January 2003 Archives

I'm watching Late Night with Conan O'Brien right now. There's a pre-recorded sketch where Conan takes pity on the people waiting in line in the freezing cold on standby to attend the show. So he rents an RV, invites a bunch of them in, and holds a show in there while they drive around New York City.

What a hilarious concept! He's got Max Weinberg playing drums using pots and pans and Joel Godard announcing. They essentially duplicated the opening, monologue and all. Finally, Conan's celebrity guest was MC Hammer. He had MC Hammer dancing alongside him to some 60s music. It was masterfully done and totally entertaining.

Oh yeah, can't forget about parody.

I know a lot of Starbucks coffee drinkers. I'll have to subtly query them and run their orders through this personality quiz—for scientific testing purposes of course.

The Gettysburg Address as PowerPoint: classic example of satire. But the Web's full of such things.

Wow, I never knew that the Olsen twins were interested in nanotechnology. Or were worth $76 million collectively. Or scored 1600s on their SATs. Or that Mary-Kate finally got a puppy.

[UPDATE] I reverse DNSed the IP address "66.111.43.11" and it resolves to sp0ofed.com. I've been deceived! Ignore the nanotechnology and SAT perfection links.

Vulgar, yet catchy.

Busy week. I didn't have a chance to read one word of The Skeptical Environmentalist. Feh.

I don't know exactly how to categorize this site. At first, I thought it might be some sort of modernist "art" and then I thought it might some sort of community development project. In the end, I filed it away under "neat."

Note to self: remember to read "Links Want To Be Links" thoroughly. Also, comb through the author's site for other such pearls.

Note to anyone else: It's an article describing some of the best (read: most useful) ways to devise and phrase links. Very important subject and a very well-crafted article.

I'm not exactly sure what to make of this article. I really need to read more about neuroscience.

Favorite quote, about early testing of the device on the researchers themselves: "No one knew if we were going to be the next one to have a seizure, or if 12 years of medical residency would suddenly get blown away."

Interesting article in Scientific American entitled The Reality of Race. This is something that I'll have to think about seriously. I still don't think it's important (or should be important, to be more precise), but I always thought of it as devoid of any genetic basis.

Good quote from sociologist Duster: "It's a tightrope between trying to rescue the importance and meaning of research on race without giving it a false reality."

Ahh, the hook up. I am by no means a prude—though I'm sure plenty will disagree—but this inicipient nihilistic cultural of casual sex ("buddysex" in kidspeak) horrifies me.

Important quote: "Many girls don't have the time or the energy required for an intense relationship right now, or they can't find a guy who wants one. But they possess enormous sexual energy and believe they have every right to enjoy it in whatever form they choose...." That's the rationalization. "They don't hook up with just anyone; usually, it's with someone they know at least casually, or, if intercourse is included, with a less printable version of 'sexbuddy.' They tell themselves they stand less chance of waking up pregnant or infected that way." And that's the payoff.

Promiscuity is a disgusting form of throwing morality out the window. It says, "Sex feels good. Relationships are hard. Let's have sex with anyone." It boils down to a rejection of values since sex usually comes with a relationship based on value recognition—or it should. Why? Why can't we just screw whoever we want whenever we want? The disease angle is true, but fails to resonate with this crowd and is probably overstated anyway. I guess I've been married too long (nearly ten years now) to know what sex without love would feel like—though my wife was my one and only. I think, though, that it would be enormously emotionally unsatisfying. I think it would eventually become as mechanical as the word they use—hook-up—to describe it.

I remember when the euphemism "making love" was en vogue. While I thought (and still do) it was corny, it also spoke to the intense value and power of the act. Sex is both a response to and demonstration of love. It's a way of saying that the other person is so special and important that you'd give and receive the ultimate pleasure. The hook-up says nothing except that you are self-absorbed and self-centered. It is symbolically bereft. And it repulses me.

To say the least, this resembles nothing from my childhood and certainly not the courtship proceedings that led to my marriage. I secretly pined for my wife for months and months, relishing every opportunity to talk to her and delighting in something as simple as a chance catching of her shampoo's scent. Once I got up the nerve to call her, it led to an overnight chat that culminated with me saying, "I love you." Now I've never had any pretensions that mine was a normal method or that it would even work for anyone else.

I just could never imagine talking to my love interest with the vulgarity that today's kids (and many—oh so many—adults) use. One of my close friends—a female—recounts tales of male forwardice (cowardice masking as forwardness, to coin a term) such as telling her that she's hot right to her face and hooting when she bends over to pick something up. That she isn't more insulted or repelled is perhaps an indication of the normalcy of it all and perhaps an indication of her self-assurance.

The American Dialect Society has posted its Words of the Year 2002 list. The winner: weapons of mass destruction. Ugh. I have grown to completely hate this word. I have disliked it since my first encounter. It resounds of military euphemism while signifying nothing since it could encompass chemical, biological, nuclear, and even conventional weapons. I can't think of a more massive destruction wrought this century then the firestorms of Dresden during World War II. What's the meaning of the word beyond "weapon"?

Some of the other words were creative though without much chance of lasting. "Teen angstrel" meaning "angst-ridden popular singer." "Walking pinata" meaning "person subjected to relentless criticism." "201(k)" meaning a "401(k) ruined by stock losses." "Embetterment," apparently used by George Bush in a speech, reminds me a lot of the made-up Simpsons word "embiggen."

I must remember to check out Overlawyered, a site that showcases the high cost of our legal system and the excesses that it sometimes spawns, more often.

I finished Part I of The Skeptical Environmentalist last night (total of 42 pages of two-column text). Part I—entitled The Litany—is divided into two chapters: "Things are getting better" and "Why do we hear so much bad news?"

This section is devoted to what Lomborg calls "the Litany," the environmental dogma accepted implicitly by most of the participants in the environmental debate. This Litany, in Lomborg's view, is the theory of an ever deteriorating environment. It is taught to children, implicit in scientific papers, and accepted uncritically in countless news reports.

The first chapter—"Things are getting better"—lays out the Litany as it exists today and cites statistics to show that, in general, things are improving. He carefully makes the point that things aren't necessarily good, but that they're getting better. The remainder of the chapter is spent summarily reviewing the tenets of the Litany as represented by prominent environmental organizations, particularly Lester Brown's Worldwatch Institute, and then as summarily refuting them with statistics.

This first chapter is qualitatively mixed. Lomborg's presentation and rebuttal of the environmental organizations' alarmist proclamations is unnecessary, a fact which he implicitly recognizes by pointing out which future chapter or graph will provide support for his contentions. It leaves the impression that this chapter is a summary of what follows except that it is clear from the table of contents and prefatory remarks that there is much omitted.

Throughout the chapter, though, are epistemological explanations that offer an interesting survey of the statisical methods employed by the book. We learn, for example, that Lomborg intends to focus on important trends on a global scale over the long term. He notes that "important" means important to people, to humankind. He also indicates that he will rely on international, government sources for his data. He does so not because they are any more authoritative than academic or scientific sources, but because they are the same figures that the environmental organizations use to make their alarmist claims. In so doing, he will also illustrate that divergent conclusions can be reached from the same starting point...or that the environmental organizations are completely fabricating their conclusions—he, being more charitable than me, would take the former approach.

The second chapter—"Why do we hear so much bad news?"—examines the reason why, despite the outlandishness of their claims, the environmental organizations' voices are the only ones heard in the debate. Lomborg's theory is that the environmental organizations have a vested interest in a deteriorating environment and that the media publishes their press releases because they fit the news model. The media needs news reports that involve something easily understandable in a short period, shock the reader/viewer into paying attention, contain recent news, and portrays conflict. Environmental catastrophe fits into this profile whereas environmental stability meets none of them.

The next part is 44 pages long and covers "Human Welfare," so expect another review within a week—life willing.

Very interesting article on scalability. This site, getting 15 page views on a great day, probably wouldn't benefit from such an article. My employer is currently implementing a redesign using the Java-based Vignette CMS that runs on four times as many servers and probably couldn't handle a tenth of the load. And each one of those servers could mop the floor with their server and then whoop their ass for leaving streaks, to use a comical phrase from Roy D. Mercer.

Three entries for the Darwin Awards:

• Eight develop botulism from eating beached whale


• Man builds guillotine, kills self


• Man boasts of killing to prosecutors based on misunderstanding of double jeopardy


• Man locks keys in car, drops stolen bank money, and shoots self trying to get away

I am really digging this list of reasons why Java is better than .NET.

I've always thought that radio contests were stupid, but in merry old England they're positively dangerous. It's hard to figure out which party is stupider: the ones who sat on the dry ice or the ones who thought of the idea. At some point wouldn't you say that free tickets just weren't worth it or notice that your genitals were completely numb?

Before I comment on Part I (The Litany), I can address some prefatory remarks by Lomborg. He embarked on this project after reading some comments by Julian Simon in Wired magazine in 1997. Simon's use of statistics provoked an impassioned response by Lomborg?a quite ardent environmentalist and professor of statistics at the time?and he decided to meet Simon's challenge. After reviewing Simon's sources and statistics, he decided that Simon had it essentially right.

I'm a big fan of Julian Simon so reading this passage left me excited to read more. Lomborg could take up Simon's gauntlet for decades to come and that would be a great thing. His book, The Ultimate Resource, is vastly different from any other environmental writing in that it says that, no matter how depleted so-called natural resources might become, there will always be unlimited quantities of the ultimate resource, man's mind. Wow! What a concept! Of course, he disputes the natural resource depletion in other works, but this book indicated a much-deeper understanding of the issue than anything else I'd ever seen. From a cursory glance over his table of contents, I don't think that Lomborg has yet achieved Simonian enlightenment but he's still pretty young.

If I had to pigeonhole this book, I'd evaluate it starting out as an update to The State of Humanity. That's not a criticism, as I'm sure a lot more data and analysis has transpired since the earlier work.

Freud's a fraud and/Skinner's of no use/Read Marx and Lenin/It'll really turn you loose.

In completely unrelated news, I'm reading TSE and will post my thoughts part by part (six parts of varying page size).

Speak of the devil, I went to the library to return some movies (Clerks and A Town Like Alice) and what should I encounter while browsing but The Skeptical Environmentalist.

Taking a cue from Tesugen, I'm going to post regular updates on my thoughts about the book as I plow through it. I don't think I'll go chapter-by-chapter because there are twenty-five of them and most of them are pretty mundane sounding—like "Food and Hunger" and "Energy."

I don't know if my friend Larry is reading this right now and I don't know how much he's got saved, but he better get his ass over to eBay in the next three days. I would come and visit at least every summer.

As a general rule, I can't stand project managers. In my profession (web development), they are totally irrelevant—the last bastions for deposed managers. Edward Tufte, famed information depicter, has an interesting thread about their stock in trade, the Gantt chart. It's basically a way to depict project tasks and dependencies. If that means nothing to you, imagine a to-do list that spans a work team and includes time estimates.

Oops, I may have given away too much there. Let me try again: it leverages the power of information design to illustrate the cross-team interdependencies in a given project and facilitates rapid information conveyance through a paradigmatic convention. Now I'm PMPin'.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think they should all be lined up and shot. I'm sure there's some situation in which they're the most efficient means to managing a project; I'm just saying that I've never encountered that situation.

Today I spent the afternoon planting the bulbs that I bought my wife for Christmas. In a couple of months, we should see hundreds of flowers blooming in our backyard. It seemed a little corny at the time, but I think it'll pay off then.

This is definitely the question of my day.

It probably would have been better to ignore the findings for the sham that they are. Reason has a nice take on the problem. I must remember to get his book one of these days—I'm entirely unfamiliar with the latest research in environmentalism.

In my rant of 7 January 2003, I noted that Safari lacked deep hierarchy in its bookmarks organization. As is the case with the status bar, it's actually a non-obvious feature. When you're in the Show All Bookmarks with a bookmark playlist—for lack of a better term—click on Add a Bookmark Folder or the little plus sign at the bottom of that area. Bang, you've got a subfolder and you can keep going down. Joy returns.

Also, good review of Keynote.

I must have an engorged entrepreneurial gland in my body somewhere because I am obsessed with becoming wealthy and being my own boss. I've had all sorts of ideas in the past, some good and some unfeasible. Everyone has had a common theme: crowded market with high psychological barriers to entry. It's hard mentally to see a lot of successful players and say to yourself, "I want me some of that." The more you investigate, the more ludicrous the value-proposition of such endeavors becomes: it's just not worth the time and money to try to improve on their widgets. And there's the fear that the market, once entered, would copy your ideas and leave you with JAPOS (just another piece of software).

I'm through with that. I've got a great idea and I'm not going to let a crowded market stop me from entry. My idea is different than theirs, better than theirs, and cheaper than theirs. What's more, just the act of creating a product has side benefits because of the knowledge increase and marketability of skills learnt. I'm going to get into it and if I make scads of money, great. If not, it won't be a total loss.

What's the product? Well, I hardly know you. Why would I share that info with you, bucko? If you're someone that I would confide in, drop me an email. You know my address.

Oh yeah, end result of last month's fertilization vacation: ectopic pregnancy. We're back in the zone so to speak, so I might have good news to report later this month.

After two weeks with Dagny, my wonderful iPod, I've come to realize the true greatness that she is. I always knew owning an iPod would be neat because I listen to tunes on Thor, my laptop, and enjoy it.

What I didn't know (or expect) was how my life would change with the iPod. It has made music pervasive in my life. While I'm getting ready for work, I've got the headphones in and music blaring. On the ride to work, at work, even in the bathroom, my eardrums are bathed in the sweet sounds of over 1,500 mp3s—don't worry: I keep it in my pocket and the listening is totally hands-free if you get my drift. Music is no longer something to listen to on the way to work or while chained to my desk. It's everywhere. I've listened to more music these last two weeks than I probably had in the last six months.

365 days of interesting mp3s. Good stuff so far, but I can't imagine 365 days of continued excellence. We'll see.

[UPDATE (6/25/04): The 365 Days Project has a new home! Yeah!]

The one major keynote disappointment that I had was an upgrade for AppleWorks. There are some things that you absolutely cannot do (or maybe cannot do well) in AppleWorks: tables leap immediately to mind. It's UI could also stand some updating to bring it into the modern age. I hope that we won't have to wait until next MacWorld for an update.

I've had more opportunity to use Safari since downloading it earlier. I really, really like it. The interface simplification will yield substantial time savings for me, the heavy surfer. Unfortunately, Safari lacks two further simplifiers that OmniWeb has: shortcuts and deep hierarchy.

Shortcuts are like Mozilla's keywords, if you're familiar with those. For those of you unfamiliar, they allow you to preset a keyword like "vt" that will automatically expand out to "http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx" and go to that site. You can also define a single parameter so that "vt launchbar" would pass "launchbar" into VersionTracker's search field and perform the request. You would not believe how useful this is until it's gone.

Deep hierarchy is cognitively useful. For example, I've got over 1,800 bookmarks in OmniWeb. Keeping that many bookmarks in your mind is totally impossible. That's why you create folders to hold them and then folders inside those folders. Eventually, you've got a huge Yahoo-style directory that can largely be retained in context. I've got a top-level in OmniWeb of maybe 15 folders. Each of those has several subfolders and many of those have further subfolders.

Safari, unfortunately, has neither of these features. It does have hooks into your history, your Address Book, and your bookmarks that may make it trivial to get to a site you've been to before but you can't create predefined relationships like the VersionTracker search. Also, it sports iTunes-style bookmark folders. This makes its interface similar to an existing product (good!), easy to add bookmarks to (good!), and very very shallow (bad!). So in order to replicate my present OmniWeb organization, I'd have to have upwards of 150 folders?all on the same cognitive level thereby destroying the hierarchy. Epistemologically, then, you could say that Safari breaks the hierarchy of knowledge and power of abstraction. Then again, it's just a beta and I've made feature requests for these two. [UPDATE: David Hyatt, one of the Safari developers, has a blog where he's answering questions about Safari.]

I'm at my local Apple store, having just watched Steve Jobs's keynote. I just downloaded Apple's new browser, Safari, and I must say that my experience using it is astounding. I'm pretty sure that the people at OmniGroup are in fetal positions because this eliminates a lot of the competitive edge OmniWeb had and kicks its ass in speed.

Also, Apple introduced two new PowerBooks: an aluminum 17" monster and a titanium 12" midget. The 17" one boasts everything I could dream of at a price I paid for mine two years ago. I can't complain too much because two years is way too long for buyer's remorse to have any power, but I still want one bad.