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Augh, so close. - 4 April 2007
Apr. 5th, 2007 01:40 amIn lieu of having work to do (tomorrow, I’ll be practicing my presentation), I took a few swings at Soul Calibur III. I had one good set of rounds where I met the mid-boss I was supposed to - and he promptly whipped me. In all the other attempts, I’m getting steamrolled by the opposition right before I get to the boss, if not well beforehand. I guess I had my chance there and missed it. With the way this is going, I’m thinking that if there’s a Konami Code to this game, I’m ready to use it.
Mr. President, The Questionable Authority would like to introduce you to a document that he suspects you have not read, or do not understand, specifically, the United States Constitution. A sadly necessary introduction , the Authority says, because Mr. Bush does not understand that his only recourse against a bill that has provisions in it he considers unacceptable is to veto it. Making threats or suggesting that the Congresspersons are derelict in their duty by passing a bill that has timetables or other requirements is great grandstanding, but in the end, sir, you’re the one who vetoes the bill and prevents the funding from reaching them. If you’re willing to strand the troops without funding because you want the money unfettered, by all means, veto away. It will likely only be a matter of time before public opinion or the requisite votes for an override turn against you and pass it anyway. And if you’re really serious about this, Foreign Policy suggests you call the Congress back for a special session, as is your Constitutional right, and force them to hammer out a bill.
In the news, Iran says that the fifteen British sailors captured have been freed. Hopefully by now, they’re safely back to somewhere and getting a little time off. This did not stop John Derbyshire from calling the lot of them wimps because he believes they put up no resistance.
No doubt Mr. Derbyshire would have a harsh attitude for three Yale students who were arrested for setting fire to a United States flag sitting on a porch. The charges expressed are arson, criminal mischief, reckless endangerment, and so forth. Burning the flag is still considered protected speech. Burning someone else’s flag, however, will still get you in trouble.
In France, a TGV bullet train set a new conventional rail land speed record at 357 mph. This is only slightly slower than the highest speed achieved by any form of train, achieved by a Maglev bullet. The speed creates some competition between the makers of Maglev and France as to who will have their technology bought for developing high-speed rail elsewhere in the world. More than likely, the United States will ignore it, even though the country could use a high-speed train transit system.
Salon has a small piece about the USDA's decision to require all farms seeking organic certification to be inspected, including those in countries where the inspection fee may be too much. A previous agreement only had one fifth of the farms on a co-operative inspected every year, but now, each individually. Which could kill the organic market. I wonder if anything beside the case noted in the article was behind that kind of ruling.
In environmental possibilities, The United States Supreme Court ruled today that the federal government has the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, There’s no requirement in place yet, but the government does have this power, and the Court suggested that it be put to use. If they want to see what could happen, dust storms on Mars may be causing the planet's polar ice caps to melt through warming the planet.
Four fifth-grade students are being arraigned for having sex with each other while the teacher was out, along with a fifth who acted as lookout. They’re starting earlier and earlier these days. I doubt it was safe, although I do wonder about whether it was consensual. And I would like to know what drives those students to do so in a classroom of their peers.
Somewhere else in the world, A Toronto principal pleaded guilty to flinging feces at a student last July. It was considered by both sides to be a lapse in judgment, and no further action was taken, even with the plea. Continuing with the grab-bag of oddities, A Swedish couple is fighting to have their child officially named Metallica. Lars will probably be suing them for pirating material soon afterward. Also in the odd roundup, over $17,000 U.S. was found in a casino slated for destruction, by those preparing it for final rest. That’s a lot of change.
Moving outward and onto a different sort of social site, Hello Church offers up a prayer - God Bless the Roman Empire - I mean, America. Inside, he exhorts the faithful to be the people that others want to emulate or make legislation following their example, rather than trying tricks and politics to get in sympathetic votes that will push a particular agenda on the rest of the country. If every person of every Christian denomination really took this to heart, and strove to be an example worthy of looking up to, I think the country would change. I might even hazard that it would change for the better in some ways. Thanks to the success of Left Behind, which will finish itself out this week, there’s even more spotlight on Christian values than there was before. Make some use of it for good.
A pair of Times articles for your perusal. First, what high school students are doing to get into prestigious colleges, including stressing themselves out, staying up to odd hours, and taking as heavy a courseload as they can. Oh, that, and be pretty, athletic, socially-minded, and themselves, too. So, if they fall out of the sky, who’ll be standing by? Then, on the other end of the process, it was a banner year for the Ivy League schools, even though some of them rejected close to 90 percent of their applicants. All of that stress and work and worry, and the Ivies might not even have them. (This is why a back-up plan is a good thing.) So, if we could, please, make and reinforce a policy of less stress on the high school students who want to do well, not from the point of view of the colleges, but the high schoolers? They already have more than enough on their plates as it is, and I worry that they’re going to be absolutely burned out by the time they get through university
Straying into matters of the body, Duke University researchers suggest that gene-chip technology could be used to quickly identify someone suffering from radiation poisoning. Tests run on mice and humans indicated that there would have to be a lot of gene comparison going on with the chip. Something like this could be useful in case of a radioactive bomb being detonated in a major population center, according to the researchers.
Shifting gears from body to mind, the Guardian prints an excerpt from a book suggesting that depression has been on the rise for a while because society got rid of a lot of the merrymaking that used to happen. Work became a refuge from terror, but fun was kicked out in favor of more work. Which is why it’s good for the mental health to occasionally find a stop point in all your work and go play games and hang out with people. Something that I haven’t done a whole lot these past years, but will hopefully be able to take up again at the end of my course of study. While it may not actually happen, theoretically, I’ll be able to leave work at the office and control where it makes appearances outside of that space.
My geek senses tingle significantly at a new technique in France to get people to sign up for Internet service - for 10 euro more than a broadband subscription, they get a functional computer. It’s small, about toaster-size. If the user doesn’t have peripherals of their own to set up, 30 euros will get keyboard, mouse and camera, and 99 euros gets a small monitor. The great thing about this computer? It runs a very stripped-down version of Linux, ships with Firefox, Abiword, and Gnumeric (for web, word processing, and spreadsheets, respectively), and can have external hard drives and devices plugged into it. It’s the kind of computer that someone who’s afraid of computers might want - not much to do, and reasonably hard to mess up the basic system. Coupled with the laptop project for the Third World, maybe soon we’ll have affordable computers in the hands of all people?
Building, perhaps, on the idea of the Mechanical Turk and humans doing computer-difficult tasks, two articles appear for your perusal. First, computer models that attempt to mimic the human ability to recognize visual categorization tasks, and then, possibly the same or related material, new algorithms from UCSD that make it easier for computers to provide meaningful labels to pictures. Maybe all those Turk tasks are paying off, after all.
The last part for tonight is somewhat appropriate for the holidays being celebrated on the weekend - eggs stacked in such a way as to resemble currency patterns. If that doesn’t work for you, consider this: Louie Louie is fifty years old. If that’s not enough, or you want to take a peek and see what was going on quite some time ago in the comics when love was in the air (cheesy dialogue and all), then thisArchive of Golden Age Romance Comics might be worth either a fluttering of the heart or a good set of laughs, depending on your outlook and what you think of the material.
Mr. President, The Questionable Authority would like to introduce you to a document that he suspects you have not read, or do not understand, specifically, the United States Constitution. A sadly necessary introduction , the Authority says, because Mr. Bush does not understand that his only recourse against a bill that has provisions in it he considers unacceptable is to veto it. Making threats or suggesting that the Congresspersons are derelict in their duty by passing a bill that has timetables or other requirements is great grandstanding, but in the end, sir, you’re the one who vetoes the bill and prevents the funding from reaching them. If you’re willing to strand the troops without funding because you want the money unfettered, by all means, veto away. It will likely only be a matter of time before public opinion or the requisite votes for an override turn against you and pass it anyway. And if you’re really serious about this, Foreign Policy suggests you call the Congress back for a special session, as is your Constitutional right, and force them to hammer out a bill.
In the news, Iran says that the fifteen British sailors captured have been freed. Hopefully by now, they’re safely back to somewhere and getting a little time off. This did not stop John Derbyshire from calling the lot of them wimps because he believes they put up no resistance.
No doubt Mr. Derbyshire would have a harsh attitude for three Yale students who were arrested for setting fire to a United States flag sitting on a porch. The charges expressed are arson, criminal mischief, reckless endangerment, and so forth. Burning the flag is still considered protected speech. Burning someone else’s flag, however, will still get you in trouble.
In France, a TGV bullet train set a new conventional rail land speed record at 357 mph. This is only slightly slower than the highest speed achieved by any form of train, achieved by a Maglev bullet. The speed creates some competition between the makers of Maglev and France as to who will have their technology bought for developing high-speed rail elsewhere in the world. More than likely, the United States will ignore it, even though the country could use a high-speed train transit system.
Salon has a small piece about the USDA's decision to require all farms seeking organic certification to be inspected, including those in countries where the inspection fee may be too much. A previous agreement only had one fifth of the farms on a co-operative inspected every year, but now, each individually. Which could kill the organic market. I wonder if anything beside the case noted in the article was behind that kind of ruling.
In environmental possibilities, The United States Supreme Court ruled today that the federal government has the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, There’s no requirement in place yet, but the government does have this power, and the Court suggested that it be put to use. If they want to see what could happen, dust storms on Mars may be causing the planet's polar ice caps to melt through warming the planet.
Four fifth-grade students are being arraigned for having sex with each other while the teacher was out, along with a fifth who acted as lookout. They’re starting earlier and earlier these days. I doubt it was safe, although I do wonder about whether it was consensual. And I would like to know what drives those students to do so in a classroom of their peers.
Somewhere else in the world, A Toronto principal pleaded guilty to flinging feces at a student last July. It was considered by both sides to be a lapse in judgment, and no further action was taken, even with the plea. Continuing with the grab-bag of oddities, A Swedish couple is fighting to have their child officially named Metallica. Lars will probably be suing them for pirating material soon afterward. Also in the odd roundup, over $17,000 U.S. was found in a casino slated for destruction, by those preparing it for final rest. That’s a lot of change.
Moving outward and onto a different sort of social site, Hello Church offers up a prayer - God Bless the Roman Empire - I mean, America. Inside, he exhorts the faithful to be the people that others want to emulate or make legislation following their example, rather than trying tricks and politics to get in sympathetic votes that will push a particular agenda on the rest of the country. If every person of every Christian denomination really took this to heart, and strove to be an example worthy of looking up to, I think the country would change. I might even hazard that it would change for the better in some ways. Thanks to the success of Left Behind, which will finish itself out this week, there’s even more spotlight on Christian values than there was before. Make some use of it for good.
A pair of Times articles for your perusal. First, what high school students are doing to get into prestigious colleges, including stressing themselves out, staying up to odd hours, and taking as heavy a courseload as they can. Oh, that, and be pretty, athletic, socially-minded, and themselves, too. So, if they fall out of the sky, who’ll be standing by? Then, on the other end of the process, it was a banner year for the Ivy League schools, even though some of them rejected close to 90 percent of their applicants. All of that stress and work and worry, and the Ivies might not even have them. (This is why a back-up plan is a good thing.) So, if we could, please, make and reinforce a policy of less stress on the high school students who want to do well, not from the point of view of the colleges, but the high schoolers? They already have more than enough on their plates as it is, and I worry that they’re going to be absolutely burned out by the time they get through university
Straying into matters of the body, Duke University researchers suggest that gene-chip technology could be used to quickly identify someone suffering from radiation poisoning. Tests run on mice and humans indicated that there would have to be a lot of gene comparison going on with the chip. Something like this could be useful in case of a radioactive bomb being detonated in a major population center, according to the researchers.
Shifting gears from body to mind, the Guardian prints an excerpt from a book suggesting that depression has been on the rise for a while because society got rid of a lot of the merrymaking that used to happen. Work became a refuge from terror, but fun was kicked out in favor of more work. Which is why it’s good for the mental health to occasionally find a stop point in all your work and go play games and hang out with people. Something that I haven’t done a whole lot these past years, but will hopefully be able to take up again at the end of my course of study. While it may not actually happen, theoretically, I’ll be able to leave work at the office and control where it makes appearances outside of that space.
My geek senses tingle significantly at a new technique in France to get people to sign up for Internet service - for 10 euro more than a broadband subscription, they get a functional computer. It’s small, about toaster-size. If the user doesn’t have peripherals of their own to set up, 30 euros will get keyboard, mouse and camera, and 99 euros gets a small monitor. The great thing about this computer? It runs a very stripped-down version of Linux, ships with Firefox, Abiword, and Gnumeric (for web, word processing, and spreadsheets, respectively), and can have external hard drives and devices plugged into it. It’s the kind of computer that someone who’s afraid of computers might want - not much to do, and reasonably hard to mess up the basic system. Coupled with the laptop project for the Third World, maybe soon we’ll have affordable computers in the hands of all people?
Building, perhaps, on the idea of the Mechanical Turk and humans doing computer-difficult tasks, two articles appear for your perusal. First, computer models that attempt to mimic the human ability to recognize visual categorization tasks, and then, possibly the same or related material, new algorithms from UCSD that make it easier for computers to provide meaningful labels to pictures. Maybe all those Turk tasks are paying off, after all.
The last part for tonight is somewhat appropriate for the holidays being celebrated on the weekend - eggs stacked in such a way as to resemble currency patterns. If that doesn’t work for you, consider this: Louie Louie is fifty years old. If that’s not enough, or you want to take a peek and see what was going on quite some time ago in the comics when love was in the air (cheesy dialogue and all), then thisArchive of Golden Age Romance Comics might be worth either a fluttering of the heart or a good set of laughs, depending on your outlook and what you think of the material.
