The Mad Filkentist
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madfilkentist's LiveJournal:
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| Saturday, October 11th, 2008 | | 8:06 pm |
Surprise song
Well, I've just discovered the Easter egg (or should I say Überraschung-Ei?) in Franklin's CD "Seven of Mine."
That's all I'll tell you. | | 7:23 pm |
Lies from the Alliance Defense Fund Occasionally I get mailings from the Alliance Defense Fund, a theocratic organization which proudly admits that it's the antithesis of everything the ACLU stands for. Its mailings equate government-sponsored and mandated religious activity with religious "freedom." They also make use of vicious lies. For example, the latest mailing claims: "In one case in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana, attorneys with the ACLU demanded jail time for any person who prayed in a manner they disapproved of." I can't find any support for this ludicrous statement, but a web search shows the ACLU has been fighting repeatedly against Tangipahoa school officials who are determined to impose their religion on students; see here, here, and here for examples. I believe in their right of free speech, in learning about the enemy, and in wasting their money, so I'm not asking to be taken off their mailing list. | | 9:23 am |
FilkContinental FilkContinental is consistently my favorite filk con. ( Cut for verbosity ) | | Saturday, September 27th, 2008 | | 6:17 am |
Where the mess came from I just came upon an article, "Bailout Hypocrisy," by Sheldon Richman in the June 2008 The Freeman. It's well worth quoting now:
Thud. That was the sound of the other shoe dropping.
In response to severe problems in the credit markets, thanks to years of government invervention, the Federal Reserve -- the government's counterfeiter and chief culprit in the current crisis -- has opened its discount window to the investment banks. Interest rate: 2.5 percent. Until recently, only commercial banks could borrow money fromthe Fed. Butnow investment banks may also -- and here's the kicker. They can put up shaky mortgage-backed securities as collateral. That means the American people are potentially on the hook for those loans. Should they go bad, we will pay either in inflation-induced higher prices or in higher taxes.
Investment banks that may have invested in bad mortgages are already taking advantage of the new opportunity.
The whole thing is available here.
Comments disabled, merely because I probably won't get a chance to read or respond to them. | | Friday, September 26th, 2008 | | 8:54 am |
Biden's alternate history It's 1929. The stock market has crashed. Americans turn on their television sets to find out what's going on. There they see the face of President Franklin D. Roosevelt speaking to them. That sounds like a scene from an alternate history novel, but its author is VP candidate Joe Biden. As a comment, I can't do better (except grammatically) than to quote Biden's own words: "Part of what being a leader does is to instill confidence, is to demonstrate what he or she knows what they are talking about and to communicating to people." | | 5:54 am |
Bush's assault on America continues Financial crises are very useful as a distraction. For instance, few people have noticed that Bush has had a US military brigade deployed for domestic use, potentially for using force against American civilians. At first I thought this was a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. But according to the Salon article, Bush's pet Congress has weakened Posse Comitatus enough that such an outrage is legal. Thanks to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) nimuejohn for spotting this. | | Thursday, September 25th, 2008 | | 2:32 pm |
Fun with German
"Spenden" means to give out. "Ausgeben" means to spend.
"Absolvieren" doesn't mean to absolve, but to graduate. You still have to pay off your student loans.
"Messer" (knife) is neuter, "Loeffel" (spoon) is masculine, "Gabel" (fork) is feminine. My mnemonic for these is that it's the least intuitive combination possible.
Every positive integer is named with a single compound word in German. This proves that the German language has an infinite number of words.
When you hyphenate a word at a "ck" consonant combination, its spelling changes. For instance, "Becken" becomes "Bek-
ken."
Freud is simpler in German than in English. Ego, id, and superego are "das Ich," "das Es," and "das Ueber-ich" in the original German. I've heard that Kant is easier in translation, though.
Other words in German are often more straightforward than in English, due to less use of Latin. For instance, a sphygmomanometer is a "Blutdruckmesser" or blood-pressure-meter. In fact, just now I couldn't remember how to spell "sphygmomanometer," so I looked up "Blutdruckmesser" on leo.de. But remember that it's "der Blutdruckmesser" and not "das Blutdruckmesser," unless your doctor favors cutting an artery to see what your blood pressure is.
German is much easier to type on a Macintosh than on Windows. If I'd been typing this on a Mac, it would have had all the umlauts instead of adding an "e."
Yes, I've been spending a lot of time on the German language lately. | | Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 | | 9:19 am |
Cleanup cat
Mokka must think there's too much clutter in my life. Two days ago she dumped my cell phone in the wastebasket. I looked all around for it, then finally called it from my land line and located it by hearing the notes of "Hope Eyrie" coming from the bottom of the wastebasket. It's a good thing it wasn't turned off!
Yesterday she dropped my dental floss into the toilet.
I don't have eyewitness evidence it was her and not Carl, but I'm sure of it with 99%+ probability. | | Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 | | 7:13 am |
A voice against the bailout The Democrats and Republicans are united: We must give lots of taxpayer money to the rich, or the economy will collapse. But here is a dissenting view (PDF) from Prof. Luigi Zingales at the University of Chicago. Found by way of Cato. | | 6:41 am |
News and propaganda In an article on the tragic school shooting in Finland, the BBC says: "Last November a student shot dead eight people at a school in Tuusula. Gun ownership in Finland is among the highest in the world." We're supposed to come away with the impression that Finnish gun ownership has made the country a place where homicide is rampant. But let's look at some actual numbers. (Keep in mind that these are almost a decade old; a more thorough search should turn up more recent figures.) Finland's total homicide rate is 3.24 per 100,000, and its firearms homicide rate 0.86. The table shows 5.70 and 3.72 respectively in the United States. Sticking in an irrelevant fact, suggesting causality where there is none, is an effective propaganda method. | | Monday, September 22nd, 2008 | | 8:26 pm |
Food fight
Seen today in a Harvard Square buffet restaurant: "Kung fu chicken."
Considering that the chicken had been chopped up into little pieces and cooked, I'd say its kung fu skills were insufficient. | | Sunday, September 21st, 2008 | | 10:49 am |
The epistemology of trust
We all depend on trust for more of our knowledge than we can verify by personal observation. This fact accounts for a lot of political dynamics. People form trust clusters, accepting the word of some people and reflexively distrusting anyone who tries to discredit them. Hence, Group A thinks that A leaders are trustworthy, and B leaders are obviously dishonest, since they cast aspersions on A leaders. Members of Group B think, for the same reasons, that B leaders are well-informed and honorable and A leaders are lying bastards.
Conservatism and liberalism aren't consistent theories; they're clusters of ideas that result from clusters of trust. This helps to explain why, when liberal or conservative leaders significantly change their views, the whole movement (or enough of it to seem that way) adopts the new ideas as if they'd always held them.
The same applies to smaller groups. Ayn Rand offered a philosophy based on reason and consistency, but had some very irrational personal quirks. Far too many of her followers have adopted the quirks along with the philosophy, declaring that anyone who doesn't is a willful evader of reality. (In fact, doing that was itself one of her worst quirks.)
Some people take the need for trust as showing that all assertions are equal, that there's no difference between believing Genesis and believing Darwin. There's a partial truth behind this; few of us have any first-hand experience which is very useful in judging scientific theories. Even scientists are on a par with the rest of us outside their specialty.
But there is a difference, and the question of how to evaluate the trustworthiness of a statement is a major part of critical thinking. It's a skill that perhaps requires us to overcome evolutionary tendencies. (Or original sin, if you prefer Genesis. :) It's relatively easy for us to learn how to observe things and draw conclusions from them. The ability to do that is obviously pro-survival. It's harder to move away from reflexive trust and distrust and figure out when a person deserves trust on a particular issue. The ad hominem and ad verecundiam arguments are very effective, even if they aren't valid.
The fact that we use language may be part of why we're inclined to trust people implicitly. Trust is the only way to learn a language, since there are no facts of nature to refer to. Every assertion that we hear is expressed in language, so it's easy to continue on a path that got us so far. On the other hand, every species which is at all social depends on trust for survival, so language may not have everything to do with it. | | 7:11 am |
Fun with censorware Censorware authors try to anticipate the ways people will try to get around it, sometimes with ludicrous results. See this post on the Nashua Telegraph's forum and scroll down to my comments; its software thinks "shirt" and "shift" are dirty words. I should mention in passing that "Fed Up in NH" has a bad reputation on the forum, so I wouldn't trust that person's assertions without verification. | | Saturday, September 20th, 2008 | | 6:31 pm |
Brides and orphans The problem of "orphan works" is a thorny one in copyright law. When the copyright holder of a work can't be located, no one can legally publish it until the copyright expires, generally long after everyone involved in its creation is dead. Wedding photos are a prime example, as the photographer traditionally retains copyright. Suppose you want to send a wedding photo to your local newspaper on your 25th anniversary; you have to clear it with the photographer. Good luck finding him! Tim Lee, posting on Technology Liberation Front, is addressing this issue and trying to get some form of Creative Commons license on the photos of his upcoming wedding. Anyone getting professional photos and having any thought of using them years in the future may want to think about this. There are efforts in progress to modify copyright law to allow orphan works to be published if the copyright holder can't be located, with only compensation for use (not punitive damages) required if the copyright holder subsequently turns up. The details have to be worked out to make sure no one can abuse this provision or is unduly burdened, but it's something which is seriously needed. | | 6:35 am |
| | Friday, September 19th, 2008 | | 12:21 pm |
St. Paul will not prosecute journalists The mayor of St. Paul has announced that the city will not file misdemeanor charges against journalists who were arbitrarily arrested during the Republican convention.
Many reporters, photographers and bloggers were among the 818 people arrested during the Sept. 1-4 convention. Many were trapped on a bridge with protesters on the Thursday night, just before Sen. John McCain made his acceptance speech. Police had warned the large group to dissipate, then closed in from both sides of the bridge and made mass arrests.
Anyone else who was caught by the police in this travesty of justice will be prosecuted; non-journalists don't make as much noise. The mayor continues to maintain that "the police did their duty in protecting public safety" and his statement contains no apology for the arrests, or for the police assaults on photographers. | | 6:13 am |
Cat cabinet
Last night, after I turned the lights out but before falling asleep, I heard some banging. When it continued for a while, I decided to get up and check. Carl was looking a bit agitated and Mokka wasn't anywhere in sight. It took a moment to locate the source as the cabinet above the refrigerator. I opened it and Mokka came out.
She had managed to pull the handle to open the cabinet, get in, and pull the door closed behind her. But for some reason she couldn't push it open again once she was inside! | | Thursday, September 18th, 2008 | | 1:32 pm |
Slightly out of date A book which I recently picked up, Touring in Wine Country: Bavaria has the following: The comparison between Berlin and Dresden is a natural one since they are capitals of two States, Prussia and Sachsen, which are historic rivals. Ask a non-German to name a German State and he or she will almost certainly answer Prussia. The only trouble is that Prussia hasn't existed as a political entity since 1947, 50 years before the book was published. Berlin is a capital, but it's of a Land (state) which is co-extensive with itself. The book has a list price of $21.95. Stickers on the front show it marked down to $14.95, then $2.98, then $1.98, which is what I bought it for at Building 19. There may be a reason for this. :) It has pretty color pictures of Germany, so I still think I got my money's worth. | | 6:54 am |
I do not support Bob Barr This is something I mentioned in passing before, but I want to make it completely clear: I do not support Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party's candidate for president. If he were running as an independent candidate, I might consider him the least of three evils. But he is opportunistically pretending to be a libertarian, and he is not. Let me cite three points out of many possible ones: He attempted to get a court order to force Saddleback Church to invite him as a speaker along with McCain and Obama. Saddleback Church is a private entity and, according to libertarian principles, has the right to invite or not invite whomever it wishes. In New Hampshire, Barr has pursued legal action to remove George Phillies from the presidential ballot. Phillies has far better libertarian credentials than Barr does, and was legitimately placed on the ballot. In July of this year, Barr praised Jesse Helms as "one of the finest, most courageous and deeply principled men to ever serve in the United States Congress." No comment necessary. The Libertarian Party has decided that counting up votes is more important than being "the party of principle." While I'd prefer to see Barr in office rather than McCain or Obama if that were actually a choice, Barr will in practice serve as a lightning rod for smears against libertarianism. Comments screened. Discussion on my posts on controversial topics has very good lately, but I'm just afraid this is the kind of post where people may forget they're guests and should be polite. All comments will get unscreened unless I think there's a really good reason not to. | | Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 | | 12:43 pm |
Air travel frustrations Today I looked at United's website to see what fees and limitations apply to checked baggage. The checked-bag fee doesn't apply on an international flight, even when one leg is domestic, but the limitation on bag size is alarming. The maximum size to avoid an oversize baggage fee is 62 linear inches, length plus height plus depth. That's not very big, and the fee for an "oversized" bag is $125! At that point, I might as well just bring a carry-on. But wait, if I bring toothpaste that's a terrorist weapon, so I can't do that either. The page actually says that the limitation applies only to domestic flights, so the limit for a European flight might be different, but I'm supposed to call them to find out what that limit is. I tried that, and was unable to figure out how to get the information. So I'll assume it's the same limit. |
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