parakkum

Out of curiosity, I recently checked up on the publishing record of my entering grad school class, via Pubmed. Out of, I think, 30 or so people who started the class...

2 quit grad school
17 have some kind of authorship on a research article
7 are first authors on a research article

As I'm in that last group (and have another first authorship in the pipe) that made me feel pretty good.

Also:

2 students have defended (one more is about to)
1 of these two has left and gone on to a postdoctoral position

Now I just need to arrange to have all my faculty in the same place at the same time, so I can defend and leave...

As naturally goes along with preparing to dissert and defend, I'm currently looking at and for jobs in biotech. Possibilities include industrial postdocs (that is, a postdoctoral fellowship in a biotech company) and possibly other starting jobs, though positions that require no work experience past the doctorate are limited.

So naturally, if any of my humanities and computing friends turn up a biotech job that fits, I'd love to hear about it.

As likely as that is.

My defense date is set: August 6. Time and exact location on the UCSD campus to follow. Friends are invited to attend, assuming making your way to San Diego isn't a huge inconvenience.

Counting down to that PhD...

I just sent out (well, entered into a form-laden web interface) my first job application, for a postdoctoral position at SRI.

Now I'm pondering emailing the person who I would most likely end up working for were I to receive the job. Would that be good, or annoying?

I'm taking a moment to address a pet peeve:

"The Government" doesn't do anything. Seriously.

People are fond of saying that The Government has done this or that awful thing, and really ought to change its policies and so forth, as if speaking of a single queen bee that operates through its workers and drones.

That concept is, in short, goofy.

The actual government, at all levels from local through Federal, comprises an assortment of individuals from the exact same communities it ends up governing. Every police officer, DMV staffer and ATF agent is just some guy or gal who ended up in that line of work, just like everyone else.

But for people to make sweeping, incorrect assessments and have an easier time thinking about how the world works, these government employees have to be depersonalized into part of The Government. Which is, again, goofy. If the FCC makes a bad ruling, that means that some actual, indivual people up there made a bad ruling, after thinking about it. Perhaps they were corrupt, perhaps they don't have your or my interests in mind, but they're actual people, and not part of the monolith.

All of this stuff springs to mind both because of talking to my pal Tim, who trusts in governmental structures a little less than I do (but isn't the kind of kook to talk about The Government either, which is good), and I just read Danny Coulson's book No Heroes, which describes his career in the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team. Some salient things to draw from this book:

1) Coulson is an actual person, and describes in great detail how he came into his line of work, and how he thought about his job when he was in it. Notably, he never shot anyone, and considers violence a failure.

2) The shooting of Vickie Weaver at Ruby Ridge was a reasonable yet tragic mistake, and it pretty much ended the career of the HRT officer who took the shot. Note that the shooting happened along the true FBI deadly force guidelines (i.e. only to protect life from imminent harm -- the Weavers were shooting at an FBI chopper) and not under the wacky "shoot anyone with a gun" guidelines that a middle manager wrote without approval from headquarters. In fact, all the HRT and SWAT members on scene made a conscious decision to ignore the nonapproved guidelines.

3) The siege at Waco was necessarily going to end badly, once it started. Koresh was intent on keeping his power and fully willing to kill his followers (including many children he'd molested) to do so. Many of the children who burned when the Davidians torched their compound were shot, knifed, or bludgeoned to death prior to burning. It's also worth reading about Coulson's peaceful resolution of a very similar situation nearly a decade earlier. Sadly, the peaceful circling and negotiation he used before could not apply after ATF's botched raid (and geez, who approved a frontal assault on a complex full of automatic weapons and .50 cal sniper rifles?).

Final parting thought -- people, by and large, commit these unprovoked acts of violence because they want to and it makes them feel good. Ideological justification is secondary. If you're bombing a building with a childcare center, it's because it makes you feel powerful and validates your existence, not because it's a reasonable target in some kind of war.

Today was the first time giving blood ever hurt -- which is not a bad record, since I've given a lot of blood.

For the past year, I've been donating by apheresis, which basically entails having blood removed, like a normal donation, separated into its component parts, then some of it pumped back into you. Today, as in all but one time I've done this, they collected a double dose of red blood cells, returning my plasma and saline.

Unlike every other time I've done this, my vein ruptured on the second return, and plasma and saline pumped into the surrounding tissue. The moment I could feel the needle and then a growing pain, I figured this was what happened. It really hurt by the time I waved the attending nurse over, but she nicely DCed the needle and put an ice pack on it, and the pain went away.

But definitely no heavy lifting today, and I'll probably have some kind of bruise tomorrow.

That's okay, though. I happened to see their little printout of current RBC supplies. 0.4 days worth of O+, which is my type. Figure they really, really need the help. I also saw them actually assign my blood units to a request form from a medical facility, which was new, and quite cool. From the conversation, I know that my blood was not going to an infant (as some of the blood that day was) and thus didn't require resting for CMV.

...and sixteen weeks from now, I can do it again. :) If you're able, do give blood. It's by far the easiest form of major altruism I've encountered.

As it says. My arm didn't bruise after all.

It is 9:44pm on a Saturday night, and my dissertation is almost complete. I spent the last six hours putting in page numbers (for the figure pages), then threading it all together into a beautiful whole (well, whole chapters as PDFs), then completing the table of contents. I now have left to do:

Acknowledgements
Abstracts
Table of tables (it's a handful of entries short)

Which is good, as I want to hand this off to my committee in the coming week. Next week I take it to the Office of Graduate Studies and Research and they check the formatting to make sure it's all good. Hopefully, it will be.

...and, like someone with an optical media tic, I continue to back this up onto CDs repeatedly.

So, things left to do before the Comic-con this Thursday include the above, as well as...

Put together any pitch packages I want to have on me
Edit and update an article I wrote back on 2000 for my black belt, since the program now wants to publish it in their scholarly journal (this came at an excellent time, as you can see)

*twitch, twitch*

My thesis defense is this Wednesday. It's good, then, that I finally acquired the last signature on the predefense evaluation form today.

Stress, man.

I give the talk, then I have a week to revise the dissertation (including adding a brief chapter on future directions, which I didn't have in the original), print it properly and hand it over to be bound and included in the university library. Now I have to find some more forms...

I have given my talk, and my committee has signed off on that portion of my requirements. Now I have to revise the dissertation, then turn it in.

One step closer, one step left.

Actually, that makes it sound adversarial, which it wasn't. The very nice lady at our Office of Graduate Studies and Research caught one mistake in my dissertation -- a table that strays into the right margin too far. Tsk. So I must replace page 67 in both archival copies before they can be passed on to the library and microfiche archivist, respectively.

This is actually not a big deal, since I am also missing a signature needed for those same reasons, and won't have it until Tuesday, when our department chair returns from wherever he's gone.

The experience was interesting, though. She is obviously a dissertation-scanning expert. It's something like:

FLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIP
FLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIP
FLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIP
FLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIP
FLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIP
FLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIP --

*pause*

Place page 67 on different stack, for reasons that are immediately apparent.

FLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIP
FLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIP
FLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIP
FLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIP
FLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIP
FLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIP --

*done*

I just returned from a trip and found a bunch of junk mail and an envelope
labeled "Republican Census Document Enclosed." Inside, we find the following:

Dear Fellow Republican,

You are among a select group of Republicans who have been chosen to take
part in the official CENSUS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.

Enclosed is your GOP CENSUS DOCUMENT which was assigned and prepared
especially for you as a representative of all Republicans living in your
voting district.

Your answers will be used to develop a BLUEPRINT for the Republican Party
for the next 10 years.

The 2000 and 2002 elections showed how _critical_ it is that we _identify
and contact EVERY SINGLE POTENTIAL Republican voter in America to get them
involved_.

Because it is cost prohibitive for the Republican Party to print and mail
an official REPUBLICAN PARTY CENSUS to each and every one of the 55,000,000
Republicans nationwide...

...your answers will represent the views and opinions of all Republican
voters living in your voting district.

There's more, but I'll pause here to explain. I'm not currently a
registered Republican. Right now, I'm a Democrat, but I'm not a dedicated
Democrat either (though they have a much better track record of not being
egregiously wrong than the Republican party, to be sure). In the past, I
was registered as an independent, before someone astutely pointed out that
I couldn't vote in any major party primaries. Since that time, I've
registered depending on which primary I most wanted to vote in. This year,
it was the Democratic primary. One presidential cycle back, it was the
Republican (I voted for McCain). I'm not sure why they didn't take my name
off the rolls, but hey, I'm always happy to help determine policy,
especially for a party that's been doing such a terrific job of wrecking
our country.
So let's see what they're asking. For each question, the possible answers
are Yes, No and Undecided. I'll post the questions and my answers. I'm
mailing this out tomorrow, as it requested that I send it back within seven
days and I don't know when I received it.

Biased survey in the extended

For my remaining time in lab, I will officially be a postdoctoral researcher (as I am no longer a grad student). One upshot of this is a salary increase. I picked up my appointment letter today and discovered that I'll be picking up an extra 750 bucks a month. Nice.

(I am still paid less than all my computer-workin' friends, naturally.)

Now working on lining up the next job. I should have done this earlier, but was concentrating on my work here. That may give me some lag time, so I've been considering applying for a temporary lecturer position for the coming Spring semester at SJSU or one of the local community colleges. It doesn't pay well, but it would pay and would be better than sitting around (not that I don't have lots of other things to do...).

I'm currently in the midst of job finding. Up until earlier this week, I was considering:

A job in biotech
A postdoctoral fellowship in an academic or corporate setting

I now have a new option.

My friend Tom attended a recruiting session last week by McKinsey & Company, a consulting firm. They’re looking for candidates with professional degrees to work as consultants. Tom gave me a rundown of what they’d presented, then I spent some time looking through their site, including the specific site for people with advanced degrees (here).

I'm intrigued.

I already knew of consulting generally, and that some consulting groups hired Ph.D.s, on the principle that we've been taught to think analytically. I don't know enough to compare across consulting firms, but McKinsey's site says that 48% of their consultants have advanced professional degrees, with the rest holding MBAs. They advertise a fact-based method of problem solving, which definitely has appeal. I don't think I could work for a company whose consultant role centered around nebulous concepts of improving the client company's morale, for example. But fact-based problem solving sounds genuinely interesting.

The job frequently involves a lot of travel, but I'm totally fine with that. I really don't mind waiting in airports and on airplanes. The job is also supposed to pay well - the cited figure for the first year, with signing bonus, is on the order of $180,000. Naturally, there's a lot of work involved. However, as Tom pointed out, there's just as much work involved in a postdoctoral research position, only for one sixth the compensation.

Now that the possibility of consulting has entered my mental space, I've looked into other firms. So far, I've checked out:

Accenture
Bain & Company
The Boston Consulting Group
The Parthenon Group

I haven't yet formed a complete opinion on any of them, If you've heard of or about any other groups, feel free to tell me. I'm now quite interested in seeing what the field is like.

The application process for McKinsey begins with an online application, with a school-dependent deadline (so if you're interested, check it out now, especially if you're on the East coast). If they like you, then you take a written test. If they still like you, you have an interview featuring a case question, which has you walking through a model consulting situation.

I'm currently on step one, applying. I revised and updated my resume today. This is a nice activity, because my resume makes me feel pretty warm and fuzzy about myself.

Next I'll have to write the short essay (they do mean short - 400 words or less) on teamwork. The actual prompt is:

We almost always work as members of a team. Please describe an experience in which you worked as a member of a team, your role, the relationships you built, and your contributions to the team's effectiveness.

Incidentally, if you're a grad student who will be done in 2006, they have internships you might be able to take part in. If you think you'll be done in 2005, apply now.

Having just finished my Ph.D., I'm naturally in a position to think about the next step. Most accurately, I was in that position months ago, and really ought to have done it then. Still, there's nothing wrong with a break. However, thinking about what I want to do and considering things such as Consulting has left me pondering what I'd actually like to do with my life.

I would like to:

Make things

(Thus, writing.)

Think about biology and life sciences

(I do feel a sense of moving away from possibilities when I consider leaving the direct research role. At the same time, I don't really want to be doing grunt research that much, nor am I excited about the possibility of being an academic.)

Influence the world

(I'd like to be in policy, I think. I'd like to be a person who influences how people think about world governance. I'd like to be able to influence people such that they:

Pay attention to major world diseases (malaria, etc)
Adopt a policy of buying people off whenever possible
Act reasonably and in ways that leave a world I find better)

Be happy with what I do day to day

(The consulting seems to appeal here -- it's problem solving, and I really have had a lot of fun over the years with the troubleshooting part of my work. Getting results and figuring out experimental plans and possible hypotheses is a lot of fun, but overcoming a problem is really satisfying. I also wouldn't mind the security of additional financial resources.)

Just some thoughts, as I read about Consulting Groups, send email to labs where I might do postdoctoral work, and generally consider my goals and next direction.

So what does everyone else want to be when they grow up?

How might one say the following in an ancient language of your choice?

dark days

new day

I was writing up information on the propositions in California for my intensely busy girlfriend, so I thought I'd post that here. Also, here's a link to an insightful blog by someone serving in the military in Iraq:

http://atease.blogspot.com/

Right now, he's going through the top ten reasons to not vote for Bush, with extensive, effective discussion of each reason.

Now, the propositions:

Prop 1A: "Protection of Local Government Revenues"

Currently, some portion of local property and sales tax goes off to the state; this basically makes those funds inaccessible to the state unless two thirds of the legislature agrees that it's necessary to access them. I'm kind of ambivalent about this one, since it will make local governments more flush while depleting the state's income.

I'm going with No, but it's not a strong No.

Prop 59: "Public Records, Open Meetings."

This concise prop requires open meetings and writings for public officials, as well as requiring that access be construed to be as wide as possible, while restrictions be construed in as limited a manner as possible. It does not apply to records relating to cops, nor is it supposed to allow breaches of privacy. Seems pretty sound, as public access to information on how the government runs is a nice thing.

I'm voting Yes.

Prop 60: "Election Rights of Political Parties."

This is a counter to prop 62, below. It requires that if a party has candidates in a primary, the one receiving the most votes among those candidates must appear on the final election ballot. Basically, it's a guarantee and restatement of the process as it currently occurs.

I'm voting Yes.

Prop 60A: "Surplus Property"

Prop 60A requires that proceeds from sale of state property must first go toward paying off the bonds issues earlier this year as part of the Economic Recovery Bond Act, which was meant to stopgap the $15 billion deficit. This strikes me as a sound way to prevent foolish spending when such a large debt is still outstanding.

I'm voting Yes.

Prop 61: "Children's Hospital Projects"

This is a $750 million bond measure to fund capital improvements in various children's hospitals. It will cost 41.5 billion to pay off over the next thirty years. I'm not fond of bond measures, and I don't think capital improvements (that is, physical items and structures) the the key changes and upgrades needed in serving children in this state.

I'm voting No.

Prop 62: "Elections. Primaries."

Prop 62 would change the election process such that we'd have open primaries (that is, you can vote across party lines), but only the top two vote getters would appear on the final election ballot. It does not apply to presidential nominations.

While open primaries seem like a fine idea, this basically cuts off a substantial portion of the final election, which is worrisome. There's something basically threatening about the possibility of having two candidates from, say, the same party being your only choices on the final ballot. I can imagine ending up with two unsavory choices on the final ballot. For example, you could have:

5 candidates of your favorite party vying for nomination (with 100,000 total voters)
2 candidates from the party you don't trust vying for nomination (with 50,000 total voters)

Whereas under the current system your final ballot would automatically have the highest vote getter from each party, you could imagine in the above case that if each nominee received an equal number of his or her voters votes, that you'd see each of the 5 candidates you might like getting 20,000, and each of the two icky candidates getting 25,000, resulting in a final ballot where you have to pick between two candidates that two thirds of the voters wouldn't ever want to pick.

Naturally, I'm voting No.

Prop 63: "Mental Health Services Expansion, Funding. Tax On Personal Incomes Above $1 million."

Prop 63 funds additional mental health services by taxing personal income past the first million. It's a clever approach to gaining revenue without alienating most people. Naturally, opponents say that it will drive people out of the state. Possibly. If so, we'll live. We need more mental health services.

I'm voting Yes.

Prop 64: "Limits on Private Enforcement of Unfair Business Competition Laws."

In short, Prop 64 changes the law such that you can only sue someone for unfair business competition if you have directly lost money because of their practices or if you're the attorney general, a district attorney or something similar. This chiefly prevents lawsuits made on behalf of the people of California by parties that aren't directly involved. The proponents of this prop argue that it prevents fatuous lawsuits by money-grubbing lawyers; the opponents cite public-interest cases that wouldn't have been allowed were this law in effect. This law is heavily backed by large, corporate interests.

I'm voting No.

Prop 65: "Local Government Funds, Revenues."

This is another version of Prop 1A. Prop 1A is the revised version, so if you like the concept, vote for 1A.

I'm voting No.

Prop 66: "Limitations On 'Three Strikes' Law. Sex Crimes. Punishment."

California currently has a law whereby folks who have committed a serious or violent felony are given life sentences after accumulating their third felony (of any kind). This has resulted in a higher prison load in California than in some other states. It also means that someone can, say, mug a person (serious felony), then shoplift twice (two routine felonies) and end up in jail for life. You can also receive multiple strikes at once (that is, if someone commits multiple crimes at once, as frequently happens, they can be tried for all of them at once and they all count as strikes). Prop 66 would revise this to require separate convictions for _serious_ felonies for each strike. It would require resentencing for people who don't meet the new requirements. It also incidentally adds extra prison term time to some crimes against children.

I don't like this, because requiring offenders to seriously harm three people before they're locked away for a long time is no good. Successful measures to reduce crime would necessarily focus on prevention, through addressing the situations that contribute to crime in the first place. If someone committed a single serious crime, I want them in jail for a long time; if they facilitate that by shoplifting, that's fine by me. Prison isn't a way to change their behavior; it's a way to have them not be around and threatening people.

I'm voting No.

Prop 67: "Emergency Medical Services. Funding. Telephone Surcharge."

This Prop adds some additional telephone taxes to pay for emergency medical care. It's chiefly opposed by (shocker here) telephone and cellular companies.

I'm voting Yes.

Prop 68: "Non-Tribal Commercial Gambling Expansion. Tribal Gaming Compact Amendments."

Prop 68 would require that all tribes with gaming compacts with the state accept a new compact. If they don't all do it within a fairly short time limit, casino gaming would be allowed at sixteen non-tribal gaming sites.

This is an ambush prop, designed to allow large casinos outside of tribal control. I like the casinos where they are now -- out of the way -- and I don't see a problem with people who have been hunted more or less to near extinction being allowed to make some money.

I'm voting No.

Prop 69: "DNA Samples. Collection. Database."

Currently, DNA samples will be kept on file with the state if you are convicted of certain felonies. This prop would adjust the law to place your information on file if you are /charged/ with certain felonies, and to broaden the scope of allowed checking so your DNA can be used not just to evaluate the current case, but also see if you match any other unknown cases. You can theoretically get your DNA record purged if you aren't convicted, though in practice that would be rather difficult and time consuming. Naturally, people are worried about a potential loss in personal privacy, but I'm a fan of the increased clearance rate this offers for crimes committed by unknown subjects.

I'm voting Yes.

Prop 70: "Tribal Gaming Compacts. Exclusive Gaming Rights. Contributions to State."

This prop engages tribal gaming from the other direction, requiring a 99-year compact that guarantees exclusive gaming rights to tribes. I don't think this is necessary, either, and 99-year anythings aren't that good, by and large.

I'm voting No.

Prop 71: "Stem Cell Research. Funding. Bonds."

This prop would lay out $3 billion in bonds to cover stem cell research in the state, costing $6 billion over the next thirty years. While it offers the potential to make California into a mecca of stem cell research, which is quite tempting, I don't think it's financially sane for the state to put itself that for into debt. If the presidential election goes the way I hope it will, then stem cell research funding nationwide will pick up, making this massive work-around not as necessary.

I'm voting No.

Prop 72: "Health Care Coverage Requirements."

This prop would require employee healthcare coverage from large and medium companies. While it may not work with an older Federal law (we'll see how that works out), I like this idea. Opponents claim it will drive companies out of the state. I disagree, since the companies that currently are causing our public health system the most damage by failing to ensure (Walmart et al) (1) probably won't leave (2) are easily replaced and (3) aren't a positive contribution to the state. Companies that we don't want to lose won't leave because they are (1) high-tech and biomedical firms that already cover all their employees or (2) agribusinesses that use substantial day labor and other workers who won't be covered. I mentioned Walmart there because they're one of the biggest opponents of this prop.

I'm voting Yes.

As I discuss propositions with my friends, or read their opinions, I find it comforting that I am able to think critically, take in their ideas and input, and perhaps reconsider my choices given the new concepts they've presented.

Naturally, I am disturbed that our current president imagines this to be a weakness.

Last night, we watched Tony Blair speaking with parliament on CSPAN. Can you imagine our current president having to face an hour or more of rapid-fire questions ranging across the entire scope of foreign and domestic policy? Then can you imagine him giving convincing, fact-based answers to all these questions?

Added bit, at the request of honeyfields: What I actually said to her about Blair was that I have a "governmental crush" on him. If only we had such capable politicians.

As it says. I changed my opinion on 71 (voted yes) and 60A (voted no). Otherwise, as written.

I did my first write-in vote ever, for a local position. In an interesting turn, the only ethical member of the city council here decided to run a write-in campaign for mayor, and at last polls yesterday, she was at 30%, with both the listed candidates at 27% each.

I noticed a paper explaining how anyone can check the voter log at the voting site with the intent to carry out "get out the vote" efforts -- that is, to call people who have not yet voted. I didn't know that was allowed. Pretty nifty.

I just read KWC's post about how the tilt towards Bush made him sick.

I had to stop following the news after a while today because I, too, felt sick.

In fact, I felt sick pretty much the way I felt sick when I woke up on September 11, 2001 and saw pillars of smoke instead of the World Trade Center. Sick and angry.

I'm mad at half the people in this country who can't reason and would doom us to another four years of hideous harm to this nation I love.

I don't have hope for Ohio, but please, let it come through.

I now have a four-hundred dollar Mac gift card, which can only be used in a physical Mac store (rather than online).

Anyone need some Mac products? Wanna trade me for slightly-depreciated-against-the-Euro dollars?

Or maybe I should just trade for Euros. I don't think the local comic shop accepts those, tho'.

I was, as my friend put it, "dinged" today, so I won't be going on to a third round interview with McKinsey. The interview process was quite pleasant, overall. Though I was nervous at times, the interviewers were helpful rather than antagonistic.*

Curiously, while I was rated with a "uniquely good" (**) performance in group case questions in round one, my main flaws were in one-on-one case questions in round two. The advice was to make my later-stage problem solving more structured and to make more of an effort to synthesize and develop insight based on my analysis. Based on my recollection of my peformance in round two, I'd tend to agree with those as points to bolster. This time around, my "personal impact" (background questions, more typical of other interviews) was rated as quite strong.

Though it's disappointing to not make it this time around with McKinsey, it's good to have made it to round two. Now on to applying to other firms.

*Though I wonder whether this makes people more prone to exposing weaknesses, and whether or not that's an intended outcome.

**Yeah, the interviewer did use "unique" as a superlative. Ah, well.

I'm disappointed in our country's initial offer of aid to the nations affected by the tsunami. It's ridiculous that we went with anything less than one hundred million right from the start.

First, that's pocket change relative to our national budget. Second, one hundred is a magical human number, seeming much more like a substantial amount than even ninety-nine million. Third, we really ought to be giving many times as much as the next nation down.

The unit cost for a single F-22 Raptor is over two hundred million.

I'm going to write to our executive branch about our deficient aid. Never hurts to write.

If people are interested, this is the email I just sent. I also tried calling, but the office is closed at the moment (pretty natural, given the time of night). I will attempt to call tomorrow. The email:

Mr. President-

I am writing to express my disappointment in our low initial offering of aid to countries in the tsunami-affected region around the Indian ocean. While it is not too late to recover from this flawed opening, there are several reasons why we should have offered at least one hundred million dollars in aid initially.

First, one hundred million dollars in aid is a miniscule amount compared to our national budget. Second, one hundred is a "magic number"� for human perception, and would have bought us instant good will with the recipients. Third, we should be giving many times as much in aid as any other single nation.

Remember, the unit cost of a single F-22 Raptor is over two hundred million. For half that we would have won instant, long-lasting gratitude from a number of nations, including the largest muslim nation in the world, which was also the hardest hit. This good will simply can not be purchased with donations from individual Americans, no matter what they add up to. It is what our government does that matters.

Though we have missed out on the first impression, it is not yet too late to leave a lasting impression. We should be there, distributing our tremendous wealth and proudly displaying the flag as we do so. The United States should be great in all things, especially generosity.

Thank you -

- Alexander Shearer, Ph.D.

All hail the Mountain View police department and their near-instantaneous response time.

Last night (Saturday) as we were set to go to sleep, massive bass started thudding through the walls with a chaser of loud voices as patrons from the local night club started an impromptu after party in the parking lot across the street. I'm pretty tolerant of noise -- after all, my downstairs neighbors of five years in San Diego liked to play explosion-laden video games in the wee hours and I never really cared. This was pretty obnoxious, though, and honeyfields wanted me to yell at them. I thought that might be confrontational and a little ineffective with potenitally drunken dumbasses, so instead I placed a non-emergency call to the Mountain View PD and asked if they could maybe just have someone swing by to take a look.

After the call, honeyfields asked me about three questions (e.g. "What did they ask?" "They wanted to know how many people, and what kind of cars...") and then, no more than ten seconds later, we heard the distinctive sound of a police car bullhorn. I watched for the next few minutes as another police car showed up and the officer told the obnoxious folks to get in their cars and leave. One car left, then the others were finally persuaded to go when the three officers got out of their two cars and walked out to talk to them. The whole thing was over in a couple of minutes.

This tells me two good things:

1) Police response time at my place is excellent

2) Mountain View must be a safe place, if two police cars can show up for a noise complaint on a Saturday night

Mountain View PD may never be on Cops, but I think they're cool anyway.

Barbara Boxer is taking the approach I want my senators to take to dealing with the current administration:

Boxer challenging the electoral vote

...and...

Condoleeza Rice's confirmation hearings

The second article focuses on Kerry's role in the hearings, but I appreciated Boxer's questions. At one point, Rice requests that Boxer not impugn her integrity. Really...why not? It's as if impugning her integrity were somehow off limits, when her lack of integrity casts serious doubt on her ability to operate as the head diplomat of our nation.

Based solely on her performance in office during our current president's first term, I do believe Rice lacks integrity. It is quite odd to me that she, as one mouthpiece and policy maker in the current administration, is unwilling to say something like, "Saddam Hussein's policy of deception worked too well and we were fooled," and prefers to patch new 'reasons' on as each old one falls away. That's particularly vile, and quite worrying. It's an extreme form of mission creep. Not only do we expand and diverge from the original mission -- we forget what that mission was.

I'm currently proofing my portion of the manual for the update of the main software our group uses, and I hit this bit which I spent a while trying to parse:

The key is updated dynamically with successive highlights. However, if you undo the previous highlight (see below) the corresponding key entry is removed and will not be recovered should you choose to Redo the last unhighlight (see below).

Can you spot the error?

Note that "seeing below" doesn't really help explain this one as written, though it clarifies where the mistake is.

Overall, though, very few errors and generally good writing.

It's disturbing that very few media analysts are doing the kind of "then-and-now" look at the current administration's stated reasons for war that the Daily Show has been putting on. It's discouraging, though not surprising, to see people accept this change:

Then: Iraq is a threat because it has WMDs and is developing additional ones, and is trafficking with terrorists.

Now: We've liberated an oppressed population.

The second reason is closer to what I believe are the actual core reasons of our current batch of policy makers. They want to make the world into a more workable place, and see the removal of belligerent political entities as a means to do that. Of course, the particular mad-on for Iraq also has a lot to do with the feeling that the "job wasn't done right" earlier, and that Hussein has been mocking us since then.

Naturally, that would be a harder case to make to the U.S. public.

But say you do accept their current public motivation -- liberating people who are being oppressed, abused, tortured and killed. Given that, isn't there a strong case for occupying the following countries (not a comprehensive list):

Iran -- totalitarian religious government with a population that wants more freedom
North Korea -- totalitarian regime that is starving its population at large while maintaining an enormous army
China -- odd mix of capitalism and totalitarianism, with strong suppression of protestors and a lack of religious freedom
Sudan -- genocide in progress, being ignored by the government
Saudi Arabia -- lack of human rights, harsh punishments (and, incidentally, support for some brands of terrorism)
Pakistan -- ruled by an unelected military leader
Syria, Egypt, Jordan -- more problems with lack of democracy and civil rights

I'm sure you can add more. Now, we obviously don't want to be in the position of occupying all these countries, and there's a reasonable case to be made for scaring some countries into line (e.g. Libya) by how we act toward other countries. Unfortunately, that doesn't work if a country's government is confident that they represent an unacceptable risk (e.g. North Korea).

There is one clear reason for a country to go to war -- to protect its own existence and the lives of its populace. To this, I've heard added "halting genocide" as the only other legitimate reason to go to war with a country on a basis outside of self defense.

Certainly, it's impractical to take a military approach to all problems. It's galling, however, to see such a failure in perspective on when we do or don't take that kind of action. Consider:

If Iraq did have WMDs (and we honestly had good reason to believe they did, based on their own program of deception) they were still unlikely to pass them off to terrorist groups. On the other hand, North Korea sells weapons to all buyers. Not only that, but they're sitting right next to one of our allies with a massive army, and they've been sending terrorists over to that country for years. Iraq contained some terrorist camps in uncontrolled regions. North Korea kidnapped people from Japan to train its agents, and has sent a number of terrorists over to South Korea to kill people. If you're worried about nuclear-armed terrorists, where better to start than the country that produces both nuclear weapons and terrorists?

Not that I want us to invade North Korea. Just saying that we're deep in double standard territory here.

I had a conversation earlier this week with my friend Tim around this topic and about setting standards for success in military actions. People are averse to setting up rules for things like when we should invade other countries and when we should subsequently leave them. I think it bothers some people to have actual guidelines for these things, even though it would clarify our goals, needs and available options.

I'm not quite sure why that is, though it feels like a very human thing to do.

This was a comment I made elsewhere, and I thought it'd be worth reposting here:

(Discussing the inherent human inability to assess risk.)

I was at a scientific meeting last summer, and two of the facility staff were talking. One mentioned that his friends were planning a trip across the country. For context, the massive train bombing in Spain was quite recent:

"My friends are going to California next month. They were going to take the train instead of flying, because flying isn't safe, but now with that train attack, that's not safe anymore, either. So they're going to drive."

This is tremendously poor risk assessment. Even lacking statistics, let's look at it this way:

How many car crashes have you seen in the last month?

(I saw one yesterday, and see them fairly regularly when I drive.)

How many train crashes or bombings have occurred in the United States in the last decade?

(Train crashes occur sporadically, but for attacks on trains, I can think of one in the last decade, and that was track sabotage that lead to derailment with injuries rather than a gruesome train bombing like Madrid.)

How many airplane crashes or hijackings have occurred in the last decade?

(Again, airplanes crash every so often in the United States, but hijackings are vanishingly infrequent -- and most of the last decade was before increased security.)

The concept of driving a couple thousand miles (from Vermont to California in this case) being safer than flying it or taking a train is astounding.

It's this kind of thinking, however, that says that terrorists are more dangerous than fatty foods, smoking and driving. I've heard it argued that we only need to worry about terrorists if they have nuclear or biological weapons. But it is hard to think about things this way (for some very natural reasons, I think).

I just updated an entry in our Pathway-Genome Database from "putative peptidase" to "putative zinc peptidase."

The current LJ thing is "Ten Things I've Done That You Probably Haven't," Here's my push at it:

1) Gotten genuinely lost alone in the San Bernardino mountains and found my way back (hurrah for Boy Scouts)

2) Participated in a traditional Japanese wedding in the Meiji shrine in Tokyo

3) Participated in a somewhat less traditional Hawaiian-Japanese-Jewish wedding in a synagogue in Milwaukee

4) Broken someone's ribs

5) Discovered a novel mechanism of protein regulation

6) Made genetically modified organisms

7) Been the top-ranked Mechwarrior player in San Diego

8) Certified as an EMT

9) Earned my Eagle rank (again, Scouts)

10) Watched a nuclear reaction with my naked eye (other than the sun, naturally)

I'm riding Caltrain to San Jose tonight. I thought I might catch the connecting 65 bus line to downtown San Jose.

Caltrain arrives at the San Jose station: 8:45pm
VTA bus leaves the station for downtown: 8:44pm

Yeah.

License plate seen today in Mountain View: TIVOROX

While searching via Google for a reference related to work today, I hit a page in Japanese, which Google offered to translate. Here's a sample of the translation output:

Q3:
Oil field Shigeru one who appears this time, as an owner of rival club. The secret as for you it was possible to procure even accidentally. You who obtained the secret went to the origin of the oil field owner, could obtain financing 100 hundred million Yen beautifully. Well, does secret of the oil field owner whom you inserted in the hand probably mean that it is what?

A3: Every night, the gown the Persian cat is placed to the feather weave and the knee,
To blow first class leaf volume, the wine in the one hand,
Looking at the video of gold eight teacher, you have had to have wailed,

The question seems vaguely parsable, but the answer is purely esoteric.

Until it improves, I'll use Google's Japanese-English translation to produce Zen master answers and the rantings of madmen.

Thought for the moment: best try not to clip an ally with the soul-stealing blade.

Tonight's major Moorcock flashback is brought to you by the first season of Angel.

I pulled this from Gray Watson's quote list and while it is attributed to Joe Paterno, Mr. Watson's still looking for documentation for that. Regardless, this is a very good admonishment:

"If you manage to reach the endzone, act like you've been there before."

...and is, in fact, useful in making sure you convey your message in an understandable form.

I'm reading user survey responses* and there are a handful that I'm simply going to have to reply to by asking, "What exactly did you mean?"

It's the ones with poor concept division further exacerbated by the absence of punctuation that really feel like the textual equivalent of listening to someone with a significant mental disorder talk. This isn't meant facetiously, as I've done just that more than once -- it's the same feeling that somewhere inside them, it makes sense, but I'm simply missing a critical filter or reference that will make everything fall into place.

*Over four fifths of these folks are at academic institutions, and a full two thirds are grad students, postdocs, or heads of research groups (professors and such). Naturally, a number speak English as a second language, but it's usually clear when an entry is confusing due to foreign language issues. Those don't tend to have the schizophrenic feel.

I've been looking at names for a writing project. "Meta" is a Danish version of Margaret.

Wacky.

I'm looking for a place to have two copies of my dissertation bound; searching for such online naturally kicks up sponsored links to companies that offer to write your dissertation for you. I'm not going to link to any of them, but here's a bit of ad copy that amazed me:

We know how they feel when their professors keep rejecting their dissertations due to insufficient data, inadequate research, ineffective writing style, or incorrect formatting and compilation.

Um...what?

I can understand student frustration with the amount of emphasis put on formatting. After all, you've finished, say, five years and change of work on your topic, had more than one first author publication or conference presentation, and now someone's going to hold you back until you fix a margin? That I get. However...

...due to insufficient data, inadequate research...

Dude. I hope a student would be held back for those things. We really ought to be past social promotion by the time someone is in, say, a Ph.D. program. If you're in a field that requires a researched dissertation, the idea is probably that you know how to carry out effective research. If you can't, then maybe you need another six months or a year to figure it out.

...and I can't imagine, now that I have a Ph,D., being anything other than dreadfully pained by spending any amount of my life writing dissertations for people who must, pretty much by definition, be less capable than I was (assuming I, as the imagined dissertation service person, didn't have the help of a service myself).

One of the more pleasing moments in my life concerning evaluation and social promotion came when I certified as an EMT back in 1999 (a certification I'm about to let run out, actually). In my class, I could look at maybe a third of the people and hope that they would never, ever be the ones rendering aid to me during a medical emergency. They weren't paying attention, they made mistakes, all that.

Gratifyingly, when we had the written and skills test, none of these people passed. I was so used to people being able to maneuver around qualifying tests that it was a welcome surprise to see this one successfully filter out the people that gave me the willies.

For Tim:

The price of a single F/A-22: $257 million

(Note that this is the combined development and production cost distributed across an order of 279 fighters. This combination of costs is reasonable in light of the fact that we're unlikely to sell these to anyone else, so it really is costing us that much per plane.)

The price of a single Russian-made Su-30 fighter-bomber: $37 million

The Joint Strike Fighter is intended to cost as much as a Sukhoi, but is, naturally, experiencing cost overruns and curtailed performance.

The price of a single A-10 Thunderbolt: $13 million

The following sentence is from a non-native speaker of English. It sounds suspiciously like something a native English-speaking business grad might come up with:

[It] gave an overview for adequating the objective to my project.

I'm going to Detroit for a conference tomorrow. Anyone know good things to do (or places to eat) in Detroit? Especially near the Renaissance center?

Mmmm...Detroit.

The Black Arts Society promises to teach you "The World's ultimate fighting system for military, police, special forces and civilians."

The Black Arts is a complete fighting system including military style hand to hand unarmed combat, weapons disarming, grappling, ground fighting, edged weapons training, police control tactics, pressure points, dim mak, and internal energy development.

Ah, Dim Mak. Thanks to Palladium's Ninja's & Superspies roleplaying game, I know all about the classic death touch. So, apparently, do the credulous folks at Black Arts.

Especially precious is their gallery. If you click on the first image, you get a slideshow that progresses, taking you through 138 pictures ranging from generic to painful. Some prizes from the captions:

"Delta force agent" -- That would be a soldier, colloquially known as an "operator." Or, perhaps, some random person in the picture whose face was fuzzed out.

"Pressure point knockouts" -- Too bad these folks are in London. It'd be fun to let them try those on me.

Going after a "painful nerve center" under the nose -- I agree that having someone push up on your nose is painful. I don't like people tugging on my ears, either.

"Getting out of the guard" -- Gee. Why not use your Dim Mak death touch?

Direct quotes:

Terry Workman brings down Josh Jaques. Size and Strength do not matter when The Black Arts techniques are executed properly. (Naturally)

Sensei Greg Green performing an anti - terrorist gun disarm. It's very important that you not confuse this with the far-less-trendy random-mugger gun disarm.

...and my favorite...

Matt Workman and Matt Courey practice some Dim Mak. Good lord. I do hope they signed waivers.

May they all be so fortunate as to never get into an actual fight.

Something I should do more often -- write to political officials, especially those making poor decisions. Here's my email to the president today:

Mr. Bush --

I have relatives and friends working in the intelligence agencies and military of our country. I was deeply disappointed to see that anyone would be willing to harm our country by revealing one of our covert agents, as was done with Valerie Plame. It angers me that someone could be so disloyal to the United States as to do this for political gain.
Naturally, then, I am furious that your administration did just that. I suspect that as the investigation proceeds, you will distance yourself from Karl Rove. He is willing to take this hit for the cause. Indeed, he is willing to put aside ethics for his cause.
Please don't disappoint the American people by taking this course. Gain our respect by admitting to your mistake and never, ever doing something like this again.
Your administration and its supporters have made a point of questioning the loyalty of those who disagree with you. However, I have never seen any of your detractors do anything as blatantly disloyal to our country as this.
Please don't continue to be a party to it. It's never too late to do the right thing.

--Alexander Shearer

First, an essay on why this isn't such a big concern, and you really ought to go get some exercise.

Second, the BBC's Mark Urban, of Newsnight, as quoted in the July 25, 2005 issue of The New Yorker:

"The I.R.A. had a political arm, and a political goal, however unreal: they killed to get people to the table. What is there to negotiate with these people? An end to the American presence in Saudi Arabia? All right, we'll consider it. The elimination of the State of Israel? Hmmm, that may be a bit more difficult. The restoration of a universal Islamic calpihate? It may be a bit of a deal-breaker, that. This is not a program, really. It's a wraparound justification for a violence whose real end is the expiation of shame through massacre."

Earlier this week I found the oldest ancestor I can identify in my direct line of ancestry:

John Fenimore, born about 1480 in Newton Purcell, Oxford, England. Died on the fourth of April, 1541, in Tingewick, Buckingham, England.

One of my great, great, great and so forth grandfathers. James Fenimore Cooper was related to my ancestors on this side.

I'm sure a lot of you can track back farther than 525 years.

This is in response to this post about how short-sighted 1980s anti-Soviet policy built Al Qaeda. I liked my answer enough to want to repost it here:

In his book The Main Enemy, Milt Bearden talks about his time working with the Mujahadin against the Soviets. Though most of this is couched as a very positive experience -- he's almost gleeful about the destruction they caused in Soviet military units -- he also mentions how he was a little unsettled by the religious extremists. They were the ones who got things done, though, so the support went to them.

American foreign policy has been marked by many instances of dangerously short-term thinking and unrealistic assessment. Afghanistan is a pretty good example of this. The approach taken by Reagan was one of "any means necessary" to damage the Soviets without directly causing a war. To that end, inducing military and political attrition in Afghanistan seems to make sense.

However, the resource and political burden of Afghanistan was always dwarfed by the resource and political burden of simply facing down the United States. Even though we didn't necessarily know we were bleeding the Soviets to death just by forcing them to maintain an unrealistically large standing military (given the Soviet economy), we could calculate the relative costs they had to be incurring from Afghanistan versus their normal standing military. Based on this perspective, it isn't worth it to fund people who area /already/ killing Americans just to cause problems for the Soviets.

Of course, I think there was an extra motivation here, along the lines of "We had our Vietnam, now you fuckers get to have one, too." That, and the frustration of direct military action against the Soviets being unrealistic.

confusing-ad
Originally uploaded by parakkum.

This is an advertisement from the Al Jazeera website that's meant to promote their SMS mobile service. I'm not at all clear on how the imagery in this advertisement relates to the thing being advertised or even to the ad copy.

Mr. Bush --

I am writing to let you know that I am stunned by your failure as a president. I may have disagreed, sometimes severely, with the policy decisions and ethos of presidents prior to you, but none of them have been so stunningly incompetent. It is distressing to see the damaging effect you have had on our nation.

Before we went to war in Iraq, I believed that they possessed chemical and biological weapons and intended to make more. After the fact, I probably would have believed you if you, like David Kay, simply said "We made a mistake." But I can only conclude now that you willfully misrepresented many things in an effort to start a war with the intent of restructuring the Middle East.

Leaving that aside, your failure to address reality in your execution of the war and subsequent rebuilding of Iraq has led to many deaths among our soldiers and civilians and has now created a training area for Islamic militants. The situation can still be resolved successfully, if you or someone else -- with more competence than you have shown to date -- will actually define goals with associated metrics of success and failure.

The present crisis has convinced me that you are not specifically incompetent at foreign affairs but are, in fact, generally a failure. You said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did appreciate a serious storm but these levees got breached and as a result much of New Orleans is flooded and now we're having to deal with it and will."

I don't know if this was a willful misrepresentation to deflect blame, or if you were on vacation and couldn't be bothered to do research, but your statement is untrue. People were concerned about the failure to do upkeep of the levies, and of your dramatic funding cuts to same. Emergency preparedness exercises for New Orleans expected storm surges that would exceed the height of the current levees, flooding the city. Many, many people anticipated this problem, and worked very hard without your help to try and prevent the death of New Orleans.

You, sir, are personally incompetent, and you are dragging a good country down with you.

But there is still hope.

My simple advice is this -- try very hard to learn how to do the job. Stop making excuses for your failures. Stop setting up photo opportunities and scripted appearances. Stop bragging about your emergency measures when people are dying and CNN is more up-to-date than your emergency agency. Stop going on vacation -- the job is only yours for another few years, then you can retire.

Please do this right now. You're killing a great nation.

Sent today. I am angry.

Mr. Bush--

In your weekly radio address, you said this:

"All Americans can be certain our nation has the character, the resources, and the resolve to overcome this disaster. We will comfort and care for the victims. We will restore the towns and neighborhoods that have been lost in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. We'll rebuild the great city of New Orleans. And we'll once again show the world that the worst adversities bring out the best in America."

This is all true. Our nation does have the character, resources and resolve to overcome this disaster. Your ill-timed vacation and sick fascination with covering yourself and enriching a small group of allies curtailed our nation's response. The people on the ground did their jobs, when they were allowed to. Ordinary Americans, myself included, have donated to the effort to save lives. But because of your thoughtlessness, hundreds have died who could have been saved -- who had rescuers ready and able to save them, if only you'd led the way.

It is true that we, ordinary Americans, will comfort and care for victims -- even the relatives of those who died because you refused to act or listen, and have crippled our nation's emergency response.

We will restore these towns and neighborhoods, many of which might not have been lost had levees been maintained as they should. We will restore them even though many of their residents are dead, and many more have had their livelihoods destroyed. We will do this, of course, without any expectation of help from you. Unless we are, perhaps, already quite wealthy and due for a tax break.

The worst adversities do bring out the best in America -- at least, in the true Americans I know. So far, it has brought out the worst in you. Instead of strong, decisive leadership, you have given us craven weakness trying to hide itself from blame. You preach sacrifice then make sure that you and your friends need never face that sacrifice.

You're going to have many years after your term expires to consider your career as President. Your father can look back at his time and say that he did the best he could. You can never do this, but you have a few years left to try and come as near as possible. Perhaps you could ask your father for advice; right now, I have to assume you don't, for he was never the kind of all-encompassing failure that you have been.

You have only a few more years to get it right. Buckle down, actually listen, learn and think and make a positive difference.

I didn't vote for you, but I damn well pay your salary. So figure it out and get it right.

Sent today. Still angry. Donated money to the Red Cross yesterday.

Read Tim's essay Robbing America on the role of government in making us what we are today -- and how that's changed.

I've decided to split my political and related posts off to another blog, leaving my livejournal for things such as general entertainment reviews, random commentary and so on. The new blog is:

Hope is not a plan (hopeisnotaplan.com)

I've back-posted some of my more recent political material there; that's where it'll go in the future.

The internet is a font of useful resources. For example:

www.imlegal.com

Edit: I killed the link because the site's no longer there, and I'm afraid it's going to end up being something even more unseemly.

Their tagline is "We count down until they turn 18!"

Their DB is a little gender-biased, though. Surely someone is waiting for Aaron Carter to become nonstatuatory.

Every time I leave from or arrive at San Jose Diridon station, there are two kinds of trains there other than Caltrain. One is the Amtrack Capitol Corridor line, which provides service from Sacramento to San Jose, cruising down the East Bay as it goes. The other train is the Altamont Commuter Express. I had no idea where that one would be coming from and I kept forgetting to look it up, until today:

Altamont Commuter Express

It's a commuter line from Stockton to San Jose.

Neither of these are particularly pleasant commute lines. If you're commuting from Sacramento to San Jose, to arrive in time for a 9am start to your work day, you'd have to leave Sacramento at 5:30am. It's slightly less painful from Stockton, where you only need to leave at 6:40am.

I do appreciate my commute. I can walk to the San Jose station in 20 minutes and I'm only on the train for about that long again.

Talking with ota today, I recalled my senior year experience of taking AP European History. Going into my senior year, I didn't feel like taking AP Art History with most of my cohort. Mrs. Maple and the school administration let me and another student instead take AP European History independently.

This meant we had a free hour every day where we sat in a room and could learn as we wished while Art History was taught in an adjoining room. Mrs. Maple gave us a textbook, which I ended up not using in favor of one that I thought was better written. She gave us no tests and just relied on our interest to drive our learning.

I scored a 5 on that AP (highest score, for any non-Americans out there).

I really appreciate (and appreciated then) the trust she showed us in letting us learn that way. Similar appreciation to Mrs. Carden, who let me read ahead and test ahead in AP Biology.

A television ad for the prostate reducing drug Avodart had some of the most surprising language I've heard in a drug warning, and it appears on the Avodart website as well:

Women should never take or handle AVODART.

"...take or handle..."

Wow. Apparently, enough AVODART could make it through a woman's skin to disturb the development of any male fetus.

On my way out to meet Honeyfields today, I ran into a petition-gatherer. He summarized his two propositions as "taxing cigarettes to pay for breast cancer research" and "guaranteed school for preschoolers." I said that I was, indeed, a voter, but I didn't have time to read the texts.

"Not even the summaries?" he asked.

"I never sign anything unless I read the full text."

"Seriously, you read everything?"

"Yes."

"I think that's a big waste of time" was his followup. He then walked along with me, crossing two streets, as he tried to convince me, in order, that:

1) Reading the entire text was unnecessary (I replied that the summaries don't cover everything)

2) The summaries do cover everything, and I can't provide an example of something that wasn't covered (I provided an example from Prop 78)

3) That the example I provided, of pharma companies being allowed to distribute advertising as public literature wasn't so bad (I disagreed)

4) That they could do that anyway (I said I didn't want it happening under my signature)

At that point he gave up. He also made a transitive argument during his attempt to argue that the summaries are okay, saying that petitions are exactly the same as the resulting propositions. I gather he imagined that I was trying to dodge him and didn't read the full text of propositions. This exchange fit in between points 1 and 2, above.

I expect he was a paid petition-gatherer, given his persistence. I'm not sure why he'd see me as an easy mark, though. Do folks who give excuses tend to "crumble" more readily than those who just say no?

I've had a couple other interesting experiences with petition-gatherers. One guy was even more incredulous that I wanted to read the full text and walked off in a huff. I also had one man who had a petition to lower state taxes. When I said, "I like my taxes, they pay for important government services" he shot back an angry, "Do you want to sign my other petition where you're taxed out of your home?" Because anger will change my mind.

A gem from www.apartmentratings.com, found in a listing of the flaws in a Santa Clara area apartment:

(3) BAD neighbour.
My neighbours are bunch of Mexicans (No offense)

Um...what?

Are we being told to not take offense at the fact that they called their neighbors Mexican or the fact that this is used as an explicit negative?

Amidst looking up a number of places in the Bay Area and figuring out travel distances between then, I decided to see how far I used to travel each day to go to my elementary school. I went to a private school up through fifth grade and it always felt far removed from my neighborhood.

As it happens, the school is 7.4 miles from my parents' home.

These days, my daily commute is either 10 or 20 miles in each direction (depends on the day).

I had a good time this Thanksgiving, though I kept thinking I was a day ahead, as I'd traveled home a day earlier than usual.

Wednesday

I visited my old lab and chatted with friends who are still there. Then home, where we watched The Phantom Menace.

Thursday

Relaxing day with one nice walk to the grocery store (for non-Thanksgiving-related foods). Dinner was pork tenderloin, mashed yams, lima beans, stuffing, cranberries and butterflake rolls, with chocolate chip cookies for dessert. This was followed by a viewing of Attack of the Clones.

Friday

Tried and failed to buy gaffer's tape, but did get a chance to head by one old game store I used to frequent. We rounded out the family Star Wars film festival with Revenge of the Sith. My parents enjoyed all three movies a great deal.

Saturday

I stopped by another game store and said hello to some old gaming pals, then back home to hang out until I flew home.

Good holiday weekend. :)

I'm at a conference being held at the Asilomar Conference Grounds. I'll be here through Sunday morning.

I maimed my work laptop today. The probable cause: accidentally covering the 1cmx6cm heating vent (AKA point of failure) on the left side.

Now I'm working on the loaner after a quick HD swap. :)

(That would be one word in German)

Thanks to SSO for pointing out the charity auction for the one-of-a-kind Lego Republic Cruiser.

As of this posting, the top bid is $30,901.11. Shipping, at least, is free.

The listing

We saw this work of art in person at the San Diego Comic Con this year. It's truly beautiful, consisting of over 35,000 Lego pieces around a steel armature and weighing more than I do. My appreciation for this model is aided by the fact that I really like the design of the Republic cruiser. I'm going to have to pick one up when the Galactic Conquest (the Star Wars space-combat minis game) comes out in a year or two.

One of the radio stations programmed on my car radio is 105.7, "La Calle". Their tagline is "Reggaeton y mas."

While I like reggaeton and most of the rest of their offerings, what I find really notable about La Calle is how representative it is of Latino integration in the United States. Many of the DJs make a habit of speaking in roughly equal parts Spanish and English, typically switching back and forth within the same sentence. In addition to being a good example of code switching, it really seems like it could represent the future of the United States. Given the demographic shift in this country and the relative omnipresence of Latinos relative to many earlier immigrant groups, I suspect that integrated radio stations like La Calle will become more and more the norm, and that just maybe we'll edge toward being a bilingual nation.

I like this country.

I'm in San Diego for Christmas. It took 8.5 hours to cover the ~490 miles from Mountain View to San Diego. Notable slowdowns included crossing Los Angeles -- over an hour to cover 26 miles from Burbank to Orange County -- and traversing North County in San Diego, which took about forty-five minutes.

Overall, a good day. I timed the trip to keep almost all of my driving in daylight and to avoid hitting Los Angeles in rush hour, though as kwc has noted, there is no time when the freeways in Los Angeles are truly "clear."

FOUR JOBS YOU'VE HAD IN YOUR LIFE

TA for summer enrichment courses for elementary school kids
Freelance writer
Biology grad student
Curator

FOUR MOVIES YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER

Lord of the Rings (all three)
Star Wars (all six)
Blackhawk Down
Lilo and Stitch

FOUR PLACES YOU'VE LIVED

San Diego, CA
Berkeley, CA
Mountain View, CA

(I can't even make it to four!)

FOUR TV SHOWS YOU LOVE TO WATCH (currently on-air)

Avatar: the Last Airbender
Scrubs
Without a Trace

(Once again, shy of four.)

FOUR PLACES YOU'VE BEEN ON VACATION

Tokyo
Scotland
Vancouver
Washington, D.C.

(My trip list for "places I've been for conferences" is much longer than my vacation list. Of course, I haven't really had a vacation for the last decade or more.)

FOUR WEB SITES YOU VISIT DAILY

movabletypo.net
news.bbc.co.uk
english.aljazeera.net
boards.wizards.com

FOUR OF YOUR FAVORITE FOODS

Cheerios
sushi
pizza
In-n-Out cheeseburgers

FOUR PLACES YOU'D RATHER BE RIGHT NOW

Honestly, I'm good where I am. I'm also pretty happy to be anywhere that doesn't involve people shooting at me or rampant disease. So I'm good.

A San Diego-area strip club is running a television ad suggesting that it'd be a great place for your next company party.

I'd love to run that idea past an attorney. Lawsuit risk? No...

I'm helping to set up another email account for my parents. Here's step 11 of the instructions from cox.net:

11. The status be "add_in_progress". This means you've completed your part of the creation process. The email server is updating it's information, which could take up to an hour.

I'll let the misused apostrophe slide. But "The status be..."? Painful.

I'm back, after another exciting ~500 mile drive (510). Once again, it took an hour to cross the distance between La Mirada and Burbank.

If I were a traveling salesman, I'd be diabetic. To make it through this trip, I drank three and a half Rockstar "energy drinks," which is seven servings. This means 189 grams of sugar (70% of my RDA, but all in simple sugars, which isn't good), 515mg of caffeine and somewhere shy of 7g of taurine, for which I can't find much health info. Also many fold percent of some vitamins, though that's okay for one day.

But I am now kinda floaty.

Also, as a note for anyone else likely to be heading north on 101 through Santa Clara county, I passed three people pulled over by Highway Patrol officers in the space of half a kilometer, then watched someone else pulled over a few minutes later.

In two of my four recent trips on Highway 152, an area radio station has played music by The Go Team, a British group that feels firmly rooted in a part of the 70s that isn't subject to a ton of nostalgia right now. So far, I've liked what I've heard. They have several entire songs accessible from their site:

http://www.thegoteam.co.uk/flash/Music.html

I just happened on Ultimate Arena Paintball on WGN.

It's speed paintball, with two three-person teams engaging each other in a very small arena with inflated barriers for cover. Each match is over in less than a minute. I can't say it's recommending itself as a spectator sport so far. It's hard to follow and basically like watching people do deathmatches in first-person shooters -- it's about fast reflexes and deploying preset patterns rather than much in the way of adaptive tactics and maneuver. I'd much rather watch field paintball over a larger area.

Of course, I'd really rather just go participate in paintball than watch either version.

This was linked from a banner ad on a martial arts site:

World Combat Dating

From their "about us" page:

What is WorldCombatDating.com?

This is a world of people who have a passion for the Combat Arts and who are looking for like minded individuals to fall in love with!

Maybe I'd find this sillier if I hadn't met my girlfriend in a martial arts club. :)

In failing to have a listing for an item I wanted, Amazon recommended several others, including the movie A Life Less Ordinary. Below the Amazon.com editorial review for this movie (they didn't like it) is this paragraph, labeled Product Description:

Eliminate Your Jetlag after Long Flights! You Don’t have to Suffer from the Horrible Feeling of Jetlag. Overcome the tiredness and fatigue from travel. This CD trains your mind to reset its internal timeclock and dial into your destination's local time. Feel refreshed like you’ve already been there for days. Be alert with amazing concentration during business meetings. You stay intensely focused and wide awake at conferences and while giving speeches or presentations. Enjoy your vacation from the moment you land with energy and vitality. Come home refreshed and leave the jetlag behind. Many of our Mind Quest Studios clients won’t leave home without this CD. A wonderful executive gift. Compact Disc Approximately 30 Min. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Indeed.

From the Annals of Improbable Research, what a love letter would sound like if written in the style of a typical college writing student's essay:

How to Write a Love Letter

So, in reading the English edition of Chosun Ilbo, I learned that Superbowl MVP Hines Ward is half Korean, born to a Korean mother and an African-American father. Now Korean Air and Asiana are competing to be the one to take him and his mom to Korea.

Also, he was a really cute baby.

I suppose Sansweet may be mentioning this tomorrow night in the Star Wars panel:

Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy

Lou Ferrigno has recently been sworn in as a reserve deputy sheriff in Los Angeles, as reported in this BBC article.

Pretty cool of him. I grew up watching Lou (in green makeup, natch). I think it's great that he's going to (from the article):

...help recruit new deputies and work with the sheriff's youth activities league and the special victims bureau, which helps abused children.

I have to call hatefulness on the figure skating commentator team of Dick Button, Sandra Bezic and Scott Hamilton for taking something beautiful and converting it into an opportunity to sound like a bunch of grumpy old people tearing apart young athletes who have committed the sin of being the best in the world, yet still less than perfect.

Can I get an audio feed with just the sound from the arena and no extraneous and vicious commentary?

Edit:

After some searching, I found the contact page for NBC, which has the email address for sending feedback on the Olympics:

nbcolympicsfeedback@nbcuni.com

...and sent them this email:

I'm writing to let you know that your commentator trio of Dick Button, Sandra Bezic and Scott Hamilton is detracting severely from my figure skating viewing experience. It's obnoxious to have three people talking over what is an otherwise beautiful event, criticizing constantly and acting generally like they all woke up permanently on the wrong side of the bed.
I would love to be able to just watch the event with the audio from the arena, listening to the music, the cut of the skates on the ice and the cheers and applause from the crowd.

Who knows. Maybe they'll listen. I'm sick of having a beautiful thing ruined by three washed-up former athletes.

The Pause Magazine Lego Reference Guide covers most of the Lego sets with which I'm familiar, with pictures.

Littlestar suggested this:

Gold medals per capita, as of today:

Estonia 0.00000225

Austria 0.000000977
Switzerland 0.000000534
Sweden 0.000000444
Norway 0.000000435
Croatia 0.000000222
Canada 0.000000152
Netherlands 0.000000122
Germany 0.000000109

South Korea 0.0000000826
Italy 0.0000000688
Australia 0.0000000498
France 0.0000000495
Russia 0.0000000488
United States 0.0000000237

China 0.000000000766

You go, Estonia.

A quick stop by the Lego store last week updated me on their product line. We now have Lego anime under the name Exo-Force, featuring robots versus humans, with both sides piloting giant robots. Not to be confused with Exosquad, which featured humans versus humanoid slave species, with both sides piloting giant robots.

Much more exciting to me are the Lego Vikings, which includes such great sets as Viking Warrior challenges the Fenris Wolf, Viking Boat against the Wyvern Dragon and Viking Ship challenges the Midgard Serpent.

The Vikings inspire me with Lego lust, again. Unlike the the Republic Cruiser, this one is affordable.

The authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail are suing Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown for copyright infringement.

From the article:

Mr Baigent and Mr Leigh's non-fiction best-seller The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail was also published by Random House.

Their lawyer Jonathan James told the court: "Dan Brown copied from The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and therefore the publication of the result by the defendant is in infringement of the copyright of my client in the United Kingdom."

So, if I were to read a book of historical conjecture about, say, World War II, and wrote a novel based on it, that'd be copyright infringement? After all, the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail are selling their work as nonfiction.

I totally missed this on my first pass through the Lego site:

Batman

Cooool.

Six days until release, apparently.

I also missed the Lego factory, where you can custom-design a Lego creation, then order the pieces you'd need to build it.

...and Star Wars Episode 2 in Lego.

...and, something that is more or less Indiana Jones.

This is from a post from the Collaboration forum at Digital Webbing, where people try to find like-minded creators to work together on comics and other projects:

So i blatantly know theyre must be a million people out there who want theyre stories to be published or want to make their own comic. But they suck.

Im looking into making an idea of mine into a comic and two friends of mine both said this was the place to start. Im a writer currently doing a screenwriting course with ambitions to be a writer/director.

Makes you just want to leap up and say, "Pick me! Pick me!"

Note the matched misspellings of "there" and "their," followed by the correct spelling of "their." Bizarre.

I'm sick (cold) right now.

I also received a letter from the Stanford Blood Center letting me know I'm CMV- (that is, I appear to never been infected with the very common cytomegalovirus -- if you went to college, the odds are decent that you are infected). The upshot is that my blood, especially my platelets, can be used for premature infants and the immunocompromised.

Neat. I may have to set aside a couple hours for platelet donation in the future. Once I'm not sick. :)

Will a credit card company issue a card if you send them a torn up, retaped application asking them to send it to a new address and linking it to a cell phone number?

They sure will

This reminds me that I still need to call the FTC to block pre-approved credit card offers for me.

On the trip back from Orlando, I was sitting more or less among a family that had obviously spent a long time at Disney World. Toward the end, this cute little girl sporting Disney temporary tattoos on both cheeks was playing with her plush Ariel doll (from The Little Mermaid). She was moving it around as if to threaten the people around her, making indistinct noises of potential harm. Then this conversation happened:

Mom: "Ariel's not violent."

Girl: "Mine is."

Mom: "She wouldn't hurt a fly."

Girl (speaking for Ariel as she points it at imaginary victims): "I will destroy...."

Then she noticed her mom and went on with Ariel's godlike rampage in silence.

Best moment of the trip.

As Littlestar pointed out, you wouldn't chide a little boy if he pretended his doll/action figure was violent. Still, I thought that little girl rocked, and I appreciated that her mom didn't push hard and dropped it really fast.

As I've been packing for my impending move, I've been culling as well. Some books and games won't be making the move with me. If you're interested in grabbing one or more of them before they go to Book Buyers, let me know. A non-exhaustive list is in the extended.

This is a sidebar ad that's been running on CNN.com this week. Clicking on it takes you to http://60thcelebrations.com/, a site dedicated to celebrating the 60th anniversary of the accession of King Bhumibol to the throne of Thailand.

Kinda sweet, really.

This week the BBC featured an article on parkour, which is the practice of moving through obstacles as directly as possible. This is characteristically done in an urban environment and ends up making the practitioner, known as a traceur, move like a superhero (or perhaps like Jackie Chan).

The BBC article features some flash demos of parkour moves, as well as a photo journal on the parkour life. The wiki entry on parkour includes additional useful information, and cites for several movies and other media that show parkour, including the sixth issue of the Warren Ellis comic Global Frequency.

Back when I was younger, we did what would functionally be called parkour on rocks on San Clemente island. It's exhilarating and, naturally, dangerous.

A little while ago, m and I were discussing the possibilities inherent in fantasy critters that infinitely regenerate (e.g. trolls). Rich Burlew hit on one practical use -- of a hydra -- this week in his comic The Order of the Stick.

OotS: How I made my first million gold pieces

Of course, given the harshness of a hydra's life, shouldn't every hydra you run into already have its full complement of heads?

About two months ago, we started receiving random data calls to one or our cell numbers at annoying times of day (e.g. 8:30am) from this number: (847) 557-1100 . After the first few, I looked it up, and found out that it belongs to a financial services (that is, debt collection) company, Arrow Financial Services.

http://www.arrow-financial.com/index.asp

Niles, Illinois (Headquarters)
5996 W. Touhy Avenue
Niles, IL 60714
(800) 279-0224 Toll Free
(847) 557-1100 Phone
(847) 647-9526 Fax

I figured that it's only natural that someone might have had that cell number before we did, with an associated debt -- we've had one such bit of crossed wiring before, which was resolved with a single phone call. I called Arrow, and they insisted our number wasn't in their system. After a few calls, we received a call from someone promising us we wouldn't be called again.

Then we were.

So I went ahead and talked to the FCC, who told me that when the company is a debt collection company, you go to the Federal Trade Commission instead. The FTC told me to send a certified mail "Cease Communication" letter to Arrow. I did, and they even signed for it.

Then they called again.

I called them yet again, reminded them that they'd signed for the letter and were now breaking FTC regulations, and they promised that they'd block our number, with a working time of two business days. More than a week later, we're still receiving calls.

Arrow Financial's tagline is "Arrow's technological advantage can work for you!" It's good that they said it can work for you, rather than saying it will work for you, because clearly one of their clients is getting shafted. They're wasting time and money harassing someone who owes no debts, and may well be unintentionallly failing to follow up on someone who does owe a debt instead. I'm afraid I can't recommend using Arrow Financial Services for debt collection, as they aren't able to get their act together and stop calling a nonproductive lead in violation of FTC rules.

My current policy is to simply file a new FTC complaint using this consumer complaint form every time Arrow Financial Services calls us. Though the FTC indicated they can not track down individual complaints, they do follow patterns of abuse and rules breaking. It's up to Arrow Financial Services not to continue this particular pattern.

I appreciate the fast and helpful service I received when I called both the FCC and the FTC.

Update: Arrow is being sued by the State of Illinois. You can read more about that, and how you can get involved, by clicking here.

I gave blood today at the Stanford Blood Center. I think this is my third time giving there, and a good experience, as always.

I first gave blood as an undergrad at Berkeley, and after that attempted to give blood regularly. It became easier when I moved to San Diego for grad school and had a car. Then I could just drive on over to the San Diego Blood Bank in Hillcrest, give blood, then recover at In-N-Out on the way back to campus. After a bit of a hiatus following my move to the Bay Area, I started giving at the Stanford Blood Center.

Giving blood is a pleasingly easy way to give something incredibly valuable to others at little cost to yourself. As long as you weigh enough, have enough iron and someone can find your veins, I encourage you to go and give it a shot (and you really won't know about the last point until you try once...but if they end up having to use a butterfly needle on you, you have my official permission to not try a second time). Having jumped from blood center to blood center, I don't really have any idea how much blood I've given, though I know it definitely exceeds my total blood volume now. :) Where did my blood end up? In a trauma patient? Letting a critical surgery happen? My blood is CMV negative, so it may even be going to help babies. I have no idea, but it's been a rewarding and easy way to help others for many years now.

Added note -- the Stanford Blood Center gives you goodies, too. :) For donating today, I received an AMC movie ticket, free entry for two to a Stanford Soccer game, a free piint of Baskin Robbins ice cream, a discount on Stanford football season tickets and discounted membership in a Stanford kids athletic fan thing (which would rock if I were under 17, since it gives free entry to most Stanford events). So go. They're really short on blood this summer.

As I was heading out this morning, I noticed something moving in the swimming pool.

"That's funny. I don't remember the complex having two-inch-long otters..."

In fact, what we had was a mouse having a particularly difficult morning.

Full story in the extended.

In answering a potential ebay buyer's question about postage, I stumbled across a list of prohibited items for Australian mailing. Among the things that can't be mailed to Australia:

Fruit cartons, goods produced by convict labor, perishable infectious biologicals, radioactive materials, silencers, seditious literature and (drumroll)....goods bearing the name "Anzac."

I'm curious just what prompted the Australians to ban imports of Anzac-labeled items. In case you don't know your first world war, here's the wiki page about ANZAC.

New Zealand has no such restriction.

I noticed this ad sitting atop my gmail earlier today:

As often happens with Google ads, I'm curious how I ended up with this one. Sometimes the connection to the conversation is clear, but in this case, it was a very simple email from a friend indicating that they couldn't find a cookbook I'd recommended online, and asking which store I'd picked it up in. The cookbook wasn't even referred to by name.

So is the assumption of the person who chose the ad's keywords that anyone discussing a cookbook has a reasonable chance of being a woman who feels the need to be irresistable? Not a far-out connection, I admit.

Google ads tickle me in the same way all the wrong answers on multiple-choice tests do.

The difference between computational biology and lab biology?

Fifteen-hour days.

There are other differences, though. Working in lab is honestly more fun, and leaves me feeling more energetic at the end of that (very long) day than does a typical day in front of the computer.

Even if one of my centrifuge tubes cracked and I had to pour sample out of the rotor. And then scrape semi-frozen yeast slurry off the inside of the centrifuge.

For some reason, this BBC headline:

Pope to fly into Turkish protests

...sparked in my mind an image of the Pope leaping high into the air and landing amidst a group of Turkish protesters, then spinning and scattering them, Brigitte Lin style.

This BBC article talks about a debate I had no idea was going on -- whether the status of the dragon as a symbol of China lends itself to a negative view of China by Westerners, inasmuch as Western dragons are fire-breathing, maiden-eatin' monsters. From the article:

Other academics have suggested English speakers use the Chinese word for dragons - "long" - when speaking of the Chinese dragon, to differentiate it from its Western counterpart.

The Chinese government is reported to have decided against the dragon as its official Olympic mascot because of its connotations abroad.

This all misses the point that dragons -- any dragons -- are cool. Come on: Eragon. Dragonriders of Pern. American Dragon: Jake Long.

I'm year of the dragon, and it's by far the coolest animal to have.

What negative connotations? Seriously. Dragons rock.

This...

...is a frozen-over swimming pool, photographed this morning on my way out to the train station.

That's just not right.

Fortunately, the swimming area is helpfully bolted closed right now, just in case you were thinking of breaking the ice and taking a bonechilling swim.

I saw this yesterday:

Hm.

I mailed off quite a few international items this morning -- mostly airmail, some Global Priority mail, some Global Express Mail -- at the Mountain View post office. Danny was the very helpful employee who walked me through the process, including advising me to switch mailing choices so I'd have the exact same amount of insurance, but sent faster and cheaper.

While we were going through my stack, a guy walked up and asked, "How many stamps to mail six ounces?"

"I don't have the maiing table here," Danny replied.

"Come on man, how many stamps?"

"I don't know." ...and before Danny could point out that they have an automated postage calculating scale not fifteen feet to the guy's right, the guy said, "Come on. You know this. You've been here ten years."

"No," saud Danny simply, as he continues to work through my stack of items.

"Fifteen," the guy shoots over his shoulder in a sulking tone as he walks off.

Once he's gone, Danny said, "I don't keep that information in my head. If I did that, my life would be miserable."

Damn straight. I like Danny's attitude.

The post office is a proving ground for people. Will you blame the postal employees for a slow line, or realize that all the other people in the line means it has to be slow -- even when you walk over to the automated postal center, which goes as fast as each person in line wants it to? Will you be rude when someone doesn't do things the way you want, even rude to the point of not getting the information you need?

For me, the post office is a place where I try to be as prepared as possible, then treat the employees just as nicely as I'd like to be treated, especially since they're going to be cool and catch all the ways I didn't properly prepare my packages.

About half a year ago, I wrote about the incompetence of Arrow Financial Services. This was a popular post, with responses from people who'd had similar issues with Arrow.

Last month, the state of Illinois got in on the criticizing action. From this consumeraffairs.com article:

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has filed suit in Cook County Circuit Court alleging that a debt collector used unfair tactics and deceptive practices to collect money from consumers.

Madigan's lawsuit names Arrow Financial Services, LLC, of Niles, Illinois.

...and...

The suit specifically alleges that Arrow attempts to collect on time-barred debts over ten years old, attempts to collect on debts that have been discharged in bankruptcy or that have been settled, engages in abusive practices in an attempt to collect, such as using profanity, attempts to obtain payment without proof of debt, refuses or fails to provide proof of debt, illegally contacts consumers' family members and workplace, and withdraws money without authorization from consumers' bank accounts.

...and...

"Consumers should not be harassed or intimidated by unscrupulous debt collectors. We are focused on protecting Illinois consumers and others affected by businesses that use unfair and deceptive debt collection tactics," Madigan said.

Chicago: 1-800-386-5438; TTY: 1-800-964-3013
Springfield: 1-800-243-0618; TTY: 1-877-844-5461
Carbondale: 1-800-243-0607; TTY: 1-877-675-9339
Spanish Language Hotline: 1-866-310-8398

That last part is important -- if you are an Illinois resident and you have had a problem with Arrow Financial, call the Attorney General's office. I spoke to them when Arrow was harassing us. The people there are polite, helpful and all-around great, and by filing your complaint, you add to the weight of the case against Arrow and the weight of potential damages. The Attorney General's office has received nearly 700 complaints against Arrow in the last seven years, and I imagine that's not a majority of the people touched by this unethical company.

For the record, and because the phone number is often the only information people get from this company:

Arrow Financial Services

http://www.arrow-financial.com/index.asp

Niles, Illinois (Headquarters)
5996 W. Touhy Avenue
Niles, IL 60714
(800) 279-0224 Toll Free
(847) 557-1100 Phone
(847) 647-9526 Fax

Although I risk more criticism from my beloved littlestar for again citing a game-related thing, this article about winning (in the game Magic: the Gathering) by Noah Well is actually a really solid bit of general-purpose life advice. Three excerpts:

Do you ever feel you're "due" a win? If the answer to any of this is yes, than you have entitlement issues. Luck doesn't owe you anything, and that especially includes favorable treatment. The winds of fate blow both ways. If you get mad because you feel singled out, you're in for a rough time. The good news is that lady luck doesn't hate you. The bad news is that she doesn't care about you at all.

...

Essentially, don't believe everything you read. If something resonates with you, give it a shot. If it doesn't work, you move on. There's no author writing who's infallible, and nothing is set in stone. It's always about what works for you.

...

I know from personal experience Magic players can function on zero support. To tell the truth, I've qualified for Pro Tours off nearly zero quantities of sleep, food, and water. I was much younger than, but even so, why put yourself through all that? At the end of the day, blue envelope notwithstanding, my body still felt utterly wrecked. Plus I know I played worse on no food and no water than without; how could you not? There's no reason to cost yourself additional edge.

(Car loses.)

Caltrain 287 hit an unoccupied car this evening at the Ravenswood crossing in Menlo Park. As told to me by a coworker who was right there for the actual collision, the car skidded while crossing the tracks and nosed off the road, getting its front wheels stuck. Seeing that she couldn't move her car, the driver sensibly abandoned it and moved to the side of the tracks. A police officer who happened to be right there drove up onto the tracks behind the car and flashed his lights to warn the train.

When he realized the train wasn't going to stop in time, he backed his car off the tracks. The train hit the car with a solid thud (I heard this from the station platform) and punted it from the northbound tracks onto the southbound tracks, where you see it in the photo set. The train almost stopped in time, which is why there's more or less a solid car on the bed of that tow truck. When I first arrived at the crossing, the train was wreathed in a pall of smoke from its brakes -- you could smell them from a hundred or more feet away.

The emergency response was impressive, with seven firefighters and six or so police officers (and a sheriff's deputy) on scene within a couple minutes. Once they determined that no one was hurt and secured the one random tube that the collision knocked loose, both trains were able to move out. All told, the delay was about thirty minutes, which isn't too bad. And no one died, so it's a win all around.

Flickr photoset taken with my trusty cellphone

Eddie Griffin crashed an Enzo -- a Ferrari worth about $1.5 million -- while prepping for a charity race to promote the upcoming movie Redline.

I appreciated this bit from the car's understandably somewhat upset owner, producer Daniel Sadek:

"I'm glad Eddie came out of the crash OK but my dream car got destroyed," he said.

"I went to my trailer for about 15 minutes and I thought, there's people dying every day. A lot of worse things are happening in the world."

BBC story

(Bonus fun fact: The Enzo is rated 8 mpg city / 12 mpg highway)

So, Sunday night we were briefly in Redwood City, mainly to pick up cream puffs at Beard Papa's. As we left, I suggested we try to take a slightly shorter alternate route back, but gave up on that a second later because a guy was being tackled and wrestled to the ground by the police in that direction.

As it turns out, that was the current Mr. Universe, Doug Burns.

Seriously.

CNN: Mistaken for drunk, Mr. Universe is arrested

Mr. Universe arrested for assault in Redwood City

Mr. Burns was actually experiencing insulin shock. Insulin shock, a consequence of too much insulin in the system, can look a great deal like alcohol intoxication. As the articles note, the police didn't notice the Medic Alert bracelet he wore. I wouldn't expect them to as long as he was upright and moving, by the way, so I don't fault them for that.

I found this quote from Redwood City police captain Chris Cessina more than a little idiotic:

"The fact is Mr. Burns assaulted our officer," Cessina said. "If he had just stood there and let us help him, maybe they would have called the medics if he didn't seem to fit the description of being under the influence."

Ah, yes. Stupid of the near-coma-state medically impaired guy to not "let us help him," wasn't it? Dumb asses.

So, during a conversation with ota, littlestar, and m about the ability to claim citizenship in different nations, littlestar asked if I can claim British citizenship by descent (as my father is from Scotland). Since he was already a naturalized American citizen when I was born, I figured the answer had to be "no." However, most of the documentation online from the Home Office of the UK refers to the laws for people born after 1983, so I wasn't completely sure.

So I emailed them to ask. Here's the answer:

Thank you for your email.

As your father was no longer a British citizen at the time of your birth, you would not have any claim to British citizenship through your father.

I am sorry to give what I know will be a disappointing reply.

I love that last line. "...what I know will be a disappointing reply." There's pride in your nation. :)

On the train this morning, I heard a classic exchange between two women (and it's always two women).

The first one mentioned something about picking up a self-defense item -- I think it was pepper spray. Her friend responded with that ancient bit of folk wisdom:

"You shouldn't do that. It can be taken away from you and used against you."

Who invented this atrocious piece of poor advice? Was it some guy who felt women shouldn't know how to fight, or just couldn't be bothered to explain how a knife or other weapon worked?

Think of it this way. All things being equal, this idea suggests that the world is a place where anyone is in danger the moment they pick up any weapon, because it might be "taken away and used against them." Does that strike you as sane? Try putting it in context:

The Scene: June 14, 1994. Allied forces continue to advance into Western Europe. A small patrol of American troops happen to run across a downed German pilot wandering the countryside.

Sgt Jones: Private Smith! Capture that man!

Pvt Smith: I can't, sir. It's just too terrifying.

Sgt Jones: What are you on about, Smith? He's unarmed!

Pvt Smith: I know, sir. But he might take my rifle away from me and use it against me!

Silly, right? Right.

So we don't live in that world. Soldiers use guns, because they are a tool that gives you a huge advantage in a fight. The risk is not in having the weapon taken away from you; it's in not having brought a weapon when the other guy remembered to bring his.

So what's that advice about, then?

The message of this advice is that you, the woman who is being told this, are so helpless that there's just no point in trying to equip yourself with some self-defense item. A taser, pepper spray, a knife -- it won't help. It'll be taken away from you, and you'll lose. The core message there is you are a victim, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Makes you a little angry, right?

It's bundled in with other winners like "Don't fight back, it'll only make things worse."

Here's an alternative message:

Pick up some pepper spray, a taser, a knife or other device if you feel like it. Learn how it works, learn its limitations, and have a backup plan. Do fight back, because it's a proven fact that fighting back doesn't "make it worse". In fact, in the specific case of sexual assault, women who try to fight (and you don't have to be any kind of expert at all!) successfully avoid rape much more often than those who don't try to fight.

I'm looking forward to a world where women are not handed an issue of Cosmo that explains their deficiencies while their friends tell them they're helpless.

In law school you must master IRAC, take as many Bar classes as possible, and use specialized prep materials

Third, use specialized prep materials. A lot of professors will say you do not need these. They are wrong, unless you are one of those people who has the legal instinct at the outset. Most law professors have that instinct-- that is why they are law professors.

There's a lot more where that came from in Tim's post, where he provides a primer on passing the California bar exam, with a lot of solid, detail-oriented advice. I recommend reading it even if you aren't trying to pass the bar, just as an example of the kind of planning you may unconsciously shy away from -- but which would benefit you.

Flickr has a "popular" sorting mechanism for your pictures, sort of a compiled "how many views, how many favorites, how many comments?" deal that sorts your pictures into at least a notional most-to-least-popular order. Every so often, I like to see just how my pictures are assorting. Here's the current top six:

The trend is clear, I imagine.

Of course, popularity on Flickr is the intersection of "which pictures you publicize to groups or other areas" and "the kinds of things people like to look at." I put the bunnies pics up in groups a lot, and they're definitely a favorite viewing topic, so I suspect they will usually dominate the rankings in my picture pool.

The actual adage is "Measure twice, cut once," but I've generalized it to cover this:

The apartment complex I currently live in was sold fairly recently. The new management appears to be attempting to "flip" the place -- that is, do some shoddy work on it to make it seem as if they remodeled, then sell it for more than they bought it for. Unfortunate remodels to date include removing beautiful shrubs and trees, and ripping out all ground-level patio walls. So far, not so good. The situation illustrated here really amused me, however. The area shown used to be completely open, which made access for local garbage pickup a pretty easy issue. Then, they added the fence and the decorative covering -- although not quite as you see it in the picture. The first try at the covering looked awfully low -- it made it inconvenient to even open the containers. I imagine the next garbage crew came by and simply moved on, unwilling to try to empty the garbage without destroying the new wood structure.

The following week saw the contractors unsteadily hoisting the roof of the garbage area up so new, taller beams could be installed.

What gets me, though, is not the height error. It's the fact that there's no way for all three garbage containers to fit in the area and still be accessible. As is more readily apparent in this shot:

...the only way for all three to actually be in the structure, which is exactly three containers wide, would be to slide one container in, and then sideways so it rests immediately behind the wooden beam.

Good luck convincing a time-pressured garbage crew to reverse that process to get that same container out.

As a consequence of this instantly incorrect design, the garbage containers have been left in the screwed up "one sticking out" configuration seen in the pictures, which is much more disorderly and unpleasant than just having three lined up on a flat, grassy area ever was.

So far, I'm not impressed.

Make sure to watch through the first scenario and into the hostage-taking scenario.

(Also pay attention to how long it takes the police officer to get his own dog to let go of his hand...)

Pretty much as the subject says. What is this?

If you are, perhaps, thinking of buying (or maybe even renting) a place in the Bay Area, you might want to play with the Association of Bay Area Governments shaking map system. It lets you zoom in on different neighborhoods and then select earthquakes at various faults to see the possible destructive scenarios. The color coding is fairly intuitive, too -- red is bad. Here's part of Mountain View under a couple of possible earthquake scenarios.

A quake on the Mount Diablo fault:

Most of Mountain View is doing just fine here, with light to moderate shaking.

A quake on the entire Hayward fault:

Now the shaking is "very strong" East of Central, and "strong" everywhere else. I haven't checked yet to see how these ratings correlate with buildings actually falling down.

Now, the entire San Andreas fault going off:

That's more "very strong" shaking with a spur of "violent" shaking down the middle. Ouch.

The email that prompted this ad is a reminder from the blood center that I'm eligible to donate again.

Hmmm.