Octopodial Chrome

I was informed this evening that my youngest brother has run off to enlist in the US Marine Corps. He’s not been sworn in yet, but I’ve little doubt that he will go through with it. I was convinced that he’d enlist the day he turned 18, and the fact that he didn’t was pretty surprising. Still, it’s highly disturbing that he didn’t consult anyone in his family for advice. At 19 one thinks one knows everything, but I was 19 not that long ago, and I’m old enough now to realise what a fool I was then. Military recruiters lie through their teeth, and to sign a contract without having someone else look through it is foolish.

Of course, I suppose that this is his way of asserting his adulthood. He’s been treated like a child for the past several years living at my parents’ house, and this is probably his means of saying, Hello! I’m an adult now! He could have chosen a less drastic method of doing so.

I’m not against him signing up: the Marine Corps is an honourable institution, and it is proper and good to serve one’s country. But there are better ways to go about doing it. For one thing, he should have waited until he had a degree, when he would have been much more valuable.

And they’re going to make him shave his beard, which is just immoral…

The 2006 Denver Restaurant Week offers one the opportunity to dine at some very nice establishments for but $52.80/couple or $26.40 to eat alone. Really neat chance to try some places one might otherwise not spring for.

The US Naval Academy has lost its Marines supposedly because of the demand for combat troops. All I know is that if four dozen men can make a difference in our combat strength then we are in deep trouble.

Even more troubling is the statement that dozens of military installations across the nation have turned to civilian security officers in recent years. What the hell?!? The mightiest military in all of history is reduced to hiring guards? Utterly ridiculous. And from recent news we’ve discovered that our army isn’t even good enough to keep Mexican Army raiding parties out of the country; remind me again what we’re paying the Federal government our taxes for?

Any week now I expect to read accounts of Ottawans & Guadalajarans skirmishing in the Kansas badlands...

Here’s a list of 25 reasons to convert to Linux. Of course I’ve been using Linux exclusively since ’99—do I get a prize of some sort?

Music-Map offer a neat service: you tell ’em a band you enjoy, and they draw you a map of the artists similar to them. Already I’ve a few bands I need to try...

The United States have the highest drinking age in the world. Surely we could spend some time and rectify this situation? I think that the high drinking age is part of the reason we have so many alcohol-abuse issues.

Now this is cool: a fellow walking around downtown Tokyo in a Star Wars stormtrooper suit. Gosh that looks like fun!

I just found PureHero, a slick site with some cool superhero-themed clothes. I want that Spider-Man cycling jersey. And maybe a Fantastic Four one as well.

Why yes, I am a geek. Although I never really got into comic books, I still enjoyed ’em when I wasa kid.

Thanks to a post by Howard Tayler (of Schlock Mercenary fame), I discovered Meadow Creek Dairy; they are a small farmstead cheesemaker in Virginia (not too far from the Carolina border) who make some truly excellent cheeses. I got their full sampler, which comprises Appalachian, Rosemary, Hot Pepper (and it’s really kinda hot!), Shiitake-Leek (there’s something nice about mushroom-flavoured cheese; I’d never have guessed it, but there it is), Mountaineer and Grayson cheeses. I can highly recommend their stuff; do yourself a favour and order some.

There’s a new Russian Orthodox church in Baikonur, the city from which the Russian space flights are launched. A priest blesses the ships & crew for the missions, and many cosmonauts bring along their own icons; there is also an icon permanently aboard the space station.

The HMS Birkenhead was travelling to South Africa in February 1852; she carried very nearly 700 soldiers, their wives and children. She struck an uncharted rock on the 25th, and started to sink. There were only eight lifeboats aboard, and only three were usable, thus the women and children were offloaded first. The captain told the men to save themselves, but Lt. Colonel Seton stood with his sword drawn to prevent any man from trying to enter those boats; this was unnecessary, for not a single man in that company tried to enter the boats. They merely stood in ordered ranks, waiting their end in the shark-strewn sea.

Four hundred forty-five men died (nine officers, three hundred forty-nine ratings & eighty-seven sailors), smashed on the rocks, drowned in the sea or devoured by sharks in full view of their wives and children, but every woman and child aboard that ship survived to tell the tale, due to the bravery of those men who would not attempt to take their places. For generations the Birkenhead Drill was a model to all, but nowadays it is sadly little remembered.

But to stand an’ be still to the Birken’ead drill
is a damn tough bullet to chew.

—Kipling

A generation later, the same ethic held on the Titanic, as the band played on. Would it hold today? I rather doubt it; our modern man sees woman as nothing more than himself, so why would he yield his place to her? He has no respect for the future, so why would he yield a place to a child? He has no honour in him, and thus I fancy that a modern Birkenhead would be an occasion for the media to decry the number of women and children lost due to insufficient rock-charting efforts by the government, while men who somehow survived would sue the same government, and no doubt retire on the proceeds thereof. Even more sadly, very few would find anything wrong about it.

An in-depth study reveals that hybrids are not economically effective substitutes for normal cars. Better to buy a normal car and spend the money you save on environmentally friendly concerns.

On the heels of the news that napping is good for you comes a proposal for ordering one’s day in four parts separated by naps. I should try living like this—might be really nice if it works.

In the late 1970s, a black investigator went undercover in the KKK—they even asked him to head their Colorado Springs group! Yet more proof that bigots are morons...

How-to instructions for an attractive method of wrapping gifts in a Japanese style.

I need to get me several of these nifty high-visibility cycling shirts—several even have reflective strips attached. I might also pick up a high-visibility windbreaker, although it doesn’t have the reflective strips that are useful at night.

Well, I’d my first date this evening with a very nice girl. It’s kinda eerie how similar in some ways we are; our first topic of conversation after the coffeeshop and the weather was farm subsidies…

I’d a great time, and think that she did as well. Hopefully we’ll be able to repeat the experience soon!

Apparently many elevators have a mode which takes you straight to your floor, non-stop: simply press the door close and floor buttons at the same time. Nifty, huh?

Yesterday was the 33rd anniversary of the infamous Supreme Court decision which has led to the deaths of over 44 million innocents. It’s a scandalous decision, a legalisation of murder; we should be ashamed of our nation for allowing it to survive these many years. Yes, there are instances (e.g. ectopic pregnancies, which simply cannot continue without killing both mother and child) in which an abortion must be performed; there are instances when it may be performed (e.g. the treatment of certain malignant cancers which occur in the midst of pregnancy)—but make no doubt about it: abortion is the deliberate murder of a truly innocent human being; it is homicide. There are cases when homicide is appropriate (e.g. in war or self defense), but it is never legitimate for mere convenience, and therefrom derive the vast majority of abortions.

It is also possible that a great number of those aborted would have grown up to become criminals, and thus that abortion has decreased the crime rate. This may be true, but it is not a justification: we punish criminals after they have committed a crime, not innocent because they might someday become criminals.

Just as slavery was a grave injustice whose end was a necessary goal, so too is abortion a great iniquity which must be stopped. It has nothing to do with privacy (or else any private murder would be licit); it has nothing to do with women’s bodies (for it is another’s body which is destroyed in abortion); it has everything to do with infanticide. It must be ended; it must be finished; it must be stamped out.

An English study has found that women who eat oily fish and seeds while pregnant give birth to more intelligent, more social children.

On 26 September 1983, Colonel Stanislav Petrov of the Soviet Union saved the United States: faced with data which stated that we had launched Minutemen missiles at the Soviets (in fact, it was sunlight reflecting from clouds which the satellite saw), he held off launching 5,000 Russian nukes at our nation. I was in kindergarten that day…

Starbucks has a short size—and it’s the best value in the entire store! A good lesson for the savvycustomer.

Do you like books? Do you like drink? If you answered yes to both, then you’ll love The Bookbar—a bar constructed entirely of books.

What happens when you pit a sword against a pistol? The sword winds, of course. Although the sword in the test is Japanese, I believe that the same phenomenon would hold true with a European sword.

There’s a parasite of rats & cats, Toxoplasma, which can also infect man; in rats it causes them to cease fearing cats; in our race it makes women outgoing and men jealous. And three billion of us are infected with it. How’s that forfrightening?

Ever wake up in the middle night afraid for your life? What if there were actually something there? This is perhaps the funniest thing I’ve read in a very, very, very long time.

A week ago I was at the local Whole Foods and I discovered the most amazing taste treat: hamburger with chunks of blue cheese mixed in. It is absolutely delicious; the cheese melts and leaves a tanginess in the meat which is simply indescribable. Just perfect!

For years now I’ve known that I need backups; I’ve worried that sooner or later the hour would come when they would be necessary. I RAID my drives, but that just provides redundancy and protects against disk failure; it dœs nothing to protect against human or software error. At one point I even bought a SCSI tape drive off of eBay, but it never quite worked properly.

Well, last night disaster struck. While in the midst of trying to install some software, I tried to clean up a directory in my home, and due to a my fingers anticipating what was not there, I ended up running the fabled horror command rm -rf /home/ruhl (for those who don’t know, /home/ruhl is my home directory). When it took a fraction of time longer than I expected, I looked at it again and immediately killed it with C-c, but by that stage I’d already lost a lot of things. Among them are:

• .emacs, my emacs configuration—fortunately .emacs~, the most recent backup, survived
• .gnus, my gnus configuration—again, .gnus~ survived
• .emacs.d, a directory full of custom emacs hacks I’d written—gone forever
• apparently all of my saved papers from college
• many of my LaTeX files
• many of my PDFs

Fortunately, none of this is a truly great deal, although I was actually quite proud of some of those papers from senior year. In my line of work, I should—and do—know better than to not have backups. Sigh. Well, I’ve ordered a 500GB external hard drive which I’ll be using for complete backups, in the interim I’ve adapted the regimen recommended at Easy Automated Snapshot-Style Backups with rsync and written this quick little script:

#!/bin/bash

mkdir -p /usr/local/tmp/ruhl rm -rf /usr/local/tmp/ruhl/backup.3 mv
/usr/local/tmp/ruhl/backup.2 /usr/local/tmp/ruhl/backup.3 mv
/usr/local/tmp/ruhl/backup.1 /usr/local/tmp/ruhl/backup.2 mv
/usr/local/tmp/ruhl/backup.0 /usr/local/tmp/ruhl/backup.1 rsync -a
–delete –link-dest=/usr/local/tmp/ruhl/backup.1 /home/ruhl \
/usr/local/tmp/ruhl/backup.0 

So at least my home will be safe in the future. I am so ticked off atmyself...

I’m happy to announce the released of an expurgated version of Booth Tarkington’s Penrod. For historical accuracy, I prefer the unexpurgated Penrod, however readers of a sensitive nature may feel differently.

A 7-ton whale has made its way up the Thames into central London. How cool is that?

Apparently leftists, unable to intelligently argue against Kate O’Beirne’s latest book, have taken it upon themselves to libel her (and, amusingly, Ted Kennedy). These poltroons have written reviews on Amazon’s site, alleging among other things:

• that O’Beirne and Ted Kennedy slept together
• that she attacks the television show Sex in the City
• that it discusses lesbianism

Interestingly, not one of these three things is true; neither the supposed Kennedy incident, nor attacks on Sex in the City, nor any references to lesbians are in the book. Even more disturbing, there are clear references in leftists blogs and websites to a concerted effort to lie about the book and rate it poorly, in order to prevent others from reading it.

Leftists celebrities always complain that they are being muzzled when they speak and others disagree—failing to notice that, by virtue of the fact that they spoke and others heard them, they aren’t being muzzled. And yet as one leftist wrote, The goal is to ensure that Ms. O’Beirne’s book has a one star rating so no one will go out and buy it who would not have already done so.

I suppose that when one cannot argue cogently, one can always stick one’s fingers in one’s ears and cry Nyaaah nyaah nyaah, but that seems rather childish to me.

I just read at CNN about a plague of giant jellyfish. Nomura’s Jellyfish can weigh up to 440 lbs.; take a look at that picture: that’s a man next to that thing!

Colloidal Silver is a popular patent medicine these days; if it were harmless this wouldn’t be such a big deal. What is a big deal is argyria, a condition in which the skin turns silver, grey, blue or purple from an excess of silver suspended in the skin. Unless you wish to look like a freak, don’t take colloidal silver!

Tony Blankley reports that there have been 216 incursions by the Mexican military onto US soil, and that our Border Patrol agents are instructed to avoid Mexican military units. Could someone please tell me why we pay taxes if not to keep foreign powers off of our soil? Shouldn’t the US Army be doing something about this?

Google Talk now supports federation; that is, rather than only being able to talk to other gmail.com users, you’re now able to talk to any XMPP (Jabber protocol) users out there. At last instant messaging is starting to grow up—in time there will be no more AIM, MSN Messenger and instead a single common protocol open to all, just like email.

A British man who lived on French fries, buttered toast and baked beans die at age 20. His liver was so damaged by this diet that he developed hepatitis, his blood stopped clotting and he died after having some infected teeth removed. What a twit.

Me, I’m having some broccoli for dinner!

An Iranian court has sentenced a teenager to death for stabbing a man intent on raping her. Oh, surely Sharia law is peaceful and just. Bastards—I await the day when such barbarians no longer breathe our air.

David Pierce has an article about teaching the liberal arts to the poor. It’s highly intriguing; is it perhaps possible to tame the canaille through education? I would generally doubt it, but his description of a tough deciding not to get into a fight because he didn’t think Aristotle would do so was…unusual, to say the least. A thought-provoking story, if no more.

I just found a great list of places to telnet. For those who don’t remember, telnet was one of the original great Internet protocols: it enabled one to connect to a remote host and talk to it, logging on and so forth as if one were actually connected directly to it. Unfortunately, all data transmitted by telnet is in plain text and is therefor vulnerable to sniffing.

But Places to Telnet is all about the fun applications of telnet, such as an entire ASCIImation of Star Wars, libraries, MUDs and so forth. Telnet isn’t dead yet, and neither are the possibilities once promised by the free net.

A new study finds that parents are more unhappy than the childless. This is very probably true; on the other hand, is it possible that parents are also happier than the childless? That is, is it possible that parents experience a greater range of moods than those with no attachments? This seems to me very likely.

As a bachelor, I’ve found that I am very, very rarely happy, in the traditional sense of the term; rather, I must settle for a lack of unhappiness. Surely, this is a great advance vis-a-vis the condition of most of mankind for most of history, but surely it’s sub-optimal; surely man’s highest aspiration cannot be to be merely not actively unhappy.

It seems to me that this study just tested the negative, and not the positive. Moreover, even if it is the case that parenthood is an essentially depressing endeavour, surely that only increases its importance. After all, if something is both necessary and undesirable, surely it is important to overcome one’s aversion and acquiesce to it (like taxation…).

In a few decades, given demographic trends, there will be no Dutchmen or Italians. I’m neither Dutch nor Italian, but surely it would be a great pity to lose all the glories of those races due to simple selfishness, due to a lack of duty on the parts of their members. Would it not be a shame for their ancestors, for ten millennia of improvement, if their line were to die out because parenthood isn’t convenient? Just a thought.

PocketMod is a personal organiser made of paper. You select which templates you want for each of the eight pages, print it out, fold it up & off you go. As most of us know or are learning, paper is superior to electronics for things like note-taking; this tool enables you to create a custom organiser with things like ruled lines, calendars, shopping lists, tip calculators and so forth. A very cool idea!

I have just finished reading a disturbing article which states that US soldiers face punishment and the loss of their death benefits if they use their own equipment. Apparently the standard-issue armour is considered sub-par, and many soldiers have bought their own; this is not surprising, as some years back I read a report by an Army captain which mentioned the large number of items personally purchased because the standard issue gear is so poor. Boots, knives, flashlights and so forth were all commonly bought by the soldiers.

Well, my reading on this is that the brass are getting annoyed at the bad publicity this generates—and so their solution is to ban non-issue items. Never mind that the non-standard gear might save lives or improve the performance of our military; what really counts is that the DoD look good.

My net worth on the Hollywood Stock Exchange just edged past H$100,000,000 today. Unfortunately it’s all just funny money—but still that’s pretty cool IMHO. I started with H$2,000,000 and over the course of a few years I’ve managed to increase that sum fifty-fold. Now if only I could do the same on the real stock market...

Apparently couples having a television set in their bedroom have sex half as frequently as those without. Yet another argument against the idiot box.

I just found an incredible page with pictures of engineering feats accomplished with pennies: bridges, domes and so forth! Very, very cool. I need to start playing with such things. How cool!

There’s now a distillation of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends & Influence People available. A nice littlecheat-sheet.

ZDNet have an excellent article taking CERT to task for misrepresenting the number of Unix & Windows vulnerabilities for the past year. It makes some very cogent points, and should be read.

This afternoon and evening I attended the wedding of an acquaintance of mine, a fine young man who attends my church. It was a very well-done affair: everything from the bridesmaids’ dresses to the flowers to the choir to the instrumental bits (yes, I know: instruments in church—but it worked) was excellent. His wife seems to be a very sweet girl, and I wish them the absolute best in life.

A Canadian study found that giving homeless alcoholics a regular supply of drinks improved their health. They were each given up to 15 glasses of wine or sherry a day, one an hour from 0700 through to 2200. Participants in the study ended up drinking less than before and were generally healthier, although it should be noted that three died of alcohol-related illnesses during the study (which may have killed them anyway). The programme costs $771 (Canadian) per man-month, but saves $96/man-month in emergency services, $150/man-month in hospital care and $201/man-month in police services, for a total of $447/man-month in savings. So it’s probably not really worth it. Still, an interesting results.

I’m proud to announce the release of the second edition of Penrod, by Booth Tarkington. It’s a great book about a boy of about 12 at the beginning of the 20th century and the escapades he got into; when I was a boy I just loved it.

The observant reader will notice my new Flickr badge, displayed on the left-hand side of this page. Cool, huh? It won’t display unless you’ve a JavaScript-supporting browser, though. I generally try to avoid that sort of thing, but in this case I believe that it makes sense.

Indeed.com has a nifty little job posting trend tool; it graphs the relative occurrence of various terms in job postings over time. Nice to see which skills to focus on; a check of various Unix-family OSes reveals that Linux and Solaris are the current favourites, and that HP-UX is least common.

During lunch break I had my C0₂ tank filled; when I got home I was able to keg up both a batch of beer (which is force-carbonating in my fridge at this very moment) and a batch of apple cider (which is naturally fermenting in a closet right now). It’s nice having two kegs on hand.

And on Sunday I think I’ll start another batch of beer; perhaps even purchase another keg.

This evening after work I headed down to Park Meadows to shop for an acquaintance’s wedding gift. The couple were registered at a couple of places, but the first I went to didn’t offer gift wrapping (hey, I’ve no wedding-appropriate wrapping paper at home!), so I moved on to Foley’s, where I picked up a nice tray for them. Here’s a hint: if you run a store which handles wedding registries, wrap the gifts.

Annoyingly, the check-out girl chatted with one of her friends the entire time as though I weren’t there. I found this most annoying—when I shop, I like the illusion that I’m important to the store and to the servants. Whatever happened to customer service? Good service is all about creating the illusion that the customer matters.

Oh well: at least my shopping is done.

On the trip back from my grandfather Uhl’s funeral in Houston, we stopped off in Sherman, my old college town. While there we had lunch at Cellarman’s, my local once upon a time. I was able to show off my plaque to my mother & two of my brothers, and we’d an excellent meal as well. Believe it or not, I think that they might actually have appreciated it! As I’ve mentioned before, it is the second best place I’ve ever been (the greatest being the Falling Rock Taphouse), and is better than anywhere else in Texas. I really wish that the owner would open one here in Denver.

Speaking of owners, I discovered that the fellow I’ve believed for seven years to be the owner is actually the manager. Oh well—either way, he remembers me from my college days, and that’s enough for me. I was so lucky to have a bar like Cellarman’s my junior and senior years.

Today I was at my folks’ house and my mother—not unreasonably—wanted me to clear out some bottles I’d left in their basement æons ago. I get down there, open a box and see some wire cages and corks. Yes, there were some unopened bottles of raspberry cider I’d made either back in high school or in college. We’re talking bottles almost a decade old! I found six, left one at their house as thanks and brought the rest back home. Opened one and it was divine. Sometimes good clean living pays off!

This is the obituary my father wrote for his father:

Thomas John Uhl, Jr.

July 13, 1920–January 5, 2006

Thomas John Uhl, Jr. fell asleep in the Lord on January 5, 2006 in Houston, Texas. He was 85.

Mr. Uhl was born in Dallas, Texas, the son of Genevieve and Thomas Uhl. He had one brother, Robert Victor Uhl, who died while serving his country in WWII. Mr. Uhl was a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a masters in metallurgy. He was a Navy veteran of WWII, having served in the Pacific. After the war, he worked for Wyatt Metal and Boiler Works, eventually retiring as President of the company. From 1957–1965 Mr. Uhl was general manager of the Wyatt division in Mexico City, Mexico, where he was also active in the Roman Catholic Church. In addition, he was also a 4th Degree Member of the Knights of Columbus. He was a board member of the National Association of Manufacturers, and served as president of the Steel Plate Fabricators Association. In retirement, Mr. Uhl was an avid golfer.

Mr. Uhl is survived by his wife, Millie. He is also survived by his two children: the Reverend Luke Uhl (Ruth), Chancellor of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Denver, and Gretchen Ryan (Robert). His seven grandsons are: Robert, LTJG Thomas (LTJG Emily), John, and Stephen Uhl and Craig, Mark, and Scott Ryan. So far, six of these young men are Eagle Scouts, as their grandfather was.

Arrangements are under the direction of the George H. Lewis and Sons Funeral Home.

Not a bad job, I think.

Yesterday everyone at my company (nameless here; I do not speak for them) received an email stating that starting in ’08 our employer will stop depositing funds in our pension accounts. Up until this time we have gotten 5% of our salaries in the pension account, and 401(k) half-matching up to 3% (that is, we contribute 6%, our employer 3%); under the new system, there will be no pension, and we will get an automatic 2%, plus full matching up to 6%. That is, whereas I used to have a guaranteed 5% retirement contribution from the corporation, with up to 8% if I added to it, now I have a guaranteed 2%, with up to 8% if I contribute. This is not that big a deal; I currently contribute more than 6% anyway, so I really don’t mind.

I won’t lose the money currently in my pension account, and it may still earn interest, but my employer will no longer deposit any funds into it.

What does bother me is that the old pension could be used before reaching the 401(k) retirement age; the new way of doing things cannot. This is annoying; if I die at 45 then all I’ll have done is enrich my brothers.

OTOH, I believe that I’ll get better performance out of my 401(k) than out of a pension; if this holds true, then I’ll be able to retire when I’m old with a nice nest egg. If it doesn’t, then I’ll be in trouble—but given the current troubles with pension funds, I think I’m better off this way.

I noticed on Occidentalis a link to an Orthodox Wiki. Looks like these guys have done a very nice job of things.

This morning my mother sent an email indicating that my paternal grandfather was in a hospice in Houston and was not likely to last the month; she had this information from his physician. As the day continued, various folks who were visiting him indicated that they felt it would be much nearer than that.

This afternoon it occurred to me that if he were conscious perhaps I could ring him on the phone, or have some convey a message—or maybe I might hop in the car and drive down there (Houston’s about two days’ journey). I rang my mother to find out if he were in fact still conscious, only to find that his passing away had been reported to her minutes previously.

I’d not seen Granddad since the summer of ’97; for various reasons I’ve never quite followed he had become estranged from his family, and even then he wasn’t altogether well. But I’ve always remembered him as he was when I was growing up: smoking cigars on the backyard bench and giving us boys the cigar rings; the water-Uzis he gave us, to our parents’ consternation; watching Fletch and Spies Like Us at his home in Houston; the way he’d get water to squirt from his fist when we swam in his pool (a trick I’ve never been able to master). Although he’d long since given up cigars by that last visit, he still had a box, which he gave to me; I remember covertly smoking one with my brother Thomas when he was still in high school. That last trip we talked about golf mostly; that was right when Tiger Woods was making his breakout. I wish I could have seen him again.

Granddad’s mother passed away when he was a boy, in the 30s or 40s. His brother fell in battle on Iwo Jima sixty years ago this last March. His own father died when I was only about a year old, and now Granddad goes to join them. My father is now an orphan (his mother, my grandfather’s ex-wife, died in January ’97). When I woke up this morning, I had two grandfathers; now I have but one.

Eternal be his memory.

The Spanish siesta is going away, replaced by a 9–5 workday. This is a sad occasion; what the world needs is more, not fewer, ways of work.

Quick quiz; who wrote the following?

[There is an] absolute necessity of waging all-out war against the debauching of the environment… The bulldozer mentality of the past is a luxury we can no longer afford. Our roads and other public projects must be planned to prevent the destruction of scenic resources and to avoid needlessly upsetting the ecological balance.

Surprise answer: Ronald Reagan. And as Steven F. Hayward goes on to show, conservatism and environmentalism are not mutually exclusive, although the modern environmentalism movement has many flaws toovercome.

In celebration of Hogmanay, Niall Ferguson recommends the liquidation of Scotland. Very droll…

TV Guide has a bit of humour by Joss Whedon about the future directions of television. Great for a laugh.

A German who has lived in the US for 14 years has a subjective comparison of Germany and the United States. It’s an interesting read, particularly to see how things one likes can be disliked—or how things one never even noticed stick out to a foreigner. Naturally, as an American I think that on most of these points we’re better, but on afew perhaps not.

Well, I’ve signed up at Flickr and posted some pics from my German trip there, as well as some from my Colorado Beer Odyssey this summer (you need to be friend or family to see the latter, since I didn’t take ’em).

One of the techniques used in some sub-fields of Artificial Intelligence is training: one feeds one’s apparatus a set of known good associations (e.g. this word sounds like this and that like that, or this is the number 3 in forty different styles of handwriting), and for each sees what answer it returns, then correct it based on its answer. This obviously requires a large corpus, and building such a corpus is time-consuming and error-prone. Imagine how much work would be involved in gathering several hundred thousand photographs and hand-identifying each person and feature in each photo. It would be mind-numbingly boring; no intelligent person would want to do it, and a low-paid data-entry clerk would likely make many mistakes. But that’s what one has to do.

Until now, that is. For there are now several social networking sites out there; these are ways for one to indicate who one is and who one’s friends are, and see who the friends of friends are and so forth. Many let one upload one’s own photos and indicate who’s in them and (this is key) where. There are also sites to trade & categorise URLs, photos and what-have you.

Well, this is a researcher’s dream: tens or hundreds of thousands of motivated categorisers. Rather than a bored data-entry clerk, each of these users wants his data to be accurate, and will update it when he notices an error. So now Facebook and Flickr provide a huge photo corpus; Facebook even has photos keyed to unique users! del.icio.us provides tagged access to URLs (useful for grading comprehension of a web page). All these data are just begging to be mined.

There are, of course, some privacy implications...

This year the first of the baby boomers (born 1946–1964) will turn 60. So much for don’t trust anyone over 30!

Well, it’s New Year’s Day ’06—hope everyone had a great evening. For my own part, I hung out with my brother John and played Monopoly with him & our buddy Rob until about 0430. Then, in a fit of misguided thinking, I decided that it’d be easier to stay up than wake up in time for church. I’m not a college student anymore; all-nighters are really not the thing now. What seemed like a good idea at 0430 didn’t seem nearly as clever at 1130...