One more down. - 26 March 2007

I finally just decided to call it a day and finish up one of the papers that was just really missing an introduction and a conclusion. Finally just wrote one, which may or may not be any good. At this particular point, I’m okay if the grade isn’t that fantastic. The rest of the material should be good anyway. So now there are just three projects to go. One of which looks not to be that bad, one of which needs really to just get done, and the one that will probably cause a couple fits here and there. So the graduation track is looking good. I’m just hoping the job front starts looking good, too. Got an e-mail saying that my application was received at one of the places I mailed to.

Anyway, less second-guessing, more linking! Starting the engine and getting us off to a good start is the green racing car, composed mostly of biodegradable or recyclable materials. And it does run on biofuel and use biolubricants (wow, they’ve even got those?), so it’s a greener car than most. Of course, hopefully the processes behind the materials being used to construct the car are also nice and green.

Taking a slight detour - I’ll admit that I thought PETA was generally a harmless, if fringe lunatic-y, organization, but if these seven things we didn't know about PETA are all true, then the “harmless” part goes away and there needs to be a better thing thought of when people are thinking about donating to animal protection causes.

The San Francisco Chronicle has a spotlight on the people still here from Mountain View High School in Tucson, who have the dubious honor of being the high school with the most confirmed war dead (five). The article mentions that the war is the top concern among youth who are eligible to be called in for Selective Service and those recently out of that window. I understand why the government continues to maintain a register of those who could be pressed into military service, but with this conflict going on, despite the assurances that it would be political suicide, I still wonder if there will be a national draft to provide sufficient manpower to continue the conflict. It’s not something that stays in my mind all the time, but I do wonder. That worry is significantly compounded when stories such as How Specialist Town Lost His Benefits, which suggest the Army is diagnosing personality disorders to avoid having to pay medical costs for soldiers wounded in their tour of duty or suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. And of course, there are the 3200+ military personnel who have already lost their lives in this matter.

USA Today’s poll highlights that many Americans want to see investigation of attorney firings, the administration answering all questions, and approving the use of subpoenas. Apparently, though, none of that should happen, according to the mainstream media. Liberal media, my tailscales.

A plethora of press releases from around and about regarding Science (SCIENCE!) - a technique for targeting and killing cancerous cells without touching the healthy ones, E. coli able to generate a photosynthetic process, isotope-enchanced meat could lead to a longer life (but organically-grown kiwi are better than their standard counterparts), and a possible way of doing surgery using magnets to drive the instruments.

Wow. A father in New Zealand who is alleged to have had more than four times the legal limit of alcohol for was arrested after he took a forty minute nap at a petrol station. By the time he woke up and was tested, the car had been towed and his two-year old daughter, who was in the car at the time, was with her mother.

On this New York Times Article about using human intelligence to help computers do tasks, I’m not sure whether to think that Bezos is helping people or exploiting them. The micropayments add up, I guess, but some of the stuff being done, especially like ChaCha, could probably benefit handily from people with LIS degrees. Even when I was doing work for a class answering reference questions for the Internet Public Library, the questions being answered were generally the ones where someone had an idea about the answer or felt they could find it easily. Thus, harnessing the mob is a good idea, sure, but every now and then you’ll need a specialist in the subject or a specialist in searching.

Thanks to technological upgrades, mocap is being used in a lot more places (including Wii) than previously thought. The mocap boxing and shooting games are definitely interseting, and there’s Wii, and a lot of other possibilities. Perhaps VR and mocap will become our default interface. (Of course, if it is, we’re going to have some new issues with making sure we don’t accidentally reformat our computers.)

Still not officially admitting that the Japanese military was responsible for them, Japan's Prime Minister apologized for what happened to women forced into prostitution during World War II. It’s still not the apology that the descendants and those who are still alive want to have the government say.

Being moved to the religious realms, the focus of things tends to be on Christianity and it’s various denominations and spokespeoples. This is, for better or worse, no different. A proposed bill in Poland is trying to ban even the mention of homosexuality in school. And I was hoping that this particular type of silly was limited strictly to American soil. That way, we could at least keep it contained. This does seem to be several hops backwards, though. Speaking of keeping it contained to here, if you recall BattleCry, the organization that promotes Christian rock concerts and fundamentalist interpretations, they were in San Francisco recently promoting abstinence, homophobia, and government censorship. And had quite a crowd of teenagers who went out into the streets. I wonder about the kids in the article, whether they have seen something like God is Imaginary, and what they would do in response to it. And I kind of wonder whether they’ve been to Purity Balls or have little chastity rings. (Perhaps in a more cynical mindset, I’d be wondering about chastity belts.)

It’s not all bad, though. A new translation of the Koran (Qu'ran? What is the accepted transliteration, if there is such a thing?) is changing what is traditionally rendered "beat" into "go away". It seems like a small change, but considering how people who call themselves Christian can hinge on one word or phrase themselves on dismissing an entire group of people as hell-bound sinners, this may be a good idea for the Muslim population.

And because it would be somehow remiss not to mention it, a Thai zoo that has a reluctant male panda is being shown panda porn to try and encourage some mating activity. Because everyone knows that the sex lives of everyone else is their business - including the animals. I think it’ll be interesting to see whether the panda responds.

So, before it gets too late, and so that maybe I can get up and do the work on my part of the presentation that’s going to happen in two weeks, I’m going to go to bed. (Remember that part about getting things out of the way before they become due? Yeah, that’s my way of dealing with stress - getting it at the source.)

The predecessor to l33tspeak flamewars?

Ladies and gentlemen, I present, apart from any other influences (other than my own nefarious ones), How to Come Off Like a Gibbering Lunatic. The set-up is minimal, actually. This letter was received by one of the people that demonstrates against Israel and their occupation of Palestinian lands. Trying to read it made my red pen senses cry out. I provide an image of the item, as well as a transcription, because at some point, the image will probably be deleted, beneath the cut. Those with English degrees or who do editing for a significant part of their job may not want to look. This was apparently typed up on a typewriter, rather than with a monospace font in a computer. Anyway, here it is. It has not been edited, except to remove the name of the person being addressed. All typos, errors, and other cringeworthy mistakes are solely that of the original author.

( This protester is apparently a member of the Gestapo... )

This is why your teachers keep telling you to format and spell correctly and to use proper language. Otherwise, it becomes very hard to understand what you are raving about, much less take you seriously. It’s an image thing, really. Anyway, go about your day, citizens. This has been an installment of How To Come Off Like a Gibbering Lunatic.

More done, more to do? - 27 March 2007

If the commencement date is correct, in exactly one month, I will be graduated. (Woo-hoo!) But I have to get through the next two weeks. (D’oh!). Continuing to move material, though, and get what needs to be done finished. I think I’m in good standing on one of the projects, and I’ll be poking my partner on Thursday to make sure that we actually get the rest of the other project done. Before that, though, there will be significant harassment of the Rails instructors to see if there is a more elegant way of updating through AJAX than fragmenting the pages into many partials. If not, well, that’s what happens. If so, hopefully I can implement the better method.

Lego goes Batman. With the incredible successes of Lego Star Wars, now we get Lego Batman. Hoping that they do just as good a job with Lego Gotham as they did with the Star Wars Universe.

Livejournal Drama Queen Bingo. Taking tropes and making good use of them. Someone will probably be able to shout bingo without having to leave their friends lists.

The leading manufacturer of night-vision technology for the United States has been found guilty of violating the Arms Control Export Act, selling classified and technical data to countries such as China and Singapore without obtaining any permission from the government to do so. So they get nailed with a $100 million fine, $50 million which must be invested in next-generation night-vision technology that can be shared with all of their competitors.

If you’re going to pirate something and not give credit, it’s generally a poor idea to leave some control in the hands of those you pirated from. Senator John McCain's MySpace page learned this lesson well today, when the contact information for Senator McCain image was replaced by a graphic that indicated he was quite in favor of lesbian marriage. I would like to know how long it stayed up there from when it was first placed, myself, to see how quickly people noticed and moved to change it.

One of the aides to the Attorney General has invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to the Senate's request that she appear and testify, a gesture that made bradhicks wonder just what the hell is she hiding that she feels she has to invoke the fifth in a non-criminal proceedings matter?

The Attorney General is taking fire from other places as well, being implicated in a cover-up attempt on several minor boys in a Texas prison being sexually assaulted. The reasons for not prosecuting, according to the commentary, are the same in other rape cases - “They enjoyed it”, and “It didn’t hurt them physically”. Apparently, because nobody complained, they assume all those who were involved were okay with it. Precisely whom would they be complaining to, though? And, as a commenter remarks, would consent even be possible for those of age, considering that the guards held significant power over them? In a similar manner, although not as institutionalized, there’s a worrisome story about a student in Pennsylvania was enslaved by a family, regularly beaten and forced to do work without pay . Apparently she had stayed behind with the family to complete her schooling, but was forced to drop out, deliver newspapers, and do chores, with fear and abuse along the way.

Slashfood gives us a look into Disney’s marketing mechanisms... and tells us that someone approved the idea of a bubbly drink that's champagne in everything but alcohol. A perfect way for getting kids involved in the parties where the adults are drinking the real thing... or to getting kids involved in starting to drink the real thing earlier than they should. For those who are responsible enough to be trusted with alcohol, though, there’s the champagne cork, for when you just want to pop the bubbly and not dent your ceiling (theoretically, anyway).

Remember, kids, Just Say No to Toad. Especially fifteen-inch, two-pound, football-sized cane toads. Big guys there. Hopefully they aren’t a population of magic users who were found out and then turned into animals. (That’s two references from very different places in this paragraph.)

More from the world of sheep and genetics - a chimera sheep that has supposedly compatible or transplanatable organs has been created. Using stem cell techniques and waiting for a lamb to be born that has the requisite organ types. There is a worry that this may cause certain viruses that are harmless in sheep to find their way into humans and wreak havoc. We’ll see whether that happens, or whether recipients of sheep-grown organs will accept them.

Giant squid-fishing off the coast of California. Wondering whether there will be a regular set of squids coming into the area or not. And what they could end up doing to the fish populace that’s already there. Those waiting for the Soviets or Nod to attach mind-control devices will probably have to wait a little bit longer.

The President and the Republican Party are changing their rhetoric they now admit there is such a thing as an income gap, although they seem a bit slow to the point of figuring out people are having their incomes eaten alive by the costs of things like insurance, health care, and the shrinking or deleting of pensions and other company retirement benefits. Not necessarily taxes, but other costs that are rising steadily. We’ll see if they actually float any proposals or campaign promises to deal with these sorts of expenses and problems. Of course, then they’ll probably want to figure out some way of making it not appear like some liberal social program.

Looking to the stars, New Mexico aims to build a commercial spaceport and be ready to operate in three years. Virgin Galactic has signed on to help, and at some point the FAA will have to approve the spaceport’s flying, but I also kind of want to know what the destinations are going to be from the New Mexico spaceport. Flying around Terra, maybe, but what about intersystem flights and the like? Are we going to see colony ships start heading out?

The following is odd. It can be construed as sophomoric humor that simply has gotten well out-of-hand, it could be serious threats against the blogger’s life and sanity, it could be something else. Considering the amount of comments it’s generated, it’s certainly something that’s catching the eye of the blogging world, for good or for ill. Read her account of the threates on her blog, and make your own decisions about what’s going on. It has even caught the attention of the BBC.

Technology moves apace, and researchers at Stanford have tapped a novel place to do grid computing with - the Playstation 3 can be used with the Folding@home project. So when not playing games, you can advance science (SCIENCE!) and have something pretty neat to display on your screens. In terms of avatars of self, Technology Review has University of Pittsburgh scholars that are making personalized pictures much easier by sending a neutral picture and then warping the picture into the various moods placed.

Ninety-three pounds of women's underwear were found in a man's home. He was charged with several counts of burglary and theft. There’s a dirty old man reference waiting here, but I can’t pinpoint which one I want to use. You decide.

If you’ve got a little time to kill, considering trying out these two word games that are also adaptive programs. Something to help those Stanford researchers out in finding plenty of associations between words. If images are your thing instead, consider the Daguerreian Society, who collect and keep the precursors to modern photography

The last thing for tonight is The caffeine database. So, see what you drink and add up how much caffeine you’re getting in a day. And then, once you stop vibrating, figure out what you want to do about it. I’m just going for a little bed. 9am class and all that.