My girlfriend and I are going vegan and all-around substance free for the month of February. To kick off the month, we decided to have a goodbye party for the proscribed items. So I made a roasted red pepper cream sauce to cover some fettucine, and toasted kalamata ciabatta bread covered in melted parmesan. I washed it down with La Fin Du Monde, while Shayla enjoyed a raspberry Lambic. I had tiramisu for desert. I'm going to miss the sweet, sweet animal products but it will be an interesting challenge to make tasty food without them. I decided to make my first project Tom Kah, which is hands down my favorite vegan food so far. I also got all my biking gear together, and I'm going to try to ride 200 miles this month. I figure 5 miles per day, five days per week (to and from work) will make 100, and I'll do some biking on the weekend to get the other 100. For inspiration, I'll be dropping some Minor Threat into my MP3 player. w00t.
The Mac Mini is getting lots of attention as a possible killer app in media centers. Engadget posted a blurb this week.. Robert X. Cringely pointed out that it's already possible to use it as a HD video player without the need to wait for the dust to settle in the upcoming Blu-Ray/HD-DVD war. The troops are already mobilizing to make the software necessary to convert the little box into a killer media hub. The Mac Media Center project was started shortly after the release of the Mini, and got 150k members in their first 24 hours. Their GUI thread is up and running, and they've got some very impressive ideas. I think we'll end up seeing a broad array of third-party options springing up in the near future. I really like it, because Apple's approach to DRM and such is much more user-friendly than what's being offered by Microsoft. Apple seems to take the side of the consumer, offering options that make me happy. Microsoft appears to be taking the side of content distributors, who would very much like me to pay as much as I can, and wouldn't mind making me pay for the same media many, many times. I don't like it. I'm really hoping that Microsoft's DRM-infested Media Center flops and the third-party options for the Mac Mini take off. Competition will be a good thing, and if Microsoft gets trampled by the masses of people staying away from their product, it might send them back to the drawing board to come up with something that doesn't suck.
I had a conversation with someone the other night about Beck. The girl I spoke with was saying how disappointing and weird it was that Beck was into Scientology. I personally thought it was an Andy Kauffman-style joke, but the evidence seems to be inconclusive.
This is really a side note in a more interesting point I found about the faux-religion. Scientology is a genuine religion according to the U.S. Government and the government of Australia. Wikipedia provides the following:
In 1982, the High Court of Australia ruled that the State Government of Victoria could not declare that the Church of Scientology was not a religion (Church of the New Faith v. Commissioner Of Pay-roll Tax (Vict.) 1983, 154 CLR 120 (http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/high_ct/154clr120.html)). The Court addressed the issue of belief, rather than possible charlatanism: "Charlatanism is a necessary price of religious freedom, and if a self-proclaimed teacher persuades others to believe in a religion which he propounds, lack of sincerity or integrity on his part is not incompatible with the religious character of the beliefs, practices and observances accepted by his followers."
Huh? So basically, if you knowingly fool a group of idiots into following your genuinely fabricated and fraudulent system of belief, and they believe it, it's officially a religion?
The interesting thing about this is the possiblity, nay the probability, that the U.S. government has the same idea. I have one word to describe that: awesome. I'm going to start my own crackpot religion. This is just too sweet.
PostSecret sent stacks of cards to random people around the country asking them to reply anonymously with a secret. The results are impressive.
Certain groups are up in arms over the latest in stem cell research. Scientists have been doing research projects involving animal embryos fused with human stem cells.
Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells.
When asked whether they were trying to make a rabbit like the one in Alice in Wonderland, the researchers had no comment.
This is very troubling to religious medical groups.
"We must be cautious not to violate the integrity of humanity or of animal life over which we have a stewardship responsibility," said Cheshire, a member of Christian Medical and Dental Associations. "Research projects that create human-animal chimeras risk disturbing fragile ecosystems, endanger health, and affront species integrity."
At least it takes their mind off of human cloning. According to orthodox christians, clones would have no soul. Does that mean it's not wrong to kill a clone?
A9 is whipping out a really interesting feature today: block search. Do a yellow pages search. Go on. Not only will if find the contact information for the business, but it will give you a photo of the business. In fact, it will give you a series of photos of the street that the business is on. They sent a squadron of SUVs with high definition cameras, terabyte disc drives, and GPS receivers all over the country to gather the photos, then integrated them with the address date to patch it all together. It's really nice to see innovation marching along.
This is seriously turning into the wild west. My referrer logs are going crazy with spam sites. Others have noticed this, too. What's going on? I suppose this is the flipside to the freedom the internet provides, but it's still pretty silly. There are probably a few thousand h4X0red boxes out there working in unison to pull this crap, but it's seriously getting annoying. I'm still wishing that the Lycos spam-killing screensaver hadn't been so zealously shot down. It was a great idea, and now instead we're dealing with the opposite: leaving our collective pants down, asses in the breeze. Nice.
In case you're just totally cracked on cuteness, take a moment to surf over to the cuteness blog. It's in Japanese, of course.
I'm having second thoughts about the Mac Mini now that I've seen the Google Mini.
The funny thing about the release of the Mac Mini is the way that the Craigslist tech ads exploded with Macs for sale. Clearly Applephiles are cleaning out their old gear to scrape together a little dough to buy one.
This is seriously going to be the deepest market saturation FreeBSD has ever had, period. I'm pretty excited about this little dude, not necessarily because it's going to make Apple get its claws into more homes, but because it's going to send the x86 side into overdrive trying to make knockoffs. It's going to be pretty interesting to see how long it takes for southeast asian electronics manufacturers to beat it. The most interesting possibility will be the micro, high-capacity PVR. I'm sure even more interesting ideas that I haven't even considered will be springing up, too.
I think the best idea is to max out your credit card buying up Minis, and starting eBay auctions before it's released. It'll be good times when the shortages start.
This one's a howler. A great story about what could happen if America's tinkering with copyright law keeps going in its current trajectory:
It was time for another Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension to keep Disney's star property out of the public domain. Somebody's nephew had a bright idea. Instead of telling Congress to add the standard twenty years to the length of copyright, why not go for the big time? Extend copyright by 500 years.Somebody's niece added a smarter reason: A 500 year extension would let Disney track down Shakespeare's heirs and buy all rights to the Bard. No matter how much the heirs wanted, the deal would pay for itself in no time. Every school that ever wanted to perform or study Shakespeare would have to send a check to Disney. Every newspaper or magazine or radio show that wanted to quote the Bard would have to send one, too. So Disney asked, and Congress gave, and the World Intellectual Property Organization followed Congress's example. Disney paid off Shakespeare's heirs, then used the Shakespeare profits to buy all rights from the heirs of Dumas, Dickens, Twain, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, Bram Stoker and more. Once most of the films in every other studio's library were subject to Disney's copyright, they went bankrupt or became divisions of Disney.
And everyone was content, except for the storytellers who had to buy a Disney license or prove that their work owed nothing to the last 500 years of literature.
Then Jimmy Joe Jenkins's DNA proved he was the primary descendent of the translators of the King James Version of the Bible. At first, Jimmy was satisfied with ten percent of the price of every KJV sold and 10 percent of every collection plate passed by any church that used the KJV. But when some churches switched to newer translations, Jimmy sicced his lawyers on all translations based on the KJV. That got him a cut of every Bible and every Christian service in English. Some translators claimed their work was based on older versions and should therefore be exempt, but none of them could afford to fight Jimmy in court.
Read the rest, authored by Will Shetterly. Nice work, Will.
Zed.cbc.ca has released the source for their app under the Apache License 2.0. It looks interesting, I'm waiting until later to take a look at the source code. It uses Java 1.4 with JBoss and Tomcat, running on Suse Professional 9.2+ for a free and open solution. Too bad my host doesn't offer JSP, Servlets, or *beans on their shared hosting plan. I can't really afford to drop $1,200 a year on a dedicated host merely to get these services.
To follow up on Jeff's letter, I thought I'd throw in this fact about the war in Iraq to put things in perspective, brought to us by pseodorandom:
According to this story in the Chicago Sun-Times, the war in Iraq has cost $130 billion to date (per the Office of Management and Budget). Given that we invaded Iraq 20 March 2003, that comes to 656 days since the invasion, which in turn equals $198,730,732 per day.
In other words, the total amount committed by the US government to date for tsunami relief -- $350,000,000 -- equals 42.27 hours of the cost of the war in Iraq. Just to put things in perspective.
Yes, my tax dollars hard at work. I wish the U.S. government had as much financial interest in improving lives as it does in destroying them.
My prodigal roomate sent a letter explaining the events of the days after the tsunami as he joined in the relief efforts. I got his permission to publish it here.
Hey, y'all. Yup, I am still alive. We are all trying to help our fellow human beings heal and restart their lives. Check out http://www.auroville.org/tsunami/crisis_2.htm Here's a timeline of this week:
Sunday December 26 -- the tsunami hit the coast of Tamil Nadu, wiping out countless villages and communities within a kilometer of the shoreline. It was 3 hours after the earthquake, and still no warning nor communication was transmitted. I was told that there is no international emergency response system set up in India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, etc.. No serious police or emergency action was spent on relief in the evening -- certainly not enough to stop the riots that ensued here. Tourists were getting beaten, and there were thousands of panicking, frustrated people without a clue of what to do. No pre-organized relief or response teams were present. People searching for an opportunity to help came up dry, as these throngs ran inland for shelter. Finally, a relief effort on behalf of Auroville started. Refugee camps were set up by nightfall, but it was all improvised.
Monday December 27 -- Most of the newly-homeless villagers all left in the morning, to see their broken homes. Most remained in the villages, but some stayed in the camp (since they were getting 3 meals/day, supervision, and even television). A large amount of contradictory information was being given and received. Rumors started about possible aftershocks. No one seemed to have any real information about scientific data, etc..
Tuesday, December 28 -- Teams were finally sent out to start assessing damage in the nearby villages. The data would be compiled through Friday. The camp was accepting a few villagers. Beyond that, very little direct relief was given to the villages on our behalf. We were still waiting to get real data. The Indian government started to drop off clean water.
Wednesday, December 29 -- Still waiting. People have been helping some Aurovillian communities on the beach, but most people were still too scared to return. Attempts to find any organized help were few and far between. Still no sign at all of the Red Cross, Salvation Army, AmeriCares, etc..
Thursday, December 30 -- Another warning of the tsunami was serious this time. The police, this time, responded diligently, and evacuated all the recently-returned villagers back to the refugee camp. We sorted and distributed donated clothes and food. I played with 60 children, shaking their hands, laughing, and playing hundreds of games of paddy-cake with them. We fed 2 meals to 2000 people that day. Finally, we started to receive some authentic data about the extent of damage and needs of each particular village.Friday, December 31 -- All the people returned to their villages. We discussed many options on how to continue assessing and compiling data out in the field, and simultaneously, sending teams out to help the villages directly. Sorting more donated clothes seemed to take priority today.
In Auroville proper (which, for the most part, is 3 kilometers from the shoreline), New Year's Eve festivities ensued. The Indian government decreed that all parties, celebrations, and "cheery" type gatherings were banned for the evening, in the entire country. Hmmmm.....
Instead, the Tibetan Pavilion and the Matrimandir grounds held candlelit vigils. Many people sat, meditated, prayed for peace and relief. There were still some actual parties, though. After I meditated for 2 hours, I took my guitar straight into the Green Belt Forest and made a party happen. Dancing, drinking, and monkey-play still happened with some people.
Saturday, January 1 -- The first direct action team (that's MY team!) from the Auroville Tsumani Disaster Relief Team was sent to a hard-hit village. We cleared all their main roads and burned debris. All the villagers were grateful and very willing to help. We worked all day cutting, smashing, hauling, throwing, yelling, and we still only made a small dent. The devastation of this village is catastrophic, to say the least. It is clear that the entire economy of this whole coastline is gone. All fish have to be assumed to be contaminated by the thousands of dead bodies in the water. There are no buildings left to house most people and many sources of clean water have been contaminated, so rumors of epedemic are spreading rapidly. We decided to work our way through each village, clear roads, rebuild, decontaminate, and help in any way we can. The real information is now coming in, so we know more accurately who needs blankets, food, water, clothing, etc.. Every village needs rebuilding supplies. In my estimation, it will take years to just to make the villages "look" the same again, and that is just skimming the top.
International donations were banned at first here in Tamil Nadu. The Indian government has insisted that no contributions should be accepted by relief organizations from overseas, to prevent fraud. This was severely inhibiting, as the Auroville Relief Team is relying on such monies for our work here. So, it took a while of convincing and processing in the beaurocracy, but we finally were allowed to be an exception. I can personally vouch for the Auroville Disaster Relief Fund, because that money is spent by us and those supplies go right into our hands and into theirs. Please send a donation to:
AUROVILLE TSUNAMI RELIEF
Aurelec
Prayogshala
AUROVILLE
T.N. 605101
INDIA
If you want to do a bank transfer:
STATE BANK OF INDIA AUROVILLE TOWNSHIP ,
Branch Code - 03160
Swift Code - SBININBB474
Account - AUROVILLE FUND
Account Number - 01000060095
Description: "Tsunami Relief"
This is very different than Europe and the USA. No warning system, no emergency services, no communications, no pre-organized emergeny response teams, no reserve power, no reserve food or water, no reserve money, language barriers, etc.. The facilities here are basically nil, as well. There is no Hospice, no funeral homes, etc.. There were 300 dead bodies in a mass grave nearby, waiting to be identified by relatives. They had to be ID'd within 24 hours, or else they were buried with only a fingerprint and a picture taken.
Can you imagine? This is a third-world country... and this is exactly what "third-world" means. They were already devastated before the tsunami hit, and now this.
So... I quit rehearsals for "The Tempest" and "Mother's Day." I quit teaching at the elementary and high schools. I quit teaching at the Language Lab. I quit yoga. I am now working full time with the Disaster Relief Team.
Soon, school starts back up, and we will be delivering school supplies and clothes to all the villages. Our "relief" phase is now changing to "rehab." Rebuilding, restoration, and the like will be happening for the next several weeks and months.
Please send a donation to the above address. I can vouch for it. We need it.
Hope you are all well.
I will report again soon.
Check out http://www.auroville.org/tsunami/crisis_2.htm
love and Happy New Year,
Jeffrey
"Hope is the thing with feathers which perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all." -- E. Dickinson
In another email, Jeff provided http://www.auroville.org/tsunami/how_to_help.htm as a place to visit to learn how to help. Good luck, man. It's strange how such a seemingly far-off event could hit so close to home, but it's also a very good thing.
I stumbled onto this great reference whilst touring the del.icio.us/popular page. It's a great array of references for a host of software development tools and resources. Del.icio.us is definitely a gift to the web that keeps on keepin' on. Its abundance never fails to amaze me. On the same page I can find things like Dropload, Complexification, and SimpleViewer, and much more. I'm constantly amazed, and I'm seriously wondering what will happen to this great free app when more people start to discover exactly how good it is.
Yes, it must be hard work protecting us from the evils of same sex marriage and abortion, because all the major lobbying groups with a religious slant haven't breathed a word about helping the recovery effort. Crazy, right? I thought religious groups were all about helping the needy, not about machiavellian power grabs in national politics. C'est la vie, live and learn. Here's a list of organizations who haven't breathed a word about fundraising for disaster relief, according to this Working for Change article on the subject:
- American Family Association
- Family Research Council
- The Christian Coalition
- Concerned Women for America (CWA)
- Coral Ridge Ministries (CRM) Dr. D. James Kennedy's Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based operation
- townhall.com
- falwell.com
This is seriously very telling. I hope this matter gets more attention. It's humorous to observe how the president bristled when being called 'stingy' by the UN, only to see his constituents look the other way when it's time to actually help the needy. It's even more ironic when you compare them to Apple, an entity which (at least in theory) exists for no other reason than to generate money for its investors. Apple right now has their front page plastered with links to disaster relief sites and implores you to donate to them. Oh, and remember Microsoft, that evil borg corporation? Yeah, they're also putting the fundamentalists to shame.
In a new twist to the DRM story, a PC World article explains how .WMA files can blast you with popups and at the same time install spyware on your computer, all thanks to Microsoft's DRM! Awesome!
Seriously, does anyone actually download WMAs anyway? If you do, and actually trust Microsoft in the process, you probably deserve this.
I hope everyone had a safe and fun holiday season. I'm holding true to last year's resolution, and continuing it, by resolving not to create a resolution this year.
In order to help those who continue to reel from the tragedy to put things into perspective, why not view the body count in World Trade Center denominations?
Oh, and to pump up for the inauguration, why not read 20 awesome facts about the election?