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July 30th, 2011
03:29 pm - Google Announces Discovery of Giant Black Monolith, Lifts Employee Gag Order
Google today announced the discovery of a large black monolith under their Mountain View headquarters. The monolith was discovered as a result of investigations into peculiar magnetic anomalies affecting everything from the order of posts and the stickiness of +1s on Google+ to results from its search engine -- explaining, for example, why a Google search of the phrase "stop TSA" does not include the web site stoptsa.com in the returned listing.
"We knew this was absolutely huge news, and we didn't want the markets to panic," said the spokesman, explaining the reason for the gag order which had caused much consternation due to Google's apparent radio silence on the problematic Google+ "common names" policy. The spokesman denied that Google management had been using the news blackout as an opportunity to buy up stock in space-related companies and restock their private bunkers.
Except for a single, high-powered beam of energy aimed directly at Wall Street, the monolith has remained silent and inactive -- its origin and purpose still a total mystery.
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April 11th, 2011
09:28 pm - conspiracy theories
I originally asked this on Facebook: What's so terrible about conspiracy theories?
I think I can now elaborate a little. I had always taken the term "conspiracy theory" to mean "the idea that a particular set of observed results is best explained as the result of a conspiracy of some kind".
I have also seen it used to mean "any event-explaining hypothesis which differs in significant ways from an official explanation of that same event".
What I'm hearing, though, is that the popular understanding of the term might mean something more like "a theory that the world is controlled by some group about whom very little is known and for which there is very little conclusive evidence".
If that is how most people understand the term, then (1) I can understand the avoidance, and (2) what the heck do we call either of the first two things?
(originally posted at http://woozle.dreamwidth.org/1185.html, where the number of comments is currently  )
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March 30th, 2011
10:47 am - Harena dream
This may have been partly inspired by Harena's fitful sleep last night...
I dreamed that I had been out very late, doing something with the kids1 which somehow involved both the kids' Uncle Chris and PZ Myers (who seem to be oddly reminding me of each other, even though I can't easily define how), both of whom I was somehow supposed to connect with at different times afterwards (which ended up being in a dark parking lot just outside, and there was something to do with me not being able to find my shoes or something) and we were all there way past 1 a.m.
The amusing(?) part was that I knew Harena would be all panicked by how late we were (we probably all died in a car wreck or something), but when I got home it turned out that in her panic and depression she had elaborately calligraphed a suicide note, and then decided she really like the way it looked and submitted it to a goth font2 contest.
Because the contest ended at midnight, we were out so late that the winners were announced, and she won.
Some time later, back in reality, I told Harena about this and she made me post it. So now you know who to blamethank.
1. at this building whose exterior resembled that of the emergency room at Durham Regional Hospital (where we so recently spent many happy hours) and whose interior reminded me of RDU airport circa 1970 -- both classic early 1960s boxy "modern" architecture
2. you know... those Goth-looking fonts everyone uses... they're all the rage on the internet... you can't hardly click on a link without bumping into some new goth font... well, okay, maybe not in this universe -- I guess here it's sparkly vampires, but I'm sure there's some nearby parallel one where everyone is sick of goth fonts and yet people keep doing more of them.
Current Location: alternate universe
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March 13th, 2011
11:58 am - MoveOn and political tools
MoveOn.org finally took a step I've been waiting for them to take since they started. Here's the email I just received:
Dear MoveOn member,
How would you like to send an email to all 5 million MoveOn members—or even just the ones in North Carolina or Durham—inviting
them to join you in fighting for a cause you feel passionately about?
Well, this could be your chance. We're launching a new website where you can start your own online petition and invite
your friends to sign it.
Then we'll take the most popular petitions and share them with other MoveOn members, so thousands of new people can join
your cause.
To help get ready, we're taking a quick survey. If this website were available today, do you have an idea for a petition
you'd like to create?
Just click to let us know:
Yes, I'd start a petition.
No, I don't think I'd start a petition right now.
Thanks! –Anna, Julia, Michael, Wes, and the rest of the team
My first reaction is "whoa, where to start?" Although this isn't the rich self-governance tool I've been wishing for, it's a significant step in the right direction... even if it's basically been done before.
Now that I think about it more, I'm starting to get discouraged again. Yes, it has been done before; putting such a tool on MoveOn doesn't really change anything significantly.
Oh well, at least in my message to them I mentioned some of what's missing. Here's what I just sent them:
It would really help if you had a tool to gauge popular support for a petition before actually setting it up, so petitioners can choose terms/causes with the most support.
Here are some petitions I'd consider starting, just off the top of my head:
- TSA: Return to pre-9/11 security procedures. Congress: disband TSA, return security management to airports.
- Congress: constitutional amendment to reverse the Citizens United decision.
- Congress: reinstate Reagan-era tax levels, or at least end the Bush tax cuts. (I don't know what the procedures are; maybe it's too late for this.)
- Congress/president: close Gitmo. No more tribunals. All terrorists must be tried on American soil. No more torture, either.
- No more "executive secrecy privilege" or whatever it's called. Return government to Clinton-era transparency.
I could probably come up with some better ones, given time to research it. There is much to do, and we badly need more tools of this sort.
See http://issuepedia.org/InstaGov for more thoughts along this line.
If I can ever get to a point where I'm not constantly working on other things that need to be done RIGHT NOW NO WAIT LAST WEEK AAAGGHH, I'm just going to have to sit down and write this thing myself, I guess. (Which I had been planning to do, but more urgent things keep interrupting it, so then I keep hoping I can find some way to get funding for it or at least find other people who think it's a great idea who can then encourage me to do it in spite of all the competing priorities.)
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March 2nd, 2011
07:21 pm - two unrelated things (unconnected and free)
Thing OneIn response to a post on asexy beast, I found myself wondering if there is such a thing as a nondating/friendship site where individuals can choose what sorts of expressions-of-affection they are comfortable with (and under what circumstances) --
* kissing?
* hugging?
* casual touching?
* nonsexual intimate touching (e.g. under the shirt but not in the pants)?
* holding hands? (in public, or just in private?)
I have to think that this would be seriously awesome if there were such a thing, but of course it will turn out that someone has already done it and it somehow sucks.
Thing TwoA Fiction came into my head a couple of days ago and demanded that I write it. It's kind of an alternate-universe thing with fanfic-ish elements, but it actually doesn't depend on any copyrightable content, so I could actually publish it if it were to somehow become finished. However, after writing two large chunks, I have become discouraged and can't decide if it's worth continuing.
If anyone would like to read what I've got so far, drop me a line (or, really, a line segment... preferably with blunted ends; those one-dimensional theoretical constructs tend to go right through the floor without stopping).
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February 10th, 2011
05:30 pm - The Advise-Yourself-at-15 Meme
I caught this meme from kdsorceress; I apologize if it's contagious. The exercise, in case it's not obvious, is to describe what advice you would give your 15-year-old self. ( Read more... )
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December 28th, 2010
10:04 pm - distraction
I think I'm noticing a pattern... or maybe I already noticed it and have now figured out how to explain it.
When I'm working on code, there's a long stretch of time when it's uphill -- ConcentrateConcentrateConcentrate with no indication that anything purposeful is happening. I could be writing very good or very bad code, and there's no way to tell until I can actually use it.
Eventually you get to the point where some part of it actually functions (often after a shorter stretch of thrashing around when it almost works but generates errors -- which I actually find much easier to deal with, because it reminds me what I need to do next), and then there's this nice kick of accomplishment. Not only is there a working thing to show for the effort, but you can forget a lot of the tedious details you were having to spend mental energy to remember all at the same time.
The problem comes when I start to crave distractions.
(Ironically, unasked-for distractions often set this off: if I've had my focus broken once, it's much harder to get back to where I was because (a) I have to rebuild the house of cards toppled by the interruption and (b) I have less trust that it won't happen again.)
The thing about distractions is that you do a little bit of work and get only a little kick of "satisfied" afterwards (yay, I beat that level in Luxor for the 207th time, or yay I just explained my brilliantly controversial view in a comment on Facebook and have now alienated 6 more people) -- but it comes much more quickly and effortlessly.
When there's a long stretch of FocusFocusFocusFocus without reward, I start to desperately crave that feeling of "yay, you did something!", and I find myself doing things -- anything -- to get away from the non-rewarding work and get into something that will give a quick Accomplishment kick.
It seems very much like something that probably has an underlying hormonal mechanism.
Maybe there's a drug which can dampen out this pattern so I don't feel so desperate for an interruption. I don't know what it would be, though (even assuming I could afford it).
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December 26th, 2010
07:30 pm - political quasi-snark
Libertarians like to cite the adage "Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish, and he can feed himself for life" -- generally attacking the idea of a social safety net because it discourages people from being self-supporting1.
It seems to me that they are overlooking what actually happens: "Build an automated fishery, and you don't have to worry about whether the man is fed or not", followed by "Buy up rights to all the farmable bodies of water, and you won't have to worry about that man competing with you ever again."
1. Oh, and because it's socialism, which as we all know is synonymous with brutal totalitarianism because Soviet Russia Stalin Mao Pol Pot Hitler2.
2. Hitler's party was the National Socialists, so that proves that socialism = Nazis. Good thing he didn't like apple pie. Or chocolate. Or air. Or Christmas.
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07:03 pm - Telephones are so 20th century
I should be able to:
1. log all incoming and outgoing calls (time, other number, type (in/out), duration)
2. record all phone conversations automatically and attach the recording to the log
3. have Caller ID automatically bring up my notes on any given phone number, linked to a log of any past calls to/from that number
4. have my own "menu of options" for incoming calls
5. have different outgoing messages/menus for different callers (as detected by Caller ID), including one-time messages and messages only to be delivered during certain times
6. send a voicemail in much the same way that one sends an email
There are various tools which let me do some of this, with some caveats, if I am willing to spend a lot of time on it and (oh yeah) happen to be very smart technically. Why isn't there any software or hardware which does it out of the box?
Could it be that nobody really cares about making the phone system useable? Possibly because its days are numbered? Here's hoping.
(Edit: changed asterisk-bullets to numbers, for easier reference.)
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December 19th, 2010
10:21 pm - Non-filtered gender post
I just accidentally rediscovered this image, in a 2006 post complaining about tech conference t-shirts not being sexy enough:
The image asks the question "Which conference cared more about attendees?" I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that I think the shirt on the right is cuter.
The message I get from the article is that this makes me weird and might mean that I don't care about... something. Women? Female conference attendees? [Female] sexyness? Looking good?
For what it's worth, the one on the left makes me think of lipstick, earrings, tight pants, and other things I'm not fond of. (Maybe I'll expand on this in a filtered post, if I can think of anything intelligent to say about it.)
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