And tho I get ahead, I feel like I'm falling behind - 29 January 2007

[silveradept]

More tasks completed. More information gathered. More yet to do. Oy. Kind of hoping there’s a break in the action somewhere where I can get really ahead on things. If not, oh well. I’ll figure it out... eventually.

Parking by robot garage. Might be the new choice for space-cramped places. If the garages here in the university town operated on the same principle... there still wouldn’t be enough parking, but it’d be closer.

AlterNet has a look at some books with a common theme: they're quite good at building up the appearance of Muslim terrorism as driving the plot, only to turn aside and show that Catholics or Hindus or other religions are behind the planned “big boom” terrorist act. At the last moment, all the evidence that seemed to be so obvious is shown to be planted. And the reader, who has been going along with this premise of Muslim terrorism, is caught with their pants down, as it were. The books remind us that Mr. Kaczynski, Mr. McVeigh, and quite a few others are domestic terrorists, even with university educations. Thus, one should be more inclined to catch terrorists, wherever, whomever they are, rather than pointing a finger at an ethnic or religious group and saying “Them. They’re at fault.” Not to say that there probably aren’t many who claim to follow Islam that would like to see violence wrought on America, just that there are potentially just as many Christians who would do the same if given the chance.

CBS talks about terrorism and oil in the same breath... and actually connects the two! Now that the President appears to have given his blessing for the media to talk about alternative energy in the light of reducing oil dependence, now buying petroleum gas means that you are probably funding terrorists. So develop and buy alternative fuels for democracy! Welcome to the party, guys - you’re a little late, of course. If the terrorism hook works on the American populace, though, maybe we’ll see some progress made on developing good fuel-efficient, alternative, hybrid, and pure electric vehicles. Perhaps helping that end along, Tesla Motors has opened an R&D center in Ann Arbor. That’s exciting for a lot of the engineers at the University, I’m sure. Additionally, a hydrogen fuel cell that can be throttled up and down has been developed. Variable power output is a grand thing - might make it better or easier to build fuel-cell driven motors.

Regarding oil stuff, either Chevron or ExxonMobil will be building a $3 billion U.S. petrochemical facility in Iraq. Even if the war wasn’t about the oil, the oil companies stand to benefit greatly from it.

The Administration, however, may be taking a page out of Matt Groening’s playbook, floating a plan to blot out some of the sun to counteract the effects of global warming. And from there, the comment wars begin, where all it takes is one person to deny that warming is happening and to accuse all the scientific research being done on it as junk.

Suggesting that art critics on occasion stretch the truth one way or another, the Guardian presents a guide to critic-speak. Apparently, all the critics want to do what Simon Cowell does, they just would get sacked if they do.

Much like hamsters (spot the reference!), someone found out that putting a dish towel in a microwave is a very bad idea. Luckily, the house wasn’t destroyed when the towel caught fire. And the other good lesson learned here is not to follow anything said on the television blindly. This applies to politics as well as home sterilization techniques.

It’s an unmarked, undated essay, and as with most of the things here, I don’t actually know the credentials of the person that wrote it, but David P. Barash suggests that monogamy is not the natural impulse of humans and primates. He tempers that observation by saying that monogamy is still a good thing to go for, just that it may not be the natural impulse of people. I don’t know how true it is, but I’m not sure how far such a statement or argument would fly in the courts or in a battle with a spouse.

My last remarks for the night are reminders that computers do not solve all things, and cannot be relied on to solve all things. They do not yet have the judgment as to what may or may not be in accord with company policy. Our case study? Wal-Mart's website sells yaoi. Well, sold yaoi. No, wait, still sells yaoi - and yuri, and other forms of pornography. (Actually, those units have also been pulled from the website, as of this writing.) I don’t know whether more will be found or not, but this is clearly a case of Wal-Mart trusting their filters a little too much. You can’t keep out all the smut unless you know how the smut is described. Plus, I just find it funny that yaoi and yuri would sneak past the filters, because not everyone knows what they are. Anyway, rule is that you should always keep a human on hand to monitor things and try some new keywords. Or you could just let a blog or two mock you in the right way until someone notices and removes the pieces from the website.

G’night, people. Hoping for some rest.

Comments

[aoanla.livejournal.com]

The biological evidence for the rarity of monogamy isn't actually that new (what's interesting is, rather, that when society was less willing to consider non-monagamy as moral, scientists didn't scrutinise the degree of monogamy of animals as deeply, apparently; similarly with homosexuality in animals and the views of society, &c &c). Of course, it is still not demonstrated that monogamy is a good thing to go for - centuries of various polygynous (and the odd polyandrous) civilisations seem to argue that there are valid alternatives (especially if you're rich and powerful) - but that monogamy is a cultural layer on top of our lower-level behaviours seems fairly clear. (Incidently, this ties in with the argument from primates that we should, in fact, be more polyamorous - chimps are violent bastards, who compete over status and breeding rights in the same way "monogamy" works with humans - that is, imperfectly, and flexibly - while bonobos have relatively unconstrained sex (which isn't aimed at reproduction) with basically anything that moves, and are happy, unviolent apes. Apparently, "flexible monogamy" is a guarantee of increased aggression, due to the introduction of competition over who gets to be in which (transitory?) pair...

Not that the argument from primates is really water-tight, or anything. Arguments from biology tend to be lacking much consideration of the cultural layer...)

[silveradept]

So, this has been done before, and it's just a matter of the American culture entertaining an alternative to the idea that monogamy is the only natural way that science is looking into whether that's actually true? Interesting. Of course, a finding like this would only get some to thunder harder from their pulpits that humans have to rise above their base nature and be good (X).

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

Grrrrr at all the people who put dishcloths in the microwave without actually reading the report. I do it all the time (and did before they even came up with this advice) because it sure beats boiling them for 5 minutes and it helps them not smell really awful (I'm not so worried about the bacteria). The only thing you have to remember is that it needs to be damp and it needs to come out actively STEAMING. This usually takes a minute, so watch it. It'll start steaming relatively quickly, give it a few seconds and stop the microwave. When it stops steaming, that means it's dry so pull it out quick! Really, you have a nice large window not to be stupid in. My guess is these people stuck it in, thought "2 minutes is good, so 15 minutes must be better" and then walked away.

And I guess my lawyers tell me to add a caveat: the POINT of this is to get the sponge super hot... which means don't touch it until it's cooled or you could scald yourself.

Or you can do what we do in lab and soak everything in 70% food-grade ethanol. That's usually pretty good at killing stuff.

[silveradept]

Many ways to clean those things up. If more people read the directions before attempting something potentially dangerous, we'd all be happier. But yes, something that actually requires attention is darn near impossible for "Average Joe", apparently.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

I've gotten told by my doctor and at least two nurses that I should microwave moist towels to use as a heating pad - of course, they say to do it in 20 second intervals.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

wasn't there something a few weeks back that the car companies in MI were opposing the electric car stuff?

So Chevron wants to build a plant in a country that we're at "war" with? Something doesn't quite add up here...

Blot out the sun? Are they serious? Does the administration really think that the only reason we have global warming is from the sun, and not from the giant gaping hole in the ozone layer caused by pollution? No, let's send something ELSE into orbit. UGH! And a bunch of shiny balloons? Tell me they're joking.

The monogamy article seems to be written from a definite "male" stance - referring to men "owning harems", etc, however half the books they mention involve women being the promiscuous ones.

I will admit to not knowing what Hentai, Yaoi, or Yuri was until the past year or so, however, If I saw those covers in a store, or online, I'd assume it was porn of some sort. A computer that only scans for words, and not images, probably wouldn't pick it up either.

[aoanla.livejournal.com]

Well, culturally, at the moment, there is a tradition that men are the ones most likely to be unfaithful, driven by their testosterone.

(And, indeed, historically, many societies legitimised this behaviour by making adultery effectively only illegal for women.)

Statistics, in fact, show that in most societies, the majority of men and women are sexually monogamous once married. The incidence of adultery is generally higher amongst men than women, but both vary considerably with the society - in the US, the statistics for male and female adultery overlap within the error on the collected data.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

You might have missed it, but some city in New Jersey recently had some fun with a robotic parking garage. They let the contract with the provider lapse, and the garage went into total shut-down. No cars in or out.

They have since renewed the contract but are going to look for an open source solution.

[silveradept]

I did miss that, and it does sound interesting. Certainly don't want to get locked-in by lock-in. Maybe the new niche programmer's market is garages on GNU OS?

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

The article that you linked to mentioned the NJ garage but only superficially. I don't know what they did with the replacement OS for the garage, it would be interesting to know.

Here's a more complete story on the garage:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71554-0.html