Weblog: Sep 2003

This is long, but both summarizes some key points and adds new info: "Will the 2004 Election be Stolen With Electronic Voting Machines?," BuzzFlash.com, 29-Sep-2003

Coming to a densely-populated urban area near you: "A new bioterror lab for Boston," Boston Globe graphic

Still not much mention of the risk that these expanded powers can be used to suppress progressive social movements, to affect election outcomes, etc.:

The Bush administration, which calls the USA Patriot Act perhaps its most essential tool in fighting terrorists, has begun using the law with increasing frequency in many criminal investigations that have little or no connection to terrorism.

—Eric Lichtblau, "U.S. Uses Terror Law to Pursue Crimes From Drugs to Swindling," New York Times, 28-Sep-2003

Having spent the last few years around MIT, it's always odd to be reminded that academia overall is left-leaning. As one conservative Russian told me, "You and Chomsky are the only two liberals I know at MIT." And I suspect at Harvard you'll find many students are quite comfortably and confidently right-wing, despite what this article might imply: David Brooks, "Lonely Campus Voices," New York Times, 27-Sep-2003

Always nice to wake up on a lazy Saturday to find my mailbox full of huge Microsoft worm emails, averaging one every six minutes.

William E. Jackson Jr., "Miller's Latest Tale Questioned," Editor & Publisher, 23-Sep-2003

On one occasion, when the EPA was about to issue regulations concerning lead in gasoline, I got a call from Melvin Laird, then chief of staff to Ford (and later Secretary of Defense), who told me the White House was receiving a lot of complaints from the oil and auto industries over the EPA's proposed action. Laird asked whether those industries had had a full opportunity to express their views to the agency and I said they had. He then asked whether we had taken those views fully into account. I said we had. And with that, Laird said that was all he needed to know. That was the end of the matter.

—Russell Train, "E.P.-Eh?," Grist, 22-Sep-2003

Tim Predmore, "Paths of Glory Lead to a Soldier's Doubt," CommonDreams.org reproduction of 17-Sep-2003 Los Angeles Times piece. "Tim Predmore is on active duty with the 101st Airborne Division near Mosul, Iraq. A version of this essay appeared in the Peoria (Ill.) Star Journal."

This latest Microsoft worm has increased my email traffic load by a factor of roughly 10^4. No computer on our LAN runs Microsoft, and for good reason, yet we (and the entire Internet) suffer.

That's OK; I've never heard of Dave Chappelle:

But the comedy and music, not the politics, were the big draw. "I thought Dave Chappelle would be here, and that's why I'm here," said Nia Ferguson, a 19-year-old Hunter student. "The A.C.L.U.? I've never heard of it."

—Tamar Lewin, "A.C.L.U. Goes to College, With Mixed Results," New York Times, 22-Sep-2003

Patrick French, "Dalai Lama Lite," New York Times, 19-Sep-2003

Foxtrot 18-Sep-2002

One of the very few technically legitimate uses of JavaScript: www.costofwar.com

Then it suddenly struck me. Hang on, I thought. I'm only pretending to like this picture. I don't really like it at all. If I had seen it in the alfresco art market in the Bayswater Road on a Sunday afternoon, I would not have given it a second glance. It was only because it was hanging on a castle wall, and because I knew that it was attributed to Leonardo, that I was putting on this show of soulful rapture.

—Tom Utley, "Madonna of the Pseuds," The Spectator, 13-Sep-2003

When even ferocious protopunk drug anthems are sanitized to become jingles for television cruise line ads, as happened with Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life," "you have to rethink your ideas of what it means to be cool," Mr. [Evan L.] Schindler said.

—Guy Trebay, "Is Fashion Still Cool?," New York Times, 14-Sep-2003

Alan Cooperman, "Among Episcopalians, Grief Over Gay Bishop," Washington Post 15-Sep-2003

Liz Kowalczyk, "Rationing of medical care under study," Boston Globe, 14-Sep-2003

Nicolas P. Retsinas, "Don't hold your breath for cheaper housing," Boston Globe, 15-Sep-2003

John Cassidy, "Goodbye to All That," New Yorker, issue 15-Sep-2003, posted 8-Sep-2003

Thomas Feyer, "To the Reader:," New York Times, 14-Sep-2003

"Moses In Alabama," New Yorker, issue 8-Sep-2003, posted 1-Sep-2003

Sarah Cohen, "Ordinary People," Atlantic, 7-Aug-2003

"AP Staffer Fact-Checks Powell's UN Speech," Editor & Publisher, 9-Sep-2003

Forget Al Qaeda — someone needs to stop those federal officials:

In a key covert test of Ebersole's dogs, McQuillan told jurors that they "didn't so much as sneeze" when federal officials drove past them and into the offices of the Federal Reserve in a Jeep loaded with 50 pounds of TNT, in a Toyota with 50 pounds of dynamite and in a BMW with 15 pounds of plastic explosives.

—Jerry Markson, "Dog Trainer Given Maximum Sentence for Fraud," Washington Post, 8-Sep-2003

In Cambridge last year, the median price was $587,500 for single-family homes, and $343,750 for condos.

—Jenna Russell, "Colleges use housing to lure new professors," Boston Globe, 7-Sep-2003

Ironically (in view of yesterday's weblog), in the wee hours of this morning, I was robbed at gunpoint by three people in Central Square. Nice big shiny semiauto. I think I didn't appear scared enough when the large one asked for my wallet, since he became agitated as I reached for it, and instructed me to stop. Fortunately, there was sufficient quaver in my voice when I said "chill, man, chill" that they were reassured of my nonthreatening intent.

I feel a little dumb, since I prided myself on over a decade of Teflon urban street-savvy. I'd just been mentally distracted with something and gone out to clear my head, which of course broadcasts, "I'm not paying attention to what's going on! Please rob me now!"

The struggle began in the 1970's, after Britain sought entry into the European Union and set as a condition the acceptance by the rest of Europe of a law that would permit the addition of vegetable fat, a customary practice in British chocolate.

—John Tagliabue, "The End of Chocolate (as a Chocolatier Knows It)," New York Times, 05-Sep-2003

Paul Krugman is my fav NYT columnist of late.

A year or two ago, in a discussion prompted by a current news event, one person said that, were his vehicle to lose brakes, he would choose to plow into a crowd rather than a barrier, so as to maximize his survival chances. He's a successful businessperson you may have heard of. That's how I see MBA and MIT people in general, although he was neither.

A segregationist article in the Atlantic. He might be looking for Central Square, Cambridge, Mass., although even that seems to be drifting towards a disheartening juxtaposition of yuppie conversion condos and subsidized housing projects.

Maybe somewhere in this country there is a truly diverse neighborhood in which a black Pentecostal minister lives next to a white anti-globalization activist, who lives next to an Asian short-order cook, who lives next to a professional golfer, who lives next to a postmodern-literature professor and a cardiovascular surgeon. But I have never been to or heard of that neighborhood.

—David Brooks, "People Like Us," Atlantic Monthly, Sep-2003

Um, another quote from that article:

It's appalling that evangelical Christians are practically absent from entire professions, such as academia, the media, and filmmaking.

Speaking of intellectual small-caliber, here's another implausible assertion to which we cling in blind faith: Dana Milbank and Claudia Deane, "Hussein Link to 9/11 Lingers in Many Minds," Washington Post, posted 5-Sep-2003, print 6-Sep-2003

A provocative sentence, if you know anything about electronic voting:

The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

—Julie Carr Smyth, "Voting machine controversy," (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, 28-Aug-2003

Just tried out the CF slot in the X20, which will be great for occasionally uploading photos from the Canon PowerShot S10 when out laptopping. Built a kernel with msdos filesystem support, and modified the default /etc/pcmcia/ide.opts to look like:

case "$ADDRESS" in
*,*,*,1)
    INFO="CF IDE device"
    DO_FSTAB="y"
    DO_FSCK="y"
    DO_MOUNT="y"
    FSTYPE="msdos"
    OPTS="debug,noatime,noexec,nosuid,ro,umask=022"
    MOUNTPT="/cfcard"
    ;;
*,*,*)
    PARTS="1"
    NO_CHECK=n
    NO_FUSER=n
    ;;
esac

While the CF card is inserted, it is automatically mounted as a read-only filesystem accessible by all users. Just don't have any process with open files under /cfcard when the media is physically ejected, since the process will be killed.