Matteson's Blog

Pens and Cool Speedometers

2012-02-15T22:25:00.000-05:00

I'm a big fan of the UK Top Gear show. It's an awesome hour of television. Great hosts, sweet cars, interesting interviews and the sights and sounds of a Lamborghini Aventador.

While these guys were testing out three cars (that I'll never be able to get close to driving) I noticed that all of them had really nice speedometers. This seems like a pretty minor feature, but it's a part of the car that you will probably spend the most time looking at. The design of most speedometers is pretty pedestrian. Sure, some of them will have a white background or something like that, but they're just not very exciting. The picture at the left there is the Aventador's instrument panel. How exciting is that thing? It's awesome, and not really because it's digital.

Compare that with the picture of the Nissan Sentra's instrumentation. I drive a Sentra. It's a fine small car. The background is black, the text is orange. It's not black and white, but it doesn't have much in the way of style or design. Car makers spend a lot of time making the exterior and interior of a car look nice. They add angles and sweeping curves (check out any of the new Hyundai models) to the exteriors and different sorts of textures and colors to the dashboards and seats. I say: save the obviously fake leather and carbon fiber fill-ins and spend some time making the instrumentation look rad.

In other news, I'm a big fan of fountain pens and ink. I've gotten my wife interested in them as well, and we ordered two more today. I got a Noodler's Ahab for Christmas, and we liked it well enough that Audrey wanted a Pink Tiger, and I ordered a black one. Both of these are brand new models, and we've been waiting for them to come in. One of these days I'll be posting reviews and whatnot, but I haven't had the time yet.

The Two Ts of Valentine's Day

2012-02-14T22:41:00.000-05:00

In the effort to keep myself interested in the blog, I'm going to be altering the layout. This new one is kinda exciting. The featured posts will get filled out as I add some new material. He entries "featured" there aren't anything really special. I'm just figuring out the code.

The Mrs. and I aren't really big into Valentine's Day. Tonight, we're eating Taco Bell (volcano burritos are awesome) and watching the premier of Top Shot on the History Channel. It's a marksmanship competition, and it's far more awesome than any of those singing and dancing shows. It's not just meat-heads shootin' stuff. These folks are from all ages and backgrounds, and they're forced to use weapons ranging from cannons to rocks in some really imaginative competitions. They might have to shoot the top off of a Q-tip with an old timey Peacemaker or shoot targets with a rifle while riding in the sidecar of a motorcycle on a bumpy dirt road. Great stuff. If you haven't seen the show, you should check it out. That's my recommendation.

The Dragonbone Chair

2012-02-12T14:47:00.001-05:00

This book was only barely okay for me. I usually give a book about 100 pages to hook me, and this one didn't come close to doing that, but I kept thinking "It must get better. Right? Yeah, it must." I wasn't totally wrong about that, but it was a near thing.

The first, I don't know, 2/3 of this story (tome) were not particularly good. The story is told from the perspective of a not-too-bright teenage boy who may have been a bit mentally-challenged. I got the impression that there were really interesting things going on around him, but these things were filtered through his perceptions and he didn't care much about anything. There was a lot of whining about sweeping the floors. If you decide to read this one, you'll need to steel yourself for a whole lot of this "Waaaa...Rachel wants me to sweep the floors, but I'd rather catch a frog or go climb something. Waa."

The last 1/3 was pretty good. That's when stuff starts happening. There's mystery, betrayal, travel, travails, a fight, a neat new companion, a wolf, and the whinging switches from sweeping to sore feet and hunger.

I don't remember why I started reading this trilogy. I don't think I really like Tad Williams' other work, but I think I read somewhere that these were good. I'm about 2/3 of the way through the second book, and the story does improve. Slowly, slowly.

Here's the Amazon link. That's just in case I haven't turned you off of the story. Somehow.

2011-08-17T14:56:00.002-04:00

A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I wasn't super impressed. In fact, I was fairly bored until the final 1/4 of the book. That's about when the action really started. Once Martin stopped talking about what some character ate for lunch or talking about the names of ships and whatnot it became interesting. Martin is really gifted when it comes to creating interesting names for people/castles/ships/bric-a-brac, but he needs the hand of a strong editor who isn't impressed with his fame and word count. He's good at painting pictures, but that doesn't do anything for those of us who want things to HAPPEN in a picture.

View all my reviews

4 Months?!

2010-12-04T16:50:00.000-05:00

Wow, apparently I haven't blogged in almost 4 months. I'm pretty sure that no one has missed it, but I keep seeing the "Matteson's Blog" link in my Chrome browser window. It makes me feel inexplicably guilty that I have this blog and I don't use it.

I think my main problem is content. I dunno what to write about. I could talk about philosophy-stuff, but only one or two of my (potential) readers would be interested in that. I could start reviewing something, but that's a fairly radical departure from the rest of the (scanty) content that I've posted. I could talk about games that I play, but that might give people the idea that I play too many games instead of working on stuff that I ought to be working on. I could just type random things into my iPhone and post what the autocorrect spits out. (This site is awesome, but NSFW.) Ideas?

On another note, I'm really fascinated by the Wikileaks situation and these "Cables" that are now popping up everywhere. Sadly, I've only just found out about these things, but I might comment on them at some point.

Testing out Adobe Contribute

2010-08-18T00:40:00.000-04:00

I've got this new program called "Contribute." It's supposed to make things easier for the blogging public. If this post works out as it should, then it'll let me post things from my desktop without logging into Blogspot. I think it'll also let me do it on the fly from some browser plug-in if I see something that I just have to blog about while I'm surfing the interwebs.

One thing that I really wish it would let me do is alter the layout of my blog template. I just want to change the color of my blog title from black to...anything else. It doesn't sound hard, but the .xml stuff has that color all burried and I can't find it. As far as I can tell, this program will only let me change the content of the posts I've made. I haven't been able to figure out if I can change the text in the widgets on the sides. It's weird that I can't do that in this program, but I bet I could do it in Dreamweaver or something.

This program also fails at pictures. I can't upoad one from my computer, and I can't link one in from a url. I don't know why it would make it so easy to do some things (like new posts and post editing) while completely failing at simple things like adding pictures to a blog post and editing the .xml of your blog template.

2010-06-21T00:44:00.000-04:00

Created by Oatmeal

Why are Whale Warriors so Lame?

2010-06-19T15:37:00.000-04:00

I don't understand this show. Audrey and I watched it the other night, and I still don't really understand this thing. It seems like these people on these boats are very concerned about Japanese whaling operations, and that's good. It seems like the Japanese are doing some illicit things when it comes to whaling. (According to that group of activists that made The Cove, the Japanese are hunting protected whales in protected waters under the guise of doing research. Apparently that research requires that they spear-hunt whales and part them out on the ships.)

The part that I don't get is why they are doing lame things like making home-made slingshots to toss broccoli at whaling ships and installing water cannons. Can't they do something better? If they can afford sweet powerboats then can't they afford something more serious than a sling shot? Are there even laws out in the waters of Antarctica? If there aren't, then why don't they launch something more bothersome than veggies at these whale-poachers?

Something New

2010-06-18T12:50:00.000-04:00

Hi Folks,
I've been playing around with my wife's blog template, and I decided to try some new things here.

Here are some things that are going on:

I'm addicted to the World Cup. The ref in the USA/Slovenia game was disgracefully bad. That dude shouldn't be allowed to ref a children's game, much less the World Cup.
I hate dealing with wireless routers. They're the worst.
I've been hanging out with my brother-in-law's pug puppy while they're at work. I taught it to sit and stay. Apparently I'm awesome at dogs.
I've been doing some research for my portfolio papers, and some of it is exhausting.

2nd Amendment and the Terrorist Watch List

2010-05-06T11:40:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine posted this column from the Washington Post on Facebook today, and I think it deserves a blog. The title of that column is "Terrorists who want to buy guns have friends on Capitol Hill." It talks of an initiative to ban the sale of firearms to anyone who is on the terrorist watch list. This move is opposed by the NRA (surprised?) and others on the Hill. This columnist wants to paint everyone who opposes this bill as some sort of terror-lover, and the NRA as a terrorist organization.

"Is the NRA a terrorist organization?"

This is like one of those lines a lawyer would say in some courtroom drama. Of course the opposing council yells "Objection!" and the judge says "Sustained!" but the words are out there and in the juror's minds now. You can't unsay things, after all. I'm no lawyer, but it might even count as libel. Sure, it's phrased as a question, but we know what you meant, Dana.

One-sided rhetoric like this really pisses me off. I realize that this Dana Milbank guy is a columnist, and not a real "news guy," but if you're going to publish something that people will read in a (reputable?) news paper then you have a responsibility not to write tripe like this. The NRA is protecting the 2nd Amendment. Clearly that's a terrorist act.

The NRA isn't off the hook here either.

"The NRA, restating its opposition to the bill a few months ago, said it is all part of a conspiracy by "politicians who hate the Second Amendment" and who "think that more gun owners can be placed on the list over time."

NRA, stop using one-sided rhetoric against people who use one-sided rhetoric! It's not helpful, and it makes you look just as stupid. The best cure for stupid is to drag it out into the light and expose it for the stupid that it is. Piling more stupid on top of it doesn't help.

I seriously doubt that the govt is planning to use the terrorist watch list to just take guns from people who own guns. This isn't the sort of conspiracy theory that I can get behind. I'd like to think that our government isn't so far gone that this is a real concern. These politicians are just worried about terrorists and they have the misguided idea that making laws against guns will keep criminals from getting guns. That's a claim that is ridiculous on its face.

Let's look at this bit-of-dumb next:

"...change the absurdity in the law that keeps those with alleged terrorist ties off airplanes but enables them to legally buy guns and explosives."

Actually, this might be a pile of dumb.

There are so many problems here that I'll use a numbered list.

The "terrorist watch list" is a huge problem. It's chock full of innocent people that the FBI hasn't vetted yet. They're people who may never have committed a crime in their life. According to the ACLU it's got over a million people on it. Probably way more than a million. In April 2007 it had 700,000 people on it. 20,000 people were being added to that list per month. If that trend has continued we now have 1,440,000 people on that list. Those people might not even know that they're on a watch list. They can't get off of that watch list. I bet it's even likely that lots of them did nothing at all to get on that list in the first place.
What is absurd is revoking the rights of ~1.5 million people based on their alleged terrorist ties. I'm not sure how anyone can, with a straight face, say that it's a good idea to strip people of rights based on their inclusion on a massive, secret government list that it's nearly impossible to get off of. That's an F'ing crazy thing to say.
I'd say it's absurd to even keep these people off of airplanes. Sure, maybe you scan/search them more carefully, but don't keep them from moving freely about the country on this nebulous suspicion. It sounds very official to say "But they're on the terrorist watch list!" If that turns out to just mean that they're on a massive, secret government list for obscure reasons then it's just an empty statement that can only be meant to instill fear and silence dissent.
Even if we should keep them off of planes, this doesn't mean that we should make it illegal for them to buy firearms (aka strip them of a Right guaranteed by the Bill of Rights). This sort of arbitrary removal of rights is exactly what the Constitution and Bill of Rights protect the citizens from. Rights should only be removed if there's a legitimate reason to do so (being a felon or having some history of mental illness, for example) and not simply because a government entity has put you on a list.

Seriously, people.

The world is not made better by removing more liberties from more people without any real reason.

Jumping Goat Amber Ale

2010-05-04T21:44:00.000-04:00

Another beer review! I was going to finish up a post I started a long while back about Libertarianism, but I decided to be more of a slacker and review another of my Trader Joe's single beers.

Jumping goat is an ale that smells a lot like Fat Tire. It's got that same sickly-sweet smell with the same sort of hoppy/flower taste. This one has a taste of honey, too. Very little head that dissipated soon after I took this picture. Unsurprisingly, there wasn't any banding at all.

I generally like amber ales, but this is a style I can't really get into. There's this almost cloying flavor going on and that's not what I want in a beverage. Perhaps it's the goat part that I don't like. I had this beer called Celebrator Doppelbock a few years ago with my friend Joel, and it was straight-up terrible. BeerAdvocates gave it an A+, but I can't imagine why. It's been a year or two since then, but I think I remember both of us hating it pretty hard. It did come with the sweet goat-on-a-string in the picture at the right. At least it had that going for it.

Black Toad

2010-04-29T21:31:00.003-04:00

Audrey and I went down to Charlotte, NC and we visited the Trader Joe's there. They've got a really interesting beer selection, and I picked up a few things that I'd never tried (or seen) before.

My first was Frugal Joe's Ordinary Beer. It's pretty much as advertised. It's cheap and it's ordinary. Actually, I might also call it "inoffensive." Hipsters, take note. If you don't like beer much, but you want to be seen drinking a beer, this might be the beer for you. It's super light. Just a few shades more yellow than tap water. Very little head, and it doesn't leave any rings on the glass.

Next up is Black Toad Dark Ale. I poured this one straight into the glass, and it didn't have much head at all. It smells like toast. No joke. It's got a pretty nice flavor. It's nutty and toasty. It tastes more like a porter than a dark ale. The after taste is just a little hoppy, and it sticks around for a while on your tongue.

I like it. It's not going to beat out the Shiner Black Lager, but it's nice enough and it's cheap.

Trivia and Amway

2010-01-19T11:17:00.000-05:00

I play trivia at the Green Bean just about every Monday night. If you're in Greensboro you should check it out. Sometimes we play with people we don't know so that we can get the team size up to the max of 5 players. Last night we played with a guy named Mark*. Mark works for Amway. Of course, I said something like "Oh! The pyramid scheme?" Apparently this is mildly offensive and possibly slanderous. Whoops.

I was using a really loose definition of "pyramid scheme." I just meant an organization that recruits people to sell products and to recruit other people who then make some money for their recruiter. It seems to me the ultimate goal for a thing like that is to stop selling altogether and just recruit people for residual income. Apparently, the official definition of a pyramid scheme is a system that works in this way, but it generally doesn't provide any products. Amway appears to be an MLM. Multi-level Marketing works like a pyramid scheme, but it provides products. In the case of Amway, it provides LOTS of products. A quick Google gives you lots of examples.

I'm not sure if the first term was wrong, though. It seems like the structure is identical in the two cases. The only difference is that one (the scheme) doesn't provide any of its promised products. The other (MLM) does provide products.

As a philosopher, my primary interest is in disambiguation. This case seems like it needs some of that. There's no reason that the term "pyramid scheme" needs to be pejorative. It's a description of the business model. It sure looks like a pyramid to me. The word "scheme" doesn't sound nice, but I still think it's a perfectly good word. What people in the MLM industry need to object to is something like a "Fraudulent Pyramid Scheme."

Inventing terms like MLM really serves only to make the thing sound more legitimate. It's essentially advertising. That's fine. Businesses need to advertise. It's just silly to have two terms that mean the same thing. Call the bad thing bad because it's fraudulent. Don't get rid of a good descriptive term like pyramid just because some people use the scheme to commit fraud.

*Name changed to protect the innocent.

Great Books

2010-01-12T15:50:00.000-05:00

Hello, Gentle Reader.

I've been remiss in writing these blog posts. For a while there I was doing philosophy stuff but, as my great friend Chris reminds me, I don't have to do that. So sometimes I post something neat about an animal that I checked out and became briefly fascinated with. Sometimes I post vacation pictures. Mostly, I abandon this site for a month at a time. No more! Audrey has WAY more viewers than I do, and I'm jealous. (Good job, darlin'!)

I have a friend named Travis who has a blog called "Travis Likes to Read." He hasn't posted in a long time, but I hope he comes back to it. I like his blog. He's very systematic in his reading. He lists the number of pages read and the time it took and such. I'm not going to do that.

But, I want to post today about a book that my mom said was a classic and told me to read. It's called Great Books and it's written by David Denby. I'm on the first chapter, but those few pages are so good that they make me want to write about things! Get this book. We'll read it together.

It's about a 40-something movie critic who decides to go back to Columbia to re-take the courses they teach to Freshmen about the great books in history. The range of things that they read is staggering. There are two classes, and they're each a year long. They cover The Illiad to Rawls and Foucault. The list is heavy on people that I consider to be philosophers, but it also includes Darwin and the Bible and Malcolm X. It's a heavy list. The book promises to be about his experience as an adult who goes back and experiences these classics again with fresh eyes.

On page 35, Denby writes:

At the beginning of each semester, I would stand before the books required for my courses, prolonging the moment, like a kid looking through the store window at a bicycle he knows his parents will buy for him. <...> If no one was looking, I would even smell a few of them and feel the pages - I had a thing about the physical nature of books... Reading has within it a collector's passion, the desire to possess: I would swallow the whole store. Reality never entered into this."

That is exactly how I felt (feel) about books. It's not that I have too many books. It's that I don't have enough shelves and eyes and hours. I actually have some empty shelves now, and it's a weird feeling. I pared down my collection so that I wouldn't have to carry so many boxes in and out of moving trucks. Audrey knows that, when we finally have a house of our own, I'll have a library that's worthy of the name. I think she's come to grips with that because she loves me. I want that room to smell like books.

Honey Badgers!

2009-11-18T20:45:00.000-05:00

This cute little critter was mentioned on Top Gear, and I hadn't heard of it so I decided to look it up. It's a badger that lives in Africa, and it's totally bad ass. They eat everything from fruit to smallish (1 meter) crocodiles and gazelles. It's only about 3.5 feet long and 30 lbs, but it will face down leopards, kill crocs and gazelles and steal food from puff adders. They also love to eat bees.

The wiki article cites a National Geographic program:

In a 2002 National Geographic documentary titled "Snake killers: Honey badgers of the Kalahari", a badger named Kleinman was documented stealing a meal out of a puff adder's mouth and casually eating the meal in front of the hissing snake. After the meal, Kleinman began to hunt the puff adder, the species being one of the badger's preferred venomous snakes. He managed to kill the snake and began eating it, but then collapsed on the dead snake as he had been bitten during the struggle. After about two hours he surprisingly awoke. Once his paralysis had subsided, the badger continued with his meal and then resumed his journey.^[4]

If you're curious, puff adders have necrotic poison and kill more people in Africa than any other snake. They make honey badgers a little sleepy. Wow. (I watched the snake video and he didn't "manage" to kill the snake. He casually killed it and ate it. There was another one when one climbs a tree to get to a cobra and kills it on top of the tree.)

(There are also videos on YouTube of them facing lions and one where a 10 foot monitor lizard tries to eat one and gets its face eaten instead. Animals are so cool.)

Authors and committments

2009-11-03T13:18:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine told me today that she was starting to read a book series again for something like the 3rd time. These books are pretty long. The series so far is 4 books and 5000 pages or so. It's pretty good. I hear HBO is supposed to pick up the series.

The problem with this author is that he takes way too long to write his books. In 2000 he published the 3rd book in the series. It was a winner. Probably the best of the series so far. Then his writing schedule seems to have fallen apart.

The 4th book was published in 2005. It was interesting because it only contained some of the normal cast of characters. The 5th book is supposed to contain the rest of the character's experiences during the same time frame. I like the idea, but it turns out that the 4th book only contained characters that I either don't particularly like or just don't care about at all. It was a slog for me.

The 5th book still hasn't been published, and it doesn't look like he's in any hurry. His personal webpage lists several appearances that he's scheduled for and the "update" page for this book series hasn't been updated since 1/2008. It suggests that we all leave him alone about writing the book and that we read some other series that he's been working on with another author.

The major problem that I have with him is that when you start writing an epic series you need to finish the dang thing. At the least you should be concerned that your fans have been waiting for years to read your next work. You should have a sense of urgency. You should be ashamed that we've been waiting nearly 5 years.

Now, I'm not usually one to gripe because someone hasn't been working hard enough, but I regard an epic series as a promise from the author to the (prospective) fans. "I'll write these books and tell you a story and you'll pay for it even though some of the books might not be stellar."

If you write one-off books and one of them is a stinker only your most hard core fans will buy it. If you're writing epic series then you can write one or two good books, throw in a stinker or three (Goodkind, I'm lookin' at you), and people will keep reading them because people want to know what happens and can overlook a couple of weak books.

{ In thinking about it, I don't know why I read these epic series. I think I've been let down every time I've tried it. Robert Jordan died before he wrapped up the Wheel of Time, but I'm not sure that he ever would have. I stopped reading it in 1996 (after 7 books) when things stopped happening and the books were all looking pretty much the same. Terry Goodkind became insufferable around 2003 after 8 books, I think. Even Tolkien's Return of the King was a disappointment. There's only so much Frodo-whinging I can take. }

Am I being reasonable here?

Good for Oregon! (And Boo on the NFL!)

2009-09-05T12:44:00.002-04:00

The Oregon Ducks suspended a player for the whole season yesterday.

As you'll see in the article, LeGarrette Blount was suspended for the season and the post season after he punched a Boise State player after the game. Blount was heckled and his team was upset by the lower ranked team. He lost his temper (and apparently not for the first time) and punched another man in the face hard enough to knock him to his knees. Now he's not going to be playing for the season or the post season. They're keeping him on scholarship, and he can come back next year, but he's losing a full year in the spotlight.

Was this a good punishment? I think so. He's a repeat offender with a hair trigger for violence. He was threatening players, coaches, fans, and police. Football is a physical sport and there are many times in a football game when you are allowed to hit people, but after the whistles have blown is not one of them.

If there is a connection between the actions a player takes when not "in the game" and the consequences he should face in his career, then how does this reflect on the NFL's decision to allow Michael Vick back on the field and the Philadelphia Eagles' decision to hire him?

Granted, the actions taken and the player's proximity to the game and the level of play are all different. Does that matter, though? Let's see how these things line up.

Michael Vick:	LeGarrette Blount:
Funded a dog fighting group.	Punched a guy in the face.
Bought land and facilities for this group to "train" dogs.	Menaced some fans/coaches/cops.
Made t-shirts to advertise or represent this dog fighting team.
Knew that dogs were being tortured.
Knew that dogs were being killed in terrible ways.
Participated in the killing of dogs in terrible ways.

Vick is back in the NFL and back to earning millions of dollars after spending 2 years in prison.
Blount is not allowed to play football, but he's allowed to stay at the school and he's allowed to practice with the team.
What do you think about these situations?

Should (Can) Obama be kept out of schools?

2009-09-04T22:13:00.002-04:00

Several of my friends on Facebook have been posting this poll which asks:

“Should the United States [sic] President be allowed to do a nationwide address to our children at school, without prior parental consent?”

This is a really vague sort of question (an unqualified “yes” or “no” on this question would be too broad), but it brings up some interesting questions.

It seems like most of the people on my friends list think this would be a really bad idea. Lots of hyperbole has been tossed around on these wall-to-wall conversations regarding fascism and dictatorship and brainwashing. Perhaps most of the people that I went to high school with are just rabid Conservatives who don’t want Liberals talking to their kids. Of course, Facebook isn’t generally a platform for serious debate. This might be. Where’s the danger of the President being able to talk to kids without express written consent from parents? It seems to me that there are three issues here which should be discussed.

1. Harms to children.

2. Parents should have some say in what their children encounter while they’re at school.

3. The idea that it shouldn’t be up to the local school leadership to decide whether the President gets to address the kids.

Harms to Children?

On the issue of harms to children, I think we can dispense with any claim that President Obama is going to curse at them, instruct them to run the conservatives out of town on a rail or brainwash them. He doesn’t seem like that kind of guy, and even if he wanted to curse at children or brainwash them the risk would be prohibitive. If we are going to talk of harms then, we ought to be talking of some other sort. I can imagine two.

The first sort of harm is to the children themselves. To assume the “worst” let’s assume that the message that he intends to send is political propaganda and not just a little talk about Labor Day or something. Perhaps the things that the President intends to say would throw the kids into a panic or cause them to question their most foundational beliefs regarding politics and the veracity of their parents. I suppose that this could happen, but it assumes things about the attention span and interest of the students in politics that I just don’t think are true. Are kids really interested enough in what the Pres says to question their strongly held beliefs? Are they going to view the President as the Ultimate Authority on Everything? I don’t think that either of these are true. If the President gives political arguments to school kids they are unlikely to change their beliefs. Perhaps they’ll question the things that they have been told or the things that they believe. That would be good. Not bad. Folks need to be taught to question and analyze beliefs and claims as early as possible.

The second sort of harm that might be possible is harm to the relationship between the youngsters and their parents or other authority figures. I’m not entirely sure what to make of this. I suppose it could be the case that a persuasive political message from the President to school age children could damage the relationship between parent and child, but it seems that the relationship between them could benefit from the discussions that might arise from the President’s address regardless of the message. I know I’m being too hopeful about the ability and will of people to discuss things rationally. Does it matter, though? If something like a Presidential Address is able to cause stress between parent and child then any number of other things would as well. How much should we worry about the differences between those things learned in school and the things taught in the home? Not much, I’d argue.

Parents should have a say!

It’s likely that the last clause of the poll’s question is going to cause the most vehement reaction from parents. They are unlikely to approve of the idea that their kids are experiencing things that they have not expressly given approval to.

It smacks of paternalism and Big Brother when the President addresses kids in school. It looks like the government is hijacking the learning institutions in order to push some agenda. It looks like choices are being taken away from parents.

The first is probably true. It does smack of paternalism (or as one person said, Hitler Youth). It should be clear that “smacking” of something does not mean that it IS that thing. Permissibility here should hinge on the content, perhaps. The second might be true, but it isn’t necessarily true. He could just be saying “Hey kids. Be all you can be!”

The third is not clearly true, either. How much control do parents have over their kid’s experiences now? Most parents don’t have much idea of what is going on in the class room anyway. I think it’s odd that parents would object to President Obama speaking to their children when they might not object to some other person whose background and credentials they don’t know. These other people are MOST of the people that a kid encounters in the course of his school day. Teachers/subs/coaches/lunch ladies are mysteries to most parents. Any of them could have some nefarious past or some agenda that they’re dropping on your kids in secret. At least in this case the message is public and from a guy who seems like a not-bad human being.

Should public schools be able to keep the President out of the classroom?

No one has mentioned this, but I’m a little surprised that the Pres would even think to ask permission from parents before talking to classrooms full of kids. He’s the guy in charge of the country and the public schools are funded by the State, right? Perhaps they’re really funded by the state, but I don’t know that it matters.

This DOES smack of Big Brother. The Leader runs the State and he gets to talk to your kids en mass.

Unlike the scenario in 1984, the President is held accountable for his actions. If he starts saying things to kids which are harmful to them (brain washing?) then he can be stopped or locked away or voted out of office.

Perhaps the President’s access to kids is just the price we pay for federal funding for schools? Kids need to go to school. Schools need money. President’s are elected by the people who send their kids to school. Sometimes the President gets to talk to school-age-folk.

A related topic is that small communities who disagree with the President’s policies should not be allowed to censor this sort of thing. Keeping people in ignorance is a classic trick used by people in power, and it’s no good. A far better thing to do is to allow the Pres to talk to kids, and then teach kids to analyze and discuss political ideas and claims.

What then is the harm of allowing the President to talk to kids?

1. Children aren’t likely to be harmed.

2. President Obama is a safer-than-average person to have talking to your kids.

3. The government’s unrestricted access to your kids might sound scary, but as long as the people with the access are held to account it doesn’t look like a bad thing.

Suffering for Fashion?

2009-06-29T19:28:00.003-04:00

My mom recently accused me of abandoning my blog. Not so! I just haven't written here in a while. Class prep and such got in the way. Anyway, here's a blog!

My wife got some new shoes yesterday, and they don't look too extreme or anything. Sandles with a bit of a heel on them. After wearing them for most of a day her foot looks like this. ---->

Yikes!

I started thinking that I would never have a pair of shoes that do that to me. It reminded me of the title of this blog entry. "Sometimes you have to suffer for fashion." When I think of people suffering for fashion I usually think of women doing the suffering. This looks like one of those times where people start bemoaning the social conditioning that makes women wear dumb shoes that hurt their feet and foster an unhealthy body-image. Men wear loafers, and that sounds nice and lazy already. I'm not sure about that, though.

How much pain do people of both sexes go through in order to be attractive to the other? Is it a disproportional distribution? Uncomfortable shoes, difficult workouts, tatoos, piercings, sports, bikini waxings, etc., etc...

(Really, this was just an excuse to post that picture. Yikes!)

2009-03-01T17:30:00.004-05:00

I saw this cartoon online today and I feel that I need to write a blog post about it, but I don't have the time today. It'll have something to do with the impression that lots of people have about philosophy in general and bioethics in particular. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow. For now, enjoy the cartoon. (Click on it if it appears too small to read.)

I finally remembered to post!

2009-01-18T20:28:00.002-05:00

And on that note, we have this article about memory enhancement in a pill!

The option to become "better than well" over the counter is finally becoming a reality. I for one am a little excited about this development as long as it's safe for the user. I'm going to wait a little while before I get on the band wagon. I'd hate to be on the next Vioxx suit!

What do you folks think of this development?

An interesting aspect of this plan is that there will be two different levels of the pill. One will be a perscription version aimed at those with Alzheimer's and age-related memory loss. The other will be an OTC pill with a lower strength called a "lifestyle" pill. Would this arrangement assuage the (unfounded?) fears of those who object to being "better than well?"

Bailing out the American auto industry? [UPDATED]

2008-11-19T15:35:00.000-05:00

According to CNN the auto industry is in dire straits and they claim they'll run out of the cash necessary to cover operating costs "soon." While they refuse to open their books to the Congressional boards they are trying to get a bailout from, they claim that they "don't have the luxury of time." They claim that if they aren't "loaned" $25 billion in the near future they will go belly up and it will be on the heads of Congress when all of those workers are out of jobs.

So, should we be bailing them out of their financial troubles? Would Congress be morally culpable for the lost jobs?

I would say that they should not, and the Congress is not responsible. It would be a terrible thing to have those millions (?) of workers lose their jobs, but to blame the loss on Congress is ridiculus. The auto makers operate in a market. When people don't want to buy your product you don't get to keep making money. Ford, GM, and Chrysler don't make cars that people want anymore. They keep making SUVs and trucks and not-fuel-efficient cars and such in a time when environmental awareness is spiking and gas prices are high. That's a good way to run a business into the ground.

It honestly baffles me why they think they should be bailed out. They should be expected to CHANGE their product to meet demand. If they don't do that then they don't get to stay in business. I don't think that we bailed out the deribible companies or train companies when airplanes surpassed them as the prefered way to get around the country.

What about the workers? It's not their fault that Ford won't stop making trucks in favor of more sensible vehicles. It's not their fault that their working options are probably limited to the auto plant. Why should they suffer?

The problem here is a systemic one and the answer must be systemic as well. I don't have any idea what to do about replacing the auto jobs, but perhaps the Congress should just let the auto companies learn their lesson and bail out the workers instead. If the reason that we think we should bail out the COMPANIES is that we want to save workers, then just save the workers and let the companys lay in the bed they've made.

We don't make stovetops less hot. We teach kids not to touch them.

UPDATE: For more delicious irony, check out this CNN story. The CEOs who are begging for money all flew in on private jets. Apparently they didn't need that $20,000 to keep their business afloat. When the auto companies were asked about this they replied that it is "standard procedure." It's time to change that procedure, folks.

Keith Olbermann on Prop 8

2008-11-12T16:47:00.001-05:00

I don't watch a lot of political TV but my friend Jen pointed out this link to me, and it is moving.

If you are a supporter of gay marriage you should watch it.

If you are against gay marriage you should watch it.

If you care at all about human rights you should watch it and you should pass it along to other people who haven't seen it yet.

Bravo, Keith. Well said.

From the school newspaper:

2008-11-12T16:12:00.001-05:00

According to the Daily Beacon of UTK I'm not the only one who is looking at the athletic department and saying, "you know, the university is being hit hard with budget cuts...what about athletics?"

If you read the linked article you'll notice that they try to justify themselves by saying that they give $2.5 million back to the rest of the university. Nowhere do they mention how much the athletics department takes in on a yearly basis. I would bet that it is STAGGERING. So staggering that the paltry $2.5 million sum they give back pales in comparison.

There was an excellent letter to the editor published today which questions the claim that athletics is self-sustaining, but the paper site seems to be a day behind. I'll post it when it comes up.

Also, how sad is the site that our school paper runs? Does no one over there have any idea how to make an attractive site? If someone from the paper is looking for a good web designer, I have a friend.

UTK budgets and paying coaches

2008-11-05T20:33:00.000-05:00

Our school system has been taking hit after hit on the budget front. The last cut was $6 million. The serious problem with this is that 91% of the school budget is salary. That means that when there are cuts they come out of the "people" department and not the "stuff" department.

As a result of that $6 million cut we're going to have to cut a lot of things such as upper level classes that people need to graduate and many other things.

If you follow football you also know that we're not doing so good on that front this season. We just fired our coach of 28 years. He's been coaching at UTK almost as long as I've been alive. He's been doing poorly as a coach lately and that gets you canned in the football world. He's getting a $6 million buy-out. He would really like the UTK community to not be divided by this change and he loves the university.

Huh. I wonder where the university could get $6 million...I wonder what a person who loved a university would do if he were already filthy rich and his university was in dire financial straits?

Fulmer: Let us keep our $6 mill. The students need it and you certainly do not.

Cautiously Optimistic

2008-11-05T20:23:00.000-05:00

I'm glad that Obama won. I think that he'll do a better job than McCain would have. (McCain's speech was better than Obama's, though.) I'm not one of the folks who is crying and jumping up and down. I don't really understand that reaction, either. I hope that he will do a good job for the country, but it's not like he's magic.

Life will not automatically be sunshine and rainbows now that he is elected.

I'm optomistic, but I'm not escatic.

Obama, the election, and the importance of research

2008-10-29T13:17:00.001-04:00

I'm probably going to vote for Obama over McCain this time. I think he's a better candidate right now. I'll give you a couple of quick reasons.

1) Obama is more in-line with my opinions on environmental and energy concerns. McCain is heavily in favor of nuclear power plants. He wants 42 new ones at a cost of around $10 billion each. Aside from the $420 billion price tag these plants would be producing primary

and secondary waste that we have no way to destroy or neutralize. Our best option seems to be to bury it in New Mexico. That seems like a way of pushing the problem off on future generations instead of a solution. Obama and McCain are both in favor of expanded drilling for oil, but while McCain seems to see this as a solution to an energy problem Obama sees it as a stalling action while we research new sources of power.

2) Obama is more in-line with my thoughts on foreign policy. McCain comes off as a blowhard who is unwilling to negotiate with foreign powers. He has said in every debate that he won't "sit down" with anyone. This is so completely undiplomatic that it is hard to believe that an intelligent person would consider it rational. Obama seems much more willing to talk instead of shoot. I get the impression that he would call for shooting if it is needed, though.

Do I have worries about Obama as a President? Sure. I'll give you a couple of those too.

1) Obama does not have a great deal of foreign policy experience.

2) Obama is pro gun-control.

These are both important issues, but they may have mitigating factors as well.

With regard to (1), I think that his inexperience might be a good thing. That seems like a crazy thing to say, but hear me out. The foreign relations nightmare that we are in now stems in large part from the man who now sits in the President's chair. He has shown himself to be unwilling to listen to advisers in the past and he has a tendency to fire people who don't agree with his opinions on things. The Presidency isn't a one-man job. There are just too many things going on for one person to handle all of them at once with any competency. That's why the White House is filled with smart folks who are supposed to help the President in various ways. When the President only keeps yes-men around him we have a serious problem. McCain has run on the ticket of being a "maverick." "People in my party don't like me!" he says. No, lots of them don't. One problem is that he won't take advice or listen to opinions that conflict with his own. That's a bad thing in a President. Obama seems much more likely to be willing to take advice when he should and not to say incredibly stupid things like "I'm the decider!"

The second point is a little dicey-er. Obama has made no bones about his gun-control stance and I don't agree with him at all. Laws such as those generally proposed have the effect of removing guns from law-abiding hands while not having any effect at all on law-breaking hands. It's silly to think that making something illegal will have any effect on those who do not follow the law. Restricting the number/type of firearm that I can buy at a store doesn't stop Mac on the corner from selling me as many firearms as I can carry from the trunk of his car.

The right to own firearms is a very important, and possibly fundamental, right that we should fight to keep.

Obama is much more moderate than groups like the NRA paint him as being. My mother sent me my copy of the American Rifleman the other day so that I could see what they were saying about Obama. As any good American should, I was shocked to see claims like "Obama wants it to be illegal to protect yourself in your home!" If that were true I would rather write myself in as a candidate for President than vote for Obama! The right to self-defense is a primary human right (if one thinks there are such things) and anyone who want to remove it had better provide me with a personal ninja to defend me.

The other thing that a good American citizen ought to do is RESEARCH. I found the bill that the NRA was refering to and gave it a read. It was a bill in IL presented in 2004 which proposed to:

Amends the Criminal Code of 1961. Provides that it is an affirmative defense to a violation of a municipal ordinance that prohibits, regulates, or restricts the private ownership of firearms if the individual who is charged with the violation used the firearm in an act of self-defense or defense of another. Effective immediately.

Obama did vote against it, but it doesn't say anything like what the NRA would have you believe. It would effectively create a loop-hole for people who were breaking the law by possessing a firearm. It really says something like this: "If you use a firearm in self-defense you have a defense against the laws you were breaking by possessing a firearm." It would provide a legal defense for the violation of a law. That doesn't seem like a good thing to me. I probably would have voted the same way on that one. The legal system is set up the way it is so that the brute force of laws may be regulated by the action of a jury. When you may not legally possess a firearm you should be charged with illegally possessing a firearm. If there is a justifiable reason for your possession and action then a jury should find in your favor, but you shouldn't get an automatic loophole.

I have some other thoughts about these issues, but I'll let it suffice to say that Obama isn't the radical that he has been portrayed as. The NRA should be ashamed for thinking that Americans are too stupid to do a little light reading of legal briefs. (Here's a site which further checks the facts of the NRA claims.)

Don't go into a voting booth blinded by what the media or a special interest group says. If it sounds crazy then perhaps it is. Hit the Snopes or the Google and find out for yourself!

Are you serious?! REALLY?!?

2008-10-15T22:22:00.000-04:00

I wasn't going to write things about this debate, but this last comment by McCain is so asinine that I can't help myself.

McCain is asked how he would improve schools and education. He says that we need quality teachers and that if you are bad at teaching then you should get another job. Then he says that what we need to do is to let soldiers who are finished with their tours come straight off the battle field and into classrooms. He doesn't want them to have to have silly certifications and take classes like they do now. ARE YOU KIDDING? THAT'S YOUR ANSWER?! FAIL!!

The answer to improving American education isn't to install unqualified military vets in the classroom without vetting or training. That's just crazy. Crazy.

Somehow we are supposed to believe that soldiers are qualified by their soldiering to educate children. In fact, we are supposed to believe that they are MORE qualified to teach our children than are people who HAVE taken the classes and passed the tests. I won’t claim that all teachers are great, but I have to believe that trained teachers are more likely to be good at teaching than are untrained and untested people who just happen to have been in the military.

The only way that this could make sense is if war is VERY different than I think it is. I thought there were death and shooting and bombs and refugees. Am I wrong? Is war really about teaching children?

I was leaning towards Obama already, but I was kinda ambivalent. McCain has certainly lost my vote. I can't understand how he could say something so insane. Anyone who votes for him is now voting for someone who says and believes ridiculous things. If you’re going to vote for a person like that then you need to have an amazing reason to do so.

I don’t generally get fired up about political campaigns, but man, I can’t endorse anyone who says clearly crazy things on TV in a debate and expects people to buy them.

Now the commentators are criticizing Obama for being “professorial.” Yeah, there’s an insult. I am so sick of the anti-intellectual movement in America. When “sounding intelligent” becomes an insult something has gone tragically and drastically wrong.

Image-Smearing and Campaigns

2008-10-06T14:17:00.000-04:00

I know that it has become a fundamental part of the American system of government, but this is a point to be bemoaned. Now both sides of the campaign are getting into the mud-slinging race. First, Palin says that Obama is friends with American terrorist leaders (seems to be false, see below) and now Obama supporters are saying that if one wants to question the candidate's friendships one only has to look back as far as the 80s to find McCain in cahoots with savings and loan bad-guy Charles Keating.

This is perhaps a more obscure reference than the Palin reference that I have already blogged about, but it is also much more substantial since McCain went to bat for Keating and Obama is only tangentially linked to Ayres.

McCain has said that he doesn't want any part of the mudslinging, but that's just a disingenuous thing to say when your VP running mate is the one doing the slinging. It's preposterous to think that he either (1) doesn't have some say in her strategy or (2) isn't able to tell her to cut it out. If either of these are true then how can we say that McCain is ready to preside over a country when he can't keep his running mate in line?

Personally I am a bit tired of this, and there's still more than a month of it to endure. Why do campaigns sling mud like this instead of debating issues? Because it works. The average US citizen doesn't have any idea which candidate is going to do the "right thing" for the country and they are too busy or lazy to actually do the research required to understand the issues and the politician's stances on them. Actually, most of them are not even all that interested in finding out if the positions attributed to candidates actually belong to those candidates.

Perhaps Palin is stiring up this mess because the McCain campaign is falling behind in the polls?* Nah, that can't be it...

*Thanks to Matt for this link!
**By the way, the pic a the top of this post was found by Googling "mud ball." Apparently that's a sport!

Library Etiquette:

2008-10-06T12:42:00.000-04:00

Just a quick note: Don't come to the "Quiet Study" section of the library to have your lunch of potato chips. I swear this guy in the carrol behind me was chomping through the loudest bag of chips in history. That's all he was doing. He was just sitting there eating as loudly as he could. Then he left.

Don't do that. Don't be a jerk.

The McCain Campaign gets nasty.

2008-10-04T19:43:00.000-04:00

Palin has been called the "attack dog" of the McCain campaign, and now she's kicking it into overdrive. Unfortunately, it's not as easy to sling mud now as it was in the old days. Now we have the internet and sources are easy to check. Easy as pie.

She claimed at a speech that Obama is pals with terrorists. She based this on an article which says that Obama and Bill Ayres (founder of the Weather Underground) are from the same neighborhood in Chicago and have met a few times at the University of Chicago where they served on the same board.

Like some of the students we all get every year, Palin apparently didn't read all the way to the bottom of the article that she cites. Unfortunately for her the end of that article says that there is no evidnece that the men were close or friends or that Obama has ever expressed anything but distain for the man's past actions.

This is one of those attacks which people who are looking for a reason to vilinize Obama will latch onto without checking their facts. I hope that they read CNN and kill this slander.

Justice!

2008-10-03T18:28:00.000-04:00

Finally! Video game fans, rejoice! Video game and entertainment foe Jack Thompson has been disbarred. It's about time!

(Edit: I just noticed that he looks a little like Jack Hanna. NOT the same guy. Jack Hanna is a good person.)

VP Debates!

2008-10-02T23:39:00.000-04:00

Call me a nerd, but I watched the VP debates and I took notes. Here are a few of the things that I noticed.

Palin said at one point that McCain is such a "maverick" because he doesn't vote on his party line. He goes against the grain. The odd thing about saying this is that there are only two ways to vote in the Senate. If he doesn't vote on his party line, then he votes with the other party. As Biden pointed out at several occasions, that means that McCain and Obama voted the same way on lots of issues. Often these were issues that Palin brought up as "times Obama was wrong." She didn't mention (maybe it wasn't in her Cliff's Notes) that this also makes McCain "wrong" on those same issues.

Perhaps it's only me, but "Vote for McCain because he votes with the Democrats!" sounds like a weird sort of thing to say when you're a Republican.

Neither candidate was in favor of gay marriage. Biden believes that homosexuals should have the same rights of hospital visitation and cohabitation and inheritance as heterosexuals, but he doesn't think that marriage laws should be changed. Palin is just a bigot. She doesn't think they should have rights like these because it is too close to allowing marriage. She almost said "slippery slope," and I almost typed "a bridge too far." Puns are delicious.

So is irony. Perhaps that's particularly odd from a home-wrecking adulterer.* Clearly she is concerned with "protecting" marriage, and clearly those homosexuals who want to get married are a greater threat to the institution of marriage than adultery. Clearly.

Just a few more things:
1) Palin doesn't like to focus on the past when she's getting called out on it. Biden is right when he says "Past is prologue." That's a great comment, folks. Past is prologue.

2) Biden totally dodged the question regarding promises that their compaign wouldn't be able to keep in the current financial climate. He did it really well, though. He talked about the other campaign's promises, and which ones the Obama/Biden ticket wouldn't keep. It was so slick that it almost got past me. Palin, on the other hand, said that they would literally keep every promise that they have made. Right. As if that has ever happened. I don't remember the last time that a mute was elected to the White House.

3) "Drill-baby-drill" is a chant that makes my skin crawl. What the hell are people thinking when they chant that shit? Have they not heard of pollution? Ugh. Just ugh.

4) Palin actually said that nuclear weapons used as a deterant created a "nice, stable situation." Someone needs to read some Walzer and/or look up this thing called "the cold war" when they get home...

5) Palin is governor of a "huge state." Come on. Your entire state has 670 thousand people. Dallas, TX has over 1.2 million people. Houston has double that. You have land area, but you don't have people. Land doesn't need government. People do. No one is fooled.

I'll leave you with a question: Do you think paying taxes is patriotic? I waffle on this question, but Biden seems to think that it is and Palin made fun of him for it. I want your reactions. Do you think I've been unfair here? Are taxes patriotic?

* That link is to the National Enquirer. They mostly run trash news, but following a lawsuit a while back they are rumored to have the most stringent standards for truth in reporting around. Judge for yourself.

Playgrounds and Battlegrounds

2008-08-25T09:46:00.000-04:00

Just in time for the new school year, CNN has published a piece on how to help your kid cope with bullys. As a formerly bully'd kid, I have a little insight on this issue.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimated that 30 percent of all children in grades six through 10 have been bullied or have bullied other children during a school year.
Clinical psychologist Mark Crawford of Roswell, Georgia, called the statistics unacceptable. "Bullying is not a rite of passage," he said. "It always has a bad outcome."

I dunno, I turned out alright. I think that the 30% number above is really too low. Unless middle school has changed a great deal since I was there the real number of bullys + bullied kids is WAY higher. Any kid who isn't rich, pretty, or of exactly average intelligence will get picked on and bullied. I wasn't rich, I was skinny, and I wore glasses. I also had a really smart mouth. I was a prime target. I think I came out well, but I don't know what I would have been like if I'd been the product of the mentality represented by this article.

He also conceded that some children won't open up to their parents about bullying. "One of the reasons kids don't tell their parents they are being bullied is the fear that their parents will run in and do something about it and they think that will make it worse."

That's probably because it will in most cases. This, I imagine, is because of the trickle-down effect of directed punishment. If your parents call Jimmy the Bully's parents they might punish Jimmy for being a jerk to you. He gets grounded or whatever and he knows that you're to blame because you opened your big mouth to your parents. Then he kicks your ass on the playground. It sounds a lot like a mafia movie, but that's how it goes down on the playground. What can we do about that?

But be judicious, she urged. Some parents can inflame the situation. "You will encounter situations where parents will tell their kids, 'If you are hit, I want you to hit back.' "
Experts point out it is important for parents to keep emotions in check and to not encourage a child to hit back or retaliate.

My parents never told me to hit back. My mother knew that I had a big mouth, and I generally didn't shut up when I probably should have in order to avoid getting in fights. (I've gotten a little better at that as I've gotten older.) She was never in favor of me hitting back, but I think she understood when I finally did. My father is a fan of defending yourself. He'd tell me not to attack anyone, but defending yourself is ok if you need to do it.

That's what kids need to hear. This rubbish about "just run away" or "don't retaliate" is not at all helpful on the playground. When the playground turns into a battle ground these weak maxims just don't work. All they do is paint you as a weak target for Jimmy and his crew. Turning the other cheek just gets you punched in both cheeks. Parents don't generally want to hear this, but sometimes you have to hit back. Generally you only have to have one good fight before bullys realize that you aren't a soft target and they'll move on to someone else.

I was picked on and beaten up and chased around for years before I figured out that running away didn't solve problems. I'm not saying that force is always the only option, but sometimes it is the right option. For me, that meant finally standing up for myself in (I think) 6th grade. This guy, Brian Something, would pick on me mercilessly every day. Pushing me around. Smacking me around. One day he hit me and I hit back. Actually, as I remember it, I punched him in the face and then gave him my own 6th-grade ground and pound. I don't swear that's what happened, but I know for sure that I punched that bully right in the face a couple of times and he never, ever messed with me again. Neither of us was really hurt, but I clearly won my freedom from bullys that day.

It would be really great to live in a world where children were always civil to each other and no one ever made anyone else feel bad about themselves. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen because little kids aren't civilized. When you're a little boy and you're bully'd there is nothing worse than being told by people you respect that you can't hit back. You only have so many options as a kid, and if the only ones left are Run Away or Get Beat Up you feel helpless.

That helplessness is what leads to the bad results that Dr. Crawford mentions. It's not the bullying that makes you helpless, it's the inability to respond to it.

Comcast and the FCC

2008-08-21T13:15:00.000-04:00

Comcast does some shady things.

Customer service is nonexistent and they will sometimes charge you a couple hundred dollars for porn that you couldn't possibly have purchased. Then they laugh at you when you explain that everyone in your household was out of town that weekend for Thanksgiving and ask them to remove the fraudulent charges.

Their technicians are hit or miss and sometimes they just don't show up, or they show up and do a really poor job. (I've had a couple of really good ones, but that's not the norm.) Their services in cable, phone and internet will just go away for no apparent reason, and woe betide the person who calls customer service to find out what's up. Woe!

Another thing that they do which is shady is that they block or impair some web-things that go across their internet connections. Bit-Torrent is a program (and protocol) that allows large files to be sent over the internet in bits and pieces between peers. It saves expensive and limited bandwidth for companies like Blizzard (who uses it to dispense their WoW patches to hundreds of millions of players) and Revision3 (who uses it to dispense their free web programming). Comcast doesn't like torrents and they instituted some code to drastically slow or block torrents. This has been determined to be unfair by the FCC because Comcast and other ISPs are supposed to provide an internet connection that is neutral to those things that move across it. They are violating Net Neutrality (not a law, but it's coming I hope!) by limiting the sorts of files they'll allow to pass. It leads to situations in which web page owners would have to pay off Comcast so that people could access their sites. That's bad. It would be like your phone company allowing you to call your mother, but not Pizza Hut. Or your internet connection working only with PCs and not MACs. Bad stuff.

Now, the FCC has been known to make big threats before (Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfuntion), but in this case they haven't really put their foot down. They say that Comcast has to give them details of their operations and change the bad parts with in a year. What a load of crap that is. Come on, FCC. Make yourself useful. Some people are offended by nipples and the F-word, and you threaten fines and sanctions. Comcast (among others, I imagine) has a monopoly on the internet service in many areas, you have determined that they are doing something bad, and you give them a soft ultimatium like this? Outragous.

Comcast now says that they would remove this torrenting restriction, but they want to slow down the internet connection for their heaviest users at peak periods during the day. I don't know the details yet, but this might be an ok solution. If the impact is minimal and these heavy users aren't paying a premium for fast service then I suppose it's a decent solution.

A better solution would be to take the massive profits ($1.163 BILLION in free cash flow) that they make from their monopoly and roll them into a better infrastructure that can handle traffic without impacting anyone's service.

Back in town and back to the Grind!

2008-08-21T11:08:00.000-04:00

I spent a week in Maryland recently helping my Aunt Marge get her house ready to go on the market. Mostly, I carried heavy things and replaced rotten parts of a deck. More heavy lifting than anything else. I also got to see folks that I don't see very often, so that's a big plus. I don't have the pictures that I took with me right now, but I'll post some of them in the very near future.

School started yesterday. I'm still pretty relaxed because I haven't been to any of my "real" classes yet, but they start today so that will come to an end soon. I wish all of the awesome video games that are coming out in the fall had come out in the last month or so when I could have had time to play them!

Kilts FTW.

2008-08-07T22:40:00.000-04:00

Dudes and Dudeettes,

I want a kilt. A Utilikilt. Why should men be limited to bifurcated leg-wear? Audrey says that she won't be seen in public with me if I were to get one. People would probably laugh. How sexist is that? Women can wear a tuxedo and it is acceptable. Why can't a man in the States wear a kilt? It harkens back to a time when men were MEN with big ass swords and face paint who drank from the skulls of their enemies. (Ok, I don't know that last bit for sure.) Pants harken back to when men were little frilly boys in puffy shirts and colored tights with codpieces. Which is more manly?

{YES! America's Best Dance Crew kept the Super Cr3w! We were sure they were going home tonight. America, I don't know why you put them in the bottom on every show. They're awesome. AWESOME. It's not that I don't like FannyPack, but the Cr3w is just better at the dancing.}

Texas Defies the World Court

2008-08-06T10:03:00.000-04:00

According to this article from Reuters, Texas defied an order by the World Court and executed a Mexican national who was convicted of the rape and murder of a 16 year old girl. The world court said that Medellin, the murderer/rapist/gangbanger, shouldn't be executed because he didn't get to talk to his consulate before he was sentenced (or some such technicality).

Yep, we executed a guy who participated in the gang-rape and strangulation of two young girls who just happened to be walking down the street when a gang was doing some initiation bullshit. His aunt said "He was a normal, happy kid ... They don't have the right to take his life away, we acknowledged that he committed a crime but make him pay with a life sentence."

It doesn't seem that there is any reason for us to think that Medellin is innocent of his crimes, and I have a gut feeling that when two girls are gang-raped and strangled those responsible gotta pay.

The article makes it seem as if Texas did some outrageous thing by defying the World Court in this decision. It makes no mention of the fact that the US (much less the state of Texas) has no obligation to follow any World Court decree. It's true that we sometimes follow their edicts, but only when we want to or it seems prudent. If we don't have an obligation to listen to them, then who cares what they tell us to do?

State sovereignty is a big deal these days. Basically, the idea is that States have the right to do as they please within their own borders without the risk of other States intervening. How does this idea apply to foreign nationals who come to our country and commit crimes like Medellin's? Why should we think that local laws do not apply to those from other countries? I suppose that there ought to be policies which limit the sorts of laws which apply to foreigners (say we have some really weird laws that don't apply anywhere else) or which give some leniency to those whose languages would be a barrier to an effective legal defense, but neither of those things apply here.

Of course, this rule applies to Americans too.

Proof that we're the subjects of government experiments: Rainbows.

2008-08-05T19:49:00.000-04:00

This woman needs at least two things:
(1) A tripod or a camera with steady-shot. Shaky-cam makes you look/sound extra crazy, and she really needs to dial it back a couple of notches.

(2) A class in general science where she learns the stuff that Isaac Newton figured out a couple hundred years ago. Light refracts through water. You don't need "oxide salts" or government conspiracies to make rainbows.

Shark Weak!

2008-08-03T11:52:00.000-04:00

I'm generally a huge fan of Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. (This is a full week of shark-themed shows.) This year was a bust, though. Every night fell into two categories: (1) Great Whites jumping out of the water and looking awesome and (2) how to avoid becoming shark food. (Don't smell like fish/blood.)

I like great whites as much as the next guy, but there's only so much time in a week to see sharks, and I'd rather see some science-y shows about neat sharks. Mix it up a little bit, Discovery! Show me some Goblin Sharks. Show me some more unusual stuff that I've never seen before. There are something like 350 species of sharks out there, and as far as I can remember you only showed me tiger sharks, lemon sharks, great whites, and Caribbean reef sharks. That would be a nice variety if I were talking about one or two shows, but that was the whole week. It sounds like a lame thing to complain about, but I wait all year for my shark-fix and I feel like I was denied this year. Shark weak, Discovery. Weak.

Burning River and Hancock

2008-07-15T22:45:00.000-04:00

Tonight we went and saw Hancock and I tried the Burning River Pale Ale from GLBC.

Hancock was a better movie than I thought it was going to be, but it could have been better in a few ways. Several of the reviews that I read say that the best part of the movie is the section before the turn. That's probably true. It's funny. I like movies where superheroes aren't perfect and Hancock reacts to public criticism in the same way that most of us would: badly. He saves a guy's life and the public is pissed off at him for the way that he does it. That hardly seems fair!

It's not really a movie about a superhero. It's a movie about a guy who needs someone to care about him. Here are some spoilers: Hancock doesn't know who he is or where he comes from or how it is that he got to be the way he is. He woke up with amnesia in a hospital in Miami and thinks that he must be pretty worthless if no one ever came and looked for him. That worthlessness really eats at him. A simple thing like meeting a kid who likes him despite the bad things that people say about him or having inmates clap for him when he finally speaks up in group are enough to give him the feeling of being needed. It's a film on the theme of "no man is an island."

Also, Hancock kills a few people. I don't know how you folks feel about that, but I don't mind seeing that from a super hero. Perhaps I'll start an Unideal Observer thread about it.

The Burning River beer is only OK in my book. I'll drink the ones that I have, but I'm not really interested in getting any more. It's a bit too bitter for me. Whereas the Dortmunder was beautifully balanced this one is a little heavy on the hops for me. It reminds me most of a Samuel Adams. They have essentially the same tastes. If you like one then you'll like the other, but neither are for me.

Also: Shark Week is coming! I wish it were then now.

Great Lakes Brewing Company

2008-07-14T20:22:00.001-04:00

Aud and I went up to Ohio this weekend, and it was great to see everyone who was around. I miss those Bowling Green folks. A couple of them have a radio show on Mondays from 4-6 that discusses political issues. I'll be calling in there pretty regularly when I have the chance. If you go to that link you can find a link to their show's live broadcast on the interwebs. Check it out.

Also while I was in OH I picked up a sample pack of beers from the Great Lakes Brewing Company in Cleveland, OH. They are a really great brewery, and they make some very fine beers. Unfortunately I had only just discovered them when I left OH and it isn't available in Tennessee for some reason. I'll post some little reviews of the beers that I try in the next few days. Here's the first one!

Tonight I tried the Dortmunder Gold Lager. The website lists 14 gold medals for this beer from the World Beer Championships. It deserves every one of them. The color is a beautiful gold and the head is thin but stiff enough to last to the last sip while leaving light rings on the glass. The flavor is a really plesant and balanced combination of malt and hops that leaves a lightly hoppy aftertaste. If you want a bright and delicious lager with a lightly hoppy flavor, this one is for you.

As a side note, check out the website for the GLBC. They are a green company in many different ways, and the brewery tour video on the site is pretty excellent.

To Grandmother's house we went!

2008-07-08T20:43:00.000-04:00

Audrey and I spent the weekend+Monday at my grandmother's house. It was a good time had by all, I think. We were able to stay until Monday to see my Aunt Marge.
I installed blinds for Grandma and she and Audrey did things with plants and Grandpa watched the weather channel and informed us of the weather conditions in the greater Jacksonville area every few minutes.
After Aud and Grandma packed up all of the plants that Audrey thought were pretty I got to plant them and stick them in water to root and such like that. I'm not the best planter, but I hope that most of them survive.

Matt dances across the world.

2008-07-03T12:52:00.000-04:00

This video was made by a fellow named Matt Harding. He travels and dances this silly dance wherever he goes. Sometimes lots of people dance with him. It's made me smile today.

Mike has a new car!

2008-07-02T15:35:00.000-04:00

I had to say goodbye to Sally last night. She has been a wonderful car for the last 10 years, but it was time to part ways. I fervently hope that she goes to a highschool kid who is fixated on repairing 1995 Thunderbirds.

Last night I traded her in for a 2008 Nissan Sentra. It's got almost all of the bells/whistles, but the manager decided to count it as "used" since it had 572 miles on it. Apparently the previous owner returned it because she was worried that the intellikey system would interfere with her pacemaker and kill her. (This is a neat little feature that allows me to keep a key fob in my pocket and run the car without inserting a key. I just turn a switch. It also unlocks the doors and such for me when I'm close enough. Neat!) We got it for a lower price than many of the used Sentras were going for, and that's super for us. Pictures will follow later this evening!

A blog run by a bigot.

2008-06-26T10:21:00.000-04:00

No, not this one. THIS one. This is the guy that I was debating with at 2nd Hand Smoke a month ago. He has his own blog (apparently they'll let anyone have a blog here...) and he seems to be some sort of super-naturalist. His pet issue is the creation of children from the sex-cells of same-sex couples. It's just a DNA switch-a-roo, but he seems to think that natural=ethical and that any question which ignores this "natural fact" is just missing the point. It's also not possible at this point.

I post to his blog a lot because I find his psychosis interesting. I'd love to meet the guy. Preferably in a public place where he can't pull any "funny stuff." If you want to see what happens when you let a loon have access to science-y sounding words, go visit his blog.

[EDIT: I changed the title of the entry because I realize that one doesn't have to be mad to have these beliefs. One only has to be a bigot.]

RIAA and MPAA gone wild with copyrights.

2008-06-25T11:20:00.000-04:00

We're going to be talking about copyright in the digital age in my class this afternoon, and I've been doing more reading on that topic than I usually do in order to prepare for class. What I've found is that the crazy is accelerating faster than I could have believed.

MPAA doesn't think they should be required to have evidence in order to prosecute (persecute) people they believe to have pirated movies. They want to sue for $150,000 per supposed offense without presenting any evidence.

RIAA (and a bunch of other people) think that they should get royalties from Broadcast Radio. They want $7 billion a year. That's almost half of the $16 billion that the NAB is reported to make.

John Barlow wrote a prophetic piece for Wired in 1994 that has been dead on with regard to the future of copyright. He followed it with another great piece in 2000. (The first gets a little lyrical, but they're both amazing.)

Barlow writes that the real problem is that the property that these groups think they have is illusiory. Ideas can't be kept in bottles or widgets, and they are worthless when they are. Information and ideas need to be free in order to be useful or great. Information doesn't behave like widgets in the market because it isn't physical. As Barlow says, if I steal your horse you have to walk, but I can take all of the information that you have and then we BOTH have it without either of us being impoverished.

The switch from selling widgets in the marketplace to selling information in the digital world has left people with the mistaken impression that they should be paid for every instance of that information in all cases because if they aren't then they are losing something. That's just not the way that information works, and the public has noticed. If you put your songs out there for free and people like them then they will buy your albums and go to your shows and buy your merch. As Barlow puts it, ethics is replacing law. Law is built to be static, but ethical requirements may shift in response to changes in society. What is happening is a shift from the law smashing you with a hammer when you don't pay for music that you enjoy to a sort of horizontal public disapprobation. There is personal presure applied from your peers to support acts and artists that you enjoy watching. Radiohead and NIN have figured this out and integrated a pay-as-you-like scheme. The Offspring figured it out long ago when they would digitally post their music for free. The Greatful Dead encouraged fans to tape their shows and give it to their friends. They did quite well for themselves by producing a product that their fans loved and by being good to their fans.

Another interesting tidbit is that artists are like waiters in the US. I can name several people who have done quite well just by making something neat on the WWW and then selling related merchendise. The comics from Penny Arcade, Questionable Content, Dr. McNinja have become a viable source of income for these guys without requiring their fans to pay to see their work online. Revision 3 is a company that produces really excellent web-based shows for free. Ze Frank had one of the greatest web-casts ever for a year. At the end he let people donate and seems to have done well on that deal. They aren't starving either, but they don't charge for their content. If you do a good job entertaining people and you forge a connection with your audience you will profit from it. People will work to support you in your endeavour. They'll do that with cash-money.

Faith "Healing" vs. Real Healing

2008-06-24T11:36:00.000-04:00

Stories like this really get my blood to boiling. In the linked story a 16 year old died from an easilly treatable illness because he belonged to a faith which practices "faith healing" instead of real medicine. There are no charges expected in this case because the state allows minors 14 and older to make health care decisions.

Normally, I'm a huge fan of autonomy and liberty. I will argue all day for a silly basic right like the right to property. (Don't get me started on home owner's associations!) This, however, is just ridiculousness on stilts. At 14 none of us know what the heck we are talking about. That's why we're legally required to go to school. They can't drive, vote, smoke, buy porn, have sex, leave home, or any number of other things. Why? Because we're not mature enough to make those decisions, says the State. Why in the hell are we going to allow a 14 year old to make decisions which may immediately lead to life or death?

The case in question involves a 16 year old, but the principle is still the same. At 16 a kid will do whatever crazy thing their parents tell them. This seems especially true in relation to religious beliefs. I bet the convo went something like this:
"Mom, I don't feel good. I need to go to the doctor."
"God doesn't like you to go to the doctor."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Ok, I won't go to the doctor then."
This is where the conversation ends because the kid is now dead.

You know what else I imagine God doesn't like? Just a guess: Needless death of teenagers due to easily treatable illness.

***Edit: The other picture disappeared. The new picture in this post is a fake angry bear in response to fake healing.***

Reckless Power

2008-06-18T18:37:00.000-04:00

Apparently, John McCain thinks that we should build a whole slew of nuclear reactors. 45 of them by 2030.

That seems completely irresponsible to me. We have 104 nuclear plants in the States, and we don't know what to do with the waste we are creating that way. Why would we build that many nuclear-waste-creating things without any way to get rid of the primary waste (glowing goo) and the secondary waste (glowing goo cleanup and containment stuff)? Figure out a way to deal with the problem we have without increasing the problem by ~50%.

And that's to say nothing of the hypocrisy of building nuclear plants while forbidding others from doing so. We sanction Iran because they want to build nuclear reactors, but the "cure" to our problems is to build nuclear reactors? Riiiight....

Angry Day.

2008-06-17T13:09:00.000-04:00

I'm a pretty laid-back fellow, but today I'm angry. Most of it is due to this class I'm teaching. About half of the kids didn't do the reading today, and I know that before they even come to class. The world-wide-web has tattled on them. It's seriously disappointing. I thought I had a good crop of kids here, but apparently I only have half of a good crop of kids here. I'm seriously thinking of calling out those who didn't read and kicking them out of class for the day. I don't know if I can do that, and there weren't any profs around to ask about it, so I won't. And that makes me angry too. Don't get me started on a particular student that I'm super-angry with.

You know what else makes me angry? This. Why would you call them Super-Earths when they're too huge and fast-moving to support life as we know it? A planet 6x the size of earth which rips through an orbit in 4 days? That would do bad things to critters who tried to live there unless they were super-dense and had suction-cups for feet. (Ok, I know that's not how physics works. I just needed a laugh.)

Good news for gamers:

2008-06-12T15:49:00.000-04:00

Video game addicts are not shy nerds!

The AMA has considered adding video game addiction to the list of official addictions in the DSM. This psychology grad in Australia has shown that we MMORPG players aren't the basement-dwelling, anti-social, socially inept trolls that we are stereotyped as.

I don't count myself as an addict of anything (except JUSTICE), but I have always resented the public perception that gamers have gained over the years. I don't live in a basement, I don't have any social issues, and I can put down the game when I need to do so. I've known a lot of different gamers in lots of different games and I've never known one who matched the stereotype.

Thanks for bringing the science, Daniel Loton!

(PS: The guy in the above photo isn't Loton. That's Johnathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel. He's the most famous gamer on earth. Not only is he not some creepy guy in the basement, he's turned his awesome gaming skillz into a brand. He has merchandise. I swear I played Quake with him back in '98-'99.)

Randomness = Love?

2008-06-11T12:18:00.000-04:00

I'm totally on a bioethics kick recently. One of the things that's come up in genetic engineering discussions over and again is the idea that a parent who makes some selections (sex or hair color or something) with regard for their child will be an unfit parent because they will view their child as a commodity or something.

This just looks like a bad argument to me. I can't think of any strong reasons to suspect that having a child with randomly assorted genes will be treated better by their parents or that the 'naturalness' of it all has anything to do with parenting ability. There are plenty of parents who do it the old fashioned way and still end up treating their children horribly. If there's no correlation between the two then what is the argument about?

Holy Crap!

2008-06-10T22:22:00.001-04:00

A politician is running on a platform of raising taxes!

Yep. I typed the right word there. Obama has said that he will raise taxes on those making above $250k/year and those who have large profits from the stock market in order to lower taxes on the middle class. (McCain is going with the classic tactic of promising big tax cuts to corporations and such.)

I kinda like the idea. The check that we got from the Bush tax cut is great and all, but I would have voted against it if I'd been asked. Why politicians think that a country in debt can give people back a big chunk of the taxes they pay I will never know. Currying favor before an election year, maybe?

At heart I'm kinda Libertarian, and I don't know that I want to pay taxes to the State at all, but if anyone is going to it should probably be those who can afford to give up some cash instead of those who are scraping to get food on the table and keep the car running so that they can get to their minimum wage job. We're not going to get rid of the IRS, so let's have a tax plan that makes some fiscal sense!

Of course, McCain is telling folks that Obama is raising taxes on "everyone," but you have to expect some spin on something like this. I'm pretty sure that neither of these guys is going to do exactly what they campaign on, but I'm offended that McCain thinks no one will read a paper or listen to an Obama speech in order to get the right story. Apparently McCain thinks that "everyone" either makes $250k+ or makes lots of money in the stock market. Maybe most of his friends do.

The value of tradition.

2008-06-10T16:17:00.001-04:00

I read Wesley Smith's blog "Secondhand Smoke" and I occasionally comment on things that go on there. Smith is a bright guy, but I disagree with him on almost everything and that makes the discussions interesting for both of us.

The current argument I'm in started out with Smith's post regarding the distrust between the public and the medical community (perhaps including bioethicists) and has ended up as a 'discussion' between myself and another poster regarding the value of tradition.

I have argued all along that tradition does not provide much, if any, moral weight. If a policy is going to stand it will need more legs than the spindly tradition leg. He seems to think that if I (and all bioethicists) don't accept tradition as an important argument then I am dismissing it because it is tradition-based. That's just not the case. I merely recognize that tradition only means that you've done something for a long time.

Perhaps tradition is important. Maybe we've been doing things in a certain way for a long time because it works. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't question the things that we traditionally do. Traditionally black people were sub-human slaves and women lacked most of the rights that men had. Neither of these traditional conditions or beliefs could withstand the onslaught of rational argument, and neither should lots of other traditions.

What do you think? Tradition as a spindly-leg or unquestionable rock-solid pillar?

Where have all the bodies gone?

2008-06-09T10:17:00.001-04:00

This article, over on Wired, takes a look at one of the constants of video gaming. When we kill a truckload of bad guys their corpses don't just stack up like kindling. A new game, Ninja Gaiden II, doesn't leave us with an empty street. When you dispatch a bunch of evil ninjas they stick around. The author of that article points out that this trend began a long time ago. It was originally a response to the need to free up computing power. All of the corpses sitting around needed to be rendered (a really grisly word here) by the computer and the old ones just couldn't keep up.

Now it might just be that this trend has become a tradition that has followed us into the modern age of games, but it might also be that

"... when you put it that way, this idea -- that the bodies of everyone we kill
just sort of wink out of existence -- is so hilariously pregnant with misplaced
dread that it's practically Freudian. It's as if our violent games can't quite
bear to have us face up to the dimensions of what we're doing. So they just get
rid of the evidence." -Thompson

I don't know what the plot of the Ninja Gaiden game is, but I picture Mario shrugging as he walks through a field of squashed goombas and dazed turtles saying "It's not my fault. I was just trying to save the princess!"

Twitter

2008-05-30T14:41:00.000-04:00

I heard about this site through a webcast that I watch called Diggnation. Twitter is either the ultimate social broadcasting tool or just a way to invite people to stalk you. I don't really know which.

It's a site which allows you to post a blurb ("twitter") about whatever you're doing/thinking at the moment. It's interesting. You can do it from a mobile device like a phone or from a PC. It only allows 140 characters, so it's got to be a really short blurb. Reading the twitters that people write is a little like anthro-archeology. You can only read/write a sentence, but that could lead to some really interesting things. It's a little like trying to figure out what a civilization was like by unearthing a pot or learning about a person by going through their house. We'll have to see if I like it. The jury is still out since I don't have a texting plan on my phone. I don't know if a twitter is worth the $.10 it costs to send one in.

Vatican still WAY behind the times.

2008-05-30T12:23:00.000-04:00

Some of you may have thought that the Catholic church is becoming (a little) more modern. Birth control is now ok. It was only outlawed for 3000 years. It only took a massive AIDS epidemic to effect this policy change. That's a step in the personal-freedom direction. Sign of positive change? Probably not.

Unfortunately, they'll excommunicate any person who tries to ordain a woman and the woman herself. Seriously? It's 2008 and they still want to hold onto this irrational patriarchy? The woman in the article doesn't seem to be taking it very seriously, but if the Pope is supposed to be infallible then the church has said something very derogatory about half of the population of Earth. Apparently women aren't qualified to speak for God or to spread the Church's message.

That's right. Child molesters are more qualified to be your priest than women are.

Ugh.

I'm a little more excited now.

2008-05-28T21:38:00.000-04:00

I decided to take the course. I have some sample syllabi to look at, and I think I can cobble something together by Monday. It's an ethics class that is built on discussion and presentations about current moral issues. That's right up my alley, and I hope it will remind me what it is that I love about teaching.

Tough decision.

2008-05-28T09:56:00.000-04:00

Two posts in one day? I know. That's a lot of posts for me.

So yesterday afternoon I got an email from the department head asking if I would teach a course for them this summer. First summer session, actually. That session starts a week from last Monday. I've never taught the course, and I have never taken a summer course that meets every day. It really seems like a daunting amount of work, but the extra pay is probably worth it. The only problem is that I have to create a syllabus in just a few days based on a book that has been ordered, but that I have never seen. I'm not excited about this. I had planned to spend my summer sitting around in my underwear playing video games. :-(

Questionable Content

2008-05-28T09:53:00.000-04:00

This is a web comic that I think is occasionally hilarious, and this one is a good example. The characters strike me as people that I would really like to know and hang out with. Today's comic is exactly what I would do if I had that sort of power. Restaurant gives my friend food poisoning? The obvious next step is to OWN them.

I would have changed the name, though.

Back from the cruise.

2008-05-20T19:38:00.000-04:00

We drove through the night to get back to Knoxville from our cruise out of Miami, but we made it. I have some pictures posted here on my MySpace page. Check them out. I'll be adding more as I have time. St. Maarten was kind of a let down after the awesomeness that was St. Thomas. It has some of the best scenery and beaches that I've ever seen. If we were offered jobs there we would take them for sure.

In San Juan we took a kayak tour on a a lake filled with bio-luminescent flagellates. We got to row through a Mangrove forest in the dark and the water lit up every time we put an oar in the water. It was pretty impressive. The guide claimed that on a really dark night you can see the fish swimming by the glowing blue trails in the water. Either he's a liar or it was just not dark enough that night to see them.

Aside from some mild stomach thing on the last day of the cruise it was great. I have a bit of a tan now, and I hardly got burned.

Awesome

2008-05-03T15:07:00.000-04:00

Iron Man was fantastic. See it. Stay through the credits.

I'd write a review, but I don't have time to do so today. It is great though. Audrey even liked it and she was never a little boy who read comic books.

See it.

It's Grand Theft Auto Day!

2008-04-29T10:29:00.001-04:00

and I don't care AT ALL. This is the game that has had the anti-video game-violence folk in a tizzy since the first one on the PC let you run your car into other cars. Honestly, I haven't liked one since that little top-down PC game let my little pixel-person carjack people and run around. My good friend Chris is super excited about it, and Audrey sorta liked the last one. I just don't think it's fun at all.

To put this in perspective, Hollywood was worried that the Iron Man movie will have poor box office numbers because so many people will be playing GTA4. Apparently people just won't be able to tear themselves away from the couch to go sit in a cinema and watch the extravaganza that will be Iron Man.

Here's what the Penny Arcade guys say about GTA4 and Gran Turismo (a hyper-realistic racing game). I agree with them on both counts.

"Grand Theft Auto - like Gran Turismo - is a game that we have a difficult time integrating into our consciousness. Gran Turismo got this way by being an uncompromising simulation of something we don't care about, a blisteringly high-resolution image of a ketchup packet or a strip of bark. Ketchup fans and bark enthusiasts are going nuts, they'll pay forty dollars for part of the image. I played the second one a million years ago, earned enough money to wash my virtual car, and then quit the series forever.

Grand Theft Auto has had another problem, or rather, we have had a problem that intersects with what the game offers: the raw, virtually limitless opportunity presented is paralyzing, a sheer face with no purchase. We're always impressed by each world's livingness, but historically the story structure - the obvious thread that we can grip and pull ourselves along - is hung about the neck with frustrating, repetitive gameplay. We end up burning out on free roaming in a couple days, taking random missions or sitting in a parking lot listening to the radio. I feel guilty, because there's probably no game more "important" globally than Grand Theft Auto. I certainly feel like I'm looking in on what I consider my own community. It never seemed to bother anyone else that the core of the game wasn't much fun, so mostly the whole thing just makes me feel like a crazy person."

So, to wrap up: Don't care about GTA. I am giddy in anticipation of Iron man. I don't want to write any more term papers. I certainly don't want to take this test in logics.

Thorny Devils:

2008-04-25T17:57:00.000-04:00

So I have to admit that I love animal shows.

Crocodile Steve Irwin is a personal hero of mine. I also like Jeff Corwin, and Aud and I were watching some Corwin's Quest tonight where he started talking about this little guy.

He's called a Thorny Devil and he's really neat. He's a little lizard who lives in the Australian desert and he can use little grooves in his skin to suck any water he can find towards his face. Corwin put the little guy's foot in water and you could actually see the water move toward his mouth. So neat. Also they're covered in spikes and they change color in response to the sand they are standing on. What a neat critter. Respect the Thorny Devil.

Who couldn't love that face?

You know what's terrible?

2008-04-21T19:51:00.000-04:00

The Price is Right with Drew Carey. It's just really, really bad. He doesn't care at all about that show and it's completely noticeable. He must be replaced as quickly as possible.

Audrey and I watched a little bit of the new and dis-improved PiR on Friday night. That's the night where shows go to die. I had forgotten all about the terror of that night until I saw the episode of How I Met Your Mother with Bob Barker. It reminded me of how awesome that show used to be.

There's just something about how Bob Barker plays those games and accepts the hugs from the old ladies and tells us to spay and neuter that can't be replaced.

Thanks Bob.

Eastern Caribbean in May!

2008-04-20T13:32:00.000-04:00

This is where I'll be right after finals. Hoooray cruises!

Selecting for deafness.

2008-04-17T19:55:00.000-04:00

Take a look at this story. Briefly, deaf parents in the UK are fighting to be allowed to use genetic screening to select embryos for deafness. Apparently they are arguing that not allowing deaf parents to select deaf embryos is akin to discrimination. I realize that they think that deafness is not a disability, but there seems to me a clear difference between using genetic selection to choose an embryo who is not deaf and using the same tech to choose one who is deaf. In one case you're choosing a child with all of the same abilities as other kids and in the other case you are choosing one who lacks an ability. How is this not a disability?

I've heard it called genocide against a community, but this seems silly. It's not as if being able to hear makes you unable to speak ASL. Keep the language, just don't gratuitously create disabled children.

What do you think about the concept of purposely selecting a disabled child?