Thursday link roundup

• Ala. Officials Probe 'Monster Pig' Saga

  State wildlife officials said Wednesday they want to know how the huge hog dubbed "Monster Pig" got into a fenced hunting preserve where it was chased down and shot to death by an 11-year-old boy.
  ...
  weighed 1,051 pounds and measured 9 feet, 4 inches from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail.
  ...
  Jamison was hunting with his father and the guides on May 3 when he killed the giant pig. He said he shot the huge animal eight times with a .50-caliber revolver and chased it for three hours through hilly woods before finishing it off with a point-blank shot.

• Are you a good liar?
• Microsoft Surface
• Popular Mechanics how to videos
  

Scientific recognition of my personality

Psychology Today has a Field Guide to the Loner, though not me specifically.

Guiliani

As my libertarian and libertarian leaning friends have been bringing him up lately, here is a negative portrait of Rudy Guiliani.

And to expand on my bar rant of last night, he would make a great mayor (New Orleans needs one right now), and would probably make a great president if it were the year 1880. However, in our modern age presidents have far too much discretionary power, and pro-choice, thrice married, adulterous Catholics are far too good at living with contradictions to be trusted to keep their promises.

Quick link round

• Puzzles and Mysteries from ZenPundit
• The Captain America Syndrome at the Washington Monthly. - They don't actually call it that, but that's what they're talking about.
• This seems dirty, but it's mostly medical. Quite funny though.
  
• Yet more Stirling engines
  

I answer more questions no one asked

If bin Laden's intention behind 9-11 was to draw us into a quagmire in Afghanistan, and instead we invade Iraq, then wouldn't pulling out of Iraq and moving more troops into Afghanistan pull us into said quagmire?

A belated Memorial Day post.

There have been many, many others like it around the blogosphere today, so I'll just second this one from Scott Kelby.

Thanks.

Photography Note

For good portrait shots with an SLR camera, make sure the focal length (zoom) is around 72mm (or 50mm if you're using Nikon DX lenses, which most Nikons are). This minimizes lens distortion and ensures that the photographs actually look their subjects.

My magic portrait lens is set at this by default, and it's a wonderful thing.

Line of the moment

I came across this podcast of Steven Landsburg, author of More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics and found it quite entertaining. I thoroughly enjoyed his earlier works, especially The Armchair Economist (much better than Freakonomics). In the excerpt it has this bit:

...If your common sense tells you otherwise, remember that common sense also tells you the earth is flat.

Strange and funny

From the Wikipedia entry on Sam Peckinpah

Ray Bradbury tells the story of Peckinpah's long interest in filming Bradbury's novel Something Wicked This Way Comes. When Bradbury asked how Peckinpah intended to shoot it, Peckinpah said he would "rip out the pages and stuff them into the camera." Bradbury sold the rights to another party, and the incensed Peckinpah sent Bradbury a gift: a potted cactus and a jar of Vaseline.

Strange and funny

From the Wikipedia entry on Sam Peckinpah

Ray Bradbury tells the story of Peckinpah's long interest in filming Bradbury's novel Something Wicked This Way Comes. When Bradbury asked how Peckinpah intended to shoot it, Peckinpah said he would "rip out the pages and stuff them into the camera." Bradbury sold the rights to another party, and the incensed Peckinpah sent Bradbury a gift: a potted cactus and a jar of Vaseline.

The Grifters

I just finished The Grifters by Jim Thompson, one of the best hard-boiled crime dramas I've ever read. Told entirely in the first person, it's the dark and evil story of crooks, marks and no innocence whatsoever. Notable in it's absence is any objective description (well, there's almost none). Almost no "it was raining", "the night was cloudy", etc. Lots of impressions, feelings and lies, but no independent reality.

Highly recommended.

Michael Moore the inverted prophet

He did Bowling for Columbine, and the Democratic party changed positions on gun control, he did Fahrenheit 911 and Bush got re-elected, and now he has a new movie coming out on health care. Does that mean health care is going to be deregulated?

A retort I didn't say

While I was in Borders today I overheard someone say "I wish they'd just get what they have right instead of coming out with something new". I think she was talking about Microsoft Vista. I thought, "That's what they're doing, they're just adding a new skin and saying it's new." The the "fixed" features create other problems because that's just the way technology works.

Willful blindness in the media

I read the headline of this CNN.com article Ohio lethal injection takes 2 hours, 10 tries and was thinking how tough that guy must be, after all, 10 tries! Then I read

Death penalty opponents called on the state to halt executions after prison staff struggled to find suitable veins on a condemned man's arm to deliver the lethal chemicals.

The execution team stuck Christopher Newton at least 10 times with needles Thursday to insert the shunts where the chemicals are injected.

...

Officials said the delay was due to Newton's size -- he weighed 265 pounds. In May 2006, the execution of Joseph Lewis Clark was delayed about 90 minutes because the team could not find a suitable vein. He was a longtime intravenous drug user.

This is ridiculous. Not being able to find veins is quite common in any hospital, nursing home, or drug den. After a prolonged period of being jabbed with needles the veins (quite sensibly) appear to retreat and get much harder to find. A high percentage of body fat will makes it hard as well. It's not like this guy withstood the lethal dose ten times or anything.

This is why everyone should read The Corner.

The wheel turns full circle

Feminists arguing that adult women shouldn't be allowed to make decisions on what to do with their bodies. In this case raising the age of consent to appear on Girls Gone Wild videos from 18 to 21. Oddly, the author supports her argument by pointing out the many lawsuits filed against GGW producers by people who did not consent to be photographed/videotaped. It's a bit like saying Iraq is a horrible disaster, therefore we need to invade Iran.

I suppose the right of women to control their bodies only applies below the waist.

Thursday link roundup

• Hitchens has a sharp pen - Jimmy Carter is his particular target today.
  
• The economics of The Wire - I suppose I need to write one about the economics of the Shield to fully flesh out the crime show econ world.
• Top 100 website run by one guy - hopefully someone will be writing that about me.
• How to photography silhouettes
  

Local music legends mentioned in the mainstream media

Atlanta based garage rock duo The A-Sides are briefly mentioned in today's Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Random Thursday links

• How to fix the Microsoft Home Page
• Robert Conquest's 3 Laws of Politics

  1. Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
  2. Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
  3. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.

• More Stirling Engines how to guides - this one looks a bit better than the last one I posted. Here is another one.
• The top 100 web apps for freelancers - mine is not on it, yet.
  

A needed innovation

Last night I spent about seven hours trying to get a particular Microsoft web product to work, only to discover at the end of a long search that you simply couldn't make it work that way. I was trying to update the error message dynamically and have it appear in the VCE

It would be quite handy to have a list of things that a product CAN'T do, it would save so much time trying to prove negatives. Perhaps that should be a new site idea.

Quote of the morning

From Marginal Revolution

If they were more like me, they wouldn't be them in the first place.

The oldest living tree

From this article

The oldest known tree is "Methuselah", which is 4,789 years old. To keep Methuselah from harm, this tree isn't labeled, as the other trees are. An older tree called Prometheus was killed shortly after it was discovered in 1964.

Recommended reading for Tuesday

• Londonistan Calling - Hitchens goes back to London. Choice quote:

  He was a conspicuous figure because, having lost the use of an eye and both hands in an exchange of views in Afghanistan, he sported an opaque eye plus a hook to theatrical effect. Not as nice as he looked..

• The Crime Against Kansas - Why isn't this sort of thing in more history classes? You might hear about John Brown's raid, but never about any clashes
  

Monday link roundup

• A useful post from CodingHorror.com on interface friction
• Al Gore, like Ann Coulter, seems to be a mac person
• A blog for women! And one of the editors might be someone I went to high school with.
• Kuler! The Adobe web color harmony tool - via this site
• Co-Mapping (mind mapping software) looks cool
• Properly bashing ethanol
• HiddenUnities and PurposeSlog have posts on the Wire and 24. I helpfully added the Shield in the comments. All excellent programs, though 24 is basically a commercial for the cell phone industry, not torture.
  

Firefox tip

(via CodePoet) To speed up Firefox

Open Firefox, type about:config into the adress bar, filter on "v6" (this should easily find the ipv6 setting)
Right click it and choose "toggle" and the FOX is back in business.

It works quite well.

The Civil War in time lapse format

Coming Anarchy has an awesome time lapse animation of the Civil War, it's one of the best animations like this I've seen.

Worm gears and motors and robot, oh my!

As my mad scientist phase continues, I've come across a few cool supply sites (some from Mark)

• Robot Objects
• Surplus Robot Parts
  

In other news, I just ordered 3 sets of brass robot gears for ten bucks from E-Bay. They should arrive soon.

Two from Slate

• Hitchens on Falwell - a nice vicious hit job, closing with

  It's a shame that there is no hell for Falwell to go to, and it's extraordinary that not even such a scandalous career is enough to shake our dumb addiction to the "faith-based."

• On Generals - An interesting piece on the lack of turnover at the Pentagon due to the Iraq war. Unmentioned is the lack of turnover as a result of 9-11, which should be the larger clue.
  

We live in scary times when Bill Maher is right about something

Check out this post from The Agitator. The whole "They hate us for our freedom" bit sounds nice, and is partly true, but it is the most useless adage ever created. If we're going to reduce the number of terrorists to zero (the goal) we're going to need to do more than just proclaim our greatness and ignore all specifics. Sigh.

Funny

After the Snuke episode of South Park, the cast of 24 actually sent them one of the suitcase nuke props as a gift.

V for Vendetta

I finally saw the V for Vendetta movie and found it soils my memory of the comic. Gone was the grit of Evie, the violent mystery of V, the looming menace of the state. Replacing it was corporate angst, an ocean of improbabilities, and a third rate parody of the Bush Administration. Gone was all the base motivation, the insight into human nature, and a believable origin of the crisis. Instead we got soap opera, pandering nonsense, and an explanation out of a Michael Moore movie.

Somehow they turned a potent story of pure anarchism into a theme of left-wing resentment.

All that being said, it was well acted, especially by Steven Rea, who caught the essence of Finch very well.

If Granny had wheels, she'd be a trolley

Starting with this review of a CNN.com Michael Moore's movie "Sicko is Socko". It prattles on and on about the inequalities and suffering that result from illness. All true most likely. Read that and ask yourself, "So What?" Is the same leviathan that brought you the Iraq War (or "Peace" if you prefer) likely to improve matters? Or for that matter, one that couldn't even find a way to discreetly have sex with interns?

The second one is "What if Lincoln Had Survived?", also on CNN.com. If they had the medical technology of today but not the 25th Amendment, what would have happened?

Isn't there some news site that caters to the person who is interested in news?

For far better non-news brain candy, check out this history of the 1920 Wall Street bombing. The perpetrators of that attack, much like the anthrax mailer, were never caught.

Wind Power in Popular Mechanics

Popular Mechanics has an interesting article on Wind Power on their site. Sadly, it makes it seem unworkable on any kind of large scale. It would be quite handy on a small to medium scale though.

First HDR attempt

The image is nothing spectacular, but the HDR process really brings out the grain and contrasts from the source files (HDR stands for high Dynamic Range).

First thoughts on Brave New War

I just finished reading John Robb's Brave New War and I'm struck by how similar his vision of the future was to David Friedman's Machinery of Freedom.

I'll have my review of the book later. On the whole I liked it a lot.

Local cooling

I sit here at four in the morning, listening to Woodie Guthrie trying to restore a database that a client accidentally deleted the day before launch (yay me). And it's 54 degrees outside. In Georgia, in the middle of May. It seems unnaturally cold lately.

I wonder if there's a site somewhere that tracks local temperatures and plots, plots a yearly average and indicates if that is lower than average or higher. If not, that would be a cool AdSense supported project...

How does the West expect to win...

When we have judges like this

"The trouble is I don't understand the language. I don't really understand what a Web site is," he told a London court during the trial of three men charged under anti-terrorism laws.

Prosecutor Mark Ellison briefly set aside his questioning to explain the terms "Web site" and "forum." An exchange followed in which the 59-year-old judge acknowledged: "I haven't quite grasped the concepts."

A cool idea

ThinkCycle.org - an open source community for machines.

Interesting bits of knowledge

About evolution in this case

Since records on the subject began in the mid-1800s, the average breast size in the US has increased from a 32-B to the current average of 36-C. This may be a result of better nutrition, healthier lifestyle, or the result of the aforementioned sexual selection.

A mad scientist period

For some reason I'm going through a mad scientist phase right now. My current idea is pair a passive solar heater with a Stirling engine and see how much power is actually generated. Hopefully I'll have time to work on it in a few weeks.

Quote of the moment

Via CodePoet, and from this page

It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter. (Nathaniel S Borenstein)

and

There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses. (Bjarne Stroustrup)

and

Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration. (Stan Kelly-Bootle)

Wednesday round up

• 5 Techniques for Enhancing Contrast in Digital Photos
• "Breeding dysentery in the ranks" - the best misuses of the English language in the Sopranos
• What journalists need to know about economics - quite good
  

Wars in the Middle East are officially a vested interest

I read this article on CNN.com

White House taps general for 'war czar' post
President Bush has chosen Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, the Pentagon's director of operations, to oversee the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan as a "war czar" after a long search for new leadership, administration officials said Tuesday.

In the newly created position, Lute would serve as an assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser, and would also maintain his military status and rank as a three-star general, according to a Pentagon official.

and was reminded of this Albert Jay Nock quote:

Experience has made it clear beyond doubt or peradventure that prohibition in the United States is not a moral issue; it is not essentially, even, a political issue; it is a vested interest.

and this H.L. Mencken quote:

The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.

We have this horrible tendency in our culture to see the means (a big new bureaucracy) as an end in itself, nay, an achievement. What endeavor has failed because there are too few managers? The right managers, sure, lots of failures due to a lack of them. But too few?

Plus an additional bureaucracy just creates it's own principal-agent and knowledge problems.

Functionally Lute will probably serve as a dedicated adviser, but why the title Czar? All of the Russian Czars were an odd combination of stagnant, incompetent and murderous. Why is that some role model.

Sigh.

Tuesday rapid fire

• A BBC documentary about Private Military Companies
• Geoengineering
  
• Amazon.com buys DPReview.com - I've bought my last two camera based on DP Review's recommendations
• High Dynamic Range photography - I'm surprised I haven't heard of this before. A flickr group is here, and the photoshop tutorial is here. I'll probably have some examples soon.
• Photoshop madness - unmentioned is American free time
  

New photo gallery

Sunday night in Alpharetta

Characterization of Environmentalism

A random thought: A useful way of distinguishing amongst environmentalism is that people see the world as a museum that can never be changed, and mankind must adapt their behavior to suit it, and not the other way around. A good example would be those who would have us reduce our carbon emissions rather than take positive steps to take carbon out of the air (for instance using the proposed carbon vacuums or the algae-iron flakes method).

I realize it's the views are seldom in stark conflict.

Monday link roundup

• It's Wiretap the Internet Day - what have we come to in this country. Sigh.
• Entrepreneurial Adages - All quite true. in particular

  Start with nothing, and have nothing for as long as possible -- small budgets give big focus

• Battlefield spy-bot - really cool
• Tribal Minds
• The indispensable Col. Patrick Lang has an outline of what a diplomatic solution to Iraq might look like. I would read all of it. Webbed version of the outline is here.
  

The tin can Stirling engine

I came across simple plans for a tin can Stirling Engine on the interweb, I think I'm going to build one. I've had some thoughts on how to pair one up with a solar chimney that might actually work. I'll keep everyone posted.

Sunday photography

I wound up taking some shots for a friend of mine's site and wound up with a lot of good shots. My brother took the one of me (the first one) and I took the one of Steve Coffey (of the band the Rockin' Pontoons) (the second one). Galleries on the way soon.

Taken at my brother's house

Taken off of North Highland

Reason #93,843 for private schools

This is quite weird

Teachers Stage Fake Gun Attack on Kids
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Staff members of an elementary school staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables.

The mock attack Thursday night was intended as a learning experience and lasted five minutes during the weeklong trip to a state park, said Scales Elementary School Assistant Principal Don Bartch, who led the trip.

"We got together and discussed what we would have done in a real situation," he said.

Today's quote of the day goes to...

Cokie Roberts who characterized Barack Obama as "the candidate from Whole Foods".

The Sniper

I finally finished watching The Sniper, a good film noir from 1952. It's a good tense drama about a compulsive sex killer (who uses an M1 carbine, heh). One funny moment comes after the protagonist burns himself on a stove and goes to the emergency room. In addition to the memorable scenes of doctors smoking in hospitals, it has the line

E.R doc: A man's got no business messing around with stoves, it's strictly a woman's business.

Blogger is back!

It's been hanging on posts for the past few days. Now it's working again for some reason.

An excellent flick

I just finished Knock on Any Door and was quite impressed. It's quite similar Dead Man Walking in that it explains a path to crime and it's resolution in the death house.

Quote of the evening

From the movie Knock on Any Door

Female Lead: If I were as cynical as you I'd hang myself.
Bogart: I don't trust the rope.

Manhattan project for energy independence

Some ideas never go away; to wit, in what way does the statement, said by many "we need a Manhattan project for energy independence differ from Soviet industrial policy? It's quite different from the original Manhattan project in that it's quite wide in scope and chases an ill defined goal, whereas the original Manhattan project was quite specific in both method and destination.

An interesting interview

With Charles Barkley

A nice short overview of Kurdistan

From Stephen DeAngelis, who is in Kurdistan right now.

How to be a better photographer

In video no less, on Digital Photography School.

Apocolyptic quote of the moment

From Michael Lind

Modernity shot itself in the head in 1914. How much longer ought we expect the body to live?

Lou Dobbs is the perfect man of the age

By repeating the dumber parts of the conventional wisdom in a solemn tone he continues to be taken seriously. Case in point, his newest CNN.com column (he drags down the whole franchise IMHO) A call to the faithful. It's an adventure in the non sequitur. While lauding the separation of church and state he points to examples of church based groups having opinions on matters of pure politics, i.e. Iraq and immigration.

Neither of those are religious matters. If they were trying to implement Sharia, force church attendance, establish a state religion or mandate that government personnel had to be of a particular sect, or any sect, that would be one thing. But these are either pro/anti war choices, or pro/anti amnesty choices, which have no inherent religious significance. Religious people may care a lot about them of course, but so can a lot of people. He then quotes Romans 13, with

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.

In a democracy, the governing authority is the people, and the above verse would seem to encourage public participation in the process. Dobbs would seem to want separation of people and state.

Tuesday Rapid Fire

• Networks, in Forbes
• Tin Can Stirling Engine - really cool, this would go nicely with the passive solar heating system that I blogged about last week.
• Global warming awareness reaches diminishing marginal returns, aptly explained by Instapundit. I'm still waiting for the Shotgun News green issue.
• Gauss vs Pareto, if you understand bell curves, you should read this.
• Robots, Robots, Robots, in Iraq and elsewhere
• An insightful article on internal migrations in the US. By Michael Barone