Tilting at windmills for a better tomorrow.
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Massive construction project going on outside my office door – scheduled to last three years (lucky me!). Just heard a huge crashing sound, walked outside, and found a 130-foot eucalyptus tree laying on its side, branches snapped, debris everywhere. And under a large bough, the dean’s car. He was not in it at the time and no one was hurt; he was even able to drive it away. But wow.
Theory is that some of its roots were cut by a Godzilla-sized backhoe during adjacent construction, and today’s high winds gave it enough nudge to seal the deal. Eucalyptus don’t have very deep roots to begin with… I’m sure the contractors are going to have some explaining to do. It really was a beautiful tree.
Photos here.
Every time I sign a credit-card receipt, I wonder what the point is. I don’t recall any clerk ever checking to see whether it matched the signature on the back of the card. Apparently I’m not the only who’s wondered. Old Ziff-mate John Hargrave’s Credit Card Prank is the ultimate real-world proof that credit card signatures are worth even less than you think they are.
NOT AUTHORIZED
Update: I realize now that the prank linked to above is actually just the first chapter of the prank I really meant to link to, which is bigger and funnier.
If you haven’t already, run — don’t walk — to rent Ray, the musical biography of Ray Charles. The cinematography is gorgeous, the story of his life honest and gripping, the history tragic and fascinating, the music… speaks for itself. Jamie Foxx perfect as Ray. We split this over two nights (it’s around 3.5 hours short), and wished it wouldn’t end. Neither of us have enjoyed a movie this much for ages.
Provocative piece in the current issue of Wired on how small swaths of the traditionally staunchly anti-nuclear Green movement are starting to go pro-nuke. My earliest awakening of any socio-political thought whatsoever occurred while protesting the construction and launch of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in the early 80s with Mom and Dad. But now:
Some of the world’s most thoughtful greens have discovered the logic of nuclear power, including Gaia theorist James Lovelock, Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore, and Britain’s Bishop Hugh Montefiore, a longtime board member of Friends of the Earth.
The “green” arguments in favor of nuclear power are not airtight, but the Wired piece does make a pretty compelling case. Not because nuclear power has become as safe as solar or wind, but because the current hydrocarbon-based situation is so dire.
Burning hydrocarbons is a luxury that a planet with 6 billion energy-hungry souls can’t afford. There’s only one sane, practical alternative: nuclear power.
Not to mention the sheer scale of global energy requirements — to generate the kind of power with solar or wind that can be obtained from a single nuke requires enormous masses of land. Space requirements relative to power sources to produce 1,000 megawatts of electricity:
Nuke: .33 sq. miles
Solar: 60 sq. miles
Wind: 300 sq. miles
Biomass: 1,000 sq. miles
So, yes — if we had put all of the effort and funding over the years into solar that we’ve put into nukes, solar power generation today would be cheaper and more efficient than it is. But I somehow don’t think we would have put that much of a dent in the space requirement problem.
I think I’d be willing to reconsider my stance on nuclear power if we had adequate answers to long-term waste storage problems. Unfortunately, the article pretty much glosses those, focusing instead on the possibilities of recycling spent fuel (which are promising). But until the storage problem is really nailed, there is a problem of conscience. We call the ancient Egyptians “ancient” and they were doing their thing just 5,000 years ago. 100,000 years+ is an almost inconceivably long period of time. It is almost impossible to image us not coming up with a good storage answer somewhere in that span. But it is also unconscionable to start laying this stuff in the ground before we’ve figured it out. It’s our problem, not our childrens’.
A couple of weeks ago, as I was reading stories to Miles in the evening, I heard the soft clicking of Amy’s camera going off in the hall. Wasn’t sure whether we were in her frame or not, but found the sound comforting. Tonight we got take-out sushi to eat at home and Miles had his first taste of sashimi — appropriate because we’ve been reading about Yoko, the cat who took sushi to school (none of the other kids in the story could grok it, leaving poor Yoko struggling for cool in a terminally un-hip, merciless world). Miles’ first sushi experience went well, and he actually did succeed in eating with chopsticks, kinda, but he mostly enjoyed making balls out of rice and batting them around while calling out “Rice balls! Rice balls!” After tonight’s storytime, this lovely valentine rolled into my inbox. I love my family.
In the newsgroup alt.os.linux.redhat lives a current thread titled “OsX compared to Linux and BeOS” (gratuitously x-posted to a handful of other OS groups) — a fairly typical bottomless OS war, er, reasoned discussion, either fascinating or tedious depending on your disposition.
First of all, I’m floored that anyone in the universe is asking whether BeOS is a viable alternative four years after the company bit the dust. That’s funny bit #1. But this excerpt had me rolling:
>>> is there anyone who knows OS X and Linux well who can
>>> make an honest and reasoned comparison of the two?
>> Scot Hacker?
> Fribilty Jones.
So that’s what it’s come to. Get a job, have a baby, fade from the OS scene, and before you know it, you may as well be Fribilty Jones. Less than zero. Dang, it rolls off the tongue nicely though. Fribilty Jones. Fribilty Jones. Fribilty Jones. Must … create … pseudonym …
Thanks mneptok.
Somebody had to think of it: Print-on-demand gaining a bit more traction? Qoop (currently in soft-launch) will let weblog publishers offer their blog archives as nicely printed and bound books. Birdhouse customer John Battelle is giving it a shot, offering up his Searchblog in print form.
Just finished the final exam in my Unix Security class — three classes down, a fistful to go to complete my cert. Once again, learned a ton but feel like I just scratched the surface — security is a bottomless topic. In addition to the nuts and bolts stuff, great tangential discussions. One day, discussing the behavior of viruses and the significance of “laying low,” an analogy to the ebola virus:
The disease is often transmitted during funeral preparations in Congo which traditionally require relatives and friends to wash and kiss the dead body.
… and so entire villages are wiped out quickly — the local culture inadvertenly helps the virus to more efficiently kill its own host. If AIDS killed its host immediately, it would virtually be over — its long dormancy is what enables it to spread. Which helps explain why so few computer viruses are immediately destructive — if a virus formatted your hard drive the minute you contracted it, it wouldn’t have the chance to propagate. It wouldn’t become a “popular” virus.
Powerful: A theoretical virus that sits around on a corporate LAN and changes one digit in one randomly selected cell in one randomly selected Excel document per month. And nothing else. How long could such a virus evade detection? How much hair pulling would this cause? How soon before people stopped trusting Excel?
From dubyaspeak.com, a transcript of Bush explaining Social Security reform to an audience, Tampa, Florida, Feb. 4, 2005:
WOMAN IN AUDIENCE: I don’t really understand. How is it the new [Social Security] plan is going to fix that problem?
DUBYA: Because the — all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculated, for example, is on the table. Whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There’s a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those — changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be — or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It’s kind of muddled. Look, there’s a series of things that cause the — like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate — the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those — if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space.
Update: Related: Scott Squire (who hosts nonfictionphoto.com on birdhouse) has produced a photo/interview essay on Social Security reform for Mother Jones.