Cause of Death
December 27, 2006 | People & Society
BBC: A statement from Betty Ford said: "My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather, has passed away at 93 years of age." The statement did not give the cause of death.
Um, at 93, the cause of death is probably "old age." Does the specific mechanism matter at that point? It reads as though people are surprised when everyone doesn't live forever. The only real surprise is that Ford outlived the writer of his obituary.
Sneetchcrafted Chocolate
December 27, 2006 | Business & Commerce
Reading this investigative journalism piece about extremely overpriced chocolates made in Plano (Dallas) Texas, you will learn a whole lot about the origins, processing, and packaging of chocolate.
Bonus: The word "Sneetchcraft," following Dr. Seuss. "This collection of four of Dr. Seuss's most winning stories begins with that unforgettable tale of the unfortunate Sneetches, bamboozled by one Sylvester McMonkey McBean ("the Fix-it-up Chappie"), who teaches them that pointless prejudice can be costly."
Strong Medicine
December 25, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life | People & Society
Between the rampant consumerism, the killing carried out in the name of God, and your everyday garden-variety family dynamics, it takes a heckofalotof positive, weird, and funky energy to keep the cultural balance this time of year. In an attempt to stay sane, the past three days I've deep-listened to:
* Frank Zappa's, We're Only In It For The Money, Lumpy Gravy, and Civilization Phase Three. (That right there should tell you something, when those three albums are the description of sanity.) [Those are all really good Wikipedia links for learning about Zappa's music, which is worth doing, hint.]
* Bob Dylan's Blood On The Tracks and Modern Times.
* Grateful Dead, Truckin' Up To Buffalo, July 4, 1989.
* Phil Lesh and Friends, Live at the Warfield DVD, May 19, 2006 (twice!). This is some hot jamband-inspired jazz improvisation, showing off John Scofield tearing it up with Larry Cambell. Joan Osborne on vocals.
* Radiohead's Kid A. ("...one of the most challenging pop records ever to achieve such commercial success.")
I've also browsed Love In America, an article on interpersonal triangles by Thomas Fogarty, an MSW thesis written by a friend (regarding the effects death-anxiety has on end-of-life caregivers), and the New Yorker Complete Cartons.
The Difference Snow Makes
December 24, 2006 | Nature & Environment
Great photo comparison of the Denver airport with and without 36" of snow.
I Am The Slime
December 23, 2006 | Arts & Culture
A little pre-holiday Frank Zappa for you, I Am The Slime:
I am gross and perverted
I'm obsessed 'n deranged
I have existed for years
But very little had changed
I am the tool of the government
And industry too
For I am destined to rule
And regulate you
I may be vile and pernicious
But you can't look away
I make you think I'm delicious
With the stuff that I say
I am the best you can get
Have you guessed me yet?
I am the slime oozing out
From your tv set
You will obey me while I lead you
And eat the garbage that I feed you
Until the day that we don't need you
Don't go for help...no one will heed you
Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold
Thats right, folks...
Don't touch that dial
Cliche Finder
December 22, 2006 | Arts & Culture
Clever: Cliche Finder, by Aaron Swartz.
Coop Holiday Shopping
December 22, 2006 | Life | People & Society
I went to the Coop at 1:30 PM today, three shopping days before Christmas, and the first day off of work for most people. I knew it would be a scene, but it was such a scene I got a photo pass from the store manager and took a few shots. When you arrive and there aren't any carts, you know you're in for it:
After you make it through the deli (whew!!) you have the dairy gauntlet:
The intersection of wine, meat, and produce was something of a bottleneck:
I don't eat caviar, but if I did I'd be glad to know you can get it in a range of qualities this year, from $4.25/oz to $130/oz:
Checkout moved quickly, but there were a lot of people, and everyone had full carriages:
My meager basket was $143.62:
Eat, drink, and make a toast to peace in our lifetime.
Car Security Hacks
December 20, 2006 | Arts & Culture
The post begins:
So, you know those cars with that keyless entry pad? The one under the driver's side handle?
And ends with:
I am going to give you a sequence of minimal length that, when you enter it into a car's numeric keypad, is guaranteed to unlock the doors of said car. It is exactly 3129 keypresses long, which should take you around 20 minutes to go through.
In other words, if you press the sequence of 3,129 numbers he presents, you will get yourself into any car with a keyless entry system.
When You Act You Make New Facts
December 20, 2006 | Governance | People & Society
Important intellectual analysis from Jay Rosen on how the Bush administration has played the media.
In Without a Doubt (subtitled “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush”) Suskind was not talking about an age old conflict between realists and idealists, the sort of story line that can be re-cycled for every administration. It wasn’t the ideologues against the pragmatists, either. He was telling us that reality-based policy-making—and the mechanisms for it—had gotten dumped. A different pattern had appeared under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The normal checks and balances had been overcome, so that executive power could flow more freely. Reduced deliberation, oversight, fact-finding, and field reporting were different elements of an emerging political style. Suskind, I felt, got to the essence of it with his phrase, the “retreat from empiricism.”
JibJab's Year in Review
December 14, 2006 | Arts & Culture
This will be making the rounds: Nuckin' Futs: JibJab's animated year in review.
Bonus blast from the past: Big Box Mart
Eating Soy Leads to Homosexuality and a Small Penis
December 12, 2006 | People & Society
Really! That's what this Christianist guy Rutz says over at the WorldNet Daily.
Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because "I can't remember a time when I wasn't homosexual." No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can't remember a time when excess estrogen wasn't influencing them.
James Rutz is chairman of Megashift Ministries and founder-chairman of Open Church Ministries. He is the author of "MEGASHIFT: Igniting Spiritual Power," and, most recently, "The Meaning of Life." If you'd rather order by phone, call WND's toll-free customer service line at 1-800-4WND-COM (1-800-496-3266).
Then there's this ad at the bottom:
You can't make this stuff up. These people are crazy! Yeah, maybe I do need a keychain NukAlert radiation monitor!
Update: Everyone's on this one today. Wonkette:
If you’ve been on the internet today, someone has forwarded you this charming World Net Daily editorial on how the communists are sapping our precious bodily fluids through soy. Making fun of it is pretty much out of the question, not because everyone else has already had a crack at at, but because the damn headline is “A devil food is turning our kids into homosexuals.” That is not a Babel Fish translation.
Wesabe
December 12, 2006 | Products & Opportunites | Software
Been meaning to post this for a while: Wesabe. There's a good tour describing the app.
Wesabe is a community of people who share our experiences with our money so we can help each other make better financial decisions. We do this by aggregating and analyzing our community members' personal financial data, and showing tips — recommendations to get the most from our money. These tips and recommendations come from the collective wisdom of our entire community. When one of us figures out how to make a great decision, we all learn.
Really interesting approach, requiring great trust, with potentially strong benefits to the participants.
PawSense
December 12, 2006 | Software
PawSense: Catproof your computer.
When cats walk or climb on your keyboard, they can enter random commands and data, damage your files, and even crash your computer. This can happen whether you are near the computer or have suddenly been called away from it. PawSense is a software utility that helps protect your computer from cats. It quickly detects and blocks cat typing, and also helps train your cat to stay off the computer keyboard.
Of course, Windows-only. Everyone knows Mac cats are much better trained and there's no market for remedial catproofing software.
Monday Blues
December 11, 2006 | Life
Observe the following:
- It's 40 degrees F outside.
- I'm wearing a t-shirt, a flannel shirt, a wool sweater, and a ski jacket.
- I'm freezing, my sore throat is a lot worse today than yesterday, and I can't tell if my muscles ache or if it's tension because I'm cold.
Ugg, I hope this doesn't last too long. Is it too late for a flu shot this year?
Update: Okay, I've worked 90 minutes today, time to go home.
Wordie
December 11, 2006 | Arts & Culture
Confidential to Hannah: This Wordie thing appears to be another excellent opportunity to avoid writing. ;)
Teenar, Girl Guitar
December 4, 2006 | Arts & Culture
I Can't Help It, If I'm Lucky
December 4, 2006 | Arts & Culture
Just quoting a lyric from the weekend, no hidden meaning.
Someone's got it in for me, they're planting stories in the press
Whoever it is I wish they'd cut it out but when they will I can only guess.
They say I shot a man named Gray and took his wife to Italy,
She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me.
I can't help it, if I'm lucky.
Blood on the Tracks is a monstrously fantastico piece of work. [Liner notes]
Rich People Don’t Care About Gas Prices
December 4, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites
Great essay, with attitude, on why Ford, GM, and Chrysler are sucking eggs so hard.
We’re looking at two strategies here. Toyota: build affordable transportation for the masses at a quality level that slightly exceeds expectations relative to price. GM et al: build oversized, under-engineered and fuel inefficient cars for people who don’t care about money while palming off sub-standard cars on mainstream customers.
Recall that GM has underfunded its pension and Ford just laid off bought out 40,000 workers, and you realize how they've already lost the game. There won't be any decent American cars to buy in a few years. Just government subsidized Yugo-clones that attempt to preserve a national pride of manufacturing. Oh well; we still have the entertainment industry.
Comments
December 4, 2006 | Site Maintenance
Since I'm under deadline, I'm messing around with my weblog configuration.
Weblog commenting is totally broken. I just deleted 5,835 junk comments, all spammed since Thanksgiving. Then I went into the approved comments and find that there are 3,300 of them, when in fact only between 300 and 800 are valid. So I'll have to manually delete those over the next few weeks, in small batches so I don't become a serial killer.
I should probably do what Chris and Ashley recommended two years ago, which is to use Haloscan for comments. Or I should at least upgrade to Moveable Type 3.33 – but since they don't appear to address any of the comment management problems, who cares what other new features there are? I don't have 15 minutes a day to delete this crap from clueless people who think they're going to get rich vandalizing websites.
For now, I've turned on TypeKey authentication, which probably won't solve the problem but may reduce it dramatically. That means you have to register with them in order to comment here. Sigh. Not many people comment anyway, especially since the summer when I ran out of energy to engage commentators and keep the conversation alive.
It seems to me like keeping Moveable Type crippled like this is a good way to drive "upgrades" to TypePad, the paid hosted service that Six Apart offers. That's very annoying, and there's no solid evidence, save for the snail's pace of MT improvements over the past three years. They are ignoring the biggest hassle of running a weblog today.
It wasn't like this in 1998, I tell 'ya.
Update: Great, now TypeKey says I haven't signed up for this (free) feature. But the weblog key matches they key they display on my configuration profile. Oh well, maybe I've broken comments completely. Which is possibly better than deleting the vandalism every day.....
Update 2: CRAZY! In the TypeKey setup, you have to have a trailing slash after the URL. Even I can friggin' write Perl to add one if it's not present!! How un-friendly is that??
Update 3: Okay, once I have "trusted" a commenter it appears to work. Wish us luck!
Know Your Cell Phone
December 3, 2006 | People & Society | Technology
Did you know that when you turn your cell phone "off" it is not actually off?
Well, I had previously heard a rumor that the GPS (global positioning system) stuff was still available when a cell phone was "off," enabling it to be used as a tracking device. But that was a rumor, and I hadn't taken the time to research it.
Today comes news, from reliable sources like court documents, that in fact the microphone can be used when the phone is "off."
The U.S. Commerce Department's security office warns that "a cellular telephone can be turned into a microphone and transmitter for the purpose of listening to conversations in the vicinity of the phone." An article in the Financial Times last year said mobile providers can "remotely install a piece of software on to any handset, without the owner's knowledge, which will activate the microphone even when its owner is not making a call."
Pretty amazing, huh? Lest you think this is all science fiction, note that the court opinion regarded the admissibility of said evidence against a mafia crime family. So it's been done, is being done, and is being admitted in court.
Of course, if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to worry about, right?
A BBC article from 2004 reported that intelligence agencies routinely employ the remote-activiation method. "A mobile sitting on the desk of a politician or businessman can act as a powerful, undetectable bug," the article said, "enabling them to be activated at a later date to pick up sounds even when the receiver is down."
Other mobile providers were reluctant to talk about this kind of surveillance. Verizon Wireless said only that it "works closely with law enforcement and public safety officials. When presented with legally authorized orders, we assist law enforcement in every way possible."
Oh, and that really neat OnStar "safety net" in your car?
Surreptitious activation of built-in microphones by the FBI has been done before. A 2003 lawsuit revealed that the FBI was able to surreptitiously turn on the built-in microphones in automotive systems like General Motors' OnStar to snoop on passengers' conversations. When FBI agents remotely activated the system and were listening in, passengers in the vehicle could not tell that their conversations were being monitored
I feel so safe I can hardly stand it.
