The Wayback Machine - http://web.archive.org/web/20040402011326/http://www.flutterby.com:80/

Thursday April 1st, 2004

Thorax Cake

Dan Lyke comments (0)

Oh. My. This freakin' rocks, and I'm going to have to make this for someone's birthday. Shamelessly filched from Borklog, the Thorax Cake...

At this point Barbara May came home from a party and helped me move the cake to its final location so I could attach the intestine, which was to be trailing out of the rib cage so as to suggest that the person to whom the thorax had belonged had been ripped apart, rather than carefully dissected.

I bent the jelly roll (which I was quite proud of; I'd never made that kind of cake before and I sometimes have problems with whipping eggs.

Warning: Although all violence is apparently simulated, the pictures are not to be viewed if you're squeamish.

Lies and politics

Dan Lyke comments (0)

You should just go read Medley for political coverage, but one entry caught my eye. It links to The American Prospect: Credibility Gap, which, among other things reports on a paper that takes beliefs in simple falsehoods (and facts which even the Bush administration has admitted are false) and correlates those to support for the war. From the article:

Support for the war was found to be highly correlated with the possession of false beliefs on these three matters -- 86 percent of those who believed all three supported the war, as did 78 percent of those who believed two, and 53 percent of those who believed just one. Among people who knew the truth on all three scores, just 23 percent supported the war. One key finding was that misinformation about the state of world opinion was the single strongest predictor of support for the war.

The Nurture Assumption

Dan Lyke comments (3)

Christopher Rasch had a link to Malcolm Gladwell on Judith Rich Harris's research which suggests that peers have more to do with how children turn out than parents. That lead me to The Nurture Assumption website, which is mostly mentions for her book, but it sounds like there's a bunch of interesting thinking down that road.

In an email conversation a while back someone referred to Chattanooga as "a great place to raise children". My instincts were that if I were raising kids I'd do everything I could to give them peers from an upscale area, but I then (and now) believe that parents can make a huge difference. This suggests that those instincts were more correct. And could throw all sorts of fuel on the notions of bussing and desegregation.

Wednesday March 31st, 2004

Big Schnabel car

Dan Lyke comments (0)

Little trip down memory lane: A thread over at NScale.net sent me off in search of the GEX 40010 Schnabel Car that I saw several times, since my dad worked at the GE power transformer division in Pittsfield Massachusetts. Nothing cosmic, just a big honkin' piece of machinery.

Dancing robots

Shawn comments (0)

Boing Boing has a link (direct to the WMV) of a group of Sony's QRIO robots dancing. ASIMO eat your hear out.

Legal trouble

Dan Lyke comments (1)

Out here in the Bay Area there are big posters offering large cash rewards for information on bail bonds companies taking compensation other than cash or playing similar games. The Erotic Lady reports that things aren't that way elsewhere....

Over at Eros Blog Bacchus had a link to Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Teen who posted own photo charged with child porn and World Sex News Daily pointed to USA Today Teen girl charged with posting nude photos on Internet:

She has been charged with sexual abuse of children, possession of child pornography and dissemination of child pornography.

Scammers scammed

Dan Lyke comments (1)

Harvard professor scams $600k, gives it to 419 scammers.

While the future for Xu appears to involve breaking rocks, and plenty of 'em, one fundamental question remains: what is currently the minimum IQ required for a Harvard professorship? We suspect that the answer is double figures - or less.

'Twas only a matter of time: latest Nigerian scam e-mails are datelined from Iraq. Somebody has been watching reruns of Three Kings.

Tuesday March 30th, 2004

Police brawls

Dan Lyke comments (1)

Gotta love this city. I mentioned the incident where a San Francisco cop allegedly mugged a guy for his fajitas. His father was the chief of police, there were allegations of conspiracy and cover-up. In the "saw that coming" department, Alex Fagan Sr. (the chief of police during the fajita incident) is being investigated for lying to cover for his son's involvement in a drunken brawl.

Meanwhile, Scottsdale police made public 22 pages of reports Monday that provide new details of the actions of 53-year-old Fagan Sr. at the Chaparral Suites Hotel, where his son allegedly assaulted a hotel manager. (To read the reports, click here.)

Da Vinci plagiarism?

Dan Lyke comments (2)

Did Dan Brown rip off The Da Vinci Code from Lewis Perdue's The Da Vinci Legacy? Makes me want to read the latter to see if there was a real story somewhere under that somewhat contrived thriller...

Monday March 29th, 2004

A pic of sunrise from the bedroom window I just have to share.. (and show off) - Life is good and Nancy and I are off on another adventure, more pics and stories when I get caught up with Life 9.1.

Domesticity and appearance

Dan Lyke comments (3)

Busy busy busy the first few days of this week, so updates on the weekend's trip will have to wait. To tide you over, something that looks like a "must-read" that I've not yet had a chance to pursue too far. A little link lovin' to Jerry Kindall who had a link to Good Tempered Creatures, which is an article about breeding for domestication which, among other links, pointed to Early Canid Domestication: The Farm Fox Experiment (HTML, no pictures) (but see PDF version with pictures) which describes a 40 year long experiment to breed foxes for domesticity that found that many of the traits we find endearing, like floppy ears, appear to be a side effect of breeding for behavior.

More grist for the "beauty may not be only skin deep" mill...

Friday March 26th, 2004

new HIV test

Dan Lyke comments (3)

March 24 2004 - Day one of the new enlightenment

ziffle comments (14)

I don't know if this was covered but I am so proud of Michael Newdow - read his arguments before the supreme court - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03...7a6&ex=1080882000&partner=GOOGLE

He is a physician and became a lwayer I think for this reason, possibly. He stood in front of the supreme court and said "I deny the existence of god" - I wonder is this a first? We should note this day and make it a holiday - maybe someday we can cast off this tyranny of religion over life in the US.

Outstanding - It helps me to know there are people like Dr. Newdw.

Ziffle of Mayberry

Thursday March 25th, 2004

So every once in a while, when I'm really ultra certain about something, I add an entry to my .procmailrc rules which filter a message to /dev/null. This morning I erased my download log and started fresh. Since this morning, I've received 158 emails. 23 of them have been gotten by these rules. The slimeballs at "bestdailydeal.com" and "moosq.com" seem to be the worst offenders, especially since I've tried unsubscribing from both of them. Lying scum. I'm actually shocked and amazed that those slimeballs don't try to hide any better, but I'm glad that they're so easy to filter.

Sexist Body Piercings Illegal in Georgia

meuon comments (12)

Atlanta Journal Reports that genital piercings, on FEMALES, are illegal. Looks like a case of good intentions (female genital mutilation) being taken to extremes by conservative religious ideologies. Of course, the good quote:

"The original intent of the amendment was to make illegal the voluntary piercing of female genitalia for decorative purposes," said Rep. Bill Heath (R-Bremen). Heath said that while some piercings do fall under the category of involuntary genital mutilation, he is fine with banning the voluntary procedures as well. "I just don't think it's appropriate," Heath said. The bill only regulates female genital piercings. Heath said he doesn't support male genital piercings, but won't draft legislation to address the issue."

And, just to be clear: I wonder what life (and sex) would be life with an intact foreskin... It was not MY choice, and given one now, would not be.

Wednesday March 24th, 2004

Printer Frustrations

Dan Lyke comments (2)

Note to self: Next time you see a "you really should install..." note, but discover that things work, you might want to really install whatever it was. In particular this was installing CUPS on Charlene's desktop machine, and thinking that because we were getting reasonable output from her HP Deskjet 960c[Wiki] that everything was fine. But I recently tried to print out some photos and was getting horrible resolution, everything looked like a really bad newspaper dither pattern. Installing the HPIJS driver, and then using the OpenOffice.org Printer Administration facility to import the PPD file from /etc/cups/ppd/*.ppd has turned this from a reasonable word processing machine to a photo-printing monster.

The lure of scum

meuon comments (4)

Had an interesting morning, met with the owner of a '1 to infinity' gifting (MLM-ish) site and e-marketeer. He needs a new system, a little database work and some changes made to evolve and 'stay legal'. He also sells and uses 'marketing databases' and teaches his downstream to use 'stealth mailers' and similiar techniques to recruit prospects. Claims to have made 200k+ last year. But can barely afford to pay for the development of his next system. Searching for his domain name (I'm keeping him anonymous for my own protection), finds lots of spammish e-mails pointing back to his site and it's cloned/replicated derivitives...

And then, while I was toying with doing it anyway (it is potentially good paying work, after all), Nancy e-mailed me an e-mail that contained: "..authoritative enough to defend what is true & just." - It was the clincher.

After spending years working on the 'white hat' side of the 'net, some things just aren't worth any amount of money. Adding my level of internet related technical, e-commerce, business and database expertise to the scummy underside of the 'net would make me feel like a barnacle, and right now life is too good to play with the large shipload of bad karma this thing has.

It was interesting hearing it from his perspective. But all of a sudden I need to take a bath.

Bash.org strikes again:

<fooz> In a perfect world... spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with many men who have enlarged their penisses, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship.

Union calls whistleblowers snitches

Dan Lyke comments (2)

Wow. The San Francisco Fire Department recently had a fracas where a few firefighters were busted for drinking on the job. Whistle-blowers called snitches in union newsletter. The Local 798 website doesn't have a current issue up, so I don't have the primary source, but the article quotes extensively:

...union official Tom O'Connor, denounces "a separate subterranean group of 'leaders' (who) appear fixated on bringing down the Fire Department in the public eye."

"The new generation of 'snitches,' " O'Connor wrote, is focusing on "destroying all that this department stands for . . . all just to advance their own interests.''

I really hope this guy was quoted out of context, but having read assorted union newsletters in the past, I'm fairly sure that he was voicing the worst of interpretations that could possibly be laid to his words.

Tuesday March 23rd, 2004

Michael Huffington bi?

Dan Lyke comments (3)

The Chronicle article GOP gays place ads opposing amendment is unremarkable, except that:

Former Rep. Michael Huffington, a Republican from Santa Barbara who says he is bisexual, said Monday that he has donated $100,000 to the Log Cabin Republicans in part to help pay for the media campaign.

I don't wanna be snarky or anything, but having been married to Arianna Huffington is not necessarily credibility in the "bi" camp.

What reporters want

Dan Lyke comments (0)

Cheap C for Windows

Dan Lyke comments (0)

Dave Winer asks about C programming tools for Windows. While the responses have a lot of "you've got money, just buy VisualStudio .NET[Wiki] " answers, there are also jewels for cheaper tools, both open source and not. Some resources there for next time someone's trying to get into coding on the cheap.

Mark Morford mentioned this one in one of his Daily Fix[Wiki] newsletters, and David Chess[Wiki] has now mentioned it twice, and for some reason this time I got to the third screen, and... If you liked Myst[Wiki] in that meditative click around see what happens sort of way: http://www.freshsensation.com/samorost.swf

Monday March 22nd, 2004

Savior Comparisons

meuon comments (5)

http://home.earthlink.net/~pgw...ristianOrigins/PaganChrists.html an interesting minimal comparison of Attis, Jesus, Krishna, Mithras, and Osiris.

Memo to Michael Powell

petronius comments (0)

Just when you despaired of watching cable TV and still maintaining a clean lifestyle, Jacuzzi comes out with the first multi-media spa . Cleanliness may not be next to Godliness, but does God feature a floating remote control?

Gay marriage opposition

Dan Lyke comments (2)

A picture in today's SF Chronicle jelled in my mind why there's opposition to gay marriage: There's Gavin Newsom standing in in between two women, but we know they're just married to each other so that whole three-way prospect thing disappears. The opposition to gay marriage is really just about the maintaining porn fantasies.

Sunday March 21st, 2004

[Tux Hefner] I blame Meuon. He was describing the gathering in Chattanooga on Friday, which will probably be a recurring thing, on the Chugalug mailing list as " Geekdom Politics, Sex, and Food!", someone who undoubtedly wishes to remain nameless wondered about Tux in a smoking jacket with a martini glass, and... well... in between helping Charlene clean up the back yard, doing a dump run, and helping my neighbor solder the fixtures in place for his darkroom, I couldn't leave well enough alone and slapped this together.

Damn. I meant to put a little tux logo on the jacket. Oh well, next time.

Urban Legend

meuon comments (4)

I'd recently gotten some strange e-mails, not spam. And tracked it down to 'meuon' being an "urban legend". Heck, I even have a line of clothing. I created the word 'meuon' years ago, looking for a short unique word that did not exist on the 'net. Later found a very small island named it, but this is the first other reference I've bumped into. The 'net is getting crowded.