Obscene Clone Fall

So, South Korean national hero scientist Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, who stunned the world with his announcement last summer that he had created the world's first cloned dog, and had made other major scientific breakthroughs in the cloning and stem-cell research fields...

..and published the experimental results, among other places, in the incredibly prestigious journals Science and Nature...

Well, it turns out that he may have exaggerated a little bit.

Or a lot.

Hell, it's starting to look like he made the whole thing up:

A landmark scientific paper on cloning that propelled a South Korean scientist, Hwang Woo Suk, to international stardom was an "intentional fabrication" orchestrated by Dr. Hwang, a university panel charged today.

[...]

Offering the first evidence of what is considered one of the most sensational suspected frauds in science in recent years, the Seoul National University panel not only pledged to impose an unspecified heavy punishment on Dr. Hwang - until recently hailed as a national hero in South Korea - but also announced it was investigating his other high-profile achievements for veracity.

The most prominent of these was his announcement in August that he had created Snuppy, the world's first cloned dog. Time magazine named it the invention of the year for 2005.

The nationally televised announcement by the university - which examined data from his lab and questioned members of his research team - marked the first confirmation of a series of allegations that have cast doubt on all of Dr. Hwang's purported scientific breakthroughs.

"I apologize to the people for creating an unspeakable shock and disappointment," said Dr. Hwang, surrounded by weeping students. "I step down as professor of Seoul National University."

The tears of a cloner.

Korean Scientist Quits After Charges He Faked Cloning Data - New York Times

La vie en prison

France may be about to introduce the most draconian anti-piracy laws yet.

Internet downloaders could face jail sentences and software makers may be required to add anti-copying technology to products distributed in France under draft legislation that's expected to go to a vote this week.

Wired News: Download Piaf, Go to Jail

DSM-IV/Christmas Carol mashup

(From one of those e-mails that's going around...)

Schizophrenia -- Do You Hear What I Hear?

Multiple Personality Disorder -- We Three Kings Disoriented Are

Narcissistic Personality Disorder -- Hark the Herald Angels Sing (About Me)

Manic phase of Bipolar Disorder -- Deck the Halls and Walls and House and Lawn and Streets and Stores and Office and Town and Cars and Buses and Trucks and Trees and Fire Hydrants and...

Paranoid -- Santa Claus is Coming to Get Me

Borderline Personality Disorder -- You Better Watch Out, I'm Gonna Cry, I'm Gonna Pout, Maybe I'll Tell You Why

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder -- Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells...

Agoraphobia -- I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day But Wouldn't Leave My House

Senile Dementia -- Walking in a Winter Wonderland Miles From My House in My Slippers and Robe

Oppositional Defiant Disorder -- I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus So I Burned Down the House

Back in the Big Apple

Got an early afternoon flight back from Dallas-Fort Worth yesterday.

The cab ride from Newark Airport to the West Village didn't even take thirty minutes; we barely slowed down as we hit the Holland Tunnel, and there was virtually no traffic on Hudson Street.

Got home, reheated a little of the pizza that Carrie had ordered earlier, spent some blissful time just hanging out with the family, and hit the sack early.

Woke up in my own bed for a change, with my wife sleeping next to me and Mister Gato, naturally, hogging most of the space by my feet. Chows were splayed out on the carpet by the bed snoring away. The sweet sounds of home.

(Incidentally, for those of you who just can't get enough Gato in your life, Carrie has additional catblogging this week; check your blood sugar levels before you visit.)

Speaking of sweet sounds, the radio alarm woke me up at 6:30 AM; WBGO was playing Coltrane's "My Favorite Things." Indeed, indeed.

Best of all, the transit strike that hobbled New York City for three days is over. The trains and buses are running again this morning, the transport workers union having achieved exactly nothing. "Hold your head high when you report to work" this morning, their web site advises the hapless members of TWU Local 100. "We walked out strong, and we walked back stronger."

Heh. Personally, I think this assessment is a tad more realistic:

While many workers seemed relieved to return to their jobs, there was at least a small undercurrent of anger directed at the strike's result.

"I'm very disappointed to have to come back now. I think we should have held out," said Larry Powell, 55, who was returning to work at the 239th Street maintenance shop in the Bronx. "I feel bad. I don't know what we got."

Or, even more bluntly, this one:

"We got nothing out of this, absolutely nothing," said George Pearlstein, a [TWU Local 100] board member who voted against the deal.

Home with friends and family, Christmas right around the corner. Life is good.

Tough Stance, Tougher Fines: Union Leader Is in a Corner

Oh, dear. Looks like Roger Toussaint, leader of the rogue Transport Workers Union Local 100 in New York City, is starting to realize just how badly he has miscalculated...

...Mr. Toussaint has quickly discovered that engaging in an illegal walkout can leave a union with a weak hand. His union faces a $1 million fine for each day on strike, a state judge is threatening to throw him in jail and thousands of individual strikers stand to lose two days' pay for each day out.

Not only that, but the mayor, the governor and editorial writers are denouncing the union as greedy and showing contempt for the law. The front page of The New York Post screamed, "You Rats." And the transit workers' parent union has come out in opposition to the strike.

"They have painted themselves into a corner," said Barry L. Feinstein, the former president of New York City's largest Teamsters local and now a member of the transportation authority's board.

This news analysis appears today in that notoriously unreliable, arch-conservative, anti-union, anti-worker running-dog rag, The New York Times: Tough Stance, Tougher Fines: Union Leader Is in a Corner - New York Times.

Here's a strategy hint for the union boys: When you finally realize that you're stepped on your johnson and are continuing to grind it into the dirt, your first move should be to LIFT YOUR FOOT.

(Mr. Toussaint and his colleagues shouldn't give up hope entirely, though; a few people are still buying into their class-warfare rhetoric. In particular, the World Socialist website, published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (sic), is still 100% behind them. So they're apparently assured the continued backing of at least a few losers in rent-controlled cold-water flats... just what you need to win the hearts and minds of average New Yorkers.)

Mister Gato's Guide to Abundant Living

Mister Gato was a street cat before being rescued and (partially) rehabilitated. He had done pretty well for himself hunting and living by his wits (plenty of rodents in New York City!) but one of his all-time favorite concepts, first introduced to him by the gentle, kind animal rescue folks, has to be "cat food."

As in, food that he doesn't have to hunt down and kill, or compete with some other animal to get. Plain old dry cat food that gets shaken into his dish a couple times a day, with another little dish of fresh water that gets replenished often.

He still hunts for sport, but man alive, does this boy love his cat food. And he likes to see plenty of it in his bowl; if the supply gets low, you'd better believe that we hear about it.

In this picture, Mister Gato performs essential quality control measures as we replenish the stock of hard, crunchy nuggets in the plastic pitcher that we dispense them from, having just received a massive delivery of cat and dog kibble, kitty litter, dog biscuits, and related sundries from the neighborhood pet store:

A good batch, and it tastes just fine right out of the bin.
Plate some up for me, won't you?

You'll have to imagine the loud, purring sound effects.

Visit the Friday Ark at The Modulator to check out more bloggers' pets from around the world--and be sure to visit the Carnival of the Cats on Sunday, hosted this Christmas Sunday at Watermark.

Greenwich Village Idiot - 45 RPM

We're hoping to bring back the Greenwich Village Idiot podcast in 2006, and here's a little preview from someone who will be a primary collaborator. Guest host Chap of Chapomatic, owner of the World's Most Dangerous Record Collection, has been busily digitizing some vinyl 45s and 78s, including some tasty B-sides.

Here's the 45 RPM edition of the Greenwich Village Idiot (MP3 format - 31:45, 21 MB).

It includes music from Booker T and the MGs, Ross Bagdasarian (aka David Seville, the guy who made the Chipmunks records), Dave Brubeck, the klezmer/jazz genius Mickey Katz, Mister Rogers...

Also, hear Chap's iTunes signature. Scary.

But well, well worth a listen.

Spy Court Judge Quits In Protest (Washington Post)

A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush's secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, sent a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. late Monday notifying him of his resignation without providing an explanation.

Spy Court Judge Quits In Protest - Washington Post

BQE, 8:30am, 12-20-05

BQE, 8:30am, 12-20-05
Originally uploaded by jukeboxgraduate.

This pretty much says it all. The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, yesterday morning at 8:30 am. (Originally posted by "jukeboxgraduate" at Flickr.)

Blog coverage of the NYC transit strike

For excellent blogger coverage of the NYC transit strike, may I recommend:

• Metroblogging NYC
• Gothamist
• Gawker

Also well worth a look:

• Flickr users are tagging their photos with "transitstrike"; here's a collection of the "most interesting" photos with that tag.
  
• The New York Times has an excellent "interactive map" showing routes in and out of the city, along with war stories from commuters.

And finally, for a general survey of opinion on the transit strike in the blogosphere, you can run this Technorati search.

A stray thought or two

You know, replacing bus drivers is not a big deal; there are qualified bus drivers all over the United States.

Replacing subway workers is a little more complicated, as the skill-set is a little more esoteric.

But, you know, there are subways and metros all over the world.

And I bet that the *current* MTA salary and benefits package would look pretty good to an experienced motorman from Mexico City or Moscow.

Just sayin'.

Two words: Taylor Law

One place they didn't hear the trains running last night: New York City.

The long-threatened transit strike started in earnest last night (coverage: AP via Yahoo! News, New York Times.)

I'm in Dallas at the moment, and Carrie is going to work from home until the strike is resolved, but millions of New Yorkers (and suburban commuters) aren't so lucky; they've got to work out a way to get to and from work and school until the strike is resolved.

According to press reports, the MTA and the state attorney general intend to seek full damages from Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union under the Taylor Law, which prohibits public employees from striking. Mayor Bloomberg and the City's attorneys are likely to pile on.

And I say: Go get 'em. I hold no brief for the MTA (to put it mildly), but it's time to shut this union down hard.

Put the boot in, boys, and give no quarter. New Yorkers are behind you, and you'll find little sympathy for the union in the electorate.

Related:

• Preliminary injunction, New York City Transit Authority v. Transport Union Workers of America (via Findlaw)
• The Taylor Law
• New York Times Complete Coverage: The Transit Strike
• Straphangers Campaign (NYPIRG)
• Metropolitan Transportation Authority
• Transport Workers Union Local 100

You can get used to anything, I guess

Back in Dallas for one final week of change management classes before Christmas, and I think I've finally found the perfect hotel room for my needs.

Now that I've been living in New York City for ten years, I find it impossible to sleep in a truly quiet room.

Even on our idyllic West Village side-street, there's plenty of noise at night: cars going by, people talking on the street, sirens from ambulances arriving at nearby St. Vincent's Hospital... to me, the mingled street noises are a lullaby. (Throw in a snoring Chow Chow or two and I couldn't be happier.)

When I travel, if I'm not in a noisy part of a major city, I have to create some comforting background noise to fall asleep. In a hotel room, I usually tune in CNBC, turn the sound way down so that there's sort of a constant background mutter (unless they're rerunning Jim Cramer's show, in which case it's a sort of muted background screaming) and drift off; other places, I've been known to carry a little transistor radio to assure myself of some ambient noise. Silence is actually a little creepy to me now.

The people at the Adam's Mark Dallas must think I'm a trifle strange. The hotel is quite near a light rail station (very convenient!) and when I checked in last night, I asked specifically for a room on a low floor overlooking the train tracks.

"Um, sure, we can do that," the nice-but-bewildered lady at the front desk said hesitantly. I smiled happily.

Last night, I was lulled to sleep by the sound of steel wheels, electric motors and ringing bells, as the DART Red Line ran outside my window. (It doesn't quite run all night--they seem to take a break between midnight and 4 AM - but it was more than enough to get me to sleep. Bliss!)

Kesher Talk: Welcome to the RINO Carnival

RINO Sightings are up over at KesherTalk.

Music and Cats » Carnival of the Cats #91

Carnival of the Cats #91 is now up over at Music and Cats. Go visit!

It's ska, it's Sinatra, it's Hoboken

enrevanche pal and partner in musical crime Chapomatic hips us to the existence of Skanatra - a band from Hoboken, New Jersey that performs nothing but ska versions of songs first performed by Old Blue Eyes.

Skanatra is a 12-piece ska band whose members decided at the band's inception that they would perform excerpts from the Frank Sinatra songbook exclusively. The name "Skanatra" effortlessly spilled from their lips just moments after conjuring the ska-Sinatra concept.

They've got a couple of MP3 samples up at their site, including a ska version of Come Fly With Me. Not bad.

Hey, if XM Radio can have an all-Sinatra *channel* (Frank's Place) then why not a side-project ska tribute band made up of musicians from Hoboken?

SKANATRA: It's ska, it's Sinatra, it's Hoboken

How to make your Chow Chows happy

In fact, how to send them into transports of ecstasy...

Shortrib leftovers from last night's dinner.

Torture's Long Shadow

Like John McCain, Vladimir Bukovsky actually knows a little something about torture.

Unlike McCain, who was tortured by the enemy while a prisoner of war, Bukovsky, a former Soviet citizen, was tortured by his own government. He was, you see, a "guest of the state" in prisons, political gulags and psychiatric hospitals for over a decade due to his nonviolent human rights activism.

He has a few thoughts on torture as a matter of public policy, which he shares with us in an op-ed in today's Washington Post.

(Warning for those of you with weak stomachs: the article contains a harrowing description of torture, under the guise of "medical treatment"--brutal force-feeding--inflicted on Bukovsky after he went on a hunger strike. You've been warned.)

Here's an excerpt:

If America's leaders want to hunt terrorists while transforming dictatorships into democracies, they must recognize that torture, which includes [cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment], has historically been an instrument of oppression -- not an instrument of investigation or of intelligence gathering. No country needs to invent how to "legalize" torture; the problem is rather how to stop it from happening. If it isn't stopped, torture will destroy your nation's important strategy to develop democracy in the Middle East. And if you cynically outsource torture to contractors and foreign agents, how can you possibly be surprised if an 18-year-old in the Middle East casts a jaundiced eye toward your reform efforts there?

Finally, think what effect your attitude has on the rest of the world, particularly in the countries where torture is still common, such as Russia, and where its citizens are still trying to combat it. Mr. Putin will be the first to say: "You see, even your vaunted American democracy cannot defend itself without resorting to torture. . . . "

Off we go, back to the caves.

Torture's Long Shadow (Vladimir Bukovsky, Washington Post, Dec 18 2005)

Related:

• Biography of Vladimir Bukovsky (at The Gratitude Fund)
  
  
• "The Soviet Archives" (compiled by V. Bukovsky) at INFO-RUSS
  
  
• Conservatives Debate: Is the Threat of Islamic Terrorism More Dangerous to America than Communism Was? (Vladimir Bukovsky, Daniel Pipes, Paul Hollander and Michael Ledeen) - History News Network
  
  ...which includes this highly quotable gem of an observation from Bukovsky: "The West’s response to radical Islam is as bad as it was to the communist challenge. Essentially, this is because the West is poorly suited to fight ideological war of any kind. It always fights itself more than it fights the enemy. It cannot define the goals and the means, the nature of the threat, a coherent strategy to deal with it, possible consequences and inevitable sacrifices. In short, the West is not terribly good at fighting wars as such, least of all the ideological ones."
  
  
• An Open Letter to President G.W. Bush (Vladimir Bukovsky and Elena Bonner, 2003)

"Señor El Gato"

Alert enrevanche reader and pal Ben G., listening to WFMU's excellent "Greasy Kid Stuff" radio show this morning (presumably with his young son, but there's no telling) reports via e-mail:

Just heard a song on FMU called Mr. El Gato...

Some rapid research turns up the likeliest candidate for the song he heard:

KELLY HOGAN - Señor El Gato

You can listen to a snippet of the song over at Amazon.com; it appears on a collection of children's music amusingly entitled (pace, Merle Haggard) "The Bottle Let Me Down."

It's a cryin'-in-your-(root)-beer love song about a beautiful lady cat, and the tomcat who dies of a broken heart pining for her. Mister Gato approves.

By the way, Bloodshot Records, the publishers of "The Bottle Let Me Down," is an amazingly good Americana/alt.country/roots music label. I don't even *have* kids, and I think I'm gonna buy this album. If you're looking for a Christmas present for a family with toddler(s), you could do a lot worse.

Too cute, and I ain't lion

As noted earlier, Carrie's doing the family catblogging this week, but this morning, as I was reading the news, I stumbled across this incredible Reuters photo-series:

Veterinarian Houses Exotic Animals (Reuters via Yahoo! News)

Tatyana Efremova, a veterinarian in Kharkov, is raising three little lion cubs in her house. There are some lovely shots of Tatyana, her mother and friends with the lions, who are lounging around the house in various attitudes of repose.

I particularly like this shot:

Photo credit: REUTERS/Gleb Garanich
(click the picture to go to the entire photoset)

As I've said many times before: you know a cat really likes you if he's chewing your ears.

Visit the Friday Ark at The Modulator to check out more bloggers' pets from around the world - and be sure to visit Kimberly's furry family at Music and Cats this Sunday for the Carnival of the Cats.

NYC Transit strike: It's on, sort of

After negotiating through the night with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and not making much progress, the head of the Transport Workers Union, Roger Toussaint, announced that the TWU would start a partial strike (involving drivers of private bus lines) Friday evening, but would hold off on shutting down buses and subways citywide until 12:01 AM next Tuesday. (See this morning's New York Times for details.)

I really don't know where to begin with this one, y'all.

Leaving aside that the City of New York will be in a complete state of emergency for the duration of a public transportation strike (over seven million people, a mix of New Yorkers and suburban commuters, ride the subways and buses in New York City every day) what we've got here is this:

A bloated, inefficient, secretive, and incredibly poorly managed state government transportation authority pitted against a venal, thuggish labor union with a hypertrophied sense of entitlement.

Whose side am I on? Easy: the people of the City of New York, who are utterly dependent on this pack of dysfunctional jokers to get them from point A to point B in the five boroughs.

Sadly, "a plague on both their houses" won't solve the problem; New York City has got to move.

But in my fantasy world, both sides (the MTA and the TWU) would take such a credibility hit from this fiasco that we (as in "we the people") could break the back of the union AND shake up and restructure the MTA from top to bottom. And start over.

The NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign, which claims to represent the interests of the average Joe riding the subways, attempts a conciliatory tone in a letter jointly addressed to the heads of the MTA and TWU:

We understand the challenges faced by the MTA, including future deficits fueled by a growing burden of past massive borrowing to pay for much needed repairs in the absence of the State and City to shoulder their fair share. At the same time, we applaud progress this year, including passage of a five-year $15 billion-plus core capital program, voter approval of a $2.9 billion transportation bond and a first-ever program of holiday fare discounts. These actions are due to the efforts of a broad coalition of groups - including business, community groups and labor - and the MTA.

We are also pleased that transit officials have agreed to keep booth personnel as customer service representatives. So we are all the more disappointed that MTA New York City Transit appears to be pressing for "one person train operations," at the expense, we believe, of rider and worker safety.

(Because they're NYPIRG, they started off with some ass-kissing rhetoric about the glory of collective bargaining, which I've spared you.)

Related:

• "Transportation Workers Union Rejects Contract Offer; Set to Begin Partial Strike" - New York Times
• New York Times Complete Coverage: The Transit Talks
• Straphangers Campaign (NYPIRG)
• Metropolitan Transportation Authority
• Transport Workers Union Local 100

Pencil Roving: Mister Gato is my muse

Mister Gato fans: Carrie has the catblogging duty this week.

Pop on over to Pencil Roving and see:

Pencil Roving: Mister Gato is my muse (or should that be "mews"?)

Online encyclopedias put to the test

According to a study by journal Nature, Wikipedia (mistakes) — such as this week's one on President Kennedy's assassination — are "the exception rather than the rule", and the resource is almost as accurate as the online Encyclopaedia Britannica, at least when it comes to science.

Nature took stories from Wikipedia and Britannica on 42 science-related topics and submitted them to experts for review. The experts were not told which encyclopedia the stories were from. "The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, around three," according to Nature.

Online encyclopedias put to the test - The Age (Australia)

Congratulations, Britannica! Your professional, expert writers and editors are only 75% as inaccurate as anonymous, random, self-selected amateurs from all over.

The standard warnings against using Wikipedia as a single source for information are, and remain, pertinent, but they are but a subset of the general rule: never use *any* single source and trust it to be definitive, even when it's a venerable brand name like "Britannica."

Related:

• Wikipedia (in English)
• Encylopaedia Britannica Online

Novak: "Bush knows who the source is"

Addressing a luncheon audience at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, NC on Tuesday, syndicated columnist Bob Novak threw more fuel on the Plamegate fire:

"Bob Woodward speculates that his source is the same as my source. He says that’s the case. He is not going to reveal this name, and certainly I am not either until such time as this person comes forward and says he wants his name to be revealed.

"I am confident the president knows who the source is. I would be amazed if he doesn't. So I think, don't bug me. Don't bug Bob Woodword. Bug the President as to whether he should reveal who the source is."

Read the whole story, broken by the Raleigh, NC News and Observer, in their "Under the Dome" politics column. (I grew up in Raleigh, and "Under the Dome" has long been required reading for NC politics junkies.)

• "Under The Dome" (Dec 14, 2005) - News and Observer
• "Under The Dome" (Dec 15, 2005) - News and Observer

A strange new respect for chimpanzees

"Monkey see, monkey do" is useful shorthand for the concept that observation and imitation is a fundamental teaching model. (I'm teaching change management classes this week, and about an hour of the three-hour class is tool instruction... straight "monkey see, monkey do"; watch what the instructor does on the overhead projector and follow along on your PC.)

A new study just published in Animal Cognition (and referred to in this fascinating essay in the New York Times) indicates that humans might just be a little too imitative in their learning patterns.

In comparative experiments pitting chimpanzees against toddlers, behavioral scientists "taught" representatives of both primate species how to open up a box and get to a desirable treat by demonstrating the process. But they deliberately included some unnecessary steps in the process (e.g., tapping on the top of the box before opening it.)

The chimps quickly figured out which steps didn't get them any closer to the reward, and stopped doing them.

The children? Not so much. They did everything the teacher showed them, even when it was completely irrelevant to the task at hand.

One of the grad students who helped design the study thinks he knows why:

Mr. Lyons sees his results as evidence that humans are hard-wired to learn by imitation, even when that is clearly not the best way to learn. If he is right, this represents a big evolutionary change from our ape ancestors. Other primates are bad at imitation. When they watch another primate doing something, they seem to focus on what its goals are and ignore its actions.

As human ancestors began to make complicated tools, figuring out goals might not have been good enough anymore. Hominids needed a way to register automatically what other hominids did, even if they didn't understand the intentions behind them. They needed to imitate.

Not long ago, many psychologists thought that imitation was a simple, primitive action compared with figuring out the intentions of others. But that is changing. "Maybe imitation is a lot more sophisticated than people thought," Mr. Lyons said.

Or maybe we need chimps taking a hard look at our business processes.

Really interesting stuff.

Children Learn by Monkey See, Monkey Do. Chimps Don't. - New York Times

(hat tip: Slashdot)

Regret The Error: Crunks '05: The Year in Media Errors and Corrections

I'm sure missing New York this morning, and über-NYC blog Gawker points us to the fabulous Regret the Error, a site which tracks amusing corrections printed in the nation's press.

This being the time of year for "best of" lists, here are some of the best corrections run in the last year: Regret The Error: Crunks '05: The Year in Media Errors and Corrections

Since I'm in Dallas this morning, this one seems oddly apt.

From the Dallas Morning News:

Norma Adams-Wade's June 15 column incorrectly called Mary Ann Thompson-Frenk a socialist. She is a socialite.

Whew. I'm sure the debutantes in Galveston are relieved to learn this.

My own hometown paper is hardly exempt, however.

From the New York Times:

An obituary of the civil rights leader James Forman yesterday misstated a word in describing his call, in 1969, for reparations to be paid by Protestant and Jewish groups for the crimes of slavery. Mr. Forman asked for $500 million for crimes perpetrated against generations of blacks, not "by" them.

Ouch. That's gonna leave a mark.

Regret The Error: Crunks '05: The Year in Media Errors and Corrections (hat tip: Gawker)

onNYTurf : Google Map NYC-Subway Hack

Just a quick one on the way out the door this morning:

onNYTurf has come up with a neat Google Maps hack: it's the best New York City-wide subway map I've ever seen. The idea is simple but powerful: overlay the subway route map on the actual topography of the city; you can use Google Maps' lookup, pan and zoom features to figure out where you want to go, then zoom out and find the closest station.

Brilliance.

onNYTurf : Google Map NYC-Subway Hack

The Next Retirement Time Bomb (New York Times)

Since 1983, the city of Duluth, Minn., has been promising free lifetime health care to all of its retired workers, their spouses and their children up to age 26. No one really knew how much it would cost. Three years ago, the city decided to find out.

It took an actuary about three months to identify all the past and current city workers who qualified for the benefits. She tallied their data by age, sex, previous insurance claims and other factors. Then she estimated how much it would cost to provide free lifetime care to such a group.

The total came to about $178 million, or more than double the city's operating budget. And the bill was growing.

"Then we knew we were looking down the barrel of a pretty high-caliber weapon," said Gary Meier, Duluth's human resources manager, who attended the meeting where the actuary presented her findings.

Mayor Herb Bergson was more direct. "We can't pay for it," he said in a recent interview. "The city isn't going to function because it's just going to be in the health care business."

Thousands and thousands of jurisdictions across America have made similar promises to their government employees.

Stephen T. McElhaney, an actuary and principal at Mercer Human Resources, a benefits consulting firm that advises states and local governments, estimated that the national total could be $1 trillion. "This is a huge liability," said Jan Lazar, an independent benefits consultant in Lansing, Mich. "If anybody understands it, they'll freak out."

Oops.

Gee, I wonder how well my Mom's pension and health insurance plans are funded. She was a school librarian in Wake County, North Carolina for most of her career.

The Next Retirement Time Bomb - New York Times

Face recognition software

Shamelessly yoinked from MetaFilter this morning: Face recognition software.

Historically, primarily used in security applications (by the military and border security to spot undesirables, and by Vegas casinos looking for cheats and card counters) face recognition software is coming of age in the general commercial market as well.

Now there's a geneaology web site that will allow you to upload a picture of yourself and compare it against a database of "family pictures" (or... more fun... a rogue's gallery of over two thousand world celebrities.)

Hysterically, the face-recognition database found high-percentage matches for this headshot of me with:

Aung San Suu Kyi (67%)
John Cusack (61%)
...and, God help us all, Alec Baldwin (56% -- probably later photographs, after he put on all that weight.)

I even matched better-than-50% with Barack Obama.

Your assignment for today: upload a headshot of yourself, run it against the celebrity database, and report back the results (in the comments.)

Heading to Dallas

Flying out to Dallas tonight so as to be ready to go bright and early Monday morning. I'll be teaching a couple of week's worth of classes. and flying out the night before makes it possible to be in place, with a smile on my face and a song in my heart, at 8 AM CST tomorrow.

I'll still be posting this week, but both tempo and quantity of blogging will be different from the normal pace from December 12-22, in all likelihood.

Carrie will be giving you your catblogging fix this week.

Over and out.

Richard Pryor, RIP

(Posted Saturday afternoon, about 4:20 PM Eastern Time)

Just moved over the news wires, no stories up yet:

Richard Pryor, aged 65, apparently died this afternoon Saturday morning at his home in California after a long struggle with multiple sclerosis.

The skinny kid from Peoria, Illinois was one of the finest comics who ever lived. Rest in peace, Richard.

---

Update, Sunday morning:

Some very fine remembrances of Richard Pryor in the press this morning, including:

• The New York Times (Mel Watkins)
• The Sunday Times (of London) (Brendan Bourne)
• The Los Angeles Times (Lynell George)

And in many other newspapers not called "The Times" as well.

The message forums at Richard's web site are still down; the server must have damn nearly melted under the load.

I used to pop in there from time to time and read a thread or two; Richard's wife (and long-time caregiver after the MS diagnosis) Jennifer Lee was a constant presence on those forums, and the Man Himself turned up there every now and then with a comment (dictated, of course, to Jennifer, as MS had long since robbed him of the fine motor control required to operate a keyboard.)

Wikipedia has temporarily locked their article on Pryor due to repeated vandalism; if you're looking for a biography, the one at Richard's site is quite good.

TeKahlo

The heirs of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo have launched a line of high-end spirits using the name and likeness of the style icon, hoping to capitalize on the popularity of expensive liquor in fancy packaging.

"Tequila was her favorite drink, and she drank a lot of it," said Mara Romeo Pinedo Kahlo, a grand-niece who was an infant when Kahlo died in 1954.

Words fail me. "She drank a lot of it" is putting it rather mildly; her surviving family is cashing in on Frida's legacy by naming a superpremium tequila after a lifelong alcoholic (after a terrible accident that basically broke every bone in her body, Kahlo turned to alcohol and drugs for relief from the physical and psychological pain.)

Perhaps one day, when hard drugs are eventually legalized in this country, we can look forward to Richard Pryor-labelled cocaine, Tom Sizemore-endorsed crank, and Charlie Parker brand smack... and when it all becomes unmanageable, you can take yourself out with a Hunter S. Thompson signature 12-gauge double-barrel.

Houston Chronicle: Family to cash in on the Frida factor

Don't be stupid, be a smarty, come and join the Nazi (dance) party!

It sounds like a plot point from a Mel Brooks movie, but it isn't: back in the 1930s, German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels commissioned a Nazi Party "house band," Charlie and His Orchestra, with an English-speaking bandleader, who broadcast Big Band music over shortwave, aimed at European and American audiences:

Charlie and His Orchestra was led by Karl Schwendler, an English speaking German who broadcast Nazi-themed swing and big-band hits every night on the medium-wave and short-wave bands throughout the 1930s to Canada, the US and Britain. Leave it to Goebbels to take the music of The Andrews Sisters, Paul Whiteman and Irving Berlin and fill it with venomous rants against Jews, America and the British. The man took his propaganda seriously.

And, naturally, there are forty-plus tracks of Nazi Swing available for you to download from the Internets, courtesy of the very fine, eccentric freeform radio station WFMU and its very fine, eccentric blogging general manager.

The musicianship can be described as competent at best -- strictly "sweet" Big Band sound, a sort of second-rate Glenn Miller style, stuff that wouldn't really "swing" in the Louis Armstrong sense if you put four million volts through it.

But the lyrics have to be heard to be believed (e.g., FDR Jones.)

WFMU's Beware of the Blog: Still More Nazi Swing Music (MP3s)

Hat tip: BoingBoing.

Yahoo! buys del.icio.us

Yahoo! just acquired the community "social bookmarking" site del.icio.us.

Wow. First Flickr, and now del.icio.us.

Yahoo is betting the farm on tagging and folksonomies.

del.icio.us: y.ah.oo!

iTunes Signature Maker (Jason Freeman)

Here's one of the coolest Java applets I've seen in a long time. The iTunes Signature Maker analyzes your iTunes music library, and creates a personalized sonic "signature" for you based on your favorite music.

Here's how creator Jason Freeman describes it:

People often ask me what music I listen to, and I find it difficult to describe my enormous music collection in just a few sentences. So I created iTSM to answer in sound a question I cannot answer in words.

iTSM selects a small number of your "favorite" tracks based on some simple selection criteria, such as the number of times you have played them or the rating you have assigned them. Then it analyzes the audio content of these files, combining a small bit of each of them to create the signature.

Maybe you'll load your iTunes signature onto your iPod, e-mail it to some friends, share it in our signature gallery, or stick it on your home page. Maybe it will help you gauge your compatibility with your next blind date: "She seems nice enough, but her iTunes signature is just so atonal! Should I go with my heart or with my ear?" Or maybe an iTunes signature will figure prominently into a political attack ad: "If you're mad at him for raising your taxes, polluting our environment, and cutting the education budget, just wait until you hear the music he listens to…"

Since Carrie and I share the same iTunes music library (about 10,000 songs now) this is a composite musical signature generated by ITSM. It's about a minute and forty-five seconds long, in MP3 format (96 bps):

Barry and Carrie's iTunes Signature (MP3 download, 1.14 MB)

Cat Condo Update

Nanobob Construction, under contract to Lexacor Industries, today announced the start of construction on Quad Cat Towers, a multidollar project designed to bring affordable feline lounging to Red Hook. Project managers predict that construction will be complete by December 16, 2005 and the first residents are expected to start scratching at its doors the same day.

For lovely pictures of Quad Cat Towers in its early developmental phases, see: callalillie: Condo Update.

Callalillie, via Curbed.

Mister Gato picks some lox

No time for catblogging today. I'm going to have to leave the writing of this post to the Irascible One...

Thanks, Papa. Hey, did you know that you can order any kind of smoked fish you'd like over the Internet?

Hmm... it looks like the bank sent you a new credit card while you were away on business...

Gotta go.

Mister Gato, picking some lox.

Oh, dear.

Be sure to check out the Friday Ark at The Modulator for more bloggers' pets from around the world - and don't miss the Carnival of the Cats on Sunday, this week hosted at Quite Early One Morning.

(If you're a catblogger yourself, don't pass up the chance to join Ferdinand T. Cat's "Cat Lovers Community.")

And add yourself to our Frappr map, won't you?

Oh, the weather outside is frightful...

...but the Chows, and Mister Gato, are so delightful...

Finally back in New York City, having been delayed in Dallas by an ice storm on Wednesday, and having narrowly missed the snowstorm that arrived overnight in NYC. Carrie, who is still in Texas (San Antonio, to be exact - check out her blog for some great Lone Star State pix) is due to fly back to New York today; that ain't looking so good right now, schedule-wise and weather-wise.

Blogging may be light over the next few weeks, as I'm going to be returning to Texas from December 12-22. I'm teaching some ITIL-based Change Management classes to about two hundred new friends...

Running Out of Steam (David Brooks, New York Times)

It's such a shame that David Brooks's (and John Tierney's) columns are behind the New York Times's ill-conceived TimesSelect firewall. (As long-time subscribers to the Dead Tree edition of the the Times, Carrie and I get our TimesSelect for free.)

Today's Brooks column - "Running Out Of Steam" - is about the intellectual and philosophical crisis facing the conservative movement, and it's a corker.

An excerpt, because I just can't help myself:

First, most of the issues that propelled conservatives to power have been addressed. Modern American conservatism was formed by people who wanted to defeat the Soviet Union, reduce crime, reform welfare, cut taxes, deregulate the economy and reintroduce traditional social values. All those problems are less salient today.

Second, conservatism has been semi-absorbed into the Republican Party. When conservatism was in its most creative phase, there was a sharp distinction between conservatives and Republicans. Conservatives chased ideas, while Republicans were the corporate hacks who sold out. Now that conservative Republicans are in power, that distinction is obliterated.

There are a number of consequences. A lot of the energy that used to go into ideas is now devoted to defending Republican politicians. Many former conservative activists have become Republican lobbyists. (When conservatism was a movement of ideas, it attracted oddballs; now that it's a movement with power, it attracts sleazeballs.)

Running Out of Steam - New York Times (behind TimesSelect firewall)

Google Transit launches

New Yorkers (and the hipper visitors from out of town) already use services like Hopstop to plan their subway and bus excursions from point A to point B, and most major cities already have some kind of online route-planning software, of varying degrees of quality, for their public transportation systems.

It was only a matter of time before someone turned services like these into a Google Maps mashup. And this time it was the Googlers (Googlistas?) themselves who did it.

Introducing Google Transit.

Google Transit not only allows you to search the best route between two given locations, but you can specify time requirements as well ("best route at 8AM," or "I gotta be there by 6PM!") and it will even estimate the total fare (and give you a cost comparison for public transport vs. what it would cost you to drive yourself!)

At the moment, Google Transit only includes information for the city of Portland, Oregon, but that's just a demonstration and proof of concept; I'm morally certain that within a few months, you'll be able to find your way around any major American city you find yourself in.

Say that you need to go from 100 NW Couch St in Portland, Oregon to Hillsboro, Oregon and get there by 8PM. What route should you take, when do you need to leave and how much will it cost you?

Simple... just enter "100 nw couch st, portland to hillsboro, oregon by 8pm" into Google Transit et voila:

It'll take you a little over an hour and cost you $1.80
(vs. over $8 if you drove yourself.) You're welcome.

Need directions for Dallas's light rail system (the hotel room I'm blogging from this morning overlooks the St. Paul's stop on the Red Line), or figure out which bus to catch in Baltimore? It's all gonna be on Google Transit soon, I'd wager.

Google Transit (beta, currently has data for Portland, Oregon only)

What You Can Get for $220,000 - New York Times

The national median price for a house is now $220,000.

What will that buy you in New York City?

My answer would have been "a cardboard box under an overpass."

And then I read this surprising article:

What You Can Get for $220,000 - New York Times

IT workers: become "versatilists"

Within a few years, having a strong technical ability may not be enough to get you a job.

That's the warning coming from Gartner, Inc., an industry analyst firm. Being a specialist in a specific technology, like Linux, Windows or database administration, isn't going to be enough of a calling card in the not-so-distant job market.

''Let's just say it's no longer going to be a question of just having good technical ability -- of having a specialty,'' says Diane Morello vice president of research at Gartner. ''If you're just maintaining a specialization without raising their caliber, it's not going to be enough... Companies will need people who are broader. The people I'm talking about are 'versatilists'.''

Morello says a new Gartner study shows that the job market for IT specialists will shrink by 40 percent by 2010.

Source: Tech Skills Not Enough for a Job in 2010?

While "versatilists" is truly an ugly coinage, the trends I'm seeing in IT agree with the new Gartner study. If you want to stay employable as a geek, you'd better acquire some business skills along with the technical flavor-of-the-month certifications.

Part of the culprit is outsourcing and offshoring, and part is the increasing automation of IT functions. But the bottom line is that you'd better be bringing a good mix of skills to the table - performing a role that can't be easily documented as a cog in a process and then shipped out to a low-wage country with a surplus of degreed engineers.

Rat brains, flying planes

It sounds like science fiction: a brain nurtured in a Petri dish learns to pilot a fighter plane as scientists develop a new breed of "living" computer. But in groundbreaking experiments in a Florida laboratory that is exactly what is happening.

The "brain", grown from 25,000 neural cells extracted from a single rat embryo, has been taught to fly an F-22 jet simulator by scientists at the University of Florida.

They hope their research into neural computation will help them develop sophisticated hybrid computers, with a thinking biological component.

Source: Why this brain flies on rat cunning - The Age (Australia)

Dude. It's the "Rat Thing" from Snow Crash, morphed into a Top Gun pilot.

Neal Stephenson, call your office.

How to stop filesharers from stealing hotel bandwidth (signal15.com)

Geek staying at hotel notices that the "free wireless Internet" sucks. He suspects that someone is running a filesharing program and taking up all the bandwidth.

The geek is a network security analyst, and so he fires up some tools and discovers that "smith-laptop" is running Kazaa (or something like it) and sucking up 1.6 Mbps of the connection...

So he makes a couple of phone calls, and they go a little something like this:

I pick up my cellphone and call the front desk at the hotel and as for Mr. Smith’s room. The lady at the front desk says “Eric Smith?” And I tell her yes. The phone rings, someone picks up, the conversation goes like this:

Me: Eric Smith?

Eric: Uhh, yeah?

Me: My name is Jim Grant, and I’m an investigator with the RIAA. Have you heard of us?

Eric: Uhhhhh….. What does that stand for?

Me: Recording Industry Association of America. We represent several large record companies. In monitoring several p2p filesharing networks, we have found that you Eric, are currently downloading copyrighted material. Are you aware that this is illegal?

Eric: Ummm…. my laptop is off. (At this point, I no longer see him on the network)

Me: We are in the process of filing 18182 lawsuits against people who steal copyrighted music on the internet. We will continue monitoring these networks, and if we see you on them again, you will hear back from us.

Eric: Ok, thanks. Bye.

Nice. Very nice.

How to stop filesharers from stealing hotel bandwidth (signal15.com)

Kansas Professor Attacked Along Rural Road

LAWRENCE, Kan. - A college professor whose planned course on creationism and intelligent design was canceled after he derided Christian conservatives said he was beaten by two men along a rural road early Monday.

University of Kansas religious studies professor Paul Mirecki said the men referred to the class when they beat him on the head, shoulders and back with their fists, and possibly a metal object, the Lawrence Journal-World reported.

'I didn't know them,' Mirecki said of his assailants, 'but I'm sure they knew me.'

Now that the holy season is upon us once again, it's good to see that the fine citizens of rural Kansas are brimming over with Christian love and goodwill for their fellow man.

Kansas Professor Attacked Along Rural Road - Yahoo! News

See also: Mirecki Treated After Roadside Beating - Lawrence, KS Journal-World

RSS feed for enrevanche updated; e-mail subscriptions added

Due to some unbelievably hilarious incompetence on the part of a web-based service that is currently republishing my RSS feed, I've had to make some changes.

The new RSS feed for this blog is:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/enrevanchedotcom

Click any of the buttons below to add the feed to your favorite online RSS reader:







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CBS Offers Free "March Madness" on Demand

Fantastic news for college basketball fans who have moved away from the geographic regions containing the teams they follow:

CBS, the network with locked-up broadcast rights to the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament until the Apocalypse, announced today that *all* of this year's tournament games are going to be broadcast, for free, over the Internet.

CBS and College Sports Television have teamed up with the NCAA to provide free live video streaming rights for out-of-market game coverage of the NCAA men's basketball tournament.

For the first time, NCAA March Madness on Demand will be offered free of charge. Beginning March 16, 2006, fans will be able to watch live CBS Sports broadcasts of the NCAA tournament from outside their viewing area via NCAAsports.com, the official NCAA Website, produced by CBS SportsLine.com. NCAA March Madness on Demand will be supported by advertising sales.

As a fanatic ACC basketball fan now living in New York City, I just can't tell you how happy this makes me. Good for y'all, CBS.

CBS Offers Free March Madness on Demand - New York Times

What is the sound of one dog laughing?

Researchers at the Spokane County Regional Animal Protection Service in Washington state say sometimes a bark is just a bark — but a long, loud panting sound has real meaning.

They say the long, loud pant is the sound of a dog laughing, and it has a direct impact on the behavior of other dogs.

This is absolutely fascinating news to me - especially as one of my Chow Chows (this one) routinely makes a panting/huffing vocalization that fits this description to five decimal places.

Who knew that she was laughing? Makes perfect sense, though.

ABC News: Sound of Dog's 'Laugh' Calms Other Pooches

RINO Karaoke at "No Credentials"

Rose Nuñez does a beautiful job with this week's RINO Sightings at No Credentials, converting a sampling of this week's posts to a karaoke singalong.

Glad to see you back, Rose!

(Tip for actual karaoke survival: in a non-virtual karaoke bar, when people get drunk enough to start performing duets, e.g. "Islands in the Stream," stay not upon the order of your going but go at once.)

Back in the Big D

Back in Dallas again, for a few days (and then, starting next week, right up until Christmas.)

I would've blogged about my horrific plane ride, but, you see, Blogger had this six-hour outage yesterday...

'Twould be churlish to complain, since Blogger is a free service. And so I'm not complaining, as I'm getting exactly what I'm paying for.

However.

Fans of the Campbell family blogs would do well to bookmark these two URLs:

• http://enrevanche.com
  
  
• http://pencil-roving.com

At the *moment*, they simply point to our Blogger presences.

But they may not for too much longer.

(Oh, the plane? A 737, which is too damned small for a scheduled four-hour flight, oversold and absolutely packed to the gills; by the time I was allowed to board, they had to stow my laptop case in the rear of the plane, behind the toilets, in the space that used to be used for preparing actual meals back when, you know, they served actual food on airplanes. Bad weather with mucho turbulence and strong headwinds that slowed us down and turned it into a *five-hour* flight... at least there were no drunks, or crying babies, or drunken crying babies...)

The Truth Laid Bear: Ecosystem Changes Unveiled

N.Z. Bear has taken the wraps off the tweaks to the TTLB Ecosystem:

The Truth Laid Bear: Ecosystem Changes Unveiled

The 89th Carnival of the Cats...

is now up, over at When Cats Attack!

Are your papers in order?

Meet John Gilmore. He's a 49 year-old philanthropist who lives in San Francisco, California. Through a lot of hard work (and a little luck), John made his fortune as a programmer and entrepreneur in the software industry. Whereas most people in his position would have moved to a tropical island and lived a life of luxury, John chose to use his fortune to protect and defend the US Constitution.

On the 4th of July 2002, John Gilmore, American citizen, decided to take a trip from one part of the United States of America to another. He went to Oakland International Airport -- ticket in hand -- and was told he had to produce his ID if he wanted to travel. He asked to see the law demanding he show his 'papers' and was told after a time that the law was secret and no, he wouldn't be allowed to read it.

He hasn't flown in his own country since.

[emphasis added - bc]

Oral arguments in the case of Gilmore v. Gonzalez will be heard in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on December 8th.

There's quite a bit of good information on the case, and why it's important, at the site that John Gilmore has set up:

PapersPlease.org - Gilmore v. Gonzales

Gilmore is a principled libertarian, not some random crank. He's one of the co-founders, and still sits on the Board of Directors of, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and was employee #5 at Sun Microsystems; he's also the guy who made the timeless (and highly accurate) observation: "The Net treats censorship as damage and routes around it."

Related:

• John Gilmore's Home Page
• Wikipedia entry on John Gilmore

Wasps Could Replace Bomb, Drug Dogs

Wow, I knew that we had a surplus of Ivy League graduates on our hands, but this is ridiculous:

Wasps Could Replace Bomb, Drug Dogs

An office politics reading list

A participant on a mailing list I frequent asked for recommendations for good books on understanding the politics of the modern workplace.

I put a fair bit of effort into my answer, and realized that I had inadvertently also written a pretty decent blog post. So in the spirit of maximizing productivity through re-use, here it is.

Here's the best book I've ever read on office politics:

The Way of the Rat: A Survival Guide to Office Politics
Author: Joep Schrijvers
ISBN: 0954282922

However: to understand the cultural anthropology of the modern office, you need to understand anthropology in general, preferably with a smattering of evolutionary psychology thrown into the mix. Human beings have built and designed some wonderful things, ranging from flint arrowheads to Michelangelo's David to the Brooklyn Bridge to particle accelerators, but we're still giant hairless apes with swollen forebrains, and despite our carefully constructed facades, that's still how we act much of the time.

And you'll never see better examples of primate dominance hierarchies than you'll find in most "modern" offices.

Thus, I recommend:

The Naked Ape : A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal
(Good general introduction to practical anthropology)
Author: Desmond Morris
ISBN: 0385334303

The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are
(Good general introduction to evolutionary psychology)
Author: Steven Pinker
ISBN: 0679763996

And for more general background:

Office Space
(Motion picture, 1999; director, Mike Judge)

Time allowing, it's also not a bad idea to brush up on your Von Clausewitz, Machiavelli and Sun Tzu. A little dose of Hobbes and Kant wouldn't hurt either.

Related:

• The Way of the Rat reviewed in the Daily Telegraph (UK)

PCWorld.com - The 100 Best Products of 2005

PCWorld Magazine just published their "100 Best Products" list for 2005.

The top ten:

1. Mozilla Firefox Web Browser
2. Google Gmail Web Mail
3. Apple Mac OS X Version 10.4 (Tiger) Operating System
4. Belkin Wireless Pre-N Router and Notebook Network Card Wireless Networking
5. Dell Ultrasharp 2405FPW 24-Inch Wide-Screen LCD
6. Alienware Aurora 5500 Performance PC
7. Seagate USB 2.0 Pocket Drive Portable Hard Drive
8. Skype VoIP Service
9. Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT Digital SLR Camera
10. PalmOne Treo 650 PDA Phone

PCWorld.com - The 100 Best Products of 2005

Merriam-Wiki

Merriam-Webster, home of arguably the best free online dictionary and thesaurus in American English, has opened up a site for all you amateur lexicographers out there: The Open Dictionary.

Welcome to Merriam-Webster's Open Dictionary where you can 1) submit and share entries that aren't already in our Online Dictionary, and 2) browse entries submitted by other members of the Merriam-Webster Online community.

It's not precisely a wiki, of course, but it's open-participation, so it's pretty close. This should be interesting.

Merriam-Webster's Open Dictionary

FBI Plants Fake Candidate in W.Va. Race

Thomas Esposito's campaign for the Legislature seemed to be following the usual pattern. The longtime Democratic mayor issued press releases, raised money and bought newspaper ads. Signs bearing his name popped up in yards around rural Logan County.

But less than a month before the May 2004 primary election, Esposito dropped out, saying he had to withdraw because of his ailing mother-in-law.

The real reason surfaced only later: The FBI had planted Esposito among the field of candidates to help find evidence of vote-buying in southern West Virginia.

FBI Plants Fake Candidate in W.Va. Race (AP, via Yahoo! News)

Schneier: Airline Security a Waste of Cash

Security maven Bruce Schneier, writing about airline security in Wired News:

Exactly two things have made airline travel safer since 9/11: reinforcement of cockpit doors, and passengers who now know that they may have to fight back. Everything else -- Secure Flight and Trusted Traveler included -- is security theater. We would all be a lot safer if, instead, we implemented enhanced baggage security -- both ensuring that a passenger's bags don't fly unless he does, and explosives screening for all baggage -- as well as background checks and increased screening for airport employees.

Then we could take all the money we save and apply it to intelligence, investigation and emergency response. These are security measures that pay dividends regardless of what the terrorists are planning next, whether it's the movie plot threat of the moment, or something entirely different.

Preach.

Wired News: Airline Security a Waste of Cash

Related:

• "Terrorists Don't Do Movie Plots" (also by Schneier, also in Wired News)
• Bruce Schneier's Site
  

My life in the splinter group

I am a member of a splinter group, and I'm madder than hell.

No, not a fringe political or religious organization.

Our hardwood floors are of roughly the same vintage as the rest of our apartment building, which was built at the turn of the 20th century. And they're in pretty bad shape.

My membership in the "splinter group" is hard-won. Though we have some ancient rugs down in various parts of the apartment, there's enough exposed, splintery floor around (mostly in the living room) that you want to be really, really careful when baring your soles.

After pulling the latest monster chunk of wood out of my foot over the weekend, I finally had enough, and put my design consultant on the job.

We're going to put down industrial rubber mats on the kitchen floor--and in the living room, modular carpet tiles in some kind of attractive, funky color pattern.

New Audacity versions released

Attention, podcasters and audio geeks. The excellent free, open-source program Audacity has two new versions - a stable release version and a beta with loads of new features:

Audacity 1.2.4 is a new stable version of Audacity, the free audio editor. It includes a couple of bug fixes and minor improvements and is recommended for all users. Audacity 1.3.0 is a beta release that contains hundreds of new features, but this version is unfinished and unstable, and is recommended primarily for advanced users. You can install both Audacity 1.2 and 1.3 simultaneously.

Audacity (at SourceForge.net)

Stowaway cat arrives home from France

Emily vanished from her Appleton [Wisconsin] home in late September. She apparently wandered into a nearby paper company's distribution center and crawled into a container of paper bales.

The container went by truck to Chicago and by ship to Belgium before the cat was found October 24 at Raflatac, a laminating company in Nancy, France. Workers there used her tags to phone her veterinarian...

After clearing a one-month quarantine, Emily the Cat flew home--business class--courtesy of Continental Airlines. She turned up her nose at the in-flight dinner on offer (a peppered salmon filet) in favor of the French cat food she had become accustomed to.

I feel just the same way about airline food. Hell, I'd rather eat cat food myself than most of the airline meals I've been offered lately.

CNN.com - Stowaway cat arrives home from France

My man Bill

I am a devoted weekday reader of the Wall Street Journal, but I haven't gotten into the habit of reading it on weekends, despite their aggressively hyped recent launch of a weekend edition.

So I am just now--thanks to Reason Magazine's "Hit and Run" blog--seeing this November 12th interview with William F. Buckley (via OpinionJournal.com, so the link will work for everyone whether you subscribe to WSJ or not.)

These are interesting and dangerous times for conservatives.

Once upon a time, being anti-Communist was enough to bring you into the Big Tent of the conservative movement. But as conservatives have achieved near-total ideological victory in American politics, and since old-style Soviet Communism has for the most part withered and died on the vine (yes, I know, China - but they're looking less Communist, though not less authoritarian, every day) the fragile coalition of pro-business conservatives, defense hawks, libertarians and social conservatives that united to form "the conservative movement" is starting to fray badly around the edges.

A few interesting observations by WFB:

Does he believe the war on terror to be the same kind of "long twilight struggle" as the Cold War? "Well," he says, "it lacks the formal face. It's detached from national dimensions. As such, it legitimately inquires into two things. No. 1: To what extent does this society elect to fight it? Because if it doesn't care that much about it then to hell with it. No. 2: Is this society pliant enough to come up with a formula to defend itself that nevertheless acknowledges the ancient restrictions on ideas? If I'm correct, there hasn't been an act of terrorism in the U.S. for four years, and that bespeaks not the absence of will by terrorists to damage but a lack of resources. How much of that is owing to their own institutions or to a sense that resistance is here remains to be seen."

This last is a glancing way of referring to the U.S. enterprise in Iraq, which Mr. Buckley calls "anything but conservative." "Conservatism," he says, "except when it is expressed as pure idealism, takes into account reality, and the reality of the situation is that missions abroad to effect regime change in countries without a bill of rights or democratic tradition are terribly arduous. This isn't to say that the war is wrong, or that history will judge it to be wrong. But it is absolutely to say that conservatism implies a certain submission to reality; and this war has an unrealistic frank and is being conscripted by events."

Old School (Wall Street Journal Weekend) - Nov 12, 2005

Hat tip: Hit and Run

Chapomatic: The next major Iraq War scandal

In a courageous act of investigative journalism, Chapomatic uncovers the next big scandal to come out of Iraq:

Administration officials anonymously confirm that little-known squads of men attached to the Department of Defense have been using weapons that shoot projectiles with extremely toxic chemical characteristics, and a form of burning chemical accelerant that is known to kill. Internet photos discovered by Chapomatic reporters have shown gruesome post-Falluja video evidence of persons in civilian clothes grievously injured or even killed by the sheer velocity of the projectile, even before the poisonous lead-based projectile has had a chance to take chemical effect.

The horror.

Chapomatic >> Major scandal about to blow

The incredible disappearing Gato

Cats have a reputation as curious creatures, and Mister Gato is certainly curious.

And busy.

In this series of photographs, Gato helps us put away the clean laundry.

An open drawer! I must investigate.


There's something back there. I'm going in.


Papa, I think I found a missing sock.


(sigh) I'll just perch here for a little while.

Be sure to check out the Friday Ark at The Modulator for more bloggers' pets from around the world - and don't miss the Carnival of the Cats on Sunday, this week hosted at When Cats Attack.

(If you're a catblogger yourself, don't pass up the chance to join Ferdinand T. Cat's "Cat Lovers Community.")

And add yourself to our Frappr map, won't you?

Blog Software Smackdown

Over at Sitepoint, web developer and blogger Vinnie Garcia reviews three of the most popular standalone blogging packages: Movable Type, WordPress, and one which has been intriguing me mightily of late, Textpattern.

If you're considering a move away from a hosted blogging service (TypePad, Blogger, LiveJournal) you'll want to check this article out.

(I've had enrevanche.com registered for some time now, but haven't had time to implement a new site.)

Blog Software Smackdown (Sitepoint)

Skype 2.0 Beta released

Skype has just released Skype 2.0 beta, a shiny new version of the incredibly popular "free phone calls over-the-Internet" application. There are lots of little tweaks, including a much cleaner interface, and one Big New Feature: video calling.

Clean new interface.

The eminently quotable Walt Mossberg, writing about the Skype 2 beta in today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) concludes:

Skype has escaped from its niche and is heading for the mainstream. You might want to give it a try.

The Skype 2.0 beta is available for Windows machines only, but will be on other platforms soon.

(I'm user "enrevanche" at Skype, by the way, if anyone wants to chat.)

Skype 2.0 beta (download link)

CIA Realizes It's Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years (The Onion)

This explains a lot.

A report released Tuesday by the CIA's Office of the Inspector General revealed that the CIA has mistakenly obscured hundreds of thousands of pages of critical intelligence information with black highlighters.

According to the report, sections of the documents— "almost invariably the most crucial passages"—are marred by an indelible black ink that renders the lines impossible to read, due to a top-secret highlighting policy that began at the agency's inception in 1947.

CIA Realizes It's Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years (The Onion)

Hat tip: enrevanche reader and pal Greg.

yoco: College Basketball

Now that we're solidly into the preseason, I again call your attention to Yoni Cohen's excellent "yoco: College Basketball" blog.

Yoni covers NCAA Division I men's basketball like nobody else. While there are plenty of worthy team blogs, and even conference blogs, nobody covers college basketball at a national level like Yoni.

In fact, Yoni is the Dick Vitale of the blogosphere, except that you can understand him when he talks without consulting a dictionary.

Oh, how I long for the day that I can log in
to Google's automatic translator and see this...

yoco: College Basketball