A faith-based sun shield in Boston yesterday.
Last summer, in Harvard Square, I saw this BMW with an emergency sun shade. Before I could smash in the window to help whoever was in trouble, I noticed that no one was in the car.
Katherine observed that the water jets circling Post Office Square's transporter fountain form marble-like spheres of water.
Chalk another one up to insane Boston drivers. We were waiting on a corner around midnight Friday night in Union Square when a car comes speeding sharply around our corner with a screech and then stops suddenly maybe 50 feet away. Then they stay there, so I look over and see their windshield appears shattered on the driver's side. When I run over to help, I see they'd struck a pedestrian. The victim was conscious but clearly seriously injured and not fully coherent. Fortunately, a police officer ran up within what seemed like 20 seconds. When the officer had first reached us, the victim pleaded that he had to go to work. Then he kept repeating "I'm sorry, man... I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..." and said several times that his back hurt. The car driver and his passenger did not seem to be injured, but remained in their car for the entire period at least until the ambulance had left.
Delivered another project today. Taking the weekend off.
Michele Kurtz' Boston Globe article today, "Pledge debate spotlights civil liberties" mentions this week's appeals court judgement that "under God" does not belong in the Pledge of Allegiance, serves up a wrong-headed defense of "under God" in the Pledge, then muddles the issue by flinging in some more benign controversies regarding the Pledge.
A year or two ago, I'd consciously stopped reading the Boston Globe, because every time I went to their Web site, there'd be a top story with a noticeable religious advocacy (or pandering) slant I didn't see in other papers. But the recent Catholic priest abuse scandal coverage in the Globe surprised me with its intelligent slant, and I was naively hoping to see a new era of critical thinking regarding religion by the Globe.
I may have to give the Boston Herald another try, though the last few times I've peeked at it, it's seemed targeted at people who find the Globe too intellectual. Then there's always the Boston Phoenix, which, while it doesn't have broad local news coverage, has some good journalists.
CNN "Court rules Pledge of Allegiance 'unconstitutional'," followed later in the day by much better reporting by the NYT, "Judges Ban Pledge of Allegiance From Schools, Citing 'Under God'." Unfortunately, it appears the decision is about to get unholy amounts of smackdown. The fact that so many influential people are so intent on keeping the "under God" addition in the Pledge is a great reason why it absolutely shouldn't be there — it's making a powerful endorsement of Judeo-Christian monotheism in defiance of our supposed separation of church and state. Those who insist on calling the US a "Christian nation" need to be told no.
Eileen McNamara's Sunday piece used phrases such as "corrupt leadership of the Archdiocese of Boston," and accused them of plotting to fund the priest abuse settlement by liquidating urban parochial schools rather than luxury parcels of property like the Chancery. If I had more time right now, I'd study the Boston Globe's new (self-published?) book, "Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church." The subject matter is screaming Pulitzer fodder, so it'll be interesting to see how well the Globe's coverage has has coincided with the award criteria.
PLT Scheme 200 released. Debian Sid should have the final version soon; then just do:
apt-get install drscheme
In Cambridge, we prefer our excitement in small doses.
Finally snapshotted the Cadillac Escalade EXT that always parks right in front of the neighborhood crunchy-granola whole-foods co-op grocery. Like the ad says, "It defies everything, including description."
Encountered these crutches at about 6:30am in Harvard Square. Were they complete, one might suspect a miraculous recovery. Miracle on JFK Street. Has Massachusetts already beatified Kennedy?
And you thought university politics at your school was bad:
Armed men stormed a university hall in Nigeria, and opened fire on engineering students taking examinations, killing at least 15 people [...] Officials at the University of Nigeria campus in Nsukka, [...] blamed Saturday's attack on members of an unidentified university secret society believed to be targeting a rival student group.
Need to try out Jim Bender's WebIt XML parsing and transformation tools for PLT Scheme.
Took two snapshots of the wet outside seating of the Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square, from the city-owned sidewalk, at about 5:30am. Gave up on getting the scene I wanted, so I walked on, but then a security guard approached and said that photographing the property was prohibited. Turned out he meant the Holyoke Center building, which he informed me contained Harvard administrative offices, and that the rule was for security reasons, and that it didn't apply to any other building. He said it wasn't a new rule, but had "always" been. I called Harvard campus police, but they had not heard of this rule, and they suggested that he might've been confused with a photo policy issue, and that I could visit the News Office to ask the reasoning or for their permission to photograph in Harvard Square.
While waiting to meet a student near the MIT food trucks, found that you can simultaneously eat a hummus sandwich, use a camera, and feed the birds (edits: shrunk).
Best sentence from CNN.com article, "Sainthood for stigmata monk":
In troubled times for the Catholic church, the honour for the Padre Pio fits into the pontiff's quest for role models of unstinting belief and obedience.
Mismatched caption of the day. Is that all that remains of them?
Good opinion piece by Bill Keller in NYT, "Fear Factor".
For Immediate Release: NEC Supercomputers Fastest, Ugliest
Contrast with stylish old supers from Cray (the Cray 2 came with its own waterfall) and Thinking Machines (CM-5 cascade of sleek black cabinets with blinkenlights show).
NYT article, "Judge Lets Man Accused in Sept. 11 Plot Defend Himself." Could get interesting.
One can only assume Dan was baiting me by execing several Unix processes to get a time value
from within Elisp. In this particular case, Elisp's unconscionably poor
integer support can be kludged around satisfactorily:
(format "~/somedir/%.0f.html" (+ (float-time) 2208988800.0))
Lots of people have their own ad-hoc weblog/diary setup. Mine involves directly editing the Lisp code that generates my site. This code automatically maintains things like weblog navigation bars and archive pages, and it lets me use conveniences like:
(web5-link "Foo" "/foo/foo.jpg") ⇒ "<a href=\"/foo/foo.jpg\" class=\"linksamesite\">Foo</a>" (web5-link "Bar" "http://www.bar.bar/") ⇒ "<a href=\"http://www.bar.bar/\" class=\"linkothersite\">Bar</a>"
At some point, I may define a DTD, convert to an XML encoding, and write the appropriate translator to HTML, but pure Lisp was more expedient for this task.
Another DSL outage, this one from 2pm to approximately 6:40pm.
Michael Paulson has a nice Boston Globe article "Lessons unlearned," on how a Catholic Louisiana community that was rocked by priest sex abuse scandal 20 years ago reacts to the Boston priest scandal. Reads like a hackneyed drama, were it not true. Incidentally, I'd love to know the full motivations and spin behind the continuous barrage of coverage the Globe has been doing on the scandal.
I absolutely loathe nutrition articles, but here's one by Dr. Robert M. Kradjian, "The Milk Letter: A Message to My Patients."
Free Atlas of Cambridge and other Cambridge maps.
Last week was productive overall, the weekend was un. For this week, more productivity planned, of the bureaucratic variety. After wading through countless miles of distasteful bureaucracy and politics, it'll be great to start doing actual research soon.
I read several how-to-be-a-grad-student books when I first started grad skool, but none of them teach you near as much about university politics as you'll hear after you get to grad school — from other grad students, young professors, and firsthand experience. I suppose prior exposure to politics might ultimately make one a more effective professor, if one comes away with the right lessons, and with values still intact.
A couple weeks ago, they came one day and scraped away the park, then they came in the morning with a flatbed truck of park, and unrolled the new park (edits: shrunk).
Another tree chair near Harvard Square (edits: rotated, shrunk, pixelation).
Some overhead electrical bus cables (edits: rotated, cropped), enhanced by pollution from vehicles other than the electrical buses.
A fairy tale of hard work and happy endings at MIT.
DSL outage starting at about 1:30am this morning. I get the impression the three Cambridge outages this week (I didn't mention the 2-3 hour one on Monday morning) aren't Speakeasy's fault. Hopefully Covad or Verizon or whoever gets their act together.
Seventeen-hour DSL outage. There is so little to love in life: DSL, ThinkPads, hot chocolate...
I'm going to link to Dan's site, just to weird him out.
Amusing old Sixdegrees.com story.
Guarana soda, like coffee and caffeinated soda, isn't a good idea for me. Went fine Saturday, but caught up with me by mid-Sunday. Got a decent sleep Sunday night, and my brain is working well this morning.
Looks like that Laserwriter 360 that I bought on Ebay is not going to arrive in time. Seller's email was down for a week after I PayPal'd, then he shipped via USPS, then he discovered he'd shipped me the wrong printer. Now, just have to get a refund, be certain delivery of the mis-shipment is refused, get my document to print from Windows on Kinko's 49-cents-per-page printers, and consider whether this should be a smudge on the seller's perfect Ebay feedback record.
My cooking knife of nine years seems to have accidentally moved out and into the summer storage of my roommate of nine months. It was an odd thin, curved, serrated knife with a tiny bit of flex in the blade. Cheap, but I'd learned how to use it well. I'd bought the knife as part of a set that came in a wood block stand, and though the knife was presumably specialized, perhaps for fileting, I found I was using it almost for almost everything. The last time I moved, I needed to fit all my belongings into a few boxes, so I got rid of everything that wasn't small and essential. I kept this knife, and one other, and gave away the rest of the set with the block. The closest I found to the style of my knife on the Web was a $50 one, but I'd gotten my entire set on closeout for $10 or $20 nine years ago, at a discount store in Providence that's since gone out of business. I may just buy another cheap closeout set and give away all but the most useful knife in it.
© Copyright Neil Van Dyke Contact
