Blog Archives 071111 to 071005

Old pointless chatter instead of new pointless chatter.

 

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071111 Davis, CA
Sorry folks, but you get random thought theater today; I'm still trying to catch up on work left over from being gone for almost a week at the Recent Advances in Fermentation Technology meeting (co-sponsored by the Society for Industrial Microbiology the Division of Biochemical Technology of the American Chemical Society). Anyway, that's why you're getting tidbits (taken from things I'd meant to write up over the past week or so) instead of several individual posts each more lengthy or well fleshed out.

First-up: An era is over. I finally got rid of my old Nissan Sentra. It served me well, but it spent two years parked here in Davis while I toured the world. When I got back, I looked at the bluebook value and the cost of repairs (new tires since the old ones had flat spots from sitting so long, some work to unstick the parking break, replacing bits of the corroded electrical system, new inspection, etc.) and realized that they were about equal, at best. So, I tried for a bit to sell the car (again, I'd tried and failed before leaving the US). Then I just registered it as a non-operated vehicle and figured I'd get around to having it hauled off at some point. That time came last week, when I was able to donate the car to a local public radio station. It was a win-win; the car goes away and ceases to be something about which I must worry and a public radio station gets a few bucks in the process.

When I was flying to Florida for the meeting, my flight passed through Denver. Whenever I fly, I always try for a window seat. I'm still not tired of looking out airplane windows. The rush of wind and the hurtling force of the take-off are always worth paying attention and the landscape from high above is beautiful. It may have just been low hills and desert as we flew over Colorado, but it was still beautiful, with the tracework of waterways reflecting the sunlight.

As we flew in over Denver, I noticed most of the new housing developments had no yards. The tight-packed moderate-sized houses had almost no surrounding grass and no sidewalks to tie the neighborhood together. That made me sad; they were clearly build as communities where you drive to and from the isolation of your house and your children play indoors.

While I was at the meeting, I was in a hotel and so had access to cable TV. For the first few nights, I watched a lot of TV; maybe 3 hrs a night. That was sufficient to start seeing repeats and to decide the quality of programming did not justify the time spent watching... but there is something inherently attractive about moving pictures and sounds, so I kept watching some of the most gawd-awful programming (e.g. "A Shot At Love With Tila Taquila"). By the fourth day, I had regained my senses and turned the boob-tube off.

So, I've been going to a yoga class semi-regularly lately. The instructor likes to finish with a "guided visualization" to relax you. You lie on the mat with your eyes closed and he talks through a relaxation exercise. One of the things he always asks the class to do is relax and think of a beach and the ocean.
I always end up thinking of the pounding surf, powerful undertow currents, deep undrinkably salty water, shark attacks, and hurricanes... It doesn't make me feel very tranquil.

So, instead, I think of a different kind of ocean; a cloud ocean. I saw it most impressively on Alishan mountain, where I was above the cloud level and could watch the evening clouds roll in, slowly ebbing and flowing over the outlying foothills, pushed by the wind up the side of a hill, to break and wash down the opposite slope to fill the valley on the other side. I have stood in the rain on the Appalatian Trail in the Smokey Mountains, in the rain, watching the mist roll in, sweeping up valleys to obscure the ridgline path. Most recently, I stopped the car when driving home from a visit to Muir Woods, to stand on a ridge overlooking the woods and watch the evening fog march like a sinuous white army along the depressions to swallow the woods as the fading sun tinted the scene a glowing red.

Now that is peaceful. I just don't get why the ocean, since time immemorial an uncaring devourer of men, should be a peaceful image.

Oh, before you think I hate the ocean or anything, I delayed my return from the meeting specifically so I'd have a morning to go swim in the ocean. Yeah, I was on the wrong side of Florida, so I was in the Gulf of Mexico rather than the ocean, but the thought (and the presence of jellyfish, rays, and sharks) is the same. I charged out into the braking surf and swam a good ways out, while taking reference to the buildings on the beach to make sure the current didn't fool me. Respect for an elemental force is quite different from dislike. It was really nice.

071028 Davis, CA
I'm a total pack-rat... This means that when I do an occasional reality check I'm sometimes getting rid of really old, useless stuff. Today, I decided to free up some shelf space by getting rid of some old computer games. I mean, do I really think I'm going to re-install Windows 95 and play "Tie Fighter" again? So, today I dumped the CDs and boxes for Windows 95, Afterlife, Aliens vs. Predator II, Aliens vs. Predator II - Primal Hunt, Baldur's Gate II - Shadows of Amn, Battle Chess II - Chinese Chess, Batlefield 1942, Batlefield 1942 - Secret Weapons of WWII, Chessmaster 6000, Creatures, Dawn of War, Dungeon Keeper, Dungeon Siege, The Elder Scrolls III - Morrowind, Emperor of the Fading Suns, Flight Unlimited, Forsaken, Half-Life, Mechwarrior 2, Mechwarrior 3, Oni, Quake III - Arena, Quake III - Team Arena, Splinter Cell, Star Wars - Jedi Knight Dark Forces II, Star Wars - Rebellion, Star Wars - Tie Fighter, Star Wars - X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter, Total Annihilation, Total Annihilation - The Core Contingency, Total Annihilation - Battle Tactics, Total War - Medieval, and Total War - Shogun. Whew.

Sure, the graphics were neat, but it kinda makes me appreciate the classic games more; checkers, chess, cards, etc. No processor upgrade is going to render your version of checkers incompatable with your friend's version of checkers.

Anyway, I'm hoping that eventually my apartment will resemble a living space more than a storage facility, and dumping a few old games is a good step in that direction.

071021 Davis, CA
I have not been doing much exciting lately. This past Saturday, I went over to a friend's place. He is German and his wife is Chinese, and they just moved to the US a few months ago, so they had never carved a pumpkin before. I went over to their place with a bunch of ingredients and we took the pumpkins and made pumpkin pie, pumpkin soup, toasted pumpkin seed snacks, and a jack-o-lantern. They really enjoyed the carving the pumpkin into a jack-o-lantern and seeing it lit up with a candle inside. It was a good day. So, I guess I'd say that my life has not been very exciting lately, but that's a good thing.

071019 Davis, CA
Apologies for the politics, but politics is the reason for my comments today. You see, I've found the front page news depressing, so I've slowly been moving back further and further in the paper, finally settling for getting my news by reading only articles that start on the lower half of page seven. That way, I can get a little dose of news, but not enough of a big story to make me say "Ahrgh!"... Unfortunately, page seven is no longer safe.

Page seven was where I found a little note on Executive Order 13422. What's that, you ask. Well, it's just a little tweak to Executive Order 12866. 12866 was the order that requires regulatory agencies to do market impact studies before changing regulations. Say, for example, the EPA has found that some municipal water supplies contain enough mercury and arsenic to cause mental retardation in children and compromized ability to fight off infections in the elderly. In the old days, the agency was free to do a scientific study and issue regulations based on the evidence. After E.O. 12866, the agency would be prevented from increasing water quality standards if it was moderately detrimental to the profits of water suppliers. Essentially, corporate fiscal health could trump science and human health.

Apparently, the current administration believes that 12866 does not go far enough and they have issued E.O. 13422, modifying E.O. in two important ways: The first is that each regulatory agency now must have a new layer of bureaucracy in the form of a presidential appointee (the Regulatory Policy Officer) whose approval is required for any new regulations. So, no more bothersome regulations unless the president wants them. The second change is the adding of the term "guidance document" throughout the Executive Order. So, even if a regulation is justified by science and human health impact, and if it is also has only minimal impact on corporate profits, and if it is popular enough to make the administration feel required to pass it, then the administration now has the option of "soft-balling" the regulation by calling it a "guidance document"; an un-enforcible suggestion it'd be nice if things were a little healthier.

Sigh. OK, so no part of the newspaper is safe. I'll just read something vaguely health related at lunch instead of the newspaper. Hmm. What's this? The New England Journal of Medicine... And it has a piece by David Tornberg, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs... A piece in which he defends the administration decision to have military doctors involved in torturing suspects. Tornberg makes the claim that the military doctor's Hippocratic Oath ("do no harm") doesn't apply because the doctor is not acting as a doctor when involved in torture, so it's not violating the oath.

Fine, fine. No more reading. How about flipping on the most innocuous radio station I can find; a light jazz stations... A light jazz station that happens to be carrying the Senate Judiciary Cmte. nomination hearing on Michael Mukasey to be the new Atty. General. I listened just long enough to here Mukasey having to do gyrations around the torture issue... He stated that torture is unconstitutional, that it is illegal for a President to order unconstitutional acts, and he even agreed that "waterboarding" (i.e. simulated drowning) has been prosecuted in the past by the United States as torture and as a war crime, but he was not willing to call waterboarding torture.

Now, Mukasey is a bright guy. No matter how obvious the link (waterboarding = torture = unconstitutional = criminal), he can not make the link at this time. Since the administration has approved the use of waterboarding, if he makes the link, then he has essentially just announced a plan to indict Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Tenent, Cambone, Bybee, Yoo, Haynes, Addington, and Bush himself, since all of them have their signatures on orders approving the use of techniques that are deemed worldwide to be torture. If you can think of a speedier way for Mukasey to have his nomination withdrawn than announcing an intent to prosecute the adminitration, then you're smarter than me. So, he isn't touching that one with a ten foot pole.

Here's the thing about torture: whenever there is a debate about it, the "pro-torture" side likes to recast the issue in some sort of unlikely and desperate light. "What if the guy had your family, and they were in a sealed room with only a few hours of oxygen left and he refuses to talk. Wouldn't you torture him if that was the only way to get the information?" Casting the debate in this frame makes the assumption that torture works and then frames the debate as the question of whether or not you'd use all working methods of gathering information. This is false. Torture does not provide good intelligence. The National Intelligence University took a look at modern information gathering and found that not only is there no evidence that torture provides any useful information, but there is strong evidence that it leads to the suspect providing misinformation, which detracts from the ability of intelligence agents to draw correct conclusions. Yep, you got it; not only does torture not work (even when the administration calls it things that sound less criminal), but it actually damages information gathering efforts.

Even if you leave ethics completely out of the debate, torture doesn't work and is criminal to boot, so why would the administration approve it? It does a bang-up job of fulfilling the "I'm doing something" claim. After all, you can point to your opponent and say "He won't do everything to make you safe! I'm the only one willing to do everything to make you safe!"... If your opponent points out that your definition of "everything" includes plenty of stuff that doesn't work, plenty of stuff that is criminal, and plenty of stuff that is outright counter productive, then you can always call your opponent "soft on crime/terrorists".

So you look good, your opponent looks bad, and you win elections. It's a win-win situation, except for minor details like ethics, effectiveness, and legality.

071013 Davis, CA
Bumbling around the net, you find interesting things. One of the latest interesting things I ran across was an article on the ancient Persian religion Manichaeism. From there I followed the topic to an article on Manichaean paranoia; the moral certitude that one is leading the forces of good against the empire of evil. Specifically, Manichaean paranoia combines the intense dualism of Manichaeism with paranoia in a way that results in those suffering from this mental illness believe that their moral superiority over their enemies (who are by definition "evil") justifies them in committing what might normally be considered immoral acts (e.g. law-breaking, causing harm to others, lying, creating an extra-legal domestic spying program, approving torture, providing false documents to Congress, etc.). For people suffering Manichaean paranoia, the ends justify the means, because the belief is that "evil" people are forcing the person to treat them in such an extreme way; the victim is held to be immoral and morally responsible for the means used in the Manichaen paranoid's acts against them.

I thought the article on Manichaeism was interesting because the Manichaean world view of a sharply polarised struggle beween good and evil is a world view has influenced a number of Christian fundamentalists despite the fact that the renowned early Christian thinker St. Augustine (an ex-Manichean) wrote a number of epistles warning against taking a sharply dualistic viewpoint of good and evil. (See the Confessions of St. Augustine, Book V, Section 10 for an example.) Early Christian communities viewed the tennents of Manichaeism as heritical and yet a number of modern Christian fundamentalists seem to hold to the Manichaean world view.

I thought the article on Manichaean paranoia was interesting because it was both the description of recognized mental illness and a description of Bush Jr.'s world view, as taken from his speeches... Draw your own conclusions about that. (Note: I think Zbigniew Brzezinski was the first to notice this disturbing fact. I'm just sharing it with you.)

071009 Davis, CA
Well, my car now looks slightly less new. This past weekend, I was backing out of a parking spot at the bank and, to quote the 17 year-old in the lift-kit modified truck "Man, I saw you backing up, but I thought I could make it!". His attempt to "zip" past me both surprised me and failed. He ended up with scrapes around a decorative oversized wheel-guard and I ended up with a scraped-up bumper and a smashed tail-light. We exchanged information, he drove back to LA (he was up here visiting a friend for the weekend) and I drove over to the dealership to replace the tail-light. 240 USD later, it's hard to tell anything happened; just a few scrapes along the corner of the bumper. I didn't bother filing a police report (on the Bank's private property, not public streets) or reporting it to insurance (cost was below insurance's deductible). Eh, as accidents go, that was pretty dang minor.

More interesting than that (to me, anyway), I picked up a copy of the magazine "STEP - Inside Design". I was wandering through Borders and this one lept out at me because it had an article about Hermann Zapf. You know, the Hermann Zapf, creator of the fonts Palatino, Optima, Melior, Virtuosa, Aldus, Kompakt, Zapf Book, Zapf Chancery, Zapfino. Apparently Zapf is working with Linotype to develop something called Zapfino Ink, a font that (with the proper software) will replicate calligraphy, with changes in stroke width and ink transparancy over the "written" character. Neat! The magazine also had a bit on the Creative Director at Chronicle Books, the guy responsible for bringing to life art books such as "Griffin and Sabine". As an added bonus, the magazine was running a series on papers, so it contained ads from various paper suppliers, printed on various kinds of high quality paper (the suppliers were showing off). It makes you think; when you are holding something mass-produced in your hands, group of people sat down and decided the size, color, feel, etc. of the object from a world of possibilities most of us have not considered. Heck, the font and paper-stock of the instruction manual or declaration sheet that came with the object may also have been the topic of comittee debate. Yeah, you all know this, but how often do you hold something in your hand and consciously know this?

Oh, as a final note, my father mentioned he was reading something called Getting Things Done. One of the things the author, David Allen, suggests is a "2-minute Rule" - If it would take less than 2 minutes to do something, just do it right away. I looked around my place and decided to try implementing that rule... I now know two things: 1) Apparently I can't tell the difference between two minutes and fifteen minutes and 2) I had a lot of little "two minute" tasks laying around incomplete.

071005 Davis, CA
Today, let's talk politics. Specifically, let's talk about understanding the US presidential primary candidates and learning who actually matches your opinions as opposed to the advertising statements of a handful of the current front-runners. Many current voters are vaguely aware that many of the candidates are pretty similar, but how many people have thought to graph their actual postions? If you follow that link, you'll see that almost every candidate is classified as being in the Authoritarian Right quadrant, with the Republicans generally being more on the Authoritarian Right than the Democratic candidates. Now take a look at where you fall. Surprised? Now flip back to the diagram for the candidates and take a look at who best matches your position.

Rather than just use that single quiz as a metric, go ahead and take a look at a few other political quizes. There's the one from Select smart, which attempts to make you sign up for a ton of advertising to get your results... Just ignore the advertising and click the link at the very top of the page, where it says "Click HERE to go to your results".
Then there is the one from Speak Out, which is simple, fast, and provides links to candidate's pages.

I'm bringing up the politics now, because the election is a very long way off and people are already getting tired of the political ads... And I have a message.

I hate that many times the only candidates on whom we focus are those that have the most success at whoring, er, fundraising. Rather than letting advertising budgets annoint our choices, how about taking a look at (first and foremost) your own policy calls and then (only after having made your own decisions) examine the candidate's policy calls? Reading through the many many pages of policy statements by the candidates is pretty awful, but you can use a few quizes as tools to let you know where you ought to spend a bit of time. It's worth it. Treating thinking about voting as a chore is just a guarentee that the voting public will be a bunch of thoughtless, ignorant sheep; easy prey for unscrupulous demagoges who will fleese the nation and the public. Do you want to be one of that flock? You can't let yourself get tired and fed up with it to the point where you allow yourself to be uninformed or pushed into a choice; the right to vote is too important for that. Do your thinking now, before the political ads have pushed you into sensory overload; question where you really stand politically, and carry that knowledge forward as insulation from media oversaturation.

Good night, and good luck.

Page Last Modified: 2008 04 14, 16:50:43

 

 

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