MemeMachineGo!

Perhaps you thought that one thing in this world you could count on was the constancy of the speed of light. Well, maybe not.

In science, no truth is forever, not even perhaps Einstein's theory of relativity, the pillar of modernity that gave us E=mc2.

As propounded by Einstein as an audaciously confident young patent clerk in 1905, relativity declares that the laws of physics, and in particular the speed of light — 186,000 miles per second — are the same no matter where you are or how fast you are moving.

[...] Guided by ambiguous signals from the heavens, and by the beauty of their equations, a few brave — or perhaps foolhardy — physicists now say that relativity may have limits and will someday have to be revised.

There was once an sf story about humanity dying out, and actually going quietly into that long night, and engaging in a massive project to make monoliths with collected human wisdom on them and distribute them throughout the solar system for the benefit of intelligent successors that would evolve. They're designed to be impervious to harm, unscratchable, to last millions of years.

And the story concludes with our hero seeing a beaver (I think it was) looking at one of the monoliths and proceeding to add graffiti with what looks like a sharp stick. As I recall, in response to E=mc^2, the beaver wrote "Sometimes."

The Marin County women who brought us peace writ in naked bodies are planning to march naked down Market Street in San Francisco on January 18 to protest the impending war in Iraq.

Swabbing without a warrant:

Recently, the police asked Shannon F. Kohler if they could swab the inside of his mouth to analyze his DNA. It was a request they made of 800 men in southern Louisiana as they searched for the serial killer who has slain four young women, leaving behind genetic material in each case.

It was his choice, Mr. Kohler said the officers told him, but if he refused, they would get a court order and that would get in the newspapers and then everyone would know he was not cooperating. The approach was heavy-handed and foolish, he said, especially since he has feet much bigger than the prints left by the killer and had phone bills that show he was at home when the murders took place.

[...] The idea for a DNA dragnet — sampling people who are not suspects but merely live or work near a crime scene — emerged in Britain. In 1987, the police tested 4,000 men in Leicestershire before the rapist and killer of two girls was caught after he got another man to take the DNA test for him.

Just for giggles, here's the 4th Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, [emphasis added] houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

In "Gattaca", one of the better sf films ever (which isn't to say that it was a great film, but it's one of very few films that's truly science fictional as opposed to being action/adventure or horror with sf props), the cops of a near-future world with fast, cheap DNA testing are portrayed as having become one-trick ponies with DNA dragnets as their approach to everything. Props to Andrew Niccol (who also wrote "The Truman Show").

Already widely circulated, but important enough to spread further: What should I do with my life?

Addressing the question, What should I do with my life? isn't just a productivity issue: It's a moral imperative. It's how we hold ourselves accountable to the opportunity we're given. Most of us are blessed with the ultimate privilege: We get to be true to our individual nature. Our economy is so vast that we don't have to grind it out forever at jobs we hate. For the most part, we get to choose. That choice isn't about a career search so much as an identity quest. Asking The Question aspires to end the conflict between who you are and what you do. There is nothing more brave than filtering out the chatter that tells you to be someone you're not. There is nothing more genuine than breaking away from the chorus to learn the sound of your own voice. Asking The Question is nothing short of an act of courage: It requires a level of commitment and clarity that is almost foreign to our working lives.

Workingforchange.com's most underreported and overhyped stories of 2002. (I'm excerpting relatively briefly — see the whole thing.) Overhyped:

Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: Nobody — except the Bush Administration and Tony Blair — believes they exist. Seldom have so many words been wasted on weapons that, if they did exist, would be few in number, poorly made, and impossible to deliver more than a couple hundred miles. Instead, Bush's obsession becomes our obsession. Worse, constant repetition of "Iraq = Saddam = Terrorist" has successfully shifted post-9/11 focus — and blame — away from the very real threat posed by Islamic terrorists, most of whom seem to come from countries we consider allies.

Axis of Evil: News Flash!! Iraq, Iran, and North Korea are three different countries. Iraq’s and Iran's governments loathe each other, and neither has any connection with North Korea. They are radically different in politics, history, religion, and culture, linked only by the rhetorical flourishes of George Bush's marketers — er, speechwriters. Apparently that's enough.

The Economic Recovery: It's coming, remember? And coming, and coming. It's just around the corner. Who'd have guessed this funhouse had so damned many corners?

Underreported:

White House Propaganda: Particularly while justifying its Iraq obsession, the Bush Administration told one whopper after another this year — exaggerations or outright lies not even consistent with each other, let alone reality. The individual statements are rarely challenged, and the Bush Administration's overall pro-war propaganda campaign — one of the most effective in a half-century — is itself rarely acknowledged by media that instead willingly participate.

The Rest of the Corporate Scandals... and What Happened to Corporate Reform?: Enron was a star. WorldCom got some ink (although not much discussion of why its debt tripled from $3 billion to $9 billion), and Harken and Halliburton even put in (too) brief appearances. But the long, long list of other corporate scandals this year almost never made past the business section. And the systemic reasons why such "scandals" are the norm, or slight variations on the norm, were almost never discussed. Neither, after 20 years of deregulation and privatizing, was the complicity of most major figures in both political parties, or the total cost to consumers and taxpayers. Reform? With one SEC Chairman down and one head of the new Accounting Oversight Board resigning before his term even began, you can bet "reform" is a lost cause.

White House Power Grab: Occasional flurries, like Dick Cheney's noisy refusal to release information on who wrote his energy policy, made the news. But on endless fronts, this White House and its Congressional allies have reserved for themselves an unthinkable array of powers — everything from keeping details of legislation secret until the last moment to imprisoning Americans without charges or counsel on nothing more than the President's say. A full list of the ways in which our unelected president is becoming emperor would be useful. We're still waiting.

Bush's Foxes, Our Henhouses: Turns out our emperor put a stop to the revolving door between corporate America and the White House — by appointing people who never used the door, and never stopped working for the industries they came from. Particularly at the Undersecretary level, almost every conceivable segment of America's corporate economy now has a friend on the inside looking for ways to maximize its profits. Food safety, media ownership, land use, bankruptcy law, tort reform, pollution, tax law, anti-trust protection, and on, and on. Any one of these is a scandal. Three are a trend. Several dozen and you've got a looting spree of historic proportions.

Bush Flunks the Economy Test: His tax cut was supposed to bear fruit by stimulating the economy this year. It didn't, and next year's cut won't, either. He's a "supply-sider" — and the Reagan administration should have proved long ago that supply-side economics is a joke.

These quickly bring to mind Mark Morford's reference to the Bush administration overwhelming our collective gag reflex.

Their conclusion:

The lesson — beyond the fact that it's a big and complicated world — is that in such a climate, it's more important than ever to seek out — and create! — alternative media; to take in more than one source; to decide for yourself; and to not believe everything you read. We've already been told this administration will lie to us; at least give them points for honesty on that score. Pity that's the only time most media outlets didn't believe them.

One of the raisons d'etre for MemeMachineGo! The web has made it easier than ever to read newpapers from all over the world, and you would do yourself a disservice to depend on mainstream U.S. outlets. Check out some of the news sites and blogs in New World Disorder's sidebar, Electrolite's sidebar, and This Modern World's links page. (That should keep you busy for a while.)

The SF Weekly is running Amy Alkon's (I previously posted of her putting business cards under the wipers of SUVs reading "Road-Hogging, Gas-Guzzling, Air-Fouling Vulgarian! Clearly you have an extremely small penis!") Advice Goddess column. From this week's:

The state of men, these days, mirrors the state of the martini, which has gone all frilly and girly, and requires much micro-management — lest it come in purple, with green Jolly Ranchers bobbing around Malibu Barbie's floating head.

[...] How did men get so lost? Rogue feminists helped them. They whacked men upside the head with a big bronze bust of Gloria Steinem. While they were all out cold, somebody did a lot of whispering in their ears about not acting like such hairy beasts: "Now, boys, sit down, have a civilized cup of tea, and stick out your pinkies... if you want us to like you." (P.S. We do like you like this, yes — we just won't have anything to do with you on Saturday night... nyah, nyah, nyah!)

In a 1/1/2003 entry of Neil Gaiman's journal, he writes: "Wasn’t a big fan of 2002, really. It seemed sort of bitty and like I didn’t do very much..."

He then describes how he only wrote 5 short stories, rewrote another, wrote scripts for almost 200 pages of comics, wrote 4 drafts of a screenplay adaption of a Nicholson Baker novel, a 2d draft of a screenplay adapting one of his comics stories, the first draft of another screenplay, several treatments of another movie project, directed a short film, did a book tour, won the Hugo and other awards, wrote some songs, and more. At least he has the good grace to conclude: "Hmm. I suppose that looking it over, it’s not that bad. I mean, I did a lot of things in 2002." (Of course, graciousness from Mr. Gaiman comes as no surprise.)

Meanwhile, the 19-year-old author of a self-published fantasy novel just signed $500,000 book deal (link via Boing Boing.)

This Saturday, January 11, SF Improv again returns to Cafe Eclectica in Albany for an improv comedy show, featuring yours truly. If you're in the Bay Area, the only excuse I'll accept for not being there is that you're at the SONiA show at the Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, the January 15 submission deadline for the Potlatch Writers Workshop rapidly approaches. Potlatch will be February 21-23, and it'll be a lot of fun. Don't miss it.

The Bush administration continues its stalwart efforts to relax federal regulations to make them more business-friendly:

The Bush administration has decided that a controversial fishing method involving encircling pods of dolphins with mile long nets to catch tuna has "no significant adverse impact" on the dolphins. Conservation groups say the determination, which will allow tuna from Mexico to be sold in the U.S. under a "dolphin safe" label, could spell disaster for imperiled dolphin populations.

On December 31, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) announced that after new research, it had concluded that the tuna purse seine industry practice of encircling dolphins to catch tuna has "no significant adverse impact on dolphin populations in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean." The announcement came less than a month after a conservation group released an unpublished NMFS report indicating that thousands of dolphins, particularly baby dolphins, are still dying in tuna nets in the eastern tropical Pacific.

No, MemeMachineGo! has not been abandoned. My ISP reassigned my IP address, and as a network administrator, I make a pretty good programmer — I screwed up my router configuration and have been off the net at home all week And I'm not going to either blog during work hours, or stay late at work just to blog.

Fortunately, tonight an admin friend helped me fix it, so let the games resume!

The Poor Man's round-up:

If John Edwards is any different from the stock Senator character from a billion episodes of Law and Order, he could have fooled me; and if he isn't, HIS SON'S A MURDERER!!

(Via Electrolite)

The Brunching Shuttlecocks' Bandwidth Theatre: don't miss The Adventures of Evil Overmom, Ninja Massage Therapist, or Kevin Smith and His Magic Feather.

Robert Anton Wilson's response to CSICOP: CSICON.

It started with two old codgers named O'Brian and Nolan discussing the weather. "Terrible rain and wind for this time of year," O'Brian ventured.

"Ah, faith," Nolan replied, "I do not believe it is this time of year at all, at all."

At this, Murphy spoke up. "Ah, Jaysus," he said, "I've never seen a boogerin' normal day." He paused to set down his pint, then added thoughtfully, "And I never met a fookin' average man neither"

[...] Murphy's simple words lit a fire in the subtle and intricate brain of Timothy F.X. Finnegan, who had just finished his own fourteenth pint (de Selby says his fifteenth pint). The next day the aging Finnegan wrote the first two-page outline of the new science he called patapsychology, a term coined in salute to Alfred Jarry's invention of pataphysics.

Finnegan's paper began with the electrifying sentence, "The average Canadian has one testicle, just like Adolph Hitler -- or, more precisely, the average Canadian has 0.96 testicles, an even sadder plight than Hitler's, if the average Anything actually existed." He then went on to demonstrate that the normal or average human lives in substandard housing in Asia, has 1.04 vaginas, cannot read or write, suffers from malnutrition and never heard of Silken Thomas Fitzgerald or Brian Boru. "The normal," he concluded "consists of a null set which nobody and nothing really fits."

[...] Patapsychology begins from Murphy's Law, as Finnegan called the First Axiom, adopted from Sean Murphy. This says,and I quote,"The normal does not exist. The average does not exist. We know only a very large but probably finite phalanx of discrete space-time events encountered and endured." In less technical language, the Board of the College of Patapsychology offers one million Irish punds [around $700,000 American] to any "normalist" who can exhibit "a normal sunset, an average Beethoven sonata, an ordinary Playmate of the Month, or any thing or event in space-time that qualifies as normal, average or ordinary."

Project Prevention offers cash to addicts who go in for long-term birth control or sterilization. This is raising the obvious objections they they're unethical, racists, eugenicists.

Even if their motivations were racist or eugenicist, for which I've seen no evidence, I'm having a really hard time convincing myself it's a bad thing that an addict who'd prefer $200 to having children gets $200 instead of having children.

(Via New World Disorder)

Corporations are considered persons under the law. A person's first amendment right to free speech guarantees, among other things, the right to lie. Nike is bringing these two statements to their syllogistic conclusion, claiming a corporation's constitutional right to lie.

While Nike was conducting a huge and expensive PR blitz to tell people that it had cleaned up its subcontractors' sweatshop labor practices, an alert consumer advocate and activist in California named Marc Kasky caught them in what he alleges are a number of specific deceptions. Citing a California law that forbids corporations from intentionally deceiving people in their commercial statements, Kasky sued the multi-billion-dollar corporation.

Instead of refuting Kasky's charge by proving in court that they didn't lie, however, Nike instead chose to argue that corporations should enjoy the same "free speech" right to deceive that individual human citizens have in their personal lives. If people have the constitutionally protected right to say, "The check is in the mail," or, "That looks great on you," then, Nike's reasoning goes, a corporation should have the same right to say whatever they want in their corporate PR campaigns.

I do think there are some inconsistencies in corporations' status as legal persons, mind you. For instance, I'm all for lawbreaking corporations being sentenced to prison and even, where appropriate, given the death sentence.

The Puffies: 2002's most inflated dust jacket blurbs.

Tariq Ali on Terry Eagleton's memoir The Gatekeeper: "Impaled on a crucifix, Eagleton winks, calmly removes the nails and steps down to shape his own history."

To no surprise, it ignores sf, which is, if anything, probably even more incestuous than mainstream fiction publishing. It wouldn't be any great feat to collect similarly ridiculous hyperbole within the genre.

The Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty has concluded that the "Skeptical Environmentalist" was scientifically dishonest.

"Objectively speaking," the committees found, "the publication of the work under consideration is deemed to fall within the concept of scientific dishonesty," as defined by Danish rules for scientific integrity. But because Dr. Lomborg was not found grossly negligent, he could not be found formally to have been scientifically dishonest, the report said.

As Henning Bertram says over at American Samizdat, "in less polite terms: he is an obfuscator, but just may be too dumb to realize it."

Meanwhile, the Worldwatch Institute concludes we only have a generation or two to save ourselves.

The longer that no remedial action is taken, the greater the degree of misery and biological impoverishment that humankind must be prepared to accept, the institute says in its 20th annual report.

A meat eater concludes vegans were right all along.

Biotechnology — whose promoters claim that it will feed the world — has been deployed to produce not food but feed: it allows farmers to switch from grains which keep people alive to the production of more lucrative crops for livestock. Within as little as 10 years, the world will be faced with a choice: arable farming either continues to feed the world's animals or it continues to feed the world's people. It cannot do both.

As a meat-eater, I've long found it convenient to categorise veganism as a response to animal suffering or a health fad. But, faced with these figures, it now seems plain that it's the only ethical response to what is arguably the world's most urgent social justice issue. We stuff ourselves, and the poor get stuffed.

What we do matters. What are you willing to do and not do?

Lobstermen doing a better job of feeding lobsters than catching them:

Professor Watson attached an underwater video camera to a standard trap and dropped it down to the seafloor. [...] They were totally stunned by what they saw. "The numbers of lobsters were just amazing," Watson recalls, with lobsters scuffling and fighting over the trap. "It looked like an anthill."

But the biggest surprise was that the lobsters were happily wandering in and out of the traps at will. On the videos, lobsters of all sizes crawled in and out of the funnel-shaped entrance as they pleased. The biggest impediment they faced were other lobsters, which did their best to chase newcomers away from the bait. Only 6 percent of the lobsters that entered the trap failed to find their way out again. (To watch the video, go to http://zoology.unh.edu/faculty/win/lobster%20ecologyfisheries/ltv.htm.)

This really tickles me.

Bush's war on condoms:

Three thousand years ago an amorous Egyptian couple (probably libidinous liberals) experimented with a linen pouch, producing the world's first known condom. Some right-wingers still haven't gotten over it.

Over the last few years conservative groups in President Bush's support base have declared war on condoms, in a campaign that is downright weird — but that, if successful, could lead to millions of deaths from AIDS around the world.

[...] Then there was the Condom Caper on the Web site of the Centers for Disease Control. A fact sheet on condoms was removed in July 2001 and, eventually, replaced by one that emphasized that they may not work.

I wrote about this previously. In the comments, in response to the suggestion that the page was probably just being updated and that it was an alarmist concern to suggest that the administration wanted to, or was, altering the CDC's position, I wrote:

I'll bet that as of March 1, 2003 either the page is still missing in action, or that its replacement, far from merely updating spermicide info, features a noticeably pro-abstinence and anti-condom-effectiveness change in tone.

Well, here's the old page (courtesy of the Internet Archive).

"Refraining from having sexual intercourse with an infected partner is the best way to prevent transmission of HIV and other STDs. But for those who have sexual intercourse, latex condoms are highly effective when used consistently and correctly. "

"Five U.S. studies of specific sex education programs have demonstrated that HIV education and sex education that included condom information either had no effect upon the initiation of intercourse or resulted in delayed onset of intercourse; five studies of specific programs found that HIV/sex education did not increase frequency of intercourse, and a program that included development of skills to negotiate safer sexual behaviors actually resulted in a decrease in the number of youth who initiated sex."

"STDs, including HIV infection, are preventable, and condoms represent an effective prevention tool. A recent analysis estimated that, for high-risk heterosexual men, the societal savings (in health care costs and productivity) per condom was $27, and for men who have sex with men, the savings per condom was more than $530 when condoms were used consistently and correctly with multiple partners."

And the new one:

[bold in original] The surest way to avoid transmission of sexually transmitted diseases is to abstain from sexual intercourse, or to be in a long-term mutually monogamous relationship with a partner who has been tested and you know is uninfected.

For persons whose sexual behaviors place them at risk for STDs, correct and consistent use of the male latex condom can reduce the risk of STD transmission. However, no protective method is 100 percent effective, and condom use cannot guarantee absolute protection against any STD.

Gone is any information on condom usage being cost-effective, education not resulting in greater promiscuity, and even details on condoms themselves, replaced with details on STDs.

I'd say I accurately called the change in tone, god help us all.

Judge rules police are obligated to issue Miranda Warnings to those with multiple-personality disorder on a per personality basis.

Haley reportedly made several statements implicating herself, but District Judge Thomas Honzel tossed them out, saying the damaging remarks presumably had been made by Haley's alternate personality, who had not been given an additional advisement of her rights.

In the making the other side's point for them department, some heated words about WW I were too hot for a UC Berkeley fundraiser:

In one of the quotations, from 1915, Goldman called on people "not yet overcome by war madness to raise their voice of protest, to call the attention of the people to the crime and outrage which are about to be perpetrated on them." In the other, from 1902, she warned that free-speech advocates "shall soon be obliged to meet in cellars, or in darkened rooms with closed doors, and speak in whispers lest our next-door neighbors should hear that free-born citizens dare not speak in the open."

Berkeley officials said the quotations could be construed as a political statement by the university in opposition to United States policy toward Iraq.

Over at Google Answers, someone asked about Paul Krugman's personal life, in a transparent search for dirt:

I would like to acquire as much information as possible about the personal and professional life of Paul Krugman, the Princeton economics professor who writes a column for the New York Times. For example, it is publicly known that he was a paid consultant to Enron — what other consulting, advisory or employment arragements has he had with other companies or organizations? What is known about his family — who were his parents, other relatives; is he married, children? What is his lifestyle like — what is is compensation at the New York Times (salary, options, bonus, whatever) and at Princeton (salary, retirement, whatever). How about royalties from books, speaking engagements, and so on? What kind of house does he live in? What kind of car does he drive? Is anything known about his personal life (hobbies, sports, sexual orientation, etc)? How about his career — he's taught at quite a few colleges, why has he moved around so much? Were there any problems? I will pay $100 for this as a starting point

Krugman himself answered at length and solicited the $100.

We also have two cats; I withhold their names to protect their privacy.

Mad props to seminal improv teacher Del Close who willed his skull to Chicago's Goodman Theatre when he died 4 years ago so he could play Yorick in their productions of Hamlet.

In centuries past, actors doing so was the theatre's only source of skull props, so it's not a wholly original move, but still very cool.

Last night, SF Improv gathered to watch the videotape of our last show and critique our performance. Unfortunately, the sound was accidentally not recorded. Fortunately, that offered an opportunity we probably wouldn't have otherwise availed ourselves of to observe just the physical aspects.

It was nice to find out that some things I'd had some concern about weren't true. I didn't look fat. I didn't display any awkward physical tics. I didn't look like I didn't know what to do with my arms. I had thought my stage presence was probably adequate, but it's actually pretty good.

One thing I will make effort to change: I would always take stage left and tend to stay there. (Another player did the same with stage right.) And I could do much more to establish the setting and interact with the environment (all mimed, as is usual in improv).

And, of course, you can see the results for yourself February 8; mark your calendars now; plug plug.

Several Japanese Zen sects apologize for collusion with Japanese aggression in the '30's and '40's after this was publicized by the book Zen at War.

The initial statement said that the conflict between America and an anti-American jihad made it important to remember "that in the past our nation, under the banner of Holy War, initiated a conflict that led to great suffering."

The more detailed version apologized for helping to lend a religious purpose to invasions, colonization and the former empire's destruction of "20 million precious lives." The self-critical account also described how Myoshin-ji members followed Japanese invaders across Asia, "established branch headquarters and missions" in conquered areas, even "conducted fund-raising drives to purchase military aircraft."

Scary article about the lack of safety in the porn industry, and the industry's general treatment of actors as disposable, and authorities' disinterest.

The extent of infection among those performers is unknown because no government or regulatory medical agency has ever tracked the industry consistently. The limited data that does exist is alarming. The Adult Industry Medical HealthCare Foundation (AIM), an industry-backed clinic in Sherman Oaks, administered voluntary tests to a group consisting primarily of adult film workers. Of 483 people tested between October 2001 and March 2002, about 40% had at least one disease. Nearly 17% tested positive for chlamydia, 13% for gonorrhea and 10% for hepatitis B and C, according to Sharon Mitchell, a former adult actress who founded AIM.

[...] In the heterosexual adult film business, producers may not demand the use of condoms, but they do require actors and actresses to sign documents meant to excuse the filmmakers of liability. A typical contract from Vivid says the company is not responsible, and will pay no medical costs, for "sexually transmitted diseases... such as acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), herpes, hepatitis and other related diseases."

Ballowe and Goldberg signed similar waivers on the movie they shot together. "I represent that I am in good health, with no known sexually transmittable diseases. I understand that the benefits of the workmen's compensation laws do not apply," the waiver said.

Ballowe's lawsuit alleges that Goldberg lied when signing the document, and that the attempt to force her to waive worker's compensation rights was not lawful.

Legal experts called by The Times agree. Employees cannot be forced to sign away their legal rights to work in a safe environment--or to earn a minimum wage, overtime pay and enjoy the protection of workers' compensation insurance.

Almost makes me wish I were a porn consumer so I could boycott them, but as with auto-makers, the oil industry, and producers of meat, junk food, fast food, and, indeed, just about all mainstream food sellers, my boycott would be redundant. Sigh.

San Francisco penguins in the grips of a fad:

It all started in November when six newcomer Megellannic penguins, formerly of Sea World in Aurora, Ohio, were brought in.

Since then the penguin pool at the San Francisco Zoo has been a daily frenzy of circle swimming by all of the 52 birds at once.

It's the old story. It only takes a few bad penguins.

Try the World's Only Ass-Kicking Machine. Check out its full technical details.

The design is simple and rugged. A six-foot waterwheel is cut from thick plywood and equipped with vanes that are driven by a stream of water falling from above. The water is contained in an underground tank and driven by a 110v submersible electric pump up to a water valve and sluice, thus, this is an "overshot wheel" type ass-kicker. The valve controls the water flow, and after driving the wheel, the water drains back into the underground tank. Water level is maintained by rainwater collected from an adjoining gazebo roof.

The actual ass-kicking is done by a seven-foot length of 2"x4" lumber with a hub at the center, driven by a 1" steel driveshaft that is concentric with the drive wheel. At each end of the 2x4, there's a used green suede tennis shoe tacked to a piece of lumber.

Real Live Preacher is a blog by a Texas preacher and it's funny, warm, and passionate. Start from the beginning and read the whole thing. From The Preacher Remembers Earl the Grave Digger:

The conversation turned to God. Earl was a thoroughgoing atheist. Not angry. Not defensive. No need to convince anyone to join him. Very rational. He celebrated my calling to the ministry and was genuinely interested in the classes I was taking.

One night we were sitting at our desk and a bookmarker fell out of whatever the hell Earl was reading. It was a construction paper cross with “Jesus loves you Daddy” written on it in crayon.

I picked it up and looked at him. “Earl?”

It was given to him by his daughter who went to church with her mother. Like lots of little kids, she really, really loved Jesus.

I asked Earl if he minded his daughter going to church.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “Whatever gets you through the night.” He punctuated this with a thumbs-up. “Plus, she gave it to me because she loves me.”

At that time the preacher was newly married. Later I would discover how your child can pull your heart out of your chest with a little gesture like that.

He cradled the small cross in his large hands. For a moment our heads were bowed across the desk in adoration of this little icon of love.

The seminarian giving his life to the service of that cross and the atheist who understood the love of his child shared a moment of worship.

Dear friends, I celebrate our common ground. I marvel at the impulse of love which is clearly present in all of us.

Now I lay me down my need to save or evangelize you. That’s not an easy move for a preacher. We’ve been taught that all souls are our responsibility. That’s a terrible burden to bear, and it feels good to let it go.

Thank you for making me welcome. Thank you for letting me tell my stories. I didn’t realize how desperately I needed to share them.

R. Crumb on The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick, an 8 page comic.

Thanks to Lia at Cheese Dip for turning me on to Izzle pfaff!, the funniest online journal I've found in a while. See, for instance, I'm the Good Kind of Whore!:

I started working on a new show this week; AR Gurney's Far East. And if I am not mistaken, tonight I will be given a paycheck. A paycheck! For acting! Weekly! This is a great feeling; it's like at the end of the week, they're so moved by my artistic prowess, they'd love to give me an enthusiastic handjob, but it wouldn't quite be proper, so here's a check. Fools! With that check, I can buy several handjobs!

or The Icy Hands of Death Hog the Remote:

There is an advertisement on TV that has quickly vaulted onto my list of Things That Make Me Want To Set My Face On Fire. Perhaps you've seen it, which would explain the extensive facial scarring.

The scene opens up with a normal schlub sitting at his computer. Behind him stalks his clearly pregnant wife. She has the kind of face that suggests she has thus far spent her life spreading malice and despair; perhaps as a telemarketer or an angry Tiki god. It's hard to say. The guy wears a faintly haunted look that suggests the early stages of Stockholm Syndrome. Anyway, he's kind of dicking with his computer, tapping at it with the desultory air that men have at the keyboard when they know they won't be looking at pornography.

Then you hear a sound like old bones being gnawed by hungry ghouls. Oh, right, it's the wife speaking. "You know, starting a family means getting a new car," she hisses in a nice wifely way. It does? Never mind, you poor shithead! Run! Run while she's heavy with your unfortunate child! Start a new life as a lemur wrangler in Madagascar! Anything! Don't doom yourself to this!

or this priceless aside.

Wolfgang Puck carries the lingering stink of the Eighties, and just kind of looks desperate and tanned in that panicky way that says, "I can't possibly be irrelevant. I'm tan!"

Unmovies.com has lots of great and funny essays on creativity, writing, and particularly screenwriting. Like Why Screenwriting?

I met my first fringe-Hollywood shark--this odd, older guy who approached me during a break and told me how "terrific" and "visual" my writing was and what a "great ear" for dialogue I had. He then offered me money to remove my shoes and allow him to sit on my bare feet for the duration of class.

No. Just kidding. Although, in a way, the truth is even seedier.

How to become a good screenwriter is some of the best writing advice I've seen, and I shan't do it the injustice of excerpting. Go read it.

And there's lots more. I do think he's unfair to Robert McKee, though.

For best results, turn off Java before entering. Why does anyone think it's a good idea to use a Java applet for a navigation link?

You might not ever get rich,
But let me tell ya it's better than diggin' a ditch.
There ain't no tellin' who you might meet:
A movie star or maybe even an Indian chief!

=v= Why (I hear you cry) am I singing "Car Wash," the disco hit by Rose Royce? Because I just found a job listing for a car wash company in Iowa, and they want a C++ software engineer for (and I quote) "COMMISERATE WITH EXPERIENCE Work."

Some of the work gets kinda hard.
This ain't no place to be if you plan on bein' a star.
Let me tell you it's always cool,
And the boss don't mind sometimes if you act the fool.

=v= Last Saturday, the SQLSlammer worm exploited the inevitable Microsoft security hole and disrupted (among other things) Bank of America's ATM network. While the bank's customers puzzle out the implications of their life savings being so comfortably close to port scans from the Internet, yours truly is getting busy and helping our heroic Office of Homeland Security with a lead on the perpetrator: I think it's Oliver Wendell Jones.

It was Jones, of course, who hacked into the stock exchange back in the early 1980s and broadcast the message, "Avast, ye scurvy dogs! Bank of America is about to go belly up!!" His current whereabouts are unknown, but there's a low-resolution photo available online (from the 1980s, when digital camera technology was in its infancy).

Well, obviously he was pleased by it given its domination of his web page. He discusses it further in this article.

"To my knowledge, everybody took the same attitude I did, the common sense attitude. They're having fun in order to get at something else," he said. "One of the themes in Charlie's work, of course, is the struggle to express himself in an art form that is full of convention," McKee said. "Hence, my character is there saying, 'Look, you've got to tell a story.' "

A study on mice suggests the importance of leanness.

Ronald Kahn at Harvard Medical School in Boston, US, and his colleagues have been able to extend the lifespan of mice by 18 per cent by blocking the rodent's accumulation of fat in specific cells. This suggests that leanness — and not necessarily diet — promotes longevity in "calorie restricted" animals.

[...] But many researchers hope they will be able to trigger the same effect with a drug once they understand how less food leads to a longer life. One theory is that eating less reduces the accumulation of harmful chemical by-products called free radicals that can damage cells. But Kahn's team wondered whether the animals simply benefit by becoming lean.

To find out, they used molecular biology tricks to disrupt the insulin receptor gene in lab mice — but only in their fat cells. "Since insulin is needed to help fat cells store fat, these animals had less fat and were protected against obesity," explains Kahn.

People'll be lined up around the block to get at the trials of any such drug, any risk be damned.

I mean what's the alternative? Eating less?

Men are jerks (cue laughtrack).

Welcome to the new comic image of men on tv: incompetence at its worst. Where television used to feature wise and wonderful fathers and husbands, today's comedies and ads often feature bumbling husbands and inept, uninvolved fathers.

[...] While most television dramas tend to avoid gender stereotypes, as these undermine "realism," comic portrayals of men have become increasingly negative. The trend is so noticeable that it has been criticized by men's rights groups and some television critics.

It has also been studied by academicians Dr. Katherine Young and Paul Nathanson in their book, "Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture". Young and Nathanson argue that in addition to being portrayed as generally unintelligent, men are ridiculed, rejected, and physically abused in the media. Such behavior, they suggest, "would never be acceptable if directed at women."

Inspired Nigerian Spam spoof:

MY FAMILY IS CALLING FOR YOUR URGENT ASSISTANCE IN FUNDING THE REMOVAL OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ AND ACQUIRING THE PETROLEUM ASSETS OF HIS COUNTRY, AS COMPENSATION FOR THE COSTS OF REMOVING HIM FROM POWER.

Spider Robinson sneers at Lawrence Lessig and casts any opponents to the Sonny Bono Act, which extended copyrights to 70 years beyond a creator's death, as thieves.

So when I do snuff it, I'd like to leave [my books], and any money they may fetch (the wee percentage the publishers, producers and taxmen won't keep) to my daughter Terri — just like any other craftsman would. I don't think that's an outrageous, capitalist-pig desire: It's a large part of why the stories exist in the first place.

Terri's 28. If I hand in my lunch pail tomorrow, she'll hold U.S. copyright on my works until she's 98. Again, that doesn't seem unreasonable to me. Life span is increasing. Her great-grandfather died last year at 100. I recently heard an eminent expert — Dr. Phil — say if you are alive in the year 2010, your life expectancy will be 125. If that's true, and I croak later today, Terri will be S.O.L. for the last quarter-century of her life, helpless to prevent slipshod pirate editions, bogus spinoffs or Hollywood rip-offs of her dad's legacy.

So I'm fine with the Sonny Rollins . . . the furshlugginer Sonny Bono Act; I wouldn't mind extending it further.

All this despite recollecting that he wrote a story called "Melancholy Elephants" which was extremely explicit in its point that indefinite copyright is a bad thing for the human race at large (and is currently available for free on-line, both ironies which he notes.)

Many other blogs have discussed the virtues of an intellectual commons, and I won't go into them here. I will, though, note that Spider Robinson is no Walt Disney or Robert Heinlein (examples he discussed) and I doubt his royalties are going to be making a difference to his daughter's bottom line 50 years from now, let alone 70. (I haven't been able to touch his stuff since the conclusion of Callahan's Lady in which our purported heroes cripple the villain and then stand around slapping each other on the backs and gloating about how he was sure to be raped in prison now that he was defenseless.)