Gusalmighty.com: A Leaded Perspective

Sorry to get personal...

I want to avoid using this space to discuss details of my personal movements in space-time, but it's not going to be possible. I just have enough time right now to comment that field work is hellafun but analyzing data and transcribing interviews and recorded conversations sucks hairy root. 1 hour of recorded converstation takes about 3 hours to translate and transcribe. Ugh....

I'll try to keep posting here though. And I'll also try to refrain from turning this space into a political soapbox. Another intention of mine for here that got ignored like a crank addict's new years resolution to kick it.

What's a vote for?

Last election, I waffled for a long time between voting for Al Gore or Ralph Nader. I was drawn to Gore because I wanted my vote 'to count' and I was having trouble breaking out of the hood that blinds us to the realities of our current "two-party" system. I then realized that both the Democrats and Republicans are funded by the same companies and, at the time, were both centrist governments. Remember that Bush and Gore said pretty much the same thing during their campaign, with Bush talking about staying out of such ventures as "nation building" and wotnot.

So I had woken up to the farce that is the two-party option in American politics but was still considering voting for Gore simply to help ensure that Bush didn't get elected. I felt that Bush was an emotional child without any entitlement for his position and not even a sense of what it takes to run the nation in this day and age. It just didn't feel right.

Then I realized that my vote should be used to express my opinion regarding who I think the best candidate is (or I could use the write in option to vote for who I think would best lead the country). A vote isn't to be used to elect someone you don't really have faith in, I told myself, just in order to oppose a different candidate. It seemed a violation of the sanctity of a vote and even a bit unfair. Voting is a popularity contest, and giving votes to someone you don't like isn't playing by the rules.

So I voted for Nader. I didn't have the integrity to research other third party candidates (although I knew I didn't want to vote for Buchanan) and I should have done a bit more followup on Harry Browne and the Libertarian party. But I didn't, and I voted for Nader. Gore was expected to win and even if Bush did, I figured I could live with it. I knew that my candidate wasn't going to win the election, but it felt good to vote for someone that I would be happy with if they did. And I knew that my vote did help advance the growth and involvement of 3rd parties, an essential part of the process of reforming our current system. If everyone who didn't vote spread their votes over the 3rd party candidates, we'd have a true multi-party system in no time.

Now we are faced with an even greater dilemma. We now know how horrible a president Bush is: neo-imperial unilateral expansionism riding a wave of massive military buildup with the stated intention of brandishing it as a cornerstone of foreign policy, civil liberties under assault, massive deficits and cuts in government programs to pay for a tax cut for the richest minority of the nation (which otherwise could be used to pay for the military buildup), the obvious religiousification of the government. This is not a good situation.

So 2004 is a big deal. It shouldn't be hard to beat Bush, as long as someone isn't afraid to call a spade a spade. The only thing the incumbent has going for it is the ability to twist the opposition into a corner by arguing if anyone opposes them, they are in cahoots with terrorists, etc., kind of like they tried to demonize opposition to the war as support for Saddam. As if.

But I won't support someone like Daschle or Kerry, dolts without an ounce of integrity. Daschle is a pathetic whiny partisan bitch and Kerry is a spineless dweeb without any independent principle. We need someone like Paul Wellstone, rest his soul.

As it stands, I'll probably vote Libertarian or Green this time around, unless a Democrat I can believe in stands up and stomps. I've changed my opinion on the use of a vote though. A vote isn't just for voting for someone, its a powerful tool that can be used to vote against someone too. I think its sad that we don't have candidates appealing enough to vote for or incumbents so horrible we need to abandon hopes of voting who we believe in in order to get them out of office, but voting your conscience reserves the right to use one's vote in whatever manner needed to ensure the best possible for the country.

It's never to early to start talking about these things. It will be very very important that people vote in the next election. Start reminding people how far Bush has brought us from the country we all believe in. The United States is not about locking up citizens without trial, is not about invading countries in order to establish a military precendent, is not about further developing a nuclear arsenal, is not about support research into chemical and biological weapons, is not about cutting funds for education and health care in order to fund the largest military buildup in the history of humanity, is not about cutting taxes for the wealthy when running massive deficits (although I'd generally agree that if one cuts taxes, those who pay the most should get a generous portion of the return), is not about granting government positions to convicted criminals and political scum, is not about selling its soul to the highest bidder.

We might be Idawhores around these parts, but the nation is not a crank slut. Time to slap that dirty dealer in the White House down.

Bid four powr

In the continuing yet doomed to fail pursuit of excellent as set by the standard known as Suckful (that's my sneaky way of saying that I'm copying him every chance I get), I've been keeping track of the site stats. Not doing too bad thus far, all things considered. Getting about 20 hits a day and a fair amount of comments. I'm happy really. Hard to believe this has been up for 2 months though.

Considering that I don't really have high expectations for readership, the actual site traffic stats aren't that important to me. The coolest thing about keeping page stats is that I now possess insight as to what people where doing before they showed up here. Yes, we have our own little Leaded Big Brother here. We finally got a visitor who found their way here from Google, and its a good one alrighty: Someone searching for info about a bid four powr found it here, undoubtedly deserving its top rank. The kicker: it was a Hebrew-reading someone to boot!

Beat that, Suckful! (I can poke fun at him right now because he fell out of google-favor with his domain change and we all know he has better linkage (and content) too ;-)

More Japanese Convenience

After decrying the inconvenience of Japanese cuisinary service, I must balance that out with a report of the other element of Japanese society so well known overseas, consumer electronics. Customer service in this regard, in my experience, is superb, as long as you are in the warranty period. If you are no longer warrantied, don't even try to convince, cajole, plead, beg, or whine your way to an exception; just pay the money to get it fixed.

But if you are in the warranty period, just make that initial phone call, explain that the appliance doesn't work, and they send someone to your house within 48 hours to fix it. The cool thing is that they bring modular parts with them and swap it out in the living room. I'm sure this is the same thing they do if you send in your VCR or whatever, but its kind of cool to have the guy open up the VCR/DVD combo deck, remove a couple screws, yank the whole tape apparatus, and replace it new from a box. Thanks!

Same thing happened today with my digital satellite tuner. My reception has been shit lately, full of pixelated artifacts and dropped signals. We called in yesterday and today a guy shows up and switched out the circuit board. Slick. I think I actually fixed the problem beforehand by wiggling the cable at the dish end and tightening the connector by the quarter turn it was loose, but that doesn't matter.

Even Apple Computers has been great. My remote for the iPod frayed at the end. I filled out the online service form and got a brandnew remote with headphones 3 days later. I dropped my iPod and it died last week; today I got a replacement machine (I did have to send in the broken one, but they sent me a box and accepted the shipping charges). Based on reports from other people dealing with Apple in the US, it doesn't seem like the service is that great. I suspect that the Japanese expectations are carried over in that corporation here.

I guess in the end it isn't all that revolutionary that repair come to your home and fix stuff there, but it's still cool. Considering that most Japanese families have a stay-at-home wife, there is someone there to receive the repairman. Plus people rely on public transportation so much more here, and its hard to ask a housewife to carry a VCR on the train and then on to the local repair shop.

It's also a good example of Japanese over-employment, but I'll talk about that more later.

"Could I have some cough medicine, that brand next to Barely Legal?"

Missouri legislators suggest a law requiring pseudoephedrine-containing over-the-counter cold remedies be placed behind the counter

No crank for yuo!!!!

Has NPR fallen to The Dark Side??

One of the *many* benefits of being a mac user (beyond the obvious benefit of not risking life and limb zooming around the Internet at Ghz+ speeds) is iTunes and Quicktime streaming. Actually QT isn't a Mac OS only (get it here; it does audio and (some) video) and is a nice alternative to crap like Windows Media Player and that corporate sludge of code known as RealPlayer. Don't ever install RealPlayer on your computer. Ever. Ever ever ever ever ever! I don't even think I'd install it on most of my enemies computers.

Quicktime is cool though. It has a nice little interface and can play audio streams. I usually listen to SomaFM's Groove Salad or NPR. At least until today, when I fired up the NPR link and found a generic QT window of sorts indicating that the QT-TV selection has changed and that I should update my software to see the latest options. I wasn't exactly sure what that meant since I have the most up to date software and ignored it and went about my web browsing for the morning.

Then I discovered a new headline awakening an awareness that had lain dormant: NPR dropped Quicktime support. My initial reaction was to get pissed off at Apple. Their QT-TV selection has slowly faded over the last 18 months or so. It used to kick all sorts of ass, including live video feeds of BBCWorld and other stuff. There are still lots of links to content on the Apple QT Content page and the move trailers page is very cool. But the substantive comment like NPR and BBC will be missed.

Reading the comments at slashdot reminded of something though: QT is free. The Quicktime Streaming Server is open source and freely downloadable (hell, even the Darwin OS to run it on is free as well) and there are no fees to stream from it once you set it up. It looks like the decision to drop a QT stream was purely economic in the sense that NPR wanted Apple to pay (or keep paying) them to keep streaming.

Factor in a consideration of the current platforms being streamed by NPR (WMP and Real) and suspicions deepen even more. Microsoft may have pressured NPR into dropping the QT support. I have a hard time believing that Real paid NPR, but maybe my sense that Real isn't making much money is off the mark.

Regardless of what happened, I'm severely disillusioned by this. NPR is public radio and should be expected to offer its broadcast as widely as possible, especially when that broadcast doesn't cost them anything (bandwidth maybe, but that equivocal regardless of the streaming platform). They don't even offer mp3 streaming or downloads of shows and programs (but Pacifica offers downloads of its DemocracyNow! program, an interesting listen-to.).

Corporate encroachment is becoming worse and worse these days, and I fear its becoming critical. Critical in the sense of critical mass, where we no longer feel that it is wrong or undesirable or that other options exist and thus we just accept it and quit thinking about its consequences on our lives. Even though it may feel pointless in the face of corporate power or obvious to the point that you may feel it doesn't even warrant being pointed out, don't accept it. Be aware of it and talk about with other people.

Just as in class, when you shouldn't be afraid to ask questions because other people likely have the same question as you, talking about issues of concern is important because many other people are likely upset about the same stuff. But if no one brings it up, we end up as a mass of silent accomplices in our own demise.

I kind of meandered off-track here at the end, and there is no proof that NPR was bought out by Microsoft, but its decision to stop hosting a stream on QT is clearly not rational by the expected standards of a National Public Radio station. Perhaps I can find a net-radio station that rebroadcasts NPR. Haven't had luck with that so far though. Please let me know if you know of any.

Humidity: Further proof there is no God.

Well, at least proof that he didn't create us in his own image. There is no fucking way a supreme being would create us without setting us up with either a love for humidity or an environment that didn't have it.

Think about it. Do you know anyone who actually enjoys humidity? Who looks forward the hot sticky mugginess of humid summers? It's a common climatic phenomenon, and I'm sure it was in the Garden of Eden, lush place that it was.

I'm tempted to think that evolution failed us as well. Surely there would have been a competitive advantage to enjoying humid environments, so why don't we love it? I actually am not opposed to humidity per se but rather my emotion response to it. Nothing ruins a good spring like the dawn of humidity.

Bah, just grouchy today.

UN/US trade roles with regard to Iraq sanctions

I couldn't help but cackle aloud at this Washington Post article that explains how the United States wants the UN to lift sanctions on Iraq immediately but the UN wants to wait until it can ensure its involvement in the future of Iraq. The UN is insisting that it can't lift sanctions until it Iraq's disarmament has been established, a process that naturally involves UN weapons inspectors. The US argues that its military should be able to verify the existence of WMD and thus can validate the disarmament.

I just find it funny because the US was forever in favor of sanctions that accomplished nothing towards their intended purpose and only served to wreak death and disease on a population while further strengthening its eeeeeeeevil leader. Now they pull the "we need to do what is good for the Iraqi people" line out of their ass as a card to play against the UN trying to get itself a useful and substantial role in the rebuilding of the country.

I can't imagine why the US wouldn't want the UN on board. Well, I can, but not by any rational calculation. Having as many extra multi-lateral organizations involved would only seek to dissuade those who suggest the occupation liberation of Iraq was for the sake of the US gov't first and the Iraqis second.

If anyone is interested, Foreign Affairs magazine has a pretty good article that lays out a good plan for building democracy in Iraq. My money is that the US doesn't employ anything remotely close to that though.

The convenience of Japan, part I

Japan is a such an odd place at times. I think perhaps my occasional incompatibility with this society stems from my overall indifference to concerns with form at the expense of function, whereas the Japanese seems to have a pathological fixation on the preservation and exhalation of form with little to no regard for function.

This is easily seen in the commerce of cuisine in Japan. The stereotypes of Japanese indecision hold true in many cases and many restaurants cater to this by offering "Set Menus." Sometimes a set menu is very set, with a specific appetizer, entree, and soup, for example or other times you are given an option of appetizers, entrees, and desserts, or whatever. It makes ordering easier and since many restaurants and cafes in Japan are so small, sometimes just a couple tables, it helps them control their menu without having to stock lots of different foods and streamlines ordering; you can only deliberate between the A Set and the B Set for so long.

My frustration isn't due to the lack of options in these restaurants but their rigidity. The other day we went to a little cafe that had 3 sets available for lunch, as well as assorted ala carte items. I wasn't in the mood for a full set of food and just wanted some soup and bread to dip in it. The ala carte menu only offered vegetable soup, but all the set menus had a tasty sounding corn pottage on the menu.

In my ignorance, I assumed it would be possible to order the corn soup on the side, but no, I was politely informed, this simply wasn't possible. The corn soup was part of the set, they explained, and couldn't be sold on the side. I tried to get a more explicit answer of why it was that the soup, which sat in a warmer identical to the vegetable soup and served in its own physically distinct (yet again, identical to the vegetable soup) bowl, was unable to be served on the side without the rest of the set, but the look of uncomfortableness with being faced with such absurd questions on the face of the server made me stop. It wasn't possible to order Set A (which came with vegetable soup in the set) but substitute the corn. If you wanted corn soup, you had to order the set with corn soup in. What could be easier?

Japanese people just don't ask such unnerving questions. I have discovered that most servers or sales people can handle an initial question inquirying into a particular possibility with ease, but when the possibility is revealed to be nonexistant (which happens almost 100% of the time) and I follow up with a question regarding the reasons why such a situation exists, a look of panic and desperation creep into their eyes and they begin to stammer the Japanese equivalent of "Just because." That could be the damn tag line of Japan Inc: "Just Because."

It happens all over the place. Go to McDonald's and ask for nugget sauce for your fries. You'll be told that nugget sauce is just that, sauce for nuggets, and since you didn't buy nuggets, you can't get sauce. Offer to pay for the sauce, and the EXACT same answer will echo in your head. Offer to pay full price for an order of nuggets, just without the nuggets, and you'll find that it's impossible to sell you nuggets without giving you nuggets.

At least home-delivery pizza doesn't complain if you ask to have the a pizza made without mushrooms. But when we stopped by a local Italian restaurant last week for dessert we found that you couldn't just order dessert there, had to order dinner for dessert. This was at a deserted restaurant in the middle of a 12 year-long recession, and they were turning customers away.

But as condemning as I may sound, I usually find amusement in this world of form over function. Sure, its a pain in the ass to not be able to eat my fries with BBQ sauce and I never got my corn soup, but its a different world that constantly offers a stimulating social environment, and that makes life fun.

Physical Spam

Note: Slashdot picked up this story too, but this is one time at least that I was going to post on it first. I'm just lazy too busy to get entries posted efficiently. Anyway, mea culpa aside, here is what I wanted to say:

Ah, the 15th of the month, which means the delivery of the Bruce Schnier's Crypto-Gram, his monthly newsletter dealing with cryptography and security as well as links to a bunch of interesting stories. Usually pretty good stuff.

This month's newsletter was relatively brief, but had some very good sections. The first topic described how easy it has become to literally flood people with junk mail of the paper kind. Some people are aware of the email spammer who got buried under junk mail after his address got posted publicly and many people signed him up for all the stuff they could find.

Schnier points out that using a google search and a simple script for completing forms it would be very easy to sign someone up for this kind of mass mailing. Here is a brief NewScientist article on it too. Imagine the hassle of getting pounds and pounds of crap in the mail every day and trying to sort through it for the phone bill and whatnot, not to mention what it would take to get off the lists. And if you got signed up for the "ship now, pay later" book or CDs clubs, you could rack up serious debts. Not that you'd have to pay, but you'd have to deal with it.

Your postman would hate you too.

I thought it was a neat hack and instructive about the emergent properties of the technological environment we live in. While this was a rather malevolent product, it really is just yet another example of the surprising things that come out of an established physical system when tied into something like the internet, with its democratization of information access and speed of communication, not to mention the lowering price barriers to entry.

I know we keep hearing the same mantra regarding communication access and speed, cheaper technology, and greater access to information, but I think that at times we hear it so much we may forget that it truly warrants being repeated, as it has these types of consequences.

Back to the topic though, I wonder what effects widespread use of this technique would have? Would it drive mailers into more 'secure' systems of signup that require a human intelligence stage, in spite of the reversal of convenience this would entail? Would they stop offering such types of free mail entirely, thus altering the commercial climate we live in? Would we just have to deal with new script kiddies fucking around and letter-bombing some random address? Who knows? I doubt it will happen, but its a fine topic for pondering around a campfire drunk off your ass, I suppose.

Stonehenge, the female body

A British Columbia university professor has suggested that Stonehenge was inspired by women's anatomy based on his analysis of the texture and layout of the famous stone circle.

After noticing the difference textures throughout the stones in monument, Professor Anthony Perks hypothesized that the smoother stones correlated with the smoother skin of females caused by higher estrogen levels.

Furthermore,

He noticed how the inner stone trilithons were arranged in a more elliptical, or egg-shaped, pattern than a true circle. Comparing the layout with the shape of female sexual organs showed surprising parallels.

Perks believes the labia majora could be represented by the outer stone circle and possibly the outer mound, with the inner circle serving as the labia minora, the altar stone as the clitoris and the empty geometric center outlined by bluestones representing the birth canal.

Since the people who built Stonehenge and similar monuments didn't leave a report of why they built it, how they built it, or what they used it for, we are forced to deal with intrepretations such as this. More popular interpretations hypothesize a link with the cosmos based on the alignment of the stones with the stars at particular points in the season.

I don't see any reason why both can't be reconciled with each other and considering the plausibility of putting that much effort into an icon of the vagina or the stars, I'm willing to believe this.

But then if we do, someone might try to argue that the Washington Monument was inspired as phallic tribute to the leaders of our nation. Maybe the first woman president can build a Stonehenge style addition around the monument?

Trendsetting the American Way

India announces that it has the right to "pre-emptively" strike at Pakistan to protect itself.

Pakistan asserts that India is a "fit case for pre-emptive strikes" like the US launched against Iraq.

Lessig on the RIAA suits against students

I'm a big fan of Lawrence Lessig and his analysis of the current state of information control initiatives and their likely effect on the future of ideas.

He had a nice little entry on his blog a while ago that bears repeating here, as it saves me the time required to think up an entry and helps expose his ideas to a wider audience (I think there are 2 people who read this blog).

on what we need courts for

They say I'm a pessimist about the future of freedom on the net, and they've got two books of mine to prove it. But the report that the RIAA has now filed suit against four students for sharing content over a university network is a moment of hope. If we work hard to report the details and reality of this suit, then the extremism of the RIAA's tactics will finally get through.

Let this extremism finally force recognition of the best response to this problem for now: a compulsory license with a large carve out for non-commercial "sharing." Napster proposed as much in 1998. Had Congress listened, then we would have had just as much sharing over these last 5 years, but artists would have 5 years of income, and fewer of our children would now be felons. Instead, Congress did nothing (except pass the Sonny Bono Act and the DMCA), and 5 years later, artists are no better off, our kids are now "terrorists" (such is the rhetoric of the other side), and the cartel of the RIAA is only stronger.

What politicians need to remember is that Congress has always adjusted the rules by which creators get paid as a response to new technology. That's just what they should be doing today. Never before has the law been used to force new technology into old way of doing business. Every time before this, it was the law that adjusted to assure artists got paid given the new technology.

There are any number of proposals floating about just now for a compulsory license for content [Ed Felten has a nice post on this; my favorites are William Fisher's from Harvard, and Neil Netanel's from Texas] ' a way to free content while assuring that artists get paid. All of them would also have the salutary effect of leaving our courts to deal with real criminals (can anyone spell Enron anymore?), and leaving the internet to do what it does best (making content broadly and efficiently available).

It's time for Congress to turn its attention to constructive ways to assure that artists get paid without destroying the extraordinary freedom of the internet. This has been Congress's role in the past. It needs to get beyond the distortions of a bunch of lobbyists if its to play its proper role in the future.