Isaac Jones Blog
Welcome to the Future

Some of you may know Karen Sept from Saint Stephen's. I just put a web site for osteopathic practice up on my server. She runs her practice in Hawaii. Karen is a great person, and I'm really hoping her practice takes off :) So if you know Karen, link to her site. Osteopathic medicine sounds really cool. I never knew what it was before.

I was really pleased with how easy it was to set up a brand new site. I just logged into my registrar and added the new name, pointing it to my IP address. Then I modified my Apache configuration to bring up that web site when people visited that URL using Apache's Virtual Host system, which took all of 3 minutes, and I didn't even know anything about it; I just copied some example. She wrote the site content, so all I had to do was untar it onto my server.

That probably sounds pretty hard to folks who are using a complete hosting service where you have FTP access and all you have to do is drag the files over to the server. Well, I like doing things the "hard" way and then talking about how easy it is ;)

Andy and Dylan are two coworkers of mine who are always sending me interesting stuff to read on the internets. Here are a few of the great links they've sent lately.

Andy's blog (get it from the source).

Wil Wheaton's blog. You know, from Star Trek? He talks about old episodes. Very amusing.

Engines of Democracy - an article about a great place to work.

In Defense of PowerPoint - An article that briefly talks about a good way to give talks. I agree a lot with this article, although I think his anger against Tufte is misdirected.

The Show with Ze Frank. Awesome show.

A blog entry (and also podcast) by my friend Chris Manion. OK, this wasn't from Dylan or Andy, but it links to my other blog entry about wikis :)

I was at the grocery store the other day and the checkout lady said, "Wow, who has the great cologne on?" I didn't fess up because I wasn't wearing cologne but the guy behind me didn't fess up either. I looked at him and he said, "It's not me." They could tell from the look on my face that it was me they were smelling; either that, or they deduced it was me because they each knew that it wasn't themselves.

So the checkout lady asked me, "So what cologne is it?" and I said, "I'd tell you, but you'll laugh." Now the entire line was paying attention, and I swear to you, they all started saying, "Come on, tell us what it is!"

So I told them: When I cycle to work, I sweat a bit, and there aren't any showers at work or anything, so for the last few days I've been experimenting with wiping off the sweat with baby wipes."

And the checkout lady said, "Well it smells great. I guess it attracts the women because we all love babies." The guy behind me pretended to be impressed at having discovered my "secret".

But don't tell anyone I work with... or if I work with you, don't tell yourself.

Hello! I'm happy to say that my blog, email address, and web site are finally back after the Great Web Server Crash of 2005-2006. Please email me if you see any problems, especially w/ my RSS feed.

Read below for my exciting announcement (nerd talk)!

My friend Daphne recently had her first article published by the AP. Yay Daphne! I think I'm one of the violists inadvertently mentioned in her tag line at the bottom.

Also, I need to correct myself, because previously I mentioned Andy Moran. His real (new) name is Andy Adams-Moran. I think he just wanted to get another mention on my blog.

Hello to the disjointed readers who are now picking up my blog. I'm not sure what it'll look like on the main page, so I'll take this opportunity to point out that my blog is actually hosted here, and my main web site here.

My blog is being "syndicated" by disjoined so that you can read it alongside the rest of the disjointed posters, but I don't have to move my blog to disjointed to be a part of it. Thanks, Ryan!

It's also being syndicated to livejournal (sometimes), and the "technical" articles are also syndicated to Planet Debian next to a strange picture of my head.

Recent blog highlights are a trip to Smith Rock, an essay on the English language's use of proprietary syntax to express relationships, and very cute pictures of my cat.

Email me here.

My haircut is so good that the barbershop I use was linked from the front page of CNN.com today.

If you scroll down near the bottom, there's a picture of the guy who cut my hair. I'm glad to help make him famous. The only problem of course is that now EVERYONE is going to go there.

Oh, and I had dinner at Brett's house the other day. The company was great, the food was great. I even got carrot cake!

I made (way too much) sushi today. I'm starting to get the hang of this, but I have mostly failed to actually go out and learn to make sushi. Trial and error and a couple of web pages have helped.

This sushi is made of carrots, peas, and tofu, as well as rice and seaweed. I drank ginger brew while I ate it.

The best piece of advice I can give to you, though, is this: Do not drop any sushi rice on the floor. THIS STUFF WILL STICK TO YOUR SOCKS AND IT DOES NOT COME OFF.

I wonder how many people have blogged about making sushi? Isn't it so very hip? But how many of them have provided Irrefutable Digital Proof:

I've been reading some books by Margaret Atwood. I recently read Oryx and Crake and just finished The Handmaid's Tale. They were both really good, though a bit intense and depressing.

Slight Spoiler Warning: I don't really like the endings to either of these books. I think she could have done better.

I'm sorry I haven't been blogging much. I'll try to do better. My laptop broke again, and it took me a while to get the automatic sync-blog-with-laptop tool going after moving to the new monk server.

The Haskell Cabal is going quite well, and I like my new job at Galois Connections.

I have been drooling over the Sharp Zaurus since Amazon sold off a bunch of them at a pretty low price. I probably should have grabbed one. They are rather powerful little computers, and they run Linux. Ah well, I'm still waiting for my dream phone / PDA / Linux machine to appear. The Zaurus can run Haskell code, though. I sorta picture this device as an ultimate remote-control for the internet. A super-portable Linux machine with wireless internet built in.

Well, I'm safely in my new apartment. Bummed about the election, though. Here are some pictures of my apartment and cat.

Greetings all. I finally, after much pain and suffering, got my content and DNS moved to a new server. Probably, you won't see much of a difference, but this is the reason it's been so long since you've seen an entry from me!

I hope I haven't lost too many readers. You can expect more regular updates now :) Below is an entry that I wrote a while ago, but couldn't put up because of the DNS problems.

pax.

I just beat my brother in chess. I mean I really destroyed him. I just thought the internet needed to know that.

Oh, and I'm moving to Portland, Oregon. email me with any questions :)

The other day, Anna and I were on our way to the rock climbing gym, about to turn onto Hudson ave, when we saw a cop put on its lights and siren and drive through the light.

No big deal.

But then we noticed that there was another one nearby, and he turned on his lights and siren. So did the cop behind him, and the one behind him.

We turned the corner onto Hudson and drove along. Sirens started to fill the air, and we saw another few cops fly by. I tried to pull over, but drivers are stupid and ignorant and they don't know you're supposed to pull over, so the person in the right lane wouldn't let me in. I put on my blinkers and slowed down at least, as a cop flew by.

As we came upon Summit, I could see that they had blocked it off. I couldn't tell which direction the sirens were coming from at this point. The Summit & Hudson light was red, so I stopped. I saw a cop running with his gun drawn and pointed at a mess of confusion. Anna saw a half-dozon cops in a pile, presumably piled on top of someone.

So the light turned green. I could hear sirens and there was another cop van coming up behind me. I wanted to go through the intersection, but I couldn't tell what directions there might be more cops coming from.

Anna and I agreed that it would be best to get away from the guns.

But as I tried to go through the intersection, I had to wonder if there was a cop flying through, about to sideswipe me. Even if he had his siren on, I couldn't tell what direction the sirens were coming from at this point, it was all I could hear.

I looked both ways and punched it. Went through the intersection without encountering any more cop cars.

The next day I read an online news site that said there was some kind of jewel heist and that this was a related arrest, that the suspect had a .375 Magnum nearby or something.

Do you ever feel guilty for wasting time? I recently noticed a distinction in the way I look at wasting time.

There are certain things that I would feel guilty to spend too much time on, even though they're good things: reading, hanging out with friends, exercising, even cleaning the house.

There are certain things that I would feel guilty to spend not enough time on. Actually, these are the same as the above.

But then there are some things that I wouldn't feel guilty if I spend too much time doing them. Mostly work, hacking on free software, etc.

It's strange that I should feel guilt for doing things that I know I should do, and that I want to do. I really have to learn to be more content sometimes.

My friend and co-worker, Mark, read my "Statue of Liberty" blog and pointed out this speach from 1966, which is about how security doesn't always come at the barrel of a gun. It is often better pursued through diplomacy and shared interests. It's a good read.

I mentioned recently that I'm reading books by Daniel Quinn. I highly recommend them. I saw The Story of B at Half Priced Books on Lane Ave for about $6 the other day.

Last night, Anna and I saw Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring at The Drexel East. Good film.

At work, we spend a lot of time talking about thinking. The other day, during a conversation about resource allocation, it occurred to me that humans don't really have much of a problem with resource allocation, at least not personally.

That is, you never have to sit and wonder, "What should I be looking at now, since I can only look at one thing at a time?" In fact before it would even occur to you to think this, you would just look at each of the things in turn. You have other senses to help cover the gaps too.

This might not be true in a catastrophic situation, like being in the middle of a riot, where far too much is going on for you to process it.

In my opinion, the same is true of human thought as well. We spend most of our time not thinking very hard. Unless you're over-worked and stressed out, (which can hardly be considered a natural state of things) you seldom say, "I cannot decide because I simply haven't had time to think about it." Or maybe you do... are you stressed out?

What I'm getting at is that we have an abundance of personal resources. Nature produces in abundance.

While I was doing dishes today, I had a thought of personal importance to me. After a minute or two on that thought, I started thinking about something else. I said, "wait a minute, that was an important thought" and tried to go back to it, but when I got there, I found that there wasn't much to think about. The thought was complete.

Then I came to my computer and picked up a book on meditation that I've been reading from. It talked a bit about the random thoughts that come up while you're meditating, "When you are practicing... do not try to stop your thinking. Let it stop by itself. If something comes into your mind, let it come in, and let it go out. It will not stay long..."

Perhaps this is the case because of the abundance of mental resources we possess. Perhaps this is the power in the discipline of meditation, and why it is hard for beginners (like me): It gives you time to think about everything that you need to think about. If you meditate for 20 minutes a day, perhaps in a couple of months, you will have thought about everything important. Perhaps the difficulty for the beginner in clearing their mind is that they just have a certain amount of stuff to get through before it can become clear.

I finished reading The Story of B by Daniel Quinn. Then I went for a run. Reading and running is a good combination for thinking.

In "The Story of B" Quinn talks a lot about how the philosophies behind the book are not compatible with Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc. One thing in particular is that he doesn't feel that mankind is in need of being saved. He also talks a lot about how the need to spread our religion / culture (and therefore "salvation") is the root cause of the mono-culture that the world is heading into. Don't think that he means "Americanism" either; East and West are one culture.

The religion that I learned at my father's knee is not incompatible with Quinn's view of Earth's history and future, in my opinion. It is not incompatible with the theory of Evolution either. I didn't learn about the salvationist view of much of Christianity until I was older and was exposed to fundamentalism. A lot of Christians don't buy the idea that mankind is cursed forever by the "Original Sin" of Adam and Eve. I think that humans are inherently beautiful and good.

I think you should admit your vulnerabilities, at least to yourself. It changes the way you view the world. When a horse is grazing, it stops to look around very very often. The other day, I read that some elk species or something were being attacked by wolves because they had stopped looking around while eating. The reason? They were so lean that they couldn't afford to stop eating. It's a bit depressing to think about weighting two vulnerabilities like that, but I suppose it's a fact of life or a fact of nature.

In the last few months, several people have gone out of their way to thank me for conversations I've had with them that they found particularly useful. I'm really glad about that; In my best moments, the thing I most want to be is a wise and giving person. This feedback makes me think that I should keep doing what I have been doing.

I was thinking about the phrase "fighting fire with fire". I don't think I've ever heard anyone point out what a stupid idea that is. I don't know if I've ever heard anyone say the phrase with any seriousness, but come on. If you fight fire with fire, it just spreads.

Yes, oppression is a bigger threat than terrorism.

So here's what life has been like:

On Friday, we went to Fahrenheit 9/11

On Saturday, I went biking with some biking princesses (below), and then to ComFest, where I held a class on portable electronics for the inept.

On Sunday, of course Church.

On Tuesday, we went rock climbing

On Wednesday to the Magnetic Fields concert at Weigle

On Thursday to 2Cos Caberet for drama & music

On Friday (today), Anna & Vanessa built their own clothes

I took some photos of the additions to Larkens hall and the new architecture building. Larkens is the fitness center. The architecture school is made of marble. They look really neat!

I took these photos for Anna's sister's husband Rob, who showed some interested in the buildings when he was visiting the campus some time back.

There's a lot of construction on OSU campus right now, including those two buildings, the oval sidewalks, and the renovation of two buildings on the oval (can't remember their names).

I understand that they will soon start renovating the main library.

Since I've been in Columbus, there has been construction on the stadium, the business school (several buildings, including a new hotel), there are new dorms that were recently completed on 10th & Neil.

I'm sure I'm forgetting a few things. Oh, and they keep raising tuition. The economy, you understand.

There's a little cafe near OSU campus on 3rd Ave a few blocks west of Neil. It's great food and a nice atmosphere. It reminds me of a few places I ate in England. I think you should eat there. The guy who served us the first time we came told us a bunch of jokes.

So my cat had a broken tooth (very slightly gross photo) from his days on the street. It was bad, as you can see from the photo (compare the color and length with the fang on the left side of the photo). With the vet's help, we've been keeping an eye on it for a while. So today we had it taken out. Now there's just a hole there, I guess. I haven't actually tried to examine it very carefully. I'm sure he's going to be much more comfortable without it.

So Jenn threw a party last night, which was tons of fun. Click here for my photos of the event. Here's a sampling of the pictures.

There was a lot of very serious bubble-blowing, puppet-controlling, and a little bit of sugar burning (not pictured).

And of course, the girl of honor (showing off photos from her last party):

I got a new digital camera. I've never owned a digital camera before, and so far I am very pleased with this one. You'll probably see more photos here in the future :)
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I took a photo of myself today wearing a Haskell T-Shirt. Very nerdly: .

But here's the cool version of me:
.

You will see more photos, but I promise not to post too many of myself :)

peace

Went to Little Brother's tonight and saw Mason Jennings and Vienna Teng who were both great performers.

Turned out that Vienna Teng worked at Cisco Systems at around the same time I did. I didn't get around to asking her how she got away from computers and into music.

I really like a good performance. It used to be that hearing a good performance made me envious because I don't play my guitar enough, and I don't play my viola enough, and I don't sing enough. I would love to be really good at those things, and I think I could be pretty good, but I don't want to spend the time at least at this point in my life.

Now-a-days, though, I can enjoy a performance without feeling quite so envious. I really like what I'm doing, and good music makes me want to do well in what I'm good at, rather than making me want to do well in music.

I guess that's what inspiration is :)

pax.

I got a new phone so you can all start calling me again.

Are you having trouble in a relationship?

Did your best friend piss you off by tailgating you while you were both driving drunk?

Or did you just see some guys walking down the street that you didn't like the look of?

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, then I have some important information for you. The area under my window is a magic place at 3AM, where all your troubles can be solved, provided that you're drunk enough, and that your voice is very shrill, and that I'm having a good dream.

I always think it's funny to compare the international edition of CNN.com with the US edition. Today the international edition headline is:

U.S.: 'Not in control' of 2 cities

And other headlines:

France upsets Turkey over EUl

20-year term for Chechen bomber

Deadline for UK terrorism suspects

Italy on edge ahead of Easter

India mine blasts kill 26 police

Poll challenge for Algerian leader

Study links sex, lower cancer risk

Surfer killed in shark attack

But the US edition headline:

Commission hearing Rice testimony

And:

Coalition raid destroys Mehdi Army base

Kerry attacks Bush's 'bucks to the privileged'

Italy on edge ahead of Easter

Former ABC newsman Jack Smith dead

Man charged with fatally kicking dog like a football

Hawaii surfer killed in shark attack

Eyeball jewelry new fashion trend

It's very rare that the top headline of one doesn't make it into the other's top headline or "other news". In fact, there's almost no overlap right now between the two editions. I usually see the differences as being "what americans want to hear" vs "what the world wants to hear".

I think that the dog-kicking thing and the sex study are the "soft news" items. Maybe Europeans would rather hear about sex than cruelty to animals. Both Americans and Europeans apparently want to hear about Americans getting killed by sharks. Europeans want to hear about how badly the war is going, and Americans want to hear about the Rice testimony that had just started.

Tuesday the 24th is Fat Tuesday

We're eating pancakes at my church from 5-7PM

All you can eat pancakes $4 for adults. Student discount available.

Church is Saint Stephen's on the corner of Woodruff & High.

It's good to see that the Washington Post is so committed to diversity.

And remember, Debian is the place for Dueling Banjos Sheet Music.

I have an old pea coat that actually saw military service. It's my uncles or something, which makes it really old, like 30 years? Older? But the lining around the sleeve needs to be stitched, so I took it to Swan Cleaners yesterday. The girl behind the counter stared at a book with little pictures and prices for about 10 minutes trying to figure out what category this repair would fall into. Was she "replacing the lining" or just "repairing an original seem"? Is "Fixing a hold" the same thing as "repairing a sleeve"? And if so, why are the costs so completely different?

Eventually she gave up and told me to buy a new coat. This isn't to imply that this is something that a sewing machine couldn't fix in a few minutes, just that she couldn't figure out a way to charge me that would be less than a new coat.

In my opinion, she failed the turing test.

A number of minor victories:

T-Mobile finally found the phone that they failed to deliver to me TWO MONTHS ago and credited my account! Hurray! That means I didn't buy one phone for the price of two.

I got side-by-side displays working on my laptop. That means I hook it up to my desktop computer's monitor and basically have two displays to work on. Cool.

I equipped Anna's desktop machine with a PCMCIA->PCI adaptor so I can plug a wireless card into her (Linux) desktop. I tried it with my card and it works great. So now the entire apartment is wireless. I just have to pick up a wireless card for her.

I got Internet access for my cell phone, so I'm trying it out for a week or so. It's $20 a month, though so I can't really imagine keeping it. I do however, have this HUGE credit on my account now! (Thanks to the newly acquired phone-finding ability for t-mobile.)

Oh yeah, and I bought 4 used CDs today. Talking Heads, Nirvana, They Might be Giants, and Blues Traveler. They were all pretty cheap (as you might guess from their age), but all quality music!

The Haskell community publishes the Haskell Communities and Activities Report every so often. I submitted several entries and posted them to my Nerd Blog.

Here's an opinion piece (not by me) that summarizes a lot of the evoting issues that I've been talking about. Also on the evoting front, there's an interesting article about how Diabold's ATMS have been infected with a windows-based virus (a variant of the blaster worm, I think). Diabold makes voting machines and has had a lot of criticism about their security and the CEO's ties to the republican party.

Here are pictures from Haloween and Hocking Hills. You must look at This one.

I went to a Belle & Sebastian concert last night. It was TONS of fun, except that the venue was a little more suited to the ballet than such a concert. People really wanted to get up and dance, but you just couldn't! I got a t-shirt and I think Phil, Jacquelin, and Christie all had a good time too. Rasputina opened for them. I like Rasputina, so all around it ruled.

Somewhat disappointed by The Matrix. No news there.

More crazy news on voting machine irregularities [ here]. Why aren't people going nuts over this? I keep reading articles that say "this illegal thing happened at the polls this week" but I never read "so-and-so was taken away in handcuffs because he did an illegal thing with a voting machine this week..."

Going to Belle & Sebastian tonight!!

Get your geek right here I saw kucinich, a Democrat presidential candidate, speak at Ohio State the other day. He was shaking hands on his way out and I ran into Phil. Phil told me I should just stick my hand into the crowd and he'd shake it, so I tried that. He shook my hand, looked straight at me, stopped talking to whoever he was talking to, and said, "You gotta get the word out there about our web site!" I assured him I would and walked away. The question is, how did he know I was a geek? He's got a pretty cool platform too.

The Mango Fairy has been discovered! I set an elaborate trap involving gum, glue, and Halloween candy on my front porch. The cat actually captured it, and currently keeps it confined in my apartment. Eating mangos is actually trickier than I thought! We're looking for a replacement mango fairy to bring me mango related products.

Speaking of which, the Episcopal church officially ordained its first openly gay bishop on Sunday. No matter where you stand on the issue, it's a good time for prayer. The media [here, here, here, and here] is convinced that something exciting is going on, but really its been pretty quiet so far. God was not available for comment by press time.

ACLU: I donated to the ACLU for the first time by clicking here. I was sorta inspired by Michael Moore's book.

Bread: Someone gave me a bread maker and yesterday I made bread. Yummmmm.

Matrix Wednesday

It started on Tuesday, I exited my apartment building and found a can of mango juice waiting for me, with a note. The note was addressed to me and claimed to be from The Mango Fairy. Hmm...

The mystery continued at work, my boss came to me yesterday (Thursday) claiming to have found a can of mango juice in the company mailbox. Did I know anything about it? Maybe... No note this time, though.

This morning, there were two mangos on my front step, waiting for me. The note was mysterious, hinting that there may be more than one mango fairy. Some people claim to have blurry, out-of-focus pictures of the mango fairy flying down high street, but there are no known confirmed sightings.

I went to an OSU symphony concert tonight and saw the 3rd Rachmaninoff piano concerto performed. I've seen this performed a couple of times, I own it on CD, and I played (the viola) once for a performance. Sometimes, I love listening to a piece that I know so well, especially one so complex. I can listen for new things, I can anticipate the exciting moment coming up. This concerto is so passionate! After hearing it many times, it's easy to forget how virutosic and intense it is, but when you see it live, there is no doubting it. The performer at times moved so delicately over the piano that you could hardly imagine that so many notes were coming out of her fingers at the same time. At other points, of course, she seemed to be slamming the piano with all her might, only to draw from it a volume that could hardly match the intensity of the music and the musician. Good stuff.

I finally have a working wireless card for my laptop! Perhaps the embargo is coming to an end :)

More news on the E-Voting front. According to a Wired article, there's been more funny stuff going on at Diabold, and there's no way to tell whether it is the cause for startling results in a 2002 election in Georga (it went to a republican). Some choice quotes:

"Now a former worker in Diebold's Georgia warehouse says the company installed patches on its machines before the state's 2002 gubernatorial election that were never certified by independent testing authorities or cleared with Georgia election officials."

...

"Behler said as far as he knows, election officials in the Georgia secretary of state's office were never told about the patches.

"That's the last thing Diebold wanted," said Behler. "They made that very clear.... I sat around tables where (Diebold people) discussed whether they were going to tell them the truth, the half-truth or a complete lie. "

(The patches were to fix technical problems with shipped machines.)

Here are some thoughts on some random technologies: Tools that can be used for good but which are also dangerous or threatened; tools which are coming and probably cannot be stopped. There are likely many more examples, but here are a few that occurred to me.

Peer-to-peer: Peer-to-peer software first came to most people's attention through the famous Napster software, which allowed you to establish direct connections to people's computers in order to share music. Napster set a bad precedent for peer-to-peer software: much of the data exchanged was done so illegally, and Napster was eventually shut down. Such technology is in a questionable state now: even though Napster never actually trafficked in the data, it was still held responsible for what people used its network for.

Peer-to-peer has many important and legitimate uses, and has lots of advantages over the somewhat more centralized systems that are more common now. Peer-to-peer and otherwise decentralized networks could be more robust against attacks or catastrophic failures. They can also allow you to anonymously share information, opinions, and political speech. It's very hard to silence someone one a peer-to-peer network. They can be good for democracy, but they could also be outlawed.

The Free Network Project is one example of a peer-to-peer system which seeks to empower The People, as is the up-coming Government Information Awareness site. Keep an eye on these projects!

The problem we face is that these technologies could become illegal. In reality, they are only a tool, and this tool can be used for good or evil (as is true of all tools), but the focus has been on stealing music, and that is not good for projects like Freenet or GIA. It's like baptism into fire for these technologies.

Free software: So much has been said already about free software / open source software systems like the GNU/Linux system.

Free Software is software "By the people, for the people" and is having an enormous impact on the industry. To me it is simple: Software is everywhere, software is important, software controls things. Who do you want to be in control of the software? Speaking of which...

E-Voting: It's the obvious next step after punch cards, but if you thought what happened in Florida in the 2000 election was bad, wait until E-Voting machines are ubiquitous.

E-Voting machines can be used for good: They have the potential to be more accurate and more user-friendly (with photographs of the candidates for instance; "click Al Gore's forehead if you want to vote for him!"). They could also allow for a more, shall we say "scientifically robust" voting scheme. For instance, instant runoff is easy to understand and implement. You can vote for two people, first and second choice. If your first choice doesn't win, your vote goes to the second choice. So 3rd parties wouldn't be election spoilers as in the 2000 election, and they could have more influence over government policy.

E-Voting machines can be very bad also. Allegations of vote tampering, terrible computer security, and dubious political motives are already infesting this new "industry". This technology must be made open to the public for review among academic and industry computer experts for several years before being implemented on a wide scale. Should the narrow interests of a few companies like Diebold direct this important technology, or should it be made to serve the democratic needs of the citizens?

Non-Lethal Weapons: Something a little different. Non-lethal weapons are things like rubber bullets, tear gas, I think even various signal-jamming technologies would count. They are good for stopping riots, they are good for minimizing civilian casualties in an urban warfare environment.

But they can also be used to quell non-violent protest or grass-roots political movements. This Interesting paper talks about the Tiananmen Square massacre as a strategic bad-move on the part of the Chinese that could have been avoided with non-lethal weapons.

Hey everyone. Just so you know, I've moved! Email me if you want my new address (but if I get myself together, I'll probably email it to you soon) :)

By the way, I've gotten several confused / confusing emails about my last blog entry (which was mirrored to friendster). Just to keep the record straight, it wasn't directed at anyone in particular, or inspired by any particular episode, and I most certainly didn't have any ulterior motive for writing it :) I suppose I should have put more effort into effectively "communicating", but I didn't noticed the irresistible irony in writing a piece about miscommunication that is itself a backhanded attempt to make implications on another level about a particular person / event.

I'll write more about it later, but I'm running a new web page that is a sub-page on haskell.org! It's about the "Library Infrastructure Project" that I've been working on lately. Check it out here. Please email with any comments.

I swear there must be some kind of import-to-isaac restriction for tech toys. My trouble getting a wireless card is well documented and was further complicated this week with a fed-ex delivery problem for the new card that I'm 100% sure will work (scared yet?).

Furthermore, an even more complex post office delivery problem has prevented me from getting my new cell phone, and if it doesn't show up, I might have to pay for it (but I'll put up a fight!) A replacement should come today (we've heard that before).

OK, so I didn't do laundry for a while (I couldn't find my quarters, but I found them yesterday) and so I'm wearing clean jeans with holes in the knees. And OK, this morning, I was wearing my desert-storm era camouflage jacket (It's chilly out, but not so cold that I can wear my winter coat). I come out of my apartment and start walking down the sidewalk, this girl looks up at me and actually crosses the street and walks over on the other side so she wouldn't pass by me. Did I look like a vet?

There's a lyric in an Ani Difranco song that goes, "We don't say everything that we could so that later we can say, 'oh you misunderstood'." Sometimes I think that the first step in effective communication might be to decide whether the other person is really trying to get you to understand their viewpoint or not. If not, this may be unconscious. Some reasons they might not want you to understand:

• They prefer to think that the concept is complex and so they won't speak in simple or clear terms (unconscious).
• They don't understand it themselves and they want to obscure this fact (unconscious or conscious).
• Strategic / practical / political interest in keeping you confused (conscious).
• They are ashamed of it (unconscious or conscious).
• Hedging so they can change their minds later (unconscious or conscious).

Reasons that they would honestly want to communicate are rather more vast, but include:

• The human desire to be understood.
• The practical advances of having people who agrees with your viewpoint.
• The practical necessity to work something out (build a relationship, design a piece of software, etc.).

But what do you do if you decide that the person you are dealing with is not really trying to communicate? Perhaps they're lying, perhaps equivocating, perhaps intentionally misunderstanding you. If you think that they're motives are unconscious, and both parties stand to benefit from effective communication, then you might break through this problem by either pointing it out explicitly, or by otherwise responding to it.

In other cases, be strategic. Refusing to communicate clearly at least tells you something, and from that fact, you might be able to infer the truth. Why are they equivocating? What do they have to lose? Where are the weapons of mass destruction?

And of course, you should try to notice when you yourself are doing the same thing. Is what you're hiding really worth hiding? Shouldn't you just answer so-and-so's technical question clearly without overwhelming them with jargon? Shouldn't you admit that your brilliant idea isn't really that hard to understand?

Don't you have the deep, human desire to be understood?

Thanks to Colin for setting up my new blog. I'll get one set up for Anna too so that she can post stuff about her trip.
peace.

Its funny to read about Hoaxes.

I often read news on the internet. I browse Google News a lot, as well as some of the more traditional news sites. I was recently thinking that it would probably be more interesting to read news according to a story or related stories. That is, wait until things have played out a little and read about them in depth, then maybe if they're interesting I can write about them here. Google's news search engine could be helpful for this.

Two things I'd like to read more and write more about are the recent events in the Episcopal church where we might ordain an openly homosexual bishop, and relate that to the George Bush's comments against gay marriage (who does he think he is, The Pope?) as well as the Roman Catholic Church's statements of last week on the issue of gay marriage. Were these statements timed to coincide with the Episcopal Church's decision which might come today or early next week? Tune in here to find out.

I've also been thinking about abuses of our election systems by our elected officials. I don't know a lot about the issues yet, but I'll try to read about them more. Items that are making me curious:

Congretional Resitricting

The recall of the governor of California; Is it too easy to recall a governor? Were the laws created with a different expectation of the size of the state?

E-Voting: voting machines should be Open Source and widely tested and approved before deployment.

George Bush's election relating to the technology and the electoral college. peace.