If there's one thing we love in Portland, it's making fun of California, but if there are two things we love, making fun of Seattle comes a close second. Now, I was born in the Seattle area, lived there for several years as a child, and still have lots of relatives there, so I usually don't indulge in this particular guilty pleasure, although the plague of Seattle's Best Coffee outlets downtown is a bit grating. And of course Paul Allen is everyone's least favorite tubby billionaire man-child, although people here mostly hate him for mismanaging the Blazers, and I could care less about basketball. But the OS rivalry is another matter: They've got Microsoft, we've got OSDL. And so far as real sports go, it's a proven, scientific fact that both the Sounders (soccer) and the Thunderbirds (hockey) are the embodiment of pure evil. Strange, but true. It may have to do with the whole MSFT thing.
But I'm not here to make fun of their stupid hockey team today. Today we're making fun of the Emerald City's inability to sort out its yellow brick road situation. After all these years, they're still wringing their hands over what to do about the Alaskan Way viaduct. And their vestigial monorail system may have been totalled in that recent fender-bender. What it boils down to is that nobody can agree on what to do, and even if they could, all options are prohibitively expensive. Unless a miracle happens, the transit situation up north may be unfixable, and it'll just get worse over time as more people move to the area.
Here's a 2003 story from the Seattle Times, which argues that Seattle comes up short in the "urban vision" department, when compared against both Portland and Vancouver.
Ok, so that's good for a civic ego boost here, but in the interest of fairness I have to note that the article uncritically repeats a bit of our fair Rose City's own urban mythology. Everyone knows that in the early 70's, we ripped out the Harbor Drive freeway that went right along the downtown waterfront, and replaced it with a nice green park. Which is all true, so far as it goes, but people always neglect to mention that it was only possible to remove Harbor Drive because it was replaced by an even bigger freeway, I-405, which sits below grade and forms a deep moat around the downtown area. But at least it doesn't run right along the river, which is something, I guess. What's more, part of the crummy old "freeway" remains, in the stretch of Naito Parkway between Barbur and about SW Harrison. Ask someone who lives in the Corbett/Lair Hill area whether we've got our transportation situation all sorted out. Or better yet, visit the area from out of town, and try to figure out how to get onto the Ross Island Bridge from downtown, or from 405. Good luck! You'll need it!
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Things Without Faces
I cheerfully admit to a bias towards "cute" land mammals, but they're certainly not the only, or even the most, interesting beasties out there.
Consider the humble and rather obscure siphonophore. They often look like fancy jellyfish, but technically they aren't. Unlike jellyfish, they're colonial organisms made of many small individual animals, referred to as zooids. It's not immediately obvious that this is the case, as individual zooids perform specialized functions within the colony: Propulsion, buoyancy, feeding, etc. They seem to be sort of an intermediate stage between undifferentiated colonial animals like corals, and fully integrated individuals like proper jellyfish, both of which are Cnidaria, and thus (distant) cousins of siphonophores. If it can ever be shown that they're truly intermediate in an evolutionary sense, we'd have on our hands one of those "intermediate forms" that creationists keep insisting don't exist. Not that this would help in the debate. They'd either ignore the fact (as usual), or claim the evidence was fabricated by the global liberal conspiracy, or something equally idiotic. But I digress.
The thumbnail picture above is of a Praya dubia. The original site, which the pic links to, contains what I think was a freudian slip, referring to it once as a "Praya dubya". Which is completely unfair. While it's true that, like GWB, siphonophores are venomous invertebrates that lack anything resembling a central nervous system, they also generally mind their own business, they don't try to impose their religion on anyone, they don't run up colossal budget deficits, they don't spy on anyone, and they couldn't smirk even if the wanted to. So the analogy is an insult to siphonophores everywhere, and someone owes 'em an apology. But I digress again.
One might argue that we still haven't left the realm of charismatic megafauna, since a creature that strongly resembles art glass has charisma of a sort, and anything that grows to over 30 meters long has to count as megafauna. So let's consider some even humbler organisms, the bryozoans, sometimes known as "moss animals". They're colonies of zooids, like (but unrelated to) siphonophores, but entirely lacking in propulsion and charisma. The first time I'd ever heard of these creatures was on a local nature show, in which the host fished one out of a local pond. I'd seen them before that without having any clue what they were, and I just figured they were random blobs of icky protoplasm. Freshwater bryozoans are the minority, however, and most are oceanic like the one pictured above (right).
And just below bryozans on the evolutionary scale are authors who fabricate imaginary sordid pasts in an attempt to sell more books. I realize publishing is a cruel and mercenary industry, and sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do, but this is venturing perilously close to Vanilla Ice territory. He was from the streets too, ya know.
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Excelsior!
Today's fun word is "excelsior", which is a remarkably fancy and exotic name for wood shavings. The Dictionary.com entry mentions it was once a trademark, and a historical note from the American Excelsior Co. indicates the stuff dates back to the 1890's. Everything was so much more exciting and melodramatic back then. Even wood shavings.
The name's still a trademark for a font family, but odd and colorful font names are not unusual. Where the original trademark came from is info that doesn't seem to exist on the net so far as I can tell. Determining what, if anything, the word meant before the shaved-wood packing materials industry got their grubby hands on it would probably require a hardcopy investigation, meaning an expenditure of time, effort, and/or money. Hmm.
I understand that the word has a special meaning of some sort in the comic book world. I assume it relates back to wood shavings somehow. It does so far as I know, anyway.
I reluctantly admit to knowing there's also a Star Trek significance to the word.
Today's interest in the word stems from seeing it on an old opera or musical poster I saw recently, I think as the title. Not a lot of info available about this musical either. There's a brief reference to a musical production by that name, the first stage show to employ electric lighting. There's also an opera company in Schenectady, NY, and a hotel near the Garnier opera in Paris, but neither seems to be what I'm looking for. Hmm. One dead end after another.
So this is probably a good time to switch gears, even while sticking with a general theme of "weirdness relating to mundane items". And what could be more mundane than plain old seaweed? Assuming you don't live in Nebraska, or Mongolia, or somewhere, anyway. Well, it turns out that seaweed is no longer just for tripping over on the beach or holding together otherwise-flavorless wads of rice and raw fish. No, our friends across the pond in the Emerald Isle have figured out that you can make wine out of the stuff. Wine of a sort, anyway, although I doubt the French would approve. Here's another reference to a "wine" made partially with a sort of seaweed known as "bladderwrack", also known by its genus, "Fucus". Neither name sounds especially appetizing. I don't know where the word "bladderwrack" actually comes from, but just guessing it sounds like a rather serious diuretic. Seems there's also been some interest in the beverage in Taiwan as well.
Actually there are quite a few search hits that come up on the topic, but the vast majority are fictional references, mostly emerging from the SCA/D&D/fantasy novel/unicorn milieu. Imaginary people and magical beasts can't get enough of the stuff, it seems. This recipe involves bat guano, for some reason. Here's a vaguely Chinese-themed reference from some sort of RPG. A bottle of the stuff figures in this tale of a wayward goldfish. It's just one of many exotic fictional beverages on this list. And another fictional piece where kelp wine shows up. A longer story that mentions the stuff in passing. And another appearance, this time in a fan fiction story about the Monkees.
I had no idea the stuff was so popular, at least in its imaginary version. I'd have thought there'd be at least a few comments in homebrewing or home winemaking forums, either people saying they'd tried it and made a wonderful discovery, or perhaps relating their unfortunate experiences to discourage anyone else from trying such a putrid beverage.
I certainly don't want to harm anyone's rich fantasy life, so please note the following is pure speculation by someone who's never tried the stuff. If you really want to make some palatable oceanic hooch, there are a few problems you're going to need to solve. First, you need something to ferment. The easiest thing would be to do the longstanding "country wine" trick and add a bunch of sugar as your fermentable, with the seaweed basically just as flavoring. Some people regard that trick as "cheating", somehow. A more technically interesting thing would be to figure out how to ferment the seaweed itself. Kelp, for instance, contains a great deal of laminarin, a polysaccharide similar to starch or cellulose. Regular yeast won't know what to do with the stuff -- it's similar to the beta glucans that brewers wring their hands about -- so you'd need to add some enzymes, or find some other way of breaking it down to its component glucose molecules.
If you can resolve that hurdle, there's all that salt and iodine to worry about. Nobody wants to drink salty booze, and iodine is bad for yeast, so you may need to soak it for a while, changing the water a few times to let the salt diffuse out, like if you were getting ready to prepare a country ham, or other food preserved in salt.
And I can't begin to imagine what the stuff would taste like, if you managed to pull it off. Maybe it would help to nibble a bit of excelsior first, to cleanse the palate.
The name's still a trademark for a font family, but odd and colorful font names are not unusual. Where the original trademark came from is info that doesn't seem to exist on the net so far as I can tell. Determining what, if anything, the word meant before the shaved-wood packing materials industry got their grubby hands on it would probably require a hardcopy investigation, meaning an expenditure of time, effort, and/or money. Hmm.
I understand that the word has a special meaning of some sort in the comic book world. I assume it relates back to wood shavings somehow. It does so far as I know, anyway.
I reluctantly admit to knowing there's also a Star Trek significance to the word.
Today's interest in the word stems from seeing it on an old opera or musical poster I saw recently, I think as the title. Not a lot of info available about this musical either. There's a brief reference to a musical production by that name, the first stage show to employ electric lighting. There's also an opera company in Schenectady, NY, and a hotel near the Garnier opera in Paris, but neither seems to be what I'm looking for. Hmm. One dead end after another.
So this is probably a good time to switch gears, even while sticking with a general theme of "weirdness relating to mundane items". And what could be more mundane than plain old seaweed? Assuming you don't live in Nebraska, or Mongolia, or somewhere, anyway. Well, it turns out that seaweed is no longer just for tripping over on the beach or holding together otherwise-flavorless wads of rice and raw fish. No, our friends across the pond in the Emerald Isle have figured out that you can make wine out of the stuff. Wine of a sort, anyway, although I doubt the French would approve. Here's another reference to a "wine" made partially with a sort of seaweed known as "bladderwrack", also known by its genus, "Fucus". Neither name sounds especially appetizing. I don't know where the word "bladderwrack" actually comes from, but just guessing it sounds like a rather serious diuretic. Seems there's also been some interest in the beverage in Taiwan as well.
Actually there are quite a few search hits that come up on the topic, but the vast majority are fictional references, mostly emerging from the SCA/D&D/fantasy novel/unicorn milieu. Imaginary people and magical beasts can't get enough of the stuff, it seems. This recipe involves bat guano, for some reason. Here's a vaguely Chinese-themed reference from some sort of RPG. A bottle of the stuff figures in this tale of a wayward goldfish. It's just one of many exotic fictional beverages on this list. And another fictional piece where kelp wine shows up. A longer story that mentions the stuff in passing. And another appearance, this time in a fan fiction story about the Monkees.
I had no idea the stuff was so popular, at least in its imaginary version. I'd have thought there'd be at least a few comments in homebrewing or home winemaking forums, either people saying they'd tried it and made a wonderful discovery, or perhaps relating their unfortunate experiences to discourage anyone else from trying such a putrid beverage.
I certainly don't want to harm anyone's rich fantasy life, so please note the following is pure speculation by someone who's never tried the stuff. If you really want to make some palatable oceanic hooch, there are a few problems you're going to need to solve. First, you need something to ferment. The easiest thing would be to do the longstanding "country wine" trick and add a bunch of sugar as your fermentable, with the seaweed basically just as flavoring. Some people regard that trick as "cheating", somehow. A more technically interesting thing would be to figure out how to ferment the seaweed itself. Kelp, for instance, contains a great deal of laminarin, a polysaccharide similar to starch or cellulose. Regular yeast won't know what to do with the stuff -- it's similar to the beta glucans that brewers wring their hands about -- so you'd need to add some enzymes, or find some other way of breaking it down to its component glucose molecules.
If you can resolve that hurdle, there's all that salt and iodine to worry about. Nobody wants to drink salty booze, and iodine is bad for yeast, so you may need to soak it for a while, changing the water a few times to let the salt diffuse out, like if you were getting ready to prepare a country ham, or other food preserved in salt.
And I can't begin to imagine what the stuff would taste like, if you managed to pull it off. Maybe it would help to nibble a bit of excelsior first, to cleanse the palate.
When technology attacks!
The predicted, long-awaited revolt of the robots has already begun. The latest victim is a Japanese manager at a factory in Malaysia. This sort of thing always starts with one or two victims here and there, so that the world becomes accustomed to a certain level of "random accidents", and is lulled into a false sense of security. Then the robots take over the world. I've seen all the movies. I know how this works. Trust me.
As we're faced with yet more evidence of our impending doom, it's mildly comforting to reflect on at least one interesting technology that hasn't taken over the world (yet). It's a bird? No. It's a plane? Not exactly, but close. A hovercraft, then? Also a good guess, but not quite. I present to you the Ekranoplane, a.k.a. wing-in-ground, or WIG craft. The second link goes to what's considered the definitive site on the subject, but if you have a short attention span and just want to look at pics, here are some of the Lun, the Orlyonok, and the KM. If I had to pick a favorite, I might have to go with the KM, but they all have an odd sort of appeal. None looks like it ought to be able to fly, even in a limited sense. They look like they ought to be hanging off of strings in bad sci-fi movies, pretending to fly, and failing to convince anyone. Combine their unlikely appearance with the clever idea behind them, and their sheer hugeness, and we have a winner. There's no way to know whether ekranoplanes were really a quirky technological dead end, or whether they were just ahead of their time, or a singular and remarkable combination of both, a la the Great Eastern.
Here's a company that claims to be offering somewhat smaller ekranoplanes for sale as flying yachts, because one gets oh, so terribly bored with regular yachts. Too bad I'm not evil enough to ever have that kind of money. But then again, not being evil is sort of its own reward, I guess. At least until the robots take over.
Friday, January 06, 2006
More megafauna, charismatic and otherwise...
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Two surly political posts in a row are quite sufficient for the time being, I think. For a change of pace, O Gentle Reader(s), I present to you a couple of pics of baby porcupines.
But be warned! There's at least one widely distributed pic out there which claims to be of 3 baby porcupines, but which is actually of 3 baby hedgehogs. Which is fine, really, they're awfully cute as well and all, but they aren't porcupines.
Updated: Actually I think the pic on the left is a hedgehog as well. They're everywhere! It's a conspiracy, I tell ya.
But let's set aside all things cute-n-cuddly for a moment. On the far other end of the adorable organism spectrum are the fish of the deep ocean. Unluckily for them, being hideous and living deep in the ocean isn't much protection from the human world, because a.) they're edible, and b.) they reproduce very, very slowly, so they're being drastically overfished. This site has more info, also covering threats to the world's deep-ocean, cold-water corals. Yes, there is such a thing. I was surprised too.
Fish+Barrel
What would we do without Pat Robertson? The guy's such an easy target, and he's always feeding us new material. Like today, he's now saying God gave Ariel Sharon a stroke as punishment for pulling out of Gaza. Really. You can't make up stuff like this.
Robertson's perhaps even more meanspirited and cruel than most fundies, if such a thing is possible, but his ideas place him firmly within the "mainstream" religious right. What really sets him apart is that he's quite open about how he feels. He's not polished, or media-friendly, or warm-n-fuzzy the way others like him try to be. He doesn't seem to buy into the common notion that there's some things you just don't say within earshot of the "liberal" media. He just doesn't care, and he comes right out and says what millions of nutty people like him are thinking. And always with the same calm, beatific smile on his face.
In the next couple of days we'll see the usual recriminations from more media-savvy right-wingers, people who often privately agreee with Pat but find his bluntness embarrassing. They'd have us think the problem is just that Pat's sometimes a little crazy, when the real problem is that the underlying idea is a lot crazy, and is what disgusts the world beyond the walls of their cozy little echo chamber. A terrible idea remains a terrible idea, no matter how many pollster-approved nuances you attach to it.
Interestingly, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's answer to Pat Robertson, is saying much the same thing. Crazy religious fanatics are just so predictable.
These latest comments aren't likely to win Robertson any friends in Israel, which is likely to complicate his recently-announced plans to build an evangelical theme park near the Sea of Galilee. The article's not clear on whether it's supposed to be located on land taken from Syria in 1967, but I doubt Robertson would pass up the opportunity.
Robertson's perhaps even more meanspirited and cruel than most fundies, if such a thing is possible, but his ideas place him firmly within the "mainstream" religious right. What really sets him apart is that he's quite open about how he feels. He's not polished, or media-friendly, or warm-n-fuzzy the way others like him try to be. He doesn't seem to buy into the common notion that there's some things you just don't say within earshot of the "liberal" media. He just doesn't care, and he comes right out and says what millions of nutty people like him are thinking. And always with the same calm, beatific smile on his face.
In the next couple of days we'll see the usual recriminations from more media-savvy right-wingers, people who often privately agreee with Pat but find his bluntness embarrassing. They'd have us think the problem is just that Pat's sometimes a little crazy, when the real problem is that the underlying idea is a lot crazy, and is what disgusts the world beyond the walls of their cozy little echo chamber. A terrible idea remains a terrible idea, no matter how many pollster-approved nuances you attach to it.
Interestingly, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's answer to Pat Robertson, is saying much the same thing. Crazy religious fanatics are just so predictable.
These latest comments aren't likely to win Robertson any friends in Israel, which is likely to complicate his recently-announced plans to build an evangelical theme park near the Sea of Galilee. The article's not clear on whether it's supposed to be located on land taken from Syria in 1967, but I doubt Robertson would pass up the opportunity.
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Ritual Cleansing
R's in DC and elsewhere are falling over each other in a mass stampede to rid themselves of dirty Abramoff cash. The thinking, apparently, is that if you give the bribes back, it's just like the whole thing never happened.
It's notable that the stampede didn't start until Abramoff cut a plea deal and agreed to name names. That got everyone's attention, so now we get the usual DC mass ritual cleansing. The sight of a mass of extremely powerful people all desperately scrambling for self-preservation is ugly and sickening, yet exquisitely funny. It's amazing how, suddenly, nobody ever knew the guy, the name Abramoff simply doesn't ring a bell, maybe they met him at a campaign event once, long ago, but it was just small talk about the weather, and there was certainly never a quid pro quo. Everyone's holding their own outraged news conference, putting out a self-righteous press statement, letting us know they're shocked, shocked that such things could ever occur in Our Nation's Capitol, among Our Public Servants.
You know things are getting out of hand in DC when Newt Gingrich comes across as a rare voice of reason. On this one issue, I mean.
Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not arguing that D's in Congress are paragons of virtue. Remember last time they ran the show? Jim Wright, anyone? Quite a few D's took Jack's money too, but when you're part of a powerless minority party, you just don't attract the same level of cash as the guys who can actually do something useful for you in return. Bribing the powerless is a poor investment.
But enough with the bipartisan fairness. This scandal is just a lot of fun to watch. It's old-school DC all the way. The media hasn't identified the inevitable perky blonde just yet, but the scandal's still in its early days. The best part is seeing this happen to the party that's been lecturing us for years about they're so much more moral than everyone else, utterly without sin or blemish, sternly guarding our nation's virtue, and all that. I think that deep down, everyone across the country always knew that was a lie from day 1, but it's still great to see these hypocrites taken down a few notches, in the most public way possible.
It's notable that the stampede didn't start until Abramoff cut a plea deal and agreed to name names. That got everyone's attention, so now we get the usual DC mass ritual cleansing. The sight of a mass of extremely powerful people all desperately scrambling for self-preservation is ugly and sickening, yet exquisitely funny. It's amazing how, suddenly, nobody ever knew the guy, the name Abramoff simply doesn't ring a bell, maybe they met him at a campaign event once, long ago, but it was just small talk about the weather, and there was certainly never a quid pro quo. Everyone's holding their own outraged news conference, putting out a self-righteous press statement, letting us know they're shocked, shocked that such things could ever occur in Our Nation's Capitol, among Our Public Servants.
You know things are getting out of hand in DC when Newt Gingrich comes across as a rare voice of reason. On this one issue, I mean.
Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not arguing that D's in Congress are paragons of virtue. Remember last time they ran the show? Jim Wright, anyone? Quite a few D's took Jack's money too, but when you're part of a powerless minority party, you just don't attract the same level of cash as the guys who can actually do something useful for you in return. Bribing the powerless is a poor investment.
But enough with the bipartisan fairness. This scandal is just a lot of fun to watch. It's old-school DC all the way. The media hasn't identified the inevitable perky blonde just yet, but the scandal's still in its early days. The best part is seeing this happen to the party that's been lecturing us for years about they're so much more moral than everyone else, utterly without sin or blemish, sternly guarding our nation's virtue, and all that. I think that deep down, everyone across the country always knew that was a lie from day 1, but it's still great to see these hypocrites taken down a few notches, in the most public way possible.
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Cute Prosimians
I figured it'd be a good idea to lighten up a little, and do at least one post that's nothing but cute wildlife pictures. No math, no GWB, no space, no griping about Windows, just cute animals. As usual, clicking on any image will take you to the original source of the image.
Today's theme is prosimians. Finding cute prosimians is easy, since most are nocturnal and have really big eyes. Above, you've got two pics of tarsiers, one slow loris (cute, but venomous. See here for more info), and a potto.
Enjoy!
Surcomplex
Today's cool word is "Surcomplex", as in "surcomplex number". Surcomplex numbers are to surreal numbers what plain-vanilla complex numbers are to real numbers. The name combines "surreal" and "complex", and I can think of lots of everyday situations where this word would be a perfect description.
As you may have noticed with the stubby little Wikipedia article referenced above, there's not a lot of info on the net about these babies. And I've seen nothing at all about "surreal-hypercomplex" numbers, which would seem to be a logical extension of the idea. With the use of something called the Cayley-Dickson construction, you can go on indefinitely, creating ever-more-hypercomplex (and ill-behaved) numbers. It's interesting to note that the number of dimensions of a number created this way is always going to be a power of 2, which suggests a sort of parallel with the binary-tree way that surreals are constructed. Well, it does to me, anyway, but then I'm a computer geek, not a mathematician, and besides, by no means are all mathematicians happy with Conway and his surreals (you'll want to read a few posts in the thread to get the gist of the argument). Anyway, a surreal-style tree that also gains dimensions on the way down is quite an interesting thing to comtemplate. At omega, assuming the analogy holds this far, you'd start encountering weird beasts like numbers with an infinite number of dimensions. Just try to imagine that for a moment. And each dimension a surreal number, possibly infinite or infinitesimal. Wheee!
I'd hope there'd be no way to use something as esoteric as a surcomplex number to design a new kind of bomb, but you never can tell. GH Hardy took a great deal of pride in the notion that his beloved number theory was of no practical use to anyone, not foreseeing the rise of math-intensive cryptography. Now, cryptography clearly isn't a bomb, and has lots of wholesome, nonmilitary applications, but in this day and age it's also safe to assume that numerous large numbers have been factored using the Cheney algorithm, which is to find someone who already knows the factors, and torture them until they cough 'em up.
Speaking of Cheney, here's another fun article about his (and Rummy's) longstanding love of surveillance and hatred of Constitutional government. Meanwhile, the talk radio / think tank / conservative blog echo chamber is full of the usual suspects, each trying to outdo the next in heaping scorn on outdated and subversive notions like search warrants, habeas corpus, the ban on cruel and unusual punishment, freedom of speech. We're told again and again that anyone who still believes in that old-fashioned stuff is a commie pinko liberal who hates America and loves the evildoers. I ask again, what's this country coming to, when to be considered a "true patriot" you're expected to abandon, and actively oppose, the entirety of the country's founding principles?
Well, actually today the wingnut universe has other, more immediate concerns, namely yesterday's UN-imposed ban on trade in wild caviar. Here's one example of the conservative hysteria this is evoking. This story's got everything. The UN, which they hate, and have all sorts of fun conspiracy notions about. The environment and endangered species, which they're also 100% against. Left-wing-inspired "persecution" of poor innocent rich folks who just want to enjoy their bland, salty fish eggs in peace.
Interestingly, we have a similar fishy situation here in Oregon, except with sea urchins instead of sturgeon. People are often surprised that sea urchins are commercially fished along the Pacific coast. It's not like you see them at the grocery store, or even in seafood markets on the coast. No, they're all exported to Japan, where sea urchin eggs are a delicacy. They only started catching the things here in the early 70's, and the sea urchin population seems to have been in a steady and ongoing decline ever since due to overfishing. What makes this even more fun is that the urchin population started out at an unnaturally inflated size, due to the prior local elimination of its main predator, the sea otter. And when the urchin population explodes, the little beasties mow down the coastal kelp forests that provide shelter to numerous species of fish, hurting those populations as well. So some might argue that overfishing of sea urchins is good news for kelp and fish. Well, until the population crashes, which is something fisheries of all types are prone to do, and then there aren't enough urchins around to keep the kelp in check. Then I suppose the answer to that problem will be some kind of anti-kelp herbicide, or an ongoing Federal kelp mitigation program at taxpayer expense.
Here's a pic of a sea otter eating a sea urchin.
Here's an even cuter sea otter picture. Awwwwww.....
As you may have noticed with the stubby little Wikipedia article referenced above, there's not a lot of info on the net about these babies. And I've seen nothing at all about "surreal-hypercomplex" numbers, which would seem to be a logical extension of the idea. With the use of something called the Cayley-Dickson construction, you can go on indefinitely, creating ever-more-hypercomplex (and ill-behaved) numbers. It's interesting to note that the number of dimensions of a number created this way is always going to be a power of 2, which suggests a sort of parallel with the binary-tree way that surreals are constructed. Well, it does to me, anyway, but then I'm a computer geek, not a mathematician, and besides, by no means are all mathematicians happy with Conway and his surreals (you'll want to read a few posts in the thread to get the gist of the argument). Anyway, a surreal-style tree that also gains dimensions on the way down is quite an interesting thing to comtemplate. At omega, assuming the analogy holds this far, you'd start encountering weird beasts like numbers with an infinite number of dimensions. Just try to imagine that for a moment. And each dimension a surreal number, possibly infinite or infinitesimal. Wheee!
I'd hope there'd be no way to use something as esoteric as a surcomplex number to design a new kind of bomb, but you never can tell. GH Hardy took a great deal of pride in the notion that his beloved number theory was of no practical use to anyone, not foreseeing the rise of math-intensive cryptography. Now, cryptography clearly isn't a bomb, and has lots of wholesome, nonmilitary applications, but in this day and age it's also safe to assume that numerous large numbers have been factored using the Cheney algorithm, which is to find someone who already knows the factors, and torture them until they cough 'em up.
Speaking of Cheney, here's another fun article about his (and Rummy's) longstanding love of surveillance and hatred of Constitutional government. Meanwhile, the talk radio / think tank / conservative blog echo chamber is full of the usual suspects, each trying to outdo the next in heaping scorn on outdated and subversive notions like search warrants, habeas corpus, the ban on cruel and unusual punishment, freedom of speech. We're told again and again that anyone who still believes in that old-fashioned stuff is a commie pinko liberal who hates America and loves the evildoers. I ask again, what's this country coming to, when to be considered a "true patriot" you're expected to abandon, and actively oppose, the entirety of the country's founding principles?
Well, actually today the wingnut universe has other, more immediate concerns, namely yesterday's UN-imposed ban on trade in wild caviar. Here's one example of the conservative hysteria this is evoking. This story's got everything. The UN, which they hate, and have all sorts of fun conspiracy notions about. The environment and endangered species, which they're also 100% against. Left-wing-inspired "persecution" of poor innocent rich folks who just want to enjoy their bland, salty fish eggs in peace.
Interestingly, we have a similar fishy situation here in Oregon, except with sea urchins instead of sturgeon. People are often surprised that sea urchins are commercially fished along the Pacific coast. It's not like you see them at the grocery store, or even in seafood markets on the coast. No, they're all exported to Japan, where sea urchin eggs are a delicacy. They only started catching the things here in the early 70's, and the sea urchin population seems to have been in a steady and ongoing decline ever since due to overfishing. What makes this even more fun is that the urchin population started out at an unnaturally inflated size, due to the prior local elimination of its main predator, the sea otter. And when the urchin population explodes, the little beasties mow down the coastal kelp forests that provide shelter to numerous species of fish, hurting those populations as well. So some might argue that overfishing of sea urchins is good news for kelp and fish. Well, until the population crashes, which is something fisheries of all types are prone to do, and then there aren't enough urchins around to keep the kelp in check. Then I suppose the answer to that problem will be some kind of anti-kelp herbicide, or an ongoing Federal kelp mitigation program at taxpayer expense.
Here's a pic of a sea otter eating a sea urchin.
Here's an even cuter sea otter picture. Awwwwww.....
Leland 1
"Leland 1" is the official name of the ugly sculpture I continue to think of as "Rusting Chunks No. 5". That link, and this one provide some additional info about the artists. Apparently other works by one of the artists have been stolen. And this one hasn't, probably just because it's so big. Still, you'd think that a few enterprising meth tweakers could make short work of it, score a fair amount of money for the scrap metal, and do society a big favor in the process. But no. Not so far, anyway.
That abomination should not be confused with an unrelated artwork that came up during a search on the phrase "leland 1". I rather like this painting. Its actual title is "1994 X", where X is the Roman numeral. Seems like quite a sensible naming convention to me. The "leland 1" connection is that the artist's last name is Leland, and this is the first of six images on his faculty bio at the University of Tennessee.
Meanwhile, the (again unrelated) leland.com simply offers a photo of a happy middle-aged couple, with the caption "Future home of leland.com". One could argue it's actually the current home of leland.com, technically, and it's just a very small home. But it's probably not worth arguing about. The Leland Report, once again unrelated, covers Leelanau County, a beautiful corner of the Michigan lakeshore, and a place that I'd never heard of and was entirely unfamilar with until just now. It's an oddly fitting place to end up, since outsiders often wrongly imagine that all of Michigan is a barren landscape of rusting chunks, which sort of brings us full circle, or something.
Updated: Linky from Edward Blank.
Updated 7/31/2010: Added a Google map and a Flickr slideshow, for added tasty modern interweb goodness. Sorry 'bout that, dialup users...
Updated 10/5/2020: Replaced that crufty old Flickr slideshow with a non-Flash one as Chrome is pulling the plug on Flash support at the end of the year. The replacement is not exactly tasty or modern, but at least it'll work next year. Also enlarged the map to fit the margins this humble blog has had for mumble-mumble years, since I was in the neighborhood anyway.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Rusting Chunks No. 5
Recently came across this blog about public art in Portland. Ok so far as it goes, and it highlights a number of obscure or forgotten works around town, but reading it you'd think we've got nothing but good art here in town. If only.
Updated 8/6/06: Actually this is an unfair characterization, and I was being snarky and unreasonable, as I often am. Sadly, this is my way. So by all means, go visit the Portland Public Art blog. I may not always agree 100%, but it's worth your time, and mine.
The problem I've noticed is that the PDX arts community is very, very small, so that it's unwise for anyone to burn their bridges with anyone else. It's like being in Congress: If you want to get along, you go along. Therefore, everyone pretends to like everyone else's work, no matter what it is.
We're also a small and insecure city, and we perceive that we're a tiny island of culture in a sea of primeval ignorance (i.e. loggers). We know "they" hate and fear all art, so we have to like all of it, just to show that we're different from them. It's assumed that if you criticize a supposedly "difficult" artwork, you must be an uneducated philistine, and probably a Thomas Kinkade fan. You've just voluntarily voted yourself off the island.
Luckily I'm not part of the tribe, and don't wish to join, so I've got nothing to lose. I've already listed a few of the ugliest buildings in town, although it's not a comprehensive list, certainly. Surely our inventory of bad public artworks deserves similar treatment. Here are a few off the top of my head. I reserve the right to add more art to the Hall of Shame, since I'm absolutely sure there's more bad art out there I haven't thought of yet.
Updated 8/6/06: Actually this is an unfair characterization, and I was being snarky and unreasonable, as I often am. Sadly, this is my way. So by all means, go visit the Portland Public Art blog. I may not always agree 100%, but it's worth your time, and mine.
The problem I've noticed is that the PDX arts community is very, very small, so that it's unwise for anyone to burn their bridges with anyone else. It's like being in Congress: If you want to get along, you go along. Therefore, everyone pretends to like everyone else's work, no matter what it is.
We're also a small and insecure city, and we perceive that we're a tiny island of culture in a sea of primeval ignorance (i.e. loggers). We know "they" hate and fear all art, so we have to like all of it, just to show that we're different from them. It's assumed that if you criticize a supposedly "difficult" artwork, you must be an uneducated philistine, and probably a Thomas Kinkade fan. You've just voluntarily voted yourself off the island.
Luckily I'm not part of the tribe, and don't wish to join, so I've got nothing to lose. I've already listed a few of the ugliest buildings in town, although it's not a comprehensive list, certainly. Surely our inventory of bad public artworks deserves similar treatment. Here are a few off the top of my head. I reserve the right to add more art to the Hall of Shame, since I'm absolutely sure there's more bad art out there I haven't thought of yet.
- "Essential Forces", the fountain at the Rose Garden arena. One of those timed, computer-controlled fountains beloved by casinos and some (but by no means all) small children (and by them only on hot days). Actively anxiety-inducing, which is really remarkable for something made entirely of running water. And that's even without the "fire feature" running, which only happens before big sports events at the arena.
- A certain horrible sculpture in my general neighborhood. I've forgotten the official name, but I've taken to calling it "Rusting Chunks No. 5". A massive pile of rusting steel with a bit of burnt-orange enamel on the side, plonked down right in your way so you have to detour around it, a la Tilted Arc. It's really worse than I'm describing it. I'll post a picture if I can find one, or I can take one that really does it justice. [Updated: I did find some pics. Look here, if you dare.)] At least they had the sense to site it in a dead-end plaza where it only offends the residents of neighboring condo towers. If they'd put it in the middle of town, it'd have been melted down years ago. Certain artists love the idea of confrontational ugliness, art that inconveniences you, aggressively gets in your way, reminds you that the government (who paid for the thing) is huge and powerful and doesn't care whether you exist, much less care what you think. Resistance is futile! One hopeful sign: there used to be a "companion" piece in the area, a tall cylinder covered in ceramic tiles, all in the same burnt orange color. It was set in a small grassy plaza, with a long series of steps leading up to it as if it were some sort of edifying monumental work. A formal setting, but with mute, soul-crushing emptiness at the center: Instead of a winged Victory, there was a parking garage pillar, encrusted in tiles swiped from a groovy 70's-era public toilet. It's gone now, plaza and all, replaced by Portland State University's new CompSci building. I'd have to call that a real, quantifiable improvement. No word on what happened to the old "sculpture". Perhaps it was dynamited.
- "Untitled", at the ODS Tower, in which Judy Pfaff went all Abu Ghraib on a poor innocent tree. This is the best pic I could find. Most pics of the ODS Tower don't show the tree, and for good reason. Depressing and authoritarian as anything you've ever seen. Manages to surpass the "best" works of the most hardcore 60's brutalists, and gets extra brutalism points for incorporating an actual dead organism, instead of just working in grey concrete and rusting steel like in the old days. Someone should convince Dick Cheney to buy this thing and take it off our hands. It's right up his alley. On top of everything else, the artist couldn't even think of a name for the thing.
- South Waterfront Park. You guys really like walkways. You like the idea of people ambling around idly, enjoying nature, or whatever. We got it. Enough, already. The triangular garden part feels like the grounds of an expensive nursing home, except without any flowers. You can just imagine affluent oldsters scooting around the place with their walkers, with greedy, beady-eyed next-of-kin in tow, pretending to be all caring and attentive. You can practically see it with your own eyes. But the best part is the series of paths that angle down to the river. They just sort of angle down to the river and end up in the river. If you're bored on a summer afternoon, it's fun to grab a park bench and watch the bewildered tourists. They'll try one, figuring it goes somewhere. Maybe there's another path that continues closer to the river or something. That would be a reasonable guess, but no, not here. The paths just take you down to the river's edge, where you'll do... what? Nothing, probably. It's certainly not a boat launch, or a beach, or anything useful. Perhaps you're supposed to try to imagine what the landscape artist had in mind, if anything. This is a classic overdesigned control-freak Portland park, where your every move has been unsubtly shaped by the artistic Powers That Be.
- Oh, but it gets better, oh so much better. Take a peek at our shiny new Tanner Springs Park, where rule number one is "look, but don't touch". Our latest and conceptually greatest city park, the one that comes with an instruction booklet, in which you're basically scolded not to touch anything whatsoever, lest you upset the delicate (and completely artificial) ecological balance, with unimaginable consequences. At the very least, the ozone layer will collapse, or something. The park caters to the vanity of aging rich boomers, by letting them feel they're really making a difference just by not letting their precious pugs crap in the grass. The first park in the Pearl District was Jamison Square, which has a really fun fountain that's become a hit with the kids. It even attracts suburban kids and their parents. They ride the train into town, and then the streetcar up to the park, and have a great time splashing around in the water. It's great. The park's so popular it's even attracted its own hot dog stand during the summer. None of this was anticipated by the Powers That Be, and so to avoid a similar calamity with the next park, they designed the next one to be "contemplative", with an unattractive water feature full of dank, muddy water that no parent would ever let their kid wade in. Or even their dog, for that matter. Sure enough, walk past both parks on a summer's day, and one's full of people, and the other's nearly empty. Mission Accomplished! The most telling thing about the park is the east edge, which is marked by a high wall built out of rusting rails (the area used to be a railyard, in its formerly-useful days). You can tell this was a compromise; I expect that if they'd been given free rein, the design team would've surrounded the entire park with such a wall, so that only the elect few (professional architects, designers, "creative class" types) could gaze upon its ecological wonders. And to top it all off, this artificial bit of nature sits right next to actual nature. The WIllamette River is just a few blocks away, and Forest Park is a 10 minute bus ride away, where you'll find real streams, with plants that grew where they are on their own, with no human intervention. Many streams even have fish in them, fish that also got there on their own, with no human intervention. But without a human being to put a stamp on the thing, a la Duchamp, it's Nature, not Art, so it really doesn't count. In this case, Art is an cheesy imitation of Nature, sanitized for your protection, and with a big rulebook. If I was more extroverted, and had more of a performance art bent than I do, I'd build a makeshift raft, put on a Huck Finn outfit, and sail around that prissy little pond of theirs, asking all passersby if they know the way to the Mississippi and points west. I doubt anyone would get it, though. As a city, we're far less educated than we let on. Also, they'd arrest me for sure; I'm sure there's a rule against rafts, and probably the Huck Finn outfit would violate a dress code or constitute disorderly conduct, or something. And if I could convince anyone to play the part of Jim, he'd be arrested as well, for being black in a nice part of town.
- David Manuel's "The Promise Land" (yes, it's "promise", not "promised"), that pioneer family in Chapman Square. This was surprisingly controversial when the artist first offered it to the city. It was criticized as patriarchal, racist (as in anti-Indian), and reflecting an exclusive white male perspective, etc. I think the criticism was basically justified, although it was phrased so that nobody except graduate students could understand it, or take it seriously at the time. The arts community hated the statues for not being Real Art, since the sculptor has a studio off in Eastern Oregon and sells a lot of his work directly to tourists passing through the area. And again, they had a point. The statues are inferior from a purely technical standpoint, on top of whatever fussy political objections one might have. It's like a Thomas Kinkade painting in bronze. While I have to roll my eyes at people who honestly think it's the end of the world every time somebody buys a Kinkade "painting", it's also intuitively obvious that all things Kinkade, and Manuel for that matter, are kitschy crap. If we're going to do kitschy crap, I'd rather have my tax dollars go for the world's largest velvet Elvis. That, at least, would be something we could brag about to out-of-towners. IIRC we got stuck with the world's ugliest pioneers due to a feud between the city and the county. The city didn't want it, if memory serves, but the county stuck it in a city park anyway, with Mr. Dead White Male Pioneer pointing an accusing finger right at city hall, no less. All just so the county could show the city who's the real boss around these parts.
- "MLK & Friends" statue at the Oregon Convention Center. It's extra hard to criticize public art when it's made with high-minded noble intentions, but this grouping of statues is poorly executed, looks cheap, and feels "educational" in the classic Soviet style -- although the Soviets did it much better, to be honest. I've never heard anyone else criticize this thing. I guess we all cut it some extra slack for PC reasons. The real irony here is that the convention center sits roughly where the heart of Portland's black community used to be, until it was all bulldozed in the 60's in the name of "urban renewal". The city's quite happy to rename a street MLK Blvd. set up a third-rate statue next to it, anything except come to grips with an actual injustice it perpetrated within living memory.
Ten Lords a-Leaping. Or Not.
A few days ago, as part of my holiday-related blathering, I was going to propose that if the religious right really wanted to do some good for once, they ought to start a campaign to make all 12 days of Christmas legal holidays. It might focus people's attention on the supposed "real" reason for the holiday, for people who care about that sort of thing. Or at least it'd give everyone 12 days off in a row. The general public could really get behind a campaign like that, even unchurched heathens like myself.
On the other hand, we're on day 10, it still feels like it's the holiday season, and said season is really starting to overstay its welcome. The Monday legal observances for Christmas and New Year's Day just drag whole thing out. We were out around town yesterday, and people are still in a frantic holiday shopping mood. All those after-Christmas fire sales, I imagine. Enough, already. Get back to work.
On a not-very-related note, if you're not already feeling overfed after the recent month of mandatory mirth and merriment, there's now an RSS-friendly feed for Cyclotram. As usual during this time of year, some assembly was required. Well, not actual assembly, not yet, anyway, but creating it required me to sign up with a third party, since the default feed you get with Blogger is Atom-only, and then there's some cut-n-paste html to deal with.
Speaking of overfeeding, here's an article titled in part "Bush Pigs Out". Sadly, it's not the Bush that I care about, although I understand this guy is an excellent football player.
Speaking of Bush, here are a couple more fun articles I've come across about GWB and your civil liberties: "The Bush Family Coup", and one about GWB and the 4th Amendment. The second article points out that there's already a Supreme Court precedent about no-warrant surveillance in the name of "national security", and in that 1972 case, the Court plainly said ixnay on the iretapsway. To be sure, this was in relation to purely domestic surveillance, which the Glorious Leader promises up and down he isn't engaging in. Just like he promised us Iraq was full of WMDs.
It's very simple, really. Nothing happens in this White House without going through Karl Rove and the whole political operation. Is it even remotely conceivable that GWB & Co. would award themselves absolute power, and then not seek to abuse it for partisan advantage? In their worldview, anyone who doesn't buy the whole party line without question is actively helping the evildoers. They've defined "enemy" as broadly as possible, and so they see enemies everywhere. Further, when it's decided someone's an enemy, the administration feels it's entitled to do as it pleases against them. They can spy on anyone, detain them indefinitely, have them tortured or executed, entirely at their discretion, with no checks and balances whatsoever. We're supposed to accept vague promises to use this power "wisely", made by habitual liars, as a substitute for the constitutional protections we've enjoyed for over two centuries.
On a somewhat lighter note: I present to you the Lesser Bushbaby. (Awwwww...) You might think I'm still talking about GWB now, but I'm not. Honest. I mean, look at the picture. Look at those ears. It obviously spends a lot of its time listening, unlike certain people I'm not talking about right now.
On the other hand, we're on day 10, it still feels like it's the holiday season, and said season is really starting to overstay its welcome. The Monday legal observances for Christmas and New Year's Day just drag whole thing out. We were out around town yesterday, and people are still in a frantic holiday shopping mood. All those after-Christmas fire sales, I imagine. Enough, already. Get back to work.
On a not-very-related note, if you're not already feeling overfed after the recent month of mandatory mirth and merriment, there's now an RSS-friendly feed for Cyclotram. As usual during this time of year, some assembly was required. Well, not actual assembly, not yet, anyway, but creating it required me to sign up with a third party, since the default feed you get with Blogger is Atom-only, and then there's some cut-n-paste html to deal with.
Speaking of overfeeding, here's an article titled in part "Bush Pigs Out". Sadly, it's not the Bush that I care about, although I understand this guy is an excellent football player.
Speaking of Bush, here are a couple more fun articles I've come across about GWB and your civil liberties: "The Bush Family Coup", and one about GWB and the 4th Amendment. The second article points out that there's already a Supreme Court precedent about no-warrant surveillance in the name of "national security", and in that 1972 case, the Court plainly said ixnay on the iretapsway. To be sure, this was in relation to purely domestic surveillance, which the Glorious Leader promises up and down he isn't engaging in. Just like he promised us Iraq was full of WMDs.
It's very simple, really. Nothing happens in this White House without going through Karl Rove and the whole political operation. Is it even remotely conceivable that GWB & Co. would award themselves absolute power, and then not seek to abuse it for partisan advantage? In their worldview, anyone who doesn't buy the whole party line without question is actively helping the evildoers. They've defined "enemy" as broadly as possible, and so they see enemies everywhere. Further, when it's decided someone's an enemy, the administration feels it's entitled to do as it pleases against them. They can spy on anyone, detain them indefinitely, have them tortured or executed, entirely at their discretion, with no checks and balances whatsoever. We're supposed to accept vague promises to use this power "wisely", made by habitual liars, as a substitute for the constitutional protections we've enjoyed for over two centuries.
On a somewhat lighter note: I present to you the Lesser Bushbaby. (Awwwww...) You might think I'm still talking about GWB now, but I'm not. Honest. I mean, look at the picture. Look at those ears. It obviously spends a lot of its time listening, unlike certain people I'm not talking about right now.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Animated Minions, Unite!
It's interesting, and rather depressing, to occasionally do a Google News search for the word "philosophy" (although the results are far less depressing than a search on the word "kitten").
At the moment, the top, er, philosophy article is from our very own Oregonian, which discusses the coach of the local NBA team, and his coaching philosophy. I'm not a big basketball fan, but there's apparently some debate about who gets to start at point guard, or something.
Another top article comes to us from the Khaleej Times of Dubai, luridly wringing its hands about Hindu extremists in India.
There's a piece titled My Philosophy, from The Stranger, an alternative paper out of Seattle. You know for sure that the author's not totally shallow, because hurricanes and tsunamis get a brief mention in his list of regrets, sandwiched in between Hunter S. Thompson offing himself, and all the indie rock and hip hop albums that sucked this year.
This looks more interesting: A French mention of a British book titled Monsters and Philosophy. A nicely eclectic list of source materials and topics: Aristotle, conjoined twins, unicorns, Hegel, creationism, and so forth. Although I suspect that the original essays are far less interesting than the titles would suggest. Academic writing has an odd way of being simultaneously tedious and silly. You'll have a few hundred pages of dense, impenetrable prose, all to prove the thesis that that the Revolution is right around the corner now, and after it comes, the world will be run by an anarcho-syndicalist commune of unicorn-riding conjoined twins. Or something. Anyway, the book's sure to sell lots of copies in France, given their surprising penchant for the odd and grotesque, e.g. Grand Guignol, or I guess Cirque du Soleil for that matter, or their longstanding fascination with Edgar Allan Poe.
Speaking of odd and grotesque, I recently came into posession of a ghastly book of eldritch incantations, a black grimoire of unspeakable things mortal man was not meant to know, a vile tome of instruction in the dark arts. I speak, of course, of "Developing for Microsoft Agent", subitled "Microsoft ActiveX Technology for Interactive Animated Characters". In layperson's terms, it's the Clippy Construction Kit. Yes, you too can build your own horrific, unkillable animated minions, and send them forth across the net to offer "friendly advice" and otherwise torment and bedevil the world of the living. I think it might make for a fun, geekish practical joke, but I have to wonder if that itself is part of a sneaky ploy by the Beast of Redmond. No doubt they've realized you can get GenX types to do just about anything, if you can just make them think doing it is ironic. So maybe it's all a ghastly trap laid to ensnare unwary developers. I didn't pay a cent for the book, and I haven't broken the seal on the CD yet (apparently the previous owner never got around to that... or didn't survive long enough...). So the CD remains there in its clear envelope, all silvery and shiny and beautiful, beckoning to me, calling to me....
Oh, uh, anyway, I also picked up a book about BeOS at the same time. When you touch the two books together, unearthly green sparks shoot around the room, your hair stands on end, and clocks start to run backwards. I'm still trying to figure out the exact mechanism here, but it may be a promising source of energy if I can figure out how to harness it. My biggest concern is that BeOS books are almost certainly a limited, nonrenewable, and dwindling resource. Maybe we need to start a federal Strategic BeOS Reserve, sort of like what we did with helium.
At the moment, the top, er, philosophy article is from our very own Oregonian, which discusses the coach of the local NBA team, and his coaching philosophy. I'm not a big basketball fan, but there's apparently some debate about who gets to start at point guard, or something.
Another top article comes to us from the Khaleej Times of Dubai, luridly wringing its hands about Hindu extremists in India.
There's a piece titled My Philosophy, from The Stranger, an alternative paper out of Seattle. You know for sure that the author's not totally shallow, because hurricanes and tsunamis get a brief mention in his list of regrets, sandwiched in between Hunter S. Thompson offing himself, and all the indie rock and hip hop albums that sucked this year.
This looks more interesting: A French mention of a British book titled Monsters and Philosophy. A nicely eclectic list of source materials and topics: Aristotle, conjoined twins, unicorns, Hegel, creationism, and so forth. Although I suspect that the original essays are far less interesting than the titles would suggest. Academic writing has an odd way of being simultaneously tedious and silly. You'll have a few hundred pages of dense, impenetrable prose, all to prove the thesis that that the Revolution is right around the corner now, and after it comes, the world will be run by an anarcho-syndicalist commune of unicorn-riding conjoined twins. Or something. Anyway, the book's sure to sell lots of copies in France, given their surprising penchant for the odd and grotesque, e.g. Grand Guignol, or I guess Cirque du Soleil for that matter, or their longstanding fascination with Edgar Allan Poe.
Speaking of odd and grotesque, I recently came into posession of a ghastly book of eldritch incantations, a black grimoire of unspeakable things mortal man was not meant to know, a vile tome of instruction in the dark arts. I speak, of course, of "Developing for Microsoft Agent", subitled "Microsoft ActiveX Technology for Interactive Animated Characters". In layperson's terms, it's the Clippy Construction Kit. Yes, you too can build your own horrific, unkillable animated minions, and send them forth across the net to offer "friendly advice" and otherwise torment and bedevil the world of the living. I think it might make for a fun, geekish practical joke, but I have to wonder if that itself is part of a sneaky ploy by the Beast of Redmond. No doubt they've realized you can get GenX types to do just about anything, if you can just make them think doing it is ironic. So maybe it's all a ghastly trap laid to ensnare unwary developers. I didn't pay a cent for the book, and I haven't broken the seal on the CD yet (apparently the previous owner never got around to that... or didn't survive long enough...). So the CD remains there in its clear envelope, all silvery and shiny and beautiful, beckoning to me, calling to me....
Oh, uh, anyway, I also picked up a book about BeOS at the same time. When you touch the two books together, unearthly green sparks shoot around the room, your hair stands on end, and clocks start to run backwards. I'm still trying to figure out the exact mechanism here, but it may be a promising source of energy if I can figure out how to harness it. My biggest concern is that BeOS books are almost certainly a limited, nonrenewable, and dwindling resource. Maybe we need to start a federal Strategic BeOS Reserve, sort of like what we did with helium.
Friday, December 30, 2005
Leaky Trojans Cause Accidents
If you're here looking for photos of Tasmanian Devils and/or Tucker Carlson, I'm afraid Google's pointed you at the wrong place. Once upon a time, I linked to a couple of such photos hosted outside this blog, and when those photos disappeared from the interwebs, Google started sending people here instead. No, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me either.
So the links in the first sentence go to Wikipedia, and you may have better luck there. In fact I'm almost certain of it. Alternately, feel free to stay and poke around here for a bit, if you like.
Thx.,
Mgmt.
So the links in the first sentence go to Wikipedia, and you may have better luck there. In fact I'm almost certain of it. Alternately, feel free to stay and poke around here for a bit, if you like.
Thx.,
Mgmt.
 |  |  |
In May, the cooling tower of the now-defunct Trojan Nuclear Plant is due to be imploded, by the same guys who did a real number on the old Kingdome. Locals had suggested keeping it around, either for use as a prison, or maybe to fill with beer during Oktoberfest. But alas, it is not to be.
The plant's been closed for years, and the reactor core was shipped upriver to Hanford a few years back. There was no way the thing could ever be reopened, so this demolition is mostly symbolic, but still, it's going to be Oh, So Satisfying.
The title comes from one of the many anti-Trojan petition drives back in the 1980s, and I'm afraid I can't take credit for it. It was (allegedly) the inspiration for the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant where Homer Simpson works, and although I don't recall that it was especially leaky by nuclear plant standards, it *was* built right on top of several active seismic faults. Yeah, great plan, Mr. Burns, er, PGE.
I'm also afraid I can't take credit for the cool images up top, either. Clicking on any of them will take you to the larger originals.
Our buddies down at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have some pix up showing the appropriately phallic-looking Trojan core being dismantled. It's part of a larger series for students, featuring Our Friend the Atom, who isn't just a deadly isotope, he's also a friendly cartoon character.
I thought we'd dispensed with that patronizing crap back in the 60's, but I guess not. It's not like they're going to stop promoting nuclear plants any time soon, since GWB positively loves the things. Apparently they're really good for the environment, because nukes and oil are our only two choices. Go ahead, pick one, already.
Potatoe
Researchers at Oregon State University have now figured out how to grow potatoes that come in lots of different colors. Sure. It's all fun and games, until they attack Tokyo.
However, I'd hate for people to think that we on the West Coast have a monopoly on potato news. The East Coast gets in on the act as well, they've just got a different take on the subject. Here's the latest gruesome potato-related homicide out of Queens, NY.
Speaking of potatoes, if you're going to be in Scottsdale, AZ towards the end of January, be sure not to miss an exciting public appearance by the one and only Dan Quayle. Seems that while we weren't watching, the former fencepost-like veep has mutated into a "smart-as-they-come businessman". Believe it, or not.
Interestingly, the event is being put together by some org called the "Strategic Research Institute", and deals with the private equity market. A previous event of theirs starred none other than Larry Goldfarb, of Baystar/SCO fame. I'm noticing a theme here.
While we're vaguely on the topic of weird mutations, I recently saw a trailer for "Monster from Green Hell, a jungle-based atomic monster flick from 1958. And then I was shocked to discover that Netflix doesn't have it. This seems like a manifest injustice, although I may change my mind about that if I ever manage to see the thing.
...meanwhile, in non-tuberous news, Tropical Storm Zeta has just formed in the Atlantic. Anybody know what happens if we run out of greek letters? Kanji characters, maybe?
However, I'd hate for people to think that we on the West Coast have a monopoly on potato news. The East Coast gets in on the act as well, they've just got a different take on the subject. Here's the latest gruesome potato-related homicide out of Queens, NY.
Speaking of potatoes, if you're going to be in Scottsdale, AZ towards the end of January, be sure not to miss an exciting public appearance by the one and only Dan Quayle. Seems that while we weren't watching, the former fencepost-like veep has mutated into a "smart-as-they-come businessman". Believe it, or not.
Interestingly, the event is being put together by some org called the "Strategic Research Institute", and deals with the private equity market. A previous event of theirs starred none other than Larry Goldfarb, of Baystar/SCO fame. I'm noticing a theme here.
While we're vaguely on the topic of weird mutations, I recently saw a trailer for "Monster from Green Hell, a jungle-based atomic monster flick from 1958. And then I was shocked to discover that Netflix doesn't have it. This seems like a manifest injustice, although I may change my mind about that if I ever manage to see the thing.
...meanwhile, in non-tuberous news, Tropical Storm Zeta has just formed in the Atlantic. Anybody know what happens if we run out of greek letters? Kanji characters, maybe?
WMF,WTF!?
So that WMF file vulnerability I wrote about a couple days ago seems to be a Big Deal, with exploits popping up left and right. Worms, spyware, the whole schmeer. Here's some updated coverage about this fiasco from George Ou and Suzi Turner. If you visit Suzi Turner's "Spyware Confidential" blog, be sure to check out some of the other articles. Top 10 rogue anti-spyware is rather fascinating.
And I've yet to see anyone explain why it's even remotely reasonable that a malformed graphics file should allow arbitrary code to run under the SYSTEM account.
It's probably one of those things they "had" to do to maintain ass-backwards compatibility with ancient Windows versions, dating back to the pre-networking era. If you read Petzold, or just look at the exports of GDI32.DLL, you'll notice that functions for handling metafiles are right there next to your regular drawing primitives and so forth. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and now we're stuck with it.
Well, we're not really stuck with it. I have no Windows boxes at home. While one certainly can't rule out the possibility of, say, a PDF vulnerability in OSX (PDF being essentially the "metafile" format on OSX), it's not clear whether that would immediately hand over root access on the box. Even if it did, the bug wouldn't be exploited to anywhere near this degree. I definitely will at some point go off on a rant about crappiness in the Unix world, but not today.
In happier news for the PC (and soon Mac) universe, Intel's just unveiled its shiny new corporate logo. And now you know.
Meanwhile, in happier news for the Linux universe, it's always fun when Linus calls 'em like he sees 'em.
And then the thread continues.
In that spirit, here's a webcam where you can watch live Gentoo penguins in the wild, from a German+Chilean research station in Antarctica. What's really fun is that the station itself isn't primarily concerned with penguins; the big dish in the background is the main deal, and it's used for satellite tracking and VLBI. Which further supports my hypothesis that there's a deep and mystical connection between astronomical research and cute wildlife, for example see my WOMBAT post from a few days back. I can't explain the connection, but I find it oddly comforting.
And I've yet to see anyone explain why it's even remotely reasonable that a malformed graphics file should allow arbitrary code to run under the SYSTEM account.
It's probably one of those things they "had" to do to maintain ass-backwards compatibility with ancient Windows versions, dating back to the pre-networking era. If you read Petzold, or just look at the exports of GDI32.DLL, you'll notice that functions for handling metafiles are right there next to your regular drawing primitives and so forth. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and now we're stuck with it.
Well, we're not really stuck with it. I have no Windows boxes at home. While one certainly can't rule out the possibility of, say, a PDF vulnerability in OSX (PDF being essentially the "metafile" format on OSX), it's not clear whether that would immediately hand over root access on the box. Even if it did, the bug wouldn't be exploited to anywhere near this degree. I definitely will at some point go off on a rant about crappiness in the Unix world, but not today.
In happier news for the PC (and soon Mac) universe, Intel's just unveiled its shiny new corporate logo. And now you know.
Meanwhile, in happier news for the Linux universe, it's always fun when Linus calls 'em like he sees 'em.
And then the thread continues.
Pretty much the ONLY people who ever complain about those internal kernel
interfaces changing are the free-loaders. It's hard for them, because they
don't want to play according to the rules. Tough. Watch me not care:
[ Linus sits in his chair, patently not caring ]
See?
In that spirit, here's a webcam where you can watch live Gentoo penguins in the wild, from a German+Chilean research station in Antarctica. What's really fun is that the station itself isn't primarily concerned with penguins; the big dish in the background is the main deal, and it's used for satellite tracking and VLBI. Which further supports my hypothesis that there's a deep and mystical connection between astronomical research and cute wildlife, for example see my WOMBAT post from a few days back. I can't explain the connection, but I find it oddly comforting.
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Today's giant bug movie
...is called "Cosmic Monsters", a.k.a. "The Strange World of Planet X", from way back in 1952. You haven't heard of it because it's mostly a lot of talk, and only delivers the giant bugs in the last act. Also, it's British. Mad scientist damages Earth's magnetic field, allowing cosmic rays to hit the earth. As a result, bugs and lizards grow to "gigantic" proportions and start ravaging the fair English countryside. Until the local authorities show up with guns and shoot them darn bugs. Then a benevolent alien steps in and has his remote-control UFO whack the mad scientist, and we all live happily ever after.
Pretty run-of-the-mill, but it gets points for openly acknowledging the tired cliche (already, in 1952) of the token icy female scientist, and making her cute and French instead. Also, the male "protagonist" is supposed to be Canadian, which is mildly unusual. Also, I like the bit where a large egg of unknown origin is discovered, and the scientists' advice is to go back to the kitchen and hard-boil the thing ASAP. I think this explains a great deal about English cuisine.
"Beginning of the End" is better overall, the photography is surprisingly good, and the DVD audio commentary is kind of interesting. I would dare to say this is the best locusts-eating-Chicago film that's ever been made, and that would be saying a lot if any others existed.
On the other hand, "Sting of Death" (which I saw recently) is quite a poor film, despite the big airboat chase in the Everglades, and the highly amusing jellyfish-man effects. You'll get most of what you need by watching the last 10 minutes or so. Although if you're really hard up for campiness you might look for the musical numbers as well, which feature songs and even a personal appearance by the legendary Neil Sedaka. Yes, you read that right.
Meanwhile, in more timely news, the 2005 Golden Turkeys are out, and Guy Ritchie (Mr. Madonna) wins big! I haven't seen a single movie on their top 10 list, which makes me rather proud. As a token contrary opinion, this blog posting argues that "Alone in the Dark" is one of the worst movies ever, right up there with Ed Wood's ouevre. Which just tells me that the author a.) lacks a proper historical perspective, and b.) doesn't realize that there have been far worse filmmakers than Ed Wood; for all his faults, his work holds your interest, which is more than you can say for many filmmakers of that era.
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Extremely Critical!!!
So there's a new Windows security advisory out. We're told this one's EXTREMELY CRITICAL. All melodrama aside, it's exceedingly silly that one can gain absolute power over a Windows box with the aid of a malformed graphics metafile.
It's like the previous post about today's DDE nightmare. I haven't seen a live Windows metafile, whether WMF or EMF, for a long, long time. But that hardly matters, because Windows must keep supporting WMF+EMF forever, for the sake of backwards compatibility. And sandboxing these metafiles just wouldn't be the Redmond Way. So when a file that's (allegedly) of a certain format enjoys a privileged, non-validated gateway into the inner sanctum of the operating system, it only takes one malefactor, and it's game over.
Metafiles were a triumph of 1980s technology. The idea was that you could save disk space and cpu cycles (both at a premium) by just recording to a file each call to the low-level GUI portion of the OS. Displaying the resulting file would be a simple matter of playing back the sequence of OS calls. Great idea, if memory and CPU cycles are at a premium, and you're willing to sacrifice device independence, and OS independence. ISTR that the GEM gui was big on metafiles, from back in my Atari ST days. In this day and age, with wild Opterons roaming the Earth, it's a positively goofy idea.
Perhaps you've noticed this rant is slightly unbalanced, offering up far more outrage than the matter really deserves. Mea culpa. It's the beer, probably. When you're stuck with drinking a whole bottle of Gouden Carolus Noël because nobody else really likes it, your opinions tend to become rather, er, inflated.
In happier news, it seems that Satan has finally been captured by Our Boys in Blue, and he's now cooling his heels, er, hooves, in a Florida county jail. Your tax dollars at work! Although the fact that this happened in Florida may result in a bit of sibling rivalry between Governor Jeb and his brother George, who'd sworn to personally rid the world of evil. Maybe they'll go on Springer or something.
For your ecumenical reading pleasure, here are a couple of stories about the Father of All Lies (and stepfather to Darl McBride) from an Islamic perspective: [1] [2].
In that spirit, here's the (relatively) cutest picture I could find of a Tasmanian Devil. Note that this is not the animated Tasmanian Devil, as that would invite expensive "IP" litigation and so forth.
And another pic of Ol' Whatsisname, in his "Tucker Carlson" persona. The bow tie is supposed to make you think he's a harmless doofus. But don't be fooled. Inside the beltway, people who look like that are actually taken seriously. Honest.
[Updated 10/27/06: For the last week or so, I've been getting tons of Google image search hits because I linked to that photo of a certain bowtied beltway charlatan (who I won't mention by name a second time for fear of boosting my PageRank even further). You won't find the photo here, and I'm not sure I've even mentioned the guy again in any capacity. So I'm afraid you've come to the wrong place, if that's why you're here. Sorry about that.]
It's like the previous post about today's DDE nightmare. I haven't seen a live Windows metafile, whether WMF or EMF, for a long, long time. But that hardly matters, because Windows must keep supporting WMF+EMF forever, for the sake of backwards compatibility. And sandboxing these metafiles just wouldn't be the Redmond Way. So when a file that's (allegedly) of a certain format enjoys a privileged, non-validated gateway into the inner sanctum of the operating system, it only takes one malefactor, and it's game over.
Metafiles were a triumph of 1980s technology. The idea was that you could save disk space and cpu cycles (both at a premium) by just recording to a file each call to the low-level GUI portion of the OS. Displaying the resulting file would be a simple matter of playing back the sequence of OS calls. Great idea, if memory and CPU cycles are at a premium, and you're willing to sacrifice device independence, and OS independence. ISTR that the GEM gui was big on metafiles, from back in my Atari ST days. In this day and age, with wild Opterons roaming the Earth, it's a positively goofy idea.
Perhaps you've noticed this rant is slightly unbalanced, offering up far more outrage than the matter really deserves. Mea culpa. It's the beer, probably. When you're stuck with drinking a whole bottle of Gouden Carolus Noël because nobody else really likes it, your opinions tend to become rather, er, inflated.
In happier news, it seems that Satan has finally been captured by Our Boys in Blue, and he's now cooling his heels, er, hooves, in a Florida county jail. Your tax dollars at work! Although the fact that this happened in Florida may result in a bit of sibling rivalry between Governor Jeb and his brother George, who'd sworn to personally rid the world of evil. Maybe they'll go on Springer or something.
For your ecumenical reading pleasure, here are a couple of stories about the Father of All Lies (and stepfather to Darl McBride) from an Islamic perspective: [1] [2].
In that spirit, here's the (relatively) cutest picture I could find of a Tasmanian Devil. Note that this is not the animated Tasmanian Devil, as that would invite expensive "IP" litigation and so forth.
And another pic of Ol' Whatsisname, in his "Tucker Carlson" persona. The bow tie is supposed to make you think he's a harmless doofus. But don't be fooled. Inside the beltway, people who look like that are actually taken seriously. Honest.
[Updated 10/27/06: For the last week or so, I've been getting tons of Google image search hits because I linked to that photo of a certain bowtied beltway charlatan (who I won't mention by name a second time for fear of boosting my PageRank even further). You won't find the photo here, and I'm not sure I've even mentioned the guy again in any capacity. So I'm afraid you've come to the wrong place, if that's why you're here. Sorry about that.]
Be still my ugly old Hearts$
[This post isn't solely about weird Windows foibles, so if that doesn't interest you, feel free to page down.. It might get better, or not. Whatever.]
So I was looking through the security log on a local Windows box, and saw some activity on something called a "DDE Share". I like to think I'm pretty well-versed in the Windows universe, and I'd never heard of such a thing. Turns out it's a truly ancient form of interprocess communication in Windows, which can operate either on the local machine, or over the network. The main thing it's used for within Windows itself is for the multiplayer feature in MS Hearts. Seriously. I kid you not. I read over the API docs out of morbid curiousity, and I can't make head or tail of how it's supposed to work, which helps to explain why nobody uses it, and why MS appears to consider it an orphan technology they'd rather not talk about. Seems your DDE shares have UNC-like paths, and are protected with regular old security descriptors, which explains where those audit entries came from. Beyond that, how it works is a real head-scratcher to me, but obviously someone's figured it out, since there's at least one recent vulnerability report out there. The 'naming convention' for DDE shares is that names end in a dollar sign (i.e. "Hearts$", hence the title), except when they don't, or when other unrelated shares end in a dollar sign (i.e. "C$" for your C drive's hidden admin share ).
You gotta love it. You just gotta. So far as I can tell, MS has to keep this ugly beast alive just in case your shiny Win2k3 box ever needs to talk to some crufty old 286 running Windows 2.03 that accidentally got sealed inside a wall during the last remodel. Your department's kept this box around all these years because it runs some cheesy old legacy app that only speaks DDE and won't run in "386 enhanced mode", and you can't migrate because (naturally) you don't have the source. Lucky you.
But the one saving grace here is that the NetDDE services are disabled on "modern" versions of Windows, unless you go in and turn them on. So don't, already.
I'd hate for people to come away thinking that Windows is a random, seething, tangled mass of warts and scabs, because it isn't. Far from it. It's a painstakingly designed (and repeatedly redesigned) seething, tangled mass of warts and scabs.
This sordid episode prompted a quick Google News search for the word "ugly", which came up with a few fun hits:
Ok, here's something obscure for ya. A couple of posts ago, I chatted a bit about various weird and fun kinds of numbers: infinite, infinitesimal, hypercomplex, and so on. I had a vague recollection that Godel, Escher, Bach contained a bit about infinite numbers, so I went back and checked, and noticed that it covers yet another variety of infinite quantity, "supernatural numbers", which aren't covered by Wikipedia.
So far I've come across several definitions. This one quite technical, this one rather less so. The problem is that I'm not sure the various hits I'm seeing are all referring to the same animal, and it's not clear that any of them are the same beast referred to in GED, either. I haven't seen any other references to the three-part indexing scheme the book refers to. "Supernatural" is an attractive (if rather obvious) name for an extension to the natural numbers, so is it possible the name's been used more than once? It's all so very confusing. Maybe that's the whole idea, I don't know.
I'd hate to end this on an ugly note, so here's an article with a picture of some adorable little piglets. It's a funny thing about pigs: They're cute, they're intelligent, and they're delicious. Just not all at the same time. Go figure. It's like a conundrum, or something.
So I was looking through the security log on a local Windows box, and saw some activity on something called a "DDE Share". I like to think I'm pretty well-versed in the Windows universe, and I'd never heard of such a thing. Turns out it's a truly ancient form of interprocess communication in Windows, which can operate either on the local machine, or over the network. The main thing it's used for within Windows itself is for the multiplayer feature in MS Hearts. Seriously. I kid you not. I read over the API docs out of morbid curiousity, and I can't make head or tail of how it's supposed to work, which helps to explain why nobody uses it, and why MS appears to consider it an orphan technology they'd rather not talk about. Seems your DDE shares have UNC-like paths, and are protected with regular old security descriptors, which explains where those audit entries came from. Beyond that, how it works is a real head-scratcher to me, but obviously someone's figured it out, since there's at least one recent vulnerability report out there. The 'naming convention' for DDE shares is that names end in a dollar sign (i.e. "Hearts$", hence the title), except when they don't, or when other unrelated shares end in a dollar sign (i.e. "C$" for your C drive's hidden admin share ).
You gotta love it. You just gotta. So far as I can tell, MS has to keep this ugly beast alive just in case your shiny Win2k3 box ever needs to talk to some crufty old 286 running Windows 2.03 that accidentally got sealed inside a wall during the last remodel. Your department's kept this box around all these years because it runs some cheesy old legacy app that only speaks DDE and won't run in "386 enhanced mode", and you can't migrate because (naturally) you don't have the source. Lucky you.
But the one saving grace here is that the NetDDE services are disabled on "modern" versions of Windows, unless you go in and turn them on. So don't, already.
I'd hate for people to come away thinking that Windows is a random, seething, tangled mass of warts and scabs, because it isn't. Far from it. It's a painstakingly designed (and repeatedly redesigned) seething, tangled mass of warts and scabs.
This sordid episode prompted a quick Google News search for the word "ugly", which came up with a few fun hits:
- Another sign that China's well on its way to becoming a modern, advanced country: They're the latest source of ignorant, pushy tourists. The article refers to them as the new "Ugly Americans", so at least we're still the standard by which all other tourists are measured. We can take pride in that, anyway. Hooray for us!
- It's not just tourists that are ugly these days. Molecules are getting in on the act as well. It seems like a completely esoteric topic, and yet look at all the comments the article got. Way more than anything I've ever posted here. I don't get it. I really don't. Maybe I need to find something more obscure to talk about.
- Politics are ugly. Everybody knows that. Politics are even ugly when there aren't any politicians involved, as anyone who's witnessed a major ballot measure campaign can testify. The author of the opinion piece seems to think that doing away with ballot measures will clean things up immensely, and return integrity to the democratic process. Riiiiight.
- And of course, the all time winner in the "ugly" category is, of course, the male gender. A new study indicates that if you're ugly, you're probably a bad dancer as well, so you may as well not bother. The chosen yardstick for ugliness is how asymmetrical someone's facial and body features are, since past studies have shown that people and other mammals equate symmetry with attractiveness. Maybe there's really something to the whole "two left feet" cliche after all...
Ok, here's something obscure for ya. A couple of posts ago, I chatted a bit about various weird and fun kinds of numbers: infinite, infinitesimal, hypercomplex, and so on. I had a vague recollection that Godel, Escher, Bach contained a bit about infinite numbers, so I went back and checked, and noticed that it covers yet another variety of infinite quantity, "supernatural numbers", which aren't covered by Wikipedia.
So far I've come across several definitions. This one quite technical, this one rather less so. The problem is that I'm not sure the various hits I'm seeing are all referring to the same animal, and it's not clear that any of them are the same beast referred to in GED, either. I haven't seen any other references to the three-part indexing scheme the book refers to. "Supernatural" is an attractive (if rather obvious) name for an extension to the natural numbers, so is it possible the name's been used more than once? It's all so very confusing. Maybe that's the whole idea, I don't know.
I'd hate to end this on an ugly note, so here's an article with a picture of some adorable little piglets. It's a funny thing about pigs: They're cute, they're intelligent, and they're delicious. Just not all at the same time. Go figure. It's like a conundrum, or something.
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
2009, here we come!
This is the best news I've heard in a long, long time. Seems that GWB's already started "thinking" about what to do after he's not president anymore. So it looks like here's still at least an outside chance he won't declare himself emperor for life. At least if he's got a say in the matter. But if Cheney says he's got to stay, he stays.
He'd be a really poor emperor, if it came to that. For starters, the guy looks awkward and uncomfortable in anything fancier than jeans and a t-shirt. Just look at that silly blue tie he insists on wearing all the time, or the cheap, ill-fitting suits. Real emperors need regalia, and the regalia needs to look good on them. I realize there's a minor fashion model in the family, but GWB didn't inherit whatever genes are involved in that. He's certainly got the absolute power thing nailed, although it's debatable how much of that's really his idea, and how much he's a creature of other people's ambitions. Maybe it's more accurate to describe him as a late pharaoh or sultan, the product of many generations of careful inbreeding, utterly at the mercy of ambitious high priests or grand viziers, i.e. Uncle Dick. On top of everything else, he's failed in the primary duty of all dynastic despots, which is to produce a legitimate male heir. Instead, we've got two daughters, and twins, no less. We'd have to split the country in half, King Lear style, east vs. west this time instead of north vs. south, just for variety's sake. Jenna and Barbara would probably end up marrying either petty Eurotrash royals, or Kennedys, which is roughly the same thing. Then we could have a few decades of wars of succession, starting out with Prince Sven of the Western States pitted against Prince Luigi of the East. Then it's discovered that the late Emperor had an illegitimate, and, er, non-caucasian biological son in New Orleans (dating back to those fun times he reminisced about post-Katrina). He raises an army, and we have a three-way battle over who gets to be the next Emperor. About this time, aggressive neighboring countries take an interest and start annexing territory, until the rival Bushes are left with nothing but Monaco-like coastal enclaves in Houston and Kennebunkport.
Recent studies have indicated that fighter pilots are far more likely to have daughters than sons. I think the theory's that it's got something to do with g-forces and fragile Y chromosomes. So maybe, just maybe, George's otherwise-unremarkable Air National Guard service really did some good for the country after all.
He'd be a really poor emperor, if it came to that. For starters, the guy looks awkward and uncomfortable in anything fancier than jeans and a t-shirt. Just look at that silly blue tie he insists on wearing all the time, or the cheap, ill-fitting suits. Real emperors need regalia, and the regalia needs to look good on them. I realize there's a minor fashion model in the family, but GWB didn't inherit whatever genes are involved in that. He's certainly got the absolute power thing nailed, although it's debatable how much of that's really his idea, and how much he's a creature of other people's ambitions. Maybe it's more accurate to describe him as a late pharaoh or sultan, the product of many generations of careful inbreeding, utterly at the mercy of ambitious high priests or grand viziers, i.e. Uncle Dick. On top of everything else, he's failed in the primary duty of all dynastic despots, which is to produce a legitimate male heir. Instead, we've got two daughters, and twins, no less. We'd have to split the country in half, King Lear style, east vs. west this time instead of north vs. south, just for variety's sake. Jenna and Barbara would probably end up marrying either petty Eurotrash royals, or Kennedys, which is roughly the same thing. Then we could have a few decades of wars of succession, starting out with Prince Sven of the Western States pitted against Prince Luigi of the East. Then it's discovered that the late Emperor had an illegitimate, and, er, non-caucasian biological son in New Orleans (dating back to those fun times he reminisced about post-Katrina). He raises an army, and we have a three-way battle over who gets to be the next Emperor. About this time, aggressive neighboring countries take an interest and start annexing territory, until the rival Bushes are left with nothing but Monaco-like coastal enclaves in Houston and Kennebunkport.
Recent studies have indicated that fighter pilots are far more likely to have daughters than sons. I think the theory's that it's got something to do with g-forces and fragile Y chromosomes. So maybe, just maybe, George's otherwise-unremarkable Air National Guard service really did some good for the country after all.
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