News You Can Bruise for 2003 October

Also present: a few recipes, including one for potstickers ("When I overcook them, I usually announce to my wife that I have prepared them 'authentically', thus leading to our often using the word 'authentic' to mean 'screwed up'.").

NewsBruiser has incoming trackback now, incidentally. The display is pretty ugly, but I've got all the neccessary templating in place. (I'm still looking for some general UI help with NewsBruiser, actually).

Sumana had a fennel and apple salad, and an entree composed primarily of tempeh. I will let her give her opinions of that once we fix her NewsBruiser install to keep up with the latest weird changes OCF has made to their hosting setup.

For an appetizer there was free bread, with a tofu-based aioli. The bread was good, and the aioli tasted okay but had a really weird texture. I think they should have just mashed up some garlic in olive oil instead of putting tofu on every flat surface.

There was a wide variety of desserts. I had a cannoli with a tapioca filling and a fig sauce, which was great. Sumana had a chocolate/tofu cake.

Also, Millennium had these fruit juice drinks called "refreshing potions", and Sumana ordered one, so the receipt says:

1 POTIONS                    6.95

Sadly, Millennium would not accept payment in gold pieces. I don't recommend the potions anyway; get the hot chocolate instead.

Incidentally, I am trying to write a science fiction story about the revision theory of truth, a story I think you would love. Too bad I am not very good at writing stories.

Bradley says the "strength of the country" is at stake because relatively few students go into science or technology. Further, he says, ordinary citizens need to understand science and technology better to make informed choices in the voting booth.

Canned vegetables, except hominy and mushrooms
Receipts for contract and commission work on women's, misses', juniors', and girls' raincoats and other waterproof outergarments
Hollowware (including toiletware, ecclesiastical ware, novelties, trophies, baby goods, and other platedware)
Urea
Other burial caskets and coffins and metal vaults [plastics, fiberglass, foam, masonite, cardboard, fiberboard, etc., and all children's]
Pattern publishing, including clothing patterns [exclude industrial patterns]

(Foam coffins? For when your beer goes flat? Are they real coffins or not?)

There must be a cool toy in here somewhere, but the only thing I can think of is a little simulation of an economy where people start companies dealing in producing and combining the products of various industries, and there'd be no room for you in that simulation. Those simulated people don't need your reductionist thinking about whether it's a good idea to turn letterpress printing inks and fiber optic cable into stamped and spun utensils, cooking and kitchen, aluminum.

Incidentally, if you are related to me and you want a weblog, I'll host it here.

OK, here you go. Resign Patterns, including "Simpleton" and "Flypaper". From Ned Batchelder's weblog.

As long as we're talking about odd food: the Roman emperors used to eat eg. fried flamingo tongues, and Romans of all classes enjoyed their lamprey. Special question for classicists: what's the source for the spine-chilling tale of Augustus' lamprey-keeping friend? (In old days, they would probably leave such gruesome passages untranslated, but nowadays we can just hide the gory details behind a link.)

There was a show where Jack Hanna was in Thailand at an elephant refuge. It was bath time for the elephants, so he rode an elephant into a river and scrubbed it and kept falling into the river. Fun. In the next scene the elephant was on land and Jack, surrounded by onlookers, rinsed off the elephant with a hose. Then he turned the hose on the onlookers and sprayed them with water for twenty or thirty seconds, laughing manaically the whole time!

The onlookers were laughing, too, and it was supposed to be all in good fun, because of course Jack was already soaking wet from spending so much time in the river. But the scene went on way too long, and it got sort of creepy. It was as though Jack, sick of not quite being the Crocodile Hunter, had finally snapped. "You're all elephants! I know it! Ah ha ha ha ha!"

My understanding is that there is a Chinese swallow that sticks its nest together using its viscous saliva. This dries into a brittle mass. In Chinese cooking, the nest is boiled and reduced and whatever chemical makes the saliva gooey is used to thicken broth. "Bird's Nest Soup".

I tasted some once on a CSF trip to San Francisco--I ate lunch with the Ho sisters in a dim little out of the way place they knew about. The menu was only in Chinese and the offerings were scary. The soup was nothing to write home about.

Swallow's nest: the honey of the vertebrate world!

<lucas> brian: how was FOO camp ?
<brian> FOO-tastic!
<lucas> doh

Sumana: Is this a semantic web thing?
Leonard: Nooo...
Sumana: You know I can tell when you do something with the semantic web.
Leonard: Yes, dear.

Anyway, that's the software side of things, and on the hardware side there's the collection of old scanned computer manuals, truly a labor of love. A random skim through the manuals reveals, eg. the Hayes Stack Chronograph, which is an external system clock. I thought external CD-ROM drives were old school, but it turns out that that school was built on the ruins of an even older school.

[Wait, under what circumstances did you swear revenge on Ned Batchelder's weblog? -Ed. Such questions are not productive in these times of transition, as we seek to reopen friendly relations with Ned Batchelder's weblog. How come I never heard about this? Is this one of those delusional things you make up as you type to make an entry more interesting? -Ed. You're a spy for Ned Batchelder's weblog, aren't you? Fie! This means war!]

"Why is this joke so funny?"
"I give up, why?"
"Because the punchline is completely novel!"

You can only tell that joke once, but you could coast on this for a while:

"Why is this joke so funny?"
"I give up, why?"
"Are you kidding? It's a classic!"

But eventually you would have to switch to this one:

"Why is this joke not so funny?"
"Because the punchline is so stale."
"Yep."

I realized this while trying to find "Finnegan's Wake" (Google: 'Did you mean: "finnegans wake"'), the song that provides part of the the narrative structure for Finnegans Wake. It turns out to be a nineteenth-century American vaudeville song [Lyrics and music]. Even stack was surprised by this fact. Speaking of stack, here's his take on the matter:

There's loads of 'comic' songs -- alot written recently... but their authenticity is questionable being paddies singing about an idealized paddy (loads of drinking, working the bog, afraid o the women)...

Shaw has a character in john bull's other island that is a take on the 'stage Irishman'... There is an old irish novel, knocknagow, written by a man who was a member of an antecedant of the ira, the irb (should be the other way round says you) who took piss out of 'stage irish' mid 18th c (if i have my dates right).

As for actual songs, stack says he can't think of any in English, but "I know there'd be a legion in original irish." This reinforces my hypothesis of immigrant authorship.

I've complained in the past about the practice of including famous people in works of fiction (Sumana analyzed this as a projected Mary Sue impulse in reality fan fiction), but it turns out that, like all mankind, I am flawed. I think it is really cool that Samuel Pepys has a non-trivial part in Quicksilver. I thought I had a principled objection to this practice, but it was merely that no author had yet met my price. My price is apparently measured in some form of indie-cred economy units, since really famous people like Newton aggravate me when they show up, but I throw the door wide for less famous people like Pepys. Let's try some thought experiments. Robert E. Lee: blah. Hyman Rickover: sure, I'd read that. Einstein: waaay overdone. PGP author Phil Zimmerman: cool! Lewis Carroll: only if the story did not involve fairies.

Other reasons why you should look at that screenshot: the first fake weblog name is really good, good enough for someone to use[0], and while making up fake spam for the sample Bayesian network I came up with the phrase "the set of all sluts".

I think the lack of comments is the leading cause of people who might use NewsBruiser not using NewsBruiser. Every time people complain about Blogger or Moveable Type, I (along with every other penny-ante weblog software author) see an opportunity to plug our own software. I'm too shy to actually do it, though. I'm stuck in the naive hacker's world where if I make something better everyone will automatically use it.

I still need weblog spam from you. I want to provide a starter Bayesian network with NewsBruiser, and I need me some data. The trackbacks and comments will share a Bayesian network, BTW; the datasets are undoubtedly similar, and that will cut down on training time.

PS: I made Reverend work with Python 1.5, because I live in a cave. If you're interested, it's here.

[0] Another weblog name I made up recently: "Commodius Vicus". You're welcome.

"I heard you were a gumshoe," she said, setting her purse on my Formica countertop. I started blending three of the peaches with a quarter-cup of lemon juice, and mashed up the other two with a potato masher.

"You heard right, sister," I said, tossing my chewed-up cigar into the wastebasket. You can't chew cigars with a classy dame like that around--just one of the pillars underlying my general anti-classy-dame policy. "What can I help you with?"

"It's about this slightly-more-than-a-cup of sugar," said the dame, opening her purse to reveal an overful measuring cup. "It's such an odd measurement; whatever can I do with it?"

"Just leave it to me, babe," I said, stirring it into the mashed peaches and pouring the puree on top. "I'll use it as an ingredient in a peach-flavored ice cream that will melt your troubles away."

"Then... that explains the two cups of milk and cream simmering on the stove," she said breathlessly, almost swooning over the counter.

"You catch on quick, toots," I replied in a businesslike manner, picking the pot off the stove and pouring the mixture atop the peaches. "Care to help me stir?"

"Only if I can add a couple drops of orange extract to the mix," purred the aforementioned dame.

"Add orange juice if you want," I told her. "Just remember: it's a simple recipe. There's no need to dress it up."

"Bolivia is one of the last strongholds of indigenous values," Reimuller said. "It needs to be preserved in our world."

• I'm yours leonardr@segfault.org
• leonardr@segfault.org, date me
• leonardr@segfault.org, its me

[0] The test match against Pakistan is a separate one-hour chunk which can be deleted from the Pakistan release of the film.

Because there are so many silly phobias, the template is often amusing in its eagerness to accept you and act like your phobia is nothing unusual while not actually knowing anything about it. It makes out that there is a specialized Clinic for the study of each phobia on their list (eg. "The Fear Of Things To The Left Side Of The Body Clinic at The Phobia Clinic™"), and that they have a special interest in whatever phobia pertains to what you Googled for (in my case, Ranidaphobia, not to be confused with the more general Batrachophobia).

I myself have a touch of acrophobia, and for me it's not so much the fear of falling so much as the fear of suddenly feeling compelled to hurl myself over the edge, which is how I manage to work on the sixth floor of a building without being gripped by fear all day. There's no edge, thus no acrophobia. Similarly, someone who suffers from Fear of Peanut Butter Sticking to the Roof of the Mouth is probably actually afraid of feeling compelled to scoop an entire eight-ounce jar of Jif into their mouth, but it's not that hard to just not open jars of peanut butter.

Also, if peanut butter does stick to the roof of your mouth, you're not dead on the sidewalk or at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, you can just scrape it out with a napkin. So if you are morbidly afraid of peanut butter sticking to your mouth you are probably also afraid of everything else in the world, with an acute case of Googlephobia, so you'd never be able to find the web page that offers help.

Anyway, some of the other funny values for x are: the vague Fear Of Certain Fabrics ("FEAR OF CERTAIN FABRICS THE MOVIE: The Directors Cut... starring Me!"); the overly-specific Fear of the Great Mole Rat, which makes the Great Mole Rat sound like a Lovecraft monster; Refund, which looks like a mistake in the database, Fear of Your Step Mother, which reads like low-grade satire, Phobiophobia, which actually circumnavigates satire, and Tyrannophobia, which seems to me more of a political problem than a "phobia" per se. That last complains that most tyrannophobia therapies "require the patient to be exposed repeatedly to tyrants over and over again", and asks you, "What's it worth to live free of Tyrannophobia ?" I guess the tree of liberty has been looking a little under-nourished lately.

Sick of The Phobia Clinic™'s Google-trolling? Wish you'd never heard of their revolutionary anti-phobia technique? Well, What's it worth to live free of Time Line Therapy™ ?

PS: One more. I can't resist. Caligynephobia: "most caligynephobia therapies take months or years and sometimes even require the patient to be exposed repeatedly to beautiful women over and over again." The horror!

• Comment author cookie so you don't have to keep typing in your stuff
• Keep track of recent annotations and provide an RSS feed, as well as an SSI to get the "recent comments" effect you see, eg. on Steve's weblog.
• Better validation for the author fields
• Comment permalinks (I tried doing this early this morning, but it turns out I have to change the template system to get it to work properly).
• Mention comment spam guess next to comment.
• Replace current "You don't see anything with spam probability >50" system with more flexible user-specified filter system.
• Automatically shut off comments for entries past a certain age and/or with a certain amount of time since the last comment.
• Send email to admin when a comment or trackback comes in.
• Import of Bayesian classification data from a Cheatsheet file.

Stuff you don't care about because it's internal:

• Create separate screens for posting comments and marking them as spam.

Of course, since basically all the comment stuff is in one file, you could hack on it yourself instead of waiting for me.

One of them is staring at me. Its fiberglass eyes bore into the back of my neck. Its... ah, who am I kidding. It's not scary. It's a fiberglass dog head. But that night, the fiberglass dog head snuck into Leonard's house and... yeah, how's it going to do that? It has to be dragged around on a trailer! Jabba the Hutt had a wider range of motion! But then, the owner of a San Francisco weenie stand threatened to remove the fiberglass dog head from its perch, and thousands of people got angry! Well, that's a little weird, but still not very scary. Better luck next time, fiberglass dog head scary storyteller.

Doesn't quite work, but you wish it would.

"We have problem x."
"Couldn't we use solution y?"
"No, because this instance of problem x is very complicated."
"Solution y is a static solution. What if we used solution y, but made it dynamically respond to external events?"
"Brilliant!"

At some point you gotta wonder why no one thinks to add dynamic y ahead of time. I think there's something about this sort of problem-solving breakthrough that speaks deeply to Star Trek writers.

(Don't worry, NewsBruiser is not going to become a JavaScript monstrosity. I need JavaScript so that static entry pages can have the comment fields prepopulated with your remembered information. If you don't have JavaScript, the comment cookie stuff won't work on a site with static entry files; that's all.)

Other origami sea creatures include sperm whale and lobster.

Feel free to talk about Quicksilver in general in the comment section, in fact. My take: it was really good, for a book with no friggin' plot! Can't wait for the next one. May reread Cryptonomicon, in fact, shovelling aside my overflowing shelf of unread books.

powerpoint presentation in wisdom tooth surgery

"That's real great, Leonard, about the future of your country and all," you say. "But what about your weblog?!?!" Well, I'm not going to go on hiatus the way Cam did (Cam is the one who recruited me, BTW), but I'll be too busy to post much. I may reinstate the guest weblog, just to keep you coming back for more. Having a guest weblog on your site for up to a year is a little weird, but I've never been deterred by the slightly weird.

What is there to do in Little Rock? Sumana and I were there last weekend and there was not much besides a farmer's market and a Red Bull promotional event. This makes me feel as though the people in charge of my Truman Show-style simulated life were caught unprepared by my sudden excursion, and that when I come back it will be bustling.

Well, after a lot of Google trickery I was able to find the site, and I present it to you: What's Not To Like? It would be really neat to have sites like this for other countries.

We also talked about making Nethack trendier by adding an Atkins diet conduct. To keep this conduct you could eat all the animal corpses you wanted, but not vegetable-based foods, or potions of booze or fruit juice. Alternatively, there might be a vegetable timeout.

Also check out newCROP, which has an enormous list of food crops, as well as the disturbing list of Famine Foods.

Kill those junk emails xf gswk

Warning: Disable product before clicking "send".

join the many Americans enlarging their penises! iop iop qweew

With leaky bicycle pumps, by the sound of it.

+-----------------------+   +---------------------------------------+
| Wrote wacky flowchart |-->| Incorporated suggestions into version |
+-----------------------+   | 2 of wacky flowchart                  | 
                            +---------------------------------------+
                                              |
                                              v
                    +---------------------------------------------+
  +-----------------| Revealed 6 new flowcharts at company picnic |
  |                 +---------------------------------------------+
  v
+------------------------------------------------------------+
| Came up with trendy Cabbage Patch Dolls flowchart, big hit |
+------------------------------------------------------------+
                         |
                         v
         +------------------------------------+
   +-----| Cabbage Patch Doll market collapse |
   |     +------------------------------------+             
   |
   |   +---------+    +---------------------------------------------+
   +-->| Despair |--->| Slashed wrists with own flowchart templates |
       +---------+    +---------------------------------------------+
                                           |
                                           v
                                     +-------------+
                                     | NO PROBLEM! |
                                     +-------------+

As flowcharts became obsolete, a few of the surviving wacky flowchart writers managed to make the transition to wacky UML diagrams, but their audience ever shrinks and becomes more technical. Some of the old stuff is really good, though. For instance, today on Crooked Timber they posted a funny, multi-page Meta-Cosmology Theory Flowchart. That was actually the whole point of this entry, but it's sort of overshadowed by the graphic. HEY! LOOK OVER HERE! There, that should do it.

Even today, flowcharts are sometimes funny, but it's usually unintentional.