05

1. Monkeys hubris. RE: Life. Philosophy. Rambling. Relations.
2. Pr0n creep. RE: Cyber Life. NSFW. Pr0n. Saucy.
3. 4 moral polls. RE: Philosophy. Poll. Science.
4. Tonga 8.0 earthquake. RE: Geography. News. Science.
5. Microsoft stock low. RE: Microsoft. Money.
6. Beer prayer. RE: Funny.
7. AA comics. RE: Comics.
8. Plaid ninjas. RE: Animated. Flash. Funny. Martial.
9. No language for math. RE: Culture. Philosophy. Pscychology. Words.
10. Besides Megapixels. RE: Engineering. Photography.
11. Curious searching. RE: Cyber Life. Cyber Tech. Flow. Google.
12. The Singularity = The Rapture. RE: Evolution. Funny. Science.
13. Mimetic violence placated by sacrifice. RE: Mind. Philosophy. Pscychology. Relations. Violence.
14. Self-powering nanodevices. RE: Economy. Engineering. Nanotechnology. Science.
15. Google Sketchup available. RE: Cyber Life. Design. Google. Make. Q9of9.
16. Bye-bye zLinks. RE: Cyber Life. My Stuff.
17. O MSG spice. RE: Google. Microsoft. Open Source. Sun.
18. Asian counterparts to Google and Wikipedia. RE: Cyber Life. Google. Wikimedia. World.
19. Giant floating wind turbines. RE: Engineering. Sustainability.
20. Hit-and-run by the Zoo. RE: Chicago. News.
21. Catholics are Orthodox without beards. RE: Faith. Funny. Politics. U.S.A. (America).
22. Google does not always win. RE: Culture. Cyber Life. Evolution. Faith. Philosophy. Popularity.
23. Pick 2 from Google, eBay, Microsoft, and Yahoo. RE: Cyber Life. Money. News.
24. Microsoft offers WMP/WDP as JPG alternative. RE: Cyber Tech. Images. Microsoft. Open Source.
25. Manga sound effects interpreted. RE: Comics. Culture. Japanese. Manga. Words.
26. Wallet returned 35 years later. RE: Funny. Quirky.
27. Sometimes all you have is a knife for a gunfight. RE: Martial.
28. Temple Burning and my daily exercise routine. RE: Health. Martial. My Stuff. Play.
29. CSG website done!. RE: CSG. Cyber Life. Martial. My Stuff.
30. Jungle Disk. RE: Cyber Life. Cyber Tech. Storage.
31. Post-divergence interbreeding. RE: Anthropology. Nature. News. Science.
32. Marvel-Peanuts mashup. RE: Comics.

2006-05-03t10:45:00Z | RE: Life. Philosophy. Rambling. Relations.
Monkeys hubris

People are monkeys. And don't give me that old crap about "no, we're apes", because on the  infraorder level we're categorized with other simians like the New World monkeys. It's just that saying "People are simians" doesn't have the connotation of saying that "People are monkeys". I've written about monkeys before (Adam and Eve and monkeys) and others have certainly thought about human-monkeyism before but I woke up early and I just want ramble a bit.

People are monkeys. As much as we may be enamored with our potential for cleverness and beauty, we are still monkeys --foolish and animalistic. Ideas like this are not new. Thinking that our mortal form is a shadow of our godly potential is an ancient idea. The thing that has been getting me lately is our pride. A preschooler puts on plastic sunglasses and proclaim himself cool. A scientists solves a problem and proclaims herself a genius. Making a distinction between pride and hubris while retaining self-esteem and humility is something we should all do (except for all the "geniuses" out there!).

Personally, I'm a monkey. I appreciate the talents I have (and don't have), but talents are just tools. If I can't do it, then perhaps someone else can. If I don't have the tools or the knowledge of the tools, then I can find the tools or someone who has the knowledge. If the tool or knowledge doesn't exist, then let's try to create them. I'm pretty hopeful in this fashion but really it's nothing to be self-impressed about.

The other thing about that is the competitive v cooperative aspect. Competition is good for raising standards but so is cooperation. It's good to do both but competition usually initially involves a sense of ego. The bottom line is what is the goal of competition or cooperation? I think that competition and cooperation are, again, tools. There is some duty/necessity or joy that you want to achieve. The initial sense of ego is often a self-esteem issue, but once you have that, then you should focus on other "greater" goals. Unfortunately, some people never really get past the ego and they fall into the hubris trap.

Here are two hubris traps:

• Enthralling video game players. While winning sometimes encourages more play, losing enforces continued playing even more because the ego is on the line. However if a game is a series of interesting choices, even if the choices are no longer really interesting, players will continue because of hubris. A game itself is worthy if players continuing to play because the game continues to provide interesting choices and is still an actual joy.
• Gadget-love. In this context, a "gadget" can cover many things. Hot wheels toy car gadgets. Barbie fashion doll gadgets. Bling bling gadgets. Sexual play gadgets. Techno-phobe gadgets. Bloat-ware and fancy software gadgets. Martial arts gadgets. Office supplies gadgets. House cleaning gadgets. Engineering gadgets. Political solution gadgets. The list goes on. Hyper-gadgetry can be a joy in of itself (or a duty if your job is to provide gadgets). The key is to keep an eye on the line between duty/joy and ego. If collecting gadgets is no longer a joy, then it's ego. If the gadgets become interfere with the duty, then it's ego.

I don't mind doing my duty. I'm fine with acquiring tools/knowledge to do "work", but I what are these tools for? What is the goal? Is this a one time goal? How important/urgent/costly is the goal? What is the return on these tools? How much time/money/effort will it take to get these tools? Will I be able to reuse these tools? These questions (and others like them) seem particularly relevant to "techie" work (where there are a lot of new and specialized tools), but really this concept applies to many other lines of work.

Perhaps the other key thing about this is my line of work. If I worked in finance or science, then then perhaps my tools would be reusable and acquiring my tools would have great or important returns? In the "People, Ideas, and Things" model (from job-hunting and career-choosing book What Color Is Your Parachute? [Amazon.com/...] by Richard Bolles), the tools concept works well with ideas and things but the tools idea can actually apply to people too. It's not that people are just tools, but that people can collaborate and cooperate, people can be very helpful/useful, people are great resources. On the other hand not everything is a tool --things exist on their own and have being. On the other hand, it's not a binary thing.

And since I have clearly started to actually ramble, I'm done for now.

2006-05-03t15:57:56Z | RE: Cyber Life. NSFW. Pr0n. Saucy.
Pr0n creep

Boy am I ever behind the times. It looks like porn has been creeping into the gaming industry. I guess this was inevitable.

Could they go to E3 if they put on some clothes? [blog.wired.com/sex/index.blog?entry_id=1471773]

I just saw on the Sex & Games blog that despite earlier reassurances from the Entertainment Software Association that E3's "content policy" pertained to booth babe attire (and I think booth decoration), not to game content, the games conference has banned (NSFW) Naughty America: The Game from attending. However. I just got off the phone with Noah Dudley, head dude of NA:TG (NSFW), who says that they missed the deadline to get a booth, so they weren't going to be at E3 regardless. He did confirm that E3 said "no adult content." He took that to mean not just the booth but the game content as well, so he says NA:TG would probably not have been permitted to exhibit anyway.

Porn has it's place but it tends to be overpowering. nsfw.reddit.com had lots of potential of being like social bookmarking for fark.com-like stuff --"NSFW but not strictly porn" (NSFW BNSP, I made up this stupid acronym). However after months of using nsfw.reddit.com for months, it has essentially become spammed by porn links. Mind you: reddit.com, digg.com, and the like are great for NSFW stuff, but it would be nice to have a popularity site for NSFW BNSP content.

2006-05-03t16:37:07Z | RE: Philosophy. Poll. Science.
4 moral polls

I love philosophy and science in the mainstream. TAKE THE 4 POLLS BEFORE YOU READ THE ANSWERS IN THE ARTICLE OR MY VOTES.

What if... [news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4954856.stm]

Suppose you could save five lives by taking one - what would be the correct thing to do? Such ethical dilemmas provide classic "experiments" for philosophers. Here the Magazine presents four such quandaries and asks readers to vote on what they think is right.

SPOILER:

1. Judith Thomson's violinist: "One day, you wake up in hospital. In the nearby bed lies a world famous violinist who is connected to you with various tubes and machines. To your horror, you discover that you have been kidnapped by the Music Appreciation Society. Aware of the maestro's impending death, they hooked you up to the violinist. If you stay in the hospital bed, connected to the violinist, he will be totally cured in nine months. You are unlikely to suffer harm. No one else can save him. Do you have an obligation to stay connected?"
   • I voted yes. The poll was 75.30% no out of 4142 votes.
2. Philippa Foot's runaway trolley car: "A runaway trolley car is hurtling down a track. In its path are five people who will definitely be killed unless you, a bystander, flip a switch which will divert it on to another track, where it will kill one person. Should you flip the switch?"
   • I voted no. The poll was 76.33% yes out of 4859 votes.
3. Philippa Foot fat man and the trolley car: "The runaway trolley car is hurtling down a track where it will kill five people. You are standing on a bridge above the track and, aware of the imminent disaster, you decide to jump on the track to block the trolley car. Although you will die, the five people will be saved. Just before your leap, you realise that you are too light to stop the trolley. Next to you, a fat man is standing on the very edge of the bridge. He would certainly block the trolley, although he would undoubtedly die from the impact. A small nudge and he would fall right onto the track below. No one would ever know. Should you push him?"
   • I voted no. The poll was 74.80% no out of 4445 votes.
4. The cave explorers: "An enormous rock falls and blocks the exit of a cave you and five other tourists have been exploring. Fortunately, you spot a hole elsewhere and decide to let "Big Jack" out first. But Big Jack, a man of generous proportions, gets stuck in the hole. He cannot be moved and there is no other way out. The high tide is rising and, unless you get out soon, everyone but Big Jack (whose head is sticking out of the cave) will inevitably drown. Searching through your backpack, you find a stick of dynamite. It will not move the rock, but will certainly blast Big Jack out of the hole. Big Jack, anticipating your thoughts, pleads for his life. He does not want to die, but neither do you and your four companions. Should you blast Big Jack out?"
   • I voted yes. The poll was 74.21% yes out of 4219 votes.

2006-05-03t19:42:44Z | RE: Geography. News. Science.
Tonga 8.0 earthquake

Tonga [W], just east of Australia, was hit with an earthquake rated 8.0 on the Richter scale around fours ago. Let's see what happens. If it's big, then I hope everybody is a bit more prepared this time.

Magnitude 8.0 - TONGA 2006 May 3 15:26:35 UTC [earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/usmgas.php] [via metafilter.com/mefi/51361]

Wednesday, May 3, 2006 at 15:26:35 (UTC) = Coordinated Universal Time

Thursday, May 4, 2006 at 4:26:35 AM = local time at epicenter

Location 20.035°S, 174.227°W

2006-05-03t20:40:05Z | RE: Microsoft. Money.
Microsoft stock low

Something smells fishy at Microsoft. Here are some screenshots from Google Finance [finance.google.com/finance?q=MSFT].

The past 5 days: What's with that big drop on 2006-04-28 followed by continuing decline leading to today at $23.31.

The past  year: Microsoft hasn't ballparked that low since 2005-10-12 at $24.30.

Microsoft in recent news:

• Microsoft, Yahoo! In Possible Partnership Talks [forbes.com/markets/bonds/2006/05/03/yahoo-microsoft-partnership-0503markets04.html]. Monetized search, IM, and email.
• Microsoft Says: We Can Build a Friggin' Grid Too [battellemedia.com/archives/002533.php] 'Few others have the resources to build this massive online computing infrastructure. Who else can build, aintain, and exploit a cluster of millions of servers? Who else can spend the billions required? Not Amazon. Not Ask. Not any venture-funded startup. Probably not Yahoo. The search war is now an arms race. '
• Microsoft's Soft Quarter; Outlook Trails Estimate [tradingmarkets.com/tm.site/news/TOP%20STORY/237610/]
• Analysts cast doubt on rescheduled date for delivery of Vista [seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002968211_vista03.html]. Vista's late and I think the XBox is going to take a beating.

Is it buy low and sell high? Or sell before it's too late?

2006-05-04t01:20:24Z | RE: Funny.
Beer prayer

This is making the rounds

Beer Prayer

Our lager,
Which art in barrels,
Hallowed be thy drink.
Thy will be drunk,
(I will be drunk),
At home as in the tavern.
Give us this day our foamy head,
And forgive us our spillages,
As we forgive those who spill against us.
And lead us not to incarceration,
But deliver us from hangovers.
For thine is the beer, The bitter and The lager.
Forever and ever, Barmen.

2006-05-04t14:34:45Z | RE: Comics.
AA comics

Ethan Persoff [ep.tc] has some older comic strips like a complete set of the 1968-1974 Alcoholics Anonymous comic strips, but he has other stuff too. I thought the AA stuff would be laughably awful like Chick Christian cartoon booklets [chick.com/catalog/tractlist.asp], but the AA stuff was actually pretty good.

2006-05-10t14:42:03Z | RE: Animated. Flash. Funny. Martial.
Plaid ninjas

Just some flash animation fun at spinnerdisc.com [via metafilter.com/mefi/51503] with stuff like Tiny Plaid Ninjas and Penguin calls.

2006-05-10t14:54:23Z | RE: Culture. Philosophy. Pscychology. Words.
No language for math

The Pirahã people [W]. The Pirahã language [W] has no language for numbers and hence no concept of it. I've known that other languages like Aramaic have indirect language for colors but the Pirahã are on a totally different level.

• one-ish, two-ish, lots [metafilter.com/mefi/35108]
• More on arithmetic in the Amazon [metafilter.com/mefi/36640]
• Live here and now [metafilter.com/mefi/51505] 

2006-05-10t14:59:34Z | RE: Engineering. Photography.
Besides Megapixels

I'm in the market for a digital camera somewhere between point-and-shoot and professional SLR, so I'm filing this link here. Technology is often a crutch for those who don't have the expertise.

Beyond Megapixels [wired.com/news/technology/0,70853-0.html?tw=rss.index]

2006-05-12t15:06:30Z | RE: Cyber Life. Cyber Tech. Flow. Google.
Curious searching

A few recent words from Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt.

Will search keep Google on the throne? [news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6070774.html]

"It's obvious things are going to be more competitive in the future," he said during the company's annual press day. "This competition is healthy for end users." But "none of the other competitors is emphasizing" search.

In the end, the users will dictate the direction of search and Internet services, he said. "I would propose the first rule of the Internet, most humbly: People have a lot to say," he said, pointing to the popularity of user-created wikis. There will be a "transition from learned information to learning information, and curiosity will be how you establish your expertise." In five years, Google will have built "the product I've always wanted to build--we call it 'serendipity,'" he said, adding that it will "tell me what I should be typing."

That's what I do. But I call it "exploring" instead of "research" or "expertise", because then it would be more work and less fun. If I was trying to get someone to pay me for exploring, then I might call it research, but even then I would prefer to call that "deeper" or "wider" exploration.

Other search engines don't have the hardware infrastructure, let alone the visionary vector.

2006-05-15t15:32:12Z | RE: Evolution. Funny. Science.
The Singularity = The Rapture

In one sense I believe in The Singularity (in that we will eventually develop greater than human artificial intelligence and that might self-evolve), but I'm not much for speculating about what I can't possibly know. I like the line by Douglas Hofstader line: The Singularity is "the rapture of nerds".

The great Singularity debate [blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=3029&tag=nl.e539]

The first speaker was Ray Kurzweil (pictured below), the progenitor of the Singularity, who reprised his recent 672-page book, The Singularity Is Near : When Humans Transcend Biology. He whizzed through the charts from the book, showing how law of accelerating returns is leading to the transformation of  humanity. Kurzweil has concluded that intelligence will become more nonbiological and increase by the trillions.

Douglas Hofstader followed Kurzweil, offering his critique of Singularity. Hostader, professor of Cognitive Science and Computer Science Adjunct Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, Philosophy, Comparative Literature, and Psychology at the University of Indiana and the author of Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, doesn't buy into the whole Singularity vision.

It's funny to have the computer science guy "defending" humanity.

2006-05-15t15:52:14Z | RE: Mind. Philosophy. Pscychology. Relations. Violence.
Mimetic violence placated by sacrifice

"René Girard, philosopher and anthropologist"? Sounds cool.

You want something because someone else does [metafilter.com/mefi/51219]

Mimetic rivalry on a planetary scale. Rene Girard is the author of several books developing the idea that human culture is based on sacrifice as the way out of mimetic, or imitative, violence between rivals. When one rival is successful in obtaining the love object, violence is precipitated, which falls on the head of certain scapegoats, of whom Jesus Christ is the archetype. The violence can be traced in literature.

I had some confusion initially because I read it as memetic [W] at first, and then thought of mathematical mimetics [W] (related to finite differences [W]), but really the actual word is simply mimetic [thefreedictionary.com/dict.asp?Word=mimetic], as in mimicry.

Certainly kids get the concepts of justice, mimetic competition, and sacrifice immediately.

2006-05-15t16:01:39Z | RE: Economy. Engineering. Nanotechnology. Science.
Self-powering nanodevices

I've love self-powered things. It's amazing how primitive we are. There are so many untapped resources out there —money, food, power, love, etc.— and it can be done cooperatively instead of just competitively. Why do zero-sum [W] when you can have infinite-sum or win-win [W]?

Free Electricity from Nano Generators [technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16746&ch=nanotech]

Today's portable electronics (except for self-winding watches and crank radios) depend on batteries for power. Now researchers have demonstrated that easy-to-make, inexpensive nanowires can harvest mechanical energy, possibly leading to such advances as medical implants that run on electricity generated from pulsing blood vessels and cell phones powered by nanowires in the soles of shoes.

"When you walk, you generate 67 watts. Your finger movement is 0.1 watt. Your breathing is one watt. If you can convert a fraction of that, you can power a device. From the concept we've demonstrated, we can convert 17-30 percent of that," says Zhong Lin Wang, professor of materials science at Georgia Tech and one of the researchers of the work, published in the journal Science.

Their results confirm a theory: zinc oxide nanowires will show a powerful piezoelectric effect, which is the production of electricity in response to mechanical pressure. Ordinarily the positive and negative charges of zinc and oxygen ions in these crystalline nanowires cancel each other out. But when the wires, which are chemically grown to stand on end on top of an electrode, bend in response to, say, a vibration, the ions are displaced. This unbalances the charges and creates an electric field that produces a current when the nanowire is connected to a circuit.

2006-05-15t16:59:00Z | RE: Cyber Life. Design. Google. Make. Q9of9.
Google Sketchup available

Google Sketchup [sketchup.google.com], Google's free version of Sketchup [sketchup.com] has been out for a couple of weeks now (since 2006-04-27). 3D modeling made ridiculously easy. Awesome, awesome stuff! I'll be doing layout planning for the yard and specific rooms in my house so I'll definitely use it.

2006-05-16t17:32:21Z | RE: Cyber Life. My Stuff.
Bye-bye zLinks

I've decided to get rid of the "odd" titles and headings that I use on this site. This includes stuff like aaIntro, aaScrap, EG, zMisc, zVoc, and zLinks. While they're pretty clear to me, I think they're meaningless in Google searches. EG: The file /h/xDatabases/aaIntro/index.htm, which was called "aaIntro", will now have a title and nav bar link called "Databases Intro".

I've made these changes on the directory and page level, but I'll take my time doing it on the sub-page level. My old "odd" conventions are still useful as far as sorting directories and files, but the new "conventional" conventions will be more user friendly.

Non-fixation is good.

2006-05-17t15:37:02Z | RE: Google. Microsoft. Open Source. Sun.
O MSG spice

Funny how these articles transition from open source to Microsoft to Google to Sun to open source.

• Ballmer memo targets Linux [news.com.com/Ballmer+memo+targets+Linux/2100-1016_3-1013124.html?tag=nl]. Ballmer's Microsoft v open source memo. Not terribly new but wait...
• Microsoft's nightmare inches closer to reality [news.com.com/Microsofts+nightmare+inches+closer+to+reality/2100-1012_3-5877197.html]. Two more Microsoft memos! The odd thing about the MS v Google struggle is that it's so predictable.
• Google Releases AJAX Framework [developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/17/127214&from=rss]. Google's toolkit helps developers make AJAX via Sun's Java.
• Sun boss ponders how to open source Java [itwire.com.au/content/view/4335/53/]. The most explicit statement by Java about going open source ever. Let's see if they pull through or fall.

2006-05-19t14:47:24Z | RE: Cyber Life. Google. Wikimedia. World.
Asian counterparts to Google and Wikipedia

With the Chinese government in control of the Chinese Internet, it's not surprising that Google is having a hard time there. In any case it is fascinating to read about the Chinese counterparts: The Chinese Google is Baidu.com (Baidu [W]) and the Chinese Google is baike.baidu.com (Baike [W]).

Chinese Search Site Adds User-Written Encyclopedia [technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16896]

China's biggest Internet search site, Baidu.com, has launched a Chinese-language encyclopedia inspired by the cooperative reference site Wikipedia, which the communist government bars China's Web surfers from seeing. The Chinese service, which debuted in April, carries entries written by users, but warns that it will delete content about sex, terrorism and attacks on the communist government.

It is also fascinating to see that Google has a hard time in Korea because the Korean Google counterpart, Naver.com, is a portal/search engine that's more human-based.

Google struggles in one of most-wired nations [msnbc.msn.com/id/12533368/]

Google referred only about 17 percent of unique visitors to other sites in March, according to the Web analytics company WebSideStory. Another research company, KoreanClick, found that Google's Korean site referred only about 10.8 percent of unique visitors in February. The search-engine field here is ruled by local NHN Corp.'s Naver Web site, whose links accounted for nearly 58.4 percent of search referrals, according to WebSideStory. KoreanClick's tally of Naver's share was even higher — nearly 80 percent. Daum Communications was second with more than 48 percent, and U.S.-based Yahoo's Korean-language site No. 3 at 32 percent.

The Korean slice of the Web is relatively small compared to the English-language chunks of cyberspace. Koreans often come up short when trying to find information in their native tongue. To remedy the situation, Naver — which is more like a Yahoo-esque portal than a mere search engine — came up with what it calls Knowledge iN, where users post questions that are answered by other users — creating a database that now totals more than 41.1 million entries. A search on the site brings up typical Web results along with the Knowledge iN database and news and blog sites. "I don't know whether they expected it before or not, but it was actually a very good match for Korean culture," Wayne Lee, an analyst at Woori Securities, said of Naver's service. "Korean netizens like to interact with other people, they want to answer questions, they want to reply."

Both the Chinese and Korean variants are culturally influenced but the Korean variant is at least more transparent than the Chinese one. It seems that the Chinese are opening up in different areas (markets, knowledge, social, etc.) at their own pace --slowly.

2006-05-19t22:06:30Z | RE: Engineering. Sustainability.
Giant floating wind turbines

These are just so cool. It's like something from Popular Mechanics or Hayao Miyazaki.

Giant Wind Turbines [technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16801&ch=biztech]

Huge turbines mounted on floating platforms could make wind power competitive with fossil-fuel-generated electricity. These advanced wind turbines, which are in development, could be situated far from the shore, too, avoiding battles with onshore residents who object to the presence of large wind farms.

GE has announced a $27 million partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy to develop 5-7 megawatt turbines by 2009, each of which could power well over 1,000 homes. Supplanting the company's current 3.6 megawatt turbines, these giant energy factories should make wind power more economical, since the major cost of building and installing offshore wind farms does not depend primarily on a turbine's size, but on the number of them that need to be erected. By 2015, GE could have even bigger, 10-megawatt turbines, according to Jim Lyons, leader of advanced technology for GE's wind energy business.

None of these technological advances will make a difference, however, if erecting monstrous turbines is blocked by shoreline residents who see them as visual pollution. A potential solution is floating platforms that allow the turbines to be located farther out in the sea -- and out of sight. Current projects locate wind turbines in waters less than 20 meters deep. Going farther out on the continental shelf, which extends several hundred kilometers from the U.S. East Coast, would mean locating them at depths up to 50 meters, which is probably too deep to build towers or trusses that support turbines standing on the sea floor, at least at an affordable cost.

2006-05-22t18:44:03Z | RE: Chicago. News.
Hit-and-run by the Zoo

I first heard this story this morning on the radio. It's chilling to me for several reason:

• My family and I frequently go to Lincoln Park Zoo. I know exactly where Lincoln Park West and Belden Avenue [Google Maps] is: That's just west of the Conservatory.
• I have kids in the same age range.
• The kid was taken to Children's Memorial Hospital where my wife works.
• Hit-and-runs are so cowardly.

Charges could come in girl's hit-run death [chicagotribune.com/news/custom/newsroom/chi-060522maya-hit-run,1,624557.story]

Charges are expected today against a motorist arrested in a weekend hit-and-run accident near Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo that killed a 4-year-old girl.

On Saturday afternoon, a Lexus traveling north on Lincoln Park West struck Maya, her mother and brother at the intersection with Belden Avenue. Police said Maya was dragged for several yards as the driver fled the scene.

Her mother and brother were treated for minor injuries, police said. A witness chased the driver of the Lexus and took down his license plate number. The driver was taken into custody soon after, but no charges were filed over the weekend.

Good job Mr. Witness!

2006-05-22t19:05:59Z | RE: Faith. Funny. Politics. U.S.A. (America).
Catholics are Orthodox without beards

Christianity, especially American and Catholic Christianity is such a fun topic.

Catholics are the New York Yankees of Christianity [metafilter.com/mefi/51774]

The Interpretative Dance Theocrats. Inspired by Salon's excerpt from Michelle Goldberg's new book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, this handy guide will resolve your confusion over Christian theological jargon.

Here are a few excerpt from facetious link:

The Bible
The Bible was written by God as a merchandising tie-in to His blockbuster film "The Ten Commandments." Each book of the Bible is named after a person who features prominently in it, for example, the Book of Numbers, which is named after Herschel Numbers, who invented numerals. The Bible was so successful that God wrote a sequel, "Bible II: On to Rome," now generally called "The New Testament." Protestants believe the Bible is literal and exactly true in every detail except the description of the Eucharist, while Catholics are not allowed to read the Bible.

Orthodox
For many years, American scholars believed the Orthodox were, like leprechauns, unicorns, and Eskimos, purely the product of the fanciful imaginations of medieval writers. Recent evidence leads us to tentatively conclude, however, that Eastern Orthodoxy may have somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 million adherents. Protestants tend to see the Orthodox as "Catholics with beards," while Catholics confess to a haunting sense that they are simply "Orthodox without beards."

2006-05-23t16:10:03Z | RE: Culture. Cyber Life. Evolution. Faith. Philosophy. Popularity.
Google does not always win

Sometimes it's nice to have stats to get perspective.

Google leads search, Yahoo wins portal wars  [enn.ie/news.html?code=9696416]

Newly compiled US statistics from online traffic analysts at Hitwise suggest Google reigns supreme in terms of searches and seems to be increasing its lead.

The figures were posted on the blog site of Hitwise analyst Bill Tancer on Monday and have created a mass of speculation already. Commentators are suggesting that Google has received a lot of press over its non-search capabilities but users have not changed over from established portals such as MSN and Yahoo due to familiarity rather than cost. Based on comments from Google spokespersons in the US media the search giant does not seem fazed by its low figures in its non core area and expects growth in the future.

Summary:

• Search: Google 47%, Yahoo 16%, MSN 12%.
  • Of course!
• News: Yahoo 6.3%, Weather Channel 5.6%, MSNBC 4%, CNN 3.95%, Google 1.9%.
  • The Weather Channel?!?
• Email: Yahoo 42%, Hotmail 23%, MySpace Mail 20%, Google 2.5%.
  • This is mostly a matter of people getting entrenched in whatever email system they started with.
• Finance: Yahoo 35%, MSN 13%, ...., Google 0.29% (40th).
  • Again a matter of entrenchment.
  • Not surprising given how new Google Finance is.
• Maps: Mapquest 56%, Yahoo 21%, Google Maps 7.5%, MSN Virtual Earth 4.3%, Google Earth 2%.
  • I love Google Maps, but Mapquest is still the only one that does the zoom in on start and finish locations on the printable versions.

The reality is that the masses pick what they pick, but they don't always pick what is the "best". Just look at what the masses pick for TV, video games, religion, philosophy, etc. A lot of it is about popularity, tradition, laziness, primitive reactions, etc. If you're concerned about making a buck or a vote off of the masses, then this is very important stuff. However I have a soft spot for those that explore other options as well.

2006-05-24t21:56:43Z | RE: Cyber Life. Money. News.
Pick 2 from Google, eBay, Microsoft, and Yahoo

It's all speculative but if I had to choose, I'd like Google & eBay. Why?

It makes sense for eBay to merge with one of the other three as a complement because the other three compete with each other. That would be best for consumers because if, on the other hand, two competitors merged with each other, then the third could have a hard time. So which of the three should eBay go to?

The three competitors have large user bases. Microsoft's has the strongest user base because of its Windows legacy. Google rules the search users base. Yahoo, like AOL, has a large user base simply because it's older than Google and it has more media. However, given the transience of media, and how closed Microsoft is, I think eBay would be best with Google.

But like I said —it' all speculative.

Google, Yahoo, eBay, Microsoft--which will merge? [news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6076135.html?tag=nl.e550]

Speculation is rife on Wall Street that a big Internet deal or alliance is in the works, with Google, Yahoo, eBay or Microsoft as possible partner--and a Yahoo-eBay partnership seen as most likely.

UPDATE: 2006-05-26: Ha ha! I took to long to post because the news is that eBay and Yahoo have merged! Yahoo, eBay Joining Forces in Partnership [technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16927].

2006-05-25t15:50:09Z | RE: Cyber Tech. Images. Microsoft. Open Source.
Microsoft offers WMP/WDP as JPG alternative

I know people distrust Microsoft (especially if you read the comments at Slashdot [http://slashdot.org/articles/06/05/25/1217248.shtml] and Digg [http://digg.com/software/Microsoft_shows_off_JPEG_rival_-_WMP]) but after reading the Windows Medai Photo Specification [http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/wmphoto.mspx] directly from Microsoft I have to say that I think it has potential.

Here are the reasons given by Microsoft for a new image format:

• Smaller memory usage (as in RAM)
• Cutting edge compression levels (dare we take their word?)
• Integer only operations (as in better execution math)
• Lossy or lossless compression using the same algorithm
• 1-32 bit images (as in a range of colors)
• Lots of metadata options (as in tags)

Here are other reasons that Microsoft does not explicitly state:

• A new codec avoids lawsuit issues with JPG (just like PNG was created because Unisys wasn't playing cool with the GIF format).
• Can this lead to Digital Right Management (DRM) for photos? People do need to copyright protect their photos but this can get ugly.
• There is nothing wrong with a new format --as long as it's better.

Here are a few issues that I haven't seen anyone discuss yet.

• The spec says that it will support multiple images per file but doesn't give much info. This could store multiple different images, but couldn't it also make GIF89-like animation except with photos?
• I like the naming conventions "Window Media X", where when X is Video, Audio, and Photo, then you get WMV, WMA, and WMP. Will they ever have X = Raster? Raster needs standardization.
• The actual extension for WMP is supposed to be .wdp. The MIME type is supposed to be image/vnd.ms-photo. Who can remember either one?

JPEG 2000 [W] (.jp2; .j2c; image/jp2) is floundering and Microsoft has a great opportunity to do this right. Making it open will be better for Microsoft and the public than if they make it closed. The key thing is to make it a really popular and default format. I like choice but having a gazillion audio, video formats is confusing and annoying. At least photos really only have a few formats (GIF/PNG and JPG/TIFF/RAW). Could Microsoft reduce it to just one?

2006-05-25t16:31:39Z | RE: Comics. Culture. Japanese. Manga. Words.
Manga sound effects interpreted

Fascinating and yet expected. The Japanese have more manga/comics than America does and the language itself is more compact, so no wonder they have more sound effects. The written English sound effects are limited to stuff like "POW!" and "Zzzz".

Japanese Sound effects and what they mean [oop-ack.com/manga/soundfx.html]

2006-05-30t14:50:27Z | RE: Funny. Quirky.
Wallet returned 35 years later

Everyone loves finding a wallet that they've lost.

Wallet found right where he dropped it -- in 1971 [suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-wallet29.html] 

It took 35 years, but someone finally returned Gary Karafiat's wallet. Karafiat, who lost the wallet as a 14-year-old freshman at Benet Academy in Lisle, picked up the black billfold from Wheaton's St. Francis High School on Friday morning.

The wallet contained a student identification card, his original Social Security card, a library card from Westmont Library, a coin collector's crib sheet on the value of Jefferson nickels, a holographic 1972 pocket calendar from Stroh's beer, a mysterious autograph, a rosary prayer guide and a Benet football schedule for the 1971 season. On the schedule, he had recorded the scores of the games. It contained no cash. The wallet and the cards inside are still in mint condition, he said.

2006-05-30t14:55:14Z | RE: Martial.
Sometimes all you have is a knife for a gunfight

Midtown Rambo; Victim Fight Backs, Kills Robber [wsbtv.com/news/9290011/detail.html] [via forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=2091556]

ATLANTA -- Five robbers picked the wrong victim in Midtown Atlanta last night and one of them paid with her life. The unidentified victim fought back; killing one robber and wounding another. Three other suspects are in jail. The victim was walking home after getting off work as a waiter at Jocks and Jills. The five suspects pulled up in a car and confronted the victim in the 500 block of Penn Street just before midnight. The victim began running down the street yelling for help. Residents who heard him called 911. While he was running, the victim pulled a pocket knife from his backpack. Two of the robbers jumped from the car. When one of the robbers pointed a shotgun at him, the victim kicked it out of his hands. At that point two of the robbers jumped on the victim. During the struggle he stabbed both of them. One, a female, died of her wounds. A second is in critical condition. Police arrived on the scene and with a description of the car; they quickly arrested the three other suspects. The victim, who is a former U.S. Marine, will not be charged since police say he was acting in self defense. So far police have not released his name.

2006-05-30t16:40:06Z | RE: Health. Martial. My Stuff. Play.
Temple Burning and my daily exercise routine

Earlier this month (2006-05-07) the Chicago Swordplay Guild did one of its "Temple Burnings" (as in your body is your temple). A CSG Temple Burning is like a day at a martial arts camp. This year it  was at Jesse's house and it consisted of the following:

• Warm up
• 3 mile = 4.8 Km run interspersed with brief stops at around 6 playgrounds for pushups, ab work, swinging, wall climbing, parkour [W], etc.. Finished with a sprint.
• Activities in the nice and cool Loch Lomond [google.com/maps....], including swimming, throwing, stick wrestling, and boating.
• Warm down.
• Sword cutting. Live sharp blades against water filled bottles, rope, etc. Sorry but no water-soaked tatami rolls this year.

Since I don't have a regular running program and my heart rate is 68 (as opposed to the 40s when I was doing lots of karate), I thought the Temple Burning was going to be more difficult, but as it turned out I my breathing was very easy and it was easy to talk while running. Apparently a weekly 2-4 hour CSG practice combined with my mild workout program must actually work.

For kicks, here is the mild workout that I try to do every other day before I shower. It only takes around half an hour and can be easily made harder or easier. (Sorry but I'm not taking the time to give each exercise common names.)

• Joint loosening
  • Neck yaws, pitches, and rolls.
  • Elbow and wrist spins. Finger shakes.
  • Spine, hip, and knee rotations.
  • Ankle rotations by tracing the outline of each foot.
• Exertion
  • Arms: Push ups to failure (40-60). Tricep dips on a chair to failure.
  • Neck: Supporting my body with just head and feet on the floor using different orientations.
  • Back: Bridges to failure. Locust (Salabhasana) lifts where I lie on my belly and then lift to failure: each leg and then both legs.
  • Abdominals: Crunches 20 front, each side, and then twisting. Iron bridges for 10 counts in 12 different combinations of legs together/apart and hands down/downard, side, upward, and up. 10 jackknives. It takes too long to get an ab burn.
  • Butt. 100 butt lifts while in foot and upper back bridge. Lifting head and each leg while on hands and knees.
  • Legs. 20 squats while in different width stances: together, shoulder width, 1.5 width, 2 width, 2 width toes out.
  • Hands. I actually do this while doing the squats above. Pushing towards palm/back of hand and rotating towards thumb/pinky for 4 combinations for each hand.
  • Calves. 20-30 calf raises while toes in, out, and straight. These are the only exercises that give a consistent burn.
• Stretching and yoga
  • Salute to the sun variation:
    1. Breath standing and hands together.
    2. Hands together lean and look behind.
    3. Hands to floor with legs straight and feet together.
    4. Squat down while right leg goes back. Look behind.
    5. Both legs back. Stretch calves.
    6. Hips down, arms straight, look back and each side.
    7. Butt back up while arms stay stretched forward. Press down and back with shoulders.
    8. Pull right leg in for squat. (Like #4 but reversed.)
    9. Hands to floor with legs straight and feet shoulder width together. Rotate to both sides.
    10. Feed double width, hands 90 degrees. Lean one side and then side and forward. Repeat on the other side.
    11. Hands together lean and look behind and both sides.
    12. Breath standing and hands together.
  • Lie on back for leg stretches and "winding". Left leg up, then pull it with hands, and then tuck to chest. Repeat with other leg and then both.
  • Position hands and lift to should stand.
  • Reach feet behind and both sides for ploughs.
  • Send feet forward again while supporting back for back stretch.
  • Drop hands and push chest up.
  • Legs front and stretch forward.
  • Stretch with the legs apart (This is probably the most difficult for me), and then towards each side.
  • Sit with legs folded (almost like sitting side saddle). Cross top leg over vertically. Lift arms to folded cross. Twist towards crossed side. Open arms. Put opposite arm on opposite leg for an awesome stretch.
  • Head stand followed by corpse pose (sitting on your knees with your body horizontal) to get the blood normalized.
  • Crow pose: a handstand where your inside of your knees are balanced on the backs of your elbows.

2006-05-30t23:32:18Z | RE: CSG. Cyber Life. Martial. My Stuff.
CSG website done!

At long last I have finished the majority of the work that I had intended to do on the Chicago Swordplay Guild [chicagoswordplayguild.com]. I became the Webmaster on 2005-11-07. I've been working on it pro bono in my spare time but it wasn't until recently that I finished converting the old site (all hard coded HTML pages in frames and not Google discoverable) into a near-Web 2.0 content management system complete with logins, a database backend, some tag clouds, client-side sortable tables, WYSIWYG post entry forms, buddy icons, user editable profiles, comments, post voting, RSS feed, search bar, etc.

I gave myself the honor of making the first post: Site now more Web 2.0 [chicagoswordplayguild.com/c/archives/post.asp?pi=1].

Perhaps I over did it because I get the sense that most of the members are not techie-oriented (there are quite a number of historical re-creationists in the Guild). However, people can enter their own posts, and perhaps I can get back to doing other stuff.

Long live the Guild!

2006-05-31t21:35:30Z | RE: Cyber Life. Cyber Tech. Storage.
Jungle Disk

The Jungle Disk idea is intriguing. At $0.15 per GB per month = $1.80 per GB per year, then 100 GB would cost $15 a month or $180 a year.

I can see myself using this for small amounts of must archive data or for large amounts of data.

Jungle Disk [jungledisk.com] [via metafilter.com/mefi/51700]

Jungle Disk is an application that lets you store files and backup data securely to Amazon.com's S3™ Storage Service.

• Store an unlimited amount of data for only 15¢ per gigabyte
• No monthly subscription fee, no startup fee, no commitment
• Your data is fully encrypted at all times
• Data is stored at multiple Amazon.com datacenters around the country for high availability
• Access files directly from Windows Explorer, Mac OSX Finder, and Linux

• Pay only for what you use. There is no minimum fee, and no start-up cost.
• $0.15 per gigabyte-month of storage used
• $0.20 per gigabyte of data transferred.
  JungleDisk caches data locally to minimize the number of bytes uploaded and downloaded.
• Remember that you only pay for what you use! If you have 1.2 GB of data stored, you only pay 18 cents! If you only have 100MB that's only 2 cents!

2006-05-31t22:07:44Z | RE: Anthropology. Nature. News. Science.
Post-divergence interbreeding

Since I've been reading up on human evolution, I find this article fascinating. A post-divergence interbreeding can very nicely explain the Sahelanthropus and Orrorin genera which appear to be in our subtribe Homonina and yet existed 7-6 MYA which is before the expected Paninina (Chimpanzees) and Homonina (Humans and extinct relatives) split around 5/3 MYA.

Humans, chimps may have bred after split [boston.com/news/science/articles/2006/05/18/humans_chimps_may_have_bred_after_split/]

The researchers, working at the Cambridge-based Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, used a wealth of newly available genetic data to estimate the time when the first human ancestors split from the chimpanzees. The team arrived at an answer that is at least 1 million years later than paleontologists had believed, based on fossils of early, humanlike creatures. The lead scientist said that this jarring conflict with the fossil record, combined with a number of other strange genetic patterns the team uncovered, led him to a startling explanation: that human ancestors evolved apart from the chimpanzees for hundreds of thousands of years, and then started breeding with them again before a final break.

The suggestion of interbreeding was met with skepticism by paleontologists, who said they had trouble imagining a successful breeding between early human ancestors, which walked upright, and the chimpanzee ancestors, which walked on all fours. But other scientists said the work is impressive and will probably force a reappraisal of the story of human origins. And one leading paleontologist said he welcomed the research as a sign that new genetic information will yield more clues to our deep history than once thought.

Pilbeam helped discover an early human ancestor known as Toumai, which walked on two legs and is thought to have lived in present-day Chad 6.5 million to 7.4 million years ago. The new report, published in today's issue of the journal Nature, estimates that final break between the human and chimpanzee species did not come until 6.3 million years ago at the earliest, and probably less than 5.4 million years ago.This contradiction could be resolved, Reich said, if early creatures like Toumai then interbred with chimpanzee ancestors, leaving a population of hybrids that developed into today's humans. (In this scenario, the line of Toumai creatures then went extinct.) But it is also possible, he said, that the dating of the early human fossils is wrong, or that the dating of other, older fossils used in his calculations is wrong, which would partially undercut the interbreeding theory. Scientists said that the report will probably bring intense scrutiny, as researchers look for potential flaws in the work or other explanations for its findings.

Previous studies have used this idea and found that the two species split between about 5 million and 8 million years ago. The Broad team sought to get a more precise answer by looking at how different the DNA of chimps and humans is at many locations, instead of calculating an average difference. The DNA of humans and chimpanzees is quite similar, meaning that scientists can readily identify many segments of DNA that are so similar they must have been handed down by a common ancestor, deep in the past. Scientists can then use a computer to put the segments of human and chimp DNA into alignment, placing side by side the segments that are very similar. For each pair of segments, they then calculated how long it would have taken to accumulate all the differences. The team used sophisticated statistical techniques to calculate these ''divergence times."

This analysis brought surprises that the team could explain only by suggesting human ancestors and chimpanzee ancestors interbred. First, they found that the divergence times varied widely. Some parts of the DNA seemed to indicate the human and chimpanzee species had been apart much longer than others, by millions of years. If humans split from chimps and then interbred before splitting again, the more divergent DNA sequences could date to before the first split, while the less divergent sequences could date to just before the second split. The other surprise was that sequences from the X chromosome, one of two chromosomes that determine gender, gave consistently more recent divergence times, instead of the range seen on other chromosomes. This, too, would be explained by the idea of interbreeding, according to the report. The X chromosome is thought to be the focus of fertility problems in hybrids, and population models suggest that all of the X chromosomes in a hybrid population would quickly come to match those of one of the parent species. This would explain why the human and chimpanzee X chromosomes are so similar.

2006-05-31t22:21:53Z | RE: Comics.
Marvel-Peanuts mashup

These are surprisingly comforting. I like how the artist, jdh.goodgrief, actually chose "key" moments in Marvel comics.

Peanuts Meets Marvel! [statueforum.com/showthread.php?t=10151]

Is it Peter Parker re-meeting MJ? Or Charlie Brown finally getting it on with the Little Red-Haird Girl? I love how "TIGER" was replaced with "BLOCKHEAD".