dealing with fatuous rhetoric

mike harding [hi x-boss!] at sun alumni blogs pointed to ethan at urbanspoon and made my day. do latte drinkers really vote for obama?

We could just assume all trust fund babies are sipping latte at Starbucks and refer to figure 1, but that wouldn't serve the interests of science. Instead, let's assume that trust fund babies have one thing in common, money, and look at how wealth stacks against voting habits.

looking for a notebook app

i have been looking for a good mac notebook applicaton for a long time. i have a set of requirements that may seem quite idiosyncratic; here are a few of them:

• basic wiki/blog/etc. functionality [esp. markdown et al support] for simple structured writing [mac user, blogger]
• emacs-grade editing capability for heavy lifting [oldtimer, unix hack]
• good image support [photographer]
• sketching, scribbling [designer, illustrator]
• good indexing [eg. see circus ponies notebook], regex search [author]
• good layout support [author]
• organizational tools for content

clearly i do not need just a notebook; i need a strange hybrid. so far, i like circus ponies notebook as a comfortable compromise, though its lack of direct blogging support is forcing me to look for other tools. [my blog is just one of my notebooks, structured slightly better for public display.] i initially wrote this entry as a test from macjournal. [the result did not display correctly, alas; it was fixed using appzapper...]

[if any readers of this blog have some suggestions, other than write the app yourself, i would appreciate them]

[update: i have circus ponies notebook, and voodoopad pro now. they are both reasonable tools, with some nice ideas. on the other hand, neither tool impresses me all that much.]

daily rotfl: iso and ooxml

jason matusow of microsoft wrote:

I could make a very compelling argument that Open XML has done more to revive the reputation of international standards than any other standard before it.

i doubt such an argument can be made anywhere except in warm fantasies of those oblivious to decades of international standards work. a reasonable reading of the events, arguments and objections around this particular "standard" suggests iso's reputation, such as it was since the heady days of iso/osi, is worse off than before; there has been significant complaints that microsoft, consistent with its history of monopolistic aggressiveness, has abused the standards fasttrack process to push out a specification that it can manipulate to compete against a well-specified, open iso standard it does not like. [canada, i am proud to say, voted against this faux-standard precisely because of this]

being a microsoft toady is not the kind of reputation iso needs.

good books in the pile

an incomplete list of books from 07-08 i found entertaining, essential, edifying, exciting and sometimes exceptional.

Kluge: The Haphazard Construction Of The Human Mind

Predictably Irrational [i expect everyone knows dr. ariely by now...]

logolounge 4 [a logo designer has to keep up with these logo lounge collections. alas, the content is less innovative than one may expect.]

collective intelligence [very interesting book with some cool algorithms, and in python. sort of book numb3rs might publish...]

Refactoring to Patterns

Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction

The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter [masayuki miyata's paper cuts [kiri-e] make this book possibly the best edition out there. i wish it was in bigger format]

Venus on the Half-Shell and Others

Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability [second edition.]

Toward the Light of Liberty: The Struggles for Freedom and Rights That Made the Modern Western World

Release It!: Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software

Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys But Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life

Here Comes Everybody [hmm, i know some people called this a masterpiece, but i reserve that word for very, very special books. my initial impression is that this is a good solid piece of work, but not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination.]

Flavor of the Month: Why Smart People Fall for Fads

Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought

The Age of American Unreason [robert fulford of national post called her a "demi intellectual" and wrote a lazy, lip-smacking critique of sorts, as befitting his paper: "To satisfy Jacoby, it's not enough to exhibit intelligence. It's necessary also to use that intelligence properly, to develop views closely resembling hers." first part of the sentence is priceless, never mind its degeneration into a slur afterwards.]

Dark Integers and Other Stories

Calendrical Calculations (3rd ed)

Brasyl

Light: Science and Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting [one of the most informative books on photographic lighting i have ever found.]

Influences: A Lexicon of Contemporary Graphic Design Practice

Silver Palate Cookbook 25th Anniversary Edition [you just have to have it. many years ago i discarded an early edition, now have it back with better photography...]

How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing

Cosmic Motors: Spaceships, Cars & Pilots of Another Galaxy

Turning Back the Clock: Hot Wars and Media Populism

Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters [one of the best in this topic]

Who Rules in Science?: An Opinionated Guide to the Wars

Statistics as Principled Argument [MAGIC: magnitude, articulation, generality, interestingness, and credibility. required reading.]

Scientists Confront Creationism [insert picture of fish in a barrel]

[list extracted from my amazon [ca] and chapters orders, but all pointers on this blog are directed to barnes and noble [us]]

ventus available online with CC license

one of my favorite authors, karl schroeder just released ventus under a creative common license. [eg. pdf] see karl's site [recently redesigned] for different download formats.

Ventus is a novel of information apocalypse set in the far future. For a thousand years the sovereign Winds have maintained the delicate ecological balance of the terraformed planet Ventus. Now an alien force threatens to wrest control of the terraforming system away from the Winds...

Jordan Mason, a young tradesman, is thrust into the midst of an ancient galactic conflict when he becomes the only human on Ventus who can locate the source of the alien threat. But will he side with the Winds, who have brutally suppressed technological development among the human colonists of Ventus? Or will he throw in his lot with an entity that may be planning to remake Ventus in its own, deathly image? Ventus incorporates ideas about nanotechnology, terraforming, and information theory in an epic tale of war, tragic love, betrayal and transcendence.

a photographer's notes: images on facebook

if you care about copyrights, especially your rights on your images, you may want to keep them away from facebook.
first their stuff:

No Site Content may be modified, copied, distributed, framed, reproduced, republished, downloaded, displayed, posted, transmitted, or sold in any form or by any means, in whole or in part, without the Company's prior written permission, except that the foregoing does not apply to your own User Content (as defined below) that you legally post on the Site.

now your stuff:

By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.

plain and clear. if you are a serious photographer, your images do not belong in facebook.

[group link: My photos are MINE! NOT Facebook's! Change the Terms and conditions!. so far as i can tell, this group was formed in 2007, and has amassed 87164 members. facebook has not changed its terms and conditions, and i doubt it will.]

recently noted quotes

lock-ins are never good for customers: a business that isn't confident that it can keep your business by providing the best product at the best price is a business that isn't planning on providing the best product at the best price. -- cory doctorow [in defense of complaining]

look, she is nuts, but we cannot give her 10ccs of atheism and send her home. -- tal [house, m.d.]

Don't you have paint to watch dry? -- cosma shalizi

Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity. —- marshall mcluhan

This page was last updated in 1984 by a gifted psychic who foresaw all that is described here. -- mr bunny's hutch

ah, complexity: the mother of all consulting fees! -- marco tabini

you may have an invisible opponent, but you still have to see him. -- sandra jorgenson [iaido 5th dan sensei, mu mon kai]

i paid a life to get these parents. [because i pay a lot more, i get better parents] -- eren yigit [age 9]

properly implementing a singleton requires a number of the tricks shown earlier. -- the ruby programming language

people don't change. for example, i will keep repeating: people don't change! -- house [house, m.d.]

cyborg: do you even have opposable thumbs?
beastboy: most of the time! -- teen titans [fourth season]

why is the notion of a fundamentalist comedian funny, or at least quite odd? -- john allen paulos [irreligion]

the incongruity necessary for appreciating humor is only recognizable with an open mind and fresh perspective. -- john allen paulos [irreligion]

people want interesting clutter. people want clutter that is on sale. -- matthew powell

left to its own devices, the mind runs off in random directions as synapses connect to others that happen to be in the neighborhood. -- jack hart [a writer's coach]

Dear site operators: Here's a quarter, go buy a terabyte from Amazon S3 and stop complaining. -- cory doctorow [17 tips for getting bloggers to write about you]

autosave failed ... autosave failed ...

google's blogger, a year or two later: utterly boring layouts and templates. unbearably mediocre editing front-end. endless "autosave" failures. same sorry software, different day.

[addendum: yes i know i can take my blog elsewhere, but quietely walking away is not good enough. i want google to be informed. i want it to know that blogger is mediocre, and should be improved. google did not get to where it is by being the second or third best.]

[april update: at least one blog entry become entirely un-savable in draft form. several other drafts have had intermittent autosave failures. this is gone from bad to disgusting.]

daily rotfl

yet again pz myers is making fun of fishes in a barrel, er, creationists. [a creationist own goal?]

Creationist: There are no transitional whale fossils!

Scientist: Oh, dear, really? That's terrible! We should teach the students about that, don't you think?

Creationist: Yes, we should. That information must go into the science standards for our state.

Scientist: I quite agree. When we mandate that our teachers must offer instruction in the details of whale transitional fossils, the gaps will be so obvious.

Creationist: Good. Let's insert, "Teachers will discuss the nature of evolutionary transitions, emphasizing the kinds of evidence needed to support claims that land animals evolved into whales, and that cats give birth to dogs."

Scientist: Well, as a compromise, let's leave out the bit about cats and dogs, and we'll have to clean up and standardize the language in committee, but let's do it. The committee might even make this broader, pushing for discussion of all kinds of transitional fossils, which, of course, are absent. Boy, you sure got me over a barrel, forcing me to include discussion of an evolutionary flaw in our public schools. I hope you aren't going to continue to outwit me with your Mastery of Science.

Creationist: <preening smugly> Ha ha, our cunning plan is working!

dns and censorship

a judge orders dynadot to

prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or any other website or server other than a blank park page, until further order of this Court.

hm. until we get a domain name system that can withstand arbitrary attempts of censorship and manipulation, click this link: wikileaks

blue note needs java and linux

i try to track all rudy van gelder remastered blue note jazz. this used to be somewhat easier; rvg had its own section in bluenote. it is now redesigned, and more difficult to navigate even when not throwing up after a simple click. how embarrassing for such a legendary label...

Exception Details:
System.FormatException: Input string was not in a correct format.

Source Error:
Line 40: for (int i = 0; i < b1.Items.Rows.Count; i++)
Line 41: {
Line 42     if (Convert.ToInt32(b1.Items.Rows[i]["Width"]) < 433)
                   b1.Items.Rows[i].Delete();
Line 43: }
Line 44: b1.Items.AcceptChanges();

Source File: e:\inetpub\wwwroot\LabelSites\BlueNote\
bluenote.com\www\CatalogArtistReleases.aspx.cs    Line: 42

prophet and wikipedia

nytimes reports on an attempt to censor a medieval image of prophet muhammad in wikipedia. evidently, no amount of inhumanity or insanity [such as beheadings, suicide bombings] can arouse enough islamic sensitivity to put together a petition [not that petitions would ever work against insanity] but a medieval image in wikipedia can. too bad the painter is already dead...

quote of the day

So in light of the issue’s new prominence and with a desire to improve the mental hygiene of others, I would just like to say that Intelligent Design is a really, really bad idea -- scientifically, politically, and theologically. I say this as a dedicated conservative, who has on many occasions defended and espoused religion and religious conservatism. I also say it as a professional molecular biologist, who has worked daily (or at least week-daily) for years with biological problems to which the theory of evolution has contributed significant understanding -- and to which Intelligent Design is incapable of contributing any understanding at all. -- mac johnson [intelligent design and other dumb ideas]

late resolutions for 2008

• touched: i will never buy any new electronic gadget without a reasonable touch interface. thanks to apple, the year of the teeny buttons, plastic styli, undergrad-grade interfaces and poor navigation are gone. [sad observation: palm is still producing things for year 2000. see centro.]
• right of ownership: i will rip every single cd in my cd library in three different ways: lame mp3, aac, and ogg, and i will encourage and provide assistance to anyone with a cd collection to do the same to their own library.
• food fight: every package of food that i find in my storeroom that has any form of tropical oil [such as palm oil] regardless of how many "healthy grains" claims it may have, will go in the garbage. companies that produce this crap [such as orville redenbacher] and pretend you are getting something healthy will be boycotted.
• environmental protection: i will do everything within my power as a canadian citizen to keep majority [preferably even a minority] government from the reach of harper and his drooling toadies.
• squeezed: i will write ten thousand lines of python. a portion of that will be rewriting others' java, perl and ruby code.
• overbooked: i will finally clean up my library, and get rid of anything i have not looked at in the last five years. [this is going to be very difficult. what am i to do with my copy of weissmann's lisp 1.5?]
• wikiful: i will contribute to at least ten wikipedia entries. [i had also once promised that i would contribute 100 images to wikimedia; i am still working on that one...]
• fox hunt: i will remove every copy of firefox, iceweasel and any other related animal from all my systems. i am sick and tired of of this bloated, resource gobbling piece of cyberblob eating up my systems.
• martial way: i will finally learn aikido. [i am minutes away from aikido yoshinkai canada where kimeda sensei teaches.]
• imagenation: i will make 2000 good [keeper] images, and display ten of them at a nearby starbucks. [see photographic goals]

recently noted quotes

to clarify, add detail. -- edward tufte [iphone resolution]

archer: you're sure there is nothing down there?
t'pol: yes captain.
archer: not even a microbe! i don't want to blow up something that can evolve into a sentient species in a couple billion years. -- [star trek enterprise]

as usual with arguments about the invisible hand of the market, it is a load of rubbish. -- mark c. chu-carroll [insurance: why it sucks]

I have an unreasoning prejudice against phones that I can't run a Python interpreter and a word processor on. -- charlie stross [marketing musings]

don't you know? a dead martyr's worth ten posturing leaders. -- kyril finn [star trek next generation]

streamlined madness is what i've come to expect from sun. -- anonymous coward [slashdot story on Sun buying MySql]

Ideational Clearance Sale! Going out of our minds, all concepts must go! -- http://gnosis.cx

we live the life of mollusks! -- anonymous mom

if my mom was a role model, she would be famous. -- connor yigit [my five-year-old nephew]

apple and dtrace: move along, nothing to see here

adam leventhal discovered that apple broke dtrace while trying to prevent some applications from being traced.

The notion of true systemic tracing was a bit too egalitarian for their classist sensibilities so they added this glob of lard into dtrace_probe() -- the heart of DTrace:

#if defined(__APPLE__)
        /*
         * If the thread on which this probe has fired belongs to a process marked P_LNOATTACH
         * then this enabling is not permitted to observe it. Move along, nothing to see here.
         */
        if (ISSET(current_proc()->p_lflag, P_LNOATTACH)) {
            continue;
        }
#endif /* __APPLE__ */

[i was tempted to say but at least they have dtrace, while linux developers are still scratching their heads and armpits but i won't. i just realized that they are now even at being differently clued.]

[update: landon fuller's fix]

daily yawn

perl6 and parrot
released, i hear
oh, like
wow.
welcome to 2001
without
the onion.

daily rotfl

here is john dvorak, pissing on sun, again. [i find it disappointing to be in an industry that encourages its practitioners to wear the "engineer" label also continues to encourage employment for drooling "analysts" whose fame and typing skill far exceed their ability to assemble a coherent and thoughtful analysis.]

I'm close to being convinced that Oracle wanted to buy MySQL to kill the product, but knew it couldn't pull off the stunt itself. So it sent in a stooge to do the job.

nicely put, but...

stephen metcalf tries to rescue slate, but too late, me thinks...

The crux of Saletan's pieces was his Liberal Creationist analogy. The analogy is hopeless along several competing dimensions, but it reminded me of the Dilettante's First Law of Empirical Narcissism. In a moment of controversy, the temptation to proclaim yourself an avatar of truth, and your opponent a faith-based inquisitor, is natural enough. But Darwin is Darwin thanks to generations of independent corroboration. By definition, generations of independent corroboration do not stand behind a thesis that is still being hotly contested. In claiming Darwin (or Copernicus or Galileo) for his cause, a person is often by implication saying: There would be consensus here, but for you damned critics! This is an odd definition of consensus. Conversely, when one's angry reaction to an idea is being adduced as evidence in its favor, one should ask: What does my anger have to do with the truth-content of your idea? If you told me there was a genetic basis to Jewish avarice, I would be angry. So what? What does my anger have to do with your crappy research?

broken social

i just deleted my opensocial account. [why? i do not have the time] first attempt spinned for an hour, though i was warned that "this will take a few minutes." second attempt did what it was supposed to do after a shorter spin. so we know that the deletion sort-of works on opensocial.