***Dave Does the Blog

And to bed

Last clean-up in the kitchen -- put plastic over the yummy pumpkin cake with apple struedel topping Margie made today. Take down the trash for the collectors to haul off tomorrow morning -- including, sadly, the microwave I first bought here in Denver when I moved, in a desperate late-night frenzy of big-box shopping, lest I be forced to reheat leftovers on the stove or in the oven.

Big, bright full moon out, all the moreso for the unlit lights at the neighbors' houses. First full moon Halloween in some decades, and last for some decades more. Cats are inside, doubtless annoyed, but precaution (especially for little black Indy) against random cruelty.

Lots of words written, a portent of things to come starting tomorrow. Rey's designed a t-shirt -- a must-have for the "Writing in the Dark" group.

Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you make the whole trip that way.
          -- E. L. Doctorow (b. 1931)

Beep-beep.

And good night.

10:38 PM  •  0 comments

Worth the wait

Victory Blog is gone, but Spy Hamlet, its replacement, is a worthy successor. The lead story today is the government announcing new measures against the "global anxietyist networks" that are "worrying innocent Americans."

Experts also point to such fear-producing CNN tactics as frightening photographs of anthrax germs and ominous theme music as further evidence of anxietyist groups' involvement in the national epidemic of concern.

"It's not just CNN," Kerr said, "but groups like Fox News, CNBC, and even CSPAN that are behind the anxietyist attacks. These are large, well-funded, well-organized groups dedicated to scaring the shit out of innocent men, women, and children."

10:07 PM  •  0 comments

More media bashing

Molly Ivins in her 10/25 column notes how media company margins have grown by cutting frills like foreign bureaus and other such trivia. "That the media have a public responsibility so important it is protected by the Constitution gets lost in the profit chase." She notes as well, with some alarm, that our new FCC Commissioner is about to further deregulate the media.

Forbes magazine is predicting a merger frenzy in 2002 as Powell prepares to repeal the ban on crossownership of TV stations and cable operators in the same market, crossownership of TV and newspapers in one market, and the 30 percent cap, limiting one cable to 30 percent of the nation's subscribers or 35 percent of the television audience. In a moment of painful irony Tuesday, Powell was discussing the need for back-up broadcasting capability after the World Trade Center attack knocked out many radio and television antennas, and said, "Public policy should minimize having all of your eggs in a single basket."

Yes, Mr. Powell, it should.

10:01 PM  •  0 comments

Traditions

I've commented before on how Katherine has, to put it mildly, cut into our free time. One place that's visible, to me at least, as in the traditions that Margie and I had begun B.K. (Before Katherine).

Take Halloween. We've a box or two of Halloween decor -- little pumpkins to hang from the now-bare tree branches, a wreath, bits of decor for the interior. Come the Night, we'd replace (at least some) of the light bulbs in front of the house and in the living room with cheesy candelabra-style "flickering" lights. We'd light candles all over, put the Scary Tape in the boom box, and have a nice time scaring little kids.

Not this year. No decorations. No music. Two uncarved pumpkins on the doorstep. Katherine got a costume, but that's it.

Problem is, there's plenty of disincentive to doing decorating (it takes time and effort, scarce commodities), and no incentive (Katherine won't appreciate it).

My hope is that, over the next few years, we'll start building new traditions, with Katherine able to appreciate them (incenting us to do them) and not prone to destroying them (not disincenting us to do them). I look forward to it. Ditto Christmas, birthdays, etc.

In the meantime, kids ... just be thankful we bought candy to throw in your bags.

9:47 PM  •  0 comments

Computer art takes a good step forward

Take image A. Work various transformations and filters on it to create image B. Run the start point (A) and end point (B) through the software. The software figures out the gestalt of the transformations ... and can now apply them to image C to create image D.

Cool stuff, in and of itself.

Now imagine A is a photo, and B is a watercolor painting of the same subject ...

(Also via Boing Boing)

9:27 PM  •  0 comments

Halloween a la Lego

A contest of Halloween-related art, built with Lego. I love it.

(Via Boing Boing)

9:22 PM  •  0 comments

Tuvalu gains new trivia question status

Viewers of the Game Show Network have seen a confused woman trying to figure out the capitol of Tuvalu.

Internet enthusiasts know that Tuvalu's major export was their ".tv" top-level domain name.

And now a new distinction. It appears that Tuvalu is the first country to fall prey to global warming.

(Via Boing Boing)

9:17 PM  •  0 comments

America the Terrorist State?

Matt Welch debates a "Chomskyite" on whether the US is "a flawed, arrogant, naive, idealistic, successful, occasionally brutal and constantly improving democracy, whose founding principles and imperfect track record have inspired billions worldwide, from Vaclav Havel to Fidel Castro," or if it is "what the criminals have set up for the purpose of plundering and oppression." And does so quite nicely, with blinders (of all stripes) firmly off.

9:07 PM  •  0 comments

More journalist bashing (with cause)

Are journalists themselves responsible for the "doubts" and "haunting spectre of quagmire" that they report on as lurking about the war? William Saletan at Slate thinks so.

The reason such questions “bubble around” is that reporters raise and repeat them in a self-escalating cycle. Here’s how it works. On Friday, a reporter tells an admiral at a Pentagon briefing, “There is a growing chorus now—it's still a small chorus, but it's getting louder—of critics who are saying that the United States appears to be bogged down.” On Saturday, under the headline “New Sense of Impatience Is Emerging,” the Los Angeles Times cites the “bogged down” question as evidence that doubts have “crystallized” as “the military faces increasingly skeptical questions.” On Sunday, ABC’s Cokie Roberts opens her interview with Rumsfeld by noting, “There've been stories over the weekend that give the perception that this war after three weeks is not going very well.”

(Also via InstaPundit)

8:48 PM  •  0 comments

Risks, damned risks, and statistics

Jeffrey Rosen in The New Republic writes a good article about the risks of terrorism -- and how they are overestimated by an anxious public (and a story-seeking media).

As new cases of anthrax infection continue to emerge, the World Health Organization is begging people not to panic. But tabloid headlines like this one from The Mirror in London send a different message: "PANIC."

[...] Will sensationalistic reports of worst-case terrorist scenarios exaggerate people's fear of being caught in an attack? There's every reason to believe that they will because of the media's tendency to exaggerate the scope and probability of remote risks. In a book called Random Violence, Joel Best, then of Southern Illinois University, examined the "moral panics" about a series of new crimes that seized public attention in the 1980s and '90s: freeway violence in 1987, wilding in 1989, stalking around 1990, kids and guns in 1991, and so forth. In each case, Best writes, television seized on two or three incidents of a dramatic crime, such as freeway shooting, and then claimed it was part of a broader trend. By taking the worst and most infrequent examples of criminal violence and melodramatically claiming they were typical, television created the false impression that everyone was equally at risk, thereby increasing its audience.

(Via InstaPundit)

8:39 PM  •  0 comments

Halloween Fun

Last year we had Katherine (five months old) in the obligatory Pumpkin costume. Propped up on the bed, balance the cap, snap the shot.

This year ... Winged Unicorn. (Or, Margie opines, Monohorned Pegasus.) White and fluffy and irridescent and a cute blue-and-purple mane and tale. Too, too, too cute. Toddled around to the neighbors, picked up candy and plopped in the bag. Cuteness to the point of insanity.

Jake the Dog thought so, too, which is why he tore off the leg of the table he was tied to. Hilarity ensued.

Pictures (of Katherine) to follow.

8:03 PM  •  0 comments

Word counts

In the month of October (1000+ hits! Woo-hoo!), this blog was 47,504 words long.

That is including the dates, timestamps, and "comments (0)" tags. It also includes the block quotes from other sources.

That's excluding the Link List o' Horror, etc.

I can do this NaNoWriMo thing. Really.

My biggest concern is that all the cool ideas I've had bubbling around in my head the last two weeks will come spilling out, lickety-split, way too sketchily, way too fast, leaving me with 29 days and 45,000 words to the final scene I have in mind.

Well, that's probably not my biggest concern, but we'll leave that for some other time.

7:09 PM  •  0 comments

Gloom, despair, and anxiety are we ...

I was going to write a long post about NaNoWriMo Angst. But Doyce beat me to it.

But, like him, I'm also excited. I mean -- damn, what a challenge. A palpable, creative challenge. Wow. Juices flowing. Freezing in my veins on occasion, but flowing most of the times.

Wow. Giddy as a schoolgirl ... who has a 50,000 word essay due November 30th for the teacher she's got a crush on.

Those who want to follow along (and I'm at least as daunted by the thoughts that folks will be reading it as that I have to write it) can go to the "My NaNoWriMo" link to the upper right of this blog. Those who don't -- just keep coming back here. I'll keep writing, though probably only a couple of times a day.

Yeep!

(By the way ... I broke 1000 visits today, as of 5:30ish p.m. Yee-haw!)

5:33 PM  •  0 comments

Gloom, despair, and agony are we ...

If, like me, you find those motivational posters ("ACHIEVEMENT - Only when we all pull together will we get someplace" under a scenic picture of an eagle flying over guys in a canoe) that some execs insist on having in their office to be ... platitudinous to a toxic level, then you'll enjoy the products of folks at Despair.com. Whether it's demotivation, arrogance, or pessimism you're looking for, they have the gorgeous wall posters (and calendars and notebooks and ...) for you.

I really hate to give away any punch lines, since the visuals are half the thing, but ...

CONSULTING - If you're not a part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem.

ELITISM - It's lonely at the top. But it's comforting to look down upon everyone at the bottom.

DEMOTIVATION - Sometimes the best solution to morale problems is just to fire all of the unhappy people.

(I actually had one of their calendars up in my office. After a while, it dawned on me that might not be the most motivational of things for a manager to do.)

(Via Blather)

12:50 PM  •  0 comments

Today's second gratuitious Micro$oft slam

Okay, I don't mind seeing AOL get busted in the chops. They're the Evil Empire on Training Wheels, as far as I'm concerned. I just wonder why stories like this don't happen to M$.

Probably because M$ simply rolls their own technology, regardless of copyright and anti-trust issues, while AOL tries to buy it. Contracts are a lot easier to nail people on than the specific vagueries of Redmond's behavior.

9:51 AM  •  0 comments

Stopping terror

It can be done, with strength of will, good PR, and international cooperation. It has been done, and this Monitor article gives some recent examples. Remember Abu Nidal?

In the 1980s, for instance, the Abu Nidal Organization was wreaking havoc in Europe and the Middle East. It was responsible for 900 deaths or injuries in 20 countries, including machine-gun killings at the Rome and Athens airports in 1985. The US State Department called it "the most dangerous terrorist organization in existence."

Then, because of a coordinated international pressure campaign - as well as brass-knuckles tactics used by some intelligence services against the group's members - Abu Nidal was kicked out of several countries, including Syria and Libya.

"We turned him into a vagabond," says L. Paul Bremer, head of Marsh Crisis Consulting in New York and the former ambassador who chaired the National Commission on International Terrorism last year. The strain on the organization led to infighting, which thwarted its ability to carry out attacks. Abu Nidal himself is now inactive and reportedly living in Iraq.

If we can create a climate where this is no longer a useful tactic to states -- where to be a state sponsor of terrorism brings some real pain in return -- then this sponsorship will dry up. It won't stop individual nutcases from pursuing courses of terror, but it will limit their scope to what they can do on their own, without shelter, aid, or comfort from a government. And that's a goal that's both achievable and worthwhile.

7:17 AM  •  0 comments

Today's gratuitous Micro$oft slam

Steven Levy at Newsweek writes about the new Apple iPod, an MP3 player that can store 66 hours of music, downloaded from a Mac via FireWire.

The iPod certainly got a lot of attention when I showed it to people, including a Windows guy named Bill Gates. He spun the wheel, checked out the menus on the display screen and seemed to get it immediately. “It looks like a great product,” he said. And then he added, incredulous, “It’s only for Macintosh?”

(Via Boing Boing)

7:01 AM  •  0 comments

Fame! the Sequel

Yesterday, I had a record-breaking (for me) 68 hits here.

My monthly stats for October, excluding today (since heaven knows how busy I'll be tonight, and all bets are off starting tomorrow) but including the Day Averdata Died, are 958. Versus a September with an (extrapolated) 686.

No, I'm under no illusion that this is some great, fabulous number. But it's kinda cool, for me.

Peak viewing time is around 11 a.m. (MST). Lowest viewing times are, not surprisingly, between 3-4 a.m.

The plurality of viewers come directly in (either keying in the URL or, more likely, from a Favorites/Bookmarks list). The next biggest portal is Doyce's page -- and since I'm pretty certain he isn't resetting his IP address the several times a day someone comes from his page, I assume it's other folks visiting his page and clicking on my link. Which is weird, but I'm not going to complain.

For those who like to keep score in other arenas, 94% of visitors use some version of IE, 4% use Netscape, and the rest are AOL, Opera or Other. Which means that my viewers had no problem going to MSN earlier this week, either, right? 95% use a Windows OS. A bare majority view at 1024x768.

What will be interesting to see is how my hit count goes over the next month. With NaNoWriMo coming up, my browsing will almost certainly be cut into, which will probably mean less activity here, and will also mean less activity commenting at other pages, both of which activity definitely drives up my hit count. So we'll see.

Anyway, I'm gratified to have been entertaining enough to draw some hundreds of readers, and to actually keep some of them. Thanks, and we'll revisit this subject at the end of November.

6:49 AM  •  0 comments

Fame!

For $99.95, you can have your name immortalized in the DVD credits for all three volumes of the LOTR trilogy. Or so I hear on Xkot's message board. (Which I don't ordinarily read, but he does put active thread headlines on his blog page, so ...)

Wow. Tempting, but ... I probably have to draw the line on whacky impulse buys somewhere. Might as well be here.

Besides, gotta save up for a TiVo ...

6:32 AM  •  0 comments

Words mean things

SpinSanity has a well-written story on the hyperbolic use of "treason" and "patriotism" by commentators on both side of the political spectrum. It concludes:

Those who value thoughtful, rational debate should be concerned when these terms are used irresponsibly by those who shape American political discourse. Their continued use to attack opponents will have two effects: to unfairly castigate political opponents and to dilute the terms of their real meanings. Neither outcome is a healthy one.

A related story notes that bandying about the term "war profiteer" (again, by both conservatives and liberals alike) is equally counterproductive. Indeed, this is a central theme of the site -- trying to attack the use of "spin" and rhetoric to avoid reasoned discussion of the facts. It's a good place to visit.

8:10 PM  •  0 comments

Unfinished business

Things I've had on my List of Things To Do for too long:

• Finishing my novel. No, my old novel. Stuck in an endless series of re-writes.
  
• A whole shitload of genealogical info to compile, esp. from Margie's family, esp. from the family reunion two or three summers ago.
  
• Mapping the yard, so that we can do some real planning for it.
  
• Scanning old photos.
  
• Labeling and booking the photos from our England trip two and a half years ago.
  
• Labeling and booking all our other photos.
  
• Sanding and restaining the rest of the railing in the house.

So what the hell am I doing starting the NaNoWriMo thang? Hell if I know.

At the very least I won't get any further than a month behind on it.

8:01 PM  •  0 comments

Irksome

Matt Welch is a left-of-center fellow who writes well. I like him. He's currently incensed over an award-nominated blog in Australia that's making some ... less-than-convincing commentary about the war.

And Tony O’Brien closes out the festival of reason with a triumphant use of scare-quotes and imaginative spelling:

But if we ‘civilised’ countries, full of ‘freedom-loving’ people wish to preserve our systems, particularly our time-honoured system of justice and of the principle of presumed innocence, isn't the proper course of action to attempt to capture bin Laden et al, a la Milosevitch, and hand them over to an independent tribunal such as the European court of justice?

Milosevic slaughtered the peoples of Yugoslavia for a decade. For the first half of that decade, the world did just what the O’Briens of the world would have us do now – it sent in UN “peacekeepers” to deliver food, fretted a great deal, took pictures of the "tribal" carnage, and applied sanctions (oh wait, sanctions are bad, too). Anyway, Milosevic didn’t budge until he and his military were bombed, first in Bosnia, later in Kosovo and Belgrade. By then, the graves were full, the countries were ruined and the seeds for future war were planted. How many hundreds of thousands of American deaths is O’Brien willing to accept while we “attempt to capture bin Laden” without resorting to war?

I'll add another note. The blog in question goes on to ask:

And yet a couple of days ago didn't I read that George - resorting to the b-grade cowboy movie dialogue that he loves so well - had given his special forces the nod to kill him if they find him? And why might that be? Might it be that they didn't want him, at some date in the near future, blabbing off his mouth in front of a tribunal, and exposing the US role in all sorts of nasty business over the last couple of decades?

Feh.

7:29 PM  •  0 comments

Christmas is coming, the advertisers are getting fat

And the award for the First Christmas Commercial of the Season, as witnessed by Margie and me?

Anne Murray and (her badly lip-synced) Christmas Classics, brought to you by TVMusic4U.

Operators are standing by ... and will be for another two months.

7:23 PM  •  0 comments

The Saga of Three-Star Dave

Back in the dim, dusty, dark ages of my life, along about Summer 1994, my company got access to the Internet via e-mail. It was good timing, since I was seriously burnt-out from a six-month field assignment full of 18-hour days and bitter, hostile clients. I dove in like a drowning man to a swimming pool.

But at the time, I had a problem. Y'see, everyone on the Internet has a sig line. This has faded -- slightly -- at least in the circles I circle. But in those days, it seemed the bigger the sig line the better. Big, elaborate ASCII-art. Multiple boxes with names, addresses, pithy Blake's 7 quotes.

Lots of which was obviously designed around an earlier era of fixed-pitch display fonts.

So Dave needed a sig line. But nothing that would look goofy when translated into Times Roman.

Ever the imaginative graphics designer, I realized that a fixed, left-margin text border would look cool, and would translate into any font.

So ...

*** Dave Hill
*** dhill@pas01.jacobs.com
*** "Reality takes its toll ...
*** ... please have exact change."

And eventually I was typing "*** Dave" enough that I was using it even in company e-mail (which, in those days, was still a minority of my traffic).

And now you know the rest of the story.

(Note that, properly speaking, there should be a space between the third asterisk and the capital D. In most display cases, though, like on the page title, I leave the space out, since, in those cases, that looks better. Irritatingly enough, though, Google ignores asterisks in its searches.)

6:24 PM  •  0 comments

Father/Daughter Time

Margie was guest-lecturing a class over at Red Rocks Community College (the importance of statistics to medical folks). The timeframe conflicted with a bunch of IT Honchos visiting the office, so I couldn't afford just to work from home. So at 9:30 a.m., Margie dropped off Kitten with me and drove off, leaving me to walk around the Denver West complex for a few hours with her.

It's really a pretty business complex. The buildings are spread far apart. There are lawns, lakes, waterfalls, lots of trees. Almost bucolic.

Lots of geese around. Denver is a cross-over area. Geese from the north come down here for the winter. Other geese that winter further south come back here during the summer. But we get more of the former. Sure, they leave goose shit everywhere. But they're still fun to see waddling around, and it's really neat seeing them swoop in for landing, honking all the way, on the lakes.

"Duck! Duck! Duck!" quoth Katherine.

We found a little park next to the northeast corner of the complex. Katherine climbed up onto the high slide -- and slid down with me. She enjoyed the merry-go-round (especially when Daddy ran to intercept her no matter which direction she ran on it). The sandy gravel was a particular favorite.

Swings are still on the no-go list.

I had to drag her away, kicking and screaming.

She recovered, as we continued on our way. We strolled hither and thither, enjoying the geese, enjoying the fresh air, enjoying the capital improvements DW Management has been doing since they were unable to sell the place. The latter improvements include some bronze statuary which Katherine found particularly fascinating.

We continued along our way, Daddy singing silly songs which do not bear repetition here.

As it turnedout, Margie's class was a two hour one, not a one hour one, so it was a little bit longer time with Squiggy than I'd expected. But, y'know, it was good time.

6:07 PM  •  0 comments

A warning to us all

My sainted wife, Margie, comments on the Cheney/Bush post below:

What worries me about Cheney is Bush's repeated statements, "I don't have anthrax." That has been his pat answer to all questions concerning anthrax at the White House. The very small conspiracy buff in me says, "Ahh, but what about Cheney?"

3:06 PM  •  0 comments

A warning to the Saudis

When even the Wall Street Journal starts talking, seriously, about a US take-over of the Saudi oil fields, you know the relationship is in trouble. [Requires an e-mail registration.]

Today the dominant fact of the U.S.-Saudi relationship is that this "friend" is a principal source of funding for al Qaeda. The U.S. Treasury has identified several Saudi charities and a prominent Saudi businessman as bankrollers of terrorism. The Saudi response has been to decline to participate in an international consortium of more than 80 nations that have agreed to block the assets of terrorist groups.

This affront comes on top of the Saudi refusal to cooperate with the U.S. investigation of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, in which 19 American servicemen died. Since last month's terrorist attacks in the U.S., numerous connections have also emerged between Saudi Arabia and the hijackers, some of whom carried Saudi passports. Many of those currently under arrest are Saudis, but the official Riyadh reaction has been to overlook these facts. All of this despite the fact that 5,000 U.S. troops are based in the Kingdom--less to protect American interests than to protect the Saudis from Saddam and other neighborhood bullies.

[...] The U.S. is so fearful of "instability" that it's afraid to criticize the current regime, much less encourage it to move in a more democratic direction. But the status quo is hardly stable. The U.S. has looked the other way while the Saudi ruling family has stifled even moderate challenges to its power. This in turn has bred radical Islam as the only outlet for dissent, which the Saudis have attempted to buy off with cash for fundamentalist mosques and schools that promote the most venomous anti-American sentiments.

(Via InstaPundit)

3:02 PM  •  0 comments

"Five Things You Can Do For America"

An American Muslim organization's web page attempts to help Muslims around the world understand about America. Interesting reading.

(Via InstaPundit)

2:57 PM  •  0 comments

At least they're not flying black helicopters

NATO crews are flying AWACS planes over the US. There's a switch. I can't wait for the conspiracy theorists to start in on this one.

(Via NextDraft)

2:46 PM  •  0 comments

Who's on first?

I was going to write this as a comment to a post Adam made, but when I reached my third paragraph, I decided I should blog it instead.

Adam notes an NPR story this afternoon ...

"Vice President Cheney has been moved to an undisclosed secure location. Meanwhile, tonight the President will be attending Game 3 of the World Series."

To which I say:

Actually it makes sense. And not just in a Macchiavellian "Well, you always knew that Cheney was the important one in the Administration, didn't you?" sort of way.

We have people lobbing passenger jets at us. It's altogether possible that, knowing where both Bush and Cheney are (even at separate locations), a conspiracy could take both of them out. Plus any number of the rest of the line of succession. Chaos ensues.

But the President can't be the one to hide. That was demonstrated on 9-11, when Bush took incredible flack for not going to Washington ASAP. So he has to retain that air of normalcy, and do things like go to baseball games and hold press conferences.

For Cheney, on the other hand, it's perfectly reasonable to ferret him away someplace where he can survive another wave of attacks. That only makes sense, actually, regardless of whether he's the Puppetmaster President or not. Indeed, lacking a department to run, he's the only one who can be so kept safe without impairing the activities of the Administration.

Yeah, it sounds weird in juxtaposition (and NPR may well have been aware of that). But it does make a sort of Worst Case Scenario sense.

2:34 PM  •  0 comments

Search results

I get few enough hits from search engines that it's always interesting to me when I do get one.

flash movie bin laden New Kumbaya my lord

And then it's fun to do the translation. "Le *** Dave fait le Blog"

Certains sont minces,
Et certains sont gros.
Le gros a
Un chapeau jaune.

Actually, I got another hit from Yahoo yesterday for "buffy the vampire slayer download ring tones". The odd thing is, the search doesn't find me today. And I don't know why it would have found me anyway.

1:37 PM  •  0 comments

Telemarketing Regulation Proceeds

More info on the implementation of the No-Call law going into effect in Colorado. About damned time.

9:08 AM  •  0 comments

Time Passages, redux

A couple years back, Margie and I visited Britain. I'd promised her a trip before we started having to lug a baby around, so there we were.

Wandering on foot around London on Palm Sunday, we unexpectedly had a chance to go to Palm Sunday service at Westminster Abbey. Odd, the time was off, but what are you going to do with those crazy Brits?

Wander around the city some more. End of the day is to be a trip at the British Museum. Woo-hoo, great place. Only have a couple of hours to do it, though, so it's going to be a bit of a rush. Spend lots of loving time around the antiquities, the Elgin Marbles, etc. Great stuff.

Wandering through the rest of the museum. Notice folks beginning to close doors. Odd, the museum's open for another hour, right? More doors closing. More groups being ushered out ...

Long story short, that was the day that Britain was shifting to their Daylight Savings Time. We'd lost an hour, and gone through the city unaware of it the whole day.

Crazy American tourists, that's us.

8:56 AM  •  0 comments

"Dave seems like a cool, laid-back kind of fellow"

I find the little TITLE tags that folks include in their links to my site to be as fascinating as the links are themselves happy-making.

I don't know if I'd call myself laid-back, or cool, but it's an interesting observation. Thanks.

(Via speakeasy, who writes a very personal and nicely-thought-out blog)

7:34 AM  •  0 comments

Zombie humor

Q: How many zombies does it take to change a light bulb?

A: BRAAAAAAAINS!

The laughs keep on coming, folks.

(Via Boing Boing)

7:27 AM  •  0 comments

Sniping at the appeasers

A Geoffrey Wheatcraft opinion piece from the Observer about the folks who Just Don't Get It.

Almost the worst thing about the bleating critics is their imperviousness to reason and complete lack of the intellectual humility needed to recognise that one may have been wrong. In the spring of 1999, I was one of those who deplored the bombing of Serbia. Elementary observation now suggests that Serb forces are no longer terrorising Kosovo, that Serbia is returning to something like democracy and that Milosevic is on trial. Would that have happened if we had dropped John Pilger, Julie Burchill and Simon Jenkins on Belgrade (tempting as that thought is)?

[...]At a time like that - and this - the only honest prescription is 'pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will'. 'KBO' was Churchill's even pithier version of Gramsci's slogan: keep buggering on, recognising that it will be a long struggle, but that it has to be won.

(Via Matt Welch)

7:20 AM  •  0 comments

Masks and Candy

A collection of some of the goofiest packaged Halloween costumes ever. This is great stuff, folks.

I bet this outfit would have been more dangerous to wear than the famed all-black "Invisible Pedestrian" costume from the classic SNL sketch. You're just asking to get your candy stolen, and be beaten within an inch of your life when you're dressed up as Scott Baio.

(Via Sillycow)

7:08 AM  •  0 comments

Death of innocents

One of InstaPundit's readers has an interesting metaphor for civilian casualties in Afghanistan. It's worth reading.

6:58 AM  •  0 comments

I love the Java Jive, and it loves me!

Not only does it make you smarter and more physically adept, but caffeine's also the key to curing headaches!

They found that 58 per cent of those who took either caffeine or ibuprofen alone reported complete pain relief from a headache - and the caffeine-takers typically experienced relief about half an hour faster. The caffeine dose was equivalent to that in a large mug of coffee, says Seymour Diamond, who led the study.

[...]After 90 minutes, pain began to recur in the caffeine-only group. However, drinking a second cup of coffee could probably prolong the analgesia, Diamond says.

None of this explains, of course, the frequent headaches I get at the office, even though I heavily self-medicate with coffee. But that's just another mystery for Science to figure out.

(Via Blather, which, for my money, is one of the most attractive and soothing-looking sites out there. And he didn't even pay me to say that.)

6:46 AM  •  0 comments

Time passages

When I was in college, I always thought it was unfair that "Spring Forward, Fall Back" meant that you gained the extra hour in the Fall and lost it in the Spring -- when it was really in the Spring that you needed an extra hour to catch up with a year's worth of deferred homework and kegger excess.

I have had an epiphany, though. I know what will drive home networking (whether by Bluetooth or some other standard -- knowing Micro$oft, probably the latter). It will be the ability to sync up all the clocks in one's house to Daylight or Standard Time automatically, without intervention.

Back in the Good Old Days, you had perhaps a clock on your oven, one out in the parlor, and one in each bedroom. Maybe one in the car, but that was always broken.

Now it seems like every widget in the house has a clock on it. And all of them have to be reset when the time changes -- except for the PCs, which may or may not reset accurately. And unlike the Good Old Days, when it was an analog knob you could twist one way or the other, every single clock -- from your microwave to the one in your car radio to the one in your light timer -- has a different interface to changing it.

Now pardon me, while I get up off my rocking chair and chase those damned kids off my lawn again ....

6:33 AM  •  0 comments

Writing in the Dark

NaNoWriMo is coming closer -- Thursday is Der Tag. Eep!

I've added my NaNoWriMo site to the upper Link List to the right, along with my Denver support group. You can enjoy the hysteria as we go.

2:34 PM  •  0 comments

"We are the Standards of the World ..."

Micro$oft has begrudgingly removed blocks from non-IE browsers viewing its MSN portal.

The blocks had been there because alternative browsers (such as Opera) did not "support the latest XHTML standard," in M$'s words. Now they will allow the other browsers in, rather than blocking them and suggesting their owners download IE instead. Graciously, M$ notes, "The experience may be slightly degraded simply because they don't support the standards we support closely, as far as the HTML standard in those browsers."

This despite MSN's non-adherence to XHTML standards itself, of course.

Also of course, ultimately, the "standard" is what everyone uses. If everyone has to use IE, then its idiosyncratic implementation of XHTML, etc., becomes the de facto standard. You don't think that's what they have in mind, do you?

9:51 AM  •  0 comments

It's everywhere, y'know!

InstaPundit notes that anthrax spores occur in nature, as any rancher knows. How sensitive is the testing they are doing on post offices, etc.? What's the possibility/probability that they are now merely reading "background" rather than something significant?

Other InstaPundit goodies this morning (which I'll summarize here):

• Our politicians are not doing well acting as war leaders, which means taking the same risks they're asking others to take. "But maybe it's more basic. Politicians, like show biz types, are now so unnaturally sealed off from the world by their vast entourages that the sudden piercing of the perimeter has utterly confounded them: suddenly, they feel vulnerable, as many Americans do in a thousand situations--walking down an empty city street after dark, working the midnight shift at a convenience store in a crummy neighborhood."
  
  
• The "freak-out factor" continues to rule on our air flights. If you make anybody nervous, upset, or suspicious, you're in big trouble. "I felt the many eyes in the room follow me all the way to the ticket counter. . . . I searched for a behavior type that would ease the tension and alleviate their worries, but could not manage more than a nervous smile. I avoided eye contact, but wait, I told myself, that is suspicious behavior. Look at them. No, don't stare; that's even worse" I've written (as late as yesterday) that we need to be patient about this -- but we also all need to start trying to get a grip. If you can't serve the public -- that includes people who perhaps look like some of the folks who committed the evils of 9-11 -- then maybe you shouldn't be working for the airlines.
  
  
• Does profiling (see previous item) make sense? It's worth noting that only a minority (23%) of Arab-Americans are Muslim (most are Christian), and only a minority of Muslims world-wide are Arab. "But the first step towards a just -- and justifiable -- profiling policy would have to involve carefully studying the groups in question, first to determine whether the approach would be effective; and if so, to learn how best to protect us efficiently while avoiding racist stereotyping and the undue harassment of innocents." (This is from a few days ago -- I should have posted it then.)

9:23 AM  •  0 comments

Tomorrow is Yesterday

The Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World has shuttered the Carousel of Progress. This "ride" led people through the advancement of technology through the century (the last one) and, Worlds Fair-like, promised ...

There's a great big beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of every day,
There's a great big beautiful tomorrow
And tomorrow is just a dream away.

Man has a dream and that's a start,
He follows his dream with mind and heart,
And when it becomes a reality,
It's a dream come true for you and me.

There's a great big beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of every day,
There's a great big beautiful tomorrow,
And tomorrow is just a dream away.

(Via John)

Had I known this was still the "traditional" CoP when I was at WDW earlier this month, I'd have made a point to go on it.

Maybe it's appropriate that, now with the 20th Century well and truly over, its celebration should be over. Maybe, as we herald Windows XP and the USA Act, we should stop celebrating what technology can do for us, and instead worry about what it will do to us.

All I know is, another childhood icon bites the dust. *Sigh*

(Via Blather)

8:49 AM  •  0 comments

Are we not viewers? We are TiVo!

I am seriously looking into getting a TiVo machine. I very much would like to easily timeshift TV, catch things automatically (without juggling tapes and cable channels), and "pause" my live viewing whenever Little Miss Entropy decides she needs attention.

The concerns I have ...

Bad law, redux

Wired has an interesting article on more details coming to light about the USA PATRIOT Act. Despite proud crowing that there are a number of sunset clauses in the bill, much of it is in there permanently (until explcitly repealed), and much of the rest has plenty of loopholes in the sunset clauses.

After the president signs the measure on Friday, police will have the permanent ability to conduct Internet surveillance without a court order in some circumstances, secretly search homes and offices without notifying the owner, and share confidential grand jury information with the CIA.

Also exempt from the expiration date are investigations underway by Dec. 2005, and any future investigations of crimes that took place before that date.

(Via words mean things)

7:29 AM  •  0 comments

And the hits just keep on coming ...

Came in this morning to find that I had a wide variety (for me, at least) of comments to my posts.

Comments are neat. Hit counts are neat, but comments are neater, because comments have a verifiable live body behind them. Plus, when they come from someone I read, it's almost like making a real human contact. Woo-hoo!

So comment, folks. Even a simple "Ayup!" or "PU" or something like that is of use, at least in stroking my fragile ego.

7:21 AM  •  0 comments

Lots of Little Brothers are watching ...

So I'm reading an article in the Rocky Mountain News about the problem with mail-in balloting. One of the things that Colorado requires as "proof" of identity in such things is the birthdate.

The article mentions a site, anybirthday.com, which you can use to look up peoples' birthdays.

Ha ha ha, I say. Here, at least, I, the not-very-private guy, am safe. Because whenever some dopey web site asks for my birthdate for demographic or proof-of-identity purpose, I always give it plus-or-minus one day. Or one year.

Look me up. Bam. There I am. Correct date.

Margie, too.

And Rey.

Not Jackie or Doyce -- but there's a ZIP code field, and I don't have their old ZIP code. I'll betcha ...

Randy doesn't show ... but Randal does.

Neither set of parents shows, nor does my grandmother -- but my grandfather, who's been dead for some time, does indeed show.

'Taint funny, folks. Because, as with the State of Colorado, there are places that actually use this (bad) piece of info as a proof of identity.

According to the site FAQ, the information comes from "Public Records." There is an opt-out option, which allows you to have your data purged (and flagged to not be re-entered).

Ordinarily I don't mind. But for stuff that is being used by some locations as proof of identity ... then I do mind.

6:53 AM  •  0 comments

What's in a name?

While I've used the davehillblog47 name here since the beginning, I've also used the window title "***Dave Does the Blog". Now I'm adopting that as the page title, as you can see above.

Why?

Well, it's catchier.

It captures my normal sig line, "*** Dave," in it. (I'll post that story some time soon, though it's on my normal web pages if you're impatient for the scoop.)

And ... well ... it tends to show up closer to the top of various alphabetized lists.

Of course, "davehillblog47" is kinda fun, too. So that will stay around on the page somewhere, indefinitely.

Now all I need to do is start gratuitously mentioning the name of famous terrorists, movie stars, and singers, and I should have a pretty impressive hit count ....

6:47 PM  •  0 comments

"Thank Heavens you're here, Categorization Lad!"

I have this temptation to apply some sort of better categorization to the List of Blogging Honor off to the right.

Right now they are in two blocks -- fairly frequent (daily) posters, and less frequent.

What I'm tempted to do is somehow ID some basic categories -- personal journal, link lists, editorial/commentary/essayist. Maybe a 3-point scale (not at all, some, lots) for each. So next to Fred might be "201" if the person does a lot of personal journaling and a bit of essay-writing, but not really much in the way of links. Or something like that. Maybe graphical (empty circle, half-circle, full circle).

That way, if someone were nuts enough to actually follow my suggestion about taking a look at said List, they could at least zero in on the type of blogs they were looking for.

Or not.

Just being Type A here. Nothing to see. Move along.

3:19 PM  •  0 comments

Health Report

Dave: Feeling better today, a bit snuffly, but the long nap yesterday and the decent sleep last night have refreshed me. Felt well enough to go up and rake aout eight bags of leaves on the front porch. Good thing I'm recovering, too, since I have IT dignitaries coming into the office over the next few days. Not my direct bosses, but still Influential People.

Margie: She's about a day behind me, so today is her day to take a long mid-day nap.

Katherine: Feeling a lot better (evidently early aspects of this illness were part of why she was so fractious at night -- she's doing much better there, too). Very snotty, and a bit clingy, but a world better than a week ago. She's also vocalizing like crazy, lots of different sounds. Makes us wonder if she's going to be one of those kids who, when they start to really talk, talk in actual sentences.

3:07 PM  •  0 comments

Countdown to Terror!

No, not Anthrax or Terrorism or Bombing or whatever.

I'm talking about National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, which starts Thursday, 1 November. Gah!

I know what I'm writing about. Sort of. I have a plot in mind. Vaguely. And, typically, I have a final scene in my head, which I'll desperately try to get to.

Now if I can just get the creative juices flowing. And the discipline. Oh, yeah, the discipline.

Which conjures up some disturbing images of Margie in leather with a whip and ...

... er, I'd better end up this post right here.

2:53 PM  •  0 comments

Terrorism by any other name is ... a blank check?

The ACLU goes into the new, broad definition of terrorism in the newly-passed USA PATRIOT Act (somebody spent way too much time fiddling up that acronym). Even though the 9-11 terror violated all three existing federal definitions of terrorism, the new Act creates a new definition:

Under Section 802 of the USA PATRIOT Act, a person commits the crime of domestic terrorism if within the U.S. they engage in activity that involves acts dangerous to human life that violate the laws of the United States or any State and appear to be intended: (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping.

... This over-broad terrorism definition would sweep in people who engage in acts of political protest if those acts were dangerous to human life. People associated with organizations such as Operation Rescue and the Environmental Liberation Front, and the World Trade Organization protesters, have engaged in activities that could subject them to prosecution as terrorists.

Under the USA PATRIOT Act, once the government decides that conduct is "domestic terrorism," law enforcement agents have the authority to charge anyone who provides assistance to that person, even if the assistance is an act as minor as providing lodging. They would have the authority to wiretap the home of anyone who is providing assistance. Also, the government could prosecute the person who provided their home under a new crime of "harboring" a terrorist (Section 803) or for "providing material support" to "terrorists."

The ACLU does not oppose the criminal prosecution of people who commit acts of civil disobedience if those acts result in property damage or place people in danger. That type of behavior is already illegal and perpetrators of these crimes can be prosecuted and subjected to serious penalties. However, such crimes often are not "terrorism." The legislative response to terrorism should not turn ordinary citizens into terrorists.

There are certainly plenty of folks who consider Operation Rescue to be "terrorists." And others who consider PETA to be terrorists, or the anti-WTO types, or the Environmental Liberation Front. And then we have "terrorist" unions. And "terrorist" union-busters. And "terrorist" gay-bashers. And "terrorist" pro-choicers. And ...

How many terrorists do you want to have? Now you can have all you want. Figure out how they are threatening human life, figure out how they are coercive, and any group of people can be labeled as terrorists. And then the Feds can monitor them, detain them, investigate them, all in secret, and both them and their "supporters." Donated to one of the groups above? Or to a group that supports one of the groups above? You, too, may get a knock on the door, or discover folks going over your records.

This is bad law-writing, folks. I don't think it's a deep, dark conspiracy (ever being the optimist). I just think it's bad law-writing. And I hope it doesn't take too many abuses of it before it's changed.

(Via Bornfamous)

2:33 PM  •  0 comments

Patience is a virtue, and other cliches

InstaPundit notes that some folks are complaining because, gads, we've been bombing for weeks and we haven't won yet. Gads!

I was really hoping the Instant Gratification streak of the US would be on hold for a bit longer. It makes you wonder how WWII would be different if fought today.

Geoff also makes the interesting obervation that "[T]his war is the inverse of most Afghan conflicts: to win, they have to govern Afghanistan. We just have to stop them."

1:03 PM  •  0 comments

Freedom and Circumstance

I was going to do this as a comment to the below story, but figured I'd blog it into the mainstream here.

An editorial I read in this morning's Denver Post gave me a different spin on this. To wit, Fritz the National Guard dude who plays such a role in the below tale is not a law enforcement officer.

Consider that. The National Guard has many roles, but serving as law enforcement officials, except to shoot at looters during disasters, is not one of them.

That may explain the rather all-or-nothing, civil-liberties-be-damned, I-either-ignore-you-or-shoot-you attitude. Because that's a soldier's role: to shoot the folks who need shooting, and not shoot the ones who don't. Niceties like civil rights and due process are not a key part of the mission.

Which is appropriate, for the military. But doesn't work well in a civilian application.

Or, as the Post editorial puts it, in disagreeing with the calls to use the Army to support local law enforcement:

Soldiers have a different orientation: Their prime function is to destroy the enemy, not bring him to justice. Moreover, the military ethos fosters prompt obedience to orders. How would a 19-year-old infantryman react if, for example, a civilian questioned the propriety of having his house searched?

Fritz, or whatever his name is, was given a mission. Military thinking is, don't make decisions based on what your enemy will do, do it based on what they can do. Getting into a hissy-fit over taking pictures is understandable, from the framework of "There's Us, and then there's the Enemy."

Of course, that doesn't excuse all the other bureaucratic folderol the writer ran into. But I chalk that up to general fear. Fear of being the person to let the terrorist through. Fear of contradicting what others have done. Fear of digging too deeply, of being the nail that stands out.

Hopefully, we'll all get over that. Until then ... try to avoid being that nail. There's no profit in it

12:42 PM  •  0 comments

Ordinary freedom in extraordinary circumstances

A Sacramento story about a journalist who managed to get on the wrong side of some folks who could make his life much less pleasant.

“Hey you! What are you doing?”

A California National Guardsman, a big guy with a buzz-cut dressed head-to-toe in camouflage army fatigues, was moving rapidly toward me. I froze as he approached. He came so close it seemed impossible he wasn’t touching me.

“Did you take my picture?” he asked angrily. “Did you take my picture?”

“I’m a journalist, working on a story about airport security,” I told him.

“You can’t take pictures here,” he said.

“Says who?” I asked.

“Says me!” he barked.

Or people trying to figure out how to balance an imminent, tragic sense of urgency with expectations of How Things Have Been?

Or just the sort of confusion and mixed signals that occur when action precedes policy, and then testing of that action follows immediately?

About 15 years ago, I was in England. I was touring through London on my own, on foot, near twilight. I was taking a "short cut" through some side streets to get to Buckingham Palace.

I stepped out of a side street into a -- well, it was another side street. Or a back street. And what it was the back of (on the other side of the street) was a major military barracks.

The street was deserted. No traffic. No parked cars (duh). Nobody but me.

And two British soldiers, standing by the truck entrance across the street. Guarding it against the obvious threat.

I looked at them. They, lacking anything else to look at, looked at me.

I considered, for all of about two seconds, taking a picture. It would be intersting, I thought. It would be fun. I could show my friends. It would be a conversation piece.

It would be so stupid ...

I pride myself on being able to put myself into the Other Guy's shoes. This sometimes makes me extremely wishy-washy, but other times it saves me a trip to the local constabulary. Like this time.

Since, for all those guards would know, I was an IRA supporter, sypathizer, or member, taking photos of a secure entrance to a barracks, for purposes that would be unpleasant for the inhabitants therein.

You don't tug on Superman's cape. You don't spit into the wind. Etc.

And maybe, just maybe, you don't give hypersensitive security guards at airports any reason to worry. Because, in the tension of the moment, before policies and procedures and little things like Constitutional Protections are all firmly in place and integrated, they might react badly. And do stupid things. And then other people will overreact and do stupid things.

And then you get to be in stories like this.

Did the writer do anything wrong? Nope. Did the guardsman overreact? Absolutely. Did the bureaucracy mess things up? Duh, that's their job, and during a crisis is when they do it best.

But it's understandable, dammit. It's not a sign of the impending apocalypse, or proof that we're all about to be rounded into Re-education Camps by grey-uniformed State Police.

This is a crisis. People aren't thinking clearly. They still aren't. Most are, probably for the best, erring on the side of over-caution, overreaction, which is understandable because underreaction and blithe disregard of threats is part of what got us into this to begin with.

So think, people. At least for a while. Consider how something might look. And if you transgress, don't start waving around the Bill of Rights and getting all snarky. Err on the side of over-apologizing. Make yourself as non-threatening as possible. Cooperate above and beyond.

And then go home and file your story. Because we don't want treatment like this -- understandable now -- to become the norm. We do expect appropriate policy and Constitutional protections to come back into play Real Soon Now. And if something really dire happens -- well, save your moral indignation and standing on the Constitution for those times.

But until then ... expect problems. And don't be stupid about them when you run into them.

(Via Boing Boing)

8:04 AM  •  0 comments

With friends like these ...

There's a low but growing tide of hostility out there toward the Saudis. A lot of the money trail supporting the Taliban and al Qaeda seems to be leading back to Saudi Arabia. And more and more evidence is coming out that, whether through cultural schizophrenia or through an attempt to counter fundamentalist forces in their own regime, the Saudi royal family is seems more than willing to play both sides of the modernism/reactionary fence. A number of folks are beginning to ask when the Bush "You're With Us, Or Against Us" Doctrine is going to be put into play.

Not to address that directly, but here's an interesting bit about how Saudi reconstruction crews in Bosnia are demolishing historic religious architecture they consider idolatrous and blaphemous, and rebuilding it in their own fashion.

At the Beg mosque, the Saudis ordered the Ottoman tilework and painted wall decorations stripped off and discarded and had the whole building redone, as Riedlmayer puts it "in gleaming hospital white, even the minaret slathered in white plaster." He says that in scores of villages, the Saudis had war-damaged but restorable historic Ottoman-style Bosnian mosques demolished and redone Saudi-style. All of the colorful Balkan-Muslim interior decor was eliminated, and separate entrances were added to segregate women.

(I have to confess, that with my twisted Historian values, this bothers me a lot worse than some other things going on ....)

(Via InstaPundit)

6:44 AM  •  0 comments

"Freedom? That is a Yang worship word!"

Even some of the hawkier, harder-line folks are a bit dismayed over the scope of the anti-terrorism bill passed, as well as the speed at which it was rushed through Congress. This Reason article makes it sound like all the various law enforcement agencies (the FBI at the vanguard) simply dusted off all the proposals they'd had over the past two decades, bundled them up, and sent them to Capitol Hill.

Although the House passed anti-terrorism legislation earlier this month, it was far removed from a bill that made it through the Senate. Deliberations that normally would have gone on in a conference committee instead happened informally. In the meantime, congressional sources who could have shed some light on the proceedings were almost impossible to track down because of the anthrax-induced frenzy on Capitol Hill. According to McCullagh, rank-and-file House members were still in the dark Tuesday night as leaders tried to hash out a deal with the Senate and the administration: "Members of the House of Representatives were saying, ‘Whoa, can I see a copy of this bill? We haven’t seen it yet.’"

(Via InstaPundit)

6:27 AM  •  0 comments

You would think we're doing everyone a favor here

According to a just-released UN report, Taliban forces retaking the Yakoalong district earlier this year basically rounded up all the males they could find and had them executed. Oh, and tortured. And desecrated the bodies.

And these are the folks crying bloody murder over heartless US aggression? These are the folks trying to rally the Muslim world around the virtue of their cause?

Feh.

(Via InstaPundit)

9:22 PM  •  0 comments

Bleah, redux

This is really annoying. My head is full of snot, and my thoughts feel like they're having to swim through said viscous material to get anywhere, and nothing is enjoyable and nothing is fun.

Bleah.

9:06 PM  •  0 comments

Bleah

Margie's birthday.

Both of us are snuffly, probably from Kitten being snuffly.

I seem to have the worse of it -- I ended up napping from 11 to 4:30 -- but, then, that means that Margie gets stuck monitoring Kitten activities, etc.

I did the dishes for her.

Went out to Thai Hiep for dinner. Yummy.

Margie gets to open her gifts now, we're going to drink some decaf, and then join Kitten in Slumberland.

Happy Birthday, Honey!

8:06 PM  •  0 comments

Tech talk

Modeling off of one of the Movable Type templates, I've replaced all the rest of the TABLE code with DIV and FLOAT code. Which has turned out kind of cool. The page doesn't load any faster, in toto, but it starts displaying almost immediately (first the picture/title, then the posts, then, almost as an afterthought, the link list on the right ... in case you didn't notice).

So it feels like it loads faster (always good), and, functionally, it very quickly lets folks see if anything has changed.

Cool, if I do say so myself.

9:35 PM  •  0 comments

Tomorrow's Margie's birthday

And tonight she's off to a D&D game.

Heh heh heh heh heh ...

UPDATE: Unfortunately, I seem to have gotten Katherine's cold that she was suffering from earlie