Me 'blog.

Monday, March 12, 2007 [09:32]

We've moved!

I've decided to move my primary blogging spot to Neon Derby Cars. It's an anagram, y'see. But mostly, I wanted to add some new features to my blog, but didn't want to bother adding them myself. Anyhow, go there for further updates.

Monday, February 19, 2007 [10:06]

Victory is not an option

That's the name of a brilliant editorial by former general William Odom, outlining the fallacy of continuing in the quest to turn Iraq into a western-style, liberal democracy.

Odom lays out--and then knocks out--what he calls "the four myths" that the Bush administration uses to keep us from calling for immediate withdrawl. If we leave:

The country will fall into chaos: Too late. The country is already in a civil war, and our presence only fuels it.
Iran's influence in Iraq will grow: Had we been successful in building a democracy in a country with a large Shiite population, increased Iranian influence would have been a predictable result.
Iraq will become a new haven for al-Qaeda: It's unlikely that al-Qaeda could be influential in Iraq after the current civil war resolves itself. In the meantime, our leaving would leave al-Qaeda with one mission: supporting the Sunnis against the Shiites.
We must support the troops: The troops themselves are growing disillusioned with their mission. Also, phrasing it in these terms incorrectly implies that "the troops" chose the mission, and war supporters are simply respecting their judgments. In fact, the president chose the mission, and the troops are making huge sacrifices by respecting his judgments. To support the President, support the war. To support the troops, bring them back home to their families.

Odom also argues--quite plausibly--that withdrawing troops from Iraq will open up a host of diplomatic options that are currently unavailable to us.

Glenn Greenwald points out that this is how Democrats should be talking about our role in Iraq.

In any event, the entire Odom interview (and his Op-Ed) ought to be read by every Democratic consultant and anti-war politician. So many war opponents and Bush critics feel compelled to express their opposition defensively and apologetically. It is common to hear them -- especially political figures -- prefacing their war opposition by bending over backwards to assure everyone that they are patriots, that they care about the troops, that they want to protect America, too -- as though those matters are legitimately in doubt.

Reading the commentary surrounding Odom's article (and a later encounter between Odom and right-wing radio pundit Hugh Hewitt), it seems that war supporters are obsessed with asking Odom the question: "Do you know how many Iraqis will die if we pull out of Iraq, and do you care?" When phrased in such terms, it's easy to make Odom look like a heartless, bloodthirsty sunovabitch.

But I think Odom is right not to be overly concerned with the aftermath. Because war supporters have an interest in making a pullout appear disastrous, it's likely that the results will be less apocalyptic than many are saying. It's impossible to know for certain which scenario is worse, but I sincerely believe that our military presence there is only pouring fuel on the fire.

Anyhow, this sounds like an insincere rhetorical device, given supporters' indifference to the Lancet study estimating 600,000 war-related deaths since the invasion began, and by their lack of interest in a better-funded, more comprehensive study. In short, why should I believe that Bush supporters are genuinely interested in protecting Iraqi lives, when they show no interest in finding out how many are dying right now?

Before I close out this post, I'd like to address another "big lie," this one about Congress' power to cut off funding to the Iraq conflict. I support such a move, and I do not believe that there is no risk of even a single additional U.S. military casualty if it happens. Do supporters of this war honestly believe that "cutting off funding" means simply stopping all shipments of MREs, bullets, and fuel to our troops? Are we going to simultaneously cut off the troops' direct deposits?

The rank and file might believe it, but the influential pundits from the right simply have to know better. They want you to have this picture in your head of a young American serviceman, surrounded by insurgents, firing in a heroic frenzy. Suddenly, his M-16 clicks, his clip is empty. Before he is killed, he utters his last four words: "Damn you, Nancy Pelosi!"

It's a stark picture of just how much Democrats "hate the troops", but it flies in the face of reality. In fact, there will be plenty of funding for force protection, defunding or no. I think the Democrats should immediately pass a resolution guaranteeing that funding, simply to get this false picture out of the public's mind.

Monday, February 05, 2007 [15:32]

Cross-post from Salon

Salon.com is carrying an interesting (but I believe flawed) proposal for campaign finance reform.

My response. In summary: TV advertising is expensive and counterproductive, and should be reined in somehow. Individual states could band together and enact a similar proposal, without having to pass national legislation.

Of course, all this raises the question: Who asked for my opinion?

Thursday, February 01, 2007 [08:28]

It all ends in fire

The following is a dream I just woke up from. It's still pretty raw. I find myself taking deep, self conscious breaths, and being amazed that I can do so.

I was wandering Salt Lake City, minding my own business, when word came to me that there was a nuclear bomb somewhere in the city. Nobody else seemed to know about it, and I wasn't quite sure how to broach the subject.

In a complete logical mis-inference, I went looking for a newspaper. It would know what was going. But before I could find one, a gray mushroom cloud appeared somewhere in the distance, out towards West Valley. It was like a giant hammer, coming down on my mind. All those people, suddenly dead. I didn't know what to do, or where to go. It was like the concept was too big to fit in one brain, and it shoved everything else out in the attempt. All those people, suddenly dead.

The wind was heading in the right direction, so I didn't feel much immediate danger. There were a few people around me, all in shock. I was trying to think how many people might have died, and what day it was. I thought if I could remember today's date, it would tell me something about how this would be remembered.

As I was thus dithering about, when I really should have been looking for safety, or buying bleach, plywood, and duct tape (all disasters require bleach, plywood, and duct tape), I saw something strange off in the distance. It was a sort of geyser of purple flame. Then another erupted, and another, some of them very close.

I started shouting at everyone to get inside. I ran down a stairway inside the shop, leading to a basement. Others followed. I thought to myself, this is about as safe as I can be, given the circumstances. Almost as soon as I thought it, the wall began to glow purple. I turned and saw the floor behind me glowing purple and cracking. As I ran back up the stairs, the air around me was heating quickly. I stumbled, then fell. My eyes had stopped working, and I could feel my body burning away.

As the superheated gases choked the life out of me, my brain was doing a quick mental calculus: Dying now, with so little done and so much to be done, made the whole effort of living up to that point seem pointless.

I came awake with a choking cough, so surprised to be alive that it took a few seconds to realize that I was happy about the fact.

The funny part? Still not as bad as the zombie dream. Let us never speak of it again.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006 [17:55]

Bwahahahaha!

Now that our takeover of the despised United States, we blackhearted liberals can finally announce our 25 point Contract Against America.

Oh, and we'll be teaching evolution to illegal immigrants.

Saturday, August 19, 2006 [08:34]

I hate blogging

There's been a recent addition to the family. Once again, Dee Zell has come through to save our family from genetic extinction. Her newest is a beautiful girl named Aunicka, which sound a lot prettier than it's spelled.

Frankly, there is no way this could live up to my entry about Beauden. I tried, but it wasn't turning out well. Face it, Aunky, it's tough trying to compete with the eldest for attention. You'll likely get fewer photos in the family album and less undivided attention than Beauden got his first couple of years. You should have planned ahead, and done something to mix it up. Like... I don't know... being born with nine heads or something. That would have gotten you all sorts of attention.

On the upside, your elder brother did you a favor by loosening your parents up a bit. They'll be letting you do things at the age of two that Beauden never could have gotten away with. Like getting your nose pierced.

So, why does blogging suck? It's times like these, when I feel an obligation to really nail an entry. It's not often you get to welcome a new wriggly-squirmy into the world, and the occasion seems to merit a really kickass entry. I'm pretty proud of the write-up I did for Aunicka's older brother, and it seems unfair not to give this one equal treatment.

So there's some self-imposed pressure there. But I'm in a totally different and suckier place right now. Last time, I was happy with myself and with my life. I was doing well in school, I'd just moved into a new apartment up by the U, and I was just starting up an exciting new relationship with a beautiful woman. These days, I look at my life, and find little to brag about. My recent stint in San Francisco shattered my self-confidence, Nala has moved on to someone more suited to her, and while we're trying to maintain a friendship, when I'm around her I still seem to reek of inadequacy and failure.

The point is, I'm not happy about my life, and when I'm down on life, blogging only forces me to dwell on it. I'm sorry, Aunicka-who-I've-likely-spelled-wrongly. Your very existence is a miracle, and I just don't have it in me to do it justice.

Thursday, August 03, 2006 [08:54]

The Bay burps

Magnitude 4.4 is approximately enough to make the natives think a big truck rolled by. At least, that's what the guy at the bookstore thought when I asked what I'd just felt.

Friday, July 21, 2006 [10:02]

Dance Dance Burnination

I forgot to write about my trip to Oakland last week for another Fire Festival. The trip was generously sponsored by my company, to whom I owe much fiery gratitude. This particular instance lacked the serendipity of the original experience (which took me from "never heard of it" to "being there" in about thirty minutes), and I was less impressed with the dancers. But what little it lacked, it more than made up for in 1) sheer volume of propane consumed and 2) Dance Dance Immolation.

DDI is described as Dance Dance Revolution. With Flamethrowers. Pointed at you. It is also listed as a proposed solution to SFZero Task #373: "Deliniate a real-world problem. Fix it with fire."

I'm too lazy to do a full write-up today, and I don't think I could make it terribly interesting. Today, allow me to instead serve as a humble conduit for SF weirdness.

Thursday, July 20, 2006 [19:36]

It's a great day to be an American!

/me hits Google News looking for anything to justify the preceding statement.

Let's see what we have.

"U.S. Opposes Cease-Fire with Hezbollah."

"Veto of Stem Cell Bill Bush's First."

"Nigerian 419 Scams: As Effective as Ever."

Never mind.

Actually, I do have a quick point to make on the second headline. Lots of bloggers are claiming that Bush is trying to pander to his evangelical base. I don't. I think he honestly believes he's doing the right thing, and that just goes to show how messed up his priorities really are.

The veto is based on a single misguided belief: that allowing federal funding for research using new stem-cell lines would increase the number of abortions. This belief is based on the sort of economic analysis that you might employ when explaining the law of supply and demand to a third-grader: if more people want fetal stem cells, then there is more incentive to produce fetal stem cells. Therefore, people will have more incentive to have abortions.

This line of reasoning is inadequate for the current situation, where we have so many sources for these cells that no forseeable increase in demand could ever hope to make a dent in the supply. Setting abortions aside, the two obvious sources of new stem cells would be miscarriages and in vitro fertilization clinics.

I'm convinced that this is the motivation behind the veto, because it dovetails nicely with two of my other cherished beliefs. First, my belief that MBAs like W make really sucky economists. Second, my belief that free-market ideologues have an almost religious devotion to a rather simplistic concept of supply and demand. That's why they balk at government interference in business, even when it can be shown to do great good, and also why they balk at anything that might hint at an economic incentive for abortions, even when it cannot be shown that it would actually affect people's behavior.

The conservatives say that liberals don't have any ideas. Meanwhile, it seems that many of them have exactly one: The Free Market. You know how it goes. When all you've got is a hammer...

Hmmm... That's not at all where I was headed with this entry. I'll try again tomorrow.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006 [19:48]

Pretty girl smile at boy

I told you I'd mention it again.

Monday, July 10, 2006 [20:31]

I'm such a pushover

It says disturbing things about me, the fact that I can congratulate myself for seeing right through a guy who is hustling me for a few bucks, even as I'm pulling out my wallet.

I have no right to be smug, since it's clear who profited from the exchange. And in fact, the train ride after, I wasn't smug. I was thinking very dark, uncharitable, downright Republican thoughts. But then as I came into the office, the pretty girl from the office across the hall was coming out, and she smiled back. My annoyance melted away, and all that's left is the smug.

So what follows is my critique of what will be henceforth referred to as "The Hustle".

The hustler started off on the right foot by not asking for the money straight off. Instead, he asked me if I needed directions, which both made me feel a sense of gratitude (even though I didn't need directions) and which helped disarm any potential defenses I might have had. Of course, my defenses against people asking for money are only slightly less pourous than the Canadian border. He needn't have bothered.

Then, after asking where I was from, he didn't take the cheap and easy route of claiming that he was a native Utahn.

But the pitch was a little too practiced. The breaking point came when he claimed that, as a college student, I was unique in my intellectual gifts, and would therefore be able to grasp the concept of him needing money "to get home". It was a transparent shot at my vanity, and he could only have been thinking "what a rube" as he said it. And I could only have been thinking, "Dear god, how stupid does he think I am?"

Clearly, stupid enough. In the end, I gave him three bucks. He'd asked for $11.80, a convincingly arbitrary figure. He didn't thank me, and given how condescending I felt towards him, there isn't any reason he should have. Really, what makes me think I'm any less an open book than him?

Did I mention that a pretty girl smiled at me? Good. Check back tomorrow, and I'll surely mention it again.

Monday, July 03, 2006 [21:52]

Free meandering lessons!

Sometimes the lampposts of this city are just too generous for words. I wandered through Haight Ashbury, looking for the Ghost of Hippies Past (no dice, but I did find their poet laureate). On one of the lampposts, there was an advertisement for "free meandering lessons." So I took one.

Today, another sermon by David Bradbury Haning. I left it where it was, because it seemed selfish not to let others see it. But David would like you all to know: "To those of you who think you are older than me, I have given you false memories of a life that never existed."

Also, "Osama is like a fishhook. Jesus is the bait." Amen, Brother Haning. Amen.

Saturday, July 01, 2006 [13:10]

It's not easy being green

Previously, I mentioned that I'd recently switched to a vegetarian diet, but didn't bother to explain my bizarre rejection of all things meaty and mouth-watering. I present my explanation... wait for it... wait for it... now!

Fairly soon before Nala and I broke up, we decided to do a day hike around Farmington Bay. We loaded up the girlfriend, the dog, the sandwiches, the water, and my lucky autographed glow-in-the-dark snorkel, and rolled forth to engage in Healthy Outdoor Amusements.

The day was misty and muddy, a bit chilly in the beginning. There were lots of birds of the widest variety, which could be broken down into the following classifications: seagulls, ducks, and birds to let Nala remember the names of. Let's face it, I never had a prayer of becoming a talented birder.

Things were going nicely, until Metsi's amazing nose led her off down a side trail. Curiosity is contagious, and we followed. What we encountered had to be the single most gut-wrenching, nauseating thing I'd ever seen in real life. Hundreds of dead muskrats, skinned and carelessly dumped by the roadside. They looked like skinned cats with rat tails. Some of them were in pieces. It was heartbreaking.

We left quickly, still reeling from the images. Nala was taking it especially hard; her love and concern for animals has always run to her core. I was never as good at reading her moods as I would have liked, but I could tell she was feeling like me, powerless in the face of a world that had just reminded us how cruel and heartless it could be.

The suggestion just slipped out: "I think we should go vegetarian." I hadn't really thought it through; I was just filled with an aching need to do something, anything. My reasoning, such as it was, was that when I bought or ate meat, I was letting some abstract economic system do the dirty work of killing an animal which I doubtless could never bring myself to kill with my own hands. I like to think the idea gave Nala some small measure of comfort. I know it helped me.

From a strict ickiness perspective, this particular carnival of butchery was nothing compared to some of the things I've seen in the educational slides the Army uses to train its field medics and lab techs. I've seen secondhand people burned to death in their vehicles, the effects of all sorts of chemical agents, and just about all the nasty things that a parasite infection can do to a person. So it wasn't just the gore. It wasn't even that the muskrats died in fear and agony. That's not what shook me. It was that their deaths were so... methodical. The pile of corpses was the result of an intentional act by an intentional being, performed on the most helpless and confused creatures I can imagine.

I believed, then, that on some level it was necessary for animals to die for us to live. It was the way of things, and had been since our ancestors hunted buffalo and saber-toothed chinchillas across the plains. It wasn't a stunning revelation to discover that meat was made of animals, or that somebody had to kill them before they could be eaten. But sometimes an experience just takes an idea that has been floating around the periphery of your mind, and shoves it straight into the center, forcing you to deal with it or go crazy trying.

But my initial vegetarianing was of a non-dogmatic, live-and-let-live sort. I wasn't repulsed by the idea of meat. Sometimes I'd even forget and start loading my plate with ham at family gatherings. In short, I had personal qualms about eating meat because it seemed like an exercise in self-deception, but I was perfectly happy letting others do as they liked. It hardly mattered to me.

Thanks to a book called Diet for a New America by John Robbins, I've gone from veggiez-faire to annoying, self-righteous vegvangelical (yes, I made the words up, and no I don't expect them to catch on). Ironically, the author was the heir-apparent to the Baskin Robbins ice cream company. His arguments are sometimes over the top and he never reins in his sarcasm, but overall he was very compelling, drawing connections between things I understood and elaborating details of things I'd only vaguely known.

For example, I'd already known that it takes ten to twenty calories worth of grain (ignoring fossil fuel usage) to create one calorie of meat. But I hadn't really considered that a nationwide switch to a vegetarian diet would therefore allow us to take over half our farmlands out of production, while still producing the same calories. That means less rural sprawl, less intensive cultivation methods, less pesticide in our water and our bodies, and more resources for other important human endeavors.

I was also well aware that animals have genuine capacities for emotion and suffering. Abstract reasoning isn't their strong suit, as anyone who has tried playing chess with a duck can easily attest. But it takes willful blindness to argue that animal suffering is either nonexistent or inconsequential. This I knew.

But I was unaware of the conditions in which most of our food animals are raised. They're called "factory farms" for a reason: animals are no longer raised, but manufactured. Crammed six to a cage their whole lives, never knowing sunlight, open space, or any other condition that their bodies and rhythms were designed for, and pumped full of antibiotics to counter the squalor of their condition. But the worst part for me was one single claim that I can't imagine to be untrue: along with the capacities for emotion and suffering, animals have the capacity to be driven insane. Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, they invariably are.

Meat is murder? I wish it were just that.

Of course, I'm also a sucker for claims of corporate evilness, and therefore bought hook, line, and sinker into his claims that agricultural organizations are fighting long and hard to sow confusion about what is and is not a healthy diet. He draws a very compelling analogy between the food industry and the tobacco industry. Both try to distract us from the bigger scientific picture by pointing to a few industry-sponsored studies. Both market products that have well-understood adverse health effects. Both start howling about "personal choice" when backed into a corner, even as they fight to deny their customers the information that would help them make informed choices.

I'm reading other books on the intersection between politics, society, and nutrition. They all paint a pretty bleak picture of a world heavily tilted in favor of corporate interests, and against the best interests of consumers. When you boil it down, that's pretty much the nature of our modern world.

Diet for a New America is considered a classic of the vegetarian world, but being written in 1987, it's definitely showing signs of age. The Food Revolution--by the same author--is said to be much more up-to-date.

I guess I'll be making family gatherings more difficult on myself "going forward."* It's just how I roll.** And I'm sure most people won't want to hear it, because life is already difficult enough without some arrogant punk telling them to find new things to feel guilty about. But I can't help it. It's like there's a huge potential energy between what the world is and what it ought to be, and I just bear the sort of charge that gets swept along by it. Electrometaphorically speaking, of course. None o' that New Age hippie crap for me, no sir!

But I'm sure I can come to a reasonable detente with those nearest and dearest to me. Eating your veggies is a good thing, whether or not you're making it into some sort of moral statement. But there is one huge caveat: don't try the veal! If you do, you'll force me to explain exactly what veal is, and how it's made. And trust me, you're happier not knowing.

More veggies, less meat, no veal. Everyone clear? Cool. I love every one of you very much, and admire your patience with me.***

* Note my use of active business jargon. For my next trick, I'll synergize my first-mover advantage to implement customer-empowering, revenue-driven paradigms, leveraging them into

** Fifty billion bonus points for anyone who can tell me the origin of this phrase. Somehow it's hit the blogosphere like a big, flaming bag of crap.

*** If you actually read the entire thing, it probably means you're one of the people I would be able to sincerely say this to. Even though I probably don't.

Saturday, June 17, 2006 [10:33]

$3.2 billion government boondoggle

I'm always shocked and angered when our right-wing military-industrial complex pushes through yet another porkbarrel project, supposedly to help protect our nation. But it's even more disheartening when the politicians who let these things happen try to pretend that they're doing us a favor, and a blind and apathetic citizenry goes along with it.

photograph by Eric in SF (cc).

Take, for example, San Francisco's new Anti-Godzilla Defense System. Our politicians--many of whom were elected primarily on the strength of their anti-Godzilla platforms in the wake of the devastating attack on Los Angeles two years ago--assured us that soon, the latest technology would protect our coastline. When the AGDS was proposed, some even said that it didn't go far enough, that any proposed dollar amount was too small, that any finite number of dollars could never hope to defeat Godzilla's infinite powers. It was only later that we discovered that many of these "groups of concerned citizens" were fronts for owners of TransMegaCorp stock.

Despite the rush to commandeer taxpayer money for corporate gain, a few people like myself pointed out that Godzilla's very existence was a direct result of our technological imperialism. But such voices were quickly shouted down.

So the project moved forward, and I went to last night's unveiling of the result. The two robots in the picture are the first of three pairs of automatons to be stationed around San Francisco, at the hefty pricetag of $500M per unit. As I will soon show, this money was utterly wasted.

This didn't stop our military and business leaders from engaging in an orgy of ribbon cutting and backslapping, of course. It never does.

The first problem with the system is that the two robots--named Komi and Jira--are made entirely of metal, which will likely fail under the barrage of Godzilla's atomic breath. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to inspect the robots closely, so I was unable to confirm the rumor that much of the robots' "high tech adaptive armor" actually consists of silverware scavanged from local dumps.

Note the lack of jet packs, making them useless against Mothra. But I've been assured that they'll get them in three years, for the low low price of $280M a unit. Your taxpaying dollars at work, my friends. Just remember what you bought when they close your kids' schools.

Nor can we trust that the robots themselves will not turn on us. The military and its contractors have never been able to convincingly demonstrate that the production models doesn't suffer from the same defect that caused Bandu-shin--the early prototype--to wipe out half of Santa Fe.

Finally, and most crucially, the apparent size of the robots in the picture (widely publicized by TransMegaCorp) is nothing but photographic sleight-of-hand. Far from straddling the Bay Bridge, Komi and Jira are each less than thirty feet tall. Godzilla, in his most recent incarnation, was estimated to be over three hundred feet tall. What are our robots going to do? Club his ankles to death?

Godzilla, with or without his ankles, is more than a match for any number of these robots. When my alternative proposal of Godzilla-containment went down to defeat last year, I hoped beyond hope that I was wrong, and that our leaders would take responsibility and set aside our culture of corruption long enough to field a system that could protect our city.

I hate it when I'm right.

Friday, June 16, 2006 [10:11]

SF-Zero set us up the bomb

Two sermons today. One for those who know of David Bradbury Haning and one for those who don't.

Haning is a local crazy person (or performance artist, though it's a rather fine distinction to try and draw, especially in SF) who goes around putting up photocopies of his whacked-out sermons on phone poles in my neighborhood. He seems to think of himself as Jesus, and he's locked in eternal struggle with George Bush, the Governator, and the C.I.A. Of course, who isn't these days.

But unlike lesser freedom fighters, Haning's works are laced with epic philosophical doctrines, such as "Jesus Christ doesn't care what you think, because he gave you your thoughts," and "Jesus thinks babies are stupid." Now that's my kind of prophet.

More links to this exciting and dynamic religious leader: here, here.

On to the second sermon. Not all crazy people have to make do with photocopiers and duct tape. Some have gone high tech, with websites and mailing lists and everything. To become one of them, I've joined a real-world game/social experiment called SFZero. So far, I haven't done any of the live events, but on Saturday they're having some weird pilgrimage thing that involves scampering around the city. I just have to go.

They definitely seem like my kind of people. They hand out points for completing tasks, which meshes well with my love for all things Skinner-Boxy. I mean, who can forget my World of Warcraft phase? But they deduct points for spending money in order to complete the task, which meshes well with my love of not spending money.

So, what sort of Herculean labors are required to battle to the top of their heirarchy? Well, giving up your wallet, for starters. One task (worth fifteen! points) is to take the contents of your wallet, and carry them in some other, non-wallety receptacle. One especially creative lady hollowed out a squash, which she then carried around for three days. By the time her task was complete, her new wallet was getting all squishy and unappetizing.

They also do the standard oddities, like geocaching, paying the toll for the car behind you, and carrying a piece of artwork of your own devising around to bars and clubs, to test the theory that human beings invented art as a strategy for impressing the opposite sex. Okay, that one's actually a bit non-standard.

I'll check in later to say how it went. Of course, going out in the evening to meet a bunch of people I've never met, there is a greater-than-zero probability I'll wake up in some motel room bathtub filled with ice, with a note advising me that my kidneys have been sold on Chinatown's black market.

It's a risk I'll have to take.

Sunday, June 04, 2006 [11:31]

A cursory examinaton of my logs

At 3:40 AM this morning, somebody got to my website by entering "Bryce Anderson" "Chuck Norris" into Google. Whoever it was, just turn yourself in, and you will be shown mercy. That is all.

Sunday, June 04, 2006 [11:13]

Letters from a nut

Boing Boing is one of my favorite websites. The editors are real, hard-working, salt-of-the-earth types over there. So it's tragic when they get slapped down by powerful corporate interests. But that is exactly what happened yesterday, when they received a message from Baker & McKenzie, LLC, an enormous law firm based in London.

What Boing Boing received is not so much a takedown notice (where copyright infringing websites are asked to remove material from their sites), but something I've never seen before: a "don't put up notice."

Well, when some big corporate type shoots itself in the foot, leave it to the bloggers of the world to start handing it another box of ammo. In my case, I did something supremely stupid, by sending the following:

From andersbr@cs.utah.edu Sun Jun  4 10:47:14 2006
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 10:47:14 -0600 (MDT)
From: Bryce C Anderson 
To: info@bakernet.com
Subject: Where is *my* C&D?

I read of your recent "preemptive cease and desist" letter to 
boingboing.net, as outlined in 
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/06/03/hideous_company_send.html .

I am truly shocked and outraged by your company's behavior.  As owner and 
sole author of one of the premier blogs on the Internet, (proudly doing 
business at the url http://www.cs.utah.edu/~andersbr/blog.shtml since 
2003), it is deeply disturbing that I did not receive one of these letters 
myself.  Nothing short of an actual lawsuit does more to raise awareness 
of a blog than a good old-fashioned C&D.  By giving boingboing.net special 
and preferential treatment in this matter, you are doing my site great 
injury.

I therefore request that you accord my site the same treatment, and allow 
me to reap the same benefits that you have given to boingboing, by sending 
me a similar cease and desist letter, reminding me of your client's 
intellectual property interests in FIFA World Cup soccer (whatever that 
is), and billing your client for time spend performing said wasteful 
activity.  You may send the formal letter to:

  Bryce Anderson, c/o Craig Anderson
  [address deleted]
  [more address deleted]
  [this line never existed, but I'm pretending to delete it anyways]

Other questions and concerns may be sent directly to this e-mail address.

Understand further that I value my intellectual property as much as your 
client does, and that I will be monitoring your site for infringement of 
any text, images, or trademarks used on my blog.

Forever yours, faithfully,

Bryce Anderson

Great idea, Bryce. Grab a stick, and start poking and prodding at a huge lawfirm which has already demonstrated that it has too much time on its hands. Well, nobody ever said I was blessed with an abundance of smarts. But I have three things working in my favor. First, I'll probably get lost in the shuffle. Second, they've probably wised up, and are mostly ignoring this in the hopes that it blows over. Finally, I never threaten any sort of legal action, so I'm doubtful that there's much they can do.

Well, I'm off to the Union Street festival. I'm still not clear what it is or why I'm supposed to be going, but hell, it's San Francisco. It doesn't need to have a point.

Wednesday, May 31, 2006 [19:50]

Confessions of an Armchair Utopian

Food just got way more expensive.

Six or seven blocks from my apartment, traveling 'neath some of the least scenic overpasses in the country, there is a magical, faraway land called Rainbow Groceries. It is a purveyor of organic food, which ought to do something for me, but it never has. I've long felt that, while organic foods are more eco-friendly, much of the price difference was a simple tax on white liberal guilt. Then there's the simple fact that, while I'm never sure how much I've gained by buying organic, figuring what I've lost is a simple matter of mathematics.

Other people see "organic" on the label, and automatically attribute all manner of lovely properties to the food in question. Healthy! No icky pesticides! Happy cows! I've always been a bit skeptical. But I also have labels that short-circuit my critical thinking skills. In this case, the circuit is closed by two electroconductive words: "Worker-Owned."

It said so, right on the sign.

I was fascinated by the idea. But my fascination was tempered with guilt, for I had only recently found FoodCo, which promised to supply me with cheap crap food at cheap crap prices for the duration of my stay in San Francisco. I discovered Rainbow Groceries as I was walking happily home with several bags of said foodstuffs. Standing there, looking up at the sign, I experienced one of those classic cartoon moments, with an angel standing on one shoulder and a devil standing on the other.

Angel: "It's a worker's paradise! Solidarity forever!"

Devil: "Who needs happy workers when you can get Raisin Bran for ten cents an ounce?"

Angel: "Labor will never be justly compensated until workers own the means of production."

Devil: "Navel oranges, fifty cents a pound."

Angel: "Karl Marx said it. I believe it. That settles it."

Devil: "Do they even sell Ramen noodles in that hippie-infested freakshow?"

The thing about cartoon angel/devil duos? If you walk away, they just stand in midair where you left them, arguing. You just have to wait until it's clear that they've forgotten the original purpose of the conversation. When cartoon devil made the crack about how mom always loved him best, I figured it was safe to go home.

Today I went back, looking to score me some skim milk. The angel and devil were still there, but the argument had degenerated.

Angel: "Is not!"

Devil: "Is so!"

Angel: "Is not!

Devil: "Is so!"

Angel: "Is not!"

I scared the bejeezus out of the lady at the cash register by trying to get a discount using my Safeway card. The poor dear, just one of the many wide-eyed innocents in the world who never saw me coming. I asked her about her job, and she talked excitedly about being her own boss, and how she felt like she was a decision-maker. Honestly, I can't remember the last time I heard someone wax so rhapsodic about her employer. Except maybe the Scientology guys, which should probably be a red flag.

I'm going to turn in a job application there. I have my reasons.

Friday, May 26, 2006 [08:47]

Bay to Breakers

"Bay to Breakers" is America's longest-lived annual footrace. It's also has the highest taffeta-to-runner ratio of any race anywhere in the world.

About a dozen of the runners were dressed as Storm Troopers, and another group was pushing a Katamari Damacy ball. It started out as a group of five runners, but by the end of the race they'd picked up an additional three hundred.

If I'm around next year, I intend to run as "a box of one dozen starving, crazed weasels."

Wednesday, May 24, 2006 [19:03]

Verbally Beauden

I just had a rather long conversation with my nephew. He's got such a lot to say. When he does go silent, his mom tends to encourage his expressions by means of the Socratic method. "What does the elephant say?" "Can you say, 'Uncle Bryce?'"

He strikes me as very smart for a two-year-old. It is every new uncle's perogative to believe that his nephew will grow up to be the criminal mastermind of his era, and I'll be taking full advantage of the fact.

Beauden, just remember to nuke my town last, okay?

Sunday, May 21, 2006 [18:25]

Bryce Anderson, Scientologist and Pyromaniac

"Thank you. Go back to the beginning, picking up any new data as you go."

I'm sitting with my eyes closed, across from a friendly, professional-looking young man. I don't know how he's reacting to me as I sit there, recounting for the n+1th time a memory from a few weeks back. I hesitate, then begin again. "I'm walking into the fieldhouse, through the double doors. There's a stack of free newspapers to my left. I'm handing my student card to the lady behind the counter so she can swipe it. I think she's latino." I'm sitting in a small, white room in San Francisco's Headquarters for The Church of Scientology. I'm being audited.

I'm trying to follow the process they describe. Each time I go back over the memory, I try to find new details that stand out. I describe the sights, the sounds, the smells, to try and maintain the feeling that I'm not just remembering it, but living the memory over again, watching it on the videotape in my head.

That's the first problem I have with this process. There is no such videotape in my head, hard as they tried to convince me otherwise. Memory is a much more chaotic thing than the Scientologists. False memories can be implanted and elaborated until they seem just as real to the rememberer as their real memories. Me, I still live with a memory of being run over by a car when I was four. I was never run over by a car. I think I made it up in first grade, because it would have been cool had it been true.

I'm trying to get into the spirit of it. Despite all my reservations, I feel it would be intellectually dishonest not to give the Scientologists every possible chance to prove they're onto something. So I'm telling this guy about cold showers, brown carpets, and fluorescent lighting. He can't not be bored by this. On the other hand, he read the chart their computer spit out, just as I did. He knows what a desperate head case I am, and how many opportunities Scientology will open up in my life. So he'll most probably forbear out of kindness.

"Thank you. Go back to the beginning, picking up any new data as you go."

He's following a prepared script, presumably written by L. Ron Hubbard himself. I think the exactness of the process is supposed to provide a comforting feeling of scientific validity. But all right, let's play along. Back to the beginning....

I wake up fairly early in the morning. I've got this project I've been wanting to do, a web-based interface for condorcet voting. I'm doing it in Rails, because while BigTribe has gotten me more familiar with EJB, they haven't got me liking it. Rails, for all its controversy, makes for much more relaxing coding.

Around noon, I go down towards work, then hop a random bus. Using the Dirk Gently method of navigation, I simply let the bus take me somewhere that I need to be. This turns out to be Office Depot, where I pick up a mouse for my laptop. There's fifteen bucks I hadn't planned on spending today, but no matter. It won't be my last unplanned expenditure.

Purchase in hand (after I left without it, and the cashier reminded me to take it with me), I hopped another bus. I wasn't sure where this one was going either. It drove me past Washington Park, where the Jesus people were handing out pamphlets, and a few blocks past. I hopped out after noticing a rummage sale/block party. I wandered around that for a while. My mood has been relatively chipper today, compared to the past little while.

Finally, after going back and getting the fine literature of the Jesus people, I walk through the park. It's a happy, friendly place. I get the occassional whiff of pot. For some reason, it makes me smile. No, it wasn't that strong a whiff.

I walk toward downtown, down Columbus Street. There's this bookstore in San Francisco called City Lights. Jonathon told me to look it up, because it's supposed to be one part bookstore and one part hippie icon. But he never told me where it was, and I never bothered to find out. So wouldn't you know, I walked straight past it. I stop in, browse around, see a beautiful woman but can't dredge up the nerve to talk to her. Finally I settle on a book called "Inequality Matters," a collection of essays on the growing disparity between rich and poor. Fifty pages in, I decide to buy it. If you're reading this, I'll probably nag you to read it at some point in the future.

I continue down Columbus Street, towards the Mighty Pyramid of Skyscraping Doom (if you've spent time in SF, you know what I'm talking aboot). I get to the weirdest intersection of all time, with the Skystabber on one corner, the Scientologists at another, and all sorts of streets coming all sorts of ways. Maybe the intersection is leaving me feeling directionless, or maybe I'm just that bored. Whatever the case, I decide to go in, where I take their personality test, watch the video, and finally (because I guess I seem to hold potential, but haven't signed anything) they offer me a free auditing session.

The version of Scientology presented to me sounds somewhat plausible. No galactic wars, no space emperors hurling nukes into volcanoes. Just the simple idea that our minds are divided into two regions: the analytical mind, and the reactive mind. The analytical mind is our best friend, while our reactive mind is an evil puppetmaster that forces us to behave in unnatural and irrational ways. You know, panic attacks, aches and pains, jumping up and down on couches for no good reason... strike that one.

While our analytical mind is a finely honed machine that allows us to make choices to improve our chances of survival, the reactive mind has been programmed during moments when we were in pain and also suffering a degradation or loss of consciousness. In the film they showed me, an unconscious man in an ambulance is overhearing a conversation between the EMTs. One of them is talking about how he just broke up with his girlfriend. Later, the guy is with his own girlfriend, when something triggers a reminder of that event. Not understanding why, he breaks up with her.

The funniest part of the video has to be their demonstration of "preventative Dianetics," where the police officers at the scene of an accident are shushing bystanders, to avoid the implanting of suggestions. Even surgery and childbirth are no-talking zones. That's right: all your phobias and neuroses can be traced back to offhanded comments the nurses made while you were exiting the birth canal.

The key is, you're not really unconscious in these moments. Your memories are just being stored in a different part of your mind. If the diagram is to be believed, it's an evil, red part of the mind, with lightning bolts shooting out.

I asked a few pointed questions to my handler about the whole "videotape" issue. For example, I wanted to know if I could delve into my mind and accurately recall the inscription on a statue I'd simply glanced at that morning. He wasn't sure, but he was pretty sure that if I'd taken the time to read it, it would be stored and available to me. Which sounds like the sort of thing a person could desperately want to be true.

The question of how accurately the brain remembers such things is critical to the Scientologists' claims. In an auditing session, the auditee (also known as a "preclear," in recognition of the fact that his reactive mind hasn't been cleared of all the crap it's accumulated over the years) is asked to recall an event where he did something he's been dwelling on, or something where he didn't make the right choice. The auditor asks the preclear to play the tape over and over, filling in details until no new information is emerging. If the auditor sees that reviewing the incident isn't making things better, he might ask the preclear to jump to a similar or related incident, and repeat the process. The goal is to follow back the chain to some imprinting event. Once the preclear discovers the trigger in the reactive mind, it gets moved to the analytical mind, where it has no force. I think this is called a "clearing event."

It sounded like an interesting process to try, but actually undergoing it was difficult. Part of it is that I'm not a verbal person by nature; words don't come quickly or easily to me, so spending over an hour doing most of the talking was rough. Another part was the idea of dumping all this personal information about my life on a total stranger. On the other hand, he lives in San Francisco, so he likely finds weirder things than me included in his Wheaties box.

My biggest difficulty? The unstated assumption that the details I was recounting were accurate. The fact is, most of the details I provided regarded the place where it happened. Things get burned into your brain when you see them over and over again. Other details were a matter of inference. If I took a shower, then I must have dried off, then put my clothes back on before leaving. I honestly don't remember who swiped my card, or whether I really did take a shower that day, or what I was wearing. When pressed for details, I thought that maybe I might remember, and filled in from there. That has to be what's going on with other people who undergo the process; they're simply less aware of their mind's ability to fabricate, and therefore accept their memories as fact.

Maybe it was the stress of the situation, or the therapeudic value of talking, or just that rush you get when you feel like someone is taking a personal interest in you. Whatever it was, I left feeling... wow. I felt really good, especially given my recent funk, and I'm convinced that there is some therapeudic value in some of their practices. The science is bunk, don't get me wrong, and I've no doubt that some of their practices are unethical. But I did leave feeling more confident and capable.

Which leads to the next bit.

Still buzzed, I found my way to the N-line (the train that would take me home). There were three girls riding with me. We talked, and they asked for directions, and we figured out they were going the wrong way. I asked what they were headed to go do, and they explained that there was this thing called the Fire Festival, which was somehow associated with Burning Man.

Click.

Knowing I was leaping off a very huge cliff, I sucked it up and said, "Can I come along?"

"Sure."

Thank you, thank you, Scientology.

Thursday, May 18, 2006 [21:44]

Joshua A. Norton, Emperor of the United States, Protector of Mexico

A most noble and heralded San Franciscan, and an inspiration to us all.

Saturday, May 13, 2006 [13:26]

The soul of a new machine

In the quest to transform me from n00b intern into productive coder, BigTribe has been upgrading my mom's old laptop. First they threw a gig of RAM my way, so I could run Eclipse and JBoss at the same time without grinding to a screeching halt. Then Dan threw an old ethernet card my way, freeing me from the tyranny of the Gods of the Ethernet Jack.

So my machine, humble as it was, is now blessed with a +5 intelligence bonus, and has donned the Cloak of Evasion. So here I sit, unwired, ready to take on the Internet. If a couple of saving throws roll my way, I think I can win.

My mom will be glad to know, I got my cruise this morning. I've been staying with Adam until my apartment is ready, but he leaves for Hawaii tonight. So I'm staying with Dan until Monday. Getting to him required taking the ferry to Sausalito (someone check my spelling on that, because I'm too lazy). I got blown around by salty sea air, attacked by surly seagulls, and all those other things that add up to the best parts of a cruise. By the end of the forty minute ride, I was ready to don an eyepatch, grab the nearest parrot, and abjure the company of women.

Everyone has been really great to me, Utahns and Friscans alike. Thanks to everyone for everything.

Saturday, May 13, 2006 [05:08]

Your daily dose of me!

San Francisco is a seductive place. First it enthralls you with its skyscrapers, its crowds of bustling people. Then it lures you in with quaint little trolley cars, rolling morning fog, its oddballs, its goofballs, its bearded crossdressers. Finally, I'm sure it mounts your heart on a pike along the road leading to the city, as a warning to all who follow. But I haven't gotten to that point yet.

I'm still in the honeymoon phase of my job as well. I'm still getting up to speed when it comes to BigTribe goals, technology, and quirks. It feels like I'm diving in, learning a lot, and the people around me have reasonable expectations about my skills and potential contributions. Yet they don't seem to mind giving me money that feels vastly out of proportion to those expectations. Of course, I've always had this tendency to undervalue my skills and time. All in all I'm pleased with the situation, and it motivates me to work hard. But then there's that little voice in the back of my head, asking me how long the good times can roll before they figure out what a complete poser I am.

Another day, another pointless, worrying excursion into my brain.

My family should start their cruise any day now. I hope they bring me back a t-shirt. I like t-shirts. But not orange ones. I'm picky that way. Note to self: don't blog at 4AM. It just isn't worth it.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006 [08:22]

San Francisco

What can I say about Greyhound? They didn't lose my luggage, which was a plus. They broke down outside Elko, making us wait for four hours to get a replacement bus. That should probably go in the minus category. They somehow forgot we were coming, so when we hit Sacramento--city of lights, intrigues, and washed-up ex-actors with political ambitions--our driver wasn't allowed to put in any more hours and there was no replacement for him. So we sat for several more hours, waiting for the next bus to come. I skipped the bus that most everyone else took, in favor of an express that left a half hour later. On the upside, I beat everyone else to San Francisco. On the downside, I beat my luggage.

So, twenty-three hours, four peanut butter sandwiches, six hours of U2, and one massive crick in the neck later, I arrived in the heart of beautiful San Francisco, nursing thoughts about how Greyhound takes years off your life. It must be the case, because every person riding it looks positively exhausted with life.

So I left the transit hub, pulled out my map, figured out that I should be heading towards Sixth Street instead of First, and started walking. Suddenly, I'm very conscious of the fact that I'm walking down the streets of San Fran. Sure, I'm a little out of place with my wide-eyed newbie stare and my day and a half of stubble. Doesn't matter. Every ten paces, I smell a new type of cuisine, and the skyscrapers are everywhere, each one representing tens of thousands of frenetic, complicated lives.

I relied too heavily on knowledge gleaned from Google Maps. I realized when I got to the right block that I didn't have either the exact address or a phone number to reach BigTribe at. Backstory: BigTribe is the company I did my senior software engineering project for. When my team showed off the final demo, they offered to let us come down for internships. We all took that as a huge compliment, but I was the only one in a position to accept. They were kind enough to offer to pay reasonable living expenses (for San Francisco, which translates into unreasonable living expenses in Utah), plus enough for me to pay my tuition in the Fall. Hence, Greyhound. Hence, Frisco.

Right now, I'm looking at an apartment just a few blocks from my employer. In the meantime, I'm staying with a co-worker. He very kindly helped me retrieve my luggage and navigate San Francisco's inordinately complex mass transit system. I owe him a huge debt, which I will now repay with propz on an unread blog in an uninteresting corner of cyberspace.

Sunday, April 30, 2006 [15:26]

Blog guilt

My next blog entry was supposed to be about the Impeccable Coolness of Aspen, in order to get her to start reading again. But too much talk-worthy stuff has happened, so please go to Chuck Norris Facts, and replace "Chuck Norris" with "Aspen".

I don't often bother to post updates anymore. Chalk it up to being busy, or just really bad at time management skills. Either way, I'm shirking. I'm not keeping people up to date, I'm not exposing the deep inner poetry of my soul, and I'm not posting nearly enough embarrassing personal information to destroy my future prospects for employment. I'm a blogging failure.

Short updates are better than none. So:

Nala broke up with me.

I've landed an internship in San Francisco. I'll be leaving next week, if all goes well.

I'm a vegetarian, I've lost twenty pounds, and the two facts are pretty much unrelated.

Life isn't bad. I'd love to go into details, but no time.

Friday, February 03, 2006 [18:35]

Let's see who's laughing NOW!

I've been going through a bit of an ordeal involving a voice recorder being incompatible with my religion of choice. To make an interminable story terminable, I finally managed to get the files I'd already recorded, decided the whole process was too much of a hassle, and gave it to my sister.

My evil, treacherous, backstabbing sister.

Here's how it went down: I got a call from my baby sister. She said she'd gotten the recorder talking to her computer, and asked if I'd wanted to save all the files on the recorder.

I really thought I'd deleted them.

"Delete them! Delete them right this instant!" I shouted into the phone.

"I'm keeping the Rocky Mountain High one," she responded calmly.

Oh hell.

A few days after Christmas, before the novelty had worn off, I'd been driving home by myself. I started recording, then started belting out John Denver at the top of my lungs. It was a deeply private thing that nobody else was meant to hear.

"Delete it!"

"Nuh-uh."

"You're not my sister anymore!"

"It's too funny."

So now she has a copy. This is deep, blackmailable stuff here. Stuff that, if it ever surfaces, will guarantee I will never hold political office. I know she's going to try and extort me for tens of dollars. But it won't work.

Who's laughing now, huh?

Bonus track

Friday, January 13, 2006 [11:34]

Today's horoscope

Bunnies will find you fascinating, and will want to be near you.

Saturday, December 31, 2005 [22:12]

I blame the Romans

I've had the influenzas for the last few days. Now that it's New Year's Eve, I'm still too sick to go out. So I'm staying home with my equally sick brother, and together we're coughing up a festive storm.

This is certainly less fun than my original plans. In fact, this is... kinda... lame? Yes! It's lame! There, I said it!

I realize I've used up my lifetime supply of exclamation points just in that one paragraph. I'm sick, so please forgive me.

Anyways, the Romans. The Romans decided to celebrate Christmas on the 25th. Had they gone for the 24th, or the 23rd, then our family Christmas party would have happened on the 25th or 26th instead of the 27th, and then I'd have gotten the influenzas then. Therefore, I'd be fit by now, and ready to... how do the kids put it these days? Infiltrate the CIA? Yeah, those kids with their new-fangled jive. They're just precious.

Emperor Aurelian, you suck!

So spending the night at home, watching a TV New Year's Eve special is lame. But is it lame enough? I think I can do better. So here is my proposal: I'll Tivo the TV special, and catch it in the morning. I could certainly use the sleep.

Two moral superiority points to the person who e-mails me saying you read it. Twoooooo pooooiiiinnnnttttttsssssss..... Ooooooohhhh!

Sunday, December 18, 2005 [23:02]

Yo! Leon!

I'm not your blogging monkey. I'm going to sleep. Good night.

Feed the bunny? Thanks.

Thursday, December 15, 2005 [17:23]

That's not a cat!

Bunnies! Bunnies! Bouncing, happy bunnies!
They're never nasty or mean.
I'd give a home to all the lost bunnies
If only one day I were queeeeeeeeen!

When even my most loyal readers--read: actual family members--start asking me why they bother even as they load up the page, I know it's time for me to start updating again. Or possibly well past time.

Around midnight, on the day before Halloween, Nala and I were cruising through one of Salt Lake's less prestigious neighborhoods. From Nala's perspective, all of a sudden I shout, "That's not a cat!", hit the brakes, and turn the car around. From my perspective, it made a good deal more sense. As I drove by, I saw something vaguely--but not quite--catlike sitting underneath a car parked by the side of the road. I turned around to investigate, feeling that "That's not a cat!" would adequately express my reasons for performing the maneuver.

My split-second explanatory powers are a bit sub-par. Sue me.

So we get out of the car, and find this wide-eyed bunny rabbit shivering in the cold, looking just about ready to bolt. We did the only thing two young people can do when the world hands them a free bunny. We wrapped it in a blanket and took it home with us.

There are, however, limits to our amoral, bunny-snatching ways. We did go back to the neighborhood a few times, knocking on doors, putting up flyers, and pestering passing pedestrians. Did you like the alliteration there? I thought you might. But in the end, our efforts were in vain, for which we are most grateful.

Nala named him Myshkin, after a minor character in "The Brothers K", who is named after some character in an unspecified Russian classic. I nicknamed him "Bun Bun", after the homicidal, sociopathic bunny on Sluggy Freelance.

Did you click on the Amazon link? Did you note the five star rating?

You just have to read that book. It rips your heart out, then stitches it back together. Duncan is a definite literary master type person. Read the book.

After Nala's parents refused to let her keep Myshkin, he got immediately transferred to Leon's apartment, where he has spent the last couple of weeks lazing about, nibbling on pant legs, and generally doing everything possible to annoy his new landlord. Toilet training isn't going well, either. But his inquisitive, fuzzy demeanor has thus far been enough to keep himself from getting evicted. Leon's patience thus far has been amazing, which is good because I'm not sure what to do with Bun Bun if he can't live with me.

The options I've come up with so far: Bunny astronaut, bunny cowboy, bunny lion tamer, and bunny Chinese-sweatshop-factory worker. My ideas are very rarely constrained by reality.

Monday, October 17, 2005 [17:44]

iGot iPod, uGot daNuke

This blog is just pleased as punch to announce that the author has recently been given a tiny marvel of the technological age: a 20G iPod. These amazing little devices have already revolutionized the way people pirate, steal, pilfer, purloin, rip off, swipe, and filch music, and I'm just ecstatic about being a part of all that.

The whole thing was Nala's idea. Apparently, she figured that just because I occassionally rambled on, hour upon interminable hour, about how cool they were, that I might want one. I don't know where she gets these silly ideas of hers, but I'm glad she did. She called up just about everyone I know and got them to chip in.

As she'll tell you, I have this weird and skittish relationship with the whole gift-giving tradition. I don't really enjoy being on either the giving or receiving ends. Giving sucks because I'm never sure what to get, I hate spending money, and deep down I just know that if I don't get the perfect gift, it means I don't actually know the recipient as well as I pretend to. Receiving sucks because people are spending money on me (which I usually hate), and I feel obligated to show enthusiasm whether I like the gift or not. But this is different. It's something I tried and tried to pretend that I didn't really want, something I never would have bought myself, but something I'll thoroughly enjoy. In my mind, that's the precise definition of a perfect gift. Thank you thank you thank you!

On a completely unrelated note: last Friday, Channel 4 News sent one of their news crews to the University of Utah's Mechanical Engineering Building. I cornered the truck driver in the parking lot and asked him what was going on. He explained that they were doing a follow-up for a recent ABC news story about nuclear reactors on campus. "Like the one in that building there," he said, pointing to the MEB.

That's right. As I'm writing this, I'm sitting within five hundred feet of a nuclear reactor. I find that strangely disconcerting.

Thursday, October 13, 2005 [20:36]

I'm not sure it will do any good, though

In response to the "Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act", I sent this to Senators Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch of Utah. I felt like I had to, because the bill that is going before the Senate is a scary one. I didn't do a whole lot of revising because I have grave doubts about it even getting read, much less persuading anyone who matters. The full effects of this letter are probably countered by $5 worth of donations from some real estate developer.

For what good it will do, here it is.

Orrin, Bob,

     I haven't written to a public official since I was a fourteen
year old Boy Scout.  It was a rather silly letter, created primarily
to fulfill a requirement of the Citizenship in the Nation merit badge.
I think it was addressed to President Clinton, who by my youthful
reckonings was the most evil man alive.  As I write this, I'm reaching
deep into that upbringing.  I remember the long camping and hiking
trips.  I remember baking myself as I swam in the lakes of scout
camps.  Most of all, I remember the feeling of reverence towards
nature which that organization gave me, a duty which forbid me from
leaving so much as a soda can behind when I broke camp.  It is that
sense of duty that compels me to speak out today against a bill which,
if passed, would represent a betrayal of that sense of duty.

     The euphemistically named "Threatened and Endangered Species
Recovery Act" that just passed the House is nothing less than a
frontal assault on the Endangered Species Act.  I ask you, beg you, to
reject this bill.

     This bill is important.  Most biologists believe that we are in
the middle of a massive extinction event of the sort not seen since
the dinosaurs died off sixty-five million years ago, and that the
actions of humanity are the culprit.  So you mustn't hide behind the
comforting illusion that nature is too big and powerful to be harmed
by powerless, ineffectual mankind.  We exist as part of nature, we are
a force of nature, and if this bill is any signal of our priorities,
we have become an immensely destructive one.

     This bill is shameful.  It takes crucial conservation decisions
out of the hands of scientists, and puts it in the hands of biased
political appointees.  Not only does this put political goals ahead of
sound public policy, but it could easily come back to haunt the
Republicans if they ever lose the White House.  It raises the
floodgates on the use of pesticides that have been shown to harm
endangered species.  It hamstrings regulatory agencies by forcing them
to spend much of their budget bribing developers who threaten to build
on critical habitat.  This last provision, the way it crassly funnels
money away from enforcing important government functions, and moving
it instead into the hands of wealthy businesses, is simply beyond the
pale.

     This bill is blasphemous.  Or should be, to any person who
believes that the natural world is the handiwork of God.  As an
atheist, I wouldn't be terribly swayed by such an assertion.  Without
a God to be offended, "blasphemy" seems to be an empty concept.  But I
was once a devout young Mormon, and I remember learning about how Adam
and his descendants were given stewardship over the land.  It was a
noble principle, and one which I recall fondly.  I was even taught
that the Earth had a soul (if this doesn't square with doctrine, blame
one overly-enthusiastic Seminary teacher).  This stewardship implied
duties and responsibilities towards the natural world, in exchange for
the bounty we took from it.  Now I fear that we are eroding nature's
ability to provide for our ever-growing population, causing disruption
and extinction in the pursuit of material wealth.  If you believe in
the same Creator I once believed in, then picture Him watching the
last stretch of some endangered species' habitat being destroyed to
make way for vacation condos, and ask yourself what uncharitable
thoughts might be going through His infinite mind.

     That letter I wrote to President Clinton so long ago was supposed
to teach me that I was a citizen of the United States, and could
therefore petition my elected representatives and have my voice heard.
I didn't understand the complexities of campaign finance, industry
lobbyists, the shrill realities of Beltway partisan politics.  As
young and uninformed as I was, I believed Washington was the place
where wise men and women gathered to make decisions that benefitted
everyone.  When I contrast this hopeful image with the likes of
Richard Pombo and his self-serving, deceptively marketed legislation,
it's enough to make me give up altogether.

     It may be that there are reforms that should be made to the
Endangered Species Act.  It may be that there is a piece of
legislation that would better balance the protection of wildlife with
the need to use natural resources for the fulfillment of mankind's
needs.  Hopefully that legislation will find clever ways to fulfill
both goals.  This is not that legislation.  Please, kill this bill.


Bryce Anderson
Salt Lake City, UT

Saturday, October 01, 2005 [08:45]

Serenity: Best movie in the 'verse!

I laughed, I cried, I swallowed a bug. You have to see it.

Wednesday, September 28, 2005 [18:17]

Standing up to "The Man" Episode II: Attack of the Clones

Last Saturday, I joined in a second protest against the Iraq occupation. Apparently the first one didn't work.

I enjoyed the whole thing immensely. I know it sounds flippant, as though I don't take it seriously. Maybe I don't take it seriously enough. Back when they were protesting Vietnam, the draft meant that young people had a huge stake in the war. But I've been out of the Reserves for four years, and I don't know of anyone I know being over there. So for me, the outrage is more abstract than for lots of people.

But I still get a knot in my stomach when I think about what we did, and what we're still doing over there in Iraq. We let Der Chimpenchief drag us into a war against a country that posed no threat to us, under the delusion that the country would welcome the invasion. Now that we've killed tens of thousands of theirs, and thousands of ours, we have to stay the course in order to honor the sacrifices of the fallen, right? And tomorrow, when a hummer gets blown up, killing three more of our soldiers, we'll have even more reason to stay!

We screwed things up over there, and my earlier philosophy was, "We broke it, we bought it." We owed it to Iraq to stay until things were fixed. I've changed my mind, and decided that makes about as much sense as a bull wandering into a china shop, knocking over three displays, then offering to stay and help clean up. Even if the bull means well, he's not capable of doing anything but make things worse.

I think that if we pulled out, moderates in Iraq would be able to see their government as their own, not as a puppet of the American Occupation. As things stand, I think our presence only fuels the insurgency.

So it was a relief to go out and pretend I was making a difference. Everyone had their reasons for being there. For some it was moral outrage at the war. For others it was fear of losing a loved one. Some people came to scream and shout and rail against all things Republican. Some even came to make fun of us peaceniks. I mostly just took pictures. My favorites are the "Nutcakes for Peace". Thanks for the inspiration, Orrin!

Wednesday, September 21, 2005 [20:07]

This is just too wrong for words

Fightin' hamsters. 'nuff said.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005 [12:58]

Spaceballs II: The quest for more money

[snip two paragraphs of me griping about money]

I've got ideas about what I would do if I had a lot of money. There is one that especially captures my imagination. When a person starts a business, that person does so with the intention of making herself as much money as possible. Enron notwithstanding, this intention usually comes with a caveat about not doing anything too illegal or sociopathic, which is commendable. Anyhow, to get the business doing all those business-like things that will make it money, the owner goes out and hires a bunch of people, so that the business can accomplish more than the owner could do as an individual. In order to get the most value out of his investment, the owner pays the employees as little as possible in order to ensure the results he desires.

"As little as possible" varies wildly, but depends entirely on the amount of negotiating clout that the employee has. Having a unique or valuable skill is helpful, but so is living in a country where high wages are expected. If most people in a community are earning $10/hr working unskilled manufacturing or service jobs, then it's economic suicide for an employer to try and offer only a smidge more for a position that requires a B.S. in metallurgy.

There is one important conclusion to draw from this: normal companies benefit greatly when the overall cost of labor is low. As the average wage drops, employers have to pay less to highly skilled employees to make the jobs attractive. Thus, I have a suspicion that an increase in the minimum wage drastically improves the situation of just about everyone whose primary revenue stream is labor, rather than ownership.

So we have what appears to be an intractable problem: the interests of owners and workers lie in nearly opposite directions. Karl Marx had that bit right, at least.

Though it's less obvious, I think he also had the solution right. The conflict of interest disappears when the workers are the owners. But though I can sympathize with Marx in both his frustration with the status quo and his desire for grandiose action, violent overthrow by the proletariat was never a good idea. The whole approach was divisive, destructive, immoral, and besides, who has time for a revolution with all those compelling new reality-TV shows in the fall lineup? It's hard to do real grassroots revolution, because--at least to a first approximation--people don't give a crap.

So I offer up a counterpoint to Bush's "ownership society". A business whose goal was to funnel as much money into the pockets of its workers, and whose workers had control over how the business ran, would immediately raise the quality of life for its workers. It would provide incentives for productivity that would be unmatched by anything a normal company could offer. It would be more responsive to the needs of the community in which it was based. And arguably the company could run more efficiently than your standard "command and control" corporation, because good ideas would freely flow throughout the company.

If the employees were willing to go along with the experiment, it wouldn't be difficult to migrate an existing business to the new model. If a bank was unwilling to finance the purchase of an established business by its employees directly, someone with money could act as a surrogate. They would take out a loan in their own name, sufficient to buy a business from its current owners, and privately finance the sale. Ownership would be conferred to a trust organized specifically to represent the interests of past, present, and future workers.

So far, I'm not proposing anything revolutionary. Worker-owned cooperatives already exist, and such setups have varying degrees of success. But I think I would want to take it a step further, setting up a fund whose purpose is to find businesses to reorganize, with the goal of moving as many people as possible towards coop-styled businesses. The fund would loan out money to workers who wanted to reorganize under one of its systems, provide templates for fledgling coops to copy, create software to help businesses keep track of themselves, and perhaps provide legal and arbitration services. Overall, the fund would try to make a reasonable profit off its loans, which would be used to cooperatize more businesses.

So, that's what I'd do if I found a couple million in loose change under the cushions of my sofa. Check back next week, and I'll try to explain how I envision organizing a single business, what its goals and methods would be, and--most important--how the hell everyone is going to get paid. Or don't. Makes no difference to me. I don't even check the logs anymore.

Saturday, September 10, 2005 [13:54]

Local band makes good

Nala and I were at Area 51 last night, and I got a flyer from a local band called Allyptic. I think it was one of the band members who was passing them out. Whatever the case, I hyperwebbed over to my Interlink and surfed up their e-mail pages. After some frustration (their site is sort of borked under Firefox (but you should still download it immediately), I listened to some of their music. Haunting, melodic, angry stuff. Their lead singer is very good. The samples definitely make me want to see them live.

I'm going to try and get a cohort together to see them this coming Saturday. Hard Rock Cafe, 505 S, 600 E, 9:30 PM. $5 cover charge.

Anyhow, check out the website, sign the cheezy guestbook, listen to the music, and maybe gripe about their non-standard HTML. E-mail me if you want to come with us.

Sunday, August 28, 2005 [08:37]

Google Earth

Google Earth is the coolest thing ever. Nala and I played around with it, and not only found her old apartment in England, her old dorm in Colorado, but also (we're very sure of this) her ex-boyfriend's car.

Too bad it's Windows-only. C'mon, Google. Show us that Linux love.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005 [08:51]

Standing up to "The Man"

We tried standing up to "The Man" yesterday. But it was hard to do because "The Man" hoped straight off his jet and into his limo, which conspicuously avoided any route that might take him anywhere near anyone who was standing up for any reason but to pat him on the back, until it finally arrived at an event that was pre-screened to keep out any possible upstanders. Once there, "The Man" delivered his usual tired, counterfactual speech to his supporters, shook a few supportive hands, kissed a few confused babies, before he was whisked back to his limo, which carefully traveled a route that had been cleared of upstanders.

President Bush dropped by Salt Lake yesterday to address the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Mayor Rocky Anderson called for--and evenutally led--a big protest down in Pioneer Park. Nala and I got there late, but we still caught the last hour's "festivities". I couldn't really judge the number of people who attended, but it had to be somewhere between 500 and 2000, which included a handful of counter-protesters. One rather attractive lady was trying to shout down the speakers with a chant of "Support the troops, support Bush," but the speakers had huge advantages, including the support of the crowd and a Big Honkin' Sound System of Doom. Eventually either her voice or her courage gave out, but for a few brave moments, she kept everyone within fifteen feet of her from hearing what the speakers were saying. Of course, this victory was achieved at the cost of making all Bush supporters look like obnoxious, slogan-spouting drones, but I digress.

Nothing makes or breaks a protest like signage, and as with any good left-wing protest, the signs ranged from the brilliant ("Karl Rove, Olympus High Class of '69. Mr. Tolman would be ashamed!" and "Loose Lips = Pink Slips! Fire Karl Rove" and "GOD is not spelled G-O-P") to the run-of-the-mill ("Bush lied, soldiers died") to the tasteless (Several signs equating Bush to Hitler). There was even a highly confused "Impeach Nixon" sign wandering about. One guy showed up in an enormous papier-mache zombie Bush head with enormous, clutching hands, and wandered around the crowd giving people hugs. The effect was too creepy for him to be a Bush supporter, and my suspicions were only confirmed when I saw a news clip that evening where he was complaining about how the Administration was trying to instill fear in everyone.

Eventually we met up with Mark, a friend of mine and Nala's who lets us mooch climbing gear off him. We met each other at the intersection on the southeast side of the park, just as Rocky was leaving the protest. Rocky waited for the permission of Glowing White Man Sign before crossing the street, even though several people shouted that they'd pay his ticket for him (I don't think the bribery of public officials has ever been so silly). Anyhow, we wandered back into the crowd to find someplace where we could hear the speeches.

The final speaker told people that they should march to the City/County building in an orderly fashion, obeying all relevant traffic laws. So not surprisingly, as soon as the speech was over, people started marching en masse towards the Salt Palace. Marching was fun, and we got lots of supportive honks from the people stuck in the march-induced traffic jam. Well, some of the honks were supportive. During the trip, I saw this heinous woman (I won't disparage the profession by calling her a cop, but she was wearing a uniform) showing off her baton and tazer, and making it abundantly clear that she was eager to use them. I don't know how common such power-tripping dumbasses are among Salt Lake City's finest, but it was clear that she wasn't afraid of losing her job for her behavior.

The primary chant for the entire length of the march went as follows: "Show me what democracy looks like!" "This is what democracy looks like!" The chant started to grate on me. At first I thought it was just the lack of variety. Couldn't we throw in the occasional "One-two-three-four, we don't want this stupid war"? Just one, for me? But as we went along I realized it was deeper than that. For most Utahns, democracy is this tidy little affair where, every four years, they read the voter information pamphlets before shuffling over to form an orderly line at the local senior citizens center. Between voting cycles, their job is to support our president (unless he's a Democrat), drag themselves to work to keep the economy running, and plan to take the kids on that vacation to Disneyland. Protesting a war is akin to treason, and seeing a protest with people shouting and running amok and crossing streets against the signs must give them a very "barbarians at the gates" feeling.

Democracy is supposed to be loud, boisterous, and more than a little messy. What bugged me was that we spent all our time shouting something that should have simply been taken for granted. Yet people needed the reminder. That rock-headed "cop" certainly needed the reminder. The people who don't understand the reality of democracy, and the vital role that dissent plays within democracy, are the ones who are slowly dragging this country towards fundamentalist Christian theocracy, which will be just as bad as the theocracy we overthrew in Afghanistan.

Eventually we showed up at the Salt Palace, getting lots of eye-rolls and a few glares from the VFWs. I was getting a little uncomfortable at that point. Bush was already on the plane back to his ranch, so it felt like we were there to protest the gathering of a bunch of venerable senior citizens. We stood around for a while, met a girl from Nala's old high school who kept throwing herself into the Salt Palace fountain, and watched as Salt Palace management kicked people off the front steps. One rather loud, angry guy was shouting expletives at the manager as he was shooed off the steps. Later, the same guy started screaming about how the cops (who were still standing on the steps) were tresspassing, and needed to be arrested. Lucky Republicans, they have a much easier time keeping their people "on message". Seriously, the guy was a huge embarrassment.

Eventually the three of us wandered over to the City-County building, found nothing of interest going on, and hit a coffee shop on the way home. Then Nala and I went to pick up her new dress. It's a really nice dress, and I guarantee there will be pictures. You have to see Nala in this dress.

The protest got some play on The Daily Kos, and then went on to save the state fair before marrying his high school sweetheart, moving to the suburbs, and taking a job with a medium-sized accounting firm. There will be another on September 24th, again in Pioneer Park. Hope to see you there.

Thursday, August 18, 2005 [10:05]

Follow-up

Somebody posted a follow-up to my transportation rant. I don't know if it's a good response, or if I'm just the sort of person who likes it when people agree with me.

Thursday, August 18, 2005 [08:10]

The Yank and the Automobile

Note: Reposted from Slashdot, because I'm in desperate need of filler.

Here is how things went down.

The United States had a much different reaction to World War II than Great Britain. While Britain was mourning its dead*, rebuilding its infrastructure, and thinking deep thoughts about What It All Means in a world where such wasteful death and destruction can occur, The U.S. patted itself on the back for saving the world, then went out on a three decade long economic kegger.

Our GI's went home, got married, copulated like rabbits (sometimes in that order), and started looking for big houses with huge front lawns and wide streets far away from the hustle and bustle and slight garbagy smell of the cities. Vast swaths of land were converted into suburban tract housing. Everyone bought a car so they could live and work and play exactly where they wanted.

As the rich kids moved out to the 'burbs, they took the money and jobs with them, leading to a vicious economic downturn that turned our most populous areas into barren ghettos. Major city centers still had all the problems they had before, but lost the tax base and education base needed to do anything about them. As things got worse, the idea of living in the city became less and less attractive to most people.

Meanwhile, the ugliness of the networking problem came to the forefront: the need to link everything to everything else in our suddenly sprawled-out landscape necessitated the building of ever bigger roads. Eisenhower started the Interstate Highway System, which is a wonderful thing if you want to drive from L.A. to New York without stopping to ask for directions, but it proverbially duct taped America to its automobiles.

Now we're in a situation that I don't think we'll be able to pull ourselves out of unless oil hits $300/barrel (which I expect to occur in June 2007, right in time for Labor Day). Given the area that needs to be covered, no city can convince its taxpayers of the necessity of a really effective mass transit system. It's just too expensive to field the sort of system that car-owners would consider a viable alternative to their own private vehicles. The only people who really use mass transit are those too poor to buy their own cars, and if you're too poor to buy a car, you're certainly too poor to buy a politician.

So instead we field crappy mass transit systems that can get the poor to their exploitative jobs and back, and call it good. In my home town of Salt Lake, buses run every half hour, and most routes shut down after 6PM. So from an arbitrarily chosen departure time, the bus commuter waits fifteen minutes per connection, and has no alternative but to come straight home after work. In order to make the mass transit system something that car owners would consider, I think buses would have to run every ten minutes on most routes, with full service running until 9PM (and buses every half hour until midnight or 1AM). Routes would have to be added, so people on the outskirts wouldn't have to walk seven blocks to the nearest bus stop.

To most people, it sounds like overkill, but overkill is barely enough if the goal is to make mass transit a convenient alternative to private vehicles. Hence, we're never going to wean ourselves from our automobiles. Looking at the hundreds of thousands of cars, hundreds of gas stations and repair shops, thousands of miles of pavement, scores of car dealerships, etc., it seems pretty clear to me that a good mass transit system would be far cheaper than the current solution. But we're too heavily invested in the current solution to give it up without a fight.

I believe that fight is coming soon.

* Yes, the U.S. had casualties. But they had about a fifth the per capita military casualties of Britain, and suffered no losses stateside after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The whole thing was just less traumatizing from our perspective. For the U.S., World War II was a successful military operation. For Great Britain, it was a near-fatal brush with nasty, pointy death. Hitler taught Europe a lot of hard-won lessons about the horrors of war. All he taught us Yanks was, "Being an economic superpower kicks ass!"

Somehow, I think this goes a long way towards explaining Iraq.

Monday, August 15, 2005 [07:07]

Evil, gold card-carrying, book-hogging academics!

The due date on a library book is a sacred trust, a bond between librarian and patron, utterly inviolable. I, as a patron of the Marriott Library, University of Utah, was loaned a copy of Language and Reality by said library. A deal was struck, and by the time I walked out the door with the book in my backpack, I was required to bring the book back on September 14th of this year.

I believed in the fundamental honesty and good will of the library administrators, silly and naive boy that I was. But this morning, I woke to discover an e-mail in my inbox, explaining that somebody else had reserved the book, and that I was now required to turn the book over three weeks earlier. Now I understand that this supposed institution of higher learning is nothing more than a good ol' boys network, where the powerful and tenured can steal from poor starving students at will.

Well, we proles are not going to take this lying down. I think a phone call to the ACLU is in order, don't you?

Huh? Well, screw you, you corporate tool!

Thursday, August 11, 2005 [00:21]

I am SO there!

Mark August 12th on your calendars. It's the day Star Wars: Episode 3 hits the buck flicks.

I plan on camping out the night before.

Sunday, July 24, 2005 [10:44]

When you give directions, you're supporting terrorism.

Nala's mom is getting back from a six month stint in Africa, where she spent her time doing "anthropological studies" on native populations. The unfairly brief summary is that she spent months trying to convince indigenous tribespeople to do tasks that must seem rather pointless to them.

But that's not why I've gathered you together today. Oh no. I've asked you to come here so that we can discuss matters vital to national security.

Allow me to start off with an anecdote that happened just a few short days ago. As I was riding my bike through downtown Salt Lake City, I was approached by a seemingly friendly man, carrying a backpack, who wanted directions to the library.

I was thoughtless. I wasn't weighing the consequences of my actions. So not only did I tell this complete stranger the exact address of the library, but also how to use our local mass transit system to get there quickly.

I know what you're thinking, people. How could I blithely release vital information about our city's infrastructure to an unknown person? Did I even stop to think that the man might be a terrorist? That he might be preparing--or even carrying out--an attack on my fellow Americans? And just what was in that backpack anyways?

In an unthinking moment, sad to say, the instinct can be to act in antiquated, pre-September 11th ways. How many lives could have been saved if, on the way to the airport, some brave person had directed those hijackers towards the local police station instead of the airport?

We cannot ensure our freedom and safety so long as it is possible for the enemies of our country to find our weak spots. Giving bad directions is only the first step. We need an army of dedicated people out there. We need them to mix up, reverse, and remove street signs. We need them stealing maps from local convenience stores. We need them to go out and place orange cones and detour signs, put up fake historical landmark notices, and to drive down the freeway at frustratingly slow speeds.

Remember, my friends, that the terrorists cannot destroy what they cannot find or cannot get to. So be vigilant.

Sunday, July 17, 2005 [12:44]

H4xx0r3d, going postal, and other items of interest

So I was goofing off last night, and was reading an obscure tech site, when an article brought to my attention that there had been a recent spate of SSH brute-force attacks. For the uninitiated, SSH is a piece of software that allows people to log into a computer remotely, a brute force attack means that somebody tries a whole bunch of names and passwords trying to get lucky, and a computer is something that sits on your desk, sometimes giving you error messages and deleting your files.

I went to look through my logs, and found a couple of instances of these attacks. I thought, "Hmm, that's not very nice," and started looking around for ways to make my system more immune to these attacks. For starters, I changed SSH so that I'm the only user on my system that can use it. Then I figured I would restart sshd (the program that handles remote connections), so that it would read the changes I'd made to the configuration.

killall sshd

Boom. My connection shut itself down. Since "my" system resides thirty miles away at my parents' house, and it was late, I had no way to get into my computer to turn sshd back on. I'd locked myself out.

Moral of the story: I am a bonehead who shouldn't be allowed to administer any system anywhere. Instead, I should work at the Post Office.

Excuse me for a moment while I pat myself on the back for that remarkable segue.

Okay, I'm back. I think I dislocated my shoulder in mid-pat. Anyhow, yesterday I took an exam to see if I have what it takes to sort mail. My brother has been working at Salt Lake's Remote Encoding Center, which is where they send pictures of mail that the automatic sorting machines can't read. It seems to be a good job, and pays well, so I figured I'd try and get in on that gravy train too.

The test was remarkably reminiscent of taking the ACT's. Everything was the same: the number two pencils, the scantron sheets, the vague feeling that I was being judged by some huge, soulless bureaucracy, and the realization that if I screwed the pooch on this one, I'd never get into the college of my choice.

The difference is, back in high school I was a multiple-choice-testing samurai warrior at the top of his game. I tested very well back in the day. I'm pretty convinced that, had I been handed a test consisting entirely of items like, "Question 1: This space left intentionally blank? A) blue B) green C) marmalade D) The Spanish Inquisition," I would have scored 70%.

But alas, my multiple-choice-fu has melted away over the years, leaving me a weakling, a dried husk of my former self. So I'm not convinced that I did terribly well.

Job hunting sucks. I miss the good old days, when I didn't have to worry about earning a paycheck, or even dressing myself. Like Beauden.

Beauden celebrated the big Zero One yesterday. Let's pause a moment now to reflect on the awesomeness of that last segue. Okay, on with the story.

Over the last year, Beauden has added the following skills to his repertoire: blowing raspberries, crawling, standing unassisted, clapping, clapping while standing unassisted, walking two or three steps when there is someone in front of him ready to catch him, saying "Bice!" when I'm around, and babbling in a language he came up with all by himself.

It was a straightforward affair, with barbecue being followed by presents being followed by cake being followed by intense, self-inflicted stomach pains. I got to see my cousin Krishaan, who has spent the last couple of years in Japan with the Air Force, and meet his and Amelia's kids for the first time.

I think my favorite moment of the entire event was when Beauden was presented with his birthday cake. In order to understand what happened next, you have to understand that his parents have been religiously avoiding giving him processed sugars. He took a tentative handful, put it in his mouth, got a look on his face like someone just tried to feed him a stinkbug, and spat it back out.

I'm so proud of that kid.

Thursday, July 14, 2005 [14:32]

I'm a webmaster! Yay!

I am moderately enthused to announce that I am now the acting weblackey for Hawkwatch International. I really didn't have much to recommend me. No formal experience, only a vague smattering of PHP/MySQL. But I did have Nala. She was working there for a couple of months, and suggested that I come lend a hand.

I've decided that PHP is easy enough to use, and it's installed on the CS department servers. So if I get around to it, I might rebuild this blog from the ground up.

Yeah. I can tell that you share my excitement.

Friday, July 01, 2005 [23:35]

Standardized tests frighten me

I just thought you should know that.

Around 5:30 PM tomorrow, it will be exactly one year since I first met Nala face to face.

I've had a good year.

Saturday, June 11, 2005 [22:12]

Mag?

I had no idea how rough being a parent would be until I tried it. But when life hands you a pink, squirmy little thing that constantly demands to be fed, what can you do? You feed it.

Life handed Nala and me such a pink squirmer one warm summer evening about a month ago. It was a baby magpie, probably less than a week old, that we found underneath a tree while the two of us were ambling listlessly about. Not knowing what else to do, we put the poor thing in Nala's pocket and ambled listlessly home.

The smart thing probably would have been to turn it over to an animal rehabilitator. Instead, we did the "awwww, cute!" thing, and decided to raise the thing ourselves. Nala pronounced it to be a 'she', blessed her with the name Babylon, prepared a small basket for her to sleep in, and put a sign on the door to her room saying "CLOSE THE DOOR!" We didn't want the cats to make her acquaintance. Safe behind the cat-proof door, the two of us sat there, hypnotized by the tiny ball of loose skin and pinfeathers. When I roused myself a little, I told Nala, "You're a mommy." We were very happy.

In the morning, we got a better look at her. "Babylon" wasn't the sort of regal name that you could properly confer upon a naked, pink, spiny dinosaur thing with a hugely distended butt. So we temporarily renamed her "Gizmo" until she could grow into her real name.

Having banished the naming crisis, we set about the long, laborious bird-raising process. Basically, we put wet dog food in one end, cleaned up what came out the other, and banked on the classic parenting formula: Input - Output = More Baby. It worked like a charm, and she expanded like a balloon. Feeding Gizmo was a farcical process. Every twenty to forty minutes (or if something woke her up) she would lift her head straight to the sky and make loud, demanding trills. When we put food down her throat, she would rise up and try to get her entire mouth and throat around my finger, then swallow a few times. It was far and away the funniest thing I've ever seen Mother Nature do.

When she got old enough that we felt safe traveling with her, she got a lot of attention from random strangers. Now, it would be immoral of me to suggest using baby birds just to pick up women, or to make friends, or any of that. Animals are not playthings, but real life critters who need love and attention to be healthy and happy. But Babylon had a way of hypnotizing and fascinating people, and I enjoyed the vicarious attention.

There was one time when I was riding TRAX, and six or seven black teenage boys got on. They asked me a lot of questions, many revolving around the fear that I'd get some sort of disease from the bird. "Do you kiss it?" "Sometimes." I'm not sure what made that encounter so surreal, except that their fascination seemed of the morbid sort. It was as though the idea of a wild critter in downtown Salt Lake City was the harbinger of a great plague of... bird cooties?

By then, she was shedding feather sheaths like they were fifteen year old computers, and as the feathers came out, she started to look more and more bird-like. Gizylon? Babymo? Neither name seemed to fit well at that stage, but adding a third seemed gratuitous. But we could take her out of the nest and put her on the bed, and she would stagger around until she found something to balance against. Later, she started standing, then hopping, then perching. You know, all the developmental milestones they tell you to look for in "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Baby Magpies".

Somebody needs to write that book. Or at least a Linux HOWTO. Telling my computer man magpie didn't help either. We were pretty much left to our own pet theories about what constituted a kosher magpie upbringing.

Eventually, she got big and strong and moderately competent at flapping about, so we let her spend time outside. When she was outside, of course, Mighty Hunting Cat Rivka was to stay strictly indoors. She didn't like her confinement in the least, and she could often be found sitting at the window, staring at Babylon like a lioness would stare at a lone baby gazelle staggering across the Serengeti. She would spend many hopeful hours that way.

Finally Babylon started flying. Tiny, pathetic flights with lots of flapping and quick loss of altitude at first, then short but meaningful hops to targets fifteen feet away, until finally she could flutter from the ground all the way to the roof. A couple of times, she couldn't figure out how to get back down, and we had to fetch the ladder. Eventually, she stopped letting us put her back in her cage, and we had to leave her out overnight.

One evening, she disappeared. I was working on a tiling job when I got the call. Nala was frantic, and soon I was too. I spent some more time tiling, but cut off early so that I could search while there was still light left. It was gut-wrenching to think that our baby was gone, before she had demonstrated any ability to survive in the wild. We looked and looked around the neighborhood, but there was no sign of her. When it got dark, we broke out flashlights and tried peering into trees and calling for her. Mag? Maaaaag? It was our best magpie impression, and the sound we had been making whenever we fed her. She usually responded to it. Eventually we decided that there was no way she could still be awake, and gave up until morning.

Because I was unable to sleep, morning came early for me. I was out and looking by six AM. But I found her in the next door neighbor's trees within twenty minutes. She trilled at me like she was hungry, and a bit miffed that I hadn't fed her earlier. I told her to wait there, and then ran to bang on Nala's window. As soon as she saw me, she knew what had happened. When we got back, Babylon was perched on the neighbor's roof, whining hungrily. We grabbed the ladder, took her to the backyard, and fed her. And there was much rejoicing.

Soon we got more comfortable with her temporary absences. She was starting to peck at bugs successfully, and making impressively long, swooping flights. Gone were the days when we would put a mealworm in front of her and she would stare at it quizzically, then trill "feed me!" at it. She was shaping up into a half-competent birdy, though she was far too fond of humans for her own good.

She left again, a few days ago. No goodbyes, no note of explanation, no promises to keep in touch, nothing. We saw her, then when we came out a few hours later, we didn't. I know deep down that we had always intended for her to leave. But I don't think either of us were ready for it to happen. I can't count the number of ways things might have gone wrong; all the ways she might not have been prepared for survival. The fear and the hope are in conflict, but both are tempered by the near-certainty that I'll never know for sure what happened to her, whether she thrived, or even if she was actually a she.

Whenever I hear magpie calls, I "mag?" back at them, half hoping that one of these times, she'll swoop down and try to perch on my arm. I half suspect that it will turn into a hopeless, nostalgic habit for me. She'll never come; if she is okay, she's probably followed her instinct to get far away from the area in which she was raised. But then again...

Maaaaag?

Sunday, May 08, 2005 [09:30]

The serial killer in the closet

On Friday, Nala and I went to my parents' house so I could fix my mom's computer. We got back to her house around 4PM, to find a note from a local security company saying her alarm had gone off. Nala's grandmother had been notified, and she left a very concerned message on the answering machine. We checked to see if anything was missing, then called her back and told her everything was okay.

A bit later in the evening, after we'd taken Metsi (loyal canine companion) for a walk, Nala's grandmother called back, and asked us to check the house to make sure no escapees were hiding in closets anywhere. I figured that was highly unlikely, since none of the inside motion detectors had been triggered. But to put her mind at ease, I lied and told her that I would. I hung up the phone, giggled to myself about the worries of the aged, and told Nala. She agreed that there was no need to scour the house.

Nala went off to her room to feed Babylon, her new baby magpie. I was in the kitchen. I looked down at my feet, and I saw it.

Blood.

It couldn't be anything else.

It was the blood of the serial killer, who was at that very moment lurking somewhere in the house just waiting to jump out and kill us all!!!!!!!!!!

That was my brain's first reaction, anyhow. Stupid brain, always lying to me. After a rather whiplash-inducing reality check, I told Nala that there was blood on the kitchen floor.

This is a tribute to the epic silliness that is us: her first thought was the same as mine.

Eventually, I figured out a pattern to the tiny smears, and they were approximately a dog's footfall apart. We checked the dog, and found she'd stepped on something that was lodged in her foot. We pulled it out, then cleaned and bound the wound. Metsi was cooperative, though she had a shamefaced, "What did I do?" look to her throughout the ordeal.

So we're all safe. Me, Nala, dog, cats, bird, all safe. But we're still a bit jumpy from our brush with death.

Tuesday, May 03, 2005 [14:56]

Finally finalled out

Having just finished dragging my way through my AI final, and finding myself with several hours to kill before traffic school (a story for another time) and lacking anyone to assist me in the slaughter, I caught up a bit on my back-websurfing. A couple of weeks ago, KUW got its first e-mail ever, and I didn't notice because I haven't been checking that address for months on end.

So now I guess I need to start putting up actual content. Let the procrastinatothon that is this project come to an end. Maybe. If I get around to it.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005 [09:41]

I demand a re-pope

The Catholics are the single largest organization in the world. So I see their actions as an indicator of the overall state of religion. Judging by the recent pope-ification of Pope Benedict MCXXXVIII, a hard-line conservative and presider over what used to be "The Holy Office of the Inquisition"... well, part of me wishes I were Catholic so I could leave in a huff.

The Catholic Church will become an increasingly unfriendly place for "liberals". If you believe that euthanasia is wrong, and that your personal beliefs must be the law of the land, pull up a wafer. But if you don't think society has a right to force a long and unnecessarily painful death on anyone, or if you support a politician who thinks that way, then you're a sinner who must be denied communion.

On the other hand, disagree with Catholic doctrine by, say, supporting the war in Iraq? Or by supporting the execution of the mentally retarded in Texas? If so, Ratzinger is an easy-going, big-tent kind of guy. There's all sorts of room for differing opinion there.

On the upside, if you're a Catholic who thinks that this sort of thinking represents a very mixed-up set of priorities, take comfort: The Anglicans are always looking for a few good recruits. They wear the same silly hats and robes, so it'll be like you never left.

P.S.: I need confirmation on a rumor I heard last night. Is it true that, in order to ascertain that the pope is really, truly dead, they whack his forehead with a small, silver mallet?

Thursday, April 14, 2005 [19:08]

For sale: Cyclo. Like new. Children not included.

Nala has fascinating dreams, the sort that really leave you hoping that dreams represent the random churnings of the unconscious, rather than its most heartfelt desires.

Last night, for example, she dreamed that she moved to southeast Asia to take up a job driving tourists around in a cyclo (a bicycle with a passenger cart). When she got there, she bought one for thirty bucks American. Much to her surprise, the cyclo didn't function properly unless small children were hung from its front and back. She looked around, and all the cyclos required two children in the 20-40 pound range.

Ever practical, she went out and purchased two cut-rate orphans, and hung them from the bike. They enjoyed the ride, charmed Nala's passengers, and were otherwise helpful in numerous ways. The only drawback was that when she let them off to run around, they would go steal charms and trinkets to put on the cyclo. Apparently, the children had abysmal taste.

Thursday, April 07, 2005 [13:14]

A Cautionary Tale, Part 1

A story, told on a stretch of I-15 between Vegas and Mesquite:

Once upon a time, there was a woodsman. His name was Lawrence. He was a good woodsman, a hard-working woodsman, a woodsman who could cut down everything in sight. He was not environmentally friendly, to say the least.

Lawrence lived alone in an increasingly large clearing in the woods. His only company was his pet donkey, and an enormous giant who sometimes came to pick up the trees and take them to town. The giant isn't really relevant to the story, and will not be mentioned anymore. We thought the donkey wouldn't be relevant either, but he sort of shoved his way in without so much as a "pardon me".

One day, the woodsman decided to chop some trees further north. He put his axe over his shoulder, and walked north for about a mile, whistling a jaunty tune. He came to a very large, beautiful tree, and said, "What a large, beautiful tree! I shall cut it down now!" So he unshouldered his axe, and prepared to swing it. But the tree reached down, grabbed the axe, and bopped him over the head with it. "Ow!" Lawrence said.

Never before had a tree put up such a fight. Most of the trees Lawrence had met seemed very apathetic about their fates. There was one tree that seemed to grumble and gripe, but that was years ago, and anyhow it was probably just the wind. So Lawrence picked up the axe to swing again, and once again he was bopped on the head. He picked up the axe a third time, hid it behind his back, strolled casually up to the tree, whistling and pretending to be very interested in a particular cloud off to his left, then tried to swing at the tree. This time, the tree bopped him on the head, then flung the axe fifty yards.

Lawrence gave up. He went and picked up his axe, selected another tree, and started chopping. On the third swing, he heard a rustling sound coming up behind him. As he turned, he saw the first tree rushing up to him. It grabbed his axe and threw it again.

Very, very curious behavior for a tree, Lawrence thought. "Ahem," he said. "Tree?"

"Yes?" the voice was low and wooden. Certainly too low to be a squirrel. Lawrence was sure now that he was dealing with a talking tree, not a talking squirrel.

"Um, tree?" Lawrence started again. "Would you mind if I cut you down?"

"Yep."

"See, the thing is, I'm supposed to clear out this whole area. The King of Leshp wants to build a garrison here."

"You shouldn't be cutting down trees," the tree responded. Lawrence nearly asked, "Why not?" but then he thought better of it.

"You're not like other trees, are you?" he asked instead.

"Whatever do you mean?"

"Other trees don't talk," Lawrence said.

"Sure they do. Watch. Other trees? Other trees? Talk to me!"

Lawrence waited. And waited. Not a peep from the other trees. A few chitters and tweets here and there, but that was to be expected.

"Other trees?" the tree called out again. Again, nothing. "Well, this is embarassing."

"But they usually talk?"

"That's what I'd always assumed," the tree responded, rather dejectedly. "I never actually asked."

Something in Lawrence's brain started itching, as though it were trying to remember something. Maybe a childhood story. A fairy tale.

Yes, that was the only solution. He was in a fairy tale, and this was an enchanted tree.

"Have you always been a tree?" Lawrence asked.

"For as long as I can remember."

Lawrence nodded. "I won't be chopping trees down anymore." The tree seemed satisfied with this. "Would you excuse me? I need to go check on something. Wait here."

He went back to his cabin. He sat in front of the fire, thinking and thinking. Finally, he came to a decision. All the fairy tales were written in books, so he needed to find books. "Donkey!" he called out. Donkey clip-clopped his way into the cabin, looking at Lawrence expectantly.

"I ran into a talking tree. It's silly, because everyone knows trees don't talk. Anyways, we're going to the town!" Lawrence loaded supplies onto the donkey, then left the cabin. He looked left. He looked right. He looked forward. He looked backward.

Finally, he said, "Which way is town?"

"This way!" the donkey said.

Three days later, they got to the town. Lawrence looked around. He'd never been to the town before. He needed to find someone who knew where everything was. So he asked the first person he saw, who happened to be a fishmonger working down by the river. "Do you know where everything is?"

"I know where the fish are."

"Who knows where everything is?"

"Ask the mayor. She knows everything."

"Where's she?"

"Dunno. I only know about fish."

It took a while to find the mayor. He met people who knew about tailoring, and blacksmithing, and when to plant beets, but nobody who knew about mayors. Finally, he asked the mayor where the mayor was. As luck would have it, the mayor did know.

"I'm looking for the library," Lawrence told him.

"Ask the fishmonger down by the docks. He's our librarian."

"But he only knows about fish."

"He also knows where the key to the library is."

Lawrence shrugged. It must be nice, living in a town. Being all alone in the woods, he had to remember everything himself. So he talked to the fishmonger, who opened the library for him.

The library was a small, dusty place. The fishmonger lit a lamp for him, and pointing to a book on the table said, "Well, there's the book. Be careful with it, and don't get jam on the pages or light it on fire."

"You only have one book?" Lawrence was aghast. "Libraries are supposed to have lots of books.

"You must be thinking of the fancy schmancy libraries in bigger towns. We don't have any use for that sort of thing. No, this book is enough for us." Lawrence thanked the old man, and then sat down to read the book. He looked at it a long time, increasingly perplexed. Finally, he got up and went outside to talk to the donkey.

"Donkey, I can't read."

"That's okay. I can read it for you." The donkey trotted inside. He sat down in front of the book and studied it. "The Book of Stuff," the donkey said. "Not a bad name for a book."

The donkey said, "Turn to the appendix."

"What's an appendix?" Lawrence asked.

"It's a place at the end of the book that tells you where all the other stuff in the book is."

"So it's like a map?"

"Yes, but it's nothing but words and numbers."

"You mean, it says something like, 'Turn left at the fallen tree, then go three miles down the road to the sign of the Withered Crumpet?'"

"Sort of."

They found the information they were looking for under "Lost Princesses, page 192-196." Apparently, many princesses had been lost over the centuries, primarily due to kidnappings, elopings, and diabolical spells, but occasionally because of unclear road signs.

The most relevant was the disappearance of the Princess Ellouise of the kingdom of Leshp. It had happened three years ago, and her whereabouts were currently unknown.

Lawrence scratched his head. It was time to go to Leshp. But something odd was afoot.

They locked up the library and went down to the docks to return the key.

"Greetings, fishmonger!" Lawrence said.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" the fishmonger asked.

"Yes. But I was wondering something."

"Is it about fish?"

"It's about the book. It looks like it's a couple hundred years old."

"That's right."

"But there's stuff in it about a princess they lost three years ago."

"That's right."

"How?"

"It's a very clever book."

"How so?"

"While people read it, it reads the people. I suspect it's never read a woodcutter before."

"You didn't tell me that would happen," Lawrence complained.

"You know stuff the book knows, and the book knows stuff that you know. Seems like a perfectly fair trade to me."

"But, but..."

"Nothing's free in this life, son. Except crawdads. I can't seem to give away crawdads. Do you want one?"

"No."

"See what I mean? Can't give them away."

The donkey watched the exchange. As Lawrence walked off, the donkey stayed behind for a second. "I'm curious," he said. "What happens if two people read the book who think different things?"

"It has arguments with itself, usually at night. I have to go in and calm it down sometimes."

The donkey nodded, and trotted to catch up.

Thursday, March 24, 2005 [17:11]

But, it's funny!

I know, you want to hear how the trip to San Diego went. I'm working on it. But I interrupt my normal blogging schedule to bring you THIS!

Thursday, March 10, 2005 [09:49]

Road Trip!

Spring Break approacheth, and Nala and I are planning to take ourselves a road trip. We intend to drop down to southern Utah, attend my aunt's wedding, return a backpack, then drive on out to take in the sights, sounds, and--above all--smells of sunny, overpopulated southern California. We may also visit Nala's I'm-an-only-child-but-still-have-a-brother further north.

So, in case we never come back, you all know where to start looking. By the time you find us, we'll most likely be acolytes in a UFO cult of some sort. I'll write again if I can get SSH access. Until then, happy trails.

Saturday, February 12, 2005 [16:29]

Wretched bird

Bawk is a large, white cockatiel who is trying to steal my girlfriend from me. When Bawk's owner is out of town, Nala goes over to bird sit. The feathery cassanova greets her with joyous trilling, puffing up his crest and waving it from side to side. Once out of the cage, he seldom leaves her side. Usually you can find him perched on her arm or shoulder, making happy whistling noises and occasionally trying to groom her.

He displays his virility and strength to her by hanging from the top of his cage by his beak. Nala goes ga-ga over this sort of thing, telling him what an impressive bird he is.

To paraphrase the line once spoken of Isaac Newton, Bawk has little patience for fools, and none at all for rivals. The little guy sees me as a rival. He occasionally rushes at me, and starts nipping furiously at whatever body part happens to be convenient. It's not a big deal when he's on the ground and I'm wearing Bawk-proof foot armor. Tennis shoes are usually sufficient. But he's gotten my hands a few times. More often, his approach is more subtle. He sort of sidles up in a carefree, nonchalant manner, trying to give every indication that he just happens to be in the area, and isn't at all interested in finding out how nutritious a hunk of my earlobe would be.

At least he doesn't consider me an enemy. There's a grad student named Mike living in the basement. With his shaggy beard, Nala says he looks exactly like a macaque, a cockatiel's natural enemy. Whenever Mike comes into view, Bawk puffs up his feathers, and starts shrieking until the poor guy flees. Bawk's other enemy is the evil feather duster, which he will mercilessly attack. On the other hand, if someone picks the feather duster up, Bawk will flee it in terror.

Someday, I'm going to have white plumage and a seductive trill. Then the lovely Nala shall be mine at last.

Thursday, February 03, 2005 [15:27]

I admit my moronhood

Slashdot post wherein I explain Social Security reform and announce my intention to finance my retirement through random muggings.

Saturday, January 15, 2005 [16:27]

Two months of catch-up

I've been derilect in my blogging duties. I'm a bad, bad man.

Just to bring you up to speed: Nala? Still my girlfriend, still wonderful. Beauden? Still cute, still pre-verbal. School? Still standing, still putting up with me.

Since my last post, I've picked up a few new classes, gotten into a couple of flame wars, and developed a hard-to-break World of Warcraft addiction. Nala has joined me at the University, with an option on Salt Lake Community College. I'm moving out of the apartment at the end of the month, and for the moment Leon is condescending to allow me to inhabit his new condo.

The U's computer lab underwent a major renovation, which partly explains why this page has been so silent.

I don't have much time today. Future installments may touch on Bach (the feathered Cassanova who is trying to steal my girlfriend), speculative names for my new car, this week's plan for world domination, and a critique of the frozen burrito I had for breakfast this morning.

What? Nobody cares what I had for breakfast this morning? C'mon, I promise I can turn it into comic gold! Still no? Fine. Your loss.