The Evil Eyebrow

Category: Opinion

  • 9-11 and Why We Should Move On

    The various September 11th things that I hear on the radio or see on the TV bug me. Not because I think it’s wrong to remember the dead; I don’t have a problem with the Oklahoma City bombing memorials. No, it’s because the government and the news media have managed, in seven short years, to assign a connotation to the event that does not represent the best values of this nation. We have become accustomed to a persistent reminder that “WE WERE ATTACKED!” rather than “We Mourn the Loss of our Fellow Citizens”.

    This bugs me, as I mentioned. For one thing, I don’t think that America is about revenge or retribution. For another, what happens when we’ve “won” the war on terror?1 What happens to our 9-11 remembrances than? Will they fizzle out with a whimper because their raison d’etre has been eliminated?

    Almost 3,000 people died and that is horrible. What would be more horrible is if we continue to use their deaths as a springboard to throw our freedoms and liberties out the door. Let’s take back the 9-11 from the fear mongers and opportunists. Let’s remember our fellow citizens as people who died for their country. As the bumper sticker says, “If you like your freedom, thank a Vet.” Let’s not change it to, “If support government control, thank 9-11.”

    1Not that it’s possible to win the war on terror

  • Why The LHC Won't Destroy the Earth

    There’s been lots of noise this summer about the incipient destruction of the Earth by the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. There’s been scientists quoted as saying, basically, “Yes, there’s a teeny tiny chance that the LHC will produce black holes or quantum strangelets or Evil Elmo, but it’s so small as to be negligible.” These quotes are then re-processed as to say “Scientists declare that Elmo may Devour World!”

    This is all silly. But not for the reasons you might think. First, here’s my Declaration:

    I, William M. Ruhsam, Jr., guarantee that the LHC will not destroy the Earth. There is no possibility, at all, that this may occur. I’ll stake anything you care to name on that fact.

    This is not bravado. I have total confidence in this. Why?

    Because it won’t matter one little tiny damn bit if I’m wrong. If I’m wrong, we’re all either sucked into a black hole, blown to smithereens, or eaten by a cosmic muppet. There’s no downside that results in me having to eat my words. Scientists are being too scientific! They’re not examining the consequences if they’re wrong. Consequences = none because we have to be here for there to be consequences.

    So, particle physicists, you have my permission to state boldly that there is no possibility of the LHC wreaking havoc on us. You can say this with certainty, standing up proud. No ethics committee will have time to convene if you’re wrong.

  • Why I Despair Sometimes for Technology

    I nearly shot Mozilla Thunderbird with my imaginary ray cannon this morning. This is why.

    I am a hip, with-it, capable-of-adapting, technology person. I am a beneficiary of a middle class American upbringing and a private engineering college education. I have self selected myself into a realm of (moderate) computer skills which assist me in carrying out my daily tasks, including this blog post.

    But sometimes, it feels like banging my head on a wall.

    I remember back in the day of MS-DOS 3.0 when I sat down with a manual and started playing the “what does this command do?” game. That was when I first learned about paths and command line interfaces. Every computer geek that I’ve ever been associated with has at one time or another spent days figuring out how to do something; a lot of learning is packed into that process. Undertaking a daunting computer task is a good way to learn all the ins and outs. I respect this method of learning and do it myself (although less these days) especially now that the web has provided a wealth of resources to help, literally at your finger tips.

    But again, sometimes computer problems are like pulling the nails off those tips.

    Case in point: I have recently switched from POP mail to IMAP mail for all my normal email communications. This allows me to a) access my messages wherever I go rather than having to wait ’til I get home and b) retain easy access to encrypted communications. I’m using Mozilla Thunderbird for various reasons, the trump of which was that it easily allows GnuPG through its extension of Enigmail. All good and simple. As long as you’re familiar with how to set up an email account on a mail program, Thunderbird will give you no issues.

    Unless, for some reason (say) you can’t send mail because Thunderbird insists on using your login ID as “nematode” rather than “nematode@roundworm.org”. It so happens that the “@roundworm.org” is a critical part of the login of your mail server and Thunderbird just won’t send it! You mess with the settings. You delete and reload the account. You pore over the server variables. You delete and reload the account again. You stare at the screen until your eyes bleed. You go three whole fucking weeks without being able to send email from this account.

    Then you notice the little scrolly bar on the left side of the account set up window.

    nematode

    Yes, ladies and gentleman, I agonized for three weeks because I couldn’t figure out that I should scroll down to the bottom where it helpfully says “Outgoing Server (SMTP)”. This is where all those settings I’d been looking for were hiding. This was the root of my despair. Why wasn’t this placed with all the other account settings? Why why why!?

    I’m a bit upset by this, as you can probably tell.

    Technology is a wonderful thing. Good design is also a wonderful thing. Good design isn’t just making things look good (and I praise Thunderbird for having a simple and attractive display), it’s about making things usable, and my wife will probably agree.

    I’ll be forwarding this comment to the Thunderbird developers. While not everyone probably has a horror story like this one, it’s the exceptions that create the largest amounts of grief.

  • I've Been Taken To Task

    I posted on Friday about vaccines and my opinion of parents who don’t do use them.

    Ginger Taylor responded (and snarked at me for not approving her comment fast enough). She makes some points, to which I respond.

    I want to know what you, my regular readers, think. Am I being a mouthpiece for corporate pharmaceutical or does the science hold up?

  • Productivity Systems

    Richard from Pantsonfaster.com asks if productivity systems are for everyone? I respond, and not just because he used my images.

    Moleskine HackJust for full disclosure, the image that Richard picked was a doomed experiment. It did not end up working in a manner that was useful. For one thing, the credit cards were nearly impossible to remove from the sleeves. For another, it just didn’t fit very well into a pant pocket. Without a cargo pocket (which I generally can’t wear to work) this contraption wasn’t very useful.

  • Elantris

    I finished reading Elantris by Brandon Sanderson today. Review: Good, but a few flaws (some big). I hope his novels get better—this is his first published work—otherwise I might stop reading.

    I picked up this book because Mr. Sanderson was picked to finish the Wheel of Time (WOT) series in place of the late Robert Jordan. This situation merits some examination of his novels to see what kind of writing we can expect out of the last WOT book. According to Tor, we’re about a year away from the last novel and everyone who is a WOT groupie is anxiously awaiting it.

    I’ll get the another novel by Sanderson and see how it goes. As I said, hopefully it will be a bit better, although I have no real complaints about Elantris.

  • Still Being Nitpicky

    While I’m on the topic of critiquing news reports, here’s one from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA, pronounced “nitsa”).

    Secretary Peters said that in 2007, the overall number of traffic fatalities fell to 41,059, the lowest number since 1994. In addition, the fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled was 1.37, the lowest fatality rate on record, she noted.

    That’s good news. When over 40,000 people die every year in traffic collisions, that’s big problem. But my nitpickiness was triggered by this:

    “Thanks to safer vehicles, aggressive law enforcement and our efforts, countless families were spared the devastating news that a loved one was not coming home last year,” Secretary Peters said.

    Countless? Really? I bet I could count them. After all, we have very good numbers.

    For a prepared statement, I’m not happy with the verbiage. Government agencies should do better.

  • Bullshitese

    I was reading an article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution this morning concerning Georgia’s budget cutbacks. One statement in particular stood out:

    Sen. Kasim Reed (D-Atlanta), said those new jobs should be reconsidered.

    “I don’t know any organization that faces the kind of budget challenges we’re facing that doesn’t take a serious look at right-sizing itself,” Reed said. “We need to drill down and give some thought to whether our government is the right size or not.”

    Ahhh, the concept of the “right size”. It’s good to avoid inflammatory language like “down size”. I’m also not sure how “drilling down” is relevant to the “right sizing” unless we’re changing up our menu options.

    [sigh]

    Well, I guess I shouldn’t nitpick too much. I’ve never been cornered by a reporter and asked to comment on an issue that will cause a lot of heartache and layoffs.

  • Flat Earth

    The Bad Astronomer posted about this BBC article, but I just need to chime in.


    According to the BBC, the idea that the Earth is flat, and not an oblate spheroid, is still alive and well     amongst people who are obviously unsuitable for being around my children.

    Two of the interviewees said:

    Mr Davis now believes “the Earth is flat and horizontally infinite – it stretches horizontally forever”.

    “And it is at least 9,000 kilometres deep”, he adds.

    James McIntyre, a British-based moderator of a Flat Earth Society discussion website, has a slightly different take. “The Earth is, more or less, a disc,” he states. “Obviously it isn’t perfectly flat thanks to geological phenomena like hills and valleys. It is around 24,900 miles in diameter.”

    In this day and age, the fact that someone who was interviewed for a news story (that was posted on the Internet!) can believe that the Globular Earth Theory is a massive conspiracy just boggles my foot. I like to think I’m relatively tolerant about people’s beliefs and such, but if someone were to present this idea to me as fact, I’d have to either tell them they were a bonehead and leave, or if they were at my house, let them know that they were no longer welcome. Some types of anti-intellectualism should not be tolerated.

  • Russia + Georgia = ?

    I’ve been paying attention to the Russia/Georgia/South Ossetia war that’s going on and I’m trying to figure out (from my Oh So Worldly knowledge) what Russia’s angle is here.

    Obviously you don’t go committing a division of troops without a good reason. I don’t know enough about the Republic of Georgia to understand what it is about the area that makes Russia want to either destabilize it or force a regime change (or to split of South Ossentia). Are they looking for weaker states on their borders to force them into economic satellite-hood? I’d think, just given their geography, that they already were. I’m assuming that Russia is Georgia’s majority trading partner, unless it’s Turkey. I really don’t know. I also assume that there’s no reason that Russia would want to conquer Georgia from a geographic standpoint. They’d acquire a couple Black Sea ports, a mountain range and a valley. I’m guessing that this is all political (which Clausewitz would say is the whole point of war).

    Anyone have any knowledge or thoughts?