Scrupuli

As SLow aS Possible

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 04:00:00 +0000

On that “Fatal Day”, “Fatal Day in Halberstadt”¹ (Thirteen sixty-one, February twenty-third), Nicholas Faber’s archetypal manual with five raised rear keys gathered semitones to form one twelve-part octave, equal tempered; into which strait jacket of stems we then bound all our music. Music slipped its straps at last, bled across the lines. Cowell, Carlos, Cage freed it with noise and silence. Now Gerald Woehl’s Cage Organ keens in Halberstadt, its six hundred thirty-nine year sentence: to play Cage “As SLow aS Possible”.² This work to be read for ever or five minutes, whichever comes first.

—Edward K. McGuire, December 24, 2011

1. Partch, Harry. “Genesis Of A Music, An Account Of A Creative Work, Its Roots And Its Fulfillments”. 1979.

2. Cage, John. “Organ²/ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible)”. 1987.

George Washington’s axe or Cuisinart’s coffeemaker?

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 22:38:00 +0000

Which is the better design?

We read in Plutarch’s Life of Theseus that the Athenians saved the ship which carried Theseus home from Crete. But over time, they replaced so many decayed timbers that philosophers began to argue that it was no longer Theseus’ ship. This paradox is still with us today in stories such as George Washington’s Axe, in which his axe handle has over time been replaced three times, and the head twice.

For today, let us not consider the paradox – I will simply say that it was still Theseus’ ship. Please consider the fact that things wear out. To that end, I wish to compare George Washington’s axe with Cuisinart’s $ 100 DGB-900 Burr Grind & Brew Thermal 12-Cup Automatic Coffeemaker.

Pour whole coffee beans and water into the top of this appliance and press a button, and it will dispense very fresh, tasty coffee into the carafe at the bottom. And it will go on doing this almost miraculous thing – transforming water into coffee – until parts of it wear out.

Now you might imagine that, like the owner of Washington’s axe, the owner of Cuisinart’s coffeemaker could replace a worn part and continue to operate the appliance.

Because, when a part of a device wears out, and the rest of its parts have many months or years of useful life, it is a waste to discard them. The raw materials, labor, and energy which went into making those parts are lost. The environmental impact of their manufacture was done in vain and cannot be undone. Furthermore, you probably paid good money for those things, so you labored in vain to get them.

The part in this case is the coffee channel cover: a small black plastic part that flips back for cleaning the coffee chute. It broke into two pieces at the point where you flex it in order to flip it back.

When I contacted Cuisinart to purchase the coffee channel cover, they replied:

We apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced. This is a part that is not available to purchase. Based on the information you have provided, your unit is out of warranty. If you have a proof of purchase that states you have had the unit for less than 3 years, please let us know. We will be able to provide you instructions on how to obtain a warranty replacement under that circumstance.

This coffeemaker is, quite simply, an environmentally irresponsible product. A few replacement parts are available, such as the bean hopper, coffee filter, and carafe. Otherwise, once it is out of warranty, the first worn-out part “bricks” the device. (For those unfamiliar with the verb, it means to render a small device useless, as in the sentence: I accidentally bricked my phone by dropping it in the pool.) The remaining valuable parts which might last for many more years, such as the reservoir, burr grinder, and stainless steel carafe, are wasted.

From first hand experience, I know that parts are available for any number of more modest devices. Parts can be had for a dual flush toilet conversion kit which originally cost $ 30. Axe handles are still for sale. Or consider the humble pencil. If the eraser wears out before the graphite does, this simple, inexpensive replacement part can be installed – and can be reused with a different pencil when the graphite does wear out. Here we have an example of an environmentally responsible design that takes into account the value of every part of the device.

Another example of environmentally responsible design which takes a different, but equally valid, approach is the engineering of certain automobiles so that every major part wears out at pretty much the same mileage. Again, the raw materials, labor, energy, and environmental impact of manufacture are not wasted, but fully used up.

“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” This American proverb captures our cultural value of frugality, of avoiding waste. The next time you purchase a device, I encourage you to consider whether its design makes it possible to “use it up, wear it out”, or whether it would be more responsible to “do without”.

Please respond with your thoughts and ideas about how we can preserve frugality as a cultural value and how we can influence manufacturers such as Cuisinart to support frugality in the design of their products.

Why is the White House Organic Farm Project offering me Viagra?

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 16:10:00 +0000

There really are only two likely possibilities.

Possibly The White House Organic Farm Project¹ now offer Russian and Ukrainian computer viruses, pirated software, and drugs to enlarge the penis and treat erectile dysfunction, pain, obesity, anxiety, insomnia, and other conditions.

Or else they failed to protect the confidentiality of an e-mail address which only they and I knew.

Because the facts seem to be that someone is sending spam to an address which I (i) created specifically for them, (ii) gave only to them, and (iii) did not write down or save anywhere.

The White House Organic Farm Project (TheWhoFarm), http://www.thewhofarm.org/.

How to associate a Windows 7 file with a Windows XP Mode application

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 16:56:00 +0000

If you use Windows 7’s Windows XP Mode to run older applications which don’t support Windows 7, you might run into this problem. You have installed an older application into Windows XP Mode. You have a file in a Windows 7 folder that should open in the older application, but it doesn’t. And, in the Open With dialog box, Windows 7 does not show the older application as an option to open the file.

The solution assumes you have Windows XP Mode’s “Auto Publish” parameter set to the value “Enabled”. To check or set this parameter, be sure your Windows XP Mode desktop is shut down. Start, Windows Virtual PC. Select Windows XP Mode and click “Settings”. Check and set the parameter.

Now follow these three steps to associate your file with the older application in Windows 7.

1. Using your Windows XP Mode desktop, associate the filetype with the application.

2. Shutdown your Windows XP Mode desktop.

3. Start your Windows XP Mode desktop.

Now, when you open a file of that type from your Windows 7 desktop, it should open in your older application.

NOTE: If Windows 7 already has files of that type associated with a Windows 7 application, there is one more step to switch to the older application. Using your Windows 7 desktop, right click any file of that type, click Open With, and click Choose Default Program. In the Open With dialog box, click the Windows XP Mode application, be sure “Always use the selected program” is checked, and click OK. The file should open in the older application, and all files of that type should automatically open in the older application from now on.

Aaron Swartz broke into a library

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 19:29:00 +0000

Why are we supposed to pat him on the back?

As I read the indictment, the offenses include breaking in to a wiring closet, wiring devices to the MIT network without permission, performing a high-volume copy that brought several servers down and caused service interruptions and unnecessary labor, as well as the theft of IP.

The theft of IP is analogous to taking too many books out of the library. But the analogy breaks down as soon as you consider that he broke agreements with MIT and JSTOR that are like agreements you make with a library before they will lend you a book.

So perhaps the apt analogy is that he broke in to a library stockroom, borrowed whatever he could carry off without checking anything out, left a big mess that resulted in the library incurring repair and cleanup expense, and caused the library to have to close its doors to patrons for several hours while it cleaned up.

Yes, IP is controversial. Perhaps Aaron Swartz was engaging in civil disobedience. But David Segal’s characterization of it as taking too many books out of the library is a lie. People who are supposedly acting in the interest of truth and ethics shouldn’t do that.

Internet Activist Charged in M.I.T. Data Theft

Congress is full of sex maniacs

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 17:25:00 +0000

… because Congress is full of people.

In the wake of the Weiner scandal, I keep seeing comments that Congress is full of “sex maniacs” and we need to get them all out.

Well, duh! We are the most sexual animals on the Earth. People have huge sexual appetites. The problem isn’t sex, it’s religion. Religion tells us, wrongly, that our sexual appetite is bad, so we’d better repress it—or at least hide it.

This combination means we want lots of sex, and we want to know what kind of sex other people are having, and hypocritically we want to crucify them if we catch them at it.

No wonder sex makes liars out of politicians. Who can choose between sexual repression and public humiliation? It’s an impossible choice.

A pretty young lady from Norway Hung by her heels in a doorway. I heard her shout, “Sven! Let’s do it again! I think I've discovered one more way!”

I have been attacking the problems at Project Euler.net

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 23:30:00 +0000

… and Project Euler is winning Round 34.

I have been working my way through some fun problems at Project Euler.net. Fun for me, anyway. To solve them takes what Edsger Dĳkstra called mathematical engineering: mathematics and programming skills used together.

There are many problems to choose from, from very easy to very challenging. But they all have this in common: though it takes time and thought to analyze each problem, the solution should run on any basic computer in less than a minute.

Which is great! It means that nobody needs a supercomputer to solve these problems: just a PC and the will to learn and succeed.

Which brings me to Problem 34, find the sum of all numbers which are equal to the sum of the factorial of their digits. This problem is eating my lunch.

My solutions to problems 1–33 were sometimes lazy. Yes, some run under a millisecond, or scale to much bigger problems than those posed … but I have also been perfectly satisfied with brute force solutions if they ran under a minute on my old PC.

But, so far, my solution to Problem 34 takes more than 2 minutes to run and its output is rejected by Project Euler for no good reason that I can see. Suddenly I cannot afford to be lazy.

Incidentally, all my solutions are written in Perl. I have, as I hoped, learned quite a bit about optimizing Perl programs that I did not know before.

In case you can’t tell, I am really enjoying this!

Do it yourself repair of a Panasonic KX-FL511 fax machine

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 18:41:00 +0000

I solved a CALL SERVICE 3 condition by fabricating a one dollar wire for the fuser unit.

The machine reported a CALL SERVICE 3 condition and recorded a cause distinction code of 01DF, which means the heat roller temperature sensor was still at 23 °C (room temperature) 22 seconds after the heater circuit was energized. The fuser stayed cool to the touch, so I agreed with the sensor.

This could have been a fault anywhere in the heater control system. I pulled the fuser assembly because the moving parts and heater have a high potential for failure.

The multimeter showed the heater circuit had no continuity (bad), but the bulb had continuity (good). So I started removing wiring, and terminal plate wire B came out in two pieces.

The wire runs across one end of the heat roller. In my unit, it was installed wrong and was in contact with the heat roller. Over time, the heat roller sawed through the wire.

I fabricated a new wire because I did not find one in stock. I used bare solid copper wire of slightly heavier gauge than the original.

After reassembling, I cleared the CALL SERVICE 3 using service function 529.

This was my first use of the KX-FL511 service manual. It is a very good, detailed and complete manual. It has some mistakes in the cross references, some poor grammar, and some missing text cut off by the margin, all of which might have been caused by Japanese–English conversion. But it was still so good that even someone like myself who does not normally service electronics can be successful using it.

References

Service Manual: High Speed Laser Fax and Copier: KX-FL511 (for U.S.A.). KMF0304645C1. Panasonic, eBook. 6 Apr 2011. <http://www.eserviceinfo.com/download.php?fileid=38206>

Google Chrome On Track To Overtake Firefox

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 23:36:00 +0000

Chrome could overtake Firefox in about one year.

The browser race is continuing to follow same trend that I discussed here eight months ago.

Browser	Trend	2010 Market Share	2011 Market Share
Internet Explorer	in the lead, but losing ¾ to 1 percent of its market share every month.	Down from 6 in 10 users in April to 5.7 in December.	Close to 5 in 10 by year’s end.
Firefox	in second place, but maybe doing something more alarming than IE—braking: June 2008 growth was 3 percent per month, May 2009 was 2%, April 2010 was 1%, second half of 2010 was zero.	Down from 2.5 in 10 users in April to 2.3 in December.	Close to 2 in 10 by year’s end.
Chrome	in third place, still the fastest growing; gained 11–12 percent per month through April; decelerated beginning in May to what looks like a new plateau of 8%.	Up from 0.7 in 10 users in April to 1 in December.	Close to 2 in 10 by year’s end.

Based on the trend, Chrome could be tied with Firefox for second place by the end of the year. But will it? One fact in favor is the upcoming release of Chrome OS devices in 2011.

Updated numbers and charts here. And notice in the charts: Internet Explorer has a solstice spike in July 2008, May/June 2009, and May/June/July 2010. Is this a yearly pattern? Maybe graduates entering the workplace and being issued PCs with preinstalled IE? Readers, any thoughts? Should I predict a solstice spike in the IE market share in 2011?

As before, historical data provided by Net Applications. “Top Browser Share Trend”, Net Market Share, http://netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=1&qptimeframe=M&qpsp=112&qpnp=25 (accessed January 12, 2011).

Do not cede moral high ground to Pope

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 07:21:00 +0000

Lying about what the Pope said only erodes the credibility that you need when you are legitimately criticizing him.

As an atheist who considers supernaturalism to be a mistake which often leads to tragedy, and who condemns the disgusting Catholic sex scandal, I must still say that the Pope’s address is being intentionally misquoted.

C’mon, freethinkers. Passing this crap around as if it were true is as dogmatic as believing the crap that comes from the church. Having the freedom to find out what’s true is useless unless you also actually do it!

When combatting immorality, it is important to keep the moral high ground. Wouldn’t it be better if the Pope were criticized fairly for what he actually does say and do. When people make things up (or pass them around without due consideration) they only piss away hard won credibility.

The Pope did not say, as has been claimed, that pedophilia is defensible, nor say that pedophilia was normal back in his day. He plainly said the opposite. He said that there were some who championed pedophilia in the 1970’s, that their theories were completely lacking in morality, and that the negative effects are still evident today.

Learn something about the pedophile movement here: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,702679-3,00.html and read the complete Pope’s address here: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2010/december/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20101220_curia-auguri_en.html

Geminid meteor shower TONIGHT: predicted to be best shower of 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 20:59:00 +0000

The biggest sky show of the year may be the Geminid meteor shower tonight.

First, watch for an hour starting at sunset (5:25 PM in Fort Worth). Get a good view to the east and watch for "earth grazing" meteors. They are rare, but if you are lucky enough to see even one you will be amazed.

Second, watch the peak of the shower, which is expected between 2:00 AM and sunrise, probably centered on 5:00 AM Fort Worth time. Viewing conditions for the peak are very good: the moon will already have set and the sky will be mostly clear.

Viewing tips: dress very warmly; lie down flat and look straight up; do not use binoculars or a telescope. Geminid meteor trails can appear anywhere in the sky.

Interesting fact: If you trace a path backwards along a Geminid meteor trail, you will find that the path intersects what is called a "radiant point", an imaginary point located near the bright stars Castor and Pollux in the constellation Gemini. This is the origin of the name of this meteor shower.

New buttons and options being tested in Google Maps

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 19:10:00 +0000

I am seeing some changes to the Google Maps user interface. These appear when I am logged in using Chrome, and not when I am using a Chrome incognito window. So perhaps I have been included in a beta test. Here is a slide show of the changes I noticed.

Click an image to zoom in.

PHOTO "0". This is a Chrome incognito window and shows the previous (stock) interface that I am familiar with. Just for comparison.

PHOTO 1. The new features are a dot above Orange Guy (this is actually visible in PHOTO 0 but it's the first I've noticed it), different Satellite and Traffic buttons, a magnifying zoom icon on the left hand side of the map, and a ruler icon at the bottom left corner of the map.

PHOTO 2. When the mouse hovers over the Satellite button, the controls area expands to show more options: the Earth button and various map feature that can be shown (checked), hidden (unchecked), or deleted (xed).

PHOTO 3. Expanding the "more" button adds additional map options, such as exploring an area through Wikipedia articles.

PHOTO 4. Clicking the dot above Orange Guy queries the browser for physical location to display it on the map, similar to Google Latitude. The strip across the top is the Chrome browser getting permission to share the physical location with Google Maps.

PHOTO 5. The ruler icon uncovers a distance measurement tool. Supply your own route as points along the path, and Google Maps will calculate the total distance.

PHOTO 6. Choosing "I'm feeling geeky" offers a wide variety of modern, historical, and "quirky" distance units to choose from.

PHOTO 7. The magnifying zoom icon lets you select a rectangular area. This takes most of the guesswork out of choosing an an appropriate zoom level, which seems like a great feature.

The Power Of Prayer

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 21:30:00 +0000

A folk tale, origin unknown.

In a small, conservative town, a sign went up in front of a small building under construction saying that it was to be a new tavern.

The local Baptist church started a campaign of prayer and petitions to block the bar from opening.

Construction progressed steadily, but the week before it was to open, lightning struck the bar and it burned to the ground.

The church folks were smug about this turn of affairs until the bar owner sued the church, saying that the church was either directly or indirectly responsible for his building being destroyed. The church vehemently denied that it had any responsibility at all in the matter.

At the hearing, the judge listened to the attorneys for both sides, then said, This is a most unusual case. Although no one has stated it this way, two things are obvious. What we have here are a bar owner who believes in the power of prayer, and an entire church congregation that doesn’t!

SourceForge Does Evil?

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 23:54:00 +0000

I believe SourceForge has disclosed personal e-mail addresses (including mine) to untrustworthy third parties, for the purpose of spamming.

On December 2, 2010, I received an ad sheet by e-mail. The ads offer white papers at the cost of providing my industry, company size, and complete identifying information. Judging from the title—This Week’s Best IT Re:Sources—it is apparently the premier issue of a weekly mailing.

The mailing used the SourceForge name and logo, and SourceForge admit sending it. It was accomplished using third party service bureaus.

The advertisers who underwrote the mailing were: Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Intel.

Based on SourceForge’s privacy policy, I believe I should have only received the mailing if I had first requested it, selected it, or been offered a choice about it. I also believe they should not have used service bureaus to accomplish the mailing, and I do not believe they used trustworthy service bureaus.

About The Mailing

I had only opted to receive the sitewide SourceForge “Site Update Email Alert”, a.k.a. SourceForge.net Update, a monthly newsletter which carries their security notices and other site related announcements, and no others except notifications of comments on a few individual bug reports. Up to now, I had only received these e-mails. And SourceForge’s media kit does not mention This Week’s Best IT Re:Sources, or offer any kind of mass mailings other than short four-line snippets in their newsletters. This Week’s Best IT Re:Sources has not been mentioned anywhere as a new advertising program that I can find. These facts suggested that somebody else sent the mailing.

Also, SourceForge has an in-house system which it uses to distribute its newsletters, but this mailing used an outside system. This fact also suggested that somebody else sent the mailing.

But the ad sheet was addressed to a unique e-mail address which I disclosed in confidence only to SourceForge and Gravatar. This fact suggested either that SourceForge did send the mailing, or that spammers stole my personally identifiable information from SourceForge or Gravatar.

Because either possibility raises a serious issue, I filed a private trouble ticket with SourceForge support.

Today SourceForge admitted to me that they sent the mailing.

About The Privacy Policy

The serious issue, then, is this. I believe SourceForge broke trust with me, twice:

1. They promise that personally identifiable information will only be used with permission. In their privacy statement, they say they may use the information for various good purposes. Especially relevant to this issue, they may use it

to notify user referrals of Geeknet services, information, or products when a user requests that Geeknet send such information to referrals

and

to allow the user to purchase products, access services, or otherwise engage in activities the user selects

and they promise that they

will not use or share the personally identifiable information provided to it online in ways unrelated to the items described above without first letting a user know and offering the user a choice. (Emphasis added.)

2. They promise only to share personally identifiable information with a third party in a manner consistent with the privacy policy, or when obligated by law. That is, when they have

a user’s permission,

or when they use a third party service bureau

prohibited from using users’ information for any other purpose

and who will

comply with Geeknet privacy practices, and other appropriate confidentiality and security measures,

as required by legal obligations.

They say that when using a service bureau they will still keep all the promises made in the privacy statement.

The mailing has links to elabs10.com and emailengine.com for mailing list management, and sourceforge.com and then to accelacomm.com for fulfillment. With Google Search I found that elabs10.com appears on some lists of domains blacklisted for spamming, and that accelacomm.com appears on a list of domains blacklisted for phishing.

Damage Control

In the mailing, they did appear to honor the part of their privacy policy which says they will provide instructions in each of its emails on how to be removed from any lists.

SourceForge have also apologized to me and said, The team has received feedback on this issue, and are working to ensure to make the purpose of these messages more clear in the future and that these messages are only sent to those that want them. This might be corporatespeak for, The people who broke the privacy policy have been properly spanked.

I hope so.

Citations

“GeekNet, Inc. United States/European Union Safe Harbor Privacy Statement.” SourceForge. GeekNet, Inc., n.d. Web. 3 Dec 2010.

Faith Is Not A Renunciation Of Evidence

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 23:43:00 +0000

It is not right to say that Christians make absence of evidence into a virtue and call it faith.

Courage, not irrationality, is the virtue of faith. The Bible defines faith as staying firm in your hope despite your fears, because the one who made the promise is trustworthy. And the Bible goes on to offer evidence that God exists and is trustworthy. So faith is defended by the Bible on evidence. Far from renouncing evidence, over and over, the Bible points to evidence as the basis for believing things.

Consequently, most Christians are quick to point to all kinds of evidence underlying their faith. A small minority renounce evidence, but they are not doing it right.

When Christians resist challenges to their beliefs, it can seem like they are renouncing evidence. But what is really operating is confirmation bias. That is not a religious virtue. Persisting in discredited beliefs is a human tendency at work in everybody. (It is one reason why the scientific method is so important: it guards us against our normal human tendency to fool ourselves.)

When you put the inconvenient facts in front of a person having false beliefs, you cannot expect them to quickly and easily embrace them. But in time and with repetition from various sources it often happens that they do eventually. This point of view helps me to be patient, and to be hopeful that I am making a difference even when it is not immediately apparent.

Manic And Depressed All At Once? That’s Normal

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 12:44:00 +0000

In bipolar people, mania and depression are not opposites. Data suggest that depression and mania fluctuate independently. Instead of having a manic episode followed by a depressive episode, you may often experience both—or neither.

Here is the abstract of the study reproduced from the PubMed page.

1. Acta Psychiatr Scand. 2010 Sep 5. [Epub ahead of print]

Depressive and manic symptoms are not opposite poles in bipolar disorder.

Johnson SL, Morriss R, Scott J, Paykel E, Kinderman P, Kolamunnage-Dona R, Bentall RP.

Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.

Johnson SL, Morriss R, Scott J, Paykel E, Kinderman P, Kolamunnage-Dona R, Bentall RP. Depressive and manic symptoms are not opposite poles in bipolar disorder. Objective: This study of 236 individuals with bipolar disorders employed longitudinal analyses to determine whether the symptoms of mania and depression can be understood as one dimension (with depression and mania as opposites) or two relatively independent dimensions. Method: Weekly severity ratings of manic and depression were assessed using the Longitudinal Interval Follow-up Evaluation—II for 72 weeks. The within-subjects correlation of manic and depressive severity was examined using random effects regression. Results: Contrary to the one-dimension model, mania and depression symptoms were not negatively related. Indeed, the correlations of mania with depressive symptoms were quite small. Conclusion: The data suggest that depressive and manic symptoms are not opposite poles. Rather depressive and manic symptoms appear to fluctuate relatively independently within bipolar disorder.

PMID: 20825373 [PubMed—as supplied by publisher]

Make Firefox Take Geolocation From Google Latitude

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 11:16:00 +0000

Firefox takes its geolocation from Google Latitude, with the help of a small PHP program.

Websites can now ask for your location, and a few do. For example, Gowalla wants your location so that it can show you nearby places of interest.

When you give your permission, your browser does its best to find out where it is and let the website know. But sometimes this procedure goes wrong. For example, my home computer is in Tarrant County, Texas, but my browser tells Gowalla that it is miles away in Dallas County.

Now, if you know your actual latitude and longitude, there are a couple of ingenious ways that you can supply this to the Firefox browser so that it can offer the correct location to websites. But these methods, which have been blogged about elsewhere, have two drawbacks: First, there are several manual steps. You must find out your latitude and longitude, and then you must carefully update your browser with the information. Second, you must do this each time your location changes.

But Google Latitude lets me simply click on a map to set my exact location. So I came up with a refinement of the manual method. I arranged for Firefox to ask Google Latitude for my location.

First, I built a small web page which finds out my Google Latitude location and supplies it to Firefox when asked. For the time being, I have made this web page public so anyone can use it. If it becomes so popular that my web server cannot handle the demand, I will restrict its use. I hope other people will also make this web page public on their servers, so I am reproducing the page source code at the end of this article.

Second, I made my location public in Google Latitude using the Google Public Location Badge option. From the code snippet for the Badge, I copied my user code, which in my case was a large negative number.

Third, I opened about:config in Firefox, and changed the value of geo.wifi.uri from the default value to http://archweaver.com/geol?user= and pasted my user code after the equal sign.

And that was it. Now, when I click to set my Google Latitude location, Firefox passes that location on to websites such as Gowalla.

Incidentally, when I want to restore the default behavior, I simply reopen about:config, right-click on geo.wifi.uri, and choose Reset.

Here is the PHP code mentioned above:

 1 <?php
 2 // geol.php - pass Google Latitude location to Firefox.
 3 // Author: MetaEd. Update: 2011-12-21.
 4 
 5 // Identify this program's output as JSON.
 6 header('Content-type: application/json');
 7 
 8 // Get Google Latitude Badge as JSON, using the key provided. The
 9 // cast to integer protects the URI from attack.
10 $badgeKey = (int) $_GET['user'] ;
11 $badgeUri = 'http://www.google.com/latitude/apps/badge/api?user='
12   . $badgeKey
13   . '&type=json' ;
14 $badgeJson = file_get_contents( $badgeUri ) ;
15 $badgeObject = json_decode( $badgeJson ) ;
16 
17 // Read the latitude and longitude from the badge.
18 $longitude = $badgeObject->{'features'}[0]->{'geometry'}
19   ->{'coordinates'}[0] ;
20 $latitude = $badgeObject->{'features'}[0]->{'geometry'}
21   ->{'coordinates'}[1] ;
22 $accuracy = $badgeObject->{'features'}[0]->{'properties'}
23   ->{'accuracyInMeters'} ;
24 
25 // Encode the geolocation in JSON and write it to Firefox.
26 // There are two encodings. Firefox 8 and older request the old 
27 // encoding using the POST method; Firefox 9 and newer request the 
28 // new encoding using the GET method.
29 switch($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'])
30 {
31   case 'POST' : // Firefox 8 and older
32   $geoArray = array(
33     'location'=>array(
34       'latitude'=>$latitude
35         ,
36       'longitude'=>$longitude
37         ,
38       'accuracy'=>$accuracy
39     )
40   ) ;
41   $geoJson = json_encode( $geoArray ) ;
42   break ;
43 
44   case 'GET' : // Firefox 9 and newer
45   $geoArray = array(
46     'status'=>'OK'
47       ,
48     'accuracy'=>$accuracy
49       ,
50     'location'=>array( 'lat'=>$latitude , 'lng'=>$longitude )
51   ) ;
52   break ;
53 }
54 
55 $geoJson = json_encode( $geoArray ) ;
56 echo $geoJson ;
57 ?>

I want to be very plain that this work is preliminary. I could do a much better job of explaining the step by step instructions for setting this up. I could also do a much better job of input validation and exception handling. But I wanted to get the word out that this is really very easy to do, and get some real world feedback that would direct my efforts.

So if you give it a try, please comment here. Mention any trouble you run into, and also let me know what you are using it for.

Cheers!

Pumpkin Pie Mea

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 07:53:00 +0000

Scrvpvlvs likes to make pumpkin pie every holiday season. His pies are a little different every year. Here is this year’s pie recipe.

Notes on measurement

Measurements: by volume, using customary United States cooking units of measure

Abbreviations: C = cup, T = tablespoon, t = teaspoon, °F = degrees Fahrenheit

Gather materials

1 small (6–8” diameter) pumpkin, heavy for its size
flour
eggs
cream
olive oil
sugar
salt
ground cinnamon
ground nutmeg
ground ginger
ground cloves
ground coriander
ground paprika (smoked okay)

oven heated to 375 °F
two baking pans having a lip
two or three pie pans
large kitchen knife
measuring cups and spoons
large spoon
fork or toothpick
dough cutter or two knives
small bowl
medium bowl
large bowl
rolling pin
rolling surface

Roast pumpkin

Cut the pumpkin in half at its middle with the knife. Pull out the seeds with pursed fingers and thumb and save the seeds in the small bowl. Scrape out and discard the slimy, fibrous strands which held the seeds. Place halves cut side down on a baking pan. Put in the oven to roast.

The pumpkin is ready to remove when fragrant pumpkin juice is bubbling in the baking pan and a fork or toothpick goes in easily and comes out clean. Remove the pan from the oven and set aside to cool enough to handle. Scoop the meat of the pumpkin out of the rind and into the large bowl. Discard the rind.

Roast seeds

This can be started as soon as the pumpkin is in the oven.

Combine 1 T olive oil, 1 T sugar, 1 t cinnamon, ½ t paprika, and ½ t coriander with the seeds in the small bowl. Spread on the second baking pan. Put the pan in the oven to roast with the pumpkin.

The seeds are ready to remove when they have begun to darken. Remove the pan from the oven. Rinse the bowl and the spoon; scoop the roasted seeds into the bowl.

Pie crust

For each pie, thoroughly mix 1 C flour and ½ t salt in the medium bowl. Cut in ⅓ C shortening. Sprinkle and cut in 3 T water. Form a ball on a floured surface. Flour the ball and the rolling pin. Roll out to fit the pie pan. Fold in quarters. Unfold in the pie pan and cut off the excess.

Pie filling and baking

Mash and mix thoroughly together with the pumpkin meat in the large bowl:

1 ½ C cream
6 eggs
¾ C sugar
1 ½ t ground cinnamon
1 ½ t ground ginger
¾ t salt
¾ t ground cloves
½ t ground nutmeg (note half of that used this year for lack of enough)

Pour the filling into the crusts, leaving at least ¼ inch for expansion. Put in the oven to bake for 45–60 minutes depending on the size of pie. The pie is ready to remove when the crust and filling have browned, the filling has swelled up, and a fork or toothpick comes out of the filling clean. Remove the pie and let it cool.

Extra crust dough can be scattered with sugar and cinnamon and baked in the oven to a light brown.

Eddys Found In the Space-Time Continuum

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 22:27:00 +0000

Ripples in the background glow of the Universe may be caused by huge explosions that occurred before the Big Bang, say well respected physicists.

Doctors V. G. Gurzadyan and Roger Penrose have circulated a new paper on the history of the Universe.

They are looking at the idea that the Big Bang is a recurring event. If their particular idea is right, then there were clusters of galaxies before the Big Bang. In them, super-massive black holes collided numerous times, resulting in violent explosions on an intergalactic scale.

Their idea predicts that these energy bursts were so huge that we should still be able to see evidence of them today in the background glow of the Universe---as concentric ring patterns, like ripples in a pond.[1]

The background glow of the Universe was predicted in 1948, and first detected in the 1960's. Since then, radio astronomers have been observing and mapping its features. (Click for a full size map.)[2]

The new paper concludes that concentric ring patterns are, in fact, faintly visible in the best maps of the background glow, just as the idea predicts!

This is a very interesting development in astrophysics, and I look forward to reading the reactions of other physicists around the world.

1. Photograph by Roger McLassus.

2. Map of the background glow of the Universe courtesy of NASA.

rad50.pl - interpret quadragesimal numbers

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 12:43:00 +0000


  1 #! /usr/bin/perl

  2 

  3 # Title:

  4 #   rad50.pl

  5 #

  6 # Author:

  7 #   MetaEd

  8 #

  9 # Version:

 10 #   November 22, 3732

 11 #

 12 # This document is a Perl 5 program which will:

 13 #

 14 #   1. take a line of text as input

 15 #

 16 #   2. interpret it as a string of three-digit quadragesimal numbers

 17 #

 18 #        NOTE: Quadragesimal notation is analogous to octal,

 19 #        decimal, and hexadecimal notation. Octal uses eight symbols

 20 #        (numerals), decimal uses ten, hexadecimal uses sixteen, and

 21 #        quadragesimal notation uses forty numerals.

 22 #

 23 #   3. convert each such number to six-digit octal numbers

 24 #

 25 #   4. type the octal numbers as a line of text

 26 #

 27 #   5. stop

 28 #

 29 # Sample input:

 30 #   "Nothing sucks like a VAX."

 31 #

 32 # Interpretation as quadragesimal numbers:

 33 #   "NOT/HIN/G S/UCK/S L/IKE/ A /VAX/.  "

 34 #

 35 #     NOTE: The interpretation is not case sensitive. If the last

 36 #     number is incomplete, it is padded on the right with space.

 37 #

 38 # Sample output:

 39 #   054754 031566 025723 101703 073314 034775 000050 104700 127400\n

 40 

 41 # First, we declare the forty symbols we recognize as quadragesimal

 42 # numerals.

 43 

 44 $_ =

 45 $numerals =

 46 $digital020 = ' ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ$.%0123456789' ;

 47   # ' ' (space) = zero, 'A' = one, ..., 'V' = twenty-two, ...

 48 

 49 $digital044 = ' 0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ.$%' ;

 50   # ' ' (space) = zero, 'A' = eleven, ..., 'V' = thirty-two, ...

 51 

 52 #   NOTE: Two different notation schemes are commonly used. These

 53 #   originate from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) sixteen bit

 54 #   systems and DEC thirty-six bit systems, respectively. The same

 55 #   symbols are used by both schemes, but the ordering is different.

 56 #   For our purpose, we adapt the sixteen bit ordering.

 57 

 58 # We create a hash table which maps each numeral to its number.

 59 

 60 %rad050 = map( ($_ => $i++), split // ) ;

 61 

 62 #   NOTE: These schemes (both of them) are better known to systems

 63 #   programmers as Radix 50. Why Radix 50, not Radix 40? Because 50

 64 #   (octal) = 40 (decimal). Ask a silly question, get a silly

 65 #   answer.

 66 

 67 # We read input from a literal string, and transform it to valid

 68 # input.

 69 

 70 $_ = "Nothing sucks like a VAX." ;

 71 tr/[a-z]/[A-Z]/ ;                 # convert lower case to UPPER CASE

 72 eval "tr/$numerals//cd" ;         # delete any illegal character

 73 $_ .= '  ' ;                      # pad the last number with space

 74 

 75 # We create an accumulator to hold intermediate values during

 76 # interpretation, a place counter to keep track of what place of the

 77 # quadragesimal number we're on, and a string to hold the result.

 78 

 79 $accum = 0 ;

 80 $place = 0 ;

 81 $output = '' ;

 82 

 83 # We consider each numeral in turn from left to right.

 84 

 85 foreach( split // ) {

 86 

 87   # As a failsafe, we assert that the current numeral can be

 88   # interpreted quadragesimally. If not, we construct an identifying

 89   # error message and stop.

 90 

 91   index( $numerals, $_ ) >= 0

 92     or

 93   die "$0: current numeral: "

 94   . ( /^[[:graph:]]$/ ? $_ : sprintf("<%#o>",ord($_)))

 95   . "\nILLEGAL FILE NAME\n" ;

 96 

 97   # We shift the accumulated value left one quadragesimal place to

 98   # make room for the value corresponding to the current numeral,

 99   # taken from the hash table.

100 

101   $accum = $accum * 050 + $rad050{$_} ;

102 

103   # If the place counter tells us the number is complete, we write

104   # it in octal with a space separator, and reset the accumulator

105   # and the place counter.

106 

107   if ( $place++ == 2 ) {

108     $output .= sprintf "%06o ", $accum ;

109     $accum = 0 ;

110     $place = 0 ;

111   }

112 

113 }

114 

115 # At the end, we type the line of output.

116 

117 print $output, "\n" ;

118 

119 # HISTORICAL NOTE: Systems programmers used quadragesimal (Radix 50)

120 # numbers to economize on memory needed to store text: for example,

121 # file names in the disk index. Consider the file name "NONAME".

122 # Storing it as a string of six ASCII codes would cost forty-eight

123 # bits:

124 #

125 #   N        O        N        A        M        E

126 #   01001110 01001111 01001110 01000001 01001101 00100101

127 #

128 # But storing it as a string of two three-digit quadragecimal

129 # numbers would cost sixteen fewer bits:

130 #

131 #   NON               AME

132 #   01011001 11100110 00001000 01001101

133 #

134 # Economy was traded for convenience. File names were limited to the

135 # repertoire of forty quadragesimal numerals. And conversions to and

136 # from quadragesimal were arcane, despite the availability of tools

137 # in the system library. For example, here's how the PDP-11 RSTS/E

138 # systems programmer could store a file name as a quadragesimal

139 # number with this technique, saving sixteen bits of memory:

140 #

141 # 1000    T$ = "NONAME"                                     ! ASCII

142 # 1010    T$ = MID(SYS(CHR$(6%) + CHR$(-10%) + T$), 7%, 4%) ! RAD50

143 #

144 # And here's how the programmer could recover the file name as text:

145 #

146 # 2000    CHANGE T$ TO T%

147 # 2010    T$ = RAD$(      T%(0%)

148 #                 + SWAP%(T%(1%))

149 #            + RAD$(      T%(2%)

150 #                 + SWAP%(T%(3%))

151 #

152 # Or:

153 #

154 # 2000    T$ = RAD$(      ASCII(MID(T$,0%,1%))

155 #                 + SWAP%(ASCII(MID(T$,1%,1%))))

156 #            + RAD$(      ASCII(MID(T$,2%,1%))

157 #                 + SWAP%(ASCII(MID(T$,3%,1%))))

158 

159 # vim:set sw=2 sts=2 tw=68 : Instructions for Vim, the text editor.

Out Of Kindness, Play Dumb

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 12:43:00 +0000

Sometimes the nicest thing you can do for others is refuse to cooperate.

When patrons and employees of a restaurant franchise in my area want the corporate office, they ask at a restaurant for the number. Sometimes the restaurant manager mistakenly gives them my company's number. (It's an easy mistake; theirs ends 0888 and ours ends 0088.)

The trouble comes when my kind receptionist gives the caller—who has a real and urgent problem such as a missing paycheck or a case of food poisoning—the right number. This positively reinforces the mistake. Any restaurant manager that makes the mistake gets to know the wrong number from memory, and continues to supply it. Over time, we get more and more phone calls for the franchise. This represents frustration and a waste of time on the part of the callers and my receptionist.

The kindest thing to do is never, ever, cooperate with the caller by giving the right number. Instead, we play dumb. Callers push the problem back on the restaurant manager. The restaurant manager soon gets to know and give out the right number. The result is less frustration and less waste of time, both ours and future callers.

This principle has many applications. Before you offer help and advice in a situation, consider whether the kindest thing to do might be to play dumb.

Oklahoma law banning Islamic law could also ban Biblical law

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 22:51:00 +0000

Oops! The Oklahoma law that Oklahoma voters just approved, banning Islamic law from their courts, could ban Biblical law also. #UnintendedConsequences

The people of Oklahoma amended their Constitution by adopting State Question No. 755, Legis. Ref. No. 355, by a vote of 70%‒30% at the November 2, 2010 election.

They have forbidden their courts to look to the legal precepts of other nations or cultures when deciding cases. Specifically, the courts shall not consider international law or Sharia Law.

There is an irony here.

The amendment, legally known as the “Save Our State Amendment”, strongly appealed to the Christian majority of the people of Oklahoma because of its rejection of Sharia Law. The Attorney General of Oklahoma described Sharia Law on the State Question as Islamic law […] based on two principal sources, the Koran and the teaching of Mohammed.

But Dr. Joseph Thai, a University of Oklahoma law professor, pointed out that the new law could also forbid their courts to consider Biblical law: The Ten Commandments, of course, is international law. It did not originate in Oklahoma or the United States. (Quoted in this AP article.)

So Oklahomans who would like to see Biblical law established in their state may have created a new obstacle for themselves. And, by doing so, arguably they have violated Biblical law:

You will not curse the dumb or put an obstacle in the way of the blind, but will fear your God. I am Yahweh.
(Leviticus 19:14, quoted from the New Jerusalem Bible.)

I guess it’s fortunate for them that they cannot be prosecuted for it in their state courts.

Here is the old and new text of Okla. Const. Art. 7 § 1 from the State Question:

Section 1. A. The judicial power of this State shall be vested in Senate, sitting as a Court of Impeachment, a Supreme Court, the Court of Criminal Appeals, the Court on the Judiciary, the ~~State Industrial~~ Workers’ Compensation Court, the Court of Bank Review, the Court of Tax Review, and such intermediate appellate courts as may be provided by statute, District Courts, and such Boards, Agencies and Commissions created by the Constitution or established by statute as exercise adjudicative authority or render decisions in individual proceedings. Provided that the Court of Criminal Appeals, the State Industrial Court, the Court of Bank Review and the Court of Tax Review and such Boards, Agencies and Commissions as have been established by statute shall continue in effect, subject to the power of the Legislature to change or abolish said Courts, Boards, Agencies, or Commissions. Municipal Courts in cities or incorporated towns shall continue in effect and shall be subject to creation, abolition or alteration by the Legislature by general laws, but shall be limited in jurisdiction to criminal and traffic proceedings arising out of infractions of the provisions of ordinances of cities and towns or of duly adopted regulations authorized by such ordinances.

B. Subsection C of this section shall be known as the “Save Our State Amendment”.

C. The Courts provided for in subsection A of this section, when exercising their judicial authority, shall uphold and adhere to the law as provided in the United States Constitution, the Oklahoma Constitution, the United States Code, federal regulations promulgated pursuant thereto, established common law, the Oklahoma Statutes and rules promulgated pursuant thereto, and if necessary the law of another state of the United States provided the law of the other state does not include Sharia Law, in making judicial decisions. The courts shall not look to the legal precepts of other nations or cultures. Specifically, the courts shall not consider international law or Sharia Law. The provisions of this subsection shall apply to all cases before the respective courts including, but not limited to, cases of first impression.

Update Nov 8, 2010

A friend wrote to ask: “This passed by a wide margin—who’s to say that the ban on biblical law, ten commandments, etc. was unintentional?”

Oklahoma’s Department of Libraries says there is very little record of legislative intent. The legislature does not publish floor debate, committee reports, minutes, or hearings. (source)

But the two primary authors have said that they meant to ban Sharia law. And based on their voting records and other activities, I cannot believe that they meant to ban Biblical law. In fact I am sure they want just the opposite.

Rep. Rex Duncan (R) said that foreign influence has undermined the legal systems of other democratic states, specifically Great Britain and Michigan. He said the amendment will constitute a pre-emptive strike against Sharia law coming to Oklahoma. (source) Rep. Duncan has reportedly voted yes on bills requiring the Ten Commandments be posted at the entrance to the state Capitol. (source)

Sen. Anthony Sykes (R) stated that Sharia law coming to the U.S. is a scary concept. Hopefully the passage of this constitutional amendment will prevent it in Oklahoma. (source) Not long ago, Sen. Sykes was a featured participant at a “Reclaiming Oklahoma for Christ” event. The mission statement of this organization is to educate our pastors, legislators, educators, students and all citizens as to the truth about America’s Christian Heritage and the role of fundamental, Biblical Christianity in the establishment and function of our legal, legislative and educational systems; and to work towards the successful reestablishment of these values in our society today. (source)

About Roundup: Part 1, Preface and Introduction

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 12:04:00 +0000

Permit me to introduce you to Roundup, a chemical product invented by Monsanto Corporation. Roundup needs no introduction to you; Roundup has come in contact with you before, whether you knew it or not.

Preface

You are reading the first of a series of columns about Roundup, in which I introduce you to the product and why I think it is worth writing about. In later columns, I present the benefits and hazards of using it. The last column will pull together my conclusions and advice. I begin this project not knowing what my conclusions and advice will be, so I am quite curious myself! But I will take my time and try to get everything right, so we will just have to be patient and wait and see together.

A bottle of Roundup turned up during housecleaning not long ago, and our question was, what should we do with it? Answering this question is what these articles are really about. At the end, I hope I know whether it is best to turn it in to the local Environmental Collection Center, give it to a friend, or use it on my lawn and driveway. Even if by then we have already turned it in, at least I will know what I should have done! Anyway, that question is the scrupulus behind this project. So now let’s get started.

Introduction

Roundup was invented by Monsanto Corporation to control the growth of plants. Inside the bottle or the barrel, the product is a liquid mixture of two substances. One is glycine phosphonate, known as glyphosate, a chemical that blocks plant growth. The other is a liquid detergent which helps the glyphosate spread out and soak quickly into the leaves.

In my country, the United States, we apply about 100 million pounds of glyphosate to the land every year, more than any other herbicide (plant killing chemical). We apply it on crop lands, lawns, and gardens to kill or slow the growth of plants.

100 million pounds is more than any other chemical we use in the United States to control plant growth. It is three-fourths of a cup for each person. It is 1 rounded tablespoon for every city block (that is, if we divided all of the land into city blocks and applied an equal amount to every block).

This is why I say Roundup needs no introduction to you. It has come into contact with you before, whether you knew it or not.

Please let me know your thoughts about the project, so that I can approach it from more points of view. And watch for the next column in the series!

NPR’s firing of Juan Williams an example of an ethical double standard?

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 16:12:00 +0000

A friend says yes; the evidence says no.

My blog is syndicated to Facebook. Yesterday’s article on the firing of Juan Williams attracted a comment. One of my friends attached these words:

NPR has a long history of turning a blind eye to leftist opinion from their commentators. In 2002 NPR reporter David Kestenbaum accused the Traditional Values Coalition of sending anthrax powder through the mail to key U.S. Senators and reported the FBI was investigating TVC. In fact none of this was true and Kestenbaum never lost his job for such unprofessional conduct.

But NPR’s liberal bias doesn't end with Kestenbaum either. In 1995 NPR “legal correspondent” Nina Totenberg said that if there is “retributive justice” in the world, the late North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms would get AIDS or his grandchildren would get AIDS. She still has her job at NPR.

In 2005, NPR’s “All Things Considered” aired a segment by humorist Andrei Condrescu, who said that the “evaporation of 4 million [people] who believe” in the Rapture, “would leave the world a better place.” Condrescu was a contract worker for NPR. He has been with “All Things Considered” since 1983. Would he still be with NPR if he had wished for the evaporation of a billion Muslims?

To which I replied:

I had seen some vague comments elsewhere that NPR had applied a double standard in this case. I was curious, so I appreciate you for posting some specifics and goading me into a very interesting investigation. I was unaware of Traditional Values Coalition (TVC, the organization which accused Kestenbaum of unethical reporting).

Do you see the minor irony of making a statement on an issue of journalistic ethics, by posting something without attribution? The text of your comment is an excerpt of a statement that has appeared on several blogs. That statement in turn is a revised, abridged form of a statement released by TVC.

My comments below are directed to the TVC statement.

Did Kestenbaum publicly accuse TVC of sending anthrax powder through the mail, as TVC claim? To me, this is plainly a TVC lie. I have the transcript of the NPR report before me, sourced from TVC’s own website. Kestenbaum reported that two of the anthrax letters had been sent to two Senators who had recently been attacked by TVC. He said he spoke to TVC who told him they were not under investigation. That was it.

Was Kestenbaum’s mention of TVC a breach of ethics? NPR said so at the time. They said it was inappropriate for Kestenbaum to name TVC, because there was no evidence TVC were being or should have been investigated.

But I think this. Kestenbaum’s report was about how investigators try to identify anonymous perpetrators such as the Unabomber or the anthrax terrorist. He reported that one thing you try is to collect and trace critical or threatening writings that were sent to the same targets, seeking to find a lead back to the perpetrator. Kestenbaum illustrated how you would start from something known, like TVC’s attacks on the targeted Senators, and work back through TVC to a possible perpetrator. The TVC attacks on the Senators are what made them relevant to the story. They were the evidence that TVC should have been contacted by FBI—just as FBI contacted Planned Parenthood, also reported by Kestenbaum. Planned Parenthood did not, apparently, denounce Kestenbaum or NPR for reporting this, or claim to have been accused by Kestenbaum or NPR of sending anthrax powder through the mail. Anyway, TVC’s actions say more to me about the ethics and motivations of TVC itself than the ethics and motivations of NPR.

Did NPR apply a different standard to Kestenbaum than to Williams? NPR say they confronted Williams, in a series of episodes over several years, about public statements which did not respect the ethics code, and that this was the last straw. I have seen no evidence for more than the one episode with Kestenbaum. Now if Kestenbaum has a worse history of ethics code violations over the years than Williams, you could make a good case for a double standard.

Having discovered that TVC is a heavily biased and unreliable source, I have not looked into their other claims of a double standard at NPR. But if you find any reliable evidence for it I would be interested.

Juan Williams firing was justified

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 12:18:00 +0000

Juan Williams put NPR in the position of either firing him or ignoring their own ethics code.

Juan Williams is reportedly a freelance contributor to NPR, but that still means he contracted to comply with the same ethics code that NPR employees must follow.

He agreed to provide credible content, which is defined to mean: fair, unbiased, accurate, complete, and honest.

He also agreed to protect the credibility of NPR content by avoiding even the appearance of conflict of interest or prejudice in his outside activities, public comment, or writing.

The code says that NPR might reject any future content that is tainted by a violation, or simply terminate the contract.

NOTE: I am partly quoting, partly paraphrasing above from the actual ethics code, which I discovered at: http://www.npr.org/about/aboutnpr/ethics/ethics_code.html

Reportedly, he admitted to Bill O’Reilly that he has an irrational fear of Muslims on airplanes. He seems to understand it is prejudicial and to be doing his best to compensate, which is praiseworthy. But it appears to me that his admission put NPR in the position of either taking action or ignoring their own ethics code.

What we honestly ask Google about one another

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 12:02:00 +0000

source: Google Suggest Venn Diagram

Question, Don’t Attack, Objections

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 12:00:00 +0000

A friend of mine, a salesman I respect*, privately circulated an article titled Question, Don’t Attack, Objections.

Paraphrasing, he made the point that when you tell a person flatly that they’re wrong, or make them feel stupid, or paint them into a corner, or preach at them, you are not going to endear yourself, are you? And you are not going to make the sale.

He wrote that you must first help the person to doubt their existing beliefs. If they do, then they will become more open to what you have to offer as an alternative.

He offered a two step process for creating doubt.

First, think through in advance the reasons the person might object to a new idea.
Second, develop questions which isolate and create doubt about each objection in a non-adversarial way.

Be prepared for possible answers and your next responses.

Suppose you know a mother who tends to believe the anti-vaccine propaganda, and you want to sell her the idea to vaccinate her baby. An objection to the idea might be, “I hear that vaccines can cause autism”.

Instead of contradicting, an isolating question might be, “If it weren’t for the concern about autism, would you vaccinate your baby?” If so, a doubt-creating question might be, “Let’s talk about the risk of autism then. How much risk of autism would your pediatrician say is created by this vaccination?”

Be prepared for her to answer, “I don’t know,” or “none,” or, “my sister is a nurse and she heard lots of babies got autism from vaccines,” and prepare questions to ask next.

My friend pointed out that it’s impossible to anticipate or answer every objection, or to be sure of getting the person to the point of openness right away, or to make every sale. The goal is to plant seeds of doubt. Doubt will grow in its own good time. And that is when you pitch your new idea to them.

* I realize I may have lost my audience with that phrase alone :-)

I originally wrote this article on January 7, 2010 as a comment on the Swift Blog.

Google Translates Steve Jobs Out Of The Picture

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 12:00:00 +0000

Google Translate omits Steve Jobs from its English translation of a Danish cartoon. The Danish text mentions Jobs, chairman and CEO of Apple Inc., along with Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corporation, and Mark Zuckerberg, president and CEO of Facebook, Inc. The English translation omits Jobs, but not Gates or Zuckerberg.

The original Danish cartoon includes the text: “iPhone med personlige numre til Bill Gates, Steve Jobs og Mark Zuckerberg”. In Google’s English translation, the text becomes: “iPhone with personal numbers to Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg”.

Many Apple products compete directly with Google, Microsoft, and Facebook products. Competing products include hardware and operating systems for desktop and handheld devices, games, and social networking, music distribution, and TV services.

Apple recently announced iTunes Ping, a social networking which competes with Facebook, and Apple Game Center, a new portable game application which competes with Microsoft’s Xbox Live. Apple and Google have recently announced competing TV services.

Screen shot of Google’s Danish to English translation.

Intelligent Transportation Systems (revisited)

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 12:24:00 +0000

Responding to a call on the Freakonomics blog for suggestions to improve urban mobility, I have updated my 2008 article on the subject and posted a shorter version at Slate.com.

Intelligent Transportation Systems, as envisioned by Joseph Sussman, a senior civil engineer and professor at MIT.

A couple of years ago, our science museum hosted an exhibit titled “Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination”. In one of the exhibit videos, Dr. Sussman gave a talk.

He said the automobile had a profound impact on the design of cities, and on the practicality of mass transit. Before the automobile, homes and other destinations were concentrated in clusters and connected by arteries. These were easily served by bus and train lines. After the automobile, we sprawled in all directions. Serving a sprawl with bus and train lines is impractical. Look, for example, at Fort Worth/Dallas. It has been very difficult for them to provide useful bus or train service to most of the population because of the sprawl.

Dr. Sussman also showed that we have designed in to our current transportation system a certain rate of crashes. This design is why the current safety system wraps large amounts of metal and safety gear around the motorists. Traffic is inevitably delayed when a crash occurs, and sometimes people will be injured or killed despite the safety system—literally by design.

Significantly for our petroleum consumption, most of the fuel burned by personal vehicles turns out to be moving the safety system, not the passengers. And the safety system is also a substantial amount of the cost of building the vehicle.

Dr. Sussman argues for an intelligent transportation system, which he defines as a marriage of high technology with conventional roadways. Automating our personal transit system, he said, would lead to enormous savings measured in lives, injuries, property, fuel, and travel time.

The difficulty is that developing such a system is analogous to the development of rail or the interstate highways. It would be revolutionary, and also require a sea change in attitudes about piloting one’s own vehicle.

In summarizing Dr. Sussman’s ideas, I have no doubt oversimplified or failed to make his points. I recommend reading his published books and articles for a real understanding of what he proposes.

Will coal, oil, and gas destroy us?

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 05:34:00 +0000

A friend has posed the question, are we in the End Times? Surely not the event predicted by believers of bronze age myths. But I am slower to reject the idea in the form of an economic argument.

Today our population is huge, and growing exponentially. Despite this, in some parts of the world, poverty has become rare.

This is new for humanity, and caused by a temporary windfall. Like an ant colony living off a honey spill, or a starving person living off stored fat, we have begun to live off fossil hydrocarbons. They are not merely our power source. Much of what we call “fossil fuels” we literally eat (ammonia based agriculture) or make stuff out of (plastics, cleaning compounds, etc.).

Nature finds a balance. But she does not do it kindly. If this trend continues, then once we consume her stored fat, many of us will starve, and maybe our remaining grandchildren will learn what it was like to live before the Industrial Revolution.

We imagine we can replace fossil hydrocarbons with alternatives. But, at our current and future population level, we do not know how to build the number of solar panels, wind farms, cellulose farms, etc., we actually need and still leave room for living space; to build and maintain them indefinitely we would still need plenty of fossil hydrocarbons.

There are only two technologies that I know of with the potential to stave off enormous human misery. Population control would reduce the demand for fossil hydrocarbons. Nuclear power, especially fusion power, would provide an adequate supply. But we face political barriers to both, and we may need another hundred years to make fusion power practical.

The smart money may not be on the happy ending.

Chrome Heats Up Faster Than Firefox

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Thu, 20 May 2010 13:00:00 +0000

Update January 12, 2011: New article with updated statistics for the rest of 2010 here.

Alex Chitu has published a chart showing 70 million active Google Chrome users in April 2010, up from 30 million July 2009.¹ Alex compares Chrome to Mozilla Firefox, saying, “Firefox grew from 265 million users to 365 million users in the same period. To put things in perspective, Firefox has 5 times more users than Google Chrome.”

I wondered how much of the growth of Firefox is just due to the growth of Internet use overall. To find out, I developed the three charts below (historical data provided by Net Applications).²

The first chart shows that Firefox growth (red) only kept pace with overall growth. About 1 in 4 browsers were Firefox in April 2010, about the same as in July 2009. By contrast, Chrome growth (navy) outpaced total growth. About 1 in 15 browsers were Chrome in April 2010, compared to only 1 in 39 in July 2009.

The second chart shows that Firefox market share growth (red) was 3% per month two years ago, and the current growth is 1% per month. By striking contrast, Chrome (navy) has sustained a growth rate of 11–12% per month since it was released.

If this trend continues, Chrome will have more users than Firefox in about one year. This is shown in the third chart, which compares projected future performance of Chrome (navy), Firefox (red), and Internet Explorer (blue). Obviously, though (as businesses love to remind investors), past results are no guarantee of future performance.

The chart data are available here. Please let me know about any errors.

1. Alex Chitu, “Google Chrome Has 70 Million Active Users,” Google Operating System, http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/05/google-chrome-has-70-million-active.html (accessed May 20, 2010).

2. Net Applications, “Top Browser Share Trend”, Net Market Share, http://netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=1&qptimeframe=M&qpsp=112&qpnp=25 (accessed May 20, 2010).

Hostway admit fault in domain renewal, violate ICANN agreement

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Fri, 14 May 2010 19:27:00 +0000

Hostway have caused a serious problem for my employer. Our domain name has been disabled: removed from the Domain Name System (DNS). This means complete loss of e-mail service and no website. The company has blinked completely out of existence on the net (except for the WHOIS record).

Hostway admit it is their fault, but have not fixed the problem in a day and a half and cannot tell me when it will be fixed. They say it is escalated to a fifth level team. As a practical matter, this is not so good, as this team only works during normal business hours. This means most of the downtime is simply due to inattention.

The problem began when Hostway automatically renewed the domain. Hostway took payment for the renewal in advance of the expiration date, but did not renew the domain properly.

A WHOIS query for the domain shows inconsistent information. In one section it shows a future expiration date and a status of ClientHold. In another section it shows a past expiration date and a status of Locked.

To resolve the problem for my employer, I took the decision to transfer the domain registration to GoDaddy. However, Hostway have made that impossible.

(i) Hostway have failed to unlock the domain at our request, either through their website or their telephone support center.

(ii) Hostway have interfered with delivery of the domain transfer e-mail to the administrative address of the domain by disabling the domain.

(iii) Hostway have failed to change the administrative e-mail address of the domain at our request, either through their website or their telephone support center.

These are violations of the domain transfer rules that registrars are required to follow.

Hostway's answer has been to admit fault again and cite the original technical problem. But they cannot say when any of these problems will be fixed.

We have filed a dispute with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), alleging Hostway violated the Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy (IRTP).

My employer has been a customer of Hostway for 11 years. Ironically, that may be a part of the problem. Hostway bought Affinity, which bought ValueWeb, who originally created the domain on my employer’s behalf. Integration of old customer records into new systems is never perfect and can have many strange side effects down the road.

Copyscape: Who Stole My Page?

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Fri, 07 May 2010 12:25:00 +0000

Ever wonder if somebody stole or plagiarized your web page? Let Copyscape tell you.

You can click the link above to go to their search page, and enter the URL of your page. Or, you can drag this bookmarklet to your browser’s Favorites or Bookmarks: Send To Copyscape. Then when you want to check a page, browse to the page and click the bookmarklet.

Copyscape is free and requires no signup, but sets a limit on how many times a particular site can be Copyscaped in a month. If you need to use it more frequently, or want your pages automatically monitored, they also offer a pay service.

Essentialism and Food: Why We Seek Natural and Shun Artificial

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:56:00 +0000

Essentialism creates practical problems for feeding humanity. This and many other interesting problems of human nature are highlighted by Steven Pinker in his 2002 book, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Here is a sampling:

When a 1999 cyclone in India left millions of people in danger of starvation, some activists denounced relief societies for distributing a nutritious grain meal because it contained genetically modified varieties of corn and soybeans (varieties that had been eaten without apparent harm in the United States). These activists are also opposed to “golden rice,” a genetically modified variety that could prevent blindness in millions of children in the developing world and alleviate vitamin A deficiency in a quarter of a billion more. Other activists have vandalized research facilities at which the safety of genetically modified foods is tested and new varieties are developed. For these people, even the possibility that such foods could be safe is unacceptable.

A 2001 report by the European Union reviewed eighty-one research projects conducted over fifteen years and failed to find any new risks to human health or to the environment posed by genetically modified crops. This is no surprise to a biologist. Genetically modified foods are no more dangerous than “natural” foods because they are not fundamentally different from natural foods. Virtually every animal and vegetable sold in a health-food store has been “genetically modified” for millennia by selective breeding and hybridization. The wild ancestor of carrots was a thin, bitter white root; the ancestor of corn had an inch-long, easily shattered cob with a few small, rock-hard kernels. Plants are Darwinian creatures with no particular desire to be eaten, so they did not go out of their way to be tasty, healthy, or easy for us to grow and harvest. On the contrary: they did go out of their way to deter us from eating them, by evolving irritants, toxins, and bitter-tasting compounds. So there is nothing especially safe about natural foods. The “natural” method of selective breeding for pest resistance simply increases the concentration of the plant’s own poisons; one variety of natural potato had to be withdrawn from the market because it proved to be toxic to people. Similarly, natural flavors—defined by one food scientist as “a flavor that’s been derived with an out-of-date technology”—are often chemically indistinguishable from their artificial counterparts, and when they are distinguishable, sometimes the natural flavor is the more dangerous one. When “natural” almond flavor, benzaldehyde, is derived from peach pits, it is accompanied by traces of cyanide; when it is synthesized as an “artificial flavor”, it is not.
A blanket fear of all artificial and genetically modified foods is patently irrational on health grounds, and it could make food more expensive and hence less available to the poor. Where do these specious fears come from? Partly they arise from the carcinogen-du-jour school of journalism that uncritically reports any study showing elevated cancer rates in rats fed megadoses of chemicals. But partly they come from an intuition about living things that was first identified by the anthropologist James George Frazer in 1890 and has recently been studied in the lab by Paul Rozin, Susan Gelman, Frank Keil, Scott Atran, and other cognitive scientists.
People’s intuitive biology begins with the concept of an invisible essence residing in living things, which gives them their form and powers. These essentialist beliefs emerge early in childhood, and in traditional cultures they dominate reasoning about plants and animals. Often the intuitions serve people well. They allow preschoolers to deduce that a raccoon that looks like a skunk will have raccoon babies, that a seed taken from an apple and planted with flowers in a pot will produce an apple tree, and that an animal’s behavior depends on its innards, not on its appearance. They allow traditional peoples to deduce that different-looking creatures (such as a caterpillar and a butterfly) can belong to the same kind, and they impel them to extract juices and powders from living things and try them as medicines, poisons, and food supplements. They can prevent people from sickening themselves by eating things that have been in contact with infectious substances such as feces, sick people, and rotting meat.
But intuitive essentialism can also lead people into error. Children falsely believe that a child of English-speaking parents will speak English even if brought up in a French-speaking family, and that boys will have short hair and girls will wear dresses even if they are brought up with no other member of their sex from which they can learn those habits. Traditional peoples believe in sympathetic magic, otherwise known as voodoo. They think similar-looking objects have similar powers, so that a ground-up rhinoceros horn is a cure for erectile dysfunction. And they think that animal parts can transmit their powers to anything they mingle with, so that eating or wearing a part of a fierce animal will make one fierce.
Educated Westerners should not feel too smug. Rozin has shown that we have voodoolike intuitions ourselves. Most Americans won’t touch a sterilized cockroach, or even a plastic one, and won’t drink juice that the roach has touched for even a fraction of a second. And even Ivy League students believe that you are what you eat. They judge that a tribe that hunts turtles for their meat and wild boar for their bristles will be good swimmers, and that a tribe that hunts turtles for their shells and wild boar for their meat will be tough fighters. In his history of biology, Ernst Mayr showed that many biologists originally rejected the theory of natural selection because of their belief that a species was a pure type defined by an essence. They could not wrap their minds around the concept that species are populations of variable individuals and that one can blend into another over evolutionary time.
In this context, the fear of genetically modified foods no longer seems so strange: it is simply the standard human intuition that every living thing has an essence. Natural foods are thought to have the pure essence of the plant or animal and to carry with them the rejuvenating powers of the pastoral environment in which they grew. Genetically modified foods, or foods containing artificial additives, are thought of as being deliberately laced with a contaminant tainted by its origins in an acrid laboratory or factory. Arguments that invoke genetics, biochemistry, evolution, and risk analysis are likely to fall on deaf ears when pitted against this deep-rooted way of thinking.

—Steven Pinker. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

The Associated Press: Disputed isle in Bay of Bengal disappears into sea

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 15:39:00 +0000

The Associated Press: Disputed isle in Bay of Bengal disappears into sea: What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming.

How A Representative Can Use Surveys To Good Advantage

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 22:43:00 +0000

A friend forwarded an e-mail from U.S. House Rep. Dr. Michael Burgess (R-Texas). Dr. Burgess represents a district my friend left some time ago. But Rep. Burgess is still seemingly interested in his opinion of a health care reform bill up for vote this weekend, and sought to have him complete a short survey.

This e-mail survey is a delightfully clever bit of misdirection and propaganda. Let’s see how it works.

Misdirection: inviting you to tell more about yourself than you realize

The e-mail baits you into action. It calls the bill a product of corrupt acts: “secret negotiations, sweetheart deals for certain Members, and rule-bending procedural gimmicks”. This will delight or antagonize you, depending on whether you agree or disagree with the Republican Party position on this bill.

Having gotten your attention (the bait), the e-mail then immediately invites you to click a link (take the bait) to complete a survey. You are primed by your enthusiasm (or indignation) to do so.

The link you click is the hook. It doesn’t go straight to the survey.

Here are some of the links which take you to Rep. Burgess’ survey. Notice each one has a different ID:

http://burgess.house.gov/Components/Redirect/r.aspx?ID=50286-00000001
http://burgess.house.gov/Components/Redirect/r.aspx?ID=50286-00000002
http://burgess.house.gov/Components/Redirect/r.aspx?ID=50286-12345678
http://burgess.house.gov/Components/Redirect/r.aspx?ID=50286-99999999
[...]

When you see a system like this, it generally means each copy of the e-mail has a different ID. That lets your e-mail address be linked to your survey results.

The survey comes up on your screen, with two questions: (1) Email Address for future email updates (more spam), and (2) are you opposed to the bill (Yes/No/Unsure).

Still enthusiastic, you answer.

Remember: even if you do not give an e-mail address on the survey, your original e-mail address can be linked to your survey response. So Rep. Burgess can know how you voted.

You now enthusiastically forward the original e-mail to your like minded friends. Some of them vote. Some of them give Rep. Burgess their e-mail address on the survey. Now, Rep. Burgess can know not only how you voted, but who your friends are, and how they voted.

But that’s only half of the fun.

Propaganda: using the results for greater influence

For more delight, let’s look at the first question of the survey itself: the Email Address for future email updates. The first question of a survey is the one that is most likely to be answered. So a survey will put the most important question first. Why is this question the most important to Rep. Burgess?

It’s important because it influences you. If you oppose Rep. Burgess, or if you support the bill that he opposes, then you won’t want his e-mail updates. So the first question of the survey deflates a lot of your enthusiasm for completing the survey. In other words, people who agree with Rep. Burgess are more likely to complete the survey.

This is an example of what is called self selection bias. Rep. Burgess’ survey responses will lean towards people who agree with his position. Therefore, so will his survey results.

One way Rep. Burgess can capitalize on this situation is to influence other House members. He could claim he surveyed my mailing list and found that the results were strongly against the bill, more strongly than you would expect if only Republicans opposed it.

Another way is to influence voters at reelection time. He could claim voters can trust him to listen to his constituents, pointing out that he voted against the health bill after surveying his mailing list and finding mostly opposition.

Rep. Burgess should be careful not to point out that his mailing list is not limited to constituents, and that his e-mail could and probably was forwarded to many people not on his list and living outside his district. The e-mail specifically says, “health care reform will affect every single American, so I want to hear from you”—inviting responses from people outside his district.

I do not in any way mean to single Rep. Burgess out for criticism. The e-mail and survey system he uses is the regular House Of Representatives system. It is designed to be used the way he did. Therefore I have no reason to doubt that his survey is a fair example of what all our Representatives from all political parties are doing as a matter of routine.

Delightful, isn’t it?

The scientific evidence for health supplements

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:33:00 +0000

David McCandless has just released another beautiful graphic, Snake Oil? The scientific evidence for health supplements | Information Is Beautiful. Go see which health supplements live up to their hype and which are a waste of your money.

Wasted Gift Cards

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:19:00 +0000

In 2006, $8 billion was spent on gift cards that will never be redeemed---a bigger impact on consumers than the combined total of both debit- and credit-card fraud.

Two articles on the wasteful choices people often make when giving gifts:

The Gift-Card Economy By STEPHEN J. DUBNER and STEVEN D. LEVITT

Humbug or wise man? By Heather A. Davis, an interview of Wharton Professor Joel Waldfogel

How To Wash Hands and Prevent Illness

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:40:00 +0000

Skin is our defense against many kinds of harm.

Nails, hair, scales, claws, hooves, horns, quills, feathers, and beaks all grow from skin. They are mainly made of keratin.

Keratin is a tough, flexible, waterproof filament made in special skin cells.

The surface of skin is a very thin layer of keratin. It is made by the layers under it, and moistened with fats and waxes. The keratin, fats, and waxes keep water inside the body and foreign particles, such as bacteria, outside.

House dust is mainly skin.

The skin surface is constantly wearing out and being replaced. One square inch of your forearm loses about 8,400 cells every hour.

Soap strips fats and waxes from the skin, but within six hours, the stripped skin's protective ability returns to half of normal. Within six days, it returns to normal.

Our skin has bacteria living on it—and in it. Counting live cells in one square inch, forearms have been measured at 65,000, the abdomen at 260,000, underarms at 3,200,000, scalp at 6,500,000, and hands at 30,000,000.

Not all bacteria found on the skin cause illness. Some even set up house, living in permanent colonies attached to the deeper layers of our skin, without causing harm.

The surface of our skin also picks up and drops off visitors—germs, both bacteria and viruses—when we touch things. These visitors are often the ones which cause illness. Some die very quickly in the open air, but others can survive for long periods of time. They are also easy to wash away. This means that many illnesses can be prevented by hand washing.

It is especially easy to pick up and drop off germs when you touch moist surfaces—such as moist skin, food, and any damp or wet object.

You can prevent illness by washing hands before and after preparing food, and before eating. If you already have an illness caused by a germ, you can easily transfer it to your hands, and from there to anything or anyone you touch. Your bed, clothing, and other objects very close to you can also accumulate shed skin with germs on it. So anyone who touches you or these objects should wash their hands afterwards. (Clothing and bedding should also be washed regularly.)

Plain soap and water picks up germs without killing them, so they can be rinsed away. To be effective, you should rub all parts of your hands for at least 30 seconds, and then rinse thoroughly.

Soaps with germicide kill germs while the soap picks them up. They are used like plain soap.

Alcohol hand sanitizers kill germs by dissolving their outer parts. Use products containing 60–95% ethanol. Soiled hands can prevent the sanitizer from getting to all of the germs, so wash hands first if possible. Rub all parts of your hands until completely dry. Alcohol evaporates quickly, so apply enough (about one-half teaspoon) to keep your hands wet for at least 30 seconds.

The risk of alcohol fire is very low, but be sure to rub until completely dry, and keep wet hands away from sources of flame or static sparks.

Alcohol hand sanitizers with germicide work like plain alcohol sanitizers, but also continue to kill germs for a short time after your hands dry.

Soaps and sanitizers have been studied carefully to see which is best. The studies have found that not all germs are alike. Plain soap and germicide soap are about equally effective for preventing common illnesses such as colds and the flu. Washing hands followed by hand sanitizer is more effective than washing hands alone.

Some germs are naturally resistant to alcohol or to some germicides. If you are trying to prevent illness caused by a specific germ (such as hepatitis C) ask a doctor which germicide is most effective.

Some viruses are learning to adapt to germicides in soap. Some scientists are concerned that the use of germicides will cause these viruses to become common.

Use soaps and alcohols that contain skin conditioner, to prevent skin irritation and dryness.

To help children rub all parts of their hands for enough time, teach them to wash while they sing “Happy Birthday” twice.

For more information, see:

Guideline for Hand Hygiene in Health-Care Settings
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5116a1.htm

Wikipedia: Stratum Corneum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratum_corneum

Comparing conservatism and liberalism

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:00:00 +0000

Conservatism at its heart is the champion of the accumulated wisdom of many generations, protecting it from the new wisdom of the current generation or of individuals. At its best, it preserves our institutions from ill considered changes. At its worst, it interferes with wise innovations and preserves evil in the form of social institutions such as American slavery.

Liberalism at its heart is the champion of personal liberty, protecting it from fascism, whether despotic or the tyranny of the majority. At its best, it rights past wrongs and comes to the aid of the defenseless. At its worst, it acts without foresight and creates evil in the form of unintended consequences of social reforms such as rent control.

Legal Jargon In the New Texas Uniform Cell Phones In School Zones Law

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 23:04:00 +0000

Anonymous writes:

Laws (in the US) are written in English. The existence of legalese is a fiction perpetrated by lawyers in an attempt to both enhance their monopoly and to obscure the facts. The sentence as quoted is ambiguous. Unless it is further constrained by surrounding language it does in fact give entities the option to choose not to enforce the law.

Thank you for responding. I love knowing someone is actually reading my stuff. My answer turned out to be too long to relegate to a comment, so I wrote this followup article.

I won’t argue that lawyers never obscure facts. But legalese is not a conspiracy to make understanding the law impossible, and the sentence is not ambiguous.

Specialists invent technical terms so that they can communicate clearly and efficiently with their peers. It’s human nature. Any discipline will develop jargon.

Specialists frequently reuse ordinary words as technical terms. Consider the meanings of these words:

moment, conservation, mole, work, and charm as used by physicists
real and imaginary as used by mathematicians
process, hash, virtual, and predicate as used by computer professionals
utility, enemy, rent, and inferior as used by economists

Jargon greatly improves the chances that specialists will understand one another. At the same time, it greatly increases the risk that laypeople will misunderstand specialists, because of the reuse of ordinary words as technical terms.

So there is no conspiracy to confuse laypersons. It just so happens.

It is true that specialists can and do write in lay language. There is a big market for books and articles that popularize technical subjects. A long enough book can explain almost anything.

But specialists writing for their peers do not write in lay language. They save a great deal of time and confusion by using jargon when writing for peers.

A law needs to be efficiently written and have a unambiguous meaning. Jargon has developed among lawyers which makes that possible.

Like any jargon, its precision comes at the cost of confusing and misleading laypeople. So it is popularly ridiculed as legalese, just as I did in the original post. But that does not make it a deliberate attempt by lawyers to obscure, any more than computerese is a deliberate attempt by computer professionals to obscure.

A standard English dictionary or English grammar can be unhelpful in understanding jargon. Jargon follows its own rules.

The rules for understanding legal jargon are very well developed and well documented.

A municipality, county, or other political subdivision that enforces this section shall post a sign at the entrance to each school crossing zone in the municipality, county, or other political subdivision

The qualifying phrase that enforces this section unquestionably applies only to other political subdivision by the rule of last antecedent, one of the basic rules of legal jargon. This means the supposedly ambiguous qualification does not refer to a municipality or to a county, at least. They are unambiguously obligated to post signs.

Then, unless the context indicates that an other political subdivision that enforces this section is obligated differently by the law than a municipality or a county (which it does not), the remaining supposed ambiguity is eliminated also. Several different rules might apply, and they all come to the same conclusion.

The rule of ejusdem generis restricts the general descriptor other political subdivision that enforces this section to the same class as the other items in the list. The other items simply identify political entities which are known to have the enforcement duty, rather than assigning that duty to them. Therefore other political subdivision that enforces this section is also simply identifying an entity, rather than having the more general effect of assigning a duty.

The rule of noscitur a sociis determines the meaning of other political subdivision that enforces this section by association with the other words in the phrase, from which follows the same conclusion by the same reasoning as above.

The presumption against absurdity rejects the alternate interpretation, that political entities other than municipalities and counties would have discretion in the matter, considering that the law was passed specifically to establish a uniform statewide rule, and also preempts all local ordinances, rules, or regulations that are inconsistent with specific provisions of this section adopted by a political subdivision of this state.

All Texas School Zones Must Have Road Signs Posted Prohibiting Cell Phone Use

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 12:00:00 +0000

Some media outlets have published misleading news stories about the new Texas school zone cell phone law. Some reported that communities might not post signs at a school, which would let drivers off the hook.

The cause of the the misleading stories is that Texas law is written in legalese---a language very similar to, but not to be confused with, English.

The new law reads,

A municipality, county, or other political subdivision that enforces this section shall post a sign at the entrance to each school crossing zone in the municipality, county, or other political subdivision

This says that the local authority that is responsible for enforcing this law at the school is also obliged to put up a sign at the entrance to each school crossing zone.

A municipality, county, or other political subdivision that enforces this section means the local authority that is responsible for enforcing this law.

Shall post a sign means is obliged to put up a sign.

So it is a fact that the local authority is obligated to post signs. That is why local authorities all over the state are posting signs.

It has also been reported that the local authority cannot enforce the law where a sign is not posted, and that the sign must notify the driver that there is a fine for disobeying, and that existing local laws are preempted by the state law. Those are true facts.

To sum up, there is now a uniform Texas school zone cell phone law. The local authority must post signs, and the driver must obey the signs unless they are missing.

Sample stories that got it right:

Sample stories that got it wrong:

Back On Your Heads

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:45:00 +0000

The devil, escorting a lawyer to his place in hell, gives him a choice of three rooms in Hell in which to spend eternity. However, the laywer may only examine each room once and either choose it or reject it.

The first room is too huge to see across. Millions of agonized people in business suits are up to their waists in boiling hot shit.

Knowing the devil’s friendship for really smart lawyers such as himself, the lawyer figures this room is not for him and rejects it.

The second room is smaller; you can actually see the far wall. Hundreds of thousands of agonized people in business suits are up to their necks in boiling hot shit.

The lawyer makes a quick calculation. He can see which direction this is heading, but he knows the devil loves trickery and also has a warm spot in his heart for really smart, tricky lawyers such as himself. With a knowing look at the devil, he rejects the second room.

The devil escorts him to the third room. It is only the size of one city block, and populated with people in business suits standing in boiling hot shit about one foot deep, drinking cups of coffee.

The lawyer sees a few of his Manhattan colleagues, who wave and smile. He steps down into the room, gets himself a cup of coffee, and begins to chat with a couple of divorce attorneys.

Then a loud whistle blows. A small army of imps armed with pitchforks collect the coffee cups, and their captain announces, “Okay, coffee break’s over. Back on your heads.”

Privacy Risks of Facebook Applications

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:54:00 +0000

I was just asked about the privacy risks of what are called Facebook applications. It is well worth looking at, and I had given it only superficial attention.

I will begin with what a Facebook application is. Then I will present the personal data that is at stake. I will share my beliefs about how far you can trust a Facebook application with this data. Finally, I will suggest Facebook settings that I think are safe.

What is a Facebook application?
A Facebook application is an add-on to Facebook. Facebook offers a few of its own, such as Marketplace. The rest are contributed by web programmers all over the world. Whenever you get the message:

Allow Access? Allowing (application name) access will let it pull your profile information, photos, your friends' info, and other content that it requires to work. Allow or cancel

That is a Facebook application wanting your personal data.
What information can a Facebook application get from Facebook?
Almost everything you were willing to tell Facebook.

According to Facebook, when you “Allow” an application, the application sees the same personal data that your friends do, except contact data (your address, phone, e-mail, IM, or website). It does not see unshared data such as your password.

When a friend of yours “Allows” a Facebook application, the application sees limited data about you, too. This limited data can be extensive or it can be nothing at all, depending on your preference.
How far can you trust a Facebook application?
You might as well trust Facebook’s own applications, since you were willing to give the information to Facebook. But what about contributed applications? BBC looked into this in 2008. A BBC web programmer created an innocent looking Facebook application which secretly skimmed personal data from any user who allowed it, plus their friends. (This is called a Trojan horse attack.) It was three hours of effort. I looked into Facebook programming, and saw for myself how easy it would be.

But BBC knows of no badly behaving Facebook applications (other than theirs). They say Facebook has a team that monitors the site for bad applications. If it is so easy to do, why isn’t Facebook overrun with bad applications? One possibility is that Facebook’s team is doing its job: when a bad application is released into the wild, it is detected and removed. A more grim possibility is that there are bad applications in the wild, but they have avoided detection. BBC did not release their bad application into the wild, so we don’t know if it was detectable.

I think you can trust contributed applications to keep your personal data private only if you think Facebook is policing them perfectly, and I don’t think that’s been proven.
So what do I do about Facebook applications?
I treat anything I post to Facebook (other than my password and contact information) as if it might be available for anyone in the world to see. If I would be uncomfortable with that, I don’t post it.

However, that does not work for your birthdate. Facebook requires you to supply it, and it is potentially useful for identity theft. Nevertheless, it is part of the personal data that applications can see.

For that reason, when an application asks to be allowed, I check it out first. And until I feel pretty sure that it is not more than what it seems to be, I don’t allow it. Also, I have denied my “Basic Info” to applications allowed by friends, because that protects my birthdate from applications which I have not checked out personally.

Another way to secure your birthdate is to supply the wrong date. The Facebook terms of service only require you to say truthfully whether you are 13+ or 18+. As long as the date you supply does not misrepresent your age category, you are not violating the terms of service. You could save your friends some confusion by supplying the true month and date, and changing only the year.

You control which applications you allow to access your personal data on these pages:

http://www.facebook.com/editapps.php?v=allowed http://www.facebook.com/editapps.php?v=additional

You control what personal data your friends’ applications can access on this page:

http://www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=platform&tab=other

Facebook keeps a list of all applications on this page:

http://www.facebook.com/apps/

Facebook documents the personal data available to applications on this page:

http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/FQL_Tables

Here is the BBC article.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/7375772.stm

Please comment if you have anything to add or correct in this article. I would like it to be as accurate and useful for Facebook users as possible.

Send to (Blogger, Bookmarks, Mail, Wayback, English) in Google Chrome

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 03:54:00 +0000

I have customized Google Chrome to make it simple to send the current page to:

Blogger (create a post about the page)
Google Bookmarks (bookmark the page)
Gmail a.k.a. Google Mail (create an e-mail containing the page)
Wayback (show the page’s revision history)
Google Translate (show the page in English translation)

The result of this customization is the “Send to” menu. This is very easy to set up and requires no special technical knowledge. This customization is not original with me but it has worked very well for me. Harry McCracken gets the credit.

If the Google Chrome bookmarks bar is hidden, bring it into view with ~~Ctrl-B~~ Ctrl+Shift+B. [Google changed this keyboard shortcut in 2010 to avoid a conflict with the standard use of Ctrl+B to bold text.]
Right button click on in the bookmarks bar (but not on an existing folder), then click Add folder…
Name: Send to
click OK
NOTE: If the new folder does not appear on the bookmarks bar, then look in existing folders and in the » folder to see if you accidentally created it there. Then simply drag it with the mouse to the location you desire.

Now you have an empty Send to menu.

To add the Blogger option to the menu, drag the text BlogThis! with the mouse from this page at blogger.com and drop on top of Send to. (So that the name makes more sense with the words Send to, you can change the name from BlogThis! to Blogger by clicking Send to, right button clicking on BlogThis!, choosing Edit, and following the directions.)

To add the Bookmarks option to the menu, drag the text Google Bookmark with the mouse from this page at google.com and drop on top of Send to. (I changed the name to Bookmarks.)¹

To add the Mail option to the menu, drag the text GmailThis! with the mouse from this page at contrapants.org and drop on top of Send to. (I changed the name to Mail.)

To add the Wayback option to the menu, drag the text WayBack with the mouse from this page at gyford.com and drop on top of Send to.

To add the English option to the menu, drag the text English with the mouse from this page at google.com and drop on top of Send to.

A Google search for bookmarklets will turn up many similar options that you can consider adding to the Chrome bookmarks menu, for example at bookmarklets.com.

There is a related Chrome customization to make your Google Bookmarks searchable from the address bar (which as far as I know is original with me). The combination of Send to Bookmarks and searchable bookmarks makes Google Bookmarks simple to use in Chrome.

Using Google Bookmarks in Google Chrome

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 12:00:00 +0000

I prefer Google bookmarks to Chrome bookmarks because I can access them from anywhere. So I customized Google Chrome to use Google bookmarks. This is an easy customization that requires no special expertise or software add-ons.

First, read how Chrome works with the customization and take a look at the screenshots. Then, if you want the same customization, continue reading to see how it’s done.

To Google bookmark a page in Chrome

To bookmark the current page, I click my Bookmarks button. (You can see in the screenshot that I file it under Send to, but you can put it anywhere.) I optionally edit the title and add tags to make it easy to find later, and click Add bookmark.

At this point, my Google bookmark is saved and I can access it later from anywhere.

To return to a Google bookmarked page in Chrome

To find a Google bookmark page, I use search, naturally. In the address bar (a.k.a. the omnibox), I type gb (for Google Bookmark), press Tab or Space, type search word(s) that match the bookmark name or tags, and press Enter. On the results page, I click the bookmark I wanted.

To add these customizations to Google Chrome

To create the Bookmarks button, drag this bookmarklet to the Google Chrome bookmarks bar: Google Bookmark (or do the same thing from Google’s help page Bookmarks: Using Google Bookmarks, which is where I got it).

You can, of course, add the bookmarklet to a folder, as I did.

To add Google Bookmark search to the Chrome address bar, right-click in the address bar, choose Edit search engines…, click Add, fill out the form as follows, and click OK:

Name:: Google Bookmarks
Keyword:: gb
URL:: http://google.com/bookmarks/find?&q=%s

(In the Search Engines window there is also an option to make this the default search, if you wish.)

Comments on your experiences with this customization (and on the way it is presented above) would be most welcome!

Obama Because He Is Black

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:05:00 +0000

I voted this morning to make Sen. Barack Hussein Obama our next President. I have been endorsing him because:

He is not white.

He has an “Arab sounding” name.

He is otherwise qualified to serve as President.

I want to write today about racism. And if Sen. Obama had not won a very close primary race, I would have endorsed Sen. Clinton because she is a woman. So I want to write about sexism, too—about prejudice.

People keep telling me that age, ethnicity, religion, parentage, sex, and sexual preference are not what qualify someone to be President, therefore I should not consider them.

I have been told that voting for Sen. Clinton or Gov. Palin as women is sexist (as much as voting against them as women would be). That voting for Sen. Obama as a black is racist. That voting against Sen. McCain as a senior is ageist.

In short, I have been told that I should vote without prejudice. But I cannot, and pretty much nobody else can.

Almost all people have prejudice and believe that they don’t. America prefers whites, men, Protestants, straights, and tall, pretty, young people. We prefer them in daily, practical ways that matter: acts of friendship, trust, pay, and performance evaluation. And we act this way not realizing that we do. These facts have been so well proven that even a habitual skeptic like myself cannot really doubt it.

There is a test for automatic bias, developed at Harvard, called the Implicit Association Test. You can go to <https://implicit.harvard.edu/> and measure your own automatic bias for race, skin lightness, sex, sexual preference, age, weight, and political party. Even if you are black, your test will probably show an automatic bias for whites, and if so, the smart money says you have been giving whites preferential treatment, whether or not you believe it.

But it has also been proven that we are not born with these biases. We take them from our culture, and we can relearn them pretty easily once we know the trick. You cannot beat the Harvard race test by mere will power or wishful thinking. Even the authors of the test cannot beat it that way. But they learned, it turns out, that you can beat the race test by thinking about black heroes—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for example, or Olympic athletes—black people who achieved great things.

Here is another example. The proportion of women hired to play in orchestras is steadily rising. It was 10% in the 1970’s, and more than 35% in the 1990’s. The cause was a screen put up between the judges and the performer during the audition. Judges no longer knew if women were auditioning. But the screen itself is responsible for only a third of the difference. The other two thirds is due to a change in bias. The experience enlightened judges. Now, when they audition women, they are not made deaf by their bias. They can see greatness.

There is no screen hiding the candidates from us. We cannot pretend we do not know that Sen. Obama is black, Sen. Clinton is a woman, and Sen. McCain is a senior. It is too late. Our biases are already in play. But like the orchestra judges, our biases are shifting. Every time we gain a new hero who contradicts our culture’s automatic bias, we change. Every time a schoolteacher introduces a new generation to one of these heroes, we change.

A President is more than an executive officer and a diplomat. A President is a hero.

So, thanks to courageous activists who blazed a trail, and thanks to our teachers who preserved it for us, we are at the point of recognizing a new hero. A hero who will challenge our false implicit biases about people with dark skin and “Arab sounding” names. Who will help us see more clearly the greatness of all people. Who will help us to act more like we mean it when we say that we are created equal.

I am grateful for my small role in this as a voter, but I do not take any credit. It was the American thing to do.

I just wish he weren’t a lawyer.

The Ballad of RSTS/E

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:42:00 +0000

Writing and performing this video is not the nerdliest thing I’ve done—so that alone should scare you. It probably also violates the principle that what happens at DECUS stays at DECUS.

A Thirty Year History Of Google Chrome … Continued

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 04:33:00 +0000

Evolution of Personal Computers

When I talked yesterday about thirty years of personal computers, I did not mean IBM compatibles. I meant all PCs (including, for example, the Mac, the TRS-80, and the Amiga.) I did not make that clear, and I apologize.

Here is a time-line of major events in the evolution of PC reliability. Technically speaking, I mean protected memory, preemptive scheduling, and allied protection features which keep an error in one application from crashing other applications or the whole system.

1982. P/OS, Digital Equipment Corporation: DEC miniaturized an existing data center architecture having protection features (RSX-11M), to compete with the IBM PC.
1987. OS/2, IBM: IBM developed this Windows competitor from the ground up, incorporating protection features they knew to be important from their data center experience.
1993. Windows NT, Microsoft: Microsoft started to catch up in 1990, with limited memory protection in Windows 3.0. They only really got it right when they released Windows NT 3.1. NT was a rewrite of Windows by ex DEC developers.
2001. Mac OS, Apple: Apple tried to rewrite their own operating system, but what ended up working well for them was a merger of their original Mac OS with the UNIX operating system.

(It is hard to know if and when to put Linux on the time-line. Linux had protection features from its inception in 1991 because its design was based on UNIX, but it only now beginning to make any inroads into the personal computer mass market.)

The time-line is based on a bit of research and what remains of my memory, so please correct me if you know better.

Advantages Of The Data Center

A family computer is used for business and personal records. On a family PC you will find a whole lot of correspondence in the form of saved e-mail. There will be various kinds of record keeping, from family histories to monthly budgets. Many people are storing photos and music collections on the computer. Any number of personal projects—greeting cards, posters, newsletters.

People put too much faith in PC hard drives, discs, and memory cards to preserve their family records. These devices break, and they get stolen. Migrating away from local applications is advantageous. Data center equipment breaks too, but data centers have parallel secondary systems that take over until the primary systems are restored, with no loss of data and little or no interruption of service. Security against physical theft of the storage devices is much better.

How Risky Is It to Migrate?

On the other hand there are some new things to worry about. What is the risk of unauthorized, undetected use of family records by data center personnel or by the government? Google has a strict privacy policy, but what enforces it, and, for that matter, what keeps Google from changing its mind? The risk is not easy for the mass market to assess. This fact leads them to imagine that it might be a high risk, and avoid it. Similarly, they find it hard to assess the risk that Google will close its facilities unexpectedly. And the very fact that Google provides free service creates a fear that Google has no incentive to provide a reliable service.

There are real risks here, but I think they are often hugely overestimated. The incentives to Google are being looked at the wrong way. Google is like television in an important respect.

You (the user) are not the customer.
Google is not your supplier.
The advertiser is the customer.
You are the product.

Google earned $1.35 billion in the last quarter and has $14.4 billion in cash. There is plenty of incentive to continue attracting users by creating and maintaining a reputation for ethical behavior and reliability. If Google offends its users, they will go elsewhere and Google’s revenue will go with them.

Google doesn’t only run public services. It also runs the same services at private data centers for paying corporate customers. But corporate demand for high availability causes improvements which carry over to the public services.

When a bank goes bankrupt, its operations do not stop. Another bank buys its operations and its customers. My login screen for WaMu now mentions JPMorgan Chase in passing; it’s the same bank under new management. If Google goes bankrupt, its operations and its user base are too valuable to be discarded. Another player in the cloud computing market will buy them, add their name, and go on. The real risk is that at that point I will be offended by a logo reading “Microsoft Google”, and take my files and go elsewhere.

Supposing I am wrong, and one day Google is simply not there. How will I get my family records back? Well, Google actually stores my documents in an open, non-proprietary format. Google also keeps copies of all my documents on my personal computer if I wish. (And, of course, I have opted to do this.) Google offers this option so that I can continue working if my network connection goes down, but I can actually continue working if Google goes down and stays down, until the open source community takes over for them. I think this is really why Google does so much to support open source software. By making themselves non-proprietary, they eliminate risks that I would otherwise be taking by using them.

This is not to say that people should not keep their critical family records in printed form. Nobody should think of keeping their will in Google Docs. And even paper has its problems. We have a printer with archival quality, pigment based ink. The family photos we print with it ought to last many, many years, long after the plastic compact discs gas out enough plasticizer to self-destruct. But it is still true that a fire, a flood, or a plague of insects can destroy them, and I am glad enough to have copies of them stored in digital form at a data center.

A Thirty Year History of Google Chrome, Plus How To Share Chrome Settings Between PCs

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:47:00 +0000

Google announced Gmail on April 1, 2004, according to the press release. Gmail was followed by other web based applications: word processor, spreadsheet, slide show. These applications have delighted people who use Office, OpenOffice, WordPerfect, or Lotus.

No errors caused by opening a document created with the wrong version of software. No confusing differences in menus, features, or settings between the home computer, the office computer, the laptop.

No schlepping documents around on floppies or discs. No huge e-mail attachments.

No important documents lost to hard drive crashes or stolen laptops. No embarrassing failures to make frequent, time consuming backups.

Just sign in, and the application and the document are ready to work for you—and you can collaborate with anyone else that you give access to. Specialists at the data center keep the system in order, and you get more actual work done.

It comes as a surprise to many people that, thirty years ago, this is how we used computers. You just signed in from wherever you were, and there were your applications and documents, lovingly maintained on the mainframe computer at the data center.

The personal computer devolution.

Around that time, electronics got small and cheap enough that a family or a small business could buy one and make room for it on a desk. By 1980, over a million had been sold worldwide. At the time, we called it the personal computer (PC) revolution. That was when it began to be easy to work at a computer outside a data center.

A computer that didn’t slow down considerably in the afternoon. That you could update yourself when there was an application you needed. That had a printer that was never busy with someone else’s project.

But a cheap PC, with cheap software, that would frequently eat your disk or crash after you had entered an hour’s worth of work or fail to boot after you installed an application.

That wrote disks that another PC would not read. That could call another PC on the phone and transfer a 20 page document from it in about 20 minutes (and maybe fail to open it).

High speed networks bridge the gap.

Thirty years later, PCs have gotten much better, and the network has gotten fast and cheap. The family and the small business have a high speed link from the PC to data centers all over the world. And the new network made it possible to unify the two models of computing.

Enter Google. The Google applications and documentss are stored and kept up to date at the data center, and used from any PC. The application and the document are flash-transfered to and from the PC automatically, over the new high speed network.

The PC, not the mainframe computer, actually powers the application. If the application is underpowered (or when the PC fails, because they all fail—it is only a question of when) you replace the PC without the pain of migrating documents or restoring them from a backup that you made six months ago.

A new browser makes it better.

Finally, enter Chrome, a new browser released by Google in September.

Despite the limitations of the first release, I immediately abandoned Mozilla Firefox for Chrome. Chrome is the next step in the evolution of the PC. Chrome is designed to run network applications differently than other browsers in three ways which I shall call Better, Stronger, and Faster.

Better.

The Chrome developers did not make a more complicated, feature-heavy browser. They made the browser controls simpler and less intrusive than in other browsers. They learned from Firefox and Opera, and added some good ideas of their own.

Stronger.

Mainframe computers were shared by many users running many applications. Barriers had to be erected between applications and between users. These made it impossible for one user to access another user’s private documents. They also made it impossible for one application to crash another application. If an error occurred, it was contained. One bad actor could not bring the whole system down.

These barriers were not originally available on the cheap PCs. It took more than ten years for them to appear. But they did, and PCs crash a lot less. But web browsers have not taken full advantage of this—until Chrome.

Chrome has put these barriers around each browser tab. If an error occurs on a page, it is contained. One bad web based application cannot bring the whole browser down, or interfere with another tab, or access another tab’s private data.

Faster.

By putting barriers around each tab, Chrome also recycles all the memory of a tab when you close it. I can’t tell you how often I have restarted Explorer, or Firefox, or (faugh!) AOL because poor recycling of memory had led to a memory shortage on the PC. I have never had to do this with Chrome.

Chrome even provides a task window that shows the size and activity of each tab and plug-in, so you can see any bad actors and close them.

Problems with Chrome.

Chrome is brand new, and there are still problems to be worked out. There are two problems that plague me in the first release.

One is a software glitch. Applications that rely on plugins such as Java, Flash, Adobe Reader, or Google Gears can still cause the entire browser to come to a halt. I tend to run into this with YouTube, Google Analytics, and National Weather Service radar loops.

Incredibly, the other is that Chrome—the very application that is helping unify the PC with the data center—stores its browser settings, bookmarks, history, and open tabs on each PC instead of at the data center! With Firefox there were add-ons available to do this (Google Browser Sync and then Mozilla Weave) which I sorely miss.

Being a data center kind of guy myself, I could not wait for Google to fix this. I added an application called SyncToy from Microsoft. It keeps my Chrome settings the same at work and at home, including bookmarks, history, and open tabs. It’s very easy to operate, but it took a little work to set it up.

Here’s how I set it up.

Both PCs run Microsoft Windows XP.

I installed WebDrive 8.2 on both PCs. This shareware app lets any other app on the PC see a remote file server as a local hard drive with its own drive letter such as Z:. I gave WebDrive a password to a public FTP file server that I already have an account on. (Before I selected WebDrive, I tried NetDrive and FTPDrive, which are freeware apps. They nearly worked, but they corrupted the files. WebDrive was reliable.)

I installed Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 on both PCs. I did this because SyncToy needs it.

I installed SyncToy 2.0 on both PCs. I gave SyncToy the name of the Chrome user data directory on my PC:

C:\Documents and Settings\Edward\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default

I created an empty directory on the Z: drive and gave that to SyncToy to sync with the Default directory. I told SyncToy not to copy the Thumbnails file or the Cache subdirectory, and for my peace of mind I told it to check file contents.

That was all. Now, before I start Chrome and after I stop it, I bring up SyncToy, preview the sync, and run it.

I expect I’ll have to work out a bug or two in this procedure, and then I hope to use SyncToy’s scheduling feature to make the extra steps automatic. If I accomplish that, I’ll post a followup article.

Not too late to hunt chiggers!

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:14:00 +0000

A million itchy bites on my ankles testify that it is NOT too late to hunt the elusive wild chigger in the tall grass of north Texas.

Okay, twenty.

According to HowStuffWorks.com, Wikipedia, and the Ohio State University Extension, it’s a myth that chiggers burrow under your skin and lay eggs there.

In the wild, the chigger feeds on scaled and feathered critters. A young chigger crawls around on you for hours looking for a feather or scale to crawl under. It will stop on you to feed when it finds a tight place under your socks, belt, underwear, or bra straps trick it, and anywhere you have skin against skin, such as the groin and inside your elbows and knees.

The young chigger dissolves skin with its saliva and drinks it up. The nearby skin hardens around the liquid. As the saliva goes deeper into the skin, a tube of this hardened skin forms. In other words, the chigger makes a straw out of your own skin from which it sucks its meal.

When full, it drops off, develops into an adult, and lays eggs on the ground.

The sooner you wash your skin and your clothes, the better. Chiggers wash off easily before or during feeding. Chigger saliva and the tubes of hardened skin both cause intense itching.

Especially millions of them.

Bullying bill passes three years after student’s suicide

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Mon, 05 May 2008 14:20:00 +0000

The link is to Naples (Florida) Daily News coverage of an anti-bullying measure which I read with interest.

After the article there are various comments by readers.

I became curious and read the bill at flsenate.gov. It became obvious that some of the comments were made by people who hadn’t taken the time to do that.

The bill is not a substitute for existing laws against assault, theft, harassment, and other crimes.

The bill requires schools to act on reports of bullying and harassment instead of turning a blind eye. It tells schools what their minimum responsibility is.

As Wordofmouth (one of the commenters) points out, in schools, assault and harassment are often not prosecuted under existing law. Teachers and administrators already have a tough job, and they tend to under-investigate reports of behavior that in the real world would involve the police. “Kids will be kids,” I’ve heard, and “he said, she said.”

My daughter is currently a target for a group of bullies, who have learned that a good cover is to immediately report her as having done the very thing they did to her, and corroborate one another’s stories. This is a classic “he said, she said” situation.

I sympathize with my daughter but also with the teacher. The teacher’s priority is to restore order and get back to teaching.

But there is a cumulative effect of chronic teasing, threats, thefts, lies, humiliations, and destruction of property. Merely restoring order after a complaint is not an adequate remedy.

As her mom has said, in the real world, if someone makes a report, the police appear and make an investigation. We are doing both the victims and the perpetrators a disservice if the rule of law is suspended in schools.

Accordingly, the bill requires the schools to:

tell students about bullying, how to report bullying, and what the consequences are for bullying and for false reports
train employees and volunteers to identify, prevent, and respond to reports of bullying
notify parents of each report (including where to pursue criminal charges against the perpetrators)
regularly report to a victim’s parents the actions taken to protect the victim
refer victims and perpetrators for counseling
report each incident to the state for statistical aggregation

My daughter’s mom and I would like to see a similar bill made law in Texas.

Mom’s letter to the editor

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:32:00 +0000

My mother writes in the Des Moines Register letters section:

Our professed born-again Christian president who calls for democracy throughout the world has announced he will put in an appearance at the Olympics this summer. One can only guess at the gigantic taxpayer expense which will entail dozens if not hundreds of security personnel to protect him. Instead, why doesn’t he exert strong moral leadership by declaring the United States will boycott the upcoming Olympic games in Beijing, with other countries possibly following our example, unless the Chinese government allows freedom in Tibet? Does the Bush administration feel such a move would complicate Chinese financing for the U.S. to continue its immoral war in Iraq?

It could be argued, obviously, that many hopeful American contestants would have their hopes dashed after long arduous preparations, and so a boycott would be unfair to them. Their efforts could be recognized with a special parallel event elsewhere in the world, if China continues to stifle Tibetan freedom.

There is no easy answer. But for the president to visit the Olympics sends a clear message that winning is everything.

The Weather Is Running Late Today

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:10:00 +0000

From a statement issued by the National Weather Service, Fort Worth, Texas:

ELSEWHERE...THUNDERSTORMS HAVE BEEN SLOW TO FORM ALONG THE DRY LINE ACROSS WEST TEXAS...BUT ADDITIONAL DEVELOPMENT IS EXPECTED BY EARLY EVENING.

Apparently enough faith in your weather forecast can lead you to characterize the weather itself as running late!

Snapfish Tricks Confidential Information Out Of Visitors

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 22:09:00 +0000

An invitation to view a friend’s private photo album reads: “(Friend’s name) has created an account on Snapfish for you. Please enter your name, email address and password to access your account.” Snapfish then prompts for full name, e-mail address, password, and retype password.

It’s a classic confidence game. Snapfish creates a pretext for the need for your real name. You are being led to believe that what you enter is being compared with information your friend gave them already. There seems to be no harm in logging in to an account that has already been created. Bull Shit, as we say in my state. Snapfish is setting up the account now. It’s you, not your friend, who is giving up your real name.

Earlier, they created a pretext for your friend to give up your e-mail address. You know that worked, because the e-mail came from Snapfish. Your friend was led to believe that the appropriate way to protect the confidentiality of the photo album is to give away confidential information about you. And that is false. I’ll look at how Flickr, the Yahoo property, handles this in a moment.

First, I want to avoid a possible misunderstanding about my amazement with Snapfish. While I don’t like being required to sign up before I can see my friend’s photo album, I do accept it. That’s not the con. E-mail addresses are valuable. Any site has every right to ask for an e-mail address in payment for locked content. It’s up to me to decide whether the release of personal information is worth it to unlock the content. My complaint is not about requesting personal information but about the pretexts.

So about Flickr. It does not play this confidence game. When I share a private photo album with a friend, I supply zero information about my friend to Flickr. Instead, Flickr supplies me with a guest pass in the form of a web address. The guest pass is valid until I choose to expire it, and I can deliver it any way I like to anyone I like. My friends remain anonymous.

Intelligent Transportation Systems

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 23:34:00 +0000

The Freakonomics blog was talking here about what causes traffic jams, and this reminded me of something I wanted to write about.

The traveling exhibit Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination came to our science museum not too long ago.

In one video, a senior civil engineer (who I believe was Joseph Sussman at MIT) pointed out that we have designed in to our current transportation system a certain rate of crashes. As long as we use roadways, drivers, and vehicles the way we do, there will be these crashes. Traffic will back up, and worse, people will be injured or killed.

This transportation design is why the current safety model wraps large amounts of metal and safety gear around the motorists.

Significantly for our petroleum consumption, most of the fuel burned by personal vehicles turns out to be moving the vehicle, not the passengers. And, of course, a substantial amount of the cost of the vehicle is the safety system.

He also pointed out that many modern cities were designed in the automobile age. Destinations in such cities are very far apart. It becomes difficult to make public transportation of any kind effective in these cities on existing roads.

He was arguing for intelligent transportation systems. The benefits, he said, are huge in accident prevention, fuel consumption, and trip times. The difficulty is that the project is the size of what we did with rail and with the interstate highways, and probably requires a sea change in attitudes about piloting one's vehicle.

A Foolish Consistency

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:18:00 +0000

This article from the Science-Based Medicine blog is an unsettling reminder that people, even people in the scientific community, believe themselves much less gullible than they are, believe themselves immune to human weaknesses they can easily see in others, and effortlessly ignore facts that contradict what they believe.

This fact of human nature is why Richard Feynman, one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century, wrote that the first principle of scientific integrity, the main reason science has advanced our knowledge so greatly, is, “you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”

Heaven? Or Hell?

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 17:27:00 +0000

The last thing Old Mary MacQuarrie remembered was going to bed. Now she was standing in a long line of people, slowly advancing through a long, dark hallway towards a bright light. At the end of the hallway there was a receptionist.

Old Mary quavered out, “Am I in heaven now?”

The receptionist replied, “Do you mean the new Jerusalem, with streets of gold and angels eternally singing the praises of Our Lord?”

“Yes,” answered Old Mary.

“Then you’re in heaven. You’ll be in the choir, playing the harp and eternally singing the praises of Our Lord.”

“Oh, no, thank you,” said Mary. “I just want to find my dear Old Paddy, and enjoy the peace that passeth understanding.”

“Then you’re in hell. Here's your harp.”

avoirdupois

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 18:48:00 +0000

avoirdupois (áav-ard-a-POYZ, -PWAH): A standard system for trading commodities by weight, originating in France and still the standard in the USA.

unit of measure:

1 pound (lb, lb av)

≡

0.453 592 37 kilogram (kg)

fractions of a pound:

1 lb	≡	16 ounces (oz, oz av)
1 oz	≡	16 drams (dr, dr av)
1 lb	≡	7 000 grains

multiples of a pound:

25 lb	≡	1 (short/sh) quarter (qtr)
4 qtr	≡	1 (short/sh) hundredweight (cwt)
20 cwt	≡	1 (short/sh) ton (tn)

NOTES

AVOIRDUPOIS (AV): Middle English avoir de pois, commodities sold by weight, alteration of Old French aveir de peis, goods of weight : aveir, avoir, to have (from Latin habre. See able) + de, of (from Latin d, from. See de-) + peis, pois, weight (from Vulgar Latin *psum, from Latin pnsum, past participle of pendere, to hang. See (s)pen- in Indo-European Roots). The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
POUND (LB): In the United States, the pound is no longer a unit of weight. It is a unit of mass, whose value was defined in terms of the kilogram in 1893, and altered slightly in 1894 and again in 1959.
KILOGRAM (KG): 1 kilogram was originally the mass of 1 liter of pure water at a temperature of 3.98 degrees Celsius (°C) and 1 atm (standard atmospheric pressure). Now 1 kilogram is the mass of a particular standard mass in France. This reference mass seems to have lost about 50 micrograms in the last 100 years. (By definition it is more accurate to say that any other object in the universe that had a mass of 1.000 000 kg 100 years ago, and has not changed since then, now has a mass of about 1.000 050 kg.)
LITER (L): 1,000 liters ≡ 1 cubic meter.
METER (M): 1 meter is the length of the path travelled by light in absolute vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 seconds.
SECOND (S): 1 second ≡ 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium-133 atom.
DEGREE CELSIUS (°C): The current official definition of the Celsius temperature scale sets 0.01 °C at the triple point of water, and defines a degree to be 1/273.16 of the difference in temperature between the triple point of water and absolute zero.
TRIPLE POINT OF WATER: The single combination of pressure and temperature at which water, ice, and water vapour can coexist in a stable equilibrium occurs at exactly 0.01 °C and a pressure of 611.73 pascals.
PASCAL (PA): 1 pascal ≡ 1 newton per square meter.
NEWTON (N): 1 newton is the amount of force required to accelerate a mass of 1 kilogram at a rate of 1 meter per second squared. (Thus the original definition of kilogram is circular.)
ABSOLUTE ZERO: Absolute zero is defined as the temperature at which all motion of particles would theoretically cease.
STANDARD ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE (1 ATM): 1 atm ≡ 101 325 pascals. This “standard atmosphere” is an arbitrary representative value for pressure at sea level.
GRAIN: Originally, the weight of a grain seed from the middle of an ear of barley.
OUNCE (OZ): From Latin uncia, meaning a 12th part. (The Roman pound was divided into 12 ounces. The word "inch," meaning 12th of a foot, has the same root.) The symbol oz is from the old Italian word onza (now spelled oncia).
DRAM (DRACHM): Possibly originated as the weight of silver in ancient greek coin “drachma.”

The 10 Suggestions

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 22:52:00 +0000

As the Supreme Court considers whether the government should endorse the 10 Commandments, it is worth examining some of the myths propagated by those who obey them religiously, or at least would like others to do so.

The Ten Commandments are not the basis of our legal system. And for this we can thank God. Otherwise heresy would be a capital offense, adultery would be punished with stoning, and back-talking kids would find themselves in jail.

They are not the basis of any legal system, in fact. Religious leaders would have us believe that murder, adultery, and theft were all perfectly legal until Moses came down from Sinai. This isn't even true for the Middle East, as the Code of Hammurabi, from which the Commandments seem to be partly derived, pre-dates Moses by at least 500 years, and the Egyptians, at least, had a law making it legal to hold Jewish slaves.

But this is all irrelevant to our own legal system, which is based on English common law. Our law has Germanic, Viking, northern precedents, and these people, our legal ancestors, enjoyed a highly sophisticated and evolving legal code for at least a thousand years before they even heard of Moses.

Our system of political divisions, down to the sheriff of the local county, is pagan. The tolerance of other religions embedded in our law is pagan. Monogamous marriage itself was foreign to the Middle East; it's not a commandment of the Eastern desert God, but of Norse inheritance law.

Each day of the week, we genuflect to those pagan Gods: the Sun, the Moon, Tiw (Mars), Oden, Thor, Freya, and Saturn. Our unacknowledged debt to the worshippers of Thor and Zeus is more than just another aspect of Christian historical ignorance, it's an affront to those who bequeathed us the law we live under, and it cries out for a statue of the mighty hammer-wielding warrior in every courthouse in this nation. Can I get an Amen?

It's True About Girl Scout Cookies!

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Sun, 13 Feb 2005 21:47:00 +0000

Well, it seems the awful legends are true after all. Check out the Girl Scout cookie box top for this year’s new cookie flavor.

Humans: More Inbred Than You Knew?

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 23:30:00 +0000

Surprising conclusions about human ancestry come from research just published in Nature. The entire Western world has Emperor Charlemagne as a common ancestor (A.D. 742–814) through one or more of his eighteen children. The most recent common ancestor of all humanity except those living in the remotest places on earth probably lived in early A.D. The most recent common ancestor of all humanity probably lived in 1,500 B.C., in eastern Asia. Before 5,400 B.C., all the family trees of people today are composed of exactly the same individuals.

What is the research behind these conclusions?

The full article is available from Nature: Human populations are tightly interwoven: Family tree shows our common ancestor lived just 3,500 years ago by Michael Hopkin (2004).

More about the remarkable genetic similarity of all humans can be found in an earlier Scrupulus: Shall We Breed Humanzees? (2004).

Should men give suck?

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 23:54:00 +0000

Should men breastfeed their children? Even ancient authorities say yes.

Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child. (Numbers 11:12 Authorized Version of 1611)

Historically, male lactation was noted by the German explorer Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt prior to 1859, who wrote of a 32-year-old man who breastfed his child for five months. It was also observed in a 55-year-old Baltimore man who had been the wetnurse of the children of his mistress. (Milkmen: Fathers Who Breastfeed)

All a man has to do to get his breasts to produce milk is to let the baby suck at them. (The Nursing Father)

Breast-feeding may prevent breast cancer

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 23:45:00 +0000

Breast-feeding may modestly reduce the risk of developing breast cancer.
Women who breast-fed for a total of six years or more (all children combined) over the course of their lives had as much as a 63% decrease in breast cancer incidence compared to women who never breast-fed.

Out of 31 studies, more than half reported that women who breast-fed had a decreased risk of developing breast cancer (ranging from 10%-64%) compared to women who never breast-fed. The rest of the studies reported that breast-feeding had no influence on the risk of developing breast cancer. (Breast-feeding and the Risk of Breast Cancer, Cornell University Program on Breast Cancer and Environmental Risk Factors in New York State)

Corporate Wisdom

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Mon, 13 Sep 2004 18:32:00 +0000

Lesson 1

A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is finishing up her shower when the doorbell rings. After a few seconds of arguing over which one should go and answer the doorbell, the wife gives up, quickly wraps herself up in a towel and runs downstairs. When she opens the door, there stands Bob, the next door neighbor.

Before she says a word, Bob says, “I’ll give you $800 to drop that towel that you have on.”

After thinking for moment, the woman drops her towel and stands naked in front of Bob. After a few seconds, Bob hands her $800 and leaves. Confused, but excited about her good fortune, the woman wraps back up in the towel and goes back upstairs.

When she gets back to the bathroom, her husband asks from the shower, “Who was that?”

“It was Bob, the next door neighbor,” she replies.

“Great,” the husband says, “Did he say anything about the $800 he owes me?”

Moral of the story: If you share critical information pertaining to credit and risk in time with your stakeholders, you may be in a position to prevent avoidable exposure.

Lesson 2

A priest was driving along and saw a nun on the side of the road. He stopped and offered her a lift, which she accepted. She got in and crossed her legs, forcing her gown to open and reveal a lovely leg. The priest had a look and nearly had an accident. After controlling the car, he stealthily slid his hand up her leg.

The nun looked at him and immediately said, “Father, remember Psalm 129?”

The priest was flustered and apologized profusely. He forced himself to remove his hand. However, he was unable to remove his eyes from her leg. Further on while changing gear, he let his hand slide up her leg again.

The nun once again said, “Father, remember Psalm 129?”

Once again the priest apologized. “Sorry, Sister, but the flesh is weak.”

Arriving at the convent, the nun got out gave him a meaningful glance and went on her way. On his arrival at the church, the priest rushed to retrieve a Bible and looked up Psalm 129. It said, “Go forth and seek, further up, you will find glory.”

Moral of the story: Always be well informed in your job, or you might miss a great opportunity.

Lesson 3

A sales rep, an administration clerk, and their manager are walking to lunch when they find an antique oil lamp. They rub it and a genie comes out in a puff of smoke. The genie says, “I usually grant only three wishes, so I’ll give each of you just one.”

“Me first! Me first!” says the administration clerk. “I want to be in the Bahamas, driving a speedboat, without a care in the world.”

Poof! She’s gone.

In astonishment, “Me next! Me next!” says the sales rep. “I want to be in Hawaii, relaxing on the beach with my personal masseuse, an endless supply of pina coladas, and the love of my life.”

Poof! He’s gone.

“O.K., you’re up,” the genie says to the manager.

The manager says, “I want those two back in the office after lunch.”

Moral of story: Always let your boss have the first say.

Lesson 4

A crow was sitting on a tree, doing nothing all day.

A small rabbit saw the crow, and asked him, “Can I also sit like you and do nothing all day long?”

The crow answered, “Sure, why not.”

So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the crow, and rested. All of a sudden a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit, and ate it.

Management lesson: To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very, very high.

Shall We Breed Humanzees?

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Fri, 03 Sep 2004 23:26:00 +0000

The very thought of breeding a human-chimpanzee hybrid is abominable to some people, yet it is almost certain to happen. The prospect has generated considerable discussion of the ethics of human-chimpanzee hybrids and whether one must legally recognize a “humanzee” to be a person.

“Modern scientific usage defines two ape families: the family Hylobatidae consisting of 12 species of gibbons, including the Lar and the Siamang, collectively known as the lesser apes, [and] the family Hominidae consisting of Gorillas, Chimpanzees and Bonobos, Orangutans, and Humans, collectively known as the great apes.” [Ape]

“When one looks at the chromosomes of humans and the living great apes, it is immediately apparent that there is a great deal of similarity between the number and overall appearance of the chromosomes across the four different species. [Human and Ape Chromosomes]

Humans and other great apes did not always look so different. “The Miocene apes discovered by Louis Leakey had relatively short arms and still had not developed a simian shelf, indicating with respect to these features that apes have been getting progressively less manlike over millions of years.” [Fix, The Bone Hunters, p. 17]

The world human population differs less genetically from chimps than regional chimp populations differ from one another. That is, genetically speaking it may be fair to call humans a form of highly inbred chimpanzee. Humans and chimpanzees can very likely still interbreed. Members of different ape species often mate in captivity when left together, and the resulting offspring resemble a mix of the parents’ physical characteristics. Humans and chimpanzees are closer in genetic similarity than many species that can interbreed, such as felines, canines, and equines.

Richard Dawkins had some thought provoking words about basing our morality on an arbitrary division between humans and other species: Gaps in the Mind

Bush: Bible Is Not History

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 06:44:00 +0000

While answering questions on a campaign stop Saturday, President Bush contrasted the Bible with books containing historical truth. He admitted there is value in historical truth, but preferred the Bible.

Plague Of Locusts Engulfs Gibson’s “Passion” Film Location

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 04:20:00 +0000

Locusts have descended on the town of Matera, where Mel Gibson's The Passion of The Christ was shot.
The insects engulfed the ancient stone city.
“I’d never seen anything like it,” Rosalia Guira Longo, who runs the Albergo Italia where Gibson stayed, told Reuters news agency.
“At night, the ground was carpeted by locusts … they were huge.”

Kerry Swift Boat Arguments Illustrate Faithlessness of Memory

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 00:50:00 +0000

To memory researchers, it doesn't take intentional falsifying to understand the discrepancies in the retelling of Sen. John Kerry’s war experiences. Far from being an indelible recording, human memory is fragile, incomplete, malleable and highly subject to suggestion, researchers have shown in dozens of studies.

In [an] experiment with soldiers, Yale researchers interviewed about 150 at intervals over six years, starting soon after their return from the first war with Iraq in 1991.
They asked the soldiers questions about their experiences, including whether they took incoming gunfire, faced Scud missile attacks and witnessed a friend’s death. About 15 percent changed their recall of something significant, like seeing a friend die, the researchers reported.
Some veterans were upset when their own discrepancies were pointed out. Some even asked for help. “They would say, ‘Which one is it?’ to me. I’d say, ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there.’”

Is Procrastination Healthy? Religion Or Science To the Rescue?

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 08:35:00 +0000

Decision making in humans is now represented by a formula:

If it feels good, we do it. We pursue whatever has the greatest chance of a reward, the largest reward, and the shortest tolerable delay before a reward, as we perceive it. And impulsive people (people who are less tolerant of delay) procrastinate more.

Human behavior consistently bears this out. Impulse goals elbow out long term goals and less pleasant tasks.¹

Why do our brains work this way? Because animals with a built-in preference for impulse goals, who “sleep and hoard and mate when the relevant urge arises,”² are more likely to survive and pass it on to future generations.

So procrastination is a label for a normal, healthy functioning brain being asked to do something it isn’t adapted to: sacrifice impulse goals for long term goals.

Western religions have another name for impulse goals: temptations. The mythology of western religions reframes them as sin. For people who believe an impulse goal to be sin, the threat of punishment reduces its perceived value. The success of western culture, which owes much to long term planning, a.k.a. the work ethic, is a testament to the power of mythology to color our perceptions of value.

Recently, scientists found a center of procrastination in the brain. When they interfered with the rhinal cortex of monkeys, the monkeys were no longer able to discover that a desired goal would take time to accomplish. These monkeys treated all goals as impulse goals. Normally procrastinators like us, they suddenly became extreme workaholics.^{3, 4}

I guess this counts as science improving on religion, but do we need better mind control?

----------
1. Measuring Your Procrastination
2. George Ainslie.
3. Gene blocking turns monkeys into workaholics
4. DNA targeting of rhinal cortex D2 receptor protein reversibly blocks learning of cues that predict reward (requires Adobe Reader)

Are malcontents smarter?

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 16:23:00 +0000

Are you in a good mood? Beware of careless thinking and contaminated memories. When you’re in a bad mood, you have better memory, better judgment, and better communication skills.

Why do our brains work this way? Probably because animals with moods are more likely to survive and pass them on to future generations. Bad moods help us be vigilant in threatening situations. Good moods let us relax and conserve energy.

Bipolar personalities have very poor judgment in their manic (up) phase. I wonder if their extreme mood blocks their judgment.

Do drunk people have poor judgment because they’re happy?

Are malcontents smarter?

The Marriage Amendment

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Sat, 17 Jul 2004 02:22:00 +0000

PROPOSING AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION RELATING TO MARRIAGE -- (Senate - July 09, 2004)

Mr. ALLARD. Mr. President, I rise today to start what I hope will be constructive debate on my amendment, S.J. Res. 40, the marriage amendment, which states:

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman of the same color. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman of the same color.

Before making my formal comments I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to my colleagues who have cosponsored this amendment. It has taken countless hours of study and discussion to get to this point and each of our cosponsors has shown courage and commitment to protecting marriage.

I would like to express my appreciation to the majority leader for his commitment and leadership. Without the support of Senate leadership, the public may never have had an opportunity to address this vitally important issue in a democratic body.

I also thank President Bush for his early commitment to the principles embodied in this amendment.

Marriage, the union between a man and a woman of the same color, has been the foundation of every civilization in human history. The definition of marriage crosses all bounds of race, religion, culture, political party, ideology, and ethnicity. Marriage is embraced and intuitively understood to be what it is. Marriage is a union between a man and a woman of the same color.

As an expression of this cultural value, the definition of marriage is incorporated into the very fabric of civic policy. It is the root from which families, communities, and government are grown. Racially pure marriage is the one bond on which all other bonds are built.

This is not some controversial ideology being forced upon an unwilling populace by the Government. It is in fact the opposite. Racially pure marriage is the ideal held by the people and Government has long reflected this. The broadly embraced union of a woman and a man of the same color is understood to be the ideal union from which people live and children best blossom and thrive.

As we have heard in hours upon hours of testimony in various Senate committees over the last 2 years, racially pure marriage is a pretty good thing. A good racially pure marriage facilitates a more stable community, allows kids to grow up with fewer difficulties, increases the lifespan and quality of life of those involved, reduces the likelihood of incidences of chemical abuse and violent crime, and contributes to the overall health of the family. It is no wonder so many single adults long to be married, to raise kids, and to have families branching out in every direction.

Today there are numerous efforts to redefine marriage to be something that it isn’t. When it comes to interracial couples there is a problem of definition. A man and a woman of different color simply do not meet the criteria for marriage as it has been defined for thousands of years. Marriage is, as it always has been, a union between a man and a woman of the same color.

American society has come to recognize the stability and commitment of interracial couples in a way unimaginable in many other countries. In some States partnership laws and civil union statutes have been created—contractual bonds among interracial couples—to symbolize and codify these relationships. Some cities and States have elected to express this legal recognition while others have not. Some employers extend benefits to interracial partners while others do not. In virtually every town and city, America’s tolerance and respect for diversity is second to none in the world. I believe that our democracy continually, systemically expresses these values.

Marriage, however, is what it is. It is a union between a man and a woman of the same color. Interracial partners are entitled to the same legal protections as any one else. Interracial partners have the right to live the way they want to. But they do not have the right to redefine marriage.

I believe the Framers of the Constitution felt that this would never be an issue, and if they had it would have been included in the U.S. Constitution. Like the vast majority of Americans it would have never occurred to me that the definition of marriage, or marriage itself, would be the source of controversy. A short time ago it would have been wholly inconceivable that this definition—this institution that is marriage—would be challenged, redefined, or attacked. But we are here today because it is.

Traditional marriage is under assault. I say assault because the move to redefine marriage is taking place not through democratic processes such as State legislatures or the Congress or ballot initiatives around the Nation. This assault is taking place in our courts and often in direct conflict with the will of the people, State statute, Federal statute, and even State constitutions.

Activists and lawyers have devised a strategy to use the courts to redefine marriage. This strategy is a clear effort to override public opinion and the long standing composition of traditional marriage and to force interracial marriage on society.

Over the course of the last 10 years, traditional marriage laws have been challenged in courts across the Nation.

Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia have all seen traditional marriage challenged in court. Cases are pending today in 11 of those States. But this is not a strategy based on tilting at windmills. It is a strategy that has been employed with a good deal of success.

The first success in this legal strategy was in Vermont in 1999. The Vermont State Supreme Court ordered State legislators to either legalize interracial marriage or create civil unions. The second, and to date the most widely covered success in the effort to destroy traditional marriage, came more recently in the State of Massachusetts where four judges forced the entire State to give full marriage licenses to interracial couples.

This edict came despite the fact that the populace of Massachusetts opposed this redefinition of marriage and despite the fact that no law had ever been democratically passed to authorize such a radical shift in public policy. Proponents of interracial marriage have shopped carefully for the right venues, exploited the legal system, and today stand ready to overturn any and all democratically crafted Federal or State statute that would stand between them and a new definition of humanity’s oldest institution.

The question of process is very important in this debate—it is in fact the very heart of this debate. While recent court decisions handed down by activist judges may not respect the traditional definition of marriage, these decisions also highlight a lack of respect for the democratic process. No State legislature has passed legislation to redefine the institution of marriage. Not one.

Any redefinition of marriage has been driven entirely by the body of government that remains unaccountable and unelected—the courts.

Many colleagues do not feel we should be talking about marriage in the Senate. I say we must. Our government is a three-branch government. The Congress is the branch that represents the people most directly. We have a duty to, at the very least, discuss the state of racially pure marriage in America. If we do not take this up, if we do not overcome procedural hurdles and objections we abdicate our responsibility. We will allow the courts sole dominion on the state and future of marriage. This Senate, the world’s most deliberative body, must provide a democratic response to the courts.

Legislatures across the country have joined Congress in recent years in affirming a 1996 law called the Defense of Marriage Act—DOMA. DOMA defines marriage at the Federal level as a union between a man and a woman of the same color and essentially prohibits one State from forcing its will on another on the question of marriage. This bipartisan legislation passed with the support of more than three-quarters of the House of Representatives and with the support of 85 Senators before being signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton. To date 38 States have enacted statutes defining marriage in some manner, and 4 States have passed State constitutional amendments defining marriage as a union of one man and one woman of the same color. These State DOMAs and constitutional amendments, combined with Federal DOMA, should have settled the question as to the democratic expression of the will of the American public. As I outlined before, these laws—these expressions of the public—have been ignored by the activist courts.

State court challenges in Massachusetts or Vermont or Maryland may seem well and good to those concerned with the rights of States to determine most matters, a position near and dear to my heart. These challenges, however, have spawned greater disrespect, even contempt, for the will of the other States than any of us could have predicted. It seems to me that there are long-term implications for both Federal DOMA and the rights of States to define unions through either state DOMA or the State constitutional amendment process. It is clear to me that we are headed to judicially mandated recognition of interracial couples regardless of State or Federal Statute.

The interracial marriage proponents achieved some success in Vermont and Massachusetts by forcing the hand of those States’ legislatures.

The national effort to redefine marriage has also been buoyed by decisions made by the U.S. Supreme Court. In June 2003 the Court inferred that a right to interracial marriage could be found in the U.S. Constitution in Lawrence v. Texas. A variety of experts, including Justice Scalia and Harvard Professor Lawrence Tribe, forecast that this decision points to the end of traditional marriage laws—including Federal and State DOMAs. The Massachusetts court relied heavily on the Lawrence decision to strike down the State’s traditional marriage law in that Goodridge case. The court further specifically threatened and questioned the validity of DOMA and traditional marriage laws around the Nation.

When Goodridge took effect on May 17 of this year, interracial couples became entitled to Massachusetts marriage licenses.

In anticipation of Goodridge, a handful of local officials in New York, California, and Oregon began issuing licenses to interracial couples in February and March. To date, through the combined efforts of lawless local officials and those licenses issued in Massachusetts, couples from at least 46 States have received licenses in those jurisdictions and returned to their home States. These 46-plus States are State and Federal DOMA challenges just waiting to happen. A couple will file for recognition—sue for recognition—under the full faith and credit clause. What we know about the Lawrence decision, that all traditional marriage laws are unconstitutional, dooms those State DOMAs.

There is a case pending in Seattle today to force recognition of an Oregon marriage license. More of these cases are expected and we look forward to nothing less than a patchwork of marriage laws, crafted by judges and forced on to one State from another outside the democratic process, regardless of the will of the voters.

It is important to highlight what is going on in the State of Nebraska where an even more odious turn of events is unfolding. Nebraskans passed a State constitutional amendment, defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman of the same color, that passed with 70 percent of the vote. The ACLU and the Congress of Racial Equality are now suing Nebraska in a Federal court to undo the will of the voters.

According to testimony in the Senate Judiciary Constitution Subcommittee, Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning, whose office moved to dismiss the case and was denied, the language in the court’s order signals that Nebraska will very likely lose the case at trial. I find it chilling that the will of an entire State, expressed democratically, may be undone by a Federal judge in an unelected position and tenured for life.

So we find ourselves here today, seeking to debate an amendment to the United States Constitution that reads in its entirety as follows:

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman of the same color. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman of the same color.

Our amendment defines marriage as it has been defined for thousands of years in hundreds of cultures around the world. This text further defines that any establishment or nonestablishment of civil unions or partnership laws be created democratically, by the States themselves, and not by courts.

I have said it time and time again and I say here today for the record, the amendment does not seek to prohibit in any way the lawful, democratic creation of civil unions. It does not prohibit private employers from offering benefits to interracial partners. It denies no existing rights.

What our amendment does is to define and protect traditional marriage at an appropriate level, the highest possible level—the Constitution. Importantly, the consideration of this amendment in the Senate represents the discussion of marriage in America in a democratic body of elected officials. This is something too long denied this important topic.

I have heard from those who claim this amendment discriminates against people; that the very definition of marriage is somehow a tool for oppression.

To those who believe that our marriage protection amendment is discriminatory, I ask them this: Do you truly believe that marriage, the traditional and foundational union between a man and a woman of the same color, is discrimination? Is it discrimination to hold as ideal that a child should have both a mother and a father of the same color?

It is important to make clear that on the question of federalism and States’ rights, I stand where I always have. While an indisputable definition of marriage will be a part of our Constitution, all other questions will be left to the states. Gregory Coleman, former Solicitor General of the State of Texas, testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution last September and made the following statement on this matter:

Some have objected to a proposed constitutional amendment on federalism grounds. These concerns are misplaced. The relationship between the states and the Federal government is defined by the Constitution and, a fortiori, a constitutional amendment cannot violate principles of federalism and States’ rights.
A federal constitutional amendment is perhaps the most democratic of all processes—because it requires ratification by three-fourths of the states—and simply does not raise federalism concerns. The real danger to States’ rights comes from the recognition of unenumerated constitutional rights in which the states have had no participation.

I share those sentiments and cannot express them any more clearly. We stand today at the commencement of the most democratic, most federalist process in all our government. Those around the country who have watched as activist courts have wildly disregarded these principles I say to you, watch the Senate; watch the House of Representatives, watch your elected officials and see where they stand on this most important debate.

This body and that on the other side of the Capitol represent the American people more fully and completely than any other and it is time we make this discussion truly national and truly democratic.

Those serving in the Congress understand that there is a great deal of emotion on both sides of this issue, and not every one of us will agree on this matter. It is my hope that we can agree that in matters concerning marriage, the most fundamental of all social institutions, this debate can not take place exclusively in the courts. The democratic process compels this Congress to discuss marriage and what is taking place—the judicial redefinition of marriage.

Marriage, the union between a man and a woman of the same color, has been the foundation of every civilization in human history. This definition of marriage crosses all bounds of race, religion, culture, political party, ideology, and ethnicity. It is not about politics or discrimination, it is about racially pure marriage and democracy. It is incumbent upon us to remember that and to move forward.

Alcoholism

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Tue, 06 Jul 2004 00:22:00 +0000

Here is Dr. Graeme Cunningham, a physician interviewed by Barbara Myers on the subject of alcoholism.

I always felt I wasn’t good enough. There’s dense, dense shame and guilt and fear, and a little voice, “But you don’t know me. If you really knew me, you wouldn’t have anything to do with me, and you’d leave me.” And that voice was very loud in my own mind when I was ill. So in moments of clarity it was extremely painful. Alcohol took those feelings of inadequacy away. I made a conscious decision to use alcohol to be normal.

A social drinker will take a drink and it kind of goes down tinkle, tinkle, tinkle. When I take a drink it goes down BOOM, and I become six foot four with a full head of hair and can dance like Fred Astaire. It literally changes my whole perception of the world. And that’s what alcoholics chase, sometimes into the grave.
To society, they see the drinker’s problem as the alcohol. But the problem for the alcoholic is sobriety. And if we don’t offer options and strategies around maintaining sobriety, the alcoholic will continue to drink. Because that’s what makes the alcoholic normal.
When you’re living in a place of shame, you keep secrets. And in the secrets lies the sickness. I thought I was the only doctor in the world doing what I was doing. So I didn’t know any doctors that I trusted. I didn’t know any human beings that I trusted. Thinking I was the only doctor and the only man in the world doing what I was doing—it’s utterly isolating and lonely to be addicted.
The core of being addicted is isolation. The treatment is people. So what I basically do as a therapist is get addicts living with people again.
That doctor said he’d been sober for 20 years, and I just about fell over because I thought I was the only doctor doing what I was doing. And that’s why I do what I do now. By taking the risk of sharing my own wounds, I can give other doctors the permission to be sick, as opposed to be secret and feel that they’re bad.
To be addicted is to have a medical condition that has a spiritual solution. It’s got absolutely nothing to do with religion. Religion is simply a set of dogmas. Spirituality is finding out what makes you feel good in your own skin in a healthy way. Whether it’s looking at a sunset, enjoying a painting, listening to wonderful music, or being in a room full of people being honest and sharing feelings, these are all spiritual approaches.
In essence what the Twelve Steps do is take an infantile ego and allow it to grow up. An infantile ego says, “I’m the center of the world, I’m selfish, I’m self-centered, and how can you pick on a nice guy like me, and what’s all the problem about?” To the end of the Twelve Step process, where you say, “How can I be of assistance to somebody else?” So it’s a growing up process that many, many people get in their own families and their own lives automatically. And the people like me don’t have that. And so I had to grow up in a psychological sense by working through a number of steps that taught me to take responsibility for my own behaviors, to recognize that I wasn’t in control of very much in my life, and I always needed to ask for help, direction, and support from other human beings.

A Den Of Robbers

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Fri, 02 Jul 2004 22:10:00 +0000

Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, “We are safe”—safe to do all these detestable things? Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you?

The prophet Jeremiah cried these words at the steps of the Temple. They are the words Jesus quoted as he drove the moneychangers and innocent sacrificial animals out of the Temple.

The evil ones have returned.

The Bush campaign have ordered their staff to organize conservative churches for Bush. The churches are to host Republican Party membership rallies called “citizenship Sundays.”

They are also to send copies of their membership directories to Party headquarters! Now it will be easier to decide whether you can vote in Florida or other states, depending on whether you belong to a Republican church.

Jesus	Bush
Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill? Do not resist an evil person. Love your enemies. If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck.	Sent our children to kill and die in Afghanistan and Iraq. Turned our Temples into dens of robbers and corrupted our Sabbaths.

Unfortunately, Jesus is gone, and John Kerry is no Jesus (and no Jack Kennedy). Who will stand up and speak these words where they will be heard?

Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men. You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.

Court Orders ‘God’ Into Oath

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Thu, 01 Jul 2004 22:02:00 +0000

A new pissing contest, this time in North Carolina, where the state Supreme Court has ruled that District Judge James M. Honeycutt (i) must include the phrase so help you God when administering oaths to witnesses and (ii) must allow bailiffs to proclaim God save the state and this honorable court. Judge Honeycutt revised the proclamation and the oath out of respect for the increasing number of non-Christians and people of diverse beliefs served by the court system.

In Art We Trust (Since We Can’t Explain It)

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Wed, 30 Jun 2004 09:52:00 +0000

Believing in art is no more or less absurd than believing in Christianity or Buddhism or Vitamin C. Art is just another faith that promises immortal life and access to the spiritual.

Billions of Iraqi Oil Dollars Missing

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Mon, 28 Jun 2004 05:15:00 +0000

The United Nations gave the United States and the Coalition Provisional Authority control of all Iraqi oil income. The conditions were that they pay it all into the Development Fund for Iraq and use it in Iraq’s best interests. But up to $3.7 billion have not been accounted for. For the entire year that the CPA has been in power in Iraq it has been impossible to tell with any accuracy what the CPA has been doing with Iraq’s money.

Revenge Of the Apes

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Sun, 27 Jun 2004 20:09:00 +0000

The apes at Lincoln Park Zoo are finally getting a chance to take their revenge on people who for years have been pounding their palms against the glass walls of the primates’ old home. At the zoo’s new Regenstein Center for African Apes, chimpanzees can touch a panel hidden from public view that will shoot harmless bursts of air at unsuspecting visitors.

The story calls this revenge, but SCRVPVLVS observes that escaped primates typically take their revenge by escaping to attack their keepers and the public, particularly women and children (perhaps because they are the most common patrons). Consider the attacks in the United States alone within the past ten years:

11/29/1998, Dallas Zoo. Hercules, gorilla, escapes, mauls 25-year-old keeper Jennifer McClurg, tormenting her for nearly an hour.
5/30/2000, The Zoo Gulf Breeze. Sara, orangutan, escapes, inflicts multiple bites on a female keeper.
7/24/2000, Dallas Zoo. Chimpanzee escapes, injures a keeper, and is electrocuted grabbing for a power line.
9/28/2003, Franklin Park. Little Joe, gorilla, escapes, jumps on 2-year-old Nia Scott and bites 18-year-old zoo volunteer Courtney Roberson—and heads for bus stop.
3/18/2004, Dallas Zoo. Jabari, gorilla, escapes, injures 26-year-old Keisha Heard and critically injures her 3-year-old son Rivers Noah; also injures Cheryl Reichert and her 4-year-old son Logan—shortly after being teased by some youths.

SCRVPVLVS thinks the Lincoln Park chimps would rather be able to touch a hidden panel and trade places with unsuspecting zoo visitors. And evidently the Dallas Zoo keepers are to be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

Texas Republicans Urged to Drop “Christian Nation”

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Fri, 25 Jun 2004 23:35:00 +0000

A pissing match is developing between the Jewish Anti-Defamation League and the Christian Texas Republican Party. The TRP have adopted a party platform which declares the United States of America to be a Christian nation and calls the separation of church and state “a myth.” The ADL have asked the TRP to change their platform in light of the U.S. Constitution, court rulings, and sizable populations of Jews, Muslims, and other non-Christians in Texas. The TRP say they represent the beliefs and values of Texans.

Therapy the New Religion

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 20:51:00 +0000

Those recognising psychotherapy’s extraordinary spiritual status include Sydney-based psychoanalyst, Neville Symington. His recently published book, The Blind Man Sees, explores similarities between religion and psychoanalysis by “drawing examples” from Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, according to his website.
Religion and psychoanalysis “open people to compassion,” says Symington, by helping them transcend the limitations of “self-centredness”—the origin of various mental illnesses.
“Compassion is (fundamental) in all the great religions,” he says. “And in psychoanalysis, if you can get … someone (to) start communicating in a healthy (compassionate) way, then their mental disorders begin to dissolve.”
Admittedly, such disorders are keeping therapists in a profession that yields, on average, $140 per 55-minute emotional tune-up.

It couldn’t be put any more clearly.

He doesn’t say selfishness. He says self-centeredness. Are they different?

Archdruid Wants Stonehenge Back

noreply@blogger.com (Scrvpvlvs) — Wed, 23 Jun 2004 22:56:00 +0000

The Archdruid of Wales wants England to return Stonehenge to the Welsh. Studies of the builders’ remains and the stones themselves have shown that they originated from western Wales.

It's not practical to move Stonehenge. But it turns out that the ancient political boundaries were different when Stonehenge was erected. England now claims territory which was once unified with Wales. So really the best thing is to return some of England to the Welsh.