28 Feb 2005
Fear Itself
We have nothing to fear but fear itself. -- FDR

We should be afraid, very afraid. For there is an epidemic of fear that sweeps across this land like a dark shadow, clouding everything we think, do and say.

We are scared to death of dying.

It's been growing in our culture since I was a kid - so the effect of being middle aged is serving me well. I can see the "before" and "after". And I now understand the impulse to nostalgia that is evident in may of our senior citizens.

You can see it in the health campaigns that regularly convulse our culture: we all want to live longer. When I was a kid, a mere 4 decades ago, seat belts weren't even standard equipment in automobiles. Car seats were unheard of. Smokers made up nearly 60% of the population, and a non-smoking bar would have gone out of business in a day or two.

Now, don't get me wrong: I don't particularly want to cross the Rainbow Bridge. I'm not suicidal. But neither am I obsessed to the point of rearranging the details of my life merely to prolong it by a year or two. Because, statistically speaking, that's the net effect of counting carbs, quitting smoking, selling our Harley and giving up skydiving: one to five years added to our life expectancy.

Fear drives this. I've tried to think of other motivating factors, but can find none: it's got to be raw, naked fear.

In 1965 we didn't dress our kids to look like the Michelin Tire mascot just to ride a bike or a skateboard. Huck Finn was still available in the school library. Drunk driving was a misdemeanor.

Today, protective gear for children is a multi-billion dollar market, anything remotely offensive to anyone has been pulled from the shelves of the library, and drunk driving is now a felony, with levels so low that you can be classified as drunk merely by looking at an unopened beer.

I'm not saying that any individual course of action for safety purposes is necessarily wrong. Of course driving drunk should be a felony. I'm saying that we're obsessed and terrified, and it's killing us more surely and swiftly than any of the calories we lost count of or any of the evil drugs we didn't inhale.

It's our collective, maniacal, obsessive reaction to fear of death that drives ever closer to a cultural edge - an edge we can't see past. And may the gods help us if we ever cross it.

00:00 /Home | 2 comments | permanent link

27 Feb 2005
Governors Sound Alert on U.S. High Schools

There's no doubt that the American education system is in trouble: but I think these guys are off base in their corrective prescriptions.

First, we must ask ourselves "What is the purpose of an education?" The consensus answer among politicians and business leaders seems to be "To train the population for working." That's dead wrong. One doesn't need to know calculus to drive a truck. No appreciation of the context of the French Revolution is required to be a nurse. Nor is an understanding of organic chemistry necessary to write computer programs.

The purpose of an education is: to educate! What a concept! An education is a background store of knowledge that can be applied across the educated person's life, from work to relationships to hobbys and leisure activities. An education is a knowledge and understanding of the culture in which the educated person lives and operates, and an appreciation for the foreign and historical cultures that share this planet.

A good education certainly includes a basic understanding of history, math and even organic chemistry. But those can be acquired anytime, if the key goal of an education is met. And there is only one real key to a good education.

Reading.

And that's where we're failing.

According to the National Adult Literacy Survey reported in Publishers Weekly in January of 2003, 20% of adults in the U.S. read at or below the fifth grade level. Only 56.5% of US households purchased a book in 2003. There's a whole page of these depressing statistics here.

We are churning out kids by the millions who hate reading, avoid literacy and only look at the classified ads when they do pick up a newspaper.

Remember the old saw "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."? That's the way it is in education generally: teaching somebody to turn an eighteen wheeler on a dime, or measure an injection, or paste together a Visual BASIC program is giving them a fish. Teaching someone how to read, and, more importantly, to enjoy reading, is feeding them for a lifetime.

AP - The nation's governors offered an alarming account of the American high school Saturday, saying only drastic change will keep millions of students from falling short.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

11:13 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

26 Feb 2005
Yet another SPAM Attack ...

Today is was over 2500 comments, pushing a variety of porno sites. They managed to get past my little blocker, and just went for it. The real questions are who and how.

A bit of browsing through the logs provided the answers. The specific "who" was some scumbag on a Verizon DSL connection. But the more interesting who turned out to be the folks at www.php-soft.com : note that it isn't linked, as I sure as Hel ain't gonna give them any publicity whatsoever.

These particularly fetid piles of coding scum have assembled a database of weblogs - complete with ID bypasses for schemes like mine (commonly known as "monkey math"). They're based in Europe, apparently, and hosted there as well (again, apparently, as things get a bit murky in there). And MacRaven has the distinction of being included in their database. Oh, joy!

For the time being I've stopped the attack by simply assigning a new ID number - look for this to start changing with far more frequency than it has in the past. But if this continues - well, I have no desire to get into an arms race, so writebacks may have to go the way of the dodo - which would be a damn shame.

00:00 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

25 Feb 2005
Road kill candy angers animal rights activists

These nutballs need to lighten up a bit: this is like a group of otolaryngologists bitching about Harry Potter' Every Flavor Jelly Beans because they encourage nose and ear picking!

And I actually feel sorry for Kraft Foods:

"If you look across the Gummi category we certainly have many products that are offbeat, and that's what we were doing in this case," said Kraft spokesman Larry Baumann. "We didn't mean to offend anyone."

Then you'd better just go outta business, fellas, 'cause that's not possible in this day and age.

Animal rights activists are disgusted by a new candy from Kraft Foods Inc. that's shaped like critters run over by cars -- complete with tire treads.

(link) [CNN]

00:00 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

24 Feb 2005
No Encryption for E-Passports

Why don't we just appoint Paris Hilton to the State Department's passport security team?

Despite cries from security watchdogs, the United States plans to roll out RFID-enabled passports without encrypting the personal data, downplaying theft threats. By Ryan Singel.

(link) [Wired News]

00:00 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

Amos Expresses Herself With New Album

This kind of crap really sets me off:

Born in North Carolina and raised in Maryland, Amos is the daughter of a Methodist minister raised in the strict Christian sense that entails. Along with a voracious literary appetite, from her mother she inherited a Cherokee bloodline that connects her to spirituality deeper than any church can provide.

<RANT>

While this statement is undoubtedly literally true, the implication is that only "native" blood can provide this kind of spiritual connection. I got some news for the writer here. All of us, regardless of the color of our skin or the exact content of our DNA, can use our ancestry to connect to a spirituality deeper than that offered by any "universal" religion. For, truth be told, ancestry is the universal religion, and it's recognition is what sets mankind apart from the rest of the animal kingdom.

Perhaps this is a bit of "angry middle aged white guy" backlash here, but I get so sick and tired of hearing about the spiritual "superiority" of various and sundry "native" groups. I don't hold it against the natives, however, as usually it's not them claiming it, it's white, distraught, post-Christian yuppies looking for a new age religion fix. It really pisses off some native American groups when they feel that their religious heritage is being stolen - as much as it pisses me off that mine is being ignored. For the life of me I can't understand what folks mean by "native" in this context - do they think white Europeans have always been Christians, and that Jesus was a blond Scandinavian? White folks was wild once, too!

What really gets me going, however, is the typical reaction of Wiccans and other neo-pagans when a white folkish Heathen expresses the notion that maybe people should follow their own ancestral paths. Instantly, the charge of "racism" or "fascist" is leveled at the poor fellow - but when the Lakota or Australian aborigines make the same claim, they're applauded as defending their native culture from corrupting foreign influences.

Such hypocrisy drives me absolutely crazy.

The Indo-European peoples have a rich, deep and spiritually satisfying path all our own: why we simply refuse to explore it, and insist on attempting to steal others cultures is beyond me. Is it just guilt over our treatment of native peoples? Is it some repressed knowledge that we are responsible for the near loss of our own ancestral heritage?

</RANT>

Amos is an artist driven solely by the creative process, following the music wherever it goes to harness its essence.

(link) [Billboard]

via The Wildhunt Blog

00:00 /Asatru | 0 comments | permanent link

Animal Sacrifice

A fine exposition from a thoughtful blog ...

If we are going to eat meat, then the animals we consume should be killed in a fashion which respects their nature and does them honor. To simply slaughter an animal for food is, in our opinion, wrong. The animal we eat must be killed humanely, with honor, and with an acknowledgement that we have removed this animal from the circle of life to offer us sustenance.

(link) [Numenous Thoughts]

00:00 /Asatru | 2 comments | permanent link

Software Patents Affecting Futures Exchanges

Ah, how words can change ... a few years ago, if an armed warship stopped a cargo vessel on the high seas and robbed it, enslaving it's crew, it was known as "piracy". Today, we call it "drug interdiction". And only recently has the practice of demanding payments for permission to keep operating your company been called anything other than a "protection racket" or "blackmail". Today it's known as "intellectual property enforcement".

The Financial Times reports European exchanges, brokers and traders are preparing for possible legal battles with Trading Technologies, a US software company. The situation is being made harder for potential defendants because the cases so far have all been sealed. No doubt, all those IP lawyers think this is a good thing..."

(link) [Slashdot]

00:00 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

Schiavo Case Highlights Eating Disorders (AP)

Boy, does this ever add some irony to the mix. As Paul Harvey is wont to say: now you know the rest of the story.

AP - Before she was the severely brain-damaged patient at the center of a legal dispute over whether she should live or die, Terri Schiavo was a young woman who desperately wanted to be thin.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

00:00 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

Medical Companies Joining Offshore Trend

Well, this should make the Republicans happy ... you want fries with that?

The exporting of jobs is now spreading to a crown jewel of corporate America: the medical and drug industries.

(link) [NYT > Home Page]

00:00 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

Big grocers under stress

A fine analysis of the demise of the American Way of Dinner... we're cheaping ourselves to death, but it's stores like Winn-Dixie that started the trend. Those who live by the price cut, apparently, shall also die by it. How does Wal-Mart do it?

Here's a hint: the thirty two cent avocados mentioned in the article don't come from California. And check the COO (country of origin) on shrimp and seafood ... we're talking Mexico and Thailand or Vietnam here - now, granted, the product may leave something to be desired quality wise, but it's the lowest cost! We're cheaper!

And when Winn-Dixie (or Kroger, or Safeway, etc.) tries to pull the same trick and import the same merchandise, they rapidly discover the logistical advantage Wal-Mart enjoys. In the race to the bottom of the price barrel, the best warehousing and distribution system wins.

I've learned that I cannot compete on price: my eggs sell for $2/doz., roughly twice what the local LoBill charges for white eggs, and about 25% higher than their price on brown eggs. My chickens go for $2.50 a pound - that's 2.5 times higher than the best price in the local supermarkets.

And I'm sold out of chickens and about at capacity on eggs.

Unless and until the major supermarkets realize that people are willing to pay a premium for real quality, they will keep wondering why their shoppers figure a thirty two cent shitty avocado from Wally World is better than a fifty nine cent shitty avocado from them... to the Winn-Dixies of this world I say "Go for it, guys, sell me a dollar avocado that's actually good to eat, and not something for a quarter that resembles a cow pie in a jalapeno shell. You can still beat Wal-mart, just not on price."

That the South's giant Winn-Dixie chain has filed for bankruptcy shows the profound changes in the economics of supermarkets.

(link) [Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories]

00:00 /Agriculture | 1 comment | permanent link

22 Feb 2005
States' Private Pensions Make a Weak Showing

Are we as a society incapable of learning from experience?

... when Nebraska's state and county workers were given do-it-yourself accounts, they made so many investment errors that they ended up making less than colleagues with fixed-benefit pensions — and less than what analysts have said is needed for old age. Their poor performance led the Nebraska Legislature two years ago to junk the accounts for new employees.

Managing an investment account takes a lot of skill and, more importantly, discipline. That's a commodity in short supply in today's America, where we are constantly bombarded with inducements to "spend now".

But Bush is, in a sense, right in his assessment of the Social Security system being "broken". As designed, it failed to take into account the effect of falling birthrates and rising life expectancy - rendering it little more than a Ponzi scheme today.

Over the years, Congress has refused to raise Social Security taxes to the level needed to fund it: that's been a n effort led mostly by Republicans, who don't want to raise taxes ever. The Democrats, for their part, have been eager to add new spending to the original system, mostly in the form of disability and educational payments. The effect has been a conspiracy to bankrupt the system.

Bush is off base, however, as to the immediate "crisis" - best estimates are that the system won't collapse for another 40 years or so. And I think he may be discovering why folks call the system the "third rail" of American politics (named after the electrically conductive track in a subway system - touch it and die).

I know how his plan would effect us: between us we have better than $350,000 "invested" in Social Security - we'd both have to live to be 85 before we got all of that back, assuming we don't contribute any more. Since I'm not contributing much right now, I'd have little or nothing to put into any private account scheme - but the shortfall caused by others in the system moving to private accounts would have to be made up somewhere, otherwise my mom would find her benefits reduced. That shortfall can only be recouped by raising general revenue taxes - which I would end up paying, one way or another.

So from my perspective, moving to a partially private system now is distinctly flawed. But I'd still be willing to go along with it, if I thought it would fix the system for my grandchildren. And that's where we should look at states that have tried this and learn from their mistakes. It doesn't seem to fix anything.

Nice try, Dubya.

Los Angeles Times - WASHINGTON — President Bush believes Americans are so eager to join the "ownership society" that, given a chance, two-thirds of those eligible would divert funds from Social Security into the personal investment accounts he proposes.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

00:00 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

Feathers in PCs No Birdbrain Idea

What an interesting idea! Right now most of our offal goes to the compost pile, but to be able to sell it .... hmmmm.

Chickens make a tasty meal, sure, but did you know that their feathers may one day be used in computers? Researchers are experimenting with recycling clucker coverings into circuit boards. By Katie Dean.

(link) [Wired News]

00:00 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

Free Mojtaba and Arash Day

Mojtaba and Arash are two Iranian bloggers currently incarcerated by the Iranian government. The Committee to Protect Bloggers has asked the blogosphere to show support for them today, and to draw the attention of governments around the world to the fact that they are not forgotten, and that we stand together with them for freedom of expression.

Update: The BBC noticed.

00:00 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

Computer Cracks 5x5 Go

Indeed this is an accomplishment: mathematically it makes Deep Blue look like a computer kindergarten exercise. Go is significantly more complex than chess, and this game (albeit on a tiny board) was "solved", not just programmed to beat a human player.

The American Go Association is reporting that Go for the 5x5 board has been solved by the computer program MIGOS, reports the program's creator, Erik Van Der Werk, a professor at the University of Maastricht in Holland. At about a quarter of the full-board version, 5x5 go is minuscule, similar in scale to "solving" 2X2 chess. The fact that a programmer would even consider this a noteworthy challenge is itself a remarkable testament to the game's complexity. Van Der Werk's approach is described in detail in an article at the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NOSR).

(link) [Slashdot]

00:00 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link