A Beleaguered Conservative in Nor Cal

I'm Elsewhere

2005-05-15T14:50:00.000-07:00

I've moved to a new home. I'm hosting my own blog.

Neural Fusion

Here and There: Nineveh

2004-11-23T01:01:00.000-08:00

3700 years ago a kingdom emerged south of the Kurdish mountains on the Tigris river. Originally, Akkadian, later a Babylonian colony, the kingdom threw off the yoke of the Babylonians. Named after Assur, its first capital city, Assyria was founded.

For about one thousand years, Assyria grew in power. The Assyrians conquered their neighbors with frightful brutality and suppressed revolt with equal violence. When Assyria neared the peak of its power, it became almost customary for the Assyrian army to go out on annual campaigns and fight battles in which prisoners were purposely taken and summarily killed. Peoples which might have proven to be troublesome to Assyria were deported en masse. The best example is Israel. Assyria wiped Israel from the ancient map and deported the Israelis, known today as the Ten Tribes.

Read more at Neural Fusion

Unveiled

2004-11-22T19:31:00.000-08:00

Neural Fusion is officially open. The links work (if you find one that doesn't, please let me know. I would be grateful). The menu is snazzy, if not as sharp as the first one I tried.

I think I did quite well, especially considering how I basically built the damn thing around a name. Curiously, the name was meant to be Neon Brainiac like the URL. Don't ask me how it morphed into Neural Fusion, because I don't recall making that decision. Hip Flask may have done that for me.

Anyhow, I will resume more substantive posting now. I'm going to cheat a little and use my blogger site as a draw for a while. I'll post excerpts of my entries here with the bulk of the post residing at Neural Fusion. If you've linked to me, or bookmarked this site, I'd appreciate it if you would update your bookmarks and links to point to Neural Fusion instead of Beleaguered Conservative.

A Word

2004-11-21T15:55:00.000-08:00

I'm more or less finished with my Neural Fusion project. At least the initialization phase. It's set up and running. It's styled and scripted. I will continue to update my blogger site here, but from now on, all of my title links will be to Neural Fusion which will have images and the like so, make sure you go there to see all the cool geeky gizmos.

I wrote a bit about the philosophy behind Neural Fusion and also detailed some of the steps I took to get it set up. Feel free to check that out.

Neural Fusion has been taking up a lot of my time so I haven't posted much of interest to non-geek people. I'll be posting more substance now.

Finally, I'm curious about netiquette. Is it appropriate to let people know to update their links to reflect my new home (blogger is now my home away from home), or is it pushy? It's certainly not a hassle for me to send out those e-mails.

Quick and Easy Vol. II

2004-11-20T17:40:00.000-08:00

Vol. I was pretty much comprehensive. I installed Movable Type and am now a self-hosted blogger.

I had a few problems with Movable Type, but nothing serious. I'm not going to explain the steps for downloading and installing Movable Type because their instructions are quite adequate.

Most of my problems came from the fact that I tend to glance over the instructions and then carry on as though they were committed to memory. So, I failed to do a couple of things that needed to be completed before Movable Type would function.

The first problem was that the initial login didn't work. I installed the db folder like the instructions said. Then I got a server error and found that I needed to change some file permissions. After that, all was well. I did fuck things up later. I changed the file permissions by accident and couldn't find which ones were not set properly. Since it was early and I had nothing to lose I just re-installed Movable Type and started over.

I have to say it was pretty painless. I've spent most of the day tweaking things to make my blog visually appealing. I suspect that will be sort of an on-going process, but it has gone from protoplasmic slime to at least a reptilian stage of evolution. Ghttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifo check it out.

Neural Fusion

Here We Go Now

2004-11-19T22:43:00.000-08:00

Go ahead and follow the title link. You will see what amounts to the primordial ooze of Neural Fusion, hosted on www.neonbrainiac.nu, by yours truly. I don't have the details of my theme ~~conceived~~ worked out fully. But you can bet it's going to be good.

Will I abandon my blogger? Not likely. At least not for a while. I intend to keep it in the event that I ever get traffic. I have some repeat traffic like Len over at Rite Turn Only and CMN from In Vivo Observations. But I have faith that my little machine can serve up two pages at a time.

More importantly, I've learned a hell of a lot. A second volume on the quick and easy business will be forthcoming. For now I' have to go tinker. Tinkering is always important, you know.

Quick and Easy Web Server Vol I.

2004-11-18T22:28:00.000-08:00

Was I perhaps a bit hasty on the cakewalk comment? We'll see.

I'm working on my little project. Thus far, I've only been testing things to see where I stand.

As I said, I've registered my domain name. I haven't had much time to continue on the project until now. I've now completed some additional steps. I went with a service called Sitelutions because they had a fair number of domains from which to choose and very reasonable prices. I decided to go with a .nu TLD. The dynamic IP service is free.

Once I registered my domain I did nothing for a few days. It takes a while for the information to propogate across the internet, so even though the registration is instant, there's no guarantee I would have been able to do the necessary testing until now.

Anyhow, tonight I started tweaking the applications I will need to have running in order for my site to serve up web pages. Apache is my webserver. It's free and already installed. It also is the server of choice for about 60% of the internet. Anyhow, I also discovered that it will not be necessary to set up BIND or the DNS server because my DDNS service provider has kindly done that for me.

In fact, the only thing I had to do following that was enable Apache.

I did have to test some IP settings and information. Some ISPs don't permit port 80 requests which can be problematic. I don't seem to have that problem. My first question was how to bypass the firewall so that my server can honor web page requests. It's simply a matter of port forwarding. This is a setting that can be adjusted from within the firewall. I access my firewall and instruct it to forward incoming requests on port 80 to the LAN IP address assigned to my server. For what it's worth, things can be arranged so that http requests come in on other ports.

Now that my server is running, and serving up web pages, I have to set up the IP update client to inform my DDNS provider of my IP address as it changes. There are plenty of these clients and they all work in the same way. The problem I'm afraid I'm going to run into is that I will need to retrieve my IP address from the router. In fact, I spent about two hours trying to make this fit into a client I found online, when actually, it may not even be necessary. Moreover, my IP address hasn't changed yet, so everything I've been doing has largely been a waste. Why couldn't I have thought of that sooner? In any case, I will likely be using something called ddclient with secure https. I can set it up as well as I can and pay attention to my IP address so that when it changes I'll be able to determine what more I might need to do to configure my client.

The only thing left for me to do at present (concerning base configuration) is change the runlevel for Apache and my update client. I'll set these to load on boot so should I have to restart I won't have to try to remember what modules need loaded.

Just so you know, I am serving up web pages. I'm hesitant to give out my address yet as I'm still tweaking firewall settings and besides, the only thing you would see is the Apache splash page. But I had my Barbadian friend try it out for me and it is absolutely working. I would say I'm a fucking genius, but I'm all modest and shit, you know.

X-43 Success

2004-11-18T13:14:00.000-08:00

The X-43A was successfully flown for the third time. This is big news because of what the X-43 is. The X-43A is one of two designs for hypersonic aircraft.

These aircraft, the X-43A and Australia's HyShot, use scramjet engines. One of the goals of this project is to achieve hypersonic speed without using rocket engines. A rocket engine carries a fuel and an oxidizer both (LHOX rockets carry hydrogen fuel and oxygen as the oxidizer). Scramjet ramjet engines use atmospheric oxygen as the oxidizer.

Every chemical engine uses a fuel and an oxidizer. For example, an internal combustion engine in your car uses gasoline as fuel and atmospheric oxygen as the oxidizer. Tweaking the ratio of fuel to oxygen makes the engines burn more efficiently. In the internal combustion engine atmospheric air is compressed with pistons which effectively makes the engine burn fuel more efficiently. Rocket engines combine their fuel and their oxidizer in a chamber and direct the exhaust through a nozzel, but they carry everything with them which makes them hopelessly inefficient (and expensive) for most commercial applications. Jet engines work similar to internal combustion engines in that they use atmospheric air as the oxidizer and compress it in a chamber with the fuel. These engines use a turbine to compress the air in the engine. Jet engines are mechanically complex with a lot of moving parts.

The SR-71 Blackbird held speed records for a long time with a top speed of about 2,200 miles per hour. It could only maintain top speed for about and hour before it needed refueling. The SR-71 remained the fastest air-breathing engine in the world until the HyShot and X-43A crashed the party. The X-15 rocket plane flew at Mach 6.7 using a rocket engine. Up till now, rocket planes have held the speed record and only reached about Mach 6. The X-43A hit Mach 9.7 and could theoretically reach Mach 24, though there is a lot of debate on this point.

The X-34A uses a scramjet engine. Scramjet engines have no moving parts like turbines or pistons. The engine is aerodynamically designed to created a high pressure zone inside the engine where it burns fuel and creates thrust. The forward velocity of the aircraft compresses air forced through narrow pipes. The air reacts with fuel and the exhaust powers the aircraft forward. Combustion takes place at supersonic velocities within the chamber. Scramjets are preferable to ramjets because ramjets have a much lower maximum speed limit. Ramjets actually slow the air down inside the engine and then reaccelerate the air.

Scramjets have enormous potential. Scramjets powering commercial aircraft mean more flights in less time. People will be able to fly from New York to Sidney in a couple of hours. A conventional flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles could take more time than a scramjet flight from San Francisco to Boston. If one of Ace's Y-Wings is outfitted with a scramjet, our Air Force could chase down ballistic missiles. An anti-missile missile system is no longer necessary because we'll have an anti-missile Y-Wing Interceptor Fleet. Scramjets also hold potential for affordable space access. Scramjets could do a significant portion of the work it takes to accelerate a craft to escape velocity, cutting down on the amount of fuel needed for launch.

I'm putting a scramjet on my Christmas wish list.

Urban Islands. But First. . .

2004-11-16T18:18:00.000-08:00

A word from your humble host. I'm presently installing Linux on my soon-to-be blog host. I see no need to go into much detail about this as it is fairly straightforward. The only thing I specifically changed from the default settings was the network packages which I added to the install list. So, when YAST is finished, I will have all of the networking software I need to turn my machine into a mighty web hosting device. Enough geekery though.

Normally this link (obtained via Drumwaster) would be the title link, but since I'm lazy and spent the first paragraph on my own personal business I'll link it here. Urban Archipelago. This one got under my skin.

The fellow spends an ungodly amount of time telling the world how the cities in America are put upon and how they will change the political landscape of America. The accusations of ignorance and stupidity generally amuse me. In spite of a lack of formal tertiary schooling, I would absolutely describe myself as well-educated. For Christ's sake, I read the likes of Aristotle and Voltaire for fun! When these yahoos accuse me and my fellow conservatives of ignorance I can tolerate it with good humor. But this particular article wallows in ignorance like a pig in its own shit. I think it's only fair to turn the tables.

Ignorance is technically defined as a lack of information or knowledge. After reading this post, I can only assume that the authors have no knowledge of America.

The city, they claim, is the ideal of Americana. I suppose the root of their argument is the idea that America is a melting pot and nowhere moreso than in urban centers which generally have a larger immigrant population. But they fail to account for historical traditions.

In cities lies the strength of the Liberals. The maps are their evidence. I'm not one to argue with the evidence. Certainly, the cities were the strength of the Democrats in this election. Subsequently, they argue that by making cities more attractive, they will attract more people who will become more Liberal, and presto changeo, they've gained political control of the future of America.

Expanding public transportation and building affordable housing are important concepts in their arguments. Since when is the American Dream to live in a nondescript apartment in a boring apartment complex on the corner of a block of identical concrete buildings? When did the American Dream become a 6:00 a.m. commute on a train packed cheek by jowl with grumpy, sweaty, frustrated souls?

It's not, and it hasn't. The American Dream is to own a pretty little house in a quiet little neighborhood with a three car garage full of three cars. Editors don't care much for the suburbs because they tended more towards the conservative end of things. But they forget that the suburbs exist because people don't like cities. They want to escape from the madness, the rudeness, the pushing, the shouting, the traffic, and the concrete. They want a patch of grass to call their own, they want to at least have the illusion of freedom, and a view of the hill even if they never see what lies on the other side.

Editors seem to have be ignorant of our history. Americans are traditionally nomads. Our ancestors uprooted themselves from Europe to move to America because they were being told what to do, how to behave and what to believe. In America they had an opportunity to escape. When they arrived they had before them an almost limitless expanse of land over which they could spread. There is an anecdote dating from the early 1800s (possibly earlier) where a family moves to the wilderness far from any towns or neighbors. They were entirely self-sufficient entirely unregulated, and happier than ticks in a pigs ear. When they saw smoke rising from a chimney on the next hill the father said the neighborhood was getting too crowded. So, they packed up and moved farther into the wilderness. The very thing that made America magical was the enormous expanse of land. People could own farms and ranches and not be bothered by neighbors or rules or nannies. This freedom was so captivating to Americans that it became our Manifest Destiny to spread across the entire continent from sea to shining sea.

Cities became more important (they have always been important as centers of commerce, of trade). People to the cities because there was greater economic opportunity. But their heart was not in the city. Around the turn of the century when automobiles became widely available and affordable people took to them instantly. Here was an escape from the city, from the chains of public transportation. For at that time American cities had public transportation systems that were the envy of the world. Once the car hit the scene, Americans immediately realized that they now had a way out, even if it was only for a short time. They could go where they wanted, when they wanted. It was the personal automobile that gave birth to the suburb. People didn't have to live within city limits and rely on public transportation. Americans, by and large, are nomadic, and are certainly mobile. Editors believe they can tempt Americans away from our automobiles, but they are a symbol of our freedom. Punishing car owners for their ownership will drive people away from cities.

I would comment on the health care and minimum wage issue, but the fellows over at Drumwaster did so admirably. They also mentioned how the red states are growing more quickly than the blue ones. I'm fairly confident that a lot of that red state growth comes from blue state emigration. There are a great many people living in cities who don't particularly want to be there. Modern technology is making the city obsolete. A great deal of service jobs don't have to be located at the company site. Hell, we employ God knows how many Chinese and Indians and Hong Kongians. Telecommuting may prove to be as transformational to the American city cityscape as did the automobile. That's pure speculation.

There's one thing that kills me. One thing makes me absolutely fucking insane. These bastards in their "shining cities" brag about how they aren't going to give a rat's ass about the people in the red states. The rubes and fools living in the "shithole" that is called Wyoming might not much care for their idea. Sure, there are only about 500,000 people in the entire state (fewer than live in Contra Costa County), but these 500,000 people produce the coal that they will want to power their precious cities. Suppose we don't give it to them? They'll switch to Uranium? Well Wyoming might have something to say about that too. Wyoming has the largest Uranium reserves in the country. When they want natural gas for their buses on whom shall they rely? Baking soda for toothpaste, the refrigerator and all its other uses? Who produces the concrete used in the construction of their delightful apartment buildings? When the fuckers want to 'get away from it all' where do they go? To Yellowstone and Jackson Hole. Well, if they want to be islands, more power to them. But they can get their fucking energy from somewhere else. They can push the buses up the San Francisco hills and they can breed gerbils to power their coffee machines. They can huddle in the cracks formed in their decrepit concrete buildings and starve. Because when they come to Wyoming demanding their coal (burned cleanly please) and their uranium (non-radioactive) and their gypsum, they'll find a whole mess of angry "rubes" armed to the tits standing on the border. And I'll be right there with my 30.06. And when they're hungry, to whom will they turn? Nebraska and Oklahoma and Kansas and Texas might not be so pleased to hand over their agricultural delights to these self-righteous bastards. And they're likely as well armed as the "fools" in Wyoming. The red staters aren't the fools. These people are the fools if they believe they can monopolize the American people. They will alienate the conservatives and the fence-sitters with their socialist agenda and send them into the welcoming arms of the people who produce the raw materials that feed their mindless consumption.

Then they will not only be islands, they will be islands adrift.

A Brief Note

2004-11-16T13:56:00.000-08:00

I spent a couple of hours on a post yesterday and was quite pleased with myself when Internet Explorer suffered a catastrophic failure. I've used Internet Explorer for quite some time and you would think by now that I would know to prepare for such an eventuality. Well, I never need to use IE again. I now have Firefox, Netscape, and soon I will have Konqueror. You hear that Microsoft! I'm finished with ya! Done!

Anyhow, I'm trying to re-write that particular post. In addition, my little project is moving forward. There will likely be a fair amount of technical sorts of things being posted. This evening, I will blow out my Windows installation and replace it with Linux. That process takes a couple hours, but fortunately, I'll be able to entertain myself with my other machine during the install.

Here's hoping Murphy's Law is on vacation tonight.

Scramble For Power

2004-11-13T13:14:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I'm a little late sharing my two cents on Arafat.

It's a shame they didn't burn the body and bury the ashes in an old boot.

Over the next few weeks we will see the Palestinians prepare for an election. Palestine is not unified in any way. The various factions at work in Palestine will maneuver for advantage over their opponents. Each faction thinks it can best fill the vacuum left by Arafat.

Arafat of course was the face of Palestine. His grasp on power was not due to his leadership abilities so much as it was his bank account and his fame. As a leader, he never evolved beyond the role of guerilla war lord. Arafat siphoned billions of dollars away from the Palestinian people and invested it in what amounts to shelters outside the control of Palestine. His wife Suha is now a very wealthy woman and the Palestinian people are no less destitute. He maintained his influence among the Palestinian factions by buying their cooperation. This article gives some idea of his shady fiscal policies.

I wrote in a previous post that Arab politics have historically been characterized as a mad scramble for absolute power and Palestine is a prime example of that. Yassir Arafat out-scrambled his oponents. He became the international face of Palestine and was legitimized by that recognition. He placed himself in a very lucrative financial position and thus became the leader of the Palestinian people both by hook and by crook.

It remains to be seen what the upcoming elections will look like. Here is some information on those who will likely be in the running.

Mahmoud Abbas AKA Abu Mazen was the first Palestinian Prime Minister. He strikes me as being perhaps the best choice for Palestinian President and the least likely to win. Abbas conflicted with Arafat from day one of his appointment to the post of Prime Minister (likely realizing it was an empty post and that Arafat didn't mean for him to actually have any power). He disagreed with Arafat over the use of violence in the Palestinian bid for statehood and at least appears to desire a peaceful solution. I do not think Palestinians will vote for a candidate who isn't prepared to take a hard line approach to Israel.

Ahmed Qureia has also been a relative moderate in Palestinian terms and has been deeply involved in arriving at a peaceful solution to the Palestinian conflict. On the other hand, I think it likely that if one desired to know a bit more about the theft of Palestinian dollars by Arafat, this might be the fellow to ask. If he is elected as the Palestinian president, it will most likely be because he holds certain purse strings.

Jibril Rajoub is an interesting character. If Ahmed Qureia is the purse strings guy, this one might be the gestapo guy. His election would not likely mean much of a change in the political stance of Palestine. Rajoub's actions towards Israel have been as conflicting as Arafat's were. Likely he would continue to give tacit support to Fatah's extremist wing. He has a great deal of knowledge of the other extremist groups in Palestine such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad and probably has little support from those groups because of his record of opposing them in favor of Fatah groups. He is not popular because on a couple of occasions he has saved his own skin at the expense of other Palestinians. He has worked with Israeli and American intelligence agencies, and I think that will count against him. If he wins it will be because he can silence the Hamas and Islamic Jihad factions.

Hani Al Hassan is not a well-documented fellow. He appears to have risen to power by being a toady. Most of what I find about him comes from snippets of news articles. Hani Al Hassan seems to have managed to mostly avoid any notice while still climbing the political ladder in the Palestinian Authority. Al Hassan most recently served as Arafat's national security advisor and seems to have been a confidant. There's something to be said for loyalty though there does seem to be evidence that he was building his own support base while serving with Arafat. It's difficult to say what his chances are at being elected since there is little hard information on him. I do find that he does not seem far different (politically) from Arafat and has said he supports suicide bombings against Israeli settlers and was a supporter of the intifada. He first achieved note by merging his own faction with Fatah. I think it not unlikely that he could find a way to be elected though he has faced opposition and it was due to Arafat's protection that he kept a position of power.

Nabil Shaath was Arafat's Foreign Minister. He seems to have made out nicely in the financial department and is quite wealthy. Palestinians seem to think his money was not accumulated in an honest fashion (Golly, that would be, like, unheard of right?). Nabil Shaath has been rumored to be the brains behind Arafat's power. He has proven to be a canny negiotiator and is accustomed to Western politics. With the death of Arafat, he may well be the most recognizable Palestinian in the world due to his position, and has the potential to gain Arafat's title as the face of the Palestinian people. His personal fortune is another brick in his wall because depending on the extent of his wealth, he could buy support using Arafat's method of giving certain people the keys to a numbered account. He is accused of corruption and I think is not likely to be popular with Palestinian leadership. He has participated in negotiations for several of the various peace plans, but also seems to be much more hard-line than most of the previous candidates. Jewish sources say he has "seething hatred" for Ariel Sharon. He is prominent and well known, wealthy, and may win votes if Palestinians are not convinced his negiotiating means that he is weak and an appeaser to the Israelis.

Mohammad Dahlan is a very curious character. He is fairly well known and it is said that he was second in actual power only to Arafat. Dahlan was a valuable ally to Arafat and served as Chief of Preventive Security among other things. He was directly responsible for the first intifada. Dahlan seems to be an effective leader and motivates people to his benefit. He is popular with American and Israeli leaders and has been noted for opposing corruption in Arafats cabinet. It's possible that he was responsible for some assassinations of people close to Arafat but who were known to be thieves and such. He will face some serious opposition from Hamas and Islamic Jihad because he was charged with disarming them. Theories have been bandied about that he could possibly arrange a coup in Gaza and effectively be the leader of that piece of land. I think he was loyal to Arafat, but without Arafat, he certainly has the ability to motivate people to his cause. His ties with America and Israel will likely count against him as well as his action against certain terrorist groups. On the other hand, he has shown his charisma and leadership ability and the reforms he has pressed are not unpopular among Palestinians. Dahlan has an excellent chance.

Marwan Barghouti is a popular choice. He's presently serving five life sentences plus forty years in an Israeli prison for murder and terrorism. He's the most obviously militant of the candidates. He was instrumental in both intifadas. Barghouti was the leader of Tanzim and the Al Aqsa Martyr Brigade. Under his leadership Tanzim was remade to resemble the terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Barghouti is popular because of his militant stance against Israel. Our beloved media thinks that if he is elected Israel will be obligated to release him from prison. I do not believe Arial Sharon will give in to such pressure on behalf of a convicted murderer. If he is elected, I think it likely he will be directly at odds with Dahlan. If he is elected and remains in prison it is even more likely that Dahlan will be the de facto leader of Palestine from his power base in Gaza.

Get Your Shares Now

2004-11-12T13:45:00.000-08:00

Follow the title link to see how my value has skyrocketed.

Hobbying Revisited

2004-11-12T13:30:00.000-08:00

My little project is underway. I did some homework and found the means by which I can set up my Linux box as a web server without arranging for a static IP address. It turns out there's a whole mess of companies who provide that service. Dynamic DNS (as the idea is called) is relatively big business.

Would you like to know more? I thought so. It seems that for the past few years the internet has been running out of those unique little monikers called IP addresses. IP addresses are basically unique names for computers comprised of a series of numbers like this: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx. IP addressing is fairly complex, but the details aren't really important. What is important is that every computer on the internet needs a unique handle which then allows other computers to find it and talk to it. Static IP addresses are IP addresses which are assigned to certain computers and which are static (they don't change). Static IP addresses are usually used by servers or computers which need to be found readily by large numbers of computers.

Dynamic IP addresses are addresses which are changed with some frequency. Internet users usually have a dynamic IP address which is assigned when they log on to their service provider. It doesn't really matter if you have the same IP address everytime you get on the internet because you are usually searching for other computers which don't necessarily need to find you. If you do need to be found you can usually determine your current IP address and share it with others. Dynamic IP addresses have given our current Internet Protocol a bit of longevity. The idea is that not everybody who has internet access will be online at the same time. So if IP addresses are recycled and reused everytime somebody terminates their connection to the internet, ISPs will effectively have a greater number of IP addresses. We are reaching the limits of IPv4. You will be releived to know that IPv6 is just around the corner and will effectively give us an unlimited number of unique IP addresses. Some things already use IPv6.

Anyhow, since I have a dynamic IP address I would have to update the internet everytime my IP address is refreshed so people would know where to find my site. That's not a reasonable proposition. So instead, I will use Dynamic DNS. A Dynamic DNS is a server with a static IP address. When I register my domain name I will give the registrar the name servers of the Dynamic DNS service provider of my choosing. I will also download a client which will notify my service provider's computer of changes to my IP address. When a user requests my page it will be directed to my Dynamic DNS provider which will subsequently redirect the user to my server. I suspect there will be somewhat greater latency than if I had a static IP address, but I don't think it will be significant.

Bandwidth is really the only thing concerning me. My cable connection is severely limited in terms of bandwidth. But, I'm excited when my stats log double digit hits in one day. Ten and up makes me ecstatic. If my visitors become more numerous I'll maybe consider a third party host.

Which reminds me. The cable guy is coming on Tuesday to plug me in. I was obligated to pay for the professional installation which is about $50. It kills me to have to pay that. They only provide installation for Windows and Mac. I'm not going to be using either. So, I'm paying these folks fifty bucks to come set up a computer which I will subsequently format and rebuild as a Linux server. What a rip.

My tasks will then be:

1. Select a Dynamic DNS provider.
2. Register a domain name.
3. Download and install Movable Type.
4. Brag about my accomplishment.

Stay tuned for the setup edition. It may or may not be family friendly depending on how smoothly the Linux setup goes. But, for anybody interested in trying this themselves, I will do my best to post the steps I follow as I set up FTPD, Apache, BIND, an e-mail server, and the Firewall. And of course, Movable Type. And the IP updater client. And MySQL. Should be a cakewalk.

The Incredibles

2004-11-12T13:20:00.000-08:00

I saw the Incredibles at the theatre (matinee of course. I only had money left over for a small popcorn.).

It was quite good though it wasn't what I expected. The visuals were spectacular. The voice acting was excellent.

What was unexpected was the sophistication. There was a whole mess of kids in the theatre and when the film ended, I think the kids were a little disappointed but the adults certainly liked it. The humor was fairly subtle and the plot was kind of mundane, so it was less specifically aimed at children.

I would call it Simpsonesque in that it was centered on a socially conservative premise, that being the importance of a strong nuclear family. There was also a point made about folks being stuck in boring dead-end jobs when there are other more alluring possibilities they could pursue.

It was an excellent movie and it will be added to my collection.

To Our Veterans

2004-11-11T14:21:00.000-08:00

Thank you. That flag still flies over the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Hobbying

2004-11-10T15:04:00.000-08:00

I'm considering setting up my own website. Not only am I considering setting up my own website (I've designed a built a few for other people), I'm considering hosting it myself on a Linux server. Considering my traffic will not likely be overwhelming whelming, a simple broadband cable connection would be sufficient for my purposes. I have a professional Linux install disk(s) complete with firewall, DHCP server, Apache, FTP server, MySQL server, and SMTP server. Movable Type has a free version (provided I don't care to commercialize my little project).

The main hurdle is monetary. It's not that the cost is prohibitive. My only expenses would be domain registration and the Comcast bill. At most I'm looking at a few hundred bucks. The problem with the money thing is that I'm a cheapskate.

Technical hurdles to overcome? Well, I don't think I'm willing to pay Comcast for a static IP address (I don't know, but I suspect it costs more), though having a static IP address simplifies things. It's not a problem exactly since I know it's possible for a web server to have a dynamic IP address, I just have to figure out how that works. I don't know how much I need to know about MySQL and SQL, but what I do know would fit in your eye (which I'm fairly certain is not enough). Also, I don't know a whole hell of a lot about the specifics of security settings in Linux. There will be a learning curve as I figure out how one uses Movable Type. None of this will cost me much sleep (except that I'll likely be up till all hours of the night tweaking it out of sheer curiosity). And there's that little Perl thing about which I know nothing.

I'm actually in a good place to start this little project. I have two computers. I think both are capable of hosting my project. One is about five years old. It's a dual processor Pentium III (450 mHZ) with 512 Mb RAM. It's no great shakes anymore, but it is certainly capable of functioning as a Linux webserver (at least for my needs). The other is my new computer I just built it this year and I built it specifically as a server of sorts (I couldn't afford the Xeon chip). It's a Pentium IV 3.2 gHZ Prescott chip with 512 Mb Ram a 200 GB SATA hard drive and an on-board giga-lan NIC (that's 1000 Mb ethernet transfer).

I posted a while back about my attempt to set Linux up as a sort of intranet server (for fun). It was with decidedly mixed results, though that's more a result of the fact that I wanted it to serve up web pages, assign IP addresses, serve e-mail, and FTP as well as function as a file and print server. The mixed result comes from the fact that I was never entirely able to get my Windows machines to recognize it as a file server and it was forever eating my printer. The DHCP server, Apache server and FTP server were working properly when I decided to wipe out the whole mess and start something new. So, I also have the basic knowledge I need to set up my server. It'll take a little more effort to get my security settings where they need to be.

One other thing is I don't particulary want to be a dot com or dot org. Dot info might be okay. I find the regulation of domain suffixes terribly frustrating. There's the cost trade-off too. I look at dot nu registrars and it costs 30 Euros per year. I look at the dot com registrars and it costs as little as $10 per year. Dot be and dot cc are not so expensive. They look to be country suffixes. Where, I wonder?

Where do I stand? I'm pretty set against dot com, dot org, etc. So, I'll figure on 60 Euros for two years of domain registration whether it's dot nu or something else. Movable Type is free (for my purposes). I can set up my own internet connection so it'll be somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 per month for my internet access. I need to do a little research to figure out how to configure things for a dynamic IP address. Not too shabby I guess. Now I just have to figure out if the project is that appealing. I certainly think it would be fun and interesting. At worst my loss is 60 Euros. I think it would be entirely worthwhile. So actually, now I just have to open the wallet.

I guess we'll see.

UPDATE
These people are responsible for the lack of desirable domain suffixes. I don't think I want to help them out. Thus, should I pursue this, I will be registering a domain that is not within their purvue.

A Brief History of Warfare

2004-11-10T11:04:00.000-08:00

Five thousand years ago, soldiers were basically infantry. They were foot soldiers armed with swords, spears, possibly bows and arrows. For a few thousand years, wars were fought hand to hand between great armies meeting on the field of battle. This form of warfare remained largely unchanged for thousands of years until Romans developed the more flexible and adaptable legion. Pikemen were arrayed in a rectangular formation with a strong forward position but weak flanks. Archers were used to defend the flanks and attack the enemy as it charged the phalanx. The phalanx worked because an enemy was practically assured of defeat if they were unable to flank the column.

The phalanx became somewhat more vulnerable around 1600 b.c. The horse (though too small at that time to be ridden for any duration) was capable of pulling a cart. The cart we know as the chariot. This innovation came to the civilized part of the world from Asia. The Hyksos are probably the most well known. They invaded Egypt and conquered the Egyptians handily. They were far more mobile than the clumsy Egyptian phalanx and easily flanked or surrounded the Egyptian infantry. Not only did the invading Hyksos bring the chariot to Egypt, they brought the compound bow which had greater range and stopping power than the typical longbows used up to that time.

The legion was one of the next innovations in soldiering. The Roman legion was a new organization of soldiers. They were more adaptable on the battlefield and responsive to changing tactics during battle. The legion was divided into various groups which had their respective commanders. The legion remains to this very day, though it is evolving.

The cavalry was also an important addition to soldiering, but it was only in the 6th or 7th century that it became truly effective. The invention of the saddle and the stirrup were what made the cavalry truly formidable. The Mongols brought the cavalry to the rest of the world in a fearsome campaign. The Mongol cavalry (which was practically their entire army) were so effective that they conquered most of the world from China to the Middle East and on to Europe. The Mongols were able to attack from a distance with their compound bows and harass enemy armies with impunity. The Mongols also understood the need for timely information. They maintained ranged scouts which rode around the main force and were able to quickly report information on enemy forces to the generals.

At the time of the Mongol invasion, the most powerful defensive force in the world was the Byzantine army. They were in decline and the Byzantines were primarily interested in maintaining their empire rather than expanding. They used a heavy cavalry unit called the cataphract which was a heavily armed and armored cavalry unit. In defense they were nearly undefeatable. Due to poor generalling, the Mongols were able to draw the Byzantine cataphracts into offensive military actions where they were destroyed. The Europeans did not quickly learn the lessons they needed to defeat the Mongols. We can only be thankful the Mongol empire fragmented when it did.

Roughly at the same time the Mongol's were rising to power, there was a group of Muslim's in Afghanistan or northern Iran who were the first recorded group of special forces known. These were the Hashshashim (assassins). They were used mostly by Muslims to kill Muslim leaders who were viewed as usurpers. Their services could also be purchased. The Mongols actually destroyed the sect, though remnants exist to this very day.

The Europeans more or less stagnated for about a thousand years after the Roman Legion came about. They developed the knight which dominated European warfare until gunpowder came around. War in Europe was mostly a matter of defense. Castles were practically impregnable until the cannon was developed to batter down the walls. So, while there was nearly constant warfare, things were just traded back and forth between warring nations. What is a curious thought is that the knights were a priveleged warrior class of nobility and kings gave them land and peasants to pay for the expense of their training and their armaments. This fact colors social structures in Europe to this very day. The citizens of Europe continue to believe that the priveleged class exists to protect them and it remains their duty to support them.

It's also worth noting that the French clung to the ideal of the charging knight long after it was no longer the most effective battle tactic. The English developed a more powerful bow which was capable of punching through armor at several hundred yards and much faster than the crossbow. They also had a few generals who figured novel ways to use their archers against the charging column of enemy soldiers. Several French armies suffered destruction over the course of centuries because they could not let go of the romanticized notion of the charging knight.

Armor became worse than useless after the gun was invented since an armored soldier was a large and slow moving target (even for the inaccurate weapons of the time) and fighting a defensive war from behind the walls of a castle was also a poor idea since cannon could simply beat down the walls and the invading army could sack the joint. The Legion was still fairly important but instead of marching directly into hand to hand combat columns of soldiers would face one another across a battlefield and fire into one another's ranks until they had to resort to hand to hand combat. This was the standard battle tactic pretty much up until the end of World War II. A couple of notable exceptions are the American Revolution and the French and Indian War.

During the Revolution, Americans could not hope to prevail in pitched battles against the British Army. Americans waged a guerilla war against the British soldiers and though they did relatively poorly, all things considered, they won the war of attrition and the British had to give up because they could no longer foot the bill, and had more pressing matters concerning them in Europe (and Americans did finally win some decisive battles). The French and Indian War might be called a mutual guerilla war and as far as I can tell, neither side actually won.

The Civil War was more of a return to standard battle tactics. It's intereresting to study the military history of the Civil War. Both sides fought not to lose until General Grant was tapped by the Union. Grant fought to win while General Lee continued to fight not to lose. Lee's strategy was aimed at maneuvering the Union army into a position where it would be forced to surrender rather than at destroying the Union army. We should be thankful General Lee was the commander of the Confederate Army rather than Stonewall Jackson.

Anyhow, soldiering in the Civil war was not so different from soldiering in 18th Century Europe, the only real exceptions being the accuracy and destructive power of the weapons.

The same holds mostly true throughout the 19th and more than half of the 20th centuries. The effects of World War I and II, Vietnam, and Korea was to teach us that the indiscriminate application of military firepower was too destructive. It was that which precipitated the Cold War. While it was worth any cost to defeat Hitler's Nazism, it was clear that victory would be pyrrhic because the physical damage would be so monstrous. Images of the unimaginable power of our weaponry lost America the Vietnam war. It was at roughly that time that the U.S. began to realize that we needed a new military strategy. We could handily win almost any conflict with overwhelming force, but the price was more than Americans were willing to bear.

It has only been in the last 20 odd years that a new overarching military strategy has been pursued (things don't happen rapidly in a bureaucracy after all). We still rely on overwhelming force, but the key is focused targeting. Instead of carpet bombing a suspicious activity zone, we can drop a couple of smart bombs within a few yards of their specific target. Special forces units can quietly collect and transmit GPS information. Commanders and soldiers are trained to think and react to changing conditions effectively. Ours is the first Information Age army and operations are reliant on flexible special forces and a flood of information transmitted by satellite.

What is most interesting is that as much as things have changed, they've stayed the same. The Apache and the Joint Strike Fighter are our ranged attackers (formerly archers), the Tank is our chariot, the Hummer our cavalry, and Land Warrior our newly designed cataphract (though with far more powerful offensive capabilities).

State Visits

2004-11-09T11:50:00.000-08:00

The title link takes you to the Gleeful Extremist who says:

"Play along with a hypothetical I like to think about from time to time:

Suppose you were just elected president for your first term instead of George Bush for his second. One of the things that new presidents have to figure out quickly -- and something that is given a lot of weight by our allies -- is which countries to visit first."

1. I agree with his first choice. A visit to Iraq would send a powerful message about our commitment to the future of that country.

2. I'm going to cheat a little here and visit two nations, Poland and Estonia. These former Eastern Bloc nations are still testing the waters of democracy and free market capitalism. I think they have more potential for growth at this point than Western Europe and the U.S. would do well not only to thank them for their contribution to the War on Terror but to reach out to them politically and economically.

3. India would be next on the agenda. India is slightly ill at ease with America because of our support for Pakistan during the Cold War. I think it's time we bridged that divide. Pakistan is somewhat important to us now because they are in a position to help us hunt down Osama. However, I don't have faith that there are few enough militant Islamic factions in Pakistan to make them a worthwhile long-term ally (ally might be too generous, how about coincidental cohort?). Besides, I wrote before that European nations are loosing relevance in the world and the focus of world events is shifting to the Pacific. In that area, China and India are the two with the greatest potential.

4. Australia to further consolidate our presence in the Pacific, and to give them due respect for their friendship.

5. This is a difficult slot to fill. Israel occurs to me because we would affirm our support of democracy in the Middle East and our stance against extremism. Japan also seems a good possibility because they too have been allies and would doubly serve as additional consolidation of the Pacific. But, I think the Phillipines might be the best visit. They're waffling in their commitment to the war on terror. I think if we strengthened our economic and political ties with them and gave them assistance with battling their own Muslim terrorists in the south, they would be more resolved to fighting with us. I also think they have a great deal of economic potential in the Asian Pacific.

The UK has certainly been an ally, but I think they are drifting away from the US and given the vigorous nature of the protests surrounding President Bush's previous visits, I don't think we can hope that a presidential visit will shift public opinion in the UK in our favor.

Canada and Mexico aren't on the list for the same reason they aren't on Gleeful's list. Add to that, Mexico's attempt to block the death penalty for that murderer in Oklahoma.

Turkey was another possibility that crossed my mind, but I think they're too politically unpredictable to be worth cultivating as allies in the War.

I suppose a visit to France would be unavoidable. I would go to Normandy.

Consume Less, You Greedy Bastards!

2004-11-08T16:16:00.000-08:00

The title link takes you to an article in Le Monde. I found the link here at Andrew Boucher's blog.

The French author bemoans the fact that the U.S. dollar has been allowed to devalue against the Euro. I think this fact has been in large part to thank for the U.S. economic recovery. The greenback's devaluation makes American products more desirable by driving their cost down.

Eric The Butcher (Babelfish translation) says it's not fair and that the U.S. must agree to consume less or save more, thereby inflating the dollar's value and approaching equity with the Euro.

It doesn't seem to occur to him that maybe Europe needs to reassess it's ecnomoic policies. They're facing a Catch 22 because anything they do will have major impact on the welfare state. Since they can't change, we must.

I think not.

Wow

2004-11-08T15:47:00.000-08:00

Just. . . wow.

Some Follow-up Stuff

2004-11-08T13:20:00.000-08:00

Consider me amazed. The Democrats lost the Presidential race. They lost seats in both the House and the Senate. One would think this would be a time for them to look at themselves and maybe reconsider their strategy and their platform.

Nah, instead they accuse Americans of stupidity. And they figure if they pick a different horse they'll do better next time. No more patrician Senators from the Northeast. It doesn't seem to occur to them that maybe Americans don't have any faith in their policies.

Of course the only reason that could be true is if Americans were stupid and uninformed. Which is obviously the case since President Bush remains our President for another ten years.

In reading the post-election analysis and news I have to say I think the Democrats have been hijacked by the far left. I suppose the media buys into it because it makes for a good soundbite. But it remains that all the comments voiced by American liberals are the same ones we hear coming out of Europe:

I think it's terrible that we have to put up with the biggest imbecile in the world four more years. Congratulations to the ignorant and illiterate; their votes do count.

Consider that in the US they don't have the same information that there is in Europe, they don't have the same values, they bring them up thinking that they live in the world and that the rest of the countries are other planets, that guns are things a bank can give away for opening an account, and above all a country that chooses its leaders in a dictatorial way...black or white, two candidates at 50% each, and then whoever governs does it alone and they do what he says...what's the difference with a dictatorship?

I found the quotes at Iberian Notes. It likely will find a place to the left. You can read more comments there.

Anyhow, the similarity is striking. American Democrats are our very own home grown socialists. Sure they dress it up as social democracy, but it's still socialism and Americans quite frankly don't much like it. What I find curious is that I think this group is not so powerful or large. The problem is that this group is the most vociferous and visible. And the more moderate groups of Democrats won't tell them to get stuffed. I think that sours a lot of Americans on the Democrats. Perhaps not so much as being called ignorant though.

Which raises an interesting question. Why do American Democrats think over half of America is stupid? Other than that they lost, I mean.

Europeans simply don't understand Americans. The incredulity I find in what Europeans say about our election result says so as loudly as though they spelled it out. Our vote strikes them as being irrational and thus we could have only voted in such a way if we were stupid. Or crazy.

I think they also don't have much of a grasp of our political system. Populism isn't hugely important to European democracies. Our electoral college is confounding even to a lot of Americans. I think at the very root of things, they don't understand what our Constitution means to us.

American liberals on the other hand don't have that handicap. They grew up in America, learned American history (heh), and theoretically hold to the same values as every other American. And in my experience that is true. Living where I do the vast majority of people I know are Democrats and they vote for Democrats. The thing is in everyday dealings with them they are American to the core.

So it is, I have to think that the Democratic party (which has always been more socialist than the Republicans) are not appropriately represented by the howlers we see on TV. Unfortunately, those howlers tend to be the leaders in the Democratic party and are the ones Democrats tend to emulate.

The Republicans have a fair majority in Congress and we hold the Presidency. Unless something startling happens between now and 2008, I don't see how that is likely to change then. The Democrats have to distance themselves from the fringe groups.

Stupid God Damn Rednecks

2004-11-05T13:00:00.000-08:00

We ignorant dimwits don't even know enough to come in out of the rain I guess.

But at least we have these wise and rational sort of folks to help us see the light.

Thanks to Protein Wisdom and American Digest.

Vindication of a Return To Morality

2004-11-04T13:32:00.000-08:00

I wrote this back in April when I was still at Tblog. I'm reposting here because according to exit polls, a plurality of voters cited morality as their primary consideration when voting.

For some time I've been noticing gravitation away from values and towards morality. In fact, it began when I considered my own philosophies and motivations as a member of Generation X. I see little things, like young people my own age complaining about the behavior of children and their lack of discipline (I was a holy terror for a good while. My folks weren't afraid to use the belt when it was warranted). Television programming is tending towards the innocuous and away from the scandalous. The business-suited professional is emerging as something of a pop-icon.

Values are purely arbitrary. To value a thing is to hold it in a degree of esteem according to a personal scale of worth. One can never hold one's values as superior to those of another. Thus a parent who values a child's freedom of expression and exploration over decorum and socially accepted behavior is as valid as one who values discipline and appropriate behavior. A two-bit hooker who values a quick buck and the right to do with her body as she sees fit is equal to the local hardware store owner who values hard work and a commitment to excellence. The values mentality is a left-over of the feel-good free-love decades of the 50s, 60s, and 70s.

There are two main problems with a value-driven society.

First members of a value-driven society have no corrective mechanism. (For purposes of this discussion I can discount values that are contrary to law). So, discounting values that infringe upon the rights of others, the society is still left with values that infringe upon the tenets of good taste and appropriacy. In fact, such a society ends up in a downward spiral of values that are progressively less tasteful and appropriate. The values driven society started in the 50s after World War II. The adults from that time remembered the hardships of the Depression and the shortages during the war and wanted their kids to have everything they did not. So, the Baby Boomers were indulged and amused and appeased. Additionally, they wanted to make a difference and to stand out from the stolid, do what you gotta do, boringly reliable attitude their parents had. So they indulged themselves with free-love, bra-burning, and outrageous swinging. As time passed and they started having kids of their own they created a trap for themselves. They couldn't in good conscience deny their children the same indulgence they had enjoyed. However, what they had done had been done and their children had to do something even more outrageous and scandalous in order to stand out from their hippie parents. From the freel-love ballad rockers of the baby-boomers we went to the X-Treme sex drugs and shock rock and roll craziness of Generation X. The next step, the Millenials, found alternative rock and crotch grabbing rap, marginalized sex, and plumbed the depths of depression. Should it be taken, the next step may be too terrible to contemplate.

The second problem with a value-driven society is that it has no external measure of improvement. Since all values are equal it would be a hypocrisy of the first order to disparage anybody for any value they might hold. If all values are equal, everybody who has a value is of equal standing to anybody else. A person who values image and appearance over accomplishment and achievement (that is somebody who thinks the appearance of achievement is equivalent to achievement) will always be more of a drain than a contributor. They will not be likely to achieve anything but because their values are held in esteem they will never have to achieve anything. No individual or group of society needs to aspire to more than what they are because if they are defined by their values they are as respected as any other member of society.

Morals are not individually arbitrary. Morals are an external set of behavioral guidelines that determine the limits of appropriacy and acceptability. Morals may be arbitrary to a given society, but they apply equally to all members of society. I think it's fair to say that morals are 'pure form' values. Being external to the individual, morals provide a measuring stick by which an individual can compare their behavior and their values and determine their progression towards achieving the nearest possible approximation of morality.

America has traditionally been a moral society and I have determined at least three direct sources for our moral fiber.

The first and oldest of these comes from Plato. I mentioned that morals may be described as 'pure form' values. In the Republic, Socrates explains pure form. The idea is that on some level all things exist in purity. In reality all things are flawed but it is right for man to strive to achieve the nearest approximation of the pure form possible. Sound familiar? It should. It is in fact one of the founding principles of America. "We the people of the United States of America in order to form a more perfect union. . ." Plato's pure forms are embodied in the documents that create our country and by extension in the people of our country.

The second source of American moral fiber, and the one most frequently derided is the Bible. As an atheist I don't believe in the Bible as such. However, the Bible is a well-written book with valuable moral guidance. I equate the Bible with Aesop's fables. Both are books containing stories that serve to illustrate points of morality, and provide a source of moral guidance. The Bible has the advantages of humanity (Sorry Aesop. Talking goats just aren't hugely motivating.) Christianity is the source of our societal morality. It is the measure which Americans have chosen for themselves by virtue of historical circumstance.

The third source is our frontier heritage. I think sometimes people underestimate the influence America's march across this continent has had on our collective and individual identity. The unwritten laws of the frontier are perhaps the most influential source of American individuality. Some of the frontier laws come directly from the Bible, but beyond that the people who populated America had to develop an acceptable code of behavior without the benefit of external reinforcement. Personal integrity, honesty, and the golden rule were the essence of survival among the pioneers.

America took a decades long foray into the world of values, but now we are seeing a reversal and a return to morality. What's particularly astonishing is that it's not old fogies complaining about the good old days when people were decent. It's younger Americans in their twenties and thirties.

Television programming is an excellent example (and more importantly a reflection) of the changing attitudes of Americans. The most popular shows on television are about self-improvement and achievement. American Idol and The Apprentice are enormously popular. It may be reflective of America's love-affair with celebrity, and wealth, but I think it also reveals a desire to better one's self and to achieve. American Idol starts with a bunch of potentially talented singers who practice and improve their abilities until they reach number one. Americans love winners, but more important than winning is earning a win. The Apprentice reveals similarly unexpected appreciations shared by a relatively young demographic. These people are not competing for survival in a jungle or on a desert island. They are competing for survival in the cut-throat world of corporate America. We see a contemporary example of the Christian ethic and how Americans have applied it to their working lives. The majority of the dot com boomers were of Generation X between the ages of 19 and 31. They were the people working 80 hours a week and living on frozen pizza and tap water. Their continued enthusiasm for America's free enterprise system and the benefit of hard work is exposed in The Apprentice. The Simpsons is a perennial favorite and while their politics are often left-leaning they maintain a core of conservatism. The Simpsons live in a traditional family situation. Homer brings home the bacon. Marge is a stay at home mom. They have 2.3 kids. The Simpsons are as dysfunctional as any other American family but they are first and foremost a family. Springfield is a community. The Simpsons rub elbows with their doctor, their teachers, their principal, their judge, and their local billionaire down at the Kwik-E-Mart. Although the Simpsons aren't the Brady Bunch they still cling to tradition and morality and (somewhat startlingly) this is part of the appeal.

I think one of the most telling examples of America's shift was the Janet Jackson Super Bowl extravaganza. Liberals pooh-poohed all the people who were angered by her antics and furthermore, blamed the fall-out on conservatives; they immediately began screaming censorship. I don't think the FCC arbitrarily decided to start cleaning up the broadcast house. And I don't think that they were picking on Janet and Justin. I think they were responding to the outrage of a sizable portion of the American public. It was Americans, young and old alike, who bitch-slapped Janet and Justin for what happened on Superbowl Sunday and the FCC acted on our collective disapproval.

Additionally, the changing direction can be seen in politics. Liberals and Democrats have had an undeniable edge for decades. During Clinton's administration the Democrats began losing their numerical edge. States began leaning towards Republican legislatures, Congress was swept by Republicans. And finally, even the Chief Executive was chosen from the conservative half of the spectrum. Barring clandestine meetings among conspiratorial conservatives, the only conclusion can be that the voters decided.

I don't know exactly what led to the changing winds in American culture. I think it is somewhat cyclical. I also think that no matter what liberals would have you believe, people do and can think for themselves. People my age saw the direction they were heading and the direction their children were heading. And I think it scared the hell out of them. Recurring themes I hear while listening to semi-liberal talk radio are recriminations less of schools and institutions but more of inadequate parenting. I hear people finding ways to spend time with their kids and help with homework and screen their television habits. More moms are trying to stay at home at least for a while to be with their kids. People are waiting longer to marry. Divorces are declining. Juvenile drug use and juvenile violent crimes are down overall. We seem to have hit a plateau of the "It's okay if it feels good" philosophy and adopted one of greater responsibility. It's okay to do things that feel good but it's important to do things that are right.

Thus we have one generation (Generation X) making a u-turn and another generation (Millenials) being raised with this renewed morality. Further evidence of this change can be seen in the proliferation and popularity of conservative blogs. There are few enough outlets for conservative ideology. Most television is left-leaning, most educational institutions are left-leaning. The largest newspapers are left-leaning. Fox news tends towards conservatism, but I'm hard pressed to think of any other right-leaning news source. Until looking on-line that is. I hate that I can't find the link but I actually read an op-ed piece castigating the internet and its users for the ability (and desire) of people to search and filter the information they choose to peruse. The internet provides an uncontrollable flood of information from every imaginable position on the political spectrum and while my browsing habits take me to far more conservative outlets, I make it a point to occassionally put on my protective gear and tool through the liberal outlets. So far I have found a far smaller forum of liberals (although generally far more vociferous). I have also found a greater amount of repetition among the liberal side of things.

What all of this tells me is that liberalism has plateaued for the time being. I think it is a cyclical pattern, so it won't be forever. But conservatism is on the rise, especially among the younger demographic. It will take time (probably decades) to run its course and it will not be complete (imagine San Francisco electing a Republican board of supervisors). But once again we see the amazing self-corrective properties of the American people as a society.

Gloating

2004-11-04T11:25:00.000-08:00

So, President Bush was elected by an outright popular majority. I've not been well so I haven't blogged for a few days, but I will when I'm back up and running. For now, just let me say:

HA!

Yet Another Site Stuff

2004-11-01T17:22:00.000-08:00

I'm adding Jim Treacher to my favorites because he cracks me up.

Another Site Stuff

2004-11-01T14:44:00.000-08:00

Another link, this time to Rite Turn Only in Canada, can be seen in the Allies list.

I'm doing some maintenance things today, and am updating links and such. I should have done so before now. Consider me properly ashamed.

Site Stuff

2004-11-01T14:20:00.000-08:00

A new link to Economics With a Face can now be found to your left.

A Defeated Man

2004-11-01T13:27:00.000-08:00

Following is a transcription of Osama Bin Laden's most recent video. It can be found all over the place. I borrowed it from Wretchard's site, the Belmont Club. He titled the post regarding this as Bin Laden's Surrender Proposal. I think he nailed it. This is nothing like the fiery death to infidels speeches to which we've become accustomed. This is a throw in the towel, I'm sick of being hunted please let me alone, I gravely underestimated you people speech.

You American people, my speech to you is the best way to avoid another conflict about the war and its reasons and results. I am telling you security is an important pillar of human life. And free people don't let go of their security contrary to Bush's claims that we hate freedom. He should tell us why we didn't hit Sweden for instance. Its known that those who hate freedom don't have dignified souls.like the 19 who were blessed. But we fought you because we are free people, we don't sleep on our oppression. We want to regain the freedom of our Muslim nation as you spill our security, we spill your security.

I am so surprised by you. Although we are in the fourth year after the events of Sept 11, Bush is still practicing distortion and misleading on you, and obscuring the main reasons and therefore the reasons are still existing to repeat what happened before. I will tell you the reasons behind theses incidents.

I will be honest with you on the moment when the decision was taken to understand. We never thought of hitting the towers. But after we were so fed up, and we saw the oppression of the American Israeli coalition on our people in Palestine and Lebanon, it came to my mind and the incidents that really touched me directly goes back to 1982 and the following incidents. When the US permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon with the assistance of the 6th fleet. In these hard moments, it occurred to me so many meanings I cant explain but it resulted in a general feeling of rejecting oppression and gave me a hard determination to punish the oppressors. While I was looking at the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it came to my mind to punish the oppressor the same way and destroy towers in the US to get a taste of what they tasted, and quit killing our children and women.

We didn't find difficulty dealing with Bush and his administration due to the similarity of his regime and the regimes in our countries. Whish half of them are ruled by military and the other half by sons of kings and presidents and our experience with them is long. Both parties are arrogant and stubborn and the greediness and taking money without right and that similarity appeared during the visits of Bush to the region while people from our side were impressed by the US and hoped that these visits would influence our countries. Here he is being influenced by these regimes, Royal and military. And was feeling jealous they were staying for decades in power stealing the nations finances without anybody overseeing them. So he transferred the oppression of freedom and tyranny to his son and they call it the Patriot Law to fight terrorism. He was bright in putting his sons as governors in states and he didn't forget to transfer his experience from the rulers of our region to Florida to falsify elections to benefit from it in critical times.

We agreed with Mohamed Atta, god bless him, to execute the whole operation in 20 minutes. Before Bush and his administration would pay attention and we never thought that the high commander of the US armies would leave 50 thousand of his citizens in both towers to face the horrors by themselves when they most needed him because it seemed to distract his attention from listening to the girl telling him about her goat butting was more important than paying attention to airplanes butting the towers which gave us three times the time to execute the operation thank god.

Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or Al Qaeda. Your security is in your hands. Each state that doesn't mess with our security has automatically secured their security.

Oddly, I can't disagree with the last statement of his . . . statement. Your security is in your hands. True enough. Two days hence, the American people will go to the polls and take the matter of our security into our hands.

We have the option of choosing our very own surrender monkey to make nice with the bad men because they're ever so misunderstood and we're evil imperialists with an obligation to accomodate them because they're poor brown people. Or we can choose to stay the course and do what needs to be done because God knows nobody else will.

If we follow Osama's advice, we elect Kerry. The best we can hope for from him is that he does nothing for four years. I rather suspect he will be much more destructive than that. More likely than not he will do his damndest to gut our military and flee from Iraq. In return, Bin Laden says he will not attack the U.S.

A couple of interesting points. Bin Laden royally pissed off America. We won't be satisfied until he and his like are destroyed. In other words, we don't trust him, we want him dead, it's too late to offer an olive branch.

So, if you're willing to deal with the kind of man who would turn passenger jets into torpedoes, vote for Kerry. If you want to hunt the monster down and fry him, give GW another four.

The Best Damn Gumbo Ever

2004-11-01T11:03:00.000-08:00

So, this weekend I bought an electronics reference book (Beebop to the Boolean and lo and behold there was a recipe for gumbo at the end. I like gumbo, so I figured I would give it a shot. But, when I read through the recipe I realized I don't much care for some of the recommended ingredients and it was more work than I was willing to put in. So, I made my own gumbo. Because it's so damn good, I feel obligated to share it with the world.

Bear in mind that measurements are best guesses since I don't use the cups and spoons like I'm supposed to. I tend to cook according to taste and texture. Even with my tweaking it's not an easy recipe or particularly cheap. But it makes about ten or twelve servings and damn, is it good.

Here's what you'll need:

6 Cups Chicken Stock
1 lb. Sausage (Italian, Andouille, Polish. I used spicy Italian sausage)
1/4 lb. Bacon
1 lb. Medium Shrimp (Crawdads would be good here too, if you can get them.)
1/2 lb. Scallops (and/or mussels/clams)
1/2 lb. Fish (Your choice. I'm partial to salmon or mahi mahi)
2 onions
2 Cups Green Beans
2 Cups Corn
2 Zuchini
1 Box sliced mushrooms
3 Potatoes
1 Habanero Pepper (I used a large one. With the seeds. I like spicy food.)
Garlic
Oregano
Thyme
Bay Leaves
Black Pepper
White Pepper
Cayenne Pepper
Cajun Seasoning
Butter
Flour
1 large bottle of wine

This isn't a recipe for dieters. And it's a little on the spicy side.

To begin:

Make the chicken stock and set it to simmering in a big pot with the chopped onions, a good tablespoon of garlic and a good teaspoon each of black, white and cayenne pepper.

Break out the skillet and fry up the bacon until it's crisp. Set the bacon aside to cool for a bit and fry up your sausages in the bacon grease.

While the sausages are frying, peel the potatoes, slice the zuchini, drink a bit of wine. Cut the potatoes into cubes and toss them in the big pot. Go ahead and chuck the green beans and corn into the pot.

Add a good couple of teaspoons each of thyme, Cajun Seasoning, and oregano, and throw in four or five bay leaves. Dice the habanero pepper (I use the seeds, but for a milder version you can leave the seeds out) and add a little heat to your concoction. Drink a bit of wine.

Break out another skillet, and heat up a chunk of butter (use the real stuff). Fry some garlic for a bit, add a dash of salt and a pinch of black pepper and sear the zuchini and mushrooms. Once they're sizzling away, pour the whole mess (yeah, butter and all) into the big pot. Drink a bit of wine

Wash out the skillet (have you been turning the sausages?) and heat another chunk of butter (same deal, garlic, salt pepper). Now is a good time to crumble the bacon into the big pot. Throw the shrimp (you peeled them right?) into the butter and fry them for a few minutes until they turn pink. Slice the sausages and introduce them to their new friends in the big pot.

You're then going to heave the shrimp (and its butter) into the pot. Slice the scallops into halves, cut the fish into cubes, and into the pot with all of it.

Leave the pot to simmer for a bit.

This is the hard bit if you haven't made gravy before (the homemade kind not the envelope of polymonoblablychrondrate garbage). You want your Gumbo to be thick like a stew. You have to dissolve a few tablespoons of flour in a bowl of hot water and add it a bit at a time to your boiling gumbo, stirring constantly. You have to take your time and add the flour slowly because if you aren't careful you will end up with glue. It probably will take two or more bowls of the flour and water stuff. Drink some wine.

Once it's properly thickened, you set it to simmer and let all the ingredients have a little party until they get to know each other. Two hours would be my minimum recommendation. Then, steam some rice or get a thick slab of crusty bread. Scoop yourself a bowl of the best damn gumbo you're every likely to eat. Enjoy a couple of bowls with a couple of bottles of wine. (Red wine will cancel out the butter, sausage, and bacon, so be generous.)

At the Crossroads

2004-10-28T15:59:00.000-07:00

I think the most common theme in this year's election (I mean besides Vietnam) is that this is to be a particularly momentous vote; this could well be the most important vote of our lives. Americans are more or less evenly polarized between the two parties.

What is at stake is not a policy or a candidate, but an ideology, a direction for America.

On the Left, you have John Kerry. He sees an America enlightened in the European sense. Kerry is a socialist democrat. He would raise taxes on higher income brackets to pay for education, medical care, and retirement. He would cut our military budget (he says otherwise, but his Senate record contradicts him). He would shackle us with international treaties.

He, and other Democrats get support from the American people because we tend to root for the underdog. They claim to be the party for the underdog so people who think they are underdogs vote for Democrats. That's why immigrant populations tend to be heavily democratic and black folks and gay folks.

On the Right you have George W. Bush. He sees an America that continues to remain true to our more traditional political roots. He believes in less regulation over business, privatized retirement and privatized medical care.

Modern Liberals win the sympathy vote. Everybody should have an education, everybody should have a roof over their heads, everybody should have three squares a day. I don't disagree with any of those ideas, but I don't believe it is my responsibility or my neighbor's responsibility or my grocer's responsibility to grant such providence to 'everyboby'. Modern Liberal Democracy is socialism decorated with chads.

The Right gets the common sense vote. If there's one thing we should have learned by now it's that communism (in any guise) is inconsistent with the human condition. Capitalism and traditional liberalism are the most effective and successful societal institutions humanity has yet discovered. The Right tends to a society that encourages competition and rewards success. One where people are responsible for themselves.

I don't believe that a Kerry win would signal the collapse of American tradition. We've had a good share of terrible presidents. The interesting thing about our system is that it is so massive that it's exceedingly difficult for a single person (even if it is the president) to damage it significantly. The best any president can hope to do is influence the future direction of the our country. The only way they can do that is by winning people (voters) to their view. It has happened infrequently in history and I'm not convinced George W. Bush or John Kerry will prove to be the sort of president who will have such a lasting impact on America.

I do think Kerry would be disastrous for America in the short term if for no other reason than that he would be entirely incapable of getting anything through Congress, and we would be in political deadlock for four years. The bad thing is any damage he might do would take some time to repair.

I'm confident America is sufficiently different from Europe that even if we do somehow stupidly elect the Frenchest American surrender monkey we can find, we will not simply adopt that particular philosophy for the rest of our country's existence.

The choice we make tomorrow is important, make no mistake. But also be aware that America is self-correcting. We have made errors and will make them again, but we also can correct them.

Writing and Not

2004-10-28T15:47:00.000-07:00

It's funny, but I notice when I post less often I have fewer ideas about which to post. When I post more frequently I have more ideas. I guess my brain is rather like a breeder reactor in that sense.

In any case, I'm not abandoning the blogging. I just fell off the wagon for a bit.

NaNoBlogMo

2004-10-21T14:47:00.000-07:00

It's a very Simpsonian acronym (think the BiMonSciFiCon), which means National Novel Blogging Month. I might consider participating. Worst case scenario: I get stuck after a few thousand words and delete the whole mess.

Now, I just need a good idea.

The Guardian Votes

2004-10-18T14:15:00.000-07:00

The title link comes via Ace of Spades.

The Guardian from UK initiated a letter writing campaign encouraging readers to send letters to citizens of swing states in the upcoming election, thereby influencing them to vote for Kerry. I think it displays a staggering misunderstanding of Americans. This is the kind of thing that would make a lot of folks do the opposite out of sheer contrariness. Behind the title link is some of the responses that have come from Americans.

This one from California makes me hang my head in shame:

"Right on! Just wanted to say thanks from California for your effort and concern. This IS a very important election ... There are so many people here in the States that care about the impact America has on the rest of the world. I am personally saddened for the loss of all innocent lives. The best statement Americans can make to the rest of the world is to not elect Bush for president. Thank you so much for getting involved in our world."

This from D.C. makes it better:

"Shame on you for using the people of Ohio like this. The US presidental election isn't just about foreign policy, it's about healthcare, taxes, education, transportation, natural resources and all manner of issues with little to no impact on the people of Britain.

We live in a globalised, interconnected world. If China shuts its borders to US imports, you better believe American companies, shareholders and workers are affected. Should US citizens therefore have a direct say in Chinese policies? No - Americans should demand that their own elected leaders address the issues with their Chinese counterparts. The British have a similar voice in US policies - through your own elected representatives who have any number of diplomatic, economic and military tools at their disposal. You vote for your leaders and we'll vote for ours. Your problem is with your leaders, not ours."

Aquinas and Al Ghazali

2004-10-16T10:25:00.000-07:00

Here at the Angry Iranian which link was left in the comments of a previous post, can be found the following:

". . . If so, newly emerged Islamic Iraq with an alliance with Islamic Iran will be a force to be reckoned with. Their is a sad joke that instead of re-building the Twin Towers in New York, the United States is unintentionally building the Twin Towers in the Middle East, meaning Twin Islamic Towers of Iran and Iraq. These turn of events will be a nightmare scenario for the United States . The Bush administration in a million years with their narrow-mindedness could not have foreseen/predicted such an outcome, but as Allah says in the Holy Quran: "They plot and plan, and Allah too plans. But the best of planners is Allah.""

Not that He isn't mighty and fearsome, but Allah's plans haven't worked out quite as well as He might have hoped.

This article, borrowed from USS Clueless's Essential Library, explains why Arab nations fail to compete in the modern world. But the origins of the social structures and beliefs found in the article have important historical roots and actually, have opposite counterparts in Western History.

About 1000 years ago Muslims had a golden opportunity to capitalize on a sad state of European affairs. When the West was descending into the Dark Ages, the Muslim world was flourishing. In fact, much of what had been known to the Romans and the Greeks and their successors was lost to the Europeans and only preserved in Muslim libraries. The Muslims were not big on scientific theory, though they did do well in using and adapting technology they took from other sources.

Setting technology aside for the moment, the first concern is more political in nature. Arab nations throughout history have been more characterized by a political free-for-all. In the past, succession to an Arab empire or nation was characterized by a cutthroat scramble for absolute power and wealth by generals, sheiks, princes, and kings. It hasn't changed much in modern times.

What is likely even more important than the lack of political cohesion is the philosphy that was adopted by the Islamic world. After Muhammed preached, waves of fanatics streamed east and west from the Arabian peninsula. They spread the Muslim faith with violence. They conquered the Middle East, Central Asia, Northern Africa and even Spain for a time. They destroyed Western books and scrolls wholesale for "If it disagrees with the Koran it's pernicious and if it agrees it's superfluous."

There was a flowering of Arabic science and philosophy for a time. This was at the time of the European Dark Ages when science and philosophy were replaced by religion and mysticism. Towards the end of the European Dark Age, an Arabic Philosopher and Theologian from Iran, Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali, wrote about philosophy and theology in an Aristotelian fashion. He applied reason and logic to the questions of faith and science. His conclusion was that while one can learn from science truth comes only from Allah and His Prophet. He even claimed that to pursue science and logic drove men away from faith.

Al-Ghazali's influence on Muslims was equal to that of St. Thomas Aquinas on the Christians. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote a series of articles, over one hundred years after Al-Ghazali. He also applied logic and science to the question of faith and God, but arrived at a far different conclusion. He determined that there are two types of knowledge, inspirational knowledge granted by God and reasoned logic uncovered by man. Furthermore knowledge of things was truth, and to know much of truth was to be closer to God.

Oddly enough, Al-Ghazali was right and Aquinas was wrong. Knowledge of science and logic does undermine the principles of faith and religion. The impact these two scholars had on their respective cultures endures to this very day, and can not be overestimated.

The Muslims adopted Al-Ghazali's philosophy so vigorously, that they were eventually driven into a Dark Age of intellect which persists even in this modern age. The Europeans adopted Aquinas's philosophy with equal fervor and not only emerged from a Dark Age but did so explosively, entering a Golden Age of science and technology that continues on, even as I write and which the rest of the world is still struggling to catch up to.

The reason this is important is because it is only through the development and application of technology that nations compete, both economically and politically.

It is these very things (cutthroat power scramble and Al-Ghazali's philosophy) that have kept the Muslim part of the world from competing with the rest of the world, and that also makes this part of the world so dangerous. They don't care so much about the workings of technologies or the consequences of using them; they are only interested in the application and the possibility of greater power and wealth.

In the recent past, this was not a big deal. Warlords could squabble amongst themselves and they were more or less contained in their own small territories since they only had access to second or third rate weaponry. Now, second and third rate weaponry is big and ugly enough that power-hungry leaders can threaten more than just the neighboring warlord, as was evidenced by Saddam Hussein in his war with Kuwait.

The only reason that the Middle Eastern countries haven't been at war with one another in recent times is that none of them have sufficient technology to give them a big enough edge to win any decisive military actions. Pakistan has developed nuclear weaponry, but they are more concerned about India than their other neighbors.

It also explains why sanctions and diplomacy don't work. The thugs who achieve power do so for wealth and power. They are indifferent to the status of their citizenry.

I am skeptical about the possibility of an Iraq/Iran alliance, and even more skeptical as to the measure of might they could potentially wield. I can't say such an outcome wouldn't be dangerous however, but I also think that our present administration is fully aware of such a possibility, and will likely be actively engaged in preventing it. It's important to know too, that Iran is not entirely stable right now and that the current unrest will probably be aggravated by the elections going on around their borders.

Fashion

2004-10-15T15:42:00.000-07:00

I may well be the last person on the face of the planet who should be offering fashion advice. I buy grey socks so I don't have to match them. Any two socks can be pulled from the drawer at random and worn as though a perfect pair. I have five pairs of pants, all of which I bought for their pockets. I have one pair of shoes and one pair of sandals. I'm not finicky about fit; I have a belt. I don't iron. My clothes tend to be a little large because they're comfortable.

But anyhow, I saw this fellow walking down the street. 'He walks oddly.' I thought. 'Rather like a duck.' Then it occurred to me he walked like a duck because it was necessary for him to keep his pants up. Only it didn't work out too well because every couple of steps he had to clutch at his pants and hitch them up a bit.

Now, like I said. I'm not exactly an expert on the height of fashion. I don't know if I own any cool clothes. But can anybody explain to me what makes one look particularly cool when walking down the street like a duck, clutching at one's drawers to keep them from falling?

AT&T

2004-10-15T10:36:00.000-07:00

Title link is via the Technology Liberation Front.

AT&T or American Telephone and Telegraph stretches back to 1885. It has endured to this very day. It was the parent company of Bell Systems which monopolized the telephone industry in America for nearly 100 years. AT&T was, for a long time, a leader in research and technology, even up to recent times. Along with RCA, they developed a lot of broadcasting technology and the two companies co-monopolized vacuum tube patents. AT&T pioneered satellite technology launching the first commercial satellite Telstar I and also developed the Unix OS at Bell Labs.

AT&T was broken up in 1984. The company purchased NCR, but then divested itself of NCR as well as Bell Labs, forming the company Lucent Technologies. Later AT&T bought a huge amount of cable television interests only to find it couldn't pay its debt and divested itself of its cable interests, selling them to Comcast.

AT&T did have a strategy in mind when they bought up so many cable companies. They intended to bridge the last mile. AT&T intended to provide broadband internet and communication services to homes, hoping to undercut local phone companies' monopolies on data and telephone access to consumers. Had they acted earlier, they might have succeeded, but at the time a price war was going on between telephone providers and they were unable to sustain their debt.

AT&T did have an inkling of where we would be today though they were unable to capitalize on their idea. Broadband information access is the wave of the present. Presently we have two fairly mature technologies, one tentative technology, and one is heading towards us like a runaway freight train.

DSL and cable are the two mature technologies. I have found in working with both of them that cable is faster and more reliable than DSL and discourage people from getting a DSL account. The more tentative broadband technology is satellite access. I've not had an opportunity to try it out, but the specs give it slower bit rates. On the other hand, it's likely to be very reliable, and is available anywhere in the Lower 48. On the third hand, there are special FCC regulations concerning two-way satellite communication. Personally, I think the idea of internet information being beamed to my home from outer space is terribly sexy, but anyhow. . .

Fiber optics is coming soon to a home near you. Millions of feet of fiber optic cable were laid during the 90s. The problem has been that last mile. Getting from the trunk to the doorstep has not yet happened, though with the new FCC rulings linked in the title, that will soon change. The FCC decided that fiber optic networks don't have to be shared among competitors. Companies have resisted bridging the last mile with fiber optics because they had little incentive. The potential was that they would lay additional millions of feet of fiber optics and then a competitor comes along and uses the network. Now companies will scramble to lay that last extra mile and snag some new consumer accounts.

It will be interesting to see how this evolves. There will certainly be monopolistic goings-on. Consumers will lack a certain amount of freedom of choice. But they'll have fiber optic broadband access to television, telephone and the internet. Also, there's significant advancement being made in wireless technologies. Satellite broadband is here. Wi-Fi is becoming Wi-Max (1000 MB transfer. Wireless) and could potentially be scaled up to serve homes and communities. While consumers may not be able to choose between Comcast and SBC, they will be able to choose between fiber optic and satellite.

Gladiator

2004-10-14T13:15:00.000-07:00

I watched Gladiator last night. I hadn't seen it yet and was in the mood for a quality historical epic. I should have watched Gettysburg instead.

Why does Hollywood always think they can make history better? I mean history, tells a good fucking story. You have heros and villains and magic and mystery and intrigue.

My first nit is that the cavalry had stirrups. Stirrups were only invented at about that time, possibly in China, India, or Mongolia. And these proto-stirrups were actually a loop through which the big toe was thrust to provide stability to the rider. Stirrups weren't documented in Europe until the 8th Century, about 600 years later.

Technology history aside, the sequence of events was wildly inaccurate. About the only events that were remotely accurate was Marcus Aurelius did die in the North (likely of disease though poison is not impossible) in 180 AD. Commodus was his successor, and Commodus did enter the arena and "battle" gladiators and wild beasts (though it was vaguely appalling for an emperor to do such a crass thing(and it should be noted that Commodus made his success in the ring a virtual certainty)). Also, his sister, Lucilla was involved in plots intended to kill or depose Commodus as emperor. That is pretty much the extent of the historical value of Gladiator.

The real story, I think, is much more interesting. Commodus was the successor to his father, Marcus Aurelius. This was a break with what had been a tradition of adopting a hand-picked successor to the Roman Empire. It is curious that Aurelius chose Commodus. Aurelius was a Stoic and a philosopher and wrote extensively about virtues. Commodus had almost none of the virtues his father appreciated. In fact, Commodus was unstable if not downright insane. He was not a warrior-philospher as his father was. He made peace with the Germanic tribes of the north (though he did fight later battles with them). He trumped up charges against Senators and had them killed. He even exiled his wife Crispina and later murdered her. He fought gladiators, though he wore full gladiatorial gear and his ~~opponents~~ victims were only armed with wooden weapons. He bragged of killing 12,000 gladiators. Commodus is also reported to have had a harem of three hundred women and 300 boys, and entertained himself and his friends with wild orgies.

As he continued to fall into megalomania, he took to dressing like Hercules of legend. Hercules was the son of Zeus and Commodus named himself a God, a successor to Hercules. He renamed Rome in his own honor after a portion of the city burned in 190 AD. He not only renamed Rome he renamed the Army, the months of the year, and the Senate. It is reported he killed everybody in an entire village because one of the residents looked at him cross-ways. Towards the end of his career (and his life) he demanded that he be worshipped as a God.

In 192 AD, conspirators launched a plot to rid the Romand empire of the embarrassing and insanse Commodus. He was due to be named consul and intended to march to the Senate wearing a gladiator's costume. No doubt this final slap in the face drove the conspirators to initiate their plan. Marcia, one of Commodus's mistresses was to poison him. He ate the poison but it failed to kill him. Later that night, Narcissus, Commodus's wrestling partner strangled him in his bath.

That's Commodus in a nutshell. There is much more to the story. Commodus was the emperor and was somewhat well-loved by the people and the army. Unfortunately, he was less interested in administrating the Empire than he was in playing warrior and getting laid. While Commodus was engaged in various sorts of licentious and inappropriate activities, his consuls and cohorts were plotting and stealing and extorting. The Senate and their conspirators had to act carefully lest they anger the citizens of Rome and the army by acting against the Emperor. A certain prefect, Quintus Aemilius Laetus, Commodus's favorite mistress, Marcia, and Commodus's chamberlain, Eclectus, hatched a plot to kill Commodus because Laetus and Eclectus had reason to fear for their own lives. They were being maneuvered into unfavorable positions by Commodus's greedy friends. They maneuvered people into positions where they could strike Commodus. Marcia agreed to poison him, but as with all good conspiracies, there was a plan B. When the poison failed to kill the madman, Narcissus was tapped to sneak into Commodus's room and strangle him.

Pertinax, though not part of the plot, was selected as the new Roman Emperor and actually did not do badly for the short time he was Emperor. He was a victim of circumstance. Commodus and his cohorts had run the Empire into the ground. Pertinax didn't have enough money to pay the bills, including the salary for the army. A band of soldiers mutinied and entered the imperial residence. Pertinax unwisely (considering he was over 60 years old) confronted the soldiers himself and was killed. He had been Emperor for 87 days.

Pertinax has nothing to do with my point.

My point is that the story of Commodus didn't need invention. It has all of the elements of a great modern story. It has violence, plotting, debauchery. All it needs is a powerful operatic score and characters brought to life with a good script.

It opens with a young Commodus travelling with his father during the Germanic campaign. Commodus is a narcissistic (the irony. . .) young man with a penchant for violence. We see him take the throne after his father's death. We watch as he descends into madness and cruelty. His madness is fed by the whispers of his friends and cohorts until he can only be described as monstrous. We find some unlikely heroes. A few elderly and frightened Senators, and a fearful mistress plot to end the reign of an insane tyrant. The plans are laid, the poison smuggled into the palace and delivered to the mistress. Marcia slips the poison into Commodus's food. Dear Gods! It didn't work! He lives. The unwell Commodus retreats to his bedroom promising to find and punish those who would see him dead. The desperate Marcia turns to her only hope, a good man, though he's a companion and partner to Commodus, Narcissus. She pleads with the young wrestler and he sees what is right. The soundtrack is silenced save for a crashing symphonic score as Narcissus strides through the palace and into the Emperor's bathing chamber. Commodus struggles, but Narcissus has him overpowered. Narcissus chokes the life from the Mad Emperor Commodus in his bath and the mighty Roman Empire is given a new breath of hope.

Now, that would be a movie. It has believable human characters. It's an exciting and intriguing plot with no shortage of action. A tragic element could be injected with Crispina being madly in love with the crazy emperor, but driven out and killed by the whispered lies of Commodus's handlers. Or Marcia loving him desperately until she's forced to see his wickedness. Or Narcissus could be a jilted homosexual lover manipulated by the conspirators, a tragic star-crossed lover driven to do violence against the object of his love. Or the Senators could be idealists and Stoics extolling the virtues as praised by Marcus Aurelius, frightened yet determined defenders of goodness and decency and champions of the Roman people.

For movie-makers there is almost complete freedom to create a powerful and mesmerizing story with engaging and wholly believable characters by playing with the script and the motives of the characters. Yet, at the same time, historical accuracy can be preserved. If I knew how I would produce it myself.

The Ocean Blue

2004-10-12T13:44:00.000-07:00

Everybody knows the old rhyme. In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. I think there's more, but that's as much as I can remember. Regardless, on Monday we celebrated Columbus's discovery of the New World. The period during which Columbus discovered America is popularly called the Age of Exploration in history books. There had already been much exploring by the time of the Age of Exploration, but during that period, most of the world was embarked upon exploration from the Europeans to the Chinese.

Ameica had been discovered a number of times before Columbus arrived. Between ten and fourteen thousand years ago the earth was in the midst of an ice age. Asiatic nomads discovered a land bridge between Eastern Russia and Alaska. When the ice retreated, the land bridge was submerged. Nomads who had crossed this bridge spread south and east across two continents. They were effectively the first to discover the Americas. However, after the land bridge disappeared, the Americas were isolated and remained obscure for at least eight thousand years.

There is a possibility that Celts rediscovered America at or before the time of Jesus Christ. Fragmentary apocryphal records, most of them only reported second- or third- hand (or worse), suggest that Angles or Celts may have found the Northeastern coast of North America. In fact, it's even possible that these reports were partly responsible for Plato's Atlantis. However, there's no confirmation or reliable accounts so this story could be as mythical as Plato's Atlantis.

At this point in history, the people of North America were still nomadic hunter-gatherers. The people of the Middle East, and Europe had developed complex civilizations. The Sumerians had invented writing. The Egyptians had built the Pyramids which endure to this very day. Anthropologists attribute the difference in civilization building to variations in geography, climate, and biota. We probably will never know why it took so long for civilization to develop in the Americas.

After the Celts, America wasn't discovered again until the Vikings sailed from Greenland to the Canadian Atlantic coast. This is an even more curious episode of history. Historians disagree about exactly what sort of presence the Vikings had in the Americas. Some suggest that the Vikings only reached America because they were caught in a storm. On the other hand, there are archaelogical remains that suggest they actually had settlements in the Americas. Most curious of all is this Viking rune stone ( which may be a hoax) inscribed with runes that suggests the Vikings reached the Great Lakes during their exploration of America. It is not known whether the Vikings actually left the rune stone at that location or if it was carried there by other parties. One troubling thing about the Viking presence in America is that their settlements all seem to have died out. I think it likely that the Vikings were unable to support their colonies and the settlers were absorbed by the natives.

Following the Vikings, it's possible that Admiral Zheng He discovered the Pacific Coast of America. There's little to substantiate the claim, though it does seem to be generally accepted. The Chinese at the time were not interested in expansion, and it was shortly after this that they turned in on themselves for most of the next four or five hundred years.

It was only at this point that civilization was on the rise in the Americas. Three impressive technological civilizations emerged in America. There was a possible fourth in the Mississippi River Valley, though their most impressive structures appear to be man-made hills.

The Aztecs were famous for their savagery. Actually, it has since been found that when the Spanish Conquistadors arrived, the Aztecs were being conquered by a more warlike tribe, just as the Romans had been terrorized by the Goths and the Vandals. The Mayas were somewhat less bloodthirsty. They developed writing independently and had a fairly complex calendar. The Incas may well have been the most technologically advanced civilization in the Americas. They didn't have writing but they had very advanced astrology, and mathematics, including zero. They had knowledge of hydraulics, and horticulture. The Incas built terraces and experimented with crops up and down the sides of mountains, developing different varieties for growing at different altitudes. They also seem to have invented communism.

Not long after Columbus arrived, the settlers and explorers destroyed the New World civilizations, and ultimately most of the New World pre-civilized cultures as well. I find it regrettable that the New World Civilizations weren't allowed an opportunity to flourish. It's a fascinating 'what if' of history. But events of the time dictated a different outcome. Old World disease and technology, and New World superstition put the newcomers on top of the heap.

Columbus more or less spelled the end of history for the indigenous peoples of the Americas, though it took several centuries to complete. But it also marks the beginning of America and what has since become the most powerful nation in the world. Columbus discovered the Americas and made a number of trips between the New and Old Worlds. But in the end he died penniless and disgraced. In fact, his discovery was named for Americus Vespucci. It was mistakenly reported in a letter that Vespucci discovered America. A mapmaker found the report and named the New World 'America' (America being feminized in the Latin tradition as were Africa and Asia) after a man who had nothing to do with America's settlement or discovery. On the other hand, Columbus is immortalized in the name of our nations capitol, a number of other cities and towns, and uncountable public buildings and roads. He even has a day named for him, which we celebrated Monday. People like to bitch about Columbus day as celebrating the destruction of Indians. I don't suppose it occurs to them to wonder if they would be around to complain had Columbus not discovered America. Perhaps it should be recommended that they kill themselves. If it doesn't bring back the Indians it will rid the rest of us of their moaning.

Thanks to Columbus, a place was discovered where people could imagine a new life and indeed a whole new way of life. Indirectly we can thank Columbus for populist democracy and free market enterprise. We can also thank Columbus for being the first American hero. Columbus was an explorer and an adventurer. He was willing to accept risk to achieve a goal. He thought outside the box by arguing that Spain could open trade with the Far East by sailing west (nevermind that he was mistaken until more modern times). These traits have been enormously respected and encouraged during America's history and while Columbus was not an American he did embody some of the ideals in which we believe.

Sky Captain

2004-10-12T13:33:00.000-07:00

I watched Sky Captain. Caught the Sunday matinee. In summary: Bad acting, bad script, jerky story line. Giant flying robots with super laser blaster visors. I give it an A+.

A Red Button

2004-10-10T10:19:00.000-07:00

Follow the title link to the Dissident Frogman and click the red button.

Gaming

2004-10-09T11:12:00.000-07:00

Follow the title link for an amusing and entertaining game. It's a circus.

Thanks to Dave E. at Ham in the Fridge.

Why?

2004-10-09T10:59:00.000-07:00

Does Google specifically hate Netscape or is it inadvertent?

Congratulations

2004-10-09T10:23:00.000-07:00

Pay another visit to Western Heart. The evil lefties have been defeated. I would say this calls for a drink but it's only 10:30 a.m. I guess I'll have two this evening.

Also, with more opportunity to browse their blog, I will be adding Western Heart to my links, though I think I need another category.

Site News

2004-10-08T16:36:00.000-07:00

You'll notice an additional link to your left. Brian Tiemann, Breeder of Show Peeves.

That will be all.

Barbadians Take a Swipe

2004-10-08T13:23:00.000-07:00

I follow Barbadian news a bit. I have some friends who live there, so I like to keep an eye on things.

The article at the title link is interesting. It's curious in that it's practically a list of left-wing talking points. I think it's a conspiracy.

Anyhow, the article is written for a Barbadian newspaper. Presumably by a Barbadian.

"Unfortunately, the rest of the world does not have a vote else there would be a landslide victory for the A.B.B. Party – Anybody But Bush. This has recently been confirmed by the publication of a poll taken in many countries in which the result was unanimous."

I like that. It's the Bush Party and the Anybody But Bush party. A full half of Kerry's platform.

"There are a few governments which support the United States Government’s policies for one reason or another, primarily in the hope of picking up a few crumbs from the rich man’s table. . ."

Why do people not believe it to be possible that our allies are our allies because they believe we are doing the right thing?

"The American government signalled its thinking recently when a decision was made regarding the problem of “no-go” zones in cities and districts in Iraq which were under the control of dissenting Iraqis who are conveniently labelled insurgents.

The options were twofold – either try to negotiate with the help of moderate Muslim leaders, as happened in Falujah where the leading, highly respected cleric Ayatollah Sustani was able to secure a truce and a withdrawal by both sides, or grind them into the dust with aerial bombardments, tanks and artillery"

Dissenting Iraqis? As in 'It's just a phase. They'll grow out of it. Give them time.'?

Sistani was a militant and an insurgent, but when he agreed to a truce with Americans he upheld his end of the bargain. Sistani's little band of thugs put away their weapons and went home and Sistani has since been dabbling in the political process instead of trying to blow shit up. We've tried the truce thing with Sadr and he thinks its a wild hijinx to start shooting before the ink is dry. "Ha ha. Fooled them again."

"The Americans chose the latter course which will now inevitably lead to the Vietnamisation of the conflict as they take similar action in Falujah and Najaf."

Vietnam is of course the second half of Kerry's campaign.

"There is little doubt that before very long either the Americans, or Israel on their behalf, will try to destroy the installations in Iran which are accused of processing uranium for the purposes of developing nuclear weapons, even though they say it is for the purpose of generating electricity.

It may even happen before the election if it is thought that will help impress the voters by showing what a macho swaggering tough guy Bush is."

Given the honesty record of folks in the Middle East, you would think people would be a little more sceptical of declarations by these Ayatollahs and Sheiks. A persons word doesn't mean shit to these people and yet the liberals are forever insisting that 'Well, they said they would.' It's like the hamster experiment where you zap them with electricity when they try to take a bit of food. Soon the hamsters learn not to take the food. Liberals don't seem to learn as quickly as hamsters.

I'm not sure the idea that Israel is an American puppet bears much mention. We might have close ties with Israel, but they make their own decisions as a nation. I count the U.S. fortunate that our goals and theirs are so often in line and that they are such reliable allies.

There's more. I don't know if it's really worth a read. I only found it in passing. It does serve as an interesting barometer of international attitude. Kerry's boast that he has the support of international leaders (though I don't recall that he ever named any) is probably not entirely untrue. The thing is that Americans don't have much interest in the opinions of world leaders. But it also tells us a great deal about what sort of administration he would lead. He would have us be another Canada. A European nation on the opposite side of the pond. Which we are most emphatically not.

I have yet to determine what is so great about the European way of doing things. Why is the left so convinced we need to emulate them? In part, it is the difference between ourselves and our European cousins that propelled us to the top of the international food chain. We're now supposed to emasculate ourselves and become another bunch of pacifists? For what? So that everything is fair? So we're all even? The United States has demonstrated more restraint and more responsibility in the application of our force than any other national power in the history of the world.

From the time of the Egyptians until the end of World War II, nations have been almost constantly at war with one another out of selfish territorial interests. The Egyptians, the Mongols, the Romans, the Huns, the British, the French, the Spanish, every one of them and dozens of others have consistently tried to take what they wanted through sheer force of military strength. The United States decided empire was a bigger pain in the ass than it was worth and we divested ourselves of our imperial interests. For the last half century we have bent our energies on fostering freedom and defeating absolutism of every kind. One could argue that we have an economic empire as the world economy is so heavily dependent on our own, but I rather think that it is our internal economics that make us such a powerful financial force in the world.

I guess over all there's nothing special about the Nation article except that it is a convenient summary of left-wing jabber.

Western Heart

2004-10-08T11:22:00.000-07:00

I found the title link via Powerline. Damn.

It's a little unsettling. The United States and Australia share a fair amount of historical similarity. The Australian Outback compares to the American West. Similar populations settled both lands, criminals in the case of Australia and heretics in the case of America. Australians and Americans have similar social patterns as a result of our parallel histories. Australians have mateship which is the same attitude Americans have as friends. That is you look out for your friends, you help them when in need, you stand by them through thick and thin. Individuality is as important to Australians as it is to Americans. In spite of the great distance that seperates us, Australians and Americans are more similar than not. Except they talk funny.

It would be quite a blow for America to have weakened ties with what may be our closest ally (and who have certainly been our most steadfast). It's unsettling because we need one another. The focus of world affairs is shifting from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Europe is losing relevance. The Middle East, China, India, and South Asia are becoming much more powerful and wealthy. America and Australia are the only two Western Nations on the Pacific with any significant power. Anyhow, during the recent past, America and Australia have been strengthening our military and diplomatic ties and a liberal Prime Minister would be a disaster. As much as I appreciate President Bush, his diplomacy is somewhat ham-fisted at times and I don't believe he would work well with Mark Latham should he be elected Prime Minister.

America and Australia can benefit enormously from continued good will and alligned goals. I've followed Australian news a bit and the article behind the title link spells out what I've thought of Latham. He would have Australia rival France or Canada in relevance. They would become a pacifistic, insular nation for at least the duration of his Prime Ministership.

Australians deserve better. Their location has kept them largely out of the sphere of world affairs for the better part of their history but in today's connected world with the shifting focus of worldly considerations means Australia is in a prime position to capitalize on strategic alliances. The United States equally can benefit from a strong Australia. We already have enormous interests in Asia and with Australia's cooperation we will have an easier time increasing our interests there.

Let us hope that Australians realize how disastrous it would be for them to select Mark Latham.

Successful Democracy

2004-10-07T18:36:00.000-07:00

For a long time, at least since Tocqueville's Democracy In America, sociologists and political theorists have tried to determine the secrets of successful democracy. They look to America because ours is the longest enduring and most successful democracy in the history of the world.

The factors to which our success are most often attributed usually include an educated population, material wealth, and a long period of peace during which democracy can mature. I won't deny that these things foster the development of democracy, but I do not believe they are the keys to America's success. In combination, these things sound more like a recipe for a planned democracy.

I do not believe America is a planned democracy in any way. In fact, it was a fluke as much as anything. For one thing, our Revolution was not hugely popular among most Americans. Land owners and merchants were mostly responsible for pushing for independence. Once we achieved independence, these people were lukewarm about being political leaders; their motives for independence were primarily financial. Freedom and liberty and all that jazz was a convenient rallying cry. Also they had to face the reality that most of our new country was lawless wilderness and the idea of having a tightly controlled central government was impractical at best. They put their heads together and borrowed ideas from the Greeks, the Romans, the Natives, political thinkers of their time, and they came up with a few of their own. All of this was mashed together in a matter of a few years. When they were finished they had a somewhat vague (and remarkably short) framework for the governance of this land which has evolved and endured to this very day. None of this is to say that they were unaware of what they were doing or that they weren't pursuing the ideals of freedom and justice for all. Only that their motives were not entirely noble. In some ways they were downright selfish.

Were I to choose three factors of our success (which is exactly what I'm doing) I would choose populism, cooperative social will, and the 2nd Amendment.

A while back I wrote a few pieces on rights. I don't believe I transferred it to my blogspot because in the end it was practically incomprehensible. I failed to stick to my premise which was that I don't distinguish between having a right and having the ability to exercise it. It's a matter of practicality. Anyhow, political influence has been described as the ability to threaten the use of force to achieve political aims. Using this definition, political influence was placed in the hands of American citizens by the 2nd Amendment. Americans have the means to protect themselves against tyranny and against the loss of our rights.

Our ability to use force is tempered by our social cooperation. As a people Americans are remarkably cooperative, even (or maybe especially) when we disagree. We agree to abide by the laws of our government. We agree to pursue change via specific channels. By and large we agree that the application of force is a last resort. I think technically, this could be called a cooperation of apathy. Live and let live is a sort of unwritten law. Leave me the hell alone and I'll do you the same favor. As long as the government, and by extension other citizens, don't try to meddle in personal affairs, we'll do just fine. This leads me to the curious idea that our government is a diversionary occupation for folks with a certain type of ambition. Those who desire power and influence are the ones who run for political office. The limits placed on them by our Constitution makes it relatively risk free. We can keep an eye on them and if things seem to be getting out of hand they can be removed. By and large the men and women in office have no more personal power or influence than the mail man or or the grocery clerk. We consider them to be regular people with a famous job. The office of President commands more respect than the person holding the office. It is this cooperation and attitude that prevented small groups of people in America from accumulating power and influence that could be wielded against other citizens. Europe and South America don't seem to have realized this, and I think that is partly why democracy is of only mediocre success for them. The citizens of these places place too much power in the hands of their governments and reserve too little for themselves. It is habit perhaps. For centuries power has been held by lords and ladies and people have become accustomed to following their bidding. They cooperate because it's tradition to follow the leader.

Populism is where citizens of a nation make the decisions. America is more populist than any other nation in the world. Though we have a representative government and little in the way of political accountability, we participate vigorously in the political process, even those who don't vote. I often hear people deny legitimacy to people who don't vote. But we are largely a self-ruling people. That is perhaps the heart of the American experiment. People can live successful productive lives without government interference (being told what to do). People who do that are participating and furthering the experiment even if they don't vote. It is not the structure or the body of our government that is unique in the world. It is the fact that it is severely limited in how intensively it can meddle.

Failed democracies elsewhere in the world did not fail because of a lack of education, a lack of meterial wealth, or a lack of peacetime. They failed because of a lack of something else.

The European Union is an excellent example of a failed attempt at a Republican Federation. Or at least one that's in the process of failing. Some of the problems are easy to pinpoint. Beyond the institutional failings of the EU, the member nations don't work cooperatively. They are unwilling to give up any of their sovereignty lest the French or the Spanish or the Germans or anyone else take it as an opportunity to exploit them. I don't know if the citizens of European nations are entirely capable of putting historical differences behind them. One wonders if political boundaries were lowered would Germans be as welcome to find work in Poland as Poles? The histories of the respective peoples of European nations likely work against their adoption of an American style federation. They cling to nationalism and do not work together. Perhaps because America's history began as a blank slate we are better able to cooperate as a people.

Our notherly neighbors, the Canadians cooperate fairly well with one another. They hold the right to bear arms (for now). But I would not be surprised if their nation dissolved. Aside from the 'phone issue, they don't seem to have the populist tradition that America has. Following the Revolution, most Americans who were loyal to the Crown ended up moving to Canada where they remained under the Britain's rule for about another hundred years. Today, what little Canadian news I follow suggests to me that Canadians are subject to their government in a way that Americans are not. As near as I can tell, the government pretty much has the run of things until a vote of no confidence (aka an election) is called. Liberals from Quebec and Ontario have pretty much controlled things for a good few cycles. There seems to be a seperation between the government and the people. Things seem more tightly controlled and planned and people seem to have less impact on how or even whether these things are accomplished.

Many many nations, democratic and otherwise, have succumbed to militants. This has been a frequent theme in South America and it gives truth to the idea that if guns are outlawed, only criminals and cops will have them. It becomes a problem when the criminals outnumber the cops. In America only a fool would try to monopolize force. Everybody between the Rockies and the Appalachians would literally be up in arms. And there would be a big bunch of bullet riddled militant corpses to get rid of.

I couldn't tell which of these things is most important. I think a lack of any one of them is a recipe for disaster.

Gears

2004-10-06T11:43:00.000-07:00

Previously, I wrote that in a hundred years people will look back at the X-Prize competition and realize that we went to space because some folks with extra time and money on their hands thought it would be cool.

The gear, one of the most fundamental and useful objects in every day life, was possibly invented as a prayer mechanism. The circle was at one time considered divine in its perfection. Turning a circle about its focus was thought to draw holiness up from within the soul. Completing more or larger revolutions was better, so a mechanism was developed that allowed a person to turn more than one wheel at a time. At first it was probably done with smooth wheels using friction. Eventually, some clever person realized how it could be made to work better by cutting matching notches in the wheels.

Posting By E-Mail

2004-10-06T10:55:00.000-07:00

I was apparently mistaken. Posting by e-mail isn't all it's cracked up to be. Avoid it like the plague.

From the Earth To the Moon

2004-10-05T14:15:00.000-07:00

On earth people use fuel to drive from place to place. We don't think
much about the energy we expend as we go from Martinez to Boise, for
example. To all intents and purposes, we have an infinite supply of
energy at our disposal. We can drive seven hundred miles without much
thought because at no point will the driver be much more than fifty
miles from a fuel station. We measure our progress in miles per hour.
Sometimes we worry about miles per gallon, but by and large we are
more worried about the time we spend covering a given distance.

In space things are different. In space one has to worry about how
much energy is spent getting from place to place. It's generally
measured as delta V which is a change in velocity (an acceleration).
The reason for this is that space craft must carry with them all of
the fuel they need to leave earth, to complete their tasks, and to
return to Earth. Engineers put a lot of effort into determining the
most fuel efficient trajectories for space flights because our space
craft all use some form of chemical rocketry for propulsion.

Chemical rockets aren't very efficient. About 90% of a typical NASA
shuttle launch is fuel. Some people wonder why we don't just make
bigger rockets to send us further into space. A chemical rocket has
to lift itself and its fuel. Chemical rockets have fuel that lifts
fuel that lifts fuel that lifts the rocket. Ad nauseum. Chemical
rockets quickly run into the law of diminishing returns.

Space Ship One mitigates the cost of chemical rockets by using an
airplane for the first stage of the flight. Also, the oxidizer used
by Space Ship One is Nitrous Oxide which is cheap and plentiful.
Chemical rockets are the best option we have so far, though there are
a few others that may prove to be useful in the future. Some are more
distant than others.

Novel chemical fuels are being researched. Some fuels combinations
are more efficient than others and produce greater thrust and higher
specific impulse. Currently LHOX is favored (liquid hydrogen oxygen).
LHOX rockets are very heavy because they require refrigeration
equipment. Tests have been done on chemical rockets using beryllium
or lithium, oxygen and hydrogen or fluorine, as well as rockets using
hydrocarbon fuels like methane or kerosene.

More speculative chemical designs include free radical hydrogen, and
metallic hydrogen. These fuels would be excellent rocket fuels but
are exceedingly difficult to produce or store. Hydrogen molecules are
made of two hydrogen atoms. Atomic or free radical hydrogen is single
hydrogen atoms. When they combine they release energy.
Unfortunately, they are very reactive and combine too readily.
Storing atomic hydrogen for long enough durations has proven to be
extremely difficult. Metallic hydrogen is hydrogen that forms a solid
metallic molecular structure. It can only be made under extreme
pressure. It could prove to be a useful fuel, but the enormous
pressure needed to maintain hydrogen in its metallic state means
special diamond tanks would have to be made to store the hydrogen.

Chemical engines are also in the process of redesign. There's a whole
lot of oxygen in the atmosphere. Engine designs are being developed
that use atmospheric oxygen rather than a tank of oxygen. These kinds
of engines are called Ramjets or Scramjets. They differ slightly in
operation but use the same concept. These engines are designed to
take in and compress air in the engine. It is mixed with another fuel
and explodes. The resulting exhaust is ejected providing thrust. It
may be possible to use a ramjet to reach the edge of the atmosphere.
A second stage engine of a different design would then propel the ship
on into space. NASA's X-43 recently completed a successful test of a ramjet and
Australia’s HyShot demonstrated that scramjets are equally possible. The
second stage engine would be necessary because the atmosphere thins
rapidly and there would be too little oxygen for the engine to
operate.

Scramjets and ramjets are novel in that they don't carry all of their
fuel with them. The best potential method of getting into space is to
do so in such a way that the space craft only has to carry and burn a
minimal amount of fuel to reach orbit or beyond.

A few ideas in particular are being researched. One is only now
becoming remotely possible. That is the space elevator or sky hook. Basically, it's a beanstalk. A cable is extruded from a geostationary point in space. The cable extends in
both directions so that it maintains its center of gravity in
geostationary orbit. Eventually one end is attached to the earth; the
opposite end functions as a counterweight keeping the cable relatively
motionless. Cable cars can then travel up and down the tether
carrying payloads. The problem is that there isn't yet a material
that can maintain structural integrity under the forces that will be
acting on the tether. However, carbon
nanotubes may prove to be a material capable of being used in
building a sky hook.

Another idea is the mass driver. A mass driver is an electromagnetic propulsion device. Electromagnets
are used to accelerate an object. They can accelerate objects to
extreme velocities given enough time, distance and energy. High speed
commuter trains in Europe and Japan are a mass driver variant. Space
craft could be attached to a sled which would then be accelerated
along a rail at several gees of acceleration. Once the craft reached
escape velocity it would be flung away from the sled and plow through
the atmosphere into space. This is actually my favorite concept. It
would be terribly exciting to be blasted into space as though fired
from a giant gun. The problem is that mass drivers are very
inefficient. It takes a lot of energy to accelerate many tons of
mass. A lot of the electricity used would be lost in transmission.
Mass drivers will only be practical with dedicated nuclear power
plants and/or superconductors.

Finally, laser propulsion may be an option at some point. It has been
demonstrated to be possible on small craft. High powered lasers are
focused on an ablative material. Any material would suffice (such as
a block of ice or an ingot of iron). The laser vaporizes the material
and the resulting spurt of expanding vapor accelerates the craft. Laser
propulsion has the same problem the mass driver has in that it takes
an enormous amount of electricity to power the lasers. Furthermore,
multiple lasers would have to be used and targeted precisely. Certain
problems show up with high powered lasers (these necessarily must
operate in the range of hundreds of megawatts).

For now, technology, finances, and (to some degree) political will
compels us to continue using chemical rockets to get into space. I
think that as the industry develops we will see some of these other
technologies come to fruition. Many of them are being researched by
NASA and the JPL. I suspect that a numbe of these projects will be
taken over and completed by private parties for fun and profit. It's
always difficult (possibly foolhardy) to make predictions about the
future especially where technology is concerned, but I think that
within ten years we will see some of these technologies in use.

Anyhow, getting into space is one thing. Getting around in space is a
whole 'nother story. I'll discuss some ideas for interplanetary
propulsion later.

Posting By E-Mail.

2004-10-04T14:29:00.000-07:00

Does it work?

Just a Few Notes

2004-10-04T11:55:00.000-07:00

Just a few notes today. Unless something exciting occurs to me.I'm back from vacation. Damn it all. It was nice while it lasted. Iwent through the southeastern corner of Oregon, across Idaho, throughCraters of the Moon, into Jackson Hole, through the Tetons, acrossWyoming, halfway across Nebraska, into South Dakota and back throughUtah and Nevada. I realized that I don't really belong in California. It would be great if it weren't for all the damn people. So, it'sprobably time I packed up my bags and moved. I particularly liked Boise. It's a beautiful little city and Idaho isn't yet turning intoa giant block of concrete. The pace of life is slower. I guess I just need to save my pennies and pick a time to move on out of here.

I should give a nod to Shane at Happily Stuck in Ithaca. He left a comment to an earlier post. I may have been less than charitable towards his site in a comment about a list of blogs included there. I'm adding a link to his blog, though it is a little more liberal than my usual fare. I won't hold it against him.Never let it be said I can't ~~respect~~ ~~appreciate~~ peruse different points of view.

Did you all watch the presidential debates? I was a little disappointed in Mr. President. He should have dunked on Kerry. Kerrywas totally incoherent in what he said about Iraq and foreign policyin general. Kerry is very good at public speaking. He's just got such foolish ideas. The global test we're supposed to pass beforedeploying the military was notable. What kind of fool thinks weshould have to ask permission before engaging in military activities? The thing I like about President Bush is that you know where he stands. He was clearly bored and frustrated by the end of the debate because he said where he stands and how he felt, and it was probably irritating for him to keep repeating it. It's a little unsettling that he 's not quicker on his feet. He could have completely shut down the Kerry campaign. In any case, he certainly held his own, and didn't loose any ground.

Which reminds me of a billboard I saw outside of Boise: "Fight Terrorism. Get U.S. Out of the UN."

Did I mention I drank more bad beer in the last two weeks than I've had in the last six years? I hate cheap beer.

I spent half a day in Salt Lake on Sunday. I tooled around Temple Square in my shorts and sandals while all the church folks were\getting out of services in their Sunday best. There was a disproportionate number of hot guys and beautiful women. Maybe I need to be Mormon. I need to be Mormon long enough to get inside of the temple. It bugs me that I can't go in.

I guess I've rambled enough. With the vacation over, I should be\posting things with a little more substance.

Winners Wrote the Bible

2004-09-28T11:31:00.000-07:00

I read the Da Vinci Code a few days ago, and then a companion book, Secrets of the Code. Secrets of the Code is a collection of essays and interviews that help to explain the historical context of the Da Vinci Code. It's as good as the novel. In some ways, it might as well be one.

A lot of it is supposition, and maybe even a little wishful thinking. Generally, people are very excited about the idea of a female apostle (Mary Magdalene), and the pagan roots of Christianity. I guess it's not surprising. Turning sex into a religious ceremony has a certain appeal. You pray every time you fuck. The world would overflow with religious zealots if that were the case.

Actual questions of religion (does God exist, what is His will, what is His nature) don't concern me much. I think religion is a game of Let's Pretend in a sense. It's not so different from imagining aliens in science fiction novels. I can't really bring myself to believe in something so arbitrary. I like to have explanations for everything. So, I have to withhold my belief until God can be described rationally and rigorously.

Religious history on the other hand is very interesting. The power and influence of religion on humans and history can't be understated. I was as captivated by the Da Vinci Code and its apocrypha as anybody because, though the author writes a fiction book, there is a grain of fact in what he wrote.

Religion extends back as far as the Stone Age. Altars and idols and artifacts of religious ceremony have been discovered dating to more than ten thousand years in the past.

One thing the author of the Da Vince Code does well is compare science and religion favorably to one another. Both are simply an effort by humans to understand our existence and our surroundings. I agree. I have nothing against religious folks. I just can't really understand how somebody can believe in something so mystical. I want answers, other than "It's God's will."

Anyhow, I'm wandering badly.

The first religion was likely animism. Animism is the idea that all the things in the world are possessed of a spirit, an animus. Pagan religions probably followed with gods and goddesses representing things of importance to people. Most likely the first gods were nature gods. As civilization developed things like war and justice needed gods so the pantheons grew. Sumerians and Egyptians had highly developed religions. Sumerians had a very depressing religion centered on death. Egyptians had a pantheon of gods as well as their own living god, the pharaoh. It is suspected that Egypt failed in part because people lost faith in their pharaoh god. They were defeated frequently by various invaders such as the Hyksos, and that's just not supposed to happen when your king is a god (how embarrassing for them). Both of these religious traditions contributed to Judaism and eventually Christianity. For example, the story of Noah's Ark is a variation of events described in the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh.

Judaism was a break with pagan traditions because it was a monotheistic religion. The pantheon was condensed into a single all-powerful god. Christianity developed from Judaism with the birth of Christ and the spreading of his word. There is a bit of controversy over Christ. At the time of Christ there were a great many travelling Jewish preachers. There is no independent verification of Christ's existence outside of the Bible and its related works (like the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi). Jesus Christ was either one of these travelling preachers, or the works attributed to him in the Bible are a collection of preachings by sundry preachers. It may be a combination of the two ideas. Plato is known to have existed, and to have written a collection of Socratic Dialogues. However, a number of the dialogues included in his collection in modern times, were likely not written by him. The same is probably true of the Bible. Jesus did exist and preach, but probably much of what is attributed to him came from other sources.

Regardless, the Jesus figure has had greater impact on the course of history than any other single figure.

I think my idea of the source of New Testament writings is correct, and that the events of the time bear it out. We know there was a fair bit of confusion following the death of Christ. He founded his church, and the Apostles and their Disciples spread the word of Christ. Much of it was probably spread via the spoken word since it's not likely many people could read and write at the time. It was probably chaos until the Catholic Church emerged at the top of the heap. They quite successfully destroyed the Gnostic Church. Until the Nag Hammadi were found, all we knew of them was the heavily biased information passed on by Catholic Church. The Nag Hammadi reveals some of the teachings of other versions of Christian churchery. Curiously, people seem to be perfectly willing to abandon the Catholic tradition and adopt the newly discovered Gnostic tradition. Some go so far as to call it the true Christian faith and maintain that the Catholic church is a usurper. Knowing how people are and how history is, I think it's not unlikely that the Gnostics might have done the same thing to the Catholics had they gained the upper hand during the power struggle over the nature of Christianity. I suspect the Catholic Church succeeded admirably at destroying their rivals, and we probably don't even have an inkling of the explosion of Christ-related writings and preachings and churches following his life and death.

I think it's foolish to declare the Gnostic faith the true faith. We often say to the victors goes history. In Christianity, the Catholics won and wrote the history book. We understand that the winners will write history in such a way that they look favorable and the losers lost because they deserved to. But, those who don't win write about themselves in an equally favorable light and paint themselves as being bullied. Taking the word of the losers as gospel is as foolish as taking the word of the winners. The true story will always be found somewhere in between.

Anyhow, the main difference between the Nag Hammadi and the New Testament books is that the Gnostic texts have a different attitude towards women than seems to be found in the Gospels, and a number of them have distinctly Buddhist sounding spiritual advice. This is one of my favorite sites. You can go there and read the full text of dozens of religious texts from the Deuterocannonical texts of the Old Testament to the translations of the Nag Hammadi to the Koran and its apocrypha to the Baghavad Gita. It's an excellent source of information. Anyhow, I've read most of the Christian portion of the site, and most of the Bible related books. And there is a distinction between the Testament and the Gnostics.

What has become traditional Christianity is very conservative and very much interested in things beyond the flesh of the material world. The Da Vinci Code and many of the scholars who contributed to the Secret Of the Code have created a fusion of pagan religion and Christianity. God is balanced by a Goddess. Acts of nature are integral to the religion. It does make a certain sense. Creation is supposed to be God's ultimate act; procreation is the closest humanity can get to Creation, so fucking like bunny rabbits should make people very godly.

I think Christianity (I'm using Christianity and Catholic more or less interchangeably. Catholic means 'universal', Christian means 'one of Christ'. The Catholic Church is the universal church of Christ. Or used to be.) is probably as successful as it is because it did wring sexuality out of the belief. Christianity makes a great effort to separate manifestations of t he material world from those of the spiritual world. Christianity deals with deeds and actions and beliefs. Good deeds and truthful words are the Christian word. They castigated sex and sexuality because it is a desire of the flesh, leads to temptation and to evil deeds (watch Cops sometime).

I think this too, is a key to Christian success. Doing good for one's self is equally important to doing good to one's neighbor. And vice versa. That's especially true in the Protestant sects of Christianity. In the Christian faith people are expected and taught to separate earthly desires and motives from higher spiritual callings. They are expected to temper their behavior and be masters of themselves. Islam goes a bit further, especially where women are concerned. And, while kindness and generosity are important to Muslims, the central belief is submission to God's will. There are a number of passages in the Koran about being kind and generous. There are also a lot of passages about killing the infidels and cutting their heads from their bodies. The more rigorous one is in following Allah's will, the closer they will be to him at the end of things. Buddhists believe that the material world doesn't matter much. Earthly desires and hungers can be ignored because spirituality has little or nothing to do with earthly things. If you ever travel in a Buddhist part of the world you will see this quickly. Prostitution, drugs, even homosexuality in some of them is tolerated with equanimity. I met half a dozen trans sexuals in Thailand. I was propositioned daily (for 'good sucky fucky'). I felt like I was hip deep in marijuana and opium. Hindis. . . Well, there are so many variations of Hindi faith I can't even count them. Feel free to enlighten me.

Gnostic faith strikes me as being similar to Buddhist faith. I don't know how things would have turned out had the Gnostics won, but I do think that the discipline and moderation of our Catholic faith has made a powerful impact on our society. So much, that I don't believe we would be so clearly dominant in the world if things were otherwise.

A Bit More Vacation Stuff

2004-09-26T20:33:00.000-07:00

I'm posting a little more about my visit home. I don't really know, but I think some people might be interested in knowing about my vacation and my unique roots. I know a lot of my friends are curious about the few things I mention to them of my upbringing and my background.

This morning I awoke to my mom's canning. She got a bushel of tomatoes from a friend in Nebraska and is canning some of them and making tomato juice from some of them. She's already done chokecherry syrup and pickled green beans. She cans things for two reasons. One is simply that she enjoys it. My grandmother canned things all my life. She lived with us until I was fifteen and we could no longer give her the professional care she needed. Grandma canned every kind of vegetable you can grow in these parts. We ate very well through the winter.

Canning, of course, is not necessary in this day and age. But, the difference between home canning and Green Giant canning doesn't really bear mention. Which brings us to the second reason for my mom's activity. Home grown fruits and vegetables don't really compare to even the best organic kind you find at any given store. I don't know that I could pinpoint the difference, but one who has had the experience can always tell. So my mom cans things. The freshness is lost, but the flavor is unique and particularly enjoyable.

We generally use the fruit syrups on ice cream, sometimes pancakes and waffles and biscuits. It's not so sweet as you might find in the grocery store, which in my opinion adds to its appeal. I'm not a huge fan of sweets.

Anyhow, the evening I arrived here, we went to the Lippizaner Stallion show. Lippizaner Stallions are horses bred in Europe. Technically, I suppose, they come from Austria, though they are a cross-breed between Austrian and Spanish stock. Back in the day they were famous for their stamina and strength and were used as war horses. Their isn't much call for that today so they are more like show horses and breeding stock. The show was most enjoyable. I hadn't seen horses actually dance before, but these particular ones do. Literally. I watched them step and trot and skip in time to a number of musical pieces ranging from classical to big band. It was remarkable. The horses were beautiful examples of horse flesh with powerful muscles, fine, slick coats, and amazing balance and grace. PETA would likely have a fit, but these animals were some of the best cared-for and best trained I can imaging. If you should ever get an opportunity to watch the Lippizaner Stallions, I can't recommend it highly enough. It was good, clean family entertainment, far better than anything you might find in the movie theatre. In fact, it was a proper show, with a larger-than-life announcer: "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! We now present the Lippizaner Stallions and their riders." I like concerts and theatre as much as anybody, but you can't beat a good show. Presentation is everything.

Something that may be worth an entire blog on its own is the audience response. The show began when the announcer sang America the Beautiful followed by the National Anthem. Practically the entire audience sang along with the Anthem. A horse and rider, following the Anthem, made a circuit around the stadium bearing the American Flag. As the flag passed, each section of the auditorium stood and waited until the flag disappeared behind the curtains. Midway through the show, they did a piece on how General Patton saved the Lippizaners from the Germans during World War II. Once again, the Flag made a circuit about the auditorium, and the audience was, if possible, even more respectful and patriotic than before, standing, removing head-gear, placing hands on hearts. I don't mind admitting that it brought a tear to my eye and quite literally stood my hair on end. The worthy and heady topic of a blog entry related to this topic would be patriotism. It's a difficult concept to pin down. I don't think the left is any less patriotic than the right in American politics, I just think they're flat-out wrong. But, I do think this is proper patriotism and I think it bears examination.

Anyhow, back to the lightness of vacation, I have plans to have breakfast with Lou (my mom's friend) tomorrow or Tuesday. I'll probably spend most of a day helping my dad out with cattle stuff or fencing, or whatever. Probably we'll drive a few hours for different shopping than can be found here (because crap you buy elsewhere is ever so much better than crap you buy here), and I'll probably end up cooking some crazy things for my folks and their friends and our other family. I'll spend a good few hours playing with the dogs.

One of the things I miss most is pets. Unless you are independently wealthy you really can't afford a pet in California. Perhaps it's an exageration, but not by much. You have to have tags and shots and deposits and licenses and God knows what else in California and they all cost two or three times as much as they would anywhere else. I've had dogs all my life and they truly are man's best friend. My folks have a couple of Australian Shepherds. They're the sweetest dogs you could ever hope to meet. Rusty "talks" when you talk to her and pet her. Sara can't possibly get enough lovin'. She's kind of a chicken dog, scared of loud noise, people, possibly even squirrels. But, she's just the sweetest thing ever. I sit on the floor and pet her, take her to town when I drive one of the trucks, sneak tidbits to her under the table. I think I'd give a kidney to have a good dog like her. But, California is no place for a dog like that. They need space to roam and play and explore. You might be able to train them to a little square of yard or teach them to walk and all, but it's not right. Bigger active dogs really ought to have space to roam; to be happy.

There may be more tomorrow. Maybe not. It's hard to tell, but I can tell you I'm enjoying my vacation. Call me a mama's boy if you like, but there's no place like home.

I Say Start With a Wrecking Ball

2004-09-26T11:40:00.000-07:00

This has been a draft for a while. I figured it's a good time to post it since I'm on vacation and don't really feel like actually writing out decent bits. But, it wouldn't do to lose traffic, you know.

Children and Family Services is in the midst (or possibly the dawn) of an overhaul. The buzzword is Child Welfare Redesign.

It seems outcomes are not what they should be. Outcomes are a measure of the success with which foster kids emancipate from the foster care system. Foster kids don't do so well as kids raised by their biological families.

CFS is a social program and is dominated by liberals. Thus, fortunately, it's obvious what the solution should be. The answer is two-fold. First "It takes a village to raise a child." Second, "Throw some more money at it."

I beg to differ. It takes a parent to raise a child. And the money we have thrown at the problem has ultimately created a cycle of dependence.

Community involvement is a trendy catchphrase at the moment, as is youth empowerment.

Community involvement is the village idea. It sounds quite good in theory. Community members will take an active role in providing guidance to youngsters. Pastors and coaches and teachers and neighbors will be invited to weigh in on the decision making process as the child progresses towards adulthood. It doesn't seem to occur to people that for this to work these community members have to make an emotional investment in the children. Everybody feels a little tug on their heart strings when they read stories about homeless foster kids and how they're shuffled from home to home. It's sad, but that's exactly why people are not likely to get involved. It's begging for tragedy and heartbreak. People simply are not prepared to make that kind of investment without some evidence of success.

Youth empowerment is the idea that kids need to be more involved in the decision making process and need to be empowered to influence the decisions being made for them. But they're kids for Christ's sake. They don't necessarily care about what's right for them, they care about what they want. And this particular group of kids is less capable of making those kinds of decisions than most others. They haven't been taught about consequences, or they've been taught the wrong lessons about consequences. They simply don't have the capacity to make appropriate long term decisions for themselves.

Barring the success of that avenue, more money will solve the problem. Or not. We have an army of social workers, attorneys, analysts, and specialists working with youngsters and foster families. We pay for education, housing, clothing, health care and child care for teen parents. As the youngsters get closer to emancipation, we help them with applications, sometimes we bully them into filling out applications, sometimes we outright do it for them, we talk to them about housing ("I don't need that I'm going to apply for Section 8"), we find job fairs and job openings and we drive them to them, we provide them with other forms of transportation. All this costs billions in tax payer dollars and for all this money and effort, outcomes are not favorable. Spending more will only add to the dependency. Why would anybody work to improve their own lot when everything is already done for them?

The real problem is the structure of the institution. Bureaucracy and parenting go together like steamed carrots and Michael Moore. And that's what CFS is trying to do. They're trying to bureaucratize child rearing.

Enter the wrecking ball. I don't think CFS ought to go completely but it is a failure as it stands now.

An enormous amount of effort goes into keeping children with family members and in their native community. I think it's the first mistake. Kids ought to be completely removed from the environment. They deserve a new life and hopefully a better life. The only way to do that is to get them far from the craziness from which they came.

A fair amount of money is paid to foster parents, and they want to increase the amount. Theoretically, more money will attract more affluent and responsible adults to be foster parents. I doubt it though. We'll have the same kind of folks who do foster parenting for the money and not the kid. If you found foster parents willing to do without the stipend you would likely have a much better candidate.

Finally, get the damn bureaucracy out of the picture after the kid is placed. The social workers and attorneys and judges dick around and prevent the parents from being parents. Kids sometimes need tough love (not abuse) and if parents aren't allowed to do that the kids can't learn a lot of lessons they need.

You can't help but feel for these youngsters. But we're using a band-aid approach. We add another bandage every time a problem comes along. We're trying to minimize the ill effects on kids, by keeping them in a familiar place and so on but that's the first band-aid. Some of my suggestions might sound cold-hearted, but I think in the long run they would be more successful than the current foolishness.

Continuing the Vacation

2004-09-25T17:34:00.000-07:00

I've been in Nebraska for the past three days. I have family and friends there. I lived in Nebraska from third through the eighth grade. That was about ten years ago, and I haven't been back in more than five, since moving to California.

It was a nice trip, barring the bad beer. I'm a beer snob. I like ales, especially good hoppy India Pale Ales. In Nebraska, your choices are Coors, Bud, Pabst, Miller, Busch, Old Milwaukee, and Michelob. Light versions give you variety, I guess. Bleah. Two is about as much of that as I can handle before I'm bloated. I can't for the life of me figure on how people get drunk off that crap.

Anyhow, I remember hating Nebraska when I lived there. I was terrified of tornadoes (I lived in the Tornado Alley part of the country). This time, I was startled by how remarkable it really is. I was fifteen when we moved and I suppose that makes a difference. The sandhills are something else. I learned all about the geology when I lived there. I don't remember it too much, but I do seem to remember that the sandhills were, at one time, sand dunes on the shore of some primordial ocean. I may look that up and refresh my memory unless somebody cares to help me out. Regardless, allow me to attempt a description that sticks in my mind.

Rolling green hills stretch as far as the eye can see. Dark cedar copses shade the hollows while cotton woods and willows mark meandering streams. Of an evening, a soft breeze stirs the stifling humid air. Dotted here and there are windmills or occasionally red painted barns. A blazing red sun sets behind streaks of cloud glowing orange and yellow and gold.

It truly is no less beautiful than most other places.

For the best food in the world, you need to find somebody willing to cook for you out here in this part of the country. "A little" breakfast was bacon, eggs, toast with homemade chokecherry jelly, hashbrowns, and fruit. For lunch we had pork roast, roasted potatoes, carrots, onions, creamed green beans, fresh tomatoes, home made pickles, and the crustiest, softest home made bread you can imagine. Supper we usually ate out since we were meeting with friends and all. Today is my birthday, but since we were travelling, tomorrow we'll have a birthday supper. It's all ready to be cooked: Corned beef and cabbage, stewed potatoes, carrots, celery, biscuits, frog-eye salad (not with real frog eyes), vegetable platters, canned salmon, and God knows what else. It'll be damn good, whatever it is.

I'm actually dreading going back to California. Having eatend and seen what I'm missing, I don't really know why I live there. I think it may be time to consider relocation. Boise seemed quite nice. I may ponitificate more on this later.

In the meantime, I have pancakes to ponder this evening. We arrived late, having travelled all day. So, it's pancakes for supper tonight. I intend to add a few pounds.

(Oh, and remind me of the Lippizaners.)

More Wandering

2004-09-22T11:04:00.000-07:00

I reached Wyoming without incident. Today I continue on to Nebraska to visit some family and friends. At that point I will have crossed a full half of the country. Not bad. Upon my return to ~~Bernie Ward~~ California, I will have completed something over three thousand miles and been through seven (7) states. It may be premature, but it seems quite a nice ramble.

I had an enjoyable chat with the fellow at the candy store in Boise. He had lived in California for a while, and we ended up talking politics. On my way out of town I read a billboard in my rearview mirror "Fight Terrorism! Get the U.S. out of the UN." I love Boise.

I drove on and made a few stops at some historical sites and such. I had the cashiers in the gas station laughing at my foolishness. Why does that never happen in California? People don't even seem to have time to be pleasant in that madhouse.

I went through Craters of the Moon. It's quite a fascinating bit of geology. I intend to return and spend a little more time exploring the caves and such. I bought a book and may put up a bit of information on the park.

I stopped overnight in Jackson, Wyoming. It's a nice enough little joint, I guess but too expensive. I drove through the Tetons, and took some pictures. I may be a little biased, but I'm fairly certain there is nowhere in the world that has scenery like Wyoming. It has the biggest sky, the prettiest moutains, and the reddest desert you could ever hope to see.

Finally a few factoids:

National Parks visited: (2) Craters of the Moon and Tetons National Park
National Forests Visited: (4) I don't remember the names of all of them, but the Targhee, Bridger/Teton, and two others.
Crossings of the Snake River: (4)
States Visited: (5) California, Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming
Wildlife Viewed: Marmots (Giant whistling Prairie Dogs), Coyotes, Foxes, Deer, Antelope, Bison, porcupine, oppossum(sp?), numerous birds of prey.

Stay tuned.

Wandering.

2004-09-19T22:05:00.000-07:00

I may have misspoke in my previous post. I probably should have said over the next few weeks.

I'm now on vacation. In fact, I'm posting this particular bit from my hotel in Boise, Idaho. I spent about ten hours traveling between Martinez and Boise. I stopped in Reno, Winnamucca, and Danner.

Danner isn't actually a town. It's a cluster of ranch buildings and an Oregon Historical Site. It's kind of interesting actually it's the site of the grave of the son of Sacajawea and some French guy. I took pictures, but don't know of a good, free photoblog site.

Anyhow, traveling through southern Oregon was a little curious. I felt like I was in Wyoming. The landscape and the vegetation is almost identical to what you might see in central Wyoming. It serves as a reminder to the sheer scale of America.

I had a conversation a few years back in Thailand, with some fellows from Great Britain. It had not occurred to me before they spelled it out, but America is an enormous place. I've seen the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert, the Red Desert, Zion National Park, Bryce National Park, Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, Yellowstone National Park, the Medicine Bow National Forest, Big Trees National Park, Yosemite National Park, I've flown from West Coast to East Coast, I've lived in Wyoming, Nebraska, and California. I've driven hundreds of thousands of miles and seen things that should boggle my mind.

I've certainly been propery boggled, but not unduly. America is my home, and I suspect I take it for granted to some degree. The Grand Canyon is enough to make a person swallow his cud. The size of the thing defies imagination. Every person on the planet could fit in a small portion of the Grand Canyon. But it's a bare fraction of the size of our country. It would hardly be worth mentioning except it is unusual, being such an enormous rent in the earth, carved over millions of years. A person can drive across the entire expanse of Great Britain in a day or two.

This short vacation, only two weeks, is a chance for me to see an additional part of the U.S. I haven't been to Idaho since I was about three or four. So, I decided to take a little tour. I'm going to cross the entire width of Idaho. I considered staying an extra day in Boise and checking out the Real Estate and employment situation. Boise is quite a wealthy city and I think there might be some opportunities for a computer guy like myself. It turns out my travelling won't be done when I reach Wyoming. My folks want to go on to Nebraska for a few days. When I return to California in a couple of weeks, I will have crossed an entire half of the U.S. Most of it is country I've seen.

I'm always vaguely surprised at people I meet. Most folks seem to have been to a few major parts of the U.S. New York, Hawaii, Florida, maybe California. But people seldom need to go far from home to find something new and interesting. As far as I can tell I've seen a good bit more of the world and the U.S. than most people see in their entire lifetime. It's a little startling considering how mobile and nomadic Americans are. I don't know many people who are actually natives of the places they live, but it appears that once people find a place to settle they do so admirably. I might settle down at some point, but that's not to say I won't stop travelling. Snow in California is not the same as snow in Vermont and I want to see the difference.

Anyhow, I'm on vacation so don't expect a whole lot of deep thinking or political commentary. I'm setting my brain to regurgitate.

Site Info

2004-09-17T15:30:00.000-07:00

I'm transferring some old posts from my old blog. Over the next couple of days I'll be adding a number of posts from back in March, April, May, and June.

Memory

2004-09-17T09:50:00.000-07:00

I need to read up on memory and how it works. Mine doesn't seem to function like a normal person's.

Most people are taught to learn by rote. It's reinforced throughout school.

Did you all take 'times tests'? It works like this: Each combination of multiplication and addition of the numbers 1-9 are randomly printed across a page. You have one minute to complete as many as possible. My fellow students memorized the multiplaction and addition tables, and completed those tests in under a minute without fail. I have never managed to do that. I don't think I ever completed a page in the given minute because I couldn't memorize the tables. Instead I had to apply the rules of multiplication and addition to each problem no matter how many times I did the tests. On the other hand, I always won the annual math competition because I remembered the rules for completing problems. I didn't need to memorize tables and charts, I knew how to puzzle out the answers from the rules of mathematics.

I have a terrible time remembering lists, sequences, driving directions, and phone numbers. I am quite good at recognizing patterns and trends, and I see shapes of things without remembering any specific details. I'm also good at putting pieces of information together.

One thing I've read about memory is a phenomenon called mental mapping. Its a method some people use for navigation. It's completely unconscious for me. Most people use directions to navigate, left at the street, right at the oak tree, right again after the stop sign. I have a hard time remembering directions like that. Normally I always know where I am in relation to some other place. Home is in that direction, the hotel is over there, I need to go that way to find the office. When we went on family road trips as a kid, I spent most of the trip with my face planted in a book. But I amazed my parents by being able to look out the window at any point on the drive and being able to say where we were and where we needed to go. I can only remember having been lost twice in my life; once in the medina in Casablanca where all the alleys dead-ended, and another time in the same sort of situation in some alleys in Chiang Mai. But, once I've been to a place I can almost always find it again.

I apply mental mapping to other things also. I'm very good at fixing computers. But I can't for the life of me talk somebody through a fix without being able to look at a screen. When other people watch me working on a computer they accuse me of rummaging around, poking buttons until something makes it work. I actually do know what I'm doing, but I don't do it in any particular order. I can't memorize a specific sequence of events to follow and I can't memorize the location and function of every setting that can be changed. Instead, I remember the relationship between locations, settings, and functions.

All of this makes me seem a little unsociable in some ways. I have a hard time conversing. I either answer questions directly or as simply as possible or I ramble because I can't remember all the specific details that would make my part of the conversation concise.

I remember odd bits and pieces of things that are only marginally related. It all meshes in my brain, but talking about something is hard for me because I can't remember specifics and have to explain my references. I might explain Lord Of the Rings like this: "Lord Of the Rings is fascinating. People claim it's a battle between good and evil, but it's a little more subtle than that. It's actually a religious exploration examining temptation and innocence and the Ring sort of represents original sin. Besides that if you read the books its an exploration of linguistics. It has that guy in it who was the Arab guy on Indiana Jones and who was the professor on that show where the kid made the device that allowed him and his friends to travel between parallel universes, and also that really hot guy who was the hero on the pirate movie with the ghost ship, and that beautiful girl, you know the rockstar's daughter. . ." By now people are bored or insane.

I see and hear things and forget them almost immediately. But they don't just go away, instead they are filed somewhere in my brain. At a later date something else will happen, and all of these bits and pieces come together in a comprehensive whole. I try to avoid doing this in a lot of situations because it's a little creepy and makes me look like a sneak. But I don't go around snooping or evesdropping. I hear little snips of conversations and see things that just get put away somewhere. Later on somebody makes a comment that fits them all together. It's an intuition of sorts, but it seems like I know things I shouldn't know. I slip every now and then. I used to try explaining how I knew but it goes like this: "I heard so and so say something to somebody and then somebody mentioned something about . . ." Now I just say "I pay attention." I don't know if I can do it consciously, either. But, I do know that I arrive at uncannily accurate suppositions with not a lot of information.

Anyhow, it makes me curious about memory and how it works and how and why it is different for different people. I don't think a whole lot is really known about memory at this point, but I'll be on the lookout for what information I can find.

An Addendum To the Previous

2004-09-16T20:06:00.000-07:00

Follow the title link. I feel somewhat vindicated.

"BARBARA: One person to one person. That's how change is made. That's why it's so discouraging when gay people don't talk about being gay. I've seen how effective it can be. Like these cowboys upstairs. They're these crazy Texan guys, big old guys, and we're totally out to them.
CARA: I think they'd do anything for us.
BARBARA: One night this guy had parked in the driveway. I challenged him and he came up and started yelling at me. The boys came outside with their arms crossed and just looked at this guy.
CARA: They're very protective of us.
BARBARA: Once people get to know you, they can't connect with the larger picture of "gay culture," but they can connect with one gay person that they know. People are really open to one-on-one. It's just the concepts they're afraid of."

Of course, the whole thing is worth a read.

Some Thoughts On Gay Stuff.

2004-09-16T19:04:00.000-07:00

At the end of this post, I will descend into self-doubt and pity. Apologies in advance. This blog is meant to be a writing and thinking exercise for me. I do it online like this because it would seem pointless to do all this writing if I’m the only person who will ever see it. But, like anybody else, my mood and attitude impacts my writing. And at roughly 2:56 p.m PST when I found a topic worth writing about, my mood simultaneously went south.

I read an interesting bit in the USS Clueless archives. If you don’t care to follow the link he’s talking about how the blogosphere is kind of clustered. Various communities tend to link together and there isn’t much cross linking between them There are news/political bloggers (further divided into conservative and liberal), there are gay bloggers, and there are diary keepers.

News and political bloggers do links and pieces on current events. Gay bloggers network with other gay folks and they write a lot about society and politics and gays. Diary keepers jabber on about what a fucking prick their boss is and how nice their yard looks, and how pretty their kitchen looks with new tea towels. They can be entertaining diversions.

Every blog I’ve been to is a mash of all the above. Most bloggers network with others who have the same interests. Most bloggers combine personal news along with current events. Most bloggers have written a piece or two about a week long visit with the in-laws or a particularly bad day.

Anyhow, I was intrigued by the gay blogger cluster and set out to find it. Which I did. I’ll include some links here.

Happily Stuck In Ithaca
Rebel Prince
Ethno-Queer
Kai
East-West

These are a few samples. They aren't uninteresting in their own right, I suppose, as long as you skip over the political bits. Like this one.

I noticed a few curiosities. Gay bloggers are a bit more balanced in their topics. They combine news and politics and personal information in relatively balanced proportions. Their blog entries tend to ramble, but are still quite well written. And I can’t deny that they often have very catchy designs for their blogs. Also, (and this is part of their networking) they have a lot of extraneous links. They put up advertisements for gay resorts, gay cruises, gay parties, gay rights groups, clothiers, Democrats, and basically anything else that might be gay friendly. It’s really kind of impressive how cohesive gays are as a group. Links to famous gays and gay groups were almost universal. Andrew Sullivan and Log Cabin Republicans were linked frequently.

It’s a shame they don’t direct their energies more effectively. Andrew Sullivan was ostensibly a conservative, though now he’s all but stumping for Kerry. Ace has all the scoop on Sully. Log Cabin Republicans, I’ve heard of, but only today did I browse their site. When I left I was more convinced that it was an infiltration operation than a group of actual conservative gay people.
Gays have the same challenge that blacks and other minorities have in America. That is to prove that they believe in the American way. Trouble is, we’re battling two thousand years of Christian teaching. On the other hand, if there is a place in the world where gays can come to be accepted without qualification that place is America.

The trouble with the gay political mobilization is that they took the path of least resistance. They practically recite Democratic talking points. They believe tolerance and acceptance can be legislated (so-called ‘Equal Rights’ laws), or through judicial fiat. But, again, it comes back to traditional folk culture in America. To a traditional American (like myself), it looks like gays are trying to get something for nothing. It feels like gays are trying to force something upon other people and that a is sure way to see the contrary, stubborn nature of Americans.

Law is sort of antithetical to the American way. We crave individual freedom more than anything. We set the laws and agree to abide by them. We like fewer laws, we believe we are capable of moderating our own behavior. By and large this has proven true for more than two and a half centuries. Forcing laws through Congress or engineering judicial fiat is diametric to one of the foundations of our country’s success.

Gays would be better advised to direct their energies towards social acceptance. Law will follow easily once gays are more or less accepted. Instead of holding rallies and waving signs and screaming as loudly and stridently as any crazed tofu eating green peace nut job, gays should go about their lives as they see fit, consequences be damned.

Civil disobedience worked for Martin Luther King because black folks were willing to pay any price to be seen as decent human beings. They broke civil laws, like sitting in white only sections at the restaurant, and they were arrested, beaten, some of them were killed. But in the end establishments, however grudgingly, had to admire them for their fortitude and will. That more than anything earned them points and the change in laws that followed.

The situation for gays is different. Namely, we don’t have the option of disobeying laws. We could go out and marry en masse, but nobody would really give a rat’s ass except the media and the Democrats trying to trump up some sort of sympathy vote. They would have no means of collecting marriage benefits. Sodomy laws aren’t really enforced, so we could fuck like bunny rabbits but nobody would care as long as they didn’t have to watch.

The root of the problem isn’t legal. It’s social. As long as gays cloister themselves in their little communities in San Francisco and Atlanta and Washington D.C., they’re going to be marginalized and ignored and their wishes will go unfulfilled. They would be better off going out into the rest of the world. Taking boyfriends and girlfriends to mainstream places, and mingling with straight people would go further towards realization of the goal. Gays should move to Idaho and Kansas. We should be as gay as we want, and as long as we take care of business, keep jobs, look out for one another and look out for our friends and neighbors, and as long as we keep our private lives private, we will find the success we are looking for.

I use we and they at different points because I don’t want to be associated with the Democratic gay screechers, but I do have a desire to achieve similar goals.

Is there evidence that this might work? I believe there is. It’s not fair to say straight people are allowed to be affectionate in public and gays are not. Look at the bally-hoo over Janet Jackson and Breast. They might have looked at the blow ups and masturbated on their computer screen in private, but the fact that it was public was what made it such a big deal. Americans value privacy and discretion. Gays tend to be overtly sexual, and that makes Americans uncomfortable regardless of whether it’s gays or not.

Also remember Matthew Shepherd. He was hung up on a snow fence in Wyoming and pistol whipped to death. I heard snide comments about Wyoming and rednecks and intolerance. But I lived there at the time, and those very comments were as bigoted as anything I’ve ever heard. There were a few folks who very quietly said he got what he deserved (very few and very quietly). The vast majority were appalled. They probably didn’t like Shepherd’s lifestyle very much, but almost universally, people felt that he didn’t deserve what happened to him. When Fred Phelps and his congregation showed up from Kansas, people built a human chain and blocked them from approaching the University to protest. When they tried to march at his funeral, Casper passed a law preventing protests within a given distance of a memorial service.

What I’m saying is that a door is wide open. All it takes is enough guts to step through. There will be incidents. People will be hurt, some of them might even be brutalized and killed. But in the end, gays will be Americans with every attendant benefit. I wish it could be done more easily. I suppose legislation would be easier. But I'm not prepared to settle for legal protection. I want acceptance, even though I know what it likely will entail. It might not be fair, but life seldom is.

Here begins the moody personal bit. The extreme liberal thread I found while browsing the gay blog cluster discouraged me. I believe very strongly in what I wrote above. I think the best things in life, the things one appreciates most, are the things one has earned.

I want a boyfriend. I also want to move to a quiet little conservative community with obnoxious nosy neighbors. I don’t know how to square the two. I could easily have one or the other. So far I have neither. I‘m painfully shy and have the hardest time meeting guys, I‘m fiercely independent and don‘t really mind spending time alone. I make quite a good living at a job I hate, living in a place I would rather not be. A toss-up. Do I give up my job and hare off to some other place? I’ve done it once and very likely will again at some point. Until I do get fed up and leave I can squirrel money away.

I can stay here in California where my chances of meeting a guy are relatively high. Of course, chances are, he will be here in part because California is such a liberal place and won’t want nosy neighbors or a quiet little community and will disagree with the very foundations of my belief. On the other hand, I could go somewhere smaller and more traditional where my chances of meeting a guy are slim.

One way or another, it boils down to taking a chance.

Anyhow, I guess I’ve wallowed in self-pity long enough. It’ll work out. Things usually do.

Rather Exculpated

2004-09-16T11:15:00.000-07:00

In the world of quantum mechanics, things behave as both particles and waves. The particle part is the actual physical entity of the object (a photon for example, or an electron). The wave part is termed a probability wave and explains why beams of particles created interference patterns. Everything has both the properties of a physical entity and a wavelike entity, from a human body to a single photon.

In fact, single particles fired at a surface one by one, still create an interference pattern even though there are no other probability waves to interfere with.

Without going into all the details of what this means, let me just say that it takes some powerful explaining.

One effort to explain this phenomenon is the many worlds theory. Probability waves interfere with themselves because there are an infinite number possibilities generated each and every moment. So, a single particle interferes with itself or at least a reflection of itself from a parallel universe.

Why do I bring this up? Because in some distant universe the forged documents bashing President Bush, are actually real.

Since that is the case, Dan Rather is exculpated. It would be dishonest of him to admit that the documents were fake since they do exist in a parallel reality.

Good To the Last Drop

2004-09-15T14:49:00.000-07:00

My Zack and Dani's Coffee Roaster arrived in the mail today. I immediately broke it open and fired it up. I'm glad to say it was worth every penny. Right this minute I'm enjoying the smoothest, most flavorful cup of coffee ever.

I ordered Zack and Dani's thanks to One Hand Clapping. I ordered the package deal which came with the roaster, a burr grinder, three pounds of green coffee beans and a cannister.

I mentioned that I'm a coffee snob. You can bet it just got worse. I started out content with Folgers and the like. I started drinking Starbuck's and it was night and day. I went to Peet's and again night and day, though I don't know exactly what the difference is between the two. In any case, Peet's is much better than Starbuck's. Somehow they lost the marketing war. Now I've had my own freshly roasted and brewed cup of coffee and once again, the difference is night and day.

I've learned a good bit (more) about the science of coffee since I decided it might be a worthwhile little project. And now, with my help, you too can be a coffee conniseur.

Whether you're a coffee drinker or not, it's still worthwhile to know a bit about coffee. Coffee is the second largest import to the U.S., only second to oil. Of the two varieties of coffee, Robusta and Arabica, Robusta accounts for the majority of our coffee consumption. Robusta is the Folgers and Hills Brother type coffees you buy in the giant tin can at the grocery store. Robusta is easier to grow, less susceptible to disease, and generally produces more fruit. Arabica, on the other hand, is much more labor intensive, and susceptible to ailments. However, Robusta doesn't have the flavor that Arabica has. When comparing Robusta to Arabica, it's a tradeoff between quality and quantity. Arabica is of higher quality, but less in quantity and thus somewhat more expensive.

Acids and oils and flavinoids in the coffee bean are what gives it its flavor. A green coffee bean is covered with a thin membrane, and it retains water in the bean and preserves the bean. When you roast the bean the membrane dries and flakes, becoming chaff. But, roasted coffee beans are very porous. The chemicals in the bean that give coffee its unique flavor oxidize rapidly once the membrane is removed and the coffee flavor is compromised. Roasted unground coffee beans loose half of their flavor within two weeks. Ground beans only last a few days. Furthermore, coffee tends to do the same thing that baking soda does when you put it in the refrigerator. Coffee stored in the fridge or the freezer will end up tasting like the fridge or the freezer. Unroasted coffee beans last a year or more and will still taste as good as ever when you do roast them. That's also why coffee tastes better if you make it in a stove top percolator or a press. Coffee brewed in a drip style coffee maker tends to take on a bitter papery taste because of the filter. Even if you aren't such a prig as I am about your coffee you can still get a better cup simply by rinsing the filter in hot water before brewing your coffee or by purchasing a permanent wire mesh filter that will fit in your coffee maker.

Anyhow, coffee was first discovered in Ethiopia. From there it was transplanted to places all around the globe. Coffee is still grown in Ethiopia, as well as Yemen, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Burundi, Uganda, Indonesia, India, Hawaii, Brazil, Peru, Columbia, Ecuador, Guatamala, Costa Rica, Jamaica. . . Coffees grown in different locations have different characteristics. I don't really understand the characterizations given by coffee tasters (winy, berry, fruity, etc.). I had to make up my own vague, inadequate descriptions because I've never really tasted those things in my coffee. Coffee tastes like coffee, not wine. Ethiopian and Yemeni coffees are bright and lively. They're my favorite, because they come closest to tasting like coffee smells. Sumatra is much darker and heavier. It makes a good thick wake up cup of coffee. I put those two at opposite ends of the coffee spectrum. All the rest I've had fall somewhere between. Guatamalan coffee (my first stab at home roasting), is closer to Ethiopian, and it actually has a sweet kind of flavor. Peruvian coffe is another favorite, it is richer and goes really well with chocolate. Brazilian and Columbian coffees are much closer to Sumatran. I haven't had Indian coffee yet. Kenyan is also very very good. It's close to Ethiopian but tends to be less complex.

Now that I've characterized some different coffees, I'm going to distance myself from all of that by saying that the roast can have as much to do with the flavor of a coffee as the origin has. Roasting your coffee beans to different degrees of doneness will give you heavier coffees for darker roasts and brighter coffees for lighter roasts. So a darkly roasted Yemeni coffee will be notably different from a lightly or medium(ly?) roasted Yemeni coffee.

Which brings us around to one of the reasons for home roasting your own coffee. Bottom line is, it's fun. You can have a new and unique coffee brew every day if you choose to do so. It's a matter of experimenting. Try a dark roast Yemeni, a light roast Sumatra, maybe mix the leftovers together the next day. You never have to be stuck drinking the same boring coffee every day.

Another thing is that it will save you some money in the long run. I ended up with nine pounds of green beans. I purchased six pounds (two each of a Peruvian bean, a Sumatran, and Yemeni (Yemeni is my all time favorite(Can you tell I don't know how to use brackets? I just like them.(This would be correct if I was writing an equation.(Hmm. English as an equation?)))). I was given a pound of Zach and Dani's Breakfast Blend, a pound of Columbian, and a pound of Guatamalan when I bought my roaster. The six pounds of coffee I bought shipping was about $30.00 after shipping. Starbuck's coffees run about ten bucks a pound. The Yemeni coffee is even more expensive because it is grown in remote mountain regions and has to be carted around by donkeys. Two pounds of Yemeni coffee costs about $36.00 from Starbuck's or Peet's. Furthermore, if you buy in bulk (ten or more pounds) you get discounts from most places. Once I have a few particular favorites, I'll probably buy ten or so pounds of my favorites and keep them sealed up in cannisters.

You are now armed to go out and impress your friends with your staggering knowledge of coffee and the benefits of home roasting. So, go. Impress. Be staggering.

Rather Intriguing

2004-09-13T10:31:00.000-07:00

No doubt you've heard about Rathergate (The worst thing about Watergate is that every little scandal is some sort of gate. Zippergate, Pantsgate, Cigargate. Jesus.). The title link is a good overview of the state of things. Browse Ace's site a little more thoroughly, and you'll find all the information and links and explanations you could ever hope to see. In fact, you could spend entire days following links from site to site, you can see scans and reproductions and copies of all the documents Dan Rather discussed on 60 Minutes. You can find typography analysis, interviews with analysts, editorials, opinion articles, even downright frothing-at-the-mouth ranting-and-raving.

Rather fucked up. He failed to verify his source. He reported news based on fraudulent information. And, so far as I know, he has refused to recant the report. Press articles on the topic seem more supportive of Rather than they do of the information that is circulating the blogosphere. But there is a noticeable difference between the two. All of the blogs I've read have painstakingly documented their research with links, and references. The newspaper articles I've read have not. In fact, they practically give unqualified support to the 60 Minutes report.

What strikes me about this situation though, is that it seems the media has competition. For a very long time, reporting has been the domain of reporters. They had sources and references and access to all sorts of information. Reporting was a full time job and by and large your average guy (or gal) didn't really have the time to verify the reports they heard or read.

Enter the world wide web. Near instantaneous access to practically every piece of information you could ever hope to lay eyes upon. Near instantaneous communication with practically anybody on the planet (certainly anybody worth communicating with). Reporting on the news became little more difficult than typing a search string into Google, and emailing a couple of folks. Anybody with enough curiosity to search a little and ask a few questions can report on the news can verify sources (multiple times), can even ask for expert opinions and analysis if they're so inclined (like Bill at INDC).

I read a piece (linked from USS Clueless, I haven't been able to find it again) about why blogging and the world wide web is a bad thing. The article may have been published in the International Herald Tribune, though I don't remember that for a fact. In any case, the gist of it was that people now have the ability to filter the information that comes into their homes. It will severely diminish the consideration of alternate points of view. Conservatives will peruse conservative slanted information and will not concern themselves with liberal opinion. Liberals will do the opposite (or converse or whatever). I don't recall it being explicitly spelled out, but the suggestion was clearly that people ought not to be allowed to filter their information sources.

Consider for a moment: When the contractors were torched and hung from a bridge in Fallujah like slabs of beef, I recall about two or three days worth of front page coverage. Abu Grabassgate on the otherhand merited weeks of frontpage coverage. The media has howled bloody murder at the Swift Boat Vets since day one, yet they've hardly said boo about Moveon.org (and if they have, it was to claim it was a valid expression of free speech).

Anyhow, I digress. My point is not to blow the lid off the 'Liberal Media Bias' story (sadly, I'm too late for that). I only mean to point out that blogs and the world wide web are actually changing the way we examine information. Prior to modern times, it has likely been our healthy skepticism that has prevented Americans from buying into the liberal media thing. We have excellent bullshit detectors and we're suspicious of everything. With this new found ability to find things out for ourselves, the extent of media bias is becoming ever more apparent. More importantly, it's being negated.

The world wide web has only existed for a little more than a decade. It is still evolving. I think we are witnessing the emergence of one of the most powerful aspects of the internet. The pace of this evolution is nothing short of astounding, and it is clearly changing the shape of our society. Reading and writing have existed for something on the order of 5000 years. The printing press has existed for roughly five centuries. The telegraph has been around for about a century and a half, the telephone for a little more than a century, radio and television less than a century, computer around half a century, the web for about a decade. Each represents an increase in the availability of information. Each also represents and acceleration of technology and society.

I don't know exactly how this will change our world. You can bet that the media as it stands now will loose what prestige it has remaining. A middle man is being cut. And you can further bet that people will be exposed to a wider range of ideas and opinions than ever before. I freely admit that I avoid liberal blogs purposely, but I experience a wider range of opinion among the conservative blogs I read than I experience in conversation with all the many liberals I know here in California. Regardless, it's all there. Liberal, conservative, in between. You can find it if you look. The only difference is that it's not being foisted on you.

It's kind of a curious thing, but as near as I can tell liberals actually do buy into the mainstream news and the bias embedded therein. It's as though the thinking has been done for them and they simply recite what it is they've heard. When it comes to an argument they seem to be loosing, they say that conservatives are cold-hearted, religious fanatics, liars, or flat-out stupid (think 'Anybody who doesn't agree with my husband's health care proposal is an idiot.').

In my browsing, I've found that conservatives are rational. They tend to lay out reasoned arguments. They have reasons for what they believe. Liberals are compassionate and emotional and don't need reason.

The world wide web t is revealing this distinction. In the past there has never been a compelling reason to doubt that the news was reporting anything but well researched, accurate stories. But beginning with the Monica Lewinsky story (Matt Drudge at Drudge Report broke the Lewinsky story as I understand the sequence of events surrounding that appalling mess) and continuing today with Rather's failure, we see that blogs and independent research and the world wide web is counterbalancing things.

I believe it is fueling the resurgence of conservatism, at least in part. The trend is towards reason, towards rational decision making. Especially among younger people of my generation. We don't rely on the news for our information, we seek it out for ourselves. Our endless browsing of the web has replaced the media as our main source of information, and when we are presented with unbiased, primary-source information, we draw different conclusions than would be the case if we relied on newspapers and the 5:00 broadcast.

I believe this will be a catalyst for a very long time. Probably for at least the duration of my life. I only make very basic and obvious predictions here that are already emerging. But, my final observation is that as I mentioned before, the pace of change is accelerating. Ten years ago, one might have been able to see where we would be today, but today, I don't think we can really look much beyond five years from now.

It's a good time to be alive.

Road Trip

2004-09-12T10:29:00.000-07:00

I didn't go on vacation this year like I normally do, backpacking through some of the more remote (and sometimes not so remote) parts of the world. So far I've been to Peru, Thailand, Morocco, Spain, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and the Bahamas. In the States I've been to Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California, Oregon, Kansas, and Florida. One week from today, I'll be adding Idaho to my list. I was there once when I was three or four, so it doesn't count yet.

The purpose of the trip is a little foggy. On September 25th, 2004 I will have endured for an entire quarter of a century. Normally I don't like birthdays. As near as I can tell they're just a countdown until death. But, a quarter of a century seems like a decent milestone. I'm not celebrating as such. Rather, I'm examining. It seems like a good time to reflect to do a little soul searching and consider where I think I ought to be going. At the absolute outside I have to believe that I've used up a full quarter of my existence. It's something of a sobering thought, especially when I'm not sure what it is that I've accomplished.

Next week I will take a hiatus from California insanity. I'm going to head east into Nevada. I'll drive about eight hours to Wells Nevada where I'll spend the night. From there I head north to Idaho. I'll pay a visit to Idaho Falls, Craters of the Moon National Park, Twin Falls, and then head further east to Jackson Hole and on to my parents house for a week or so. I figure it will take three to four days. If you live along that path and care to have a cup of coffee or something e-mail me.

Anyhow, I guess it'll be a fair vacation if nothing else. I'll be taking my laptop. Hopefully I'll find a hotspot at a hotel or something. I'll still post a few things. Maybe I'll set up a photolog before I go. I can take my camera and post a picture or two of the things I pass.

I've heard often enough from fellow travelers from other parts of the world how big and amazing America is. I've never argued that point. There is practically as much to see in America alone as there is in all the rest of the world. It's my home, and I have no excuse not to take some time to appreciate it in all its glory.

September 11th

2004-09-11T14:25:00.000-07:00

Roughly 13 billion years past a decidedly strange thing happened. Prior to that occurrence, all of existence was compactified into a little curlicue of near infinite density. In this infinitesimal speck of reality, matter and time and energy and space were indistinguishable. Theoretically, there were all sorts of curious little quantum goings-on, um, going on. However, one of these little goings-on wasn’t supposed to happen. The universe tried to divide by zero and got the blue screen of death. Unable to resolve this appalling turn of events the Speck self-destructed in an unimaginably ferocious explosion of matter and energy. The Speck split into two parts. Four of eleven dimensions expanded into a reality consistent with self-organization.

Over the course of billions of years, these four dimensions organized themselves and their contents into the Universe. Matter and energy cooled and differentiated. Slowly the bits of matter agglomerated into stars and galaxies and clusters. Stellar explosions, and galactic collisions rearranged these collections of matter and energy until planets emerged.

A few billion years into this process a nebula (a cloud of matter) was slowly revolving about an axis. Equally slowly, it was contracting under the force of gravity. For unknown millions or billions of years, this cloud continued to contract. Particles of matter fell roughly towards the center of the cloud, and heated as they fell until a point was reached in the center of this cloud. And in a blaze of energy, a stellar engine ignited. Other centers of gravity formed in this cloud, and other, much smaller bodies formed from the leftovers.

So it was, an unremarkable solar system formed in an unremarkable corner of an unremarkable galaxy. For an additional billion years, this solar system carried on in an unremarkable fashion. But something nearly as startling as the original error in the Speck happened on one of the chunks of rock circling the average yellow sun. Tiny bits of matter started to clump together in chemical formations that were capable of replicating themselves. Long chains of carbon based chemicals not only stuck together and persisted, they built more of themselves. More importantly, when they broke down, they fixed themselves in novel new ways so that they didn’t necessarily break again in the same way.

Shortly thereafter, life emerged. Not life as we know it, but our most distant and alien ancestors had been born. For another couple billion years these little life-like bits of chemistry carried on about their business of self-replication. More importantly, they continued to complexify. Strings of self-replicating chemistry separated and came back together and separated again, until at some point, these strings weren’t really strings anymore, but were agglomerations of different bits of chemistry. They became better at replicating. Strings turned into chains, and found a way to combine with energy to propagate. Cells had been invented. Prokaryotes (cells without a nucleus) gave way to eukaryotes (cells with a nucleus). Eukaryotes clumped together and differentiated and multi-cellular organisms emerged from the primordial ooze.

Once life had a toehold, it proved more tenacious and resourceful than could ever have been imagined. Life not only adapted itself to survive, it adapted its surroundings. Today, life can be found existing near super hot volcanic vents at the bottoms of the oceans, in oil samples dredged from deep beneath the surface of the land, and in ice samples hundreds of yards deep.
Life, it seems, has some indefinable desire to persist, perhaps even to explore. It is that drive, that continued effort to complexify which eventually led to a singularly successful arrangement of specialized organization. At first, it didn’t seem like much of anything. A critter four or five feet tall covered with hair, it stood on its hind legs and used curious appendages to manipulate things. This apelike beast continued to change and adapt. It diverged rapidly from its simian cousins.

At some point, another of those curious events reinvented the shape of things. Nobody rightly knows exactly when it happened, or why. Perhaps a stray cosmic particle slipped through the atmospheric particle shield. This little bundle of energy plowed through the air until a howling, grunting, hirsute little monster had the misfortune to block its path. This particle crashed into the creature, burrowed through skin and muscle and fat, through intracellular fluids, cellular membranes, through cellular fluids, nuclear membranes and finally, crashed headfirst into a particularly delicate and venerable apparatus of life. A single sequence of chemicals buried in the deepest part of a single organism was subtly altered by this one bit of energetic mass. The cell carrying that altered gene paired with another cell. This unusual pairing of cells gave rise to an unusual new critter. A genetic sport was born. This animal was not capable of swallowing and breathing at the same time. That might be a neat trick, but he had something better. He could talk.

Thus communication, and subsequently, civilization was born. Sport was particularly successful at getting laid and having little ones. I suppose his honeyed words were irresistible. In any case, humanity as we know it stopped grunting and howling and started cussing and discussing.
Life had been moving upward for untold millions of years. Our little proteinaceous predecessors had started in an ocean. They crawled up onto land (as plants first). These plants couldn’t support themselves so they invented new structures to build them up, to take them closer to the sun, the source of their energy and their strength. When animals came to land, they too strived to move upwards. Some of them grew to tree-like proportions, some of them learned to climb and live among the branches, others learned to fly.

Humans were climbers. But crawling to the top of a tree wasn’t enough. They not only climbed to the top, they learned to stand up. Even when our ancestors came down from the trees, they stood tall. They looked above the grasses on the savannah. They watched for predators, for friends, for enemies. And they looked to the stars. Humans stood on their hind legs and tilted their heads back oh so slightly, and there above them was an immense bowl of black filled with twinkling lights.

Humans began to build. Many of the first structures were observatories. Buildings designed to help people look at the stars and understand them, even to explore them, after a fashion. Stonehenge was an observatory and a calendar. The pyramids too, were built according to celestial measurements. It is easy to imagine that for the entire duration of human existence we have struggled to reach the stars.

For something more than ten thousand years we have demonstrated our desire to reach the stars. To explore them, to unlock their mysteries, possibly even to say howdy to our galactic neighbors if we have any.

And our buildings have equally represented our vertical explorations. Pyramids and ziggurats gave way to even more enormous palaces, temples, and workplaces. Only in the past couple of centuries have our engineering abilities permitted us to build constructions ten or more stories in height.

At the time of its completion, the World Trade Center was the pinnacle of engineering. It was the tallest building in the world. It was so monstrous in scale that everything that went into its construction necessarily became a mass produced stock item. It was a testament to the power of human ingenuity. It was the result of 13 billion years of universal coincidences and stood at the heart of a city that represented the most successful group of people to have emerged since Sport first said howdy.

On September 11th, 2001, The World Trade Center was destroyed. A group of (jealously) less successful people demolished an icon of human success; a group of people who believe they can win because they “believe in death while you believe in life”.

They failed to reckon on a few things. First, life persists. We have warehouses full of archaeological remains that tell us how true this is. Life has survived multiple extinction level events. Life persists in environments that should be completely hostile to life. Every time life has approached extinction, it has emerged more strenuously organizing than ever before. Amphibians gave way to reptiles, reptiles gave way to dinosaurs, dinosaurs gave way to mammals. Each step represents additional complexity and ever more rapid evolution. Life finds a way. Always bet on life. Second, the attack occurred in the one place on earth where the better part of human nature is most virulent. America is practically defined by upward mobility.

We may perhaps be forced to take a step backwards, but nothing will stop us from climbing the beanstalk. Every step backwards will be followed by two steps forward. Our tenacity and success has bred admiration and jealousy in equal measures.

Every one of the three thousand people killed three years ago looked to the stars, explorers at heart if not in action. Every one of them struggled to better themselves and their surroundings. They may have been lost, but their dreams remain. It’s been said that America is a shining city on a hill. But it is her people that provide the illumination.

Hyuk.

2004-09-08T14:19:00.000-07:00

There are only 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand computers and those who don't.

Faster! Faster I Say!

2004-09-08T09:20:00.000-07:00

Intel and AMD are continually coming up with creative new ways to cram more transistors on silicon chips. Chip makers have to continue to find ways to improve computer performance in order to continue to make sales. Their strategy up to now has been making transistors ever smaller and as a result, faster.

There is a limit to this approach, though we haven't reached it yet. The problem is that as transistors get smaller certain quantum effects start to show up. I can't find the link again (I really need to be more diligent about saving links for things I write) but these quantum effects started showing up several chip generations in the past. Electrons whizzing along through the chip sometimes tunnel through non-conductive materials. So transistors that expect to be at zero suddenly find themselves at one and vice versa. It's the kind of thing that makes programs collapse into a twitching heap of spastic electronic epilepsy. But engineers, being the clever folks that they are, invented error correction which mitigated the effects of quantum tunneling. Only it gets ever more difficult as the distances continue to shrink. At some point the effects of quantum tunneling will become so severe that error correction will not be able to resolve the issues. Additionally, heat continues to be a problem. Semi-conductors don't conduct very well as temperatures rise, so chipmakers must also find ways to conduct a great deal of heat away from the chips. There is evidence of this on practically every chip or board that you buy. I have a heat sink and fan on my CPU, another one on my motherboard, one on my video accelerator, and four system fans to pump heat into my living room. We're pretty much at the limit of cooling technology. If chips generate much more heat than they do now, they will quite literally melt.

There may be another few generations of transistor miniaturization. Intel recently announced another step forward due to materials science and such. But they are also looking for other mechanisms to allow them to continue shrinking chips or at least making them faster. Multi-core processors are coming soon. Basically this means arranging two or more processors on a single chip. News articles tout it as parallel processing. I have my doubts on that score. My old machine is a dual processor machine. My new machine has an Intel Prescott chip with hyperthreading. Both are ostensibly capable of parallel processing. Neither performs that particular function however. For one thing, none of the software I have seems to have any use for dual processors (beyond recognizing them). For another, I'm not sure that the system architecture really permits processors to work in parallel.

For processors to work in parallel, they must have access to the same resources and data. They can work on crunching the same numbers thus doubling the speed at which data is processed. Two minds are better than one, you know. But so far as I know, we haven't figured out how to do that yet. When you have two processors working on the same bits of information, they tend to try accessing the same resources at the same time which is a big no-no in the computer world. Instead we have a quasi-parallel computing scheme whereby the two processors are assigned specific tasks or processes. They each do their own little processing gig and scrupulously avoid bumping into each other or stealing one another's resources. It's faster than with a single processor but not as fast as would be the case if they really were operating in parallel. It will be interesting to see how the multi-core processors work and what impact they will have on software. I rather suspect we'll see the same problem. There might be two or four or eight processor cores packed onto a single chip but the effect will be as though there were four distinct processors each dedicated to its own tasks.

In the more distant future there are alternatives. I think the one that will reach maturity first will be spintronics. Right now our computers use the electrical property of quantum particles (electrons) to perform binary mathematics. The electrical charge of electrons flows through the transistors. The transistor is charged or not, one or zero, on or off. The same binary logic works with spintronics. Spin is a property of particles related to magnetism. Electrons can be either spin up or spin down, again giving us one or zero, on or off. Magnetic devices can read the spin of the particle to determine whether it is up or down and relay that information to other parts of the computer. We already use a sort of rudimentary version of spintronics in laptop hard drives and other magnetic storage media. IBM is investing an enormous amount of money and energy into spintronic research. One technology is MRAM or Magnetic Random Access Memory. It operates at or near the same speed as conventional ram but maintains its state even when powered down. Another avenue of research is storage devices capable of storing information on a near-atomic level. Particles can be embedded in a material with a given spin. A read head can pass over the particle and determine whether it is up or down, can change the spin of the particle (one or zero) and can relay the information. Mind-boggling amounts of information will be able to be stored on ridiculously small devices. Our knowledge of electronics is extremely mature. I think spintronics will be next because it will rely on the same binary logic as our electronic computers, (in fact spintronics computers will likely be an amalgam of electronics and spintronics) and magnetism is basically a variant of electricity (the electromagnetic force).

Following spintronics, things get a little more vague. I think optronics will follow spintronics. These are computers that compute using beams of light rather than streams of electrons. There are already optical semiconductors and optical transistors. Optronics will use beams of visible or possibly infrared light to perform computations and carry data. This approach to computing is still nascent, but I think one of the most fascinating. And besides, the idea of a computer operating at light speed seems very sexy in a way. I can't find the article anymore, but one of the colleges (MIT or possibly Cal Tech) have built and operated an optical computer. It uses mirrors and optical transistors to calculate numbers. It fills most of a room but then, so did ENIAC. The important thing is that it actually crunched some numbers. There's no fundamental reason that the devices can not be shrunk and the beams of light miniaturized to fit in a little box on your desk. In fact, the beams of light could theoretically amount to a single phton being fired through a given transistor (though I don't know if that will prove to be practical). Optical computers won't be likely to require a fundamental shift in computer programming either because optical computers will also use binary (transparent or not, on or off, one or zero).

The above options don't change any fundamental aspects of computing (at least as far as our understanding of programming and binary goes). They advance computer science by increasing the speed at which operations are capable of being calculated either by shrinking distances between transistors (spintronics) or by using a faster medium (optronics). There are two other computer technologies on the horizon and both have recently been demonstrated to be possible.

Chemical or DNA computers fascinate me. I have doubts about how useful they will prove to be on a consumer level. A DNA computer doesn't use binary. I don't know really know what rules of logic apply to DNA computing. But, in any case, DNA computers are very good at Hamiltonian Problems. Hamiltonian Problems are key in the lock problems. It goes like this: I give you a padlock and box filled with five hundred (thousand, million) padlock keys. Only one key fits the lock. How can you find which one will work? A traditional computer, given that problem would have to try each key, one at a time until it found the one that works. A chemical computer is different though. To solve the problem using a chemical computer, you create a chemical sample representing the lock say the chemicals in the test tube are shaped like the lock. Then you dump all the keys in your chemical sample and shake up the vial. When you examine the chemicals left over you find that only one key fit into the lock and all the rest are floating around uselessly. There's more to it than that, but you get the idea. The problem with chemical computers like this is that they're very poor at linear computing (like adding a string of numbers together). Something else they're very good at, though, is storing data. DNA strands can potentially be used to store enormous arrays of data. I think it will likely be used as data mining and pattern recognition applications. One problem with DNA as a computing medium is that it isn't very stable. DNA strands don't live very long without repair mechanisms. Heat degrades them very quickly. A more stable chemical arrangement needs to be found or else a device or critter that can repair the information strands and maintain data integrity. I don't doubt something will be invented.

Finally, we will see quantum computers. I'm a little foggier on their nuts and bolts but I'm not alone. Quantum computers work by manipulating certain quantum properties of particles. Namely, the wave properties. Particles exist as both waves and particles. Our current state of knowledge permits us to manipulate the particulate properties of particles. It also allows us to observe the wave-like properties. We now have a vague inkling of how it might be possible to manipulate these wave-like properties. The wave-like properties can be termed probability waves. A particle exists in an infinite range of possible existences until it is observed at which point the state of the particle collapses into some sort of stability. So, if you shine a particle beam (a flashlight will do nicely) on a wall, each photon zips across the distance to impinge on the wall. Only instead of zipping through the intervening space, the photons from the flashlight potentially zip everywhere at the same instant. Each photon has its own probability function that says it is simultaneously crossing between the flashlight and the wall. At the same time, each photon takes a jaunt to Epsilon Eridani and the wall, and Timbuktu and the Wall and Gramma's back porch and the wall. There is a finite (though in most cases vanishingly small) probability that you could observe the photon from your flashlight in the space around Epsilon Eridani or Wolf 359. However, once you observe a photon all of those possibilities collapse into a single possibility. Quantum computing is an attempt to manipulate this probability wave. The idea is that a problem can be sort of written into a probability wave. The wave can then be tweaked so that it collapses in such a way as to result in the correct solution to the problem. Believe it or not, it's been done. Again, I can't find the article, but scientists have managed to coax very simple calculations from a sort of pre-quantum computer. I don't think our grasp of quantum mechanics is sufficient to achieve an actual quantum computer, but I don't believe there is any fundamental reason it can't work. There are problems, for example, larger problems require larger probability fields, but the probability fields tend to break down and do bizarre things when they get too large. They also go nutso when they interact with other particles like matter and such, so the fields must be contained.

Chemical and quantum computers will necessitate the first real paradigm shift in computing since the days of the vacuum tube. They don't operate on conventional binary rules and an entirely new language will have to be invented. Estimates I've read suggest that quantum computers aren't much more than ten years away. I think that's an optimistic estimate. On the other hand, the same is said about DNA computers, which I think is much more likely.

I don't think we will have true parallel computers (like our brain) without making enormous strides in programming. But that might be another topic. Fuzzy logic will probably have something to do with it. Anyhow, Moore's law has continued to prove accurate, right up to this very day. We are now running into the physcal wall that may end his prediction, but I'm not so sure. The wall might not be a barrier to stop us, so much as it's likely to encourage a detour. With all these options on the horizon, I think we have every reason to beleive that Moore's law will continue to hold true in the near future.

Downright GIDDY

2004-09-08T08:14:00.000-07:00

This big famous blogger guy added me to his rolls via the 'ginormous update' engine. I would say he's a king, except for the fact that he's an Ace. I figure I'm about a four. Probably of popcorns.

Anyhow, the ginormous update included analysts, humorists, incorrigible rapscallions, and even a few ribald jackanapes.

I'm not sure which accounts for me, but I'm fairly confident that I haven't been a ribald jackanape since that time I woke up in a stranger's house on a Thursday. But that's neither here nor there.

The point is Ace of Spades HQ is still a favorite, though now he's also a linker. I can hardly take him from my favorites list, so from this day forward Ace will be dually linked from this site.

Fixing Men

2004-09-07T10:56:00.000-07:00

My Sunday usually starts with a cup of coffee and a wander through the bookstore. I park in the 90 minute parking so I have to leave at some point. I favor the history, politics and science sections. I tak an occassional look at the science fiction section, though I seldom read fiction any more, and watch for good deals on classics (especially when I can find Easton Press bindings). I tend to ignore the social studies section. The titles always turn me off. You aren't supposed to judge a book by its cover but the titles make me suspect that everything on those shelves is written by a bunch of whiners who think the world ought to change for their sake.

I haven't been proven wrong. One of the books in men's studies caught my eye so I leafed through it for a while. It was a collection of essays about men and society. The gist of it was that both are bad for each other and need to be changed. The essays pretty much surrounded a theme about perceived masculinity, that in America men are expected to behave with a certain aggression and territoriality, to be competitive. The conclusion was that all of this is bad.

Men ought to be raised to be softer and more gentle. We need to be metrosexualized. We should wear pink and carry hand bags and be excited about hugging because it's better you see. And society needs to be conditioned to accept these newer more sensitive men.

The world is not equitably balanced. Men have unfair advantages. Men have all the good jobs and get all the good money and they're ever so mean. But it's not their fault. Society makes them into hairy hulking beasts. So obviously, the answer is to create a new man and remake society to reinforce our collective rebirth.

To translate: 'It's not fair! Don't you people realize the universe revolves around me?' It's more cleverly done than that though. What they say is that men behave in x manner. But it's not the fault of man because society reinforces x manner and punishes y manner. It's very nice that way because nobody is to blame. (Americans tend to be very good at shifting blame.)

There's always an anecdote as well. 'My little boy likes to play chess and read and build lego cities but he's ostracized because he doesn't play sports.' 'Our son liked playing with dolls in kindergarten and we worried he might be gay and that the other kids would tease him.' On and on.

I understand where they're coming from. It's a knife in the heart of every parent when they see their babies being teased and picked on. They only want their children to be happy. They don't want their children to go through some of the things they remembered facing as children. But, they think the world should change to make things better rather than teaching their children how to adapt.

God knows the marketers are all over it. Look in any magazine, in any mall, at any billboard and you'll see how things are being changed. Men shaved so smooth they squeak, manicured, hair doed, wearing pink shoes. Not so long ago the world would have been certain they were gay. At some point the stereotypical gay boy image became trendy.

The only problem is that their solution can't possibly work.

Society shapes certain aspects of character, I'll give you that, but biology does as well. You can dress men up in pink jump suits and make them hug till their ribs crack but in the end you're still likely to have a bunch of beer-drinking, pizza-eating, football-watching guys. Men and women function differently. Hormones, proteins, brain functions, it's not the same. I believe a significant amount of behavioral differences between men and women can be traced to biology. Certain of these things are hard-wired into our biology, whether you're a man or a woman.

Besides the above, there will always remain a minority who doesn't fit normal perceptions. The gay boy image could become the norm and suddenly actual gays don't really stand out any more. I suppose the theory goes that by homogenizing society, there will be an end to societal rejection. But the staggering variety of humanity makes the premise ludicrous. For example, what am I to do? I'm a gay guy. I own an iron but can't remember the last time I used it. I'll be damned if I'm going to shave anything besides my face. I prefer a handshake to a hug any day. I don't care if my clothes match, and if they do, it's not because of anything I did on purpose. I prefer comfortable clothes to fashionable clothes. On the other hand when I watch sports it's because of the hunks. I know the physical principles and theory that makes a car work but damned if I know how to fix one. I would rather play Final Fantasy than Madden NFL.

I'm too masculine to be metrosexual, too gay to be straight.

Fortunately for me, my parents had the solution before anybody knew there was an issue. They raised me to be comfortable in my own skin. They raised me to be my own person and not worry about appearances or illusions. The people I grew up with recognized it. I was teased as much as anybody. But the fact that I gave as good as I got, that I knew who I was and didn't care that I was being made fun of earned me the respect of my peers. Certainly I was never popular as such but I was respected. The tattlers, the whiners, the cry-babies were the ones made miserable (and I won't deny my participation in tormenting them).

Regardless, the point is that the problem would be better solved by teaching kids confidence. Teach them to be themselves to act right and be proud of themselves when they do.

This effort to homogenize society has other problems. It degrades polite behavior. I often hold a door for people (especially women) when I go to a store. Sunday I held the door to the coffee shop and the lady was visibly shocked (pleasantly so, but none the less. . .). There was a time when it was a thoughtless action people barely noticed. Then somebody woke up one day and decided it was some sort of gender based slight so it became vaguely inappropriate. Now who goes around bitching about rudeness?

I'll be the first to admit that I hold to old-fashioned values. I feel distinctly uncomfortable when a woman holds a door open for me. There are very few women I allow to pay for my meal or my drink. I would probably burst into flames if a woman bought me flowers or chocolates. Why do I think these things? I have nothing vested in behaving towards women in such a way. At best I'm going to make a new friend should we strike up a conversation. I'm not going to get laid or meet my soul mate.

No. I hold to my old-fashioned values purposely. It makes for a better more civilized world. Homogenizing our society makes for an oatmeal society. If we are to celebrate diversity we must recognize it, and appreciate it for what it is. Diversity means different, not the same, distinct from other things.

Men and women are diverse. Men should be permitted to be masculine as women should be permitted to be feminine. I was still a kid in the 80s. But I have recollections of tv images, commercials, magazines that portrayed women in a particularly masculine light. During the nineties it shifted and women once again drifted towards femininity. During the same period there was the shifting of men away from masculinity. I also remember during the 80s how frequently men were admonished about allowing themselves to be emotional, how there were support groups for everything, how hugging was particularly big at the time. Then in the 90s we end up with Abercrombie and Fitch and The Gap and Banana Republic with their quasi- homosexual soft porn advertisements. It was the birth of the metrosexual. The Salon.com article I linked above seems to me to be clearly in favor of the metrosexual engineering project. It's as though people are trying to erase these genetically drawn lines.

But what is served? It won't solve the problem of men being men. It won't end certain gender inequities. It won't preclude peer rejection. It feels like an oblique attempt at societal engineering. It is an addition to slavery guilt. White people ought to be sorry for slavery and reparations need to be made. Men ought to be sorry for being masculine and ought to be remade into something less masculine.

There will always be exceptions. There will be men who are not terribly masculine. There will be women who bring home the family bacon. There will be gays who actually like monster truck rallies. No matter how hard these people scrub with their eraser, no matter how long they spend trying to blur the lines and balance the equation it will never work.

A Note.

2004-09-03T16:44:00.000-07:00

I wrote out my e-mail address at the top due to discovery of the fact that it limits spam.

Thank you.

That will be all.

Evil Twin

2004-09-03T15:46:00.000-07:00

Killer Commercials.

Here.

And here.

Fruitcake Politics

2004-09-03T11:20:00.000-07:00

My day always starts with a brief foray to a nearby coffee shop where I buy a bucket of black coffee and plug it in to the IV. I'm a coffee snob when I have the option, favoring single origin coffees from the Middle East and Northern Africa, but any liquid resembling coffee will do in a pinch. I'm not really the sort to hang out at coffee shops, but you hear people talking, or read the little flyers while waiting in line.

All I can really say is god damn. Were I to sit down and think of a list of political issues regarding coffee, I would probably come up with tarriffs and. . . Well that's pretty much it. Perhaps I'm not well-suited to considering such heady issues

Fortunately for the world there is a whole mess of people out there who have nothing better to do than come up with ~~idiot~~ revolutionary ideas. I suspect these are the same people who decided dancing about with long ribbons and synchronized diving would make super Olympic sports.

They puzzled out the real issues facing the world of coffee and came up with some ringers.

1. Fair Trade Coffee: Coffee merchants cut out the middle man and buy coffee direct from the farmer for a minimum price of $1.26 per pound. It's good for the farmers I guess. And I'm all for it if coffee bought directly from the farmer at $1.26 per pound costs me less than coffee bought from an import agent. On the other hand, I don't care to drink socialist coffee. I want my coffee to carry the nutty undertones of free market capitalism.

2. Sustainable Coffee Farms: A "sustainable" farm is one where "sustainable coffee is coffee grown in a manner that is kind to the environment and its people." This includes but is not limited to "reuse coffee husks as heating fuel rather than cutting down eucalyptus trees. They will plant new trees for those used during heating, or implement pollution free coffee dryers . . ." and "They promote education programs, provide medical care for workers, and provide decent wages and working conditions for their employees." Color me wowed. I would have thought a sustainable coffee farm is one that engages in farming techniques that permit it to continue growing coffee.

3. Organic Coffee: Most folks by now should be aware of the anomalous 'organic' title. Food grown without things like pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers. I um. . . don't care. Coffee needs to be black and caffeinated. Grow it in such a way that it meets those conditions and I'm satisfied.

4. Bird Friendly Shade Grown Coffee: Apparently birds like coffee too. But they're bigger snobs than I am. They only want coffee as long as there is shade nearby. So, to make the birds happy it's better to grow coffee in the middle of the forest where the birds can get their daily dose of caffeine. Hey, I'm willing to share a bean or two with the birds. But in the end the ~~spice~~ coffee must flow. Don't get too comfy, birds.

Escaflowne

2004-09-02T13:28:00.000-07:00

I have kind of particular taste in anime. Series like Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon do nothing for me. I did enjoy Card Captor Sakura on a diversionary level. The premise fascinated me and it there were a lot of beautiful visuals, but it lacked the depth I like. BoogiePop Phantom, on the other hand, is remarkable. It's extremely complex (a thinking movie). The visuals are curiously bland, but amazingly effective in the context of this particular series. Another series that is particularly notable is Escaflowne.

Escaflowne is spectacular. I caught one episode of Escaflowne (Episode #8, The Day the Angel Flew) on a Fox Box afternoon while I was between jobs (I still watched television at that time). I was instantly hooked. Fox cancelled Escaflowne shortly after that, and I never saw another episode on TV. It ended up not mattering though because I spent two years hunting down the dvds for the entire series.

To set the scene, Hitomi is the main character. A bright light comes from the sky and carries her to a strange new world ("Was it a dream... or an illusion? It's about the sudden transfer of my admirable senpai abroad... ...about him and a giant dragon that appeared in front of me... ...and this mysterious world where both Moon and Earth appear in the sky."). Hitomi finds herself in Gaea where people operate giant units of powered armor, dragons fly through the sky, and angels exist.

The opening where Hitomi is teleported to the Gaea universe is another terribly effective tool they used to set the stage and bring the viewer to Gaea. They create and maintain the illusion that we are transported to Gaea along with Hitomi where we witness all the drama and adventure and magic that lives in Gaea.

The reason I stopped and watched it on Fox Box was because of the art. The drawings are simple and clean, but no less expressive or detailed and the colors are rich and vibrant. It's pure eye candy. They used abstractions and freeze frames during the intense action sequences and it was very effective.

Most of the characters are more or less static throughout the series. Only two (Hitomi and Van) are really dynamic and changed by the end. There is a reason for this though. Hitomi is a high school girl interested in boys and school and track and all the things high school girls are interested in. Van is a child prince, and certain events force him into an adults role though he isn't ready for it. By the end, Hitomi is self assured and confident, Van comes to understand what it is to be a king and an adult. The rest of the characters (save Merle) are already adults. They don't change much, already having found their character. I also think that the characters are less individuals than they are representations of aspects of character. They aren't terribly deep characters until you see them in that light. Then their relationships become very intricate. It's as though the characters are pieces of a greater whole rather than unique individuals.

The voice acting was decent (not as good at BoogiePop Phantom). The translation was also pretty good (again not as good as BoogiePop Phantom), and something I noticed about the English was that it served to highlight differences between Japanese and American culture (also an important note for the previous paragraph). They translated a lot of things as directly as possible from Japanese to English so a character might say 'honor' where 'duty' would make more sense to an American. Catching those differences in language reveals a lot about how our cultures are different.

In reading reviews, I've noticed a number of people think the plot is simplistic. I can see how it might appear simplistic, but there are many layers, and many threads to the plot. It's not obscure and tangled like BoogiePop Phantom (it's not what I call a "thinking movie") but it's still complex and rich. Separating the plot lines kind of wrecks the whole thing. The story weaves character backstories, character development, general history and current events (on Gaea) into a comprehensive whole. It would be like describing a Monet as a picture of some weeds and water and a couple of trees. I liken it to The Lord of the Rings or Dune in detail and completion. The story and the visuals combine in such a way that the viewer doesn't have to set aside belief so much as having it set aside for them.

The soundtrack is as good as the rest of it. The music is very powerful and operatic. Babylon Five had the same quality to its soundtrack. The music was powerful and appropriate, creating and reinforcing moods.

The finishing touches really glued it all together. The episodes begin with Hitomi dragging the viewer into Gaea. "Was it all just a dream? An illusion? No. It was real." Each episode is marked by a tarot card (The Hermit, The Wheel of Fortune, The Hanged Man, The Burning Tower). If you know the meaning of tarot cards, it lends a hint about the theme of the present episode.

I've also watched the Escaflowne movie. They're barely related. The movie lacks the depth and polish of the series, but it is entertaining in its own right. The movie is far more mindless and I think a lot is lost in shoddy translation. You will be disappointed if you expect much of the movie, but I'm not sure that the series can be overestimated.

Now I need to start on a new anime series. I always feel like I'm blindly guessing at their content though. Especially since I watched Escaflowne. Had I not seen a portion of Escaflowne myself I would never have picked it up at a store based on reviews or the back of the box. Most people who review Escaflowne try to summarize the story and invariably they fail miserably (that's why I didn't try). I lucked out with Boogiepop Phantom. I basically picked it off the shelf because the box stood out compared to the others. But, I think now that I have established something of a flavor for myself, I can choose a little more selectively. While browsing for information on Escaflowne and Boogiepop Phantom, I've found two more titles that are often mentioned in relation to them. Serial Experiment Lain and Now and Then, Here and There are frequently compared to Escaflowne and Boogiepop Phantom in terms of complexity, detail, and completion. Also, something called Grave of the Fireflies might be worth a look. If you've seen any of these let me know. And if you know of any titles that might compare nicely to Escaflowne or Boogiepop Phantom let me know.

Anyhow, I suspect that Serial Experiment Lain will be the next series I watch. I'm going to Fry's this evening where I expect I'll find it. I haven't seen Now and Then Here and There in any of the stores around here, so it'll have to wait until I decide I want to special order it. Stay tuned for notes on Serial Experiment Lain.

Macabre and/or Bizarre

2004-09-01T09:08:00.000-07:00

I found the title link via curi.us. Which is indeed, as the title implies, a curious blog. While reading it I had that vaguely schizophrenic feeling as though I couldn't be entirely certain I wasn't hallucinating.

Anyhow, regarding the title link, I can't for the life of me fathom why people seem to think humanity is some sort of disease. Is it fashionable? Is it the creed for some secret society? Perhaps, there's some sort of gratification of which I am unaware?

The gist of the article is that humans fail miserably as parents.

"Four-legged or two-legged, which makes the better parent? Hands down, the animals win."

I'm guessing this lady hasn't spent a lot of time around animals. I've seen cats eat their kittens. I've seen sows eat their piglets and wallow them to death. I've seen cows kick their calves to death. Horses wean their foals by kicking them in the face when they try to suckle (goats and sheep and cattle tend to do the same thing).

People like her seem to forget that people actually are animals. Like it or not, we are biological machines just like any other critter. We are a bag of chemicals, slaves to little bits of protein that float around telling us what to do. The difference is that we have a few genetic alterations as compared to our animal relatives resulting in wildly divergent behavior as compared to the rest of the animal kingdom.

People invest more of their lives in rearing children than any other species. We spend (though we don't necessarily have to) at least 18 years raising and grooming our children. In fact, the average age a person leaves home is 26. You can find the statistics on the Casey Family page but I'm too lazy to look them up. Statistically, about one third of a parent's life is consumed by a single child. We do pretty well on that score. Additionally, humans don't generally wean our children by elbowing them in the face. I won't rule it out, but I haven't heard of humans eating their own offspring.

The score is about equal so far. Then again, when people do evil things to children other people punish them. We recognize that it's wrong to treat children cruelly and make a group effort to limit such cruelty. Animals don't do that. We take in other people's children when it's necessary. It happens in the animal world, but it's pretty rare. I've raised a number of bums because it's nearly impossible to get animals to accept babies that aren't theirs.

For all the appalling things people do to their kids, I think we measure up pretty well in general. In fact, I would indeed place us well above other animals though as I said we too are just a differently shaped bag of chemicals.

The piety is what gets me. Obviously humanity haters don't include themselves with the herd or they would take steps to remove themselves from the catastrophe (and spare the rest of us their idiot moaning). It seems that their recognition of "reality" makes them enlightened or possibly even transcendant.

The fact that we are animals means we will behave as such. Humans will always do monstrous things to one another. The thing that makes us better is that we strive for virtue in a way that I believe is beyond the ability of animals.

A Random Curiosity 1

2004-08-31T12:19:00.000-07:00

You know Chupa Chups?

They're Spanish ice cream flavored lollipops. Chupa in Spanish means suck. Chupa in (Brazillian) Portuguese means a wet, vigorous kiss, or to suck (in an . . . orally gratifying manner).

You know Chupa Cabra?

It's a mythical monster sort of like the Jersey Devil or the Yeti. Mostly reports of El Chupa Cabra come from Texas, California, Florida, Puerto Rico, etc. Cabra means goat in Portuguese and Spanish. Chupa Cabra means Suck Goat. Or, I suppose in colloquial English, Goat Sucker.

More Environmental Foolishness

2004-08-27T16:34:00.000-07:00

Today is chock full of bloggy goodness.

The title link will take you to another bit of idiocy thrown out by the econuts. I wrote a little about nuclear power recently. I'm too lazy to find the permalink, but feel free to hunt through the archives.

In any case, I wish I had come across this tidbit before completing my previous post on the global warming thing.

Here's an interesting contradiction.

The left is completely bonkers about nuclear power plants. Read the title link. The left is completely bonkers about global warming.

We're stuck with coal as the only realistic alternative for electricity. According to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory: "Given a typical coal-fired plant, producing 1000 megawatts, it burns 2.3 million tons of coal per year, produces 200,000 thousand tons of fly ash a year, 7.5 million tons of carbon-dioxide (CO2) per year, 200,000 tons of sulfur oxide, 25,000 tons of nitrous oxide, and 1000 tons of carbon-monoxide (CO)."

Interestingly, we could meet the Kyoto Protocols by shutting down some of our coal power plants and replacing them with nuclear plants. And not only would we reduce CO2 emissions, we would reduce radioactive emissions.

Curious.

2004-08-27T15:00:00.000-07:00

Here's a little irony for me. Pay a visit to jrogg.blogpsot.com.

Wanted: One Gas Mask + Instamatic Ice Maker

2004-08-27T10:45:00.000-07:00

Title link comes via the Public Enquire Project.

It boggles my mind that people buy this junk. "American and international panels of experts concluded as early as 2001 that smokestack and tailpipe discharges of heat-trapping gases were the most likely cause of recent global warming." This is according to "the best possible scientific information".

Here you can see another side of the story. One that is a bit more scientifically rigorous than the New York Times article, and likely more rigorous than the study completed by the "experts".

What they do is create a computer model of the environment and tweak certain numbers. The model runs a number of iterations and spits out a result. The problem is that these models aren't very accurate. The weatherman on tv uses these same kinds of models to make forecasts. The thing is they can't predict the weather with any kind of accuracy more than about five days in advance. Here you have a bunch of yahoos claiming they can predict the changes in the entire global climate over a period of years and decades. Not only that, they have determined that a few factors representing a tiny fraction of the causes of global temperature fluctuation will effectively bring about the destruction of the ecosphere.

These experts aren't pursuing science. They're pursuing their own self interest. They're having a field day and getting paid to tinker with their computer models and every now and then they find themselves in the news. These experts are the frauds in the EPA. They're fat-assed bureaucrats and lawyers who make a killing ripping off the government and companies. They're crooks. Pure and simple.

Go here for a site that is honestly interested in environmental health.

50 Things

2004-08-26T11:44:00.000-07:00

Courtesy The Llama Butcher

1. Your name spelled backwards. nitsuJ
2. Where were your parents born? Father South Dakota (Possibly Gregory); Mother – Wyoming (possibly Saratoga).
3. What is the last thing you downloaded onto your computer? mIRC.
4. What’s your favorite restaurant? Nantuckets (Steak and Lobster and ever so much to drink).
5. Last time you swam in a pool? About a month ago for scuba lessons.
6. Have you ever been in a school play? Several. I’ve been in Alice In Wonderland, A Baseball Variety Show, a couple Shakespeare thingums.
7. How many kids do you want? Two (fat chance of that).
8. Type of music you dislike most? Rap and Europop (I don’t qualify them as actual music.)
9. Are you registered to vote? Indeed.
10. Do you have cable? I have rabbit ears.
11. Have you ever ridden on a moped? I laughed at some guy pushing one.
12. Ever prank call anybody? No.
13. Ever get a parking ticket? I live in the Bay Area. Parking tickets are more ubiquitous than telemarketers around here.
14. Would you go bungee jumping or sky diving? In a heartbeat.
15. Farthest place you ever traveled. The opposite side of the planet.
16. Do you have a garden? I have a plant. It’s still alive.
17. What’s your favorite comic strip? Garfield.
18. Do you really know all the words to your national anthem? Verse one.
19. Bath or Shower, morning or night? Morning and Evening shower.
20. Best movie you’ve seen in the past month? I Robot
21. Favorite pizza topping? Pepperoni ham and mushrooms.
22. Chips or popcorn? Chips. Or popcorn.
23. What color lipstick do you usually wear? No.
24. Have you ever smoked peanut shells? I can’t be sure. When I drive down memory lane I find a few fogbanks.
25. Have you ever been in a beauty pageant? Please.
26. Orange Juice or apple? Cranberry.
27. Who was the last person you went out to dinner with and where did you dine? A friend and I went to Pasta Primavera II.
28. Favorite type chocolate bar? Symphony. With almonds.
29. When was the last time you voted at the polls? 2000.
30. Last time you ate a homegrown tomato? About six years.
31. Have you ever won a trophy? I won the spelling bee, the geography bee, and the math bee.
32. Are you a good cook? I'm an excellent cook.
33. Do you know how to pump your own gas? Absolutely!
34. Ever order an article from an infomercial? They wouldn’t let me have him.
35. Sprite or 7-up? Cranberry Juice.
36. Have you ever had to wear a uniform to work? I wore an apron when I was a dishwasher.
37. Last thing you bought at a pharmacy? Lighter fluid and barbecue briquettes.
38. Ever throw up in public? Possibly. See #24.
39. Would you prefer being a millionaire or find true love? Whichever comes first.
40. Do you believe in love at first sight? Retch.
41. Ever call a 1-900 number? No.
42. Can ex’s be friends? It could happen.
43. Who was the last person you visited in a hospital? My friend after the birth of her daughter.
44. Did you have a lot of hair when you were a baby? Maybe.
45. What message is on your answering machine? Instructions.
46. What’s your all time favorite Saturday Night Live Character? The lizard on the Geico commercial. I hate Saturday Night Live.
47. What was the name of your first pet? Sir Giles. A Collie/Australian Shepherd/Blue Tick Hound/Portuguese Water Dog.
48. What is in your purse? Don’t have one.
49. Favorite thing to do before bedtime? It’s private.
50. What is one thing you are grateful for today? Payday.

Sunday

2004-08-22T10:55:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday, I helped a friend move to a new apartment, went to a wedding, and then to a club until they kicked us out.

Today I am tired/sore/hungover/possibly still drunk.

I remember now why I don't do such things very often.

Pimpification

2004-08-20T11:06:00.000-07:00

I've pimpified myself.

My pimp name is Professor Truth Justin Rock.

Kerry's Tangled Web

2004-08-20T09:02:00.000-07:00

This Swift Vets thing is a big hairy deal. I've read the letter they put up on the web. It's fairly damning on its own. I haven't seen the commercial, seeing as how I don't watch television. I don't really think the content matters all that much.

The relevant thing here is that Kerry is allowing himself to be deflected from actual campaigning.

Kerry placed so much weight on his Vietnam service in the beginning that he can't afford to allow it to be besmirched. So, he's wrangling with the Swift Boat Vets who certainly don't hold him in high esteem. He's doing so in order to protect his reputation and all, but this bickering makes him look weak and narcisistic (more so). In the meantime, Bush sails along campaigning and presidenting like a madman.

Kerry set himself up for this situation by making his veteran status a cornerstone of his campaign. Rather stupidly, I might add. He went to Vietnam. When he came home he basically spit on his fellow soldiers and turned his back on them. As far as I can tell, it was a political decision aimed at currying favor with the left (which had much more influence then). He gambled on the left thirty years ago. At the time more socialist policies were necessary or at least tolerated for the sake of fighting the Cold War. Nobody had any reason to think that the left would eventually outlive some of its usefulness or that conservatives would take their turn at the helm again.

Anyhow, Kerry misjudged. He didn't count on their long memories. The Swift Boat Vets have been biding their time, waiting for a chance to get back at Kerry for his disloyalty. His slight against them was a major deal to these people. It would have been okay for him to disagree with the war, but he actively worked against it, undermining and, from their perspective, disrespecting them and their efforts in Vietnam. It's the same reason we don't much care for France. The French claimed to be our friend and ally, but when we asked for their support they not only said no, they actively worked to oppose us.

The actual content of the arguments is no longer much of an issue. It still boils down to spin, to one's word against another's. What matters now is that Kerry must defend his reputation and he seems to be doing so to the exclusion of other considerations. He appears shallow and petulant.

At this point it would be a disaster if Kerry abandoned his Vietnam platform since it is the cornerstone of his bid. It's the only evidence he can offer that might make him remotely attractive to hawkish Americans. But in defending it so strenuously, he turns into a five year old on the playground "Am so." "Are not." "Am so."

He's damned if he does and damned if he don't.

Black Americana

2004-08-19T10:59:00.000-07:00

The title link will be added to my list. I stumbled across this site, which in turn took me to the title link. It's all terribly interesting reading. I would say I find it odd that groups like the Conservative Brotherhood aren't more widely acknowledged in the news, but I don't.

Anyhow, I titled this post Americana because I see an illustration of traditional American folk culture here. I wrote a little about it in this post.

It's often commented that America is the only place in the world where people can come and become nationals. Americans can't move to Italy or Egypt or Japan and become Italian or Egyptian or Japanese. But people from anywhere in the world can come to American and become Americans. All one must do to become American is demonstrate their commitment to American ideals and values. The bureaucracy part can be disregarded for my purposes.

I grew up in a very small town in Wyoming. My folks lived there for about eight years before I was born. I remember that the generational families were a little standoffish towards us. My parents weren't usually invited to card parties or things like that. The neighbors were always friendly and civil towards us, but vaguely cool. We moved a couple of times, but so far, my family has always found its way back to that little town. It was when I was in high school that I realized what had been going on and also realized that we actually were finally and still are a part of the community. At some point, there's no defining moment or time period, the town agreed that our family were good respectable folks and proud members of the community. Others who moved there while we lived there didn't fare quite so well. A number of families came and went because they didn't understand what it meant or took to belong. Their words and actions decided for them how welcome they would be. Some of them hung on and pretended not to notice or care, but were overheard complaining and backbiting (which certainly didn't help their efforts). Eventually most of them moved on.

Anyhow, this illustrates American folk culture. My family noticed but didn't care. They were there to make a life and raise a family. They worked hard. They took care of business. They were committed to making a life in that little town. We did move away a couple of times, but that is still our home (even mine though I'm now in California). Because we held the same values and ideals of the people in our little town, we became members rather than residents.

This happens over time throughout America. Immigrant populations eventually find that if they fail to adopt American values, they fail to find the success they seek. As generations are born and raised, they slowly abandon their own roots and become more American.

The traditional American values are complex and sometimes seem contradictory, but they boil down to some fairly simple concepts. Personal integrity, hard work, willingness to do unto others, and cautious generosity are what I would claim to be the backbone of traditional American values.

These values are sometimes contradictory because we are also a nomadic people, because our first loyalty is to ourselves and our immediate family, and we often place efficiency above integrity.

Americans are friendly and curious about strangers, but remain shallow and slightly distant. It doesn't pay to get too close to somebody who might pick up and leave at any time. And until one has proven one's dedication to the American way, you can't be sure of their motives or their worth.

It makes for a fascinating twist to history. We created a cultural paradox because of our ostensibly contradictory values and actions, and black people have been more or less trapped at the center of it for nearly the entire duration of our history. Now I think the twist is smoothing out, however slowly. We brought Africans here to be slaves. They did not come voluntarily, and were barely recognized as people much less Americans. Our inherent moralism eventually led to war. We were fighting ourselves and our conscience. The fight continued, though not necessarily with weapons. Instead, the war became one of ideology that persists to this very day.

The ideological war is between what might be called the moralists and the traditionalists. It's a fascinating contradiction. On one hand, our moral voice tells us that we owe something, especially to black people. On the other hand, we can't accept them as Americans until they turn away from dependency and prove they can carry their own weight independent of entitlements. Americans don't trust people who don't earn their keep. We offer a cookie with one hand and slap with the other. I think they are deciding that the cookie isn't worth the slap anymore.

I wrote about Bill Cosby's speech at the NAACP, and he sees what must be done. He wasn't castigating black people, he was trying to make them see that they must be responsible for themselves if they are to find success.

I can't say any of this is necessarily fair, but since when has history been fair? People perceived as potentially un-American have to worker harder to cover less distance. They carry the burden of proving whether they believe in the American way and deserve to be recognized as Americans.

Members of the Conservative Brotherhood demonstrate an understanding of this facet of American folk culture in their writing and an acceptance. The American folk tradition runs deep especially in the South and Midwest. In the end, accepting and adopting that traditional culture will go further towards erasing inequities than any amount of legislation will do.

10, 20, 30, 40, 50.

2004-08-18T15:31:00.000-07:00

Futurepundit asks.
I'm not sure I entirely agree with his assessment. I'm not convinced that some of his predictions will have come true in fifty years much less the ten or twenty he gives some of them.

Within Ten Years (U.S):

1. Growing retiree population
2. Medical care
3. Energy Infrastructure redesign following more Eastern Seaboard style blackouts.
4. Protein/Genetic/Stem Cell research
5. Genetically Modified animals (as we have GM Corn right now).

Within Twenty Years (U.S and World):

1. African Terrorists (Not necessarily Islamic) (I suspect we may see a biological, chemical, or radiological terrorist event by twenty years, but not necessarily by ten)
2. Economic competition/tension with China and Southeast Asia
3. Alternate fuel sources
4. Selective reproduction
5. Pending collapse of the EU

Within Thirty Years (U.S. and World)

1. Human Cloning
2. Eugenics (designer babies)
3. OPEC nations near collapse as oil reserves dry up. Influence shifts to Canada (oil sands) and off-shore drilling projects.
4. Cybernetic Implants for fun and profit
5. Senescence research

Within Forty Years

1. Human Cloning
2. Eugenics
3. Cognitive Machinery
4. Genetic Engineering (designer organisms)
5. Senescence research

Within 50 Years

1. Cognitive Machinery
2. Neural Implants (wetware)
3. Extraplanetary colonization (territoriality)
4. Robot cognition
5. Nanotech machines

So, there's my list. Most of my entries are based on science and technology. I think that a lot of social concerns will remain more or less the same. Things like social welfare and education will always be important to people and I don't think that will change in fifty or one hundred years. They are sort of background issues and I don't think they will prove to be keystone issues. Likewise, things like gay marriage and racial issues will fade as we cease to care about them (and I do think that will happen).

I will include a disclaimer here about the order of my list. Science and technology can change terribly rapidly and it isn't very predictable so we could see some of the 50 year projections come true in 20 and not realize some of the 20 year projections for 50.

Another thing I've not focused on too heavily are buzzword issues. Global warming for example. I think global warming is a foolish premise at best. The earth's climate has never been particularly stable for as far back as we can research. I don't think humans have much impact on making it more or less stable. It's also unpredictable. There will be many major geological and climatological events in the future, but it's nearly impossible to predict when they will occur. The climate will change. Yellowstone will probably erupt again, a meteor will eventually collide with earth. Politically I don't think there is much we can do about it. Pass a law forbidding volcanic eruptions maybe.

Anyhow, I also chose a number of things on my list because there will be moral challenges from both sides of the aisle. Conservatives will be worried about playing god with genetics. Liberals will be worried about the rights of cognitive machinery. Things of that nature will be what fuels the political discourse as these issues come forware. The non-science issues like demographics will prove to be challenging political issues as old people fail to die. We will end up increasing the working life of people, changing retirement plans, battle with medical costs. All of these things will have to be addressed and all of them will likely be addressed individually.

I didn't put much about energy policy in the list because it will likely take care of itself. We know that there are alternatives, and we even have a good idea of what they are. There is also an impressive amount of research being done on making them feasible. The only real important political aspect is how the balance of power will change as we deplete the easily extracted oil reserves found in the Middle East and move to less easily accessed oil found in oil shale and oil sands and under the sea bed. The thing that stops us from accessing alternates to fossil fuels is that fossil fuels are handily concentrated fuels and we don't have the technologies to replace them while keeping the costs comparable. I laugh at people who insist we don't have to be dependent on fossil fuels not because their ideas won't work, but because their ideas won't work now (except for the tinfoil hat people who know how the harness zero-point energy or angular momentum. I just laugh at them because they're fucking nuts). Only the market and technology will decide when we can operate as a hydrogen or nuclear economy and that won't be for some time. Thus energy policy will generally be relegated to the realm of background issues. Yeah, it's important, but it's not likely to be radically so.

So, I figure the most important issues will be ones that affect humanity's, um, humanity. Things like designer babies and clones and cybernetic implants will be bitterly debated (probably more in the U.S. than almost anywhere else).

The first ten years I focused on the U.S. The rest are generalized. I don't mind making a few other predictions here more broad and less politically charged. The current delegation of power around the world is changing even as you read this. Europe has lost a lot of its prestige. I don't see any signs that it will come roaring back in the near future. The focus of U.S. and world affairs is slowly starting to ignore Europe. Their political influence is become less relevant and soon Europe will be treated like some dear crazy uncle. The Middle East will be temporarily important. Without radical social change, however, they will not continue to be as important. Middle Eastern countries must find a replacement for their oil wealth. I'm not aware of any of them doing that. I think power will next emerge in Asia. It could be China, but I think India is more likely. I think I will live to see a revolution in China. I don't know whether it will be violent, but there will be change and upheaval, and their growth will be deflected. If there is a violent revolution, it could begin with Taiwan. If India can find peace with the Muslim population, I think it will surpass China. I think we will see a lot more trouble in Africa and South America. I'm not sure either of those places will have much prominence in the world for the next fify or more years unless something radical happens. Europe will remain important to the U.S. economically, culturally and historically, but not so much politically. Australia has important cultural and historical ties with America. We have similar social structures, and they will be an invaluable ally as we turn our attention towards Asia and the Pacific. Watch for expanding military collaboration.

Many of the things I mentioned are barely emerging right now. Some of them will develop more rapidly than others. I put nanotech far down on the list. I don't think we will be able to pursue nanotechnology until we have a better grasp of matter and energy. Quantum mechanics gave us mastery in chemistry; I think we will need an equivalent breakthrough to pursue nano scale machinery. Genetics is already an issue and it will grow in importance as we hone our abilities. I think that research in proteins and protein folding will prove to be the holy grail of genetic engineering and modification. When we understand how and why proteins fold the way they do we will have a near complete picture of the mechanics of biology. After that, we will have what knowledge we need to understand how the entire system works, to understand the big biology picture. Cybernetics is more speculative I think. We are making in-roads into merging organic and non-organic bits to make computer chips and eventually computers. I don't think there is any reason to think that we will not be able to build the bionic man at some point (figuratively speaking). The real leap forward will come when we can integrate neurally with computers. It's already on the horizon with artificial eyeballs (cameras) and the talking monkey device. I think the really big hairy deal will be the cognitive machinery. And that, I think is a topic worth its own post.

SCUBA

2004-08-13T14:38:00.000-07:00

I'm officially a certified SCUBA diver for what it's worth. And a damn good one.

The Wrongness Scale.

2004-07-30T16:37:00.000-07:00

In science quantities are measured with some sort of scale. Science tries to use an absolute scale whenever possible. An absolute scale doesn’t change depending on where the measurement is taken or who is taking the measurement. Temperature is measured with an absolute scale. 0 degrees Fahrenheit is cold and 110 degrees Fahrenheit is pretty hot by human standards. 0 degrees Fahrenheit is the same temperature in Ulan Bataar as it is in Boston. Additionally, the size of one degree Fahrenheit is the same everywhere so the difference between 68 degrees and 69 degrees is the same everywhere because the size of the degree doesn’t change. Distance is another absolute scale of measurement. One mile equals one mile everywhere you go.
Some scales are relative.

Currency is a relative scale. As temperature is a measure of the amount of heat in a substance, currency is a measure of the amount of stuff you can buy. Currency is relative because one unit of currency is not the same where you go and it is dependent on what unit of currency you use. Five U.S. dollars aren’t worth a whole lot in the U.S. That will buy you a decent snack. If you take that same five dollars to Peru it will buy you an excellent lunch probably with a beer and a cup of coffee. On the other hand five Sols (Peruvian currency) will buy you a fair lunch in Peru but almost nothing in the U.S.

Some scales use more than one unit of measurement to arrive at a value. Velocity and acceleration are measured using combinations of distance and time units. Momentum is measured using a combination of mass, distance, and time units.

Morality is also measured in some way. It can be done according to an absolute scale or to a relative scale. It is a combination of units. It isn’t possible to assign a number, but people still have a means of applying a measurement to morality and the units we generally use are magnitude and intent. In an earlier post I used a thieving bread man as an example to illustrate these two units. Theft is a moral infraction, but we tend to agree that in some forms it is palatable while in others it is despicable.

If we return to the bread man and think about the situation as observers, we can see how the process works. The bread man has a couple of hungry kids. Out of desperation he steals bread to feed the kids. He gets caught. How will he be judged when the truth of his story is verified? We, as observers, first think that stealing is wrong. He didn’t earn the bread; it is wrong of him to take it. Of course, it was only a loaf of bread, and he was only doing it out of desperation. It was right of him to do what he could to take care of the kids. So, the wrongness of his theft is minimized because the magnitude of his theft was small and the intent of his theft was for an understandable reason. We give a value to the intent and the magnitude of his moral infraction and arrive at an amount of wrongness.

In science scales usually have an underlying physical principle that makes them absolute regardless of what we might wish for them to be. Time is measured using the oscillations of a certain Cesium isotope. The oscillations of this particular isotope is true for every other instance of this isotope existing in the universe (as far as we know) and is true no matter where in the universe any instance of this isotope is taken. The frequency will not change if we measure it in San Francisco or while orbiting Alpha Centauri. Distance is measured as the distance traveled by a beam of light in a vacuum over a certain period of time. It too is the same no matter what beam of light you use or where in the vacuum it is measured.

Mass is a different story. We haven’t found a reliable means of defining an amount of mass. The best science has come up with so far is to arbitrarily pick a chunk of metal (a Platinum Iridium alloy) and say this is how much a kilogram is. The problem with this is that no two masses are identical. They are close enough that we can’t easily discern a difference but the fact remains. No two masses are identical to each other or to the standard chunk.

Measuring morality is like mass because no two people have identical moral scales and our only external standard is largely arbitrary. People have tried to create an external moral standard. I think this is a big part of where religion comes from. Religious texts spend a lot of time making distinctions between desirable behavior and undesirable behavior, but we have a whole lot of these texts and most of them disagree. Christians and Jews use the Holy Bible (I know the Jews don’t necessarily believe in the New Testament but the foundation is the same for both). Muslims refer to the Koran. Buddhists refer to the teachings of Buddha and to animistic beliefs. Hindis ascribe to Vedas and other things.

Enter moral relativity. The argument goes that if our respective moral guides are completely arbitrary, who is to say that one is better than another? Technically, we can’t fairly say that one is better than another. The extension of this idea is to then hold members of a moral school accountable to their respective scales. Christians will be held to their Judeo/Greek/Christian Scale, Muslims to their Koranic scale, Buddhists to Buddha, and Hindis to their (many many many) scale(s). As far as I can tell this tends to be where a fair portion of the liberal camp stands.

The other side of the coin is that somebody does actually say ‘ours is better‘. I’m of this school. I think our Western moral tradition is better. No apologies or regrets. Conservatives tend to this side of things. It isn’t fair or sensitive, but there you have it. You can point to specific morals from a different group of people that are more fair or beneficial than the Western counterpart but on the whole, ours is superior.

Our morality comes from three sources. Judaism, Christianity, and the Greeks. Both Plato and Aristotle did some examination of morality and the like and they influenced our Western perception of morality. Morality as I said in an earlier post, is a pure form of how we think we as individuals and by extension as a society ought to behave to be ideal as both. However, I think their more important contribution was that they allowed us to consider morality from a more logical perspective.

Hollywood often creates extreme situations to examine heady issues like morality. John Q (spoilers ahead) was such a movie. A guy’s kid ends up with some heart disease and needs a transplant. The dad does everything he can but can’t afford the heart so he holds the ER (or maybe the ICU) hostage at gunpoint until his kid gets a heart. I think the underlying premise of the movie is that somebody must make a choice about who will benefit from our limited supply of hearts. Usually an administrator of some sort decides who gets a heart and who doesn’t. I think it is an inherently moral choice to make. In the movie the administrator who has to make the decision is shown to be a cold bitch who gives hearts to people with money. But, because of the impassioned valiance, and all that jazz, she finds a heart for the boy.

Given a situation with an older person with lots of money and a child with little money needs a heart, and we only have one to give, the tendency would be to give it to the kid. Our sympathy would lie with the child. We can find logical reasons for this though. First, the oldster has fewer years to live anyhow. He would get less use out of the heart. Second, older people are more likely to have incidental conditions that can contribute to less life and they would again get less use out of the heart. Third, the child has greater potential to contribute to the society. The older person has contributed more of his potential than the child so his loss will likely have less long-term impact than the loss of the child. When colored in this light it sounds cold and calculated, but I believe these considerations are examined, even if not consciously.

My examples are intended to show that we make distinctions between moral decisions. Consciously or otherwise, we assign weights to certain factors which in turn lead us to make a moral decision or judgment. When we make moral judgments we use a scale of wrongness. Is stealing a loaf of bread less wrong than stealing ten thousand dollars? Is giving the heart to the boy less wrong than giving it to the oldster? We make decisions like these every day, some people use a more logical means, some use a more emotional means but we still have a wrongness scale that guides us in making our moral judgments.

Westerners tend to believe that we are immoral creatures and that is why I say we use a wrongness scale. We aren’t trying to be moral, we’re trying to be less immoral. We must decide whether it’s less immoral to lie about our friend’s hairdo than to hurt their feelings, we decide that it’s less immoral to steal a loaf of bread than a bag of money, we decide which of our elective candidates is less bad than the others. Our Greek intellectual tradition tells us what we should pursue. Our Judeo/Christian tradition tells us where we stand in relation to our goal.

Morality is always colored in shades of grey. We are seldom faced with situations that are either right or wrong. There are almost always circumstances that might color our perception. So, we use our wrongness scale to tell us how to respond. We don't kill thieves but we do kill murders. We don't send people to jail for parking in the handicapped space, but we do drunk drivers. All of these things are illegal and immoral, but we weight them differently and assign different values on our wrongness scale.

Most of my examples have been both illegal and immoral, but that doesn't need to be the case. We use the wrongness scale all the time. We tease our siblings and make them angry. I don't think it's a very moral thing to do but it is fun. We eat grapes in the supermarket without paying for them. It's theft but not such that anything will be done. We read newspapers in the bookstore without paying for them. We fail to hold open the door for little old ladies. We do all manner of such things, but generally most people try to behave in such a way that these things are outweighed by the good things we do.

In a larger context, most of us measure our selves on a wrongness scale and try to tilt the scale towards the better side of things.

I finished writing this and am posting it because I just finished Life the Universe and Everything. It seems to sum it all up rather nicely. "We apologize for the iconvenience."

Blogging Lite

2004-07-30T14:12:00.000-07:00

Summer blindsided me more than I expected. I'm taking scuba lessons, studying for my MCSE/MCSA, designing a website, working extra hours (I'm supposed to be gallivanting around the world right now, but I guess this fall or winter will be a fine time for a vacation), and catching up on my reading. So, my blog went to the back burner. A good while ago I said that I would be returning to a more normal blogging schedule, but it hasn't happened yet. Soon though. Real Soon Now.

I do have an excellent post written up on my laptop, maybe I'll go to the Hotspot later this afternoon and put that up. It's a follow-up to my post on moral relativism. I wrote it on my laptop and haven't managed to get it posted on the web yet. I can bug out of work early today since I'm working tomorrow.

Tomorrow I have to go to the dive center and rent my equipment for diving. I bought my mask, fins, snorkel, gloves, and boots; I have to rent my wetsuit, BCD, hood, and airtank. Next weekend I'll be going down to Monterrey for open water diving and I will then be a certified scuba diver.

I've been scuba diving and free diving and snorkelling a good few times and it's one of my favorite things ever. It's an odd adrenaline sport. It's relatively sedate and serene, but still a damn good work out and definitely gives you that rush. I think it's the curiosity factor. Scuba diving means exploring an entirely different world.

I read a blurb a little while ago about science fiction, and the writer questioned the vision authors have for their alien races. The general Sci-Fi alien is usually a bipedal critter not terribly far removed from humans. I guess in the world of motion pictures, it's much easier to create a humanoid critter than a super-intelligent shade of blue, but it doesn't seem to rhyme with what we see in our own world.

If you take a gander under the waves you see life forms that appear wholly unrelated to humans. Colonies of coral, sponges, tunicates, fish, shrimp, crabs, none of them appear to be even marginally related to humans until you dissect some of them or examine their DNA. A trip into the distant past gives us an additional glimpse of how differently life might evolve on other worlds. If we look to the cretaceous period, the world is dominated by giant lizard-like monsters, and a sprinkling of mammals. It looks nothing at all like the world we inhabit. Who's to say that one of them couldn't have evolved speech and intelligence equivalent to that of humans?

It's a fascinating thought and one I've considered fairly frequently. I'm always somewhat disappointed in the aliens I find in works of science fiction. The aliens in Ender's universe were properly alien. The aliens in Star Trek looked like humans in costumes. The Aliens in Aliens were . . . hungry? drippy? toothy? The aliens in Star Wars were somewhat more varied and interesting. But they still seem to be the product of evolution in more or less earthlike conditions. It is our only frame of reference, so maybe it's hard for us to imagine different forms that life could take, but coming full circle, you can see the different forms life might take when scuba diving.

None of the critters I've seen or read about in science fiction is as shocking or strange as those living under the water. The colors and shapes and processes that one finds under the waves are more varied and wondrous than anything you can find on land, and what's truly amazing is that we can are distant cousins to these things. And for all we know about life and how it works, we know almost nothing about these cousins, simply because their environment is alien to us. They evolved here on earth before us and beside us, yet if we weren't able to see them first hand, we would never be able to imagine animals taking on the shape of a carnation coral, or an anemone.

So, that's what I like about scuba diving. It's the closest I'm ever likely to get to exploring a different world. It feeds my curiosity. I can look at the startling colors of cold water ecosystems or the diversity of warm water systems, I can examine the plant life in fresh water, explore caves that haven't been in touch with the rest of the world for time out of mind, and every time I look, I will see something new, something I had never dreamed of. It's not quite the same thing as setting foot on a different world, but it's damn close.

Moral Relativism

2004-06-30T16:29:00.000-07:00

What beheading apologists are you referring to? This is just a red herring invented by conservatives as the only defense to our own abuses.

You are absolutely right when you say beheading is inexcusable if we did it, as it is inexcusable by anyone. Similarly, it would be wrong for the terrorists to humiliate our soldiers, deprive them of food and sleep, beat them, leave them tied up for hours outside on the desert ground, and other such abuses.

The only moral relativists I see in this mess are conservatives trying to defend this indefensible war. Wrong is wrong, no matter who the perpetrator is.

Curious thought. It brings to mind the question "Is it wrong for a man to steal bread for his hungry children?" Yes, it's wrong because stealing is wrong and as 'Anonymous' says wrong is wrong no matter the perpetrator. However, most people are not monsters and would say it is acceptable for a man to steal food for his hungry children, myself included. Consider it the benefit of the doubt defense. It's probable that the man is only stealing bread because they're hungry and he has no alternative. In a different situation, it's likely that he would never steal bread.

The bread man is a staple of moral discussion. I'm not really sure how it relates to Abu Ghraib vs. the Beheaders, but consider: It's at least marginally acceptable to many people that the breadman steal food for his kids. Was the breadman childless and not hungry it would be completely unacceptable.

So, what changes our assessment? Are we "Thinking of the children"? I don't think so, at least not directly. If the man steals bread for his kids he's taking risk on behalf of others. Immoral actions done for a noble cause is pallatable. Thus, motivation serves as a measure of morality. Stealing for one's own gain is disgraceful. Stealing for a second party's necessity is (or can be) acceptable.

It's marginally okay for the breadman to steal bread for his kids. What if he robs a bank at gunpoint, with the intent of spending the money on bread for the little tykes? I would feel sympathy for him but not to the extent of agreeing that he should be let off. At that point the man ought to be prosecuted. What is different here? The extent of the moral infraction. Theft is the immoral behavior. Swiping bread from the grocery store is wrong, but nobody is endangered, and the loss is on the order of pennies. Robbing a bank at gunpoint puts many people at risk, and is measured in hundreds or thousands of dollars. Thus, magnitude is important in determining the morality of actions.

Combining these two ideas gives us moral judgement. Lying is a moral infraction (I hate lying and very seldom do it). Social lies are generally acceptable (I'm not good at these. "Does this shirt make me look fat?" "Yeah. Ow! Stop hitting me!") Lying to spare somebody's feelings is often excused. I tend not to do this either, but feelings and I don't talk often. Lying for personal gain is generally reprehensible.

Furthermore, the response to moral infractions is important to determining the moral fiber of a person or people.

Abu Ghraib was shameful. It was wrong. It was inexcusable, and never once have I seen a conservative blogger make excuses. America was appalled. We expect excellence from our people and this was most certainly not excellence. We are still in the process of punishing those who were guilty of this atrocity. We responded by holding the guilty parties accountable to a standard of behavior. We trotted them out in front of everybody and made them take responsibility and face their shame. It doesn't make it right but it hopefully helps us move towards a world where it will not happen again. At least not at our hands.

Beheading civilians is shameful and wrong and inexcusable. In America it would be considered a monstrosity only explainable by insanity. We would be collectively horrified if a farmer in the midwest showed up on the news beheading some stranger, some passerby. It is almost blase in the Islamic world. Some of them are chagrined and ashamed and horrified, but no small number of them dance in the streets and cheer for these monsters. They clearly have a different moral scale than we have as Americans.

Conservatives, including myself, use an absolute moral scale. Moral infractions are measured on a 'wrongness' scale. Liberals use a relative moral scale and wrongness is measured on a perpetrator scale. America is supposed to be better than fundamentalists so lesser transgressions perpetrated by Americans are equivalent to greater transgressions perpetrated by others.

I'll close with this: Were you captured by an enemy and given a choice would you pick humiliation or beheading? I know I can live with wounded pride and a few bruises. I'm not so sure I would long survive without my head.

Lazy Blogging

2004-06-30T11:58:00.000-07:00

Courtesy Two Brain Cells.

The Top 100 Grossing Movies (with snide on the side)
Bold those you've seen, asterisk those not seen at the theatre.

1. Titanic Touching movie, but can you believe that broad threw a priceless gem away like it was a piece of chewed gum?
2. Star Wars*
3. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial* ET bored me when I was a kid and it hasn't gotten better.
4. Star Wars: Episode I It was okay as far as it goes, but a wild gorilla could have done better than "Annie".
5. Spider-Man
6. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King We likes it precious.
7. Passion of the Christ
8. Jurassic Park*
9. Shrek 2
10. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
11. Finding Nemo Twice in the theatre.
12. Forrest Gump I've tried watching it a couple times and reading the book and it's so fucking stupid I can't stick it out for more than half an hour. Please explain the appeal this garbage has.
13. Lion King*
14. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
15. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
16. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones The new Annikin is fine as hell.
17. Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi*
18. Independence Day*
19. Pirates of the Caribbean
20. Sixth Sense, The (1999)* I figured it out early in the movie and was bored through the rest of it.
21. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back*
22. Home Alone*
23. Matrix Reloaded, The
24. Shrek This is a toss up. The allusions were funny. The general humor not so much.
25. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
26. How the Grinch Stole Christmas Retch
27. Jaws* Jaws is one of my top ten.
28. Monsters, Inc.*
29. Batman*
30. Men in Black
31. Toy Story 2 *
32. Bruce Almighty
33. Raiders of the Lost Ark *
34. Twister
35. My Big Fat Greek Wedding *
36. Ghost Busters *
37. Beverly Hills Cop *
38. Cast Away
39. Lost World: Jurassic Park, The *
40. Signs
41. Rush Hour 2
42. Mrs. Doubtfire *
43. Ghost (1990) *
44. Aladdin *
45. Saving Private Ryan Phenomenal
46. Mission: Impossible II *
47. X2
48. Austin Powers in Goldmember*
49. Back to the Future *
50. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
51. Terminator 2: Judgment Day *
52. Exorcist, The
53. Mummy Returns, The What a waste. Absolutely pathetic.
54. Armageddon Please. NASA is going to hire a misfit bunch of roughnecks an turn them into astronauts in a matter of weeks to stop impending doom from destroying the earth. Retch.
55. Gone with the Wind *(Does reading the book count?)
56. Pearl Harbor
57. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade *
58. Toy Story (1995) *
59. Men in Black II Another waste. I couple this with The Mummy Returns.
60. Gladiator
61. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs*
62. Dances with Wolves* Retch
63. Batman Forever *
64. Fugitive, The * This was excellent.
65. Ocean's Eleven * I'm going to assume this was the original with the Rat Pack since the more recent one was a fucking rip.
66. What Women Want
67. Perfect Storm, The
68. Liar Liar* Jim Carey got old almost as rapidly as Ben Stiller.
69. Grease
70. Jurassic Park III *
71. Mission: Impossible*
72. Planet of the Apes
73. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom *
74. Pretty Woman*
75. Tootsie
76. Top Gun * My brother's favorite. I think it was decent but not great.
77. There's Something About Mary* - The only thing funny in this movie was the little dog.
78. Ice Age * Scrat killed me.
79. Crocodile Dundee *
80. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York * Retch
81. Elf - Will Farrell is not funny
82. Air Force One
83. Rain Man * I've watched it in bits and pieces and finally pieced it all together. Not bad.
84. Apollo 13*
85. Matrix, The
86. Beauty and the Beast*
87. Tarzan
88. Beautiful Mind, A
89. Chicago
90. Three Men and a Baby* I can't possibly believe this is one of the top 100 movies.
91. Meet the Parents
92. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves* Fair enough, I guess. Kevin Costner shouldn't be allowed to act.
93. Hannibal Excellent.
94. Catch Me If You Can I saw this on an airplane flight. I managed to watch all of it because technically I was a captive audience.
95. Big Daddy
96. Sound of Music, The* One of my all time favorites.
97. Batman Returns*
98. Bug's Life, A*
99. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
100. Waterboy, The* Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller and Jim Carey were marginally funny at one point. This is no longer the case.

Awaiting the Apologists

2004-06-18T11:49:00.000-07:00

Islamic fundamentalists have beheaded Paul Marshall. In all probability a video will soon be circulated. We'll soon hear the worthless two-bit apologists making excuses for what would be inexcusable if it was our doing. Welcome to the world of moral relativity where the malleability of truth is plotted asymptotically.

For the life of me I can't fathom how anybody could try to rationalize this monstrosity. I don't care to try fathoming it either. I have nothing but contempt for anybody who thinks slaughtering an innocent man, a civilian engineer, is fair play.

We're the evil ones, they say. We shouldn't be there in the first place, they say.

Why not? Who will hold these people responsible for what they do? Europe? Themselves? Allah? Please. Europe is overflowing with apologists. Arabs might publicly excoriate the actions of these fundamentalists, but their actions don't reflect their words. And their god?

"Allah revealed His will to the angels, saying: 'I shall be with you. Give courage to the believers. I shall cast terror into the hearts of the infidels. Strike off their heads, maim them in every limb!'" Sura 8:12

In short, their god invites them to behave monstrously.

I called it a sickness before and I stand by that. It festers in their heart and drives them to madness. They are like rabid dogs and like rabid dogs these fundamentalists should be killed.

To Lengthen My Home Page

2004-06-17T10:00:00.000-07:00

Courtesy Ambient Irony an exercise for readers.

Go through the list, bold those you've read. Italicize those you've started but not finished. Normalize the rest. Add three of your own.

For those of you who don't care to go through my list, I have a weakness for 19th century literature, early 20th century literature, science fiction and fantasy.

The three I'm adding are:
439. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
440. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
441. The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe

As an aside I looked up these books on Amazon and was floored when I read some of the reviews. One young lady said she was a high school freshman in Advanced English and thought the book was a real challenge. Makes me wonder how advanced that class is. I first read Kidnapped in the fifth grade and it's been one of my all time favorites ever since. Then again, it was around that time that I first read the Bible, cover to cover, so my bookwormishness might be a little extreme.

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. 1984, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corellis Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The DUrbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alices Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Susskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Joness Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnights Children, Salman Rushdie
101. Three Men In A Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
102. Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
103. The Beach, Alex Garland
104. Dracula, Bram Stoker
105. Point Blanc, Anthony Horowitz
106. The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens
107. Stormbreaker, Anthony Horowitz
108. The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
109. The Day Of The Jackal, Frederick Forsyth
110. The Illustrated Mum, Jacqueline Wilson
111. Jude The Obscure, Thomas Hardy
112. The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13 1/2, Sue Townsend
113. The Cruel Sea, Nicholas Monsarrat
114. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
115. The Mayor Of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy
116. The Dare Game, Jacqueline Wilson
117. Bad Girls, Jacqueline Wilson
118. The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
119. Shogun, James Clavell
120. The Day Of The Triffids, John Wyndham
121. Lola Rose, Jacqueline Wilson
122. Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
123. The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy
124. House Of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
125. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
126. Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett
127. Angus, Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging, Louise Rennison
128. The Hound Of The Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle
129. Possession, A. S. Byatt
130. The Master And Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
131. The Handmaids Tale, Margaret Atwood
132. Danny The Champion Of The World, Roald Dahl
133. East Of Eden, John Steinbeck
134. Georges Marvellous Medicine, Roald Dahl
135. Wyrd Sisters, Terry Pratchett
136. The Color Purple, Alice Walker
137. Hogfather, Terry Pratchett
138. The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan
139. Girls In Tears, Jacqueline Wilson
140. Sleepovers, Jacqueline Wilson
141. All Quiet On The Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
142. Behind The Scenes At The Museum, Kate Atkinson
143. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
144. It, Stephen King
145. James And The Giant Peach, Roald Dahl
146. The Green Mile, Stephen King
147. Papillon, Henri Charriere
148. Men At Arms, Terry Pratchett
149. Master And Commander, Patrick OBrian
150. Skeleton Key, Anthony Horowitz
151. Soul Music, Terry Pratchett
152. Thief Of Time, Terry Pratchett
153. The Fifth Elephant, Terry Pratchett
154. Atonement, Ian McEwan
155. Secrets, Jacqueline Wilson
156. The Silver Sword, Ian Serraillier
157. One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, Ken Kesey
158. Heart Of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
159. Kim, Rudyard Kipling
160. Cross Stitch, Diana Gabaldon
161. Moby Dick , Herman Melville
162. River God, Wilbur Smith
163. Sunset Song, Lewis Grassic Gibbon
164. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
165. The World According To Garp, John Irving
166. Lorna Doone, R. D. Blackmore
167. Girls Out Late, Jacqueline Wilson
168. The Far Pavilions, M. M. Kaye
169. The Witches, Roald Dahl
170. Charlottes Web, E. B. White
171. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
172. They Used To Play On Grass, Terry Venables and Gordon Williams
173. The Old Man And The Sea, Ernest Hemingway
174. The Name Of The Rose, Umberto Eco
175. Sophies World, Jostein Gaarder
176. Dustbin Baby, Jacqueline Wilson
177. Fantastic Mr. Fox, Roald Dahl
178. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
179. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, Richard Bach
180. The Little Prince, Antoine De Saint-Exupery
181. The Suitcase Kid, Jacqueline Wilson
182. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
183. The Power Of One, Bryce Courtenay
184. Silas Marner, George Eliot
185. American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
186. The Diary Of A Nobody, George and Weedon Gross-mith
187. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
188. Goosebumps, R. L. Stine
189. Heidi, Johanna Spyri
190. Sons And Lovers, D. H. Lawrence
191. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
192. Man And Boy, Tony Parsons
193. The Truth, Terry Pratchett
194. The War Of The Worlds, H. G. Wells
195. The Horse Whisperer, Nicholas Evans
196. A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
197. Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett
198. The Once And Future King, T. H. White
199. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle
200. Flowers In The Attic, Virginia Andrews
201. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
202. The Eye of the World, Robert Jordan
203. The Great Hunt, Robert Jordan
204. The Dragon Reborn, Robert Jordan
205. Fires of Heaven, Robert Jordan
206. Lord of Chaos, Robert Jordan
207. Winters Heart, Robert Jordan
208. A Crown of Swords, Robert Jordan
209. Crossroads of Twilight, Robert Jordan
210. A Path of Daggers, Robert Jordan
211. As Nature Made Him, John Colapinto
212. Microserfs, Douglas Coupland
213. The Married Man, Edmund White
214. Winters Tale, Mark Helprin
215. The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault
216. Cry to Heaven, Anne Rice
217. Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe, John Boswell
218. Equus, Peter Shaffer
219. The Man Who Ate Everything, Jeffrey Steingarten
220. Letters To A Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke
221. Ella Minnow Pea, Mark Dunn
222. The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice
223. Anthem, Ayn Rand
224. The Bridge To Terabithia, Katherine Paterson
225. Tartuffe, Moliere
226. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
227. The Crucible, Arthur Miller
228. The Trial, Franz Kafka
229. Oedipus Rex, Sophocles
230. Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles
231. Death Be Not Proud, John Gunther
232. A Dolls House, Henrik Ibsen
233. Hedda Gabler, Henrik Ibsen
234. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
235. A Raisin In The Sun, Lorraine Hansberry
236. ALIVE!, Piers Paul Read
237. Grapefruit, Yoko Ono
238. Trickster Makes This World, Lewis Hyde
240. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
241. Chronicles of Thomas Convenant, Unbeliever, Stephen Donaldson
242. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
242. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon
243. Summerland, Michael Chabon
244. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
245. Candide, Voltaire
246. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, Roald Dahl
247. Ringworld, Larry Niven
248. The King Must Die, Mary Renault
249. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
250. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline LEngle
251. The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
252. The House Of The Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne
253. The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
254. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
255. The Great Gilly Hopkins, Katherine Paterson
256. Chocolate Fever, Robert Kimmel Smith
257. Xanth: The Quest for Magic, Piers Anthony
258. The Lost Princess of Oz, L. Frank Baum
259. Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon
260. Lost In A Good Book, Jasper Fforde
261. Well Of Lost Plots, Jasper Fforde
261. Life Of Pi, Yann Martel
263. The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver
264. A Yellow Rraft In Blue Water, Michael Dorris
265. Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder
267. Where The Red Fern Grows, Wilson Rawls
268. Griffin & Sabine, Nick Bantock
269. Witch of Blackbird Pond, Joyce Friedland
270. Mrs. Frisby And The Rats Of NIMH, Robert C. OBrien
271. Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt
272. The Cay, Theodore Taylor
273. From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg
274. The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
275. The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin
276. The Kitchen Gods Wife, Amy Tan
277. The Bone Setters Daughter, Amy Tan
278. Relic, Duglas Preston & Lincolon Child
279. Wicked, Gregory Maguire
280. American Gods, Neil Gaiman
281. Misty of Chincoteague, Marguerite Henry
282. The Girl Next Door, Jack Ketchum
283. Haunted, Judith St. George
284. Singularity, William Sleator
285. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
286. Different Seasons, Stephen King
287. Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
288. About a Boy, Nick Hornby
289. The Bookmans Wake, John Dunning
290. The Church of Dead Girls, Stephen Dobyns
291. Illusions, Richard Bach
292. Magics Pawn, Mercedes Lackey
293. Magics Promise, Mercedes Lackey
294. Magics Price, Mercedes Lackey
295. The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Gary Zukav
296. Spirits of Flux and Anchor, Jack L. Chalker
297. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
298. The Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices, Brenda Love
299. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace.
300. The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison.
301. The Cider House Rules, John Irving.
302. Enders Game, Orson Scott Card
303. Girlfriend in a Coma, Douglas Coupland
304. The Lions Game, Nelson Demille
305. The Sun, The Moon, and the Stars, Stephen Brust
306. Cyteen, C. J. Cherryh
307. Foucaults Pendulum, Umberto Eco
308. Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
309. Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahniuk
310. Camber of Culdi, Kathryn Kurtz
311. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
312. War and Rememberance, Herman Wouk
313. The Art of War, Sun Tzu
314. The Giver, Lois Lowry
315. The Telling, Ursula Le Guin
316. Xenogenesis (or Liliths Brood), Octavia Butler
317. A Civil Campaign, Lois McMaster Bujold
318. The Curse of Chalion, Lois McMaster Bujold
319. The Aeneid, Publius Vergilius Maro (Vergil)
320. Hanta Yo, Ruth Beebe Hill
321. The Princess Bride, S. Morganstern (or William Goldman)
322. Beowulf, Anonymous
323. The Sparrow, Maria Doria Russell
324. Deerskin, Robin McKinley
325. Dragonsong, Anne McCaffrey
326. Passage, Connie Willis
327. Otherland, Tad Williams
328. Tigana, Guy Gavriel Kay
329. Number the Stars, Lois Lowry
330. Beloved, Toni Morrison
331. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christs Childhood Pal, Christopher Moore
332. The mysterious disappearance of Leon, I mean Noel, Ellen Raskin
333. Summer Sisters, Judy Blume
334. The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo
335. The Island on Bird Street, Uri Orlev
336. Midnight in the Dollhouse, Marjorie Filley Stover
337. The Miracle Worker, William Gibson
338. The Genesis Code, John Case
339. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevensen
340. Paradise Lost, John Milton
341. Phantom, Susan Kay
342. The Mummy or Ramses the Damned, Anne Rice
343. Anno Dracula, Kim Newman
344: The Dresden Files: Grave Peril, Jim Butcher
345: Tokyo Suckerpunch, Issac Adamson
346: The Winter of Magics Return, Pamela Service
347: The Oddkins, Dean R. Koontz
348. My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok
349. The Last Goodbye, Raymond Chandler
350. At Swim, Two Boys, Jaime ONeill
351. Othello, by William Shakespeare
352. The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas
353. The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats
354. Sati, Christopher Pike
355. The Inferno, Dante
356. The Apology, Plato
357. The Small Rain, Madeline LEngle
358. The Man Who Tasted Shapes, Richard E Cytowick
359. 5 Novels, Daniel Pinkwater
360. The Sevenwaters Trilogy, Juliet Marillier
361. Girl with a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier
362. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
363. Our Town, Thorton Wilder
364. Green Grass Running Water, Thomas King
365. The Interpreter, Suzanne Glass
366. The Moors Last Sigh, Salman Rushdie
367. The Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson
368. A Passage to India, E.M. Forster loved
369. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky
370. The Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux
371. Pages for You, Sylvia Brownrigg
372. The Changeover, Margaret Mahy
373. Howls Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones
374. Angels and Demons, Dan Brown
375. Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo
376. Shosha, Isaac Bashevis Singer
377. Travels With Charley, John Steinbeck
378. The Diving-bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
379. The Lunatic at Large by J. Storer Clouston
380. Time for Bed by David Baddiel
381. Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
382. Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre
383. The Bloody Sun by Marion Zimmer Bradley
384. Sewer, Gas, and Eletric by Matt Ruff
385. Jhereg by Steven Brust
386. So You Want To Be A Wizard by Diane Duane
387. Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
388. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte
389. Road-side Dog, Czeslaw Milosz
390. The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje
391. Neuromancer, William Gibson
392. The Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
393. A Canticle for Liebowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr
394. The Mask of Apollo, Mary Renault
395. The Gunslinger, Stephen King
396. Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare
397. Childhoods End, Arthur C. Clarke
398. A Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman
399. Ivanhoe, Walter Scott
400. The God Boy, Ian Cross
401. The Beekeepers Apprentice, Laurie R. King
402. Finn Family Moomintroll, Tove Jansson
403. Misery, Stephen King
404. Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters
405. Hood, Emma Donoghue
406. The Land of Spices, Kate OBrien
407. The Diary of Anne Frank
408. Regeneration, Pat Barker
409. Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
410. Dreaming in Cuban, Cristina Garcia
411. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
412. The View from Saturday, E.L. Konigsburg
413. Dealing with Dragons, Patricia Wrede
414. Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss
415. A Severed Wasp - Madeleine LEngle
416. Here Be Dragons - Sharon Kay Penman
417. The Mabinogion (Ancient Welsh Tales) - translated by Lady Charlotte E. Guest
418. The DaVinci Code - Dan Brown
419. Desire of the Everlasting Hills - Thomas Cahill
420. The Cloister Walk - Kathleen Norris
421. The Things We Carried, Tim OBrien
422. I Know This Much Is True, Wally Lamb
423. Choke, Chuck Palahniuk
424. Enders Shadow, Orson Scott Card
425. The Memory of Earth, Orson Scott Card
426. The Iron Tower, Dennis L. McKiernen
427. The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles
428. The Four Feathers, A.E.W. Mason
429. The Jester, James Patterson
430. Cry the beloved Country, Alan Paton
431. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
432. The Stranger, Albert Camus
433. Deathscent, Robin Jarvis
434. Memnoch the Devil, Anne Rice
435. My legendary girlfriend, Mike Gayle
436. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Phillip K Dick
437. Bored of the Rings - Harvard Lampoon
438. The Pelican Brief - John Grisham

Riddick

2004-06-15T14:31:00.000-07:00

I saw the Chronicles of Riddick Sunday. It wasn't entirely a waste. There was a lot of action and gadgetry. The shallow side of me loved all the big nasty looking weapons and the eye candy. The critical spiteful side of me wanted a refund. The story was choppy at best. At least, what story there was. And I can't for the life of me imagine why anybody would pay Vin Diesel to act. He's horrible.

I give it many kudos for special effects. The camera work irritated me. The action was good. The actors were mostly horrible. The story was tantilizing but horribly inadequate. But, I'm shallow enough to give it a positive neutral rating for the eye candy alone.

The other movie I watched was Van Helsing. I liked it much better. It was very fun with lots of eye candy and action. There were some cleverly done camera tricks and I loved the soundtrack. Van Helsing's accent came and went. That always bugs me a little bit. The humor was second rate one-liners. But the action was excellent, and the weapons equally so. I can't claim Hugh Jackman is much of an actor either, but he at least strikes me as being likable. Van Helsing gets an outright positive positive.

Curiously, and wholly unrelated, Babylon 5 Season 5 DVD collection is the #8 bestseller on Yahoo Shopping.

News and Comment

2004-06-15T11:07:00.000-07:00

I've not seen much of interest in the political/current events arena lately. But here are a few interesting items.

Under God

Michael Newdow lost his case in the Supreme Court. Under God will remain in the pledge of allegience. I put this in the ignorant waste of time category. Seperation of church and state only means that no church can carry political influence in our governments. Since our government is made up of people and people tend to have religious beliefs that color their actions, I don't think it is realistic to believe that every religious reference can be excised from our government. Under God in the pledge of allegiance is harmless, as is 'in God we trust' on our money, as is the patriotic song, God Bless America. I think it's more of an historical trapping than anything, it's America's version of invoking God on our behalf.

France Unions

French utility workers initiated targeted blackouts against members of the government to protest a move towards privitization. I'm no economist but I have to think that France is headed towards a meltdown. 25% of France's labor force is employed in the public sector. 10% is unemployed. That means 65% of their labor force has to pay enough taxes to cover entitlements and so on. Combined with economic strangulation, I don't see how they can last much longer. The fact that the government is desperately trying to solve the budget problem and is being blocked at every step by unions, compounds the problem.

Kerry's Message

Senator Kerry says he will fix Bush's economic squeeze. Meanwhile, hiring prospects are exploding. I don't know if Kerry reads the news or just ignores it, but as my folks used to say "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Linux Revisited

2004-06-14T13:17:00.000-07:00

The big question asked in my previous post on Linux and networking was if it is possible to use one Linux box to serve as a DHCP server, an HTTP server, an FTP server, a DNS server, and a LAN server. The short answer is yes.

I now have all of the daemons running on my server. It assigns IP addresses via DHCP as it is supposed to. Apache is running. Xinetd is running. Samba is running. Bind is running. Kudos to me.

As an aside, this is no small undertaking. The documentation for Linux is not terribly convenient. I had to sift through man pages, commented configuration and sample files and how tos to patch everything together. One of the less helpfully commented sample configuration files looked something like this:

; Sample .conf file
;
123 @ SOA
domain.here ; declaration

this is a useless line that will be ignored

111 aaa bbb ; args

#ignore me

So, having all of these things working on some level is an accomplishment on its own. The worst thing about the documentation is that it isn't laid out logically. Most of the information only applies to very specific parts of the process so when setting up the dhcpd module you have to hunt through a whole mess of files and folders to find the ones that need editing. It's a lucky thing to find references to other files that need to be configured while editing one. Only by hunting through as much of the documentation as I could find did I learn that setting up Bind meant editing named.conf then creating *.zone files for my domain and then editing the named.conf.include file to point to the *.zone file.

I would be disingenuous if I led you to believe that all of these things are working exactly as they ought to be. I think I'm probably trying to do to many things at one time and would have more complete success if I focused on one task at a time but I don't operate like that. Also, it makes some things easier to get these things working at more or less the same time. For example, setting up the DHCP server makes it easier to connect clients because you don't have to worry about assigning IP addresses. Having the Apache web server running makes it easier to set up Samba because you can't use the Swat utitility to change the Samba configuration files unless the httpd process is running. Swat is a form-based utility run in a web browser that allows you to update your Samba configuration files. It's much easier than scouring through smb.conf files.

I still have some problems to work out. DHCPD doesn't start on boot. I have to manually start the dhcpd process with the command dhcpd eth0. I used the chkconfig command to change the runlevel but I haven't found where to define the interface to be used. That's why I have to manually specify the eth0 interface. Samba is running almost satisfactorily. My windows machine detects the workgroup but I can't browse to any of the shares. I believe the problem is that user priveleges on the shares are set to deny so I need to change the user priveleges to allow remote users to access the shares. Once that is done I should be able to map the share as a network drive.

Setting up DNS is the real bitch. Bind is running but I can't figure out where to specify the domain I want to use. I'm going to use ziggurat.home. I need to set it up as a zone in the named file but I'm forever getting errors about invalid syntax in my *.zone file or in the zone section of the named.conf file. The errors make no sense to me because I've even used examples that are supposed to be functional. When I do find a reference to my domain it's always Linux or localhost. Linux is not specified anywhere as a domain or as an alias that I'm aware of and localhost is simply the loopback for my Linux box. I need to dig up some more information about Bind and DNS.

I just got the http daemon working so I haven't tinkered with it much so far. I think it will be something of a bitch too though. I want to be able to create subdomains for the projects I'm working on so I can have (for example) http://mysqlproj.ziggurat.home, http://phpproj.ziggurat.home, http://perlproj.ziggurat.home. Both Apache and Bind support this, but the problem I have is that I have no idea what the directory structure will look like or where it is supposed to live, or how to specify the path. I know how the http file structure looks since I've done some web development, but not how it fits into the Linux directory structure. I'm fairly certain this information is buried somewhere in the Apache documentation or in the httpd.conf comments. It'll just take some digging and some trial and error. You can ditto all of the above for ftp.

Actually, one thing I've hardly even mentioned is MySQL. I also intend for my Linux box to be a MySQL server. As things stand now I don't even know what questions to ask except how do I start the MySQLd process? All of the commands give me an error and tell me to read the manual which is over 1000 pages long. I guess I'll just have to start the long slog.

I can say it is coming together. My clients are all assigned IP addresses via the DHCP daemon. I can wrestle the clients into accessing the Apache documentation pages and the Swat utility which means Apache is running as it is supposed to. I can navigate to the Samba Server, even if I can't yet access the shares. Here are the questions I intend to answer in the immediate future.

1. How do I assign the domain I want to use for my intranet?
2. How do I create subdomains? And are these zones?
3. How do I create a directory structure for my domain and for my web development projects? Where do I locate this directory structure?
4. How do I give my clients access to the Samba shares and to their own Samba directories?

My best means of answering these questions is trial and error and scouring through the documentation. I've heard and read a lot of things that rave about how well documented the linux modules are and how extensive the help, but there are a couple of problems with the documentation.

A lot of it is written by and for people who already have some idea of what it is they're doing. It's also written sort of reflexively. It's like having a dictionary with circular definitions. Crotchety means grouchy. Grouchy means crotchety. A domain is a location defined by an IP address. An IP address defines the location of a domain. A domain server gives a domain an IP address and conversely assigns an IP address to a domain.

Another problem is that there are often pages and pages of nuts and bolts information about how these services work. I know in excruciating detail the 4 step process that is how IP addresses are assigned using DCHP, but barely enough about the practicalities of making Linux into a DHCP server to make it happen. It's like taking a driving course and learning about the internal combustion engine that causes vehicular perambulation.

This is why Linux is not terribly popular among casual users or even professionals. It has a lot going for it in some ways but learning how to use it is a hell of a project. I've searched for a lot of information but I can seldom find things that lay out the processes logically. Nor is there much information that bridges the gap between developer and mechanic. Command line commands aren't discussed anywhere except from within Linux. The command line is very useful for setting these services up and testing them, but there aren't any references that tell you what commands to use or how to use them. Users who are new to Linux and the command line would be a complete loss as to how to use it. I've learned a number of basic commands, but know very few of the arguments. The man pages don't do much good from the command line because you can't see them and type on the command line at the same time. The command -h isn't very helpful unless you already know what the arguments do and just need a reminder of which one you want. Like I mentioned, a lot of the manuals tell you all you could ever want to know about the processes and why they work and what they do, but it's a rare thing to find a clear cut how, which in my case is what I really want to know. Going back to the driving lesson, you could learn everything there is to know about why the internal combustion engine works and what it does, but that doesn't mean you will know how to operate it.

In any case, I think it's interesting and useful enough to be worth my attention and I will keep hammering away at it.

A Final Goodbye

2004-06-11T12:38:00.000-07:00

To Ronald Reagan;

Darkness clouded the early days of your time in office but you saw the light. Your steady example guided the rest of America towards the light you saw. Time has proven the acuity of your vision.

Your vision was born of optimism unbound, patriotism unfettered, courage undaunted. You believed that America was a land of great people and great ideas, although you may not have counted yourself among them. An old adage has it that there are no great people, only ordinary people who do great things. You, sir, prove its truth.

Your loss reminds us of the ideals in which you so firmly believed. It reminds us why they are important to America and to the world. You will not be missed, Mr. Reagan. You will be remembered.

Rats

2004-06-10T10:45:00.000-07:00

My day is officially fucked up. Perhaps I'll have deeper thoughts tomorrow.

It's All Been Said

2004-06-09T09:27:00.000-07:00

By the end it will all have been said twice.

I'm a little startled at the surge of emotion Ronald Reagan's death has precipitated. They who appreciated him place him in the top ten presidents of our nations history. Those with less favorable recollections vent unadulterated vitriolic spleen.

I'm not old enough to remember most of Reagan's administration but I'm smart enough to read my history. Ronald Reagan was a victim of circumstance as much as he was an adept political figure. When Reagan was elected, the Soviet Union was about to collapse under its own weight. Communism was its own source of destruction. Reagan was not directly responsible for its death. He was responsible for the acceleration of the collapse though. Reagan pumped additional money into the military and reignited the arms race. It was the straw that broke the camel's back. He had the good fortune to be president during that time, and the wit to seize the opportunity. He made some hard economic decisions, but combined with the end of the Cold War it set the stage for the boom of the 90s. People howl about Reaganomics, but sometimes things have to get worse before they can get better. In 1980, when Reagan was elected, the inflation rate was over 13%. In 1984 at the beginning of his second term the inflation rate was a little over 4%. Interest rates peaked in 1980 at 21.5%. In 1984 they were 11%. His economic policies inflated unemployment for his first term, but the unemployment rate fell throughout his second term to 5%.

I think he will be remembered for something other than his politics though. He was a good man, he treated people with dignity and respect. Even the letter he wrote to the American people when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's was encouraging and generous of spirit. He was the kind of man people could believe in. During both terms, Reagan's approval rating hung damn close to 50%. He was not wildly popular but over 50% of America believed in him and trusted him. And he didn't let them down. He stuck to his guns; he did what he thought was right. I suspect he will fade into mediocrity with time. He won't be counted among the very best of American presidents, but he made our world a little better than it had been, and for that he can rest peacefully.