The Phnom Penh

I want a Wii!

2007-04-05T13:35:00.000+07:00

UNEASYsilence, a pretty cool tech blog, is giving away a Wii. All you have to do to win it is mention it on your blog, or Digg it, or tag it, or something. But you're not gonna win, because this is the winning mention, right here.

Texas cops lead interesting lives

2006-03-19T18:44:00.000+07:00

From San Antonio, a contender for all-time best headline: Flying Cow Leaves Two Police Cars in Flames

And, reported by Dave Barry many years ago, this:

"Police Blotter" item from the Port Aransas (Texas) South Jetty, consisting entirely of this fascinating statement: "No goat was found in the trunk of a vehicle when an officer responded to a complaint on East Avenue G at about 1:20 p.m."

Technorati Tags: Law enforcement, Texas, Weirdness

Beware unintended consequences

2006-03-01T11:16:00.000+07:00

I heard once that a bar in California (why is it always California?) had installed a coin-operated breathalyzer, the intention being that patrons could check their alcohol levels before leaving, to make sure that it was safe and legal for them to be driving.

If you think that's how the machine got used, you need to learn more about human nature. Almost immediately, people in the bar started holding contests to see who could get the highest reading on the machine. Although this was probably good for business, the bar was forced to remove the machine on advice from their lawyers.

But if the machine were still in that bar, this guy could probably win a lot of money, betting on himself.

Technorati Tags: Alcohol, Weirdness

Of course, fraternal twins don't necessarily look alike...

2006-02-28T17:11:00.000+07:00

This story is amazing:

When Kylie Hodgson gave birth to twin daughters by caesarean section, she was just relieved that they had arrived safely.
It was only when the midwife handed them over for her to hold that she noticed the difference between them.

Remee, who weighed 5lb 15oz, was blonde and fair skinned. Her sister Kian, born a minute later weighing 6lb, was black.

Both of the grandfathers of the twins are black; both grandmothers are white. General coloration is thought to be determined by several genes, which is why children often have skin tones intermediate between their parents. But in this case, against extremely long odds, one twin seems to have gotten all the genes for dark hair and skin, and the other all the ones for fair.

I bet they're going to get really sick of explaining this to people who object, "But you can't be twins!"

Technorati Tags: Genetics, Twins

Of course, "normal people" have nothing to fear

2006-02-20T15:27:00.000+07:00

According to the Hatch Act, political bumper stickers are allowed on cars parked on federal property, with no stated limitation on either size or number of stickers. So by the current rules, Scarbrough's car would seem to be legit--unless the "elsewhere" of the pamphlet rule is meant to extend to personal property as well as government property.

If that's the case, both Scarbrough and his coworker said, "That's news to me." It would also be news to the dozens of people parked in the Natural Resource Complex with bumper stickers reading, among other sentiments, "My Dad is a Marine," "Create Peace," "POW/ MIA," and others of both the pro-choice and pro-life variety.

But after going through the incident, both Scarbrough and his coworker are insistent: it's not the location or size that mattered in this case. It's the message.

— from the Boise Weekly, in an article on Scarbrough's being made by Homeland
Security officers to move his vehicle and its anti-war messages away from his workplace

Two uniformed men strolled into the main room of the Little Falls library in Bethesda one day last week and demanded the attention of all patrons using the computers. Then they made their announcement: The viewing of Internet pornography was forbidden.

The men looked stern and wore baseball caps emblazoned with the words "Homeland Security." The bizarre scene unfolded Feb. 9, leaving some residents confused and forcing county officials to explain how employees assigned to protect county buildings against terrorists came to see it as their job to police the viewing of pornography.

— Policing Porn Is Not Part of Job Description

It took me a half dozen e-mails and telephone calls over three days to just to confirm that yes, the Directorate of National Intelligence, or DNI, the new-ish uber-spooks body — has opened an office to deal with state and local law enforcement.

And it took me a few more inquiries before the DNI gave up the name of its head, Michael Tiffany, though nothing more.

— Jeff Stein, National Security Editor, CQ.com

Secret police, arbitrary (mis)enforcement of laws—America is cravenly allowing the Bush administration to, bit by bit, create a police state.

Technorati Tags: Bush, Homeland Security

Now Alec Baldwin shoots at Whittington!

2006-02-18T12:50:00.000+07:00

Luckily for Whittington, Baldwin was only using words, and he's not all that good with them. And Whittington is the wrong Republican to be going after—he's deserving of respect, a member of the honorable opposition. Want to know why? Go read Molly Ivins on the subject. Here's a sample:

...Whittington is seriously civilized, particularly on the issues of crime, punishment and prisons. He served on both the Texas Board of Corrections and on the bonding authority that builds prisons. As he has often said, prisons do not curb crime, they are hothouses for crime: "Prisons are to crime what greenhouses are to plants."

Technorati Tags: Alec Baldwin, Harry Whittington, Dick Cheney

I can do 8th grade math! Kinda...

2006-02-18T12:38:00.000+07:00

You'd think that after spending 12 years getting a BA in math, I would have no problems with a test that purports to tell you if you could pass 8th grade math. And sure enough, I got 10/10—but that was only because I guessed right on this question:

-7 is:

a. Irrational
b. An integer
c. A whole number
d. A prime number

I hate it when test creators don't carefully check their tests. Depending on how you define "whole number", either b or c could be correct. According to the Wikipedia (and my memory, which is even less reliable), a whole number can be either a positive integer (1, 2, 3, ...), a nonnegative integer (0, 1, 2, ...), or any integer (... -1, 0, 1, ...).

This isn't, however, as bad as the questions from Thailand's test of English I posted a while back.

Technorati Tags: Annoyances, Mathematics

The US decides to help fix Iran

2006-02-17T13:48:00.000+07:00

US to promote change in Iran

The Bush administration, frustrated by Iranian defiance on its nuclear program, has proposed spending $85 million to promote political change inside Iran by subsidizing dissident groups, unions, student fellowships and television and radio broadcasts.

The problem is, we've made ourselves so poisonous to Muslims that none of the recipients can be seen to be accepting help from Americans.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice...said Wednesday that the administration had also worked out a way to circumvent U.S. law barring financial relations with Iran to allow some money to go directly to groups promoting change inside the country.

Gee, waddya think that way was? Did Bush decide he didn't have to follow that law, either?

Senior State Department officials said that they did not intend to publicize recipients of the financing, for fear that they could be jailed or even killed.

See, that's the sort of thing that might make you a little reluctant to accept this money.

...the United States has been cautious about supporting dissident groups, fearful that Iranians, even those sympathetic to the West, might view these efforts as an echo of past U.S. meddling in Iran's internal affairs.

Yup, when you take anti-democratic actions while preaching democracy, people tend to think you're less than sincere. In Iran, in particular, the US-backed ouster of the democratically-elected Mossadegh and installation of the autocratic shah hasn't been forgotten. Together with US support for the military takeover of Algeria, support for Israel's clearly anti-democratic actions against the Palestinians, support for Musharraf in Pakistan, Mubarak in Egypt—I could go on and on—the US just doesn't have much credibility in the region.

...some conservatives at the Defense Department and Vice President Dick Cheney's office are known to be resigned to a nuclear-armed Iran and to argue that the best way to address that problem is by opening Iran to democracy and reform.

I think at this point they're right. I'm disturbed, but unsurprised, at the implication that the ideological purge of the military policy-makers (isn't it disturbing how Stalinist the US is sounding these days?) has left only "right-thinking" conservatives in place.

Technorati Tags: Bush, Iran

A Mac OS X virus had to happen someday

2006-02-17T13:11:00.000+07:00

So the dread day has come, the day when the first OS X virus got released into the wild:

A malicious computer worm has been found that targets Apple Computer Inc.'s Mac OS X operating system, believed to be the first such virus aimed specifically at the Mac platform.

The worm is called OSX/Leap-A, according to a posting on the Web site of antivirus software company Sophos, which said the worm is spread via instant messaging programs.

The worm attempts to spread via Apple's iChat instant messaging program, which is compatible with America Online's popular AIM instant messaging program, according to the Sophos Web site.

The worm sends itself to available contacts on the infected users' buddy list in a file called "latestpics.tgz," according to the Sophos Web site.

...

The worm will not automatically infect Mac computers, but will ask users to accept the file, Weafer said.

Symantec ranked the new worm as a Level 1 threat (with 5 being the most severe).

So be careful, especially with files sent to you via iChat. But no need for paranoia yet.

Technorati Tags: Macintosh, Computer security, Virus

These guys claim they're good at protecting us?

2006-02-15T17:55:00.000+07:00

Pre-Sept. 11 intelligence conducted by a secret military unit identified terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta 13 different times, a congressman said Tuesday.
Kimberly Hefling, AP

...FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.
Presidential daily briefing, 6 August 2001, entitled "Bin Laden determined to strike in US"

The deaths and suffering of thousands of Hurricane Katrina's victims might have been avoided if the government had heeded lessons from the 2001 terror attacks and taken a proactive stance toward disaster preparedness, a House inquiry concludes.
Lara Jakes Jordan, AP

Really, would it be possible for the Democrats to be any worse than this? Well, OK, I suppose it might. But not much. At this point, I wish we could give them a chance.

Technorati Tags: Bush, National security

Please let these tiny computers arrive soon

2006-02-15T15:24:00.000+07:00

I walk around with a backpack nearly all of the time, because I like having a 17" screen to work on and so I need a pretty big bag to carry it in. I would be so happy to have a full-featured big-screen computer I could carry around in my pocket. Not possible, you say? Maybe it is.

<rant>Look at the title of the article I linked to. "Future PC's". The purpose of an apostrophe is not to provide a warning that there's an "s" approaching; it's to signify possession ("Bill's obsessions") or to indicate that letters have been omitted ("I can't stand it"). Neither is true in this case. The title should be "Future PCs".</rant>

Technorati Tags: Technology

Copyright in the digital age

2006-02-15T15:16:00.000+07:00

There's a fascinating talk by Lawrence Lessig up on his site about Google's Book Search, and the lawsuits that have been brought against it. These cases focus on the doctrine of "fair use". This doctrine is what, for instance, allows me to quote from copyrighted materials, so long as I'm not using too much of that material.

Lessig builds the legal case for Google on two basic arguments. The first is that there's a transformation of some kind on the work. Google Image, for instance, creates thumbnails of (possibly copyrighted) images, and then uses those thumbnails to link to the originals. This has been held to be fair use. Lessig argues that what Google Book Search is doing is analogous; it's giving users a reduced portion of the work—in this case a "snippet" of text—which links to the original, or to the publisher's site or some such.

The other argument is that Google Book Search remedies a market failure for a portion of the books indexed. Books which are in the public domain (about 16% of the total) are not in question; books which are currently in print, or have recently gone out of print (another 15%) are being dealt with by negotiations between Google and the publishers in question. The problem comes with the remaining 69% or books which are still under copyright, but are no longer in print. In many, perhaps most, cases, the copyright holder cannot be identified or located. As a result, there's a piece of property which is said to belong to someone, but because the owner is unknown, it cannot be bought and sold. This is a clear market failure.

I would think that for most authors, the problem is not so much potential loss of royalties as it is lack of exposure. Most books sink without a trace. And if Google Book Search helps little-known books find an audience, I think it would be welcomed by both authors and readers. As with music and movies, it's the desires of the few very popular creators that are being allowed to drive decisions. It's not good for the arts, it's not good for the vast majority of creators, and it's not good for the rest of us. Who wants to listen to Top 40 radio all of the time, or read only Tom Clancy, or watch only Bruce Willis movies?

Technorati Tags: Google, Intellectual Property

Who has a fetish for only schoolgirls' right slippers?

2006-02-15T14:24:00.000+07:00

After a year of living in Japan, I had say that the place and its people were relentlessly fascinating. Vending machines containing beer, 10-kilo sacks of rice, porn videos, and cans of hot coffee. Trains which, when they missed the spot where they were supposed to stop by a meter or less, would back up. Fast-food drinks, in a cup, with a lid, all presented in a paper sack. It's a very strange place.

It's nice, though, to see that they have UFOlogists just as wacko as the American ones.

Technorati Tags: Japan, Weirdness

Who has a fetish for only schoolgirls' right slippers?

2006-02-15T14:21:00.000+07:00

Technorati Tags: Japan, Weirdness

You can't buy popularity

2006-02-15T00:03:00.000+07:00

Apparently we're not as dumb as they think:

Bush Administration Spent Over $1.6 Billion on Advertising and Public Relations Contracts Since 2003

Bush's approval rating drops to 39 percent

Technorati Tags: Bush

Did Cheney tell Libby to out Plame?

2006-02-10T17:32:00.000+07:00

This could be some real trouble for Dick Cheney:

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said in documents filed last month that he plans to introduce evidence that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, disclosed to reporters the contents of a classified National Intelligence Estimate in the summer of 2003.
...
In a Jan. 23 letter to Libby's lawyers, Fitzgerald said Libby also testified before the grand jury that he caused at least one other government official to discuss an intelligence estimate with reporters in July 2003.

"We also note that it is our understanding that Mr. Libby testified that he was authorized to disclose information about the NIE to the press by his superiors," Fitzgerald wrote.

The White House, of course, had no comment.

Technorati Tags: Cheney, Scooter Libby

Abramoff and Bush

2006-02-10T17:28:00.000+07:00

It is stunning to watch this administration's reaction when confronted with bad news. No matter what, their first reaction is always to deny it. Global warming doesn't exist, the president isn't unpopular, Bush opponents aren't excluded from events, no one at the White House leaked Valerie Plame's identity, a plane was headed for the White House on 9/11, Bush completed his National Guard service, etc., etc. I think their calculation is that by the time the truth comes out, the media will have moved on, and people will only remember the denials, not the truth.

A recent example is the White House's statements that Bush doesn't know disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and while Abramoff might have been at a few large gatherings at the White House, Bush certainly doesn't know him personally. It seems that the White House has asked at least one photo studio to hide pictures of Bush and Abramoff together.

These claims never passed the sniff test. It strains credulity beyond all reason to believe that Bush, who takes good care of his big donors, would not do what he could to stay close to Abramoff, one of the Bush Pioneers.

According to Abramoff, the White House is simply lying about his relationship with Bush. He says he met Bush "almost a dozen" times, and that Bush even invited him to his ranch.

Now, I don't trust Abramoff any more than I trust Bush. But given that Abramoff has little to gain from saying what he's saying, and Bush has a lot to gain from what he's saying, I would give Abramoff the benefit of the doubt in this case.

What puzzles me, though, is why the White House didn't just say, as the scandal was breaking, that they were shocked at the allegations, give the money back, and swear to be more careful about who they associate with in the future? Why lie as the knee-jerk response? Maybe it's just that longstanding habits are hard to break.

Technorati Tags: Bush, Jack Abramoff

Virtual war. We all knew it was coming.

2006-02-08T23:07:00.000+07:00

I, for one, didn't expect it to be against the Danish. Apparently, crackers in the Muslim world have been attacking Danish websites in retaliation for, um, some cartoons. See, this is why they say that "truth is stranger than fiction". From the article:

The number of Danish websites alone - those carrying a '.dk' suffix - knocked offline in the past week numbered 578 between 30 January and 6 February, according to Zone-H.org, a cyber-crime observatory that tracks website defacements. Hundreds more websites of European, Israeli and American companies and private citizens have also been defaced during that period, with the vast majority occurring after the re-publication last week of the cartoons in European newspapers.

It is a little worrying, how many sites were vulnerable. With any luck, these attacks will help strengthen defenses as weaknesses are exposed.

Technorati Tags: Denmark, Internet

Huh. Eating less fat doesn't make you healthier? Obesity might result from an infection?

2006-02-08T17:18:00.000+07:00

In recent health news, it turns out that a low-fat diet doesn't affect your chances of getting cancer or heart disease:

The $415 million federal study involved nearly 49,000 women ages 50 to 79 who were followed for eight years. In the end, those assigned to a low-fat diet had the same rates of breast cancer, colon cancer, heart attacks and strokes as those who ate whatever they pleased, researchers are reporting today.

"These studies are revolutionary," said Dr. Jules Hirsch, physician in chief emeritus at Rockefeller University in New York City, who has spent a lifetime studying the effects of diets on weight and health. "They should put a stop to this era of thinking that we have all the information we need to change the whole national diet and make everybody healthy."

This certainly does fly in the face of current conventional wisdom on the subject.

Even more interesting was this little tidbit:

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison have found that mice and chickens infected with a common human virus put on much more fat than uninfected animals. They have also discovered that the same virus is more prevalent among overweight people, a strong indication that it may also cause obesity in humans.

Ulcers, and now, possibly, schizophrenia and obesity? It may yet be that nearly all of our bodily ills are due to genetics and bugs.

Technorati Tags: Fat, Health, Obesity

Bush hears some criticism!

2006-02-08T17:08:00.000+07:00

This must have been an unpleasant surprise for Bush:

"[Coretta Scott King] extended Martin's message against poverty, racism and war. She deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions way afar. We know now that there were no weapons of mass destruction over there," Lowery said.

The mostly black crowd applauded, then rose to its feet and cheered in a two-minute-long standing ovation.

A closed-circuit television in the mega-church outside Atlanta showed the president smiling uncomfortably.

"But Coretta knew, and we know," Lowery continued, "That there are weapons of misdirection right down here," he said, nodding his head toward the row of presidents past and present. "For war, billions more, but no more for the poor!" The crowd again cheered wildly.

Former President Jimmy Carter later swung at Bush as well, not once but twice. As he talked about the Kings, he said: "It was difficult for them then personally with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated as they became the target of secret government wiretaps." The crowd cheered as Bush, under fire for a secret wiretapping program he ordered after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, again smiled weakly.

So, Mr President, think you've run through all that "political capital" yet?

Technorati Tags: Bush

My dad's got a blog!

2006-02-08T14:25:00.000+07:00

For some sane discussion of life from a religious perspective (dad was a minister for about 40 years, and a missionary — no, not that kind, rather the kind that goes to help people instead of converting them — for five), go take a look at his blog. He's currently posting his Mind Matters columns from years past, which are certainly worth a read. And if you like what you see, be sure to leave a comment.

Technorati Tags: Mind Matters

Doctors have more interesting jobs than most of us

2006-02-07T17:57:00.000+07:00

Don't believe it? Go have a read at Things I Learn From My Patients. Random sample:

if you are going to have a leg amputated in a car accident be very sure that the neighborhood dog is not lurking in the area...they tend to take what they can get.

That broken hand you deliberately smashed with a hammer will get you ONE PRESCRIPTION FOR VICODIN, NO REFILLS. Do not go home and remove the cast and try to return to the ER two hours later to get more. We are busy, but we will remember you.

If you're a 13 year old girl with a long arm, fiberglass cast on it's totally OK to go swimming at the beach (she didn't even try the usless bag with duct tape trick). When your dripping, sand filled cast starts to itch be sure to use a bent coat hanger to pull out all the cast padding. Since that won't work (I swear I'm not making this up) go ahead and pour salt down the cast on the assumption that it will soak up the water. Once your arm is a red, macerated mess come on down to the ED.
Aside from the stupidity of this course of action this girl also had a weird affect so I asked if she was developmentally delayed. This thoroughly annoyed the girl and her mother but the dad said, "Well I can see why you might think that but no."

...don't allow someone with a known poorly controlled seizure disorder to perform oral sex on you...

If your family/doctor/government whatever has taken away your drivers license because you have frequent seizures and refuse to take your pheno, please use a riding lawn-mower as your primary means of transportation. Chances are, you won't seize, hit a telephone pole, burn your leg and scalp on the mower as you fall off of it, and cause a power outage in your surrounding area.

This stuff goes on for 38 pages. It makes for an absorbing afternoon.

Technorati Tags: Health, Weirdness

The future of computing?

2006-02-07T14:42:00.000+07:00

There's now an online image editor at http://pxn8.com/. Go play around a little—it's limited, but a nice proof-of-concept. For many people, I expect this to be the way computing will be delivered in the future. Rather than millions of people each buying and installing an application on their own computer, and then having to deal with upgrades and bug fixes and conflicts and the like, the application will reside on a server, and the user's computer will just display the user interface.

One effect would be to greatly reduce the hardware requirements for your desktop computer, making it (in theory) much cheaper.

You'd think this would be a boon to the developing world, and it may yet be. There are a couple of major obstacles, though. One is financial—online tools like PXN8 will probably be provided on a subscriber basis, and very few people in the developing world have a way (or, indeed, the money) to pay for things online. The other roadblock, though, will be bandwidth. The megabit connection I have here in Bangkok, which costs me $25/month with no data transfer charges, could cost me as much as $2500/month next door in Cambodia. There's just no way that the average Khmer could afford a fast enough connection to make PXN8 a viable alternative to $2 bootleg Photoshop from the market.

Update: As Tharum points out in the comments, even better than bootleg Photoshop are FOSS solutions, notably GIMP (available for Unix‑y OSs including Mac OS X, and Windows).

Technorati Tags: Development, Internet

Does the US not want to win the GWOT?

2006-02-02T17:16:00.000+07:00

This is from a recent White House gaggle (via the always excellent First Draft):

Q According to data currently available at the Department of Homeland Security Funded Terrorism Knowledge Base, the incidents of terrorism increased markedly in 2005: worldwide attacks were up 51 percent from the year before, and the number of people killed in those attacks is up 36 percent; since the year 2000, attacks are up 250 percent, and deaths are up 550 percent. How do you reconcile those numbers with your claim that you're winning the war on terrorism and putting terrorists out of business?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, just look at the facts. If you look at the facts, many of al Qaeda's known leadership have been put out of business. They've been brought to justice. They've either been captured or killed. No longer is America waiting and responding. We're on the offense; we're taking the fight to the enemy. We are engaged in a war on terrorism. The enemies recognize how high the stakes are. And one thing the President will talk about, continue to talk about tomorrow night and in the coming weeks, is that we continue to face a serious threat. This is a deadly and determined enemy. But the difference is now that we've got them on the run, we've got them playing defense, we're taking the fight to them. And all of us in the international community must continue to work together...

This reminds me of nothing so much as the war on drugs. In that "war", law enforcement forces focus on the amount of drugs seized, and assume that this reduces harm to citizens rather than reflecting the amount of drugs available. But they have no intention of doing anything that might actually reduce the perceived need for the "war" on drugs, because that would reduce their budgets. The drug lords, in turn, want things to stay as they are so their profits remain high. The interests of the criminals and the police are aligned, and citizens suffer as a result.

Similarly, in the GWOT the Bush administration is focusing on the number of terrorists captured or killed, rather than the number of people and amount of property destroyed by terrorists. They've created this enormous "anti-terrorism" bureaucracy, and should they actually reduce terrorism they reduce the justification for their own existence. If they redefined their mission as reducing terrorism, rather than capturing and killing terrorists, they might accomplish something. As it is, they've given themselves perverse incentives to increase the amount of terrorism, so as to justify bigger budgets—and the numbers the questioner quotes above show that they're succeeding.

Technorati Tags: GWOT, Terrorism, US

What the $#%& were they thinking?

2006-02-02T15:01:00.000+07:00

Right now I'm watching Martin Scorcese's Casino on TV. To meet Star Movies's "standards", they've removed every instance of the word "fuck" from the film. According to the IMDb, that's 422 instances. Many lines contain awkward long silences in them; some scenes are reduced to several split-second flashes. It's pretty distracting, and I have to wonder why they even bothered.

Technorati Tags: Weirdness

Parochial Americans

2006-02-02T14:52:00.000+07:00

Unless you're an American, you probably didn't know that the Super Bowl, the American football championship, will be held this coming Sunday. In the US it's a pretty big deal; something like 90 million Americans will watch it. But to claim, as this article does, that it's "the world's biggest sports event", is just absurd. True, the NFL claims "a potential worldwide audience of 1 billion" for the game, but that seems unlikely, given that I've never met a non-American who's ever said they've seen a Super Bowl. Besides, I could claim "a potential worldwide audience of 2 billion" for this blog; it doesn't mean I actually get that many hits.

The worldwide audience for the World Cup final game has been estimated as high as 2 billion. The draw for the final round alone was seen by 300 million. The cricket World Cup is also seen by 2 billion, and the Rugby World Cup has been seen by as many as 2.5 billion.

The world's biggest sports event? The Super Bowl isn't even close.

Technorati Tags: World Cup, Sports, Super Bowl

How, exactly, did Salman Rushdie harm Islam?

2006-01-31T18:16:00.000+07:00

Blasphemy is a strange crime. First you create a religious system. In this system you have one or more extremely powerful gods. Then you claim that insulting the god(s) somehow harms these omnipotent beings, and thus those who commit such an offense need to be punished.

I do understand that people get offended when their belief systems are mocked. It's just that freedom from being offended is not a human right.

What about the "harm" that mockery does to a religion? Sorry. I just don't get how, say, this could possibly "harm" Christianity. And I don't think that Islam is so fragile that a few disrespectful drawings of Mohammed in a Danish newspaper pose any threat whatsoever.

Technorati Tags: Christianity, Islam, Blasphemy, Religion

Hamas wins

2006-01-31T16:57:00.000+07:00

I don't get it. Why is everyone so surprised by Hamas's winning a majority in the Palestinian elections? When I was in that part of the Middle East (admittedly, it was back in 1990), the Palestinians I talked to, in both Jordan and Israel, viewed Hamas very favorably, preferring to focus on the social services that Hamas provided rather than the terrorism in which it engaged. Besides, the religious motivation of Hamas members seems to lead to less corruption than that exhibited by Fatah. I would have been surprised if Hamas didn't win, or at least do very well.

But the US State Department didn't ask me, and so now we're seeing the spectacle of an administration which claims to want to spread democracy, trying to strangle the winners of an election that went the "wrong" way. The whole point of democracy is to create a process by which a majority of the governed can choose the government it wants. It is decidedly not to select a government that is acceptable to the Bush administration. And as long as an elected government respects human rights, acts as a responsible member of the international community, and holds regular, free, and fair elections, the US should be willing to work with it.

It almost enough to make you think that Bush & Co don't really believe in democracy.

Technorati Tags: Democracy, Hamas, Israel

"Metallic penile adornment"?

2006-01-31T16:32:00.000+07:00

Here's an article you won't want to miss, on "the terrible, terrible things that some men do to their dicks". It'll make you giggle or cringe, depending on your gender. Here's one bit that will haunt me for a bit (sorry):

Always - if you must disregard rule five — check said orifice first. This includes knot holes in trees. Knot holes are often nested by creatures who may misinterpret your intentions.

On the "setting your penis on fire" front, during my first year in college I had the good fortune to witness the final performance of the Flaming Mouse, in which a member of my college would douse his penis in lighter fluid and set it on fire, to the delight and amazement of a large and very appreciative audience. He did this a total of ten times over the course of his college career, and said that it felt like a mild sunburn for about a week afterwards. Still, it's not recommended.

Technorati Tags: Sex

Toxoplasmosis and schizophrenia

2006-01-31T16:09:00.000+07:00

You might remember my suggesting that most "mental illness" would be found to be, in fact, bodily illness, either genetic or infectious. Now there's some more evidence for that, at least in the case of schizophrenia:

Research published in Procedings of the Royal Society B, shows how the invasion or replication of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii in rats may be inhibited by using anti-psychotic or mood stabilising drugs.

The researchers tested anti-psychotic and mood stabilising medications used for the treatment of schizophrenia on rats infected with T. gondii and found they were as, or more, effective at preventing behaviourial alterations as anti-T. gondii drugs. This led them to believe that T. gondii may have a role in the development of some cases of schizophrenia.

Dr Joanne Webster from Imperial College London, and lead researcher said: "Although we are certainly not saying that exposure to this parasite does definitely lead to the development of schizophrenia, this and previous studies do show there may be a link in a few individuals, providing new clues for how we treat toxoplasmosis and schizophrenia."

I've said it before, and I'll say it again—conditions like schizophrenia and depression are probably best understood as symptoms, rather than illnesses in and of themselves.

Technorati Tags: Health, Mental illness, Schizophrenia

Reasoned but passionate debate on the substantive political issues of our time

2006-01-22T17:54:00.000+07:00

Unfortunately, there's precious little of it these days. Instead, what you hear is much more like this.

Technorati Tags: US politics

Bush is #1!

2006-01-21T12:15:00.000+07:00

Sen. Hillary Clinton...charged that the Bush administration "will go down in history as one of the worst that has ever governed our country."

She's wrong. As a serious student of politics and history in high school and college and a close observer as a journalist for more than a half-century, these presidents were the five "worst"...
— USA Today editorial

Mr. Hamilton: What I'm suggesting is that this place is the crummiest, shoddiest, worst-run hotel in the whole of Western Europe.
Major Gowen: No. No. I won't have that. There's a place in Eastbourne.
— from
Fawlty Towers

And just what does USA Today list as reasons the Bush League shouldn't be considered the worst, or even one of the five worst?

His tragic "pre-emptive" war against Iraq may well go down as the biggest foreign policy blunder ever, especially if he "stays the course" and the unconscionable cost in lives and dollars goes on.

But domestically, except for the foul-up of the follow-up to Hurricane Katrina, Bush has done reasonably well. His leadership helped rally the country after 9/11. The economy is not great, but OK. In the areas of health care and education, he gets pretty good grades.

"...helped rally the country"? He could have used the emotion and sense of shared fortune among Americans to help create a better America. Instead, his "with us or against us" rhetoric and actions have polarized the US and alienated the world. His economic policies have further divided the haves from the have-nots. The major health care initiative he has inflicted on the US is the new Medicare, which has been a disaster for everyone but Big Pharma, and the real disaster hasn't hit yet, but will when people start falling through the "doughnut hole".

Economically, things are far from OK. The staggering deficits resulting from idiotic tax cuts, coupled with the inability of the White House and Congress to control spending—not to mention the war ("Don't mention the war!"), which might wind up costing $2 trillion—guarantee overly high tax burdens in the future.

But what about education? Bush's signature program, "No Child Left Behind", is a perfect example of an unfunded mandate:

THE federal No Child Left Behind law of 2002 may go down in history as the most unpopular piece of education legislation ever created. It has been criticized for setting impossibly high standards—that every child in America must be proficient in reading and math by 2014—while providing meager financing, as President Bush has budgeted billions less than what the law allows.

And let's not forget his ignoring warnings that al-Qaeda was intending to strike the US, alienation of America's oldest ally, opposition to any independent inquiry into 9/11, opposition to popular elections in Iraq, refusing to speak with those who disagree with him, appointing unqualified cronies to high office, refusal to be honest about his National Guard "service" or history of drug use, denying turkey dinner to troops in Iraq who don't support him politically, claiming "Mission Accomplished" when clearly it hadn't been—and then lying about who was responsible for that, illegally wiretapping when he could easily have gotten warrants, admitting that he violated the law but that it didn't matter because laws "curtsy to great kings"...I could go on and on, but it's not really necessary.

Worst. President. Ever.

Technorati Tags: Bush

You know how many time zones they got?

2006-01-20T16:18:00.000+07:00

Here are a couple of questions that every fledgling programmer should be asked:

How many time zones are there in the world?
How many hours are in a day?

The naïve answer—the answer I would have given—to both is "24". And that answer is wrong for both.

It turns out that the world has many more than 24 time zones. For instance, so that nowhere in India is local sun time too far off from the official time, the country is 5:30 later than GMT. And Nepal, just to show that it's different from India, is another 15 minutes later.

The answer to the second question is "it depends". I discovered this when I was analyzing some logs from machines in several locations around the world. One thing I was calculating was their productivity per hour, and I calculated it by taking the amount of work each had done during a calendar day and dividing by 24. One day I noticed that all of the machines in the US showed about a 4% drop in productivity; the ones in other countries didn't. The next day they were all back to normal. This puzzled me until I analyzed the logs over the previous year, and found a day when US machines had a 4% increase in productivity. That day was exactly 6 months earlier. The culprit was daylight savings time, which creates a day in October that's 25 hours long, and one in April that's 23 hours long.

So time is harder than you might think, and takes some work to get right.

(And if you don't know the answer to the question in the title to this post, you need to listen to more Negativland.)

Technorati Tags: Software

The US scores an own goal in Pakistan

2006-01-20T15:01:00.000+07:00

A reader asked that I comment on the recent bombing in Pakistan, which, we're told, was intended to kill Ayman al-Zawahiri, the ideological leader of al-Qaeda. Although he seems not to have been there, 18 others were killed, possibly including al-Zawahiri's son-in-law and two other al-Qaeda leaders.

The rationale for this comes from the "great man" theory of history, which places a great deal of importance on key individuals. The idea is then that, by getting rid of the person, you can stop the history that would have resulted from his life. It's easy to see why the people who made this decision like this theory of history.

There are two major problems with acting on this theory in this way. One is that individuals rarely are as important as all that. If Newton had died as a child, what would the impact have been on, say, calculus? The answer is "very little". Leibniz was developing calculus about the same time, and it's his notation that we use today. The reason that so much credit is given to Newton in this area is that he did it first, not that only he could have done it.

Al-Zawahiri's contributions to al-Qaeda have been primarily ideological. He studied under Sayyid Qutb and took his ideas in a new, more murderous direction, first with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and then with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Even if the theory were correct, by the time a "great man", whose work consists of ideas, can be identified as a target, he has likely already produced his most important work, and martyring him tends to enhance the perceived worth of those ideas. So even if the attack had succeeded in killing al-Zawahiri, his ideas would live on.

The other major problem with the thinking behind this attack is that it presumes that al-Qaeda is controlled by its "leaders", and if those leaders are killed, the organization will fall apart, much as an ant colony deprived of its queens will perish.

Unfortunately for the planners of the attack in Pakistan, al-Qaeda seems to be a much looser organization, if indeed it can be described as an "organization". It seems rather to be a description of adherents to the ideas espoused by al-Zawahiri and bin Laden. Killing them would not kill their ideas, and so al-Qaeda would live on. The only effective way to fight al-Qaeda would seem to be to make the ideas themselves unattractive. Although various countries have tried to battle ideologies by making them illegal—for example, the Falun Gong in China, neo-Naziism in Germany, and Christianity in Rome—many humans rather perversely see the persecution as a validation of their beliefs.

The best way to kill an ideology is is for the general public to stop believing in its importance. Bombs won't make that happen. Neither will dishonest PR campaigns. The best weapon is demonstrably better ideas. And this is where this bombing had its greatest failure. By killing innocents—and they will be seen in the Islamic world as innocents, no matter if they were hosting al-Zawahiri—the case that democracy, and human rights, are a better way than the religious purity of al-Qaeda becomes harder to make.

We have a good story to tell, a story of better governance, of more dignified, more meaningful lives. The noise from bombs like the those in Pakistan last week makes it harder for people to hear it.

Technorati Tags: Ayman al-Zawahiri, Pakistan, al-Qaeda, Terrorism

Sure, monkeys seem cute

2006-01-19T12:53:00.000+07:00

Monkeys seem like they'd be great pets until you actually get to spend some quality time up close and personal with them. Then you discover that they are highly intelligent, extremely agile creatures with all of the emotional maturity and impulse control of a 2-year-old human. I know of committed pacifist vegans who have not killed their local monkeys only because a) they couldn't catch them, and b) guns are too hard to get where they live. Another friend in Phnom Penh who lived near the Post Office there, had so much trouble with one that she talked a wildlife NGO into shooting it with a tranquilizer gun and taking it far, far away.

Now the monkeys in Phnom Penh have learned a new trick—they are stealing bags of glue from people addicted to sniffing it. Monkeys are hard enough to deal with at the best of times. I can't imagine what a monkey high on inhalants would be like.

Technorati Tags: Cambodia, Monkeys, Weirdness

The perils of net fame

2006-01-18T14:31:00.000+07:00

A while back I wrote about the guy who created the Million Dollar Homepage. He recently received an extortion e-mail, demanding (in rather poor English) $50,000, lest a DDoS attack be launched against the site. He didn't pay, said attack duly happened, and his site went down. So he's upgrading the site security. But there should still be a lot left out of that million dollars.

Technorati Tags: Crime, Internet

A terrorist plot foiled!

2006-01-18T14:23:00.000+07:00

Well, OK, it wasn't in the US, but it was in the UK, which has been our most faithful ally in the GWOT. Still, a blow has been struck against the Islamo-Fascists, yes?

Um, not exactly:

SPECIAL Branch cops smashed a plot to kidnap little Leo Blair while monitoring a small band of fanatical dads, The Sun can reveal.

They stumbled across the startling plan as they investigated the activities of men on the lunatic fringe of the Fathers 4 Justice group.

As far as I can tell from the article, they didn't need to tear up their constitution (not that they could, not having one—but they also don't seem to have violated their laws) in order to foil this nefarious plot. These people would not have been identified by the racial profiling advocated by US wingnuts. It just took good solid police work, and any arrests and trials will happen in the criminal justice system, and not in offshore extrajudiciary prisons answerable only to Tony Blair.

Technorati Tags: UK, Terrorism, Tony Blair

Captain Kirk donates a kidney...stone

2006-01-18T13:33:00.000+07:00

In yet another episode of How the Famous Lead Odd Lives:

Actor William Shatner has sold his kidney stone for $25,000, with the money going to a housing charity, it was announced Tuesday. Shatner reached agreement Monday to sell the stone to GoldenPalace.com.

At least Shatner seems to be having fun with his rather unusual fame.

Technorati Tags: William Shatner, Weirdness

Religious nutcase leaders, only one of which has nuclear weapons (so far)

2006-01-15T15:20:00.000+07:00

"God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."

— George W. Bush, quoted by Mahmoud Abbas

In November, the country was startled by a video showing Mr Ahmadinejad telling a cleric that he had felt the hand of God entrancing world leaders as he delivered a speech to the UN General Assembly last September.

— from an article in the Telegraph about Iran's President

The Telegraph goes on to say:

All streams of Islam believe in a divine saviour, known as the Mahdi, who will appear at the End of Days... His return will be preceded by cosmic chaos, war and bloodshed. After a cataclysmic confrontation with evil and darkness, the Mahdi will lead the world to an era of universal peace.

This is similar to the Christian vision of the Apocalypse. Indeed, the Hidden Imam is expected to return in the company of Jesus.

Mr Ahmadinejad appears to believe that these events are close at hand and that ordinary mortals can influence the divine timetable.

The prospect of such a man obtaining nuclear weapons is worrying.

Well, yes, that is a worrying prospect. It's worth noting that one of these religious nutcases already has access to nuclear (or, as he says, "nukular") weapons.

Technorati Tags: Ahmedinajad, Bush, Iran, Nuclear weapons, Religion, US

Death from above

2006-01-13T19:33:00.000+07:00

OK, imagine this: you're somewhere in Africa, hunting or gathering or something, keeping an eye out for predatory cats and the like. Tragically, though, you forget to look up. That's when a predatory bird swoops down, pierces your skull with its talons, and then waits for you to die before feasting on your flesh.

That's apparently how at least one of our ancestors died.

Sweet dreams!

Houston-area TV stations refuse to air ads about DeLay

2006-01-13T19:21:00.000+07:00

Quivering with courage, three Houston TV stations decided that their fear of Tom DeLay outweighed what remains of their commitment to free speech, and refused to air ads which detailed the connection between DeLay and Jack Abramoff. And so, bit by bit, our media become more independent of the idea that they should serve the public interest, or the truth.

Technorati Tags: Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay

Body armor: everything just peachy, but we're going to make it better

2006-01-13T19:15:00.000+07:00

Stung by a report that said that many soldiers died due to inadequate body armor, the armed forces respond:

The Army plans to send thousands of ceramic body armor plates to Iraq this year to better protect soldiers while the Marine Corps already is delivering such gear, military officers said Wednesday.

In a private appearance before members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the officers defended the body armor available to U.S. troops. A Pentagon study done last summer but only disclosed recently found that improved armor may have prevented or minimized torso wounds that proved fatal to Marines in Iraq.

Huh? I think they're saying that the body armor the troops already have is adequate (otherwise they're open to accusations of inadequately protecting soldiers), but they're going to upgrade it anyway. Either it's already adequate, in which case upgrading it is a waste, or it's not. If the latter is true, we sent our soldiers to Iraq with inadequately armored vehicles and inadequate body armor. This is what they call "supporting the troops"? Or do they think that putting a yellow ribbon magnet on your SUV is enough?

Technorati Tags: Iraq, Body armor

Let's stay safe out there!

2006-01-13T19:03:00.000+07:00

One thing that travelers often don't think about until just before they leave is health. In my experience, most travelers will have some health issues when in other countries, even if it's only loose bowels due to changes in their drinking water. (And that's true of everyone, not just people from rich countries—Mexicans are advised not to drink the water in the US.) It's generally a good idea to investigate health risks a few months before you leave, as some immunizations take a while to take effect.

Something that people from rich countries often don't consider is that for diseases which are rare in their home countries, the standard of care may be better overseas. A friend of mine caught malaria in India, and then some months later started having similar symptoms again, and went back to the US. The doctors there decided his malaria had recurred, and tried to treat it as such. In the end, he had to spend several days in the hospital, and was near death, because what he had was, in fact, typhoid. It's likely that had he stayed in India, it would have been recognized and properly treated much sooner, as both diseases are common there.

Technorati Tags: Health, Travel

Being annoying can be hazardous to your health

2006-01-11T17:58:00.000+07:00

An Australian woman will face court charged with repeatedly stabbing her partner because he played an Elvis Presley song over and over again, police said Tuesday.

The song? Burning Love. The article says the man will survive the attack. There's no word on the fate of the disc.

Technorati Tags: Elvis Presley, Weirdness

Spielberg, hoist on his industry's own DRM petard

2006-01-11T17:41:00.000+07:00

Every time I think about this story, I smile from sheer schadenfreude:

By tomorrow [BAFTA members] have to nominate the films they think worthy of accolade, and Spielberg's Munich was expected to be among them, tipped for awards both in Britain and at the Oscars.

But the preview DVD sent to the academy's members is unplayable on machines used in the UK.

The reason the discs couldn't be played? DVD region encoding.

For those of you who spend all of your time in one country, every DVD is encoded for a particular region, and can only be played back on DVD players set to that region.

Most players can switch to a different region, and will ask if you want to do that if you insert the disc of The Office that your friend in the UK sent you. Problem is, the player will change regions a limited number of times (5 or so), and once you exceed that number, the player will never let you change the region it's set for again. So if the last disc you inserted was from Africa, that player will, in perpetuity, play only discs from Africa.

DVD regions were a stunningly bad idea from the get-go, especially for those of us who regularly travel to more than one region. But Hollywood insisted on them, and so they were implemented, and I'm smiling because Hollywood so richly deserved to have this bite them in the ass.

Technorati Tags: DRM, DVD, Munich, Spielberg

Drugs and blogging just don't mix

2006-01-03T20:14:00.000+07:00

As you may have read previously, I've been on prednisone this last week. It's quite a nasty drug, which is used to, in effect, shut down the immune system.

Why, you might reasonably ask, would I want to do this, especially when living in the famously disease-ridden tropics? Well, it wasn't my preference, but my doctor asked me to. He wants to see if everything that's happening with my lungs is due to sarcoidosis, or something else. Sarcoidosis is an inflammatory disease, and shutting the immune system down greatly reduces inflammation.

The reason prednisone isn't used continuously is that its long-term side effects include osteoporosis, diabetes, arthritis, glaucoma, etc. In the short run, it's given me extreme fatigue and listlessness, wild mood swings, swelling, continuous hunger, and lots of hiccuping.

There may be an added twist. No one knows what causes sarcoidosis, but there is some evidence that it's due to a bacterial infection. If that's true, then using prednisone to treat it should allow the disease to spread, and possibly prolong the course of the disease. And it seems that's exactly what happens.

My choice, though, was to take the prednisone, or forgo treatment. And so I've been taking the prednisone. Last dose in four hours. I'm going to be very glad when this is done.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Drugs, Prednisone, Sarcoidosis

The ultimate banner ad

2005-12-30T19:14:00.000+07:00

OK, this really shouldn't have worked. A student in England turned a webpage into, basically, a 1000x1000 banner ad, and sold the pixels in it to advertisers for $1 per pixel. That's a million pixels, by the way. Thanks to a compliant press and viral marketing, he's sold 936,700 of those pixels. The appearance of the page is a little offputting, but apparently buying pixels has been effective for the advertisers—at least so long as the hype continues.

And waddya know. I just helped continue it.

Technorati Tags: Internet, Weirdness

Bush reads!

2005-12-29T21:23:00.000+07:00

OK, to be fair, the full headline is "Bush reads up on Teddy Roosevelt, U.S. troops". Still, it's saying something that a simple assertion by the White House that the president is actually reading a book is considered newsworthy; even more that without corroborating evidence, the assertion isn't fully credible.

Technorati Tags: Books, Bush

Too southerly the phalarope

2005-12-29T15:06:00.000+07:00

Birders (don't call them birdwatchers!) in California are spotting thousands of red phalaropes, which normally only land in the Arctic to reproduce. The article says that "scientists are stumped".

Well, given that some animals—including your cat—are known to navigate using the earth's magnetic field, perhaps it's related to the changing location of the magnetic pole?

Technorati Tags: Biology, Birds, Science

Odd news this year

2005-12-28T23:03:00.000+07:00

Go on, you know you want to read it—a roundup of the year's stranger stories.

A friend of mine was once accused by his brother of being too "pendantic". He says he saw the trap, but couldn't stop himself, and said, "Actually, that's pedantic." "See?", said his brother.

Well, sad to say, me too. When reading the above-linked story, you should note that cane toads are amphibians, not reptiles. And no, amphibians are not a subgroup of reptiles. Amphibians and reptiles are both chordates (as are we, with the exception of some politicians I could name), but that's as close as they get.

Technorati Tags: Weirdness

Abnormal sounds about right

2005-12-28T13:15:00.000+07:00

I had mixed feelings, looking at the lab results from yesterday. On the one hand, it's a little sobering to look at the 30 tests they ran and notice that 18 of them came back outside the normal range, especially when the abnormal results include important stuff like oxygen.

On the other hand, I've been putting up with the skepticism of doctors for a few decades now, who looked at my normal results on standard tests and clearly didn't believe my litany of what they call "non-specific" symptoms. It was validating, having finally figured out the right tests to run, and getting results something like I expected.

So what the results say is that I'm in respiratory alkalosis, due to my exhaling too much carbon dioxide. (Sorry about any additional global warming I'm causing.) This might be because my body is too acidic, causing me to get rid of CO2 in an attempt to make the pH normal. But the lung doc thinks it's due to sarcoidosis. He's put me on prednisone "just to see", something I resisted mightily, as prednisone has a bad side-effect profile (including such nasties as diabetes, arthritis, cataracts, and osteoporosis). It's also addicting. Besides, there's no evidence that it provides anything but symptomatic relief, and some evidence that it prolongs and worsens the course of the disease. So we compromised on a week at moderate doses, at which point we'll rerun the tests and see what changes.

One thing I'm excited about is that this condition may have reduced the blood flow to my brain by as much as half; thus, if it can be effectively treated, I might once again be able to think properly. It's nice, having a little hope after so long despairing.

Technorati Tags: Health, Prednisone, Sarcoidosis

Who invented the Walkman?

2005-12-28T12:48:00.000+07:00

As it turns out, it wasn't Sony. It was a Brazilian, Andreas Pavel, who just settled a lawsuit with Sony. Apparently Sony had been willing to pay a licensing fee from the beginning, but not to acknowledge him as the inventor.

I'm not surprised that was the sticking point with Sony; every time I've heard a Japanese person defend their country against charges that they lack innovation, the Walkman was the example they used to prove their point. Clearly they couldn't easily let that part of their mythology go.

Technorati Tags: Japan, Walkman, Sony

Hate writing papers? Become a mathematician!

2005-12-28T12:38:00.000+07:00

<public_service_announcement>
I have a number of friends who possess what are known as ABD degrees—"all but dissertation". That is, they fulfilled all of the requirements for a doctorate or a master's, but somehow just couldn't bring themselves to write that all-important paper at the end.
What's more, science & math education in the US, says a USA Today editorial, is falling well behind that of other countries, and it's not all due to the "intelligent design" nonsense. A major problem is the lack of teachers with mathematics training.

So I'm going to do my part to help and point out the recent achievement of Steven Hofmann, who solved a newish math problem called Kato's Conjecture. This was a result important enough to get reported by the AP, and could well have been accepted as a dissertation.

Here's why the paper-shy should become mathematicians: it took all of 120 words to report the results. And he had five others helping, for an average of 20 presumably extremely well-chosen words per author. I suppose there were also some equations involved.

Even for a math paper, that's exceptionally short—I would guess that most math dissertations are closer to 20 pages long. Still, I think almost anyone could manage that.

If you need another reason—and I'm talking just to the boys here, and a few of you girls—Winnie Cooper grew up [warning: mildly not safe for work] and became a mathematician. Should you ever start going out with her, it'd be nice to have something to talk about, yes?
</public_service_announcement>

Technorati Tags: Education, Mathematics, Danica McKellar, US

Polar bears

2005-12-27T20:14:00.000+07:00

A friend sent me a link to this very cool picture of polar bears investigating a submarine. Go, look.

Such events may become much less common. As polar ice melts, the bears are being forced to swim longer distances—up to 60 miles—causing many to drown.

Technorati Tags: Global warming, Polar bears

Marfa lights explained; Texas folklore a little poorer

2005-12-27T20:07:00.000+07:00

Many years ago, I took a trip to West Texas with a friend to attend the Cowboy Poetry Festival. (During the long drive, I passed the hours when I thought she was asleep softly singing to myself. Unbeknownst to me, she thought I was doing the standard serial-killer-mutters-to-himself-before-offing-the-passenger thing, and was plotting ways to escape before I could put my nefarious plans into action. Luckily for our continued association, her good sense got the better of her. But I digress.)

One thing she wanted to see in West Texas was the Marfa Lights. Yeah, I didn't know what they were either. From the Wikipedia:

Marfa may be most famous for the Marfa Lights, visible every clear night between Marfa and the Paisano Pass as you face southwest (toward the Chinati Mountains). According to the Handbook of Texas Online, "at times they appear colored as they twinkle in the distance. They move about, split apart, melt together, disappear, and reappear. Presidio County residents have watched the lights for over a hundred years. The first historical record of them recalls that in 1883 a young cowhand, Robert Reed Ellison, saw a flickering light while he was driving cattle through Paisano Pass and wondered if it was the campfire of Apache Indians. He was told by other settlers that they often saw the lights, but when they investigated they found no ashes or other evidence of a campsite."

Investigations both on foot and by aircraft have failed to discover the source of the lights, and although theoretical explanations abound, they remain a mystery.

The county has set up a viewing area nine miles east of town on U.S. 67 near the site of the old air base.

These objects have been featured in various media, including the TV show Unsolved Mysteries.

Now a bunch of killjoy scientists say they've explained the Marfa Lights. According to them, the lights are simply car headlights from a distant highway.

I'm not so sure. For one thing, it would be hard to square that explanation with the lights I saw; for another, how many car headlights were there in 1883?

Technorati Tags: Marfa, Texas

Letting markets regulate companies not always a good idea

2005-12-27T19:41:00.000+07:00

You sometimes hear free-market fundamentalists argue against legal regulation of companies, saying that firms that engage in bad business practices will get punished by the market and change their ways as a result.

There are some problems with that approach, illustrated nicely by recent admissions from Guidant Corporation, who failed to warn others of known problems with their implantable defibrillators. As a result they have been deluged by lawsuits.

OK, fine, say the free-marketers. They done wrong, and now they're being punished.

However, their customers didn't get a real chance to buy or not buy Guidant's products based on the merits of said products, because there's a glaring asymmetry between the information known to Guidant, and that which was known to their customers.

On top of which, some customers may die from defective devices, and it's cold comfort to those customers, or their families, that the market will force the company to change its ways. Basically, the company gets many chances to experiment with transactions until it gets it right; the customer may only get one.

These basic asymmetries are why regulation of corporate activity is often essential, lest the dead hand of the market turn out to belong to the angel of death.

Technorati Tags: Economics, Guidant

Cell phones are not for internal use

2005-12-27T19:28:00.000+07:00

OK, everybody+dog has linked to this. But with a headline like this, I just can't resist:

Swallowing Cell Phone May Not Be Voluntary

Technorati Tags: Weirdness

Health care in Thailand

2005-12-27T19:24:00.000+07:00

So I just spent some time seeing my doctor. I went in to get the results from some blood tests. Those results, as it turned out, pointed to a possible respiratory problem, so he decided to refer me to a pulmonologist, who talked with me for a bit, looked at the test results, and sent me for some pulmonary tests. I'm going to take some medication for a week, and then we'll do the tests again and see if there's any change.

Total elapsed time today, from when the shuttle bus picked me up, including two consultations (one unscheduled) and the lung tests, until the shuttle dropped me off? One hour, forty minutes. Total cost, including meds? $168.22. And this is at a fully-accredited hospital, one of the best in Asia. The doctors are US board-certified. The people are even polite and friendly.

How is this possible? It reflects the generally lower costs here. Salaries are much lower, buildings and land are cheaper, and (I expect) litigation costs are much lower. And it should be noted that very few Thais could afford this.

Still, the excellent care, and low costs, are why more than 350,000 foreigners will be treated at that hospital this year.

Technorati Tags: Health, Thailand

And they say humans are bad at risk assessment

2005-12-23T16:23:00.000+07:00

From a reader in Oregon:

Technorati Tags: Health, Weirdness

Iraq headed for civil war?

2005-12-21T16:08:00.000+07:00

Patrick Cockburn, writing in the Independent, argues that Iraq is splitting along the expected sectarian lines: Kurd, Shia, and Sunni. In it he quotes Zilmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Iraq:

You can't have someone who is regarded as sectarian, for example, as Minister of the Interior.

This is a little rich, coming from a representative of the most divisive, exclusionary administration I've seen in my life. Pot, meet kettle.

Technorati Tags: Iraq

Mind control

2005-12-21T15:40:00.000+07:00

It's recently been discovered that a parasite of grasshoppers is able to make the grasshoppers jump into water, which the parasite needs to complete its life cycle. This does, however, kill the grasshopper.

What's really interesting about this is that it's brought about by simply altering the mix of proteins in the grasshopper's brain.

I have a few qualms about this article, since it refers to "enslaver fungi", the only one of which I've ever heard was reported by the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Now, the MJT is a wonderful place to wander around, but I, um, wouldn't take it as an authoritative source. (If nothing else, think about its name for a minute...)

Still, I'm fascinated by a parasite's ability to improve its reproductive chances by altering the behavior of its host. It's seen in simple ways, as in the common cold, where the virus causes us to sneeze, thus spreading the virus. That seems like a simple stimulus-response. But what about the toxoplasma parasite, which normally lives in cats, but sometimes spreads to rats which eat cat feces? The parasite is able to increase its chances of returning to live in a cat by altering the rat's behavior. Specifically, it makes the rat less afraid of new things and new situations, making it more likely that it'll be in a place where a cat can catch and eat it.

The next question I'm interested in is how much of our specific behavior can be controlled this easily. Put another way, what are the limits on our "free will"? I have seen illness change the way I act, going from a shy withdrawn loner, to a gregarious social butterfly, and back again. While I feel that I could have chosen not to make those changes, the fact is that I didn't, so perhaps it wasn't a choice I was really able to make.

I'm going to guess that most "mental" and "autoimmune" "diseases" will be found to have genetic or infectious causes, and will be reclassified until all that remains are "behavior problems". I just hope it happens soon enough for Thomas Szasz to see it, and for me to benefit from it.

Technorati Tags: Mental health, Parasites, Biology

Want shops to say "Merry Christmas"? Come to Asia!

2005-12-20T15:47:00.000+07:00

The malls in Bangkok are dripping with tinsel and decorated trees and big signs saying "Merry Christmas". All of this, mind you, in a country in which Christians are only 0.7% of the population. People here, and in the rest of Asia, have quite gleefully embraced Christmas—and it's "Merry Christmas" here, not that anti-Christian "Happy Holidays"—while rejecting Christ in droves.

It's not the words. It's what you believe, and what you feel, that makes it Christmas. What they're celebrating here, despite using the words and trappings, isn't Christmas. And loving your non-Christian neighbor by using the non-exclusive "Happy Holidays" strikes me as being more in the spirit of Christian charity than hectoring retailers who don't conform to your particular dogma.

Technorati Tags: Bangkok, Christmas

Unwanted births are up, which should please the fundies

2005-12-20T14:59:00.000+07:00

A recent survey says that the percentage of births that were unwanted rose from 9 percent in 1995 to 14 percent in 2002.

This is being hailed in some quarters as a Good Thing:

"I don't think there's any mystery here," said Susan Wills, of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The new data underscores that more women are turning away from abortions, even when it's a pregnancy they don't initially want, said Wills, associate director for education in the Conference's Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities.

"It shows a real pro-life shift," she said.

More women may be carrying pregnancies to term because of increasing availability of ultrasounds and other information that show "it's a baby from an early time," Wills said.

It's hard to read that and not hear a celebratory undercurrent of "Yay! We forced women to have children they didn't want!" But you're not going to find me celebrating taking choices away from people.

Others are speculating that the result might have something to do with a 25% drop in the number of abortion providers between 1992 and 2000, something the above-linked article seems to think is a mystery. I dunno, maybe it has something to do with the risk of getting killed by anti-abortion terrorists?

I suppose it's also possible that this rise might partly reflect the emphasis on abstinence at the cost of more effective education in other birth control methods.

As if you needed a reason...

2005-12-20T14:14:00.000+07:00

Dark chocolate may cut heart disease risk. White chocolate isn't as good for you (or as good, IMHO).

Technorati Tags: Health, Chocolate

What's next? Secret police?

2005-12-20T14:12:00.000+07:00

Many years ago—as it turned out, Iraq invaded Kuwait during my time there—I traveled for a few weeks in Syria as part of an extended trip around the world. Another American I met there suggested that I read the travel advisory from the State Department. It turned out to be a rather dire warning about the dangers to be found in Syria, and stopped just short of forbidding travel there on safety grounds.

Turns out, though, that it was entirely false. Syria at the time was, for non-Israeli travelers, as safe a place as there was in the world. (It might not have been for Jewish travelers, but I met no Jews in Syria, so I can't say.) There was a very good reason why it was so safe. The place was crawling with secret police. As a result, the Syrians I met were welcoming and friendly in the usual Middle Eastern way, but only so long as I avoided talking about politics. Should I bring up anything political, people couldn't get away from me fast enough.

Now, the safety was only for some people, for foreigners and those who kept in their place. Those who objected to the governing regime tended to disappear. Those seen as a threat, such as the people of Hama, where the Muslim Brotherhood started to rise up against the Assad regime in 1982, paid a dire price. The Hama rebellion was brutally repressed, with tens of thousands dead, including many who had nothing to do with the uprising.

This is how totalitarian regimes operate. They promise, and to a large degree deliver, security to those who do not step out of line. Those who do not go along can eventually expect to find themselves arrested and detained indefinitely without charge, tortured until they confess, and then disappeared. The state, in order to identify those who are not in full compliance, spies on their citizens, using electronic means as well as secret agents.

The Bush administration is offering a less extreme version of this deal. They promise security, but in return ask that the executive be allowed to secretly and indefinitely jail, on nothing more than the President's say-so, anyone it pleases. They insist on being able to torture confessions from people, although they avoid that accusation by redefining whatever they happen to do as "not torture". Now they have admitted that they are secretly spying on US citizens, and tell us they are doing it to keep us safe.

This is how it starts. We trade "essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety", as Ben Franklin put it. And maybe we do, most of us, feel a little safer. So we trade a little more, and then yet more. And in the end we find that we have traded away our most precious and dearly-bought rights. But rather than the absolute security we thought we were buying we find instead that we live our lives in fear, fear of being identified as an enemy of the state.

This is why we must oppose the totalitarian impulses of the Bush administration. This is why we must insist on the President being subject to the rule of law. This is why we must fight to ensure that election results truly reflect the will of the people. This is why we must cherish and support a free and independent press.

Otherwise, we will wake up some day to find the Stars and Stripes, protected by a constitutional amendment, flying over a place that is no longer America.

Technorati Tags: Bush, Terrorism, US politics

America is hindering Middle Eastern democracy

2005-12-19T10:40:00.000+07:00

The brilliant Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk—who I expect will win a Nobel prize someday, for reasons both artistic and political—is about to go on trial for having had the temerity to publicly discuss the Armenian genocide and the slaughter of Kurds. Pamuk is both a proud Turk and committed to democracy and free speech, so it should be especially worrying to the US that he is saying this:

As tomorrow’s novelists prepare to narrate the private lives of the new élites, they are no doubt expecting the West to criticize the limits that their states place on freedom of expression. But these days the lies about the war in Iraq and the reports of secret C.I.A. prisons have so damaged the West’s credibility in Turkey and in other nations that it is more and more difficult for people like me to make the case for true Western democracy in my part of the world.

The conduct of the Bush administration is besmirching the good name of democracy. As advancing democracy is in America's best interests, this means that this administration is hurting America.

Technorati Tags: Bush, Orhan Pamuk

Freelance bugfinders

2005-12-18T15:29:00.000+07:00

In an interesting, er, development in software, someone recently tried to sell on eBay a bug he'd discovered in Excel. This bug would allow a maliciously-crafted spreadsheet to assume control of a Windows computer on which it was opened. The existence of a vulnerability in a Microsoft product is nothing new, of course—but the attempt to sell it is.

Software companies seem to expect their users to provide the valuable service of bug-finding for free, while charging for a product which is not guaranteed to do anything at all. (Ever read a EULA? They typically, in effect, deny that the software is in any way useful.)

Now, bugs do cost the software companies money, mostly in support costs. So those companies should be willing to pay for bug reports. Common, minor bugs ("I can't print to my 1978 IBM line printer from Windows XP!") would garner small payments; more major bugs ("Selecting that checkbox wiped my disk clean and electrocuted my hamster!") would get paid more.

It could create a cottage industry in bug-finding. On the other hand, it might bankrupt certain software companies.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Software

Christmas fights back!

2005-12-18T14:17:00.000+07:00

In what was surely a skirmish in the War On Christmas I keep hearing so much about, 40 drunk Santa Clauses rampaged through Wellington, New Zealand.

Absurdity piled on absurdity.

Technorati Tags: Christmas, New Zealand

Henry Moore sculpture stolen

2005-12-18T14:14:00.000+07:00

There's a Henry Moore in Houston, in a fairly little-visited (mostly because you have to get out of your car) spot off Allen Parkway, and I remember thinking up a way to steal it, and wondering how long it would be before anyone noticed.

As it turns out, someone did recently steal one of his pieces from his Hertfordshire estate. The article mentions that the thieves may simply have wanted it to sell for scrap.

From prices posted on the Internet, it seems that the thieves could only expect to net about $5-6K from selling the bronze, which hardly seems enough to justify the risk, not to mention the trouble of hiring a crane and a flatbed truck, and then melting the sculpture down. I mean, given that you've got a crane and the truck, why not just steal a nice car or two?

It seems far more likely that they wanted the sculpture, not just the metal. I wonder whose back yard will soon be featuring it.

Technorati Tags: Henry Moore

Yet another example why mixing religion and politics is a Bad Idea

2005-12-17T18:27:00.000+07:00

So Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, not content with pissing everyone off by continuing Iran's nuclear program, has now denied the Holocaust and suggested that Israel be relocated someplace far from the Muslim world. I think this is mostly pandering to the fundamentalist base that elected him. Pakistan's nuclear weapons are seen as a source of enormous pride and prestige for that nation, not to mention a guarantee against attack; it's disappointing and scary, but hardly surprising, that Iran wants the same. But Holocaust denial is a shameful thing for a national leader to express, and it's a condemnation of the Iranian people that holding such a false belief could help anyone's political fortunes.

Technorati Tags: Iran

Is it worse to waffle, or to stay the wrong course?

2005-12-17T16:56:00.000+07:00

Nancy Pelosi said that the Democrats will not have a party position on what should be done in Iraq:

There is no one Democratic voice . . . and there is no one Democratic position.

This strikes me as a bad idea, born of a craven desire to avoid stating a position that could later be used against them. Even if they can't currently agree what actions should be taken now, at least they could agree as to what goals the US should be working towards in Iraq, and then have a discussion as how best to achieve those goals. As it is, they just look like inert obstructionists, and it's hard to imagine a worse image for politicians.

Technorati Tags: Iraq, Democratic party, US politics

World not rushing to help the US go it alone, complains Rice

2005-12-17T16:45:00.000+07:00

Condoleezza Rice has lately been complaining that the rest of the world isn't doing enough to help try Saddam Hussein:

The international community's effective boycott of Saddam's trial is only harming the Iraqi people, who are now working to secure the hope of justice and freedom that Saddam long denied them.
...
As welcome as this broad support is, I am sad to say that the international community has barely done anything to help Iraq prosecute Saddam Hussein.

All who express their devotion to human rights and the rule of law have a special obligation to help the Iraqis bring to justice one of the world's most murderous tyrants.

OK, a couple of problems with this. First, what does she think others should be doing? Cheerleading? Mostly, though, it's this administration's own fault for having opposed the mechanism established by the rest of the world for trying those accused of "crimes against humanity"—the International Criminal Court.

Even if you're the richest kid on the block, and own the only baseball, if everyone else wants to play football and you've refused, you're gonna wind up trying to play catch alone.

Technorati Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Saddam Hussein

Mistletoe rustling?

2005-12-17T16:11:00.000+07:00

Reuters is reporting that there's a mistletoe shortage in the UK, which has led to "cases of mistletoe rustling". It's a perfect business opportunity for some enterprising Texan, as the parasite grows everywhere there. All that would be required would be permission to import it into the UK. But once it was pointed out to the customs official that it would increase the likelihood of getting kissed this Christmas, that should be pretty easy.

Technorati Tags: Mistletoe, Weirdness

Oral swab HIV test produces false positives

2005-12-17T15:58:00.000+07:00

There's a new HIV test, which uses an oral swab—much safer and more convenient for both the patient and medical personnel—to collect the sample. Unfortunately, about a quarter of those in San Francisco who have tested positive on it turn out not to be HIV positive after all.

There is speculation that perhaps there's something special about the group tested, as this problem hasn't been seen before with this test. But there's also something else at work here, a basic misunderstanding of detection systems, and of Bayes' theorem.

Detection systems can fail in two basic ways, known as Type I and Type II errors. Type II errors are what people normally think of when they think of an alarm failure—the burglar breaks in, but the alarm doesn't go off. In medical tests, this is called a false negative, which means that the patient had the condition but the test didn't detect it.

The false positives in this case are also known as Type I errors, which are also a problem. For one thing, too many Type I errors can cause people to disregard the result, as when we all ignore car alarms. In medicine, a false positive can cause needless worry, Just ask any woman who's been told that there are "abnormalities" on her Pap smear, a notoriously error-prone test.

Detection system can be tuned to have very low Type I error rates, or very low Type II error rates, but usually not both at once. In public medicine, it usually makes sense to have a cheap safe screening test with a very low false negative rate, and then a more expensive but more sensitive follow-up test for those who test positive. It sounds like this new test would be ideal for an initial HIV screening test.

The other thing that many people don't understand about testing systems is Bayes' theorem. Consider an HIV test that's "99% accurate". That is, when someone is known to be HIV+, this test will detect it with 99% probability; similarly if they're HIV-, the test will show that 99% of the time. The problem is, that's not how the test is used. Such a test is done on a person whose HIV status is unknown, and the test comes back positive. The question is, what's the probability that the person really is HIV+?

Bayes' theorem tells us that the answer depends on the incidence of HIV in the population. Let's run the numbers on a population of 1 million Americans. The prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the US is about 0.33%. That means that of that 1 million, 3300 will be HIV+, and 996700 will be HIV-.

Of the 3300 HIV+ people, 3267 (99%) will test positive, and 33 (1%) will test negative.

Of the 996700 HIV- people, 986733 (99%) will test negative, and 9967 (1%) will test positive.

Now comes our poor testee, whose test comes up positive. Remember we don't know if he's one of the 3267 HIV+ people who would test positive, or one of the 9967 HIV- people whose tests produce false positives. So the chance that he's really HIV+ is 3267/(3267+9967), or 24.7%. In other words, of the people who test positive, only about 1 in 4 is really HIV+. And that's with a test with 99% accuracy!

Given all that, I think that this new test sounds pretty good. They just need to educate people that a positive result just means that further testing is needed, and not that they necessarily really are HIV+.

Technorati Tags: AIDS

Bush, unindicted co-conspirator?

2005-12-17T15:21:00.000+07:00

Robert Novak, who first published Valerie Plame's name, has been claiming of late that President Bush knows who leaked her name. In response, Bush said:

Although I have no first-hand knowledge of this leak, I have asked all White House staff to sign a statement that they did not reveal Ms Plame's identity as an undercover CIA operative to anyone not authorized to have that information. Anyone who refuses to sign such a statement will be suspended from further duties, and the case turned over to the Attorney General for investigation and possible trial.

I jest, of course. That only happens when adults with a sense of responsibility and accountability are in charge. What Bush really said in response to Novak's claim was this:

I appreciate his bold assertion.

What a weasel. The man can't even answer a simple yes or no question about what he himself knows. Good thing it's only about possible treason, and not extramarital sex, or he might find himself impeached. But of course I jest yet again—this Republican Congress will never hold Bush to any standard whatsoever.

Technorati Tags: Bush, Robert Novak, US politics, Valerie Plame

When love means having to say you're sorry

2005-12-17T14:54:00.000+07:00

I remember a time when, shortly after being intimate with someone, I discovered that I'd had a communicable disease at the time. Although we lived on different continents, I was luckily in the city where she lived when I discovered this, and so was able to tell her in person. I took her into an empty room, closed the blinds, and proceeded to offer abject apologies and express my sincere hope that she was OK, but that I thought she really ought to go to the doctor and get checked for...

I realize now that I should have begun with this last bit of information, as she was pretty worked up by this point. Who could blame her, considering the nasty, even lethal, bugs that are going around out there?

Anyway, she went and got checked out, and as it turned out, she hadn't managed to catch my mononucleosis.

But she was a friend. What if she'd been someone I'd met casually? Now San Francisco and Los Angeles are providing an answer: a service which sends an e-card to those you slept with, telling them what they might have. One problem with this—you have to have their e-mail address, and they need yours. It might be a good idea to set up a special one, like tellmeifihaveanstd@yahoo.com.

Technorati Tags: Sex

Between the devil and the deep blue sea

2005-12-15T13:15:00.000+07:00

Give a thought for the people of Vanuatu—rising sea levels are forcing some people there to move inland; others are being forced from their homes by a volcano. Good thing they're not happening on the same island; just imagine one group, going inland, meeting the other, running for the sea, and all of them wondering what to do next.

Technorati Tags: Global warming, Vanuatu

Grandma's a pill pusher

2005-12-15T13:05:00.000+07:00

So now it's come to this: the US's insane drug policies, combined with poverty among the elderly, has led to 40 senior citizens in Kentucky alone being charged with dealing drugs.

Technorati Tags: Drugs

Emperor says he's not naked

2005-12-15T12:55:00.000+07:00

This week President Bush, responding to criticism dating back to 2000 that he was out of touch, denied that he lives in a "bubble".

I swear, you can't make this stuff up.

Technorati Tags: Bush

George Orwell's Shooting An Elephant

2005-12-15T12:39:00.000+07:00

If you've never read it, or if you haven't read it recently, you really, really need to. There's a copy online here. In just a few pages of brilliant prose, Orwell recounts a tale that should give any would-be imperialist or occupier pause.

Technorati Tags: George Orwell

Breeding like...well, maybe we need a new metaphor

2005-12-15T12:27:00.000+07:00

How badly do you have to screw up your environment that you're endangering a species of rabbits?

Technorati Tags: Environment, Rabbits

Technology leapfrog

2005-12-15T12:14:00.000+07:00

One of the big disadvantages of being a leader in technology is that early, inferior versions tend to get entrenched as standards. For instance, the television standard used in the US, NTSC, doesn't produce image quality nearly as good as PAL/SECAM. And the cell phones in use in most of the world work more seamlessly than those in the US.

Places which are not on the leading edge benefit from the mistakes and advances made by others. Cambodia and many other developing countries have not needed to develop extensive wired telephone networks, as most people simply use cell phones.

Now cities in the US are, over the strenuous objections of the telecommunications companies, are beginning to provide Internet connectivity. I would guess that the WiFi used by Tempe to provide access will soon be superseded by a better wireless technology, possibly WiMax. And when the price on that better technology comes down, the developing world will be able to take advantage of it in the same way that they're taking advantage of cell phone technology.

Should that, coupled with the $100 laptop, come to pass, Sun Microsystems' vision that "the network is the computer", can become a reality. In that model, most of the processing load is offloaded to servers, so users don't need to have extremely powerful machines, no matter what Intel's Craig Barrett says.

Technorati Tags: Development, Technology

Good news on the death penalty

2005-12-13T21:37:00.000+07:00

From USA Today:

An October Gallup Poll found support for the death penalty at 64%, down from 80% in 1994. When life without parole is offered as an option, preference for the death penalty drops to the 40% to 50% range.

Life without parole has always seemed to be a better punishment than execution to me. Given that we know that innocents have been executed, it seems obvious that we should prefer to put convicts in jail from which they could, if later found to be innocent, be released, rather than sending them into death, from which no return is possible.

I understand the emotional appeal of killing those who have killed, but killing for revenge—even if the state is used as a proxy—legitimizes killing as a means of redressing grievances. The death penalty thus brutalizes society, and puts us in the company of such countries as China, Iran, and Syria. America can be better, and it's good to see Americans beginning to realize that.

Technorati Tags: Death penalty

IEDs always make me feel welcome

2005-12-13T20:48:00.000+07:00

In an article reporting Bush's denial that the bungling of the Katrina response reflected racism (for once, I believe him—I think it was much more likely because of the poverty of the victims), is this:

Bush defended Vice President Dick Cheney's pre-war assertion that the United States would be welcomed in Iraq as liberators.

"I think we are welcomed," he said. "But it was not a peaceful welcome."

Huh? Even allowing for his genetic estrangement from the English language, it's hard to make sense of this. When you're getting shot at and bombed, what you're experiencing is not a welcome.

Technorati Tags: Bush, Iraq

No blogging for a day

2005-12-12T00:07:00.000+07:00

I've got to make a quick trip, so I'll be away from a net connection for a day. But when I come back, I've got a couple of things to say about the shooting of Rigoberto Alpizar, and a comment on the virtues of monarchy.

In the meantime, you could always go read the always interesting Balloon Juice. But come back real soon, y'hear?

2005-12-10T23:47:00.000+07:00

Who knew kite flying was so deadly?

Technorati Tags: Kites, Weirdness

The new enemies list

2005-12-09T19:09:00.000+07:00

The list of "terror suspects" distributed by the US to airlines has grown from 16 names pre-9/11 to 80,000 names. For some very good security reasons that list is classified, but I'm really curious to know how many of those names are actual terror suspects, and how many are just people who've publicly disagreed with this administration. You can't tell me they're above using such a mechanism to harass those they don't like.

Technorati Tags: Terrorism

If you haven't got anything good to say about anyone...

2005-12-09T18:38:00.000+07:00

...you should be a blogger. It seems that Mena Trott, the president of Six Apart—which makes Movable Type, one of the more popular blogging systems—doesn't really get it. At LesBlogs in Paris she took bloggers to task for their incivility.

She’d like to think that bloggers can be different, that they could change to all be “so darned nice” and that this would automatically lead to positive stories that will bring more people into blogging. Yeah right. Not in Britain they won’t and, I suspect, not in many other countries either. Maybe California is different. (And we mustn’t forget that more bloggers equals more revenue for Trott’s company.)

Specifically, she didn’t like people who say nasty things behind people’s backs yet are pleasant face to face. She coined the term “two-facedness” to describe it. She is disappointed that some people are so different to their online personalities.

The attraction of blogging for a lot of people seems to be the opportunity to be someone else online. I think she's missing the virtues of role-playing. Admittedly, blogging falls somewhere between D&D and real-life conversation, in that bloggers do talk about real people and companies. Part of the price of free speech, though, is that others get to say what they want about you, and it may not always be what you want to hear.

The audience was chatting on IRC about the speech as it was being given:

At this point in the proceedings the backchannel was on display. A “this is bullshit” comment from a backchanneler called ‘dotBen’ tipped Trott over the edge. “dotBen. Who’s dotBen?” demanded Trott. To a collective gasp, he promptly stood up and identified himself.

“All day yesterday you’ve been an arsehole,” said Trott, spluttering and stumbling her way to “why the fuck?”

Here's the kicker: dotBen is, or was, one of Ms Trott's customers—you can read his version of this story here. And Ms Trott has blogged about it as well here and here. They both seem to be pretty "darned nice" about it all.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Mena Trott, Six Apart

Real wife swapping

2005-12-09T07:55:00.000+07:00

From Reuters:

A Turkish villager who ran away with his friend's wife has offered his own wife in exchange, newspapers said on Thursday.

Farm laborer Cengiz Esme said Gulhan, his wife of 18 years, disappeared a month ago after leaving their village to go shopping in the southern Turkish town of Tarsus.

The 36-year-old said his village friend Mehmet Yaksi had telephoned him the next day and said: "I've run off with your wife .... You take my wife," the Radikal daily reported.

I mention this not just for the intrinsic interest, but because it takes place in a place where I used to live—Tarsus, Turkey. The place isn't much in the news these days, but it used to be pretty famous, as it was St Paul's home town, and it's also where Antony and Cleopatra first met.

Technorati Tags: Turkey, Weirdness

Maybe you can hug your kids in cyberspace

2005-12-07T23:23:00.000+07:00

From Reuters:

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore scientists looking for ways to transmit the sense of touch over the Internet have devised a vibration jacket for chickens and are thinking about electronic children's pyjamas for cyberspace hugs.

A wireless jacket for chickens or other pets can be controlled with a computer and gives the animal the feeling of being touched by its owner, researchers at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) told Monday's edition of The Straits Times.

Somehow I don't think is going to work yet. Our eyes see an image of a dog, and when asked what it is, we say it's a dog, but we're never fooled for more than a moment that an image is... Hang on a minute. "Chickens or other pets"? Who keeps a chicken as a pet? Besides, none of the chickens I have known have been notably fond of being hugged. NTU, if you're listening, this idea—or at least the PR for it—needs a little more work.

Technorati Tags: Technology, Weirdness

What's Diebold hiding?

2005-12-06T15:31:00.000+07:00

I used to write software in a regulated industry, and one of the first things we did was to make sure that we kept all versions of our product software around so that if a problem occurred, we would be able to find out what went wrong and, if necessary, fix it in the current version of the software.

If we had wanted to hide (entirely hypothetical) prior software misdeeds, it would have been necessary to prevent others from seeing our old code.

Which is why, when Diebold refuses to put into escrow their software that runs voting machines, as required by North Carolina, I immediately suspect that they're trying to hide something in their code.

The commenters at Slashdot, on the other hand, seem to think that this is mostly about hiding the criminal past of much of Diebold's staff (scroll down a bit).

Technorati Tags: Diebold, Technology, US politics

Sorry I've been gone

2005-12-06T14:26:00.000+07:00

After I last blogged, my health fell over a cliff, and then when I started to get better, I was out of the habit of blogging, so it's taken me a while to get back to this. I'm sorry I just disappeared without any notice; I won't do it again.

Very cool illusion

2005-10-26T12:48:00.000+07:00

Take a look at this optical illusion — it works, I think, partly because of "ghosting" in our visual systems, and partly because are brains are wired to notice change and generally ignore what stays fixed. (BTW, it worked for me in FireFox, but not in Safari or NetNewsWire.)

Technorati Tags: Toys

How to tell when you've really made it

2005-10-03T01:46:00.000+07:00

If you're really famous, someone will be willing to pay more than half a million dollars for your undershirt.

Technorati Tags: Weirdness

Should math be beautiful, or practical?

2005-09-18T12:29:00.001+07:00

The readers of Physics World recently voted on the greatest equation of all time. The result was a tie. One of the top vote-getters was Maxwell's equations, which describe electromagnetism. One physics professor I know said that understanding these equations was a big hurdle for students; once mastered, Einstein's work was a doddle. (He may have exaggerated a bit, but only a bit.) The usefulness of these equations is hard to overstate.

The other winner was Euler's formula, which can be written as:

e^iπ + 1 = 0

When mathematicians first see this, they find it incredible. This formula includes two basic transcendental numbers, e and π, the multiplicative identity (1), the additive identity (0), and the basis for the imaginary numbers (i) with nothing extraneous. At first blush, it's hard to believe that an imaginary exponent of a real number should wind up as a real. But seeing that it does is a wondrous experience.

I would guess that if you interviewed the voters, you would find that those who voted for Maxwell's equations were scientists and engineers, who value usefulness. But those who voted for Euler's formula would be mostly mathematicians, who value beauty.

Technorati Tags: Mathematics

Next year, Caracas?

2005-09-18T12:05:00.000+07:00

Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela and bugaboo of the President of the US, has announced that he has proof that the US has plans to invade Venezuela. Now, I'm sure that the administration would love to have a distraction from the demonstration of their incompetence in New Orleans, and from the continuing incompetence in Iraq. I also have no doubt that the Pentagon has drawn up plans to invade Venezuela. They probably have plans for the invasion of Switzerland drawn up. But given the lack of sufficient resources, the rapidly-dwindling enlistments, the fast-rising deficit, and the bottom-of-the-barrel poll numbers, it seems hardly likely that this will come to pass. But it would make for interesting times.

Technorati Tags: Hugo Chavez, US, Venezuela

Ah, the good old days

2005-09-18T11:56:00.000+07:00

I was an undergraduate at Rice University for a very long time. Twelve years, to be exact. During all that time, the football team (we're talking American football here, not that wimpy soccer stuff) was always the whipping boy of the conference. One year, the team was named the worst in the nation in the Penthouse list. This caused great joy among the students, as it allowed us to chant "we're number 1!" at games.

One memorable year, we lost to LSU 77-0 one week, and then 72-15 to Texas the next, scores which stretch the limits of what's possible, given the limited time available during a game. The latter score was considered a moral victory, since no one had scored as much against Texas that season. This was somewhat tempered by their having sent in their cheerleaders to play the last quarter,

Disappointingly, Rice fell out of first place in Penthouse, and has since been only middling bad. But this week, hearteningly, Rice lost to Texas 51-10, giving this old Owl hopes that once again students will throng one small section of the stadium, screaming "we're number 1!"

Technorati Tags: Rice University

Surely even Bush doesn't believe what he says

2005-09-17T11:06:00.000+07:00

So Katrina was one of the worst natural disasters to hit the US ever. Also, one of the most expensive. Helping people recover from this is one of the purposes of government — it falls under that "promote the general welfare" clause. So, how are we going to pay for it? From taxes, of course. That's where the government's funding comes from. So, what does Bush say?

President Bush on Friday ruled out raising taxes to pay for Gulf Coast reconstruction, saying other government spending must be cut. "You bet it will cost money, but I'm confident we can handle it," he said.

Excuse me, but "other spending must be cut"? Has this administration, and this Congress, given any indication that they can do anything other than spend more, and cut taxes? And one way or another, their record deficits will be paid for from taxes, either now, or later, when grownups are back in charge. But Bush tried to be reassuring about that, too:

"It's going to cost whatever it's going to cost, and we're going to be wise about the money we spend," Bush said a day after laying out an expensive plan for rebuilding New Orleans and the Gulf Coast without spelling out how he would pay for it.

Any government that gives multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts to their cronies is, prima facie, emphatically not "wise about the money we spend".

Technorati Tags: Bush, Katrina, US politics

Internet .xxx real estate, going fast!

2005-09-16T01:19:00.000+07:00

Patrick Trueman, of the conservative Family Research Council, takes on the Internet in a USA Today editorial, and makes it very clear that he just doesn't get it:

It was Churchill who observed, "There is nothing so exhilarating as to be shot at, without result!" And this must be the sentiment of pornographers. For years there has been near unanimous condemnation of the notion that they should be rewarded with even more space on the Internet. Yet, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Internet's governing agency, is moving ahead on this seductive idea.

Oh yeah, that precious limited "space on the Internet". It's a shame that it'll be going to porn merchants when it could be used for...what on earth is he talking about? It's clear that he doesn't understand that the name space on the Internet is, in practical terms, unlimited, and although some names are better than others, there's always room for another name.

Most who advocate for a .xxx domain for porn sites say children would be the chief beneficiaries because filtering pornography would become a simple matter - just block .xxx sites. That assumes that pornographers would give up their .com sites, the cash cow of the porn industry, and move to .xxx.

Pornographers may be sleazy, but that hasn't affected their sound business sense. They have been making millions on the .com domain since long before Michael Dell sold his first computer over the Internet, and they would keep all their current .com locations.

Maybe yes, maybe no. There's no inherent reason why .com should be any more profitable than .xxx. It's not as though .xxx sites would be any harder to find.

Besides, porn merchants really don't want children looking at their sites. They want people with credit cards looking at their sites. I think many of the big porn merchants would be happy to move to the .xxx domain.

Pornographers would simply expand to .xxx, thus perhaps doubling the number of porn sites and doubling their menace to society. Thus the argument that .xxx would benefit children is without any basis in fact.

News flash, Patrick: Pornographers can, today, buy just as many domain names as they want. In fact, some of them do buy many, many names, which doesn't increase the number of sites, it just increases the number of names under which they can be found. .xxx will likely have little or no effect on the number of sites, and if any do give up their .com names — and you'd better buy them when they give them up, Patrick, because if you don't, others will — you gotta count that as a win, yes?

Furthermore, creating a designated domain for pornography would simply have the effect of legitimizing much material that is likely illegal.

Ah, this is the real problem. The only action people like Patrick want taken on things they disapprove of is to eliminate them. It's all or nothing with them. There is no understanding that people are going to do these "bad" things anyway, and given that, the best thing to do is to minimize the harm that comes from them.

Just one example, one that has effects that can be seen here in Southeast Asia: social conservatives disapprove of premarital sex, so the only thing they want to do is to tell people not to have sex. Any hint of real sex education, ways to minimize the risk of pregnancy or disease, is anathema. The Bush administration has done their best to implement that policy, and given the financial clout of the US, has been fairly successful at it. And people, here and all over the world, are getting sick and dying for the sins of people like Patrick Trueman.

Technorati Tags: Internet, Pornography, xxx

At least he's not telling them to chew on razor blades

2005-09-15T10:12:00.000+07:00

Thailand's prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra has a job for the kids here (from the Bangkok Post 11 Sep 2005):

...children could be selling expressway coupon booklets at toll plazas, he said.

Apart from easing traffic congestion at toll plazas, the scheme is likely to improve the quality of life of the children, he said.

I read this and heard, "Kids! Go play, er, work in traffic!"

Sad to say, though, he's probably right that this will improve their quality of life. These children are currently selling garlands of flowers at stop lights, and if the coupon books are popular enough, this could raise the amount of money the kids make. (He's proposing that they earn 2 baht, about $0.05, for each book they sell.) The toll plazas are a more controlled environment, and thus likely safer. And his proposal includes accident insurance for the children.

But there aren't nearly enough toll plazas to employ all of the flower sellers, so this will wind up being yet another symbolic gesture from Thaksin. Shouldn't he working on making it possible for these children to do what they should be doing, going to school and conducting the serious business of children, which is play?

Technorati Tags: Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand