posts brought to you by the category “physics”
Das eez kaput! Sometime around 2002 I spaced the entire database table that mapped individual entries to categories. Such is life. What follows is a random sampling of entries that were associated with the category. Over time, the entries will be updated and then it will be even more confusing. Wander around, though, it's still a fun way to find stuff.
Saying American cheese has "arrived" is like saying wine from Ontario is great.
So, let's ask the obvious question: Why on earth would fermented foods like cheese be enjoying such a wave of popularity at a time when microbial anxiety is running so high? The threat of bioterrorism lingers in the back of our minds, new diseases like West Nile virus and SARS freak us out, and antibiotics that have kept us healthy for years seem to be losing their efficacy. Perhaps the thought of microbial cultivation, a sort of micro-agriculture, is comforting. Cultivating microbes confers an idea of control: It reassures us that we've lived with microbes for a long time and always found a way to manage them.
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The bloodrage will do that to you, I hear.
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Is that Thomas Friedman, or just David Frum wearning Groucho Marx glasses?
Sundays seem to be the day that Thomas Friedman likes to show the world just how much he is suffering from "I-am-the-story-itis" and otherwise losing his grip on reality. I was going to write something the other week when he waxed poetic about Europe, smoking and GMOs but Tom Cosgrove did a better job of it than I would have.
Today, Friedman is likening the U.N. Security Council to a poof-ball professional sporting event and suggesting that France be replaced on the U.N. Security Council by India. Now, I have nothing against India being on the Security Council, per se. But Friedman's suggestions ignore two important, not to mention "serious", issues.
The first is that giving India a permanent veto on any subject that comes before the council (Kashmir, anyone?) is practically an open invitation for Pakistan to start lobbing nuclear weapons at its neighbour to the East. I'm sure Friedman has some clever and witty solution to this problem; something along the lines of : "Let them eat Big Macs".
The second is the idea that, however borked the U.N. already is, a U.N. Security Council without any European representatives would somehow be better. This is where the annoying little right-wing pencil-necks in their Topsiders and comb-overs start having seizures and sputtering that if Britain and Russia aren't European enough for me then they don't know what is! I can only presume that what they're trying to say is that the former is "Old Europe" before it went sour and Russia is the culmination of all the potential inherent in whatever the "New Europe" is supposed to be.
Britain, for all its charm, is only barely beginning to consider itself part of Europe and would probably integrate the pound with the U.S. dollar before it did the same with Euro. Europe has so far done a remarkable, if nascent, job of putting a thousand years of squabbling, back-stabbing, bloodshed and two World Wars in the past and just getting on with it. I am pretty sure that if you scratched the surface you'd find reasons for any one country to be upset that any other, especially France, had a seat on the Security Council but I'm also pretty sure that Europeans as a whole would balk at the notion that England holds its interests to heart on anything with the possible exception that Russia is part of Europe.
Let's back up for a second. There are lots of things to fix with the U.N. and with the general bad behaviour of any one country, both past and present. The whole idea of a permanent Security Council has always struck me as not unlike wanting to have your cake and eating it too. I am not so naive as to believe that the U.N. would have ever survived the chaos that a vacuum at the center would have invited. Look the Security Council, in its current form, is a product of history and not very hard to parse: 1) the winners 2) the ones who were too big to push around (translation: they either already had nuclear weapons or were fast on their way to getting them) 3) not German. (That France and Germany are doing anything in concert is amazing enough on its own, but we'll save that for another day.)
This is pretty much why everyone else still wants nuclear weapons. Period. But Friedman seems to think that we should set up some kind of standardized test to measure "democracy and seriousness" as the criteria for membership. Presumably a day will come when all countries are democratic; just some will be more democratic than others.
(I don't give it too much credibility, but apparently some of the more hawkish hot-heads are suggesting the U.S. "liberate" China when everyone else on the Axis of Evil has been redeemed. If the mere mention of that idea doesn't give Americans pause to wonder that they're not being led by idiots, I don't know what will.)
Friedman's primary grievance with France seems to be that they've never thought America was god's gift to civilization, that it has always looked after its own interests and (warning, news flash!) just generally acts wily and duplicitous. Excuse me if I point out that almost perfectly describes the problem that everyone else has with America these days. Or to put it more bluntly : no one trusts that the Bush administration is pursuing policies for the reasons it says it is.
That may be difficult to understand for people who enjoy saying things like "When the President says jump, I don't ask 'how high?' but rather 'when should I come down?'", but there you go.
It is true that without America's participation in the second half of World War Two, Hitler's army might have conquered Europe. (The bit about the U.S. "winning" the First World War is just such conceited and self-congratulatory drivel that I'm not even going to go there.) But it carefully ignores two salient facts:
1) America had no interest in participating in the first half of the war and had to be dragged in by force and not conviction.
2) Anyone who's read any history knows that it was only due to accidents of circumstance (Hitler's over-estimation of the British radar system during the Blitz and his three week detour to crush the Yugoslavians on his way to Moscow which, it turned out, was the window during which the Russian fall became winter) that there was even a Britain and a Russia left to liberate by the time the Americans decided to do anything.
The clever wits in the Brooks brothers jackets are probably foaming at the mouth, by now, ready to accuse me of actually being a hawk on Iraq despite myself. If I didn't think that the people who are championing the war were largely the root causes of it, if I believed that the war was going being fought for principles (there is some not unconvincing evidence that the NATO bombing of Serbia served as an effective deterrent against any further genocide like that seen in Bosnia) rather than carefully scripted sound bites designed to mask raw national interests, and if I believed that the U.S. was going to stick around and fill the vacuum in the aftermath (in fairness, they have in a few notable exceptions like Kosovo) I just might be able to get behind the idea.
Put simply, I do not have any confidence that the current U.S. administration is acting in good faith and the fact that Saddam Hussein is a "bad guy" doesn't go very far to balance out the scales.
Whatever else happens, though, by his deft and skillful use of the "Survivor" metaphor to describe foreign policy Friedman has all but assured himself the 2003 Shut the Fuck Up Award.
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From the "Art is Your Friend" department: Christa Donner
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Meanwhile, the New York Time starts a photo-blog
see also : WBUR pictorial roundup And yes, I am planning on scraping the fuck out of these site. I may even publish RSS feeds if you're nice...Each week, staff photographers around the world send thousands of images to the editors on the picture desk at The New York Times. Only a fraction appear in the newspaper. Margaret O'Connor, picture editor, and Mike Smith, deputy picture editor, will select their favorites each week – both published and not – and tell the stories behind them.
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Me : HTML::RSSAutodiscovery.pm 1.1
locate
method which implements an
ultra liberal
RSS locator
. Why Because you shouldn't need all that white space to do cool stuff
;-) As always, until the CPAN listings are updated you can grab a copy
over here
. see also :
docs
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Damn, I want to be "wack old-skool" too!
The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : bagatelle
Bagatelle \Bag`a*telle"\, n. [F., fr. It. bagatella; cf. Prov. It. bagata trifle, OF. bague, Pr. bagua, bundle. See {Bag}, n.] 1. A trifle; a thing of no importance. Rich trifles, serious bagatelles. --Prior. 2. A game played on an oblong board, having, at one end, cups or arches into or through which balls are to be driven by a rod held in the hand of the player. web1913
bagatelle n 1: a light piece of music for piano 2: something of little value or significance [syn: {fluff}, {frippery}, {frivolity}] 3: (British) a table game in which short cues are used to knock balls into holes that are guarded by wooden pegs; penalties are incurred if the pegs are knocked over [syn: {bar billiards}] wn
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YASB : Yet Another SVG Browser
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Me : Image::Shoehorn::Gallery.pm 0.21
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The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : skanktastic
A girl you know you should stay away from but you can't help yourself.
ex. I know I shouldn't go out with Betty, but she sure is skanktastic.
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The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : sobriquet
Sobriquet \So`bri`quet"\ (s[-o]`br[-e]`k[asl]"), n.[F. sobriquet, OF. soubzbriquet, soubriquet, a chuck under the chin, hence, an affront, a nickname; of uncertain origin; cf. It. sottobecco a chuck under the chin.] An assumed name; a fanciful epithet or appellation; a nickname. [Sometimes less correctly written {soubriquet}.] web1913
sobriquet n : a familiar name (often a shortened version of a person's given name); "Joe's mother would not use his nickname and always called him Joseph" [syn: {nickname}, {moniker}, {cognomen}, {soubriquet}] wn
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Props to the Creative Commons gang on their launch.
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The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : propitious
Propitious \Pro*pi"tious\, a. [L. propitius, perhaps originally a term of augury meaning, flying forward (pro) or well; cf. Skr. pat to fly, E. petition, feather.] 1. Convenient; auspicious; favorable; kind; as, a propitious season; a propitious breeze. 2. Hence, kind; gracious; merciful; helpful; -- said of a person or a divinity. --Milton. And now t' assuage the force of this new flame, And make thee [Love] more propitious in my need. --Spenser. Syn: Auspicious; favorable; kind. Usage: {Propitious}, {Auspicious}. Auspicious (from the ancient idea of auspices, or omens) denotes ``indicative of success,'' or ``favored by incidental occurrences;'' as, an auspicious opening; an auspicious event. Propitious denotes that which efficaciously protect us in some undertaking, speeds our exertions, and decides our success; as, propitious gales; propitious influences. -- {Pro*pi"tious*ly}, adv. -- {Pro*pi"tious*ness}, n. web1913
propitious adj : presenting favorable circumstances; "propitious omens" [ant: {unpropitious}] wn
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Me : www.otlml.org
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Neil McIntosh : "It's the beginning of the end of free at Blogger."
John Dean : Military Tribunals, A Long and Mostly Honorable Tradition
The potential of having to mete out justice to possibly thousands of alien enemy terrorists, or unlawful combatants, who are openly violating the common law of war makes the use of these military proceedings very appealing.The good news, of course, is that by this logic we'll have a proven and ready means of clearing of the backlog of cases that already exist in the citizen's court system. #2) That guy, in the Civil War, who opposed military tribunals, well he was just wrong:
...Lee's view, however, was quickly challenged and overruled. Indeed, Lee was legislated out of a job by Congress, and President Lincoln...Indeed. #3) Bad council:
Rehnquist seems to suggest that if the government had had better counsel it would have prevailed in Milligan.Because, you know, the customer is always right. I am eagerly awaiting the flood of court decisions that will overturned with this argument. I am told that, in some cases, this is actually a valid argument. In this instance, however, it strikes me as a bit of a strech. #4) Nuremberg:
There were hundreds of these proceedings. Many of them - like those at Nuremberg, to mention the obvious - remain models of fairness and justice.It is interesting that we don't hear mention of this one made more often. It is, perhaps, the closest thing to a compelling argument made to date. But not really. There were still those, at the end of World War Two who had lived through the justice meted out on Germany after the First World War and had seen what the economics and political conditions it engendered had given rise to, namely Hitler. There was a real incentive to prove, pretty much to all the parties involved I think, that the war had been fought and won on principles and that those principles extended both to the victor and the vanquished. And the U.S. was gunning up for the Cold War so it needed to make friends with the Axis, some quick. #5) Franky got cake; why can't I? :
Both Lincoln and FDR had the blessings of Congress.This is supposed to be a compelling argument? Congress has also blessed a whole littany of ill-conceived and ridiculous laws in it's long and storied past. Just because Congress says something doesn't mean it's right; that is why laws are sometimes deemed to be unconstitutional. #6) Someone else agrees with me :
For example, as one federal court noted in the 1972 case of Atlee v. Laird...That's great. People say stuff all the time. What was the outcome of this case? Was it overturned? Was the comment even directly related to the case? Anyway, I can name a few people that agree with me too. What's next, the tyranny of the majority?
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From the Tower of Babel department :
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Me : What is Aaron thinking about?
http://aaronland
.info
/weblog/category/(NAME|ID)/rss
. You can see an example of where all this nonsense might get
interesting at the
perlblog
. You is all still in the proof of concept stage, so you should expect
breakage and random weirdness for a while yet.
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The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is cabal
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Bertrand Badie : "Et surtout, nous ne devons pas oublier cette rčgle d'or,
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Me : rss2blogger 1.0
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Sjoerd Visscher : Organizational charts
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Harlan Hile and Drew Perttula : Toilet Paper
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Leigh Dodds : Validating XML using XSLT
Chris Nott : The 1k DHTML API
Larry Wall : "What I will be revealing in these columns will be the design of Perl 6.
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Tim Waugh : The Selfdocbook
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M.J. Dominus : ArrayHashMonster.pm
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Storing RDF in relational databases
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Ben Schochet : Homesite editor for Zope [ alpha ]
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Teleweb.org
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Talking to Americans : Do you, the American people,
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I think websites
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Jeff Hawkins, Handspring
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Mordecai Richler : O, woe is Montreal
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Wired : The Medium is the Community
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You'd almost think they were talking about weblogs...
National Post : Canada is cyberterror hotbed: U.S.
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You'd think I'd won an award or something
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digitalMass : A coder's worst enemy
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Speaking of Python
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Perlmonth : The DOMinant Technique for Parsing XML
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Charles Naylor has a vision
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NY Times : Columbia, Guggenheim and BAM Consider New-Media Arts Program
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I had no idea that
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Mordecai Richler
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Jorn Barger : The First-Cut Manifesto
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My Most Scary Canada Day
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wtf?
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dude, where's my car
This document uses CSS kung-fu and a small amount of JavaScript for rendering its contents. Efforts have been made to separate the form from the content so if you are viewing this in a text-based browser it shouldn't be an issue.
On the other hand it may look funny if you are viewing it in a browser with incomplete CSS and/or JavaScript implementations. Internet Explorer 6 comes to mind.
It's not that I don't love you. However, my time is limited and I no longer feel very good about spending it working around any one browser's inconsistencies with little, or no, confidence that they will ever be fixed or otherwise made more inconsistent at some later date.
On the other hand, if something is down-right unreadable please let me know and I will endeavour to fix it.
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yes, we have no bananas
This page may not validate. It's not that I don't care, it's just that I'm not aware of it yet. Part of the reason that I rewrote the entire back-end for managing this site is that the old stuff made it too easy for these kinds of mistakes to slip through the cracks.
See also : W3C::LogValidator.pm
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it's the software, stupid