massdestruction

Stuff I have been looking at

If I were looking for a new bike... and I were a little bit smaller (I have never been able to use that phrase) I would get this bike. I really like the rear tire.

I really dig the new attempts at changing people's minds about prefab houses. There is one going up in Pittsboro (very close to here) that is being sponsored by Dwell magazine. Unfortunately the website devoted to the house is down for "maintenance".

Rolls of Doom

Whatever you do... DONT MAKE THE ROLLS!!!!

URGENT NOTICE REGARDING POTENTIAL FIRE AND SAFETY HAZARD IN RECIPE FOR ICEBOX ROLLS ON PAGE 154 OF THE APRIL 2004 ISSUE OF SOUTHERN LIVING

Please DO NOT USE the Icebox Rolls recipe. Combining the water and shortening as described in the recipe may cause the mixture to ignite, is extremely dangerous, and could result in fire and safety hazards.

The correct recipe is currently available on our website, southernliving.com. It will also be reprinted in the May issue of Southern Living. If you have any questions, please call 1-888-836-9327.

Freedom to shutdown the press

It blows my mind what the U.S. passes off as "democracy" when we are pushing it on others.

The Kaiser

I am currently reading (among other things) Barbara Tuchman's classic history on the lead-up to the start of WWI, The Guns of August.

Although I am only on the 2nd chapter I already know that Kaiser Wilhem II was simply a man who wanted more power and thought the other heads of state didn't pay him enough attention.

Thanks Willie, thats quite a landslide you started.

An Open Letter to the FCC

To: Michael Powell
CC: Dennis Hastert, Doug Ose,Lamar Smith,Kathleen Abernathy, Michael Copps, Kevin Martin, Jonathan Adelstein
Subject: Public Offenses

Dear Chairman Powell,

This evening I was horrified to see that the United States House of Representatives has published a bill that includes some of the most vulgar language I have ever seen. You may reference this bill at the following website http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:H.R.3687:.

I am outraged that public funds are being used to print such filth. I would request that the FCC investigate this abhorrent document and revoke any publishing or broadcasting rights to the offenders. I would also ask that proper fines be placed on the offenders, I believe I read recently that Clear Channel paid $750,000 for the actions of that filth peddler Howard Stern. This is probably a good start for the deeds of the House of Representatives.

I appreciate your hard work and hope you will crack down on these offensive miscreants. What kind of country would this be if we let these types of people say just anything they wanted to?

Yours,

David Mason

Electric Motorcycle

I have decided that I would like to build an electric motorcycle. I am not talking about a scooter or one of those bicycles with a tiny motor. I looked online a little bit and found absolutely no kits for this. There are tons of electric scooters and bikes, but no kits for making a full size motorcycle electric.

I'd like to find an old Triumph or some such bike and do the work myself... but I have absolutely no clue where to begin other than buying an old bike. I don't think I will do that unless I get more of clue though.

I do think it is really odd that there are not more references to this on the web... there have to be people out there who want this... don't there?

Google God

For the first time in my life I lead a search term on google. This triumph comes from a simple blog entry about the Banana Splits.

Now when one searches for the terms drooper fleegle my blog is first. Woo! I rule!

A Triumph!

Critics are calling Dave's lastest submission to fuh2.com a Tour de Force. Roger Ebert says it mixes the "subtle with the sublime... not to be missed". Gene Shallot said something about the bats being back... we didn't really know what to make of that so we all just smiled and nodded.

Here it is in all its glory - I don't think its been posted on the site yet, but how could they not!

Liz answered an ecological question with a cute story of how she feels like a rock star when she drives her H2 to pick up the kids. Liz, you are a rock star... really.

The International Language

Havoc has written a few articles on the selection of language and technology in open source software - more specifically GNOME. I am glad Havoc has done this as he understands *how* to debate.

As one who avoids being a hacker I will admit that I use python and lisp on a regular basis. I know, I know all you lisp haters - I like it, its a very nice language to me. As you might guess though, I am not building large scale apps so perhaps I have a different perspective.

There is a good deal of discusstion generated from Havoc's post that seems to stem from the certain people's selfish interests instead of what might be best for everyone. I'd like to take another approach at this...

To my non-hacker brain none of this matters until the auto* tools are done away with. Good god - it is harder than all hell to simply compile and make a release of *anything* you code. Have you seen how people using Mac and Windows do it?

Well neither have they!

Get it?

Sure it is nice to have a language that doesn't "get in the way" as it were... but if the tools get in the way who really cares?

On the Prairie

We had a friend over tonight who was raised in South Dakota. Somehow the old TV show Little House on the Prairie came up in conversation. Our friend said she didn't like the show at all.

Why?

"We lived on the fucking prairie... why would we want to watch a show about it?"

Classic.

Fingerprinting Nukes

I am not quite sure I understand wanting to design a method for 'fingerprinting' nuclear fallout. I suppose it is important if someone gets hold of one of our nuclear bombs... but it would only apply to brand new ones right? (and we don't like to talk about the fact that we continually make weapons of mass destruction)

It seems like this could lead to a very odd practice of creating safer nuclear weapons... Berkley Breathed is probably angered.

An Open Letter to President Bush

Dear Mr. President,

Please, please don't smile (smirk?) when you talk about fighting the War on Terror.

Sincerely,

Dave

West Coast Y'all

1:20 AM

<dcm> so dude - whats living in the pacific time zone REALLY like?

<geoff> Everything is on at the same time as the east coast, just delayed

Still here

After a harrowing night of nausea I am still here. Today I hung out with my friend Paul and we continued to plot our way into power - real power.

I learned today that Paul doesn't read my blog everyday and that upset me. If he had a blog I would read it everyday. Hell, almost everyday I check people's blog who seem to never update them (you know who you are). Does this just mean I have too much time on my hands, or does it mean that I care deeply about the comings and goings of my friends? ...please don't answer that question.

I'll crawl back in my hole now.

The Decline of British Sea Power

I was really looking forward to going to see the band British Sea Power tonight but here it is 10:00pm and I feel like complete shite. I don't know why either - but I don't think I'm going to go damnit.

On a happier note I realized today that you could take the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, replace all the names of drugs with "Red Bull" and have a pretty funny bit of literature on your hands.

The curiously strong mintz

Tonight we had our good friend Rich, whom I met at the Clark campaign, over for dinner. He's on his way North and was kind enough to stop in. We also invited Fred and his girlfriend over - local ex-Clarkie. Cate made a great mole and we had a good time talking, eating and drinking.

I certainly am dissapointed that Clark didn't get the nomination but, to be honest, the hard part of leaving the job was leaving the exceptional people in the tech team. Very good people. Luckily a good number of them are working on the Kerry campaign up in D.C. so it won't be too far of a drive to visit.

Hell bent for leather

It appears that Hell is bending for other reasons. That's it, I no longer want to take drum lessons from an aging rock star... another dream crushed.

Extreme Butter!!

I don't believe this story about toxic popcorn. I think the RTP branch of the EPA was just looking for an excuse to eat a bunch of popcorn.

More on war

So my friend Bryan posted a very good reaction to my post on the war yesterday (in my now working comments section) and I want to go ahead and respond to it here on the front page. You should read it, its lengthy, but worth it.

First of all let me point out that the moveon.org movie was not the reason I feel and think the way I do, it just prompted me to write. It wasn't a very good movie even. The main points I think I got from it were that the administration tried to play up the imminent-threat thing and the ties to al quaeda which never existed as a way to sell a preemptive strike - a strike that fit into a political ideal. As a documentary it was doomed to failure in the fact that it was made by moveon.org - there just can't be an elimination of bias... but that's a different story.

I do not think that Bush and Co. created the idea of the weapons otherwise I would think that most of the world did too, as well as the last few Presidential administrations. I think they used the convenience of the situation to walk down the path the neocons have mapped out.

And thats the rub... my big problem comes from the simple disagreement with the ideas of the neocons (which I still don't like the terminology). The new book by Richard Pearle sums it up better than any other source, these guys want to take pre-emptive action against nations that they deem to be enemies in order to show other countries that we play hardball. His book lays out actions against many other nations besides Iraq. These guys have Dick Cheney's ear and to some extent, the President's ear. Their main triumph these days is Libya - "see how good the action in Iraq was for changing the area!" - which is bogus as Libya has been reaching out to the Western world since Clinton's presidency because they wanted the sanctions lifted. They offered hard intelligence on 9/11, they gave up the Pan Am bombers, etc. I can not buy into the neocon's ideal, it seems wrong on too many levels.

To one point, I don't have the answer to dealing with countries like North Korea but preemptive force just isn't it. To his credit, Pearle is a little shaky on invading them too - so I suppose he isn't off his rocker completely, but the core of his argument is something I will never buy into and it scares me that the ones who do buy into it are working with the administration.

the War

If I look back to the way I was thinking before the invasion of Iraq I see myself as someone who was trying hard to believe that his country was decent and would always at least try to do the right thing. To this day I still believe that Saddam Hussein was someone who should have been 'gotten rid of' but, as I said before the war, I would hope that it would have been done with other countries and without destroying the U.N. and NATO. I would also have hoped that the U.N. could have been even more creative in removing such people from power as was their charter to begin with. I still can't believe that the war was not sold as a humanitarian mission to get rid of a violent tyrant anyway... especially now knowing that the weapons issue was fabricated.

I just finished watching the moveon.org movie Uncovered: the Whole Truth About the Iraq War and it boils my blood to look back at all of this crap now knowing that there were absolutely no chemical, no biological, and no nuclear weapons. No more of this talk about still needing more time, there were never any such weapons and the issues related to the information were concocted by our President and his administration. Its that simple. No one can convince me otherwise now.

My favorite quote by George Bush on the subject came in an exchange with a reporter:

Reporter: Is U.S. credibility on the line over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?"

Bush:"Uh, I'm not exactly sure what that means"

No wonder the RNC and FCC are trying to pressure media outlets to drop ads made by the moveon.org people (which in and of itself is extremely Unamerican!). I think our country has done some serious damage to itself and is left in deep trouble. I really believe that and it makes me sad and angry. And yes, it has taken me this long to actually post something on the topic... thats how upsetting it is.

Roll me over

As I noted in my old blog there was a great article by Malcolm Gladwell about SUV's and perceived safety. I think his points overall are quite good but I may have found some facts to the contrary.

The National Highway Safety Administration has released their rollover tests for SUVs and one thing is surprising, the American 4x4 platform has better ratings than the 4x2 or the foreign 4x4 platforms. Note: the higher number is a better rating in the table

Digging a litte deeper, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety records fatalities in vehicles in the U.S and it seems that people in SUVs are much less likely to die in highway accidents than passenger car drivers. This may be a bit misleading as the number of SUVs on the road versus passenger vehicles might be much less... but you wouldn't think that around here.

I still think Gladwell's point of avoiding accidents is a strong one and I do wish that SUVs were subject to the same regulatory controls as passenger cars, but it does look as though the facts are confusing at best when it comes to safety.

Done and done

Thanks to Geoff for pointing out that I could simply change the comments url to the permalink url and achieve everything I wanted. Now you can all post your comments to me. Woot!

I've gotten a sore throat today. I hate sore throats.

In even other random news I have scaled and conquered Mount Laundry but I want to try out some of Mrs Meyers Laundry Detergent sometime soon.

Comments-thingy

OK all you MT gurus... I cannot figure out what is going on with the comments links in this blog. If you click on the time-stamp-permalink you will get comments fields but if you click on the comment link you get an error. I want to hear from you people but I am tired of working on the comments-thingy.

Side note to jfleck: in response to today's post, didn't Mexico City do something kind of similar in their restrictions of driving certain days per number on license plates? Of course people just bought two cars and drove everyday... but in some ways its similar. Perhaps an extra point for your writing... and you could go visit Federico too!

Blown away

And just as quickly as it arrived, it is gone.

Blow me down

A beautiful day all day. About 10 minutes ago the winds kicked up to amazing strength. I checked a local TV station's website and see that there is a high wind warning - up to 50mph. Limbs are hitting the roof. Trees are swinging back and forth. Oh, and its sprinkling.

Very, very odd.

The good, the bad, and the Macintosh

I started having some very odd problems with my powerbook a few days ago. It turns out that the latest airport software update can do quite a number on one's system. OK so this is the bad. With closed source there are no fast fixes to hunt down, and Apple pretty much denies that there is an issue with the update. Add to that that there is no clean way to downgrade this particular package. At one point my laptop stopped recognizing the battery and the airport card. Unacceptable.

The good came though... I learned of a cool feature of the Mac OS X install discs - there is an install that will basically tar up the user home dirs and re-install the system while preserving the users data. While I am not a big fan of reinstalling *nix-based systems (one should not have to after all) it was a cool experiment that went *very* well. Its a very nice feature to have.

After the install I upgraded everything but the airport software.

Should I smite them?

Geoff has a post by way of Fred that cracks me up. They are both good citizens.

Read it.

Reply All education

I have an idea... all mailers should have by default a lock on the 'Reply All' button. You press it you get a dialog stating:

You must enter your 'Reply All Course' completion number to use this feature.

With some new virus that is causing all sorts of problems I am getting a few hundred emails from clueless people wanting to know why Duke University has 'subscribed' them to a mailing list. The number of CCs is now in the thousands I think. <sigh>

Polly Polyp

I was in one of those large bookstores tonight and on a whim I walked into the Kids section and asked if they had any Parasite Pals books. The woman looked very confused and after double-checking the name appeared as though she was stifling laughter.

This has me thinking. I am considering a plan to go into the kids section of a bookstore each week and asking for some made-up series of books. Do you have the Croup Cough Kids series? Do you have Polly Polyp... the PopUp edition? Do you have Tommy Three Thumbs? You wouldn't happen to carry the Eric the Entrail series would you?

Engine Fires

For many years I have said that the only thing a Volkswagon is good for is an engine fire. In 2002 I changed my tune after reading an article about the new VWs - also Cate wanted one and when we looked at it I thought it was great. We got it, it was good. Now, to be fair, Cate does drive a long way to work and has put a great number of miles on her car... all highway miles which are easier on an engine. Today we found out that once again the Cam seals are leaking oil. We had the whole engine taken apart once to fix this... do we want to do that again? No. No we don't. I think we should let it go until we get an engine fire, Cate says its time for another car.

The only thing a Volkswagon is good for is an engine fire.