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Friday, September 30
My Two Cents . . . Literally
I've started going for walks again (no, mom, I'm not going to get mugged) so that I get at least a *little* exercise. Last night I found two pennies (on different streets). At this rate, by the end of the month I should be able to make a living from my walks . . . I do have to admit, though, that these are two of the sorriest-looking pennies I've seen. The decades have not been kind.
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Thursday, September 29
"We Might Experience Some Turbulence . . . and Then Explode"
There is entirely not enough buzz about the relatively unknown but still incredible movie that comes out tomorrow. Go create buzz. And then go see it. Then we'll all meet in the treehouse and gush over it in secret code. OMG! P.S. - What's up with Jewel Staite not being in the trailers? I mean, come on, she's the best character in the show. :P
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Wednesday, September 28
Stereotypes for Fun and Profit
I wrote a post about my personality type that's quite long. Skip it if you don't care. :)
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Monday, September 26
From the Paper Today
Two articles I found interesting: 1) A blurb about a Ten Commandments display going up at a Catholic church as "a counter movement to . . . attempts to remove displays from the public eye." Which is amusing because the debate and court cases have never been about removing religion from the public eye, only from State-endorsement. If people want to put up religious displays on their church lawns or hold prayer meetings on their front steps, more power to them. This "protest," ironically, is what the ACLU has been pushing for the entire time. 2) An opinion column from the Boston Globe about a new book called "The Bottomless Well" which proposes that energy-efficient cars are actually bad. Why? According to the authors, making something cheaper to use causes the public to use more of it (so they propose that drivers will drive farther, thereby using more total gasoline, if they get better gas mileage). Their solution? Do nothing. Humans have always found a new energy source when their old one becomes unusable (going from wood to coal to whale oil to petroleum, etc.), and we'll do it again. No worries. The author of the column doesn't point out any of the criticisms of the book (or that it only gets 2 out of 5 stars on Amazon). My first thought when I read the article was that, although *some* people might drive farther, the majority of people use their vehicles for set situations (driving to and from work, for example), and you'll have to drive a *lot* more to use up more gasoline if you're suddenly getting 45 mpg instead of 12. Or, to use another of their examples, the PC (which they point out has had higher demand as the price has gone down), say PCs suddenly dropped to $25. Everyone would buy one, but would everyone buy 10? What would be the point? At some point the market reaches saturation. The authors' contention that human ingenuity has always found a new energy source is, to date, accurate, but their extrapolation of that into the indefinite future seems slightly less than a certainty.
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Sunday, September 25
Halloween Inquiry
Yes, I know it's still a month off. For the first Halloween ever, I have a house. And that means I have the capacity to hold parties. And since Halloween is the bestest holiday ever, a Halloween party seems right up my alley. Unfortunately, Halloween is on a Monday, which doesn't work so well. So if I have one, it will be on the previous Saturday (the 29th). Now, since I've never hosted a party before, I'm slightly timorous. In an effort to convince myself to throw caution to the wind, who is interested in a costume party at my house? You can use the "contact" link on the left to e-mail me directly if you'd like; I'd just like to get a headcount of people who are interested. No promises, at least until I see who's interested, but I've been reading about " murder parties" (think the movie "Clue" acted out by guests). If people are interested in something like that, I'd need a more accurate headcount in order to design the game. Let me know. :)
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Saturday, September 24
Blah
To continue with my depressing posts . . . (Okay, so maybe this one pisses me off more than depresses me): < soapbox > An article about an HIV-positive woman who is a spokeswoman for a group that claims that, and who wrote a book that claims that, HIV is not the cause of AIDS, and who also runs an organization for HIV-positive expectant mothers who don't want to treat their HIV, don't want to test their children for HIV and want to breastfeed their children (which increases the risks of transmission), offering advice about how to refuse tests and find doctors who won't report them to protective services. She went on Air America radio in March to talk about her views and how both of her children were doing fine. Then her daughter died of AIDS-related pneumonia two months later. The woman has suggested the coroner messed up the autopsy and is requesting a new one and still maintains that she did nothing wrong. This has echoes of the "vaccinate/don't vaccinate" debate, with one major difference: there are no debates about whether the *test* for HIV causes harm. The woman knows she's HIV-positive and that mainstream medicine says she can pass it to her children, so the only reason she can justify not having the test done (putting aside the issues about her views and their dangers) is because she's afraid that the test will come up positive and protective services will step in. This is equivalent to refusing to have your children tested for a genetic illness that you have because you're afraid the authorities will say the child needs to be treated for it and you'd just rather not know. *Even* if she wants to argue that HIV doesn't cause AIDS (which is a decidedly fringe opinion), she still knows that HIV itself is a contagious virus. I can't find a way that willfully exposing your children to a contagion and then refusing to test them for it doesn't translate into neglect. Even if mainstream medicine wasn't sure whether HIV caused AIDS, wouldn't it still be in your child's interest to be on the safe side? In the end, it's the children who are paying for the parents' denial. < /soapbox >
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Friday, September 23
The Nature of Genocide
I think I'm going to write letters to my Congressmen this weekend, which is something I haven't done in, well, since I was in high school. I've seen a couple of disconnected reports in "outer fringe" media (non-mainline tv/radio/web sources) about ongoing war in Darfur (a region of Sudan) between the Arab-dominated government and ethnic African rebels. That in itself is nothing new (the world, after all, is a loose collection of conflicts), but this one seems worse than most. The government has been accused of using tribal militia to subdue the region using murder, rape and arson (including reports from U.N. and U.S. observers of militia burning down schools and killing children "as examples" and systematically gang-raping women in rebel villages to "subdue" them), echoing the conflict in Rwanda in 1994 (current estimates are 400,000 dead with close to a million by the end of the year). The scariest part is this isn't new. It's been happening for years, and the major media just hasn't been reporting it (" NBC had only 5 minutes of coverage all last year, and CBS only 3 minutes . . . -- about a minute of coverage for every 100,000 deaths. In contrast, Martha Stewart received 130 minutes of coverage by the three networks"). From what I've read, the U.S. government is "looking the other way" because the Sudanese government is a key player in the war on terrorism (with its leaders being flown to Washington to meet with the CIA) and the U.N. has handed it off to the International Criminal Courts because China has threatened to veto any meaningful U.N. action (because of its long-term contracts with Sudan's oil industry). The ICC is largely powerless and Sudan has openly announced it won't cooperate with it. I don't know if my letters will do much, but there isn't a "donate to the Darfur relief" collection fund like there is with hurricane relief, and if nations refuse to intervene in a country where the government is methodically killing women and children, I really don't see how they can even remotely justify invading any country, ever.
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Seen in a Document
"The Bonds were offered for ale to the public." Just in case you've ever wanted to trade Guinness for revenue bonds. Labels: proofreading
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Wednesday, September 21
Page Update
Hey, look, I updated a page.
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Tuesday, September 20
Customer Survey
Dear Lucky Star Chinese Restaurant, I drive by your restaurant on my way to work every day. I have not yet stopped to sample your cuisine and thus cannot express an opinion on its quality, but I do have a suggestion for improving your business: next time you have banners made for the outside of your restaurant, have them made at a place that can spell your name. Trust me on this one. Yours truly, Jay
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Monday, September 19
A Picture Is Worth a Thousand . . . Stormtroopers?
Seen on an IRC-based "funny pictures" site yesterday: 1. The Empire calling up its National Guard to help with hurricane relief. 2. [ Mild nudity warning.] Reason #42 to wear plenty of SPF 50 . . . They're originally from the archives of the site listed on the pictures themselves, but I wouldn't suggest visiting that site if you're at work (that should be enough to indicate its general contents, but just to be clear, it's a pseudo-porn site).
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Saturday, September 17
Burn, Baby, Burn
I splurged and bought a Lighstscribe-capable DVD burner from HP to replace my dead CD burner. After a couple of hours of random quirks while trying to set it up (*hopefully* it's done with them; we'll see), everything seems to be in working order. The basic concept is that not only will it burn normal CDs and DVDs, but if you buy special Lightscribe media (which is obviously more expensive, but already available at Wal-Mart) you can flip the burned disc over in the drive and actually burn an image into a thin film layer on the top of the disc (using a cover-design program). It burns in monochrome, which comes out as sepia because the discs are a gold color. I tested it last night by burning a VCD of the twins for Scott and Lisa and then burning a photo of the twins into the disc. It turned out rather faint, which I'm hoping is more me not knowing how to set the contrast right and less it just being a standard level of detail, but it's still identifiable (although it did take 22 minutes - yes, 22 minutes - to burn the image; it's not a fast process). Now that I have a working DVD burner, I went ahead and bought a used digital camcorder off eBay yesterday (since I'll have a way to share the much-larger-file-size video). No, it's not for porn. Although even if it was for porn I wouldn't admit it here. My mom reads this.
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Thursday, September 15
The Funniest Damn Thing I've Read All Week
I always wondered how Johnny ended up winning. I thought his playing sucked compared to the devil's. Maybe that was the beginning of my realization that I don't like country music . . .
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Wednesday, September 14
The Spooky World
The World-Herald's final commentary on its editorial page today (the "official opinion" of the paper, as it were) earns a D for science education. While ridiculing government spending on "useless" projects, it references a San Francisco Chronicle article on a $25,000 report commissioned by the Air Force on teleportation. Then it repeats the tired "Beam me up, Scotty!" line that is printed over and over again any time teleportation is mentioned outside science fiction or physics conferences, closing with "Just who's kidding whom here?" I actually found the report, and it is indeed largely nonsense (with sections on teleporting macro-sized objects (i.e., people), which according to current theory is impossible, as well as "psychic teleportation), but the paper also references quantum teleportation, which is a well-known and demonstrated property of quantum mechanics. It's not science fiction, and is going to be a strong component of cryptography and computing in the near future. It's unfair to dismiss actual science out of hand because the name conjures up bad 60s science fiction special effects. Labels: quantum mechanics, science
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Tuesday, September 13
Traffic Survey
Is it just a random fluke of my choice of driving routes, or has Omaha traffic been more rude than usual for the last couple of days? Monday I had to stop for a woman who stepped off the curb into traffic during a green light, and then had the guy behind me honk at me for it, then almost hit a guy who made a left turn (from the opposite direction) through my lane while I had a green light. Today an entire 6 lanes of traffic sat through a green light while a group of posturing male adolescents (yes, we get it, you're cool because your pants are falling down and you can snarl up traffic with an angry stare) strolled across an intersection after getting off a bus. Then I had to brake for a guy who ran a stop sign and then brake again when *another* car cut in front of me at the same intersection from yesterday. Maybe people are just pissed off about gas prices and taking it out on the road. I dunno.
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Ah, the Necessities of Life
Food. Water. Shelter. Small bills to stuff in g-strings.
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Monday, September 12
Searching for Chrysalides
Although current-Lane is stuck in the prison she has defined as "school," yesterday-Lane is enjoying the butterflies in the backyard. :)
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Saturday, September 10
Seek and Ye Shall Find
New on the Essays page, a list of search strings that have actually led to my site. Let me know your favorite. :)
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Friday, September 9
Magic Pill of Int+5
(Yes, that was a geek roleplaying game reference. If you get it, you probably need sunlight as much as I do.) The latest Discover magazine had a blurb (which isn't on their Web site) about a drug in clinical testing called CX717 (although I imagine it will eventually have a "cooler" name like "Intellivil" or "Eyecuetan" or something else catchy that is easier to remember). It's being developed for Alzheimer's patients and other brain-related disorders (narcolepsy and ADD, for example), and, in effect, makes the brain more efficient at passing along signals. In animal testing, monkeys on the drug performed better on tests when sleep deprived than control monkeys who were well-rested, and in early human testing even low doses increased cognitive functions (while higher doses produced significant results). I'm all for its use in the above-mentioned disorders (and I'm really hoping it works out without any side effects, as the studies have suggested). But both the Discover article and the above-linked report skipped over the reason that most people are going to be interested in this (although the Discover article did rather deceptively name their article "Brains in a Bottle"). Just as steroids (when used as prescribed) can help people with certain disorders but are more commonly known as "performance enhancers" for "normal" people, you can bet we'll be seeing this drug (and others like it) being used by non-impaired people to prepare for the SAT, the GRE and other graduate program tests and, for those with access to it, even final exams, and eventually there will be people who are using it full-time "just for the edge." That creates questions for society. Is that ethically acceptable? Will it be banned like steroids, and if so will students be tested for intelligence-boosting drugs before tests (what a logistical nightmare)? Will it be permitted, and if so will society ignore the fact that the people who will have access to the drugs will be disproportionately wealthy and upperclass? And what of the conflict for those who feel that taking such drugs is unethical, but by refusing to take them are sacrificing their class ranking or career advancement? We also have to consider that once any portion of the population begins using the drug to temporarily boost intelligence for tests, statistics (which are based on those tests) become skewed. Our current statistics might be the last set to accurately measure intelligence in the population.
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Thursday, September 8
Happy Birthday, um, Again!
I think I'm going to rename my blog "Jay's Birthday Wishes." But until then, happy birthday to Cris, who is, um, just really really old today. Trust me. He hides it well, though. ;) Labels: birthdays
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Wednesday, September 7
Bandwidth Rustling
A question for everyone. But first, a word of introduction. For those of you unfamiliar with the term "hotlinking" or "direct linking," in a nutshell it's the process of loading a file (usually a graphic) directly from someone else's server onto your site (so that it looks like it's part of your site, as opposed to "hyperlinking" which creates a link to someone else's site that takes you away from the linking page). There are a lot of ethical concerns with this, especially if the material is copyrighted (as all of the original photos on my site are), but you also have to take into account that hotlinking uses the bandwidth of the hosting site without giving the hosting site any credit or visitors (which is usually more of an ethical than an economic problem, but in cases where the hosting site is close to its bandwidth limit or is paying based on its bandwidth, it actually ends up costing the owner of the hosting site money - consequently, it usually doesn't make the owner of the hosting site very happy). So, for example, over the weekend I looked at my server logs for the first time in a couple of months and discovered that a guy on a forum had hotlinked directly to one of my pictures and was using it as a forum icon (which meant that every time he made a post in the forum it referenced the picture on my server, and every time someone read that post it called up the picture). The end result was that, since his forum had about 600 people and he was posting more than once a day, in the month of August that picture alone made up 12% of my bandwidth (about 7 times more than any other file). One drawback to hotlinking is that the person doing it has no control over the file (since it's still hosted on the original server). Which opens the possibility of the " switcheroo" (which involves the hosting site moving the file and replacing it with a file of the same name but different content). Depending on what's replaced and how long it takes the person who hotlinked it to notice, this can lead to humorous results. So now to my question. Was it wrong of me to replace the picture he was hotlinking with a new picture saying "I have a very small penis"? I may have been slightly biased since many of the guy's posts were well past the border of misogynistic (and that irritates me). In any case, it took him less than a day to change it (since it changed the picture on *every* post he'd ever made at the same time). I'm actually happy that some people like my pictures enough to want to use them, but there are better ways of going about it. For the two 17-year-old LiveJournal users who had hotlinked to one of my full-sized clouds pictures for their background images, for example, if they'd e-mailed me and said "I like this picture; can I download it and use it as a background if I give you credit and a link?" I'd have said "Sure, that's cool." (The misogynistic guy was out of luck, though. Of course, he's just hotlinked to someone else now.)
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Monday, September 5
Happy Birthday!
To Lane, who joins the "double digit" club. :) A party was held, and much fun was had. She even had spectators (although they weren't allowed to have any of the Butterfinger cheesecake). Labels: birthdays
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Sunday, September 4
Caveat Emptor
I teased myself by stopping at Nebraska Furniture Mart to look at the digital cameras during their Labor Day weekend sale on Saturday. Which, when I say "teased," means I longingly held the camera on display, caressed it gently and then called Lisa on my cell phone specifically to ask her to tell me *not* to buy it ("Tell me not to buy this camera." "What?" "Seriously." "Okay, don't buy the camera." "Thanks. That's really all I needed."). It was on sale for about $30 less than I've seen it anywhere else, but even $30 less means (including accessories) about $575. So it sort of comes down to a camera or heat during the winter . . . At the time I was lost in the bliss of megapixel nirvana and merely footnoted it as something about which to be annoyed later, but I'm now recalling the interaction between the salesman at the camera booth and the woman in front of me (who was examining the same camera). A day-and-a-half later I'm being rather annoyed by it (time-delayed annoyance; I should patent that). The woman was looking at the same camera I was (which meant I had to wander over and examine the empty iPod case while waiting), and the salesman was doing his best to convince her that she needed *that* camera. I can only assume the salespeople at NFM work on commission because he certainly wasn't doing her any favors. Even on sale that's a $500-plus camera, certainly not a beginner's-level camera, which would be fine if the woman knew was she was buying; it was pretty clear to me, just from the couple of minutes I stood there, though, that this woman was clueless about cameras. Sample dialogue: Salesman: *babble about megapixels* Woman: "Okay, but does it plug into the computer? Because I want one that will plug into the computer." (Um, yeah, that's pretty much standard.) Salesman: "It even includes this nifty little feature where you can take several photos and combine them together!" (Yeah, it and every *other* camera made by Canon for the last 4 years, including the $150 ones on the next shelf . . .) Woman: "What's a memory card?" (I can't even think of a funny comment for that one.) Woman: "Would it be good for taking pictures of my kids?" Salesman: "Absolutely." (In kind of the same way that a BMW would be good for running your kids to soccer practice.) I think basically I was annoyed that he was glossing over the fact that everything he was hyping about the camera was available on at least 3 other Canon cameras there that were half the price. I mean, the S2 has *13* shooting modes (I can guarantee she'd never use more than 4, tops, provided she could figure out how to switch from one mode to another) and takes telephoto lenses, along with at least half-a-dozen other functions that you can't justify unless you're at least a semi-serious photographer. Even if you have the money to justify it, there's a learning curve to these cameras; buying a fancier camera just means that there are more functions you'll never use because you don't carry the manual around in your purse. If the salesman had been honest, he'd have directed her to one of the newbie-friendly digital Elph cameras (even a top-of-the-line Elph is $150 cheaper, and someone new to digital cameras should be very happy with a mid-grade one). If nothing else, it taught me that I shouldn't rely on the person who has an incentive in me buying the most expensive item possible to tell me the pros and cons of things I'm considering buying.
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Saturday, September 3
Key Not Included
Seen on an IRC-based picture archive: A friendly reminder to hide the toys before the photographer for the local paper shows up. :)
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Thursday, September 1
Highway Robbery
So apparently some (most?) Americans are "outraged" about gas prices. As though there are no supply/demand effects at work and some higher authority is childishly raising prices on a whim. "It's highway robbery." "This is ridiculous." "I'm going to have to quit my job." Interestingly, there seems to be some sort of correspondence between how unhappy people are and what vehicle they bought (the guy in the story putting $75 into his SUV being the most unhappy). Personally, I think this is great; I'm a little disappointed that the "outrage" isn't more along the lines of "penitent acknowledgment of poor choices and an understanding that cheap fuel is not a right" but I'm looking forward to the greater awareness of fuel-efficient and hybrid vehicles. Hopefully a public demand will spur the technology into a more cost-effective development. Amusingly, the paper has a two-page advertisment for a Jeep/Chrysler Labor Day SUV sale; good luck with that.
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