December, 2003: 46 posts.
Yesterday Recap 2003 Dec 01
Breakfast.
Swap meet.
Christmas gifts.
Turkey cooking.
Lose main pair of pants on drive to laundry.
Laundry.
Second degree twisted ankle.
Pain.
Turkey and squash dinner
Scrooged. Cleanup.
Bedtime.
The swelling has gone down, but it hurts still. Ow.
Today: work; bus pass; new pants; leftover turkey; HEALING.
These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things 2003 Dec 02
Flattering? 2003 Dec 02
WiFi, pedal powered 2003 Dec 02
More:
Pedal Power: Look Ma No Wires
Jhai PC – A Computer for Most of the World
JHAI Foundation: The Remote IT Village Project
Now that’s a really interesting use of technology.
NewsFlashes 2003 Dec 03
In other news: My ankle continues to get better! It’s now many shades of purple I really didn’t want my ankle to ever be.
Additionally: I’m way behind on many things.
This is cat and catch-up week!
The Prophet 2003 Dec 03
I like this:
Your daily life is your temple and your religion. Whenever you enter into it take with you your all. Take the slough and the forge and the mallet and the lute, The things you have fashioned in necessity or for delight. For in reverie you cannot rise above your achievements nor fall lower than your failures. And take with you all men: For in adoration you cannot fly higher than their hopes nor humble yourself lower than their despair.
Voltes V Videos Question – Now in the FAQ 2003 Dec 03
Respiratory Work Coming Out of My Ears 2003 Dec 03
I must say, I’m conflicted about not taking RT work more seriously. I do maintain my California license though.
I may yet return to the work in some form.
Perhaps I’ll start a web based RT employment agency. I certainly have the Google PageRank for it.
Cat Update 2003 Dec 03
He’s still exploring this old house. He’s using the litter box as he should, and is not so perturbed at us he might do any retaliatory marking or peeing. His former owner couldn’t keep him at his new apartment, so he had to let him go. So, he is here. I do feel a little bad for him though, his front paws are declawed, and playing with a shoelace with him is just not the same when he can’t really grip.
We have a cat!
Still a bit hard to believe.
I find domestic animals fascinating. If humans ceased to exist, they would be very different creatures. When these animals ancestors did not live with humans, they were very different creatures.
Cool! Wikipedia has some things to say about domestication. And more about domestic cats. The ontology for a cat would be: Animalia: Chordata: Mammallia: Carnivora: Felidae: Felis: silvestris: catus. I love that.
Like many other domesticated animals, cats lived in a mutualistic arrangement with humans. The benefit of removing rats and mice from humans’ food stores outweighed the cost of allowing a formerly-wild animal to enjoy the relative safety of a human settlement; hence, the relationship between cat and human has continued. However, unlike other domesticated species, housecats’ ancestors did not hunt socially or enjoy the safety of a herd, as other domesticated animals did. This evolutionary history may be the reason cats do not ‘understand’ the desires of humans in the same way that dogs do; before humans, cats had fewer social relationships to benefit from. This may also contribute to a sense common among pet owners that cats are both more aloof and more self-sufficient than other pets. However, cats can be very affectionate towards their humans, especially if they imprint on them at a very young age and are treated with consistent affection.
I also note that: The cat was first domesticated by the Ancient Egyptians in 4000 BC, to keep mice and rats away from their grain stores. They regarded cats as embodiments of the goddess Bast
“Bast” sounds like what Leah calls him, “Bas” — short for — again — Basilone. She plans to take some pictures this week to share with family around the country and yes, with the whole darn internet.
One of my regular readers also points out that “Basilon is Cuban slang for someone or something that is a lot of fun” — which is a nice nifty thing as well.
Some google searches find a “John Basilone” who was a WWII Medal of Honor winner.
There was also a Naval Destroyer: USS Basilone.
Nifty random stuff.
Forgot this: R Spot 2003 Dec 04
Search Refit 2003 Dec 04
And thanks to Tom Bickle for spotting that my htdig installation was hosed. How embarassing.
The underpinnings are the open source Perlfect.
Basilone 2003 Dec 04
He’s a great cat. More, and better photos to come in the next few weeks.
Old Holiday Photos 2003 Dec 04
Paintings for Sale 2003 Dec 04
First Positive Thing Bush Has Said? 2003 Dec 06
Though I’m really beginning to think Dean has a shot to be the next President. The re-election of the President is not a fait accompli.
My First Cease And Desist: 1997 2003 Dec 06
They gave me “fine” business days to remove the page. I think they meant “five” Heh. Crazy lawyers!
Here’s the text of the letter:
Global Telecom Media
December 9, 1997
Joseph A. Crawford
3375 Manning Ave. #14
Los Angeles, CA 90064A search of VOAA through YAHOO turns up the site //home.earthlink.net/~artlung/logos5.html, apparently your site. An examination of of that site turns up work done for our company (to wit; a VOAA logo and artwork for GTM.NET.) This work is the property of Global Telecom Media and is not to be reproduced without our permission. Please remove it immediately. If it is not removed within fine(sic) business days of this letter being posted, we will have no alternative but to turn this matter over to counsel.
Cordially,
James A. Leecc. P. Campbell, Esq.
GTM023.DOC
9713 Santa Monica Blvd. Suite 218
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
(310) 273-7760
(310)273-8860
Some Links For A Sunday Morning 2003 Dec 07
- My sister sent me the link for videos from The Darkness. She said: “Watch the video for I Believe in a Thing Called Love. It’s amazing.”. I have. She’s right. Unashamed 70’s Power Pop. Reminds me of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody merged with the Beastie Boys’ Intergalactic.
- A plugin for PGP for Mail.app: GPGMail
- I’m alarmed to find out that the open eye racquetball goggles I want so much do not work: Open (Lensless) Eye guards Fail Testing; Racquetball Eye Injuries
- United States Marine, Artist
- The amazing history of Frank Zappa and Louie Louie
- The story of the Frank Zappa statue in Vilnius. And, The statue itself.
- Elizabeth Shin tragedy: comment by Philip Greenspun
- What is this about SCO and SAMBA source code?
(Blogger was down when I wrote this part): A light rain is falling here. It should be a lovely day.
…
Leah and I went to a more solemn Catholic Mass this evening. Fulfilling. This has been a mellow weekend. My ankle is feeling better, too. Though we went to the store to buy an ankle brace and when we got home the box was empty. Oops. That makes me feel dumb.
It was a good day. I trust it will be a good week too.
Cat Update 2003 Dec 08
He growls off into the kitchen, at unseen and unheard forces. Bolt upright, and growling quietly.
“We have our very own guard kitty,” says Leah.
She whispered it, lest he growl at her.
Good Newsletter 2003 Dec 09
And if you’re in San Diego, you should check ’em out.
And You May Remind Yourself 2003 Dec 10
Hurrumph 2003 Dec 12
No really, more this weekend. Sometimes I feel like I’m going to burst with links and news, and this is one of those times. But not right now.
UP AND AT THEM 2003 Dec 13
Afterwards I bought an elaborate lace-up brace at Sports Chalet in Point Loma. I think keeping off it, and stabilizing it can only be good for the ankle.
Leah’s kids are here, though her youngest is ill. I am presently tired and lying in bed due to racquetball and because I happened to stay up till 4am or so working on some freelance. Yesterday’s timing of events and responsibilities was not optimal. I stayed a bit late at work, no problem.
But my Grandma asked me about getting one of my cousins’ varisty football games to show up on her computer. The archived games were available, but there was no video. Well, her Windows 98 machine had an older version of Windows Media Player (these were .asx files), so I advised her to upgrade WMP to version 9.
This of course produced only confusion on her part, and asked me if I could do it.
Under the circumstances, I decided sure, I can totally do this!
The downfall, of course, is that my Grandparents are on dial-up. So the 14 megabyte install took an hour and change to download.
Actually, it was cool to just chat with my Grandma for an hour about the holiday season, about helping her buy a gift for my Uncle (a computer guy), I showed her the photos of Bas on Leah’s site, she talked about having lots of cats when she was a girl. We talked a very little bit about Church. Last Sunday Leah and I went to St. Joseph’s Cathedral downtown, and I can’t think of any reason for me to have gone there with anyone other than her. So it was like a little oasis of a conversation in a hectic day. I feel lucky to have some Grandparents who are still around. She talks about how embarassed she is about having not such good control of her right arm. Twenty years ago she had a terrible stroke, which she has survived with grit and determination. But it changed her life utterly — she had been vibrant and active, and losing her right side catastrophically meant she could no longer drive, write, type, walk the way she once could.
I have a hard time seeing how I could do much better than she has considering she lost so much mobility and dexterity. She’s a marvel of energy and mental strength. Sometimes I even see myself in her. Or should I say, sometimes I see aspects of her when I look at myself.
So now I’m listening to Virgin Radio UK on iTunes. They played The Rolling Stones’ Undercover of the Night, a song I like. Ty brought me hot cocoa. Today we’re taking it easy. Chilling out in this 1892 house. Playing games, blogging, having cocoa, and soon I’ll be napping.
I like today. It could be a morass of stress, especially considering it’s the holiday season — presents to buy, lines to be in, and all of that — but today is good.
News of the Day 2003 Dec 14
I watched Three Kings, one of my favorite movies, with Leah’s two older boys last night. I suppose this is the endpoint for one of its’ plot points, Saddam himself.
So the question is, what changes for the Iraqi people?
Snapshots of the Yuletide season 2003 Dec 15
- I gave blood today.
- next time I give blood I’ll drink more beforehand.
- I’m still loving Quicksilver.
- I have purchased some Christmas gifts.
- I have more to purchase.
- Going to Mass tonight.
- Going shopping tonight.
- I’m wearing an ankle brace.
- The weekend was great — Leah and I had her kids.
- The cat is slowly recovering from the traffic levels.
- Reflective heaters ROCK!
- I prefer too hot to too cold.
- I like the game Go.
- itsyourturn.com is nifty.
- My iBook is a useful, versatile tool.
- I reorganized some books last night and found some mouse droppings. Old ones. The cat found them before I cleaned them up. I hope Bas understands to associate that smell with “KILL!”
- I enjoy french toast.
- The Ukes of Hazzard are charmingly funny and silly.
- Leah makes tasty french toast.
- Old Christmas Content on ArtLung.com: Merry Christmas in other languages.
- Target during Christmastime is busy.
- Possible plans for New Year’s include a trip to Utah.
- More as it happens.
Racquetball Class 2003 Dec 16
Still very busy now. I look forward to peace and quiet of vacation/holidaytime.
Just worked on this: 2003 Dec 16
Saddam, Captured… by the Kurds? 2003 Dec 22
But was Saddam awfully haggard in those photos? And was that spider hole: a of base of operations or more like a prison cell?
Looks like it was actually the Kurds that caught Saddam – note the sources are in the Arab world, Australia, UK, India. I don’t see any US sources there.
They say the first casualty of war is the truth.
So will we see the US domestic media tell this story?
Xmas Rap 2003 Dec 22
I am content, though a bit more stressed than usual. Supposedly, this is typical during the hoidays. Being aware of it is a nice change. To know my own limits is a wonderful thing.
Joe Namath: the new Mahir? 2003 Dec 23
Links and Stuff of the Moment 2003 Dec 23
- He’s Not In It For The Money: Frank Zappa’s Big Band Brother Ed Palermo
- QRIO: Your Plastic Pal Who’s Fun To Be With!
- Zinni, Vietnam veteran, Bush supporter in 2000, against the conflict in Iraq
- Judge: I saw police commit felonies: A judge who said he witnessed some of the anti-free trade protests complains in open court about how police handled the demonstrations.
- Net Smartass Extraordinaire gives us: Shock and Awe: Merry Christmas from the White House!
- Mission creep for Patriot Act
- From Leah: Tolerance.org: MISOGYNY IN MUSIC: Have Videos Gone Wild?
- Hilarious Audio from NPR: NPR : Humorist and NPR commentator David Sedaris — a Santaland Diary thing. Very very very funny.
- My Quixtar URLs Page was updated.
- I like this Doug Welch column, which can be summed up as Think.
- NFL Click for Cans
- jwz points to Eyesore of the Month by James Howard Kunstler — wow! bitter, smart, witty!
- HTTP made easy
- What Does LVX Mean?
- Great quote: “No man was more comprehensively doomed than him whose chief source of gratification was making favorable impressions on some particular woman.” — Quicksilver p. 389
- Slugging — I did not believe in this — but my sister who lives in DC says: My friend slugs to work every day. She lives with her dad way out in Potomac Mills, slugs to the Pentagon, takes the metro there and is work in about a half an hour to forty minutes. Otherwise it would take her up to an hour to two hours (on a bad day) to get to work. Evidently, there are unspoken rules, for example, no talking, driver controls the radio, driver must pick up two people (to make it safe), and you don’t make future arrangements to meet up. It’s a great way to commute because all parties involved benefit and there’s no commitment. Driver gets to take the HOV lane and everybody gets to work faster. Erica was saying that they did a piece on NPR and she heard that it was started by military folks who lived out in the burbs when the HOV lane was created. Or, so I’ve heard.
It’s 11:24 on 11/23. Here comes Christmas!
Onward.
Fascinating thing about memory 2003 Dec 26
On the agenda today: getting out of bed, breakfast, laundry, and a birthday party.
Fascinating Bible and Christianity Interview; Religious Update 2003 Dec 26
I’m putting the book on my wishlist.
Also on the Christian tip, Leah and I attended Midnight Mass here in San Diego at St. Joseph Cathedral. And I got the book Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About by Donald Knuth, inventor of TEX (here’s his homepage). It’s about the intersection of, of all things, faith, specificlly Christianity, and Computer Science. It’s based on a series of lectures he gave at MIT on the topic. I’ve just finished the introduction, and I’m riveted. Here’s his own page about his book.
My evolving thoughts on religion are, I think, a direct result of having been asked to be the Godparent of my friend Chris’ (his portfolio site hosted here)son, Zac. It was into the Catholic faith, and it stirred my own heart on my own evolving feelings about Catholicism, Zen Buddhism, Atheism, Agnosticism, and Freethinking — in addition to talking with Leah about her own feelings toward her upbringing. I am not at all certain how I feel, but I continue to seek truth and light and goodness.
I quite like the emphasis the Catholic Church places on works. It makes me feel like it is not Grace what judges us. Rather, a just capital-“G” God would look at how we treated other people and judge us that way. I continue to be highly skeptical of the notion of a personal “God.” I reserve the right to be a Freethinker in the capital-“F” sense. I reserve the right to question EVERYTHING!
That’s the scientist in me, I suppose. Reconciling that with a person who “believes” in things like “art” and “love” and “trust” and “family” — which are abstract constructs, unsuited to scientific measurement. Not all things are explained by science, and that is acceptable. But where we can, we must look carefully at ALL things, to see where we can, and where we cannot apply a scientific method.
For the heart knows things that reason cannot know, and that I know to be truth, because I feel it in my heart.
Which of course is the kind of tautological explanation that sounds very like a zen koan. Ah well, sweet mystery of life.
Lines of the Day 2003 Dec 26
Cats love printers.
10 Year Anniversary of Philip Greenspun’s Dynamic Site 2003 Dec 27
Kudos on that anniversary!
Excellent Civic Metaphor about Money and the Occupation of Iraq 2003 Dec 27
Translations of “Joseph” 2003 Dec 29
- Arabic: Yousef, Yousuf, Yusef, Yusuf
- Croatian: Josip
- Czech: Jozef Josef
- Danish: Josef
- Dutch: Joop
- French: Jose
- German: Josef Iosef
- Hungarian: József
- Italian: Giuseppe, Giussepe
- Kiswahili: Yusuf
- Norwegian: Josef
- Polish: Józef
- Portuguese: Jose
- Romanian: Iosif
- Russian: Ioseph Osip
- Serbian: Josif
- Spanish: José
- Swedish: Josef
- Tamil: Susai
(via oxygen.com babynamer)
FedEx buys Kinko’s 2003 Dec 30
ipodsdirtysecret.com : triumph of the will 2003 Dec 30
Q: Apple only released their battery replacement service because of all the bad publicity from iPod’s Dirty Secret.
A: While often claimed, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Apple released the battery replacement program November 14. ipodsdirtysecret.com was only registered on November 20, and started being heavily publicized on November 21. Additionally, Apple had been planning the AppleCare programs for months – these types of service programs don’t just happen overnight – before Casey Neistat even had his first contact with Apple. The video campaign had nothing to do with Apple’s rollout of the battery replacement program.
The Dirty Secret folks have a great guerilla movie. The sad thing is that I put it in the category of “Triumph of the Will” — brilliant marketing for a hollow, misleading cause.
I would like to see the Neistats do something more substantial with their marketing talents. (background: ipodsdirtysecret.com )
Mad Cow Disease New Year: Animals you eat must be vegetarian 2003 Dec 31
No…that’s not nature. Cattle are not cannibals. They are turf munchers…cud chewers, and they are meant to feast on the salad bar that is open pastureland. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or “mad cow disease” results when the people who raise cattle feed them chow that includes the brains of other cattle that were infected. Why would anyone want to feed cattle to cattle? Economics of course…it’s a cheap way to bulk up feed. And why would someone want to do that? To get the price of beef down. Why? Because we like it that way.
That’s right, Mad Cow disease isn’t the beef industry’s fault, it’s not the USDA’s fault, and it’s surely not the cattle’s fault. It’s our fault.
That’s right…you and I are to blame for the fact that hundreds if not thousands of animals will have to be destroyed because of the threat of BSE. We are to blame because our culture has come to value two qualities above all else: “cheap”, and “more”. How else can you explain the cancerous creep of Wal-Marts across our landscape, or the ever swelling American waistline.
And then read this, from the author of a book that got no media coverage in the USA. Read AlterNet’s story: Mad Cow USA: The Nightmare Begins. Which is surely scary, but necessarily so. Government is in the pocket of the beef interests, this needs to be fixed, and this is important. An excerpt:
Since the announcement of United States mad cow disease our phones have rung off the hook with interview requests. The New York Times noted that “The 1997 book ‘Mad Cow USA’, by Sheldon Rampton and John C. Stauber, made the case that the disease could enter the United States from Europe in contaminated feed.” Articles in the New York Times also cited other warnings from Consumer Union’s Michael Hansen, and Dr. Stanley Prusiner, the Nobel Prize-winning researcher who this week called the current United States practice of weaning calves on cattle blood protein “stupid.” All of this would be very vindicating, except for one problem: the millions of dollars that the government and industry are spending on PR to pull the wool over the public’s eyes might just succeed in forestalling the necessary steps that now, at this late date, must still be taken to adequately deal with this crisis.
The good news is that those steps are rather simple and understandable. We should ship Ann Veneman and her smartest advisors to Britain where they can copy the successful feed and testing regulations that have solved the mad cow problem in Europe. Veneman and her advisors should institute a complete and total ban on feeding any slaughterhouse waste to livestock. You may think this is already the case because that’s what industry and government said they did back in the summer of 1997. But beside the cattle blood being legally fed back to cattle, billions of pounds of rendered fat, blood meal, meat and bone meal from pigs and poultry are rendered and fed to cattle, and cattle are rendered and fed to other food species, a perfect environment for spreading and amplifying mad cow disease and even for creating new strains of the disease.
The feed rules that the United States must adopt can be summarized this way: you might not be a vegetarian, but the animals you eat must be. The United States must also institute an immediate testing regime that will test millions of cattle, not the 20,000 tested out of 35 million slaughtered in the past year in the United States. Japan now tests all cattle before consumption, and disease experts like Dr. Prusiner recommend this goal for the United States. And of course, no sick “downer” cows, barely able to move, should be fed to any humans. These are the type of animals most likely to be infected with mad cow and other ailments – although mad cows can also seem completely healthy at the time of slaughter, which is why testing all animals must be the goal.
So. People, get active. Learn about this. And tell the truth about it. Animals you eat must be vegetarian. It’s that simple. The USA can solve this problem.
