DryaUnda's Musings

Cambridge University Press has agreed to destroy all unsold copies of a 2006 book by two American authors, "Alms for Jihad," following a libel action brought against it in England, the latest development in what critics say is an effort by Saudis to quash discussion of their alleged role in aiding terrorism.

In a letter of apology to a wealthy Saudi businessman, Sheikh Khalid Bin Mahfouz, Cambridge University Press acknowledged that allegations made in the book about his family, businesses, and charities were "entirely and manifestly false." The publisher wrote, "Please accept our sincere apologies for the distress and embarrassment this has caused."

Bush and bin Laden don't scare me, but this does. there is one consolation though:

Libel law in England is more advantageous to the litigant than is American law, which has stronger First Amendment protections.

Let's just say that's both an affirmation and a challenge.

Wow, somebody's mad.

Have there been rants about Bush/Cheney like this before on mainstream news?

You want surreal that can surpass M. Night Shyamalan's version of Avatar? No? Well I'll show it to you anyway: live action Bratz.

I do this for the lolz.

I play the stream on a totally random whim and the first thing I hear is that something happened to Chris Benoit. You see, I used to watch pro-wrestling so the name got my attention. I did a quickie search and found...o_O.

The short version, Benoit smothered his wife and 7-year-old son, then hung himself. Roid rage is strongly suspected.

...Oh, I forgot to add that I used to want to be a pro-wrestler. I was worried about keeping a job with my temper back then, you see.

Some summaries for you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ufl6YZXl5U&NR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlgzdyGSPJw

    While stomping up to my library a second time this evening, having forgotten about one due book, I thought about how RFIDs would make things so much easier. Imagine, books that are due let you know when they're clumped together, which due books are missing, and which ones aren't due yet. It'd save me a trip, and save the libraries some hassle.

    I told the librarian about this, she said that the idea came up and was voted down. Strangely enough, the Berkeley library system is using RFIDs while San Francisco's isn't:

The Board of Library Trustees (BOLT) approved the library’s purchase of RFID over a year ago but the protesting didn’t begin until after the San Francisco Public Library proposed their implementation.

    Let's assume the government wants to track down everyone who checks out The Republician War on Science, or some such critical book. I can think of three ways they could do it:

• They can send snoops to drive by every house and pick up the RFID signals. This assumes the snoops' radio equipment can pick up a few microchips in a house. This also assumes the equipment can cope with apartment buildings.

• They can plant snoops in front of libraries with radio listening devices. Ideally, the snoops actually on location will be inconspicuous loiters under the direction of spymasters. Lets assume not one of them will notify a reporter when offered a little money to sit near a library all day with a black box.
  • Should professionally spys be used instead, assume neither boredom nor the accounting department will be a problem.

• They can do away with untrustworthy humans and just plant the black boxes near libraries, antennas pointed at the exits. Let's assume not one snoop box gets its signal traced by a hobbyist hacker.

    After They record the information, They need to collect it via:

• Radio transmission from the spy boxes to a collection station. Assume They will be able to conceal traffic of an active shadownet so close to Web hotspots like libraries, colleges, and Internet cafes.

• Physical pick up. Since people can't routinely poke around in the accessible yet unassuming places the boxes are planted without looking suspicious, the spooks'll have to dress up as crazy people. Throughout the monthly nighttime pickups all over the nation, the street crazies digging in loose soil near libraries will go unnoticed.

    Now that They know who read what dangerous idea, They need to know what to do with it. They then consult the spooks who've already been tracking credit card purchases for years now. When I least expect it, Big Brother will strike at me from the shadows because of my offending Amazon purchases. I'll bet They're the reason I couldn't even get a retail job in December, even with a professional job consultant's help. (Never mind a job history that begins and ends in the spring of 1997.)

    The last few days, I've been thinking about how my Mary-Sue becomes a hidden corporate mastermind behind technological progress. Not even she will have the power to dick around with every student activist, even with the patronage of a secular god.

    Okay, so it was actually Comcast's boo-boo, I like the title.

Some New Jersey tots got an adult education Tuesday when a cable TV giant replaced a Disney cartoon with hardcore pornography.

    ^_^

"It was two people doing their thing, it was full-on and it was disgusting," said [Paul] Dunleavy, who asked that his son not be named.

    I wonder how hard that name would be to look up in the phone book. That aside, his indignant tone makes me roll up my eyes. Really, porn's only disgusting if there's an unattractive body part in the way. Most porn's actually more boring than anything else.

"If you can't feel safe letting kids watch the Disney Channel, what can you do?" asked Dunleavy, a father of three from Middletown, N.J.

    Hmm, would that be like Middleton from Kim Possible? (Fanfic writers, take note.) Anyway, what can they do? Go direct to DVD or iTunes (or equivalent), hopefully not costing as much as a cable subscription. There's that recurring theme of endangerment though.

"I couldn't believe it. We try to do the right thing to protect our kids from this stuff, and then they broadcast it on children's TV," Dunleavy said.

    Considering that pervs will likely be looking up your name in the phone book, you could've best help your family by keeping this between you and Comcast -- or at least withholding your last name.

"My son was extremely upset because he thought he'd done something wrong, and we're hoping what he saw doesn't become an issue for him.

    Emphasis mine, because it seems it wasn't the sex per se that bothered the kid. Kids are more likely to be traumatized by the current Burger King mascot than anything else.

"If he asks about it, we'll have to find a way to discuss it with him.

"What did I see?"

"What you saw is call porn, son."

"What's porn?"

"Porn, or pornography, is a TV show showing people having sex."

"Why?"

"Some people like to watch others have sex."

"Why?"

"Because people are turned on by sex."

"Why?"

    This is the part where you have to explain sex itself to a kid. I'll differ the the advice of the parents on my f-list for that.

"But I'm speechless. I try to protect my kids from a lot of things, but I wouldn't have thought Disney would become one of them."

Again, protect them from what? Bad acting? Worse dialog? Dangerous-to-immitate sanitized violence? (Wait, that isn't in generic porno...) Most parents don't seem to worry about that last one, usually saying that their kids know better. Why can't kids know better regarding sex?

While checking up on what Annalee Newitz has to say, I found some disturbing news. Below is what worries me in particular (emphasis mine):

One of the highest courts in the land, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, has determined that it's legal for an employer to fire a female employee who refuses to wear makeup. Think this through slowly and carefully, girls: if you live in the 9th Circuit (which covers California, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Idaho and Montana), you could be fired tomorrow if your boss decides your "uniform" for work includes makeup. Supposedly this ruling doesn't run afoul of discrimination law because it doesn't impose an "unequal burden" on women. Do you want to know why, ladies and germs? Because a rule for women enforcing face paint is "equal" to a rule forbidding men from wearing it.

I wouldn't forbid men to wear makeup. In fact, most men could certainly do with some.

    About a decade ago, I was trying to advocate the Millennial Project among my schoolteachers. Their reply? That we shouldn't bother, since Big Oil companies would set up OTEC colonies first. I mention this to abruptly segue to the same kind of hopeless-helpless puling:

If you turn on any radio station or read any article in virtually any newspaper, the consensus is that the American voter prefers Democrats to Republicans and that the Democrats have a legitimate shot to take over both houses of Congress. Such news ought to make Democrats so hopeful that they’re spending their evenings crouching in corners, fingertips in their mouths, chattering with glee, like little devious children as they try to figure out how they will change government during the coming years.

Don’t believe it for a second. Here’s a prediction: Democrats will not take over either house of Congress. They will make gains that will ultimately be characterized by the news media as “disappointing”. Why do I believe this? I believe this because Karl Rove says so. As repulsed as I am to admit it, Karl Rove knows more about the American voter than all Democrats put together. Karl Rove has been right about everything for the last seven years and I, for one, don’t expect anything to change. During interviews about the upcoming elections, Rove just sits there like a political Buddha and calmly explains why he believes Democrats will not take control of anything. If Karl Rove says it, I believe it. Democrats ought to take heed, but they don’t. They are too politically stupid. After all this time, the still don’t get it.

(Four paragraphs of Iraq War rant later...)

If only Democrats were smart enough to [lie]. Instead, they’re a bunch of political retards and it’s not exactly a mystery why they’ve had so much trouble, why there’s more trouble on the horizon, and why the American public has so little interest in what they have to say.

    Yes; you whine instead of act, wait for the second coming of Jesus Fitzgerald Kennedy, and then wonder why anybody would vote Republican.

    I just know I'll be seeing flak for my "whine instead of act" remark; every entry I've made where my mood setting was "satisfied" backfired somehow. Before you accuse me of hypocrisy, I'd be activist myself if it didn't feel so much like a flying head-butt into a wall. Somehow, I suspect that's going to be everybody else's reason as well.

    Let me explain a little more from where I'm coming from, as an advocate of something new, the last thing I want to see is blind adherence to Murphy's Law substituting for thought. I was like that once, I can tell you from experience that I wasn't trying to be critical so much as trying to be cool. It's the perfect crime; I could be rebellious without getting into trouble, and I could look more wise and caring than everybody else. If I'm trying to promote something as the the One True Way to escape the world of the damned, so much the better. Personally, I think people are also peer pressured to say anything that'll keep them from getting labeled as "Sheeple"; better to put down others than to put down on yourself

    It makes me feel so good to see this pseudo-critical thought get throughly disproved, it makes me feel good because it's something to point to when somebody says "They'll find Osama in late October of 2008, you'll see." The only thing I see is the same prediction for 2004. More to the point, it lends strong evidence to my hypothesis that doomsaying about anything isn't critical thought nearly as much as it is an articulated fear reaction.

    Fear of difference, fear of novelty, fear of being wrong, fear of change, I have nothing to fear but the fear others have. Everyone, don't assume that God is a killer game master.

(Yanked from Beth)

Yes, grown livers from umbilical cord cells. These three paragraphs say it all:

As it stands, the mini organ can be used to test new drugs, preventing disasters such as the recent 'Elephant Man' drug trial. Using lab-grown liver tissue would also reduce the number of animal experiments.

Within five years, pieces of artificial tissue could be used to repair livers damaged by injury, disease, alcohol abuse and paracetamol overdose.

And then, in just 15 years' time, entire liver transplants could take place using organs grown in a lab.

Besides the obvious benefits, this completely hashes the entire premise of Parts: The Clonus Horror.

I can't wait to see the opposition to this; polemics about the looming lack of Personal Responsibility regarding alcohol, and so forth. Say, let's make this post different; let's come up with ways this technology is Wrong(tm). We'll understand opposing viewpoints and vent at the same time!

(I'm still feeling spacy...must remember not to examine all the candidates and ballot measures in one day...)

    One of the great things about being a political independent is that I'm free to decide which political pork seems to be the best medium-to-long-term investment, without worrying about pleasing "the party".

    I'm a bit puzzled, though, by my tendency to vote for Democratic-backed candidates, measures, propositions, bonds, and such. I'm puzzled because I have very strong libertarian tendencies.

    Don't get me wrong, I don't vote the party line of the San Francisco Bay Guardian. I looked at both sides of everything there was to vote for. I'm sure I did a good job voting for or against everything based on educated self-interest (primarily by checking who supports what, as Mom does). I'm also just as sure that my voting was influenced by "affluent guilt"; I don't want people to get me wrong as the other extreme.

    So there's the how and why of my voting; what's yours?

    Due to the hiring of an incompetent plumber, I had neither hot water nor a running shower. Nonetheless, I still went to the trouble of freshening myself up for the Exotic Erotic Ball. (I did quite well considering the circumstances.) Pity that Exotic Erotic dropped the ball.

    Here's the thing, the EEB is basically a sexually provocative costume party -- a couples party judging by my luck with finding a fondling partner. I'm no hardbody, but I'm certainly more attractive than average; the problem was whomever happened to be my type was already with somebody. I certainly wasn't going to offer myself to the fat, hirsute, dirty old men completely unashamed of their full-frontal nudity...

    Even if you do have a playmate to squeeze, I still recommend against the $85 ticket price:

    • I couldn't bring in bottled water, the interior was sweltering, the drinking fountain didn't work, and bottled water was quadrupled in price. I put these all in the same sentence for a reason.

    • A $4 coat/bag check. Of course that's not included in the ticket price!

    • A hard rock band only notable for being all-female; I swear the only thing differentiating their songs were the lyrics. With music loud enough to literally vibrate the air in my lungs, you'd think I'd at least be able to buy earplugs. Where there wasn't 140 db noise, there was 110 db hip-hop playing in the crowded aisles between the booths.

    • The crowd was dense to sustain nuclear fusion, it certainly felt hot enough. I've also found that there's an inverse correlation between crowd density and the ability to meet new people.

    • On a lighter note were the world's stupidest Christian fundamentalists picketing and demanding we choose Jesus over Hell. I say "world's stupidest" because they occasionally ranted about orgies going on at the event. The irony was that the event was as hot and frustrating as Hell.

    In retrospect, I likely would've gone anyway even if I did find negative reviews ahead of time, as I'm making a point to acquire a broad base of experiences. If you're interested in an erotic costume party in San francisco, go with Halloween at the Castro instead as it's open-air and you'll only be asked for a $4 donation.

The evening wasn't a total loss, mind; in addition to some porn sites*, I found this promising sex club. It looks like there's hope for me yet. :)

* (Akira Lane, Armando Huerta (non-Flash MySpace page...if you have a fast modem and some spare time), Sticker Chick, and Vanessa Blue in case you're interested.)

    Another late news item from Miss Dynamite, serious news that may provide more laughs than uprooting terrorists from a pot plantation. Apparently, Evangelicals are coming to realize that politicians will lie to you.

[A]s the Foley cover-up has many evangelical Christians wondering whether the G.O.P. is really in sync with their values, "Tempting Faith" provides the answer: No way.

Kuo, citing one example after another of a White House that repeatedly uses evangelical Christians for their votes — while consistently giving them nothing in return[.]

    So how was loyalty kept? The same way Napoleon kept his troops loyal: status baubles.

Little trinkets like cufflinks or pens or pads of paper were passed out like business cards. Christian leaders could give them to their congregations or donors or friends to show just how influential they were. Making politically active Christians personally happy meant having to worry far less about the Christian political agenda.

    Reminds me of my in-laws, who won't own up to the fact that Jesus wants us to give and give and give. I'm a selfish atheist and I'm more generous than those megachurch fucks elbowing through crowds for better spots at their Billy Graham circle-jerks.

In fact, Christians who voted for Mr. Bush based on his religion, may have ended up hurting the very people Jesus sought to help: the poor.

    I got that sweet line from the article's continuation. Thankfully, Kou really is a Christian.

Part of the problem, he says, was indifference from "the base," the religious right. He took 60 Minutes to a convention of evangelical groups – his old stomping ground - and walked around the display booths, looking for any reference to the poor.

"You’ve got homosexuality in your kid’s school, and you’ve got human cloning, and partial birth abortion and divorce and stem cell," Kuo remarked. "Not a mention of the poor."

"This message that has been sent out to Christians for a long time now: that Jesus came primarily for a political agenda, and recently primarily a right-wing political agenda - as if this culture war is a war for God. And it’s not a war for God, it’s a war for politics. And that’s a huge difference," says Kuo.

    Yes, that 60 Minutes, this goes beyond partisan blogs.

While doing research for my random Scientology babble, I found the South Park episode Smug Alert!, about hybrid vehicles, their outspoken advocates, and San Francisco. Wondering how anybody could possible razz about hybrids, and curious of how Parker & Stone would depict San Francisco, I finally got around to watching the episode.

I was amazed with how arrow-splitting accurate San Francisco was depicted; the cool geography, the annoying smooth jazz, the infuriating sanctimoniousness, the connoisseurship of flatus that passes for intellectual discourse -- all accurate.

How do I know all this? I live in San Francisco too...

Needing a good laugh, I decided to watch a re-run of Fight Science, which was nothing but bad science. How, you ask? Well...

• In general, the experiments were a complete mess.

• If you're testing the legitimacy of the martial arts mystique then you need to include non-martial artists as points of comparison.
• If you're comparing martial arts to each other then all participants should be in each experiment.
• If you're measuring life-or-death utility then telegraphed blows on still targets are only bad comedy. Get a guy in a special padded suit rigged with sensors and arm him with shocknives.
• Test only one of the above at a time.

• The math was even worse.

• The Muay Thai kick was measured with a different metric than the other three kicks.
• The reaction times used different notations; 0.18 sec compared to 1/5 sec (i.e., 0.20 sec ) strikes me as dishonest presentation to an innumerate public.
• Swing circumference doesn't mean anything.
• If I don't know the minimal lethal (or breaking) force, throwing numbers at me doesn't do anything.

• "Ninjutsu, I want to take you on a journey...to your own deconstruction..."

• Balancing on plum flower poles doesn't show anything useful. An obstacle course, though, would make for better science and television!
• Glen made a very good point about targeting weak points, because that begged the question as to why raw force was being tested in the first place.
• A strike to the axillary nerve is non-lethal, yes? I've seen live tests of mace and tasers, so why should nerve strikes be any different?

• The weapons tests, such as they were, left much to be desired.

• What's the minimum swing effort needed for a bludgeoning weapon to cause injury? Testing this question would have at least addressed concerns about control and breakage.
• Each sword should have been tested for the three mentioned variables of piercing, slashing, and breakage, which they weren't.
• While I'm going on about breakage, don't use weapons that are rigged to break.
• Don't want to test the blades on dead pigs? Put a skeleton in the ballistics gel, if an art geek can do this then surely the great and august National Geographic can.

• Finally, I end with some odds and ends.

• So, speed-punching...how does it compare to the other punches? Same thing for speed-kicking.
• Drunken Fighting wasn't even tested!
• One of the brick-breakers said that failing to shatter the blocks would cause the energy to bounce back twice as hard. This means one of two things:

• A circus strongman has beaten the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
• He meant to say that it's a question of what gives first, the bricks or his body. Of course, phrasing it that way would have made the audience wonder why the bricks gave first, which would have led to an answer that deflated a lot of the hype. The bricks were far enough apart to have room to break but close enough for the strongman to maintain momentum (and suspend disbelief).

• I'd like to see Li Jing and Alex Huynh in indecent clothing -- yummy.

Where're the Mythbusters when you need 'em?

    I completed the 20th Annual AIDS Walk this Sunday.

    ...Wow, $3.77 million. Let's see where that money's going.

    ...Wow, it'll take me a while to figure out how much of it goes to nifty retrovirus research programs. I'll just go back to the front page.

    Hm, a video *click*. BLEAH! Folksy music! I'll just get to the bullet points.

    • This whole all started when a former classmate by the name of Joan Chang e-mailed a request for donations. Curious as to her reaction, I sent her $50. She seemed happy with me bankrolling her entire pledge goal; not jumping for joy, mind, since she's on the shy and subtile side.

    • Having nothing better to do, I decided to participate in the walk myself. Being a cheapskate, I set my pledge goal at $25 -- the minimum needed to get someone on an honor roll that nobody would read. Feeling something resembling charitable, I asked my mom if she'd be interested in sponsoring me. She agreed, all in the spirit of tax-deductable charity.

    • Sunday was living up to its name with the weather, thank goodness for that gal handing out sunscreen.

    • Crowd density and my mood are inversely correlated. Being something of a pessimist, I was pleasantly surprised when the crowd dispersed -- then I took off. Happiness is being able to go at my own pace.

    • I saw lots of stuff: two good-looking circus performers (a male and female), a group of not-so-good-looking crossdressing cheerleaders, a doughy guy in a pink wig and string bikini, a sharp-looking leather daddy, some belly dancers, a waterfall, SPAM's polka band, too damn many dogs, lots of greenery, and the changing sea of people I kept passing by.

    • ...the flow...I have seen the truth...we are a liquid, dynamic and pliant...individual flows, none impeding the other...perfection...

    • When I wasn't in my walking trance, I was noticing how I was clinching my lower abdominals. Happiness is a buff tummy.

    • I didn't keep exact time, but I think I completed the walk in ~1.75 hours, give or take 15 minutes. While I wasn't exhausted, my legs were stiff and tired out -- and remained so throughout Monday.

    • Happiness is free food. For anybody going to attend the AIDS Walk in the future, avoid the Honey-baked Ham boxed lunches unless you like garlic. Also, any future hamburgers will be ordered sans-bun, I can't believe people still eat white bread.

    • Being able to talk with two of my old classmates (Joan and Jason) was nice. I wish I didn't blank out on topics when around people, though. I told Jason a bit about the wisdom of crowds, and was able to get Joan to open up a bit with some chemistry chat, so that's something good.

    • While pulling a heavy pack, I can hustle eleven blocks to a pickup spot in ~18 minutes. Yes, this was after the walk.

That walk was fun, I'll have to attend more civic events in the future.

"Before the U.S. military made Matt Buschbacher a Navy SEAL, he made himself a soldier of the Fourth Reich."

That's the very first line. It gets worse in the same page:

"[L]arge numbers of [...] extremists continue to infiltrate the ranks of the [U.S. Army]. Military recruiters and base commanders [...] often look the other way."

Outing them doesn't seem to help:

"[T]he military took no [punitive] action against former Navy SEAL Matt Buschbacher, who continued to fight in Iraq after the Southern Poverty Law Center had alerted officials to his active support of neo-Nazi groups."

Apparently, our government just doesn't give a damn:

"[W]hile military regulations prohibit all gang-related or white supremacist tattoos, many recruiters are ignoring such tattoos, or even literally covering them up." (emphasis mine)

Maybe we should just say that they're gay. After all, gays could corrupt or few good men an ways that race warriors never could!

One of my terrorism worries is of frogmen blowing up the dikes in Amsterdam. When Mom phoned me about "something happened to the World Trade Center", my reply was "What, did they fall like Jenga towers?" Hopefully, my (no longer blase) pessimism won't be accurate a second time.

    I'm all for capitalism, but not at the cost of user-friendliness.

    When I do a search for a FAQ for a magical girl cartoon, I don't want to see a Toys R' Us product list. (Hmm, I wonder if being undermarketed actually helped the Sailor Moon fandom.) I really don't want to see a bunch of korp-speak (i.e., "biopharmaceutical solutions") when doing genetics research.

    Free-floating stupidity is one thing, but now there's plans not only to strangle the Net, but to fight the Net itself. The right to choose between brands won't mean much when there aren't enough brands to choose from.

The location of this report especially alarms me...

Police can now enter homes of DUI suspects without a warrant.

(AP) SAN FRANCISCO Police may enter Californians' homes without warrants to arrest those suspected of driving under the influence, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a case testing the scope of the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.

The 6-1 decision follows similar rulings in about a dozen other states. A dissenting justice said the majority handed authorities a "free pass" to unlawfully enter private homes and arrest people without warrants.

While I don't either drink or drive (in this city?), my mother does (though not at the same time, of course). If any of us gets political enemies, Mom could be in big trouble.

(I figure a low-investment news entry is as good a ping as any...)

This is probably stating the obvious about charity, but I find this quickie article worth a quickie mention because:

    • It shows that charity can't survive on Christian sacrifice alone.
    • It demonstrates the usefulness of working across disciplines.

One of my amusements is reading about so-called Christians who are about as pious as quick sex in an alley. That's why I recommend Slacktivist. While I am most definitely not a Christian (which the author is), I still enjoy his writings on McChurchgoers and the Left Behind series.