Month: April 2008

And so it has begun

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I’m keeping up a family tradition here. My paternal grandmother did it until she was 85, my father did it until he was in his early 60’s. And I’ve now joined them in keeping that tradition. What is it you ask?

Luckily the love of my life is also a licensed aesthetician, so tonight for the first time my hair got colored. I was probably about 15% gray but there’s none of that now. And no, the carpet doesn’t quite match the drapes. But I draw the line at coloring pubic hair.

So now I figure I’ve got a good twenty years of coloring it if my father is any indication.

Yes that’s the vain side of the family too. A little vanity is always a good thing.

Yahoo Music doesn’t support Firefox or Opera

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Well now, this is interesting. I know that Yahoo embraces OSS since the underlying mail service under their Yahoo Mail product is Qmail.

But try checking out their music casts. I recall that in the past they worked with Firefox. I’ve been noticing a lot of sites now enforcing the use of Internet Explorer. I’m sorry but Firefox now represents a large portion of the browser base, and it should be supported.

Or could it be that Microsoft’s crappy net services are now defined as the standard? In any case I smell an anti-trust rat here against Microsoft.

The error dialog

So I went ahead and clicked on their supported browsers:

Firefox and Mac not supported

****UPDATE****

Got a response back from Yahoo:

Hello Truthspew,

Thank you for contacting us about the problem you are experiencing with
Yahoo! Music services.

We regret you are having concerns with not being able to access
LAUNCHcast through FireFox. We’ll try to resolve this for you as quickly
as possible.

Although LAUNCHcast is not currently compatible with the OSX system or
the Mozilla, Firefox, Safari and Netscape 6-7 browsers, we do consider
your feedback regarding the features you would like to see. Our users’
feedback is a very important part of how our development team decides
which features to add to our services.

At this time there is no estimated date as to when this service may be
available using these applications.

We have forwarded your comments to our development team for review.

In addition, we have good news for you: the new Yahoo! Music Video
Player is now available. The new player is compatible with Mac and
Firefox (a browser alternative to Internet Explorer)

.

What happened?

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I note that Cooper’s Corridor has disappeared. When I try to visit I get

Blog has been removed

Sorry, the blog at cooperscorridor.blogspot.com has been removed. This address is not available for new blogs.

I wonder what happened. If anyone has any information please let me know int he comments section. I hope he didn’t piss off Google. That would be very bad. It’s one of the main reasons I left blogger.

But I hope everything is alright with he and his kids.

***UPDATE***
I got an email from Tornwordo and apparently Cooper had gotten some comments which made him fear for the safety of his kids and he deleted the blog. It’s a dark day on the web when things like this happen. I’m going to miss his blog. Perhaps he should re-open it as a friends only type site.

A nice comparison

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This is a nice little summation.

Science v. Creationism

Yes boys and girls, science is about taking the facts and drawing a conclusion based upon those facts. That’s the basic way of putting it, in essence science aims to make the universe predictable. I know that sounds weird but it’s true. Look at all the theories in physics for example, and they describe the interactions of space-time, matter and energy. Plug the right numbers into the formulas and you’ll get the orbits of planets, the distance to another planet, or even be able to peer into atoms.

Creationism, aka Intelligent Design simply starts with the premise that a god/sky fairy/flying spaghetti monster created something. Then they try to arrange the facts to support the conclusion they’ve already reached, a foregone conclusion you might say. For example, check out the Answers in Genesis tour of the Creation Museum to see fixing the facts around a pre-determined conclusion.

I can’t wait for the Christofascisti to start commenting on this post. I will admit though that I’ve reached common ground with one of the Christians who comments on my blog on occasion. It’s amazing how it can come to that. But I think the fact that I hold a science degree, even though it’s information science, means I fall solidly in the science camp.

Then again I’ve let a few obvious tinhat/asshat/asswipe comments through and commented on them, torn them apart etc for the entertainment of my readers.

Getting to the post petro-fuel era

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This is a fantastic analysis of what the obstacles are to reducing our dependence upon fossil fuels.

Jose Etcheverry doesn’t dance around the main obstacle, entrenched corporate interests. It is said that Tesla figured out how to transmit power without wires and that Westinghouse and Edison officials at that time didn’t like the idea because they couldn’t slap a meter on it. Based on what I’ve been able to glean from my electric bill and the occasional newsletter inserts is that the cost to produce and distribute the power is far less than the 14 cents per kWh I pay. And energy usage is fairly consistent throughout the year. So explain why we couldn’t shift our electricity to a subscription usage, where for $x you get y kWH usage per month. Hell if you ask they’ll put you on a budget plan and you pay a fixed amount each month.

The entrenched corporations have the money to pay for big shot lobbyists. That much should be clear to all of us.

But we need to start moving past this. There are many encouraging discoveries being made, things like Thermal De Polymerization (TDP), using plant cellulose to generate gasoline, wind and solar systems to name just a few.

One of the main fields that is lacking is energy storage. In the case of TDP and cellulose fuels they are closest to what we do now.

Wind and solar have a drawback. During sustained winds and full daylight they produce a huge amount of electricity. But storing that electricity is a problem.

Current battery technology isn’t showing much progress. The students at M.I.T. did figure out that with solar or wind you could generate and capture hydrogen from water during the day when usage is light, then run the hydrogen through a fuel cell at night to provide power. That might work.

Troppe informazioni martedì numero e un centinaio di trenta tre (TMI #133!)

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1. Early bird or night owl?

Night owl. I can hang till the sun comes up. I’ve always been this way ever since I did the radio show back in the 80’s. Used to do Saturdays midnight to 2AM but that always went until 5AM if the jams were flowing well. Then I’d go to work, then back on the air Sunday night from 6PM to 9PM.

2. Where was the first place you ever had sex?

The finished basement in my parents house. That was pretty much my lair to begin with. That basement saw many a good time.

3. On a scale of 1-10, how happy are you? (1 is lowest, 10 is highest)

I’d say I’m about a 8, maybe 9. I’m kind of a go with the flow guy so that usually provides for a life blessedly free of most conflicts. But then I’m Italian-American which means I have to be miserable some of the time.

4. Are you more submissive or dominant?

Dominant. Is it any wonder Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” is one of my favorite songs, hell it’s my theme song because I most definitely do it my way.

5. Do you believe in love at first sight?

I certainly do. And here we are fifteen years later.

Bonus (as in optional): Describe your bed time habits. What side do you sleep on? What do you usual wear? Any night time rituals?

If you’re facing from the foot of the bed I sleep on the right. Usually sleep curled up on my left side.
The one ritual is the brushing of the teeth and then the flossing. I finally realized that flossing in the morning was useless. By brushing and flossing before bed you get at least 7 or so hours of no sugars in contact with your teeth. That’s a pretty good start. Then I brush my teeth after breakfast and occasionally after lunch. I hate getting fillings so that explains my OCD habit.

As far as what I wear, it depends entirely on the weather since I rarely heat the bedroom. So in the dead of winter it’s flannel PJ’s bottoms with a long sleeved sweatshirt, summertime it’s pretty much uber-commando.

Gettin’ Biblical On You

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Found this on Sticky Crow’s Blog. He only got 66%. I guess studying the book for a year over 20 years ago really left it’s mark on me. Had I thought about the answers instead of just clicking the first one that looked logical I probably would have scored lower.

That said, it also makes me a formidable enemy of Christian Fundamentalists most of whom I would venture to guess would score lower than 50% on this quiz.

And here I score 74% and I haven’t read the book in 25 years. Take that you fundie asswipes.

You know the Bible 74%!

 

Wow! You are truly a student of the Bible! Some of the questions were difficult, but they didn’t slow you down! You know the books, the characters, the events . . . Very impressive!

Ultimate Bible Quiz

And yes, I figured out how to strip out the MySpace spam. Knowing a little HTML helps. Of course I far prefer PHP.

Bell Case is stirring it up

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I’m as much angry about the judges ruling as the rest of them. In case you don’t remember, Sean Bell was the groom gunned down my NYCPD detective. One of them, Detective Michael Oliver fired 31 shots which means he reloaded at least twice. In all fifty rounds hit Bell and his friends.

The problem is that the blue line makes cops feel they are untouchable by justice. In essence, they fucked up and now they’ve been exonerated by the court.

I’m also hearing there have been protests over the verdict though I’ve not found any links for that as yet.

The Inconsistency of the Federal Courts and Schools

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The latest is that the student that wants to wear his “Be Happy, Not Gay!” t-shirt to his school during the National Day of Truth on Monday, following the National Day of Silence on Friday.

The school of course banned it. But then a federal appellate court said that he can wear it.

Since when has the federal court taken such an interest in first amendment rights in public schools? Of course the Alliance Defense Fund was active in this case. Curiously they don’t list who their allies happen to be, but they do say that over 300 ministries are it’s allies. I just bet the AFA is one since they are a ministry whether they want to be known as such or not.

But the courts have traditionally been hands off when it comes to school rules and regulations. I find the case of the t-shirt to be in the same vein as yelling fire in a crowded theater. It is also hate speech.

I recall the case of an incident at one of our local schools. The Providence School Department has long had a regulation that bans smoking on school property.

One day a student made a video of the principal of one of the schools smoking in a prohibited area. The resulting shit storm made it clear that the student should not have been taking video of the principal smoking, blah blah blah. It finally quietly went away after a couple of weeks.

The district policy still says there’s no smoking on school grounds.

But let one little hate monger wear a t-shirt and it’s off to federal court. I’d like to see the federal courts reject these cases outright saying that they belong in state jurisdiction. I’d like to see the state courts emphatically make this point.

But it’s far more likely the state courts essentially told these religious fuckwits to go pound sand so they took it to the federal level. And as I said, they too should have told them to go pound sand.

The only nice thing about this is that it makes it easy to spot the bigots. And what happens when another child wants to wear a t-shirt to school that says “Religion is just a fairy tale”

This is bad case law.

Land Yachts

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As a kid in the late 70’s to early 80’s we used to buy some old land yachts. We’d yank the engines, re-cam them, replace the rings, in essence give them some serious performance boosts.

But the cars were always what we referred to as boats. They looked like boats, they handled like boats, you get the general idea. Most of what we played with was 60’s and early 70’s vintage. But I found these shots of a true land yacht.

We have here a 1953

Then a 1953 White El Dorado