Octopodial Chrome

Today Britain paid off the last instalment of its debt for money & equipment we lent during the Second World War—$42½ million dollars. The pages of history turn…

Ever wonder what those hand signals used by soldiers mean? Never fear, the Internet has provided this handy list of close-range engagement hand signals for your edification.

According to news reports, Saddam Hussein has been hanged in Baghdad, by Iraqis. He richly deserved this punishment, one he had doled out to many thousands who deserved it not. The fools at Amnesty International (some decades ago, a respectable organisation) stated, The rushed execution of Saddam Hussein is simply wrong. It signifies justice denied for countless victims who endured unspeakable suffering during his regime, and now have been denied their right to see justice served. How wrong can they be? Justice has most definitely been served: Hussein’s heart beats no more. The man who had men fed into grinders dangled at the end of a rope.

One can only hope that his end is a beginning for Iraq. The old order is done away with; let the new order take its place. For my own part, I’m rather more pessimistic than that—still, I can hope.

From the Washington Post comes a great do-it-yourself guide to writing an asinine Christmas movie. It’s shameful that we celebrate the birth of our Savior with saccharine.

From the Rocky Mountain News comes this recipe for snow cream:

• 1 gal. snow
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
• 2 cups milk

Stir sugar & vanilla into snow, add milk to thicken.

I just made a quart of it. Wow! Great stuff. Next time I’d blend the milk & sugar before adding; otherwise it’s perfect.

You want clean snow; for normal snowfalls just put a bowl outside. In my case I scooped some snow out of a clean drift.

Divid Zucker (of Airplane fame) takes on the Iraq Study Group. Can’t say we weren’t warned…

Thanks to Senators McCain & Feingold, their Senate colleagues, the House of Representatives, President Bush and a majority of the Supreme Court, political speech is being censored in America. Never mind the First Amendment; never mind our historic liberties. This is real, folks: a blatant power grab by incumbents determined to silence their challengers.

It appears that many root canals will be avoidable, as a new technique can be used to regrow dentin. Anything which prevents dental pain is good in my book.

I recently found a nineteenth century exam. It was meant to be taken in 8th grade (although 7th graders were also allowed to take it), by students in Saline County, Kansas. This was a rural area, but I doubt most students today would pass it; indeed, I had some slight trouble with a few parts. Nowadays our educationists are more concerned with self-fulfilment than with education.

From Epionons.com comes DrFaustus’s December Mix. Read the entire article (which has comments on each piece), but here’s the list of titles:

1. Snow Patrol: Chocolate
2. Matt Pond PA: Holiday Road
3. Pezband: Baby It’s Cold Outside
4. John Mayer: Waiting on the World to Change
5. Steely Dan: Reelin’ in the Years
6. Simon & Garfunkel: Homeward Bound
7. Warren Zevon: Keep Me in Your Heart for a While
8. Fountains of Wayne: Valley Winter Song
9. The Pretenders: 2,000 Miles
10. Supertramp: Even in the Quietest Moments
11. The Flaming Lips: Do You Realize?
12. Semisonic: Closing Time

I’m downloading the songs now, but just from the familiar ones and the mix notes it sounds like DrFaustus knows his stuff. I first discovered his January Mix, which sounds just about perfect for that month, and can’t wait to move forward through the rest of the year.

Yes, Virginia, sometimes stupid people become programmers. I’m not certain how they graduate and get jobs, but it happens. Perhaps they bribe those who should be failing them and turning them away.

Milton Friedman died a few weeks ago; it seems a fitting tribute to link to the open letter he wrote Bill Bennett regarding Drug Prohibition. From the letter:

You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are a scourge that is devastating our society. You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are tearing asunder our social fabric, ruining the lives of many young people, and imposing heavy costs on some of the most disadvantaged among us. You are not mistaken in believing that the majority of the public share your concerns. In short, you are not mistaken in the end you seek to achieve.

Your mistake is failing to recognize that the very measures you favor are a major source of the evils you deplore.

And:

Drugs are a tragedy for addicts. But criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for society, for users and non-users alike. Our experience with the prohibition of drugs is a replay of our experience with the prohibition of alcoholic beverages.

Milton Friedman’s was a brilliant and penetrating mind; his death is a great loss to our republic.

Countryman’s Cooking is back in print, but I’ve thus far been unable to find a source for it here in the States. It looks just wonderfully excellent.

Check out these colour photographs of the Great War. Very strange to see it in anything other than black-and-white.

A study has found that marriage & children kill creativity in men. This is not too surprising: why would a man satisfied with life have any further drive?

Tonight I finished the first beer I brewed after my advanced homebrewer’s course—a beer I brewed back in late July. It was the best beer I’ve ever made: light copper, sweet with a very slight thickness (just enough to give it some body), a bit of an acid bite and some bitterness to more than balance, with some hop nose and a lot of hop flavour. It was excellent for a few months, although to be honest the last few it’s not been that great, although it did clarify nicely. Well, on to the next beer: a Scotch ale made with peat-smoked malt!

For the first time ever, my parents had Thanksgiving not at their or a relative’s house—instead, we went to Le Central and had their Thanksgiving prix fixe menu. Their reasons were probably three-fold: first, last year broke our Thanksgiving habits (not a single Uhl boy was on this continent, or even in this hemisphere: two in Berlin, one in Greece & one chasing pirates in the Indian Ocean); second, there are only two boys here in town now; and third, they returned from a trip just a week ago.

Overall I have to say I liked it. No mess, no stress, no worry. I did miss my mom’s rolls—but it seems to me that overall the ease of eating out is quite addictive. And really, when one factors in the cost of special ingredients and so forth, is cooking a fancy dinner at home really that much cheaper?

This morning my brother John and I set forth on a noble quest, determined to conquer or die in the attempt. Our goal: to set foot in every light rail station in Denver. We brought along our bicycles, in order to explore the environs around each station (find the entrances & the exits, discover which restaurants and merchants might be found nearby and so forth). Despite man trials and tribulations, we succeeded, and we two, we happy two, we pair of brothers have managed a feat few have done.

Last night after I got home I discovered the my disposall (really, an In-Sink-Erator) had gone to the great golden appliance warehouse in the sky, and thus I set upon fixing it. Two trips to the hardware store and several hours later, I am the proud owner of a wonderful model, one aimed squarely at the yuppie market: two-stage grinding, noise baffles, vibration-damping mounts. It evens comes in a tasteful colour (amusing in something which is hidden away…)! Sure, my wallet’s a bit lighter, but that’s why I have a household budget after all. And I must admit that it is well and truly sweet.

Yesterday I introduced the mater & pater to Denver’s new light rail line; we drove from their house to the Dry Creek Station, purchased our tickets the rode to the Colorado Station, boarded the 40 north and got off at Alameda & Colorado, walking the rest of the way to office; after a brief stop there we took the 3 west to Cherry Creek Mall, where we did some light shopping and ate lunch. Finally we took the 24 south to University Station, and headed home.

It was their first time to ride light rail in this town, and I think that they enjoyed it. Should public transit make sense for them, they’re likely to take advantage of it.

I just want to point out that this woman invented frequency-hopped spread-spectrum radio:

Now that’s a geek’s dream girl!

Found a great explanation of why Chinese is so difficult to learn. Some of the points aren’t quite fair—e.g. the fact that it’s not Indo-European doesn’t make any difference to, say, a Cherokee—but others are quite insightful.

Oddly enough, I kinda want to learn Chinese now…

From Europe comes a strange new trend: the elimination of traffic signs. Small towns are repaving the roads with cobblestones and taking down all traffic signs, signals and painted markers, instead relying on good sense and mutual respect between drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. If it works, it sounds very cool indeed—but I can’t help but be reminded of earlier utopian schemes. Still, it’s well-worth investigation.

From Mr. Bad comes a list of things to say when one is losing a technical argument. I particularly like #17: yes, I believe that’s the approach Windows NT is taking.

Yesterday Southeast Light Rail opened, and a new era dawned for the Denver area. It’s now possible to travel from the suburbs into downtown and never enter a car—for many of us, it’s possible to do so without even a bus ride: just walk to the station, buy a ticket, board and ride in comfort & safety.

All is not perfect: the County Line Station sits right next to Park Meadows Mall, but there’s no way to walk there. RTD employees revealed to me that this is due to the mall not wanting pedestrian access. Perhaps they’re concerned that people might go shopping or something. Oh well—I’ll do my shopping downtown instead.

But other than that I predict a bright & happy future for light rail. More cars off the streets, more energy-efficiency: rapid transit has finally come to town!

I heartily endorse this product and/or service.

Way back in 1989 Milton Friedman wrote a letter to Bill Bennett about the War on Drugs.; it’s as relevant today as then. It’s also rather amusing, given William Bennett’s troubles with another illegal vice. My favourite passage is this:

You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are a scourge that is devastating our society. You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are tearing asunder our social fabric, ruining the lives of many young people, and imposing heavy costs on some of the most disadvantaged among us. You are not mistaken in believing that the majority of the public share your concerns. In short, you are not mistaken in the end you seek to achieve.

Your mistake is failing to recognize that the very measures you favour are a major source of the evils you deplore.

That’s it in a nutshell: the War on Drugs has caused far more casualties than simply letting drugs be would have.

A little-known fact is that when I am anointed Grand Emperor of Everything, the nations of the world will march in to offer their coronation gifts to The Procession of the Sadar. You read it here first…

Whilst looking up the proper way to lace running shoes, I discovered a page with 31 different lace-tying methods. Who knew there were so many possibilities? There’s Criss-Cross, Over-Under, Straight, Sawtooth, and on & on. Now I need to relace all of my shoes…

This comes too late for this year, but a heads-up to you veterans for next year: the Veterans’ Pride Initiative is encouraging you to wear your medals on your civilian shirt or coat on Veterans’, Independence & Memorial Days. They suggest three options: miniature medals, large medals or large medals with devices & unit awards. Hopefully such action will help instill a certain sense of national pride in and awareness of our armed forces.

The guys at the Coalition to prevent Assault Weapon Violence are keeping a close eye on assault weapons—-they’ve set up a web cam to catch an assault rifle in the act of committing crimes. None so far, but they’re still watching.

Well, the American people spoke on Tuesday, and while I can’t agree with their decision, I can understand it. The Republicans had become corrupt and no longer even paid lip service to their principles (principles which first catapulted them to power back in ’94), and many voters felt they needed to be punished. That’s understandable; however, in place of big-state Republicans we now have giant-state Democrats. For every issue on which the Republicans are wrongs, the Democrats are wronger. I won’t rule out ever voting for a Democrat, but he’d have to be better than his Republican alternative and good enough to merit my vote. For that to happen, he’d have to:

• Oppose infanticide
• Support the right to bear arms
• Support a strong & effective military
• Favour limited government

In other words, he’d be a Republican. Sure, there are pro-life Democrats; there are pro-gun Democrats; there are even Democrat hawks. But the fundamental principle of the modern Democrat party is that the State knows best, and is best-suited to address most if not all problems.

Unfortunately, this attitude seems to be that of the American people in general. How often does one hear the phrase, There ought to be a law? Far too often. No, there probably shouldn’t be another law: once they’ve outlawed rape, murder, theft & fraud the legislature can probably go home.

To judge by the Republicans of the last half-dozen years, this attitude is that of their party as well. It’s a sad thing when the party of the Contract with America becomes a party to big government, when the party which once pledged to eliminate the unconstitutional Department of Education instead more than doubles its funding.

Tuesday’s election was, I think, a vote against the Republicans rather than for the Democrats. The unfortunate thing is that the latter party is now in power, and we are all set to repeat the 1970s. We’re in the middle of a clash of civilisations—really, a war between civilisation and brutality—and very few Democrats seem to realise that, just as the many of them failed to give sufficient credence to the Communist threat in the 60s, 70s & 80s. I fear for the future of our nation.

Presenting a short parable:

The Parable of the two Programmers

Neil W. Rickert Dept. of Math, Stat., and Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago.

Once upon a time, unbeknownst to each other, the "Automated Accounting Applications Association" and the "Consolidated Computerized Capital Corporation" decided that they needed the identical program to perform a certain service.

Automated hired a programmer-analyst, Alan, to solve their problem.

Meanwhile, Consolidated decided to ask a newly hired entry-level programmer, Charles, to tackle the job, to see if he was as good as he pretended.

Alan, having had experience in difficult programming projects, decided to use the PQR structured design methodology. With this in mind he asked his department manager to assign another three programmers as a programming team. Then the team went to work, churning out preliminary reports and problem analyses.

Back at Consolidated, Charles spent some time thinking about the problem. His fellow employees noticed that Charles often sat with his feet on the desk, drinking coffee. He was occasionally seen at his computer terminal, but his office mate could tell from the rhythmic striking of keys that he was actually playing Space Invaders.

By now, the team at Automated was starting to write code. The programmers were spending about half their time writing and compiling code, and the rest of their time in conference, discussing the interfaces between the various modules.

His office mate noticed that Charles had finally given up on Space Invaders. Instead he now divided his time between drinking coffee with his feet on the table, and scribbling on little scraps of paper. His scribbling didn’t seem to be Tic Tac Toe, but it didn’t exactly make much sense, either.

Two months have gone by. The team at Automated finally releases an implementation timetable. In another two months they will have a test version of the program. Then a two month period of testing and enhancing should yield a com- pleted version.

The manager of Charles has by now tired of seeing him goof off. He decides to confront him. But as he walks into Charles’s office, he is surprised to see Charles busy entering code at his terminal. He decides to postpone the confrontation, so makes some small talk then leaves. However, he begins to keep a closer watch on Charles, so that when the opportunity presents itself he can confront him. Not looking forward to an unpleasant conversation, he is pleased to notice that Charles seems to be busy most of the time. He has even been see to delay his lunch, and to stay after work two or three days a week.

At the end of three months, Charles announces he has completed the project. He submits a 500 line program. The program appears to be clearly written, and when tested it does everything required in the specifications. In fact it even has a few additional convenience features which might significantly improve the usability of the program. The program is put into test, and, except for one quickly corrected oversight, performs well.

The team at Automated has by now completed two of the four major modules required for their program. These modules are now undergoing testing while the other modules are completed.

After another three weeks, Alan announces that the preliminary version is ready one week ahead of schedule. He supplies a list of the deficiencies that he expects to correct. The program is placed under test. The users find a number of bugs and deficiencies, other than those listed. As Alan explains, this is no surprise. After all this is a preliminary version in which bugs were expected.

After about two more months, the team has completed its production version of the program. It consists of about 2,500 lines of code. When tested it seems to satisfy most of the original specifications. It has omitted one or two features, and is very fussy about the format of its input data. However the company decides to install the program. They can always train their data-entry staff to enter data in the strict format required. The program is handed over to some maintenance programmers to eventually incorporate the missing features.

Sequel

At first Charles’s supervisor was impressed. But as he read through the source code, he realized that the project was really much simpler than he had originally though. It now seemed apparent that this was not much of a challenge even for a beginning programmer.

Charles did produce about 5 lines of code per day. This is perhaps a little above average. However, considering the simplicity of the program, it was nothing exceptional. Also his supervisor remembered his two months of goofing off.

At his next salary review Charles was given a raise which was about half the inflation over the period. He was not given a promotion. After about a year he became discouraged and left Consolidated.

At Automated, Alan was complimented for completing his project on schedule. His supervisor looked over the program. With a few minutes of thumbing through he saw that the company standards about structured programming were being observed. He quickly gave up attempting to read the program however; it seemed quite incomprehensible. He realized by now that the project was really much more complex than he had originally assumed, and he congratulated Alan again on his achievement.

The team had produced over 3 lines of code per programmer per day. This was about average, but, considering the complexity of the problem, could be con- sidered to be exceptional. Alan was given a hefty pay raise, and promoted to Systems Analyst as a reward for his achievement.

The tale is as true today as when it was written in March 1985. It’s not productivity which is rewarded, but the appearance of productivity. And the computer world has made very few fundamental advances in the two intervening decades: we’re still using WIMP interfaces; the best text editor out there is older than I am; the best operating system in common dates back to 1969; the best free database is older than I am. We’re stuck in a 1970s world.

Monday morning I awoke to a strange odour: the smell of Bakelite, familiar to geeks everywhere as the reek emitted when the Magic Smoke™ is freed from electronics. It appears that my CPU fan failed, leading to a CPU meltdown.

I replaced the power supply, motherboard and CPU; this in turn necessitated an upgraded operating system (since the old CPU was an Athlon and the current one is a Pentium D). So I’m now running a very much nicer setup than before. Life is pretty good.

Although I am a bit sad that I'm running atop a Pentium now. Oh well.

This is the coolest game in the world: tank paintball. They’ve got some old British armoured cars with turrets fitted to fire tennis balls filled with paint. This is seriously sweet.

I recently made my first batch of kefir, a Caucasion fermented milk drink. It’s pretty cool: you add a packet of bacteria and fungi to a jug of milk, then let it sit at room temperature for a few days. The microbes multiply to sour & thicken the milk. It’s pretty tasty, and very healthy. And you just gotta love anything which involves letting milk sit on a counter for a few days…

So I had to be up in Boulder this afternoon on business, and afterwards killed some time on Pearl Street Mall. The college kids are back in town now, and for the first time they look like children. When did I get old?

Found a great list of reasons to prefer either emacs over vi, or vi over emacs. Note that recent releases of vim have added quite a few features (but of course, that begins to prove the whole point of emacs…), and it’s not nearly the primitive editor it was once; now it’s the primitive editor it is now. Emacs, of course, is not standing still: version 22 will soon be out. This years marks the 31st birthday of emacs; it’s a text editor older than I am, one which has been continually improved all that time.

It’s pretty nifty.

I’m been an avid reader of science fiction since my teens, but must admit that it’s not exactly top-notch stuff all the time. Why, imagine if all stories were written like sci-fi stories…

The Image Quiz searches Google Images for pictures related to some keyword or keywords, then displays them to you; your job is to guess what keywords were used in the search. Strangely addicting, and loads of fun.

Ever wondered how many folks in the USA have your name? Well, HowManyOfMe.com lets you search.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 69 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

At the moment there are 69 Robert Uhls out there.

Today marks fifty years since the Hungarian Uprising, crushed by the Soviet Union while the West stood idle. It’s a shameful episode in our history.

Today marks ten years to the day since I met Karen, ten years since I fell hard for her—and almost exactly eight¾ years since I recovered.

I was in Abell Library (amusingly, the library home page is exactly as it was a decade ago) that evening, and saw a guy from my wing of Baker Hall; he was studying Kafka with a pair of girls. I got to talking with one of the girls: talking, and talking, and talking. She was fascinating: religious (like me!); a fan of Tolkien (like me!); a history geek (like me!). And although far from classically lovely, there was something about her I found attractive. No doubt it was the hunter green sweater & red hair pulled into a ponytail which together gave her a faint English look. I vaguely remember, once I’d left the library and she was out of sight, leaping into the air and clicking my heels together. Yup, I was well-and-truly smitten.

Hormones exist for several purposes, many quite useful (it’d get quite cold here in Denver without the beard I possess courtesy of some hormones which started their work almost twenty years ago), but they serve one end which is quite pernicious: they addle the brain. Our minds rely on our brains to process data for us; the brain is the mind’s calculator, its web browser, its interface to the body and through the body to the outside world. Under the influence of hormones the brain’s workings are confounded and the mind no longer perceives the truth. This is a good thing for the species as a whole, for otherwise no-one would marry. Women and men are fundamentally incompatible, and only through intoxication—whether by chemical or biological means—can we persuade ourselves otherwise. Eventually we sober up, but by that point it’s too late: we’re married, with children and mortgages and throw pillows and curtains and sleeping next to someone whose vocabulary possesses sixteen different words for the colour white.

It’s amusing how hormones persuade us that the object of our affections is exactly what we want. If one wishes an active mate, his brain fails to perceive that his beloved would really rather stay at home and read a good book; his hormone-addled brain sees the two skiing trips and the disused bicycle and ignores the bookshelves and the literary reviews. Likewise the girl who wants a scholarly young man: her hormone-intoxicated brain sees only the unread copies of Aquinas, Newton & Gould (inherited from his flat’s former owner) and completely overlooks the football jersey, the Playboy centrefolds on the wall and the C average. Hormones are brain damage.

In my case I had been taught to put friendship and intellectual & philosophical similarity at a premium and discount physical attraction—and I was only to happy to perceive exactly that. Why, Karen & I were practically identical! We read the same books; we thought the same things; we could sit and talk for hours (over twelve hours in one memorable instance). Why, we agreed on everything. Well, everything important. Well, almost everything important. And I could convince her on the outstanding issues. And besides, we were so similar on the big political issues of the day, e.g. we both opposed gun control. Even the fact that she wasn’t a classic beauty was a mark in her favour, for it proved that this was an authentic love. Hormones are brain damage.

In reality, we were similar insofar as we were both intelligent, quirky, middle-class, American teenagers of the 1990s who had both read the books that intelligent, quirky, middle-class, American teenagers read back in the 1990s. Sure, she wasn’t fanatically anti-gun, but that’s hardly rare in Texas. While we did have interests in common, we came at them from different angles and for different reasons: the boy who reads about Sts. Nicholas & Alexandra because they are the Royal Martyrs has little in common with the girl who reads about Tsar Nicholas & Tsaritsa Alexandra because they were famous historical failures. Hormones are brain damage.

But my hormone-addled senses convinced me that dating Karen made sense, that it was a logical, rational thing to do. There was one hitch, though: she had a boyfriend—but he went to a school roughly six hours away. I figured that I had a pretty good chance; after all, don’t most high school relationships break up once they become long-distance in college? I’ve often wished that he’d gone to Austin College as well, for then it’s likelier that I’d have given up. Instead, I persisted for over a year, in defiance of all logic & reason. Hormones are brain damage.

Karen is blameless in all this: she mentioned Scott the evening we met and never led me to think she would break things off with him. If anything, she was very clear that they were quite fond of one another and that she & I had no romantic future. Despite the evidence, I was convinced that I could somehow win her affections. Hormones are brain damage.

I was a lovesick pup for month after month; I spent every possible minute with her; I bored my friends with talk of her; I spent the summer break of ’97 pining after her; I contacted her immediately after she got back on campus; in short, I made a complete and utter ass of myself. I alienated my friends and neglected my studies. Hormones are brain damage.

It’s odd how quickly these things can start & end. I fell for Karen in an instant, and I fell away almost as quickly. I still remember the day: it was the end of the 1998 Jan Term (very possibly 23 January, which would be nicely symmetrical) and my best friend Phil & I were sitting in his dorm room polishing off a magnum of hard cider we’d made. I can still see the winter sun slanting in through the blinds, and can still remember saying, You know, I don’t think I’m in love with Karen anymore. It was as simple as that, like a light switch being flipped on.

For a time after my brain cleared I strongly disliked her, although it wasn’t really her that I hated; it was the error of which she reminded me. Eventually that shame subsided and we became decent acquaintances. Karen’s married to Scott now, with one son and another child due in a month or two, and I’m quite happy for them.

I wouldn’t have things turn out any other way. Karen & I would have been a big mistake even if she’d be amenable: we’re just not anywhere a good match, but hormone-drunk I was convinced we were. Hormones are brain damage.

Before America entered the Second World War, Great Britain had 3,000 spies in the United States, all working to turn public opinion in favour of the United Kingdom. Quite a story.

Wikipedia is available in Latin. Great resource if you’re learning that language, or want to hone your skills.

A girl in Scotland threw a bottle into the ocean and it arrived in New Zealand, making the journey at an average clip of 369 knots, which is completely absurd. Is it a hoax? Did someone pick it up in an æroplane somehow? Strange story—one wonders what the truth of it is.

I just watched the first Christmas episode of Moonlighting, from way back in 1985. At the end the camera pans out of the scene to reveal the entire studio & its crew, all singing The First Noël. It’s striking how much our culture has changed: in 1985 one could make a Christmas episode featuring a religious song; nowadays one cannot even refer to the Christmas season, but rather to some absurd holiday season. It’s sad how low we’ve sunk in a mere 21 years.

My brother Tom sent me a of his ship entering San Francisco Bay for Fleet Week. It’s a pretty cool shot.

After attending Stephen’s boot camp graduation, we headed down to Dallas for my mom’s family reunion. It was good to see my various relatives again. We’re an odd lot: highly intelligent, highly excitable, more than a little weird. The high point was the presentation to Granddad of an album of photos & reminiscences of his life. He’s done a great deal of good for many people, but naturally I’m most grateful for the fact that he married my grandmother and begat my mother.

After San Diego & Dallas the return to Colorado was a bit of a shock: in our absence the temperature had dropped into the 30s and it seemed that winter was truly upon us. It’s warmed up since, but one can tell that it is on its way. Late fall and early winter are the finest of times, and I’m eagerly looking forward to them.

This past Friday my kid brother graduated from US Marine Corps boot camp at MCRD San Diego. Our family (save for Tom & Em, who are deployed on their respective ships) flew out for the ceremonies and so forth associated therewith. We’re all very proud of this newest young Marine. God grant that his career will be successful and safe.

Sorry about the recent outage here at Octopodial Chrome. Something went wonky with my DSL bridge last Wednesday and it took until today to get a replacement (gosh, ain’t overnight delivery over a weekend fun!). Things hsould be up & running fine now, though.

The experience has led me to re-evaluate my Internet approach. Expect some changes in the semi-near future…

I just saw Un long dimanche de fiançailles (A Long Engagement), an excellent French film about a young woman trying to find her fiance—supposedly slain in the Great War. It’s a top-notch film; if your eyes are able to read the subtitles in the final scene then you have a lump of ice where your heart should be.

The Royal Society has released its Philosophical Transactions and Proceedings since 1665 online. Want to read Newton or Priestley in the original? They’re there. They are free until December, so archive as many as you can.

Here’s the Complete List of Pirate Laws for your reading enjoyment. Just remember: a pirate does not use the word Fabulous. Ever.

This article on pirate radio is great: when FCC agents raided radio free Santa Cruz, several hundred protesters gathered, including the city’s mayor. The FCC agents’ cars had their tyres slashed and then the police gave them parking tickets. Grass roots government at its finest.

Well, after decades of faithful service the F-14 Tomcat retires today. These are the planes made famous in Top Gun; they were one component in the shield which defended us from the now-defunct Soviet Union and prevented World War III. And now they’re fading into the sunset.

I want a little hobbit cottage like this.

I just got back from seeing Top Gun on the largest screen in all Denver. It was incredible to see again in a theatre—well worth the princely sum of $5 a ticket. I highly recommend it, should you get the chance.

So I watched Batman, for probably the first time I a decade and a half. Back in ’89 when it came out my father heard something on the radio about—unfortunately he mis-heard DC (as in DC Comics) as Disney and thus he took his family to see a Tim Burton film.

At the time, I thought that was about the coolest thing ever. My parents would normally have never allowed us to see anything like that, and I’d have been the laughingstock (as usual) of the kids at school. But instead I was one of the guys, for a brief moment. It was pretty sweet.

Seeing it now, though, I have to admit that it is bewildering why any sequels were made. It’s just not a very good film: too juvenile for adults; too adult for children. It’s not at all believable; in fact, it’s really a stupid film.

On the way home after church on Sunday I stopped off at my local homebrew shop to pick up the ingredients for a Scotch Ale. The folks next to me at the grain mills were a nice young couple looking about college age or slightly older. I ended up in line behind them, and as we were chatting (the store was busier than anyone had ever seen, so there was plenty of time for talk) it turned out that they’d never done an all grain batch before. I and the fellows behind me noted with some surprise that they were about to buy around nine pounds of barley and no extract.

Those of y’all who’ve never brewed before (poor souls!) probably don’t know that there are different levels of brewing one can do. Most folks start out with hopped extracts; these are barley syrups with hops already added—the brewer simply mixes with water, boils and adds some yeast. The next step up is to use unhopped extracts and add hops of one’s choosing. The step after that is to steep ground barley (or other grains) in warm water to extract some desired flavour, then to add extract and hops. This is where a lot of folks end up stopping for awhile, as it requires no extra equipment and is fairly simple. It’s relatively expensive, though (extract isn’t cheap to produce or transport) and doesn’t give one very good control over the final beer.

The most advanced sort of brewing (and that done by almost all commercial breweries) is all-grain brewing. One takes ground grains and mashes & lauters them. Mashing is the process which converts the starches in grain into sugars; lautering is the process of straining the sweet sugar water from the spent grains. Both of these steps require a certain amount of skill and special equipment. One has to calculate the right amount & temperature of water to add in order to raise the grain to a temperature where the right enzymes can go to work and one has to lauter the mash so that the wort is relatively clear.

In effect, this couple was going from buying freeze-dried coffee to green coffee beans—and they didn’t realise it! Fortunately, it’s not that difficult a process, but to leap into unsuspectingly is…mind-boggling. We did our best to give them a brief overview of the process and point them to some good resources and I hope that they were successful, but I fear that they might have had one rotten Sunday evening.

Seen on the profile of bookstopshere, a LibraryThing user with whom I share a number of books:

It is often much harder to get rid of books than it is to acquire them. They stick to us in that pact of need and oblivion we make with them, witnesses to a moment in our lives we will never see again… The truth is that in the end, the size of a library does matter. We lay the books out for inspection like a huge exposed brain, offering miserable excuses and feigned modesty… There is a moment, however, when we have accumulated so many books that they cross an invisible line, and what was once a sense of pride becomes a burden, because from now on space will always be a problem.

Carlos Maria Dominguez, The House of Paper

Very true. Don Aslett once pointed out that books are really clutter, read a few times but taking up space forever. What he failed to note is that books reveal who someone is. Also, a smoking room unlined in books is hardly a smoking room at all.

Well, I’ve gotten all but one of my bookcases into my LibraryThing book catalogue—435 books so far. I’ve one bookcase, several boxes and a few loose books and I’ll have a complete list of all the books I own (and so will anyone who visits my LibraryThing profile. It gives a pretty good idea of who I am & what I’m interested in.

Well, I left my Common Lisp blogging software project lie for long enough; about a fortnight ago I started working on it again. It’s now in a workable condition, and is faster than my current blogging software. I have two more plugins to finish porting and then I’ll be able to convert Octopodial Chrome over to it. How cool will that be—running my blog on my own hand-written blogging tool.

Today I learnt about something I’d never heard of: the springhouse (sometimes written with two words, as spring house, others with one). It’s a small structure you build—generally of stone—over and around a spring. At its simplest, it just fills a cistern and keeps it in the dark so that algæ doesn’t grow. But it can also be used to fill a trough running the perimeter of the building; the cold spring water constantly running up from the spring, around the room and out of the springhouse yields a constantly cool room; a low-tech refrigerator. If you’re lucky you can even use the coolness to chill another room where you can work during the summer.

If I ever buy a piece of land, I think it definitely needs to have a spring. I’d love to build a springhouse.

Dr. Ian Walker conducted an experiment which showed that drivers are twice as likely to pass too close when a cyclist wears a helmet—at an average separation of 3¼ inches. The theory is that perhaps they consider helmeted cyclists to be more predictable. Or perhaps they are less afraid of hurting someone wearing protective gear. The researcher was struck twice, both times whilst wearing a helmet, out of 2,500 passes.

Yet more evidence that helmets can be bad for your health.

Almost a century ago Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii developed a colour photography technique and travelled throughout Russia taking pictures. Now, there are some pictures of the same places 94 years later. It’s interesting to see how little certain things can change.

Found this great bit of advice from a guy in his fifties to a guy in his twenties. If this doesn’t make you laugh, you have no soul.

What if Noam Chomsky & Howard Zinn provided a commentary track for The Fellowship of the Ring? You can really imagine them blathering on like this…

A fortnight ago I’d a spill on my ride in to work. While making a right turn my rear tyre went out from underneath me, and I discovered that it’s very difficult to ride a unicycle when one’s a few feet behind, rather than above, it. I went sprawling and my glasses, hat and backpack went flying (how does a backpack come off of both arms?). It was the worst accident I’ve ever had: banged up my left knee, right thigh, right elbow, right ribs, and both hands & palms.

I’ve not ridden my bike since the parking lot of the bike store after it was supposedly fixed (the mechanic believed it was due to loose cranks, but I just don’t see it). To be honest, I’m rather afraid of riding thing. One of these days, maybe, but for now I’m happy walking.

Two police officers were killed and one wounded whilst on a charity bike ride. A truck struck the van alongside, which then struck them. Considering that it’s a four-lane highway, it’s hard to imagine any justification for truck driver to have hit the van, which was prominently marked Caution Cyclists Ahead. Ironically, the ride was meant to raise money for the families of officers killed in the line of duty.

Fr. Aris Metrakos has an article about American Orthodoxy and both its positives and negatives. Interestingly, Fr. was a naval aviator before attending seminary and receiving Holy Orders.

Google offer a searchable database of products, services and so forth; I’ve submitted my books in a bid to see if they make any money. The books are:

G.K. Chesterton

Alarms & Discursions

What’s Wrong with the World

Christopher Morley

Shandygaff

Booth Tarkington

Penrod (hardcover)

Penrod (softcover)

We’ll see if they sell or not. It’d be kinda cool if they did.

Apparently Steve Irwin died from a ray’s sting off the coast of Australia. What an ignominious end!

I just ran across Craig Finseth’s book The Craft of Text Editing. It’s a kind to implementing a text editor, given the knowledge current as of 1991 (which, sadly, hasn’t progressed a bit—the old text editors are in many cases far more advanced than the modern ones). An essential read if you’re looking to write an emacs-like editor.

Psychology Today has an article about how we’ve become a nation of wimps due to parents who obsess over making life as easy for their children as possible. Cellphones don’t help, either. Read on so that your children will be among the few to actually grow up when they grow up.

Today was my last day at Nissan, after a little more than a year there. I don’t feel nearly as sad as when I left the CoBank account, but it’s still the end of something fun.

Yesterday I bid a final farewell to Tom Tripp. He interviewed me for an internship position at IBM—at CoBank—way back in the summer of ’98; I got the job and we’ve been working together for eight years. He’s a fine man, one whom I’ve been fortunate to call a co-worker and a friend; I count myself lucky to have known him.

Now I’m on to the American Express account. It should be a great challenge!

In Baltimore the cops pulled a man and his passengers from his car, then arrested him for stealing it. Then they went on to sell it at auction before he was even tried—the charges were dismissed, but the man is without his property. I think that the police officers involved should have their cars confiscated and given to the man in question.

Whilst reading the Wikipedia article about Jägermeister I discovered something I’d never know: the cross between the hart’s antlers is a reference to St. Hubert, a nobleman who neglected the church for hunting until on Good Friday he saw a hart with a cross in its antlers, which spoke to him thus: Hubert, unless thou turnest to the Lord, and leadest an holy life, thou shalt quickly go down into hell. He reformed his life, gave his goods to the poor and eventually became a pious bishop.

The poem on the bottles reads thus:

This is the hunter’s badge of honour,
that he protect and nourish his game,
hunt sportingly, as is proper,
and honor the Creator in creation.

It’s odd that a beverage with such Christian packaging has become a favourite of drunkards across the nation. A pity, reall.

Ever wanted to keep track of all your books? Every wondered who out there has similar tastes in reading material? Ever thought that a massive-enough database should be able to give you some reading suggestions? Well, LibraryThing does all that. I started using it yesterday, and bought a lifetime account today (it’s free for 200 books, $10/year or $25/life for an unlimited account). Only have 169 books in there, but that’s only two bookshelves and the books lying around my bedroom.

From the Netherlands comes a disturbing report of a new lock-opening technique known as bump-keying. In this technique, a specially-prepared key is made which is hit with a hammer, screwdriver handle or other object; it then turns and opens the lock. Almost all locks are vulnerable to this opening method—one which leaves no trace at all, leading to many insurance companies refusing to accept claims for stolen goods. One bit of good news is that some locks are resistant, and thus over time we can expect that this technique will be provided for in lock ratings.

Tyler Larson has put up a video with instructions on how to make and use a bump key. Interesting stuff.

I just got back from watching Beerfest, a film which is perhaps—nay definitely—the finest film in all of recorded history. Casablanca & Citizen Kane pale in comparison; indeed had Welles & Bogart know what was to come they’d have just stayed home and not bothered.

Yes, it’s crude and crass and not at all good for society—but it’s something better than uplifting: it’s funny. I went with a bunch of guys from work; we drank beer and ate a hearty meal at C.B. & Pott’s, then adjourned to the theatre for this greatest of movies. It was absolutely perfect for our mood. The only unfortunate thing is how few people caught it with us. This is the sort of movie which should be seen in an auditorium packed with delirious fans. But it was worth it nonetheless.

If you don’t enjoy Beerfest, you don’t like beer, or you have two X chromosomes, or your sense of humour has atrophied and fallen off. If, on the other hand, you are a somewhat young at heart (that’s code for immature) guy who can turn off his brain and laugh at some politically incorrect humour, then see this film! See it tomorrow, and bring all your friends.

Apparently the Canadians have a warship, which they even use for war. Who knew?

Just as jail time tends to instill a prisoner mentality, so too does Microsoft Windows imposes its own kind of prisoner mentality. I wonder if Mac OS X does the same thing, to a lesser degree.

Sometime around this week marks a full decade since I started college. It was the happiest day of my life: as I watched my family's van drive off into the long August evening, I felt very strongly the old words of Martin Luther King, Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty I'm free at last!. After 18 years of bondage, I was finally free (this wasn't a particularly mature attitude, but it's the one I had at the time).

As soon as they had disappeared, I ran up into my dorm room, tore into my boxes and produced my corncob pipe and some truly foul peach tobacco which I though was the bee's knees back then; then I went outside and enjoyed my first pipe as a free man. It was truly glorious.

Looking back on it all now, it's amazing how much I can still easily remember, and how much I've forgotten. I can recall the second-rate jellybeans at the Hopper Store, but not getting my photo made for my student ID; I can remember listening to The Edge (back when it was 94.5), but not meeting the guys who are now my best friends.

Looking back on it now, I realise that my major failing was treating college just like the previous dozen years of my education. Ever since the abominable Mrs. Freeman in fourth grade, school (life, really) had been a matter of cost-benefit maximisation, of seeing how well I could do for a minimal amount of effort. That's probably not an entirely inappropriate way to handle middle school, but it's utterly wrong for college.

College is a golden opportunity: one gets to deal on a one-on-one basis with experts in their fields---one's field, but I didn't realise that. Instead, I saw it as something like high school without parents: I had to do well enough academically to stay in, but there was no need to do better. Tests were not useful gauges of my progress, but instead hurdles to be overcome. Grades were not my friend but my enemy.

It wasn't until my senior year that I really got it and started to do well not because I needed to but because I wanted to---but by then it was too late. It's funny: senior year I partied more, did more, had more fun and got better grades than ever before. Unlike some, it wasn't partying which did me in, but attitude.

Socially, college was the best time of my entire life. I formed excellent friendships, many of which persist to this day. In college, one is surrounded by members of one's age cohort: never again will a young man have so many young women around him, nor will he ever have so many friends.

Life after graduation is inevitably downhill: one gets older; the body which once supported one now needs support; work sucks out what idealism and optimism one had and replaces it with the worst kind of cynicism. How could it be otherwise? What can be better than to be young & foolish, unaware of life's limitations? Age and wisdom may be better for one's character, but they aren't very fun.

And yes, gentle readers of this humble blog, prepare for four years of reminiscing, all leading up to my ten-year reunion. It was a fine thing to be a young man in the twilight years of the twentieth century, and I plan to recount it all.

Over a decade ago Ed Hitchcock made an amazing attempt at an extremely early beer. He malted his own grains, baked them into loaves, mashed & fermented them—and he came up with a good beer as an end result. He also took the post-fermentation yeast cake (with much included grains and starches), mixed it with flour and made more bread. Someday it might be a fun experiment to try.

Turner Broadcasting is censoring over 1,500 Tom and Jerry cartoons, removing any positive reference to smoking (e.g. Tom impressing a lady cat by rolling & a cigarette with one hand), while leaving in negative portrayals (e.g. a villain smoking a cigar). Stalin did this sort of thing too.

I am beginning to think that if one is to admire freedom at all then one must smoke at least a bit, if only as a form of social disobedience.

Remember COBRA from the old GI Joe cartoon? Ever wonder what went on in the minds of its countless faceless minions?

I was reading a page about hnefatafl (a Viking board game) when I came upon this most incredible excerpt:

In Völuspá, a great poem about the creation of the world and the Scandinavian equivalent to Genesis, the Anses play tafl with golden tæflor—table-men—in the innocent days after the creation of the world. When the world is resurrected after Ragnarök, they find the same table-men laying in the grass.

I was instantly reminded of the bit in C.S. Lewis’s Prince Caspian (the second-published of the Chronicles of Narnia) when the children, pulled back to Narnia centuries after they’d left, discover a golden chess-man in the garden of Cair Paravel.

Gosh, Oxbridge dons are cool guys.

Many years ago I started to get into Scheme, an academic programming language which was supposed to become the official language of the GNU Project; it was this which drew me to it. After all, if the GNU Project would be using it everywhere, then it’d serve me well to learn it ASAP.

Scheme’s an interesting member of the Lisp family; code is represented as a list which may itself be manipulated. A simple Scheme function to add two numbers and divide by a third might look like:

(define (f x y z) (/ (+ x y) z))

It’s a Lisp-1, which means that in the example above the function f is in the same namespace as the variable x et. al.

Anyway, Scheme seemed pretty cool, very clean and idealised. I’d also heard of Common Lisp, but what I’d heard was that it was old, clunky and big—that I should stick with Scheme because it was small & clean. But I found that was never really able to use Guile for doing any real work: it’s not compiled, but simply interpreted (this means that it’s very slow); there’re aren’t a lot of libraries for it and so forth.

Then I saw a Slashdot article about a new book, Practical Common Lisp. It sounded interesting, so I picked up a copy.It was utterly amazing! I’d no idea that a programming language could do the things it could do. Yes, it’s a much larger language than Scheme—but the extra pieces the Common Lisp standard specifies are the extra bits that every Scheme implementation has to invent on its own, usually incompatibly.

So I’ve been working with Common Lisp for about a year now and I couldn’t be happier. I’m actually getting work done and programming is as fun as it was when I was a kid mucking about with HyperCard, which was my introduction to this world.

Tumblewood Tiny House Company produce small (many below 100 sq. ft.!) homes. It occurs to me that these could be put to good use as summer cabins, second residences, carriage houses and such. Space-efficient, energy-efficient and dollar-efficient: can’t beat that.

Apparently a a fellow in Minneapolis drove off some burglars with a sword. According to the original URL, one of the attackers had a gun—for all the good it did him. A followup story tells of the indictment of the burglars. Interestingly, their names would indicate that they are Mohammedans!

A tree in San Antonio, Tx., become a spring, with water streaming from its side. I predict that in a decade we’ll all have one.

A Navy chief has sunk lower than any man in history, using a hardsuit to dive to 2,000 feet. Go Navy!

Scotland has banned knives & swords. So much for Scotland the Brave; they’re all a bunch of poltroons now.

The Library of Congress is hosting a pictorial Bound for Glory of colour photographs of America from 1939–1943. It’s amazing to see how backwards we were back then.

Many years ago, when I was still a young man, the Geek Code was created as a simple way for one to list one’s geekiness in a concise format (even the desire to do so is geeky…); my own geek code is:

GCS d+(++) s:+ a- C++++$ ULSA++++ P— L+++$ E+++ W+++$ N+++ o+ K w— O- M– V- PS+++(–) PE++ Y+ PGP t– 5++ X– R>+ !tv b++ DI++ D+(++) G+

Ah, the days of my youth!

I’ve recently been playing at home & at work with AllegroServe & Webactions, a web development framework from Franz Inc., one of the leading Common Lisp vendors. Once you’ve worked your head around it, it’s quite powerful. I’ve also been learning how to use Lisp macros to reduce my coding burden. For example, take a look at the following lines:

(def-db-object brewer (thing)
  ((rating
   :type float
   :reader rating
   :html (html (:princ (make-stars (rating *object*)))))
   (beers
    :db-kind :join
    :db-info (:join-class beer
			  :home-key name
			  :foreign-key brewer
			  :set t)
    :accessor beers
    :html (let* ((beers (beers *object*))
		 (webaction (webaction-from-ent ent))
		 (websession (websession-from-req req))
		 (beer-path (locate-action-path webaction "beer" websession)))
	    (html
	      (:ul
	       (dolist (beer beers)
		 ;;(error "brewer: ~a; beer: ~a" (name *object*) (name beer))
		 (html (:li ((:a href (concatenate 'string
						  beer-path
						  "?"
						  (query-to-form-urlencoded `(("brewer" . ,(name *object*))
									      ("name" . ,(name beer))))))
			     (:princ (name beer) " (" (rating beer)
				     "-Star "
				     (style beer)) ")")))))))))
  (:base-table "brewers"))

These lines create a class named brewer, which has slots (members, if you’re familiar with that terminology) named rating & beers, and which inherits slots from the class named thing; it also creates nice little HTML-extension functions to display rating, beers & name, URL and notes inherited from thing. It also over-rides the default function provided for rating and displays it as a series of little asterisks instead as a number, and does the same for beers to instead create a nice little undelimited list (the :ul bit) with the list items being links to the beers.

Not too shabby for just a few lines, eh?

Well, for one, Zed Shaw will kill them if they don’t. But seriously, he brings up some very important points about the use and misuse of statistics in computer science circles.

I’ve used R, the statistical package to which he refers; it’s a nice piece of work, and very useful for my purpose at the time (which was determining the root cause of some performance problems on one of my hosts).

I recently found an interesting interview with Alice Cooper, one of the founders of heavy metal. He’s a preacher’s kid, a family man, a Christian and a Republican—and an old pal of Groucho Marx. I can’t say that I care for his stage persona, but the interview with the man himself is good reading.

The Ozzie interviewer’s political bias is shockingly out-there, though. Even in America our interviewers are rarely this forthrightly partisan.

A 60-year-old Norwegian man taught some muggers a thing or three; what they failed to realise is that he was a boxer in his youth, and no pushover even in his dotage.

I just read an article about iAudio, a portable little audio player which—unlike the iPod—might be worth owning. It uses a real AA battery, not some expensive proprietary failure-prone one; it plays unencumbered audio formats like Ogg Vorbis; it has a little FM tuner. The iAudio might be the player for me.

Some of my regular readers may have noticed that this blog has been silent recently. Well, there’s been a reason: I was attending the Advanced Homebrewing Programme offered by the Siebel Institute in conjunction with Ft. Lewis College. The course, only in its third year, is a comprehensive review of brewing techniques & technology, beer styles, sensory perception of beer and so forth. It was incredible. More on it to follow…

A new report suggests that sleeping in the same bed is bad for men & women—but worse for men. Not surprisingly, it appears that having someone else in one’s own bed disturbs one’s sleep patterns.

Of course, not having anyone to share a bed with might not be the best thing for one’s well-being either…

A family in New York City have built a porch & meadow atop their building. It’s a pretty sweet idea; ideally all buildings would be designed for a full-scale garden to offset the ground the building uses.

The Denver Post has an article up about child race-car drivers. One six year old drives a half-scale race car that gets up to about 80 mph. That is so cool! To be a kid driving a race car must be just this side of heaven.

Apparently hybrids don’t get very good gas mileage after all. My ’91 Tercel gets the same mileage as an ’04 Prius, and better mileage than either the hybrid Civic or the Escape. Are modern cars so much heavier than 15 years ago? What’s slowing them down so much?

Tristan Miller pleads that his correspondents not send him Microsoft Word files. I echo his plea: if you love me, you will not send me Microsoft (or Apple) formatted files.

Michæl Lewyn has a brilliant piece detailing why urban sprawl should concern conservatives. We’re used to thinking that this is a leftist issue—and indeed the usual remedies are leftist and statist in the extreme. Lewyn, though, shows that it was actually state actions which encouraged suburban developments.

Starting in the 1930s the federal government started offering cheap mortgages to those who bought homes in low-risk areas—at the time, ’low-risk’ meant thinly-populated (e.g. suburban), new and lacking ’undesirables’ (at the time, it was explicit that this meant blacks & immigrants). Due to FHA policies, moving out of the city & into the suburbs was subsidised for the middle class—at the expense of everyone.

At the same time, the federal government was constructing low-income housing projects in the cities. This was effectively bribing the poor to stay urban while bribing the middle class to become suburban; hardly a conservative idea!

Then there’s the subject of transportation policy. Throughout the last century roads have been paid for in great part from general tax revenues rather than from usage fees or gasoline taxes; thus non-drivers have been subsidising drivers (and yes, non-drivers and drivers alike benefit from trucking—but mightn’t the railroads have fulfilled the same function if they hadn’t been forced to subsidise the truckers?). This has created a perverse incentive to drive, and once many people were driving on the roads, they demanded yet more roads. And these roads themselves have led to more sprawl, in a process most of us are beginning to accept: when was the last time that a highway expansion actually led to a shorter commute?

Then there’s the issue of education. Because of forced busing, the only way to keep one’s children from being educated alongside the lower-class was to leave the school district entirely. Subsidised mortgages and roads made that decision an easy one.

Then there’s the plague of zoning. Without it, suburbs might have just become new, upper-class cities, with walkable neighbourhoods and a vibrant blend of commercial & residential property. Instead, the State mandates that no business is allowed within a particular area; naturally that means no-one living there can walk to work, and thus that they must all own cars. Helpfully, these same zoning codes mandate parking spaces, further encouraging drivers (for example, when was the last time you saw any parking lot at capacity—that’s valuable property being put to no good use).

Lewin makes some excellent suggestions. Read the article for them!

Here’s an article which argues that Manhattan is the greenest city in the country. This seems counter-intuitive: it’s a great concrete jungle, with hardly anything green at all. But in terms of impact-per-person, it is far, far more ecologically-sound than the suburbs.

I wonder what can be done to make urban centres more pleasant to live in, so that people are drawn to them and away from the sprawling suburbs. What would a truly well-planned city look like? How would issues such as noise and privacy be handled? What would make living in a small apartment or condo seem more attractive than living in a McMansion on a half-acre of land?

Well, privacy can be assured with better construction—thicker walls, windows placed intelligently. I can imagine all streets be underground, or on elevated, fully-covered highways (increasing safety, since weather would not be a factor) so that the primary means of transportation would be on foot, via bicycle or public transport. And a large yard simply means having to do yardwork; maybe apartment building could be built with well-designed windowboxes for flowers, or stagered private gardens or something.

More than two years ago I’d the very great privilege of seeing Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World, perhaps the most important film of our age. At that time, I stated that it was masterfully done in every respect. Well, I just saw it again, and if anything my opinion is even higher. If you see only one film in your entire life, make it Master & Commander.

It is a film about duty, about courage, about holding fast when the odds are against one; a film about humility, about subjecting oneself to the concerns of the greater good. It should be the film of our age, but I understand that it didn’t earn enough in the theatres to merit a sequel. Shame upon movie-goers everywhere!

Perhaps the finest is when the 12- or 13-year-old Lord Blakeney—who has been left in command whilst the other officers board the enemey—determines that those left under his command need to themselves board in order to prevent a last-ditch attack. He gives the order, and men many multiples of his own age, including the ship’s doctor (an officer, but under the command of a barely-teenage boy) follow him. In that brief sequence is portrayed everything about honour and duty which can be portrayed.

Master & Commander should be required annual viewing for every young man from the age of 6 to 24; it’s that good. Only in our sad and lowly modern age would it not have won the box office success it deserved. If you’ve not seen it yet, see it now. If you’ve seen it already, see it again.

On 12 December 1862 the Confederate States of America achieved yet another of their technological firsts by becoming the first to sink an enemy ship by means of a mine, when they sank the USS Cairo by means of a mine detonated by wire. Unfortunately no Yankees were slain in the action—but still, we Southerners acquitted ourselves well.

One week ago my college buddy Darren & I embarked on our second Beer Odyssey (the one last year having been such a very great success). This time our target was central and western Colorado (last year's epic having covered the northern end of my fair state). We set out on I-70 with but a single goal in mind: to enjoy great beer and beautiful scenery; we were to get both in spades, although I should note that as the driver for this expedition I enjoyed mere sips of beer whilst watching Darren drink. But I live here, and thus can always return, whilst he must travel from Texas.

Our first stop was the Dillon Dam Brewery, where I'd an excellent hamburger and he'd a passable bratwurst. I purchased a glass, a pack of cards, a guide to Rocky Mountain drinking holes, a growler of pilsener and a six pack of their lager. Thereafter we headed to Hanging Lake (just east of Glenwood Springs) where we saw one of the natural wonders of the world: a lake which collapsed from a cliff face, leaving a pair of cataracts and a beautiful crystal clear lake on the side of the cliff. The shores are composed of travertine in its primitive state. I can highly recommend it to anyone who's travelling in the area---it's roughly a three-hour hike, but worth every minute.

We journeyed on to Palisade, where we visited both the Palisade Brewery and Peach Street Distillers. The former had some excellent ales on tap; I left with a growler of their Dually Imperial Pale Ale, a deceptively smooth beer with a massively high alcohol content, and another growler of their peach ale. The latter had an exceedingly friendly staff; had I not been driving I would have dearly loved to settle down and throw back a few drinks with them. As it was I purchased a bottle of their Goat Vodka to bring home---a truly wonderful vodka, sweet with just a slight hint of maize (it's made from the semi-famous Olathe Sweet Corn).

We then continued on to Grand Junction and booked ourselves some rooms, then headed out to dinner at the Alehouse (a tied house of the Breckenridge Brewery) where I'd a steak and Darren'd a burger (and we shared some great pub chips); then we were on to the Kannah Creek Brewing Compant, a brewpub/pizzeria. I wasn't terribly impressed, to tell the truth: they struck me as more of a non-drinker's brewpub. Still, friendly staff. We walked to our rooms from the pub, and were soon fast asleep.

On Friday we arose and stopped briefly in Palisade to visit the Meadery of the Rockies, whereat I got a bottle of their Chocolate Cherry Velvet, a mead-port) as well as a six pack of perry (pear cider). We then headed back to Glenwood Springs, where we stopped off at the Glenwood Canyon Brew Pub, which I will wager money is owned by a Greek. Excellent food, wonderful beers. I believe that I brought back a growler of the raspberry wheat, IIRC. Darren had a gyro and I'd a very good fish & chips. Then we headed to Glenwood Caverns, a somewhat new attraction in the area. The caves are very cool, and the Alpine Coaster is loads of fun. We set back on the road just as he weather began to turn. We stopped off at the Gore Range Brewery, a nice little brewpub nestled in Edwards (an otherwise nondescript town); we'd an order of chips & salsa and I left with a growler of their red ale. As the weather turned decidedly nasty we stopped off in Frisco at the Backcountry Brewery for a dinner of pizzas---very good, and well-worth a repeat visit. This was the first brewery whereat I failed to buy a growler, not because their beers were subpar but because I can buy them here in town and the car was getting very cramped.

Then commenced one of the very worst drives of my life. There were several times when I thought our numbers were up; the worst was when a passing pickup's rain-shedding tyres obscured our windscreen so badly that I couldn't see for about a second and a half. On a downhill stretch. A curvy downhill stretch. At night. My life flashed before my eyes, I swear. But we got home in the end and our beer odyssey was done.

The following day we would visit a local C.B. & Pott's, catch Pirates of the Caribbean, stop off at Edward's (whereat I bought a fine pipe whereby I shall remember this trip always) and finally brew a batch of beer. Then on Sunday we went to church, had dinner at my folks' house and ended up visiting the finest beer bar in the country, the Falling Rock Tap House. After all this beer-chasing (and due to my own homebrewing efforts) my condo housed roughly 24 gallons of beer---that's over ¾ of a beer barrel! Along with all this beer (and the vodka) I also purchased much glassware---mostly pints, with a few shot glassed thrown in for good measure.

All in all it was an most wonderful trip. I'll be posting pictures soon.

Well, not quite—but I managed to go more than a whole month without driving my car into the office for work. Not too shabby, eh? Of course, this Tuesday I got a flat & I’ve been driving in until I’ve fixed the tyre. Sigh…

My old friend Lara posted a link to this cool collection of 80s music videos. Al I can say is that the art form was under-developed then. There’s really no excuse for it. But the music still rocks…

Perhaps the majority of my blood is Irish---but I cannot be proud of the fact. The Irish are, after all, the inventors of modern-day terrorism; they slew women and children indiscriminately in their revolts against the British Crown, utilising terror killings and such to win their bloody independence. They long refused to recognise the sacrifice of their countrymen in the Great War: while the Protestant war memorial is well-tended, the Catholic one is small, shabby and decrepit. It took 20 years for the city of Dublin to approve a statue of a nationalist Irishman because of three little words: Killed in France (because he died fighting for the English). We are talking about the sort of people who can blather on about reparations for the potato famine, as though the English could be blamed for potato blight. We are talking about traitors who rebelled during the Great War. In the case of the IRA, we are talking about folks fighting on the side of the Nazis in the Second World War: Sean Russell sent bombs into England and travelled to & from Berlin, partly via U-Boat. Worst of all, Éamon de Valera---prime minister of the Irish Republic---visited the German ambassador to convey his official condolences after Hitler's suicide; the Secretary of External Affairs accompanied him and the next day the Irish President did the same.

No, I'm not terribly proud of my Irish heritage.

But the Irish are finally acknowledging their history in the Great War in general and the Battle of the Somme in particular in an excellent manner. One of the better articles details the first day of the battle, a day which started in hope and ended in misery. Another article examines the mistreatment of war veterans by the nationalists: as Ireland became more polarised, Remembrance Day ceremonies faded out to a din of Sinn Fein protests; worse, the IRA murdered over 200 war veterans.

One should note that more Irishmen died in the first two days of the Somme than rebelled in the Easter Uprising. Many were nationalists, yet they fought for King and Country nonetheless.

Ninety years ago on Saturday the Battle of the Somme began. On that first day there were nearly 60,000 casualties; almost 20,000 died. By the end, there would be 600,000 casualties, of whom more than 120,000 died. In a few months an entire generation fell. Practises such as Pals’ Brigades (military units formed of men from the same town, or school, or place of business—a good idea in earlier wars) meant that a few sweeps of a machine gun could cut down all men of fighting age from a village. The terrible new weapons of warfare had never been tested against civilised foes, and tactical doctrine couldn’t find a solution.

And of course the great cost paid by the Allies demanded an equal price be paid by the vanquished Central Powers—and the vindictive Treaty of Versailles led directly the Second World War.

The BBC reports on a Dutch study which has found that church air is chock-full of pollutants from candles and incense. It turns out that church air is ridden with a number of potent carcinogens—more than air beside a road travelled by 45,000 cars per day.

We know how this will turn out: first churches will be asked to cut on candles and incense. Maybe electric lamps will be suggested instead, or plug-in air fresheners. But some churches will adhere to their long-hallowed ways, and the studies will continue to mount up. Then special taxes will be imposed upon candles and incense to discourage their use. And yet still some churches will continue as they always have. Meanwhile, most people will have left such things in the past, and will complain when visiting a traditionalist of the odour of snuffed candles and the reek of smoke and charcoal. And in the end all churches will be banned from using the accessories of their faith, supposedly for the good of their congregations and clergy (who never wanted to let go of their traditions in the first place).

First they came for the smokers, and you didn’t speak up because you weren’t a smoker. Then they came for the overweight, and you didn’t speak up because you weren’t obese. Then they came for the candle-burners…

Tonight is the night freedom in Colorado dies. Tomorrow is the day the Californication of our once-fair state quickens. You should be ashamed, all of you who have banned smoking from bars, pool halls and bowling alleys. The sad thing is that there’s very little chance the ban will ever be repealed. This is how freedom ends: not with a bang but with a whimper.

There was recently an interesting article in the New York Times (no, really) about the impact of PRK on the Navy, specifically the Naval Academy. The most favoured spots are those which require good eyes (e.g. aircraft pilots); in the old days excellent candidates with bad eyes (which I should note is a relative term—folks with truly bad eyes don’t get in at all) might go on instead to become submariners. But with the incredible rise in PRK procedures (349 out of the 993 midshipmen of the class out ’06, compared to 50 in the class of ’01), more and more men are qualified to become pilots. This would be cool (more candidates means being able to choose better candidates, right?), except that this means that the best overall candidates (physically, academically & militarily) are becoming pilots, while the other branches are getting less-qualified candidates. As an example, the rate of those washing out of nuke school—a prerequisite for submarine service—has been steadily increasing over the last five years.

I don’t know what they can do to solve the problem. There’s an undeniable romance to flying which is a strong motivator; I don’t think anything else has quite the panache. Very few kids saw Top Gun and wanted to be a SWO—and no-one has ever watched Das Boot and decided that subs are the way to go. The Navy is offering bonuses to those who go into subs, but that just attracts those who like money; it doesn’t do much to grab the truly motivated. Of course, one wonders how motivated someone who wanted to be a pilot but had bad eyes would be either…

The world changes in strange ways!

I recently discovered these republished versions of classic brewing & distilling texts. This fellow scans in the originals, typesets them appropriately and re-prints them in hardcover. They look just great; I’d really like to get the complete set.

I just happened upon the greatest 80s quiz ever. I am a confirméd child of the 80s, despite my younger brothers’ epithet earlier in life. In fact, most of the items made me shed a tear or two for the long lost world of my youth…

There’s an excellent radio station a co-worker introduced me to: Radio Nigel. Just point your streaming audio tool at stream.radionigel.com, and Bob’s your uncle.

I don’t believe that I’ve pointed this out before, but 80s new wave really is the pinnacle of musical development. Thousands of years of years of musical development starting with the first caveman to hit two rocks together to get a beat going, and it peaked with synth-pop. Everything after that has been just…sad.

Recently I had to put together a list of essential new wave for a friend. The final playlist—formed after much consultation with my co-workers, all of whom were young men two decades ago—was:

1. Dead or Alive: You Spin Me Round
2. Dream Academy: Please, Please, Please Let Me
3. Madness: Our House
4. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark: If You Leave
5. New Order: Blue Monday
6. Heaven 17: Let Me Go
7. The Smiths: How Soon is Now
8. Thompson Twins: Hold Me Now
9. Modern English: I Melt with You
10. The Church: Under the Milky Way
11. When in Rome: The Promise
12. Depeche Mode: Just Can’t Get Enough

Anyone who doesn’t like these songs is that much less than human.

Steven Hilton has posted a very cool map showing the current state of the software wars. Microsoft is under attack on all fronts, with Windows XP in particular having to divide its forces to face foes as diverse as Google, Mac OS X, Linux & Solaris.

I just happened upon a page full of folks from the 1970s. This is the sort of thing I watched as reruns as a boy. Dear Lord in Heaven fashions were ugly then. OTOH, some of those gals are kinda cute…

Here’s a great YouTube video about the SCA, taken from some news programme or other. A bit more emphasis on fighting than I’d have (I was always more interesting in partying & shopping than in fighting), but still a very good picture of what the war side of a large war is about (there’re also the classes, and the merchants, and the whole social side). It manages to convey how there are those times when one can suspend belief and persuade oneself that there’s actually an actual fight going on, when one’s hair stands on end and it all seems very real. You should watch it!

A dishonest Florida Today report faults repeal of that state’s helmet law, but their own numbers reveal a far different situation. They lead off with the fact that unhelmeted fatalities rose from 22 in 1998 & 1999 (before the repeal) to 250 in 2004. That sounds serious indeed: a tenfold increase! But of course before the repeal, it was illegal to ride without a helmet, and so it was much rarer—perhaps almost unheard of. And there are many crashes which are fatal whether or not a helmet is worn. Another factor to consider is how many people are riding: more people means more accidents and thus more fatalities.

And in fact the number tell an interesting story: total motorcycle deaths have increased 67%. But motorcycle registrations have increased 87%. This means that fatalities are 89% of what one would have expected with an increase in the motorcycling population!

Why would fatalities decrease? It could be due to a number of factors: shorter trips; less frequent trips; or more careful riders. It’s a well-researched phenomenon that protective measures can actually be unsafe: someone with a helmet on his head can engage in riskier behaviour, despite the fact that his torso and neck are as unprotected as others, while a bareheaded rider is more careful.

The example I like is SCA combat. Few sane men would allow others to hit them with rattan rods unarmoured—but put them in armour, and they are only too happy to play. And then they incur injuries they never would have suffered before.

This is what it has come to: amateur chemistry is becoming a crime. When I was a boy, my chemistry set had cyanide and cobalt; now it’s all balloons and rubber balls! It’s absurd.

A Virginia police officer shot and killed optometrist Sal Culosi for the crime of gambling. Naturally, the state chose not to press charges. Of course, if a citizen had shot and killed a cop who had broken into his home, then he would have a 50-50 chance, not just of being charged, but of serving time.

Ariel Alonso & Jonathan Conrad were a pair of old men who practised alchemy at home. They built a lab, financed with credit cards, and started a small business selling elixirs on the Internet. The DEA destroyed their labs, their lives and their business. When will this madness stop?

Students at George Washington University suspected that campus cops lied when they said that they weren’t using facebook.com to sniff out parties, so they laid a trap, creating false intelligence about a supposed blowout party. When the police arrived, they found shots glasses brimming with chocolate cake, Beirut cups filled with frosting, and partygoers loaded up on sugar rather than alcohol. Score one for the good guys!

So I went over to my folks’ place tonight ’cause I wanted some advice on a decision I need to make at work. They were actually quite helpful with that, and I think that I now know which choice is the best. Afterwards, though, it devolved into their standard catalogue of everything they dislike about me, which is not all that bad to tell the truth. They’re even correct about some things—although despite my flippant attitude, these are actually things I’ve been thinking of already.

But then it turned from mildly annoying to full-on nasty. My father started castigating for introducing my kid brother to smoking—which might be fair were it true. The facts are somewhat different: he learnt it from his co-workers and I discouraged him from smoking cigarettes once I found out that he was addicted to them—discouraged him quite vigorously, to the point of annoying him quite a bit. I did encourage him to smoke a pipe, in part because I believe that in moderation it is a pleasant past-time with essentially no negative side effects and in part because it has been found to be an excellent way to quit cigarettes. Additionally he was the one who inspired me to buy my hookah, rather than vice-versa.

My parents are very intelligent people, but in some few ways they are complete fools. You know how often I smoke? One pipe a week; perhaps once a month I have a second one. The last cigar I had was at the beginning of April. If that is a dangerous addiction, I don’t know what isn’t. Quite simply, there’s nothing hazardous about four or five pipesful a month and two or three cigars a year. In their defence, I think they believe that it’s impossible to be a once-a-week smoker—but my own example disproves that idea (in college I smoked 4–6 pipes a day, and in my first few years after graduation I smoked most days of the week).

I fanned the flames by saying that I’ve little respect for non-smokers, which was rude and upset my father more than I would have expected. But it’s also true: a non-smoker is like a man who walks around with his eyes closed, adamant that colour doesn’t exist; if only he’d open his eyes he’d see a world of beauty and delight.

What I didn’t say (because I was hot under the collar, and in no mood to be conciliatory) is that I also have little respect for smokers (by which term I mean addicts). Addiction is an ugly thing and a sign of weakness. It’s absurd to be cranky and short-tempered simply because one hasn’t indulged in some pleasure; worse, it’s childish.

Speaking of, I guess I’m growing up: a year ago, right now I’d be smoking a pipe out of spite, but tonight the only aroma in my condo is the night air drifting in from my balcony. I’m more sad about the whole business than angry at my parents.

These guys offer kegerators to rent. Where oh where were they when I was in college? What a great business idea, BTW. Wonder if they need some investment capital?

Jonah Goldberg certainly thinks so.

An experiment conducted at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Centre has demonstrated that even in moderation trans-fats (partially hydrogenated oils) lead to weight gain and increased abdominal fat—said abdominal fat is an indicator for diabetes.

Monkeys were fed a diet in which 8% of their BTUs (calories, for you French unit users) came from trans-fats and 27% came from other fats; another group was fed the same diet, but with mono-unsaturated fats substituted for the trans-fats. After six years, the trans-fat group had gain 7.2% body weight and had 30% more abdominal fat than the mono-unsaturated group, which had gained 1.8% body weight.

These findings are pretty clear: avoid trans-fats as much as possible.

John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods, is a former leftist hippy who became a staunch Libertarian. He makes some excellent points about the branding problems the freedom movement has; we’ve picked the wrong battles and made an insufficient dent on society. He also points out that once we are free to live our lives as we wish, we need to actually determine how we wish to live our lives—something many libertarians neglect. Many of his arguments sound similar to those of the crunchy conservatives.

Best line I’ve read in a review of Revenge of the Sith:

Wow, my date was great last night! He only spit in my face once, and even offered to give me the leftovers of his dinner to feed me! And then I kissed his moldy shoes in gratitude before he left me to walk myself home in the dark!

That kinda says it all: Revenge of the Sith was good only because it was better than the previous two.

I just finished watching Red Dawn, a classic bit of Cold War era schlock from 1984. Believe it or not, I’d never actually seen it before. What’s up with that?

It’s every awkward teenage boy’s fantasy. First of all, the Russians and Cubans invade. This is important, because it frees the heroes of adult control—and as every adolescent knows, it’s adults who are the real Evil Empire. It’s also key because it gives the boys a chance to play at being heroes (which is the secret dream of every right-thinking boy). They see their parents die, and go on to avenge them; they are given some like-aged girls to protect (I don’t need to explain the appeal of this); they roam the mountains, camping and hunting and conducting guerrilla warfare against the invaders. In short, it’s the daydream of every boy over the age of 13.

This review explains Red Dawn even better; the Mutant Reviewers also do a bang-up job. It really is a stupid film (why on Earth would Russian invaders shoot up a school?!?), but it’s a fun one, and worth the time to see and laugh at.

According to a Student Monitor study, iPods are more popular than beer—and to add insult to injury the noble drink has to share second place with facebook.com. What has come to the world when some over-priced electronics beat out hops & malted barley? More to the point, what is wrong with students today?

Found some history about the Revolutionary War I didn’t know: the British freed slaves during the Revolution. This ties into a theory of mine that the American revolutions were all about slavery: the First American Revolution against the British (successful); the Texan Revolution against the Mexicans (also successful); and the Second American Revolution against the Yankees (unsuccessful). Not that I’m in favour of slavery—on balance I’m opposed—but it is interesting that it has fuelled so much talk of liberty.

Presenting Twenty-Five Position Rock-Paper-Scissors (RPS-25 for short), which involves the following positions:

1. gun
2. dynamite
3. nuke
4. lightning
5. devil
6. dragon
7. alien
8. water
9. bowl
10. air
11. moon
12. paper
13. sponge
14. wolf
15. cockroach
16. tree
17. man
18. woman
19. monkey
20. snake
21. axe
22. scissors
23. fire
24. sun
25. rock

There’s a complete list of how to pronounce the wins too.

A Floridian judge ordered two lawyers to play a game of rock-paper-scissors, complete with paralegals to act as witnesses, after they were unable to settle on the location of a deposition. How droll.

John Ringo meditates on the glory which is smoking. There is a romance to smoking which the snivelling masses will never understand, and which Ringo only alludes to, for it can never be explained—only lived. Thanks to Capt. Andrew Diedrich for the link; he sometimes posts to his brother’s blog.x

I can no more respect a man who shaves his face than one who shaves his armpits, his legs or his chest. It is the height of puerility to shave, to deny that one is a man. A grown man’s chin should be no more visible than his knees. And don’t even get me started on short pants…

Yesterday I was at my local tobacconist when a young couple happened in; their errand was to buy pipes for their wedding party and for the groom himself. They ended up with some truly spectacular specimens, six in total; by their appearance I would say $100–300 pipes. It turned out that none of the groomsmen—nor the groom—had smoked a pipe, so the clerk gave him some quick lessons. I hope that they all stick to it, for it’s a healthy hobby and one to be encouraged wherever possible.

And by the looks of those pipes, I wish I were one of his men…

Tonight my buddy Jethro threw one of his famous parties (although I will point out that they’ve calmed down a lot now that we’re all getting older); as is common, some of his pals came, bringing with them their musical instruments. This time, though, I brought my guitar, and played right along with them. Granted, I’d the volume turned almost the entire way down, but still—I played with a band!

No doubt Carlos Santana is shaking in his boots…

My brother John has returned from Greece; after a month I finally have a brother in town, and after years John will be living here again. It’s good to have brothers.

On Wednesday my buddy Rob graduated from the United States Air Force Academy. Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld gave an excellent speech, and the Thunderbirds put on a good air show. I wish all the best to Rob in his career as an Air Force officer.

Well, yesterday out on an errand for my dear mother, I was stopped at a red light and a twit rear-ended me. Well, not that big a deal—we’ve all made our mistakes. I pull forward and to the side of the road, and he just makes some gestures at me and heads down the road. I got his license plate, then repeated it to myself over and over until I found a filling station & a pen. Called the cops, filed a report and the rest, but unfortunately it turns out that the plate I wrote down is not on file—I must have messed up the state or some of the digits. It happens.

The damage to my car is very minor; I don’t believe that I’ll bother fixing it, as it’s simply the bumper shifting inward perhaps a quarter inch, with part of the frame punched through by the same amount. On a 15 year old car, this blends in.

I have this satisfaction: he was driving a very nice car, and judging by the streaks on my bumper and the damage I saw to his own, he’ll be paying a pretty penny for it. And without a police report, odds are that his insurance company won’t be picking it up… Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Taki wonders in the New York Press what the world would have been like had the Central Powers won the Great War. In short, much better:

What would have happened had Germany won the war? For starters, the most philo-Semitic nation in Europe, Germany, would have remained so. Six million Jews would not have disappeared, as Hitler would have remained a failed artist and nothing more. The dynasties would have survived, which means there would have been no communism with its 20 to possibly 100 million victims. Hungary would not have been chopped up by Romania and Slovakia and Yugoslavia would not have become the unnatural federation it became. The Ottoman Empire would have lumbered along, Iraq would not have been created, nor would’ve Isræl, Lebanon or Jordan. Russia would have joined the modern world—eventually. The world would have been led by England, Germany, France and the United States, and Africa would have never become the slaughterhouse it is today.

Read the long version—it’s even better. The Great War was one of the great crimes of history, and we were on the wrong side of it.

As related by economist Tim Harford, safety causes death. More succinctly, it has been demonstrated that seatbelt laws lead to increases in pedestrian and cyclist fatalities. Something to keep in mind as our modern Stasi heed the whims of our überführers in the Click It or Ticket nanny-state campaign (I should note here that I have, to my present knowledge, never in the last decade travelled in a car without a seatbelt—and before that, but once, and in a parking lot at that). On other words, every action has unintended consequences. As a cyclist, I worry about anything which makes drivers more careless. As a free man, I worry about anything which reduces that freedom.

Back in 2004, researchers had police fire 700 (blank) rounds in a New Orleans neighbourhood. Not a single man called in to report the gunfire. That, in a nutshell, reveals all that is wrong with that sad city.

Reihan Salam & Will Wilkinson argue that a Playstation 3 is a better investment than a spouse. The short version is that the return on investment of a games console is better than that of a spouse, with smaller recurring costs.

Economist Tim Harford points out the absurdity of many insurance plans, using the example of a $10/day premium to avoid a $900 deductible. As he points out, that would only make sense if he crashed every 90 days! And yet people buy such things.

How’s this for cool: a spider rolled out of dollar bills? Very, very sweet.

Taking a look at the .sig quotes on cluefire.net, I see that I’m in there five times! Pretty cool for a simple boy from Denver.

From the 2006 Devil’s Dictionary, Updated:

woman

One who, when told that her hair looks lovely long, immediately goes out an cuts it short. Then gets angry and/or weepy that one doesn’t like it.

husband

One accustomed to trading honesty for comfort.

bachelor

The happiest of men; pitied universally.

Not that I’m in a mood or anything…

From Websnark, the best way to protect children online. Of course, this is probably too simple for most folks.

I’d add: use a proper multi-user operating system, and allow the kids to only use the Internet between certain hours (iptables can be used in conjunction with cron to do exactly this—M-x all-hail-unix). If they really do need to use it at other times, then it can be easily enabled and disabled with a shell script.

Well, last night was the last time I’ll ever be 27. It’s sad to see another year ended. Growing older is like falling down a gravel hill—scrabble as one might, one can’t stop tumbling.

It’s a decade ago that I became a man in the eyes of the law. Strange thought, that. I’d give all I have to be 18 again, but that’s just not possible.

An Indian has come up with a solar cooker made from a car inner-tube, along with a piece of wood and a pane of glass. Very clever, and very cool!

Tonight I brewed my first non-beer, malta; it’s essentially a small beer made with hops, then force-carbonated & bottled. Tonight it’s settling in the fridge; tomorrow I’ll rack it into a keg and carbonate it; the following evening I’ll dispense it into bottles and then pasteurise it. It should keep for quite awhile that way as long as it’s refrigerated.

The Toronto Star reports on why suburban trees are so stunted. It turns out that it’s because of modern development practises and the manner in which they destroy the soil.

Well, my youngest brother left this afternoon for boot camp. Once again—as so many times before—he’s made me feel for our parents more than I could have thought possible. I’m reminded of when they left me at AC: how happy I was, and how sad they were. It was much the same today: he was enthused about his new life, and we all were sad to see him go.

For my own part, I’m going to miss the guy. For a time after I graduated, my brother John was in town: we went to concerts, hung out in bars & so on. When he left for Grand Junction, there was Stephen: we did much the same—although since he’s not yet old enough to drink, we went to concerts and he drove me home from bars. We’d a grand old time: our trip to Berlin was the experience of a lifetime. All in all, I think that I’d more great times with him than with our other two brothers (although I’ll grant that John & I had a great day at the LoDo music festival a few years ago), esp. Tom, who was already at the United States Naval Academy by the time I graduated.

I’d been fortunate to have been here in town for John’s 21st, and had the honour of showing him around Denver’s finest pubs. I’d hoped that one day we should have the same opportunity with Stephen, but we almost certainly shan’t.

Our parents merit a thought and a prayer tonight: this marks the first evening in which they are truly empty nesters. After almost 28 years of having children this is the first time they’ve had truly to themselves. I really hope that they make the most of it.

I will say that I’m kind of ticked off. Growing up, when our neighbours took their two kids to Disneyworld, Mom & Dad would point out that we’d four kids, not two, and that thus we’d have to sacrifice now—but that we’d always have our brothers. Well, this is how the world looks to me: one brother with the Navy in San Diego; one in Greece; and now one with the Marines. There’s a good chance that there will be periods in which I won’t have a brother in this hemisphere!

Life’s going to be a lot less fun without my crazy kid brother around. Certainly, serving these United States is a noble life—but I’ll miss him nonetheless.

This past weekend I went on a camping trip with my kid brother and our old Scout troop (he’s an assistant Scoutmaster); it was surprisingly fun—enough so that I’m interested in helping them out more often. We’d a great time, what with snow, hiking, campfires and so forth. The mountains were just beautiful; it really struck me that I’m lucky to live in such a state, and that I ought to get out much more often. Maybe this summer I’ll take a look at camping on the weekends or something.

Wal-Mart has opened a premier store in Plano which will carry high-end electronics and…craft beer. Maybe this is the start of a good thing!

It’s not being reported in the Western media, but there is a great persecution of Christians going on in Europe, in the Balkans. The Islamist terrorists whom we sponsored in the Balkan Wars of the late 1990s are doing their best to cleanse the Kosovo area of any trace of Christianity: pulling down centuries-old monasteries & churches and persecuting the inhabitants in hopes of restoring this piece of Europe to the Dar al-Islam. Archimandrite Nektarious Serfes is particularly concerned with their plight, doing his utmost to relieve Decani Monastery, one of the last to survive the Mohammedan’s desecration. He composed this prayer for those persecuted & suffering in the Balkans today, and I thought it meet to share with y’all.

In The Name Of The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit:
Let us pray to the Lord: Lord, have mercy!

Our Lord and most loving God,
we Thy servants prostrate ourselves before Thee,
crying to Thee in prayer.
Thou art our Peace and Thou alone art our Hope.
Humbly we beseech Thee with tearful words
from the depths of our burdened hearts,
and we cry out to Thee to visit upon us Thy boundless Love.
In Thine unwavering kindness,
strengthen us at this time of continuing strife and struggle;
depart not from us for Thy people’s suffering seems endless.

So too do we beseech thy Mother, the Most Holy Theotokos,
to grant to all who hunger or who are otherwise in need,
her promise of Joy, Hope and Peace.
Send down upon all our suffering souls, O Theotokos,
thy Motherly Guidance and sure Protection.

Hear us, we beseech Thee, O Lord:
we plead for all Christian victims of those who now persecute our faith,
for all who are homeless, who are without food or adequate clothing,
who are without needed medical assistance.
And especially, for all left desolate by war and strife,
all victims of tribal conflicts and hatred,
of prejudice and intolerance, of ethnic cleansing
and all forms of discrimination or misapplied nationalism.

May all Thy children rest in the shelter of each other’s love
and in Thy boundless and indiscriminate kindness
which we Christians, obeying Thy command,
are charged to reflect toward one another.

By the prayers of Thy faithful saints from everywhere
and throughout all ages, O Lord, strengthen our suffering souls,
our aching hearts and our fragile bodies.
With Thy strong Hand, uphold them who in weakness cry to Thee:
hold them confidently in Thy Love,
comforting them in the sure knowledge of Thy salvation.

Teach us all the meaning of peace and especially
of Thy Peace which passeth human understanding.
Give us Grace to learn from Thine own supreme example
to always be prepared to assist any and all who are in desperation.
Keep us steadfast in Christian virtues in this time of ongoing conflict,
even when we lose sight of the path to peace
and good will is compromised by national and sectarian interests.

Keep us also ever mindful that we here in North America and Europe
who are comfortable enough to have surplus to share,
along with those who have lost all in strife-torn lands
and those who were born into abject poverty,
are all together beloved in Thy sight—
all of us together are Thy children and heirs of Thy Kingdom.
As such we are responsible for one another as brothers and sisters
of a single Christian family.

Lord, Thou givest of Thyself to us for nourishment.
Let none now perish of hunger or thirst
in lands turned desolate by the cold-heartedness
of those who hate Thee and persecute us, Thy people.
Thou, O Lord, didst feed the five thousand with bread and fish.
Stretch out Thy hand to feed Thy people now, both their souls and bodies,
wherever they may call upon Thee.

Through the hands and hearts of our Christian brothers and sisters
who have the will and the means to share with those in need,
feed and sustain those who hunger and thirst in blighted lands.
Inspire with Thy Loving Kindness those who have much
that they will give to help others who are struggling.

For Thou seest the devastation of war,
the outcome of hate and violence. Thou knowest intimately
the tears of the despairing; Thou understandest human vulnerability;
Thou art acquainted with pain and hunger, cold and homelessness;
Thou makest common cause with the widow, and with parents
no longer able to provide even for their children’s most basic needs.

Thou also knowest the means of those who enjoy Thy bounty
for they have nothing but what Thy loving Kindness has allowed
and in Thy Mercy hast bestowed upon them. Move our hearts
and guide us who have much to help those who need
by sharing what Thou hast graciously allowed us for ourselves.

We thank Thee, O Lord, that Thou hast gathered us all together
in Thyself, all of us Christian people: Thy universal and eternal Church.
For Thou didst come into our midst to make us one family—Thy family.
Raise us from the mire of our foolish squabbling and vain divisions.
Let us now serve one another according to our abilities and means
as all together serve Thee according to our understanding and devotion.

Let us remember one another in our prayers and in our charity.
For in Thee there is no East nor West nor North nor South, but one nation
and one people—the Christian nation of Thine own Christian people.
Of that body Thou alone art the Head at all times and in all places,
adored by all hearts, praised and exalted in all languages,
hymned and worshiped according to all cultures and customs.

Show us now, dearest Lord, how we may rouse our separated
Christian brothers and sisters to join themselves to us
to become a world-wide force of Christian love.
Only in Thee, Lord, can we overcome our self-inflicted divisions
and petty rivalries; only by Thy Grace may we rise up together
to wield our common Christian faith like a mighty shield
against those who aim to destroy Thy legacy in the world.

For we will need all hands and hearts, all prayers
and the resolve of all Christians to save the Serbian Orthodox Church
and the Serbian people, this branch of Thy Christian family
which today is in dire peril from Thine enemies.
We will need all to stand firm together against the rising tide
of anti-Christian sentiment that is engulfing our world.

Come to our aid, O Lord; save the persecuted Serbian people
and restore the plundered Balkan lands today lest they perish
and we Christians in North America and Europe,
having been heedless and unrepentant in our self-indulgence,
suffer the same fate tomorrow!

The Decani Monastery Relief Fund and International Orthodox Christian Charities, among others, are working to bring some share of mercy to the Kosovars.

Well, I just saw the DVD re-release of Top Gun, a film which was arguably the formative experience of my youth. I remember that Dad took me & Tom to see it in the theatre, maybe for my birthday—I don’t believe that John was there, as he was probably too young in ’86 (not even three), and Stephen wouldn’t be born until that August—and although I don’t really remember that experience, I know that it was a defining one. We boys in the schoolyard would discuss every single aspect of the movie. As an example, there were endless debates over whether or not Maverick cast Goose’s dog tags into the sea at the end or not: while it’s pretty obvious from the film that he does so, many of us adhered to the belief that he wouldn’t discard such relics so casually. These and other matter absorbed our every waking hour. I vaguely remember that Katie—the girl across the street—had a signed photo of Tom Cruise, or had met him, or the signed photo led us to believe that she had met him; regardless, she was well and truly cool for a very long period thereafter. The fact that her father was in naval aviation only confirmed the fact.

As boys, I know that we went through at least one Beta (it still plays, last I checked!) and two, maybe three, VHS cassettes of Top Gun, as all four of us boys absolutely loved the film. It offered everything: sports (the volleyball scene); love (Kelly McGillis); death (Goose); violence (the fighting finale); chaos (Maverick’s general misbehaviour); defeat and eventual triumph. It had large doses of humour and tragedy; it had snappy uniforms & attractive women (alongside the aforementioned McGillis there was a 24-year-old Meg Ryan); it had a pumped-up 80s soundtrack. What more could a boy want?

Seeing the movie as an adult, I still enjoy it. Yes, there are those who say that it’s homosexual and cheesy, but I don’t really think so. Even the infamous Tarantino monologue is really a cop-out. If McGillis represents heterosexuality and Iceman homosexuality, then we straights win: Maverick chooses her at the end. But besides the supposed camp undertones, it’s just a fun movie. Sure, it’s not great, in a film-for-the-ages sense, but it’s enjoyable—and isn’t that what we’re looking for in entertainment?

I will admit that the script is…lacking. Quite honestly, a great deal of the lines sound like something from Saved by the Bell—i.e. an adolescent’s idea of adult speech. But it’s all in fun, and that’s what matters. Heck, Shakespeare made a classic play out of two teenagers who couldn’t keep their passions in check! It really gets back to the same things I loved as a boy: the music; the characters; the melodrama; the fighting; the girls.

I firmly believe that Top Gun is responsible for more military careers than any film before or since. It was filmed at the height of the Cold War, when America finally realised that it was fighting the good fight, but before we had actually won it. And many of us who saw it as boys would go on to sign up. My own brothers Tom & Stephen were almost certainly influenced by Bruckheimer & Simpson’s masterpiece, although I wonder how often they’ll actually admit it.

Now, the movie did get just about all of the facts wrong. I understand that pilots don’t actually have planes with their names on them, and their callsigns are very rarely used, and never in social situations, and that a plethora of miscellany about the film is screamingly wrong. But it’s just a film and if one isn’t a naval aviator then one doesn’t notice most of the nonsense. And, to this fellow, a lot of the look still appears accurate: the buildings and fixtures are what I remember naval installations looking like when I was but a lad.

Oh, and Top Gun in DTS Digital Surround is truly fun. You simply must try it…

Today we celebrate the Feast of Feasts, Christ’s Resurrection from the dead & His defeat of Satan. There can be no finer words than St. John Chrysostom’s on this day:

If any man be devout and loveth God, let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumphal feast! If any man be a wise servant, let him rejoicing enter into the joy of his Lord.

If any have laboured long in fasting, let him how receive his recompense. If any have wrought from the first hour, let him today receive his just reward. If any have come at the third hour, let him with thankfulness keep the feast. If any have arrived at the sixth hour, let him have no misgivings; because he shall in nowise be deprived therefore. If any have delayed until the ninth hour, let him draw near, fearing nothing. And if any have tarried even until the eleventh hour, let him, also, be not alarmed at his tardiness.

For the Lord, who is jealous of his honour, will accept the last even as the first. He giveth rest unto him who cometh at the eleventh hour, even as unto him who hath wrought from the first hour. And He showeth mercy upon the last, and careth for the first; and to the one He giveth, and upon the other He bestoweth gifts. And He both accepteth the deeds, and welcometh the intention, and honoureth the acts and praises the offering.

Wherefore, enter ye all into the joy of your Lord; receive your reward, both the first, and likewise the second. You rich and poor together, hold high festival! You sober and you heedless, honour the day! Rejoice today, both you who have fasted and you who have disregarded the fast. The table is full-laden; feast ye all sumptuously. The calf is fatted; let no one go hungry away. Enjoy ye all the feast of faith: receive ye all the riches of loving-kindness.

Let no one bewail his poverty, for the universal Kingdom has been revealed. Let no one weep for his iniquities, for pardon has shown forth from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the Saviour’s death has set us free. He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it.

By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive. He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh. And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry: Hell, said he, was embittered when it encountered Thee in the lower regions.

It was embittered, for it was abolished.
It was embittered, for it was mocked.
It was embittered, for it was slain.
It was embittered, for it was overthrown.
It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains.
It took a body, and met God face to face.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen.

O Death, where is thy sting?
O Hell, where is thy victory?

Christ is risen, and thou art overthrown!
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave.
For Christ, being risen from the dead,
Is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be glory and dominion unto ages of ages.

Amen.

Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!

Ever wanted to be a South Park character? Now you can, with South Park Studio. For what it’s worth, this is me:

Feel free to laugh, and to do so most heartily…

A school-child watered houseplants with water heated to boiling either by a stove or a microwave, then cooled. It turns out that the plant fed microwaved water did dramatically less than that with the stove-heated water. A proper scientific study would be useful, though—this one hardly qualifies.

The TSA detained a Marine travelling home from Iraq because he was on their watch list. Why was he on their watch list? Because he had gunpowder residue on his boots on an earlier flight. Why did he have gunpowder residue on his boots? Because he’s in the United States Marine Corps!

Will this lunacy never end?

Well, you anti-smoking yahoos, you authoritarians, you hateful fascist thugs, you bestial guardians of public behaviour: you’ve pretty much won the war on the noble weed tobacco; where will you turn your baleful gaze next? William Saletan believes that obesity is next on the block, as the anti-smoking industry gears up for its next massive campaign. Me, I’ll laugh as every anti-smoking morbidly obese person is publicly shamed—you taught your children to castigate me for smoking, now I shan’t lift a finger when you are mocked. You campaigned against the right of proprietors to choose whether to allow smoking in their establishments; now I shall smirk when you are no longer able to buy your sodas and junk food. You urged that my insurance premiums should be raised, without statistical evidence therefor (indeed, the numbers reveal that pipe smokers live longer than you teetotalling swine); now I shall enjoy the spectacle of your premiums rising to the sky.

What goes around comes around. Beware, for the suppression of smoking has formed a blueprint for bluestockings of every stripe. Where now we smokers are the oppressed, maybe next time it will be you.

There’s recently been a great deal about hybrid cars—those which get their energy from both gasoline and electricity. But as Jamie Kitman points out, hybrids aren’t a cure-all. Hybrid technology is useful for reducing mileage in certain situations, but not others.

I’m reminded of a billboard I saw yesterday which advertised an SUV which got all of 25 miles a gallon. My 15 year old sedan gets 35 and costs maybe a dozenth as much as that SUV, and the odds are that said SUV will be used for exactly the sort of errands my car is used for: commuting to & from work & church; getting groceries; running errands.

Iran has created the Special Unit of Martyr Seekers, a force of suicide bombers. Will no one rid us of this troublesome regime?

A cabdriver ended up playing harmonica in a packed concert hall due to being overheard by the band playing that night. Not too shabby!

Patrick Moore—a co-founder of the radical environmentalist group Greenpeace—is now advocating nuclear energy! It’s good to see that the man is seeing some sense in his old age…

An 18 year old Massachusetts man was sentenced to two years in prison for selling an undercover cop a strong teaspoonful of marijuana. This is absurd; it is wrong.

The Left have raised the question: did Bush lie? This may be audacious, considering their own track record, but it is a valid issue. The Christian Science Monitor’s John Hughes examines the evidence and concludes that Bush did not, in fact, lie. Hussein had spent the last decades convincing the world, his allies, his enemies and even his own generals that he had chemical weapons—but he did not. There was no way for our president to know that Hussein was bluffing. We called his bluff, and he lost.

Agents of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms assaulted a college student returning home from a pirates-and-ninjas event. One agent was quoted, Seeing someone with something across the face, from a federal standpoint—that’s not right. I’m wondering why there’s any federal standpoint involved. Amusingly, the agents in the included picture are quite pot-bellied…

Not many folks today remember Gopher a once-popular precursor to the World Wide Web. And yet there are those who regret its passing, believing that it had much to offer; some are even keeping the dream alive by running their own Gopher sites. Others point out that Gopher and the Web are equally bad replacements for the client-and-protocol world which came before.

I tend to agree with this last point of view. There was a time when file transfer called for a File Transfer Protocol, mail called for a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol; there were even protocols for phone directories and so forth: each did one thing, and did it well. Nowadays everything is crammed into a web browser, which does all things, none of them well.

Accordion Guy has a harrowing tale of a girlfriend who completely made up her life—from where she worked, to her history, to her family. A lesson for us all.

Reason magazine points out the disturbing prevalence of cops killing animals—and the disturbing fact that people don’t care nearly as much for the indignities visited upon their fellow citizens as those visited upon beasts.

Wired magazine has great quotes from neophobes throughout the ages. My favourite is this:

The indecent foreign dance called the Waltz was introduced…at the English Court on Friday last…It is quite sufficient to cast one’s eyes on the voluptuous intertwining of the limbs, and close compressure of the bodies…to see that it is far indeed removed from the modest reserve which has hitherto been considered distinctive of English females. So long as this obscene display was confined to prostitutes and adulteresses, we did not think it deserving of notice; but now that it is…forced on the respectable classes of society by the evil example of their superiors, we feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion.

The Times of London, 1816

Good stuff!

Today my best friend from college passed his PhD. defense—he is now Doctor Philip Branch Forshee. I’m very happy for him (and proud of him), but I must admit that it makes me feel very old. Just today at lunch I was talking about how Phil & I had discovered that ramen noodles make the perfect post-party food: water, salt & carbohydrates in proper proportions to forestall hangovers.

But that was very nearly half-a-dozen years ago, and we’ve moved on since then. For one thing, each of our bars now is worth several times our combined bar then…

Still, it’s very strange when one’s best friend becomes a doctor. Doctors are old men, not guys one once played golf with!

Here’s a quick little political math quiz. How well did you score?

Discover magazine has a cool article on bacteria in man. An interesting datum is that for every one of our own cells we have ten bacteria inside ourselves. Assuming that the bacteria weigh the same as other cells (a poor assumption, I know), that means that there’re only about 16 pounds of me that are me—and 164 that are bacteria!

Fascinating to read how some of the bacteria are essential, and others are harmful, and how the whole thing is rather a delicate balance, as killing off the mildly harmful stuff can open the door to the even worse.

Leonard Sax asks what’s happening to boys: more and more are demotivated, staying in their parents’ homes far too late and not achieving much. My thought is that it’s due to the fact that society is increasingly feminine: girls are coddled and supported in their idiosyncrasies, while boys are looked down upon, considered behavioural problems and generally not given a chance to contribute their unique skills. Ours is a post-masculine society—this is not good, but it is. How we resolve this problem is a very great mystery.

All I know is that when the great masculine role models are a bunch of grown men wearing spandex and touching one another’s behinds, we men are in a great deal of trouble…

Jonathan Rauch writes very interestingly on the hazards of polygamy. In short, every man with two wives (and polygyny far outstrips polyandry) is taking a potential wife from some other man, and the societal effects can be quite violent indeed.

It’s an interesting problem: from a sheer rights perspective, surely citizens have the right to contract their private affairs as they like! I think that—as ever—the solution is to eliminate marriage as a legal grant of rights: rather, allow free citizens to contract (or covenant, if that’s your preferred terminology) as they like, and allow anyone to recognise those contracts as he likes—but don’t mandate recognition of any of them.

Y’all may recall my article about the city manager of Tuttle, Oklahoma threatening CentOS developers. Well, he’s back, proving everything I’ve ever said about Okies is true. I hope he keeps at it—this could get good.

CNN has a heartwarming article about how recipients of organs from the same donor form a kind of extended family. Do families realise what organ donation entails? Their loved is slit open and dissected like a frog; he is eviscerated like a butchered animal. This is disgusting; it is barbaric. We rightly condemn the savages of New Zealand for eating their dead, but are we any different? If some cannibal ate my grandmother, I would not invite him to my wedding—and yet this family did exactly that! Have we so far lost our moral compass that this seems normal?

Organ donation should be legal; I have no quibble there, for donation is a private matter between consenting parties. But it should be condemned from every pulpit; it should be derided; it should be socially unacceptable. I very much hope that should I ever be faced with a failing body that I resist the temptation to receive a transplant from a corpse. Donation by the living is an entirely different matter, of course—I’d cheerfully give a kidney if needed.

In 1980 a miscalculation caused an 11-foot deep freshwater lake to become a 1,300-foot deep saltwater lake. Now that’s just cool.

Paul Knapp describes what signs of a real tech shortage would look like—and points out that we’re seeing none of them. In short, the much-ballyhooed tech shortage doesn’t exist.

The city manager of Tuttle, Oklahoma discovered that his web sites were displaying the vendor default web page, so he did what came naturally to him: he accused the vendor of cracking his site. This man is an insufferable twit—surely he can be removed from office!

This afternoon and evening I brewed my first all-grain batch of beer, five gallons of a mild ale. The term all-grain means that I brewed it using raw ingredients rather than malt extracts. To make beer, one steeps malted barley (and other grains, if desired) in water of a temperature sufficient for the barley’s enzymes to convert all the starches to sugar (mashing), then strains out the grains (lautering) and washes off any residual sugars (sparging), then boils the wort produced thereby (brewing) along with hops and other adjuncts as needed for the recipe in question. A quick way to brew is to use malt extracts, where someone else performs the mash, lauter and sparge steps for one; that’s the process I’ve used up until this point. But now I’m a true brewer, and that’s pretty cool.

The Siebel Institute of Technology, one of the great brewing schools of the world, are offering an advanced homebrewing programme this July in Durango, Colorado. I’m giving some strong thought to attending—it would be an excellent chance to learn more about my favoured hobby, and maybe even get a head start on going pro someday.

On 22 March 1820 Commodores Stephen Decatur & James Barron faced off to fight; W. Thomas Smith relates the odd tale.

Some time ago I posted about Calvin Woodward’s trans-America ride; today he has some tips for the cross-country cyclist. I really would like to do this one day.

Yet another reason I don’t live in Texas: the state is arresting people for being drunk in bars. I don’t mind public intoxication laws in principle, but the police should not be looking for people to harass. If someone is causing trouble and citizens feel the need to call for the police, that’s fine—but to go undercover and arrest people for drinking is absurd.

Found some comparison screenshots of video games from twenty years ago and today. Pretty impressive how much graphics have improved! I didn’t realise that games were this good—I might need to get a system one of these days.

43 Folders has a way to avoid procrastination: dedicate ten minutes to the job at hand, working straight through with no breaks; then spend two minutes goofing off, then repeat four more times to get through the hour. I’ll have to try it tomorrow at work.

Christine Fair & Husain Haqqani dispel some current myths about Islamist terrorism: Isræl’s not the big deal; poverty doesn’t lead to terrorism; young men are the most likely terrorists; and madrasas aren’t terrorist factories. Thought-provoking reading.

A blogger named why the lucky stiff argues that we need more little languages for kids to play with. When we were young, every computer system had an included programing language which let one play around. I myself was inspired by the Basic available for our TI-99/4a; it’s no doubt a large part of the reason that I’m now a Unix syadmin, and that I have such cool things available as my beer tasting notes.

But most devices these days lack such accessible tools, and hence kids are much less likely to get drawn into programming. This could hurt in the years to come. And besides, wasn’t one of the great ideas of the personal computer revolution that everyone would be a programmer someday?

An Afghani man, born a Mohammedan, faces execution for conversion to Christianity. And now we find out if our invasion and toppling of the Taliban was worth it after all…

We all learnt in school that æroplanes fly due to the Bernoulli effect—but as it turns out, this isn’t actually so. The late Jef Raskin explains that flight is due to the Coanda effect, as can be demonstrated with a spoon and tap water. Very cool example of how common knowledge isn’t always correct.

Famed author Michæl Crichton points out the absurdity of the current US patent system. A must-read for anyone interested in intellectual property issues.

Writing in Slate, Robert Bruce does a bang-up job of debunking ethanol’s utility as a fuel—at least for vehicles (it remains a fine fuel for men…). He points out that we’re spending $37.3 billion on ethanol subsidies. He notes that a gallon of ethanol made from corn yields about 76,000 BTUs, but costs 98,000 to make. Even soy, the cheapest way to produce ethanol, still costs 27% more to make than it yields. Bryce also reports that switching to ethanol involves expensive technical issues (e.g. it absorbs water and affects the evaporation rate of gasoline).

The BBC report that a three-headed frog was found in Weston-super-Mare. Strange looking creature!

Eugene Ciurana has written a very cool guide to eating sushi. I need to run this by the Japanese I know, to make sure he’s got it correct—but if so, then I’ve some great new things to try out next time I eat the wonderful delicacy.

My Tasting Notes database is—after a very long hiatus—back online, albeit in very primitive form. I expect to be improving it rapidly, though.

From C|Net comes news that digital restrictions management hurts audio player battery life. Yet another reason to avoid that particular pox.

Today my kid brother & I went up to the mountains outside of Bailey to go shooting in the backyard of one of my fellow parishioners. We shot my Beretta Model 96 (.40 calibre), our brother John’s Chinese SKS (7.62x39), my buddy’s Ruger .22 automatic, his (Smith & Wesson?) .45 revolver and his Russian SKS. It was a blast! Afterwards we’d a late lunch, then sat around talking for several hours, then had dinner, then sat around talking for a few more hours. The folks whose land we were using are such nice folks, very friendly & welcoming.

And a day spent shooting beats a day at the office any time…

Today marks the 61st anniversary of the death of my great-uncle Robert Victor Uhl; he fell in the battle for Iwo Jima.

Those of y’all who know me, know also that I don’t pay much heed to what i wear. I’ve a few articles of clothing which date back to high school, and possibly one or two which date even further back—clothes just aren’t something which concern me all that much. To tell the truth, I’d be happy if there were magical Clothing Fairies who would replenish my closet and dresser every decade or so.

Well, the stitching on my belt is falling apart, so I decided to get one of those solid leather ones—nothing to fall apart, and thus nothing to replace in six or seven years. And today at lunch I was actually ashamed of my shoes; and if I am ashamed of a pair of shoes, then they must be truly rotten.

So I went to the nearest mall to rectify the situation, found a belt and then found some shoes. I asked the shoe guy if I could ring up my belt too, signed the receipt and then headed back—as I neared the exit he caught up with me; apparently he’d forgotten to ring up the belt! Good thing he caught it, as that would have been awkward to explain to the store detective. Although now I rather wonder if this could become a wonderful new method of shoplifting…

Anyway, the upshot is that I’ve a new set of leatherware: new shoes and a new belt. I’m practically a new man, now. Although I still wish that the Clothing Fairies would visit—I do so hate shopping for clothes…

Twenty-two Tomcats recently flew into Oceana, the last time in such numbers. I grew up near there, and always loved watching the planes fly overhead.

Kevin Kelly has a great piece on what he calls consensus web filters—that is, site which rely on their readers to submit & rank items of import. This is a category which will become only more important with time; the ability to filter out items in which one is interested out of the millions generated daily is highly useful.

Back when I was at Austin College, I lived for three years at Baker Hall. One of our dorm traditions was the annual Baker Bun Run, in which the fellows would run a lap around the campus dressed in nothing but their boxers (a relic, I imagine, of the streaking phenomenon of the 70s). I never participated, considering such things beneath my dignity, but now that I’m older I really wish that I had. It would have been fun, and harmless. And—in keeping with my tweed-tie-and-sweater-vest persona—I could have worn boxers with a tie, and nothing else. It would have been amusing, and it would have been an amusing memory, but due to my reticence it’s naught but a regret now.

A Yankee has posted text messages found on a cellphone. How can any human being write such drivel? You know, it galls me on a daily basis that they beat us in the war.

At last, a simple listing of negative calorie (or negative BTU, for those of us still hewing to a sane standard) foods is available at http://life.currenttoday.com/index.php/2006/03/12/negative-calories/. Interestingly, one could make a good Lenten diet from the listed foods.

Walter Cronkite has spoken out about the absurdity and injustice of the War on Drugs. The man has been gravely mistaken about many things, but on this particular issue he’s spot-on. Will anyone listen?

A North Carolinian nursing assistant was slain by flesh-eating strep bacteria in the span of three days. What’s peculiar is that someone she knew also contracted the same strain—and that the physicians are not certain whether one of the two passed it to the other. Ummm…it’s a rare infection, and two people, familiar with one another, contracted it. You think that just maybe one got it from the other?

Even more worrisome are the emergency measures they took trying to save her life: amputating her arm at the clavicle and removing all the muscle and tissue around her left breast, torso and thigh. Lord save me from such physick!

Twenty years ago the ultrasound machine started being widely used in East Asia—and twenty years ago the people thereof started to murder their girls in the womb. Now, the male-to-female ratio is grossly out of whack—what will the result be of having too many young men competing for too few young women? History suggests that the status of women may rise, but that it could also be a time of wars, banditry and other adolescent behaviour. It’s going to be an interesting century.

Daniel Dennet (an atheist) and Richard Swinburne (a Christian of one sort or another) debate how we should study religion. A very interesting exchange, making some interesting points about scientific enquiry and the nature of thought.

Jason Headley asked himself that question, and decided to see what happened if he stopped washing his hair. The answer: not much. It turns out that shampoo doesn’t really do much for one.

My frequent readers (do I actually have any frequent readers?) may have noticed that this blog has been especially quiet of late, even more strikingly so when one considers that the month just past was my most prolific to date. Well, ever since January I have been busy at work—they’re actually getting their money’s worth out of me! And thus rather than spend my time browsing the web and blogging about neat stuff, I find that my time is spent working rather hard.

But now it’s the weekend, I’ve no films from Netflix, and I’ve time to catch up. So buckle your seatbelts, folks—we’re in for quite a ride!

Today my bike’s odometer rolled over to 1,000 miles! That’s 63,360,000 inches, every one of which was powered by my two legs. That’s also 1,000 miles not on my car—at my rate of 34½¢/mile, that’s a savings of $345. Still not break-even, but getting there. And of course I’m healthier too.

One thousand miles! One thousand miles! (I’m doing my victory dance, which is a sight no-one should be subjected to) One thousand miles!

A hairy lobster has been discovered in the Pacific. A truly strange looking creature.

Ben Stein has just written a remarkable column at E! Online, his final under the Monday Night at Morton’s tagline. It is a profound reflection on the nature of celebrity and human worth, and is quite unusual for normal entertainment fare. You need to read this, now. Some quotes:

Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails. They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer.

A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world./p>

And:

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton’s is a big subject.

And finally:

We are not responsible for the operation of the universe, and what happens to us is not terribly important. God is real, not a fiction, and when we turn over our lives to Him, he takes far better care of us than we could ever do for ourselves.

In a word, we make ourselves sane when we fire ourselves as the directors of the movie of our lives and turn the power over to Him. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human.

I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin–or Martin Mull or Fred Willard–or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life.

Ben Stein is—as though anyone needed to know—the actor most famous for Bueller…Bueller.

A fellow has designed Fourth Amendment Shipping Tape; it has the entire Fourth Amendment printed on itself, and every time the jackbooted Homeland Security thugs open your luggage, they have to literally slice the fourth amendment in half to perform their unconstitutional search (and possible seizure). Certainly, the animals who perform the work won’t care, but at least we can feel somewhat better as our personal belongings are illegally pawed through and stolen.

A Swede set up his fully-patched Mac Mini online and challenged all comers to try to crack into it. It took a single cracker 30 minutes to do so. Doh!

A Persian graduate student in North Carolina drove his car into a group of his fellow-students, injuring nine. Apparently the attack was religiously-motivated: he is a Mohammedan, and wished to commit this terrorist act in retaliation for supposed slights.

The little town of Steamboat, Colo. has switched to free software. Ever onward, Colorado!

John McCarthy—of Lisp fame—writes about the reasons that Marxism was so attractive. Something for us all to learn from.

A comparative study of 3- and 4-year old children & chimpanzees has found that man is altruistic even at a very early age; tots will do their best to help out, even at great cost to themselves, whereas the beasts only help if it is easy.

There’s a rumour going ’round that the Marines are censoring the web, forbidding certain websites and access personal email. I hope that this is false, but fear that it may be true. Perhaps the full story is untold? Still, it sticks in one’s craw something fierce.

Brainshrub argues against the widespread practise of news sites requiring registration. They’re only hurting themselves, after all: how many of us bother to fill out Yet Another Intrusive Subscription Form, and how many of us just skip it? Count me in the latter group most days…

Did you know that it’s a bad idea to taser yourself? I could have guessed, but never thought the tale would be quite so hilarious…

Just found a blog entry on the importance of having friends who disagree. It raises some good points; in some ways I am most indebted to those of my friends with whom I disagree most strenuously. OTOH, my best friends are those most alike whom I think (does that sentence parse properly?). There’s a place for both, methinks: on the one hand there are those who challenge one, and on the other there are those who affirm one. Both are necessary.

An excellent LiveJournal post examines programming languages in terms of sexual relationships. Extremely funny if you know what it’s about; beyond opaque if you don’t. I get it, so I loved it!

Oddly enough for a firm whose name means small & limp, Microsoft were at one point shilling their product with sex. Is anyone really surprised?

My friend John posted that Don Knotts passed away a few days ago. It’s the end of a legend. He may not have been great, but he was funny.

A woman has given birth to two girls, one white and one black—and yet daughters of the same father. Both she and her man are mulattoes, and by a freak chance the genetics worked out this way.