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Archive for April, 2008

Go for a walk today

April 22, 2008 3 comments

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I always appreciate seeing people move under their own power, however they do it.  One student at the College Of Business even carries a skateboard around.  Wouldn’t it be fun to see corporate executives riding to work on skateboards, rollerblades, bicycles?  We have muscles, folks; let’s use ‘em!

New Laptop & Linux Installation

April 20, 2008 6 comments

I bought a new laptop, which arrived last Wednesday.  It’s a Dell Vostro 1400; the specs are: Intel Core II duo 1.4ghz, 2gb ram, 120gb hd, and a 9-cell long-life battery.  This machine was quite a deal, or so I thought.  The next day, Dell sent me an email saying something like “You’ve expressed interest in our Vostro line of computers.  We’re running a sale for [$100 less than I paid for the same computer].”  Grrr…  From what I read online, Dell wouldn’t have been receptive to giving me a rebate, so I decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

Oh well.  The thing has a nice screen, very long battery life, and seems to work just fine.  I installed WinEDT to edit LaTeX files (a mathematical typesetting markup language), and it had a number of neat features lacking in TeXShop (the Mac equivalent).  It sucked in a variety of other ways, notably that the computer slowed down if I didn’t reboot periodically.  This sort of poor performance is new to me—I’ve been exclusively using OS X since July of 2002.  I wanted to install Linux, though Webs05 advised that I wait until the new version of Ubuntu comes out.  Never one to follow advice, I decided to try the release candidate for Hardy Heron. 

The install went fine, but WiFi didn’t work.  Several hours later, I decided that since all the advice I saw online related to Gutsy Gibbon, I should try installing that.  After much more Google searching, I discovered the solution, something which I should have found much sooner.  (I didn’t think to check in Windows what chipset is actually in my computer; the Dell documentation was just plain wrong on that point.)  Admittedly, I was stupid in various ways, but I doubt that the “average user” would have been able to fix this.  On the other hand, the average user probably couldn’t fix a similar problem under Windows, even if the solution would have been easier to find.  There was also a problem with the sound, whose solution I found quickly, but it involved editing a config file by hand.

First impressions of Ubuntu:  much faster than Windows XP on identical hardware.  Install (modulo the driver problem) was much faster and simpler than installing Windows (at least as I remember it).  Installing programs is actually quite a bit easier than installing them on either a Mac or Windows.  Ubuntu has a neat utility to automatically find supported programs, and download/install them at the click of a button. 

I installed TeX/LaTeX, and two integrated LaTeX editors: Kile and TeXMaker.  Both were substantially better than anything I’d seen on either Windows or Mac, Kile being the better of the two.  It includes a number of features which made me slap my forehead and go “Why doesn’t everyone else do that?”, including templates for common document types, and pulldown menus to find uncommonly-used symbols.  Given that LaTeX is my most commonly used non-web application, I think Linux and I will get along just fine.

The video player that comes with Ubuntu is very good, and it actually successfully found codecs online automagically for the video file I wanted to play.  Realplayer and Quicktime almost never succeed at that (I still haven’t gotten the AC3 codec working on my Mac).

I had previously used RedHat Linux in the late nineties, and things have gotten a lot better since then.  I only had to edit one config file, it found networks automatically, drivers actually existed for all the hardware I wanted to use, I didn’t have to recompile the kernel, there was no obnoxious “screen calibration” thing, etc.  After it was installed, I think it’s probably about as easy to use at Windows XP.

The only cons I’ve seen so far are the difficulties in setting up drivers, and that the computer takes a long time to hibernate.  Also, that if anyone finds out that I use Linux, then I’ll be branded as some sort of uberl33t jerk that everyone loves to hate.

Categories: Uncategorized

A modest proposal to control Civic Boosterism

April 20, 2008 12 comments

Civic Boosterism (CB) is a pernicious disease that afflicts city councils and mayors in mid-sized cities.  Call it “Chicago Envy” if you like.  In its early stages it’s fairly harmless or even beneficial; hanging potted plants from signposts downtown, commissioning artists to do murals on the side of buildings, and promoting rehabilitation of 1800’s buildings.

Late-stage CB is another matter.  The victims begin to suffer delusions of grandeur and they hear voices… of highly-paid consultants.  “Growth!” whispers the consultant.  “If you’re not growing, you’re dying!”  (Precisely the philosophy of a cancer cell, as Edward Abbey famously observed.)

“Oh no”, thinks the council person or mayor.  “I don’t want to die!  But the consultant says; “For just a medium-sized wad of taxpayer’s money, I can save you.  I can tell you how to grow…”

Our own city council of Normal, IL fell victim to this disorder some years ago when it decided to provide tax-relief subsidy for an “Outlet Mall” to the West of town.  It was going to be a tourist destination!  It was going to increase the tax base!  We should have done this years ago!

It’s almost completely empty, a vast white elephant wrapped around a gigantic empty parking lot in what used to be a productive corn field.  It reminds me of the “Monorail!” episode of The Simpsons

But apparently CB suppresses the learning centers of the brain.  Our twin city of Bloomington, IL decided they’d give end-stage CB a try and build a $30m arena.  Their consultants said it would revitalize the downtown!  It would turn $2m profit a year right from the start!  Why didn’t we do this years ago!?

Never mind that the arena in nearby Peoria took 20 years to turn its first profit, and as soon as it did the city sunk another $55m into it.

Bloomington voters smelled a rat and forced a referendum, in which they answered with a resounding “NO”.  But the mayor was determined to leave a legacy and the thing was built anyway, right downtown.

Today’s headline in the print edition of the Bloomington Pantagraph reads: Is it worth the price of admission? Long-term profitability of arena still unclear.  The headline pretty much sums up the article that follows.  Of course the profitability of the arena was never unclear to the voters.

OK, so here’s my modest proposal:  big-ticket civic projects must include punishment clauses for the consultants and the city council and mayor who voted for them if it doesn’t turn out like they said.  And by “punishment” I don’t mean censure.  I mean the consultant is publically flogged, and the local pols who voted for it must agree to march naked in a parade in which townspeople throw eggs and tomatos at them.

Hey, if you’re so damn sure this will work…

Of course, my own town of Normal is currently building a hotel and convention center right downtown.  The cost is murky – what’s a subsidy, what’s just urban repair, but it’s in the tens of millions of dollars.  That’s the next chapter in our story.

Categories: Economics, Politics

Hitchhiking the Pennsylvania campaign trail

April 19, 2008 3 comments

It’s an old-fashioned campaign song!  To the tune of Johnny Cash’s I’ve Been Everywhere, Man.  Everywhere in Pennsylvania, at least…

(Hat tip to Nobody Asked)

Categories: Uncategorized

The pope still doesn’t get it

April 18, 2008 12 comments

Paul at Cafe Philos put the atheist “A” letter on his sidebar in solidarity with nontheists. Not because he’s a nontheist particularly; the question of god’s ontological existence is not of interest to him one way or the other.  But he wanted to make a statement, particularly in support of one Nicole Smalkowski, a teen girl in Oklahoma facing prejudice and bullying.

Which inspires me to go find the atheist “A” and put it on my sidebar as well – it’s now next to my “Religion & humanism” links.  Because my other inspiration is Pope “Ratzinger” Benedict XVI visiting our country, offering some inspiring thoughts about the child-molesting priests.  He assures us that…

“we will absolutely exclude paedophiles from the sacred ministry”

Oh, yeah… heh… What were we thinking?  Those kid-raping, trust-betraying phonies are so out of our frock club!

He laid part of the blame for the crisis, of which he feels “deeply ashamed”, on a breakdown in US values.

Um,  exqueeze me?  It’s a breakdown in OUR values?!!!

I will pause at this moment to allow the Catholics in the audience to put on hearing protection.  On second thought, don’t.  It’s probably considered disrespectful to address the pope this way, but public piety will only buy you just so much immunity from criticism.  I’ll phrase it as a blockquote to set it off from the rest of the post:

Pope Ratz, you stinking sack of corruption!  How DARE you come to OUR country and tell us that our values are breaking down?  Kiddie porn is illegal in this country.  We prosecute child molesters in this country, and send them to prison!  And once they’re in prison, even our criminals hate them! 

But not you, oh no, before you were Pope, you wrote a memo calling on bishops to hide evidence, to transfer offenders, and to protect the good name of the church.  YOU let the infection grow, and deepen.  YOU moved the enablers beyond the reach of law enforcement.

You, your “holiness”, OBSTRUCTED JUSTICE! Don’t come to our country dressed in your finery and lecture us about morals.  You are precisely this: a “whitewashed sepulchre, full of dead men’s bones.”

OK, now on with our show…

 

Categories: Uncategorized

We’re OK… really! (Earthquake)

April 18, 2008 10 comments

A friend emailed MrsDoF from Florida (land of mammoth hurricanes) to see if we were OK.  Central Illinois had an Earthquake a few hours ago – a 5.4.  That’s enough to rattle windows, wake a few people up but most buildings are up to the challenge.  The quake was felt as far away as Wisconsin and Ohio.  But I must have been snoozing because I didn’t know about it.  Lucas is down in Urbana, a little closer to the epicenter; maybe he’ll give us a report.

Our region has had one real smack-down of a quake, though, in 1812.  (Actually two big quakes followed by one staggeringly enormous one) Estimated at an 8.0 on the Richter scale, it cracked sidewalks in Washington, DC and rang church bells in Boston.  Around here it changed the course of the Mississippi and even toppled resilient buildings like log cabins.

I can’t remember exactly how the Richter scale works and right now instead of geeking out over it I have to rush off to work.  But the New Madrid quake of 1812 was several thousand times as powerful as today’s quake. If the same quake happened today…

Anyone notice the quake?  Or been through another quake?  Tell us about it!

Notes & Updates:

Expelled, spewing into a theater near you

April 16, 2008 13 comments

Ben Stein’s docuflunkary Expelled starts Saturday. Reviews I’ve seen so far focus on its clumsy scripting and propagandistic imagery, its intellectual dishonesty, and its outright total misunderstanding of what evolutionary theory is or is not.  The implication is that it will be naturally de-selected by the marketplace.

It would be nice if the movie fell to quick oblivion, but that isn’t going to happen. It really doesn’t matter if it’s bad or good. There’s serious money behind it, and a very popular religious meme.  Millions of people have a religious/political reason to see the movie, whatever its merits.  And it will live on in DVD performances in church basements everywhere.

The movie pits bad-boy rebel Ben Stein against “Big Science” to ask the question “But how did life begin in the first place?”  But Stein never catches on that abiogenesis is a separate question from evolutionary theory.  Instead the movie keeps trying to clumsily pack “Darwinism” and Nazis into the same box.

At least the TV ad shows Richard Dawkins saying; “God is about as unlikely as faries, angels, hobgoblins etcetera.” 

UPDATE: Jason Rosenhouse at EvolutionBlog reviews Expelled, The Movie.  And Ken Hanke at Mountain Express says; Junk science meets even junkier filmmaking.  Still slavering for more?  Scientific American‘s John Rennie says; “Expelled; No Integrity Displayed”.

Categories: Religion

Ralph Nader visits our university

April 15, 2008 12 comments

imageRalph Nader visited our campus on 14 April, and I’d never heard him speak.  Here are my notes from his speech.  They’re in fragmentary, sound-bite form because I take notes on index cards.  This is the easiest way for me to share those notes with my friends.

  • Our country goes through long “cycles of justice interspersed with longer cycles of passivity”

  • Told story of how he was impressed by the gory wrecks he saw while hitchhiking hundreds of thousands of miles as a student.
  • Realized cars were being sold exclusively on power and style, and that people were dying because of it.  “They subjugated engineering integrity to stylistic pornography.”
  • 1966 hearings: GM hired private eye to follow him.
  • Reporter called his mom to ask; “What makes Ralph tick?”  She replied, “What makes you not tick?” 
  • Daniel Webster said “Justice is the great work of human beings on Earth!”  We should develop “A sense of injustice without which you will not know what Justice is.”  We need to know if corporations will be our servants or our masters.
  • One heuristic is to ask yourself; “Who is saying no to letting Americans get a fair shake in life?”  Answer is; ‘Giant corporations’.  Big corporations when they get in trouble, go to Washington.  Unlike small businesses, which are free to go bankrupt.  This is one of many double standards.
  • Ask yourself: “Who are you?  And who else are you?” “And who else?” After how many self-definitions do you reach; “I am a citizen”?
  • Schools have made study of civics taste like sawdust with no butter. Left Civics For Democracy book with library.  Also cracking the code by Thom Hartman. 
  • You think we have a capitalistic society?  We ration political parties, we ration debate, and oil prices, food prices, drug prices, are separated from supply and demand.  We gave Taxol to Bristol-Myers Squibb – developed with tax dolars – as a monopoly.  How did that happen?
  • What is it that gets you righteously angry?  What’s it going to take to provoke you to leadership?  A tragedy?  How about 53,000 dead each year from workplace accidents and illnesses?  65,000 dead each year from pollution?  100,000 dead each year from medical negligence?
  • Charity, bless it, ministers to people who need something right now.  Advocacy for justice goes to the roots of the problem, which is too much power in too few hands. 
  • Being a one-issue voter sets you up to be manipulated by politicians.  The more issues by which you measure a politician, the more power flows from them to you.
  • Are you angry about an ethnic slur, a gender slur, or a racial slur?  That’s what upsets students today.  But the conditions behind those slurs hardly affects them at all. 
  • Politicians can lose their jobs like *that* for the wrong words.  But they can dial for corporate dollars and let people be pounded into the sand, and not skip a beat.
  • How many leaders will come of our university?  Not just political leaders but scientific leaders for justice, and literary leaders for justice, and graphics leaders for justice.  What provocation do you need to become leaders?  “There’s a joy in justice”.
  • “Do not shy away from controversy or run to charity as an escape from the pursuit of justice.”

In the Q&A period, he called for a return of the draft, pointing out that children of FDR & Eisenhower went to war.  Not so much Bush’s daughters.  Said this would galvanize people to become engaged with war issues.
Also said that young people spend too much time listening to iPods and text-messenging, emailing, and talking on cell phones and should communicate with other people instead.

Photo from 8th row.

Categories: Uncategorized

Will the first pass on a Turing test come from spammers?

April 15, 2008 1 comment

CAPTCHA stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.”  Well, OK, Turing test may be a bit strong for what is essentially really hard OCR, but passing a good CAPTCHA shows at least some proficiency with pattern recognition. Now that the GMAIL and HotMail CAPTCHA’s have been cracked*, CAPTCHA’s will presumably become harder still.  Eventually, you might get a brief reading comprehension test, or more probably be told to identify a picture.  What happens when spammers crack these?  Eventually, computers may become indistinguishable from humans in automated tests.  Of course that’s a long way from passing a true Turing test, but it wouldn’t surprise me if some advances in AI are made by malware developers. 

* Of course, the spammers haven’t really “cracked” these in the sense of being able to do them well every time.  They only need to succeed a significant minority of the time for their goals.

Categories: Uncategorized

On the value of raving lunacy

April 15, 2008 1 comment

“Half-Hearted Fanatic” offers Monique Davis: God’s Gift To Atheism.  Given her vitriolic rant, how is that possible?  The answer is a dramatic story involving black neighborhoods and skateboards…

Categories: Uncategorized