The Evil Eyebrow

Category: Opinion

  • Comment Spam

    I don’t get much comment spam that I have to directly moderate. Most of it is picked up by the wordpress-default comment spam eliminator Aksimet. I get some, though, and the majority is linking to (allegedly) prescription drug or (definitely) sex sites.

    One in particular has been hitting my moderation queue in the past week. It’s Asstraffic.com. For some reason, that URL amuses me. I get a bit of a chuckle every time I see it. That doesn’t keep me from depositing it in spam purgatory, though. Maybe Asstraffic.com is something I can talk about on Talking Traffic?

    Maybe not. I don’t think it fits the theme.

  • Comcast Denying Bittorrent Traffic

    AP has (apparently) confirmed that Comcast is blocking Bittorrent regularly. A back-of-my-envelope thought on this matter is that they are saving bandwidth to sell to other people, so it’s part of their business model to manage the network traffic through their backbones. Seems that this will have continuing impacts on their customers and the ongoing debate over network neutrality.

    Which brings me to a thought I’ve had in times past. I’ll preface this thought with the statement that I’m a network moron. I have some vague notion of how packets bounce around the world via copper and fiber and other transmission streams, but no firm knowledge. That being stated, I think that there is a market for newly built residential subdivisions to have super-high-speed internet built in to the homes. If a large subdivision were to have its own fiber drop, and optical connections into every house, that would be a selling point for a lot of people, especially here in Atlanta. I would certainly be willing to entertain a large up-front cost that was rolled into my mortgage. Maintenance could be part of a homeowners agreement. Then we wouldn’t be dealing with the crappy customer service that Comcast or AT&T deals out to their little customers. We’d be a major commerical customer who would require better upkeep.

    It’s a thought. I wonder if this is happening anywhere?

  • Gay Dumbledore

    Jenn alerted me to the news fracas caused by J.K. Rowling saying that Dumbledore was gay (is gay? Do the portrait people have love-lives?).

    Apparently, there’s always been suspicion amongst fans that he was gay, due to his lack of a love interest and other items. Personally, I never pulled up a hint of gayness from Dumbledore until the seventh book, so this “always has been a suspicion” thing is a crock. It’s along the lines of crackpot fans everywhere coming up with unlikely scenarios for the most mundane nuances, then springing forth with an “Aha! I told you so!” when their particular nuttiness is revealed as truth. I won’t say that there weren’t any “hints” about Dumbledore being gay in books 1-6, but frankly, who cares? It’s immaterial to the story. Dumbledore didn’t have any subtextual motivations that weren’t clearly explained in book 7. This is not the type of book with imagery and metaphor coming out the wazoo. It’s an entertaining (but epically paced and written) story.

    I think that J.K. Rowling should start making stuff up about her characters, just to see how much more whacked out the movies will get.

  • James Watson: Victim of Politics

    Yesterday, I alluded to racist statements made by James Watson, regarding the inability of africans to measure up to other persons in the intelligence arena.

    Today, I see that he has been suspended from “the administrative responsibilities” of his posting at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, due to the board’s “disagreeing with the comments…”

    This is a travesty. James Watson is a renowned scientist, and a dope. But being a dope isn’t illegal, and if we expect non-dopes to be able to present opinions without them being trashed perfuctorily, the dopes have to be allowed the same privilege.

    I have no personal knowledge of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, but I doubt that if Dr. Watson were merely a ranking scientist (rather than the head of the lab) that he would have been suspended from his job. Thus, politics. The board cannot permit a person with undeniable scientific gravitas to say stupid things in public. I think a better approach would be to insist that Dr. Watson present the evidence for his case, and if that cannot be found, then insist he back off on his racist comments. Cold Spring Harbor could advertise to the world that they are such a powerful scientific organization, they don’t hold stupid comments against even their most visible members.

    Or they could just drag him out at dawn and shoot him in the career. Whichever.

  • Holy Racism, Batman!

    Through a fluke set of circumstances, I ended up beginning to read the story, “Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle.” You may recognize this as the derivation of the acronym TASER (Thomas A. Smith Electric Rifle).

    Not knowing much about the story, who wrote it, or when it was published, I dove in. As I read, I gathered through context that it was written earlier in the century (airships, monoplanes) and that it was a youth adventure story (both true). Then I hit this dialogue [emphasis mine]:

    “Rad! I say, Rad! Where are you?”

    “Heah I is, Massa Tom! Heah I is” called a colored man as he came around the corner of a small stable where he kept his mule Boomerang. “Was yo’-all callin’ me?”

    “Yes, Rad, I want you to help make a scarecrow.”

    “A scarecrow, Massa Tom! Good land a’ massy! What fo’ yo’ want ob a scarecrow? Yo’-all ain’t raisin’ no corn, am yo’?”

    “No, but I want something to shoot at when Ned Newton comes over to-night.”

    “Suffin t’ shoot at? Why Massa Tom! Good land a’ massy! Yo’-all ain’t gwine t’ hab no duel, am yo’?”

    “No, Rad, but I want a life-size figure on which to try my new electric gun. Here are some old clothes, and if you will stuff them with rags and straw and fix them so they’ll stand up, they’ll do first-rate. Have it ready by night, and set it up at the far end of the shooting gallery.”

    “All right, Massa Tom. I’ll jest do dat, fo’ yo’,” and leaving the colored man to stuff the figure, after he had showed him how, Tom went back into the house to read the paper which he had purchased that morning.

    I was born in the 70’s and raised in the 80’s and 90’s. I have no concept of being able to think like this. I think the most egregious part of this dialogue was Tom Smith showing Rad how to make the scarecrow. Who the heck, even then, would think a black man couldn’t know how to make a scarecrow? It’s obviously assumed that anything that Tom (white) doesn’t tell Rad (black), won’t get done.

    This novel was published in 1911. Only 48 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. And I am intellectually aware of the climate surrounding race relations prior to World War II, which was 28 years after publication. Still, this shocks me. Is it a good thing that I’m shocked, indicating a deep acceptance of racial equality, or a bad thing, showing that I just don’t grok history?

    At least I am not famed scientist James Watson, co-credited-discoverer of DNA, who thinks africans are less intelligent than caucasians.

  • It's a Mad Mad Mad … World

    Phil Plait has a posting concerning a major TV personality who doesn’t know whether the Earth is flat.

    Phil hit it hard, but I’ll reiterate one of his points. It is just not possible to exist in an industrialized country in the 21st century and not know that the Earth is a ball. People who espouse a belief in flath-earthism or, as this person did, claim ignorance of the matter, are not qualified to breathe.

  • Ten Things Not to do on your Blog/Website

    I think I’m only doing two of these things that Binary Moon says shouldn’t be included on a website. Of course, I don’t have any advertising, which eliminates the possibility of me screwing up numbers 1-4, which means I’m hitting two of six bad-things-to-do. Well, a 66% is almost passing in the US High School education system.

    (for reference, I’m not calling out the time of my posts in the post header, and I don’t bother with an Author, because it’s just me so far)

  • Dedication, Time, OCD

    Somedays I think my life would be easier if I were an obsessive-compulsive.*

    Let’s look at what I’m doing right now: Working a consultant engineering job, with its attendant time consumptions, busy putting in more personal exercise hours than I have since high-school, trying (and failing) to keep a bi-weekly podcast operation, trying (and not doing so well) to keep interesting content up on this blog, maintaining a house and yard, maintaining a spousely relationship, trying to catch up on my scrapbooking, trying to catch up on my reading, trying to keep up with my professional journals, trying to maintain friendship relations with people who don’t live near here, plus myriad other things. Ugh. There’s not enough time in the day. If I were OCD, I might have one or two of these that I MUST DO EVERY DAY, but as it is, I flit from one to the next as they catch my attention and must put in real effort to maintain a constant level of dedication to a project.

    Jenn complains of the exact same thing as what I just wrote; she’s got too much to do. I need to take the advice that I give her: “Just don’t do all of that.” Of course, I won’t give up on my spousely committments, nor can I give up on my professional committments. I have a serious time investment right now in my fitness that I will not allow to slacken, thusly everything else sort of slides. Especially the yard (boy, do I need to edge the lawn, it looks like grassy octopi are attacking our road and driveway). I’ve also been reading a lot less than I used to, which is a shame because there is so much good stuff out there.

    Probably the thing I could do that would most effectively give me time back would be to quit writing and reading blogs. That must take up at least an hour a day, and more on the weekends, plus my ~6 hours-per-two-weeks committement for the podcast. Or I could quit watching TV, but like the reading thing, there’s a lot of good stuff out there.

    Alas, at the moment I don’t see a whole lot that would be easy to scrub. And truthfully, despite the slightly whiny tone to this post, I’m not feeling stressed by my committments at the moment. I hearken back to the days in college when I really didn’t have any committments (besides my wife and the band) and smile. Now, it’s time to go and upload some photos to flickr!

    *CoverMyAss: I am in no way implying that behavioral disorders are good, or that I think people with OCD have it easy. This is a thought experiment and I’ll emphasize I don’t know anything about OCD that isn’t broadcast and sterotyped on national TV networks.

  • Track and Field Units of Measure

    I was watching Track and Field last night when a seemingly obvious question came to mind. I say “seemingly” because it has never crossed my mind before.

    Why do we measure running distances (except the marathon) in meters but throwing and jumping distances in feet-inches?

    Of course, this might be a foible of American TV. I was watching NBC after all, and they might assume that while the average American probably knows what a meter is, he or she will be extremely unlikely to know what a centimeter looks like (I may be being cynical, but I doubt it).

    A quick check of Wikipedia, the repository of all human knowledge in its most precise form, shows a listing of world records in feet. Okay, maybe this is a wikipedia thing, measuring things in feet, while the rest of the world sensibly goes with meters.

    Nope. According to the official results from the Sidney Olympics, we measure the Long Jump in feet, to the nearest hundreth. This is screwy. Entirely screwy. Why are we measuring in feet, still? And which foot are we using? I hope it’s the international foot, rather than the American Survey Foot, although the difference between those two is only found in the seventh decimal place (0.3048 meters for an international foot and 0.30480061 meters for a survey foot) so it wouldn’t really matter.

    Ack!

  • Why We Don't Trust Mechanics

    My vehicle was making some distressing new noises this week. They seemed to originate from the front end (front wheel drive) during acceleration and cornerning, which is not a good combination. I was thinking CV joint or axle. It turns out to be the right half axle, which is being replaced.

    However, when I called yesterday to make an appointment, the lady who took it asked me to summarize the symptoms, and I said, “Funny sounding vibration, in front.” She asked, “at highway speeds?” to which I responded, “Yes.”

    Fast forward to the call from the mechanic. They recommended a replacement axle, and a few other things which I know are problems (but am ignoring), plus they strongly recommended I rotate and balance the tires, to remove the “vibration at highway speeds.” The kicker here is that there is no vibration at highway speeds that is attributable to my tires. Furthermore, my tires were newly bought and balanced less than two months ago. I know they tacked this on as a silly way to milk my wallet with unecessary work. This does not make me happy, and I plan to tell them about it when I get there.

    Grr.