Weblog: Oct 2003

Steve Bailey, "University Deluxe," Boston Globe, 31-Oct-2003

Kendall Cafe closes: Steve Morse, "Latest closing is a sour note for club scene," Boston Globe, 31-Oct-2003

A lot of the American popular response to this observation is an arrogant, "Well, tough."

For decades, "deterrence" and "balance" were the main notes of Pentagon planning, but now "prevention" and "dominance" define the US posture. Such assertions can be made in Washington with only good intentions, but they fall on foreign ears as expressions of aggression.

—James Carroll, "Bush's battle to dominate in space," Boston Globe, 28-Oct-2003

But in early 1991, at the time of the Persian Gulf War, the Pentagon said there would be no more media coverage of coffins returning to Dover, the main arrival point; a year earlier, [George H.W.] Bush was angered when television networks showed him giving a news briefing on a split screen with caskets arriving. [...] The photos of coffins continued for the first two years of the current Bush administration, from Ramstein and other bases. Then, on the eve of the Iraq invasion, word came from the Pentagon that other bases were to adopt Dover's policy of making the arrival ceremonies off limits.

—Dana Millbank, "Curtains Ordered for Media Coverage of Returning Coffins," Washington Post, 21-Oct-2003

Anna visited Boston to dispense her own brand of justice.

One of the people in a developer community recently switched to Yahoo Mail. An email of his just now to the developer list had an appended Yahoo ad that clashed a bit with the respectability of the email:

Do you Yahoo!?
Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears
http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/

Released sigbegone.el version 0.7.

John Lewis, "At a crossroads on gay unions," Boston Globe, 25-Oct-2003

Massachusettsians feel favorite son JFK still watches over them.

Hurriedly caffeinating before a Saturday appointment, spilled the first coffee of winter into my new IBM keyboard.

We know what "BEFORE it is archived" is about:

Most importantly, any required intervention occurs in real-time before data is transmitted, ensuring the filtering of non-compliant data BEFORE it reaches the outbox and BEFORE it is archived.

—Orchestria.com

Decades later, underpaid professors trying to make ends meet still feel compelled to moonlight in degrading side jobs:

Twenty years ago a young woman wrote on one of the professor's evalutions, "Snacks in bed with you would be exciting and economically beneficial," [...]

—Gabriela Montell, "Do Good Looks Equal Good Evaluations?," Chronicle of Higher Education, 15-Oct-2003

Some people believed when G.W. Bush called it a "crusade":

Lt. Gen. Boykin's remarks over the past few years, including remarks that Islamic extremists hate the United States because "we're a Christian nation," that "our spiritual enemy will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus," that President Bush "is in the White House because God put him there," and that Boykin's "god was a real god and [the Muslim god] was an idol," are disgraceful and wholly inappropriate for a man in his position. These remarks are inflammatory to Muslims in our communities and abroad.

—"Representative Conyers' Letter to Rumsfeld on Lieutenant General William Boykin's Remarks about the War," BuzzFlash, 17-Oct-2003

The Globe has a surprisingly (mostly) intelligent piece on this: James Carroll, "Warring with God," Boston Globe, 21-Oct-2003

Now that Arnold Schwarzenegger has been elected governor, California newspaper editors are scratching their heads over the daily challenge of squeezing his 14-letter last name into a headline. [...] Editors at the newspaper briefly discussed using Schwarzenegger's three initials, like JFK and LBJ, Armstrong said. "But we looked up his middle name, Alois, and AAS — not so good," he said. "Editors like me across the state would have a sleepless night worrying about the possible typo."

—Laura Wides, "'Schwarzenegger' Hard on Headline Writers," AP via Editor & Publisher, 9-Oct-2003

Don't ditch Boston for NYC just yet:

The average price for an apartment in Manhattan was $919,959 in the third quarter of this year [...] In part because so many of the sales in Manhattan are in the seven-figure range, the average is skewed upward. The median price of an apartment in Manhattan for the third quarter of 2003, the exact middle of all the sales, was $575,000, [...]

—Dennis Hevesi, "What Can a Million Buy in Manhattan? Something Average," New York Times, 15-Oct-2003

Cleaned a few old keyboards. Mostly this consists of opening them up, then submerging and scrubbing the all-plastic top portion with dishwashing detergent in the kitchen sink. This should be done while one's cute roommate is not home. At least one model of IBM keyboard hides some of the case screws beneath keycaps. The L-shaped Enter key of one model of Keytronic keyboard can be attached by aligning the two metal wires to just barely rest on the top edges of the posts before pressing down on the cap with a touch of luck.

I'm half-seriously thinking of blocking all Web access under the biz and info TLDs, as they're used heavily by spammers, and I don't recall ever seeing a legitimate Web site under one.

Frat Boys Discover CraigsList:

last modified: Wed, 15 Oct 11:36
hot redhead in basement comp. lab - m4w
Reply to: anon-17736380@craigslist.org
Date: 2003-10-15, 11:35AM

You came in at about 11am. Hot as hell. Thick red hair, big breasts, high heels. A wet dream come true. Hope to see you more often.
I was the blue-eyed guy in light green polo shirt.

this is in or around BU

—boston.craigslist 17736380

Latest update of my Privoxy actions file includes blocks for some sites I've found advertised in email spam the last few days.

I don't like the idea of monkey experimentation (can there be informed consent?), but the research result is kinda neat:

After the monkey became skilled at the exercise, the scientists disconnected the joystick. At first, the monkey jiggled the stick and stared at the screen, Dr. Nicolelis said. Even though the joystick was not working, the monkey's reaching and grasping motor plans were being sent to a computer, which translated those signals into movements on screen. There was an "incredible moment" when the monkey realized that it could guide the cursor and grasp an object on the screen just by thinking it, Dr. Nicolelis said. The arm dropped. Muscles no longer contracted.

—Sandra Blakeslee, "In Pioneering Study, Monkey Think, Robot Do," New York Times, 13-Oct-2003

The last few days, I've been experimentally blocking Web sites advertised via email spam. Oddly enough, roughly half of all the spam is advertising pharmastation.biz. Where are all the violent Internet sociopaths when you need them?

If you just can't wait til Rumsfeld self-destructs, an appetizer:

In a meeting with foreign reporters on Tuesday in Colorado Springs, Rummy made no effort to mask his displeasure, saying he had not been consulted, even though Condi said he had, and cattily referring to the "little committees" of the N.S.C. When a German broadcast reporter pressed the defense secretary, he hissed: "I said I don't know. Isn't that clear? You don't understand English?"

—Maureen Dowd, "Is Condi Gaslighting Rummy?," New York Times, 9-Oct-2003

Farhad Manjoo, "Another case of electronic vote-tampering?," Salon.com, 29-Sep-2003

How far will you go for Sox tix?

Amusing exchange after Finkelstein accuses Dershowitz of plagiarism:

AMY GOODMAN: Let's get the response to that.
ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Stay away from the ad hominems and get to the merit of the case.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Professor Dershowitz, I'm not a professor at Harvard but I do...
ALAN DERSHOWITZ: You seem to resent that a lot.

—Amy Goodman interview, "Scholar Norman Finkelstein Calls Professor Alan Dershowitz's New Book On Israel a 'Hoax'," Democracy Now, 24-Sep-2003

Python support in DrScheme

Jim Hightower, "No Sweat: The Story of TeamX," WorkingForChange, 3-Oct-2003

David Greenberg, "Nabobs Revisited," Washington Monthly, Oct-2003

Ruben Bolling, Tom the Dancing Bug, 1-Oct-2003, A Presidential Message, from Wilkes Land, Antarctica

The nice thing about Safire is that he's so skilled with language that he speaks volumes in what he doesn't say.

These Web pages desperately need an overhaul, to reflect my new work and greatly de-emphasize the old stuff.