Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Shanex's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
2:31 am	Silencing Opposition? I like Obama, and I voted for him. But I can't get behind his spat with Fox News. Yeah, I know, Fox is biased to the right. So what? In a Democracy, the leadership has to answer to the media. And parts of the media will be hostile. You don't get to arbitrarily declare people who disagree with you as "not news". Bush spent 8 years filled with negative reporting about his administration, but he never tried to exclude CNN from the press room. The way to counter a bias or inaccurate reporting is with logical argument and correct facts. The administration could easily set up a group of people in their press office to pay close attention to everything Fox claims, then post rebuttals on slanted articles, and proofs where there are lies/inaccuracies. But to try to silence dissent? To attack a news outlet directly and try to exclude them once they start to disagree with you? That's flatly unacceptable. That's banana republic stuff. Opposition news agencies happen. You deal with it by making your case to the people. The other news agencies will carry your rebuttals. I don't care if it's Fox News or Ku Klux Klan Magazine. You just press on and make your case. You DO NOT attack the media. Trivia: When was the last time a President directly attempted to discredit a news agency? Answer: Nixon, the Washington Post. -ATW (Comment on this)
Friday, October 2nd, 2009
12:12 am	Back in California I've struggled with depression my whole life, and up until 4 years ago, I couldn't point to any part of my life I looked back on fondly. That all changed when I moved to the Boston area for a job. I got my life in order, started making some pretty good money, made some friends, earned a lot of respect at work, and really liked the job. I bought a beautiful house. A dream house. It's on a lake (the back yard ends at the shore!), nestled in a quiet, virtually crime-free neighborhood. I put a lot of work in to the house after getting it. I also got along well with my neighbors. It takes a long time to be accepted in New England, but I did my time, paid my dues, and eventually was a member of the community; an "insider". I had finally gotten my shit together. Life wasn't perfect; it never is. But it was good. Then my company started laying people off, and cut my salary. Soon there were only three people left at the struggling firm. It became clear the job I liked so much was going to evaporate. Boston was now a wasteland. Several local businesses were dying all at once, flooding the market with tons of people in my field. My recruiter asked if I would be willing to consider a job in Sunnyvale. I said no. She said talk to them and see what they have to say. I told the company flat out in my first phone interview that I didn't want to relocate. "We'll see," they said, and the process continued. They liked my skills and offered to fly me out for an in-person interview. I refused, because I'm afraid to fly. No problem, they said, we'll do it all over the phone. I warned them that I had no college degree. No problem, they said. My experience was good enough for them. Seven more phone interviews followed. Then they offered me a job. They offered considerably more than I am worth, to do my favorite part of programming, in exactly what I am an expert at. I'm unlikely to receive an offer this good for the rest of my life, let alone in the middle of a recession where I'm lucky to even get an interview. After an agonizing week of indecision, I eventually took the job, and thus I am here in California once again. This is an incredible opportunity. I'll be in a position of respect at a major company. It'll look great on my resume forever, and will help me take a step away from the games industry, which I have been trying to wriggle out of for years. The money I make will help me pay off the mortgage on my house faster and with more security. (I haven't sold my house. I'll be renting it out.) But I feel like a failure. I feel like I've gone back in time 4 years and undone all I've accomplished. I feel like I have just ended the best days of my life. I was miserable in California and happy in Massachusetts. How could I return? As Casey repeatedly points out to me, a lot of it is the maturing I did while in Massachusetts, and I get to bring that maturity with me back to California. But late at night, as I get tired and my emotions make themselves heard, I have this terrible sinking feeling that I've traded genuine happiness for a high salary. And that's not a good trade. Time will tell if I get to have both. I'm scared. If I have to go back to that unhappiness, I don't know if I can take it. I'm just plain scared. -ATW (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 30th, 2009
9:56 pm	RawText helper app Ever get sick of all the damn text formatting you get when you copy and paste text? All you want to do is copy an email address from your IM into a document and you end up getting it blue and underlined? Or when you copy some text from a web page to paste into an email and it shows up 5x normal size and bold and in some other font? Drives me crazy. So I made a very simple app, called rawtext. You launch it, and it strips all text formatting from the system clipboard. It doesn't even bring up a window or anything. It just does that and quits. Simple as that. It's the same as pasting into notepad and then copying back out of it. So much nicer now. I put it on my quicklaunch bar and I can now quickly remove unwanted formatting with a single click of the mouse. Here it is, if you want it: http://www.galactanet.com/rawtext.zip I wrote the app myself from scratch. I can guarantee it is virus free. -ATW (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009
8:36 am	Dems new Health Reform Bill The House has unveiled a new Healthcare reform bill: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/14/house.health.care/index.html I want to urge you all to pay special attention to this part: "-- Required participation by individuals, with a penalty of 2.5 percent of adjusted gross income for non-compliance." In other words, if you do not have health care, for whatever reason, you will be penalized 2.5 percent of your income. This makes it mandatory to have health insurance. So this is another great victory in a long line of victories for the insurance industry. A victory, I would add, that they have already achieved here in Massachusetts. That same law exists here. If you don't have health insurance, you're breaking the law. What's the result? What harm comes from that? Well, if you don't make much money, and you work part time or minimum wage, or at some other job that doesn't supply health insurance, you now have to go get it on your own. Rather than make the decision yourself on whether or not to risk it, you are no compelled to go buy a several thousand dollar product when you can barely afford rent. It has been an unmitigated disaster in Massachusetts. The state legislators here, not being complete idiots, realized that minimum wage workers can't really afford to spend thousands on health care every year, so they implemented MassHealth, a state run system that gives insurance to those who can't afford it. It has cost the state something like a billion dollars thus far. Meanwhile, other people are left out in the cold because they made enough to disqualify themselves for state aid, but not enough to, you know, actually AFFORD health insurance. Add to that the fact that only 2 companies are authorized by the state to count as being health insurance, it's all an incredibly transparent scam to compel us, by law, to buy a product from a private company. So why did legislators make this incredibly stupid law, screwing the taxpayers, the low-income, and blatantly feeding the insurance industry? Simple 1) It makes the insurance lobby happy. Making lobbyists happy is what representatives really care about. And: 2) It allows them to say "We now have healthcare for everyone in the state" without technically raising taxes. This is the main point. It's all a dodge to avoid actually raising taxes. And that's what they should do. Just raise the damn taxes and have state-run healthcare. Honestly, I don't think health care should be the government's concern at all, and attempting to tackle it will send us down the road of Britain, Canada, and any number of other countries with laughable failures of healthcare systems. But if you want state-run healthcare, tax us and pay for it. Compulsary Purchase Health Care is the worst possible compromise. Far worse than paying for it all with tax dollars; far worse than simply not addressing healthcare at all. It make the insurance industry wealthy, and further improverishes the poor. -ATW (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
9:01 am	Attention Media Michael Jackson is dead. He died some time ago. There are other things going on in the world. For the love of god, move on to a different top story. Also, Give up on Swine Flu, it wasn't the media sensation you were hoping for. That is all. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, July 4th, 2009
9:38 pm	Solitaire Game I was bored, so I wrote a video game version of a solitaire card game I invented a long time ago. Yes it's an executable, but I can assure you it's virus free because I wrote it myself. http://www.galactanet.com/zsol.zip When you unzip it, make sure the directory structure remains intact. It should be zsol.exe, and a directory called "assets". For instructions on how to play, click the Question Mark button in the upper right. It's basically Klondike solitaire with a twist. Please leave feedback if you play it. -ATW (2 Comments |Comment on this)
4:14 am	Lessons from Disney Important Lessons I learned from animated Disney movies: Movie: Snow White and the Seven Dwarves Lesson: If you have a problem, do nothing about it, and wait for other people to solve it for you. Explanation: At no point did Snow White take any proactive action on her own behalf at all. Aside from running away into the forest when the huntsman told her it was that or be murdered. Other than that, the hunstman, various dwarves, and a prince did all the heavy lifting. So remember, kids, if you have a serious problem, wait around for someone to fix it for you. Movie: Pinocchio Lesson:Wandering away from your parents and talking to strangers will lead to no long-term bad outcomes Explanation: Oh sure, he got taken to Pleasure Island, bad people tried to turn him into a donkey, and he drowned. But in the end, the Blue Fairy came and resurrected him, showing me that, for the small price of momentary discomfort, you can have a fun filled vacation to Pleasure Island! Movie: Dumbo Lesson: Your purpose in life is to make yourself useful to your masters. Explanation: Dumbo goes through all kinds of hell at the hands of the circus owners, and in the end of the movie, he is an elephant who can FREAKING FLY. The end result: He's still part of the circus, still working for the same assholes, he just has a better trailer is all. What an accomplishment, Dumbo! If this were set in the deep south, it would be the story of a hard working slave who eventually earns himself a position as a house negro. Movie: Bambi Lesson: Murder is ok. Explanation: When Ronno shows up and starts trying to move in on Bambi’s gal-pal, Bambi shoves him off a cliff. I guess it’s ok if I kill anyone who hits on a girl I like, right? Movie: Cinderella Lesson: See “Snow White” Explanation: Yeah. Just hang back and wait for a fairy godmother to give you a dress, horse, carriage, grooms, and other crap. Well done, Ella. You sure took the initiative there. Movie: Alice in Wonderland Lesson: Opium is awesome! Explanation: Well, what do you think the caterpillar was smoking? Movie: Peter Pan Lesson: Repeated attempted murder is ok, if you feel bad about almost killing a non-intended target. Explanation: Tinkerbell. You think of her as a pleasant, glowing fairy who waves her wand at the beginning and end of movies. You may have forgotten that she is an evil, conniving, malicious, vindictive little bitch. Tinkerbell’s jealousy of Wendy was so profound that she convinced the Lost Boys to try to kill her, claiming Wendy was an evil bird that Peter wanted dead. Apparently the Lost Boys aren’t big in to questioning orders. When that didn’t work, she turned over the location of the secret hideout to Captain Fucking Hook, with the promise that he would kill Wendy. Hook agreed, and figured while he’s there he’d kill all the lost boys and Peter while he was at it. Tink didn’t want that to happen, so she sacrificed herself to save Peter. Then survived. And all was well. Note that she never stopped wanting Wendy dead. Even at the end. Movie: Sleeping Beauty Lesson: See “Snow White” and “Cinderella” Explanation: Ok, sensing a trend here… Movie: Robin Hood Lesson: Grand theft and treason are ok if you say they are. Explanation: Let’s face it. No matter what your political leanings, you are not allowed to rob the IRS or try to depose President Obama, right? Well that’s what Robin Hood does, while deftly evading authorities at every turn. If he can do it, so can I, right? All I have to do is rationalize it as being “political” in nature instead of “greed”. Movie: The Little Mermaid Lesson: You may be a member of an inferior race. Explanation: I guess humans are the master race, and all should aspire to be like them. White humans. Movie: Beauty and the Beast Lesson: Beauty is only skin deep. But massive wealth is something worth falling in love with. Explanation: Belle falls in love with the Beast, even though he’s ugly. But remember, he wooed her with his big-ass mansion and staff of possessed furnishings. That’s actually not that hard to do. There are plenty of women out there who will fall in love with your ugly ass if you can demonstrate a bank book that would choke an elephant. Movie: Aladdin Lesson: Crime pays; cheaters prosper Explanation: How did he get the lamp and the carpet in the first place? He stole them. So here we learn that stealing stuff gets you ahead in the world and at no point will there be any reckoning for it. Then he used wishes to pretend to be a prince to impress Jasmine. And yeah, she liked his actual personality better, but he wouldn’t have been able to meet her at all if he hadn’t lied about being a prince. Movie: The Emperor’s New Groove Lesson: You can be an unremitting asshole of a ruler your entire life, but if you’re marginally nice for a while, all is forgiven. Explanation: How do you feel about George W. Bush? Well, hold on. What if he went on a wild and hilarity-generating road trip with a fat guy? Let’s say it’s Jack Black. Jack and George need to cross the US to save something or other or something. There’d even be a scene where they need to share a hotel bed and much silliness ensues. The Arkansas redneck who shoots at them with his scattergun is ball-bouncingly funny, I can tell you! Now, once that’s done, W is a great guy, right? You like him now, Right? Movie: Mulan Lesson: Mulan is a bad-ass Explanation: Yeah! Mulan is a bad-ass! At last a woman who actually solves problems! (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, June 25th, 2009
11:18 pm	Deadly day When Farrah Fawcett arrived at heaven, God granted her one wish. She wished for all the children to be safe. So God killed Michael Jackson. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
12:09 am	Essay I'm working on this short essay, just for my own use, possibly to put on a page somewhere and link to people when I want to explain my (controversial and highly opinionated) views on modern environmentalism. I'd appreciate any feedback, but more on the writing itself than in rebuttals. Though always happy to listen to alternate points of view, my focus here is to write a good essay. So even if you wholly disagree with its purpose and conclusion, if you're going to comment, please focus on the writing itself. (Feel free to email rebuttals or content-related comments to me at sephalon@comcast.net )    It gives my opinions bluntly and as firmly as I could manage, and that's intentional. Here goes:     We are not the custodians of this planet. We are its owners.   The environment has no intrinsic value. It does not provide sustenance; we extract it, through means of farming no plant would ever evolve to. It does not provide comfort; we spent countless millennia evolving that comfort for ourselves. It does not provide safety; rather it provides endless peril that we, through tireless effort, have brought mostly under control.   The environment is not a delicate virgin that should never be despoiled, nor a timeless utopia that only saw suffering due to our influence. It changes constantly, with or without us, and is a source of raw materials that we have every right to use as we see fit. We can engage in endless debate about how best to utilize the environment to our own ends, and that is the debate we should be having. Those who feel the environment itself should have a voice in this debate have anthropomorphized it and should thus be heeded exactly as much as any other religious practitioners. -ATW (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, April 6th, 2009
12:25 am	Oceal level rise I just got back from iCon28, a science fiction convention. Much fun was had by all. One thing I didn't expect was a seminar on global climate change, poking holes in the bad science used on both sides of the issue. It was really interesting and, I'll admit, nudged me a little toward believing humans had a non-negligable part to play. I remain a skeptic, and also believe that the part we played was minimal and nearly irrelevant, but it did shift me on the issue, and that takes doing. But I want to focus on one part of the lecture the guy gave that I thought was incredibly insightful and compelling. He completely eviscerated the theories about ocean level rise. And he use simple, understandable science that prove there will be no ocean level rise at all, no matter how much ice melt there is. FLOATING ICE DOES NOT CAUSE A CHANGE IN WATER LEVEL WHEN IT MELTS: It's really very simple. Ice floating in water displaces its mass in water. When it melts, it becomes water, which will also displace its mass. The mass does not change when it melts. So the amount of water it displaces will also not change. In other words, an ice shelf melting in to the ocean will not cause any oceanic rise at all. You can prove this in your own home. Get a glass, fill it halfway with warm water, and drop several ice cubs in. Not enough that they are resting on the bottom of the glass (in the same way that the north polar ice is not resting on the ocean floor). Note the water level with a piece of tape or something. Put a saucer or something on top of the glass to eliminate the possibility of evaporation affecting the experiment. Then let the ice melt. when you check back, the glass will contain nothing but water and the water level will not have changed. That's incontrovertable. All the science claiming ocean levels will rise is simply false. It can be disproven by a high school physics student. WHAT ABOUT ANTARCTIC ICE: The above is all well and good for Arctic ice. It's just ice floating in water. But what about Antarctica? That's ice sitting on a continent. It's not displacing any ocean water at all right now. And if it melts, it will end up in the ocean, displacing water. So wouldn't that cause the oceans to rise?  Andser: Yes, it would. But Antarctica won't melt. I guarantee it. How can I be so sure? You know how they track ice ages and warm periods though earth's climate history? Ice core samples from Antartica. If Antarctic ice was susceptable to melting during periods of global warmth, there would be no ice record of it, because the ice would have melted. So unless you believe that the ensuing global warming will be more profound than any climate shift in geologic history (something no scientists that I know of believe), you can rest easy knowing that Antartica won't melt. Meaning there's nowhere for water to come from to raise the oceans. WHY DOESN'T ANTARCTICA MELT? This is less directly obvious. According to the lecturer, it comes down to the fact that it's on a continent. What melts ice in the polar regions is warm water coming from the equatorial regions. It gets up to the poles and gets up under the ice. It basically bakes it away like an oven. It can't do that to ice that's on land because it can't get under it. It can, at best, nibble away at the ice shelves sticking out past the landmass, and those follow the same displacement rules as arctic ice. Ask yourself this: Why is the ice in Antarctica focused so heavily on Antarctica? Why isn't the whole pole riddled with ice floes like the Arctic is? The answer is simple: The land masses in the north severely restrict the warm water's ability to get to the Arctic. Look at a polar view map of the Arctic and you'll see how hard it is for warm water to get up there. In the south, there is no land in the way, so there's no accumulation of ice because the water doesn't get cold enough, because it's constantly mixing with a free and easy supply of warm equatorial water. I found all that fascinating. Also I plan to spring this simple and easily understandable proof on anyone who gives me the ocean-rise arguments. -ATW (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
10:03 pm	G20 Protests Am I the only one who noticed that the G20 protesters shown on the news, all of them, are extremely young? Like... the median age there has to be around 20. I'm trying to figure out why I hate those people so much. I guess I'm just jealous. I wish I was lucky enough to have my needs paid for by external sources, starry-eyed enough to be sure my beliefs were unquestionably correct, arrogant enough to think two years away from home in a dorm meant I knew all there is to know about life in the real world, deluded enough to believe government is to blame for all woes, and stupid enough to simply adopt the beliefs of my college peers. If I had all those things, I'd probably be as happy as they are. -ATW (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009
8:34 pm	Why the World Baseball Classic is made of Fail Most friends of mine aren't that in to Baseball, so I doubt this post will be significant to anyone, really. But I wanted to post some opinions I have about the World Baseball Classic. I love the concept behind the WBC. It wants to be the "World Cup" of baseball. It's the only true top-level international competition. But the way it's organized and the way its run is ruining it. Extremely bad high-level decisions are crippling what could be a new era in baseball. 1) American's don't give a crap: This is the main problem the WBC needs to combat. In America, baseball fans care about their team, and about the World Series. They're not particulary interested in anything outside of that. The vast majority of baseball fans in the world are in America. So, to make the WBC relevant, you need Americans to care. The WBC has not taken the steps it needs to cause more interest in the US. there is little to no advertising for the event, and only the semifinals and final are shown on national TV. You couldn't even watch America's qualifying rounds in a lot of places, but I'll touch on that later. The point is, WBC has done very little to drum up support in the world's largest baseball market. 2) Pooling and Advancement scheduling is awful This year's tournament was won by Japan. They defeated Korea in the final. Japan and Korea both played a total of 8 games during the tournament. 3 round-robin games, 2 quarterfinal matches, 2 semifinal matches, and 1 final. During the course of those 8 games, Japan and Korea played each other FIVE TIMES. This makes for boring baseball. The problem was that the two teams advancing from a round-robin pool were placed in the SAME POOL for the next tier of competition. This guarantees that there will be a lopsided number of games between the better teams. In the other round-robin pool, America and Venezuela both advanced and then had to play each other again in the second tier. America and Venezuela ended up playing each other 3 times.  What they should have done was have the winner and runner-up of a round-robin pool advance to different tier-2 pools. This is obvious and done in all other tournaments. It's mind-boggling that they didn't do that. 3) Ambiguous Venue Most international tournaments take place in a specific host country. For instance, the World Cup 2010 will be in South Africa. All games will be in South Africa. The 2010 Olympics will be in Vancouver. All the events will be in and around Vancouver. But the WBC was literally all over the place. It removes the feeling of a tournament and instead makes it a random collection of baseball games. With no opening or closing ceremony to speak of, it doesn't feel like a critical major sporting tournament. Instead it feels like a fantasy baseball league where you use a series of unrelated games to determine your score. It's lame. 4) Broadcasting Despite the fact that they desperately need to get Americans interested, they decided to give exclusive broadcasting rights to MLB.com. MLB.com is a pay-service that only serious baseball fans buy. Alternately, it comes free with some cable packages, but most of them don't carry it. I'm a pretty serious fan, but I don't care enough to pay for MLB.com, and my cable provider doesn't carry it. So that was it. I couldn't watch. If they want the tournament to become popular, they're going to need to make it viewable by lots of Americans; casual fans who would be happy to root for Team America, but aren't going to go out of their way to buy a channel or change cable providers to get it. 5) That's not how baseball works! The biggest problem by far is that baseball is not a sport that lends itself to a one-game decision. The best team in the MLB will lose to the worst team about 40% of the time. It's the nature of the game. Having a single game final is ridiculous. Even double elimination is not enough. The only way to properly do it would be with a bunch of round-robin games in 4 pools. Something like 18 games total, meaning each team faces each other team in the pool 3 times. The winners of each pool advance to quarterfinals. The quarterfinals are each a 5-game series. The semifinals are the same. Then the final is a 7-game series. With all the teams in the same general area (see point #3) there would be no travel, and they could easily play 4 games every 5 days. This means: 18 pool games plus 5 quarterfinal games plus 5 semifinal games plus 7 final games = 35 games, which could be done over 42 days. That's 6 weeks. It's a perfectly reasonable duration for a world-class tournament of that nature. For reference, the 2006 FIFA World Cup lasted 32 days. In the end, I think the WBC is an excellent concept, but it's being executed incredibly poorly. They need to shape it up in a lot of different ways, or it'll go the way of the XFL, the IHL, and any of a number of other failed sport ventures. -ATW (Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
4:15 pm	Resource Theft in Game Design A lot of games allow you to take resources from other players. Cards, game pieces, whatever. Depends on the game. And I have always hated it. It makes it hard in whatever game it is to formulate long term strategy because whatever you're planning to use might not be there by the time you put your plan in to motion. And I just can't forgive a game for punishing strategy. Basically, resource theft is an overpowered mechanic implemented by inferior game designers who don't care about the effect of "skill" on a game. This got Casey and I talking about what some well-established games would be like with the idiocy of resource theft in them. Consider: Poker: You can play a joker to remove a card from an opponent's hand at any time! Yay! Chess: My pawn has reached the back rank.  Your queen is mine now. Checkers: My checker has reached your back rank. King me. With one of your pieces. Tic-Tac-Toe: So you put an X in the center square, eh? Well for my turn I will turn it in to an O Coin Toss: "I'm claiming your call of heads" Baseball: Your team no longer has a first baseman, and mine now has 2. Pong: I now have both paddles Basically, you can take any game, add resource theft, and turn it in to utter shit. -ATW (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, February 16th, 2009
12:24 am	Internet Justice Internet Justice I just had to post about the sequence of events that took place over the weekend. It was a rare occasion where an awful individual online actually got nailed by denizens of the internet. This is no petty revenge story for a DDoS, this is a serious crime and the fact that justice prevailed due to anonymous computer users performing a focused investigation is unique, I think, in the internet’s short history. A complete asshole going by the name of “Timmy” decided it would be fun to film himself beating the hell out of his defenseless cat, then post the video to YouTube. He was wearing a balaclava in the video, and he took the cat, identified as “Dusty” to the bathroom, slammed it against the wall repeatedly, then punched it over and over. The attack lasted over a minute. The cat was helpless, defenseless, cowed, in pain, and miserable. “Timmy” posted the video on YouTube under the username glennspam1. It was up for only a few hours before YouTube deleted it and suspended the account, for obvious reasons. But in the short time it was up, it gathered 30,000 views, and had been duplicated all over the internet. Social networking sites all over the net passed the link and links to mirrors of the video around, and the outrage was palpable. Enter 4-chan, the sewer of the internet. Nowhere online will you ever find a more disgusting site. There is no login required to post images there. They have no morals, no respect for anything, and will post pictures of the most disturbing things imaginable. People dying in accidents, people crapping on each other, the occasional child porn (the mods delete the child porn, at least). You can imagine my surprise when I tell you that 4-chan, of all places, was as outraged as the rest of the internet. The anonymous internet users of 4-chan, none of whom know each other, none of whom are organized in any way, managed to conduct an investigation into the video by sheer power of thousands of angry, skilled, internet users with a single purpose. Everyone tried everything they could to ascertain the identity of “Timmy”. And they eventually succeeded. It goes like this: He posted the video under the name “glennspam1”. Searching for that username everywhere online yielded an account on a website about Haiti called “haitiwow”. This user account gave the user’s zip code, 73505, which turns out to be the zip code of Lawton, OK. Another user concluded that “glenn” was probably either his first or last name, and set about the long task of checking up on every mention of “glenn” and Lawton he could find in google. After many many dry leads and false hits, he found the Facebook page for Kenny Glenn, who lives in Lawton, OK. Why is this significant? Because there are photos of Kenny in and around his house on his facebook page, including a photo of him in his bedroom. The bedroom has a unique green carpet, wooden kickboard, yellow walls, and green Venetian blinds on the window. Also it has a drum set and a guitar in the corner. In the abuse video that “Timmy” posted, there is a scene where he is speaking to the camera in front of a door which is partially open. Through the open slit of the door, you can see the green carpet, yellow walls, green Venetian blinds, The drums, and the guitar. Kenny Glenn. Lawton, OK. Having identified the little shit, his information was quickly disseminated throughout the internet and thousands of people called the Lawton Sherrif’s department, the kid’s school, the kid’s house. Etc. By 10pm that evening, he was placed under arrest and the cat, Dusty, was removed by Animal Control. Here is a link to within a web suite about the incident made just today. This is a jpg that shows the incriminating images I described: http://www.kenny-glenn.com/kenny-glenn-dusty.jpg I’ve never seen this before. “The Internet” nailed a criminal. That makes me happy but… Fuck you, Kenny. -ATW (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, February 8th, 2009
3:34 am	Platform Politics Any major political issue will have a liberal view and a conservative view. If you sit down and make a list, you can easily come up with 20 political issues facing the nation today. Some will be less important than others, but you will be able to make a list.  In order for something to be a political issue, there has to be contention. “Slavery” isn’t a political issue because there aren’t enough people in favor of it to matter. “Outlawing the Color Blue” is also not a hot topic. So all the major political issues (Abortion, the War, Death Penalty, Gun Control, Health Care, etc.) have large numbers of people on both sides.   On that list of political issues, note your stance on each. Also note the liberal stance and the conservative stance for each issue. If your stance is liberal on all of them, or conservative on all of them, you simply aren’t thinking about your political beliefs.   There is no correlation between the Death Penalty and Gay Marriage. Yet you will find that a disproportionate number of people who are in favor of Gay Marriage are against the Death Penalty. A similarly disproportionate number of people who are against Gay Marriage are in favor of the Death Penalty. Why? Platform Politics.   For the most part, people rarely think about their own beliefs. They tend to adopt the beliefs of the people around them. But when you point this out to them, they get really upset.   Like, really upset.   But it’s true. They hang around with groups of people who all have the same political opinions, and they adopt them. Why do you think politics is regional? Is there something about smog that makes people in California liberal? Is there some chemical in grits that makes southerners conservative? No. Politics is infectious, and most people aren’t independent-minded or strong enough to actually form their own opinions. Everyone thinks they are. But they’re not.   Technically, if you make a list of unrelated political issues, you should fall on one side or the other about 50-50.   So why do these “official liberal stances” and “official conservative stances” exist? Culture. Liberalism and conservatism are subcultures in America. All cultures have rules and norms. People often end up in one or the other, and they adopt the norms without challenging or questioning them.   I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “What about a root cause? What if there’s some simple belief that you can hold which will make you have these so-called ‘platform politics’ stances?”   It is ridiculous to look for a causal link on such a wide variety of political issues. Consider this list: Gun Control, Death Penalty, Gay Marriage, Emissions Standards, Abortion, Affirmative Action, Minimum Wage, Nationalized Health Care, Belief in Man-Made Global Warming, Prayer in Schools, The War in Iraq, Labor Outsourcing. Those are just off the top of my head. What simple belief can you have, without requiring subclauses, semicolons, and multiple paragraphs, that would drive your opinion on all of those?   So do you hold this view?:   Gun Control - for Death Penalty - against Gay Marriage - for Emissions Standards - increase Abortion – pro-choice Affirmative Action – for Minimum Wage - increase Nationalized Health Care - for Belief in Man-Made Global Warming - yes Prayer in Schools - against The War in Iraq - against Labor Outsourcing – it’s victimization     Or perhaps this one?:   Gun Control - against Death Penalty - for Gay Marriage - against Emissions Standards - decrease Abortion – pro-life Affirmative Action – against Minimum Wage – decrease or remove Nationalized Health Care - against Belief in Man-Made Global Warming – not convinced Prayer in Schools - for The War in Iraq - for Labor Outsourcing – for   Where you differ from one of those archetypes, how many issues do you differ by?   When was the last time you thought about your political beliefs? Here’s something I do with all of my beliefs: Argue the other side. Do your best to make as compelling an argument as you can for the opposing viewpoint to your own. See what comes up. -ATW (28 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, February 1st, 2009
3:04 am	Meta To-Do list Things not covered in the defined rules for Meta (I remove things from this list as we solve the problems): 1) Prepositions are evil. Different languages use different prepositions in the same situations. In English you get ON a plane. In Spanish you get IN a plane, etc. For the most part that doesn't matter, because slightly different prepositions won't affect your ability to understand what is written. The problem is overloaded prepositions like "by". It could mean "beside" (I sat by the tree) or it would mean "facilitated via" (I got hit by a rock). I think in general, every word will have to have one understood meaning. 2) Gerunds. "Having children is a rewarding experience". "Swimming in the ocean can be dangerous" 3) "in order to" constructions. Like "To get across town, take the number 8 bus" or "To succeed, you need to work hard." -ATW (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, January 31st, 2009
11:20 pm	Meta Recently I have taken a great interest in languages, and I came up with an interesting idea. I'm fairly convinced this idea hasn't been tried or seriously considered, because it would have no value before the computer age. I want people all over the world to be able to communicate online WITHOUT any of the mhaving to learn a new language. If one guy speaks only English and another speaks only Cantonese, I want them to be able to chat in forums and instant messenger without either of them having to learn the other's language, or any other language. Computers can translate words excellently, but they can't translate syntax well at all. If you take some text from a Japanese web site and run it through altavista, you'll see what I mean. You'll get a bunch of words, but they'll be nonsense. So my idea is to come up with a set of common grammar rules that everyone can use, a complete language in terms of sentence construction, but everyone uses their own native language's vocabulary. Then computers translate the words in place. I'm calling it "Meta", and here's what I have so far. Languages are complicated things, so This is a work in progress, and there are probably numerous things I'm doing inefficiently or less easily than they could be done. Please give any feedback you can. Please point out things that can't be said, even when rephrased, in these rules, and maybe offer solutions via additional sentence construction rules. ( Meta language rules ) That's all I have for now, -ATW (28 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009
9:05 pm	Exploration Casey and I tend to think alike. caseyzero: The team found a safe landing site three kilometers from the station, and approached on foot. caseyzero: They found the three temporary structures. One had been completely incinerated. One was heavily charred and broken. caseyzero: It revealed that one of the humans had said, "It's killing us! It's burning us alive!" shanex_exxel: Hmm... ancient base... incendiaries... I SMELL DYSON DESTRUCTOR DROID! caseyzero: They found an empty flechette pistol clip, and human footprints moving at a dead run. caseyzero: In one of the caverns, they encountered a building that the researchers had begun to excavate, and the body of one of the researchers. caseyzero: He had been cataloging fossilized Aurenide remains, which appeared to have suffered horrible trauma. caseyzero: In another room, there was a region where some of the sedimentary rock had been blasted away, and a very smooth ovoid depression. shanex_exxel: Almost as if a DYSON DESTRUCTOR DROID had been hanging out in that rock? caseyzero: At that moment, the team heard a humming noise coming from the caverns behind them. caseyzero: The humming noise revealed itself to be a DYSON DESTRUCTOR DROID! shanex_exxel: OMFG! NO WAY! -ATW (Comment on this)
Thursday, January 1st, 2009
10:12 am	The Science of Rock Music Hello, and welcome to “The Science of Rock Music”. Today we will cover the scientific principles discussed in various rock songs. Let’s get right to it. ROCKETMAN (Elton John) In Rocketman, Elton John gives us this helpful public service announcement: “Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids In fact it’s cold as hell And there’s no one there to raise them if you did” What Elton is saying here is that leaving your kids on Mars, alone, without any form of climate control, is a bad idea. He neglected a few minor points, so I’ll add them in to the lyrics for him: “The pressure there is 1/90th of Earth The kids would bloat and burst! And the raw UV raaaaays would, Cook them aliiiiive….” DON’T STOP ME NOW (Queen) This song has some excellent SCIENCE: “i'm a shooting star leaping through the sky like a tiger defying the laws of gravity” A shooting star is all about obeying the laws of gravity. It fell in to the gravitational field of Earth, and burned up in the atmosphere. So, like, a shooting star defying the laws of gravity wouldn’t be a shooting star at all. And if it was like a tiger in some way, it wouldn’t burn for very long, as a tiger has very little mass comparatively and wouldn’t take long to burn out while falling through the atmosphere. “I'm burning through the sky yeah 200 degrees that's why they call me Mr. Fahrenheit” I guess being hot makes you “Mr. Fahrenheit”. Of course, 200F isn’t that hot on the grand scheme of things… “I’m Mr. Farenheit!” “Nice to meet you. Can you boil this water?” “Ooo, no, sorry. That’s just out of my range.” Moving on… ”I'm traveling at the speed of light I wanna make a supersonic man out of you” Indeed the speed of light is “supersonic” but that’s sort of an understatement. The speed of sound in air (depending on pressure and temperature) is about 340 m/s. The speed of light, meanwhile, is about 300,000,000 m/s, which is almost a million times the speed of sound. So calling lightspeed “supersonic” is sort of like saying Superman is “Stronger than Ted in Accounting”. Also, of course, it’s impossible to travel at the speed of light, but we’ll let that slide. Freddie Mercury gets some bonus points for not saying he’s traveling *faster* than light. THE FINAL COUNTDOWN (Europe) We learn a lot about the solar system from this song, which states: “We're heading for Venus and still we stand tall Cause maybe they've seen us and welcome us all With so many light years to go and things to be found I'm sure that we'll all miss her so.” Venus is approximately 108 million km from the sun, Earth is about 150 million km. This means that, depending on where they are in their orbits, Venus and Earth will be between 42 and 250 million km apart. A light year is 9,460,000 million km. So when they say they have so many light years to go, they actually meant “With 0.0000264 Light Years to go and things to be found…” I guess it doesn’t flow as well. (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
8:00 pm	Creative things Global Warming has been blamed for Obviously, worldwide change in climate is an important issue and should not be ignored. And many concerns about global climate change, including issues related to temperature increase, are wise to think about and attempt to put a stop to. But It's things like the items listed below that make me believe it is completely out of hand, leading to my wary and cynical view of modern environmentalism. Here are a few things Global Warming has been blamed for. (Note: I say "Global Warming" instead of the more accurate "Global Climate Change" because the people in the articles refer to it as "global warming" and are focused specifically on global temperature increase as opposed to other effects of climate change.) Cannibalism: Ted Turner claims that in 30 to 40 years, the projected 8 degree increase in global temperature will lead to "living in a failed state, like Somalia or Sudan, and living conditions will be intolerable... most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals" (Source: Ted Turner interview on Charlie Rose, PBS) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mys_AQjM4U0&feature=related Death of the Loch Ness Monster: "despite having hundreds of sonar contacts over the years, the trail has since gone cold and Rines believes that Nessie may be dead, a victim of global warming." (Source: Nessie enthusiast Robert Rines quoted in Scotland Daily Mirror newspaper) http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2008/02/13/veteran-loch-ness-monster-hunter-gives-up-86908-20317853/ Kidney Stones: Higher temperature would lead to dehydration, and thus kidney stones. Dr. Tom Brikowski, lead researcher and an associate professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. "It will make life just uncomfortable enough that maybe people will slow down and think what they're doing to the climate." (Source: Globe and Mail article) http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080715.wlstones15/BNStory/specialScienceandHealth/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20080715.wlstones15 Black Hawk Down: Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) "In Somalia back in 1993, climate change, according to 11 three- and four-star generals, resulted in a drought which led to famine. That famine translated to international aid we sent in to Somalia, which then led to the U.S. having to send in forces to separate all the groups that were fighting over the aid, which led to Black Hawk Down." http://www.cnsnews.com/public/Content/Article.aspx?rsrcid=32291 Granted, the Loch Ness Monster enthusiast is just a crackpot. But the rest of these sources are a major business mogul, a congressman, and a university researcher. The point here is I'm trying to illustrate why I question the allegedly respectable and unbiased sources of environmental studies. Merely being respected in your field, and in a position normally associated with responsibility and/or unbiased study, does not necessarily mean the person is able to be rational about environmentalism. Environmentalism has become an emotional "gut feel" issue for many people, and they prioritize their strongly held position over all other concerns when making their reports about it. Obviously not all people do that. But some do. A lot of people do. And as I listen to people report on global climate change, I have no way to separate who is logical and who is letting emotion dictate their findings. -ATW (2 Comments |Comment on this)