Funk Friends
Friday, July 10, 2009
9:58AM - "Face it -- Bill Gates is about a white Persian cat and a monocle away from being a Bond villain."
From the department of Does-that-make-Steve-Ballmer-Oddjob?: Bill Gates wants to develop weather control technology
Really, what could possibly go wrong? I mean, none of Gates' other technology solutions have ever caused any problems... </sarcasm>
scared9:42AM - I suck
It's official. Every larp I've ever run or been a part of now sucks by comparison.
Holy mother of Zeus
embarrassed12:43PM - Hitler heaven
Sen. Jim DeMint says that America under Obama is like Germany before World War II. Republican women in Maryland say that Obama is like Hitler. Hitler comparisons are apparently rife at tea parties. What's gotten into the GOP?Nothing. This has been going on all along. Back in 2002 Sen. Charles Grassley - reputedly a moderate [...]
8:37AM - the President and the Pope walk into a bar
Stop me if you've heard this one before.
So today Obama is going to meet with the Pope, which leads to the following question: why?
When i was in catholic school we were fond of saying that the Pope isn't just a religious leader, he's a world leader. Is he? Well, he's the monarch of Vatican city, which makes him one of the last real kings that I can think of. But so? Vatican City is not a world power. they have 558 citizens, no economy to speak of, and no exports save for guilt. The place is literally two miles across.
But I know that stuff is small potatoes. The pope is a world leader because he has authority over about a billion people (hypothetical authority, since he can't even get them to abstain from sex before marriage, but whatever). That's a good lot of people, especially when you consider how many of them are American.
So, does Obama have a responsibility to meet with him? I'm still not sure. The Pope is, no matter what title he may want to claim, a religious figure and he has no political authority here and really none to speak of anywhere.
No,I don't think that there is a responsibility to meet with the pope. Not really.
But that doesn't make it a bad idea. So what do you think? Is meeting with the Pope a good thing that shows the Obama administration embracing the faith of millions, or is he simply giving more power to someone who should not be a dominant figure in world politics in the first place?
12:24PM - Economists oppose more stimulus?
That's the headline of this WSJ article. And it's true that most of the economic forecasters they surveyed don't want more stimulus. But the question is why.And here's the thing: it's NOT because they think a solid recovery is on the way. On the contrary, their outlook is quite bleak: on average, the surveyed economists [...]
3:17AM - Report Offensive Google Images Results
Google Image Search, recently rebranded as Google Images, made it easier to change the SafeSearch filter by including a drop-down below the search box. The default option is "moderate", which excludes explicit images, but you can also disable SafeSearch or select the "strict" filter, which takes into account your keywords and the text from web pages.Now you can also report offensive images that aren't filtered by SafeSearch. "Many users prefer not to have adult sites included in search results (especially if kids use the same computer). Google's SafeSearch screens for sites that contain explicit sexual content and deletes them from your search results. No filter is 100 percent accurate, but SafeSearch should eliminate most inappropriate material," explains Google.
The word "offensive" is pretty vague and Google doesn't define its scope, but you shouldn't use the new option for reporting irrelevant images or spam results.
5:52AM - NSA Building Massive Data Center in Utah
They're expanding:
The years-in-the-making project, which may cost billions over time, got a $181 million start last week when President Obama signed a war spending bill in which Congress agreed to pay for primary construction, power access and security infrastructure. The enormous building, which will have a footprint about three times the size of the Utah State Capitol building, will be constructed on a 200-acre site near the Utah National Guard facility's runway.Congressional records show that initial construction -- which may begin this year -- will include tens of millions in electrical work and utility construction, a $9.3 million vehicle inspection facility, and $6.8 million in perimeter security fencing. The budget also allots $6.5 million for the relocation of an existing access road, communications building and training area.
Officials familiar with the project say it may bring as many as 1,200 high-tech jobs....
It will also require at least 65 megawatts of power....
Another article</a>.
4:26AM - Free music Friday
Lonely H - “Diggin’ a Hole”
Cotton Jones - “Gotta Cheer Up”
Throw Me the Statues - “Ancestors
These United States - “I Want You to Keep Everything”
Hope Sandoval - “Blanchard” (This is a ZIP file)
Julian Plenti - “Fun That We Have”
The Rural Alberta Advantage - “Frank AB”
UUVVWWZ - “JapDad”
We All Have Hooks for Hands - “Made Up of Tiny Lights”
Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band - “Cheer for Fate”
MEN - “Off Our Backs” (Download from Sendspace)
Cory Chisel & The Wandering Sons - “Born Again” (Download file)
3:56AM - Wishful thinking: Blind Allman
(Please note this is my poor attempt at doctoring a photo)
A few years ago the guys from Pantera (minus Phil) made an album with outlaw country bad boy David Allen Coe. They called the project Rebel Meets Rebel and the CD was actually really good.
I just read the Gregg Allman article in Rolling Stone and shamefully admit that while my CD collection is well over 1,000 and my MP3 albums probably double that, I’ve NEVER listened to an entire Allman Brothers album. In fact, I only barely know the “hits”. But, I checked out
Thursday, July 9, 2009
8:31PM - Walking On The Moon
I heard two stories about this on NPR yesterday, and then there was a big spread in the Arts&Life section of today's paper.
Alan Bean: Painting Apollo, First Artist on Another World opens next week at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum.
PRI's "The World" had a good interview with Bean.
http://www.pri.org/arts-entertainment/a
The Dispatch also had a good article.
http://www.columbusdispatch.com/live/co
Bean walked on the moon during the Apollo 12 mission. After the end of Apollo, he eventually left NASA to pursue painting full time. He started painting scenes on the moon because he realized that was what he felt passionate about, and a friend pointed out that he's the only artist who's ever been off the planet. Eventually, he realized that his patches from his space suit were covered with moon dust and he started incorporating them into his paintings as well.
I would love to go to DC and see this exhibit. Unfortunately the Smithsonian website doesn't say how long the paintings will be on display.
excited9:57PM - Cats: masters of their own destinies
by Amanda Marcotte
I’m traveling to Las Vegas to go to The Amazing Meeting, and so blogging may be patchy, but I will try to report back on what’s going on in the world of skepticism and science promotion. In the meantime, I have to restart the feminist pet wars, by taking issue with Jill’s assertion that cats are useless. Oh sure, in our puritanical culture, where pleasure is considered suspect, at best a waste of time, then cats are not only “useless” but aggressively so. Even as I’m a fan of laying around feeling pleased with yourself, I sometimes walk by my cats and tell them that they need to get up and wash something. Or at least quit puking on shit. Be useful!
But the beauty of cats is they give the finger to the mantra of cheerful industry. They remind us that because something isn’t industrious doesn’t mean it’s useless. When you come careening around a corner and run into a wall, the subsequent laughter at your expense is a net positive in the world. When you jump on someone’s blanket-clad feet and knead them for 10 minutes before passing out cold, the warm fuzzy you provide adds something to the world.
Jill’s responding to this post by John Tierney about the uselessness of cats. He’s writing about a paper on the evolution of cats that seems a little disdainful of what I think is kind of awesome about cats.
All the other species, in the authors’ view, were bred by people for their desired qualities. Cats, being without utility, were not. Instead, they domesticated themselves and chose their own mates without human interference.
It all came about, the researchers concede, because of wild cats’ powers of observation. They had the wits to notice that the first human settlements were full of uncleared garbage strewn about by their slovenly inhabitants and so were overrun with rats, mice and sparrows.
The cats decided to move into this inviting new ecological niche, even though the price of admission was to develop a disdainful tolerance of people.
You hear a lot from people who haven’t had cats that cats don’t actually like people. To my mind, this is a ludicrous statement. Independent-minded doesn’t mean they don’t have affection for you. Sure, you can say they rub on you, sit in your lap, and punch your suitcase angrily when you pack it because they’re purely mercenary, but you don’t know that any more than I know 100% that they kind of like you.
I detect anti-cat stereotyping, I’m afraid to say. Pets are subject to the same vicious stereotyping that women are familiar with. Independent-minded self-starter who doesn’t take commands, go out of her way to please you, and who seems to have an internal life that’s not all about you? If cats were women, they’d be tarred as “career women” and “cold”, no matter how loving and kind they are. Loyal to a fault, living only for the master, obedient, eager to please, and seemingly not possessing many interests outside of the master (well, a couple of cute hobbies like chasing the ball that don’t conflict with the loyalty-and-obedience traits)? If we’re talking women, that’s the patriarchal ideal!
And people wonder why so many feminists like cats. I applaud cats for taking control of their evolutionary destiny. I don’t want a pet to be too industrious. I get pets because they’re relaxing. I don’t require strict obedience from a pet, and I like cats because they don’t obey you, but in exchange they don’t need as much from you as dogs. There’s just less codependence in the cat/person relationship. And what’s great about that is that cats show that just because they’re not codependent doesn’t mean they don’t love you. See the above picture, if you want a data point.
9:02PM - When Will The Recovery Begin? Never.
The so-called "green shoots" of recovery are turning brown in the scorching summer sun. In fact, the whole debate about when and how a recovery will begin is wrongly framed. On one side are the V-shapers who look back at prior recessions and conclude that the faster an economy drops, the faster it gets back on track. And because this economy fell off a cliff late last fall, they expect it to roar to life early next year. Hence the V shape.Unfortunately, V-shapers are looking back at the wrong recessions. Focus on those that started with the bursting of a giant speculative bubble and you see slow recoveries. The reason is asset values at bottom are so low that investor confidence returns only gradually.
That's where the more sober U-shapers come in. They predict a more gradual recovery, as investors slowly tiptoe back into the market.
Personally, I don't buy into either camp. In a recession this deep, recovery doesn't depend on investors. It depends on consumers who, after all, are 70 percent of the U.S. economy. And this time consumers got really whacked. Until consumers start spending again, you can forget any recovery, V or U shaped.
Problem is, consumers won't start spending until they have money in their pockets and feel reasonably secure. But they don't have the money, and it's hard to see where it will come from. They can't borrow. Their homes are worth a fraction of what they were before, so say goodbye to home equity loans and refinancings. One out of ten home owners is under water -- owing more on their homes than their homes are worth. Unemployment continues to rise, and number of hours at work continues to drop. Those who can are saving. Those who can't are hunkering down, as they must.
Eventually consumers will replace cars and appliances and other stuff that wears out, but a recovery can't be built on replacements. Don't expect businesses to invest much more without lots of consumers hankering after lots of new stuff. And don't rely on exports. The global economy is contracting.
My prediction, then? Not a V, not a U. But an X. This economy can't get back on track because the track we were on for years -- featuring flat or declining median wages, mounting consumer debt, and widening insecurity, not to mention increasing carbon in the atmosphere -- simply cannot be sustained.
The X marks a brand new track -- a new economy. What will it look like? Nobody knows. All we know is the current economy can't "recover" because it can't go back to where it was before the crash. So instead of asking when the recovery will start, we should be asking when and how the new economy will begin. More on this to come.
5:00PM - Jr Lotus Notes Administrator (Columbus, OH)
Location:-Columbus, OHDuration:- 3 + Months
Need to manage Notes email, DB, and ACL.
Knowledge of functions related as LEI and other connection types.
Intermediate knowledge of AIX O/S installing and configuring.
Ability to troubleshoot problems with Domino and related systems while working with IBM support.
Experience applying service packs, patches, and fix packs.
Ability so suggest future strategies for Domino upgrades and improvements to existing architecture for better performance and stability.
Please apply to the posting or reply back with your updated resume at rajat@okayainfo.com
12:38PM - turning the page
The KDE e.V. general assembly was held this week and new board members were voted in to take the positions Klaas and I had bee holding. It's been absolutely terrific working with the other board members, present and past, and working for the e.V. membership has been a great pleasure.But now that I'm not on the KDE e.V. board and putting my energy into that, what's next for me?
Ch-ch-ch-changes
Besides the professional, there are also some changes happening in my personal life. I'm moving out to where my heart has always lived regardless of where my head lay: amongst the trees that tower above the ocean on Canada's West coast. P. will once again be geographically near his mother after this move and to top it all off I've been blessed with the arrival of a loving partner who will be joining me out there.
The ten year chapter of my life in Calgary is coming to a close, and a new set of chapters is opening, this time set in a place I find a bit more intuitive and meaningful to my soul.
Work Focus
As far as my professional life, I'm not planning on straying very far. As a regular member of KDE e.V. I will still support and volunteer within that organization. I'll also continue working on KDE technology projects full time and keeping some eyes on the organizational structures in and around them. I'm quite looking forward to getting back to attending conferences and doing the public speaking thing again once my geographical relocation is complete.
Beyond that, there are three areas I plan to focus my energies on over the next few years: technology focus in KDE, helping communicate what KDE is and working on whole product concepts.
Technical Focus
It's really important that we do more than simply release new KDE 4 packages twice a year: we need to follow through on our plans and take full advantage of the various Pillars of KDE in our applications.
I feel we have lost a little bit of the sharpness in our focus that we had during the lead up to KDE 4.0. We've been working hard with our heads-down on getting 4.1, 4.2 and now 4.3 rocking hard and we have some great results to show for it. While doing so, we've let some of the long term picture grow a bit fuzzy in places. Stepping back and taking stock from time to time to maintain our focus is needed so that we the global coherency in our efforts remains and we continue to hit meaningful end points.
Whether it is Nepomuk-ing our apps, pulling fresh new ideas into the Plasma/KWin pairing, exploring the future of social/contextual computing, targeting different kinds of hardware form factors, exploring the needs of educational environments, improving document management, sorting out the web content issues we face, etc. ... we need to keep these goals in focus as we continue to refine, improve and enrich our software.
This doesn't tend to happen all by itself, so I will be working in support of our community leaders to document and maintain these goals, backed by consensus and follow through.
Communication
In addition to the critical ingredient of Freedom, we have a lot of great features and exciting capabilities in KDE right now. The world needs to know about these things, and we need to be telling them about it repeatedly and with passion, communicating with clarity what the real world benefits of KDE are for people.
We also need to ensure that others working in technology know what we are up to so that they can join us or invite us to join them where there is overlap and mutual interest. In general, we need to be in front of the variety of KDE users more often and more effectively.
I haven't been involved as much with communication side of things in the last 18-24 months as I'd liked to have, especially when compared to my level of involvement in the years preceding. Now with some of my energy freed up I will be putting some time into that.
Whole Product Thinking
How can we build up a more dynamic, sustainable and responsible commercial ecosystem around and for KDE? That's a big question. One possible answer (among many) is to engage in some clear "whole product" thining and building a full, open and participatory solution stack with KDE as one of the crown jewels within it.
I've been working on a map that has four areas within it: hardware, operating system, user interface and services. Multiple players exist within each of those areas who have relevant expertise and offerings, but finding working harmony between the four different areas is really hard and it's become rather hit-and-miss. I hear this from Free software users on a regular basis. So what can we do?
By focusing on specific use cases, specific hardware profiles, specific OS integration targets and specific kinds of services, we can create whole product prototypes that "feel right" and which can be relied on more that our current "
KDE's open, generic support-everything approach must be maintained and having "support everything" distributions out there is also good, but these are instruments which need to be tuned to create harmony with each other so that great products can be reliably and affordably created from them.
It should be easy for someone to build a netbook device without having to start from the ground up by just ticking off boxes on a checklist. Right now, this process is currently something that even the biggest of companies struggles to succeed with. Creating whole product concepts that provide clear and reliable options for specific use cases can open up entirely new kinds of possibilities for even the most humble of groups and ultimately let us create exciting, useful and reliable objects for people to use.
No Guarantees, But When Are There Ever?
As I put my KDE e.V. board duties into the capable hands of others, I'm making a lateral move within the community and focusing on a different set organizational and process oriented tasks that really need some love and attention.
To pull it all together will take an ongoing, concerted multi-year effort. It will require building working relationships with each other in ways we perhaps haven't previously and working on defining what we expect from the systems, social and technical, that we are building. The goal-posts will also be likely to shift and evolve as we explore the landscape.
There are no guarantees of success in any of this, of course, but I am ready to bring what I have to offer for as long as it is welcome and needed. Working with and in support of this great community of thinkers, dreamers and doers, I feel we can achieve nearly anything we put our collective minds and backs into and I'm chomping at the bit to get going. :)
p.s.
I'm leaving for Vancouver tomorrow morning and will be only sporadically available over the next couple of weeks. I wanted to get this blog entry out before I left, however. I hope it answers the questions that some of you have been asking and will make my being out of touch while I'm throwing my life into the chaos of moving a little less concerning. Love 'n hugs ... aseigo.
12:56PM - Google Translates Documents
Google Translate added the option to upload the documents you want to translate. Until now, you could copy the text in Google Translate or publish the document online and paste its address.Unfortunately, Google converts your documents to HTML and then it translates the HTML file, so the translation doesn't preserve the layout or the embedded images. You can upload Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, PDF files, HTML and text files.
{ via Blogoscoped Forum }
12:56PM - The ATM Vulnerability You Won't Hear About
The talk has been pulled from the BlackHat conference:
Barnaby Jack, a researcher with Juniper Networks, was to present a demonstration showing how he could jackpot a popular ATM brand by exploiting a vulnerability in its software.Jack was scheduled to present his talk at the upcoming Black Hat security conference being held in Las Vegas at the end of July.
But on Monday evening, his employer released a statement saying it was canceling the talk due to the vendor's intervention.
More:
"The vulnerability Barnaby was to discuss has far reaching consequences, not only to the affected ATM vendor, but to other ATM vendors and--ultimately--the public," wrote Brendan Lewis, director of corporate social media relations for Juniper in a statement posted to the company's official blog last week. "To publicly disclose the research findings before the affected vendor could properly mitigate the exposure would have potentially placed their customers at risk. That is something we don't want to see happen."
More news articles: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
1:37PM - Insurance Agent
We are currently looking for non licensed and licensed life and mortgage insurance agents that want to make great money in Ohio!!! You can work part time or full time. No experience required. Make you own hours and build your own business. Part time agents can make anywhere from $2500-3500 per month only working around 12 hours per week. Full time and make anywhere from 5000-?? per month. If your licensed, you can start making money right now, we guarantee no other company will beat our commission scale. If you are interested please forward your resumes to starfleetcars@yahoo.com. Thanks!!11:48AM - Software developer, IT support (Columbus)
Regional Courier Company is in need of an entry level programmer. Work under more senior programmers to prepare specifications and user requirements. Assist with coding, testing, debugging and documenting programs or program modules. Write, modify and debug software for client applications. Use source debuggers and visual development environments. Write code to create single-threaded or user interface event driven applications, either stand-alone and those which access servers or services. Test and document software for client applications.Required Skills:
PHP (PHP5 preferred)
Microsoft SQL Server
MySQL
Windows XP/Vista/Server 2003
Linux
Basic troubleshooting
Knowledge of Microsoft Windows Terminal Services and Microsoft Active Directory
Please list salary history.
8:57AM - Simultaneous Searches in Google Maps
Sometimes you want to see the results for multiple searches in Google Maps or you want to quickly switch to a recent query. Now it's possible: Google Maps displays at the bottom of the page a list of recent searches and each layer of search results can be enabled independently. Google Maps uses different colors for the markers so you can differentiate the results.
1:49PM - Well, Poop
by Jesse TaylorA new study shows, rather unsurprisingly, that people who take out payday loans often need more than one loan. By the time that someone is at the point that they’re looking to get an advance on money they’re already going to be receiving, and getting it at a stiff penalty, that single advance is not going to set things straight. The person getting the loan likely can’t afford the penalty to begin with, and what they’re most likely doing is deciding to pay penalty A (the high fees on a payday loan) over penalty B (the shutdown of utilities, ruining of credit rating, etc.). Should you need one more bit of evidence that payday loans are little more than modern-day financial slavery, there you go.
Now, the interesting part about all of this is that I logged into my bank account this morning. No, really, me logging into my bank is fascinatingly amazing.
I bank (well, now, banked) at Fifth Third, which notified me of a great new option this morning: Fifth Third Early Access. Were this a 1950s musical, you’d probably wander up to me dressed in your Sunday best and say, “Sir, that sounds fantastic! I do love accessing my bank, and good ol’ Ben Franklin himself said that bein’ early was great!”
And then, because I’m a cynical 21st century scam artist masquerading as the Good Humor man or whatever people in olden times bought their cocaine-laced sodas from, I sign you up for a direct deposit payday loan with a mere 120% APR. Details below the fold:
- Real-time transaction where you can transfer cash into your associated checking account.
- Automatic payoff of each outstanding Advance balance and associated finance charge. Payments will be automatically deducted from your associated checking account on your next qualifying direct deposit of $100 or more. If there is an outstanding balance on the 35th day after each Advance, we will automatically pay off the outstanding Advance balance from the associated checking account.
- Associated finance charge with advance is 10% ($1 for every $10 borrowed) each time you make an advance, which equates to an 120% Annual Percentage Rate (APR).
- Advances can be made in dollar increments up to your maximum credit limit. If your associated checking account is negative, an advance must bring your checking account to a positive status before you can access your full credit limit.
So, not only do you get to go through a paperless payday loan that’s automatically processed by the bank (which may or may not happen in “real time” and may or may not clear your account in time for an impending bill), but your payment is also automatically deducted from your account on the 35th day. If you don’t have the money in your account, you will, of course, overdraft (and chances are, you will, and chances are, you’ll do it multiple times because of the old “largest payments first” rule). But don’t worry, there are protections (PDF link). For instance, you may only overdraft 20 times (at $35 a pop) before you’re not allowed to take out an advance...for one month. And then you can do it all over again.
It’s not just that this is predatory lending - it is - but that it takes the old, comfortable way of getting ripped off and makes it so much cooler. And by cooler, I mean likely to cost hundreds of dollars more than a typical payday loan because it’s tied directly into every other financial transaction you make.
Credit union, here I come…
2:45PM - ‘Complexion’ of black camp kids not a problem at this pool
by Pam SpauldingAfter the treatment the kids attending Creative Steps Day Camp received from The Valley Swim Club, a private school has welcomed the children to swim in its pool. (NBC):
[T]he staff at Girard College, a private Philadelphia boarding school for children who live in low-income and single parent homes, stepped in and offered their pool.
“We had to help,” said Girard College director of Admissions Tamara Leclair. “Every child deserves an incredible summer camp experience.”
The school already serves 500 campers of its own, but felt they could squeeze in 65 more – especially since the pool is vacant on the day the Creative Steps had originally planned to swim at Valley Swim Club.
“I’m so excited,” camp director Alethea Wright exclaimed. There are still a few logistical nuisances—like insurance—the organizations have to work out, but it seems the campers will not stay dry for long.
And to sweeten the deal, the owners of Gumdrops & Sprinkles treated the kids to a free day of candy and ice cream making.
To think that The Valley Swim Club took the $1900 from Creative Steps Day Camp yet were so appalled when they actually deigned to show and they were—gasp—Negroes— that they gave the money back indicates they didn’t think the money wasn’t green enough to accept the “contamination” of the pool. I can’t think of more publicly inhumane behavior toward children in recent memory. It’s such a stain on his state that Arlen Specter is looking into this social (and PR) catastrophe.
I have a couple of questions, though. Let’s say that the state, and Specter talk to the club’s owners and the PR nightmare continues for The Valley Swim Club. The club has a couple of choices, and none are good (not that I feel sorry for these bigots). Lift their racist ban on POC, or claim right of assembly as a private club (that cannot possibly fly if they take money from non-members to access the facility—that’s public accommodation). So then they have to clean up their public relations mess by admitting minorities.
Do you think that members of the club will cancel their memberships in droves over this? I could see this happening because they were so casual in expressing their bigotry out in the open; certainly they will rebel against any notion that they have to socialize with human beings they see as “pickaninnies,” right
Take a look at some of the comments found at the article below the fold.
From the comments of the article:
So nice to see everyone playing the race card once again. Unfortunately those that claim to condemn it only further it’s existence by bringing it up EVERY CHANCE THEY GET. The private club is just that, and despite the poor choice of wording used by the club representative, the fact is, it remains a private club. I wonder what the camp will do next..........hmmmm........perhaps take the kids to lunch at Le Bec Fin, then when they act up and are thrown out, everyone will be screaming racism once again. Seems both sides are to blame in this one, the camp for thinking they can take 65 rowdy children to a private club, and the club itself for booking the camp in the first place. And why weren’t these kids taken to a PUBLIC pool to begin with? No one has provided an answer to that one yet either. I know for a fact not ALL the pools were shutdown by everyone’s favorite mayor.
good for them. go somewhere else. and it is especially nice of Vince to leave out the safety issues regarding why they were told not to come back. The Valley Club does not have enough lifeguards to watch this many kids, who are NOT good swimmers, so the first concern was their safety...not their color. But God forbid you tell a black person they can’t do something because then you MUST be racist. Maybe you are too ignorant to see past you own color and realize that there just might be a reason other than your color that this was done. And Vince, maybe ask the club if anyone else was turned away. Oh, 3 others camps were turned away....because they were too big for the club to safely watch. Maybe if your mayor hadn’t run the city into the ground and closed YOUR pools you wouldn’t need to come to ours.
should have just closed the pool for the day and let these animals have at it. Wait, they might have to close the pool for two days to clean up after them.
this has nothing to do with racism...has to do with certain people not being repsctful to others...the black as a whole is not bad...but some of these younger kids of no respect for anything...and i think the owner just did not want problems...if the black community wants us to respect them they have to start to respect others...it can not just be a one way deal
People are missing the big picture here! The fact is that inner city people (yea, I mean “you people") do not take care of their surroundings! Ever walk or drive through North Philly?? It’s a rats nest! Trash, broken glass, drug debris, used condoms ect. all over the streets.. Do you want people who have NO self worth in your private swim club? It has nothing to do with color.. It has to do with 65 kids from the same place that I just spoke of! It’s about class and it starts with the adults.. They raise their children to grow up and be statistic.
your an idiot...you never seen a bunch of blacks hanging out together ....they are trouble...if they want us to accept them as equal...that have to stop acting like thugs and start to respect other people...when they do that then maybe people will see them as equal...but idiots like you keep makeing ecuses for them and things will never change
Rick, even with these “all black” schemes, what is the percentage of black men in institutions of higher learning? The fact is that on an individual level, white men may feel discriminated against, but in an overall level, white people still come out tops. All black colleges were created because blacks couldn’t get into the white colleges. Not because black people wanted to keep whites out.
Now, I don’t know anything about Philly, but I used to live in one of those NY neighborhoods that always got a bad rap as an urban ghetto—Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Not every block was a hell-hole of urban crime, not every black man was a thug, convict or wino. What was and is true is that minorities are victimized by crime more often in their own neighborhoods than any white resident in a tony suburb. Bed-Stuy was always full of working middle class people of color and they always took pride in their neighborhood, but the lower middle class and those just getting by (or not at all) were part of the scene as well. I’m sick of the urban stereotypes tossed around. Does the neighborhood below, my old stomping grounds, look like a rat’s nest? Bullsh*t.
Related:
More at this DKos diary, Valley Swim Club: Day Two.
11:06AM - Writer's Block: My Ideal Life Ten Years from Now…
What does your ideal lifestyle look like 10 years from now? Presented by Intel, Sponsors of Tomorrow. |
umm ... duh. my ideal lifestyle 10 years from now is to be independently wealthy and not have to work. It involved a lot of playing around and extra girlfriends who are mute nymphomaniac underwear models. In my spare time I save the world from ninja invasion.
However, to answer a bit more realistically, how about asking where I think I'll be (since I don't plan on having a shit life that I don't want).
I'm guessing that we'll have moved by then. I love my house, but my best guess is that we'll outgrow it.
I hope to be in a new job that I actually enjoy. I don't even care what anymore. And if my current trend continues, I'll sell handmade books on the side (possibly Id' like a workshop for these).
I'm guessing that a lot of things will be about the same. I'm hoping that we'll still be hanging with the Cranes on thursdays and gaming on mondays (of wednesdays). And given my current workout schedule, I'm hoping I'll be in better shape and maybe back at martial arts again.
However, 10 years is also plenty of time for babies and that will take up a good chunk of time as well.
Plus, I'll probably have a cool robot to help with chores.
2:18PM - Food for thought
According to a new site called Mediaite, Mark Bittman of the Times is the 8th most influential columnist in America, ahead of Arianna Huffington.It's also noteworthy that Glenn Greenwald of Salon is #10.
On the other hand, Christopher Hitchens is #5. Why would God allow that?
And the less said about #1, the better ...
7:19AM - please enjoy this
In the wake of the "changing the complexion" racist rampage in Pennsylvania, please enjoy this from Fox News and Washington Monthly:
[Fox and Friends host Brian] Kilmeade was reflecting on a study that found married people fare better when it comes to Alzheimer's than divorcees. Fox News is "pro-family," so it might seem like the kind of study Kilmeade would approve of.And now,
Alas, no. The Fox News personality took issue with where the study was done, which he said discredited the results. Alex Koppelman, who posted the video, explains:Kilmeade and two colleagues were discussing a study that, based on research done in Finland and Sweden, showed people who stay married are less likely to suffer from Alzheimer's. Kilmeade questioned the results, though, saying, "We are -- we keep marrying other species and other ethnics and other ..."
At this point, his co-host tried to -- in that jokey morning show way -- tell Kilmeade he needed to shut up, and quick, for his own sake. But he didn't get the message, adding, "See, the problem is the Swedes have pure genes. Because they marry other Swedes.... Finns marry other Finns, so they have a pure society."
sick11:42AM - We’re not all out to get you
by Amanda Marcotte
Tracy Clark-Flory put a twinkly post up about the possibility of creating sperm in a lab and the both baffling and yet predictable media response to the possibility that women could reproduce without men at all:
Take the following headlines the research spawned: “A world without need for men,” “Sperm from stem cells put men on notice” and “British scientists grow ARTIFICIAL sperm in a lab (so who needs a man?)” and “Chaps doomed as lab grows sperm.”
From what I can tell, all these came from the right wing press, so it isn’t hard to figure out what’s going on here. The more invested members of the dominant class are in maintaining their oppression of others, the more they have elaborate, paranoid fears that the Other will rise up and kill them one day. I have no doubt, hailing as I do from Redneckia, that the gun nut culture---at least the NRA paranoid version, not just people who like to own guns and shoot them at targets, but have no interest in worrying that Obama is going to take their guns away---stems from a deeply embedded racism. That’s why there’s so much nonsensical talk about the statistically low dangers of home invasion while you’re at home. Guess what race they imagine the home invader to be. It’s not conscious, but the ever-present fears of black criminality in this particular set of white people goes straight back to their own stranglehold on white privilege, which is so strong they assume that it will all end in violence.
Why else do you think the fears that Obama specifically will take their guns have such a hold on their imagination? You got that fear with Clinton, but not even close to the same degree. I’m lucky that I don’t spend much of my time around racist rednecks, but friends of mine who have to for work will say that yeah, it’s a fear they talk about non-fucking-stop.
I see the same thing operating here in this fear that women are plotting to overthrow the patriarchy by eliminating men altogether. Though, of course, the paranoid would never say it that way. They’re invested in the self-delusional belief that there’s no patriarchy and that they, in fact, are the victims here. This mix of wanting to hang onto your ability to dominate women with all your might and your self-rationalizing belief that women are the ones with real power leads to this bizarre conclusion: Women hate being under the boot, but they are using their immense power to organize to eliminate men altogether. A feminist conspiracy that was able to rid the planet of all men would be powerful indeed, and if they had that power, knowing feminists, they’d actually use it to get equality instead. But to the right wing mind, this is not a possibility, because they think being a man is about domination. Maybe this fantasy of women making artificial sperm and getting rid of men completely reflects this belief that without domination, there is no such thing as manhood itself.
I dug into the comments section at Salon, because I know that there’s a ton of troglodytes that live and breath for hating women, most of the time because they obviously feel insecure and think it’s easier to hate women to make themselves feel better than do what it takes to feel secure, which in most of their cases would require doing hard shit like developing a personality. I figured that a bunch of men whose obvious misogyny probably does make them personally repulsive to a whole bunch of women they meet would be enraptured by a fantasy about how all women hate all men, and would get rid of us if we didn’t need sperm.
Indeed, I found the misogynist peanut gallery there didn’t even question the idea that this is what women want. I suspect for a lot of mouth-breathing misogynist dweebs that spend all day in internet comments freaking out that they let women write, it’s comforting to believe that manhood in general is as repulsive and rejected as they are.
Misogynist #1 assumed that women would get rid of men the first chance we got, and too bad, because The Children cannot be raised by women, but need a man to impart his sweetness and light, albeit from a proper distance as a woman does the not-raising-at-all-work of actually tending to a child.
I can’t see bringing a kid into this world at this point… not with how fucked up things already are and what portends.
Misogynist #2 assumes as well that women hate all men as much as he hates women, but believes that women exploit their power over men for more than sperm-stealing.
until sperm pays alimony and child support…
...i guess we’ll still be needed
With anti-feminists who spout this line, I’m coming around to the idea that they personally are of no value to women outside of filling legal support obligations to children that were reproduced when those women were in more gullible, desperate, or needy phases in their lives, that they would allow someone who radiates misogyny to reproduce with them. And again, these men prefer to think of their repulsiveness as a characteristic of manhood, not a personal failing.
Misogynist #3 spouts the same line:
Let’s be honest. Women hate our guts. Always have, always will.
If we didn’t buy them stuff or pay their bills, they’d off us in a second. As I’ve said before, we’re just pack animals for them.
In the fantasy world of misogynists, women do not hold jobs, have checking accounts, or even quite understand how to use money. There is also a strong suspicion that women have as little interest in sex as we have in having our own money. Or, in Misogynist #4’s opinion, women have no real interest in sex with men, either.
When women get scare men want them more but I think if men were irrelevant to the functioning of the society women would lose interest altogether. It is not at all clear that a male body is intrinsically compellingly interesting to women simply because it is a male body (and mind).
Again, you see this insistence that all men are basically alike, which is their way of saying, “I cannot help being a megaton asshole. That’s how men are.” That this single asshole personality for all men theory is not true is irrelevant---we are talking about men who believe that women are seeking to eliminate men altogether, that women have no real interest in sex, and that women have no use for money of our own.
I’ll leave you with Misogynist #5, who already believes that there’s a war going on, and his “tribe” of men must retreat to the fortress to fend off the Amazonian invasion:
This is what single motherhood and the feminization of the education system has wrought. The reality is there is still a large number of men being raised by men....unfortunately for liberals, the men will all grow up to be republicans, and you won’t see these men in cities....at least not until they are in their 20’s. I for one, will continue to promote fatherhood and maleness to my tribe, even if I’m the last democrat doing it.
The thread continues like this, with misogynists claiming that their assholery and repulsiveness, both sexual and social, are inherent to all men, and that just as women try not to be around them personally,* women want to be away from men permanently.
*At least women with healthy self-esteems. I’m sure many of these guys get laid, have dates, have girlfriends, and most have ex-wives. The patriarchal system of self-esteem shredding in women seems like it’s almost demonically designed to get dates for men like this.
9:31AM - What makes a religion?
I was reading through neopagan rites (by isaac bonewits) and he brought up the idea that most monotheisms are not actually religions anymore, because they lack a magical element.
Which got me to thinking what makes a religion. Is Christianity, for example, a religion?
I think that it is (or thinks it is) but the way most (American) Christians practice, it is not.
See, what makes a religion different from a phillosophy is magic. they don't always call it magic. they probably call it miracles or sacraments or sauce drippings from the almighty, but whatever they call it, it's magic. it's something impossible or improbable happening because they (or god or the saints, angels, magic fish said so).
For example, Christianity is a religion because they believe that the wafer and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ. That's magic. they also believe that candles protect you from ailments of the throat and that confession cleans your moral slate.
Except that they don't. Not most of the Christians I know. Most of the Christians I know believe that these things are symbols. that the Eucharist is the symbolic body of Christ (because they know what literally means, perhaps) or that confession is a symbol of your own repentance.
Most of them don't even believe in hell anymore. And I'm not sure to what degree I think they believe in heaven. And in my book, that makes their religion a phillosophy. Which puts that particular faith in an odd light, since it is a religion for some a not a religion for others. But I think it still counts as a religion overall, since it's intent is to be a religion.
I'm rambling.
6:36AM - Homomorphic Encryption Breakthrough
Last month, IBM made some pretty brash claims about homomorphic encryption and the future of security. I hate to be the one to throw cold water on the whole thing -- as cool as the new discovery is -- but it's important to separate the theoretical from the practical.
Homomorphic cryptosystems are ones where mathematical operations on the ciphertext have regular effects on the plaintext. A normal symmetric cipher -- DES, AES, or whatever -- is not homomorphic. Assume you have a plaintext P, and you encrypt it with AES to get a corresponding ciphertext C. If you multiply that ciphertext by 2, and then decrypt 2C, you get random gibberish instead of P. If you got something else, like 2P, that would imply some pretty strong nonrandomness properties of AES and no one would trust its security.
The RSA algorithm is different. Encrypt P to get C, multiply C by 2, and then decrypt 2C -- and you get 2P. That's a homomorphism: perform some mathematical operation to the ciphertext, and that operation is reflected in the plaintext. The RSA algorithm is homomorphic with respect to multiplication, something that has to be taken into account when evaluating the security of a security system that uses RSA.
This isn't anything new. RSA's homomorphism was known in the 1970s, and other algorithms that are homomorphic with respect to addition have been known since the 1980s. But what has eluded cryptographers is a fully homomorphic cryptosystem: one that is homomorphic under both addition and multiplication and yet still secure. And that's what IBM researcher Craig Gentry has discovered.
This is a bigger deal than might appear at first glance. Any computation can be expressed as a Boolean circuit: a series of additions and multiplications. Your computer consists of a zillion Boolean circuits, and you can run programs to do anything on your computer. This algorithm means you can perform arbitrary computations on homomorphically encrypted data. More concretely: if you encrypt data in a fully homomorphic cryptosystem, you can ship that encrypted data to an untrusted person and that person can perform arbitrary computations on that data without being able to decrypt the data itself. Imagine what that would mean for cloud computing, or any outsourcing infrastructure: you no longer have to trust the outsourcer with the data.
Unfortunately -- you knew that was coming, right? -- Gentry’s scheme is completely impractical. It uses something called an ideal lattice as the basis for the encryption scheme, and both the size of the ciphertext and the complexity of the encryption and decryption operations grow enormously with the number of operations you need to perform on the ciphertext -- and that number needs to be fixed in advance. And converting a computer program, even a simple one, into a Boolean circuit requires an enormous number of operations. These aren't impracticalities that can be solved with some clever optimization techniques and a few turns of Moore's Law; this is an inherent limitation in the algorithm. In one article, Gentry estimates that performing a Google search with encrypted keywords -- a perfectly reasonable simple application of this algorithm -- would increase the amount of computing time by about a trillion. Moore’s law calculates that it would be 40 years before that homomorphic search would be as efficient as a search today, and I think he’s being optimistic with even this most simple of examples.
Despite this, IBM’s PR machine has been in overdrive about the discovery. Its press release makes it sound like this new homomorphic scheme is going to rewrite the business of computing: not just cloud computing, but "enabling filters to identify spam, even in encrypted email, or protection information contained in electronic medical records." Maybe someday, but not in my lifetime.
This is not to take anything away anything from Gentry or his discovery. Visions of a fully homomorphic cryptosystem have been dancing in cryptographers' heads for thirty years. I never expected to see one. It will be years before a sufficient number of cryptographers examine the algorithm that we can have any confidence that the scheme is secure, but -- practicality be damned -- this is an amazing piece of work.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
3:14PM - Sex Crisis Hotline / Violet Blue: A day in the life of national sex crisis hotline workers
I'm on my way to visit the offices of a locally-based, national sex crisis hotline; to get there, I decide against a detour and perambulate up the street that goes right through a set of notorious San Francisco housing projects. It's sunny and hot. I pass by...
Thursday, July 9, 2009
1:06AM - going to disneyland
Going to Disneyland. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
spazzkat made two comics about that. (I like the second one a lot.) Back l8r, try not to destroy the world while I'm gone.
sleepy4:28AM - FutureRuby!
Jon and I will be at FutureRuby this weekend (actually, I will be there, and Jon will be speaking).
Say “hi” if you see us. I’m flying into Toronto Thursday for FAILcamp.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
11:00PM - Today's little updates
- Wed 2:51pm sitting at Easton Cup O Joe listening to them play good early-80s music. A day that makes me tempted to find the nearest swimming pool. #
Thursday, July 9, 2009
1:49AM - Black kids booted from Philly club’s ‘whites-only’ pool
by Pam SpauldingWelcome to post-racial America, where people have their heads in the sand about the state of race relations in this country because a black man was elected POTUS.
The staff at the Valley Swim Club in NE Philly must have stepped into the DeLorean and took a spin back into the days of segregation, as 60 kids were turned away from the pool there and apparently the people at the Swim Club didn't mind their inner bigot surface for all to see. (NBC Philly):
"I heard this lady, she was like, 'Uh, what are all these black kids doing here?' She's like, 'I'm scared they might do something to my child,'" said camper Dymire Baylor.
The Creative Steps Day Camp paid more than $1900 to The Valley Swim Club. The Valley Swim Club is a private club that advertises open membership. But the campers' first visit to the pool suggested otherwise.
"When the minority children got in the pool all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool," Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. "The pool attendants came and told the black children that they did not allow minorities in the club and needed the children to leave immediately."..."There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club," John Duesler, President of The Valley Swim Club said in a statement.
Excuse me, what year is this? Am I watching a rerun of a scene in Far From Heaven (2002)? There was a scene in the Todd Haynes film, set in the 1950s, where a black boy, the son of service worker at a Miami hotel, dares to step into the hotel pool. His father rushes and pulls him out, but it’s too late—the white people in the pool race to get out of the “contaminated” water. Apparently that’s the kind of “change they can believe in” at The Valley Swim Club.
Contact information for the club is here. This is so outrageous that I’m almost unable to type.
I don’t see anything on the membership app asking about race, so when do they determine you can’t join—when you show up? Check out the club’s rules of operations below the fold.
I don’t see anything here about no Negroes.
The Valley Club
2009 Rules of Operation(7) Only one person allowed on the diving board at a time.
(8) No glass of any kind is allowed on the club grounds.
(9) Floating devices not secured to the swimmer are prohibited except at specific times.
(10) Swimming under the diving board is strictly forbidden.
(11) The pool apron must be kept free of blankets, towels, clothing, chairs, strollers, etc…
(12) The baby pool and nearby play area are for children under 7 years of age.
(13) Baby swim diapers must be worn in the baby pool.
(14) Children not toilet trained may not use the large pool.
(15) No guard is on duty for the baby pool. Parents are responsible.
(16) Smoking, eating, drinking, and gum chewing is not permitted on the pool apron or in the pool. Smoking is permitted in designated areas only.
(17) Each member is responsible for keeping the grounds clean.
(18) Please do not attempt to intimidate the pool employees in the performance of their duties.
(19) Pool managers and lifeguards are responsible for enforcing the above rules and regulations.
GENERAL
(1) Types of Membership: FULL-SEASON=entitles members to access club every day we are open. WEEKENDS=entitles members to access club on Fri, Saturdays,& Sundays WEEKDAYS=entitles members to access club Mondays thru ThursdaysALL WELCOME ON HOLIDAYS!
(2) Membership cards must be presented upon request to obtain entrance to the club. Please be prepared to show a driver’s license with your membership card.
(3) Pets are not permitted on club grounds
(4) Persons under the influence of intoxicants will be denied admission to the club.
(5) Possession and/or the use of alcoholic beverages are strictly prohibited. The club is not responsible for the loss or damage to personal property.
(6) Any member (or guest) deliberately destroying or damaging pool property will be subject to financial reimbursement for the damages and disciplinary action in violating the by-laws.
(7) Loading and unloading of vehicles will be permitted at the upper level, but all members and guest vehicles must be returned to the paved parking lot located at the club entrance.
(8) Picnic tables must not be placed anywhere other than the picnic area, nor may they be reserved. A limited number of picnic tables may be reserved by the Club Manager for pre-registered member parties during the week.
(9) Cooking must be confined to the areas designated for this purpose.
(10) Tables on the patio next to the snack bar are to be used only for eating food purchased at the snack bar.
(11) Water Volleyball Schedule
Saturdays/Sundays
2:00 to 2:30 pm and 4:00 to 4:30 pm
(12) Adult Lap Swim Schedule
Everyday
11:30 am to 12:30 pm; 2:30 to 2:50 pm; 4:30 to 4:50 pm; 5:30 to 6:00 pm
(13) The shallow end of the pool will remain open to the full membership during these lap swims.
POOL HOURS
(1) The gate to the pool will be open from 11:30 am until 8:30 pm, weather permitting.
(2) If there is inclement weather forecast for the day, please call the club answering machine to find out if the club is open or not.
(3) During Our Swim Lessons (Mondays thru Thursdays), the shallow end of the pool will open at 12:30 pm to accommodate swim lessons.
These rules are for the benefit of all club members and must be obeyed at all times. Members are responsible for their children and guests, in compliance with club rules. It is the responsibility of each member to inform guest of pool rules. Infractions may result in temporary loss of club privileges or loss of membership. Please help by respecting and obeying the rules. Situations arising that are not specifically covered by the established rules will be resolved by the manager or the Board of Directors at anytime.HEALTH AND SAFETY
(1) All members use the club facilities at their own risk.
(2) Children under the age of 13 must be accompanied at all times by an adult member (17 years or older).
(3) All children under the age of 13 must pass a swimming test to be permitted in the deep end without an adult.
(4) Use of the pool will be refused to anyone wearing bandages or having skin abrasions, colds, coughs, inflamed eyes, skin infections, etc…
(5) All bathers must shower before entering the pool.
(6) Running is not permitted on the pool apron.GUEST REGULATIONS
(1) All guests must be accompanied by the sponsoring member upon entering the club grounds. Members must remain with their guests. You may not bring guests into the club and leave the grounds.
(2)The club strongly urges the use of pre-paid guest cards. These cards may be purchased pre-season with dues. They may also be purchased through the pool manager.
(3) Guest Rates:
Adults $10.00
Children (under 17) $5.00
Guest Rates After 6:00 pm
Adults $5.00 Children (under 17) $2.00
(4) We invite you to have your family birthday or other parties at our club (including summer company picnic). Our Party Rate for 2009 Members will be $7 per person. For non-members it is $10 per person. For parties, our grounds are open to members and non-members, alike. Parties must pre-register with the pool manager to reserve enough tables/space.
Join Our Swim and Dive Teams: TheValleyClub.com
More at J&J Politics. Here’s a great video:
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
11:12PM - Camille Paglia May Be A Horrible Person, By Which I Mean She Is
by Jesse TaylorToday’s Camille Paglia column has been roundly vilified for its idiotic take on Palin’s decision to drop out; I think it deserves vilification for an entirely different reason.
A conservative reader writes in to Camille, presumably because he doesn’t want to be challenged or provoked in any way:
I am conservative politically, yet I see the profound weaknesses in the movement. One thing from the liberal side of thinking that I struggle with is the concept of a “hate crime.” If I am murdered, is that less heinous than a member of a protected class being murdered?
Matthew Shepard’s case is often singled out as the reason we need hate crime legislation. The question is: What more would those who propose hate crime legislation like to be done to the perpetrators? They are serving consecutive life sentences. I believe they should be executed for their crime, but it seems that most liberals oppose the death penalty. So what would be different in his case if this legislation were enacted?
The proper answer, of course, is that like any number of exacerbating factors in sentencing, a hate crime designation may not actually result in a higher sentence for someone who’s already committed an atrocious crime. Hate crime legislation is designed to target those who commit crimes that, even though only a single person or group was harmed, demonstrate an intent to either intimidate members of a larger group or a likelihood to inflict actual harm on other members of that group. Basically, it’s a recognition that someone is a greater threat to society, and is reflected in pretty much every form of sentencing we do. It’s why the person who kills in the middle of a heated argument receives a relatively lighter sentence than someone who rigs a shotgun to shoot their spouse when they walk through the front door - the latter shows a far greater intent to harm the person, and a greater likelihood of harming others in the future.
Camille Paglia’s answer is a lot like that answer, except totally different by being so much worse it’s scary.
Only a week before, Shepard had expressed fears about being killed. Given that apprehension, it is still inexplicable—if the case is examined only through a political lens—why Shepard would leave a public place in the company of such blatant thugs. A hate crimes law that claims to be able to penetrate the mind of the perpetrator should be equally open to questions about the victim. If, out of fairness or pity, one avenue of inquiry is shut down, then the other must be too.
So, in case you were wondering, we cannot use intent as an element of trying a murderer unless we also figure out the victim’s intent in getting murdered. It’s a novel legal theory with any number of wondrous applications: if we try a thief for his intent to steal, we must also try the victim for having a wallet so full of cash; if we try a rapist for his intent to rape, we must also try the victim for her having a vagina around such obvious threats of rape.
I see absolutely nothing wrong or destructive in following Paglia off of this cliff. Especially not when Shepard’s murderers get the idea to try Shepard for causing something like a “gay panic”...which would never, ever happen.
11:47PM - Are you Comix Experienced?
Go and read http://savagecritic.com/ (and you need to read both http://savagecritic.com/2009/07/neil-gai
Short version, I'm doing a signing at Comix Experience on on Sunday, July 19th from 11 AM to 12:30 PM. And because time is limited, it's limited to 100 people. Brian Hibbs decided that the easiest way to pick the 100 people was to presell them copies of the WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE CAPED CRUSADER hardback, which will be out then.
Preorders for the book can be taken immediately by visiting Comix Experience at 305 Divisadero St. (at Page) in San Francisco, or by calling 415-863-9258 from 11-7 Monday-to-Saturday, Sundays 12-5, PST.
And my Metamorpho Page with the brilliant Mike Allred is out in Wednesday Comics -- details of what this thing is at: http://comicbookresources.com/?page=arti
3:29PM - Indefinite detention and torture
Mr. Obama's administration has decided that it has the right to imprison people indefinitely even if they've been acquitted of all charges, even by military commission - in other words, to jail the innocent forever, if, in the judgement of the administration they could be dangerous in the future:
Jeh Johnson, the Defense Department's chief lawyer, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that releasing a detainee who has been tried and found not guilty was a policy decision that officials would make based on their estimate of whether the prisoner posed a future threat.Rep. Nadler (D-NY) pegs the trial part:
What bothers me is that they seem to be saying, "Some people we have good enough evidence against, so we'll give them a fair trial. Some people the evidence is not so good, so we'll give them a less fair trial. We'll give them just enough due process to ensure a conviction because we know they're guilty." That's not a fair trial, that's a show trial.Not incidentally, Vice Adm. Bruce MacDonald is arguing for the use of torture-derived confessions and evidence in these military commissions as Congress debates all of this brutal lawlessness.
Meanwhile, over in the state propaganda front, NPR was caught using the word "torture" to describe the exact same techniques that they refuse to describe as "torture" when Americans and the American government use them. This is their ombudsman explaining why:
In that case, these were strictly tactics to torture him, to punish him, versus in the United States, and the way that it’s used, these are tactics used to get information. The Gambian journalist was in jail for his beliefs.If you torture someone for the "right" reasons, it's not torture. So sayeth NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard.
Glenn Greenwald was waiting for his turn on NPR to talk about their policy when he heard Ms. Shepard talk about this in advance of him - he'd been led to believe he'd be able to engage her in direct conversation, but that was not the case. Here's his take on both of these topics.
Oh, and Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson is suggesting Gitmo will be kept open past January 2010 after all. Or that another such facility will be used elsewhere, as we've already known.
Please enjoy your institutionalised bipartisan torture, arbitrary arrest, and indefinite detention regime. I don't know what it's going to look like, but it probably won't be very democratic for very long. They rarely are.
sick1:53PM - Usage Rights Options in Google Image Search
Last month, I mentioned that Google Image Search is about to add some options that let you filter images licensed using Creative Commons. The options have been added to the advanced search page, where you can choose between images that you are allowed to reuse, images that can be modified or used commercially.
Google Image Search is the first important image search engine that has this feature, since Yahoo Image Search only supports Flickr images. If you want to illustrate your web pages or your documents with images from the web, choose one of the four filters from the advanced search page, find the licensing terms and try to respect them.
8:24PM - Bond panic subsiding?
Wall Street Journal Interest rate on 10-year TreasuriesOver the course of the spring there was a substantial rise in long-term interest rates; it was fed partly by talk of green shoots, but also, I suspect, by all the yelling about deficits and inflation. And, of course, the rise in rates was itself taken as evidence [...]
4:09PM - Systems Engineer (full-time) (Dublin, Ohio)
Afirenet is a strategic solution and service provider in the Columbus,Ohio region. We are seeking a Systems Engineer who will be assigned to various clients throughout the region - assisting with management of installations, migrations and upgrades with a focus on quality customer service. This is an ADDITIONAL position.Responsibilities:
* Perform basic to advanced diagnosis and repair of desktop systems, server systems, and network configurations.
* Perform system management duties.
* Perform installations, migrations, and upgrades.
* Promote company services and best practices.
* Ability to develop & document a comprehensive system management plan for each client including defining various processes and procedures.
* Research new solutions and provide direction for future growth of client's systems.
Desired Technical Experience:
* MS desktop DOS - Win XP, Vista, Office Suite
* MS server operating system - Active Directory, Exchange, SQL, Terminal Services
* Novell administration and client access
* Cisco Routers, Switches
* SAN Infastructure
* Veritas or equivalent backup software
* Firewall technology
* Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition
* Protocols: TCPIP, iSCSI
General Requirements:
Seeking 5+ years IT experience and able to solve wide variety of desktop, server and network issues. Excellent verbal and written skills; excellent organizational skills. Project management experience and Certifications are a big plus. Required BSCE or equivalent experience, along with good communications skills. Position requires traveling to customer sites -- dependable transportation, a valid driver's license & current auto insurance are required.
3:26PM - Project Manager 6061 (Columbus )
UNICON International, Inc. is a top consulting firm in Columbus, Ohio and is dedicated to achieving total client and employee satisfaction. Our clients range from Fortune 500 companies to small and medium sized businesses. We work with companies to help them define and meet their IT needs by providing high quality and competitively priced products and services. If you are interested in working for an organization where honesty, integrity and quality are among the core principles then apply today at UNICON!We are currently accepting resumes for a Project Manager in Columbus, Ohio.
The selected candidate will perform the following duties:
- Oversee and manage the day-to-day tasks for the Automated Title Processing System Rewrite project (ATPSIII)
- Perform project oversight and day-to-day implementation tasks
- Migrate the existing (ATPSII) business functionality; transitioning from Oracle-based to .NET/SQL Server-based architecture
- Train business users on the new system and train internal development staff on new technology
- Develop and implement functionality enhancements
- Employ ongoing project management techniques to ensure a comprehensive project plan is developed, executed, monitored, and maintained
- Train the appropriate project staff in the use of the project management methodology and System Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
- Develop and maintain the project plan
- Develop and maintain a risk management plan, including key risks, constraints, assumptions, planned responses, mitigation steps and any contingencies for each
- Develop and maintain other subsidiary management plans as required
- Log and control open issues and pending decisions
- Attend and present project status at regularly-scheduled status meetings
- Deliver weekly status reports
- Manage the deliverable acceptance process
- Manage the change control process
- Manage or assist in the management of a project budget, as appropriate
- Identify and satisfy the quality standards relevant to the project
Required Skills and Experience:
- 10 years experience working in Information Technology either as a Programmer, Business Analyst or Project Manager
- 6 years experience as a Project Manager within the last 8 years
- 5 years experience in directing and managing major projects including organizing staff, preparing project plans, resource requirements, and coordination with vendors, in a large environment
- 5 years experience analyzing end-user needs and conducting fit gap analysis
- 5 years experience eliciting and defining system and user requirements through observation, interviews, and analysis
- 5 years in coordinating a work-team with demonstrated leadership capabilities
- 2 years experience as a Project Manager on projects employing the PMBOK Project Management Methodology
- Experience as the Project Manager from project initiation through completion on at least one software development or implementation project of at least twelve (12) months duration and involving a minimum of one hundred (100) geographically distributed installation sites
- Experience as a Project Manager on a minimum of one (1) federal, state, or local government project with a minimum of twelve (12) months in duration
- Experience using project management software (e.g. Microsoft Project) to develop and maintain a WBS including a project schedule on a minimum of five (5) projects
- Project Management Professional (PMP) certification from the Project Management Institute
- Training in the following areas: Risk Management, Planning (plan development and execution), Quality Management, Communications Management, Time Management, and Scope Management
- Ability to display a solid understanding of the various components (e.g., network, servers, routers, databases, etc.) of an entire system and discuss how they interact to deliver the completed solution
- Ability to collaborate with supporting resources across business and/or functional lines
- Ability to work independently and as part of a team with the ability to manage time and resources to meet assigned deadlines
- Strong understanding of prioritization stemming from the elicitation of system and/or user requirements
- Excellent oral and written skills and possess strong meeting and work session facilitation skills
- Excellent organizational skills, proven analytical, planning, problem solving, and decision-making skills
Preferred Skills and Experience:
- Experience in risk assessment and mitigation strategies and techniques
- Contractor management and contract administration experience
UNICON offers competitive compensation packages including medical, dental and vision insurance, paid time off and holidays, tuition reimbursement, matching 401k, and more!
UNICON International, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
1:54PM - Spanish Police Foil Remote-Controlled Zeppelin Jailbreak
Sometimes movie plots actually happen:
...three people have been arrested after police discovered their plan to free a drug trafficker from an island prison using a 13-foot airship carrying night goggles, climbing gear and camouflage paint.[...]
The arrested men had setup an elaborate surveillance operation of the prison that involved a camouflaged tent, powerful binoculars, telephoto lenses, and motion detection sensors. But authorities caught wind of the plan when they intercepted the inflatable zeppelin as it arrived from the Italian town of Bergamo.
3:17PM - "Revenge is a dish best served with country accompaniment."
amused3:08PM - Posted using TxtLJ
So Zicam went down in flames. Good. I can't believe homeopathic 'medicine' is allowed on drugstore shelves.
2:46PM - Looking for Important Person (Columbus)
This is a part time job / flexible hrs. Computer Proficient is a + but not required12/ hours - week minimum required
Payment is between $625 and $1250 a week.
Payday is on Friday's only!
For more Details see ------> www.go4it.me
Thank You
his family found records of their execution Ridah fled to the US in 1982 bribing officials for a passport and dropping his last name He graduated with a BA in
6:21PM - Video homobigot of the day - Pastor Leroy Swailes
by Pam SpauldingUPDATE: The transcript is below the fold.
Holy crap, I don’t know how I missed this beauty. During testimony in DC before the Board of Elections and Ethics regarding the District’s law that recognizes out of state marriages (it was upheld), Minister Leroy Swailes comes untethered from reality to condemn homosexuality by invoking pedophilia, bestiality, the anti-Christ, and extermination of the human race (since, of course, homosexuality is anti-human). Via HRC:
”A beast has four legs and one gender. If you put two men together, you have four legs and two penises...that’s one gender—that’s a form of bestiality.”
Hat tip to reader aethersaplings for the mind-blowing transcript:
Now when I, when I was growing up here sex was only between a male and female. Now it’s between Adam and Adam Eve and Eve which I can’t understand. You talk about discrimination and people’s rights. OK. The thing about it is you have rights and you have human rights but you have inhuman rights. If a man get with another man a woman get with another man. That’s it it’s inhuman. So me as a man that deals with the deals with the opposite sex I don’t see how you can put the two together. You have to separate them. Once you separate them that would be discrimination. Cause discrimination’s a negative and a positive. Me as a black men when they discriminated against me I came out of my mother’s womb like I didn’t have a choice. That was a negative discrimination. If you discriminate against a homosexual that’s a positive. Why? Cause of the children. You’ve got people they called pedophiles. Then you got pedophilia. What is pedophilia? It’s when your deception is Adam and Adam Eve and Eve. And you’re going to look in the eyes of a child and you’re going to tell a child that sex is between Adam and Adam Eve and Eve. You become a pedophile.
These books here. These books here. When they talk about King and King. And this and this Prince (unintelligible) Prince is a pedophile book. This book here that says Heather and Heather is a pedophile book. Pedophalia. Pha-Phaillia. This book here that talk about. Daddy’s Roommate? Is a pedophile book. This book here talk about All Families Are Different. Has to do with what? You have, let’s see God’s family which is a natural family. And you have the Anti-Christ family. Either you Christ or you Anti-Christ. Make your decision. Whatcha gonna be? You cannot be both. But if you can look in the eyes of a child and tell a child they have a choice to be hetero heterosexual or homosexual you have a serious problem. And we’re back to discrimination and human rights.
Everybody should have human rights but you have to be human. You and me you deal with the opposite sex. That’s by nature. That’s a blueprint. If there’s a plan there’s a plan. If there’s a design there’s a design. That’s the way the planet was designed. We cannot cha-change the cycle of life. That’s just like oxygen comes from plants. It goes up into the air. It mix with molecules with others in the air. It comes down hit Mother Earth. When they penetrate inserts Mother Earth we have what? What. We have life. Homosexuality’d destroy us. There would be extinction of the human race. If you go back five thousand years and do the research like I have (unintelligible) last culture it was the death of their culture why? Because they gave in to strange sexua sex strange. They gave in to strange flesh. The same sex. Which is a form of bestiality. Why is it a form of bestiality? Because a beast has four legs and one gender. If you put two men together they have four legs and two penises and still one gender. That’s a form of bestiality. That’s what we’re accepting here. If you put Adam Eve and Eve together two vaginas are still one gender. That’s a form of bestiality.
We have to separate it. And when you separate something you’re discrimination. If I put a glass of water here and a glass of poison, which one you’re gonna choose? You’re gonna choose the water. That’s discrimination. If you put a heterosexual girl here and a homosexual girl here I’m going choose a heterosexual. That’s discrimination. Discrimination is a negative and a positive. In order to have a future with our children and everything the word discrimination have to come in. To protect children. I cannot look in the eyes of a child and tell that child you got a choice to be heterosexual or homosexual. That would make me a sadist. So what is a sadist? A sadist is someone that distorts sex. Sex is only between a male and female and somebody comin around and tell you that they’d become a sadist. And I don’t practice Satanism. And we as a city, D.C., we got to realize that you gotta ‘scriminate against something that’s inhuman. Thank you very much.
2:10PM - Upcoming Projects
I have been, it is probably pretty clear, very un-project-oriented for the past year or so; since the revision of The Dedicant Path Through the Wheel of the Year (affectionately known as WotY), I've put nearly all major projects on the back-burner, getting very little done.
Some projects have been finished: the ADF Clergy Training Program Circles 2 and 3 are now written and complete (though my own coursework is not), and the Liturgist Guild Study Program is also very close to "presentation-polished" for the rest of the Guild to look at. These are the result of minor things I did that were helped along amazingly by others, though, in my mind.
As things have become more. . . "normal" at work recently (for a while there it was balls-to-the-wall-day-and-night-what-the-h
- The Fire On Our Hearth (affectionately known as FooH): This is, as many of you know, the Grove's devotional book. We intended to get a "second edition" out around April 1 of this year, and it just. . . didn't happen. Mostly (okay, entirely), this is my fault: see above. But, as I look at a July that's pretty free of festivals and compulsory travel, I think we may be able to finish this out before Summerland, which would be pretty awesome.
- The Chronarchy.Com Store: This was originally going to supplement my income (it already has, to an extent, even though it's not open for business yet), and the stock includes things like portable altars, rune dice, Discordian Furthark dice, actual elder futhark rune sets, sigil dice, Greek divination tiles, and amulets. The issue has been an inability to create the requisite stock to actually open a store (I have a sneaking suspicion that the demand will be highest when it opens, and then it'll drop off). So, materials are prepared, I just haven't managed to make enough dice, rune sets, and altars to actually be comfortable opening the shop. I'd like to manage that soon, but it really requires a weekend without distraction to make three or four sets of any of these things.
- WotY: Edition 3: Since the "new" Dedicant Path handbook came out (sort of) recently, this is creeping up the list of things I need to do. For the most part, I need to update it so that it reflects the page numbers in the "new" DP book, as right now it's still referencing the old DP book. The current WotY outline can remain, of course, but
![[info]](http://www.chronarchy.com/images/userinfo.gif)
Ian Corrigan has brought up an interesting point about it: it could be far less academic and far more of a real "working" document, with ritual texts, meditations, and deeper guidance. This concept excites me, and I honestly very much want to make it something less like a homework schedule and more like a course of spiritual study (though the homework schedule would remain). And this leads me to the next item: - An IP and CTP WotY: Recent discussions about Orders within ADF, the IP work that Ian Corrigan is doing, and some of my own comments about things I'd like to see within the CTP itself have led me into considering a more "as I go through this" sort of approach to a new WotY for the IP and CTP. There's room for as many IP/CTP training documents within ADF as we'd like to create, I think, and the more I think about this, the more excited I become about the whole prospect. This is a real thing in my mind, something that'll happen one of these days. As of now, though, it's partially unstarted, though the notes I'm taking are already taking some shape.
- The Trillium Project: sleepingwolf and I got this started at Trillium, and we've been working to expand it. . . This is likely to be the first project I finish, as I hope to send my part off to him sometime this week, if work doesn't hit the fan again.
So, those are the current projects I'm oriented toward and bringing online. They're all contingent on me continuing to work on my CTP work, and on work staying settled for a bit, but I think they're all doable.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
11:59PM - Testing With "The Force"
Markdown was one of the humane markup languages that we evaluated and adopted for Stack Overflow. I've been pretty happy with it, overall. So much so that I wanted to implement a tiny, lightweight subset of Markdown for comments as well.
I settled on these three commonly used elements:
*italic* or _italic_ **bold** or __bold__ `code`
I loves me some regular expressions and this is exactly the stuff regex was born to do! It doesn't look very tough. So I dusted off my copy of RegexBuddy and began.
I typed some test data in the test window, and whipped up a little regex in no time at all. This isn't my first time at the disco.
Bam! Yes! Done and done! By gum, I must be a genius programmer!
Despite my obvious genius, I began to have some small, nagging doubts. Is the test phrase...
I would like this to be *italic* please.
... really enough testing?
Sure it is! I can feel in my bones that this thing freakin' works! It's almost like I'm being pulled toward shipping this code by some inexorable, dark, testing ... force. It's so seductively easy!
But wait. I have this whole database of real world comments that people have entered on Stack Overflow. shouldn't I perhaps try my awesome regular expression on that corpus of data to see what happens? Oh, fine. If we must. Just to humor you, nagging doubt. Let's run a query and see.
select Text from PostComments where dbo.RegexIsMatch(Text, '\*(.*?)\*') = 1
Which produced this list of matches, among others:
Interesting fact about math: x * 7 == x + (x * 2) + (x * 4), or x + x >> 1 + x >> 2. Integer addition is usually pretty cheap.Thanks. What I needed was to turn on Singleline mode too, and use .*? instead of .*.
yeah, see my edit - change select * to select RESULT.* one row - are sure you have more than one row item with the same InstanceGUID?
Not your main problem, but you are mix and matching wchar_t and TCHAR. mbstowcs() converts from char * to wchar_t *.
aawwwww.... Brainf**k is not valid. :/
Thank goodness I listened to my midichlorians and let the light side of the testing force prevail here!
</form>
So how do we fix this regex? We use the light side of the force -- brute force, that is, against a ton of test cases! My job here is relatively easy because I have over 20,000 test cases sitting in a database. You may not have that luxury. Maybe you'll need to go out and find a bunch of test data on the internet somewhere. Or write a function that generates random strings to feed to the routine, also known as fuzz testing.
I wanted to leave the rest of this regular expression as an exercise for the reader, as I'm a sick guy who finds that sort of thing entertaining. If you don't -- well, what the heck is wrong with you, man? But I digress. I've been criticized for not providing, you know, "the answer" in my blog posts. Let's walk through some improvements to our italic regex pattern.
First, let's make sure we have at least one non-whitespace character inside the asterisks. And more than one character in total so we don't match the ** case. We'll use positive lookahead and lookbehind to do that.
\*(?=\S)(.+?)(?<=\S)\*
That helps a lot, but we can test against our data to discover some other problems. We get into trouble when there are unexpected characters in front of or behind the asterisks, like, say, p*q*r. So let's specify that we only want certain characters outside the asterisks.
(?<=[\s^,(])\*(?=\S)(.+?)(?<=\S)\*(?=[\s$,.?!])
Run this third version against the data corpus, and wow, that's starting to look pretty darn good! There are undoubtedly some edge conditions, particularly since we're unlucky enough to be talking about code in a lot of our comments, which has wacky asterisk use.
This regex doesn't have to be (and probably cannot be, given the huge possible number of human inputs) perfect, but running it against a large set of input test data gives me reasonable confidence that I'm not totally screwing up.
So by all means, test your code with the force -- brute force! It's good stuff! Just be careful not to get sloppy, and let the dark side of the testing force prevail. If you think one or two simple test cases covers it, that's taking the easy (and most likely, buggy and incorrect) way out.
| [advertisement] Interested in agile? See how a world-leading software vendor is practicing agile. |
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
10:18AM - System/Network Administrator (Columbus, OH)
System Administrator responsibilities include:Applying operating system updates and configuration changes.
Installing and configuring new hardware and software.
Performing backups.
Adding, removing, or updating user account information, resetting passwords, etc.
Answering technical queries from users, customers and management. Have strong inter-personal and communication skills: is capable of explaining simple procedures in writing or verbally, has good phone skills.
Responsible for system security to protect against intrusion.
Responsible for documenting the configuration of the system.
Troubleshooting any reported problems.
System performance tuning.
Keeping the server to network connectivity up and running.
Routine audits of systems and software.
Research new vendor technologies.
Requires a minimum of an active secret clearance to be up graded to a top secret.
Windows or Unix experience.
The Newberry Group, Inc. offers competitive salary, benefits, 401(k)/Roth 401(k), training reimbursement, education reimbursement, an on-site testing center, Employee Stock Ownership (100% ESOP), and a career of growth and development.
The Newberry Group, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer – EEO/AA - M/F/D/V
10:12AM - on the sadness of lateness
It makes me sad when I see things I want to do and find that I'm too late to do them.
Like this
Sadly, it's all full and waiting listed. There are other good workshops there, though. I'll just have to keep my eyes open and plan a trip to Ann Arbor in the near future.
Navigate: (Previous 50 friends)