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September 27, 2004

Define "collusion."

Flirting With Disaster - The vile spectacle of Democrats rooting for bad news in Iraq and Afghanistan. By Christopher Hitchens

The plain implication is that the Bush administration is stashing Bin Laden somewhere, or somehow keeping his arrest in reserve, for an "October surprise." This innuendo would appear, on the face of it, to go a little further than "impugning the patriotism" of the president. It argues, after all, for something like collusion on his part with a man who has murdered thousands of Americans as well as hundreds of Muslim civilians in other countries.

Oh, horsecrap. If you're going to try to turn the "impugning the patriotism" schtick back onto the Democrats, you're going to need a far less specious and whimsical premise than this. How he gets "collusion" out of this is beyond me. You might want to ask Jose Padilla if the gummint was "colluding" with him when they had him stashed away for a number of months. It's entirely possible that the government could hold bin Laden against his will in one of Cheney's "undisclosed locations. " Jesus. The rap on Hitchens is that he's supposedly intelligent. Apparently not, given this indulgence in fuzzed, sloppy thinking.

Posted by John at 3:31 PM |

Fat City?

Yahoo! News - Study: Living in the Suburbs Can Make You Sick

An adult living somewhere like Atlanta, with its spread-out suburbs and car-heavy culture, will have a health profile that looks like that of someone who lives in Seattle -- but who is four years older, the study found.

And the culprit seems to be exercise, or the lack of it, the researchers report in the October issue of the journal Public Health.

If people just used bikes for all trips of even 3 miles or less, it would still have far-reaching effects in both public health and street planning.

Posted by John at 12:54 PM |

Gillmor gang indeed

If RSS ain't broke... | Tech News on ZDNet

See how many gladhanding, namedropping shoutouts you can find in this latest conflict-ridden (now with no disclosure!) advertorial puffball from RSS cheerleader and "tech journalist" Steve Gillmor.

Posted by John at 11:56 AM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

But the prices are so low.

Wal-Mart stops sale of anti-Semitic tract - Sep. 24, 2004

Jewish leaders had complained that the book, which purports to tell of an international Jewish conspiracy to take over the world, was being sold on Walmart.com with a description that suggested it might be genuine instead of a forgery concocted by the Czarist secret police in the early 20th Century.

Posted by John at 11:41 AM |

An entire meal in a pill!

ST(O) : If all stories were written like science fiction stories

"Should we take a train, or a steamship, or a plane?" asked Ann.

"Trains are too slow, and the trip by steamship around South America would take months," replied Roger. "We'll take a plane."

He logged onto the central network using his personal computer, and waited while the system verified his identity. With a few keystrokes he entered an electronic ticketing system, and entered the codes for his point of departure and his destination. In moments the computer displayed a list of possible flights, and he picked the earliest one. Dollars were automatically deducted from his personal account to pay for the transaction.

I wrote a story just like this in 8th grade. And the article captures perfectly why I really just don't like science fiction. I tried reading some of Boing Boing amanuensis Cory Doctorow's stuff recently, and it grated on me badly. It was some horrible combination of coolfucking and product placement from the future. This post sounds like Cory Doctorow 20 years ago. Wired gets off on this same sort of thing. It just seems like more superficial bullshit to me.

Posted by John at 11:36 AM | | Comments (1)

No bombs on bikes

New York City - Manhattan news

The city has even entered itself in a contest for the nation's most bike-friendly community sponsored by the League of American Bicyclists, a national advocacy group in Washington.

It's occurred to me that the city would be much safer if the mayor established a London-style congestion plan and severely limited the amount of automobile traffic in Manhattan. You can't get a truck bomb near a building if you're letting far fewer trucks into the city in the first place.

But instead we get the cops seizing bikes and talking about cyclists "obeying traffic laws." You know, like the drivers all do. Right.

Posted by John at 11:29 AM |

September 15, 2004

A must read

A intelligent, thoughtful account of Emmanuel Goldstein's (of 2600) arrest during the RNC protests. Long, but really worth reading.

Posted by John at 3:08 PM |

September 14, 2004

Oprah's big gift

It would have been so much cooler if she had given them hybrids.

Posted by John at 12:02 PM |

September 8, 2004

More to XCode than you thought.

Developing Cross-Platform UNIX Applications with Mac OS X

This is kind of cool:

Using Xcode
It may not be immediately obvious, but Xcode understands Perl, Ruby, and Python files and will highlight keywords and strings in color as well as provide indentation support and pop-up symbol navigation.

Cool. Any way to set up XCode as an "external editor" for BBEdit?

Also sort of interesting to find out that you can actually build regular 'nix software via XCode via a "GNU Make" project. Though I'm still not sure this has any advantage over the ./configure ; make ; make install dance. Interesting nonetheless, and I'll definitely play with XCode on my Powerbook this evening.

Posted by John at 4:00 PM |

September 3, 2004

Boutique software

Techdirt:Big Flexible Software Or Focused Situational Software?

For years we've had attempts at making programming tools for non-programmers and that hasn't gone very far. Meanwhile, the idea of componentized jigsaw puzzle software has been trotted out on a fairly regular basis -- and while there have been religious wars on various implementations, very little has actually changed in the way most companies develop software.
HyperCard and Applescript come to mind. I tend to think that for very simple things that do not need to scale at all, they can be useful tools. My standard for Applescript used to be that you could build about a page of code before you started swearing at the machine. Past a certain point, "simple" programming tools rapidly get in the way and become a hindrance to development. I at times wonder if the grail of programmerless app building tools can really be realized for anything less than automating drudgery.

Posted by John at 11:51 AM | | Comments (2)

September 2, 2004

11 ways of looking at an election

Eleven Public Opinion Insights on the Election

Interesting read. We're in for a very rough couple months. The showdown states are in a dead heat (according to this article) and I think it could really go either way, even if Bush appears on stage tonight holding bin Laden's severed head by the hair.

Posted by John at 12:00 PM |

September 1, 2004

A nation of shut up

...: the full story

Excellent account of a man arrested at last week's Critical Mass/RNC protest:

They loaded us up on a city bus with our bikes and took us to a facility on the Chelsea piers that was, as we were told, specifically for the convention week to hold protestors. We also learned that we were being arrested and detained as a "messsage to all the other protestors this week."

Talk about your "chilling effect" on speech. Dissent has another meaning on the street that those of us blathering safely away here would do well to remember.

Posted by John at 2:47 PM |

Russell gets it right

Russell Beattie Notebook - Republicans Suck 2004

Republicans just keep on lying and lying and lying until the stupid people think it's the truth just because it's so consistent. E.g. "Death Tax", "Flip Flop", "Libera Media" - it's *not* but now everyone assumes it is, and the conservatives get their way always. They are manipulators extraordinaire. Have you read the platform? Revisionism and manipulation at it's best. Goebbels could't have written it better.

Exactly right, and it's the most frightening part of their strategy. I think of it as the "la la la I can't hear you" strategy - no matter what the other side says, repeat the same argument verbatim ad nauseam. Don't acknowledge any reply, don't respond, just keep repeating it over and over.

Frightening. Read the post; it's not easily dismissed as Bush-bashing, or its evil cousin Bush-hating. (Though it will be anyway; remember the strategy.) Russell lays out the arguments against Bush in eloquent anger.


Posted by John at 9:02 AM |