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More stuff than nonsense - 20 May 2008
May. 20th, 2008 11:16 pmAt least, we hope that’s the case. I still haven’t found the cause for the white screen of doom, but I do know that it only occurs when I turn the monitor off and leave it that way for a while. It also shows up right at the beginning of a boot-up sequence, but eventually clears off when there’s a successful Ubuntu boot. Makes me wonder what’s going on, and whether my drivers are just causing problems (with bugfixes along the way at some point), or whether my monitor is trying to tell me that it will be dying soon. So I’ve changed off to the generic driver set, and I’ll be experimenting tonight to see whether the white screen problem persists or not. For what I use this machine for, if I have to stay on the generic driver for a while while they work out the bugs and kinks in things, that’s okay. I just hate having my functionality go away because I want to save energy and monitor life by turning it off at night.
It rained a lot today, without lightning or thunder or darkness of sky. Just heavy rain. After stepping outside after the storm (or more precisely, in a break in the storm), I got that wonderful post-rain smell. A wonderful, lovely smell it is, and it made the whole rain kind of worth it.
Got to do some talking up for the Teen Summer Reading program today. Kept it light, casual, informative, and wasn’t put off by a large amount of blank stares. That said, I did take notice in the places where I did actually get a reaction, and plan on gearing a lot of the talks back towards those points if at all possible. I think I might have found my primary book for the talking. Hopefully I don’t appear too much like an old fart, and not too “unprofessional”. I’m hoping that I’ll get lots to come in and do the program. That’s my hope, anyway.
Speaking of professionalism, even when it's him, the professional photographer takes a picture of the guy who gets javelined.
In international news, keep an eye on attempts to build sovereign states in deep waters. Might help solve some of the crowding problems, but I suspect there’s going to need to be an ideological purity test passed at some point.
In Burma, while the government does its best to convince the world that the disaster has been managed, there aren’t any other countries buying it.
More seriously, the drumbeat of "Bomb Iran" continues to get louder, including trying to get Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tried in international courts for bellicose rhetoric. If he gets put up before the Assizes, then Mr. Bush should probably be brought before them as well, considering his rhetoric actually led to killing. Timed with that is the Prime Minister of the Kurdish region in Iraq saying "You've made progress with us! Don't go!", knowing full well that he and other Kurds would probably be vaught in major crossfire should the United States leave.
In domestic matters, Mr. Bush's war spending bill may have to be vetoed after several other spending packages were attached to it. It’s still a dirty trick, mind you, to bog down and force vetoes by adding unrelated matters. Considering the current climate that would pass unencumbered bills and still veto domestic spending if presented properly, it is an effective trick, but still not really playing fair.
Can I get an Amen for banners against torture for churches and places of worship to display? And one more for the Slacktivist expanding the idea to include every place of business? Row upon row of “torture is wrong” banners, stretched as far as the eye can see? That would be really cool.
Senator Edward Kennedy has a cancerous brain tumor. He was getting on in years, but cancer is still a horrible way to end up dying, especially when it’s a zombie cancer.
A couple has been banned from Royal Carribean for frequent complaining. Some of which the cruise line agreed with, some which it did not. And finally, after having listened to the complaints for too long, they lowered the banstick. Be judicious in your complaints, and make sure they’re the right ones. Receiving yearbook photos with obviously mismatched heads and bodies? Definitely worth complaining over. Items arriving five seconds late? Definitely not.
With regard to candidates for the election, with a victory in Oregon, Senator Obama requires less than 100 of the uncommitted superdelegates to capture the Democratic nomination. The mathematics that we know of is showing Senator Obama as the winner, but superdelegates are fickle creatures, and so the matter is not finished.
John Bolton suggests Senator McCain challenge Senator Obama on foreign policy, as well as detailing reasons why he thinks Senator Obama’s plans aren’t going to work and will do more harm than good.
C. Fred Bergsten foresees a debate on trade agreements in the general campaigns. Although I’m not completely understanding the events that took place as he described them. Somewhere in there, agreements Mr. Bush wants are being held up and/or voted down by the Congress? Isn’t that a normal part of checks and balances?
And in the opinion pages, William McGurn laments how Harvard University treats military graduates, having expelled the ROTC from the campus and refusing to do a whole lot with them because of the military’s continued practices of discrimination against open homosexuals. The argument is similar to other “right or wrong, we should support the troops” arguments. We can support those troops while still insisting that they treat everyone equally. Those who choose the military of their own free will, not because it’s the only option available to them, or because they were sold on a promise of glitz and glamour and not the reality of blood and death, for them we can say, “Well, that’s your choice. We can respect that, even if we disagree mightily on the missions that you will be undertaking.” And at the same time, pointedly try our best to make sure that nobody else goes in without knowing exactly what they’re getting into. We do support the troops. We only want the people who want to be there and are okay with the mission to be fighting.
In technology, Webmonkey returns, with tutorials, code, and all sorts of resources to help aspiring and experienced webmonkeys. Because there can never be too much helpful material for free on the Web, right?
Getting to social points, two lists, one good, one not so good. The good list - Interacting With Females, Geek Version, which reminds us all of common sense, courtesy and the value of soap. The not-so-good list is 75 Skills Every Man Should Know. For one, 75 skills seems either too small or too large for these days, depending on your point of view. Not only that, but some of them seems pretty useless to me (#4 is only useful if you’re a baseball fan, I assure you). Others reinforce the “grunt, sports, grunt, women” kind of mentality for men. Fighting is not a useful skill unless one plans on getting in fights. Knowing one’s drink is only useful if one intends on drinking a lot. Many of these skills reinforce the stereotypical male, and a lot of the stereotypical male fell out fashion when abducting women and carrying them off to be brides fell out of fashion.
Our Unabashed Feminism Department chief linked me to a rant on the still-prevailing image that women aren't interested in or don't like science fiction. Despite several famous female SF authors, actors, and a gigantic amount of fans of SF that are female, some newspaper articles still don’t get it (some other fans don’t necessarily want all the women in their space, but they’re fools and not worth paying attention to). The women are coming, and they’re not going to just stand outside and wait for you to let them in. Actually, they’ve been inside the party for a while now. Learn how to deal with it - after all, at some point she’s going to speak better conlang than you. And look good while she does it. We refer you to the list above about geek communication, and remember, her eyes are up there.
A random sample of nearly 2000 high-school science teachers found approximately one in eight of those teachers teaches creationism as valid science. The study also found that those teachers with more science in their backgrounds spent more time on the evolution unit, and those with evolutionary biology spent more time still. Teaching non-science as science is still not acceptable. I don’t really care what personal beliefs are, but with as poorly as the children seem to be learning, contaminating their learning with other stuff doesn’t sound like an effective solution to me.
Last for tonight, a potentially scary thing - Hello Kitty is now Japan's tourism ambassador to China and Hong Kong. This is in addition to Doraemon getting a title some time earlier - I don’t remember which title it is, but I do remember that it happened.
Anyway, bed time, sleep well, have fun storming the castle and all that.
It rained a lot today, without lightning or thunder or darkness of sky. Just heavy rain. After stepping outside after the storm (or more precisely, in a break in the storm), I got that wonderful post-rain smell. A wonderful, lovely smell it is, and it made the whole rain kind of worth it.
Got to do some talking up for the Teen Summer Reading program today. Kept it light, casual, informative, and wasn’t put off by a large amount of blank stares. That said, I did take notice in the places where I did actually get a reaction, and plan on gearing a lot of the talks back towards those points if at all possible. I think I might have found my primary book for the talking. Hopefully I don’t appear too much like an old fart, and not too “unprofessional”. I’m hoping that I’ll get lots to come in and do the program. That’s my hope, anyway.
Speaking of professionalism, even when it's him, the professional photographer takes a picture of the guy who gets javelined.
In international news, keep an eye on attempts to build sovereign states in deep waters. Might help solve some of the crowding problems, but I suspect there’s going to need to be an ideological purity test passed at some point.
In Burma, while the government does its best to convince the world that the disaster has been managed, there aren’t any other countries buying it.
More seriously, the drumbeat of "Bomb Iran" continues to get louder, including trying to get Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tried in international courts for bellicose rhetoric. If he gets put up before the Assizes, then Mr. Bush should probably be brought before them as well, considering his rhetoric actually led to killing. Timed with that is the Prime Minister of the Kurdish region in Iraq saying "You've made progress with us! Don't go!", knowing full well that he and other Kurds would probably be vaught in major crossfire should the United States leave.
In domestic matters, Mr. Bush's war spending bill may have to be vetoed after several other spending packages were attached to it. It’s still a dirty trick, mind you, to bog down and force vetoes by adding unrelated matters. Considering the current climate that would pass unencumbered bills and still veto domestic spending if presented properly, it is an effective trick, but still not really playing fair.
Can I get an Amen for banners against torture for churches and places of worship to display? And one more for the Slacktivist expanding the idea to include every place of business? Row upon row of “torture is wrong” banners, stretched as far as the eye can see? That would be really cool.
Senator Edward Kennedy has a cancerous brain tumor. He was getting on in years, but cancer is still a horrible way to end up dying, especially when it’s a zombie cancer.
A couple has been banned from Royal Carribean for frequent complaining. Some of which the cruise line agreed with, some which it did not. And finally, after having listened to the complaints for too long, they lowered the banstick. Be judicious in your complaints, and make sure they’re the right ones. Receiving yearbook photos with obviously mismatched heads and bodies? Definitely worth complaining over. Items arriving five seconds late? Definitely not.
With regard to candidates for the election, with a victory in Oregon, Senator Obama requires less than 100 of the uncommitted superdelegates to capture the Democratic nomination. The mathematics that we know of is showing Senator Obama as the winner, but superdelegates are fickle creatures, and so the matter is not finished.
John Bolton suggests Senator McCain challenge Senator Obama on foreign policy, as well as detailing reasons why he thinks Senator Obama’s plans aren’t going to work and will do more harm than good.
C. Fred Bergsten foresees a debate on trade agreements in the general campaigns. Although I’m not completely understanding the events that took place as he described them. Somewhere in there, agreements Mr. Bush wants are being held up and/or voted down by the Congress? Isn’t that a normal part of checks and balances?
And in the opinion pages, William McGurn laments how Harvard University treats military graduates, having expelled the ROTC from the campus and refusing to do a whole lot with them because of the military’s continued practices of discrimination against open homosexuals. The argument is similar to other “right or wrong, we should support the troops” arguments. We can support those troops while still insisting that they treat everyone equally. Those who choose the military of their own free will, not because it’s the only option available to them, or because they were sold on a promise of glitz and glamour and not the reality of blood and death, for them we can say, “Well, that’s your choice. We can respect that, even if we disagree mightily on the missions that you will be undertaking.” And at the same time, pointedly try our best to make sure that nobody else goes in without knowing exactly what they’re getting into. We do support the troops. We only want the people who want to be there and are okay with the mission to be fighting.
In technology, Webmonkey returns, with tutorials, code, and all sorts of resources to help aspiring and experienced webmonkeys. Because there can never be too much helpful material for free on the Web, right?
Getting to social points, two lists, one good, one not so good. The good list - Interacting With Females, Geek Version, which reminds us all of common sense, courtesy and the value of soap. The not-so-good list is 75 Skills Every Man Should Know. For one, 75 skills seems either too small or too large for these days, depending on your point of view. Not only that, but some of them seems pretty useless to me (#4 is only useful if you’re a baseball fan, I assure you). Others reinforce the “grunt, sports, grunt, women” kind of mentality for men. Fighting is not a useful skill unless one plans on getting in fights. Knowing one’s drink is only useful if one intends on drinking a lot. Many of these skills reinforce the stereotypical male, and a lot of the stereotypical male fell out fashion when abducting women and carrying them off to be brides fell out of fashion.
Our Unabashed Feminism Department chief linked me to a rant on the still-prevailing image that women aren't interested in or don't like science fiction. Despite several famous female SF authors, actors, and a gigantic amount of fans of SF that are female, some newspaper articles still don’t get it (some other fans don’t necessarily want all the women in their space, but they’re fools and not worth paying attention to). The women are coming, and they’re not going to just stand outside and wait for you to let them in. Actually, they’ve been inside the party for a while now. Learn how to deal with it - after all, at some point she’s going to speak better conlang than you. And look good while she does it. We refer you to the list above about geek communication, and remember, her eyes are up there.
A random sample of nearly 2000 high-school science teachers found approximately one in eight of those teachers teaches creationism as valid science. The study also found that those teachers with more science in their backgrounds spent more time on the evolution unit, and those with evolutionary biology spent more time still. Teaching non-science as science is still not acceptable. I don’t really care what personal beliefs are, but with as poorly as the children seem to be learning, contaminating their learning with other stuff doesn’t sound like an effective solution to me.
Last for tonight, a potentially scary thing - Hello Kitty is now Japan's tourism ambassador to China and Hong Kong. This is in addition to Doraemon getting a title some time earlier - I don’t remember which title it is, but I do remember that it happened.
Anyway, bed time, sleep well, have fun storming the castle and all that.
