), music (1 hour, 44 minutes), computers (1 hour, 2 minutes) and video games (49 minutes) is cause for concern. Kids spent an average of 43 minutes reading. '
      • Of course don't blame the devices. It's all still a matter of house rules.
  • 'Ever need to make a really long or convoluted URL shorter? Or need to hide some bit of web naming from someone? You'll want to use something like TinyURL, BabyURL , URL123, and Make A Shorter Link. All that shortening can't be good. Fun ways to play with your enemies! HugeURL and my favorite - EvilURL (Evil - NSFW)' [MeFi]
    • Old but it's good to post stuff like this on ocassion. 
  • The Wikipedians Who Make it Happen [/.]
    • 'Many of us might have wondered who these crazy people are, spending lot of time at wikipedia and presenting us with such an invaluable information. Wired has decided to give some credits to the most active wikipedians, in their article titled Wiki becomes a way of life '
    • Yep, I just love Wikipedia, our modern Encyclopedia Galactica. These guys make me feel so at home.
    • It's as if editing is a game. #1 has 131,521 edits. #1000 has 1,019 edits. They should make a separate list for robot editors.
  • Mutual online calendar
    • My wife and I both have Yahoo and Hotmail accounts but we primarily use our Yahoo accounts. We haven't liked the shared calendar feature, so what we're trying out this plan:
      • Keep using our Yahoo email and IM as usual.
      • Create a new hotmail account just for our shared calendar and IM alerts.
    • Yahoo and Hotmail each has its own pros and cons.
    • UPDATE 2005-03-14t16:03:31Z: I quickly found out that the Hotmail calendar is inferior to Yahoo's calendar. Sure the Hotmail calendar has some nice DHTML and ActiveX features, but given that Microsoft is so big and that Hotmail has been around for so long, I was surprised to find the Hotmail calendar lacking in simple things that you notice right away when you use the product.
      • EG: The events list. If you are entering a bunch of birthdays or whatever, then at some point you'll want to see them as a list instead of just from the calendar views (day, week, month, year). However Hotmail has no event list. The closest thing you get is a reminders list. And even then you are limited to 10 to a page and then there is no one-click to the next page --you have to open a drop down then select a page. That's just too many clicks.
      • EG: The year view should bold the individual dates that have events.
      As a result, Julia and I have opted to form a private Yahoo Groups and we're entering our common calendar there. We won't get IM reminders for common events, but we rarely use that anyway and we can enter an IM reminder via our personal Yahoo accounts if we want to.
  • Google Adds News Personalization [/.]
    • 'ZDNet is reporting that the Google News home page is now customizable, allowing you to add or delete main news categories (such as business, sports and so on), as well as increasing or decreasing the number of headlines within a section. They've also introduced a feature that lets you create your own section using keywords for a topic that interests you. '
    • Sweet! I just removed the sports section and added a "Teletubbies" section!
  • Madrid: Terrorism, the Internet and Democracy
    • Besides the content, the feeling behind the content is good.
    • 'The Internet is a foundation of democratic society in the 21st century, because the core values of the Internet and democracy are so closely aligned.
      1. The Internet is fundamentally about openness, participation, and freedom of expression for all -- increasing the diversity and reach of information and ideas.
      2. The Internet allows people to communicate and collaborate across borders and belief systems.
      3. The Internet unites families and cultures in diaspora; it connects people, helping them to form civil societies.
      4. The Internet can foster economic development by connecting people to information and markets.
      5. The Internet introduces new ideas and views to those who may be isolated and prone to political violence.
      6. The Internet is neither above nor below the law. The same legal principles that apply in the physical world also apply to human activities conducted over the Internet.'
  • Tips for Mastering E-mail Overload.
    • This topic is a must read for all the idiot emailers out there. Here are the bullets for you lazy bastards!
      • 'Use a subject line to summarize, not describe.
      • Give your reader full context at the start of your message.
      • When you copy lots of people (a heinous practice that should be used sparingly), mark out why each person should care.
      • Use separate messages rather than bcc (blind carbon copy).
      • Make action requests clear.
      • Separate topics into separate e-mails … up to a point.
      • Combine separate points into one message.
      • Edit forwarded messages.
      • When scheduling a call or conference, include the topic in the invitation. It helps people prioritize and manage their calendar more effectively.
      • Make your e-mail one page or less.
      • Understand how people prefer to be reached, and how quickly they respond.
      • Check e-mail at defined times each day.
      • Use a paper "response list" to triage messages before you do any follow-up.
      • Charge people for sending you messages.
      • Train people to be relevant.
      • Answer briefly.
      • Send out delayed responses.
      • Ignore it.'

Cyber Tech

  • Learn UNIX in 10 minutes. Wham, bam, thank you  ma' am!
  • Torvalds switches to Apple
    • The title is misleading. He switched to from PC to Mac HW but his OS is still Linux.
    • ' "My main machine these days is a dual 2GHz G5 (aka PowerPC 970) - it's physically a regular Apple Mac, although it obviously only runs Linux, so I don't think you can call it a Mac any more ;)" he said.  '
    • ' "As to the why ... Part of it is simply that I wanted to try something else, and I felt like there were enough people testing the x86 side that it certainly didn't need me. Part of it is that I personally believe there are two main architectures out there: Power and x86-64 are what _I_ think are the two most relevant ones, and I decided that I had to at least check the other side of it out seriously if I really believed that," said Torvalds. '
    • ' "Oh, and part of it is that I got the machine for free," said Torvalds, "I'm really a technology whore." '
  • HOW-TO: Make your own annotated multimedia Google map.
    • Bwah-ha-ha! Let the Google map-hacking begin!
    • 'One of the great things about Google maps is it has its roots in XML. To translate for the non-web developers out there, it basically means Google maps are user hackable. This how-to will show you how to make your own annotated Google map from your own GPS data. Plus, you'll be able to tie in images and video to create an interactive multimedia map. We'll walk you through the steps we took to generate an annotated map of a walk we took recently through our hometown, now that it's actually starting to get warm enough to want to walk about!'

Education

  • Chiropractic school angers FSU professors
    • Old story but I just had to post the hilarious fake campus map.
    • 'A growing number of professors in the Florida State University College of Medicine are saying they will resign if FSU administrators continue to pursue a proposed chiropractic school.'
      [MAP: FSU map with fake bad schools]

Faith; Philosophy

Flow

  • "10 Things I Have Learned" by Milton Glaser
    • Very nice list. It's almost frightening in its simplicity and truth. He's obviously a fellow who loves to shake up clichés like I do.
    • Here's the list without the details.
      • 'You Can Only Work For People That You Like.
      • If You Have A Choice Never Have A Job.
      • Some People Are Toxic Avoid Them.
      • Professionalism Is Not Enough or The Good Is The Enemy Of The Great.
      • Less Is Not Necessarily More.
      • Style Is Not To Be Trusted.
      • How You Live Changes Your Brain.
      • Doubt Is Better Than Certainty.
      • Solving The Problem Is More Important Than Being Right.
      • Tell The Truth.'

Geography; History;

Health

Local

  • Citywide 'Wi-Fi' network pondered
    • 'Chicago officials took the first tentative steps Tuesday toward installation of a citywide wireless network that would allow residents to connect to the Internet from easy chairs, school desks and office break rooms--and provide City Hall with a major source of new revenue.'
    • 'Service probably could be provided more cheaply than what people now pay for wired Internet service, and "instead of going to Starbucks or another upscale coffee or sandwich shop to get wireless access for your laptop, it could be available throughout the entire city," Burke said.'
    • 'Aside from scattered businesses that may charge a fee, the biggest provider of Wi-Fi service in Chicago is the city's public library system. People with laptops can connect for free at 78 library locations where installations "provide high speed data into communities and bring people into the libraries," said Christopher O'Brien, the city's chief information officer.'
      • I did not know that.
    • 'Citywide Wi-Fi installation would entail placing about 7,500 small antennas on street light poles "every block and a half or two blocks" citywide, O'Brien told aldermen attending a joint meeting of the City Council's Finance and Economic Development Committees. He estimated the cost at $18.5 million. Possible service options range from offering the connectivity for free to creating a public utility that would provide the service for a fee, O'Brien said.'
    • I just noticed that it got slashdotted!
      • 'Chicago Indymedia reports on developments pertaining to community internet in Chicago. A press release from the Center for Neighborhood Technology reports that the city's Finance Committee has commissioned a study to explore the possibility of low-cost wireless internet across the city of Chicago, and reserve Chicago's right to establish a citywide Wi-Fi network. It could run into efforts underway now in the state capital by Big Telecom to shut out muni Internet in Illinois." Several readers also pointed to the Chicago Tribune's story on this possibility, including efforts to head off regulation which would make municipal Wi-Fi difficult.' [/.]

Martial

  • Ex-Marine Says Public Version of Saddam Capture Fiction.
    • 'A former U.S. Marine who participated in capturing ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said the public version of his capture was fabricated.

      Ex-Sgt. Nadim Abou Rabeh, of Lebanese descent, was quoted in the Saudi daily al-Medina Wednesday as saying Saddam was actually captured Friday, Dec. 12, 2003, and not the day after, as announced by the U.S. Army.

      "I was among the 20-man unit, including eight of Arab descent, who searched for Saddam for three days in the area of Dour near Tikrit, and we found him in a modest home in a small village and not in a hole as announced," Abou Rabeh said.

      "We captured him after fierce resistance during which a Marine of Sudanese origin was killed," he said.

      He said Saddam himself fired at them with a gun from the window of a room on the second floor. Then they shouted at him in Arabic: "You have to surrender. ... There is no point in resisting."

      "Later on, a military production team fabricated the film of Saddam's capture in a hole, which was in fact a deserted well," Abou Rabeh said.'

    • O well.
  • Army frowns on Dungeons and Dragons
    • 'Does the Israel Defense Forces believe incoming recruits and soldiers who play Dungeons and Dragons are unfit for elite units? Ynet has learned that 18-year-olds who tell recruiters they play the popular fantasy game are automatically given low security clearance.

      "They're detached from reality and suscepitble to influence," the army says.'

    • He he.
  • ' My coming My going, Two simple happenings that got entangled... Japanese Death Poems. Small beautiful simple poems written before death. I just discovered them and thought I would share. A few more here ' [MeFi]
  • Martial measurements

    • If we go by the standardized length of the kanejaku (1 shaku = 10/33 m = 10 sun = 100 bu), use the exact length SI to IS for length (0.0254 m = 1 inch), and dump it into a spreadsheet, then we get numbers like this:

      • Maximum length for a tanto blade =
        1 shaku = 0.3030 m = 11.930 inches

      • Minimum length for a daito blade =
        2 shaku = 0.6061 m = 23.861 inches

      • A hanbo or sanshaku bo =
        3 shaku = 0.9091 m = 35.791 inches

      • A 37 shinai =
        3 shaku, 7 sun = 1.1212 m = 44.142 inches

      • A 38 shinai =
        3 shaku, 8 sun = 1.1515 m = 45.335 inches

      • A 39 shinai =
        3 shaku, 9 sun = 1.1818 m = 46.528 inches

      • A yonshaku bo =
        4 shaku = 1.2121 m = 47.721 inches

      • A jo =
        4 shaku, 2 sun, 1 bu = 1.2758 m = 50.227 inches

      • A goshak