Fascinating photo essay about the ship-breaking industry in Bangladesh, where decommissioned supertankers of the world are slowly disassembled by locals using crowbars and their bare hands (and, in so doing,…
Fascinating photo essay about the ship-breaking industry in Bangladesh, where decommissioned supertankers of the world are slowly disassembled by locals using crowbars and their bare hands (and, in so doing, providing Bangladesh with 80% of its steel).
It’s like watching ants strip down a carcass.
(via J-Walk)
The Department of Justice wants to know what you’re searching for on Google. Yes, you — if you’re lucky enough to be in the records that they’re asking for. Now,…
The Department of Justice wants to know what you’re searching for on Google. Yes, you — if you’re lucky enough to be in the records that they’re asking for.
Now, of course, the reason for this is not so much because they’re making a list (and checking it twice) on you in particular. The reason given for the the subpoena on Google search records (selected at random, actually) is to help prove the case that folks get to pr0n sites on the Internet by accident, and therefore the government needs to restrict access to such sites.
The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law was meant to punish online pornography sites that make their content accessible to minors. The government contends it needs the Google data to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches.
In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Justice Department lawyers revealed that Google has refused to comply with a subpoena issued last year for the records, which include a request for one million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period.
[…] The government argues that it needs the information as it prepares to once again defend the constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act in a federal court in Pennsylvania. The law was struck down in 2004 because it was too broad and could prevent adults from accessing legal porn sites.
However, the Supreme Court invited the government to either come up with a less drastic version of the law or go to trial to prove that the statute does not violate the First Amendment and is the only viable way to combat child porn.
As a result, government lawyers said in court papers they are developing a defense of the 1998 law based on the argument that it is far more effective than software filters in protecting children from porn. To back that claim, the government has subpoenaed search engines to develop a factual record of how often Web users encounter online porn and how Web searches turn up material they say is “harmful to minors.”
Google says the information is private, both a trade secret and protected by its own privacy agreement.
So, what have you searched for recently? And would you like the Justice Department to know about it? Even if they’re not going to do anything with that info … this time … yet?
(via BoingBoing)
I am still desperately behind on comics reading from being away on business trips and the holidays. The subject came up with Aaron the other day what other “great” titles…
I am still desperately behind on comics reading from being away on business trips and the holidays. The subject came up with Aaron the other day what other “great” titles I’m reading.
Here’s the “bottom” third of my box, with 1.5 months of comics in it, with the idea that farther down the list is better (i.e., saving the best for last). Since it’s such a long interval, this probably covers most of the best comics titles I’m reading right now:
Teen Titans
Runaways
Outsiders
Penny Arcade
Captain America
Spider-Woman: Origin
Conan
Daredevil
New Avengers
X-Factor
Ultimates
Amazing Spider-Man
Powers
Strangers in Paradise
Fantastic Four
Supreme Powers: Hyperion
Fables
Book of Lost Souls
Planetary
PvP
Make of all that what you will.
Okay, this is a test. I’ve installed a new FF extension called Performancing, which creates an in-browser window (FF 1.5 or higher only) to create a blog entry (complete, by…
Okay, this is a test. I’ve installed a new FF extension called Performancing, which creates an in-browser window (FF 1.5 or higher only) to create a blog entry (complete, by default, with a link to the page you’re currently viewing). It’s usable, so it claims, with various and sundry blogging packages, has a WYSIWYG editor, etc. We’ll see how it works …
And even do text in color and stuff.
I look forward to playing with it some more.
UPDATE: Hmmm. It created the post with a category, but the category didn’t show up. And it handles line breaks in a rather ugly fashion (internally).
And … I’m not sure why the post came out in justified text.
UPDATE: Um … that’s because that’s the basic text format I use at present. Duh.
Last Vestry meeting last night. Not particularly noteworthy — approved next year’s budget, made some plans, discussed this and that. I reported on the nominees that will stand for election…
Last Vestry meeting last night. Not particularly noteworthy — approved next year’s budget, made some plans, discussed this and that. I reported on the nominees that will stand for election to Vestry in a week or two at the Annual Meeting. There was a bit of sentiment as the outgoing members present (myself, Michelle, Kees) were given thanks and a standing round of applause.
And out of there by 8:30p. I said the closing prayer, helped clean up, and that was about it.
I won’t miss the job, to be honest. Though in theory one evening meeting a month sounds trivial, that represents almost 5% of my weekday evenings in a given month. And there were periods where we were meeting a lot more frequently in there, either during crises or during budget cycles. Plus, as a Vestry member, I had a whole slew of other fun assignments lobbed my way.
On the other hand, I’ll miss the people. There was discussion about the Vestry retreat next month, which will include the new nominees. Those were always a blast, both as an opportunity for spiritual exploration and as a chance to just hang out and socialize.
Not that those people are going away. And not that the parish leadership is going to let me fade off into the sunset without asking me to help in other ways. But it won’t be — quite — the same.
I’ll have served on Vestry for four years there, close to half or more of the total time I’ve attended Good Shepherd. I won’t miss making the announcement to Margie that “I have Vestry tonight.” But I’ll miss not being part of that group.
My Internet host, Hosting Matters, is rolling out a new anti-spam system to its various servers, and it finally got to mine. The new system, MailScanner, still uses the SpamAssassin…
My Internet host, Hosting Matters, is rolling out a new anti-spam system to its various servers, and it finally got to mine.
The new system, MailScanner, still uses the SpamAssassin engine, but the option to flag subject lines of spam messages (as detected) has gone away (it’s a server-based setting, not an account-based setting, and evidently a huge majority of HM users prefer not to see the subject line marked up). Problem is, a lot of mailers (like Outlook Express) can’t read the alternative mail header flags.
MailScanner has two threshold (configurable to a SpamAssassin score) — “low scoring spam” and “high scoring spam.” Mail falling into either of those categories can be set to be delivered, deleted, or routed to a particular e-mail address.
Now, with Thunderbird, I can set a Message Filter to look for a X-HMDNSGroup-MailScanner-SpamScore message header value that contains “ssssssssssss” or something. But what makes this dicey is that I also provide mail hosting to my folks, Margie’s folks, and Mary, and OE users (the Ks) can’t do message header filtering, and I have no idea if it’s possible in my folks’ or Mary’s e-mail clients.
Sigh.
What I will likely do is monitor what flows into my account with that flag, and look for false positives, then play with the settings some more, until I can confidently just have stuff flagged as spam deleted. Either that, or the HM folks have said they’re looking at a per-account subject line flagger that I’d be more than happy to go back to using.
Meantime, the new system also has anti-virus cleaning and some nice anti-phishing/fraud features that I consider a plus. Yay.
It was a pleasure being able to put a face, a voice, and personalities to a couple of our CoH mates, Kate and Aaron. They seem to have enjoyed their…
A combination of major job assignments cropping up like huge, carnivorous toadstools, combined with irksome levels of angst over recent CoH coalition brouhaha, not to mention my last Vestry meeting…
A combination of major job assignments cropping up like huge, carnivorous toadstools, combined with irksome levels of angst over recent CoH coalition brouhaha, not to mention my last Vestry meeting (of my term, and thus for a while, if not necessarily ever) means not much is getting posted here today. Sorry.
Kaylee helps Margie with CoH. this post enabled by airblogging.com….
While the initials “MLK” mean something quite different to me than they do to the rest of the country (I’m married to her), this date remains an important one for…
While the initials “MLK” mean something quite different to me than they do to the rest of the country (I’m married to her), this date remains an important one for this country.
Not just for Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was a man — an influential man — but the tying of this date to him has had the mixed blessing of providing a personalized example: an heroic icon whose life can be examined and whose achievements cataloged and celebrated, but also a man whose flaws (and the sins and goofiness committed in his name) can be used to discredit all that the day is meant to represent, which is the triumph of the human spirit over oppression, the achievement of peaceful change against injustice, and the (ever-unfolding) recognition that all are created equal, not just those born with the “right” gender and skin color (etc.).
It makes me wonder — do we live in a post-heroic age? Did the idolization of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, such that their birthdays were made national holidays, run into similar problems? Or are we too prone to look for clay feet these days, too quick to dismiss the good of a man if we can pick out a flaw?
I can point to any number of individuals involved in the Civil Rights movement of the 60s and find dirt on any of them, or note how some ideas they had were as screwy as others of their ideas were profound. Heck, I can point to how excesses of the movement, and venality amongst some of its leadership (to this day) have had negative impacts on the nation and on the groups the movement sought to protect.
Nonetheless, our nation, as a whole, is profoundly better off for the pain and sacrifice and dedication to purpose of those civil rights leaders and the thousands and millions who followed them. And if we let the flaws of that era and its principals obscure the good that came of it — the escape from Jim Crow and separate drinking fountains and racial (among other forms) discrimination being not only present but legally condoned and enforced — then we’ve become part of the problem as much as we are inheritors of the solution.
Long, intense, fun, exhausting weekend … Saturday was prepping for, then executing, our annual Twelfth Night party. Despite pretty minimal planning and preparation over the preceding week, it went pretty…
Long, intense, fun, exhausting weekend …
Saturday was prepping for, then executing, our annual Twelfth Night party. Despite pretty minimal planning and preparation over the preceding week, it went pretty smoothly. As usual, I focused on cleaning, Margie on cooking, and Kitten on being underfoot, but by the time folks arrived the house was clean and inviting, the food was ready to serve, and Kitten had managed to get into a party dress.
We had 20-25 this year — which included zero from both our offices (our being both slugs about getting invites put out) — split pretty evenly between folks from the church and local friends. The Denver playoff game ended up being turned on out in the family room, which was annoying to begin with, but I went with the flow and it turned out okay. Half the party broke up after the game completed, and most everyone had wandered off by 11:30p or so.
Sunday was the post-party party, with the various local gaming folk coming on over in different shifts. Doyce was kind enough to prep and run a couple of games (including a slightly-abridged-for-time hilarious RISUS-based “A Kringle in Time“), and that action ran from early afternoon to about 9-10p or so, at which point folks exited, we cleaned, then crashed.
The week ahead looks like a moderately hectic return to normalcy — probably some final-evening fun with Kate and Aaron before they wing their ways back to their respective coasts, continuing the steady dishwashing of cups, plates, and platters, and getting the tidied contents of various boxes back where they belong. Work looks fairly insane, but no travel planned (as of the current moment).
There was a patina of snow on the ground when I got up this morning, and the roads varied between wet and slightly snowy on the way in. Took me a while longer, but no big problems. I hope that’s auspicious for the week.
Consuming post-party goodies and having a good time, we have Dave G., Jackie (behind the lamp), Lee, De, Kate (with Kaylee), Stan, Doyce, Randy, Aaron, and Margie. A full…
Consuming post-party goodies and having a good time, we have Dave G., Jackie (behind the lamp), Lee, De, Kate (with Kaylee), Stan, Doyce, Randy, Aaron, and Margie. A full living room, indeed.
this post enabled by airblogging.com.
After watching one our new BTAS DVDs: KATHERINE: I’m going to practice karate at home. Just a little bit. DAVE: Well you know, we could let you take a class…
After watching one our new BTAS DVDs:
KATHERINE: I’m going to practice karate at home. Just a little bit.
DAVE: Well you know, we could let you take a class in karate.
KATHERINE: But then I’d have to listen a lot!
She got a bit offended by how loud and long Margie and I laughed.
There’s much to recommend Washington, and Seattle has always seemed like an interesting city to me, and certainly there’s a lot of natural beauty in the area. That said, Defective…
There’s much to recommend Washington, and Seattle has always seemed like an interesting city to me, and certainly there’s a lot of natural beauty in the area.
That said, Defective Yeti provides the definitive reason why (aside from our love of Denver) a move to Seattle is not in the cards for us.
So you may have been noticing an increased volume of bitching here about workload and so forth. I’ve been (and will remain) discreet about a lot of work-related stuff, just…
So you may have been noticing an increased volume of bitching here about workload and so forth. I’ve been (and will remain) discreet about a lot of work-related stuff, just because that’s the ethical thing to do (not to mention the smart thing)*, but I think I’ve clearly been feeling a lot of … pressure, lately.
Now as an over-achiever with a fear of being found out as an inadequate imposter (yeah, yeah, enough with the armchair psychology, Dave), I dread failure. Which makes doing something like going to my boss and telling him how I’ve felt really overwhelmed with my workload of late (i.e., “I can’t hack it!” if that’s how someone would want to interpret it) just seriously insane, as well as exhaustingly daunting to even consider.
But it is, perhaps, a sign of said overwhelming, that I did just that.
I actually typed out an outline of stuff that was troubling me, and couched it (honestly) not as a bitch session about how much work was being dumped on my poor little head, but my concern that I was not keeping up with things, or keeping up with them well enough, and that my clients, staff, and management were going to suffer for it.
I noted (just to give an example) my realization from a week or two back that my informal metric as to whether I was “keeping up” was whether, when I went home at the end of the day, I’d opened all my e-mail. Not that I’d actually done whatever critical things were called for in same. But if I’d read it all, replied to things that needed immediate replies, and put the rest on my to-do list (whether I was able to-do it or not), I was feeling … well, not successful, but at least not a failure. At least I was paying off the interest, even if the principle wasn’t going down much, right?
In reality, that feels to me like a pretty pathetic metric, and that it was what I was reduced to was part of what led me to take this step.
I am not going to go into much detail (obviously) in the conversation, but his response was:
Which, in sum, doesn’t make my job any easier come Monday. But it was … gratifying. And a relief. And a, “I’m glad he didn’t say, yeah, Dave, I’m sorely disappointed in you and I plan on demoting you to second assistant code scrubber, with a 90% reduction in pay.” And a sense that, yeah, I was really glad I’d called him, too.
Then I sat back and took many, many deep breaths. 🙂
“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
An interesting map showing what people in different nations are know for — based on searches in Google framed as “Germans are know for” and taking … well, actually, it’s…
An interesting map showing what people in different nations are know for — based on searches in Google framed as “Germans are know for” and taking … well, actually, it’s taking a somewhat random smattering of interesting answers, rather than the top X.
For the record, Americans are “known” for:
Hmmm.
Of course, one could ask the difference between prejudice (how the author labels it) and reputation or stereotype. And, as the author is first to point out, since it’s not a scientific grab of the top answers, the question of “prejudice” might be directed elsewhere.
I can understand the idea of Kodak wanting to reinvent themselves, and even their desire to distance themselves a bit from the old-fashioned film industry to whatever it is they…
I can understand the idea of Kodak wanting to reinvent themselves, and even their desire to distance themselves a bit from the old-fashioned film industry to whatever it is they do today.
But, really, folks — not only is this major change in a 70-year logo throwing away a lot of positive image association, the result is generic and undistinguished to the point of banality. Gone is the implicit “K,” formed stylistically from film running under a lens. The vivid, highly visible gold-and-red of the old logo box now become a fragment of color, using the unimaginative word-between-two-lines format. Blah, and bleah.
(And, it appears, that the horizontal lines are unofficial, too. Meaning that the logo is — the name, in red, in an unimaginative typeface.
Bad move, folks. I’m not saying that if Kodak goes under it will be because of this, but if it does go under, that passing will be that much less noticed.
(via kottke)
For this year’s office calendar, I’m actually using one I bought Margie, which has various fun advertising poster images from the first half of the 20th Century. Katherine had evidently…
For this year’s office calendar, I’m actually using one I bought Margie, which has various fun advertising poster images from the first half of the 20th Century.
Katherine had evidently been looking at the calendar, and Margie asked me if I knew what her favorite was. I guessed it was a very cute cartoon of a purple zebra hoisting a Cinzano (on the cover of the calendar, here), but it turned out to be the Freshie vegetable girl (right).
Which so makes sense (it being both cute and absurd). So I thought I’d share.
Kate, Jackie and Margie at the Testerfolk “CoH LAN Party” thang. Four of us at the breakfast table, another three in the office. Yay. this post enabled by airblogging.com….
Kate, Jackie and Margie at the Testerfolk “CoH LAN Party” thang. Four of us at the breakfast table, another three in the office. Yay.
this post enabled by airblogging.com.
Kaylee and Katherine, down in the basement at the Testerfolks. this post enabled by airblogging.com….
