Month: November 2004

A couple of interesting perspectives on The South, a geographic area near and dear to my heart, having been born in Kentucky, married in New Orleans, graduated from North Carolina, and currently living in Tennessee. The South as a culture has taken a beating since the election, painted red with the anger of liberals and the joy of conservatives both. It’s no secret which side of the line upon which I fall, but way down deep I keep believing that the South’s reputation for bigotry, hate, and fundamentalism is simply a public face or mask, and that in private the hospitality and warmth of the people is the real story.

But I really wish that we could get rid of the fucking mask.

The South vs. The South.

In the parlance of 1337 speak: OMFG.

I want these so bad I can taste it.

Hill House Publishers (beware shoddy web design) has made deals with two of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman and Neal Stephenson to publish limited signed and numbered editions of some of their works. And what editions…boxed, silk-bound, and in Gaiman’s case often with the “author’s edition” text, with sections that were cut from the published editions. Their edition of American Gods has 12,000 words that weren’t in the previously published editions.

They are also doing the amazingly cool “Neil Gaiman Author’s Preferred Limited Edition Series” subscription service, where you not only get the books in the series, but limited edition one-time printings of Gaiman stuff not available anywhere else, like the recently published “Screenplay” (a slight-of-hand way of referencing a screenplay he did for Good Omens). They appear to be doing the entire Stephenson Baroque Cycle in these limited edition versions…my mind boggles.

Unfortunately, so does the pocketbook. These will run you around $200 each, so it appears that they will remain a distant dream. On one hand, I’m sure they will appreciate in value…on the other hand, you’re talking about $200 for books that I already own. But what books….the bibliophile in me weeps.

I don’t believe that I spend time doing this today. But I did, so…

B6 d+ t+ k s u- f i+ o x+ e+ l- c-

Code / Decode

In a post on election day, I suggested that we put Bruce Schneier in charge of the national election process here in the US. His recent post on why electronic voting is currently broken, and how to fix it, is among the most succinct I’ve ever read. Here’s a sample:

We need to start treating voting software like we treat any other high-reliability system. The auditing that is conducted on slot machine software in the U.S. is significantly more meticulous than what is done to voting software. The development process for mission-critical airplane software makes voting software look like a slapdash affair. If we care about the integrity of our elections, this has to change.

He breaks down the issues with voting in general, the specifics in regards to electronic voting, and makes suggestions on how we can improve said e-voting in the future (since it is apparent that we will be headed that direction whether or not it’s best). He says that everything comes down, more or less, to two propositions:

1. We need paper trails for audit purposes.
2. The software in question must be open source.

No surprises here…now can we make it happen?

I don’t have any idea what this is, but I want one. The video is amazing…

The Animaris Rhinoceros Transport is a type of animal with a steel skeleton and a polyester skin. It looks as if there is a thick layer of sand coating the animal. It weighes 2. tons, but can be set into motion by one person. It stands 4.70 meters tall. Because of its height it catches enough wind to start moving.

Cobb County, GA is at the center of a court case testing, again, how to deal with evolution in high school science textbooks. A sticker was placed in all science textbooks in the county stating:

“This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.”

While I will actually agree that the sticker doesn’t present any actual falsehoods, evolution is certainly just about the closest thing to a fact we’ve got in science these days. No respected scientist believes anything else…so why the sticker? Cue the fundies:

The first witness, parent Marjorie Rogers, started the drive to put the stickers in the books. She said it was only fair to put a small disclaimer in a textbook where religious-based ideas about the origin of life are not mentioned.

“I don’t want the Bible taught in the classroom. But there is a wealth of science that would support intelligent design, and that is not taught,” she said. “There should be a marketplace of ideas.”

Guess what, Marjorie…scientific inquiry is the original marketplace of ideas. “Intelligent Design” lost. There’s absolutely nothing “intelligent” about it…nor scientific. Evolutionary theory is the way that life has speciated on Earth. Get used to it. But I fear that with the new political climate we might just see some of these typically rational judgements go the other way…welcome to Jesusland!

• Lesson One: An untimely reboot will cause write errors.
• Lesson Two: Said write errors, if they occur on the account info of Windows XP, are bad.
• Lesson Three: Being unable to read any account info, Windows XP will happily blue screen and reboot, only to repeat that process forever.
• Lesson Four: Even after editing the password file with a Linux boot disk in hopes of fixing the corruption…no dice.
• Lesson Five: Backup your data, boys and girls. Early and often. Luckily I only lost a handful of files, and spent only most of a weekend reinstalling everything.

Here’s a site that just gets creepy right. Make sure you read all the way through…esp. to the related characters blogs.

The Dionaea House.

I originally read this quote somewhere, and just found the article that it was from. After the results of this election, this scares me more than ever.

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like about Bush’s former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend — but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

October 17, 2004, New York Times Magazine, Without a Doubt – By RON SUSKIND