November 30, 2005

Tangled Invertebrates

Circus of the Spineless #3 is up at Urban Dragon Hunters and science blogs have gathered together at Tangled Bank #42 hosted by Dogged Blog.

Posted by Steve on November 30, 2005

Role of the Courts

"Mr. Norrell, it is not the duty of the court - any court - to exalt one person's opinions above others! Not in magic nor in any other sphere of life. If other magicians think differently from you, then you must battle it out with them. You must prove the superiority of your opinions, as I do in politics. You must argue and publish and practise your magic and you must learn to live as I do - in the face of constant criticism, opposition and censure. That, sir, is the English way."

Susanna Clarke, Jonathon Strange & Mr Norrell, 407

For more on this novel see the Seminar at Crook Timber.

Posted by Steve on November 30, 2005

Thank-You-Kindly Edition

Grand Rounds is up at Over!My!Med!Body.

Posted by Steve on November 30, 2005

November 29, 2005

Firefox 1.5

Just when I didn't need anything else to procrastinate with the Mozilla folks release Firefox 1.5. As usual I'll break it in on my desktop at work which is a relatively low use machine before putting it on my laptop and other home machines.

The release notes are here and a comprehensive listing of new features and bug fixes is here.

Via Laurence.

Posted by Steve on November 29, 2005

Full Frontal Blogging

You were warned.

Welcome to Olduvai George!

Via Pharyngula.

Posted by Steve on November 29, 2005 | Comments (1)

Touch Me, Feel Me

It won't be a surpise to the average scifi reader that someone has developed a networked "hug suit." Tim Worstall is, though, amazed by what is unsaid :

They manage to get all the way through the report without mentioning what it’ll actually be used for. How long before the first spam email asking whether you have such a suit? And would you like to be squeezed by that 18 year old Ukrainian girl you can watch on the webcam?
Perhaps Oprah will take an in depth look at how this might impact pron addiction on tomorrow's show. (I'll update the link on Thursday after the show runs)

And, yes, it does seem like a good investment opportunity...the mind simply boggles at the possible variations and add-ons. Of course, there is no reason that this has to be a one way thing either.

Posted by Steve on November 29, 2005

More Competence in government

Here is what USAID does:

USAID works in agriculture, democracy & governance, economic growth, the environment, education, health, global partnerships, and humanitarian assistance in more than 100 countries to provide a better future for all.
Here's the qualifications of the new USAID director deputy assistant administrator:
More significant to the administration, perhaps, is the fact that Bonicelli is dean of academic affairs at tiny Patrick Henry College in rural Virginia. The fundamentalist institution's motto is "For Christ and Liberty." It requires that all of its 300 students sign a 10-part "statement of faith" declaring, among other things, that they believe "Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, is God come in the flesh;" that "Jesus Christ literally rose bodily from the dead"; and that hell is a place where "all who die outside of Christ shall be confined in conscious torment for eternity."

Faculty members, too, must sign a pledge stating they share a generally literalist belief in the Bible. Revealingly, only biology and theology teachers are required to hold a literal view specifically of the Bible's six-day creation story. Bonicelli has stated, "I think the most important thing is our academic excellence, [and the fact that we] combine it with a serious statement about our faith and values ... I believe in six literal days, but I remain open to someone persuading me otherwise."

This is certainly consistent with this view of bush and is a perfectly good reason to toss out both bushies and government as we know it. It is simply too risky to have so powerful an institution susceptible to occupancy by bushies or, for that matter, the other 535 534(click through).

Via Columbia Libertarians.

Update: Kip noted in a comment that bonicelli was not appointed director. I fixed that. Kip also points out that bonicelli has a more extensive resume than implied above. You can read more here but I'm still not impressed.

Posted by Steve on November 29, 2005 | Comments (1)

November 28, 2005

Little Quinn

Rest in Peace.

Our condolences to Jaquandor and his family.

Posted by Steve on November 28, 2005

November 27, 2005

Know Thy Cats

Carnival of the Cats #88 is up at IMAO.

Posted by Steve on November 27, 2005

November 25, 2005

Friday Ark #62

We'll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and....?

We will add your post to the list if you do one of the following:

  • Leave a comment or trackback to this post,
  • Use the Carnival Submission Form,
  • Email Modulator or
  • Our extensive staff finds it during our weekly search of the web
Of course, if our staff goes on strike then we will link only those posts someone tells us about.

Visit each border and come back regularly Friday-Sunday to visit new boarders. And do link to the Friday Ark whether you use trackbacks or not.

Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map.

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey's Musings.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 88th edition will be hosted this week by IMAO. There are more weekly cats at eatstuff's Weekend Cat Blogging which has many participants who may not be familiar to Ark or Carnival participants.

Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. Send your links for the 12th edition to Mike. The 11th edition is up and hosted by the The House & other Arctic Musings.

New for the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The second edition is up at Snails Tales.
The 3rd edition is scheduled for November 30 and will be hosted by Urban Dragon Hunters. Mail submissions to nannothemis AT gmail.com

Arkive editions of the Friday Ark.

Slow Updates This Week: Thanksgiving is this week and like last year we will be traveling and will have limited time and bandwidth. This wasn't too much of a problem then. There were only 22 boarders. Now there are often over 100. Friday updates probably won't begin until noon or later eastern time. Be patient and click through comments and trackbacks if it looks like things are way behind.

Cats

InvertebratesDogsBirdsOther VertebratesIn MemoriamDidn't Make It
Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat's Carnival Page and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Note for Haloscan Users: Haloscan started (the end of July) rejecting trackbacks if they were submitted "too rapidly" by the same host. I don't know what the timer is but it is long enough so that it was very difficult to ping everyone that is using Haloscan for trackbacks. I'm sure that they are doing this to try to hold back the tide of trackback spam but it makes the service pretty useless for carnival type posts. Perhaps you can contact them and urge some different solution. Update: Typepad appears to be doing the same thing. Everytime I update the Ark it appears the timers are reset and the long list of MT autogenerated pings fail. Yecchhhh....

Posted by Steve on November 25, 2005 | Comments (14)

November 24, 2005

Happy Thanksgiving

That all: Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted by Steve on November 24, 2005 | Comments (1)

November 23, 2005

Where In The World...

...are the birds?

To find out fly over to I and the Bird #11 which is now up at The House & other Arctic Musings.

Posted by Steve on November 23, 2005

The Mad Scientist

Here's the bait:

"Just imagine it—great pelagic orgies, the males thrusting wantonly with their massive penile arms, promiscuously inseminating any nearby slickly molluscan body. Perhaps they end up sated and exhausted from their frenzied exertions and, oblivious and insensate, drift ashore to die content. Forget March of the Penguins. There's a great documentary to be made here: Squid Gone Wild. Cephalopod Sex Party. I want to see Michael Medved review it."
Even if you have figured out who it is go read about him here, now!

Warning: Not ID friendly.

Posted by Steve on November 23, 2005

November 22, 2005

Bad News for Deadheads

In a nutshell, the pioneers of music trading appear to have joined the dinosaurs of the recording industry. Read and weep (there were 2300 shows here yesterday).

I've downloaded only a few complete GD shows from the Archive, streamed quite a few more, bought many commercial releases over the years including the just shipping 1969 Box Set (why hasn't it arrived yet) and never, ever traded one of the Dead's commercial releases. And still won't. But I also will not be adding any new commercial releases to my collection for a while, if ever again...hell, I don't even get close to cycling through my collection once every 5 years.

The music is theirs to control however they want. However, if they want to change the culture I can damn well change my buying habits.

Update: David Gans has some thoughts to share.

Posted by Steve on November 22, 2005 | Comments (5)

Here's A Nasty Little Business

Seems there are a bunch of folks making at least part of their living by selling your cell phone records. Now they can't be making huge dollars can they? Really, how many folks want someone else's call records on any given day? Well, it turns out that there are quite a few business out there offering the service. Enough to make you angry if you think about it a bit:

It's actually obscene what you can find out about people on the Internet.
says Bob Sullivan who goes on to note:
It may be outrageous, but it's not new. MSNBC.com first wrote about this problem in October 2001, in a story titled "I know who you called last month."

The problem was exposed years earlier by a private investigator named Rob Douglas. Banking records, home phone long-distance calling, even medical information, were all for sale, he told Congress.

But, isn't this kind of illegal? Sure, but who's prosecuting? Joel Winston, associate director of the Federal Trade Commission's Financial Practices Division,
...said the agency has never taken such a case to court and does not know how widespread the problem is. He said the FTC must focus its resources on the practices of data thieves that can cause the most damage to large numbers of consumers, such as financial fraud.
Why is this just an FCC issue? It appears to often require fraud to implement the theft. So where are the other law enforcement agencies? Likely all the other law enforcement critters are too busy checking out what books we are reading or staking out some pot user to spend time protecting us. As I argued previously:
Federal standards and regulations are invariably broken and generally never written with individual citizens in mind but Ed's last point hits the nail on the head.

No institution, government or private, can be allowed to collect or distribute, for free or for fee, any information about an individual without that individuals specific consent on a per incident basis and if the distribution is for a fee then that individual must be compensated at a rate agreeable to the individual.

Perhaps it is time to get serious about instituting alternatives to the existing federal, state and local legal systems. You know, put something in place that can stamp out crime that has victims and perhaps obsolete all those law enforcement agencies that are so focused on victimless crimes.

Via fergie's tech blog.

Posted by Steve on November 22, 2005

November 21, 2005

Where's My Aspirin?

Should aspirin, acetominophen or penicillin be used? Derek Lowe argues that today not only would they not be approved by the FDA they likely would not even be submitted for approval:

The best example is aspirin itself. It's one of the foundation stones of the drug industry, and it's hard to even guess how many billions of doses of it have been taken over the last hundred years. But if you were somehow able to change history so that aspirin had never been discovered until this year, I can guarantee you that it would have died in the lab. No modern drug development organization would touch it.
I don't know about you but I would be very unhappy not to have aspirin, etc., in my home arsenal and I had more than one childhood infection cleared by penicillin. On the other hand I have seen first hand the frightening experience of an allergic reaction to one of penicillin's offspring.

I do, though, lean in the same direction as Lowe:

We can be relieved that we've learned so much more about pharmacology, ensuring that the drugs that manage to gain approval today are the safer than ever. Or we can think about how people seem to use aspirin and the other legacy drugs anyway, safety problems and all, and wonder how many more useful medicines we're losing by insisting on a higher bar.

I definitely see the point of the former, but I lean a bit toward the latter.

The final informed choice on drug use should be made by a well informed patient. If the patient is being treated by a medical professional responsibility for providing the full set of information on a course of treatment belongs to the medical professional. If the patient is self-treating then the patient is responsible for acquiring the information. In both cases it is the patient who must make the final evaluation of a course of treatment.

That many people are not competent to make these evaluations and decisions is one of the great failings of our culture, our education system and our health care system.

Via Marginal Revolution.

Posted by Steve on November 21, 2005

November 20, 2005

What Time Is It?

Well, the answer depends on context: you need a place reference.

So to make it a lot easier to answer the question, "What time is it around the world." load up the Google Map based Gchart click on your place of interest and up pops the answer in an information balloon.

Via lifehack.

Posted by Steve on November 20, 2005

It all started with ...

...the big bang.

Via Pharyngula.

Posted by Steve on November 20, 2005

bush....

....trying to exit stage right...

Via the ReddHedd.

Posted by Steve on November 20, 2005 | Comments (1)

November 18, 2005

Friday Ark #61

We'll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and....?

We will add your post to the list if you do one of the following:

  • Leave a comment or trackback to this post,
  • Use the Carnival Submission Form,
  • Email Modulator or
  • Our extensive staff finds it during our weekly search of the web
Of course, if our staff goes on strike then we will link only those posts someone tells us about.

Visit each border and come back regularly Friday-Sunday to visit new boarders. And do link to the Friday Ark whether you use trackbacks or not.

Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map.

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey's Musings.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 87th edition will be hosted this week by Scribblings. There are more weekly cats at eatstuff's Weekend Cat Blogging which has many participants who may not be familiar to Ark or Carnival participants.

Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. Send your links for the 10th edition to Mike. The 10th edition is up and hosted by the Thomasburg Walks.

New for the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The second edition is up at Snails Tales.

Arkive editions of the Friday Ark.

Looking Ahead: Thanksgiving is next week and like last year we will be traveling and will have limited time and bandwidth. This wasn't too much of a problem then. There were only 22 boarders. Now there are often over 100. More on this next week.

Apologies and Alert: Well, I thought this went up 6-7 hours ago. I do remember publsihing it at about 2:00 AM EST and apologize for any inconvenience. Note that staff will be updates will be slow to not at all between 10:00 AM and 3:30 PM EST.

Cats

InvertebratesDogsBirdsOther VertebratesIn MemoriamDidn't Make ItExceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat's Carnival Page and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Note for Haloscan Users: Haloscan started (the end of July) rejecting trackbacks if they were submitted "too rapidly" by the same host. I don't know what the timer is but it is long enough so that it was very difficult to ping everyone that is using Haloscan for trackbacks. I'm sure that they are doing this to try to hold back the tide of trackback spam but it makes the service pretty useless for carnival type posts. Perhaps you can contact them and urge some different solution. Update: Typepad appears to be doing the same thing. Everytime I update the Ark it appears the timers are reset and the long list of MT autogenerated pings fail. Yecchhhh....

Posted by Steve on November 18, 2005 | Comments (17)

November 17, 2005

Tie-Dye Memories

Jaquandor has been doing crafts and his fine work brings back memories of my own work many years ago. Perhaps someday I'll get a scanner and run a few old prints through and share . Mine, though, were not as bright or colorful as Jaquandor's. I was very much in a purple stage at the time...

Jauandor, I don't think it is possible to make a mistake when doing tie-dye. The patterns you get are very much the pattern of the world at that moment.

Posted by Steve on November 17, 2005 | Comments (1)

So You Want To Be An Academic

This seems like it would be just the thing for bloggers:

I asked everyone the same question: "What's it really like to have your job?"

Instead of responding with: "Do you like teaching?" they all asked: "Do you like to write?"

It does appear that some tenured academic bloggers have plenty of time to write. Heck, even some of the untenured ones (until recently) appear to have a lot of writing time.

But there is more to the academic life than just writing. Read the rest of the above linked article.

Via TaxProf Blog.

Posted by Steve on November 17, 2005

cheney-bush flailing away

Seems bush and cheney are feeling a bit tender these days as more and more folks come to the conclusion that dear leaders have not been entirely forthcoming over the past 5 years. Especially with the respect to the Iraq diversion from the so-called war on terror.

Yesterday cheney comments:

Some of the most irresponsible comments have, of course, come from politicians who actually voted in favor of authorizing force against Saddam Hussein. These are elected officials who had access to the intelligence, and were free to draw their own conclusions.
....
The President and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone – but we're not going to sit by and let them rewrite history.
And, John Cole notes:
It seems to me there are plenty of things to flay this administration about that you don’t need to start lying yourself. Or playing the tired old victim card.
Well, it is not clear that any of the criticizing folks are lying but one thing for sure: the senators and congress critters who supported the bushies grabbed the bait hook, line and sinker. They should all be thrown out of office.

Oh yea, lest anyone forgets bush's real reason for wanting to take out hussein:

And, in discussing the threat posed by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Bush said: "After all, this is the guy who tried to kill my dad."

Posted by Steve on November 17, 2005

November 16, 2005

Open Source Pajamas

The Pajamas Media (aka Open Source Media) development has been mildly interesting to watch and now I wonder whether anyone will read, analyze, quote and link to anything on that site beyond navel gazing by the participants. My reading of their copyright notice suggests that The Talent Show is has already violated it. Heck I will too:

You may not reproduce, distribute, copy, publish, enter into any database, display, modify, create derivative works, transmit, or in any way exploit any part of this site. The only exceptions to this are that you may download material from Our Site for your own personal use, provided such download is limited to making one machine readable copy and/or one print copy that limited to occasional articles of personal interest only. No other use of the content of Our Site is permitted.
The language seems pretty clear that they don't want us to quote and comment on any of their material so let's oblige them.

Via Making Light.

Posted by Steve on November 16, 2005 | Comments (3)

E-checks: Use Cash Locally

Some online retailers are touting the use of e-checks:

This process --... -- has been around for a number of years. It's common among utilities and others that send out monthly bills: They ask for your bank-account number and the "routing" number at the bottom of your checks, then withdraw what you owe when your bill's due.
For paying directly from my checking account I've been pretty happy using a debit card. But the retailers are looking for a bit more:
Retailers wish everyone would pay this way, as it saves them money. Take Fresh Direct LLC, a New York City online grocer. Deputy Chairman Jason Ackerman says the company pays 2.2 percent in fees on the average credit-card transaction, but its new e-check system costs it roughly half that amount.
I think any thoughtful online retailer will look seriously at this kind of savings. But, there may be drawbacks for some consumers:
For consumers, one of the best reasons to avoid e-checks is to keep earning rewards from a credit-card company. Retailers argue that's short-sighted. As Amazon notes on its site, if more customers were to pay through their bank accounts, Amazon could pass on its savings in the form of lower prices.
Amazon and the others need to incent customers on a per transaction basis if they want broad adaptation. The way to do this is to pass the savings directly to the customer. If a retailer saves a net of 1.1% when customers use an e-check then credit that to the customer on a per transaction basis. In the long run everyone except perhaps the banking and card industry will be better off: retailers become more competive, consumers save some money and the fees charged for using credit/debit cards probably come down (e-check fees may go up).

This is potentially good stuff for online purchases and it would be great to see more of the same when we shop locally. Remember that w hen you are buying in person you can ignore the cards and e-checks and simply pay with cash. This will definitely hit the bottom line of the banking industry and I'm ok with my local stores keeping the difference for a while. I would, though, rather see us getting an automatic discount for cash at the register!

And as to the rewardsmentioned above:

Some credit cards give you 5 percent refunds when you use them at the grocery or drug store.
If these card companies are charging a service fee high enough to give 5% refunds then we should damn well be all over retail outlets to give us discounts for cash!@!

Posted by Steve on November 16, 2005

November 15, 2005

For Your Science Reading Pleasure

Tangled Bank #41 is up.

Posted by Steve on November 15, 2005

Thermobaric Weapons

After all the recent discussion about white phosporous it will be interesting to watch the discussion about this addition to the infantry arsenal:

Nor is it difficult to see why soldiers faced with rooting out loyalists to Saddam Hussein in Baghdad would covet a small version of such a weapon. City combat is dangerously unpredictable because any corner could hide an enemy. Soldiers often clear every room of every building they sweep. Thermobaric ammunition can eliminate enemies in several rooms at once.

"For urban warfare (thermobarics) could be very effective," said Andrew Koch, Washington bureau chief of Jane's Defence Weekly. "If you lob a grenade in the entrance of a building, it hits just the people in the entrance. A thermobaric weapon would (go) though the rest of the building."

This looks great when you are targeting 100% known enemy soldiers but it sure seems that the possibility of inappropriate civilian casualties is very high.

More here.

Via boingboing.

Posted by Steve on November 15, 2005

Stay Warm, Stay Healthier

Simply keeping your feet warm may help fend off colds:

But when he and a colleague deliberately chilled subjects -- by dipping their feet in ice water -- they found that those who got their feet cold and wet were significantly more likely to develop symptoms of a cold over the next four or five days than were those who just put their feet in an empty bowl.
While this study did not look at this it seems reasonable to conclude that folks with circulatory problems that lead to cold extremeties should, if the study is correct, show a higher incidence of colds.

Investors might note an uptick in sales of foot warming devices if this study gets much play in the popular press.

Posted by Steve on November 15, 2005 | Comments (1)

November 14, 2005

More Medicine

I know some religious folks who will bristle at Scalzi's sensible views on family management and relationships but they live in dark places and if they are very lucky their sons will not look to be dating Athena:

And as for passing along the "the husband is the head of household" meme to my daughter, well. Here we pause for a long and hearty laugh. I've already given Athena permission to kneecap the first jackass who tries to pass that one off to her. And you don't want to know what Krissy's given her permission to do.
Chuckle! Read it all.

Posted by Steve on November 14, 2005

Laughter Is Great Medicine

I don't know that this ad is airing on the tube anywhere but take a moment...just go on over to Lauren's place, click through and give a listen.

If your own laughter doesn't make you feel better then you should probably contact the advertiser.

Posted by Steve on November 14, 2005

November 13, 2005

Kitty Scratchin' Time

Michael, the host at Curiouser and Curiouser, has posted the 86th edition of the Carnival of the Cats.

Go scratch a kitty!

Posted by Steve on November 13, 2005 | Comments (1)

November 12, 2005

Looking Forward to a Free Market

Should corporations have to disclose more about their executive pay structure?

Well, if they are public corporations created and supported by state and federal laws then a case can be made that, yes, they should be very transparent. Problably more than Barney Frank proposes.

However, this simply points again to the failure of government created organizations. Every year there are more patchwork bills to regulate corporations and, it seems, we hear more and more about what is not right with them. Let's solve the problem! Let's end government protection of corporations and the concept of limited liability corporations. If you are going to play you need to be willing to assume the risk.

And, yes, I disagree with Doug at Below the Beltway who says:

A possible end to the inane idea that so-called "commercial speech" is less deserving of First Amendment protection ?
As noted here when a business is structured like a human then we can consider applying human rights.

Posted by Steve on November 12, 2005 | Comments (1)

November 11, 2005

Friday Ark #60

Friday Ark Template

We'll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and....?

We will add your post to the list if you do one of the following:

  • Leave a comment or trackback to this post,
  • Use the Carnival Submission Form,
  • Email Modulator or
  • Our extensive staff finds it during our weekly search of the web
Of course, if our staff goes on strike then we will link only those posts someone tells us about.

Visit each border and come back regularly Friday-Sunday to visit new boarders. And do link to the Friday Ark whether you use trackbacks or not.

New: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map.

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey's Musings.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 86th edition will be hosted this week by Curiouser and Curiouser. There are more weekly cats at eatstuff's Weekend Cat Blogging which has many participants who may not be familiar to Ark or Carnival participants.

Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. Send your links for the 10th edition to Mike. The 10th edition is up and hosted by Thomasburg Walks.

New for the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The second edition is up at Snails Tales.

Arkive editions of the Friday Ark.

Update: We wish Clare of eatstuff a speedy recovery from her cat bites.

Cats

InvertebratesDogsBirdsOther VertebratesIn Memoriam
Didn't Make ItExceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)
For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat's Carnival Page and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Note for Haloscan Users: Haloscan started (the end of July) rejecting trackbacks if they were submitted "too rapidly" by the same host. I don't know what the timer is but it is long enough so that it was very difficult to ping everyone that is using Haloscan for trackbacks. I'm sure that they are doing this to try to hold back the tide of trackback spam but it makes the service pretty useless for carnival type posts. Perhaps you can contact them and urge some different solution. Update: Typepad appears to be doing the same thing. Everytime I update the Ark it appears the timers are reset and the long list of MT autogenerated pings fail. Yecchhhh....

Posted by Steve on November 11, 2005 | Comments (23)

November 10, 2005

Tin Foil Plot

All those tin foil hats in your closet are a government plot.

Posted by Steve on November 10, 2005

Having Trouble Finishing that Next Post?

You might have a lot in common with this writer!

Posted by Steve on November 10, 2005

Ark, Roaches and Stress Relief

Hey now:

The 60th edition of the Friday Ark will start boarding sometime in the wee hours tomorrow. Check out last week's boarding.

Elisson is looking for your cockroaches.

And, to lighten your day Tommy presents the Carnival of Comedy.

Posted by Steve on November 10, 2005

November 9, 2005

What, Who and Where is That Bird?

Find out at the 9th edition of I and the Bird hosted by Thomasburg Walks:

This edition includes 28 posts from four continents posts describing bird identification, migration events, unlikely birding, lucky (and unlucky) birding, endangered birds, birds in recovery, and more.

Posted by Steve on November 9, 2005

Time for a Coffee Break?

If you weight 170 pounds you should note that 30.94 tall coffees from Starbucks will kill you!

Via KidneyNotes.

Posted by Steve on November 9, 2005 | Comments (1)

Kansas Enters A New Dark Age

I thought I'd write at length about the Kansas Board of Education decision to abandon teaching science in public schools

...the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.
but on something like this PZ Myers is going to be far ahead of the curve:
Rewriting the definition of science seems a rather presumptuous thing for a school board to do, I think, especially when their new definition is something contrary to what working scientists and major scientific organizations say is science. As for removing the limitation to natural phenomena, what do they propose to add? Ghosts, intuition, divine revelation, telepathic communications from Venusians? It's simply insane.
It is worth noting that:
The standards approved Tuesday are not binding on local school districts, and few have said they plan to revise their lesson plans.
To the extent that there are real science teachers in the schools and educated, thoughtful folks on the local school boards the state board may be simply ignored. On the other hand, the light may be turned out in some classrooms.

Sad.

Update: More from Steve Verdon.

Posted by Steve on November 9, 2005

November 8, 2005

Carnivals Provide Information and Post Material

Grand Rounds celebrates National Medical Staff Services Awareness Week, Carnival of Liberty XIX continues the battle against ignorance and the Carnival of the Capitalists covers economics, politcs, advice and more.

Read'm all. There out to be a post or two hidden in each.

Posted by Steve on November 8, 2005

When Is That Flight Going to Arrive?

One of the handy helpers that the internet has brought us is the ability to track airline flights via sites like Flight Arrivals and Flight View. No more arriving at the airport to find that the flight will be three hours late.*

New on this front is FlightAware. They claim

Founded in March of 2005, FlightAware is the first company to offer free flight tracking for both private and commercial air traffic in the United States. FlightAware's proprietory flight arrival time algorithms combined with our powerful, intuitive, and reliable web-based interface yield the most capable and useful flight tracking application on the Internet.
I just gave this a quick test drive and it is pretty nifty with lots of info available. The registration was a pain but, then, that's a good reason to have a pseudonymous email account. One downside of this service today is poor to non-existent international tracking.

As usual, your mileage may vary. Check'm out.

Via A Guy In New York.

*Though you need to check early because flights can be 45 minutes early as we found out a while back. We checked about an hour before arrival and found out the plane was landing in 12 minutes and it was going to be a 40 minute drive to the airport.

Posted by Steve on November 8, 2005

November 7, 2005

Will cheney's Torture Policy Lead to A World You Want to Live In?

Larry Johnson argues that cheney does not understand the real world:

I think Dick Cheney has been watching too many Hollywood flicks that glorify torture. He needs, instead, to get on the ground and talk to the folks he is ostensibly trying to empower to torture.
....
If you inflict enough pain on someone they will give you information, but, unless you kill them, they will hold a grudge. As far as the information goes there is no guarantee it will be correct.

What real CIA field officers know from their work with actual sources is that whatever short term benefit can be derived from torture will be offset by the new enemy you have created. It is better to build a relationship of trust, no matter how painstaking, rather than gain a short term benefit that puts you on par with a Nazi concentration camp guard.

Perhaps Johnson underestimates cheney who certainly doesn't intend that his victims will walk free any time soon. No, they will best end up dead or at worst be stashed away in a secret gulag until the end of the never to end war on terror. If the latter, cheney will be long gone and will have left to our children the task of cleaning his mess.

Read the rest.

Via Talking Points Memo.

Posted by Steve on November 7, 2005 | Comments (2)

Now, here is something I need....

...all too often!

Professor Solomen's new book: How to Find Lost Objects.

Principle one:

Something’s lost, and your first thought—your basic instinct—is to look for it. You’re ready to start rummaging about. To hunt for it in a random, and increasingly frenetic, fashion. To ransack your own house.

This is the most common mistake people make.

And it can doom their search from the start.

See, you and I both learned something right away. Tonight, I will read through the rest of his Twelve Principles.

Via boingboing.

Posted by Steve on November 7, 2005

Don't Play Sony CDs in Your PC

Better yet, don't even buy them until Sony stops a whole bunch of bad behavior:

the EULA does not disclose the software’s use of cloaking or the fact that it comes with no uninstall facility. An end user is not only installing software when they agree to the EULA, they are losing control of part of the computer, which has both reliability and security implications. There's no way to ensure that you have up-to-date security patches for software you don't know you have and there's no way to remove, update or even identify hidden software that's crashing your computer.

The EULA also makes no reference to any “phone home” behavior, and Sony executives are claiming that the software never contacts Sony and that no information is communicated that could track user behavior. However, a user asserted in a comment on the previous post that they monitored the Sony CD Player network interactions and that it establishes a connection with Sony’s site and sends the site an ID associated with the CD.

I decided to investigate so I downloaded a free network tracing tool, Ethereal, to a computer on which the player was installed and captured network traffic during the Player’s startup. A quick look through the trace log confirmed the users comment: the Player does send an ID to a Sony web site.

..... (go to above link to see screen shots)

I dug a little deeper and it appears the Player is automatically checking to see if there are updates for the album art and lyrics for the album it’s displaying. This behavior would be welcome under most circumstances,...

Let's see: hidden software, no easy way to uninstall, lying about how the software works, and,well, there may be more that we don't know about yet. I do think no purchase is the right action: Boycott Sony music CDs!

And, I disagree with mark's assertion that checking for album art and lyric updates "would be welcome under most circumstances." It should only be welcome if the system owner specifically asks for it to happen and given the extremely limited value of this information on a day to day basis such requests should be very rare.

Via MU at Running Scared.

Posted by Steve on November 7, 2005 | Comments (1)

November 6, 2005

Cats Partying!

Claudius will be heading down for the party as soon as he wakes up. Go join him at the 85th Carnival of the Cats.

It is a big party so be sure to also check out the catnip room and the run amok room.

Posted by Steve on November 6, 2005

November 5, 2005

Down For Maintenance in the Middle of the Day

Stuff like this certainly leads me to question the technical and service credibility of the folks at google and blogger:

Blogger Network Outage

We are currently down for network maintenence from 12pm (noon) to 2pm PST.

Those of you who support real production network environments will know what I mean. You just don't schedule maintenance during times when your service or network is going to be used by many people.

Yea, I suppose it is possible, given the wordwide nature of the web, that this is the least busy period of their week and if this is so that suggests that blogspot's biggest use is in the time zones serving the middle east, China, Japan, The Philipines, etc.

Interesting. And a pain as I was working on a post that has links into the blogspot world. Oh well, it will wait.

Posted by Steve on November 5, 2005

November 4, 2005

Friday Ark #59

We'll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and....?

Alert: Comments do not seem to be posting below but we are getting notifications of your comments. Feel free to use one of the other options if you want some additional certainty that we have received notification. We do not mind the duplications. We aren't going to research this problem until we are caught up with all the pending boardings in a few hours.
We will add your post to the list if you do one of the following:
  • Leave a comment or trackback to this post,
  • Use the Carnival Submission Form,
  • Email Modulator or
  • Our extensive staff finds it during our weekly search of the web
Of course, if our staff goes on strike then we will link only those posts someone tells us about.

Visit each border and come back regularly Friday-Sunday to visit new boarders. And do link to the Friday Ark whether you use trackbacks or not.

New: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map.

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey's Musings.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 85th edition will be hosted this week by Pages Turned. There are more weekly cats at eatstuff's Weekend Cat Blogging which has many participants who may not be familiar to Ark or Carnival participants.

  • New: Laurence has started a The Catbloggers Frappr Map. Go shout out!

    • Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. Send your links for the 10th edition to Mike. The 9th edition is up and hosted by the Living the Scientific Lige.

    New for the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The first edition is up at Milk River Blog.

    Arkive editions of the Friday Ark.

    Update (10:23 ET): Updates will be slow and we will not be caught up until after 2:00 PM Eastern Time. Sorry for the delays today...

    Cats

    InvertebratesDogsBirdsOther VertebratesIn MemoriamDidn't Make It
    Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat's Carnival Page and The TTLB Uber Carnival

    Note for Haloscan Users: Haloscan started (the end of July) rejecting trackbacks if they were submitted "too rapidly" by the same host. I don't know what the timer is but it is long enough so that it was very difficult to ping everyone that is using Haloscan for trackbacks. I'm sure that they are doing this to try to hold back the tide of trackback spam but it makes the service pretty useless for carnival type posts. Perhaps you can contact them and urge some different solution. Update: Typepad appears to be doing the same thing. Everytime I update the Ark it appears the timers are reset and the long list of MT autogenerated pings fail. Yecchhhh....

    Posted by Steve on November 4, 2005

    November 2, 2005

    You Won't Find This In Albertsons

    Yep, Albertsons is not very interested in biological sciences. Especially when it has anything to do with female anatomy.

    However, PZ Myers makes up for Albertsons' failings by providing Evolution of the Mammalian Vagina.

    Posted by Steve on November 2, 2005 | Comments (1)

    Blawgs and Rounds

    Bag and Baggage presents Blawg Review # 30 with a halloween theme and you can learn all about the New Lawyer Specialty: Representing Murderers' Girlfriends.

    and

    Kidney Notes     presents medical Grand Rounds where, inter alia, you can find out What Patients Have Said During Their Colonoscopy, Supposedly, for example:

    “Hey! Now I know how a Muppet feels!”
    .

    Posted by Steve on November 2, 2005

    November 1, 2005

    My Answer Is C

    Here is the quiz:

    Imagine yourself in the following scenario:

    You’ve just returned home from a day at work. While you set your keys on the kitchen counter and remove your coat you can hear the familiar voices of your roommate and her/his S.O. in the other room.

    You start to wonder about what you might make yourself for dinner when suddenly you are startled by a loud gunshot, followed by what sounds like a body falling to the floor. Rather than getting the hell out of there you somewhat foolishly run to the other room to see what happened. Once there, you see your roommate standing there, arm outstretched, holding a still-smoking pistol pointed at what is now, apparently, a corpse.

    Your roommate looks at you and says “Santa Claus did it.”

    Do you:

    a) Sincerely believe that your roommate is telling the actual truth?
    b) Decide that, because you didn’t actually see your roommate fire the gun, you just can’t know one way or another whether Santa did it?
    c) Consider your roommate a murderer, and the claim to be the rationalization of a mind that has snapped?

    Yes, I initially have to go with c and act accordingly. Subsequent evidence may validate an alternate conclusion but that is not relevant to the scenario as presented.

    Read the rest and comment here.

    Via Pharyngula.

    Posted by Steve on November 1, 2005 | Comments (1)