dsandler.org

Brian Eno’s article in Time has been getting some coverage across the web today. There’s too much in there that’s worth quoting, and my <blockquote> key is worn out, so just go read it already.

Well, OK, one quote. But not the same “Bush recently declared that the U.S. was ‘the single surviving model of human progress’” remark:

This narrowing of the American mind is exacerbated by the withdrawal of the left from active politics. Virtually ignored by the media, the left has further marginalized itself by a retreat into introspective cultural criticism. […] Political discourse is now dominated by moralizing, like George W. Bush’s promotion of American “family values” abroad, and dissent is unpatriotic. “You’re either with us or against us” is the kind of cant you’d expect from a zealous mullah, not an American President.

With respect to Cc, Jeremy points out:

It turns out biologists (or at least my Dad) were not at all surprised when the cats turned out to be so different. Despite the fact that CG has made us assume that all clones of, say, a notorious bounty hunter would look exactly like, say, the same notorious bounty hunter, it turns out that complex organisms such ourselves are, well, more complex. Despite the vast differences that can arise from environmental influences, during early development, certain chromosomes turn off in different cells, apparently at random, resulting in a vastly different genetic expressions.

Example: having two X-chromosomes firing off in the same cell is apparently very bad, and so one switches off in cells early on. Result: a case of fraternal twins (sisters) with one being normal and the other being severely retarded because in one case, the “bad” X-chromosome is active in the cells that become the brain, while the other this is not the case. A textbook example involves, you guessed it, calico cats where the different colorations arise from different X-chromosomes be activated in the respective regions (note: all calico cats are female).

My Dad told me about this in the context of pissing off the Vatican since this shows that individual identity (and hence individual biological value) is not determined at conception.

Sorry for the book, but I think I’m just getting pissed at the media who can’t accurately report a technical story to save their miserable, worthless lives.

-j

Attention: My hosting provider is having some more issues today. We may be up and down while they get things sorted out.

I haven’t had time to read all of these links yet, but:

<ctate> interesting. lots of newspapers run pro-Bush letters that sound… oddly similar.
<ctate> also:
<ctate> | United Nations weapons inspectors have uncovered evidence that proves Saddam Hussein is trying to develop an arsenal of nuclear weapons
<ctate> and, let’s see. Here. the guy who wrote one of the Bushisms-type books, “Dyslexicon,” is coming to believe that there’s a pattern to Bush’s malapropisms and fumbled commentary: that it’s because he’s a sociopath.
<ctate> “He has no trouble speaking off the cuff when he’s speaking punitively, when he’s talking about violence, when he’s talking about revenge.
<ctate> “When he struts and thumps his chest, his syntax and grammar are fine,” Miller said.
<ctate> “It’s only when he leaps into the wild blue yonder of compassion, or idealism, or altruism, that he makes these hilarious mistakes.”
<ctate> Happy reading for a Tuesday morning…

I hope you’re feeling better, Dave.

For someone who falls asleep as easily as I do, near-sleep delirium is actually a not entirely unfamiliar experience. I recall clearly nodding off in class, vainly trying to fight the tide of alpha-waves soaking my lobes. The interesting things would happen in response to stimulus. If, through my fogged aural perception, I heard the far-off sound of the rest of the class laughing, I would cough up from my reverie a complementary laugh and smirk … and invent some sort of completely nonsensical explanation for what everyone was laughing about. If there was a particularly pregnant pause, I would realize that the instructor awaited a response from the class, and on several occasions I barely stopped myself from blurting out completely grammatical nonsense. (As I jolted suddenly to the level of alertness necessary to hold back the babbling, I was able to hear the words echoing around my brain, in that two- or three-second aural buffer. As you say, Dave, syntax OK, semantics not-so-much. Things like, “The red-black tree stays balanced because of the carpet on the staircase.”)

The worst of it was the notes I took in this state. On rare occasion, the uninitialized-memory ramblings would make it, intact, to motor neurons, and then to ink. Astonishing.

AP newswire: U.N. inspectors find chemical warheads

Jan. 16, 2003 | BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — U.N. inspectors found 11 empty chemical warheads in “excellent” condition Thursday at an ammunition storage area, where they were inspecting bunkers built in the late 1990s, a U.N. spokesman reported.

A 12th warhead also was found that requires further evaluation, according to the statement by Hiro Ueki, the spokesman for U.N. weapons inspectors in Baghdad.

CNN coverage: “Dimitri Perricos, leader of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, or UNMOVIC, team in Baghdad, said the find was “not a smoking gun” that might indicate Iraq had violated U.N. resolutions.”

According to Mike Krahulik, the font he’s using for his kickin’ new-style Penny-Arcade panels is Blambot’s Mighty Zeo. I hope he doesn’t mind me mentioning it.