Decrepit Old Fool

A US marine has apologised after a video spread on the internet of him singing a song about the killing of Iraqi civilians. Cpl Joshua Belile, 23, said the song had been written as a joke and was never intended to cause offence.
BBC News: Marine ‘sorry’ for Iraq deaths song

Inspired by “Team America: World Police”, it’s a fictional ballad in which the marine falls in love with an Iraqi girl and is then ambushed by her parents.  I’ve seen a few songs/videos on “YouTube” written by American servicemen, and it hardly seems appropriate for those of us in comfort and safety to persecute them for blowing off steam to keep from blowing their corks.

Soldiers have probably always written songs like this; we just didn’t always have YouTube where everybody could see them.  No doubt the song offended a lot of Iraqis and some Americans but the human cranium can only take so much pressure. 

Update: 
See also: Imagine the moment in Fallujah

This is a train station in Johnson City, Tennessee.  I took the picture on the left in 1981 and posted it on this blog in 2004.

Justin Hoilman found it – somehow – and took the picture on the right 25 years later, and just emailed it to me.
How cool is that!!!
OK, someone take a third picture in 2031 and email, er, teleport – send it to me somehow…
(Just click the picture to see the original post with Justin’s picture added)

The 10 June Economist reports on the information workers’ trend of ‘lifehacking’ in the article, “Reprogram your life”.  In covering 43 Folders, a lifehacking site, one of my very favorite tricks turns up:

“Life hacking does not rely on the use of technology for the sake of it, however.  Indeed, perhaps Mr. Mann’s greatest claim to fame is the ironically named “Hipster PDA” – a stack of index cards… that is, he contends, superior to an electronic personal organiser.”

Back during the Reagan era, I was inspired to start using index cards by an NPR comedy skit.  It had become a personal trademark by the time I got my first Palm Pilot, but I found the heavy, fragile, and bulky device more annoying than helpful so I went back to using index cards.

I buy blank cards and round them off in a corner-rounder so they slip easily into my shirt pocket.  My two data-entry devices are a Sharpie marker and a Zebra F-301 ballpoint pen. I write one issue on a card, use it for keeping track of the issue, and pitch it (or file it) when the issue is resolved.  I always have blank cards for information sharing or leaving notes.

The name of the NPR skit was “Index Cards At The Summitt”, featuring ‘Ronald Reagan’ recounting how essential his index cards were in his meeting with Gorbachev.  I’d have to say that’s the most useful joke I ever heard.

Visit The Revealer to read Reporting women’s protests in Tehran comparing (and linking to) various news reports about the Iranian women’s movement:

…By contrast, the BBC account, “Iran Police Beat Women Activists,” not only emphasizes the event’s violence, but the oppression and innocence of the women as well. It reports the singing of feminist songs, the great numerical advantage of the police over the protesters, and the outrage of male passers-by at the “viciousness of the attack…”

I wish them luck – they certainly have enough courage.  It is a study in the difference between strength and power.  In that context, which is the “weaker sex”?

Microsoft is releasing a bunch of patches for Windows XP today – you should (shudder) start up Internet Explorer and click on Tools and Windows Update.  (At other times, use a real browser like Firefox or Opera)  While you’re at it, make sure your system is set to download system updates automatically, using the link that will appear on the Microsoft Windows Update page.

You may have to do this several times if the ‘Windows Genuine Advantage’ patch loads first.  This is Microsoft’s way of making sure there will be literally millions of unpatched Windows computers out there, cranking out viruses and spam. 

Yes, it is annoying but that is the price for using a Windows computer.  You Macintosh and Linux users don’t get off scot free, though.  There’s at least five percent as many viruses and known attacks you have to contend with, so get out there and patch your machines too, damn it!

By the way, today is MrsDoF’s 50th birthday!  Go wish her a happy!

MrsDoF and I went to see Prairie Home Companion at the 12:10 matinee today. 

The attendees were all over 40, a small group wading through a long line of screaming kids whose grateful parents had dropped them off to see Cars.  And then, on theater seats from the ‘Marquis DeSade Furniture Design Group’, we waded through 25 minutes of the very same commercials we see on broadcast TV.  Finally the movie started with the narration of Guy Noir, Private Detective, flat broke and working security for a live radio show that time forgot.

Like Garrison Keillor, PHC is about 90% texture and 10% story.  Keillor’s niche is the quiet little place of respect for people who grew up in small towns and have only a dim awareness of the Internet.  Contrary to stereotype, rural folk aren’t simple; they’re human.  A lot goes into a living person, and Keillor embraces that complexity.

The story takes place in ‘real time’ as a live radio show is on stage.  A few are aware that the show is the last of its series, for the theater is to be torn down the next day.  Even fewer can see the Angel Of Death, in the person of an extremely well-upholstered young woman, moving quietly about the theater during the performance.

Which leads to my favorite line from the movie.  An elderly performer, after his song, retires to his dressing room to await a tryst with another performer.  He dies before his lover can arrive.

When Keillor is informed of the situation, he nods in acceptance, and begins giving directions for the next set.  A young, inexperienced performer takes umbrage at his apparent lack of concern.  “We should say something!  When someone passes, we should pay attention!”  To which Keillor replies…

“We’ll pay attention by doing our jobs.”

I like that a lot.

Like a real theater production, the movie is a bit confused, with a lot of stuff going on.  You probably won’t like it unless you like the radio show.  And maybe not even then.  But I did.

President Bush, insisting that we actually modify the US constitution to keep gays from marrying, concludes:

“We should also conduct this difficult debate in a manner worthy of our country, without bitterness or anger.

In all that lies ahead, let us match strong convictions with kindness and goodwill and decency. “

Here’s a little hint, Mr. President:  using the words ‘kindness’ or ‘decency’ in a context where the majority tells the minority they are not worthy of forming lifetime partnerships, is guaranteed to cause both bitterness and anger.

Can Mr. Bush provide any coherent argument that allowing such partnerships would in any way harm existing or future heterosexual marriages?  Can he present any reason, other than that it is contrary to his religion?  And how much equanimity should a gay person show when kindness, goodwill, and decency are denied them? 

The ‘argument from historical precedent’, by the way, is bogus.  Gay marriage is not new or novel.  Unfortunately, neither are demagoguery and fear-mongering. 

Hot-button issues – the politician’s substitute for facing real problems.

Hey Microsoft!  As long as you’re making your latest imitation of the Macintosh new operating system “Vista” all pretty and positively bulging with advanced (and probably unnecessary) features, here’s one I’d like to see:

After Vista is installed, and starts up for the first time, it shouldn’t connect to any address except Windows Update until the installing technician opens it to other addresses. 

This would eliminate the ‘race against time’ that newly built machines go through in getting their first batch ‘o’ patches.  As it stands now, new Windows installs are often compromised before 45 patches can be downloaded and installed. 

How big of a ‘clue-by-four’ does corporate (and government) America have to be hit by… before they ‘get it’?

“A seemingly random theft has led to another potential breach of personal data—this time name, address and credit card information from Hotels.com customers.

A laptop belonging to an Ernst & Young employee was stolen in a car theft earlier this year. Ernst & Young is the auditor for Hotels.com, an Expedia company, and the laptop contained personal data on Hotels.com customers.

Hotels.com was notified of the theft of the laptop, which contained data for about 243,000 customers…”
- ZDnet: Laptop theft exposes Hotels.com data

Imagine you are an auditor, a consultant, a data employee, whatever, and you have a laptop full of data.  If the data gets out, there will be serious economic consequences for your company and disastrous consequences for the individuals whose data it is.

Because you work in both the IT and financial industries, you know about Bank of America, University of California, the Veterans Administration, and literally dozens of other cases where sensitive/disastrous data is compromised by carrying on portable media or devices.  Pop quiz, hotshot: what do you do?

a:  Nothing, and just hope it ‘won’t happen to you’?
b:  Encrypt the data, or get it off the laptop entirely and use a secure VPN to access it? 

What’s it going to take?

Every year, physics teacher David Lapp brings his Korean War era M-1 carbine to school, fires a shot into a block of wood and instructs his students to calculate the velocity of the bullet.

It is a popular experiment at Mill Valley’s Tamalpais High School, where students are exposed to several unique stunts that Lapp performs in his five classes every year to illustrate inertia, velocity and other complex formulae…
- SFGate.com: Physics teacher under fire for gun experiment

We’ll get back to that example in a minute.  It’s part of a larger picture.

This week, two very different bloggers independently wrote about the safety-nanny gutting of science education.

One is a self-described liberal ‘moonbat’, a biology professor at a Northern university.  The other is ex-military, a common-sense libertarian who works in heavy industry in the South, keeping high voltages and enormous machines on the job.  So these two guys don’t exactly run in the same circles.  Have a look at the target they both hit…

Start with a Wired magazine article, Don’t try this at home, about a couple of mail-order DIY science suppliers in New Mexico who found themselves staring down the assault rifles of a SWAT team and a federal investigation.  Under the guise of preventing terrorism, it is increasingly a crime to do any dangerous science on your own.  Rocket hobbyists and firework enthusiasts, take note.

For your reading entertainment…

• Cajun; “Don’t try this at home”, about the Wired article and the diminuition of chemistry education.

• Meyers; “Neutering our kids’ exposure to science”, about how chemistry sets now pretty much consist of a ball, some balloons, and cornstarch
• Cajun; “I Gotcher ‘Earth-shattering boom’ right here” about his memories of high-school chemistry class
• Meyers: “Now it’s those ‘crazy-dangerous’ physics teachers” about the California physics teacher who fired his M-1 into a block of wood for a physics experiment, causing some bureaucrats to have an attack of the vapors.  (One of that teacher’s young students actually dropped in as a commenter.)

It’s worth the tour, especially if you are a schoolteacher or administrator.  Just remember, not everything that looks dangerous, is.  And not everything that looks safe, is.  How many causes of teen death are traceable to boredom?  Sometimes danger, like safety, is subtle and reaches beyond the immediate situation.

I’ve read various science-fiction dystopias about a perfectly safe society, all of them claustrophobic and suffocating.  Our brains are at the business end of a billion years of risk-driven evolution.  Can we be completely awake in the absence of all risk?

Updates:

I have been thinking some more about the physics teacher who got in trouble with his annual rifle-shot experiment.  In addition to the physics itself, that lesson folded in several more:

• Science is real, not just something in books

• Even quite extreme, invisible phemonena can be analyzed, understood, and predicted scientifically
• Math is one of the most important tools in the scientific box – some have even said ‘math is science
• Safety should be conceived in the larger context of the skill and intent of the user, not only the observance of prophylactic rules
• Corollary to above lesson: intent is a function of character, which can’t be legislated.  Skill is a function of instruction, study, and practice, and confers the freedom to achieve what would be impossible without it.

Another thought: if you have ever worked with teens, you know how hard it is to get them to focus.  If the experiment were constructed so that a baseball hits a bowling ball, many of the students’ attention will be on other things.  But I guarantee that every students’ attention in that room was on. the. experiment.  The’d talk about it later, and think about it.  It’s a priceless educational effect.