The Evil Eyebrow

Category: Opinion

  • Crazy stuff you learn by surfing

    Through a long and tortuous chain of links and lookups1, I came upon an interesting wikipedia entry: Flag of Convenience.

    Did you know that you can register a ship (an ocean-going SHIP!) in Mongolia! You can have a ship sailing around the world, carrying cargo, with a large name on the back (say) Poseidon, out of Ulan Bator. That’s crazy.

    At least if you’re registered in Bolivia (which is also landlocked last time I checked), you’re only 100 miles from the ocean. Mongolia’s nearest large body of water is Lake Baikal.

    The weird stuff you learn every day really blows my noggin.

    1 I’ll be posting a topic which will lend some clues as to this long and tortuous chain at a later date.

  • First Round Pain!

    Well, so much for me picking Iowa to win this years NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. [sigh]

    I was doing well first round right up to that moment. All of my first round picks that had not made it to second round were slated to lose there anyhow, so I still had plenty of opportunity to make it!

    Alas, so much for the Atlanta Regional for me. Go Ohio! who I have playing Iowa for the championship.

    Yes, I’m contributing to the $4B of lost productivity.

  • "Forced To Resign"

    I was reading a NY Times article today concerning the difficulties Harvard’s President is having with his Faculty. Sounds like they are having fun up in Cambridge.

    However, that’s not the point of today’s random rambling. Inside the article was this phrase.

    “Some faculty members also say they would like the university’s governing board, the Harvard Corporation, to force Mr. Summers to resign.

    It gotten me to thinkin’. What is the difference between being “forced to resign” and being “fired like the scum you are?”

    Well, actually, even I think that comment a bit flippant. I realize the difference in the above example is usually a matter of politics (“You are not toeing my line!”) rather than ability (“You said that this bridge would only need one beam, and now five people are road pizza!”), but the phrase itself is one of those passive phrases such as “mistakes were made” that gets bandied around so much, all of its meaning is buried in the subtext.

    A google search for the phrase “Forced to Resign” returns about 1.15 million hits as of today (2/14/06). That’s a lot of hits, and I obviously did not read each one, but a quick perusal of the first few pages shows that the top-counted hits are all related to corporate and/or political infighting. No one is “forced to resign” from McDonalds. They just fire you.

    In the example that started this blog, of the Harvard University President, does it really make any difference whether or not the board “forces him to resign” or sends him a Donald-gram (“You’re fired!”)? The outcome is the same; everyone knows what happened; obviously news organs will cover it and no one will seriously believe he stepped down of his own accord (if this takes place of course. All strictly hypothetical).

    So let’s not bandy around the bullshit. If your boss asks you to resign, you’ve been fired, end of story.

  • SOTU 2006

    It’s good to see that the State of the Union this year was once again:

    1) Vague Platitudes
    2) Unfunded Initiatives
    3) Veiled insults to the opposite party

    Does anyone remember the “Death to People who Use Steroids”? I do…

  • ACLU Discussed to Death!

    If you are not a reader of The Bad Astronomy Blog, I’ll point you to a recent post which has received a lot of comments. Quite interesting reading, from low to high brow.

  • Child's No Behind is Left

    Thanks to friend Fraudirector, I was made aware of this very scary article concerning the state of America’s College students.

    I’m not sure if I’m depressed or overjoyed. Depressed for America’s failing education system. Overjoyed that I have some serious job security. After all, you need to divide and multiply in my job. Even use percentages!

    I have a wild idea (totally out in left field here) that it may partially be to blame on New Math. It was a failure and may have made that generation dislike math to the extent that their children do not get the sort of support during grade school and high school that is needed to instill a thorough understanding of basic concepts.

    Just a theory.

  • Email Tripwires

    In a bit of conversation a few weeks ago, a person related their plan to deploy tripwires in all of their outgoing email to cause the NSA headaches if they happen to be monitoring for certain phrases or words. She would include words such as bomb, missile, nuclear, radioactive, radioisotope, dirty bomb, terrorist, etc., in order to swamp their filters with junk.

    I immediately thought, “Good! Teach those rotten do-badders a lesson if they try to break the law and spy on Americans.” However, then I got to thinking: Is this against the law? Is it the right way to protest the President’s obvious flouting of our democratic ideals? Would it actually do any good?

    Here is some commentary (in the comments, mostly), which might shed some light on the topic, although some of it is a bit lowbrow. Personally, I think whether or not you believe it is right (or legal), it will be 99.9% ineffective.

    Assume for a moment that there is some email wiretapping going on. How much email flows back and forth every second? It’s got to be in the hundreds of megabytes. No one has the ability to visually scan that much email. Therefore we get to the filter/datamining approach. How much email every second contains words or phrases that are innocuous in context–”I’m gonna kill my father for showing up drunk,” “She is the bomb,” “Y’all want to go to the quarry this weekend and blast things with guns?”–but would probably trip a dumb filter’s protocols? I’m sure it’s plenty. Too much to be looked at, again, by the budget-strapped agency that is the NSA (every gov’t agency is strapped).

    Therefore, we get to the point of smart filters. The only way I can think that this sort of datamining approach to work would be for the filters to know when something isn’t critical because of the context it is in. This scenario would invalidate the email tripwire described above and merely make your signature line look weird.

    So, in the first two cases, I think they would not be able to scan that much email with or without any deliberate insertions, and in the third, they wouldn’t see it anyway.

    Personally, I think Bush is off his rocker and should face some serious inquiries regarding these wiretapping revelations. But also, I don’t think a personalized NSA-Bomb of this nature would have much effect, either positive or negative, on our country’s intelligence organs.

    Again, for thorough commentary, see this link

  • Lion Country: Don't Roll your Windows Down

    Today’s NY Times has an article entitled Florida Wildlife Park’s Lions Lose Some Freedom to Roam, by Abby Goodnough. It concerns a safari park that is near and dear to my childhood memories, despite only one visit.  I remember driving through the park with my parents and sisters listening to this lioness asthsmatically hack like there was no tomorrow.

    The story of that trip doesn’t end until we get lost on the way home and end up in Yeehaw Junction, Florida. Yes, that is a real placename.

    But that is getting aside from the real story, which is people not following common sense rules.  Such as… 

    If you followed the rules – windows up, doors locked, absolutely no pets or convertibles – you could motor among packs of the fearsome creatures at Lion Country Safari, a drive-through wildlife preserve whose residents occasionally dislodged bumpers and gnawed on side-view mirrors.

    But in November, Lion Country Safari enclosed its 14 African lions in a tall chain-link fence to keep rule-breaking visitors from becoming lunch. Too many were opening their car windows and occasionally even doors, a park official said, making the threat of lawsuits too great for the small attraction.

    Ahhh, people.

  • Professional Ungineers

    Today I received a solicitation from the National Society of Professional Engineers concerning my membership—I’m not a member—and exhorting me to contemplate the benefits of association with their august group.

    Here is a quote from the beginning of the cover letter:

    Dear William:

    Nothing says “professional engineer” like the PE license.

    Ummm, duh? I’m at a loss for words. Truly. But wait, there’s more.

    Nothing says “professional engineer” like the PE license. Why? Because in a profession so affected by rapid changes in technology, techniques, and ethical issues, a demonstrated commitment to staying ahead of the curve is a pledge of excellence to a prospective client or employer.

    I won’t go on.

    If you can translate that last sentence into something that makes sense, please tell me what it means.

  • Gross Irregularity in Harry Potter Film

    Seven days until Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire hits the theaters. I was poking around in the internet movie database and discovered a shocking irregularity.

    Spoilers follow!

    In this studio still from the filming, you will see the names on the tombstone where Harry is used to bring Volemort back to his mortal body. This tomb is for Voldemort’s Father, his father’s wife, and his father’s son (I’m not calling them step-mother and half-brother because I don’t believe that applies in this case). They are, reading from the photo, Thomas Riddle (the father), …ry Riddle (which I assume to be the wife) and Tom Marvolo Riddle, who is Voldemort himself!

    What the Hell? Voldemort killed his father and his father’s family for vengeance sake. We know this. His father never had anything to do with him. We know this too, and not from reading further forward in the series, it’s in Goblet! What the hell are they doing messing with the story like that? If they change up the relationships of people now, it will have serious repercussions in the future movies. It will almost be an alternate Harry Potter reality.

    Grrr.

    Another thing that’s got me confused are the dates on the tombstone. They are difficult to read in the still, but it looks like Voldemort (Tom Marvolo Riddle) “died” in 1946 which doesn’t even come close to matching the timeline of the book series. I’ll reserve final judgement on the last part of this rant until I’ve seen the movie and read those dates better.

    [did you know that Harry Potter was in training to be a Jedi?]