The Con Game
Nov 3, 2004 outsideNews
Will people please stop telling me that Bush has won the election? Reports of the number of provisional ballots still to be counted from Ohio vary from 150,000 to 250,000. Bush’s margin in Ohio is 136,000 votes or so. He hasn’t won shit.
Don’t you see what he’s doing? By calling victory for himself, by saying that the gap in Ohio is “statistically insurmountable,” he’s trying to convince the population at large that Kerry is desperate, that he’s wasting our time. He wants the country to say “Forget about it. Bush won. Don’t even bother.”
Bullshit. It’s too close to call. Let all the votes come in, give it a few days, and then we’ll talk.
And at that point, if Bush does win, then you can move to Canada.
Free Schools
Oct 24, 2004 outsideNews
It’s rare that I post anything from the news here, but it’s also rare for articles from the New York Times to move me to tears.
An excerpt:
Joseph Lolo, 16, had worked six days a week since he was 13 grazing and watering the local headmaster’s cows. The headmaster, Peter Mzungu, paid the boy $4 a month and gave him Sundays off.
Joseph had watched enviously as the headmaster’s children returned from school each day in their crisp uniforms. He longed to attend the public school the headmaster ran. But his family was too poor to pay the fees.
Then last year, Joseph heard that fees had been abolished. Slowly, his resolve to go to school strengthened. This year, he went to his father, a crab trapper, who told him he should keep looking after Mr. Mzungu’s cattle. The family needed the extra income. They live in two tiny, falling-down shacks. Only six of Joseph’s 13 siblings have survived. Hunger and sickness have plagued the family.
But Joseph said he asked his father, “What will save me if I don’t go to school?”
Next, Joseph went to the headmaster, quit his job and asked for a spot at the headmaster’s school, Kadzuhoni Primary.
A tall strapping boy whose ears stick out from his closely shorn head, Joseph looks like a giant among the Lilliputians in the class of 83 first graders. The floor of the classroom is loose dirt and the children sit on ragged chunks of coral rock that tear holes in their shorts and skirts.
The article:
In Africa, Schools Feed A Different Hunger
Fifty-Nine Deceits
Jul 5, 2004 outsideNews
On Wednesday, I saw Fahrenheit 911. It served its purpose very well. But in every discussion I’ve had afterwards, I’ve had to take issue with it. Moore gives the impression that he is providing the facts behind the Bush adminstration’s web of hearsay and conjecture. But, of course, his film is left-wing propaganda , just as much as Fox News and the Patriot Act are right-wing propaganda.
Etan just sent me a link to this article: Fifty-Nine Deceits In Fahrenheit 911. It’s kind of absurd the way he manipulates the viewer. Or perhaps the way the author of this article manipulates me.
It’s becoming very hard to tell what’s true and what isn’t. When Election Day comes around, I think a lot of people will just have to vote from their guts. And that’s a very very bad sign.
The Greatest Phone Message of all Time
Feb 1, 2004 outsideNews
This may be the funniest thing I have ever heard. Next time you have 20 minutes to spare, PLEASE check out this “triumph of contemporary American humor” from last week’s episode of This American Life.
It goes from 39:09 to about 58:11. Real Player or some derivative therof required. Enjoy.
30 Years Later
Jan 14, 2004 outsideNews
From Gil-Scott Heron’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, 1974. (audio)
Whywhywhywhywhywhy?
Dec 28, 2003 outsideNews
On December 13, when U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein, President George W. Bush not only celebrated with his national security team, but also pulled out his pen and signed into law a bill that grants the FBI sweeping new powers. A White House spokesperson explained the curious timing of the signing – on a Saturday – as the President signs bills seven days a week. But the last time Bush signed a bill into law on a Saturday happened more than a year ago – on a spending bill that the President needed to sign, to prevent shutting down the federal government the following Monday.
By signing the bill on the day of Husseins capture, Bush effectively consigned a dramatic expansion of the USA Patriot Act to a mere footnote. Consequently, while most Americans watched as Hussein was probed for head lice, few were aware that the FBI had just obtained the power to probe their financial records, even if the feds dont suspect their involvement in crime or terrorism…
From the San Antonio Current.
[via Toomuchsexy.org via jayallen.org]
Fuck Bush
Jul 30, 2003 outsideNews
I am disgusted.
My only consolation is that, as was mentioned to me this morning by a certain young lady, history has proven to be a very severe judge of bigotry. I can only hope that when this menace is finally removed from power, change will begin sooner rather than later.
And finally, as Ari reminded us this evening, please register to vote. Because things may be bad…but they could get worse.
Inkblot Security
Jul 18, 2003 outsideNews
Microsoft researchers have come up with a way to help people remember passwords – have them base them on pseudo-Rorshach-test inkblots. Turns out everyone sees and describes them differently, so if you string enough together, the description each person comes up with will be pretty difficult to crack. Take a look at the test blobs on the MS website. I’ll post what I saw as a comment, so it doesn’t influence you…
[via Slashdot]
Homosexual Sex
Jul 2, 2003 outsideNews
In this week’s Newsweek, in an article entitled The War Over Gay Marriage, I found this quote:
Polls showed that the justices have public opinion behind them: some six out of 10 Americans believe that homosexual sex between consenting adults should be legal.
What?! So four out of ten adults think it should be AGAINST THE LAW for people of the same sex to have any kind of sex in the privacy of their own homes. Are we really that stupid? Do people not really understand the difference between the legal system and their own moral beliefs, wrongheaded as they may be?
Next thing you know, we’ll have 50% of Americans thinking it should be illegal to lie. We’ll have people getting jail time for cheating on their girlfriends. I mean, what if I could be fined for not calling my parents often enough?! Or for, God forbid, coveting my neighbor’s wife?!
I could go on and on, about how the non-recognition of gay marriage by this country is just an example of catering to Judeo-Christian morality inappropriate to an institution that determines how much income tax you pay, and Canada, and about how I’m very glad about Lawrence et. al vs. Texas, but in my heart of hearts, I find it hard to believe that such a verdict was anything less than self-evident, but what is there really to say but “My god, what is wrong with this world?”
Apple does it again?
Jun 24, 2003 outsideNews
So today Apple dropped a bombshell today: the new Powermac G5.
But more importantly, they introduced the developer preview of OS 10.3, aka Panther. Why would I say more importantly, you ask? Especially when the so-called G5 (built around a chip totally unrelated in composition or even manufacturer to the previous G3 and G4) looks like it really does finally live up to Apple’s claims of being the fastest desktop computer ever, defeating PC’s in actual benchmark tests rather than just Photoshop filter bakeoffs? When the G5 accepts up to 8 GB of RAM, and has blindingly fast 1 Ghz system buses?
Because computers will always get faster. In the grand scheme, this is inevitable and each upgrade essentially meaningless. What should be important to us as human beings is how we will interact with these computers as their capabilities become more and more grotesque and we become more and more dependent on them for our own creative work and for the infrastructure of our society. As Alan Kay often says, we’re still using the same windowing paradigm that he invented over 20 years ago at Xerox, which Apple then “borrowed,” which Microsoft then “stole,” and which formed the basis for basically every other major system since then (BeOS, KDE/Gnome, NeXTStep, the list goes on…).
Kay’s own Open Croquet, built in Squeak, a programming language / development environment originally developed at and still technically owned by our own Apple Computer, provides a notable counter-example.
It’s debatable whether a 3-D avatar system is really the next step in interface design, but at least it’s something different – something that attempts to rethink the immense computing resources we have at our disposal.
Now back to the topic at hand: Panther. Let’s start with Exposé. This handy little fella lets me manage my windows with some cool minimize-in-place, tiling windows, show all windows for a single app, and show desktop features. Any of this sound familiar? It should, because none of it is even the littlest bit revolutionary. These features are all just managerial tools to deal with the current static window paradigm – what about sticky windows, so that I can actually use two apps at once, without having to do the magic dance of rearranging their windows so they don’t overlap? How about providing some the focus options that the Linux users that Apple’s been trying to convert for so long have been screaming about for so long? Exposé is dope, but it represents a fundamentally stuck in the mud paradigm.
Next: the new Finder. So it looks different (many would say uglier). But what does it do? It’s got this funny little Places bar on the left that you can use as a main navigation point. As far as I can tell, thats it! What happened to the rumors of the database file system, the smart folders? What happened to this OS being like nothing we’ve ever seen before?
On the whole, fast as these new G5’s are, what I got from this keynote was that if I want some totally different shit, I’m gonna have to wait it out or just keep playing with Squeak. Cause Apple, creative as they might be, doesn’t have the luxury right now of altering the user paradigm.
That said, Xcode is the dopest. I mean, changing code for an already running application?! On the back end, they’re making a lot of big changes to desktop computing at large – when do the users get some?