The New Road

Against Iraq But Voting Republican?

I'm not sure I understand these polling numbers any more. 80% of American's favor a withdrawal of our forces from Iraq. But when people are given a choice between Democrat or Republican presidential candidates the split is like 60/40 to the Demoncrats. So where are the 20% of people who want us out of Iraq but are going to vote Republican anyway? That position is nonsensical.

No serious Republican candidate has come out against the war. In fact they are all saying the same "stay the course" line as Bush. And they even favor, or want to extend Bushs war on our civil rights (in the name of protecting our security). What is that Romney said? He wants to double the size of Guantanamo? How can a person say they want us to get out of Iraq then vote for him? It doesn't make any sense.

But then again the conservative position on the Iraq people doesn't make much sense either, given that it's a cynical mix of ethno-religious hatred and feigned hope of a 'democratic middle east'.

And this Fred Thompson guy, sheesh, don't get me started. He brings fear mongering to a whole new level. Far worse than Bush. He is truly the presidential candidate of the fear addicted.

Indonesia adding pot to food

How cool is this? In Indonesia you can now get pot on your food as a 'seasoning'. Awesome. Now you can get wasted and get your munchy fix all in one stop.

Strangely the government doesn't consider this 'legalization'. Whatevah.

Legalize it. Don't criticize it.

Switching To Camino

I'd been hearing other people complain about Firefox on Mac for a while, but I was pretty happy with it. Until last week when it just started hanging and getting slower and slower, even after restarting it. So I've switched over to Camino, which is the same engine in a lighter weight frame and it's much nicer. Genuinely snappy even. I had to switch back to Firefox for a minute to see what my user name was on some site, and I was appalled at how slow it was.

So is Camino the bomb at this point on Mac? Or should I be looking to re-try Safari?

Power Of Gears

The first part of my two part series on Google Gears is up on the O'Reilly Network site. I'm really excited about the potential of Google Gears. I think it's a genuinely practical and pragmatic solution to the problem of offline web work.

Stung by Sushi

Megan and I went to sushi last night for dinner because it was fast and convenient. She seemed really interested in the sushi bar with the boats the last time, so we sat at the bar. For the first time ever I decided to eat off the boats, while Megan ate her usual (rice, edamame and miso soup). I felt fine at the time. But I did notice a couple of things. First, we were the first customers of the night. And second, the rice on some of the rolls was a little dry.

Everything was fine last night. I even did an hour of yoga after Megan went down. But this morning, right before I woke up, I had serious stomach cramps that lasted most of the morning. Ugh.

I will not eat off the boats again. I will not eat off the boats again. I will not eat off the boats again. I will not eat off the boats again. I will not eat off the boats again. ...

Ugliest Dog Contest

I love this ugly dog contest. Elwood is classic. Sid, Reggie and Ralph need to just go home. Their photos do no justice to their outer ugliness.

Great Weekend

We had a really long and fun weekend. On Friday I took some friends up Mission Peak, but didn't get back home until after midnight. Saturday was supposed to be an easy day. But the idea of a hike to the beach became a trip to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, but then morphed into a trip to the Alameda County Fair.

Thankfully we got there early. It was clear from the start that Megan wanted to ride every ride she could get onto, so a handful of tickets wasn't going to be enough. We got unlimited ride wristbands for ourselves and hit ride and after ride as Lori looked on in horror.

After lunch Lori went off to look at some of the exhibits while I watched Megan ride even more rides at the kids park. By that time I wasn't really in the mood for rides as I was pretty ill from all of the spinning. Megan quickly found a new friend, Samantha, and we spent the next three hours as a group with Megan, Sam, her mom and dad, and after a while, Lori.

On the way out Megan and I did a few more of the adult rides. One last run on the roller coaster. And other go on this flying one that I found started to put me to sleep. It wasn't really doing anything exciting for Megan either who I swear was telling herself a little story about how she was flying to this castle...

On Sunday I went for a 50K ride while Lori did some massive house cleaning. I came back in time to help out. We took the dogs to the dog park then got them baths. We also took the Furminator to Oso which has helped tremendously with his shedding. We then head home and I made dinner while Lori continued cleaning up. After dinner Megan and I went for a dip in the Jacuzzi.

By the end of the day on Sunday Lori and I were pretty wrecked. Now I need today just to recover!

iPhone

Apple has a new tour of the iPhone up on it's site. It's pretty awesome. I can't wait to try one out for myself. It's like they had a list of all of the pet peeves we have all had for our crappy phones and fixed every single one of them.

I've been thinking about this persistent rumor that Apple is going to be acquired by Google. I think it's bullshit. Both companies are financially solvent. And the Apple brand name is incredibly strong. If it does happen then Adobe needs to watch out because Google would be clearly looking to compete head to head with Microsoft. They are already doing that somewhat with the hosted business application suite. But from what I have seen the browser still needs to come a long way to compete head to head with desktop applications like Word and Excel.

Serpico

Life on an elliptical trainer can get pretty dull. So we have installed a TV in front of it with a TiVo. I've got my usual subscriptions on it; Olbermann, Daily Show, Frontline, Colbert Report. Ninja Warrior. But even those only last so long, and when I'm doing a really long session, like two hours, I need something more. So I've been looking around on all of the movie stations for films I haven't watched before. I find a few, then I treat them like books, thirty minutes here, an hour there, and so on. The one I'm on now is Serpico. It's good, but man is it slow. I'm like 45 minutes into it and he hasn't even made detective yet. I hope this gets going quickly. I'm pretty finicky about some of these movies, they have to suck me in or I dump 'em. I tried 'Endless Summer II' and dropped it after fifteen minutes of boredom and annoyance with the latent homosexuality.

Unicorns L.A.

What happens when you mix ren faire freaks, acid, unicorns, and really bad video production? Find out for yourself. The most awesomely worstest thing evah!

33,000 calories

Lori was hosting her Mom's group last night. So I took care of Megan and then gorked on the tube with the dogs in our bedroom. As I was clicking around I found this show on TLC called something like "I eat 33,000 calories a day". So, being the curious type, I had to tune in.

The show was a sober, kind of even handed look at some people who were genuine food addicts. The subjects were all in the 600-800 pound range. I've seen shows like this before and they treat the people like side show freaks. This one seemed more compassionate to me.

The story was pretty much the same across the board; bed ridden and still eating massive quantities of food. I'm not unsympathetic to that. But my food issues are not addiction like these folks have it, one woman described her experience with food as an almost transcendental state, or a drug high. So I can easily see how one could overdo on that.

Anyway, being an engineer I had a hard time figuring out the logistics of consuming 33,000 calories a day. To put that in perspective the show actually showed how much food one of these guys ate, and it filled a table with eight steaks, cupcakes, fried foods, and on and on. And when I looked at that my first impression was; how could one person possibly consume all that in a twenty four hour period. I mean, seriously, we are talking a Thanksgiving style feast eaten by one person, on a daily basis.

My next thought (after taking the first to it's logical conclusion and shuddering) was about finances and logistics. Eight steaks. That right there is a lot of money. A good steak is $15, if you take it home and grill it yourself, or $25 at a restaurant. That's $150-$200 right there. And the rest of the food wasn't cheap either. So who is paying for all this stuff. And who is cooking it and delivering it?

I don't know. I'm sure there is an answer there. The whole situation is just sad. Food and lifestyle is a real problem across the first world. Actually, food is an issue all over the world, it's just that some have too much and some have too little.

Frontline: End Game

Frontline has been doing some excellent reporting on the state of the war. Their most recent installment, End Game, continues the trend. It's well worth the watch as it gives an excellent summation of where we are and how we got to this point. is this the end game? I'd like to think so. I'd like to think that in September we will get enough defectors from the right to really have an impact on Iraq policy. But my guess is that Karl will still hold enough sway to keep them in line, get the final supplemental of the Bush administration, and successfully dump it in the next administration's lap so that Bush can try and claim that Iraq wasn't a failure on his watch. Which is, of course, complete and utter bullshit.

Slamming Microsoft's Table

If you haven't seen anything on Microsoft's cool table technology you are actually missing out on something neat. I recommend having a look. And then when you are done with the serious spiel have a view of this awesome spoof on it:

Awesome.

Banning Baggy Trousers

I must be getting old, because honestly, I can really agree with the sentiment here. These baggy trousers are a fashion crime to be sure. As well as practical problem for the wearer. Ever see one of these idiots waddle down the streets? It's a riot. But I'm not sure it should be an actual legal crime. Since practically speaking all of the nether region bits are covered up. Low riders, which are the ladies equivalents, can be sexy. So we should be banning those.

How about this for a solution? Take pictures of all of these fashion fools so that twenty years from now we can show them the pictures and watch them go into convulsions of cringe.

Another fashion thing that I hate, which is not as bad as the baggy trousers, but is still pretty bad, is the baseball cap worn skewed to the side, or the visor worn upside down. It's just plain stupid. I mean, seriously, kids, we think you are ignorant to start with, you don't have to wear clothes that prove the point!

Arming the Sunnis

A while back I heard some conservative pundits talk about "picking sides" as a possible strategy in Iraq. Either picking the Sunni or the Shiite faction and then supporting them with weapons. Of course, that didn't make any sense as both sides are attacking us, and each other. It's too crazy to give weapons to people who are just going to turn around and point them at us. There is no way we would do that. Well, at least that's what I though. Turns out... it's our new strategy.

I keep thinking it can't get any worse in Iraq, and it just keeps spinning more and more out of control. Insurgents are blowing up every single bridge in Baghdad, but nobody seems to see this as a problem. Insurgents just blew up another central mosque, again. The same one that inflamed the civil war the last time.

Is anyone following this other than me? Where is the outrage? Perhaps the problem is that too many people watch Fox News, which spends only 6% of it's coverage on the war.

I shudder to think what's coming next in all of this.

Another Megan Picture

Reverse Engineering Creationism

In case you are living on planet Zorton you might have noticed that in the last couple of years the creationism vs. science debate has heated up. In this particular debate I throw my hat deep into the science part of the ring. I find myself shaking my head in disbelief at a lot of the crap coming out from the creationism side, in particular statements like "The Universe is 6,000 years old". What world the world be like if it were indeed 6,000 years old... I wonder... It’s a good question for physicists.

For example, science dates things based on the set rate of carbon decay. Given that we know that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old. So what happens if we crank up the decay of the carbon atom to be 766,666 times faster, so that the age of the Earth is 6,000 years. And let’s say we applied that to a house cat. Would house cat poop be so radioactive that we could run a reactor off of it?

And how about geology? If the continents moved 766,666 times faster we would be surfing across the pacific. Oh, wait, I need to reverse that. Given the rate of continental drift we would have only moved about 500 feet in 6,000 years. Which kinda leaves a big hole, between, er… us in America, and say, Australia. So how did Australia get populated with animals, given there was only one Noah and one ark? Turns out the creationists actually have a solution for that one. All of the Australian species migrated to Australia in mass on giant tufts of floating grass. I kid you not. No, no, really. I'm not kidding.

I would love to see this stuff applied to a lot of the sciences. In particular those that have a real effect on daily living. For example, the speed of light governs the speed of data transfer, which in turn powers the web and our ability to watch YouTube videos. How fast would YouTube videos be if we adjusted the speed of light to conform to the 6,000 year old Earth? The more ridiculous the example the better.

Surf's Up

I took Megan to see Surf's Up on Sunday. She was visibly bored by it, crawling into my lap and just putting her head down. Which is a bad sign, I suppose. I actually really liked it. The animation was great, the story was fun, the mockumentary style was engaging. But looking at my daughter I kept wondering about the target audience for this movie. Who was it? Certainly not me. There are enough good surfing movies that I don't need an animated one. And it doesn't seem to have been Megan either. Perhaps a little older kid? I don't know. It's sad. I liked the messages in the movie. I want to see it do well, but my guess is that through word of mouth it will likely collapse next weekend and make most of it's money in DVD sales at Christmas.

Sopranos Finale

What a screw you to the fans. That was my first thought at the finale of the Sopranos. Spoilers follow:

Anyway, not a lot of spoilers now that I think about it. But people have gotten pissed off in the past, so I'll play it safe.

Get Out Of Jail Free

Even if you hate Paris Hilton you have to hand it to her for her clever plan to get out of jail quickly. I'm sure they had it worked out in advance. Stay a few days, then start acting like your having a breakdown. They probably went through all the signs and symptoms. Once that happened the jail called her lawyer, her lawyer said that he would sue the county and state for violation of Paris' civil rights unless she was released to home or sent to a psych ward. And since they wouldn't have a psych ward ready to handle the zaniness, viola, home free. Brilliant! Bravo Paris!

To those who want to attempt the same trick. You will likely end up heavily medicated in the psych ward unless you are a rich, white, world famous woman.

Resistance to Science

A friend pointed me at an interesting article on why people seem so resistant to science, especially recently. From the article:

In sum, the developmental data suggest that resistance to science will arise in children when scientific claims clash with early emerging, intuitive expectations. This resistance will persist through adulthood if the scientific claims are contested within a society, and will be especially strong if there is a non-scientific alternative that is rooted in common sense and championed by people who are taken as reliable and trustworthy. This is the current situation in the United States with regard to the central tenets of neuroscience and of evolutionary biology. These clash with intuitive beliefs about the immaterial nature of the soul and the purposeful design of humans and other animals — and, in the United States, these intuitive beliefs are particularly likely to be endorsed and transmitted by trusted religious and political authorities. Hence these are among the domains where Americans' resistance to science is the strongest.

Spot on.

What's sad is that the science is almost always right. Why? Because it's tested. You can't test faith.

Dance Class

More pictures from dance class.

Baramins

I love it when nuts have to create bogus science-ey type stuff to justify their bogosity. Take creation science. Which is this whole idea of Earth being 6,000 years old. Obviously that needs some science-ey sounding terms and what not. So in comes baraminology. (I hope I spelled that right because Firefox doesn't know how to spell it, which kinda tells you something right off. Anyway...)

Baraminology is a science (?) of figuring how to categorize things (conservatives are big on the whole them 'n' us thing). It's all boring bullshit up until the this section:

Baramin Distance

To refine this method, the concept of "Baramin Distance" was proposed. The initial study by Robinson and Cavanaugh tested several methods on the Catarrhine primates, including genetic tests and tests based on ecology and morphology. However, one criterion for determining a baramin is whether scripture says the two groups are separate, so methods that did not separate humans from primates were rejected.

Basically it's saying that people wanted to actually test this bullshit. So they came up with experimental methods. But the experiments that didn't produce the results that they wanted. Like which said humans were close to primates, were rejected.

Mmm.... That's some tasty science. If the facts don't fit the hypothesis, throw out the facts.

Oh, yeah, and to add insult to injury, the Conservapedia (?) has an entry on baraminology that goes on to attempt to separate whites from 'negroes' using this odd semantic bullshit.

Awesomest thing ever... today

This is truly, today's most 'awesomest thing ever'.

This guy is ready for the coming apocalypse. In a big way.

I mean, come on. What more do you need to know?

More Running

The Guardian always has excellent practical articles on topics like fitness. In this most recent article they cover some common fitness myths and debunk them. The one that wrung most true with me was on running and my knees. I tend to back off of running completely when I experience any knee pain, and I fall back into biking. Now I think I'm going to try and run every single day if only for a half mile or so. Obviously longer on other days. But just to strengthen that area.

It doesn't make sense to me that the body should react different for the knees as opposed to everywhere else in terms of conditioning, and that is what this article points out. Actually on my most recent run I felt pain not in the knee joint itself but in the interior portion of the quadricep. Which is consistent with an incomplete biking form where I over-emphasize the downstroke of the pedal. It's also consistent with using the elliptical trainer which only responds to the downstroke and provides no ability to use the muscle on the upstroke. Ideally the elliptical should have straps so that you could bind your feet to the pads and us your muscles for both the downstroke and the upstroke.

New Mac

After two books, thirty articles and four years I think it's time for a new Mac. For it's age the current one is still in good shape, but it's getting too slow for development tools to handle. And I find myself locked out of a lot of the cutting edge stuff because it's PowerPC instead of Intel. Thankfully Apple has finally released the new Santa Rosa based Macs, with the new LED backlit display. Should be very nice.

What's funny is that this time around I don't think I want the tippy-top of the line. I find my current 17" machine just too big really. I'd much rather have a 15". And I don't think another 0.2 GHz of speed is worth $500. I'd rather spend another $150 on a larger capacity hard drive on the slightly lower end model. Which means I would be looking at $2,040 retail, and I think I can get a good discount on that.

Then I could give my current machine a good scrubbing, blow out the keyboard, reset the operating system and give that to Lori. It should last her at least six months or so, and it will do all the stuff she is doing now on her current machine a hell of a lot faster. It's certainly not like my older 17" which was falling apart by the end, I've taken really good care of my current machine.

A Game Of Endurance

Rebecca was right last night when she pointed out that poker is a game of endurance. By eleven last night I was super tired and on my last legs. It was the last hand of the night and it was my deal. I'd done fairly well up until then, having about $15 after starting with $10. Not bad, but not great.

I figured I would end the game on an interesting note, so I dealt a new game called Omadraw, based on Omaha, but with a draw phase after the flop. Either way, it gets down to just two cards you can play out of your hand. That's the way I like it. Do all the funky stuff you want, but end up with two playable cards and five on the board.

That way I can at least run the odds. I know that if there is a pair on the board then the best hand is four of a kind, or more likely, a full house. Failing that, if there are three of a suit on the board the best hand is a flush. Otherwise the best hand is a straight. And a straight, the nut straight is what I had. But I was bleary eyed and couldn't believe it. So as the amount of money in the pot went up and up and up I just kept calling.

I ended up winning, given that I had the nut straight. I guess the late night was having it's effect on everyone. That one hand doubled me up, giving me $30 for the night, and the win at the table. Though Lori had the high water mark record with $38 earlier in the evening.

It's definitely an endurance game. Keeping your concentration for hours is really tough. I have no idea how the world series guys do it. My guess is that they take regular long breaks.

Tattle On Movie Theatre Idiots Wirelessly

Regal Cinemas has come out with a wireless device that you can use to tattle on idiots talking or making disturbances during the movie, without leaving your seat. I don't think this brings up any new ethical issues. It simply allows you to make the same complaint you would otherwise without leaving your seat. Of course, the four buttons doesn't cover the problem we had a pirates where they brought on the house lights for about 30 minutes right in the middle of the movie.

Megan Speaks

As with all kids Megan's age she has some funny pronunciations of things including; Stephanie, and Living Room.

Pets 2.0

I was talking with another technology guy earlier in the week about the peaks and troughs in the valley economy. I said that when he sees the first Web 2.0 version of the pet food play he should watch out for the start of the slide. I wonder if a social network for dogs and cats counts? Yeah, it probably does. At least the traffic will improve again. I wonder what Web 3.0 will be...

Put To The Test

Lori and I were put to the test last night. Along with four other friends we were each given four red wines. We weren't shown the bottles or the labels. The game was to pick the varietals. In the three years this contest had been running there had only been 12 people who had picked all four correctly. I didn't think I would win, but I wanted to get at least one right.

As the wines were poured I noticed they were all dark, almost brown in hue. Then the guy told us they were all common varietals and all different. So my choices were; Merlot, Cab Sav, Pinot, Shiraz and Zinfandel.

The first was was light and fruity. The second had a very bold and sharp flavor, but was a little off. The third was bland. And the fourth was strong, but refined. I went with my gut and wrote out Pinot for the first. The second I figured was a disappointing Shiraz (or Syrah as we say in metrosexual around here). The third was just a bland old Merlot, so I knew I had that one nailed. And the fourth I was about 90% sure was a straight up and down Cab Sav, a California classic.

I was confident in all but one of my votes. I was troubled by the first one, vacillating between Zinfandel and Pinot. I knew it was fruity and light, it was just a matter of how light, and how fruity.

After about thirty minutes the guy came in to grade us. I got the first one wrong right off the bat, it was a Zin and not a Pinot. Pinot is Zin's lighter skinned brother, and I should have known from the fact that I couldn't see through the wine when I held it against a light.

But then my odds started to improve as I nailed the second. Yes, it was a very disappointing little Shiraz that I'm pretty sure was off. It had a nasty smell to it. So sad, my favorite varietal and I didn't even want to drink it. Lori got that one too, as well as James, the guy next to me. In fact, without even realizing it James and I had written exactly the same thing.

I was right on the third, it was indeed a boring Merlot. Those are easy to spot since they are really little more than alcoholic versions of grape juice. And I got the fourth right, a good old Californian Cab Sav.

So I was three for four, my first time out. I was very proud of myself. If I had just remembered how light Pinots are I'm sure I could have gone four for four.

Nerd Test

Lori pointed me towards the nerd test. The questions are kind of silly. I'm really surprised I came up with this level of nerdiness: