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This site is a member of WebRing. To browse visit here. Saturday, January 31, 2004 I've been reading Ms Frizzle, and added a link to her site. As a homeschooling grandparent, I keep running into people who despise everything public education stands for. I agree with much of what they have to say, though seldom for the same reasons. They see "Godless liberals" under every child's desk; I believe that the "economies of scale" that work so well for Wal-mart and other mega-retailers are simply inappropriate for teaching our children.As the daughter, sister and partner of public school teachers (whose combined experience must be over 80 years), I know from first-hand experience that the calling to teach is a wonderful thing. I'm a banner-waving supporter of every teacher out there whose love of children and devotion to their calling keeps them going in spite of criticism, methodological changes and general stupidity. So I'm very happy that Blogger chose Ms Frizzle as a featured blog and urge anyone interested in education to read it.And I've discovered, to my surprise, that I really love teaching math. I always enjoyed teaching in general. I taught general computer classes in my computer store and set up customized classes for numerous companies and institutions. I also taught computer, bookkeeping and business math courses at what is euphemistically referred to as the "post-secondary adult level" (in other words, a commercial business school). But I never realized how much I specifically enjoy teaching math. Spending these last months in one-on-one instruction with Nick has opened my eyes to methods of visualizing and explaining mathematical concepts that I hadn't considered when I was dealing with adult students. I've probably maimed him for life; he'll never see a fraction again without a mental image of a pizza cut up into the same number of slices as the denominator of the fraction, and the same number of slices as the numerator sliding onto his plate. But fractions don't put him off any more, which was the whole point. We sailed through decimals and percentages and discounts and interest, and now we're plotting x,y pairs onto gridded paper, lots more fun than fractions. The high point of any day comes when he looks up at me and says wonderingly, "You know, I think I really understand this!" and that is what teaching children is all about. posted by Liz @ 8:30 PM | Along the lines of "Great minds think alike," I clicked over to Now Entering Laboville and discovered that Daniel was having similar (but far more specific) thoughts about 'electability.' Go read it--it's the best analysis I've seen so far of the thorny decision between getting the right person into the White House, and just getting Bush and his cronies out. When you've finished reading that entry, scroll down to January 20, and read "The Flaming Wreckage of Rome." I haven't seen a better analysis of WHY we need to get Bush and his cronies out. I couldn't find any way to link directly to that entry, but it's right under "James Taranto is an Idiot." And thanks, Daniel, for noticing that I linked to you. posted by Liz @ 11:11 AM | I'm playing with the site—found a neat 'online reader counter' from some people called NerdsOnSite and decided to try it out. I am concerned that it may slow down page loading, so if it disappears after a while, that will probably be why. I've also added the Atom search engine and a link to the Democratic webring. posted by Liz @ 10:24 AM | Howard Dean is looking more and more like the John McCain of 2004. Outspoken, blunt and forthright, and doomed to support someone else just to maintain party loyalty. To me, the issue is not 'Can John Kerry defeat Bush?' but will he do a good enough job that America will want him back in 2008. The only thing that would be worse than a Bush re-election would be the country's opinion that 'We tried a Democrat, and he failed.' There seems no question that Americans are becoming more conservative. The annual American Freshman survey reportsThe percentage of students focused on "being very well off financially" has risen sharply, from 42% in 1966 to 74% in 2003, while the percentage saying it's important to develop "a meaningful philosophy of life" has dropped by more than half, from 86% in 1967 to 39% in 2003.While it would be easy to equate conservative politics with the desire for weath, the reason may simply be that each year's students have watched their parents' real income slowly erode, and have no desire to see themselves in the same position. To me, a more significant item was that, although a very much larger ppercentage of students reported having attended church recently (80% as opposed to 69% in the mid 1960's), many more say they have no religious preference. That's a troubling trend. People who have spiritual feelings but no spiritual direction tend to find other foci for their emotional needs, turning to secular figures for leadership. An ineffective Democratic presidency sets the stage for some charismatic personality to run away with the election in 2008. Given popular support, such a person could do far more damage than George Bush, who, in my opinion, been his own worst enemy. Note added later: I couldn't find a link to the 2004 survey itself (it is administered by the Higher Education Research Institute of UCLA), but here is a link to the full article by Linda Saxe, which has been widely quoted. This link is to the Center for International Higher Education, at Boston College. posted by Liz @ 12:20 AM | Thursday, January 29, 2004 I've been debating, as I mentioned earlier, whether to separate my personal blog from the political one. I'm not going to do that, but I have moved this blog back over to blogspt, where it originally resided. The address now is http://spectatorsport.blogspot.com. If you have linked to my site from yours, now would be a good time to change your link. I'll leave a file on the other site with a redirect to this one for at least a while, but I eventually want to get all the blogger-related files off my site--they're taking up three-quarters of my space. Beautiful day today, blinding sunlight after almost four days of non-stop gloom. I drove for five hours out to southwest Virginia to inspect a store, and five hours back. Not going to make much money on this one! The half day of sunshine yesterday melted the top layer of snow, which then, of course, refroze overnight, leaving an effect sort of like a syrupy viscous layer of marshmallow creme spread over the countryside. For some reason, it brought back a recollection of years ago, when the Ford Taurus was first introduced. My son dismissed the car with a disapproving sniff. "They look like they were left out in the sun too long," he said, "and melted." The landscape had that same sort of appearance today, as though the whole world had been left out in the sun and had softened around the edges. No politics today, too much work to do. posted by Liz @ 9:02 PM | Wednesday, January 28, 2004 Wow, two entries in a single day. Making up for lost time, I guess. It's going to be sparse again for a while, because work is beginning to pile up. But I couldn't resist this excerpt from a column in the Advocate:Images of gay rights demonstrations at the National Mall will be removed from a video display that has been running at the Lincoln Memorial since 1995, according to a civil service group. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility said the National Park Service, under pressure from far-right religious groups, has agreed to alter the eight-minute video containing photos and footage of demonstrations and other events taking place at the Lincoln Memorial. The conservative groups asked that footage of gay rights, pro-choice, and anti-Vietnam War demonstrations be excised because it implies that "Lincoln would have supported homosexual and abortion 'rights' as well as feminism," PEER said. The Park Service said it would develop a "more balanced" version that include rallies of the Christian group Promise Keepers and pro-Gulf War demonstrators, though those events did not take place at the Lincoln Memorial or the National Mall.The word for this is "revisionism." Tourists viewing this video in the future will not know, unless they found out somewhere else, that gay rights demonstrations took part at the National Mall, while being led to believe, falsely, that Promise Keepers' rallies did. Aren't we lucky to live in this day and age! posted by Liz @ 10:46 PM | Tuesday, January 27, 2004 This is a political entry of sorts, though not in connection with the elections. On January 21, a bill before the US House Judiciary Committee passed 16-7. There hasn't been much publicity about it, though there may be more when it gets to the floor. The Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act, HR 3261, grants to databases essentially the same protection that the copyright laws give to music, literature and movies. That is, the information in them can't be copied by someone else and sold. On the face of it, that doesn't sound too terrible. After all, if you had gone to a lot of trouble to compile large amounts of data, and then found that someone else had copied your collection of information and was selling it, you'd probably be kind of irritated. Something similar to this has happened to me, and I was, indeed, extremely aggravated until the matter was settled. The problem with this bill, however, is that, for the first time, it permits private ownership of knowledge, something that common sense has always told us could not be owned, and that the US Supreme Court specifically ruled (in 1991) was not permissible. This bill, in fact, conflicts with the Supreme Court ruling, which Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-CA, probably had in mind when she said, "Even if we pass this bill the court is going to strike it down and we will not have solved the problem." The bill was introduced by Howard Coble, Republican, of North Carolina, and co-sponsored by six other Republicans and two Democrats, so there is some degree of bi-partisan support for it. Reaction from constituents has been almost entirely negative, however. Even the traditionally conservative US Chamber of Commerce has been outspoken against it, predicting that, for example, a financial analyst with access to stock market databases could violate the law by including information from such sources in a report prepared for a client. Tech firms such as Amazon.com, AT&T and Comcast also oppose the bill, as well as the owners of two of the largest databases on the planet, Google and Yahoo. NetCoalition, a public policy voice founded by the owners of Lycos, Yahoo, Inktomi and DoubleClick.net, says, "what 'database protection' really means is establishing property rights for basic, publicly available facts." The bill's proponents would say, "No, it just means that no one can copy and profit from someone else's hard work, even if that work only consisted of arranging publicly available information in logically useful ways." And they might point out that it is not the information itself which is being protected, but the work which went into finding it and making it available. I have some sympathy for that point of view. When I was informed that someone else had copied an entire family history website for which I had spent months researching information and locating appropriate images and designing an attractive appearance, I saw red. Fortunately, a note to the offender was all it took to get him to use a link to my site, rather than copying it verbatim on his site. I throw in all this personal stuff to show that I'm not just having a kneejerk reaction to the notion of someone owning information. I felt pretty proprietary about what had been copied from me. I think database owners should be protected from anyone who wants to profit from their hard work without paying them for it. But they have plenty of protections already, from copyright law to anti-hacking laws to terms-of-use contracts, and they have some interesting ways of protecting themselves. For example, companies which provide mailing labels for mass mailings always "salt the list" with a label that gets mailed back to a post office box owned by the company. That way they know whether the names have been used more than once, a violation of their contract. They are not without resources to protect themselves. What this bill does, however, is to provide a legal climate in which information, as a generic entity, can be privately owned. Researchers have always tried to keep discoveries secret until they were ready to publish (at which time they could be copyrighted). But there has never been legal (or common sense!) support for the idea that a new arrangement of publicly available information somehow confers ownership of that information. Might it confer ownership of that arrangement of the information? The Supreme Court struck down the idea that a trivial arrangement (listing names in alphabetic order) could be protected. Perhaps some more complex arrangement could then be protected? Do we want to have endless court battles over what is trivial and what is protectable? As Rep. Zoe Lofgren implied, when a law can be enforced only by resorting in each instance to the courts, it's not good law. Another problem arises when you consider what information may go into these databases. Can personal information about you and your family be owned by someone else? Nothing in the bill precludes that scenario. If your personal information becomes someone else's property, that person or company may dispose of it as they wish. All the privacy notices we've been getting in the mail recently are essentially void, if the bill is passed into law. Finally, what about libraries and other non-profit institutions that make information available to their users? The bill's supporters claim that they are exempt from the provisions of the bill. Turns out that's not quite true. Paraphrased, the "Permitted Acts" clause states that a non-profit institution may make available "in commerce" a "substantial part of a database" IF [capitals mine] the court determines that such an act was reasonable under the circumstances." When does the court get to decide? After the owner of the database proceeds with the civil remedies provided by the bill, among which are the impoundment of "all copies of contents of a database made available in commerce or attempted to be made available in commerce potentially in violation of section 3, and of all masters, tapes, disks, diskettes, or other articles by means of which such copies may be reproduced." In short, the court could impound all the institution's computers and related storage media until the case was settled, effectively throttling the institution's further operation. Just the threat of costly litigation would likely be enough to make institutions reluctant to take any chances. Finally, the bill's supporters claim that without such protection, owners of databases will have no motive to maintain and update them, nor to create new ones. This is the same tired old reasoning that pharmaceutical companies have used to keep their US pricing at astronomical levels, while instead of putting that money into new research, they turn out minimally changed versions of existing proprietary formulations (the widely advertised antacid, Nexium, for example, is a very slightly modified version of Prilosec, whose patent was set to expire in October 2002). Database companies already have many avenues of recourse against people who use their databases without compensation. Conferring ownership of the data upon them merely locks up knowledge and makes it unavailable to the average citizen. posted by Liz @ 11:01 AM | Monday, January 26, 2004 Another link on the sidebar of political sites: The Yellow Doggerel Democrat. Steve is a fellow computer type, a fluent writer and a common-sense thinker. I'm glad I ran across his blog. We're still snowed in here, though the predicted freezing rain hasn't materialized yet. Tomorrow the roads had better be passable off the hill, because we're going to be eating nothing but oatmeal and tuna fish if I don't get to the grocery store pretty soon. I've been wanting to address the noise over the alleged "Bush-as-Hitler" comparisons. Perhaps some of them are indeed as scurrilous as the accusations say—I haven't seen any that I would put in that category. Folk, there is a huge difference between comparing one person to another, and seeing similarities in the policies of their respective governments. You can't read the provisions of the so-called Patriot Act without making uneasy comparisons with the way people were taken away in the middle of the night in 1930's Germany. Never before in our country has there been a legal mechanism for the detention of a United States citizen without being charged and without being allowed access to legal counsel, and for searches and seizures without judicial oversight (which is just a fancy way to say you have to prove to a judge that you have a good reason for the searching and seizing). That's not to say those things never happened; they were just never legal. Now they are. Never before in our country has the government set up an official corps of citizen informers. TIPS (Terrorist Information and Prevention System) has been canned, you say? Yes, the national organization is no longer in operation. However, a quick search of the net turned up instance after instance of state and local sites with lists of "suspicious activities" to report. TIPS has only been carefully and slyly hidden. For example, the list of "red flag" activities from the city of Burbank, California, website includes these reasons for suspicion:Subject of news reports, rumors or an investigation indicating possible criminal activity Are we to understand that rumor is now justifiable grounds for suspicion?Insists on using a post office box or mail dropI guess it's just too bad if you do business in a town with a rural post office where you have no choice but to get a post office box. A rural post office, for those who haven't been introduced to them, is one where the mail is delivered solely by vehicle. If your home or business is located within one-quarter mile of the post office building, or if you are unable to provide a safe place for the delivery vehicle to pull off the road, you can receive mail only by renting a post office box.May be reached solely by pager, cell phone or emailOops, now I'm in trouble--I never give out my home phone number, only my cell phone, especially since I'm on the road eighty percent of the time and that truly is the only way to reach meHigh employee turnover Well, there go all the McDonalds!Dishonest, untruthful, evasive, or never looks you in the eye when talking or listening Italics mine—you don't suppose this person might be from a culture where looking you in the eye is considered to be aggressive and impolite, do you?Personality anomalies Even the professionals can't agree on what constitutes a personality "anomaly" —ordinary citizens are supposed to know?Known womanizer You wouldn't think a male dominated city government would be stupid enough to include that oneand finally, ta-da . . . Immaturity, inappropriate dependence upon spouse or parents, unable to accept responsibility or make decisions, unusual attraction to child-oriented toys, video equipment, photographic equipment, Jacuzzi, or swimming poolThe sloppy writing of this catch-all description would be enough all by itself to make me shrug it off, but you shutterbugs out there better be careful from now on about taking pictures of anyone in the Jacuzzi or swimming pool!Do you notice the exceptionally large number of subjective words in this very short excerpt of suspicious activities? Evasive, inappropriate, unusual . . . these are words your high school English teacher told you not to use unless you could back them up, words that lawyers are cautioned for using in witness examination, words with emotional connotations far beyond their dictionary definitions. If the thought of using these words in connection with other people doesn't bother you, how do you feel about them applying these words to you? Think it can't happen? You might want to read what happened to Marc Schultz, a bookstore employee in Atlanta, Georgia. And if you'd like to see what the TIPS website and related sites originally said, before the content was removed or changed, The Memory Hole has cached many of them and made them available. Bush-as-Hitler? That's a stretch. Nazi-style subjugation of a formerly free people? It's already happening. posted by Liz @ 6:10 PM | Sunday, January 25, 2004 The Gender Genie claims to be able to determine your gender from your writing. It came up wrong on me (well, sort of), but the statistics show an overall success rate of 65.19% for the submissions since September 13, 2003. The stats also showed something else, something very interesting: the number of percentage points between correct and incorrect results held steady, right around eight to nine, in every category—except non-fiction submissions of more than 500 words. There the correct results for females were 77.48% and the incorrect results only 10.27%. In other words, the algorithm used by Gender Genie was able to determine the correct gender three-quarters of the time in non-fiction pieces of at least 500 words. I tried it with a chunk of text from my most recent posting to Voting in America. Now, here things get really strange. When I submitted the text as non-fiction, the algorithm correctly identified me as female. When I re-submitted it as a "blog entry," however, it identified me as male. The obvious conclusion is that women's blogs read differently from men's (not exactly a whopping surprise) and that the technical matter in my submission didn't meet the expectations for a woman's blog. I didn't expect general non-fiction written by women to be so specifically identifiable, however. In fact, if anyone had tossed this out for speculation, I would have said fiction would be more easily gender-tagged than non-fiction. Apparently not. An article in Nature magazine about the algorithm says, "Female writers use more pronouns (I, you, she, their, myself) . . . Males prefer words that identify or determine nouns (a, the, that) and words that quantify them (one, two, more)," a style preference which has also been described as "involved" vs. "informational." I tried the algorithm with a page from one of my slash stories, slash fiction being the ultimate bastion of women's writing, and it tagged me as male. Oh well. Some of my best friends, etc . . . A felicitous discovery: Making Light, the blog of Teresa Nielsen Hayden, a favorite author, and also a fellow knitter. Among other things, her blog mentions some of the more arcane recent developments in knitting: the Mobius scarf (one of which I have actually made), the DNA double-helix cable stitch and the Klein Bottle hat (a Klein Bottle is a bottle with a single continuous surface that folds in upon itself like one of those impossible Escher drawings). I'm exceedingly happy to have found Teresa and will post her blog as a link under "Other Blogs of Interest." posted by Liz @ 4:52 PM | Three inches on the ground and still falling. The children are tracking snowy footprints into all the hallways, dripping on the carpet when they come inside, trailing damp coats and hats and gloves behind them. Four to six inches is predicted, so it looks like the snow isn't going to stop any time soon. I've been debating with myself whether to move the political comment to another blog. I'm still updating Voting in America. I could certainly shift all political opinion to that site. I find that I don't like mixing personal and family information with political commentary. It takes one kind of mood to speak about my kids and grandbabies and my partner—another one to voice my feelings about the current political situation. Yet the two are inextricably intertwined. Our future—more importantly, their future—depends on what happens in the next ten months. So for the time being, I'll continue to inflict my political opinions on the few readers I probably have left here, and restrict the voting blog site to its original purpose—dealing with electronic voting issues. If you went to church today, you missed the Women for Howard Dean rally in Hooksett, New Hampshire. I couldn't go to church in any case, living at the top of a very steep hill with a good two inches of snow on the ground by that time (and all the church services canceled anyway), so I watched it. I remain convinced that Dean is the only candidate who tells you what he really thinks, regardless of what he thinks you want to hear. Whether he can be elected is another story, and whether he would actually make a good president is even farther down the road of speculation. There seems to be no question that he was an effective governor of Vermont. That set of skills doesn't necessarily translate to what it takes to operate inside the Beltway (though I'd be happier with Dean's skills and principles there than what we have now). My greatest concern is that Washington-as-usual would balk him at every step. I was hoping to find a transcript of today's remarks on his website, but it hasn't shown up yet. I started up WordPerfect and captured what I could, but without a VCR I couldn't get more than bits and pieces. A few pungent remarks really caught my attention though. In response to the official photo taken when Bush signed the bill prohibiting late-term abortions, Dean observed that everyone in the room was a middle-aged or older "white guy." Kate had already sent me a link to this picture, so I had seen it. Not a single woman was present at an occasion which profoundly affects her 50 percent of the population. Whatever your opinion on abortion issues, that roomful of smugly triumphant older white male faces sends a message that females, younger people and minorities weren't welcome. "Those guys are mired in a time which has no relationship to the lives of ordinary Americans," Dean said. "They are out of touch with what it's like to live in the most diversified country in the world. . . time has passed them by. They can't run a country any more that they don't understand." I'm hearing that "Bush is out of touch with Americans" more and more often these days. He certainly has no idea what my life is like, or that of my truck-driver daughter who has a decent job now only because a WorkForce program provided training for her (a program whose funding will disappear in Bush's budget). Or my youngest daughter, whose medical problems could be addressed only by her moving to a state with a generous disability program, since she is unable to work and has no other access to health care. Or my middle daughter, whose lawyer husband was laid off just before Christmas, resulting in her having to return to work only a month after their son was born. I can hear the groans and shouts already: "It isn't the government's responsibility to provide health care, or pay for job training, or keep people from being laid off." And you know what? In some ways, I tend to agree with that. I like being independent and self-suficient. But it also isn't the government's business, or its right, to structure an economy in such a way that self-sufficiency is extraordinarily difficult to attain. You reap what you sow, and we'll pay far more in prison and welfare costs, drug dependency and stagnant economic growth for every penny diverted from programs that lift up our weakest members than we'll ever gain from programs that merely make the strongest ones richer. posted by Liz @ 1:45 PM | Saturday, January 24, 2004 I was reminded today of that old saw: Yesterday's history Tomorrow a mystery, Today is a gift. That's why they call it the present!" Today was indeed a gift, a midwinter present of temperatures in the high 50's and bright sunshine all day long, the kind of day in which people washed their cars in the driveway in their shirtsleeves. I drove home from Roanoke tonight under the conjoined crystalline aura of a perfect crescent moon and Venus, winter's lady of the night, sparkling brightly about ten degrees to the west. The other stars struggled over the horizon above dark tongues of cloud flowing in from the south and west, presaging the weather to come. Tomorrow we pay the piper for today's balmy present with snow, sleet and freezing rain. That ghostly aura around the moon is a high altitude layer of ice crystals, an accurate predictor of bad weather long before we had satellites and smooth-talking meteorologists. Back to more mundane matters, if anything about today's political climate can be called mundane. In December, a conservative group calling itself the "American Family Association" posted an online poll with the stated intention of demonstrating American opposition to same-sex marriage. The plan was to present the results of the poll to Congress. Respondents were to choose one of the following options: I favor legalization of homosexual marriage.I favor a 'civil union' with the full benefits of marriage except for the name.I oppose legalization of homosexual marriage and 'civil unions.'Unfortunately for the AFA, 60 percent of those polled said they favored same-sex marriage. Eight percent favored civil unions. Only 32 percent were opposed to any formal recognition of same-sex couples. The AFA now claims that "homosexual activist groups around the country got a hold of the poll -- it was forwarded to them -- and they decided to have a little fun, and turn their organizations around the country (on to) the poll to try to cause it to represent something other than what we wanted it to. And so far, they succeeded with that." You know what? That's a very interesting statement. To begin with, if the poll was intended to convey American opinion, then all Americans should be able to respond, regardless of their sexual orientation. More than that, however, the wording of the statement makes it clear that the AFA had no real desire to find out what Americans thought. Their spokesman complained to Wired News that homosexual participation caused the results to represent "something other than what we wanted it to." The AFA had evidently intended the url for the poll to be circulated only among its membership and other like-minded folk. But it "escaped" quickly, and by the middle of December could be found on many socially-conscious mailing lists, blogs and news sites. Daniel Terdiman, who wrote about the poll for Wired News expressed the outcome succinctly: ". . . the AFA and organizations like it will have to get used to the idea that if they want to use the Internet as a tool, they had better understand how it works." Bottom line: the AFA has dropped its plan to present the results to Congress. posted by Liz @ 10:00 PM | Monday, January 19, 2004 I've finally heard from Rich directly. He confirmed that the destruction on Niue was indeed massive, but said that his server installation was undamaged. Only the downtown office was destroyed, and he managed to salvage most of what was in it first. Good news for both of us. I feel rather proprietory about some of that stuff, having handled it, repacked it for international shipping and sent it on its way. The only thing he lost was the weather station, which he said registered 300 kmh before it "blew away into outer space."Back to more mundane concerns. I'm slowly becoming accustomed to the new way of submitting my inspection reports. It is indeed a savings in terms of direct costs, but the time it takes to process the documents for a store is five times what it used to be. And it's obvious that the company which constructed the online submission site does not understand database design, nor the easiest way to fill in online forms. I've written pages of ideas on how to improve the whole works, but feel a little awkward about sending them, as I have no real authority to suggest changes. On the other hand, I suspect I'm the only one of the subcontractors who does have any experience in the field, so I'm going to let Tammy know what I think and see what happens.Nick and I are more than half way through the school year now and beginning to look at the specific things he must know to pass the Virginia Standards of Learning tests given by the school board in April. He's ahead of the game in math and English, probably about where he should be in social studies, and needs some work in science. His passion continues to be music. To my amazement, since no one suspected any abilities in this area, he has turned into quite an accomplished composer. I introduced him to the Irish penny whistle, which he took up half-heartedly at first. Something seemed to click, though, after a week or so of piddling around with it, and suddenly he was improvising little melodies of his own. For a couple of months he did nothing more than play those simple, but cheerful, little tunes, and learn other songs from the penny whistle books he was given. He has passed some additional plateau now and taken off into far more complex tunes and rhythms. He is also, without any prompting or instruction on my part, playing with different kinds of tonguing and blowing, and making far richer sounds than one normally hears from a penny whistle. I wish I could get him interested in playing the recorder as well, as there is a large body of published music for recorder. So far, though, he is reluctant to start over with another instrument. I wish we had a real piano here, instead of just the electronic keyboard. I wish my flute were playable, because I think he could make the transition to flute very easily, but all the pads and corks are dried up and crumbling, the mouthpiece is corroded, and the original quality was probably not worth what the repairs would cost.Back to getting inspection packages ready for tomorrow's trip. posted by Liz @ 3:26 PM | Tuesday, January 13, 2004 Update on Niue: I've finally heard through a third party that Rich is okay, but his internet service installation is gone. I had figured that was the case, as he would have had some kind of communications setup in place by now if anything was left to do it with. The situation there is sad. One of the residents said there are many dead dogs and pigs, the trees have been denuded of their leaves, and the birds are all circling looking hopelessly for food. "We have no petrol left," another email said, "and very little food." I've read reports of looting, and of relief supplies being locked up on the Vice-Premier's lawn instead of being properly distributed. Some of the houses that were destroyed had asbestos insulation, so there is the fear of asbestos particles in the air. Electricity is back on, at least part time, and some sort of email is available through USP (University of the South Pacific), but as far as I know, regular telephone service is still out. The only pictures I have are from copyrighted news sources, so I'm reluctant to post them, but the island looks like the worst tornado devastation that we're used to seeing in the states. Please continue to pray for them. The reality of what has happened is beginning to sink in and weigh people down. posted by Liz @ 3:53 PM | Thursday, January 08, 2004 More on Niue: still no word from Rich, but I do know he was not among those who were airlifted out for medical treatment in Auckland. NZoom.com, a New Zealand online news site, reports that the island looks like a "war zone." "Houses on the island's coastal side and up to 100 metres inland were wiped out, leaving just rubble. Locals say there are some parts of town that they simply can't recognise anymore." The hospital, the Justice Building and the hotel were destroyed, along with something like half the houses. Pictures sent back from Alofi show cars thrown on top of each other, houses reduced to piles of broken cinder blocks. The couple who owned a scuba diving business say everything they had was destroyed, and they expect that many of the prime diving sites were badly damaged as well. There is already much talk about people just leaving Niue and trying to rebuild their lives somewhere else. I've looked in vain for coverage of this disaster in the American news outlets. If statistics are all one goes by, then it doesn't sound like much. One dead, 200 people homeless, a hotel and a government building knocked down . . . big deal. Samoa suffered more damage than Niue, in terms of dollars and injuries. But Samoa is far more densely populated to begin with, has more industry and agriculture and tourism. Little Niue has only its historical significance and its pristine, unspoiled beauty. That may not be enough to save it. posted by Liz @ 11:03 PM | Wednesday, January 07, 2004 Update on Niue: The Tonga Post is reporting that a woman was killed and her baby seriously injured in the storm, described as the "worst in living memory." The only contact with the island so far has been through a satellite phone used by New Zealand's High Commissioner, Sandra Lee, who said that the capitol town of Alofi was "flattened." A relief flight carrying medical supplies, tents and other desperately needed materials will leave from New Zealand on Thursday (some time today, our time, as New Zealand is west of the international date line). I spoke with the New Zealand administrator of Rich's company late last night, hoping that Rich might somehow have managed to get word out to him. He didn't know anything more than I had already learned, but promised to call as soon as he heard from Rich. Niue is a tiny island nation, discovered by Captain James Cook in 1774, though it was populated long before that by Polynesian explorers. Cook called it "Savage Island." It's a coral atoll of only 100 square miles (about 1.5 times the size of Washington DC), with a minimal economy of cash crops--vanilla, taro, limes and other similar tropical plants. Its tourist income was growing, however, and the storm will certainly be a setback to that. The Premier, Young Vivian, said from New Zealand that he feared many Niueans, who hold New Zealand citizenship, will choose to emigrate rather than trying to rebuild their lives on Niue. This would be an additional hardship on those left behind, who would have even fewer economic opportunities. AsiaPacific reports that most of the island's roads have been cut, that the hospital is damaged and the fuel depot destroyed. Without the fuel, they have no electricity, as it came from local diesel generators. Rich's company, the internet service provider on Niue, had become well known in the Pacific Rim technology community for its development of wifi service, providing internet access to people who would otherwise have had minimal contact with the outside world. Its equipment and facilities will amost certainly have been severely damaged. My New Zealand contact says "Rich has good sense, he'll be all right," but I can imagine him running out to rescue an antenna that was flying away in the wind, or one of his neighbors. More as I find out. posted by Liz @ 9:35 AM | Tuesday, January 06, 2004 Surfacing briefly, from a flood of work that has taken me all all over the state, to ask for prayer for the people of Niue, in the Cook Islands (South Pacific). My friend and customer Rich mentioned to me a couple of days ago that they might be affected by Cyclone Heta, which was at that point bearing down on American Samoa. I was on the road yesterday and today and unable to look at the satellite imagery for that area, but I've just seen it now and it's obvious that they got clobbered. It looks as though Heta ran right over them. Rich said that if that happened, "We're toast." The Tonga news outlets are reporting that communications shut down there early this morning when the satellite dish that provides their telephone service was taken down to protect it. Rich is an amateur radio operator, though, and I'm hoping he'll be able to get word out even if they can't get the phones working right away. Niue has a population of about 2000, mostly Polynesian and a few New Zealanders, and apparently had about 20 tourists on the island at the time. The company which sells the .nu domain names is also located there, and their site, as one would expect, is unavailable. Please pray for them. posted by Liz @ 11:21 PM | The template is set to display 10 posts. To see all the posts for this month, click on the month name in the Archive section RSS Feed PERSONAL Send email toliz at life-as-a-spectator-sport.com Home I'm a mother, grandmother, a computer professional, Democrat, Christian. I welcome politely worded comments and email, my spam filter throws the rest away, so don't bother to flame me WHY 'LIFE AS A SPECTATOR SPORT' "If you're lucky not to live in the gutters of a slum, but still can't afford to take vacations in the Alps, you're part of that enormous middle class who lives life through the medium of the television, further separated from "real" life by air conditioner, by automobile, by dishwasher, microwave and ice-in-the-door refrigerator, by automatic washer and dryer, and all the other appliances and conveniences that make it possible for America to live life at second hand. I'm not sure why Americans decided that televised drama was better than the real thing, that cardboard microwave food containers were an adequate substitute for real dishes, and their contents for real food, or that cooking, dishwashing and face-to-face conversation wasn't worth the effort and time it required. Someone fed this nation a plastic crate of out-of-season tomatoes and told us it was life and we took them at their word, and we're so much the poorer for it that it's hard to know where to start to list the shortcomings." I wrote this a couple of years ago, but I have to admit it's much less amusing than I thought it would be to see the artifical construct falling apart. THE NON-ELECTRIC HOME Cleaning, 1 Cleaning, 2 Cleaning, 3 KNITTING BLOGS Extravayarnza Knitting Heretic Mind of Winter Pie Knits Persistent Illusion See Eunny Knit The Keyboard Biologist Taleweaver's Ramblings TECHnitting Wendy Knits FINISHED PROJECTS -------FINISHED IN 2006------- Peruvian Cap Tutti-Frutti Socks Shelley's Socks Carol's Socks -------FINISHED IN 2007------- Chain Link Socks Baby Surprise Jacket Valerie & Friend Baby Bonnet Rainbow Baby Socks Girls Pixie Hood Mitred Square Heart Red & White Socks Coffee Cup Pot Holder Nubbins Dishcloth Garterlac Dishcloth Suede Booties Kate's Socks Norwegian Sweet Baby Cap Half Thumbless Mittens Red Mittens for Akkol -------FINISHED IN 2008------- SELF-RELIANCE AND THE FUTURE -- Blogs and websites -- Causubon's Book Club Orlov Food Storage Made Easy From the Wilderness In the Wake Listening to Katrina Survival Topics The Modern Homestead The Oil Drum Notes from a Hillside Farm -- Mailing Lists -- 12vdc Power Living on the Land Rainwater Refrigeration Alternatives Old Ways of Living POLITICAL BLOGS and SITES The political sites have moved BOOKS I'M READING How to Grow More Vegetables, etc. Small Scale Grain Raising ARCHIVES February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 August 2008 July 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 April 2002 March 2002 February 2002 Feedjit Live Blog Stats
I've been reading Ms Frizzle, and added a link to her site. As a homeschooling grandparent, I keep running into people who despise everything public education stands for. I agree with much of what they have to say, though seldom for the same reasons. They see "Godless liberals" under every child's desk; I believe that the "economies of scale" that work so well for Wal-mart and other mega-retailers are simply inappropriate for teaching our children.As the daughter, sister and partner of public school teachers (whose combined experience must be over 80 years), I know from first-hand experience that the calling to teach is a wonderful thing. I'm a banner-waving supporter of every teacher out there whose love of children and devotion to their calling keeps them going in spite of criticism, methodological changes and general stupidity. So I'm very happy that Blogger chose Ms Frizzle as a featured blog and urge anyone interested in education to read it.And I've discovered, to my surprise, that I really love teaching math. I always enjoyed teaching in general. I taught general computer classes in my computer store and set up customized classes for numerous companies and institutions. I also taught computer, bookkeeping and business math courses at what is euphemistically referred to as the "post-secondary adult level" (in other words, a commercial business school). But I never realized how much I specifically enjoy teaching math. Spending these last months in one-on-one instruction with Nick has opened my eyes to methods of visualizing and explaining mathematical concepts that I hadn't considered when I was dealing with adult students. I've probably maimed him for life; he'll never see a fraction again without a mental image of a pizza cut up into the same number of slices as the denominator of the fraction, and the same number of slices as the numerator sliding onto his plate. But fractions don't put him off any more, which was the whole point. We sailed through decimals and percentages and discounts and interest, and now we're plotting x,y pairs onto gridded paper, lots more fun than fractions. The high point of any day comes when he looks up at me and says wonderingly, "You know, I think I really understand this!" and that is what teaching children is all about.
Along the lines of "Great minds think alike," I clicked over to Now Entering Laboville and discovered that Daniel was having similar (but far more specific) thoughts about 'electability.' Go read it--it's the best analysis I've seen so far of the thorny decision between getting the right person into the White House, and just getting Bush and his cronies out. When you've finished reading that entry, scroll down to January 20, and read "The Flaming Wreckage of Rome." I haven't seen a better analysis of WHY we need to get Bush and his cronies out. I couldn't find any way to link directly to that entry, but it's right under "James Taranto is an Idiot." And thanks, Daniel, for noticing that I linked to you.
I'm playing with the site—found a neat 'online reader counter' from some people called NerdsOnSite and decided to try it out. I am concerned that it may slow down page loading, so if it disappears after a while, that will probably be why. I've also added the Atom search engine and a link to the Democratic webring.
Howard Dean is looking more and more like the John McCain of 2004. Outspoken, blunt and forthright, and doomed to support someone else just to maintain party loyalty. To me, the issue is not 'Can John Kerry defeat Bush?' but will he do a good enough job that America will want him back in 2008. The only thing that would be worse than a Bush re-election would be the country's opinion that 'We tried a Democrat, and he failed.' There seems no question that Americans are becoming more conservative. The annual American Freshman survey reportsThe percentage of students focused on "being very well off financially" has risen sharply, from 42% in 1966 to 74% in 2003, while the percentage saying it's important to develop "a meaningful philosophy of life" has dropped by more than half, from 86% in 1967 to 39% in 2003.While it would be easy to equate conservative politics with the desire for weath, the reason may simply be that each year's students have watched their parents' real income slowly erode, and have no desire to see themselves in the same position. To me, a more significant item was that, although a very much larger ppercentage of students reported having attended church recently (80% as opposed to 69% in the mid 1960's), many more say they have no religious preference. That's a troubling trend. People who have spiritual feelings but no spiritual direction tend to find other foci for their emotional needs, turning to secular figures for leadership. An ineffective Democratic presidency sets the stage for some charismatic personality to run away with the election in 2008. Given popular support, such a person could do far more damage than George Bush, who, in my opinion, been his own worst enemy. Note added later: I couldn't find a link to the 2004 survey itself (it is administered by the Higher Education Research Institute of UCLA), but here is a link to the full article by Linda Saxe, which has been widely quoted. This link is to the Center for International Higher Education, at Boston College.
The percentage of students focused on "being very well off financially" has risen sharply, from 42% in 1966 to 74% in 2003, while the percentage saying it's important to develop "a meaningful philosophy of life" has dropped by more than half, from 86% in 1967 to 39% in 2003.
Thursday, January 29, 2004
I've been debating, as I mentioned earlier, whether to separate my personal blog from the political one. I'm not going to do that, but I have moved this blog back over to blogspt, where it originally resided. The address now is http://spectatorsport.blogspot.com. If you have linked to my site from yours, now would be a good time to change your link. I'll leave a file on the other site with a redirect to this one for at least a while, but I eventually want to get all the blogger-related files off my site--they're taking up three-quarters of my space. Beautiful day today, blinding sunlight after almost four days of non-stop gloom. I drove for five hours out to southwest Virginia to inspect a store, and five hours back. Not going to make much money on this one! The half day of sunshine yesterday melted the top layer of snow, which then, of course, refroze overnight, leaving an effect sort of like a syrupy viscous layer of marshmallow creme spread over the countryside. For some reason, it brought back a recollection of years ago, when the Ford Taurus was first introduced. My son dismissed the car with a disapproving sniff. "They look like they were left out in the sun too long," he said, "and melted." The landscape had that same sort of appearance today, as though the whole world had been left out in the sun and had softened around the edges. No politics today, too much work to do.
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
Wow, two entries in a single day. Making up for lost time, I guess. It's going to be sparse again for a while, because work is beginning to pile up. But I couldn't resist this excerpt from a column in the Advocate:Images of gay rights demonstrations at the National Mall will be removed from a video display that has been running at the Lincoln Memorial since 1995, according to a civil service group. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility said the National Park Service, under pressure from far-right religious groups, has agreed to alter the eight-minute video containing photos and footage of demonstrations and other events taking place at the Lincoln Memorial. The conservative groups asked that footage of gay rights, pro-choice, and anti-Vietnam War demonstrations be excised because it implies that "Lincoln would have supported homosexual and abortion 'rights' as well as feminism," PEER said. The Park Service said it would develop a "more balanced" version that include rallies of the Christian group Promise Keepers and pro-Gulf War demonstrators, though those events did not take place at the Lincoln Memorial or the National Mall.The word for this is "revisionism." Tourists viewing this video in the future will not know, unless they found out somewhere else, that gay rights demonstrations took part at the National Mall, while being led to believe, falsely, that Promise Keepers' rallies did. Aren't we lucky to live in this day and age!
Images of gay rights demonstrations at the National Mall will be removed from a video display that has been running at the Lincoln Memorial since 1995, according to a civil service group. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility said the National Park Service, under pressure from far-right religious groups, has agreed to alter the eight-minute video containing photos and footage of demonstrations and other events taking place at the Lincoln Memorial. The conservative groups asked that footage of gay rights, pro-choice, and anti-Vietnam War demonstrations be excised because it implies that "Lincoln would have supported homosexual and abortion 'rights' as well as feminism," PEER said. The Park Service said it would develop a "more balanced" version that include rallies of the Christian group Promise Keepers and pro-Gulf War demonstrators, though those events did not take place at the Lincoln Memorial or the National Mall.
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
This is a political entry of sorts, though not in connection with the elections. On January 21, a bill before the US House Judiciary Committee passed 16-7. There hasn't been much publicity about it, though there may be more when it gets to the floor. The Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act, HR 3261, grants to databases essentially the same protection that the copyright laws give to music, literature and movies. That is, the information in them can't be copied by someone else and sold. On the face of it, that doesn't sound too terrible. After all, if you had gone to a lot of trouble to compile large amounts of data, and then found that someone else had copied your collection of information and was selling it, you'd probably be kind of irritated. Something similar to this has happened to me, and I was, indeed, extremely aggravated until the matter was settled. The problem with this bill, however, is that, for the first time, it permits private ownership of knowledge, something that common sense has always told us could not be owned, and that the US Supreme Court specifically ruled (in 1991) was not permissible. This bill, in fact, conflicts with the Supreme Court ruling, which Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-CA, probably had in mind when she said, "Even if we pass this bill the court is going to strike it down and we will not have solved the problem." The bill was introduced by Howard Coble, Republican, of North Carolina, and co-sponsored by six other Republicans and two Democrats, so there is some degree of bi-partisan support for it. Reaction from constituents has been almost entirely negative, however. Even the traditionally conservative US Chamber of Commerce has been outspoken against it, predicting that, for example, a financial analyst with access to stock market databases could violate the law by including information from such sources in a report prepared for a client. Tech firms such as Amazon.com, AT&T and Comcast also oppose the bill, as well as the owners of two of the largest databases on the planet, Google and Yahoo. NetCoalition, a public policy voice founded by the owners of Lycos, Yahoo, Inktomi and DoubleClick.net, says, "what 'database protection' really means is establishing property rights for basic, publicly available facts." The bill's proponents would say, "No, it just means that no one can copy and profit from someone else's hard work, even if that work only consisted of arranging publicly available information in logically useful ways." And they might point out that it is not the information itself which is being protected, but the work which went into finding it and making it available. I have some sympathy for that point of view. When I was informed that someone else had copied an entire family history website for which I had spent months researching information and locating appropriate images and designing an attractive appearance, I saw red. Fortunately, a note to the offender was all it took to get him to use a link to my site, rather than copying it verbatim on his site. I throw in all this personal stuff to show that I'm not just having a kneejerk reaction to the notion of someone owning information. I felt pretty proprietary about what had been copied from me. I think database owners should be protected from anyone who wants to profit from their hard work without paying them for it. But they have plenty of protections already, from copyright law to anti-hacking laws to terms-of-use contracts, and they have some interesting ways of protecting themselves. For example, companies which provide mailing labels for mass mailings always "salt the list" with a label that gets mailed back to a post office box owned by the company. That way they know whether the names have been used more than once, a violation of their contract. They are not without resources to protect themselves. What this bill does, however, is to provide a legal climate in which information, as a generic entity, can be privately owned. Researchers have always tried to keep discoveries secret until they were ready to publish (at which time they could be copyrighted). But there has never been legal (or common sense!) support for the idea that a new arrangement of publicly available information somehow confers ownership of that information. Might it confer ownership of that arrangement of the information? The Supreme Court struck down the idea that a trivial arrangement (listing names in alphabetic order) could be protected. Perhaps some more complex arrangement could then be protected? Do we want to have endless court battles over what is trivial and what is protectable? As Rep. Zoe Lofgren implied, when a law can be enforced only by resorting in each instance to the courts, it's not good law. Another problem arises when you consider what information may go into these databases. Can personal information about you and your family be owned by someone else? Nothing in the bill precludes that scenario. If your personal information becomes someone else's property, that person or company may dispose of it as they wish. All the privacy notices we've been getting in the mail recently are essentially void, if the bill is passed into law. Finally, what about libraries and other non-profit institutions that make information available to their users? The bill's supporters claim that they are exempt from the provisions of the bill. Turns out that's not quite true. Paraphrased, the "Permitted Acts" clause states that a non-profit institution may make available "in commerce" a "substantial part of a database" IF [capitals mine] the court determines that such an act was reasonable under the circumstances." When does the court get to decide? After the owner of the database proceeds with the civil remedies provided by the bill, among which are the impoundment of "all copies of contents of a database made available in commerce or attempted to be made available in commerce potentially in violation of section 3, and of all masters, tapes, disks, diskettes, or other articles by means of which such copies may be reproduced." In short, the court could impound all the institution's computers and related storage media until the case was settled, effectively throttling the institution's further operation. Just the threat of costly litigation would likely be enough to make institutions reluctant to take any chances. Finally, the bill's supporters claim that without such protection, owners of databases will have no motive to maintain and update them, nor to create new ones. This is the same tired old reasoning that pharmaceutical companies have used to keep their US pricing at astronomical levels, while instead of putting that money into new research, they turn out minimally changed versions of existing proprietary formulations (the widely advertised antacid, Nexium, for example, is a very slightly modified version of Prilosec, whose patent was set to expire in October 2002). Database companies already have many avenues of recourse against people who use their databases without compensation. Conferring ownership of the data upon them merely locks up knowledge and makes it unavailable to the average citizen.
Monday, January 26, 2004
Another link on the sidebar of political sites: The Yellow Doggerel Democrat. Steve is a fellow computer type, a fluent writer and a common-sense thinker. I'm glad I ran across his blog. We're still snowed in here, though the predicted freezing rain hasn't materialized yet. Tomorrow the roads had better be passable off the hill, because we're going to be eating nothing but oatmeal and tuna fish if I don't get to the grocery store pretty soon. I've been wanting to address the noise over the alleged "Bush-as-Hitler" comparisons. Perhaps some of them are indeed as scurrilous as the accusations say—I haven't seen any that I would put in that category. Folk, there is a huge difference between comparing one person to another, and seeing similarities in the policies of their respective governments. You can't read the provisions of the so-called Patriot Act without making uneasy comparisons with the way people were taken away in the middle of the night in 1930's Germany. Never before in our country has there been a legal mechanism for the detention of a United States citizen without being charged and without being allowed access to legal counsel, and for searches and seizures without judicial oversight (which is just a fancy way to say you have to prove to a judge that you have a good reason for the searching and seizing). That's not to say those things never happened; they were just never legal. Now they are. Never before in our country has the government set up an official corps of citizen informers. TIPS (Terrorist Information and Prevention System) has been canned, you say? Yes, the national organization is no longer in operation. However, a quick search of the net turned up instance after instance of state and local sites with lists of "suspicious activities" to report. TIPS has only been carefully and slyly hidden. For example, the list of "red flag" activities from the city of Burbank, California, website includes these reasons for suspicion:Subject of news reports, rumors or an investigation indicating possible criminal activity Are we to understand that rumor is now justifiable grounds for suspicion?Insists on using a post office box or mail dropI guess it's just too bad if you do business in a town with a rural post office where you have no choice but to get a post office box. A rural post office, for those who haven't been introduced to them, is one where the mail is delivered solely by vehicle. If your home or business is located within one-quarter mile of the post office building, or if you are unable to provide a safe place for the delivery vehicle to pull off the road, you can receive mail only by renting a post office box.May be reached solely by pager, cell phone or emailOops, now I'm in trouble--I never give out my home phone number, only my cell phone, especially since I'm on the road eighty percent of the time and that truly is the only way to reach meHigh employee turnover Well, there go all the McDonalds!Dishonest, untruthful, evasive, or never looks you in the eye when talking or listening Italics mine—you don't suppose this person might be from a culture where looking you in the eye is considered to be aggressive and impolite, do you?Personality anomalies Even the professionals can't agree on what constitutes a personality "anomaly" —ordinary citizens are supposed to know?Known womanizer You wouldn't think a male dominated city government would be stupid enough to include that oneand finally, ta-da . . . Immaturity, inappropriate dependence upon spouse or parents, unable to accept responsibility or make decisions, unusual attraction to child-oriented toys, video equipment, photographic equipment, Jacuzzi, or swimming poolThe sloppy writing of this catch-all description would be enough all by itself to make me shrug it off, but you shutterbugs out there better be careful from now on about taking pictures of anyone in the Jacuzzi or swimming pool!Do you notice the exceptionally large number of subjective words in this very short excerpt of suspicious activities? Evasive, inappropriate, unusual . . . these are words your high school English teacher told you not to use unless you could back them up, words that lawyers are cautioned for using in witness examination, words with emotional connotations far beyond their dictionary definitions. If the thought of using these words in connection with other people doesn't bother you, how do you feel about them applying these words to you? Think it can't happen? You might want to read what happened to Marc Schultz, a bookstore employee in Atlanta, Georgia. And if you'd like to see what the TIPS website and related sites originally said, before the content was removed or changed, The Memory Hole has cached many of them and made them available. Bush-as-Hitler? That's a stretch. Nazi-style subjugation of a formerly free people? It's already happening.
Sunday, January 25, 2004
The Gender Genie claims to be able to determine your gender from your writing. It came up wrong on me (well, sort of), but the statistics show an overall success rate of 65.19% for the submissions since September 13, 2003. The stats also showed something else, something very interesting: the number of percentage points between correct and incorrect results held steady, right around eight to nine, in every category—except non-fiction submissions of more than 500 words. There the correct results for females were 77.48% and the incorrect results only 10.27%. In other words, the algorithm used by Gender Genie was able to determine the correct gender three-quarters of the time in non-fiction pieces of at least 500 words. I tried it with a chunk of text from my most recent posting to Voting in America. Now, here things get really strange. When I submitted the text as non-fiction, the algorithm correctly identified me as female. When I re-submitted it as a "blog entry," however, it identified me as male. The obvious conclusion is that women's blogs read differently from men's (not exactly a whopping surprise) and that the technical matter in my submission didn't meet the expectations for a woman's blog. I didn't expect general non-fiction written by women to be so specifically identifiable, however. In fact, if anyone had tossed this out for speculation, I would have said fiction would be more easily gender-tagged than non-fiction. Apparently not. An article in Nature magazine about the algorithm says, "Female writers use more pronouns (I, you, she, their, myself) . . . Males prefer words that identify or determine nouns (a, the, that) and words that quantify them (one, two, more)," a style preference which has also been described as "involved" vs. "informational." I tried the algorithm with a page from one of my slash stories, slash fiction being the ultimate bastion of women's writing, and it tagged me as male. Oh well. Some of my best friends, etc . . . A felicitous discovery: Making Light, the blog of Teresa Nielsen Hayden, a favorite author, and also a fellow knitter. Among other things, her blog mentions some of the more arcane recent developments in knitting: the Mobius scarf (one of which I have actually made), the DNA double-helix cable stitch and the Klein Bottle hat (a Klein Bottle is a bottle with a single continuous surface that folds in upon itself like one of those impossible Escher drawings). I'm exceedingly happy to have found Teresa and will post her blog as a link under "Other Blogs of Interest."
Three inches on the ground and still falling. The children are tracking snowy footprints into all the hallways, dripping on the carpet when they come inside, trailing damp coats and hats and gloves behind them. Four to six inches is predicted, so it looks like the snow isn't going to stop any time soon. I've been debating with myself whether to move the political comment to another blog. I'm still updating Voting in America. I could certainly shift all political opinion to that site. I find that I don't like mixing personal and family information with political commentary. It takes one kind of mood to speak about my kids and grandbabies and my partner—another one to voice my feelings about the current political situation. Yet the two are inextricably intertwined. Our future—more importantly, their future—depends on what happens in the next ten months. So for the time being, I'll continue to inflict my political opinions on the few readers I probably have left here, and restrict the voting blog site to its original purpose—dealing with electronic voting issues. If you went to church today, you missed the Women for Howard Dean rally in Hooksett, New Hampshire. I couldn't go to church in any case, living at the top of a very steep hill with a good two inches of snow on the ground by that time (and all the church services canceled anyway), so I watched it. I remain convinced that Dean is the only candidate who tells you what he really thinks, regardless of what he thinks you want to hear. Whether he can be elected is another story, and whether he would actually make a good president is even farther down the road of speculation. There seems to be no question that he was an effective governor of Vermont. That set of skills doesn't necessarily translate to what it takes to operate inside the Beltway (though I'd be happier with Dean's skills and principles there than what we have now). My greatest concern is that Washington-as-usual would balk him at every step. I was hoping to find a transcript of today's remarks on his website, but it hasn't shown up yet. I started up WordPerfect and captured what I could, but without a VCR I couldn't get more than bits and pieces. A few pungent remarks really caught my attention though. In response to the official photo taken when Bush signed the bill prohibiting late-term abortions, Dean observed that everyone in the room was a middle-aged or older "white guy." Kate had already sent me a link to this picture, so I had seen it. Not a single woman was present at an occasion which profoundly affects her 50 percent of the population. Whatever your opinion on abortion issues, that roomful of smugly triumphant older white male faces sends a message that females, younger people and minorities weren't welcome. "Those guys are mired in a time which has no relationship to the lives of ordinary Americans," Dean said. "They are out of touch with what it's like to live in the most diversified country in the world. . . time has passed them by. They can't run a country any more that they don't understand." I'm hearing that "Bush is out of touch with Americans" more and more often these days. He certainly has no idea what my life is like, or that of my truck-driver daughter who has a decent job now only because a WorkForce program provided training for her (a program whose funding will disappear in Bush's budget). Or my youngest daughter, whose medical problems could be addressed only by her moving to a state with a generous disability program, since she is unable to work and has no other access to health care. Or my middle daughter, whose lawyer husband was laid off just before Christmas, resulting in her having to return to work only a month after their son was born. I can hear the groans and shouts already: "It isn't the government's responsibility to provide health care, or pay for job training, or keep people from being laid off." And you know what? In some ways, I tend to agree with that. I like being independent and self-suficient. But it also isn't the government's business, or its right, to structure an economy in such a way that self-sufficiency is extraordinarily difficult to attain. You reap what you sow, and we'll pay far more in prison and welfare costs, drug dependency and stagnant economic growth for every penny diverted from programs that lift up our weakest members than we'll ever gain from programs that merely make the strongest ones richer.
Saturday, January 24, 2004
I was reminded today of that old saw: Yesterday's history Tomorrow a mystery, Today is a gift. That's why they call it the present!" Today was indeed a gift, a midwinter present of temperatures in the high 50's and bright sunshine all day long, the kind of day in which people washed their cars in the driveway in their shirtsleeves. I drove home from Roanoke tonight under the conjoined crystalline aura of a perfect crescent moon and Venus, winter's lady of the night, sparkling brightly about ten degrees to the west. The other stars struggled over the horizon above dark tongues of cloud flowing in from the south and west, presaging the weather to come. Tomorrow we pay the piper for today's balmy present with snow, sleet and freezing rain. That ghostly aura around the moon is a high altitude layer of ice crystals, an accurate predictor of bad weather long before we had satellites and smooth-talking meteorologists. Back to more mundane matters, if anything about today's political climate can be called mundane. In December, a conservative group calling itself the "American Family Association" posted an online poll with the stated intention of demonstrating American opposition to same-sex marriage. The plan was to present the results of the poll to Congress. Respondents were to choose one of the following options: I favor legalization of homosexual marriage.I favor a 'civil union' with the full benefits of marriage except for the name.I oppose legalization of homosexual marriage and 'civil unions.'Unfortunately for the AFA, 60 percent of those polled said they favored same-sex marriage. Eight percent favored civil unions. Only 32 percent were opposed to any formal recognition of same-sex couples. The AFA now claims that "homosexual activist groups around the country got a hold of the poll -- it was forwarded to them -- and they decided to have a little fun, and turn their organizations around the country (on to) the poll to try to cause it to represent something other than what we wanted it to. And so far, they succeeded with that." You know what? That's a very interesting statement. To begin with, if the poll was intended to convey American opinion, then all Americans should be able to respond, regardless of their sexual orientation. More than that, however, the wording of the statement makes it clear that the AFA had no real desire to find out what Americans thought. Their spokesman complained to Wired News that homosexual participation caused the results to represent "something other than what we wanted it to." The AFA had evidently intended the url for the poll to be circulated only among its membership and other like-minded folk. But it "escaped" quickly, and by the middle of December could be found on many socially-conscious mailing lists, blogs and news sites. Daniel Terdiman, who wrote about the poll for Wired News expressed the outcome succinctly: ". . . the AFA and organizations like it will have to get used to the idea that if they want to use the Internet as a tool, they had better understand how it works." Bottom line: the AFA has dropped its plan to present the results to Congress.
Monday, January 19, 2004
I've finally heard from Rich directly. He confirmed that the destruction on Niue was indeed massive, but said that his server installation was undamaged. Only the downtown office was destroyed, and he managed to salvage most of what was in it first. Good news for both of us. I feel rather proprietory about some of that stuff, having handled it, repacked it for international shipping and sent it on its way. The only thing he lost was the weather station, which he said registered 300 kmh before it "blew away into outer space."Back to more mundane concerns. I'm slowly becoming accustomed to the new way of submitting my inspection reports. It is indeed a savings in terms of direct costs, but the time it takes to process the documents for a store is five times what it used to be. And it's obvious that the company which constructed the online submission site does not understand database design, nor the easiest way to fill in online forms. I've written pages of ideas on how to improve the whole works, but feel a little awkward about sending them, as I have no real authority to suggest changes. On the other hand, I suspect I'm the only one of the subcontractors who does have any experience in the field, so I'm going to let Tammy know what I think and see what happens.Nick and I are more than half way through the school year now and beginning to look at the specific things he must know to pass the Virginia Standards of Learning tests given by the school board in April. He's ahead of the game in math and English, probably about where he should be in social studies, and needs some work in science. His passion continues to be music. To my amazement, since no one suspected any abilities in this area, he has turned into quite an accomplished composer. I introduced him to the Irish penny whistle, which he took up half-heartedly at first. Something seemed to click, though, after a week or so of piddling around with it, and suddenly he was improvising little melodies of his own. For a couple of months he did nothing more than play those simple, but cheerful, little tunes, and learn other songs from the penny whistle books he was given. He has passed some additional plateau now and taken off into far more complex tunes and rhythms. He is also, without any prompting or instruction on my part, playing with different kinds of tonguing and blowing, and making far richer sounds than one normally hears from a penny whistle. I wish I could get him interested in playing the recorder as well, as there is a large body of published music for recorder. So far, though, he is reluctant to start over with another instrument. I wish we had a real piano here, instead of just the electronic keyboard. I wish my flute were playable, because I think he could make the transition to flute very easily, but all the pads and corks are dried up and crumbling, the mouthpiece is corroded, and the original quality was probably not worth what the repairs would cost.Back to getting inspection packages ready for tomorrow's trip.
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
Update on Niue: I've finally heard through a third party that Rich is okay, but his internet service installation is gone. I had figured that was the case, as he would have had some kind of communications setup in place by now if anything was left to do it with. The situation there is sad. One of the residents said there are many dead dogs and pigs, the trees have been denuded of their leaves, and the birds are all circling looking hopelessly for food. "We have no petrol left," another email said, "and very little food." I've read reports of looting, and of relief supplies being locked up on the Vice-Premier's lawn instead of being properly distributed. Some of the houses that were destroyed had asbestos insulation, so there is the fear of asbestos particles in the air. Electricity is back on, at least part time, and some sort of email is available through USP (University of the South Pacific), but as far as I know, regular telephone service is still out. The only pictures I have are from copyrighted news sources, so I'm reluctant to post them, but the island looks like the worst tornado devastation that we're used to seeing in the states. Please continue to pray for them. The reality of what has happened is beginning to sink in and weigh people down.
Thursday, January 08, 2004
More on Niue: still no word from Rich, but I do know he was not among those who were airlifted out for medical treatment in Auckland. NZoom.com, a New Zealand online news site, reports that the island looks like a "war zone." "Houses on the island's coastal side and up to 100 metres inland were wiped out, leaving just rubble. Locals say there are some parts of town that they simply can't recognise anymore." The hospital, the Justice Building and the hotel were destroyed, along with something like half the houses. Pictures sent back from Alofi show cars thrown on top of each other, houses reduced to piles of broken cinder blocks. The couple who owned a scuba diving business say everything they had was destroyed, and they expect that many of the prime diving sites were badly damaged as well. There is already much talk about people just leaving Niue and trying to rebuild their lives somewhere else. I've looked in vain for coverage of this disaster in the American news outlets. If statistics are all one goes by, then it doesn't sound like much. One dead, 200 people homeless, a hotel and a government building knocked down . . . big deal. Samoa suffered more damage than Niue, in terms of dollars and injuries. But Samoa is far more densely populated to begin with, has more industry and agriculture and tourism. Little Niue has only its historical significance and its pristine, unspoiled beauty. That may not be enough to save it.
Wednesday, January 07, 2004
Update on Niue: The Tonga Post is reporting that a woman was killed and her baby seriously injured in the storm, described as the "worst in living memory." The only contact with the island so far has been through a satellite phone used by New Zealand's High Commissioner, Sandra Lee, who said that the capitol town of Alofi was "flattened." A relief flight carrying medical supplies, tents and other desperately needed materials will leave from New Zealand on Thursday (some time today, our time, as New Zealand is west of the international date line). I spoke with the New Zealand administrator of Rich's company late last night, hoping that Rich might somehow have managed to get word out to him. He didn't know anything more than I had already learned, but promised to call as soon as he heard from Rich. Niue is a tiny island nation, discovered by Captain James Cook in 1774, though it was populated long before that by Polynesian explorers. Cook called it "Savage Island." It's a coral atoll of only 100 square miles (about 1.5 times the size of Washington DC), with a minimal economy of cash crops--vanilla, taro, limes and other similar tropical plants. Its tourist income was growing, however, and the storm will certainly be a setback to that. The Premier, Young Vivian, said from New Zealand that he feared many Niueans, who hold New Zealand citizenship, will choose to emigrate rather than trying to rebuild their lives on Niue. This would be an additional hardship on those left behind, who would have even fewer economic opportunities. AsiaPacific reports that most of the island's roads have been cut, that the hospital is damaged and the fuel depot destroyed. Without the fuel, they have no electricity, as it came from local diesel generators. Rich's company, the internet service provider on Niue, had become well known in the Pacific Rim technology community for its development of wifi service, providing internet access to people who would otherwise have had minimal contact with the outside world. Its equipment and facilities will amost certainly have been severely damaged. My New Zealand contact says "Rich has good sense, he'll be all right," but I can imagine him running out to rescue an antenna that was flying away in the wind, or one of his neighbors. More as I find out.
Tuesday, January 06, 2004
Surfacing briefly, from a flood of work that has taken me all all over the state, to ask for prayer for the people of Niue, in the Cook Islands (South Pacific). My friend and customer Rich mentioned to me a couple of days ago that they might be affected by Cyclone Heta, which was at that point bearing down on American Samoa. I was on the road yesterday and today and unable to look at the satellite imagery for that area, but I've just seen it now and it's obvious that they got clobbered. It looks as though Heta ran right over them. Rich said that if that happened, "We're toast." The Tonga news outlets are reporting that communications shut down there early this morning when the satellite dish that provides their telephone service was taken down to protect it. Rich is an amateur radio operator, though, and I'm hoping he'll be able to get word out even if they can't get the phones working right away. Niue has a population of about 2000, mostly Polynesian and a few New Zealanders, and apparently had about 20 tourists on the island at the time. The company which sells the .nu domain names is also located there, and their site, as one would expect, is unavailable. Please pray for them.
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WHY 'LIFE AS A SPECTATOR SPORT'
"If you're lucky not to live in the gutters of a slum, but still can't afford to take vacations in the Alps, you're part of that enormous middle class who lives life through the medium of the television, further separated from "real" life by air conditioner, by automobile, by dishwasher, microwave and ice-in-the-door refrigerator, by automatic washer and dryer, and all the other appliances and conveniences that make it possible for America to live life at second hand. I'm not sure why Americans decided that televised drama was better than the real thing, that cardboard microwave food containers were an adequate substitute for real dishes, and their contents for real food, or that cooking, dishwashing and face-to-face conversation wasn't worth the effort and time it required. Someone fed this nation a plastic crate of out-of-season tomatoes and told us it was life and we took them at their word, and we're so much the poorer for it that it's hard to know where to start to list the shortcomings." I wrote this a couple of years ago, but I have to admit it's much less amusing than I thought it would be to see the artifical construct falling apart.
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