I'm still following Power Line in an effort to try to incorporate at least one voice from the opposite end of the political spectrum into my reading, but so far I've found little that has been at all persuasive to me, and frequently I just end up shaking my head.

Case in point, this entry. In it, the authors use this quote from Obama's Memorial Day speech:

"Our fighting men and women - and the military families who love them - embody what is best in America. And we have a responsibility to serve all of them as well as they serve all of us.

And yet, all too often in recent years and decades, we, as a nation, have failed to live up to that responsibility. We have failed to give them the support they need or pay them the respect they deserve. That is a betrayal of the sacred trust that America has with all who wear - and all who have worn - the proud uniform of our country."

Apparently they're interpreting this as a specific attack on the Bush administration?

I've never thought much of Barack Obama's policies, and I'm starting not to think much of him as a human being. Today he continued his gratuitous and graceless attacks on his predecessor in the inappropriate context of Memorial Day.

Paranoid much?

I'm thinking of dropping them from my readings, but I'd like to replace them with a more thoughtful, less rancorous conservative voice -- something like a long-lost conservative twin of Kevin Drum. Will have to go looking when I have more time.

So I was making a donation to the developer of the incredibly useful FoxyProxy extension, and was surprised to see this:



Now until quite recently, the only real game in town for internet access was QTel, and QTel (presumably at the mandate of some ministry) used SmartFilter to block web access to sites "Prohibited in the state of Qatar", a classification which is not specifically defined anywhere, but experimental evidence indicates applies to porn, political criticism, and ways to bypass the block.

Notably the internet connection on the campuses of Education City is said to be completely uncensored, and, never having run into a blocked site, I believe this is true. EC housing, which is owned by Qatar Foundation, also had an uncensored connection, though it's unclear whether this was by design or by virtue of network topology.

Anyways, apparently something has changed, and EC housing internet is now being censored, though they seem to be using a different system.

End result? I doubled my donation to the foxyproxy guy. If he's on their blocked list for being helpful in bypassing the block, he clearly deserves more money from me.

Adblock Plus with an auto filter update is such a wonderful combination; every time I have to use a machine without it, I'm shocked at how much advertising exists which I never knew about.

It's not perfect, though, and this was sitting on the edge of my browser window earlier:

I know we Americans are suckers for buying in bulk to "get a good deal". But man, after the second or third eye, you'd think the marginal utility would pretty much fall off a cliff.

(U^-1 + S'HS)^-1 is the same as (I + US'HS)^-1U

For reasons which are of interest to very few people, figuring out this (in retrospect really obvious for linear algebra geeks) tidbit makes me very, very happy.

As of this moment, if you go to www.microsoft.com and try to click through to the "Security" tab...you get a 404.

Sometimes you just can't make this stuff up.

The amount of spam I get for some variant of a "male enhancement" product is truly prodigious. It got me thinking--why do I never seem to get spam for any shady products aimed primarily at women?

In contrast, mainstream advertising (TV, magazines, etc) seems to have plenty of spots featuring products of questionable efficacy targeted primarily at women (diet pills, etc).

The whole issue makes me wonder if:

A) Spammers are smart/careful enough to try to use some sort of automated system to guess my gender

B) The male of the species is far more gullible/insecure/trusting than his female counterpart

or

C) I truly do have a deficiency of...ahem...apparatus which is both globally known and of great concern to a surprisingly large number of helpful people

Some questions to which I wish I knew the answers:

• Common wisdom is that the level of political discourse is trending continually downwards in the US. It says that the electorate is increasingly polarized and that there is less and less willingness to even consider the opposite side of many political issues. Is this really true, or is this just a case of looking fondly to the past?
• If it is true, is the increasing interconnectivity of the world partially to blame? Are we as people less likely to engage with those who disagree with us if it's easy to find forums which just reinforce our own views?

A while back, I had an interesting conversation with a friend who would almost certainly describe himself as a born-again Christian. Although we rarely broke that implicit rule that says don't talk politics with a friend on the another part of the political spectrum, we did talk about what political blogs we follow. He said he gets a lot out of reading Power Line, and I suggested that Kevin Drum is a liberal blog that is more substance than rancor.

(I was terribly embarrassed that, after giving this advice, the headline on day and find that the top story was something along the lines of "Most idiotic conservatives ever".)

I don't know if he still checks up on Drum, but I do look over Power Line every few days, and I find myself shocked at what I read there; it seems so clear to me that the narrative of the Other Side's consists entirely of rumors, scaremongering and personal attacks while My Side clearly states its case...

If there's anything I got out of my college education, it's that certainty is to be distrusted, questioned, and skeptically examined, especially when it is you that is certain of something. When I step back and look critically at what's written in the blogs which seem RightCorrect, I see some of the same unsubstantive look-at-how-awful-those-people-are stories that fit with my world view and therefore slip past my own bs-detectors.

I do sincerely hope that, if Obama does win this election, his rhetoric of finding common ground across the political spectrum turns out to be more than talk.

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."

- H. L. Mencken, via Quotes of the Day

I actually clicked through an ad (porcine aviation is just around the corner, or so I hear) today; it was a blurb about a service to bypass monopolistic and/or paternalistic internet stupidity, an offering of which I heartily approve.

It seems to be common wisdom that free markets and other freedoms go hand in hand, but it's not often you see such a direct connection...

From the I-wonder-who-buys-that-here department, today I saw this in the Abu Dhabi airport Duty Free.

Shining a light on hazards of fluorescent bulbs

Fluorescents — the squiggly, coiled bulbs that generate light by heating gases in a glass tube — are generally considered to use more than 50 percent less energy and to last several times longer than incandescent bulbs.

Also, humans are generally considered to need oxygen to survive, and the Earth is generally considered to be approximately spherical.

I don't think I've ever read a more prescient piece of satire than this one, from January 17, 2001.

So finally, several years after it should have happened, I did my thesis proposal and am now ABD (All But Dissertation). It's hard for me to judge how it went--in any project, including ones that I've done a good job on, I really tend to focus on the things I don't like--but I think it went pretty well. No major surprises in the questions, and I think I had good answers. There was far, far too much material in the proposal to even do a good overview in the 30-45 minutes that we're supposed to talk, so it felt a bit rushed and somewhat disjointed to me. (and now this, and that, and I really need to talk about this, and that, and you also need this bit of information and ...)

I think my viewpoint is colored by having taught a couple of classes; I would really have preferred to have a more interactive format and at least twice that amount of time; I would have liked to have more of an opportunity to get people involved and on board with the underlying concepts instead of just glossing over them at a high rate of speed.

Randy Pausch, in his time management talk, references something along the lines of "challenges tend to be pass-fail". This one I passed. And now I feel like I can breathe again.

St. Mary's Academy says woman cannot ref boys game

The Kansas State High School Activities Association said referees reported that Michelle Campbell was preparing to officiate at St. Mary's Academy near Topeka on Feb. 2 when a school official insisted that Campbell could not call the game.

The reason given, according to the referees: Campbell, as a woman, could not be put in a position of authority over boys because of the academy's beliefs.

Those crazy Kansans. Clearly we should invade to bring them democracy, liberating them from their backwards religious views.

Yeah, it's really not a fair (implied) analogy; gender discrimination like this makes headlines in the States, whereas it would be pretty unthinkable to have women refereeing a men's basketball game here unless it was a completely expatriate league. What makes the local customs possibly less backwards than the Kansas situation is that the trend here would be more about preventing inappropriate gender mixing rather than a more direct statement of power. Locally, it would also be culturally shocking to have a man refereeing a women's league.

If you haven't heard it This American Life, produced by Chicago Public Radio and a staple on many public radio channels, is worth checking out. It's been around for a while; Ira Glass, the show's beatnik-meets-NPR host, presents a number of "Acts" around a central theme. The acts are usually short stories from the lives of people, sometimes true, sometimes fiction.

I tend to catch the podcast while doing work around the house. This week I listened to an episode entitled "Shouting Across the Divide", which revolved around interactions across the American-Muslim divide. It's well worth listening to.

So here are some things I'm honestly curious about.

The administration wants to provide retroactive immunity to telecom companies that helped the government implement a broad eavesdropping plan which was, in most legal opinions, blatantly illegal. The fear is that these companies (AT&T, Verizon, etc) are liable for damages to the extent that it would take very little (and pretty straightforward) litigation to destroy them.

Of course, the companies which stand to lose big for (to put it bluntly) being held responsible for their actions are lobbying congress to get retroactive immunity. From a strictly profit-maximizing perspective this makes perfect sense: spend $$ to lobby in congress to avoid lawsuits totalling $$$$$$$$$$$$$$.

Here's the first thing I'm curious about. By most accounts, Qwest is the one baby bell that denied the government the access it wanted under the program. If that's the case, is Qwest lobbying against telecom immunity? If the facts are what they appear to be, and I were running Qwest, I'd be dedicating as many resources as I could afford to prevent such an immunity from being passed.

The more obvious, and possibly more naïve question is this: why is the primary concern here the telecoms? If the program was blatantly illegal, aren't those people in the government who implemented it even more culpable than the telecoms?

As far as I can tell, the only reason that the telecoms are in more danger than the relevant governmental offices is the lack of legislative independence at this point in history. Telecoms are in real legal danger because the independent judiciary might look at the facts of the situation and try to come to a just solution. Since the legislative bears primary responsibility for the oversight needed on the government side of the fence, the lack of legislative independence means there's little danger for the wannabe J. Edgar Hoovers.

I'm all for holding telecoms accountable, but it makes me sick that, for all the attention that this line in the sand is getting, it's been drawn in a small corner of the beach that the real bullies never visit.

(Obligatory call to action: Contact your senators! Writing to the Obama and Clinton campaigns to say that this issue is important to you would probably help, too. Join the EFF! Or the ACLU! Or both!)

When did Travelocity start getting evil?

They were one of the first success stories of making money on the web, and for good reason! Travel agency seems to be an industry, like real estate agency, which exists primarily because the underlying market is not made directly available to consumers. Travelocity let users actually research and buy the tickets they wanted--themselves! It wasn't perfect; it didn't (and doesn't) let people do things like research and consolidate individual legs of a journey into single tickets, but it was a huge improvement over the status quo.

Of course, it spawned many imitators. For domestic air travel in the States, the alternatives are pretty good, though I still usually find the best deals on Travelocity. However, for travel to and from Qatar, well, Expedia is the only other site that will even try to figure that out, and it only gives results which are 2-3x the price of those I find on Travelocity.

Recently, Travelocity has shown signs of becoming the evil market leader. The most obvious ones are the hotel bookings and the travel insurance. They offer two search options off of the main page, flights, or flights + hotels. Even if you're all "show me the flights only thanks", it's all "Look look! I know you don't want one, but these are the best deals evarrrrrr and please look at this 3 mile long page of places to stay, mostly within the same hemisphere to which it looks like you're traveling! I've hidden the Skip This button somewhere in the page as a 1x1 pixel image so you really can appreciate just how awesome the awesomeness of these hotels is!".

And then, when you actually select an itinerary, there's a little box with a pre-checked checkbox that's all "don't mind me, I'm just the checkbox that lets Travelocity charge you an extra $50/person for Travel Insurance that you almost certainly don't want! Please move along and just purchase things without looking too closely, 'mkay?"

My reading of the situation is that Travelocity is not going to be around 2 years from now. These kinds of tactics are usually evidence of either a company desperate to increase margins, or one which doesn't mind annoying its customers for some short term profits. Either way, the prognosis is grim.

Certainty and is feels made in the brain supply, decisions to be Life it is future. complicated. in short like my blender. has been through a Many near

On tying federal aid to preventing P2P sharing

So, in short, tying federal education funding to copyright policy in the special case of college networks is a good idea because...ummm...yeah, I can't think of a good reason either.

Whats the right analogy here...maybe threatening to revoke federal highway funding from specific counties unless they agree to put policies in place to prevent duck poaching? 'Cause, you know, ducks are being poached! And we should stop that!

Harry Reid, Ruben Hinojosa, and George Miller, how can you possibly think this is a good idea?

0:00 Hmm...I need to swap out this laptop's hard drive, but there's no obvious way to get it out.

0:15 (16 screws later) Hmm...this laptop is sure hard to get into

0:30 (10 more screws later) OK, it's almost coming apart. What's still catching?

0:40 (4 more screws later) LCD is detached, doesn't seem to help matters

0:50 (2 more screws) Aha! That small plastic bit snaps on; removing it shows more screws

0:55 (4 more screws) OK, it's apart. The hard drive is under the motherboard? Crap. That's another 10 screws or so. WTF Dell?

0:56 Wait a second...(removes two screws that were accessible from the very beginning, pulls out hard drive rendering entire work done so far not only obsolete, but counterproductive).

0:57 <bangs head against wall>