Input Junkie

Chinese Restaurant named Translate Server Error

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 23:23:53 GMT

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/15/chinese-restaurant-c.html

And the name's on a great big sign.

Best comment: someone mentions core dumplings.

Link thanks to Geek Press.

Klingon Klez near Philly next Wednesday

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 18:07:51 GMT

http://www.phillyjewishgrads.org/node/813

At Pastorias Park in Chestnut Hill, 7:30 PM.

Link thanks to weirdjews.

Cake wrecks

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 15:38:28 GMT

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

A funny blog about ugly cakes-- just the thing to supplement lolcats if you need a giggle or two.

Link thanks to David Oster.

Web 2.0 advertising and the race to the bottom

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 13:19:19 GMT

http://synecdochic.livejournal.com/238999.html?view=10349719#t10349719

This is a three part series about why financing social network and social media sites with advertising is at best very difficult. Oddly enough, people tend to resent a model where they do all the work and someone else gets all the money.

It hadn't occurred to me that advertising is especially vulnerable because if you piss off the best content providers, they'll energetically and vividly tell everyone they know about why they hate the ads and the social network which gave them a platform.

It's more obvious (but still new to me) that if an ad-supported environment is going downhill, the ads will get more intrusive and annoying, thus increasing the odds that ads will get ignored, so they get worse.

Sidetrack: There are connoisseurs of tv advertising, but I haven't seen anyone make a hobby of web ads. While spam isn't a major interest for me, I do watch its evolution in my inbox-- the latest thing is fake news headlines, like the Pope getting assassinated.

Fact-finding missions

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:09:28 GMT

Obama is off to Iraq and Afghanistan, and both he and McCain are talking as though this is a crucial way for him to learn what's going on.

For tolerably obvious logistical reasons, almost all the information presidents get has to be reading (and, one hopes, thinking) and listening to people who come to where the president is. If they can't mostly learn without being on site, we have a problem. (A chorus repeats the last bit.)

Not only that, but much of what a president sees on a visit is going to be dressed up.

Note that there are legitimate reasons for presidents to travel-- negotiation makes sense, and so does showing that they care. But is there any evidence that they actually find facts?

Criminal minds

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 12:51:33 GMT

This week's Studio 360 has Howard Gardner (the multiple intelligences guy) and Sarah Brown (who does an amazing range of accents and personas). She talked about how, as a kid in school in the days before cell phones, she'd imitate the voices of her friends' parents to get them excuses for getting out of school.

And I remembered that when I was a kid, I'd forge my mother's signature (and once or twice, someone else's mother's) for school stuff, and how meticulous I was about getting it right. These days, I'm a pretty good calligrapher.

So I'm wondering....what deceptions are you meticulous about, and does that show talents which have or could pay off in other parts of your life?

If you want to comment anonymously, that's fine.

A hamster wheel for the mind

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:54:35 GMT

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/010435.html

Making Light takes on the question of whether God can create a stone so heavy He can't lift it, which leads to physics, theology, puns, logic (and a claim that Judaism uses non-Aristolelian argument), Mystery Science Theater, and so on.

It's all agrumer's fault.

The car industry in an alternate universe

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:13:27 GMT

I was contemplating whether we need some way of making big hierarchical organizations more flexible, and I ended up wondering why, considering that everyone knew for decades that the Big Three were doing a bad job of making cars that Americans want to buy, no one took a crack at being Big Four.

Was it simply more capital than anyone could raise? Lack of imagination? It was easier to invest in Toyota? Legal and/or quasi-legal barriers?

Hard Fantasy

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:07:46 GMT

http://www.sfnovelists.com/2008/07/16/hard-fantasy/

Hard fantasy is concerned with how things work, and why. Fantasies can be meticulous about that in some areas while being completely casual in others.

I recommend Margaret Ball's Lost in Translation as hard fantasy. Magic flows through the ground and into plants. Clear too many plants, and the magic comes out as monsters. What follows is some nice world-building. Not being able to clear large areas has all sorts of implications. And the book has one of my favorite villains. He comes up with a "clever" way of working around his world's restrictions on magic, and in the middle of the havoc he's causing, he regrets that he can't publish his findings. Also, he has trouble understanding that the scary people he's dealing with will remember the promises he makes.

To my mind, the other pole of fantasy is dream logic, with the Alice books as the prime example. Dream logic needs little bits of rationality to ground it-- if Alice keeps growing, she won't fit in a house, and if she keeps shrinking, she's floundering in a pool of tears from when she was gigantic... but the size changes don't have to be connected to any large structural ideas.

Mieville's Perdido Street Station and Un Lun Dun are probably my favorite relatively recent dream logic fantasy, with the latter not nearly as famous as it deserves to be.

Any recommendations for hard and/or dream logic fantasy?

Link thanks to yhlee.

Any

Trading Corpses

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:23:48 GMT

This recent deal between Israel and Lebanon made me realize how macabre this use of corpses is. It's storing the corpses of your enemies for years, hoping to get a good exchange for them.

Are there any laws or principles against it? Have there been wars where corpses were just returned out of decency?

My mind reels with fantasy and horror ideas. These are the corpses of your enemies. Zombies are a plausible possibility. So are ghosts just wanting to go home. The weirdest and perhaps most horrific possibility would be ghosts and zombies of the same people.

Shakespeare and neurology

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:34:09 GMT

http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/davis_07_08.html

I told my brain scientists that one small but powerful example of this quick Elizabethan shorthand is what is now called functional shift or word-class conversion - which George Puttenham, writing in 1589, named 'enallage or the figure of exchange'. It happens when one part of speech is suddenly transformed into another with a different function but hardly any change of form. It sounds dull but in performance is almost electrically exciting in its sudden simple reach for a word. For example: an adjective is made a verb when in The Winter's Tale heavy thoughts are said to 'thick my blood'. A pronoun is made into a noun when Olivia in Twelfth Night is called 'the cruellest she alive'. Prospero turns adverb to noun when he speaks so wonderfully of 'the dark backward' of past time; Edgar turns noun to verb when he makes the link with Lear: 'He childed as I fathered.' As Abbott says, in Elizabethan English 'You can "happy" your friend, "malice" or "foot" your enemy, or "fall" axe on his head.' Richard II is not merely deposed (that's Latinate paraphrase): he is unkinged.

*****

Secondly, the P600 surge means that the brain was thereby primed to look out for more difficulty, to work at a higher level, whilst still accepting that, fundamentally, sense was being made. In other words, while the Shakespearian functional shift was semantically integrated with ease, it triggered a syntactic re-evaluation process likely to raise attention and extra emergent consciousness, and giving more power and sheer life to the sentence as a whole.

Link thanks to andrewducker.

Status ratings

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 13:30:04 GMT

This is a science fictional idea and/or prediction. It's free to good homes, but if you use it in a book, I'd like to be mentioned on the acknowledgments page.

Once upon a time, loans were made based on personal impressions and/or specific knowledge. As the population and the number of loans went up, a half-assed system of not especially accurate credit ratings developed. Even though they were apt to include inaccurate negative information (I don't know if they also have a tendency to be too positive) which is very hard to correct and even though no one knows all the premises they're based on, they're still commonly used because people are apt to assume that even bad information is better than nothing. And besides, it's numbers. You can trust numbers.

In the near future, not only will the population continue to grow, but a lot more people from a number of different cultures will be joining the world economy.[1]

If you have a relatively monolithic culture and you're interested in status, you'll just know what clothing and accent indicates how you need to treat some people and how you can get away with treating others.

It could get more complicated rather quickly, especially since I'm expecting more than one major cultural center.

So, we get status ratings. They'll be even less accurate and more opaque than credit ratings, but at least you'll have a number to lean on.

[1]I figured out years ago that life in the third world was going to improve, and I mean I saw it coming well before The World Is Flat came out. There will probably continue to be poor regions, but there aren't going to be poor continents.

Went to the movies last night

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 13:16:35 GMT

I didn't think there were any more movies I wanted to see this summer, but some of the trailers were very promising. Hellboy 2 looks really good. It'll be nice to see a movie that was clearly put together by an artist rather than just "I can haz CGI with a morfing program". Dark Knight will no doubt be grimmer than I like, but at least it also looks good visually. I'd rather slit my throat than see Step-brothers, but I already knew that. The surprise was a trailer for Switch Voter, due out in August. A ne'er do well guy's daughter (who has a Lisa Simpsonesque sense of responsibility) registers him to vote, and through a series of plot twists not shown in the trailer, this man's revote (his first ballot was spoiled) will be the deciding vote in a presidential convention. The whole focus of both campaigns lands on one man who doesn't care about politics. It won't necessarily be a good movie, but I'm curious to see what they'll do with it.

However, I was in the theater because I wanted to see the main attraction. *sigh* I wasn't planning to see Get Smart, but I'd heard from two sources that the scene with the fat woman shows her being a really good dancer. Ok, I'll spend my $10 and get three minutes of Hairspray.

She hardly danced at all. She was presented with respect, and I treasure the authority with which she took a fan from one of the thin snarky women, but damned if I can see how that translates into people hallucinating that she did a good dance number.

In general, it was an awful movie. Maybe it's just that we've calmed down a bit since 9/11, but the movie's sense of comic timing was so bad that it couldn't get a laugh by dropping an Islamic terrorist on a pig. There were a lot fewer laughs from the audience than there were joke-shaped objects.

So much of it was about bullying and humiliation, and I especially disliked it that Maxwell Smart was presented as a brilliant analyst who's constantly getting stepped on.

It reached a point when I was so sick of him chasing Agent 99 and her being nasty to him that I just wanted both of them to die, and I don't usually feel that way about fictional characters.

It wasn't awful all through. Max and the Chief were committed to the idea that you need to understand the enemy rather than just use satellites, and really knowing the enemy pays off nicely late in the movie.

Here's something I found deeply annoying, and I'm not sure why it pisses me off so much. When Agent 99 is cutting him down, she's taller than he is. In the big cuddly kiss scene (which in spite of everything, was pretty good), he's taller. Later on (with the course of true love running smoothly), their heights are more equal, but he's still a little taller.

The best moments were based on the original tv show. I really liked the highly arranged version of the tv theme, and the "would you believe" sequence wasn't too badly done. On the whole I want my two hours back.

Survey: How much Yiddlish do you use?

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:19:07 GMT

Quoted from weirdjews:

You are invited to participate in an interesting and entertaining survey about language. Essentially, we're asking about the spread of Yiddish (and some Hebrew) among English speakers in North America. We're turning to both Jews and non-Jews to answer questions like these: Who uses Yiddish words like "shmooze" and "daven" and phrases like "Money, shmoney"? Why do some people say "temple" while others say "shul"? Who prefers biblical names for their babies? Your responses will help us answer these and other questions, and you might learn something about yourself in the process. Please set aside 15-20 minutes, and click on this link to participate:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=9eQwWyblG_2b8ixLqbt6QFhg_3d_3d

Please forward this request to your friends and family. We are hoping to get thousands of responses from people of all religions, ages, and regions of the United States and Canada. If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail Prof. Sarah Bunin Benor <sbenor@huc.edu> or Prof. Steven M. Cohen <steve34nyc@aol.com>.

papersky, do you have the link handy for that discussion of pesach vs. passover vs. family holiday? I bet they'd be fascinated.

I didn't like *any* of the sets of children's names. Probably just as well that I don't have kids.

Lost sky colors

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:51:24 GMT

When I was a kid (1960s in Delaware), there was a faint green band on the horizon. It was presumably pollution-- the sky is blue all the way down to the land now, and the only reason I can think of for the change is the laws requiring cleaner air.

The band was pretty, though, and so were the brilliant green "lakes" between the clouds at sunset. I haven't seen that for quite a while.

The other thing that might be lost is magenta-- *bright* pinkish purple that would show up late in some sunsets, and which I've also seen in Frazetta paintings, though I can't remember which ones offhand.

Has the sky changed in your lifetime?

If you saw a picture of a sunset with bright green in the sky, would you think someone was making it up?

How about other implausible skies? I remember a sunset with puffy, evenly pink clouds that went as high as I could look without tipping my head up. I certainly wouldn't have believed it in a picture.

Some of Gauguin's paintings have yellow "shadows" under the trees, and I'm told critics thought he was using arbitrary color for composition until someone realized it was fallen flower petals.

American Academy of Pediatrics, health hazard

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:27:42 GMT

http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/07/is-it-for-real-cholesterol-screening-in.html

The American Academy of Pediatrics is recommending cholesterol screening for 2 year olds, and statins for children as young as 8-- including children who don't have high cholesterol, just family members with histories of heart disease or who are fat.

Statins can have serious side effects, and haven't been studied for long term use in children or adolescents.

What Did You Say?

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:11:12 GMT

View Poll: What Did You Say?

The Red Cross' Safe and Well list

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 17:22:30 GMT

https://disastersafe.redcross.org/

If you're in a disaster area, you can list yourself as safe and well. This is a good idea.

Names can only be searched for by complete address or pre-disaster phone number. This strikes me as semi-reasonable security. There are at least a couple of ways for it to go wrong, but it may be the best possible. Griefers (the kind of practical jokers that Heinlein had in mind) won't find it too difficult to get addresses for false listings, and (to put it mildly), these days we're connected to a lot of people whose full names, addresses, and/or phone numbers we don't know.

Link thanks to pecuniam.

Is there an economist in the house?

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:15:02 GMT

Is there a difference between standard monetary policy for handling situations where there's too much money versus times when there's too little stuff?

Does "overheated economy" mean too much government-generated money going into dubious investments, or something else?

On junk food

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 03:18:50 GMT

http://academic.sun.ac.za/medphys/junk.htm

The real definition of junk food (or, of any of its synonyms) should recognize the fact that the adjective is applied exclusively to food items that children, and especially teenagers, find appetizing. Thus, codliver oil, despite its undeniable greasiness and artificially added vitamins and preservatives, is not junk food, because children loath it. Cake, which children love, is, on the other hand, a non-basic (or junk) food, despite containing flour, eggs, milk products, fruit, and sugar (which, with the inexplicable exception of the sugar, are all individually classed as "basic" food items).

Another factor which distinguishes "junk" from "basic" (or "nutritious" food), is the amount of effort the lady of the house expends on preparing that food.

I'm not sure this is true, but it's at least plausible.

Negislation

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:29:59 GMT

http://crookedtimber.org/2008/06/24/annals-of-stupid-lawmaking/#comments

From a discussion of a proposed law to raise money to promote tourism by charging a $25 fee for visiting the US, a good name for laws which are very likely to undercut their stated purpose.

There's also a suggestion to refer to especially destructive reforms as deforms.

Americans less dogmatic about religion than you might think

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:57:44 GMT

http://www.pewtrusts.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=40664

From a big survey:

Although many Americans are highly religious, they are not dogmatic in their faith. Seventy percent of Americans with a religious affiliation say that many religions - not just their own - can lead to eternal life. Most also think there is more than one correct way to interpret the teachings of their own faith.

Almost two-fifths of Americans report meditating at least once a week. This practice is particularly common among Buddhists, but nearly half of evangelical Protestants and Muslims say they meditate at least weekly. About one-quarter of the unaffiliated report weekly meditation. These patterns may incorporate elements of both Christian and non-Christian traditions.

Usenet becoming less available

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:47:00 GMT

Sprint sounds like it's going to stop offering alt groups.

And here's what Google Groups offers: http://groups.google.com/support/bin/
answer.py?answer=46465&topic=9244 is that you are supposed to tell
Google that you want to read groups via e-mail, then use the
filtering in your email client to organize the postings into threads,
and filter out those you don't want to read.

Do you bother with that? Do you know anyone who does?

I've been told that some sysadmins won't forward posts from google groups because there's so much spam and that Google just doesn't think it's worth hiring people who know and love usenet to work on google groups.

I haven't been using usenet for a while, but it would be a shame if it were allowed to go under. I haven't seen anything on the web that's as good as trn for making large discussions convenient.

First link thanks to twistedchick.

Addendum: Google's causualness about usenet seems odd to me. Not only could it be a better source of add revenue if more people read Google Groups, but letting Google Groups turn into a spam portal violates "Don't be evil".

A pretty good sf story

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:08:49 GMT

Mine the Primes by Julian Todd. It's a cross between environmentalism and Atlas Shrugged-- not the sort of thing I'd expect to work, but it does.

It came up in a discussion at yhlee's about how much science you need to write science fiction.

I'm really not sure-- the problem may be that some authors are thrown off-balance by bad science or history or whatever. There are certainly stories that work very well for readers in spite of bad science or other nonsense. 1984_ has been a very useful horror story for the intelligentsia even if it doesn't make sense that O'Brian would put so much work into into breaking Winston. _Dune_ works nicely even though the still suits wouldn't. (They don't seem to have any way of getting rid of heat.) The still suits work very well as a way of underlining the scarcity of water.

I'm very fond of the premise of "Mine the Primes", but it's definitely a shiver-down-the-spine collision of coolness with only the smallest homeopathic nibble of truth.

Heat hazards....

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 04:45:31 GMT

This is inspired by a flocked post by an athlete who said it's just heat.

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007766.html has plenty about heat cramps, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke, and how to avoid them.

Heat is dangerous, and getting heat exhaustion once makes people more vulnerable to getting it again.

I find people who find it a big pleasure to challenge their physical limits mysterious, but I don't have to understand everything. However, there's a less obvious mystery.... why don't such people get seriously hurt more often, considering that what they're overcoming is their bodies' warning signals? There must be some secondary warning system that kicks in to say "you're REALLY overdoing it", and identifying those signals is something that can't be entirely learned the hard way.