Diabetes in New York

Hmm... maybe this is why it's so hard to get an appointment with my endocrinologist:

An estimated 800,000 adult New Yorkers - more than one in every eight - now have diabetes, and city health officials describe the problem as a bona fide epidemic. Diabetes is the only major disease in the city that is growing, both in the number of new cases and the number of people it kills. And it is growing quickly, even as other scourges like heart disease and cancers are stable or in decline.

Already, diabetes has swept through families, entire neighborhoods in the Bronx and broad slices of Brooklyn, where it is such a fact of life that people describe it casually, almost comfortably, as "getting the sugar" or having "the sweet blood."

But as alarmed as health officials are about the present, they worry more about what is to come.

It's a long, gruesome, and generally very good article in this morning's Times about New York City's experience with diabetes as a disease, which in some ways mirrors the rest of the nation's, and in some ways is much worse:

The percentage of diabetics in the city is nearly a third higher than in the nation. New cases have been cropping up close to twice as fast as cases nationally. And of adults believed to have the illness, health officials estimate, nearly one-third do not know it.

Diabetes and Its Awful Toll Quietly Emerge as a Crisis - New York Times

(1) Desktop and (1) Laptop PC, w/ Linux, free to good home

UPDATE: That was fast. Both machines claimed.

Any New Yorkers want a spare Linux machine or two?

We made some significant technology upgrades in our household this year, and as a result we've got some *old* equipment to give away: two old computers, hard disks wiped clean, reformatted and loaded up with Linux, yours for the asking. Neither one is really suited to running a recent version of Windows, but the five year-old desktop unit hums right along with Ubuntu Linux, and even the nine year-old laptop does fine with a minimal Linux installation.

We can't ship, but if you can pick them up, one or both are yours for the asking. First request(s) win(s).

See the Craigslist listing with all the details, here:

(removed - both machines claimed)

Spirit of America Releases Anonymous Blogging Guides in English, Arabic, Chinese and Persian

I usually discard the press releases I occasionally receive... but I'm running this one in full, unedited. It's kind of important.

Spirit of America has launched the BlogSafer wiki, available at http://www.blogsafer.org. BlogSafer contains a series of guides on how to blog under difficult conditions in countries that discourage free speech.

LOS ANGELES, California - January 7, 2006 – Spirit of America’s BlogSafer wiki hosts a series of targeted guides to anonymous blogging, each of which outline steps a blogger in a repressive regime can take, and tools to use, to avoid identification and arrest. These range from common sense actions such as not providing identifying details on a blog to the technical, such as the use of proxy servers.

“A repressive regime trying to still free speech first goes after and shuts down independent print and broadcast media,” said Curt Hopkins, project director of Spirit of America’s Anonymous Blogging Campaign. “Once that is done, it turns its attentions to online news sites. As these outlets disappear, dissent migrates to blogs, which are increasing geometrically in number and are simple to set up and operate.”

In past several years at least 30 people have been arrested, many of whom have been tortured, for criticizing their governments. This trend is likely to increase in the coming year.

The five guides that are currently on the wiki serve bloggers in the following countries:

• Iran (in Persian)
• China (Chinese)
• Saudi Arabia (in Arabic—also useful for other Arabic-speaking regimes such as Bahrain, Egypt, Syria and Tunisia)
• Malaysia (in English—also applicable to neighboring Indonesia and Singapore)
• Zimbabwe (in English—applicable to English-speaking Africans as well as aid workers)

These countries were chosen because they are representative of the kinds of repressive tactics that have been used in the past several years against bloggers. These include filtering, interrogation, torture and imprisonment.

The guides are a synthesis of all currently available information on the subject of anonymization. They have been edited for non-technical readers, translated into the languages of the target areas and posted on the wiki. Bloggers can use the wiki format to expand, edit and change the current guides to reflect a closer knowledge of the changing situation in their countries. Others may use the guides, and the other resources provided, to translate the guides into other languages or create new guides specific to their countries’ situations.

The wiki will provide a work and communications space for those bloggers around the world seeking to speak the truth as they see it and those in freer countries who wish to support their fellows bloggers.

Spirit of America's mission is to extend the goodwill of the American people to assist those advancing freedom, democracy and peace abroad. We provide support to those on the front lines: American military and civilian personnel and people who call to Americans for help in their struggle for freedom and democracy.

Spirit of America is a 501c3 nonprofit supported solely through private-sector contributions. We do not receive funding from the government or military. 100% of your tax-deductible donation is used for the purpose you choose. For more information and to support Spirit of America and this and other projects, visit the web site at www.spiritofamerica.net.

Solution Watch: First look at Newsvine

If you have missed all the buzz about Newsvine, Newsvine is a news media site that presents news, like what you would see on news sites like MSNBC or CNN, but in a much more attractive interface. Even better, Newsvine is also a community of users that can tag stories, comment on stories, chat with others, write news and add links, and a lot more.

Newsvine - Seeding the Vine. First Look! » Solution Watch

The "News" side of Newsvine includes feeds from the Associated Press, ESPN, and so forth; the "Vine" side includes user-submitted stories.

It's in private beta now, with about 7,000 users, invitation-only (but current users have just been seeded with invitations to send.)

So. Anybody got a spare invite? If so, please drop me a line: enrevanche at gmail dot com.

Who took Abramoff's money?

The invaluable Capital Eye, which tracks money in politics, lists the recipients of Jack Abramoff's lobbying largesse for the last seven years.

The top recipients, by dollars received? (Abramoff spread around almost $4.5 million between 1999 and 2006.)

1. National Republican Congressional Committee: $498,000
2. National Republican Senatorial Committee: $436,500
3. Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee: $423,480
4. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee: $354,700
5. Republican National Committee: $326,000
6. J. D. Hayworth (R-Ariz): $101,620
7. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill): $69,000
8. Democratic National Committee: $65,720
9. Thad Cochran (R-Miss): $65,500
10. Conrad Burns (R-Mont): $59,590

See the complete list (sortable, sliceable and diceable) here: Jack Abramoff Lobbying and Political Contributions, 1999 - 2006.

Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.

ACC preview - NCAA Basketball

Clark Kellogg gives us his opinions on this year's crop of Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) men's basketball teams. In all the ACC previews I've seen this year, Duke is the consensus number 1, but Clark seems to think that North Carolina looks pretty good this year, too:

North Carolina Tar Heels
News | Schedule | Roster

The young and talented Tar Heels have surprised me with how well the freshman class of Tyler Hansbrough, Bobby Frasor, Marcus Ginyard and Danny Green has played to this point.

Hansbrough is an absolute beast inside. His intensity and skill level are more like those of an upperclassman. The other freshmen have shown great promise as well, but conference play will present a greater challenge. As Lorenzo Romar (Washington's head coach) said recently, "freshmen have to learn to play through a scouting report."

That's why the play of senior David Noel and junior Reyshawn Terry will be so important to the Heels' success. They will have to be very consistent and productive in conference play to help smooth out the inevitable bumps that most freshmen experience when the intensity and familiarity increases.

I'm certainly looking forward to this afternoon's game - UNC vs. NC State, the first conference game of UNC's season and the first nationally televised (ESPN2) UNC game of any importance this year.

ACC preview - NCAA Basketball - Yahoo! Sports

Related sites:

• ACC BasketBlog
• YoCo: College Basketball

The Late Miocene Radiation of Modern Felidae: A Genetic Assessment

The prestigious journal Science, this week, reports on where your kittycat came from.

Modern felid species descend from relatively recent (<11 million years ago) divergence and speciation events that produced successful predatory carnivores worldwide but that have confounded taxonomic classifications. A highly resolved molecular phylogeny with divergence dates for all living cat species, derived from autosomal, X-linked, Y-linked, and mitochondrial gene segments (22,789 base pairs) and 16 fossil calibrations define eight principal lineages produced through at least 10 intercontinental migrations facilitated by sea-level fluctuations. A ghost lineage analysis indicates that available felid fossils underestimate (i.e., unrepresented basal branch length) first occurrence by an average of 76%, revealing a low representation of felid lineages in paleontological remains. The phylogenetic performance of distinct gene classes showed that Y-chromosome segments are appreciably more informative than mitochondrial DNA, X-linked, or autosomal genes in resolving the rapid Felidae species radiation.

Science 6 January 2006: Vol. 311. no. 5757, pp. 73 - 77
DOI: 10.1126/science.1122277

It turns out the standard-issue modern housecat (Felis silvestris catus) is most closely related, genetically speaking, to African and European wildcats, and was domesticated roughly 6,000 years ago. And the main difference between cat species, wild and domesticated, is... size.

"The cat is a wild animal that inhabits the homes of humans." - Konrad Lorenz

Links:

• New cat family tree revealed (BBC)
• DNA offers new insight regarding cat evolution (New York Times)

Magazine publishers get desperate; online retailers act as enablers

It seems that magazine publishers, facing declining readership in the Web age, are pairing off with online retailers to pad their subscription rolls. Buy something online, and you could find yourself with a "gift subscription" to a magazine you couldn't care less about (or, as in my case, a couple that cause your gorge actively to rise.)

Warning: you could be their next victim, if you buy anything online... at least from eBags.com or yourmusic.com.

Here's what happened.

Last week, I received, unasked for and most definitely unwanted, a subscription to Newsweek.

When I called Newsweek subscription services to find out how on earth this had happened, they referred me to an outfit called ValueMags.com. They had an 800 number.

ValueMags told me that I had been "gifted" with a subscription to Newsweek via eBags.com (I *did* buy some luggage there last year, so I knew who they were.)

eBags has a toll-free number, too. When I called eBags to ask what was going on, I was politely informed that they had a promotion going on; whenever you buy something at their site, you're automatically subscribed to your choice of one of three magazines, though they *do* give you the ability to "opt out" (assuming, of course, that you notice it in their shopping cart... I made a living for a few years designing user interfaces for web sites, and I certainly didn't notice my opt-out option, nor did I "choose" a magazine; I can only assume that Newsweek is the default choice.)

Well, that's easy enough to deal with. I cancelled my subscription to Newsweek (twice, for good measure--once at Newsweek, once at ValueMags) and instructed eBags never to get in touch with me for any reason ever again.

Hell will be a Frigidaire dealership before I buy another backpack or suitcase from them or recommend them to anyone else. Not a great loss, perhaps, but I did drop a few hundred dollars on bags and travel accessories at their place in 2005; that won't be happening again.

Then, today... a copy of Entertainment Weekly showed up. Unasked for, and, again, definitely unwanted.

eBags again? Nope. This time the culprit was BMG Music Club, which runs yourmusic.com, a place where back-catalog CDs can be purchased for cheap.

I couldn't get an actual human being on the phone there, but--extra points for having a good user interface--I was able to cancel my account online immediately from the web site and send them a little love note explaining why.

And, again: Hades, snowballs, ice cubes, etc. Spent about a hundred dollars with yourmusic already and had thirty-plus CDs in my queue.

Buh-bye, now.

I don't have time to read the magazines that I already subscribe to and want to read, much less odious, half-bright crap like Newsweek and Entertainment Weekly.

Memorandum to the web merchants I do business with:

When I order something from you, I want it sold to me at a fair price and shipped quickly. That's all I want, mmkay?

I definitely don't want you to choose reading material for me, even if I have the alleged ability to "opt out." I don't want a damned thing but what I've ordered and paid you for.

I've just opted out of doing business with eBags or yourmusic ever again.

Avoid, avoid.

The Humane Society Of New York

New Yorker?

Got a car? Got a pet?

Oh, man, do you need one of these:

Pet License Plates: The Humane Society Of New York

(Tip of the enrevanche chapeau to reader and pal Laurie Kalmanson.)

Detroit: Heal Thy Self

This is pretty harsh, but essentially accurate.

The strangest thing about the crisis in the American auto industry is this: Nobody outside of Detroit seems to care.

General Motors could go down. Ford Motor could go down. If either company fails, hundreds of thousands of workers could lose their jobs and health benefits. I'm not saying that this is going to happen. I'm just saying that the American people and the leaders in Washington don't seem particularly concerned about the traditional U.S. auto industry.

[...]

These days, most Americans already buy cars made by foreign companies. If you pull out all of Detroit's business with the rent-a-car and fleet buyers, you'll see that true retail sales by Toyota Motor, Honda Motor and Nissan easily top those of Chevrolet and Ford. And Chrysler is now owned by the Germans.

Detroit: Heal Thy Self - Forbes

Security risks in outsourcing bank back-office functions

First, US textile jobs were shipped to the Orient, then customer service call centers for American companies cropped up in Manila. Now the back office of the corner bank is being hauled to Bombay and Bangladore, India.

From SunTrust in Atlanta to Bank of America in Charlotte, N.C., banks are hiring overseas shops to stay competitive, be more efficient, and have access to cheap labor.

But as more accounting and investment banking is being sent overseas, the result is that Americans' personal bank accounts are increasingly susceptible to theft and fraud, some experts say.

'If you think about the scenario, you have the lowest-paid contractors furthest away from the main office all with access to sensitive data," says Paul Bilden, vice president at Covelight, an Internet security company in Cary, N.C. "It's an incredibly risky proposition."

As bank jobs go abroad, are records at risk? (Christian Science Monitor)

Mister Gato says, "Let's Recycle!"

Recycling Day is always a lot of fun at our house. In addition to the empty whiskey bottles and cans of Diet Coke with Lime, a prodigious quantity of newsprint, magazines and cardboard must be dealt with.

So we flatten out the cardboard boxes, we get out the twine, and...

Hey! Has anybody seen Mister Gato?

My name is Mister Gato, and I'm here to help in any way I can.

Oh, right. Cardboard boxes and twine. Naturally.

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 at Pages Turned.

(We're hosting the Carnival of the Cats here on February 5.)

---

Carrie has some more Mister Gato for you this week (or will shortly.)

"Official" fix for WMF vulnerabiilty now available

An update to an earlier post:

As of the evening of January 5, 2006, an official patch from Microsoft is available to address the WMF vulnerability.

If you run Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows Server 2003 and have set your systems up to receive patches automatically, it should come through soon if it hasn't already; you can also go directly to Windows Update (using Internet Explorer) and download the relevant patch.

Now, let's suppose that you followed our earlier advice (which was based on the best advice available from security mavens we trust) and installed the temporary, "unofficial" patch. In this case, *after* you install the Microsoft patch and reboot your machine, you should do the following:

1. Go to Start --> Control Panel --> Add or Remove Programs and remove the temporary fix (it appears in the list as "Windows WMF Vulnerability HotFix 1.2" or something similar to this.)
   
   
2. Re-register the DLL that you temporarily disabled, by going to Start --> Run and typing the following in the dialog box:
   regsvr32 %windir%\system32\shimgvw.dll

(If you didn't install the temporary patch or disable the DLL, once you install Microsoft's patch and reboot your machine you should be good to go.)

Related articles:

• Microsoft Security Bulletin MS06-001: Vulnerability in Graphics Rendering Engine Could Allow Remote Code Execution (912919)
• Wikipedia article on WMF Vulnerability

Say it ain't so, Jack

The Second Avenue Deli, a neighborhood institution in the East Village since 1954, has shut down and may have to close permanently.

The owner, Jack Lebewohl, said he closed the restaurant on Sunday after a lease dispute with Jonis Realty of Great Neck, N.Y., the new owners of the building at 156 Second Avenue, at 10th Street.

"My current rent is $24,000 a month for 2,800 square feet," Mr. Lebewohl said. "They want $33,000. I can't afford that."

I really, really hope this doesn't happen. When Carrie's in-laws (and friends) were in town recently, we had a gut-buster of a late breakfast at the Second Avenue Deli and enjoyed it hugely; it's one of the New York-iest places ever.

Lease Dispute With Landlord Closes Second Avenue Deli - New York Times

Related site: Second Avenue Deli

Mountain Philosopher - back again

Hey, don't look now, but the Mountain Philosopher is back from his long hiatus, with a vengeance.

And I don't ordinarily link to this kind of thing, but he's got a really funny blonde joke over at his site.

Creating Passionate Users: Crash course in learning theory

If you ever have to teach anyone anything--as part of your job, on a volunteer basis, for any reason at all--or if you ever give presentations, or write user documentation, you could do worse than spend fifteen minutes with this blog post:

...[H]ere's a crash course on some of our favorite learning techniques gleaned from cognitive science, learning theory, neuroscience, psychology, and entertainment (including game design). Much of it is based around courses I designed and taught at UCLA Extension's New Media/Entertainment Studies department...

This is not a comprehensive look at the state of learning theory today, but it does include almost everything we think about in creating our books. And although it's geared toward blogs/writing virtually everything in here applies regardless of how you deliver the learning--you can easily adapt it to presentations, user documentation, or classroom learning.

Creating Passionate Users: Crash course in learning theory

Related:

• Crash Course in Learning - Summary
  
• (Summary PDF file - 500K)

Slate: Those Weird College Ads

Alert enrevanche reader and pal John deVille tips us to this wonderful article at Slate; as he notes, "must reading for NCAA sports fans."

Excerpt:

College-football bowl season is a time for America's top corporate sponsors to strut their stuff on a national stage. But it's not just corporations like Gaylord Hotels, Meineke, and EV1.net who plaster their names and logos all over our television screens. The 56 universities represented in this year's bowlapalooza also have the chance to sell themselves to a national audience.

And no, they don't let their football teams speak for themselves. America's colleges and universities try to make an impression with "institutional spots"—trade parlance for the promotional television commercials they use to sell themselves. The ads typically run for 30 seconds during halftime. As state-school spokespersons are quick to point out, colleges don't pay for the airtime—the slots are provided at no cost under most college-football television contracts.

The standard mise-en-scène of the institutional spot will be familiar to any dedicated college-sports watcher: campus greenery, one-on-one pedagogy, chemistry labs, black gowns and mortarboards, and laughing/hugging students of as many colors as possible. Those are just the ingredients, though. A survey of more than 30 of this year's bowl ads reveals many different tactics for selling higher education.

Those Weird College Ads (If you like our football team, you'll love our chem labs full of Asian students...)

Squidoo

Entrepreneur, marketer, author and blogger Seth Godin has a new project out in beta: Squidoo.

Here's Seth's elevator pitch on Squidoo, from an interview with e-consultancy:

Squidoo lets anyone build a simple, free web page that points to blogs, online stores, maps and other information on a single topic—any topic. Each page can contain insight, bullet points, links, products and pictures, and each page earns royalties for its creator or for charity.

Squidoo leverages the power of personal recommendation. The site will eventually host millions of handmade ‘lenses’, each a focused, useful guide to some area of expertise, some glimpse of the net. Instead of aimlessly poking, a lens lets a user see the big picture—a human being’s big picture, the overview you need to get the meaning of the idea.

And here's my take, after playing around with it for a little while. A "lens," in Squidoo-speak, is a site--basically a one-page portal--set up to accumulate information about a particular topic, with a very friendly interface for creation, assembly and editing. Prefab modules allow you to (for example) incorporate RSS feeds, link to books on Amazon, and so forth.

How easy is it? Well, with just some spare bytes that I had lying around the house, I was able to whomp this together in about half an hour:

Squidoo: Lenses: Knowledge Work: Analyze, Communicate, Share

Part wiki, part blog, part social network, with tagging baked in... I think this just might catch on.

• Squidoo
• Squidoo Blog
• Barry's Squidoo Lens on Knowledge Work
  

The science behind cuteness

Scientists who study the evolution of visual signaling have identified a wide and still expanding assortment of features and behaviors that make something look cute: bright forward-facing eyes set low on a big round face, a pair of big round ears, floppy limbs and a side-to-side, teeter-totter gait, among many others.

Cute cues are those that indicate extreme youth, vulnerability, harmlessness and need, scientists say, and attending to them closely makes good Darwinian sense. As a species whose youngest members are so pathetically helpless they can't lift their heads to suckle without adult supervision, human beings must be wired to respond quickly and gamely to any and all signs of infantile desire.

The Cute Factor - New York Times

Related sites:

• PandaCams at the National Zoo
  
• Cute Overload (web clearinghouse for photos of cute animals)
  
• Kittenwar
• Cats in Sinks
  

Patch Windows now to avoid WMF exploit

Update, January 6, 2006:

There is now an official patch from Microsoft to address the WMF vulnerability issue. This post explains how to get it.

Don't follow the directions below to "fix" your system; they have been rendered obsolete now that an official patch is available.

---

There's a very dangerous new security exploit that affects Microsoft Windows users. It involves a "hole" in Windows that allows code to be executed automatically when web-based images (Windows Metafiles - WMFs) are viewed.

Currently, there is no patch from Microsoft and no announced availability date for a patch.

An independent programmer has developed an unofficial patch, and the SANS Internet Storm Center advises all Windows users to both apply the patch and disable the part of the operating system that can be potentially exploited.

How to protect yourself, short version:

1. Download the patch here.
2. Run the executable patch to install it.
3. Click Start, click Run, type
   regsvr32 -u %windir%\system32\shimgvw.dll
   and then click OK.

How to educate and protect yourself, somewhat longer version:

This FAQ file from SANS explains the vulnerability and how you can (temporarily) protect yourself. I advise you to read the whole thing, but if you don't have the patience for that, at least read these relevant excerpts and follow the directions therein.

Why is this issue so important?

The WMF vulnerability uses images (WMF images) to execute arbitrary code. It will execute just by viewing the image. In most cases, you don't have click anything. Even images stored on your system may cause the exploit to be triggered if it is indexed by some indexing software. Viewing a directory in Explorer with 'Icon size' images will cause the exploit to be triggered as well.

Is it better to use Firefox or Internet Explorer?

Internet Explorer will view the image and trigger the exploit without warning. New versions of Firefox will prompt you before opening the image. However, in most environments this offers little protection given that these are images and are thus considered 'safe'

What versions of Windows are affected?

All. Windows 2000, Windows XP, (SP1 and SP2), Windows 2003. All are affected to some extent. Mac OS-X, Unix or BSD is not affected.

Note: If you're still running on Win98/ME, this is a watershed moment: we believe (untested) that your system is vulnerable and there will be no patch from MS. Your mitigation options are very limited. You really need to upgrade.

What can I do to protect myself?

1. Microsoft has not yet released a patch. An unofficial patch was made available by Ilfak Guilfanov. Our own Tom Liston reviewed the patch and we tested it. The reviewed and tested version is available here (now at v1.3, MD5: 14d8c937d97572deb9cb07297a87e62a), PGP signature (signed with ISC key) here. THANKS to Ilfak Guilfanov for providing the patch!!
2. You can unregister the related DLL.
3. Virus checkers provide some protection.

To unregister the DLL:

• Click Start, click Run, type "regsvr32 -u %windir%\system32\shimgvw.dll" (without the quotation marks), and then click OK.
• A dialog box appears to confirm that the un-registration process has succeeded. Click OK to close the dialog box.

Our current "best practice" recommendation is to both unregister the DLL and to use the unofficial patch.

Related links:

• 2005 WMF Vulnerability - Wikipedia
  
• Microsoft Security Advisory: Vulnerability in Graphics Rendering Engine
• SANS Internet Storm Center - WMF Exploit FAQ
• US CERT Vulnerability Note VU#181038
  
• Security Fix - Brian Krebs on Computer and Internet Security - (washingtonpost.com)
• Demonstration of infection with WMF - Windows Movie format
  

‘Hero’ cat apparently dials 911 to help owner

Alert enrevanche reader and pal John deVille sends us the following:

Police aren't sure how else to explain it. But when an officer walked into an apartment Thursday night to answer a 911 call, an orange-and-tan striped cat was lying by a telephone on the living room floor. The cat's owner, Gary Rosheisen, was on the ground near his bed having fallen out of his wheelchair.

Rosheisen said his cat, Tommy, must have hit the right buttons to call 911.

‘Hero’ cat apparently dials 911 to help owner - AP via MSNBC.com

Personally, I have no trouble believing this whatsoever.

Hello? Yes, I'd like a half-pound of sliced Nova lox...

Multiple Choice: One of Three

Hat tip to Rachel at Tinkerty Tonk, who brings us this meme from Normblog.

1. Beatles, Stones or Beach Boys? Stones, in the period ranging from "Beggar's Banquet" to "Exile on Main Street."
2. Kant, Hegel, Marx? Kant.
3. Cluedo, Monopoly, Scrabble? Scrabble.
4. Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford? Jack.
5. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart? Bach.
6. Australia, Canada, New Zealand? New Zealand.
7. Groucho, Chico, Harpo? Groucho.
8. Morning, afternoon, evening? Nighttime into the wee hours of the morning. But never at dusk.
9. Bridge, Canasta, Poker? Canasta.
10. Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou? Lebowski.
12. Cricket, football, rugby? Women's rugby.
13. Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte? Jane Austen.
14. Parker, Gillespie, Monk? All of the above, but if I have to choose, Diz, Bird and Monk in that order.
15. Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham? Don't follow English football.
16. Cheers, Friends, Seinfeld? None of the above.
17. Henry Fonda, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart? Jimmy Stewart.
18. France, Germany, Italy? France.
19. Apple, orange, banana? Apple.
20. Statham, Tyson, Trueman? Don't know beans about cricket.
21. Rio Bravo, El Dorado, Rio Lobo? Rio Bravo.
22. Katharine Hepburn, Meryl Streep, Ingrid Bergman? Hepburn.
23. Chinese, Indian, Thai? Yes, please. If I must pick one: Indian.
24. Handel, Scarlatti, Vivaldi? Handel.
25. Oasis, Radiohead, Blur? Radiohead.
26. Fawlty Towers, The Young Ones, Yes Minister? Fawlty Towers.
27. Chekhov, Ibsen, Shaw? Chekhov.
28. American football, baseball, basketball? NCAA college basketball.
29. FDR, JFK, Bill Clinton? Ronald Reagan.
30. Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky? I'd put a bullet in Lenin first, but it's a tough choice.
31. Paris, Rome, New York? New York.
32. Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Steinbeck? Fitzgerald.
33. Blue, green, red? Blue.
34. Guys and Dolls, My Fair Lady, West Side Story? West Side Story.
35. J.S. Mill, John Rawls, Robert Nozick? Mill.
36. Armstrong, Ellington, Goodman? Armstrong.
37. Ireland, Scotland, Wales (at rugby)? No preference.
38. The Sopranos, 24, Six Feet Under? Sopranos.
39. Friday, Saturday, Sunday? Saturday.
40. Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear? The Scottish Play.
41. Fried, boiled, scrambled (eggs)? Fried over easy with flour tortillas.
42. Paths of Glory, Cross of Iron, Saving Private Ryan? None of the above.
43. England, Australia, West Indies (at cricket)? See #20; Don't know beans about cricket.
44. Chabrol, Godard, Truffaut? Godard.
45. Bringing It All Back Home, Blonde on Blonde, Blood on the Tracks? Bringing It All Back Home.
46. Trains, planes, automobiles? Trains.
47. North By Northwest, Psycho, Vertigo? North By Northwest.
48. Third, Fourth, Fifth (Beethoven Piano Concerto)? Third.
49. Coffee, tea, chocolate? Yes, please. If I have to choose one: Coffee.
50. Cardiff, Edinburgh, Dublin? Edinburgh.

What is your dangerous idea? (The Edge - 2006)

Last year, The Edge asked 120 scientists, philosophers, and thinkers, "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?"

This year's question is, to me, even more interesting:

The history of science is replete with discoveries that were considered socially, morally, or emotionally dangerous in their time; the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are the most obvious. What is your dangerous idea? An idea you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be true?

A few of my favorite "dangerous ideas":

Martin E.P. Seligmen: Has relativism gotten to a point that it is dangerous to the scientific enterprise and to human well being?

David Gelernter: What are people well informed about in the Information Age?

Michael Shermer: Where goods cross frontiers, armies won't.

Irene Pepperberg: The differences between humans and nonhumans are quantitative, not qualitative.

George Dyson: I predict we will reach a complete understanding of molecular biology and molecular evolution, without ever discovering the origins of life.

Eric Kandel: Free will is exercised unconsciously, without awareness.

Daniel Dennett: There aren't enough minds to house the population explosion of memes.

J. Craig Venter: Revealing the genetic basis of personality and behavior will create societal conflicts.

THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER 2006: What is your dangerous idea?

RINO Sightings: New Year’s Edition

...and the first RINO Sightings of 2006 are up over at Louisiana Libertarian: Louisiana Libertarian » Blog Archive » RINO Sightings: New Year’s Edition.

Carnival of the Cats #93 now up...

The first Carnival of the Cats of 2006 is now up at Elms In The Yard: Carnival of the Cats #93: Elms in the Yard.

Poor Dick Clark

No longer an eternal teenager, Dick Clark looked and sounded like an old, old man on television last night.

Nearly felled by a stroke in 2004, Clark worked very hard indeed to make it back this far:

Clark, sitting behind a desk with the street scene in the background, sounded hoarse and occasionally was hard to understand, but he said, "I wouldn't have missed this for the world."

"Last year I had a stroke," he explained. "It left me in bad shape. I had to teach myself how to walk and talk again. It's been a long, hard fight. My speech is not perfect but I'm getting there."

I give Dick Clark much respect for courage and persistence, and wish him only the best.

But I hope that he steps down now, having made his point that he's still among the living, and makes the permanent hosting handoff to Ryan Seacrest, who did 95% of the heavy lifting last night anyway.

It can be "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve" forever, as far as I'm concerned--his production company owns the night--but he should watch it from his living room next year, like the rest of us. He's earned it.

Dick Clark Returns to TV to Mark New Year - AP via Yahoo! News

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Update: Carrie has a slightly harsher take:

Good on ya, Dick, you survived the stroke. But for God's sake, for the rest of us you're a goddamn memento mori, and New Year's Eve is a horrible enough holiday without having to see you and reflect on The Way of All Flesh. Get the hell off my TV screen.

Hirabah and the Splodeydopes

To ring in the New Year, Chap's got a long, but worthwhile, post on the concept of hirabah.

What's hirabah? It means "terrorism," basically--the killing of innocents--and is the word that modern, moderate and peaceful Muslims use to describe the activities of the likes of Al Qaeda, rather than jihad.

Here's Chap's executive summary.

1. Given that a center of gravity for our enemy is related to their ability to recruit new dopes, it is in the West’s best interest to prevent that recruitment or at least change the environment in which dopes grow. I characterize a little of the environment and mention some possible means of improvement.
   
   
2. Some of the recruitment is a perversion of otherwise noble concepts.
   
   
3. We won’t know how much we affect public opinion until a sudden cascade appears. It is very hard for someone in certain situations to be able to do and say the right thing. We have the ability to influence those situations.
   
   
4. I link to various calls to action: one from the Wall Street Journal, one organization’s categorization of which Muslims are using this word hirabah to refer to who we’re fighting, and a few ideas on information warfare.

A usage note:

"Dopes," above, is shorthand for "splodeydopes." These are the folks who (a) strap on the explosive belts and (b) detonate themselves in public places in order to (c) murder innocent people (d) at the behest of their masters, who as a general rule tend to avoid blowing themselves up.

Thus, "splodeydope."

I believe that as a term of art, "splodeydope" may have originated at LGF. I like this neologism, as it contains the right admixture of contempt while simultaneously providing an alternative to calling them "suicide bombers" (as if the only people they're aiming to kill is themselves.)

(Other alternatives include the somewhat redundant "homicide bomber," the current preferred usage at Fox News, and the unwieldy but descriptive "not-so-smart bomb," which appears to be enjoying a certain vogue in military circles.)

Sorry about the linguistic digression. It's what I do.

Where do splodeydopes come from, and how do we discourage future production of same? Chap has a few ideas.

Now a person doesn’t normally wake up one day and decide it’s time to go die for God by killing off some more of God’s children. There is a socialization process for many of the fighters we see, and a path that people take from being normal person to evil beast.

Some of the primordial soup for the people that join the Bad Team includes such factors as the media environment, the conventional wisdom, the zeal of the recent convert, the rite of passage, and a person’s need to do something greater than oneself.

He goes on to make useful suggestions about how to alter each of these elements.

Chap's got the bones of a really good article in this post, and the density of good ideas is unusually high even for him. Well worth reading and mulling over, even in its early stages; I fervently hope that he develops it further, as the ideas in this one post could foster a year's worth of worthwhile blogging.

Chapomatic » Hirabah

Related links:

• Hirabah vs. Jihad - Center for Understanding Islam

2005: The Year In Military Heroism

Here's a year-end list that, sadly, you won't see in the news media, in all likelihood:

Riehl World View: 2005: The Year In Military Heroism

Follow that link, and go read about Sgt. 1st Class Paul Smith, Sgt. Willie L. Copeland III, Lance Cpl. Aaron Austin, and many more whose names you probably haven't heard before, but should remember.

Worth a Nobel, if it works

Forget vaccines to protect us from AIDS and avian influenza. Got a planned design for an automobile that gets 100 miles to the gallon? Pish and tosh.

Courageous scientists at the School of Textiles and Design at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland are tackling a serious problem--and the answer will be a boon to clothing manufacturers, not to mention beleaguered husbands, boyfriends, and significant others around the world.

They seek a scientific, definitive method for answering the question, "Does this outfit make my ass look fat?"

Models with variously sized posteriors will wear different types of clothing as part of the research, which will examine how designs, colours, patterns and fabric types affect perception.

Others will be asked to assess how big or small each model's backside appears to look in the outfits.

"This study will provide for the first time detailed and usable information that would enable designers to make the clothes that help women make the most of their natural assets," said Dr Lisa Macintyre, who is leading the study.

Vaya con Dios, Dr. Macintyre. Our thoughts and prayers--nay, our hopes and dreams!--are with you.

British academics to tackle fashion's bottom line - AFP via Yahoo! News

More year-end reporting from enrevanche

In a previous post, we reported the most common search terms by which folks found this blog in 2005.

This site is a labor of love, but we do derive a little bit of revenue from our Google Ads and our affiliation with Amazon.com.

If you click on a Google Ad, or if you buy something from Amazon after clicking a link on our site (or clicking the Amazon logo in the sidebar) then we get a little piece of the action. It's a nice way to support the site, and we appreciate it when y'all do that. (It funds our habit of buying tube socks at street fairs, a joke that no one outside of New York City is likely to get.)

Just ran the year end reports from Amazon. I had missed this in an earlier report, but in late May, one of our loyal supporters bought the following--speaking of a piece of the action:

• Undergear French Thong Brief M BLACK
• Undergear Silk Extreme Thong M ROYAL
• Flawless Mesh Thong S/M NUDE

Don't worry. We have no way of knowing who ordered what; Amazon protects the privacy of its customers. But we do get a list of what they ordered.

Um. Call me?

Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!

It's a little late for Christmas, but if you're looking for an appropriate gift for a young child any time soon, I heartily recommend Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!

From author Katherine DeBrecht's description:

HELP! MOM! There are LIBERALS Under My Bed! follows the adventures of Tommy and Lou, two regular boys who dream of starting a lemonade stand in order to earn enough to buy a swing set. Their dream goes quite well until liberals like Congresswoman Clunkton, Mayor Leach and Mr. Fussman attempt to tax and regulate their dream away...

Help! Mom! Books - A division of World Ahead Publishing.

Every life makes a difference

While I was home over Christmas, we got a call from a reporter at the Raleigh News and Observer. They were doing a year-end feature on people in the community who had passed away over the last year, and wanted to interview us about Dad.

The story ran in this morning's N&O: "Every life makes a difference," (Saturday, December 31, 2005.) The entire article is fascinating reading.

Here's the bit about Dad, which runs at the very end:

Bob Campbell, 69, Raleigh
Though disabled, he was neighborhood's Mr. Fix-It

Bob Campbell lost the ability to walk at 31, but he never gave up his will to live.

Inspired by his young son, the IBM engineer from Western North Carolina soldiered on in a wheelchair by laughing at the small indignities of his disability and by tinkering with his Raleigh neighbors' lawn mowers.

Campbell died in October at the age of 69.

He savored taking things apart and putting them back together. He spent his first few years at IBM traveling the world for the company.

His life changed in November 1967, when he borrowed a friend's motorcycle. He lost control of the bike on a country curve in Rowan County, flew into a field and snapped his back.

Campbell was paralyzed from the chest down, and life was harder. He had to pull himself out of bed in the morning, required help getting dressed and could no longer control his bladder.

"His sense of humor got us through the hard times," said his wife, Betty. "We laughed about things that you never would think we'd laugh about."

He developed a reputation as the mechanical handyman of Raleigh's Oak Park neighborhood, fixing lawn mowers and children's bicycles for free in the shade of his carport.

I can't tell from the web version of the article whether they ran a picture of Dad. But in case they didn't, here's one from his retirement party, at which he was presented with a toy lawnmower as a gag gift from his friends and colleagues, who knew of his mechanical proclivities.

I hope you don't expect me to fix this.

GAO Report on Offshoring

This was released while I was on a heavy business travel schedule, so I missed it, but better late than never.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO, formerly known as the General Accounting Office) has finally released a long-awaited report on the economic impact of offshoring: "Offshoring of Services: An Overview of the Issues."

From the abstract:

Analysts of the offshoring phenomenon have expressed a range of views about the likely impacts of offshoring on four broad areas. The differing views reflect several factors: the fact that services offshoring is a relatively recent development whose impact is not fully known, the limitations of available data on offshoring, and different theoretical expectations about how services offshoring will impact the U.S. economy.

(1) The average U.S. standard of living: Traditional economic theory generally predicts that offshoring will benefit U.S. living standards in the long run. However, some economists have argued that offshoring could harm U.S. long-term living standards under certain scenarios, such as if offshoring undermines U.S. technological leadership.

(2) Employment and job loss: While economic theory generally predicts that offshoring will have little effect on overall U.S. employment levels in the long-run, there is widespread recognition that pockets of workers will lose jobs due to offshoring, though there is disagreement about the expected magnitude of job loss and implications for displaced workers.

(3) Distribution of income: Some economists maintain that offshoring could increase income inequality in the U.S., while others argue that changes in the income distribution are driven primarily by factors other than offshoring, such as technological change.

(4) Security and consumer privacy: Experts express varying degrees of concern about the impact of services offshoring on the security of our national defense system and critical infrastructure--such as utilities and communication networks--as well as the privacy and security of consumers' financial and medical information.

There's nothing terribly new or groundbreaking in this reporting or analysis, to put it mildly, but it might serve as a decent basis for opening a policy dialogue on an issue that is going to be extremely significant to the American economy in the coming years.

Links:

• GAO: Offshoring Report Abstract
• GAO: "Offshoring of Services: An Overview of the Issues" (PDF, 2.9MB)

Is Outsourcing the Next Terror Target?

At about 7:30 p.m. on December 28, a gunman walked into an international conference taking place at the Indian Institute of Science, a prestigious academic institution in Bangalore, and began throwing hand grenades into the conference hall—four grenades, all unexploded, have been found so far on the institute's campus. Apparently panicking when none of the grenades exploded, the gunman opened fire with an AK-56 while he retreated. A retired mathematics professor attending the conference was killed, and four others were wounded. The gunman scaled a wall and fled; the Bangalore police believe that he had an accomplice.

No arrests have been made, and the police have named no suspects yet, but suspicion is increasingly zeroing in on the Islamist terror outfits that have been waging a mounting campaign of terror against India. The Lashkar-e-Toiba, a jihadist group that aims to drive India out of Kashmir, is a prime suspect, but Bangladesh-based terror outfits are also considered potential culprits. India's security experts have been warning for months that it was only a matter of time before terrorists attacked Bangalore in a bid to weaken the country's booming technology sector. In March this year, Indian authorities announced that plans seized from militants belonging to a Lashkar-e-Toiba cell in New Delhi showed that the terrorists had planned to strike at software companies in Bangalore.

TIME.com: Is Outsourcing the Next Terror Target?

Mister Gato's new favorite spot

We've done a little rearranging in our house, which always slightly discombobulates the cat. Inadvertently, we made it a little easier for Mister Gato to go mountaineering--he can now climb up onto the stereo before jumping to the top of the bookcase.

(In case anyone from Cambridge Soundworks is reading this, you'll be pleased to know that your Radio/CD 740, in addition to sounding great and filling a small NYC apartment with beautiful music, makes an excellent and sturdy feline launch platform.)

So he's spending a lot of time up in the crow's nest, atop (naturally) some cardboard boxes containing... well, I'm not sure what's in them, but I'm guessing they're business records of some kind. The Cat in the High Castle.

Baseball broadcasting legend Red Barber used to talk about a pitcher "sitting in the catbird seat" when he had a game well under control. I never knew just exactly what the hell that meant, even though Red and I are both from the South.

But maybe I'm beginning to understand. This is indisputably a picture of a seated cat who is as happy as if he'd just eaten a small bird.

Visit the Friday Ark at The Modulator to check out more bloggers' pets from around the world--and be sure to visit the first Carnival of the Cats of 2006 on Sunday, hosted this New Year's Day by Rahel at Elms In The Yard (where it has actually been 5766 for some time now... dammit, I just stopped writing 5765 on my checks, too...)

(And pssst... mark your calendars! We're hosting the Carnival of the Cats here on February 5.)

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Update: Carrie has more Mister Gato for you this week.

SCOTUSblog

Just a quick tip in case you're not already hip:

For matters relating to the United States Supreme Court, the excellent SCOTUSblog should be your first stop on the Information Superhighway.

Especially as the fight over the Alito nomination heats up, you're going to want to check in every now and then... but today, for example, their coverage of the Jose Padilla case is better, more insightful and more nuanced than what you'll get if all you read is the New York Times or the Washington Post.

SCOTUSblog

A Chowhound In Boston

Today's Boston Globe runs a nice profile of Chowhound's Alpha Dog, Jim Leff, on a holiday trip to the Boston 'burbs (Framingham and Worcester), where he samples more ethnic cuisines than you can shake a stick at: Brazilian, Jamaican, South Indian...

I've been on a couple of restaurant crawls with Jim (though not recently... and, full disclosure, I used to volunteer a few hours a week working on the Chowhound site newsletters) and this article does a pretty accurate job of capturing the Jim Leff Full-Contact Chowhounding Experience:

As a fan of Brazilian food, [Leff is] enraptured by Framingham. ''Cidade maravilhosa -- that's what they call Rio, city of wonder. But that's what I call Framingham."

[Accompanying Chowhounder] Chris, 36, chuckles: ''He's kind of a zealot, but in a good way."

Sure enough, when Leff asks what I think of a baton-shaped, coconut-flavored sweet and I say it's fine but not that interesting, he rushes to correct me. ''Have you given it enough of a chance? Take another bite. Things will start to happen."

I do. Nothing happens. I'm sure it's perfectly made -- not stale or dry -- but does that mean I have to love it? Apparently so. ''Some things hit you over the head with flavor right out of the gate," he says. ''Some things build. This is a builder."

Chris is smiling. ''This is where the word 'zealot' starts to make sense," she says.

Chowing down with the hound - The Boston Globe

Related: Chowhound.com

The Needies

Everyone loves to be loved and needs to be needed.

That, at least, is the tagline of a bizarre new line of plush robotic dolls called the Needies. Clingy, jealous, and possessive, Needies want nothing short of your undying love and attention--and they're prepared to fight one another to get it.

Pick one up and give him a squeeze, and he'll reward you with fond words, flattery or a special Needie song. But soon his Needie siblings will start to complain.

"Is it my turn yet?" one might sullenly whine.

"Me! Me! Me!" another may shriek.

"Throw him," a particularly desperate Needie might even command. "THROW HIM!"

Being already possessed of (or by) two clingy Chow Chows and one irascible tomcat, I have no need (ahem) of this new product. But it's a fascinating use of wireless networking technology and an amusing concept for a new toy... assuming that you find a plush toy with a personality disorder amusing, that is...

The Needies Need You to Need Them - Forbes

Related links:

• Forbes Video: Needies in Action (RealPlayer video with annoying ads)
  
• Needies.com (home of Codependent Designs)

All he needs now is a good nickname

Meet Richard Causey. History may well ultimately record him as the "Sammy the Bull" Gravano of the Enron case.

Just as Mob underboss Gravano's turning state's witness was instrumental in Federal prosecutors bringing down John Gotti (and a host of other Mafia kingpins), Richard Causey -- the former chief accounting officer of Enron -- has apparently just agreed to a plea deal, one that will almost certainly involve testifying against his former bosses:

In a reversal that transforms the criminal case against Enron's former top officers, the company's former chief accounting officer has reached an agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty to violating federal law during his employment there, people briefed on the decision said yesterday.

The former accounting officer, Richard A. Causey, had been viewed by lawyers in the case as likely to strike a plea deal with prosecutors and possibly serve as a witness for the government in the coming trial of two former chief executives of Enron, Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling.

Plea Deal Is Seen for Enron Figure - New York Times

Use your body as a network connection

Crypto-geeks have been heard in the past muttering about "handshake protocol," but this is ridiculous and wonderful:

Japanese company Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) has developed technology that uses the human body as a high-speed network. What's more, it also forms a communications link between people and electronic devices.

This is the first viable Human Area Network (HAN) device, enabling fast data transfer between devices using the human body as a conduit.

The transceivers - called RedTacton - uses the surface of the human body as a safe, high speed network transmission path.

What, you don't have the latest copy of the PowerPoint presentation? Here, take my hand...

Don't have a LAN connection? Use your body! - Indiatimes Infotech

Mistaken identity

This is kinda funny.

Wonder if it's one of my alter egos?

The Ecosystem Shifts, Again

Don't look now, but I think the TTLB Ecosystem is on goofy pills.

Or N.Z. Bear is tweaking the algorithms again, or both.

Look what I saw this evening in my sidebar:

We appear to be evolving rapidly.
Punctuated equilibrium, anyone?

And when I checked it out at the TTLB site...

Suddenly, I'm a Large Mammal again...

At this rate, I'll be overtaking Michelle Malkin and Glenn Reynolds in a few days.

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Update, December 28: A Marsupial again. Stay tuned for further devolution.

What Was, and Wasn't, on the Public's Mind in 2005

It's that time again - the year-end lists are coming fast and furious.

One of the most interesting comes from the Pew Charitable Trusts: What Was (and Wasn't) on the Public's Mind in 2005.

The top ten opinion trends as captured by Pew's pollsters and opinion watchers (each is, of course, described in much more detail at the linked article):

1. Presidential Popularity Plunge
2. Hurricane Blowback
3. Iraq Disillusionment
4. Pump Shock and Economy Anxiety
5. Inward Turn
6. Domestic Issues Ascendant
7. Schiavo Backlash
8. Evolution Devolution
9. Social Security Misstep
10. Feds Out of Favor

More interesting to me, a short list of non-stories:

People failed to panic over avian flu. The Democrats failed to get much of a bounce from public disillusionment with the GOP. Most Americans didn't change their opinion on the propriety of torture (one-third say it is never justified; two-thirds see circumstances under which it might be useful.)

What Was (and Wasn't) on the Public's Mind in 2005 (Pew Research Center for the People and the Press - December 27, 2005)

Reason: Are You Being Searched?

Julian Sanchez has a good (if somewhat brief) piece on the NSA eavesdropping program over at Reason Magazine.

Excerpt:

The defenses offered thus far of warrantless wiretaps on U.S.-to-foreign communications of persons with "links" to al-Qaeda have been, if not quite tortured, then at least subject to coercive tactics.

Consider, for instance, the argument that Congress' authorization of military force to pursue terrorists in the wake of 9/11 gave President Bush the power to authorize such surveillance—even though Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said the administration declined to seek such authority explicitly for fear of being turned down.

The argument turns on a strained analogy to a 2004 Supreme Court ruling holding that the authorization of force included the authority to detain captured combatants, a fairly obvious natural concomitant of war, even though it did not explicitly mention "detention." The alternative would be to conclude, ludicrously, that Congress intended a "take no prisoners" War on Terror, in which enemies must either be released or shot on the spot. But administration apologists—take the hairpin curve in this logic slowly or you may crash—have parsed the ruling as entailing that Congress therefore endorsed anything short of putting a bullet in a suspected terrorist's brainpan.

Reason: Are You Being Searched?: How NSA's mass eavesdropping could fly under constitutional radar

The Meme of Four

The Commissar tags me with a floating meme:

Four jobs you’ve had in your life: emergency medical technician, short-order cook, technical writer, IT consultant/business process analyst.

Four movies you could watch over and over: Blade Runner, The Godfather (I and/or II), Drunken Master, Aliens.

Four places you’ve lived: Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill (Research Triangle) NC; Hollywood, CA; Chicago, IL; New York, NY.

Four TV shows you love to watch: The Sopranos, Deadwood, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report.

Four websites you visit daily: Gawker, Metafilter, Chowhound, Google News.

Four of your favorite foods: Only four? Yikes. Well... the classic New York pizza slice; kalamata olives; bhindi masala; Eastern North Carolina-style pulled pork barbecue.

Four places you’d rather be: London, Paris, San Francisco, the middle of nowhere (not necessarily in that order.)

Four albums you can’t live without: John Coltrane, A Love Supreme; Dizzy Gillespie, Groovin' High; Richard Pryor, Is It Something I Said?; The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street.

And now, I tag: Chap @ Chapomatic, Fiona @ V's Spot, Kimberly @ Music and Cats, and Kat @ The Wisdom of Change.

ABC News: India's Outsourcing Boom Runs Into Trouble

A chronic shortage of skilled workers is threatening India's outsourcing industry. Call centers and outsourcing firms are growing fast, but their human resources employees despair because most of the young Indians they interview are, they say, "unemployable."

Some people in the IT industry have said that only one in 10 graduates is worth taking on. "Just look at their English," fumed a frustrated Mumbai-based call center manager as he waved around letters written by employees. One read: "As I am marrying my daughter, please grant a week's leave." Another said: "I am in well here and hope you are also in the same well."

ABC News: India's Outsourcing Boom Runs Into Trouble

And there were in the same country shepherds...

1 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.

2 (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)

3 And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.

4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David)

5 To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.

6 And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.

7 And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

8 And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Gospel of St. Luke, Chapter 2, verses 1-14 (King James version.)

Happy Christmas, one and all.

Trolling for traffic in 2006

John deVille, the Mountain Philosopher, promises to start blogging again Real Soon Now. In the meantime, in response to this post, he provided the following comment, which in my view deserves a post of its very own. Riffing off our most popular search terms, John develops the following traffic-trolling scenario:

Maybe posting this story will greatly increase your traffic in the coming year.

Kyle and Stan buy a shitty router from Cartman, who currently happens to be working at Best Buy as a crooked salesman. Being quite pissed they search the internets for a hitman, but as it turns out, the only one they can afford happens to be a retired Mexican gunfighter who happens to love cats.

With no cash to hire said hitman, Kyle and Stan steal their parents' big box discount cards to use as payment for the hit on Cartman.

Unknown to Kyle and Stan, Cartman has anticipated their wrath and has hired hitmen of his own -- a Jamaican with a spaghetti fetish and a talk-show host who is the bane of a certain naval Lt. Cmdr.

All the boys have gathered for a sleepover at Kenny's house in the ghetto. Kyle and Stan's guy is supposed to make the hit on Cartman; Cartman's thugs lay in wait in the basement for the Pancho Villa makeover.

Unfortunately for all hitmen concerned, Kenny's basement is jammed with rodents as they couldn't afford to pay for a cat. The Mexican gunfighter's cat is overwhelmed by the rodents who starts shooting, alerting Cartman's duo who also start shooting, and in typical farcical fashion, they all shoot each other.

The boys, who have been playing terrorist/Homeland Security (with Kenny wearing a fake beard designating his jihadist status), scurry to the basement to observe the source of the ruckus (and to see whose hitman was successfull). They extol Kenny to light a match in order that they could see, unaware of the gas leak in a nearby stove.

There is a huge explosion which vaporizes Kenny, who is miraculously able to stay in character as he curses his old chums with one last exhortation.

THE END

Track Santa with Google Earth

If you've got Google Earth on your machine, starting at 2PM GMT today, you can track Santa Claus's progress around the globe.

To: "Google Support"
From: claus@gmail.com
Subject: Naughty or Nice Layer

I love Google Earth and have been planning a big trip with it. Now I'm wondering if you've ever thought about licensing data layers for "nice" and "naughty." If interested, I've got a really good list -- I've checked it twice. Rooftop accurate data!

Let me know,
S. Claus

Santa tracking data here for Google Earth users.

We just spotted Santa very near Pyongyang.
Personally, we're betting Kim Jong Il gets a stocking full of coal.

Via the Official Google Blog

enrevanche zeitgeist

Google Zeitgeist tracks the most common search terms in use by Googlers at any given time. The 2005 Year-End Google Zeitgeist has just been posted, which has in turn inspired this post:

About 30% of our traffic, on any given day, comes from search engines. Google, far and away, sends us the most visitors (in both its plain-vanilla and Blogsearch flavors) followed by Yahoo and MSN Search.

The most common search term bringing people to this blog in 2005 was some variation on "Westell Versalink 327W" - the name of the piece-of-shit DSL modem/WiFi router combination that Verizon sticks its aDSL users with.

I get so many hits on this post that I think I should start a freaking support group.

And the top ten search strings leading people to "enrevanche" in 2005...

(1) "Westel Versalink 327W"(and variations)
(2) "south park avatars"
(3) "gato"/"gatos"
(4) "cats with guns"
(5) "party of sams club" (and variations)
(6) "pastafarianism"
(7) "borat"
(8) "mouse infestation" (and variations)
(9) "how to light stove pilot light" (and variations - yes, there are people out there Googling to learn how to do this)
(10) "dirka dirka"

I'm so proud.

Making a list, checking it twice...

...gonna find out who's naughty and nice...

...by illegally conducting warrantless wiretaps on US soil and co-opting major telecom firms and ISPs to get backdoor, direct switch access to perform data mining and traffic analysis...

The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said.

[...]

What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation.

[...]

Historically, the American intelligence community has had close relationships with many communications and computer firms and related technical industries. But the N.S.A.'s backdoor access to major telecommunications switches on American soil with the cooperation of major corporations represents a significant expansion of the agency's operational capability, according to current and former government officials.

That settles it. I'm going into the tinfoil hat business right now.

Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report - New York Times

Related link in which I have a sudden, strange new interest:

• GNU PG - free, open source encryption software for individuals

Infamous neighbors in the news

A few famous Greenwich Villagers in the news this week.

First, Vincent "Chin" Gigante, former Village resident and Genovese Family crime boss, died in Federal prison this week. Also known as "The Oddfather," Chin (who like most Mob bosses attained his elevated position by climbing atop a pile of corpses) had some habits that were notably eccentric even in a neighborhood famous for its tolerance of eccentricity:

What made Gigante a legend was his feigning of mental illness as a way of escaping prosecution. Unshaven and mumbling to himself, Gigante would wander around Greenwich Village in his bathrobe. When cops once tried to serve him a subpoena, they found him fully clothed in a running shower holding up an umbrella.

Investigators suspected Gigante was acting, but he tricked the courts for years.

In April 2003, Gigante pleaded guilty to charges he feigned mental illness in the 1990s, adding three years to his sentence.

Chin's been out of the neighborhood for years, being a guest of the Feds and all. But he was back, briefly, this week, for a modest, low-key funeral service at St. Anthony of Padua Church over on Sullivan Street.

Then there's this other guy, who still lives right around the corner from me, and who I see occasionally on the street when he's in town. A noted lawyer and former Attorney General of the United States, he's a little busy right now in an out-of-town trial... defending Saddam Hussein.

Meet Ramsey Clark, 12th Street resident and the counsel of choice for dictators, mass murderers, and war criminals who make Vinny the Chin look like Mister Rogers.

Clark has defended not just Saddam Hussein, but (and this is just a sample) Radovan Karadzic, Slobodan Milosevic, Nazi concentration camp officer Karl Linnas, Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, Rwandan genocide instigator Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, the PLO leaders whose minions tossed wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer off the deck of the Achille Lauro...

Frankly, I'm not that proud to have shared a neighborhood with either man, but if forced to choose I'd rather associate with the likes of Chin Gigante than Ramsey Clark.

For one thing, I'd trust the mobster more, and have more respect for his personal integrity.

Here's Ramsey Clark, defending Saddam's use of actual murder and torture:

"He (Saddam) had this huge war going on, and you have to act firmly when you have an assassination attempt." - BBC interview, 28 November 2005, about the torture and murder of 148 men and boys near the mainly Shiite town of Dujail, Iraq in 1982.

Compare and contrast with his assessment of Abu Ghraib:

"Abu Ghraib is unbelievable in the innocent times of 1961. That we would torture people that way and on the instructions of the President of the United States and his highest legal advisers, torture is okay, they said. Go for it, fellas. If we can't renounce that and remove it from office, then the Constitution doesn't work anymore."

Articles cited:

• Newsday: Genovese mob boss dead at 77
• The Villager: Trying to figure out Ramsey Clark

Related links:

Gigante:

• Obituary, New York Times, Dec. 19, 2005
  
• Gangland News: Vincent "Chin" Gigante, the Pajama King
  
• Gangsters, Inc: Vincent Gigante
  

Clark:

• Ramsey Clark, the war criminal's best friend (Salon, 1996)
• How Ramsey Clark championed Baltic Nazi war criminals