Month: December 2006

Crowdsourcing Christmas

Futurismic: New Fiction From Jason Stoddard

He was nine when Dark Christmas came. He knew there were lots of different kinds of Santas. But when the first robotic Santa went rushing from tree to tree in his front yard like a soldier in a wargame, he knew something was wrong. When two more Santas, shiny with human sweat, appeared from the street and chased the robot down, David knew that something had changed forever.

New short science fiction on Futurismic combining “the magic of Christmas” with Web 2.0 buzzword-concept “crowdsourcing” and a little bit of the dark side of capitalism and the American Way.  It’s a nice, quick read.  I like the way the author tells the story as a father explaining Christmas to his daughter.  In fact, it’s very much like an old fairy tale before they were all Disney-fied and the dark parts taken out.

Congratulations to the Vice Presidents daughter

Report: Vice president’s lesbian daughter pregnant – CNN.com

Mary Cheney, 37, and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, 45, are “ecstatic” about the baby, due in late spring . . .

I like how CNN had to make sure they mention in the headline that she’s a lesbian.  That’s because everyone knows that lesbians have babies with two heads and shoot beams from their eyes that turn straight people to gay.

T-shirts and more t-shirts

Tcritic – Daily T-Shirt Blog

Ever since the dude from Preshrunk stopped updating regularly, there has been a t-shirt-shaped hole in my RSS reader.  But no more.  Ever since BoingBoing pointed me towards the list of blogs that I’m not cool enough to be reading already, I’ve added Tcritic to my daily reads.  Awesome t-shirts, not too much commentary (You know how some of us bloggers get long-winded and rambling.  I mean, not me, of course).

Were just going to take our God and go over here

Episcopal Churches To Vote on Departure – washingtonpost.com

Many Episcopal churches are voting very soon on whether or not to leave the umbrella of the U.S. Episcopal church because the U.S. church has allowed a gay bishop in New Hampshire.  I’m a little torn.  First, I fully support the right of a church to decide that they want to leave the organization because the organization did something they don’t believe in.  But it’s sad that two churches in Fairfax County, VA, where I live, are so upset over a gay bishop that they want to ally themselves with an African Reverend, Peter Akinola, who thinks holding hands with your gay partner in public should be punishable by jail time.

I assume that most people voting to leave will say that it’s not just one gay bishop in a state most of them will never visit, but rather the direction the church is heading by allowing him to become a bishop, and that’s certainly valid.

I wish some positive stuff about religion would make the news.  I know there are religious groups doing good things out there.  But the only ones that make the news are the intolerant ones.

I’m going to stop here, because I’ve lost my train of thought.

Saturday afternoon

It’s actually quite a nice day out.  It was a little cold this morning as we lost our flag football game, but it’s 47 and sunny now.  Excuse me for a moment . . . Ahh, that’s better.  Sorry, just had to take a quick break and drink a little Bell’s Oberon that we got from Whole Foods just half an hour ago.  We were there trying to find key limes for a pie, but had to settle for regular limes.  Hopefully our hosts this evening won’t notice.  The wife will probably tell them.

Anyway, I took a little detour down the beer aisle, because I knew they had Bell’s, and wanted to see if they had anything new.  Turns out they did, as they did not have Oberon last time.  It’s out of season now, so this is maybe the dregs of the summer run, but, contrary to what Budweiser might tell you, beer doesn’t have to be bottled in the last week to taste good.  And honestly, lukewarm skunked Oberon is better than freshly bottle Budweiser anyway.

So we picked up a little sushi, and a little Bell’s, and even a new flavor of Odwalla bar.  It’s so new it’s not even on their website yet.  It’s called Choco-Walla, and I haven’t tried one yet, but it’s sure to be delicious.

The cat is currently trying to drink my beer.  I might have to lock her in a closet.

Complaining through song

Treehugger: The Complaints Choirs of The World

Global Warming got you down? Wish your city had better recycling programs or more bike lanes? These are some of the issues that the Complaints Choir of Helsinki and the Complaints Choir of Birmingham are singing about.

If I could sing, I would totally want to do this.  These two groups sing about their complaints.  I’m sure my compatriot over at VentBox will be interested to see this, as well.

Score one point for those of us who call it complaining rather than venting.

And you thought you were old

Carbon globules in meteorite may have seeded Earth life – space – 30 November 2006 – New Scientist Space via Kurzweil AI

Now, analysis of atomic isotopes shows that the globules could not have come from Earth and must have formed in very cold conditions, possibly before the Sun was born.

It’s crazy to think about little bits of carbon that have been hanging around inside a rock since before the sun was born.  I mean, that’s, like, a long time ago, and stuff.

But to think that, maybe, some carbon got stuck inside this rock, where it was more or less protected, way back before the sun.  Then that rock flew around space until it eventually crashed into earth, where the conditions were right for life to emerge.  Eventually, that life became us, and koala bears, and fruit bats.

They aren’t sure that’s what happened, but it’s a good theory.  Makes you feel really small and insignificant, doesn’t it?

Its about time

Security Of Electronic Voting Is Condemned – washingtonpost.com

The recommendations endorse “optical-scan” systems in which voters mark paper ballots that are read by a computer and electronic systems that print a paper summary of each ballot, which voters review and elections officials save for recounts.

It’s amazing that the electronic voting systems have lasted this long. We all know that computers have problems. I mean, I’m a software engineer. I know better than most how buggy software can be. But still, we let the computer count the votes with no way to check the results? That’s insane.

Instead, we really should be using the system that this study recommends. You use a touch screen to cast your vote, then it prints out a piece of paper with your vote on it, which is both easily readable by you, and by the machine. You then stick that piece of paper into the counting machine, and you’re done. Yes, election officials have to make sure you don’t take the paper home with you. If that’s a big deal for your election officials, you need new election officials. This way, everything is quick because it’s done by a machine. But if you have any questions (Like the county in Florida that seems to have lost 10,000 votes or something in this most recent election), you can count the ballots by hand.

This system combines the best qualities of both paper ballots and electronic voting, and it makes it very hard to interfere with an election. At least, to interfere by messing with the votes. Messing with voters is a different story, but it can’t be helped if people are dumb.

Edited to add: A coworker mentions the problem here, that it’s difficult to change a vote. Let’s say you vote, and the card that prints out is wrong. What do you do? We don’t really want poll workers to be able to change the vote, or to be able to throw votes away and make new ones.

Maybe the machine will accept your old ballot, destroy it, and allow you to make a new one. If you destroy one without replacing it, the machine sounds an alarm that can be heard from space.

_NB: Any comments about Bush stealing an election will be marked as spam and deleted. _