Octopodial Chrome

I’ve just been watching the first few episodes of Firefly, a short-lived series by Joss Whedon. It’s space science fiction set in a thinly-disguised post-War Between the States American West. For foes there are inhuman man-eating savages (analogues to the American aborigines) and the neo-fascist Alliance (Union) government which has recently finished a war to suppress an independence movement; its troops are even called Federals. Our heroes are a captain and exec, formerly of the independence army, a pilot, an engineer, a doctor, his sister and a travelling preacher. It’s a decent series, although the constant reminders that it’s the West in space do get a bit wearing after awhile.

It’s a pity that the series was cancelled so soon; I think that its second season could have been even better. The writers seem to have been on the way to building up some interesting story arcs and letting the Old West theme settle into the background a bit.

Yesterday as I exited my shower my pager went off—I’m working hotpager duty this week—and thus I put off my morning toilet of hair-combing, tooth-brushing, face-shaving and hair-braiding to answer the summons. I ended up needing to drive all the way up to Boulder in order to deal with a hosed machine which had lost network connectivity (and its mind, but that’s another tale). As a result of all this, I was unable to go to church. I don’t know how the irreligious do it

I missed going to church; my whole week is now a lesser thing; I have left something incomplete. It’s not that I am a creature of habit; those who know me can vouch that I am too sloppy to have habits. It’s just that it is important to worship God properly and to receive the sacraments regularly.

I suppose that the irreligious get through it because they don’t know what they’re missing. Much like the blind man cannot conceive of colour or the deaf man sound, neither can those who deny God understand what it is to worship Him.

Anyway, I’m rather put out by the whole thing.

Yesterday I made an absolutely wonderful bread which involved honey and, of all things, vinegar. It tasted amazing. Soon, very soon, I shall have knocked this breadmaking thing into a cocked hat.

On Christmas Day I’d my family over for mulled cider—well, all of my family save Thomas, who’s at his future in-laws’. While they were over, he called me, and so I spoke to him, then passed the phone around the family. At the end, when my father had finished speaking with him, Dad handed the phone back to me. I’d already spoken to Thomas, so why did I get the phone again? Because it’s my home, and it’s the host’s due to finish the call if he wishes. It made a mighty big impression on me.

Well, we once again find ourselves in Yuletide, that fine season when once again we meditate upon Our Saviour’s Nativity. Or do we? Many don’t. We’re told by the secular society that the true meaning of Christmas is sharing, or giving, or kindness or some such flimflammery. This is, of course, utter nonsense: the meaning of the season is that the Creator of All, God Himself, became Man through His Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and walked among as one of us. Next to that kind of thing, gift-giving rather pales in comparison.

Note, too, that for the secular the celebration of Christmas begins sometime between Halloween and Thanksgiving (the pagan and civil, or evil and neutral, holidays on our modern calendar) and ends on the day itself. The world does not remember the great good which has been done for it. For we Christians, though, Advent is a time of preparation and fasting second only to Great Lent—and Yuletide is a time of celebration second only to Eastertide. Then we proclaim that Christ is Risen; today we proclaim that Christ is Born! And so we do for twelve days, until Epiphany comes to mark a twofold feast: on the one hand the arrival of the wisemen—heralds of the heathen, our forefathers, who would recognise Him—and on the other hand His recognition by the Father and the Holy Spirit after the Forerunner baptised Him in the Jordan. Just as the period from Easter to Pentecost (another visible visitation of the Holy Spirit) is a time of great joy, so too is the time Christmas to Epiphany.

We Christians should do our best to keep that time festively, as we ought, and not wake up on Boxing Day believing that Christmas is over. It is never over: it always is, but in this season we celebrate even more than usual.

Christ is Born! Glorify Him!

We pray give us this day our daily bread, and we also admit that God helps those who help themselves. Thus, out of a kind of piety I decided to turn my hand towards bread-baking today.

It’s a lot more difficult than it looks. Baking is orders of magnitude more difficult than simple cooking—and thus worth orders of magnitude more effort. Be that as it may, I produced a tasty, albeit somewhat dense, loaf from beer-barm, flour and water. This is a subject into which I feel a need to delve. The word lord, after all, derives from hlaforda, which means loaf-guard. How can a man be expected to guard that which he hasn’t?

No, not Happy Holidays; not Season’s Greetings—Merry Christmas. Our Saviour is born: let us glorify Him!

I am the champion! I am the king! I am monarch of all I survey! My bachelor recipes are the first results one finds when looking for bachelor recipes in Google (note: this may not last—but today it’s true!). Not middling, not second: first.

What’s sad is that they’re not anywhere near complete—I’ve but five (ugly number) recipes at the moment: azteca, basic grilled chicken; bean soup, punch and tequila lime chicken. I shall strive to add more, although I’m a bit stuck for ideas on what. Still, I’m number 1! I’m number 1!

Anyone who’s dealt much with computer graphics has come across a few standard images, the teapot and an image of a young woman gazing alluringly over her shoulder. Well, here are the true stories behind both the teapot and the gal.

Michael Crichton has written a quite cogent article on ETs, nuclear winter, second-hand smoke & global warming. Unfortunately that (official) page is somewhat difficult to read; this unofficial one is much easier on the eyes, but may go away in time.

Ever since I purchased my fine condo, I’ve been hounded by hundreds of letters offering me huge sums of money (at not-negligible interest rates). Most if not all of these are sucker’s loans—only a fool would sign up for one. Just today I received one claiming that I could receive $20,000 just by asking for it. No mention was made of how much that $20,000 would cost me, but I’ve a nasty feeling that it’d be not a small amount.

On the one hand, I do believe that it is important for folks to be able to freely arrange their affairs. On the other, it worries me that there are enough morons out there for this type of business to be profitable.

This article has been retracted.

Apparently, herring communicate by breaking wind. Words fail me.

Victor Davis Hanson addresses the European question. Aside from his typical pro-Israeli boosterism (as if on could reasonably be happy about a state whose sole commendation is that it is not quite so evil as its neighbours), it’s a very good piece.

Byron York explains the real reason for the so-called overcharges for petrol: in short, they’re not. When Basra was in the middle of civil unrest due to fuel shortages, the Army Corps of Engineers had Halliburton purchase petrol from Kuwait (the nearest supplier) at $2.27/gallon. Later on, they started purchasing it from Turkey for $1.18/gallon. They’ve since been importing from both sources, since neither on its own is enough, and since Turkey is too far from southern Iraq.

Halliburton’s contention is that it actually saved money by opening up the Turkish source.

Recently, a good friend of me begged me not to become a hipster. At the time, I laughed it off—me, a hipster?!? But now I fear it has come. Last night I was at a bar which was playing music videos, and one of the bands was one which I have enjoyed in the past (whose name eludes me at the moment: not the White Stripes, but someone with a similar name, beginning in S). And in the newspaper I saw an interview with Azure Ray, whose CDs I had purchased well over a year ago.

I did not seek hipsterhood: it sought me.

Well, I just returned from seeing Return of the King. It’s the end of an era: three years, three films, three opening days—and now it’s over. Well, I’m young yet; before I die hopefully it will be made again.

The movie was pretty good. More faithful in many ways that The Two Towers, and a better film in several respects than Fellowship of the Ring. Even the absence of the Scouring of the Shire was not nearly so bad as I had feared—and the most important part of the entire tale remains intact.

See this film.

My dear brother has taken issue with my statement that the Unix culture expects users to program. My point is not that I expect every user to write operating systems, word processors, graphics manipulators or the like, but rather that it seems proper to me that all should have some idea of what a computer is. Simple programming is a dead-simple activity; the introduction to The Structure & Interpretation of Computer Programs demonstrates this more neatly than I ever could:

Educators, generals, dieticians, psychologists, and parents program. Armies, students, and some societies are programmed. An assault on large problems employs a succession of programs, most of which spring into existence en route. These programs are rife with issues that appear to be particular to the problem at hand. To appreciate programming as an intellectual activity in its own right you must turn to computer programming; you must read and write computer program—many of them.

A computer user who doesn’t know how to program is like a driver who has no idea of how his car operates; a pilot who knows nothing of ærodynamics; a sailor wholly ignorant of the behaviour of water. I’m not arguing that all users should be hackers or software engineers, but that they know how to bend the computer to their will; that they reason logically; that they are more than mere lumps of clay.

Beer & nutmegs go well together—a fact known well unto our ancestors, but little-remarked upon in these sad days. The proportion can be tricky, though: too much nutmeg and one becomes a raving, hallucinating madman. Great stuff.

From the classic tale:

Have you ever left your terminal logged in, only to find when you came back to it that a (supposed) friend had typed rm -rf ~/* and was hovering over the keyboard with threats along the lines of lend me a fiver ’til Thursday, or I hit return? Undoubtedly the person in question would not have had the nerve to inflict such a trauma upon you, and was doing it in jest. So you’ve probably never experienced the worst of such disasters…

It was a quiet Wednesday afternoon. Wednesday, 1st October, 15:15 BST, to be precise, when Peter, an office-mate of mine, leaned away from his terminal and said to me, Mario, I’m having a little trouble sending mail. Knowing that msg was capable of confusing even the most capable of men, I sauntered over to his terminal to see what was wrong. A strange error message of the form (I forget the exact details) cannot access /foo/bar for userid 147 had been issued by msg. My first thought was Who’s userid 147?; the sender of the message, the destination, or what? So I leant over to another terminal, already logged in, and typed grep 147 /etc/passwd only to receive the response /etc/passwd: No such file or directory.

Instantly, I guessed that something was amiss. This was confirmed when in response to ls /etc I got ls: not found.

I suggested to Peter that it would be a good idea not to try anything for a while, and went off to find our system manager.

When I arrived at his office, his door was ajar, and within ten seconds I realised what the problem was. James, our manager, was sat down, head in hands, hands between knees, as one whose world has just come to an end. Our newly-appointed system programmer, Neil, was beside him, gazing listlessly at the screen of his terminal. And at the top of the screen I spied the following lines:

# cd
# rm -rf *

Oh, shit, I thought. That would just about explain it.

I can’t remember what happened in the succeeding minutes; my memory is just a blur. I do remember trying ls (again), ps, who and maybe a few other commands beside, all to no avail. The next thing I remember was being at my terminal again (a multi-window graphics terminal), and typing

 cd /
 echo *

I owe a debt of thanks to David Korn for making echo a built-in of his shell; needless to say, /bin, together with /bin/echo, had been deleted. What transpired in the next few minutes was that /dev, /etc and /lib had also gone in their entirety; fortunately Neil had interrupted rm while it was somewhere down below /news, and /tmp, /usr and /users were all untouched.

Meanwhile James had made for our tape cupboard and had retrieved what claimed to be a dump tape of the root filesystem, taken four weeks earlier. The pressing question was, How do we recover the contents of the tape? Not only had we lost /etc/restore, but all of the device entries for the tape deck had vanished. And where does mknod live? You guessed it, /etc. How about recovery across Ethernet of any of this from another VAX? Well, /bin/tar had gone, and thoughtfully the Berkeley people had put rcp in /bin in the 4.3 distribution. What’s more, none of the Ether stuff wanted to know without /etc/hosts at least. We found a version of cpio in /usr/local, but that was unlikely to do us any good without a tape deck.

Alternatively, we could get the boot tape out and rebuild the root filesystem, but neither James nor Neil had done that before, and we weren’t sure that the first thing to happen would be that the whole disk would be re-formatted, losing all our user files (we take dumps of the user files every Thursday; by Murphy’s Law this had to happen on a Wednesday). Another solution might be to borrow a disk from another VAX, boot off that, and tidy up later, but that would have entailed calling the DEC engineer out, at the very least. We had a number of users in the final throes of writing up PhD theses and the loss of a maybe a weeks’ work (not to mention the machine down time) was unthinkable.

So, what to do? The next idea was to write a program to make a device descriptor for the tape deck, but we all know where cc, as and ld live. Or maybe make skeletal entries for /etc/passwd, /etc/hosts and so on, so that /usr/bin/ftp would work. By sheer luck, I had a gnuemacs still running in one of my windows, which we could use to create passwd, &c., but the first step was to create a directory to put them in. Of course /bin/mkdir had gone, and so had /bin/mv, so we couldn’t rename /tmp to /etc. However, this looked like a reasonable line of attack.

By now we had been joined by Alasdair, our resident UNIX guru, and as luck would have it, someone who knows VAX assembler. So our plan became this: write a program in assembler which would either rename /tmp to /etc, or make /etc, assemble it on another VAX, uuencode it, type in the uuencoded file using my gnu, uudecode it (some bright spark had thought to put uudecode in /usr/bin), run it, and hey presto, it would all be plain sailing from there. By yet another miracle of good fortune, the terminal from which the damage had been done was still su’d to root (su is in /bin, remember?), so at least we stood a chance of all this working.

Off we set on our merry way, and within only an hour we had managed to concoct the dozen or so lines of assembler to create /etc. The stripped binary was only 76 bytes long, so we converted it to hex (slightly more readable than the output of uuencode), and typed it in using my editor. If any of you ever have the same problem, here’s the hex for future reference:

070100002c0000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
0000dd8fff010000dd8f27000000fb02
ef07000000fb01ef070000000000bc8f
8800040000bc012f65746300

I had a handy program around (doesn’t everybody?) for converting ASCII hex to binary, and the output of /usr/bin/sum tallied with our original binary. But hang on—how do you set execute permission without /bin/chmod? A few seconds’ thought (which as usual, lasted a couple of minutes) suggested that we write the binary on top of an already existing binary, owned by me…problem solved.

So along we trotted to the terminal with the root login, carefully remembered to set the umask to 0 (so that I could create files in it using my gnu), and ran the binary. So now we had a /etc, writable by all. From there it was but a few easy steps to creating passwd, hosts, services, protocols, (etc), and then ftp was willing to play ball. Then we recovered the contents of /bin across the ether (it’s amazing how much you come to miss ls after just a few, short hours), and selected files from /etc. The key file was /etc/rrestore, with which we recovered /dev from the dump tape, and the rest is history.

Now, you’re asking yourself (as I am), what’s the moral of this story? Well, for one thing, you must always remember the immortal words, DON’T PANIC. Our initial reaction was to reboot the machine and try everything as single user, but it’s unlikely it would have come up without /etc/init and /bin/sh. Rational thought saved us from this one.

The next thing to remember is that UNIX tools really can be put to unusual purposes. Even without my gnuemacs, we could have survived by using, say, /usr/bin/grep as a substitute for /bin/cat.

And the final thing is, it’s amazing how much of the system you can delete without it falling apart completely. Apart from the fact that nobody could login (/bin/login?), and most of the useful commands had gone, everything else seemed normal. Of course, some things can’t stand life without say /etc/termcap, or /dev/kmem, or /etc/utmp, but by and large it all hangs together.

I shall leave you with this question: if you were placed in the same situation, and had the presence of mind that always comes with hindsight, could you have got out of it in a simpler or easier way? Answers on a postage stamp to:

Mario Wolczko

A true sysadmin to the core—an impressive tale of victory snatched from the very jaws of defeat.

The ancient anti-visual editor humour:

When I log into my Xenix system with my 110 baud teletype, both vi *and* Emacs are just too damn slow. They print useless messages like, C-h for help' and "foo" File is read only. So I use the editor that doesn't waste my valuable time.

Ed, man! !man ed

ED(1) UNIX Programmer's Manual ED(1)

NAME
ed - text editor

SYNOPSIS
ed [ - ] [ -x ] [ name ]

DESCRIPTION
Ed is the standard text editor.

Computer Scientists love ed, not just because it comes first alphabetically, but because it's the standard. Everyone else loves ed because it's ed!

Ed is the standard text editor.

And ed doesn't waste space on my Timex Sinclair. Just look:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 24 Oct 29 1929 /bin/ed
-rwxr-xr-t 4 root 1310720 Jan 1 1970 /usr/ucb/vi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 5.89824e37 Oct 22 1990 /usr/bin/emacs

Of course, on the system I administrate, vi is symlinked to ed. Emacs has been replaced by a shell script which 1) Generates a syslog message at level LOG_EMERG; 2) reduces the user's disk quota by 100K; and 3) runs ed!!!!!!

Ed is the standard text editor.

Let's look at a typical novice's session with the mighty ed:

golem> ed
 
?
help
?
 
?
 
?
quit
?
exit
?
bye
?
hello?
?
eat flaming death
?
^C
?
^C
?
^D
?

Note the consistent user interface and error reportage. Ed is generous enough to flag errors, yet prudent enough not to overwhelm the novice with verbosity.

Ed is the standard text editor.

Ed, the greatest WYGIWYG editor of all.

Ed is the true path to nirvana! Ed has been the choice of educated and ignorant alike for centuries! Ed will not corrupt your precious bodily fluids!! Ed is the standard text editor! Ed makes the sun shine and the birds sing and the grass green!!

When I use an editor, I don't want eight extra kilobytes of worthless help screens and cursor positioning code! I just want an editor!! Not a viitor. Not a emacsitor. Those aren't even words!!!! Ed! Ed! Ed is the standard!!!

Text Editor.

When IBM, in its ever-present omnipotence, needed to base their edlin on a UNIX standard, did they mimic vi? No. Emacs? Surely you jest. They chose the most karmic editor of all. The standard.

Ed is for those who can remember what they are working on. If you are an idiot, you should use Emacs. If you are an Emacs, you should not be vi. If you use ed, you are on the path to redemption. The so-called visual editors have been placed here by ed to tempt the faithless. do not give in!!! The mighty ed has spoken!!!

Could it be any better?

Joel Spolsky reviews The Art of Unix Programming. Spolsky’s a Windows programmer (indeed, I believe that at one point in his life he worked for Microsoft), so he’s rather a biased source. He writes There are many details and subtleties, but for the most part it comes down to one thing: Unix culture values code which is useful to other programmers, while Windows culture values code which is useful to non-programmers. I rather disagree; say rather that the Unix culture expects users to program, while the Windows culture does not.

The typical Unix user hopes one day to better himself, to improve until he too is considered a guru of great renown. The typical Windows user, on the other hand, is content to wallow in ignorance, never learning about computing, happy merely to use the computer. Unix calls man to better himself; Windows tells him he needn’t bother. I suppose that’s why I like Unix: it’s much like God & the Church, both of which continually encourage one to do better. Windows is like Satan: constantly tempting one into sloth, telling one that ignorance and folly are good &c.

Further on, Spolsky writes:

I’ve encountered too many Unix programmers who sneer at Windows programming, thinking that Windows is heathen and stupid…It’s rather rare to find such bigotry among Windows programmers, who are, on the whole, solution-oriented and non-ideological.

That line itself seems quite bigoted to me. Why are Unix programmers sneering; why are Windows programmers solution-oriented? It seems to me that the reality is that Unix programmers are technical: they appreciate beauty in code, in applications and in APIs. Windows programmers are the real ideologues: rather than use that which better, they use what will make them more money.

The fact that so many intelligent people like Unix should say something. I’m reminded of why I first started to learn Lisp: so many excellent programmers suggest it that it seemed to me that they cannot all be wrong. Likewise, so many bright folks like Unix, and Unix has lead to so many great things, that it’s very difficult to think that they’re mistaken. By their fruits shall ye know them; compare Windows & Unix, their cultures, their code, their APIs, their apps, their achievements, their adherents—it’s rather obvious which will come out on top.

I was just browsing the John Hughes Film Jukebox, and it occurred to me once again how truly excellent the music of the 1980s often was. Of course, in a time when no film was complete sans musicla interlude, how could pop music not be much better than before or since? The music of the 80s is most notable for how fun it was. Grunge was a reaction thereto, and possibly a needed one—but who has a heart so stony that the simple happiness of Kids in America, Take on Me, Rebel Yelll, Video Killed the Radio Star, der Komissar &c.? The Seattle sound was so bloody gloomy, so unhappy, so angst-ridden, so pathetic-pimply-teenager that I really think that we might have done without it and been better off. Of course, it was an entirely new sound: who can forget the first time he heard Smells Like Teen Spirit?

Deroy Murdock writes on a possible link between Saddam Hussein and the 11 September attacks. Featured is this line from a memo one of his intel fellows wrote about the July 2001 visit of Mohammed Atta: He displayed extraordinary effort and showed a firm commitment to lead the team which will be responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy. Two-and-a-half months later, Atta was taking over an æroplane.

Why do mall stores bother hiring guys to sell things? Every red-blooded man is more likely to buy from a pretty girl than from another male, and from what I understand, women are more likely to trust other females. It would seem to be a no-brainer: don’t hire guys unless your intended clientele are homosexual.

A handy guide to identifying Unix sysadmins exists. I am a Technical Thug, but I wish I were a Maniac. So true, even after more than a decade.

Just watched Super Troopers—lowbrow humour at its best/worst. Much enjoyment. One word: Bidibodi. Anyone who’s seen it knows what I mean…

Saw Adventures in Babysitting tonight. Elisabeth Shue. Elisabeth Shue. She was—and is—so hot, even for a blonde. Mmm…Elisabeth Shue…

Los Angeles County has requested hardware vendors to stop referring to the components of an IDE chain as master & slave. This is the same kind of lunacy which demands that male and female plugs be referred to by some other, less descriptive, moniker. It goes without saying that we cannot be free until these people are crows’ food.

Paul Graham writes cogently on taste. A must-read essay for any man who would like to consider himself at all educated.

Well, today I went back to work after a theoretical three weeks’s vacation. I write theoretical because, other than the two weekdays I was in Madison and the day of Thanksgiving, I worked. I even worked some weekend hours. So really I’m not going back to work; I’m just being honest about the arrangement.

Not that I’m bitter or anything.

I want this sword cane badly, very badly indeed. It looks reasonably attractive, and it’d be just too cool.

Went skeet shooting today with one of the fellows from church. Had a grand old time knocking ’em out of the air. I wasn’t too bad, which is always a good thing—indeed, at times I was pretty magnificent. At others I…wasn’t. Hopefully several of us will be able to go hunting in the next month or so. That should be a blast.

I went to my first gun show today with my buddy Dean. Had a pretty good time; it’s an interesting bunch of folks who show up to such things. First time outside of church that I’ve felt out of place for having only a Van Dyke.

Wish I could have picked something up. I feel the need for a new firearm. Well, to be honest, it’s not need at all: I want a new firearm. A rifle, perhaps—my only rifle right now is a piddling .22 which hardly deserves the name. Something which I could go hunting with would be kinda cool. Not that I’m actually likely to go hunting—but if it’s possible then I could claim that the new rifle is useful, not just a really, really expensive collection-piece.

I saw on Sci-Fi Hi-Fi that Dan Sugalski has written a wonderful series of introductory articles on somewhat advanced subjects. I don’t agree with all he writes, but it’s well worth reading.

I was watching an interview with Richard Curtis, the creator of the Blackadder series and other things (most notably to those who don’t watch PBS, Four Weddings and a Funeral) in which he stated a most remarkable thing: that the atrocious Vicar of Dibley was a political act. He wanted to support the idea that priestesses should be ordained because women are best at working out complex problems and that kind of thing. Not a single word about, I don’t know, priests being icons of Christ, or leading the congregation in the Sacraments, or worshipping God, or anything else: apparently a priest’s job is to act as an underqualified and underpaid psychologist. It’s sad.

Of course, on those grounds, there’s no logical reason women shouldn’t be made priestesses. Once one’s lost the idea that the priest is something, and the he represents Christ, one might as well throw in the towel utterly. Of course, this is the same denomination currently patting itself on the back for electing bishop a man who left his wife and children to find solace in the arms of another.

Been listening to La Decadance on Radio 1190 tonight. It’s an absolutely wonderful show which is kind of French-flavoured pop. What it ends up being is just about the most eclectic thing around, ranging from electronic New Wave-ish stuff to Western covers of the Star Wars theme (no joke—and it worked!) to whatever else the DJ feels like playing. It’s what radio was meant to be. Best two hours on the air.

All the Star Wars goodness one man can stand is at the official Star Wars Databank. Why, it almost makes up for Episodes I and II. Almost. Almost, but not quite. What would make up for it would be for George Lucas to publicly apologise for making a complete dog’s breakfast of what had been a more-than-mildly enjoyable series. Of course, Episode VI was pretty bad, too. Come to think of it, two out of five is pretty bad.

Lucas was also responsible for American Graffiti and Howard the Duck, IIRC. The man must be stopped before he films again.

Yes, one can now get party pigs (i.e. mini-kegs) of root beer! I’ve one sitting in the fridge now. The world gets ever cooler.

Rich Lowry writes on the turgid career of Reverend Al Sharpton. Of course, I rather hope he would get the Dem’s nomination.

Deroy Murdock that Ronald Reagan was a friend of homosexuals and supporter of AIDS research, contrary to the libels of The Reagans.

Patty Reagan does the same, noting how approvingly her father told her about homosexuality when young. It just goes to show that leftists haven’t loyalty even to their friends.

James Nee writes about his thoughts on his son’s growing up. A must-read for any guy.

David Schneider writes about the path which brought him from evangelicalism to Orthodoxy. A must-read for Protestants everywhere—it’ll raise questions you’ve probably not dealt with before.

I saw this today:

Today many people, wishing for an excuse not to do what God asks of them, find fault with the teaching of the Holy Church and reject correct Christian belief. Instead, they choose to believe what they wish. This is akin to a man, not wishing to believe that he will die, simply because the notion does not comfort him. Not only will he fail to prepare for death, as one ought to do, but he will inevitably find himself in the snare of death. Correct belief is not based on what we wish were true, but on Truth itself.

Archimandrite Chrysostomos, The Ancient Fathers of the Desert

That about says it all. It also dovetails nicely with my thoughts on sin, which are that it is not bad so much because it is breaking divine law (although it does do so, of course), but because it is bad for us; sin is a disease. We may not wish to admit that murder, or pride, or lust, or greed are bad for the soul, but they poison it nonetheless—that’s the truth.

Adam Wolfson writes on why the Left hates Bush so. I don’t quite agree with him that their hatred of Bush is so much greater than the Right’s loathing for Clinton. But certainly it often seems much more venomous, and much more undeserved: the man is held to be a fool when he’s actually quite intelligent; he’s held to be inhumane when the opposite is the case. I don’t agree with him on very much—in my opinion, he’s simply another annoying authoritarian statist and the most successful socialist of our age—but the bile poured forth on the man is in most cases undeserved.

This evening I watched a couple episodes of the BBC production Blue Planet: Seas of Life. It got me to thinking that the science fiction fantasists have it all wrong: it’s not the rest of the Solar System which beckons us (for the moment), but rather the other three quarters of our own planet. There are vast expanses under the seas which are currently of no use to us: we should tame them beneath man’s hand before we think of heading to the stars.

Indeed, it makes a good deal of sense to look at the oceans before we look to the sky. The one can be preparation for the other—but one is not at the wrong end of a gravity well. Both environments require sealed habitats (although underwater the condition is rather the opposite of a vacuum); both are hostile to man (although the sea actively attacks while space is simply indifferent); both require three-dimensional thinking. The sea makes a great deal more economic sense: it is full of life, and certainly if the best minds of the next several centuries turned their thoughts in that direction we could figure out how to farm and ranch the place.

The colonisation of the oceans would of course take millennia. We worry about over-population when on the other side of the shoreline there’s more land than the entire settled area of this world. Certainly, it would be a difficult endeavour: there are many strange creatures there against which we have no weapons; there are many scientific problems which would need to be solved regarding pressure, workable habitats, industry and transportation. But those problems are all much more solvable than those associated with space travel.

And yet more men have ventured into space than have travelled to the watery deeps.

I’ve recently added some tasting notes from my Madison, Wisc. Beer Expedition. It was a great time; I’d like to return someday.

Angelic Brewing Co.

Enchanted Abbey

The Great Dane

Black Earth Porter

Cascade Mountain Porter

Crop Circle Wheat

Devil’s Lake Red Lager

Emerald Isle Stout

Old Glory Pale Ale

Old Scratch Barleywine

Potter’s Run IPA

Pumpkin Ale

Stone of Scone Scotch Ale

Wooden Ships ESB

New Glarus

Spotted Cow Kölsch

Read & enjoy.

I was watching the telly tonight at Fado, an Irish pub (so-called) here in denver, when an advertisement for a Lexus sales event came on. What the bloody hell is a sales event, and how is it different from a sale? I imagine that the answer is that it’s simply a stupid way of referring to a sale. Idiot moron marketers.

I’d a depressing realisation yesterday: despite the fact that my brother Thomas & I get along quite well, we’re not likely to see one another all that many times in the future—very probably, less than two dozen. That’s the problem with dispersed family (and, of course, friends): those not in the same geographic area must make a specific effort to see one another, an effort which becomes ever more tedious as the years increase.

Two dozen seems an awfully small number, but it makes sense. I hope to visit him for his winging ceremony (when he gets his pilot’s wings), and of course I’ll be there at his wedding. But after that, he’ll be stationed all over the world—nowhere near Colorado—and his own family & holidays. First it’ll be a two-year gap between, then four, then more. Pretty soon we’ll be strangers.

It’s not unique to Thomas & myself, of course: the same applies to each of us brothers. John is still in Colorado, but it’s not at all certain that he’ll that he would stay. Even should he, when one lives in another end of a Western state the opportunities to cross paths are few and far between. Stephen is still at home, but who knows where his future path will take him? One would imagine that with four brothers the odds would be good that two would end up in the same place, but that’s not the case at all. Interestingly, we Uhl brothers have a far smaller chance of knowing one another in the future than do those I know with but a single sibling.

It’s not even limited to family. The same holds for me & my college friends: they’re all in Texas, and I’m here. As the years pass, I have become less and less likely to go down there, and they have become less and less likely to come up here. I see no reason for that trend to reverse.

The technology for keeping us together has not kept up with the technology for separating us. No longer can one rely on meeting with all one’s circle in the nearest local pub—or even in any pub anywhere, ever. Someone needs to perfect virtual reality Right Now, so that we can meet with all our friends and acquaintances as though in real life.

My brother Thomas’s fiancée, Miss (also Ensign) Emily Burgess, was baptised today. A most enjoyable service; one almost wishes that we were all baptised as adults. It’s so very cool: do you renounce Satan, all his angels, all his works, all his services and all his pride?; I do renounce him. thrice. Of course, Baptism is an excellent thing which should not be with-held from infants. But still…

Anyway, we’d all a good time. My good friend Dean’s wife Chrisanne Gartelos was her godmother, and so her folks & his mom were there, as was Fr. Gabriel from Cheyenne, Wy., and of course all four of us boys were there, and Mom. Dad, naturally, served (benefits of being a PK: we get first-class service, and first-class services). Emily is a great girl, and it’s wonderful that she’s now a baptised Christian.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone out there. It seems to me that on balance I’ve more to be thankful about than otherwise: I live in the best country in the world (it has a lot of problems, but it’s still the best); I’ve a good job; I’m comfortably in the lower middle class; I have three fine brothers; and I’m in good health. Despite how fun it can be to be pessimistic and negative about things, I figure that most of us are probably as lucky—compared to 99% of the world’s past and present population, we’re very fortunate.

Two nights ago I saw Elf with some friends. A nice, pleasant film. Not intellectually challenging, sure, and a bit by-the-numbers—but sometimes that’s alright. A good way to spend a few hours, methinks. Not every film should make one think.

And Zooey Deschanel is hot. Good voice, too.

Years ago in school there was a wonderful site which by the name of mixdrinks.com; it was one bartender’s collection of recipes. It gave me & my buddy Phil more than one idea, let me tell you. Nearly a year ago I tried to visit it again, and much to my chagrin it had disappeared: the name was now owned by some domain squatters. It was a terrible blow.

But that’s all changed now. Steven Foster now has a new site: brightredlipstick—drinks to infinity & beyond. Life is good again. Hopefully a whole new generation of college students will be able to pull victory from the jaws of party-going defeat.

At Fred on Everything I saw this quote:

Consider urinals and the Army. They were never a problem because men regard the entire earth as a urinal in waiting. The side of the road, the middle of the road, a tree, the ocean—they don’t discriminate. The way feminists see oppression everywhere, men see urinals. It’s a design feature.

How true. I often feel sorry for women: they’ll never know the joy of having a beard or of making one’s mark on a tree, fence or snow. On the other hand, I think I prefer them just the way they are, thankyouverymuch…

An amusing site, Fred on Everything; extraordinarily politically incorrect. Passed on my an aunt of mine, who thought I’d enjoy it—and I have.

The town of Geuda Springs, Kansas, passed an ordinance requiring citizens to own guns and ammunition. There are exceptions for the impoverished, the handicapped and those who object to weapons.

There’s part of me that like the idea. We should all take responsibility for the safety of ourselves, our families and our guests. Certainly, those who are not willing to be responsible should be allowed not to be, and thus it is necessary for a process to exist whereby individuals who so wish may declare that they’ve no wish for the responsibility adulthood requires, and thereby be freed of its obligations and privileges. One might no longer be required to own weapons, to be subject to the draft or certain taxes—but then surely it would be fair that one could no longer vote or own more than a small amount of property.

On the other hand, the whole business smacks of statism. If some folks are not willing to take responsibility for their own welfare, well then they should be allowed to, without penalty. If some wish to be foolish, then they should be allowed to. And thus I really cannot seriously support an enforced-arms provision, despite how amusing I find the entire thing.

Eugene (Russian: Evgeny or Yevgeny; Greek: Evgenios) Rodionov was a young (but 19 years old) Russian soldier captured by Chechens seven years ago. Held prisoner for 100 days, his captors spotted his cross and demanded that he remove it and renounce the faith. He naturally refused, and was martyred (New York Times article; requires free registration); three other soldiers were killed along with him. It seems to me that, assuming the veracity of the tale, the man must be a saint; martyrdom automatically includes one in that class, or so I’ve been taught.

The very last line of the New York Times article above notes that although glad to do his duty, the boy wanted to be a cook. Pondering that lead me to consider what a waste a war is. Even when in the noblest of causes; even for the best of reasons; even with a minimum of casualties war is a waste of resources: of time; of money; and of that most precious resource of all—human life. Every single man who dies was born of a mother who’d carried him for nine months; every single one had a father; many had siblings; many were loved; many were respected; all had grown up, had experienced a little or a lot of life—and the life of each one was snuffed out far too soon.

War’s not necessarily senseless: sometimes it can be very sensible indeed. Defeating a Hitler or a Hussein, a Lincoln or a Cromwell: these are worth killing and dying for. But war is never a good thing; it’s never to be hoped for or celebrated. The cult of war is the cult of death.

Thy martyr Eugene, O Lord, in his sufferings has received an incorruptible crown from thee, our God, for having thy strength he has brought down his torturers, has defeated the powerless insolence of demons. Through his prayers save our souls.

A Westerner might wonder how it can be sung that Eugene brought down his torturers and defeated the powerless insolence of demons. But I believe that it’s rather obvious: seeking to dispatch him, his slayers instead sent him to Heaven, to receive a martyr’s crown; seeking to demoralise the Russian people, they instead strengthened Russia’s resolve.

Well, I got back tonight from a beer tour of Madison, Wisc. I’d a great time drinking all sorts of wonderful beers and visiting and old friend and her friends. More on the whole thing later; for now I must sleep.

The Supreme Court of the state of Massachusetts has apparently decided that, somehow, that state’s constitution demands that homosexuals be allowed to civilly marry. I’m not certain what reasoning lead to this conclusion, but it seems sure that excessive use of self-delusion was involved.

Predictably, conservative news outlets are in a tizzy. Many are calling for a Federal Marriage Amendment. My thought is that to do so would be laughably silly. The better idea is to eliminate civil marriage entirely. Marriage is a religious state, not a legal one. True, there are various privileges which spouses get; I see no reason that those privileges could not be extended to anyone who wishes to claim them.

Get the State out of the Church—get rid of civil marriage.

John Derbyshire points out that hatred of England drove English greatness. An interesting thought. Also, the article notes that in some ways Communist China is freer than the modern US.

Despite coërced confessions and poor & ridiculous evidence, the state of Massachusetts has held an innocent man for 14 years. Unlike the Mumia Abu Jamal case—that malefactor is demonstrably guilty—this is a clear-cut case. Or would be, were the Massachusetts judicial system not rotten to the core. The state supreme court at one point apparently stated that finality is more important than justice.

Of course, what else can one expect from Yankees?

Yes, Python fans, we have an answer. Let there be much rejoicing!

I went to a lecture this evening by the owner of White Labs, the premier producer of yeast cultures. He mentioned something quite interesting: the shape of the fermenter has an effect on the finished product. Beer is truly the most complex of beverages: first there is the malt, which is influenced by sun, rain and soil (normally several types of malt are involved); then there are the hops, also influenced thereby, and by the time at which they are added to the boil (too, several hop varieties are usually used); and there’s the yeast, which can completely change a beer (make one batch of beer, divide it by six and use six different yeast strains, and one has half-a-dozen different beers); and then there’s even the shape of the fermenter!

Wine is a stultifyingly boring beverage by comparison. I don’t know why anyone drinks it. I suppose that it’s better than water—but not by much.

I’ve just been watching some of the third seasons Babylon 5 episodes. What a series! What writing, what stories, what consistency: this is what science fiction television can and should be. Star Trek is Star Drek in comparison (well, even not in comparison: were it the only television show in existence, it would still suck; watching grass grow is more exciting, observing foreigners scratch their armpits would be more intriguing and sneezing is more intellectually stimulating than any episode of that God-forsaken series).

The first season’s production values were not particularly good, and some of the stories were a tad immature, but that can all be written off as the product of studio involvement in a new franchise. The second season got much better, and is quite enjoyable in its own right. If that second season hit the ground running, then the third starts out riding a race horse atop a race car within a bullet train—and gets better each episode. I can only begin to guess what the remaining seasons might have in store.

Go down to the local video store, or go to Netflix or some other online DVD rental, and rent everything that’s out so far, then stock the fridge and settle down for the best series television has produced so far. Well, with the exception of Black Adder, of course.

I went to two local malls this weekend and noticed two disturbing phenomena. The first is that there are a great deal off attractive girls—who happen to have children. This is highly annoying: mothers should be my mother’s age, and thus safely too old. It’s highly annoying to have one’s attention captured by a striking gal, and to then discover that it’s a baby she has.

The second, yet more disturbing, phenomenon is the hyper-sexualisation of even preteens. It’s one thing for those who have hit puberty to be sexual: even if we as a society have decided that they should not be, nature will have its way. But it’s somehow sick for a mere child to be prancing about in eye-shadow and makeup. To put it another way, it’s one thing for those who can be sexual to act sexually (even when they oughtn’t), but it’s something far more disturbing when those who cannot try. Whatever happened to childhood? There were great stretches of years in my youth which were dedicated to frogs and fish and flammables, and not to chasing girls. I’ve outgrown that now, but at the time it was entirely appropriate.

There’s something special about a cover song—in many ways, something even more special than the original. The original has become part of the Gestalt in which we live, while the cover is a kind of riff thereon which serves a two-fold purpose: first, it reveals the coverer’s own take on the well-known; and second, it discloses hitherto unknown facets of the work. I’ve an entire and not insignificant section of my audio collection devoted to covers: they are something of a pursuit of mine.

This extends even to other realms of art. Remakes, as film covers are termed, are always worth watching, no matter how poor they might be. I wish that rewrites, or covers of written works, existed. E.g. imagine what Harry Potter could be, written by an author with talent, wit and attention to consistency.

Well, I’ve just had my first patch for a piece of software accepted: I added comments functionality to audiotag, a tool for editing audio file metadata for MP3, Ogg Vorbis and FLAC files. In the past, I submitted a patch for xmms which let it recognise files ending in .mpeg3 as mp3s, but that patch was rejected. Now I’m an honest-to-goodness contributor to free software!

I’m now in the process of reworking my mp3-filing tools. Currently, mp3file is used to edit an mp3’s tags into a standard (to me) format: artist, title, comments (which are such things as 70s, or romance, or grrrl); the same tool then renames & files the songs alphabetically. There is also a tool, mp3list, which is used to search through my collection for songs matching a particular search specification. Everything’s currently written in bash, while that has been reasonable it’s beginning to reach its limits. I’m rewriting in python and hope to have a good curses-based interface.

The occasion of my brother’s 21st has led me to marshal my thoughts on drinking once more. First of all, drinking qua drinking cannot be evil: our Saviour Himself turned water into wine. Second, it has occurred to me that one cannot really trust a teetotaller.

This seems at first a terrible thing to write, but on consideration one will see that it must necessarily be true. Why might a man not drink? First, he could be philosophically or religiously opposed thereto. In that case, he is a heathen and follower of a false religion, and thus not to be trusted. Perhaps his religion allows it, but he does not like the taste of alcohol: in that case, he is a man of poor taste and hence not to be trusted. It may be that his religion allows it, and he likes it, but he does not trust himself to drink. Why should one trust a man who will not trust himself? The only valid reason not to drink alcohol is if one—allowed to drink, enjoying drink and trusting oneself to drink—takes a vow not to, as a form of mortification or spiritual discipline. That can a man respect. There are no other reasonable excuses to abstain from the product of the yeast.

I discovered tonight that the song with the refrain We had joy, we had fun/We had seasons in the sun is about a condemned man awaiting his fate. He killed his wife’s lover—his best friend. Changes my perception of the song, let me tell you.

Of course, it also gets one thinking. Should a man who kills his wife’s lover, or a woman who slays her husband’s mistress, be considered guilty of murder? I don’t believe so: it seems to me that a spouse has a right to blood in such a situation. Not, of course, a simple right to kill: the guilty party has a right to defend himself. I’ve previously written about duelling; I daresay that such a situation is absolutely perfect as an example of when duelling is acceptable and laudable. The interloper and the guilty spouse have broken the marriage contract; but the injured spouse has no recourse against his mate, as that would be an even greater violation thereof. But the third party is, I think, fair game.

Naturally, it would have to be entirely on the up-and-up. An ambush; a sniping bullet; a poison: these would be quite unfair. But a fair fight, mano a mano: that is quite reasonable, I feel. The cuckold has his chance to receive satisfaction, and the libertine has his chance to dispatch his rival and win his paramour.

Of course, it would be better were none of this to happen. But once the marital bed has been defiled by adultery, I think that a duel—not necessarily to death—is a perfectly reasonable way of settling things.

Tonight I lit a roaring fire in my grate; later on I kindled a cigar therefrom; at the moment I’m drinking a dram of Talisker. What do all these things have in common? Smoke, of course. In fact, the aroma in my rooms is really quite incredible: the smoke from wood and cigar are combining to form a kind of spicy velvetiness which transports one to the ethereal realm. The peaty smokiness of the Talisker is an added pleasure on top of it all. It is sublime.

Of course, it’s horribly poisonous: smoke causes cancer (it’s almost the entire reasons that cigarettes are so dangerous, and in addition is why grilled meat tends to lead to various nasty digestive-tract cancers). But I really don’t care: what is life for, if not to enjoy the years we have on this great Earth which God gave us, and to prepare ourselves for the next life? No philosopher can abstain from smoke: like incense, it spirals upward; like prayer, it rises to the heavens. It draws one’s mind to higher things. It is divine.

The BBC reports that kilts will no longer be considered women’s wear by the Brussels bureaucracy. I’m highly annoyed—but not shocked; what else could one expect from such morons—that this was ever an issue.

One of these days I’m going to purchase one for myself. Gals like guys with good legs, and the kilt shows them off well.

Rosemary Œlrich Bottcher writes that feminists should support Terri Schiavo, since not to gives weight to the legal assimilation of a woman by her husband. Of course, most feminists will not, given that for some thirty years or more so many of them have lead the charge to establish culture of death and destruction.

Ed Morrow comments on Andy Rooney, and by extension leftists in general. He correctly notes their habit, which is to insist he said things he didn't say, then claim he was lying. I’m no great fan of Bush—he’s presided over the greatest increase in social spending ever; he’s an authoritarian; I didn’t vote for him (or Gore)—but the man at least deserves to be dealt with honestly.

My brother John turned 21 yesterday (yup—his birthday is Armistice Day) and so I took him downtown to show him the good places. Had a fun time, although the kid is a bit of a lightweight. The older I get, the more I appreciate having brothers. I really do feel sorry for the poor saps who are only kids or only have a single sibling.

No—not women’s skirts (as pleasant a subject as that is to discuss): skirted clothing in general. I’ve long said that one looks much more dashing in clothing which flows rather than that which tucks, but only recently it occurred to me that everyone agrees, only often without realising it. Why do mean’s coats have tails? Why do kids leave their t-shirts untucked? Why did we blouse our t-shirts as kids, to find a median between the options? Why are overcoats so popular? Why does Keanu Reeves gad about in a long coat-cassock throughout the Matrix films?

It’s because flowing, skirted clothing looks better. It’s more dashing, more dramatic, more impressive and more organic.

Also, I look hot in an overcoat.

I have added a short monograph on punch to my bachelor recipes page. It has the receipt for the punch I made myself while recently ill.

I didn’t believe that they actually existed, but rather considered them to be excuses for missing work—but it turns out that there is such a thing as a twenty-four hour fever after all: I just had one. I woke up at about 0300 Friday morning parched and burning, and now seem to have more-or-less recovered.

What really amazes me is how much energy one burns when under a fever. I normally try to eat 3,600—4,800 BTUs (900–1,200 calories—which incidentally aren’t calories at all, but actually kilocalories; so much for French units’ vaunted consistency); on Friday I consumed 18,417 BTUs (about 4,600 calories), more than four times my normal and 1¼ the energy in a pound. Not just that, I weigh nearly about 1¼ less today than yesterday. Considering that I was about equally dehydrated, with about the same food in my gut, one could estimate that I went through about 30,000 BTUs; I normally burn about 5,200 a day. Thus I was running at nearly ½ horsepower. Unfortunately, my physics is not good enough to back-figure how much my temperature must have been. One BTU will heat one pound of water one degree, and that I weigh 167 lbs., and that I was burning for almost exactly 24 hours, one could guess that my temperate went up 30,000/167/24 = 7½°, but I’ve no idea if that’s the right way to go about the calculation.

To tell the truth, I kinda wish that I’d not eaten, so that I’d burned off that much fat instead. But most of the energy came from a strong punch I made to soothe my throat (the recipe for which will come in another article), and it was a life-saver. Without it I’d be a wreck, and possibly would not have healed as quickly.

Rich Lowry writes an excellent defence of toy guns, complete with quotes from Chesterton.

This article has been retracted.

The National post reports that a pillar of the Kyoto Accord is based on flawed calculations, incorrect data and an overtly biased selection of climate records. It turns out that its supposed proof of global may have been essentially, nonsense.

Just finished listening to that great old German soldiers’ love song, Lili Marlene. It’s a masterfully melancholy old lay:

At the barracks compound,
By the entry way
There a lantern I found
And if it stands today
Then we’ll see each other again
Near that old lantern we’ll remain
As once, Lili Marleen,
As once, Lili Marleen.

Both our shadows meeting,
Melding into one
Our love was not fleeting
And plain to everyone,
Then all the people shall behold
When we stand by that lantern old
As once, Lili Marleen,
As once, Lili Marleen.

Then the guard to me says:
There’s tap call, let’s go.
This could cost you three days.
Be there in half a mo’.
So that was when we said farewell,
Tho’ with you I would rather dwell,
With you, Lili Marleen,
With you, Lili Marleen.

Well she knows your foot steps,
Your own determined gait.
Ev’ry evening waiting,
Me? A mem’ry of late.
Should something e’er happen to me,
Who will under the lantern be,
With you Lili Marleen,
With you, Lili Marleen?

From my quiet existence,
And from this earthly pale,
Like a dream you free me,
With your lips so hale.
When the night mists swirl and churn,
Then to that lantern I’ll return,
As once, Lili Marleen,
As once, Lili Marleen.

It has been translated into many languages, including Latin.

Once again it has been demonstrated that drinking is healthy. This time, nipping down to the local for a pint has been shown to help maintain mental agility in the aging. This is, of course, why tee-totallers are such a sad, drifty, senile lot.

I’ve been informed by my team lead (right-hand-man of my manager) that I must use up my vacation days & personal holidays—all 16 of them. I’ve only taken two this year, you see. And I cannot take off the end of December, because I’m working hot pager over Christmas. So it looks like half of November and part of December will be mine to do with as I will.

Sadly, I’m pretty much out of ideas. My brother’s fiancee will be in town over Thanksgiving, and a friend has invited me to visit in Wisconsin, but other than that I’m at a loss. Oh well—not working trumps working any day. Maybe I’ll borrow my kid brother’s camping gear and just walk about the mountains.

In 2007 the entire world will celebrate the quadricentennial of the first English settlement in the New World, at Jamestown. A good 13 years before the Mayflower, I hasten to add. My family are descended from John Rolfe, the man who first planted tobacco in Virginia. These Yankee-come-latelies ever brag of their vaunted ancestry—hah! We were here while they were still gadding about the Netherlands.

Sometimes, Scott Adams says it best.

Last night for a friend’s birthday I went up to Central City to gamble at Harvey’s—the first time I’ve ever legally gambled (naturally, I’ve wagered off-the-record in the past). It was alright, but I think that I’m too mathematically inclined to really enjoy a losing game like that.

What I really don’t get are the video slot machines. So many of the folks in front of them are grim and unhappy—they’re certainly not enjoying themselves. It’s not even as though the games themselves are intellectually engaging: all one does is bet, then see if one has won. There’s no challenge, no excitement, no fun.

Now, the bunch I went up with all had a good time, and they approached the games with the right mindset: to have fun. After all, when one sees an opera, there’s no chance that one will get one’s ticket refunded, but when gambling one may actually come out ahead—properly understood and enjoyed for itself, gambling is the only fun activity which can reward one. I’d a great time with everyone, but it’s just not something I can see myself doing often, or much at all.

Plus, there was no roulette. I don’t know how one can call oneself a casino without roulette.

Well, that’s the quickest autumn ever: one week. Last Friday it cooled off; yesterday we’d a lot of ice; and today it snows. Damn it, I love autumn: it’s the greatest time of year. And this year, it hardly happened. I want grey; I want clouds; I want to not see the sun, and yes winter offers all that. But I don’t want snow (yet); I want leaves on the ground, not ice. I want the romance of autumn, not the hibernation of winter. I want October back!

According to CNN, toy gun in a bag caused a lock-down of a Capitol office building. How utterly ridiculous! Who cares—so someone had a (toy) pistol. For nearly a century it was common practise for men to carry weapons into the Capitol itself. Andrew Jackson once challenged the entire Senate to a duel. Weapons are only an issue when a few have them, because those few suddenly have a lever on the many. If most men still carried weapons, we’d be safer, but more importantly we’d be freer.

Sean Rushton has written an excellent article on the rampant rudeness and discrimination shown toward Janice Rodgers Brown, Bush’s latest mistreated judicial nominee. He also alludes to racialism, which is to say leftist racism, as a particularly ugly influence.

As I went to sleep last night, the carboy in my closet full of my latest beer was happily bubbling away—quite noisily, actually. Blurp, blurp, blurp, a bit more than once a second. A sweet lullaby to carry me off to dreamland, visions of amber nectar dancing in my head.

Seriously, it was most pleasant. Brewing’s a nice hobby.

It occurred to me recently that we waste an awful lot of space on growing useless plants in our parks. Why plant evergreens when we could plant apples? Why ground cover where mints or herbs could grow?

No, since that land will be used for growing things (an admirable pursuit), it should be used to grow useful things. In this way the poor would be given an additional resource to fall back on, and the well-off would be able to supplement their cookery.

I saw 16 Horsepower play last night (Pinkku, apparently a side project of musicians from several local bands, opened). Lots of fun. The band’s music is kind of an alt-country rock with an eclectic set of instruments: guitar and drums, of course—but also bass cello (or whatever it’s called), banjo and accordion. The lead singer’s grandfather was a so-called Nazarene preacher, and it shows in his songs. The show was a bit pricey for an indie band ($14), but well worth it.

Title IX provides that men and women must have equal access to sports teams at the collegiate level. Since fewer women than men are interested in sports, this has led to the destruction of many men’s athletic teams. But I'm not certain that this is a bad thing. What business does a college have handing out athletic scholarships? How does groping, mashing, running and hitting factor into education? Shouldn’t collegiate funds be spent on something somehow related to improving the minds of students—say, a library, or academic buildings, or (at a private university) a chapel?

I’ve naught against sports in general. Mens sana in corpora sano, after all. But physical fitness is the business of gymnasia, not universities. The university is a temple of thought, of reason, of scholarship—not of pugilism. Informal, student-initiated sports are fine, but the formal, corporate, insane spectacle which college athletics has become should be stopped.

Don’t de-fund men’s teams: de-fund them all.

Deory Morudock has an article on the imprisonment of Tommy Chong and the drug war in general. Apparently even the Drug Czar has admitted that the real debate should be about legalisation of drugs.

Fall has finally arisen. It’s my favourite of the seasons, a time when a man can feel truly alive. Awfully late this year—even into last week we’d weather in the 80s. Pity, too: October is typically my favourite month. Grey, beginning to get cold, the leaves blustering around in the wind: it’s the most romantic time of the year.

Saturday morning we’d the first frost, though, and now it feels as though it’s not likely to warm up again until spring. Life is good!

I’m brewing up a Belgian abbey-style ale right now. Should be tasty, what with amber & light malts; Hallertauer, Goldings and Saaz hops and a Belgian yeast.

I also kegged up my porter from September this week. It’s pretty tasty.

I attended the International Mead Festival yesterday evening. What a blast! I’d some great metheglins (mead with herbs and spices—the root word of our modern word medicine) and melomels (mead with fruit, save apples or grapes). There was even a braggot (mead with malt) and several varieties of tej (Ethiopian mead). Unfortunately, I’d no cyser (mead with apple juice—a kind of mead cider) or pyment (mead with grape juice—mead-wine). There was even a rose mead; it was the only the second time I’ve had such a thing.

For those who’ve not heard of it, mead is fermented honey. It’s widely believed to have been the first alcoholic drink, as it is the most easily produced by accident (water down honey, as if to drink it, but forget to—come back in a few days and you’ll find mead). It has also been considered to have aphrodisiacal properties and to stimulate the production of boys (much as white wine is believed to do the same for girls—something to do with pH, I’m told), which is why it was traditional among our Saxon ancestors to drink it for a month after being married, hence our modern word honeymoon.

Cringely writes on how greatly Microsoft misunderstands the free software movement. A worthy read.

Oceanwave Consulting tried to get support from Microsoft, but no luck, so turned to the Psychic Friends Network. Their results may surprise you.

Passed on by my old man.

Rules to Enter Texas

Applies to each person as they enter Texas. Learn and remember them.

1. Pull your droopy pants up. You look like an idiot.
2. Let’s get this straight: it’s called a gravel road. I drive a pickup truck because I need to. No matter how slow you drive, you’re going to get dust on your Lexus. Drive it or get out of the way.
3. They are pigs, cattle and oil wells. That’s what they smell like to you. They smell like money to us. Get over it. Don’t like it? I-20 and I-10 go east and west, I-35 goes north and south. Pick one.
4. So you have a $60,000 dollar car. We’re impressed. We have quarter-million dollar cotton strippers that we drive 3 weeks a year.
5. So every person in every pickup waves. It’s called being friendly. Try to understand the concept.
6. If that cell phone rings while a bunch of doves are coming in, we will shoot it out of your hand. You better hope you don’t have it up to your ear at the time.
7. Yeah, we eat catfish and crawdads. You really want sushi and caviar? It’s available at the corner bait shop.
8. The Opener refers to the first day of deer season. It’s a religious holiday held the closest Saturday to the first of November.
9. We open doors for women. That is applied to everyone, regardless of age.
10. No, there’s no vegetarian special on the menu. Order steak. Or you can order the Chef’s Salad and pick off the two pounds of ham & turkey.
11. When we fill out a table, there are three main dishes: meats, vegetables, and breads. We use three spices: salt, pepper, and Pace Picante Sauce.
12. You bring coke into my house, it better be brown, wet, and served over ice. You bring Mary Jane into my house, she better be cute, know how to shoot, drive a truck, and have long hair.
13. High School Football is as important here as the Lakers and the Knicks, and a dang site more fun to watch.
14. Yeah, we have golf courses. Don’t hit the water hazards—it spooks the fish.
15. Colleges? Try Texas A&M, Baylor and UT. They come outta there with an education plus a love for God and country, and they still wave at passing  pickups when they come for the holidays.
16. We have more folks in the Navy, Army, Marines, and Air Force than any other state, so Don't Mess with Texas. If you do, it will get your butt  whipped by the best.
17. Always remember what our great president Sam Houston once said: Texas can make it without the United States, but the United States can’t make it  without Texas.

God Bless Texas!

I recently happened upon Unix is a Four-Letter Word. It’s a nice introduction to some of the regions of Unix most useful to the new user. Although I’d recommend emacs over vi any day.

It’s funny: until about a year ago, I don’t believe my parents really realised how absolutely incompetent I have been with the fair sex. When I went to London for a week-and-a-half in early December, they somehow had the idea that I was meeting a girl. What’s odder is that they said naught before I left about it.

I suppose that just as every mother thinks her son handsome, every father thinks him a success with lasses—and if the lad says he’s not, then he’s just being modest.

The alpha version of Tasting Notes is now being worked on. I’ve coded the most essential features: one can see beers, breweries and bars. I have yet to add view-by-style or view-by-food, and editing still must be done from the PostgreSQL listener psql—but the major work is done.

This version should be much faster than Tasting Notes 1, and stabler by far. It uses mod_python to speed up the Python side of things, and PostgreSQL to do a better job on the database side. It’s also written in much more sensible fashion than before. It’s still unattractive, because I have yet to add in all the CSS styles I need to in order to make it pretty; that’ll come last.

I recently realised that all three of the Uhl boys with websites have recipes pages: I have bachelor and mediæval recipes; Thomas has many recipes and John, too, has a recipes page. Although of course mine is the most attractive, which is only natural…

Seriously, it’s odd how much we each like to cook. And of course my buddy Phil is an incredible cook and a confirmed Food Channel (or is it Food Network?) junkie. Pity he hasn’t a page up as well.

Somehow, cooking got the reputation of being woman’s work—naught could be further from the truth, really. It’s very much a man’s kind of thing, I believe, for various philosophical reasons which I shan’t go into here. For centuries, so far as I can tell, it was recognised as such. It’s time we men reclaimed the kitchen!

Scott Andrew is donating the excess over $5/CD for each CD he sells to the P2P Legal Defence Fund. Pity the fellow doesn’t play out this way—anyone willing to do this much deserves to be heard.

I attended the Known World Costume Symposium this past weekend. To my great good fortune, not only was KWCS in Denver, but so too was the Known World Academy of the Rapier—and therefor the attendance was quite phenomenal. The event was an absolute blast!

The moment I strode into the hotel I was hit by a wonderful sensation of cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, the building was fairly modern: bright and airy; great atria; glass elevators &c. On the other, it was filled with men, women and children in the clothing of a myriad times & places. Filling those modern hallways and visible in the elevators were folks who could have stepped out of a painting. Lining the balconies overlooking the lobby men & women stood chatting, just as out of a Renascence picture. It was too cool.

I attended several most informative classes on various topics (the importance of primary sources; Elizabethan doublets; Elizabethan cassocks; Renascence gambling; dance) and met some great people. I made some new friends and saw old friends anew.

Saturday evening there was a masque, to which I was able to wear the Venetian mask my dear brother bought for me from a maker which has been in business for several centuries (400?). I was splendidly dashing, I think.

Loads of fun. Those who do not don mediæval clothing on the weekends can only wish they did.

Because a Minnesota school board outlawed the carrying of weapons by students, gun safety classes cannot be properly taught on school property. A bunch of middle schoolers brought their shotguns and rifles to class to learn how to safely handle them, but were forbidden by administrators to carry them into the building. The article features this chilling statement by one Sue Brown, of the school board: Whatever you can do to restrict, restrict. That woman should be disenfranchised.

The trouble with diets is that as one progresses, what had formerly been an excellently low weight becomes an excessively high one. E.g. when I was at 180 it was wonderful to weight in at 172, but now that I’m at 168 I consider 172 painfully high.

An article from 7 January 1946 has such gems as:

…We have swept away Hitlerism, but a great many Europeans feel that the cure has been worse than the disease.

We’ve lost the peace.

Friend and foe alike, look you accusingly in the face and tell you how bitterly they are disappointed in you as an American.

Never has American prestige in Europe been lower.

…instead of coming in with a bold plan of relief and reconstruction we came in full of evasions and apologies.

…some also blame America because they expected so much more from her.

The more things change the more they stay the same.

Terra Wind: the luxury motor-home/yacht. Yes, it goes in the water. No, I’ve no idea why you'd want to take it therein.

Please, make the hurting stop.

Israeli intelligence agents cheered and took photos as the World Trade Centre burned. Maybe the loony-bin conspiracy theorists are right after all. Almost certainly not, of course. Still, I’d like to know why our supposedly great friend’s agents found the attack so droll.

The Colorado Libertarian party has issued a press release on the recent insidious spread of smoking bans in our state. It presents the issue quite plainly: it is a matter of individual freedom; nothing more, nothing less. The businessman is free to allow or forbid smoking; the citizen is free to patronise that business or not. There is no place for the State in that equation! Those city councils which pass such ordinances are acting contrary to the ideals upon which this nation was founded; those who support such measures are traitors to the very principles of liberty and freedom.

Michelle Malkin writes on the topic of liberal racism as well. She uses the shameful treatment of Bobby Jindal, Republican candidate for governor in Louisiana and incidentally an Indian, who has been described repeatedly as dark-skinned by leftist journalists.

One notes that in modern America it is we conservatives who are truly colour-blind, wishing for all to having equality of opportunity regardless of the shade of our skins, while it is the leftists who strive mightily to preserve racial discrimination wherever it serves their purposes. The conservative wishes all the races to be equal; the leftist wishes whites (and East Asians) to be subservient to all other races (and men to women, as well).

Walter Williams has a great article about racial censorship, that is, the reporting of supposed racist comments made by conservatives (e.g. Limbaugh’s quite justified statement that the fuss over Donovan McNabb is due to his colour) while actual racist statements made by liberals are ignored. He gives as examples the New York City Councilman who states—in 2002—that he’d like to slap a white man; California Lieutenant Governor and sometime gubernatorial candidate Cruz Bustamante, who used the word nigger in public; Senator Robert Byrd, who did the same in an interview; and a few others. These were all, unlike Limbaugh’s statement, actual, honest-to-goodness racist moments, and the liberal offenders got off quite scot-free. Of course.

I’d an Oktoberfest meal at C.B. & Pott’s today: kraut & wurst with mash & applesauce—sound good, huh? Well, the sausages had been fried (frying bratwurst, of course, imperils one’s immortal soul); the kraut was dry and crispy: it too had been fried, lightly; the mash was, instead, cold, uncooked vaguely-German potato salad; the applesauce was blah and boring and, also, cold. I’ve never had a sadder platter. Until lunchtime today, I would have called the man a lier who claimed that wurst-und-kraut could be ruined. Now, I must sadly admit that said statement is, in fact, the case. How bloody unfortunate. Expensive, too: $11 for culinary enlightenment of the most negative kind.

Friday’s issue of the Rocky Mountain New featured the headline She Said No in reference, of course, to the Kobe Bryant rape trial. Now, I should preface my remarks with a note that IMHO rape is the worst of crimes, worse even than murder, and that it should be a capital offence. But I also hold justice to be among the highest of ideals—and part of justice is the principle that the accused is innocent until proven guilty. In fact, until he has been proven guilty, he is the innocent and therefore his accuser is the guilty party, for his reputation will never recover, no matter what the truth about the crime in question.

Is Kobe Bryant (what sort of name for a man is Kobe, anyway?) an adulterer? Of course. Is Kobe Bryant an overpaid, under-mature athlete? Obviously. Is he a rapist? That remains to be seen. And until it has been demonstrated, or he has admitted it, or an impartial witness can be obtained, then there is no sound basis to claim that his supposed victim said no. It remains, for the moment, simply a matter of he-said, she-said. My own opinion is that is probably was some degree of rape, although almost certainly not the worst kind—but that’s just an opinion; it’s not fact, and Bryant could be quite innocent of all but adultery (which is why he will not get the title Mr. on my blog)—that’s just not how I happen to be betting at the moment.

That’s immaterial, though. Until a jury of his peers has found Bryant guilty of rape, or at least until it has been demonstrated that the woman in question did, indeed, say no, it is irresponsible for a newspaper to state that she, in fact, did so do.

Tried to watch the utterly dreadful Dinotopia. Precious moments of my life which will never return. Atrocious, simply atrocious. Full of all sorts of new-agey crap like vegetarianism and pacifism. Unscientific nonsense like meat-eater and plant-eater areas (in real life, of course, predators are interspersed well among their prey). Foul acting, terrible writing, poor computer graphics—nothing good about it at all.

I turned it off and watched All Creatures Great and Small instead. Superior by far.

I was to have gone hunting today.

I was to have started a 14th century costume for the Known World Academy of the Rapier and Known World Costume Symposium.

I was to have achieved something with my holiday.

Instead, I lay in bed until well past midnight reading a book, then read another until noon because I had a phone call to make at 0845. Then I slept until 1900. A complete waste of a day, a complete waste of my day off. All because I like reading.

Strangely, it’s not at all satisfying.

Francis Ford Coppola was in town last night to receive a lifetime achievement award from our mayor. Before the presentation of the award, he displayed a film of his from 1981 or ’82 entitled One from the Heart which had been shown for but one week before being pulled from distribution. Not a bad film, with some interesting ideas (the main one of which was shooting the entire thing live, which didn't actually end up happening, although much of it is these really long, multi-set takes).

Our mayor is an interesting sort. Of course, Cromwell was a brewer too…

Drove up to Ft. Collins today; did the tours at New Belgium and Odell’s, and had dinner at CooperSmith’s. Jotted down lots of notes which will eventually get added to Tasting Notes (possibly I won’t add ’em until I’ve updated the program entirely). On the way back home, I stopped off at St. James’s, an Orthodox church visible from the highway. At another point in my journey I retrieved a spaghetti pot I had left in a clubhouse in February.

Then I went to work for two hours. All in all a full day.

A sentence for some horrendous crime? A foul mediæval torture? No—Robin Miller willingly subjected himself to Windows for a week. The horror, the horror.

I’m revamping Tasting Notes; it’s a database of my thoughts on various beers I’ve had. The current version is CGI-based and very slow: the new version will use mod_python and should be considerably faster.

For the first time in my life, I’ve plaited my hair; it’s in a single braid running down my neck and between my shoulders. It looks good. I should have grown my hair out years ago.

Ari Armstrong has written on the subject of jury nullification. There’s recently been something of a controversy here in Colorado, where a country treasurer dared make available pamphlets containing the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and other material, including a defence of a juror’s right to ignore the law and find a man innocent.

Those of us who are single have grown to hate the insipidity which seems to infect parents’ brains—that flaw of character which renders them unable to realise that their beloved child is, really, not much more than a per of above-average intelligence. A fellow named Maddox reviews kids’ artwork, as posted by their parents at work.

Actually, I quite like kids. I’m just not labouring under the delusion that they are precious, sweet or any other such thing. They’re human beings, just like anyone else, with their own good and bad qualities.

I’ve recently completed a reworking of the Metropolis of Denver site. It’s not perfect, but is the result of various political compromises—but the main thing is that it’s done, and done far better than the previous site. As bad as the design is in spots, it is universes better than that which preceded it. To tell the truth, I’m actually quite proud of bits and pieces thereof.

Scott Granneman of Security Focus has an article in the Reg arguing that Windows is inherently insecure, and that if some Unix (e.g. Linux or Mac OS) took over the desktop and server markets, we’d not see the sorts of vulnerabilities and worms so prevalent with Windows, Internet Information Server, Outlook, Internet Explorer &c.

I’m not quite certain. It seems to me that as long as there are fools who wish to use computers without knowledge, there will be broken programs which cater to their supposed needs—and that so long as these programs exist, there will be problems.

Christopher Hitchens writes on the topic of Englishness. A wonderful read.

Arnold Rimmer has a website. Or at least Chris Barrie does.

Seems that Bruce Campbell is in as new film, called Bubba Ho-Tep. He plays Elvis, who didn’t die but instead switched places with an impersonator (who went on to die of pills & fatty food). He’s ended up in a nursing home with JFK, who was died black by the CIA after they replaced his brain. And now there’s a mummy stalking the other folks in the retirement home. So odd that I’ve got to see it.

Slashdot has a review which manages to nicely whet my appetite.

Back in August, Dave Barry published the toll-free number of the American Teleservices Association. Thousands of folks called, wasting the ATA’s time (can you imagine that?). It got so bad that the telephone number was disconnected.

Well, he’s now published their new number. It is, at least for the moment, 317-816-9336 (I called it, and the guy at the end said it was the wrong number). So make sure to pick it up and see if they are interested in any of the fabulous offers you no doubt have.

This whole telemarketing business is much like the spam problem. It isn’t free to receive spam (some 1/3 or so of AOL’s) email storage space is spam, pure and simple), and nor is it free to receive a telemarketer’s call. It takes time and effort to answer the phone, time and effort which one would prefer not to expend. The solution, of course, is to waste the telemarketers’ time with phone calls, much as the solution to spam is to fill the mailboxes of spammers with every catalogue, subscription, junk mail &c. one possibly can. It doesn’t so much do good as make one feel good, which is good enough for me.

The Poles have found four French Roland-3 missiles in Iraq. Thy were manufactured in ’03—shortly before we invaded. This should serve as further proof that the real reason the Frogs & Krauts have opposed us is that they made money off of the Hussein régime.

They have since apologised, most likely because they wish to join the New Holy Roman Empire (one would have thought that the Poles would have learnt their lesson with the first one). The French defence—that the missiles haven’t been made in years—strikes me as false: what wouldn’t make sense like continuing to manufacture old-tech weapons to sell to suspect buyers? That way one would always have an advantage, but could still make money.

An animal rights group set loose 10,000 mink—thereby unleashing a frenzy Mink have attacked exotic birds, chickens, fish and even a dog. Those which have been returned have resorted to cannibalism (apparently mink will only leave alone their sibling, and since there’s no way to tell which is which, inevitably the pens have a heterogeneous mixture).

The Fur Commission USA is offering a $100,000 reward information about the crime. Methinks they should offer $1,000,000 for the heads of those responsible. But I’m bloody-minded.

I don’t care about sports (in fact, I consider them akin to short pants: silly in anyone over the age of 13), but the recent furor over Limbaugh’s remark that some quarterback is over-rated because of his colour has reached even me. Allen Barra writes that yes, Limbaugh was right, and further that he didn’t say aught wrong.

They coldcall folks listed in whois. Why am I posting this? Read on for enlightenment.

Reading my brother Thomas’s rant about an article which noted that the name of the Ignobel Prizes is a pun on ignoble reminds me how much we’re alike. I never used to think so; in fact there was a time when I wondered if he might not actually be a changeling (the boy likes sports!). But when he graduated from the US Naval Academy, we went to a party with some of his friends, and they commented that we are incredibly similar. At first we resisted; after all, a large part of our lives has been spent opposing one another in various ways. But eventually we had to admit that it’s true. It’s not so much that we’re alike, as that everyone else is so much different.

What made me realise the truth is that on the drive over we had spent about a quarter hour agreeing that anyone who misuses the apostrophe as in CD’s (it hurts just to write that) should be executed, banished or otherwise dealt with very harshly indeed.

I’ve spent the last two months or so revamping WesternOrthodox.com, the homepage of my parish and an excellent resource regarding Orthodoxy. It’s now all about buzzword compliance: XHTML, CSS, Dublin Core Metadata &c. There’s some really good content therein, and it should be accessible to all, due to my efforts to keep it standards-compliant.

Went small game hunting today up around Georgetown. No luck (my dinner tonight came from the fridge, not the field), but I’d a great time nonetheless. It’s pretty country up there; and the weather was pleasant (overcast, so the sun could not work its evil). I’ve read that half an hour alone in nature can be as rewarding as an hour in psychotherapy; now I’ve experienced it.

Of course, psychotherapy doesn’t give one blisters and sore muscles, but that’s a small price to pay, methinks.

I went to a great concert last night: My Morning Jacket with Patrick Park.

When I write Park opened, I mean it: it was just him, his acoustic guitar, a harmonica and a microphone. A good, earnest musician who obviously enjoys what he’s doing. Keep an eye out for him—he could be big someday. After the show, I bought a CD from him. Unlike the pictures on his website, he’s actually a friendly fellow.

My Morning Jacket were incredibly varied. Their music ranged from country-folk to Skynardesque rock, complete with guitar solo, to Zeppelinnish tunes, to a Grateful Dead-like jam session. The players all have long hair, and for almost the entire evening it covered their faces completely: a nest of hair with a microphone vanishing inside. ’Twas much like being serenaded by Cousin It. The band played for 2¼ hours—about 3 normal-length sets. It was an incredible show.

Lots of pretty girls, but nearly all of them were attached. I managed to speak to almost all the rest, but alas no good news to report on that front. I did manage to get a good conversation going with one girl (on beer, of course: it’s the only thing I know aught about), but just as it was getting interesting the music started.

The Rocky Mountain News, the better of the two local papers, had the temerity to give me a fortnight’s subscription for free. This is not the boon it seems; rather it’s been an horrible nuisance. Every morning, there’s a paper on my step, which I toss in my hall to read in the evening—which of course I never get around to doing, and so the dashed things pile up, mocking me.

Should I ever have an enemy, I shall subscribe him to both papers.

Bruce Bartlett has an informative article about poverty. Of the poor, 91% own colour televisions and 74% own microwave ovens. Correcting for errors in calculations, the poverty rate for last year (officially 12.1%) was actually 7½%. Moreover, over ½ of those classified as poor between 1996 and 1999 met the qualification for less than four months. As Bartlett notes, this sort of income mobility means that our measures of income inequality are also overstated.

Antarctica finally has a church. Concerned with the spiritual condition of those on post there, the Russian Orthodox built a church, disassembled it and are shipping it to King George Island. A Father Georgy will be assigned to the chapel.

Holy Russia used to do this sort of thing all the time, sponsoring chapels in foreign lands for the use of all Orthodox. It’s good to see that this has returned.

Thomas Hibbs has a very interesting review of Lost in Translation. I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about it, so perhaps I’ll see it this weekend.

I actually met Bill Murray once in downtown Denver. He was at the Celtic Tavern and so loitered outside until I got the chance to shake his hand. Nice guy—much taller than one might suspect.

Meghan Cox Gurdon continues here excellent Fever Swamp column with a tale of childish birthdays. Quite funny.

That’s one of the nice things about growing up: one can forget about birthday parties and instead go out, have a beer and enjoy oneself.

I recently watched Jane Eyre and Persuasion, both set in about the Regency Period, and suddenly the thought occurred to me that someday the present day will seem as remote and odd as that time does to us now. Very strange idea, that so much which we take for granted and the order things, will one day be regarded as antiquated and odd. Common sense, of course, but still strange.

William J. Federer writes that is religion, and more specifically Christianity, which is the fundamental basis for freedom. Without God, rights spring from the State—and may be removed thereby. Without equality under God, secularists are free to exterminate those races they despise. Without morality, no government can govern—and in the headlong dash to its own destruction, it will be forced to legislate and legislate its citizens into slavery.

According to Suzanne Fields, copyright law was used to silence an article about Hitler. Apparently, Homes & Gardens had published a fawning article about Hitler in ’38, which was recently posted online at the Guardian (a left-wing English newspaper). The article was forced down by the current editor in an attempt to quell his embarrassment.

When will we learn that information wants to be free?

So far as I know, Uhl Studios are owned by a Uhl completely and totally unrelated to myself. And yet they are located in the same town as we are, and I’ve never heard of them until now. Small world, indeed.

The New Yorker discusses the latest Chicago Manual of Style. It makes the excellent point that any manual of style is purely idiosyncratic. I have my own style which I use always; so too every other writer of any taste whatsoever. It’s the small mind which is limited by the vision of others.

The discussion of the supposed horrors of writing the end matter of one’s works made me laugh: I use LaTeX, which is built on a text formatter older, I believe, than myself, and I never had any issues. Of course, anyone foolish enough to use anything so inadequate as Microsoft Word deserves every wasted hour and misery-filled breath. Those of us with wit will have retired to bed long ago, secure in our superiority.

Anyway, the closing paragraph expresses the oh-so-true sentiment: there is, if not a right way, a best way to do every single thing, down to the proverbial dotting of the i. Those who haven’t an opinion on what that best is, aren’t really trying hard enough.

Dennis Prager writes on the absurdity of the leftist position regarding race and two items: a California girl who (apparently innocently) wants a white-kid’s club, there being clubs for every other ethnicity; and a conservative student group which sold cookies at prices dependent on the race and sex of those purchasing, in order to make a point about discrimination (which is termed affirmative action these days).

From Smart Guns/Foolish Legislators:

A real-world example of the statistical evidence found by Lott and Whitley was the incident in Merced, California, in August 2000. There, a pitchfork-wielding man cut the phone lines to a home, then broke in and began attacking the four children, while their parents were not home. The oldest child, fourteen-year-old Jessica Carpenter was unable to retrieve her father's guns from a locked cabinet. She ran to a neighbour’s home, and begged him to use his own gun to confront the attacker. The neighbour did not do so, but 911 was called. By the time the police arrived, Jessica Carpenter’s seven-year-old brother and nine-year-old sister had been murdered. Jessica's fathers guns were locked up in accordance with the California felony CAP law.

A CAP law is a so-called Child Access Prevention law. Had California not had one, it’s likely that the fourteen-year-old could have saved her brother and sister. The legislators who proposed, drafted & approved that law are responsible for those deaths; so too the worm of a governor who failed to veto it, and the thugs of police who enforced it. As for the neighbour, I hope he burns in hell: the whole point of gun-owning is to be able to wield force appropriately. Refusal to do so is a dereliction of duty.

Yesterday I had lunch with the two youngest of my three brothers. Although they’re still quite young (John’s 20 and Stephen’s but 17), it was really nice to be able to sit there and dine with them. I pity the only child, or the child from a small family. Looking back, the trade-off of vacations to Disney World for them was well worth it.

Perhaps inspired by Philip Greenspun’s proposal for free tuition, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created MIT OpenCourseWare, a collection of freely-viewable and somewhat freely-distributable course materials for many fields. This could be a truly Great Thing.

One of the bands which played on Saturday night was Cordero, from New York City. They said something which quite moved me: that in New York it is illegal to dance or smoke in a club—and therefor they begged us all smoke and dance, because you never know when someone’s going to take it away.

It really makes one thing, and it really gets down to the nitty-gritty of the subject: authoritarian legislation is all about taking, all about enslaving. And it makes one think how sad that folks, rather than rising in armed insurrection against such evil, merely accept it mildly, as something inevitable. But oppression is never inevitable: it requires the acquiescence of the oppressed.

To quote Ari Armstrong (originally on the subject of drinking laws):

What we are talking about precisely is fascism. Not the fascism of the death camps, but a banal, tedious, petty fascism that slowly leaches the spirit of freedom from the American soul.

That’s exactly what it is. Sure, anti-smoking laws are not as evil as death camps and secret police—but they’re still evil. I am not exaggerating here: they are denials of liberty, and liberty is simply respect for the free will with which our God has endowed us. Authoritarianism is thus the denial of free will, and inimical to the Christian.

Ironically, this was also the first time I have ever in my life been surrounded by smokers, and wished they’d extinguish their cigarettes. For whatever reason, they smelled absolutely foul that night. But I, being a respecter of liberty, would never demand that anyone be forced to cease smoking in my presence.

Having turned a grand quarter-century not too long ago, my insurance rates have gone down not inconsiderably: from $761.78 every 6 months down to $222.16! That’s absolutely incredible. There’s no way that I’m that much safer a driver now than I was several months ago. Amazing the evils an actuarial table can work upon one. If there were fairness, the rate would go down slightly every year, as one improved according to the tables, and then up, once one reaches the age of general senility.

I sent in my car registration (i.e. property tax on ownership of the means of transportation), which has been about $25 for several years now ($23.87 this year, to be exact), only to have it returned by the county clerk. Because I have moved into an area serviced by a toll road, my taxes are increased by a further $10—nearly ½ my entire bill! Not only would this be unreasonable for any road (esp. one which I use no more frequently now than I did before I moved), but it is especially unreasonable considering that it is a toll road which should be more than paying for itself.

What this country needs if for every penny-ante legislator, bureaucrat, executive & voter who dares waste the public’s money to be forcibly expelled.

Tonight I struck my head against the underside of an iron stair, thereby occasioning the flow of rather a surprising amount of blood from my scalp. Eventually it stopped, and now my hair is caked with it. Interesting, the colour is exactly that of red-died black or brown hair, as is to be found in certain subcultures. From now on, I shall ever think they look as though they’ve hair filthy and matted with gore when I see them.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving: I used to think them a decent bunch of folks who did a wonderful job of educating folks about the dangers to oneself and (more importantly) others of drunken driving. I believe that I’ve even given them money. Who could oppose their agenda? As it turns out, anyone with any wit whatsoever. These harridans are not so much opposed to drunken driving (something which is a problem and should be punished), but opposed to all consumption of alcohol. Read these quotes from them and their fellow-travellers:

Lowering the legal [arrest] standard will be a deterrent for light drinkers as well as heavy drinkers. There is no safe blood alcohol level, and for that reason, responsible drinking and driving means no drinking and driving.—Catherine Prescott, former MADD President

…we do not want to overlook the casual drinker. If you choose to drink, you should never drive. We will not tolerate drinking and driving-period.—MADD President, Karolyn Nunnallee

Driving is a very serious and complex task. The thought that it can be successfully combined with alcohol on the part of the driver or even the passengers defies any logic I can imagine.—Wendy Hamilton, former MADD President

If .08% is good, .05% is better. That’s where we’re headed, it doesn’t mean that we should get there all at once. But ultimately it should be .02%.—Steve Simon, Chairman, Minnesota State DUI Task Force

Bull-fucking-shit. There are plenty of safe blood alcohol levels. There are also plenty of unsafe blood alcohol levels. The heart of intelligence is learning to discriminate, to identify where in a continuum a factor becomes an issue. These bluestockings obviously have not just far too much time on their liver-spotted hands, but also no scientific sense at all. Had they such sense, they would no that it’s not one or two—or even several—drinks which endanger, but many. Fewer, true, than is necessary to be truly drunken (e.g. one may still be able to walk & talk and yet be unfit to drive): but more than 0.

Perhaps someone should get these spinsters a good stiff drink in order to demonstrate, in terms their walnut-sized brains might possibly understand (although I doubt it: 2 + 2 = 4 is doubtless the sort of thing which passes for high learning amongst their sorry sort), that a single drink does not a drunk make. I’m in favour of prosecution of real drunken driving: it’s unsafe enough that a very good case can be made that merely doing it is endangerment of others, much like firing a weapon into a crowd—even if no-one is struck, all were in danger. But there’s a very real difference between driving drunk and driving having had a drink or two or three.

Last night I saw Trailer Bride play; an absolutely wonderful Southern band. Their label’s description tells of their songs of sex, death, sin and redemption, and calls them the spookiest band we know about. It occurs to me that this describes the Southern spirit to a T: we’ve done great good and great evil; we’ve been the home of honour and dishonour alike; we’ve known the joy of victory and the bitter taste of defeat. We’re trying to remedy the ill we’ve done, and increase the good we will do. Unlike Yankees, we Southerners have souls.

These guys are just amazing. From the Gallery Page:

One does wonder, though, if any of the above are married. Beard-cultivation may be one of those hobbies only a bachelor has the freedom to pursue.

Tyler Cowen notes that Americans give far more per capita to charity than Europeans. We give €278 each—well over twice the next-highest nation.

Note that the French—of whom 10,000 old folks died of heat stroke alone in their flats while millions of the young frolicked on the beaches—give only a bit more than ¼ what we Americans do. The Germans are worse yet, at just over one eighth. These wretched lice fund the Hussein régime, give us hell over overthrowing him, wallow in decadence, watch their own nations be taken over because they cannot be bothered to produce children and manage to be stingy as well. Utterly wonderful people, non?

I wonder if our relative kindness is due to the fact that we’re also relatively much wealthier than they are.

The original source for these figures is 2blowhards, who have a very interesting article on wealth.

As many perhaps already know, Berke Breathed is penning a new strip featuring Opus. Let’s hope it’s as great as back in the good old days.

A old college friend sent me a note that there is another Land of Nod in the world: a children’s store for the rich & stupid. They’ve a boy’s rug for $289! It measures 34"×46"—that works out to $5.41 per square inch! What sort of moron spend five-and-a-half dollars on an inch of rug for a kid? That rug is more expensive that the hardwood floor it sits atop.

Not that they shouldn’t be able to sell such a thing, or twits be free to purchase them. But it’s a ridiculous excess and a waste of monies which could be better spent.

Samuel Silver replies to Susan Lee’s Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll: Libertarians have more fun—and make more sense. Lee argues that libertarians are not comfortable with normative questions, that libertarian thought promotes relativism and inclusiveness. Silver argues that this is not in fact the case. I would go so far as to argue that Mrs. Lee does not understand the basis of libertarianism. The whole point of liberty is that we men do care about normative questions—but the libertarian recognises that reasonable men can and do differ on the answers.

Further, she writes that libertarians support infanticide (commonly called abortion). Again, this is far from true: while the so-called Libertarian Party does support infanticide, Libertarians for Life does not. In fact, any libertarian who recognises the human nature of the unborn must be against infanticide, or he could not be a libertarian.

As Silver notes, one may agree with Milton Friedman that drug laws are inappropriate in a free society without accepting drug use as acceptable behaviour. That is the essence of libertarianism: decrying others’ moral choices while allowing them the freedom to choose. Mrs. Lee, on the other hand, is arguing what H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. has termed liberal cosmopolitanism. This school of thought looks at the condition brought about my libertarianism as a positive good, rather than a modus vivendi meant to prevent the war of one philosophy against another.

I am a conservative, and a Christian. I believe in the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, One God. I believe that extra-marital sex is wrong (although not the worst of sins: gluttony and sloth are worse, and pride is the worst of all); I believe that no religion save Christianity is right; I believe that it is probably morally wrong to indulge in hard drugs—and yet I will not support legislation outlawing extra-marital sex (or over-eating, or laziness, or pridefulness); nor legislation which attempts to impose my own faith on anyone else; nor legislation which prohibits drug use. I ask only for the freedom to preach my beliefs, and to live according to them, and hopefully to persuade others that they are correct. I am a conservative, and a libertarian.

In the online edition of National Review, Orthodox Jewish Rabbi Daniel Lapin takes on those who are opposing Mel Gibson’s latest film, The Passion.

Something he mentions in passing is that many of those involved with the horrid image of the Mother of God spattered with elephant dung were Jewish—I didn’t know this. Why is the artistic freedom of anti-Christians more important than the artistic freedom of Christians?

I do disagree with one part of the good rabbi’s article: he writes that it is ignoble to ignore the wrongs done to others while loudly deploring those done to us. I’m not so certain. After all, harm to one’s own group is obviously going to both incense and worry one more than harm to another’s.

Donna Hughes writes about the sex trade, a scourge which ruins the lives of many women and children. They are persuaded to emigrate from their home countries with promises of honest work, and once they find themselves in a strange place, they are forced into prostitution through various means. It’s a horrible trade, and one which should be stopped.

I don’t believe, though, that the answer is more laws; rather, the solution is to legalise and regulate prostitution like any other trade. The reason that prostitutes are so badly treated is that their work is criminal; they are afraid to go to the police because they’ve been breaking the law. Employers of honest workers don’t beat or harass their employees, but pimps can get away with it because they know that they’ll get away with it.

Prostitution is certainly immoral, from both sides of the transaction: it’s wrong to sell one’s body for sex, and it’s wrong to purchase sex. But immorality is hardly sufficient grounds for making something illegal. Were it, I’d campaign hard for the abolition of short pants for anyone over the age of thirteen.

What is the situation of prostitutes in those Western states where it is legal—Holland, France and Nevada? Are they safer, more secure from harm &c.? From all accounts, yes.

The past tense form of the verb to loan is lent, not *loaned. There’s no such word as loaned; its mis-use marks the speaker or writer as ignorant beyond words. So don’t use it.

Just got back from the GABF. Loads of fun: lots of great beer. Loads and loads and loads and loads of really cute mädchens. I enjoyed myself immensely. More beer than a stick may be shook at, and more cute girls than a pint-glass may be waved in the direction of. Those who live not in Colorado get what they deserve for their heresy.

The beer was good.

The woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery has been set free. This has attracted a lot of worldwide attention, but I believe that much of it has been over-vehement. After all, what’s the particular difference between making fornication illegal and making the use of certain drugs illegal? And while everyone focuses on how harsh Sharia law is, it only applies to Mohammedans. I daresay the objection is mostly to the method of death, which is rather unusual.

Now, as a libertarian I’m strongly against civil law being religious—but as a Christian I’m not opposed to people also being subject to the law of their faiths. As long as one is free to leave one’s faith, and thereby release oneself from its rule, it seems perfectly appropriate to me that one should be held accountable under its particular laws, whatever they might be. Of course, one problem with Sharia is that it’s a capital crime to convert to another faith.

I’m unclear on the particulars of the case in question. Was the woman raped? That would cast a very different light on the question. But presumably even the law of Mohammed isn’t so cruel as to condemn a woman because a man attacked her. I’m glad to see that she’ll live—it’d be as rotten a thing to die for having sex as it is to be cast into prison for smoking a planet.

Another tool for bloggers is BlogStreet; I’ve just submitted myself there.

According to Richard Johnson there’s a village in East Yorkshire called Land of Nod. English place-names are so cool. Me, I want to live in Lower Weems.

JWZ writes that he’s confused by the promotion of CSS by the W3C et al.; I don’t believe that he quite understands the issue—or if he does, he professes to be ignorant in order to win some rhetorical point.

He seems to be annoyed that so many folks hated the presentation-oriented markup which Netscape introduced. He ignores the fact that structural markup leads to Good Things: automated indexing; improved searching; automatic transformation of presentation while leaving content unchanged, reading by the disabled (whether physically or technologically, e.g. those with old computers) &c.

He is correct that presentational markup is also important. People want to be able to design attractive pages, and to do that they’d like some control over the way the page will look. CSS is a nice (albeit imperfect) attempt to create a flexible presentation-oriented language. As long as the designer is smart, pages will be attractive at various resolutions, window sizes &c., but he will have a lot of power at his fingertips, using a tool meant for the job (CSS) rather than a mess of hacks (HTML-based presentation). And if he really wishes to ignore certain populations, he’s free to do so.

The situation with CSS is in many ways much better than with presentation-oriented HTML, and in none worse.

According to Adam Curry:

Every couple of months the city of Amsterdam shuts down access by automobile. These are known as Car-Free Sundays.

How utterly totalitarian: fine people for daring to drive their cars along city streets. Never mind that they might wish to do so, on roads their fuel taxes pay for. Never mind the fundamental freedom to travel. And in a wonderful bit of Doublespeak, it’s all part of a Mobility Week—encouraging mobility by denying it, I suppose. Freedom is Slavery. War is Peace. Love is Hate. Immobility is Mobility.

Not that I cannot sympathise; cars are certainly not nearly so romantic as horse-drawn carriages. But they’re nowhere near so polluting, nor so inefficient (and hence bad for everyone). Would you rather die of cholera at 8 (from horse excrement in the roads and air) or lung disease at 80 (from auto exhaust)? Would you rather use oil—itself a nasty, toxic substance pulled out of the ground in inhospitable places—or hay—which wastes farming space which could be used to feed men—to fuel your transportation?

But that’s the problem at the root of so much that is European: a fondness for theory over fact and for ideology over practicality. I’m reminded of the decadent French elites who would venture into the countryside and imagine themselves shepherds and noble savages. These same elites would give birth to the butchery of the French Revolution. I’m also minded of a group of German Romantic Pagans, but that’s a tale for another day; I don’t wish to invoke Godwin’s Law.

If you publish a serial, you are eligible to apply for an International Standard Serial Number. This applies to magazines, journals, memoirs—and weblogs: anything which is a non-terminating serial issued in some medium. Unfortunately, the registrars are beginning to resist; apply while you’ve still a chance.

I do sympathise with them, though: the ISSN is only 7 data digits, plus a check digit, and this means that it is only possible to register some 10,000,000 serials. This is hardly a large number: 1 number for every 600 men on earth. The solution, of course, is to extend the number, and write it in hexadecimal. A 7-digit hexadecimal code would have 268,435,456 possibilities; an 11-digit code (with the check digit, it would yield a pleasing 12 digits) would have 17,592,186,044,416 possibilities—nearly three thousand for everyone now alive. Heck, extend it out to 16 digits (including the check digit), and the range won’t run out before the sun does.

Those who are old Mac hands like myself might recall an old abandoned Apple project of the mid-90s, Dylan. Mike Lockwood has an interesting tale of the layoff of the guys who developed it. The kind of layoff that could only happen at Apple. The article’s worth reading solely for the screenshot of the Dylan IDE the guys were working on. A long time ago I read an article (which I can unfortunately no longer find) by a fellow who wrote that source code needed to be more than just files, but actual living data, which could be manipulated in various useful ways; it looks as though the Dylan guys might have been headed in that direction.

To be honest, Dylan looks like a mostly warmed-over C/Algol/Pascal/&c. to me, in much the same way that many folks who construct their own languages end up with cyphers for English; it at least has closures (essentially, true first-class functions). I’d rather just go straight to using a Lisp, to be honest. Arc looks more promising.

The same site has a lot of other cool Apple tales.

Yesterday I bought a pair of suspenders for my socks (wot Americans often called garters), the culmination of years of searching. They’re just not something often in stock these days. Very cool—now I needn’t toss a pair of socks just because the elastic has gone; instead, I can keep darning them until the weave’s naught but empty air. Life is good.

Yes, my brother is the sort of person who buys running shoes. And runs marathons. I’m so ashamed. BTW, when I write my brother, I mean Thomas; it’ a holdover from until I was four years old—when he was my only brother. Old habits die hard; in this case, it’s been more than two decades…

Laugh; it’s funny.

Well, I’ve just finished brewing my latest beer, the beer of the month at my local homebrew shop, Beer at Home. I hope that it will be pretty good; with luck, it’ll be the beer on hand over Thanksgiving weekend, when my brother and his fiancee are in town.

For this batch I tried something I’ve not attempted since high school: after the brewing I cooled the beer in a sink full of ice and cool water. It worked amazingly well, which is odd, as last time the beer was still warm the next morning. I’m going to do this every time from now on, as I was able to pitch directly after the cooling. It’s really quite incredible.

Since my shop doesn’t archive its recipes, here it is:

Quarter Porter

• 7 lbs. Amber Malt Extract
• ½ lb. Crystal Malt, 120°
• ¼ lb. Chocolate Malt
• ¼ lb. Black Malt
• ¼ lb. Karaffe Malt
• ½ oz. Chinook hops @ boil
• ½ oz. Willamette hops @ 45 min
• White Labs London Ale Yeast

And I believe that I neglected the black malt—so maybe I’ll have a brown ale instead!

One of the gals at work happens to belong to PETA and thinks my desire to go bird hunting is obscene—and yet she wears leather shoes and carries a leather bag. One wonders if she believes leather comes from trees.

As far as slaying, butchering and eating animals goes, it seems to me that the PETA-ites are hoist on their own petard. Animals eat other animals; thus why should men not? Ah, they might say, we need to be higher than the beasts. But if we are higher, why should we not use them for our advancement? Either we are naught but animals—and thus free to eat them as they eat one another, or we are better than they are, and free to treat them as one would one’s inferiors.

It is impossible to be a member of PETA and be a Christian, for God Himself allowed Noah to eat meat, and thus it cannot be wrong to do. It is possible to be a vegetarian and a Christian, at least in theory, as monks are vegetarians (but not vegans: they’ll eat milk, cheese and eggs in the proper seasons, and fish on feasts). It is certainly more holy to kill no thing, nor profit from any beast’s death—but it cannot be truly evil not to do so.

A rare taste treat from the pages of Schlock Mercenary, the chupaqueso is essentially toasted cheese wrapped around more cheese.

Paul Graham writes on the topic of taste that although we live in a relativist time, when one considers the facts, it’s really quite obvious that taste is not subjective, but objective. The implications of this are as staggering to us as they would be matter-of-fact to our forefathers. Think about it.

I put in 25½ hours at work this weekend. Not as bad as some did, I’ll grant—which indicates the magnitude of the suckage. And I’m so worn out that I’m not driving up to Boulder to hang out with some folks from Radio 1190. I just want to sleep.

Listening to Radio 1190 tonight, I heard a jazzy rendition of a song I invented way back when I was learning German: Mein Hut, Es Hat Drei Ecken—My Hat, It Has Three Corners!

Mein Hut, es hat drei Ecken
drei Ecken hat mein Hut
Und ob es hätte nicht drei Ecken
Es würde nicht mein Hut sein!

Yes, life is good. And yes, I know that a better translation is:

Mein Hut, der hat drei Ecken,
Drei Ecken hat mein Hut
Und hätt’ er nicht drei Ecken,
so wär’ es nicht mein Hut.

But give me a break, eh?

Dennis Prager, a Jew, argues that Christmas parties should be called that, not holiday parties. He makes an excellent point.

IBM developerWorks has cool article on faster booting using make. What I find most interesting is the way that it uses an ancient tool for a new purpose. This is enabled by the Unix philosophy: small programs which do one thing very well. These small programs can be tied together in a myriad of useful ways; in this case, make’s ability to calculate dependencies is utilised to start various services, and its ability to run jobs in parallel is utilised so that one need not wait for each to start before continuing.

Another example is the guy who uses lpd to play MP3s. lpd is the line printer dæmon: its job is to spool files to a printer. But because of the way Unix represents devices like printers, and because of the flexibility of lpd, it can also be used to spool songs (not just MP3s—again, because Unix is so cool, the fellow switches based on whether the music is MP3, Ogg Vorbis or mod) to the speaker.

This is why we Unix admins wear such smug looks all the time.

I’ve added Octopodial Chrome to syndic8, which means that it has its own page where it can be managed by you, the reader.

Yes, that’s right—I’ve been added to the list of recently changed pages at Weblogs.Com. I’ve also written a small script to monitor when the a new item is added, and then notify that site of the fact. In this way various blog monitors will be able to tell that my site is active—and hopefully folks will be drawn to my site. Ain’t I cool?

This article concerning a friend who was convicted of disorderly conduct for having a rude note in his luggage has been retracted.

The unmitigated assholes who support drinking-age legislation are at it again, this time targeting advertising for so-called flavoured malt beverages (those godawful froo-froo drinks so popular now: Smirnoff Ice, Bacardi What-Have-You &c.).

In my opinion, what was done to that proto-Puritan Oliver Cromwell should be done to these neo-Puritans. The student of history will recall that when the son of his victim retook his rightful throne, Cromwell’s body was dug up, hanged on a gallows, beheaded, the head being displayed on a pike and his remains burnt. Well, perhaps not—after all freedom, even a freedom to be as evil as these, is a precious thing.

Back in January the New York Times misquoted a naval officer. Charming people, really quite charming.

So ask Gary Aldrich and Ashley Varner. Among other points, they ask one to entertain the notion of a man’s equivalent to Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: guys train gals not to complain about the toilet seat, to enjoy drag racing &c. That’s just as offensive as that loathsome show.

I watched The Man from Elysian Fields last night. It stars Mick Jagger, Andy Garcia, Olivia Williams & James Coburn, and is about a writer (Garcia) who is forced by straitened circumstances to find employment at a male escort service run by Jagger’s character, where he meets a beautiful woman (Williams), who happens to be married to a great writer (Coburn). Not at all what one might consider to be an edifying film, one might think.

But in reality, it is. What it’s really doing is showing the results of iniquity. Garcia trusts Williams because he believes they share affection—but she cannot be trusted: it’s sex ohne love. Williams betrays her husband’s trust as well, despite the fact that he was quite enthusiastic about her adultery. Jagger, towards the end, says something along the lines of, I've spent my life trying to pleasure women, when I should have spent it pleasing one woman. Garcia goes on to find professional success but not personal happiness because he loves his wife. It’s a morality play: the message is that men and women should be paired off and faithful to one another, and that when they’re not, they are deeply unhappy.

Quite interesting.

According to this article, Microsoft’s Excel product is unsuited to statistical analysis and gives erroneous results. Use software such as Gnumeric—or just write your own in a real language such as Scheme or Lisp.

Right now I’m smoking G.L. Pease’s Cumberland. It includes a twenty-year old tobacco which had lain unnoticed in a shed in Kentucky; when it’s gone there will be no more. From the tin:

Robust and possessing a subdued sweetness, Cumberland is a delightfully orchestrated suite of American tobaccos, featuring a rare and exquisite mahogany Kentucky, aged in bales for twenty years. Red and matured Virginias establish a theme; the Kentucky and a pianissimo of perique create the variations. Pure, natural tobacco flavours are harmonised by delicate arpeggios and underscored by deep, resonant tones. The coda is lovely and lingering—a perfect finish to a rich performance. Best savoured slowly.

Non-smokers can only wish they were men enough to enjoy such a treat.

Popular Science has in an article about the worst jobs in science. They’ve an amusing bit about federal advocates for the French system of measurement (commonly mis-termed metric units). One of them cannot even give his own height in metres, which really says all one needs to know: without forcing people to use the half-witted things, they will not be able to think in them.

Far from perfect, the article also weeps for those poor researchers unable to dismember infants for scientific gain.

As y’all no doubt know, the great Johnny Cash fell asleep on 12 September. Steve Beard eulogises him much better than I ever could. He was a great singer, an excellent songwriter and a good man.

Jay Nordlinger—whose quality can be irregular—offered this tale in a recent Impromptus:

Janos Starker—the great Hungarian-American cellist—was to perform the Elgar concerto with the South Carolina Philharmonic, in Columbia. The concert hall was smoke-free, and he was informed that he could not have a cigarette even in his private dressing room.

So he said to the orchestra—assembled for rehearsal—I have lived through fascism, and I have lived through communism. But I cannot abide the petty tyranny into which this country is falling, and neither should you.

With that, he left—left rehearsal, and left town. The orchestra was silent for a minute. Then a clarinetist began to play Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.

There’s a lesson there, for him who has ears to hear and eyes to see.

The weather here is finally getting down to a reasonable temperature. Right now the Weather Channel says that it’s 46°, and that tonight it’ll get down to 36°! The day is overcast; there’s a bite to the air, and that sweet fibrous smell which heralds snow, soon dances across one’s nose. At long last Sol, that hideous yellow ball of flame which blights our skin and burns our eyes, is beginning his long slow defeat.

The pagan Romans used to have a feast, Sol Invictus (The Unconquered Sun), to celebrate the return of the Sun. I think we should have a feast Sol Victus to celebrate its long slow waning.

Of course, it’s not permanent: winter never is. Even this cold snap will soon pass: later this week the temperature will return to the ’80s. But for now, I’m relishing the day. There’s a fire in my hearth, a pipe on my lips and a song in my heart!

An ancient develop has some great programming tips written by Bob Johnson. Good points, all, although some are pretty obvious. Well-worth taking to heart, though.

I've added two more recipes to my Bachelor Recipes Collection. The first is a quick-and-easy way to grill up a chicken breast: my Basic Grilled Chicken; the second is an excellent dish, well suited to impressing a fair maiden: my Tequila Lime Chicken. Both are, of course, quite easy to prepare, which is the focus of my Bachelor Recipes.

Gotta love Damage Studios’ job page. If you send a Microsoft Word-formatted resumé, they delete it unseen. If your resumé includes SCO after May ’03, they delete it. Good to see an employer exercising some discretion in whom it hires.

Yesterday I rode my bicycle to work. Man, am I out of shape! It's pretty humiliating, actually. Not six months ago I would easily do twice the distance and not even really think about it, but this time I actually started to get the dry heaves. I'm going to have to start biking to work every day and get back into shape.

At least my diet is beginning to kick in: today I weighed the least I've weighed since April.

As Byron York demonstrates.

An interesting geek toy to send MP3s to one's stereo. It looks pretty sweet, although the OGG suport is kinda shaky (it re-encodes to MP3 on the fly, which eats CPU). I want one.

John O’Sullivan argues that we won Vietnam: it’s now capitalist, and by fighting therein we manged to stave off Communist socialism in much of the rest of Asia. Indeed, Gorbachev once pointed out that Singapore (a single city) exported more than the entire Soviet Union (the largest state in the world)!

According to the US Naval Historical Centre (Go Navy!), he first computer bug was logged on September 9, 1945 at 15:45: Moth found trapped between points at Relay # 70, Panel F, of the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator while it was being tested at Harvard University, 9 September 1945. The operators affixed the moth to the computer log, with the entry: First actual case of bug being found. Note that the term bug pre-dates computers by quite awhil.

Paul Greenberg reflects on the life & times of Charles Bronson.

Rich Lowry writes about medical marijuana. Choice quote:

Eight other states have legalised [medical marijuana] as well, creating friction with the feds, who don't want grievously ill patients to get relief if it means taking the untoward expedient of lighting a joint.

It’s time to legalise the stuff.

It's true, as demonstrated in this advert for Greene King India Pale Ale. Greene King's Abbot Ale was the first legal beer I had, in the pub at the base of my hotel in the late morning/early afternoon of 31 December 1998. Good stuff, and one reason why I had to return to England.

Rich Lowry writes about the plague of weeping men which afflicts us. He’s quite right: the ethos of wimpery is weakening us all. Wonderful quote: the rise of confessional daytime TV, which is a kind of emotional pornography. This is exactly my objection to the let’s-talk-it-out school of pseudo-thought. Some things are best left unsaid; to even discuss certain topics is injurious to oneself.

I read that the Oath of Allegiance is changing. The new version, to be frank, sucks rocks. Compare the current:

I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.

To:

Solemnly, freely, and without mental reservation, I hereby renounce under oath all allegiance to any foreign state. My fidelity and allegiance from this day forward is to the United States of America. I pledge to support, honor, and be loyal to the United States, its Constitution, and its laws. Where and if lawfully required, I further commit myself to defend the Constitution and laws of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, either by military, noncombatant, or civilian service. This I do solemnly swear, so help me God.

What a namby-pamby silly bunch of claptrap. Never mind that it also merely renounces allegiance only to foreign states, leaving those to people untouched. And it cuts the bit about bearing arms on behalf of the United States. Damn hippy fools. And this is under a Republican administration!

VDH has a great piece on differing views of our war situation: essentially, one group believe that we are not at war, and that 11 September and related incidents should have been treated as criminal disturbances, while another believes that we are at war with enemies who wish our destruction. It's a useful piece. I must admit that I incline slightly to the first viewpoint in some ways. It'd surely be cleaner and simpler that way. But realistically, the second view is the one practical one to take: it's as silly to try to criminally hunt down and charge every terrorist on earth now as it would have been to do the same to the Japanese or Nazis of the Second World War. At the end of all this, yes we'll need to have at least a few trials—but they're not really the goal. The goal is defeating our enemies and securing our safety.

John Derbyshire has written a wonderful filk concerning the California recall. Absolutely hilarious: imagine Chaucer writing about the mess. Only it's not dirty, which is ¾ the fun of Chaucer…

I was feeling a touch of illness coming on this morning, so I figured I'd drink orange and cranberry juices (lots of Vitamin C, don't you know). Well, imagine my surprise to find that they're more unhealthy than beer: per pint, OJ has 873 BTUs, 15 grains of fat, 833 grains of carbohydrates and 62 grains of protein; cranberry juice has 1,143 BTUs, 15 grains of fat, 1,127 grains of carbohydrates and no protein; beer, the health drink, has 782 BTUs, no fat, only 278 grains of carbohydrates and 15 grains of protein.

Look at that: beer has 90% the BTUs, none of the fat and one-third the carbohydrates of orange juice. It doesn't have as much protein, but that can easily be remedied with a steak on the side. Beer has only 68% as many BTUs as cranberry juice, none of the fat, and ¼ the carbohydrates—and as much protein. Also, beer has much less sugar (better for the teeth), as most has been converted into alcohol. Which is something else beer has in its favour.

In this day and age, we know that low-carbohydrate diets are the key to keeping off the pounds. It follows logically that it's better to drink beer than juice.

BTW, readers (I fancy I have two or more) no doubt noticed that I use BTUs and grains rather than calories (really, kilocalories) and grams. Are you at all surprised? Intelligent science uses English, not French, units.

John Lott recently wrote in National Review Online about arming pilots. He's in favour (no surprise there). Some interesting things to note: the Transportation Security Administration acknowledges that many lethal weapons are undetectable (and hence, cannot be guarded against); pilots of planes carrying mail used to be required to be armed (in order to defend the mail in case of a crash); military pilots flying outside of the US must carry sidearms; pilots were allowed to bear arms as late as 1987; studies from 1996–2000 show that only eight thousandths of one percent of assaults on police officers resulted in them being killed with their own weapons. Also, the argument that a few bullet holes would destroy the plane is foolish: 14 Boeing aircraft have survived in-air bomb explosions! Every Boeing aircraft which has experienced handgun fire has landed safely. As always, Lott shines light on the subject.

Did you know that a water-filled vase can act as a lens to focus the sun's rays? This means that it can set things on fire—like your home.

A castle in Bohemia has recently been purchased: the goal is to have 15th century vacations (at about $1,500/head/week), complete with proper dress, food &c. Unlike some of the plans bandied about here in the States, which never seem to get off the ground, these guys have actually laid out the cash for the place. Sounds extraordinarily interesting. Done right, it could be trés cool; done wrong (honey butter, anyone?) it would suck greatly. I'd love to give it a try.

In other news, I'm nearly done with my chausses—mediæval man's hose. I look quite dashing in 'em.

Well, duh.

Along with right-thinking people everywhere, Forest Tennant supports some drug legalisation; in the 80s he was a big anti-drug crusader.

S.T. Karnick has written two articles, one on the Fifties (which weren't really conformist) and the other on the modern day. I don't agree with everything he writes (for one thing, short hair on men is not tough—it's childish), but it's a very interesting read, and quite penetrating in places.

FWIW, the proper hair length for men is about the shoulders, and for women the lower back. Only boys and the louse-ridden should have short hair, as it is a symbol of weakness (e.g. Sampson, Apollo &c.).

David Brooks of the Standard has a wonderful article on the new suburbia. Very funny and insightful at once.

Well, folks, the Centre for Science in the Public Interest are at it again. Will no-one rid us of this meddlesome institute?

This time their target is: ice cream. Yes, ice cream. Apparently, it is a coronary in a cone. Absolutely pathetic.

As everyone knows, the price of petrol has recently leapt to a record high. But is it really a record? No, of course not.

Read the Comic. Stupid humour that's very, very funny.

I invented a kind of Tequila Cape Cod two nights ago. No cool name yet (is South Padre Island taken?), but here's the recipe:

• ice
• shot of tequila
• juice of ½ lime
• cranberry juice

It's pretty tasty—surprisingly so, actually.

Jonah Goldberg writes that pro- and anti-globalists are hypocrites.

Ben Stein sings of cars and the man.

Joe Barr has written a decent introduction to GnuCash an excellent accounting program for Unix. Read it, then download GnuCash.

From The American Enterprise, a group of women talk about what they like about real men. An odd concept, to be certain, but amusing. My favourite exchange: What’s behind men’s interest in guns, truck racing, wrestling, &c.? Are these positive masculine traits, or just gross? They are truly masculine things and a mystery to me. Which is exactly the right attitude to take, if you ask me.

Christina Hoff Sommers has an interesting article on masculinity in The American Enterprise. She recounts three amusing stories:

In the first, her son was camping in Israel’s Negev Desert and was instructed, along with all the other boys and girls, to take pencil, paper, matches and a candle into the desert and to absorb the quiet calm of the desert, to record their feelings, and to find himself. The girls, of course, did this. The boys, OTOH, got bored, found one another, and made a fire with their paper and pencils. This, of course, is exactly what one expects from teenage boys, and goes a long way toward restoring my faith in mankind.

A Baltimore gender facilitator (what the hell is that anyway?!?) tried to get nine-year olds boys to play with baby dolls, causing a reaction…so hostile, the teacher had trouble keeping order.

A boy named Jimmy in San Francisco was made to contribute to a quilt celebrating women we admire. His contribution was in honour of Monica Seles, who was stabbed by a lunatic who favoured Steffi Graf: a square depicting a tennis racket and a bloody dagger. This was not appreciated by the teacher, but I believe all of us with brains find it most amusing.

The rest of the article is good as well, arguing that men and women are fundamentally different and that this is no bad thing, as it leads each to succeed where the other would likely fail. For my part, I’ll close with a quote from Camille Paglia: There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper.

Dennis Prager notes that in the Bible, man and God disagree—and that God doesn't necessarily seem to mind. I'm not certain that I agree: simply calling the Israelites Struggles with God doesn't indicate agreement with their struggling.

Sowell has a great article (nearly all his articles are great) about the anniversary. Wonderful quote: speakers like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson certainly can't afford to be judged by the content of their character. Ain’t that the truth. Another: when push comes to shove, the teachers’ unions mean more to Democrats than the future of the next generation of blacks.

Saw in a Matt Towery article that this last weekend was the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech. I wonder what he would have thought about our modern racial preference system: it's certainly not judging by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character. But of course, it's impolitic to say that. Racism is fine when it's against whites; whites only signs are wrong (they are), but blacks only signs are okay (they're not).

Quin Hillyer writes in National Review Online about how Bill Pryor—castigated by Senate Democrats—has upheld his duties in Alabama in regards to the Roy Moore case. Don't expect to read an apology from any of the same, either.

I've recently been watching quite a few French films, and I'm afraid I must admit that they are operating on a different set of assumptions from us. One thing I detect is an underlying current of extraordinary sadness: the French are true moderns, atheists who believe there is no love, no joy, no happiness, no life after death—and their films reflect that sad fact. If only they would return to the example of Clovis (Chlodwig, really) and forsake their soul-destructive ideology.

Herbert London notes that while Communism may have been defeated, we are all in the grip of massive state control.

Timothy Lynch, of the superb Cato Institute, writes in National Review Online about the Patriot Act. He raises good questions from a conservative viewpoint. My own thought is that I don't care about the modernisation provisions of the law; I do care about things like forbidding subpœnaed parties from speaking. Seems like a clear violation of one's right to free speech to me.

Dave Plonka writes about how miswritten firmware in Netgear routers denied service to UWisc. Very interesting, and an example that the true ethos of the net still exists.

I've recently been reformatting the Commonitory of St. Vincent of Lerins; in it he writes of a particular heresy:

I tremble to utter it: for it is so full of arrogance and self-conceit, that it seems to me that not only to affirm it, but even to refute it, cannot be done without guilt in some sort.

This is a novel idea to the modern world, which believes that even the worst things can be talked through—this is, for example, the foundation of both psychotherapy and debates. But I wonder if perhaps St. Vincent is not more correct than we are: some things are so patently wrong that even to discuss them is to poison one's mind.

Bruce Perens