Image of the Week

Posted on April 25 2004 by Mickey
    I haven’t posted much this week, and in fact I don’t have anything much to post. In lieu of real content, here’s a photo of President Bush’s reaction to all those scary pro-choice women who marched on Washington today…

Are they gone yet?
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Happy Earth Day 2004!

Posted on April 22 2004 by Mickey
    Courtesy of Earth Browser, here’s what our beleaguered little home looks like, right now, as of 3:00 PM (EDT).

The Earth
Posted in News, Space | 1 Comment

I Gotta Get Me One of Them Cat-Eating Fords

Posted on April 20 2004 by Mickey
    Completely by accident I watched the local news today. When they talked about how Ford was outraged their advertising company had created an authorized and controversial Internet ad I of course had to find it for myself. And since I spent so much time looking for it (and found, as of now, a live link for it) I figured I might as well make a blog entry out of it.
    The ad is controversial, at least to American viewers, because it depicts a cat decapitation. And Ford has been forced to strongly disassociate itself. “We find this unauthorized ad totally unacceptable and reprehensible,” says a spokesman, “and deplore the fact that it has been unofficially issued.”
    Interested yet?
    Here’s a link that is, as I said, active for now.
    And, for good measure, here’s a link to another Ford / animal encounter.
Posted in Links, News, TV, Video | 2 Comments

Studies Show Studies are Crap

Posted on April 19 2004 by Mickey
    For some reason the decision at Duke University to eliminate early morning classes has become a big deal. Their concern is that studies show college students are getting less sleep than ever, therefore the university is eliminating 8 AM classes and will begin counseling students on the benefits of a good night’s sleep. The average for college students is reportedly six to seven hours a night. Seeing as it’s quarter after two in the morning as I type this, I can’t help but react with a sarcastic “Awwww. Poor babies.”
    Six to seven hours a night? I wish!
    The director of counseling at Duke is suggesting students should get more like nine hours of sleep. Coincidentally, the same day as Duke’s announcement, the University of California San Diego has found that the same problems that afflict light sleeps also affect those who get too much sleep. And too much sleep, according to them, is anything over eight hours.
    Go figure.
    It looks like Duke’s plan might backfire on them, resulting in cranky zombie students no matter what they try. The San Diego study suggests people should beneficially get only between seven and eight hours of sleep. I doubt my internal clock is that precise, and, sadly, fixating on this uncertainty is bound inevitably to keep me up at night.
    I guess what I’m driving at is that college students are lazy bums and that I need to take my NyQuil earlier so it will kick in on time.
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5 Months & You’re Out

Posted on April 16 2004 by Mickey
    Don’t have much to say. I’m just typing this up as a way to show my PowerBook some love. The upgrades that Apple announced today have made it obsolete. I made the mistake of going to Apple’s site, so now my laptop knows that it’s been surpassed and superseded. It’s a tough break, even though it’s just a tiny increase. Nothing like the emotional trauma it will suffer when I can finally get a 3GHz G5.
    Oops. Better hit Submit before the PowerBook realizes what I just typed.
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ITT: I am Bored

Posted on April 16 2004 by Mickey
          Diet Blog: Day One Hundred Five: my Easter feasting had less of an effect than I feared. I weighed 207 this morning, a pound less than last week, with a total of 31½ pounds lost.
    In other personal news, I’ve finally gotten around to adding John Williams music to my iPod. I figured I’d start with the 2-disc “Special Edition” releases of Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back (the ones with the complete scores); but after listening to them a couple days I realized I actually prefer the “concert version” edits of the original LPs. I’ve since gone back and replaced those albums with rips from the four-CD box set, which is a closer approximation of the original LPs, but with improved CD-sound. (The only drawback is the Empire disc is missing the Mynock Cave music, so in that instance I did rely on the 2-CD set [with a quick bit of iTunes editing to remove the music from the first half of the “Mynock Cave” track, which is duplicated in the single disc’s “City in the Clouds” track].)
    I recently upgraded my NetFlix service from two discs to three — just in time for them to lose one of my discs, so that I was paying for three but only getting two! While waiting for movies to show up, I started watching my box set of Season One of 24 again. I was already aware of that glaring blooper in the final episode (even though Jack is supposed to be working alone, note the crew member with the face mask), but I discovered another blooper midway through show 12. During an interrogation scene, you can clearly see a secondary film camera shooting an alternate angle (as shown below).

Top: what the camera was shooting. Bottom: the camera itself (at left)
    Oops! I guess they weren’t quite used to the new 16×9 shooting format.
Posted in Diet, Music, Personal, TV | 1 Comment

Robocop

Posted on April 14 2004 by Mickey
    I didn’t think I’d be posting today — my forehead is still too bloodied from beating it against the tabletop during Bush’s press conference last night. But I just had to point out this news story I just read, about Verichip’s “smart gun” technology. According to AP: “The tiny chip would be implanted in a police officer’s hand and would match up with a scanning device inside a handgun. If the officer and gun match, a digital signal unlocks the trigger so it can be fired. But if a child or criminal would get hold of the gun, it would be useless.”
    Drawbacks include an inability to defend oneself using a partner’s gun, the possibility of being wirelessly hacked and causing the officer to repeatedly punch himself in the face, and the automatic casting of sixteen thousand “no” votes for Al Gore when in contact with a Diebold e-voting machine. Nowhere do they mention the drawback of the police officer needing to have a freaking computer chip implanted in his body, like he’s some bear cub in the wild.
    It’s an interesting concept and it might be a great benefit, but I really can’t see it being successfully implemented. I’d expect most gun owners would insist their hands be cold and dead before agreeing to such an implant.
    Re: the press conference…
More >>
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Actionable Intentions

Posted on April 13 2004 by Mickey
    President Bush announced he’s going to address his fellow Americans tonight for forty-five minutes. Broadcasters are confused because he has decided to start at the unusual time of eight:thirty. Fox has announced it will be pre-empt 24 because of this, which really ticks me off. Now I have to wait till Sunday at 9 PM to find out if Jack Bauer offs Chapelle.
    It’s not like we don’t know what Bush is going to say either: that the August 6 PDB was not a plan, that its items were not actionable, that someone’s hair was possibly on fire, and that he would’ve moved mountains to prevent the 9/11 tragedy…if only the terrorists had been more specific.
    Well, you know what? I know someone who believes something should have been done anyway, without the need of specifics. And his name is George W Bush…
    Let me get this straight. Pre-emptive strikes are okay when it’s Daddy’s war. But not so hot when it’s Clinton’s idea.
    Right. Good plan.
    (Audio courtesy of The O’Franken Factor, by way of the unofficial Air America Radio archives.)
    P.S.: Am I being too harsh? You know, there are some people who actually love this administration.
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Pedantry

Posted on April 12 2004 by Mickey
    It must come as no surprise to admit I’m a sniveling little know-it-all. I must confess however that I’m not quite the pedant I’d like to be. This is made even more obvious by Your Dictionary.com’s list of the 100 Most Often Mispronounced Words and Phrases in English. I do know how to properly say “respite”, “forte”, “zoology” (as shown in the list); but I have a nasty habit of sloppily pronouncing “prerogative”, “theater”, and even “take for granted” (as well as using “nother” and saying “drowned” when I mean “drown”).
    The careful pronunciation of “diphtheria” is new to me, but then again the word hasn’t come up much in conversation. And apparently I’ve been pronouncing “electoral” wrong, along with “lambaste” and “long-lived” — which I dispute — and “parliament”.
    Speaking of disputes, I must point out, flexing my pedant muscles, that the list is incorrect when it comes to “duct tape”. It is called “duck tape”, and was given that name by the military with regard to its waterproof properties. Also differentiating “spitting image” from “spit and image”, as the list does, is pointless, since the phrase should really be “spirit and image”.
    Hah!
    (Link taken from #!/usr/bin/girl.)
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Yesterday’s Technology Today

Posted on April 11 2004 by Mickey

No, not another Janet Jackson reference.
Nor a Simpson at night.
It’s Venus from 1882.
    Slashdot mentions a fascinating story about what might arguably be called the first movie. On December 6 1882, astronomer David Peck Todd created 147 glass plate photographs of the transit of Venus across the face of the Sun. “Fast-forward 120 years,” reads the article at the Sky & Telescope website, as Bill Sheehan and Anthony Misch convert these glass plates into QuickTime, animating at last the images Todd created. [Link to large form movie (4 MB). / Link to small form movie (1.2 MB).]
    “The result, which premiered at the International Astronomical Union’s general assembly in Sydney in July 2003, shows Venus’s silhouette flickering strangely as it marches across the Sun’s face. It’s the shadow-show of an astronomical event that occurred when Queen Victoria sat on the throne of Great Britain and Chester Arthur was president of the United States — a moving record of an event seen by no one now living, and a preview of what millions will see for the first time on June 8, 2004.”

Emir of Bukhara (1911)

    Slashdot’s comments point to the work of another forward thinking mind: Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, “photographer of the Tsar”, who in the early 1900s had, according to the Library of Congress, “developed an ingenious photographic technique [for] images to be captured in black and white on glass plate negatives, using red, green and blue filters. He then presented these images in color in slide lectures using a light-projection system involving the same three filters.” These amazing full-color photographs vividly capture his world at that time.
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