As fate would have it:
You couldn't make up stuff like this.
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December 30, 2005
December 27, 2005
Power nap:
The science of snoozing, revealed.
Out there:
It's good that Mark Vonnegut sticks up for his father. Kurt Vonnegut has been around the block a few times, and as such, is entitled to spout whatever controversial nonsense he might choose to, as Mark argues in an op-ed. But, he also writes...
At no point did he say that blowing yourself up in a crowd of people was a good thing to do.
Maybe not, but here's what he did say, according to David Nason in the Australian.
What about terrorists? Do you understand where they're coming from? Do you regard them as soldiers too?" I ask.
Vonnegut's reply is startling. "I regard them as very brave people, yes," he says without a moment's hesitation.
When the eighty three year old Vonnegut directs that type of perhaps intentionally provocative nonsense into the public arena, no one, including his son, should be all that surprised when it is just as publicly assailed.
Evolutionary:
Check out Scott Helman's article on the blogging of politics in Massachusetts.
Small world:
While reading Indira Lakshmanan's report, this morning, about a controversial highway that will span Amazon forest area, I was able to fire up Google Earth and zoom in on the road project.
Google Earth is, without a doubt, the coolest program of 2005.
I've used Microsoft's Live Local earth mapping service and it's... OK. Not great, but OK. Microsoft does, where available, incorporate images taken from aircraft which give a closer-to-the-ground view than Google's satellite shots, but navigating from one to the next is difficult.
The Google Earth interface is smooth and intuitive; net integration transparent and fast. And where they have started to offer aerial shots (on a limited basis in partnership with National Geographic, in parts of Africa) Google has seamlessly integrated them into the satellite shots so you can zoom down to the village level and see people walking around. Very cool.
Here, for example, are some elephants in southern Chad, seen from Google Earth.
Pretty amazing, huh?
School days:
A survey of high school students, mostly in Roxbury and Dorchester, confirms what many already knew: violence is a big part of life for kids in the city.
If there's any good news in the report, it's that the internet is commonly available to these families. About three quarters of the kids surveyed said that they had access.
December 26, 2005
Posting from writely:
I use Ecto to do most posting to this site. It's a great rich text blog posting client for the Mac, but the Windows version doesn't quite measure up.
Lately I've been fooling around with Writely, which along with being a platform-independent online word processor and collaborative document editor, allows for (single site) blog posting. I'm going to test it out and I'll let you know how it works. (You can get a beta account at Writely.com)
December 24, 2005
In a smile:
According to emotion regognition software...
... Mona Lisa was 83 per cent happy, 9 per cent disgusted, 6 per cent fearful and 2 per cent angry.
A school board in Ohio showed us that religion and science don't mix. Now, the same can be said of science and art.
Mall of America:
I made a couple of mall kiosk purchases this week (can's say what, that would spill the beans) and it was a different experience than buying in a store. Generally, the person set up in a kiosk, often an immigrant, is the one who owns the business and they're enthusiastic, friendly and genuinely happy to make the sale.
Of course the product may be junk and you'll never see them again, but that's another issue altogether.
The Oddfather:
Vinnie "The Chin" Gigante, known for wandering around Little Italy in his pajamas feigning mental illness, was buried yesterday in a low-key (for a mafia boss) ceremony.
Delay tactic:
A Globe editorial quite reasonably proposes that Sal DiMasi stop stalling and either get behind the pending witness protection legislation or explain what needs to be changed before he can support the measure.
Credulity:
Anyone with at least one foot in the real world knew the story of federal agents visiting a student who requested Mao's Little Red Book was fake.
And then there's the political science department at UMass. I guess you believe what you want to believe. (Kos blames the professors, but also says his readers should face the facts and move on. )
December 23, 2005
Closing credits:
In light of shrinking movie revenue Hollywood executives are asking themselves if it's the quality of the films that's to blame, or changes in the way we watch movies. The short answer is that it's both.
Let's see... wait in line, get your bag searched, pay seven dollars for a fountain drink, sit through twenty minutes of theater commercials, that same old snack bar animation that you've seen a hundred times, then previews, and finally, you get to watch a teenage focus-group plotted movie that's more predictable than the average sit-com.
Or, you could stay at home and catch up on your Netflix disks (or better yet, read a book) and eat an entire Chinese take out meal that cost less than the movie theater Diet Coke.
I wonder what the movie executives are paying their consultants these days.
Foxhole circuit:
Good for Al Franken, Robin Williams and other critics of the war who put politics aside to entertain the troops. Even Black Flag's Henry Rollins is touring the battlefields.
Unfortunately they're the exceptions among today's entertainment class.
Beer wars:
Kurds in Turkey have found a unique way to promote their ethnic identity: beer. The Turks are resisting the effort.
Tis the season - for nametags:
Read Scott Lehigh's take on surviving the party season.
December 22, 2005
Turf over mission:
The Department of Homeland Security has its own lapel pin, and even its own font. That's the good news, as far as it having its act together. Here's the bad news. And presumably there'll be more bad news in tomorrow's installment.
Noble intentions:
Joan Vennochi has mixed feelings about Partners Healthcare. Sure, it isn't really evil -- it does a lot of good things -- but it is, by comparison, big and domineering, to the overall detriment of smaller, less profitable hospitals. And, it's a non-profit that generates big profits surpluses.
Her point: Is health care too important to be left to market forces?
I'm not sure what the alternative would be. If it's the Amtrak model, I think I'd just leave things as they are.
Rue the day:
Newspaper headlines are the last refuge of words falling out of common use. When was the last time you heard "rue" used in conversation?
Here's a dictionary usage: "to his rue, the error cost him the game," -to which most people would reply, "to his what?"
December 20, 2005
End of the line:
The MTA went out at midnight. It's not going to be pretty. Here's a New York commuting guide.
Dammed if you don't:
Flawed legal reasoning from the Herald this morning, that seems to encourage the police to cut corners.
[T]he Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution would have forgiven any urgency by investigators to go through the vehicle if they believed there was a firearm either in plain view or concealed inside, or if there was reason to believe the car was involved in the commission of a crime.
Not quite. There is something (based in case law, not the Fourth Amendment) called the motor vehicle exception to the warrant requirement for searching a car. But it's not a 'sure bet' since it is context dependent. A judge may later find that it didn't apply to the circumstances and any evidence found in the search might be thrown out.
Getting prior judicial approval for a search by obtaining a search warrant gives a much higher probability that any evidence found will be held up at trial.
So why, in an important homicide case, does the Herald promote the notion that the police should take the quick route and risk losing critical evidence? Seems odd.
December 19, 2005
The realm of probability:
Dan Kennedy picks up on the story of the Boston Police blog and of the challenge to yesterday's Herald story. He says we'll know more today about how accurate the Herald report was.
Well it's today and here's the paper's response. In regards to the sources they relied on, they now write:
While saying certain aspects of the story were inaccurate, [the Herald's police] sources acknowledged others “were not beyond the realm of probability.
Now that's quite the standard for fact finding in news reporting.
Walled out:
A proposal to put a wall around a Minnesota prison is upsetting people who live nearby. They say they prefer the prison wide open and fenceless as it is now.
My guess is it's the prisoners who asked for the wall to keep those weirdo townspeople away from them.
Good work if you can get it:
And you thought your Christmas office party schedule was tough? Try 26 parties in 21 days with total of 9500 guests!
It's a wonder he finds the time to compose a coherent address to the nation.
The winners:
I thought Katrina would be a shoo-in for pseudo Person of the Year, but I was wrong, two real people got it: Melinda Gates and Bono.
Look left:
Why do some places drive on the right side of the road and others on the left? It all revolves around which hand you hold your sword in. Here's the history.
December 18, 2005
True lies:
A rebutted Herald headline from the Boston Police blog. Here's the original Herald story that sparked the response.
Disclaimer: I had a hand in setting up the BPD blog and I'm not a completely disinterested party. But I think it's very interesting how this new two-way news thing is working out.
December 17, 2005
On Dasher:
Just in time for all your Christmas online gift buying, the Dasher.b virus loads a rootkit keylogger onto your computer to capture your credit card passwords. (If you have a Mac, you can stop reading now and relax.) From Brian Krebs:
[A] keylogger employed by viruses and worms usually works off a predefined list of financial and e-commerce sites. The keylogger program lies in wait until the victim visits one of those sites, at which time it intercepts any information entered into credit card and other personal data fields and transmits the information back to attackers.
Dasher.b is a more robust variation of Dasher.A which didn't propagate.
Is String Theory in trouble?
(I hope not since I'm only about halfway through a big book by Lisa Randall on M-Theory and I'd hate to think all that head scratching was all in vain.) True or not, this is an interesting Q&A with prominent string theorist Leonard Susskind.
Out of the bottle:
It's interesting, what's been happening in China in the wake of the Guangdong farmer protest shootings and the role the internet is playing.
Chrome plated megaphone of destiny:
Frank Zappa knew his way around a recording studio. From the early Mothers of Invention audio montages and sped-up vocal overdubs, to the hybrid live/studio tracks to his complex synclavier compositions, some of Zappa's most interesting work was technology based.
But my favorite Zappa recording is a traditional band track from 1972, the title track from the album Waka/Jawaka. It's part improvisational jazz and part rock, built around a jumpy melody. Check out the horn arrangements as they progress and build. And Aynsley Dunbar's 'just on the edge of chaos' drum solo. Great stuff.
A mighty wind:
Robert Kennedy forgot to note his personal stake regarding the wind farm that he slammed in a NYT op-ed yesterday. Jay Fitzgerald at the Herald didn't miss the omission.
But at the Globe? In an editorial they seemed to praise Kennedy for at least being open in his deception. Strange.
Motive and opportunity:
The Legislature is composed of attorneys, primarily defense attorneys who have made a living taking criminal cases. So it's no mystery why Melanie's Law was stalled earlier this year. And now, why The Speaker is fighting a witness protection bill.
DUI and drug defendants are the most lucrative of all.
December 13, 2005
Mini madness:
When Apple discontinued the iPod Mini in favor of the Nano, many Mini owners felt like they had been stranded on a dead-end product development branch. But now, with big demand and a very low supply, the price of Minis is going up, as is the coolness factor of owning one.
A loss for words:
Renée Graham writes about why rappers have stayed quiet on the Tookie Williams exceution.
[M]ainstream hip-hop -- and the billion-dollar corporations behind it -- has spent far too much time, effort, and money marketing inner-city misery to champion someone who has renounced gang violence. Williams's early life of crime is practically a template for gangsta rap. And that hugely popular hip-hop style is more likely to embrace the scary image of the young Williams, with his huge Afro, menacing glare, and muscle-thick prison-yard physique, than the middle-age, gray-haired author of children's books.
On the money.
One side:
Ten paragraphs of unadulterated spin from an advocate of a family who likely intends to sue the government (although speculation about any intended lawsuit or possible financial motive was conveniently left out of the story,) and one small carefully constructed paragraph at the end to present the alternate view.
This is blatant, dishonest, narrowly focused advocacy journalism.
If reporting is about getting to the truth, this isn't reporting. It's source directed PR aimed at a potential jury pool.
(20 years of criminal investigations? Who the heck is Rob Selevich anyway?)
Next generation:
And the winner is... Blue Ray.
It's a new media format, so I guess that means that I'll have to buy another version of Abby Road.
December 12, 2005
First things first:
No guns in school. That seems like a reasonable enough demand from students, but some school administrators feel that installing metal detectors contributes to an atmosphere of mistrust.
I'll buy the issue of the practicality of screening students, (for now --it is a surmountable problem) but if even if one student has a real fear of getting shot in school, administrators who haven't done every thing in their power to keep guns out of school, even if it fosters mistrust, have failed in their duty.
If kids are afraid of getting shot during classes, nothing else in the experience of school has meaning.
Crystal ball:
New Orleans needs fortune tellers. And tourists.
Un-pimp my ride:
The bad news was that his car was stolen. The good news was he got it back. The weird news was that in the interim, the thief put thousands of dollars worth of customization into the car and now the 49 year-old family man has a pimped-out, bass pumping, chrome hubbed ride.
Minor league:
Who doesn't think this is a great idea? Bringing a minor league team to Boston would make baseball accessible again.
Load paper tray:
Remember the future? It was alleged to be paperless.
I have to agree with this CSM article when it says we're "drowning in more paper than ever before."
Marijuana monopoly:
Guess who's cornered the market on legal marijuana? Surprisingly, it's the federal government.
Busted:
The big surprise wasn't that a couple of Playboy centerfolds got rowdy and then tried to bribe the police with sexual favors. That's a fairly routine occurrence.
The interesting part of this expose' is that the San Antonio Police are still writing out their official reports in pen. Shocking.
December 11, 2005
Lost Sunday afternoon:
I had no intention of completely upgrading this website when I sat down a few hours ago to play a quick game of snood. But a redesign, especially to utilize the newest version on MT, was overdue, and one thing led to another.... There are a few more things that have to be finished, but mostly, it's done.
Web 2.0:
If you've heard the term and you weren't sure what it referred to, this list of examples of Web 2.0 products may be instructive. Or there's this.
Multitasking:
I guess it's the twenty first century version of grabbing a newspaper or magazine.
December 10, 2005
IO:
A Times story details our military's information operations, which include plans for an anti-terrorist comedy based on "The Three Stooges."
I could make one of those 'your tax dollars at work' cracks here, but hey, maybe it's not such a bad idea.
Nancy Kerrigan's teeth:
These are absolutely hilarious.
Net weggie:
Big companies acting like eight year-olds. Microsoft and Firefox have competing web browsers. Microsoft's is Internet Explorer (IE) and Firefox uses Mozilla Firefox.
Click on Mozillasucks.com and look where you end up.
Click on IEsucks.com and look where you end up.
I think maybe a time-out is called for. Or take away their iPods for a week.
December 9, 2005
Recovery:
The New Orleans police chief has fired 60 officers, most of whom went awol during Katrina. Others are being investigated for contributing to the chaos, including for borrowing cars from dealerships. (Maybe some of the latter could be justified (for official use) in light of this and this.)
But what about these two and their disgraceful behavior? I hope that's been addressed.
Hiatus:
WaveMaker says he won't be posting much anymore. Hey, we all have those weeks (months?) where posting gets to be a pain or even a hardship. Take a break but don't quit.
Low flying:
Watch this video of a 747 landing in St. Maarten. Not that big a deal. But pause the landing just when the plane is over the beach. See the people there? That's got to be one very loud spot for sunbathing.
Autoruns:
If you rely mostly on MSConfig to help friends get virus and spyware start-ups out of their Windows machines, try this instead.
Dark matter holes:
When a scientist says that his theory will "profoundly change our whole view of the universe," be suspicious.
December 8, 2005
Data driven:
Knowledge work is important stuff these days. Here, in a nutshell, is how it should work, at least according to a couple of the Google guys.
If the proof is in the pudding, they've had some winning results, but here's one new thing that they came up with that seems to need a bit more teamwork and coordination.
Edgy:
Corporate sponsors don't want the likes of Madonna or Brittany Spears singing on their commercials anymore. They want people like... Bob Mould?
Twenty five years ago today:
It's the anniversary of John Lennon's shooting by Mark Chapman. Some fans are expected to make the pilgrimage to the Dakota or to Strawberry Fields but they're not expected to say too long at the latter.
December 7, 2005
Brotherly love:
Murders up, guns proliferating, ministers calling for action. Welcome to... Philadelphia, where they're happy just to keep t