tags: personal journal

I enjoyed this great transition from a great American tradition (racial profiling) to a great American tradition (patriotic consumerism) courtesy of NPR's All Things Considered today:

Daniel Schorr: [...] And marking Black History Month, the president's attorney general, Eric Holder, called the United States "a nation of cowards" for not confronting the issue of race.

All this is part of the backdrop Thursday night as the president clinks beer glasses with the black professor and the white cop who, by coincidence, is the one who briefed his colleagues on avoiding racial profiling.

But perhaps Obama need not wade into every racially charged conflict. After the Cambridge, Mass., affair, the president searches for teachables. Could I address a first teachable to Obama?

Remember, Mr. President, that you are the president, and when faced with an emotionally laden encounter, you cannot afford to act on your visceral reactions.

Or, to put it briefly, don't do something. Just stand there.

[This blank part is the good bit. Enjoy the segue!]

Presenter: More importantly, what will each man be drinking? Reportedly the President will have a Bud; Professor Gates, Red Stripe; and Sgt Crowley, Blue Moon. None chose the beer associated with Boston, and that is Sam Adams. We have Jim Koch on the line -- he's the founder of the Boston Beer Company, the brewery that makes Sam Adams. Welcome to the program.

Koch: It's a pleasure to be with you.

Presenter: Sadly they didn't choose your beer.

Koch: Well, I -- that's okay. I think I was hoping, along with hundreds of other American breweries, that American beers would be chosen at the White House rather than, you know, beers that were owned by big foreign global conglomerates. But I'm at least happy that they're getting together, they're having a beer -- beer has, since the founding of the Republic, been this glue that held us together way back when Sam Adams was plotting the revolution in the taverns over a beer, or Thomas Jefferson was sitting at Queenshead Tavern in Philadelphia, drafting the Declaration of Independence over an American brew.

Presenter: This has been referred to as a "teachable moment" -- the President called it that -- and if you were asked to make a special beer for this summit, a teachable beer, what would it be?

Koch: You know, I think I'd make a blend of ingredients from all over the world, which is certainly what's represented there with the three participants...

Jackson dominates Oz charts

1) Michael Jackson put out an album titled “Number Ones”
2) It’s at number two.

When I cook something in the microwave, I generally put it in for some time between 30 seconds and 3 minutes. This usage pattern is borne out by the wear on the buttons.

I wondered if this would follow Benford's law, but it doesn't seem to. Here are the buttons arranged in order of usage, based on the amount of wear:

There's no particular reason why it should, as the amount of time I want to heat my food isn't so much related to the actual heating requirements of the food as to the amount of times I feel like getting up and stirring it. Plus a bunch of other reasons. :) Sadly I think the wear patterns are too noisy to work out if the arrangement follows a Zeta distribution.

Wear on buttons can have more serious side effects: Bruce Schneier recently posted about security-code keypads which leak information by showing a pattern of wear on the correct keys.

Handy tips, number 1: Remember to make sure you know where to buy a replacement toilet seat before you remove the incumbent seat and throw it away.

With more than a hint of double entendre, McManus asked: “How many times a day do you actually shake the sauce bottle?”

After a brief pause, Mr Rudd rejoined with: “Not often enough.”

(source)

Iphone 3GS: Finally, a worthy successor to the Apple ][GS!

Thanks to a comment on this page I now know that you can sing Emily Dickinson’s poems to the Gilligan’s Island theme, and that is now the only way I will ever think of them.

BECAUSE I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
(More foot-tappin’ stanzas)

Everyone has (been 14 and) giggled at “man touch”, but I like:

man pow
man screen
man 2 write
man strfry

Sadly the last one is Linux only.

The worst joke ever, my previous entry notwithstanding, is this joke recounted by an unnamed Labor guy during the Senate proceedings:

Unnamed Labor guy 1: How do you confuse the opposition over climate change?

Unnamed Labor guy 2: I dunno, ask them about sequestration?

ULG1: No.

ULG2: Err... talk about biochar?

ULG1: Nope.

ULG2: I'm really at a loss here, unnamed Labor guy 1! How do you confuse the opposition over climate change?

ULG1: You don't have to say anything, because they're already confused!

ULG2: *reaction unrecorded*

Honestly, that's hardly even a joke. I'm beginning to suspect that people don't get up during Senate proceedings to tell jokes at all, but instead to make some rhetorical point.

Follow-up to this post.

1. Garlic flakes (or what have you), chili flakes, and pepper.

Actually the bread I use is called “Lebanese bread”. In Australia (at least), Lebanese bread (a.k.a. Syrian bread) is a lot flatter than “pita bread” — it’s totally unleavened. But apparently this isn’t the case everywhere. There is probably a fascinating etymology here that I am too full of delicious pita bread triangles to look into.

my favourite FORTRAN program reads:

      REALITY, SANITY, and ME
      STOP
      END

— Anonymous comment. (Had to figure out how to indent Fortran to verify this one.)

Today, just out of interest, I decided to download the video lectures which accompany MIT’s famous Scheme-based SICP course. I used the torrents. The first one came down at about 800 kilobytes a second. Subsequent lectures are arriving at 7k/sec, with fewer peers. My conclusion is that one SICP lecture is all you need to drive you straight back to Python, but I’m hoping to be proven wrong.

(Of course, MIT themselves took 30 years…)

Q: How do you make a cross city tunnel?

A: Sneak up behind it and kick it in the arse!

(I had something here before about duplicating access, closing free roads, setting high tolls and going broke, but it wasn't as snappy.)

I'm very encouraged by the reaction of the majority of the public to the flaws in the Australian government's Internet censorship plan, which has received widespread ridicule in the local and overseas press.

I enjoyed this cheap shot by the Associated Press, covering an interview with the Minister responsible, Stephen Conroy (full article):

"It is possible to support a blacklist and support free speech," Conroy said. He did not explain how.

If you're interested in following along, I recommend the (obviously biased) site somebodythinkofthechildren.com.

To start with, the conversation should be about 95% silence. Give the impression that you don't have to talk. Chatting is for the timid. You don't need it. Convey the absolute minimum amount of information necessary, as an afterthought. "Just a trim, please," you might say, for example. After five minutes of silence, he will perhaps respond with "shall I trim the sideburns?" and you can respond with something like "yes please."

Give the conversation time to develop. This requires the utmost delicacy. Think "deer in headlights" more than "Nescafé ad". With the proper timing, you should be hitting the conversational high points after a quarter of an hour, talking about male pattern baldness, how to attract the ladies, your computer science thesis -- and the minutes will just fly by.