Chuck's Blog

Testing Psychic Abilities

2012-01-05T10:13:00.000-08:00

This morning I was listening to Brian Greene on the Point of Inquiry podcast and came up with a hypothesis that may effectively test psychic abilities to a very high degree of certainty. I hasten to add that I am highly skeptical of the claims surrounding psychic abilities, but like a good skeptic, I leave open the possibility that even outlandish claims may someday find experimental support.

If you have studied quantum physics, or even higher level chemistry, you are familiar with the "Uncertainty Principle" and "Quantum Superposition". In a nutshell, these ideas say that a particle can exhibit the property of superposition, which is a complicated sounding way of saying that it be in multiple states at the same time (like being alive and dead at the same time). Once this superposed particle is measured or otherwise observed, it "chooses" one state or the other (the technical term for "choosing" is known as "collapsing the wave function"). Yes, these ideas may seem counter intuitive, but there is nearly a century of experimental evidence backing this up. You can also do the experiment yourself if you are still unconvinced (science is cool that way).

Given that a person with psychic abilities claims to be able to see and control things outside of the realm of normal senses, we should be able to apply the Uncertainty Principle and Quantum Superposition to this claim.

Thus my hypothesis would be worded as follows:

"A person with psychic abilities should be able to collapse the wave function of unobserved particles."

This hypothesis implies a certain contradiction - how do you maintain the wave function (a.k.a. the superposed state) of a particle and still observe it? Given that particles have been observed in their superposed state, our hypothesis could possibly be tested by repeating those experiments in the presence of a psychic. If the psychic is indeed causing the collapse of the wave function in the unobserved particles, the experiments would fail to replicate in a reliable fashion as there would be no superposed state to observe.

All that being said, if you really are convinced that you have psychic abilities, there is an easy $1 Million waiting for you...

Thank you Mr. Hitchens

2011-12-15T21:58:00.000-08:00

In October of 2011 I attended the Texas Freethought Convention and got to see Christopher Hitchens receive the Richard Dawkins Award. During the question and answer period an eight year old girl asked Christopher what authors she should be reading. Christopher considered it for a moment and then told the girl that he would meet her in the hallway after the talk and give her a list. True to his word Christopher met the girl in the hallway and gave her his undivided attention. What follows are the pictures I took of Christopher talking with the young girl. The pictures were taken with my HTC EVO 8 megapixel cellphone camera.

The Emergent Conspiracy

2011-12-09T18:38:00.000-08:00

I do not believe in LSCGs (Large Scale Government Conspiracies) unless there is objective evidence to support the claim. Without evidence, belief in LSGCs becomes a presupposition that blocks further inquiry. The 9/11 Truth movement is one such example, where true believers are hopelessly mired in an ever deepening tangle of justifications in order to maintain a core belief.

That all being said, I do believe that what appear to be conspiracies can be emergent over large populations of people. In the end, these conspiracies are nothing more than a manifestation of the abstract needs of the population. The spread of democracy is one such example. No global cabal arranged for the spread of democracy. It was simply what the world needed. Individuals pushed and pulled in their own little ways and the "average" emerged over a few hundred years of progress.

Add to this "emergent behavior" the very human ability to build systems that predict society's behavior and we have the makings of a feedback loop. For example, this supercomputer predicted instability in the Middle East based on deteriorating public sentiment, and this initiative seeks to accurately model the probability of large scale disasters like 9/11, and the 2003 Shuttle breakup. Once these "forecasts" become accurate and easy to obtain, leaders should be able to use that information to make subtle adjustments in order to prevent bad things from happening (sort of like the movie The Adjustment Bureau).

A cynical person might say that such power could be used to do bad things (like oppress people by predicting when they will rise up and revolt), however history does not bear this out. "The People" have always thrown off the chains of their oppressors. Yes, it may take centuries or more, but no power has ever succeeded in permanently subjugating large populations of people. In addition, with large scale communication, as we have today, revolutions would happen much faster and adapt to such predictive systems much more efficiently. Thus the only plausible predictive system is one that gave people what they truly needed (not to be confused with what they want).

This is where it gets interesting. Eventually as these systems evolve they get more effective than the existing ineffectual government we have today. They make better decisions because they can take more data into account at a faster rate than the best politicians.

The systems begin to take over for us...

It is a fallacy to say that harmony and peace will reign as a result. That may very well be what happens, but we cannot say for sure that harmony and peace is what humans really need. There is good reason to believe that humans can only be their best and most creative when there is some degree of adversity pushing us.

Everyone's desires/needs/actions/etc averaged together is an emergent property that some like to call the "collective consciousness". This is in direct analogy to the collective contributions of every cell in your body working together to be "you".

In other words...

I propose that these predictive systems are slowly becoming a "brain". Just as our own brain guides the trillions of autonomous cells in our body, this "brain" will guide the billions of autonomous "cells" roaming the Earth that we call humans.

Benefits of Exercise... Need more proof?

2011-10-06T09:34:00.000-07:00

I like to do the timed race up the Columbia Tower in Seattle. In the 2008 I did it in 13:28.25 and 2009 my time was 12:55.55. Both were done without any training and each time I knew that I could have done better. I missed the 2010 race altogether.

Sometime in September of 2010 I started training for the 2011 race. I managed to shave 30 seconds off of my 2009 time with only a few months of training and decided to push it even harder for the 2012 race. I also picked up a heart rate monitor a few months ago in order to get a more detailed understanding of how my body was responding.

As your aerobic capacity increases, your heart gets physically bigger and is able to pump more blood during every cycle. This causes your RHR (Resting Heart Rate) to slow down, which is a good way to track your progress. I got my heart rate monitor on 17Aug2011 and strapped it on for the night while I was sleeping. I added a daily run to my training and strapped on the monitor again last night (05Oct2011) to check my progress.

The results speak for themselves - the blue graph is my August data and the pink represents the current state of affairs.

(Click to embiggen...)

From a subjective standpoint, I feel a lot calmer and more relaxed. The little things do not bug me as much as they used to, and on nights where I cannot get in enough sleep, I feel perfectly fine the next day.

To be sure, the data is not perfect (you are not perfectly at rest while sleeping) and last night could have been an anomaly. I will continue to track this on a monthly basis and see if a true trend is developing. I like what I see so far though.

Nothing fails like prayer...

2011-09-19T16:09:00.000-07:00

Then: "I, Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas."

Now: "In the past seven days Texas Forest Service has responded to 176 fires for 126,844 acres."

Functional Evaluation

2011-09-19T16:07:00.000-07:00

I have some iPad development to do in the near future and I need to learn Objective C. Since Objective C is a super-set of the C programming language, I figured I would finally work my way through the KnR C book. I taught myself how to program in C, which means I most certainly have some gaps in my knowledge that could be filled.

This is one of those embarrassing gaps that falls into the "everyone probably knew this but me" file...

Somewhere at the end of chapter 2 it says:

"C, like most languages, does not specify the order in which the operands of an operator are evaluated. (The exceptions are &&, ||, ?:, and ',' .) For example in a statement like x = f( ) + g( ); f may be evaluated before g or vice versa; thus if either f or g alters a variable on which the other depends, x can depend on the order of the evaluation."

This whole time I had naively assumed that evaluation was always done from left to right...

Big Government

2011-09-08T17:34:00.000-07:00

I hear a lot of talk about how Barack Obama supports big government. I see no direct evidence of this and really feel like such talk mostly comes from whiny teabagger welfare recipients. About the worst you can accuse Barack Obama of is not using his bully pulpit more effectively on a gridlocked Congress. But that is not what this post is about...

What confuses me is how we heard so little about the expanding size of government when George W. Bush was in office. Along with federalizing airport security and signing the Patriot Act into law, we lost a huge surplus, overthrew Iraq and started running their government for them.

Why is it that a Republican can kill a surplus, expand the size of government and start running a second government and no one gives a shit. But when a Democrat wants to do something useful like get rid of recision in the health insurance industry (the practice of dropping paying customers for pre-existing conditions) you would think the whole world was coming to an end.

Bottom line. I think this is all driven by people who let "liberal" and "conservative" labels do their thinking for them. There is nothing wrong with looking at an idea in isolation and ignoring where it came from. Try that on for size and then tell me how much you hate politicians.

Military Grade Security

2011-07-01T16:43:00.001-07:00

Quick back of the napkin guess about the government's current ability to crack passwords... There are probably a lot of flaws in reasoning. Feel free to point them out and I will adjust accordingly.

In 1998 the EFF built a machine called Deep Crack for about $250,000. It was capable of checking 90 Billion 56 bit DES encryption keys per second which means the whole keyspace could be searched in about nine days.

Speculation begins here...

Assumption 1: Moore's Law holds when it comes to dedicated decryption hardware. If you could check 90 Billion 56 bit keys per second in 1998 for $250,000, and there are (rounding up) seven doublings over the ensuing 13 years, then you could check 2^7 * 90,000,000,000 = 11,520,000,000,000 56 bit keys per second in late 2011 for $250,000.

Assumption 2: You can check 2 AES keys (regardless of size) in the time you can check one 56 bit DES key. This puts the late 2011 capability at 23,040,000,000,000 keys per second for $250,000 dollars.

Assumption 3: The federal government can afford a lot more than $250,000 for a password cracking rig. I figure $10 Billion is an entry level price before it starts to attract attention, so that ups the capability by about 40,000 times to 921,600,000,000,000,000 keys per second.

That puts us at about 913 quadrillion keys per second capability in late 2011... Or about 92,160,000 keys per second per dollar spent...

Camp Quest Ohio

2011-06-27T15:15:00.001-07:00

Just got back from a camp counselor gig at Camp Quest Ohio. Easily the most amazing week of my life. The kids were incredible and the program went off like a well oiled machine. Many thanks to August Brunsman and his crew for running such a great camp.

I cannot wait to do it again and am especially excited about our efforts to do the same thing with Camp Quest NorthWest. I also have it on good authority that I have been missing out on a great experience over at Skepticon, so I plan to register for that at some point too.

Camp Quest NorthWest

2011-06-13T23:08:00.000-07:00

Working a lot lately on setting up a Washington chapter of Camp Quest called Camp Quest NorthWest. Our rough goal is to have a full week camp going by 2013 with a type of weekend activity in 2012. It remains to be seen how close to that we land, but we are trying. Drop me a line if you are interested in volunteering, or simply think it might be fun to send your kid to a fun and interesting camp experience.

Wonder what this is...

2011-02-10T11:35:00.000-08:00

I see this all over, I wonder what it is for?

46 DC EA D3 17 FE 45 D8 09 23 EB 97 E4 95 64 10 D4 CD B2 C2

French lessons...

2010-12-01T22:13:00.000-08:00

Back to taking French lessons. I took three years of French in high school, a year in Junior High and spent a few weeks in France in 2008 where I learned more French than in the four years I had studied in school. This time I am working with the Rosetta Stone TOTALe software. I just finished section 1.1 and did the Studio Session. I was pretty nervous, but the teacher was really nice and I did fairly well. I think I was prepared, but it was still very difficult to dredge up French words on command. Towards the end of the session it got a lot easier and I was able to belt out rudimentary phrases without thinking too much. On to section 1.2...

Just doing my civic duty...

2010-09-20T11:43:00.000-07:00

HDCP MASTER KEY (MIRROR THIS TEXT!)

This is a forty times forty element matrix of fifty-six bit
hexadecimal numbers.

To generate a source key, take a forty-bit number that (in
binary) consists of twenty ones and twenty zeroes; this is
the source KSV. Add together those twenty rows of the matrix
that correspond to the ones in the KSV (with the lowest bit
in the KSV corresponding to the first row), taking all elements
modulo two to the power of fifty-six; this is the source
private key.

To generate a sink key, do the same, but with the transposed
matrix.

6692d179032205 b4116a96425a7f ecc2ef51af1740 959d3b6d07bce4 fa9f2af29814d9
82592e77a204a8 146a6970e3c4a1 f43a81dc36eff7 568b44f60c79f5 bb606d7fe87dd6
1b91b9b73c68f9 f31c6aeef81de6 9a9cc14469a037 a480bc978970a6 997f729d0a1a39
b3b9accda43860 f9d45a5bf64a1d 180a1013ba5023 42b73df2d33112 851f2c4d21b05e
2901308bbd685c 9fde452d3328f5 4cc518f97414a8 8fca1f7e2a0a14 dc8bdbb12e2378
672f11cedf36c5 f45a2a00da1c1d 5a3e82c124129a 084a707eadd972 cb45c81b64808d
07ebd2779e3e71 9663e2beeee6e5 25078568d83de8 28027d5c0c4e65 ec3f0fc32c7e63
1d6b501ae0f003 f5a8fcecb28092 854349337aa99e 9c669367e08bf1 d9c23474e09f70

3c901d46bada9a 40981ffcfa376f a4b686ca8fb039 63f2ce16b91863 1bade89cc52ca2
4552921af8efd2 fe8ac96a02a6f9 9248b8894b23bd 17535dbff93d56 94bdc32a095df2
cd247c6d30286e d2212f9d8ce80a dc55bdc2a6962c bcabf9b5fcbe6f c2cfc78f5fdafa
80e32223b9feab f1fa23f5b0bf0d ab6bf4b5b698ae d960315753d36f 424701e5a944ed
10f61245ebe788 f57a17fc53a314 00e22e88911d9e 76575e18c7956e c1ef4eee022e38
f5459f177591d9 08748f861098ef 287d2c63bd809e e6a28a6f5d000c 7ae5964a663c1b
0f15f7167f56c6 d6c05b2bbe8800 544a49be026410 d9f3f08602517f 74878dc02827f7
d72ef3ea24b7c8 717c7afc0b55a5 0be2a582516d08 202ded173a5428 9b71e35e45943f

9e7cd2c8789c99 1b590a91f1cffd 903dca7c36d298 52ad58ddcc1861 56dd3acba0d9c5
c76254c1be9ed1 06ecb6ae8ff373 cfcc1afcbc80a4 30eba7ac19308c d6e20ae760c986
c0d1e59db1075f 8933d5d8284b92 9280d9a3faa716 8386984f92bfd6 be56cd7c4bfa59
16593d2aa598a6 d62534326a40ee 0c1f1919936667 acbaf0eefdd395 36dbfdbf9e1439
0bd7c7e683d280 54759e16cfd9ea cac9029104bd51 436d1dca1371d3 ca2f808654cdb2
7d6923e47f97b5 70e256b741910c 7dd466ed5fff2e 26bec4a28e8cc4 5754ea7219d4eb
75270aa4d3cc8d e0ae1d1897b7f4 4fe5663e8cb342 05a80e4a1a950d 66b4eb6ed4c99e
3d7e9d469c6165 81677af04a2e15 ada4be60bc348d dfdfbbad739248 98ad5986f3ca1f

971d02ada31b46 2adab96f7b15da 9855f01b9b7b94 6cef0f65663fbf eb328e8a3c6c5d
e29f0f0b1ef2bf e4a30b29047d31 52250e7ae3a4ac fe3efc3b8c2df1 8c997d15d6078b
49da8b4611ff9f b1e061bc9be995 31fd68c4ad6dc6 fd8974f0c506dd 90421c1cd2b26c
53eec84c91ed17 5159ba3711173b 25e318ddceea6a 98a14125755955 2bb97fd341cea2
3f8404769a0a8e bce5c7a45fb5d4 9608307b43f785 2a98e5856afe75 b4dbead4815cac
d1118af62c964a 3142667a5b0d14 6c6f90933acd3d 6b14a0052e2be4 1b1811fda0f554
12300aa7f10405 1919ca0bff56ea d3e2f3aad5250c 4aeeea5101d2ec 377fc499c07057
6cb1a90cdb7b11 3c839d47a4b814 25c5ac14b5ec28 4ef18646d5b9c2 95a98cc51ebd3b

310e98028e24de 092ffc76b79f44 0740a1ca2d4737 b9f38966257c99 a75afc7454abe4
a6dd815be8ccbf ec2cac2df0c675 41f7636aa4080f 30e87b712520fd d5dfdc6d3266ac
ee28f5479f836f 0bf8ee2112173f 43ae802fa8d52d 4e0dffd36c1eac 3cbda974bb7585
fb60a4700470e3 d9f6b6083ef13d 4a5840f02d0130 6c20ef5e35e2bf dad2f85c745b5b
61c5ddc65d3fc9 7f6ec395d4ae22 2b8906fb3996e2 e4110f59eb92ac 1cb212b44128bb
545afda80a4fd1 b1ffea547eab6b fac3d9166afce8 3fe35fe17586f2 9d082667026a4c
17ffaf1cb50145 24f27b316acfff b6bb758ec4ad60 995e8726359ef7 c44952cb424035
5ec53461dbd248 40a1586f04aee7 49ea3fa4474e52 c13e8f52c51562 30a1a70162cfb8

ccbada27b91c33 33661064d05759 3388bb6315b036 0380a6b43851fb 0228dadb44ad3d
b732565bc37841 993c0d383cfaae 0bea49476758ac accc69dbfcde8b f416ab0474f022
2b7dbcc3002502 20dc4e67289e50 0068424fde9515 64806d59eb0c18 9cf08fb2abc362
8d0ee78a6cace9 b6781bd504d105 af65fab8ee6252 64a8f8dd8e2d14 cb9d3354e06b5b
53082840d3c011 8e080bedab3c4c e30d722a455843 24955a20397c17 82495c1c5114e8
656e71c31d813d 1f0a6d291823a1 6327f9534353fa b89529c2f034fb 70e9b12205c7b3
a06c87969407a2 520bfa2fe80f90 da1efc3d345c65 313936ec023811 a8cc87128be2fa
4cd0e8645ee141 be7975519e2b63 9543d23113c2a8 3d87b0da033f22 df0464c704e9d4

7e1a30947e867e 014ae464b37935 5c4babf689fa4e c4aec0cb01cc35 328c0e4a0230e4
fdacb93b419594 26deefc8a553e6 6e75a2d790cb55 2c4554518f7396 94b77184cb145d
95f883f620a8bb edff42866a2783 7b4ee6304b711d ed56e077a4b9fb c4e60e687ff6c3
0cbf144b8f64d5 023dd10a35eddd beaa3323e999c6 d2e016b31c38c4 8d2917a888f799
18c3abd28e736b 8d38e69b4966cc 624db0143dd2e7 5e2fa510f632b7 ee6e64d45b139a
a1c6d852e74be7 429843b9e6bb7e db9ab07c8dc267 9efa092299f071 dcca9e0e61e960
94406fac95f1d8 d19122f3f88782 1b11a662e9c83f d161fd6fb7f032 89f7d984da9d48
a3583fea45fe58 885e2c4839e254 47e87235f713b1 f4732e05b71aee ae026d063f4349

0a481d2db197af abfce1039d4ac0 4a6b89d2d1aeac 0842eb7178cc53 b82ce2835f1937
3b4002ca21d6b6 e64a78a78abb27 8bd6142ad04526 e035dacb23624a 4cf80110135771
7a52fafc92745e efa28a290ea782 735617cd8b0221 b095e9f4b286a5 021e9ba0727645
3e58e9ec16ed1c d7732bb5ba99a6 374bde43fa89a9 cb83e5ef2e4d04 1da4f73566d134
e01da194625c25 d62018764d7473 64643721313d24 5a01badd970941 481c9578781414
a4d3faa92d1fef bd4b247d37862a 5332a7ca3c2ca6 393ee51989d5a9 01a6e564040d37
390c472ee27892 f0217fe009e9b4 5d3f04da415b35 612ecd5b8e4eac 757e27d2169f2d
92853b737b7526 9ac837c86476df e956c2b45ebd5e d4fa6da687ac39 60f4343669ddd3

64b8d778e72e78 f86cd55efe92b8 a9adbf2e728440 966c8282cee1f9 ea195972b883f4
46ac03b37e7f24 744df253954ae5 22e3f9a0adbc58 6add7c7d8a2961 ba963e4912d17c
2840ac28fcfad9 8d8ec3ad6dfc32 a3c788dd094910 e65ebb61dabb5f b50e906b28c881
003b11eb83e6a9 a2fac0595b138d 3d55a28f915330 c343bd1849a085 54c786629d2b42
1d465cb22ccbc2 d8f87fd52aded1 ecb34f46656b71 b4cbe50f839f2c 2df6a553cc3698
40b2dd25f26d51 492f3c5c6fa566 f80dd453864548 d4be786d8735d9 e364511a0fb62d
3c2df64d6d1c9f f640e4ef4186be 41773025d6ff57 6147e75d7df3f5 49809548639d16
01067ef6034247 4e7c1b20deb154 3f8172a6b98ea0 b0691d4b575801 136a88607a3e5b

0180058ca8742e 972bc2ca1c4cb6 7b05bbc57e63df 5f01049697eaa2 c537f3121384dc
edb1fa0b34f132 689b1374cafe25 802d7bca5c6674 f8e01e75e9eb3d a59c2d9126d85d
f10f603f8c4fd9 d5a358aa84b2d5 f8320f2a3bd078 019bcf0dabb5c3 43dd8dd5e173f0
45169f788a0233 d62daee0e9839c 7d673cf77a53d2 008730faf272d0 3c08080778ae8d
920e40fad87d7e bf118230ffb194 692baf40b951b4 83549affe4e382 68e172f86a40b3
aa5e2c1b74636d c3d7809ac68aae 33c344fd9bcc33 6e6057dc7d71f0 bceef547db57fa
ec91cc1056e4b5 8153f00c8ef4f8 a2ca943ab03915 079a070121782d d592dcec23dd3f
44ba5fe5078279 e6f8ed790ffa59 e7877e834b4391 d1ca3db32bccd7 b382e35bff1ba1

96cb3b9ef8671e 70342fff9216a5 d635530148dcc6 bf40909f72ba4b e3697761ac11f1
f2a77a5f435c5c a57729bb9aaf37 14f78a30f9bf6f 1a7fe7f0271b01 0b224bc83ef07b
0d409ce2157473 adefa793287d48 a6b13ce8e00a7f 74d735fd54a00b e2dc16285d1b5a
8b3d55371ce703 bb3909153586b6 03c8c622aa53e9 89ee3322e069aa 325ce41fbd0175
2cd1326421cd83 3c47eed2daadda 87c2177de0c63f 39b496d688c971 179359349f5e0e
3cfa9ea9345dbc 47b1948cbfe45f 2a13b18cf3a0d1 00b03fc13e6cde 656ef26757f5d1
7c584630c27fb2 02f2e14ca8a67e fcfec527978154 4ec09910379625 e90fc0a898a5b7
5beb0f3ee5d03a 2383832708cfb7 6905747e27453e 1714e418f0f0a3 53bcdef0965e8d

2c9b5813b90c3c bb9a20c8ebb80e 045e04f3d57918 6fe6ffb0718731 201760abf11c27
e289872adda7e1 233e7ef2b2c83b 423b4c0ba711db 334b15e5bd4c01 034d1e41bff0e8
58a436cce28ea3 e6ef4d94b49962 ec8728db63716b 8c8ffc95c21b06 0beb50502d9acb
c1eb732268091a e45e0c30cfed36 31d58c384bc3e4 8a26ae8b7a5c60 83991e11e8a21e
e4f193c0183e07 691fbbf9ccb4c2 4e5214fae905d8 2052c969e9699d f6cea5a6157de3
fd84477a6bad8e 04f37758724bc3 a491d0fd8f084e 19933cec5f51f0 93794e76e1f29b
ebd1f1c057b30c 7ec220fa6d31d9 867d711c9a7674 a700cf5f177e37 cf3fae5da3ddc4
4e8030990c7917 553a5ce2abaaa4 c2296c42e2dcea 19ae4f9b654581 66d5fff1163703

bb5085e0e7d595 12605df8a35f9f 35c6d572c28ea5 5099437e5f5595 fb45cdaa8872f1
6e012db5feedc3 1ba0e5515be76f b793b687fbf1dd 9d2c01063d4ca1 c2e6fde5bc3a1c
c17b11e1a33418 436fcacef170c5 e4c3cbc3066618 2063665d2a1b84 a8b5b4f2e58850
ce74bcbc892d71 b312d96806cdc8 82d9c95678fff1 5d8a0120206c3c 621f13db39bd6e
4a5db4815f181d 8dae6e596cebd5 1b8b1681dd4918 1dbcbd79f8e5ff 135064b0968c4e
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No more anonymous comments...

2010-03-26T22:00:00.000-07:00

I turned off anonymous commenting today. Too many spammer scumbags leaving spam in the comments...

Perfectly inquisitive...

2010-02-07T12:34:00.000-08:00

Let us define a "perfectly inquisitive scientist" as one who has no distractions, never gets bored with what they are doing and simply lives for the thrill of the next discovery. If we were to give this perfectly inquisitive scientist an infinite amount of resources and an infinite amount of time, would they reach the same end point regardless of where they started?

In other words... all science starts with an observation, and the best science starts with a, "huh... that is strange...". Different scientists are going to have different starts in life and will start out with a different set of observations.

Since one discovery can lead to another, given infinite time, resources and effort, will their respective starting points cause them all to converge on the same point? If so, are infinite time, resources and effort even required? Or could those quantities possibly be finite?

iPad Joke

2010-01-27T14:40:00.001-08:00

Customer: "Do you happen to have a Thai version of the iPad?"
Genius: "Yes, we call it that iPad Thai."

*rimshot*

Where the crazy ones are...

2010-01-24T13:10:00.000-08:00

Picture yourself back in 2001. The Taliban runs Afghanistan and harbors Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda attacks the US. This was an act of war.

Pop Quiz time: What would you do?
Answer: Defend your country, duh!

How would you defend your country? You would go after the enemy, right? Of course you would!

So who is the enemy? The attackers, and the ones who provided them safe harbor, duh!

So that would be the Taliban and Al Qaeda right?

Uhhhh, well... not exactly...

If you were U.S. President George W. Bush, that would be Saddam Hussein. Leader of the ruling Ba'ath Party in the country of Iraq.

(sound of record needle scratching) WTF?!?!?!?!

Now that it is 2010 and details are starting to trickle out, things are starting to make a *LOT* more sense. As it turns out, apparently 'ole George W. Bush felt that he was on a mission from "god". Not the tongue-in-cheek "let's rally the troops" kind of mission from god.

No...

He was on a *REAL* mission from god. "the world is ending in a blaze of glory and I was elected to fulfill biblical prophecy", kind of mission from god. His book of bronze age fairy tales (a.k.a the "Bible") said so!

Holy s***!

We spent a *TRILLION* dollars and over 4,000 U.S. lives chasing the fairy tales of a deluded ex-drunk frat boy?????

Hey Demorcrats - Nice job losing Ted Kennedy's seat...

2010-01-19T21:13:00.000-08:00

I will keep this one short and sweet...

Democrats have been playing wet nurse to Joe Lieberman and anyone else who wants to line up and whine for attention. Now they had better freaking not be surprised that they lost one of the most reliable seats in the Senate!

When will you get the message that people elected you to make *BOLD* progress on a progressive agenda? Not rock back and forth sucking your thumb and wringing your hands worried you might have annoyed someone. Quit being afraid to make enemies and do what people elected you to do ya crybabies!

Republicans passed the Bush tax cut using budget reconciliation. You do *NOT* need 60 votes to get strong health care reform or anything else for that matter.

Grow a pair and do what needs to be done! I think you will be amazed at how much support it will earn you.

Google's New Approach to China

2010-01-12T20:31:00.000-08:00

Way to go Google! Now it is up to China to decide how they will respond. Quite a pickle for them.

If they concede to Google, who has stated that they will no longer filter search results, then unfiltered access to the Tiananmen Square incident will finally be available within mainland China. On the other hand, the notoriously prideful Chinese government can tell Google to piss off, and look far worse.

Either way, the good guys win one this time :-)

Getting the most out of Python range()

2009-12-24T22:31:00.000-08:00

I am doing a small data analysis project and figured it was a good time to learn a bit of Python. One of the requirements was that my data analysis range go from a start to a finish value in certain increments. The range() built in function was perfect for this, except that it stops prior to the last value. For example, for range(10, 25, 5), the values 10, 15, 20 would be produced. I needed 10, 15, 20, 25.

The obvious fix for this is to add the increment value to the stop value: range(start, finish+increment, increment). Unfortunately, this falls flat when the difference between your stop and start values is not a zero modulus of the increment value. For example, range(10, 23, 5) would produce the values 10, 15, 20, 25 based on the obvious fix, and that goes past the finish value.

The proper fix is the following (broken up into two lines for readability):

mod = increment - ((finish - start) % increment)
range(start, finish+mod, increment)

The astute will notice that all this "magic" really does is bumps up the finish value so that the difference between the finish and start is a zero modulus of the increment. For situations where the difference between the finish and start value is already a zero modulus of the increment, this solution effectively implements the "obvious fix" above.

The same thing could be done by simply adding the increment value to the finish value only when the difference between the finish and start value is a zero modulus, but that requires an "if" statement to detect that situation. My solution replaces multiple lines of code, or an awkward looking conditional (does python even do conditionals???), with a nice clean mathematical statement that works for all situations.

Theories and Laws...

2009-11-24T15:04:00.000-08:00

I am amazed at the number of people who do not know what the word "theory" means... Maybe this will clear it up.

Hypothesis - educated guess that may or may not be backed up by facts. When most people say "in theory" they really mean "I hypothesize that...".

Theory - A way of explaining why something works the way it does, backed up observational/experimental results. The Chilton's guide for my car is the theory manual behind the operation of my car. The theory of gravity attempts to explain why gravity works the way it does. A book on computer science is the theory guide explaining how your computer works. And so on...

Law - A description of a phenomenon, but does not explain the "why". A train schedule is an example of a "law". It explains when the train will arrive but has no power to explain why the train got there on time. The "law" of gravity explains why your head hurts when someone drops a brick on it, but only the "theory" of gravity explains why the brick dropped downwards, instead of just floating there in space.

Last but not least, in case it is not obvious, theories are never promoted to "law" status. They are totally different things.

Theories explain "why", laws explain "what"...

A sed keeper...

2009-10-28T15:03:00.000-07:00

For those of you who are shell scripters, you may find this one useful:

/bin/sed ':a;N;$!ba;s/\n\n\n*/\n\n/g'

This removes multiple blank spaces in a file and replaces them with only one blank space. There are other ways to do this, but this is one of them...

Source: http://linux.dsplabs.com.au/rmnl-remove-new-line-characters-tr-awk-perl-sed-c-cpp-bash-python-xargs-ghc-ghci-haskell-sam-ssam-p65/

Mac Mini Upgrade and Adventures in Boot Camp

2009-09-20T14:17:00.000-07:00

Now that Snow Leopard is out and I have some time off between classes, I am able to get Bailey's computer fully upgraded. I thought it was going to be a simple software upgrade, but as it turns out, his Mac Mini was only running on 512MB of RAM and a 80 GB hard drive. Since he is starting to use this machine for more than just games, I guess it is time to max out the RAM and get him a decently sized hard drive.

A quick trip to Best Buy and $200 later, we have 2 GB of PC2-5300 RAM and a nice Seagate 7200 RPM 320 GB hard drive. I considered going larger on the hard drive, but my time was too short to wait for something to be delivered and the 320 GB was the largest drive they had that was 7200 RPM. Also, now that we are going to have three people on the Time Capsule, I figured 320 GB was a good limiter to make sure he would not prematurely force me to upgrade the Time Capsule to 2TB.

I used the iFixIt instructions for opening up the Mac Mini. It was surprisingly easy. One thing they did not mention was to label each screw you remove. I used a sticky note and labeled where I removed each screw from. Most of the screws were identical, but I noticed one or two were specialized sizes, so I was glad I kept that organized. Another part I had to learn the hard way was the RAM insertion. I did not insert one of the sticks hard enough and when I booted up the machine only one stick registered. After re-seating the RAM, I was able to get both 1GB sticks to properly register. I might also add that the Mac Mini is a really impressive sample of engineering. Everything fits together amazingly well. Total hardware time would have been about an hour if I had seated the RAM correctly the first time. Given my mistake, it was around 2.5 hours (I tested each stick individually).

Now that the hardware was working properly, it was time to install Mac OSX 10.6 (Snow Leopard). The install was effectively effortless. There were only two hitches. The first was the basic install. No drives showed up to select as a target to install. I was able to go to one of the installer pull-down menus (I think it was Utilities) and select disk tools to partition and format the disk. Once that was done the installer showed the target disk and the install went through flawlessly.

The second hitch came after the installation was complete. I noticed that the "Macintosh HD" icon was missing from the desktop. After some help from TheGoogle, I figured out it was simply a default configuration option that is delivered with Snow Leopard. To add it back, just click on the desktop anywhere so you display the Finder menu. Select "Preferences" from the Finder menu and make sure "Hard Disks" is checked in the "General" menu. I also found it helpful to go to the "Sidebar" tab and and check the box next to "Hard Disks" and turn off the one for "iDisk" (I choose not to use Mobile Me, so iDisk is not useful to me).

Once all of that was complete I went to Software Update and installed all of the updates (at this point there were only three). Voila, fully working Snow Leopard system with 4x the RAM and 4X the Hard Drive space. Total "from scratch" OS X Snow Leopard install time with updates, 2-ish hours.

Last but not least, it was time to get the WindowsXP partition up and running. Boot Camp has gotten incredibly easy to use since I originally played with the beta. I found the Boot Camp icon in Application/Utilities. It started up and allowed me to partition and format the disk, then it had me insert my WindowsXP Pro SP2 disk and rebooted into the XP installer. One of the biggest problems I encountered was that my keyboard would not work. After some searching, I found out that it was the Mighty Mouse that was confusing the XP installer. I removed the mouse and moved the keyboard to the USB port just below the audio port (the last one), and after rebooting, the XP installer worked just fine (I am not sure that moving the USB keyboard port helped, but I figured I would mention it). When it came time to select the partition to install to, it was easy to find the BOOTCAMP partition. I opted to change the format from FAT to NTFS (I have since verified that NTFS is still read-only from OS X, hopefully Apple fixes this some day). Once the graphical installer interface came up, I was able to plug the Mighty Mouse back in and it worked for the remainder of the install.

After the base XPSP2 install was complete, I inserted the Snow Leopard disk to install all of the Apple specific drivers. Once that was done, it was time to start applying XP updates. I made the mistake of attempting to install the SP3 update first. I kept on getting error messages about not being able to find files like "osloader.ntd". I figured this was because I did not apply the mountain of pre-SP3 updates first, which I then proceeded to do. It took so long I went to bed and resumed the next day. Even after that, SP3 still did not apply cleanly. After some searching, I was able to find this link that perfectly explained what was wrong and provided a solution that worked. After that, SP3 applied cleanly and then I was able to apply the final group of updates. Total time spent getting Windows XP installed and fully updated was probably 12 hours, nearly 3x what was required for a RAM, Hard Drive and OS X Snow Leopard install (4x if I had gotten the RAM installed correctly the first time).

I also spent some time getting FireFox 3.5 installed in each OS as it is one of the required browsers for Bailey's online Math class. The last thing I did was to get The Snow Leopard partition connected to the Time Capsule. This was the easiest part. I clicked the Time Capsule icon in the dock, slid the switch from "Off" to "On" and typed in the Time Capsule password. After that, I just left the machine alone while it did the initial backup of the OS (8.11GB). I should also mention that the first Time Capsule backup has to complete uninterrupted, so I turned off the power-saving settings in case the Mini went to sleep before it was done (I left myself a note to remember to turn it back on when it was done).

Epic Win

2009-08-21T15:43:00.000-07:00

It is hard to get tired of watching this one... Too bad that woman does not understand the difference between Facism (ultra right) and Socialism (ultra left)...

Chiropractic Therapy

2009-08-20T15:09:00.001-07:00

(Note: this is the infamous article on chiropractic that got Simon Singh sued. It is being reposted all over the web by multiple blogs and online magazines.)

Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all, but the research suggests chiropractic therapy has mixed results - and can even be lethal, says Simon Singh.

You might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that "99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae". In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.

In fact, Palmer's first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.

You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact some still possess quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything, including helping treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying - even though there is not a jot of evidence.

I can confidently label these assertions as utter nonsense because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world's first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.

But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.

In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.

More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.

Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.

Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: "Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck."

This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Edzard Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher.

If spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.

Simon Singh is a science writer in London and the co-author, with Edzard Ernst, of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial. This is an edited version of an article published in The Guardian for which Singh is being personally sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association.

Palm Pre and a few warts...

2009-08-02T22:19:00.000-07:00

I indulged in a Palm Pre a few days ago. I had been waiting to get an Android phone, but I figure it will be at least two years until we see anything Android from Sprint, so locking myself into a two year agreement with the Pre seems like a reasonable compromise.

So far, I really like it, it is beautiful and has a lot of potential. I am still getting used to how things work and I cannot wait to get an SSH client on it and figure out how to tether it.

One thing I did not notice in any of the reviews is that there are a few fairly glaring bugs and annoyances that I will try to detail here:

The biggest annoyance is migrating calendar and contacts with the migration tool (I used the Mac OSX version). I started from my old Treo 680 and sync'd it one last time to iCal and AddressBook. After running the sync tool to move things over to the Pre, none of the street addresses get migrated and fax numbers occasionally get mixed up and duplicated. I had to go through my entire address book and manually enter the street addresses. Although very time consuming, I feel that it was a good exercise because it gave me a chance to clean up my address book. Something that I have not done in years apparently... A lesser annoyance is that all day calendar events with no specific time (like an anniversary) show up on the Pre as timed events lasting the entire day. I had to go in and manually change the setting to "All Day".

When updating the calendar, it takes an unusual amount of time for the change to actually appear on the calendar. It feels like there is a refresh bug of some sort that keeps the old calendar information on the screen *JUST* until the point at which you are unsure if the change took, and then *poof* the screen updates. Rather strange...

The text messaging app does not show character count. This is rather a pain when twitting because there is a 140 character limit... less than the text messaging limit...

It would appear as if certain apps cannot be deleted unless I root my pre. I will be doing that eventually, but with the limit of three launcher pages, it would be nice to be able to tidy things up a bit.

Call me pathological, but I would like an easy way to migrate over my phone calling history. The Treo was great about keeping a permanent record that would follow you from phone to phone. This does not appear to be the case with the Pre.

I think there are a few other things, but this is all I have for now. For comparison, if I were to list everything I *LIKE* about the Pre, I would be typing all night long. Other than not knowing how many characters in a text message, the rest of the issues can be worked around or are simply not that important...

NASA 747 pilot tells of carrying the Space Shuttle

2009-07-10T10:10:00.000-07:00

Reposted with permission. Fascinating story!

Triple Nickel - NASA Pilot

Well, it's been 48 hours since I landed the 747 with the shuttle Atlantis on top and I am still buzzing from the experience. I have to say that my whole mind, body and soul went into the professional mode just before engine start in Mississippi, and stayed there, where it all needed to be, until well after the flight...in fact, I am not sure if it is all back to normal as I type this email.

The experience was surreal.

Seeing that "thing" on top of an already overly huge aircraft boggles my mind. The whole mission from takeoff to engine shutdown was unlike anything I had ever done. It was like a dream...someone else's dream.

We took off from Columbus AFB on their 12,000 foot runway, of which I used 11,999 1/2 feet to get the wheels off the ground. We were at 3,500 feet left to go of the runway, throttles full power, nose wheels still hugging the ground, copilot calling out decision speeds, the weight of Atlantis now screaming through my fingers clinched tightly on the controls, tires heating up to their near maximum temperature from the speed and the weight, and not yet at rotation speed, the speed at which I would be pulling on the controls to get the nose to rise. I just could not wait, and I mean I COULD NOT WAIT, and started pulling early.

If I had waited until rotation speed, we would not have rotated enough to get airborne by the end of the runway. So I pulled on the controls early and started our rotation to the takeoff attitude. The wheels finally lifted off as we passed over the stripe marking the end of the runway and my next hurdle (physically) was a line of trees 1,000 feet off the departure end of Runway 16. All I knew was we were flying and so I directed the gear to be retracted and the flaps to be moved from Flaps 20 to Flaps 10 as I pulled even harder on the controls.

I must say, those trees were beginning to look a lot like those brushes in the drive through car washes so I pulled even harder yet! I think I saw a bird just fold its wings and fall out of a tree as if to say "Oh just take me". Okay, we cleared the trees

duh, but it was way too close for my laundry. As we started to actually climb, at only 100 feet per minute, I smelled something that reminded me of touring the Heineken Brewery in Europe...I said "is that a skunk I smell?" and the veterans of shuttle carrying looked at me and smiled and said "Tires"!

I said "TIRES??? OURS???" They smiled and shook their heads as if to call their Captain an amateur...okay, at that point I was. The tires were so hot you could smell them in the cockpit. My mind could not get over, from this point on, that this was something I had never experienced.

Where's your mom when you REALLY need her?

The flight down to Florida was an eternity. We cruised at 250 knots indicated, giving us about 315 knots of ground speed at 15,000'. The miles didn't click by like I am use to them clicking by in a fighter at MACH .94. We were burning fuel at a rate of 40,000 pounds per hour or 130 pounds per mile, or one gallon every length of the fuselage! The vibration in the cockpit was mild, compared to down below and to the rear of the fuselage where it reminded me of that football game I had as a child where you turned it on and the players vibrated around the board.

I felt like if I had plastic clips on my boots I could have vibrated to any spot in the fuselage I wanted to go without moving my legs...and the noise was deafening. The 747 flies with its nose 5 degrees up in the air to stay level, and when you bank, it feels like the shuttle is trying to say "hey, let's roll completely over on our back," not a good thing I kept telling myself. SO I limited my bank angle to 15 degrees and even though a 180 degree course change took a full zip code to complete, it was the safe way to turn this monster.

Airliners and even a flight of two F-16s deviated from their flight plans to catch a glimpse of us along the way. We dodged what was in reality very few clouds and storms, despite what everyone thought, and arrived in Florida with 51,000 pounds of fuel too much to land with. We can't land heavier than 600,000 pounds total weight and so we had to do something with that fuel. I had an idea...let's fly low and slow and show this beast off to all the taxpayers in Florida lucky enough to be outside on that Tuesday afternoon.

So at Ormond Beach we let down to 1,000 feet above the ground/water and flew just east of the beach out over the water. Then, once we reached the NASA airspace of the Kennedy Space Center, we cut over to the Banana/Indian Rivers and flew down the middle of them to show the people of Titusville, Port St.Johns and Melbourne just what a 747 with a shuttle on it looked like. We stayed at 1,000 feet and since we were dragging our flaps at "Flaps 5", our speed was down to around 190 to 210 knots. We could see traffic stopping in the middle of roads to take a look. We heard later that a Little League Baseball game stop to look and everyone cheered as we became their 7th inning stretch. Oh say can you see...

After reaching Vero Beach, we turned north to follow the coast line back up to the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF). There was not one person laying on the beach...they were all standing and waving! "What a sight" I thought...and figured they were thinking the same thing. All this time I was bugging the engineers, all three of them, to re-compute our fuel and tell me when it was time to land. They kept saying "Not yet Triple, keep showing this thing off" which was not a bad thing to be doing.

However, all this time the thought that the landing, the muscling of this 600,000 pound beast, was getting closer and closer to my reality. I was pumped up! We got back to the SLF and were still 10,000 pounds too heavy to land so I said I was going to do a low approach over the SLF going the opposite direction of landing traffic that day. So at 300 feet, we flew down the runway, rocking our wings like a whale rolling on its side to say "hello" to the people looking on! One turn out of traffic and back to the runway to land...still 3,000 pounds over gross weight limit.

But the engineers agreed that if the landing were smooth, there would be no problem. "Oh thanks guys, a little extra pressure is just what I needed!" So we landed at 603,000 pounds and very smoothly if I have to say so myself. The landing was so totally controlled and on speed, that it was fun.

There were a few surprises that I dealt with, like the 747 falls like a rock with the orbiter on it if you pull the throttles off at the "normal" point in a landing; and secondly, if you thought you could hold the nose off the ground after the mains touch down, think again...IT IS COMING DOWN!!!

So I "flew it down" to the ground and saved what I have seen in videos of a nose slap after landing. Bob's video supports this! Then I turned on my phone after coming to a full stop only to find 50 bazillion emails and phone messages from all of you who were so super to be watching and cheering us on! What a treat, I can't thank y'all enough. For those who watched, you wondered why we sat there so long.

Well, the shuttle had very hazardous chemicals on board and we had to be "sniffed" to determine if any had leaked or were leaking. They checked for Monomethylhydrazine (N2H4 for Charlie Hudson) and nitrogen tetroxide (N2O4). Even though we were "clean", it took way too long for them to tow us in to the mate-demate area. Sorry for those who stuck it out and even waited until we exited the jet.

I am sure I will wake up in the middle of the night here soon, screaming and standing straight up dripping wet with sweat from the realization of what had happened. It was a thrill of a lifetime. Again I want to thank everyone for your interest and support. It felt good to bring Atlantis home in one piece after she had worked so hard getting to the Hubble Space Telescope and back.

Matthias Rath - steal this chapter

2009-04-14T11:38:00.001-07:00

Matthias Rath - steal this chapter

April 9th, 2009 by Ben Goldacre

This is the “missing chapter” about vitamin pill salesman Matthias Rath. Sadly I was unable to write about him at the time that book was initially published, as he was suing my ass in the High Court. The chapter is now available in the new paperback edition, and I’ve posted it here for free so that nobody loses out.

Although the publishers make a slightly melodramatic fuss about this in the promo material, it is a very serious story about the dangers of pseudoscience, as I hope you’ll see, and it was also a pretty unpleasant episode, not just for me, but also for the many other people he’s tried to sue, including Medecins Sans Frontieres and more. If you’re ever looking for a warning sign that you’re on the wrong side of an argument, suing Medecins Sans Frontieres is probably a pretty good clue.

Anyway, here it is, please steal it, print it, repost it, whatever, it’s free under a Creative Commons license, details at the end. If you prefer it is available as a PDF here, or as a word document here. Happy Easter!

This is an extract from
BAD SCIENCE by Ben Goldacre
Published by Harper Perennial 2009.

You are free to copy it, paste it, bake it, reprint it, read it aloud, as long as you don’t change it – including this bit – so that people know that they can find more ideas for free at www.badscience.net

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The Doctor Will Sue You Now

This chapter did not appear in the original edition of this book, because for fifteen months leading up to September 2008 the vitamin-pill entrepreneur Matthias Rath was suing me personally, and the Guardian, for libel. This strategy brought only mixed success. For all that nutritionists may fantasise in public that any critic is somehow a pawn of big pharma, in private they would do well to remember that, like many my age who work in the public sector, I don’t own a flat. The Guardian generously paid for the lawyers, and in September 2008 Rath dropped his case, which had cost in excess of £500,000 to defend. Rath has paid £220,000 already, and the rest will hopefully follow. Nobody will ever repay me for the endless meetings, the time off work, or the days spent poring over tables filled with endlessly cross-referenced court documents.

On this last point there is, however, one small consolation, and I will spell it out as a cautionary tale: I now know more about Matthias Rath than almost any other person alive. My notes, references and witness statements, boxed up in the room where I am sitting right now, make a pile as tall as the man himself, and what I will write here is only a tiny fraction of the fuller story that is waiting to be told about him. This chapter, I should also mention, is available free online for anyone who wishes to see it.

Matthias Rath takes us rudely outside the contained, almost academic distance of this book. For the most part we’ve been interested in the intellectual and cultural consequences of bad science, the made-up facts in national newspapers, dubious academic practices in universities, some foolish pill-peddling, and so on. But what happens if we take these sleights of hand, these pill-marketing techniques, and transplant them out of our decadent Western context into a situation where things really matter?

In an ideal world this would be only a thought experiment. AIDS is the opposite of anecdote. Twenty-five million people have died from it already, three million in the last year alone, and 500,000 of those deaths were children. In South Africa it kills 300,000 people every year: that’s eight hundred people every day, or one every two minutes. This one country has 6.3 million people who are HIV positive, including 30 per cent of all pregnant women. There are 1.2 million AIDS orphans under the age of seventeen. Most chillingly of all, this disaster has appeared suddenly, and while we were watching: in 1990, just 1 per cent of adults in South Africa were HIV positive. Ten years
later, the figure had risen to 25 per cent.

It’s hard to mount an emotional response to raw numbers, but on one thing I think we would agree. If you were to walk into a situation with that much death, misery and disease, you would be very careful to make sure that you knew what you were talking about. For the reasons you are about to read, I suspect that Matthias Rath missed the mark.

This man, we should be clear, is our responsibility. Born and raised in Germany, Rath was the head of Cardiovascular Research at the Linus Pauling Institute in Palo Alto in California, and even then he had a tendency towards grand gestures, publishing a paper in the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine in 1992 titled “A Unified Theory of Human Cardiovascular Disease Leading the Way to the Abolition of this Disease as a Cause for Human Mortality”. The unified theory was high-dose vitamins.

He first developed a power base from sales in Europe, selling his pills with tactics that will be very familiar to you from the rest of this book, albeit slightly more aggressive. In the UK, his adverts claimed that “90 per cent of patients receiving chemotherapy for cancer die within months of starting treatment”, and suggested that three million lives could be saved if cancer patients stopped being treated by conventional medicine. The pharmaceutical industry was deliberately letting people die for financial gain, he explained. Cancer treatments were “poisonous compounds” with “not even one effective treatment”.

The decision to embark on treatment for cancer can be the most difficult that an individual or a family will ever take, representing a close balance between well-documented benefits and equally well-documented side-effects. Adverts like these might play especially strongly on your conscience if your mother has just lost all her hair to chemotherapy, for example, in the hope of staying alive just long enough to see your son speak.

There was some limited regulatory response in Europe, but it was generally as weak as that faced by the other characters in this book. The Advertising Standards Authority criticised one of his adverts in the UK, but that is essentially all they are able to do. Rath was ordered by a Berlin court to stop claiming that his vitamins could cure cancer, or face a €250,000 fine.

But sales were strong, and Matthias Rath still has many supporters in Europe, as you will shortly see. He walked into South Africa with all the acclaim, self-confidence and wealth he had amassed as a successful vitamin-pill entrepreneur in Europe and America, and began to take out full-page adverts in newspapers.

˜The answer to the AIDS epidemic is here,” he proclaimed. Anti-retroviral drugs were poisonous, and a conspiracy to kill patients and make money. “Stop AIDS Genocide by the Drugs Cartel said one headline. “Why should South Africans continue to be poisoned with AZT? There is a natural answer to AIDS.” The answer came in the form of vitamin pills. “Multivitamin treatment is more effective than any toxic AIDS drug. Multivitamins cut the risk of developing AIDS in half.”

Rath’s company ran clinics reflecting these ideas, and in 2005 he decided to run a trial of his vitamins in a township near Cape Town called Khayelitsha, giving his own formulation, VitaCell, to people with advanced AIDS. In 2008 this trial was declared illegal by the Cape High Court of South Africa. Although Rath says that none of his participants had been on anti-retroviral drugs, some relatives have given statements saying that they were, and were actively told to stop using them.

Tragically,Matthias Rath had taken these ideas to exactly the right place. Thabo Mbeki, the President of South Africa at the time, was well known as an “AIDS dissident”, and to international horror, while people died at the rate of one every two minutes in his country, he gave credence and support to the claims of a small band of campaigners who variously claim that AIDS does not exist, that it is not caused by HIV, that anti-retroviral medication does more harm than good, and so on.

At various times during the peak of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa their government argued that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, and that anti-retroviral drugs are not useful for patients. They refused to roll out proper treatment programmes, they refused to accept free donations of drugs, and they refused to accept grant money from the Global Fund to buy drugs. One study estimates that if the South African national government had used anti-retroviral drugs for prevention and treatment at the same rate as the Western Cape province (which defied national policy on the issue), around 171,000 new HIV infections and 343,000 deaths could have been prevented between 1999 and 2007. Another study estimates that between 2000 and 2005 there were 330,000 unnecessary deaths, 2.2 million person years lost, and 35,000 babies unnecessarily born with HIV because of the failure to implement a cheap and simple mother-to-child-transmission prevention program. Between one and three doses of an ARV drug can reduce transmission dramatically. The cost is negligible. It was not available.

Interestingly, Matthias Rath’s colleague and employee, a South African barrister named Anthony Brink, takes the credit for introducing Thabo Mbeki to many of these ideas. Brink stumbled on the “AIDS dissident” material in the mid-1990s, and after much surfing and reading, became convinced that it must be right. In 1999 he wrote an article about AZT in a Johannesburg newspaper titled “a medicine from hell”. This led to a public exchange with a leading virologist. Brink contacted Mbeki, sending him copies of the debate, and was welcomed as an expert.

This is a chilling testament to the danger of elevating cranks by engaging with them. In his initial letter of motivation for employment to Matthias Rath, Brink described himself as “South Africa’s leading AIDS dissident, best known for my whistle-blowing exposé of the toxicity and inefficacy of AIDS drugs, and for my political activism in this regard, which caused President Mbeki and Health Minister Dr Tshabalala-Msimang to repudiate the drugs in 1999″.

In 2000, the now infamous International AIDS Conference took place in Durban. Mbeki’s presidential advisory panel beforehand was packed with “AIDS dissidents”, including Peter Duesberg and David Rasnick. On the first day, Rasnick suggested that all HIV testing should be banned on principle, and that South Africa should stop screening supplies of blood for HIV. “If I had the power to outlaw the HIV antibody test,” he said, “I would do it across the board.” When African physicians gave testimony about the drastic change AIDS had caused in their clinics and hospitals, Rasnick said he had not seen “any evidence” of an AIDS catastrophe. The media were not allowed in, but one reporter from the Village Voice was present. Peter Duesberg, he said, “gave a presentation so removed from African medical reality that it left several local doctors shaking their heads”. It wasn’t AIDS that was killing babies and children, said the dissidents: it was the anti-retroviral medication.

President Mbeki sent a letter to world leaders comparing the struggle of the “AIDS dissidents” to the struggle against apartheid. The Washington Post described the reaction at the White House: “So stunned were some officials by the letter’s tone and timing during final preparations for July’s conference in Durban that at least two of them, according to diplomatic sources, felt obliged to check whether it was genuine. Hundreds of delegates walked out of Mbeki’s address to the conference in disgust, but many more described themselves as dazed and confused. Over 5,000 researchers and activists around the world signed up to the Durban Declaration, a document that specifically addressed and repudiated the claims and concerns–at least the more moderate ones–of the “AIDS dissidents”. Specifically, it addressed the charge that people were simply dying of poverty:

The evidence that AIDS is caused by HIV-1 or HIV-2 is clearcut, exhaustive and unambiguous… As with any other chronic infection, various co-factors play a role in determining the risk of disease. Persons who are malnourished, who already suffer other infections or who are older, tend to be more susceptible to the rapid development of AIDS following HIV infection. However, none of these factors weaken the scientific evidence that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS… Mother-to-child transmission can be reduced by half or more by short courses of antiviral drugs â€¦ What works best in one country may not be appropriate in another. But to tackle the disease, everyone must first understand that HIV is the enemy. Research, not myths, will lead to the development of more effective and cheaper treatments.

It did them no good. Until 2003 the South African government refused, as a matter of principle, to roll out proper antiretroviral medication programmes, and even then the process was half-hearted. This madness was only overturned after a massive campaign by grassroots organisations such as the Treatment Action Campaign, but even after the ANC cabinet voted to allow medication to be given, there was still resistance. In mid-2005, at least 85 per cent of HIV-positive people who needed anti-retroviral drugs were still refused them. That’s around a million people.

This resistance, of course, went deeper than just one man; much of it came from Mbeki’s Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. An ardent critic of medical drugs for HIV, she would cheerfully go on television to talk up their dangers, talk down their benefits, and became irritable and evasive when asked how many patients were receiving effective treatment. She declared in 2005 that she would not be “pressured” into meeting the target of three million patients on anti-retroviral medication, that people had ignored the importance of nutrition, and that she would continue to warn patients of the sideeffects of anti-retrovirals, saying: “We have been vindicated in
this regard. We are what we eat.”

It’s an eerily familiar catchphrase. Tshabalala-Msimang has also gone on record to praise the work of Matthias Rath, and refused to investigate his activities. Most joyfully of all, she is a staunch advocate of the kind of weekend glossy-magazine-style nutritionism that will by now be very familiar to you. The remedies she advocates for AIDS are beetroot, garlic, lemons and African potatoes. A fairly typical quote, from the Health Minister in a country where eight hundred people die every day from AIDS, is this: “Raw garlic and a skin of the lemon–not only do they give you a beautiful face and skin but they also protect you from disease.” South Africa’s stand at the 2006 World AIDS Conference in Toronto was described by delegates as the “salad stall”. It consisted of some garlic, some beetroot, the African potato, and assorted other vegetables. Some boxes of anti-retroviral drugs were added later, but they were reportedly borrowed at the last minute from other conference delegates.

Alternative therapists like to suggest that their treatments and ideas have not been sufficiently researched. As you now know, this is often untrue, and in the case of the Health Minister’s favoured vegetables, research had indeed been done, with results that were far from promising. Interviewed on SABC about this, Tshabalala-Msimang gave the kind of responses you’d expect to hear at any North London dinner-party discussion of alternative therapies.

First she was asked about work from the University of Stellenbosch which suggested that her chosen plant, the African potato, might be actively dangerous for people on AIDS drugs. One study on African potato in HIV had to be terminated prematurely, because the patients who received the plant extract developed severe bone-marrow suppression and a drop in their CD4 cell count–which is a bad thing–after eight weeks. On top of this, when extract from the same vegetable was given to cats with Feline Immunodeficiency Virus, they succumbed to full-blown Feline AIDS faster than their non-treated controls. African potato does not look like a good bet.

Tshabalala-Msimang disagreed: the researchers should go back to the drawing board, and “investigate properly”. Why? Because HIV-positive people who used African potato had shown improvement, and they had said so themselves. If a person says he or she is feeling better, should this be disputed, she demanded to know, merely because it had not been proved scientifically? “When a person says she or he is feeling better, I must say ‘No, I don’t think you are feeling better’? I must rather go and do science on you’?” Asked whether there should be a scientific basis to her views, she replied: “Whose science?”

And there, perhaps, is a clue, if not exoneration. This is a continent that has been brutally exploited by the developed world, first by empire, and then by globalised capital. Conspiracy theories about AIDS and Western medicine are not entirely absurd in this context. The pharmaceutical industry has indeed been caught performing drug trials in Africa which would be impossible anywhere in the developed world. Many find it suspicious that black Africans seem to be the biggest victims of AIDS, and point to the biological warfare programmes set up by the apartheid governments; there have also been suspicions that the scientific discourse of HIV/AIDS might be a device, a Trojan horse for spreading even more exploitative Western political and economic agendas around a problem that is simply one of poverty.

And these are new countries, for which independence and self-rule are recent developments, which are struggling to find their commercial feet and true cultural identity after centuries of colonisation. Traditional medicine represents an important link with an autonomous past; besides which, anti-retroviral medications have been unnecessarily – offensively, absurdly – expensive, and until moves to challenge this became partially successful, many Africans were effectively denied access to medical treatment as a result.

It’s very easy for us to feel smug, and to forget that we all have our own strange cultural idiosyncrasies which prevent us from taking up sensible public-health programmes. For examples, we don’t even have to look as far as MMR. There is a good evidence base, for example, to show that needle-exchange programmes reduce the spread of HIV, but this strategy has been rejected time and again in favour of “Just say no.” Development charities funded by US Christian groups refuse to engage with birth control, and any suggestion of abortion, even in countries where being in control of your own fertility could mean the difference between success and failure in life, is met with a cold, pious stare. These impractical moral principles are so deeply entrenched that Pepfar, the US Presidential Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, has insisted that every recipient of international aid money must sign a declaration expressly promising not to have any involvement with sex workers.

We mustn’t appear insensitive to the Christian value system, but it seems to me that engaging sex workers is almost the cornerstone of any effective AIDS policy: commercial sex is frequently the “vector of transmission”, and sex workers a very high-risk population; but there are also more subtle issues at stake. If you secure the legal rights of prostitutes to be free from violence and discrimination, you empower them to demand universal condom use, and that way you can prevent HIV from being spread into the whole community. This is where science meets culture. But perhaps even to your own friends and neighbours, in whatever suburban idyll has become your home, the moral principle of abstinence from sex and drugs is more important than people dying of AIDS; and perhaps, then, they are no less irrational than Thabo Mbeki.

So this was the situation into which the vitamin-pill entrepreneur Matthias Rath inserted himself, prominently and expensively, with the wealth he had amassed from Europe and America, exploiting anti-colonial anxieties with no sense of irony, although he was a white man offering pills made in a factory abroad. His adverts and clinics were a tremendous success. He began to tout individual patients as evidence of the benefits that could come from vitamin pills – although in reality some of his most famous success stories have died of AIDS. When asked about the deaths of Rath’s star patients, Health Minister Tshabalala-Msimang replied: “It doesn’t necessarily mean that if I am taking antibiotics and I die, that I died of antibiotics.”

She is not alone: South Africa’s politicians have consistently refused to step in, Rath claims the support of the government, and its most senior figures have refused to distance themselves from his operations or to criticise his activities. Tshabalala-Msimang has gone on the record to state that the Rath Foundation “are not undermining the government’s position. If anything, they are supporting it.”

In 2005, exasperated by government inaction, a group of 199 leading medical practitioners in South Africa signed an open letter to the health authorities of the Western Cape, pleading for action on the Rath Foundation. “Our patients are being inundated with propaganda encouraging them to stop life-saving medicine,” it said. “Many of us have had experiences with HIV infected patients who have had their health compromised by stopping their anti-retrovirals due to the activities of this Foundation.” Rath’s adverts continue unabated. He even claimed that his activities were endorsed by huge lists of sponsors and affiliates including the World Health Organization, UNICEF and UNAIDS. All have issued statements flatly denouncing his claims and activities. The man certainly has chutzpah.

His adverts are also rich with detailed scientific claims. It would be wrong of us to neglect the science in this story, so we should follow some through, specifically those which focused on a Harvard study in Tanzania. He described this research in full-page advertisements, some of which have appeared in the New York Times and the Herald Tribune. He refers to these paid adverts, I should mention, as if he had received flattering news coverage in the same papers. Anyway, this research showed that multivitamin supplements can be beneficial in a developing world population with AIDS: there’s no problem with that result, and there are plenty of reasons to think that vitamins might have some benefit for a sick and frequently malnourished population.

The researchers enrolled 1,078 HIV-positive pregnant women and randomly assigned them to have either a vitamin supplement or placebo. Notice once again, if you will, that this is another large, well-conducted, publicly funded trial of vitamins, conducted by mainstream scientists, contrary to the claims of nutritionists that such studies do not exist. The women were followed up for several years, and at the end of the study, 25 per cent of those on vitamins were severely ill or dead, compared with 31 per cent of those on placebo. There was also a statistically significant benefit in CD4 cell count (a measure of HIV activity) and viral loads. These results were in no sense dramatic – and they cannot be compared to the demonstrable life-saving benefits of anti-retrovirals – but they did show that improved diet, or cheap generic vitamin pills, could represent a simple and relatively inexpensive way to marginally delay the need to start HIV medication in some patients.

In the hands of Rath, this study became evidence that vitamin pills are superior to medication in the treatment of HIV/AIDS, that anti-retroviral therapies “severely damage all cells in the body–including white blood cells”, and worse, that they were “thereby not improving but rather worsening immune deficiencies and expanding the AIDS epidemic”. The researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health were so horrified that they put together a press release setting out their support for medication, and stating starkly, with unambiguous clarity, that Matthias Rath had misrepresented their findings.

To outsiders the story is baffling and terrifying. The United Nations has condemned Rath’s adverts as “wrong and misleading”. “This guy is killing people by luring them with unrecognised treatment without any scientific evidence,” said Eric Goemaere, head of Médecins sans Frontières SA, a man who pioneered anti-retroviral therapy in South Africa. Rath sued him.

It’s not just MSF who Rath has gone after: he has also brought time-consuming, expensive, stalled or failed cases against a professor of AIDS research, critics in the media and others.

But his most heinous campaign has been against the Treatment Action Campaign. For many years this has been the key organisation campaigning for access to anti-retroviral medication in South Africa, and it has been fighting a war on four fronts. Firstly, TAC campaigns against its own government, trying to compel it to roll out treatment programmes for the population. Secondly, it fights against the pharmaceutical industry, which claims that it needs to charge full price for its products in developing countries in order to pay for research and development of new drugs – although, as we shall see, out of its $550 billion global annual revenue, the pharmaceutical industry spends twice as much on promotion and admin as it does on research and development. Thirdly, it is a grassroots organisation, made up largely of black women from townships who do important prevention and treatment-literacy work on the ground, ensuring that people know what is available, and how to protect themselves. Lastly, it fights against people who promote the type of information peddled by Matthias Rath and his ilk.

Rath has taken it upon himself to launch a massive campaign against this group. He distributes advertising material against them, saying “Treatment Action Campaign medicines are killing you” and “Stop AIDS genocide by the drug cartel”, claiming–as you will guess by now–that there is an international conspiracy by pharmaceutical companies intent on prolonging the AIDS crisis in the interests of their own profits by giving medication that makes people worse. TAC must be a part of this, goes the reasoning, because it criticises Matthias Rath. Just like me writing on Patrick Holford or Gillian McKeith, TAC is perfectly in favour of good diet and nutrition. But in Rath’s promotional literature it is a front for the pharmaceutical industry, a “Trojan horse” and a “running dog”. TAC has made a full disclosure of its funding and activities, showing no such connection: Rath presented no evidence to the contrary, and has even lost a court case over the issue, but will not let it lie. In fact he presents the loss of this court case as if it was a victory.

The founder of TAC is a man called Zackie Achmat, and he is the closest thing I have to a hero. He is South African, and coloured, by the nomenclature of the apartheid system in which he grew up. At the age of fourteen he tried to burn down his school, and you might have done the same in similar circumstances. He has been arrested and imprisoned under South Africa’s violent, brutal white regime, with all that entailed. He is also gay, and HIV-positive, and he refused to take anti-retroviral medication until it was widely available to all on the public health system, even when he was dying of AIDS, even when he was personally implored to save himself by Nelson Mandela, a public supporter of anti-retroviral medication and Achmat’s work.

And now, at last, we come to the lowest point of this whole story, not merely for Matthias Rath’s movement, but for the alternative therapy movement around the world as a whole. In 2007, with a huge public flourish, to great media coverage, Rath’s former employee Anthony Brink filed a formal complaint against Zackie Achmat, the head of the TAC. Bizarrely, he filed this complaint with the International Criminal
Court at The Hague, accusing Achmat of genocide for successfully campaigning to get access to HIV drugs for the people of South Africa.

It’s hard to explain just how influential the “AIDS dissidents” are in South Africa. Brink is a barrister, a man with important friends, and his accusations were reported in the national news media –and in some corners of the Western gay press–as a serious news story. I do not believe that any one of those journalists who reported on it can possibly have read Brink’s indictment to the end.

I have.

The first fifty-seven pages present familiar anti-medication and “AIDS-dissident” material. But then, on page fifty-eight, this “indictment” document suddenly deteriorates into something altogether more vicious and unhinged, as Brink sets out what he believes would be an appropriate punishment for Zackie. Because I do not wish to be accused of selective editing, I will now reproduce for you that entire section, unedited, so you can see and feel it for yourself.

The document was described by the Rath Foundation as “entirely valid and long overdue”.

This story isn’t about Matthias Rath, or Anthony Brink, or Zackie Achmat, or even South Africa. It is about the culture of how ideas work, and how that can break down. Doctors criticise other doctors, academics criticise academics, politicians criticise politicians: that’s normal and healthy, it’s how ideas improve. Matthias Rath is an alternative therapist, made in Europe. He is every bit the same as the British operators that we have seen in this book. He is from their world.

Despite the extremes of this case, not one single alternative therapist or nutritionist, anywhere in the world, has stood up to criticise any single aspect of the activities of Matthias Rath and his colleagues. In fact, far from it: he continues to be fêted to this day. I have sat in true astonishment and watched leading figures of the UK’s alternative therapy movement applaud Matthias Rath at a public lecture (I have it on video, just in case there’s any doubt). Natural health organisations continue to defend Rath. Homeopaths’ mailouts continue to promote his work. The British Association of Nutritional Therapists has been invited to comment by bloggers, but declined. Most, when challenged, will dissemble.”Oh,” they say, “I don’t really know much about it.” Not one person will step forward and dissent.

The alternative therapy movement as a whole has demonstrated itself to be so dangerously, systemically incapable of critical self-appraisal that it cannot step up even in a case like that of Rath: in that count I include tens of thousands of practitioners, writers, administrators and more. This is how ideas go badly wrong. In the conclusion to this book, written before I was able to include this chapter, I will argue that the biggest dangers posed by the material we have covered are cultural and intellectual.

I may be mistaken.

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Please distribute

This work is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works License described here, you are free to copy it wherever you like as long as you keep it whole, and do please point people back here to badscience.net so that if they like it, they know where to find more for free.

Write the Caption Contest...

2009-01-29T06:22:00.001-08:00

This just screams for a great caption...

Originally found here: http://www.kuvalauta.fi/b/src/123325512598.jpg

Solving problems out in the open...

2009-01-25T13:35:00.001-08:00

If I solve a problem out in the open, for anyone to see, the problem is solved forever.

If I solve a problem within a confined corporate environment, the problem is only solved for a short period of time.

A corporate veil, like a cell wall, ensures the inner workings are separated from the rest of the world so something unique can happen on the inside.

Solving problems within the corporate veil helps unique things happen inside.

One way to make unique things happen is if there is an uneven gradient of solutions to problems.

Prosperity traditionally follows from the homogenization of some aspect of the solution gradient.

Where does history explain the consequences of the extremes (all secret, all open)? Where does history explain the consequences of the homogenization of the solution gradient?

GOP Economics

2008-11-19T13:46:00.001-08:00

The Dow, as Bush takes office: 10,587.59
The Dow, eight years later: 7,997.28

Source: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/11/19/171644/60/362/663749

Abraham Lincoln, The US Civil War and the 1960's...

2008-11-04T15:33:00.001-08:00

I didn't grow up in the 1960's, but my parents did and I grew up hearing lots about it. Not as much from my parents as just from society at large. Some hated it, others were "part of it". According to my Uncle, if you remember it, you weren't there.

Lots of people, hippies perhaps, thought they were changing the world. Lots of people also derided the hippies of the 1980's who turned in their tie-dye shirts for suits and ties. They called them traitors. I don't know much about that, because, as I said, I didn't grow up in the 1960's.

What I do know is that the Civil Rights movement started in the 1960's. But, the Civil Rights movement could never have happened without the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln and the end of slavery in this country.

Looking back, it all seems so logical now. The Civil War lead us to the Civil Rights movement which lead us to Barack Obama being elected president. Some may say this is good for African Americans, but I say this is good for everyone. Hatred, fear and division brings us all down. Coming as far as we have shows that we can all hold our heads high.

This country has shown that it has come a very long way.

"Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk. Martin Luther King walked so Obama could run. Obama's running so we all can fly." -Jay-Z

I've been called worse by better!

2008-10-23T17:19:00.001-07:00

Next time you want to call me names, just remember that I've been called worse by better.

A good friend of mine was fortunate enough to be chosen to attend a dinner with Richard M Stallman a.k.a. "RMS". My friend cast about for questions to ask RMS during dinner. Here was mine (which I am told was printed out and handed to RMS, rather than verbally paraphrased):

Ask him what he thinks of William Wallace (Character portrayed in
Braveheart). Does he see himself as someone who wanted to be just an
average farmer, but got pulled into something bigger and more important
because his conscience would not let him ignore what was going on? Or was
he always scrapping for a fight and the free software issue seemed to suit
him well.

My guess is that it's the latter, but he is only capable of seeing himself
as the former.

And the response from RMS:

"This is hostile. Who wrote this? Fuck him."

A tale of two candidates...

2008-10-13T14:56:00.001-07:00

This is the the vision John McCain inspires:

Photo Credit: http://www.brettmarty.com/

This is the vision that Barack Obama inspires:

Photo Credit: http://obeygiant.com/post/obama

A sign?

2008-10-12T15:22:00.001-07:00

I am an Atheist. I have rejected all forms of the supernatural. *BUT* if I were into "signs from above", how do you think I would interpret these:

2003: The US invades Iraq on the basis of faulty intelligence.

2004: Just prior to the presidential election, Osama Bin Laden releases a video taunting George W. Bush. The result is a 1-2% shift in the polls handing victory to Bush and ensuring that Osama Bin Laden gets to keep his recruiting drive running.

2006: Mark Foley scandal erupts just prior to the election, Democrats take over both houses of Congress in a landslide. George W. Bush later describes it as a "thumpin'".

2008: The global economy melts down just prior to the election, poll numbers climb out of reach for the Republican candidates still banging the drums of war and relying on hate speech and lies to run their campaigns.

Personally, I believe it's just chickens coming home to roost. You simply cannot expect to run a permanent campaign of deception and denial and not expect to see some backlash. *BUT* if I were a Christian fundamentalist, I can't imagine how the above facts would not give some pause to reflect on.

Social Security Privatization

2008-10-09T06:34:00.001-07:00

Sooooooo, the DOW just dropped another 675 points to 8,579. Anyone wanna take a stab at how much support there is for privatizing social security at the moment?

Oil drops below $114 on slowing economies...

2008-08-14T16:29:00.001-07:00

Newsflash, oil drops below $114 on slowing economies. Well duh! Why the heck do you think the economies slowed down in the first place...

It all makes sense now...

2008-08-06T07:48:00.001-07:00

I used to be confused. Everything makes sense now...

Things aren't always as they seem...

2008-08-05T14:12:00.001-07:00

A few nights ago, the lights flickered kind of strangely. It was enough that both Karey and I noticed it, but everything seemed fine so we ignored it. The next morning, Karey calls me at work and says the refrigerator wasn't working... Hmmm, maybe that's what the light flickering is all about. Compressor motors tend to go out in an inductive blaze of glory...

I have her set up an appointment with the repairman for the next day. I might be able to fix it, so I don't want them coming out that day, and they may be really busy, so it's good to get an appointment set up as soon as possible... Later on Karey calls back about something unrelated and I have the bright idea to ask her if anything else isn't working. She tries the toaster... no joy... Hmmmm. try plugging it in somewhere else... Bingo works great! Ok, so the fridge isn't broken, it's a power issue. I have her check the breakers, but everything seems in order. She cancels the appointment and I wish upon a star that it's just a bad breaker, and not some mysterious break in the wall.

I get home and confirm that every outlet in that string is dead. I further confirm that none of the breakers are tripped. Hmmmm, weird... During our remodel I was careful to do all of my electrical work up to code. I am now very glad I did because all of the splices are accessible through wall plates with plenty of spare wire, etc. I test all of the wires and everything is working. I am pretty certain I did not touch the wires in the dead string during the remodel, but it helps to confirm that everything behind the plates is unaffected by this... anomaly...

I mentally trace where the wire would probably be and realize that the most likely route to the panel is a trip underneath the house. That means I have to get into the crawlspace... I hate that place... I move 64 tons of crap out of the closet to get access to the crawlspace and finally get the "portal to hell" open. The usual musty smell floods in while I get the light turned on (I always feel like the bogeyman is going to grab my hand while I'm grasping in the dark for that infernal light switch puller string).

I peer inside and am immediately shocked by what appears to be pools of blood and spatter! Holy %^&* what the ^&*$ happened! My first thought was to wonder who the heck you call when you see something like this. It wasn't a huge amount of stuff, so I figured it was a rodent of some sort that bit into the wrong wire and learned a very shocking lesson. It then hit me that I didn't notice the usual rotting flesh smell when something dies. Odd, maybe it crawled off.. I also thought it was weird to see spatter, I didn't think animals did that when they were electrocuted...

I was too chicken-$%&^ to actually go in there just yet, so I got a stick and poked around the heating duct that crossed in front of the "crime scene" to see if I could find more clues. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't see any dead body or anything. Could something else have gotten in there and carried it off?????

I finally got the nerve to go in there and take a closer look...

I slowly creep over to the puddles and survey the scene. There's definitely nothing dead (or .... yuck ... dying) that I can see so far. There's also more spatter than I could originally see from the entry. I poke around a bit more and notice a dark red stain permeating the insulation above the spatter. Yuck! Maybe whatever it is, is in the insulation somewhere.... I guess that makes sense since the wire runs above the insulation. I poke at the insulation (from a distance) and nothing falls out, but I do notice the stain travels up... to... the... floorboards... above...

And then it hits me...

Remember that bottle of wine we broke a month ago.... I bend down and smell the puddle very carefully, and confirm that it's got a rather pleasant boquet to it... a rather *CABERNET*-ish smell, mixed with 30 years of musty dirt...

One mystery solved... but the power still wasn't working...

I traced the wire underneath the house and it was very much intact and unadulterated. I decide to call it a night and sleep on it...

Next morning I noticed the heater air circulator (we keep it running year round to filter the air in the house) wasn't running. Ah ha! A clue! After getting home from work, I go to take a look at it and also notice that the automatic litter box has been falling down on the job. Wait a mintue... the power light is off! Ah ha! Another clue!

At this point, I'm considering that a surge hit the house and took out a few of our geriatric circuit breakers. It wouldn't be the first time something like that ever happened. Since my circuit breaker box labeling hasn't been up to date for nearly 20 years, I need some help tracing which wires go to which circuit... I purchase some trace tools from Home Depot and promptly discover that you need an energized circuit to get them to work. *GRUMBLE*...

I'm prepared to use my pulse generator and reciever that I use for LVW (Low Voltage Wiring) tracing since the circuit is clearly not energized. Before I do that, I pull the panel cover and use my passive electrical detection pen "thingy" to see if I can identify a dead breaker. You can also test a breaker with a multimeter by checking for an AC potential between the wire screwed into the breaker and the ground. I just happened to have the pen handier than the multimeter in this case...

As I'm testing the wires, they all seem to work. Hmmmm, not good, that means there's probably a break buried somewhere in the wall. *GRUMBLE*...

I set my pen down on the generator hookup switch box to think about my next course of action when my eyes drift down to the switches on the front of the switch box...

Hmmm, two switches aren't lined up with the rest of the... *HEAD SLAP*

Two switches accidentally got bumped to the "generator" setting, which cuts off the main panel supply to prevent grid backflow... I check with Karey and she confirms that it was probably her when she was grabbing the stroller to take her infant nephew for a walk...

Mystery solved...

No broken appliances... No electrical surge... No bloody horror show... No broken wires... No bad circuit breakers... A few new tools and a good test of the generator hookup switchbox...

Not bad for two day's work...

WHARRGARBL

2008-07-31T08:40:00.001-07:00

I have a black lab, so this really hits home. I just can't stop laughing at this picture!

BTW: I did an inadequate search to see where it came from and didn't find anything obvious. If anyone knows, please let me know so I can give credit.

3rd Class Medical

2008-06-16T14:34:00.001-07:00

I belong to the AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association). They are a really cool group that looks out for the interests of GA (General Aviation) pilots and small aircraft owners. What most people don't realize is that GA is like the ecosystem in the Amazon Jungle. You may not be directly affected by the massive destruction of the rain forests at the moment, but you will once it's too late. The same goes for GA. Most of the technologies that help large commercial aircraft go bigger/better/faster get their start on small GA or military aircraft. Granted military aircraft aren't GA aircraft, but considering military applications are "bleeding edge" feeder technologies, GA aircraft are usually the first ones in the civilian world to make use of those technologies as they mature. Simply put, you do not "bet the farm" on a technology that has only been proven in the military world. The military and civilian worlds are completely different. GA bridges that gap since small aircraft cost a fraction of what a large transport jet costs to design. GA allows for more "technology maturing" design cycles. A large commercial aircraft company like Boeing measures its design cycles in decades. A bad design decision on a large transport jet can cause heartache and ruin for many decades to come. A bad design decision on a GA aircraft design is more like a 5-10 year setback, depending on the fallout.

While I'm on the GA bandwagon, another value most people don't realize is that airlines depend on GA to fill the need for good pilots. The military does an excellent job training pilots, but they can't possibly fill the entire need. Many airline pilots worked their way up the hard way, grinding it out one hour at a time. They scraped their pennies together to buy flight time and eventually get their CFI (Certified Flight Instructor) certificate. At that point they can build time and get paid for it. They're barely able to make ends meet, but usually don't mind because they're pursuing something they love.

All things considered, the margins are very thin in GA. No one gets into GA because it makes a lot of economic sense. They do it because they truly love flying, or perhaps they see it as a step towards a career. It's sometimes very easy for those in power to lose sight of the fact that GA represents a critical ecosystem that feeds this country's economic engine. The AOPA exists to make sure those in power understand those complex issues and don't make stupid decisions that affect everyone from the retired "mom" who has always wanted to fulfill her dream of flying, to the technology pipeline that drives much of the innovation in the multi billion dollar air transport industry.

But enough about that... Each week the AOPA sends out their ePILOT newsletter. Since I'm in training to be a CFI, I was interested to read this in the recent newsletter:

==> QUIZ ME! <==
Here's a question asked by an AOPA member who contacted our aviation services staff through the AOPA Pilot Information Center. Test your knowledge.

Question: Does a flight instructor need to hold a second-class medical certificate when providing flight instruction?

Answer: A flight instructor does not need a second-class medical to provide dual instruction. If the CFI must act as pilot in command (PIC) for the flight, he or she is required to hold a valid third class medical certificate. While a commercial pilot certificate or airline transport pilot certificate is required to become a CFI, the FAA has determined that when providing instruction, a flight instructor is simply receiving compensation for his or her instruction and, therefore, exercising the privileges of a private pilot certificate. If the CFI is not required to act as PIC and is not performing the duties of a required crewmember (i.e., safety pilot), he or she does not need a valid medical certificate. Additionally, a medical certificate is not required when performing the duties of a flight instructor with a glider rating or sport pilot rating. This information is discussed in FAR 61.23(3)(iv)

What does all of that mean? GA pilots have to have a medical certificate clearing your way to fly. Even if you have a pilots license, you can't fly if you aren't approved by a FAA designated doctor. The higher up you get, the more stringent the medical certificates. Airline transport pilots have what is called a first class medical. This has to be renewed every 6 months. From there, it goes down to a second or a third class medical certificate. Third class medical certificates are all that are required for private pilots, and those are good for three years, unless you are over 40, then you have to get it renewed every 2 years. I've personally always gotten a first class medical and as far as I can tell, the exam for all three medicals is the same until you turn 35. It's basically just a standard physical with a vision and hearing exam thrown in. When you turn 35, the first class medical requires an EKG.

If you are exercising the privileges of a commercial pilots license, which means you can be compensated for flying, you need a second class medical. What makes the quoted passage so interesting is that even though you need a commercial certificate to be compensated for flying, being paid to instruct others to fly only requires a third class medical. Wonder why that is...

I suspect that it probably has something to do with the fact that you aren't alone in the plane and more likely than not, your student can land the plane safely if you keel over and die of a heart attack. I also think it has a lot to do with not grounding a lot of good CFIs. It takes a lot of dedication and hard work to be a flight instructor and they don't exactly grow on trees.

Back in the Saddle

2008-05-21T12:20:00.001-07:00

After an 8 year hiatus, and a few hours spent with a flight instructor to take care of my biennial flight review, I finally took to the skies solo last Sunday. I did 8 touch-and-goes in a Cessna 152. If you have to fly around in a 2 seater, the 152 is a much better ride than the 150. Eight extra horsepower make a huge amount of difference.

Having been away from flying for 8 years, the event was not without its problems. I did an absolutely thorough pre-flight; probably more thorough than I ever did as a student pilot. Unfortunately, I was so fixated on the checklist that I neglected to take into account the odd corner the airplane was parked in. I very nearly whacked the left elevator into a deck support. Fortunately one of the FBO's CFIs was aware of the situation, ran over and gave me the big "X" shutdown signal with his hands. It was very embarrassing, but not nearly as embarrassing as putting a dent in their airplane. Strike one...

After getting situated again I did a pretty good job with the radio calls and managed to do a proper run-up (pre-flight engine and instrument test). After the run-up, I requested, and was given, clearance to take off and was then on my way into the air. My first trip around the pattern was pretty ugly. It wasn't unsafe by any means, but it was probably the most ungraceful solo flying I'd ever done. I made my crosswind turn way too early and didn't even make it up to traffic pattern altitude until I was almost through with my downwind leg. About that time the tower comes on the radio and informs me that they aren't picking up my transponder signal... whoops, I forgot to turn it on... Arrrrgggggg, strike two. Total rookie mistake! I turn it on, but they still don't see it. I make a note to get it looked at on the ground. Tower clears me for the option (meaning I get to land or do a touch-and-go). I fiddle with the transponder some more, but I can't get the little status light to blink and the tower says they still can't see it.

As I entered the approach phase I felt a bit disoriented, but the old training came back quickly.... abeam the end of the runway, drop the power to 1500RPM pull the carb heat... speed is in flap operating range, give me 10 degrees of flaps... hmmm this looks like a good place for a base leg... give me 10 more degrees of flaps... whoops I better turn before I blow final... crap, I blew final, wish I'd given myself more time on that crosswind leg... better correct to get back on final... oh wait, what did ATIS say the winds were... nevermind, I can see the smoke blowing from a fire somewhere on the ground... wow pretty hard crosswind... crab the plane into the wind with left rudder and right aileron... ahhhh good I'm back on final... PAPI (Precision Approach Path Indicator) is showing two reds and two whites.... good I'm on the glideslope, I guess I wasn't completely ungraceful... hmmm oh yeah that transponder thing; I radio the tower and tell them I'm going to do a full stop to get the transponder looked at... tower clears me for the full stop... hmmm maybe I should go with 10 more degrees of flaps... nevermind the plane is landing fine as it is... sinking... sinking... don't flare too early... sinking sinking... flare... chirp... chirp... wheels kiss the ground surprisingly gently... hmmm not a bad landing, next time let's try to avoid missing the centerline by a half plane's width... good thing the runway is 150 feet wide...

I taxi back to the FBO and have them look at the transponder. I know the transponder is working just fine, it's the pilot that's working incorrectly, but I'm stumped and need some help. I've read enough close call stories to convince me that it's better to be embarrassed than to do something stupid that'll get you hurt or sanctioned (or escorted home by a pair of F-16s because you are now an unidentified flying object in controlled airspace). The owner of the FBO is in the lobby and hears me asking about the transponder. No doubt he's already aware of me nearly denting his airplane, so he's already not terribly pleased with me. Seeing me ask questions about equipment I should already know about must really be making his day... He marches out to the airplane with me and asks me when I turned the transponder on. I admit that I turned it on about halfway through downwind... he just shakes his head... Then he notices that I haven't removed the keys from the ignition and sternly reminds me that I left the mags hot which could injure a ramp person if the prop chugs through a revolution while they're moving the plane into its parking spot. Strike three...

By now I'm wondering why he hasn't just told me to go home and never come back. Instead he proceeds to give me a stern lesson on how transponders work. I keep my mouth shut and actually learn a few things. Apparently it takes four minutes and 30 seconds for this particular Mode C transponder to warm up. This explains why the tower didn't see me even after I turned it on. He advised that I should keep it on the "ON" setting while taxiing so it can warm up without useless altitude strobes cluttering up the control tower's radar. Once I'm ready to request clearance to take off I should switch the transponder to the usual "ALT" (altitude) setting. I'd never heard of that little control tower courtesy before... After fiddling with it for a while, the FBO owner wasn't able to get the little status light to blink, but assured me that the transponder was working earlier that day and was probably fine. I was later able to confirm with the tower that it was in fact transmitting properly.

I taxi out again and am cleared for take-off.

I'm determined to do the perfect pattern and the perfect landing. I've heard career pilots talk about how they've never had what they consider a perfect landing. I totally agree. The dynamics of flying an airplane are very fluid and there's always something you could do better. It's a very satisfying challenge.

Each touch-and-go was better than the last. I made a note of something I did wrong after each approach and made an effort to improve it the next time around. By the last time around, I was landing exactly on the center line and pretty much at the exact spot I was aiming for, even with a pretty gnarly crosswind. My patterns still weren't as good as I'd like to see, but at least I was able to make them marginally consistent. I got the plane up to traffic pattern altitude before I turned into the crosswind leg, gave myself plenty of room in the pattern and kept ahead of the airplane. My altitude still fluctuated more than I wanted to see. I'm sure the guys in the tower were getting a pretty good chuckle watching my altitude bounce all over.

On my last pattern, after clearing me for the option, the tower suggested that I may want to make it a full stop. Apparently the FBO had called the tower and said they had a student waiting for the plane. I guess I'd lost track of time. Fortunately I had planned on making a full stop anyway.

When I got back into the FBO, the CFI who'd stopped me from whacking the deck post looked pretty cranky. I guess it was his student who was signed up for the plane. I don't think I made a lot of friends that day, but I did knock a lot of rust off of my skills and got my confidence back.

I start my commercial flight training on Friday...

ID Not Required!

2008-05-13T17:04:00.001-07:00

This comes from my friend Phil Mocek. I've reprinted it here with permission unedited.

Hi, everyone. Sorry for the rather impersonal mass mailing.

Some of you, namely KU basketball fans and Kansas Citians, have undoubtedly already seen this, but I'm pretty excited about it and want to bring it to others' attention: On Wednesday, April 9, 2008, the Kansas City Star ran a front-page article [1] about my efforts to stand up for our right to travel freely in this country without being monitored by our government.

[1]: <http://www.kansascity.com/105/story/567590.html>

Inspired by people like John Gilmore [2], Chris Soghoian [3], and my friend Ben [4], I've been flying without identifying myself to TSA agents for a couple years, and after my last flight to Kansas City, I filed a complaint with the TSA about signs posted at the airport [5] that falsely state that travelers must present photo identification before crossing the security checkpoint.

[2]: <http://papersplease.org/gilmore/>
[3]: <http://www.cnet.com/8301-13739_1-9769089-46.html>
[4]: <http://oblivion.net/~ben/journal/?entry=725>
[5]: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmocek/2349302702/>

After receiving a response from TSA [6] confirming that there is no requirement that people show ID for domestic flights (and not mentioning anything about fixing the signs), I got in touch with the right people, and the next thing I knew a reporter from the Kansas City Star was interviewing me. At the time I had no idea it would end up on the front page, much less on a somewhat-commemorative "National champion University of Kansas basketball team returns home to big parade" issue that was surely in the eyes of many people who wouldn't otherwise pick up the paper. (That a picture of me, someone who would rather watch paint dry than sit through a basketball game, is likely to end up on the walls of hundreds of KU fans is particularly delicious.)

[6]: <http://papersplease.org/wp/2008/03/31/id-still-not-required-to-fly/>

I feel pretty strongly about this issue and hope that you'll give it at least a little consideration.

If you're so inclined, please read on for my best newspaper-friendly summary of why I've been doing what I do. I submitted this to the Star today and very much hope that it is published by them as an op-ed. Judging by the interest the story seems to have generated in KC, I think there's a good chance that they will do so. If they do, I'm going to do what I can to get one of the Seattle papers to pick it up, and I also have a connection at the AP who might be interested.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

While flying out of Kansas City last year, I saw TSA signs at the airport stating that travelers must present government-issued photo identification. I knew that wasn't true, and I didn't show ID. I neither caused trouble nor slowed things down for other travelers when I asserted my right to travel without checking in with the government by identifying myself; I was taken out of line to be screened along with other "selectees".

After returning home, I filed a complaint with TSA. I received a response from Jeanne Oliver, Associate Director of TSA Office of the Executive Secretariat. She did not indicate that TSA would fix the problem, but did confirm that if a traveler is "unwilling or unable to produce a valid form of ID, the traveler is required to undergo additional screening at the checkpoint to gain access to the secured area of the airport." People who show ID receive a less-thorough screening. Any time saved when people volunteer to show ID comes at the cost of less effectively checking them for dangerous items.

We're being lied to about federal air travel policies by airport security at KCI and other locations, and it's not making us any safer.

Government agents requiring people to show ID before boarding a flight wouldn't make air travel any safer. It's relatively easy to get a fake ID, and regardless of how much technology we put into ID cards, a criminal will be able to purchase a fake one or steal someone else's identity and get a real ID with his picture and the other person's name.

We can and do call upon TSA to ensure safe air travel by preventing people from carrying dangerous items onto flights. TSA's current practice of allowing people who show ID through security with less screening than other people receive contributes to a false sense of security, breeding complacency among passengers, crew, and TSA agents.

I acknowledge that the inconvenience of showing ID is trivial. My concern is that a requirement to show ID would allow the government to monitor and restrict our travel. Our courts have established that people in this country have the right to travel and associate without being monitored or stopped by the government unless they have been convicted of committing a crime or are suspected -- with good reason -- of having committed a crime. They have ruled that we cannot set up roadblocks and checkpoints to stop everyone who passes just to catch the few who have done something wrong, or to find the few who are suspected of intending to do something wrong.

Recent Congressional testimony suggests that over 900,000 names are now on the United States' so-called "terrorist watch list". Many people who have found themselves on the list are U.S. citizens who have no ties to any terrorist organization. There is no appeals process for those who have been blacklisted. We are not allowed to know who is on the list, who put them there, or why they were put on it.

If these people pose a danger to others, why don't we go arrest them instead of waiting for them to present themselves at the airport, then hassling them or preventing them from flying before sending them on their way?

Even if we could prune the list so that it included only people who actually pose a "known" threat, potential terrorists could probe the system by sending people on innocent trips, observing which ones were subjected to additional screening, then later sending the other people on a real terrorist mission. Restricting travel based on an ID check simply cannot improve security.

People can show their ID to whomever they want, whenever they want to do so, if it makes them feel safer. My doing so doesn't make me feel any safer. When a government agent asks me to show my papers or searches me, I feel *un*safe. It reminds me of descriptions of life in the former USSR, where identification was required upon demand, movement was restricted, and people either kept quiet and did as they were told, or risked disappearing into the night, never to be heard from again.

When I see security guards in airports wearing what look like police uniforms and demanding identification, and police on our streets wearing what look like military uniforms, driving DHS-grant-funded armored vehicles, marching in riot gear with machine guns, pepper-spraying and
Tasing peaceful demonstrators, it makes me feel like I live in what is approaching a totalitarian state.

Catholic Church Employed 6,000 Forced Laborers In WWII

2008-04-22T05:45:00.001-07:00

This recently came across Free Internet Press:

Germany's Catholic Church employed almost 6,000 forced laborers during World War II, according to new research commissioned by the church. The report highlights the church's ambivalent relationship with the Nazis. The German Catholic church made no secret of the fact that it employed forced labor under the Nazis and commissioned research into its history in 2000. That research was published on Tuesday, providing detailed figures on the numbers of forced laborers used and underscoring the church's "historical burden," according to Cardinal Karl Lehmann, the bishop of Mainz. Records collected from the Catholic dioceses over the last seven years showed a total of 4,829 civilian laborers and 1,075 prisoners of war worked in 776 Catholic institutions such as hospitals, homes and monasteries, on church-owned farms or gardens during World War II. They came mainly eastern territories overrun by the Nazis such as Poland, Ukraine and the Soviet Union.

Original Source: http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16141

This is more evidence towards refuting a point Dinesh D'Souza, and other supernaturalists (people who believe in a power greater than the physical laws of nature, like the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or Allah, Zeus, Vishnu, etc) make. They posit that religious atrocities, though abhorrent, pale in comparison to what atheists have done throughout history.

Supernaturalists tend to claim that their deity created morality and without their deity there is no morality. I grant that there is some divergence among supernaturalists with respect to this point. Some supernaturalists seem to claim that their deity's morality is "poured out" like a bowl of morality soup on the population thus giving everyone a little morality, but the true believers get the whole meal deal. They tend to explain away disgusting things like priests molesting little boys, stealing from old pensioners and perverting the minds of young children in cult like environments by saying that the perpetrators aren't *TRUE* believers.

The hardliner/fundamentalists tend towards the idea that without following their deity's dogma, you won't have any morality at all, and as a result you get Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, etc. It's a well worn, tried and true argument. It's also a very weak one. There are more ways to counter it than I have time to put here in this blog entry.

Although there is ample proof to show that the Catholic church was complicit in Hitler's genocidal agenda (what I re-posted above is probably only the tip of the iceberg), it can be argued that Hitler was unaffected by the church's position and that they were just a convenient ally. In other words, so postulate the hardline supernaturalists, Hitler was an atheist and had no morality, so he had no problem doing what he did.

Christopher Hitchens addressed this issue extremely well in his book "God is not Great". In a nutshell, Christopher showed that the idea that atheism leads to Hitler (and Stalin, Pol Pot, etc) is absurd. Those genocidal dictators simply mirror dogma of the sort you find in supernaturalistic worship. They utilize certain supernaturalist sects, like Christianity, in order to get utility out of it. What you do *NOT* find is a genocidal dictator advocating on the side of atheism as part of their platform. He gives plenty of examples and accessible source references, go read his book if you're curious. Why is that relevant?

What we know for sure is that no genocidal dictator could do what they do without the support of a certain cornerstone of the population. The easiest way to access this population cornerstone is by mirroring the ritualistic dogma you find in supernaturalism. By adhering to supernaturalistic dogma, just the opposite of atheism, a talented dictator can take control, and over time do terrible things. Regardless of the beliefs of the genocidal dictator, the population cornerstone, who has sincere supernaturalistic beliefs, is the unwitting enabler of the dictator.

It is not the dictator that does the real damage. This idea makes a lot of people uncomfortable. If people weren't so credulous, Adolf Hitler would have very likely ended his life in old age with a lot of weird ideas in his head and nothing more than a failed career as a painter to show for it. Instead, as we're finding out more and more with evidence like the Catholic church's complicity in the holocaust, it's the overly credulous believers who have underdeveloped critical thinking skills that are the biggest dangers to humanity.

2007 Tax Hilarity

2008-04-06T06:19:00.001-07:00

Saw this one while doing my taxes for 2007:

Do you want to designate $3 to a fund that provides campaign money to presidential candidates?
Note: Selecting Yes will not increase your taxes or reduce your refund.

Am I the only one who finds the "Note" hilarious?

(Yes, I realize it refers to the 2007 tax refund... but in a way, it almost doesn't...)

Communicating with Highly Physically Disabled People

2008-03-16T13:04:00.001-07:00

I am not a linguist, I am a mathematician, computer programmer, amateur electrical engineer and all around renaissance geek. I just finished reading the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It is a profoundly moving memoir dictated one letter at a time by Jean-Dominique Bauby, a stroke victim who suffered from locked-in syndrome.

Jean-Dominique was only able to communicate by blinking his left eye. An alphabet was developed that was re-ordered from the usual alphanumeric ordering, so that the most frequently used letters were at the beginning. To communicate, the speaker would cite each letter and Jean-Dominique would blink when the appropriate letter was said. Slowly, words would be built up and sentences would eventually form, conveying meaning. It was a tedious process and it had its drawbacks:

" "Want to play hangman?" asks Theophile, and I ache to tell him that I have enough on my plate playing quadriplegic. But my communication system disqualifies repartee: the keenest rapier grows dull and falls flat when it takes several minutes to thrust it home. By the time you strike, even you no longer understand what had seemed so witty before you started to dictate it letter by letter. So the rule is to avoid impulsive sallies. It deprives conversation of its sparkle, all those gems you bat back and forth like a ball - and I count this forced lack of humor one of the great drawbacks of my condition." (Pages 70 and 71, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)

Since Jean-Dominique was a native French speaker, the letter frequencies in his special alphabet were based on the French language. The alphabet looked like this:

E S A R I N T U L O M D P C F B V H G J Q Z Y X K W

For the English language, the letter frequencies (which can be found here) would be:

E T A O I N S H R D L C U M W F G Y P B V K J X Q Z

As I was learning this system, it occurred to me that there had to be a more efficient manner to do the same thing. The main problem appears to be that it takes a great deal of time to get to a letter deep into the alphabet. In addition, the deeper in the alphabet you go, the more likely it is that an error will happen thereby missing the intended letter and causing the letter selector to have to start again at the beginning.

In order to improve communications speed, I came up with this alternate "tabular" method:

E	A	N	D	W
T	I	R	M	B
O	H	U	P	X
S	C	Y	J	PH
L	G	K	Z	LY
F	V	Q	QU	RY

Note: Since the standard Latin alphabet has 26 letters, a six by five table left four empty spots. I chose letter pairs to fill those spots. The letter pairs were guessed at, as my brief searching was unable to turn up any letter pair frequency tables. I have no doubt that an exhaustive lexical analysis of the English language would turn up the true top four letter pairs. Some pairs like IE and EA are very common, but they are pretty cheap to create one letter at a time, so it's not worth using them in the far bottom corner where it takes more steps to get to them.

This alternative method works as a simple Cartesian coordinate system. That's fancy mathematics speak for "select the row and then select the column". To find the letter M, the letter selector starts at the top row and works down row by row, until the patient blinks when the second row is chosen. This means the patient could be interested in the letters T, I, R, M or B. The selector would then work across the columns until the patient blinks when the M character is chosen. In total, six stops were made to get to the M character. The old system would have required fourteen; more than twice as many. In addition, by locking the selector into a given row, the possibility for error is greatly reduced. If the selector picks the wrong row or misses the target letter, they will know they've done so because the patient never blinks by the end of the row. With the old system, the selector would have to go to the end of the entire alphabet to find that they've missed the letter.

To give you a better idea of the benefit of this system, here's the same table with the relative costs of getting to each letter added. The letter represents the target letter, the number represents the number of steps, or "cost", required to get to that letter and the number in parenthesis is the cost the old system required to get to that letter:

E - 2 (1)	A - 3 (3)	N - 4 (6)	D - 5 (10)	W - 6 (15)
T - 3 (2)	I - 4 (5)	R - 5 (9)	M - 6 (14)	B - 7 (20)
O - 4 (4)	H - 5 (8)	U - 6 (13)	P - 7 (19)	X - 8 (24)
S - 5 (7)	C - 6 (12)	Y - 7 (18)	J - 8 (23)	PH - 9 (27)
L - 6 (11)	G - 7 (17)	K - 8 (22)	Z - 9 (26)	LY - 10 (29)
F - 7 (16)	V - 8 (21)	Q - 9 (25)	QU - 10 (38)	RY - 11 (27)

Some immediate observations are that the letters E and T actually require one more step in this system than the old. In addition O and A cost the same in both systems. However, it should be noted that the overall cost savings is dramatic when you start creating whole words. For example. Let's take the following sentence (chosen from a random poster I saw at my Son's elementary school):

SEE JANE RUN

The cost breakdown is as follows:

Word	Old Cost	New Cost
See	9	9
Jane	33	17
Run	28	15

Thus with the old system, it costs 70 letter stops to spell the test sentence. With the system I am proposing, it only takes 41. It is also important to note that the word SEE costs the same in both systems, which is an example of how the extra step to find the letters E and T are quickly absorbed by economies elsewhere.

Potential improvements on this would be to re-arrange the alphabet on a per patient basis. Since everyone uses a slightly different subset of their native language's words, their letter frequencies would likely be slightly different. If available, recordings and writings from the patient created prior to becoming disabled could be analyzed to alter the table layout. However, after the patient starts using the table, I would suggest that it not be altered unless absolutely necessary, as a familiarity will have been built up that will be difficult to overcome to take advantage of newer efficiencies. It would be interesting to study whether or not patients adapt their vocabulary to the table, thus removing any need to alter the table to introduce efficiencies after being introduced to it.

A potential objection to altering the table on a per patient basis prior to being introduced to it, would be that each patient should use the same letter table to keep communications uniform. I would overcome this objection with the idea that patients will not be using this system to talk directly to each other. This system would only be meant to facilitate communication between a disabled patient and an able bodied person who can work the board. The able bodied person working the board, should be able to adapt to different boards for different patients, especially considering that the incremental improvements in communications speed will far outweigh any inconvenience to the board operator. In addition, there is no reason why the intermediary could not be a computer, thus allowing similarly disabled patients to communicate with each other in real time. I wonder if it would be a positive thing for a patient to share their feelings with someone in the same situation?

It is important to note that this system is only useful for persons who already have the ability to read and can process information relatively normally. It is also only useful to those that have the ability to consistently gesture in a singular fashion, such as an eye blink, or some other "single bit" manner. If multiple gestures can be clearly and consistently mastered, there are much faster ways of communicating than the system that I am proposing. It would be very interesting to be able to study systems that apply to various numbers of feedback bits from the patient. As a general rule, the greater number of feedback bits available from the patient, the more robust and efficient the communication. I should coin the term CFB - Consistent Feedback Bits. A basic eye blink would be one CFB. An eye blink and a finger twitch, would be two CFBs and so on. The various systems of communicating could be indexed by CFBs. A specialist could assess the patients CFBs and perhaps use therapies to expand the number of CFBs, and then a system of communication could be chosen that best fits their unique situation. Again, many of these systems of communications would fall apart if the patient is simply cognitively unable to process information.

I believe that this system requires the ability to see out of at least one eye, but could possibly be used with a blind patient as long as they could hear well enough to memorize the table and give "single bit" feedback as they were learning. If the patient were blind and deaf, it may still be possible to communicate as long as they had relatively normal information processing abilities and could feedback to indicate to their teacher where they were in the learning process.

With an advanced enough computer, this could all be done automatically. It would not be that difficult to train a computer to analyze when an eye has blinked or a similar "single bit" gesture has occurred. Lights could be used on the selection table (or sounds if the patient was blind) to work through the table. Even further, if recordings of the patient's voice could be found, the patients words could be synthesized in their own voice! The only drawback would be that the table would have to be enhanced to include commands like "turn on/off synthesizer", numbers and some punctuation.

Going even further, a computer could learn to discriminate multiple gestures from what appears to be a "single bit" gesture to a casual human observer. For example, to most people an eye blink is an eye blink. A finger flex is a finger flex. To a computer, who can analyze millions of pixels of video data per second, the subtlest differences in movements can be discerned. Given enough training, a computer could learn to pick up on the many different shades of meaning a patient could build into a simple "single bit" gesture. For example, a patient could decide that a fast blink means one thing and a slow blink means another. Or perhaps a fast half blink means something different from a slow half blink. Or perhaps, the patient can actually move their eye, so a blink and a move to the right could mean something different from a half slow blink with a move to the left.

To be sure, it would be a long and arduous process for the computer and patient (and technician(s)) to get this language straight. Once it was learned though, it seems entirely likely that a completely paralyzed patient who only had the use of one eye (or some other single bit gesture), could communicate using a computer as quickly as you and I can with our voices.

I considered several other systems for organizing the alphabet in a manner that would require the fewest number of steps to get to a given letter. All of those that I could come up with were either too complex, or communication efficiency wasn't high enough. If you're interested, I'd be happy to talk over some of the ideas I've abandoned.

Oh, and if you've got a pile of money and want to see something tangible developed along the lines of what I have just described, feel free to throw it at me. I would love nothing more than to be able to work on this full time.

PZ Myers: The Courtiers Reply

2008-02-25T16:27:00.001-08:00

I found this to be absolutely brilliant in its construction and execution. It echoes a sentiment I have often felt when reading logical deconstructions of Atheist works by inconvenienced believers. Except in this case, it puts into words what I have only been able to internally articulate in vague emotional terms.

Reposted from http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/12/the_courtiers_reply.php:

There's a common refrain in the criticisms of Dawkins' The God Delusion^{(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)} that I've taken to categorizing with my own private title—it's so common, to the point of near-unanimous universality, that I've decided to share it with you all, along with a little backstory that will help you to understand the name.

I call it the Courtier's Reply. It refers to the aftermath of a fable.

I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship. He has apparently not read the detailed discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the exquisite and exotic leathers of the Emperor's boots, nor does he give a moment's consideration to Bellini's masterwork, On the Luminescence of the Emperor's Feathered Hat. We have entire schools dedicated to writing learned treatises on the beauty of the Emperor's raiment, and every major newspaper runs a section dedicated to imperial fashion; Dawkins cavalierly dismisses them all. He even laughs at the highly popular and most persuasive arguments of his fellow countryman, Lord D. T. Mawkscribbler, who famously pointed out that the Emperor would not wear common cotton, nor uncomfortable polyester, but must, I say must, wear undergarments of the finest silk.

Dawkins arrogantly ignores all these deep philosophical ponderings to crudely accuse the Emperor of nudity.
Personally, I suspect that perhaps the Emperor might not be fully clothed — how else to explain the apparent sloth of the staff at the palace laundry — but, well, everyone else does seem to go on about his clothes, and this Dawkins fellow is such a rude upstart who lacks the wit of my elegant circumlocutions, that, while unable to deal with the substance of his accusations, I should at least chide him for his very bad form.

Until Dawkins has trained in the shops of Paris and Milan, until he has learned to tell the difference between a ruffled flounce and a puffy pantaloon, we should all pretend he has not spoken out against the Emperor's taste. His training in biology may give him the ability to recognize dangling genitalia when he sees it, but it has not taught him the proper appreciation of Imaginary Fabrics.

I'm afraid that when I read H. Allen Orr's criticism of The God Delusion in the NY Review of Books, all that popped into my head was a two-word rebuttal: Courtier's Reply. You would be amazed at how many of the anti-Dawkins arguments can be filed away under that category. That's all you'll get from me on Orr's complaint—it's another Courtier's Reply. If you want a more detailed dissection, Jason Rosenhouse provides it.

Not exactly the target demographic...

2008-02-07T15:42:00.001-08:00

Can you spot what's wrong with this picture? Hint: Check the advertisement on the right side... Whoops... In their defense, they probably use an advertising syndicator and don't have much control over what appears. However, you'd think that someone would go to at least a little bit of trouble to research their target demographic...

Poor Choice of Words...

2008-02-07T11:32:00.001-08:00

This unemployment benefits appeal was forwarded to me by the writer's sister. I've redacted all of the identifying information with X's to protect the innocent (and the guilty). While I do not condone violence, including threats of violence, perceived or otherwise, I can empathize with her frustration...

Okay, so my sister...whose name has been partially changed, wrote the letter below which earned her a call from the XXXXXXXX County Bomb Squad Sheriff today. The funny part (besides the fact that they called her) is that it's been two weeks since she faxed this to the unemployment office. The sheriff said that he sympathized with her letter, as did all the other's who had read it.

Enjoy...
XXXXXXX

Ima D. Bomber
XXXX XXXXXXX XXXX
XXXXX, WA XXXXX
(XXX) XXX-XXXX
SS# XXX-XX-XXXX
Decision to appeal: denied benefits
Reason for appeal: I believe I had a "good cause for quitting".

        My decision for quitting my job is quite clear. My husband was laid off from work, we were unable to pay the rent on my single income and we were subsequently evicted from our home. As I had no way to house or feed my children, I was forced to separate from my husband and travel across the state to move in with my sister's family (including my mother who also resides at that address).

        I put in my two week notice to my employer, with every intention of fulfilling my obligation. As I found that telling this woman I hardly knew that I was being evicted from my home was far too embarrassing, I told her that I was moving to my sister's to help care for my ailing mother. This was not entirely honest but, as my mother suffers from anxiety and a heart condition, I found this a more acceptable reason for my departure During my lunch break on 11/19/07, however, I received a distressing call from my children regarding a lack of food in my house and knowing that I had no way to pay for groceries, I knew I would have to move more quickly than planned. At this time I had finally reached my breaking point and had a complete emotional melt down. Knowing that I could not return to work with my face blotchy and my eyes full of tears, I told the supervisor that I was suffering from a migraine headache and could no longer work that day and, furthermore, I had to pack my belongings quickly so I would not be able to return to work for my remaining days. Although your office found this reason for quitting my job both "plausible and/or compelling", it did not fit into one of your nine clearly defined reasons for "good cause" and my benefits were denied.

        Since that time I have gone through a number of emotions. Starting with utter despair, continuing on to a feeling that I can only relate as a suicide bomber and finally to an almost uncontrollable anger. I am unable to make my car payment or my car insurance payment and will be unable to get to a job, even when I get one. So, yesterday, I found myself applying for state assistance. Now I have gone from being a productive member of society that pays my taxes, to a user of state resources set aside for those who can not provide for themselves. Now YOUR taxes are being used to support me even though I am quite capable to supporting myself, but needed a bit of help to get by. I believed I was paying into an unemployment system that would provide for me should this unfortunate event arise and I find that they are not.

        I have been paying taxes since I began my first job at age sixteen and have only once before received unemployment benefits. During that time I had been laid off because the government did not find it necessary to supply enough funds to provide my patients, the mentally ill, with a nurse. My union fought bitterly and used my story as a compelling reason for the government to stand up and take action to help those suffering from mental illness. Again, I find that the government has no problem taking my money, but has no intentions of using it to help me or my fellow Americans in any way, other than to support immigrants (noting that all government forms come with a variety languages to choose from) and a war against those who wish to immigrate here. I am proud to be an American. I know a lot of them and they are generally a good people. The people in charge of the bigger picture, however, are obviously taking advantage of our general good nature and at some point this MUST come to a stop.

        I have considered bombing target areas, but find that I do not have the stomach to kill innocent people like yourself who are just trying to do their own job and take care of their own families. Nor do I have the availability or knowledge to use a weapon large enough to make any impact that would draw the governments' attention. I have seriously contemplated suicide and hope that you will think of me whenever you hear of someone who has literally come to the end of their rope. The irony in all of this is that if I proceeded down either of these paths I would probably end up in prison or a mental hospital and either way the American tax dollar would be paying to support me even though the government could not provide for a few months unemployment that I paid for in advance.

        So, if this letter falls into your hands and you find yourself saying, "I would love to make a change, but I don't have that kind of power." do not despair. I have been in your position, wishing I could do more for my patients with mental illness and finding that the government has more money wasted in meetings, paper work and red tape than in truly trying to find what will work best to aid the American people and implementing it.   All I ask is that you pass this letter on to your boss and if he/she finds himself/herself saying, "This is totally out of my hands." then they should continue to pass this letter up the chain of command. I know eventually this will fall into the hands of someone who says, "It is my job to make sure that my boss is not bothered with this kind of thing." To that person I would like to say, "Please file this between your butt cheeks. Because you are part of the problem and not part of the solution!"

Sincerely,

Ima D. Bomber (aka #XXX-XX-XXXX)

Fear...

2008-02-04T14:01:00.001-08:00

This video speaks volumes...

Mounting Flat Panel Monitors

2008-01-27T13:23:00.001-08:00

After getting rid of my CRT monitors in favor of flat panel monitors, I couldn't believe how much space I freed up on my desk. I'm still a big fan of CRT monitors because they simply have a better picture, much in the same way that a vinyl record gives a deeper and richer musical experience as compared to a compact disc recording. However, the differences between CRTs and flat panels are becoming smaller and smaller and, for my needs, the space saving attributes exceed any complaint I may have about quality differences.

I recently decided to take it one step further by mounting the flat panels to the wall in front of my desk. Not knowing the first thing about how to do this, I googled for the manufacturer of the monitor thinking they had some sort of "wall mount kit". Well... they did have a nice kit, that enabled the monitors to swivel on a ball joint, but it was about $100 before shipping, which comes to a little less than 50% of the cost of one of my monitors. I could buy a third monitor for what the mounts cost. In addition, I don't want my monitors to swivel on a ball mount. I wanted something that would mount my monitors nice and flush to the wall to free up as much space as possible.

I couldn't find anything else simply because I'd never dealt with flat panels before. On a whim I went to my friendly neighborhood Video Only. I figured they get questions like that all the time. I wasn't optimistic though, as I assumed that each manufacturer had a different mounting scheme for their monitors. You could have knocked me over with a feather when the sales guy informed me that, with the exception of Phillips, every flat panel monitor and TV used a standardized mounting scheme! Yay for standards :-)

About ten minutes later I walked out of the store, the proud owner of two new "Sanus Systems Vision Mount Flat Panel TV Wall Mount" kits. Model number was VMFL1b-01. These babies were exactly what I needed. Total cost: about $25.00 each. I got out of there for about $55.00 including tax. The wall mount went from about 50% of the cost of the monitor to about 12.5%.

(Actually Video Only had one in stock and had to order in the other one. They called me the next morning and said it had arrived about 5 hours earlier than they'd promised. We managed to get over to pick it up that night about a minute after they closed. The sales guy doing after hours inventory saw me run up to the door, and was nice enough to run back and grab it for me, rather than force me to come back the next day. I have nothing but praise for Video Only. These guys really work hard for their business. The deals are fair, the sales people are knowledgeable and they don't annoy you with junk you don't want.)

Big Pharmaceutical

2008-01-09T15:06:00.001-08:00

Surprise surprise, the pharmaceutical industry spends twice as much on marketing as it does on research and development. The details can be found in this article. I really wish this got more press than it did. At least I don't remember hearing a lot about it from the mainstream press.

CentOS 5 + Tomcat5 + Java 6

2007-12-20T10:56:00.001-08:00

I just installed a CentOS 5 server and I wanted to run Tomcat5 with the Sun Java 6 JRE, not the JRE that's packaged with CentOS 5. Naturally everything broke. It took about an hour of poking and debugging, but in the end the fix was surprisingly simple. Here's how I did it:

Removed all of the original java packages (java-*, gcc-java glib-java)
Installed the JDK 6 RPM downloaded from the Sun website.
Create two symbolic links:

ln -s /usr/java/latest /usr/lib/jvm/java
ln -s /usr/java/latest /usr/java/default-exports

That's it.

If you want to run Tomcat5 on port 80, it needs to have root privileges to bind to a low order port. In its default configuration Tomcat5 cannot do this because it is a pure Java application and must run cross-platform. Dropping privileges is not platform agnostic so Tomcat5 does not support it.

It is dangerous to run Tomcat5 as root, so only do it if you know what you are doing! I took this approach on this server because it is an intranet application server that is not exposed to the outside world. Do not do this if you are exposing a Tomcat server to the outside world...

Here's what to do:

Update the /etc/tomcat5/server.xml file and look for <Connector port="8080" Change the 8080 to 80.
In the file /etc/sysconfig/tomcat5 change "#TOMCAT_USER=tomcat" to "TOMCAT_USER=root"

If you are exposing your server to the outside world, your best bet is to do it in a way that it is only root while it is binding to the low order port. Here is a tutorial that appears to explain how to do this. Your other option is to run Apache on the same server and use it as a proxy. The upside to this approach is that you can use Apache to serve static content, like images, more efficiently than with Tomcat.

Advanced Extraterrestrial Intelligence

2007-12-13T14:24:00.001-08:00

Consider three conjectures:

The universe is the same age for all objects within it.
Chemical reactions between two chemicals takes the same amount of time on Earth as they do on any other potentially habitable planet. (Corollary: physics is the same on all habitable planets)
Human intelligence on Earth evolved as fast as the underlying chemistry could support it.

If those conjectures are true, then I would hypothesize that any other habitable planets with intelligent life contain an intelligence that is pretty much equal to ours. This would be a reasonable explanation for why we haven't (yet) seen evidence of extraterrestrial intelligent life.

Conversely, if their intelligence is far more advanced, then we would have to question what happened during our development to stunt our growth.

Mike Huckabee - Crazy Nutjob? You decide...

2007-11-08T00:04:00.001-08:00

The Huffington Post, while reporting on the values voter conference, noted this little gem :

"Though no candidate emerged from the Summit as a clear Christian right favorite, the badly underfunded former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister Mike Huckabee won over the audience with his insistence that banning abortion would put an end to America's illegal immigration problem." (emphasis mine)

Anti-abortion comment: Check

Anti-illegal immigration comment: Check

Tying both together using incomprehensible logic: Jackpot!

Looks like Huckabee must have read the memo:
(Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-11/hu-rof110707.php):

Public release date: 7-Nov-2007

Contact: Emily Simon
esimon@fas.harvard.edu
617-496-7208
Harvard University

Roots of Fundamentalism traced to 16th-century Bible translations

Researcher finds that reading was a 'tightrope of terror' for early Protestants

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 7, 2007 -- The English Reformation—heyday of religious change—spurred a fundamentalist approach to Bible reading, according to new research by a Harvard professor.

“Evangelical reading habits after 1525 were disciplinary, punishing and even demeaning,” says James Simpson, Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English in Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

In 1525, Protestant reformer William Tyndale translated the Bible into early modern English. Scholars have widely hailed that moment as a liberating step for the literate public, who could suddenly read the Bible on their own terms—without the constraints of priestly interpretation.

Simpson disagrees.

“The 16th-century moment was not the foundation of liberalism, as many historians have maintained, but rather the foundation of fundamentalism,” he says. “Anyone who wants to understand how fundamentalism is a product of the modern era must look to its birth in the 16th century.”

Tracing the history of biblical translations between 1525 and 1547, or from Tyndale to the death of Henry VIII, Simpson argues that reading in this era became a program of punishment that left believers “persecuted and paranoid.” His argument is the focus of a forthcoming book titled “Burning to Read: English Fundamentalism and its Reformation Opponents” (Harvard University Press).

“Evangelicals did not believe that you could be saved through good works, so they looked for signs that the decision had gone their way,” Simpson says. “Reading became the locus for salvation or damnation—it was an intense experience in which your eternal fate would be decided.”

Prologues to the Bible as well as polemical works helped Simpson to illuminate what the reading experience would have been like for commoners in the 16th century. Tyndale’s prologue to the 1525 Bible, for example, highlights the kind of stern warnings offered to private readers.

“If you fail to read it properly, then you begin your just damnation. If you are unresponsive … God will scourge you, and everything will fail you until you are at utter defiance with your flesh,” the prologue reads.

According to Simpson, such rhetoric reveals the fundamentalist nature of these early translations, and indicates the extent to which reformers repudiated individual interpretation.

“Reading became a tightrope of terror across an abyss of predestination,” Simpson says. “It was destructive for evangelicals, because it did not invite freedom but rather fear of misinterpretation and damnation.”

Simpson argues that the history of evangelical reading has important implications for politics in today’s world.

"The birth of fundamentalism marked a new kind of modernity which still influences religion today," he says. "As we enter a new period of fundamentalist reading, we had better understand the ways in which the last period in the West produced 150 years of European violence."

Daylight Savings Discovery

2007-11-05T00:56:00.001-08:00

I was resetting the clock on our stove yesterday and noticed that it had a "Sabbath Mode" setting. I've never heard of this before so I googled it (source: http://www.star-k.org/kashrus/kk-cooking-ovenyomtov.htm):

Sabbath Mode Ovens
(The Following Applies to Yom Tov Only)

Sabbath mode ovens are designed to bypass many of the practical and halachic problems posed by the modern oven.

For the Sabbath mode ovens with the random delay feature, one may raise or lower the temperaturet of the oven without concern for the heating element or glow plug. This is because the computer does not directly react to the change in settings. The oven will randomly look to the setting and adjust the temperature. This means that turning on the heating element or glow plug is only an indirect result of your action (grama). Therefore, since a grama is permitted on Yom Tov one may actually adjust the temperature. For the Sabbath mode ovens without the random delay, the temperature may be raised when power is flowing to the oven and lowered when power is not flowing to the oven as indicated by the readout on the display.6

Another issue is that some ovens can be programmed to turn off at a preset time. This feature is known as timed bake. In many models, when the time has elapsed and the oven shuts off, it will sound a bell or buzzer or display a readout (such as the word “end”) to indicate that the oven is off. On some models this buzzer or display will continue until it is manually turned off or until the door is opened, which is not permitted on Yom Tov. On those Sabbath mode models that include the timed bake feature, the buzzer or readout is eliminated. (Please note that once the timed bake goes off, the oven cannot be used again for that Yom Tov.)

As a safety feature new ovens are designed to shut off after being on for twelve hours. Although this safety feature is very important, it creates a problem when preparing food for the daytime meal which is more than twelve hours after the onset of Yom Tov. For all types of Sabbath mode ovens, the twelve hour cutoff is bypassed.

In Sabbath mode ovens, the door plunger switch is disabled so that it will not directly cause any electronic reaction.

The oven cavity light for some Sabbath mode ovens will remain on or off, depending on how Sabbath mode was entered. For other Sabbath mode ovens, the light must be turned on at the control panel before entering the Sabbath mode, or the bulb must be unscrewed.

It is important to note that not all Sabbath mode models offer the same features. If you have a Star-K certified Sabbath mode oven, please check the appliance section of our website at www.star-k.org to see which features are available on your model, or contact our office at 410-484-4110.7

The following are some commonly asked questions about oven and stovetop use on Yom Tov:

Why is one allowed to push a button on the keypad of a Sabbath mode oven on Yom Tov?

Pushing a button on an oven, when in Sabbath mode, on Yom Tov that starts a process internal to the computer without any heat, light, sound, movement or anything tangible that can be perceived, is not considered a melacha and is permitted on Yom Tov. When a melacha is finally accomplished, namely turning on the heating element in the oven, it is accomplished through a grama, (an indirect act because there is a random delay of between 15 and 25 seconds before the heating elements can be activated). This grama is permitted on Yom Tov, but not on Shabbos.

Can one turn on a Sabbath mode oven on Yom Tov or Shabbos?

Not on Yom Tov, and certainly not on Shabbos. This is because it directly causes the display to change which is prohibited.

Can I set the timed bake feature on Yom Tov?

For those ovens that have the timed bake feature included in the Sabbath mode, it can only be set from before Yom Tov. This will allow for a one time usage. Once the oven shuts off, it cannot be used again for that Yom Tov. One may not set the timed bake on Yom Tov (and certainly not on Shabbos).

May one turn off their stove or oven to conserve energy on Yom Tov?

No. One is only permitted to lower the setting when it is necessary for the preparation of the Yom Tov’s food.

May one lower the setting on a Sabbath Mode oven even when it is not for the benefit of the food?

Those Sabbath Mode ovens that are equipped with a random delay may be lowered on Yom Tov. This is because the random delay makes the reaction of the oven to lower the temperature a grama (indirect action). Although we only permit extinguishing or lowering a flame where it is needed for food, this only applies where one does the action. Here, where the computer will lower the temperature later on as a reaction to your instructions, it is called gram kibui and it is permitted.

Can I open and close a standard oven door at any time on Yom Tov?

One may open and close the door of an oven on Yom Tov to process the food as needed if this does not cause a light or icon to go on directly because the door was opened. On Shabbos there is a problem with opening the door because you will cause additional burning in the oven. This is prohibited on Shabbos8 and permitted on Yom Tov.

Must I wait until I see the glow plug glowing to open the door to my gas oven on Yom Tov?

As a rule the oven will not immediately go on because of the reduction of heat created by your opening of the door. Therefore, even though the oven will eventually go on because its door was opened, this is not a direct result of your action. The additional burning is permitted on Yom Tov.

Regarding raising the temperature of a gas oven on Yom Tov, one may not do so unless they know that the glow plug is glowing and the display will not change. This is because raising the temperature setting will direcly cause the glow plug to go on if it is otherwise off, creating a problem of molid. However, if the oven is cerified with sabbath mode that has a random delay feature built in, and this was initiated before Yom Tov, one may adjust the temperature on Yom Tov.

It wasn't me, but...

2007-10-17T04:40:00.001-07:00

So if you got caught in a colossal backup this morning on I-5 going North through Federal Way, I didn't cause it, but I was involved... You're probably going to want to sit down for this one...

I'm making my way through the I-5 grind this morning, as usual. The wet roads and drizzle were making the usual commute even slower. Traffic is doing the accordion thing the whole way. There's no point in changing lanes or caring about who's passing who, so I move into the middle lane and throw on NPR. Remember, it's slippery out and Seattle drivers do weird things when the road gets wet so I'm trying to keep plenty of distance between the car in front of me...

All of a sudden, *WHAM* someone glances off of my rear bumper. I look behind me and notice that rather than pulling over to the right so we can exchange information, the car appears to be ... moving past me to my left! So now I'm thinking it's probably some drunk driver who didn't notice that they hit me. But as it drives past me, I look into the car and ... *THERE'S NO ONE IN THE CAR*!

I did a double take and confirmed it; the car was *COMPLETELY EMPTY*. Could it be some remote control experiment gone horribly bad?!?!?!

I lose track of the car for a second while I'm fumbling with my emergency flashers, and then notice serveral cars are pulling over to the side. Clearly I'm not the only one involved so I pull over with the rest of the group. We all get out of our cars and confirm that, yes, the car was indeed without a driver or any other human occupant!

One of the drivers goes walking back to the end of the line of cars and actually locates the driver of the "ghost car" and pieces together the story. Apparently the driver, who turns out to be 4 months pregnant, decided that the brakes on her car didn't feel right. Rather than pull the car over and call for help, she bailed out of the car in the middle of I-5 morning rush hour traffic, crossed the HOV lane *ON FOOT* and let the car drive on by itself... empty... through morning rush hour traffic...

After sorting it all out, I asked the state patrol officer if this was the most bizarre accident she'd ever seen, and she shook her head and said yes...

Death with Dignity Slippery Slope Fallacy

2007-10-03T04:05:00.001-07:00

The state of Oregon has an assisted suicide law that is called "Death with Dignity". This law was enacted twice by citizens initiative. It was also upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in Gonzales vs. State of Oregon.

Opponents of assisted suicide have a spectrum of reasons why they're against it. Mostly they consist of:

Euthanasia would not only be for people who are "terminally ill"
Euthanasia can become a means of health care cost containment
Euthanasia will become non-voluntary
Euthanasia is a rejection of the importance and value of human life

(Source: http://www.euthanasia.com/argumentsagainsteuthanasia.html)

First of all euthanasia is a clever choice of words. This is a classic debate topic where word choice is used to shift the argument. Let's be clear when we say that euthanasia is not assisted suicide. They're different.

Assisted suicide is where a medical professional (MD or OD) enables an informed consenting adult to end their own life in a humane and dignified manner. Euthanasia is the same but a medical professional does the work of actually ending the persons life.

Addressing the issues outlined above are these recent studies:

26-September-2007 Doctor-aided suicide: no slippery slope
26-September-2007 No evidence physician-assisted death leads to 'slippery slope'
28-September-2007 Vulnerable groups are not at higher risk of physician-assisted death

The takeaway message is that as of 2007, the concerns brought up by assisted suicide opponents are provably unfounded.

Best Bible Synopsis Ever

2007-09-20T13:32:00.001-07:00

Probably a bit inflammatory, but funny nonetheless... Found over at atheism.com message boards, posted by "His Noodly Appendage" on September 3, 2007:

"... therefore, a cosmic Jewish zombie who was his own father wants you to telepathically acknowledge him as your master so that he can remove an evil force from your soul that was put there when a talking snake convinced a rib-woman to eat the fruit of a magical tree."

Maslow's Future...

2007-09-03T15:38:00.001-07:00

Consider what you would do when all of your needs are met...

You do not hunger, you do not thirst, you are not tired and you require no adjustment to your health.

Your environment is safe, you fear no evil and you consider no dangers.

You feel listened to, your thoughts are validated and your affections are reciprocated.

You are good at your job, your peers recognize your expertise, and your employer fairly compensates you.

You understand your environment, your place in the world and have a sense of what is meaningful.

What do you do then?

I believe that this is the real goal of the Singularity Institute. Rather than deciding what we should do with AI (Artificial Intelligence), we are exploring what we should do with ourselves once we have AI.

My turn to explore...

Consider what a child does when left alone with little or no guidance. They tend to express themselves in creative ways. The more sophisticated the environment that contains the child, the more sophisticated the expression. Each new generation represents a departure from the last, but the amount of time they have remains constant, thus the quantity of expression remains more or less constant. The sophistication of the expression is the differentiating factor. I would postulate that this variable sophistication is a combination of generations building on where the previous left off and the general availability of different tools.

Fast forward... True AI exists and machines do all repetitive work. Food and drink cost nothing because they are delivered from ground to mouth by machines. A calculus of the body has been developed thus eliminating all forms of ailment. Shelter, again built and maintained by machines, has no imperfections and can be built, repaired, remodeled and rebuilt with no effort. The only value to be arbitrated will be the location of the property, not what is built on it. And finally, at the risk of stating the obvious, the machines that do the work are maintained by other machines.

What will it be like? On the downside, we'll probably see new forms of the problems of oversupply that we see today. Where today we see a growing percentage of people in first world countries becoming overweight, we'll see widespread laziness and entitlement. A corollary to that is how society will react to those problems. Where people today discriminate against those who appear overweight, they'll discriminate against those who seem to be lazy and entitled. In other words, oddly enough, peer pressure and discrimination based on controllable traits (think Paris Hilton), may be what saves the human race from sociopathy.

For those who do wish to contribute to society in this new world, there will be no need for manual labor skills. I believe, and we can already see this happening today, that those who wish to contribute will do so in a knowledge based world. Exploration will be a central goal of this new world. Where today you see only the best and brighest taking positions of research and exploration, in the future, society will be able to handle people at all levels who wish to self-actualize in this manner.

To summarize, humans are a curious species whose greatest delight is in homesteading. In America, homesteading once meant staking a claim on a piece of property in the "wild west". Later it meant staking a claim in the "American Dream". In the Internet age, we Homestead the Noosphere. In the future, when Maslow is quietly sleeping in the corner with nothing more to do, we'll finally be able to "Homestead Ourselves".

No Silver Bullet

2007-06-11T16:32:00.001-07:00

Owing to Fred Brook's seminal paper "No Silver Bullet", it has slowly become clear to me that concepts in general cannot be explained to another person without rigor equivalent to that which is put into implementing an idea within a computer program. Once you actually try to implement a computer program, you realize how deficient your description is. You have to mete out the computer program detail by detail, instruction by instruction. Carefully thinking through each line in solitude and with fellow programmers.

When describing a concept from one's brain to another, the problem is compounded when one considers that an instruction does not mean the same thing between any two people, even those from the same socio-ethnic groups. In the computing world, this is known as compatibility. In the computing world there are relatively few platforms, but the platforms are vastly different. In the human world, there are billions of different "platforms", but the differences are generally very small. In the computing world, it's very easy to tell if your language is not being understood by a platform. In the human world, it is nearly impossible most of the time to tell if your language is being truly understood by another person. It is further made difficult when you consider that all computer programs have incorrect logic, otherwise known as "bugs".

All of the compatibility variances and logical errors leads me to conclude that it is nearly impossible for people to communicate without learning a common dialect. Without a common dialect, at best, after a great deal of discourse, time and energy the true flavor of what one seeks to communicate can only start to come through.

A syntax exists for communication, but it is difficult to understand. It is known as the language of mathematics and the scientific method. It is invariant universally and communicates the same regardless of who is commanding it. It is with this language that answers about our place in the universe are starting to come into focus.

It is also with this syntax that those who previously claimed a monopoly on answers are being revealed as the charlatans that they are.

Optimal Shop Temperature

2007-06-01T01:06:00.001-07:00

According to Jim Whipple, most QA manuals indicate that the optimal machine shop temperature is 68 degrees F.

Developing on the Back Deck

2007-05-30T02:50:00.001-07:00

In honor of Jesse Keating, I present this development metaphor/cliche:

"Developing on the back deck"

It can have any one of three meanings:

1. Developing code through a terminal session running on one OS to a different OS, thus masking the things that suck about your desktop OS.

2. Pulling code out of your posterior region.

3. Working from home.

These people can't even wrap up genocide...

2007-05-10T01:26:00.001-07:00

Reposting from Crooks and Liars:

This is truly one of the most disgusting columns I have ever read. I refuse to link to any website from which she can benefit, but this hate-mongerer should be exposed for what she is, so I will link to the Salon post about her here. [..]Coulter's take on Darfur:

These people can't even wrap up genocide. We've been hearing about this slaughter in Darfur forever - and they still haven't finished. The aggressors are moving like termites across that country. It's like genocide by committee. Who's running this holocaust in Darfur, FEMA?

This is truly a war in which we have absolutely no interest.

She's asking for a more speedy genocide. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the voice of the Republican Party. Never–ever–let them try to untie themselves from this abomination of a partisan hack.

Prospect Theory

2007-05-05T09:12:00.001-07:00

I've been doing some reading about prospect theory lately. Prospect theory basically says that people tend to risk more to keep something than they risked in acquiring it in the first place. It also says that people are more willing to accept incremental gains that are a sure thing than they are willing to accept a chance at a huge gain. I'm sure a true connoisseur prospect theory will cringe at this over simplified explanation, but I think it makes the point.

To me, prospect theory is just another good example of the concept of least cost, plain and simple. Over billions of years of evolution, humans have gained the ability to determine which path will require the least amount of energy. When viewed objectively in the context of the modern world, where resources such as food are plentiful, some decisions that people make, which would seem perfectly rational 50,000 years ago, seem downright comical today.

I looked up...

2007-05-03T16:03:00.001-07:00

I looked up Narcisstic Personality Disorder on WikiPedia today. I was surprised to see the diagnostic criteria match so well with our current president (George W. Bush).

1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance
2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by other special people
4. requires excessive admiration
5. strong sense of entitlement
6. takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
7. lacks empathy
8. is often envious or believes others are envious of him or her
9. arrogant affect.

And while we're at it, Nancy Pelosi reminded us of this quote by King George prior to the 2000 elections:

“I think it’s important for the president to lay down a timetable as to how long our troops will be involved and when they will be withdrawn.”

Just doing my part...

2007-05-02T04:48:00.001-07:00

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

Rex84

2007-04-22T15:08:00.001-07:00

This image showed up on PostSecret today:

Here's some information on what's known about Rex 84: Wikipedia: Rex 84.

I found this on YouTube: Oliver North Questioned - Rex 84 Exposed During Iran Contra.

The details go on and on and on. It's a lot of dots that seem to be connecting themselves.

At the very least, it should serve to confront everyone with the simple question...

Are you prepared to go quietly?

VTech

2007-04-16T15:38:00.001-07:00

Would 32 people have died on the Virginia Tech campus today if VTech students were permitted to carry concealed weapons?

It's too late for the 32 who died. My thoughts are with their families tonight.

Reincarnation...

2007-03-21T02:54:00.001-07:00

Reincarnation isn't something I believe in, in the sense that I see no evidence that it's real. If there was repeatable evidence for it, then I'd believe in it. That being said, let's have a little fun...

Imagine that reincarnation does exist as a method of "training" the soul. Each incarnation in flesh refines and improves the soul a bit each time. Let's further presume that the idea is to improve sufficiently to the point that you can move to the "next level" (is this starting to sound familiar?). The question then:

At what periods of time in the known history of mankind would the soul have gotten the best education. Or in other words, in which period of history would the soul have gotten the most out of the least number of lives spent in flesh on Earth?

Before you answer quickly, it's important to realize that we have no idea what the criteria for judgement would be. What may seem like a wise and experienced soul (if indeed you could describe a soul that way without the resume of a life attached) may in reality be a naive soul.

Learned something new today...

2007-03-15T11:10:00.001-07:00

I was trying to do a shallow copy rather than a deep copy of a Java HashMap. As far as I can tell, you can't use clone() in Java 5 without getting unchecked cast warnings, period. The solution is to either ignore the warnings, or forgo the shallow copy and instantiate a new version of the object with the old version of the object as an argument (copy instantiation). Generics are cool and suck at the same time...

Reference: http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=559703&messageID=2982374

Trip to Long Beach

2007-03-05T13:21:00.001-08:00

Flew to Long Beach, California today. Met two very interesting people on the way here. One is just about to be promoted to manager of a famous "Seattle grunge era" band and the other is an aspiring author who was attending a writers conference on Whidbey island. Fascinating conversation. A great beginning to the second annual Boeing Software Conference.

In other news, my son is at that stage where it's hard to have Daddy away from home. I remember that stage well. He's got it a lot better than I did. My Dad was away for almost 4 months at a time a few times a year for most of my childhood. Of course, in my case, I got pretty numb to it. Hopefully that never happens to my Son. When I called home tonight, he made the comment that "I would pick weeds all day if you could come home right now". Darn near killed me... The thing he hates most in the world is to pick weeds. No one deserves a kid as good as my Son, least of all me.

Color Mappings

2007-02-28T05:42:00.001-08:00

Is it abnormal to see numbers and letters in colors? I've always seen them that way and the mappings have never changed. The mappings are:

1 - Black
2 - Green
3 - Yellow
4 - Orange
5 - Red
6 - Blue
7 - Yellow
8 - Green
9 - Brown

A - Red
B - Blue
C - White
D - Brown
E - Green
F - Brown
G - Yellowish Brown
H - Blueish Black
I - Black
J - Orange
K - Blueish Black
L - Greenish Black
M - 70's Yellow
N - Orange
O - White
P - Blueish Purple
Q - Squishy Green (don't ask, I can't explain it)
R - Orange
S - Light Blue
T - Black
U - Cream/Pink
V - Black with Green tints
W - Brown
X - Black
Y - Yellow
Z - Black

Lathe Stand

2007-02-14T05:27:00.001-08:00

Got my metal lathe mounted on the stand last night. I felt very mortal while doing it. Swinging 1100lbs of solid iron around isn't something you do lightly. I had to rent an engine lift to do the deed. The whole time I had it suspended in the air, my "mind's eye" could see it crashing to the ground. In the end, I managed to get it bolted down to the stand without a hitch!

Sorry about the quality of the pictures. I noticed only after taking them that the lens on my cellphone camera had a bunch of crud in it.

Baby Robbie

2007-02-11T04:40:00.001-08:00

My Brother-in-law and his girlfriend had their kid a week ago. He's a good looking little guy. Tragically, baby Robbie has had a brain bleed. It's clearly no fault of his parents, stuff like this just happens. Everyone is devastated. Robbie presents well in person, but it's too soon to tell the extent of the damage. We're all pulling for him. In talking with the neurologist, it's loosely analogous to an adult having a stroke. Naturally the therapy will be vastly different, but he has his extreme youth as a huge plus. His brain is well equipped and still rapidly developing. It's just a matter of time to determine what limitations he may have later in life. Robbie's Dad is periodically updating Robbie's status here.

Those Among Us...

2007-02-10T08:10:00.001-08:00

There are those among us who have seen a rational shift on the inside. Seek them out. They can help guide you.

The child who starts smoking at an early age and turns from the habit.

The alcoholic who finds life without alcohol.

The cult member who finds himself.

The vagrant who learns to seek stability.

The academic who has changed their mind based on new evidence.

The person who looks in the mirror and sees possibility of change.

The person who no longer fears.

What the Terrorists Want

2007-01-27T23:50:00.001-08:00

Reprinted with permission verbatim from the September 15, 2006 issue of Bruce Schneier's most excellent monthly newsletter CRYPTO-GRAM:

On August 16, two men were escorted off a plane headed for Manchester, England, because some passengers thought they looked either Asian or Middle Eastern, might have been talking Arabic, wore leather jackets, and looked at their watches -- and the passengers refused to fly with them on board. The men were questioned for several hours and then released.

On August 15, an entire airport terminal was evacuated because someone's cosmetics triggered a false positive for explosives. The same day, a Muslim man was removed from an airplane in Denver for reciting prayers. The Transportation Security Administration decided that the flight crew overreacted, but he still had to spend the night in Denver before flying home the next day. The next day, a Port of Seattle terminal was evacuated because a couple of dogs gave a false alarm for explosives.

On August 19, a plane made an emergency landing in Tampa, Florida, after the crew became suspicious because two of the lavatory doors were locked. The plane was searched, but nothing was found. Meanwhile, a man who tampered with a bathroom smoke detector on a flight to San Antonio was cleared of terrorism, but only after having his house searched.

On August 16, a woman suffered a panic attack and became violent on a flight from London to Washington, so the plane was escorted to the Boston airport by fighter jets. "The woman was carrying hand cream and matches but was not a terrorist threat," said the TSA spokesman after the incident.

And on August 18, a plane flying from London to Egypt made an emergency landing in Italy when someone found a bomb threat scrawled on an air sickness bag. Nothing was found on the plane, and no one knows how long the note was on board.

I'd like everyone to take a deep breath and listen for a minute.

The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets, or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.

And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want.

We're all a little jumpy after the recent arrest of 23 terror suspects in Great Britain. The men were reportedly plotting a liquid-explosive attack on airplanes, and both the press and politicians have been trumpeting the story ever since.

In truth, it's doubtful that their plan would have succeeded; chemists have been debunking the idea since it became public. Certainly the suspects were a long way off from trying: None had bought airline tickets, and some didn't even have passports.

Regardless of the threat, from the would-be bombers' perspective, the explosives and planes were merely tactics. Their goal was to cause terror, and in that they've succeeded. Imagine for a moment what would have happened if they had blown up ten planes. There would be canceled flights, chaos at airports, bans on carry-on luggage, world leaders talking tough new security measures, political posturing and all sorts of false alarms as jittery people panicked. To a lesser degree, that's basically what's happening right now.

Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat. And if we're terrified, and we share that fear, we help. All of these actions intensify and repeat the terrorists' actions, and increase the effects of their terror.

(I am not saying that the politicians and press are terrorists, or that they share any of the blame for terrorist attacks. I'm not that stupid. But the subject of terrorism is more complex than it appears, and understanding its various causes and effects are vital for understanding how to best deal with it.)

The implausible plots and false alarms actually hurt us in two ways. Not only do they increase the level of fear, but they also waste time and resources that could be better spent fighting the real threats and increasing actual security. I'll bet the terrorists are laughing at us.

Another thought experiment: Imagine for a moment that the British government arrested the 23 suspects without fanfare. Imagine that the TSA and its European counterparts didn't engage in pointless airline security measures like banning liquids. And imagine that the press didn't write about it endlessly, and that the politicians didn't use the event to remind us all how scared we should be. If we'd reacted that way, then the terrorists would have truly failed.

It's time we calm down and fight terror with anti-terror. This does not mean that we simply roll over and accept terrorism. There are things our government can and should do to fight terrorism, most of them involving intelligence and investigation -- and not focusing on specific plots.

But our job is to remain steadfast in the face of terror, to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to not panic every time two Muslims stand together checking their watches. There are approximately 1 billion Muslims in the world, a large percentage of them not Arab, and about 320 million Arabs in the Middle East, the overwhelming majority of them not terrorists. Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance political careers or increase a television show's viewership.

The surest defense against terrorism is to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to recognize that terrorism is just one of the risks we face, and not a particularly common one at that. And our job is to fight those politicians who use fear as an excuse to take away our liberties and promote security theater that wastes money and doesn't make us any safer.

Incidents:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=401419&in_page_id=1770 or http://tinyurl.com/k5njg
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/5267884.stm
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/17/national/main1906433.shtml
http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006/08/18/doctor-winnipeg.html or http://tinyurl.com/emnox
http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/06/08/16/100wir_port1.cfm
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/states/florida/counties/broward_county/15321870.htm or
http://tinyurl.com/s5oxe
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-08-20-fbi-passenger_x.htm
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/08/17/1155407916156.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-6024132,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5283476.stm
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=11211166

There have been many more incidents since I wrote this -- all false alarms. I've stopped keeping a list.

The chemical unreality of the plot:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/17/flying_toilet_terror_labs/print.html or http://tinyurl.com/eeen2
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200608/msg00087.html or http://tinyurl.com/etrl8
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/08/14/tatp_about_that_pyro.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2306994,00.html

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/08/10/us.security/index.html
http://www.wondermark.com/d/220.html
http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2006/08/wait-arent-you-scared.html

This essay also makes the same point that we're overreacting, as well as describing a 1995 terrorist plot that
was remarkably similar in both materials and modus operandi -- and didn't result in a complete ban on liquids.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/08/17/airport_futility/

My previous related writings:
http://www.schneier.com/essay-096.html
http://www.schneier.com/essay-038.html
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/terrorism_secur.html
http://www.schneier.com/essay-087.html
http://www.schneier.com/essay-045.html

This essay originally appeared in Wired:
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,71642-0.html

Exponential Growth

2007-01-17T02:52:00.001-08:00

Just read a great article by Dr. Albert Bartlett on Arithemetic, Population and Energy. The main take-away is one that I'd learned a long time ago, but definitely needed a refresher.

Dr. Bartlett shows that if you want to figure out how long something takes to double, divide 70 by the annual growth rate and you'll get the number of years until you're doubled. An example of this is to consider inflation. At an average of 3% annual inflation, it will only take 23.3 years for all prices to double. Another example that Dr. Bartlett uses is population growth. At a nominal growth rate of 1.3%, the earth's population will double to 12 billion people in 53.86 years. The natural conclusion is that we'll need double the infrastructure that we have now in order to support the population in 53.86 years.

This whole thing sent my mind spinning a bit and I did a few calculations of my own. In 53.86 years, given an average inflation rate of 3%, everything will cost 4 times more than it does now. Will wages follow this trend?

Fortunately, according to the US Census bureau the population growth of the US is 1.1% and is expected to drop to .54% between 2040 and 2050 with a final population projection of 392 million by 2050. Taking into account economic globalization and the fact that the global growth rate is higher than the US growth rate, it's readily apparent to me that the US isn't going to remain at the top of the heap forever in terms of resource utilization. This is causing a shift that's been apparent for many years where we see the manufacturing jobs leaving to other countries where they are cheaper. The consequence is that there is a greater and greater emphasis on education in the United States.

Interestingly, this all leads me to predict that eventually all manufacturing will come back to the US and that we'll be a global manufacturing superpower. Why? Consider that as the US population growth declines and levels off, our emphasis leans more and more towards being educated and using our minds to create things. Over time, the US will take the lead in lean process automation to the degree that we can manufacture things far cheaper than even the cheapest labor because we'll be able to do it without labor. Other countries will follow suit of course, but as long as we have an intelligent and informed workforce, the lead we gain while other countries lap up our manufacturing jobs, will enable us to permanently stay one step ahead of the rest of the world.

Survival of the Fittest

2007-01-15T08:15:00.001-08:00

The animal kingdom constantly seeks to improve itself through "survival of the fittest". The feeble and diseased are preyed upon by predators, thus cleansing the stock, leaving behind the strongest to compete for the attention of mates in order to reproduce. One could argue that over many generations, this constant "improvement" would lead to super animals within a given species, but in fact it hasn't.

Ecosystems eventually reach an equilibrium with their environment, where the weak and diseased are still "trimmed" from the pack, but the overall strength of the entire system remains constant.

This all brings three questions to mind:

1) Is there some sort of external constant downward entropy that gets stronger as groups of animals improve? Such a thing would cause a natural limit to be reached.

2) Are their natural limits of the physical biology that the animals are hitting?

3) Are families of animals that exceed natural limits the ones who go on to speciate?

Proof: Oil Imports Fund Terrorism

2006-12-08T01:07:00.001-08:00

I remember a while back when the US Government was airing PSA (Public Service Announcements) on TV saying that "buying drugs funds terrorism". It was B.S. then, and it's till B.S. now. What funds terrorism is middle eastern oil (actually it's fear and ignorance, but those don't make for sensationalistic BLOG entries now do they!). Here's an excerpt of an article from the Christian Science Monitor (the full version can be found here):

The Associated Press reports that "key Iraqi officials" say private Saudi citizens are providing millions of dollars in funding to Sunni insurgents in Iraq. Much of the money is used to buy weapons.

The Iraqi officials interviewed for the article say most of the money comes from "private Islamic donations inside Saudi Arabia, known as zakat." The zakat is one of the five pillars of Islam, and all Muslims are obliged to give it, primarily for the "poor and needy." Some Saudis know where the money goes, the officials say, but others give the money to Islamic clerics and don't know where it goes.

The two Iraqi officials said that while some of the funding goes to Iraqi Sunni leaders, who then disburse it, other channels are being used to send money directly to insurgents. Among them are Iraqi drivers working on road links between Iraq and neighboring countries.

Several drivers interviewed by the AP in several Middle East capitals said Saudis have been using religious events, like the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca and a smaller midyear pilgrimage, to send money into Iraq on buses that carry returning pilgrims.

"They sent boxes full of dollars and asked me to deliver them to certain addresses in Iraq," said one driver who would give his name only as Hussein for fear of reprisal. "I know it is being sent to the resistance, and if I don't take it with me, they will kill me."

AP also says an Iraqi Sunni cleric used US $25 million to buy an anti-aircraft missile from Romania on the arms black market.

MIG Welding

2006-11-12T23:27:00.001-08:00

Learned something new about MIG welding:

* Welding with shielding gas is not practical for windy conditions.

* Flux cleans the metal and keeps it from oxidizing while you're welding.

* Welding with shielding gas keeps your weld from spattering molten metal all over and gives you a cleaner weld.

* Welding with solid core and shielding gas is best for inside work on clean metal.

* Welding with flux core and no shielding gas is good for outside work on unclean metal.

* Welding with flux core and shielding gas is good for inside work on unclean metal.

I'm still not clear on the polarity stuff and the proper gas mixtures for each type of MIG welding.

Powerful Video

2006-11-07T22:02:00.001-08:00

I've never had this kind of reaction to a video I saw on the Internet. I got seriously choked, especially up at the picture of the little kid with hands raised in victory. Enjoy it and congratulations if you voted for change!

Blue Wave

2006-11-07T19:49:00.001-08:00

What an amazing night last night was. I take back my previous post about Democrats ruining their chances to make any headway this time around. It was better than my wildest expectations. The remaining races are Montana and Virginia. Both of which show the Democratic candidate in the lead with no more precincts left to report results. Best case scenario for republicans is to split the two races and make it a 50/50 senate.

Next comes strategeries for not blowing it in the next two years. My humble proposal:

Civilians (aka non-politicians) need to constantly remind those around them that "government is best when it does least" in response to complaints about "gridlock" in government. To seal the deal Democrats need to keep the right happy by not raising any taxes, working to cut spending (something the Republicans forgot how to do) and reduce the size of government.

Senator George "Macaca" Allen

2006-11-01T00:27:00.001-08:00

Unbelievable... There's nothing much I can add to this, so I'll just reprint what Mike Stark (the guy beat up by a couple of Senator George Allen's (R-VA) campaign staffers) wrote. Update: Keep reading to see the published response from the George Allen campaign website as well as a third party rundown from USA Today.

Letter from Mike Stark

The following is a letter to NBC29 from Mike Stark, the man who was tackled for a comment he made at Senator Allen's campaign stop in Charlottesville on Tuesday.

My name is Mike Stark. I am a law student at the University of Virginia, a marine, and a citizen journalist. Earlier today at a public event, I was attempting to ask Senator Allen a question about his sealed divorce record and his arrest in the 1970s, both of which are in the public domain. His people assaulted me, put me in a headlock, and wrestled me to the ground. Video footage is available here, from an NBC affiliate.

I demand that Senator Allen fire the staffers who beat up a constituent attempting to use his constitutional right to petition his government. I also want to know why Senator Allen would want his staffers to assault someone asking questions about matters of public record in the heat of a political campaign. Why are his divorce records sealed? Why was he arrested in the 1970s? And why did his campaign batter me when I asked him about these questions.

George Allen defends his support of the Iraq war by saying that our troops are defending the ideals America stands for. Indeed, he says our troops are defending our very freedom. What kind of country is it when a Senator's constituent is assaulted for asking difficult and uncomfortable questions? What freedoms do we have left? Maybe we need to bring the troops home so that they can fight for freedom at George Allen's campaign events. Demanding accountability should not be an offense worthy of assault.

I will be pressing charges against George Allen and his surrogates later today. George Allen, at any time, could have stopped the fray. All he had to do was say, "This is not how my campaign is run. Take your hands off that man." He could have ignored my questions. Instead he and his thugs chose violence. I spent four years in the Marine Corps. I'll be damned if I'll let my country be taken from me by thugs that are afraid of taking responsibility for themselves.

It just isn't the America I know and love. Somebody needs to take a stand against those that would bully and intimidate their fellow citizens. That stand begins right here, right now.

W. Michael Stark

And now here's the response from the George Allen Campaign:

Allen Campaign Demands Webb Restrain Out of Control Supporter

October 31, 2006
Contact: Press Office
703.845.3689

ARLINGTON, VA – At the conclusion of a well attended event in Charlottesville, a Webb supporter wearing an Allen sticker aggressively went after Senator Allen, who was at an event with his wife Susan and Senator Elizabeth Dole, screaming that he answer inappropriate questions.

As the Senator was trying to exit the room with a campaign staffer, the Democrat activist, identified as Mike Stark, pushed the Allen staffer. Later, volunteers restrained him and asked to leave the building when he approached the Senator a second time, asking inappropriate questions.

This was not the first time that Stark, a frequent Daily Kos blogger, has aggressively confronted Senator Allen in front of TV cameras and been removed from the premises by event security. In August, Stark was asked to leave a Holiday Inn by management “after he became combative” while interrupting a press conference with Senator Allen. (Chris Graham, “Webb Supporter Asked to Leave Allen Event after N-Word Question,” Augusta Free Press; August 25, 2006)

Stark has a history of violent outbursts on the Daily Kos, an extreme left-wing website, such as his post “The F*****g Way…Take These RNC F*****s Down”. Daily Kos Link

He also posted his intention last night on his blog, Calling All Wingnuts, which is subtitled “Kickin’ a*s on the lyin’ side: A never-ending battle against stupid, ugly, deceitful and corrupt right-wing water carriers…” in which he wrote in reference to stalking Senator Allen,“So yeah… I miss doing this stuff - it seemed that at least once a month, something would happen that really got the adrenaline flowing… I miss those tasty morsels of victory.” (www.callingallwingnuts.com; Accessed October 31, 2006)

Last, but not least, here's the third party review of the event from USA Today:

USA Today 11/1/2006 10:03 AM ET
Heckler subdued at George Allen event
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A campaign appearance by Sen. George Allen turned physical when a liberal blogger was wrestled to the ground after heckling the senator about his divorce and court records.

Mike Stark, a first-year University of Virginia law student, approached Allen at an event Tuesday in a Charlottesville hotel, loudly asking, "Why did you spit at your first wife, George?" The confrontation was captured by WVIR-TV in Charlottesville.

RAW VIDEO: Blogger put in chokehold, pushed to floor

Three men, all wearing blue Allen lapel stickers, immediately grabbed Stark, put him in a chokehold, dragged him backward and slung him to the carpet outside a meeting room.

Stark said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press: "I am a constituent. I am allowed to ask my U.S. senator questions." He later demanded that Allen fire the staffers who accosted him and threatened to press charges.

In a posting a day before the incident, Stark hinted on his liberal Web log "Calling All Wingnuts" that he would attempt to provoke Allen before the TV cameras.

"I'm also trying to 'Roger and Me' George Allen whenever I can," Stark wrote, referring to director Michael Moore's 1989 documentary in which he repeatedly tried to confront former General Motors' chief executive Roger Smith about the company's downsizing.

Allen's former wife, Anne Waddell, who lives in California, said that she and Allen divorced more than 22 years ago, and that because it was a personal matter they sealed the divorce records. She issued a statement calling Stark's question "a baseless, cheap shot."

According to a news release from Allen's campaign, the incident began when Stark pushed an Allen staffer. "Later, volunteers restrained him and asked to leave the building when he approached the senator a second time, asking inappropriate questions," the release said.

The scuffle wasn't the first time Stark has confronted Allen. In August, Stark similarly approached the senator after a speech at a hotel near Staunton, loudly asking if he had ever used a six-letter epithet against blacks.

That was two weeks after Allen, at a rally, referred to a volunteer for the senator's Democratic opponent as "macaca," which is considered by some to be a racial slur.

Stark said Tuesday that he approached Allen at the same time reporters did after his speech and first asked him about two court summonses issued for Allen in Albemarle County in 1974.

A county court index book reflects that they were issued, but supporting documents that would explain them were destroyed long ago. Allen has said the two offenses were for fishing without a license and too many unpaid parking tickets.

A new statewide poll conducted for CNN showed Allen's Democratic challenger, former Navy Secretary Jim Webb, with a slight lead in the fiercely contested race that could help determine whether the GOP retains control of the Senate.

Pemco Billing

2006-10-26T03:11:00.001-07:00

PEMCO is our auto insurance company. Their claims service and rates basically kick butt. I've only had to make one claim, but they were shockingly good. They handled everything very professionally and efficiently. There's another shoe here and it's dropping right about... now. When it comes to paying the monthly bill, they stink with the stench of a thousand rotting camels. You essentially have two options:

1) Pay the full amount at once.
2) Let them take the money out of your account on a monthly basis.

They apparently do not allow you to simply pay on a monthly basis using something like your online billpayer. They only want to play the monthly payment game if they get to take the money for you. Whats even better, if the payment "bounces" even once, they silently stop taking monthly payments and let your policy quietly lapse. Thankfully that didn't happen to us.

To go with option 2, you have to send them a voided check. If you don't have a voided check, you've got to go to your bank and get documentation that you can fax to pemco. Apparently it's not ok to simply give them your routing number and account number over the phone because "we need to verify that it's your account". You see, it's for my security ;) You have to fax or mail in a copy of a voided check. Uggghhhh, I call BS! I don't even have to do that with payroll anymore at my job.

They can very easily take your information over the phone and simply call the bank on your behalf to verify that the account belongs to you. "Oh no, we can't do that because of privacy rules!". Once again I call BS. Credit card companies do it *EVERY* time you have a transaction. It's no longer enough in most cases to simply give a credit card number, they need your "billing address" too so that they can match up all of that information. In the case of the insurance company, they'd simply say to your bank "Hi, we're Pemco, we've got a customer named blah blah blah who lives at blah blah blah who claims to have account number XYZ123, is that correct?" and the bank would say, "Yes" or "No", just like the credit card company.

Ugggh, get with the new millenium PEMCO. It shouldn't be this hard to give you money!

Ask Ms. Dewey

2006-10-20T15:26:00.001-07:00

A high school buddy of mine, named John Reid, just lead an effort to launch Ms. Dewey. Our entire lab group had a great time playing with her today. I think the best way to describe Ms. Dewey is to let John do it:

"She's a sassy know-it-all micro site that we've created that serves up some
hilarious video clips to your search queries. She's really smart (she has 3
brains, seriously). You can ask her anything, and she?ll not only know what
your asking, but serve up a snarky (yeh, I said snarky) response."

I personally found that she was oddly accurate with her video clips. She's also got a bunch of easter eggs that were pretty entertaining to stumble upon. I hope a lot of people stumble upon this because it really is a lot of fun to play with!

Solar Cell Efficiency Boost

2006-10-16T01:35:00.001-07:00

Interesting approach to boosting solar cell efficiency. In a nutshell, solar cells cannot convert light from the lower end of the spectrum into energy. Some very smart people have figured out how to chemically combine two low energy photons into one high energy photon which can then be used by solar cells to generate electricity. Linked here.

log4j and UNIX syslog

2006-10-10T05:50:00.001-07:00

I couldn't find Java code examples anywhere on how to get log4j to log to Unix syslog. I'm sure they're out there, but I'll be damned if I could find them. I spent a few hours with log4j today and managed to decode what's going on. Here it is in all it's glory:


import org.apache.log4j.net.SyslogAppender;
import org.apache.log4j.Logger;
import org.apache.log4j.SimpleLayout;

class FOO {

    public static void main(String args[]) {
        FOO foo = new FOO();
    }

    public FOO () {
        SimpleLayout layout = new SimpleLayout();
        SyslogAppender appender = new SyslogAppender(layout, "localhost", SyslogAppender.LOG_DAEMON);
        Logger logger = Logger.getRootLogger();
        logger.addAppender(appender);
        logger.info("This is just a test");
    }
}

I'd write more about how cool log4j is, but I'm under a deadline and have to get back to work...

P.S. If this still doesn't work, then you probably forgot to make your syslog daemon listen to a socket....

2001 Saturn SC2 PCV Valve

2006-10-05T09:27:00.001-07:00

I got my oil changed yesterday at one of those Grease Monkey(TM) shops. They're annoying because they always want to upsell you on stuff (and yet I keep going back). This time they wanted to sell me a PCV valve for about $17.00 and an air filter for about $20.00. I know the air filter was about 4 times cheaper if I bought it myself. As for the PCV valve, I'd never changed one out, but from the looks of it, I knew it was pretty cheap to buy. In addition, they had it out in about 30 seconds, so I knew it wasn't hard to replace either.

Today on my way home from work, I stopped into an auto parts (Auto Zone) store to get a PCV valve and an air filter. The PCV valve cost me about $5.00 and the air filter would have cost me about $5.00, but I opted for the snazzy KnR filter that lasts for the lifetime of the car. I got out of there for about $45.00. For my money, I got a new PCV valve and an air filter that will never need to be replaced. If I'd opted for the Grease Monkey(TM) parts, it would have cost me $37, but I'd still have to replace the air filter every 12,000 miles. I figure if I drive my car for 96,000 miles I'll break even on the KnR filter, although I haven't factored in inflation against the potential ROI if I'd bought the cheap filter and simply invested the other $35. If I always bought Grease Monkey(TM) filters, then the KnR filter would pay itself back in about 24,000 miles.

So anyway... Now that I had this PCV valve, I needed to install it. After a bunch of poking around, I found it sitting right next to the oil cap. It was incredibly easy to replace. I just pulled out the old one and plunked in the new one. Didn't even require any tools.

Discretion Advised! No Really!!!

2006-10-02T02:39:00.001-07:00

I was going to post the transcript of the online chat that Representative Foley (R-FL) had with that 16 year old congressional page. After getting about 2 pages into it, I was disgusted and decided it wasn't worth the baggage to have it in this blog. What I will say is that it's now becoming clear that GOP leadership knew about this for a very long time and, like the Catholic church, tried to cover it up.

A poster named VannaB summed it up nicely in response to this article: "...isn't the irony so delicious? I mean here's the GOP, party of "family values" and the first line of defense against the so-called "gay agenda" and here's one of their own...one of their important, powerful own, in a Congressional seat they need BAD, and oooopsie he's a pedaphile. You can't write scripts soapier than this."

Same old, same old...

2006-09-28T04:25:00.001-07:00

The Democrats had a very unique opportunity this year to take back what was lost in 1994. Unfortunately they have blown it in a colossal way. Instead of spending time saying what they were going to fix, like the Republicans did in 1994 with the Contract with America, they've resorted to vague statements about "real" national security and how much better they are than the scoundrels that are currently in office. If they'd spent 2005 creating a detailed plan with easy to understand bullet points like the Republicans did in 1994, we'd be in for a landslide power shift.

Fortunately though, they haven't hurt their chances. All of the reputable polls show things shaping up to be a 50/50 congress and a 216D - 219R senate. All in all, not too bad, but it could have been a lot better.

Life in Iraq

2006-09-25T02:17:00.001-07:00

I've never really understood what life was like in Iraq after the US invasion until now. This article makes me sad...

Overheard...

2006-09-15T06:52:00.001-07:00

Overheard in the office today:

P: "It's 4:27am in Tehran (Iran) right now..."
S: "Which year?"

*rimshot*

All in one room...

2006-09-08T07:23:00.001-07:00

This just in from our friends at the FRC...

Washington Briefing: Value Voters Summit in Washington,
D.C. The speaker line-up matches any national
political/policy convention: Sen. Santorum, Sen. Brownback,
Attorney General Gonzales, Gov. Huckabee, Gov. Romney, Sean
Hannity, Ann Coulter, Newt Gingrich, Bill Bennett, Rep.
Marilyn Musgrave, and so many more. As news reports
circulate about the values voter it's time to show that we
are a force to be reckoned with...this is not just a
convention, it's a call to ACTION.

(emphasis added by me)

If that concentration of extreme right wing ideology doesn't scare you, I have no idea what will. What's even scarrier is that our current sitting attorney general will be in attendance. While there is nothing illegal about it, it sure does scare the crap out of me...

Bailey and the Trumpet

2006-09-06T13:03:00.001-07:00

Today Bailey played his first real note on the Trumpet. It was a low C. He was able to match his tone to mine pretty well.

Plan B OTC

2006-08-24T06:33:00.001-07:00

I'm sure this will make some heads explode today...

Rush: Stop Worrying About Your Rights!

2006-08-23T02:49:00.001-07:00

These days I pretty much exclusively listen to C89.5 on the radio. They've got a great mix of heart pounding dance music. Lots of fun to listen to. I used to listen to AM talk radio, but finally had to stop because it was adversely affecting my mood. Old habits are hard to break through and about once a week I'm compelled to do the rounds on the AM dial. At the far right of the dial at 1090 is Air America a left wing station. On the far left of the dial is 570 KVI a moderate right wing station. In the middle is 770 KTTH, the ultra conservative right wing wacko station. Only in Seattle would the liberals be on the extreme right, the moderate conservatives on the extreme left and the wackos right smack dab in the middle.

So anway, today I landed on 770 for a while and caught some of the Rush Limbaugh show. It was only about two minutes, but I could have filled about 3 or 4 pages of commentary on the logical falacies he spews. There's definitely a job opportunity for someone well versed in linguistic logic to poke holes in what he says on a daily basis. Something like "Rush Watch" would be a real hit, especially if everything was supported by clear and unambiguos logic (even when it was inconvenient to one side or the other). It would definitely provide lots of fodder to his critics and help people wake up to the BS he's spewing. At worst, it would force him to spend a lot of time watching what he says more carefully and backtracking (more than he usually does) to "clarify" himself. With his gift for speaking, it might actually make him a useful asset to this country! *GASP*

In the 2 minutes I listened to him today, he spaketh this little gem, "...you need to stop worring about your rights and start worrying about your responsibilities...". He was speaking within the context of this country, "...being at war..." and that it's your responsibility to support the war effort.

Where does one begin with this... It's a free country, I don't *HAVE* to agree with the war, nor do I have to support it. That's not the most important part though. The key is to see that he's trying to separate the concepts of rights and responsibilities. If you care about your rights, you should know that your rights are your responsibility! That's, presumably, why we're at war, because we take our rights seriously enough that we're willing to attack someone who would dare threaten our soverign land.

I do support Rush's right to spew this drivel though. Let the market decide if it's interesting enough to pay him to do it...

Fry's and Privacy

2006-08-22T13:11:00.001-07:00

Bought a couple of flat panel monitors at Fry's today. Normally when you exit the store, the door person checks your receipt to make sure you're not trying to steal stuff. I'd found out a while ago that they really can't do that unless they think you're stealing something. As I left the store, instead of handing over my receipt like a "good citizen", I simply refused to give it over saying, "I don't have to show it to you". The door person looked a bit bemused, and then simply said, "Ok". And that was that. It was a good feeling. It won't change the world, but hopefully more people will start to see this as the invasion of privacy that it is and start to feel more comfortable standing up for their rights.

What really happens when you take your dog or cat to a shelter…Graphic

2006-08-16T08:54:00.001-07:00

I found this on Craigslist "Best Of" today. I think it says a lot about the realities of animal shelters and it's worth repeating...

What really happens when you take your dog or cat to a shelter…Graphic
Date: 2006-07-06, 12:15PM PDT

I am posting this (and it is long) because I think our society needs a huge “Wake-up” call. As a shelter manager, I am going to share a little insight with you all...a view from the inside if you will. First off, this is a forum to for adoption and/or rehoming as clearly stated in the rules. All of you breeders/sellers on craigslist should not only be flagged (and I hope the good people on craigslist will continue to do so with blind fury), but you should be made to work in the “back” of an animal shelter for just one day. Maybe if you saw the life drain from a few sad, lost, confused eyes, you would change your mind about breeding and selling to people you don’t even know…that puppy you just sold will most likely end up in my shelter when it’s not a cute little puppy anymore. So how would you feel if you knew that there’s about a 90% chance that dog will never walk out of the shelter it is going to be dumped at? Purebred or not! About 50% of all of the dogs that are “owner surrenders” or “strays”, that come into my shelter are purebred dogs. The most common excuses I hear are; “We are moving and we can’t take our dog (or cat).” Really? Where are you moving too that doesn’t allow pets? Or they say “The dog got bigger than we thought it would”. How big did you think a German Shepherd would get? “We don’t have time for her…”. Really? I work a 10-12 hour day and still have time for my 6 dogs! “She’s tearing up our yard…”. How about making her a part of your family? They always tell me “We just don’t want to have to stress about finding a place for her…we know she’ll get adopted, she’s a good dog”. Odds are your pet won’t get adopted & how stressful do you think being in a shelter is? Well, let me tell you…your pet has 72 hours to find a new family from the moment you drop it off…sometimes a little longer if the shelter isn’t full and your dog manages to stay completely healthy…if it sniffles, it dies. Your pet will be confined to a small run/kennel in a room with about 25 other barking or crying animals. It will have to relieve itself where it eats and sleeps. It will be depressed and it will cry constantly for the family that abandoned it. If your pet is lucky, I will have enough volunteers in that day to take him/her for a walk. If I don’t, your pet won’t get any attention besides having a bowl of food slid under the kennel door and the waste sprayed out of its pen with a high-powered hose. If your dog is big, black or any of the “Bully” breeds (pit bull, rottie, mastiff, etc…) it was pretty much dead when you walked it through the front door. Those dogs just don’t get adopted. If your dog doesn’t get adopted within its 72 hours and the shelter is full, it will be destroyed. If the shelter isn’t full and your dog is good enough, and of a desirable enough breed…it may get a stay of execution…not for long though. Most get very kennel protective after about a week and are destroyed for showing aggression…even the sweetest dogs will turn in this environment. If your pet makes it over all of those hurdles…chances are it will get kennel cough or an upper respiratory infection and will be destroyed because shelters just don’t have the funds to pay for even a $100 treatment. Here’s a little euthanasia 101 for those of you that have never witnessed a perfectly healthy, scared animal being “put-down”. First, your pet will be taken from its kennel on a leash…they always look like they think they are going for a walk…happy, wagging their tails. Until they get to “The Room”, every one of them freaks out and puts on the breaks when we get to the door…it must smell like death or they can feel the sad souls that are left in there, it’s strange, but it happens with every one of them. Your dog or cat will be restrained, held down by 1 or 2 vet techs depending on the size and how freaked out they are. Then a euthanasia tech or a vet will start the process…they will find a vein in the front leg and inject a lethal dose of the “pink stuff”. Hopefully your pet doesn’t panic from being restrained and jerk…I’ve seen the needles tear out of a leg and been covered with the resulting blood and deafened by the yelps and screams. They all don’t just “go to sleep”, sometimes spasm for a while, gasp for air and defecate on themselves. When it all ends, your pets corpse will be stacked like firewood in a large freezer in the back with all of the other animals that were killed…waiting to be picked up like garbage. What happens next? Cremated? Taken to the dump? Rendered into pet food? You’ll never know and it probably won’t even cross your mind…it was just an animal and you can always buy another one right?

I hope that those of you that have read this are bawling your eyes out and can’t get the pictures out of your head…I do everyday on the way home from work. I hate my job, I hate that it exists & I hate that it will always be there unless you people make some changes and realize that the lives you are affecting go much farther than the pets you dump at a shelter. Between 9 and 11 MILLION animals die every year in shelters and only you can stop it. I do my best to save every life I can but rescues are always full, and there are more animals coming in everyday than there are homes.

My point to all of this…DON’T BREED OR BUY WHILE SHELTER PETS DIE!

Hate me or flag me if you want to…the truth hurts and reality is what it is…I just hope I maybe changed one persons mind about breeding their dog, taking their loving pet to a shelter, or buying a dog. I hope that someone will walk into my shelter and say “I saw this thing on craigslist and it made me want adopt”…that would make it all worth it.

Tony Perkins and the FRC

2006-08-14T08:00:00.001-07:00

As I mentioned previously, patterns begin to emerge no matter how complex the topic. I just read an interesting article over at The Nation on Tony Perkins. Apparently the golden boy himself has consistently forgotten to mention that he was suspended from his job as a Baton Rouge police officer and subsequently resigned. This wouldn't be so bad, as it happens all the time for a variety of reasons that aren't always that bad. In his case though, he put a lot of officers lives in danger by failing to report to his superiors, a plot by anti-abortion protestors to overrun a barracade and storm an abortion clinic. Even this, in a sick and twisted sort of way, could be excused if Tony Perkins truly felt that he was somehow preserving life by putting others in danger. What's pretty inexcusable is how Tony Perkins conveniently forgets to mentioned the "suspended and later resigned for putting officers lives in danger" when he proudly trumpets that he is a "former police officer for the Baton Rouge police department".

Of lesser consequence is the revelation that Tony Perkins killed his political career by paying $82,500 for David Duke's list of political contributors. For those who don't recall, David Duke is a former KKK member who ran for several political offices and eventually had to serve 15 months in prison for tax evasion.