2020 Hindsight

I can't resist desisting

Moscow attack, redux Here's a timeline of what happened over the Moscow theatre takeover and rescue. Nurse Al comments on the drug used, and its antidote.

Desisting So yesterday I got my first web-related cease and desist letter. You see the results on my page for Sunday. I think I'll file it under 'Poetic License,' that I get an email from a friend about a story of school people censoring art due to (gasp!) nudity. Art is taken down. The paper covers it, and I post the accompanying image on my web site because I thought that maybe you'd actually follow the link to the story if I did. And they ask me to take down the picture due to copyright violation. The one time I am asked to remove something, it's a link to a story about censorship. Man, I tell ya.

MojoWorld 2.0 Congratulations to Ken Musgrave and the other developers at Pandromeda for shipping MojoWorld 2.0. Gee, if I post an image here, will Ken come after me and ask me to remove it? I just want you to follow the link!

Art offends people. It always has

YEEEEE HAAAAW!!!!!!!!!!! First World Series win in the history of the Angels. Saweeeeetttt!!!!

Art offends people. It always has. It always will. Modesto Bee:Is it art, or school rules violation? For some 8 years, a high school art room's ceiling tiles have been painted over á la The Sistine Chapel. Last spring, nudity was censored. Recently, the tiles were ordered taken down.

UPDATE: at the request of a staffmember of Modesto Bee, I was asked to remove the picture that was here. Go to The Modesto Bee's story to see the foto. (Tho I'm curious if I sent more people to the story with the photo than if I'd just done a link? I guess I won't know.)

Chechens at the Moscow Theatre

Dry ice nightmares First I saw that Garret was playing with some dry ice (I did a similar thing in a post-FedEx moment, bringing a halt to otherwise productive work in an engineering department after tossing the frozen pizzas in the company freezer and then playing with the dry ice that kept them that way). But now, a story about what happens when dry ice is mixed with blue chemical toilet acid in a jet plane 33,000 feet high.

It's your worst bathroom nightmare at home or in a hotel -- clogging up the shitter at midnight and watching it overflow. Except this time it's a Technicolor eruption of flesh-eating poison, dribbling between the floor seams of an airplane at 33,000 feet, down into the entrails of the beast to freeze itself around cables or short out bundles of vital wiring.

[via BoingBoing]

Damn! Blogger was hacked, and passwords being changed. I have a test Blogger site, so I went and changed my FTP password for the web server it lives on. It looks like it's mostly Blogger Pro users affected.

Chechens at the Moscow Theatre In Pravda, (English version), lots of stories, including an article by Dmitry Darin suggesting to find out what villages the terrorists come from, go to those villages, round 700 of their relatives and neighbors, and bring them right outside the theatre. Then negotiate.

via Greatest Jeneration, an editorial that draws links between al Qaeda and Chechnya . Chilling.

BBC: Non-stop nightmare for Moscow hostages, Children Freed from Moscow Siege.

Pravda: Alpha Forces brought in 25 children remain, foreign nationals remain, talks have broken down, forces brought, spectators and press told to leave.

Background Info: Q & A on The Chechen conflict.

Why you should never believe what the polls say

OW! That game was painful! Ouch ouch!

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I'm a poll troll I just got two back-to-back calls from people purporting to be from an outfit called David Binder Research. I had difficulty understanding both people.

Ring!!!!

me:Hello?

female voice: Hello? Is this Susan Kitchens?

me: Who's calling, please?

person:Hello? I'm Carolina calling from DaviByebyeReason

me: I'm sorry, Carolina, I didn't catch the company you were with...

Carolina: David Binder Research

me: (always wanting to get them off their script, because they got me off of whatever I was doing before the fone rang). Where is David Binder Research located, Carolina?

Carolina: I cannot say.

me: Why's that?

Carolina: Because I want to bias.

me: Hm? I don't understand.

Carolina: Because I want to bias.

....because I want to be unbias.

me: ohhhhh! Bias! You don't want to cause a bias? Okay...

She lowered her voice to an almost inaudible tone and proceded to hastily read a statment that shewouldonly take aminuteofmytime ifIwoojusanswer somequestions.

me: I think that it will take more than a minute because I will have to ask you repeat everything you say because (I spoke more hurriedly) I am having a hard time understanding you. Unfortunately, Carolina, you have read your script out loud to lots of people before but I am hearing it for the first time, so please read it s.l.o.w.l.y.

(pause)

Hello? Carolina?

(the line was dead)

Now, where was I? Oh yes, reading some web thing.

Ring!

me: Hello?

male voice: Hello, is this Susan Kitchens?

me: Who's calling, please?

male voice: This is [Name, which I don't remember] from David Binder Research

The guy sounds young, 20's, with a strong asian accent.

me: Oh! I was just talking to Carolina from David Binder Research!

male voice: I do not know her.

me: Well, I had a difficult time understanding her because she read her script too fast. She said it would only take a half a minute, but I couldn't understand what she was saying.

me: Hey, do you guys have a website? Are you at davidbinderresearch.com?

male voice: I do not know anything about that.

Will you take a survey? It should only take a minute.

me: Okay, I've started the timer. Go ahead.

[start googling to find David Binder Research]

male voice: Are you registered to vote?

me: yes

Oh, you guys are at Dee Bee hyphen research dot com

male voice: oh.

Pause.

male voice: Will you be voting for in the November edection?

I'm thinking--Say what?! is he asking IF I'll be voting or who I'll be voting FOR? And who at this outift has been writing up questions that make NO grammatical sense?!?

me:What? will I be voting for in the November election?

male voice: Will you be voting foh in the November edection?

me: Are you asking me who I'll be voting for?

male voice: Will you be voting foh in the November edection? Do you plan to vote?

me: Are you asking if I plan to vote this November?

male voice: yes.

me: Yes I will.

male voice: Who will you vote foh in da Gobonoh election?

me:Who will I vote for for Govorner?

male voice: Yes. Will you vote for Dabis, foh Simon, foh...[he names other candidates]

me: I'm going to write in Dick Riordan.

(pause)

(I'm wondering if he's got a category for that, or how that is being marked on whatever survey form he's working with.)

male voice: Who will you vote foh Assembly

[back and forth about how I don't know the names off hand, he reads them. By this time I'm tiring of answering questions, and am feeling secretive. I'm mostly decided, but I need to do a little more research.]

male voice: Who are you leaning towards?

me: Undecided. That's prolly the best way to put it.

male voice: Okay, and would you tell me your age?

me: I'm between 40 and 49.

male voice: Would you specify?

me: No, I will not.

male voice: What is your race? Are you white, black, asian, hispanic, american indian or other?

me:(I really hate these questions) I am a human being. Female.

male voice: What is your race?

me: I decline to say.

It ended not long after.

I recently read a statement, "Never believe the polls; people lie to pollsters." No kidding. After this kind of experience, I felt compelled to lie. The longer I dealt with trying to understand non-sense, the less I felt like speaking truthfully.

The funniest part about this? Read the fluff on the David Binder Research home page:

David Binder Research helps clients answer their most difficult

questions and solve complex problems using insightful public opinion

research and market research. [emphasis mine]

Difficult statements like "I want to bias" and difficult questions like "Will you be voting for in the November elections?"

The difficult questions I have: Why do I enjoy being so mean to these ridiculous telemarketers and researchers? Why do I want to post transcripts of the entire conversations afterwards? Why do I send email to them to tell them "it wasn't pretty" and then give them the url to this page?

Space Scuttle

GO ANGELS!!!! :D

Trying this out with OmniWeb's browser. Cool; it highlights misspelled words in the text edit form window.

Heh. I certainly have heard of (and attended) a blast off of Space Shuttle, but I see that there's been ablast off for space scuttle. One giant leap for crustacean-kind.

Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi, wins the Booker Prize.

Tricking Browsers and Hiding Style Sheets [via Al's place]. I been doing behind-the-scenes CSS research. Add this link to the pile. Maybe (before too long) this site will look different, more compliant?

Helplessly Addicted to Ebay Barbie. [via Dori at Backup Brain] Yes, it's for sale, but you get an (illustrated!) morality tale for free. Just in time, too. My boyfriend's getting ready to sell his old SGI O2 5K/180 on eBay. In great condition, complete with monitor, original mousepad, an extra drive sled, and proudly bearing a shiny oldstyle SGI logo (Scott Kim design). Will What Happened To Barbie happen to him? (heh. this EBay Barbie will prolly go for more than his old O2, too.)

Craftsman

Craftsman This past weekend was the Craftsman Weekend put on by Pasadena Heritage. My brother, who does wood marquetry, came out for a peek. I went with him and his colleague to see the Gamble House, a gorgeous house built by the architects Greene & Greene nearly 100 years ago. I've some exterior shots (interior shots forbidden on the tour). But you can also see photos and QTVR on the Gamble House site. BTW, in the film Back to the Future, the professor's house was, in fact, the Gamble House.

Junebug Symphony Yesterday I saw The Junebug Symphony at UCLA. Put on by Compagnie du Hanneton. Here's the L.A.Times review. If this comes to your town, run, don't walk to see it. The Director-star, James Thiérrée is the grandson of Charlie Chaplin and great-grandson of Eugene O'Neill. The genes do tell! Surreal and surprising.

Happy Birthday Ian! Ian Rager is one year old! Funny, last night I was showing my brother some pix of our cute niece. "Gosh, that visit to Las Vegas was just a year ago!" Also on that visit, Hal gave me (and niece and her mama) a tour of the True Las Vegas. Turns out that tour was a week before Ian's birth. How time flies!

Quakiversary

Bali Bombings I've been following Tim Blair's weblog for news pointers and the Aussie perspective on the Bali Bombings. He's pointed to several stories in The Age.

The Age's Bali Bombing page (list of newsstories) reminds me of stories of a year ago in the US. Of the lost and found, of the time it'll take to identify victims, interfaith memorial services, spies asleep at the wheel, Western intelligence didn't take seriously enough BinLaden's targeting of Australia, the disbanding of a radical jihad group hours before the bombings occured, the firebombing of a Melbourne mosque, and an editorial: "Now we know how the U.S. feels."

When will it end?

Compare Compare blog tools. Cool. I wanted (to do) one of these a long time ago.

Hey, what's shakin'? Wait a second... Today's the 17th. Is this the 13th anniversary of the N. CA quake? I remember where I was (in So. CA) when... driving home, listening to the announcement on the radio. I'd just moved, and I was planning on getting things for earthquake kit the next day. Really. Of course, I wasn't alone. Tons of Southern Californians were doing the same. I wanted to say to them all, "No, really, I'd planned to do this today; I'm not in here because of the earthquake!" (hrm. gotta check the battery and water supply; no doubt I've dipped into those supplies over the years.)

I know someone who moved from Santa Cruz to So Cal 13 years ago yesterday. In the nick of time.

Rocket explosion, launch MOscow Times Russian rocket explodes just after liftoff, one person killed. Engines are nearly identical to the Soyuz-FG, which is set to take off Oct 28 to take cosmonauts to the Space Station (it may be delayed, and a Nov 10 Space Shuttle flight depends on the Russian flight). But two days later, Russians successfully launch another rocket.

Nukes in N. Korea Times of India: N. Korea admits it has nukes

The stunning disclosures, confirmed by North Korea, immediately raised questions about US moves on Iraq because Pyong Yang's actions appear far more egregious than Baghdad's which is still said to be some years away from possessing nuclear weapons.

.....North Korea already has a well-proven ballistic missile capability that it has sold to Pakistan, in return, according to speculation in proliferation circles, for help in mastering nuclear weapons technology.

Back into Rehab Noelle Bush Sentenced. Same day as Uncle Dubya visits Florida to campaign for Governor Dad.

Grayish mid October

gray gray gray day.

Mo' Jerry Falwell. Via Instapundit, a link to Telford Work's thoughts on Jerry Falwell's comments on Mohammed and the clash of civilizations contained therein.

Civilizations clashed as several innocent Indians were murdered because of fallout after Jerry Falwell called Muhammad a terrorist. I am using Huntington's language because I think this is more than a foolish remark by a foolish person (though it certainly is that). I think it portends the future of western-Muslim relations, and that future is dark. [Read More]

It's a hell of a lot more thoughtful than my tasteless parody of the other day. At the end of reading it, I no6iced the url is at westmont.edu! Wow! My alma mater. Turns out that Work is a professor of religious studies at.. Azusa Pacific University? Westmont? I guess he just went to one from the other, and his site is still hosted by Westmont.

Happy Birthday, Garret!

Old Macs can learn New Yellow Dog tricks. Linux tricks. I've an old 6100 and 7100 sitting around doin' nothing, time to dink around in Linux.

Corel moves in on Microsoft Monopoly: Corel makes another deal with hardware vendor to install Word Perfect (that's right, instead of Microsoft Word). This is the 4th vendor they've done a deal with.

Columbus Day

culled from the afternoon surf-break Philosophy & Literature takes up the (now defunct) Arts & Letters slack. [via Jonathan Delacour]

It's all about me via P&L: Singleton Society by Frank Furedi. Living Alone is becoming the norm. "The rise of the adult singleton suggests that we are experiencing, not so much a crisis of the family, but a profound difficulty in handling close and personal relationships."

SciTech Daily: "Here's the best intelligent, informed science and technology coverage and analysis you can find on a daily basis, sourcing a huge range of great writers and excellent publications."

Happy Columbus Day, w/ a twist Wrech challenges Captain Cook " Archaeologists in Australia say a recently discovered shipwreck could prove that the British explorer, Captain James Cook, was not the first European to discover Australia's eastern coast." [via SciTech Daily]

Tea is good for you Tea Boosts Insulin 15-fold! Have a cuppa? Aaack! But I like milk with mine!

The scientists found black, green and oolong teas boosted insulin activity the most. This insulin-augmenting effect was seen with both caffeinated and non-caffeinated teas, but not with herbal teas, which do not use leaves from tea bushes.... Adding whole or skim milk, nondairy creamers or soy milk appears to soak up tea's insulin-augmenting compounds and inhibit the insulin boost, although these milky sponges may release the tea extracts in the stomach, Anderson said. No absorption problem was seen with lemon juice.

Of Lessig and Movie Trailers A trailer I saw before watching Spirited Away (again, I urge you to go see it!): An upcoming Disney animated feature: Treasure Planet. Yep, based on Robert Stevenson's book. Which is now in the public domain, so Disney can do a re-make of it and modernize it a bit (there are cyborgs and planet thangs, but it has a retro Jules Verne look to it. Visually interesting).

Lessig gives Lawrence his perspective about his time before the Supreme Court. He states that 4 years of activism leading up to last week focused people's understanding on the issue. On Saturday, I sat in a movie theatre, watching a Disney preview and ruminating about how The Mouse takes advantage of the public domain but lobbies congress to extend the terms of copyright. All that while admiring the visuals in The Mouse's movie trailer. That's one example of what the 4 years of activism has done.

(BTW, the Lessig blog entry is amazing for its own reasons. How many times do you get to read a first person account by someone who argued a case before the Supreme Court? Oh, and read the comments, too. )

Spirited Away

Spirited Away Last night I saw the film Spirited Away, an animated film by Hayao Miyazaki (who made Princess Ononoke).

Amazing story, breathtaking animation.

Go see it.

Now.

Right this very minute. Or at the soonest possible opportunity.(theatre listings)

[Official US Spirited Away site, contains lotsa flash]

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[Macro error: Can't call the script because the name "pictureRef" hasn't been defined.]
Oh, what a wonderful testimony for the Lord Jesus Christ. Jerry Falwell, an annointed minister and man of God, in an interview on 60 Minutes called the prophet Mohammed a terrorist. He said that "Jesus set the example for love."

But, praise the Lord, Falwell also exemplified another saying of Jesus, where he said,

"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." (Matt 10:34)

Well the response was not exactly swords, but knives and stones were wielded in the riot inspired by The Reverend Falwell's words. 5 people died. I guess when people call him a prophet of hate, Mr. Fallwell can take comfort in these words of Jesus:

"Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you." (Matt 5:11, 12)

I'm so edified by this. This kind of thing really brings me close to the Lord. Praise Jesus.

In fact, I'd dearly love to go to an evangelism crusade and have Jerry Falwell preach at it, say those words again and then talk about the message of salvation. I want to go forward at the altar call. Hallelujah.

....But what's this? Falwell apologized? But...but...I was so inspired by his boldness for the Lord, and then he backed down from what he said? He apologized thus:

"I sincerely apologize that certain statements of mine made during an interview for [the Oct. 6 edition of] CBS's '60 Minutes' were hurtful to the feelings of many Muslims."

Oh, Lord, please help me to understand. After he stood up for you in that bold and public way, he's now apologizing for hurting feelings? What's so scriptural about that? I mean, I suppose I could understand him apologizing for the people who got hurt, or the people who died. I just thought the Lord was mightily using Jerry Falwell to help Jesus bring a sword. I just don't get what hurt feelings has to do with anything.

I think I'll have to pray for more understanding. When I was reading the "blessed are you" verse, I couldn't help but notice the one two verses before. It said,

"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God."

I think it's time to nominate Jerry for The Wittenberg Door's Green Weenie award.(if they still give those out) Oh look! Buffy the Vampire Slayer is named Theologian of the Year!

[note: this last week, I dusted off some old journals I wrote at the tender age of --eek!-- 17. That was in the hey-day of my, um, days of being a religious-fanatical-Jesus-freak Christian. After cringing, I've adopted the journal's vocabulary for this post. Sigh. How wonderful that time mellows a person. Peace to you all.]